Duke Bushido

I would be _honored_ to sit at a table with you, Mr. Kenobi, but alas, I'm closer to Catseye than I am to you.

Mostly correct: Davien _was_ harmless (unless you count his tendency to hold up or even derail the game when he wasn't catered to), at least in our group, for the simple reason that most of us could, one-on-one, kick his butt up the street and down the highway four or five miles if he tried to get really ugly (we had a player named Russ who moved a few months after Davien joined in who physically snatched him up one day when Davien went from condescending to outright insulting-- Russ was on a weightlifting and wrestling scholarship, so.... ) with a comment along the lines of "I'm not an English major, I'm not in the Drama program, and I don't have the most flowery vocabulary in this room. But I have very large fists and a lot of endurance. Comprende?" (I should note that as a devout Jehova's Witness, Russ wouldn't actually hurt a fly, but evidently Davien didn't know that, and Russ was scary big if you didn't know him) The sheer volume of laughter that exploded from the room caused him to stop playing and sulk until the game broke up, and we didn't see him again for nearly six weeks (we played twice weekly at the time). Totally worth it. However, we rather suspected he was something more of a problem to the younger group he was in-- I think the oldest of them was a high school sophomore....? (though honestly, a lot of us would have been glad to stomp a mud waller in his kidneys on their behalf, too. )

I love the idea, and I like the little descriptions of the character, but I can't tell you a damned thing about an .hdc file; sorry.

Maybe. It didn't click for me in all-small. Not that it matters; I don't use them anyway. It just doesn't feel like Champions. while I would like to, I can't be more specific than that: too many of the games I didn't care for use that kind of thing; none of the ones I do like _do_ use it. Probably why I never went for the newer rules options on Luck, either: roll your Luck dice and you have that many pips to influence die rolls, etc-- not my thing, at least not for this game. Just make it one of those stretchy book covers, because I promise there are at least six possibly opinions about which books to re-wrap.

Nope. He capitalized it. You celebrate by going to dinner with Viola.

Not much to tell, really. His last name was Davien, and-- sorry; I'm not the type to just throw away someone else's privacy without consent-- his first name was almost the same (yeah; the weird started with his parents, apparently). We already had a player with the same first name, and half is friends called him "Davien" anyway, so that's how that came about. He was just your standard power-gamer, rules rapist, combat-monster, yell-at-the-GM, hold-himself-hostage-when-things-didn't-go-his-way game-wrecking jackass we've all known at one time or another. He was the player for whom we coined the phrase "The Klingon Butt Hook Maneuver" (I can't remember who put it out, but that first version of Starfleet Battles-- the one that came in the baggies? We were totally about that game for _years_ if we weren't roleplaying) for his tendency to be able to quote strange and exotic arcana from all kinds of sources and had a nasty habit of trying to force everyone to accept that ideas and suggestions in Space Gamer and Dragon Magazine were absolute handed-down-from-God rules and were totally valid and that's the impression he had been working under from the start of the game (no matter what game, and no matter how many times he was told up-front "these are the rules we're using; here are the house rules we are supplementing with). Another of his favorites was to quote and bemoan that what he just did was rules-legal (any game. Seriously: _any_ game) because of the new supplement that he just picked up and oh, damn! I forgot to bring it with me. But trust me; this is how it works. I'll bring it next time. Of course, that's only when it benefitted Davien. He also had a "game he had been working on for a couple of years." An action game he was just trying to work the kinks out of. Out of courtesy (you know: before we got to know him), we all expressed interest in maybe reading it and helping him play test it, etc. When we finally saw it (I don't know-- maybe after two years of hearing about this tweak and that change, etc)-- we gamed at his house one night (actually, the _only_ time we played at his house, ever, now that I think about it) and there was a battered and beyond-well-thumbed spiral notebook on his game shelf that caught Jim's attention. "What's that? Character workbook? Off-table playbook? (that's what we called what would eventually come to be called "blue booking:" Off-table play)" Oh, that's just that game I've been writing. I've been testing it out with my other group. (We knew he did have another group; they were younger than us by four or five years, but we were young enough that four or five years mattered, you know?). Without thinking-- and without trying to be rude-- Jim grabbed it up and started reading it. At first, Davien was _frantic_ about it, but Jim said nothing; he just kept calmly reading it, nodding, making sure to stay in the neutral/positive reaction range (later he told us that this was so that he could keep reading it, because he couldn't believe what he was reading. Understand that at the time, Jim, myself, and one of the Stevens were working on a game ourselves for a property we really liked. Eventually we gave up and ran it on Champions legs because-- well, why not? Anyway-- back to the story). Jim continued to read while Davien, now swollen with pride and gushing about all the work he put into it, and how hard the system had been to come up with, and figuring out how to scale damage realistically, etc, etc-- just everything designing a game means, really-- and how he was having to go it alone, but he already had two publishers interested in it, but he was going to have to turn them down if they couldn't get a better offer....... Anyway, his action game? It was a hand-copied (in pencil, no less) rules book of Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes. Yep. Evidently he had no idea that all seven of us (we always had a group of eight, which is how Davien managed to stay so long: we just had the habit of eight people) owned it, and were quite familiar with it, having played it extensively. Jim knew it _cold_, and could quote it chapter and verse. (He could do the same with Champions and D&D back then, too, but to be fair, there was a Hell of a lot _less_ of both of those back then ) That's just the kind of guy he was. He fit in with us like bleach on waffles.

