UncleBear Media

GORE(TM) uses Open Game Content from Mongoose’s RuneQuest System Reference Document and newly presents algorithms from a notorious 80s horror role-playing game to produce a generic role-playing system in the tradition of old-school percentile-based games. GORE(TM) follows a trend that’s been going on within the last few years in pen-and-paper games, that is, making material available to publishers to encourage competition and the contribution of high-quality gaming material to the market.

Most new presentation in GORE(TM) is Product Identity, but Goblinoid Games provides a free license to use this material to produce third-party products that are compatible not just with GORE(TM), but also with any of several old-school games using a percentile-based system with similar algorithms.

Stress and Trauma by Berin Kinsman adds the missing element of *cough*sanity*cough* mental health rules for the system, allowing more compatibility with a particular classic horror rules set. It can be downloaded free from the Downloads page.

GORE Core Rules are FREE at the Goblinoid Games website.

There is a GORE Discussion Group at The Dire Cafe.

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My life would be incredibly simple if I could just park my behind in front of one computer, on a regular basis, and write for large uninterrupted blocks of time. Unfortunately, my life doesn’t facilitate that. In order to achieve any sort of productivity, a lot of the writing I do is on the fly. A few minutes before work, coffee breaks at the day job, standing in line at the grocery store, waiting for the wife to finish trying on cute little slingback pumps at the shoe store. Any moment, I need to milk it for what it’s worth. At home, if the wife wants to use the one computer we’ve got and I want to write, I have to resort to other means. So I’ve got my files on the computer. I’ve got documents on the Alphasmart. I’ve got scribbled notes in the Moleskine. I’ve got stuff in Google docs, stuff I’ve emailed myself from my phone, reminders and ideas passed in text messages via IWantSandy. All of which leads to an ungodly mess of information scattered higgledy-piggledy that I need to sort out later.

Thus, I came up with The Notebible.

continue reading…

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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…

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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.

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