While I’ve babbled a bit about gadgets and “bonus abilities” for future splats/expansions, at the core of the system I want it to remain about ordinary people. I want to be able to write up Edward Woodward’s Equalizer and Magnum P.I. and Melinda Gordon from Ghost Whisperer (okay, she can see dead people, but she’s otherwise “normal”) and play those types of characters. That’s why it’s important for me to really get this stuff right before moving on to guns, cars, and other gear.

This is where I really have to think of this as a second edition and diverge from being a simple retro-clone. It’s a crunchy game system, but there are so many story game-style elements that can be hung on this framework. I keep reminding myself that that’s the sort of stuff for splat/expansions, but I feel the need to lay the groundwork in the SRD so those sorts of “plugins” don’t feel forced. Expect to see some retooling of the “Weaknesses” system to act as that foundation.

• Game Geeks #59 Unknown Armies by Atlas Games
  On episode #59 Kurt reviews Unknown Armies by Atlas Games.
  (tags: youtube rpg reviews)
• Bebe Barron, RIP
  Best known for the soundtrack to the 1956 sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet — the first full-length feature to use only electronic music
  (tags: movies music)
• Iron Man: Look What’s On Tony Stark’s Workbench In Iron Man
  It might be Captain America’s shield.
  (tags: movies marvel)
• Speed Racer Goes Crazy - The Dire Cafe
  Mashup of classic Speed animation
  (tags: animation speedracer)
• G.I. Joe: First Look At Christopher Eccleston In G.I. Joe
  The greatest Doctor Who star of them all, Christopher Eccleston, is playing a villain in the new G.I. Joe movie, and the first image of him without his mask has been released.
  (tags: gijoe movies)
• Steampunk Moves Between Two Worlds - New York Times
  First appearing in the late 1980s and early ’90s, steampunk has picked up momentum in recent months, making a transition from what used to be mainly a literary taste to a Web-propagated way of life.
  (tags: steampunk)
• It’s Not a Flying Car - It’s a Drivable Airplane
  Aviation enthusiasts have been dreaming of flying cars since the 1940s. But in an old machine shop in Woburn, MA, a team of MIT aero/astro grads is building what could be the first practical airplane that’s also certified for highway driving.
  (tags: vehicles)
• Iron Sky: Nazi Pigs in Space
  In 1945, the Third Reich fled to the dark side of the Moon. In 2018, the Fourth Reich is back to settle the score.
  (tags: movies)
• Milk & Cheese take over MySpace
  The dynamic dairy duo take on (eek) Furries.
  (tags: comics furry)

Captain America and Batman keep popping into my head, as I ponder superheroes that aren’t superheroes. Bats could easily be written up in the legacy system without tweaks; he’s a well-trained guy with a lot of gadgets. He fits. Cap is the same, but I think there needs to be more. I’ve added “supersoldier” to me list of splat/expansion ideas. Nazi eugenics programs, genetic engineering, steroids, surgical enhancements, they all fall into the realm of cutting edge/near future pseudoscience tech that the legacy setting dealt with to some degree and the system should be able to handle them. I’m even lumping other-than-human characters in otherwise normal-people settings, like Vincent from the Beauty and the Beast TV series, into this category.

I don’t want to allow attributes above the current ceiling of 15 for this, and I don’t think we need to. I’d give Cap a 15 DEX and his STR and WIL would be in the 13-14 range. What I’d add are Fields of Experience (or something similar) along that lines of “Enhanced Strength” or “Enhanced Dexterity” that would lower the EF for him. They would represent the fact that he was not only ‘roided up on “the serum” but had training to use those enhancements to their fullest potential.

But this is a future enhancement, and at the moment I don’t want to get sucked down a rabbit hole. Just planting these seeds in your head to let you know what I have planned for down the line.

