I have played a few RPG systems and I dislike both the single dice mechanic (d20 or d%) and the dice pool mechanic (Many dice and count 'hits'). I play GURPS. The 3d6 bellcurve reduces unlikely outcomes and crits. The class free aspect allows for a lot of variation in character creation. I have been GMing for about 3 decades off and on. I am relatively to online gaming. I play a few game in roll20. I think it has potential. It certainly has a lot of people, but they seem to be focused on D&D, which I am not interested in, at least not in the dungeon crawl. I am interested in social interaction, Role Playing, Investigation and problem solving styles of play. Mostly the roll20 game page will be used for a backdrop and to share text content. Game play will take place primarily in Voice chat and eventually Video chat. I would like a GM assistant for a long term online GURPS game that I will run. I am not sure of the genre yet. Options include 1) a 1920s investigation Call of Cthulhu style; 2) a campy Supers - Heroes vs Villains - style based on 'The Venture Bros' animated TV series or 3) a Paranoia style campaign. All of these consist of custom worlds and home made adventures. (In the case of The Venture Bros, the show is taken as cannon, and the game takes place in the same world, but focuses on ancillary or unrelated characters and an independent plot.) This is the intro to my Paranoia campaign. It is run in a 'minimal information' format: You wake and take in your surroundings. You are alone in a cubical room that appears as if it would measure roughly three meters on a side. The room contains a narrow bed with a mattress, a mattress cover and a blanket. The room also contains a wall mounted sink basin with attached towel rack to which a towel is attached, and a bar of soap which rests on the top of the sink basin. In addition to these things that are contained within the room, the room also contains a canvas drawstring bag. Contained within the canvas drawstring bag is a second gray jumpsuit (you are wearing the first gray jumpsuit). Attached to the hip of the jumpsuit that you are wearing is a velcro patch. And attached to that patch is a multifunction tool. The preceding multifunctional tool contains the following tools: pliers, fork, small knife, small knife, small knife, medium knife, medium knife, large knife, spoon, fingernail clippers, fingernail file, cuticle scissors, toothpick, tweezers, straight razor and a fold-out ten-centimeter ruler. In addition to the items listed so far, you see that on the non-adjacent wall nearest to your feet hangs a round mirror that is 61.3-cm in diameter. Beneath this mirror and also on the wall are two doors set side by side and hinged at the top. Each door measures 28.4-cm high and 48.4-cm wide. To the right of these objects and directly inline with your bed is a 68.1-cm square blank display screen and a 15.3-cm long light-pen with a 0.4 mm thick and 74.9-cm long cable attaching it to a point 2.6-cm below the center of the screen. The bed upon which you awoke measures 196.1-cm in length and 75.9-cm in width. From beneath the bed and extending out toward the wall with the blank computer screen are two rails set into the floor which are 1.6 cm wide and 0.2 cm deep. They extend 62.3 cm from the bed and stop short of the wall by 48.2 cm. The wall mounted sink basin which is mounted to the non-adjacent wall nearest your head via the basin's left side measures 56.6 cm in width and extends 33.2 cm from front to back. The wall opposite of the wall to which the bed is adjacent houses a door which measures 150.2 cm wide and extends from the ceiling to the floor and appears to open by sliding upwards into the ceiling. In the corner of the room furthest away from the corner closest to the head of your bed rests an empty footlocker measuring 55.5 cm wide, 75.5 cm long and 42.7 cm high. Measuring stuff, although almost certainly a fruitless exercise, has none-the-less been a satisfying one. After all, it gave you something to do. And doing something, even something that accomplished nothing, felt better than doing nothing at all. As you lie there in bed, you slowly become aware of the fact that you cannot remember who you are. You cannot recall anything about your life. You know what fire hydrants are and how to lace and tie a pair of shoes. You know what shoes are. But you cannot recall where you grew up or what your parents looked like or even if you had parents. You know what macaroni and cheese is, but not what it tastes like or even if you liked its taste. You try recalling something from your past, and you simply cannot remember anything. Simply nothing. Nothing what-so-ever. As you are failing to remember stuff, the appearance of a muted white light draws your attention. It blinks on and off three times in rapid succession. The light is located just above the right door under the mirror. You find the next thing that happens startling because you are briefly startled