….And Rinley Too! I Should Wait Until This Is All Done… But I Have No Idea When I’m Going To Just

I guess this is the first nonsense I’ve ever reblogged.

I want to know how big the Tumblr Chuubo’s and Nobilis fandom is!

If you like Nobilis or Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, like this post. If you generate content for them, reblog this post.

(Re what counts as “generate content”: posting an occasional character sheet every so often is plenty. There isn’t a “you must post this frequently to count” bar.)

Luke Skywalker in Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine

Today I was posting on a thread in RPG.net about using Canon Characters and Franchise Settings when, quite unexpectedly, I wrote this lengthy explanation of how Luke Skywalker would work as a Chuubo Main Character if Star Wars were a GMD-style campaign rather than a movie series.

I'm actually pretty happy with it, so I'm gonna put it here so I don't lose it.

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Let's imagine Star Wars wasn't a movie but a game like Chuubo.  You'd get a character playbook that says:

"Your name is Luke Skywalker, you're an orphan farm boy with a grand destiny to become a Jedi Knight!  OR you could be:

Lulu Skywalker, an orphan farm GIRL with a grand destiny to become a Jedi Knight!

Lu'twach Skeewakka, an orphan wookie with a grand destiny to become a Jedi Knight!

Luke Amida, an orphan farm boy with a grand destiny to become an Ace Rebel Pilot!

Luke Skrontmeer, an orphan farm boy with a grand destiny that he's not sure of!

You'd get a list of generic but customizable starting Quests -- A Basic Quest that relates to being a farm boy out of your element; a Side Quest about befriending some droids, a Storyline Quest about being drawn off the farm and discovering a Wise Mentor.

You'd also get a generic Quest Set for someone on your Knightly path.  A very VERY quick Knight Arc Luke Quest set would be...

The Legendary Deeds of Luke Skywalker...

Knight 1:  Greater Things (Where you find a Mentor and are exposed to a new problem)

Knight 2:  The Dark Side (Where you discover your flaw and stumble because of it)

Knight 3:  Losing Things (Where you lose a mentor/lose faith/lose a hand)

And then the two optional:

Knight 4:  Get Back on the Horse (Where you get back into the path of Destiny)

Knight 5:  Balance (Where you face an Unbalanced Rival (a Walker in Darkness; like you but failing in their Vice) and defeat/befriend/mitigate them by your own control of your Vice)

Finally, you'd get some glimpses as to how this Quest Set can be arranged into Arcs that can be built into a campaign:

The Balance Arcs

Arc 1:  Luke Skywalker, A New Hope (Where the Jedi Knight finds that he is the only hope to keep the Rebellion from collapsing to the Evil Empire)

Arc 2:  Luke Skywalker, Among the Clouds (Where the Jedi Knight is Betrayed and Learns a Secret About His Past)

Arc 3:  Luke Skywalker, A Very Personal War (Where the Jedi Knight Must Find a Way to Bring a Star-Spanning War to a Close)

Arc 4+5:  Luke Skywalker, the Extended Universe (Where Other Things Happen - because I don't know the EU and can't really figure another whole Luke-centric Knight Arc out of the original trilogy)

So, if you lived in a world where Star Wars didn't exist but the Chuubo Star Wars game did, you could (By combining the Jedi Knight with the Smuggler, the Machine Conscience, the Rebel Noble, and (heck, maybe) the Treacherous Prince) approximate the entire plot of Star Wars just by going through those Arcs...  but you could also end up somewhere else entirely!  You'd have a general road map to a type of story without ever actually revealing more than a few landmarks of the story underneath.

A Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine Interlude by Rip van Mason

Over on RPG.net, I'm in a PbP game of the Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine (an RPG by jennamoran) campaign Glass Maker's Dragon (I play Natalie Coutourier, the Vampire Prodigy) [You'll need to have an RPG.net account to click that link].

The game is being HGed by the incredible Rip van Mason.  And, in between doing some damn good HGing, he's been peppering little "Interlude" fictions into the game and they are amazing.  Like the best bits of micro-fiction I've ever seen in an RPG.  And, with his permission, I'm reprinting them here (mostly so jennamoran can see them because they're great and I think she'll get a kick out of them!)

Interlude I of IX – Childe Rider to the Farthest Tree Came

"An Unreliable Narrative" - A Prototype Welcome to Night Vale Quest Set for Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine (Part 1)

Okay, so I've been thinking about Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, and I've been thinking about Welcome to Night vale, and I've been thinking about how to combine Chuubo and Night Vale together. More specifically, I've been trying to think about Chuubo Quest Sets and just how tricky they are to make.

