Morning Gamer ☕️
Having wrapped up the first two books of The Dread Empire, I started on The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon. Mecha Fiction(whaaat?!!) The Archive Undying is the first volume of Emma Mieko Candon's Downworld Sequence, a sci-fi series.
War machines and AI gods run amok in The Archive Undying, national bestseller Emma Mieko Candon's bold entry into the world of mecha fiction.
WHEN AN AI DIES, ITS CITY DIES WITH IT
WHEN A CITY FALLS, IT LEAVES A CORPSE BEHIND
WHEN THAT CORPSE RUNS OFF, ONLY DEVOTION CAN BRING IT BACK
AI deities and brutal police states clash, wielding giant robots steered by pilot-priests! Just in time for my upcoming Lancer debut with Ukuwa Station on Twitch! Also, Glen Cook's books are on Bundle of Holding!
I've talked about the card game ATMA on Last Week in Gaming; Meromorph Games have Season 2, ACT II out...and I'm tempted! It's a great 2-hour game that you can easily expand to fill 3 or 4 hours of play. Easy to buy into the sci-fi-anime-inspired setting, PBTA-ish mechanics, and beautiful, just beautiful cards. You can also play a demo online!
Return of The World’s Most Interesting Man
I talked about great villains before; this weekend, an NPC we've been calling The Most Interesting Man in the World has returned to our Twilight: 2000 Saturday game! He’s more like a competent rival than an evil bad guy. After two years of play, we finally named this NPC. Borys. He's a Russian man who married into a Polish family before the war. He’s a fully leaned-in survivor who cares for his niece and nephew. Plenty of back-and-forth antics with the player-characters over many sessions. He's almost killed a PC with a downed helicopter. The PCs left him tied up and attached to a car battery with some sketchy folks, you know, stuff like that. This weekend he's offering to set up a very dangerous meeting with Thomas Moore, a man the Players have been tracking down. But Borys wants to get paid first, and either side’s goods are worthy!
The Magic Hustle
I put in some DEEP magical research this weekend. Delving into what meta-magic skills might look like for a Vancian magic system. My side project, Wizard Time! a CRPG, has Dying Earth, a Dread Empire-inspired setting. There are only 99 spells left in the world. Wizard spells are Vancian, fire-n-forget. I'd like meta-magic skills or talents that can alter spells; duration, magnitude, and speed are easy picks. But maybe a skill that lets you pull a cast spell back for reuse? Maybe enchanting is a skill? Is there a place for longer rituals? So I've been deep into the apocryphal lore of the Dying Earth and the Wizards of Ilkazar, looking for inspiration and compiling prototypes to play with.
I got my ass kicked, stomped by my kid - who giggled like a mad hyena the whole time! YOMI Hustle(Your Only Move Is Hustle) —outlandish!! It's a brawler, fight game - but turn-based!! He brought it to me because of my many rants about twitch-centric games, especially action RPGs, I’m an old man, and my twitch skills are shot. In YOMI, you pick Wizard, Cowboy, Ninja, or Robot. They have tiers of fight moves you pick from turn to turn. The player with "Advantage" acts from turn to turn -but that’s a very simplified statement. The game will replay the whole match in real-time at the end, which always looks outstanding! The entry barrier is extremely low; no tutorial is needed. By my second match, all the giggles, his and mine, were about our hustle moves!
If you're interested in my adventures in RPG video game design - I'll have another newsletter option here for you to check out soon. Because it's a different dragon of nerdery, you'll have to opt in. I'll fold in 'Play by Post is Dead' also because...without interaction...it's beyond disco!
See ya in a week!