Fair Play
Posted by Jason on April 19th, 2010 — in Fair Play
In honor the world’s first playtest at Nerdly Beach Party…
Will, Ryan, Laura and Paul are playing Nine Roosevelts Against the Impossible.
Ryan, playing The Colonel, is Roosevelt Prime. He describes the Roosevelts tramping through the scrubby, sweltering forests of 1898 Cuba, and stumbling into the middle of a Prussian military camp! Prussians? In America’s back yard? Roosevelt Prime lets out a war-whoop and leads an ill-considered charge!
Paul, playing TR-9000, lumbers into a hail of withering Prussian gunfire, instantly identifying himself as Hero Roosevelt. Since Paul has three white chips left and nothing else, he elects to use leadership, rallying the rest of the Roosevelts in the attack. “I want to whip the entire Prussian camp,” he says, and Ryan is OK with that. Paul puts forward all three white chips. Since this leaves him with nothing, which could be lethal, he chooses to take a new chip as his prize. Figuring some violence is in the future, he takes a red one.
Ryan, as Roosevelt Prime, can either stay Roosevelt Prime or introduce his Theme. He knows Laura’s Theme – Treachery – would be perfect here while his – Love – seems like a weird fit. He also enjoys being Roosevelt Prime, so he takes that and gives Laura the last prize, introducing her Theme.
Will describes the Prussian camp and the battle underway, and the four players spend a few minutes one-upping each other in over-the-top lunacy. TR-9000 sprouts steam-powered battle flags. They finally reach a point where they really need to know whether TR-9000 succeeds or fails.
Paul rolls three dice. They come up 2, 2, and 5 – a success, but with Reality Burn! He loses all three chips. Paul begins to describe TR-9000 directing the Roosevelts and protecting Roosevelt Prime before being overcome with nth-dimensional interference. Laura jumps in with some treachery! The Mambie irregulars supporting the Prussians suddenly switch sides and join TR-9000 and his fellow selves. In the commander’s tent – evidence of black magic. And the Prussian commander has slipped away…
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Posted by Jason on April 14th, 2010 — in Fair Play
“I was a sickly, delicate boy, suffered much from asthma, and frequently had to be taken away on trips to find a place where I could breathe … My gun was a breech loading, pin fire, double barrel of French manufacture. It was an excellent gun for a clumsy and often absent-minded boy” – An Autobiography, p.14, 20
“In the fall of 1876 I entered Harvard, graduating in 1880. I thoroughly enjoyed Harvard and I am sure it did me good, but only in the general effect – for there was very little in my actual studies which helped me later in life. Doubtless through my own fault I saw almost nothing of President Eliot, and very little of the professors. I ought to have gained much more than I did gain from writing the themes and forensics. My failure to do so may have been partly due to my taking no interest in the subjects.” -An Autobiography, p.24
“The loss of our first 1-A Battleglobe was an opportunity for me to prove my long-held contention that a man’s body – no matter how vigorous and hard-working – was merely an extension of his brain. Since I’d been blown to flinders when the aft Tesla accumulator ran wild over Caracas, I called on my particular friend Hamilton Wasp to build me a new body. ‘Something bluff, practical and not too fussy’ were my instructions, and Wasp understood precisely what an active man would need by way of mechanical extension.” – A Cowboy Among the Mechanics, p.100
“Occasionally I made long trips away from the ranch and among the Rocky Mountains with my ranch foreman Merrifield or, in later years, with Tazewell Woody, John Willis or John Goff. We hunted bears – both the black and the grizzly, cougars and wolves, and moose, wapiti and white goat. On one of these trips I killed a bison bull, and I also killed a bison bull on the Little Missouri some fifty miles south of my ranch on a trip which Joe Ferris and I took together. It was rather a rough trip … we met with all kinds of misadventures.” – An Autobiography, p.116
“Only four men started with me, three of whom were shot. I ran back, much irritated that I had not been followed, which was quite unjustifiable because I found that nobody had heard my orders. General Sumner had come up by this time and I asked his permission to lead the charge. He ordered me to do so, and this time away we went and stormed the Spanish entrenchments. There was some close fighting and we took a few prisoners. We also captured the Spanish provisions and ate them that night with great relish. One of the items was salted flying fish, by the way.” – An Autobiography, p.248
