Back to Life, Still Debating Game

The virus thing seems to be overcome, for now. Thanks go out to Sargon, who talked me through some stuff. I may be dumping Chrome pretty soon. I love it as a browser, but there's one thing it doesn't do. It doesn't work with TiddlyWiki, like at all.

So when I decided to use TiddlyWiki to help me organize and design this game world idea I'm playing with, I had to load up another browser. Problem: Firefox wasn't playing real well with TiddlyWiki either. So I decided to do what I never do, and load up Internet Explorer just to edit the wiki.

That appears to have been the mistake. And the reason I say that is that the fake virus-scan Trojan that completely fucked my system keeps trying to open up IE windows. As far as I know, I've cleaned out the major portions of it (virus scans have stopped coming up with Trojans, anyway), but IE still keeps trying to open on its own, and every now and then, my speakers blurt out "Congratulations. You won!" for no reason.

And since it looks as if Firefox has more robust and flexible security options, along with the ability to handle the updated TiddlyWiki, I'm seriously thinking of switching back to Firefox as my default browser.

Meanwhile, during the time my system was down, I did a lot of work on the game world. I have basically abandoned OpenD6, basically because without previous experience with it, I'm still not getting a warm and fuzzy feeling about designing an extensive game world around mechanics that I'm not comfortable with.

Which means I've jumped into Champions with both feet. I've designed several NPC's using the 4th Edition book, which isn't quite as simple as I was hoping to go, but at the same time, it's all in one book and not 5th Edition, which made several changes I wasn't comfortable with (and also had approximately 100 pages of errata on the Hero website, so I feel as if I can't really trust anything in the book).

But as I've worked through the process, I've gone through a shift in attitude. At first, it was wonderful to get back into the Champions mindset, like slipping on comfy old clothes you haven't worn in a long time. I know how things work, I have the points costs memorized for a lot of stuff, and I've designed so many characters with exotic powers that the design process has become really intuitive.

On the other hand, as I've worked through several characters in a row, I'm starting to chafe again at how complicated everything is. So I'm looking more seriously at the "design my own system" idea.

There is a whole movement of people who are playing Old-School Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, or retro-clones like Labyrinth Lord and Pathfinder. What I'm thinking of doing is basically taking Champions and cutting it down to a simpler core, retaining the things I like--the simple, scalable building blocks of 5 pts. per d6 and the one-roll, mostly chartless attack/skill resolution, the variety, flexibility and unique flavor of the speed chart--while getting rid of the things I don't--the complex math for advantages and limitations, the necessity of building everything with points, the large number of stats and the fiddly breakpoints, the complicated nature of a twelve-segment speed chart.

I don't know if I will actually go through with it. Hard enough to create a game world from scratch, but then to try to run it with an essentially un-playtested set of rules? The good part is that the people I play with are a pretty fun and flexible bunch, smart and articulate. So it wouldn't be like some of my previous GM'ing experiences, where I'm fighting with both the system and the players.

I hope.

And really, I've got a lot of time to mess with this. I don't anticipate trying to run this until the Atlantis game has run its course, and it seems to have a lot of fuel left in its tank. We're all having a blast, and there looks to be a lot of story left to play out.