bryant

Hey, I’m using the year in the titles now! Shows I didn’t have much confidence that I’d keep this going a year ago. Well, a big raspberry to younger me.

We’re getting spooky again, of course, with a lineup that is varied both in types of horror and in quality. I think we have another contender for worst movie to ever play on the Channel — read on to find out which one.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

Welcome back to my read-through of Dark Inheritance, a mostly forgotten child of the D20 boom! Find all the entries in the series here.

The first chapter after the introduction is a big old lore dump. This matches general expectations at the time, although you know there’s gonna be more lore integrated into the mechanics, and it’s also probably smart for the modern world but occult setting. It’s only 20 pages long, which probably helps explain why it was an impulse purchase for me way back when — I skimmed this quickly in the dealer’s hall.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

Midway through my week in Montreal for Fantasia Festival, and boy is my ass tired. Losing weight is excellent, it’s just that I don’t have as much padding as I used to and Concordia University lecture hall chairs were not completely designed for two hour stretches. Worth it, though.

This is not my look at the full festival — that’ll come next week. Instead, I’ve been spending time thinking about why I cherish this festival so much.

Part of it is simply the continuity. My first Fantasia was 21 years ago — Chris and I drove up from Boston for the weekend. My second one was a couple of years later, and was the first one with S.; then for reasons which I’m sure were sane at the time I didn’t go again for like ten years. Then another eight years. After 2023, S. and I realized there was no reason not to go as often as yearly, and here we are again two years later.

I can look back on those previous visits and trace a lot of my life’s changes. Not just that this blog ran on Movable Type for the first one. I was gaming more the year we went from Montreal directly to Indianapolis for GenCon, which is not something that seems appealing right now even if it wasn’t exhausting. The differences between driving up from Boston and flying, which come to think of it is probably why I had those really big gaps. The ways I’m reacting to movies changed considerably during the pandemic.

So that’s one thing. Then there’s the audience: I am 100% sure that every single movie I see in the Henry F. Hall (except Jeruzalem) is benefiting from the enthusiasm of the audience. Every movie, no matter how bad, should be seen with audiences that are so happy to be there.

Finally, most importantly, there’s the risks. The movie industry is struggling in real and important ways; I can’t minimize the difficulties around original ideas, mid-budget movies that just don’t get made any more, and so on. All of that is real.

What’s also real, though, is that a majority of the movies I see here every year are taking big swings. I didn’t have to love Redux Redux last night to notice that it was made by a couple of brothers who just wanted to make a Terminator homage, so they grabbed a bunch of actors and some cheap locations and took their knowledge of the craft and put together two hours of film that made them happy. That’s fucking cool. I did love Sasyq, and it’s made by a Kazakhstan dude who’s played the ominous thug in a few Hollywood movies and TV shows and wanted to put his dream of a fairy tale on screen. I absolutely adored Dog of God, and it happened because another pair of irreverent brothers wanted to mythologize the story of a werewolf trial and realized they could get Latvian state funding for it as an experimental film. “Nobody cared what was in it as long as we had the logos in the right place at the beginning and the end of the movie.” Fuck yeah.

This festival reminds me that filmmakers are still finding ways to bring their weird little visions to life, with varying degrees of competency. This week is a celebration of parts of the human spirit that I will always love without reservation. Much of the time I get to see the directors come up before the movie and thank a rabidly excited audience; some of them have been here before, and some of them are experiencing this for the first time. How can I not be grateful for the opportunity to welcome them?

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

I don’t own a lot of remnants of the D20 boom any more, just a few select books, for the novelty and quality of the ideas rather than for anything mechanical. Tynes’s D20 Call of Cthulhu, for example. The least remembered of these is a D20 Modern setting called Dark Inheritance, which I bought at GenCon. I absolutely adored this back in the day, for its weird mix of genres and modern occult vibe, plus I always thought D20 Modern looked like an interesting system. So in my constant effort to blog a bit more, I dug around till I found my copy, pulled it out, and am spending some time reading it and blogging my thoughts. This is not a review, because I haven’t played it, although that’d be a kick — it’s just a once over. No promises on how often I write these.

The original book was published in 2003; I believe there’s also a Spycraft version, published a year later. It is not available in PDF. Noble Knight has a copy of the D20 version, and it occasionally shows up on eBay. The publisher is Mythic Dreams Studios, which appears to have been mostly Chad Justice. Chad is no longer working in the industry and Mythic Dreams only had these two releases, despite plans for other books as per an advertisement in the back of this one. Still, one solid 200 page campaign book isn’t bad.

