The Black Chameleon, First Time, (adults only)

[xBlackWolfx]

Are you doing this by yourself? Maybe interacting with other people would be better.

Yes, I'm by myself. I'm essentially just writing a story like I normally would, except I'm rolling dice to determine the outcome of combat scenes.

Honestly, another problem may be that I don't find the story very interesting. Originally, it was just escapism, I had him acting as I would and I was envisioning the story through his eyes. But after I found how easy the thugs were for him, I lost interest in this and tried to find some way to actually challenge him.

Maybe I should try to get back into his shoes, or maybe I should actually try to make this interesting other than "Superhero beats up bad guys". Oh well.

[xBlackWolfx]

Still no idea when the next chapter may be up. Right now, I'm planning on taking a fantasy writing course online, so it may not be anytime soon.

I hate to leave a story unfinished, but honestly I'm just not interested in this anymore. Maybe I'll continue it eventually, maybe not. Only time will tell.

[fairytalejedi]

I just got caught up with this. On the mechanical side, BASH is more interesting with teamwork. You have more options, more skills to potentially use and so on.

On the writing side, I know all about infrequent updates. If you feel like coming back to this in 6 months or a year, there's no rule that says you can't. And if not, that's kind of an interesting stopping place anyway.

Thanks for posting!

[xBlackWolfx]

I was afraid of having a team of characters, since I thought I may not be able to handle it. My second to last chapter was meant to try out what it would be like to control more than 3 characters. Of course, I was playing a character that got 6 attacks in a single turn. I kinda got tired of all that rolling though, at least when it came to the long drawn-out fight where he couldn't defeat everything in two blows.

Would I actually have more fun if I had a team of heroes with more diverse abilities? Maybe I should try that out. Though I may not include the Black Chameleon since I don't think I like having to make 6 attack rolls every turn. And besides, I kinda get the feeling that the character I made was overpowered because of that.

I started thinking about making characters again. I was planning on making a bunch of my own 'sample characters', like the ones you see in the back of the book. Not that there's anything wrong with what's in the book, I would just like a bit more diversity. And I kinda dislike the fact that there's no street-level magic character, even though there are ones for the pulp and world-class levels.

I doubt I'll continue this story. But I think I'll try to post some character builds of my own soon. My fantasy writing class is winding down, so I'll have some more free time to think about other things.

[MrJupiter]

Hello xBlackWolfx. I have only just read your story posts today and really found them to be very entertaining. The Black Chameleon is a really interesting character; an absolutely average nobody with only the will to do good deeds and accidentally blessed with mystical ‘gifts’ he doesn’t deserve… fantastic!

While the technical mechanics of your fight scenes follow the actual rules, you still do manage to bring them to life with your storytelling. I really like this honesty because, while being a story, it still does feel like a great game session as well. You improvise the tale well as both Narrator and Player. While I had thought of writing up a game session as a story, I had not ever thought of actually playing it out first and then staying true to the events as they unfolded! Brilliant!

I honestly hope that you will one day return to this story so that we can all see how things unfold for the Black Chameleon, but I understand the drudge and disillusionment that comes from depression myself. So many game projects that I’ve worked on would start out with great energy and then would become almost impossible to finish. If it were not for the worry of letting people down on the EXTREME EARTH project, I might not have ever finished it. The A.D.E.L. FILE was more than a year-and-a-half of starts and stops and probably wouldn’t have ever happened if I had not reached out to Walt (a.k.a. kroh, here on the BASH forums) over at HAZARD STUDIOS. But so many other projects have practically died because of these dark bouts and even though I record many, many ideas for game/story products and other things almost daily (I’ve literally got three, two-inch binders of them) it’s a constant battle to do anything but watch TV.

Still, inspiration and enthusiasm does come to me, as I hope these moments do for you. Try something new for a while and then come back this when the fancy to do so hits you. Write some other stories for now and let this one simmer a while. We will all be patiently waiting for another installment of this hapless hero when the mood comes back; you might have some new ideas for him by then. Just don’t completely give up.

[Sijo]

On the subject of writing and frustration, I have my own story to tell.

I've been a lifelong fan of well, everything involving fantasy and science fiction (including of course, RPGs). Always wanted to work on the field, but I never had a chance. And as I approached the half-century mark of life, it appeared as if I never would. Like Mr. Jupiter, I had notebooks full of ideas I showed to a few friends at most.

I actually got on the internet about ten years ago. But other than a few fanfiction stories, I never really made good use of it. But last year, something just- clicked.

