We played our final session of The 23rd Letter play test this week, and wrapped up the story of Poppy and her baby. After recuperating overnight (under Joy’s watchful care, and a handy saline drip), Poppy recovered enough from her ordeal to tell the group about what had happened, which really just confirmed all their…
Author: AJ
Gamist: 14%, Simulationist: 29%, Narrativist: 57%. Ah, the irony.
FASERIP generator
Back when I was running the Watchtower New England game using Marvel Super Heroes’ FASERIP system, I wrote a simple character generator. I found it recently, and thought I’d pop into GitHub in case other folks might find it useful. It generates random characters using the Ultimate Powers rules, which can then be tailored using…
Venting Pyrokinetics
Our fourth and fifth in-game sessions of the 23rd Letter saw quite a lot of action! I’ll give a brief summary, and then talk about some of the rules that I think were interesting. I’ll put a * and a number on some rules I’m going to talk about at the end. Everybody woke up…
A precog walks into a bar …
Now a few weeks into the first play-test of the 3rd edition of The 23rd Letter, I wanted to post some updates on what’s been going in the game, and a few reflections as both Referee and game designer. First off, let’s talk about the party, which in this edition is by default a Cell…
Watchtower play test reflections
The recent posts about Watchtower were from a one-shot adventure I ran for my son’s gaming group. They’ve been playing (mostly) D&D together regularly for 3-4 years, and it was a good opportunity to test out the rules with a group that had no preconceptions. The players created Talos-class exotics (the middle of the three…
Watchtower SF: August 4th
Bergs in the Bay! San Francisco Chronicle Meteorologists were shocked today when a massive iceberg several miles long appeared off the coast of Marin County, seemingly on a collision course for the Golden Gate Bridge! “This iceberg cannot be a natural occurrence,” said Dr. Karl Limewall, Professor of Climatology at Caltech. “Nothing that large could…
Watchtower SF: some recent headlines
Whyte Buys Watchtower SF San Francisco Chronicle, July 1st 2022 Jack Whyte, exotic and indestructible billionaire, adds Watchtower SF to his stable of Watchtower franchises. This brings his franchise total to four, starting in 2013 with the NYC franchise, and adding the Twin Cities in ’15 and Miami in ’19. “The San Francisco franchise of…
Tomb of the Snake King
My kids and I made a game for a Game Jam this weekend, which had a theme of “It Never Ends”. My youngest daughter (age 12) created all the art and music for the game, while my son (age 15) and I did all the programming (he did most of it). You can play it…
WatchTower: The Game
After many games of WatchTower played using rules from other systems (primarily the classic Marvel Super Heroes game), Matt and I have knuckled down to start writing the actual WatchTower game. We were planning to start a new group and play a Supers game (Godlike was the original proposal), and before you know it we…
WatchTower New England – Episode 3
Robotic Rampage Stopped By Raw Recruits by Rhonda McAvoy of The Boston Globe March 18th, 2002 The Prudential Center was subject to a brutal attack this morning at around 8am. Three robotic figures burst out of one of the iconic “Duck Tour” tour buses to go on a deadly rampage through downtown commuters. The three…
WatchTower New England – Episode 2
Sunday March 17, 2002 (St. Patrick’s Day) From the log of Karl Maclean, WTNE Controller 8am: New recruits have lasted 24 hours without injury or fatality. Void seems to have settled into a leadership role, and may make a decent long-term recruit should we choose to extend their contract. Seven seems somewhat unreliable and bears…
WatchTower New England Episode 1
WatchTower secretly recruits new members by Rhonda McAvoy of The Boston Globe March 17th, 2002 Three new WatchTower operatives were spotted yesterday in and around the greater metro area. While no information has been forthcoming from the New England franchise, the identity of one of the new recruits has been confirmed as Vanja Mestrovic, also…
WatchTower State Coverage and the New England Team
This map shows all 50 states, and which WatchTower franchise(s) cover each state. Those states which are shaded with two colours have agreements with two franchises, and either will respond depending on availability. The north-east used to be covered by the WatchTower New York, but a series of blunders a few years ago by the…
WatchTower Franchise Map
There are currently 10 WatchTower franchises in N. America, with a number of others under consideration by both WatchTower Inc. and various city and state governments. View WatchTower franchises on a map. Each franchise has its own charter of specific responsibilities (primarily geographical) but in times of crisis, operatives from other franchises will help out….
The X-1 visa
The late 80s and early 90s saw an upswing in exotic crime, as beleaguered WatchTower franchises were stretched trying to find members willing and able to combat this rising tide. In response in 1994, Bill Clinton signed into law the Exotic Foreign Workers Act, which passed with slim majorities in both House and Senate. This…
WatchTower New England
All of New England is protected under one WatchTower franchise (WT-NE), which has offices in each of the state capitals (Boston, Hartford, Providence, Montpelier and Augusta) but is headquartered in Boston. To be precise, the HQ is in Cambridge, MA (want to see what it looks like?). The satellite offices are primarily administrative, although each…
WatchTower – What Everyone Knows
The world is similar to the world we live in now. We have all the same political, social and environmental issues, the same level of media, technology and education, the same strip malls, gas guzzlers and sitcoms. Origins People with exotic powers first came to the public eye in the late 50s, with a series…
Back from hiatus – some new WatchTower
My move to Canada and subsequent birth of my daughter kind of put my gaming on hold, but now I’m back in a regular group and I’m looking to run a WatchTower game with them. This will be my first time doing a bunch of things: Running a supers game Running Marvel system Running WatchTower…
D&D 4th Edition … now with more!
I had a poke through a friend’s copy of 4th Edition D&D. It seems it has been genericised to the nth degree, and everything has been made more powerful from the word go. On top of that, alignments have been simplified and there is even the concept of “unaligned” (maybe they read my previous article)….
Current games in development
As mentioned a few posts ago, here is a list of the games that have gone through our idea filter and dropped down into the Book Development stage. If you’re a regular reader, the chances are none of these are of surprise to you, although I’m not sure we’ve blogged about all of them. So,…