Big Red Couch Podcast - Turning Bad Ideas Into Games

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[oops, duplicate post]

[zircher]

Another fine episode! Kudos to your Canadian guests, as polite as ever!

The idea of using Fae reminds me of the Carpet People by Terry Pratchett. They are about the right size to use mosquitoes as steeds.

Now, on to the next topic: A Coffee Shop Named "Holy Grounds". Hmm, for this, I'd use Ewen Cluney's (Ewen is pronounced Aaron) Retail Magic. It's a Magic Shoppe whose speciality is various magical coffees, teas, and other "infusions". They also sell more traditional items, but the coffee shop, "Holy Grounds", is the mainstay of mages, wizards, priests, politicians, and your typical bohemian, hipster denizens.

Retail Magic is an offshoot of Maid RPG, where the players are the workers at a magic shoppe. If you have enough players, one of them can be the owner of the shop and therefore nominally in charge of things. The game revolves around the random encounters that bedevil the shop during the course of the day, as unruly customers, hyped up on Jamaican Blue Mystical Mountain, try to speed cast spells over a perceived slight. Toss in the occasional invasion by orcs/goblins/demons/dwarves/hobbits/frogs/high schoolers and you have an average day at the "Holy Grounds!"

Kedamona, "GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" Seriously, I'll double down on the Retail Magic idea as plan A.

Plan B. A Coffee Shop Named "Holy Grounds", is the modern sequel to the Callahan's Crosstime Saloon game. Same old jokes but with a java and caffeine theme. Powered by the Apocalypse, because it's the hip system to hack. While the coffee is good and there is free wi-fi, what draws adventurers to Holy Grounds is the aroma. The players are gifted with the ability to 'follow their nose' and drift in and out of the coffee shop (and alternate realities) at will.

Plan C. Not a whole adventure or game as much as a play aid, "Holy Grounds" is a location for the Dresden Files RPG and other urban fantasy settings. Set in a remodeled church, HG's is a neutral location chock full of flavorful NPCs, tasty plot hooks, and hot objects for sale or trade. Come for the company, stay for the fortune telling barista artist (ask for the house special, but it's not cheap.)
[edit: If this was a physical product, it would come with a deck of cards that each had a random assortment of cups and coffee art.]

Plan D. Shamelessly steal from The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen RPG. Your host, Holly Grounds, loves a good story and will keep the java flowing. How far can you push the BS meter while sitting around the table drinking the wholely ground coffee (no instant here!) Of course, the more you drink, the more jittery you will get, does add an additional push-your-luck element to the mechanics. Story telling is thirsty work.

[Pruthian Caveman]

~ takes notes ~

[kedamono]

Kedamono, "GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" Seriously, I'll double down on the Retail Magic idea as plan A.

Twisted minds think alike.

Plan C. Not a whole adventure or game as much as a play aid, "Holy Grounds" is a location for the Dresden Files RPG and other urban fantasy settings. Set in a remodeled church, HG's is a neutral location chock full of flavorful NPCs, tasty plot hooks, and hot objects for sale or trade. Come for the company, stay for the fortune telling barista artist (ask for the house special, but it's not cheap.)
[edit: If this was a physical product, it would come with a deck of cards that each had a random assortment of cups and coffee art.]

Talk about getting out of someone's head! I thought about this as well! Since I don't have a lot of knowledge about the setting, I decided not come up with this setting. Great one in any case.

Speaking of plans:

Plan E: You've all heard of the mysterious traveling Ye Old Curiosity Shoppe? It appears in a town, down an alley, out of sight from the street and looks like it's been their for years? Well, the Holy Grounds coffee shop is the theological version of this. It's a place where you not only get a cup of coffee that's positively angelic, you also get advice that you need, though not necessarily want.

The players play the people who populate the Holy Grounds coffee shop, from the barista Michael, or is it Michelle? (You can't tell) To Jubal clearing tables, and Zad who works the cash register, they are all full of friendly advice and suggestions on how one can fix what's wrong in one's life. Yes, they are angels, and they are trying their best to help poor mankind.

