Rushed gameday superficial glosses: Part 2

As with last time, I've waited until the last minute and we have our game tonight. All of these were done between 12:20 and 3:20 this afternoon. For those just joining us, these guys are all aliens for my super hero game. If you'd like more of a clue see my previous post.

Click the images to enlarge

First up we have: Braino! He's thinking bad thoughts. About... you!




Next the Reptiloid!

and his pal, Squishy: the alien amoeba!

I did a line and wash thing with Squishy. The paper warped. Apparently, the scanner doesn't like warped paper. Bitch.

Next, the Glar, synthetic foot soldiers of the Krang!

And now, the last resort of the Krang! The Worminator. I rather like this one, actually.


Anyway, regarding the Metal Earth. We will be splitting our weekend game sessions between Icons and the Metal Earth starting in a bout a month. I will not be the referee for the ME game, which I think is ideal, because it will actually be more of a test of the rules as opposed to a test of my ability to make up shit on the spot (although I'm sure i will do some of that as well). And I get to play! So this will be the play test before I release a general play test doc- if I decide to do so.

Online gaming stuff, and some rushed game day drawings

Here are some drawings I did for Sunday's game Earth Zero (Icons). We have finally hammered our online system down. We use Skype for voice and infrno for the game table. We turn off all A-V functions in infrno. Although a big part of face to face gaming is being, you know, face to face, we've found that online video is a pain in the ass to implement and kind of distracting on top of that. We had a blast on Sunday without it, so there you go.

Anyway, here are some extremely crappy drawings I did for the game- click to enlarge and all that. I had limited time to prep, so I spent 15-30 (or less) minutes from concept to pencil to inks on each one. I'm going to make this a regular practice, I think, and maybe allow myself an hour or two to do a post session drawing of a scene from the game. This will create a pictorial history of each campaign. Augmented with captions, I think it'll be neato- despite the rushed, substandard look of the art.
The characters (Doc Crucible and The Fire Knight) hail from 1949AD; however, as a result of a long series of events, they have found themselves on board a derelict generation star ship (pictured above) named Interphaze, which left earth in the 54th century, but has been drifting around in No Space for about 6000 years. The Biozone is designed to look like the surface of the Earth; DC and TFK actually wandered around up there for a couple of sessions before they accessed the lower level and got a look out into space and a clue. The scale is all wrong on the pic, actually, I eventually decided it was too small. I think the ship is at least a couple of hundred KM long. I'm waffling on that point. Also I did that drawing in like a minute and a half with a ballpoint, so cut me some slack if you will.
As it turns out, the human crew died off long ago and the ship is currently run by (possibly evil) gene engineered dolphins, who tend to the 20k human colonists residing stasis chambers located within giant, artificial, water-filled caverns on the systems level.
Also, there are monkey people, most of whom work for the dolphins, but some who have broken away and formed their own civilizations

Anyway, the ship has an infestation of mind control parasites known as the Krang! The Krang! arrived on the ship when their much, much smaller star ship had some kind of hyperspace malfunction and materialized inside one of the thousands of artificial caves that make up the geozone. TFK and DC are part of a temporary alliance of money people and dolphins committed to stopping the Krang before they gain access to the slumbering human colonists. The Krang! crew is made up of a disparate group of mind controlled aliens, like these guys on the left.

Here is the picture of the Krang! spaceship, which is trapped in what the Monkey people (The Imae) call "The Cave of the Old Ones." Incidentally, this is where Sunday's game came to a close:
















Last but almost certainly least, a security droid that the the boys activated by accident whilst exploring another area:

Mastermind take 2, and an update on the Metal Earth book

Friend of the Metal Earth, Stormbringer, has kindly offered to do the layout on the book. He has already taken it upon himself to reformat the Mastermind layout. Get it here or in the side bar. I think it looks awesome and I am very appreciative.
Thanks SB!

The Mastermind class, version 1

So anyway, I'm thinking that I am going to go with Plan C as mentioned in the comments of this post. There will be three classes, the Sorcerer, the Adventurer, and the Mastermind (Click to download- also available in the side bar at the left).

In creating this I was very influenced by the Beyond the Black Gate S&W Thief Class and I used Erin D. Smale's Building the Perfect Character Class to get a baseline for xp requirements and such. I found both of these at the OSR Links to Wisdom page.

My sincere thanks to everyone involved with everything above (including S&W).

I'll likely change this up a bit in the future, but probably only a bit.
I can invent monsters and technogear and spells all day, but making classes has been the major stumbling block for me, and I feel that I am on the right track at last. I could be just a few weeks away from play test document.
Or something.

OPD Entry

I have decided to enter The Forgotten Depths (also available in the side bar on the left) into the OPD contest. It's like a year old, so nothing to get excited about.

Character Classes: Plan A and Plan B

I’m still working this out, and I have two alternating plans.

Plan A: the players may chose from the classes listed below, each of these classes will have a number of options with witch a player may further customize the character in question. For example a sorcerer may be a healer or necromancer, or a bit of both depending upon his choices. A slayer may be a soldier, an assassin or a brawler. Another level of customization may be available through mulit-classing. Each character would only be allowed to advance in one class at any given time, but may chose to take a level in a different class upon leveling up in their current class. For example, upon gaining second level in the Slayer class, Sarken the Scourge decides to take a level in the Hunter class. This would be subject to GM approval.

These are the classes under plan A

Mastermind: The scientists, intellectuals and engineers of the Metal Earth. Examples from literature: Turjan of Miir, S’nerg (Hiero’s Journey), Tomb the Dwarf (Viriconium), Guyal of Sfere (The Dying Earth), The Red Queen (Den Saga)

Outlander: A warrior from another time or place. Examples from literature: Den, John Carter, Kamandi, Sumner Kragen (Radix) and many, many more.

Hunter : Scouts, savages and beast-friends these seasoned individuals have the know how necessary to thrive in the wild. Examples from literature: Naüsica, Hiero, the gelfling chick from Dark Crystal.

Sorcerer: Wielders of the realty warping power of magic. Examples: Turjan of Mur and Mazirian the Magician (The Dying Earth).

Slayer: Soldiers, assassins, swordsmen, brigands, members of this class are skilled in dealing death to their opponents. Examples form Literature: Severian (The book of the New Sun), Tuftan (Kamandi), Ulan Dhor (The Dying Earth)

Plan B:

There are two classes Sorcerer and Adventurer, any and all special abilities have to be worked out with the referee. I may provide a list of suggestions, like “Speak with lizards” and “crack shot” and shit. I don’t know. Maybe there will be a random table of special abilities.

Regardless of which way I go (as of this writing, I’m leaning heavily towards Plan B) there will be two ‘race’ as class options (Robot and Halfdead); mutations (mostly psionic in nature) and Sorcerers will be able to use any sort of weapon- except guns (the mechanisms of firearms and energy weapons mess sorcery up).

Actually, I may have made a decision while writing this post, but I have to think on it.

Explain the OGL to me

Here The AD&D Grognard expresses concern over the lack of proper use of the OGL and where it will lead.

I'm not sure when it is appropriate to use and when you can give it a miss.

For example:
Should I have a OGL page for monsters that use a Swords and Wizardry style stat block, but are largely my own creations such as in these posts?

How about spells, like in this post?

What about my own house rules that use common gaming concepts like hit points?

Does the fact that I'm not looking for cash here make any difference?