Frak, Frel and Other "F" Words

With the narrative thrust resolve, I then turn to the actual "adventure" itself. The current plan calls for at least five sessions (although, knowing my luck, it's more likely going to be 6 to 8.) Right now, I've split up each planned session according to the characters involved:

Now that I have all of the planned characters for this, I've officially started working on actual planning for this. A GURPS: Monster Hunters game that is set in the Dresden Files universe (albeit located here in OKC), I'm planning on trying something slightly different (and potentially game-breaking if this blows up in my face) wherein I'm going to be intentionally not having the characters be in a group until the climax. This is definitely going to be something of an experiment to see if I can actually pull this off, but I've got a decent game plan, I think.

Evidently, they've changed how they operate and no longer allow me to use their damned service the way it's always worked. Unless I pay them, of course. So all of my Obsidian Portals sites that refer to the images there are thoroughly broken. Clearly, I must now upload all of those images to my own site and hotlink from there, which means my time with Photobucket is rapidly nearing an end.

One of my players has two characters - looking at doing the troupe kind of play - and finally got around to finalizing his second one. He is going to be a wizardly type but will not a dedicated combat mage. You won’t see him hurling fireballs or calling lightning. What he does is more subtle – by altering probability and utilizing discreet illusions, he will no doubt be a very dangerous foe. Curiously, technology does not seem to hate him like it does other White Council mages, which indicates there is definitely more to him than meets the eye. (This requires an Unusual Background.) Have discussed making Serendipity a "sorcery power" - normally, it costs 15/level, however if we apply Sorcery (-15%) and Karma (-20%), this would come to 10 pts/level. With Karma, we would use the Distortion Points thing from Thaumatology p193 which works like Paradox; each time he activates Serendipity, he gains a Distortion Point and once he has 3, he would begin rolling against that number wh...

In the ConsOps game (which is just GURPS: Action!), we have a Wheelman and it occurred to me that a neat scenario could exist wherein the PC in question ends up being the driver in some big race (Grand Prix, of course.) Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything that really fits rules for this.

Took my pistol to the range this a.m. and put a couple hundred rounds though it (225, to be precise.) While my miserable shot grouping isn't the subject of this post - clearly, I only have a single point in Guns (Pistol) - what did occur to me is how frequently I lost track of the bullet count and was momentarily surprised when my magazine was empty. This led me to thinking: how is it that PCs in a RPG are able to know exactly how many rounds they actually have fired? In an Ultra Tech situation, that's easy - an ammo counter might display this, ala the M41A Pulse Rifle of Aliens fame or perhaps the character has a HUD running that tells him this - but in a more modern society? I spent four years in the Army as an infantryman and even in a carefully controlled environment like a gun range, I lose track of my count. In GURPS: Tactical Shooting , there's a bit about Situational Awareness on page 11 that remarks simply that the game presumes everyone is aware of things that...

Went ahead and signed up for The Great Courses Plus  because I'm a big ass nerd and have been watching the King Arthur lectures, what with me actually running an Arthurian game and all. It's pretty much what I'd expected - basically an examination of the literary history of Arthur with one lecture on what the most likely historical character (Ambrosius Aurelianus and/or Riothamus, who may be the same person) before then mostly focusing on the various literature that padded out the myth. Still, it's fascinating to me. Not sure what I'll be watching next. Would actually like something on Charlemagne, honestly...

By now, we've all (presumably) seen  Rogue One.  It was, mostly, unnecessary in the grand scheme of things but still managed to be pretty awesome. The Battle of Scarif was flat out fantastic, but it led me to thinking ... what about this?

In our Friday game, we're playing D&D 5E with a relatively new GM, with a fascinating campaign concept: the PCs are legendary heroes pulled from the past to deal with a great threat ... unfortunately, they were pulled from the timestream before they could become the legends. I decided that I would play a Paladin but wanted to do something slightly different and came up with a concept: the Traitor-Knight. Essentially, in his past-future, he would go on to become reviled by most of the populace due to his siding with the losers of the inevitable war that leads to the current status quo. But that's not what this post is really about. Instead, I wanted to throw out some interesting musings on Holy Knights like this.

