Baristas in the Oort Cloud

If you listen to A Gaming Podcast About Nothing, you might know that my current pet project is running a campaign set on the various communities in the Oort Cloud of some future time. Probably using Machinations of the Space Princess, although it started off in my head as a Dogs in the Vineyard hack, I've been making notes, creating tables, even a sample grid of space two light-minutes by two light-minutes across.

At 3:30 this morning while I was waiting with my daughter something just popped into my head: Baristas.

At the edge of the solar system, alcohol isn't so much banned as it is severely frowned on. There's a time and a place for a good time, and you can buy beer if you want it - but it's not the done thing. Coffee on the other hand - well, it's a natural stimulant, keeps you alert, and even in the safest of safe places, there's always a chance of a micro-meteor causing a hull breach, or a cometary ice storm to weather. Coffee is good.

And the Exalted Order serve the best coffee. Some people scoff and say that the machines they use are a sham, that the taste and smell from the resulting coffee is all about perception. Others say that the machines came from Earth, have been lovingly restored or preserved over many generations, and that the Baristas are near-alchemists, turning dials, grinding beans just-so and applying water of the correct temperature to two decimal places without computer aid.

You pay a price for this devotion, but it's often rewarded. The movers and the shakers, the high and the low, they all pay at the temple-cafes of the Exalted Order. There are even stories of the Baristas of the Exalted Order, in their simple black shirt and trousers (forearm sleeve tattoo optional) entering trances, uttering things about patron-worshippers that they couldn't possibly know. Who knows?

Start Over

I don't remember the last time that I slept through the night. I used to, all the time, sleep for six to eight hours at a stretch every night without fail. Now, my rest is piecemeal, two hours, then three, then 45 minutes, then whatever is left until the morning.

(Parenthood ladies and gentlemen!)

I also don't remember the last time I wrote something of substance on here, but the clock tells me it was probably over three months ago. It hit me a few days ago, when reading Warren Ellis' new "blog" morning.computer that there was an opportunity here to connect two "problems" and create an opportunity.

Even at two or three in the morning when I swing out of bed, stumble into the nursery and shush CJ or lie her back down (tangent: she learning a new trick this week, how to go from lying on her back to sitting up; this has been an intellectual leap for her. The next day she started crawling) and help her fall asleep, even when I am actually struggling to remember what day it is, or whether I have work or whatever - even then, my brain is ticking over ideas.

So: when I wake in the night, brain kicks in, ideas ideas ideas - when I get back to bed, before I lie down, make a note of them, when I get chance in the day after, write something - anything, even if (like morning.computer) it is just a short idea or observation.

Let's see where this leads.

A Gaming Podcast About Nothing

Dave, aka noisms, and I are doing a podcast. We've been talking about doing it for ages, and finally found the time. It was so much fun to record that we're going to make time to record more regularly (although not on an official schedule just yet).

A Gaming Podcast About Nothing is here! And we talk about lots of things related to role-playing games, our lives and nothing really. Listen to it, and tell us what you think.

PRISM/AGENT

PRISM/AGENT is a hack of GHOST/ECHO that I am working on which is inspired by Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. It has been rolling around in my head for a while now to create something "complete" - something that is done and I can play it and move on. Not just to have ideas in my brain all the time with no escape. I think PRISM/AGENT (which is a name-in-progress) is the first way to defuse that creative bomb which, if it explodes, will make me bitter and annoyed and sulky.

I love GHOST/ECHO. I think I've said that before on here. It's just beautiful. Two pages, some inspirations, some simple mechanics that create rich stories. PRISM/AGENT is an ugly little runt, built out of the best bits of other things, but hopefully it will be playable. I see it one way in my head, and others might play it totally differently.

Core ideas are that PCs are agents with colour codenames, as the Captains in Spectrum are; agents have been freed/released/rescued from aliens/others, but as a result have gained Influences (equivalent to Channeling the Ghost Field move in G/E). These Influences are based on the powers that the Mysterons show in Captain Scarlet, but that's it: the agents can use these powers, but if they lose control of them something bad happens. Basic moves are similar/identical to G/E, which of course are based in part on moves in Apocalypse World I think. The Listening For Echoes move is translated to trying to uncover the intention of the Others (Obscurons?) - and if you fail at that then something bad happens (the Others become aware of you, or you face some kind of mental assault).

But here's what occurs and which I am excited about: PRISM/AGENT has the possibility to be really neat in that you can take the basic premise and transplant it to so many different locations and time periods. A retro-future like Captain Scarlet? Check. A 1920s gangster backdrop with Others/Invaders? Check. Straight pulp heroes? Check. This was something that GHOST/ECHO did beautifully - you don't need lots of stuff in order to play it, and to play it in so many different ways.

Anyways! PRISM/AGENT - or something similarly (or not) named. Coming soon. Playtesting over G+ maybe by the end of April, or in person in Liverpool (Liverpool Game Nerds Assemble!). Comments and questions very welcome!

