Put Away the GM's Shield

Put Away the GM's Shield

By Vincent L. Cleaver

I think that I'm done with GMing for a while, and will hang up my shield.

I'd like to play a friendly neighborhood werewolf, and roam far afield,

With 'Billy and The Alphas' I'd patrol the streets of that toddlin' town,

Defending the weak and clueless, stopping bad guys wherever found...

Or be like Mike, Carpenter, that is; God bless him and all of his!

I'd urge Sergeant Murphy to take up the sword, there ain't no Wiz 8-(

But she could not abandon her city so easily, nor go far, far,

And neither, I think, could I  finally run crunchy ol' D-F-R!

Per-maybe-haps I could do captain-y things, on some rusty old death trap.

With plenty of trouble and a cute little mechanic (I'll be taking a pleasant nap 8-),

But I would not break my heart in Serenity Valley, no, not ever again,

And lately the Cortex system has somewhat lost its charm, my friend.

What is that, you say? Meddling kids and a talking dog, too?

Why not, you suggest, be running 'Scooby Doo of Cthulhu'?

It all sounds like a fun little evening for four to six,

But, alas, I seem to have mislaid my case files; nix, nix...

It is a thing, a tired and selfish thing, but there it is, let it suffice.

Somebody else can sit at the head of the table, roll the dice,

And run a game that's not about beating up on the green races.

That lets the players back in the peoples' and the gods' good graces.

One which sets out to save the world, all the worlds, or maybe just Tea!

Something weird, something wonderful, something... y'know, for me?

Bulldogs!

I've been reading Bulldogs! on my Nook, and I really like the system. It's FATE, but a much less crunchy version than Spirit of the Century or Dresden Files. I'd love to run a game where I can sit down with a half dozen friends and world-build a fantasy setting, which is one thing I dodn't think we can do with DFRPG, unless we defocus the Urban Fantasy tropes... Gah!

Off the cuff SFnal goodness, here we come!

)Just add players... 8-(

The PCs are the crew of a down-on-it's-luck tramp merchant (sounds familiar! 8-), but working for The Man, TransGalactic, and under the thumb of a tyrranical, loser NPC captain... (sorry Fillian!) But Trans-G doesn't expect much and is more than happy to turn a blind eye on profitable side-ventures, so Trouble- I mean, Adventure Awaits!

http://galileogames.com/pdf/kickstarter-preview.pdf

http://galileogames.com/

http://galileogames.com/bulldogs-fate/

Matters Dense, Behavior Uncommon

I am a damn silly fat man,

Of more than two score plus two.

And I write silly fic-fan,

To amuse you, and you, and you!

Sometimes I make a little sense,

Touch on things that lie

Near unto the heart of matters dense

Which answers the 'Why?'

With another question or three-

Why do we fight, why there is pain,

What does it mean to simply be?

And hope for behavior uncommon, humane.

The Dream-Teller

"I see a rose, a red, red rose. It is a perfect flower, arranged with others like it on a pleasant rosebush, verdant, vibrant-"

The woman jerked and the Dream-Teller felt her fingers trembling. He peeked through eyelids barely shut to see her tears, rolling down her gaunt cheeks. "What do you see, now?"

"I see the rosebush torn out of the ground, roots and loose dirt falling... a hand, torn and bleeding on the thorns. Tears and blood are raining on the violated ground."

Powerful imagery, the old man allowed. Mrs. Hendricks was always a welcome customer, and not just for her coin or her small-talk...

"What does this dream mean?"

The Dream-Teller opened his eyes and signalled for the boy, his apprentice, to clear away the tea cups. He shook his white-haired head and his cheeks were wet, too. "This is a thing that I would not tell you..." and he paused dramatically. "There is love turned around, and murder, remorse, suicide!"

"My daughter and her fiancé?"

"Perhaps. It is someone close to you..."

"But if not that nasty, shifty animal, then who?" Gloria Hendricks muttered as she hastily paid his fee and departed.

"That was amazing," the apprentice cried, once the good matron had left. He put the jingling coins safely away and brought out lunch.

"Oh, that?" The Dream-Teller smiled at the flattery, but reflected that the boy was still too new at the game to appreciate the delicacies. It was all about information and intuition, really. "I just told her what she wanted to hear, given the dream which she related..."

"But..."

"Son, the unconscious is fairly reliable, and a decent way to assess threats, when you follow it up with sweet reason." The old man shrugged. "Maybe she knew something which she didn't know she knew?"

More Rambling

I watched a little Avatar this morning; just missed 'The Cave of The Two Lovers', probably my favorite episode after Lake Laogai. It verges on filler, like the despised 'The Great Divide', but the story of the two lovers, and of *our* two lovers, is worth a lot of silliness.

I need to write today, and do a few other things, but mostly I really should write at least my 500 words... (What to write, Vinnie? 8-P Something weird, something wonderful!)

