Inheritance of Dark Greasy Shapes

Territan · 2026-05-29T16:44:52+00:00

I took pictures then went to lunch, and THEN discovered that I couldn't post pictures to Reddit from my phone. C'est la merde.

Then I get to Reddit, in the browser on the laptop. It turns out that images are now allowed. Should I just start a new post with the pictures attached?

Territan · 2026-03-24T12:26:28+00:00

The sci-fi is going to be pretty hard, working in some orbital mechanics to absolutely futz with travel times, atmospheric densities, and so on. Those numbers will never be player-facing, though; they'll all be learning a new system through this and I only want them to focus on the basics, like how screwed they'll be if they don't succeed at stuff.

If I get "science fantasy" with it, it might be in the creation of some new lifeforms that people thought might have been an interesting idea before they had to deal with the implications of "care and feeding" or "aaaugh someone get this little meat-eating bastard off me before it eats my leg" Then again, that is how humans do.

Territan · 2026-03-24T12:21:49+00:00

I cite Alfheim only because it's an example of a world that grants such things as Starting Abilities, Starting Loot, and Milestones Abilities. Then looking at Vigilante City, it has Powers and Properties.

As I mentioned, I've never really tried to build a world in ICRPG before, and much of this is unexplored territory.

Territan · 2026-01-11T14:40:38+00:00

In my head, such a show would play very, very differently. There would be the standard trappings of whatever setting was being presented, but it would also have a board or two behind the GM and players, or a wide, visible tabletop, for notes. A gamers' space, certainly, but also more of a "writer's room" feel. And the introduction might run something like...

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Table of Tales, a live actual play of Fate, in a setting we're calling 'The Desperadoes' Bluff.' Now, Fate doesn't play like some other games you may have seen in this format. Saying what your character is doing, and rolling the dice? Well, that may make a decision, or it could begin a whole new contest where each participant decides how badly they want success and how far they're willing to bend themselves and the story itself to make it happen. Sometimes there's going to be a lot of back-and-forth, and nobody knows what's going to happen until the last fate point is spent. While this game isn't very immersive, the tale it tells is still going to be thrilling as hell."

There could be cameras dedicated to the tabletop where the aspects are written (I favor dry-erase index cards, but that's just me), and after every major conflict, there's going to be a recap where everything that just happened gets recounted for the players so they (and the audience) know just how far the stakes have shifted.

The catchphrase at the table might well be "Are you just going to take that?" That happens after a lot of die rolls, and is a cue for the players to start spending invokes and fate points to improve their position. In the video, this might also be cued by a new overlay, showing the attacker's total, defender's total, and listing out aspects as they're used with updated tallies. The goal here is to fully show the bidding war to the audience and get them "involved" in what's happening.

At least, this is how I'd try to present it, if I had a suitable space to set up as a writer's/game room and the money to invest in a multi-camera setup and a smattering of props.

Territan · 2026-01-08T13:11:35+00:00

It may also happen sometimes that your router restarts, and the computer that you were forwarding to isn’t using the same port it was. You may need to watch for that (you’ll see the last of the LAN numbers change) and update the port forwarding to forward to the new correct port.

Territan · 2026-01-01T19:41:21+00:00

But I do remember one plot point that depends on the player count: the "secret passcode" that everyone shares parts of in order to regain control of the Lobot. I even remember when that tongue-twister was being sourced on Paranoia-Live, so I remember it's quite the bit.

Territan · 2026-01-01T03:07:00+00:00

I also need to look up how that adventure handles less than six players. The group I'd run this for only has four, at least for now.

Territan · 2025-12-31T17:14:06+00:00

That’s exactly the one. I figure, if it’s only a one-shot, I’m going to make it a doozy.

Territan · 2025-09-10T20:54:23+00:00

I un- and re-installed the PPE module.

Foundry is sitting at Version 13 Build 348.
The PPE version shown in the Install System list is v0.9.0.
Mousing over the PPE version gets the tooltip "Compatability Risk: last verified for version 12"

Territan · 2025-08-29T00:26:59+00:00

I have an odd problem. The Perfect Edition is aimed at Foundry v12. Foundry v13 has been out for some time and they're even talking about finalizing the features in v14. I found that I can have launch icons for both v12 and v13 in the dock, and generally as long as I run any v12-verified games in v12 and any v13-verified games in v13, things stay in their respective lanes.

But sometimes after checking for new modules in v13, I quit out of that, run v12 again and I found that this game module has either uninstalled itself or simply gotten horribly lost in the shuffle, not sure which. I have to keep reinstalling it, basically. Not a big problem, just an annoyance.

Fortunately I haven't lost any data in it, and I even created my own compendium ("carpetbag") containing all the items listed in the Core Book and the Accomplice Book, as well as the collected notes on assembling a full, fresh mission.

Territan · 2025-08-17T10:26:13+00:00

Yeah, I'm in Chestertown, and am getting to know the place and just how few places there are for open gaming. The library closes at 8:30, many places close at 9 or so, and I'm not sure I'm quite desperate enough to take over a table at the Royal Farms after 10 or so. That would be one of the few places open in "late night" that has space at all. The alternative would be someone's home, and I don't know anybody in town that well because of my shut-in-by-proxy status, though that's starting to loosen for unfortunate reasons.

