My Superhero RPG site

Been spending a bunch of my free time lately working on material for an original superhero setting, adapted to the new superhero roleplaying game ICONS.

You can check it out here if so inclined.

Screw rpg.net, I'm done

I've been reading and posting material (not at a very high rate, for reasons that will become clear) on rpgnet for five years now, and it has consistently been the most frustrating online experience I can imagine.

Here's the thing: nobody ever replies to my posts. Ever. I will take the time to think of a reasoned reply to one post, linking to outside sources, often incorporating a response to more than one prior poster's comments, and I will get nothing.

Here was the latest sample of my efforts to communicate:
Quote:

Originally Posted by Son of Kirk It's like Comment or opinion pieces in the Guardian. Bold claims and assertions are made because that's often the best way to get an article noticed. Let's face it, an article that says '4E is alright, it has some issues and it has some good bits' just isn't going to draw as much interest as 'OMG 4E is the Reaper and our hobby is it's target!' because, facing it again, we all love a trainwreck and we all like a bit of confrontation.

"Very true. I think there's also an element of attraction to extreme blogs based on what Farhad Manjoo calls "weak dissonance"--a poorly argued viewpoint or idea that is the opposite of one we hold. Everyone likes to knock down a straw man argument, as it makes us feel better about our own views and intelligence. I suspect it is particularly satisfying when that straw man seems to be especially obnoxious.

Look at how many people have checked out Mishler's blog based on this thread. I think the degree of draw and the level of reaction (on these forums, at least) are based largely upon the ease with which people feel his arguments can be refuted in a satisfying fashion, not so much upon the idea that his blog is influencing gaming trends. (Though people have indicated that they feel too many older gamers share his views already.)

That said, all the hyperbole and histrionics in the blogosphere can certainly wear thin. I found the squareman blog entry interesting, though I am always suspicious of claims related to the "new economics" of the Internet. Chris Anderson has made a career out of preaching that everything we thought we knew about economics and commerce is now wrong, but he still has to acknowledge in his latest book that YouTube does not make money giving away its services. (And it will cost you $27 on Amazon to buy Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Apparently too radical to charge it for his own work.) Certainly there is a market for micropayments and the like, but tabletop RPGs are not quite the same thing as video games.

I eventually gave up and just skimmed the profanity-laced, teeth-gnashing silliness of RPGPundit's blog entry and read Ryan Dancey's comments at the bottom, which were much more sober and coherent. Dancey's point about paying RPG writers based on the quality of their content--say, a very good 32 page adventure--versus paying by the word was interesting. I've been a freelance writer and editor for eight years now, and I am paid by the chapter, by the component, etc., never by the word. And most contracts include a revision clause."

I thought that was a thoughtful response that added something new to the conversation. Did anyone else think so? I have no idea, because it has been ignored for three days. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Even the guy whose post I basically insulted as a childish rant couldn't be bothered to rant at me in reply.

Earlier this year a guy started up a thread about alternative technology and setting tweaks for a Star Trek universe. I had done the same thing the previous year and had fewer than 20 replies, maybe 100 views. This guy Shadowjack had some similar ideas, some different--but he added these little cartoons. I thought they were nice. He got a few HUNDRED replies and more than 2,000 hits.

I sighed, sucked up my wounded pride, and made a few comments in the spirit of the discussion. One of which involved replacing Klingons with Neanderthals (either carried offworld by mysterious Progenitors or, in an idea of mine that I particularly liked, resurrected through DNA samples to serve as soldiers during the Eugenics Wars, only to escape into space).

I did get a reply to that, from a self-styled Paleontologist who took issue with my suggestion that a Neanderthal culture might find cause to blame homo sapiens for being responsible for the extinction of Neanderthals on Earth. He said there was no evidence whatsoever that ancient humans had anything to do with the end of the Neanderthals. I replied that (a) I thought he was being kind of precious not to think that ancestral humans would not have come into conflict for resources with Neanderthals in close proximity, since we do that with every living creature we encounter and exterminate the competition [and why wouldn't early man eat Neanderthals, to be blunt? We eat other primates.]; (b) it doesn't matter if it DID happen that way, it matters if resurrected Neanderthals could reasonably be expected to THINK it happened that way; (c) Space Neanderthals are just fucking cool!