So, Here's the current thinking with regards to the adventure itself.

First, ST:D is kind of a terrible abbreviation. They didn't think that one through. Second, I have low expectations for this simply because it's CBS. Third, I must admit that I kind of like these uniforms...

As stated earlier, watching "The Pacific" and "13 Hours" has me thinking about a quasi-realistic siege scenario for the Action! game that we occasionally play on Saturdays. In both of those references, mortar fire plays a pretty big role - heck, one of the Main Characters in "The Pacific" is a mortar-man. So how does this work exactly?

Over the last couple of days, I watched "The Pacific" mini-series on Amazon ... as a massive fan of "Band of Brothers," I always meant to watch this but when it originally came out, I didn't have HBO and then, it just fell off my radar. Having seen it now, I will say that, overall, I still prefer BoB but will acknowledge that "The Pacific" is still really, really good. Episode 6, for example, is incredibly intense and the crap that the Marines went through during those campaigns ... wow. Just horrible. That said, it certainly made me think about how to replicate a lot of this sort of thing in RPGing. The big thing that immediately comes to mind are the stakes: in these sorts of movies, machine guns mow down characters willy-nilly, artillery and mortar fire tear apart bodies, and snipers take people out without warning ... if a player spends an hour or more (for example) creating a character, complete with awesome (or heck, less than awesome) backstor...

Wow. That was really  bad. In pretty much every way, I strongly disliked this episode. I don't want to say that I hated it but ... I think I kind of did. The plot was all over the place - don't get me started on my continuing dislike of Orlando Jones as Mister Nancy; terrible casting, IMO - and the directing was even worse. Eostre taking away spring until it is prayed for? Uh ... she did no such thing in the book and her role was honestly just to bring Shadow back after the vigil. None of what they're doing makes any sense to me ... is Shadow not going to spend any time in Cairo? What about Bast? Is he not going to end up in Lakeview? Show started out really well ... I just wish they'd stuck closer to the freaking book as written.

Wonder Gal has reported for duty on my desk. Much bigger than expected; clearly must get an equivalent Cav-El statue to go with her...

Yeah. I backed it.

Interesting thought for the actual "siege" itself: do use Mass Combat, but for the Significant Actions part, run a 10-15 second tactical firefight involving just the PCs as they do something ... well ... something significant (e.g., "Oh, shit! They're setting up mortars!") In this way, each "wave" of bad guys would represent a single Mass Combat round. Principally, though, a lot of this is going to deal with "ammunition conservation" ... I've reviewed the Mass Combat book again to see if it actually includes that sort of component already since being low on ammo is a common trope in both cinema and real life, but haven't found anything. May have to crowd-source that on the GURPS boards... Using the 13 Hours movie as an example, then: Mass Combat Round 1: Hostiles conduct a zerg rush. PCs defend. Mass Combat Round 2: Hostiles shift tactics slightly, then intend to use a big ass bomb inside a bus. PCs engage bus, cause it to blow ...

Something else occurred to me with this: one of the players in the RPG group where I'd run this has an "Action!" scenario he calls "The Ship of Death" which he started running once before that game fell through that basically involves a group of highly skilled bad asses trying to retake a container ship from Somali pirate types. He did a lot of research on such vessels and has a bunch of ready made maps. I could repurpose that as part of the "faux bin Laden" (hereafter referred to FBL) raid ... so the container ship is the target of the Raid that takes place in the second (or third, depending) session. This could then naturally lead back to the actual siege, with the followers of "FBL" trying to recover him following the successful raid... Something to ponder, anyway.

Purchased a pair of cardboard standing desks that arrived today. Figured I'd spend $50 now just to see if I like it. If I do, then I'll look into dropping the $250+ for the much fancier and stable metal one . Definitely had to buy the pad to stand on, though. Yowch.

