Fair Play
Posted by Jason on July 24th, 2007 — in Design
I wrote Dungeon Squad as a 24 hour RPG after an eye-opening but not super successful attempt to run actual D&D 3.5 for a bunch of teens at the Durham County library. I left knowing exactly what they would think rocked and wrote it down. A few people liked it, and it has been favorably reviewed on rpg.net, but recently some guys over at Dragonsfoot have really fallen in love with the game, and they are doing cool and impressive things with it. Because I released it under a Creative Commons license, it has been tweaked, modded, and bowdlerized into all sorts of configurations, and I couldn’t be happier. Check out The Haunted Keep!
Posted by Jason on July 18th, 2007 — in The Roach
Slowly, slowly. In the meantime, have you seen the character sheets for Overlord and Darker?
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Posted by Jason on July 16th, 2007 — in Grey Ranks
Here’s a great actual play report of the third play session of a rockin’ game of Grey Ranks.
The players comment that the special rules for handling dead player characters don’t make sense, and I can see their point - although I disagree. I think the cool thing about fixing the dead character in time, space, and emotional state at the moment of death is that they will be relentlessly pulling from the same set of situation elements. Ignoring this rule won’t break the game, so it may be a matter of what feel you are after.
Posted by Jason on July 10th, 2007 — in Vampire Machines
We call this place Sweet Home, and it is, really. We have everything we need and we have engines of our own. The vampire machines don’t have a monopoly an engines.
We grow switchgrass for conversion into ethanol. We get about ten tons per acre, and also use it as forage for our goats. For ourselves we grow wheat and barley inside the wall, and there is a grove of date trees and oil palms. All our water comes from the qanat and is divided by the Parceller, who happens to be me.
The vampire machines like to burn our switchgrass, but switchgrass is hardy and perennial. We keep it clear near the wall anyway, so a switchgrass fire is an early warning sign that a vampire machine is causing trouble.
Our walls are made of hardened clay and are twice a man’s height in most places. We have palm oil lamps with Fresnel lenses on them that turn night into day. Some villages hang the wreckage of machines on their walls as a warning, but we re-use their dead husks and leave the power piles, trapped, for other vampire machines to find. We have a metalworking shop powered by an ethanol engine.
We also have more tin than we can use from the mine off the qanat channel. We fashion bronze, solder, and stannous chloride salts for trade, and it makes us rich. We can hook the engine up to a cart and drive up and down the grass road very fast if we need to. All of our youngsters have gone overwall and seen the world.
Soda Village, one of our neighbors up-valley, uses our tin in the Pilkington process to fashion window glass that is in high demand. They make a nice window; as good as the old glass shards you find now and then, perfectly flat and clear.
Posted by Jason on July 7th, 2007 — in Vampire Machines
There is a machine hole called Whiskey Heap far to the south. When I went overwall I wanted to go to that place and return to tell the tale.
I followed the grass road south, away from the village and the sea, toward the mountains. They shine like emeralds above the wavering salt pan. The mountains are covered in trees fed by snowmelt. Snow! I was drawn like moth to candle. The desert is so hot.
I was young and full of scorn – I scorned my home, I scorned the desert, I scorned the others overwalling with me. I alone would make the journey to Whisky Heap! I carried a bolt gun fashioned from a vampire machine’s arm. I longed to kill one, to shoot it and smash it to pieces, like beating a man into the earth with his own longbones. I hated the machines and fancied myself their equal. What a fool I was.
In those days the grass road above our qanat was well traveled by caravans, and there were mules pulling wagons, and ethanol carts with old hacking chemical engines. I caught rides up-valley, trading tin for a space among the bales of cotton and pottery jugs. One day we saw a vampire machine on a dune. “It’s feeble,” said the caravan’s Parceler, “Worn out and off its steam. It won’t molest us.”
As I said, I was full of fire. I saw the Parceler’s wise discretion as cowardice, and told him so. He invited me to leave his caravan, and I was glad to. I had my bolt gun, didn’t I? Was I not immortal? I loaded a bolt and opened the valve, striding up the dune like a champion.
The machine was an evil-looking thing, as big as I but with a clustered multitude of rusted legs. It moved up and down with its flywheel like an old man laboring for breath, oblivious to my approach. I considered putting a bolt through it but saw no risk; I put the heavy gun down and got out my wrecking bar. I intended to dismantle it alive.
That is not what happened, obviously. The young men and women who had gone overwall with me were traveling together and found me and tended to my wounds as best they could. That I survived is something of a miracle. On the wall, I can still mount a passable watch but walking eludes me these days.
