The Black Campbell

Looks like I’ll be writing for the Victoriana line again, starting with their upcoming Marvels of Science and Industry. I’ll be doing the vehicle and weapons chapters and some of the rules.

1) STEAL! All the best authors and artists have done it — they either call it an homage (think the Great Machine or the even the Shadows v. Vorlons metaplot of Babylon 5 [Forbidden Planet and Lensman respectively]) or a re-envisioning (everything friggin’ thing Shakespeare or John Scalzi wrote)…

You want a terrifying monster on your spacecraft light years from help? Alien…doesn’t have to be that particular alien, but you get the notion. Maybe you want that particular beastie in one of your campaigns…they’d drop into a Mythos campaign rather nicely, I think. Want a slightly run-down but noble contract pilot with a one eyed dog for your pulp campaign? Nothing says he has to be called Jake Cutter (but he is in my pulp China campaign…) You want to do a 1980s cop show with hot cars and clothes? You know where to steal from…just do it.

Steal ship designs from games you like. If I ever get around to my homebrew sci-fi setting, I’m using the ships from Jovian Chronicles. Steal guns — the pulse rifle from Aliens or the BFG Deckard has in Blade Runner jump to mind for your sci-fi or cyberpunk campaign; I stole the Tachikomas from Ghost in the Shell for my Serenity campaign (minus the cheery voices, but after thinking about the Fruity Oaty Bars commercials…) Steal characters and modify them; rename them if you like. I’ve used a variant of Sam Elliot’s character from the not-great but fun Shakedown in Bond games for 20 years; more recently I used his character from Avenger wholesale. (’cause Sam Elliot can rescue almost any scene, if not a movie…)

The real gold mine for stuff to steal — especially if you have a square like me in your group that doesn’t do computer or console gaming: video games! Dead Space, Mass Effect, L.A. Noire (man, this one’s almost enough to get me to buy an XBox360…), etc. These are great for set pieces, alien races, characters, ship, etc.

2) REUSE…or steal from yourself or other campaigns you’ve been in. I reuse plot lines all the time — some without modification, some with heavy alteration. I and other reuse characters. My ex-wife played a variant of her first character from an old Bond campaign in subsequent campaigns, in a Stargate campaign, in a superheroes campaign. Others have used the same general character tweaked and renamed — Jed Callahan is always the acrophobic, wise-talking inventor/ gunsmith/mechanic who likes guns way to much, and manages to get himself into trouble at every turn (and the rest of the players with him.) He started out as a Car Wars character, became a superhero character whose only power was he couldn’t die and healed very quickly…otherwise, normal. He was in an espionage campaign or two. He showed up in a sci-fi game.

3) [Insert name of series here] RE IMAGINED! They did it with Batman, James Bond, Battlestar Galactica  and you can do it, too. Have an old campaign that died on the vine with one group? Revitalize it with the new group. Or have a look at how you want to change the tone — the new espionage campaign I’m running, The Professionals, is similar to the last Bond campaign — a super-elite group that fights bad guys around the world. Last time, the characters were CIA, and were the honest and true guardians of America fighting bad political decisions and getting slapped around for it. They couldn’t operate legally in the US, but sometimes had to. It was more Sandbaggers than James Bond.

This time, the group is a test program — an interdepartmental task force that has sworn Secret Service agents and CIA special action team members on it, and is co-operated by the National Clandestine Service and Department of Homeland Security. Are they legal? Well, Eric Holder says so, but it remains to be seen…they have a short time to prove their worth to the law enforcement and intelligence communities, and to make the various directors look good. It’s one part The Shield, one part 24, and one part The Unit…they’re not always right, they’re rarely pretty, and the piss a lot of people off. But they get the job done (so far…)

I’m thinking about firing up a version of the Gorilla Ace! campaign that had so much potential before that gaming group blew up. Maybe it’ll fly, maybe it won’t — bu the idea was too good to let die & I need a filler pulp game for the time being, as my wife is out of rotation for the next few months due to baby and work scheduling.

I remember the original 1973 version scared the living piss out of me when I was a kid (I was eight or nine when I caught it on a Saturday horror fest on TV.) Del Toro’s producing, and it looks like it could be pretty taut.

