Messages

1

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: The Mitchum Cleary Time Loop?

« on: September 09, 2016, 01:46:37 PM »

I'm sorry to dive into an old thread, but a re-listen to Know Evil has me wondering if Mitchum Cleary's fate is as terrible as it seems.  The bank robbed on Luna, was Cleary and Dutch.  So maybe Mitchum's time-traveling escapades left him wealthy enough to found the choice location for storing creepy thermoses and suspicious football helmets post-Fall. 

2

RPGs / Re: First Time Player Campaign

« on: September 10, 2013, 08:35:18 PM »

Oh!  Awesome thank you!

3

RPGs / First Time Player Campaign

« on: September 10, 2013, 05:06:57 PM »

Hey RPPR People!

I've been playing in a D&D 3.5 Game for a short while, and during this campaign something unusual started happening.  Some younger gamers in the gaming shop we play at started sitting in on our sessions.  So far we've had 3 people, all younger than 13 sitting in on our  (PG rated, so far) campaign.  It seems like there was an untapped demand for exposure to D&D!

This gave me the idea of organizing a beginner's campaign of D&D at the game shop.  Take sign-ups, lay some pretty strict ground rules for at-the-table conduct to ensure everyone's treated respectfully, and then find a day to play.  My hope is that this is an opportunity for kids and parents to ask questions about D&D, try it out, and maybe get started playing.

  I sketched an outline for a dungeon-crawl heavy 9 session campaign set on Prospero's Island from the play "The Tempest" so that the tone is appropriate for younger players, and have been brain storming ideas on how to make the game easier for first time players (for example, using 4e rather than 3.5e since I'm more familiar running it, partially making character sheets so that the players have less math to do but still get to create characters, limiting house rules and short cuts as much as possible, stuff like that).

My goal is to try to keep it as simple as possible for the players, so I'm limiting classes and races to the core 3 books.  I've also considered making "player mats" like DM Screens with vital "at-a-glance" information about how to attack in combat, how to roll skill checks, some terminology, stuff like that, with the goal of avoiding a situation where, in order to play every parent has to sink a bunch of money in to buying the books.  I'll have 2 sets of the core 3 books available, as well  as the Monster Manual 2 for reference.

Do any of you have suggestions?  Have you ever ran a game for first time players?  What challenges did you face?  Are there any resources you'd suggest?

4

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: The RPPR Know Evil Fan Creation Contest

« on: May 11, 2013, 03:41:12 AM »

"A Great Idea that I Will Not Do"

In Episode 14, where the team plans the heist of the Cleary and Dutch bank, Drew made the suggestion that the episode could be made better by intercutting it with the audio from the actual heist.  Ross, rightfully, dismissed the idea.  I decided to take up the challenge and created this mash up of the two episodes.  While most of my posts have been jokes or ideas I had and just wanted to share, this project was my own little labor of love for "Know Evil" and this contest!

Enjoy!

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3QMJB0VxhOTdXlldm1oRWR2NzQ/edit?usp=sharing

5

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: The RPPR Know Evil Fan Creation Contest

« on: May 11, 2013, 12:24:32 AM »

Timely Tuna!!  YES!!

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Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: The RPPR Know Evil Fan Creation Contest

« on: April 20, 2013, 06:59:31 PM »

This is a little drawing I've been wanting to make since I listened to the Eclipse Phase Annual.

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Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: The RPPR Catchphrase, In-joke, and Obscure Reference Appreciation Station

« on: April 20, 2013, 03:18:02 PM »

After listening to "Know Evil" and the "Heroes of New Arcadia" I noticed how much Tom loves making fun of Detroit.  Example from Episode 14 of Know Evil when the PCs have just returned from PCR in time for Fall Day featuring images from pre-Fall Earth and Post-Fall Earth "Well that picture of Detroit looks pretty much the same"

8

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: The RPPR Know Evil Fan Creation Contest

« on: March 26, 2013, 10:19:01 PM »

A tribute to my favorite Caleb-ism!

