And now for more...

Stealthy/Pious Fun Facts!

Two search strings which yielded Stealthy/Pious in the top 10 results:

goliath cleric (google)

sexual dance (msn)


If you think that's weird, you should be reading this blog much more often.

WEIRD.

Not really, but whatever.
Booth has started in real amounts now, guaranteeing that I can be screwing and drilling and nailing to my heart's content for the next month or so.
I learned something really cool: Despite my livejournal account being gone, the cookies aren't, so I still have access to all of my "friends" private or semi-private entries. I think only one person has said something about me thinking I couldn't read it, but I'm fairly unsurprised. Just a cool find to make everyone paranoid again.
And, buggy may actually work! Pushing starts Saturday. Woo...
Infiltration
Cool stuff. Not only extremely CMU, but could be useful for running a modern (read: cyberpunk) RPG as well. Saw the review on RPGnet, kind of want to get the book now.

Today is a day, like many other days

I had a very weird idea this morning while walking to calc about the Dead Kennedys writing a song about tort reform. I looked up tort reform on Wikipedia about 10 minutes ago...writing a punk song about it would be ODD.
Odd is a good word. Greeksing is over (*tear*), but booth is starting up. Work requires so much more focus, and gaming is a luxury. I'm missing another week due to Puzzlestorm and Pledge Party...I'm just glad I stopped off at a good intermission point.
Speaking of which...PLEDGE PARTY! Frank, our singular pledge, is throwing his pledge party on Saturday and it will be awesome. Any of you CMU students who read this, it starts at ten on Saturday, it is disco-themed, and you should all show up.

Today has been a day for random dancing. It was very warm today. Which was nice. Those statements aren't even realy connected. Weird.

Speaking of random....
\m/ >o< \m/
METAL! Metal...METAL!!! metal...METAL!!!!!!
Someone gets that.

There was a time when you were so young and walked in their way.
They made you feel they loved you all-seeing they say.
You're going wrong if their game you don't play
And that the song I sing will leave you astray.

Unfeeling, feel lonely rejection,
unknowing, know you're going wrong.
And they can't see that we're just trying to be,
and not what we seem,
and even now believe that it's not real and only a dream.

Just so you know I'm alive

Best explanation of the right-hand rule ever:
"It's the Physics gang symbol."

More next week...too much is going on this week for either gaming or updating blogs that much.

No answer, no path, just what you know

Time Of Your Song - Matisyahu
The world is moving to the song I hear,
Who’s that singing, wind is rushing in my ear,
Mind gushing memories almost lost everything,
Felony and fellows running in my dream,
We were in the van where the hits were driving,
Saw myself In the highlands at age 13
And im asking questions to the present day me,
Moving backwards down the hill see we were posting.

[Chorus]
Moonlight illuminate my night and my days sunray make the people say
Had a vision somethings missing so they're screaming out loud
Keep my feet on ground and my head in the clouds.
I'm the arrow, you're my bow, shoot me forth and I will go
And I know and I go and I go get up and go
Make me feel its for real tell me what you know.

I don’t mean to glorify,
Ate the apple of the tree and tried to lie,
In the garden ill remember
That’s when I started to sing
I said death brings life into uncertain things,
Classroom's not for me
Sun setting autumn breeze
Sound is moving like a chorus
Keep hearing that melody,
Check the radio but theres nothing playing,
Check the radio again but theres nothing playing.

[Chorus]

Rewind…

Dub-wise!

Swing low, sweet chariot of flames
Change my name, No!
It Was always the same,
Till if only what you find when you climb,
Check the radio but of all that shines theres no time,
My life is making your mind work in overtime,
But along the line youll have to pay for the crime.
Slow it down You turbo too soon,
Vroom vroom then you want to blast off unto the moon,
But you might get trapped in a temple of doom,
You might get trapped in a temple of doom.


[Chorus]

Back in the Burg

I have returned to good old PA, and it is nice. This week is insane, schedule-wise, which doesn't surprise me. Playing on Saturday may or may not happen, I'm unsure. In the meanwhile, our rehearsals have been in costume, which has been VERY distracting. In a good way. Uh...anyway, yeah. I also found out I'm psychic. Either that, or I may have actually learned to read people. Or, I'm an evil, evil person, dedicated to ruining people's lives. Uh, probably not the third one. Yeah.

Assassin's Quest: History

In a fit of boredom, I've written up a history for my grandiose space opera world, Assassin's Quest. My next step will be a starmap, and then, if there's interest, I may write some technical stuff up, and prep it for a run in GURPS. Please comment with thoughts and suggestions!