• First Look: DC’s ‘Final Crisis’
  A 5-page preview from Entertainment Weekly
  (tags: dc comics)
• Substitute Teacher Says Wizardry Accusation Cost Him Job
  Jim Piculas, a substitute teacher, displays the magic trick that he says cost him his job with the Pasco County School District. Piculas says a parent complained after he performed the trick at Rushe Middle School in Land O Lakes.
  (tags: asshat)
• Levitating Secret in India Finally Revealed
  Funny video
  (tags: humor)
• Kirby tribute in the New Yorker
  In the monthly caption contest that appears at the end of each issue of the New Yorker, artist Harry Bliss offers up a Kirby monster tribute.
  (tags: comics)
• The Savage Worlds Online Community
  Savage Worlds Online, a new community designed to support and bring together gamers using the Savage Worlds Ruleset for Fantasy Grounds II to play their favorite Savage setting online with friends across the globe!
  (tags: savageworlds)
• Worth1000.com | Photoshop Contests | D&D
  …your task is to design a promotional art piece for the launch of a new version of Dungeons & Dragons. Wizards of the Coast is launching the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons on June 6 a
  (tags: d&d)
• 6 Little-Known Facts about The Dick Van Dyke Show
  So you think that you’ve got trouble.
  Well trouble’s a bubble.
  So tell old mister trouble to get lost.

  Why not hold your head up high and
  Stop cryin’, start tryin’.
  And don’t forget to keep your fingers crossed.

  (tags: tv)
• Internet Archive: September 11 Television Archive
  This collection contains television news programs recorded live from around September 11, 2001 by the non-profit Television Archive to help patrons research this important part of United States history.
  (tags: tv history terror)
• Cloverfield: Manga Boy Rides On Cloverfield Monster’s Head
  …now that an English translation of the Japanese tie-in comic is finally availalble it doesn’t explain all about the monster as we’d hoped…the backstory about a little boy who seems to become the monster’s best friend, just adds to our confusion.
  (tags: movies)
• Claymation Alien Explains The Plot Of Lost
  According to the announcer, these tapes were recorded over 900,000 years ago by an alien using a remote controlled camera. See how Prometheus and Bob explain how a polar bear could have ended up on Lost’s island.
  (tags: lost tv)
• Dave Sim is not… no, wait… actually he is.
  Dave Sim is shocked that anyone might have gotten the impression from his own words that he is a misogynist. So he’s sent out a form letter saying that he’ll only talk to people who will sign an online petition affirming that it’s not so. Hilarity ensues.
  (tags: comics asshat)
• Dark Roasted Blend: Soviet Futuristic Illustration: Oodles of Optimism
  This extremely rare series of illustrations to various books by Alexander Kazantsev shows very clearly what kind of future the communist dreamers preferred.
  (tags: pulp russia scifi)
• Radio host James Whale is sacked
  My first thought was, “they brought the director of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein back from the dead to host a sports radio show? -b.
• Photobombers Of The Day
  Photobombers = people who hilariously ruin your nice little picture. Probably, mildly, not safe for work but funny.
  (tags: humor)
• Warren Ellis » Message Of The Day
  Received from a 24-year-old man in Florida: why should i read new universal if it has nothing to do with wolverine….is there a wolverine in new unviersal? I would read new universal if it had wolverine. I honestly do like what you do.
  (tags: fandom)
• Twelve Steps with Tony Stark
  A hilarious interview with everyone’s favorite alcoholic superhero.
  (tags: marvel comics supers)

Another splat-PDF mini-supplement I want to write expands the Sixth Sense skill and develops specific low-level psychic abilities. These will be Fields of Experience that must be purchased at character creation. I’m talking about things like mediumship (I see dead people), psychometry (object reading), fortune telling, precognition, even light mind reading. I’ll probably include a couple of other skill-based abilities like hypnosis (which would be a Persuasion check) and light telekinesis (Willpower check, most likely). Not full-blow “superpowers”, but the types of abilities that could give an otherwise normal person a slight edge.

