Pushing the Limits of Decency.

Not talking about 40K this week...well not the 'on a tabletop' variety anyway...except we do use a table-top...because we sit around a table and our stuff is on the top...well using the bottom wouldn't make a lot of sense what with gravity being as single-minded as it is.....

Wait...let me start again...


Some time ago a group of friends of mine decided to venture into the world of RPG's...or re-enter for some of us as several of us had done them before...Fuck it I'm rambling again.....

We started with Deathwatch as being a giant armoured Space Marine was kinda fun...being an Evil giant armoured Space Marine is obviously even more fun so several of us gradually turned to the forces of evil or into an Obliterator...still not sure I've forgiven Tom for that...



Me - "My Tech-Marine investigates the body of the morphing gun platform that just killed most of our allies"
Tom - "Your now infected with the Obliterator virus..."
Out of character me - "Doesn't the Obliterator Virus need Daemonic energy in order to infect someone?"
Tom - "Yes. This is a Daemon world...why? didn't I mention that?"

Bastard.....

Space Marines being what they are we never had any situations that could be described as controversial..though our first GM's very specific description of the outfit of a maid in a certain mission certainly gave us an interesting inset into his mind...

...and I still think that the arrogant fop we scared to death during his interrogation was going to turn out to be a particularly sick bastard...

So we fought away through all sorts of enemies and despite the fact that by the end of the campaign one of us was effectively a Khorne Berserker, another an Obliterator and a third had followed virtually every Chaos god that you could think of we hadn't pushed the limits of taste in any appreciable manner.

Then we started Dark Heresy,

By it's inherent nature the world of Warhammer 40K is a nasty place. Take the worst area of the world today and multiply it by about a zillion times and you'll barely scratch the surface of what horrors must exist there.

However the hobby itself has a strong bias towards children for obvious reasons so much of the literature has a definite 'look what we almost said...' quality about it. Read the Horus Heresy novel Fulgrim as an adult and you'll get a far different picture of the Emperors Children than a child would from reading the exact same novel.

However as adults playing an RPG we can pretty much push the boundaries as far as we feel comfortable to do...Enter Lucien...

I wrote up a brief background story for a decadent, bored and inherently corrupt loser of an Arbitrator and Lucien seemed like a reasonable enough name...For reasons that are unlikely to be explained here he was also a Cyber Mastiff Handler because I though that would be fun as well and after a bit of fiddling with the rules my character was born. Quite a lot of the unpleasantness in his background was implied rather than outright stated. It was implied that he burned down a hab block rather than pay his rent and implied that he probably killed more than a couple of bad guys and stole their stuff, etc.

Implied but never specifically detailed of course...Until the 'hooker incident'...

Sorry...wrong hooker...

I can't even remember why there was a hooker in the mission to be honest but we found out she had some money and was vaguely connected with some gang who's significance I've now forgotten. One of the kinder members of our team gave her his pass card so she could escape the city and she toddled off to get her cash and disappear into the sunset...

...and then my character tracked her down, killed her and stole her money...Well that was the initial plan anyway...however the conversation turned somewhat darker and several hours later my character was a sexual sadist who raped, defiled and then killed hookers.....Strange as it might seem now it was actually quite funny at the time....

No really it was...

In the next mission one of our team members 'serviced' a Guardsman in exchange for the use of his Salamander..several times in fact and our Inquisitor used Biomancy to make some-one orgasm so they'd go away and stop bugging them...all of which incidents seemed amusing at the time...

I doubt any similar incidents will be making there way into the next Black Library novel though.

I'd like to point out that I don't personally kill hookers and in my normal life probably wouldn't react to a news story about hooker torturing with the same amusement that the same scenario 'in game' elicited. I'm also reasonably sure that no matter how well you performed sexually, a soldier would be unlikely to lend his APC to you.

So what avenues you go down in your own RPG's are obviously entirely up to you but is there a limit beyond which you shouldn't go?

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

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Music to Game By

Yes, this was once a series that I attempted to write for Blood of Kittens and no, I was never able to fully realize it.  The idea was to put a soundtrack to each of the races and factions of 40K.  Overly ambitious- yes!  Crazy of me to think I could write for 3 or more blogs at once- certainly!  At any rate, I got through about a third of the races before real life took over and I had to unceremoniously let the project fall by the wayside.

Music, however, has always been and remains a very important part of my life and my games.  As such, I'm always interested in trying to figure out the perfect record to play during my games.  Would a selection of German cabaret music add that extra something special to my FoW games?  Should my pal Frank be forced to pump Sabbat every time he takes the field with his Chaos Marines?  Somehow, the answer to all of these questions and more seems to be yes.



For me, music is one of the best ways to help me fall into a game.  Back a million or so years ago, I used to make atmospheric mix tapes of gritty Industrial music to play in the background while GMing games of Shadowrun.  Throwing on a Big Electric Cat album was always a great way to get one in the mood for some masquerading as a Vampire. 

Fast forward to today and, while I don't have much time for roleplaying, music is still always a part of my hobby.  Any time you're in my basement, there will be music playing while we're gaming.  That is a fact you can count on.  It just really helps create the atmosphere of the game for me- whatever that means.  No matter what you're into, a good soundtrack is easily the best way to amp up the violence of, underscore the brutality in, heighten the sadness inherent in, explore the futility of, or even provide a counterpoint to the game you're playing.  Whatever the mood you're trying to create, music is a simple short cut to it.

