This Random TTRPG Thoughts #81
It’s Tuesday, my Sabbatical has begun, and my brain is having some difficulty grasping the concept. But it’s quiet, I’ve got coffee, and misfiring brain cells are screaming to be heard. These are random TTRPG thoughts.
- John Fredericks sent me Streamlined Superheroes early last week. I read it in a day, I purchased it the next day. Two days after purchasing the game I ran it with no problem. It is as streamlined as advertised!
- On Thursday, July 10, I’m interviewing Glen Finney from RPGs vs. Alzheimer’s Disease. I lost a grandmother to this wretched disease so this one is personal. We’ll start our chat at 8:30.
- As of July 2021, which is the last time the site was updated, “Alarums and Excursions” was still being published. Does anyone know if it still is? Even if it’s not, I love that an amateur publication from the 70s lasted so long!
- The US Gestapo rolled a military patrol down a street in an LA park for pretty much no reason other than to show they were insecure about the size of their private parts. After LA Mayor Karen Bass appeared on site, and the patrol left without doing anything, Gregory Bavino shared, “I don’t work for Karen Bass. Better get used to us now, cause this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.” Let’s be clear what this horrible person said. Having an occupied US city is “going to be normal very soon.” Elections have consequences.
- I’m working on posting the written forms of my last several videos during this first part of my sabbatical. It’s kinda fun.
- I get the feeling that someone in the current regime watched season 2 of Andor, saw what the Empire did on Ghorman, and thought, “What a great idea! Let’s do that!”
- The reason I enjoy narrative first games, especially for comic book games, is because I’ve found it frees the player’s imaginations. Instead of having to flip through the rules for their powers they get to describe what they look like in the fiction. So, instead of asking, “Do I have the feat which lets me create magical entanglement?” The player just says, “I use my magic to tie this guy up.” They then roll to see if it works and, if so, how well it works. If the player has ice powers and they want to punch something using that power they just say, “I create ice boxing gloves and hit the villain.” And it happens. There’s no flipping through books or interpreting the minutia of rules. There is the game, the rolls, and the world which reacts. I love it. And the fact that it leads to superhero groups who declare they are sponsored by a Mazda dealership is icing on that delicious cake.
- I need to let my little one GM adventures for me more often. He makes up everything on the fly, and I try to write down what’s going on. Last time he wound up doing a whole contested d4 mechanic which was hysterical.
- Here’s some games I want to run while I’m on Sabbatical. Heroes of Cerulea, The Electric State, Monty Python’s Cocurricular Medieval Reenactment Programe, Barbarians of the Ruined Earth, EZD6 Wasted World, and The Origin. I’d better get to it!
- My heart goes out to the people in Texas who are dealing with catastrophic flooding—lives have been lost, homes destroyed, and everyone will come away from this scarred.
