Heroic Sacrifice

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been working intermittently on writing up a rules document for a second (or ninth, depending on how you’re counting) version of the Mecha Monogatari RPG. One of the concepts I’ve borrowed from the Bliss Stage RPG is that of character ownership, an understated concept that resonates with what I want the Mecha Monogatari RPG to be (a cooperative storytelling game with randomized task resolution).

Death of Two Boxes

Ok so here’s the story.  Way back when, launch day for the Xbox 360, I drove my arse thirty something miles to pick up my preordered Xbox-o-fun.  So I suffered through the dull launch line up and hearing about the “Red Ring of Death”, mine ran fine. The months dragged on much better games came out and I bought what I was interested in both crap and damn good titles. Then it happened, I got the dreaded ring…and then it went away. Cool I though, I got lucky. Yeah I don’t think so skippy, last October it finally happened. The ring of death killed my beloved Xbox. Oh well I had been looking at the new elite systems anyway so I bought one off Amazon, saved $60 too.  So after buying Gears of War 2 and playing co-op split screen with Doug I decided that I would look into getting the old launch system repaired. So I went online and filled out the form and had them send me a box to ship it off in. I sent it off and within a week they sent me a referb at no cost to me even though the warranty had expired two years ago. Cool I thought as I sent the referb home with Doug. For the next couple of weeks I bugged him to buy Gears and get on live which he did and we had fun beating Horde with just the two of us. So it’s been a few months since then and I’m setting in my chair playing [Prototype], good game, and the screen goes all weird on me. I can only describe it as the matrix code without the scrolling. Crap…I cycle power…Crap!!…it still there. I unplug the system and plug it back in…cool normal again. NOT…so it seems to go away after I unplug the system or let it set awhile. So I swap cables just to see and what does it do? It gives me the E47 message…great… So I go online again and fill at the form but this time I’m prepared, I got a box so I just print off the shipping label. What is really funny is that it died Saturday and I just sent it off today and I got the new Ghostbusters game in the mail yesterday….. Now I have to wait at least a week to play it. Oh well at least I don’t have to pay for this repair either; and even if I did I would.

Imperator Tempestatium, Prologue

And so, as if I did not have nearly enough projects on my plate, I trade a small, short-term project for a large, long-term one…my cup overfloweth, and yet I continue to pour…

The Mecha Monogatari Second Edition, Playtest Report #1

Two significant issues presented themselves in the first playtest of the Mecha Monogatari RPG.