Well, I heartily apologize for my absence. That being said, I am reasonably happy with the progress I’ve made on SaSS:R, and am continuing work on expanding the outline for Lions of Judah. It is the former I wanted to share with y’all today.

I had something of an epiphany while I was working in the equipment section, and immediately went to work on the “Riding Animals” table (have I mentioned I am unhealthily fascinated by tables?) So, after much reworking of the values involved, here is the current table for riding animals allowed in SaSS:R.

Now, most of these probably seem pretty typical, and you might ask “why bother, in a game with mechs and airships?” To which my reply is “look more closely.”

Specifically, look at the last four entries. “Riding gorilla”, “Riding bear”, “Elephant”, and “Ostrich”, though the last of those is for novelty only. I’m not trying for ACKS levels of economic interactions and commercial verisimilitude (which I am looking forward to getting to play with in the coming year), but I like to have thorough lists of the things players might need over the course of campaign, and that includes… Riding gorillas! Because who, having forty-five-hundred guilders, would not want to have a riding gorilla to go into pitched battle with?

What really tickles my fancy is the juxtaposition of, say, riding bears with something like this:

… Because the image of a Sino-Japanese samurai riding into battle with an electrified heat-saber atop a grizzly bear amuses me greatly. The image is only made better by making it a squadron of samurai bear-cavalry charging a mech from out of the edge of a woods. Maybe a couple in the back with giant Anti-Mech rifles while the rest charge in with heat-sabers and -halberds.

I’m interested to see how my players (my friends) will react to these opportunities. I expect to see some degree of change in cultural composition, should attrition take its toll on the party. I already have two of them interested in riding animals, when they will be starting with (relatively cheap) mechs, so I consider that a success. The question will be–will they survive long enough to save up for the mounts they want to have for those moments they aren’t driving a mech?