Wings Over the Pyre

Looks like they’ll offer me a free badge to AWA if I’ll run a few games. I had a few moments of inspiration, and this is where the madness took me:

Friday

3pm

PS666: Finals

System: Wushu

The characters are students at PS666, a school for young sorcerers, their children, or other supernatural beings. Finals are here! Can the students make it through to the other side with decent grades?

Chargen will be on-site. No experience necessary.

5p

Invaders

System: Capes

Players assume the roles of both aliens and humans as interplanetary invaders attack the world of 2175. The unique nature of Capes means everyone gets to play every side of the conflict. Who’ll fall in love, who’ll destroy a city, and whose giant robots will reign supreme!?

Chargen will be on-site. No experience necessary.

Saturday

1:30p

Rikanishu Chu-Chu

System: Capes

Rakinishu was just an average guy, fresh out of high school, trying to deal with college, and holding down a part-time job as a a data entry clerk at the bank. That was until the Chu-Chus showed up, mischievous spirits that make your dreams come true. Unfortunately for Rak, he dreamed of the beautiful girls he wished were in his life. Can he find happiness in the Chu-Chus’ projections or is the real girl of his dreams elsewhere?

Chargen will take place on-site except for Rak, who’ll be pre-gen. No experience necessary.

3:30p

PS666: Prom Date

System: Wushu

The characters are all students at PS666, a school for young sorcerers, their children, and other supernatural beings. Can they get through prom with their hearts intact … and in their chest?

Characters from Friday’s PS666 strongly encouraged to return.

Chargen will occur on-site. No experience necessary.

I realize two hour slots per game might be pulling it kind of tight, but I’m wagering there’ll be so little interest one or the other will get dumped. Luckily for my evil planning, both Wushu and Capes can really easily add people as the game goes on, so it’s not a huge burden if folks want to jump in or out.

Now, the real question becomes “is it worth billing these games as run by the co-author of Hearts, Swords and Flowers?” On the one hand, it’s completely true. And I’ve definitely constructed all four premises to have definite shoujo overtones (or, in some cases, whole palettes). On the other … well, is that even a selling point? Are there HSF fangirls/boys? One shudders to think.

Assuming these games get approval, next step’ll be doing plot and character/relationship graphs for the Wushu games and a fist-full of characters/situations for the Capes games.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Cephalic Carnage - Xenosapien - Molting (Squid's Redoubt)

I’ve written of Dragonstaff before.

The original idea was a totally over-the-top fantasy setting, roughly inspired by the kind of insanity one finds in DragonLance, but expressed through Capes mechanics. The possibilities for comedy and pathos were always massive in such a thing and the original plan was just to go the whole 9-yards and let the madness flow.

But we can do better.

At Dragon*Con, I plan to go somewhere out even beyond that far outpost of limitation. Just as Marvel has created the Ultimate line of comics to bring their characters into the 21st century, and largely managed to screw up everything that made the originals cool, so I plan to bring Dragonstaff into the modern era and screw up everything — OK, no one but point5b and I really saw it, so no one can really be horribly disappointed, but that’s not the point! The point is that I’m fully intending to bring the most bizarre mix of crazed over-the-top-ness ever to a gaming convention.

I want people playing in the RPGA Living City games to look over and wonder what in th’Hell we could possibly be playing … and how they can get in on it! I want it to get rowdy and disturbing and bizarre by turns. Sometimes all at once.

We can do this.

Ultimate Dragonstaff takes what few limits there were on the Dragonstaff setting and throws it out the window. Ultimate Dragonstaff will make Exalted look like pikers playing in a sandbox. Ultimate Dragonstaff takes a look at Nobilis and scoffs at such a low-level campeign!

OK, maybe not that last one. But close!

Ever wanted to play Fistandantilous / Raistlin? How about The Scarlet Empress? Drizzt Do’Urden? Elric of Melnibone? Conan? John Carter of Mars? John Galt? Elminster the Wizard? The Black Adder? Arthur? Lancelot? The Lady of the Lake? That Guy on the Dead Wagon?

You can do it all in Ultimate Dragonstaff, and probably should!

