Good Monday Gamer,
AI and Human relations
I saw The Creator this weekend; maaan what a fantastic and gripping experience. Ken Watanabe, Gemma Chan, AND John David Washington?! I'll go see it again this week with my son. No Spoilers!! I like the opening scenes; it's like a quick history montage of how we get to 2065 and the current AI war. Code 8 on Netflix did a similar thing around meta-humans, and I loved seeing history as we know it mixed with the stuff that is different in the world we’re watching. The Creator has a lot of things to think over when you walk away from it: AI human relations, different classes of AI and AI “bots” and “replicants,” and who is waging this war vs. AI. The Creator is a personal story against a huge backdrop, not an action spec-ops fantasy —and it gets some tears across a few moments from me. My favorite and most WTF?! The scene is an interstitial downtime scene. An AI robot is chilling, reclined, laid back, and takes a long-ass draw on a smoking device… like it’s had one rough day at work! This is relevant to me as I work out my Debt Punk setting and mechanics. Plenty of world setting is inferred for playing a sci-fi roleplaying game. And plenty of setup situations before the movie's event, during and for sure, "What happens now?!" after the movie. This is likely another post about what and where to play and what games are great matches --cause I'm old and on a budget of weekends left, I can't be bothered with good matches anymore!! 👴🏾
TBZ: Anthem Zero
Staying on the sci-fi train, I've resurrected Anthem Zero, my setting for the Tenra Bansho Zero RPG. I'm revising it with my son before putting it on the Open Hearth Gaming (fka The Gauntlet) games for November. It's not a reskin, more of a mash-up of "What Jay likes" about the video game Anthem and TBZ . Anthem Javelins easily map to Yori in TBZ. I'll keep the "kids as pilots." I think Anthem’s Freelancers is a term for a group/team with a Yori. That Yori kid pilot seems to me to have parental figures and mentors as a support group. Yep, that means Mom and Dad might be hiring young Frankie out for dangerous mecha work. I'm prolly gonna need some content warnings and safety tools!!
Exploring Better Worlds
Freeleague continues to separate me from my cash with shenanigans... Better Worlds. Their tools supplement for playing an open world campaign as explorers or colonists. Done. Bought it. I hope to crack the PDF open this week. Yet another sci-fi system relevant to my Debt Punk interests.
Designing for Better
Monte Cook is on Substack ICYMI; his recent post about designing toward vs against/away from behavior is worth a read-through. I'm on the same page here. I like to see design choices that encourage or mechanize intended play behavior rather than design that tries to address bad player, facilitator, or table play. For sure, as designers and creators, we're pulling in our life experiences, good, bad, and whatnot. I love my games risky, frenetic, and dicey. I design that way, weighted by my previous life paths. The Baker's Agendas and Principles in Apocalypse World and Under the Hollow Hills is another approach to setting us up for good play, Good and timely stuff, Mr. Cook!
See you next week!