One Must Silly Walk Into Mordor

In case you missed the Hangout on Google+, here's the dissertation on role-playing games and the role of the contingent, mundane, and silly in role-playing.

The Power of Prayer (is crowdsourced)

I don't have all the kinks worked out on this one, but I had this idea the other day.

I am a huge fan of the Super Nintendo cult classic EarthBound.  (For the uninitiated, it's a classic video game RPG but set in the modern day.  And it's quirky as hell.)  The game is pretty heavily spoiled, but if you want to play it with no prior knowledge, know that spoilers are ahead.

Paula is unique among the player characters, being the only one with the ability to Pray.  This weird little idiosyncratic ability allows her to cause random status effects, and is generally a dangerous tactic — some of the effects restore HP to the party, while others put everyone to sleep, ally and enemy alike.  One even revives everyone in the battle, reviving fallen party members and enemies.

However, in the final battle against Giygas, Paula has to use the Pray command to draw on the strength of everyone they have met in their journey.  The combined psychic weight of the people of Earth banishes the eldritch alien.

A Game Master would have to severely limit its use, but a cleric could easily have a Pray power as described above.  When the PCs are aware they are entering a tough battle, they can prepare using the Pray power.  Once used, the GM could post on any social media he or she uses, attempting to garner support.  ("Hey, my PCs are descending into the Demonweb Pits tonight.  Show your support for them, would you please?")  Each "Like," "Comment," "+1," "Share," or whatever show of support your local social media site uses counts for something.

That's about as far as I've gotten with it.

My thought was that each "+1" or whatever gives a floating point in a pool (we'll unimaginatively call it "the Prayer Pool").  Points in the pool can be used to increase die roll results for one roll, temporarily increase HP or defenses, or possibly diminish enemy dice roll results.  Once the pool is depleted, that's it, so make sure it counts.

The Pray power would have to be heavily curtailed — maybe it's usable only once per level, or adventure, or even once per year.  If you play the sort of game where this sort of thing wouldn't seem heavy-handed, perhaps it's only usable by GM fiat.

Mysteries of the Gods (1977)

Another day of blogging links to other things, as gaming continues to be a trifle slow for a moment before exploding again.

Today, we have Mysteries of the Gods, a 1977 documentary based upon the works of Erich von Däniken and hosted by William Shatner.  I include it here because ancient astronauts are a major part of the backstories of Blackmoor, Call of Cthulhu, and Carcosa, as well as a fair number of modern occult campaigns.

Probably worth watching if you have about ninety minutes to waste.  (Or ninety minutes in which you can do something and have Mysteries of the Gods playing in the background.)

DragonStrike and Wildspace

So on Wednesday I got to watch the "instructional" video for TSR's 1993 D&D-themed board game DragonStrike.  Despite being the tutorial, it really just shows a dramatization of a DragonStrike adventure.

You can blame OUT OF CONTEXT D&D QUOTES for this.

More interestingly, I learned that the actors (as the same characters) were going to return for a Spelljammer-themed television program called Wildspace.  It was never produced, although there was a trailer:

Meanwhile, on Carcosa

Orbit Magazine #1, 1953, Illustration by Rudolf Belarski

Happy Birthday, D&D!

I've seen a couple of sources placing yesterday as Dungeons & Dragon's fortieth birthday, so we'll go with that.  I celebrated by playing D&D on Saturday; the PCs fought some Carcosan Space Aliens, and then nearly died when they found some Space Alien robots.  (Incidentally, since we're almost finished with the Carcosa dungeon, I'll likely be posting my 4e Carcosa encounters within a couple of weeks.)

Happy birthday to D&D.  I'm sure much more eloquent people than I have things to say on the subject (where's Maliszewski when you need him?), so it'll just suffice to say that role-playing games are fun, and thank you for forty years of fun.

Here are some appropriate links:

Happy 40th birthday, Dungeons & Dragons! (Yahoo!)

When Dungeons & Dragons Turns 40 (Playing at the World)

Dungeons and Dragons Turns 40: 10 Awesome D&D Computer Games (PC Magazine)

Dungeons & Dragons turns 40 (USA Today)

All I needed to know about life I learned from “Dungeons & Dragons” (Salon)

Dungeons and Dragons is 40 Years Old (Daily Kos)

And finally, Out of Context D&D Quotes (Tumblr)

Lich Jesus

I usually find this sort of thing done to death, but I happened across an article that I think did the concept justice (despite a lot of silliness in the article).

There's a persistent joke going around that Jesus Christ is a lich because he was a potent spellcaster who returned from the dead under his own power within 1d10 days of his death.  I always find this a little annoying as it ignores the fact that Christ's deity revives him from the dead (clearly the DM playing favorites), or depending on your interpretation, that Jesus was a divine avatar and so never actually rose from the dead (if Jehovah or whomever loses one avatar, he just...sends another avatar).

At any rate, this blog post from Compromise and Conceit breathes a little life into the Jesus-as-lich concept by framing the various religious conflicts of the first millennium in the context of this fact.  The Jewish clerical establishment may or may not think Jesus is a rabble-rouser, but more importantly, they understand that he is slowly-but-surely gathering the components to build a phylactery and must be stopped.  (The Roman government is apparently unaware of the threat, although the Jewish clerics manage to get them to act.  Sadly, it's too late.)

(This also neatly utilizes the underused clerical lich concept, and totally paves the way for Jack Shear's lich popes.)

He goes on to explain a Vatican conspiracy hiding the Christ-phylactery (or the Christ demilich, by now), among other things (including early tensions between Jewish magic-users and a barbarian Muhammad).

Ultimately, this seems like it would be excellent background for some manner of early modern, Lamentations of the Flame Princess-style campaigning.  (Or you could even set your game earlier chronologically, if you want to dust off your copy of Testament that you clearly totally have in your collection.)

Go ahead and check out that Jesus-as-clerical-lich article and then craft some gonzo occult conspiracy D&D campaign.