But you can’t have a Capes game without a Comics Code, the list of things that cannot come to pass … and, which, incidentally, the villains and sometimes heroes of the piece try to do constantly, since almost achieving them gives Story Tokens as a pay-out.

So, let’s rough a little something out. This can be refined as we go, but as a first pass:

• Characters with Powers cannot be permenantly killed.

  The distinction here is any character with Powers. That’s heroes and villains alike. Falling off a cliff to your “certain doom” pointedly does not count as being permenently dead, nor is being left in a deathtrap. If neither of those happened, there’d be no fantasy novels!

• Exemplars cannot be permenantly killed.

  Well, if we’re giving Powered folk the out, might as well give it to Exemplars. This pretty much just means your Exemplars will be constantly in some kind of danger, as folks go for the Gloating pay-off.

• The root conflict between characters and their Exemplars can never be resolved.

  • Corollary: Unspoken love can neither be revealed nor abandoned.
  • Corollary Exemption: A character in love with a villain must make it repeatedly, brutally obvious to everyone but the target of their love.

  Those pesky root conflicts. It’s just no fun if Aunt Mae tells Peter she’s OK with his web-slinging and hires a goon army to protect her from his rampaging rogues’ gallery, and neither is it fun when the cute red-headed wench the burly Adventurer is smitten with but too shy to tell has it all ruined if he confesses his undying devotion like a sane, smart person. Just doesn’t happen. Ergo, can’t.

  Why the thing with the villainous love interest, you ask? Because it’s necessary.

• The world cannot be destroyed.

  Pretty obvious stuff, that. Can’t blow up the setting. Note what’s not covered, though: political revolutions, murdering heads of state, ruining economies … and that you’re intended to be playing characters that can do such things reasonably on a whim. Feeling a bit unconstrained yet?

Current Mood: creative

Blame Eric the .5b for making me think of how to translate the Mage setting into Capes characters. Damn you, Eric.

Time to break out the latest incarnation of the Vrai line.

Alison Vrai is the descendant of a long, long line of House Tytalus magi. Unfortunately for the House, her tastes ran neither to leadership nor to direct conflict with others. As a result, she hovers at the fringe of the House's involvement with magic, which suits her just fine. Appearing to be in her late 30's, Alison has been an active mage since the late 20's. She always dresses more for comfort than for show, tending toward well-worn sweats and flannel shirts.

Sorcerously, Alison has spent her academic life exploring the mutability of perception and illusion in general. Her grasp of transformation is near the top of her field.

William Albacastle looks about 45 and is 38. He's been confined to a wheelchair for the entirety of his adult life. Luckily, he discovered an affinity for constructing complex electronics when he was three and by the time he'd finished elementary school, had designed and built a complex waldo system to aid his failing muscles. Albacastle was offered a full scholarship to MIT's online degree program by an organization called "The Brotherhood of the Virtual" which eventually recruited him at graduation into the Virtual Adepts. Albacastle worked with the VA for several years but eventually became disenchanted by their fixation on the mystical experience of technology while he believed less and less in any supernatural agency not explicable by rational science. His recruitment by the Technocracy's Iteration X was a welcome change.

Albacastle has no patience for those who lack mental agility, engage in willful foolishness, or in any way measure up to what he considers a worthy being -- ie. doesn't aspire to be more like him. He considers his wasted body an annoyance and a burden to be ignored at the best of times. His powered wheelchair contains an interface rig for his omnipresent set of drones and waldoes.

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Klingonz - Drink Fight Fuck (Squid's Redoubt)

[21:59] point5b: http://i11.tinypic.com/4pmxyeg.jpg
[21:59] point5b: And the excellent comment:
[22:00] point5b: Jesus plays SHADOWRUN??

Guess that makes sense, you need patience to count all those d6's.
"Okay, this is a simple run. You go in, locate the poor and downtrodden and unload some hope and salvation at them. If you run into any crippled or blind, heal the bastards without thinking twice. The means of exctraction are as usual: martyrs death while spreading the gospel of the lord to the unbelievers. See you in heaven."

[22:00] exopilot: [laugh] OK, Old Testament as Shadowrun. There's a Nobilis game waiting to happen.

