postGeek

What I'm Up To

2012-01-14T16:36:00.001-06:00

What I'm up to in gaming:

Roleplaying: Still hosting the weekly Magpie Gaming Night, although we're also still trying to make it a bit less Magpie-ish. The last few games have all been multi-session rather than one-shots, although a couple of them have featured only one adventure spread over multiple sessions. These games have included Dungeon World, Ashen Stars, Pendragon, and a playtest of Jason Morningstar's upcoming game Durance. That order also indicates the order of overall satisfaction that the group appears to have had with each game. No intended slight on Durance, as it was a playtest after all.

Pendragon is the current game of choice for most of the group, although we intend to re-visit Ashen Stars, and possibly Dungeon World. We're attempting the Great Pendragon Campaign, but disinterest from one of the players may eventually derail it before its conclusion. This is a pretty ambitious project for a group called "Magpie," but it's something that I've wanted to do for a long time now, and there's a great deal of enthusiasm for it from some of the other players. We'll just have to see how it goes.

Board Gaming: Board Game Night is still on hiatus. We started discussing a return at the beginning of December, but that's been derailed by developments discussed below, and will likely continue to be something that I'm unable to take the lead on. I'd love to attend one if someone else would step up to run it, but that doesn't seem to be very likely at this point.

Miniatures Gaming: Dead. I get the itch to do something with miniatures every once in a while, but I haven't even found the time to go play a game where the miniatures were being provided by someone else, let alone try to work on some of my own.

Computer Games: Star Wars the Old Republic is the "development" mentioned above in board gaming. I've been playing the heck out of this. The license combined with overall solid game play has hooked me in more than any MMOG since the last Star Wars MMOG first came out. There's a few bugs, and the end game needs a bit of polish, or possibly just more people I know to hit 50...

Word Cloud

2011-12-11T18:54:00.001-06:00

Nifty word cloud for the blog, made using this app.

Dungeon World

2011-10-11T11:52:00.001-05:00

We had our first session of Dungeon World using the Red Book, and had a blast! I'm not sure I was doing everything exactly right, but it worked.

My original plan was to convert over Keep on the Borderlands, boiling it down to its essential elements for the Dungeon World tri-fold adventure format, but I ran out of time. Instead, I went with the The Bloodstone Idol from the book. Probably for the best given that we're all new to the game, but I still hope to get back to my original idea at some point.

We had three players who played the following characters: Marlow the good human Thief, Thelian the neutral elf Fighter, and Father Wesley the evil human Cleric. Father Wesley had heard of Grundloch's plan to learn the secrets of the idol, and had convinced the other two to come along and help him put a stop to it. Not because Wesley thought that Grundloch would do harm if he wasn't thwarted, but because he had grown up with Grundloch, and held a grudge over some long ago slight. Father Wesley isn't a very nice person.

We made characters last week, so this week we got right into the adventure, which went as follows:

While standing at the entrance to the Bloodstone Caverns, the group is surprised by a lizardman hunting party exiting the caverns. The party kills three of them while the remaining two flee back inside. They follow to find goblins and lizardmen facing off against each other. Grabbing the three lizardman corpses, they approach the goblins and ask for information, showing that they have helped their cause. This parley attempt by Father Wesley achieves a partial success and the goblins say that the party must first kill more lizardmen.

Wesley and Thelian charge across the hall and attack the lizardmen, killing three of them with help from Marlow's shooting. More lizardmen arrive as reinforcements, and the group retreats back to the goblins. The three lizardman heads they recovered are enough to cause the goblins to answer their questions and let them pass.

In the next room they face off against yet more lizardmen, but the magic of the room prevents the use of weapons, and the group ends up moving across to the exit that the lizardmen aren't blocking. This leads them to a hallway that eventually opens out at the top of the large cavern that contains the Bloodstone Idol. The floor of the cavern being about a hundred feet below, the group looks for a way down.

They see the web of ropes created by the goblins and cut the ones they can reach to keep the goblins from getting close, and to drop a bunch of them to the ground. They then use their own ropes to climb down. Only making a partial success, Father Wesley faces the tough choice of letting himself fall part of the way, or grabbing Marlow to steady himself, likely causing her to lose her balance. He chooses to grab Marlow, even though she had been helping him up to this point. Marlow falls to the ground. Thelian, having taken a separate rope, finds himself drawing near to some surviving goblins in the ropes. He can try to climb past them while they attack him, but he instead chooses to jump and take one with him to the ground, which is not that far below.

Marlow and Thelian find themselves once again in the middle of a battle between goblins and lizardmen. As Wesley joins them a cloud of noxious gas rolls towards the party. They manage to flee from it, but are split up with Marlow and Thelian on one side and Wesley on the other. Marlow spots a hidden door and leads Thelian to it.

Wesley attempts to cross the battlefield in the middle of a major attack by the goblins on the lizardmen positions. He finds himself in a trench with some goblins whom he helps fight some counter-attacking lizardmen until only he and a wounded lizardman remain. He parlays with the lizardman, converting him to his faith, at least temporarily. Wesley worships a god of healing and restoration, but one that also values suffering and sacrifice. Guess which elements Wesley emphasizes? The lizardman and Wesley part ways, and Wesley meets back up with the rest of the party.

The party ends the session by entering the hidden room and making camp.

For those unfamiliar with Dungeon World, it takes the system from Apocalypse World and changes it so that it can be used to recreate the classic dungeon crawl feel. It's a very narrative system that builds off a set of principles and moves. The gamemaster never rolls dice in Dungeon World. The players roll dice when they make a move, and how well or poorly they roll helps define what kind of move the GM can make in response.

For example, in the above adventure, the lizardmen being reinforced was a monster move I made in response to a poor roll by the Thief when she attempted a Volley move to shoot the lizardmen. I could have just done damage to the Thief as a move, but that wasn't as interesting, or really appropriate since she wasn't in melee.

The system of alternating moves between players and GMs seems very structured when reading it, but in play it cam across a lot more smoothly and naturally than I feared it would. Most moves came without my really thinking about them, and the moves list became a crutch to fall back on rather than the straightjacket I feared it might be.

For those already familiar with the system, here's some more detail on how the mechanics worked out. The most common move used by the players was Hack and Slash (and Volley), followed by Defy Danger. Defend, Parley, and Discern Realities were used a few times each. Spout Lore and Aid were used a couple times each. I never had them Make A Saving Throw, although I probably should have a couple of times.

The Fighter used Bend Bars Lift Gates to cut the ropes the goblins were using. The Cleric cast many spells, often drawing attention to himself with partial successes. The Thief never used any special moves, but did use a stolen item to help another to gain XP (the rope she used to help them climb down with was stolen). I should probably work on giving that player some opportunities to use more of her special moves next time, and/or make sure she knows to look for those opportunities.

I think I did a good job on two of the three agendas, I filled the characters' lives with adventure, and I played to find out what happened, but I probably could have made the world a little more fantastic. I think I did OK on making things fantastic, but only by drawing on what was in the adventure already.

I was a bit more hit and miss on the principles, but the thing that needs the most work is addressing the characters and not the players. This is something I've been trying to do in other games as well, but I keep slipping up.

Everyone seemed very interested in continuing this adventure next week, especially since they all got enough experience this week to go up to second level!

Trail of Cthulhu: First Adventure

2011-10-04T13:44:00.004-05:00

We wrapped up our first Armitage Files adventure last night, and I think the game is going well so far, with a few hiccups. The investigative style of game is a bit different from the largely action based games that we've been playing lately, and I think there may be a little adjustment going on with the players, but most of the feedback I've been getting has been positive.

I'm still getting used to running the point based mechanics of the system. It feels as if I'm not giving them enough opportunities to spend points, but that may just be me. It's not something they've brought up, so it may not be a problem.

The more I play with how the investigative skills work, the more I realize how effective a tool they can be to keep players on track. Core clues, the ones the players have to have to solve the mystery, don't require point spends to get. Clues that aren't key to solving the mystery do require point spends. This means that if a player is chasing down a lead and they don't get any information without spending points, then they know that they're off on a tangent.

I'm fine with this, because I sometimes get frustrated when players are off chasing down inconsequential stuff at the expense of the main plot, but I don't want them to feel as if the point spend system is railroading them towards the inevitable outcome of the investigation. In the long run, I think their attitude towards this mechanic is what is going to determine the viability of a campaign using this system. As long as they don't feel railroaded by it, then it should hold up. So far, the players haven't expressed any concerns over this, but it's something I'm keeping an eye on.

If anything, they seem to want me to provide more immediate direction when they try to decide what to do next, rather than letting them spend too much time going over what they know and trying to pick a next course of action. I'm going to continue to work on the balance between letting them control the direction of the investigation and keeping the story moving.

If you are curious about how the adventure itself played out, you can check out the Adventure Log for the campaign on Obsidian Portal.

Now that the first adventure is over, we're going to take a short break to try out Dungeon World before continuing with the Armitage Files.

Less Magpie in Magpie Night

2011-09-23T15:21:00.003-05:00

This past Monday marked the beginning of a turning point for our Magpie Night RPG sessions. The night was originally designed to try out a variety of game systems using one or two shot adventures. We did that for a while bi-weekly, then added a Pathfinder Kingmaker campaign on the off weeks.

This was working quite well for some time, but lately things have changed. First, we lost one of our founding members when she moved away, and the Kingmaker campaign has been dragging a bit since then. With another of our players now taking a (hopefully) temporary leave of absence, I made the decision to put Kingmaker on hiatus.

Meanwhile, I have been getting some push-back on the core Magpie concept of bouncing from system to system fairly rapidly. A couple of the players are either frustrated at constantly having to come up with character ideas, or else have a desire to explore their character concepts more deeply than a single adventure allowed for.

Also, I want to explore some games that require more than a single adventure to get into, so while I do want to still do some more one-shot adventures in the future, I am abandoning them for now and doing short campaigns instead.

With this in mind I created a spreadsheet of all the games I am willing to run, along with ratings as to how great my desire to run them is, my preparedness in terms of understanding the rules, and some other factors. At the top of that list is Ashen Stars, but Trail of Cthulhu is right below it, and two of my three current players are more interested in it than in Ashen Stars.

Thus, we have started a Trail of Cthulhu campaign, while possibly doing some Ashen Stars adventures whenever I need a break from running Trail of Cthulhu. Since they are both based on the Gumshoe system, there shouldn't be much difficulty in switching between games. More on this in my next post.

I'm a little sad to see the format change, but we got through a lot of games over the past year or so, which has been a lot of fun, and which I think really helped some of my skills when it comes to roleplaying. I'm now looking forward to running some longer games.

Space Marine

2011-09-10T21:11:00.000-05:00

I just finished the new Space Marine video game, and it's one of the best uses of the Warhammer 40K IP that I've yet to see. Certainly the best single player experience in a 40K video game.

Playing Captain Titus of the Ultramarines, I feel like I'm capable of accomplishing exactly what a Space Marine Captain should be able to accomplish according to the fluff of the 40K universe. I can face hordes of orks and renegade guardsman with ease. With skill, persistence, and a bit of luck, I can even take down an ork warboss solo.

However, even with the abilities and gear of a Space Marine Captain, if I fail to use proper tactics, then I will die. As Captain Titus I am a super soldier, but I am not Superman.

The way the game plays supports this. Throughout much of the mission I am accompanied by two fellow marines, my battle brothers in the parlance of the Space Marines. They aren't very effective at taking down the enemies they face, but that doesn't break the immersion for me, because they are also invulnerable to taking damage. This is important, because it allows me to stay immersed in the idea that I am a Space Marine fighting alongside fellow Space Marines. I never have to make a tactically stupid choice in order to keep one of my battle brothers alive because those battle brothers can take care of themselves. I can focus on my own goals without having to keep track of my companions at every moment.

The way weapons work also contribute to the proper feel of the setting. A bolter feels like a powerful weapon, but it still takes a few hits to drop an ork. Opponents take about as much punishment as you would think that they should according to the fluff. Maybe a little more than you'd expect in some cases, but not excessively so.

While the story is linear, the little tactical choices you make in combat seem to matter. This is because there are very few places where the enemy spawns continuously. If you shoot an enemy, that enemy is gone. It's not going to be replaced by another enemy until I reach some arbitrary trigger point that turns off the respawns. This lets me use actual tactics, like sniping the enemy instead of rushing straight into the middle of them.

Where there are respawning enemies, there are usually a limited number of respawns, and they respawn in a way that is consistent with the setting, such as coming through a hole torn in the warp.

There are a few tropes of the shooter genre present that can break immersion, but they are relatively minor. For example, the ability to swap out up to four different weapons, including heavy weapons, at will. I'm not sure where I was keeping that lascannon while shooting my bolter, but it's a concession to game play that I think is both necessary to maximize the fun, and is easy to get used to.

The graphics and sound are appropriate. Space Marines are big. Imperial Guard troopers are tiny next to them. Proportions are true to the fluff, not to the tabletop game miniatures, which is good. The scenery is appropriately gothic and war-torn, with jury-rigged defenses created by both orks and humans scattered around. Nothing gets repeated so much as to become annoying or humorous, neither sounds nor graphics.

All the vehicles and characters are from 40K designs, with nothing really original to the game itself. I liked this, as you get to see some things animated that I don't think have ever been animated before.

Vehicles in general make few appearances in the game. Most of it takes place in confined spaces where vehicles can't operate, but when they do appear, they tend to be impressive. If there is a sequel, one thing they could do to differentiate it from the original would be to include more vehicles.

Overall, a very fun game, despite an ending that was a bit weak (probably to leave room for a sequel), and I strongly recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of the IP of Warhammer 40K.

Mouse Guard RPG Unboxing

2011-08-24T12:45:00.000-05:00

I've had a few people asking about the Mouse Guard RPG Boxed Set, so this post is going to be something I can point people to when they ask. It's been a while since I read or played Mouse Guard, so this is going to be mostly an evaluation of the physical components.

To start with, the box itself is nice. Solid, with nice artwork. Inside is a clear plastic insert to keep the contents from bouncing around too much. Roughly from top to bottom, I'll now go through those contents.

First are the dice. Ten solid six sided dice with engraved symbols, black on off-white. Three sides have a snake eating its tail for the cowards, two sides with crossed daggers for the regular successes, and one side with the Black Axe for the "6" side that can be exploded using fate points. While certainly not necessary, these look very nice.

There are five "mouse pawns" in different colors. These are oversized soft plastic chess pawns with mouse heads on top them. They resemble the pawns Gwendolyn uses in the comic to mark Guard patrols on the map. They don't really have any game function, but could make for a nice prop.

Next up are the cards. Three Action Decks, one deck of Conditions, and one of Weapons. Every card has an illustration and rules summary. The Action Decks have three each of the four different actions. The Conditions Deck has three each of the different conditions. The Weapons Deck has two each of ten different weapons, and one card for the mace introduced in the New Rules New Missions booklet. These cards seem to be the most useful things in the box, and I can see them coming in very handy when playing the game, especially with people new to the game.

Next is the rulebook. This is a softcover version of the rules, but otherwise identical to the hardcover book available separately.

Next is the "New Rules New Missions" booklet. The new rules introduce a variety of specialized "weapons" (really tactics and gear in most cases) for different types of activities, from giving speeches to fighting larger animals. There's also three new towns, a Combat Matrix revised for clarity, and rules for using mounts.

The bulk of the booklet is taken up with three new missions, each with new character templates. I've deliberately not looked too closely at these, but they are comparable in length to the sample missions in the rulebook.

The end of the booklet consists of a description of the other components which can be found in the boxed set. One thing I noticed here is that it mentions the presence of "other cards" beyond the decks I mentioned above, specifically cards with conflict disposition, conflict skills/action, and action mechanics on them. I can find no such cards in the box, and they aren't mentioned on the back of the box. I don't know if they're missing from my box or simply were dropped from production, but I suspect the latter given that they aren't mentioned on the box.

Next up are two pads of sheets. One pad of character sheets, and one of GM sheets. The former are what you'd expect from a character sheet. The latter has one side for summarizing the player characters, and the other is a rules summary.

Below the pads is a 3 panel cardstock GM's screen. It looks like it contains useful information, but I'd have to use it in play before I could fully evaluate whether it's well designed or not. The outer side consists of two panels of artwork, and one of information for the players, which is nice.

Finally, there's a map of the Mouse Territories in 1150. This is the same map found on the inside covers of the hardback rules, but with a little more color.

Overall, this is a nice set. Should you get it if you already own the rules? That's a tough call. If you're only interested in "crunch" then $70 is an awful lot for 44 pages of new rules and missions. It becomes a better deal if you're also interested in the play aids, like the cards and GM screen. If you were considering getting a second copy of the rules anyway, just to make things easier at the table, then definitely consider getting this set instead.

If you don't already own the rules, then I'd find this set an easier recommendation. You're still paying $35 above the cost of the hardcover for all the extras, but they are nice extras, and should make playing the game easier.

Don't Discourage Your Customers

2011-08-16T18:32:00.000-05:00

These are some ideas that have been floating around in my head for a while, but I was finally inspired to write them down after reading the following tweet from Adam Jury: "Pricing that punishes late adopters discourages late adopters. Hey, discouraging customers kinda sucks."

In case it's not obvious: discouraged customers are less likely to buy your product.

An example of this is the pre-order discount. This is a common tactic in the hobby games industry, particularly among wargame manufacturers where it's become a nearly universal practice. It obviously works for them on some level, but it does tend to discourage new customers in a market that already struggles a great deal to attract new customers. Sometimes the pre-order discount is so large that you have to wonder whether the final MSRP is being overly inflated to further encourage pre-ordering.

Pricing isn't the only way to discourage customers. Another way is the pre-order exclusive. If the only way for a customer to get a certain substantial thing is to pre-order, and they missed the pre-order, then they're even more likely to become discouraged than they would from missing a discount. By substantial I mean something related to game-play. An adventure, or scenario, or expansion that's exclusive to pre-orders and otherwise unavailable.

In the past I've even seen companies that only offer a legitimate PDF of the product to those who pre-order. This goes beyond discouraging sales to actively preventing them!

Substantial exclusives in general are a bad idea. Whether it's a pre-order exclusive, a con-exclusive, or a direct order exclusive, when customers find out that they've missed out on something, they become discouraged. That means while they may have already bought your core game, now they're less likely to buy anything else related to it.

A combination of the two is the pre-order bundle. Everything in the bundle is available after the pre-order, but at a higher combined price. This is most commonly found in situations where the PDF is offered free with a pre-order, but has to be paid for separately if you don't pre-order.

So, what's a company to do if they want to encourage pre-orders, but don't want to discourage late adopters? Offer bonuses that aren't involved with game play: signed copies, t-shirts, posters, anything that's "cool" but isn't actually used in the play of the game.

Many Kickstarter projects are using this kind of thing effectively. In many cases people are actually paying extra to be an early adopter (in some cases a LOT extra) if it gets them something cool, even though it's not related to the game play. Something as simple as getting your name in the product as a supporter can help encourage people to put money up front.

It's possible to get creative about offering incentives while avoiding dis-incentives.

Diana Jones Award 2011

2011-08-04T07:43:00.000-05:00

I still haven't gotten around to doing my own analysis of what would make for a good gaming award, but I almost don't have to, because I can point to the Diana Jones Award.

Instead of being a popularity contest, the Diana Jones Award is chosen by a panel of professionals. As a result, both the list of nominations and the final winner are consistently deserving of the attention given, and this year is no exception.

The nominees were:

Catacombs, a board game

The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game

Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space, a board game

Fiasco, a roleplaying game

Freemarket, a roleplaying game

These were all worthy nominations. I've played the three RPGs, and am familiar with the board games by reputation. While not all the nominees are my personal favorites, I can easily recognize the merits of them all.

The winner was Fiasco, and I think this was well deserved. It's been one of the most successful games I've played in terms of providing a consistently fun experience.

Congratulations to Jason Morningstar!

Space Battleship Yamato: The Final Battle

2011-07-29T14:58:00.000-05:00

I am not an expert on Space Battleship Yamato. I didn't watch Star Blazers as a kid, and I've only seen a little bit since then, including the first anime movie. Still, when I saw that this live action version of the story had been filmed, I knew I had to see it, and I'm not disappointed that I did.

While it is a re-imagining of the story, much of the first two thirds of the film remains faithful to what I know of the source material, at least in spirit, with the biggest changes being to beef up the female roles a bit by making Yuki, the female lead, into more of a bad-ass and changing the gender of the ship's doctor.

It's only when the crew comes face to face with the enemy that things really start to diverge from the source material. The enemy aliens are made far more alien in this version than they were in the original, which I think ends up working rather well. I don't want to give away too many spoilers, but the ultimate fate of many of the characters also ends up being different than that of their animated selves.

