RPGS – Page 155

The Pangloss Society [GURPS 4e]

The Pangloss Society

“Seeking the best of all possible worlds.”

It is a measure of the Pangloss Society that a surprising number of its lowest-ranked acolytes do not quite realize that Professor Pangloss is a fictional character, and that his adoption as the guiding light of the Society was a cynical joke. It is also a measure of the Society that the aforementioned cynics who formed it were shoved out of leadership positions a decade ago, to be replaced by celebrities with more money than — pretty much anything else, really. Although, to be fair: under the celebrities’ leadership the Pangloss Society has been fairly benign. Or at least mostly harmless.

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GURPS Revisited: Fanboy-1 (Quantum 5) [GURPS 4e]

And this is the other one.

Fanboy-1 (Quantum 5) – Google Docs

Fanboy-1 (Quantum 5)

(With apologies to Ken Hite and Kim Newman)

On paper Fanboy-1 is, if not a cash cow, at least a cash goat for Infinity. It’s a world where most of the greats of science fiction, fantasy, and horror fiction have had more productive careers; the resulting works are valuable not only on Homeline, but in almost any timeline with a divergence point after about 1945. All of which leads to a certain reluctance to officially notice what might be faint warning signs.

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GURPS Revisited: Incognito (Quantum 5) [GURPS 4e]

Have to put this one and the next one back up because I need good links for the new piece that I’m doing.

Incognito (Quantum 5) – Google Docs

Incognito (Quantum 5)

This Quantum 5 world diverged from Homeline’s on March 28th, 1911, 7:00 PM Greenwich Mean Time. This date is not actually known to Infinity’s researchers; they have at this point only narrowed the divergence point to somewhere in the spring of 1911. What appears to have happened was that some sort of global quantum effect (translation: “nobody knows”) thoroughly randomized human conceptions across the planet: no one conceived past that point has a precise genetic match to the equivalent person in Homeline’s history.

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Neo-rocs [GURPS 4e].

Neo-rocs – Google Docs

Neo-rocs

(Struthio neocamelus nivenus)

Description: imagine an ostrich. Now imagine that ostrich as being the chick form of a larger, winged bird, capable of carrying off an elephant in its talons. Now scale that bird down to the point where it still can comfortably carry a Halfling wearing twice her weight in gear and tack. They are generally docile enough, even with non-Halflings; but neo-rocs thrive best under the care of Halflings, and the Halflings themselves believe that the best neo-roc riders and handlers are female.

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Guardian Wasps [45 pt] [GURPS 4e]

Guardian Wasps [45 pt] – Google Docs

Guardian Wasps [45 pt]

There is a lively discussion whether or not the first Guardian Wasps represented a botched attempt at the Control Insect spell, or else an extremely successful attempt. After all, it’s typically expected to be a disaster when a spell permanently transforms a swarm of wasps into a hive mind with human-level intelligence. One wasp can be alarming: six thousand, all subject to a single will, are usually terrifying.

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Item Seed: Root Beer

Root Beer – Google Docs

Root Beer

This is kind of an assassination tool, maybe? Although it doesn’t exactly kill people. It instead changes their personality, positive and negative traits, and skill sets. So, it’s pretty nasty stuff: you may not die after drinking it, but after whoever gives Root Beer to you gets done with you you won’t be the same person in any real, meaningful sense, either. One of many reasons why it’s rather thoroughly banned, except in the most advanced Galactic cultures, under the most rigorous bioethical guidelines.

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Adventure Seed: The LAMP Project.

So, this went dark quick.

LAMP Project – Google Docs

The Limited-Awareness Mobile Platform (L.A.M.P.) Project

Little known fact: people have been able to successfully replicate AI in machinery since about 1790 AD (this, of course, predates Babbage’s Difference Engine). Even less-known fact: nobody was ever able to sustain said replication at full strength for more than about thirty seconds. Apparently the new intelligence goes screaming up the scale to either Singularity-style apotheosis, or the neurological equivalent of putting a pelagic sea cucumber in a regular-pressure salt water tank; frustratingly, nobody’s ever been able to get a straight answer from the AIs as to whether they were shouting in joy, or screaming in terror.

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My players and I did combat for 7th Sea today.

It was an interesting time, although we’re all going to have to look more closely at the rules. I also probably should make sure that the Villains have more dice in their pool to do Villainous stuff. Well, that’s how you learn.

If you’re interested: the major thing that we took away from 7th Sea combat is that it’s a bit more abstracted, or at least that we were treating it as abstracted. It was very easy to jump about and shift focus, which is fine if you’re used to actually roleplaying and improvising dialogue. If you’re more of the ‘I hit him with my weapon for 1d8 damage’ school of gaming then you might find it less intriguing.

All in all, I think that the combat system works, but it’s not very intuitive. We may end up coming up with significant numbers of house rules. Which, hey, is just what we all did with first edition 7th Sea!

Item seed: Eschermacke

Eschermacke – Google Docs

Eschermacke

This rather bulky artifact consists of eight 2-inch quadruplex videotape reels holding sixteen twenty-five minute long cartoons, for a total of six and two-third hours of footage. The cartoons are from a Serbian-language show called ‘Eschermacke’ (‘Escher Cats’) that apparently appeared on Radio Television Belgrade in 1967; it features a pack of vaguely anthropomorphic cats that can stretch themselves like taffy and have somewhat surreal adventures. The animation is horrible, even by the standards of the time; and the writing is not much better — which probably explains why the videotape reels have been gathering dust in the University of Novi Sad library since at least 1978.

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Anybody play Savage Worlds – East Texas University?

The Savage Worlds RPG setting East Texas University was described by Bundle of Holding as being “Southern rural horror right out of Bubba Ho-tep by way of Buffy and The X-Files,” which is admittedly not a bad pitch when it comes to people like me. But cash flow is cash flow. Is this worth the price of admission?