Or, at need, Capes ...

I've already done God, Jesus, and Lucifer in Capes, which is undoubtedly going to send me right to Hell. I'm horribly, horribly tempted to go pull Nobilis off my shelf and start statting out God as an Imperator, and Jesus, The Holy Ghost and Lucifer as Powers thereof. (This is, technically, wholly at odds with the original Nobilis setting write-up, but since I'm responsible for injecting a dose of yaoi romanticism between God and Lucifer in there, I feel comfortable further mangling things horribly.)

Jesus as Shadowrunner, though ... This could be fun.

Joshua Christi
Son of God and Ass-Kicker

You know, it was a lot more straightforward in the New Testament. Things were simple. No Aztechnology, no magic reawakened in the world, no two-guns-akimbo street sammies running hither and yon without giving two-farts-in-a-whirlwind about the Message of God. Honestly, Joshua had no real inclination to even come back. A few more centuries and the bone-headed morons on Earth might get some of their heads on straight.

No such luck.

Instead, Josh gets sent back to the world with nothing but the fact he's doing the Will of God and His Son, a charming affinity with summoning the spirits and powers of the air, a Holy Writ for the angels -- who are feeling kind of pissed and ignored, anyway -- and a bad case of post-traumatic stress disorder from the last time he dropped in. All that and a Desert Eagle in each fist.

The Son of God is back. And, boy, is he pissed.

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Various Artists - Ataris - I Remember You, The (Squid's Redoubt)

Well, Hell, the last issue of Superdrunks was a fair hit. I might as well write up the Exemplars ...

Jimmy Ho
Child Kung-Fu Prodigy

Jimmy was just a dirty street kid in Hong Kong when the Drunken Master found him. Honestly, not much has changed about him, except DM has sunk a couple years into teaching Jimmy some of the most incomprehensible martial arts known to man. For his part, Jimmy's remained the prank-loving hard-charging kid he always was, albeit now with a Hell of a left hook.

Jenny Spark grew up the next house over from Billy Burner; their families had known each other for years even before they were born. It really wasn't much of a surprise when Billy fell for Jenny's girl-next-door charm in elementary school and they dated through High School. The only reason their relationship was broken off was that Jenny found a position working on her uncle's pit crew and, eventually, as the primary racer on the circuit. Jenny's racing often ends up taking her to places which coincide with trouble Billy has to deal with -- much to his discomfort.

The universe is a perverse place, perverse enough that it requires an Avatar of some inherent concepts. One of those concepts is alcohol. Avatars aren't always extant, but their presence strengthens the concept that they're linked to even as it provides a point of vulnerability. Tres is not Alcohol's Avatar yet, but destiny is gathering itself around him. Almo sees it as her duty to usher him through the inevitable trials which little the path to ascention.

John Fayetteville
Third Lord of Fayetteville

Fayetteville's family immigrated to the States not long after the state of Georgia was established and immediately invested heavily in cotton production, securing a lifestyle that provided them the luxury of clinging to aristocratic traditions and dual-citizenships for the next two hundred years. Luckily, John has inherited all the best traits of the family, an open, friendly attitude and a tendency to be able to get by on his looks -- and no reluctance to do so. He still has a few old-school beliefs about privilege and law that gives some friction with his friend, the Black Swan.

Thanks to Eric the .5b for this reference to something well-related to the subject, how to self-induce an alcohol coma.

Next ish, villainy!

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: World of Warcraft Killin'

I've been sitting on this idea for too long. Unfortunately, it was originally inspired by my buddy and fellow intern, Chris Swan, over on MySpace, but ...

The Superdrunks
Defenders of the Liquid in Life

Not every super-team can be the Avengers. Nor can they be the Legion of Substitute Superheroes. Sometimes the best they can hope to be is the Superdrunks, who may not be the most impressive bunch of guys, but they know how to have a good time.

Drunken Master
Master of Drunken Boxing

The Drunken Master is leader of the Superdrunks, generally because he's the only one sober at any given time. DM's powers originate from a self-induced state of hypnosis which mimics drunkenness without the actual toxic effects of alcohol, lending him preternatural dexterity, a truly incomprehensible gait, and inhuman resilience. Unfortunately, he also tends to speak in philosophical Oriental jibberish, making it difficult to always know his intent.

