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| Maybe the anime event of the decade. |
What's Interesting This Week?
Well... nothing especially catches my eye, so let's look back on December. Mostly, it looks like a bunch of 2017 retrospectives. So, yeah, if you want to remember what 2017 meant to a bunch of bloggers, take a look.
Other Thoughts and Self Reflection
Not much to say, I'm working on a Monster Hunter (Capcom, not GURPS) INSPIRED (when I give elevator pitches, I get a lot of surprised reactions when I mention that element x, y, or z is not a carbon copy of the video game mechanics shunted onto a 3d6 roll) setting. Going for a slightly more gloomy and bleak take though, with a goal that I want it to be terrifying to fight superpowered megafauna and glorious to succeed despite the stacked odds. It's kind of a different vein than I have taken in the past; usually I consider my games to be pretty forgiving and "noblebright," but this one is gonna veer more towards... probably "nobledark," or maybe even neutral on the noble-grim scale. So far, I've sorted out most of the rules and options that I want to turn on, I've homebrewed some alchemy rules, written up stats for about 5 boss monsters, and started working on some setting details... so far, this weighs in at 15 pages, and I feel like I am about a little more than halfway done with the foundation. I started off using Monster Hunter kinda as a scaffolding to work around, so now that I am close to "right-sizing" the project, I'm starting to trim out the "fan-art" elements of the book, and might be posting them to this blog in the future. Oh well. Here's hoping to a nice bully free 2018.
"Nobledark." What a nice phrase.
ReplyDeleteYou can ask 100 people what that means and get 100 different but correct answers. To clarify what I mean when I say that, on the Noble-Grim spectrum, Noble means that good and bad are distinct; the good guys are the good guys, and the bad guys are the bad guys, and shades of gray are rare. The Bright-Dark spectrum is hopefulness to hopelessness.
ReplyDeleteIn short, I am aiming for a setting where the good guys are being the best they can be, despite how hopelessly stacked the deck is against them, as opposed to say "Noblebright" where morality is black and white and the forces of narrative conspire to make the heroes victorious despite any bumbling or mistakes they make.