Surprise Post after a "Brief" Hiatus

 

Hello from 2022.  So been awhile hasn’t it?

 

I make no promises of any future posts, but really quickly here’s what I’ve been up to.

 

I moved from Saint Louis Park to Eden Prairie, and from Eden Prairie to Saint Paul.  I’m still at that job I had just started back in September of 2011.  I greatly enjoy it.  After working eight years as a telephone operator in rural Minnesota (which wasn’t a bad job at all), and spending however long I spent working for CPP (a company that doesn’t even exist in the US any longer) trying to convince people to not quit their identity theft memberships they signed up for on their random credit cards, I find working for a company that manufactures actual useful physical products to be amazing. 

 

We mainly manufacture and sell variable-frequency drives and related products.  I started in customer service and a few years back moved to technical support of all things.  It’s great.

 

I still play WoW off and on (I tend to come back for an expansion, play a bit at the start and again a bit at the end).  I still play City of Heroes (thank you Homecoming) off and on.  I play the odd other video game off and on (Final Fantasy XIV for example) as well.

 

Still role-playing.  Ran a second BESM campaign set in Nayado using BESM 3^rd edition that ran for five years.  Enjoying D&D 5^th edition quite a bit, trying to DM when I can, and playing in a campaign as well.

 

I still watch the odd anime here and there.  Still read the odd comic book.  Still do most of the same things as before really.

Totally lost that game of chess back in 2011, but I'm far to lazy to go digging around in old Facebook posts to find the moves.

 

Until next time.

Sadly Familiar Behavior

Before I delve into my latest tale of my sadly predictable behavior regarding sleep, let me set the stage a bit with some background information. The weekend of Easter (I forget if it was Saturday, Sunday, or Monday) I on Chipple crafted my final piece of the Shadow's Embrace set; which was the goal I’d been focusing all of Chipple’s attention on in WoW for more than one month. Last Tuesday patch 2.4 went live. When I got home from work, I logged onto WoW, got the patch, and like basically everybody else found almost all of my mods no longer worked. I sat in front of my computer thinking to myself, “I really don’t have anything I’m trying to do with Chipple right at this second, and I don’t want to play without my mods, and I really don’t want to spend the time to update them right now.” So I logged out of WoW, and started watching some anime.

I started off with a few episodes of Pretty Cure Max Heart, but eventually moved on to starting two new series: Rental Magica, and KimiKiss ~ Pure Rouge. Rental Magica is about the escapades of a company called Astral that rents out magicians and other magically inclined individuals to people who require some supernatural assistance. As you can probably guess from the name KimiKiss is a romance anime based on a dating simulation game. After work on Wednesday I didn’t log into WoW at all instead I continued watching mostly Rental Magica, and some KimiKiss. On Thursday I finally updated my mods, and spent some time playing around on WoW. I also finished off the final four episodes of Rental Magica. This brings us to Friday my last morning shift before having the weekend off.

A brief aside here. I’m sure I’ve said this before, or at least I’ve described my sleeping habits enough that this probably won’t surprise anybody, but I stay up later than I should when I work 6:30am - 3pm shifts. Since I get up around 5:15am I should really be going to bed at 9pm, but generally I’m up until midnight. I mention this mainly to illustrate why it isn’t terribly shocking that very nearly the first thing I did upon getting home Friday was fall asleep on my couch. I woke up somewhere in the neighborhood of 8pm, and logged onto WoW and played until a bit after Midnight. I then started watching KimiKiss. I watched four or five episodes and was through 13 of the 24 episodes. It was now somewhere around 3am I did this odd combination of going to bed, but also started burning files onto DVDs. Basically I’d start a DVD burning, and go lie down on my couch where I’d fall lightly asleep, but wake up when I heard my DVD burner open up. I’d then start another disk and repeat the process. I think I was on my third disk when I finally stayed asleep through the burner opening up.

I woke up at 10:28am. I remember this because I looked at my clock, and my first thought was, “well I guess I can’t get breakfast at McDonald's today.” I’m not really sure why that was my first thought, I’ve probably eaten breakfast at McDonald's five time in the last year, so it’s not like this is something I do on a regular basis. I goofed around on an alt on WoW until about noon, got myself some lunch, and burned a few more things onto DVDs.

At about 2:40pm I left to goto Matt’s for his BESM campaign. The actual gaming portion of the evening got started sometime after 6pm. It was a really good session (not that any of them have been bad sessions, I’ve enjoyed all of them, but this one was especially fun); Dan, Paul, and I each had one really awesome idea during the course of the evening. Another aside here this time to talk about the BESM campaign. In Matt’s chaos campaign we’ve dubbed the current world we’re running around in the anime world, and we’ve picked up a magical girl NPC (which is fitting since we got a cyber-enhanced troll NPC from the Shadowrun world, and a halfling cleric NPC from the D&D world). Matt has also tossed in a few references to my last BESM campaign. Namely Obo, and the bag of never ending homework.

Originally Obo was the main character of the comic The Path, which is the comic whose setting I used for my last BESM campaign (and promptly advanced the timeline 150 years, and altered the tone well beyond anything recognizable in the original comic). My Obo started out as a Buddha like figure, but evolved into a GM device for inserting comic relief, plot hooks, and useful bits of information. Every time the PCs encountered him he was in a different guise - the head of a monastery once, a cashier another time, etc.. He was also responsible for giving Matt’s character the bag of never ending homework. Matt’s character was a high school student, and it only seemed fitting that he should have to continue his studies while running around a fantasy world collecting magical artifacts. The name is a bit of a misnomer as the bag didn’t create an endless supply of homework, but was really just an inter-dimensional link between where ever Matt’s character was at, and his school back on “earth.” Obo arranged for his class work and homework to be delivered through it, and returned to the school once Matt’s character placed the completed work back in the bag. Matt must have liked the idea, as he inflicted it upon the magical girl NPC.

The basic details of the current plot in Matt’s campaign would be our group of inter-dimensional travelers had stumbled across something utterly ancient, and alien beyond human understating buried in Antarctica on the anime world (from Matt’s descriptions of it I keep picturing a huge robotic looking thing - 20 stories tall if I recall correctly, but the theme and tone he is clearly, and successfully, portraying is Lovecraftian in nature). We were trying to get it dug out of the ice, without waking it up, and moved to the nearby inter-dimensional portal leading to its realm.

It woke up. One truly epic battle ensued. We were succeeding in destroying it, but it became apparent to us that upon its destruction it would explode with the force of, as Matt phrased it, a few nuclear bombs. Dan’s wizard had the idea to create some Portal style portals between the about to explode alien monstrosity and the inter-dimensional portal leading to its realm. So we got it out of the anime world before it exploded, but we were unable to get the inter-dimensional portal closed before the explosion happened. Fortunately we have a sentient NPC ship capable of traveling between the dimensions (we call it Bob) we could hide in, unfortunately we knew from prior experience with these things, they can hurt Bob. This is where Paul’s great idea came in. One of the magical items we picked up in the D&D world was Lyre of Building. One of the neat uses of a Lyre of Building is protecting a structure from damaging effects including such powerful effects as disintegration. Paul’s character used the Lyre of Building to reinforce Bob before the massive explosion. So instead of being thrown through inter-dimensional space-time in a heavily damaged, and unconscious Bob, we got thrown through inter-dimensional space-time in basically unharmed Bob (his sensors were fried, but easily repaired). However we were still lost, and adrift somewhere in the multiuniverse. This is where my idea came in, as I realized our magical girl’s bag of never ending homework was linked to the world we had just been blown off of. With Bob’s sensors repaired it was an easy task to follow that link back to where we started. That is were we ended the session.

