Max Kaehn 🌈😺 @mithriltabby@dice.camp
Reader. Gamer. Maine Coon Cat wrangler. Software engineer. Zen practitioner. He/him. http://www.mithriltabby.com/
I’m Max Kaehn, probably most known for my old Shadowrun page at http://www.amurgsval.org/shadowrun/ , though I’ve been more into narrative systems like Feng Shui and Fate and Gumshoe lately. My main Mastodon account is mithriltabby@wandering.shop; dice.camp is where I blather about gaming.
With #introductions going around again: I’ve been gaming since the days of the D&D Basic Set and am currently heavily into the variants of the Fate RPG. I’m most of the way through a Star Wars campaign (http://www.mithriltabby.com/starwars/), have done Shadowrun (http://www.amurgsval.org/shadowrun/), Feng Shui, and Ars Magica, and am currently brewing up a Fate Accelerated take on Shadowrun. My main account is @mithriltabby.
“Does the demi-lich *know* he’s part of a bong now?”
“Dude, he gets cranky if you don’t light him up with some premium herb every full moon.”
(inspired by Sam Sykes on https://twitter.com/SamSykesSwears/status/974489310824050689)
https://dice.camp/media/vNrja2H2Aw-XPhybyVE
Converting #Shadowrun to #FateRPG got a lot smoother once I saw the Pathfinder conversion and tried using #FateAccelerated instead. #FAE encourages ditching all the bonuses and dice pools and focusing on narrative permissions. http://www.killershrike.com/Fate/Fae/Pathfinder/PathfinderFateAccelerated.aspx is great inspiration!
Tonight, our group of Jedi knights need to stop Sith saboteurs from turning the world-city of Alsakan into a radioactive hellhole.
Star Wars:
Player, musician character: So what kind of music to these renegade droids play?
Me, GM, improvising hastily: They lack a pulsing fluid pump and have an innate sense of mathematics, so the music is very different. For example, they have pieces where the time signature is 2/4, 3/4, 5/4, 8/4, 13/4, etc. where the longer measures echo patterns in the shorter ones. Organics have to cultivate an appreciation for it.
Player: A challenge!
Time to restart my dormant Star Wars campaign (interrupted by multiple sources of chaos last year). The setting is a thousand generations before the films, the player characters are the founders of the Jedi, and they're currently dealing with growing the brand-new Galactic Republic in opposition to an evil Empire.
You want to get rid of murderhobos?
Give your PCs enduring connections to the community -- family, friends, professional acquaintances, organizations, and so on -- and then don't destroy them for cheap drama.
Done.
And of course there are all the personal-scale plots that can go on in any space opera setting. #bulldogsrpg could be a good system, though the setting would need meddling. http://www.galileogames.com/bulldogs/
Various big space opera plots:
• A stellar stream cut off from the galaxy for aeons reconnects, and it contains a multi-system civilization. An expansionist empire is one kind of problem; a peaceful civilization that has different rules is another one.
• A rebel group is rescuing populations from a world whose dominant faction is expansionist and hiding them and copied biomes in a Type II system.
• An intelligent civilization on a water world will never get to space. Contact them anyway?
This means that the 4X narrative is very different in that universe: galactic consensus is that you live within your means, and any colonists have to be very stealthy. No expansionist, colonialist interstellar empires! Trade is all between and within the well-known civilized systems, unless you’re a rebel.
A civilized species uses one star at a time. Some like things quiet and aesthetic with very few visitors, maybe they go full Kardashev Type II and invite everybody to come build a habitat and back up the biomes from their homeworlds there.
Pondering a space opera setting that addresses why we aren’t already a satrapy for aliens:
The galactic standard proof of being a civilized species is sending out self-replicating killbots that wipe out any civilization that attempts to colonize another solar system. If a colony ship leaves your solar system first, you’re toast. If your killbots do, you’re welcomed to galactic civilization.
WIRED CHEF: the cyberpunk cooking competition where there are no sous chefs, just superhuman reflexes!
ROLLING INTO THE NEW YEAR LIKE https://dice.camp/media/o9zlJkJIuYmDw62Th90
Gaming has been somewhat disrupted this year due to all manner of events in my group’s lives, so I feel like I’ve been unproductive *runs a word count tool on plans for next campaign* 140,038 words. That’s ... a couple of novels’ worth... OK, not so unproductive after all.
Bundle of Holding now has two bundles for the Warhammer 40K role-playing game: https://bundleofholding.com/presents/DH1Essentials
I discovered a fair amount about the universe via TVTropes, and I am tempted to, at some point, run a campaign where the player characters get to burn down all the various factions (which are each horrible in their own way) and lead a revolution for multiculturalism and tolerance.
I’m Max Kaehn, probably most known for my old Shadowrun page at http://www.amurgsval.org/shadowrun/ , though I’ve been more into narrative systems like Feng Shui and Fate and Gumshoe lately. My main Mastodon account is mithriltabby@wandering.shop; dice.camp is where I blather about gaming.