Up In The Air

As of this moment, this very moment right here, I have no idea what I am running this Saturday.

My girlfriend is unavailable to hang out with in the evening as her parents are visiting from out of town (out of the country to be more precise), so I have the option of running a looong session for the first time in almost two months. Can't wait.

Um...can't wait to figure out what it'll be a session of. Let's Vote! Should I run...Fantasy, Science-Fiction or Superheroes? Which should I do? What would be my personal choice? What will my players prefer? OMG! The suspense is killing me.

AD

Barking Alien

PS: It has been brought to my attention by some in the blogosphere (you know, the zenith of all cultural, social and philosophical understanding) that I may well be a nerd who occasionally vents my feelings about things. Wow. I did not know this. My life is enriched by this revelation. Thank you for this gift of enlightenment. So...on to why I despise licorice...

Blues Traveller

Great minds?

For the better part of the day I've been thinking about posting about Traveller. Low and behold, I come home to find I am not the only one with 'Science Fiction Adventure in the Far Future' on the brain. Even the subject of the post is similar. I am surely in good company.

Onward...

I have been feeling at odds with myself over what to game.

I want/need to get back to my Champions game, I am running my Empowered/M&M 3E game Fridays nights* and I am supposed to be running a Smurfs campaign at my FLGS 'The Compleat Strategist' but an erratic weekend schedule has prevented me from running anything after the first adventure.

I feel the desire to run fewer games and therefore have more time to dedicate to the ones I am running. In addition, I haven't run Science Fiction or Fantasy for a while and those two genres have been at war in my heart and head quite a bit recently.

Now for Fantasy I would like to return to my D&D-But-Not system and setting which, to be quite honest, is more like a medieval Superheroes RPG. I do love that world and the rather unusual nature of adventuring there and it is comic book-like enough to also support my continued fascination with Supers.

For Science Fiction, as much as I loves me some Star Trek (and I do loves me some Star Trek), I would be really excited to get back to Traveller.

Traveller and I have a rocky relationship. I love it but didn't always. I would venture to say that even though it is a favorite of mine now, I probably don't run it 'right'. As I have grown up and Science and Science Fiction have evolved, so too has my view of the Traveller RPG and it's universe. Combine this with my love of Anime and video game imagery and you get a Traveller that may not appeal to a lot of the classic and traditionalist fans of the game.

Nowadays, when I think Traveller, I mostly think of Mass Effect...




While I don't see the two as identical to each other, I see Mass Effect in my mind when I am describing a lot of things in my Traveller games. When playing Mass Effect and/or its sequel, I also start thinking about running Traveller.

While not my favorite starship design ever, the Normandy is definitely what I think of when I think of a Traveller ship. The aliens, while not exactly Traveller aliens, are still somehow Traveller-like to me. Same thing with the weapons and equipment. Many of these things are not in the classic Traveller RPG but I feel like they belong. They should be there. They are there in many of my games.So if I take inspiration from the overall look and feel of Mass Effect, combine it with images by the legendary futurist Syd Mead, drop in some of the politics and pathos of Dune mixed with Babylon Five (before it went down hill) and added a dash or two of A. E. Van Vogt's Voyage of the Space Beagle, I think I'd have the Sci-Fi, space adventure, hard-space opera game I am looking for.

That's Traveller to me.

Crazy huh?

AD
Barking Alien

*I'll discuss the details on that continuing experiment another time.

Fantasy Versus Science Fiction - Unfair Fight?

A good friend of mine has brought it to my attention that my recent series of 'Fantasy Versus Science-Fiction' posts, originally a way to air my thoughts on which of the two I should run next, have amounted to little more than D&D/Old School Medieval Fantasy RPG bashing.

Such was not my intention, nor do I 100% agree that that's what they are, yet at the same time I must concede that by putting thoughts to screen as it were, those thoughts do come up. I can't deny that I am not a big fan of D&D and the type of Fantasy it covers but since I don't run the game in the typical way I should have probably changed the nature of my comparisons. Perhaps.

Tell me what you guys think? Unfair portrayal or spot on observations? D&D bashing or honest gaming fan speaking his mind?

Inquiring minds want to know. I want to know.

AD
Barking Alien

8 Days until The Muppets. I hope I can make it without exploding in joy first.

Fantasy Versus Science Fiction...Heroes - Made or Born?

My good friend, fellow gamer geek and 1999 'National Welcoming Bear Hug Champion' Allen Ravenfeast for the rest of you mugs) brought up an interesting idea in the comments of one of my previous posts. Essentially, he postulated that Fantasy characters are generally larger-than-life heroes (or anti-heroes when appropriate) but Science Fiction characters are just people in space doing their job.