Now back to my tale.

We finished up with gaming around 11pm, and proceeded to play some Super Smash Bros. Brawl until after midnight. Paul and Matt continued on after that, I played around on the Internet. Paul and I left Matt’s well after 4am (somewhere around 4:20am I think). I arrived back at my house just a few minutes after 5am. I thought to myself hey since I was thinking about breakfast at McDonald's when I woke up, I’ll stay up until 7am and actually eat breakfast there today. So I start watching KimiKiss again. I didn't just stay up until 7am, I finish the series all 11 remaining episodes. It was now around 9:30am so I went to eat my breakfast at McDonald's. And I noticed that Across the Universe was available to rent at the Redbox there. I got home a bit after 10am, and I watched Across the Universe (really, really good by the way). Once that was over it was somewhere between 12:15pm and 12:30pm and I was still feeling like watching a movie, so I put in Hott Fuzz (if you haven’t watched that, you should really put it atop your “to do” list).

Now it was roughly 3pm Sunday, and I’d been awake since 10:28am Saturday. Did I go to sleep? Nope I started watching another new anime called Kekkaishi. This is a 52 episode shōnen action series with a supernatural theme. I continued to watch it until I fell asleep sometime after 6:30pm. I woke up at about 1am. Did I go back to bed? No that would be reasonable, and intelligent, I started watching Kekkaishi again. I did this until about 8:30am - 9am Monday morning (at some point in there I did pause to watch the movie Smokin' Aces which I found to be kinda meh) when I decide that since I needed to take the movie back to the Redbox at McDonald's I might as well eat breakfast there again. I came back from breakfast and again started in on Kekkaishi. I continued this until about 1pm when I needed to get ready for work. All in all I watched the first 35 episodes of Kekkaishi (basically 14.5 hours of anime).

That is my tale of foolish behavior. A few general notes on anime. In addition to those I’ve mentioned above, I’ve finished Oh! Edo Rocket, Clannad, and Spice and Wolf. I loved all three, and with any luck I’ll have some more to say about them soon. But now I’m going to see if I cannot finish off the final episode of Rosario + Vampire before I have to leave for work today.

I've got the sound, but do I have the fury?

I feel like there are about a hundred different things I'd like to talk about, and no way that I'm going to fit them all in. So let me mention a few things in passing with the (probably in vain) idea of addressing at least some of them in more detail in a later post (it could actually happen).

I finished off Sky Girls last week. I found it to be a solid, enjoyable mecha series. While nothing about it really grabbed me, made me want to run out, wrestle people to the ground, and shout "WATCH THIS" at them, I still have no problem encouraging people to give it a try. "Refreshingly straightforward" probably sums up my thoughts on Sky Girls more than anything else. There are no genre altering plot twists, no surprise villains, no secret organizations pulling the strings - just enjoyable mecha action. The fact these mecha were piloted by cute girls instead of angst-filed boys probably didn't hurt my opinion of it either.

I'm through the first story arc of Spice and Wolf. This series certainly started off slowly, but as the first arc progressed things did pick up nicely. Craft and Horo are very interesting characters in their own right, and watching their relationship develop has been quite enjoyable. My impression of Craft is he's a skilled merchant who is just a touch too cautious for his own good, but his dealings with Horo seem to be putting just the right amount of daring in him. As for Horo, she is a wonderful character. For a wolf spirit/harvest deity she is surprisingly human - very wise yes but also very fallible, confident and powerful but also emotionally vulnerable and even painfully lonely.

This is not your typical fantasy story, as stated Craft is not some stock fantasy archetype like a warrior, but rather a simple merchant; his big dream is to amass enough money to buy a shop in a city so he can settle down and stop being a traveling peddler. Outside of Horo's existence magic has been nowhere to be found, and even with Horo the flashiest bit of magic we've seen is her transformation into her wolf form - and that has only happened twice or perhaps more accurately once and a half since the first time we only got to see Craft's reaction to the transformation (it scared him witless). The main story arc revolves around economics with nobles, kingdoms, and rival merchant houses plotting and scheming to make money off a pending alteration to the purity of one kingdom's silver coins. For an anime the depiction of the economics gets pretty in depth maybe not quite "Moby-Dick's descriptions of 19th Century whaling" level in depth, but still I feel at times like I should be taking notes.

Oh what else: I've started in on Oh! Edo Rocket and it is ridiculously fun. When I try and think of a way to describe it I keep coming back to the fact it reminds me of Excel Saga, but only coherent with an actual plot. I'm not entirely happy with that comparison as I am at best ambivalent towards Excel Saga, while I am loving Oh! Edo Rocket. I would have to say that in every way that being silly is a good thing - Oh! Edo Rocket is just as silly as Excel Saga, and in every way that I found being silly a detriment to Excel Saga - Oh! Edo Rocket is actually logical and serious. The setting is Edo in 1842 (as the anime is quick to tell you Edo in 1842 was in the midst of numerous onerous restrictions on things deemed frivolous - like say fireworks), and the basic premise is a woman asks a fireworks maker to make some fireworks capable of reaching the moon for her. Anyone familiar with the anime will understand the magnitude of the understatement I’m about to engage in - there is more going on in this anime than I’ve just mentioned. I doubt I could do it justice were I to try and describe everything going on there, I think this is clearly a case of experiencing it for oneself as being the best policy.

I’m still watching Rosario+Vampire, I’m not sure I could even explain why. I know I haven’t made it through an episode yet where I haven’t thought, “now that is an excessive amount of fan service.” For some reason it actually makes me think of History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi. There are some similarities: Kenichi is the last anime I watched to feature a truly noteworthy amount of fan service (although nowhere near the level of Rosario+Vampire), many of the defeated foes in both go on to become staunch allies of the main characters, the female leads in both could kick the male leads’ collective asses, and while I wouldn’t really call Kenichi a harem anime the main character does pick up more than one female admirer over the course of the series. Where Kenichi differs from Rosario+Vampire (and most harem anime/manga I’m familiar with) is Kenichi (the character) actual grows and becomes more competent and mature (and since it is a martial arts comedy I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention stronger and more skilled). I doubt Tsukune is going to be much different at the end of Rosario+Vampire from how he was at the beginning.

