Monday, November 23, 2009
Rosie
Rosie (Big Daddy Class)
A ancient icon by today's standards, Rosie the Riveter was a cultural icon meant to inspire women to contribute to the American war machine in times of war. This Icon was turned into a grim parody when Dr. Suchong named a type of Big Daddies after it. Named because of the weapon they were designed to wield to great effect, the Rivet Gun, Rosies are more defense oriented much like the Bouncer was designed to get in close and personal. When not defending Little Sisters on their rounds, Rosie's also conduct maintenance on the city itself; carrying tools in order to repair damages when they see it.
In addition to their gun, Rosies are also taught how to fashion explosive mines in order to lob them onto the battlefield in a attempt to keep groups of Splicer Thugs away from their charge. With a bit of fine tuning eventually they can configure their Kit enough to be a real challenge for whoever wants to steal their Sisters Adam.
As with all Big Daddies, The Rosie is contained in a large Diving Suit, with their view port emitting a colored light defining their mood (Yellow for Alert, Red for angry, and Green for a good, at ease mood.) that they may change at will to warn enemies of their transgressions. Unlike bouncers, they are tall and fairly lithe with a large backpack style kit.
Lair: Unlike other Big Daddies, Rosie's left alone for too long without seeing a Little Sister will set up a work shop that will act as their lair. This workshop will be the base of their Repair operation and where they will keep their spare tools. When meeting with a Little Sister, they will abandon the workshop for as long as it takes, leaving turrets and traps to hopefully protect it long enough to last until the Rosie returns. Any room will make due for a Rosie's lair as long as it is abundant in Salvage material and has plenty of space for the Rosie to construct objects to defend and repair Rapture.
Background: Like others of their kind, Rosie's have little or no remembrance of the days before their creation. Only the two goals burned into their minds. Repair and Protect Sisters. Nobody actually knows how to combat the mind control plasmid used on Big Daddies so they may be roaming the halls of rapture forever.
Weakness: On their back is a large canister of oxygen for their treks on the sea floor in order to repair the outside of rapture. Shooting or penetrating this tank will put a hole in it that can be later repaired as a Extended Action by the Rosie for a point of Salvage. When a hole is put inside the tank, O2 will spray out; Dazing the Rosie for a round. Any nearby flames that meet the Oxygen will cause 1D10 -5 lethal damage, with a minimum of one. The rosie requires its Tank in order to breathe underwater.
Salvaging: Discarded metal items such as guns can be converted to one salvage point for each point of resources the item costs by the Rosie as a simple action. They may also choose to strip spare metal plating off of rooms as a Extended action, every two successes leading to a point of Salvage. Every point of Salvage taken from the room in this manner causes a point of durability damage to the room which can later be repaired using Salvage
Favored Attribute: Dexterity or Intelligence
Kit: Rivet Gun, Rosie Mine Recipe
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Big Daddy Template
[BEGIN]
Template:
Big Daddy Class: Big Daddies are given a specific layout upon creation, along with a specific type of plasmid mix that transforms them into that type of big daddy. Classes of Big Daddy are available later in the book and define your weaponry, bonus specialty, and method of gaining Salvage points.
Rosie
Bouncer
Rumbler
Salvage Points: Wandering through the halls, Daddies will collect material they find may aide in repairing or upgrading their weaponry. When coming across metal items like Guns or scrap left from destroyed bots a Big Daddy may collect it and immediately turn it into usable Salvage Points that can be spent at a U-Invent machine and fashioned into whatever they need that is metal such as new weaponry or bullets. Big Daddies can have up to ten Salvage Points at one time.
Honor: Being so far changed from a normal human, Big Daddies simply do not think of actions as right or wrong, just like Splicers. Big Daddies instead has Honor, which replaces the concept of Humanity or Morality.
Honor system
10 Abandoning a Little Sister
9 Attacking First
8 Killing Non Splicers
7 Attacking a Big Daddy unprovoked
6 Killing a Big Daddy
5 Stealing a Little Sister from another Big Daddy
4 Letting a Little Sister get stolen from
3 Letting a Little Sister get hurt
2 Hurting a Little Sister
1 Letting a Little Sister Die
Pheromones: Mr. Bubbles possesses special chemical pheromones that attract Little Sisters to him. On sight a Little Sister will join the Big Daddy and follow him. Little Sisters currently being escorted by another Big Daddy will ignore the other Big Daddy until a fight breaks out between them and one Big Daddy stands victor or forces the other Big Daddy to break contact with the Little Sister.
