Hey everybody,

I just did a really cool panel for Domino Girls, which you will get to see in several weeks.  But I liked one particular part of it enough that I also did a sketch I've decided to share.

I should sketch more.  I should do a lot of things more, for that matter.  But since that's not very likely, you'll just have to enjoy Phoebe: schoolgirl from Hell.

An error with the blog yesterday seems to have been resolved - probably through the tireless efforts of Tim Rayburn.  Or maybe it was just one of those things.

Either way, I don't know if my hordes of subscribers (okay 6) got their RSS feeds, so I figured I'd throw out an announcement.

I figured I'd start with the hardest part first.  Well, that's not strictly true.  I have most of the other parts worked out already, but magic is a toughie, and some of the other stuff hinges on how it works.

Buffy magic is a very robust system, but it doesn't fit the Gargoyles flavor.  Buffy Sorcerers have an entirely diferent set of problems than Gargoyles ones.  The high probability of spells going awry doesn't really fit, and the progressive -2 per turn seems a little off, too.

All we know about magic comes from Demona, the Magus, the Archmage, and various faeries.  And really, there's not a lot.  Normal humans hardly ever cast spells (compared to the amount of time they spend doing other stuff).  Faeries, on the other hand, sling magic around all the time, although it does seem to wear them out after a while.

For humans and gargoyles, the rule seems to be that it's very hard to cast spells spontaneously.  The Magus only ever does it once, and he dies from it.  I think the Archemage throws around some nasty spells, but it's been a while since I've watched it.  I'm going to go with the assumption that for the most part, magic in Gargoyles is through rituals, or through using magical devices.  For instance, it was likely a property of Titania's Mirror that Demona could use a simple ritual to summon Puck - rather than a "spell" of Demona's.

EDIT:  Something else I've thought of

One thing I might change, although I'd do so with some trepidation, is to make spell formulas a little more flexible.  Spell R&D is pretty hard.  If your books don't have a spell for turning people into statues, you're probably never going to be able to turn people into statues.  But if your books DO have a spell for turning people into statues, you can probably turn one person into a statue, or a dozen, or a million if you're good enough to marshal the magical energies.  And you can do so under different circumstances, like "the next person I touch" or "everyone in the sound of my voice."

What this means is that the spells you know are listed with their minimal effect and starting PL, and you can pick and choose modifiers.  Make the spell work longer or faster or bigger, and the PL goes up.  Make it take rare ingredients or year-long rituals, and it goes down.

That's a scary level of freedom, though.  I've already learned that WitchCraft style Invocations are frighteningly poweful, and those just let a magician do one kind of effect.  So I'll have to think about it.  Sometimes play balance has to win over simulation of the source material.

So anyway, the Sorcery quality is really, really rare.  Human magicians learn rote spells and need either elaborate rituals or a magical conduit to work their mojo.  A magical conduit is an Enchanted Item that - just to keep things simple - provides the holder with the ability to Quick Cast spells up to its Power Level.  It doesn't provide the bonus points.  Instead, that's going to be a Quality called - because I like GURPS - Magery.  Levels of Magery up to 5 add to your Occultism skill to cast spells.  Since I'm already dinging you at roughly 2 points per level for Quick Casting, I'll just make that Quality a 1-point per level Quality.  And if you want Telekinesis, you have to pay for it the old-fashioned way.

I think I'll leave Sorcery in, but make the prerequisite for learning it be something like Occultism greater than 10.  And I might turn it into a sort of "Wild Card Skill" so it advances a lot more slowly.

On the other hand, Gargoyles magicians don't seem to have too much trouble with spells going awry.  A spell can fail if you're not talented enough to cast it, and what it's supposed to do might not actually be what you think it does, but it's not going to do something radically different.  Magic seems very legalistic.  A spell to make you as enduring as the mountain stones may just turn you to stone.

(Although I have a private theory that if Xanatos had immersed himself in the cauldron, it would have made him immortal - he would have shed his stone skin like a Gargoyle.  I think Puck didn't want Xanatos to be immortal because then  he'd be stuck as Owen for all eternity, so he did something to scare Xanatos off.  Greg Wiesman doesn't actually agree with me, but what does he know?)

