FINALLY!

So, after several years of looking in varying degrees of intensity, I finally have a (hopefully) regular gaming group again, for which I am running the game. It's a couple of old friends who live in the area.

When they agreed to let me run something, I gave them six choices:

• MegaTraveller: Noble House - This would be my own MT setting, using my conversion and update of the Pocket Empires rules from T4 (which aren't complete right now, but I would have worked extra hard to get them ready in time to run the game). The story would revolve around a noble house and its retainers, and the intrigues of a rival house to discredit and dismantle them.
• Top Secret: Special Missions Bureau - A Top Secret game set in the early '80s, with Cold War intrigue and globehopping adventure. I intended to take the results of the game and use them to provide a background for a second arc which would take place in the modern day.
• White Star: The Flanaess Sector - In this one, the players would be gritty, down on their luck adventurers in the Flanaess Sector, against a background of interstellar rebellion against a distant empire. I'm afraid that I didn't present this option to the players very well, though it was considered.
• Flashing Blades: Scourge of the Caribbean - Swashbuckling pirates in the Caribbean Sea!
• GURPS Deindustrial Future - I presented this as a cross between Stephen King's Dark Tower series and Fallout without the nukes. The setting is the future a few hundred years after our civilization runs out of petroleum to fuel it. While electricity, and technology, does exist, the large-scale networks of power transmission and transportation infrastructure do not. Characters have access to items up to TL7 (most TL8 items require far too much interdependent, and so unavailable, infrastructure), but cost 2x as much as normal for every TL above 4 (roughly the 16th-18th centuries), which is the maximum easily sustainable technology level. The culture is heavily influenced by the American West, simply because that's easier to get everybody on the same page, but the world is split into, effectively, city-states and tribal chieftains - not unlike Europe's Migration Era after the fall of Rome. There's also some magic of a relatively subtle kind ("Path/Book Magic" for those of you who know GURPS) along with spirits, and alchemy of the standard GURPS sort ("snake oil") along with some other things like Gunslingers and traveling preachers of a sort.
• CORPS Old Solar System - Dying Mars with its ancient civilizations and canals crossing the cold deserts, overcast Venus and its vast, jungle swamps, shallow seas, and saurian monsters. I hadn't yet figured out what would be around Jupiter and Saturn (or further out yet!), but Mercury was to be largely drawn from Space 1889's "Nodding World" with its planet-girdling World River. Lots of inspiration from C.L. Moore and Leigh Brackett.

After some discussion, the players settled on the GURPS Deindustrial Future game, despite the fact that none of them have played much GURPS (they have an ongoing Champions game and have stayed focused on HERO System, though like most sensible people they shied away from the sixth edition of that game). Since I haven't played much 4E GURPS myself, things have been a learning experience for us all. I hope to write up some about their characters and their first adventure (a saloon brawl that took us a long time because of our collective unfamiliarity with actually playing the game)  soon.

An Update - Still Alive!

Looking around, I couldn't find where this comes
from. I like it, but if the owner wants me to
take it down, just let me know.

Wow, has it really been nearly a year? Last year wasn't much fun for me. Whatever, on to the post.

I'm not quite ready to be back fully yet, but I am around. I'm occasionally posting on the Traveller groups on G+, some stuff on Facebook, and occasional other groups. I do intend to return to the blog.

I'm still working on a MegaTraveller retroclone, based on the Mongoose OGL and incorporating elements of other editions. After discussions online and thinking about it, I want to really get back to the sandbox tools of CT LBB77, but with the rules influenced by some of the MT developments. One thing that I've learned about spaceships is that reaction drives are subject to the square-cube law, since thrust increases by the square while mass increases by the cube, speaking roughly. Building that into the ship design sequence should push designs toward smaller ships. I've been thinking about some other things, too.

I'm pretty certain that I am going to continue writing up the project I gave the working title "Flanaess Sector" as an AD&D 1E/OSRIC product. I'll import some of the alternatives to Illithids and other Product Identity races from sources like Adventures Dark and Deep, but otherwise it's mainly writing up tech items, a spaceship construction and combat system, and star system details. I am also trying to decide if it should be more science fantasy like Star Wars, Warhammer 40K, or White Star, or harder SF on the order of Traveller or even Orion's Arm. Maybe somewhere in the middle.

