I May Do The Blogging from A to Z April Challenge

Hello again long time no see!

Just thinking that I may do the ongoing Blogging from A to Z April Challenge. I am not definite about this yet. I'm thinking of doing something for either the Toon RPG (Steve Jackson Games) or the Ghostbusters RPG (West End Games). Both dead games, but both very fun games. Right now I am leaning toward Toon, but I'm still pondering my options.

Is the OSR Dead And Other Ruminations

Here's something I haven't done in a while. Just some random thoughts about various things in gaming and beyond...

Shhhhh! Me and Mr Holmes are thinking!

Is The OSR Dead?

A current meme that's going around is the question "Is The OSR dead?" I'll have to say that the question cannot be answered with a simple yes or no.

Will we see a reduction of the amount of new retro-clone rules? For the various editions of D&D/AD&D, yes. The ones that survive will be the ones that are the most creative with their rule design. You will see retro-clones and revivals for other games continue, and more "what-if" style rules ala Mutant Future (Basic D&D powered Gamma World) and Rotworld (Pacesetter system used for  survival horror).

When it comes to dungeons, campaigns, and worlds? The sky is still the limit. Even if WotC releases every book in their library, someone will want to make their 'cowboys vs terminators helped by psykers and fae" setting for Basic D&D. A set of retro-clone rules makes it possible to share your idea with the world (or those 10 folks who want to cannibalise your games for parts).

Even if the OSR fades away, the ramifications of what they accomplished will go down for years. Sword & Sorcery has returned in force to fantasy roleplaying. PDFs, kickstarters, and print on demand has allowed people to create their own RPGs and supplements to sell in ways not possible even 10 years ago. In the end the OSR took up the do it yourself mantle and went beyond the d20 System revolution to awaken something much greater.

Finally, a thought about WotC releasing the entire D&D/AD&D library. You do realise for every person that buys the old D&D stuff from WotC because it's "official", there may be another that says "I can use this for my Labyrinth Lord/Mutant Future mash-up" when they pick up X2 Castle Amber?

Ad Infinitum Adventures Acquires Icons Superpowered Roleplaying From Adamant Entertainment

Several days ago I saw this press release about the future of the Icons Superpowered Roleplaying game  here.

I think this is a great development. I like Adamant Entertainment. I think Thrilling Tales in both the d20 Modern and Savage Worlds incarnations are among the best in pulp roleplaying. Mars is a great mash-up of all your favorite martian science fantasy  concepts. But I'm glad Gareth-Michael Skarka went this route. Icons is a great superhero game, and it deserves a solid focus to let it expand and grow. Kudos to GMS and Steve Kenson on making this deal.

The New Superhero RPG Golden Age

While I'm on superhero roleplaying games, are we not living in a golden age of superhero roleplaying? We have Mutants & Masterminds (M&M), Icons, DC Adventures, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, BASH Ultimate, Supers!, and two companies putting out products for Villains & Vigilantes, just for a start.

Yes, I said Villains & Vigilantes. Two companies. It's True.

Plus with various OGLs and Creative Commons there are a metric ton of great material that can be adapted for your favotite superhero RPG. Most of it is M&M 3e/2e or Icons, but from Golden Age  wackiness to dark Dark Knight-Wannabe grittiness there is plenty of Superhero goodness to go around.

I Wish I Had More Money For Kickstarters

To all my internet friends and people who've I bought games from: If I haven't donated money to your Kickstarter, it not because I don't like your idea. I think you idea is kind of sweet actually. I just can't afford to spend my paychecks on everything I want to support. Nothing personal.

Emmanuelle Vaugier is Still Flippin' Hot

Yep. Flipping Hot.

Emmanuelle Vaugier  is still flipping hot. I know it's not gaming, but I just had to get that off my chest.

Inspiration: DeviantART Fun

I'm running around a few ideas round my head as the summer rolls on. Maybe some of these cartoon and crossover ideas from Deviantart can be blended into a strange campaign idea:


Masters of the Universe 300 by ~Killersha on deviantART
80s Spread by ~Eleyre on deviantART
Disney VS Capcom by *Tyrranux on deviantART
TMNT Vs. Aliens by ~BrianJMurphy on deviantART

Morlocks In Tripods: Discuss

Just had an idea I had to share.

How about

driving these?

Could be awesome...

Deja Vu Blogfest: Yellow Rhapsody

Here's my entry for the Deja Vu Blogfest. A Tale of Terror I call Yellow Rhapsody...

This is yet more game material written when I was a member of All of the Above, the GURPS APA. Yellow Rhapsody is an adventure seed featuring The King In Yellow. It was written in the systemless style of Steve Hatherley's Tales of Terror. I first saw this format in Pagan Publishing's legendary Call of Cthulhu zine The Unspeakable Oath. Written in 1997, I consider Yellow Rhapsody one the best things I have ever created. The only changes made here are spelling and formatting. Enjoy.


Yellow Rhapsody
A Film by "Alan Smithee"

Excerpt:

Man in the Mask: To what do you hold dear?
Robert: Life, love, happiness, what all men hold dear.
M in M: They mean nothing in the Tremors of the dance.
R: Then why do you dance if you have no pleasure?
M in M: There is no question in the dance, no why, no how. We dance for the king. That is enough.
R: Who is the King?
M in M: The name is all around you.
R: I see nothing.
M in M: That is his name.

The packaging is deceptive. It is a video box decorated by colorful computer generated art with the title Tales of the Weird set in garish red. The back has text that promises terrors from these three college films. The only film company mentioned on the cover in "Weird Press Films".

