I was in a chatroom today talking about how ER was kinda like hell for television characters, bad things happened to people constantly.  Often in rapid succession. Medical Dramas are kinda like this 10th Circle of Hell where the truly dispicable are sent to be tortured for our amusement. people were maimed, killed, diagnosed terminally ill and beat the disease only to drop dead randomly, marriages were made, broken, marriages were interrupted mid-ceremony, people were kidnapped, live surgeries were done on people with bombs in their chest, blackouts mid-operation, floods in the hospital, terrorist situations, helicopters landing on people.. All of this while trying to save peoples lives.

So suddenly it occured to me, the genius and savant that I am, that this would make an AMAZING setup for a roleplaying game.

The players take on the roles of the dramatis personae in a hospital. Every week there are situations, emergencies, protocols have to be followed to keep people alive, often broken to save them. Surgeons, nurses, EMTs, what have you. No superheroes, but as members of the fast-paced medical community, your skills are definately above that of your average doctor.

Now here's the twist. The GM is in control of the bit players, the victims, the scenery and the setting.

But a player is in control of the DRAMA. There's a director player, every week someone takes their hand at playing the generative, malicious force behind the scenes. The director might make the power go out mid-surgery, or have one of the players abusive, alcoholic parents show up to stir up trouble, they might make a characters vicodin addiction flare up, or give him flashbacks to that year he spent in an Vietcong prison camp mid-operation. A helicopter might malfunction trying to lift off from the helipad, someones dead wife might return from the dead just in time to interrupt his remarriage. The patient might show some strange new symptom that baffles or misleads the players, or turn out to be possessed by the devil, a victim of an alien abduction. A recent plague outbreak might cause dead patients to rise from the dead. They might just put a fucking banana peel on the floor in front of someone carrying a full bedpan.

The goal of the players is to save the patients. The goal of the director is to make it as hard as possible.

I just have to think of a way to make it work mechanically. I want the directors control to be limited, yet still give them the ability to do lots of really insane things to people. Let's brainstorm. Let's make this fucking HAPPEN.

So Greg wants to play a Kobold in 4th edition. Allow me to introduce you to the joy of 4th edition; RESKINNING, you can change around what they give you to do basically anything.. OBSERVE.

I'm trying to reskin a Fighter to be a cool class for a Kobold. So I think I've got an idea, a Kobold Trapmaster. Trapmasters know the lay of the land, how to manipulate the dangers of a battlefield and rapidly create his own to pierce enemy defenses. A Trapmaster gets in close with an enemy, hiding behind a large shield and maneuvering to lure his opponent into traps he's exploiting in the enviornment, or throwing at his enemies to break their concentration and defenses. He is trained in martial combat with melee weapons, as well, but where any other adventure sees a dungeon hallway laden with hazards, the Trapmaster sees a dungeon filled with weapons.

For example:
Spinning Sweep becomes Tripwire:
-Hit: 1[W] + Strength modifier damage, and you knock the
target prone.

Steel Serpent Strike becomes Caltrops:
-Hit: 2[W] + Strength modifier damage, and the target is
slowed and cannot shift until end of your next turn.

Combat Challenge -> Annoying Distraction. Kobolds have a notorious ability to aggravate even the most stalwart enemies, by being small, annoying and loud, the enemy finds it hard to focus on things OTHER than him.

Cleave becomes Jar of Bees and adjacent enemies get caught in the swarm, Armor-Piercing Thrust becomes Hidden Arrowtrap as the Kobold dextrously maneuvers the Orc into a hail of arrows.

You could leave other attacks vanilla, but I love the idea of having him wear heavy armor. It makes him look like a tiny bomb-squad trooper, clad in mail just in case something goes awry.

He has a lot of HP because he's spent his career getting stabbed, speared, set on fire, climbing out of spiked pits, outrunning massive boulders.

Hell, maybe he's more than one Kobold. Maybe there's a bunch of them laying in wait around him, preparing the stage for the next blow, he's just the frontman. It'd be like fighting the Ewoks at the end of Return of the Jedi. If an attack against fortitude misses, the enemy swats a charging kobold out of the way. If the character is bloodied, the frontman is knocked out cold and another guy jumps in...

