Alexander 'Lex' Williams

I suppose it's time to actually show people my work. Running Breathless is a game about being chased and dealing with problems along the way, sometimes not even your own. squidlord.itch.io/running-br… Maybe you're a psychic kid who's escaped from the hospital or the school for unusual talents. Maybe you've made the heist of your life. Maybe you're the worst kind of criminal scum. Maybe they're right behind you. Catch your breath when you can. Go to ground if you find someone you can trust or a big enough sucker. The one thing you're guaranteed to do? Run. Running Breathless is a TRPG for one to five players, GM optional, based on the Breathless SRD. Check it out. It's pay what you want, which means you can pay absolutely $0.00, and I won't be mad. In fact, I encourage you to do so. It runs pretty quickly, so you can even throw it up on the table while waiting for other players to arrive for your main game. It's fast, a little bit cruel, and you should have about 50-50 odds of getting away with it. Whatever it was you did. The chasers know.

This is absolutely true. I would note indie games tend to have far fewer supplements, scenarios, and expansions. Now, some of you think that's a drawback. People who actually have to pay for their stuff probably think of that as a positive. Anyone who's ever had to run a game with 20 different supplements, all of which have feature and power creep, very few of which have been playtested in combination with one another, and when they have, the flaws are deliberate, and the creators promise they'll get it fixed in the next edition. Just buy it when it comes out, GURPS, I'm looking at you, know exactly why that's a pain in the ass. Some indie games you don't have to pay a dime for. They're just giving them away. Things that you can play for hundreds, maybe thousands of hours. Free, just for the taking. The author is even happy to see you take it away and play it as long as you tell people you're having a good time with it. Indie games are the bomb, and they have been for about 30 years.

I don't think I've ever even heard of a convention being canceled in the middle of the convention because the people running it went bankrupt. There are so many things wrong with that premise, so much bad decision-making that had to go on along the way, so much incompetency, not to put too fine a point on it. I'm actually quite impressed. You've got to work hard to fuck up that bad. I'm surprised that the vendors didn't just band together, use some stanchions and curtains to make torches, fabricate some pitchforks from the food court, and go after the organizers with blood in their eye. I can't say that I wouldn't have joined them.

> A human mind is not culled — it is released: open questions are handed off, and the person is marked unavailable. It says something about my life that anything that I am working on actually includes this sentence.

If you really want a feeling of terror, ask yourself what has me going through my drawers looking for old Android phones, because if that doesn't scare you, you're not thinking hard enough.

I've always thought that 4 hours was the right length of a slot for an introductory game. Now that doesn't mean that you have to take up the full 4 hours, but that's the usual length of a game slot at a US TRPG convention. In practice, the first 15 to 20 minutes is just getting people settled in, waiting a few minutes for latecomers, getting people jazzed up about what they're about to do, introducing them to the mechanics, and so on. The next 15 minutes to 45 minutes, depending on the system, is character generation. You may show up with some pre-generated characters, but one of the best ways to show off a system and get people excited about what they're about to do is to do character generation with them. This is one of those bits where lightweight mechanical systems are a lot easier and better to introduce new players to than heavier ones, because character generation gets them right into being excited about something that's theirs. At this point, you've gone through the first hour, and everybody has a character. They understand what the world is because they have to understand what the world is so that they can make their characters. They understand the basics of the system because they've walked through making the character, which generally touches on all the mechanics. So then you're ready to kick off. Throw them right into the action. Something intense is happening, and they are responsible for reacting to it right then. It doesn't necessarily have to be a fight, though sometimes it can be an introductory fight, sort of like a tutorial level, but something intense is going on that they have to react to. That's probably going to be the next 30 minutes because they will be using the mechanics, pushing the buttons and pulling the levers and playing the game. Depending on the complexity of the mechanics, this can be a whole hour. That's the first two hours taken care of right there. Now you want to back off the intensity to something a little more relaxed: investigation, role-playing, talking to characters within the scenario or game space. Plan for this to go a half an hour to 45 minutes, depending on what's going on. If it's a particularly combat-focused RPG design, then this might be as short as 15 minutes, just moving to the next fight. If it's a character-focused RPG, it could go that full 45, as the players want to experience the characters in the space and their own. Intensity should be cranking up slowly during this process as they discover things that disturb them, when they are good and properly concerned, and they feel the pressure on the things that their characters care about. It's time to pay that off. You're talking about another 30-minute to hour-long conflict. This is where everybody gets to pull out the stops, use all their big powers, use their best weapons and spells, because they are probably never going to play these characters again, so they get to, as we say in the US, "drive it like they stole it." People may, and probably will, die if this is a big combat scene, and that's okay. Hand them an NPC sheet and have them help you go up against the rest of the group. If it's a GM-less game, then there's other things for them to be doing, possibly including just elevating one of the NPCs to the status of a PC with the mechanics connected to it. However it ends, you should have somewhere between half an hour and 20 minutes left in the 4-hour slot. If things run a little long, you've got enough padding for it to be okay. If things run a little short, that's all right as well. You've got time for people to talk about what they enjoyed about the game or what they didn't, what they enjoyed about the scenario if you were running one, what they enjoyed or didn't enjoy about their characters, and to cool down a little emotionally before they go on to the next game slot or the next event that they're going to at the convention. This also gives you 5 to 10 minutes at the end to clean up the table. Stack your sheets, switch books if you need to, and prepare to run your next 4-hour slot. I find one hour to be entirely too short to run a role-playing game, which really intends to hook people into the whole game. All you can really do is demo a combat scene if you're going to just run an hour. That's not really showing off an RPG, that's just showing off combat mechanics. Sometimes that's what you're there to do, but you need to understand that's all you're going to do. Yes, I have run four 4-hour sessions a day for three days running at a convention, and these were not lightweight games I was doing at the time. In fairness to me, one of the games I ran actually ate two entire slots, 8 hours, at the end of my day, and then we went another hour and 20 minutes because it was a drop-in, drop-out game where people could come in, make a character in under five minutes, get to play as long as they felt like, and then hand off their character to someone else if they were still alive and go about whatever else they were doing at the convention. That was a long day. I probably shouldn't have done that to myself, but damn, it was fun. I don't think I've ever run a session as short as one hour, even when I was doing the Sailor Moon-themed **Penny For My Thoughts** game.

