#rpg – Actual Fucking Nightlife, Part One – Kin

Nightlife was a much underrated game, by Stellar Games (also known for It Came from the Late Late Show) with great art by my long time partner-in-crime Brad McDevitt (whose art was all over AFM and who also sells stock art through us at Drivethrurpg.

I have tried to approach the guys from Stellar Games on several occasions to seek licensing for this ‘lost’ game, but they have always asked for too much, or more commonly, been unresponsive to attempts to license or or produce a new edition (as I did with Blood!).

I figured it might be fun to provide some bare-bones rules conversions for running Nightlife using the Actual Fucking Monsters system nonetheless, it doing so would also help me explore what additional rules and ideas might go into AFM’s companion book.

So here it is, just a silly fan-blog.

Kin

The Kin in Nightlife were pretty loose anyway, rather open collections of thematic powers and weaknesses. So there’s plenty of scope to use AFM’s completely open system to recreate the Kin breeds found there.

Death and Resurrection

Unlike Monsters in AFM, you can’t outright kill Kin easily. When they die they – usually – resurrect the following night. This is detailed in the Nightlife books, but a Monster in AFM’s rules can only resurrect a number of times equal to their die type in Body (1-5 times) before dying the ‘true death’. Dying from Bane damage, or being dismembered or bodily destroyed will also do it.

General Kin Monster Powers

Ageless, Armoured, Claws & Teeth, Control Weather, Danger Sense, Direction Sense, Drain, Dreams and Nightmares, Extra Sensory Perception, Heightened Sense, Navigate Probability, Sense of Time, Speed, Techno-Invisibility, Tracking.

Vampyres

Those who are Made.
Transgression: Cannibalism/Blood Drinking
Monster Powers: Animal Magnetism, Beast Form (Bat), Hypnosis, Insubstantial, Beast Form (Rat), Beast Form (Wolf), Drain (Blood).
Possible Banes: Sunlight, Running Water, Garlic, Wood, Fire, Holy Relics.

Werewolves

Those who are Born, or Those who are Made.
Transgression: Sadism or Cannibalism.
Monster Powers: Animal Magnetism, Beast Form (Hybrid), Beast Form (Wolf), Drain (Pain), Fearsome, Heightened Sense.
Possible Banes: Fire, Silver.

Ghosts

The Neverborn.
Transgression: Cause Fear.
Monster Powers: Armoured, Camouflage, Drain (Fear), Empathic, Facedance, Fearsome, Frigidity, Insubstantial (In Ghosts, using this power makes them corporeal), Levitation, Telekinetic, Teleportation.
Possible Banes: Cold-Wrought Iron, Fire, Holy Relics.

Daemons

Those who are Born or Neverborn.
Transgression: Corruption and temptation.
Monster Powers: Body Manipulation, Drain (Life Force), Facedance, Fire Breath, Flight, Inhabit, Levitation, Telepathic Projection, Telepathic Reading, Teleportation.
Possible Banes: Flint (stone), Holy Relics, Natural Fire.

Wyghts

Those who are Made.
Transgression: Necrophagy, Necrophilia.
Monster Powers: Drain (Youth), Necrocommunication, Reanimator.
Possible Banes: Sunlight, Silver, Fire.

Manitou (Inuit – even I thought that was a bit much)

Those who are Born.
Transgression: Pranks and tricks.
Monster Powers: Animal Magnetism, Bedlam, Camouflage, Harm Transference, Heart Attack, Levitation.
Possible Banes: Fire, Holy Relics.

Animates

The Neverborn.
Transgression: Sadism.
Monster Powers: Body Manipulation, Demagogue, Drain (Life), Hypnosis, Telepathic Projection, Telepathic Reading.
Bane: Sunlight, Fire, Antipathy.

#RPG – Actual Fucking Monsters RELEASED!

Aren’t we all just a little tired of shiny, brooding, romantic, tragic monsters with their ‘woe is me’ whining and carrying on? ‘Monsters we are, lest monsters we become’. Well, fuck holding onto your humanity. If we’re going to be monsters, let’s be Actual Fucking Monsters.

Drawing inspiration from works like Nightbreed and an endless array of 80s horror flicks and their revivals, Actual Fucking Monsters is a game of monstrous creatures doing horrible things and being tracked down and destroyed for it. You don’t win, you live fast, leave a bloody swathe in your wake and then are cut down by the forces of vengeful humanity.

Is that fun?

It sure as shit is.

BUY PDF HERE

BUY POD HERE

#RPG – MetaCards – System-Neutral Roleplaying Prompts RELEASED!

