Nathaniel Eliot

A friend asked me to pass this on to my gaming buddies. It was addressed to folks in Austin, but I don't think you need to be in Austin to play . . .

A new FRPG called 'Codename: Era of the Fallen' is now seeking playtesters. It emphasizes narrative storytelling, allowing for deeply immersive roleplaying, and encourages a different sort of play style centered around: character development, mature themes, ethical dilemmas, etc.

Codename: Era of the Fallen has THE most realistic combat system ever devised, which has been culled from the author's extensive knowledge of the topic and subjected to careful tuning to establish just the right balance between detail and simplicity. Dice based combat is fast paced, intuitive enough to be easily understood, and quickly results in a decisive outcome. Just like real combat. Emphasis is placed on thinking through things instead of blindly rolling dice. The combat system is extremely flexible to suit many styles and preferences: from strict dice rules, to diceless, to a hybrid between the two.

Codename: Era of the Fallen also includes an expansive, incredibly intricate system of magic, which gives the player several well defined paths to choose from, and the ability to strike out in new directions, offering complete control over the development of the character's powers. Through increasing specialization in one of 15 fields of magical study, the character gradually masters a subset of the primal powers which govern all things. A rich history rewards exploration with something new to be discovered and mastered at every turn. The numbers of ways in which the branches of magic can be combined and recombined is nearly limitless.

Codename: Era of the Fallen also has a lavishly detailed world for players to explore with a comprehensive and coherent cosmogony. It is a world of many secrets which allows for infinite expansion and encourages the players to become co-creators of their own worlds within worlds. It offers the opportunity for players to have a wide variety of possible experiences and guide their character down a path of their own choosing, light or dark within the narrative the Game Master creates as backdrop to character evolution.

More information and a stripped down version of the rules are available at: www.eraofthefallen.com

Anyone playing Operation: Sleeper Cell? Got a team, or want to make one?

It's for research purposes, of course.

It's 1720, and both Earth and the stars are restless. At home, Mongol warlords vie for control of the Khaganate in the tourneys and mock battles of the Kuraltai, while Isaac Newton and the Royal College of London issue disturbing new magical treatises. Abroad, newly ascendant dark-elf and goblin nations disrupt trade, and skirmishes with lizardfolk and their shapeshifting infiltrators claim many valiant warriors daily.

In these troubled times, the Galactic League's agents are hard-pressed to keep the interstellar peace they're charged with protecting. You're invited this (and every) Thursday from 7 to 11PM, to join them in the struggle. The episodic back-story is designed to encourage drop-in players; come join us, even if you're not sure you'll be back.

GURPS rules: TL4+4, 200pt starting characters, in a gritty, pervasive low-magic setting. Initial character design and backstory session will be this Thursday (3/13), at my house (6602 Laird Dr.). If you want to get a head start, you can answer some questions from these character questionaires.

And let me know if you know other folks I should invite: the more, the merrier . . . (yes, I'm insane)

The corner of Congress and Oltorf is a common stamping ground for religeous proselytizers, and I often pass them on my way to Ruta Maya. So when one of the ladies handed me a flyer, I wasn't suprised to find it was for a local church.

"Shouldn't doing God's work entail more than standing on a corner with a bullhorn?" I shouted, but my words went unnoticed.

It wasn't until this morning, as I pulled into work, that I looked closely at the flyer. In the background, there is an image of a red fanged beast looming out of the darkness.

A very familiar red fanged beast:


I feel much better knowing that one of the possibilities for the afterlife is D&D. There's an afterlife I could handle, though I hope they use 3rd edition rules . . .

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Edit: Since everybody insisted, I've scanned the flyer and posted it. Two copywrongs don't make a copyright, but what the hell . . .

Somewhere in the back of my skull a wizened mambo stirs a gigantic pot. Ideas I find neat (interesting, but impractical for some reason) I give to her, and she tosses it in the pot. Occasionally I ask if it's ready. She may let me taste a bit of the gumbo, but mostly she just laughs and says, "Not YET, childe."

( Look deeper into the pot . . . )

And from the back of my brain I hear a cackling: "There's the salt I needed!". I don't yet want ask if that means it's done . . .

