Little notes to myself regarding B20, because I keep losing them:

RACE
Human: +1 to class and alignment bonus
Elf: +2 to perception, or while in favored environment (choose during character creation)
Dwarf: +2 vs Goblinoids, Orcs, or Giants
Gnome: +2 to haggling and provision checks
Tiefling: +2 to hurting people

CLASS
Adventurer: +1 to race and alignment bonus
Fighter: +2 to use violent force
Wizard: +2 to knowing stuff, can attempt magic
Cleric: +2 vs demons or undead, can attempt magic
Thief: +2 to lying, stealing, and sneaking

ALIGNMENT:
Neutral: +1 to race and class bonus
Good: +2 to help people
Evil: +2 to hurt people
Law: +2 when following orders
Chaos: +2 to disobey (sincere) orders

(If you're the "leader", or just in a group without such things, coming up with a plan beforehand is basically giving yourself orders. Sincere just means you can't give someone chaotic orders you obviously want them to disobey.)

Happy Birthday, H.P. Lovecraft!

What are the last three games you've played?

A) Nobilis. I'm actually in two games (and counting) online, one PbP at rpg.net, another on IRC. In the PbP game I'm running, which uses the Treachery campaign in the back, the PCs have just decided to reject Lord Entropy's request that they fabricate evidence against one of his enemies, and are suffering the consequences (he's sent mooks after their bonds). The Lady of Blades is having an argument with Meon (Desecration's regal) over why it's in his best interests to leave Excalibur alone, while the Dominus of Reflection has just employed the chancel's high summoners to visit horrible crystalpocalypse upon the construction crew making an ugly industrial fortress in his idyllic valley home (and the other players have other such problems). Meanwhile, in the IRC game in which I'm actually playing, not running, we just took a whale-ride (the whale happened to be the reincarnated spirit of a young japanese guy we accidentally bought from the Cammora) to Atlantis to try and gather evidence to help save one of our sworn archenemies from the Locust Court. It's complicated.

Man, I love Nobilis.

B) Mouse Guard: A fun game with a cool little system that steals the cool bits out of Burning Wheel (and a few other sources), but what I really ended up liking is the setting. It does the whole 'points of light' thing D&D4 talks about well, with nasty wilderness between towns such that any journey is a dangerous adventure. And looking at "ordinary animals" from the perspective of the bottom of the food chain instead of the top is interesting: I've discussed with friends the idea of just taking all the animals of Mouse Guard, keeping their natures intact, and "reskinning" them as Monsters in a game where you play actual people, and it seems like it'd work pretty well as a game. I also really dig how the Seasons influence so much of situation (weather, wilderness, what animals are about and what they're doing).

C) L5R: A favorite of some of the other people in our group. It's not bad, although I'm not as gung-ho about "Let's pretend to be japanese! Wheeee!" settings being turned off by some hardcore japanaphiles back in the day (sort of like how we'll never get any version of a WoD game floating at my face to face group because some of the players have had exceptionally bad experiences LARPing the game). But the relationships between the clans are interesting, there's a lot of cool advantages and disadvantages (True Love and Bitter Betrothal: two great tastes that go great together) and I dig the rarely-actualized ideal of a game that's all about Honor, Glory, and Status. And although we didn't get the chance to use it, the Mass Battle system looks really interesting: throwing random opportunities to do cool shit at various individuals against the backdrop of war and carnage. I could see myself running a game some day in the future.

What are the three games you've enjoyed the most?

