Messages

16

General Chaos / Re: Delta Green kickstarter

« on: October 26, 2015, 03:06:35 PM »

I assume The Fall of Delta Green will be publicly available in print at some point? Because I'm planning on backing at the $20 level to get the Agent's Handbook pdf, but next year when I actually have a job I would totally be willing to drop $50 on a hardcover copy of an official GUMSHOE Delta Green book.

I had a similar question about the other books.  The short answer is (from Ross on another site) - yes, the books will be available, but the plan is for limited print-runs rather than print-on-demands.  So you'll probably want to snap them up pretty soon after release if at all possible.

Pelgrane has done a 4 for 3 deal on books at their GenCon booth in the past.  Otherwise these books don't really go on sale in my experience. 

17

General Chaos / Re: Costumes and Cosplaying

« on: October 15, 2015, 04:14:25 PM »

Whoa.  That's a cool mask.

With Halloween just a couple weeks away, does anyone have costume plans?

My wife and I are going to a party where the theme is corrupted Disney, or corrupted things in general.  We couldn't think of anything to really go with it (that wasn't too much work) but this morning I was enthusing about the vaporwave recommendations from the latest RPPR episode.  My wife jokes, "You could go as vaporwave for Halloween."

I want to try this.  (No one will get it but I don't really care.) 

Elements I'm thinking about:
- Dated late 80s/90s clothes, mismatched
- a few Japanese characters painted in random spots
- Possibly two cheap Halloween masks melted together
- Sony Walkman and other outdated technology
- hidden portable speakers to actually play vaporwave tracks

Any other thoughts?  What would vaporwave look like to you?

18

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest

« on: October 15, 2015, 01:11:19 PM »

That's awesome!  Thanks for sharing, I think it will make things way easier for my more visual and less number-y players.

19

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest

« on: October 14, 2015, 02:07:56 PM »

After listening to the last Game Designer's Workshop, does anyone have their own playmat that they'd like to share?  That idea (plus keeping track of things with poker chips and/or coins) sounded very cool.

20

General Chaos / Re: What Vidja games are you playing?

« on: October 14, 2015, 02:04:34 PM »

Darkest Dungeon is now on sale on Steam. Will definitely pick it up. Is the soundtrack worth getting too?

EDIT: nevermind, I bought this and boy am I glad I got the soundtrack version - music is excellent.

Did I hear rightly that the latest patch changed some stuff that some people don't like?

I''m not sure if it was the last patch, but Caleb and Ross talked about it on GDW.   You can also see some more .. passionate discussion in the Steam Reviews.  The two changes were Heart Attacks (if your heroes get too mentally stressed, they can simply die from a heart attack) and enemy corpses.  Enemy corpses make it so your melee guys can't attack enemies in the back until they destroy the corpse of defeated enemies.

I just got the game in the Steam sale and the enemy corpse mode seems .. not fun at all.  I'm already thinking of turning it off, which you can do in the options menu. 

I also got Undertale, which is delightful and about as far from Darkest Dungeons as you can get in terms of tone.  We've actually played a lot more Undertale. 

21

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: Caleb is a mad genius (or Yet Another Fan Club Thread)

« on: September 25, 2015, 04:52:01 PM »

Office hours were slow so I combined a saying that Caleb mentions on GDW (very relevant for grad school as well as game design) with a somewhat related cover image.

http://imgur.com/Shm3Nda

22

General Chaos / Re: What Vidja games are you playing?

« on: September 16, 2015, 12:14:45 PM »

What's the ETA on the DG kickstarter? I know I'm going to splurge on some ridiculous high-end pledge level already.

It is suppose to be September some time but the Arc Dream folks are not Pelgrane so I expect some possible wiggle in that schedule. They still have three weeks and for all I know it could have gone live even as we speak.

P.S. - I am quite fond of the Arc Dream folks so no disrespect intended.

Even Pelgrane slipped a bit with the start of the Dracula Dossier KS.  I am super excited for the DG one, but I've been waiting a couple years already...

After getting frustrated with the kinda-sorta real-time combat of Pillars of Eternity, I decided to finally just play X-Com Enemy Unknown for the first time.  It has a very Delta Green-y feel to me - governments versus aliens, casualties expected - and the gameplay is really smooth.

23

RPGs / Re: What system to play "How to train your dragon"

« on: September 08, 2015, 02:33:45 PM »

I was going to say Monsters and Other Childish Things as soon as I read the title.  It has a lot of support for the tone of How to Train Your Dragon (the films, at least - I haven't read the books).  As you note, the kids aren't super powerful by themselves, but the monsters/dragons are.  The relationships are very important and monsters/dragons tend to mess them up without realizing it. 

It also makes it pretty easy to customize your monster/dragon to do what you want.  And it's a really fun game in its own right. 

24

General Chaos / Re: Kickstarter: Cool Stuff

« on: August 28, 2015, 04:10:47 PM »

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2084279113/transreality-new-worlds

A second Transhumanist comic collection from Chris Lackey, half the duo from the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast.  (I suspect between that and the plugs on Ken and Robin Talk about Stuff, many RPPR fans will already be somewhat aware of it.  But just in case..)