Diving Suit: The bulky suit of the Big Daddy is a double edged sword. Dexterity Checks are -1 along with any roll requiring you to run or jump. Your size is increased to 7. Speed is -4. Damage taken from Firearms, Explosives, Blunt, and Piercing attacks is considered Bashing. The suit has a Armor rating of 3. Since they are literally fused into their suit, they can never get out of it.
Voice Box: The inner workings of the body that control speech have been permanently tampered with and changed. It is impossible for Big Daddies to make sounds similar to Speech, restricted to long, drawn out and pained sounding low pitch groans and grumbles.
[END]
Personally I think its unimportant to mention the Voice Box and Pheromones in Char creation since it does not have much to do with the character sheet at all. The key thing is the Class, Salvage, Diving Suit, and Honor. These are things that directly affect the sheet.
There are a few rules I have been kicking around that apply directly to Rapture
- No Covenants or Equivalent for Non Human Splicers. They lack the population and sanity to have a true population going.
- Resources are handled differently since nobody in rapture actually makes money anymore. When slaying splicers you will need to actively be looting their pockets and grabbing Resources dots in order to use the Merchant machines around Rapture.
Shotgun of Vamp-rapin' +2
Number one on my agenda of topics is a line of gaming aides called Game Mastery. My local game shop had had these packs of cards for as long as I remember. They are cheap and small packs of cards from the first two editions of printing. What the cards are, are Item cards meant to mesh well with any Fantasy or medieval setting. They are not very generic either since they are meant to resemble magic items, so even a simple cloak has a interesting description to it. One card in each pack is also a "Shiny" which adds to its coolness. Optional rule would be making the shiny cards really good items.
They may be simple, but its a great help for GM's that want to organize their items easily and keep a good idea of who has what item and give players a mental image of what they find. I bought three pakcs the other day, and boy what a smart move on my part. I fell in love with them quickly and was amazed to find out there publisher has several cheap $10 sets of these cards that are non randomized. Odd thing is the only gun so far in the sets is in a dragons treasure set of cards.
If you have a credit card and twenty bucks you want to invest in your DnD game to keep Gorgar the Dragonarion Priest/Warrior/Thief/Lich/Mage Honest with what he has on his person, then head over to Paizo games site and grab a few decks of these cards and enjoy how easy they can make fantasy or medieval settings for you. Even then, some of these can be crossed over to other settings as well. The artwork would lend well to a Legend of the five rings campaign.
Article two however is a touchy subject, and that would be the subject of Erorpgs. Erorpg is a shortening of Erotic Role playing game. The few I know of were pains and still are pains to track down. The three easy to find books are Black Tokyo and The Book of Erotic Fantasy which are OGL DnD books. BT is a anime styled game with such fan favorite classes as the flow witch, that shits and cums her panties to buff her allies. The Death womb that has a razor bladed vagina. And the guy that can turn his hands and fingers into a swarm of penis tentacles. Your mostly raping enemies to death in a strange tokyo setting that is... well. It scared a good portion of /tg/. TBOEF is a little more tame, and the art does not suck since they hired models to dress up as naked elf chicks. The material itself is lengthy and quite clumsy when I tried to understand it.
The third of the three is a small BESM knock off called Big Boobs Small Waist. BBSW Is another hentai adaptation that is mainly just a freeform game that focuses on the main reason everybody wants to play it, getting exp for giving fellatio to a room full of school boys (And the two oral virgins give you extra xp!). These three games are worth giving a look if your into collecting such material.
The couple I am having hard times with are called Zettai Reido (Translated=Absolute Slavery) and Rapture Academy. I have yet to find a full PDF of Zettai reido, and even then theres not much use of it; its completely in japanese with no official translation in sight. The game, from what can be understood, takes place in hell where the demons and devils take turns dominating each other and having crazy amounts of sex. I also found a expansion book also in japanese that adds in angels doing pretty much the same.