The first and second films are normal horror films. "Early for Dinner" is an EC Comics-style fable involving a grifter who attempts to con a beautiful gourmet cook. He gets his comeuppance when she makes him the meal for a family of ghouls. "Last Call" is a bizarre black and white blending of German Expressionistic film and Italian zombie films. Two couples spend a night in a deserted Midwest farm and stumble onto a devilish device that alters their reality.

"Yellow Rhapsody" is the highlight. It is an animated film done in a minimalist, Alex Toth-like style. The plot involves a young man named Robert Chambers who gets a strange book from his grandfather—The King in Yellow. As he reads the play, characters inspired by it begin to haunt him day and night. Helped by the mysterious Man in the Mask and the lovely Cassilda, he pierces the veil and walks the halls of Carcosa. After a surrealistic journey he meets the King, who envelopes him in voluminous cloaks of yellow. The film ends with Robert dancing with Cassilda in the King in Yellow's court. The Man in the Mask looks to the screen and pulls of his mask, revealing nothing but a starry field and a yellow rune where his left eye should be.


Tales of the Weird has become a cult classic due to the amount of disappearances connected to it. According to the legend that has grown up around it. The legend claims that "Yellow Rhapsody" was animated by a recluse who slit his own throat over the original cells of animation. It is a challenge, they say, to watch the film the whole way through. Something about the colors and the sound has a tendency to lull the viewer asleep or blur his vision. The ones that do claim that the camera plunges in the starry field and the credits begin to roll. An evil looking little boy with milky white eyes grins insanely as the credits begin to blur and break up, becoming unreadable.

Police are starting to take this case seriously. The suicides and disappearances on college campuses are starting to mount. Most of the original print run of the film has been seized and/or destroyed. Weird Press Films cannot be reached for comment.


Possibilities

1. The film itself is not the problem. It is the spirit of the animator that is the cause of the disappearances. The Mythos references were unintentional; he simply liked the King in Yellow. "Alan Smithee" lives within the original print of Yellow Rhapsody. He can perceive anyone who watches the entire film. After each viewing he attempts to take over the watcher. If he succeeds, Smithee drains life force or implants commands to watch the movie again. The disappearances are caused by the eventual destruction Smithee can visit upon a victim by draining them until they turn to dust.

2. The film is actually nested with subliminal messages put in by cultists at Weird Press Films. Throughout the video the Yellow Sign and other Mythos sigils and symbols are present. The other two short films also have references to the Mythos hidden within their narrative. The subliminals are a tool used by the cultists to recruit and identify. The curious ones are drawn to join the cult, while those who investigate the Mythos can by drawn out and eliminated. If innocents are driven to harm, that is not their concern.

3. "Yellow Rhapsody" is a cleverly disguised gate to Carcosa. If a person watches the film in its entirety (up to the grinning child), they become touched by the film. The viewer begins to watch the film over and over again and begins to see more detailed backgrounds. The sky forms into strange runes, the details in the clothes, and the characters' lines not heard before all become apparent. As the viewer becomes more drawn into the animation, the film becomes more nightmarish and surreal. The landscapes beyond the window become strange and alien, their inhabitants staring back. Screams of torture can be heard beneath the etherial music. Hallucinations begin to set in as the victim sees the characters come to life around him.

When sanity finally slips away, the Man in the Mask comes to snatch away the viewer, while Robert and Cassilda hold open the way to the city of Carcosa. The victim becomes one of the dancers whirling away to the dance of the Yellow King. A friend who watches the video might be lucky enough to see an old friend dancing for eternity in wild abandon as the Man in the Mask laughs mockingly.

Adamant Entertainment To Make Buckaroo Banzai RPG

I saw this on Facebook while checking up on my friends:

http://www.adamantentertainment.com/2011/07/18/buckaroo-banzai-is-back/

I may have to check this one out. I loved Buckaroo Banzai when I was a young 'un.

Filmation Friday: Dark Riders From She-Ra

Here are some pics of the Dark Riders, summoned by the Evil Horde sorceress Shadow Weaver. This happened in the She Ra Princess of Power episode "The Price of Power". I think the monster designs rock.

Bonus RPG Notes! (Spoilers!)

To use the Dark Riders in a D&D campaign for any edition:

• The Dark Riders are summoned by powerful evil sorcerers, necromancers, and clerics.
• They are usually sent to slow down powerful warriors, especially those with flying mounts and magicians.
• The Dark Riders themselves are skeletal warriors who wear a helm, plate mail armor, and wield an ax. They are able follow slightly complicated commands but they can be outwitted.
• The Dark Riders constantly shriek, so they cannot surprise their quarry.
• Their Mounts are winged nightmares. A Mount whose rider is knocked off will go beserk and attack the being responsible. The most common tactic is too drive the attacker to the ground.
• Both the Dark Riders and their Mounts are immune to magic. They can only be destroyed/banished by driving them into the ground, where there explode into a blinding flash.

Use with any edition! Take the stats for skeletons and nightmares, and add the immunity to magic, shrieking and the banishment by touching the ground. Adjust to taste, then send against your party next time the Evil Necromancer(tm) wants to slow your party down.

15 Games That Inspired Me

Following in the internet meme, here are 15 RPGs that inspired me, in no particular order...

