Penny Arcade’s oddly UNindulgent look at Gabe’s kid’s RPG.

Not sucking up, here (although if somebody’s got a good reason why I personally should suck up to Penny Arcade I’ll be happy to entertain it?): Gabe’s kid has got good instincts.  No, seriously: he’s set up an interesting benefit-hindrance trade-off in his Ultimate Power scenario and given his players an open-ended campaign goal which has the virtue of being straightforward while still allowing for multiple styles of play.  Do the characters approach their denial of the Throne to others as if it were a crushing burden? An endless, convenient duck shoot of would-be Evil Overlords? A marrow-freezing temptation?  Depends on your players, really.

Plus, skeletons.

Moe Lane

3 thoughts on “Penny Arcade’s oddly UNindulgent look at Gabe’s kid’s RPG.”

  1. Hmm… Before sitting on the thing, one needs to have answers for the questions of food, drink, urination, defecation, and bed sores. Also a good idea to know how comfortable it would be to sleep on.
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    Longer term is the question of CCCI. These are an extremely difficult set of issues for one person ruling a large population. What does the throne provide, and how does it do so?
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    One form of defense for the thing is to make it difficult to rapidly get a logistical line going to the throne for food and drink. Another is to enchant it with a ‘clean me’ function that, in addition to feces, kills the King, in order to remove all waste from the throne.
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    What does a world with such an object, with it being used sometimes, have in the way of history, law, and notions of sovereignty and rule?
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    Can it be used to start a dynasty, where only the first King actually has to sit on the thing?
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    I’d suggest setting the details such that the power cannot, for practical reasons, be used to manage things to get any net benefit for the populations. Good people, for that reason, desire it not be used. Bad people, are those fixated or stupid enough not to care. It won’t take much work, and one can make heavy handed political statements at the same time. Win-win.
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    I’d also suggest that the throne faces south.

  2. If you want an excuse to legitimately suck up to Gabe and Tycho, may I point out that they run a video game review/news/critique site (Penny Arcade Report). With the proper amount of sucking up, you can leverage your video game playing onto their site, kind of like what you do with the political posts for Red State. Plus, free video games (I mean, if they ask you to review a game, they gotta buy it for you, right?).

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