Character Creation: Death Divers

It's fucking cold...and what's colder than space? 

The Game: Death Divers
The Publisher: Will Power Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Death Divers and Heroic Dark 

 

Wow, when was the last time I did a game that had a separate core book? Well, probably the last time I did a Savage Worlds game, but still.

So anyway, Death Divers is, like it says on the cover there, a setting for Heroic Dark. Heroic Dark is a system that posits heroic characters fighting against some kind of Darkness, and there are always three factions defined by their relationship to said Darkness (afraid of it, oppressed by it, denying it). In Death Divers, the Darkness is the Pit and the demons thereof. Basically the system is resonant of Doom; there's space travel, they figured out how to fold space but popped a hole in it which led to a Hell-like dimension (which actually reminds me a lot of Slidescape-36 from Control as it's described). Anyway, there's some unobtanium shit in Hell, which they start mining, then the demons start getting smarter and now they're emerging and starting to attack human settlements.

It's not a bad setting. Much like the Heroic Dark book, it's a little dry for my taste. I think if I was gonna run Heroic Dark I'd rather come up with a setting on my own or with my group, but Death Divers is by no means bad.

Right, so, let's make a character!

So, which of the three societies do I find most interesting? There's a sample character concept where the person is rich, old money from Earth, but became a Death Diver (oh, right, Death Divers descend into Hell to protect people from demons while mining, though the PCs are actually former Death Divers in a spaceship fighting the demons that have escape the Pit) because someone is trying to kill them. I like the idea of being old money, but there's a bit in the book that mentions that sometimes people of means get made Death Divers as punishment, and I think I'd like to riff on that a little.

Let's say my character, Hussein Fouad, was the second-to-youngest scion of the Fouad family. The family made its money in water, but they own a lot of shit now - resort on Ganymede, properties on Mars, more spaceships than they need. And Hussein wasn't anything special, wasn't the flashiest of his generation (that'd be his older brother Hamza), wasn't the black sheep (that'd be the oldest, his sister Maryam), but definitely wasn't the whiz kid (that's his little brother Ahmed, the tech genius). Hussein was the one that society watchers said "oh, right, him." He was a good athlete, made good grades, but in his family, "good" was invisible.

And then one night he got grabbed out of his bed, a bag put over his head, a needle in his arm, and the next thing he knew he was shipping out with Death Divers. To this day, he has no idea why. His family has cut off contact, the gossip columns barely mention him, and when they do, they always mention stuff he already did, rather than what he's doing. 

Hussein feels like maybe this is a nightmare he can still wake up from. I kinda doubt it, but it'd be interesting to see what a good GM would come up with for why this happened to him.

OK, well, this means he's in the Denier society (the closest to Earth, and thus the farthest away from the Pit). That all also covers step 2 of chargen, too. 

Step 3 asks me to choose a Career from the list, and then specialize or customize a bit. I think Hussein is a Communicator (Scion). 

Step 4 is Style, which is just something to describe Hussein's general vibe. Confused? Eh, I think he would have been when he was first thrust into this, but let's assume he's been at this a while. It'd be interesting to make Hussein more of a conspiracy theorist. Let's say he's Paranoid. 

Step 5 is Archetype, which gets more into points and build. I think The Natural makes the most sense, since that gives me good all-rounder capability. No place on the sheet for that, weirdly. Anyway, that gives me two Attributes at rank two, and two at rank 1. I'll put Influence and Focus at 2, and Senses and Might at 1. That leaves Agility at 0. 

I get two skills and one specialization. How's this work again? Oh, it's pretty simple, Skills are broad, specializations are just that. Let's see, is this a list for this setting? Nope, so we'll just go with the Generic and Futuristic lists in the core. I only get two, anyway. I'll give Hussein Comprehension and Speech. I'll specialize Speech in Etiquette (should Etiquette be its own Skill? It is in some lists, but I dunno, it feels narrower to me). 

And then I get 6XP toward Power Moves. These are much like stunts in Fate, there's a system for building them, but in Hussein's case I think I want to give him one based on Speech and have key in on the camaraderie of "OK, guys, I know this sucks, but we can get out alive if we work together." That's basically Motivate: Use Speech to motivate others to pitch in and stay focused by appealing to everyone's shared misery. That only costs 4XP, so I guess I'd have 2 left to start. 

I get 8 resources to buy shit, but I think I'd keep it simple: Pistol, armor, probably some kind of camera or recording device. 

I picture Hussein as in his late 20s now, black hair, Arabic (if that means anything at all in an interplanetary setting). He's gone from confused and depressed to paranoid and a bit twitchy, especially since the goddamn demons are coming out of the Pit now. Is his family in on it? WAS HE A SACRIFICE? (Probably not.) Only one way to find out! Into the breach!

