Afterlife
Hello faithful blogsters! Sorry about the quiet month, but in all honesty, nothing of note was happening. Xmas was a great time, but as usual, I looked forward to New Year's more. My gf and I hosted my best buddy for a week, and many other friends from Seattle and Chicago for 3 days around the New Year. We threw our first party in the new house, and played tons of ping pong (another great Xmas gift) or "beer pong" as the drinking went on. We were then snowed on twice by New Year's Day - an unusual occurance here in the Great Northwest - but all hell really broke loose last week when we were frozen into our house by 6 inches of snow topped with a 3 inch sheet of ice. You know it's bad when you see people moving down your sidewalk on ice skates. Good times.
Gaming Stuff
*I ran a 3 day pick-up of
Midnight while Evan was in town, and we had a great time. Since I had seen RotK not 2 weeks earlier, it was of course heavily LotR influenced, but then with
Midnight, isn't that the point?
*I also got my hot little hands on Fantasy Flight Games'
Grimm and Green Ronin's
Mutants & Masterminds and I have to say, they are both beautiful executions of the d20 system. Briefly,
Grimm is a game of twisted fairy tales, and the first honest-to-god d20 minigame I've seen. You play kids trapped in the Grimm Lands, so instead of choosing race and class, you select only archetype - like a class - and origin - which is like a feat. Archetypes only go to level 6, at which time you outgrow the imagination that allows you to travel to the Grimm Lands forever. The game successfully handles feats (allowing them every other level) and items and weapons (slingshots multiply damage based on how much larger the target is than you) in innovative and exciting ways, and evolves the stories of the Brothers Grimm into a very interesting environment. I can't wait for the next Horizon book from FFG,
Virtual (think Tron 2.0).
Mutants and Masterminds is an oddity in the d20 market, in that has totally eschewed the d20 logo for SRD material, and drastically alters the system for the better. Most d20 designers' vanity of "compatibility" is tossed out the window in the interest of making a proper supers game, and Steve Kenson succeeded fantastically. Only the very solid core of the d20 system is used - abilities, saves, basic dice mechanics, basic combat mechanics and basic methods of determining difficulty. Players essentially start as level 10 characters, with a pool of "power points" with which they may build their characters. Everything must be purchased in this system, since there are no classes - that means BAB, Defense, Stats, Powers, Feats, Skills, Gear - all using this pool of points. Powers are handled well, each being assigned a PP cost per level, to which stunts (tricks specific to that power), extras (expanded abilities of the power that multiply its cost per level) or flaws (limitations on the power that decrease the cost per level) may be applied. This system is quite fluid, and allows you to construct powers in very detailed and true-to-the-comics forms. Lastly, there are no HP or WP in MnM - rather, damage is handled as a save, with the margin of failure determining end results. As a reformed comics geek, I am in love with supers again - I already have generated 5 characters and have campaign thoughts swimming in my noggin :)
*I'm excited - I may have nailed down some work on a new book with Privateer Press in their
Iron Kingdoms setting. We're still in the talking stages at this point, but I will be helping set the format for thes books while I toil on Project X. More as it develops.
Spycraft News
*I've started work on
Mastermind as of last week, and it's turning out to be a good bit of fun. Somehow I've ended up switching from 'maybe I'll help this book' to writing half of it now...but I get some fun stuff to do. I think GC's will find this book a great resource, and players looking for a chance to indulge in their dark sides should have good fun with it too ;)
*Project X is still being negotiated with the publisher, but we're pretty much good to go. We got the green light from AEG for the potential issues we thought might torpedo the project, but we're AOK. As for the development journal, this will start after I finish up work on
Mastermind and begin the development cycle. Speaking of which...
We are also reexamining our strategy for the PX release at this time, so it may be a little delayed (not that THAT'S anything new to you all out there). Fortunately, Project Y will also be delayed, so they won't run afoul of one another. In the end, I think a changed timeline will make Project X a much stronger final product, and give it much better sales, so who can argue?
*I've done it again - Project Z is in its planning phases right now. Yes, Project
Z. This game started as a revisionist historical game and by blending it with a new Powered By Spycraft project from Scott Gearin, I think we have a potentially kickass project on our hands. (really, I'm not the boy who cried wolf here - I DO have 3 different games in the works with 3 different companies). This one should be good fun, and really enlighten some of you out there to the feverish workings of our inner nerds :)
Contest
Now for my totally unofficial contest - in working on
Mastermind, I've come to realize just how complete Spycraft is - not a good thing when you are developing new Prestige Classes. The contest is this - give me ideas for bad guy prestige classes. I don't need rules, just names and/or concepts, posted to the comments link below. I will decide and notify the winner and post their name on this blog. Winner gets...OK, winner gets this: when
Mastermind is released, send me your book and up to 2 others and I will personally sign them and pay their way back to you in thanks. It's not much, but it's what I can afford :) Hope to hear from you!
