uhrwerkmensch

As you might have guessed, the sample character I posted yesterday lives in a "Universal Century" type setting (provisionally called "The Long War: Ganymede Waltz"). It's mostly geared towards telling character-driven war stories in a sci-fi universe on the softer side of the Real Robot genre. (I'm attempting verisimilitude, but not so slavishly that it gets in the way of the characters' narrative - where I believe PDQ actually excels.)

For variety's sake, though, I'm also planning to include a setting that's about as far from Gundam/ZoE as you can get. In fact, it's a supernatural, alt-history mecha setting largely inspired by series such as Sakura Taisen and ... oh, what's that one about diesel and vaccuum-tube mecha in WW2?

I don't want to spoil too much about it, but in a nutshell it's a supernatural mecha 'series' set during the Meiji restoration, where the Imperial forces contracted the European powers for new fighting machines made of steel, steam and clockwork (kurofune). So you have the Emperor's troops pacifying the remains of Tokugawa's followers using steam-powered mecha and mad science, as the traditionalist bushi fight back with shinto magic and the ten thousand kami of Nippon.

The splash image would be a traditional woodblock print of a female ninja standing atop a giant frog god and calling down a storm with a scroll held aloft in her outstretched hands, while a smoke-belching, black iron mecha stomps towards her and in the foreground, a samurai grimaces at the pair as he prepares to draw his swords.

Depending on space, I'd also like to include a riff on the Giant Robo genre, but we'll see. I definately want to make room for an appendix about tuning the system's dials to support your own mecha 'verse.

(At some point, I also need to contact chadu about licensing fees for the PDQ# system and other related business foo, but that can wait until I have more than a collection of vague notes and untested system hacks.)

Off VNV Nations' new album Of Faith, Power and Glory. It's probably one of the most heartbreakingly, brutally beautiful songs Ronan's ever written.

For our demo, let's use Ray Ishimura - a hotheaded young mecha pilot working with the Outer Colonies Provisional Government. Recently, the United Terran Federation Navy located an OCPG mining operation on Ganymede. Ray and his unit were scrambled to meet up with the the rebel carrier Indra as part of the Ganymede defence force. (The default setting lacks FTL but features an extensively-settled solar system, and assumes a guerrilla war between the Earth government and its breakaway outer colonies. Influenced, by part, by my desire for mecha dogfights through the canyons of a partially-terraformed Mars.)

( cut to contain the fury of a fusion-powered mech and a hotheaded pilot on a quest for vengeance )

Why do you do this to me?



At least the reviews are worth reading.

(And this still isn't as bad as the supernatural romance I found once about the immortal dinosaur shapeshifters who had to save the world from the evil faeries. Speaking of which, I need to see if I can scare up a copy - for our mutual amusement, of course.)

Oh, and inspired by chadu's own work on a space opera game, I'm working on hacking PDQ# into handling zero-gravity mecha combat of the type seen in Macross and Zone of the Enders.

Here's a rundown of how it works so far: (Please note this is currently very rough. Feedback is welcome.)

- Orbital Frames or any humanoid mecha are handled using the standard Duel rules, except that both parties make a Flashy Challenge before each round to determine initiative on the exchange, with the loser also forbidden from utilizing a Full Defence for that round. Optionally, the victor can choose to forgo the combat round to launch drones, switch weapons loadouts, attempt escape (prompting a chase scene) or perform another non-combat action. This simulates the "flurry, break, repeat" cycle seen in the source material.

- Mecha are 'worn', and add directly to the pilot's own Fortes. So a Good (+2) Mecha Pilot handling an Average (+0) frame that's been fitted with a Good (+2) High-Speed Interception kit would roll at +4 on the between-rounds Flashy Challenge. Per standard rules, the pilot can choose to apply damage to either his own Fortes, or those of his mecha, generating Plot Hooks as appropriate. Typically, baseline mecha get 4 Forte ranks to spread across their own frame rating (governing basic operations, attack, maneuvering and defence) and any specialized subsystems they carry. (Subject to playtesting, of course. But this abstracts a lot of the fiddly bits of Real Robot combat while still allowing for loadout variety. It also means that a pilot is about twice as 'powerful' (in terms of raw Forte rank count) while in his mecha than he is on foot. This, I feel, is roughly the sweet-spot for simulating the genre.)