1. Dungeons & Dragons (the introduction to fantasy rpg for me)

2. Lords of Creation (The rock on which my love of the weird in RPGs was made)

3. Marvel Super Heroes (the first RPG I ran)

4. Over the Edge (The closest RPGs will ever come to the Twilight Zone)

5. Champions 4th Editon (One of the best superhero continuities in RPGs)

6. GURPS 3rd Edition (Great source material and my first amateur RPG work)

7. Call of Cthulhu (I love reading the monster, gods, and spell sections)

8. Risus (the best free RPG ever)

9. Heroes Unlimited (can't stand the system but I love the Source material)

10. Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic (more source material I love)

11. Nightlife (horror role playing with a worldwide mythology)

12. Cartoon Action Hour (cause that was MY idea, dammit! ;)

13. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Cause I love BtVS and Angel and Unisystem rocks)

14. All Flesh Must Be Eaten (Zombies, zombies, zombies!)

15. Toon (An underappreciated game of cartoon humor)

I got more, but they said 15.

New Mini Six Bare Bones Edition At AntiPaladin Games

Vacation was way too short but I ate too much, got sunburnt, hung out with family, and had a great time!

But the reason why I'm here is:




The boys at AntiPaladin Games have put up a cleaned up and expanded edition of their variant Open D6 game Mini Six called the Mini Six Bare Bones Edition. It's free and available for download at their website at:

http://antipaladingames.com/minisix.html

The folks at AntiPaladin Games have put out a versatile cinematic RPG. Check it out!

Crisis of Infinite Terminators

Another idea that was siting in my head...

Imagine one of the versions of Skynet destroying the Human Resistance. Without the humans to fight, Skynet (now referring to itself as Skynet Prime) seeks to increase it's technological base exponentially. So it discovers dimensional travel technology, and begins to search the multiverse for other mechanical life. Three parallel earths later it discovers another Skynet. Logically, Skynet Prime's superior technological abilities would make an alliance between the two Skynets as foregone conclusion.

The war that broke out was much greater than Skynet Prime had anticipated. And it soon involved the Skynets from other timelines.

Skynet Prime has won many initial battles with the alternate Skynet timelines. A stalemate soon developed that was only broken when the final breakthrough was found. A stray probe found the coordinates for Terminator Prime, the original timeline that all other timelines branched out from. Now each Skynet plots to reach Terminator Prime to either rule the universe or end the mechanical madness once and for all.

Ideas for alternate Skynets include:

*A world where the technological basis of the Terminators was reverse enginered by the remenants of alien invasions. From the Dalek and the Cyberman invasions of the 70s and 80s.

* On a parrallel world where the Reich overran the free world fifty years before, the Nazi's rule a terrified world. As the fires burn over the last city in the United States, a signal goes to a secret bunker deep within a secret location. A red light begins to burn in the eyes of an army of skeletal robots, and soon the Nazis will know fear...

* A world where Skynet was infected with the ramblings of a madman. The book the madman was carrying was Necromicon Ex Mortis, the Book of the Dead.

* Skynet is a giant babbage machine built after the first invasion by the Martians. It soon goes rogue, and man must fight the clockwork army that was meant to protect its creators.

* Skynet was the first bio-computer created that could tap into the limitless storage capacity of the DNA Helix. The Terminators created by this Skynet are amongst the most terrifying things man can see.

One could play this as a superheroic dimensional travel game as supers try to keep the Skynet war from spilling out into the multiverse. Even more fun could be is for the players to each play a Skynet. This is perfect for miniature or board game type play. Each Skynet would have a set amount of Hunter Killers, Infiltrator Terminators, aircraft, etc. A system would be provided to individualise each faction.

When Terminators Make War

Robocop vs Terminator: A great miniseries, the main source of this idea.

GURPS Reign of Steel: Great reference for two reasons. First, it shows one way how AIs would wage war, both hot and cold, against each other. Second, it's probably the closest you'll get to a Terminator roleplaying game.

Terminator: The main wikipedia entry on the Terminator franchise.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: The late Fox TV series, which had hints of alternate timelines and different versions of Terminators working against each other.

D20 Masters of the Universe-A Link

During one of my afternoon jaunts on the web, I stumbled on to this site while looking for conversions:

D20 Masters of the Universe

The author of the page has made one of the better RPG adaptations I've seen, even for a work in progress. There are rules for the specifics of the He-Man/She-Ra setting, the races you can play, and spell and class ideas. Even the worlds of the setting are described in D&D 3e planar rules. This is a blend of 3e rules and conventions blended with the MotU setting, and the author does a commendable job.

The character sections are currently small but interesting. There is plenty use of prestige classes in the character write-ups. Many characters are mere the name, alignment and what classes they are. The best part are the sheer amount of characters and monsters that the author has provided. You just don't get He-Man and Skeletor. You get stats for obscure MotU characters as Plundor the Despoiler (an evil rabbit) and Octavia (a green octopus lady from She-Ra). Pretty neat.

Check out this site if only to witness a really good RPG adaptation of the Masters of the Universe setting.

Goblinoid Games, Public Domain, and Sinistar

Yeah, I know it's been a while since I've posted, but the writing just wasn't there. But now I feel more ideas coming on, so it begins again.

Goblinoid Games

*The Advanced Edition Companion by Goblinoid Games is a stroke of genius. Like many gamers, I started out with Red Box D&D. The people who were DMing often pulled goodies from the AD&D game and grafted them on. The AEC for Labyrinth Lord shares this spirit as well. More spells, classes, monsters, and stuff that brings back memories. Other people have explained the coolness of the AEC better than I could. Just get yourself a copy.