For fantasy gaming, I have changed my default setting a bit to include ideas from a guy named Scott, who was known for his settings such as the World of Thool but has since vanished from the internet as far as I can tell. He worked for a bit on a setting he called "Mandragora: The Mandrake March". It was to be based on Andrew Lang's Color Fairy Books (The Blue Fairy Book, The Red Fairy Book, and so on), taking elements from the stories and placing them into an otherwise normal D&D-type game. I want to do that, except that I'll include one area which is based on those (removing the Arabian and Chinese ones), an area similarly based on Irish, Welsh, and Breton fairy stories plus some Arthuriana, and an area based on the Arabian Nights Entertainments (plus the other stories traditionally associated with them, such as Sindbad, 'Ala ad-Din, and 'Ali Baba, and a similar manuscript called "Tales of the Marvelous and News of the Strange"). I'll probably have a land further to the East which is based on Chinese fairy tales (and an island nation drawing on Japanese fairy stories), but that's not the default starting area so I won't bother with it until needed. Some of the setting elements that I had originally developed will remain, such as the dragon-riding peoples of the Northern dales, the bull-riding nomad barbarians, the Southern cities of the sorcerer-kings, the iron-age Aztec island kingdom across the ocean to the West, the pirate princes in a "Pirates of the Caribbean" mode, and the fantasy Egypt-like river kingdom.

I've still been working off and on toward a fantasy setting which draws inspiration from the Wild West instead of Medieval Europe. I've been playing around with ways to approach the rather subtle magic I want, and GURPS remains the best source to do those things. I have considered changing the Swords & Wizardry: White Box rules, especially the spell list, to handle the setting. It certainly helps that it is available in .rtf format to make building a rule set possible. I might put it together as a Lulu project, if I go that way. New classes (Gunslinger! Snake Oil Salesman/Mountebank! Cunning Folk! Preacher! probably more!), new spell list, and so on, all in support of the setting assumptions. The setting itself is also slow going, since I want to create certain effects but I also don't want to be too close to actual history. Plus, I'm trying to figure the best way to have a Wild West with less Eastern Cities, and still waffling on the matter of trains (trains are a major element of Western stories, but they also bring Civilization far too quickly). I also really love pirates, and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise comes close to overlapping with the Wild West - maybe they'll be in there somewhere, like a fantastic New Orleans. I haven't come to terms with the racial politics of the time relative to the setting either, so I am not sure how I want to handle the matters of Native Americans, Africans, and Chinese laborers.

Part of the reason that I haven't completed any of these things is that I still don't have a group to play them with. I still prefer face-to-face gaming, but my attempts to reconnect with the people I gamed with when I lived in this city years ago are running into the problem that a lot of people aren't really willing to change their lives to fit the time for gaming. Oh, I'm probably overstating matters. I'm just frustrated about still not being able to get a group together after such a long, long time. It almost makes me willing to spend time learning how to use Roll20.

How are you doing?

Five Games I'd Like To Run

I guess that it's going around, but I saw Joseph Bloch do it, and now I am. A list of five games that I'd like to run, at least as I am sitting here right now tonight.

1. Spirits of the Trail: This is a sixguns & sorcery game, in which the players are traveling by land from the settled Eastern States to the great port of the west coast, Angel City. It would be a picaresque of adventures through the towns of the sparsely settled western territories where their only protections are the guns at their belts and their spirit allies. At this point, it would be run using GURPS rules, since not only does that game have excellent methods of handling gunfights and hand-to-hand melees, but also the sort of magic I want in the poorly-named "Path/Book Magic" system found in GURPS Thaumatology, which keeps me from having to write a new one to fit into something like Boot Hill or whatever.

2. Dark Space: Back in the '80s, a guy named Monte Cook wrote a setting book which was specifically intended to merge Rolemaster and Space Master in a cluster of worlds that included faeries and Lovecraftian horrors, adding biotechnology on top. I have always been interested in that setting, but never had a chance to play in it. I wouldn't mind running it.

3. Flanaess Sector: I talked about using AD&D to make a science-fiction setting, using the outlandish monsters of the D&D underworld as the basis of aliens. Illithid, Gulguthra, Flumphs, and Grell, among many others, seem like they would make for a fascinating setting in the stars. This would be the hardest to do right now, as I haven't done the work of designing the new character classes and technology I'd want to use. At least 1st edition AD&D already has a psionics system, though.