Clannad and Shion no Ou both continue to be among my favorite anime I’m watching. I’ve been periodically pestering Dan to start watching Shion no Ou so I’d have somebody to talk about it with. Dan if you are reading this be warned I’m going to add Oh! Edo Rocket, and Spice and Wolf to the list of things I periodically pester you to start watching. I continue to make my way through Pretty Cure Max Heart, and I have only a few episodes left of Lucky Star. Sadly I haven’t gotten back to Dennou Coil yet. On that front I think it is actually an attempt by me to be responsible. I have a strong feeling that once I start watching it again I won’t stop until I’ve finished it, and because I’m only through 14 of the 26 episodes I’ve been hesitant to start watching it again since I haven’t had a window were I could comfortably devote the nearly five hours it will take to finish the series off.

I could continue on about anime for awhile yet, but time for a new topic instead. Despite what it must look like given the above paragraphs, my assessment last month that I’m making a transition away from WoW towards anime may have been premature. I’m starting to get the hang of being a level 70 character with Chipple. I’ve got my flying mount (sorry still no pictures), and I’m making slow, but measurable progress towards better gear. Assuming I keep up with the necessary farming of elemental motes, I should be making myself some Frozen Shadoweave Shoulders this weekend. I still need to get Chipple into some level 70 instances, and get her keyed for Karazhan (although given my current work schedule I just don’t see myself becoming a regular raider), but the tasks before me seem slightly less daunting.

I’ve also been spending some time working on a Tauren druid named Berenek on the server Zuluhed, because that is where my friend Erik plays (I’m sure I’m not spending nearly enough time there in Erik’s estimation). Speaking of Erik, I continue to wait patiently for move number three in our latest e-mail chess match.

Matt’s BESM campaign continues to go well. He’s seems quite happy to sit back and see where we (the players) take it, and speaking for myself I’m quite happy to see where we can get it to go. In my last post I mentioned that my character Cynthia had managed to retrieve a surprising amount of data from the memory banks/brain of our apparent main foe. It turns out this info is more memories and personality and less raw data, so Cynthia threw together a small robot to attach this personality to so we’d have something to interact with while obtaining what we’d like to know. Matt has portrayed the partial copy of our foe’s memories as being a bit morose, and more than a little bitter over the loss of its magical abilities. Its complaints on the latter topic lead Cynthia to retort something to the effect of (and I mention this mainly because Matt found it amusing), “I just grabbed the information we needed, it’s not my fault you don’t keep your magic in your brain.”

My character Kell continues to survive Ellery’s Eberron campaign, although after our last session, mostly by the grace of some amazing dice rolling. D&D has long had the idea of the “natural 20," meaning you roll a 20 on a 20 sided die, as being the best thing to hope for during combat. This has been true regardless of the version of D&D you happen to be playing (and outside of a few skill systems in the pre 3.x /d20 era rolling high on a d20 in any situation has generally been a good thing). I picked a very opportune time to get one during our recent combat with a mind flayer (technically a vampiric mind flayer but whose keeping score). Had I not rolled that 20 on my grapple check, my character was about 99% likely to have his brain eaten (just a little something mind flayers like to do). Near character death experiences notwithstanding I continue to have fun with Kell.

With that I think I've touched on most things I’ve been kicking around. So it is now time for me to go knock out a few dailies and farm some motes of water.

Once More unto the Breach

To say I've thought of nothing else but singing monkeys since Saturday would be hyperbole, but it has been in the back of my mind. Yesterday I heard the radio advertisement for a second time. I listened to it with palpable anticipation. My original recollection was slightly inaccurate, the commercial ended, ". . . order your flowers by the 10th, and receive a free CD of romantic piano music, and a chance to win a singing monkey."

At least I think that is what it said, it's not like I had any trouble understanding anything else this lady on the radio was saying, but I just cannot completely wrap my mind around the idea of winning a singing monkey. Some part of me just refuses to believe that is what she said, despite having twice heard her say it. That said, I find myself a little sad I don't currently have a significant other, because I think I'd like to present her with a singing monkey (whatever that is) on Valentine's Day. I fully realize such an act would likely result in my hypothetical lover becoming my hypothetical ex-lover, but damn would the bar story be worth it.

In addition to pondering silly advertisements, I devoted most of my free time this last weekend to role playing. On Saturday Matt ran his BESM campaign. Cynthia very nearly went down the dark path of torturing a prisoner, thankfully Paul's Jedi stopped her. That aside, Cynthia did have a few moments I was pretty proud of: hacking a 24th century military grade computer system on an abandoned moon base was rather awesome, as was the invention of a shrink ray to facilitate the transportation back to their home world of the numerous D&D monsters we kept finding in stasis as we explored the interdimensional portal network our enemies seem to be using.

Like most most role players I love those rare instances where I roll the best possible result on my dice, just when I need to do so the most. Cynthia had one of those joyous occasions on Saturday. Our aforementioned prisoner was more mechanical than biological so Cynthia designed a machine to forcibly download the information stored in his memory. As it was being hooked up, he countered by activating his hitherto unknown self-destruct and total memory wipe ability. I held little hope that Cynthia would be able to use/modify on the fly her invention fast enough to get any information from him. I rolled a twelve (as good as it gets on 2d6) on the electronics test, after applying Cynthia's insanely high mind score and excellent electronics skill the test result added up to 24 (even after the penalty Matt applied to the roll) which is the target number BESM assigns for improbable tasks (BESM's highest difficulty class) . All of this means we got the information we were looking for, and while Cynthia may be a 14 year old girl she is clearly technology's daddy.

Sunday saw the resumption after a nearly year long hiatus of Ellery's Eberron campaign. I'm still trying to remember exactly what character goals I had for my changeling Kell. Still it was a fun session, although it served to really reinforce my preference for point based role playing systems. After two years of BESM (plus some random GURPS and Hero action) I find the game mechanics of character creation and advancement in d20 (and really any level based system) to be incredibly restrictive. Sorting through the seemingly endless number of D&D's core and prestige classes for that magic combination that will approximate the admittedly nebulous character concept I have has been an exercise in extreme frustration. My advice for anyone playing D&D (or any other class based system) is look over the classes, and find one that makes you go, "ooooo," and build your character concept around that. Don't create a character concept, and then try and find a class that fits it.

Let's call it 1-2 with a Walk

Suggesting the possibility of some sort of law of conservation of shipping time my SATA cables arrived a day later than the shipping estimate I was given. I'm relieved to be able to report victory in the installation of my new DVD drive, but it was far from crushing. Getting my computer to recognize the existence of my new optical drive was a chore. One would think that with three open SATA ports, one would at most only have to guess three times which port to turn on before the computer found my new hardware. Not only did my first three iterations through my computer's set up fail to get my new optical drive recognized, but for some reason my computer stopped finding the hard drive connected to the fourth SATA port. That resulted in fair amount of salty language on my part. Eventually the repeated turning of port 0 (the port my hard drive is connected to) off and back on resulted in the seemingly spontaneous return of the recognition of my hard drive. Once that problem was resolved, I turned on the remaining three ports all at the same time, and finally - for reasons I cannot explain - the existence of my new DVD drive was recognized. One final trip through the set up to turn the two unused SATA ports back off and I was good to go. For future reference my DVD burner is connected to SATA port 2.