Kait Legendary - a Kamikaze Librarian

Later today I'm playing in my first game in months (wife's online Masters is cancelled for tonight and am FLAILSNAILing for the first time into a game I've heard is good). I've also wanted to play as a Kamikaze Librarian ever since I saw Patrick's post last year.

Kait Legendary ("KL") was in a knowledge cult for a little while - the Burning Order - but realised that they were deliberately hoarding to deprive others. The name Burning Order comes from their imperative to rule and to destroy the scholarly treasure troves of others (after making sure they have a copy for themselves). Anywho, KL left before she took her novice exams, but was seriously bitten by the scroll-bug, and loves to collect scrolls, parchments, maps and books for her own personal library. When she has enough she plans to exhibit and set up shop in the University District of Wetham.

Until that time she adventures! Either she finds interesting and useful things on her travels or she finds the means to buy interesting and useful things on her travels. It's all the same to her. She looks like a hulked out Scarlett Johansson (because why not).


(stats below the fold)

Magic Item: Nena Bleeve's Journal

Nena Bleeve was the niece of Arvik Bleeve. Like her uncle she was interested in making items of magical value, but she had not reached his heights of creation (nor the depths of his madness). Nena had few friends, though occasionally played doubles Flaming Chess with aristocrats. Her distinguishing feature was the journal that many observed her writing in; compulsively some said. Writing walking down the street at times, writing while meeting people, making endless notes...

Described as bookish by everyone who met her, she was nevertheless a ruthless killer. People who survived her attacks spoke of incredible grace, speed of attack, and how sometimes she seemed able to shrug off what should have been horrific life-ending injuries. And after that she would write in her journal.

Nena died, surprised by an elven assailant who disintegrated her with a wand firing a rainbow bolt... Her journal was not recovered after the attack, and Wethamites who knew it for what it was have been unable to locate it. It is possible that it was destroyed in the attack, but who can say for sure?

A Ghost: Hanna On-the-hill

Hanna On-the-hill (a ghost generated by noisms' table)

Olpek is the oldest man in the village. He has been making furniture and wooden toys for over sixty years. When he was eight years old, his grandfather told him about the terrible girl who lived on the hill past the Red Forest. Legend said she was a beautiful princess. After angering a necromancer by refusing his marriage proposal, she was cursed with eternal unlife and a terrible hunger. Bound to the hill where he proposed, Hanna feasts on flesh when she can get it, preserving her body and regenerating when she gets enough.

Monster: Spiky Slugs

In the private workspace of Hirgon the Shapeshifter sits a large stone chest which cannot be moved. It came from Somewhere Else, and is held in our universe by forces beyond anyone's understanding. The contents of the chest hunger, but are thankfully sealed by the stone tablet on top. If it were removed or broken they would be free...

Wizard Matchbooks

You're a wizard. You're really well-established in the magical arts. You can create life from non-living material, fly and shoot lightning out of your eyes. It gets to be that you think: "Hey, I'd rather spend my headspace remembering spells to shatter the boundaries between reality than how to illuminate stuff or detect an invisible something..." So you make wands or a staff and then one day it hits you. What can you carry in your pocket, with a little one-time shot of magic, easy, handy and convenient. A book of matches. Strike one, and your spell's done.

You start making simple stuff and then realise, "Hey, I could do a lot with this..."

Making Notes Is Not The Same As Being Creative

Well dur - but that's what I have been telling myself for a while. Blah blah no time blah blah work and life and childcare and hardly even reading anything (apart from Of Dice And Men, which I enjoyed) blah blah.

So: in an effort to get more things done and made and hopefully get playing something again, I'm taking my notes and doing something with them. I keep forgetting, every six months or so, that just because I develop an idea one way, does not mean I cannot do something different with it on a different day.

A year ago I was running a campaign Somewhere North (before I switched in spring to Somewhere South, and that is where we stayed). Had the campaign continued the city of Zelman would probably have been reached. Despite the title of this post, here are some notes that I made about the city but hadn't developed (and now hopefully will):

• Bars are rare and beer is expensive as a result
• The coffee-klatch as a meeting place is extremely popular, and they're everywhere
• Mould wine is popular (NOTE: get translation in Finnish or something to make it sound cool)
• Skilled traders, trainers and artisans practice the animal-husbandry of mega-fauna
• A creature that is a mammoth with some kind of a twist to it
• The study of optiks and lenses is fashionable among natural scientists/wizards
• Make a rumour table about the Elves (who are mistrusted generally in the north)
• Location: The Unbreachable Maze of Someone. A dungeon/elaborate treasure vault protected by the usual traps, monsters and so forth but where certain sections of the dungeon are also time-stopped or time-slowed. The dungeon reclaims the eventual dead, and that's why there are thousands of re-animated skeletons guarding it, but of course the prize at the centre is worth it...

I have very talented friends who are getting things done. And I want to be someone who gets things done too. So enough with "thinking" and "note-making". Time for writing and doing.

Oh, and happy 2014! (he says on the 14th of January)