9

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: The RPPR Know Evil Fan Creation Contest

« on: March 17, 2013, 05:02:53 PM »

Welp, here's my entry.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/blmisxv24rugqvx/See%20No%20Evil.mp3

And the lyrics:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Mcm-OG30kG8Kncd4GPmDBo7U9cnPbd9EkDSx2WF2658/edit?usp=sharing

Wow that was awesome.  To be honest I never gave much thought to what it would be like to be infected with Know Evil, since I imagined it as screaming forever.  But the speaker seems to have finally resigned himself to his fate and that lead me to the think "What would an insane mind unable to sense anything think about?".   

10

RPGs / Re: Eclipse Phase

« on: March 17, 2013, 04:47:51 PM »

The trouble I have with Geoffrey Miller's concern regarding Chinese eugenics is  the idea of "perfection" on an individual or societal basis pushes against the increasing specialization of expertise that is driving global economic growth.

To wit: when you focus on an idea of racial or genetic perfection, you risk excluding genetically imperfect people who can still advance society.  Call it the "Sherlock Holmes Effect" if you like.  You take someone who, under different circumstances, would be shoved to the margins of society to wallow or suffer, and find a way to take their skills, habits, perspectives, ect to better use. 

A good example of this is the deeper understanding of Autism Spectrum Disorder.  The nature of this disorder is such that the autistic individual sees the world and thinks about it in a distinctly different way than non-autistic individuals.  The society that can find a role for people who do not see the world in the same way and funnel that into productive activity is the society that has saved itself the tremendous expense and struggle to weed these "imperfections" out of the genetic pool.

Now and going into the future we have a great opportunity to take advantage of this approach since we no longer subscribe to ideas that imperfection on a genetic or biological level is indicative of some sort of sinfulness, weakness, or impurity.  We also accept that someone can be poorly socialized in a particular field, and still be intelligent, successful, or valuable. 

We have lost our center, as a society, for perfection, and this will make us stronger. 

11

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: The RPPR Know Evil Fan Creation Contest

« on: February 24, 2013, 07:50:19 PM »

Here is my submission.  It is a speech that Singh gives after the gang has left the swarm and he is restored from back up.

http://traffic.libsyn.com/proseandverse/Singhs_Speech.mp3

To download right click and select "Save Link As..."


The text is below if you would like to read it.
[spoiler]
"Message received!"
"Decrypting... "

"Decryption complete!"

"Play it for me."

"Brothers and sisters of the swarm.  This is Sing.  We have much to discuss. 
As you can tell I have been restored from backup and was briefed on the events that have transpired since. 

Brothers and sisters, we were the victims of incivility these past few weeks.  Our openness, our trust and friendship was betrayed by a group of mysterious ne’er do wells who, it seemed, had their own, selfish interests at heart.

 The devastation they've left in their wake is severe, I will not argue that.  But many of you remember hard days at the beginning, and those that do not, this will be the trial you will tell people about. 
You will tell them how, when the swarm seemed lost, when all hope had seemed stolen away you found a way to do your part.  You will say to new comers, this is the swarm that I re-built.  This is the swarm that is stronger because of me.  This is the swarm that will live through anything, and has.
I will be clear and open about our challenges, because you deserve nothing less.  Our travel plans relied on the salvage of the engines from the La Prophesia.  Despite the bravery and professionalism of Boy Toy and We Come to Probe You, the op was sabotaged and the La Prophesia lost. 

However we were given a break when we took on our most controversial compatriot to date.  Many of you were aware that by allowing Kaleed on to the swarm it provided the necessary credits to get us back to our cycling orbit however his murder has made that plan untenable, and we are back where we were with the loss of the La Prophesia.  While I celebrate the death of a genocidal war criminal as much as any of you, we must now contend with the position we are in. 
We are now relying on our own momentum to push us, not in the direction we want to go but the direction we need to go.  All was not in vain though: during the salvage we did gather enough credits to keep the swarm running.

 However until we can start cycling again the fabbers need to be restricted use only, power will, also, have to be conserved throughout the swarm for a time being, and travel between ships will have to be limited to “restricted travel only”, otherwise we may not have enough fuel to allow us to start cycling again.  I have sent you all the details of the plan and the militias role in it ("Ding!"), tomorrow at noon the vote will take place to implement this policy.  I know this will be difficult to vote for, but I trust you all to make the right decision, and I ask that you trust me with the safety of the swarm.