So Tuesday night Chipple hit level 70. The process of getting her some good gear seems even more demanding and daunting than the process of leveling her to 70 was. I guess my next few steps with her will be earning enough gold to buy a flying mount, improving her reputation with the various factions, getting her keyed to the various instances, and maxing out her tailoring and enchanting skills. Once I stop being lazy I'll get a screen capture of her, and put it up. Although I'll probably at least wait until I've got my flying mount before I do that.

Going further back in time we last gamed on the 12th. It was a fun session, of course they have all been fun sessions. My character went on a date (of sorts), that was amusing. I guess after some of the situations I put Matt through in the last BESM campaign, the date was a bit of karmic justice (although it is worth noting it was self-inflicted karmic justice). Perhaps of more importance to the campaign we captured the apparent villain, not that we have a much better idea of what is going on, but we really haven't had much of a chance to question him yet. I do find, upon reflection, that I'm a bit surprised by how ruthless my character can get when confronted with opposition. All-in-all Cynthia is proving to be quite fun, and I always look forward to our next session.

General musings on role playing

I’m not sure what it is about October and November that distracts me so, but it has obviously been a while since I had anything to say here.

Gaming has continued to be fun. I’m really enjoying my steampunk tech genius. We’ve had three more people join the campaign each playing a unique and interesting character, so that’s worked out well. I believe we’ve had three sessions since I last mentioned anything about Matt’s campaign here. We’ve finished up with the D&D world, and Matt had us hit all the D&D high points: we fought a dragon, we fought an NPC party, and we received loads of magic items.

The acquisition of magic items illustrates an interesting difference between level based systems like D&D, and point based systems like BESM. Level based systems don’t really have a method (or at least a very precise method) for maintaining character balance when magical goodies are acquired (D&D 3.x at least assigns a monetary value to magic items, and then gives you the wealth ranges per level the designers thought were appropriate for the standard game of D&D). It basically falls to the GM to make a judgment call about whether giving out “magic doodad x” to characters of “level y” will unbalance the campaign or not. Under a point based system (assuming items are built using the same rules as characters) it is very easy for the GM to determine if characters are advancing at basically the same level. If character A gets a 25-point magic sword, and character B gets a 5-point magic sword the GM at least knows there is now a 20-point difference between the two characters. Whether this is significant will depend on which system is being used, the nature of the campaign, the nature of the players, and the GM’s style, but the tools are there to easily identify any potential balance issues.

These magic items also brought to light another interesting difference between level based systems, and point based systems. Generally in a level based system you get treasure and move on, in a point based system the GM has to decide if the characters have to pay character points for their treasure. If the GM decides that characters don’t have to pay for items (magic or otherwise) the game plays just fine (level based systems have been doing this way all along so it is a perfectly viable method), the GM’s ability to determine game balance is lessened a bit, but is still superior to that of a level based system. If the GM decides to make characters pay for items, then the balance issues are completely sorted out, but you can get some suspension of disbelief issues – such as looting some cool magic item from your defeated foe, only to find you cannot use it because you don’t have the character points to pay for it. Or maybe something like this:

Player1: What do you mean I can’t use Excalibur to smite my foe, the Lady of the Lake gave it too me?!?!

GM: Yes, but you blew all your character points making Arthur a king, so until you earn some more points and pay for it, Excalibur is a paperweight.

Most GM’s get around this by allowing the characters to use the item on a short term or temporary basis but make them pay to use it long term, for example: when you wrestle the wand of fireballs away from the evil wizard you can immediately use the wand to blast your foes, but if you want make this a permanent addition to your character you have to pay the points for it. Another popular option is to allow the character to use the item, but require them to spend some or all of the future character points they earn on it until it is paid off (so basically an installment plan). One interesting variation on that is to limit the item’s abilities to what the character can pay for, and as the character spends more points on the item, it gains more abilities until it is back to full strength.

The main downside, as I see it, to making characters pay for their magic items is it robs the items of their wow-factor, and largely negates their status as a reward. In a role playing game like D&D if your fighter gets a magic sword, that is pretty much a clear bonus. In a point based system where you have to pay character points for your magic items, that is no longer the case. If your fantasy warrior gets a magic sword, and then has to pay character points for it, you didn’t just get a bonus, you got a suggested path for character advancement (although if your GM is strict about what you can spend your points on, magic items can be a path to buying abilities you wouldn’t normally have access to).

"You even grill geeky" - Matt

This last Saturday I gathered with my gaming buddies for more role playing geekery. We added a bit to the usual mix this time around. Paul acquired a portable grill. In his e-mail informing us of the purchase he mentioned it had about the same grilling area as a hibachi, which I mistakenly took to mean he’d be bringing something similar to an actual hibachi. In retrospect I should have known better.

While I was expecting something like this:
Instead we ended up with the Grilliput (this is picture is taken from ThinkGeek and sadly isn't an actual action shot of us using the grill):
The Grilliput consists of two parts. The actual grill (assembled on the left, and in its storage mode on the right):And the optional fire bowl (fully open on the left, and again in storage mode on the right):
We cooked hamburgers, brats, and corn on the cob. It was all very delicious.

With food out of the way we settled down for a rousing game of Super Munchkin.
We also couldn't pass up the opportunity to play some four person Mario Strikers Charged. As a general note, I really ought to get a Wii.

Amazingly after all that we still found time to actually role play. Matt wrapped up the Shadowrun portion of his BESM campaign. I found it pretty amusing how quickly our dimension hopping characters started thinking like stereotypical shadowrunners. We may be on a mission to save the universe, but when we found ourselves in need of money we pretty quickly hatched a plan to rob a few of Seattle's local mafiosi to obtain it (we had some fun with Jedi mind tricks).

Matt ended the session by depositing us in a classic D&D style world where we quickly got to save a halfling cleric from some owlbears. I'm not sure how many campaigns out there have featured vans trying to run down owlbears, however I cannot help but notice I've taken part in a few campaigns now where vehicles have been used as weapons.

All-in-all, a very fun weekend.

Goodbye, So Long, Farewell, Long Live the New Edition

My first impression of using BESM 3e was quite positive, and I’ve been thinking about the differences between the new BESM and the previous edition. I’ve mentioned, briefly, the basics of the BESM 2nd Edition mechanics before. The characters are defined numerically by three stats: body, mind, and soul (quantifying the physical, mental, and metaphysical/supernatural). The success of non-combat actions are determined by rolling two six-sided dice (or as those of us in the hobby would say 2d6) and comparing the number to the relevant stat (body for physical actions, mind for mental actions, and soul for basically everything else), if the result is equal or less then the stat the action succeeded. Various skills and abilities can be taken to make success more likely (for both combat and non-combat actions), but those are the basics.

Combat itself is slightly more complicated, but only slightly. If one of the PCs in my campaign were to try and put the hurt on a hapless NPC it would have gone something like this. First the player would have tried to hit NPC (probably with a sword, they all seemed to like their swords); the player would roll 2d6 hoping to get a result equal to or under his attack combat value (which starts out as the average of all three stats). If the result was over the combat value the attack was a miss and we moved on, but if the player succeeded then I’d make a defense roll for said hapless NPC. I’d roll 2d6 and hope to get under the NPC’s defense combat value (which starts out as the average of the NPC’s three stats minus two). If the defense roll succeeds then the NPC managed to block, dodge, parry, soak, or otherwise some how avoid what would have been a successful attack. Should the roll fail the player would gleefully announce how much damage his attack just dealt.