Movie #914: The Faculty

The Faculty is a sci-fi horror movie directed by Robert Rodriguez, and probably the last movie on the list we're watching for a while now that Oscar noms have dropped. (And that's actually kind of topical, since one of the frontrunners, Sinners, was influenced quite a bit by both this and From Dusk Til Dawn, but I digress.) Pretty stacked cast: Elijah Wood, Clea DuVall, Shawn Hatosy, Josh Hartnett, Famke Janssen, Salma Hayek, Jon Stewart, Laura Harris, Jordana Brewster, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick, and Piper Laurie. 

Herrington High in...somewhere in Ohio...is kind of a shithole. Principal Drake (Neuwirth) is trying her best, but there just isn't funding for things like field trips or school musicals, because all of the funding is getting eaten up by the football team, because the whole town goes to the games and that's where the support is. So far, so depressingly accurate. 

But then the football coach (Patrick) and the drama teacher (Laurie) stab the principal seemingly to death...but then she's back at work the next day. The weirdness continues as shy nerd Casey (Wood) finds a weird creature on the football field and brings it to the science teacher (Stewart), but the students have their own shit going on. Senior delinquent Zeke (Hartnett) has a drug selling business to manage, and a pretty inappropriate rapport going with the English teacher (Janssen, who actually manages to be mousy, which for her is impressive). Casey is crushing on Delilah (Brewster), head cheerleader and editor of the school paper, who is dating Stan (Hatosy), the quarterback, but Stan quits the team to try and earn his way in life. And Marybeth (Harris), the new girl from Atlanta, is trying desperately to make friends and winds up cozying up to Stokely (DuVall), the black-clad supposed lesbian (I am continually saddened that they didn't have the guts to actually let her be gay, but whatever, 1998). 

So with this tangled web of characters, we come to the meat of the problem: There's an infestation of wriggly slug aliens. They start by taking over the faculty and then move with frightening efficiency to assimilate the student body. Our heroes, through a variety of weird happenings, wind up being the only ones to witness what's happening and figure out that if they can find and kill the "queen" alien, that should kill the aliens in everyone else, leaving them human. 

From there, it's a paranoid chase to figure out who's who, who's infected, and deal with the now-infected versions of their friends and teachers coming after them, culminating in a big showdown and, eventually victory, with only a few permanent casualties, and some shifts in the school dynamic: Zeke is now a football play, Casey is a hero and is dating Delilah, Stokely has come out as straight and is dating Stan. 

I'd seen this movie once before, but I didn't remember how well put-together it was. Like, ignore the plot, the plot is basically The Puppet Masters, and they really hang a lantern on that in the film. What's fun is that there's not an obvious final girl/guy amongst the principal cast. It's pretty clear as they start getting infected one by one that someone is going to be our last kid standing, but it's legitimately not obvious who. Likewise, Rodriguez takes just enough time to establish everyone, including the faculty, before the aliens start taking over so that we can appreciate the changes. Daniel Von Bargen actually has one of my favorite "transformations," as he goes from drunk, depressed, and apathetic to bright-eyed and aggressive and telling his students to make a detail list of all their family members. 

I like the world-building; the aliens absorb water quickly and so their human hosts drink constantly, and we see more and more water bottles popping up as the movie goes on. The scene of the coach and his players standing in the rain after the big game (during which they infect most of the other team) is chilling. 

The CGI doesn't always hold up, but it was the 90s, so they often knew to hide the really obvious stuff in shadows and let the practical effects do the heavy lifting. Rodriguez knows when to let the acting do the work, though, and the script was written by Kevin Williamson (he of Scream fame), so it's got the right amount of metacommentary on its genre. 

The Faculty is a movie that's gotten better regarded as the years go on. When it came out, people kind of thought it was ripping off other movies, but I dunno, I see it more as paying homage to them, because you can't tell me Rodriguez didn't know what he was doing. I go around about whether the nice pat "everyone goes back to normal when the queen dies" thing is too easy, but it's not like we get off scott free, and thematically there's a lot of "the more things change, the more they stay the same" happening. I think it's a smarter movie than people think. 

My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: High

Next up: The Three Amigos, eventually 

Tidal Blades: Ayup, Welm a te Brai Ri!

Last night we managed to squeak in a game before the oncoming blizzard (so they say, but who know when or if it'll hit here. I fully expect the yetis to be outside the door by dinnertime for that comment). Here's last time, which was a while ago, since we missed our December game due to illness.

Our heroes are still near the Bright Reef. Hobie hangs out with their shrimp, Garnet, and her recently-rescued mama. The others look out over the Bright Reef. 

It's bigger than they thought at first. They see lots of people - tyros, magnafrons, iota, golfins - all living in a village. But the colors, good grief. Everything and everyone is bright and more colorful than normal. Tyros are usually blue with orange fins:

Like so

But the tyros here have deeper blue scales starting at the tops of their heads and getting greener until they reach the shoulders. The orange in their fins likewise goes from deep red to bright, vibrant yellow. And everything, including the coral of the reef, is like that. 

