Plutonian Musings

Well, two posts a year?  Does that count?

Been reading lots of rules.  I’m figuring out I am having trouble separating the settings from the rules.  Silly, that.  Story first.  Rules second, subservient to story.

I’ve been reading Alternity StarDrive setting novels, specifically Diane Duane’s “Harbinger” trilogy.  They are very well written.  Of course, they invoke a desire to play Alternity (their purpose!).

Playing some Fate (e.g., Mindjammer) would be good for removing the desire to find the story in the rules, since those rules force one to think in terms of story.

I continue to watch the glacial pace of Traveller 5 rewrite/errata process.  How did that thing ever get published in that state?  There’s a brilliant game in there somewhere.  Sad.

The folks at The Design Mechanism (Runequest 6th Ed) have their act together.  Lovely set of rules.  Could easily be used to run any D100 setting with a little work, or ANY setting with varying degrees of work.  Still want to create RuneQuest 6 setting rules for Tekumel.  Pipe dream, most likely.

I’m glad to see The Tekumel Foundation has released “Man of Gold” as an e-book.  There are also hints that Barker’s work will eventually see PoD (Print on Demand) availability.

Over the last year I’ve bought RPG material for Tékumel, Pathfinder, Runequest, Alternity, Hawkmoon, Corum, Stormbringer/Elric, Traveller, Ars Magica, The Dying Earth, Mindjammer, Spirit of the Century, Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Wraith Recon, Nephilim, Thousand Suns, Shadow Sword & Spell, Clockwork & Chivalry, Tales from Future Earth, Basic Role Playing, Call of Cthulhu, Deus Vult, HeroQuest 2, etc., etc., etc. I’ve been playing Pathfinder and the D20 system is getting on my nerves. So, the glut of different games and variety of rules systems. I flit between them, reading, reading, reading, but not settling, tossed this way and that by fluctuating setting desires.

At last, it dawns on me. I’m immersed in rules in my search for story. Won’t find it there! Ideas, perhaps, but not the story. My Pathfinder play is not feeding that hunger. First, we are playing official adventures that are mostly poorly written and set in a huge context the digesting of which fills me with a sense that my time will be much better spent creating my own. Or, more likely, working with a much better setting like The Design Mechanism’s “Monster Island” sandbox or finally diving into Tékumel.

Thorn, it is the story that gives life to the rules. Rather, the rules give a handle on the story telling. Both.

I think I need to focus on a game system like Fate or HeroQuest with some material I have for those systems. Those rules push one toward the story telling. Being immersed in that for a while would kickstart my imagination. That will make shifting to another “crunchier” system (e.g., RuneQuest 6, Béthorm) easier.

Just registered thornplutonius.com for this WordPress blog.  It will mostly be about Roll Playing Game systems and play.