Acme

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Hood, an archery Weaponmaster, discovers a hostage while reconnoitering the scene of battle. The hostage is connected to a bomb which prevents moving him. Hood rejoins the group and calls out:

[heavy Cockney accent] "Anyone know anythin' about bombs? There's a bloke in there wired for sound - that sound bein' 'Bang!'"

The GM actually used the quote on his e-mails for about a week.

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

So basically' date=' elf/dwarf/orc is often a staple of fantasy games, but we should be creative in our approach to them and try to stay away from the stereotypes. [/quote']

 

The danger here is not to go too far the other way. Elves, Dwarves, etc. became popular because of these stereotypes. Often in games people say "not another surly Dwarf" or, "I don't want to play another Fireball-slinging Wizard" with the result that NOBODY plays them. It is occasionally acceptable to play one of the classic Fantasy tropes. IMHO the danger in Fantasy games is that the exceptions become cliche. (Drizzt was 'cool' because nobody had ever done it before, now everybody is, which makes it annoying...)

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

if you don't make them fully-conceived and thought-out peoples' date=' you run the risk of them coming off as shallow and one-dimensional ("they're all hot-headed, honor-obsessed warriors!") or, if they're not clearly defined at all, they might come off as fuzzy and vague and incomprehensible.[/quote']

 

A good friend (and still my favourite GM) ran several games in what started as a basic Tolkien/DnD setting, but added several NPC races for 'flavour.' They all started off as one-dimensional (for example; "sentient golems", or "like troll dolls, but halfling-sized, not cute and with prehensile hair") but developed backgrounds during gameplay. They could be player characters, but anyone wanting to play one had to work with the GM to develop culture, attitudes etc. This way, popular races became richer and evolved with the world, and unpopular races were reduced to "walk-ons" if at all.

 

(The golems became an ancient dying race trying to recreate the magics that made them since they cannot reproduce, and the trolls became a mischievous woodland faerie folk, for example)

 

Those who still wanted to play 'Classic' races could do so, with all the premade background that implied, or they could add to the game world mythos with something new. (Elves and Humans became very rare in this world indeed...)

Re: CthulhuTech?

Mecha is, to me, the ultimate empowerment fantasy --coming fairly close to solipsism. Cthulhu, on the other hand, is the ultimate disempowerment nightmare. Fantasies and nightmares do not go together. If Cthulhu were ever to show up in real life, I would love to see him pasted by a giant mecha.

But that is so not the point of the Mythos.

Having played CoC and Cthulhu Now, the impression I got was that the tech was irrelevant to the adversaries you fought. Modern weapons make a bigger boom, but the monsters are still scary. Space Horror is a subgenre where even with shiny toys, there are still things out there which can kill you (or worse). I refer to movies such as the Aliens series, Starship Troopers or even (shudder) Jason X. I think a CthulhuTech campaign could work with mecha. Hitting a Great Old One with a railgun would hurt/annoy it, but that's about it.