The world of Assassin’s Quest is a galaxy in the far-flung future. The Earth’s government was forced to convene on the mounting problem of overpopulation as the world’s population approached nearly twenty billion, and even stacked hydroponics farming could not adequately feed everyone. Point-warp drive systems allowed several agencies to send colony starships out to several systems relatively close to Sol, and have burgeoning colonies within 15 years of the program’s initiation. The agencies, two government bureaus which controlled the bureaucratic issues of the States of Earth, fought bitterly over how funding should be distributed, even as they sent out more ships and started more colonies. The more conservative and pro-business Corporate Interests bureau was more interested in having colonies serve Earth’s interests in future expansions, and investigate resource mining that was previously unavailable to the terrestrial humans. Meanwhile, the Security Council was more interested in resolving infrastructure and population problems through more stringent controls of both the colonies and the fairly libertarian United Nations of Earth. Both organizations and their respective political contingents got their common names from their detractors. Liberals claimed the Corporate Interests Bureau was trying to establish a “Corporate Dynasty” from Earth, and got snidely called the “Earth Royalists”. Meanwhile, the ruling libertarians criticized the Security Council’s desire to expand government and already bloated bureaucracy, and were even more meanly and sarcastically titled “The Imperium”. The fight between the two culminated in the Security Council implementing emergency powers in the UNE and having the Imperium title stick permanently as they seized power. The Royalists, also stuck with their name, fled to the planet of Centauri Deuteron in the nearby Alpha Centauri system. The Imperium sent delegates to 5 different systems, providing the groundwork for the Terran Imperium, as the empire is currently known. Only a year after the first coup, the Imperium was ousted from Earth by a libertarian group called the Confederation of Earth Governments, a group of legislative bodies which existed on Earth previous to the UNE coup a year previous. They held the Sol system alone; while the Royalists followed the Imperium’s lead and sent delegates and governors to 4 systems outside of Alpha Centauri.

The Confederation promised business as usual on Earth, and followed through by continuing to send colony starships to all of the systems originally on the UNE’s seed list. By the end of the seeding process, some twenty years later, there were ten systems under the control of the Imperium and the Royalists, and some thirty systems that, though linked with Earth, had no formal alignment with anyone. Within this time, scientists within all organizations had come up with important scientific advances, namely EKE (electromagnetic kinetic energy) weapons, laser weapons, and plasma arc projection, used for both weapons and for manipulating atmospheric phenomena for communication purposes. With space borne weapons now a reality, spacecraft development turned away from starships and medium research craft to starfighters and corvettes, small crewed craft which could carry weapons systems to enemy territory and attack both space borne and planet borne infrastructure. The economy took a major turn at this point. Although the development of space borne weapons was very convenient, this point some forty years after colonization had started was a turning point because the colonies were finally large enough to support an economy beyond that of mere survival. The larger colonies in Imperial and Royalist territories started building spacecraft, and suddenly private ownership was possible. For the next twenty years, trading across system borders was the backbone of the interstellar economy, allowing the unaligned colonies, some only fifteen years old, to grow much more rapidly than the first colonies had.

Some seventy years after the first coup, there were hundreds of cities across hundreds of planets in many solar systems. The technology existed to mine asteroids, gather planetary gases from gas giants, and mine resources at an unprecedented rate. Despite Earth still having a steady population of ten billion, many of the planets maintained a population of no more than ten million people, especially nonaligned ones. The attacks on trade vessels and even on planetary defenses between the Royalists and the Imperium had increased, and even the Earth Confederation had expanded and begun to field military vessels, something unprecedented even thirty years ago.

The economy could not yet support a corporate structure, since natural resources were too valuable to sell for profit. However, the services of transport, security, and ship engineering were very valuable, and guilds arose to control the pricing and availability of the services, as well as educating more people to perform them. One of these guilds was the Brotherhood of Arms, a controversial non-aligned mercenary guild that provided soldiers to defend colonies against pirates, and against the raids of the two stellar empires. Two exceptionally skilled mercenaries, only known by their call signs of Shade and Hunter, immortalized themselves in a move that forever changed the structure of the galaxy.