The style of the movie is spot on, from the uniforms, to the sets, to the ship designs. All of it remains faithful to the source material while making the necessary adaptations for live action.

Many of those adaptations appear to borrow heavily from the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, and this also seems to work. After all, the Yamato is supposed to be a renovated WWII battleship, so it makes sense that it would have similar interiors. The comparison to Galactica is probably most apparent on the flight deck, with the similar white bulkheads and jumpsuited ground crew readying fighters for launch.

These similarities of style bring to mind other similarities between the two stories. Both feature a mix of fighter and capital ship combat. Both feature themes of friendship, loss, duty, and survival. Both feature Humanity's last warship on a quest to save the species.

Overall, the movie is well done, although it does lag a bit near the end, and I'm not convinced that it was necessary to do the ending the way they did. It's still a good ending, just not the one I would have chosen.

I should point out that the lag is all the more noticeable because the rest of the movie is very well paced. Despite the fact that I was reading subtitles, it did not seem like a 131 minute long movie.

I highly recommend this one to fans of Japanese sci-fi.

The copy I got through Amazon appears to be from Malaysia, and while the overall quality is good, there are a few scenes that look like they could have been transferred better. I hope this will eventually get a US release, and that they will take a bit more care in its production. The English subtitles on this version are well done, with only a few obvious errors. There's also subtitles for Chinese and Malay.

Technoir 1.0

2011-07-27T10:17:00.000-05:00

Technoir looks very interesting. This cyberpunk roleplaying game by Jeremy Keller is one of the projects I chose to back on Kickstarter, largely due to my like of his earlier game Chronica Feudalis. The book has yet to go to press, but Jeremy recently made the pdf available to the backers of the Kickstarter project and put it up for sale online.

While I don't normally read entire rulebooks in pdf form, I made an exception for Technoir. There were two reasons for this. The first is that, when reading a pdf, books laid out in a digest format are easier for me to read than those laid out in the more standard 8.5x11 size. As long as the font isn't too small I can read it on my Kindle, and if I'm at the computer I can read it two-up on the screen, just like I would if I had the print book in hand.

The second reason that I read the whole book in pdf form is that it's a very interesting read. The most interesting part is the combination of Transmissions and plot maps. A transmission is a setting outline that consists of a very brief description of the technology, environment and society of the setting followed by six each of contacts, events, factions, locations, objects, and threats. Astute gamers will note that six each of six different items makes for an array of items that can be randomly selected by rolling 2d6, and that's exactly what the GM does to generate a plot.

As the players create their characters, the GM randomly rolls for three items to make up the starting plot map. They then associate the three items to each other, noting the reasons for the connections. Meanwhile, the players will reach a point where they give their characters connections. They then have the ability to call on those connections for favors prior to the start of the game. If they do so, those connections are added to the plot map. By the time all of this is done, the GM should have a starting situation for the players to find themselves in just as soon as they've finished their characters, or shortly thereafter.

As play progresses, the plot map will grow as either the players bring in elements through their actions, or the GM adds additional elements to keep the story going, either rolling to bring in new ones, or choosing appropriate ones as the situation warrants. Eventually, the GM may even bring in elements from an entirely different Transmission if the story moves beyond the bounds of the beginning one.

I'm so interested in this concept that I started building my own Transmission even before I finished reading the rules. I'm not sure yet whether I'll try using it when running the game for our group, but it's certainly a possibility.

The rest of the game is interesting as well, but is going to take some getting used to. It's all about applying "adjectives" to other characters. In the case of mooks you can apply the adjectives of "unconscious" or even "dead", but that's not allowed when it comes to more important characters, which looks like it might takes some getting used to.

Normally conflict scenes in RPGs have a well-defined end-point: when one side runs out of hit points the conflict is over. This applies even in many newer games which feature social conflict, as they often feature what is essentially a pool of social hit-points. Since this doesn't happen in Technoir, it's going to be up to the GM and players to decide when conflicts end.

Players are going to have to decide for themselves when to give up since they can't just keep going until they run out of hit points. If their character gets "bloody" in pursuit of a goal they have to decide if it's still worth it. Mechanically they can continue on, but does it make sense in terms of story if the character doesn't value the goal that much?

GMs need to make the same decisions for the major NPCs. The following questions have to be asked during conflicts:

What are my character's goals for this conflict?
Have those goals been met?
Is it still worth pursuing those goals in light of the damage taken?

Of course, it is still possible for characters to die as a result of conflict, it just won't happen until the conflict is over. At that point characters roll a d6 for every physical injury adjective they've taken. One "6" means they are dying, and two means they are dead. This means that a determined character can continue to pursue their goal no matter what damage they take, but in the end could find they've expended everything they had to do so.

In this game though, dead doesn't necessarily mean dead dead. A "dead" character can still be saved, but if the attempt fails, then the character is permanently dead.

The basic mechanics of the game interest me as well. It uses three types of d6: action dice, push dice and hurt dice. When you perform an action you take a number of action dice equal to the value of the "verb" that you are using (verbs being stats), plus you can add a push die for every adjective you have that helps you, as long as you have enough push dice in your pool, and finally you add one hurt dice for every adjective you have that hurts you.

When you roll the dice any dice that match a hurt die are removed. You then look at the highest value of what's left. If there are more than one of the highest value then that value X becomes X.1. You compare the value to the target number, and if it's higher the action succeeds, and an adjective is applied to the target. The target number is the value of one of the target's verbs which the target can raise by using their own push dice.

Any adjectives applied this way are "fleeting" and are easy to remove. If the player or GM wants to make an adjective last longer, then they must spend push dice to do so. One die makes the adjective "sticky" and two makes it "locked". These dice are then given to the controller of the character affected.

This last bit adds in a nice pacing element to the game in that players start out with all the push dice. The GM can't do anything permanent to the players until they start doing serious stuff to the NPCs. This should allow for the game to accelerate at a pace influenced by the players.

Overall, I'm looking forward to getting this game to the table, and hope to follow up with my observations after we've done so.

Three Kingdoms

2011-07-22T20:27:00.000-05:00

My introduction to the Three Kingdoms came from one of the original Romance of the Three Kingdoms computer games from Koei in the late eighties or early nineties. I never quite figured out the game, but was intrigued as to where the story came from.

I continued to interact with the Koei games over the years, both the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series and the Dynasty Warriors series, and my desire to know more about the story behind the games eventually led me to buy a four volume edition of Three Kingdoms.

That was several years ago, and I only recently finished reading them. Written some time in the 14th or 15th century, Three Kingdoms is a historical novel, and can be a difficult read at times. It certainly doesn't flow the way that modern novels most often do.

It's also difficult to tell just what the focus of the novel is until you are quite a ways into it. The cast of characters is enormous, and the entire first volume is largely a prologue to what eventually becomes the main story, which is marked by the appearance of the character of Kongming.

After that, the narrative picks up quite a bit, as the the story of Kongming is arguably the main plot of the novel. After Kongming’s death, there’s a definite feeling that everything else is epilog, despite being the better part of the fourth volume.

There’s also a feeling similar to that produced in some versions of the Arthurian legend, where you have mundane history leading to an era of larger than life heroes followed by a slide back into mundane history. This is reinforced by the fact that none of the heirs of the actual Three Kingdoms are capable of holding onto the achievements that their predecessors made, and are instead eclipsed and overthrown by a fourth faction that re-unites China.

To give you an indication of how dense this novel can be, the original version of the movie Red Cliff was filmed in two parts that added up to five hours of screen time. The events covered in it take up less than half of the second volume of Three Kingdoms.

Early elements of the wuxia tradition can be seen in many of the battle descriptions. While the battles include huge armies, it is often duels between generals that settle the matter, with a losing general’s side falling into disarray and being slaughtered and/or driven from the field.

These duels are not described in great detail, often consisting simply of a description of the number of passes made between duelists and the final blow that decides the outcome. Sometimes though, unique weapons are named and described, or generals are described as blocking missile weapons with their melee weapons, or they are described as defeating countless regular soldiers.

The only time I can recall a general being killed by a common soldier, that soldier was immediately promoted to become an officer and became a named character in the book. Otherwise, combat with soldiers only served to tire generals, but they would either win through, or be finished off by another general, not the common soldiers.

If you decide to read this, and choose the same version that I did, then I suggest starting with the afterword in volume IV, and reading it up to the point where the author suggests you start reading the novel itself. It will give you a better idea of what the focus of the novel is, and keep you from feeling as lost as I did throughout the first volume.

My Take on the Origins Awards

2011-07-21T19:06:00.000-05:00

If you won an award at Origins 2011, then you should probably just move along, because I'm likely going to offend you and that's not my intention. This is meant as a criticism of the awards themselves and not those that won them.

I don't think there was a bad product among the winners, I just think that many either weren't the best, or weren't properly classified.

It's been about three weeks now, and I've had some time to digest the results of the 2011 Origins Awards. Listening to episode 215 of the Dice Tower helped both confirm and solidify my initial impressions: the Origins Awards are a joke.

I don't want to minimize the accomplishments of some of the winners, particularly the folks at Evil Hat for their wins with the Dresden Files RPG, but in most cases the best of those nominated did not win, and in several cases it was the worst that did.

Let's look at the winners, starting with the single most egregious in my mind: Best Historical Board Game. The winner of that category was Catan Histories: Settlers of America Trails to Rails. This game shouldn't have even been nominated to this category. Just because a game has a lightly pasted on historical theme does not make it a historical game.

Moving on, we see Zombie Dice winning the best Family, Children's, or Party game. First, the category itself has issues. A family game is different from a children's game which is different from a party game. Mashing them all together makes little sense. I suppose they are going for best "casual" game, but they need to rethink the definitions of the board game categories if that's what they are going for.

Zombie Dice is not a terrible game, but every other nominee in the category is better. If you tell someone "you can only have X number of games for the rest of your life" no one is going to choose Zombie Dice. At least a couple of its competitors in the category could conceivably end up on such a list.

The same could be said of the winner of the Best Traditional Card Game category. Back to the Future is not a game I've played, but it's pretty obvious that the only reason it won was due to the theme. I've not actually played any of the games in the category, but I've heard really good things about some of them. I've heard no one praising Back to the Future in a similar manner.

For Best Board Game, the apparent top tier of the board game categories, at least the winner is a good game. Unfortunately it's also the weakest of the nominees. Every game in the category is better, but Castle Ravenloft apparently wins because it's Dungeons & Dragons.

Moving on now to roleplaying. While I think Dresden Files is a great game, and a serious contender for best roleplaying game, I would have chosen Fiasco. Everyone I know who has tried it has made it one of their go-to games. It's simple and innovative, and consistently produces good gaming sessions.

Best Roleplaying supplement is a close one. Having run both Dresden Files and Pathfinder games I have found the Advanced Players Guide more generally useful than Our World, but am willing to admit this is probably the most subjective call out of a lot of subjective calls in this article. As such, this is the one category where I don't really have an issue with the winner.

Moving on once more, we come to Best Hobby Game Accessory. Our nominees include such wonderful choices as Color Primer: Dragon Red... really? People couldn't find better nominees for this category than a color of paint? At least it didn't win, but the winner was almost as bad: a Cthulhu dice bag. A dice bag won the Best Hobby Game Accessory. I guess the Crown Royal bag wasn't eligible. Unless the bag actually opens into an extradimensional space, I think a better candidate could have been found. In fact, I have one, actually an entire category: everything else nominated was a better choice, except maybe the paint.

Most of the problem here is the over-broadness of the category. Everything else was specific to miniatures painters or players of a specific game, whereas the dice bag is more generic. Never mind that it doesn't even look very practical: it's cute and has broader appeal, so it wins.

I would have given Best Gaming Publication to Hamlet's Hit Points, but I haven't read Shadowrun: Spells and Chrome, so I can't say it didn't deserve to win. I can say that a category that includes both gaming fiction and non-fiction is a poorly designed category.

Best Miniature Rules: Heroclix won this. I know a lot of people like Heroclix, but were the rules included in the Blackest Night Starter Kit significantly different enough from previous editions to warrant inclusion in this category? Also, a BattleTech technical readout counts as rules? This category needs to be tightened up.

I can't really comment on the Best Play by Mail or Play by Email game, except to point out that the very existence of this category really calls into question the thinking process of those behind these awards. It's 2011, you have ten categories to cover products in a vastly diverse hobby, and you dedicate one of them to Play by Mail games.

I do have to give them credit for the Hall of Fame entries, which was the one area of the awards that I could agree with 100%. Although, paired with the Play by Mail category, I think this just goes to show that the Origins Awards has a much better grasp of the past of gaming than it has of the present.

Of course, anyone can whine about the poor quality of gaming awards, but what would make for a more useful system? I have some ideas, but I'll save them for a later post.

Podcast Update Update

2011-07-20T17:00:00.000-05:00

A quick followup to my most recent Podcast Update.

I've been listening to the Chronicles: Pathfinder Podcast. After listening to three and a half episode so far, I expect that I'll probably go back and listen to the rest as time allows.

They feature a good mix of discussion of rules crunch and interviews with Pathfinder authors. They also make it very clear before straying into the realm of spoilers for players. This differentiation between the "companion" and "chronicles" sections of the podcast makes it possible for both players and GMs to make use of the podcast (players simply have to stop listening about half way through).

Definitely worth checking out for any Pathfinder players.

Board Games I've Been Playing

2011-07-19T22:01:00.001-05:00

It's been a while since I went over what board games I've been playing, so I thought I'd go over some of the games I've been playing most often in 2011.

7 Wonders: By number of games played, this is solidly in first place. I can see this getting old eventually, but it's still a lot of fun right now, and I don't even have the new expansion yet. Fast play time combined with sort of a civilization building theme gets this to the table fairly often. I highly recommend it as a short, moderately light card game.

Dominion: Still a standard with people around here. It didn't see much play earlier in the year due to a personal shortage of card sleeves for the two most recent expansions, but now that Prosperity and Cornucopia are both sleeved it's hitting the table fairly regularly. I'm not really that good at it, but I enjoy building my deck and seeing it run, even when I don't win.

Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft/Wrath of Ashardalon: While our weekly Board Game Night was still meeting at the now closed FLGS, these games were the ones most likely to catch the eye of people new to the event. I enjoy them quite a bit, but one of my regular gaming buddies despises them. That combined with the smaller tables at our new location make it less likely these will hit the table again any time soon, although I may just try it solo the next time I get an itch for some dungeon crawling.

Star Trek Expeditions: A fun cooperative game that's been getting a lot of play. So much so that I got a little burned out on it for a while, but I'm already starting to want to get back to playing it again. Does a decent job of capturing the feel of Star Trek in addition to being an interesting game.

Barbarossa: Although it hasn't gotten as many plays as the others listed above, this is probably my pick for favorite game so far this year. I really like where the designers took the Dominion mechanics with this game, even though it does make for a longer game. Unfortunately, while my regular gaming group doesn't dislike the game, they aren't as enamored with it as I am. I still hope to get it back to the table soon.

Combat Commander: I finally managed to get some more games of this in this year. It has been about three years since the last time it hit the table, so its return was welcome. I'd really like to continue playing this, but am not sure when that will happen. Possibly my favorite squad level wargame.

All of the above have had at least three plays so far this year. Lots of other games got one or two plays. I may go over some of them in a future post.

My Changing Preferences in Gaming

2011-07-18T14:45:00.001-05:00

I'm going to muse a bit about how my hobby time has changed over the past few years. I'm not sure how interesting this is going to be to anyone else, but it was interesting to me, so here it is.

A while ago I discussed why I'm not playing many miniatures games anymore, and mentioned that my current "preference hierarchy" when it comes to games has changed. It used to be that miniatures games were near the top of my hierarchy, but they're now below board games and RPGs. I thought I'd go over some of the reasons why that's the case.

One reason is prep time. Miniatures games suck up time outside of actually playing the game. Assembling and painting models take me forever. RPGs also take a certain amount of prep time, especially when running them, which is one reason they're behind board games which take minimal prep time, but it's minimal when compared to miniatures games, at least for me.

Prep time wasn't really a factor when I was single. In fact, it was a bit of a bonus as if I didn't have anything to do I could work on miniatures. At this point in my life there's rarely a time where I "don't have anything to do," even though I technically have more "free time" right now then at many points earlier in my life.

Another reason is community. There's a couple factors involved here, and I want to start off by saying I don't mean to offend anyone in the local gaming community. They're mostly a great bunch of people, and I know at least a couple of them read the blog. The thing is that they're not the community I'm used to.

I first got talked into playing Warhammer Fantasy and 40K by a couple of my best friends from college. We had played RPGs and Battletech back then, and when years later I moved out to California they roped me into playing Fantasy and later I roped them into playing 40K. Our games were infrequent, but when we had them I was always playing with at least one guy I'd known for years. The games had their share of trash talk, but overall it was an extremely casual environment.

After the Warhammer group ceased being able to get together, I got into Flames of War mainly just to try painting the models. It was only later that I got the chance to play it. The guys I played it with weren't guys I'd known for years, but they were still very casual in their play.

When I say casual, I mean that we had no interest in tournaments. We played to win, but we didn't spend hours trying to put together the ultimate list. We played with armies we thought would be fun to play with. Although they were largely strangers when we first started playing, I count some of those guys among my best friends now.

The community here is different. Even though some complain about the lack of turnout at tournaments, it's actually incredibly tournament focused. The vast majority of the players around here play in tournaments. A higher percentage than I've seen anywhere else I've played (which admittedly hasn't been that many places).

I've never been interested in tournaments, and even if I was I couldn't do them because of my schedule. That leaves me with a community that I don't really fit into all that well.

Without an active community, there's a lot less incentive to keep up the level of work it takes to stay involved with a miniatures game.

The final reason is money. This isn't a huge reason for me. I still spend a lot of money on hobbies, just not on miniatures. Still, it is a factor. When I was single, if I wanted to spend a little extra on miniatures I could choose to not go out to eat for a while. For some reason my wife doesn't seem pleased when I tell her we're not going out to eat tonight because I bought some miniatures earlier in the week...

So, that's why miniatures have fallen back behind RPGs and board games. They have less prep time, I have a small but active community that plays them, and they cost less money (for the most part).

RPG Musings: Power Level

2011-07-17T16:21:00.000-05:00

At the heart of most, if not all, RPGs is the power level of beginning characters. For example, early editions of D&D all assumed that level 1 characters, while better than the average peasant, were pretty weak compared to the world around them. Other games, like Traveller, assumed that characters were generally experienced and competent in their fields. They might not be movers and shakers in their world, but they could hold their own in their chosen fields of endeavor. Yet other games, like Amber, assume that characters are some of the most powerful beings in their world or universe.

My past preference as a GM has been for systems that start players off as relative neophytes and allow them to grow into competent and powerful characters. This kind of game, in theory, allows for the most character development over the course of a game. In practice, I've come to realize that systems that allow characters to at least begin the game as competent, if not downright powerful, seem to lead to the most player satisfaction.

There are a few reasons for this, some of which are probably obvious, but some of which might not be. The first is the instant gratification factor. If players start out with characters that are already heroes, they get to do heroic things from the beginning. Otherwise, they have to "level up" first doing relatively menial tasks.

Now, in an extended campaign it can be argued that the players will get more satisfaction out of becoming a hero than they will out of starting as one. The problem here is that if the players don't get something up front there's likely to never be an extended campaign, as the players lose interest and drop out.

That's not to say that a game where players start out as peons can't work, but I think it's better to have such games as the exceptions rather than the rule. An experienced group that's used to playing together, and that knows what they are getting in to, can have a good time playing a campaign that focuses on the characters becoming heroes. Most other groups are probably better off starting with the characters being heroes from the beginning.

Going back and looking at my past experiences, I think this was a reason that my Shadowrun campaign was the most successful one that I ran back in college. Unlike pretty much any other game I ran back then, Shadowrun characters started out as competent characters. There was room for growth (and it was too much of that growth that eventually helped derail the campaign, but that's another story), but from the very beginning the characters were capable of holding their own against decent opponents.

Giving the players what they want is an important part of RPG design, both at the level of the game designer, and the level of the GM. The starting power level is a big part of that.

Making Things Your Own and the Problem With Sequels

2011-07-16T12:29:00.000-05:00

A while back I watched Star Trek: Enterprise for the first time, and was pleasantly surprised. I gave the series a complete pass when it was on the air. Partly because I didn't have UPN, but mostly because I'd heard such terrible things about it. Watching it now I think that the criticism was overly harsh, but I started to wonder why was it overly harsh?