A) Nobilis: I mentioned before loving this game, right? It's got a fantastic setting, a system that practically runs itself once you're familiar with it (which isn't that hard), and the game itself provides more than enough advice on how to play (which is why I never understand people who ask that very question. Like, people often ask "What do Nobilis DO?" and there's an entire chapter entitled "What do Nobilis Do")

One of the crowning moments of awesome in all games I've ever run or played came from one of the big Nobilis games I ran back in college. The Imperator had charged the group with assembling the shards of an Excrucian superweapon called "Perfection", but there were plenty of sideplots going on. The Power of Fire (a power-hungry volatile crackplot. IE: Played by Tavis) got dragged to the Locust Court for sentencing an entire city to burn for all eternity. (He regretted it, but mostly the "getting caught" factor). The Power of Influence was scheming on the side collecting the ingredients needed for the mysterious Rite of Seven Petals, which promised untold power. The two Tempests were getting more and more direct in their conflicts over how life in the Chancel should be. And there was growing concern over what their Imperator wanted said superweapon for, since it had basically been broken up and the pieces scattered across Earth for a reason.

The group finally assembled Perfection, and Influence, with his high Spirit score, was the only one who could handle it "safely". Naturally, he used it to gather the ingredients he needed for his Rite, although things got hairy the more he used it (for example, fetching the "Flower of Flowers" involved opening a rend in spacetime straight to Heaven, something the Angels weren't happy about.) Finally, he had everything he needed for the Rite, and just needed some time to do it in. Unfortunately, then, the Imperator appeared and ask him to hand Perfection over, and there was moment of tension when all eyes were on him, waiting to see what he'd do.

He gave it to Fire, and ran like hell. The moment of stunned shock and disbelief that followed, on everyone's part (including both Mine and Tavis's) was one of my most strongly remembered moments in gaming.

B) Ghost/Echo: Ghost/Echo packs a surprising amount of awesome into a two-page document (with illustrations). The setting's a brief skeletal sketch with just enough details to inspire more coolness, the initial situation is loaded for bear ("You've just been betrayed, and hungry Wraiths are closing in!"), but what really shone for me was the system. Shit happened in Ghost/Echo, especially when fights broke out. There was no "I hit him." "Okay, he hits you back." Instead, we're talking property damage, third parties bursting in ("Security arrives!"), people falling off bridges and flying out of windows ("Okay, you're falling through the air, a couple hundred floors above pavement. What do you do?") and stuff like that. There was never a moment where the PCs all sat around with no idea of what to do next.

A phrase that sometimes gets used when describing problems with some style of play is "20 minutes of fun in four hours of play", but I definitely felt Ghost/Echo gave me my four hours worth. (The rest of the group felt it was little TOO madcap, sadly, but it'd be pretty easy to hack to give the PCs a bit more competence, and indeed, that was one of the few things included in the minor revision the creator did.)

C)In Nomine: The system is, well, to be perfectly frank about it, balls. I mean, yeah, if everyone is on board it gets the job done, but if you so much as squint at it cross-eyed it will turn on you and kill everyone you love. But the setting, and the relationships between all the major groups in said setting, lead to some pretty awesome play. I included, with default character creation "Name an Angel you dislike, and a Demon you like", and that lead to an amazingly awesome group of NPCs (before I handed over the GM reigns to another one of the players to give playing it a try, and he killed almost all of them, and gave the remainder Obvious Villain Balls, but that's another story.)

It had a lot of great moments, but what really drove it was that the PCs did it all to themselves, really. There's too many moments where the one of the PCs came up with a solution to the problem that created even more problems further down the line, but I'll fondly remember Jael and E.D. as the characters who basically ran plot for me.

But that "Angel you dislike, Demon you like" trick? I'm totally using that again for any game setting that has two relatively clearly defined sides in opposition to eachother. Genius, man.

What are the three games you'd most like to play that you haven't played before?

A) Mutants and Masterminds: A bit of a cheap answer because I'll probably be running it later today, but there ya go. It seems to streamline a lot of the bits of d20 I normally don't like, and I admit there's always going to be a little part of me that goes "Yay!" when presented with a large list of superpowers and a bunch of points to spend on them.

Plus, it suddenly occurs to me, in the context of writing this post, that superheros and supervillains are two relatively clearly defined sides in opposition to eachother. Hmmm.

