Ask Me Anything: thetaodaddy

What are some of your favorite things to cook, and what, if any, music do you listen to whike cooking?

You've been on the site for years, have over a thousand post and a whole bunch of games... And I don't believe we've ever met. Have you returned to the site after an absence, or have I just failed a whole bunch of perception checks?

You're not in any active games. Are you waiting for the perfect game for you?

What's a soundtrack or piece of music that, on its own, can basically inspire an rpg adventure?

Do you still have all your Car Wars material? Do you occasionally look at it fondly and wish you could play it again?

I'm sorry, you can't just put it out there and not have me ask... "adjudicating erotic one-shots". Change the names to protect the innocent, and I suppose keep it forum appropriate but... I don't even know what that means. Are there TTRPGs specifically equipped for this style of play or was this like a homebrew thing. Is it more of a LARP thing?

That may sound mocking, but I'm genuinely fascinated at a corner of this hobby I never knew existed.

ooh, TMNT and Other Strangeness takes me back. I recently backed the "Tales From Xadia" Kickstarter that runs on Cortex, so I'll ask some Cortex questions!

1. Please wax poetic on why it is your favorite system :)

2. Does Cortex differ from Cortex Prime?

3. The promotional materials for Cortex Prime describe it as Session-Centered, which they define as "By focusing more on individual sessions, Cortex Prime gives groups the flexibility to tell stories together that are short and sweet or long and involved." Since PbP doesn't have a "session" does this design goal still translate to pbp? I find it promising that it supports shorter games from the core.

4. How do you feel about Fandom acquiring it?

In your opinion, what/who is a great book or author that you think flies under the radar, but should have more exposure?

Have there been audiobooks where you were really blown away by the narrator? Which ones and why?

Better late than never...

I enjoy cooking most when I'm just tossing stuff together from whatever happens to be in the fridge. It's sort of a culinary improv performance - assessing what's on hand, adding ingredients, tasting as I go, a little more of this or that spice, whip up some kind of sauce out of stuff on hand... those meals are the ones the family likes best.

I've also been trying new recipes every week. I'm trying different ethnic dishes that have nothing to do with my heritage, discovering new spices (garam masala on sweet potatoes is a big hit with my wife!)

Usually I'll have a random mix on (my musical tastes are fairly eclectic). Last night as I cooked I heard some Clash, White Stripes, Beastie Boys, Roger Miller, Tom Petty, Wig Wam, and Shawnee Kish. Two nights ago it was all classical piano, and I think a few nights before that I had a rap battle with my Amazon Echo while I made dinner.

I was super active for my first couple years in what was possibly my favorite ever game I ever played anywhere. If you're curious I'll give details, but I don't want to bore everyone with details they don't want.

I went on hiatus for a while and only recently returned. My work and real life schedules are still fluctuating right now and I end up with very little time during the week. I'm waiting for things to settle down to a point where I can commit to a game, then I'll try to find THE PERFECT GAME.

Just about anything can inspire an adventure for me. I wish I had fewer ideas.

I had an entire campaign inspired by a single line from the song "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath.
Vengeance from the grave, kills the people he once saved inspired a superhero murder mystery where the big bad ended up being the father of one the PCs. They thought he was dead but he was alive and had gone insane. He had decided that heroes were not meant to exist, that his entire life was a lie, and that he had to undo everything he did when he was a hero to set things right. People he saved were killed, a building he protected from a bombed was leveled, the bridge he kept from collapsing collapsed... his old arch enemy was their prime suspect until the last clue that revealed his innocence and pointed to the actual culprit.

Toccata by Emerson, Lake & Palmer inspired a post-apocalyptic adventure that took place after the battle we imagined playing out during the song.

I ran a horror-themed one-shot once that was loosely inspired by Hotel California by the Eagles - the PCs checked into the last hotel on a dark desert highway and found themselves trapped in another dimension and had to find their way back to their own world before sunrise.

I'm sure there are others that have been inspired by various albums, songs, and lyrics, but those were the ones I remembered off the top of my head.