Rapture Academy is sort of a enigma. I cannot find any actual information on it at all, yet its somewhat of a common discussion topic on 4chan's roleplaying board. The best I have deciphered from loose talk is it takes place in a magic academy setting, and the traps in said setting rape the players, most likely with tentacles. If anybody has a lead on where I can get a copy of Rapture academy or a full version of Zettai Reido I will be very happy.
Which brings me to the main thing I was getting at. My interest is in setting up a wiki or some form of specialized open source page for group collaboration on making erorpgs; this is something I may do in coming weeks if only to see if it actually happens. The weirder and stranger the subject matter the better. While working on my current project I have been musing over a erorpg that focuses on leading a gang or martial arts guild that focuses on capturing territory and raping prisoners. Much like a game from the makers of Robozou only with less "OH MY GOD WHY... WHY!" plastered all over it, and no fucked up incest with the spirit of a male ancient master possessing your sister.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
No colors anymore, I want them to be black.
Key thing that's slowly been getting done is fleshing out the details in character creation. The basics things can be referenced to the core book, but I am very sure that the steps for character creation will have to be re-written a couple times until it looks good. I want to flesh it out amazingly and put oh so much wondrous detail into the section but the key thing is much of WoD supplement character creation text is just cut and paste until it gets to the supernatural templates due to the steps for creation being much simpler then Old World.
Now; thats not suggesting I am trying to copy White Wolfs style to the point of purposely avoiding improvement. More or less I want to kind of stay true to the style and just have something I can read in a month or two and go "Hey, that looks pretty good.". Coming to the topic of Supernatural templates.
Bid Daddies would certainly be a interesting concept to transform into a playable template. Though it immediately hits on one big thing: Canon. I know, I know. Its not like we are following Canon too well so far anyway, but more or less we are strecthing it. Lets face it though, And answer honestly. When you played Bioshock, didn't you EVER want to use that big freaking Drill? More so in Bioshock two when they give you the Drill! Therefore, I can guess very well that when people play a rpg in that world; That they will want to play as a Big Daddy.
Simplest matter is to include a template but attach plenty of rules for it, including rules for being transformed into one during play as jack did before the fight with Atlas and supply a few choices of Layout for the new Big Daddy (Bouncer, Rosie, or one of the homebrew Big Daddies we are toying with) which will of course effect the weapon access they have and how hardcore they really are. A big drawback to being a Big Daddy is there's a very slim chance you will be able to wield Plasmids. To make up for it your limited weaponry will make OWoD Werewolves say "Wow thats overpowered!" Drills will most likely get 8 again, Rivet Guns will be able to switch ammunition and fire neat super bolts.
Second is the player will now be the tank. Not just the tank but THE tank. Most anything will only do bashing to you and your mis-shapen flesh underneath is not only fire resistant (Very low chance of catching fire) but slowly regenerates. Vocalization becomes well... Impossible. The Big Daddies voice box is forever tampered with and can only make the low, tired groans your familiar with and unable to actually form words. The upside is the Big Daddie can use a little Sister gathered from a Vent in order to gather Adam for the group and to further your own goals.
There is still plenty to flesh out and think of. But I am more familiar with the rule that if it is mentioned as a race there will probably be a player that wants to be that race somewhere along the line. Its how Gripli from AD&D were statted for 3.5 afterall. For instance is the similer rule of design is that is a Monster is ever mentioned a GM will use it atleast once in its existence. Like the cop out for Deadlands not statting Clay (A servant of Death) because they said "If they stat it, they will kill it" in a misguided attempt to not let players play their own story.
That and who doesint want to wield a gigantic Drill of death.
Friday, November 13, 2009
I put on my robe and wizards hat
'No,' says the man in Washington, 'it belongs to the poor.'
'No,' says the man in the Vatican, 'it belongs to God.'
'No,' says the man in Moscow, 'it belongs to everyone.'
I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose...
Rapture.
A city where the artist would not fear the censor,
where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality,
where the great will not be constrained by the small.
And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city, as well." -Andrew Ryan
These are words I have memorized by heart, and live on as one of the most amazing speeches seen in a video game, next to the infamous words of SHODAN. I mention them because of a project my friends and I have considered seeing to fruition. A few months ago we considered putting together a D20 supplement for Bioshock; Since I have never really bothered with D20 AT ALL... That proved a little difficult for me to stay able to contribute. Without me to contribute anything my friends didn't know where to start either and we eventually got bored of it.