My big anime find of recent note was 'Summer Wars', a pleasant little romance comedy anime movie in the Miyazaki mode. The boy is shy, but impresses the girl by leading the charge to save the world, and then gets the girl, the stereotypical happy ending (to paraphrase that bit on the lawyer show about gloating, there's nothing wrong with a happy ending, as long as it's done well... 8-). I would dictate gallons of blood, tears and sweat, for my heroes ought to damn well *earn* their happy ending, but I am a bastridge!

'How the States Got Their Shapes', by Mark Stein is something I've wanted to do something with for a rather long time... either a fantasy setting, or more likely a SFnal one, with a provisional territories and such. The US Lunar Territories and the great state of Tranquility? Mars and a space elevator ribbon dropped down to Peacock Mountain?

What if, to protect and save our world, another one, just as terrible and wonderful, had to be destroyed? Who would be the hero and who the villain?

Wilhelmina Cannon, who I worked with for eight years, died last Friday, and I went to her viewing this Friday. Now, I really shouldn't be eating candy anymore, but I get these little fun-size packs of snickers and share with the rest, including Wilhelmina... I made sure she had a pack, and folded an origami heart for her casket. She was annoying at times, but I liked her, if that makes any sense at all. I'm going to write her into the Abducted stories, after a fashion...

Some of the abducted are grandmas and grandpas. The slavers took mostly the young, the aggressive; some might even say the not-too-bright, but not really. And some of the abducted were, if not seasoned citizens, then perhaps a little bit over the hill...

But not Wilma.

Wilma had three children and four grandbabies. The abductees were spared having to stare at pictures, but not the endless stories. I think, now, that this is what kept her focused like a laser beam, not on here and now, and survival, but on the Homeworld. The guards and trainers who tried to make an example of her for her 'malingering' all eventually met with curious and sometimes fatal accidents, the result of a geriatric mafia of sorts and her version of the Baker Street Irregulars.

Hers was a cunning and unconventional strategic mind, who played mind-games with sky-marshalls and starship captains. She wasn't the leader, but she was the kingmaker and schemer. Hers was the plan, perfectly plotted and executed, which won freedom for nearly two thousand janissaries, the crews of Frederick Douglas, Agamemnon, Fearless, Dauntless, Majestyk and Columbia Too... shines the names; brave ships and braver crews!

Well, we ended their damned galactic war and won the next one, when the Ubers rolled into the wider galaxy. But by then there was no going home to Earth anymore...

I think that she felt that she had done her part- y'know, Kipling and his 'little bit'? For as sure as the married man fights for more than one, Grandma fought for all the rest of us.

And then she laid down her burden and was still.

New Game Design Ramble...

(I just ate a Truly Horrible fortune cookie, gah! 8-)

I was working on Vinnies' Next Game, which predictably will be space adventure; as long as I'm not *playing* Dresden Files, then I will design what I want, for which I will then probably not be able to find any players...

I have a system for world-building, which makes sense to me but probably will bore you to tears-

Mass for likely stars are between 1.1 and .8 Sols, with insolation at mass to the 4.5 power, so the insolation would be between 1.5 and .36 sols, roughly; Goldilocks orbits between about 1.2 and .6, respectively, and planet mass is approximately the star mass times the randomly-derived-but-weighted number, the same method which I used to get random star-mass distributions (I did say it would bore you to tears? 8-).

1.1 is 1 / (1+1.1)^3 = ~1/9

.8 is 1 / (1+0.8)^3 = ~1/6

So 3/18 - 2/18 is 1/18, ~5.5% of all stars

Planet mass of .5 to 1.5 E or 1/(1.5)^3 to 1/(2.5)^3, ~.3 to ~.06 or about 1/4 to 1/5, 9/20

1/5 have planets in the Goldilocks Zone

1/18 times 9/40 times 1/5 = 1/2 x 1/40 x 1/5 = 1/400 stars have earth-like worlds, .25%, or about 70 worlds in a 100 lyr cube. Virtually all worlds have some life, but rarely does it equal the complexity of Earth. There are probably a half dozen to a dozen such in the 'sector', and maybe one sentient species per... one in 8 sentient species have civilizations equal to, or greater than, man-kinds' level!

One in 25K stars with sentients, one in about 400K at starfaring or better... my humans have some lebensruam, but lots of competition (one starfaring in every 200 lyr cube)!

The 30 Day Rule of Rule

This is something I've borrowed from GURPS. Size and complexity matter, but speed of communication is king. States more than 30 days across tend to fall to pieces... a decision needs to be made, and somebody will make it, just not the bureaucrat in capitol on behalf of the crown or the republic. The Governor or Mayor or rag-tag leader will make it when and where they need to do so!

I like 1 lyr/day, and there are hundreds of stars in a 30 lyr cube, thousands in a 50 lyr cube, where the interstellar states' reach exceeds its' grasp. That 50 lyr cube even has nearly a dozen habitable worlds...