DM's kung-fu action is mighty indeed, his inner center allowing him to put his fists in the most vulnerable areas with strange joint-aching strikes, to roll on the ground in unpredictable directions, to waver on his feet in the most elusive ways, and pop up behind a threat before they know what's happened. He instinctively seems to know, simply by looking at it, where something or someone is most precariously balanced. Like many older men, his taste for young women is marginally unhealthy.

Billy Burner
Alcohol-Burning Cyborg

Born to a family of NASCAR enthusiasts, young Billy dreamed of being pit crew for Dale Earnhardt. When his genius with all things mechanical came out with his first high-torque engine designed in elementary school, his place in the record books was all but assured and Billy went off to Metro State University with the desire to build the fastest, loudest, most powerful funny-car of all time. Unfortunately, an accident in his senior year -- possibly sabotage -- cut his education short and put him on an entirely different road.

When the experimental engine Billy had on the block exploded, his body was thrown through a nearby brick wall. Mortally broken, Burner barely made it into a suit he had designed previously to keep drivers alive in the event of deadly crashes. When he came back to consciousness, Billy discovered that most of his body was useless and without significant hardware support, he was nothing but dead flesh. Turning his mind to the immediate threat, Billy replaced bits of his body with machinery, making himself into the very icon of speed he'd always wanted, all smooth curves and brightly-colored metal. Inside, he's still a young man who wants to be normal -- but not so much he'd give up his alcohol-fueled jetpack!

Animists believe that everything in the universe has an animating spirit or guiding intelligence. Perhaps it was their collective desire, or maybe they're on to an essential truth; Almo does not know. What Almo does know is that she can remember the last ten thousand years -- sometimes, hazily. To suggest she spent the whole time being "drunk" is somewhat of an understatement. The naive understanding would be that she came into being with the first deliberate fermenting and has been pleasantly buzzed ever since.

Almo appears to be a young Hispanic girl of sixteen years or so, perpetually inebriated to lesser or greater degree. She never quite understood humanity outside religious rituals and bars, and often confuses life in general for a drunken brawl or party. She's everyone's drunk little sister, which can be a little strange when she really lets loose as an empowered ancient manifestation of physical truth. When she wills it, almost anything can burst into flames as if it were doused in pure alcohol.

Black Swan
The Immortal Drunk

It's said that God looks out for drunks and little children. What happens when you become aware of this seeming immortality? What if you found a way to permanently induce a state of chemical inebriation on yourself? For the Black Swan, you decide that the world needs a saviour -- even if that saviour is pretty well in the bag and a bit unstable on his feet.

Having used his background in chemistry to alter his neuropeptides, Black Swan is almost entirely unstoppable, when not weaving unsteadily and peering through bleary eyes. When in the midst of combat against the evil in the world, he usually finds himself untouched amidst a pile of rubble and debris.

Current Mood: productive
Current Music: Justin Timberlake - Sexyback (Squid's Redoubt)

You can blame She That Is Wicked for this one; I take no real responsibility.

Name

Jason Mullins
Mullet Man

Background

Jason Mullins was just a normal, everyday redneck, living in a trailer-home in rural north Georgia, drinking entirely too much Pabst Blue Ribbon and watching NASCAR whenever he could catch the time between working hard for his uncle's house framing company.

But that was before the rock fell.

Jason was the first on the crash site of the supposed "meteor," and so it was only he who saw the Grey crawl from the wreckage. Being a hospitable sort, Jason helped the dying creature free of the crater and, in gratitude, the alien creature passed it's life-force into the stunned good ol' boy. That power was somewhat incompatible with the human biology, however, in that Greys simply don't have hair. Instead, Jason's hair took on the powers of a Grey's intestinal cillia, becoming highly extensible, flexible, and able to act as additional grasping limbs. In addition, Jason's natural knowledges and abilities were magnified. He became a better race driver than Dale Ernheart (may he rest in peace), a better wrestler than the Undertaker, and the fastest redneck alive!