Now there is some validity to this to be sure. Elric of Melnibone' has several elements to his story that make him unique amoung his people and his people special to his world as a whole. A young King Arthur draws Excalibur from the stone because he is not just some shmoe but the rightful king of all England. Even the beloved Fafhrd and Gray Mouser are unusual individuals with particular talents that set them apart from the average citizen walking the streets of Lankhmar.



Now in Science Fiction, very often, the individuals can be just as unique and special but more often seem to simply be regular people in the right place at the right time (or wrong place at the wrong time in some cases).

Louis, Teela and Speaker-to-Animals are not especially gifted or unusual individuals in their setting of Larry Niven's Known Space, yet they become heroes in the Ringworld story. Certainly Mr. Spock is an unusal individual at the time of the original series, a half Vulcan, half Human hybrid but is Leonard McCoy gifted in anyway that is abnormal from the rest of Humanity? How about Scotty? Uhura? What about Ripley and the crew of the Nostromo in Alien? Gulliver Foyle from Bester's The Stars My Destination? Foyle is amazingly clever and skillful in his attempt to enact revenge on those who he felt left him to die but before being galvanized by that concept he was quite the opposite of special.




Now here's where it gets dicey...when you add dice of course...

****

Whenever I here the old schooler talk character creation, sorry, character generation, the idea is you are not making a large-than-life hero per se. Rather, D&D seems to learn toward making a character who is quite average or even a bit inept. Nothing wrong with that. Some of my favorite Fantasy characters are largely inept at the get-go. Bilbo, Frobo, Schmendrick the Magician and The Mouse (Matthew Broderick) in Ladyhawke all begin pretty wimpy.

I ask you though...when you sit down to play D&D or it's related games, is that who you want to be. Is that what you're gunning for? I am sure some of you are and I'd even go so far as to say many are at least once in a while. But wouldn't you, generally speaking, rather be playing a character like Conan, Lancelot or Jon Snow of A Game of Thrones.

So I suppose this entry into my 'Versus' series is more one of query than personal opinion.

Should Fantasy PC generation create your average commoner turned adventurer or hero of legend? Why not have options for both? *

Are Science-Fiction PCs just the run of the mill, average joes of the far future? Do you think they are automatically destined for greatness? How so?

And while we're at it, you'll notice I try (though I'm sure I don't always remember and succeed) to avoid using Star Wars as an example. To me Star Wars is a blend of the two and therefore not so useful in a discussion of one vs. the other.

AD
Barking Alien

*I do it in my D&D-But-Not game.

Fantasy Versus Science Fiction...Changes of Scenery

In all likelihood, you'll start your journey through a world of Medieval Fantasy here...

It is in this place that you will learn of great treasures and foul, unnatural beasts living just past the surrounding countryside of...

In a place like so...

If you survive to find wealth and glory, you will likely return to...

To spend your hard won booty and prepare for another adventure.

Now, not all of you, that must be said. For some it will be a frozen wasteland, while others will find themselves in an arid desert.

***

Now in the first adventure in your typical spacefaring Science Fiction game, you could well begin in a bar in a starport city like this one...

From there you will transverse the void and a sea of stars...

In one of these...

To an out of the way place like this...

Here's why I like Sci-Fi over Fantasy and altered the nature of my Fantasy world to accommodate...generally speaking, in most Fantasy settings, if the above places where visited in the first adventure, which lasted, shall we say, three sessions, then it's very likely that in session four or five, you are still there. While you may not be in that particular dungeon or that particular medieval town, you are surely near that forested area and in a town that's very similar or a dungeon not far way.

In a Science-Fiction game however, the planet you're on in session four or five could be a completely different one from that visited in the first adventure. Why, you could even be on one planet in session four and another planet in session five. In the span of the first adventure, which took place on a single planet for sake of argument, you could have travelled from steamy, jungle to a primitive, lake-side settlement to islands in the middle of the ocean thanks to the ease of transport (grav vehicles, spacecraft, transporters, etc.).

As I've brought up before, I have an interest (bordering on obsession) with providing not only interesting locals but significantly diverse environments and terrains for the PCs to encounter. Part of the reason for this is a reaction to my own experiences as a player and going sight seeing on everyone and their brother's Middle Earth. Good lord people! There is a whole planet full of cultures you can draw inspiration from. Why oh why are we still trouncing across Tolkien's backyard? There was more to medieval times then fog and forests. Really there was.

I love providing a serious change of scenery for my players and they usually response positively to it. And, because they are so anything-other-than-Europe deprived, they can be wowed by the simplest things. What I mean is it doesn't have to be overly fantastic. Frozen lakes surrounded by icy tundra, extremely jagged mountain peaks and even being on a ship at sea is enough to get them super jazzed about an adventure. Plus, they never know what they'll see next. Or will they?

As I said this is much easier and more likely in Science-Fiction. New terrains and bizarre locations are not but a hyperjump away.

AD
Barking Alien