Damn I Am Pretty Art Laboratories

 Mutation Nation is my current tabletop role playing game in testing, a Forged in the Dark game borrowing elements from Fate Core and Heart: The City Beneath . Its a game about playing mutants, inspired by the X-men. Extinction in Mutation Nation represents how close your team of mutants are to facing disaster at the hands of your enemies. Extinction replaces stress or hit points you see in other games. Its a shared track, meaning everyone on the team takes some responsibility for it. It also functions a bit like Heat in Blades in the Dark. When a mission ends, the team marks some Extinction. Its always there looming. Whenever a member of our merry mutants decides they want to resist a bad outcome- they don't want to be pinned by a villain, or they don't want to take a hit or they don't want the crowd screaming obscenities to get to them- they roll to see how much their resisting the hit passes it onto the team instead. Extinction is marked based on how bad you roll.  Th...

 It's Lupust so, time for Lupust arts. This year, doing Wally Wood stuff. Maybe I'll post more, we'll see.

The unique thing to a game is its skill list. With Mutation Nation , my first thought for a X-men inspired supers game was the laziest, I'd admit. Eventually though, I would move onto something that felt better for it. I think I found the right list. Things you can spend forever tweaking. The first skills- I should probably call them actions, since Mutation Nation is borrowing so much from Forged in the Dark games, but my brain defaults to "skill." Action is a better term for it, the suggestion that a character is acting or is proactive versus skills, which could be seen as reacting to obstacles in the scene. I get that.  Anyway. The first skills mechanic I devised for Mutation Nation was pretty lazy on my part. They were freeform- borrowing from 13th Age with each being a word or phrase that the player could create to define their character. This is lazy because its me putting the onus on the players, which hey, sometimes is fine. Most of the time, that works. It was...

Mutation Nation is my current ttrpg project- playing mutant superheroes in a world that hates you, yes its inspired by the X-men, and it uses Yahtzee dice rolls to do it. One of the TTRPG designer heroes I have is John Wick. Sometimes he is hit or miss, but often I find myself back at some of his core narrative ideas when I make things. Family Points is very much something inspired by John Wick. In Mutation Nation , your team is your family. Found family is a big part of the inspirations of the game, and this mechanic tries to represent that. Family points reflect the strength of that family, and that strength helps you accomplish more.  Its a simple idea: if a character does something that reinforces their family bonds, the GM adds points to the Family pool for it. Then at anytime, any member of the team can pull from the family pool to modify dice rolls, get additional downtime and other things. Its a resource the players can use, but to earn it their characters have to be a fam...

Going to write something smaller this week.  Started working on a script for a comic, which required a bit of research on a variety of things.  The inspiration for it is Stranger Things, Gravity Falls, and Hellboy .  Something magical, cosmic horror and weird. Like going home.  So, let me ramble on something I've been thinking about.  Something about the nature of things like Stranger Things or the Dresden Files .  That Urban Fantasy pastiche. Where Do the Monsters Live? There is this idea in Urban Fantasy stories.   That they have to explain why monsters or fantastical elements remain hidden.  How have monsters or magic not become observed by the modern world?  Each story does its own take on this.  Superhero stories use it as the basis for some heroes.  Some stories have clandestine wizards and vampires living secret society lives.  Others are dark things that have long slumbered that now have awakened.  ...

Nadia's head was in her red leather spellbook again. The wizard had sat down after their fight with the goblins in the cave.  She had started to pen quick notes.  Her inkwell was out and she laid flat on her stomach, writing a tiny script in the blue book. The rest of the party down looked at the purple-robed wizard, waiting. "You done yet?"  Bellum, the paladin asked.  Their impatient tone didn't seem to register with Nadia at all. "Have to add a note or three,"  Nadia replied as she noted down observations from the last spell she'd cast in combat.  "My last casting of Magic Missile was different than previous.  And I might've perfected the force application equation.  At least the light refraction seemed to bear that out." "What does that mean?" "Her magic was greener than it's been before,"  Hensam added.  She took the moment of quiet to shine her daggers. Bellum shot her a glare.  Nadia beamed.  We...