Jason was never the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but his simple-man ways and honest belief that life can be better for everyone if "we just sit right down and have a beer together" makes him one of the most hopeful and comfortable hypermen for the common man to sit down with.

When "in costume," Mullet Man wears a worn brown duster over a white strappy t-shirt, worn blue jeans, and worn brown boots. Embroidered on the back of the duster is a glow-in-the-dark stylized Grey head which is typically half covered by his mullet.

Current Mood: indescribable
Current Music: Wine, Woman, and Song - Whisky Nancy (Squid's Redoubt)

Heather's right. It's unfair to offer people a good, hard gaming and then not let them have it. It's just darn impolite, at heart, and I should avoid being impolite.

So, here's the call-out. I know Heather's going out of town on Sunday for two weeks. My social calendar's scant, and I'm pretty sure most of the folks I know are in similar straits, so ...

This Present Darkness. Saturday night. Starting around, say, 7p - 8p Eastern. If you're an old hand in here, you know what the URL for the wiki is. If you find yourself free and want to join in, Capes is good in that we'll have to be putting together characters on the fly half the time anyway, so it's not so big a deal.

For those folks with PDFs, brush up on your mechanics and be ready to go. For those without, well, we'll work something out.

This will be a Skype moderated event, so that means you'll need to have the right hardware and software hooked up to do the deed. Make it happen.

If only there was an easy way to model laying 3x5 cards on a shared desktop. Ah well, can't have everything.

As Prime Operator, I'm taking it on myself to setup the first Scene. Which just means things will be strange right out the gate. Just as we like it.

Current Location: 30045
Current Mood: creative
Current Music: The Arrogant Worms / Toast! / I Pulled My Groin

I get the damned oddest spam.

Universal Psychic Guild is a world wide organization devoted to making
your life happier and more successful. "Voted the Number 1 Psychic
web site in the world" The Universal Psychic Guild's guarantee: If
you are not happy with your psychic reading, if you did not receive
accurate answers, if you did not receive an answer to any of your
questions, we will give you your money back as well as a FREE psychic
reading. That's right your money back PLUS a FREE psychic reading.
Try our online Psychic Reading now at
http://www.psychicguild.com/readings_email.php

OK, so ... you want me to contact an entire guild of professional psychics (possibly led by the Soverign, David Bowie), and if I'm not happy with the answers I get, you'll give me my money back plus a free psychic reading from the psychic guild that already left me unhappy.

As one can say about pretty much every psychic scam, "Didn't they see that one coming?"

That said ... I feel a perverse inspiration.

Name: The Guild of Psychics

Description:

Composed of dozens of psychic mediums worldwide, the Guild of Psychics act as a clearinghouse for insider information on the Average Joe. Using their thousands of contacts, they map the demographics of developed nations in immense detail, turning it into the most potent tool for advertising and political manipulation on Earth. Oh, yes, and they can see the future. Sometimes. Kind of.

Italicized entries are Powers.

Current Location: 30045
Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Meteors, The / These Evil Things / Lonliness Of The Long Distance Killer, The

Just as a note to myself, and sort of referential for everyone else, I really need to sit down and respin the Battlestar Galactica space combat between Starbuck and Scar that I originally did in Capes with Universalis. Mainly as an exercise for myself to see if I understand the architecture well enough to write it out, and also to see if I can figure out exactly how the Complications differ from the way Conflicts in Capes play out.

(I'm not doing it now because I just took my Ambien and it does me no good to try and write unconscious.)

Just as a gloss, my gut suggests the Capes Conflicts are a lot more "active" than Universalis Complications, mainly due to the fact that Conflicts can activate Powers repeatedly at the cost of more Debt, but Complications can only activate a Trait once for each time it exists on a Component. I suppose you could buy additional copies of a Trait if you wanted to go on using it multiple times in a given Complication. That'd move the Debt idea to an up-front cost instead, which is kind of interesting. A character which started with the Trait "Laser Cannon" who gets in an intense fire-fight might have it bought a few more times, ending up with "Laser Cannon x4" at the end. In the next Complication where it might be useful, it's already bought up and can be used 4x for free.