While working the night shift, I am required to stock drinks in the 7-11 cooler; unless the door is open its impossible to be heard, and anybody hearing me anyway usually just smiles and carry's on their business. I found just mumbling and humming to myself helps the time pass so naturally I went through famous words until I finally had myself saying "I am here to ask you a question: Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?" This reminded me of the project we started, so as I thought I continued "NO, says the man in Washington 'It belongs to the poor.'". A major hurdle that stopped us was a D20 friend of ours was convinced we could not roll a big daddy as a damage resistant creature, it had to have complicated armor. "NO, says the man in the Vatican. 'It belongs to god'" We also were attempting to fit characters into classes tailored after play styles, in the end having a medic, a 'bookie' (Plasmid user), a brawler, a shooter, and a engineer. It was a good idea but didn't seem very Bioshock. "NO, says the man in Moscow. 'It belongs to everyone!'" Plasmids were confusing as well, it was hard to explain how it worked in a magic system as they were not spells earned by leveling, but by consumption of Plasmid syringes
"I.... rejected these answers. Instead I chose something different, I chose the impossible, I chose..." That night I talked to Anne, convinced we can try again; I then began to rant about how we know nothing of modding DnD, if only it was something we were well skilled in, like WoD. "Rapture" Suddenly we realized it was kind of silly to consider D20 just because that's what everybody did, thinking it would be easy. World of Darkness by its very nature is held together by hundreds of small rules that make up a large, playable composite; due to how the system works. As was stated in my earlier WoD post, The various races are structured as supplements to the core book (which allows creation of vanilla mortals AKA: Common folk) so naturally its designed for it to be pretty easy to just tack on rules you like and dropkick anything you don't.
Vampires are resistant to damage because of a rule in the vampire book that says "Bullets only do bashing damage to vampires" and "Vampires may use blood points to heal". Sounds to start like if Fluxx was a roleplaying game, doesn't it? In way thats both a blessing and a curse. Its a blessing because ST's can add, use and neglect rules at will without damaging the gameplay experience for the players. The curse is... people will be tempted to play vampires, werewolves, and changelings in this Ayn Rand inspired hellhole we call Rapture.
Is that bad? Well, no. Luckily we realized that off the bat last night. Though it is quite the slap to the face of canon its not exactly impossible. Since Andrew accepted basically anybody who accepted his rules and was shunned by society or otherwise willing to leave the surfac; its not exactly too impossible for vampires, changelings, or mage's to feel being cooped up with thousands of humans oblivious to their nature at the murky depths of the ocean (An no sunlight, for vampires) is leagues better then the surface. Changelings liking the solitude, Mages for being able to express their intellectual needs, and Vampires for their new found ability to not only be a hundred percent safe from sunlight but have plenty of people to feed from as long as they are smart about it.
Werewolves have a less obvious excuse, a gigantic dog in the middle of the sea floor in what could be translated as a hamster cage like design complete with tubes and such is not a good idea. Though who knows, such individuals would probably not be shunned by Ryan if they came out of the proverbial closet to him in favor for being hired as Ryans security force.
Lost styled Changelings would probably adore the prospect, especially those who served under water-styled true fae. Protected by Ryan, able to do essentially anything that betters the quality of life. Its basically a 'get out of hell free' card. At least until the Rapture Civil War erupts.
The key thing is the notion of combat, due to extremely violent nature of Rapture post-RCW; regaining health will be relatively easy. Another key thing is we are not going to change who Jack is. So no Vita Chambers will be around to rez you. The players will take place of survivors or other people who somehow ran into the lighthouse (Who knows, there may be more lighthouses at sea to welcome people to rapture)
We're of course aware Bioshock two is coming; using much of the logic they did with our supplement. Since only a small portion of Rapture was shown in Bioshock 1, maybe 3-5 of the many buildings underwater, we can get away with having plenty of room for original rooms and buildings to be shown. Same with plasmids, there's bound to be plenty not showed in Bioshock. So that gives a opinion to being able to home brew plasmids.
