Recent content by Nutation

Still being played in the Los Angeles area by me and others, though not at Caltech. It started as original D&D, was immediately house-ruled, and grew into its own thing.

First, I would stretch out the suspense. The box can't be opened, the inscription can't be interpreted, etc. Eventually, I would either (1) tie it in to a character background or (2) introduce the grateful and powerful patron who reclaims the item and spurs the next phase of the campaign.

This is a regional thing, or perhaps not charging is a regional thing. All of the West Coast conventions that I know of only charge for the badge. I assume that the badge cost is less when there is a per-seat cost for each game.

If you take the Stargate approach, then you have a land invasion from one planet to another, and you don't have to twist your brain around the idea of dropships. The gates are defended, of course, but maybe the first thing through is EMP grenades or smoke & chaff that make the situation feasible...

One of the king's advisors is blue. Why? I am reminded of the blue demons in Etruscan art.

This approach feels much like Thundarr the Barbarian, whose adventures clearly took place in our world after some big radioactive catastrophe.

Steve Perrin in some of the games he designed or ran (RIP) had the defender roll vs. the attacker's static value instead of the normal way. His theory was that the attacker is already doing things (move, choose an attack), and this lets one more player do things on any given character turn.

I am imagining the Technetium Elemental. But, 118 elements? Not just 92? Some of the synthetic elements are really just names, and those names ("einsteinium") don't sound right for the D&D genre.

It would be advantageous to play a AL game on some weekend before then, both to learn the campaign rules (or idioms) and to learn your character. Epics are intense, sometimes chaotic, and under real-world time pressure. You want to be able to concentrate on what's happening, rather than on the...

Technically, yes. It has a few Christmas references. "Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho." But, the tone and the plot emphasis are all wrong. It's an action hero movie, the start of a franchise, and I voted "no".

Two left-handed fighters. Very inclusive.

Same reaction. Is villain-in-wheelchair really a trope? The two wheelchair examples I think of first are not villains, although one of them is Niles Caulder. We should have protagonists and villains in roughly equal proportions. A kid who can't walk should still grow up knowing he could conquer...

It's not clear yet, because no game of Titan has finished yet. More seriously, it accommodates 6 players, but 2 of them will be knocked out early and go play something else. Eventually, it becomes a grind-fest between the last two players. You do get to roll a lot of dice.

They should update the song lyrics and use it. Otherwise, it's a precursor movie like the A-Team movie or Man from UNCLE. It's a setup for the thing we remember and like, not the thing itself.

I have played a little Rifts, and "gonzo" is the word I use as well. The setting feels very artificial. I also tried some Heroes Unlimited. The character archetypes (randomly rolled) are grossly unbalanced in power. Some are skill monkeys, and a few skills are problematic. (Boxing was...