Chairman Meow Is Dead, Long Live The Queen!

With the assistance of her faithful companions and a newly repaired jet-powered skyship, Queen Genevieve successfully deposed Chairman Meow and finally regained the throne of the Autumn Court of Faerie. Thus concludes a major story arc in our Gurps Knights of the Astral Sea game. Once again, Jim DiBenedetto provides the play report:

5 May, 1939 ??? 

Capt. Alastair Hawkesworth
HMAS Richard Lemon Lander 

My Dearest Alastair, 

As I write this letter to you, I sit again in the palace of the Autumn Court, where my rightful rule as Queen has been restored.

As you know, I had been negotiating with Oberon, King of the Summer Court, to obtain his aid in reclaiming my throne. While I was engaged in that pursuit, my companions, with the “help” of Mirya the gnome, managed to transport themselves to another realm. As time does not move at the same rate in Faerie as it does in other realms, what was a few hours to me was several days for my companions. They returned somewhat the worse for wear, but in possession of a remarkable craft – a jet-powered airship, along with a pilot, Iris, who had joined them having no wish to remain in her own world. 

This airship, the Lady Blackbird, was a wonder, and it will merit much further study (alas, my companions did not agree with my desire to rename the airship. I felt that christening it Jeanne D’Arc would have been most appropriate, but I was sadly outvoted). 

The airship proved useful not only in itself, but as an aid to negotiations. I explained to Oberon that I and my companions had perfected a means of reliably bringing technological devices and vehicles into Faerie, and offered to forswear the use of said means in return for his assistance. You would, I think, have been proud of my “poker face” (that is the phrase, yes?). 

After much discussion, and having secured Oberon’s agreement, we arrived at a modification of our plan to retake Autumn. We would use the Lady Blackbird, and fly directly into the Court at top speed, hopefully surprising the usurper. To help, I was able to devise a new fuel for the airship, rather than the diesel fuel it was designed to consume. The use of rendered firedrake (a type of small dragon) as fuel increased the efficiency of the airship markedly. 

We flew directly into Autumn, encountering only one difficulty along the way: a massive black dragon! Elspeth used the “ray gun” (something else that merits further study) in the turret of the airship to attack the dragon, but, unfortunately it was able to launch an attack against us in return – not fire, but a sonic blast. The force of it caused the airship to tumble in midair, and the engines to fail.

Thinking quickly, Iris tried to keep the airship under control, while Elspeth continued to shoot at the dragon. It occurred to me that the problem with the engines was a lack of air flowing into them, and that the best way to rectify that would be to get the maximum speed and airflow – by flying straight down, towards the ground. At approximately 200 feet altitude, the engines restarted, and we were again able to fly under power.

During this time, unknown to us, Lord Tybalt had teleported himself atop the dragon, and had controlled its mind, forcing it to break off its attack. It was not until we were again flying safely and level that we learned this, and we were most grateful for it. 

After that harrowing encounter, we were only a few hours’ flight to the Autumn Court. We opted for the most direct strategy possible – we planned to bring the airship to the highest tower, where we thought the usurper would likely be lurking. Upon our arrival, Lord Tybalt teleported himself in, while General Pickton flew in, carrying a rope down which the rest of our group could enter the tower.

The usurper was not there, but instead Lord Tybalt and General Pickton found an envoy of the Spanish Empire along with several servants. He was quickly subdued, but not before an alarm was raised and musket-armed troops began to arrive just as I and my companions entered the tower. General Pickton departed, upon seeing a detachment of Singes Avion preparing to take flight and attack us, and Lord Tybalt joined him.

Meanwhile, Elspeth and Marcus engaged the oncoming guards, Elspeth with gunfire and Marcus with his sword, and then by means of a large sofa which he hurled down the stairs to scatter the troops. They then pursued the retreating troops, after which Elspeth soon ran into an old acquaintance, Lord Rakat. As she reported to us afterwards, she was torn between her heart and her head, but her head won out, and she shot Rakat dead. 

Meanwhile, General Pickton performed remarkably, rallying the Singes Avion from the usurper’s service and back to their rightful monarch. It was at this point that the usurper made his appearance. Emerging from a blocky, ugly building he had had erected on the grounds (and which shall shortly be demolished. I shall personally supervise that operation). He had with him a bodyguard composed of large armored bears. 

I then took action, choosing the only possible course at that moment; I took careful aim with my weapon, on the setting that translates as “Kill Everyone”, and fired. The usurper was vaporized, along with most of his bodyguard, in a glorious flash of Tesla Rays, and thus his vile reign was ended. 

Now we must commence the work of rooting out the usurper’s followers and determining who is loyal to their rightful Queen, and then repairing the damage done by the usurper to the Court and to its relations with its neighbors. Once that is accomplished, some arrangement will have to be made to oversee the Court while I am gone, as our true enemy, the Spanish Empire, remains out there plotting against us at every moment (on that subject, we did take the Spanish envoy prisoner, and Lord Tybalt is taking the lead in his interrogation, if that is the correct word for what is being done to him). 