So then, the question for you, dear readers is- what do you listen to while gaming and why?  Hit us up in the comments and for god's sake, don't forget to embed a video or at least provide a link to whatever you talking about.  And (now this is for SinnSynn) if you post a link to any of that dub step shit, you'll have me to answer to!  Bonus points do go to anybody who happens to mention my own band or goes to the trouble of creating an entire playlist in YouTube or Spotify or whatever you kids are using for music these days.


Submitted for your approval, here are some of my picks for gaming to at the moment, just for the hell of it and for reasons that are not entirely apparent even to myself-


Zola Jesus

Maurice Ravel

We Were Promised Jetpacks

Windir

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Gaming on a Budget: Long-distance Roleplaying

No I said Selleck, not Stelek...geez

 As one gets older, one is faced with a seemingly endless stream of bullshit.  Do I really need new brakes for my car?  How do groceries disappear so quickly?  Where have all of my friends moved?

And that latter dilemma is the one we'll be concerned with today.  What happens when you've got a regular game night going and all of your friends begin to move away?  You'll probably miss playing pretty soon.  It's time to try and hook up a long-distance game.

If you were playing a tabletop wargame, odds are the fine folks at Vassal has probably got some kind of emulator for you, legal or otherwise.  What if it's a roleplaying game?  Well, then it's time to improvise. 


Now if you're old enough, like myself, your first line of thinking to try and get a game together with your friends that transcends location might look something like this:

"Bobby,

I hope you've received this letter in good health.  I have secured the capital funding necessary to obtain a conference call line for use in our roleplaying sessions.  Unfortunately, we could not afford a toll free number, so it will be a long distance call for everyone.  To move things along quickly, I suggest cutting chatter to a minimum and only using the conference line for emergencies.  All other communication will occur via Morse Code. 

I trust you have also gotten the marvelous machine that I've sent along with this letter.  Maps and other diagrams will now be sent via Telex.  What a world we live in.  To think we can now send and receive documents at the speed of the phone line.

Look forward to our sessions.

Your humble,
Ed"

No, I have to wash my hair tonight, but thank you for telephoning

Okay, well that was wholly unnecessary, but does make something of a point- back in the dark ages, trying to organize a game over long distances with friends could be quite difficult and costly. So what's a girl to do?

Well, when faced with this exact problem a few years ago, my friends and I put on our thinking caps and came up with a pretty workable system to get in a weekly game of Shadowrun over the Internet.  Lauby used his reference Librarian: the Internet 6(7) skill to find the technologies that we'd need to get it done.  Now I'm passing the savings on to you. 

The tools you'll need to get your friends together for a virtual, remote game night are all remarkably simple to operate and, better yet, free to use!  Seriously, other than the books you'll need for your particular game, and I must stress that the more people that have the books, the better, none of this shit will cost you a dime.  So here is a list of things, other than books (and please don't illegally download these, it hurts game designers) that you'll need for a roleplaying night long-distance and on a budget:

• VoIP Access- Hearing your buddies is probably important right?  Well if you have a computer and a headset there are any number of ways to achieve this over the net.  Lauby already had a Ventrilo server account, so all everyone else had to do was download the client version for free.  Ventrilo does cost money if you have enough users, but I believe that you can host up to 5 clients for free, and you probably wouldn't want too many more players for an on-line roleplaying game.  Ventrilo is quite stable and clear, if slightly hard to set up, but there are a host of other options depending on your preference.  Skype is always a good choice and I'm sure a quick Google search will find you dozens more.  Above all make sure you've got some kind of radio discipline worked out to avoid people talking over each other.  This is hard enough to deal with in person, but becomes even more obnoxious when you can't see who's talking (unless you also happen to be using a web cam).
• Chat Program-  sending secret notes is both necessary and hilarious.  Any good chat program will work just fine for this, but I'd also recommend one such as Google Talk that allows sending of files as well.  (In hindsight, it looks like VoIP and Chat are easily combined into just Google talk now, so things may be even easier with fewer programs). Just make sure that players don't spend all their time passing cat videos back and forth.  It can get distracting.  I know when I shared this clip, we lost a good 20 minutes so to assorted silliness. 
• Dice Roller- unless your GM/DM is dumb enough to rely on the honor system, a dice rolling program that everyone can see is most helpful.  rolz.org is a good free site for this.  It allows you to create a private room (using "dice room") and will, using a random number generator, allow for the use of any size die you need to be rolled.  It will even figure out successes and the like, using built in coding to allow for target numbers.  Better yet, it even lets you figure success in Shadowrun out!  I'm even told that the program is more stable than it used to be, so it should be pretty much good to go.
• Whiteboard- the last thing you're going to need is an online whiteboard.  It is often necessary to send maps and diagrams to players to show movement, or make the indescribable describable in less than 1,000 words using a picture.  Scriblink is a nice free site that will allow you to share drawrings with everyone.  Once somebody has created a board to host, he only needs to send all the other members of the party a unique URL.  This is easily done with whatever chat program you happen to be using.

That's that.  You should now be equipped for a night on online pen and paper roleplaying.  If you've got any other tips to share for this sort of venture (better software, additional things you may need for some games, etc drop us a line in the comments).

and now you're all...

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