Different variations on the “roll this number or less” mechanic have been with role playing games since the very beginning of the hobby. It is certainly a serviceable mechanic and I’ve played many fine game systems that make use of it (GURPS and the Hero System come to mind, but they hardly scratch the surface). It can have some drawbacks however. Depending on exactly how it gets implemented it can be counterintuitive – for example in BESM 2nd Edition bonuses are expressed as negative numbers, while positive numbers are penalties. It can also start to break down when a character has enough skill, bonuses, or other modifiers to raise the target number above whatever the highest possible number you can roll on the dice the game is using making it basically impossible to fail. In BESM 2e, which uses 2d6, that number is 12 (while in GURPS and Hero that number is 18 because both systems use 3d6). This point can be reached pretty quickly and easily in BESM 2e even by starting characters.

With BESM 2e in particular another problem that could arise during combat is the characters that go first in a combat round tend to do nothing but burn through the opponents defenses allowing the slower acting characters to actually damage them. First off combat rounds - almost every role playing game divides combat time into discrete units generally called rounds, turns, or phases which usually represent a few seconds of time (I’ve seen systems where a round was as fast as one second, and others where it was as long as one minute). Now as for burning through defenses – the simple combat example I gave above covers one person making one attack, but there are various abilities that allow for multiple attacks during a round (alternatively more then one person can attack the same target in a round). BESM handles this by making the target’s defense combat value decrease by two for each use after the first in the round. If the target also has multiple actions during a round the penalties start once all of those actions are used up. I tended to throw one powerful opponent backed up by some cannon fodder at my players so I tried to design them to be able to fight multiple opponents. Since for most of my campaign the PCs had two actions a round, their opposition usually had three.

All of the above added up to make most fights look something like this (in a very simplified sense): the first PC would attack twice (almost certainly succeeding both times), the villain would defend twice (again almost certainly succeeding both times), the second PC would attack twice, the villain would successfully defend the first attack and have about a 50% chance of succeeding at the second attack, the third PC would attack twice, the villain would try to defend but at this point had only a minute chance of succeeding, and this was repeated until the villain was defeated. Fortunately creative players can go a long way to alleviating this problem, and my players were nothing if not creative. Seriously how many players would think to have their characters use Ethernet cable to first lasso an attacking dragon, and then use it as reigns to ride said dragon while fighting other dragons? And the great thing about BESM 2e is it is flexible enough that when aforementioned player announced his plans regarding Ethernet cable and attacking dragon, or any of the other countless wild/crazy stunts they all pulled I didn’t need to grab the rule book and start madly flipping pages to try and find a relevant rule, I just had them roll their attack and applied whatever seemed relevant as a modifier and adjudicated the results.

So how does BESM 3e differ? Well it does away with the “roll under” mechanic in favor of roll 2d6, add your relevant skills and other modifiers (or subtract relevant penalties), and total your result - if it is equal to or higher then a target number set by the GM you succeed. These types of systems tend to be a bit more intuitive for people to grasp, although the need to judge what an appropriate target number is can be annoying for the GM. As for combat both sides roll 2d6 and add their combat values (plus other relevant modifiers) and the higher total succeeds (ties go to the attacker iirc). Character creation is more complicated then it was under 2e. Characters in BESM 2e where built on fairly small point totals as compared to most point based role playing games. I favored 25-35 points for starting characters, whereas GURPS 3rd edition suggested 100 points for most of their starting characters (really 145 points since it was 100 points + 40 points in disadvantages + 5 points in quirks), while HERO 5th edition suggests 150 points for their starting characters (at the heroic level for super heroes it suggests 350 points). Granted each of these games uses a completely different system so you cannot really just compare point totals, but in general the more points you have to create a character the more complex your options are going to be and the more powerful (or diverse) your character is going to be. The characters we created for Matt's campaign were built on 300 points and I'd estimate are about on par with a 2e character of 30 or 35 points. So obviously the costs of the various abilities in BESM have been completely reworked for 3e, and the number of options available to you has increased significantly. This certainly doesn't hurt BESM, character creation was extremely flexible under 2e, and it only becomes more so under 3e. While I have to reiterate that character creation has become more complex, I'd still say it is far easier than say Hero 5th edition or Shadowrun 4th edition.

Anyway to sum up, my first taste of BESM 3e was positive and I look forward to playing some more. I believe we are getting together again on Labor Day for round two of the Mattoverse, so I'll probably have some more to say about it after that.

Before I go I'd like to point out I've been blogging for one year. Woohoo! I'm a little surprised I've kept it up, all previous attempts at anything resembling a journal have failed quite miserably. By my count I've been blogging for 381 days and with this being post 54 I'm averaging just over one post every seven days; which is pretty much exactly what I wanted to do. So huzzah for me! In celebration I leave you with this amusing picture that has nothing to do with BESM, or anything else I've talked about in this post.

Well Played Matthew, Well Played

A month has already passed since the end of my BESM campaign. I remain extremely satisfied with how the BESM campaign turned out, easily one of the best I’ve ever run under any role playing system. My players remained true to form, coming up with interesting and completely unexpected things to do right up until the end. I was particularly impressed with their decision to try and remove every soul in the Hell of Hungry Dragons before they sealed it up forever. Dan’s character was the driving force behind this little decision, apparently he felt infinite suffering for finite sins was terribly unfair, and he was able to convince Matt’s character that something needed to be done about this. For the record they succeeded (probably a testament to how ridiculously overpowered I let them become, and also to how as a GM I’ll allow almost everything that amuses me).

As (parenthetically) noted in my last post we got together on Saturday for BESM 3rd edition, which was also Matt’s first attempt at GMing. Matt has been talking about his multi-genre, anything goes, chaos campaign for as least as long as I ran my BESM campaign (quite probably longer). The general idea is any sort of humanoid character we could come up with (and build on 300 points) was basically fair game (there were a few restrictions, mainly don’t build a character whose abilities are completely derived from his social standing since he won’t be staying in his original world). Matt ended up with a Jedi (courtesy of Paul), an elven wizard (Dan’s contribution), and a steampunk tech genius (my character - heavily inspired by the Girl Genius webcomic). Interestingly Matt informed us that our characters had all died, and had us come up with the circumstances of their deaths.

The campaign opened with our characters waking up on a hill after being pulled away from their own worlds at the moment of what would have been their deaths. We don’t actually know who did this, or exactly for what reason. We’ve been told it was to save the universe, but the person who presumably did the summoning is currently in a vegetative state due to an accident during the complex magic ritual used to snatch our characters away from the jaws of death (or more precisely his soul had been sundered from his body and is currently lost). Just as we were getting a handle on our situation (we were on earth, but apparently the only humans in the world live in a village protected by a magic bubble that keeps the dinosaurs from coming to eat them), and hot on the trail of a clue to return the architect of our situation to consciousness, we suddenly found ourselves sucked into another alternate earth.

