Damn I Am Pretty Art Laboratories

I've found history is one of the top three things my reading pile falls into.  And often, it helps me to come up with context for what has happened before.  Like everything else I read, it helps me to figure out my own writing and thinking.  Here's a quick review about Team of Rivals. Team of Rivals looks at Lincoln's rise to the presidency by also analyzing and looking at each member of his cabinet.  This interesting because Lincoln filled his cabinet with those men who'd been his rivals for the Republican nomination in 1860. Detailing their histories and comparing how different each man compared to Lincoln, as well as how similar they were, you get the political picture of Lincoln's presidency.  Of how he cleverly would push for legislation only after having solid public support for it or how he treated each man in his cabinet with respect.  Or he managed to become the republican nominee during the republican convention despite being in last place. ...

Start of Story |   Previous Part (3/?) Sophia didn't quite think of a response to that right away. "Excuse me,"  the Demon asked again, his tone sounding both dry and irritated, "but how can I help you today?" "Uh..."  Sophia didn't like the feel of the coins around her.  They weren't people's souls, but whatever they were they didn't feel right.  She glanced down at the coins and looked back at the Demon, trying to keep a cool face.  She tried to look tough, although her gut told her that wouldn't really matter to a demon, regardless. "Are you seeking a particular service or good?  Or..."  The demon licked its obese lips, its needle-like tongue vibrating.  "Perhaps you are here for something specific?" "Someone.  I'm here for someone." Sophia mumbled the words, forcing the demon to rise and try to listen to her. "Speak up, speak up!"  The demon waved its arms at the piles of ...

Start of Story |   Previous Part (2/5) The demon-faced golden coins rolled across the floor, clittering and clattering around Sophia as she crawled to her feet.  The sensations of all the rampant greed and black friday rush started to feel like a ocean to her.  She felt sick.  But part of her started to persevere through it. Ick.   Was this what it was like to be used to all of this?  Sophia shuddered.  She hoped that being able to see in her magical senses and not topple over from all of this negative emotion wasn't a bad sign for her sanity. Her eyes followed the gold coins.  each customer in the store seemed to be dropping them as they shopped.  They couldn't seem, since in a fashion, each coin was really just ethereal.  Symbolic of something else, but that was the best symbol her mind could put to them. "Lucy, Lucy, Lucy..."  Right.  She needed to stay on track.  Sophia could feel traces of Lucy on the floor, ...

Different thinking, after being sick for a five or so many days.  Ick. I'm wondering if hacking Fate Accelerated would get me to a system I'd like to use Mage the Awakening with?  Currently, I have a hypothetical build: FAE's approaches plus three traits: Health, Willpower, Refresh and Gnosis.  These are passive values, and mainly exist to add value or determine other things. Three Attributes: Physical, Mental and Social.  Each of these would get added to FAE's approaches, hopefully giving the approaches more interesting uses and reducing the chances of a "uber" approach.  Not as clean as Rob Donoghue's FAE 2, though.  I'm still thinking it though. Still would have ten arcana, however, and its the nature of Arcana that make me ok with wonking the system a bit.  Arcana are purviews, and each dot in M:tA carries a inherent measure of use- 1 dot means you know the three basic practices of that Arcana, and so forth.  This is a setting thing, b...

Start Of Story(1/?)| Sophia steeled herself.  Then she took up a quick pace.  She entered the encampment of Black Friday shoppers, most of whom, at first, paid her no mind. People in tents crowded around propane-powered ovens.  Others just simply stood there, their eyes glazed over.  Some looked tired.  Others stared back at Sophia, with empty eyes. She sped up her pace a bit.  This many people, in this place, well, it certainly wasn't her ideal environment.  The white witch found this many people noxious. Ugh.  Thanksgiving is just five minutes over and you people have been waiting here for how long?  Sophia thought, disgusted at the sight of most of them.  And for what?  Cheap Chinese plastic? As she moved toward the front of the GenMart, more and more eyes shifted to her.  Sophia closed her eyes.  She tried to keep focus, to keep her hidden senses closed.  She didn't want to see all of the things that a ...

Sophia Clas tugged her coat tighter against the cold November rain.  It felt like cold knives against her skin.  Puffs of her breath fogged out in a aria around her. Sophia never was the tallest girl.  She still didn't flinch in the face of the cold rain- nor did she let it deter her. Her white coat outlined her in the darkness of the cold November night.  It matched her prematurely white hair.  That and her pale skin almost made her into a walking white shadow.  She clutched to a pair of knives under her coat, but Sophia felt certain that she wouldn't use them to attack or defend her self. They were meant for other things.  Things most would-be muggers wouldn't expect from someone like her.  Each knife was covered in paint and glyphs.  Fetishes hung from their handles, each glass vials with enough venom that Sophia was certain either had magical power or would at least scare any would-be attackers.  Afterall, who wants to attack a...