 So I'm rolling up a Rogue Trader character, a Seneschal. They're the groups financier, trader, the one who sits there with the clipboard and map, telling the group where the next big job is, the next great fortune, they shake hands in back alleys and share tables with planetary royalty..

Just to tell you how badass RT characters are compared to DH characters, Bella here has a 51 Fellowship. At chargen. Base chargen, and bonuses for dealing with formal situations and high authority. A Dark Heresy character was lucky to start with a 29 in anything.. Oy vey.

She's a fucking GODDESS. I'm so excited to play this freaking character. I'm going to buy her a whip I think, with a 51 Fellowship I think you have to own a whip

I mean at 51 Fellowship you certainly don't NEED the whip, but people need to know you have a whip.

 Wow, Primal Power has a shit-ton of cool abilities for the 4th edition Primal classes. Some quotes from people who have early copies of the book.

"Watcher Spirit
Your allies can treat enemies adjacent to the spirit companion as their nearest enemy. enemies adjacent to the spirit companion can't gain cover from other enemies

Spirit's Prey, Opportunity Action: An enemy leaves a square adjacent to your spirit companion without shifting. One ally within 10 squares of your spirit companion can make a ranged basic attack against the target as a free action with combat advantage. 

Thunderborn Barbarians have the goofiest looking picture in the book (it looks like a belching midget minotaur). Once per round when you bloody an enemy, each adjacent enemy takes Con mod thunder damage. They also get the War Cry power when an attack reduces an enemy to 0 hit points, close blast 3 push each enemy in blast 1 square. 
Whirling Barbarians shift two squares when they bloody an enemy and adjacent enemies grant them combat advantage. Their Whirling Lunge power lets them shift 2 squares and deal 1(W) offhand weapon damage when they reduce an enemy to 0 hit points."

Plus Swarm Druids, and a new Paragon path, Reincarnate Champion that lets you take racial abilities from another race.. Eee.

 Book haul!

Warhammer Stuff:
Rogue Trader RPG book, preordered! I should have it by the end of the week
Dan Abnett's Ravenor omnibus.. yaaaay, more inquisition stuff
Cain's Last Stand (I still need to get Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium)

I got the D&D 4e PHB 2.. So now I have access to the Gnome, Goliath, Deva, and  Shifter races.. As well as Avenger, Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Invoker, Shaman, Sorceror and Warden classes.. Woo! Avenger!

I also got the third Black Company omnibus and Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Fall of the United States of America.. Reading that one right now, it's pretty good.

I was TRYING to also find The King in Yellow, but I would have had to special order it from Indigo.

 HEY JERKS

THE HAIRY T HAS 20% OFF ON ALL HERO AND D&D 4E STUFF

THEY HAVE LIKE EVERY BOOK

TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT AND I WILL TRY  TO GET IT FOR YOU THIS WEEKEND

 So today was pretty good.. I had psych in the morning, we discussed prenatal development, gender development and baby behaviour.. Spent some time in the study lounge studying for a literature quiz. The quiz went rather well, there was only one topic I wasnt entirely certain of.. Philosophy had us dissecting an argument, I think I was the only one who reached the proper conclusion that the professor got.

Got home, my Ravenloft books arrived, my Health Card arrived (yay OSAP), mom says a GST cheque is waiting for me in TO..

Oh. My mom just guilted me into visiting Toronto for thanksgiving.. So I guess I know what I'm doing this weekend.

My Demon's Souls preorder also came in today.. This game is HARD.. You are an adventurer exploring the land of Boletaria, and uh... you die.

As a matter of plot, and as a matter of gameplay.. Upon dying you come to the Nexus, a central hub where you can store and buy items, go to new areas, and level up.

You die. You die a lot. The game is hard, monsters are strong, and you have to learn to dodge, step, block, parry, riposte, strike and build your skills with different weapons and abilities... But even then sometimes you'll just sometimes be outclasses. You'll stumble across traps and pitfalls, enemies that are WAY more powerful than you, enemies that will exploit your weaknesses, outnumber you and outfight you.

