Catching Up

Yes, the new duet campaign is about a Japanese catgirl.

The Japan chapter of Steamscapes: Asia is now 100% complete. After submitting the overlong first draft last week, I got some notes from Eric and trimmed it down to his specifications. I practically excised a chapter in its own right, so I’m tempted to use that section to write a scenario set in Yoshiwara. The “-punk” part of “steampunk” refers back to cyberpunk’s concentration on social disorder, and nothing reflects that better than Edo/Meiji Japan’s red-light districts.

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After considering Altellus and a Stone Age game, Robin and I went in a completely different direction to do a game about modern yokai living a World of Darkness-style secret existence in modern-day Tokyo. Weirdly, this is basically a remake of the first duet campaign that we played together nearly thirteen years ago. That game was fueled by Land of Eight Million Dreams, the Year of the Lotus spin-off for Changeling: The Dreaming. This one will probably be run using Savage Worlds Super Powers Companion since we’re comfortable with the system and using the SPC means we don’t have to track Power Points or modifiers to the activation rolls. Even though I didn’t expect to be running a game like this anytime soon, it’s easy to slip back into a familiar(ish) setting.

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The 5e group game has taken a weird turn: my character (not I) is upset at the quest they’re on. My character – a CN totem warrior barbarian – is annoyed because he doesn’t like quests; he’s very much in the mode of classic sword and sorcery, low fantasy characters like Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and he thinks epic, high fantasy quests are for suckers. The party is currently in the Nameless Dungeon – an elvish prison for primordial evil – chasing down some yuan-ti who kidnapped some of the other PCs’ tribesmen. Given that I am the DM right now, this is obviously my own fault. 

There is a Godzilla or Jormungandr imprisoned in my Nameless Dungeon. I haven’t decided which it is yet.