4. Under the Moons of Mars: I really, really want to run a game set on a Leigh Brackett/C.L. Moore-inspired Mars. I'd probably leave open the possibilities of traveling to Venus as well, but that wouldn't be the focus. I don't have a good opening situation for this yet, but it wouldn't be hard to come up with one. GURPS Mars had a good version of such a world in its "Dying Mars" chapter, which I'd probably use as the basis, though redesigning the canal system to match Lowell's canal maps more - though the canal through the Valles Marineris is so awesome that I'd probably include it nearly unchanged.

5. Hârn: Using Hârnmaster. There's so much to love about that setting, but I've never gotten a chance to play in it. I think that I might prefer to have someone else run it, but I'd do it.

Ruminating On Gaming Projects

Because the best thing to do when stuff needs
to be done is something else.

Sometimes, you have to sit back and take stock. I've been letting myself run wild and take on a number of gaming projects. I'm not sure if I should continue with all of them, what priority I should put on them, and so on, so it is time to think about that. I'm doing it here because it might help someone else see how another person organizes his thoughts, because someone might mention something that casts this all in a whole new light, and because doing things publicly helps force me to discipline my thinking a little.

First, let me just catalog the projects I have active, or at least semi-active, at this time, not counting actually playing games:

1. A Top Secret retroclone.
2. A MegaTraveller retroclone/revision attached to a space operatic setting.
3. Spectacular Science Stories (aka Rockets & Rayguns).
4. A Fantasy Wargaming retroclone/update.
5. A "sixguns & sorcery" setting for GURPS.
6. Flanaess Sector (for AD&D 1E).
7. Updating GURPS Voodoo: The Shadow War for GURPS 4E.
8. Codifying my version of the Trait System.
9. GURPS Greyhawk.
10. A magic system for Flashing Blades.
11. A mashup of Traveller and Flashing Blades.
12. My ideal roleplaying/adventure game system (mostly in the notes stage). It should be "semi-generic" in that it is intended to cover a number of genres, but all with the same "tone", for lack of a better term.

That, you might notice, is a lot. Several of these projects are stalled for various reasons that I will get to in a moment. Note that some of these have been projects I've undertaken for nearly the whole four-year existence of this blog. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might notice a couple of projects have been dropped from the "active/semi-active" list, such as the WRG Ancients-based RPG or a couple of attempts at an AD&D setting. The setting, actually, is also an ongoing project, but I'm not counting it here since it is purely for my own private use. I do intend to post about the current state of it at some point. The WRG Ancients RPG served its purpose and has been put to bed. Some of the ideas that came up in it have been incorporated into other projects.

Here's the thing, though. All of those projects kind of get in each other's way. For instance, I frequently find myself working feverishly at one of them for a while, then stepping away to another one, and when coming back to the first one finding out that I want to tear down some of what I'd already done and rework it. That's not really helpful if I ever want to finish any of these, and I do want to do that.

So, the first thing to do is to figure out what is most hampering each project at this point.

1. I remain uncertain just what direction to take this: should it be updated to the modern world's War on Terror or should it reflect late-'70s/early-'80s Cold War? Each has its merits, and Merle Rasmussen recently presented an adventure for the original game set in the modern day.
2. Rewriting the rules is a bigger task than I had envisioned at first. Yeah, that's mere whining and I should just get on with it, but the core of the game, the Task System, is turning out to be difficult enough to get the same sense in new language that I wonder if I really understand it. On top of that, I've been considering if I want to continue this way or approach the idea from another direction. That is, is MegaTraveller really what I want, or is there another, less drastic revision of classic Traveller that would be better?
3. Writing a D&D-based SF game is more difficult than some might think, unless you're just re-skinning the D&D rules with SF chrome, which I'm not. Plus, White Star kind of did a number on my head for a while, since it explicitly took Swords & Wizardry: White Box and made it SF, which is sort of the remit of Spectacular Science Stories. Still, I'm plugging away at this one pretty solidly.
4. I keep finding myself torn between the desire to present a more-or-less straight retroclone and the desire to update the game considerably. Reining in the latter tendency is exhausting. On the other hand, there were clearly some mistakes made in the original that need correcting.
5. I'm having a sort of crisis of faith with GURPS. It was my go-to, indeed nearly only, RPG for a decade. As I have been examining what I like about RPGs, though, it turns out that GURPS fails at many of those things. Trying to make a random character generation system for it was sobering. I remain convinced that such a random character system for it is possible and desirable, but it seems like too much work when not being paid to write it. I still have much affection for GURPS, but I have things to work through in regard to it.
6. Many of the same issues present with 3. are also problems here.
7. See 5.
8. While I still love the Trait System, I'm not sure that it fills my own needs anymore. It's kinda being superceded* by 12.
9. See 5.
10. Actually, nothing. I just haven't gotten back to it in a few weeks.
11. It's a crazy idea. It's actually more just a "hack" of Flashing Blades as a space opera, but since Traveller is definitive for that sort of thing in my head that's how I conceived it. Mostly, I haven't yet really convinced myself that it's a good idea, so I haven't done much work on it.
12. Work on this will be slow. I'm sort of thinking of it as "Hârnmaster, GURPS, Flashing Blades, Pendragon, RuneQuest, and classic Traveller have a mutant baby". At this point, I'm just writing down notes when I think of something related to it. I want it to have the detail options of GURPS, the breezy character creation of Flashing Blades, the integrated social systems of that game, the personality approach of Pendragon, and the gritty realism of Hârnmaster, RuneQuest, and Traveller. Or something like that. A lot of it is still very much in flux. This is my very own Heartbreaker. Maybe I should call it MOHb (for "My Own Heartbreaker").