Its impossible to give any thing like a due date, or much more then what we have. Expect updates in coming weeks
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
NWoD and when to refuse to roleplay
In the start, white wolf had modules for DnD out and were part responsible for the Ravenloft setting (And I believe the best module EVER. AD&D Adeventure Module I6: Ravenloft) However, thats a tale for another day.
The World of Darkness setting was a series of books and sub-books. Most popular were Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and Mage: The Ascension. There were seven other books. Orpheus, Changeling: The Dreaming, Hunter: The Reckoning, Demon: The Fallen, Mummy: The Resurrection, Kindred of the east, and Wraith: The Oblivion.
This was the old world. Much akin to the old testament, if you were not one of the supernatural creatures enslaving human kind you were doomed to die a horrible death. OWoD had its benefits, the game highly recommended Storytellers (GM's) to require reasoning behind players raising skills and purchasing merits for their characters. While players could have a rough time; GM's usually had the advantage over the characters when it came to making them follow the story without forcing them too hard to follow it. However, A big dent was all the books had its own built in core book that made up a good half of the book. Combine that with the books rarely being able to mix with eachother and in some cases impossible to mix with eachother. Character creation was also a little confusing without practice. but I put that more to poor wording rather then the game being too confusing.
Though I sound negative about it, OWoD shaped much of the early roleplaying scene, making countless tropes and inside jokes. Though Whitewolf made a sort of strange move on their part. The apocalypse came, completely ending the OWoD lines with fire, brimstone, and the rules for fighting Cain (Rule 1: You lose). Many of the fans of the game were both scared and angered, wondering how they have the balls to tell them their world is dead by canon (Its sort of messed up if you look at it, playing a game with their system only for them to rush into your house and say "OH ha ha, your characters died because we said so")
After six tons of hate mail, Whitewolf created the NWoD. And it wasn't just a rehash. White wolf actually went in and recreated every concept. First key thing, they threw our the civil war in Vampire, they quickly learned it was hard to play vampire WITHOUT getting dragged into the Sabat, Camerilla struggle. They completely revamped Changeling, Hunter, Wraith (Turned into Geist), Mummy (Turned into Promethean), and Demon. Hunters were no longer super powered warriors on a mission from god. Changelings were no longer... whatever they were. Key point is they certainly put thought into it. They even released one core book "WoD Core" that had the complete rules, immediately making all the NWoD books 300 pages lighter. The series all still received their sub books (Clan books, new merits, stuff like that) in addition to generic books with merits and equipment for all the book series.
And it was good. I feel much better about NWoD, its cleaner, and shows the vast experience WW had received from its past ventures. However, now comes the important part I have been leading up to. Of all the "races" in WoD, none were more pissed off about this change then the Changelings. In OWoD they were avatars of dream and nightmare. In NWoD they were a bit different, survivors of the fairy plane of Arcadia. Changelings are humans that were turned into half fairies in the plane of Arcadia, having been kidnapped by the True Fae and forced to serve under them. Eventually they escaped and found their way back to the human world. They have their human "Seeming" which is essentially how others view him, human and normal. However in true reality they are twisted version of themselves, magical fair folk.
Sounds cool right? Well it is. However, this is quite different then how the old changeling players were used to it. Forcing the pockets of Dreaming players to cry their bloody heads off and non officially boycott Lost. Your all welcome to your opinions, but refusing outright to play a game just because its a improvement of what was old?
The key thing here is they are not boycotting THE SYSTEM, they are boycotting the IDEA. And that hits a little more to logic. Just like most guys would not want to play a Hello Kitty rpg because its Hello-Fucking-Kitty. Another example is I have a friend of mine named John, he absolutely refuses to play any form of NWoD because he does not know the system and rules mechanics. Not playing Lost because its a different idea from what you grew up with? Ok, that at least makes sense. Not playing a modern world setting because you don't know how many dice to use? Wtf?
As a player, you should NEVER care about the actual system (With a few exceptions). You should only care about the setting. What differentiates Shadowrun from D20 Modern settings wise? On the surface well... nothing. Thats because they are both Cyberpunk settings with a fairly close idea. Then you add the shiny stuff, Dragons, Cyberware, Astral planes, you name it. Thats when the system modulates the setting into THE setting. Shadowrun isn't just Cyberpunk, its Shadowrun because it has those twists in the story that make it shadowrun.
