4/20/1862 & 4/21/2020 · 10:08pm Apr 21st, 2020
Yesterday, I spent the day in 1862. Here's my thread about the experience on Civil War Talk!
I've been doing my best to stay healthy and not go completely insane during the current state of affairs. Am... am I succeeding?
Anyhow, at some point here I'll get back to writing. I have put the story I was working on, the second installment of Wondercolt Weekends, on hold for the simple reason that it's a romance and I just haven't been in a romantic mood as of lately (although I did make some progress on it in February). My other WIP story Heart of Oak got a bit of a boost because I finally watched the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie (only about a decade after every other human being on earth). But the darn thing keeps getting longer, not shorter! So I don't expect that to be out anytime soon.
I did have an interesting idea to do another Admiral Biscuit-esque story for his not a contest, about Pony loggers in Michigan. So if anything I am most likely to work on that next.
In roleplaying news, I recently ran a game of "Magical Fury", an beer & pretzels type RPG system by the same person who made the Maid RPG, but this time about Magical Girls. It's... interesting. Some of the random generation tables can yield... odd results, at least fluff wise. I don't think I've ever heard of a Magical Girls gaining a limp after a tranformation. That might be down to me having a limited knowledge of the genre (I'm mostly a Sailor Moon guy and in no danger of running out of episodes to watch anytime soon), though. The combat system is rather confusing. I still don't fully understand it, but apparently my good friend Jake does and made a table in excel that makes the mechanics a bit clearer. To be honest as a DM I'm pretty loose when it comes to mechanical rules which is why I tend to like simple rulesets. I still think the combat tables from the old Mele game did quick play combat the best.
I felt like the book could have spent less space on the process of coming up with a world for the Magical Girls (you can random roll for everything, which I kinda like as a mechanic)... I suppose this makes sense as the game is intended to play as a quick fun game where you might not do much planning beforehand, but frankly I feel like if you want to run a Magical Girl RPG you probably have at least the general setting already in mind. And let's be honest, it's most probably "high school girls fight the big bad and also become friends" anyways isn't it? There, I saved like five pages. I really wished the book had actually had even more random tables for things like different powers, power ups, and magical artifacts\weapons the girls could gain. The intent is there, in as much as the girls get power themes (water, food, planetary bodies, ribbons, ect.), which is a cool idea since player could suggest their own ideas about what that could mean in terms of powers. But it would be useful to be able to roll randomly for these kinds of things too, especially if someone gains a new power and the poor DM can't think of a new way to hit someone with grosgrain!
Anyhow, stay safe and healthy every pony. I'll stay in touch!
I look forward to that, should you write it.
Glad it sounds like you're keeping yourself not too badly. :)
Keep staying safe and healthy yourself, and thanks!
edit:
Oh, and I'm glad you enjoyed the day out in the past, and thanks for sharing. :)