19th Level

The first thing that struck me about the Delta Green Agent's Handbook  is just how dark a game this is. Reading through it I see a game that like it's parent, Call of Cthulhu , puts our protagonists on the front lines against ancient horrors with life and sanity on the line. But Delta Green has more ways to make the agents fall to pieces. There's rules for abusing stimulants on a mission, game-related reasons for seeking solace in the bottle. rules for sacrificing - or just losing - pieces of your personal life. If you are lucky you'll end up in Cthulhu's tummy. If you're unlucky you'll wind up losing your mind, your marriage, your job, and/or your freedom. What I really like is there's rules - simple rules - for all of this. A bit of a rewind is in order. Delta Green is a take on the Call of Cthulhu Mythos. First published in the 1990's as a Call of Cthulhu supplement, it dealt with dueling government agencies and conspiracies trying to des...

"Forward, as occasion offers. Never look round to see whether any shall note it... Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matter, and think that even such a result is no trifle." - Marcus Aurelius I've been going through some of my newer stuff for the Adventurer Conqueror King System (ACKS) over the past week or two. Of late I've been thinking of fantasy RPGs, especially with a focus on the ability for characters to be movers and shakers of the world. (I've also been reading the new Laundry novel by Charles Stross and checking out some of the newer DCC stuff - the fun of being scatter-brained... Though in Icons our heroes have met their first aliens. More on that in a few days I think...) One of the things I liked about ACKS was its implied setting, one that has begun getting more fleshed out with the ACKS Player's Companion , The Sinister Stone of Sakkara , and the quarterly Axioms  digital magazine. The ten thousand foot view is it is a...

As I've been thinking about a fantasy game with domain management and/or generational play, for some reason I've also been thinking about time periods before the typical medieval-inspired settings - from Westeros to Greyhawk to Middle Earth. I've begun reading Susan Wise Bauer's The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome . Mind you the pace is slow, between grad school, work, family, and prepping for superhero adventures (next game - an invasion from spaaace!!!) What I've been finding in the earliest period is a much smaller and more person world. Kings rule over city-states. Uruk's population at its height was perhaps fifty to eighty thousand. Compare that with the million who would live in Rome during the height of the Roman Empire (though it would be near modern times when a city would again reach such a population!) The potential I see in such an environment is it becomes possible to imagine PCs rising to impor...

Unearthly Adventure Comics #254 had a cover date of May of 1958 and appeared on newsstands in March of that year. It featured the return of Thor to the comic for the first time since 1947's issue #125 featured him returning to the city in an attempt to defeat it with an army of dark elves. Cast of Characters Robert Builder/The Atomizer - Reporter for the Port Henry Times-Herald, nuclear man granted powers by Trinity nuclear test. Susan Samiel - Widowed reporter for the Port Henry Times-Herald, sorceress. Specializes in binding magic. US-Polaris 1 - Robot space probe invented by Jack Parsons. Altered by aliens and now possessing telekinetic abilities.  Y uyu - High Priest of Osiris in the 19th Dynasty. Granted immortality and superior abilities by a mystical Ankh, as well as the ability to summon minions. Capsule Summary Robert and Susan were covering the release of Mario Genco from Port Henry Federal Penitentiary. A gangster active in the 1920s and 30...

" Inhabitants Dwarves, dinosaurs, and humans are the main inhabitants of Slon." I was flipping through the pdf of The Guide to Glorantha while having lunch today and came across the above text. Which I found rather neat as I love dinosaurs and am a 30-year Glorantha newbie. Admittedly it's difficult to be a newbie for 30 years but I've somehow managed to do so. If my recollection is correct, I first encountered RuneQuest and Glorantha for the first time in 1986, receiving the Deluxe Boxed Set version of the 3rd edition of the game as a Christmas gift. I didn't know what to expect, but had heard enough about the game to be somewhat curious. Without an internet to guide me as to what was "wrong" with the game I was unaware that for most people RuneQuest and Glorantha were designed to be together. As I flipped through the box I found a foldout map of fantasy Europe. The box contained five main books. The first four were the Players, Magic, Game M...

After my depressing last post, something a bit easier to digest. I don't do much in the way of pure advertising for a game, but I see that Icons is available at Bundle of Holding for the next two weeks (until June 28 if my math is right). I'm currently having a lot of fun running an Icons game, which makes it the first superhero RPG I've had last more than two sessions in ages. Ten percent of the money made (subtracting payment gateway fees) go to  The Trevor Project , a group providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention for LGBT youth. I'd encourage you to give directly if you can.

I've tried to keep my blog reasonably nonpolitical and in a way I find it sad that commenting on an act of murder and terror is a political act. Forty nine people were murdered early Sunday morning at the Pulse nightclub. The Pulse being a gay nightclub, they were almost certainly targeted due to their sexual identities. I don't know what to call it - an act of hate, an act of terror. I don't think it really matters what you call it. Forty nine lives were ended and their loved ones are left dealing with the horror of what happened. I've been wrestling with my own thoughts. They're layered but for what it's worth, this is what they are... As far as guns are concerned... As a nation, we're not going to do a damn thing. Twenty 6 and 7-year old children were killed in Sandy Hook, along with school personnel and the killer's mother. We didn't do anything then. When we decided nothing was the right course of action for dead children, we accepted that...