Headspace

It has been busy.

First of all, there’s big things happening in the Finnish scene as we’re getting a new magazine. Roolipelaaja is a commercial project and I personally have high hopes considering it, maybe finally we get something like the good auld Arcane, a UK-RPG-magazine of good editorial quality, that I’ve been missing for quite a while. It looks promising as the mag is headed by none other than Mikki who is the best possible choise for editor I can think of. Of other people involved at least Merten who I know also happens to have what I consider the right approach both in writing and thought when it comes to RPGs.

Fading Suns forums are down… unpleasant as there for a change were a couple of rather inspiring threads going on. Ok, mainly the movie casting thing as the latest thread on Decadoses seems to have died already. Usually I tend to look at the known worlds rather differently than others, although there are couple of people to whom it would be great run some Dugiverse. Lux is the first that comes to mind and some Germans might get my Decadoses pretty well too.

Dugiverse of Fading Suns is doing rather well too. Mainly because I’ve been playing a lot and as I whip the ideas up while playing this activity does good to the gaming world. M already blogged that we’ve returned to Jez, my favourite campaign. Jez started out as an attempt to get M to believe that playing military characters might be fun. As a way of doing this we started the game with character aged fifteen entering an Officer Candidate School, North of Ottokar’s Boon. A Decados world where any householder level duties (administration, civil services, Corps Diplomatique, Commissions in armed services) pretty much required attending such an institution. Of course it didn’t work out as I planned and after we were through playing the five years of student life, the character was marked and destined for Jakovian agency and was promptly shipped to Severus. Dugiverse Agency is much more structured than the one outlined in the canon material so the thing works so, that people accepted to become intelligence officers study in Jakovian academies on various programmes. Jez spent five years in Jakovgrad due to having being picked out as having potential of becoming a sort of an heir to a very prominent magistrate, Boyar Grigori (Sort of a Mr.Smith name in Decados Hegemony of Dugiverse) aka Mirrorman. Magistrates operate outside the normal structures of the agency as trouble shooters that answer directly to the agency’s head, so it was quite natural for Jez to be required to learn a lot and then they decided that she had aptitude for the Art of Agony…

Through various phases and adventures Jezebel has become sort of a Monster PC of epic proportions. Her life we have played out for a worth of some twenty odd years or a bit more and she is still growing and developing. For a time motherhood suited her, she is delving deep in ancient mysteries, empire spanning cloak and dagger games and of course personal affairs. Most rewarding. Jez as a game and character seems to inspire me more than any of the other games we’ve done and these others have been good as well. Jez’s current multi-layered schemes and mysteries seems to keep us rather well entertained.

Lately we’ve taken an other try on Thana. There’s a new world shaping up, new perspective new kind of views on the cultures already there. Callista is surely a game that we will be returning to. Major NPC’s include an Ex-Sword of Lextiys Decados Baroness, a cabal of psychic Imperial Eye spec.ops, Migtht lords, a charming Mantis leagues assassin and so forth. The interpersonal relationships are very intresting and there is potential for much gaming entertainment in them.

Last weekend we also played our current FS-Group-Campaign. About a year back, after considerable effort on Anni’s part I gave in and decided to give a try to a group thingy. Besides this all of our games have been 1 on 1, but now we accepted somebody new. The setting started as a white castle under green roofs hosting a number of very gifted (cough psi) young people being raised to take their part as Decados nobles. Anni’s character started there, a Sixteen year old, too smart for her own good, quite gifted and blessed with the best friend a girl good wish for, a super-psi-cannon-geek with wit and a good sense of humor. Upbringing might be harsh, but so it usually is with the Decados noble youth as anyone who had read her Marius the Mantis Knight novels would know.

Same time Dariya Decados, a very capable young woman a knight some would say was busy not only in her duties towards her liege a certain baron, but in trying to find out what an earth had happened to her disowned sister (Disowned after having married a Juandaastas noble-obun pair as their concubine) and their little baby girl all assumed dead in an attack to their home and fire that ensued. She had searched a lot, gotten disappointed in the her late sister’s family by “marriage”, contacted all sorts of seedy elements, when she finally found out that the girl had not died, but was held by a certain boyar Ivanoff in a white castle under the green roofs for light knows what hideous purpose. Dariya rushed to the site, schemed her way in as a new fencing instructor for the youths and found out that things were actually worse than she had thought. Not that she would have understood the technosophical breeding program she witnessed or truly understood the Jakovian/genetech operations’s 101 fun and gruesome things to do with young psychers, but she knew that the girl would have to be rescued and from here the game kicked in.

It has been a treat to play/watch the interpersonal relations of these two young women, beutifully potrayed by M and Anni. The game was a running game for a long time, but it has reshaped itself over and over again. It has texture of its own in the growth and seeking of the ladies. Lara’s (Anni’s character) coming to terms with what she is, what the world for real is like and how it receives her and Dasha’s (M) growing, getting to actually know her house and proceeding on her road of chivalry. Their relationships with each other as well as the menagerie of NPCs thrown at their path.

Last sunday’s game introduced a new location, new schemes and new npcs tha played out great. The lame devil of Chobor Chemsky, proved an intresting boyar reinforcing Dasha’s position and selfimage of a knight. Micah, who has been a screaming dervish and now Lara’s “Yoda” was fun play, meek seeming but absolute. There’s certain rustic dark jedi appeal there. Stenka…

My favourite things that I was able to throw at them were Micah and Stenka Razin’s spurs at Dasha. You see, Dasha was knighted to her own astonishment and Lara’s delight, but never received the tokens. Now she got them from the new “liege”. Stenka Razin, Kossack captain knighted as a few surviving heroes of the Siege of Jericho had used them, now they’re Dasha’s and she was glowing.

Both wrote about the game in their blogs, feel free to check them out
This didn’t turn out as coherent as I had hoped for, but more later. As a last item I found great image material for gaming . Looks like some npcs are finally getting faces.