I love being a Black Knight. Tracking Aiden Schumaker to this module had been an easy task.  He had chartered the small habitat at the Ring and it took me about three days to pin it down. The module was floating dead in space, probably having lost whatever tether had it attached to the Ring. It was one of a million tiny modules that were tethered to the Ring. The Ring seemed rather idiotic, since the superstructure that orbited the Earth was frequented with tourists wanting to visit the largest object constructed by the human race. There were places on the Ring that looked right down on the Earth majestically. It wasn’t hiding in plain sight. The data trail and this module fit the guy I was hunting. Aiden wasn’t experienced as a fugitive and owed my client some 5 million in credits. So far it seemed like a easy job. Of course, the Cabal always managed to give me a job that had some twist in it. Luckily they hadn’t given me any alternate orders to follow, so I didn’t have to wor...

Soaking wet, the dead body tilted its head up.  Orange streetlamps cast the walking corpse in a silhouette, highlighting the still unrotten parts of its face.  It growled, and almost looked like the man it used to be. Grey blinked at it. She didn't expect to see something like that so soon.  Yes it was midnight.  Yes it was a full moon.  And yes, the head of the local Gates Group had threatened her. Crazy conspiracy to use corpses to secretly control the government behind closed doors?  And so easily spotted anyone with a lick of magical talent stay cleared of them?  Yeah, that Gates Group.  Bullies, and Grey still didn't fear them.   She had the Lupus Dei, the Wolf God on her side .  Fuck all the opposition. "Really?"  Grey asked the walking corpse. "Grrr... yrrr..." "Yeah, yeah.  I figured as much."  Grey shook her head and took up her axe another time.  "In Lupus Dei I serve.  And geez, one of thes...

Previously... So, time to cover the big issues going on in Noah: the Kaiju-Song.  First up is the Legacy Issues, past issues that the setting has moved past, but still remembers.  Second is the Current Issue, the current problems plaguing the City.  Last is the Impending Issue, things coming around the corner. There are five issues at play in Noah, influencing the past and current attitudes of the Icons and their followers: Legacy Issues Not long ago, the City survived "Metatron's Reign of Terror."  The Angel Metatron took control of Noah, his cult dominating and terrorizing the City whilst hunting down Demons. Before that, "Babylon Owned This City."  The Babylon Megacorp ruled Noah, its tendrils had corrupted every level of the Noahite government.  Its tainted control had been broken by Metatron when he and his cult first emerged. Current Issues The City has become a war zone for the "Cold War Between Demons and Angels."  Their factions ...

Her sword was wet and dripping with hot blood. The crowd screams.  The assassin hold aloft the head of the decapitated man who'd been speaking a moment before.  Her white shirt was bloodstained, a red cross blazon across it. People panicked.  Cameras moved wildly. Bodyguards ran at her position at the podium.  And then men in suits.  And then police.  Gunfire. Slice.  Thrust. Bullets deflected off her skin.  Her skin glittered like diamonds.  One man loses an arm.  Another, a policewoman, is bisected. Her dark eyes ignore all of them.  She takes the head and tosses it into the air- it found purchase upon a power pole, and dangled like a grotesque reminder of the scene unfolding. They flee from her, in her red cross shirt and her bloodstained jeans.  Her glasses were broken.  Tears streamed down her face. "I remember."

Bert stopped the car. Noir got out without a word.  Kyle followed. "You still aren't going to explain to me what's going on here?"  Kyle asked.  He held his Dragon Mask under one arm. Noir ignored him. "You can't just- damn it!" Rain poured down buckets.  Noir pulled a bag from one of pockets.  He emptied it into his right hand as he walked.  The coins felt freezing cold in his palm. The path in the park led downhill.  Noir didn't have to look.  He didn't need his ghost sight or spell.  He could feel the negative energies here.  He spat, and continued to follow the negative energies. Kyle's protests stopped.  He could sense it too, but Kyle lacked the same trained focus as Noir. "What is that?" Noir continued to walk.  He navigated by the negative energies.  It had been a cold front, necromantic in its energies.  Spirits, weak spirits on the outside of a mini hurricane of necrokinetic energies. "Bl...

Noir put a coin in Xia's mouth, waited a moment, then spoke quiet words to himself.  "Zer moduz?" Xia's eyes closed.  "Now spit out the coin," Noir commanded. Xia did as she bid.  Noir flicked the coin in the air.  As it moved in the air, he let energy flow from him.  He cast the spell, and a black fog bellowed out from the coin.  Light seemed to avoid the fog, like it were unnatural.  It flowed thick and oily. Noir breathed deep.  He inhaled all of the black fog.  He hacked, then coughed.  Noir bent over from his coughing, hitting the ground. The necromancer felt hands helping him up.  Black droplets dripped from his mouth. "Ugh."  Noir coughed.  "A foreign land is a land full of wolves, ugh." "What's wrong?" "I saw what she doesn't remember.  Ugh."  Noir straightened.  "Damn it." Noir stood up.  He pushed hands off of himself.  The necromancer gave Ghede a nod as he exited.  ...

