Monthly Archives: July 2016

Future LRP Ideas

As I’ve intimated in various places at various times, I’m kinda working on a LRP project separate from No Rest for the Wicked, Inquisition Chronicles and indeed the entire Warhammer 40,000 franchise. I have a partner-in-crime on this, but we’ve not been able to sit down and discuss what we want to do with it due to running the last No Rest event, and other things getting in the way. So that’s on the back burner for now. It might be the awesome collision of Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop, and Firefly in one new IP, or it might not. We haven’t even gotten that far, though I do love the idea of making an Outlaw Star LRP.

Something else that’s come up is the idea of a new parlour LRP[1]. This game would be something different from any other LRP (or LARP)[2] I’ve run: rather than putting people into a situation and then either having them work with the situation or go off on linears (or both), the idea would be that the live part of the game would be social with missions happening outside of game-time. Let me explain.

For this concept, we’d be looking at something like SLA Industries, Shadowrun, Orpheus, Demon Hunters, or Bounty Hunter Bebop – a game where you gather a team and go run missions for prestige, money, some other prize, or all three. The pub part would be a gathering of people able to go on these missions – bounty hunters, shadowrunners, mercenaries, etc – who grab a mission off the board, put together a team for it, then go back to drinking to “prepare”. Missions would then be run between games as tabletop sessions, and there’d be a leaderboard of some kind indicating which characters were top-ranked. The general idea would be that you’d have to weigh up the balance between taking the A-listers on your missions (which makes them more likely to succeed) versus increasing your own lead on them (as if they’re with you, they gain the same rank boost you do from the mission). There’d be some kind of meta-plot behind some of the missions, and we’d generally try to make the scene interesting, but the general obvious part of the game would be about the rankings and taking missions to get money, fame, and glory.

There wouldn’t be any downtime system – just up-time politics and the missions between games.

Curious as to what people think of the idea. I’ve probably not explained it well, but I think it has legs.

Footnotes   [ + ]

1. also known as pub LRP, pub LARP, parlour LARP, or just LARP – usually while associated with World of Darkness games
2. the difference between the terms is a whole different post

Lucifer, Anime and Coding

So what did you do over the weekend? I spent most of mine watching anime and developing a new website. Netflix has a lot to answer for in this, but the new Amazon Fire TV stick I picked up in the Prime Day sale certainly helped as well.

As I said, it was only mostly anime and coding – I also finished Lucifer, binge-watching the final ten or eleven episodes (I was a bit behind, okay?) and I’m still expecting there to be some twists that haven’t yet surfaced yet. I’m not convinced that Lucifer really did burn his wings – it’s not like he didn’t have access to a pair of fakes, and I’m actually quite interested in the ways that the series has differed from the books. I’ll say straight off that comparing the comics to the TV series is a fool’s game and that the comics wouldn’t have worked as well for a procedural TV series, but it’s still interesting seeing how they differ all the same. Mazikeen is one of the big differences – cocky and assured all the time with perfect features (unless you happen to catch a look at her in a mirror of course) – as opposed to the Mazikeen of the comics who is much more brooding and disfigured (until she isn’t). So very different to the comics and incomparable, but still a very watchable series even if it is nothing like the original.

Regarding anime, I binged all of Magi: Adventures of Sinbad on Saturday and all of Kuromukuro on Sunday. Both were much shorter than I expected (only 13 episodes apiece) but I’m sure there’s far more to come. Adventures of Sinbad should be watched after Magi: Labyrinth of Magic and tells the beginnings of how Sinbad became the king he is in Labyrinth of Magic. Kuromukuro is a new mecha series that mixes samurai and giant robots and nanotech in relatively modern-day surroundings – I recommend giving it a watch.

Regarding the website, you’ll just have to wait and see. I’m sure it’ll come to light soon.