Start at the beginning / Aeon Trilogy timeline in Aberrant

I'm on a massive Aberrant kick at the moment, after the successful session I ran for my group last week and their exceptionally positive feedback.
We've one more session before our normal GM comes back from holiday and we resume our normal scheduled zombie apocalypse.

Thing is, whilst plotting out what I want to do with this next, last session, I've started thinking in terms of an ongoing game. This is probably a mistake.

Anyways, that aside, here's what I'm thinking...

Aberrant is very much a game if it's time. It was released in 1998 and is set in 2008, ten years after the first 'Nova' erupted.
Ten years of super (or Mega) participation has resulted in leaping technological progress and widespread cultural change. The world has embraced these enhanced beings, and is a different place because of it.
This is all great, until you run it in 2012. Now, the 'future' technology doesn't seem that impressive, and the world has turned. Events like 9/11, global recession, the first US black president, the Arab Spring, Hurricane Katrina, the Japanese Tsunami, Swine Flu and numerous more have changed our focus away from the direction the game designers predicted. Which is understandable. And inevitable.

The core conflict in Aberrant still stands up - Novas, Terragen, Aberrants, Utopia, Proteus, Aeon, Divas Mal, The Directive et al are all functional and relevant. It's just the timeline that isn't.

Which is why I chose to run the game from the day the day the Galatea exploded in orbit and spread cosmic charged radiation all over the globe.

The player characters are new super beings in a world that has never known supers.
Right now, a lot is going to shit, and the players don't know it. They only know what happened to them, and even then they don't understand it. They're currently running scared with amazing abilities that they can barely control. They'll find out soon enough...

So, my plan is to run with the Aberrant timeline from the start, and make changes where required.
I'm pleased to discover that the Galatea exploded on March 23, and we played on March 27, so that with minimal fudging I could run a campaign in 'real time'.
Which is awesome.

Hello, my old friend / Returning to your favourite system

The game that really got me into paper and pencil RPGS was Vampire: the Masquerade, back with the Revised Edition in, what, 98? I'd been playing in a couple of other World of Darkness games prior to that - Vampire, Dark Ages, Changeling: the Dreaming, Mage: the Ascension - and chose the Revised V:tM as my entry point to serious GMing, or Storytelling, to use the game language.
I immersed myself in White Wolf products from then on, with little or no time for other systems.

Of late, I've tried to break out of that thought prison, and expand my horizons somewhat.
I'd already given d20 a shot in the early to mid 2000s, and looked elsewhere.
In the past year I've run Fear Itself and Trail of Cthulhu, both Gumshoe games, and Star Wars Saga Edition, a d20 derivative. I've also invested heavily in Pathfinder and dug out my In Nomine books.

Tonight the GM for the d20 Modern game I'm playing can't make it, so I've offered to run a one shot game.
After a short discussion, we've settled on a supers game, which means Aberrant.
As a result, I've been pregenning some characters, and I cannot express how good it feels to come back to the Storyteller (ing? I forget which is which) system. Filling in the dots. Not having to reference stuff constantly. Understanding things I do have to reference.
It's great.

More, please.

One night stands / Non-exclusive gaming

I've just wound up the Star Wars Saga Edition game I have been running for my local club. It's a Clone Wars era game that I'd envisioned as a lead up to Order 66 and the fall of the Jedi. The last session ended with the party ambushed unexpectedly by Clone Troopers during a New Hope-esque award ceremony.
I'd only planned past this point in the vaguest of sense, so it seemed like a good end of season cliffhanger for Season One of the game.

I've signed up to play a game next, which is quite unlike me, and have decided to work up some one shots to have in reserve should the regular GM not be able to make it.

As soon as I started thinking in terms of single session or two session games a whole new world of possibilities opened up to me.
I normally have an idea for a game, then see if I can use it as the foundation for a campaign. Which means that I usually end up running games that lose steam after certain story arcs have completed.

Focussing just on one short arc eliminates that.
I feel liberated.