There are some legitimate criticisms to be leveled at the show, but that's not what I think caused the reaction that this show got. I think the real reason is that people tend to make things their own. I did it with Star Wars, and it's one reason that I can't get into either the Expanded Universe or the prequel movies. I absorbed the originals and made them my own. I decided what the important parts of the Star Wars universe were to me, and when the work of others didn't match up with my own opinions of what made Star Wars great, then I dismissed those works.

The same is true of Star Trek. Fans of previous versions of Star Trek have decided what it was about the show that was important to them, and when Enterprise didn't focus on those elements, then they became disenchanted with it.

For example, a big criticism I've seen is the T&A elements in the show. The first episode has the busty Jolene Blalock stripped down to her underwear, and that theme is repeated in other episodes, even including a scene where Linda Park loses her top as part of a slapstick gag. There's also a fair share of beefcake. I can recall seeing comments that this kind of thing wasn't Trek. Apparently those people never watched the original series, because Trek has always had more than its fair share of T&A (and beefcake too).

Given the change in standards of broadcast media between the time of the original series and the years that Enterprise was broadcast, Enterprise is actually kind of tame when compared to the original series. Many of the costumes used in the original Star Trek revealed far more skin than those in Enterprise. The standard female uniform revealed almost as much skin as the underwear in Enterprise! Yet, Enterprise got a bad rap for it, whereas it was simply accepted as part of the show with the original series. Why?

I think it's because Trek fans have made Trek their own, and many of them considered the T&A aspect to be one of the more unimportant aspects of the original series. Finding it in Enterprise was jarring to them because they didn't consider T&A to be part of their Trek, even though it was obviously always a part of Trek in general. It was less of a factor in Next Generation, but even that part of the franchise had its risque moments, and Enterprise should have more in common with the original series than with the Next Generation, if only due to being closer to it in the fictional timeline.

Another criticism was leveled at the apparent continuity problems. Again, going back to the original series, there were huge chunks of continuity that were largely ignored by later shows. Many of the more powerful beings encountered were lucky to get even a passing mention in later shows. The fact that the first appearance of the Romulans established that their ships were incapable of faster-than-light travel was largely ignored in later stories. Probably the most well known continuity issue, the visible differences between Klingons in the original series and their later appearances, wasn't dealt with until Enterprise.

Singling out Enterprise for apparent continuity errors ignores the long history of such errors that run throughout Star Trek (and which are largely unavoidable in such a vast body of work sharing the same fictional setting).

The point of all this is that these kinds of things are true of all things where fans have an emotional investment, and make up one of the biggest problems with doing sequels of popular properties.

It's one of the reasons that I prefer to see more re-imaginings ala Battlestar Galactica and fewer sequels. Re-imaginings get to borrow the important themes and characters from a popular property without dragging all the baggage of continuity along with them.

It's something that's been done for years in Japan, and that I'd like to see done more often in American entertainment.

Embracing the Crazy

2011-07-15T22:31:00.000-05:00

One of the problems with running a more traditional style RPG like Pathfinder is that I tend to fall into my old patterns of GMing when I do so. I often forget many of the lessons that I've learned over the past few years about running and playing a better game and revert to a more dictatorial style of GMing.

One of the most obvious mistakes I keep making is that I keep trying to reign in the crazy. For example, the party in our Kingmaker campaign has had some great characters, many of which seem to have an element of the crazy to them, but I keep fighting against those elements, despite the fact that when I step back and take an objective look I recognize just how awesome some of them are.

One character in particular is just full of great crazy that I keep trying to reign in. That character is a human ranger who believes he's a half elf. He was raised by elves, which is where the root of his delusion comes from, but he's quite clearly human.

He's also an ardent lay follower of the god Erastil, to the point that he's been vociferously lobbying the rest of the group to build a huge cathedral to Erastil in the capital of the kingdom they are building. Nevermind that the more ecumenically minded NPC priest of Erastil has pointed out that the god actually prefers rural shrines, and probably wouldn't appreciate a huge urban cathedral, our deluded ranger continues to forge ahead with his plans!

I haven't even mentioned the stack of corpses that he's collecting. See, he knows that one day they will have the means to raise people from the dead, so he's been collecting those he thinks worthy of a second chance so that when that day comes he can return them to life. Those he thinks worthy have included random dead people they find in the forest, and remains recovered from an ancient barrow.

My problem is that I keep fighting these ideas when I should be embracing them. There are some really great hooks for things in this character's behavior (especially when you factor in that he isn't just another adventurer, but also the head of the city guard for a growing frontier community), but I'm too focused on the Kingmaker campaign path so that instead of opportunities I see them as obstacles.

Now that I recognize that the problem is with me and not the player, I'm trying not to block things for him so much. It's still difficult though, because the crazy often leads that character to take actions that will derail the published plot of the adventure. I have to walk a delicate path between allowing the player to have free reign with his character and making sure that the adventure can progress.

BattleTech

2011-07-14T19:45:00.000-05:00

BattleTech was the first miniatures game I ever played, although I didn't realize it at the time. BattleTech is one of those rare hybrids between miniatures and board games (and at times even RPGs), and I always thought of it as more of a board game, even when I was using miniatures to play it.

The thing about BattleTech is that while it's a decent game, it was never the game itself that really attracted me to it, it was the background. The background of the Succession Wars that pitfive houses in a free for all fight to claim control over humanity had a level of realism and detail that the actual game seemed to sometimes lack, at least for a young history and politics nut.

I was hooked on the universe from the time I first bought the game (I think probably around 1986) right up until the appearance of the Clans in 1990. The appearance of the Clans (which I was not a fan of at the time), combined with my eventual graduation from college, led me to abandon BattleTech for a period of over 15 years, but then Catalyst Games took over.

I was impressed by the production value they put into the new starter box in 2006, although not enough to actually buy it at the time. I was equally impressed by the introduction of the Sword and Dragon Starterbook that went back to the roots of the game by bringing McKinnon's Raiders and Sorenson's Sabres back into the lore of BattleTech. These were units covered in two of the original three sourcebooks for the game, and personal favorites of mine.

This is all a long-winded lead-in to how I've been totally diving into the current line of products being put out by Catalyst Games. Their take on the rules has been impressive. The core system is the same as it was back in the eighties, but with more polish. The first book, Total Warfare, was originally published by Fanpro and contains the core rules for 'mechs, aerospace, vehicles, and the various forms of infantry available in the BattleTech universe. This book is designed as a reference manual, not a tutorial. It says right on the back cover to get the starter box if you're new to the game. This let them put out a solid reference manual that contains just the core, 'tournament legal', rules.

The second volume in the series of rulebooks is the TechManual. This book is slightly larger than Total Warfare, and is all about constructing the units that have rules in Total Warfare. This book is a gearheads dream. Battletech has always had solid unit construction rules, and this tradition continues with the TechManual. Together with Total Warfare this book makes up the core rules of the system. Everything else is advanced/optional rules.

There are three volumes in the advanced rules series, two of which have been released. The first is Tactical Operations, which covers advanced optional rules for ground combat. There are a lot of good ideas here presented in a modular format so that you can just add in what you want to, without having to take the whole batch.

The second is Strategic Operations, which does for aerospace combat what Tactical Operations did for ground combat. It also does a few other things. It introduces repair and salvage rules for use in multi-battle campaigns. It also provides the BattleForce rules for fighting larger conflicts where each unit is roughly four to five times the size of a unit in standard BattleTech. Finally, it provides rules for playing BattleTech without the hex grid, turning it into a more typical miniatures game.

The third volume, yet to be released, is Interstellar Operations. This is proposed to include rules for all the other scales above Strategic Operations, up to complete interstellar wars.

There's one more hardcover volume: A Time of War. This is the BattleTech RPG. As an RPG its mechanics are rather dated, but it does expand the coverage of scale in the BattleTech universe down to man-to-man combat. It also provides additional options for players who want to play a BattleTech campaign that tracks the development of their MechWarriors.

I was pleased to see that some of the advanced abilities available to MechWarrior characters allow them to duplicate feats performed in the BattleTech fiction that otherwise aren't modeled in the rules. This was always a big issue for me back when we were playing in college.

Finally, since I first rediscovered the line, Catalyst has put out a new version of the starter box that is an improvement over the old one. It includes enough cheap plastic miniatures to get you playing out of the box, as well as a couple of better quality plastic kits. It also includes the core rules you need to play along with a couple of mounted maps to play on.

While I will probably never get back into this game in the way I once was, it's nice to see that it now exists in a form that more or less like what I always wanted. Now I just need to invent a time machine and send it back to my college self.

RPG Game Mechanics That Seemed Like A Good Idea at the Time

2011-07-13T15:25:00.000-05:00

Sometimes a game will introduce a mechanic that I really like at first, but that later I find to be flawed in practice. I'm going to discuss two of these mechanics. The first is the concept of character flaws that give the character build points at character generation, but are purely negatives for the rest of the game. The second is the concept of experience in the form of a resource that you can choose to either spend in game to give you a bonus, or spend between games to improve your character, but not both.

When I was first introduced to the concept of advantages and disadvantages they seemed like a great idea. Take a flaw for your character and get points to improve their strengths. The problem is that this method practically requires min-maxing your character, trying to get flaws that will never actually affect you in game in exchange for benefits that you can use often. I much prefer the newer systems where flaws continue to benefit the players during the game. Usually this is done by providing some sort of credit they can use to help themselves in the future whenever a flaw is used in the present.

This second method turns flaws into what they were originally meant to be: something that defines your character, not something to be avoided in play at all cost. It's such a big deal to me that when I run across a system that treats flaws in the old way, I might avoid it even if I'd be interested in it otherwise.

I wasn't as enthusiastic about the second concept as I was about character flaws, but people that I played with thought it was a great idea at the time, and I was OK with it at first. That concept is experience that serves a dual purpose, either being burned up during a game to provide immediate benefits or else saved up until between sessions to improve a character. There seemed to be a lot of games that experimented with this idea back when I was in college. Torg and Shadowrun were two big ones. I can only speculate as to what the designers were going for with this concept. I assume they were trying to add more interesting choices to the game.

I suppose it probably works as long as all the players are spending their experience (XP) in a similar manner. The problems come when they don't. In my experience, some gamers will simply refuse to spend the experience in game unless it is truly a matter of life and death for their characters. If that means the mission fails, so be it. At least they get decent XP to build their characters with.

In a party where some players are willing to spend XP in game and others aren't, there will soon be an imbalance between those characters who spend all the XP they earn on character improvement and those who don't. This can eventually lead to a negative feedback loop for those who spend XP on temporary bonuses as threats designed to challenge their more capable companions can only be dealt with by spending even more XP on temporary bonuses.

Like character flaws with no in-game benefit, this is another one of those mechanics that causes me to reconsider playing a game that includes it, even if it's an otherwise interesting game.

I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who prefers these mechanics and their reasons for doing so. Perhaps I've missed some advantage that they have.

The Bones: Us and Our Dice

2011-07-12T08:45:00.001-05:00

Another old post that got "lost" in my draft folder. This review is about a year overdue, but the book is still available.

If I hadn't read Things We Think About Games, I probably wouldn't have even considered getting The Bones: Us and Our Dice. The fact that I did read Things We Think About Games, and loved it, meant that when I heard about The Bones, I pre-ordered the limited hardcover. That's how much I now trust Will Hindmarch and Gameplayright Press to put out an interesting book dealing with gaming, and The Bones rewarded that trust.

The Bones is a book about dice. More specifically it's a collection of six articles and twenty essays by different authors about dice.

The book opens with the articles, which I think are the best part of the book, and I think it's worth listing what they cover. The first three are about the history of dice, and while there's a bit of overlap, all three are interesting. The fourth article is about all randomness in gaming, and is an excellent introduction to the role of probability in gaming. The fifth is an interview discussing randomness in online gaming, specifically the MMOG Lord of the Rings Online.

The last article is a bit of a departure from the rest as it's an interview that reveals the story behind the creation of an automatic dice roller that makes more than 1.3 million rolls per day for a play-by-email game company. That's not some computer random number generator, but a machine that physically rolls the dice!

The following twenty essays are also interesting, but I'm only going to mention the one that I was most interested in. Near the end is an essay by James Lowder. James was an editor at TSR back when the switch from 1st to 2nd Edition AD&D was being made, and the infamous Avatar Trilogy was being written to put a narrative spin on the game changes.

Those books marked the beginning of the end of my interest in the Forgotten Realms, AD&D and game fiction in general. That's how bad they were, or at least how bad I perceived them to be.

That's why I find it so interesting that at least someone at TSR at the time knew that there were issues with the books while they were being created, but that the demands of management insisted that they go forward anyway.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, then you should definitely read this book.

The Majestic Wilderlands

2011-07-11T08:00:00.000-05:00

The Majestic Wilderlands by Robert S. Conley is a supplement compatible with Swords & Wizardry. Swords & Wizardry is a set of rules based on the original Dungeons & Dragons (or as they say on the products for copyright reasons: "the original 1974 roleplaying game").

I'm going to mix things up a bit from my usual review format and describe the good bits first. There's a lot in this book. It's digest size and only 140 pages, but packs a lot into that format. Well over a dozen new character classes, including several types of rogues. Over a dozen races, including the ones from basic S&W, but with changes for the setting. Several other crunchy bits including a basic skill system, NPC classes, optional combat rules, and magic rituals. This all takes up a little less than two thirds of the book, and includes a lot of background detail concerning the setting, but not in a way that interferes with referencing the crunch.

The rest of the book is pure background for the setting of the Majestic Wilderlands. This setting is a take on the setting developed around the City State of the Invincible Overlord created by the Judges Guild over 30 years ago. There's a general geographical overview of the world as well as descriptions of the major cultures and religions. There's nothing terribly innovative about the world, but it's not meant to be. It's meant to provide a standard fantasy RPG setting, and does a pretty good job of doing just that with a rather interesting mix of Tolkien and Howard.

Now for the bad. The only major complaint I had with the crunch is that the skill system seems a bit harsh. For example, per the rules, the average character using Athletics is going to fail to clear a 2' obstacle 75% of the time. An unencumbered first level fighter with a strength bonus is still going to fail over half his tries to clear that same 2' obstacle. it's easy enough to adjust this by adjusting the base target number, but I felt it was worth mentioning.

A bigger issue for me is that the book is a case study for not relying on a spell-checker to do your editing. There are countless instances of poorly constructed sentences and incorrect words throughout the text. It doesn't make the book unreadable, and it's understandable from what is essentially a one man show, but it's unfortunate.

It should have only taken a single read through to fix a lot of this, and there are three people credited as editors on the book, so I have to wonder if maybe the author accidentally used the wrong draft when creating the PDF. The product is purely PDF and print on demand, so I would hope that the author will some day make a corrected edition available.

Even with these issues, I'd highly recommend it to anyone running a Swords & Wizardry game as it should provide a great deal of solid inspiration for tweaking the rules to fit your campaign.

D&D Essentials: An Evaluation

2011-07-10T11:18:00.000-05:00

I originally wrote this last year, but never posted it. It's interesting to note that since I wrote this, Pathfinder has passed D&D in sales, at least in some locations.

D&D Essentials have now been out for a while, and I've had the chance to look them all over, so I thought I'd give my overall impressions of how the line has done in meeting its goals.

The first step is to establish just what the line was meant to do, as it's not entirely clear. It appears that it was meant to establish a more friendly starting point for new players, but there's also evidence that it was meant to try to create a "feel" that would appeal more to players of older editions that have complained that 4th Edition D&D is too different from those editions. I think that the Essentials line has had mixed success on both counts.

I've touched briefly on the new "red box" before. As a standalone introduction to the game it's fine, but then becomes worse than useless as gamers transition into the rest of the Essentials line. Someone made the boneheaded decision to go to press with the red box before finalizing the details of the two players' books: Heroes of the Fallen Lands and Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms. As a result, characters created with the red box are incompatible with the latter books. This is a complete waste, making a lot of the nifty player aids provided in the red box useless outside of it.

To make matters worse, the issue is barely touched upon on in the rest of the line, aside from a mention somewhere that players should rebuild their characters if they are using ones created with the red box. Epic Fail.

Seriously, when creating a line meant to introduce new people to the hobby things should be as seamless as possible. If you had wanted to set out to design something as unfriendly to new gamers as possible, it would be hard to come up with something "better" than this.

It's a real shame, because despite some other criticisms of the line, it's pretty solid once you get beyond the "red box".

Enough on that though, lets move on and evaluate the rest of the line.

One interesting decision when laying out the line was to have a great deal of repetition between products. It appears that WotC has sought to cut down on the number of books required by each player to have at the table, or even to own. To that end, a lot of the rules to be found in the actual Rules Compendium (the core rules for the Essentials line) can be found repeated in the other books in the line.

Both "Heroes" books have around a hundred pages of rules covering the basics of play, character generation, powers, and skills that are covered both in the Compendium, and repeated word for word between the two Heroes books. Note the hundred pages of repeated content, because we'll come back to that later when we discuss some things that are missing from the line.

The Dungeon Master's Book from the Dungeon Master's Kit also repeats about a hundred pages of rules from the Compendium, although largely a different set of rules than those repeated in the Heroes books. Altogether that's over 300 pages of repeated material in the line, and the books average 300 pages each!

It's sort of nice that players only need to have a Heroes book with them in order to have both character information and basic combat and skill rules at their fingertips, but given the small size of the Essentials books overall, I don't think it would be a great imposition for them to have had to have both a Heroes book and a Compendium, or even both Heroes books and the Compendium.

This crossover between the books also makes it a bit unclear as to just what is needed to play the game. It appears possible that the Dungeon Master's Kit and one of the Heroes books together contain everything needed to run some basic adventures, especially pre-published ones, however, there are some additional rules in the Compendium not reprinted in either the Dungeon Master's Book or the Heroes books, so eventually someone is probably going to want to get that. It's not clear when that point might be though. Surely none of the books point it out.

We'll leave that for now and take a look at the other purpose of the set: the nostalgia factor. This is the attempt to get fans of older editions of the game to take a look at the new version. I think this is pretty much a lost cause as long as Pathfinder is out there, but let's take a look at it anyway.

The red box creates a huge feeling of nostalgia, but this is probably becomes more of a negative once people get past the red box and realize the issues of compatibility I mentioned before. It just makes it more likely they will get fed up with WotC for screwing things up yet again and go back to Pathfinder or Swords & Wizardry.

Skipping the red box and moving on to the Heroes books, there's a bit more success. The classes in Heroes of the Fallen Lands are iconic. The Knight feels like a classic fighter, the Warpriest feels like a classic cleric, the Thief feels like a classic thief, and the Mage feels like a classic wizard. The four together capture the iconic core of a classic D&D adventuring group. The fifth class: the Slayer, captures the feel of the more reckless classic fighter, but doubles up on the Striker role with the Thief. This brings up one of the issues with the Heroes books as a whole: four Striker classes compared to two each of the other three. Plus the "bonus" class available from D&D Insider is also a Striker.

The Compendium says that it's a good idea to cover all roles, but we have over twice as many choices for the Striker role as any other! Is the Striker an OK role to double up on? Maybe, but it doesn't say that anywhere in Essentials.

The races in Heroes of the Fallen Lands are also the classics, with Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, and Eladrin. OK, Eladrin are not classic in the sense that they did not exist in prior editions, but they were basically one of two ways that Elves were interpreted in the game, so in that sense they still fit.

Moving on, the classes in Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms are less attractive to me personally, but seem to do a good job of capturing a more classic feel. The Hunter captures the ranger that combined both martial and magical abilities that appeared in previous editions of D&D. I actually prefer the more purely martial take that the 4th Edition PHB takes, but that's admittedly a change from previous editions. The Scout is Drizzt, and while traditionally Drizzt broke the rules of D&D, I suppose that for many he represents what D&D should feel like, so I suppose it's appropriate to include the ability to play him here.

I've never been a big fan of druids, but the Sentinel seems to represent them fairly well. Same goes for the Cavalier. The Hexblade seems to be an oddball. Again, I'm not a huge fan of warlocks, but this seems to be a particularly specialized kind of warlock, whereas most of the other classes seem to be meant to be more generalist in their nature. I suppose the problem may be that the PHB already does a good job of capturing the classic feel of Warlocks.

The races presented are OK. In the name of repeating stuff we get Humans again, we also get the half-elf, half-orc, dragonborn, tiefling and drow. These choices are more to round out what D&D is today as opposed to the classic feel of previous editions, especially with the presence of dragonborn and tiefling. Also, drow PCs to me are what dragonborn PCs are to the generation that grew up largely with 3rd Edition: an abomination meant to be a sop to teenagers with power/emo issues. So, I'm a bit prejudiced against this volume of Heroes. Overall I think it does a decent job at what it sets out to do.