In the broad spectrum of Warhammer 40,000 fiction there’s good stuff and bad stuff. My experience thus far has been, compared to other lines of game-inspired fiction, the good stuff outweighs the bad stuff. Black Library has built a stable of solid writers capable of cranking out enjoyable, quality pulp.

That said, I know a lot of people don’t like Sandy Mitchell’s Caiphas Cain stories. This is more likely a matter of tone than skill. In the grim, gritty and unabashedly bleak universe Mitchell drops the 40k version of Flashman: a self-serving bastard out to protect his own skin, a likable rogue with a sense of humor. Cain is a Commissar, a political officer manipulating events with the intent of keeping himself as far from action as possible, but repeatedly ending up (through a twist of circumstance or blind luck) as Hero of the Imperium. Continue Reading »

There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to write up Iron Man using DoubleZero.  Some of you are looking at me like I’m crazy, but others are nodding your heads in agreement because you can see it. too. The legacy system is about well-trained people with high-tech gadgets, and Iron Man’s armor is nothing but an extreme gadget. If Sean Connery could have a jet pack in Thunderball in 1965, then flying body armor loaded with computer widgets sounds downright plausible in the 21c.  So I’ve added “power armor” to the list of possible PDF splats to work on some time on the future. I can do 6 or 8 pages on power armor. Just one of several “plug-ins” I want to create so you can customize the rules for any sort of modern or near-future setting. This does mean that I need to beef up both the gadget and body armor rules in the SRD, but I’d planned to do that anyway.

• Meet Pepper Potts, Savior of Superhero Girlfriends!
  It’s fascinating to watch Pepper wrestle with the intimate moment awkwardly, rather than act in a fickle, pouty manner.
  (tags: movies)
• Please unsubscribe me from your internet.
  My internet gets too full all the time.
  (tags: web)
• Hellbender
  Futurama/Hellboy mashup.
  (tags: hellboy futurama)
• Madwoman’s Lunchbox: Today Tastes Like Burning . . .
  I’m going to have to hit the intarwebs and google “Carcosa.” My geography’s not the best (okay, nonexistant. I memorized what I needed for tests and promptly forgot everything. Never thought I’d need it.) but I don’t recognize the country.
  (tags: cthulhu)
• 50 best cult books
  In compiling our list, we were looking for the sort of book that people wear like a leather jacket or carry around like a totem. The book that rewires your head.
  (tags: books)
• Indiana Jones: Crystal Skull Will Be Kinkiest Indiana Jones Yet
  In general, it looks like Crystal Skull will be the kinkiest of the Jones movies, with bondage, mind control and blowing down the wrong end of a blowdart, among other things.
  (tags: indianajones movies)
• Cloverfield: First Images From Cloverfield 2?
  Some new viral marketing for the long-awaited (since January, anyway) Cloverfield 2 has trickled out — unless it’s just a red herring.
  (tags: movies)
• Are Spy Movies Science Fiction?
  We don’t talk much about the cloak-and-dagger genre here at io9. We haven’t touched on the new James Bond movie, despite the scifi-sounding title (Quantum Of Solace.) We’ve barely even talked about Get Smart. Maybe you can help us settle the question.
  (tags: espionage bond scifi)
• Yakult Atoms
  As scheduled, the Tokyo Yakult Swallows wore their Yakult Atoms throwback away jerseys this weekend … the uniform says Yakult in the front like regular Swallows road jerseys, but there was a Mighty Atom (Astro Boy) patch on the sleeves.
  (tags: anime japan)
• Suspect flees scene of rollover
  Go look at the t-shirt he was wearing.
  (tags: humor crime)

What would surprise most would be learning that no one ever had this idea before. It seems so obvious that someone, somewhere has to have already thought of it.