B) Polaris: I got it a while ago, and it's the "indiest" of indie games I've ever read. I dig the setting, the whole GM-role-distribution thing, and ritualized negotiation of how conflicts go down... it's got a lot of cool ideas I'd really love to see shake out in an actual game.

But I know I'd never, ever, ever sell it with my current table-top group. I should probably hunt down some people to run an IRC game of it saturday mornings or something like that.

C) nMage: Ever since reading DaveB's actual play threads Broken Diamond and Soul Cage, I've been sold on this game. I dream of a chronicle that deals heavily with the Astral Realms (especially going inside the Oneiros, which is basically a The-Cell-esque exploration of the inside of somebody's head), Arcane Duels, and Paradox. Lots of paradox. (I'd probably just implement the optional rule in Tome of Mysteries that lets you go for an effect one dot higher than your actual sphere mastery at increased levels of Paradox, and then let the PCs dig their own graves with that one).

On the other hand, my odds of getting this game run, while slightly higher than Polaris, are still low: as there's some pretty strong anti-WoD sentiments in my current group that carried over from oWoD LARPing to pretty much anything with the White Wolf logo on it. Still, the fact that you can fight your inner demons with shotguns, chainsaws, and lightning bolts might be a decent selling point. (One of my hypothetical pitches was, in fact, "The Early Indiana Jones movies with Seers of the Throne instead of Nazis, Scelesti instead of depraved cultists, Atlantean artifacts instead of Christian relics, and the hidden depths of the human soul instead of (or in addition to) jungles and deserts.")

"And when I write my novels, I’m not writing them to make political points. I’m writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism, and what I want to do is communicate that. But, because I come at this with a political perspective, the world that I’m creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have. But I never let them get in the way of the monsters."

-China Miéville

Brief sketch of the latest Frankenstein system in my head:

Ghost/Echo (so, Otherkind)'s Dangers.
Houses of the Blooded (so, FATE)'s Aspects
Mouse Guard (so, Burning Wheel)'s Attack/Defend/Feint/Manuever choices, for all types of conflict.

So basically, you have your Goal and some of Dangers, and one die for each. You get bonus dice for invoking your aspects (or tagging your opponent's aspects) if applicable, and also a bonus dice if you choose the right type of action (Defend when the other guy Attacks, Feint when the other guy Defends, etc) or when you successfully Maneuvered on your last action. Assign the dice as you see fit, to determine whether or not you succeed in your goal and whether or not the various dangers come to pass or not.

The complex was like a cross between Lost, Myst, and Cube. Every so often, alarm bells would ring, and all the inhabitants would be assigned random "jobs" they had to accomplish before the "shift" was over, or unspecified bad things would occur. So of course, when said alarm bells rang over the course of my introduction to the place, everyone swore and ran off, leaving me alone, wondering what I was supposed to be doing. One monitor screen labeled "Hints" said only "You can't see". Another said "Power", and from that I remember the room dubbed "the Power Station", a fairly dark place full of metal framework (double-helices, with one helix curved, the other with straight lines and corners) and several connected dials that had to be adjusted to match eachother's number.

Of course, being unfamiliar with the place, I couldn't remember how to get there, and by the time I found it (navigating an annoying canal puzzle in the process) I had lost significant time. I began working diligently, until I happened to look up and realize that the ceiling in this room was significantly higher than it was in the other rooms, and that I could use this to escape. Of course, I wasted no time, and got the hell out of there.

The complex, it turned out, was inside of another larger complex (adding eXistenZ to the list of inspirations). I quickly recognized the pattern and searched for another room with a hole in the roof or high up on the walls, climbing upwards and outwards. Things began to get strange. One room had a paper-mache cow followed by a paper-mache cow skeleton followed by a large empty pot. Another had vampires in strange green armor who only moved when you looked at them with the corner of your eye. I ignored everything and focused on escaping, until I came to the final level.