I have not read the first one, but I am intrigued by more transhumanist comics.  It's going to be close if it makes it; it's a little over halfway there with only 5 days to go on August 28. 

25

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: Upcoming RPPR One Shot games

« on: August 12, 2015, 01:33:29 PM »

I was looking through "Blood on the Snow", the second Hillfolk book of advice and scenarios and noticed that "Against Hali" seems like it would have a similar emotional feel to the Fallout game described above but with a different setting.  It's about undermining a banal and very stagnant regime with groups of young people and artists, but that creativity/non-conformity risks bringing them into contact with the King in Yellow.

That said, you might want to make some modifications to the setting.  For some reason, I suspect that some of the RPPRegulars might be suspicious of a Carcosa/Hastur connection even in a DramaSystem game..

I do hope you get to run one of these DramaSystem mini-campaigns - from Caleb's Vice reporters to the post-apocalyptic resistance, I think they'd all be pretty great.

26

General Chaos / Re: GenCon 2015 and the 6th Annual RPPR Fan Meet-up: The Edition Wars Edition

« on: August 03, 2015, 04:38:43 PM »

11 new people, actually.  I was carrying a chair during the count for the meet-up newbies.

I really enjoyed the meet-up - I think I mostly talked to Tadanori, FuzzyDan, and Thesauradon while Thad showed people the yellow sign.  Hearing a David story in person was also great. 

The RPPR seminars I went to were all top-notch - Scary Parrots, Education and Games, the GDW Live one, and Beyond Lawful Good and Evil.  I'm looking forward to when the other couple show up online.  My wife, who has never listened to the podcasts, stopped by several of them and enjoyed them as well, especially Education and BLG&E.

As I mentioned on the GroupMe, here are the pictures I took of the banner heading to the Delta Green panel on Thursday night.

http://imgur.com/a/bYlZs

27

RPGs / Re: Red Markets at GenCon/Upcoming Beta

« on: July 27, 2015, 01:35:17 PM »

I saw on twitter that beta links were going out.  I am interested and should be able to run at least a session or two - while not right away, within the 3/4 month timeframe mentioned on the last podcast.

28

General Chaos / Re: What are you reading?

« on: July 13, 2015, 10:46:12 AM »

I just finished reading Planetary.  I was able to get the giant omnibus edition from the library.  It was pretty great.  I'd heard high praise for it in the past and I think it lived up to the hype.  There are a lot of great ideas in it, especially on how to weave existing pulp and superhero stories into a larger narrative.  While I'm sure that I didn't catch them all, the various comic easter eggs throughout were a lot of fun.

I'm trying to finish up Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy now (it's a pretty quick read) and just started Summerland by Michael Chabon.  I was skeptical because of its strong focus on baseball, which I'm not crazy about, but the writing is already pulling me in.

29

General Chaos / Re: GenCon 2015 and the 6th Annual RPPR Fan Meet-up: The Edition Wars Edition

« on: July 13, 2015, 10:38:58 AM »

Ha, it's either a small world or the correlation between Delta Green/RPPR fans is very strong.  Anyways, I was in the Saturday  Blacksat game, played the Navy pilot.  I ended up missing like three of the space-suit operation rolls (in a row) and drifting off into space in the end.  The game included one of my favorite bits of narration for a failed roll, where Stolze turned to me and said, "You do not yet know that your oxygen supply isn't hooked up properly and you have a few minutes of oxygen at most." and then turned to deal with another player while I reflected on that. 

I think we had a 60% survival rate on our run through; both people who went into space died, along with the NPC.  I think at least one of the people on the ship ended up crazy.  My feeling was that it could've gone better if there had been less panic and looking at the thing we weren't supposed to look at.. I did enjoy the scenario, partly because the monster was pretty weird. 

I liked the idea of the tutorial series of missions for DG a lot, with the survivors at the end potentially making your "real" Delta Green cell for a longer game.  I'll probably steal that idea for when I run a longer DG series.

30

General Chaos / Re: GenCon 2015 and the 6th Annual RPPR Fan Meet-up: The Edition Wars Edition

« on: July 11, 2015, 02:26:06 PM »

It must be a Delta Green sort of day.

From https://twitter.com/DeltaGreenRPG :

Shane Ivey: I'm running DELTA GREEN: KALI GHATI at GenCon. Sign up for RPG1582626, RPG1582627, or RPG1582625.

Play DELTA GREEN with Greg Stolze at GenCon: RPG1582630, RPG1582629, RPG1582628.

There were still spots in all of them last I checked.  I haven't played with Shane Ivey but got to die in Greg Stolze's "Blacksat" game last year and it was excellent.  Stolze described the "Star Chamber" game way back on Unspeakable! number 5, I think.  If for some weird reason you needed more than "Stolze + Delta Green" you could give that a listen to get a preview.