GET THEM HERE

MetaCards provide a means to encourage roleplay and verisimilitude in your TTRPG games.

GET THEM HERE

MetaCards are a generic system that can be overlaid on top of any other game system.

The cards provide prompts to roleplay in a certain way. The players can then represent a certain mood or perform certain actions that can provide verisimilitude for games that are designed to seem ‘real’, or thematic cues for games that are more narratively focused.

The players are encouraged to follow the cards by a small, mechanical, near-universal bonus. Decks can be customised with prompts specific to your group or campaign if you’re seeking to encourage a specific kind of roleplay. You could customise the deck to prompt players in a horror game to do stereotypical horror-movie things, or those in a romantic fantasy game to engage with the romantic preconceptions of that genre.

This is meant to be introductory, allowing you to take the concept and run with it for your own games.

GET THEM HERE

Hardcopies of the MAIN DECK and BLANK BOOSTERS will be available at TheGamecrafter.com

#RPG – Actual Fucking Monsters

I’m currently working on a couple of things, Metacards (systemless RP prompts to encourage roleplay and verisimilitude) and Actual Fucking Monsters, my spasm of disgust against the humanisation of monsters and the ‘pussification’ of vampires, werewolves and other monstrosities, inspired in part by Nightbreed (Cabal) and intended as a reaction to the lack of actual fucking horror present in most modern horror RP, TV series, films and so forth.

Rules can only do so much, the way you play a game – or are encouraged to – can also make a huge difference. In the advice section I lay out five ‘pillars’ that are meant to guide playing Actual Fucking Monsters.

Push the Envelope
Every player, including the Games Master, should be seeking to push the envelope of horrific and stomach-churning action that takes place in the game. In a time when so many games are bending over backwards to be overly considerate about people’s feelings and to protect them, this is meant to be like a roller coaster or a horror film. It’s meant to terrify and disgust each other – for fun.

There are Consequences
Everything you do in the game will come back to bite you on the arse in some way. You eat a child to fill your satiation? The mother tracks you down, even when the police give up. People see your monstrous visage and it goes viral on the internet. The sheriff comes after you, then the state police, then the feds, then monster hunters and witch burners. Everything you do comes back.

There is no Redemption
This isn’t a story about redemption or a cure. There is no spiritually pure path and probably no insight into the lore of your people. It is a downward spiral into despair and death and an inevitable bad-ending. This is Near Dark, not Interview with the Vampire.

Everyone is Awful
Nobody is good or pure or nice in this world. Every cop is a womaniser, a racist or an alcoholic. Every parent beats their children or never sees them. Every friend is a betrayer, every lover will cheat on you, everyone is out for themselves or out to get you. If you scratch the surface there’s nothing but darkness beneath.

Everyone Dies
There’s no ‘winning’ in this game. There’s no grand adventure. The world is reactive to everything you do and eventually, it all catches up to you. That’s the story here, and you ‘win’ by being an antihero, transgressing morality, pushing buttons and dying a spectacular death.

#RPG – Gorean Adventures, The Green Island RELEASED!

In this supplement for Tales of Gor you join a rebellious inventor on a quest for a mythical lost island and city. Will his technological innovations anger the Priest Kings? Will you fall afoul of the pirates that ply their trade across the Thassa? What will you discover beneath the waves, far from the politics and skulduggery of Civilised Gor?

This book also contains information on a (non-canonical) Farther Isle for you to use as a setting or base of operations for your player group.

Download

Hardcopy

#RPG – The Politics of Postmortem Studios

In the run-up to the US mid-term elections, several game companies put out statements on their political stances and exhorting people to vote in particular ways. This struck me as a little crass, and somewhat beyond the remit of a games company, an entertainer or – indeed – an artist.

This is far from the first time that this has happened, with games companies ‘excommunicating’ fans with particular outlooks, or even outright telling them ‘we don’t want you’. In a time of increasing division, this is even more divisive and this seems – to me – to be especially unhelpful when games and other diversions are a way to reach across the aisle and to humanise each other.

Still, I thought it best to explicitly state my political position as a company writer, game designer, artist, employer – and as an individual. So first, my position as a company, and the one I would prefer (but not demand) that anyone who works with me adopts…

I do not care who you are or what you believe. Your politics are not relevant to whether you enjoy my games or not. I do not want to deny anyone access to my material and while it is inevitably, somewhat, coloured by my experience and outlook, I make no demands and exclude nobody. Whatever your politics, creed, colour, sexuality, gender identity or ice-cream preference you’re welcome to play and enjoy my games, to work with me ore interact in any which way you prefer.

