Ultrablamtacular!

So last time, I got back on the horse. This time, I rode that pony!

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You can probably tell that work on Ultrablamtacular! had slowed recently. I started work on it again today, and one of the things I knew I needed to do was to update this blog. Read more…

So…if you’re reading this blog, you probably already know that the Ennie Award voting is open.

Someday, I’d like to be up for one of those bad boys. And I’d like people to vote. For me, obviously.

So go vote. The Funzor density of the nominees is high.

There’s no easy way to say it. GenCon is twenty days from now.

Ultrablamtacular! isn’t done. And I’m not going to GenCon. Read more…

I was working on an adventure for the SIFRP game I’m running (which, though I’ve located some flaws, is still working pretty well, and is still a Thing I Like) and I needed some details about pre-industrial mining. I remembered an article I had read an indeterminate-but-long time ago about the development of humankind’s ability to dig and drill in the earth. I couldn’t remember exactly where I’d read it, but I narrowed it down to one of three magazines and started googling.

I didn’t find it on the goog, but I did find it. I turned up the entire text of an article I sort of remembered from what turned out to be a decade ago based on a vague recollection of a magazine and one phrase that stuck in my head. The internet is awesome.

Many years ago, when AltaVista was the big deal in search, my dad commented that the internet was useless because while you could find all sorts of things on it, you could never find the thing you wanted. He was right then, and the fact that he’s wrong now is what makes the internet so awesome. It’s like having an enormous photographic memory. I know. This is old hat. But seriously. One partially remembered phrase.

Today is Free RPG Day! Head out to your Friendly Local Game Store and pick up some cool stuff, try out a new game, and buy the father in your life that Father’s Day present you’ve been putting off. Dads love RPGs!

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So you may have noticed that it’s been a while since I posted about progress on the game. Well, that’s because it’s been a while since there was any. Now there’s been some!

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It occurred to me that I have been using the word Funzor(tm)* for a while now, without explaining what I mean. A Funzor(tm) is a unit of fun. Something which is fun is possessed, therefore, of one or more Funzors(tm).

* The ™ is sarcastic. Anyone else remember “Nazi(tm)” from the Indiana Jones RPG?

Now, the solution to the Trust dilemma was simple. Stupid simple. Really.

You’re going to want to hit me when you realize how dumb I was before. And really, I deserve it. But here goes:

It became clear to me that tracking Trust separately from Confidence was broken. Badly broken. Trust was supposed to always be a value between 1 and Confidence -1, unless Confidence was 0, in which case Trust was 0, t00. That by itself is too complicated for Ultrablam! It is seriously lacking in Funzors. I should have known that the fact that I never felt satisfied when I explained it mean that it was broken. Mea culpa. On top of that, how are you supposed to keep track of it, exactly? Let’s say you start a session with 5 Confidence and 3 Trust. OK, no problem. But now you get hurt and spend 3 Points of Confidence to recover from Unconscious to Injured to Fine. Now, you’ve got 2 Confidence and 3 Trust. Which isn’t possible. And you’ve been following all the rules, tracking Confidence, and paying attention. Now you’re in an invalid state. That’s just wrong.

I envisioned Trust as Confidence you have in other people. That’s it. That’s all it is. The rules saying Trust had to be less than Confidence were arbitrary and prescriptive. It’s entirely possible for someone to have little Confidence in himself but lots of Trust in others. So coming to the conclusion that Trust and Confidence were the same thing in different places, meant that we were doing all the above tracking and calculating to figure out a number that we already knew. So, I’m getting rid of the box “Trust” on the character sheet, the rules for determining initial Trust, the rules for tracking consequences to Trust, and all that jazz.

I’m keeping the core component, which is; when you have Confidence in another Character, that’s Trust. All the rules apply. It’ll even be referred to as Trust, but it’s just Confidence that’s on loan.

Less work, fewer rules, same effect, more Funzors. Win.

Well, if you’ve been following along, you know that Ultrablamtacular has been undergoing some changes lately. Well, in the past week or so, two important changes have made themselves known to me. They’re not in the game text yet, so here’s a real sneak preview of what’s to come.

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