Starfinder: Finally Finished Reading It

 

Written in 2017, I picked it up in '18. It has indeed taken me this long to read the whole book. Now I haven't read it religiously, but I have been picking it up about once a week and reading three to five pages. The information is dense and meant for the truly committed D&D 3.65 player getting into science fiction  with its own nuts and bolts. Of course it has like thirty authors and twenty-five supporting people listed on the side scroll of credits, so one might expect that from a book that is 19,000 to 1.6 million pages long depending on the day of the week that one is reading it.

At least some people are playing it. At GenCon, I've seen about a dozen up to twenty plus events for it every year since its release. They might've even moved on to second edition. I attribute this to supply-based RPG "designer" Industrial Complex producing mega-widgets that need to sell only 30% of the stock to make some money, but there are ppl sitting down to play the game. Unlike a lot of new SF RPG works on the bookshelves these days, which garner hundreds of true fans online for maybe six months of online play by some people, including disinterested wouldbe actors, on YouTube. Meanwhile the older SF RPG books have dozens of fans that suck on nostalgia juice and confuse the product with Starfleet Battles or Traveller alternately.

The rules are some very solid and detailed SF stuff. Even when a thousand ppl playing one hundred Starfinder campaigns a year, only a quarter of the provided rules would come out in play. When I started reading the starship section, I was glad to see that the authors were trying to turn vessels into Characters and encounters. I was also wondering how they saw my private notes, but hey I only really got serious about space ships in my own work like five years ago-- still some three years before I waded into this book's section for them. The Character species are things like sexy robots with facial hair if needed; humans; giant lizard people to be used as Tanks; antennae-having psychics, space chipmunks; hidden-faced four-armed things; and interesting, for once, bugs. Dwarves and whatnot from Pathfinder and/or D&D are welcome. The setting is a solar system (and a bit more) striving to be a blank slate for the author-GM. So blank it has only 300 years of history. I like the world listing format, it covers the basics in good sci-fi terms designed for actual play at the table (mostly time and gravity), which I find a very helpful take for my own stuff.

Would I play it? I haven't finished running my first D&D-based combat in thirty plus years over six sessions of play for my TOG OSR fantasy setting yet, so, no. Still the rules here are thought out and helpful to any S-F GM that is only looking for tips. The true Path-finding GM, I am sure can make it work. Overall a Loch Ness Monster game system on the scale of Smurf to Godzilla.

Oh the Trip of the Fantastic

I have run my Spacers, Wobble, Crawlspace and various FRPG explorations sessions over the same time periods sticking to very strict guidelines defining each. Meanwhile, I have been slowing down on my gaming. I have been less than interested to keep straying away from soccer and beer on Saturday. Sundays are a great day to watch TV series or movies and do laundry as opposed to squeak in extra game sessions. Late Friday nights being the only time I want to game. This has led to my writing sticking to whatever I am running the next Friday that anybody can get together.

 I have always like mixing up my roleplaying. Not so much mixing the genres that are set in my head. Someone once mentioned to that the longer that they run roleplaying games the more everything runs together after a couple of decades. As a guy that runs around three differing things over various sessions concurrently this has always worried me. I kind of have viewed it as a form of meta-GM dementia for experienced GMs that must be avoided at all costs.

 I am trying really hard not to start mixing the genres up. And then finding out about George Lucas schemes to make his own sagas in Star Wars it's harder than ever.

This is the sexy picture for Lucas's master tale of Star Wars after the three original movies and before his sequels. If it looks like Jim Henson's Dark Crystal to you don't be fooled. It's a series of kid shows that is not meant for kids nor meant to be much more than after-school specials. Its writing is not intended for the kid in the picture, but for the inner child of 50 y/o Star Wars fans. The budget in casting just made its casting meant-for-TV and therefore hopefully palatable to juvenile viewers.

He take his moderate success, these products did better than the infamous Star Wars: Christmas Special, and begin production on this series of works.

Leaving out the Ewoks, but still with really bad juvenile tropes, Lucas forged works of sci-fantasy that would be terrible. Terrible up until Disney got involved to show us how bad things could really get.

Let's hope that my new RPG strategy fails half as much as the Ewok saga.

Art and the Art of Scam

I am somewhere most people speaking about the open introduction of AI into the publishing field are not. I do not reject it outright, I want to see it work. 