I haven't even touched on the half-baked ideas I've had on which I haven't done any significant work. An adventure game that uses the Car Wars pedestrian combat and character rules (yes, yes, Autoduel Champions, Car Wars Tanks, and the Ob-Racing article) as its basis, probably scaled up 4x, so that 1/4" in Car Wars is a 1" square in the adventure game. An edition of Traveller that hits a spot somewhere between the Classic and Mega- editions (probably as a supplement to the Classic edition, since The Traveller Book is back in print). An entirely new Pulp Solar System setting, with my own versions of ancient Mars and swampy Venus (and the other planets). Returning to the WRG Ancients-based adventure game in a more serious fashion. My own attempt at GURPS Warhammer 40,000.

So, how do I prioritize these? I'm thinking that Spectacular Science Stories is my most important project right now, so that should be what I work on until it is finished, with the only intruding project being MOHb. After that, I'll pick whichever one is the most interesting to me at that moment (probably not Flanaess Sector, though, because that would be just too much SF all in a row) and work on it until I'm finished with that one, and so on. One project at a time might just be the best way to go.

What do you think?

*Some people say that this is an incorrect spelling of "superseded". Those people are wrong.

Sixguns & Sorcery

Ever since Gary Gygax included a section on converting Boot Hill to use with AD&D in the DMG under that title, I have been attracted to the idea of a fantasy setting with revolvers instead of broadswords, boomtowns, stagecoaches, stetsons, and such. Heck, I remember reading an issue of The Avengers where they, along with Moondragon, pursued Kang the Conqueror back to the Old West (and they teamed up with the Two-Gun Kid), so all sorts of Marvel-style magic and whatnot got going in the setting, to say nothing of Jonah Hex. I've come closer and closer to what I want to do over the years. The inclusion of a variation of the Spirit Magic system from GURPS Voodoo: The Shadow War in the last edition of GURPS Old West under the 3E rules (to cover Native American shamanism in game terms) was enlightening. Until recently, though, I had thought of it as the American West. Suddenly, a couple years back while re-reading The Lord of the Rings for the umpteenth time, I realized that I could create a separate fantasy world, with only the vaguest references to the real world, for the concept. I'd been told that I should read Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series in relation to the idea, too, so I picked those up recently and enjoyed them greatly (I liked the stories of Roland's younger days with his first ka-tet the better of the two periods that King chronicles, but both were quite excellent), but King's parallel universes aren't really what I want to explore with this. Which is not to say that I wouldn't play in a game someone was running set in Mid-World, because I sure would!

In researching for this blog entry, I've learned about a few other such settings, such as Teara Adan, and of course Castle Falkenstein had a supplement titled Sixguns & Sorcery, but they aren't quite what I'm looking to do. Specifically, I am not interested in making it a steampunk setting. It is decidedly fantasy, not science fiction, even of the Victorian style. Deadlands is pretty close, but a little further over-the-top than I want, plus it is tied to the historical Old West. As with Mid-World, if someone else were running any of these, I'd be up for it.