Neither Shade nor Hunter agreed with the politics of the current three entities, thinking them all too bureaucratic and greedy to control entire solar systems. The two men orchestrated a coup on the planet they were living on, calling on the members of three major guilds to back them up. Despite the agendas of the administrative organizations behind these guilds, most members did come out, and the mercenaries of the Brotherhood of Arms ousted their administrators, replacing them with sympathizers of the coup. The coup was completed after Shade and Hunter stole a Royalist Colony Starship, taking two thousand guild members to a previously uninhabited solar system, and seeding the capital of their new empire. They called the new empire Cidea, a modification of the Greek word for death. Hunter took on the name of Cidus, and became the administrative leader of the now two-system government. Despite protests from the other organizations, Cidea stockpiled military equipment from the guilds that supported them, and became a force to be reckoned with in only six months. By the time the year was out, the Cideans had seeded another system, and spurred further exploration from the other governments. Cidus became the civil administrator, voluntarily resigning to a consultant position after five years. Shade spent the rest of his life as either a supreme commander of the Cidean military, or a field consultant. He did not reveal his true name, Soren Vallner, until his retirement at age 75.

The new colonization spurred by the Cidean coup reached out to several new systems, bringing the total colonized to around 50, very close to the current size of the Terran Domain. The outreach brought the Confederation and the Cideans into contact with sentient extraterrestrial life, something they had abandoned the possibility of after colonizing so many planets. The Mu’udarans, as they were known in Terran English, bore a surprising resemblance to the “grays” of popular fiction, and did indeed admit to visiting Earth many hundreds of years previous. The Mu’udarans welcomed involvement with the Terrans, on the condition that they would not be pulled into any armed conflict between Terran entities. This agreement spurred the Cideans and the Confederation to sign a peace accord, the first one in the history of Terran galactic colonization. The Mu’udarans did warn of another race that was significantly less peaceful: The Simhara.

The Mu’udarans were masters of adaptive technology, and had even developed their technology to react to pheromonal changes in their body chemistry (that is, changes detectable in the air). This technology emulated the human phenomena of psionicism, and allowed Terrans who were exposed to the technology to perfect biofeedback to a nearly psionic level. Unfortunately, the Simhara were exposed to biofeedback technology as well. While the Mu’udarans were pseudohumanoid bipedal creatures of maybe four feet tall, the Simhara measured nearly seven feet tall, had two arm-like manipulators bristling with double-jointed feelers, and four double-jointed legs. Their technology was unique and frightening. Simher, the Simhara’s home planet, had an atmosphere with large quantities of Radon, making the root genetic material of the Simhara highly dynamic, to adapt to the high levels of radioactivity. As a result, the Simhara could biomanipulate, creating buildings, vehicles, and other devices out of root biological material from native plants, animals, and fungi. Using a cybernetic implant known to Terrans as a floodgate, the Simhara can interface with any of their bioform devices without risking crippling or lethal genetic overflow. One of the exceptions is the feared “mindblade”, which, because of the preponderance of feelers and manipulators on the Simhara’s arms, is actually grown into the arm of the user, and can actually retract and deform when not being used. The mindblade is a slice of conductive crystal which is formed within a bioformed fungus called fulveda. The formation and the fungus allow for an interface between the crystal and the user’s mind, making the user’s reflexes whilst using the blade nearly superhuman. Soren Vallner was thought to have trained himself to use a mindblade, but there is little proof any human has successfully done so.

At present, about one hundred years after the first coup, and thirty years after First Contact, the one major event in the galaxy is the discovery of the Destiny Road Wormhole three years ago. The Confederation and the Cideans have both sent colony starships to claimant systems, the Royalists and the Imperium left crippled by wars with each other, and a fairly recent war with the Cideans where the Royalists lost several systems to the hardened Cidean military. In light of the recent military expansion there has been much tension within the Cidean Empire, both internally, and with the backbone guilds that still support the empire. At age 93, Soren Vallner died of natural causes during the Cidean-Royalist war, stating in his will the disgust he shared at what Cidea had become. “We started out to kill bureaucracy”, he wrote, “but bureaucracy now rules us and we kill each other.” The tensions between all four Terran empires run high, and despite this, 20 out of the 60 Terran systems are still wholly unaligned, with an additional 10 either fought over or only partially aligned (that is, planets within are both empirically aligned and not). Of the thirty aligned systems, 10 belong to the Cideans, 8 to the Confederation, 7 to the Imperium, and 5 to the Royalists (the Royalists recently lost three systems to the Cideans in the last war). The militaristic views of the Cideans have hurt their relations with the Confederation, and the Imperium is eyeing the three frontier systems Cidea has to protect from Simhara raids as a good weakness to exploit in an invasion. Meanwhile, several engineer’s guilds have defected from the Cidean guild collective, and have relocated to unaligned systems.