I can run that Trail of Cthulhu game that has bootleggers and feds running afoul of the Mi-Go in the wilderness without worrying how to make the characters work in an ongoing campaign.
The World of Darkness Aliens vs Predator (Azlu vs Werewolves) idea? Perfect for a throwaway evening. It's not as though the characters could be used again.

One mental obstacle I've had to hurdle is the idea of a pre-genned character.
I've always been adverse to doling out ready statted characters to players. I've always enjoyed character creation myself, and pre-gens prevent that pleasurable experience. Sometimes I can't get behind playing a pre-gen, and I've had players from past games tell me that they don't feel like it's their character.

However, I found myself statting characters for two of players my Star Wars players. They told me what they wanted, and I generated something in that ball park.
I thought it worked pretty well, and received no complaints.

I'd run a one shot Trail of Cthulhu game a few months ago, and pre-genned some characters for that. About eight characters. I only got three players, who were spoilt for choice.
They all professed to enjoy themselves, and I loved the interpretations they bought to their characters. It was an experience I'd love to repeat.

At the moment I'm working up a one shot game for Pathfinder, using only Goblin PCs. By necessity it will be a one shot, as I don't expect the survival rate to be high (although the Goblin Barbarian I've statted is surprisingly hard to kill...)

A h8ers regret / I was wrong about Mage Revised

Eels - I'm going stop pretending that I didn't break your heart

I realised something recently. Mage: the Ascension revised took the right path.
Ok, maybe not with the Avatar Storm.
But the whole "the Technocracy have won and the Traditions magical paradigms are fast becoming a forgotten history" thing now makes perfect sense to me.
It was the only way the line could go, without diverging into Shadowrun.

As such, I am hoping to god the Mage20 becomes a thing. The translation guide has the potential to be a genius addition to the Awakened line, and Mage20 itself should take into account the last 10+ years of Technocratic supremacy and progress.

Game ideas I would love to run with / Star Wars Saga Edition

Where: Cloud City
When: During Empire Strikes Back
What: The player characters, all inexperienced youths, flee into the air shafts of Cloud City during the evacuation, hoping to evade the Imperial occupation.
Whilst making their way to an evacuation point, they find a freshly severed human hand and a laser sword.
They know nothing of the Jedi, only that their elders command them to get rid of the weapon, and never speak of it again.

D&D Next / A concern

The internet is awash with opinion and conjecture about the pending 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons.
I have no intention or authority to add to it, but I do have a concern.

One of the possible goals of this new edition is to bridge the gap between OSG, 3.5 and 4th ed.

Does this mean WotC are going to sell us conversion guides?

Transformers Tech Specs / Half an RPG already

I may be behind the times, but I've only just seen Transformers Prime. Did you know it was developed by two of the writers behind Lost? Ok, also the two guys behind the Hawaii 5-0 reboot, but you can't have everything..

Anyways, my sudden resurging interest in 'classic' Transformers (as opposed to the Michael Bay travesty) reminded me of a thought I had a couple of years ago.

The classic Transformers toys came with a picture, brief character description and a rating of their various abilities: Strength, Speed, Endurance, Intelligence, Firepower, Skill, Rank and Courage - all rated between 1 and 10.

So, already we have a range of meaningful stats with assigned ranges.

To my mind, we just need to determine what system these stats support.

My original thought was a d10 'roll below your value' mechanic. This works for average stats, but means that characters with a score of 10 would automatically succeed, which is dull.

The other option is a target number mechanic - roll a d10 and add your score to it. Set 10 as a standard difficulty, and increase or decrease as the situation merits. Make 1's an automatic fail, and 10's an exceptional success, and you're away.

Hit points / health and damage

I guess you could either say that Strength and Firepower provide set values for damage inflicted, but again, that's pretty dull. A random element that allows for a range of results is far more interesting.

So, I guess I'd use Strength and Firepower as values to add to a d10 roll, which would give a min/max damage range between 2 and 20.
This would mean that hit points/health would need to accommodate this range, whilst still allowing Megatron to kill an Autobot with one shot from his fusion cannon, and giving said Autobot a chance of surviving said blast.
This would suggest to me a hit point range between 10 and 20, or a soak / damage reduction mechanic.

