"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.

So the "Little Game Chef" came and went on the Story Games forum. I didn't end up submitting anything, but I did get a few notes down, a sort of sketch of a system. And then I think, "Heck, haven't posted here in a while, might as well share." So here you go! Straight from my blackfleet.txt document, without explanations or elaborations!

( The Black Fleet )

The lightning struck right outside the window, and then, weirdly, stuck around: a living column of electricity connecting earth and sky. The winds picked up, circling around the bolt, until the entire house was in the eye of a raging storm.

Somewhere in the back of my head, I thought to myself, "I'm probably going to need a flashlight before this is all over."

I've had the idea in the back of my head for a while of an RPG that's all about magical dueling. I dig the idea of a society of mages (whether some Fantasy world, or Modern Occult) that use formal magical dueling for all forms of dispute resolution. Every now and then I collect ideas about stuff to put in this game.

~~~

Each player, during character creation, chooses a school of magic (simple one-word descriptor: fire, water, shadow, fate, whatever). Then they choose another school of magic that their school is strong against, and a school of magic that their school is weak against.

The GM composes a list of all these schools, including three schools of their own, and each time an NPC is made, randomly chooses what school of magic they practice. (Note: If multiple players name the same school, that school will appear multiple times on the list)

~~~

Each time a mage challenges a mage to a duel, they get one Honor.
Each time a mage accepts a challenge to a duel, they get one Honor.
If a mage accepts an opponent's proposed stakes for a duel without amendment, they get one Honor.
When a mage surrenders in a duel, (recognizing an opponent's victory rather than fighting to the bitter end) they get one Honor.
When a mage offers an opponent who surrendered some small concession or compromise on the matter being dueled over, they get one Honor.

Honor can be used as social capital, for finding out information about other mages, or convincing other mages to do things.