Today was fricking perfect. Mid to upper 80s, light breeze, sunny ... yeah. I took the bike to the river even though I rode it yesterday and the day before. Would have gone for extra distance but one of my cleats was coming loose and I left the Allen wrench at the office...

Follow-up thought on the GURPS: ConsOps siege idea. I could also combine the bin Laden raid into this as well. Maybe with the following sequence of events: PCs start out as prisoners, must escape and are pointed to the black site. PCs reach the black site, almost assault it before getting waved off & learning that this is a CIA annex. Upon entering the annex & dealing with the Obstructive Bureaucrat in charge. Learn that the Team (Delta, so at least one PC is affiliated with them) is going to conduct a raid to capture a Big Bad. Some of the PCs join this raid ... or maybe have to go in after the Raid goes bad due to poor intel. They return with the bin Laden analog. Following the Raid, the Siege begins as the bad guys try to retrieve and/or kill the bin Laden dude to prevent him from spilling the beans.

So, rewatched most of "13 Hours" this weekend and led me to thinking about how to do a scenario like that as an RPG. Our Saturday group has an Action! spy game called Consular Operations (where I'm playing a blatant ripoff of Phil Coulson using the Investigator template) and it occurred to me that I could maybe spin up the scenario using them. My current thinking is to basically the following: Begin in media res  with most PCs captured by some bad guys? How did they get caught? Who cares? Quinn (my PC) is off being tortured for information (so as to explain why he's not active later in the scenario.)  One PC (randomly determined) managed to elude the bad guys and must rescue the other PCs. Might be interesting if other Players run the appropriate mooks. Intel recovered points to a compound (of sorts) in a nearby city with indications that this has the potential of being a mass casualty event but intel should also be wildly incomplete, so no intel agency would a...

Star Trek Beyond is on Amazon Prime ... had forgotten how much I actually enjoyed this movie. Best of the three nuTrek flicks. Despite being more of an action movie than any TOS story, it still somehow manages to feel a lot more like a TOS tale. If they'd just started with this instead of the first movie, I think I might have been on board with nuTrek a lot more more...

So, finally caught up with the show - was two episodes behind - and man, the Vulcan episode really irritated me because of how heavy handed it was with regards to their (Hollywood) politics. I've read the book (just finished re-reading it the other day, actually) and there is no equivalent scene whatsoever in the book. I mean, "Mexican Jesus murdered by Americans upon illegally crossing the border?" Vulcan's nonsensical "each time there's a shoot-out in a theater, it's a prayer" bullshit? I thought the whole Mr. Nancy (Anasasi) rant about the tribulations of blacks earlier this season was already wildly OOC, but ugh ... I'm enjoying the show but every time they pull this kind of left-wing political bullshit, I have to fight the urge to just give up.

Been a while since I actually commented on this. Overall, I haven't lost any progress, really, although I have kind of stalled out at my current weight (which right now, is ~230-235, depending on the day, what I've eaten, whether I've biked, etc.) I did kind of spike back up to around 240 for a bit, but I'm work back down from that again (weighed in at 232 this morning, even though I kind of splurged yesterday on food.) Ideally, I'd like to actually drop another 10 to 15 lbs before GenCon to get around 215-220, but I have my doubts there. I haven't had a lot of those "super crazy long" bike rides like I did earlier, but that's at least partially due to fact that I put on new pedals that require specialized shoes with cleats that clip-in ... and this makes driving in traffic an exercise in suicide management. Thus, I've been hitting the river track and going for 12-24 miles (depending on whether I do both sides of the river, or just one.) Th...

Primary IT/Support guy is out for vacation - he left around 1300 yesterday - which means I get to cover for him and already for the next week, I'm sick to death of his job. I need to play and win the lottery so I can buy a walled compound in Costa Rica patrolled by armed monkeys.

This is kind of horrifying. Aydin goes over the "disorientation" manual handed out to new students at Evergreen college and good lord, these people are insane. If I'd been given this when I first went to OCU, I would have promptly withdrawn and sought a different college. NSFW due to some salty language.