Starring in the next starting teaser for an upcoming mission is the Donzi 38 XR Competition powerboat:

Donzi’s 38 ZR Competition is a water-going sports-car: It’s fast, nimble and sleek. With five bucket seats and a couple of stowage lockers in the deck (think of it as a long hood), it’s a little more roomy but not much more than the average sports car. With its engines cranking out 5,300 rpm, the 38 ZR Competition reaches 112.5 mph; cruising is 83 mph. Time to plane with the tabs down is 5.8 seconds, and from a standing start the boat reaches 77 mph in 20 seconds.

PM: +1   RED: 3   CRUS: 80   MAX: 112   RNG: 350   FCE: 3   STR: 13   COST: $500,00 or more

GM Information: Gains a +1 to quick turn maneuvers.

(…and that title’s what happens when a 40-something Celtic guy tries to be hip.)

One of my players is getting ready to fire up a pulp campaign where I will actually get to play! (Whoo!) We had also discussed a superhero campaign where we could trade off GM responsibilities, similar to what I had done with a former gaming buddy in the late 1980s. That got us to discussing the merits of various RPG rules sets — a discussion that spread to the other gaming group.

It’s easy to forget how primitive RPGs were in the early days. They were an extension of war-games, and the heritage showed in things like Dungeons & Dragons, Gamma World, and other early settings. The rules were almost completely given up to combat simulation and movement, and roleplaying was really an afterthought.

Traveler, James Bond: 007, and other non-TSR systems tried to break this battle sim feel with more fleshed out character simulations — skills, weaknesses, etc. — and while there might be rules for seducing the femme fatale or car chases, in the end, the fists, blades, or guns came out.

The one thing that was central to these rules sets was the position of dungeon master or gamester…the DM/GM was the one that came up with the general world setting (or managed it, if it was a licensed setting), the players ran the characters and worked their way through scenarios of that person’s devising. Ultimately, the GM was the arbiter (although plenty thought of themselves as “god” at the table) of what happened, and tried to set up the adventures so that the players would be entertained, surprised, etc… It’s a position for a storyteller, but also someone who can juggle lots of tidbits of background material, flesh out NPCs on the fly, and otherwise manage a group of people.

In the 1990s there was a strong push to get away from combat as the raison d’être for characters to do things: romance was played up in the White Wolf line and in Victorian “steampunk” settings. Characters’ flaws, motivations, and allegiances became more important than their +2 sword of impressing girls. I, as a storyteller, loved this trend and it fit well with my notion of GMing — combat was not always the point. (In fact, for some settings, it’s to be avoided at all costs! Dead people attract attention…not good for thieves or spies, or pretty much anyone looking to avoid a trip to the local prison.)

Now it’s normal for the combat section of a game to be subsumed into the general task resolution rules (with some expansion for various combat specific mechanics.) Some systems have done away with damage — the new Cortex Plus for Smallville uses “stresses” from emotional to relational to physical. It’s a nifty idea and one that I’m intrigued by, other than the massive bit of book keeping it appears to make for the player to keep track of.

The other trend, and one that I’m not on board with the new hotness is the shift from a GM that acts as arbiter to a communal or troupe style of storytelling. Maybe it’s because I’m a control freak or I like to be the center of attention — this is all entirely possible. But having discussed it with my players, there seemed a consensus that the idea of everyone pitching in to create the environment and plotlines ala Primetime Adventures or Smallville was intriguing for the amount of input it gave the players, we all thought that it had a serious weakness — consistency and coherence.

Think of it this way: If every TV show, book, movie, etc. could have it’s universe tweaked to your liking, every plot could be crafted to what you wanted to see, every outcome was decided by the player should they succeed…there is going to be certain lack of coherence due to the “wouldn’t it be cool if?” factor. Even in the most interactive of media, computer RPGs, the player can alter the course of events but their decision tree is small and the outcomes they lead to smaller still — computer RPGs do exactly what critics of GMs who “railroad” complain of: they design the decision trees to provide a false sense of empowerment; ultimately, what you do will lead to one of a preset number of outcomes, unless your GM runs their games completely impromptu (and those that do, when they are good, are great!)

