Voices and sound FX part 2 - Sci Fi etc.

 In the last post I bleeped and blooped about occasional amateur voice "acting" in D&D games. I wanted to follow-up with a short post on my somewhat minimal experience with Roll20 and its Jukebox function. But because a comment was left mentioning Sci Fi games I thought I'd touch on that a bit (who would have thought I'd get multiple posts out of this daffy subject).

"Going to the well one too many times"
as a wise man (probably) once said. 

I think there is something about D&D, no matter how you approach it as a DM, that lends itself to be a bit silly with the sounds of things happening in game (see the Don Martin examples that I have cherished for most of my life in my last post). As I've mentioned before I'm sure most of the anti-community theater in games folk have at least done a "thunk" as an arrow hits a body, and a "splurt" as it's pulled out.

 I mean, in most games but especially D&D there is a certain humorous irony that lurks around every corner. Behind every door. The whimsical nature of the game along with the various actions of players and the consequences of such as dictated by random number generation leads to a certain amount of suspense mixed with surprise, a great recipe for laughs. So the "spladaps" and "sizafitz's" just kind of grooves along with that. How often do we enter a session with a mind towards seriousness, and it devolves into slapstick? 

Don't even ask me to bring up that one Toon session so long ago. The voices. We all...did...voices. 😬

I ran Champions (or very early on Superhero 2044 and Supergame as a literal kid) on and off for decades, and you know the deal there. With superpowers it's kind of a no brainer; fire blast ("swoosh"), lasers ("zark!), explosions ("booosh!"). But Nothing all that silly. Uh, unless you aren't a comic book nerd, and do consider those examples silly.  Where it got real dorky was when characters with powers similar to famous characters described their stuff with those familiar sounds. Hence "snikt," "bamf" and "thwip." But hey, if it made them enjoy things more I would not complain (out loud). 

Call of Cthulhu? Ran great, long campaigns (and one or two short ones) on and off for decades. I probably voiced some scary moan, the rattling around of a skeleton in a basement before the party sees it, maybe a gurgling sound for any number of things. But really, I was pretty much about the verbal description of the dark goings-on. Trying to give voice to, say, Wilbur Watley's brother would probably just elicit laughs, which is great for D&D but not so much for CoC. 

 I laugh so I won't cry.

Let's see. What else? Well, I did a classic Traveller campaign a few short years ago, dipping into the original rules set. Not a lot of meat on that bone to go all Michael Winslow from Spaceballs. 

Ship to ship combat was silent, though somebody probably imitated various guns during firefights. But since they weren't "blasters" it would be your basic rifle or machine gun thing. "Pow pow" is so just banal. But I relied on appropriate music cue's more than anything (with CD's, so I was slapping them in and out of the player like a Free Trader computer operator would be slapping computer "tapes" in and out of the computer tower). Classical music, the 1984 Dune movie soundtrack, The Sci Fi Channel Children of Dune soundtrack, etc. 

I mean, have the right music on for a ship battle, or a Free Trader bravely skimming a gas giant, and you don't need to make cutesy sounds. 

This is Free Trader Beowulf...
mayday, mayday...iiiiiiieeeeee!!! Skidooooosh!!!

The moral of this tale is that in D&D you can't really go wrong going overboard in D&D with this stuff, but in many other games it's like wasabi. A little goes a long way. 

Sci Fi fashion goes full circle

If there is one truly weird fact I have learned from Science Fiction films and books is that fashion eventually comes full circle. That is to say, it gets to a certain point beyond military or blue collar worker jumpsuits into semi-space punk latex jumpsuits and astronaut armor, and then starts heading back to ancient garb. Tunics, togas, and robes. Cases in point: Logan’s Run, Star Wars, The Time Machine, original Star Trek, and the book version of the Dune Universe and others. Whatever it is, we eventually digress into the fashion of ancient Rome.

Somewhere in there is the turtleneck sweater phase of the future as well.

Housin' Mutant Future

In yesterday's post, I outlined the setting and set-up for my Metamorphosis Alpha game using Mutant Future. So here are a few house rules I'm going to use. I want to use the rules as-is as much as possible, but I needed some tweaking to make it fit into how I like to GM things. I have a very difficult time refraining from modifying rules, and it's nice that this game's design makes it easy to add your own ingredients.

First off, I'm leaving out alignment. I just don't want to deal with it in this game, and I personally don't think it fits. I don't think the players will mind.