- Capital Ships or any large, non-mecha vehicle use the standard vehicle combat rules. Typically, they treat mecha as environmental hazards - while on the volte-face, it's an extended challenge for a mecha to take them down (multiple rounds of flying through the superstructure, strafing key components, lining up for the key shot, etc.). So it's hard for a capship's beam weapons to hit the lightly-armed, fast-moving orbital frame suits (meaning that capital ships are mostly going to be a backdrop to the real dogfights taking place at mecha scale), and it's appropriately difficult for a group of mecha to affect a colony drop. (For the purposes of rules abstraction, space stations are treated as capital-scale vehicles)

- Small, non-mecha combatants (swarms of combat drones, semi-autonomous laser arrays, cluster missles, dudes in spacesuits with anti-materiel rifles, etc.) are treated as minion squads by mecha, standard opponents while on foot, and generally ignored by capships. Typically, they're there to harry and distract; not to do significant damage. 'Mook' mecha could also be treated as minions.

- I'm tempted to say that PCs are never treated as minions, but I don't know how much that would blur the scale divisions. Typically, you don't see fights over more than one size category (foot, mecha, capship) apart.

- For an expenditure of an extra Forte during pilot generation, the player may upgrade to a Greater Mecha. Greater Mecha begin play with 6 Forte ranks for their frame and equipment kits, and may also optionally enter ship-scale combat as a corvette with a virtual crew equal to the mecha's frame rating plus onboard AI or targetting computer (if any)

- I'm also going to offer a "ship-buster" kit - either a beam cannon or missile launcher which allows a standard mecha to enter into ship combat with a virtual crew equal to the weapon system's rating - with the provisio that standard mecha take double damage from capship weapons when engaging in direct combat.

- Unless the PCs are involved, battleships and up basically just sit in the background and foul up the combat space. There's not a whole lot of interplay between size categories on the upper end otherwise.

(An idea I had last night for a J-Horror one-shot, inspired by One Missed Call and the Fatal Frame games. I'll probably never do anything with it, but y'know.)

As a student finishing up your last term at Utsunomiya's Kita High School, you're looking forward to hanging out at the local Bell Mall, maybe catching a Tochigi S.C. game, and basically just enjoying the last summer of your youth. Until one day, all that changed. While relaxing with your friends on the roof of the school after class, all of your cell phones ring simultaneously - exactly once, accompanied by a sudden cicada chorus. In the stillness afterward, you look down to see a new text message: "tasukete, kudasai" repeated out to the message limit. The sender's number is just listed by short code - 4444.

Thus begins a summer nightmare where old horrors best forgotten come to light, set to the cicada's song.

Oh, this is brilliant.

I Love My Dead Gay Husband: being a full and thorough excoriation of the Romance genre

It is only with the hero that the heroine may finally experience the Full and Sweaty Expression of Pelvic Ecstasy!

RDFtv and Michael Shermer present: The Baloney Detection Kit - a crash course in critical thinking.

... I have to see this movie.

Something Jacob (logosinvictus) and I were kicking around in IRC just now:

[21:24] <@Logos> You know though, that gives me an amusing idea for Arcane Derangements. Whenever you lose Wisdom due to some unWise use of magic, the derangement you gain (if you gain one) is - instead of a normal one - a compulsive desire to repeat your original sin.
[21:25] <@Logos> You kill someone with magic? When you're stressed, you have to make a roll not to lash out with magic at whatever's frustrating you.
[21:26] <@uhrwerk> Make it a devil's bargin: Give them a bonus dice to tempt them into repeating their sin, compounding each time they accept. After they've taken bonus dice equal to their morality, it becomes a WP roll instead.
[21:26] <@Logos> Even better, Mike.
[21:27] <@Logos> I think it helps bring home the idea that when a mage casts a spell, it's not enough to simply believe that he CAN make the spell happen, but that the spell SHOULD happen, which is one of the keys of how magic works in nMage.
[21:27] <@uhrwerk> (Which means that, yes, 'lesser' temptations become automatic as the character's Wisdom drops. This is fully intentional.)
[21:30] <@uhrwerk> Just keep a hashmark tally of the number of bonus dice the Mage has accepted for each transgression - if the tally meets or exceeds their _current_ Wisdom, they have to make a WP roll to resist reproducing the sin the next time they're presented with the stimulus
[21:32] <@uhrwerk> If you wanted to spin this further, you could have them take on the Easily Ridden merit if they posess a number of automatic transgressions greater than their gnosis - simulating the perilous position their hubris has placed them in and the growing influence of the Abyss over their own mind.
[21:33] <@Logos> Oooo.
[21:33] <@Logos> Might write up "Abyssal Medium" as a derangement for that part.
[21:33] <@uhrwerk> Sounds good. I was just using the merit as an example. :)
[21:34] <@uhrwerk> Congrats! You've lost yourself to your hubris and become a conduit for the Abyss. Good jorb!
[21:34] <@Logos> Rowan: Someone didn't read the manual~
[21:35] <@uhrwerk> Which means that they either need to raise their wisdom or their gnosis in order to break the Abyss' hold over their mind
[21:35] <@uhrwerk> Which reaffirms their connection with the Watchtowers either way
[21:35] <@Logos> Indeed.
[21:36] <@Janana> The good part there is, if your Wisdom's been battered all to hell by all of this, buying it up will be cheap...
[21:37] <@uhrwerk> Yeah, but let's just hope you learned your lesson
[21:39] <@Logos> Quite
[21:39] <@uhrwerk> *shrugs* I just thought it would be a good way to affim through the mechanics that the Abyss is actively seeking to turn Mages' own hubris against them

