A while back, I saw a Kickstarter for the return of Heavy Metal magazine. Since I’ve always been at best a casual reader, I didn’t realize it had gone anywhere. But I feel like Heavy Metal magazine something that should exist in the world, so I backed it. I back a bunch of Kickstarters, and…
I’ve been trying to read at least some of the shorter zines I’ve collected over the years. Recently I read Glam Metal Monster Hunters and Pixie Punks on the same night, and it seemed like a good idea to review them together since they kind of have opposite approaches to zine design. Let’s start with…
Just thought I’d post a pic of the progress on the Shymeria map. I had a false start that lost some time, but I think it’s starting to shape up nicely. Facebook Twitter Reddit Tumblr Email
When I watched the new She-Ra series, I realized that “Aetheria” was basically the same as “Etheria,” Eternia’s sister planet. A Google also turned up a video game that appears to be current that uses “Aetheria” with the “Ae” spelling. So I decided to change the name, which was a terrible thing because I agonize…
I’m trying to work out how to make the rules for powers to work in Guardians of Shymeria. I’ve had several false starts so far. Every time I actually start writing the rules, I find myself lost once again in the Land of Crunch. I don’t want the rules to come from the Land of…
For a while now I’ve been working on a game called Guardians of Shymeria, which was going to be the setting for the Sample of Play Theater game in the Cinemechanix rulebook. The basic idea was “He-Man meets Heavy Metal,” with 80s cartoon characters (because I really wanted to steal a rule Josh Burnett had…
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By this point, you’ve got the “big idea” stuff about your ficton figured out. You know the basics of the setting, have some ideas for plot points, know who the characters are, and have some stock adventure ideas to get thing moving. If you’re halfway good at improvisation, you can probably run a session of…
Before we get into the next section of Guardians of Shymeria campaign design, I realized that I’ve been missing an important game-specific trait. Since characters become Guardians as recognition for an act of great heroism, it would probably be nice to know what the characters did to get noticed by the Guardians. So I’m going…
A few of the Cinemechanix core rules require the group to make decisions about how they apply to the game at hand. Determining the starting Hero Factor (see last week’s blog) is one example of this. Another is deciding whether a character who reaches “Broken” status ends up dead, forced into retirement by his injuries,…
