draft prospectus

[whswhs]

Just FYI, I've come up with a sixth proposal: Blows against the Empire, which I'm listing as "martial arts fantasy." It's going to be set during the rise of the Qin to rule of China; player characters will be xia ("knights"), masters of elemental powers, and practitioners of advanced Taoist science and technology leading the resistance. This will be a possible test campaign for GURPS Chinese Elemental Powers, among other things.

In a way, this would be sort of a midpoint between Tapestry (with its fantasy and spirit-based magic) and World Class (with its superheroic adventurers with multiple origins).

Bill Stoddard

[Grouchy Chris]

Zero does not mean I'd be unwilling to play the game. It just means I don't want to play it as much as something else.

0 Eloi.

I'd be interested in playing Transhuman Space, but this setup just doesn't grab me.

1 Fronteira

I've never done a noir campaign, and I'm not sure it's my thing.

2 Shadowlands

This sounds more interesting than a typical post-apocalyptic game because while one thing is ending, something new is taking root.

2 Tapestry

This one sounds like Star Trek in a fantasy setting. Fun.

1 World Class

The first long-term campaign I played in was Villains & Vigilantes, and I've always wanted to get back into a Supers game. But as with Eloi, I'm less inclined to games where the PCs start out at a high level of power.

4 Blows against the Empire

I'm glad I waited until now to weigh in, because this idea really works for me. Resistance against the Empire, hurrah!

I haven't played any of the systems mentioned except GURPS, but I don't mind learning new rules, so that doesn't move me one way or another.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Just FYI, I've come up with a sixth proposal: Blows against the Empire, which I'm listing as "martial arts fantasy." It's going to be set during the rise of the Qin to rule of China; player characters will be xia ("knights"), masters of elemental powers, and practitioners of advanced Taoist science and technology leading the resistance. This will be a possible test campaign for GURPS Chinese Elemental Powers, among other things.

In a way, this would be sort of a midpoint between Tapestry (with its fantasy and spirit-based magic) and World Class (with its superheroic adventurers with multiple origins).

That sounds interesting. I've been interested in the First Emperor every since I read your writeup of him in GURPS Who's Who, and he's an important factor in the Far Asian part of my Ärth settig, having gone Lich and ruled with an iron banhammer ("I don't understand X, therefore I'll best declare X illegal on punishment of death!") for over a thousand years.

I haven't done anyting with him, or with Far Asia, though.

[whswhs]

At this point I'm up to eight responses. Things may change when the rest come in (there are at least two more I know are on the way), but at this point, there are two combinations that look workable: either Blows against the Empire and Eloi, or World Class and Tapestry.

Blows against the Empire and World Class (especially the latter) are very popular—but I can't really run them together; the same people like both of them best! Blows against the Empire has a few people who rate it at 0 or 1, and all of them rate Eloi at 2 or better; World Class has a few people who rate it at 1 or 2, and all of them rate Tapestry at 2 or better. In each case, if I pick anything else for the second feature, there will be someone who gets left out. I may end up doing that (I'll have to, if everyone submits a prospectus!), but with only eight responses I'm not looking at that option.

But, as I say, things may change.

Shadowlands is by far the least liked option. I kind of regret that. But I think whichever campaigns I pick to run will leave me with regrets for the ones that don't take off.

Bill Stoddard

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Shadowlands is by far the least liked option. I kind of regret that. But I think whichever campaigns I pick to run will leave me with regrets for the ones that don't take off.

I'd have imagined you experience such regrets every time. Or do you expect they'll be much stronger this time?

I'm rooting for the one with the First Emperor, because if you GM that, it'll be potentially useful to me in the long term, as explained earlier.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I'd have imagined you experience such regrets every time. Or do you expect they'll be much stronger this time?

I'm rooting for the one with the First Emperor, because if you GM that, it'll be potentially useful to me in the long term, as explained earlier.

No, my regrets from some previous cycles are still with me.

When GURPS Thaumatology: Chinese Elemental Powers comes out, it may have things you can use, at least if you're looking for game mechanics. It won't have campaign background, though.

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

I've now received prospectuses from fourteen of my fifteen possible players. At this point it looks as if Blows against the Empire, Tapestry, and World Class are the three proposals that a lot of people like; few people like Shadowlands, and even fewer like Eloi or Fronteira. So I'll likely be running two of the first three. Blows against the Empire and World Class have a lot of overlap, and nearly all those who like both prefer World Class, which makes Blows the least likely of the three to emerge.

Even though I've found over years that statistical analysis with this small a dataset is really no improvement over eyeballing, I like to play with statistics. And this time I've spotted what looks like a possibly meaningful pattern. If I compute the correlation coefficients of the campaigns pairwise, it looks as if the pairs that have a high negative correlation coefficient are relatively likely to make good campaigns to run together. This is actually kind of logical: If a high score on A predicts a low score on B, and vice versa, then it's easy to split players between them. If the same people have high scores on A and B, then it will be hard to decide which to assign them to, and people who don't like either will be out in the cold. So a high positive correlation coefficient means that two campaigns exclude each other. A zero correlation suggests a situation in between these two cases.

In any case, I've given the last three holdouts a deadline, and two of them responded immediately; when I hear from the third I'll have to make the hard decisions. Between two and four players will be sitting out the next cycle, and I need to figure which ones those are. Or I need to run three campaigns again—and I think that that's a bit heavy a load if I want to do my best GMing.

Bill Stoddard

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

It's from the mid-90s. Pacino and De Niro are both in it. It's not what I'd call an 'action movie', but rather a drama with a lot of action.
If you have Netflix and some time to kill, I recommend it.

+1. Pacino and DeNiro in a scene together for the first time despite appearing separately in Godfather II, plus great performances from Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, and Danny Trejo and one semi-iconic action sequence with decent tactics about 2/3 through despite a primary focus on drama.