Observations of the Fox

If I say that I'm going to "storify" or make a "story-games version" or any existing crunchy mainstream game, what does that mean? Does it mean simply coverting anything an everything in the system to the "Powered by the Apocalypse" engine?  That might be a valid way to point in the right direction, but misses a lot of the point. My disdain for games that are powered by the apocalypse is well known in a lot of circles, but it's a bit misrepresented. I'm not sure where I made the comment recently, but I'll repeat a paraphrased version here because the intentions still hold true. It came from two artists that I had conversations with a long time ago. Both artists I had respected for their work, but after a half an hour or more of conversation with them, I really respected them as people too. The first artist was James Gurney, among other things he wrote a book you might have heard of called Dinotopia, and a couple of sequels. The ...

All this talk of Mage:the Ascension has returned my thoughts to the abandoned project of making a stripped back version of Mage. I wanted it months ago, I basically wanted it when I saw the monster 700+ pages of the M20 edition, and now it seems that a few more people want it. I suspect my original ideas of maintaining character stats, but playing with the underlying systems may prove unfeasible at this time. Instead, I'm seriously thinking of a FUBAR/Mage mash-up. This would use a quick customisable multi-template system to create characters, and a conversion system to adapt existing NPCs and starting characters in sourcebooks. If it works, it'd be interesting to generate variants covering Werewolf and Vampire, and maybe a few other games in the World of Darkness.

As one of my favourite games, I had to chime in when someone on G+ asked about Mage, why it's good...why it's current version is a 700-odd page tome...what could be done to streamline it... I thought my answer was pretty good, and thought it needed to be shared. Having played and run all editions, here's my thoughts... 1st (WW4000, 1993) is wild and a bit clunky when it comes to rules. It's probably the edgiest of the settings, in that it was opening an amazing concept to the world but no-one really knew what to do with it at the time. The players were fighting a war for reality. 2nd (WW4300, 1995) streamlined the rules a bit, instead of different rolls, coincidental and vulgar magic basically now used the same rolls with varying difficulties. The setting was reined in a bit, and like most White Wolf second editions it became more "professional" and more sterile. A bit more effort was made to address global cultures as complex entities rather than ...

Further to my discussion yesterday, I've found quite a few additional posts by varipus people who've obviously been seeing the same underlying patterns in modern western society, or they've been seeing similar symptoms and drawing similar conclusions to my rant. As an example, there's " 6 Reasons for Donald Trump's Rise ", which seems to theorise some interesting points but probably oversimplifies things by linking the issues in western society to the rural/urban divide. And then there's " 5 Helpful Answers to Society's Uncomfortable Questions ", which basically says that we as individuals and as a society are bound by traditions. Those traditions have served us well for millenia, defining cultures, breeding us into what we are today, competing with one another until one became dominant (the Western European Patriarchal paradigm). It defined itself as a competitor with the world and it basically won...and now it doesn't know what ...

We won. So, you've probably heard that the serial hater, the precursor to the Westboro Baptist Church, Jack Chick is dead. Here's the article that first alerted me to the fact. ( Boing Boing ) And another, that I saw a day later. ( AV Club ) Here's what the other side has to say ( Christianity Today ) Like the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, and more recently Collins and Wertham's " Seduction of the Innocent ", the Tracts of Jack Chick were hateful pieces of propaganda designed to boil down a message to stereotypes and caricature, building false images of a concept with lies, rumours and innuendo, then make a "righteous" attack against the false edifice. Conspiracies and prejudice fed into the tracts attacking the Catholic Church, the Freemasons, Homosexuality, Science, and anything else that offended Chick's "Southern Baptist" sensibilities. One of those things was roleplaying. In recent study regarding fiel...

I've toyed with the idea of the crossroads as a place of power several times in my games. It's a concept of modern myth that really intrigues me. Today I was wondering why the most powerful crossroads depicted in popular culture always seem to be in isolated locations. A modern city is littered with grids of crossroads as north-south aligned thoroughfares intersect those going east-west. Why wouldn't a city be a place where thousands of demons are waiting to make pacts with mortals? Maybe they are. But another option might be to consider the length of the roads leading to the crossroads. In the middle of a city, it might only be a few dozen metres (or yards) from one crossroads to the next, which isn't enough length for the incoming energies to generate much of a charge. In a rural environment, it might be kilometres (or miles) between crossroads, thus giving ample length for the crossroads to generate significant charge levels. If the charge level isn't high en...

For the last few months, after every LARP game, I've been tracking how characters have done in their assigned missions. I've done this by following a few key ideas: Missions occur in key marked locations Territories are expanded for factions when their missions have been successful. Territories turn from factionally aligned to neutral if a faction succeeds in a mission in another faction's territory. Influence spreads to adjacent territories if these adjacent territories are uncontested. Influence does not spread to adjacent territories if two different factions could see their influence spread into the territory. The overall power of the factions throughout the region is simply determined by adding up the number of territories they control. This process started after the third game of the LARP, when I decided the players needed a bit more focus and the factional system was brought into effect. Today saw the end of game 6. End of Game 3 - The Nomads (Green...