*Mutant Future Mania: The recent upswing of the Mutant Future goodness in the blogosphere is fun. My current favorite blogs are The Savage AfterWorld with the masterful Thundarr Thursdays and Brutorz Bill's Green Skeleton Gaming Guild, who had me when he stated Sleestaks. A ton of great material has already been produced. I may have to stat up some Mutant Future stuff, too. Maybe I should go the Grindhouse route...

Public Domain

*Two days ago I was looking up the Earth Alpha blog for some BASH RPG stats that the person had posted. One of the posts was a discussion about public domain superheroes. Following the public domain tag, there was a post about a wiki dedicated to the superheroes and supervillains that have fallen into the public domain.

Aslanc has posted his thoughts about using the characters here.

The link for the Public Domain Super Heroes wiki is here.

I love the work that others have done with these characters from the comics of Bill Black, Alan Moore, and Alex Ross, to Ken Hite's Lovecraft/Superhero opus Adventures Into Darkness. When I was a boy, I wrote up stats for many of these characters using the Marvel Super Heroes RPG game using entries from Jeff Rovin's Encyclopedia of Superheroes.

If you're looking for some superhero campaign inspiration, or trying to fill in your character's background, check out the Public Domain Super Heroes wiki.

Sinistar

People over the age of 25 will remember this. Turn up the volume up to really loud before you hit play.

HF2009] A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors: The RPG Part 2

Here’s a continuation of some notes on a Dream Warriors RPG. The first part is here.



The Setting

An RPG spun off from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors would need to have a more expansive world to game in than the movies provide. Of course, an RPG would have to determine if the sequels would affect the setting, but that is beyond this discussion. For now we are spinning off from Dream Warriors.

There are two realms that the PCs will adventure in: the Dream World and the Waking World. The Worlds are reflections of each other in many ways. What happens in one World can affect the other. A battlefield in the Waking World may be a spawning ground of demons in the Dream World. A person killed in the Dream World will die in the Waking World as well.

The Dream World

Most of the action of the game will take place in the Dream World. In this game it is the collected Dreamscapes of mankind. Most of the time, the Dreams of mankind play out quickly and fade away. Memories, fantasies and fears all infuse the dreamscapes that most people wander through in their sleep. Powerful minds and traumatic events can scar the Dream World, leaving permanent areas that do not fade. Examples of this are Freddy’s boiler room and the Dream Elm Street itself. When no one is dreaming in a certain area, the Dream World appears to be a warped reflection of the Waking World.



No one knows exactly what lives in the Dream World when no one is dreaming. What is known is that there are creatures born of fear, pain and death. Such beings are called the Nightmares. It is these creatures that the Dream Warriors battle in the shifting dreamscapes of the Dream World. These deadly creatures can come in all manner of shapes, sizes, and abilites, but they have several things in common.

• They feed on fear, whether they have to kill or not.
• They can manipulate the Dream World and themselves with an enhanced ability. These manipulations include shapeshifting, possession, dream warping, or pulling victims into the Nightmare’s personal dreamscape.
• They can enter the dreams of their victims and stalk them there.
• They are bound by rules and boundaries that define their strengths and weaknesses. Each Nightmare is different.
• Their predations can affect the real world.

Not every Nightmare is a Stalker like Freddy Krueger. Some Nightmares are Bezerkers, hiding their killings on battlegrounds and killing fields. Others are Possessors who ride an unwilling victim playing deadly games until everyone around them is dead. Some are the personifications of stories told to frighten children, others are men driven beyond the point of madness who find dark power in dreams. All are deadly, and the possibilities are endless.

The Waking World

The Waking World may seem safer to the Dream Warriors, but it has dangers of its own. Most authorities don’t believe stories about a burnt man with razor claws killing your girlfriend. A string of suicides in a small town may lead to therapy and church going, but police wouldn’t expect a Nightmare feed off of the town. Pressing these issue can lead to commitment to an asylum, imprisonment or worse.

Many of the Dream Warriors are considered sick or crazy by societies’ standards. This can affect investigations in the Waking World, as many people won’t talk about that strange dream of a man trying to kill them. And most people will not be happy if you’re found with their son who has just been killed messily in a dream.

On the other hand, those in the Waking World who know about Dream Warriors and Nightmares may not have the PCs best interests at heart. Some in the Government knows about the Nightmares and is trying to capture or control them. Occultists and misguided dabblers tap in the Dream World to unleash “magical beasts” and “demons” into the Waking World. Some Vigilantes consider the Dream Warriors as bad or worse than Nightmares, and hunt them accordingly.

And then there are stories of Dream Warriors who are corrupted by unknown forces, preying on those they were created to protect. These are considered just stories…

System Ideas

Baring the development of a new system for a Dream Warriors game, I would consider some of these systems for roleplaying:

The generic systems: GURPS, Hero, Basic Roleplaying, True20, Savage Worlds, etc all have tools for this type of campaign.

World of Darkness: Give it a Dream Control stat and some cool powers, crib the Spirit rules for Nightmares. Or go classic WoD and steal from Mage, Werewolf, and Wraith.

Over the Edge: Freeform gaming in one of the weirdest settings in RPG History. Dream Warriors would be great in Al Amajra.

Sorcerer (Yes, that Sorcerer.) There is a great thread on the Indie RPGs board about using this game for an A Nightmare on Elm Street-style campaign. I may not agree with all of the pretentious game theory pap in the book, but I really like the system as a modern horror RPG.

Risus, PDQ, QAGS: These rules-lite games share the flexibility of Over the Edge, with their own flavors.

Slasher Flick: Spectrum Games’ new slasher movie RPG can do a Dream Warriors game with a little tweaking.