Faeries have it different.  They seem to be able to just whip out with spells that do just about anything at the drop of a hat.  They also DO seem to suffer from some degradation of their powers.  Puck says he'll need a long nap after The Mirror.

Ergo, Faeries DO have Sorcery, which costs 5 points per level and lets them Quick Cast spells.  I'll keep the Quality at 5 points per level even though it doesn't include telekinesis because it will include the ability to improvise spells.  Faeries just whip out with the magic whenever they want.

I'm also making one other major change - Magic can kill you.  If you throw a Quick Cast spell of a higher PL than your Sorcery or available conduit, you take physical damage from it.  I think I'll make it five times the PL of the spell.  That'll REALLY limit what magicians can do without their tools.

Faeries can also have other powers.  In fact, not all faeries or demifey need to have Sorcery.  They might rely on innate powers that are more reliable, if less versatile.  For those, the Angel supernatural Qualities will do most of the job.

So then there's Enchanting and Superscience.

Magic items are really rare in the Gargoyles-verse, and most of the ones I can think of are actually Faerie creations: the Eye of Odin, Titania's Mirror, the Phoenix Gate, and probably Excalibur.  The Grimorium is something of an unknown, as is the Gae Bolga.  I think I might limit Enchanting either to just level 1 for humans, or entirely to Faeries.  Or maybe not.  There's a dearth of evidence on the subject.

Superscience, on the other hand, should be easier than it is in the Buffyverse.  Robots, blasters, floating factories, and whatnot are all common enough not to raise eyebrows, even if they're not ubiquitous.  So Superscience works as written - you have to have a high Science skill to have it, and it costs 5 points per level.  The only difference is that Superscience gadgets no longer require a special ingredient.  Instead, rare ingredients can lower the effective Power Level like they do for Sorcery spells.

And I think that covers everything magic-related.  We're going to discuss a slightly different way to approach the Enchanted Item Quality a little later on.  It works okay for some devices, but is really bad for things like exo-armor.

If I get my hands on All Tomorrow's Zombies before I write the next segment, I'll see what Eden did for battle suits there.  I think they went with a variation of the Robot Quality, which probably works pretty well.

Here's a sketch of Reliquary herself, with limbs and a head.

I'm not sure about the mask.  Among other things, I think she probably has a public identity, making a mask that isn't body armor kind of silly.  She'll have other variations of the costume, too.  I have a sketch around here somewhere loosely based on Kim Possible's fighting outfit, and another one that's a more traditional superhero costume.  This one is somewhat inspired by a picture of Mary Marvel in a Black Adam version of her costume that looked kinda cool.

Two quick pieces from a really nifty Mutants & Masterminds PBP I'm playing on rpg.net.

First, a mockup of the logo for my character, Reliquary.  (She is not a floating, headless torso in game - I just wanted to see what the logo would look like, so I did a quick body to sketch it on)

Second, my completely misinformed version of what Robert Edwards' character, Spitfire, would look like.  Except she doesn't, since his idea of "short hair" and mine are different.

(That said, I gave her anime hair.  IRL it'd be shorter than I drew it - just not a crew-cut like he imagined.  And he gets to be right, since it's his character)




Now, I really need to get some more gaming content on this blog.  I'll see if I can find time for more Gargoyles this weekend.

So, we're going into issue 2 of Domino Girls now.  Issue 1 runs 26 pages, of which the current one is page 17, I believe.  I'd actually like to be further ahead than that, but I don't always get what I want.

There are a few things changing, which will become apparent once you all start seeing the new pages.  One of them is that I'm trying a little harder on the art.  I'm getting a bit faster, which has let me spend more time making each panel look nicer.  Also, daily practice has probably made me a bit better than I was when I started late last year.

So anyway, I had this idea for how to render a particular scene, and before I started it, I dashed off a quick sketch.  The drawing is very simplified, with just vague shapes instead of any kind of well-rendered figures.  I just wanted to see how the composition and shading would look.