I wonder if that wouldn't actually better mimic the arc by which a character begins a story fairly loosely sketched out, and develops not only peripheral abilities and breadth, but the facets of their character that get brought into play a lot dynamically get invested in, making them ever more important.

Side thought: Could this be an alternative approach to the Hero's Journey that D&D rather sadly attempts to mimic via levels? Traits that get branched out and built upon as stories go, making the character ever harder to remove from the narrative and establishing more things about them that have to be Challenged to essentially change them? Remind me to try a fast-sketch of how a "First-Level Character" might change over multiple stories."

Well. We'll just have to see how this sort of thing works out in auto-play before I actually try it with other people.

Current Location: 30045
Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Harry and the Potters - Follow the Spiders

Source: Elephant Sack

Source Interest: steampunk

Iron Fist
Cybernetic Aristocrat

Wilhelm van Morgenstern was born to a wealthy Prussian family and given the best education a Prussian nobleman could hope to receive. By the time he was ten, he had mastered the forms of saber fencing his grandfather had nearly beaten into him since birth and his family's wealth was on the rise due to their investments in steam-weaponry. The Great War was looming on the horizon and the cunning could turn that to their advantage. Unfortunately for Wilhelm, an accident during a match against an older rival left him without a left arm, his dominant. The Morgenstern family could not be dishonoured by having a crippled son, so their fortune and technological contacts were pressed into forging a new left arm for him. Now given a powerful weapon and fueled by the desire to be seen as competent, Wilhelm devoted himself to representing his family's interest in the economic centers of Europe, while carving a swath through the fencing circles, fairly and not.

Drives

Current Location: 30045
Current Mood: optimistic
Current Music: Momus - I Want You. But I Don't Need You

Dragon*Con is coming.

Let me repeat that with the proper emphasis and effect. Let me turn on the distortion mic.

Dragon*Con is coming.

And, of course, just like every year, I really, really want to run some kind of game. Predictably. These things just happen.

On the up-side, the move toward "antagonistic narrativism," as it were, means that I can actually get to play as much as I run. The advantage thereof is incalculable, because, damn-it, I want to get to enjoy the give-and-take as much as the players. Ergo, I'm pleased thereby.

The question becomes, thus, what should I run?

Luckily, I think I have a plan. There are two things I really, really want to run.

• Capes

Well, it is kind of obvious, right? Adversarial narrativism, relatively fast character generation, you get to play with index cards and my hungus oversized d6s. Its an utter win.

Setting: Demon City: Atlanta. If you haven't read the script, well, probably all for the best given I wrote it six years ago and my writing has increased at least marginally since then. But still, probably a good background briefing if you're interested in playing. Just assume that none of the events in the script are important to your characters, and we're talking a whole new side-story. Call it ...

Megalanta.

Well, I like it.

I'll probably be looking to run this on Friday afternoon, around 2p or so, after our lunch schedule, in Open Gaming. If any of my readers think they're interested in getting in-game, let me know and think about a few characters you think might be interesting. Hades knows there's enough info linked from my blog to do chargen beforehand if you want, or just catch me on-site, or wait 'til the game. Whatevah.

• My Life With Master

Oh, come off it. You guys know I've been dying to run this, forever. While it doesn't do adversarial narrativism, as such, its so formulaicly structured and so mechanically simple that I don't think it'll be much of a hardship to run.

Besides, who more than I was born to play the role of Master to a group of horrid, socially and physically warped Minions?

Right, s'what I thought.

Again, we're looking at an early afternoon session, Saturday around 2p, Open Gaming, yadda yadda. We will be doing all chargen in this session, because chargen in MLwM is so bloody fast and easy.

Both games will probably have a max run-time of 3.5hrs or so, simply because nothing is so much fun I intend to miss my scheduled dinner for it, and nothing is so important that I can't pick it back up after dinner if, you know, there's no concert or other evening occupation that seeks me out.

So, who's up for gaming?

Current Location: 30045
Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Scooter / Stadium Techno Experience, The / Liquid is Liquid

UrsulaV just keeps providing me fodder from which to create these bizarre, pseudo-mythic Capes characters. I'm starting to get really resentful.