Saw this on social media - specifically Instagram - and immediately got my hopes up. I would really like to see a crossover of some sort here, like maybe having Phil Coulson show up very briefly in an "end credits" thing for Defenders, maybe talking with Rosario Dawson's character (whose name inexplicably eludes me at the moment.) It could be so awesome...

The primary IT/support guy for the office is going on vacation today - leaving at 13:00 - and will be gone all of next week. This means I have the wonderful task of being in around 08:00 and, on probably at least 4 out of the 6 working days, will have to be here until 18:00 (or later, depending on what's going on.) Because nothing is more fun than 10-hour (plus) work days. Is it August yet? Because I really need to go on vacation...

So, a Bernie Bro intentionally went hunting for Republicans. To no one's surprise, the media is actively trying to avoid acknowledging they're at least partially responsible for this kind of bullshit with their "get Trump!" mindset that anyone with half a brain can see.

Old interview but a good one. I'm consistently impressed with Rubin who claims to be a liberal disgusted at the "regressive left" but strikes me more as a libertarian. And Milo is always fun to listen to.

This is my current GenCon schedule. As you can see, it's pretty packed. This will be the fourth time I've gone to GenCon but the first time I've had anything resembling a schedule. I wanted to work in a Dresden Files Fate game (may have, actually; the Dweomer By Gaslight game on Saturday is ostensibly a Dresden game in the 1800s, but I'm not sure if it's using Fate or not) just to get a feel for the game. I'm especially pleased to be in the Night's Dark Agents game (think Dracula Meets Jason Bourne) on Thursday ...

Right. So, despite me planning a bit for the Jade Regent GURPS game I'll be running on Saturdays (not sure when), I really have to do some planning for the Friday "Red Sky" game (GURPS Monster Hunters set in the Dresden Files universe.) I've mostly got the next story arc - Clean Slate - plotted out, so that's fine. The issue revolves around a new player to the group and his character. Right now, we're leaning toward him basically being (in Feng Shui terms) a "karate cop" with hints of Iron Fist in his backstory. As is always the case in cinematic types like this, I thought it would be appropriate if the PC was trained from an early age, but then abandoned his family's teachings because he "wants to be normal." And then, Fate finds him and drags him back into the mess. Stats-wise, I'm currently looking at using the the Police Detective template from GURPS: Mysteries atop the Dragon-Man Kung Fu template from Martial Arts, except d...

The GM, Mark, has listened to some of this and is already freaking out over his constant use of "You know." Will be interesting to see if he overcompensates next week...

Went ahead and reserved a SUV rental today for GenCon. I have no desire to drive my car, not with three other people in it. Was also reminded I kind of needed to get official four-day parking at GenCon, so that's another charge. Thank God for credit cards, I guess. Have a pretty packed schedule with some games I've never tried. Night's Dark Agents on Thursday, a handful of (hopefully) helpful seminars on Friday, Earthdawn and a Dresden game on Saturday, and Fading Suns on Sunday. Interestingly, I've also scheduled a couple of martial arts types of things, including a Intro to Tai Chi which is funny 'cause I'm about as non-flexible as they come. Interesting times ahead...

I forgot to blog again. I swear, I don't understand how really prolific bloggers are capable of maintaining that. So, what's up with me? Not much. Took a vacation last week that ended in disaster (intended on camping for 4 or 5 days, but came home after one for a variety of reasons.) Visited the doctor for 6 month "you've been on blood pressure meds" checkup, which led to urologist who eventually said I was fine ... even though I've got a persistent recurring pain in my abdomen (left side.) Weight hasn't dropped adequately, though above-mentioned vacation didn't help as I kind of splurged and am now trying to force myself back on the proverbial wagon. Work still sucks. Still planning to attend GenCon. Desperately need that vacation... Going to be running a GURPS conversion of the Pathfinder adventure path, "Jade Regent" (although I 'm actually going to start with elements from their very first adventure path, "Rise of the Runel...