So, deadEarth... Such an incredible marvel of insane game design. Reading this thread, I fell in love with the idea that if you just completely reworked the main resolution mechanic, removed the sexism, reworded most of the rules so that they made a semblance of sense, replaced... Yeah, I started to hack it, because the characters that survive character generation are incredibly amusing and worthy of being played, just not in the deadEarth engine.
I have regained my sanity before getting too far, but I still have this automated character generator with a revised list of skills and no rules to accompany it. If ever a strange mood compels me to refine the nearly two thousand radiation manipulations (i.e. reality-warping mutations) into a format and content I would be happy with, I will let you know. But don't hold your breath.
Over at Weird & Wonderful Worlds, a five minute creative challenge was issued some three years ago, where you have just five minutes to jot down ideas as they come into your head. I like that. Sometimes it's nice to just write something down, post it and move on, rather than to keep rethinking and rewriting the perfect post.
However, I don't do so good with a completely free-form "Have an idea, now!", so I'd rather have a prompt to start the associations somewhere. And I will give myself 15 minutes, because I want to end up with something intelligible and publishable, and I write way too slow to sort my thoughts out in only 5 minutes. Yeah, that's not really the same challenge, is it?
Anyway, if someone would be interested in such a challenge, here are the rough rules:
Make yourself a nice cup of tea to get the brain juices flowing. This step is mandatory.
Use the generator below to get your prompt. You don't have to stick to it, it's here just for inspiration. Get more than one and combine them, if you'd like.
Have a sip of your tea. Think.
Start the timer and write for 15 minutes. It doesn't matter what you write - A monster stat block? Bullet points of concepts? A micro story or a poem? A stream of consciousness? - but stop when the timer runs out (or as soon as you can, stopping in the middle of a sentence would drive me crazy).
Post the result! The very point of this challenge is to have a post ready in one short sitting.
I will try to go for thirty prompts in thirty days and you are more than welcome to join me. If you decide to do this challenge, please let me know. I would love to read your creations.
Any new prompts or improvements to the challenge are also very much welcome.
Vampirism - You don't need to eat, sleep, or breath, but you must drink blood. Allergic to sunlight. Powers and weaknesses develop as you drink more people.
A character of mine in a Finders Keepers game currently has this trait. The question remains, what kind of powers and weaknesses will a vampire develop? You can use the generator below - once you drink enough blood, press the button and you will gain one random power and one random weakness.
While the powers and weaknesses were created with Finders Keepers* in mind, they can easily be used for vampiric characters in any Into the Odd-style game. To make it work as a GLOG class, you could grant Vampirism and one roll on the generator at template A, then one extra roll each level. Or just use it to inspire powers for your NPC vampires.
Dead blood is any blood removed from a living body for over an hour, or taken from a dead body that already started to grow cold.
To feed someone your blood, take d4 damage unless otherwise specified.
*) Some of the abilities are frankly stolen from there.
