Experience, Settings, Stallage

Finally got around to changing all references to 'skill' to 'experience', though I'm sure I missed some.  We decided to change it after someone play-testing mentioned some confusion.

So far we've tried a bunch of settings and I think things have gone well.  If you happen across this blog and are curious, we've described some of the settings and games we've done here.  They include Vampires, Hyboria (Conan the Barbarian), Parallel Earth in the 70's, Neverland, a Post-Human Machine Earth, and an Apocalyptic Earth (seen in previous blog entries).

Work on the site has somewhat stalled.  I think to really get things finalized we need to come up with a basic magic page, and a few settings.  I was looking at the Google sites environment for a different project, and I think it might be a good idea to have each setting as a Google site.  They seem really easy to set up and edit, and it would give each setting it's own look and feel.  Also, assuming we get some other gamers interested, others could come up with a setting and we could link to them.

And then, a year later...

I declare a zombie apocalypse.

Now it's just a matter of the feeble losers clawing out of the shallow graves...

Colfax

Ug.  <kill all mutants>  We got to the city to looks for some doctor like folks, and whadya think happens as soon as we come into town.  Some ruffians <kill all mutants> decide to pick a fight with us.  Well, actually, we shot first, but there was no doubt in our minds that they were gonna try to kill us.  They wuz look'n at us funny.  <kill all mutants>  And well, one of them was a mutant <KILL ALL MUTANTS>, so they had to die.

Problem they had was that they only had one guy with a gun, so we started blasting him, even though it was really hard not to shoot at the mutant who was runin' at us with some pointy arm bone thang.  Before they got too close, I decided to do my survival bit and drew them away from Humungus so he could shoot with impunity.  (ya like, that word?  Just learn'd it last week.  Impunity.  I like it.)  Oh, and at some point we dropped the dude with the gun, so that make things much easier.

Then something 'orrible happened.  The damn fools gave up!  Here we were, poised to kill one of our first mutants and he went and did something sensible and ran off.  How'da'ya like that?  Blast.  Well, anyway, we got ourselves some loot and the townsfolk were quite nice to us after that.

We found ourselves a doctor who was quite nice and he healed us up good and healed up the old dude we wuz protect'n.  Sounds like we're gonna stay here a bit and help the doc secure the town.

Oh, and, um... by the way...  KILL ALL MUTANTS!  Damn mutants...

Still Humungus

First things first: Colfax and myself just noticed that we talk with a drawl. Is funny-like, how we didn't notice that ourselves until we caught the kid mimicking us.

Right - the kid. Annoying little varmint. Didn't talk much when Colfax went and talked with his kin. Made a peep after we caught a ride with them, and I offered to make some trades with all pretty Stuff.

After the ride, we parted ways with the Bus People, and set out in a neighborly sort of direction. And along comes the kid, asking for us to come back with him to help out his sickly pa. And damned if we didn't get threatened by those selfsame Bussers when we got there.

Hell, the old man even wasted a bullet trying to scare us off. Damned fool.

Anyhows, I am not surely understanding how it happened, but we agreed to help the old fool and his annoying spawn, and even-more-unkindly wife, get into the city to look for medicines that might help.

Seems that the unlucky fellow happened across a cache of functioning tech, and got shot with radioactive projectiles by some nasty sorts. He told us the location, though I'm not of an inclination to go looking for it unless I get all sorts of less green than I am now. I suspect the same goes for Colfax - excepting if he finds out the be mutants, of course. He don't abide no mutants.

So, off we go: to yonder city...

Pokka Lips

My name is Humungus. Because my parents thought they were sooooo funny. My partner's name is Colfax. I assume because his parents were just plain mean. We're both very sneaky. There's the remains of a pre-tribulation city nearby, and we scavenge there regularly when we can for useful Stuff. But for the last while we've been out in the wilds picking up food - and we discovered a cache with as much as we could carry.

Only problem: as we left, a pair of big hunting cats got our scent. We crept up to the roof of an old house to lose the first one we saw, hoping it was an accidental encounter and would avoid us. But instead, it took up position in some obscuring bushes nearby and pretended to wait impatiently for us. Colfax went down, to try to lure it out into the open so I could pick it off with my rifle, but we discovered that it had a partner waiting to pounce from our flank. I used up 7 of my remaining 20 bullets stopping those two damn cats. Colfax got bit a little, but it was just a nibble. With our packs bulging with food, we couldn't even eat the damn things back nohow.

We left immediately, in a subtle-wise manner, for worries of adventurous-type people coming to see how many more bullets we had left. With 9 days of food on us, we decided to head back towards the city for some more scavenging.

On our way, we can across a group of people on the old roadway with their old rolling land-boat blocked by a junker. Before we could properly contemplate whether to help them or not, they were set upon by some raiding riders. Being fine upstanding citizens of the pokka lips, and generally preferring to take the weapons of the raiders over those of the raid-ees, we assisted with some tactical gun play.

As soon as the fighting was over, with their two riflemen down, their leader falling off his horse a little ways into the woods, and the other two getting clean away, Colfax and myself helped ourselves to some rifles.

I suppose the thing to do now is to have ourselves a chat with those people we just helped...

Giant Serpent Dentistry

Turton and Brontispa left their village to travel north-west through the forest toward the mountains separating Zingara from Aquilonia. After several hours of travel into the shady depths of the woods they were set upon by a Serpent Of Unusual Size. The massive snake struck Brontispa a terrifying bite to his leg(s) - it's hard to be really exact with a bite radius that would impress an allosaurus. The brothers responded with different philosophical modes: one by screaming like a little girl while flailing uselessly, and the other by grabbing the snake by the mouth and ripping its head in half.

The snake was sporting two serrated fangs of impressive cleaving capability, which were then ripped out of its skull and had strips of snakeskin wrapped around the roots to make handles. It was also noticed that the monster snake was slightly bulged at one spot along its length, and upon opening it they they found the smelly remains of a Pictish adventurer. Amongst the decayed remains, they found a few surviving metal artifacts - a couple minor magical rings and a battle hammer.

After several hours of roasting the metric tonnes of snake meat over a bonfire, a trio of dark-hooded assailants converged on the brothers. Armed with wicked stabbing blades, they inflicted some unpleasantness on both Turton and Brontispa. However, the Zingarian Brothers prevailed. Two of the oddly-shriveled men were dispatched irrevocably where they lay, while a third was allowed to regain consciousness for questioning. He taunted them, claiming success at their purpose, and then killed himself with a grotesquely muscular snapping of his own stick-like neck. Inspection of their weapons revealed them to be magical, but in their wielding (an obvious mark smears Brontispa's hand), and probably in the wounds they inflicted. The marks are magical in nature, and not useful to those actually wielding the blades...

Resume Plot Infliction

Master Plan

At present, our plan for COG is as follows:

1. Finish writing the core rules.
2. Play-testing.
3. Get people visiting the site, both to spread word about the game, and to hopefully generate enough ad revenue to pay for hosting and the domain name registration.
4. More play-testing.
5. Write a professional-type-looking document containing all of the core rules, as well as some advanced rules (magic, extra combat rules, custom occupations, etc).  Offer this for sale on the site as well as rpgnow.com.
6. Even more play-testing.
7. Writing detailed settings and game scenarios, either as freebies or purchasable pdf documents.