Castlereagh

During the kickstarter there was quite a bit of excitement about a game mechanic called Dispositions. Although I was a backer, I fell out of the loop during the course of the game's alpha and beta, so I'm not abreaste of all of the developments to this point. Were Dispositions renamed, or are they to be added in some future release?

I would... but in three weeks it will be a year since I played malifaux. I keep collecting, but my work schedule keeps me tied up whenever there's a tournament. I miss it!

This has never been a problem for me. It'd been my plan from day one to pull a headswap on Samael and make him a girl. I have a thing about girls in ponchos. I'm not sure where that got started.

Lew-shuss is how the name would roll off my tongue in almost all situations. However, if I was in a production of Titus Andronicus, I might pronounce it differently. I know there are points when the pentameter needs the name to be three syllables rather than two. In that case I might pronounce it Lew-see-us. Even then I expect it'd come out more like Lews-yus. I wouldn't ever say it Lew-see-us

I have to admit, I prefer the old wavy auburn Sonnia. I don't like her as a straight haired ginger one bit. I wonder if there's anything I can do to her avatar.

I meant red coats and bearskin caps. Rule Britannia, eh?

I wonder how the guild guards would look if you pulled some headswaps to give them bearskin caps...

I just had an odd thought. Do you suppose Wyrd's base inserts count towards the necessary 67% Wyrd material? Say I was about to put a girl from hasslefree, wearing a hat and a gun from Hats & Guns of malifaux, standing on a wyrd base insert, with a wyrd victorian lamp-post for good measure. Hasslefree miniatures tend to be scrawny, so I imagine by that point it'd only account for a third of the total mass of he model.

Aha, a blind poll, you clever clever beasties.

but it's what I'll be playing until Wyrd writes one for me. I've known about Unhallowed Metropolis for at least a year, but the original edition was prohibitively hard to get ahold of. Fortunately, a revised edition was released this month by Atomic Overmind Press. In Unhallowed Metropolis, history as we know it was rudely interrupted by a zombie apocalypse in 1905. The rpg is set in an alternate London, a colossal stygian sprawl protected by towering fortifications on all sides. Dubiously secure from the surrounding plague ridden wasteland, the inhabitants of London suffocate in the fog of the city. Respirators are a ubiquitous sight on the classes that can afford them, but for the great unwashed, life is invariably nasty, brutish, and short. Unhallowed metropolis absolutely oozes atmosphere. The setting is painted out for you in acrylic, rather than watercolor. By that I mean that texture and nuance are some of the strengths of the writing, at the expense of some brevity. Even though humanity has been decimated, the world has a very lived in feel to it. An imaginative Player or Gm should find oodles of little niches in the setting, crying out to be inhabited by their creations. You could easily style a character as anything from Herbert West, to Fagin, to Oscar Wilde with a gun. Mechanically, unhallowed metropolis has more in common with the Rpgs of the late 90s than with popular light narrative games in the vein of Spirit of the Century. It reminds me of games like 7th Sea and various White Wolf titles that went out of print a few years ago. Character skills and attributes are point based, and there are no levels. The game is played with d10s, so it should appeal to players who've developed an aversion to linear probability. Combat in Unhallowed Metropolis is notably lethal. There's no abstract, gradual transition from feeling ok to spilling your guts out on the cobblestones. Wounds are handled individually, so the first hit you take could kill you, or might just slow you down and make you an easier target. In fights against the walking dead, infection is a serious concern. Surviving an infected bite usually requires a roll of 17 or so, on 2d10, and those who fail have about eight hours to live. It's not just the players who can end messily, however. The tricks a PC can pull with their weapons can really tear things apart.

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That's absolutely true, and thats why I didn't recommend that people should re-fluff Falkenstein as a Malifaux game. A Malifaux rpg really has to be tailored from the ground up.

I would certainly have to protest strenuously to the suggestion that a card mechanic alone couldn't run a game. It's something that has been done with some success before, in Castle Falkenstein. Moreover, a card based system is indispensable if you want to retain the charm of Malifaux. At the very heart of Malifaux is the conceit that you're playing with fate. Drawing from a deck, every run of good luck is depleting a resource. You know that there's only so many good cards in a deck and you're bound to bottom out. Likewise, a player who starts off abysmally can at least trust that a better hand gets more and more likely as his deck gets thinner. These aren't faults, they're two of the best things's in the wargame, and would likewise be some of the best things about a Malifaux rpg. The other indispensable thing a player shouldn't have to give up when he sits down for a Malifaux Rpg is his hand. Essential to the feel of the game, the hand gives a player a bit of a chance to see his good luck coming, and plan accordingly. If the PC does a piss-poor job at some mundane task, it's probably because he saving his good cards for an action that actually matters to him. The hand gives the player a chance to prioritize the amount of effort his character spends on various actions. That's something we do every day, and a dice mechanic has never captured particularly well. These are the strengths of malifaux, and there's really no substitute for them.

I'm not sure a Zoraida puppet makes sense... I mean, Zoraida makes the puppets, doesn't she? I mean it all begins to get a bit recursive. You'd have a puppet Zoraida making puppet puppets. Maybe she'd have a puppet puppet Zoraida with puppet puppet puppets.

I really love Sonnia. Her original sculpt was one of the things that won me over to malifaux. It's fantastic to see a female model that doesn't look like a pin-up.

Well, the first two sets I picked up were Showgirls and The Dreamer. I'm looking forward to adding Kaeris to my Arcanist crew. I think Sonnia's crew shall be my next purchase, unless Lucius comes out doublequick. Oh, for heaven's sake I'm not fooling anybody, I'm getting both of them.

I'm a dour humored, foul fated beau, Who's decided to play Malifaux. When I try to roll dice, The result's never nice, But I hope I'll flip cards like a "pro" I just love the Dickensian tone, Where a hint of the gothic is shown, It's byronic and bleak, yet romantic and chic, And I love every model I own.

Oh the atmosphere here is spiteful, and a ride home sounds delightful, But I've no Guild scrip to go. Malifaux! Malifaux! Malifaux! Oh the coroner's hair needs cropping, And his coat, with blood is sopping, His crony stoops way down low. Malifaux! Malifaux! Malifaux! When it finally hits midnight, There's this little boy looking forlorn. So I ask him if he's alright, OH SWEET GOD HE'S NEVERBORN! With mechanical spiders spying, and a hollow marsh that's drying, I'm sure Ramos is in the know. Malifaux! Malifaux! Malifaux!