So I've been thinking about how to make the random sorts of notes in Starfaring into a coherent game.

Two things

One

I've pretty much decided I want to do this percentile.

One of the randomization methods introduced in Starfaring was calculator button mashing. Just mash the buttons on your calculator until you get a value greater than 1, and then read the first two digits after the decimal place.

The game also kind of assumes you have normal dice. I figured that enough gamers today have d10s that I can just drop anything that requires d6 and replace it with a percentile resolution system for everything.

I think I might need to write an old school revival of the very first space opera RPG, Ken St. Andre's Starfaring.

The game was very strange. I don't really think I'm going to do much other than fix it, and add a solitaire section / competitive writing section (something along the lines of De Profundis, so you could write your "ship's log" and treat it as a game of sorts, and if you were doing it with other people, you could challenge each other in certain ways word use challenges, character arc challenges, plot challenges, etc.)

The horror of this game is that it makes a very strong argument for the idea that people working in a cube farm are already role playing.

They do work that feeds, clothes or houses no one, and use incantations that don't mean anything in real life to accumulate point that affect nobody's standard of living.

They, at Synergon, call in BLARP, Business Live Action Role Play. The horror of it is, once you see the bullshit, you can't unsee it.

Just a note from your sheikh,

I have a thing for games that require unusual materials.

It's not just role-playing games. Parlor games, outdoor games, whatever...

You want to show me a role-playing game that requires pencil, paper, polyhedral dice, miniatures, and a battlemat? Yawn!

You want to show me a role-playing game that requires a pile of mismatched old buttons in a cloth sack, a stack of origami paper (or any sheets of square paper that are white on at least one side) and 3 different colored crayons? Wow!

You want to show me an outdoor game that you play with an inflatable ball? Whatever!

This is a post apocalyptic fantasy setting that I made up while playing around with Animalball's Instant Game. It seems like it's worth more than just to sit around on my computer, but that's all I'm going to do with it. I'm never going to make a proper role playing game out of it, so anyone who wants it, can go ahead.

In case anyone is interested, I think what I rolled when this setting first occurred to me was Post Apocalyptic Swashbuckling, Time-Travel, Zombies, and Steampunk, which I quickly replaced in my imagination with Spring-Punk.

So the setting, before the apocalypse was your standard Arabian nights style setting, Haroon Ar-Rashid is the caliph in Baghdad, sort of thing.

I discovered Whimsy Cards.

Does anyone else think it would be possible to create a whole RPG based around the concept of whimsy cards?

Would we need more cards? Maybe we should weight the deck with a bunch of cards that say, "You rock, that totally goes the way you wanted." or something like that.

Are there any other cards that would make sense to add? Any card you could think of, just go ahead and write it here.

Going through some old CD archives the other day, and I found an honest to goodness Zen RPG. This has been of some contention here in the lab, people proposing RPGs based on Zen or old School (Chuang Tsu style) Taoist philosophy, so I thought I'd share it with you. It's called Unitstat, and the website that used to have it for download is currently defunct, but may achieve a positive reincarnation for the good karma it accrued hosting this ingenious little game.

I'll explain the rules. Get all your friend's dice and put them together. Pick a pile of dice such that if every die showed it's maximum result, the sum would be 60. If you're going to have a GM, he gets to pick enough dice to add up to 60 for each player.

If I were doing a superspy game, (Seriously considering it, watch too much Iris) what sorts of superspy abilities should I have in my game?

I'm thinking things like:

Bypass Security Systems
Hack into Databases
Superspy Martial Arts
Awesome Spy-Car
Improvised Explosives
Transmitter Implant
Expert Sniper
Cultivate Informants
X-Ray Glasses
Devilish Charm

I'm just trying to see how big of a list we can make.

I'm a big fan of games that tie character effectiveness directly to the player's narrative flourish, games like Wu Shu or my Play it Cool. They allow GMs to scale villains in the middle of an encounter. While the fight is exciting, everyone can mention cool, exciting details to make their moves more effective. When the fight starts to drag, the GM can describe the villain's actions in boring, uninspired ways, so the PCs can quickly trounce him. Mook rules are built into it, since mooks don't have much style and are this quickly dispatched.

This is for a cyberpunk FATE game.

The idea is for them to be blank on the face and as the players make up their characters and play the game, they can earn fate points for writing NPCs on these cards, parents, brothers, sisters, childhood friends, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, college buddies, co-workers, former co-workers, love interests, neighbors, flat-mates, enemies, rivals, etc.

The idea being that players can put an NPC on a card if they really liked him or her or it, or if they want to see something like that come up. And the GM doesn't have to make up new NPCs since the players can be surprised to discover they share some interests with an enemy, or that their beloved uncle is unreasonable and racist or something.