A problem with both Heroes books is what they leave out. The Warpriest has domains, the Mage has schools, the Cavalier has virtues and the Warlock has pacts. The problem is that while there's obviously potential for more, the Heroes books only present two of each. I suppose this may be in the name of keeping things simple, but it really just feels incomplete. We now come back to those 100 pages wasted in each book repeating rules from the Compendium. Those pages could have instead been used to give us a complete set of options for these classes.

That leads us to the one book we haven't touched on yet: the Monster Vault. Overall this is a nice volume, but it's not nearly as flexible as the Monster Manuals because no where in the Essentials line are rules for altering the level of monsters, or for monster templates. Now, it was a pretty easy cut to make things simpler, but it results in far less utility. We return to the waste of pages in the Dungeon Master's Book where we repeat about a 100 pages from the Compendium again. That space could have been used to put the rules for tweaking monsters and would have gone a long way to making the Essentials line more useful.

So in the end, are the Essentials essential? The answer is no. They just muddy up the whole picture as to what you need in order to play with no clear line drawn as to where to go when you want more. For example, DMs can go to the DMG if they want to be able to tweak or create new monsters, but there's nothing in the Essentials line that tells them that.

I think this was a noble experiment, but that it missed the mark. I'm glad they did it because the Dungeon Master's Kit, Monster Vault, and Dungeon Tiles Master Sets are a great source of counters and maps for use in my Pathfinder game, but it could have been so much more. I can only speculate as to what went wrong and why, but it's enough to know that an opportunity has been missed.

Podcast Update

2011-07-09T16:15:00.000-05:00

Here's a rundown of what I'm listening to in terms of podcasts.

The Dice Tower: This podcast rapidly moved to the top of my list after I finally started listening to it. My favorite board gaming podcast with a nice mix of news, reviews, and interesting discussion. I will usually listen to the latest episode as soon as I know it's out.

Ludology: Part of the "Dice Tower Network" of podcasts, this is a relatively new podcast on the subject of board gaming theory. It's been quite interesting so far, even though I've not always agreed with the hosts' opinions.

Game On! with Cody & John: I tend to be more informed about what's going on in the world of board gaming than these guys, but they're still fun to listen to, as long as it's not the month of Gen Con.

The D6 Generation: This one has gone from the top of my list to barely hanging on at the bottom. I stopped listening for a few months, but recently caught back up to the point where I'm only a couple of episodes behind. While entertaining at times, I've found that my tastes in gaming do not align with any of the three hosts of the show, which makes it less useful to me than it might otherwise be. The hilarious parody of the McLaughlin Group that opens every show, combined with the occasional great interview, is what keeps me listening.

Narrative Control: It's a tough call, but I think this is probably at the top of my list for roleplaying podcasts. Lots of good ideas in a short format. It is put out in seasons, and is currently between seasons, but that just means it's a good time to catch up if you haven't listened to it before now.

Actual People, Actual Play: This is my favorite "actual play" podcast, largely because it doesn't actually record actual play. Instead, each episode opens with a summary of the session that was just played, and then has the participants discuss what worked and what didn't, both in the system they used and in their personal performances.

Fear The Boot: This is a roundtable discussion of different roleplaying topics. It has a good mix of gamers, although all of them come from a more traditional RPG background than most of the other roleplaying podcasts on this list, which tend more towards indie games. There is a good deal of discussion of whatever game they are playing at the moment, but the focus is usually on the topic of the episode, with their anecdotal experiences being used as examples.

2d6 Feet in a Random Direction: A great podcast when it comes out, but it's been a few months now since the last episode. The most balanced between indie and traditional RPG coverage of the podcasts I've listened to.

The Walking Eye: Another actual play podcast. I've listened to a handful of actual play podcasts that feature recorded sessions of play, and this is the only one I've found interesting enough to continue listening to. The actual play sessions are interspersed with interesting discussion episodes. There's also a comics cast mixed in the feed, but I don't listen to those.

The Voice of the Revolution: The PR podcast for Indie Press Revolution. I find it a decent news source, and their reviews and interviews are interesting.

World's End Radio: While it started as a podcast mostly about Games Workshop games, it's increasingly becoming more of a general miniatures gaming podcast. It also fills my "podcasts with an Australian accent" quota. These guys almost make me wish I was still into miniatures games, and are interesting enough that I listen to them even though I'm not.

Meeples & Miniatures: My most recent addition, I haven't come to a final judgment on this one yet, but am liking it so far. On the miniatures side he covers just about everything except Games Workshop.

Ninja vs. Pirates: I'm several episodes behind on this podcast, but it's a very interesting collection of interviews with game designers. Mostly RPG designers, but some board game designers as well.

The "It's a Fantasy, you Expected Realism?" Fallacy

2011-07-08T08:13:00.000-05:00

I recently saw Transformers 3, and I enjoyed it, but the movie can require an extreme amount of suspension of disbelief in order to do so.

The response often received to a comment like the one I just made goes something along the lines of "so when you went to see a movie about [insert fantastic premise here], were you expecting a realistic film?"

See, the answer to that is "yes". Leaving aside the fantastic premise, and all the many issues that likely feed into that premise, I expect the film to be realistic in the sense that I expect it to be internally logical and consistent. Also, I expect that any details of reality that don't feed into the fantastic premise will be left as they are in the real world, or else there will be an explanation as to why they've changed.

In the Transformers the fantastic premise is that giant alien intelligent robots that can change shape have arrived on earth. That premise is going to imply a whole bunch of implausible or impossible things, but we give all that a pass as long as it makes the premise work.

Where things become less forgivable is when the movie takes liberties with facts and history that don't feed into the fantastic premise or the genre. In the case of Transformers 3, the big issue is the setup for the plot.

Warning: possible spoilers ahead.

In reality, the US moon missions all landed on different locations on the bright side of the moon. None of them landed anywhere near the dark side of the moon, let alone all of them. Yet, in the movie every single mission was supposed to be to a crash site on the dark side of the moon. Now, we could have had some explanations of this. It could have been revealed that the moon landing conspiracists have been partly right all along: we did indeed go to the moon, but not to the locations that NASA said we did. That would have been enough extra detail to allow all but the most detail oriented space history buffs to suspend disbelief, but they didn't do that.

So why is this important for what is, admittedly, a summer action movie? Because, the core audience of this particular movie wants to believe that there's some small possibility that it could all happen. We want to believe that some morning we could be getting ready to make the morning drive to work only to have our car transform into a giant robot and tell us it needs our help to save the world. Anything in the movie that screams "this isn't your world," like blatantly incorrect things about history, limits our ability to deceive ourselves that way, thus limiting our enjoyment of the movie.

Now, while I use Transformers 3 as an example, I don't really have a big problem with the movie. I didn't even think of any of these things while actually watching it. Only later did I stop to go "wait a minute..."

I also don't think it will have much effect on my desire to re-watch the movie once it is out on DVD. I use it as an example because I know there are people for whom these issues did affect their enjoyment of watching the movie the first time, and who will be unlikely to watch it again as a result, and that some of those people would otherwise take great enjoyment from watching a movie about giant transforming robots.

I think those people have valid concerns, and dismissing them by pointing out that the very premise is fantastic does them a disservice. We should expect better of our fantasy.

An Open Letter to Podcasters II: Convention Coverage

2011-07-07T07:43:00.000-05:00

I initially wrote this last year just after the convention season wrapped up, around the same time that I wrote my first Open Letter to Podcasters. I never posted it because I felt it was possibly too much of a rant, but with convention season ramping up again, I find myself once again becoming annoyed by the level of convention coverage, so I feel this is worth posting.

Just say "no" to convention coverage on your podcast.

Seriously, the amount of convention coverage on gaming podcasts is getting out of hand. It's gotten to the point where some podcasts will have extensive pre-coverage, coverage and post-coverage of the same convention. Since I listen to more than one gaming podcast, it often starts to all sound the same. Some gamers have poor hygiene habits at conventions, I get it. I don't need to hear about it every time a convention is coming up. If you really care about an issue like this, then write up an article on your show's website, mention the article when convention season comes around, and leave it at that.

Pre-convention coverage: this should consist of a blurb that lasts no more than a minute or two. This is especially true if you are starting this coverage early enough for it actually to matter to people who have to plan ahead (which is usually at least three months prior to an event).

Don't interview the convention organizer! It's very tempting to do so, but if you've heard one interview with a convention organizer you've heard them all. I don't care if they're running Gen Con or the mini-con at the FLGS, 90% of the interview will be identical, and the 10% that is different isn't worth slogging through the other 90%.

Instead, do an ad with the convention organizer that outlines the major draws of the con and mention a website where more info can be found. Keep it under a minute or two.

If your podcast is actually running events at a convention, then go ahead and discuss it some, but don't forget that you can always say "go to our website for more information."

Convention coverage: Do not go through a list of the games you played or the events you attended. I don't want to come off as too harsh, but even the people who actually care don't really care that much. Write it up on your blog, but keep it off the air. Do put interviews with convention guests and other persons of interest. Also, cover any news that was released, but do it briefly. If it was a major con, then that news was released to the internet at the same time you heard about it at the con so many of your listeners already know about it.

This is especially true about news from Gen Con. People that really care about news from there are going to be listening to the This Just In From Gen Con podcast. If you must present your own news, listen to that podcast first, and makes sure you aren't just repeating what they already said. If you don't want to spend time listening to that podcast, then ask yourself why your listeners would possibly want to listen to you do the same thing?

Post-Convention coverage: This should be non-existent. The only reason I should be hearing about a convention after you've done your convention coverage is because you got a lot of interviews and so there was more material than you could cram into your one convention coverage episode.

This advice applies to all conventions, but doubly so to Gen Con. At this point pretty much everyone that podcasts goes to Gen Con. I get it, it's a big deal, but it's gotten to the point where I may just stop listening to podcasts when Gen Con rolls around, because it's the same crap I've listened to over and over again since I've been listening to podcasts!

In this case I really do mean crap. Entire episodes dedicated to "how to attend Gen Con" that cover the exact same advice repeated every year. If you have to do it, do it once, then tell your listeners to go back and listen to that episode if they're planning on going to Gen Con and have never been before.

I'm not exaggerating here, the only podcasts I listen to that don't discuss Gen Con are ones from overseas, and even they usually feel compelled to mention it. It really gets annoying. Unless you live in Indianapolis, your Gen Con coverage should be limited to the advice I gave above for general convention coverage. Even then, the coverage could stand to be toned down a bit.

Of course, this doesn't apply if the only thing your podcast does is cover Gen Con, but This Just In From Gen Con has that covered.

So, think twice about giving a lot of time to convention coverage on your podcast, particularly if you've given coverage of the same convention in the past. At the least, consider making it a smaller segment of your cast.

Player Housing in MMOGs

2011-07-06T07:02:00.000-05:00

I originally wrote this post back in February, and am not really sure why I didn't publish it back then. The recent announcement of the cancellation of Star Wars Galaxies reminded me of it, so I decided to go ahead and publish it.

This post is in direct response to Greg Dean's "The Player Housing Manifesto" that he made in his comments to his webcomic. If you don't want to go read the whole thing, then here's his three main points:

1. A house must not be instanced

2. A house must be customizable

3. A house must be a privilege

He then discusses the various arguments against implementing these points, most of which have to do with the first point, and largely have to do with server load and virtual real estate within the game world. He points out that the former has never really been an issue and that the latter has been successfully dealt with in MMOGs that have met his three points by using decay, where if a player doesn't maintain the house it disappears.

He then wonders why no one has implemented this since Star Wars Galaxies and Istaria back in 2003.

Here's why I think that hasn't happened: since 2003 companies that run successful MMOGs have figured out that one of the most important revenue generators isn't attracting new players, but re-attracting former players. There is no bigger dis-incentive to returning to a game than knowing that the work you put into your characters the first time around has been undone.

Star Wars Galaxies was probably my favorite MMOG ever, but after I quit I never went back. The biggest reason for that is the disappearance of my house and everything in it. Some of my fondest memories of the game were working to get and outfit my in-game house, so knowing it's gone greatly lessens any incentive I'd ever have to return to the game.

It's true that maintenance requirements can often keep people playing longer than they otherwise would have, staying in just to make sure that their houses and other items don't decay, but that doesn't make up for the probability that once they do leave they're probably gone for good.

This is why I think that it's unlikely we'll ever again see a game implement completely non-instanced player housing. It could be done if you had some ability for returning players to replace their house, but even then they'd have to find a new location, and location was often a big part of the equation when establishing a house in one of these games. Having a prime piece of virtual real estate was often a big deal.

Instead of non-instanced housing, I think that games that have housing at all will continue to use the instanced neighborhoods model of Lord of the Rings Online and others, which allows them to use a less strict model of decay (or none at all), thus encouraging more players to return to the game after taking a break.

Freeport

2011-07-05T07:56:00.001-05:00

Take one part Lankhmar, one part Sanctuary, and one part Port Royal, mix in some Dungeons & Dragons and season with some Cthulhu Mythos and you end up with Freeport. I'm a relative newcomer to Freeport, a setting originally created for Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. In fact, Death In Freeport was one of only two d20 books released on the same day as the 3rd Edition Player's Handbook back in 2000 (that's according to Green Ronin, the company that publishes Freeport).

The setting developed over the years with a number of adventures and sourcebooks until the approaching 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, with the accompanying changes in licensing, caused the folks at Green Ronin to divorce the system from D&D and make it a systemless setting designed to either be used on its own or dropped into another world at the choice of the people using it.

As a result they produced The Pirate's Guide to Freeport, a system neutral setting book describing the city, and to a lesser extent its immediate surroundings as well as the overall world it exists in. Since then they have released a number of Companion books that provide rules to adapt the setting to different systems, including True 20, D&D 3.5, Savage Worlds, Castles & Crusades, Pathfinder, and D&D 4th Edition (although this last is from another publisher, apparently for legal reasons).

I have the Pathfinder Freeport Companion, but haven't really looked at it much yet, and I'm not sure I'll ever use it. I'm not really sure it's that necessary, although it does offer rules for gunpowder weapons and other things that aren't in the Pathfinder Core Rules, so it would probably be nice to have if running Freeport in Pathfinder.

The reason I don't think the Companion is all that necessary is that the setting stands on its own even without detailed stats, and should be useable in any D&D inspired game system with little work, and any Fantasy RPG with just a bit more creativity. The city is predominantly human, but has representatives of all the other standard fantasy RPG races: dwarves, elves, gnomes, and halflings as well as goblins, orcs and hobgoblins. It also has one or two unique races that could be easily statted up, or simply left out.

The fantasy elements are really well done in that they offer flavor without being so specific as to make it difficult to insert them into a different world. For example, there's Bloodsalt. Bloodsalt is the goblinoid ghetto where all the orcs, goblins and hobgoblins have been forced to relocate. There's a plot hook involving the animosity between hobgoblins and orcs, but if you don't have hobgoblins in your world it could be two rival orc tribes instead. If you don't have goblinoids at all it could be some other sort of ghetto. The point is that in most places where the setting involves racial distinctions, it should't be too difficult to tweak things if those races aren't in your world, or they behave differently. Part of what makes this easy is the very lack of system specific details.

In fact, the ease with which one element can be dropped out of the mix without messing up the rest of the picture is probably the setting's biggest strength. Everything works together, but most elements can be taken out or ignored without causing gaping holes in the logic of the rest of the setting.

The biggest problem I have is the pantheon of gods in Freeport, and it's because they took this idea of interchangeability a bit too far. At some point they decided to leave the gods unnamed. They just say "god of war" or "god of the sea" and let you fill it in with the most appropriate god from the setting you're dropping Freeport into. There are two problems with this. The first is that if you're not dropping it into a setting at all, but using the default Freeport setting, then you have to come up with names and other details on your own. The second is when the details of the pantheon for the setting you're dropping it into doesn't match up with what is needed for Freeport.

There are only four major gods worshiped in Freeport: knowledge, war, the sea, and pirates. The first problem is that out of several established fantasy pantheons I've gone through only one has a god of pirates. The second problem is related to the fact that there are at least another eleven gods mentioned in parts of the text (not counting silly gods, like the god of hinges). That's fifteen gods total. Most fantasy pantheons I'm familiar with simply don't have that many gods.

It would have been more useful if they had gone ahead and named the gods. Those gods could still be replaced with ones more appropriate to the setting you're dropping it into, while providing details for any gods that don't appear in that setting.

Still, it's a minor point in an otherwise excellent setting. I'm unlikely to ever use it as it stands in my own games, but I've already been inspired by it to create a short Burning Wheel adventure featuring pirate characters based out of a similar setting. If you like reading about original fantasy settings then you should check out The Pirate's Guide to Freeport.

Canon Tricks

2011-07-04T01:00:00.000-05:00

Now that I've discussed my feelings on canon in RPGs, I thought I'd discuss a specific case in a bit more detail: Star Wars canon. As I mentioned before, my personal Star Wars canon is the original trilogy. One thing I'd consider doing when running a Star Wars campaign is establishing beforehand that one or all three of those movies were canon, but that nothing else was.

There are an amazing amount of things you can do when you only accept what appears on the screen as canon. For example, what if I say that only Star Wars is canon? Suddenly Vader may really have killed Anakin, and Luke and Leia might not be brother and sister

One of my earliest Star Wars RPG scenarios that I created had my players as the ones that delivered the Death Star plans to Princess Leia. This was back when West End Games had the license, and the only thing we knew officially about the Bothans was that a lot of them died. That's all that the movies tell us, and even that could have been misinformation, or misdirection. After all, in a Galactic Rebellion chances are the lines of communication aren't perfect. Mon Mothma could have been wrong about all the Bothans dying, or maybe all those Bothans died as part of a distraction to allow someone else to actually deliver the information. That someone being the PCs.

Let's go back to that first idea though, that only the first movie is canon. Now, let's rewind the timeline back to the prequels. Now we can tell stories of Anakin and Ben that are wide open. Either as a PC or NPC, the players can never be sure if Anakin is going to become Vader, or if Vader is going to kill him. We can play with Ben Kenobi as well. There's an old fan theory that predates the prequels that says that Obi-Wan Kenobi was actually OB-1 Kenobi, a clone of Ben Kenobi. This suddenly puts the fate of Ben Kenobi up for grabs. Was Obi-Wan Ben, or a clone? Play the game and find out!

These are the kinds of things that you can't do if you slavishly follow canon, and I think they're incredibly interesting stories to explore.

Canon Should Be Shot From A Cannon

2011-07-03T21:26:00.000-05:00

I love canon. Whether it's for a game, movie, book or TV show, exploring the official canon involved in the product is usually great fun. When it comes to RPGs though, I hate it.

Rather, I hate the straitjacket it often seems to create for GMs, players and even game designers. For an example, let's take something from the Dresden Files RPG. In the entry for Harry Dresden in Our World, there's a section called "A World Without Harry?" that warns that removing Harry from the Dresdenverse would surely have led to many bad thing happening. OK, if that's the only change made, then yeah, things would suck. Why would I have that be the only thing I changed?

This seems to be a problem encountered in a lot of situations where people start talking about messing with canon. In a Star Wars game, if you talk about dropping Luke you inevitably get an argument about how then the Death Star would have blown up Yavin, wiping out the Rebellion. As if you can only make that one change, and not decide to make a number of other changes as well.

When I run an RPG in a licensed setting I prefer to play fast and loose with canon. If the canon provides an easy answer to a problem, then fine, I go with it, but if it gets in the way, then it gets tossed out. This is doubly true if canon provides insider information that the characters in the game should never have access to. If I run a Battlestar Galactica game, then the person least likely to be a Cylon is Boomer, and everything else if up for grabs as well. Maybe Kobol is still inhabited when the Galactica gets there. Maybe human looking Cylons are a myth that merely serves to generate paranoia. There are so many ways that the story could have gone that it would be a shame to just repeat the one presented in the show when playing in an RPG.

This is true for other settings as well, even when there isn't as much mystery as there is in BSG. Star Wars is a good example. For me the original trilogy is the only thing that is in my personal canon, but if I'm running a Star Wars RPG, why even stick to that? Maybe Kenobi told the truth and Vader really did kill Anakin Skywalker. Maybe the person he tells it to isn't Luke Skywalker, but Luke Starkiller, a PC who then goes off on a grand adventure that ends with the destruction of the Death Star... at the hand of the PCs!

There are two impediments to disregarding canon like this: game designers and players. The lesser of the two are the game designers. Most licensed games seem to assume that you are going to stick to the canon. Rarely do they offer any sort of discussion as to how to deviate from canon, and if they do it's minimal. My discussion of the Dresden Files above is an example of this. It can be argued that if you buy a game with a license then people will want to play in that world, but this ignores the fact that most properties worth licensing offer rich settings where a single different choice could have produced a completely different, yet just as compelling, story than what was presented in the original property.