But once the Spanish have been defeated, I am most anxious for you to visit the Autumn court and see my beautiful realm. I am more anxious, however, merely to see you in any capacity, and I pray that that day shall be sooner rather than later. Until that happy moment, I remain your most devoted and grateful friend,

Genevieve Chantal Therese de Lisieux Lamballe, La Reine du Le Cour d’Automne

Risus Monkey Is A Code Monkey

I just wrapped up a multi-month push towards a pretty big deadline at work. I'm not about to go into specifics other than that it involved a lot of coding (C++ and Python). I'm a software engineer by trade and I  enjoy my job but it has been a long time (since my first child was born) since I have coded that furiously. While it was completely exhausting it was also exhilarating.

I mention this because my software engineering brain and my blog-writing, geomorph-drawing, game mastering brain haven't really had much to do with each other lately. It used to be that I would write character generators, combat simulators, and gaming utilities for kicks. It's what I did in my spare time before I really started blogging. It was fun and it kept my technical skills sharp when work got boring.

But with kids, I found that I no longer had the time for such things and switched almost entirely to writing and other analog pursuits. Coding isn't just something you can easily squeeze into the corners of a day. If I start a software project, I kind of obsess about it. I always want to get to the code to a state where it does something useful or interesting. If I find a bug, I want to fix the damn thing. Now.

Anyway, I now find myself thinking about coding game apps again. But I'm feeling a little gun shy because if I do, I have a sense that it may disrupt my other interests. My efforts at developing a writing habit my slide and blogging may prove especially challenging.

But I have a kind of neat idea that involves old school Interactive Fiction (like Zork) and the geomorphs that everybody was doing not so long ago. It would be nifty if I utilize some of the Interactive Fiction frameworks out there to explore a random assortment of geomorphs (stocked with monsters and treasure for good measure).

Sigh. It's a crazy idea and I may drop it if it becomes too much. But I'm going to take advantage of some possible holiday free time to see what can be done with it.

Release The Dice!

There have been sightings in the wild, so I can now safely post that I have them as well! Yes, I have the DungeonMorph Dice! Joe Wetzel has done an amazing job of putting these suckers together and I'm honored to have some of my designs included alongside a host of cartographic luminaries.

The dice look awesome and feel great in the hand. I've already been using them for dice games with my kids and I hope to use these real dungeon crawls at first opportunity.

Ring of Thieves

Do you fondly remember those old "Choose Your Own Adventure" book from back in the Eighties? Do you like Risus? If so, you owe it to yourself to check out S. John Ross' Ring of Thieves solo adventure, available for free on the Cumberland website. It's been available for almost twelve years now and Risus grognards (is there such a thing as a Risus grognard?)will certainly be familiar with the original PDF. But the classic adventure has been reformatted as a stand-alone print-on-demand book, available at Lulu. Alas, it is not free. But with all the Lulu sales popping up, it may occasionally creep down into the not-so-unreasonably-priced range. At the very least, you can ask Santa to stuff it into your stocking rather than the travel-sized bath accessories that you usually get. It would also make a great white elephant gift for your next office party. Just imagine the confused look on the faces of your non-gamer co-workers!

Reflections on Solo Game Appreciation Month

November has come and gone and with it many of my grand ambitions for Solo Game Appreciation Month. I *did* manage to restart my long-dormant Ebon Knight Mythic GME/ICONS game, and for that I should be thankful. It was over a year ago when I left off with page 16 of my pseudo-comic. It was right around that time that my schedule took a hit and solo gaming fell off the table. But I've picked up the story and I have managed to crawl my way through page 20 by stealing a few minutes here and there after work and at lunch. The pseudo-comic format works really well for folks with a tight schedule, as you only really need to do a panel at a time. 

So, yeah, that was a success. I'll even post some AP once I'm closing in on the end of the first "issue".

But my grand goal for the month was to come up with a new kind of card-based solo system based on the beats of Hamlet's Hit Points. I started hashing out some ideas HERE and the project seemed to have so much promise. But I found that my system kind of fell flat once I started to use it.

In a nut-shell, I basically came up with a system that translated draws from a standard deck of playing cards into emotional beats. Most cards resulted in procedural or dramatic beats (determined by context) and the number of pips determined if they were positive or negative (as per Robin's analysis, there was a definite negative bias). Face cards yielded special beats like Questions, Pipes, Reveals, Commentary, Gratification, Anticipations, or Bringdowns. Suit would provide additional inspiration, as per my Practical Cartomancy article.

The problem is that I totally got everything backwards. The reason the Mythic GME works so well is that the GME just acts as a glorified Magic Eightball with random twists thrown in for good measure. When playing a Mythic game, there is this natural kind of flow and you only really need to consult the GME when logic fails and answers are non-obvious (or when you just really want to allow for some unpredictable weirdness). 

My so-called "Beat System" kind of put the cart before the horse. Given a situation, I'd draw a card and flail about trying to interpret it. I was hoping the cards would provide a cool dramatic structure, but in reality they just simultaneously provided too much and too little. 

I still have hopes that I can do something with Hamlet's Hit Points because it really has been on my mind lately. But I'm most likely going to take my ideas and apply them more directly to play with the GME.

And speaking of Hamlet's Hit Points, Robin Laws will be crowdfunding a game called Hillfolk, which will be the first to use his "Drama System". Essentially, it's genre emulation for television dramas. Sounds fascinating!