Post by rflowings on Mar 29, 2015 19:25:12 GMT
'evening, all.
Many thanks for your welcome last Monday - I greatly enjoyed playing Tim's tutorial session of Xcom... although I suspect playing at a higher level would be psychologically damaging at both an individual and group level. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow evening and I've been thinking of one or two games I could put on at relatively short notice (I have rulesets without enough miniatures, and miniatures without enough rulesets. Is there a tabletop gamer's 'law' for that? A proverb, say? Something pithier than this, that I am writing now?).
One of the projects I'd like to try this year is Spirit of the Century. The last RPG I ran was around 5 years ago and I've only done a bit of LARPing since. I've always enjoyed 1920s-30s pulp settings for everything from wargames to literature, and this rulebook was recommended to me by a pal in Oxford, so I've been reading it for a few months and I have come up with a few campaigns which might be of interest.
Particularly entertaining was the idea of generating characters by coming up with the trashy novel/movie titles that the characters have featured in, and working out plots and crossovers which tie into their careers before, during, and after World War One. SOTC has its tongue firmly in its cheek with its skill sets and stock characters, and although I'm not too interested in using the fluff they go into in the book itself, I was always going to be a sucker for any game with a rocketeer fighting a gorilla in a biplane while a zeppelin burns in the background featuring on the cover.
If this, or the ideas below, interest you at all, if you have any experience of SOTC, or you'd like to chat about it at all tomorrow night, please let me know (and vote in the poll).
Some short summaries of campaigns I have been thinking of running:
#1: The Syldavian Spring:
The Taschist regime in Central Europe's foremost economic power, the Republic of Borduria, is organising an aviation conference just across the border at the same time as a succession crisis in the neighbouring Kingdom of Ruritania and an outbreak of anarchist agitation in Syldavia's capital, Klow. Someone clearly wants to start a war, or more likely everyone does, and it's up to our adventurers to secure Peace In Our Time.
(Indiana Jones-esque European setting with never-ending Tintin references.)
#2: The Eye in the Ziggurat:
The remote French colonial islands of Nouveau Navarre have long been a haven for unscrupulous sugar and coffee speculators, but now agents of the League of Nations, a disowned native prince with a grudge, and the Thule Society are stirring the foetid pot. Can our adventurers unearth the dark secret lurking beneath the archipelago's coral reefs?
(X marks the spot somewhere between W.E. Johns, Robert Louis Stephenson, Jules Verne and Helena Blavatsky)
#3: The Last Place On Earth:
Everything the civilised world thought it knew about mankind's place in space and time was overturned by the return of the Starkweather-Moore expedition from the fabled Antarctic "Mountains of Madness" in 1936. Now our adventurers must battle their way not only across the frozen polar landscape, but the zodiac itself as they strive to prevent our solar system from falling into the existential abyss!
(Lovecraft-inspired, Burroughs-delivered cosmic dieselpunk adventure)
Thoughts?
Many thanks for your welcome last Monday - I greatly enjoyed playing Tim's tutorial session of Xcom... although I suspect playing at a higher level would be psychologically damaging at both an individual and group level. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow evening and I've been thinking of one or two games I could put on at relatively short notice (I have rulesets without enough miniatures, and miniatures without enough rulesets. Is there a tabletop gamer's 'law' for that? A proverb, say? Something pithier than this, that I am writing now?).
One of the projects I'd like to try this year is Spirit of the Century. The last RPG I ran was around 5 years ago and I've only done a bit of LARPing since. I've always enjoyed 1920s-30s pulp settings for everything from wargames to literature, and this rulebook was recommended to me by a pal in Oxford, so I've been reading it for a few months and I have come up with a few campaigns which might be of interest.
Particularly entertaining was the idea of generating characters by coming up with the trashy novel/movie titles that the characters have featured in, and working out plots and crossovers which tie into their careers before, during, and after World War One. SOTC has its tongue firmly in its cheek with its skill sets and stock characters, and although I'm not too interested in using the fluff they go into in the book itself, I was always going to be a sucker for any game with a rocketeer fighting a gorilla in a biplane while a zeppelin burns in the background featuring on the cover.
If this, or the ideas below, interest you at all, if you have any experience of SOTC, or you'd like to chat about it at all tomorrow night, please let me know (and vote in the poll).
Some short summaries of campaigns I have been thinking of running:
#1: The Syldavian Spring:
The Taschist regime in Central Europe's foremost economic power, the Republic of Borduria, is organising an aviation conference just across the border at the same time as a succession crisis in the neighbouring Kingdom of Ruritania and an outbreak of anarchist agitation in Syldavia's capital, Klow. Someone clearly wants to start a war, or more likely everyone does, and it's up to our adventurers to secure Peace In Our Time.
(Indiana Jones-esque European setting with never-ending Tintin references.)
#2: The Eye in the Ziggurat:
The remote French colonial islands of Nouveau Navarre have long been a haven for unscrupulous sugar and coffee speculators, but now agents of the League of Nations, a disowned native prince with a grudge, and the Thule Society are stirring the foetid pot. Can our adventurers unearth the dark secret lurking beneath the archipelago's coral reefs?
(X marks the spot somewhere between W.E. Johns, Robert Louis Stephenson, Jules Verne and Helena Blavatsky)
#3: The Last Place On Earth:
Everything the civilised world thought it knew about mankind's place in space and time was overturned by the return of the Starkweather-Moore expedition from the fabled Antarctic "Mountains of Madness" in 1936. Now our adventurers must battle their way not only across the frozen polar landscape, but the zodiac itself as they strive to prevent our solar system from falling into the existential abyss!
(Lovecraft-inspired, Burroughs-delivered cosmic dieselpunk adventure)
Thoughts?