So here's what I've got going. I am going to run a solo game (using Mythic Game Master Emulator and GURPS 4E). Right now, I don't know much detail about the world other than the name of one county (Tioga County) located on the Great Plain. I've been calling it, alternately, the Sixguns & Sorcery game and the Tioga County game. Neither of those are ideal, but I haven't figured out what I want to call it for sure yet. I know that, someday, I will have characters in Tioga County who will work through a scenario based on the initial conditions, in a general sense, of the real-world Lincoln County War (famous for being the main exploits of Billy the Kid, and subject of movies from Chisum to Young Guns, and many others besides). I think that scenario will include the characters I call the Shootist and the Witch, David McArthur and Lizzie Hanchard, who I introduced on Friday with representative pictures, but I can't know that for certain, as they might die in a scenario before then. A lot of the details of the world will be generated as part of the Mythic GME process. In any case, it won't start in Tioga County or be centered around that area until the Tioga County War scenario gets going, and there's that issue of the Castle Falkenstein supplement. Maybe I should just stick with Fantasy West.

I do know a couple of things, I guess. I know that there are spirits and gods, known collectively as the fatas, but I only have the vaguest ideas about who exactly they are. There are something like traveling revivalist preachers. I know that technology is not much advanced beyond what existed in North America in 1860-70 or so, but there are no steam engines and so no trains. It's a world made almost entirely by hand. I'm pretty sure that there is a network of telegraph wires, though, run by animal- or water-powered generators. I know that metallic cartridge ammunition exists, but costs ten times as much as would be expected due to the difficulties of hand manufacture - most people rely on cap and ball with paper cartridges for ease of loading, and might even carry a bullet mold sized for their specific weapon. I know that there are semi-nomadic tribes living in the wilderness surrounding the towns, who don't have a lot of metallurgy (it's hard to carry a forge around with you), but trade for such items. I am not playing with the racism of the real-world Old West, so these tribes somewhat resemble the "barbarians" of the Hârn setting. I do have a vague idea that there are different cultures: in addition to the towns and the "barbarian" tribes, there are something like Mexicans in the south, some pseudo-Mormons in the mountain west, more civilized kingdoms (I think? They might be republics) in the east and the southern part of the west coast, pirate kingdoms along the southern coast, maybe some others. So, I guess I have a vague outline of a continent somewhat like North America in mind, but it's subject to change.

For rules, I plan to use the "Path/Book Magic" system found in GURPS Thaumatology, because I like it a lot. I want to use some of the more involved systems like Technical Grappling and "The Last Gasp", so that I can learn to use them more proficiently. Running solo means that I can spend as much time as I like figuring out what to use and when - I don't have to worry about pacing at the table. I'll definitely be using Social Engineering for personal interactions, which should make the solo game more manageable, or something. I'm trying to decide on whether I want to use Divine Intervention. I'm leaning to "no", though. There is definitely alchemy, which is mostly known by traveling snake oil salesmen (not all of whom are legitimate alchemists) and the occasional drugstore chemist in the larger towns. Some of the more adventurer-ready potions are pretty rare, though, as they tend to focus on healing potions of various kinds (and the occasional love potion), which is what they can sell to the average person. GURPS Martial Arts will be in use, though I am unsure as yet how prevalent various fighting styles will be. I plan to use the detailed gunfighting material from Tactical Shooting, and perhaps some of the more benign systems from Gun Fu. Some "cinematic" material is available, such as Gunslinger and Trained by a Master, but otherwise the setting is intended to be fairly gritty, with blood loss rules and other detailed injury material in effect. If it ever comes to it, I plan to use the "Tactical Mass Combat" variant. I dislike narrative rules like Signature Gear and the like, so those are not in effect. For timed advantages like Luck, I'll treat each "scene" under Mythic GME as an hour of play, regardless of how long it actually takes, and allow the characters an appropriate number of uses per scene. By default, NPCs will have Pacifism (Reluctant Killer) unless they have a reason not to have it, such as an alternative mental disadvantage representing some type of sociopathy or the like, or a (cheap, maybe 5 points) unusual background. Chances are I'll build these ideas into many of my PCs, too. Certainly, Lizzie Hanchard is a Reluctant Killer, though David McArthur has disadvantages representing his difficulties sleeping well (Insomnia and Light Sleeper) instead.

