Coming Soon!

After a long hiatus, Giant Size Scrap Pile #3 is on the release schedule! (Pleasedontfallthrough-pleasedontfallthrough-pleasedontfallthrough!)

The bad news is that there's likely to be another hiatus afterwards, so that's all the more reason to make it awesome. I'm looking to resolve one long-running plot thread, at least.

That's pretty much all I can say, because almost everything about the story is supposed to be a surprise and, like, 99% of my audience is going to be playing in it.

In Reprints

We won't be producing original material for a bit. Gotta wait for some Scrap Pile members to find their way back to Beta City.

We'll be back, though, bigger and weirder than ever!

For now, I guess we're in reprints, so check out the classic Scrap Pile adventure, "Oh, What a Night."

House Rules

We added a couple of house rules this time (session write-up coming soon) that seem to be working well.

Multiple Dodges: The first one is that you can keep dodging attacks, but you get progressively worse as the page goes on. Your first dodge is a normal roll, but after that penalties start stacking up. Minus one on the next dodge, minus two on the one after that, minus three on the one after that, and so on.

Free Activations: The other one is that everybody gets a free activation of each of their three qualities once per session. This was mainly because nobody in this group (including the GM) is used to the whole playing for determination points thing where you penalize your own character to get the bonus later. Also, I tend to forget to hand out the points for doing cool stuff, which, unfortunately, encouraged hoarding.

Scrap Pile '95

We were joking around about a dark future for the Scrap Pile, kind of like the 1990's comics, and came up with this revamped team:

• Copper - Magi has seen too many of his friends die. So he's going back in time with big guns and is now known as Copper (pipes pulled from your house).
• Bazooka Shark - Land Shark with a big rocket strapped to his back and carrying twin uzis
• Rayve - Disco, now with a bomber jacket over his costume, and a mullet
• Revenge - Torpedo, now extra-angry about the destruction of Atlantis and with mini-missile launchers on his big steel shoulder pads

Fun with Webware

Had another session last night. I'll get the summary up soon. It was pretty short.

Again, we had problems with people dropping off and getting weird glitches like being able to hear me but not anyone else. We're thinking that, since we've been mostly going with "theater of the mind" stuff and we're not using many of the features that Roll20 offers, it might be better to try just a straight Google Plus hangout instead.

Still had a great time, though. Still loving the game. I was really pleased with the way the mechanics worked out for Deathbird, although I need to do something to make the players more aware of their advantage/stunt options. Also, kind of surprisingly, I'm still jazzed to be running a super-hero campaign.

Test Run

Just had a test run. Captain Scrappy, Emergent, and Firetemple thwarted The Angry Beet's attempt to rob a bank. There were some rough spots, definitely some things I need look up and get firmly ingrained in my head, but I still think the system is going to work out well once I get more experience with it and with Roll20. They're going to come up with characters and we're planning to play again in two weeks.

Or Maybe This

Picked this up at Gen Con and thinking of going with it instead of Marvel SAGA. It's looking like a fun system. It's also more readily available (free-or-whatever PDF from DriveThruRPG or print from Green Ronin) Hopefully the print version will eventually be available through retailers like Amazon, too. The 6x9-ish hardcover is pretty nifty.

• PDF from DriveThruRPG (Pay What You Want)
• Hardback (Updated) from Green Ronin ($34.95)

I'm also thinking of setting the campaign in my own version of the POWerful Tales universe instead of the Marvel one, although I will no doubt steal plenty of Marvel material as it progresses. Here's a little bit about Beta City.

Nothing's set in stone yet, though.

Obligatory Intro Post

Yeah, I'll probably change the name of the blog. The Rustbelt thing is kinda "meh." Hopefully our first session will yield some inspiration.

The stuff about how I decided to run Marvel Saga, along with a brief history of other super-hero role-playing games I've played, is over on my other blog.

Umm, what else? There's nothing about Ezren here.

I hope we get started soon so I'll have something to post here. You don't think I'm jumping the gun, do you?