Friday, June 20, 2025

The Flats: Life on the Margins (for Champions 4th-Ed.)

Life on the Margins

I guess that, since I wrote the book, this is kind of a sponsored post, but hear me out:

The Flats is my Shadowrun by way of HERO attempt, redeveloped to better reflect a more realistic portrayal of the world and environment. To be certain, the results bear little resemblance to either game. The Flats is developed for Champions 4th-Ed.

It is a full campaign setting for modern day urban fantasy games. Magic is mundane at the beginning, but spells can be extremely potent. Likewise, starting characters are unlikely to be able to afford much cybertech, but they can save-up and buy all they want until they go cyberpsycho and have to be put down.

You can play an Elfen Cybermancer, a Dwarfen mercenary, a Troll Street Samurai, and so much more. The Flats exists outside any major city, so it should be easy to drop into existing campaigns, though the rules provide the random tables and guidelines you need to create an entirely new campaign set directly in The Flats. In fact, you can be anything you want since you can stack as many packages as you can afford (but you can only have one racial package).

All rules and rules changes are optional, but help to set the tone and atmosphere of day to day survival on the mean streets. More humanoids pour over from The Other Time daily and no one knows how to stop it. It is only now that the Goblin Horde has begun attacking truck shipments and lone travelers that anyone seems to care. 

I not only have several supplements planned for the series, I am already halfway through the sequel, which contains all the baddies and the lore surrounding them. Time permitting, I am also available to actually run the game!

Although The Flats works with nothing more than the Champions core book, you really need Dark Champions, CyberHERO, and a few other supplements to get the most out of it. Power gamers and collectors rejoice! This is a Wild Heroic setting with Average Magic, widely available cybertech, and no dearth of fantasy races.

Follow the link above to check it out!

To celebrate Free RPG Day, be sure to visit the website for a free PDF covering creating and maintaining cities in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and UniSystem Roleplaying Games. You can also find a link to The Weirding in the sidebar. Happy gaming!

© The Weirding, 2025

Monday, June 16, 2025

Heartbreakers and Hopeful Idiots

To be clear, I am the hopeful idiot here:

I am preparing to release what they call a "heartbreaker" of a RPG supplement. They call it that because I spent too much time and effort on it to get a reasonable return, and it's unlikely to sell many copies... at least, that's the likelihood. But, I'm just silly enough to hope that it all turns out alright.

I had to change the name to avoid confusion with another supplement for a different game, but that was no big deal. I used LibreOffice to do everything and had no problems with it on the last, smaller, project so I'm once again hoping that's the case this go-round.

The Flats is a modern-day, high urban fantasy setting for Champions 4th-Ed. It works best with CyberHERO, Dark Champions, and Urban Fantasy Hero, but it works well without those (and other) supplements I utilized while writing it. Everything you need is in the one book, although I have several, related projects planned.

I also managed to get at least a semblance of the site back up and running. You can find a link to it in the sideboard. I replaced my mechanical keyboard with a much more sensitive one. I rewatched the entire series of Monk and it got really repetitive there at the end. I remember it being light and fun at the time, but that was watching it weekly; the later seasons really don't stand up well when you binge it.

I found all of the episodes of Mission Hill, a now mostly forgotten Adult Swim cartoon from likely the late '90s or early '00s. I wasn't a huge fan of it when it was on, but I do remember it. It isn't that bad, but it's rarely that good. I guess it's okay... that it goes unremembered.

I'm really excited about my heartbreaker project, but I don't know that I'm prepared for the likely failure. It would seem so anticlimactic! The setting draws from existing materials and provides a great backdrop for Dark Champions and superhero campaigns, alike. I'll tell you more about it once it's released.

© The Weirding, 2025

Thursday, May 15, 2025

Life as Usual and a Book

So, I've been watching Supernatural after I had to take a break from the Buffyverse for a minute. I'm mostly listening to it, and even though TV writing can be clunky, it still works. I have yet to watch Daredevil, though I've heard mixed things. I understand there were some production changes or something midway through the run that were quite jarring to at least the viewers whose comments I read.

I'm basically living on hot green tea and frozen foods at this point. I know that's not healthy, but it is surprisingly tasty.

I am writing an honest-to-God, full-fledged, in-actuality (PDF) book, y'all! It's bonafide. I will be too, if I ever get it done and out there. I already published one but it was more to test the market and get a handle on the system. It was actually part of a discussion in a Discord channel that I didn't get to have before the conversation moved on, and I thought it was important. A handful of others may have thought the same, and I thank them. Anyway, I'll try to keep everyone informed as to that.

I'm back to playing Sims 4 again. And now also Sims 3 again again again. A wild horse came out of nowhere on my first day playing. I forgot they did that. I'll be playing more Sims 3, even though it doesn't like my computer (or vice-versa).

That's it. That's all I'm doing. I haven't had anything to report, so I haven't had much to say. But I do have a book coming out soon, so please look out for that. It is an urban fantasy campaign setting for Champions. Sorry, this keyboard sticks.

© The Weirding, 2025

Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Godzilla vs. L.A.


The Godzilla festival continues! Here's to 70 great years.

© The Weirding, 2025

Friday, April 25, 2025