I want going up in level to mean a bit more. I noticed that some good mutations include drawbacks, so going up in level might alleviate some of that. For example, a mutant human character one of my players rolled up has disintegrate. When used, you get knocked out and go down to 1 hit point. Ouch. But there is hope. I may have the hit points he gets knocked down to be equal to his level, and maybe after 4th level I'll give him a saving throw to go down to only half his points and not get knocked out. A lot of mutations can be level-tweaked like this, and I'm going to wing it as best I can.

Also, I wanted to come up with my own level bonus chart. Here it is.

Experience Level Bonus

D6 Bonus
1-2 +1 hit and damage w/ attack of choice
3 +1 attack per round w/ attack of choice (not usable with powerful mutations)
4-5 +1 to random stat
6 +1 to stat of choice

Obviously, in my game you'll get much less chances to have extra attacks. I just think that getting extra attacks in everything every two or three levels is a bit much.

OK, now this hot potato. I'm including skills. I don't want them to be a big part of the game (just like in my D&D), but I'm just compelled to do so.

Character skills

Pure humans begin with half their intelligence (round up) in skill slots.
Mutant humans begin with half their intelligence (round down) in skill slots.
Mutant plants begin with one-third of their intelligence in slots (round down)

Acting /Performance: stage, musical instrument, puppetry, etc. (mutant must use two slots)
Animal handler: might include stable skills, cattle or sheep husbandry, etc.
Blacksmith: with proper facilities can work with metal, including weapons creation. Can work iron into steel (three slots and unavailable to mutants)
Boating: operate and repair small boating craft in Europa’s rivers and lakes
Farming skills: adept at growing food.
Fishing: +1 to fishing attempts, and ability to create fishing gear from simple materials
Gambling: get a small bonus in most gambling situations (mutants must use two skill slots)
Knowledge: general knowledge of an area/place the characters is not originally from
Riding: character is especially adept (+1) at riding horses or other animals
Simple weapon craft: can create weapons from wood, stone, and bone (no metal work)
Stealth: +1 when trying to move silent or hide
Survival: minor hunting skills and living off the land (usually not applicable to non-mammals)
Tactics: (not usually available to mutants) usable when dealing in combat with 10 or more allies present
Tracking: +1 when tracking things in the wild
Trade/Haggle: usable in trading situations (mutants use two slots)
Transport familiarity: can drive and repair carts and wagons of various sizes
Weapons skill: +1 hit and damage with weapon/attack of choice (all PC’s use two slots for this)


None of these skills are going to have a big affect on play. Even little weapons bonus' won't make that big of a difference. Now, when crew members or characters from other, higher tech society levels come into play, I'll need to rethink skills. But for now, these will do for people of a dark ages level.

That's about it. It looks like only three players are showing up for the game tomorrow, so I'm hoping to wow them with this excellent old school-style game. I hope it's good enough to make the other players wish they had been there!

A little boardgame called Rivets

As a teen I played most of the microgames put out by Metagaming in the late 70’s. Chitin, Ogre, and of course Melee and Wizard.

These games were touted as being playable during a school lunch break and damned if they weren’t right. I was by no means a great rules interpreter (those skills would not be hard-forged until I started running Champions in the 80’s), but these microgames were so easy. The rules were aimed towards fast and furious action. You moved your little chits on the hex map, and you attacked, either with a weapon or missile of some kind. There you had it.

I played Rivets, Ogre, and Chitin religiously, but Rivets got the most play of all.

Rather than turn me off, the slightly cartoony robots of the Rivets were strangely appealing to me. In some weird way I thought of little robot tanks with big eyes as being kind of scary.

Armed with various guns and the occasional melee weapon (I think it was the Bopper class tank that featured a huge can-opener as a weapon, along with its freaky robotic war cry of “Pop-A-Top!”) the little mini-tanks scooted around the post apocalyptic landscape, fighting and scavenging for their respective factory CPU.

Besides some fun little game sessions, Rivets also made it’s way into a couple of my campaigns of the 80’s. In my first homebrew game, based on The Road Warrior, I had players dealing with the robots from Rivets as fellow scavengers on the field. As long as you didn’t attack them, or pick up choice pieces of salvage, they would leave you alone. I also used them in a much more violent encounter in an early Gamma World game, which eventually saw the characters having to assault the Robot Factory CPU.

I may actually have my old copy of Rivets somewhere deep in one of my game boxes, but I really only thought of the game again this last weekend as I was coming up with encounters for my Mutant Future campaign I have planned. I thought that it would be a hell of a shame not to feature the little metal scavengers as warriors in one of those upcoming games.

And I may just have to throw that monster tank for Ogre at theme at some point as well…