Weapons are realistic, don't count on using a large weapon in close quarters, don't count on a rapier to do shit unless you can move fast enough to stab around someones shield. So yeah. You're going to die. The game counts on it.

But other players can help you. Kinda.

Sometimes you see ghosts just...running around. You can't interact with them. They'll fade in and out and run around, fight monsters and die to things you can't see. THESE ARE OTHER PLAYERS (and it's so cool once you realize this).. Just in real time, you'll see snippets of another players adventure. Occasionally you find bloodstains on the ground, tapping them will show you the last 5-10 seconds of a dead players death. You'll see him run around a corner and suddenly he'll just get annihilated by something.. Peek around the corner, and...yup....Dragon flew out of nowhere and just coated the bridge in flames.

You can also leave notes for players, to help or mislead people. You hit select, put together a quick message from keywords and then drop it on the ground. Other players can inform eachother of traps, upcoming monster weaknesses, ambushes, hidden items.. It's very, very cool.. Players can vote on notes, and if you get positive votes you get a bit of your health restored.

So you die. You become a ghost and lose all your unspent Souls, used for leveling up stats, buying and upgrading items and stuff. If you get back to where you were and touch your bloodstain, you'll get your souls back.. But you don't get your body back. As a ghost you only have half your health, and there's only two ways to get your life back.. Kill a boss demon, or use a rare item. If you can't kill a boss yourself, you can drop a stone on the ground, and another player can see that stone in his game and bring you into his world.. As a ghost you can run around in his game and help him do stuff, kill a boss and get your body back.

Orrr.. You can eventually FORCE your way into another players game and turn into a boss monster to kill a player, thus regaining your corporeal form. Killing one of these invaders nets you a shit-ton of Souls, and they're usually bastards to kill..

It's a really brutal, really hard, really fun game. I'm enjoying it.

Supernatural core rulebook is in stock at the FLGS!

Also they had a new Serenity rulebook called Big Damn Heroes, described as:

"No Power in the 'Verse Can Stop You The original Serenity Role Playing Game has sold more than 25,000 copies in print and has continued to draw in more fans to gaming with the Cortex System rules for over three years. The fans are eager for more options they can bring to the game table. Now we have the answer for them. The Big Damn Heroes Handbook is an expansion to the Serenity Role Playing Game, and offers new information useful to both players and Game Masters, and includes everything from additional rules, to storytelling advice and alternate campaign models, to more information about characters from the 'Verse—including those familiar to fans and new ones that can be used to surprise the players. It also includes new and creative ways to swear in Chinese! While not required to play the game, this is material the fully expands upon the original core book and is designed to be of great use to players while maintaining appeal to non-gamer fans. The Big Damn Heroes Handbook will help keep game groups flyin' for years."

Your results:
You are Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic)

Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic) 80% Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic) 65% Inara Serra (Companion) 65% Malcolm Reynolds (Captain) 60% Derrial Book (Shepherd) 55% Alliance 50% River (Stowaway) 50% Jayne Cobb (Mercenary) 45% Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command) 45% Wash (Ship Pilot) 40% A Reaver (Cannibal) 15%

You are good at fixing things. You are usually cheerful. You appreciate being treated with delicacy and specialness.

Click here to take the Serenity Firefly Personality Test

 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3198150&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

A poster on SomethingAwful has a plethora of stories about a series of games he was involved in, and a player in those games named Stan. Stan is, without a doubt, the single worst human being ever.

These should be publically-viewable. If they aren't I'll post a few, but god damn, you should read this.

Below is a post by 50FootAnt, the PC tormenting Stan in this case is a Deacon who played with the group, Stan doesn't do much in this particular story.. But the Deacon makes up for it.:

I picked it up somewhere, God knows where with all the reading I do, but the guy was a fucking DEACON, man, you know he knew his theology. He was an intelligent, educated man with a good sense of humor that I once watched talk several hours with a Wiccan, not trying to convert her, but to listen to why she switched, what she found so attractive about Wicca, and whatever she would tell him about Wicca. He never ridiculed, belittled, or talked down to her, listened thoughtfully, and had the girl from defensive about Wicca to openly talking about it with him and laughing. He started playing D&D back in the 80's when everyone was talking about how it was Satan's Tool (DUM DUM DUM!) and he wanted to form his own opinion on it. He decided it was like any other entertainment, and found he enjoyed playing it.