Hopefully, that’s clear enough. The TL;DR is that I don’t care about your personal politics, and you shouldn’t care about mine. Games are a way to look past all that, see each other as people, set aside politics and other divisions and to just have fun.

So as regards my personal politics, if you care…

I am a left-libertarian on the political compass, waaaaay down on the bottom left. Ideologically I’m an Anarchist-without-adjectives, but closest to an Anarcho-Technocrat. Ideological ideals rarely survive contact with the real world however, and my guiding principle from Anarchism is to maximise freedom for the greatest number of people, which in the current sociopolitical climate leads me to adopt Socialism as the best option to meet that goal.

I am pro free speech, for anything that falls short of The Harm Principle and believe the role of the state should be as guarantor and defender of people’s rights, rather than a source of constriction, censorship or oppression – and I extend that to the private sphere. Those rights should be as equal as possible between everyone, without special treatment either positive or negative. I believe we should work as hard as we can to maximise people’s opportunities so that everyone has the best possible chance to achieve their full potential.

I’m also an atheist, apparently I’m obliged to mention that.

Overriding anything else I think or believe, pragmatism and correct information has to come first. Effective action can only proceed from accurate facts, and pragmatism requires compromise where such is possible without losing touch with those base principles.

You may have heard things about me that seem to be in conflict with these ideals. There is a lot of bullshit going around, mainly – ironically – because I choose to speak up about the regressive, censorious behaviour of others in the industry who – also ironically – often consider themselves progressive. If you want clarity, my door is always open.

Behind all this is, of course, is an argument over politics, art, political art, the ‘personal as political’ and all that jazz.

Can art be political? Sure. To an extent, we can’t help but project our own politics and worldviews into what we create. This is more obvious in some forms of art than others. That doesn’t mean that art has to be political, nor that it has to beat people over the head with politics.

There’s a term for wilfully, evangelical political art, and that is propaganda.

That’s also behind what I call the ‘Christian Rock Problem’. The reason Christian Rock is so fucking terrible is because it puts its religious message first, over and above the concern of making it any good. This is also why Rage Against the Machine’s breakout album is the only good one they did.

• So, art can be apolitical.
• Art can be about politics.
• Art can be political, and that’s when it becomes propaganda.

Art to any purpose can be worthwhile and beautiful. Even a TV commercial or a cereal box, even a Soviet-era political poster.

In divisive times like this, streaming art and games according to political tribalism only stands to worsen things and to increase the polarising effects we already suffer from social media bubbles, tabloids and tribalistic news channels. Games, hobbies, sports, these are places where we can meet across these lines and understand each other – or they should be. I cannot stand that people are willfully and deliberately politicising these spaces and making the problem worse, not better.

If you are interested in my more political games, feel free to check out The Little Grey Book and @ctiv8.

If there are any specifics you’d like me to clarify my positions on, I’d appreciate the opportunity to do so. Feel free to ask below or via Ask.fm/grimachu

#RPG – Postmortem Studios November Update

It’s November, and about time for another update, as we Brits look forward to setting shit on fire and blowing things up.

I’m trying to get my PATREON up to over $200 a month. This is primarily to support my work on YOUTUBE, but also supports my blogging and other work. You get access to periodic exclusive content, you can request video topics,  you can get discounts on apparel and books.

As for me, my endless wrangles with the Department of Work and Pensions seem to have come to a (positive) end, which takes off a lot of pressure and allows me to take more risks and invest more in my work in order to get out of that situation, as well as to farm out more work to others.

There will be plenty of openings as we move towards the end of the year and into the new year, for writers (Gor and D6 familiarity a bonus) and for artists (send me your links and portfolios!).

The Darkzel Scholarship will be coming up soon, my regular fundraiser to help out young, impoverished or otherwise hard-up artists. So keep an eye out for that. The fundraiser runs for three months and entries are welcome up to a month after. This year we’ll be returning to the format of providing a lump, ‘prize’, sum to one lucky applicant.

Postmortem Studios will have its own, censorship-free site next year for direct sales, insulating me from issues on existing sales sites – provided everything goes well – and I hope to be able to provide a safe haven for other, censored RPG and nerd-media writers there too.

Nanowrimo? Not sure, maybe, if I do it’ll be short stories.

While I have you, remember that my new Twitter accounts are @mort_post and @grimasaur, and given that G+ is going the way of the dodo, a MeWe account too. See you there!

Anyway, fire away with any questions or suggestions and I’ll try to get cracking!