I assumed it was the final level, anyway, because when I parted the thatch walls with my hands, and peered outside, I saw only endless darkness. It looked almost exactly like what you see when you close your eyes after looking at a bright light and put your fists against your eyelids: darkness, but full of suggestive shapes: a series of abstract geometric patterns, a skull blossoming with flower petals, stranger things. I stepped back, unnerved despite (or perhaps because) of my realization that shapes only existed in my mind as a reaction to the infinite emptiness beyond. A traveling companion I picked up along the way asked me what I had seen, and I managed to get out "everything and nothing" before fully lapsing into an Obligatory Lovecraftian Protagonist Moment and laughing maniacally.

Eventually, I came to, realized that I had nowhere else to go, so went back, downwards and inwards. I reached the first complex again, in much less time than I had taken on the way out, said hello again to everybody, and got back to work.

And then I woke up.

(Note: Lyrics NSFW)

Every now and then I want to design a Cthulhupunk game. (Basically, Call of Cthulhu meets Cyberpunk). GURPS did a supplement about it, which I've never read but I admit sparked the idea, and the thing I keep coming back to thinking about the similarity between Sanity and Humanity.

Sanity, in Call of Cthulhu and its hojillion imitators, is basically a stat that exists purely to go down: you lose it when you face down horrible things, or when you learn Mythos lore, and so on. As it goes down, people find you weird and creepy, and when it hits zero it's Game Over, Hand The GM Your Character Sheet time, but facing down horrible things and learning Mythos Lore are pretty much essential in most CoC games, because the consequences of not doing so are usually... unpleasant. (As anyone who has ever played Arkham Horror can attest. Sanity's pretty much the price of doing business in that game.)

Humanity, or some of it's occasional other names, is pretty similar: it's something that more or less only goes down. In this case, it goes down when you replace parts of your body with cybernetics. Like Sanity, having a low Humanity generally means people find you creepy, and having 0 pretty much means you're an NPC now, if it doesn't just kill you. But Cyberware gives you a significant edge over any character who doesn't have it: while you could stay pure, wired reflexes and a gun will get you a lot further than a gun alone.

So basically, both stats have the theme "what will you sacrifice to get things done?"

Also, I like the idea of taking Lovecraft's preoccupation with Dreams and shifting it over to Cyberpunk's ubiquitous virtual reality. Imagine, as the Great Old Ones stir in their slumber, instead of the dreams of artists and madmen and "sensitives" being disturbed, it's Cyberspace that shudders and assumes a subtly darker shape. Rumors circulate about the existence of a program called "Silver Key" which physically takes its user into Cyberspace. It's impossible, of course, but quite a few hackers, deckers, and even recreational simjunkies have been disappearing recently...

So every now and then I play this game where I pick an RPG, and a music album, and try to come up with adventure/scenarios using the song titles of said album (making the lyrics relevant is entirely optional. I've done it for Over the Edge with "Fire" by Electric Six, and Nobilis with "Last Night" by Moby (Although I haven't written them up or anything). Today, I was listening to Wave of Mutilation: Best of the Pixies on the way back from work, and I had the game Spite on my mind, so I started thinking about the song titles. Debaser, Gouge Away, Wave of Mutilation, Bone Machine, Broken Face...

And then I think "Most of these are actually too easy to even do anything with."

(Although, some of the songs are usable. Gigantic is clearly the PCs' first Ophanim fight, for example. And Winterlong being the last track suggests to me a nice traditional fimbulwinter heralding the first opening salvos of the Last War.)

I was reading the L5R book, specifically the various clan schools you can go to for cool abilities. One name jumped out at me, but I discovered in short order that I had misread it, sadly. The school in question was the Ide Emissary School, which my brain had parsed as "Idle Emissary School".

I'm going to have to drop the Idle Emissary School into some fantasy setting now, though, because that's kind of awesome.