The man could play an evil character almost scarily well. In our Rifts game... well... let me show you...


( Stan vs. the SAMAS Pilot (Rifts) )

 Got off the bus, passed the fuck out, woke up and went to see my dad.. He's tired, he's doped up on a lot of painkillers.. Still suprisingly coherent, we sat and talked about stuff for a while.. I ran out and visited the Hairy Tarantula and Silver Snail. Went back to see dad some more before they took him down to dialysis.. Then took mom out for dinner and then to the Worlds Biggest Bookstore (I finally got copies of Eisenhorn and Soon I Will Be Invincible) then we went clothes shopping, then I picked up pop and came home.

Tomorrow's dad's surgery, we'll see how things go from there.. 

Mom and I are sitting here right now drinking wine and watching SYTYCD Canada... Ugh.. Why do they like everything? People have literally FUCKED UP HARDCORE and these the judges are like "yeah go man go". SHOW THOSE FUCKING TEETH, TEAR THESE ASSHOLES A NEW ONE, JUDGES!

 

So I may have gotten a little carried away in the Champions character creator. I was making some of my previous RP characters (I made Sieg, too. I guess maybe he did go on a wild interdimensional adventure?) And I was trying to make my Dark Heresy character, Lupus.

But I threw a tiny frog head on him and gave him eye-lasers and couldn't stop laughing. Then I added rocket-assisted leaping powers. ALL HAIL....THE NEMITOAD.

Schedule as it stands now:

Monday
10:00 AM - Introductory Psychology
11:30 AM - Geology
2:30 PM - Introduction to Literature

Tuesday
10:00 AM - Sociology

Wedensday
10:00 AM - Introductory Psychology
2:30 PM - Introduction to Literature

Thursday
10:00 AM - Sociology

Friday
8:30 AM - Geology
10:00 AM - Social Welfare

Mondays are going to fucking SUCK.

( NOW WITH ACTUAL INFORMATION )</div>

http://deeplyproblematic.blogspot.com/2009/07/newsweek-tells-you-to-read-white-male.html

Except that both lists are OVERWHELMINGLY white and male. Some disparity is reflective of the issues in publishing in history. But when one writes a list purporting to reflect our modern world, the practical erasure women, persons of color, and the GQBTL community is not only indicative of an narrow and over privileged point of view, it’s obtuse and just plain wrong.

By the numbers, here are the kinds of voices Newsweek thinks you should be reading now:

• 42 out of 50 writers (an ENORMOUS 84%), are white
• 39 out of 50 writers (78%) are men
• 33 out of 50 writers (66%) are white men
• 48 out of 50 writers are straight
• 49 out of 50 writers are either white or male.

It gets even worse once you realize that a great deal of these writers have been stuffed into the last ten slots. Of numbers 41-50 on this list, only five are white men – meaning that the top 40 books are even more disproportionately white and male. It’s like Newsweek realized it fucked up at the last second and tried to stuff as many oppressed bodies in as possible, as a weak and pathetic defense.

And by the numbers, here are the voices that define literature for all time:

• 84 out of 100 were men
• 88 of 100 were white
• 97 out of 100 were either white or male

This is less reflective of Newsweek’s myopia and more of national patterns of oppression in publishing/literature, but still. Wow.

So Champions Online's got this lifetime subscription setup. 200 bucks you you can play it forever.

God if i had the money, I'd be all over that. Because on top of that you get;

• Guaranteed Star Trek Online Closed Beta Access
• Eight Additional Character Slots
• Foxbat Vanity Pet
• Art Deco Costume Set
• Retro Future Costume Set
• STO Mirror Universe Costume Set

There's something appealing about that to me. An MMO that's just available to play anytime I want it.

