Thursday, November 30, 2017

Monster Man contest entry: Aetherwurm!

I've been meaning to post this all month, and it looks like I might get it in just in time...!  James over at the Gonzo History: Gaming Edition blog (and of the Monster Man podcast) is hosting what looks to be a pretty awesome monster contest.

Inspired by early D&D's use of cheap plastic beasties for what would become iconic creatures of the game, James wants to see monsters based on...well, cheap toys!  Here are the bullet points of the rules from his announcement:

1. Find a cheap toy
2. Let your imagination work
3. Write up your monster
4. Submit your entry
5. Vote for the finalists!
6. Finalists go to the judges
7. Win fabulous prizes!


Oh, and the deadline for entries is today, November 30.  I have a feeling the flood of emails he gets after people read this blog post will encourage him to extend it (again), though... ;)

Now, around my house, the most common cheap toys to be found are those belonging to my dogs.  I've been wanting to use some of them in (human) gaming for a long time, so here's my contest entry (statted for generic OSR gaming)!


Aetherwurm



HD 9 (36 HP), AC 14 (base 10, ascending), Attack: 1 Bite (3d6 damage)
Special:  The Aetherwurm is immune to damage from fire, electricity, and lasers, and actually absorbs their energy.  For every 5 damage the Aetherwurm would endure from these sources, whether from attacks, spells, or other means, it gains 1 HD.

Aetherwurms are spacefaring creatures known to many inhabitants of the outer worlds.  They are typically around 30 feet long and covered with fuzzy nubbins (that's what the astrozoologists call them, anyway) that seem to both guide their movement (through space and on solid ground) and enable them to drain power from energy-rich objects and locations.  These may include sources of both conventional energy and that of a magical nature.

An Aetherwurm seeking a meal.

Feeding on a power station.

Aetherwurms are generally quite docile but are known to be stubborn.  Once they are set on their "prey," they usually are not deterred without force.  They are also fiercely protective of one another on the rare occasion that a group is encountered.

May want to think twice about using that raygun...

Skilled mechanics have been known to use the bodies of slain Aetherwurms as batteries for spacecraft.  Aetherwurm corpses may maintain harnessable energy within them for up to six weeks after death.

Oh, and they have one natural predator, the Megacolossal Spacepup:


Now...you still have a few hours...head over to the Monster Man contest and see what you can do to get an entry in...!

Sunday, November 26, 2017

This Day in Anthro History: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

On this day in 1865, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (or as I've mostly known it, Alice in Wonderland) was first published.  While Carroll has a lot of fun with anthropomorphism in it, there's one character in particular I have in mind with this post...


The White Rabbit has to be one of the most famous anthro animals in literature, eh?

(One day, I shall unleash upon the world the tales of the League of Extraordinary Bunnies, a series of period adventures featuring the White Rabbit, Br'er Rabbit, and a time-traveling Atomic Rabbit.  That's if Alan Moore doesn't beat me to it...)

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Please let me redirect you...

...to something else here in the geek blogosphere.  If you happen to be one of the few people who check out my blog but haven't seen this through other means (like, y'know, reading the blog I'm about to link to), you should head over to Tim Knight's HeroPress blog to check out his Six of the Best interview with Justin Isaac of Halls of the Nephilim.  These are two of my favorite blogs and folks who blog, and you can witness their collision by clicking here.


(And, I'm not just sending you there because I got a shout-out.  Although that was very kind of him.)

Saturday, November 18, 2017

Battleyacht - mechanical brainstorming, part 1

Well, it's about time I get some real ideas down in digital ink if I'm going to make any progress on this NaGaDeMon thing...!

As I noted in my last post, I'm taking a crack during National Game Design Month at putting together some rules for naval battles based on the mechanics of the public domain dice game Yacht.

Now, I'm neither a seaman nor an experienced player of naval battle games, but it seems to me that I can probably break down the basic actions of a boat in such a game into very few categories...I'm thinking moving, firing, and (maybe) doing other stuff.