The characters see families, schools of iotas, a couple of tyro teens tossing a ball around, another tyro fishing with a net. They split up to go look around. Faesli swims over to look at the reef and the coral itself - what is it about this place that makes it so attractive to coral miners? Coral generally is used as a building material in Naviri, so maybe this colorful coral would be premium stuff? 

Bait grabs his net and goes fishing, but has some trouble. A tyro swims up to him. "Ayup," he says. "Trin a fit?" 

"...what?" says Bait.

This continues a bit, as Bait grapples with the Bright Reef dialect, but eventually the tyro shows him. If you put your net on the surface of the water with an attached guide rope and wait, the fish come to the surface to nibble it, and then you yank. "A deh go! Rigglas!" He rubs his belly. "Yum!"

Meanwhile, Sobek swims over to the tyro lads and gestures for them to toss him the ball. They do, and he realizes it's actually a volcanic rock with little pockets, into which they've inserted other rocks to act as weights (and thus adjust the weight of the "ball"). They play for a bit, and the lads ask Sobek if he doesn't have to go up for air (Sobek, for whatever reason, seems to grasp the dialect a little better). He says he does, but he can hold his breath a good long while.

Hobie swims over the reef and talks with a local, or tries, but the local eventually manages to convey that there's a lost creature of some kind ("orandolp", but Hobie doesn't know what that is) here. Hobie is, of course, happy to meet a new friend, and the fellow calls over an iota. "Ayup," he says. "Hear you're looking for the reefin."
 

A reefin. You're welcome.

He introduces himself as Noop, and clearly speaks "standard" Naviri dialect. He leads Hobie to his home, where a veritable swarm of iota children are playing, and points to a couple of them frolicking with a reefin. "Bran tof hi!" he calls, and the lads swim over with the critter. "She got separated from her pod," Noop explains, "and washed over here. We love her, but we can't keep her - reefins need room to roam, and we don't leave the Reef much. Do you-"

"YES," says Hobie calmly. They talk with the reefin for a bit, and the reefin flips over and wiggles her fins while Hobie scritches her belly. 

Meanwhile, the others have come over, and Noop chats with them. Faesli asks about why someone would want to harvest this place, and Noop isn't sure specifically, other than the coral. He does politely ask if the characters would mind looking into and maybe stopping that? The folks in the Reef aren't exactly worldly and they have a hard time talking with outsiders, and Noop would go, but he has (he does some quick math) 26 kids to take care of. ("How do you remember all their names?" "We make up a song. Every kid gets a line." "...long song." "My parents had (math) 227 kids. That song was very long.")

The characters, of course, were going to look into this anyway, and they're quite happy to help the Reef. Noop mentions, too, that there's a shipwreck nearby, if they'd be interested in looking at that? They are, of course (Bait's eyes light up at the word "ship" in any context).

Noop shows them the shipwreck. It's not salvageable - it's got a big hole in the hull. The lettering on the side identifies the ship as the Fluttering Fantasy. Bait and Sobek both recognize it - it's a ship from Naviri. Sobek even remembers that it transports michronic cards (the kind used to get into battles in the Rings, or similar identification purposes) around the Citadel. So how did it get all the way out here? 

They investigate, trying to figure out what sank it. They do find some cyphers in the wreckage (Bait finds one called a "Reset," which, when broken, erases the last five minutes of time and rewinds everything back to that point, with Bait the only one who remembers what happened, which everyone, including Bait, agrees is far too much power to give to Bait). Bait figures that what did this punched a big hole in the hull from the outside, but left no residue or paint, so it wasn't a ramming attack from another ship. Faesli guesses it could have been a mud-crab - maybe even the one they killed back on the beach! 

Faesli finds a glass circle, like a porthole window, which she realizes is a cypher (letting her detect all living things within an area). But as she's looking at it, she drops it! She quickly swims after it and catches it, but down on the sea floor finds a small, wooden box. Bait pops the lock, and inside they find a stack vault cards.

An aside: Currency in Naviri is typically either gob fruit or michronic shells, but both of those are hard to carry in large amounts. Hence, the Citadel created vault cards. You take your money to the Citadel, they issue a vault card coded for that amount, and any merchant with a reader can deduct money from that card. Bait is thrilled - there are twenty vault cards here, maybe they can buy a ship! Sobek notes that this assumes there's any money on these cards. If they're new cards, the Fantasy may just have been transporting them to the Citadel to be encoded. They might still be worth something, though. And, Faesli notes, maybe they could sell them to Angler. If he could find a way to put money on them without actually putting money on them...

Hobie, at this point, swims back up (they had drifted away to start getting to know their new friend and introduce her to Garnet). They introduce the reefin ("this is Tangerine, and she wants to go adventuring with us!"), and gets filled in. Hobie quashes part of that plan; vault cards are unhackable, at the moment. Folks who hack michronic tech are called "entanglers," and no one's figured out how to entangle vault cards. They have multiple redundancies to protect against that.

Well, Angler might still want to buy them, they figure, so they head back up to their rented boat and head back in to shore. Bait's dads agree to watch Tangerine and throw her a fish every now and then, while the others go ashore. Their first stop is Bol's Oils, as they figure she probably has a card reader.