Naturally WoW just released some huge fucking amazing patch just in time for Aion and Champions, to quell those who might be thinking of switching over. How come this happens EVERY fucking time?

I like...

-The quiet.. Most times during the day I can look out from my balcony and see NO ONE. The city sometimes sounds like it's mourning quietly, all you can hear is the soft, unyielding moaning of the wind.
-The walks, you can go just about anywhere in the Soo on foot. I enjoy sometimes just standing out front of my building, doing a quick spin and then walking in the direction my first foot lands (although my choices are limited to; right, left, or into traffic). I always manage to see something interesting.
-That small-town charm. There are always little events or concerts that I'm always the last to know about, but everyone goes crazy for. On a few occasions I'll open my window and hear off in the distance loud music coming from the theatre, or from a thousand other directions and it always sounds like the entire town turned out to see whatever it was.
-I like watching the next generation slowly start to make changes.. Sometimes I see expressions of personal freedom or individuality I don't think I would have seen here even a few years ago.. A few weeks back I saw two guys walking down Queen St, and they suddenly stopped and kissed eachother, it made me really happy to see (also kinda lonely at the same time honestly)
-My friends. I know so many great people here. People worth getting to know. People worth taking with me when I do move back home.. People who have kept me sane are often the people who have driven me insane. It's a weird feeling but I think it's the sign of a good friendship...

I miss...


-People, stepping out of my street and onto Steeles was like throwing yourself into a sea of humanity.. Just being able to walk up and down Queen or Yonge or tour chinatown and just be surrounded by LIFE.
-Being able to look up most places and see yourself surrounded by buildings. Towering obelisks of steel and glass, each one reflecting its surroundings and showing you the sky from different perspectives. The skyline of Toronto was always beautiful, always. A wall of civilization painted upon it a mural of flickering lights.
-Variety. I don't understand why you'd want to live your entire life surrounded by ONE culture. You could pick a direction in Toronto and find yourself absorbed into a small patch of another country. You could spend your entire life there and still find something new every week, a new taste, a new sensation, a new culture..
-Conventions, expos, mass gatherings of nerds and hobbyists and geeks and freaks.. Being able to have a fucking map of nerdy stores to hunt through every week, if you wanted it you could find it, if you had the money. Buying things online feels like cheating, sometimes.. I want to be able to hold what I buy before I buy it and a .jpg doesn't really do it for me unless it's a DVD or something.


I Hate...

-That overwhelming sense of despair this town sometimes seems to have.. Maybe it's mostly the depression, maybe it's mostly me.. But I just walk around and sometimes I just see people looking so fucking sad that it makes me want to cry. There are streets in this town that have, for all intents and purposes, died and don't look like they're coming back. And it seems to inspire such anger in the kids here, who just wander around at night drunkenly shouting, like wild animals in the distance.. There are so many good people in this town, and so many chances for it to be something GREAT.. But..I dunno.. It's like something's keeping everyone from doing their best.
-Having to walk uphill to get basically anywhere except the mall. I feel like I'm going to have a good set of stories for my grandchildren.
-The job market. I've been trying so hard for so long to get a job now and there are weeks where I just feel myself giving up. What the fuck is the point anymore? I'm starting to feel like I give off this creepy vibe of DON'T HIRE ME I'LL RAPE YOUR CUSTOMERS AND BEAT UP SMALL CHILDREN WHILE STEALING FROM THE TILL..
-The medical care crisis here is disturbing.. I was at the hospital once and I was talking to this little old dying lady, she had been on the waiting list for 7 years. 7 fucking years. The Group Health Centre is the beginning of privatized healthcare. It's disturbing as hell to watch the END of the Canadian Healthcare System start in this fucking town, and soon it'll start to spread like a fucking cancer across this country. It's disgusting.

Do I want to go home? Some days yes, some days no.. If I could afford it, I'd stay long enough to finish my schooling but I've lost so much money just trying to find a job.. Just trying to stay afloat. Blargh. I'm tired of relying on everyone, I'm tired of feeling so useless all the time..