Speed of travel starts out at 1 C and increases about 25%, or .1 log 10, roughly every ten years. I worked on this last night by lamplight, so the ideas are suspect. This setting uses the Heisenberg Uncertainty Jump Drive, HUJ-D, and it jumps ships off the planet. Reaction drives powered by shipstones and using water for reaction mass allow ships to land safely, under power. HUJ gets them off-world and between the stars, at 1MWhr/tonne/lyr. Early mass space travel based on cheap, reliable access to space (CRATS), leads to the development of the Solar System, Cowboy Bebop-style.

In the second century FTL, Sooners start to settle stars and worlds w/in 20 lyr and develop in complete freedom to fail, or be swamped by later colonists. Most early colonies failed and are outliers or mildly inhospitable, easily terraformable planets. Many later colonies fail as well, but there are more of them, learning from the early mistakes (so that they can make some bright, shiny new ones!).

Who are the Sooners?

Who are the Johnny-Come-Lately's?

What is happening, back in the Solar System? (Solar Commonwealth)

I'm figuring on the early 3rd century FTL to be the point at which things shake out; interstellar commerce begins to make sense, more colonies are founded, and the Human Interstellar State decides how all this is going down, first in the Core 20, a 20 lyr cube, then in the twenty-six additional sectors formed adjacent, in the Core 60, with a baker's dozen habitable, good worlds, and a few dozen not so perfect worlds...

The Habitable Worlds Inventory

I have a suitable gazetteer of local stars, and I will use it, but first I will randomly create about two hundred worlds and place them randomly, then rationalize their actual placement according to real star data...

Habitable worlds, and not so habitable worlds, are of varying usefulness, based on arable land for living and agriculture, temperature, etc. I have ideas for sectors and ideas for colonies on habitable worlds, all influenced by Mark Steins' excellent 'How the States Got Their Shapes'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_States_Got_Their_Shapes

more, later

I'm Running Out Of Month...

Only two posts so far this month. I've been busy, but I haven't been writing 8-( I'm glad for the OT, tho).

I can't seem to get back into it; probably should spend a few nights away from the internet, but I can't seem to do that. I'm gonna go home and write, later, I promise! Right now I'm suing the wifi at the local McD's...

Case in point- I need to go somewheres with this-

Charlotte's Rabbit

By Vincent L. Cleaver

"What'cha doin'?"

Bear looked up at the little girl, all of 5 or 6. He tried not to look too surprised, for this one didn't speak, and had shied away from everyone since they'd picked her up three day back. She was nearly out the door of the room, a safe distance with the door jamb between them. Protecting her from me, Bear thought, and his imagination filled in all the details.

The walking dead were not the worst thing in this world.

"Folding paper," Bear told her, glancing down. "Do you want me to make you an origami rabbit?"

"Yes, please," she chirped, almost too cheerful, and then added, "Rabbits are tasty."

"This one is pap-"

"I understand," she said quickly, but then looked scared and fled back a step. Something in Bear ached as he watched those wary eyes; those and the very top of her head was all that showed around the door jamb now. After a moment (after he didn't get angry, rather, but, oh, how very angry Bear was, just not at the little girl) the rest of her came back into view.

"My name is Charlotte."

"That's a good name," Bear commented, voice open and calm. He concentrated on the paper, and Charlotte, too, just not looking at her. Tricky, that. "So, do you know Charlotte's Web?"

"Uh-huh!" Her dirty, short brown curls shook as she nodded. Maybe we can get her bathed and in clean clothes tomorrow, Bear thought. They had broken a rule by not strip-searching her, when they brought her into the 'Traveling Circus'.

"Can you read?" Another nod. "We'll see if we can get it for you..." There was a bookstore nearby and he and Ski were going on a recovery expedition. Bear was looking forward to that.

The paper was from some files in the office of the garage where they were bedded down tonight. Just regular 11 by 8 1/2, it wasn't square like the original design called for, itself a modified water-bomb. "Most origami you fold from square paper, but see here, I've got the extra tucked away; where we lock the base of the rabbit, here, and in the ears, here..."

Bear added whiskers, eyes and a cotton-tail with a pen and showed her how to inflate the 3D bunny.

"Ooh!" Her eyes got big and she clapped her hands together, before covering her mouth and remembering fear. So damned afraid to give offense, Bear thought. Not afraid like that of the zombies, but scared to death of people...

"Show me, please?" Charlotte asked.

"Okay," Bear said, and took two more pieces of paper from the files. They made bunnies and ducks, dinosaurs and Japanese cranes until bed-time. It was one of the best evenings which Bear could remember spending in months. He remembered something his grandmother had said-

'Doing good is a blessing, and is its own just reward.'

He fell asleep thinking of her and on that, and not the one Ski had told him that morning-

"Death is lighter than a feather, and duty is heavier than a mountain."