When I was a sophmore in High School, my biology teacher let me use her email to correspond as a pen-pal with students in Bulgaria.  I emailed them twice, and filled up her inbox with mail from the GURPSnet mailing list.  When the administration finally stopped me from staying after school to use her connection, I became the only student member on a board trying to get new computers for the school.  One of the other board members hired me as a computer programmer my junior year.

I struggled for years to find more computer work, without shelling out thousands for more school I neither needed nor could afford.  On the side, I demoed products for Steve Jackson Games, and later worked as an assistant on the GURPS website.

Thursday night, I got on a plane.  Barely made my connection at Atlanta, and I was in Austin by midnight.  Finding a hotel room was a bitch, as was the car place, and I got almost no sleep from anxiety.  But I was early to my interview Friday afternoon.  And as of about 7PM, I am the new systems administrator for SJGames.

WHOOT!

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However, this means leaving Ann Arbor.  Its the first place I've felt at home, and the first group of friends I've really connected with.  And some part of me is already missing it, though I haven't even moved.

As should be bloody apparent by this point, I'm a RPG geek. Not a mild one, either; I devote serious time and attention to this hobby of mine. Most of my close friends are part of my gaming group, or intimately connected to part of it.

My guess is that about half of my readers are with me on this. So, in the interests of equality and non-discrimination, I'm providing "seperate, but equal" lists of questions.

( Gamer Geeks )
( Player Haters )
Notes:

1. And an overly crafty writer; I very nearly forced a unfortunate pun regarding chocolate, peanut butter, and a rhesus.
2. Other days, I'm a bad monkey. A very bad monkey, who should be spanked.
3. This isn't an invitation, before you ask. I'm just curious.

I've been floundering a bit with the plot of my "Buddhist Hotdog" campaign^[1]. I ran the characters through a hellishly long "becoming" storyline. They now know that mystical conspiracies control the world, because they dug up files detailing their creation. That payoff also included discovery of lots of wonderous and freaky powers.

(At this point, the Wizard is going to order the Munckins out, so they don't see him taking five for a fag, a pint, and a leak.)

( Classified Info: Non-PCs ONLY )

This is why I love real world game settings. No geek tinkering at a game setting can hold a candle to the power of collective insanity.

1. Named after a bad joke^[2], because I tried to use as many of my gaming books as possible.
2. Buddha walks up to a hotdog vendor and says, "Make me one with everything."

The characters have recently been sprung from the clutches of BHI (Bounty Hunters International), which was variously employing and blackmailing PCs into doing their dirty work in India. Their saviours? The Chinese (aka C-Block), in the form of a double agent in their ranks who managed to turn the rest of the party (while on sodium pentathol, with dislocated shoulders).

Oh, yeah, and then the PCs all ate spirits and had superhero transformation episodes. It was groovy and horrific.

This session, they had to prove themselves to the actual powers that be the Chinese secret agency: the supernatural bureaucracy of the Celestial Kingdom. Since most of the PCs are Americans, they were sent on a sneak raid into the heart of the Technocracy. Which they pulled off, after a long bout of planning and hemming and hawing.

Next session, they get their reward. They get officially inducted by C-Block, assuming they choose to return to India, because they just freed several important spirits. They also got some loot from the warehouse, which I have yet to define more concretely than physical descriptions.

So, yeah; my game's going swimingly. How's your's?

I'm working on a Harry Potter RPG setting, out of sheer perversity.

I play entirely too many roleplaying games.

Not too much, mind you. My group games weekly, Saturday nights from 8PM (read: 10PM) to the wee hours of the morning (read: 6 or 7AM). We do plan in the off time, but that's all we really devote to the game.

The problem is, almost everybody's got a game now. Two of my group are running a game as a double-headed DM, in addition to the games they're seperately running. Most of the games started in the last two months, which when combined with the holiday disruption means that I've been making characters more often than playing them.

So, as a way to keep all of this work from going to waste, I present "The Characters":

( Havelock )
( Qwan Libro )
( Iastol )
( Tarnek ut Baltor )
( 'Neko' )

Okay, so maybe I do too much roleplaying, as well. I rationalize that it's better than doing too much meth.