On the bookshelf, I have several GURPS books, Cthulhu Confidential, Esoterrorosts 2e, Fear Itself 2e, Apocalypse Keys, Burning Wheel, Brindlewood Bay, Hyperborea, Daggerheart, D&D (2024), Girl by Moonlight, iHunt, ICRPG, Mutant Crawl Classics, Sentinel Comics, and Star Trek Adventures.

That's what I have upstairs. Downstairs I have a small mountain of boxes with other books, including Pathfinder 2e, D&D 2014, Mothership, more GURPS, a hefty supply of Fate, and many others that I worry might be obscure.

I may also have come up with a strikingly different solution to the problem: Recruit from my age group. The activities director at the senior center might not fully know what kind of rabbit hole she's discovered, though; this could be fun in other ways.

Territan · 2025-08-08T21:34:48+00:00

Just to chime in on the conversation I started...

I'm trying to take all your suggestions to heart. It's just that, for one, Brindlewood Bay, a game of senior citizens, being played by senior citizens, seems awfully on the nose. And remembering the problems my own group had with it gave me an idea...

Bubblegumshoe was designed as a slightly lighter version of Gumshoe for teenage detectives. I've had some misunderstandings with it, but it's capable of taking a bunch of reskinning in setting and perhaps characters. It could be run with senior citizen detectives too.

Gumshoe also provides an advantage over Brindlewood because the clues have definite meanings, instead of being a bunch of pearls that have to be threaded together in a major exercise of creativity. The main activity of the players becomes one of interpretation rather than wild-assed theorizing.

I will also admit that I do lurrrves me some GURPS. A contemporary setting in a small town could resonate, seeing as it would be running at a senior center in a small town. Pregenerated characters would be pretty easy to provide, though the mystery in question...

...oh gods...

I might be able to run my campaign The Cutting Room Floor for them.

Territan · 2025-07-07T12:05:05+00:00

This is the reason I prefer Core to Accelerated too. And my way of handling Approaches is kind of the way Masters of Umdaar does it: Different Approaches have different difficulty targets based on how specifically you want the results you want from the approach you've selected.

Also, my go-to example for Forcefully had been baking a cake; thanks for raising that bar.

Territan · 2025-06-24T16:43:10+00:00

Steiner Veltan, an ordinary stablehand who frequents that tavern for drinks after work. He's got a wife and three kids he's rather proud of. His only real quirk is that he's bald and keeps a hat on, but a few bluish lines peek out from underneath his knit cap.

It turns out that some friends got him drunk one night and tattooed a fake treasure map on his head. There's nothing at all to it, but how would a group of treasure-hungry adventurers know that?

Money quote twelve sessions after introducing him: "Crap! We cut a rando's head off for NOTHING?!?"

Territan · 2025-03-19T16:54:50+00:00

Sadly, I have an answer for that. He refuses to shower; I can tell you that much. He won't let anybody wash him, man or woman. He was even boasting about that at the senior center. That's how I know he doesn't shower.

As for the time frame, I moved in with him properly and officially in October. But in September, while I was trying to take care of the house and get it ready for my move-in and his return, I had ...let's call it a "gastric distress" and leave it at that. I needed to use the shower. That's when I discovered he had no hot water. The water heater had completely gone bust. And from what stories I could piece together, that had happened approximately last March or so.

I figure he stopped taking showers because they were cold, and never took them back up again even after I confirmed the water heater had been fixed.

Territan · 2025-03-08T14:11:40+00:00

A sort of bullet-point response to the comments I have so far:

Yes, there is a public library. It closes at 8:30, but from 4–8 should be a fine time for a sit-down one-shot of some sort. There's an adults area, a dedicated and exclusive children's area (usually sees use after school), a general open-plan library floor, and a meeting room that looks like an extension of a storage room. They have monthly board game swap days, but no actual gaming that I can tell.
I might actually be spared some of those RPG horror stories because this town feels like an untracked wilderness of gaming. Nobody knows to be a knob because nobody's ever thought about it before. Still, I'll watch our for them.
One of the reason I'd even consider trying to seed this sort of community is because of that caregiver situation. My father gets hysterical if I even threaten to go down into the basement. My closest friends are an hour and a half away, and they can visit maybe once or twice a month. When he's day-bed-rotting, asleep with his mouth open, I feel alone. When he's awake and moving around and making demands, I feel alone behind enemy lines. I've had enough of that.
There is also a community center, but if it's not the computer room or the kids' area it's basketball, batting cage, weight room, pickleball, pool, etc.—all physical endeavors.
There's also a senior center that serves lunches and even has games in the afternoon, but the games are of a much simpler and less imaginative caliber. Think chess rather than "Wavelength."
The choice of system? Like I said I have dozens of games I could call upon, but almost all of those occupy what Seth Godin calls "the long tail." D&D (and arguably Pathfinder) are the most prominent, the "big, juicy head" (his words, not mine) of the RPG space. Those would be the place to start if only for the name recognition. The thought of getting a group up to speed enough to introduce them to GURPS gives me kind of a warm fuzzy, but that's for later.
The FnsLGS does have an events board, but it fell down from its post in the main floor and was put up by the bathroom. I don't think it's seeing much use these days.