There was a thread-- was it the 4e incarnation of this board? Was it the old Red October?--- anyway, there was a thread people were posting their worst player cock-ups, and Doc's commentary on TPK reminded me of one of my favorites from my own tables. Short version: Sci-Fi. Space Opera-ish. Players all on the run, trying to make it to an NPC who can get them off the station. As the sneak through the catacombs (station is on alert; security is hunting them), the luck up and see the back of a guard ahead, standing in an intersection, looking three different ways in turn (he came from the same direction the players did, and assumes that the corridor behind him has thus been "secured.") Instantly Player 1pulls the other two close to him and activates his force field belt and prepares to back away. Simultaneously Player 2 "My blaster is already out; I fire it!" Okay. You all take 3d6 Killing. "What? Joey's got his forcefield up!" "It clearly didn't help." (other players are super p.o.ed, and giving him grief). "Well did I hit him?" (totally not comprehending what he's now being told for the fourth time). No; Harley; you didn't hit him. You _couldn't_ have hit; you didn't do enough enough damage to even penetrate the survival field! "Wha-- Okay, fine! I chuck the incendiary grenade at him!" Oh yeah. TPK......

I'm way ahead of the curve on that also: what the hell is haps?

Not enough riff-raff, apparently.

Well there's twenty five million reasons I'm gakd I don't live there.

I have, and it's not unenjoyable-- it's reminiscent of some of the 80s prime-time stuff, in its scripting, really-- but (and I realize it was done primarily to institute dialogue and to water-down the idea that on all the earth there was at least _one_ person so knowledgeable) I found the need for multiple "Librarians" to kind of weaken the premise; the idea lost something. Still good fun, but not as, if you catch my meaning there. I just stumbled across it shortly before posting it here. I watched a few other bits of hers, and laughed myself to tears. She's quite talented.

Bushido, yes. (Never played it, but I remember it.) Had a friend who bought it and never played it, either. I read his copy. C&S, however, rings no bells.

Don't sweat it. I'm halfway teasing you. I liked the game for a bit, and jerks are jerks no matter where you're doing it. (note my frequent call outs to Davien, a player from '79 to '84, when we just couldn't take him anymore and booted him out)

The Librarian. Because I try to rewatch it every couple of years. Because it's fun. Simple, good, clean fun. Sometimes I just need that.