Over the last year, the uproar around "Artificial Intelligence" has been the introduction to a lot of people to the automation of a lot of writing and artwork normally left to the domain of creative sorts that through passion become artists. This is not not new though. Anybody who has been working with more established providers though, has known that the use of programs has often replaced handcrafting images and writing blurbs for at least a decade now. Results have gone from producers standards going from flash to floppy.

Obvious eye-catching but relatable.

Does the original or AI "touched up" version look any good to you?

While I cannot say for certain, but my old friend MK Eidson has most likely been doing AI for a while now. Knowing his artistic process, I can put aside a bit of random imagery for the the intent that he puts into his work. There is a level of expressionism in what he is doing while doing his cover graphics. He wants a bit of cognitive dissonance of the cerebral level to occur. Apologies to Ilya Shkpin for my criticism of his work, while this a great study in fractal processing of similarities between forearms and calves, this is a doodle made by a machine of a machine-made doodle. The viewer glances at the latter image, puts it together and using context of the text around it assumes it's something. Looking deeper into it you feel like a four year-old learning that pizza is spelled "piss-off." This isn't even surrealism. At best, the guy used his ecth-a-sketch and had his AI program highlight the confusion.

Game producers, if you're going to be using AI, at least do something worth the money you're saving like look at your own work before its released. If that's not helping, take an Art History course and see examples of the samples your sources are now.

A lot of information going on. Still coherent.

GenCon 2023: "Of course. You're hip."

 

 The short data is:

• 87% average attendance rate at my Crawlspace events. 38 overall players.
  
• 100$ then 140$ PDF sales in two days. We'll see how online print and distributor sales pan out throughout the month.
  
•  Three possible new convention GMs and two old ones may be returning next year.
• Over half my players were return players and eight would-be players emailed me asking for an extra session.
  
• I only ran 2/3rds of my events.

Well, it was a remarkable couple of days. I was at the JW Marriot, which has become the normal place to be for smaller, somewhat unaffiliated game runners.  I say somewhat unaffiliated because there were a lot of Pathfinder players doing both impromptu as well as official events all over the place. Of course the guys from Tower of Gygax, David, from my Cthulhu Vs Rat Pack days being the name I remember, many of the other event runners had packed tables every time I peaked.

 

No easy Thursday

 

"Gotham City Major Crimes" game-wise, the cops and robbers dynamic worked like a dream. The cops worked together but with friction and drama, while the criminals betrayed each other at the drop of Saving Roll. A player got to be a super-villain from get go, and he was Kite Man, much giggling was had. One bell and whistle that I honed this year was the lucky player-character becoming a superhero/ villain by the end of the game, I basically got two, Plastic Boy (Plastic Man's son) and the Red Panda the Jewel Thief Extraordinaire.   I was lucky enough to have fellow DC enthusiasts, but we all liked different parts of the "DC Universe." We would diverge from the game and fill each other in on stories that the table was not familiar with.
Game mechanic was full of drama at just the right times. A Critical Fail helped the cops and criminals helped Kite Man get busted right away. Now because of the ASTRO Rule Red Bat tends to have a lot of multiple rolls of the dice. Ties though are rare. This session we had a tie and then we had A TIE. First was an Old School cop and criminal Gangster foot race. Two of the players, a cop and a robber at the table, dating in real life and as PCs, at the climax of things, rolled ASTRO eight times and then tied. In short, Plastic Boy got the bejeweled Penguin's Egg but the Red Panda got away. They were starting to suspect each other's secret identities at that point. The criminal Hacker then Critically Failed his roll to encrypt seized computers, and the New Guy cop broke it in a single try. Plastic Boy then knew the Red Panda's alias then. Kite Man escaped with kite made out of chair legs and a tablecloth.

 

 

  

 The evening's Crawlspace event started with me learning how to download apps onto my phone, without sending money to scammers, by forgetting my playing cards for the game. So for "The Dig II" with the help of James of Milwaukee, we used Random.Org's Randomizer. I also somehow only printed six Character Sheets when there were eleven people at the tables in front of me. Kal Luin, from PeryPubbers LARPs in previous years, played in this one as well. For all the technical difficulties, the players helped me turn the session into a raucous good time. Not a player left early as I killed them off one by one because our conclusion was that good. I forgot to get any pictures.