Trade runs strong, and mercenaries are in high demand as the Four Empires are threatened both by the Simhara, and each other. Many men and women leave home to join guilds, some becoming the much-desired engineers, many fighting for their lives, their homelands, for a purpose. Outside of the wealthy imperial cities, the majority of the Terran race has to fight for a place and a purpose. Whether they fight the establishment, the alien threat, or each other, the worlds of the Four Empires are ripe for conflict, and filled with motivated people willing to start it.

Do mention timeline inconsistencies if you see them, I'll do my best to correct them.

Intermediary Tangency

Firstly.
I talked with my brother a bit about his gaming, which has been an utter failure to launch. On the other hand, I realized something: in the midst of all the power gaming and ridiculous goings-on of Cyberpunk 2020, there was something very important going on: I was having a shitload of fun, and so were my players...so much so that I went 4 or 5 sessions often forgetting to give out Improvement Points (CP2020 experience) and only Jay ever complained, because he was a munchkin. I knew that system. I rocked that system. I like GURPS, and I like running this campaign, but CP let me hang loose, and just have a ball sending people into clouds of red mist, throwing around weapons of such high caliber they were physically impossible, and having cyberpsychos brains melt to the tune of contaminated VR porn. Given the group I have now, and how well they've taken to a slight amount of railroading (I haven't exactly loosened the world enough to drop a plot), I think given enough wacky characters and a whole city to gallivant in, I could make something really fucking memorable. I'm considering a primer on a PBeM basis, maybe something bigger. I may send e-mail invites to my brother and my old group, and either find a forum, or make a giant PBeM out of it. Start Cyberpunk in tricity again, have three or four dudes fuming after Blackpool, a bunch more not clued in to the whole jazz, and maybe some new dudes just because. If someone knows a forum that hosts play by post games for free, do tell me. This may be more suited to email, since I doubt that I'll be running everyone in the same place. The old guys already have characters, the new guys can make them, and we'll just run with it. Maybe some won't be interested, maybe some will. I don't know, and won't until I try it.

Because I really have to add this:
I don't think I have ever managed to date someone who wasn't at least mildly psychotic. As it stands now, I have a very very very very very SLIGHT chance of being with someone normal by my 19th birthday. Very slight. Yeargh.

Home right now.

I'm back at home in Massachusetts this week. Just thought everyone should know.
Very good things have been happening in many arenas. More on that later.

A quick update

Leaving for break tomorrow. Celebrated tonight, still feeling the effects of that now. As for everything else, it's good. I'm taking Kim to formal, which makes me very excited. Things are going right, and that is a good thing.
Gaming-wise, I'm thinking of both writing up my Assassin's Quest setting, as well as resurrecting the tricity setting for Cyberpunk 2020. I have some ideas for increasing the verisimilitude to the setting, and making everything fit in. If people could comment on things that define their level of detail in campaigns, I'd love it.
I'm in a very good mood right now. I'll leave it at that.

Third Session

Had my third session today. It went quite nicely, though I think I am generally better suited to running more light-hearted campaigns. For instance, for one reason or another, I ended up acting out an NPC ordering from Wendy's in full combat gear, including a gas mask. As a result of this, I am considering going back to 2020 in the near to mid-future. I enjoy the camp, and with a fixed point game, I can go about having a narrative and being crazy go nuts with the whole thing. I want to take my players back to my tri-city world, because I've had so much fun in it. This current campaign is going well, but I don't have the same depth I did with some of the NPCs that my old group came to both love and loathe.
At the same time, running GURPS has made me seriously consider some other campaign ideas that could work really well. I could do my weird religion one, or even better, Assassin's Quest if I ever figure out how the hell to map out that universe. It's a gigantic space opera, even I find it a little intimidating to go back to. And yet, I came up with it on my own, in my mind, before I even knew what roleplaying was. So, I've narrowed down ideas for my next campaign:
-Cyberpunk 2020: cut the bullshit, make it rich and high powered. 75 points, big characters, big guns, big action.
-GURPS: A couple ideas. Either a creative supers campaign (like the religion one, maybe something else modern-day based), or Assassin's Quest, my space opera world that has been percolating in my head for a long time. I only remember a few players: The four terran groups, the Alliance, the Royalists, the Imperium, and the Cideans, and the two alien races, the insectoid Simhara and the psionic Mu'udarans. Could be interesting.
-Paranoia XP: The game's concept fascinates me, and I think I could run a really good Paranoia game.

My current campaign is going well, though I probably would want to go back to CP2020 if I ever did cyberpunk again.