Plato’s definition of psyche broke human motivations down into three categories: Reason, Spirit, and Appetite. Reason is defined as one’s sense of logic and desire to learn and improve. Spirit is one’s competitive spirit and sense of honor and duty. Appetite is one’s desires. A personality mechanic, or a story game, could be build around these. All can be good things or bad, depending upon how each element is focused and which element is dominant. I’d assign one item to each element to define them: Reason could be focused on Movie Trivia, Spirit could be a samurai’s code of Bushido, Appetite could be a drive for revenge. You can really define a character based on these things.

Taking it a step further, Plato had archetypes for characters with one dominant element. The Sorcerer-King is ruled by Reason, and Plato considered this to be the highest and most desirable of the archetypes. The Guardian was fuelled by Spirit, which makes sense for warriors and athletes. The Tyrant is the basest archetype, a slave to Appetite and often monomaniacal and villainous. While everyone has all three elements to some degree, making for rounded and interesting characters, it’s the archetype that gives you the real core of the character.

This seems like an obvious fit for a game set in ancient Greece or Imperial Rome, it would be beautiful for any game with moral ambiguity. I could take this and apply it to any character in a mob drama like The Godfather or The Sopranos. I don’t know that I’d stat anything in terms of numbers, just use it as a quick reference for how to play the characters.

Cinco de Mayo, the Mexican St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday that has more do to with drinking to excess than celebrating cultural heritage. I bring it up because I’ve been thinking a lot about Mexico and beer lately, thanks to the Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man in the World” commercials. They’re so old school, like something you’d find in a 1960’s vintage Playboy.  Ladies’ man, man’s man, man about town.  You can imagine this guy playing a hand of poke at Casino Royale. I want to lift this guy and use him as an NPC in a DoubleZero game. He has no name, he’s only a rumor, and you never actually see him until the very end of the campaign when he does a very brief but well-timed walk-on cameo.

• The church is ailing - send for Dr Who
  He has inspired devotion from a tiny band of followers, sacrificed himself for the good of mankind and is destined to live for ever. Now… church leaders are encouraging clergy to study the science fiction series to learn about its religious parallels.
  (tags: drwho religion)
• Investigative Project Releases Gov’t Memos Curtailing Speech in War on Terror
  DHS and the State Department’s Counterterrorism Communications Center each issued reports urging government employees to avoid words like “jihad,” “mujahedeen” or any reference to Islam or Muslims, especially in relation to Al Qaeda.
  (tags: corpolitical terror)
• Savage Heroes | Nuketown
  Savage Heroes is an unofficial fan site for Savage Worlds … Of particular note is the “Conversions” section, which offers dozens of system conversions for everything from Alternity to Crimson Skies to Fading Suns.
  (tags: savageworlds)
• Never Been
  Never Been. A visual description of a year in the life of a fictional Eastern European village sometime around the early twentieth century.
  (tags: locations)
• One Monk Miniatures, Fantasy and Sci-Fi models
  Papercraft miniatures, reasonably priced and a good selection of freebies.
  (tags: minis)
• Jack Thompson Reaches Out To Take-Two Exec’s Mother
  “Your son, this very moment, is doing everything he possibly can to sell as many copies of GTA IV to teen boys in the United States, a country in which your son claims you raised him to be “a Boy Scout.” More like the Hitler Youth, I would say.”
  (tags: corpolitical asshat)
• SILLOF’s WORKSHOP: STEAMPUNK STAR WARS
  Action figures!
  (tags: actionfigures steampunk starwars)
• SILLOF’s WORKSHOP: featuring the custom figures and dioramas of sillof
  Action figures!
  (tags: steampunk actionfigures dc comics)
• SILLOF’s WORKSHOP: WWII STAR WARS
  Action figures!
  (tags: starwars actionfigures)

This movie is about a bunch of Bond villains who alternately work together and betray each other, until one of them has an attack of conscience and decides to become James Bond. This is not a superhero movie. This is a movie about businessmen and terrorists plotting and scheming to take over the world in their own particular ways, a technothriller with the tech turned up to 11.

