Ookings of d00m

The full write-up for Sleepers is up, with all the rules and, most notably, sample characters.

Not only is Sleepers the game for spies and secret agents, it's also the game to find out what happens when Roy Batty fights River Tam while Echo from the Dollhouse teams up with Chuck Bartowski.

part 1: fashion.

Last night, the belt I wear with my work pants broke. It has been getting worn, but I realised that I can put my finger through the hole that the buckle goes through. Since I was at work until 8:30 last night, this meant that shops were closed by the time I got back near home, leaving me beltless for today.

Since I had no belt, I wore suspenders to keep my pants up. I also added a grey vest over the standard black oxford shirt to cover up the suspenders and give me a pocket to keep my phone in. The pocket watch was a natural addition at that point. As was the grey silk brocade tie. I used my new skills and did a full windsor knot. I considered a fedora, but since I lack a good overcoat, the effect would have been wasted.

I need to go buy a new belt this weekend.

I'm not sure what to do about footwear - my combats have a big split in the leather, but I can't afford to replace or repair them right now.

part 2: medical.

A wheezy day today, despite the advair. I called off the planned gym experiment - I am concerned that if I have to leave classes gasping for air too often, they'll have to ban me from the gym. and that would upset me greatly.

part 3: gaming.

I've decided on running Nano-Victorian Futures and Sleepers at ACUS. The website has stymied my attempts to register games thus far. I have been mucking around the wiki adding more NVF character gneration examples and the skeleton of a section for Sleepers. I've got a plot seed for NVF that should grow into an actual plot before the con. Still not sure what Sleepers will be about plot-wise, but if all goes according to plan, I should just need to nudge the players a bit and sit back to watch the mayhem. I'm really hoping someone comes up with a Sleeper that is weirder than my sample ideas.

part 4: NOMs.

I really want chocolate right now. Instead, I have apples. I do not want apples.

Friday night, I dreamed an RPG. Or, at least, the basic broad strokes of one.

Zil and I have been watching a lot of Chuck lately. This apparently triggered a dream about secret agents and spies with weird knacks, powers and features. As the dream progressed, it turned into a game design.

The game is called Sleepers. All the players are sleeper agents for an intelligence agency. They're all in deep cover doing spy things. You go from your basic undercover spy, to guys with Intersect type things in their heads, through brainwashed Dollhouse-esque characters who don't know they're agents until they hear their trigger phrase, and down into really weird stuff.

Each character would be made with a small number of points. To get more, the character takes negative features - things like being activated by a trigger phrase, being a double, or even triple agent, having arrival agency have your loved one hostage, etc. The GM would have to figure out how big a bonus to give for each drawback. The idea is to get characters with really odd situations. In return, they can use the points on either becoming super awesome in attributes, or (in my mind, better), coming up with wacky spy powers. I had more examples from the dream, but I've lost them now.

For attributes, since we're talking spies, I figure we should assume that they're all universally highly trained in all combat skills. Any spy can take out a non-spy, and spy on spy competition comes down to finding another edge. Strength and Dexterity would have to be on the table, as would something like Intelligence (for code cracking, hacking, etc.) and maybe some sort of social/lying/acting attribute.

Anyway, this more or less popped into my head when I woke up Saturday morning. I think I could make something out of it.

Of course, I just found out that the ACUS game submission deadline is this week, so the question is, can I fill in the gaps and smooth it out by the end of the week?

New Blood: still missing two PCs. Plot needs work.
Nano-Victorian Future: still missing two PCs. Plot coming together.

Dudesical: Three filks written, one more to go, lyrics for two non-filks located.

Almost all the games I'm playing in, I'm a returning, so I had very little character generation to do. Maybe I should make more NPCs to scratch that itch.

Not sure if I'll have time to make a cravat tonight, but the demon's done.

Because I am a sheep; I know I am going to run at least one game at ACUS, but I haven't figured out which one(s) yet. Amber folks, which of the following sound like a game you'd like to play in?

#1) The world of the Blood. Basically, set in the world this story is set in. It's a modern sci-fi/"gothic-punk" type world with competing groups of super-powered psychics etc. It's also a proper Amber game - characters are all built with 5 pts (15 if you give me a character before the con). New powers allowed, strict reading of the DRPG sorcery rules (so you really need to have conjuration to be a decent sorceror), selling down of attributes is expected - compared to a normal human, Amber level strength is pretty mighty.

PCs have never heard of Amber, or Chaos, so there's no Pattern or Logrus. The population of people with Amberite blood is at least in the hundreds, possibly in the low thousands.

The PCs work for the Order of the Grail, a group of humans similar to Watchers (both the Highlander and the Buffy versions) who try to guide members of the Blood to fight evil and keep powerful artifacts out of the wrong hands.

#2) The Nano-Victorian Future It's 100+ years in the future. The world came to the brink of the Singularity, then fell apart. The US has pulled itself back together into something that resembles, in many ways, Victorian England. Except with nanotech, genetically engineered warrior angels and cybernetic implants. The Nano-Victorian Future closes the loop between cyberpunk and steampunk.

PCs can be anarchist proles, gentleman nano-engineers, aristocrats in SmartFibre frock coats and genetically enhanced super-soldiers.

#3) Caecern; a game of high fantasy. This would be the hardest to do as a con game, since the setting is actually pretty detailed, and mostly in my own head. I suspect I'd get frustrated trying to get the player concepts to fit into the not-quite-D&D setting. On the other hand, I really like the setting, and have a very clear idea of how all the powers work.

The upside is, hey, epic fantasy! The downside is that it'd be a high "homework" game for both me and the players. Really I should run this one in an ongoing F2F campagin, but I don't have the time. If I had a handful of players who were interested enough to go back and read some of the microfic, and I got my butt in gear to clean up some of the web info I have on the setting, it could still work.

I had a good con.

I finally had a shamrock shake. They taste like minty chemicals. I couldn't finish mine.

My games were all awesome. I'd promise to review them, but I probably won't.

Brutally tired. Did not get searched at the border in either direction!

I won the graphic design contest, so my pattern sword picture will be on next year's t-shirt. I was not expecting to win!

Got pretty clothes.

Work tomorrow. Sleep now.

doom!

As of 4pm today, I was officially on vacation.

Tomorrow morning, I will be getting up and heading out to ACUS, and heading back Monday.

If there are any cool surprises in R&G, don't spoil them for me, as I won't get to see it until next Friday!

The car is mostly packed, and I have road food and a tub of high protein trail mix for the con to help cut down on cookies and chips.

Now all I have to do is sleep, and not get arrested at the border for having hair that is too red. And not looking like my passport picture.