Friday, November 2, 2018
Moving to WordPress
So without further ado, the link to the new blog is:
https://rivetgeek.wordpress.com/
This blog will remain up most likely until Google+ shuts down, but all new posts will be made over there.
Monday, October 29, 2018
My Fate Dice and Fate Points from the Kickstarter came in, and they are really nice. These are adding to a little collection I have that includes a Noteboard, decks of Short Order Heroes, various Fate Dice from other Kickstarters, a variety of Exceed notebooks from Wal Mart, and a couple different sizes of these small stackable boxes for holding cards and stuff (also from Wal Mart). I want to add an All Rolled Up at some point to round it all out.
Unfortunately, I don't have a game to use them in and when I do get one running it will be 1) Blades in the Dark and 2) online. But when I do play face-to-face, I'm gonna be prepared!
Thursday, October 25, 2018

So I restarted playing Thief for about the dozenth time, with the intent of finally pushing past the horrible beginning to find out if it was as bad as the reviews. I'm now solidly into the territory I enjoy - exploration, jobs, puzzles and (of course) stealing things. It's definitely not as good as the original Thief games - but it might be on par with Thief Deadly Shadows, which was the weakest of the original three for me but still enjoyable.
The Good
- Visually the game is amazing
- Lockpicking and the general cracking/puzzle solving are my favorite out of all of the Thief games. I really like the mechanic to check for hidden switches. In fact, I can say that I like most of the mechanics.
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It makes me feel like this |
- I remember a lot of reviews complaining about changes to the controls - basically, it takes a lot of the pixelbitching out of climbing, mantling, etc. When you are able to do the thing (such as jumping over or off of something, crouching behind something, climbing) you press E when you're in the right place and you do the thing. I got used to it pretty easy, although I still occasionally attach myself and wind up peeking around a corner or box when I really wanted to sail right by.
- Related to this, there's not quite as much freedom of movement. In the previous Thief games, you could only fire rope arrows into specific materials (i.e., wood), but you could totally fire a rope arrow and climb up only to have nowhere to go. In the reboot, you can only fire them on to specific overhands and whatnot. This is slightly made up for by the fact that if you can fire a rope arrow at it, there is something to get to from there. Similarly, there are things that can broken with blunt arrows like winches, handles, etc. If that's the case, again there's going to be something there.
- The levels are pretty straightforward without a lot of alternate paths to get around obstacles, but to be honest I think I've also been spoiled by Dishonored where if you can reach it you can teleport to it (like Thief, there's no guarantee you can go anywhere from that spot, but I have found some novel paths to get places in Dishonored). The levels are definitely smaller than many of the levels in the original Thief games.
- I've never been a fan of only being able to save at checkpoints. Having to randomly hide in cabinets to get said save is kind of funny, especially since one of the commands in the cabinet is something like "barge out". Since this reminds me of my four year old liking to hide in cabinets and closets, I always imagine Garrett is going to jump out and yell, "Surprise!" or "You found me!".
- I have my difficulty settings cranked up a little bit, mostly because Thief-ing is old hat to me and otherwise it would be super easy to breeze past guards and whatnot. With it set so I can only knock out hostiles, and not kill anybody (directly - I quickly found breaking a pulley and dropping stuff on people doesn't count), I occasionally find that the line between hostile and civilian is fuzzy, For example, there is this guy in the foundry mission who obviously works for the "Thief-Taker General" (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean) and is in a uniform. Nope, can't knock his ass out. I guess the litmus test is if they run or don't react to you, can't knock them out.
- I'll preface this with the fact that I haven't been trying really hard to find every piece of loot, but it seems that without using Focus it's super easy to miss loot and collectibles. Overall, it hasn't yet impacted my game other than seeing all of the crap I missed at the end of a mission - but I suppose at some point only getting a fraction of the coin will eat into my ability to buy equipment. But beyond that, and maybe it's just because I'm early in the game, but the expenditure of Focus Points doesn't seem to add much to the game - especially compared to a game like Dishonored, where your abilities have a range of usefulness. I guess I just need to buckle down and start using Focus everywhere.
- Speaking of gear, while I like the expanded equipment I'm not totally sold on having to go specific dudes to buy it, especially if that means having to listen to their dialogue. I much preferred the earlier system where you had to choose your load out before the mission.