If you don't follow Welcome to Night Vale, it's one of the most popular podcasts ever, about(and I'll use the cliche description everyone uses from the first episode) "A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep": http://commonplacebooks.com/welcome-to-night-vale/

If you don't follow Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, it's an unreleased Tabletop RPG written by Jenna Moran, designed, primarily, for playing Miyazaki-inspired games, but its same sense of normalcy among the strange definitely can fit:  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1710667762/the-chuubos-marvelous-wish-granting-engine-rpg

As a fun exercise that no one will ever get any use out of, I thought I'd mess around a bit with making a Cecil Quest Set, which I am going to tentatively call the Unreliable Narrative Quest Set.

Alright, so let's break down a Cecil Arc. In my mind, the Cecil Arcs of Welcome to Night Vale typically traverse a certain path:

Reporting: Cecil dispassionately observes and reports even momentous events, as if they are completely external to him.

Editorializing: Some crisis or issue strikes Cecil/Night Vale causing him express fear or concern OR state opinions that clash with official opinions

Becoming the Story: Cecil is, personally, drawn into events, whether it be physically, emotionally, or merely by association.

Human Interest: Cecil has some sort of personal revelation, emotional catharsis, or transformative event

A Return to Normalcy: Cecil settles back in, the revelations of the past ignored or integrated.

Now, for various reasons, I'm pegging Cecil as being on a Storyteller Arc, generally. The most obvious is the nominal relationship, but the authorship abilities of the Storyteller Arc, and the slow burn character development of its Quest set both fit the character, in my mind. As, Ms Moran said, he's almost a background character-type, not a lot of actual growth along his path for most of the story, except, perhaps, in short bursts.

Basically, the Storyteller Arc is as follows...

Doing your thing, being cool

Continuing to do your thing even as things start getting messy

Facing things outside of your expertise

Go for the gold, the biggest prize

Fall back to earth, rebuffed by your earlier overreach

It's not exactly a map, but it's not too far off. The overall shape of the Arc feels similar.

I think I should go to bed now... But I'll come back to this, i think. Maybe. 

Well, maybe not.

Angel of Fortitude again

The Peerless Spirit

Academics Skill: Not Dumb but Extremely Unfocused Sports Skill: Without Equal Favorite Foods: Banana Cream Pie, Steak Tartare, Pineapple Blood Type: A+ Animal: Monkey Age: 5015 An Interesting Fact About You: You were grown from a seed! Character Description ❀ You are a spirit without peer, if that wasn’t clear enough. You live alone in the woods in a (treasure-filled) cave, doing whatever you like, whenever you like it. Your neighbors see you at best as a charming nuisance and at worst as a dangerous menace. You’re not an evil person, per se, but you are rude, arrogant, and selfish. Despite all of that, of course, you are often lonely. You’ve never been good at making real friends, not in your entire long life, And it has been a ridiculously long life, because… ❀ You are not human. Five thousand years ago, the Heron Queen planted a seed on a hillside under the noonday sun and you grew from that seed like a tree. Vines twine in your hair and flowers bloom at your temples when you’re embarrassed. You share a kinship with birds and can speak the language of squirrels and hedgehogs and moles. That’s just the sort of thing nature spirits can do. ❀ You’re probably going to go on this adventure just… because. You’re going to hear that the Light Seeker has a mission and they’re probably going to go out into the Near Outside and die, and you think that sounds like an awesome place for an awesome person like you. And you’re worried about him probably, too. Sidebar: Shake it Up! For an atypical Peerless Spirit experience, pick 0-2 of the following: ❀ Instead of Sonya, you can be Sonny Hou, a boy spirit ❀ Instead of a forest spirit, maybe you’re... ✶ … a fox-faced spirit ✶ … an ogre ✶ … a highly-advanced cyborg designated SWK-2456

Sidebar: Playing SWK-2456 You’re not a spirit at all! You’re an advanced combat cyborg! Don’t try to trick me! You were crafted ages ago by a team of scientists working to build a perfect organism. You were locked away in a cryosleep chamber for centuries, waiting for the right time to be revealed to an unsuspecting world. You’re a bit less full of bravado than Sonya is, but you are no less confident, your self-regard bolstered by inhuman calculation rather than pure pride. You’re definitely not as good at telling jokes as Sonya is.

A quick doodle of... okay, it's Meenah from Homestuck, but it's, in this case, the image I'll be using for my character in an RPG who is also a fish-chick with a trident.  It's... complicated...  whatever.

Chuubo!

Sharktober 2024 - 17: Electric Shark

Struggled with #15 so decided to skip it for now. This idea appeared in my mind fully formed and took three minutes to draw.

She Who Lives in Her Name, the Principle of Heirarchy