Yes, I liked it. I’ll keep the spoilers minimal, but really, you know what you’re going to get when you walk in.
Continue Reading »

After working six days straight, today is run errands/pay bills/get caught up on real life day. While the day’s already started with laundry and some yard work, I’m going to the 10am showing of Iron Man at the Tower Theater, and probably grabbing an In-N-Out burger (protein style, which means no bun and wrapped in lettuce for us gluten-intolerant folks) for lunch. Other exciting activities will include getting a haircut, grocery shopping, and more laundry. Livin’ large, people, livin’ large.

I’m through the first disc of season 5 of The Shield and I have to say, I’m already liking it much better than season 4. There was something off about s4, like everyone including the writers were just going through the motions. It didn’t feel like the same show. Part of what makes s5 work is that it picks up on a plot thread from the pilot, taking it back to the original concept of the show, and part of it is Forest Whittaker as the creepy I.A.D. guy. Whittaker broke my heart with his performance in the otherwise just-okay Vantage Point a couple of months ago, and here he makes my skin crawl. It makes me want to go out and rent Ghost Dog (why don’t I own that flick?) and some of his other movies right now.

Inspired by Dr. Checkmate, I planted the idea of lasagna into my wife’s head. I came home last night to a huge pan of gluten-free lasagna, made with rice noodles, and I have enough to be eating leftovers for the rest of the week. My wife makes 40-pound lasagnas full of mozzarella and provolone and fresh parmesan and both hot and sweet Italian sausage… oh, it is such a heart attack waiting to happen and it’s oh, so good.

Tomorrow is all about writing DoubleZero, which is why today is all about errands. There will be no television for distraction. I’ve got a stack of soundtrack CDs lined up for inspiration. I’ve got Mario Puzo and Elmore Leonard novels sitting on my nightstand, so my reading for the rest of the month will put me in a particular frame of mind.

Next week is a four-day week, Tuesday through Friday, to offset last week. I’m glad I only have to do this once every six weeks, but compared to other jobs, I only have to do this once every six weeks.

On the health front, because people ask, I’ve finished another round of antibiotics and I’m running at about 90%. I still have a crackle in my chest, so I haven’t shaken this entirely, which seems to be the pattern — get better, relapse, get better, relapse. I’m still on other meds, I’m megadosing on vitamin C and all kinds of supplements, and getting plenty of rest. Now that I’m off the antibiotics I can go out into the sunlight again and get fresh air, which always seems to help. My goal is to shake this by the next Ides of Gaming.

• Golgo 13 and Nescafe
  Nescafe is putting out a series of canned coffees with can art starring the assassin Duke Togo from Golgo 13.
  (tags: coffee)
• Moleskine: The Complete Guide to the Moleskine
  If you want to measure your Moleskine addiction - or just get an intro to the fabled leather-bound notebooks—the Put Things Off weblog offers the ultimate guide to the Moleskine, featuring the various models, mods, and accessories to feed your fetish.
  (tags: gtd)
• Smallville: Lex officially out, Doomsday on his way
  The CW has officially announced what Michael Rosenbaum has been saying for awhile … this is Lex’s last season on Smallville.
  (tags: dc tv)
• Media Downplay Hawaii Uprising, Back Hawaiian Apartheid Bill
  Native Hawaiian sovereignty advocates occupied the grounds of the palace of Hawaii’s final monarch, Queen Lili`uokalani.
  (tags: apocalypse corpolitical)
• New Dungeons and Dragons license less sleazy than I believed?
  Wizards of the Coast have published more details (though they haven’t published the license or its terms of use yet):
  (tags: d&d)

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I’m giving up on trying to get OpenID to work, because Occam’s Razor is a heck of a dandy thing.

What the headline says. We’re now at 2.5.1, so I can go back to trying to make OpenID work. Registration and login screen are pretty gain.