The shop is still closed, but they can see a light on. "Helloooo," calls Faesli from outside. 

"Hello?" Bol calls back. "Are you a spirit? Come to deliver some fell portent?"

"No, it's Faesli. Can we come in?"

Bol opens the door. "You should have knocked. I thought you were a spirit. I suppose you could have been. It makes you think."

The characters talk with Bol a bit, always a surreal experience, and she does indeed have a card reader. She scans each of the cards. "This one is empty. And this one is empty. This one is empty. This one is empty. This one is empty." 

Turns out all of the cards are empty, so Sobek was probably right, they're unencoded. Bait is a little disappointed, but such is life. And hey, maybe Angler would give them a few shells. They take their leave of Bol and head to the Battle Ring to find Angler.

He's there, though the crocs guarding the stairway to his box give them some trouble. Faesli is close to talking their way past, but Bait keeps jumping up and down yelling "Angler! Angler!" and the croc knocks him down the stairs with a tail swipe. Sobek stands up ("Nobody does that to my friend!") and the croc knocks him down the stairs. 

"WHO WANTS SOME TAIL?" the croc bellows, not really thinking that threat through. Faesli squares off and the croc strikes, but Faesli has been working on dodging and nimbly jumps over the tail! "Ugh, fine, go," he says.

They go up the stairs to Angler's box, where they find the turtle finishing up a meeting. "Well, look who it is, the Snacks." 

"Snacks?" Hobie is momentarily confused. "That our new team name?"

"Yeah," says Angler. "You beat The Appetite." 

Hobie beams. "I'm a Snack!"

Faseli gets the point, and asks about the Bright Reef. Angler seems vaguely familiar, but either he's being real cagey or legitimately doesn't know what they're on about. But they talk to him for a bit (and make some impressive social kinds of rolls), and he comes around. 

The Bright Reef has some weird michronic properties, and Cyan, one of his chief Entanglers, was pushing to harvest the coral. But Angler wasn't really interested in doing that. For one thing, it's very close to the coastline and thus to Angler's Cove, but more important, like, people live there. Angler's a crime lord, but he's not a dick, and he's not going to displace a whole village like that. 

The Snacks describe the crew they saw checking out the reef, though, and Angler nods. "Yeah, that's Cyan's crew." He also confirms that the crew of the Fluttering Fantasy made it ashore in their longboats after their ship sunk - it drifted off course in a storm about a month ago, got attacked by a mud-crab and then made it close to the coast before sinking, but the crew made it off. Angler negotiated with the captain and provided passage back to the Citadel, but he remembers that Cyan was very pushing about talking to the captain alone. 

Angler is annoyed by all this - Cyan is one of his best people, but he doesn't want his people going behind his shell. He tells the Snacks that he knows that Cyan has a private hideout, but isn't sure where. He does know, however, that Cyan buys Bol's oils to maintain michronic machinery, and that machinery isn't in any hideout Angler knows about. He tells them that that other hideout is not under any protection from him, and that Cyan has been out on the water lately. If Cyan has a boat, well, he's not going to complain if someone takes it and gives Cyan a little wrap on the fins.

Bait's eyes light up again. "Ship?" 

Movie #913: They Live

They Live is a sci-fi action movie with a sprinkle of horror starring Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster, George Buck Flower, and Raymond St. Jacques. 

Improbably swole drifter Nada (Piper; that's how he's credited, but he's never given a name in the movie) wanders into LA looking for work. He winds up living at a homeless camp and making friends with a fellow named Frank (David), and is just dealing with all that when the police roll in, smash the place up, and roust a nearby church that has a suspicious amount of sunglasses lying around.

Nada winds up with a box of them, puts a pair on, and can see the truth - the world is controlled by ghoulish, ugly humanoid creatures. Every sign, billboard, book, and magazine is actually a white plain with messages like "OBEY" and "MARRY AND REPRODUCE." Money is just white rectangles with "THIS IS YOUR GOD" printed on them. 

Nada, skipping right over the "refusal of the call" section of the hero's journey, pops into a bank with a shotgun and kills every alien he can find. From there, the movie is him trying to figure out what's happening, fight the aliens, and convince Frank that he's a heroic freedom fighter and not a dude who just shot up a bank for no reason. 

From there, Nada briefly menaces a TV exec (Foster) and gets tossed out a window for his trouble, and eventually winds up seeing what the aliens are up to: terraforming and giving people access to comfort and money in exchange for obedience. After all, everyone sells out anyway, why not enjoy it? 

They Live is one of those movies that gets referenced a lot. The sunglasses revealing the aliens, the stark "OBEY" on a white background, and of course Nada's iconic line ("I have come here to kick ass and chew bubblegum...and I'm all out of bubblegum.") have become sci-fi touchstones. But I'd never seen it before, and it was interesting watching it so close to One Battle After Another, since both deal with themes of revolution and corruption. I'm not gonna wax poetic, I'll just say that it's amazing how topical They Live remains.  

