Yoes, 🙂
So, I fell off an airplane, last Saturday. On purpose.
Yes, it was a perfectly good airplane, in perfect working order, leisurely cruising at 120 Km/h, at a 4.2Km altitude.
No, I was not wearing a parachute. Instead, I was wearing a dude who was wearing a parachute. It’s called a tandem jump. 🙂
They do a video montage of the whole thing. Check it out:
Cheers,
J.
Hello, all, 🙂
Wikipedia defines Space Opera as “a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in outer space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing advanced technologies and abilities. […] Perhaps the most significant trait of space opera is that settings, characters, battles, powers, and themes tend to be very large-scale”.
Indeed, Agora is a game of space battles, interstellar intrigue, kings, emperors and dictators, air locks and blaster burns, a galaxy-wide Faith, an Imperial Navy, and naturally, an autonomous and self sufficient space station parked in the middle of nowhere.
The above is the introductory section for Agora, a space opera setting for Eero Tuovinen’s Solar System rules set, as based off of The Shadow of Yesterday, by Clinton R. Nixon.
In addition to the obvious Babylon 5 inspiration, Agora drinks from many sources, ranging from the strictly historic, like ancient Rome or the Spanish Inquisition, to the most outlandish science fiction franchises, like Star Wars and Star Trek. References will be obvious throughout this text, and the authors make no claim to the referenced material.
Agora was developed by Gonçalo Cardoso Dias, Diogo Curado, Luis Figueira and myself. Originally, we were going to license it under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Portugal license, but then this happened, so we’re not. Instead, we’re going to get it illustrated and published as both a PDF and a print-on-demand book, and sell it. All the proceeds will go to a charity in Gonçalo’s name.
We think it’s a fitting memorial.
In any case, I’d like to show some writing samples, stuff that’ll give a feeling of where we went with it.
Ahey, 🙂
Here’s Simon:
Is there scope for asking people to do things that may not come naturally to them, that might make them uncomfortable, but that you think they might come to love?
How much can you ask someone to stretch themselves? Should play always be easy?
And here’s Vincent’s reply:
Is there scope? Of course!
How much? Well. You get to design your game to be as demanding as you like, but your audience gets to choose whether to try it and whether to stick with it. That’s how you find out whether you’ve judged them well – if they do the unnatural thing you ask them to, then you have. If they don’t, then you’ve misjudged them.
Should I underline that? Maybe I should. If your audience doesn’t seize upon the game you’ve designed for them, you have a choice. You can reevaluate your own judgment, or else you can throw blame. Blame your audience for failing to live up to your ideals, blame cliques and status-attention in the scene, blame me for monopolizing their attention, whatever. My suspicion is that reevaluating your own judgment will give you the most fruitful way forward.
There’s smart people out there in the world, and they can teach you things. 🙂
Cheers,
J.
Ahey, 🙂
Here’s Ron:
- Don’t fucking drop the ball on me. You have my Kicker. If it’s a mystery, you’re supposed to know what’s going on. If it’s an action-event, you’re supposed to round out its human and motivational side. If it’s just freaky, you’re supposed to embrace the weirdness. Don’t cop out. Above all, our shared agreement is that this Kicker is going to matter, and that means not only to at least one other character besides my own, but also to us, the people, here, during play. I know it matters to me, in its unbaked, unspiked form. You make sure your private/prepped version of it matters to you. All of that goes double for Humanity checks and Humanity gain rolls. (more…)
Hoy, 🙂
Do note the three radically different green endings, but note also the three equally different red endings.
There’s four red boxes, but one of them isn’t an ending, and really, it shouldn’t be red at all. 🙂
Cheers,
J.
Hoy, 🙂
I present to you Master of Illusions, a “new” RPG by Simon C.
The first comment, written by the very author of the game, is particularly enlightening…
Cheers,
J.
Hello, 🙂
So, while reading a random (yet rather heavy) thread on Anyway, I came across a link to Play Passionately.
It’s sort of a mini-blog by Jesse Burneko in which he waxes poetically about how he likes to play RPGs.
Thing is, it’s a lot more than that. It is, in fact, a high-density wisdom container.
It’s short enough that you can read it from the top all the way through in about an hour or so. If you’re interested in role-playing at all, I strongly urge you to do so.
Recently, I played a mildly successful game of PTA. As play goes, it wasn’t un-fun, but it was far from the hallmark of awesome I know I can get from PTA. One of the players said she didn’t really like the game at all. Her character “did things she would never do”.
At the time, I didn’t really understand what she was talking about.
Now, I do.
Cheers,
J.
Hoy, 🙂
In case anyone cares, The West is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Portugal license.
Cheers,
J.
Hey, all, 🙂
So, a friend of mine had an interesting game design insight, the other day, and I had my own insight to add above his.
I posted the whole shebang at The Forge, here: the Competitive Story Overlay.
Check it out and tell me what you think. 🙂
Cheers,
J.
Hoy, 🙂
So, after a two-year absence over at the Forge, I started a new Actual Play discussion there:
[3.x/4e] Encounter XPs are not a reward, they are a pacing mechanism
I could have posted it here, but I’d rather tap into their collective wisdom, on this particular topic. 🙂
Cheers,
J.