I have the original plastic box with all the little cardboard tokens and the folded up paper highway maps... it's one of the few things that survived the Great Mom's Basement Flood of 98. I don't know if I would play it again, to be honest. I've lost interest in tactical games. But I see it on the shelf and it bring back fond memories from the late 80's.

Let's hear about it!

my 'Trademark Question' ©Antiproduct: What do movies and television get wrong about job/career?
What's your favorite way to start a story?
Who are your favorite pair of actors that have stared in several movies together?

So... yeah. I'm not shy about my fascination with matters of the heart and urges of the libido. In my own experience and in my observations of others throughout my life, I've noticed that love and sex are one of the largest motivators for people. Naturally they both play into the fiction I write and characters I play. Most of my characters do dumb stuff for love and/or sex, just like so many people in real life. It irritates my min/max friend who want me to just play my role in the party rather than the character I created, so I often just let it inform my less important decisions.

THE FIRST TIME I ran something that I'd call "erotic" started as a Pathfinder game I was running for four friends, two couples. Between sessions, the husband and wife playing the rogue and sorcerer asked me if I could run a side story for them. It got weird, but not uncomfortable. Somehow, despite being married and in love, and playing characters in love, they remained touch free (a requirement from me) and played out the scene pretty convincingly in character while still snapping out of character to adjudicate rules. It wasn't too bad for me, and I actually found myself involved in the story they were weaving, which was surprisingly not sexual for all it's eroticism.

TIME PASSED and they asked me to run another one shot for just the two of them that ended up expanding to include the couple from our previous game. I floated a few ideas and they bit on a transhumanist idea. In this world consciousness can be transferred from body to body (imagine Altered Carbon, but without a "cortical stack" to save if the body died.) There were clones, AIs, engineered bodies, cybergear, and all the usual transhumanist tropes. Given what they had originally proposed, I asked about their interest in exploring sexuality, sexual identity, gender identity, etc. and they were excited about pretty much everything. They each played couples in love, but one of each couple was serving time. In this world you have the option to reduce your sentence in The Red Zone. The Red Zone is essentially a self-contained city jail. Every inch is monitored and streamed on a pay site. People pay to control you through a cortical implant. You can be leased by a single person and your body is under their control, you mind shunted to a service body, or your actions can be decided by popular vote while you retain awareness. People can go into the Red Zone and interact with the prisoners, usually sexually or violently, depending on the waiver the prisoner signed. The more uses you allow for your body, the shorter your sentence.

I used Cortex Drama with Values, Relationships, Distinctions and a set of Assets based on cyberwear and artificial bodies. Each player had their own character sheet, and I also created 2 additional sheets for each player. These were NPCs they would get to secretly play. They ranged from an AI to an ex-boyfriend of one PC. When the non-jailed partner visited their incarcerated partner, they might meet with their actual partner, or they might meet with one of the other NPCs that is currently inhabiting their partners' body. Things got weird. One player really got into the AI character and their partner fell for the AI. In a weird twist, one couple ended up inhabiting each other's bodies and ended up sleeping with other characters, then each other, then didn't want to swap back. There was a lot of craziness, more hijinks than a softcore porn movie, and we were all entertained despite how really insane things got.

Really it couldn't have happened without players who knew and trusted each other and could easily separate play and characters from real life and players. Parts of it were emotional, parts were silly, others were overly sexual. Using the X card was clutch, trusting your group was the most important. I don't know if that sates your curiosity. If you have more specific questions, feel free to ask.

ANSWER 1:

I've had a personal mission to create a universal system that hit the balance between crunch and storytelling for... ever, I guess. I always hated the lack of skills in early D&D, and didn't feel like any of the rules handled social interactions well in early games. I was always trying to create something that did what I wanted it to do since probably the late 80s. I tried GURPS, Fate, and a lot of other universal systems, but it wasn't until I ran across Smallville (early Cortex Drama) that I found a system that I felt hit relationship and social interaction in a way that mechanically mattered to the game.

