Recursive Inspiration

So, it seems that there's an organization out there calling itself Fantasy Brewmasters, a craft beer company that takes its inspiration from classic fantasy tropes. About three months ago, it seems, they released their first flavor, Burdisson's Dwarven Ale. Old news, perhaps, but it's got a couple of ideas brewing*.

Helpfully, the brewers have provided something of an in-universe backstory for the beer (without actually tying it to any particular universe**, also helpful), with a short history and some in-character promotional material - all of which feeds back into fantasy gaming, for it seems to me that with the material provided a creative GM could craft any number of interesting encounters or adventure hooks. For example:

- Characters needing some quick coinage might take a job guarding the merchants on the trade routes to the brewery from their favorite tavern.
- The beer could suddenly develop an adverse affect - from sickness to mind control - on the drinker, prompting a visit to the brewery to find out the origin of the contamination.
- Or, instead of the beer poisoning the drinker, it's suddenly not being delivered on schedule. What manner of catastrophe has befallen the brewery?
- Finally, maybe the brewery just happened to be the biggest/only settlement around when some evil forces came tromping over the land. Huge vats and other industrial equipment would make a great arena for a running battle with the Armies of Darkness.

Even the artwork is evocative, as this Dwarven statue/waterwheel combination demonstrates. The same artist also drew a map that makes me suspect that Burdisson's isn't the only project from Fantasy Brewmasters that will prove so inspirational.


*Pun fully intended.
**Though there's some intriguing hints that future flavors may end up contributing to just such a thing.

BEHOLD!

Somewhat buried by the fallout from yesterday's news about some fantasy game, came an announcement earlier today simultaneously from Fred Hicks (of Evil Hat Productions, publishers of The Dresden Files RPG), Mike Olson (FATE blogger and contributor to that version of The Kerberos Club) and Brian Clevinger (writer of the comic series Atomic Robo) of, well, exactly what you'd expect those three to collaborate on:

A FATE-powered Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game.

This is, to put it mildly, really exciting news for me - I've just recently become a fan of Atomic Robo, and I'm quite the fan of the guys at Evil Hat. Putting the two together, it's like the proverbial chocolate and peanut butter.

For those of you unfamiliar with the premise of Atomic Robo, I shall elaborate: Atomic Robo is a humanoid robot created by Nikola Tesla in the 1920s, who goes on to a long a fruitful career battling Communists, Nazis, cyborgs, Nazi cyborgs, giant ants, Thomas Edison, government conspiracies, and pretty much any other pulpish, Weird Science menace that rears its head throughout the twentieth century - and beyond.

I can't believe I nearly forgot the psychotic hyper-intelligent velociraptor.

If your interest is at all piqued by this I highly recommend checking out the various free online comic stories, which give what I think is a good overview of the character - most especially the Free Comic Book Day 2009 installment, from which the above panel comes (as you might be able to tell from the title of this post, Dr. Dinosaur is easily a favorite character, surpassing perhaps even Robo himself).

I'll certainly be keeping a close watch on this game as it develops - besides the latest permutation of the FATE ruleset, the potential of an Our World - type guide to the world of Atomic Robo is particularly enticing.

On Random Name Generators

When I write, I tend to pay a great deal of attention to names, whether of places or characters. Sometimes, especially for an important name, I'll try to attach a double-meaning to it, but for most applications if I don't have something in mind from the beginning I'll hit a random name generator or two to get the ideas flowing. Seventh Sanctum is my favorite website to find these, but occasionally I'll venture farther afield.

For example, the other day I was working on a fantasy-setting project and needed a quick NPC name. I knew that I wanted it to sound vaguely Arthurian, but didn't want to crib it directly from the Round Table. Lo and behold, a quick Googling brought me to the Dragon's Mark Name Generator, "Dragon's Mark" evidently being a forum name.

It's quite a slick little gadget - the interface is nice and clean, and whatever mechanism is used for generating the names does a fairly good job at making them sound consistent with various origins, though I doubt they (especially the Tolkien ones) actually mean anything. If I knew more - i.e., any - of the languages in question I'd probably try to deconstruct them for the humor, but since I don't, I'll settle for pointing the way towards what could be a very handy writing tool.

Look! Content!

(With apologies to XKCD.)