The other writers are a range, career wise. Alphabetically, we have Edward Milton, Jason Olsan. Aaron Rosenberg, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, Jeremy Tibbs, Wil Upchurch, and Sam Witt. There’s no indication of who wrote what, but I’d bet that Ryder-Hanrahan wrote at least some of the words that sparked my imagination back then. The cover artists is a dude named Mark Sasso, who sets the tone with a painting of a shadowy figure stepping forward out of what appears to be a fire. Sasso’s gone on to what looks like a decent career in and out of the TTRPG space, with some fantasy-inflected design work for the WWE and metal bands like Dio.

The interior art is B&W, mostly spot illos. The book is good 2000s TTRPG design: clear layout, in-world fiction broken out into sidebars, nothing to complain about. This is definitely the era when people expected big metaplot and lots of fiction in their game books.

OK, let’s dig in.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

It’s clearly the beginning of summer because Criterion’s June lineup is even more summery than last month’s. And last month they did a whole collection of Coastal Thrillers.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

Umpteenth in an occasional series discussing games I might ilke to run or play someday. What’s on my mind in 2025? In no particular order…

1. Nahual has been on my list for a while now. It’s a really cool adaptation of a Mexican graphic novel. The Kickstarter had a translation of the original material as a stretch goal, but you know how those go sometimes. Anyhow: it’s interestingly rebellious urban fantasy about shapeshifters who hunt angels to make a living in Mexico City. Needs to be a campaign because the journey of becoming a more adept shapeshifter is a pretty key part of the rules, and the setting is about community which means it also benefits from time to breathe. Somewhat more inclined to run this because it’s a world I’d enjoy riffing on.
2. Legacy: Life Among the Ruins is an odd choice in a way. I’m not compelled by the setting which is fairly generic post-apocalypse material. It’s sort of more a toolkit setting — you can make of it what you will, but you have to put that effort into it. However, the generational style of play is fascinating for me. Also obviously a campaign. I’d run or play. 
3. Outgunned is so high on my list of one-shots I can’t even say. I want to find out first hand if the action mechanics are good; word of mouth is strong. I could use a more flexible version of Feng Shui in my toolkit. One-shot, or maybe one scenario’s worth of play over a couple of sessions, since the whole point is finding out if I like it. I do have a campaign floating around in my head set in a Madripoor pastiche, complete with street level superheroes and mad science, and the existing superhero rules for the game would do just fine even before the upcoming superhero-specific book, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Happy to run this.
4. The Troubleshooters is occupying a similar place in my head except it’s more that Tintin nostalgia is strong in me. Pulpy 1965, you bet! Nice d% system that won’t get in the way, Jet Age coolness, etc. I would really dig playing this, I think.
5. Worldwide Wrestling is fun. I’ve run it once; I’d be into running a year’s worth of events in my PNWage Wrestling promotion. (Man, past me put in the work to make that writeup usable, thanks!)
6. Trophy one of these days. Specifically Trophy Dark, I don’t need the campaign play here. And I wanna play this, not run it. I mean I could run it but I’m interested in how it feels at the other side of the table. I did play Trophy Gold once but the scenario never got finished, which was a bit frustrating.
7. Agon or a derivative, but probably Agon. I like getting the pure form of an exciting design. You could talk me into Deathmatch Island. I am more interested in this as a player than as a GM, because I’m interested in the competitive aspects and I don’t want the extra effort of nudging players in that direction. But, you know, with the right group…

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

I’ve been rereading Greg Rucka’s Atticus Kodiak books on the occasion of him republishing the first four in the series, and it’s been a pleasure. A gloomy, morose pleasure but a pleasure nonetheless. As always they seem like they ought to be quite adaptable to tabletop RPGs, so I spent a while thinking about that last night while I was falling asleep.

The super-easy adaptation would use Night’s Black Agents, drop the vampires. It’s easy to dial that flavor of GUMSHOE into gritty dangerous street level action, and the bursts of competence that result from the Military Occupational Specialty rule — automatic successes once per session on your chosen MOS skill — would also fit perfectly. Atticus and his friends spend a lot of time being able to push themselves to unreasonable levels of competence when the situation really calls for it.

You’d have to generate some new Backgrounds, I think, which is easy. Also drop Occult Studies and Vampirology from the abilities list and… yeah, Sense Trouble is the critical ability for keeping focus when you’re on watch for hours at a time. Without play testing this, I think using the Thriller Chase rules for standing watch would work really well; the assassin is testing abilities like Infiltration, Surveillance, and Disguise against abilities like Sense Trouble, Surveillance, and Preparedness. Winner gets points in a combat pool before playing out the actual attempt.

But then I had another idea, which I like more and which would take way more effort to implement. The post title gives it away, I know.

One of the core mechanics of Blades in the Dark is the engagement roll; the goal was to reduce the amount of time a group of players spend planning out every detail of a heist. You just go straight to the start of the action, and rely on flashbacks to fill in plans as necessary. So why couldn’t you just invert that — make an engagement roll to cut right to the start of the attempt on whoever you’re body guarding?