Roddy Piper does a pretty good job with the performance of Nada, though it's in the physicality where he really shines (which makes sense). His five-minute fight scene with Keith David is amazing, not for acrobatic or balletic kung-fu kind of stuff like we tend to get now, but for how raw and real it looks (which, again, makes sense, as they really did it rather than leaving it to stuntmen or jump cuts). 

The story is mostly pretty bleak, but in a very Reagan-era kind of way. Everything is bright and stark and often colorful or opulent, and selling out one's species is treated as something you're kind of dumb if you don't do. It's a nice extrapolation of the 80s "greed is good" mentality, and Piper gets to be the one idealistic guy who dies giving a middle finger to conformity and avarice. 

(Also, it took me the whole movie to remember that Meg Foster also played a corporate asshole in Leviathan, which is not nearly as good, but there's some interesting synergy there at least.)

My Grade: A-
Rewatch Value: High, I think?

Next up: The Faculty 

Character Creation: Steel & Scale

I'm a little mad about this game. Just a little. 

The Game: Steel & Scale
The Publisher: Steel & Scale Games Ltd
Degree of Familiarity: None, but the system isn't hard
Books Required: Just the one 

Check out that cover. A kind of early 20th century vibe with fucking dragons, right? Perhaps a WWI game with some fantasy elements? Got this dude about to hurl a fireball in the back while GI Robot stands lookout? 

And like...yeah, you could do all of that. Except there's no setting. This is someone's homebrew system (or, perhaps, revision of Shadow of the Demon Lord, because the system is basically that) that they wrote up, added art, and Kickstarted. And I'm a little mad about it, because it looks like a cool game, but where's the goddamn setting?

But then I started really thinking about it, and like, do I need the setting? Do I need the game to add another 50 pages to this very lean book, just to tell me about revisionist history or ancient pacts or what-the-fuck-ever? Two years ago I might have been more grouchy about it, but I've been running D&D in my own little world (that'd be Abhaile), and I have to admit, just at the moment it's tied with Chill for the game I look forward to running the most.

So...yeah, I think I'd run this, and I'm a little mad about it. Just a little. Don't ask me to explain. It's very cold outside. 

Moving on! I think we can just assume a 1910s European sort of setting plus dragons n' magic n' shit for purposes of this project. (PDF's not bookmarked, grr.)

Step One: Idea. Every time I read this I think of Nicholas Angel in Hot Fuzz before they ram the shopping carts into the meat counter. If you know you know. 

I feel like making a sort of martial character today, so I'm gonna make a sword expert. Beyond that I don't have a lot of ideas, so I'm gonna roll on the "Weird PC Backgrounds" table in The Weird. And I get..."military brat who grew up on all sorts of military bases, including a super secret one on the moon." 

Well, no military bases on the moon are mentioned in the Steel & Scale book, but they're not not mentioned, either, so fuck it, there's a base on the moon. Let's say that getting to that base is a matter of some pretty powerful magic, and my guy went there with his family when he was 14 and left when he was 18 (it was iffy that he was there at all and they basically gave him the choice: join up or sod off, and he chose to sod off and go to university). Actually, I like the idea of him still being pretty young, still in university, and just being scarily good at dueling and fencing. Probably because he learned some secret swordfighting techniques on the moon that are extra effective here on Earth, which doesn't actually make a lot of sense, but whatever. 

Step Two: Starting CP. Starting characters typically get 20 CP, so that's what we'll go with. My Skill Bonus is +2, and I get 3 Improvements. 

Step Three: Attributes. These are named after the four elements. Let's see, which ones are important for sword-fighting? Could be Earth or Water, but Water is the one to use for quick, precise stabbies. I get 0, 1, 1, 3 to split up, and obviously I want my 3 in Water. I'll put my 1s in Earth and Fire, I think. And then I get 3 points to throw around (from my Improvements), so I'll boost Air to 1 and Fire to 2 (I feel like some buckles are gonna get swashed and Fire influences charisma). 

Step Four: Archetype. Character class, effectively, mostly about how characters interact with combat. Eliminator, Skirmisher, and Warrior are all pretty appropriate. Maybe not Eliminator, that's a little more assassiny than I want. Yeah,  I think Skirmisher, with its focus on avoiding hits, is the better fit.

Step Five: Race. There are a few cool ones, but this particular concept works better as human, so that's what we're doing. I get a free Background, and if I want I could spend 2 CP on Improvise (which would let me double up on Skill bonus in some instances). That's pretty cool, but I think I'll hold off for now. 

Step Six: Resources & Numbers. Numbers, numbers, numbers, business business...is this working? (Yes.) Anyway. I suspect I'll be able to buy things that affect these later, but as things stand:

Defending is 1 (equal to Earth), Dodging is 3 (Water), Concentrating is 2 (Fire), Reacting is 1 (Air). I get to pick three of those things (Active Responses, they're called) that I add my Skill Bonus to, but that's a permanent choice. Well, Dodging, obviously, and then I think Reacting, and finally Defending. 