Paranoia however, is just Paranoia by default. Nobodys even tried to make a knockoff of that yet. (Can't improve perfection...)
Monday, November 9, 2009
Shameless Plug
If you donate, you can create your own fields for digestion of the masses. Its kind of cool.
Friday, November 6, 2009
How to Host a Dungeon?
That takes me to a recently discovered game called How to Host a Dungeon. One thing that immediately caught my eye was the subject, its labeled a solitaire game yet its not exactly that hard to pioneer the maps into playable dungeons for all manner of dungeon delving games. However, I am that guy that likes the play the game to the letter, so the freeform "Go nuts!" rules bugged that little guy on my shoulder screaming "IT SAYS A FINGER LONG TUNNEL ROB, MAKE IT A EXACT FUCKING FINGER LONG!". Now here is a thing that is peculiar, the game has a $5 version and a free version, the exact difference is formatting, images (Which admittedly, can help with some of the poor wording), and a additional Civilization and Villain for use with some of the stages of the game. It is worth it to help the author along, this is a amazing game.
Now heres the kicker, the game flat out tells you to make your own rulings and content. Nothings stopping you from reading the rules for the Demon civilization from the PDF preview. Paying for the game becomes a choice of moral alignment. I kind of respect that, it becomes closer to incentive to donate to get a nicer looking version of the game. And that is good! treat your donaters right!.
Game play goes between four stages. Primordial, which is basically rolling three D10 and figuring out what makes your dungeon Unique like caves, gold veins, mithrel, monsters. All to a gigantic Wyrm that lives in a big cave. Also, for such large and easily labeled creatures it invites you to name them as well. The first time I rolled a Wyrm I named it Gorgar. Because Gorgar will eat you (GORGAR!). Giant rivers, volcanoes, there's little that cannot happen with a roll of the dice. This adds to the charm, actually. The creator went to quite a length to make each play through insanely unique (At first, only reading the rules it will seem like your making carbon copy dungeons. Then you play...)
Then, a ancient civilization appears. be it Dwarves that set up a mining complex, Drow that build their slave cities, Demons on their way to the surface to kill god, or anything of your own design! Sadly the file was deleted but I wrote up my own Alien Civilization that play tested perfectly, I will rewrite it and post it some day if I get requests for it. The key thing about the Civ's is they WILL die off or disappear. You may really want them to survive long, but if they last too long they will quickly mine out the mithrel deposits and most of the gold (If dwarven), have a room in every part of the map (Drow) or well, demons will never last more then 4-5 turns so they are exempt. My Aliens in fact quickly tired of the underground without any creatures to eat, requiring them to flee to the surface in order to find food. After your ancient race has got bored or died a horrible death, the age of monsters begins. Some earlier placed things like Ancient wyrms turn into big bad beasties along with other monster groups appearing along with a castle full of humans popping onto the surface.
The age of monsters is a gigantic bloodbath, where your original complex will be filled with groups of quickly breeding antlings, pissed off trolls, mining gnomes, anything you want to place in it. After one of the many factions gets 6 gold, the age of villainy begins and a big bad makes his nest in the dungeon. Generally when turning the map into a playable adventure; this is the ideal stage to place your game if you want a typical "Kill the evil overlord" game going. Otherwise, If you want a fun dungeon romp to just get treasure, place the game at the very end of the Age of Monsters when conflict is probably placed between 2-3 powerful entities.
In the end HtHaD has a lot of bookkeeping halfway through it, especially time consuming when your doing this on photoshop without a pad. However, the end product can be invaluable when you need a fast, original dungeon to throw at your redshirts (Because we all know the Cave of Fate is only fun the first 20 times you play it.)
http://planet-thirteen.com/Dungeon.aspx
Shall we Bang!
Its called Bang! Its a italian and english game (The cards are Bilingual.) based around a spaghetti western, in fact most of the characters are mostly parodies of historical or popular fictional cowboys and icons. Names such as Willie The Kid or Jessie Jones. On the back of the character cards are five bullets, you have a character card bullets showing to act as your health, sliding your character down to show how much health you currently have.