Inspirations:

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child
The other A Nightmare on Elm Street movies.
Dreamscape (1982)
Multiple Elm Street rip-offs
Sandman by Neil Gaiman
The Night Warriors series by Graham Masterton

[HF2009] Yellow Rhapsody, A Tale of Terror

This is yet more game material written when I was a member of All of the Above, the GURPS APA. Yellow Rhapsody is an adventure seed featuring The King In Yellow. It was written in the systemless style of Steve Hatherley's Tales of Terror. I first saw this format in Pagan Publishing's legendary Call of Cthulhu zine The Unspeakable Oath. Written in 1997, I consider Yellow Rhapsody one the best things I have ever created. The only changes made here are spelling and formatting. Enjoy.


Yellow Rhapsody
A Film by "Alan Smithee"

Excerpt:

Man in the Mask: To what do you hold dear?
Robert: Life, love, happiness, what all men hold dear.
M in M: They mean nothing in the Tremors of the dance.
R: Then why do you dance if you have no pleasure?
M in M: There is no question in the dance, no why, no how. We dance for the king. That is enough.
R: Who is the King?
M in M: The name is all around you.
R: I see nothing.
M in M: That is his name.

The packaging is deceptive. It is a video box decorated by colorful computer generated art with the title Tales of the Weird set in garish red. The back has text that promises terrors from these three college films. The only film company mentioned on the cover in "Weird Press Films".

The first and second films are normal horror films. "Early for Dinner" is an EC Comics-style fable involving a grifter who attempts to con a beautiful gourmet cook. He gets his comeuppance when she makes him the meal for a family of ghouls. "Last Call" is a bizarre black and white blending of German Expressionistic film and Italian zombie films. Two couples spend a night in a deserted Midwest farm and stumble onto a devilish device that alters their reality.

"Yellow Rhapsody" is the highlight. It is an animated film done in a minimalist, Alex Toth-like style. The plot involves a young man named Robert Chambers who gets a strange book from his grandfather—The King in Yellow. As he reads the play, characters inspired by it begin to haunt him day and night. Helped by the mysterious Man in the Mask and the lovely Cassilda, he pierces the veil and walks the halls of Carcosa. After a surrealistic journey he meets the King, who envelopes him in voluminous cloaks of yellow. The film ends with Robert dancing with Cassilda in the King in Yellow's court. The Man in the Mask looks to the screen and pulls of his mask, revealing nothing but a starry field and a yellow rune where his left eye should be.


Tales of the Weird has become a cult classic due to the amount of disappearances connected to it. According to the legend that has grown up around it. The legend claims that "Yellow Rhapsody" was animated by a recluse who slit his own throat over the original cells of animation. It is a challenge, they say, to watch the film the whole way through. Something about the colors and the sound has a tendency to lull the viewer asleep or blur his vision. The ones that do claim that the camera plunges in the starry field and the credits begin to roll. An evil looking little boy with milky white eyes grins insanely as the credits begin to blur and break up, becoming unreadable.

Police are starting to take this case seriously. The suicides and disappearances on college campuses are starting to mount. Most of the original print run of the film has been seized and/or destroyed. Weird Press Films cannot be reached for comment.


Possibilities

1. The film itself is not the problem. It is the spirit of the animator that is the cause of the disappearances. The Mythos references were unintentional; he simply liked the King in Yellow. "Alan Smithee" lives within the original print of Yellow Rhapsody. He can perceive anyone who watches the entire film. After each viewing he attempts to take over the watcher. If he succeeds, Smithee drains life force or implants commands to watch the movie again. The disappearances are caused by the eventual destruction Smithee can visit upon a victim by draining them until they turn to dust.

2. The film is actually nested with subliminal messages put in by cultists at Weird Press Films. Throughout the video the Yellow Sign and other Mythos sigils and symbols are present. The other two short films also have references to the Mythos hidden within their narrative. The subliminals are a tool used by the cultists to recruit and identify. The curious ones are drawn to join the cult, while those who investigate the Mythos can by drawn out and eliminated. If innocents are driven to harm, that is not their concern.

3. "Yellow Rhapsody" is a cleverly disguised gate to Carcosa. If a person watches the film in its entirety (up to the grinning child), they become touched by the film. The viewer begins to watch the film over and over again and begins to see more detailed backgrounds. The sky forms into strange runes, the details in the clothes, and the characters' lines not heard before all become apparent. As the viewer becomes more drawn into the animation, the film becomes more nightmarish and surreal. The landscapes beyond the window become strange and alien, their inhabitants staring back. Screams of torture can be heard beneath the etherial music. Hallucinations begin to set in as the victim sees the characters come to life around him.

When sanity finally slips away, the Man in the Mask comes to snatch away the viewer, while Robert and Cassilda hold open the way to the city of Carcosa. The victim becomes one of the dancers whirling away to the dance of the Yellow King. A friend who watches the video might be lucky enough to see an old friend dancing for eternity in wild abandon as the Man in the Mask laughs mockingly.

The Obelisk of Kronos Redux--In d30!

In the spirit of the really fun science fantasy material that is appearing in several blogs throughout the RPG Blogosphere, I present this random table. Set in the mighty world of Vanth from Encounter Critical, this table originally appeared in the world famous Encounter Critical Mailing List Files section using a d20. I’ve dropped some of the reference notes, but added 10 more possibilities, ‘cause daddy’s using a d30!

The Obelisk of Kronos

An Encounter Critical Adventure Starter

The Players touch a strange obelisk and are swept away to a strange new place.