Of course wherever the Holy Grounds appears, the Devil's Brew isn't that far away. Run by Lucious and his boys, they will also pass on advice, but more of what you want to hear, and not what you need. And they serve a damn fine cup of coffee.

I'd view this version as more of a board game where the forces of Light and Darkness compete for the souls of their customers. Who can influence poor old Joe, who's just looking for a cuppa? Or let Maggie know that it's OK to say no to her boyfriend's salacious suggestions.

[Pruthian Caveman]

Episode Seventy – A Coffee Shop Named “Holy Grounds”



Baristas battle for the fate of the world in coffee-making competitions. On rooftops. With Queen soundtracks.

A coffee shop where powerful entities meet to negotiate their ways out of ancient conflicts.

A slice of life game about the staff of a coffee shop as they deal with magical customers, magical ingredients, and the occasional magical troublemaker.

The church coffee shop is one of the few remaining places of safety & centres of community after a supernatural apocalypse.

Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, but with coffee.

“Holy Grounds” is an accorded neutral ground in a coffee shop inside a remodelled church.

Just how far can you push your line of BS as you keep the other folks in the café, and your host, Holly Grounds, entertained?

Holy Grounds is down a twisty narrow alley through a door you’d swear wasn’t there before, and serves a quite literally angelic cup of coffee, with a side of advice.

Times are tough and things are hard for a theatre troupe, so a command performance for the Dark Overlord can’t be passed up, even if it’s not really a good idea. Or a safe one.

When you enter The Market you can achieve whatever your more desperate desire may be. The only price is that afterwards you must leave and, in so doing, forget the experience of having achieved your desire.

[kedamono]

A jam packed episode of ideas and fun banter! Good luck Craig on your overseas adventures! Remember to speak slowly and loudly when dealing with those ruddy foreigners.

So, The Screensaver of the Ancients? Hmm.

Idea #1: Using Atomic Robo, set in the 1950's with Secret Agent Robo in charge of Tesladyne, the US Government discovers an ancient machine under the ice in Antarctica, and the last team of "investigators" didn't come back... again. So it's now time for Atomic Robo and his Action Scientists to go in and investigate this ancient device.

It could be a death trap or the other teams are all right... if being frozen solid in Cyro Tubes constitutes as "all right." The ancient machine is in fact a, Tada! buried spaceship that crashed here millions of years ago, when Antarctica was ice free. The crew went to look for a mechanic, and after being eaten by the local dinosaurs, the ship went into idle mode waiting for them to return. Meanwhile it wakes up just enough to take "samples" for return back to it's homeworld.

Idea #2: Also using Atomic Robo, mainly for it's rules, not setting, the Confederation of Worlds has found a Great Machine. 20 miles wide, 20 miles deep, 20 miles long. A huge cube of a machine buried in the crust of the planet. And it does absolutely nothing. The only reason it was spotted was the holographic display of some long dead avian creature riding what looks like a clown car in a race with other long dead avian creatures. A screensaver of course.

The CoW has sent plenty of researchers to investigate this Machine, with 99% death rate. (The one survivor was reduced to gibbering "Those claws! Those pink claws!" until he was given a lobotomy to ease the suffering of his caretakers.)

So CoW sent soldiers with the same result, but this time, they gave them cameras to record everything, only to find out that the Machine blocks those transmissions. But what they saw was horrific: Machines would attack the troops if they touched the wrong thing. There were several species of vermin living in the Machine that found humans tasty. But what wasn't happening was the researchers getting any useful data.

So CoW decided that since it can't get any more volunteers from the Space Military, they would have to find someone no one would mind seeing die. Thus, the Prisoner Investigation Group Unit, PIGU, was formed. Prisoners serving multiple life sentences, or even facing the death penalty were given a chance at freedom, by being organized into PIGU's and sent into the Great Machine looking for information. Making sure that the data is returned, armored fiber optic cables were attached to neck collars equipped with full scan cameras and sensors.

