Friday, March 26, 2010

Supers and Vampires

There are a couple of teams at work on separate projects designed to use the StarCluster system which you probably don't know about. They are each going to be responsible for what they produce as I am not involved in more than an advisory capacity.

Michael Scott (Star Patrol, MiG KiLLERS, Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier, and co-author of In Harm's Way: Wild Blue) and Randolph Allen are writing Society of Night, a game centered on a Vampire society hidden within our own, and based on the original Blood Games rather than Blood Games II. They have various levels of vampire involvement, from normal people to born Vamps. The project is fairly well along now, and is called Society of Night. I'm not at all sure of their publishing plans. Scotty is a veteran game designer - the Star Trek Adventure Gaming RPG was published in 1978 - and has a lot of connections. It may come through Flying Mice and it may not.

My son Klaxon Bowley (Co-author of Book of Jalan, Sweet Chariot, Papageniopolis Station, Guide to Created Creatures) and James Belmonte, a long-time member of my group and veteran alpha tester, have teamed up to create a Supers game based on StarCluster 3. They are extending the Paths concept of Blood Games and using inherent scaling. They have overhauled the skill set to pare it down to a set of 24 skills. The game can scale from Pulp to very high power levels easily. Klax has long wanted to do a supers game, and has been my co-designer on a number of projects. Now he's the lead designer, and doing some very interesting things. I don't know if their project has a working title yet.

-clash

5 comments:

  1. Neat! I hope to see both of them rock.

    Super games names are tricky. So many good phrases are taken. "Look Up in the Sky!" (taken from the Rpg.net thread) I don't think is taken.

    I wonder if "Its Clobberin Time" is trademarked.
    "Up, Up..and away!"

    Some superhero games make for worse titles than others. You know "Hearts & Souls.."

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  2. Well, one of the reasons I've never written a supers game is because Hearts & Souls was so damn good. It's like Two Fisted Tales for pulp. I can't imagine I could do better, and why would I want to try to make something inferior? :D

    Of course these kids, whose ages added together are almost mine, think nothing of it! :P

    -clash

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  3. Klax *loves* "It's Clobberin' Time!", which doesn't appear to be trademarked...

    I preferred "Look, up in the sky!" myself!

    Now he's sending them to James. :D

    -clash

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  4. Awesome stuff. If I'd managed it, I'd have like "With Great Power" as a name.

    Maybe H&S2E can be subtitles 'With Great power, comes great responsibility.."

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  5. Hehe! Klax is working with a mechanic that gives you more power points when you take on "Aunt Mays", so that with great responsibilities comes great power. :D

    -clash

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