Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

[David Artman <david.artman@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dale,

I hear ya--the D&D I played WAS fun, for all my talk of its nichiness (not a word until TODAY!). I just also find Mage Knight just as fun, and it's free of a grid, and I only need one (trifold) reference card to play, not three books and (for some PCs) a stack of Feat cards. Again, all a matter of taste.

And before folks say that MK is all battles, I've planned to run a dungeon crawl using MK and one of my old AD&D modules with some friends, just as soon as our lives free up three or four 5-hour sessions. :) it can be done, though with some caveat/freeform/houserules (ex: trap spotting and disarming, when not a puzzle). I figure each player will get around 150 pts, but must spend at least 100 on ONE fig, with the rest on Spels or Artifacts, or lackies (no more than two other lackeys). That will make them take "Hero" or "Legend" figures, and it should still give them some tactical flexibility (lackies, constructs from Spells, etc). But I ramble....

Another go-to game for me, for crunch, is Hero... you can do anything SIM/GAM in Hero. There's even a TINSY bit of support for NAR, in things like Disads and buying them off (ex: Exp usable only for Disad buyoff, kind of like BW's Artha for pinging a Belief or Instinct).

Nyrath,

Yep, TROS is on my list to someday buy, though I am a *bit* glutted on fantasy systems, in general (not to mention generic systems which support fantasy). But it's sort of a "must-have" for the indie collector, so....

All,

To make this relevant--Hey! Check out Stacktors! The first "traditional" RPG using all and only Icehouse pyramids. Build you character stack and head out to fact the GM's challenges. Find loot to add to your equipment stack, to augment your abilities and increase your power. No dice required; no paper required (other than, probably, the Ability Chart), use a battlemat if you're really persnickity about distance and range. Otherwise, a measurreing tape is all ya need to start having mini-style combat challenges in a world of your own imagination, with the  pyramids to provide tactical optiions and resolve individual attacks and defenses.

(Yeah, this is kind of a call for playtesting. I *think* it's near to done, but I don't know how it reads to someone who hasn't written it or talked about it with his collaborator off and on for a year.)