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I'm talking about this guy. Also, he looks like he wants to flash me. |
- Pretty much every character in the game. Seriously. The dialogue is cringeworthy at best, the voice acting ranges from wooden to jarring to "Did this guy wander away from a Barnum and Bailey's?"
- The plot, at least so far, especially combined with the really horrible dialogue and voice acting. Also, while I understand that there were likely some independent, parallel things going on with Thief's development vs Dishonored...there are things that strike me as a little too similar. Garrett returning to a city stricken by a plague, the beggar-queen character, etc. I haven't gotten too far into it to know if it continues to be not very compelling - but the beginning with Erin and then being taken back into the city on a beggar's death cart without much explanation fell flat enough that it kept me from engaging with the story and just not getting any further a whole bunch of times. When I restarted it this time I saw I had about 10 1/2 hours of play, and realized it was likely the same 45 minutes to an hour repeated about ten times - and even then bits were forgettable enough that it was like I was playing them all over again.
- The hands. Oh God the hands. It looks like Garrett just got out of bed and is trying to find the bathroom with the lights off.
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Current Stuff and Things
I hesitate to use the word "steampunk" (or any kind of "punk") to describe it, but the technology level is pseudo-mid-1800s with a strong magitech streak. So, yeah, there are trains and airships of some form or another as well as firearms. There's also the aforementioned plateau-dwellers, some of whom are nomadic and ride giant flightless birds, and others who have developed advanced techniques for unpowered flight; the forest dwellers who have something to do with the Big Mystery in the setting and are allies with giant semi-sapient ape-bear things; and an ancient culture that pioneered magitech and have twin cities devoted to extracting magical ore in the middle of a desert - and the desert is expanding because of it. Also megafauna - because I like megafauna. I've recently been thinking about how magic works, mainly with regard to its source being an element that can be mined, refined, etc. I've always really liked magic with physicality - runes, sigils, wards, drawing glowy things with fingers in the air - and having it tie in with the energy coming from a physical source would give it a very physical (and potentially visceral) feel.
I guess the whole thing might wind up looking like a Wild West meets the Pleistocene meets fairy tales meets big glowy spells. More than anything right now it just needs some focus and organization, since I'm not sure what I want the PCs to actually _do_. The system is pretty much guaranteed to be Fate-based.

"Aztecocalypse" - This started out as pondering an alternate setting for Tribe 8 based in Southern California, and quickly veered off into its own thing with very similar themes. Basically, some Mesoamerican supernatural shenanigans result in the world getting fucked up real bad. A few generations later, survivors are trying to eke out existences in the shadow of of major cities that have been turned into necropolises. Oh, and the truly horrific stuff only happens at night. Unlike Tribe 8, there's no "Fatimas" to liberate people but there is going to be an element of other supernaturals trying to restore order to the cosmos as well as people popping up with supernatural abilities. I have the basic groups and their interactions fleshed out, including Disneyland as a kind of hub and safe space for some survivors, and the descendents of Marines from Camp Pendleton as a Spartan-like society. Like the fantasy setting I'm still looking for some kind of hook or overarcing purpose to what the PCs are going to do, as well as getting the supernatural elements hammered out which is going to be heavily based in Mesoamerican (and other southwestern Native American) beliefs. I have no system really attached to this, although either Forged in the Dark or Fate are likely contenders.
Monday, October 22, 2018
Blades in The Dark Planning and Resources
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I just now started playing Thief, and that was released in 2014. I hope to get to Dishonored II by 2020. |
I've started to watch various Actual Plays as well as other videos on running the game while I try to get things a little organized. To my surprise, I found that it was easy to find YouTube videos of actual play and tutorials but it took some digging to find other resources. So as much for anybody else looking to see what cool stuff is out there as myself, I'm collecting all of these tidbits up here:
https://perchance.org/bladesnpc - People generator
https://perchance.org/blades-in-the-dark-people - More people
https://perchance.org/bladesstreetsandbuildings - Street and building generator
https://perchance.org/bladesdevils - Ghost/demon/cult generator
http://ageofravens.blogspot.com/2017/06/333-names-for-blades-in-dark.html - List of names
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/40562/roleplaying-games/blades-in-the-dark-crew-mission-type-tables - Crew mission tables
http://software.brentnewhall.com/blades/ - Score Generator
https://twitter.com/doskvolnews - Doskvol News
https://twitter.com/doskvolscores - Doskvol Scores
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FJcEBN2ym362NHJljC9QYDw9hUsu3zt1cShEdXh4Lw4/edit#heading=h.5l2cv2ggamt - Devil's Bargains
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m8L0lIwT3H7dBo1qzNMaxzdtXoQH0DVF/view - Score Workflow
Saturday, July 14, 2018
Vectored (i.e., Zero Gee) Combat in Tachyon Squadron
Monday, February 5, 2018
Facets in Retrolock
Friday, February 2, 2018
Exploration
With the magic of triangle tables, about five years ago I put together some random tables for post-apocalyptic exploration. I've noticed a few tweaks I want to make still, but I figured I'd put them back out there again. These are intended for modern-ish or post-apocalypse settings. Hopefully, they have some semblance of logic (IIRC correctly I pulled percentages of land use area for multiple cities and based the distribution on that). That means no top secret research facilities in residential areas; it also means that (hopefully) buildings that are out of character for an area will be rare. The intention is to only roll as deep as you want. Sometimes all you need is a little kick in the noggin; sometimes you're just completely stuck. These tables should be an aid, not a crutch.