Friday was straight-up Crawlspace

Because of the real world, I could only do two out of the three Crawlspace: Florida Man saga. I was surprised at how many return players that I was getting this year. I don't want to name them because if I miss one I'll feel like a heel. The stories flowed nicely and the players alternately tried to "break the game" as well as make it interesting for everyone. They would laugh at me as I stopped everything to make notes for the good stuff that were feeding me during these playtests.

 

 

 

 

Friday Night/Saturday Morning Hand of Buddha 

Reality rudely broke up my night. I don't want to talk about it. Though the drama would finish around the time that I thought it would (9-10 in the morning), at four AM I knew I wouldn't have the energy to be run sessions at 1pm and then 5pm. Cancelled Saturday in an email and with messages on my phone.
I have to admit, having Saturday night to recover was awesome. I might just do only five, maybe six, games next year on Thursday and Friday. Maybe go to a party on Saturday or take a hot bath and do laundry, who knows?

 
Jealous much?

 

This goes out to, they know who they are. Overall, just not enough older, white males with beards, for sure. Probably only about 30,000 of the 55K that attended were over 40 years-old-- who could a WOTC-hating D&D fanboy talk to? Grognards and froggies of "true gaming" were online talking about GenCon and why they wouldn't come to it yet another year. They were on about stuff like there's a strip club within two miles, too many people in one place being akin to a gangbang, and, of course, the place was full of groomers looking to seduce children. When you say stuff like that, what do you think the real world thinks of you? 

When I spoke to Peryton over the weekend, I was recounting all the return players this year. She replied, "Oh course. You're hip."

 

 

GenCon 23 Prep: A Penguin I can live with

 

GenCon 2023
Red Bat
Gotham Major Crimes: Best Served Cold

The Penguin working with Intergang to clone Mr. Freeze in soldiers for the upcoming Arctic Circle markets.

The Penguin Quick 300, 13^th Level Digger
Oswald Cobblepot considers himself much maligned by mainstream society, as he calls it, because of his billionaire gone to, well, pot roots. He has worked his from a skilled art thief, to a thriving bounty hunter, finally becoming a successful boss in the Gotham City underworld. With his many legitimate appearing businesses, he has maintained a veneer of respectability. Because of this he even has been a mayor of the venerable city. While he is under several investigations by both state and federal authorities, only one indictment has been leveled against him and that has not yet been fully implemented.
PHYSICAL 25 HITS 150
MENTAL 35 BASH 65
CHARM 30 AIM 240
LUCK 40 DUCK 80
NERVE 200 PSYCH 75/70
Perks: Obscura, Big Ear, Nose, Jeweler’s Eye, Bundis, Fix-It, Ham Headed, Indomitable, Race Car Evil
Assets:
Penguin Umbrella Inc- Three small factories, hiring local workers and management from Gotham State University and Bludhaven Community Colleges, specializing in rainy day apparel, umbrellas, and fishing gear. Quick 1,400
Resources: Equipment, talent pool

Iceberg Club- A public nightclub for a night of dressing up and some live entertainment. Quick 700
Resources: High profile publicity, money laundering, locate future marks.

Flock Manpower Employment- Temporary Employment agency focusing on inner city neighborhoods with access to established companies in and around Gotham. Quick 900
Resources: Eyes and ears on major portions of local industry

Sub-Zero Association Hall- The backrooms of the Iceberg Club where a not really secret society of “made men” and “big wigs” hangs out. Quick 350
Resources: Powerful and corrupt connections, sex scandals in the making, neutral ground for criminal gangs to discuss things

Phoenix Stage- A riverside live music venue. Quick 200
Resources: Sex workers, drug distribution, and visibility with rock and roll stars

Arctic Automotive- An electric car research and development start-up. Quick -100 (officially)...