Ahem. I've been playing around with the character generation rules in Evil Hat's Dresden Files RPG recently, testing some of the boundaries of who and what can be replicated. In doing so, I found that one particular power seemed to be absent. Naturally, I had to whip up a custom substitute:

Invisibility [-2 Refresh]

Description: You cannot be detected by sight. This ability is always in effect.

Skills Affected: Stealth

Effects: Your body is completely transparent and cannot be perceived by visual means. This does not extend to your clothes, undigested food, or other unabsorbed material, such as anything that might be splattered on you. +2 to Stealth against visual Perception rolls.

I drew from a couple different area of Your Story for this, especially the discussion of veils and the admittedly-similar Cloak of Shadows power (YS169). I bumped the Refresh cost up to reflect the more overwhelming potential, and I suspect you could bump it up even more by adding some variations - perhaps another point would be worth the ability to turn the invisibility on and off? I also tried a couple different ways of phrasing the restrictions on the increase to Stealth before settling on the above.

Anyway, I haven't tested this one out yet, but I thought I'd throw it out there as a preview of something I've (slowly) been working on. Perhaps when I get to the reason why I needed it, I'll work out an example of it in play . . .

Priming The Pump

And I mean that it two senses.  Firstly in my return to gaming-related blogging after that unplanned hiatus - I have been cooking up some ideas in the meanwhile, which may or may not ever actually get posted.

Second, and much more interestingly, it refers to a document recently made available by Noisms over at his ever-interesting blog Monsters and Manuals. I'll just let him describe it in his own words:

"It's 2200 pages of in-depth analysis and creative brainstorming by a large number of rpg.net geeks regarding EVERY SINGLE MONSTER IN THE 2nd EDITION ADnD MONSTROUS MANUAL."

I feel fairly certain that this will be old news to just about everyone who reads this, but in case it's not - go read it. Seriously, just the first couple of letters have sparked plenty of inspiration for me, and many of the contributers are quite witty, to boot.

Ripped From the Headlines

Perhaps it's just my inner bibliophile rising to the top, but I recently ran across an article in the online Times of India that I thought had great gaming potential:


Secret chamber in National Library

The chamber has lain untouched for over two centuries. Wonder what secrets it holds. The archaeologists who discovered it have no clue either, their theories range from a torture chamber, or a sealed tomb for an unfortunate soul or the most favoured of all a treasure room. Some say they wouldn't be surprised if both skeletons and jewels tumble out of the secret room.

(Read more: Secret chamber in National Library - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata-/Secret-chamber-in-National-Library/articleshow/6957358.cms#ixzz16Gjvyxqp)

The story as-is would make a great drop in for a Pulp Action or Horror campaign, depending on whether the GM wanted to emphasize the skeletons or the jewels. Actually, a secret room with no obvious way to get in seems like it would fit perfectly in a Lovecraftian game, as the innermost sanctum of some unfortunate wizard. It's probably filled with Hounds of Tindalos or something. And hey, new idea - dial back the horror elements and you get a great set piece for a DFRPG session!

On a less specific note, the article mentions that the building the room was found in, now the national library, was originally a royal palace and then, for a while, a governor's residence. This suggests some interesting possibilities for designing, for example, dungeons for a D&D-fantasy game - that door into a corridor with no floor might have a perfectly reasonable explanation, such as a now-nonexistant staircase. And hey, what's this walled-off section in this room full of books . . . ?

A Sci-Fi Setting Idea

"In the early 22^nd century, a colony ship set out from Earth, bound for a nearby star system with a recently discovered Earth-like planet. When the Adventure arrived, the first crew-members out of suspended animation were quick to notice that, although the planet is approximately 25% larger than Earth, the gravity is within a few percentage points of Earth-normal. This mystery*, however, quickly took a backseat as catastrophe struck the vessel. A string of critical malfunctions caused the Adventure to begin sinking slowly towards the planet. Working quickly, the crew managed to bring it to more-or-less intact landing on the surface – but not before several chunks of the population had taken to the escape pods and rocketed off for parts unknown. Several generations later, a wide section of the continent upon which the Adventure landed has been mostly settled (centered on the crash site itself, which has become the location of the colonists' main city), and the Adventurers (for so the colonists call themselves) can afford some time from the business of surviving on this new world to searching for their lost kin."