Common Worlds

This idea about planning is from the comments on Robin Law's journal:

My current method is that the players tell me their plan, including inventing all sorts of details about how they think the enemy operates. They tell me what abilities they're using in terms of advance intelligence, tactics, knowing the area, having useful contacts, and so on. Then I roll to see how well they did (and don't tell them the result): and the better they succeeded, the closer their assessment of the situation is to reality. If I know they're making some major false assumptions, I'll put some minuses on the roll, but to a great extent, they get to design the opposition so as to showcase whatever aspect of their PCs they want to showcase.

In one line, describe a genre/setting/situation you'd like to play, narrate or both.

Here are some examples:

• Agents of a galaxy-wide teleporting civilization convinced their superiors have become controlled by other-dimensional horrors.
• Psychic researchers extending their perceptions beyond the borders of known reality, using alien minds as their exploration tools.
• Victorian absinthe producers intent on triggering worldwide anti-royalist revolutions.
• Quantum physics grad students whose research reveals the nature and necessity of repairing the Universal Overmind, just before masters' theses outlines are due.
• Mook-mok want take cave from bear. Where find good spear stone?
• A national champion girl's high school rugby team discovers the president is a robot during an awards ceremony at the Western White House.
• Aethernauts on the HMAS Planetary Conquerer, a phlogiston-powered dreadnought crashed in the endless methane swamps of Venus.
• Faux-satanists and fellow poser death metal band mates accidentally summon Satan during an orgy/practice, and must serve him eternally or suffer in hell immediately.

Somehow yesterday I managed to get a lot of work done and make it to a matinee of 300. Along with a mess of SCA work I made barbecue for tomorrow's game.

I thought I had read the whole Frank Miller graphic novel years ago when it sat on Aradd's coffee table, but either I'd forgotten most of it or the movie was very different from the original.

Still, I quite enjoyed it. If you like that sort of thing, you'll like this one. It's especially good inspiration for my HeroQuest game.

From an SCA standpoint, I just kept thinking "See, this is why you never want to use two sword in a melee."

If you liked 300 in either version, go read Gates of Fire I kept thinking of that extraordinary book of historical fiction while watching the movie. Colin introduced me to the book and I've recommended it to many people since then. It still amazes me that the author, Steven Pressman, went from Bagger Vance to Gates of Fire.

My players heard me rave about Blindsight by Peter Watts a month ago. Man, is it terrific, awe-inspiring and frightening all at once:

And if the best toys do end up in the hands of those who've never forgotten that life itself is an act of war against intelligent opponents, what does that say about a race whose machines travel between the stars?

Apparently this book is selling so fast and is so hard to find at the moment that the author has released the entire book online as a pdf. But a hard copy is definitely worth having. Dig the author's description:

...it might be best described as a literary first-contact novel exploring the nature and evolutionary significance of consciousness, with space vampires.

But be warned: this does not have a happy feel good ending. Quite the reverse. Still, it addresses some extremely interesting ideas in ways I haven't seen done before. By the way, this is by the same guy mentioned in this post, who wrote or contributed to the amazing Vampire Domestication PowerPoint presentation.

And to tie this all back to gaming, the world described in Blindsight would make an awesome base for the Questworlds science fiction world.

I think I need to get a copy of his first book, Starfish (Rifters Trilogy) The review makes it sound like a science fiction inversion of Seaborn Child.

The "Life in Dorkath is for Adults" entry by Kirk, below, is the first example of a little experiment for the Dorkath game.

I want each of the players to contribute at least one fact about the game that their Heroes could not in any way determine. Something that could not normally be defined by your individual character creation.

So you could write anything like the following:

The Satrap's wife has a weakness for men who look like Vilavandesh.
A population explosion among the Great Swamp's giant lamprey population is decimating the fish stocks most people rely on for food.
Recent increases in papyrus prices have led to student riots at Irripi Ontor's College of Scribal Arts.
That "unnamed forbidden lover" mentioned at this link is my Hero's sister/niece/daughter/mother/slave/paid informant.

Now, while you can define these things, if they don't appear on someone's character sheet, then the characters don't know about them.