For me this is where the night was made (I suspect Paul probably harbors similar sentiments). We found ourselves in a convenience store staring face to face with a troll who was doing a little shopping. For numerous reasons that mostly have to do with shared gaming experience, and knowledge of the GM, I very quickly suspected (I imagine Paul did as well), and Matt soon confirmed that we were in a Stuffer Shack. If you’ve played Shadowrun, you almost certainly know what that is. Matt continued to delight by running us through Food Fight which is a classic Shadowrun introductory adventure (at least from 3rd Edition, and I think from 2nd as well, but I don’t know if it made the jump to 4th edition). After trouncing the thrill gang that was trying to rob the place we made good our escape, and Matt brought the evening to a close.

Sweet Tradition

Hazzuh! It’s BESM day! In the cornucopia of geekiness that consists of my hobbies, role playing games are my favorite. If I’m posting about it that can only mean I’ve finished preparing for it (insert evil GM cackle). This could possibly be the final session of the campaign, although I suspect it is far more likely that it will take at least one (if not two) more session after this to wrap everything up. Honestly I find I’m horrible at estimating how many sessions are left, as I’ve been saying only 3-4 more sessions to go for the last 6+ months, but I can safely say the campaign has reached endgame.

Tradition is the reason I’m posting before this afternoon’s session. Well okay maybe superstition would be a more accurate word for it. I’ve just noticed that when I post about gaming before the actual event it tends to go very well. Where some gamers have lucky dice, I seem to have a lucky blog.

With the end of my current campaign rapidly approaching (probably), my thoughts naturally start turning to what I’m going to do next. Fortunately a fair amount of thought has already been put into this (way back in February, admittedly it’s been a bit ignored since then), and one of my players has been making increasingly serious noise about running something himself. I find this latter option pretty appealing, as I rarely get a chance to play, and since somebody has broken down and actually made a pass at creating a character for his hypothetical game I find I have little choice but to follow suit. Since I’ve had steampunk on the brain of late, and since his proposed game would be multi-genre madness, I’ve been thinking a steampunk mechanical genius would be quite fun to play. I’m also thinking this character will likely be female, which is an unusual choice for me (outside of MMORPGs); I blame the Girl Genius web comic (really for both the choice of gender and theme).

The above picture is by Niko Geyer and is one of several he did for Guardians of Order.

Before I go I would like to mention the Twins played a doubleheader against the White Socks yesterday (a rarity in MLB these days). They won both games (not an easy thing to do in a doubleheader), but looking at the scores (especially the first game) you might be tempted to think they opted to play football rather than baseball. Game one ended with the Twins winning 20-14 (a football score if I've ever seen one), and they won the second game 12-0 (admittedly that one would be a bit unusual for a football score but certainly possible).

Also it is Caturday so here is another lolcat I found posted on the Penny Arcade Alliance forum.

A Tale of Two Horde, or Why I Shouldn't be on a PvP Server

As my experience with WoW continues to accrue, I find it increasingly likely that I am a carebear. I enjoy the battlegrounds, but random world PvP is something else entirely. I initiated my first PvP on Sunday morning, and promptly felt guilty about it. I was using my warlock Cominius (level 24 at the time of this incident) and was headed out of Stonetalon Peak when I ran across a troll shaman named Granfalloon (level 23 at the time) fighting a Twilight Runner. I watched him finish his fight, and decided well why not, so I targeted him, sent my succubus, and rushed after her firing off my various afflictions. Granfalloon opted to make a run for it, made outside of Stonetalon Peak, and nearly got into Ghost Wolf form before I dropped him. Flush with victory I continued about my marry way, but that afternoon started to feel a little guilty that I ran him down when he obviously didn’t want to engage in any PvP activity. Later on that night I was back playing Cominius and I was surprised to see Granfalloon’s body still outside of Stonetalon Peak. Now I started to feel really guilty for killing him. Late Monday night I was again playing Cominius, Granfalloon’s body was still outside of Stonetalon Peak, and I was getting ready to swear off PvP forever as I kept thinking of wildly unlikely scenarios about how my killing this character had caused Granfalloon to give up WoW forever. Happily after work on Tuesday I found Granfalloon’s body gone, replaced by a skeleton (a tell-tale sign of a PC having died and revived at that spot).

However my second foray into initiating PvP didn’t cause me any guilt at all. That is probably because I strongly suspect my victim was either a bot or a gold farmer. While running Cominius around the Stonetalon Mountains I kept encountering this level 25 undead priest killing the stags found in between Mirkfallon Lake and Stonetalon Peak (I didn’t note his name). By Monday night I was pretty sure he was a bot, so I decided I might as well kill him. So I took my level 28 dwarven hunter (whom I was playing at the time I reached this decision) to the area I kept running into him at and sure enough there he was killing stags. I waited for him to finish the mob he was on, targeted him, ordered my pet to attack, and opened fire. I became more confident in my determination that he was a bot when he started attacking my pet instead of me. Between the level difference, and his poor choice of targets the combat was quickly decided in my favor.

On Tuesday night I was back on Cominius still plugging away at a few quests in the Stonetalon Mountains. Just as I was nearing completion and while in the middle of fighting a harpy, a tauren druid named Swifthoof jumped me. Not too surprisingly I pretty quickly died. Now I find the idea of attacking somebody while they are fighting a mob to be pretty bad form, but what really annoyed me about the whole situation was Swifthoof hid and waited for me to revive and then attacked and killed me again. The first time I can understand. We are opposing factions, and given a chance I certainly may have attacked him, but to engage in corpse camping means you are just being a jerk.

Contrast this to the actions of the level 31 Blood Elf paladin, Daloo, that Cominius ran into a bit later that evening. I had completed my quests and was running out of the Charred Vale back to Stonetalon Peak when I met up with Daloo heading the other way. Being five levels higher than my character I wanted nothing to do with her, and headed off to one side hoping she’d ignore me. In doing so I aggroed both a harpy and a basilisk; while my succubus grabbed and kept the attention of the harpy, the basilisk continued to attack my warlock. Now Daloo could have simply ignored me, she could have also attacked and killed me and I would have counted as an honorable kill, but Daloo attacked the basilisk and drew it off my warlock (and at her level easily killed it). Left with only the harpy to deal with my warlock quickly finished it off (honestly without the presence of a level 31 horde occupying my thoughts both mobs at once wouldn’t have been a big deal). Again at this point Daloo could have attacked me and racked up some easy honor, instead she waited to see what I’d do. I gave her a /bow and ran off counting my blessings.

I’m certainly not trying to say this is how all alliance/horde interactions should go. Dark Iron is a PvP server after all; of course the sides should fight each other. If Daloo had attacked me before I aggroed those mobs, I wouldn’t even be posting about it (nor would I have bothered to look up her name in the combat log). I also would have been fine with her attacking me after the mobs were dealt with, and again I probably wouldn't be posting about it had that happened. The same is true if Daloo had ignored me and continued on her way after I aggroed the mobs. I actually would have considered that hypothetical act a great kindness. If events had played out that way I might even have posted about it.

