Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Meet the Vault Hunters

Welcome back, minions!

So normally I do something like this as part of my post with a fresh crop of characters. But for the sake of preserving the 'intro cutscene' feel of what I was doing, I decided to keep to the 'name card'-style intros and left a more in-depth write-up for a separate post.

Conveniently, this is a separate post. So let's get to a rundown of our cast, with answers to a couple of their history questions from the playbooks.

No Rest For the Wicked: The Big Bang

Hellooooooo, travelers!

First off, just another reminder/plug that Night Horrors: The Tormented, a book I worked on, is now available!

And with that out of the way...

This post marks the first of the next game we're running for my 'homebrew' weeks: No Rest For the Wicked, Monica Speca's fan-made PbtA Borderlands RPG. For those unfamiliar, Borderlands is a first-person shooter/RPG hybrid where the characters ("Vault Hunters," in the local parlance) are seeking out hidden caches of powerful alien artifacts, with the sort of anarchic sense of humor one might find from, say, Rick and Morty. The games (of which there are four: Borderlands, Borderlands 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, and Tales from the Borderlands) take place on and around the planet of Pandora, a world of chaos and violence and strange alien ruins and annoying robots. This intro from the first game might give you a little better idea -- you don't necessarily need to watch the whole clip, but the 'storybook' bit at the beginning (the first minute and a half) will be informative.

This game takes place on a planet of my own design, the planet Minos. Minos is owned by Torgue, one of the various corporations that runs most of the setting, and mostly sees use for mining and weapons testing facilities. (This is basically so I won't be tempted to turn the game into me doing a one-man show of canon NPCs snarking at the players, which would only be entertaining for so long.) Timeline-wise, it takes place in between the end of Borderlands 2 and Tales from the Borderlands (spoiler alert for a 6-year old video game); Handsome Jack is dead and a buttload of new Vaults have been discovered around the universe, but Hyperion is still mostly functional.

Before we kick things off below the break, it would be very helpful to check out the intro from the second game (particularly the bit from 2:52 onwards), on account of the fact that my players and I worked together to craft a similar-style intro. Rather than break the flow of the write-up to get into detailed character stuff, I'll make that its own separate post.

But let's get to it.


Monday, November 19, 2018

Dead Suns: Planet of the Dead (Starfinder)

Hey there, folks. I've got a post for our homebrew game on the docket but just waiting to get one thing fixed before I post it. Until then, I've got the last two Starfinder sessions typed up and ready to go.

But first, a quick reminder -- a book I worked on, Night Horrors: The Tormented, is out! It's a Promethean: The Created supplement full of antagonists, story hooks, and more. It's currently in the 'advance PDF' stage, but once it's fully out you can get a PoD copy as well. Or if you buy the PDF now, you'll get a coupon when the print version is available so you get a discount as if you'd bought them as a combo.

Anyhow, with that quick plug out of the way, here we go!


Monday, November 12, 2018

Night Horrors: The Tormented

So in case you missed it, Night Horrors: The Tormented is up as an advance PDF over at DriveThruRPG. I mention this because I'm one of the writers who worked on it (I did a bunch of the Pandorans). Woo-hoo!

For those of you unfamiliar with the 'advance PDF' thing, essentially you're getting the PDF with one community-sourced editing/proofing pass left to go while they sort out print-on-demand stuff. Then, once some errata's been applied, you'll get an updated PDF and once the PoD is available you'll get a coupon for a discount on the print version as if you'd bought them as a combo from the start.