Avoiding Realism Like The Plague II – Learning Skills

A great many games tie learning new skills to “gaining levels”, spending abstract “experience points” (usually gained for doing things that have nothing whatsoever to do with the skill in question), or other thoroughly abstract mechanisms. This leads to another common “realistic” request – that characters either be allowed to “learn by doing” or that [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 173 – Marty, Martial Comforter of Numerologists!

Marty mused… hey, there WAS another benefit to this multi-presence thing! It really was a big help at looking at places from an exterior point of view… Of course, it also meant that your various versions were sitting in judgement on each other. Which was WEIRD. At least he wasn’t as susceptible to identity takeovers [...]

Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 72b

Just breather masks damn it! Oh well, at least he had the subspace systems up and running to dump some of the excess energy these people were flinging around! That would keep them from roasting all the unprotected refugees and the people (including himself and Alys!) in the port buildings. Then he set out, phasing [...]

Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 72a

The wookie immediately charged at me with a scream and a leap. The blaster rifle shots I fired into his torso didn’t seem to have much of any effect though as he continued that arc to collide with me. Too late I realized there wasn’t enough time to dodge the attack as I attempted to [...]

Flexible Adventure Design – Ridmarch and the Open Sandbox, Part II

At this point the writeup has established the history and motivations of the adventure, the opponents, several locations to locate and explore, at least five different ways of dealing with the problem, and – most importantly – no particular “level”, power, or magical requirements – although some of the areas are reactive, and will adapt [...]

Flexible Adventure Design – Ridmarch and the Open Sandbox, Part I

In this particular case, it’s easiest to start off with an example. The peaceful villages of Ridmarch have nestled in the folds of the hills beneath the mountains for many centuries, their inhabitants living by herding, sheep and goats, farming the hillsides, and cutting wood from the stands of pine. Centuries past, a small humanoid [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 172b – The Audit

Picking up again on his pleasant buzz over in the Green Galaxies, Marty tried to relax a bit… This really wasn’t going too badly for a shakedown period. All you had to do was to make sure that you didn’t lose track of which identity was your basic core… Oh dear. Kevin had made his [...]

Atheria: Marriage Edition!

Atheria: Marriage Edition! Love and Marriage throughout the world of Atheria This little post mentions a few ideas about the Atheria campaign setting. It’s not officially approved yet, but hopefully some players may find it interesting enough to comment on. I definitely took more liberties with settings we weren’t familiar with than the areas we’ve [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 172a – The Wheel of Incarnations

Marty, meanwhile, had fully activated both his multipresence and multitracking powers – and was more than a bit overwhelmed. Sure, the multi-tracking let him pay ATTENTION to all of those inputs at once, but the conflicting identities were quite another matter. And Kevin seemed to run it all smoothly… No. He didn’t, did he? It [...]

Old School Renaissance Eclipse Part II – Simplicity and the Roll of Last Resort.

The second rule of of “Old School” role-play is really derived from the first one. It’s Simplicity – at least on the players side. There are several reasons for that. First up, and perhaps most importantly, when you stick with familiar biology and the basic rules that go with it – a human body needs [...]

The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XVIII – The Question of the Divine

It was only a couple of evenings later when Kiko came by. Gri Fel and Terapishim didn’t have busy schedules to keep them from investigating in depth. For another, they were both fairly old – if somewhat weakened – gods. They had seen a lot, and Gri Fel had once been god of the biggest [...]

The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XVII – Leonine Customs

The next urgent summons was from the Celestial Lions. They definitely wanted to talk; The Dimensionless Truesilver Sands of Cecelyne were extremely rare and incredibly dangerous stuff… The creation or abrogation of dimensional borders was a power that could all too easily unleash some disaster upon both creation and the heavens. They weren’t illegal to [...]

Old School Renaissance Eclipse Part I – Simulationism

The “Old School Renaissance” notion has a fairly strong following. Ergo, I’m going to take a look at how to do it in Eclipse. Old-school gaming is heavily simulationist. That’s partly because modern roleplaying games sprang from simulationist wargaming, partially because such rules are easier to write, and mostly because that made “lets pretend” (with [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 171 – Into the Magestorm

With the negotiations clearly at an end – even if they had been mostly a stall for time on the enemies part – it was time to get on with the battle! (Kevin, cheerily and loudly) “Was that enough time for everybody to get ready? We can wait a bit longer if you need us [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 170b – The Core Resistance

As they approached the central nexus, it became more and more obvious that this bunch had real discipline – and either training or someone in charge good enough to simulate it. There were organized wings of archers, mutually-supporting defensive positions, some powerful defensive spells being set up, and a lot of stuff that didn’t go [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 170a – The Preliminary Assault

It wasn’t long before the sixty-odd Thralls, with their shapeshifting animal-form “disguises” and anti-detection spells, had located and surrounded the Panther encampment. Kevin had them settle in to report – and to be ready to catch minor attempts to escape. It looked like the panthers had three encampments within a short distance of each other. [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 169b – Egging Them On

Marty considered pointing out the eggs to the skeptical guard (after all, they didn’t seem to be afraid of the things), but decided not to bother. What good would it do? He was right in some ways; trying to keep and tame a wild creature that reflexively teleported would require either crippling it by blocking [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 169a – Egging Them On

Off in the deeper cosmos the Elder Races wanted to severely scold Ryan O’Malley – and the human race in general – for unleashing Kevin on the universe. Rampaging through the Manifold, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse were gathering their forces for a final attempt to fulfill their purpose before the human race spread so [...]

Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 71c

Meanwhile, towards the enter of the galaxy, Lazlo and Vi were graduating from their special-forces boot camp – having had to use hypertime to pack better than six months of training into less than two months. There was some choice of assignments – but they were assignments. The latest Sith War might have fallen apart [...]

Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 71b

Lazlo did find a few interesting things in training… Most interestingly, the JLA seemed to blame most of the codex-related disasters on the RDF. They believed that their recruiting come-ons led a lot of people to experimenting with the Codex without any idea of what they were messing around with. With that, disasters were inevitable. [...]