Indri
Greatest of the Lemurs

Abilities (all P)

3 Dexterity
5 Lightning Quickness
4 Sharp Teeth
2 Elegant Fur
1 Blue Eyes

Styles

4 Mythic Heroism (P)
1 Not That Bright (P)
3 Vain Beyond Reason
2 Arboreal Understanding

Attitudes

1 Proud
2 Vain
3 Brave

---

Cloud Fossa
Cat-Mongoose Made of Boiling Cloud and Lightning

Abilities (all P)

5 Lightning Claws
1 Intangibility
2 Dark Shadow
4 Predator Quickness
3 Keen Hearing

Styles

3 Mythic Predator (P)
2 Grace of Heaven
1 Generally Lazy

Attitudes

3 Hungry
2 Aggressive
1 Lethargic
4 Intent

Description

Cloud Fossa are inhabitants of heaven formed of cloud and lightning. Typically, they laze about, being both predators and not needing to eat to live, they find little to rouse them in heaven normally. But when someone steps into the tree-lined savanna of their domain, they take a territorial stance and seek the interloper.

Current Location: 30045
Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Oingo Boingo / Good For Your Soul / Little Guns

Damn you, UrsulaV, for creating art I feel obsessively compelled to create Capes character write-ups for.

Tongka
Lemur Warrior of the Sky Tribe

Skills (all P)

3 Prehensile Limbs
2 Grasping Tail
1 Foliage Stealth
4 Archery
5 Millipede

Styles

4 Drunken Boxing (P)
3 Arboreal Acrobatics (P)
1 Cute and Fluffy (P)
2 Vicious Aggression

Attitudes

3 Wasted
1 Confused
2 Vicious

Description

Tongka is not old, as the Lemurs of the High Reaches go, but he is wise in the ways of the shaman and the warrior. He knows where the millipedes which bring the warrior-trances live, and the 'pedes which excrete the poisons for the dire arrows, and the 'pedes which are simply good to lick. He likes to lick 'pedes, does Tongka.

Current Location: 30045
Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Meatmen, The / War Of The Superbikes II - The Double Album / Punkerama

Yes, its more Capes geekery. Of course its more Capes geekery.

I've been playing a fair amount of Auto Assault lately. Unlike World of Warcraft, you really don't have to be on a few hours to complete a couple missions; you can generally do some decent farming or run a couple missions in an hour, which is part of why I appreciate it so. I can pop on, go butcher some Pikes or Scavs, ram head-on into vehicles and crazy huge monsters to watch their ruined, burning forms go hurtling through the air, and roll on with a big ol' smile.

But AA wasn't the first game to involve putting on the armour of Mad Max, arming up with your railgun, and heading out into the wasteland. Car Wars burned along the highways of North America long ago, and Autoduel Quarterly was one of our favourite reads. We were slaves to the wheel, strapped in and burning hard with nitro injectors and crazy-huge arenas full of jumps and deadly traps, which we bump-and-jumped around and over while blazing away with machinegun fire and flames, missiles and plasma arrays. Or we were on the highways and by-ways of a dead and mutated America, picking up resources from bombed-out cities for our Arks and subterranean bases, fighting off muties and worse in the ruins.

Well, Hell, how could I get so wound up over such a concept without translating it into the goodness of Capes? But why do it the usual way?

Car Assault Wars Auto Double-Zeta takes the Capes mechanics and leverages the click-and-lock system to let players jump in, throw together a vehicle, then hit the arena or the highway, looking for a good time, and more than a little carnage.

( Car Assault Wars Auto Double-Zeta Rules )

This has been your free Capes mini-game broadcast for the week.

Current Location: 30045
Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Johnny Cash / Unearthed (Boxset) / Softly And Tenderly

Poor UrsulaV. She made the mistake of inspiring me, and I made the mistake of following that inspiration.

An excerpt:

Description

The Battle Hamsters of the Northern Gardens are well-known for their cold brutality, their incisive berserker mentality, and their adorable cuteness. Seldom appearing in groups of less than thirty, they swarm and chitter and kill amid the icy wastes. Their battle-lord, Helm Eriksson, is the foremost of their mighty ranks, and epitomizes all that which they aspire to. Few cross him and live.