(Which probably won't stop Lisa from complaining about Phoebe's hair.  But hey, at least Phoebe got legs.  Diana is just a hovering torso and head with one arm.)

One thousand years ago, Superstition and the sword ruled...

I am a raving Gargoyles fanboy.  I loved the cartoon, enjoyed the Gargoyles Saga fan-fiction project (which I should probably look in on again one of these days.  I'm a fickle raving fanboy), and am really enjoying the new comic.  Freed from the bounds of a kid's show, Gargoyles is really coming into its own.

I am also a raving Unisystem fanboy.

I think you see where this is going.

Tweaking the Unisystem rules so they'll work for the Gargoyles universe isn't going to be all that big a job, but it'll give me something to post about for a few weeks.  I'm going to do it piecemeal here, and maybe at the end I'll write it all up nice and put it in a PDF.

First off, let's look at what we're doing.  While you /could/ just write up a Gargoyle Quality and call it good, you wouldn't really have done everything right.  Sorcery needs some work, as does Superscience, and the Gargoyels setting has some slightly different underpinnings than the Buffyverse.  Getting that extra bit of harmony is what will make this take longer than a few paragraphs.

Here's what I have in mind:

Magic - Magicians in the Gargoyles universe need spellbooks - not just for learning spells, but for casting them.  On the other hand, they can improvise spells very rapidly.  The Occult Library Quality and the Sorcery rules are in for a change.  Beyond that, there are some rules about magic in Gargoyles that I want to get right.

Enchanting - Nobody in the Gargoyles universe seems to produce magic items except the Faeries.  Assemblages seem to be okay, though.  So Enchanting is probably going to be limited to 1 level - or perhaps just folded into whatever Sorcery turns into.

Superscience - Giant floating factories, robots, battle armor, black-market blasters... the Gargoyles universe has a lot of high technology that people don't really bat an eye at.  It's going to take some work to get all that right.

Organizations - Private armies and secret societies are a big part of the Gargoyles setting.  The Organization rules in Angel are an okay start, but they don't really make any provision for characters like Xanatos or the higher-ups in the Illuminati (whoever they are).  I'll probably do something with the Rank and Wealth Qualities, and possibly build a new Organization Quality that will let characters buy Organization points.

New Qualities - Obviously, there's going to be a Gargoyle racial package.  Cyborgs, Mutates, and other strangeness will also make appearances.  An outright Faerie is possibly too powerful for a PC, but half-fey like Fox will be within reasonable limits.  And I'll give lesser Faeries a try, too.  But no player is going to get to play Thor.  Just don't ask.

Archetypes - Particularly if I decide to wrap this all up in a shiny PDF wrapper, I'll want to do some archetypes.  Gargoyles is a setting that runs to Champions more than Investigators.  The less competent characters are generally bit players.  That doesn't mean you have to play your game that way, though, so I may throw in some lower-end characters, too.

I'm trying to do one Blog post per week, more or less, so you'll see something here soon.

Hi.  It's been a while for my poor, neglected blog.  I have a lot going on lately that doesn't lend itself to giving me time to make up new blog content.  Fortunately, you, the discriminating reader, are here to help.  At least those of you who leave your grocery lists in the cart when you go to the grocery store.

Every so often, I find one, and now, instead of ignoring them or throwing them away like a sane person, I have decided to keep them, scan them, and share them with you.  I'm sure you're fascinated.

The way this is going to work is that when I find lists, I'll scan them, hide anything that would identify a specific person (like addresses and phone numbers), and post them here.  If one of my thousands (okay 7.  Not 7000, just 7) of loyal readers finds a list they'd like to see immortalized, I have an email link on the blog page.  Scan it at 200 dpi or so, save it as a PNG, and mail that puppy to me.

I'll also consider other forms of found writing.  The main criteria are that the writing be hand-written, brief, and not TOO personal.  I probably won't post someone's love-letter, but I might post an interesting greeting card.  My favorites, though, are lists like to-do lists, grocery lists, and other fairly obscure things.

So, without further ado, here's the first one.

There will be more as soon as I find some.  Of course, NOW, everyone will start cleaning up their grocery carts.  Which is a victory in itself, really.