by it. The door opens, and a small, thin brown rectangular box slides down a chute and into the room, after which the door closes and remains closed. The brown box remains stationary for the next three minutes which is how long you waiting for it to move, which it doesn't. You find most of these stylistic devices dredged up by your over-stressed mind most disturbing. You try to center yourself and find yourself staring blankly at the blank display screen. While staring blankly at the blank display screen, you are surprised to find that the display screen displays blankness no more. It now displays words and symbols where it was blank but a moment before. Near the top of the screen are the words “Color Clearance Control Classification”. Directly under those words are the words “Pending Test Results”. Somewhat further down, below these words are the words “Press Here To Begin Test”. These last words are displayed in a white light that pulsates at a compelling rate, first brighter then dimmer then brighter then dimmer, repeatedly, over and over again. Somehow these pulsations seem to beckon you. This is from my Cthulhu game: The two oppositional powers at work in this world are not Good vs. Evil. They are not Light vs. Darkness. Neither are they Order vs. Chaos nor Freedom vs. Slavery nor Life vs. Death. The two forces at work are: those who seek to unleash the ancient god-like beings that threaten to consume and destroy this planet vs. those who seek to prevent their manifestation. This battle has waged for a hundred millennia. Those who seek to unleash the ancient ones do so to serve their personal ambition and lust for power. They are blind to the consequences of these actions. They make the proverbial deals with the proverbial devils, in the hopes of obtaining personal power that they can use to lord over their fellow humans. While those who seek to thwart the advance of the ancient Godlike beings find themselves employing more and more extreme methods as the knowledge of the ancient ones grows and as the ancient ones themselves gain a larger foothold on this planet. They create societies that are just as secret as those contrived by their adversaries. They infiltrate organizations of hierarchical power, organized religions and scientific societies alike, in order to prevent information about the ancient ones from coming to light. They use alliances between royal families, corporations and shadow elements within nations to accomplish this goal, a goal which they pursue at all costs and by any means. And over many centuries, these organizations, institutions and alliances have grown both in scope and power until they have become forces unto themselves developing their own intentions, desires and goals independent and apart from the objectives set down by their founders. Secret societies spring up within secret societies like wheels within wheels and dark alliances are formed between members of the two opposing factions until it becomes impossible to tell for certain who is on which side. The only certainty is that this precarious and convoluted balance of power cannot maintain in perpetuity, and that when it fails, the outcome will not favor mankind. Also this: It would be
inaccurate to say that color itself refuses to take residence on the
grounds of the house of the Lady Gray. But what colors do call this
place home have been so muted as to constitute a new palette; one
where shadow rules with an iron-gray hand. It is as if the world had
resigned itself to perpetual winter, and gloom has fallen instead of
snow. The paltry and feeble grasses and scrub brush lend an air of
mournful wretchedness, rather than any indication of life, and
render, on the whole, a feeling of hopelessness and capitulation. It
is as if joy threw in the towel and departed for distant lands. The
small house, itself being so cloaked both in shadow and despair, that
the structure appears on the verge of collapse from sheer depression.
The windows, which seemed to occupy only the north, east and west
sides could not have possibly allowed any light to enter the dwelling
as they were shrouded by tall icy things that could only have been
the corpses of long dead trees. While the sun did shine on the on
the south side of the building, the wood itself seemed as if it
devoured the sunlight before any could be reflected back. On the
whole, the residence felt more like a grave than a place where the
living called home.
I have a fair amount of material prepared, more for some of the games than others. Running a game where the party may split up either requires a second GM or making the players wait for an extending period of time. I also welcome input on campaign and adventure ideas. Writing is hard enough; writing in a vacuum is untenable. The goal is to run a game with an enthusiastic group of players and record the games and/or live stream the games. I expect to run a few 'one shot' adventures in order to screen potential players.