Contact Information:

jay@vanishingtowerpress.com

Tuesday, June 4

Cross-Over for your Genre Tree

Those who read comics should be familiar with the cross-over.


Espionage; Cyberpunk is a perfect choice for a cross-over opportunity within this stylized branch of the genre tree. By porting over the adventure setting 2.1.3 Highway Holocaust from my Space Opera; Post Apocalypse branch I am able to cut down on the Game Master workload. Highway Holocaust works well for a group who wants to take on the roles of nomads or cops, for example. The whole Mad Max series of highway violence is your touchstone here.


Cyberpunk 2020 is a cyberpunk role-playing game written by Mike Pondsmith and published by R. Talsorian Games.

Cyberpunk 2020 claims to lend itself to play in the street level, dark film noir genre with a high body-count, 1980s action movie style.
Each player must choose a character class or "role" from the ten given in the basic rules. There is enough variation in the skill system so that no two members of the same class are alike. Because Cyberpunk 2020 is skill-based, the choice of skills around the class-specific special ability allows a wide range of character development choices including non-combatants.
It does not take much retooling to place these career packages into the Specialism mechanics of the USR rules set I plan to use for the game mechanics.
Cyberpunk 2020 is a natural fit for re hanging the material onto USR’s rules set. The rules lite approach of USR allows you to plug in the game mechanics you wish to keep, and jettison the elements of the game you do not like. As can be reviewed in the following post; http://www.rpg.net/sites/sprite/cybrpunk.html, there are parts of the game which some see as problematic. These game issues should easily be addressed with smart use of the USR game mechanics.

Once there you will need to place your protagonists (PC's) on the hostile highways of the future west striving for survival. Transportation will be a sought after tactical edge desired by most surviving cultures. The conservation, and production of potable water would be prized, medicine to offset radiation poisoning would be highly sought after. No one could fault you for busting out Steve Jackson's Car Wars Deluxe!

Come to think of it, there is no reason why the Night City campaign setting found in the original Cyberpunk2020 rule book couldn't set down right in Judge Dredd's Mega City One. The whole of Night City could be converted into a single block of this future sprawling megalopolis!




3.1 Espionage; Cyberpunk

3.1.1 Highway Holocaust
3.1.2 Night City Block in Mega City One

Friday, May 24

Espionage Branch of my Genre Tree

Another opportunity rife with wide adventure swings is the Espionage branch of my genre tree. The act or practice of spying is fraught with the edible tension we all crave when we set down face to face around the game table. This branch of the genre tree should speak loudly with tantalizing titles promising rich role playing rewards for players comfortable with public speaking, and relevant acting skills.

Whether flinty Boogy types or sexualized dimensional tramps character is king, style is substance, and the well is deep and dark. Therefore I do adopt the following three broad catagories in which to offer my gathered players to chose from;

3. Espionage;  3.1 Cyberpunk, 3.2 Hard Boiled, 3.3 Time Travel.

Holy sh$t, many places one can go off of the above three. Get your free flowing narrative style ready for this gas fueled adventure combination! For Cyberpunk I suggest grabbing a soft bound copy of R. Talsorian’s Cyberpunk 2020 rulebook. It will easily strip down for use with the simple rules found in Trollish Delver’s USR role playing system.

Hard Boiled, now you have got some range here. Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, these are some of the usual tropes. These turn of the century Sherlock Holmes styled intrigues are all ripe for the Cthulhu mythos to be thrown at them. Elliot Ness, and his band of Untouchables run into werewolves? Play some Warren Zevon, how can you miss!

How about finding inspiration from one of Fiasco’s great playsets like Havana 1953? Spies, mobsters, whores, rebels, players, tourists.

Time Travel opens up all dimensional opportunities for your players to wander into paradox bending adventures. Whether you draw your inspiration from Zelazney’s Amber series, the serial television programs of Dr. Who, or horrible movies such as Looper there is plenty of material available to throw at your players. In the next few posts I will show you the detailed campaign settings I would plan to use.


Saturday, April 27

Metal Earth has gone dark?

I am a fan of Aos' great sword and sorcery blog Metal Earth. I find all the free campaign content he has hosted fantastic. His last post mentioned he was bored with the site, and was done with it. What I found intriguing about the walk away was it seems the comment function was turned off.

While I appreciate, and respect an artists right to declare a piece of work finished I do wish Aos would leave the comment function open.

This would provide glowing fan boys such as myself to gush over the content provided.

Why would you not want to know years from now all the crazy ass adventures folks from around the world had used your stuff for?

So there you have it; AOs, please turn your comment function back on, please...?