And the guy just says "whatever," everyone else ignores the post, and it's another waste of time and ideas on my part.

The ironic thing is, when I've actually contacted a number of game designers over the years, they've liked my ideas and how I described them.

So screw rpg.net! I don't roleplay more than once in a blue moon anyway. I just wanted to try out the whole social networking online concept in a hobby that I thought was small enough and felt knowledgeable enough about to make a decent contribution to the conversation while educating and entertaining myself reading other people's ideas.

All it did was leave me feeling even more isolated.

I would have made this post on rpgnet, but nobody would give a crap. Or worse, they'd finally pay attention just to poke fun and be assholes.

RETCON!

As for the Mesa Grande universe, I had some inspiration while mowing the lawn and I'm going to be laying down a chronology and fitting the various groups into it. It will require some heavy retconning of DOA, which will affect some of the mission profiles and characters, but I like what's there so I want to keep as much intact as possible.

Here's the basics: what is now the DOA team will become a team called the Specials, formed in the 1990s by a secret cabal within various agencies of the Department of Justice (no NSA or CIA) in response to some major events (such as the spectacular exposure and collapse of the alien-backed conspiracy within Majestic-12 and the civil war between the Kremlin Thought Police, their next-generation of young psychics who want to create their own society of telepaths, and the high-tech Rocket Corps). Not so much emphasis on criminals or outright deaths, but lots of characters being put through the wringer. Most of the recruited characters are former law enforcement or vigilantes serving federal probation for their failures. This is an homage to The Outsiders and the television show Alias.

The real DOA now emerges in the 1980s as a black bag operation of the CIA. The government has a discredited process that will imbue ordinary people with superpowers. The downsides are various unpredictable mental and physical side effects and the fact that everyone who undergoes the process dies within 12 months because of their transformation as their bodies either (a) reject the powers or (b) the powers go out of control and kill them in some fashion. The CIA, banned from developing its own metahuman program after the disasters of MK-ULTRA in the 1970s, offers felons the chance to undergo the process without telling them that it's going to kill them. The idea is that there's no long-term downside to using these people, as they'll take themselves out of the picture. So truly, DOA. The series arc culminates when enough of the mission members realize what the hell is going on. This is an homage to the comics Strikeforce Morituri and the Suicide Squad.

Also want to introduce the 1960s group The Order of the Green Flame: survivors of the Philadelphia Experiment who lose their official Office of NAval Intelligence sanction and form a private association of crime fighters and defenders. Plus the original Minutemen and their downfall, the new Minutemen, the villainous mastermind plot that succeeds in preventing nuclearwar, and so forth.

Updated My Web Site

So in my latest creativity phase, which I'm anticipating will last about a week, I've started adding more material to my web site, Dreaming Empires. Specifically, superhero setting and character material. There are even character pictures I created using a software program from a game called City of Heroes. Woo-hoo!

I've also decided to host a bunch of material for the Marvel SAGA rpg that I can no longer find online. Not sure why that is, but I had copied it from the original web site (I'm anal retentive that way--you never know when stuff will disappear from the web, so I copy and save a lot of web sites I like) so I posted it on mine. With my luck, someone will ask me to take it down soon. On the other hand, so few people read my stuff that perhaps it will be safe!

Anyway, I'm hoping to update stuff over the next few days, once I did up more character details and stuff on organizations. Then I'll be converting some of the characters to one or more rpg systems. And then I imagine I'll get distracted by another topic, maybe jumping back to the fantasy or science fiction.

Updated the Web Page

Updated my web site, Dreaming Empires, with some Kirai tech, background on the unique life cycle of the Ogodal, and RPG stats for some of the aliens, including some not yet written up in the background. Just keepin' it unreal.