Ghost in the Bourne Shell
Posted June 15th, 2009 by Clay DowlingA ghost has managed to infest the computer network of a multinational bio-tech firm. It has lain dormant for months, securing its base and building itself into something more powerful.
The ghost is the departed spirit of Guillermo Sanchez, an artificial intelligence researcher and psychologist interested in the use of machine systems for treating traumatic brain injury. Unfortunately he was injured in a motorcycle accident on his way to his son's birthday party.
The Liberation of Jorge Ramirez
Posted January 11th, 2009 by Clay DowlingLast week Steve Jackson Games released GURPS Ultra-Lite, a simple but complete role playing game in six compact pages. In the spirit of this simple practicality, I thought I'd try something different this month. I gave you lots of theory over the last few months, and your eyes are rolling up into your heads. So this time, I'm going to give you a simple adventure, one you can play with GURPS Ultra-Lite.
GURPS Character Worksheet
This is a character worksheet I have created for GURPS, to make character and template building easier. It doesn't give you some nice looking character sheet that you can take to the game table, but it does give you a very nice way to keep track of your point totals when you're designing your player character, NPC or campaign template.
I have provided templates for OpenOffice Calc and Microsoft Excel. I can't vouch for the quality of the Excel template, because I don't own a copy, it's just an export from OpenOffice.
To use this spreadsheet in OpenOffice:
The Bodyguards
Posted November 15th, 2008 by Clay DowlingIn my /hack column over at rpg.net, I promised an adventure. The column went up a little early, so this is a bit rushed. I'll make it nicer once I have a chance to catch my breath. Read it and give me your feedback in the comments.
Biometric Scanners
Posted July 18th, 2008 by Clay DowlingA staple of a certain type of movie or story is the retinal scan to gain access to a high security computer or a top secret research facility. A play on that name is certainly the subject of numerous gaming table puns. Some modern laptop computers are secured by fingerprint scanners, and over a decade ago voiceprint identification was used to secure medical research facilities. These are all examples of biometric scanners, that is devices which identify a person by physical traits that are unique to them.
Stony Island, Actual Play
Posted July 15th, 2008 by Clay DowlingWe played the Stony Island adventure over the course of two sessions. Roughly half of the first session was taken up with character creation, which is a little slow for us since we're new to the system. The adventure was simple enough that it could have been handled in one six-hour game session without any trouble, but two four hour sessions with some character creation thrown in was acceptable.
Black Cat Campaign
Posted June 10th, 2008 by Clay Dowling
The players in the Black Cat Campaign are employees or allies of the Black Cat Detective Agency, a firm with a reputation for dealing with the paranormal. The game system will be GURPS, which is well positioned for an Urban Fantasy campaign.
The Perfect Gift
Posted May 13th, 2008 by Clay DowlingThis is clearly the site to send your favorite paranoid delusional to. Or at least your favorite paranoid. They may not be delusional. Sometimes they really are out to get you. Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie.
Traveller World Generator
Posted May 2nd, 2008 by Clay DowlingSome discussion online about the problem of world generation when creating Traveller characters prompted me to write this up. It's a convenient little utility for generating WPP entries for character generation. It doesn't go whole-hog, complete with starports and political information, because that's all tied in more to your campaign setting than just character gen. But it does generate a nice list of worlds for you to populate your game with.
Welcome To The New Obrien's Cafe
Posted May 2nd, 2008 by Clay DowlingThis site has been down for a month or so while I was rearranging my web hosting. I'm happy to say that it's back up and we should be seeing new content again. What you'll find here is my gaming articles, either for games that I'm currently running, or my /hack column for RPG.net. Articles written for RPG.net will generally show up here a couple of weeks later. Current game material will show up here as time permits.