Speaking of "The Last Gasp", I've made a small change to it, as the fatigue recovery rates are just too punishing as far as I can see. They don't interact well with a number of the original systems, such as hiking. That's easily remedied, though, and can still keep the intent of the original by moving each category down a level, as it were, and making the quickest category based on 120 minutes. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry too much about it. It's a way to make fatigue a serious expenditure, which complements the Action Point system of short-term fatigue that the article introduces, rather than the original system which allows full recovery of all fatigue in a couple of hours, and the fatigue of most fights in 10 or 20 minutes.)

Let me see… I know that there are werewolves running through the woods (probably not like the ones in Ginger Snaps Back, but that is definitely inspirational material). Snolligosters, Whirling Whimpuses, and of course Jackalopes are around and about, among other creatures of North American legend. There may be dragons, I am not sure, or maybe dinosaurs. Or both.

Some of the specific movies that inspire the setting include (but obviously this isn't all):

Dead Man
Django
Django Kill! If You Live, Shoot!
Eyes of Fire
Ginger Snaps Back
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
High Plains Drifter
I am Sartana, Trade Your Guns for a Coffin
If You Meet Sartana, Pray for Your Death
The Magnificent Seven
Pale Rider
The Resurrectionist (an obscure one, to be sure)
Romasanta (aka Werewolf Hunter)
The Strangers Gundown
They Call Me Trinity
El Topo
Unforgiven
The Valley of Gwangi

I want to add The Phantom Empire, but I've never yet had a chance to see it.

Another GURPS 4E Resource - Old West NPCs

I worked on this for a while, and I will probably get back to it. The plan was a sixguns & sorcery setting, with the Old West standing in for the more typical Barbarian or Medieval background. I love the idea, and I want to play in it, but my ideas for it are a little further-reaching than I'd wanted. Still, I have this for it. "This" refers to a set of NPC templates, built out of the NPCs in The Knuckleduster Cowtown Creator, one of the most useful resources for an Old West setting (whether game or fiction writing) that I've ever seen. The templates in that product were given stats for either Deadlands or D20, which wasn't very useful to me. However, GURPS Deadlands included conversion rules for Deadlands to GURPS Deadlands in the Dime Novel adventure titled Aces & Eights. Using the conversions straight resulted in heavily overpowered NPCs (the "Loafer" template, for example, originally weighed in at over 100 points!), so I toned them down considerably using a number of techniques. I still think that the point values might be a touch high, but they should work well enough for a high adventure setting. I also didn't convert the train-based templates (Conductor, Train Robber, etc.), as there aren't any trains in my sixguns & sorcery setting.

As usual, because of the lengthy nature, the actual stats are behind a cut.

Verdant, Arcadia

In the Fantasy West, there is a town called Verdant. Located in Arcadia County, Verdant is not a large town. In fact, it's hardly more than a General Store, a Hotel and Livery Stable, a pair of Temples (one dedicated to Valentina, and one to Landry), and a Saloon, with a few houses.

The General Store is the centerpiece of the town, being the place that farmers, miners, and ranchers from the surrounding County come to trade for goods they need and can't produce themselves. Run by a man named Afala Corbits and his family, the store is usually just called "Afala's".

The hotel and livery stable is the business of the Laskin family. The accounts and records are kept by Kulino Laskin, the patriarch of the family, though he is starting to give some of those responsibilities to his eldest son, Jerbart, who is otherwise involved with keeping the stables running. Kulino's wife, Latats, runs the kitchen. The children do the rest of the work, along with a few people hired from the farming families of the County. Of an evening, the rowdy youths of Verdant can often be found at the stables, gambling or fighting under the sullen eye of Jerbart.

The saloon is both the center of government for the town and County, and also the center of the roughest elements. Judge Gelorman Wilkar spends his days playing cards in the bar, ruling on cases that are brought to him in between hands. Sheriff Tarbot Numtar can usually be found at the table, along with whichever of the ranchers and farmholders happen to be in town that day.

In the Temple of Valentina, Miss Nekoma, the Holy Dove of Valentina, and her acolytes hold services to the goddess of love. For a donation to the goddess, the acolytes might take a petitioner upstairs for private worship. Judge Wilkar and Sheriff Numtar are fine with the temple being around, but always put the interests of the ranchers, miners, and farmers ahead of those of Miss Nekoma and her acolytes.

Landry's Temple is next to the saloon, and is the province of Shepherd Soduk Kalama. The storm god's pews are generally full each week, with families from the nearest farms, and occasionally even ranchers and miners, coming to listen to the philosophical orations of the Shepherd. The rest of the time, Shepherd Kalama provides counsel for those who are troubled and organizes aid for those in need.