Passive Responses! These are all equal to 9 + an Attribute. That gives me:

Endurance 11
Evasion 13
Resolve 12
Awareness 11

I can, once again, apply my Skill Bonus to two of them. I think Endurance and Resolve make more sense here (resisting poison and other body things, and then resisting fear and mental effects). 

My HP is equal to 12 + [Earth x 2] + [Improvements x 2], or 20 for me. My Energy is the higher or Air or Fire (so Fire, for me) + Improvements, so 5. My Destiny is 3 (number of Improvements). 

Step Seven: Character Skillz. I get a Trait, an Expertise, and a Weapon Skill. Do I get anything else for being a Skirmisher? Nope! (I get free stuff, but not that.) 

So for my Trait, I want to take Agile. For my Expertise, I'll take...oh, there are a few that fit. I think since I'm a military brat, Bureaucracy makes the most sense, since he was around the military but never actually in it. 

Now, I could take a Flaw, which would give me an extra 2 CP, and why the heck wouldn't I? I'll take Loud. I get a Setback to skill checks based on stealth. Swashbucklers are not sneaky. 

Right, Weapons! Blades, obviously. 

Step Eight: Backgrounds. Normally I could buy two, but I get a free one because I'm human. Does that mean I get one free and I can buy one more, or that I could have a total of three? There's an example of chargen (so I can't be too mad at this game), so I can check!

Well...that wasn't altogether helpful, since in the example he just takes the freebie and doesn't buy any more. But the phrasing in the text there and under Backgrounds seems to suggest you can only ever have two, so that's what we'll go with. 

Actually, there's only one I want, and that's Ringleader. Kind of doubling down on the idea of my guy being a charismatic sort, Ringleader means I get some Followers! I get a group of loyal followers who accompany me on adventures, and I get two Special Followers (for which I roll) who have, like, stats and stuff. Also I get a social Trait for free. Well, for that I want Charming. And then for my Special Followers, I'll roll 2d6 and get...the Doc and the Brawn. 

Step Nine: Abilities & Talents. These are really what I'm gonna spend my CP on. Abilities have variable costs, Talents cost 5CP each. Lessee now. 

Well, obviously I want Blademaster, since that's basically my whole concept. That gives me a whole bunch of cool shit that I don't have room to write on the sheet, but that's fine. Basically I'm a badass with a sword and I'm hard to hit. That costs 5CP, so I'm down to 17 (I got two extra from the Flaw, recall). 

There's a couple more I like. Weaponbound, which would give me a magic sword, is really cool, but I'm gonna look through Abilities first. 

Well, of course I want Free-Runner (requires Agile, which I have). Annnnd...no spot for Abilities on the sheet. GUYS. Oh, wait, no, I just didn't print out the 2nd and 3rd pages. OK, fine. Anyway, Free-Runner costs 2, so I'm at 7 spent. Oh, I like Parley (basically I can talk people out of attacking my friends). That's another 3, so I've spent 10. 

Oh, shit yeah I want Flurry of Strikes (lets me ignore the restriction on only attacking once per turn with a given weapon). That's another 3 spent. I want Disarming Attack, that's very swashy. And then I want Dual Strike so I can have a sword in each hand. That's 4 more total, which takes me to...17. 5 more. If I want another Talent, now's my last chance. Argh. There are still Abilities I like. OK, screw the magic sword. I want Parry (3CP), and that leaves me 2, so I'll take Improvised Fighting, just so I can fence with table legs and shit. 

Step Nine: Equipment. I would get another 200 monies to equip my posse, but I'm not gonna bother. My dude has a rapier and probably a dagger in his boot, that's enough equipment for me (for purposes of this project; obviously were I really playing him I'd spend the  money). 

So, who is this guy? Let's call him Andy McClain. Andy grew up in various military bases all over the world, but when he was 14, his father (a military scientist) was reassigned to Gassendi Base on the moon. He isn't sure what dad was studying or researching there - it was all very hush-hush - but there was a whole community of kids of scientists and personnel, so it's not like Andy grew up lonely (I'm thinking of the base in Oppenheimer here). Andy displayed an aptitude for fencing - you can tweak the artificial gravity, so he learned how to fight in various gravitic conditions. 

When he turned 18, the powers-that-be gave him the same option they gave any of the "moon kids." You either join up or you go back to Earth, and you keep your mouth shut. Andy never had any illusions about joining the military, so he went back to Earth, enrolled in college (he's still deciding on a course of study), and joined his university's fencing team. He immediately attracted a group of friends, well-wishers, and hangers-on, but his two besties are Luna, a first-year med student (he started hanging with her because of her name, and he's considered telling her the truth about where he grew up), and Tommy, an athlete, brawler, weight-lifter, and all around sweet guy who just happens to be able to crush coconuts in his bare hands.