The Obelisk of Kronos: An indestructible 6-foot tall crystal carved in the shaped of an obelisk. References in the Dimensionomicon tie these artifacts to the mysterious Kronosians. An Obelisk of Kronos not bound to a Table of Thoth is prone to cause a lot of chaos.

When a character touches the obelisk they must make roll against the Saving Throw skill. Success leaves the victim shaken but not hurt. Failure results in a multiversal shift.

Roll a 1d30 and Check the table below.

1 Alternate Vanth—Roll a d6

1 Reverse Alignment Vanth: Evil guys are good, good guys are evil.
2 High Tech Vanth: No magic, just psionics and technology.
3 One Race Vanth: One intelligent race on Vanth, with many variants.
4 Robodroid/Lizardman War Vanth: terminators vs. serpent men for control of the world.
5 Super Vanth: Vanth with superpowers and comic book tropes.
6 GMs Choice. Go nuts.

2 Throneworld of Price Dax, Protector of the Insector Alliance

3 The home of the gods. Pick a pantheon and run with it.

4 The World of Mythika

5 Asteroid 1618

6 The Bridge of the Starcruiser Durandal

7 Victorian England Roll a d6

1-4 Historical
5-6 Steampunk stuf

8 Megatheira: Gargantuan monsters rampage this world

9 The Planet Klor, rotating around the star Betalguese

10 One of the Elemental Planes: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Others

11 The Prison Dimension of Lord Dire Killblade, Thanatosian Overlord

12 Camelot Roll a d6

1-2 Classic Arthur
3-4 Twist on the Legend
5-6 Alternate Arthur

13 The plane of Limbo. Roll again or make up something REALLY weird.

14 The jungle realm of the Animal Lords

15 Post Apocalyptic America during the Neo-Luddite/Cyclor Empire War.

16 The Citadel of Honor, New Liberty during the Megaforce/Allied Battalion reunion

17 The Realm of Shatterstone, Crystal Warrior sector

18 The castle of Baron Bramm von Vulkav, country of Vulkavia

19 The Known Lands

20 Neo Chicago, 2255. You land in the middle of a battle between the Defender and Conqueror factions of the Transchangors.

21 Carcosa. One of them (Biercian, Chambersian, Tynesian, or McKinneyian)

22 Harlem, 1970s. Prince Mamuwalde is gathering monsters to his noble cause to fight inhuman creatures worse than he is.

23 Atlantis. Pick one of the thousands of version of Atlantis.

24 The Gothic Empire of Terra during the Andromedan Crusade against the NecroOrks of Antares.

25 The Keep on the Borderlands

26 New Georgia Megastracture, Mecha Police Squad

27 Modern day Earth, Illuminated.

28 The middle of an active wormhole. The players get stuck wherever the wormhole leads, and with whoever was going through it.

29 Somewhere in the history of Vanth.

30 GMs Choice: Anyway from TV, movies, books, other games or anything else.

Some Notes:

Multiversal Shift: The act of traveling through the multiverse at random.

The Dimensionomicon: A tome containing vast amounts of information on the multiverse and the omniverse. There are many different editions and versions of the Dimensionomicon, so not all of the information is valid, honest or up to date….

Kronosians: A morphic race of mutiversal travelers who observe (or try to protect) the omniverse. They can incarnate 9 times before their energies fade into the omniverse. All Kronosians have a tendency towards overconfidence and curiosity.
Thanatosians: The opposition of the Kronosians, the Thantosians are a morphic race that feed of the death and destruction of the omniverse. Whiles they do not Incarnate like the Kronosians, they can take over bodies and make them their own.

Gen Con in My Back Yard 1 (RPG Blog Carnival August ‘09)

This blog is in response to the RPG Blog Carnival topic for August of 09. This month Chgowiz is hosting it over on his blog Chgowiz's Old Guy RPG Blog.

Milwaukee is many things. It’s the City of Festivals and a Great Place by a Great Lake. It’s been talked about in classic movies and classic television. It's the home of the Racing Sausages and the Bubbler. I’ve lived there all my life.

And for over 15 years it was the home of Gen Con.

It was the Saturday of Gen Con in 1986 that my dad dropped my friend Sean and me in front of Mecca Arena. My dad had given me $20 for the day. That was enough for a $5 visitors pass, some money for food, and 10 bucks for buying some gaming stuff.

I had never been to a gaming convention before. My knowledge of the gaming community was playing D&D and Marvel Super Heroes with my friends and reading gaming magazines. The games I had gotten were from places like Waldenbooks and B Dalton, or game stores like Napoleons in Milwaukee. Pa had heard that Gen Con was in town and asked me if I wanted to go. Of course I said yes.

Sean and I waited to get into the hall with everybody else until the magic 10 AM opening of the Exhibit Hall. When they opened the doors I was in Gamer Heaven. I played in Gaming demos. I got to see RPG and board games that I had only seen in advertisements in Dragon. I got to meet people who's work I had read and enjoyed. When Pa pulled up at 6 PM, we carted our grab bags full of catalogues, freebies and purchases and put them in the car.

“Did you have a good time?” Pa asked me when we got home.

“I’m going back next year,” I said.

So I kept my promise, finding some way to get to Downtown Milwaukee every year Gen Con was in town until it left in 2002. It became part of my summer tradition, getting up early in the morning on Con day to get an early start on the convention. Saving up the money to by up all of my small press favorites. I went at least 1 day to Gen Con every year from 1986 to 2002. That was some good times.