Cortex Plus was a fantastic resource, the Cortex Hacker's Guide offered many ways to customize the system, and once I started combining Drama with Action, I realized it was pretty close to what I always wanted. THEN THERE WAS CORTEX PRIME. It did the things I liked and it was modular, so you could add in or take out bits and pieces based on what you wanted.

My "emulate D&D" build uses Attributes, Skills, and Distinctions as well as signature assets for those unique weapons, Powers as spells, and uses five Stress tracks, the Doom Pool.

My college romance, keep up your grades, budding superhero build uses Values, Relationships, Distinctions, Powers, and Talents.

I just love that it can do anything, that I can build a system where the fashion you wear to the ball can be used mechanically to your benefit when dealing with the Duke and Duchess, where a stinging retort can cause someone to get angry, and you can use that anger against them in your argument or a fight.


ANSWER 2:

Cortex is kind of a catch-all. It was the Cortex system when it was Smallville, Firefly, and Marvel Superheroes, just different flavors. All the different types were combined into Cortex Plus, and the Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide offered a ton of variations and examples. Then the whole thing was given a makeover and streamlined into Cortex Prime which sets it all up as a cohesive, modular system. I think I have it right there...


ANSWER 3:

I usually imagine each session of a Cortex game as an episode of a TV show. My favorite ever game was a Cortex Drama game played right here on Gamersplane where we played Chapters in an overarching story. As a pbp each chapter lasted a few weeks with fairly regular posting by all participants.


ANSWER 4:

I'm good with what Fandom's done with it. The online support is stellar, the new Cortex Prime book and Tales of Xadia are pretty rock solid.

I feel like I'm forgetting something stupendous with this answer, but the only 2 books that come to mind right now are:

Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey was a really great book. Solid worldbuilding, a unique (to me) character with her own voice, pretty much everything I look for in a book. The series itself lost me in book three when the sex got a little too much for my taste (and I've previously expressed how little that kind of thing bothers me, so... take that as you will.)

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss is a fantastic book. I heard of it from a friend back in 2010 and devoured it, then waited for a sequel and I'm still waiting for the final book.

The Reckoners series by Brandon Sanderson was narrated by MacLeod Andrews. I really associated his voice with that of the main character, and I found the other voices he used to fit their characters without being over the top. It's a tight line to walk between good vocal characterization and going over the top, and I felt like he did a great job with that.

A book I don’t think I would have read but for a suggestion from a friend ended up being a favorite thanks to the narration on the audiobook. The book is Her Own Devices, the first in a series by Shelley Adina. It’s far closer to the romance genre than I typically read, but overall it was a solidly enjoyable adventure with a main character I ended up really liking thanks to the narration. Fiona Hardingham brings it to life for some reason. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have finished it without her reading it.

The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, an audiobook version of something I read in the late 80’s was nostalgic for me since they got Sheryl Lee, the actress who played Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks, to read it.

Wil Wheaton’s narration of Ready Player One hit all the right buttons for me. He was as excited as the main character and as nostalgic for all the 80’s geek culture as me.

…and then there’s Stephen Fry reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - the perfect marriage of two favorite icons of dry British humor, or Kenneth Branagh reading an entire performance into Heart of Darkness - shivers, or Neil Gaiman reading any of his own work, because some authors give you nuance in their voices that add to those you pickup in their text, and Gaiman is a personal favorite.

Anything on computers. Those big ENTER PASSWORD screens. The oversimplified "Hacking In Progress" status bar or the overcomplex rapidly scrolling screen of nonsense when hacking a computer. Ugh. Painful to watch.

I like to start a story in the middle of something exciting. I always loved the opening sequences in James Bond movies where he was just completing a mission and you had no idea who what or where, just that it was ACTION!

Favorite pair of actors... hmm... probably Simon Pegg and Nick Frost... or maybe Will Ferrell & John C. Reilly. But then there's Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. I guess all my favorite repeat duos are in comedies. Who knew?