the big bang watched with steven moffat

Spider-man and Batman Hi/Lo Heroes

I wanted to post a quick shout out to the Bane. He's been posting about his work with my RPG Hi/Lo Heroes over on his Blog: Mutants and Masterminds Medley. He's got some great ideas for new rules and Hi/Lo Heroes stats for Spider-man and Batman over there. Check it out!

Regards,

Jeff Moore

Narwhals

The urge to create a "beer and pretzels" RPG based on this is almost irresistible.

Regards,

Jeff

Squadron UK may be the best Free RPG on the web ...

Squadron UK was originally published as a game called: Golden Heroes. Interestingly, I owned the boxed edition of Golden Heroes but never played it. I traded the game for a copy of the revised edition (2nd Ed) of Villains and Vigilantes. I owned the original first edition of V&V but wanted the superior updated version. Besides, friends had played V&V ... no one had played Golden Heroes, so, V&V was an easier “sell” to my gaming group.

My traded copy of V&V came with a lot of supplemental materials, a slew of villain books that had wonderful illustrations by Jeff Dee and paper counters on the back cover. I don’t regret the trade, but thinking back now, Golden Heroes was a beautiful package and one I should have found a way to keep a hold of.

This feeling that I had really given up something great is compounded as I look at the free version of Golden Heroes called, Squadron UK: Basic.

There are a handful of free “quick-start” game products out there. Most of these are stripped down versions of a game meant to give players just a “taste” of what they can expect from a game. These are cool, but I don’t categorize them as free RPG’s. I categorize them as advertisements. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s a distinction I think I should make before pointing out that, Squadron UK: Basic is no advertisement. It is a free RPG.
  

The free download available from RPG Now is 31 pages and very complete. It looks to me to be tighter and better presented than 4C and it might be (at least on paper) the best free supers RPG available if it plays as well as my “gut” tells me it will. As I mentioned, I never played Golden Heroes. So, I don’t know how it plays, but being a fan of old school RPGs, I see a lot to like here. I am newly excited about this game in a way that I never was back in the late 80’s.

Squadron UK is pretty old school in a lot of ways but it looks like it can handle comic book style super heroes with flair, and given that 4C just somehow failed to excite me, this gem was a joy to find. For most of you, this won’t be news ... but I hadn’t given it a look before now, so maybe there are others out there who missed it too.

Squadron UK: Basic is free and very complete, but there’s more good news ... It’s just the beginning. The game has a pay version that includes helpful examples, a few more powers, and attractive artwork. All wonderful things for those who try and enjoy the basic game and decide that they want more. Plus supplements ... additional materials to add to your game should you find Squadron UK as wonderful as I believe you will.

Give it a look. The price is definitely right. Supers RPG’s ... I love them.

Regards,

Jeff Moore

Villains and Vigilantes Returns!!

My thanks to Andrew at Zenith Comics for bringing this to my attention. Just felt like I needed to share because the more people to learn about great stuff like this the better! Jeff Dee and Jack Herman the original creators of Villains and Vigilantes have formed Monkey House Games and announced the return of Villains and Vigilantes "... back in the hands of its creators ..."

I have very fond memories of playing V&V way back when. It was truly a marvelous supers RPG and has inspired much of my own work in RPG creation. Back when "Living Legends" came out I was very excited to see Jeff Dee returning to create a supers RPG. I remember buying it and signing up at my local convention to run the game. But unfortunately, "Living Legends" just failed to appeal to me like I had hoped that it would and I would up running a different supers game that came out at that same time, "Truth and Justice."

There is really nothing wrong with Living Legends (although I haven't played it.) It just wasn't Villains and Vigilantes. It wasn't even close. It wasn't an upgrade, a modernizartion, an evolution of that great old game at all. But, it was the work of Jeff Dee, one of V&V's original creators ... so I bought it, and I soon gave up any hope of ever seeing an updated supported V&V. I just accepted that it wouldn't happen.

Then I read this!

Yippee! Yooo! Wooo! Hoooo!

This is really great news for us old school supers fans. I just had to share! Thanks, again, Andrew! And thanks Jeff and Jack!!

Regards,




Jeff Moore

Reviews of MY GAMES on The Web!