Like most things, I have just the right arm tucked into my pocket for a particular setting, and if you wanted to play in it, we have the tools. lonersrd.zotiquestgames.com/… --- [PC:Jamal al-Mu'izz | the one who arrives when you forget a name | concept: Jinn Keeper of Forgotten Names | nature: of smokeless fire, older than the caliphate | skill: Truth-Seeker — hears the name underneath the name you gave him | skill: Chronicler of Dynasties — remembers what every house promised, and the night it broke it | frailty: Heart Tossed by the Winds — his moods turn with the weather; no vow of his survives a change of wind | gear: Oud Strung With His Own Hair — played, it gives a listener back a name they had lost | gear: Slim-Bladed Brass Dagger — cuts knots, seals, and words off a page; it will not cut a living tongue | goal: Find the true name worn off his seal | motive: A nameless jinn is only a shape and a mood, and moods blow away | nemesis: The Seal-Maker's Heirs — the brass-founders of Homs who still keep the plaster matrix | Luck 6 ] --- Why, yes, I keep my tools for managing character generation and formatting at hand all the time, and I'm not ashamed of it. Yes, you could actually play this genie, or just have them as an NPC that shows up in your game. Either way, whatever makes you happy.

I absolutely adored Dark Conspiracy and I ran so much of it. For a while it was my absolute go-to game. I still love the setting and essentially would never touch the mechanics again, even though I appreciate them. If you ask for my favorite cyberpunk game, this is actually it. Sure, the aesthetics are vaguely retro '50s, but that's part of the charm. Cyberpunk, biopunk, incredible psychics. Man, I love Dark Conspiracy. It's a shame what the new edition is doing to it. If you've never read the novels by Michael Stackpole, you need to because they are absolute joy.

In case you're wondering, and because I'm the guy to ask -- yes, there is a game for that. grimtokens.garden/References…

It is in fact the 5th of November, and thus time for my annual viewing of V for Vendetta. This has been a ritual activity, like watching The Crow on Devil's Night, for many years now in my household, and I feel no shame about it.

If you are a writer who focuses on prose and are looking for something that's not quite a text editor, yet not quite a heavy-duty word processor, might I suggest that you check out NEO. youtu.be/guCarcEjrjk Now I know that you probably have your already chosen word processor of choice, and so do I, quite frankly. I write in Obsidian because I need the links and the crosslinks and the transclusions. It doesn't make writing screenplays particularly easy because Fountain isn't supported on Obsidian Publish, but that's a whole different problem altogether. If you just want to write your novel, your short story, your book, go ahead and break out NEO. I think it does exactly what you're going to need. If you're thinking of tinkering with screenplays, while this isn't as fully featured as I'd like, most people don't like the screenplay tools that are as full-featured as I like, and that's okay. This will definitely get you tucked in and formatted. Plus, and I can't stress this enough, the export options to EPUB and PDF are great. It'll even put out a cover template which you can then use your favorite vector or pixel editor on. Am I going to be writing in Neo frequently? No, I don't really need it, but once in a while it might be nice to have around just as an alternate tool when I want to do something different. If nothing else, the video is very soothing. Everybody seems like they could use a little soothing right now.

I do immensely love a challenge. For those playing along at home, the following write-up is intended for Ironsworn, but certainly compatible with Starforged as is. --- ORGAN MOTH Rank: Dangerous (3 harm) FEATURES - Wide fleshy wings - Faceless head with only a sucking mouth - Engorged "rear legs" DRIVES - Feed on liquified flesh - Kill mammals TACTICS - Lurk motionless - Sonic blast from genitals - Tackle and pin The organ moth is typically found in the deep wilds, in low-lying areas where fog is commonplace. Despite being 9 feet long from head to tail and easily 12 feet wide, the broad, fleshy wings blend with the dense canopy of leaves, making them hard to spot as they hang inverted in the branches. They have neither eyes nor antennae, only a broad, sucking mouth ringed with clean, chitinous teeth. With neither eyes nor antennae to sense with, many have wondered how they hunt. It is noise that triggers them, which they pick up by using their wings as enormous drum heads. Despite appearances, they are not true moths, as they are not insects. The rear pair of apparent "legs" are in fact their genitals, the species being hermaphroditic, the long, spiky hemipenis being used to deposit semen into another organ moth's cloaca. When hunting or attacked, they will beat on their stiffened wings with the hemipenis. The resulting pulsing cacophony causes disorientation and nausea in most other creatures, allowing the organ moth to drop or leap upon the target of their ire and begin to chew through their flesh. For humanoids, this typically is their faces, by accident or design. The echoes of the organ moth on the hunt are said to be a powerful and erotic stimulant, which lasts for days, for those seeking to have children. Infertile women have been known to make pilgrimages of months into the deep wilds, seeking organ moth hunting areas. Needless to say, few make it back. --- ORGAN MOTH LARVAE Rank: Troublesome (1 harm) Organ moth larvae are laid into rotting hollow logs in the moths' hunting area and are born live. Unlike their parents, they possess eyes, which are remarkably mammalian, despite being only 8 inches long. They still possess the powerful sucking mouths common to their kind and can be quite troublesome in large numbers.