I'm going to continue working out some ideas for Kaiju-Song, after rereading a bit in the Fate Core books.  This is going to be my first draft, complete with broad strokes, when it comes to skills and things.  Lets see how downhill this goes... Modes and Skills Each mode is an Approach, a way your character "approaches" an action: its how you handle that action.  Each mode also has a set of skills and extras tied to them too.  Essentially, they are packages of skills and things that represent stuff your character can do. Skill resolution is going to be simple here: When you roll to perform an action, you add your total in that mode to your rank in that skill.  Therefore, when you roll to Shoot, you add your rating in Cop and Shoot together before adding them to the roll.  (Note: this is part of this I'm not sure is going to stay) When you purchase points in a Mode, you distribute points among its skills.  The number of points you can spend on ...

Now to look at character creation and Aspects in this Setting I've been working on. Characters in Noah have same High Concept and Trouble aspects as other Fate Core characters.  If your character is going to have psychic powers or be a Angel, Demon or part of the Song, you need to reflect that in your High Concept.  Alot of the psychic skill, stunts and extras here are going to be based on representing what Angels, Demons and the Song can do.  You can break with the three big stereotypical forms of psychics in Noah, but your character might have other troubles too, being sought out as a target for research or other accusations. ICON ASPECTS Characters in Noah have an new Aspect slot in addition to their normal five (High Concept, Trouble, the Phase Trio aspects).  This is their Icon aspect, and it reflects a character's ties to a particular Noah Icon.  This aspect will come into play for some adventures in which its Icon is part of what is going on.  ...

One of the weird things about being a mythology nerd?  You note crazy motifs in things. After all, doesn't it make sense, you read up on it over and over, and you see them when they reappear.  Well, if such motifs repeat, I guess.  That could be a matter of opinion, couldn't it? Having seen Thor: The Dark World, which, after absorbing it in, I think about its mythos and motifs.  I liked it.  It feels like every Marvel movie improves on the prior ones, using Marvel's greatest invention to improve film: contuity.  Thats a essay for another time, though.  Go see it, its great. So Thor itself plays on a set of classic motifs- you know the kind, you've heard them before.  A wrong, a feud, and the broken trust that spawns from that.  Its the classic "why do we have evil?" and you hear that sort of story, over and over.  In the case of Thor, the main theme, sort of original sin-ish, is the classic Cain and Abel, the two brothers who are de...

In which Noir eats an apple, learns what is going wrong at the crossroads and decide to help a dead girl remember. The four of them sat at Xia's dining table.  Noir took the opportunity to get some food into himself, as long as he remembered to do so.  Xia looked lost, and he felt responsible for that- he hadn't yet had the chance to explain fully what she'd agreed to.  Meanwhile, Kyle kept that Dragon mask on.  The Ghede and Kyle exchanged verbal challenges. "Your kin forget justice, Nephillim." "And yours forget whose world this belongs to, Ghede." Noir chewed on a apple while Kyle in his Draco uniform argued with the death spirit.  The necromancer decided it was better to get something inside him before hearing what this Ghede was going on about.  And of course, he still had to determine what caused Xia, newly undead as she was, to miss the exact cause of her death. "Bah.  We of the Ghede clan have lived on this continent longer than yo...

"Psychogeography is a practice originally developed by the Situationist International as part of their efforts to forcibly dismantle the established social order. Psychogeography is the study of how physical spaces impact social, cultural, and personal lives. Its central technique is what is called the derivé, or drift, in which one wanders through an urban area according to some idiosyncratic logic that causes one to cut against the usual lines and paths traced." -Tardis Eruditorium Horrors in Portland Portland has, perhaps, the highest amount of cases of depression and suicides amongst cities throughout the continental US.  And because things happen this way, a lot of ghosts and spirits tied to that. There is a figure often seen near the bridges in the city, or near Forest Park.  A very tall, slim man- but his fingers are razor blades and his clothing is as stained with blood and tears.  He wears a fedora, and often has the echoes of crying in his footsteps. ...

*In a tabletop RPG. ‡And this counts for Game Masters too- we expect the same of you, if not more so. In media, stories are told.  Be it a song or a novel or film, or even a roleplaying game, we tell stories and we enjoy them.  There is an audience and then there is the storyteller.  When stories are told, there is also a set of expected social obligations that both Audience and Storyteller have to follow in order to help make the story work. These are social constructs- something we don't always think about consciously when we follow them, but sometimes we forget to keep them up.  Sometimes when we think a story failed or didn't like a story, one might see that these obligations were missed, either on the Storyteller or Audience side.  This more or less a rough Idea I've been toying with, but I think it holds true in regards to creative work: An Audience (reader, listener, watcher, what-have-you) is obliged to pay attention to a story.  To think ab...