For those unfamiliar with the triangle table concept, you roll xDF (in this case, 5DF) and then count over for every "+" or down for every "-". For these tables, the general area is either determined or rolled, then the second table comes into play to determine the building category. Finally a specific table is referenced for the building type. Entries marked with a (+) or (-) denote adding an additional "+" or "-" result when rolling on the next table. The idea is that building categories different than the area's (like a Commercial building in a Residential area) are skewed more toward certain types of buildings.
You can grab the PDF file with the tables here. Enjoy!
Monday, January 29, 2018
Actions in Retrolock
I missed updating last week, so figured I'd make up for it by writing a post with some meat to it.
Previously I had mentioned that I was working on a kind of Interlock retroclone called Retrolock. While stripped down to the mechanical level it runs very similar to Interlock (roll d10 + stat + skill), games like Fate Core have wormed their way into my gaming DNA to such a degree that I can't really look at any rpg-related without having that particular brand of "fiction first" lens tinting it. So I set out to try to make something that honors the crunchier, "Let the dice decide" philosophy of games like Interlock while still having some newfangled bells and whistles. Without playtesting it's difficult to say if I succeeded, but I like what I have so far.
Basically, like most narrative-focused games everything starts out with what the player is trying to accomplish; how they are going to accomplish it; and what happens if they succeed or fail. This doesn't have to be some long and drawn out negotiation between the player(s) and GM, but it is there to help reinforce that there should be something important, or exciting, or interesting, happening when the dice come out.
From there, it looks like most every other game of its ilk - roll, add stat and skill, compare to the Risk Factor (more on this in a minute). If the rolls beats the Risk Factor the action succeeds, if it's lower the action fails. The kinds of things that you see in games like Fate (success at a cost, boosts, etc.) are kind of there, but more rigidly defined. Rolling a zero results in things Going Sideways, which increases the Risk Factor of a subsequent action logically connected to the failed roll. Rolling a 10 gives a Bonus Effect, which decreases the Risk Factor of a subsequent action.
Finally, the character can Go For Broke, which entails intentionally increasing the Risk Factor of an action in order to reduce a follow-up action's Risk Factor if they succeed (with the chance of getting a stacking Bonus Effect to boot).
Another twist compared to most systems like Interlock or Silhouette is there aren't supposed to be any modifiers to dice rolls, and the Risk Factors are intended to be raised and lowered in clean increments of 5 (matching the Interlock scale of 10 = easy, 15 = average, 20 = hard, etc.). There will be some room in there for instances of smaller adjustments to Risk Factor, but those are going to be the outliers and not the norm.
Finally...what about this Risk Factor thing? Initially, it was intended to be a kind of detour from the idea of basing the target of rolls on "difficulty" but in the end, it just looks like difficulty does in every other system. I'm keeping the label Risk Factor though, because risk is definitely a component of how difficult an action is - along with the capability and skill of the character attempting it, the luck of the die roll, external forces working against the character, etc. So, in that light, the Risk Factor is just one "factor" in the equation of whether the character succeeds or not.
Hopefully things will start to settle down a little bit more at work and home, and I can put some more time and polish into this little project. Of course, that's along with the half a dozen other projects I want to work on as well.
Thursday, January 18, 2018
Post Apocalyptic Location Inspiration


Atlas Obscura actually has a nice page for the graveyard with a gallery of some of the structures.