How's about hit points = Endurance + Rank, with Endurance also providing a set damage reduction value as well.
This would mean an attacker rolls Strength/Firepower +1d10 to determine potential damage, whilst the defender reduces the incoming damage by their Endurance score, and deducts any remaining damage from their hit points.
This makes it possible, but unlikely, for a Strength 1 Autobot to damage Megatron by punching him.

I'm sort of tempted to forego any 'to hit' mechanics, and speed up combat by having attacks hit automatically...
But, that removes a lot of the drama, and turns combat into a straight punching contest...

Speed should also play a part in combat. Definitely in determining Initiative, and also in determining the number of actions per round a character can take (observe Blurr in the original Transformers the Movie).
Speed could also be used to avoid incoming attacks as well. All of this does turn it into a combat super stat, though.

So. Revised system:
Attacker rolls Strength or Firepower + Rank +1d10
Defender rolls Speed +1d10 and deducts the result + their Endurance from the Attackers result.
This equals the amount of damage the Defender takes.

Or:
Each combatant has a number of actions each turn equal to their Speed.
They can split these actions between Attack and Defence. For example, a character with Speed 5 could fire two shots at an enemy and dodge three incoming attacks, or throw four punches and dodge one, or make no aggressive moves and dodge five incoming attacks.
To attack, roll 1d10 + Strength/Firepower.
To dodge, roll 1d10 + Speed. Subtract the result from the attackers successes.
Finally, subtract the defenders Endurance from the damage, and apply.

Or:
Difficulty to hit = 2x defenders speed. Endurance subtracts from the damage total as before, and any remaining damage is subtracted from hit points.

The NoN List / One shot festive Gumshoe adventure

There's now no chance that I'll run with this idea for the next eleven months, so let's blog it instead.

Before I go on, its probably best if you watch the first Tom Cruise Mission Impossible film, in which Hunt and his team must stop stop a NOC list from falling into the wrong hands.

For a while now I've had a half formed joke rattling around my head about Santa assisting police with their enquiries due to his extensive Naughty or Nice list.
He has clearly established an effective and secretive international intelligence network, and uses the information it gathers to keep records on every person alive in the world today.
Therefore, Santa would possess information valuable to any criminal investigation.

It's a poor joke, but a terrifying espionage scenario.
Especially if that list falls into the wrong hands...

I intended to run this using the Esoterrorists rules with a tweaked setting, although I now think that Nights Black Agents would suit it better, being a Bourne/M:I setting already.
I'll reserve judgement on that until I've read through NBA, though.

The set up is; the players are active operatives for an intelligence agency - CIA, NSA, MI5, MI6, MOSSAD, KGB, etc.
They have been tasked with retrieving an encrypted hard drive from a defector. They are briefed that the hard drive is infinitely more valuable than the defector.
The deal goes bad; a third party intervenes, the defector is killed and the hard drive lost.

Information points to a mole within the players own agency, and they are implicated in the conspiracy.

You'll need to decide who the traitor is, who he works for and how the players can track him/her down, retrieve the hard drive and clear their names.

So, what's on the hard drive? Only the previous years Naughty or Nice list.
This is best played after Christmas Day, and should be delivered deadpan.
The Hard Drive contains one, massive, rich text document - a seemingly endless list of names, ages and addresses in table format, with three extra columns.
The columns are headed Yearly Average, Nice Deeds, Naughty Deeds.
It covers the previous Dec 25 through to Dec 24.
If they specifically look, the players can find their own names with a scarily accurate summary of their activities for that year, including details of any covert, top secret missions they undertook.
They can also find the names of their immediate family, their superiors, known operatives from rival agencies, world leaders and celebrities.
The list could topple governments, compromise national security and ruin lives.
The players may even question whether or not their own agency should possess the list.

It's important to play the game as straight as possible. The only joke is the origin of the list, everything else is deadly serious.

For a supernatural element, you can include disturbing midgets with twisted faces, high pitched voices and bleeding edge equipment who are competing against the players. 