I think one of the better licensed games in this regard that I've seen lately is DC Adventures. They made one very important decision that I think makes a huge difference: they decided to present the characters as iconic representations rather than current canon. So, the Aquaman you find in the book is a clean shaven man with two normal hands in a yellow and green costume, because that's the iconic image of Aquaman. There's a sidebar discussing a couple of the more modern alternate versions if that's what you want to use, but the iconic version is the default. This makes the DC Universe as presented in the RPG into less of a straitjacket and more of a toolkit for creating the GM's own version of the DC Universe.

The bigger impediment is the players. If you have players that are knowledgeable about the canon, then they often expect it to be canon in the game. I'm willing to work with my players on this. If there are elements of canon that the players are particularly fond of and want to be in a game they play in, then I'll work with them to keep those bits in. If the players in a game of BSG really want to serve aboard the Galactica under Adama, then I'll try to structure my game to include those bits of canon, but those might be the only bits that I keep.

Even if the players want to play with a majority of the established canon that they know and love, I will still refuse to stick to it completely. It's too limiting to have to stick to the canon, and both in terms of options within the game, and in terms of how much work it can take to keep everything straight when there's a large body of canon to deal with.

Of course, there's one thing that will always be canon in any Star Wars game I run: if there's a Han Solo in the universe, then he shot first.

Distribute Your Product, Please!

2011-07-02T12:52:00.000-05:00

One of the drawbacks of being a fan of a niche industry is that it can sometimes be hard to locate product. There are a lot of really good game designs out there that at some point in their history have been really hard to track down. When I first got Diaspora it was only available as a print-on-demand (PoD) book from Lulu.com. When podcasts were first gushing about the Alien Frontiers board game, it turned out that it was completely unavailable, having only been released as part of a kickstarter.com project.

If a product is good enough, these things tend to eventually resolve themselves. Diaspora now gets distribution through Evil Hat, and even when it was only PoD you could still get it if you were aware of it. Alien Frontiers' second printing is now sold out, but a third printing is in the works and it should be available through normal distribution channels when it comes out (it may even be out already, I haven't been following it closely since I got a copy of the second printing).

Then there are the exceptions.

The first type of exception is the "limited edition." This is where the product is advertised as having a limited run and if you don't get in on it before it's gone then you will never get it. I generally assume one of two things when this is the case: either they are lying, or the product is crap. In the first case they are going to publish it again if it sells out. Maybe they'll change the cover, but it will essentially be the same product. In the second the product is such crap that they need the extra hype to try to sell what they have before people catch on.

I don't think that all "limited edition" products fall into one of those categories, but the fact that I immediately assume that one probably does brings this particular marketing technique into question, at least as far as I'm concerned.

Then comes the second category: a traditionally published game that simply isn't distributed. The only way to get this game is through the publisher. This is a model that I am rapidly losing patience with. At least with one-source options like Lulu.com, the one source is a specialist in delivering product to customers. Whoever wrote a book on Lulu, and whatever its quality of writing, I know that if I order it I will get what I order in a timely manner, and that the physical quality of the book will be acceptable, because that's what Lulu does.

When I order from an independent publisher it's always a crapshoot. Sometimes I get what I ordered in a timely manner. Just as often I get the wrong thing, or a partial order, or I have to follow up because it's been a month and I've received no information aside from a paypal receipt informing me that my card has been charged.

It's a real hit or miss proposition, and is increasingly becoming a barrier to my desire to seek out and purchase such products. Most of these operations don't even have a single full time employee. Thus, even if the people doing order fulfillment want to do a good job, they often don't have the time to do so.

This is why more of these smaller companies should look into some form of distribution. While it takes a cut of their profits, it also eliminates some of their overhead, and makes for a more pleasant experience for their paying customers. I have not done any real research into the options, but I know that Indie Press Revolution has been expanding the number and types of products that they distribute, and I think they probably represent a viable alternative.

In addition to making things easier for a customer, it also makes things easier for those retail stores that are still willing to take a chance on the occasional obscure product. They're probably more likely to do so if they can add it to an order they are already going to make, than if they have to place a special order.

So, if you are a game company that only sells direct to consumers, please consider finding at least one more method of distribution. I ask this as one of those consumers who might just want to buy your product, but can't find it.

The Nature of Self in Science Fiction Roleplaying

2011-07-01T07:33:00.000-05:00

This is going to be an incredibly nerdy discussion of some deep philosophical issues... as they relate to gaming. Specifically, what exactly defines a unique individual as opposed to a copy of an individual, when examining consciousness and soul.

The reason I'm thinking of this is because of a reaction one of my friends had when I described the problem I had with trans-humanism as presented in the Eclipse Phase RPG. He pointed out that the idea of moving a consciousness from one body to another in Eclipse Phase was essentially the same as reincarnation in a fantasy world, and that I had no problems with that concept.

At the time, I wasn't fully able to explain why I felt there was a difference (especially since I'd never realized the contradiction before), but I think I can now. In the typical fantasy world the existence of a soul is not a matter of theological debate, it's provable fact. Not only do people have souls, but they form the core of individuality, and when you take a soul from one body and put it into another, the "self" is obviously attached to the soul and not the body. Characters in such a world can prove this by actually communicating with, or even visiting, the afterlife.

Leaving aside my personal religious beliefs, the idea of a personal soul that forms the core of "self" is NOT a given in a science fiction setting, and even if there is a soul, there's no way of showing that it remains attached to a copied consciousness. Basically, I have the same misgivings expressed by Dr. McCoy in Star Trek when it comes to transporters. If it basically destroys the body in one location and then creates a duplicate in the other, is it really the same person? Didn't the original person actually die while a completely new, yet identical, person came into existence on the other end?

This seems especially problematical when it's possible to make more than one copy of a person. If there's a soul in that case, what happens to it? Does it multiply? Is it divided? Does it only go with one copy while any others remain "souless" (there's an idea for a sci-fi/horror story, if it hasn't already been done)?

This all assumes there's a soul. If there is no soul then it presents a different set of problems. If atheists are right, and our consciousness simply comes to an end when we die, then wouldn't a consciousness "wiped" from a body after being copied into another body simply cease to be? Isn't the copy simply a new consciousness that thinks it had those prior experiences? Has not the original "self" perished?

These are the kinds of issues that bother me about transferring consciousness when applied to science fiction instead of fantasy. I haven't even gone into some of the other tricky areas, like "backup" consciousnesses that are used when the original is lost completely (a common concept in Eclipse Phase).

I thought there might be a way around this using the concept that the body completely replaces the cells within it several times over the average person's lifetime, only that's not entirely true. A big exception is neurons, which you get when you're born, and never get replaced. If our consciousness essentially resides in those neurons, then that actually supports my misgivings rather than providing a way out from them.

So, why does this cause me problems when gaming? After all, I'm not really trying to transfer my own consciousness. The problem is that I nearly always identify somehow with the characters I play. Even if I'm playing a bad guy, I can usually link some darker part of my self to the character and magnify it in order to get that identification. I can play a character that I have no identification with, but it isn't as fun. I can't identify with characters from Eclipse Phase because one of the core concepts of the game is something that I could never accept personally. Voluntarily transferring bodies without physically transferring the brain would be equivalent to suicide in my mind.

I'm curious to know if anyone else thinks along these lines, or if I'm alone in my being uncomfortable with this concept. I'm also curious to know if anyone thinks I've missed some obvious logical alternative to the conclusions I've come to regarding all of this.

Why Eurogamers Need to Take Another Look at Wargames

2011-06-30T23:30:00.000-05:00

A while back I learned that my old FLGS has essentially stopped selling wargames. I found this surprising since the store's weekly board gaming event has grown quite a bit in attendance since I left the area, so I assumed that there would have been more interest in wargames, rather than less.

It turns out that it was only myself and a couple of other guys who bought most of the wargames, and all of us stopped doing so for various reasons. The people attending the store's weekly board game night are more interested in eurogames, and have little or no interest in wargames. The shame is that wargame designers have been taking a lot of lessons from eurogame designers, and there are a lot of designs coming out from wargame companies that might appeal more to the eurogamer.

There are still plenty of traditional two player hex and counter wargames coming out, but there are a lot of other types of wargames being produced as well. In fact, the number one game on BoardGameGeek.com as I write this is Twilight Struggle, a wargame from GMT Games! Also in the top 25 is another GMT Game: Dominant Species.

Memoir '44 and the other games in the Commands & Colors line are also wargames, although the most well known in the series have not been published by wargame companies. Most eurogamers seem to think that these games are the exception to the rule, and in the past they would have been correct, but that's increasingly no longer the case.

Twilight Struggle is arguably the best example of a type of wargame known as "card driven". Card driven wargames rely on the play of cards to drive the game, either in addition to or in place of the more traditional roll of the dice. This allows for both more control on the part of the player and more variation in the types of things that can occur in the game. It's been a very successful mechanic and there are several good games out there that use it, many of which don't even get a second glance from most eurogamers.

Part of the problem is that they are all two player games, and many eurogamers play in groups rather than pairs. Wargame designers have only recently started putting out more games that cater to this, but there have been a few such designs in the past as well. One older design that has recently found a new home at Dan Versen Games is the Down In Flames card game. This game features WWII aerial combat and can accommodate up to six players out of the box. The publisher also sells additional decks of cards to allow for even bigger games without having to buy the whole game again. I've found that most gamers willing to give this one a try end up liking it.

More recent designs have come from Clash of Arms games. Their "War Is Hell" series of card games allow for two to four players to refight famous battles in a reasonable time frame. I haven't actually played any of them yet, but have a copy of their Fires of Midway game that uses the system, and am looking forward to giving it a try.

Another reason that many eurogamers don't give wargames a try is the length of time it takes to play the game. Eurogamers generally want a game that at most takes a couple of hours to play. Traditionally, many wargames take several hours, usually lasting over multiple sessions to complete, but most of the games I've mentioned in this post come in at 90 minutes or less. The biggest exception is Twilight Struggle which comes in at three hours, which I've found to be the outside limit for the average game night.

One area where wargames haven't caught up to eurogames yet is quality of production. Dollar for dollar, your average eurogame is going to have higher production value than your average wargame. Most wargames still have cardstock or even paper boards, and cardboard chits that you have to punch out of a sheet, leaving little dangly bits on the corners. The original printings of Twilight Struggle were like this, and it was only the most recent printing that had a mounted board and more attractive counters. Despite this, most wargames cost as much or more than their eurogame counterparts. This is largely due to economies of scale where eurogames sell many more copies than do wargames.

Even this is starting to change though, especially for those games that wargame companies think can do well with eurogamers. I already mentioned Twilight Struggle being reprinted with higher quality components, and there are other games receiving similar treatment.

All of this means that if you are interested in the more complex eurogames, you may want to take another look at some of the games being published by wargame companies.

Black Powder

2011-05-30T14:21:00.000-05:00

This is one of those posts I started a while ago, last June to be precise. I read the rules to Black Powder around the same time that the rules for Warhammer Fantasy 8th Edition came out, which is why I make a few comparisons between the two. I like Black Powder a lot, although it's unlikely I'll ever get to play. I'll get into why that's the case later on.

Black Powder is a game covering the black powder era of warfare during the 18th and 19th Centuries. This covers many famous conflicts including the American Revolutionary War, the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War, the Crimean War, the Zulu War, and many others.

The game is written by Rick Priestly and Jervis Johnson, best known for their association with Games Workshop. With this in mind I expected to encounter a typical GW style game, and instead found myself pleasantly surprised to find something quite different. To start with, there's no "buckets o' dice" mechanic here. Most combats look like they won't involve any more than half a dozen dice per side to resolve.

There's also none of the typical "tabletop carnage" involved in GW games, where players find themselves removing models from the table nearly as fast as they put them on there in the first place. Casualties are kept track of by placing tokens next to a unit, not removing models from it. Models don't come off the table until a unit is completely routed, at which point the entire unit is removed. I like this because after taking the time to assemble and paint an army, you want those models to actually stay on the table for a while.

Unfortunately, there are several factors that will keep me from ever playing this game. The biggest one is simply that I don't know anyone else around here who would be enthusiastic enough about playing to keep me enthusiastic enough to build an army. I'm past the point of being able to be the driving force behind generating interest in a new miniatures game. I just don't have the free time to evangelize for a new game.

Second, I don't have an army for the period. I'd love to put together a Civil War force using some of the Perry Miniatures plastics, but without someone to play against I don't really need to start another miniatures project that I would never finish.

Third, I don't have a big enough table. The game calls for tables ranging from 9' x 5' to 12' x 6', which are quite a bit larger than the standard 6' x 4' tables that are available around here. I have the room to put a bigger table in the garage, but would have to assemble it first.

So, why do I want to play this game instead of a more popular "big army" game like Warhammer Fantasy? There's a few reasons. First is the "herohammer" factor. In Fantasy it often all comes down to the character models, and this doesn't appear to be any less true in 8th edition. If I'm playing an army game, I want the army to matter. If I want individuals to be the deciding factor then I'll play a skirmish game.

Second, there's command and control. The one place that individuals should matter, is the one that Fantasy doesn't even model: command and control. With a few special exceptions based on the army you're playing, units in Fantasy do exactly what you want them to. That rarely happened in history, and I've found it's generally more entertaining to play a game where things don't always go according to plan.

I do realize that Warhammer Fantasy has a basic morale system, but as it exists in that game, I don't really count that as command and control. Units still do exactly what you want them to up to the point that they run away after taking too much damage and failing a morale check.

Third, the army construction. I want to play a game where you win on the tabletop, not in a database. I'm really starting to dislike army construction as a part of the game. I'm starting to prefer scenario based games where the forces are either based on history, or simply designated by the scenario designer.

These issues are absent in Black Powder. There are no "heroes" modeled in Black Powder. There is a command and control system that can lead to units not following your orders, and instead doing something else entirely. There are some very basic point values in an appendix for judging balance, but Black Powder is not an army construction game. It's a game intended to be played using individual scenarios either designed by a neutral umpire, or mutually created by the opposing players.

Overall, it's designed to be fun. Invite some friends over, have a few beers, and play out a scenario not to win at all costs, but just to see what happens.

Not that I don't like a competitive game, but it seems like all there is to the Warhammer games most of the time is the competition. Black Powder seems to bring more than that to the table.

While it's unlikely that I'll ever play Black Powder, the designers recently released Hail Caesar, an adaptation of the Black Powder rules to the ancients period. Given that I already have a partly assembled Roman army, it's much more likely that I'll eventually be able to get a game in using Hail Caesar, although it's still a longshot.

I don't have a copy of Hail Caesar yet, but after I get a chance to read it I'll try to post my thoughts on it, and I'll try to do it less than a year after I read it.

Where are my Posts?

2011-05-30T13:17:00.000-05:00

My posts have been far less frequent this year than last year, but if anything I've actually been commenting on more things, it just hasn't been here. If you're crazy enough to care about what I have to say you should also check out my posts on goodreads.com and my comments on games on boardgamegeek.com. My comments there are a lot shorter than my posts here, but I try to make at least some comment on every book I read and every game I play.

I also have a number of drafts saved that I haven't posted for one reason or another. Some are simply rants that I had to write, but thought twice about posting. Others have a timeliness factor that has long since passed. Still, there are several that I hope to post once I get around to either finishing them or doing an edit.

One of the reasons that some of these posts are languishing in the draft folder is that I'm more self-conscious about what I post since linking this blog to my Facebook account. Before, only those that chose to subscribe to my blog were hit with updates, but now everyone on my facebook list, a minority of which are gamers, get spammed with my updates. I thought about un-linking the blog, but response I got to that idea indicates that some of my Facebook friends follow the blog through Facebook now, so I'm going to hold off on doing that.

Instead, I'm going to try to get over my self-consciousness and just post to the blog. If you're one of my Facebook friends and you've never found anything posted here interesting, then you may just want to ignore my NetworkedBlogs updates. It should be simple enough to do.

Force on Force

2011-05-23T13:23:00.000-05:00

This is an interesting set of skirmish level rules for modern warfare. I'm not sure how accurate my information is on the history of this game, but from what I've seen it appears to have its origins as Ambush Alley. Ambush Alley is apparently a game designed to model the kind of modern asymmetrical conflicts typified by recent US conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, where conventional forces find themselves fighting against irregular insurgents. Force on Force takes those rules and expands them to allow for more conventional conflicts between two regular forces, or conflicts with a mix of regular and irregular forces on either or both sides. The new Force on Force book from Osprey appears to be the second edition of this game, with the first published by Ambush Alley games.

The new book is the same kind of high quality production that Osprey became known for with Field of Glory, at least in terms of materials. Sturdy hardcover binding, full color printing, and lavish illustrations. Although I haven't playtested them, the rules seem just as solid as the physical book. Keep in mind that the game is purely scenario driven, and not point based. The rules are meant to reflect the realities of combat in a playable manner, not provide balanced matchups for tournament play. They appear to have accomplished that goal.

Unfortunately, the book is marred by poor editing. Numerous minor typos can be found scattered throughout the book. There's also a handful of more serious errors that will require errata. Most notably two missing charts which have already been posted on Ambush Alley's site in an errata document. Fortunately, both charts are related to special rules unlikely to come up in the average game.

There are three editors listed, but two of them appear to be one of the author and his wife. I hope that in the future Osprey will consider bringing in a professional game editor to do at least one pass though their core rules, if not every supplement they publish. Such an editor would have caught most of the problems with this book before it went to press.

Still, I'm happy with my purchase. A solid set of rules with all the data you need to play scenarios set in the "modern" era, basically from the first Gulf War forward. Supplements should push this back to WWII. There's already a Vietnam supplement planned for later in the year.

It uses a unique initiative system where one side controls the initiative throughout a turn, while the other side can only react to the actions of the first player. Whether or not the non-initiative side can gain the initiative in the next turn depends on the scenario being played, and the results of the current turn. This appears to result in a game that is much more interactive than the typical igo/ugo, or even that found in alternating unit activations.

The overall design is focused on affects rather than causes. Much of the hardware is abstracted. There are no lists of small arms. What counts is the skill and morale of the soldiers fighting, not their gear. If there is a true disparity in gear (such as a unit with bolt action rifles facing one with assault rifles) that will be reflected in die modifiers, either to the number of dice rolled, or the type of dice rolled.

Speaking of dice, the game does not limit itself to the d6. It uses d6s, d8s, d10s and d12s; and recommends you have at least ten of each. The "nearly universal" mechanic for using these dice is 4+ for success, with the type and number of dice being used the main differentiator in quality, rather than a host of + or - modifiers (although they occasionally creep in).

The core rules are for infantry, but the game also covers vehicles, airmobile operations, air support, artillery, and a host of special situations. These latter include such things as cavalry, IEDs, civilians on the battlefield, and much more.

Admittedly, I'm not sure I'm fully comfortable playing games set in most of this time period. A lot of people have issues with wargames that cover recent conflicts, and my own comfort zone begins roughly a decade in the past. For example, I'm more or less OK with playing out scenarios set in the first Gulf War, but scenarios set during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (covered by the first scenario book for the game) are still a little iffy for me, while the current conflict in Afghanistan is pretty much right out (covered by the second scenario book out for the game).

As a result, I probably won't get a chance to give this rules set any actual play until they start covering some of the less recent conflicts.

Third Time's the Charm

2011-05-17T14:23:00.000-05:00

HeroQuest has had a bit of a rocky history. The name goes back to 1979 when it was first mentioned as an upcoming product in the original RuneQuest rules. That product never came out, and ten years later the name was taken by Milton Bradley for the board game they published in cooperation with Games Workshop. Another decade passed and a set of RPG rules was created that the designers finally felt was worthy of the HeroQuest name. Unfortunately, Hasbro still held the rights to the name having bought out Milton Bradley, so they called it Hero Wars instead. Finally, when the second edition came out a few years later, Hasbro had let the rights to the name lapse, so it was snatched up and the first HeroQuest RPG was published (although it was actually the second edition of the game).

HeroQuest and I have also had a rocky history. I have never read the Hero Wars book, although I do own some of the supplements for it. I have read the second edition. I read it about five years ago, before I had any experience with narrative style RPGs. I read the whole book, but really didn't "get" the system. The only reason it didn't get sold off prior to my marriage was because of the information in it about Glorantha.

In brief, Glorantha is a fantasy world that is distinctly different from most other such worlds in gaming. It is a world where magic is commonplace and where mythology accurately portrays the world around you. It's a setting that I've always had an interest in, and is the reason I became interested in HeroQuest in the first place.