There is also a tendency to less cohesion in the plots, the story arc (if there’s one at all), and in the universe itself. Think of it this way: in the 1970s and 1980s, most TV shows were serial and their stories were contained in the events of the hour. Perhaps some characters might reoccur, some stories might resurface for another episode or two, but by and large, each episode was it’s own universe. The characters were general consistent, but might be completely miswritten to fit the story being presented (what I think of as the bad sort of railroading — the “it’s in the plot” railroading.) The shows that were consistent, where the characters remained true throughout, where the story arcs made sense, where the universe was consistent and coherent, relied on a smaller number of writers, more empowered producer or show runner input (think Babylon 5 or Hill Street Blues.)

Troupe style RPGs are Starsky & Hutch, or even Mork and Mindy; games where there’s no GM, rather than a new-agey facilitator, are more like Babylon 5. I’m a big fan of having a single central vision, altered and made the players’ own by their actions — nothing good comes of the GM that is playing to himself with the rest of the table as the audience.

So I guess that’s all I’ve got to say on that.

Discuss.

Here’s an idea that was suggested by a player a few months back near the end of our Battlestar Galactica campaign. He was suggesting that all the time he was giving to certain maneuvers (in this case, touch & gos to prepare for combat landings) for training his vipers should pay off with either a bonus to their skill die or a modification to the difficulty of a task.

Hard skills get easier for people — dirt bikers practice certain kinds of jumps over and over again ’til they get it right, but you still see them drop their motorcycles from time to time on the dead simplest maneuvers; freerunners do amazing stuff, and certain jumps or tricks they do so well they look effortless, but others they flub regularly; navy pilots practice landing and takeoffs on aircraft carriers over and over because they’re hard…yes, they get better overall, but some maneuvers have just been drilled into them; shooters on the firing range can drill sub 2″ groups with their pistol or rifle, but put them in a fluid, moving environment and they don’t do as well (and some people shoot action drills superbly, but can’t group standing still worth a crap.)

So how to reflect this? If your special ops team or spy does a lot of indoor range practice, they might gain a benefit when they have the time to take up the right stance, aim, and shoot. Your viper pilot might ace combat landings on their battlestar after months of practice while running from the Cylons or is particularly adept at a 180 roll or yaw that puts them flying backwards to fire at something in their six. Say your researcher is very good at combing through archives in a library, but they don’t do search engines too well… Maybe your archeologist/adventurer has practiced snagging objects and swinging over chasms with his whip multiple times, but snapping a cigarette out of someone’s mouth is a new trick…these characters might get a benefit for something they’ve repeatedly done in game, or that had been a stated part of their regimen of training. If it’s not something they practice, no benefit.

I saw this in a clip from the computer game L.A. Noire today was instantly smitten, so without further ado — the 1937-39 Delage D8-120S:

The Delage is a French automobile designed by Louis Delage (with funding from Delahayde) and powered by a 4.7 liter straight-8 motor, 120 hp (pretty darn good for the time!) Custom bodies were designed for the steel chassis (the above is a Georges Paulin’s design house.)

Size: 2   Def: 6   Str: 8   Spd: 100 mph   Han: 0   Crew: 1   Pass: 1   Cost: $10,000

I restarted my Battlestar: Galactica campaign a few weeks ago, now that the new gaming group has gelled. Right off the bat, I wanted to do something different than the last campaign, which was a “second fleet” scenario that was running alongside the at-that-time new series.

For that, I decided to follow the Caprica model and do some serious retconning on the setting: while it is still a few decades after the first Cylon War, and most of the trappings of the new show are still around, i started tinkering with the basic premise of the first few “seasons” — instead of jumping straight to the new sneak attack, as with the last campaign, I’m starting a few years prior (undefined for the players, but hinted at if they’re paying attention to the background material — the CNP is nearing initial rollout, Galactica is slatted to be turned into a museum.)

I am using a lot of the material from Caprica and Quantum Mechanix excellent Map of the Twelve Colony of Kobol for the setting — fleshing out the rest of the 12 Colonies, instead of sticking with just Caprica, Gemenon, and Tauron. Most of the characters are from the lesser colonies — Arelon, Scorpia, and Canceron.

As with last time, the characters are heavily crafted with background hooks: family and friends, favorite locales, homes, etc…all the stuff they could lose later.