“The blood of vital, healthy young women is a small price to pay in practical terms for the safety and amity my strenuous efforts as lord of the land provide. I am no more a monster than a banker collecting interest on a loan. When the werewolves came to Drajna, were not the district’s peasant women beating a path to my door? Of course I gave those lycanthropic curs a sound thrashing, but it was blood that sustained me. Those physical and moral cowards who tell me I am wrong to sup upon the sweet nectar of youth will find that the people of Drajna do not agree.” – Black Sea Baron, p.55
“While President I used to box with some of the aides as well as play singlestick with General Wood. After a few years I had to abandon boxing as well as wrestling, for in one bout a young Captain of artillery cross countered me on the eye and the blow smashed the little blood vessels. Fortunately it was my left eye, but the sight has been dim ever since, and if it had been the right eye I should have been entirely unable to shoot. Accordingly I thought it better to acknowledge that I had become an elderly man and would have to stop boxing. I then took up jiu jitsu for a year or two.” – Autobiography, p.43
“One of Kermit’s gun bearers saw a puff adder – among the most deadly of all snakes – with delightful nonchalance he stepped on its head and then held it up for me to put my knife through its brain and neck. I slipped it into my saddle pocket where its blood stained the pigskin cover of the little pocket Nibelungenlied which that day I happened to carry” – African Game Trails, p.187
“I stand alone. None dare oppose Tödör. Before me is the Broken King, Kradd-Pya, footstool of Tödör. Before me are the howling legions, those desert spirits eager to destroy me – but not so eager that they dare tempt my death-slaked steel. Before me is the Tower of Bones, the tower of delight, the tower of my haughty queen. One day I will climb it and claim what is mine, and Branka will knock it down as Tödör knocked down the walls of Kradd. Before me is my destiny.” – Transcribed Edicts of Tödör, third stele
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Posted by Jason on April 1st, 2010 — in Fair Play
Here’s a fun idea I’m playing with. Not sure what will come of it but I can see the art in my head, so that’s a good sign!
Theodore Roosevelt was truly a monumental figure in American history. His accomplishments read like a catalog of every child’s dreams – statesman, soldier, explorer, rancher, scholar, athlete, barbarian warlord, vampire, disembodied brain housed inside a mechanical man. His was a life well lived.
A many-faceted man; a hero to many. A man who cared deeply about the world around him. And when that world was threatened by the most deadly peril imaginable, Theodore Roosevelt was faced with a dilemma. Clearly he was the man for the job, and yet he couldn’t face it alone. He needed help – the sort of help only Theodore Roosevelt could provide. He put out the call, and eight versions of himself answered. It would have to be enough. For the world to survive, it would be…
NINE ROOSEVELTS AGAINST THE IMPOSSIBLE!
There are nine Roosevelts.
Roosevelt-69: Sickly child with a voracious appetite for knowledge and a keen intellect
Roosevelt-78: Bright-eyed Harvard man, pugilist, scholar and all-around campus swain
Roosevelt-85: Trail-weary buckaroo, rancher, outdoorsman and deputy sheriff
Roosevelt-99: The Colonel, commander of Rough Rider volunteers, soldier and patriot
Roosevelt-06: Diplomat, Nobel Peace Prize winner, President of the United States of America
Roosevelt-10: African adventurer, hunter and owner of “Big Medicine”, the world’s largest rifle
Roosevelt-A: Baron Téodor of Wallachia, vampire and ladies man
Roosevelt-B: Lord of the Dab-Qasar highlands, destroyer of Krodor
Roosevelt-C: Disembodied brain in an armored Tesla robot
Further Roosevelts are possible. Roosevelt-95, New York City Police Commissioner and scourge of the underworld; Roosevelt-D, Reptilian Progressive; Roosevelt-90, obsessive lovesick romantic and Roosevelt-13, explorer, scientist and conqueror of the River of Doubt, are all good possibilities. Feel free to make up your own.
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