Andy is white, red-brown hair, barely a bit of peach fuzz on his face. He's quick and decisive, but not especially perceptive on a moment-to-moment level (great in a fight, though). It would be really easy to get him into an adventure, because he doesn't really think things through, especially if there's a problem he can solve by swording it.  

Movie #912: Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

Tales from the Darkside: The Movie is an anthology horror movie based on the TV show of the same name (well, except without the "The Movie" bit, obvs) and starring James Remar, Rae Dawn Chong, Christian Slater, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, Matthew Lawrence, Debbie Harry, Robert Sedgwick, William Hickey, and David Johansen.

We start off in a kitchen that frankly makes me envious, where a lovely suburban lady (Harry) is preparing to gut, stuff, and cook and little boy (Lawrence). The little boy manages to distract the evil witch (it's never stated she's a witch, but you can see her broomstick if you look carefully) by reading stories from Tales from the Darkside, a big ol' book she gave him to read while she fattens him up with cookies. 

He proceeds to read her three stories: 

"Lot 249" is about a nerdy dude called Bellingham (Buscemi) who raises a mummy (Michael Deak) from the dead to take revenge upon the two beautiful rich assholes (Moore and Sedgwick) who wronged him. His roommate Andy (Slater) winds up being the one who discovers this, which is unfortunately, since the assholes in question are his sister and best friend.

"Cat from Hell" shows us an old rich dude (Hickey) who made his money in pharmaceuticals, largely tested on cats, who hires a hitman (Johanson) to kill a black cat that has apparently been sent to avenge cat-kind upon him. 

"The Lover's Vow" is kind of based on a Japanese legend (and a 1968 film called The Snow Woman). Struggling artist Preston (Remar) is attacked by a hideous gargoyle (Deak again!) who kills his friend (Ashton Wise) but spares his life...if he promises never to speak of it to anyone. He almost immediately meets a beautiful woman named Carola (Chong), they fall in love, his career takes off, and ten years later he gives her the only thing he's never been able to - the truth about what happened the night they met. Whereupon she reveals that she is the gargoyle, rips his throat out, and flies off with their now-gargoyle'd children. 

I saw this movie in high school and I remember liking it well enough, but it's grown on my more in the ensuing years. Some of that is because I've read some Doyle ("Lot 249" is based on his story), I've read King, I've see a lot more movies, and I have a better appreciation for the source material. Some of that is because I'm getting increasingly grouchy about the amount of CGI in movies and seeing a horror movie that uses practical effects and had to work around a budget and a time crunch and still made a movie this tight is really impressive.

And it is tight. Anthology is tricky because if you try to do too much in the segments, they come off as rushed and unsatisfying (Holidays has this problem). It's also really easy for one segment to be much better or worse than the others and for the quality to be uneven. I don't think that's the problem here - "Lover's Vow" is hands down the best one, but there's a nice build to it and it's not like the other segments are bad, the last one is just really good. The tones of the segments are distinct, but not so different that they feel like they shouldn't be in the wrong movie. Camera, music, and lighting all differ and give the segments their own feel, and of course the cast is generally stacked (although this was at the beginning of Moore and Buscemi's Hollywood career, while Slater was really the rising star). 

It's not overall as good as Creepshow, but on the other hand, it's snappier and moves a little better, so I dunno, maybe it's about on par. 

My Grade: A-
Rewatch Value: High

Next up: They Live  

Character Creation: Pandora: Total Destruction

The gift with all the gifts, indeed.

The Game: Pandora: Total Destruction
The Publisher: Broken Ruler Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one 

The title doesn't do a great job of explaining the premise of the game, though the cover kinda does. Basically, it's a supers setting in which you're playing "Level 13" empowered characters. That is, the folks with potentially devastating powers that need to be trained how to use them before they, say, topple buildings or something. Firestarter kinda fits, here, or rather, Charlie McGee would be a pretty good Level 13 empowered. 

I confess, however, that I haven't read all the way through the book, because the print is small and very light, and I remember thinking "I've had this issue before" and lo! I have, with Killshot and ScreenPlay, which are from the same company. LARGER AND DARKER PRINT, GUYS.  

Anyway, it's a shame, because I like the premise and the themes of the game (including government overreach and abuse of power) are topical. I think if I actually wanted to run it, I might hack it into Fate? But I dunno, I didn't really parse the system well enough to know if I like it. Let's make an empowered person.

One nice thing: The PDF is bookmarked (I'm running Clerk & Dagger later today and that PDF isn't, which made game prep kind of annoying).

OK, so chargen is a 7-step process. We begin with...

Step One: The Five Questions. Shit, it's snowing again. Sorry, that's irrelevant. Right. Five questions. Like in Don't Rest Your Head? Not so much, they're much more general and open-ended.  

