Platonic Solid

I whipped up a multi-page character for Mike D's Ruins & Ronin . The images link to the PDF download.

We played a Robotech playtest one-shot last night using Heroquest 2.0. I gotta say it was downright entertaining. The most important part is that it felt right. We were able to do justice to the fiction because it was what drove our common understanding. I'm thinking that Mr. Robin D. Laws is onto something. ;) Once at the table the decision was made to hew toward the slightly crunchier side of things. We could have made Veritech a keyword and been done but we wanted to bring the mecha a bit more to the forefront. Using the Mecha Game Requirements Doc and the resulting PDQ Robotech Character Sheet as a guide we were able to quickly put together a multi-mode Veritech in HQ 2.0 terms. Keyword: Veritech Fighter Mode: Abilities Speed 12 Maneuverability 6 Afterburner 15 Flaws Wide turning radius 10 (-2) Guardian Mode: Abilities Speed 8 Maneuverability 8 Stable 15 Flaws Non-flight mobility 10 (-2) Battloid Mode: Abilities Speed 6 Maneuverability 12 Hand-to-hand 15 Flaws Poor fli...

Resulting from the Mecha Requirements Doc here is the PDQ Robotech character sheet that I whipped up: Note the bolded abilities. These abilities are common to all mecha modes. If a common ability suffers impairment all modes are affected. For example, while in Fighter mode if the Speed ability is impaired one rank and is reduced to Good [+2] both the Guardian and Battloid modes take one rank of impairment to Speed. Guardian speed is reduced to Average[0] and Battloid Speed is reduced to Poor [-2].

For the last 9 months we've been hard at work developing 'Solus' a post apocalyptic setting for our live-action airsoft game Firefight! After setting the premise and constraints of the game world much of the process has consisted of creating individual gaming events that fit our vision. Brainstorming and LEGO-style snapping of ideas together takes the concept of developing "adventures" in a game world only so far. Typically what looks like a complete event outline has holes and leaps of logic that are not only inelegant but also difficult to bridge once the game starts moving. The gaps can be closed on the fly but this isn't an optimal approach because in live action hand-waving an NPC as an agent of change into or out of existence is quite difficult. In attempt to close holes ahead of time we've been using tabletop gaming to jump into the setting to test our outlines. As we have increased utilization of this technique the positive feedback given a...

It's obvious that I haven't been posting much recently. It's certainly not because I don't have much to say. We're full bore into prime airsoft season and it has taken most of my attention for game development. At the moment we're running our Firefight! Solus campaign and I'm developing software to manage MILSIM games. In parallel I'm reading Heroquest 2.0 and am loving it. I could have skimmed the book and started running but I'm taking it slow so that I can absorb the HQ lessons of approach and style. I'm glad for doing so. Much of what I've read reinforces my notions about story telling through gaming. Some of it doesn't but that's okay because everything makes sense. It feels good to be learning something. Over and out.