Two years ago I decided to give the book a second look. Largely this was because I was starting to become more acquainted with narrative style games and remembered enough of what I'd read to recognize that HeroQuest fell into this category. Before starting in for a second read, I checked online for any errata that was out there, and I discovered that a new edition of HeroQuest had just come out. I decided not to re-read the second edition and ordered a copy of the third edition instead.

Once I had a copy of the third edition I started reading it, but only got a few pages in before giving up. This new third edition was still something I didn't quite "get" and the fact that the rules had been stripped out of the Gloranthan setting and made into a generic rules set meant that I had less interest in it.

Finally, about a month ago I decided to give the book one more try. This time I made it all the way through, and have come out rather impressed by the game. I attribute my success in making my way through the book to my better understanding of narrative games in general, specifically Fate and Burning Wheel, and to my increased familiarity with the author's "voice."

The author is Robin D. Laws, and my increased familiarity with him is due to a combination of following him on Twitter and reading Hamlet's Hit Points. There were only a few points in HeroQuest where being familiar with his voice was really helpful, but it did make it easier to get through those concepts. I wish I could give some specific examples of this, but I didn't think to take notes at the time, and can't find the specific points now.

As for Hamlet's Hit Points, you can definitely see some of the concepts from that book in the chapter on Playing Stories. He uses some different terminology, but the concepts are the same.

Mechanically, characters in HeroQuest consist solely of abilities that are defined by the player and GM. There are no fixed attributes or skill lists in the game. This was one of the concepts I used to have difficulty with, but having played Fate I now recognize them as being similar to aspects from that game. The main differences in HeroQuest are that characters consist solely of these player defined abilities, and they are given numerical ratings.

Each ability is assigned a rating from 1 to 20, but 20 is not the highest level an ability can have. Instead, when you raise an ability to 21 it wraps around and becomes a level 1 ability with one level of Mastery (the game uses a special character to show levels of Mastery, but I can't duplicate that shorthand with the character sets I have available in this blog).

Every roll in the game is an opposed roll. The GM sets a difficulty from 1 to 20 (possibly with levels of Mastery), then the player rolls against his ability while the GM rolls against the difficulty. Equal to or under the number being rolled against is a success, over it is a failure, a natural 1 is a critical success, and a natural 20 is a fumble. The two results are compared against each other which results in a range from complete victory (critical vs. fumble) to complete defeat (fumble vs. critical). Ties are resolved with the lowest roll winning a marginal victory.

Two things can alter this result, levels of Mastery and Hero Points. If one side of a contest has a greater level of Mastery than the other, then that side can shift his result a number of times equal to the difference in his levels of mastery. So if that side rolled a failure, but has one more mastery level than the other side, then they can shift the result to a success. Hero Points work the same way, with each point spent shifting the result one level. In both cases, if one side is already at critical success, then they can use additional shifts to lower the result of the opposing side.

Unfortunately, Hero Points are the one system that I really dislike in HeroQuest. The reason I dislike them is that they use one of my most hated game mechanics: combining experience points with some other form of expendable resource. I despise this mechanic, and could write a separate piece as to why (something I thought I'd already done, but as I can't find it in the archives here, I will probably write one shortly). For now I'll simply say that I don't find it to be an interesting choice as to whether or not to use experience for temporary gain within play or to hold on to it to improve the character permanently later.

I dislike this mechanic so much, that it would normally be a deal breaker for me as to whether or not I'd be willing to play a particular game that includes it, but I'm liking the rest of the system enough that I still want to run it anyway.

That's all there is to the basics of the game. The rest of the rules help clarify edge cases and special circumstances. The book finishes with a chapter on applying all of this to a game set in Glorantha, but is aimed towards those already familiar with the setting. It appears to be more of a stopgap measure until they can get further books published (there are a couple out now, but I have not yet read them).

One of the most interesting aspects of the game is character creation. Since a character consists solely of abilities, it is possible to just create a character by listing the abilities you want and then assigning points to them, but that's not the only way you can do it. The most interesting way of doing it is to write a description of your character that fills 100 words or less.

For example, if I were to create a character for a Star Wars game using HeroQuest, I might write the following:

Han Solo is a smuggler who made the Kessel run in twelve parsecs. He is always accompanied by his co-pilot, Chewbacca. He is an excellent pilot of their ship, the Millenium Falcon, which he keeps flying by jury-rigging repairs. He claims to be in it for the money, but he also has a heart of gold. He tends to shoot first when threatened, and is a crack shot with his Blastech-44. He’s also an Imperial Academy graduate, and a competent starship gunner. He owes money to Jabba the Hutt. He tends to dress like a scruffy-looking nerf herder.

Out of this I can get the following abilities:

smuggler

made the Kessel run in twelve parsecs

Chewbacca (a sidekick)

pilot

Millenium Falcon (tech)

jury-rigging

in it for the money

heart of gold

shoot first when threatened

crack shot

Blastech-44 (tech)

Imperial Academy graduate

starship gunner

Jabba the Hutt (enemy)

scruffy-looking nerf herder

Some of these abilities are obvious, like pilot or crack shot, but others may require some defining on the part of the player or GM, either before or during play.

Next I assign a value of 17 to one ability, 13 to the rest, and then assign 20 more points wherever I want to.

One of the great things about this system is that it's hard to think of a fictional character that I couldn't recreate using it, which also means that it's hard to think of a fictional genre that can't be run with a little creativity.

The simplicity of the system might make long term campaigns problematical, but certainly for short runs or one shots this should work pretty well. I'm looking forward to giving it a try.

Awesome Miniatures Gaming Room

2011-04-08T07:06:00.003-05:00

Aside from a little bit of Dystopian Wars, I'm pretty much out of miniatures gaming at the moment, but I just had to share a link to this guy's gaming setup.

Goodreads

2011-03-20T14:56:00.002-05:00

I've been using Goodreads for a while now, and it's one of the reasons that my posting on the blog has lessened. Book reviews I would have posted here in the past I've been posting to Goodreads instead. So, I've decided to experiment some with cross-posting some of the reviews I do. We'll see how it works out.

I don't always put as much care into my Goodreads reviews as I put into my blogging, so I may end up not liking the result, but given how little I've been blogging lately, I figure something is better than nothing.

One problem that I've already noticed is that it's double-posting the update to Facebook, but I think that's a problem I can live with if I have to.

Review: Smallville Role Playing Game

2011-03-20T14:55:00.003-05:00

Smallville Role Playing Game by Josh Roby

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A big departure from previous games using the Cortex system, this game has some very interesting concepts that center the story around the relationships between the characters rather than the powers and abilities of the characters. This better reflects the nature of the show and opens up some interesting possibilities for gameplay.

Unfortunately, the book is in dire need of an index. The lack of an index is only partly mitigated by a decent table of contents. The book could also use a good glossary. We ran a character generation session and had a hard time determining the difference between different terms, requiring much page flipping.

Overall though, I'm looking forward to giving this game a try, something I didn't expect to be saying of a game based on Smallville.

View all my reviews

Why I Hesitate to Get Into Licensed Games

2011-02-04T10:32:00.000-06:00

Apparently it's the "in" thing to bash licensed games at the moment, and I don't mean to jump on that bandwagon, but I first drafted this post back in November of last year and let it cool for a while before posting. I still have some concerns about licensed games that I haven't really seen mentioned elsewhere yet, so I thought I'd share them. Of course, I don't spend a lot of time reading RPG forums and such, so it may have been covered elsewhere and I just haven't seen it.

This is not a comment on the quality of licensed games. Some of the best games out there are based on licensed properties. The Dresden Files RPG is hot. The Smallville and Leverage RPGs have gotten some excellent reviews. Unlike the days of TSR's Adventures of Indiana Jones RPG, games using licensed properties today tend to actually be pretty good.

The problem is the nature of licensing. Specifically, the fact that licenses eventually end. This has always been the case, but in the past the end of a license was not something that had a very big impact on the consumer. In most cases, if a license was profitable it was kept, and if it wasn't then it was dropped. From the consumer's perspective, if a license was lost it was identical to what would happen if a line was ended for any other reason: new stuff stopped coming out and old stuff disappeared from the retail shelves.

With the increasing role of the internet and ebooks, things have changed. When a license ends, all support for that product usually ends, as the licensee is often legally obligated to end that support. When WotC dropped the Star Wars license, they took down most of their online content, and there was a lot of that content. Whole chapters that were cut from the printed books were posted online. Some or all of this is now available elsewhere, but finding it can be tricky, and hosting it is potentially dangerous should Lucasfilm ever decide to play hardball (WotC ended up keeping the forums for the game on their site, and after some random searching I was able to find links on them to fan created compilations of content formerly hosted by WotC).

Now, WotC is one of the few companies that doesn't make PDF copies of its books available, so that wasn't an issue with the Star Wars RPG, but the more recent demise of the Conan RPG from Mongoose, and the Battlestar Galactica and Serenity RPGs from Margaret Weiss Games, points out that when a license is gone, it's usually gone for everything, including PDFs.

When most non-licensed RPGs go out of print, even if the publisher decides not to re-print the game, it's usually still available for purchase as a PDF. That's not the case for licensed games. I wouldn't have even known that any of these games were going away if not for being bombarded with reminders that the PDF products would soon be unavailable.

This makes a game ending due to a lost license a distinct event compared to a game ending for any other reason. If a company decides to stop printing new product, they still usually leave PDF versions for sale (and sometimes even publish new product solely in PDF format). When a company goes out of business, the rights to the games they published usually revert to someone who can still sell the PDF versions.

While less visible than before, the games are still out there, unlike licensed games which virtually disappear after the license ends.

While no RPG is ever truly dead as long as there are copies of the rules out there and people willing to play them, games that remain easily available as PDFs are certainly more healthy than those that don't have them available. To me, this potentially makes getting into a licensed game a riskier proposition.

For example, Leverage has been sold as an extremely hackable game by one of its designers, Rob Donoghue of Fate fame, but I'm extremely leery of getting into a system that I expect to be commercially available for only a couple of years before becoming completely unavailable. This is partly because historically, it's often been several years after I get a new game before I'm actually able to play it. While that has changed thanks to our Magpie Gaming Night group, it's still something that's very much in the back of my head.

So what's the solution? I could say "don't do licensed games" but I think that's both unrealistic and unfair. A lot of people like licensed games, including me. There are properties that I want to use in gaming, and I don't always want to have to hack my own system to do so. Licensed games also often make for the most interesting sourcebooks for the properties they are based on. The Star Wars expanded universe arguably got its real start from the original Star Wars RPG.

I think that a better solution has been presented by Green Ronin in how they are doing the DC Adventures RPG. They've published a complete licensed game, but also published the exact same game system without the DC intellectual property as Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition. So, when the DC license inevitably goes away, people will still be able to get into the game (assuming that the game hasn't moved on to 4th edition, but that's a whole different set of issues).

Margaret Weiss Productions started with a similar process, creating the Cortex system as a standalone set of rules (if only in house at first), then adapting it to their licensed properties, but that's no longer really the case. Their two most recent games, Smallville and Leverage, have hacked the core rules so much that they are, in my opinion, barely recognizable as being related to the Cortex system, and were those games to go away tomorrow, it would take considerable work to run them using only the Cortex core rulebook.

To summarize, my concern with licensed games is that when I come back to a system in a couple of years I want to be able to get a new player into the game. There's often no easy way to do that with a licensed game that has lost the license.

Christmas Shopping

2010-12-20T12:11:00.002-06:00

Just a quick link to my article for local online news source Ozarks Unbound: http://www.ozarksunbound.com/the-best-of-boardgaming-a-2010-holiday-gaming-guide/13121

(apologies to my Facebook friends who are being spammed with this link twice)

WoW Cataclysm: Initial Impressions

2010-12-08T12:34:00.000-06:00

I'm Impressed. The leveling experience, at least what I've seen of it so far, offers a much more interactive storyline in the sense that what you do actually impacts the world around you. For example, when you defeat the "big bad" the "big bad" isn't still hanging around in the same spot the next time you pass by, the "big bad" is gone! The storyline is still on rails, even more so than before, but the actions you take have a visible impact on the world around you.

I'm not sure yet how exactly Blizzard does this. It would appear in some cases that I'm seeing things in the zone differently from what other people are seeing, while in other cases I may be in a completely different version of the zone. Whatever technique they are using it creates the illusion that my actions are actually impacting on the world, and the transitions are seamless. There are no loading screens after a major change.

So far I've been running with the new goblin race, but my brief experiment with a dwarf shows that the same changes have been applied, at least in part, to the older races as well. This kind of storytelling in a MMOG has been tried before, something similar was done in the Conan MMOG, but it seems to be better integrated here. Once again, Blizzard has taken ideas from other companies, polished them, refined them, and then integrated them into WoW to better the overall experience.

I should point out that only your actions make a difference, not your choices. You have no choice whether or not to kill the "big bad", as if you don't you'll be stuck. It's for that reason that i say that the storyline is even more on rails than before, and I can see where this could be a problem should you choose to level up another character of the same race as there will be even less variation in the paths you can choose. A common tactic in the past would be to switch to a different starting area entirely, and I'm not sure that is an option any more.

Another potential problem is that a bugged quest is more critical. If you can't get past a storyline quest you're stuck. I nearly ran into this once with my goblin where I had to defeat a "big bad" that was acting as if it were stuck whenever I attacked from range and that my pet wouldn't attack in melee. Since I'm playing a hunter, my inherent melee attack wasn't enough to defeat the "big bad" and I was stuck until the "big bad" partially reset and my pet at least decided to join in (although I still couldn't attack from range).

We'll just have to wait and see what, if any, effects these problems present down the road. In the meantime I'm having a blast with the game.

Will this cause me to return to WoW with the same level of commitment I showed to the original launch where I played for months and was one of the first to hit the original level cap of 60? Probably not. At this point MMOGs are really just another game for me. I run through all or a portion of the leveling content and then end my subscription since I've never had any interest in the endgame content of any MMOG with the possible exception of the old Star Wars Galaxy MMOG. I no longer buy anything but month to month subscriptions because I know that I'm unlikely to still be playing three months after release, and so far I haven't seen anything about Cataclysm that would change that pattern.

An Open Letter to Podcasters Who Accept Sponsorships

2010-11-22T10:29:00.000-06:00

Repetition is not your friend. A certain amount of repetition, particularly of a sponsor's motto or tag line, helps establish product identity in the minds of listeners, but there's a point at which this repetition becomes counter productive. You don't want your listeners to cringe when they hear the beginning of a commercial because they've already heard it a dozen times or more.

Some of you may have read an article about how advertisements that are annoying are actually more effective. This can be true for establishing name recognition for a new product or business, or for reinforcing it in an older product like laundry detergent where a customer has to make a purchase decision while looking at a wall full of similar products in a super market. Chances are if you're running a gaming podcast that your advertisers aren't selling products that you buy in the super market.

There's a point at which repetitive advertising actually starts to have a negative effect. Either it actively causes customers to associate "don't like" with your sponsor, or else they simply stop listening to the podcast due to the repetition (perhaps as a contributing rather than a primary factor), at which point they hear neither you nor your sponsors.

So what's too much repetition? For starters, if you simply read or ad-lib a short script you're probably OK. The natural variation in tone between readings can help to mitigate the negative aspects of repetition, even if the words are exactly the same. This assumes that it is truly a short script. Under fifteen seconds is ideal, over thirty is generally unacceptable. If you want to run an infomercial for your sponsor do it once, not every episode.

If you pre-record your ads then for the sake of both your listeners and your sponsors change them every once in a while! How often you do so can vary, but one hard and fast rule is that if a date is mentioned in the ad, and it's past that date, then you should change the ad! That's the most obvious subset of a larger rule: if the ad is inaccurate, then change the ad!

Two examples from podcasts that will remain nameless:

1) An advertisement for a piece of software that was to undergo an update in a few months began running on a podcast. That same ad was still running a year after the updates had been made, but the ad still referred to those updates in the future tense.

2) An advertisement for a podcast that aired for quite some time on another podcast. It mentioned the hosts of the show. The ad was still running well over a year after one of the hosts had left the show and been replaced.

In the latter case the ad was created by the sponsor, so it may have been the case that they asked for a new spot and never received it, but they may have simply never bothered to ask.

Here's another rule of thumb: if you're mocking your own ads, then it's probably time to change them. Doubly so if you're mocking them on the show!

A tip for those who like pre-recording their ads: If you really want to pre-record your ads, and don't want to have to come back and change them very often, then record more than one at a time. Record two or three for one sponsor and then alternate them between shows. Having to listen to the same ad every second or third episode is far more tolerable than every episode. If you podcast frequently, once a week or more, then consider not just rotating ads, but rotating sponsors. Of course, you need multiple sponsors for this to work, and it has to be a part of whatever contract you have with your sponsors, but it can be extremely effective at reducing the negative effects of repetition.

So where do I get off offering this advice? Mostly just as an interested consumer, but I do actually have some limited experience writing ad copy for radio professionally, and received some equally limited education on the subject back in my college days. Take that for what it's worth.

I also want to say that I realize that podcasters do this for the love of their hobby and of podcasting, and that for the most part it costs them money out of their own pocket to do it, even with sponsors. I appreciate their efforts. I offer this advice both with the hope of making their shows better and to help their sponsors get better value for their sponsorship.

Adventure in the age of Napoleon

2010-11-19T11:56:00.000-06:00

I am a big fan of both the Aubrey-Maturin novels and the Hornblower novels. These tales of naval adventure set in the Napoleonic era are great stories on their own, and have provided at least partial inspiration for such things as Star Trek and the Honor Harrington science fiction novels. While I never finished the series, I also enjoyed the adventures of Richard Sharpe, a fictional soldier in the British Army during the Napoleonic wars.

The Napoleonic period has provided the inspiration for numerous adventure stories over the years, and I've often thought about trying to run a roleplaying game set in the period, but despite running across a few systems that were either designed for doing so or could easily be adapted to it, I never really found one that I felt could do it justice, until now.

The problem with previous attempts is that they tended to be traditional simulationist RPGs. The games modeled combat well, but the genre of Napoleonic fiction isn't really about the combat, but about the characters. It can be fun to read about weathering the cape or engaging in a tense duel of sailing skills followed by the crash of broadsides, but actually rolling dice to simulate such things tends to be a rather dry experience in most cases.

Neil Gow seems to recognize this, because for the most part he has abandoned simulation in favor of storytelling. In his twin games Duty & Honour and Beat to Quarters he has adopted a system that is more similar to Fiasco than it is to Runequest. Most actions are resolved by either a single test or a short series of tests using standard playing cards. Win or lose, the players then get to narrate what actually happened based on the results of the test. The flip of the cards simply provide a framework around which to build the fiction.

That fiction starts with the building of characters. Players create a concept for their character, deciding what role they want to play in their regiment or aboard their ship, then they pick a nationality, religion and social station appropriate to their chosen role and concept. Finally they generate a number of life experiences that have defined their characters.

This step is similar to that found in games using the Fate system, but with an element of randomness. Card draws determine what kind of mechanical advancements the character gains from the experience, but it's up to the player to define the specifics and narrate the fiction surrounding the experience.

Midway through this step (after the players have generated their pre-recruitment life experiences) the group as a whole creates their regiment or ship. As part of this they define some of the NPC members of the regiment or ship, including their attitudes towards the players.

Then the players generate their post-recruitment life experiences. Once this is done the players have characters with a history that ties them into the setting and it's time to start the first mission.

Missions are what drive the game, and there are two types. The first is the military or naval mission. This mission is designed by the GM and usually takes the form of the official orders that the regiment or ship receives. The GM sets the reward for success and the consequence for failure, as well as the difficulty involved in completing the mission. The group as a whole seeks to accomplish this mission.

The other type of mission is the player mission. Each player designs their own mission that they will attempt to accomplish at the same time that the group works to complete the military or naval mission. Players set their own rewards and have a say in the difficulty level based on the reward they pick, but the GM still has a say on difficulty and determines the penalty for failure.

In our first game the naval mission was to carry orders from England to the Admiral in charge of the Mediterranean Fleet. The reward would be increased reputation with the Admiral, and failure would be a loss of a single naval reputation each player had, representing the shame incurred in being unable to complete such a mission. I decided that the party would need to successfully overcome four obstacles, called tests, on their way to accomplish the mission (the first part of determining difficulty), and that if they failed to overcome more than two tests along the way, that their entire mission would fail as the orders would have arrived too late to make a difference (this is the deadline, and is the other half of determining difficulty).

Each player then designed their own personal mission. As an example, one of the players decided that they wanted to increase their wealth through gambling. The reward of a wealth increase determined the number of obstacles that had to be overcome, in this case four. As GM, I then decided that any more than two failures would mean that the character had lost his stake money, and would result in a decrease in wealth.

