Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Wednesday Morning Randomness

1) I've been re-reading MegaTraveller. I'm surprised at how very simple the rules are, except for the vehicle design sequences. Most of the first two books are taken up with either those design sequences, the world generation sequences, or the character generation tables. Only a very small amount is taken up with resolution systems.

2) Work proceeds on the Top Secret clone. I'm keeping things pretty close to the basic book, but there are bits from the Top Secret Companion that I feel like I really want to include. I'm also making sure that some of the material from Dragon magazine would be usable by including the extra stats from, for instance, the space program articles and the wilderness survival article. I'll probably include highly simplified ways of using those.

3) Almost no one seems to be voting on the poll to the right. Please vote.

4) One of my projects for this year is to finish all of the Burroughs Barsoom books. I'm on the eighth, Swords of Mars, now.

5) I'm really looking forward to Prometheus. I may go see it in the theater, something I only rarely do - most recently, I've gone to see John Carter and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. I can't even remember what movie I went out to previous to that (the first Iron Man, maybe?). Yeah, I don't go to the theater much.

5 comments:

  1. Go see Avengers. Seriously. It's worth it.

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    1. Yeah, that's what I'm hearing. I'm also hearing, though, that it's kind of a continuation of a story that is told in Thor and Captain America, neither of which I've gotten around to yet. They're on my Netflix queue, and should be here soon, though. I imagine that Avengers is going to be in theaters for a couple more weeks, at least.

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    2. You'll enjoy The Avengers more if you see Thor and Captain America (to which I give higher marks than Thor) first, so I think you've got the right plan.

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  2. I'll be really curious to see your Top Secret clone. TS is still one of my favorite games - I have a nascent campaign on the backburner that I hope I can run at somepoint in the future.

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  3. Give me a couple of months. After rewriting all the rules (in my copious *cough* spare time), I still have to lay it out to look pretty. Plus, I'm thinking that I might want to do a Kickstarter thing so that I can afford artists, and maybe a real print run.

    It's pretty much going to be like Top Secret, though. If you have the game already, there won't be huge changes (I do want to change the optional rule for damage to particular locations so that a head shot can actually kill someone, along with a few other little things like making rifles more effective than pistols and such, just for my own peace of verisimilitude, but nothing game-shattering). My main reason for doing it is that having it available for new players to get a copy without haunting the used markets might be a handy thing.

    What the world really needs, though, is for FGU to release their stranglehold on Flashing Blades. There's a game that could use supplements if there ever was one. Royalists and Roundheads! Journeys into the Ottoman Empire! Or Persia! Pirates of the Mediterranean! The Rise of the Romanovs! Heck, what about the fall of the Ming and rise of the Qing? Not that it isn't awesome just as it is, but it could be the engine of choice for 16th-18th century games. And what about importing weird fiction ideas? They sort of touch on those in a couple of the published adventures (notably, "Guede-Je-Rouge" in High Seas), but it could use a thorough discussion.

    Um, not that I've thought about what I'd like to see for that game in some depth or anything.

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