Oh, but it's been a while, eh? Where does all that time (a whole month and then some) go? Well, there's been a lot of plumbing, the house won't rebuild itself for one thing. But even in the sphere of games, other things have slightly intruded.
You know how new ideas are good ideas? Right. And you know how it's more fun to work on good ideas? Right. Well, that.
I made a notebook for "The Boat House", there are even a few notes in there, the start of a floor plan. Actually, it turns out that's not true, I must have made the notes and the floor plan somewhere else as the notebook is pristine and unsullied with my ink.
In the mean time, I had an idea for an adventure solely based on a pun around the old Call of Cthulhu zine "The Unspeakable Oath". For Mausritter, that becomes "The Unsqueakable Oath". I don't mind saying that I laughed at that for probably longer than is right and proper. Now this notebook has been used - it says exactly three things to remind me what I was intending the adventure to be. There's also a rough map for that, but again it's not in the actual notebook I made for exactly that purpose. Honestly, organisation doesn't even bother to ring the bell at our house...
I've been mildly obsessed with Josh McRowell's "His Majesty the Worm" (https://riseupcomus.itch.io/his-majesty-the-worm) - the game isn't out yet, but four appendices are available; the magic system, the alchemy system, the city-builder and the dungeon-builder. They're all beautiful, really tactile systems (no, I don't know what I mean by that really, either) and they're based on using a tarot deck instead of dice.
I've never been a fan on card-based games, but I have absolutely no idea why not, much like a child who won't try apples because they "probably taste funny". Josh's work snuck in there via good tweeting and I was liking it before I'd really appreciated it was card-based. You really need to check it out.
Anyway, getting ahold of a tarot deck has taken a while, so I've been using a Discord dice roller for the time being and knocking out dungeons and cities with a fair measure of childish glee.
In another pun-related move, I was driving happily along when I decided someone should really create a game about spirits possessing people and call it "9/10ths of the Law", given the legal (at least in the UK) saying "Possession is nine tenths of the law". Incidentally, the saying isn't true.
So I made a few notes, though of a couple of mechanisms, was kind of enjoying myself with something that was very vanilla. Some tables to roll up character types/traits and maybe something to roll up starting equipment, that sort of thing. Meh.
But then the "using cards" concept broke the surface and I rewrote it using cards for character creation. You pick a card for Will (for example, the spirit character has Will and Charm as they're non-physical traits that reflect your personality). The value on the card tells you the score (1-4) and you have an ability like "change the temperature somewhat".
The suit doesn't affect the value or the ability. However, what it does do is give your trait a flavour (heart flavour, club flavour, whatever). Your spirit had Will and Charm (which feel like Hard and Soft traits?) and any old random person in the street has Strength and Skills (which also feel like I can suggest they are Hard and Soft trait, why not?).
Because of this, in any crowd of people, you'll have a mix of different 'flavoured' people - and maybe your spirit needs to match the suit of either its Hard or Soft trait in order to possess that body? Now we find that only some of the people in a scene are suitable candidates for inhabiting. That's cool, right?
I could go on - I realise that I have gone on.
It's probably best to save something for a next post, right, or else it'll be another month and I won't appear to have achieved anything.
The "Things" notebook? It's a halloween adventure for Mausritter, because I wasn't doing enough things at the same time already... and random notes for other things...