tcpip | May Day, Games and Time Travelling!

ser_pounce visited today, a pair that we haven't seen since for more than a year. They're part of a semi-regular planned group (we hope) of Saturday attendees to our abode at Willsmere estate. Being May Day, we had a round of the Avalon Hill boardgame Class Struggle, which could really do of a re-write more in the game-system, but also perhaps its politics. Early game session of Eon's Quirks was significantly more enjoyable.

On a related note on Friday my review of Trail of Cthulhu was published on RPG.net after several fun sessions. Reviews of Torg and Powers & Perils are planned. Thursday was our regular Dragon Age game which will be replaced with Mouse Guard in about a month or so. This Sunday will be a continuation of my RuneQuest Prax game which has had some recent significant events.

Last Sunday our co-GMs for the GURPS Krononauts game resolved a lot of the well-known paradoxes of time-travel (grandfather paradox, free lunch paradox). With a little bit of dealing we've adopted a policy of object independence of items (including people) that have time-travelled, an observer effect for things that have not (very Phillip K. Dick), and the future not being affecting the present (because that would be too hard in actual play).

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I'm very curious to know how your Mouse Guard game ends up.

I admit am having a few conflicting thoughts about what sort of story to use. It'll probably end up being Fall/Winter because most of the players aren't too familiar with the story. But I did have something else in the back of mind....

Mouse Guard 'Tomb of Horrors' clearly would be nuts. :)

BTW, I've been showing off that picture of your Arkham Asylum game to various people. They have been universally scared and impressed!

Class Struggle looks like it was inspired both by RAT RACE (not the card game) and RED SQUARE, both of which I used to own.

If anything it would have been the other way around; Red Square was from the 80s, Class Struggle from the 70s. I can imagine Red Square being written as a response to Class Struggle.

The politics was a little over-the-top; "I haven't seen this much moralising since Church" was

hathhalla's comment, and the mechanics led to a very quick game (2d6 move, doubles roll again and looped, 84 squares).

It was a little like Monopoly; but Monopoly has a subtle brilliance about it - it was originally an education tool which demonstrated the power of landlords - but without the sledgehammer approach of Class Struggle.

I would really like to re-write CS, it's a great concept and has been recognised as a classic for that reason. Fixing the politics and the game system however are both requisite. Interestingly, it seems the author is still around..

I bought the book for Mouse Guard, but haven't gotten over the laziness threshold to actually run a game. Looks good though.

There's space around our table if you're interested...

Gee, i learn new things every day. Grandfather paradox?

*nods* As linked, one of many paradoxes that come within the bounds of potential backwards movement in time; the theory of time dilation with proof positive through the Hafele–Keating experiment.

What I find fascinating about this is while were a bunch of guys who are primarily using it as an excuse to do short narrative explorations of past-times (e.g., the fall of the Aztecs, late WWII Prussia, the French philosophes etc) there is a number of physicists who have devoted a significant amount of research time to the subject - such as Igor Novikov, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Matt Viser etc.

This world of cosmological physics is absolutely fascinating - the manipulation of time as a 'thing' - and a far cry from those in the past who argued that it is 'mere' temporal space or a universal mental construct.

It could have a practical application, that is if mankind ever finds a way to bend and curve time as has become evident that space could be bent and curved (however huge quantities of energy and/or mass are required to do that).

Well, I can hardly say we're applying a hard-sf set of rules to those issues, rather applying a set of consistent ground-rules for narrative purposes that do not contradict existing theory. It's not like a Jasper Fforde novel - he relishes in the contradictions.

In that review you mentioned Masks of Nyarlathotep! That was one of the most epic, and most fun, campaigns in which I have ever participated. At one point my skeleton had jumped out of my body and I was being carried around as a bag of flesh in a basket.

This is what happens when you start off with 50% in Arabic.

That's pretty cinematic, but still within the Cthulhu 'grim horror' style.

I've played a couple of sessions of Masks, but nowhere near to completion.

My group has always taken Cthulhu a little more upbeat than most, I'll admit. Not to say it didn't lack the horror but I think truly epic Cthulhu games (IMO), need the rules concerning magic and sanity (less so sanity) loosened just a tad - less so sanity - and you have to bypass the crazy insta-death moments. POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT - I'm not sure it was in Masks, but there was one book that had a room with various tiles on it with no information regarding their significance whatsoever, but if you stepped on the wrong one you basically died instantly.

You ever play the PC/Console game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth? It's worth a rent only because they get the atmosphere and tension right, and some of the scenes are really white knuckle (I recall one early on when you're running from people in a hotel room and have to lock doors behind you, just to have them bash through it). I stopped playing it a few hours in because it started to really suffer from poor design and there were far too many times when you died and had to do the whole 20 minute scene all over, which is a damn shame because you could just tell there were so many good ideas packed in there. Not to mention that when it was flowing I had a room full of gasping and squealing people enthralled with the goings-on on the screen.

I would have liked to have actually seen an elder god, even if it was "only" Dagon, but c'est la vie. If you have more patience than I you might get more out of it. Every once in a while I think about renting it but I just can't bring myself to do it again; it was far too frustrating.

I'm not sure it was in Masks, but there was one book that had a room with various tiles on it with no information regarding their significance whatsoever, but if you stepped on the wrong one you basically died instantly.

Sounds like Tomb of Horrors, the notorious "killer dungeon" for AD&D. I gave it a fairly negative review once.

You ever play the PC/Console game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth? It's worth a rent only because they get the atmosphere and tension right, and some of the scenes are really white knuckle

Alas no. I'm not a big PC/console game player, although I keep on thinking I should rewrite World of Warcraft or similar. I could actually do that...

May Day, Games and Time Travelling!

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