Well enough about WoW.

BESM on Saturday went very well. For the record the players weren’t boned (see previous post). The end of the campaign is actually in sight. That fact makes me both very happy, and very sad. We should game again this coming Saturday.

Harkening back to the peripheral references made to quantum physics in my last post I leave you with this amusing lolcat picture I found posted on the Penny Arcade Alliance forum.

BESM!!!!

In a few short hours I'll be running my BESM campaign again after a lay off of more than a month (stupid busy summer schedules). Naturally in lieu of preparing for this, I’m writing about it instead. . .

I kid of course. Actually I’ve basically completed all the prep work I wanted to do for this coming session, so I’m taking a little break. You might wonder why I have Schrödinger’s picture (snicker) displayed on this post? Well it is in honor of a question e-mailed to me by one of my gamers after I sent out a completely innocuous e-mail* mentioning that I’d updated the main villain. This player who will remain nameless (and who definitely doesn’t have a blog that I’ve linked to on the left of the screen) asked, “are we boned?” My first thought upon reading this was, “haven’t we been gaming together long enough for you to already know the answer to that?” This quickly lead to me wondering if I had become some sort of Schrödinger’s GM, and thus the picture.

*Said innocuous e-mail may have possibly included some indication of evil GM glee, and/or nefarious laughing. If forced to testify before Congress I fear my memory on the topic would be incomplete.

WoW continues to be fun. Even though I think I’m terrible at PvP, I find I enjoy the Battlegrounds quite a bit. Anime continues to be watched, and hopefully next month I’ll actually spend some time writing about it.

I leave you with a picture sent to me by a friend I’ve gamed with in the past. I find it fitting for today.

Well he is a Sith Lord. . .

The weather this last weekend was most uncooperative so I ran my BESM campaign remotely. All-in-all it went just fine I couldn't get my firewall to allow my computer to act as a server for any of the various programs we made use of, but other people were able to handle that so it was only a minor annoyance. We did have one "major" technological outage, but I cannot really complain about it as it luckily happened just when I was ready to call a short break so I could fix myself some food, and was resolved a minute or two before I was finished eating the food I had just made myself.

I received an e-mail from an old friend of mine today. It consisted of a link to an amusing video on YouTube. I give you Dark Vader being a jerk:

Way too much Haruhi

Tomorrow, weather permitting (and if not technology permitting), I'll be running my BESM campaign. Tomorrow I will also be making the official decision about what to run for my next campaign. That particular decision is approximately 99% made at this point so baring a last minute strenuous objection by one of my players (or some late night epiphany) I'll be running a sci-fi campaign featuring independent mecha pilots in a Firefly/Serenity inspired setting. The second place idea was The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya inspired campaign. In honor of the campaign that might have been (and I guess clings to a 1% chance of still being) I give you this post which happened when happy chance lead me to YouTube, YouTube -like it usually does- lead me to more YouTube, and that inspired me to see how many of these Haruhi Suzumiya videos I could embed in this post.

I'll start with the original video I ran across. It's your basic anime music video featuring the end credits of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and a song from the Namco game Mojipittan. I found it delightfully amusing and immediately began looking for more.


Next I'll move on to the clean versions of the opening and end credits (see here for song titles and artist info).


With the original versions out of the way I give you the all dance version of the end credits.


I was very happy to find this edited together version of Haruhi's surprising rock concert at her school's cultural festival. Kyon's face when he realizes Haruhi is on stage just kills me.


Sticking with the rock theme I move on to this AMV featuring The White Stripes song "Fell In Love with a Girl."


There is a veritable cornucopia of Haruhi Suzumiya themed AMVs to be found on YouTube (and doubtless even more on the Internet in general). To represent those countless numbers I chose this one because it featured Nagato Yuki who may just be my favorite character in the anime.


Finally I leave you with the Gundam version. The fact that a Gundam version exists is proof that people with far too much time on their hands make wacky things and post them to the Internet, and other people with far to much time on their hands (like me) find those things and blog about them.

Thoughts on a future campaign - part three

For part three of this brainstorming experiment I'll start with Samurai 7. This anime is based on Akira Kurosawa's movie Seven Samurai. What I'm interested in here isn't the plot (it's a good plot, but it's also pretty basic role-playing game fare), but the anime's interesting setting. For a campaign inspired by this anime I'd be shooting for samurai versus mecha, and since the mecha in Samurai 7 have a decent steampunk feel to them, I'd likely play that angle up. So we could really call this setting Steampunk Samurai. A few things are worth noting here - one there is nothing saying the samurai have to be the "good guys," and there is plenty of room for blending after all the bandits in Samurai 7 were samurai before they turned themselves into giant mecha and Kikuchiyo (who may be my favorite samurai in both the anime and the movie) is a cyborg.

A number of different themes could be pursued from this setting. One of the anime's themes is what does a warrior do when there is no war to fight. If I stick with the idea of the samurai being the protagonists that theme meshes nicely the idea of traditional samurai trying to find a purpose when war has been taken over by giant mecha. On the other hand going with the idea of Samurai as the antagonists I could shoot for capturing the feeling of a civil war breaking out as mecha warriors struggle to overthrow their samurai oppressors. The idea of combining mecha (steampunk style or otherwise) with samurai appeals to me, so even if I don't end up using this for my next campaign it's an idea I'd like to continue kicking around and develop for future use.

From here my thoughts turn to the country of Ōto from the CLAMP manga Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle (and of course the anime Tsubasa Chronicle). The country of Ōto is based partly on Japan's Taishō era (1912-1926 during the reign of Emperor Taishō) an interesting time with traditional Japanese customs coexisting with westernized elements. That is all great from both a literary and historic point-of-view, but for the role-playing perspective the country of Ōto also features Oni hunters (and naturally Oni for them to hunt). In the manga/anime Ōto turns out to be a giant virtual reality video game which while I won't completely rule that out as an option, I am pretty unlikely to implement that particular detail. Sufficed to say I wouldn't set a campaign directly in CLAMP's country of Ōto, but I would draw heavy inspiration from that story arc for this hypothetical campaign.

The logical evolution from the country of Ōto is to ponder Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle itself. Using this as an inspiration yields probably the most wide open campaign of all the ideas I've floated to my players. If my idea to base a campaign on Suzumiya Haruhi is an opportunity to parody every genre, this campaign would be an excuse to play in every genre, and visit any world I'm familiar with be it from my own imagination, a book, manga, comic, anime, movie, or any other source of media under the sun. The keys to doing this right would be preparation (I'd want to have a few different worlds at the ready when going into this), and character creation (the player characters would greatly benefit from compelling reasons to be traipsing all over the multiverse). I'd almost guarantee that ×××HOLiC's Yūko would be the NPC responsible for sending the player characters on their merry way across the dimensions so it would be interesting to work out how I'd enforce the give-up-that-which-is-most-important-to-you cost she'd charge for giving them the ability to travel the multi-universe (and an example of why character creation would be so important for this campaign, the player characters would need to have a good reason for paying such a steep cost).