Recently, a man has come to town. No one knows where he comes from, or what he has done. All they know is his name, Palan Tobuk, and that he drinks alone in the saloon. He never takes off his pistol or his hat with others around, and has rarely been seen without his black duster.

Solo Gaming And The Fantasy West

So, lately I haven't had a gaming group. There are a couple of ways I could alleviate that. One is Google+ and Constantcon. Another is to find a place and run a game myself. I do plan on doing both of those (I'll play in someone's Constantcon game sooner or later, and I will run a megadungeon-based game using Swords & Wizardry: Whitebox plus my own set of houserules). However, there's a third way, which is solo gaming.

Solo gaming has a long and glorious tradition. There are a few ways to go about it, from getting solo adventures (which are more or less like the old "Choose Your Own Adventure" books or adventure gaming books like Lone Wolf) to just making stuff up. Somewhere in between lie the concepts in Mythic Game Master Emulator, which I'll likely be using. Basically, MGME is a systematization of using random rolls to figure out what happens next. It acts like a dice oracle, where you ask a yes-or-no question, roll dice, and take the result as the answer. There are more complexities involved (such as "chaos factor" and "event meaning", plus a structured way of approaching the adventure and an admonition to use logic), and there are even more ways to use the material in the supplement, Mythic Variations, but that's the basic idea.

This, however, is not a review of that product, but is instead a discussion of what my ideal game (or one of them, anyway) would be. As a solo gamer, I get to do that, with no concessions to anyone else's vision. This is both good and bad. It is good in that I get to play in a situation that is exactly what I am looking for when I game. It is bad in that it lacks the wider context that comes when a group of people collaborate on the game. For every thing gained, there is something that must be lost.

So, what would my game be? First, the setting. I envision a sort of fantasy world subcreation that includes those things which are of particular interest to me. In this case, a lot of wilderness with scattered areas of settlement, some of which are larger than others. So far, a typical sword & sorcery RPG world. I'd like the magic to be more subtle than "pulp", with amulets, blessings, and curses rather than fireballs and glowing staves. And in the big change from traditional roleplaying fantasy, I'd like black powder, caplock revolvers and stagecoaches and pony express riders. Not science fantasy, not steampunk, not gonzo, and not historical Old West. More like Eyes of Fire, Pale Rider, The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, and Ginger Snaps Back than The Wild Wild West or The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., but set in a fictional world that I can play around in and with. Sort of like the relationship between Middle-Earth and the historical Dark Ages.

There's even less literature to explain what I mean, but Louis L'Amour's The Haunted Mesa and The Californios come close to the tone I want to set. The story game Dogs in the Vineyard, which I love, is very much in line with the idea, but I want to play a roleplaying/adventure game, not a story game. If anyone knows of other books or movies that they think might fit the idea, let me know. Edit to add: Durr. Of course Stephen King's Dark Tower books are very much in line with the idea. A couple of others that I thought of later were the Jonah Hex comics and William S. Burroughs's The Place of Dead Roads, though neither really fits the idea well.

In addition to the "fantasy Old West" vibe, I want to include some other aspects. One of the lands will be, effectively, 17th century Scottish highlanders mixed with 14th century Irish with mid-19th century tech. Another will be an area where Chinese and Japanese analogues have colonized. Of course, the whole land will be one of colonization, and there will be some sorts of Native American/First Nations peoples. Perhaps I will make them the "humanoids", and work with the problems of racism that are implicit in fantasy at least since Tolkien. Furthermore, I want to have a Mormon-like enclave.

The magic will be like Appalachian/Ozark Power traditions, Pennsylvania Dutch Hex magic, Hoodoo, Native shamanism, Renaissance magic, and the like.

Anyway, with setting loosely defined, that leaves me to move on to system. Some game systems work better for some styles of play. Plus, since this will be something I am doing for myself, I don't have to worry too much about pacing and similar issues, so I can use a system that is as complex as I can stand (or as simple as I prefer). To that end, and because it already has an excellent magic system that fits my criteria, I am going to use GURPS, with a lot of the "realistic" and "gritty" options turned on. Magic will use the Path/Book magic system from GURPS Thaumatology. Martial arts will exist, but not the Trained by a Master advantage or cinematic skills.