Low octaNe ideas?

[Curt Thompson]

Hi all.

I'd like to say how impressed I am with octaNe, first up. That is a lot of game to pack into that little .pdf.

Anyway, to the point. Like every Narrator/GM/ST worth his salt, I absorbed octaNe, decided it was an excellent setting and then started thinking about what else I could use the mechanics for. It occurs
to me that octaNe would make a great rules set for a game set in the fantastic fiction works of Manley Wade Wellman.

Appalachian and north eastern Native American myth, Cthulhu mythos ties, the Campbell style archetypical adventurers and quests, all set against a back drop of rural America in the throws of the deep Depression. What's not to like? I'm picturing this as a cross between Crossroads, Oh Brother Where Art Thou and Pumpkinhead.

I was wondering if anyone had any advice for adapting octaNe to a crypto-historical setting?

Odd that on a day when my players bring me a raft of RPG stuff for Christmas, my favorite item is something I won for hanging around in southern beer joints. I was inspired to spend all day digging out my old Silver John novels as well as bluegrass, roadhouse blues and vintage county albums for atmosphere. I'd forgotten how good that music is. :)

Thanks,

Curt

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Hmmm...should this be called "keroseNe"?

Ha!

But seriously, I'm glad you like the game.

Whenever someone asks me, "Would 'blank' be a good setting for octaNe?" I have them think of how the various game elements work within the setting.

Roles? If you can only think of a few Roles, octaNe might not be your best best, as Roles are pretty much the entirety of character creation and without a lot of differents Styles and color details, characters (on the outside anyway) tend to look similar.

Modes? Do you use an existing Mode or do you create your own?

Mechanics? octaNe favors a player-driven game. This probably won't be a problem as the actual dice-rolling mechanics are easy to transfer to other game types. "Roll high, you control the action...roll low, the GM controls the action."

For a horror-themed game, I strongly suggest InSpectres. It uses a similar system but is geared toward spooky, mysterious tales. Also, character "niche protection" is dealt with in a different way than octaNe.

[Sidhain]

I am not unfortunatly familiar with oCtaNe, I am familiar with InSpectres, and Silver John (among other Manly Wade Wellman works such as John Thunstone, the Judge whose name I can't recall just now *L* and so on)

I don't think InSpectres would fit, unfortunatly its focus is a littles more on groups (which was a rarity in Silver John stories), and seems to me to be a little action oriented. Now that doesn't mean it wouldn't work, but the emphasis of some things would need shifting. Most of the heroes/protaganists of Silver John stories fit some of this:
     

 1) Limited tangible resources, Silver John himself was a backwoods wanderer with only his silver strung guitar and occasionally a dollar or two.
  2) Lore, they knew a lot about the people, cultures and areas they were in, Silver John was specifically adept at that and song which carried weight to his current predicament.
 3)Faith--not necessarily religious faith (although SJ had that) but faith in friends, faih in old folktales, and so on
 4) Jawin--Don't have any other word but a significant number of problems are solved by talking them out, Sjilver John had much more the "mystery revealed" kinda of story to them, rather than "dark horrors unleashed" although they touched on that, they had heroic overtones-but talking resolved a lot of problems (his issues with the "giant", the problems with Sin-eating, and so on.)

[Curt Thompson]

Humm.

Well, I sat down and made up a list of possible character Roles for keroseNe (Heh!) and realized that there are only six or so really interesting choices.

As for the nature of the Silver John stories, yea, they do tend to be little vignette style character pieces but I’d like to think that John solves things a bit atypically. That WW I revolver you brought back from France and some of Granddaddy’s double distilled ‘Shine and a match ought to handle just about any nasty that climbs out of the well. ;)

Seriously though, as fun as I think this idea is, I’ll probably just have to put it on the back burner until I figure out a way to work elements of this idea into another campaign.

On the other hand, I went out and rented Six String Samurai and the Road Warrior tonight. I’ll show them to my merry band of mutants and see what they come up with, character wise, for a ‘regular’ octaNe game.

Thanks for the help.

Curt

[Derek Devlin]

Where did you rent Six-String Samurai? I've been trying to find that movie for sale or rent for months with no luck. :(

Derek Devlin

[Jared A. Sorensen]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/6305297223/qid=1040662440/


One left...

[Curt Thompson]

Where did you rent Six-String Samurai? I've been trying to find that movie for sale or rent for months with no luck. :(

Derek Devlin

Found it at a local video rental place in the 'Killer Bs' section. Great movie. Death is a whole lot like Slash from Guns and Roses. Who'da thunk it? ;)

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Well, I sat down and made up a list of possible character Roles for keroseNe (Heh!) and realized that there are only six or so really interesting choices.

Curt,

Keep in mind that there are other ways to do characters other than with pre-defined Roles. See Blood & Steel for an example of alt.character creation. Rather than have only one Role (ass-kicking fantasy dude) or go the traditional-but-inappropriate fantasy RPG route (fighter, thief, magic-user, blah blah), characters are defined by their personalities and their pasts.

- J