With that I think I'm ready to bring this experiment to a close. I certainly have more ideas for possible campaigns, but BESM 3rd edition wouldn't be my first choice to run any of them and since I'm operating under the assumption that my players want to do a BESM 3e campaign there isn't a lot of point in pondering them at this time (fun though it would be).

On a completely different note this talk of Tsubasa Chronicle and ×××HOLiC reminded my that not too long after I first posted descriptions of those two anime I ran across a brilliantly succinct description of them both on the message boards at HERO Games. When I read them I thought them so perfect I was actually mad I didn't think of them myself, and jealous because I wasn't sure I could ever write so clearly. With a little more thought on the matter I realized that while they were the perfect description to give to me, they perhaps were not universally useful to all people. I still think them brilliant, but admit they require knowledge of CLAMP and Doctor Who to get the full effect. Anyway from the HERO Games Discussion Boards I give you Michael Hopcroft's (one of the two big anime guys on the HERO Games Discussion Boards) descriptions of Tsubasa Chronicle and ×××HOLiC:

Tsubasa Chronicle: What Doctor Who would look like had CLAMP created it. A young man travels from world to world, recovering the "feathers" that signify the lost memories of the girl he loves, knowing the one he can never recover is her love for him. He is accompanied by the girl, a sorcerer who has given up his magic and a ninja warrior with serious anger management issues, and their means of travel a marshmallow-bunny-thing with a very perky personality and an enormous ego.

×××HOLiC, on the other hand, features a character who is what [the character of] The Doctor would be like if created by CLAMP. Yūko Ichihara, an enigmatic sorceress with a unique reach in time and space, runs a Tokyo shop that grants wishes for a price. She has taken a schoolboy with spiritual powers under her wing, subjecting him to a humiliating and dangerous indentured servitude. Yūko is amusing, witty and whimsical -- frequently alarmingly so (she created two little girls to keep her company and gave them obscene names) and drives Watanuki just as crazy as the Sixth Doctor drove poor Peri.

I leave you with some advice courtesy of Roy Focker of Macross Zero and Super Dimension Fortress Macross fame:

Thoughts on a future campaign - part two

My bare bones description of the possible science fiction campaign has generated an impressive amount of e-mail traffic. This makes me a happy Game Master, which in turn makes for happy players. However as I am not yet prepared to commit to a single plan for a future campaign this little experiment in campaign brainstorming continues.

When it comes to running a role playing game I'm a big believer in theft. I steal ideas, adventures, characters, plot, names, and settings with abandon. My current campaign is a perfect example of this behavior. With that in mind I present a number of possible campaigns all which have been heavily inspired by (or if you prefer stolen from) the anime I've been watching, and the manga I've been reading (okay truthfully there are going to be a few examples that have nothing to do with anime or manga).

First up a campaign inspired heavily by Hunter × Hunter, so inspired in fact I might just go ahead and set it in the Hunter × Hunter world. One of the features of Hunter × Hunter that I find so interesting is the different reasons the characters have for wanting to become hunters (for example Gon wants to become a hunter to track down his father who is also a hunter, while Kurapika wants to become a hunter to bring those responsible for the destruction of his tribe to justice). I would strongly encourage the players to come up with interesting reasons for their characters to wish to become a hunter. If we did a short version the campaign it would feature the player characters going through the Hunter examinations. The longer version would continue on with stories focusing on and tying into the reasons the player characters became hunters. The hunter organization and the status and benefits it confers in the Hunter × Hunter world are pretty unique, and creating my own version without just copying wholesale from the anime would be a little tricky. Which is why I'd consider just setting the campaign in the Hunter × Hunter world to begin with; the downside to that is I haven't read any of the manga, and thus far have only watched 17 episodes of the anime so I'm not really all that familiar with the world of Hunter × Hunter.

For something in a similar vein I could go with a campaign drawing inspiration from Naruto. Here the campaign would focus around a team of young ninja and their more experienced sensei (in other words just like the early Naruto). The largely endless possibilities for adventure with this set up should be pretty obvious. I'd be much more apt to go ahead and create my own world for this (even though I do find the setting in Naruto to be pretty interesting); in fact I can all but guarantee that I would create my own world and ninja organizations for this campaign.

Stripping more and more of Naruto away from the last example leaves me with a core idea of a squad of operatives. Thinking about that quickly brings Ghost in the Shell in all its incarnations to mind. Which does make me think that while I've run Shadowrun on a number of occasions, I've never run a straight up cyberpunk campaign. The obvious choice here is to run a campaign featuring criminals committing crimes for money (that is the standard set up for a Shadowrun campaign and describes the action that takes place in William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer). A fine choice to be sure, but keeping Ghost in the Shell in mind I don't want to rule out creating a governmental organization like Ghost in the Shell's Section 9. All of this means I might be looking to do a covert-ops campaign as much as I'm looking to do a cyberpunk campaign.

With Shadowrun still in my thoughts I turn my attention to the other half of Shadowrun's cross-genre makeup - namely fantasy, and specifically urban fantasy. The urban fantasy most currently occupying my thoughts is The Dresden Files on the Sci-Fi channel (I've also read the first two books in the series and I'd happily recommend them), although Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the works of Laurell K. Hamilton isn't far behind. Whatever the source of inspiration the first question that would need to be answered is does the world-at-large know magic and the supernatural exists. Either choice presents a fine number of options, and a number additional questions to answer (such as why hasn't the world noticed magic, or how would world history be different if magic was real and known).

Pondering magic in the modern world brings me back to anime - namely The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya which is actually a little odd, because of all the bizarre people Haruhi collects around her a magic-user isn't one of them (maybe she does in the novels, but since I don't read Japanese I've only got the anime to go by). So what would I steal from this anime to create a campaign? Well to start with the Japanese High School setting, because that would be really fun. Also this hypothetical campaign would feature a club very much in the vein of Haruhi's SOS Brigade complete with searches for aliens and time-travelers, investigations of the paranormal, the creation of bad student films, competing in the local baseball tournament, and anything else the club founder thinks is a good idea at the time.More importantly this campaign would feature an NPC in the mold of Suzumiya Haruhi, perhaps not in personality, but certainly in ability. If you are familiar with the anime (or the novels I assume) should understand where I'm going with this, however for those not familiar with the anime I'm sure some explanation is required. To put this in terms my current players would understand Suzumiya Haruhi has the GURPS disadvantage Weirdness Magnet except increase its potency about threefold. Even that doesn't really begin to cover it, because Haruhi has the power to alter reality to suit her whims. However she doesn't have a clue that she possesses such a power, and thus uses it only subconsciously and only when she's bored. Enter the SOS Brigade composed almost entirely of the people Haruhi is searching for (namely aliens, espers, and time-travelers), and possibly owning their very existence to her reality warping powers, they strive to keep an eye on her, and above all keep her from becoming bored.

I think that is a good plenty for part two of this exercise. I certainly have more, but you'll have to come back for that in a later post. I leave you with this: I find it comforting to know that no matter what campaign I end up running the only thing able to compete with its awesomeness is the following picture.