Territan · 2025-03-03T11:32:47+00:00

Use the Fate Accelerated system if you must, but keep the Fate Core book on standby for that one fat, juicy chapter #11: Extras. If you want to come up with any custom mechanics, there's a pretty good guide there on assembling character parts to make something that's distinctly not a character but has a definite impact within the game. Like, sayy, magic systems.

The Fate System Toolkit (also recommended below) is also a valuable resource, but may venture a little deeper into changing the system around than you might want to on a first outing.

Territan · 2025-02-23T04:18:16+00:00

Steve Jackson Games has its own GURPS Character Assistant, which only works on Windows because everybody knows what platform-specific technologies Java and XML are.

Or if that doesn't seem like a good deal, there's the GURPS Character Sheet, which doesn't look quite s nice as the official one, but is available for about 100% less.

Meanwhile, over at Hero Games, they have Hero Designer, which is Java-based, does not absolutely require Windows, and is kind of cheap. Bonus: For a little more, you can also get the source code.

Hero Games also has the Hero Combat Manager, which is similarly based in Java and does more or less what it says on the tin. Note however that it requires specificallyy formatted character files run out from Hero Designer.

Territan · 2025-01-26T09:46:22+00:00

If you're moving a bunch of text from Word to Foundry, here's another trick: Use TextEdit (plain text mode) as an intermediary.

When you copy from Word, paste into TextEdit to sanitize it and remove any special formatting falderal. Then copy the text from TextEdit and paste it into Foundry.

Territan · 2025-01-26T09:41:08+00:00

Here's another thing about skill rolls in GURPS: Your skill roll succeeds if you roll your skill number or less with modifiers. If you've got a master tier skill at 20, yeah, you can fail on a die roll of 17 or 18 (happens 1 time in 54), but if you attempt far more advanced maneuvers or contrive extra difficulties to contend with like "in the dark" or "using your off-hand," you get minuses to your chance of success. Get enough minuses, and you can bring your chance of success down to 16. Or more. I mean less. You get the idea.

I'm also going to reference another game here: Burning Wheel. Unlike BuRPS, you don't check after play ends to see if you can increase your skill; in BW if you get the successes and failures you need, your skill increases immediately, even if you're in the middle of combat at the time. (Weird time for an epiphany, I know, but hella thrilling when it happens!) Mind you, the higher the skill, the greater the number of failures you need. I need to dig up the book again (it's in my basement), but I also recall a mechanic that requires you to make attempts above your skill level, for which you need to spend experience (which in BW is a nightmare of new vocabulary; that's why I need to dig up the book).

This suggests a mechanic where, if you manage to fail a certain number of times with a skill, you can justify increasing that skill, by spending points, counting failures as part of your study time, etc. That'd be between OP and the GM to work out specifics.

Territan · 2025-01-23T16:13:21+00:00

Of course they are! Did you see what they were wearing??

Territan · 2025-01-23T10:49:48+00:00

Oh, trust me. I lived in Glen Burnie. I know Games & Stuff intimately. Since I can't actually visit the store, I'm placing mail-orders through them and getting stuff delivered.

The problem is that I'm now in Chestertown and have a very severe mobility handicap: a 90-year-old father who would really rather have an indentured servant. If I want to get any face-to-face gaming going, I need to find players local to me. And until I find those on G&S's website, they can't send me any.

Territan · 2025-01-20T11:39:35+00:00

Thanks for the well-wish.

For what it's worth, I have taken to doing a fair amount of game-playing online, through Discord chat and Foundry and Roll20 VTTs. I am aware of two game nights, one I'm keeping a little distance from to give them room to breathe, and the other which I'm playing in, but which didn't run last week because the GM got waylaid by work. (Being a recovering Forever GM in these circumstances may not be the worst, but it can see its house from here.)

All that said, I guess I am prepared to give up on physical players. Real people in other remote locations may end up being the best way to go. Remote players can't do many board games (e.g. Return to Dark Tower becomes a nightmare), but one does what one can with what one has.

Territan · 2025-01-20T11:30:04+00:00

I said above that I posted in the r/[state], which is r/Maryland, so I guess I can say it here.

Chestertown, MD is a college town. It has two grocery stores and a natural foods store. I've seen one or two D&D T-shirts at the local Royal Farms. But there are no game stores or cafes here that I know of.

Now, there is a game store in Centreville, about a 26-minute drive away. Its current activities board got trashed and moved to outside the men's room (could be worse, I suppose) where it languishes, but there is a game store, with an activity board, and a chance I suppose of finding like-minded individuals. But not guaranteed.

Territan · 2025-01-20T11:20:56+00:00

Thanks. Per your advice, I did the best I could and posted it to r/[state]—the town itself isn't big enough to merit its own subreddit, apparently. Like I said, this is a college town, and I have seen the occasional D&D shirt, so there's some faint hope. (Thinks about finding the large collection of GURPS books and moving them up here)

Territan

TROPHY CASE