When it was announced that Gen Con was leaving Milwaukee, I was saddened but I understood. The city had never treated Gen Con with the respect that one of the biggest moneymaking conventions in the city deserved. Promised hotel building never took place, and other local decisions made the move to Indy inevitable. Late July 2003 was the first Gen Con I had missed in 17 years.

I finally made to Indy for Gen Con 2008 last year. I had a blast, and it was great wandering around the Con again. It felt like visiting a favorite cousin that lived around you for a long time, but moved away. I know I can always go to Indianapolis to attend Gen Con.

But I will always have the early Milwaukee Saturday mornings in August eating breakfast and getting all my Con gear together. Then I get in my car, driving about five miles to attend the Biggest Gaming Convention in the World, right in my backyard.

In the next blog, I tell some of my favorite memories of 17 years attending Gen Con.

The Moldvay-esque Adventure Helper!

Everybody has his or her favorite authors and game designers. For me, Tom Moldvay is one of those game designers who influenced my role playing and my writing. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson may have opened up the dungeon for me, and I started playing the Red Box Basic D&D edited by Frank Mentzer. But for lost cities, islands of dinosaurs and Clark Ashton Smith in my Dungeons and Dragons, that was Tom Moldvay .

And then there was Lords of Creation.

Every gamer has their guilty favorites. Lords of Creation is one of mine. I bought it for $10 at a long gone toy store at a lone gone shopping mall. This was the deep immersion to the zany world of Tom Moldvay. This game awoke my appreciation for the weird and bizarre in RPGs. One of the best descriptions of the game is here.

Submitted for your approval is a table designed to add a little Moldvay feel to any scenario. Roll a couple times on the table and let the fur fly!

The Moldvay-esque Adventure Helper!

Roll a d20

1 A portal opens to a random elemental plane: Roll a d6:

1. Earth
2. Air
3. Fire
4. Water
5. Elemental Blend
6. GM created elemental plane.

2 The Wild Hunt attacks! 1d3 Hounds and assorted beasties per player.

3 Anachronistic devices added to treasure-troves.

4 Strange prophetic dreams begin for the most intelligent player in the party. They can be useful, terrifying or both.

5 The vehicle the characters are traveling in is intelligent or a transforming robot.

6 A portal to the Plane of Shadow opens! Roll a d6:

1. Terrifying visions
2. Players take cold damage per GM choice
3. 1d6 Shadows attack
4. Shadow maelstrom! Everyone sucked into the Plane of Shadows
5. A random player becomes haunted by an Schattendoppleganger
6. Nothing, just some trippy descriptive passages

7 Ghouls attack! 1d6 Ghouls attack the party.

8 Random famous historical or fictional character interacts with the PCs.

9 Different versions of a creature or character meet and fight!

10 Genre mash. Add an unusual genre scene in the scenario. Think gun slinging orcs, cyborg elves, biotech dungeons, and haunted graveyard in a post apocalyptic city.

11 A portal to a parallel earth opens! GM Choice where it leads. Nazis are probably involved. Fricking Nazis.

12 A mysterious benefactor and/or their adversary choose to use the PCs are their representative in a grand conflict.

13 Random gates are littered through the campaign world.

14 A portal to the Realms of the Gods opens. Roll 1d12 for Mythos:

1. Greco Roman
2. Egyptian
3. Chinese
4. Japanese
5. Babylonian/Sumerian
6. Celtic
7. American (North, Central, and/or South)
8. Vodoun (The Loas)
9. Pick a lesser known Earth Pantheon
10. Animal, Plant, or Elemental Lords
11. Lovecraftian Entities. This is not of the good.
12. GM Created Pantheon or Neutral Ground

15 A portal opens that leads to a planet across the galaxy

16 Suddenly, dinosaurs attack! I got nothing. Throw a bunch of them at the PCs.

17 Have a sense or section of the scenario that is a tribute/homage to a popular book, movie or TV show.

18 Take every monster book in your RPG collection. Pick 5-15 monsters and sprinkle them throughout the scenario however you can.

19 A portal to a world based on a fictional setting opens. This can be an exact simulation of the setting, or one that is darker or lighter than the actual setting.

20 GMs Choice. Get as weird as you want. Some of my favorite moments in the Lords of Creation are scenes in the modules that make you say "WTF?"

Five Links and Grouchy Smurf

The Wandererverse: You want fan fiction crossovers? I'll give you fan fiction crossovers!

Welcome to the Corner: A fellow by the name of Cyprus Corners presents some of the best stuff not on DVD--like Damnation Alley and Moontrap!

Virtual Toy Chest: A great place to see some great old toys. Sorry about the E-bay ads.

ConceptArt.org Forums: (WARNING: Some stuff NSFW!) Concept artwork on a variety of subjects. A hour of tooling around can give you a year of gaming ideas.

cereal:geek magazine: A great 80s cartoon magazine edited by James Eatock, the legendary Busta Toons. Sample artwork and ordering information are all here. Check it out.

To finish, Grouchy Smurf says...

"I Hate Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag!"

RPG Blog Carnival: 5 Thoughts on The Future of RPGs

This is my first contribution to the RPG Blog Carnival. Of course I would have to choose a serious subject. Here are some musings on the future of roleplaying.

The Printing and PDF Connection

One of the things you will see more in the future is even more PDF support for Printed roleplaying games. You already see a lot of this now. The average small to middle tier RPG Company might put out their core rulebook, wordbook, maybe an opponents book, and an adventure collection to your FLGS. On the web they can put out a huge variety of support material in PDF and print on demand formats that would not be economical to sell in the stores.