New Years Resolutions / Gaming in 2012

It's that time of year when bloggers and social networkers churn out predictable lists of goals and aims for the coming 12 months.

Why should I buck tradition?

I'm not going to include the boring "become a better person", "lose weight" or "learn to paint" articles. They never happen, anyway. I'm 36 and still fat, unskilled and reprehensible.

Instead, here's what I intend to do with my gaming this year, and related topics, in no particular order. (that's clearly a lie. They appear in the order I thought of them)

Use the hundreds of interesting pictures I've downloaded over the past year. No, not porn. I already use those. I refer to the pictures of murder, monsters and weird shit I've stumbled across.

Run Pathfinder, Trail of Cthulhu, Changeling: the Lost and Mage: the Awakening this year, amongst others.

Blog with more regularity. I found a link to this blog listed under dead, irregular and (something else) blog's earlier today.
Probably true, but an uncomfortable truth.

Get a new, decent laptop. I broke our Samsung laptop earlier in the year, and my wife bought herself a netbook as a replacement, which is incredibly shit. Remarkably shit. And tiny.
So I'm putting money aside every month to get myself something worth having, which I will use for gaming prep, writing and blogging.

Invest in my gaming group. I would really like to build up my gaming group, attract new players and give a wide range of gaming options to our players.

Improve as a GM. I think I'm pretty good at running games, but not perfect. I've only just started saying "yes" more than I say "no", and I'm still pretty weak at preparation.

Licences fade, systems are forever / Star Wars Saga Edition Hacks

I was thinking this morning about how good a game SWSE is, and that it's a shame that it's dead now.
I was also thinking that if you remove the official licensed elements of Star Wars from the game, you've still got an excellent system for a Sci-fi game.

Are there any Star Wars SE hacks out there?
If not, here's my initial ideas...

Rename The Force to, say, Psionics or Psychic Ability, as well as the classes and races, and you're away.

Scoundrels can become Criminals.
Jedi become Psychics (and lose the combat feats and hit die to become more like a Cleric instead of a Paladin).
Nobles can become Politicians or Celebrities or Traders.
Soldiers and Scouts stay as is.l
You could even add some more classes as required - Scientist, Bureaucrat, Investigator etc.

For Races, I'd use the Pathfinder/4e approach to Humans, and give them a +2 to assign to any attribute, as well as the extra trained skill and Feat.
I'd formalise Droids into a race, and call them Androids or Artificial Beings (a 'pc' term) (I believe the term 'Droid' is a Lucas trademark). They'd receive a +2 and a -2 to assign to fit the concept. No CON score and a choice of pre-programmed skill bonuses. I'd also add a Feat to appear Human/other race (+4 to Disguise attempts to pass as a member of that one race, or something. Probably used by Spy, pleasure and care Androids). Without the Feat, they'd be obviously mechanical. Finally, Androids start with a budget for extra appendages and tools, and can spend credits on upgrades. Androids would not be able to take levels in the Psychic class.
I'd include Clones or Replicants as a race. They'd be bio-engineered and artificially grown Humans (to prevent the number of Races nearly doubling). Replicants would get a +4 to one Ability and -2 to two more. They'd not get the extra Human Feat, instead they'd get the extra trained skill and either a faster movement rate, low-light vision, a +2 bonus to one Defense or faster healing rate. Clones would not be able to take levels in the Psychic class.
Other Races would be a mix up of standard sci-fi races, with hopefully a couple of original ideas. I'd probably rule that Races with remarkably high physical bonuses could not take levels in the Psychic class, just to avoid the rampaging twinks that would result.

The Use the Force skill should be split into three, and key off a different Ability - INT, WIS and CHA. The INT skill would govern affecting the physical world with telekinesis etc, WIS would govern perception and ones own body whilst CHA would be used to mentally affect anyone else.

Psychic powers would pretty much crib off the existing Force powers.

Mechanically, the system can be utilised with little adaptation.
The setting is another matter...

What kind of Sci-fi setting would this work for? Maybe something in the vein of the revamped Star Trek, with a focus on exploration and competition for resources. Maybe pioneers, with less of the wild west/Firefly-isms.