There is some talk of my games on RPG.net Check them out!

• Five by Five (new version 2) Review on The FreeRPG Blog
• Five by Five (original version 1) Review on RPG.net
• Hi/Lo Heroes Review
• Hi/Lo Heroes Blog by The Bane
• Hi/Lo Heroes mention at Sword and Board

Thanks to the reviewers for taking the time to comment on my games. It means a lot to me!


Regards,


Jeff Moore

My Free RPG's

I have pulled out my favorite games and created separate links for them to the right. The list below contains everything I have done and I have left this available in the interest of completeness, but I do recommend you check the links to the right first.

Thanks!!

Jeff


--------------------------------------------------------------------


Here are links to all of my Free RPG's - These are Google Docs archive links that open in Google reader. Google reader works, but I highly recommend downloading anything you want to peruse and then reading it locally.

• Five by Five (version 2)
• Hi/Lo Heroes
• Xceptional (combines Powers Brawl and Five by Five)
• Five by Five (original version)
• Powers Brawl (inspired by Prometheus Blade)
• Complete Brawl (precursor to Powers Brawl)
• Prometheus Blade (inspired by Duel Blade)
• Royal Battles (inspired by Sky Ace)
• Duel Blade (24 Hour)
• Gothic Worlds (24 hour)
• Phantasy Star Ragol's Curse
• Rage/Precognition/Grace - RPG (the one page RPG)
• Hex (One Page Solitaire RPG)
• Sky Ace (ver 2)
• EZ Supers (24 Hour - Becomes Hi/Lo Heroes)
• Sky Ace (My first 24 Hour RPG)
• A+ Fantasy (My first game on 1km1kt)
• Xerospace (My first free RPG! Recently rediscovered.)

Everything is here, even some fairly sketchy projects. I think the best of the best here are A+ Fantasy, Hi/Lo Heroes, Powers Brawl, and Five by Five. Not sure about Xceptional my latest project. After completing it I have been questioning whether I like how it came out. Let me know what you think.

Regards,


Jeff

How much is that Puppy in the Window?

So I was at a seemingly legitimate geek type news site reading about "Torchwood" ... I am not sure what site it was ... not one of my usual haunts ... when a thingy pops up telling me I have a virus. It looks a bit like my anti-virus software, but it's not ... it's a lie. Something called "scareware" ... an illegal scam that gets people to try to "buy" antivirus software so it can doink their credit card for a hundred or so bucks.

Needless to say, I wasn't amused. Now I have had some viruses before (despite the fact that I keep up to date anti-virus software running on my PC) and I have dealt with them. I consider myself fairly computer literate, and work on computers (voicemail or messaging servers) in my professional capacity. So let me just say that this particular "scareware" is a genuine pain in my backside and after several hours research and trying different tactics to get rid of the damn thing ... I am genuinely angry. Not an emotion that I am accustomed to or enjoy.

I am online now writing this, because I had put a LINUX partition on my computer a while back so I could play with it and LINUX is working fine. I am at this stage seriously considering scrapping my Windows Partition all together, reformatting the thing and just sticking to LINUX.

Thing is, my computer is an older model and because of this the build of LINUX that I am using is a sort of a LINUX lite called "Puppy Linux." I haven't been able to get Open Office to work with it and so I am using the included writing package called "Abiword" none of my current projects are compatible with this and so I am starting something new.

I have been meaning to update 5x5 for a while now. I've gotten more positive feedback on 5x5 than on any of my other RPG projects, so I think I'd like to revisit it. Xceptional uses the 5x5 die roll, but it isn't the simple toolkit that 5x5 is ... it's really a completely different beast and that beast has not received the attention that 5x5 has, so clearly I missed the mark there. So, I am going back to 5x5 and am going to attempt an update and clean-up of those rules that tries not to change things over much.

This is a test for me too ... to see if I can do the things I want to do solely in LINUX and leave Windows and awful things like "scareware" behind me. So I am going to start putting together an updated 5x5 and see what comes of it and if working on a completely LINUX driven PC will do the job for me. I hope that it does for the sake of my sanity and piece of mind ... this whole virus thing really shook me up.

Regards,


Jeff Moore