Chthonian Stars... SAVAGED

It's a nice, warm. late-Spring night. Right now, I'm sitting out on my patio, drinking a root beer, listening to HLPS's audio-drama of At The Mountains Of Madness, and working on a Savage Worlds/Realms Of Cthulhu conversion of WildFire's Lovecraftian hard science fiction setting for Mongoose's Traveller: Chthonian Stars.

While I've certainly dabbled in conversions in the past, this is the first time I've really been serious enough to commit to one that I intend to make available online. At this time, I'm working on character creation and not hitting any snags... yet. Most of the Advantages/Disadvantages found in the original rules already translate well into existing Edges and Hindrances. I need to figure out if any new Skills would be needed. (Yes, Guts will be an available--and recommended--Skill.)

After that I'm going to have to start converting weapons and equipment into their Savage Worlds equivalents. Then I'm going to have to gen-up stats for the various new creatures NOT found in Realms. The hardest part will be trying to convert the various spaceships from their ori stats (if you've ever played Traveller, you know what I'm going up against) to SW. Fortunately, I've got the old Sci-Fi Gear Toolkit to help me. Once I got that done, I'll layout everything out on my Mac into a nice .PDF and post it... somewhere.

Stay tuned, Savages.

"And then SHE walked in..."

Just in case you don't religiously visit their website every Tuesday to see what new savagery they're cooking up for us, today Pinnacle announced it's newest Savage Setting: Deadlands Noir.

Now hold on thar pardner!  Ain't Deadlands supposed to one them rootin'-tootin' Western-type games. Even the sequels Hell on Earth and Lost Colony had obvious Western tropes mixed into these respective post-apocalypse and sci-fi settings and they seem to work well. However, Westerns and Film Noir ain't what y'all would call corn-patible. Right?

I was skeptical myself. Then I watched this at the Kickstarter site:

(Yeah, I recognized Cheyenne Wright's voice, too.)

OK, I'm sold.

Thats right ya' palookas. Every two-bit gunsel and gumshoe from here to the Windy City will be polishing up their heaters for a piece of the action. So cool your jets, ya' ugly mug and throw some sawbucks into the hat and get some of that hot merchandise, pally. I'm just a busted joe, myself, but I put in for the $75 package.

So whadda ya waitin' for? An engraved invitation?

I'm baaaaaack!

No, seriously! I'm back this time.

I've decided to take a hiatus from school (I've got one final Java, I got a new job at yet another call center, and my thoughts are turning back to Savage Worlds. In the meantime, I've created a Facebook group for Milwaukee-area Savages to help get my fellow Cheeseheads together and organize some games. It's a little bare-bones right now, but if you live in Southeastern Wisconsin, and have a hankering for Fast, Furious, and Fun action, then join in on the conversation!

See you all there.

Savage Worlds at RockCon

I"m going to be attending Rock-Con in Rockford, IL November 4th-6th and there are Savage things afoot. I'm going to be running a game of Space 1889: Red Sands Saturday morning in the 9 am to 1 pm slot. Pre-generated characters and miniatures (well, cardboard miniatures) will be provided. Other Savages are planning events of their own. 

Also, if you like classic RPGs and/or Tékumel, I'm also going to be running an introductory game of the original Empire of the Petal Throne, Friday night. My partner in all things OSR, Victor Raymond, is also promising to take daring gamers on a trip into the empire of Tsolyánu where adventure, wealth, and very available priestesses of Lady Dlamélish await!

More details as they come.

Monkeying around with the design.

I'm going to be adjusting the design of the site. Bear with me, please.

On "My" MARS...

One of my favorite Savage Settings is Adamant Entertainment's MARS. While it is not mean to be a translation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom tales (although you can find that setting Savaged here), Gareth's setting still has a enough sword and planet action to spark the imagination. Of course, like many gamer's I've decided to tweek it slightly to match my own vision of the Red Planet.

In my MARS, most of the Gareth's setting is still intact: Mars is still a world of deserts, jungles, and ruined cities. Red men still fight fight the green savages of the wates as well as war with the White Apes. The Gray Men still plot and scheme in their dark, dank chasms and the Synthe-Men still tend their ancient machines. Callor, Baltan, Lonaria and the rest are still major centers of action and intrigue.

One of the notable differences between the Gareth's Mars and my Mars is the climate. Rather than being a cold and dry world, I've cranked the thermostat up to max and have the Red Planet bathed in nearly constant heat from an unforgiving, swollen, red sun.

Yes, you read that correctly. A red sun. Rather than setting it in the 19th Century or early 20th century, my Mars exists millions of years in our future. By this time our sun is entering the Red Giant stage of its life cycle and slowly swelling, engulfing the worlds of the inner solar system as it expands. Mercury is no more and Venus will be next in a few millions years.  Earth is no longer habitable by anything we'd recognize as life, but the humans of the far future migrated to and terraformed Mars many eons earlier. For a time, Mars was a garden world and a haven for humanity until civilization fell into barbarism. Humanity's descendants, modified by the processes of natural selection and ancient genetic engineering, became the various intelligent races of Mars. (With the notable exception of the Grays, they aren't from around here.) If there are any "Earthmen" on Mars, they are part of the original Homo sapiens colonists who first came to Mars many millennia ago who have been somehow "preserved" (e.g. suspended animation tube), or they have been plucked from space and time by the Grays.

I'm also working on fleshing out the religions of Mars. Gareth made mention of one deity Faina the Provider, in the "Slavers of Mars" adventure. I plan on expanding the pantheon of deities a bit more, as well as work out the details of their particular rituals and practices.

Now that I've told you about my Mars, I want to hear about your Mars. Do you play the setting "straight up" or do you modify it like I did? If so how?

"Sad Savage. Saaaad."

Excuse me, I need to rant a little bit.

The last year hasn't been very good to me. I lost my job last summer and despite my education and experience I can't seem to get hired, much less interviewed, for even the most menial of jobs. I'm beginning to worry that returning to school--and consequently running up thousands in student loan debt--to peruse a career in computer programming was a wise choice. I've got bill collectors hanging on the bell and my piddly unemployment checks aren't helping cover my bills. I keep waiting for the next shoe to drop; cancer, heart disease, or some other massively expensive medical condition that would send even the most well-insured individual into a lifetime of debt or bankruptcy.

As a result, I haven't done as much gaming as I'd like to as I wallow in depression. anger, and a fruitless search for a new job. I haven't been able to afford to go to any of the major conventions and it looks like that's not going to change anytime soon, if ever. I was looking forward to going Origins and "Savage Saturday Night" again this year, but that dream was shattered each time I received a letter from a respective employer telling me that I don't even warrant an interview. Even an evening at the friendly local game store is getting prohibitively expensive; gasoline, food, incidentals, etc..

And all of my ideas for campaigns lay fallow as well; a Realms of Cthulhu campaign where the PCs play mobsters as well as my Lovecraftian Dark Fantasy setting, my attempts to create playable (and possibly marketable) Savage Worlds rules for Tekumel, playtesting Totems of the Dead, running Space 1889: Red Sands, etc.. All of these cost time, money, effort, and enthusiasm that I no longer have access to. It's hard to get excited for anything when you're constantly worried whether or not you're going to end up living in a cardboard box by the end of the month.

I don't know that the Hell I'm going to do and I shudder when I think of what lies ahead. I don't want to hear maudlin reassurances about how things are "going to get better." because they're not. If anything, things are going to get a lot worse. So, "good bye" civilization and "hello" long, slow, slide into extinction. It was fun while it lasted.