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I spent the better part of a week sitting on a snow covered hillside staring into the forest recently. It gave me time to think. A lot of time to think. While I was pondering and ruminating, I came up with a couple of ideas for small RPGs.

The first is a game about professional wrestling. The idea is that the surface appearance of pro wrestling (the drama, the rivalries, the cheating, backstabbing, Jerry Springer sideshow) is very much real. Players create young, idealistic wrestlers chasing after glory. They’ll train, get into matches, form and lose relationships,  appeal to the crowd, and generally try to stay good people in the middle of an insane, dirty politics disaster of an organization. Can they stand the test of time with their character intact or will they fall from grace as they chase after the belt? I don’t even like pro wrestling and I think this would be a ton of fun to play.

The second game is an MMA game. This would be more of a fight simulator with a title track. I don’t quite know how it would work yet but I want the resolution mechanic to be based on Rock-Paper-Scissors when simulating the fights. This game would have to take injuries pretty seriously, having significant injuries negatively impact the character for a number of fights. That could seriously hamper a chance at the title. The idea here is that the drama comes from the investment in the training and the effort one puts into the fight.

Lastly, I thought some more about a game idea that’s been knocking around my noggin for a while. It’s a superhero role playing game where the first game session is character creation and follows the origin story of your hero. It more follows the idea of superheroes as the protagonists of morality plays than the Wham! Pow! action hero sort of thing. One of the character stats will be the ideal that the hero personifies. The game will seek to challenge the character on that particular axis.

Certainly plenty to keep me busy. Who knows? Maybe I’ll finish one of these!

Old news, I know. WotC had planned to do a ki power source but then scrapped it a few years ago because they thought it would come off as racist. I disagree with their decision and humbly submit that a ki power source should exist. I’m going to do a few articles on this. This one will be an overview of what I think the ki power source should be and list the classes and roles I’d like to see in the game.

What is ki?

Ki is a very different power source from anything else in D&D. It comes from Eastern cultures in the real world rather than the traditional Western-inspired tropes in D&D. Ki (also spelled qi or chi) is a form of life essence that exists in everyone (says the white boy from northern Wisconsin; this is all my relatively uninformed and culturally biased perspective). Legendary masters of the martial arts are able to channel and direct their ki to accomplish great and powerful things. Watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to get an idea of what I mean by great and powerful things. The practice of reiki is focused on the manipulation of ki, both in oneself and in others. Continue reading →

“Spectres are not trained, but chosen. Individuals forged in the fire of service and battle; those whose actions elevate them above the rank and file. Spectres are an ideal, a symbol. The embodiment of courage, determination, and self-reliance. They are the right hand of the Council, instruments of our will. Spectres bear a great burden. They are protectors of galactic peace, both our first and last line of defense. The safety of the galaxy is theirs to uphold.”
- The Citadel Council inducting Commander Shepard into the Spectres.

Mass Effect

The main character of the Mass Effect series is the first human Spectre, the games follow Commander Shepard in the battles to save the galaxy, seemingly against itself. The Spectres are an elite group of soldiers and spies whose only given purpose is to prevent the galaxy from spiraling into chaos. They are given nearly free reign to accomplish their goals and answer only to the Council, and even they do not often question a Spectre’s methods. Spectres have unlimited license to investigate and pursue criminals. There are no jurisdictional concerns as long as they remain in Council space. Continue reading →

Mass Effect

The Citadel is an engineering marvel and work of surpassing beauty. It is a kilometers-long space station discovered abandoned by the asari thousands of years ago. The station has been kept operational by a mysterious race of creatures that have come to be known as the Keepers. The Keepers perform repairs on the Citadel and seem to operate autonomously. Hardly anything is known about them, no one has ever been able to communicate with them. The council protects the Keepers by law. No one is allowed to disturb them or prevent them from doing the tasks they carry out seemingly instinctually.

It is revealed through the course of the first game that the Citadel is the center point of the Reapers trap for all sentient life and that the Keepers were genetically engineered by the Reapers to ensure no one ever learns all of the secrets of the Citadel. The reason the trap works so well is because many mass relays connect to the relay outside the Citadel, making it highly likely that a spacefaring culture will discover the Citadel. Furthermore, they find the Citadel to be a wondrous construction of surpassing beauty and technological function. It seems ready made for a culture to move in and even comes with its own repair staff that functions autonomously! Inevitably, the Citadel is used as the center of galactic civilization because of all these factors. The great secret of the Citadel is that it is actually an enormous mass relay through which the Reapers return to the galaxy and begin their campaign of slaughter. Continue reading →

Imagine, if you will, an island off the coast eternally beset by great and terrible storms. At the center of the storm, between flashes of lightning, you can see a spire reaching to the heavens.

How long before some brave soul tries to reach this island? Continue reading →

Mass Effect is full of fantastic technologies. From the haptic interface to the application of biotics to the faster-than-light travel via mass relays, much of the setting relies on black box technology called the mass effect. Luckily for us, these sorts of black box things can be turned into magic at the drop of a hat. A large portion of gameplay centers on the management of the player inventory, equipping weapons and armor, upgrading equipment and even finding new licenses for your armory officer. All of these details help add to the rich world of Mass Effect. This post will also cover how weapons and armor can be converted for use in Mage Effect.

I’ve already briefly mentioned the mass relays and how they can be converted, that will be covered more fully in the next post. Continue reading →