Shadowlight's Lighthouse

1. Having read Steve Kenson's blog, where he's enthusiastic about narrative cards as an rpg play element (eg. Torg's Drama Cards, Marvel Saga's FATE Deck, the new Gamma World's Alpha Mutations and Omega Tech), I wonder if my Fudge Rifts rules, which continue to evolve even though I've only actually run one session, would benefit from rules that would allow random objects from my toy & game collection (or my overall collection of nifty but nigh-useless things, a designation from which my comicbooks are not exempt) to become story elements. Let's say I had an Odds Box into which I had, pre-game, placed an assortment of pictures, trading cards, figurines, lapel buttons and/or index cards with non sequiturs written on them; said assortment being chosen solely because they match the theme of the game scenario to be played; then, once per scene, say, I draw one out and it can be used by the players to their advantage (if they pay fudge points from their pool and explain how it enters the story) to their disadvantage (in order to gain fudge points for the added challenge) or, if not by them, then the villains may use it (again, giving the players fudge points for an added challenge) or it can just hang there, making the players wonder if the villains are suddenly going to work it in somehow. In Icons terms, it's an Aspect that anyone can tag. If an Odd is used in such a manner that it enters play and then leaves play before the scene ends, (eg. instant spell effects, or a weapon that gets destroyed) then a new Odd is drawn and hung out as a potential story element.

Sample non sequitur for a silly dark future game: "Cannibal Sorority Girls Want to Eat your Brain". Sure, they could be enemies, or contacts you call on the phone from a safe distance, or it's a code phrase for something else. Maybe it's just a bizarre classified ad that acts as a clue to a conspiracy.

1. That one session of Fudge Rifts that I ran? I reworked it into a more elaborate story form and posted it on Facebook, hoping to impress The Girl. (No such luck, but it was worth a try.) You're welcome to a copy of the file if you're interested.

There is SO much I'm supposed to be, need to be, doing. phone calls, household chores, appointments, emails, social engagements to rsvp, birthdays to acknowledge, ... but when Thymewind asked me to look over the FoxCon website, I saw that 'DoddNK' (my GMing Sensei) was running a superhero rpg at the Con that I didn't recognize. 'How could this be? Would DoddNK try something newfangled? Could something old exist I didn't know about by now?', says I, and google it. "The 4C System" turns out to stand for 'four color' and it's an open source retroclone (no, seriously, that's a word; a movement, even) of the original Marvel Super-Heroes Roleplaying Game. Yes, someone *paraphrased* the rules to create a version of the game that you can legally make supplements for, decades after the original company-owned version went out of print. (The original game rated success on a color-coded scale, but changing those colors into the four ink colors formerly used to print all comicbooks was a touch of genius. Likewise, 'column shifts' become 'row steps', which means the same with fewer letters.) This is so cool, in an unexplainable geeky way. It makes me want to write an adventure scenario entitled "Crisis on Earth-Red" (positing four parallel earths, wherein Yellow is Golden Age, Blue is Silver Age, and one of the other two is Dark Age.) However, despite its open source nature, my attempts to download a free e-copy of the 4C rules all fail, and I remain unsure about buying something I technically already have, just in different words. Maybe if it were cheap enough.
Anyway, in surfing about looking, I find out that Steve Kenson, the creator of M&M, has created _Icons_, a rules-light fast-playing generic superhero game inspired by old superhero rpgs, notably MSH, but with Fudge-inspired narrative mechanics. So, it's like my Marvel Fudge game, except ever so more so; those ideas, more fully developed, and made more stand-alone. There are times when I see someone else succeeding with a project based on ideas like mine that I haven't followed through on and get depressed; but there are also, perhaps more often, times when seeing that success find an audience vindicates my ideas and tastes and instincts, and I say to myself not "that could have been me." but rather, "That could be me, next time." Maybe if I can make Chicagoplex into something viable and self-supporting,* it could find an audience, too. In the meantime, I really want to snag a copy of _Icons_ and see what else he's done with those ideas.

[*or the Hudsucker Inception, or the All-Star Project, or any of the other fifty half-finished projects piled up in the workshop in the basement of my mind. It's looks like my grandfather's workshop did, but with more paper and clutter. maybe a blackboard.]

Ok, so today I worked morning shift again. Spot mopping (the removal of dirt blotches from the floor) seems to have again risen in priority among those in charge, so I did quite a bit of that, mostly upon request. I saw a co-worker who's been out sick (who has been rumored to not be coming back) come in for his paycheck, and he smiled and said the ladies in Personnel were going to do what they could to let him come back. Also, Coworker DG installed a deadbolt to act as a lock for the Ladies' room (from yesterday's post). I gave him heartfelt thanks. I spoke with one of yesterday's leads about FoxCon, and he gave me two more names to ask, and said if I kept reminding him, he could find some manner of event-runners or at least staff for the con. I spoke with one of the new names after work. He smiled and said that, just by chance, he already had that weekend off. We talked about rpgs. He told me some anecdotes about playing Top Secret back when he was in school, and he sung the praises of his new favorite system, _Savage Worlds_. He said it was easier to play than Gurps, you can create a character in ten minutes, combats are fast and smooth, even with car chases, and the core rulebook only costs $10. (duuude... ok, so I looked it up on wikpedia when I got home.) I knew these people were geeks, but it's still slightly surreal to be talking to them about geek stuff. I'm pleased at the positive responses I'm getting. Also today, I finished the manga I borrowed from Eku: _Maison Ikkoku_ is a straightforward romantic comedy about a college student in love with the semi-unavailable woman who acts as the superintendent of his boarding house. _Sexy Voice and Robo_ is more complicated, a comedy/action/drama-something about Nico, a perceptive, resourceful, (but manipulative) 14-year-old girl who performs vaguely espionage-like missions for an mysterious elderly patron, with the assistance of her friend/hapless pawn, Sudo, a lonely 20-something geek with a collection of toy robots. (I think I felt sorry for the geek more than was intended, but nonetheless they were very engaging and entertaining stories. Although set in modern Tokyo, I was reminded of 'Shadowrun'. The Old Man is an excellent example of what cyberpunk stories call a 'fixer'.)