I was paid by a lady who wanted to burn some old VHS tapes into DVD format. Now, this required me to try stuff I never had before. And I realized I loved the experience. So I decided "Hey, maybe I should try doing that Youtube Channel thing too". I mostly do Pokemon videos, but still, it's the creation process I find fulfilling. So I said, "what else I could do?" so I started my own Blog where I review, well, everything!! And most amazing of all *people read it!!* GASP!

This year I started my newest challenge: a webcomic! I am not an artist, but I found out that some people with no drawing skill produce some great webcomics using methods that range from using video game sprites to stick figures. (In my case, I'm using clip art.) I have barely started but a few people liked it enough to subscribe.

So I guess the moral of the story is: sometimes, what's coming to you, may take some time, but if you have the talent, and don't give up, you'll eventually find the way to express it.

[xBlackWolfx]

Hello xBlackWolfx. I have only just read your story posts today and really found them to be very entertaining. The Black Chameleon is a really interesting character; an absolutely average nobody with only the will to do good deeds and accidentally blessed with mystical ‘gifts’ he doesn’t deserve… fantastic!

While the technical mechanics of your fight scenes follow the actual rules, you still do manage to bring them to life with your storytelling. I really like this honesty because, while being a story, it still does feel like a great game session as well. You improvise the tale well as both Narrator and Player. While I had thought of writing up a game session as a story, I had not ever thought of actually playing it out first and then staying true to the events as they unfolded! Brilliant!

I honestly hope that you will one day return to this story so that we can all see how things unfold for the Black Chameleon, but I understand the drudge and disillusionment that comes from depression myself. So many game projects that I’ve worked on would start out with great energy and then would become almost impossible to finish. If it were not for the worry of letting people down on the EXTREME EARTH project, I might not have ever finished it. The A.D.E.L. FILE was more than a year-and-a-half of starts and stops and probably wouldn’t have ever happened if I had not reached out to Walt (a.k.a. kroh, here on the BASH forums) over at HAZARD STUDIOS. But so many other projects have practically died because of these dark bouts and even though I record many, many ideas for game/story products and other things almost daily (I’ve literally got three, two-inch binders of them) it’s a constant battle to do anything but watch TV.

Still, inspiration and enthusiasm does come to me, as I hope these moments do for you. Try something new for a while and then come back this when the fancy to do so hits you. Write some other stories for now and let this one simmer a while. We will all be patiently waiting for another installment of this hapless hero when the mood comes back; you might have some new ideas for him by then. Just don’t completely give up.

Actually I was doing the session while writing this. The pattern was simply do the rolls, then come up with some fancy way of explaining what happened. It got really tiring trying to keep the thing from sounding repetitive despite the fact that I was just doing the same thing over and over again in reality: bryan's attack roll, bryan's damage roll, monster's attack roll, monster's damage roll, repeat 30 times. I was actually keeping track of their hit points in ms paint. My stories literally record every single roll that was made (well, I didn't bother to record the actual results on the die).

I was planning on the story being longer than this. Perhaps I should continue writing it. Of course, I don't really have much planned for after this. Guess I'll have to introduce a new super villain or something. Perhaps something that doesn't have an insurmountable soak value...

[xBlackWolfx]

I've actually thought about returning to this lately.

I just bought awesome powers 8 and been looking through it. I thought about re-building vagabond, but really, I don't think I can quite recall my original vision for the character. And besides, I don't like the idea of re-building the character in the middle of a story-arch. And really, I think she's fine the way she is.

I have however recently had a 'epiphany' regarding vagabond. As I've been trying to brainstorm to write, I tend to get writers block for days or even weeks on end. Then suddenly a bunch of stuff will come to me all in a short span of time. This time, it happened for vagabond. Problem is, now I think she's a more interesting character than Bryan. That, and I think she may make the story get a bit too dark. Oh well.

Just decided to mention that I may decide to continue this soon, though if I do it's going to go off in a direction I wasn't planning for.

And I'll be honest, the biggest thing holding me back, is probably Bryan. I just don't like having to make 6 attack rolls for him every page. One, its an excessive number of rolls to make. And two, I'm really thinking its overpowered. I mean, the guy gets 6 tries every page to hit the bad guys! Seriously, look at the fights with the thugs. Every time he fought them he took all of them out before they even got to act. I think I decided to throw vagabond into the same fight just to see how it would work out. It felt, a lot more balanced. Its pretty obvious that Bryan is a lot stronger character than Vagabond, despite having the same point cost. I really think there should be a rule that you can NOT get more than 3 attacks per page or something like that. And really here, if I took paired weapons also, he could've had 12 attacks per page. With a x2 to hit, but still, twelve attacks!!!!