None of the tests were determined ahead of time, although some of them could have been. Instead I simply made them up on the fly. They began by having problems with the weather, and while successfully overcoming them, they were forced to put into Gibraltar to restock on some necessary supplies. Unable to convince the supply clerks at Gibraltar to part with all that the ship needed, the ship was forced to head to the coast of Africa to seek the last of their supplies. They found their supplies, but then had to avoid a Barbary corsair on their way to deliver the orders to the Admiral.

The resulting story was satisfying all around and really seemed to capture the feel of the Napoleonic fiction I'm used to, even though I was playing with a group of players that largely hadn't experienced the genre aside from maybe watching the Master & Commander movie from a few years ago. I don't think that a more simulationist style game would have been able to do that.

I should also point out that fans of the game have already started doing hacks of the system for other genres, including other historical periods and science fiction. Like Fiasco, it appears to be a very hackable system.

If you're interested in the game there's basically three ways of getting it right now (that I'm aware of), the first is getting a pdf from RPGNow.com. If you want a hardcopy you have two choices. You can order direct from Omnihedron Games, but they are based in England. The other option is to get it through the Lulu print on demand service. For now those appear to be the only options, although I would love to see the game get wider distribution.

Fiasco

2010-10-17T20:30:00.000-05:00

We played Fiasco as a quick pick-up game at Magpie Night after the planned session of My Life With Master sort of melted down due to GM burn out. I totally understand how that happens as it's what happened to me with the last session of our Dresden Files mini-arc.

I have to say that Fiasco pretty much works as advertised, which is a GM-less storytelling game that takes around two hours to play. We had four players with myself as the only one that had read the book and the session took just a little over the advertised two hours.

We used the Lucky Strike playset and created a story involving a hulking goldbricking bully, a fresh faced recruit with a gambling addiction, a conniving supply sergeant and a French prostitute. We basically ended up with two parallel scams going on, one involving the supply sergeant and the recruit trying to steal from the locals and the other involving the bully and the prostitute attempting to recover a cache of stolen goods hidden behind enemy lines. Connecting the two threads were a case of cognac and a truck that was needed to pull off both scams.

Of course, both plans ended in near disaster, but somewhat surprisingly everyone made it out alive. The bully ended up getting a medal after nearly getting shot to death while going after the cache. The prostitute ended up marrying the bully and moving to the states after having managed to secret away part of the cache, something she never bothered to tell her new husband. The fresh raced recruit also got shot up, but survived and went on with his life neither better off nor worse off than he began the story. Only the supply sergeant ended up with a bad ending. A final twist at the end revealed him as a German agent, but it turned out that his superiors weren't happy with his performance and threw him in prison where he stayed until "liberated" by Americans, one of which recognized him as the "supply sergeant" allowing him to go free, albeit without job or prospects.

This is definitely a storytelling game more than an RPG, but everyone enjoyed it so I'm sure we'll play it again before too long. One player has expressed interest in using "The Ice" playset included in the book, while another player is already working on their own playset!

Kingmaker Session 1

2010-10-14T14:16:00.000-05:00

We had our first session of the Pathfinder Kingmaker campaign last week, and it went well. I was pleased with how smoothly everything ran, especially considering that three of the four players have more experience with D&D 3.5/Pathfinder than I do.

Of course, I probably put more prep time into this game than all the others I've run for Magpie Night combined, so that most likely had a bit to do with it. Most of that prep time was spent reading books. The Core Rules, the first Kingmaker module, and bits and pieces of a lot of other Pathfinder books.

I also spent some time putting together information for the campaign wiki on Obsidian Portal. So far that seems to be a worthwhile tool, if only for providing a convenient means to message the players about game issues. I don't think I even have email addresses for everyone playing, but they all have accounts on Obsidian Portal, so I can just PM them about anything that needs to be handled.

Another tool that's working out well so far is Hero Lab. Entering characters into it uncovered a couple of errors that probably wouldn't have been caught otherwise. I'm not making full use of it yet, but may try using it during sessions in the future. So far every "error" we've caught in the program has turned out to be either an error we made in understanding the rules, or an error I made in data entry.

One thing I won't be doing is using this blog to document the progress of the campaign. I'll be using the Adventure Log on Obsidian Portal for that. Any discussion of the campaign here will be like this post, discussing the tools and process involved rather than the campaign itself.

I will say that I'm looking forward to the next session!

Too Much of a Good Thing

2010-10-04T15:42:00.001-05:00

I've taken a glance at the new 8th Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles rules and they look good. I'm especially pleased that guess ranges are gone. Guess ranges are the dumbest idea ever introduced to miniatures gaming and I'm glad to see them finally gone from Warhammer Fantasy Battles. All hail pre-measuring!

I could do a whole essay on why pre-measuring is a good thing, but there's no real need now since guess measurements are finally on the way out. That's not what this post is about. This post is about why despite really liking the directions being taken by Games Workshop in 8th Edition, I'll probably never play it.

I had high hopes. I totally planned on putting together 500 points and taking it to the release event at the FLGS. Then, the night before the event, I had the realization: it was scheduled for the afternoon. See, I can't do afternoons anymore, not even on weekends. This is the primary thing keeping me from having played more than a couple miniatures games since moving back to Arkansas. The people playing around here more often than not get together in the afternoons for pickup games, whether on weekends or on weekdays, and the events are always held in the afternoons.

This is understandable. Most people are available on weekend afternoons. It's just my bad luck that I'm not usually one of them. It's my worse luck that I keep forgetting that I'm not usually one of them.

I've semi-committed myself to at least two or three miniatures events only to back out at the last minute when I realize that I can't actually be there at the required time because I'd have to leave half way through it.

If this is starting to sound like a whinge about my inability to play miniatures games, it's not meant to be. Well, not really. I know that if I really wanted to play miniatures games that I could find a way to do so, but I've also come to realize that while I'm an omnivorous gamer, I do have a definite preference hierarchy amongst my hobby games. At the top of that hierarchy are board games. Next on the list are RPGs, and only after that are miniatures games.

My preference hierarchy hasn't always been ordered like this. Playing miniatures was at the top of my list for the larger part of the past decade, but that simply isn't the case anymore.

If I have to give up the miniatures in order to keep playing the board games and RPGs then so be it. I still hope to eventually get some miniatures games back into my schedule, but I'm not going to worry about it too much if it doesn't happen. I'll still follow the trends online, and read the rules, because that's what I do, but for now I more or less accept that is probably all that I'll be doing.

If I do get to play more miniatures games it will most likely be with skirmish games like Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game or Malifaux, not with the big army games like Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Like all day roleplaying sessions, or a solid weekend playing a MMOG, those big games are just too much of a good thing.

Magpie Kingmaker

2010-10-01T12:59:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Magpie RPG group is starting a Kingmaker campaign for Pathfinder. A Magpie campaign is a bit of a contradiction in terms, but it sticks with our theme of trying a little bit of everything, even if that includes a full campaign.

We're actually just committed to the first scenario or two. After that we'll judge how everyone liked it, and continue if the consensus is that it's worth going forward. I'm really excited about it so far. The Pathfinder rules seem to be a solid evolution of the Advanced D&D lineage, and Kingmaker's combination of sandbox play and empire building is pretty close to my ideal campaign.

I'm also pleased with the group of characters that the players have decided on. Some of the details are still being fleshed out, but so far we have the following: Neutral Good Gnome Oracle of Heavens, Lawful Good Elven Alchemist, Chaotic Neutral Elven Air Wizard (although I believe this is being changed to a Half-Elven Sorcerer with an Elemental bloodline), and Chaotic Good Human Ranger (I believe he's planning to multi-class with Fighter). Most are still tweaking their characters, so the exact composition is still up in the air.

We've got three of the four classic roles filled, and the fourth role of rogue doesn't appear to be that important in the Kingmaker campaign. The only question mark for me is the Alchemist, as I'm just not sure how he is going to fit into combat, but it should be interesting to find out!

I've already put more preparation into this game than any of my previous Magpie undertakings, even if you just count reading the massive Core Rulebook. In addition to that I've read the first Kingmaker module and assembled a collection of tools, including the following (note that this is a list of assembled stuff, not necessarily stuff that I went out and bought just for this game, although there's a lot of that in the list as well):

The Pathfinder hardcover books: Core Rules, Gamemastery Guide, Bestiary, and Advanced Players Guide
Pathfinder Gamemaster's Screen
Gamemastery Flip-Mats: River Crossing, Forest, and Bandit Outpost
Gamemastery Map Packs: Ruins and Ancient Forest
Gamemastery Item Cards: Kingmaker
Gamemastery Combat Pad
Pathfinder Adventure Paths: 31, 32, and 33
Pathfinder Chronicles: Guide to the River Kingdoms and Kingmaker Poster Map Folio
Chessex Battlemat
Staedtler Lumocolor non-permanent markers
Dungeon Tiles Master Set: The Dungeon
Dungeon Tiles: Harrowing Halls, Streets of Shadows, and Caves of Carnage
Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set (for the tokens)
Hero Lab software
Index Cards
A small netbook

In retrospect, that's a lot of stuff for something I'm not even sure is going to go beyond a few sessions, but some of it I already had (for example, the battlemat is something I've had for over a decade, yet has seen very little use), and most of the rest is stuff that I'll eventually find other uses for if this doesn't work out.

I plan to enter all the characters, and possibly NPCs, into Hero Lab so I can at least print out pretty character sheets for everyone, and possibly use the software on the netbook to keep track of NPCs during the game.

The netbook may end up becoming my control center for the campaign, as I'm thinking of playing some with theme music run from it as well. We'll see about that though, as my previous experiments with using music in RPGs just tended to annoy and distract the players. I'm thinking for now of just using an opening theme to let everyone know that we're starting and leaving it at that.

I've also created a campaign wiki on Obsidian Portal. I've been wanting to try out this tool for a while, and this gives me an excuse to do so. I don't know how much we'll end up using it, but I've had fun putting together the background material on it.

Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World

2010-09-27T08:30:00.003-05:00

Vincent Baker has a real knack for taking subjects I have little or no interest in and turning them into games I really want to play. First, he did it with pseudo-Mormon moral enforcers in a West that might have been in his game Dogs In The Vineyard and now he does it with post-Apocalypse survivors in his new game Apocalypse World.

He's done other games as well, but these are the two RPGs he's done that I'm familiar with.

Another thing Vincent Baker has a knack for is coining one line rules for RPG play that can be applicable to just about any game. In Dogs In The Vineyard it was "say yes or roll the dice" which is more or less self explanatory: either say yes to players or have them roll dice. Don't say no, and don't have them roll the dice if you want it to just happen.

There's several candidates in Apocalypse World for one-liners that can summarize a style of play, but my favorite is this: "look through crosshairs." This one might not be as immediately obvious in its meaning as "say yes or roll the dice," but it really emphasizes something that I can be bad at. What it's saying is to look at your NPCs and other GM creations through crosshairs, and don't be afraid to pull the trigger. In fact, when in doubt, pull the trigger.

As a GM I often become too attached to my creations, to the point that I will actively protect them from harm in the game. Baker tells the GM in Apocalypse World (he calls the GM the MC for Master of Ceremonies, but I will continue to use GM) to always consider killing or destroying the stuff he owns in the game whenever that stuff appears.

While this attitude is especially appropriate in a setting like Apocalypse World, it's also something worth keeping in mind in any other game. Nothing works as well to signify that the characters' actions have consequences than watching the world change around them in response to those actions. Nothing signifies dramatic change better than death and destruction.

Besides this possible new universal guideline for running games, there was one other thing that really stood out for me. The GM in Apocalypse World never rolls dice, ever. There is one optional rule where the GM can roll dice for the player in the one instance where rolling high is bad, but this is suggested only if the players are having a hard time accepting that in that one case it's bad to roll high.

Instead, the GM plays off what the players roll. At its most basic, if the players attempt to attack someone and they fail, then they are the ones that end up getting hurt instead of their target (it's actually more complex than that in terms of possible outcomes, but I don't want to just regurgitate the rules here). The GM never rolls for the NPCs, instead determining their actions and reactions based on what the players roll, and a set of guidelines (the latter of which is where the "look through crosshairs" line comes from).

Overall, the system is fairly simple at its core, but innovative enough that it wasn't until I got near the end of the book that a lot of it started to click. I'm not sure when we'll get a chance to play it given that it's campaign oriented, but I hope to do so some day!

One final note: A third thing Vincent Baker has a knack for is creating games with mature themes, and Apocalypse World is very much for "mature audiences" on more than one level. There's the ultra-violence of the post-apocalypse setting. The complex look at human relationships where everyone is at least a potential threat, even other PCs. And of course, there's also the naked woman on the cover (the picture above is an interior illustration, the cover is a photograph), and the fact that characters have an ability that keys off having sex with another character. You have been warned.

Dresden Postmortem

2010-09-22T08:27:00.000-05:00

There's a reason I haven't been doing any actual play posts of our Dresden Files games, and that's because I haven't been all that pleased with how they've gone. I do want to go into what I think were the reasons behind this, as well as the handful of interesting events, both good and bad.

The first problem was the power level. We decided to go with the highest starting power level because we wanted to play with all the toys, particularly with the spellcasters. This was a mistake on a couple of levels. First, playing with all the toys meant playing with all the rules, which I'll talk about more later. Second, the sheer power of a group of five Dresden level characters is enormous, and the books do little to help you deal with this.

The rules mention the possibility that the books are an account of a solo adventure, and I think our play confirms that. The entries in Our World are all woefully underpowered when it comes to challenging a group like the one we had. It more or less takes a plot level NPC to make the characters break a sweat. With more experience I'm sure I could have dealt with this, but I didn't yet have that experience, so that's why this was a big mistake.

The second problem was the players, in which I include myself. I'm not blaming the players, they were all a great bunch, both the regulars and the ones new to the table. Unfortunately, the couple of guests we had to the first two sessions had playstyles that didn't quite mesh with the existing group. Our group tends to be more narrativist and they were more rules oriented. Specifically, they knew the rules better than I did in most cases, which is something I'm not used to, and was unprepared to deal with.

Combined with my need to confirm things, this led to a great deal of page turning and rules reading when we should have been playing. It had the plus of leaving me much better acquainted with the system by the time the first two sessions were over, but the minus of making those sessions less enjoyable.

A third problem was that I'm just not that big a Dresden fan. I like the books well enough, but they don't generate a great deal of enthusiasm for me. I actually read the books because I'm a fan of the Fate system and knew that the game was coming out rather than having read them first and then gotten the game because I was a fan. This led to a certain level of apathy on my part when it came to preparing for sessions, and that was reflected in how the sessions themselves went.

A factor that wasn't necessarily a problem, but which became apparent in play is that the Laws of Magic are a "Big Deal". Now, the novels say they're a big deal, but in practice they're simply a plot device that either restricts Dresden's actions or triggers important plot twists. They don't work that way in the game. In the game they present a big massive potential for unintended consequences. This can be a cool thing as long as the players are prepared for it, but I don't think that the game books do an adequate job of portraying the potential pitfalls.

The way this came up in our game was in the climax of the first adventure. The players had to stop a ritual that was threatening to waken a great evil. The ritual was taking pace in a field and one of the casters used a fire spell to roll through those casting the ritual in the hopes of disrupting it. What wasn't apparent, because of the high grass in the field, was that there were a number of victims lying bound in the grass awaiting sacrifice. These victims were incinerated in the blaze and the end result was a rather massive breaking of one of the laws.

This could have been a very cool thing to explore, but the important thing is that none of us in any way had intended for it to be a possibility. It didn't dawn on me what was going on until after the action was taken, and I was the only one with a grasp of the overall situation. In fact, it wasn't until after the session was over that I fully grasped the implications. This is largely my fault for not fully grasping the significance of the laws in the game, but it's a mistake that I think could be made by a lot of GMs.

The biggest disappointment with the game was that fate points proved meaningless. The players could simply deal with the stuff I threw at them without needing to use them. The players took them from me because they liked being compelled, but they didn't need to.

Things I'd do differently if I had to do it over again? I'd start by going with the lowest recommended power level. This means fewer rules to deal with, and you can use the stats straight out of Our World to challenge the party with. I'd only go with the highest power level if I was playing with one or two players, or if I had a lot more experience with the system.

The group became disenchanted enough with the game that we ended up deciding to forgo our final planned session and instead made characters for our upcoming Pathfinder Kingmaker scenario/campaign. That probably says more about how enthusiastic we are about Kingmaker, but I'll talk about that in an upcoming post.

Here We Go Again...

2010-09-21T12:43:00.000-05:00

Despite not having any chance to play miniatures games in the past several months, and despite saying on multiple occasions that the miniatures didn't appeal to me, I've given in to the siren call of Malifaux.

There were a couple of factors involved in my downfall. The local miniatures crowd has been developing some interest in the game, which I've been observing on the local miniatures forum: Hogs of War. One post in particular proved a tipping point in that it mentioned a crew of Asian ghosts. I didn't recall any Asian ghosts from my previous looks at the game, so I went and checked the site and found that they'd released a lot of new models with the second book, and that there was indeed a crew of Asian ghosts.

I was still able to resist until the FLGS, Castle House Games, got in a rule book and some starter boxes. My friend Gary at Black Diamond Games, my old FLGS, had tried to get me to order the book from him a couple of times, but without it being physically in front of me I'd been able to resist. Once I could actually pick up the book and flip through it that resistance crumbled. I bought the book and a deck of cards and went home to read it.

I'm not really sure why I bought the deck of cards, I was 90% committed at this point, but still wanted to read the book to see for myself whether it was a game I thought I might enjoy, and whether there were any factions I thought I would find interesting to play.

It only took me a couple of hours to read the rules, skipping the fluff and miniature stats. I was impressed, and I knew by the time I finished that I wanted to give the game a try. I then read the fluff and was impressed even more. I still want to try the Asian ghosts, but they're in the second book, and I wanted to start with a crew from the first one. I decided I wanted to get the Rasputina boxed set.

Rasputina is basically an ice mage with a bunch of ice constructs as allies. None of the miniatures in the set are grotesque, and she's part of the Arcanist faction, which is probably the least evil faction in the game, in my view (none of the four main factions can really be considered "good guys").

The problem was that the FLGS didn't have one of those sets in stock, and I didn't want to wait on a special order, so I ended up getting a couple of other sets instead: The Victorias and the Redchapel Gang.

My focus with this new game is to actually play if I get the chance. As such, I have no intention of painting the models. I may do so eventually, but for now I'm satisfied just having them assembled. If I can actually get some games in, then I might bet more serious about getting some painted.

Another Quick Word on D&D Essentials

2010-09-08T10:15:00.001-05:00

I see one big missed opportunity with the new Red Box: 1 on 1 play.

In order to describe what I'm talking about, let me give you a little personal history. My first RPG was the predecessor to the original "red box", the version I call the "purple box" with the Erol Otus cover. My first GM was my mom, and my first adventuring party was, well, me. I was an only child and we were on vacation at my grandmother's house when my parents got me the game, so there was no one else to play.

My mom used the very basic dungeon creation rules to create a random adventure, the details of which completely escape me, but thirty years later I'm still playing RPGs so it must have been interesting at the time.

The new "red box" starts with a solo adventure, which could be run by a GM for one player easily enough, but it then jumps to an adventure written for a GM and four players... WTF? Isn't this supposed to be aimed towards people completely new to the hobby? How often do five people, completely new to the hobby, just happen to get together to play a game? I think that something similar to my personal experience is much more likely to happen.

Now, it can be argued that a DM can scale the adventure, or that a player can play more than one character, but that misses the point that this is supposed to be for completely inexperienced gamers. Scaling up an adventure is generally easier than scaling down. Write an adventure for one player, and if there's two it's just a matter of tossing in more monsters. Write an adventure for four, and if there's only one you've got to completely redesign any "big bads" in the adventure. That's not something a DM completely new to the hobby is going to feel comfortable doing, especially not with the minimal guidance given in the material included in the new Red Box.

Maybe my personal experience is a thing of the past, maybe with roleplaying more widespread it's easier to find a group and so this isn't a big deal. I disagree.

Back to my personal experience, this time some of my first impressions going through the new "red box". As I'm looking at the stuff in the box it dawns on me that this might be something I could get my non-gamer wife to try. The whole thing with the cards and map and tokens might just be something she'd be willing to play with. Then I look at the main adventure that's designed for four players and I set that thought aside with a sigh. Another missed opportunity.

A Quick Word on D&D Essentials

2010-08-31T10:04:00.000-05:00

I picked up the new "red box" the other day and have been looking at pictures of some of the upcoming releases in the "Essentials" line, and I think they've finally figured out how to deal with one of the biggest barriers to entry since the introduction of 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons: miniatures.

