Sorry! Just wrapping up this week, we might run another scenario sometime if people are into it.
Iām sorry, itās all locked up right now. Iād love to run another game sometime, Iāll try to get the word out better next time.
Yeah, good thoughts. I did put a cap of two weeks on this, I wanted it to have a definite ending and not just run forever. The turns ended up getting more spread out due to the amount of work that goes into parsing and calculating each turn but that could be improved so that people are able to play daily and take turns more quickly.
Badass Space Dragon is more of a D&D style game but a Catan style game would be awesome on a board like this too.
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Out of character so Iāll post here.
I just want to publicly thank @patrace for putting this whole thing together for us. Itās been great fun and it must take up a lot of your time.
Also thanks to the other players who have been so amazing with their flavour text and artwork. I only wish I was a talented as you guys are.
Iāve been having a crappy few weeks but Badass Space Dragon has put a smile on my face each and every time I read through the threads.
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Itās been a great time for me too, thanks for all the kind words! Good luck with the extra attention this round! The price of celebrity.
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Thought Iād post here to explain myself.
Like pedge, I hope people realise Iām not actually, I donāt know, espousing views by Esk. This been a really fun game (I donāt really go in for gaming + stats etc) and Iāve really enjoyed watching the interactions and the backstory emerging.
Iām a bit sorry that my character spiel seems sortaā¦ outta placeā¦ wrong universe kinda thing.
Itās actually interesting - playing as Esk has given me new respect for her. The original story had Sam chasing Esk, hunting her down for some unspecified crime (but really, because theyād both gotten entangled back on earth in whatever dive of a sharehouse they lived in, and Sam holds grudges. Badly)
In that version Sam was an ever-pained, hard done by good guy - I like twisting it around. Sam the shithead, eleanor the long suffering.
Iām definitely flatlined but Iāll continue following each days progress. I want to see what Falkynās little pocket fleet gets up to!
All the best from the House.
-YT
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I love what youāve been doing. I am not at all familiar with the House universe, so all I know is what youāve presented, but itās been compelling as well as confounding, and more than a little inspirational (even if El-Esk is long-suffering to the point if nihilism, Samās counterpoint makes for an overall refreshing combination).
And goddamn. I donāt know who you are, and you donāt need me to tell you this, but goddamn. You can write the shit outta this stuff!
Really wish we could follow the Wanderer into Hell, if only there were a target to shoot at.
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All the talk of Houses made me think Battletech Inner Sphere stuff, but I assume Iām way off base there. Where does it come from? My Google-Fu is way off.
āYTā,
Youāve been fantastic. Your opening two posts are what inspired me to put so much effort into the game. I, too, have loved the El Esk character. My daughter pointed out that the āyggsdrilā is the life tree of Norse mythology ā and you had me.
While I loved your writing, at times I thought I heard some familiar rhythms. By any chance, did you know an old_sailor on Plastic.com way back when Carl was still idealistically keeping it going?
Thanks again for your HUGE contribution to this game.
ātylerh
ps. one parting link
Itās mine, but it might as well be a pastische of Ian M Banks and Alistair Reynolds. Maybe with Banks characterisation, and Reynolds Nihlism + and attempt at his way with dark, lovecraftian imagery??? I kid myself. I have about half a novel around these characters - It needs massaging but I think I can get it back into shape.
In terms of the game its been all consuming fun (Iām meant to be supervising 20 kids building a bar at the moment and Iām typing this) and I like the way all the different genres intersected.
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Yeah. Itās not much of a stretch from Lepisma to old usernames.
I like the idea of Yggsdrils but I guess this 'verse already had the space lizards, so the need for ornery brachiating aboreal tree-men was minimal.
Anyway, Iāve enjoyed both your and Daneelās and Donaldās play. I like poul anderson but sometimes I wonder about his power-trip kinda rhetoric. Tau Zero is a case and point - I mean, I understand the desperation etc but I donāt buy the āhard men and harder problemsā power play thing.
In general - Iām kinda thinking patrace should reboot this as a real game. Itās got brilliant universe and seems flexible enough to deal with political machinations, trade, betrayal, backstories etc. Maybe he could automate a lot of the backend stuff (itās basically a spreadsheet yeah?) and keep running it as a GM?
