My Latest 15-Minute Obsession

Argh. I want to play Promethean. Badly.

Because you know what I see when I look at this game?

Robot angst.

Probably because I'm a mutant.

I'm serious, though. I'm not one of those squares who thinks that "robot" has to mean bits and gears and dials. This game taps my inexplicable fascination with all things created, and alienated. Robots, golems, Frankenstein, heck, even the Hulk. No idea how solid the execution is, but the concept is brilliant.

Trouble is, it's a World of Darkness game. Which means that it'd be hard to find someone to run it, and other people to play it. And I'd have to buy at least one book, maybe two. I know Rae has the basic World of Darkness book, but I don't know that she'd be into running a game this summer.

If it doesn't happen this summer, I'm going to either have to wait until next year (by which time I will have lost interest) or try putting together a game with a bunch of strangers. Which I am not sure is such a good plan. Because, at the very least, the particular nature of this game's GM responsibilities means I would be very wary about playing with a GM I don't know. And I'm not terribly interested in running this game myself. This concept engages me on a character level, not a story or environmental level. (Unlike D&D, and standard fantasy in general.)

Also, I worry about World of Darkness people being freaks. For some reason.

The other big problem is the book itself. I've only read a little bit of it, but what I have read falls in an uncomfortable place between "Damn! That's awesome!" and "Get to the point already!" Maybe this is the D&D player in me talking, but I don't care how six different groups interpret the whatsit's creation myth. I want to know what the whatsit does.

Not that it doesn't make for un-entertaining reading. (Especially the bits about ectoplasm coming from the pineal gland. That's totally how science works.) But from a "how do I use this in a game?" perspective, it's frustrating.

Then there's the game fiction. Oh, the game fiction.

I figure I can get past that, though. What I know of the basic system looks pretty neat, and the additions that Promethean bolts onto it don't look too onerous. Especially when compared to Exalted, which is the most similar system I have any actual experience. Exalted is cool and all, but talk about option overload. Yowch.

If someone to run it. And people to play it. Who aren't scary.

In all likelihood, this will turn into one of those things I get really obsessed with for a week, and then forget about. Forever!

At least I've gotten some decent ideas out of it.