Pain grooves the heart Death binds the head Screams never heard Screams never heard Walk the spiral blind, Hold your arms in the air, Feel the beat of the Earth Feelings keep it far Serenity doesn't exist Can't let them see the pain Can't let them see the pain Walk the spiral, Rip Off The Face, Fuck Yourself Blind Dreams will die Slumber eternal and lie There sits an Empty Throne There sits an Empty Throne

Names are names.  Quick post, just going to be a list of names, starting with first names then last names.  First names listed here were popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Both lists also are random tables, more or less, so feel free to use them for quick names in any modern game you run if you think this is helpful.  Roll a ten-sided die on the relevant tables and boom, you've got a name.  Its American-centric at the moment, but its not intended to cover everything. Try also the Story Games Names Project  if you are looking for more names.  This is intended to help my group in thinking up names fairly quickly, I hope. First Names Michael Christopher Matthew David Jacob Nicholas Andrew Daniel James Joseph Girl Names Jessica Ashley Emily Sarah Samantha Amanda Jennifer Elizabeth Heather Megan Last Names Garcia Smith Johnson Brown White Campbell Stewart Baker Morgan Marshall As for shadow names, n...

Noir blinked as the memory faded. The dragon-headed figure- Draco or whatever he called himself- raised his arms.  Tree branches, vines and plant matter mimicked his arms.  His fingers made a wrapping gesture.  Plant matter surround the spirit creature. The creature hissed.  It began to slice and attack the plants around it. "No you don't, spirit."  Draco muttered.  He also added something under his breath in a language Noir didn't quite understand. "Thou shalt not touch!" The creature replied back at Draco.  "Collect the wrong!  Collect the wrong!" Draco shook his head.  Noir blinked, then stretched out his senses, the same that let him see ghosts and the shades of the long dead.  What he saw made him balk.  A web of green vibrant energy crisscrossed around the plants Draco had controlled. The web used the plants, puppeting them.  The dark creature Noir could see as black nothingness.  And the web of energy ...

Like I promised, here are key locations and neighborhoods in Noah.  More to come, but each of these areas has its own aspect, something key to Fate Core.  This is still a rough draft, but this should be the same basic ideas at the end when I'm done with the Kaiju-Song.   Behemoth Dome (Daughters of Maru): One of the oldest sites in Noah, the massive Behemoth Dome defines a big part of the skyline in Noah.  It has a direct connection to both the Moria Weave and the Docks, often using both for its various projects.  The Behemoth Dome houses R&D, Corporate Housing and Headquarters for Babylon, including the now ruined Psi Division building.  The Behemoth Dome is a technological blur, irradiated with Kaiju-Gems and so entrenched in Demon control most working there forgot what it means to have a recognizable body or a single individual appearance.  Its become a technological hell, and its own employees the lab rats that run it. Aspect: Crux of Baby...

Maryhill Stonehenge is a replica of the original Stonehenge, but located in Maryhill Washington.  Completed in 1929, the replica is located on the Washington side of the Columbia River.  A fair distance away from Portland itself, but the site is often forgotten, even by residents in either state. Occultic texts on the region describe at least two or three leylines meet and combine at Maryhill before merging into the Columbia River and flowing into Portland itself- one of the many sources of the many nexuses that meet in the City. Perhaps more interesting are the seasonal midnight gatherings at Maryhill and at two sites in Portland itself.  These Witches believe all three sites are connected, and hold a pagan ritual every equinox or solstice to honor the old gods.  Sometimes they invite outsiders, but only those they are convinced might gain something from the experience. After all, Portland's local wicca and other witches have become more and more open, as th...

At noon Aggi closed up shop.  She had sold out of all her butchered meatsac product.  And she had a new task to perform for the Familia. She did not think of herself as having a problem with Hypium.  The drug kept her from losing her mind in Nightland.  It wasn’t as if anyone really wanted to have a relationship with the blue daughter of ascendists anyway. Now sex, yes, she’d had plenty.  Everyone single in Jefferson, boy or girl, liked to try and experiment with the blue girl.  After all, made a great story.  They never wanted to go past the first date, never ever.  Never. She grew tired of that. Aggi had stopped trying to go out two years before.  Besides, it felt like the Hypium was better when she was alone.  The Hypium gave her such magnificent dreams.  She’d hook up her dream rift and let chemicals and electrical impulses take her to beautiful places.  Sometimes she even connected her metaputer and recorded a drea...