The game itself plays much like a Wild West version of Werewolf. One player is the Sheriff, who is revealed to all players as the sheriff. Then there are a handful of deputies (Their goal is to protect the sheriff), Outlaws (Killing the sheriff makes them win) and one or two Renegades (They must kill others until they are the last one standing, but they must kill the sheriff LAST, otherwise the Outlaws win by their condition). Combat is simple, many cards have a "BANG!" symbol, cards with it will damage other players health. However, cards with this symbol can be deflected instantly if the targeted player plays a card with the "Missed!" symbol. Adding to this, all the characters have special rules that can go from seemingly useless, but a lifesaver (Increasing the range others must have in order to attack you) to making you 'That guy who must die NOW!' (Requiring two missed! cards to be played to deflect your Bang!s, or letting you play any number of Bang! cards in your turn.)
With the expansions, even more whacky, fun rules are added to the mix, along with even more characters. Then there is what I bought today that made me revisit this bliss. The Bang! Bullet. It contains the core set (Which has 7 role cards and 16 characters), Dodge City (15 more characters, 8 more Role cards. It says its to play with 8 players, but everybody knows it really means "Play with 7 MORE players, go freaking NUTS!"), the two special rule expansions Fistful of Cards and High Noon (Each with a deck of 15 cards, meant to make the game to go faster) along with rare cards (Three exclusive characters, based on the Producer and Distributors CEO's, along with... Santa?)
In short, this game is the ultimate game to play in a huge party when people managed to forget the booze and whores (If your reading this post, its probably going to be any party you go to, don't leave your Bang Bullet at home.). Its also worth mentioning last week it has been revealed that the game will have a electronic version released online in the coming months. Will we be able to find games on it? Who knows.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
First post lolololololol. A history of the man.
Some people may know me as Robbos, game creator. For a amount of time I wrote small and unimpressive rulesets for 1km1kt (Free rpg portal). Writing whole systems by myself proved daunting of a task. My free time dwindeled and I procrastinated. My ideas were good, the systems were fine. but I had nobody to kick me in the ass and finish them. Eventually I abandoned that, when I am ready to finally convince myself its worth it and give a good effort I will rise again.
My story is simple. For a couple months I was active on BYOND, without much practice and not much idea of munchkins or what they were. BYOND housed many of them, player killing idiots with unspoken rules they would dare not share. Every character was a typical overpowered demon, vampire, or both. Except me. I played normal people, or relatively normal. My final session was when I tried to turn a beam hitting me into something else, because I didn't feel like making a character for the 22nd time. The result was all the veterans complaining saying it was unblockable, and banned me. Yet I heard another vet say he could of blocked it.
Closing the program I sighed, starting my brief activity writing game rules. My first one was a crude rpg based around the movie battle royale (Later in time finding out a game called Classroom Deathmatch was written; far better and more playable). Looking for a location to host it I found 1km1kt and later its sister sight RPGlaboratory, which became my headquarters for my game writing for a little while. Along this path I kept in touch with my friend Anne, who I had met online during the BYOND days in a different roleplay game. For the next few years we played around and gathered players, never getting more then 2-3 people at once.
In the past year I have become more and more fond of NWoD. Thats New World of Darkness for those unsavvy. The old world was ended by the apocalypse and in a different timeline the New world was made using lessons learned in the past. However this new world boasts a easier character creation system and many of teh game lines are dramaticly different then the last.
Hunter: The Reckoning turned into The Vigil. The hunters that used to be godly superwarriors were 'nerf'ed into vanilla mortals with a couple extra abilities and ways to defend against the supernatural. So far its worked out, being the prey and the predator at once worked fine. I happen to like HtV the best of the new lines, seconded by Vampire: The Requiem. The key thing about VtR is they figured out that the Sabat-Camerilla war was just nto working out, most chronicles were almost solely about that damn war and it lended to almost copy-paste-like games.
But I still lurk amongst you as a player. In my free time I homebrew content (Which will in the future be posted on this blog for fan digestion.). I still fancy myself a rule smith, and will have presents for you every now and then. I will also give my two bits on systems I find and like. new books I want to share. and anything I can. I will also answer questions sent to my email and post the question and answer on the blog. Robbiemackmeed@yahoo.com
I will try and post updates twice a week, Tuesday and Friday.
