You're My Very Best Friend It's True

"Bert! Bert! Oh Bert! You've got to come outside, and check out this cool new RPG Bert! It is fantastic!"

"Ernie, not now. I'm reading about my favorite RPG, OK? Maybe later."

"Bert, you're reading a RPG book? What game is it?"

"Oh just the best game ever. See - Pigeons and Pedestrian Walkways!"

"Pedestrian Walkways Bert?"

"Yeah, it's..."

"What are Pedestrian Walkways Bert?"

"What? Oh, sidewalks. It's a game where you play Pigeons trying to find crumbs and having adventures up and down sidewalks all over the city. Doesn't it sound great! Exploring all these long, grey, flat areas of stone and concrete. Oh and get this! If you advance in level to High Arch-Pigeon you can explore Mega-Pedestrian Walkways!"



"Mega-Sidewalks? You can look around really, really long sidewalks Bert?"

"I know! I can hardly wait to play. Ernie, would you like to play?"

"Umm...maybe later Bert but I need to get back outside. Telly, Elmo, Big Bird, Snuffy, Zoe, Rosita, a bunch of kids and grown ups and now even Super Grover 2.0, Cookie and Oscar are playing the um...the other game I was going to tell you about."

"Oh. Wow, that's...that's a lot of people."

"You're welcome to come Bert."

"...yeah, I can finish this later. After all, if my best friend thinks it's worth checking out, I should at least check it out."

"Thanks Bert. You're my best friend too. We'll play your game next."

"Thanks Ernie."

"Can I be a Ranger/Dragon Slayer Pigeon with magic armor and a +5 backscratcher?"

"We'll see."

...

Just a quick post to remind everyone of the importance of Relationships and Routines in the Sesame Street RPG.

I don't think I need to retell the mechanics but I would make a note on style. Where as the Muppet Show take on this is sort of 60/40 Routine to Relationship and the Gorch version is 70/30 Relationship to Routine, I imagine Sesame Street's view would be almost 50/50. That is, the two are really connected more closely. Ernie and Elmo meet, sing together and have fun but they don't have Routines with reoccurring themes the way Ernie and Bert do. If you check out old episodes you'll notice a strong Relationship between Grover and Kermit. Grover and Mr. Johnson (aka 'Fat Blue') illustrate a nice use of an Anything Muppet in the creation of a Relationship Routine (Charlie's Restaurant sketches).

Another quick Saturday note...I don't think I actually defined the rules for Humans in Sesame Street games. My idea is that if something can be handled by the PC's 'Trait' you would roll the number of dice connected to the attribute. If the task relates to a 'Skill' the character should use that number. If a Trait can help a Skill then add the number of dice in the Trait as a modifier to the Skill roll results.

For Example:

Susan is Smart. Why as a matter of fact, we'll say she's Smart-2. If she needs to figure something out she rolls two dice. Susan also has the Skill Teach-4. If she wants to teach something to Elmo she rolls four dice. Since being Smart is related to Teaching, Susan can add +2 (the number of dice she has in the Trait Smart) to the results of her Teach roll.

So what might have been 2, 3, 4 and 6 are now 4, 5, 6 and 8! Nice job Susan. Elmo finally gets punctuation.

Have A Sunny Day Everyone!

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Muppet Quotes

Bert: Ernie? Ernie, come here... did I just make a complete fool of myself?
Ernie: [patting Bert's shoulder] Absolutely, Bert.

Here's A Sesame Street News Flash!

Bert and Ernie Trivia!

Bert is considered to be 'older' then Ernie, though not by much.
Bert's pet pigeon is named Bernice.

Bert wears a shirt with vertical strips to visually reinforce his uptight nature.
Ernie wears horizontal strips because they appear more relaxed.

Ernie appears without Bert (alone or with another character) far more often than Bert appears without Ernie.

A common rumor is that Bert and Ernie are named for the cop and mailman in the film, 'It's A Wonderful Life', though Henson and company has always said it's merely a coincidence.