Full On RPG Season

 I really wish I was at VengerCon right now
Now according to InterTube standards dictated to us by WebNet Influences and Disurptors, I should be meh about attending a small RPG convention where a bunch of rightwing and Alt-right froggies, according to warring Twits and Gits, get together, but I really wanted to go this year. First off, while whole-hearted fascists as well neoLiberals are there, the folks are mostly dungeon crawling fanatics that really don't like deconstruction of roleplaying tropes into posters for 18-34 y/os, without real jobs so with too much time on their hands, looking for something to be crusading against-- its called ageism as well as loafing.
The fabricated Left/Right divide among RPG fandom, VengerCon hopefully is a success this year. Why? Because it represents the author-GM as a force in creation of RPGS. That is against the current flow of pointless reasons why some gamers should hate other gamers.  Maybe it's not so pointless as folks trying to avoid ever really having a job, keep trying to make table top role playing into a real industry right up there with magazine racks in coffee shops and inner city subdivision lawn care in returns. Those goals just won't pay off but good for those over-educated sorts that don't have to pay rent.
A bit more seriously, yet possibly more inaccurate, smaller designer-driven conventions are the wave of the future for the RPG communities. If you want to feel like you're a part of something, get to know your local RPG whack job. It pays off. You make friends and see their trends whether you agree with them or not.
The hotel where VengerCon is also has some decent lox and cream cheese on the breakfast menu.



That's like your opinion.
My ongoing Wobble mini-campaign has been halted when Peryton posted in OUR RPG group, "Do I get to play Hitler?" Probably someone, most likely within the membership of the PeryPubbers, Peryton Gamers at FacetuBe, "reported" this statement. She has been banned from video chat rooms for, like, a month. 
One of the PC options in my current storyline, Edmund Weissenstein, is a clone of Hitler. He was raised by two Jewish wobblers from Santa Monica, California wanting to stave off the whole 1940s of their universe by time traveling back to when Adolf Hitler was 16 and obtaining a sample of him to give birth to a properly raised Hitler. They then planned to come back to exact same moment in time and replace their Hitler for the real Hitler. Wobble being a game where time travel is a hoax, things did not work well for the Weissensteins. But Edmund clone-Hitler would become an accomplished wobbler trying to escape all the Nazi fetishism in the multiverse.
I mean, it's not like Hitler is not a part of popular culture, most of us hate him, already.  No but sneaky concern trolls have started pointing their attention away from Twit Wars towards FacetuBe groups. Even if this just FacetuBe's algorithm being proactive, this needs to stop.

Everytime at the Table: Downlow didn't work

All three out of the last three Midnight sessions for the Wobble were supposed to be rather private affairs. Well so much for that. Apparently Peryton Publishing still has some inexplicable appeal to its members showing up whenever they want. I'm not going to complain, it's nice to be appreciated.

So with Parts 2 & 3 of "The Trial of Alejandro" we've had Peryton show up because her and then Liam, The Boy. What can I say? It happens.

So as you might've read, the trial itself was interrupted by a pirate raid. Now these pirates were lead by Taximus Bizness, not the simple intrestellar pirates that Alejandro was hanging with before. Cyclon technologies on Inasfar are well beyond Earth's (most of them at least), but the akkebarik (goat-heads) having been transdimensionally trading, both legitimately and illegitimately for about two millennia. The Business, the pirates' group brand, had more than a few advantages. The ride for Professor Viago and Alejandro had arrived.

Seeing the trouble at the capitol palaces, Dasiy Adair figured she had better get their quickly. Luckily she was on one of Athena City's elevated paths leading directly to there. After a bit of jogging, she saw The Dodo  in the impound lot about a quarter mile away. She knew that she had to get there quickly as well. So she stole police car, err a hover speeder with the City Guard, to speed up her travels.

Meanwhile back in the court, the Boy wobbled in with a Character named Willem Walsh-Wallace (something about American MAGA Republicanism, I think. He tries to be shocking with his drunken libertine uncle). W-3 was a wobbling bounty hunter and Alejandro had a warrant out for him in some other locale, which we didn't determine. Him, Viago, and the target would go about wrestling for more than a few rounds before the police care with Daisy Adair, she can drive anything, smashed onto the scene. Boy that courtroom was getting a pounding.


When the court's baliffs started shooting at everyone not wearing a judges robe, all the PCs decided to get into the hijacked police cruiser. Daisy then started making a "bee line" towards the Dodo. Some Pi-Fighters flew in to try and stop them. A couple of NPCs got killed in the backseat. All in all, the PCs back to the Wobble Boat and took off-- that is regardless of whatever Taximus Bizness and his pirates where up to.

An Inasfar patrol ship showed up when the Dodo reached orbit, preparing for it Wobble. Daisy had to make some Saves before the boat was clear.

At the sequence's end, I left the craft twirling end over end until we resumed again.

A Pi-Fighter, but with wings