(Or "Ken Hite's continuing conspiracy to empty my bank account")

Know, O Prince, that between the years when the Serpent fell and the oceans drank America and the gleaming cities, and the rise of the Sons of Space, there was an Age undreamed of, when nations guttered low and flared brilliant across the poisoned world like dying stars—California and Texas each claiming the flag of the West, France torn asunder and facing the desert, harsh Mexico, slumbering Brazil, Argentina where the seeds of Thule lay waiting, ancient lands of Persia and Arabia and Iraq between two empires, the coldly clutching Soviet Union whispering behind its Wall of Serpent, Japan whose warriors wore steel and silk and khaki. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Australia, the last green and pleasant land, ringed around by its dominions and bulwarked by the sea...



It’s Ken Hite (Trail of Cthulhu, Adventures into Darkness) (princeofcairo) writing his own version of a post-apocalyptic pulp future, drawing inspiration from men's adventure novels, Mad Max, Robert E. Howard, Nazi occultism, and the Norse Eddas. What more do you need?

Unconvinced? Fine, let's run this down.

In 1945, Nazi occultists – fueled by amphetamines, Pleistocene herbs culled from Finnish bogs and mead from “unknown insects” – succeeded in an occult ritual designed to sever America’s role as the “Rope of the Norns” and bring about Ragnarok. This, they swore, would enable the Aryan race to rule as the new masters of Midgard. Garm howled, Loki slipped his chains and the head of Jörmungandr rose from the Arabian sea. The creature proved unstoppable, easily shattering both the material and the morale of the Allied forces in its venomous jaws.

Truman, in a last-ditch decision which would forever change history, ordered Operation John Henry: a lone B-29 (the Strange Cargo) left Iceland with the Trinity Device on a one-way flight straight into the snake’s brainpan.

The world-serpent died, crushing much of Europe (including the bulk of the British Isles) under its coils. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, however, most of its 8000-mile long bulk landed in the Atlantic – creating tsunamis of unthinkable power and ferocity. Most of North America to the east of the Rockies drowned in the deluge – an America already sickened by the cloud of venom, blood and fallout settling over it, twisting and sickening much of its flora and fauna.

Eastern America today is a a monster-haunted wasteland of free cities (who model themselves after Chicago and Houston), scavenger camps and jungles growing where cities once stood, thick with the chanting of snake cultists carrying out unholy rites. Over in Russia, Stalin seeks to reanimate the Frost Giants as an unstoppable army with which to bring the world under his sway. The Japanese Empire holds Manchukuo and the Philippines, where they experiment with weird tonics and gene therapies distilled from the rotting corpse of the Midgard Serpent. Thankfully, Britain endures – though relocated to South Africa, Australia and the Indian states who rejected Ghandi’s congress– and its Rhodes University leads the free world in its own ophi-tech research: giving its fighting men body armor woven from the great snake’s tendons, jetpacks fueled by its distilled bodily humours, and microwave guns which use fuel cells crafted from its intestinal bacteria.

So that’s where things stand now: Earth has become a world of strange technology, broken cities and savage jungles laden with reptilian monstrosities and the cultists who worship them. But mankind endures. Will you help rebuild the world in the face of Fimbulwinter, or will you take what you can and watch the rest burn?

Curious? Excited? Strangely aroused? Get thee to the preview materials over at the Atomic Overmind Press website.

So I picked up one of the new low-profile Apple keyboards (wired model, with numeric keypad) in hopes of reducing the impact on my already ailing left wrist (which is full of scar tissue from an old injury).

While I miss my old IBM Model M* - the only keyboard which made my coding sound like it was causing the end of the world, I have to admit that the ergonomics are much nicer on Apple's 'board. The keys are soft, with a short throw and good tactile feedback - about like a good laptop setup. And while I do have a few dead keys (F13-19, the eject button, etc.), I have to admit that its smaller size and nearly flat typing angle does make for a comfortable experience; even moreso than the Razer Tarantula it replaced.

Colour me impressed, Apple. Now if you'd just be willing to release first-party drivers for using the damn thing under Windows so I could do something about those unused keys.


* A keyboard I had to give up after motherboard manufacturers jettisoned PS/2 support. For some reason, I've never been able to find a USB adapter that works half as well as it should.

Bloody hell, why the sudden craving for fish tacos? Fine self, I suppose we can drop by Fuzzy's tonight.