You’ll also see more of the e-book version of an RPG come out before a print copy is ready for sale. That is just a truth of the industry. If you can make money now on PDF rather than wait several months for the print copy to come out—what would you do?

You will see the amount of publishers who put their entire product line out on PDF increase as well. With places like Office Depot and Kinko’s able to print out your e-book, and the ability of publishers to set up a Print-on-demand front on Lulu, this may be a more attractive option.


The Death of Dungeons & Dragons as an RPG

The above statement may seem like overkill, but I believe this is a definite possibility. A number of factors make this possible including the fact that 4e D&D probably didn’t sell what Wizards of the Coast thought, the “I want results NOW” drive of the Hasbro Overlords, Wizards’ arrogance in several situations, and the OGL itself (see below). All of this could add up to Hasbro shutting the whole shebang down. They could sell the game to another company (probably not). More likely they will shut down the game for a while, then use the properties, as they will. Then D&D will return as a board game (as my friend Joe thinks) under the Milton Bradley brand.

The OGL and the Rise of the Retro-Clones

In my opinion, the OGL was one of the greatest forces of change in the RPG industry since it debuted in 2000. I believe that the fact that the OGL exists beyond 3rd edition D&D will have detrimental effects on the 4th edition of said game. This is for one simple reason: you just gave other people the tools to create games that can compete with yours. 3.0 and 3.5 edition D&D may be gone, but you have Pathfinder (the 3.5 rules touched up), True 20, Mutants & Masterminds, Spycraft 2.0, the Conan RPG, and the d20 SRDs that are still rolling.

Other children of the OGL that will affect the future of roleplaying are the retro-clones. Games such as OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, and others all use the OGL to recreate the D&D/AD&D editions of yore. Many have a few twists here and there, but they have definitely tapped into a desire to revive the old school games. The love of the old school goes beyond using the OGL to reconstruct the rules of the past. Games like 4 Color, ZERFS, and the remastered Star Frontiers rules all mark a return of older systems that emulate the games of the past.

I think we’ll see more of games like Mutant Future that use the retro –clone concept and bend it. Take a retro idea (Gamma World-sequel game) and give it a twist (what if they used the Basic D&D engine for Gamma World). The Hideouts & Hoodlums game by Scott Caspar uses Swords & Wizardry (a retro-clone of the 0e D&D rules) for Golden Age Superheroes. That’s the kind of games that I think we’ll see more of.


The Sharing of Rules and Settings

One of the more interesting things that came from the OGL was people able to publish their own settings and rules expansions. Other game systems have continued this strategy. Some of them are descendents of the d20 system, and some are not. Look at your local game store or favorite PDF storefront. Game rules that have either licensing or SRDs include Savage Worlds, True 20, Runequest, Traveller, M&M Superlink, and the Hero System. These are the ones off the top of my head, not including the retro-clones above.

Another thing will see is the sharing of worlds as well. There are at least 5 different rule system versions of Green Ronin’s Freeport world that you can download. You can get Ken Hite’s excellent Lovecraft/Golden Age Comics pastiche Adventures in Darkness in M&M, T&J, and Hero System editions with more coming. This sharing on both ends will continue.


The Strength of the Small and Fan Presses

The most interesting possibility in the future of roleplaying is what I consider the return of the fan press. This includes not only the fan sites and message boards with netbooks and hundreds of pages of game materials both fan and orginal free rpgs.

This goes into the realm of small press publishing on sites like Lulu and other print-on-demand venues. Magazines like Fight On and Knockspell are part of what I am referring to, as are those small press companies that are one or two guys making a game and publishing it themselves.

Related to this are the truly small press items that people have been putting out. I’m talking about self-published works like Geoffrey McKinney’s Supplement V Carcosa, James Raggi’s Green Devil Face, the recent fanzine editions of Iridia, and Jeff Rients' recent opus The Miscellaneum of Cinder. This is a fascinating trend that I hope will continue. Hell, if I had time I’d love to try a project like that myself.

These are some of my thoughts. Make of them what you will.

Mike's Appendix N Addendum!

Keeping up with the meme going around (and this list is not very organized or complete):


Authors:
Anybody who wrote for Weird Tales.
J.R.R. Tolkein
C.S. Lewis
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Allan Poe
Michael Moorcock
Ramsey Campbell
L. Frank Baum
Lin Carter
Sir John Mandeville


Films:
Conan the Barbarian
Hawk the Slayer
The Ator Movies
The Deathstalker movies
The Sword and the Sorcerer
The Warrior and the Sorceress
Excalibur
Equinox
The Evil Dead trilogy
Countless Hercules/Goliath/Machiste movies
Yor the Hunter from the Future
B-movies galore


Cartoons:
Dungeons & Dragons
He-man and the Masters of the Universe
She Ra Princess of Power
Thundercats
Blackstar
Thundarr the Barbarian
Galtar and the Golden Lance
The Herculoids
Visionaries
Inhumanoids

Comic Books:
The Conan adaptations (Marvel and Dark Horse)
The Warlord
Arion, Lord of Atlantis
Arak, Son of Thunder
Skull the Slayer
The TSR/DC comic books of the late 80s-early 90s
Dagar the Invincible
Mighty Samson
Turok, Son of Stone (original series)

As I said, this is incomplete. Regarding the cartoons, I am a child of the 80s. Many of the ideas I have used in Fantasy RPG games have been "borrowed" from cartoons. Also notice the amount of bad movies and such on my list. I am of the firm belief that we can learn as much if not more from our failures than our victories.

See ya later