In Blades, you choose the point of attack before making an engagement roll. For this application, I think you’d go a bit metafictional and choose the opposition’s point of attack — this may be a bit too much player control for some but it allows the body guarding PCs to look awesome. Bad engagement rolls mean more variance from the determined point of attack, so that it’s not a guaranteed win for the players.

The time consuming part of this hack would be building a bunch of new playbooks. Not too hard to come up with them, just using the Kodiak series as the point of reference: Bodyguard, Private Detective, Driver, Special Forces, Cop, Medic. There’s six, voila. Writing them up is left as an exercise for someone else.

I don’t see a lot of value in multiple crew types, since this is about a very specific topic. I suppose there’s a game about urban action in here somewhere, in which case Bodyguards is one of several crew types with special rules for engagement rolls, but that’s even more work.

And then time to work out a new list of actions, etc. etc. As I said, there’s real effort necessary here, but I dig the idea.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

Sometimes it’s just a new month with new movies, you know? I’m gonna dig right into it — there’s at least one collection which I want to draw attention to.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

It turns out that business trips are poor places to work on posting challenges, especially if you’re horribly jet lagged and you have a lot of evening meetings. I’m gonna try and hit 31 of these anyhow, just not before the end of January.

I found myself thinking about action a lot, so now that I’m back in the US I’m gonna do a quick Outgunned character. Outgunned is designed as a modern action RPG, very much in the spirit of John Wick. Since it’s been pretty successful as measured by Kickstarter success, the designers (Two Little Mice) have added a couple of genre books packed full of potential settings — Wild West, space opera, etc. — and a second corebook aimed at 30s pulp action. This time out I’m doing the “A Kind of Magic” mini-expansion, or Action Flick. I’m going to frame this as modern espionage with magic, which seems like a fun game idea.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

That’s a lot of OSR to start the challenge, so I figured I’d do something less trad for day three. If I’d been thinking ahead, which I may do later in the month, I’d have thrown the playbook history section open to my pals on social media to crowdsource answers, but in the interests of efficiency I just made up my own this time around.

I decided I wanted to play a character who’s a little bit out of sync with the modern world but still effective. Playbook: the Initiate, who belongs to some kind of secret sect that thinks it’s the bulwark against evil. I’m going to call her Jeanne, as a reference to Joan of Arc.

She thus has a thin body and wears unfashionable clothes. This doesn’t lessen her charisma:

Charm +1
Cool -1
Sharp +1
Tough =0
Weird +2

Or her weirdness. She’s no mystic but she is subject to prophecy; I want Fortunes and Sacred Oath for my first two move choices, to sort of emphasize the chains of obsession that bind her. For a third move, in order to make sure she plays well with others, I’ll take Helping Hand. Note that Help Out is a Cool move, which with her -1 Cool means she’ll be exposing herself to trouble a lot. If I’m power gaming, I can use Sacred Oath to offset that a bit.

I see her Sect as somewhat antiquated. It’d be fun to do the contrast of a traditionalist who belongs to a high tech bunch, but nah — let’s make her the product of her upbringing. Their good traditions are Ancient Lore and Fighting Arts; their bad tradition is Tradition-bound. I think they are religious in nature, maybe Montanists? I am just skimming Wikipedia here but a Catholic heresy that believes in prophetic gifts seems right for Jeanne. For a real campaign I’d do some more research; Montanism has the benefit of being a dead sect so not a lot of real people to offend there.

I’ll call the sect the Prisca Society, after one of the original sect leaders. They recruit by family ties, although not exclusively — if someone has the gift of prophecy, they’re a candidate for recruitment. Since Jeanne does know prophecy, I think she was recruited at a young age, which may have been traumatic. I’ll let that develop in play.

OK. Those tradition choices mean Jeanne has three old fashioned weapons and one modern one. She prefers the old school stuff: her sword, her really big sword, and a silver knife that’s handy for certain targets. She also owns a shotgun and maybe has a very limited supply of silver-loaded shells.

For my fellow PCs, I’m postulating Marcia, playing Gregori, a Professional who favors direct action; and Hank, playing Feldspar, a Spooky. Hank loves weird characters and Marcia loves being effective.

Jeanne and Gregori fought together when the tide of monsters seemed unstoppable. How did that go? Gregori says they were shoulder to shoulder when the Gates broke open, and both of them were at peace with whatever happened. She was a bit reckless — took a bite for him while he was reloading — and he appreciates that. They have each other’s back.

Feldspar knew Jeanne when she was under her cover identity as Jane, a bank teller. (I like the way there are little implications about character history in these questions.) Feldspar thought Jane was trying too hard because nobody is that boring. Turns out Feldspar was right! I bet Feldspar isn’t always right about that kind of thing, though… anyhow, these days, Feldspar keeps looking for the next shoe to drop, the next layer of weirdness, although they don’t hold the secret against Jeanne.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]