Now, we pick up the pieces of our lives and struggle to patch them together into something space worthy.  We are all tempted to give in to the same selfishness that was shown to us.  This is a mistake.  We must continue to do what we have always done to those who are threatened by our independent way of life.
 Rise above them. 

Just as we have with the hypercorps that try and indenture us, the ego hunters that try to kill us, and the uptight credit jockeys that litter this system, hate us solely for our reputation.  What do we do when we face these threats, even greater threats than those posed by this gang of cowardly thugs?  We rise above them.   So we will continue on broken, but unbowed, floating but not adrift, never adrift.  We know just where we are heading, to the future!"

"Message Complete"
[/spoiler]

12

RPGs / Re: Eclipse Phase

« on: February 23, 2013, 02:30:30 AM »

One of the things that I keep thinking about when listening to Eclipse Phase APs is how the infugee population might be used in the study of social sciences.

One of the problems with the study of Economics, Political Science, International Relations and even Game Theory, is that only history is your laboratory.  We would not know what would have happened had politician X not adopted Policy Y during this crisis or that war.  There is no control group in history. 

However, having a population of infugees hanging out in a purgatorial simulspace server, hoping for a chance to be useful enough to merit a case morph, gives the perfect laboratory for a mad social scientist.

Some of the ways I see it playing out are:
1) A simple experiment about a particular economic theory.  You set up two identical servers with one difference in how the economy works and watch them play out in accelerated time.

2) You keep restarting, by erasing the memories of the infugees tinkering with your economic system to make it perfect.  Maybe an Andrew Ryan from Bioshock type, desperately trying to bring Atlas Shrugged to life. 

3) You could re-stage historical conflicts.  Maybe force the infugees to keep reliving The Fall, trying to figure out just what kind of weapon could have halted the TITANs, what tactic might have saved more of transhumanity, or  if the controversial nuking of the Huairen Air Base slowed the TITANs or was solely an act of Western aggression. 

3a) Or maybe the hyper-elite CEO of one of the major military contractors that designed the TITANs copes with his guilt by becoming eerily obsessed with some other war.  He has is secret server of infugees that he saved from TITAN upload and treats it like his own private war miniature set.  Forcing the infugees to refight the Battle of Yorktown, The Somme,  D-Day, or General Scharzkopf's feint during the First Gulf War. 

The idea is take your mad scientist archetype and apply it to something we cannot scientifically test, but could if we could create perfectly controlled worlds.  It takes the idea that we could learn so much if we could just do horrible things to people and uses infugees to stand in for the knee-jerk hate that most players have toward slavery and the like.

I like this idea. It sound like an especially good way to introduce new player to the setting. Run them through a Fall wargame, one where they can "win," then dump them out of the simulspace into AF 10 to learn the horrifying truth. It could get them used to the mechanics and simpler tech before dropping the heavy transhumanism on them.

Also, because I like to torture players, I'd have it so that the main criticism of the simulspace historical exercises is that their findings aren't applicable to the real world. The criticism that the variables aren't controlled or simulated accurately enough really can't be refuted; the problem in the first place is that reality is largely unquantifiable itself.

However, what if one ego always rose to the top of every simulation? No matter how many times the historical period was repeated, no matter the conditions, this one personality ended up as a major leader. Would sleeving him into a morph and seeing if he could do the same IRL prove the validity of the simulation? What if a scientist, desperate to secure more funding for his indentured experiments, gave his proof of concept back all the memories wiped away from his previous selves, to secure an edge? You'd have Alexander the Great, Hitler, Jesus, and every other major shaper of world history rolled into one, likely insane, ego.