Looking at a score card for the game of Yahtzee that I found online, it's clear that there's a nice breakdown at work there, too:


That upper section is all about getting multiples of specific numbers (and earning a bonus for getting what amounts to three of each).  While the traditional Yacht game doesn't make the division quite so explicit (and doesn't have the bonus), scoring does still come down to getting lots of each number OR putting the numbers together in some sort of poker-style grouping (as we see in the bottom section).

So there's how it's gonna break down...movement will be based on getting multiples of a number in order to move that number of [whatever unit of movement I end up using].

The firing and the doing other stuff...that can be where the bottom section comes in.

At first, I figured a simple need for three matching dice in order to move might be good...and maybe additional dice could increase the movement by a unit.  So a roll of...


...would allow for 8 units of movement (6 plus a bonus of 2).

It's occurred to me, though, that a nice way of differentiating crafts in the game might be to give each of them a sort of Control score which is the minimum number of matching dice needed to make a movement happen.  Those that would take a while to get started might require four of a kind, while something like a jet ski might just be able to take the highest die you roll.  (Plus, the Yacht game itself doesn't make that three-of rule of thumb an integral part of the game, so I wouldn't be unhappy to not adhere to that...)

Additionally, crafts may be differentiated by a max speed and/or a bonus that can be applied to a move result.

More details to come on this as I work it out in my head, but I'm liking the "Upper Section" = movement line of thought.  And next time, I'll try to tackle what it means to fire and do other stuff...


Wednesday, November 8, 2017

I think I’m gonna do this NaGaDeMon thing...here comes Battleyacht!

A nice little convergence of events has led me to take on what looks to be a fun challenge this month.  On the Sunday before Halloween, I got to run the Ghostbusters RPG for some folks...my first time getting to actually GM a game in a while, and it reminded me that it's fun to roll a handful of d6s sometimes.

On Halloween night, Laura and I decided to play a quick game...and settled on Yahtzee.  It was a family favorite for me growing up, and I had actually raided our copy of it (heretofore unused) to get enough d6s for my Ghostbusters game.  I started to think that maybe there's something interesting about Yahtzee scoring (and the scoring of some of its public domain relatives) that could be exploited for adventure games.

Then, the next day, I was happy to see +Tim Snider's post over at The Savage AfterWorld on National Game Design Month (or NaGaDeMon, which is just...perfect!).


So, the end result of all of this was quite clear:  I need to spend the month of November designing an RPG- or combat-styled game using the mechanics of Yahtzee for task resolution. :)

Yep.  Definitely.

The question became...what should such a game be about?  Well, I remember coming across Yacht in a book of games long ago and realizing that Yahtzee must have been based on it.  And I guess it was, by some path of game evolution, anyway.  So I can start the game's theme with just that: yachts.

Now, I don't really know how to design a game about anything other than fighting, so I guess I know what the yachts will be doing.  But why are they doing it?  A dangerous sport for the idle rich?  War among CGI anthropomorphic vehicles?  Or...well, I remembered a post over at Halls of the Nephilim where Justin threw out post-apocalyptic pirates as a genre mashup that'd be fun to play.

And so the game takes shape.


Now, I may straight up fail at getting this done.  I have a history of not quite getting there on my gaming projects, my current game creation focus is still on getting my next Light City supplement out, and my life is kinda busy these days.  Heck, it's taken me a week (and like five separate typing sessions) to even throw this up on the blog.  But...it's been stewing in the old cranium, and I think I can knock something out by the time the month closes...

Oh yeah!  The final question to answer in this introductory post...what shall I call the game, at least in its development phase?  In homage to the naval combat game that I've probably played the most in my life, as well as one of the finest post-apocalyptic films of the early '80s, it will be known as Battleyacht.

More to come!

(Oh!  And if you're interested in taking part in the game design fun, the center of activity seems to be the NaGaDeMon Facebook page.)