Or you know, spin it off as a real little webgame?
You know, automating this game, or a spinoff, would be reason enough for me to learn how to use Node.js
(Iāve never been too fond of server side stuff, but since all the cool kids are doing server stuff with javascript, I could try)
And if Discourse allowed us to embed canvas tags for the frontend, we would have everything we need in order to run something very close to a Door Game.
I agree that Poul Andersonās Polesotechnic league has not aged well. Both Falkayn and Van Rijn are, by modern standards, selfish and boorish.
However, I suck at maintaining back stories, so I just lifted Poulās work in whole cloth. The Falkayn character was just too perfect for this world. I figured if anyone recognized Poul Anderson ( I didnāt exactly try to hide it), they could riff on whatever they wanted from that massive universe. In the meantime, I didnāt have do the hard work of creating a character. My hat is off to you for creating two characters.
For me, the real goal was ācan I organize cooperationā, because game theory says I shouldnāt have been able to. (finite games always have this problem). I was ecstatic when we pulled it off in round 4. I was pleased at how much communal effort went into saving Pete, and for just a brief moment today I though I had pulled it off as well ā which should have been well-nigh impossible, mathematically speaking. In the end, weāre going to lose about five ships today. (Roger WIlco is an asshole --which game theory predicts are likely)
I plan to be very active on the Monday wrap discussion, as I agree we have the kernel of something really interesting here. I, too, am willing to help code solutions to make patraceās life easier.
Thanks again for both you fabulous characters. I have been working on a eulogy for El all week: Iām really going to miss her.
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Let us know when youāre finished - Iāll read it!
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2 ships have negative grit. Should they be dead? Theyāre just cluttering up the place anyway.
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Bloodlust! Iāll sink them tomorrow if they donāt magically appear.
What is the source of your pictures and the action figure, and now sculpture that you posted?
I believe itās a 70s film called ālaser blastā. everybody loves a goofy alien.
Aint that right @Donald_Petersen 
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Google Images. Iām such a crook.
They were a couple of characters in a truly dreadful 1978 science fiction movie called Laser Blast. MST3K had their way with that one. I first saw the aliens in a short article about Laser Blast and the stop-motion aliens therein in a 1978 issue of Cinefantastique, I think. By the time I saw the movie, I was in love. With the aliens, not the movie. Itās really a bad movie.
Itās also a great double-issue of CFQ, if you can find it. The Star Wars stuff therein is pretty exhaustive for the time (and for a magazine, that kinda looked down on SW initially), plus thereās stuff in there about Damnation Alley, Allegro Non Troppo, and Land of the Lost.
Hope I still have it stashed away somewhereā¦
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Thanks a lot for running the game. It could be rather boring and statistical if all we did was select missions and buy stuff. But everyone is so brilliant bringing a greater dimension to the game. Iām having fun even though I am woefully underpowered. Remember where I bragged about winning after the first mission? As predicted I am far from the front. Still - Iāve had decent luck, so thatās good. Usually about now is when I roll a double critical fail.
If you are interested where I got a majority of the names I used, I pulled from Fritz Leiberās Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories. Epic did a 4 part series drawn by Mike Mignola (before he became fancy pants Hellboy), that is just awesome.
As for the characters, I borrowed Marvin from Hitchhikers (also its non sequitur wit) but the rest I just made up as I went a long. I wanted characters that were more or less competent, but didnāt take themselves too seriously. I also gave thought about their motivation of being out with the space riff raff instead of living it up in Utopia. What made Fritz so special that heās the captain? (Answer: nothing) I tried to streamline their environment, thinking about how in the future ships will be built to maximize space, communication would have to travel across vast distances, and the operation of such an advance piece of technology would look nothing like it does today. I also gave thought on how an android would vary if it were built by another AI, and not by man. And I like watching myself write, so sorry if I got overly verbose.
ETA - Oh did liberally sprinkle in various movie quotes when possible. I also think I out lined the movie plot of Michael Bayās wet dreams.
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