What is your super's power and why would it be dangerous in the wrong hands? Hmm. I was thinking about this the other day when I read the book, and I considered something like Dane DeHaan's character's power in Chronicle, which is basically jumped-up telekinesis. But then, I've been reading The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett of late, and the method of murder in that book is the use of a strain of grass that bursts its way out of a person once it's inhaled or ingested. And as far as sheer destructive power, I like the idea of unchecked plant growth. So let's say my character's power is exactly that - making the plant life of an area grow like crazy in seconds. As for why that's bad in the wrong hands, well, shit, never mind that destructive potential. Imagine what a company like Monsanto could do with it. 

What terrible thing has the character done with their power? Let's be obvious about it and say that my character destroyed...hmm. I don't want him to have destroyed a city or even a borough. How about a trailer park? Sure, my guy turned a trailer park into a dense forest in the space of five minutes, killing a couple dozen people (there were survivors, not everyone got subsumed by grass). 

What is someone the character looks up to and how has that person affected their life? The last three questions are meant to give us a "descriptive value" that becomes mechanically important, kinda like an Aspect. But it stems from a person. I think after the Green Fields Incident (the trailer park was called Green Fields, and my guy just kinda made that more literal), my guy ran off and wasn't captured for a few weeks. He wound up living with a very nice pagan couple that lived on some land a couple of miles from the park, and they gave him some useful philosophy. To wit: On a long enough time scale, you can't beat Mother Nature. The planet is, as George Carlin said, going to shake us off like fleas eventually. All you can do is try and roll with what the planet is doing, because that's better for your survival than fighting it. 

Now, did my guy take the right lesson from that? This value is meant to be what makes him a good person, regardless of what he's done (wait, I thought if you ever did anything bad ever, that makes you a monster for the rest of your life? Was I misinformed?), so it probably shouldn't be too far off the mark. Let's call this value Live With Nature, Not Against It. 

How do they deal with stressful situations and/or confront them in an unhealthy way? I think my guy finds or creates a protected space, maybe by calling up a thorny bracket or something, or maybe just by running away. Let's called the associated value Self-Isolation. 

How has the discovery of this power changed the super? This deceptively simple question basically refers to how the trauma of what they did changed them and continues to affect them. Hmm. I wish we had some examples of this. Rather, there is an example of chargen, which I appreciate, but I'd like some comparisons. Well, I think that my guy copes with having killed a lot of people by rationalizing that we're killing the planet, so if the planet kills us back, well, that's on us. A kind of retributive nihilism, if you will. I'll phrase the value as We're All Fertilizer Eventually. 

Step One: Create a Core Power. Well...I kinda did, didn't I? Isn't this covered by question 1? I do need to name it, here, so let's call it "unchecked planet growth." I also fill in the d12 in my Overpower stat.

Step Three: Choose Profile. Profiles are kind of how a character's power expresses itself? Like, transformed supers have been literally turned into something visibly inhuman. Shifted change between a normal and powered form, and cloaked can have secret IDs. The niches that we're going for here are kind of floppy. I think my guy is an aura - he constantly emits some kind of tell. I think he makes nearby plants grow slowly, but visibly. 

Step Four: Create Your Values. See, again, we did this in Step One, and all we're doing here is writing them on the sheet. There are some examples here, though, and I think I'm on the right track with mine. 

Step Five: Action Dice. I've got three stats to dice-ify: Conflict, Protection, and Interaction. I get a d12, d10, and d8, but if I'm reading this right, the bigger the die, the more likely it is that the action in question is going to cause havoc. Well, that in mind, I'm gonna put my d12 in Protection, because trying to shield himself by calling up trees is pretty havoc-y. For similar reasons, I'll put the d10 in Conflict, and that leaves the d8 in Interaction, which I think is where it would go for most characters.

Step Six: Value Points. Values get ratings. I get 3 points to split up, which can go 1-1-1 or 2-1-0. I think I'll go even across the board.

Step Seven: Make Your Super Come Alive! I can't even tell what muscle to flex.

No, really, this is just your basic "name, description, etc." kind of step. Also ID number, and the way it'd work in play is that we'd go from making our supers to making the Academy where we're all imprisoned enrolled. I'll ignore ID number, because without other players it'd just be arbitrary (other players, and we'd try to make them sequential to represent us all getting to the Academy around the same time). 

Well, let's name my guy Cayden Colgate. Cayden is (now) 21, used to live with his mom and little sister in Green Fields. He got in a fight with his sister (then 14) one afternoon, just basic sibling stuff, mostly about proximity (a double-wide isn't really conducive to privacy). And Cayden stomped outside and didn't even notice as grass, trees, and brambles started growing up behind him. 

His sister survived, but his mother didn't, and Kayla (said sister) has never forgiven him. She's probably still in foster care, and the government is probably watching her very closely to make sure she doesn't have a green thumb, too. 

Cayden is slim, white, brown hair (perpetually too long - it grows fast). His hands are always clean because if he lets dirt build up under his nails it starts sprouting grass and splitting his nails. Folks at the Academy call him "Weeds."

Hrm. I actually like the setup for this game, but the mechanics are giving me flashbacks (I ran ScreenPlay once and didn't much enjoy it). I dunno. Maybe it'd be worth figuring out.