However, what if one ego always rose to the top of every simulation? No matter how many times the historical period was repeated, no matter the conditions, this one personality ended up as a major leader. Would sleeving him into a morph and seeing if he could do the same IRL prove the validity of the simulation? What if a scientist, desperate to secure more funding for his indentured experiments, gave his proof of concept back all the memories wiped away from his previous selves, to secure an edge? You'd have Alexander the Great, Hitler, Jesus, and every other major shaper of world history
I think that introducing this messiah-type leader figure could be a great exploration of some of the more darkly bureaucratic and political aspects of Eclipse Phase.  I imagine it as sort of Enders Game meets Dr. Strangelove idea:

After years of running various simulations of historical battles Prof. Evil Von Crazy or whatever is losing the support of his patron (a hypercorp, a neo-university, a cyber-thinktank, the LLA, whomever).  He IDs this singular figure whose natural leadership and cunning instincts have turned the tide in many battle-sims.  Additionally, since this leader is time accelerated he has been learning military theory by trial-and-error first hand for decades.  Often leading, what should have been, the losing side to victory (ala Valley Forge, the Battle of Agincort, the defeat of the Spanish Armada). 

So you have this brutal gauntlet that has given rise to an incredible leader, one who, it seems, from testing , could have turned the tide during The Fall.  So what do we do with this EP version of Ender Wiggin, certainly not place him in charge of the various defense forces or security programs.  Instead he is a tool that the various players will use to their own advantage.

13

RPGs / Re: Eclipse Phase

« on: February 17, 2013, 11:05:38 PM »

One of the things that I keep thinking about when listening to Eclipse Phase APs is how the infugee population might be used in the study of social sciences.

One of the problems with the study of Economics, Political Science, International Relations and even Game Theory, is that only history is your laboratory.  We would not know what would have happened had politician X not adopted Policy Y during this crisis or that war.  There is no control group in history. 

However, having a population of infugees hanging out in a purgatorial simulspace server, hoping for a chance to be useful enough to merit a case morph, gives the perfect laboratory for a mad social scientist.

Some of the ways I see it playing out are:
1) A simple experiment about a particular economic theory.  You set up two identical servers with one difference in how the economy works and watch them play out in accelerated time.

2) You keep restarting, by erasing the memories of the infugees tinkering with your economic system to make it perfect.  Maybe an Andrew Ryan from Bioshock type, desperately trying to bring Atlas Shrugged to life. 

3) You could re-stage historical conflicts.  Maybe force the infugees to keep reliving The Fall, trying to figure out just what kind of weapon could have halted the TITANs, what tactic might have saved more of transhumanity, or  if the controversial nuking of the Huairen Air Base slowed the TITANs or was solely an act of Western aggression. 

3a) Or maybe the hyper-elite CEO of one of the major military contractors that designed the TITANs copes with his guilt by becoming eerily obsessed with some other war.  He has is secret server of infugees that he saved from TITAN upload and treats it like his own private war miniature set.  Forcing the infugees to refight the Battle of Yorktown, The Somme,  D-Day, or General Scharzkopf's feint during the First Gulf War. 

The idea is take your mad scientist archetype and apply it to something we cannot scientifically test, but could if we could create perfectly controlled worlds.  It takes the idea that we could learn so much if we could just do horrible things to people and uses infugees to stand in for the knee-jerk hate that most players have toward slavery and the like.

14

RPGs / Re: Eclipse Phase

« on: January 19, 2013, 01:32:38 PM »

The podcast 99% Invisible deals with design and human interaction.  Some of the episodes deal with issues that would come up in a game of EP. 

http://99percentinvisible.org/post/1314197574/episode-07-99-alien-download-embed-share

This episode deals with the design challenges in a zero-G environment.  Mary Roach's book, "Packing for Mars" is covered pretty well here (and is, its self a great resource for challenges in zero-G).  This might pay off in the small details. 


http://99percentinvisible.org/post/3998126463/99-invisible-extra-episode-19x-rjdj-reactive

This episode is about an app called RJDJ that creates musical tracks that react to sound in your environment.  This really got me thinking how Augmented Reality isn't just HUDs and Muses providing info.  The whole sense spectrum can be used to provide information or an enhanced experience.  In fact these other senses are probably better since we are visually-oriented creatures.  It's easy to be distracted if information from your muse is popping up all the time.  But if you have a, say an constants, low music track hooked up to your pulse or brain activity or other vital signs, and that music changes depending on how close you are to destroying your morph.  You can monitor your morph with out distracting from the task at hand.