Wednesday, April 24

Just Received Basic Fantasy...

And had a blast creating some old school PC's straight out of the book. I printed out some of the BFRPG 8"x10.5" Notebook Paper Character Sheets, and got to rolling ye olde 3d6's!

My initial character rolls left me with Strength, and Intelligence as my two highest stats sitting at 11. If I understood the rules on Combination Classes on page 6 correctly I decided to go with a Human Fighter/Magic User. This would mean "Daegan Fiend Seeker" would need a total of 4,500 XP's to achieve 2nd level, but would enter the game world fully armed, armored, and sporting the ability to Read Magic, and cast Protection From Evil (this spell was rolled randomly)! I chose race Human for the additional 10% XP bonus.

For my second character the ability scores were all 12 or above with Wisdom and Constitution as the highest at 14, and Charisma garnering a +1 bonus as well at 13. Can someone say Cleric! "Lamithe Vor'gund, servant of Balach" looks to be a perfect companion for Daegan, a learned warrior dedicated to crushing fiends of darkness.

So, yeah, I'm showing my role play upbringing  was solidly based in D&D Basic boxed set, but I feel I could take complete newbies to role play and easily help them create satisfying fantasy adventure heroes with Basic Fantasy.

If I happen to be so lucky to gather a game group somehow someway here in the wilderness of the High Rockies I wouldn't hesitate to use this rules set as an introduction to role playing games.

Friday, April 19

Playing Sci Fi with USR

Space Opera; Hard Sci Fi on my genre tree starts with Traveller. I've never played Traveller, but I have Gurps, and Hero Games sourcebooks, and would love to play some cliched sci fi tropes from "Behind the Claw"!

I would try to plunge in hoping to achieve an arena death match, star ship combat, fearsome space marine assaults, interstellar espionage, corporate sponsored wars, alien first contact, and lost civilizations. These type of grand adventures should be made available to your players  as their PC's take shape preparing for their first adventure.




2.3 Space Opera, Hard Sci Fi

2.3.1 Traveller Universe
 

Thursday, April 4

Genre Tree Spandex

Space Opera, Comic Books on the Genre Tree

The four color world of Superhero comics is provided for on my Genre Tree, and I would simply loot my Champions source books, and adventure books to create the initial sandbox. I describe my initial ideas for the campaign setting here.

You do not have to restrain your branch to the Champions Universe by Hero Games. The Comic Book world has thousands of pages, and almost any subject matter is touched upon. What they all have beating within its Krypton-vulnerable heart are characters thrust into struggles with shifting moral clarity. Anxiety wrought tension wraps every action with the cost of failure high. This is usually juxtaposed with the player's incredible powers and abilities.

Comic Books came into their own as a legitimate literary genre with their incorporation of modern psychological thought. Sarte, Jung, Einstein, all their philosophical constructs come bursting forth in spectacular eruptions of power in comic books.

This branch can be as long or short as you care to make it. Here is mine;


2.2 Space Opera, Comic Books

2.2.1 Champions Universe




Monday, April 1

Space Opera and the Apocalypse

My Space Opera branch for my Genre Tree covers a wide range of science fiction, and science adventure fare. 



From zombie plagues, and star troopers to the world of four color comics, this is why I intend to use the USR system when presenting this menu of choices to players. I'll need a completely flexible game system to follow the whim of player choices.

Space Opera Genre Tree;

2.1 Post Apocalypse              2.2 Comic Books      2.3 Hard Sci Fi


Space Opera, Post Apocalypse;

Post Apocalyptic story arcs never go out of style, and once again, your sources of inspiration to be found in film alone are immense. I for one am mashing up Aos' material from his fantastic blog Metal Earth with my love of Kamandi, the last boy on Earth DC comics series. This mash up would be my Space Opera, Post Apocalypse campaign setting. Though there are significantly more world settings to be had. The popularity of The Walking Dead television series not withstanding, different "collapse" scenarios are numerous, and all have particular story needs.

 
This branch of the Genre Tree should demand more background material be forth coming from the GM for the players to orient themselves in their game world. Even if it is a narrow band of non polluted ground, the players should have a handle on how they have survived in this hostile world. What has allowed them to live while others die.

Die hard Gamma World, and Mutant Future fans will find their favorite story lines here, and should be prepared for the shocking deaths their PC's will find. This does not preclude civilizations anchored on the long dead carcass of a past world to be flourishing, but the effect of some disruption is embedded in the culture.

2.1 Space Opera, Post Apocalypse;

2.1.1 Future Shock

2.1.2 Living Dead Dominion
  
2.1.3 Highway Holocaust