New to the setting, but what could be inferred from the two shows: there are still robots a-plenty in the Colonies, but they are non-AI; artificial intelligence is banned, according to the miniseries, and I have special squads of Colonial Security Service personnel whose job is to stop illicit AI development and manufacture…but they have butler bots, sexbots (but heavily controlled — in my campaign, I’ve inferred the Cylon rebellion started with the sexbots and caretaker androids — the stuff they were trying to make as self-aware and responsive as possible), and the like. There are self-driving cars. There’s virtual reality gaming and augmented reality similar to the stuff in Caprica (or on your smartphone, for that matter.)

The Colonial Fleet has been steadily forgetting the lessons of the Cylon War and modernizing their ships with heavily firewalled networks for faster response and more precise control of the vessels. There’s a compartment of people whose jobs are computer security and the safeguards on the ships are much improved — the Cylons won’t just cut through their electronic defenses like butter…but they will, in theory, eventually win out. (Hence the need for the CNP back door.)

The Colonial government has been expanding quickly and taking it on itself to dictate to the various colonial worlds — think the European Union vis-a-vis its members. Some of the worlds are “deadbeats” (like Greece or Portugal), others are the financial engines of the colonies (these are Leonis, Caprica, and Tauron), and some are like Brussels or the District of Columbia — purely government sinks of support (Libran and Picon.) These worlds aren’t over their tribal identities, and they aren’t working together as well as the federal state in Caprica City would like. They smuggle, they play fast and loose on spending and taxation, and there’s a sense in the younger Colonials that the Cylons are gone, no longer a threat…a position the government has been fostering for political reasons for years. The fleet is always on the edge of downsizing.

The beginning episodes are dealing with the Expeditionary Task Force — a group of detached duty battlestars and militarized civilian exploration vessels that are charting the surrounding star systems, setting up mining and science stations, and conducting deep-range early-warning missions to watch the Armistice Line (and occasionally breech it.) They know the Cylons are doing the same, but neither side has caught the other outright. There are also pirate activities that muddy the waters, so that Cylon presence hasn’t been proven. There have been outposts that have gone missing — crew, cargo, ships…pirates? Cylons?

One of the things we’ll see is that people and their personal effects — diaries, media libraries, etc. go missing — but not the tylium they’re mining, not the ships and buildings. Why would pirates steal people and not the valuables? Why would Cylons kidnap people that are relatively low on intelligence value? The point is to play up a much more mysterious Cold War scenario, coupled with the sorts of internal political intrigue that make governments too slow to respond to threats — even obvious ones.

Added to this, Colonial archeological teams have been finding evidence that there was an older, advanced civilization predating the Colonies foundings by tens of thousands of years…was it the Lords of Kobol? Are their history and scriptures wrong? This is causing backlash from the religious community and portions of the political apparatus — could Colonial society have existed before Colonization? Aliens? What’s going on..? (All of this has happened before and all will happen again…maybe the gods play out this scenario over and over through time?)

The goal: eventually the characters will discover the Cylons are either training people to act as agent provocateurs or are possibly recreating them in android form…but using biological means to disguise them. There will be more than the 12 models, but they are usually not perfect copies, mentally; the 12 are the leaders and will vaguely resemble the Lords of Kobol (the whole historical cycle thing again) in their personalities, but will be monotheists. No “Final Five” stuff.

Well, I was hoping to push a few posts out this weekend, but my mother was here visiting me, her new daughter-in-law and new grandchild. Since I haven’t seen my mother in seven years, it behooved me to actually spend time with her.

Posts coming tonight and tomorrow.

The cookout for her on Friday did provide a nice recipe for you guys:

Black Campbell Steak (or whatever you wanna call it)

Take a bunch of thin steaks and put them in a big container. Pour in enough beer (I used Blue Moon’s Summer Wheat) and bourbon to cover the meat — I did a 2 to 1 ratio (favor beer) and did dilute it a bit with water. I did six steaks, so I used about 4 cloves of chopped garlic, about a tsp each of oregano, parsley, basil, about double that sea salt and black pepper. Cover, shake a bit, refrigerate until an hour before cooking, then take it out, shake again.

Grill over an open flame for about 5-10 minutes depending on temperature. They should come out tasty and very, very moist. Succulent, you might say, were you inclined to it.

“Why?” you ask. ” ’cause,” I respond.