Categories
Roleplaying

Interesting roleplaying bits

IC Punishment, OOC Reward, a good post about a common and tricky subject. I wonder how much this thought should apply to common things, like wounds.

West Marches: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. An interesting persistent world experiment. A cool setup for a game people can drop in and out of randomly. New: Part 4: Death and Danger.

Learning to explain failure brings attention to a common stumbling point.

Cool modern fantasy art.

DM’s Haven Generators page

DNA Phil’s blog. His post about what’s he’s learned over the years is particularly good.

Categories
Misc

Two great (very dark) stories

The Inheritance and The Grandmother.

Dark and twisted; they feel like Grimms fairy tales and are well written. Check them out.

Categories
Gift Coordination

Christmas 2007

Jennifer mentioned that she’d rather get an early start on shopping– so here’s what you need to start.

Categories
Politics

Sebastian on torture

Sebastian has a good post, On Torture Hypotheticals–Conservative Perspective. I agree with him completely. Only if the government was perfect might it be trusted with selecting the perfect degree of force to extract information.

In the real world, innocent people are convicted and spend years in prison before their release. If months of trial and investigation can’t guarantee the right result, why should we trust someone acting in a moment, under pressure, to get it right?

The other red herring? Under the hypothetical, there’s still no reason for torture to be legal. The torturer will, in good conscience, extract the information… and immediately be pardoned for saving the lives of thousands. Despite being able to imagine such an extreme corner case [and despite the convenient assumption of perfect knowledge], I think we can keep laws against torture on the books.


A good discussion has sprung from Sebastian’s first post: here are further posts on the subject. Demand side Torture (by Publius), More on Torture Hypotheticals (by Sebastian), and Choose your own adventure (by Katherine).

Categories
Roleplaying

The Mountain Witch Trick

Cool way to collaboratively flesh out backgrounds, etc. (Stolen shamelessly from this Gamecraft thread🙂 Here’s a technique that’s been in use by loads of people, for a long damn time, which was put into print in the game The Mountain Witch:

Instead of mining a character background or world stuff for a figure suitable to some need in the game, tell a player that they see someone or react in some way to a feature, and then ask them why.

“A figure comes out of the sweathouse. It is a man from your past, a respected mentor. You move quickly to greet him. Who is he, Joe?”

“Joe, your character pauses at an unmarked grave by the side of the road for a moment, and bows his head before moving on. Why did he do that?”

Read the thread for some good discussion about when and how it works well.

Categories
Game Group

Next Game: Friday November 16th

Last week we enjoyed some board games instead of hiding out in a city full of bugs. This week, we return to our previous quarantine conditions…

Let us know if you’ll have any problem making the game. Otherwise, we’ll duck, weave, and gather some cash rescuing big players in town.

Categories
Game Group

Next Game: Friday, November 9th

This upcoming Friday currently looks good for gaming. If you’re going to have a problem making it, just let me know.

The situation, to recap: We’re trapped in Chicago, under quarantine, in a city full of bugs. (Though the bugs have been getting quiet and disappearing from the street for a while.)

Three electronic boxes just revealed that this was all predicted long ago, and spat out a list of ten names. If we keep them safe– or, better, smuggle them out– we’ll get 100k Nuyen apiece. Meanwhile, escape from the quarantine looks difficult; the lake’s patrolled by an aircraft carrier, and they’re collapsing buildings all around the city and manning nasty patrols that are tight enough to keep drones in.

Categories
FATE Games Roleplaying

Advice for Spirit of the Century

[Updated to add: Landon’s advice on picking Aspects to ensure characters have Description, Connections, Story, and Situation.]

Though the advice applies to just about any Pulp game that has a strongly supportive system.

This is all quoted from Roger’s post on the Yahoo FateRPG list: