We attended Renaissance Press’s multi-author book launch recently, and brought the TARDIS for photo-ops with the authors and their brand new books.
What I *should* have done was ask the author which (if any) of their characters would run off with the Doctor. Hopefully they’ll answer in the comments!
Learn about John and buy his book here!
Hello Friends and Gamers,
This is an adventure for One-Shot Party: The Simplest RPG.
Have fun!
The world is being invaded by aliens. They’ve used their U.F.O (Universal Freezing Organics) Ray to stop all living creatures from moving. As toys you are not affected and must find a way to save the world before the effects of the ray become permanent.
The group starts in a large cylindrical white room. There’s a large hatch and a note written in crayon.
I think you’ll do better. Good luck – Sally
There’s a panel next to the door and a small air grate near the ceiling.
Getting out of the room should be easy. Either ask the panel to get out, hotwire it, crawl through the vent or break down the door.
Either way it should all lead to the main control room.
Inside the control room there are a lot of people and computer screens.
Just outside the door to the chamber is a little girl holding three heavily armed drones. She seems frozen in place.
There are several adults frozen in a run towards her. They look horrified.
The computer screens seem to indicate that they were experimenting to make sentient drones.
There’s a TV on and it looks like it’s paused but the clock is working normally. If they rewind or look online they’ll see that aliens were spotted entering the solar system a week ago. After several days of trying to contact them, the three motherships took positions around the earth and started their Freeze Ray. It look less than a day for the ray to freeze everyone on the planet. The Phlebotinum Institute accelerated their efforts to make drones sentient barely activating the device before being frozen.
Enemies: Aliens and Drones
The game will require the players to figure out where they are and what they want to do. The overall goal should be to turn off the ray, scare off the aliens, or just stop the invasion.
This can be done in a multitude of ways. Let your players be creative. If they need help here are a few options that you can hint at:
No matter what they choose there should be 3 phases to the adventure: Plan, execute plan, and final boss.
Enemies: Aliens or Drones
In this section they are getting what they need to do their plan. It could be communication equipment, missile codes, etc.
In most cases the Aliens are the villains and anything they plan should include a fight with a few of the aliens. They are small, green, and ride around in flying saucers.
If they need to get into a human facility or negotiate with the aliens, the rogue drones become the main villain. They don’t want to let humans come back. They should only fight 1 or 2 of these.
Enemies: Aliens or Drones
In this section they have their equipment and must apply the plan. This should be a series of challenges and fights.
Try to throw skills challenges that have an average difficulty of 4 or 5
Enemies: General
The General or Generals (Adjust depending on strength and amount of characters.) and their army want to prevent the characters from succeeding. In this section they must fight their way to the final phase of their plan.
Enemies
| Aliens | Rogue Drones | General | |
| Health | 3 | 6 | 6 |
| Defence | 5 | 3 | 6 |
| Body | 1 | 4 | 4 |
| Mind | 3 | 0 | 4 |
| Luck | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Abilities | Lasers 1, Slam 1 | Missiles 1, Slam 1 | Death Ray 1+2 flip |
Have fun!
Please note, this article states “female masturbation” and “women”. Other than that, it’s a cute article with lots of sources.
If you’re enjoying the Blush blogs, consider learning more with Blush: The Card Game from Renaissance Press.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 4.5 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12
“Pirates? How did they find us?” Jan sounded annoyed. “How do we stop a sun from exploding and defend against pirates?”
There was silence over the private channel. Seren was thinking. The situation did seem dire. With the Techno-mage gone, there was no way of interrogating him to figure out what he’d done. He’d said, “You can die when the sun implodes.” But hadn’t specified which sun. There was the micro-sun that powered Hokulua Station, the Mother-Of-All-Stars in the centre of the planet, and the small yellow sun that planet was orbiting.
“I don’t know, but we need to figure out what sun he meant.” Seren said.
“Any of them imploding would cause enough damage to trigger either a black hole or a chain effect in the other suns,” Mr. Plentyn theorized.
“Yes, but he’d have to use some sort of tech to collapse the yellow sun and that seems unlikely.”
“Right, and if the repository is as sophisticated as you say, it should have defences.”
Jan exclaimed. “So it has to be Hoku.”
“We have to get the repository talking to the station instead of just receiving data. If we can do that then we can hopefully get the station to figure out what the Techno-mage did.” The first enemy fire hit the station as he was explaining.
Jan cursed and explained, “This is a massive fleet. We’re outnumbered fifty to one. The captain says we’re not going to survive this and recommends evacuation.”
The words hung heavy over them and both Seren and her father said the same thing, “What if we get the star-ships to help?” It would still mean being outnumbered ten to one but those were better odds.
They were about to formulate a plan when Jan cheered, “Whatever you two did, it worked. The star-ships and the repository just joined the fight.”
“We didn’t—”
The sound of Annie’s voice flooded to coms, “Woohoo! This is MOAS fighter A, requesting permission to join the fight.”
While Jan and Seren had been teleported to the station and where they’d been thinking of before teleportation, Annie had been thinking of piloting a ship.
Deep in the repository was a fabricator that could create nearly anything. With Annie’s knowledge of fighters and the repository’s impressive fabricating, they’d created a new type of fighter.
“Annie is that you?” Tower command asked.
“Yes big bro it’s me and I’m bringing some friends. You concentrate on defence and we’ll start picking off the bombers and long range gunners.”
The new ship slipped around the pirates, making them look slow and clumsy. The weapons from the repository were its biggest weakness. They were half as effective as those from the pirates and the defending force. The people who became the Mother-of-All-Stars weren’t as vicious as those who’d enslaved her children.
Annie relied on her speed, shields, and gravity ray. The gravity ray worked like her tractor beam on her regular fighter but faster and with bigger objects. She quickly discovered that weapons were not as effective as hurling the enemy’s ships at each other.
Everything was quiet while Seren and her father worked to network Hoku to the repository and the rest of the station worked on repairs and defence.
“I got it!” Mr. Plentyn cried over the sound of alarms.
“Jan, tell the captain that Hoku is running a diagnostic as we speak.” Seren turned from the coms to her Dad. “So do we turn off the AI interface?”
“No. The micro-sun has been interacting with it and the two are working together. It’s like the repository and the MOAS. The AI will interpret and help us understand each other.”
The computerized voice of Hoku said, “Thank you, Mr. Plentyn. You have been quite kind. Diagnostics are complete. I did not find anything in my systems that could create a chain effect big enough to destroy me and mother. Mother has done the same. I’ve also scanned my brother and he has no technology or way of being imploded.”
“Then what has the Techno-mage done?” Seren asked.
“I do not know. However, I have compiled a list of systems that cause me pain and how to alter them to not hurt me.”
Not knowing what else to do, they looked over the list.
The battle outside the station was quickly ending. The Pirates were taking heavy casualties and the Hoku fighters weren’t. Annie’s tactics made her a target, but the advanced shield made her almost invulnerable. Even with that, the ship would need some serious repairs.
The Hoku pilots cheered as the remaining pirate fighters retreated and the entire fleet moved away.
“Why aren’t they leaving the system?” Annie asked as she held patrol while the other ships returned to the station.
Her answer came quickly when four massive cruisers appeared in the system between the pirates and the station. These cruisers looked like the standard stations, if they’d been built for war instead of exploration.
The pirate flag on the side of the ships was quickly replaced by the Techno-Mage flag.
“They didn’t have some sort of bomb of self destruct! They’re just planning on blowing us up the old fashioned way.”
While you wait for the next chapter, check out the previous serial stories:
I loved the architecture in the lower level of the King’s wing of Versailles. Partially because there weren’t many people, partially because it wasn’t gilded, and partially because it was beautiful.
We attended Can*Con, the Aurora Award winning Speculative Fiction convention in Ottawa, Canada.
There, we spotted the Aurora Award winning author, Kate Heartfield, and managed to get a photo-op with the TARDIS.
Hello My Imaginary Friends and Gamers,
Back in 2013 I went to an event and at that event I offered to run a One-Shot Party SRPG session. I had no rules and no ideas. They chose to play Cards Against Humanity instead and I spent the event dreaming up what I would call The Simplest Role Playing System.
It was okay and I used it for a few years before altering it and renaming it CoasteRPG I had grand plans to sell it as a coaster. The concept was cool but didn’t really work out. Apparently putting your drink on something you write on and then flipping the coaster didn’t work very well. I still plan on finding a way to sell this but I’m not sure how yet.
So here we are and I’ve modified the rules a little for balance. It still uses coasters, although you could use coins or even/odd dice rolls.
Simple Rules: Each player chooses Body, Mind, or Luck as their character’s specialty. They have 4 in that ability. (Ex. Fighters choose Body.) Their Health and Defence each equal 4.
Complex Rules: Each person has 4 points to place in Body, Mind, and Luck. No negatives. Their Health equals their Body plus 2. Their Defence equals Mind or Luck plus 2.
Resolution Mechanism: When a character needs to do something, the Storyteller decides if it’s easy (1), hard (2), ridiculous (4), or inconceivable (6). The character then subtracts their attribute from the difficulty.
If the attribute is higher than the difficulty they succeed. If not, they have to flip a coaster, coin, or die, 3 times and call it (if it’s a die have them call even or odd). Add every right guess to their attribute.
If the player gets 3 successes in a row they continue to flip until they fail.
Combat: Each character does 1 point of damage (unless specified in their abilities) if they hit something and takes the same if they are hit. Death occurs at 0 health.
Opposed rolls between characters are calculated by the most successes. (Eg. Player one needs to bluff. They have 3 Luck and fliped successfully twice for a total of 5 successes. Player 2 has a mind of 4 and flipped successufully twice for a total of 6. Player two sees through the bluff.)
Special Abilities: Choose 2 of; Hit (1 damage +1 flip), Heal (1 healing + 1 flip), Help (+1 success to any other characters test) Or choose a +1 to body, Mind, or Luck (this can only be picked once.)
Everything else: The storyteller makes up.
One-Shot Party: The Simplest RPG – PDF Character Sheet (45KB)
One-Shot Party: The Simplest RPG – Docx Character Sheet (16KB)
Thank you and Good Gaming!
Éric
If you find yourself in Toronto between now and January 5th, and love Dr Seuss, I hope you’ve bought tickets to the Dr Seuss Experience at Square One!
There are many beautiful and interactive exhibits, as well as plenty of opportunities for selfies amongst the scenes and with characters.
Check it out here and here and buy your tickets before they sell out!
Jen has retired from working as a travel agent. Hope you’ve enjoyed Fandom Travel.
Hello My Imaginary Friends,
Since I first moved out on my own I have had a form of cable tv. That’s roughtly 15 years now. I did the Canadian Big 3 Dance every couple of years. (That’s where you call and complain to get a better deal, threaten to leave, cancel, and finally get another okay deal.)
In February this year, our TV, Internet, and home phone went from $98 a month to $195. I started the dance, but after 5 phone calls, I got frustrated. There had to be a better way. Right?
So I did a bunch of research, found alternatives and told Rogers/Bell/Telus that I didn’t need them.
We cancelled this and now just use our cellphones like normal Millennials.
Unfortunately, I was stuck staying with Bell for the next 2 years with our cells. We’ll see what happens in 2021.
Total monthly cost: $0
It feels like everyone and their elderly relatives is selling internet plans. From Koodo, to Cogeco, and Teksavvy.
I’d heard good things about Teksavvy, but they are built like the big three and frankly I’m sick of it all.
So I found and subscribed to Start.ca. They have no deals, not packages, no bullshit. For $60 a month we have 100mbs downloads and that’s great for us. Their customer service is quite possibly the fastest and the nicest I’ve ever dealt with.
Total monthly cost: $60
This was the part that worried me the most. I love television. I watch a lot of it. We decided to go with a 2 pronged alternative. Streaming and Over the Air.
For hardware we settled on an Nvidia Shield TV. It is fantastic. Runs extremely well and is officially updated with Google TV. My second option would have been a Roku.
The Shield also has apps for everything we wanted. You can get newer ones for $199-300. We bought ours used for $200 on Amazon.
This is a tricky one because there are a lot of streaming services and you can easily find yourself paying too much.
We went with a lot more than we should but after a year we’ll decide what we use and what to get rid of. We’re saving some money by sharing the accounts with family.
We used Prime for our diaper subscription where it saves us almost 10 a month in diaper costs so we’d have it no matter what.
Total monthly cost: $24.39
Depending on where you live, you can get dozens of channels in HD over the air. You just need an antenna. Most TVs have tuners in them.
I wanted to go one step further. We have 2 kids and watching live tv is awesome but not easy. We needed a video recorder.
I discovered Tablo makes some impressive video recorders for over the air. We bought a refurbished one and it cost us $90. Now the thing about this and all other OTA recorders is that they make their money by selling you a subscription to their TV guide. You can have 1 day free but it’s 69.90 a year for a full guide with 14 days of data.
The great thing about this is that you don’t hook it up to your TV; instead you connect through an app and watch from there. You can have multiple people watching TV or recordings and even enable watching away from home.
The company is based in Ottawa which is great.
Quick story… My daughter accidentally put a blanket on the first one and it died a horrible heat death. The company replaced it and I had a great experience with the customer support.
I bought a cheap, well reviewed antenna for $50 on sale. It’s an outdoor antenna. At first we got 8 channels with it mounted in our garage. I was greedy and wanted more.
I contacted Pinnacle Engineering Services and Doug patiently walked me through all my questions. In the end, the antenna was mounted on the roof and cost us $285 for installation.
Doug installed everything and was a really nice guy. Highly recommend their services.
I now get 14 crystal clear HD channels. I’m told if you’re closer to the US you can get some of their networks too.
We now have a plethora of streaming and can watch almost any network TV show and it costs us roughly $90 a month ($24 for streaming, $6 for Tablo guide, and $60 for internet.)
I do miss HGTV, the Food network, and watching the Weather Network live but that’s pretty small. I’ve also considered getting Stack TV ($12.99) through prime that gives access to Showcase, HGTV, Food, History, and a few other networks.
Now the monthly cost is darn great, but there were a lot of start up costs for a total of $624 ($200 for Shield, $50 for Antenna, $89 for Tablo, and $285 for installation.)
The way I look at it, we’re saving $50-$100 dollars a month, so the $624 will be worth it in within a year.
If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments.
Enjoy your TV,
Éric
In 2008, the golden gate of Versailles were replaced. The original was torn down during the French Revolution in 1798.
