The Gauntlet G+ Archives

There are so many positive benefits to getting involved in our community. Many of them are difficult to quantify or explain, but they are absolutely perceivable if you know where to look. Legacy 2e from James Iles is a terrific example of what I’m talking about here. (I believe) James first heard about us when Lowell Francis began running Legacy 1e on Gauntlet Hangouts and making those videos available. In those videos, we spoke really openly about the things we liked in Legacy 1e and the things we didn’t like. James was in the planning phases of Legacy 2e, and so he got in touch with Lowell to discuss things more in-depth. Importantly, James didn’t act like a baby when we (gently) criticized his game, but rather embraced our critique and got really involved in our community. Our community, particularly our Slack, had a first-row seat to the development of Legacy 2e. Furthermore, James began running playtests of Legacy 2e and related products, such as Rhapsody of Blood, on Gauntlet Hangouts.

Ultimately, James’s partnership with Modiphius is what sent Legacy 2e into the stratosphere in terms of its KS and DriveThru sales. We deserve absolutely no credit for the game’s success from a marketing standpoint. But in terms of the quality of the text, creative support, and just generally providing a friendly, welcoming place for James to work out his ideas, the Gauntlet did the thing.

Legacy 2e is a fabulous book. One of the things I find most exciting about the project as a whole is how James has embraced our spirit of welcoming and encouraging new people to get involved in RPG authorship. You can see that in the Worlds of Legacy line of supplements, which I have just started taking a look at. I just picked up one of them, Generation Ship by Aaron Griffin, and it’s really neat! It basically takes the factional play of Legacy and puts it in the stars.

Anyway, for the two of you who don’t yet have Legacy 2e, I highly recommend it. And check out all the cool stuff coming out for it, too!

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/242791/Legacy-Generation-Ship-Worlds-of-Legacy-1-PDF

Great post by Johnstone Metzger about Space Wurm vs Moonicorn, inspired by Tyler Lominack’s recent run of it.

Originally shared by Johnstone Metzger

I can’t find it now but I seem to remember at the end of one of these episodes of Space Wurm vs Moonicorn, Tyler (the GM) says something like “I don’t know if that was the proper way to play it, but that was OUR Space Wurm vs Moonicorn.”

At the risk of pulling back the curtain too much, I want to tell you why that comment made me happy, because that is exactly a feeling I wanted people to have after playing the game.

SWvsM doesn’t have a detailed setting. It has archetypes and issues that every campaign chooses from, then players fill in the rest using questionnaires and rules processes. Different campaigns of it only need to have two things in common: Space Wurm and Moonicorn. But even the eponymous feud is just there to get you started, because you always need to start somewhere. The game is really just an excuse to explore adventure, romance, and politics through the medium of science fantasy.

But that science fantasy medium is really important, because the game is also about being weird. I deliberately push the boundaries of weirdness so that players feel encouraged to say things they think are weird, own them, and make the game specific to them.

This is the game where I explain the 2008 financial crisis so you can have a villain use the same scam to deliberately destabilize a planet’s economy. Where if you choose the “no aliens” option, I say you can still have hallucinations from another dimension invade reality.

This is the game where one character’s polyamory is a superpower on par with another character owning 2/5ths of the galaxy, and they still aren’t as “out-there” as the character from another dimension.

Speculative fiction is about realizing there’s more things possible than just what exists now. When you imagine something impossible is true, then imagine what else has to be possible to make it true, you inevitably find things that actually aren’t impossible.

Look, you can see all the tech shit that was invented because people saw it in sci-fi and wanted it to be real. Lots of things people want are impossible, but also: lots of things aren’t, even though some people say they are.

I threw away several conclusions to this, because I’ve been trained to reach for feel-good, aspirational messages at the end and I actually hate that, so anyway, listen: weird shit is good, use your imagination, challenge yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAaT5kNKhns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAaT5kNKhns