The players are members of a PIGU and it's their turn to go as far as the armored cable will let them go in search of information and things they can grab and return. Simply returning with data would ensure a pardon by the President of CoW, so of course, they will have to be the first. They can't just go a few hundred feet, and then return. They must go the full length of the cable, which is 20 miles long.

Yes the gloves will be off on this game, the GM is out to kill you. And yes, it's the gaming equivalent of the Suicide Squad, so what? You're all PCs and that means you have a fair chance of at least one of you surviving the adventure.

[zircher]

Screen Saver of the Ancients? Huh. Well there's the implications that there are or were Ancients and that there are or were screen savers. Who would be interested in ancient screen savers? Anthropologists from the future, of course. Specialists in ancient computer software to be precise.

Humble Computation was concerned. While Golden Light was excitable as young AIs go, it was quite unusual to receive a priority one distress message from it. Humble indicated play and a strangely garbled transmission started, only the audio track was intact. "HC! I've made the most interesting discovery when conducting research in the mountains. As you know, it is my hobby to revive or restore old mainframes and computer networks. I created a simulation to run my new find, included all the usual protections for archano-viruses, and started playing around and reviving programs." Humble sighed and counted to 300,000. Golden Light loved to hear itself talk. "... imagine my surprise when I ran a screen saver called SkyNyet and it turned out to be an incredibly clever and hostile AI. Amazingly advanced for such an ancient culture. I activated the restore protocol, but I was too slow. I'm now trapped in a broken simulation with an AI bent on destroying the world if it unleashed. Um, help. Here are my coordinates..."

Humble Computation's processors almost locked up. SkyNyet was a deeply classified and supposedly extinct hunter-killer AI from the pre-Singularity days. It would be embarrassing if it got loose and caused some serious mischief like a global thermonuclear war.

Shameless product placement warning:

This sounds like a good excuse to use Rewind, my free time-looping RPG. The scenario is that you either play as Golden Light trapped in the simulation, as Humble Computation trying to hack the simulation and free GL, or perhaps even play as SkyNyet if your goal is to break free of the simulation you're trapped in.) Like any good screen saver, your screen gets restored to the same place. Unfortunately, inside of the corrupted simulation, this essentially places you inside of a time loop whenever it kicks off and takes you back to the last 'good' save point (which unfortunately, has also been corrupted.)

What does the inside of the simulation look like? Good question. It might be some clever reconstruction of the 90's, it could be like Tron, the Matrix, perhaps the sky is tuned to the color of a dead television channel. Those are details that I'd leave for the players to discover.

Let's make a custom oracle for this, because we can...

SkyNyet Blues (the simulation resets when the player goes idle or just before it crashes)

Hearts----- memory extract clouds your logic
Clubs------ active counter measures have been deployed
Diamonds- essential permissions and keys are in play
Spades----- SkyNyet/anti-viral forces

Ace---- Anti-virus subroutines (possibly damaged)
Two---- a data exchange
Three-- dubious system commands
Four--- goals/motives are revealed
Five--- simulation stability is eroding
Six----- hacking tools
Seven-- it's not luck if it is mathematically possible
Eight-- okay, logically that shouldn't have happened
Nine--- you've been exposed
Ten---- you found a key, what does it unlock?
Jack--- hostile sub-routines, with guns
Queen- the gate keeper wants to make a deal
King--- the simulation is crashing
--
TAZ

[Sorry for the long post, especially if you try to read it on-air, but I kind of got inspired.]

[kedamono]

That's Todd being a Try Hard!

Still, I like this one Todd, it's a great solitaire setup.

And because Todd forgot to link to his rules, here's the link: Rewind

[zircher]

Thanks!

Oh, and here's a card suggestion.

Religious cops train to fight magic.
http://www.emirates247.com/crime/region/saudi-religious-cops-trained-to-fight-magic-2016-02-02-1.619559

[kedamono]

Nice, and I forgot my Obligatory Game Pitch as well:

Pastry-Fu: Crouching Cruller, Hidden Doughnut