I didn't blog anything in December, and now the end of January is almost upon us. I guess I should write something, right? A little update, talk about where gaming has taken me lately? People coming here mainly for GURPS content won't find a lot this time around, just a brief recap of the first session of a new campaign I've begun using the system.
I spent most of the first part of this year ill. We spent most of the month not gaming, then I managed to get in a Call of Cthulhu game on Saturday (my character now has a fear of bandages), then I ran the first session of my Sundaland sword & sorcery game. Due to the illness and laziness, we didn't actually do much in the latter. The characters arrived at a port town that was larger than anything they had ever imagined might exist (actual population of around 1500 people) and began learning how life works when there are more people than you can recognize offhand. There are three characters (there were going to be four, but one player has a new schedule that forces him to have to bow out of gaming on the day we play), Tech the magician, Jade the "hobbit" blowgun hunter who is small even for her small race, and Gar-whee the warrior.
The setting is around 10,000 years ago, more or less, in southeast Asia, where a substantial subcontinent, around half the size of the continental US, had not yet been submerged under the rising waters at the end of the ice age. Historically, that was probably a mesolithic society, but in my imagination, it is an early bronze age one, with currency, social organization, and pretty much everything you'd expect other than wheels and common beasts of burden. No horses, no wheels, cattle are mainly food sources, and only elephants are used for transportation—obviously only by the very wealthy. Only humans (and some rare hominins like the Flores Island "hobbits" or the few Gigantopithecus "giants" from the jungles in the north) The characters are trying to wrap their heads around a currency economy after having lived their lives in a gifting one. They are preparing to travel overland, upriver, to the city they've heard makes chieftains out of everyone who sets foot on the streets.
So good of GURPS to give me some excellent tools to be able to run this. Articles on gifting economies in the Low-Tech book and its supplements, as well as one in an issue of Pyramid. Tech levels that can manage the slightly unusual set of situations in southeast Asia of the period (even given my somewhat optimistic assumption of bronze working). An amazing magic system in the Path/Book Magic system that can handle spirits well, leading my characters to carry around little amulets and such provided by the party sorcerer. There is a lot to love in that game.
I'm reading a supplement for Chronicles of Darkness (formerly called the "New World of Darkness", being the reboot and reimagining of a world with vampires, werewolves, and magicians, plus other supernatural stuff) called Princess: The Hopeful. It's an attempt to provide a society of mahou shoujo "magical girls" inspired by the likes of Sailor Moon, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Pretty Cure, Cardcaptor Sakura, and so on. Its most important inspiration is "Sailor Nothing", a deconstruction and reconstruction of the mahou shoujo genre, one of the earliest of its kind. It posits a baroque world of "nobles", both male and female despite the title, who wield magical powers of hope and heart. They come from the lands of dreams and fight against corrupted nobles from the lands of tears, storms, and mirrors, among other threats to the hearts of humanity. It began development before Madoka existed and when Pretty Cure was not yet the overwhelming phenomenon it has become. It's been making me look at some of the other mahou shoujo games I have (the Sailor Moon RPG that used the Big Eyes, Small Mouth system, Magical Fury which is based very strongly on Madoka and uses a streamlined version of Powered by the Apocalypse, and the Star Sailors supplement for White Star that gives a mahou shoujo character class powered by the Starlight Entity and dedicated to fighting the Gloom, mainly, but I have a few more too) and considering how I would approach such themes. Mostly, I am interested in playing in a game of Princess, to be frank, but I do have other ideas to bring to the table too.
It might be fun to convert Princess: The Hopeful to GURPS. I feel like it should use something based on the Sorcery system, with some unique colleges of spells. Because another project that goes nowhere is just what I need, right?
Speaking of projects going nowhere, I'm still homing in on exactly what I want from a game of my own design, but I think I am closer than ever now. Almost ready, if I can get myself to sit down and write it. A little bit Flashing Blades, a little bit MegaTraveller, some dashes of Lace & Steel and GURPS and Hârnmaster and Pendragon, maybe a bit of some other games too. I want to tie it to a setting, at least at first, but I haven't decided on what sort of setting to tie it to yet. I think that I've been assuming a space opera type setting, with galactic empires and such, but I'm not sure if that's right yet. Being immersed in mahou shoujo stuff, I've been thinking about how the systems of interpersonal relationships drawn from Lace & Steel and Pendragon can be used to model the emotional content that is often given a position of narrative significance in anime generally and mahou shoujo specifically, and Star Sailors provides a way to tie that into a space operatic setting. We'll see, assuming I can get myself to actually do it.
Then there's my ideal D&D, which is probably unnecessary at this point in history except that I want to have a copy in print. It would combine my favorite ideas from over the years: morale from RC, experience tables and hit dice from S&W White Box, the Expert from LotFP instead of the Thief, the Attack Priority initiative system, and so on. If I can figure out a way to incorporate a social system inspired by Courtney Campbell's "Solving the Social Trap", I'd probably do that too.
Anyway, sorry about the poor content. I want to get back to this blog on a more frequent basis, but I feel like I don't have a strong or proper focus for my gaming thoughts at the moment. So you get stuck with this.