Prior to 3rd, miniatures were an option, and I don't think I ever used them in a game. With 3rd they were a requirement due to the changes in the combat rules, and remained so in 4th. The game always mentioned the idea of using tokens or something else if you didn't have miniatures, but marketing considerations always made them emphasize the miniatures you could get from the D&D collectible miniatures game, and prevented them from providing a more affordable alternative. Now that that game is dead, they're finally free to offer a serious alternative for new players.

The "red box" includes a sheet of full color circular tokens representing both monsters and heroes. It also includes a two-sided full color map. From pictures, I can see that the upcoming DM's kit includes at least three more counter sheets, and a couple more maps. Then the Monster Vault includes ten sheets of counters, presumably with multiples for every monster in the "vault", as well as at least one more map. Add in the new Dungeon Tiles Master Sets that they plan on actually keeping in print, and people new to the game will be able to acquire a sizable collection of full color counters and maps for a reasonable price.

That's a big deal.

All Good Things...

2010-08-16T22:41:00.001-05:00

A couple of posts ago I discussed Liz' Dogs in the Vineyard campaign, and how much I was enjoying it. What I didn't mention was that for a variety of reasons, Liz was considering ending it early. Unfortunately, she has decided to do so.

We had one final session to wrap up the events of the town of Angel's Rest, but it looks like that will be it for the campaign.

For any who might be interested, the dogs confronted the midwife who was suspected of performing abortions (again, a reminder that the morality of DitV is very different from that of my own, see my previous posts on the game for more details on the setting if you are unfamiliar with it). She admitted to her crimes, was unrepentant, and was thus sentenced to the usual punishment for murderers by the dogs.

The end result was that the midwife was gunned down in the middle of town by the dogs as she attempted to flee her execution. My character ended up providing the coup de grace to put her out of her misery after giving her a chance to speak a few final words.

While the dogs felt completely justified in the actions they took, my character did take some fallout which allowed me to give him a new d4 attribute: "so much blood". If the campaign were to continue I could use this as a seed of doubt to possibly cause him to question his actions.

I suspect that if I get the opportunity to play in another Dogs campaign that I will play a variation of this same character, as I find the potential for such a character quite interesting over an extended period of play.

Dresden Files: Northwest Arkansas

2010-08-04T10:27:00.000-05:00

We had our setting and character generation session for our Magpie Night Dresden Files game about a week ago. We have a lot of interest in this game, so we're doing things a bit different. Instead of our usual one shot, we're doing two adventures for Dresden Files. Our regular Magpie Night attendees (Josh, Liz and Jonathan in this case) will be playing in both sessions, while the four other people who expressed interest are going to play in one session each, two in each session.

I wasn't sure if this was going to be completely necessary, but after our first session with all seven players and me, I'm glad we decided to do it this way. We got most of the stuff done that we needed to do, but it took longer than I expected, and we had to take a couple of minor short cuts. I was also so busy managing things that I really didn't get a good grasp on anyone's character, which is a big deal for a GM in a Fate game, since pretty much everything revolves around the characters.

I think there should be fewer problems with only five players instead of seven, and I'm looking forward to putting together the adventure once everyone posts their finalized characters to the thread on the NWARPG Forums.

As to the game itself, the overall process of setting creation seems a lot more involved than in Diaspora. There's no random element to give you a starting point. Fortunately, we'd already decided we were going to set it here in Northwest Arkansas, so I did a little research into legends of the area. Having spent about two thirds of my life in the area didn't hurt either.

Some of the players came to the table with ideas as well, so we had a decent starting point. If this hadn't been the case, then I don't think we'd have gotten very far. As it was, getting this all down into three overall themes and threats, plus nine locations and twelve aspects and faces to represent all of the above still took some time. We're still short an aspect or two, but most of the work got done.

At this point we'd already used more than half the time I'd expected the entire process to take, and we still needed to make characters.

Most of the players had a better idea of what they wanted to see from their characters than they did from the setting, and that helped things somewhat. A couple had no concept or only a partial concept, and that slowed things down a bit, but not too much. I couldn't complain about it either, because I'd made a point about not being too committed to character concepts in case the communal setting ended up not supporting a concept, or suggesting a better one.

We did end up having at least one concept changed by the setting and the contributions of the other players, and the one player that didn't come to the table with a concept was able to develop one largely from some elements of the setting. In fact, his ended up being the only PC that is also a "face" in the setting.

Another item of interest that came out of our session included our decision to go for the "submerged" power level, which is the highest starting level, and equivalent to Harry Dresden in the first book in the series. I had wondered whether this area would justify such a high powered group, but the threats and themes we ended up creating developed a supernatural presence for the area that is quite strong.

For example, in the Dresden books there's a bar that is considered neutral ground among the supernatural. We established an entire town that is neutral ground, complete with a ruling council made up of representatives from all the supernatural factions, including those currently at war with each other outside the town.

Now I just need to get everyone to turn in their finished characters so I can create the first adventure.

Dogs in Liz' Vineyard 2

2010-07-21T12:53:00.001-05:00

A little over a month ago I blogged about character generation for Liz' Dogs in the Vineyard campaign. Thanks to a summer cold, I wasn't able to attend the first actual session of the campaign, but it sounds like they had a good time. Fortunately, I was able to make it to the second session. Unfortunately, Seth and Ty weren't able to. That left Jonathan, Emily and me to play through the town of Angel's Rest.

I should interrupt here to state that I'm describing these events in the terms my character views them, not the way I view them. For those who are unfamiliar with Dogs, it places the characters in a fictionalized 19th Century Utah as upholders of the morality of that time and place. This results in a game with very mature themes concerning the very nature of morality and faith.

What we encountered was the usual mix of sin and tragedy that I've come to expect from a game of Dogs. Little by little we uncovered a chain of events that began with the twin prides of a father who thought his daughter could do better than a teenage troublemaker, and a teenage boy who thought he knew better than the town Steward as to whether or not he should be able to court the Steward's daughter. This led to the injustice of a thwarted love, which led to the sin of an illicit affair, which ended with the murder of an unborn child and the death of the mother from complications. We had just determined what we believe to be the identity of the abortionist when we had to call it a night.

Dogs are young men and women who have been given the authority and responsibility to maintain the moral character of entire communities, and my character in particular is completely sure of his faith. He's positive that he knows what's right from what's wrong, and doesn't hesitate to let others know what's what. When it comes to matters of the Faith and the Book he feels that he's an expert (hmm, some pride developing there...). With matters outside of his expertise, he's not quite so sure of himself.

It was fun to play him as we discovered that there was an illicit affair and an unplanned pregnancy. He's as close to a city boy as you can get in the setting, aside from a bit of experience with hunting, and has had a very sheltered upbringing. He's probably never kissed a girl, and his parents surely never had the "talk" with him. This all leaves him just a bit unsure about how all of that "biological" stuff is supposed to work.

So, when things started to get specific about whether or not the deceased was pregnant, and how anyone knew that she was, he quickly and gratefully turned things over to Rebecca (Emily's character).

The contrast was especially amusing to me given that he had just finished lecturing the kid that was responsible for causing the pregnancy about morality. Suddenly it was the kid who had all the answers and my character that was at a loss.

What's going to be really interesting though is when he starts losing some conflicts, and taking fallout. So far he's managed to succeed in all his attempts to convince others of the rightness of his beliefs. It will be interesting to see what happens when he fails. The circumstances surrounding any fallout he takes will probably determine whether his faith proves brittle and begins to crumble or whether it simply becomes stronger in adversity.

Project: Dominion

2010-07-17T00:38:00.003-05:00

Ever since the Seaside expansion for Dominion came out I've been looking for a better storage solution for the cards. Rio Grande Games did a good job on designing the boxes to be useful, and if I were playing games at home then I'd probably just leave them in the boxes they came in. The problem is that I don't play at home, I take them to the store to play, and three or four big boxes are just too many to carry. Together, all four of the current boxes don't even fit into the bag I normally use to transport my boardgames!

I think I've finally found my solution: the Ultra Pro Portable Gaming Case. I had been thinking that someone must make a case for CCG players to carry around their cards with beyond just the single deck boxes I've seen. Back in the day we used cardboard card boxes, but they're not ideal for transport, and I knew someone had to have come up with a better solution since then.

Then the other day I saw this case on the shelf at the FLGS. It just happened to be on Magic night, and a couple of the players there already had one so they let me take a look at theirs. I realized that it would probably do the job, so I went ahead and bought one.

The next step was to figure out how to organize the cards in the case. The Rio Grande boxes have individual slots for each type of card, so I hadn't needed dividers. Fortunately, BGG came to the rescue, specifically with Neo42's vertical dividers. Unfortunately, he used Power Point to make them, and opening a Power Point file in Open Office never goes off without a hitch. It didn't take me that much effort to tweak things so they'd work for me, although they still aren't as pretty as the original files. What took more effort was cutting them all out, but eventually that tedious task was done and I finally started putting all the pieces together.

It ended up working out perfectly. I have just enough room to store everything, minus the extra sets of core cards from the Intrigue set. Now I have a far more portable way to take Dominion to Board Game Night!

...at least I do until the next expansion, at which point I'll either have to get a second case, or use a combination of this case and a box. I'll probably do the latter until there's been at least two more expansions.

Some notes on putting this all together: I've put the mini-boards from Seaside in the lid pocket along with all the rules. The tokens from that set are in the lower middle space, as you can see in the photos.

If I wanted to do this fancier, I could have printed out the dividers on cardstock, but I don't really care if they get ratty. I just need something to make finding the cards easier, so regular paper should do for now.

History Geek Enraged

2010-07-02T23:10:00.000-05:00

This post is a bit of a departure from my usual rants and reviews. See, in addition to being a gaming geek, I'm a bit of a history geek. That means I get a bit bent out of shape when I see people getting history wrong.

Tonight I was downright offended. Ever since moving back to Arkansas my wife and I have tried to attend at least a night or two of the Rodeo of the Ozarks. Traditionally held on the first four days of July, there's always been an air of patriotism surrounding the event, and so I was not surprised as the announcer began to go into the history of our national anthem while the singer prepared herself to deliver it. What did surprise me was what he then proceeded to say.

The story he spun was complete and utter bullshit. About the only things he got right were the name of the writer, and the name of the fort involved in the event that inspired the writing. Just about everything else was wrong. He even got the wrong war!

Here's the tale he told:

During the Revolutionary War, Francis Scott Key boarded a British prison ship anchored off the coast of the US that held countless US prisoners in an attempt to secure their release on humanitarian grounds. The British officer refused and gave his reason by pointing out the entire English fleet gathered to attack Fort McHenry. Key protested that McHenry wasn't a military installation and was full of civilians, but his protests were ignored and the fleet opened fire. The British became enraged by the failure of the flag to fall. The next day Key visited the fort and found that fathers and sons had been killed ensuring that the flag stayed aloft, countless bodies strewn below the flag.

Wow.

What really happened is that during the War of 1812 (Key was three years old at the end of the Revolutionary War), Key boarded a British warship to secure the release of a Maryland doctor, and was successful, but wasn't allowed to leave the ship until after the attack on Fort McHenry.

Fort McHenry was very much a military installation with the purpose of defending Baltimore from seaborne attack. The assaulting fleet consisted of 19 British warships, not the entire British fleet. The British fleet at the time consisted of close to 1000 vessels, most of which were focused on the threat posed by Napoleon's France in Europe.

The attack lasted all day and all night, and Key had no way of knowing whether or not the British had won the battle until sunrise showed the American flag still flying above the fort.

Total dead in the fort amounted to four: three soldiers and a woman who died carrying supplies to the troops. No one died keeping the flag aloft as they were too busy manning the fort's guns, and the flag didn't need tending anyway. The flag itself was an impressive sight, being the largest battle flag in the US Army at the time.

I have to wonder where the bullshit story the announcer gave came from. I suppose he must have scraped it off his boot after work one night.

The original story is inspiring enough, it doesn't need the Hollywood treatment. I was very close to heckling the guy given that he was only about thirty feet away from where I was sitting, and if it hadn't been the lead in to the national anthem, I just might have done it.

Later, when the guy gave a rambling story vaguely associating the Butterfield Overland Stage with Wells Fargo and claiming that the Butterfield stage lasted until 1918 in the process, my outrage was already mostly used up. This time the reasons for the bullshit were at least more apparent as Wells Fargo was a special sponsor for the evening.

The fact that the Butterfield line lasted only three years prior to the outbreak of the Civil War and that the only connection with Wells Fargo is that Wells Fargo bought up Butterfield's remaining assets after it ceased operations seemed rather insignificant lapses compared to his earlier tall tales.

I live on a part of the old Butterfield route and the announcer isn't even from around here, so I'll let that one slide, but I'm pretty sure we're both Americans, so I won't forgive the mauling of the history of our national anthem.

Deathwatch: Free RPG Day Impressions

2010-06-22T17:09:00.000-05:00

Free RPG Day was this past Saturday, and I was able to participate in a Deathwatch game using the Final Sanction adventure produced by FFG for the event. It looks like an interesting game. It uses the same core system as Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader, which in turn was based on the 2nd Edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay rules originally developed for Games Workshop by Green Ronin. I point this out in the interest of full disclosure, because I'm a bit of a Green Ronin fanboi, and to point out that the game is based on a pretty solid system.

There are some interesting additions made to the system to better capture the sort of situations that nine foot tall super-soldiers in power armor are likely to find themselves in. Namely, the Horde rules. These rules group units of lesser beings (like rebel mobs or Imperial Guard troops) into single stat blocs that have special rules associated with them. The biggest of these special rules is that instead of hit points they have Magnitude. Magnitude is used both to record hits and to multiply the damage done by Hordes. As the Magnitude of a Horde drops so does its potential to do damage. There's also a morale rule using Magnitude whereby a Horde has to take a break test if it takes too much damage in one turn. If it fails, then the Horde is eliminated as any survivors flee.

While damage to a Horde is taken off the Horde's Magnitude, it does not act exactly like hit points do for individual creatures or characters. Instead of doing regular damage, a hit simply removes one point of Magnitude. This means that a hit from a bolt pistol does as much damage to a horde as a hit from a las cannon. In each case only removing one individual from thee mob. What really hurts Hordes are autofire weapons and blast weapons, which is to be expected as such weapons being fired into a group of people are going to do a lot more damage. Melee weapons also have a decent chance of doing more damage to Hordes, presumably because the users are wading into the Horde and downing foes left and right.

I don't want to get too specific with the rules, but for those unfamiliar with the 40K RPG system, it's percentile based where you attempt to roll under your skill or attribute to succeed at a task. By every 10 points that you succeed by, you are considered to have one "degree" of success. Every degree of success against a Horde with an autofire weapon does an extra hit and every two degrees of success against a Horde with a melee weapon does an extra hit. Since Hordes are at a +20 to hit due to their size, this makes those weapons likely to do multiple hits every time a Marine successfully uses them.

We played the system completely wrong at Free RPG Day (we treated the Magnitude as if they were hit points rather than as I just described above), but based on what we did do compared to what we should have done, I think these new rules should capture the powerful nature of Space Marines quite well. A Horde can still take down a Marine, but if the Marine uses the proper weapons for the job, then he can wade through those Hordes just like the Marines from the novels do.

One other system that I wasn't quite as impressed by, and that we really didn't use at Free RPG Day, was the Demeanours. Each Marine gets two Demeanours. One is based on his Chapter, and one is a personal Demeanour. These basically act as extra Fate points that can be used when taking an action that fits the Demeanour. The Marine is supposed to get an extra bonus if he really plays out his Demeanour well. This bonus is in the form of doubling the effect of the Fate point.

The idea is to bring a bit of character and roleplaying to what is otherwise a game about a squad of super soldiers killing things. I appreciate the effort, but I don't know how well it's going to work. There are two problems I see. The first is that the Demeanours are only useable once per session. This means that as a player I'm only going to be looking for ways to bring my Demeanour into play when I really need an extra Fate point, and ignoring them the rest of the time. If I didn't have this limitation, then I'd be looking for ways to bring in my Demeanours all the time, and thereby better emphasizing my character's personality.

The second problem is that some Demeanours are far more useful than others. In Final Sanction I played an Assault Marine with the Hot-Blooded Personal Demeanour. This is ridiculously easy to use in play. On the other hand, his Chapter Demeanour is Son of the Lion which basically means he's secretive, introverted, and untrusting. I could see this coming into play, but rarely in a way that it would apply directly to a roll. Other Personal Demeanours in the group included Gregarious and Studious, neither likely to come into play much in combat, where extra Fate points are most likely to be needed in a Deathwatch game.

Perhaps I'm being overly critical, and maybe it will work better in practice than it would seem to, but while I admire the goal here, I'm not sure that the execution really works.

Still, the game overall is looking promising, and while I don't know if I'll ever get the chance to play it again, I'm looking forward to seeing the full rules.

Warlords of Europe

2010-06-18T13:35:00.001-05:00

It's not often that I get the chance to have a game demoed to me by the designer, so after Warlords of Europe designer Ken Griffin took the time to demo his game at Castle House this past Wednesday, I think it's only fair that I take the time to review the game he designed.

I generally like to start my reviews with the bad first, and then move on to the good points, and this review is no different. I emphasize this because while I am critical of some aspects of this game, I have a lot of good things to say too, so be sure and read it all.

I'll start by stating up front that the style of game that Warlords represents really isn't my thing anymore. It has its roots firmly in the "ameritrash" style of games typified by Risk and Axis & Allies, and I've come to prefer "eurogame" style games.

Two key elements of Warlords' design really stand out as negatives to me: player elimination and the lack of a timer mechanism to keep the game from going on for an extended period of time. These are pretty big red flags to me in the games I now choose to play, and will probably keep me from adding this game to my personal collection.

That said, if those aren't factors that are important to you, then there's a lot to like about this game. To start with, the game is pretty to look at. The map is beautiful, and the plastic pieces are well done. Like most games of its type, things can get crowded on the map as play progresses, but using the provided token chips helps keep things under control such that the overall visual experience is pleasant.

The mechanics of the game are fairly simple, but well implemented. Combat is a matter of both sides rolling a die for each unit against a target number determined by how good the unit is. A success makes the opponent remove a unit. The target number is always the same, but the defender may get to use larger dice if in defensive terrain, making it more likely that the attacker will take casualties. There are a few other factors that are involved, but that's basically it. A combat continues until either one side is wiped out, or the attacker retreats.

There's a basic economic engine in the game, where players collect money based on how much territory they control. Different types of territory are worth varying amounts of income. Players can also earn bonus income in certain situations, such as controlling all the territories of a kingdom. Money is used mainly to buy more troops, but can also be used for a few other things.

Players all take their individual turns moving and attacking before taking common turns collecting and spending their income. This keeps things from getting too Risk-like with huge armies being deployed and used before anyone else can respond. New forces are deployed by all players before any player gets to use their new forces.

One of the most interesting parts of the game is the three card decks: conquest, papal, and merchant. These cards all provide unique abilities when played, usually either being instantaneous or lasting over one turn. Players usually have the opportunity to earn one of each type of card per turn, depending on what they do. A conquest card is earned if a player conquers at least one territory that turn, a papal card is earned automatically unless the player has earned papal disfavor, and a merchant card is bought with money.

A lot of the strategy of the game is deciding when to use the cards you have. Used properly they can often turn the tide of a battle. They also provide a lot of flavor to the game through the descriptions of what is causing the mechanical effects the card describes, such as the outbreak of plague, the return of crusaders, or the uprising of peasants.

There are different scenarios based on how many players there are (the game allows for 2 to 4 players), and how long a game they want to play. We played a "shorter" scenario and three hours later we called it quits as it was getting late, and it was apparent who was most likely to win. It probably would have taken another hour to play through to its conclusion had we continued, so even the short scenarios can still be lengthy.

It reminded me of Axis & Allies in many ways, both good and bad, and if you like Axis & Allies, then I think you could really get into this game too.

The State of Games Workshop

2010-06-16T07:08:00.004-05:00

I don't generally make a blog post just to link to something else, but I found this analysis of Games Workshop's financials by Purple Pawn interesting enough to justify it (thanks to Michael for linking to it on Buzz).

Qin: The Warring States

2010-06-11T13:01:00.000-05:00

I recently finished reading the Qin rulebook (well, most of it, I skipped the included adventure, and skimmed some of the ability lists, but I read the rules and background sections), and as I've been doing for most books I've been reading lately, I wrote up a review for Goodreads. While doing so, I realized that it would also make a good blog post, so I've expanded it a bit, and reposted it here.

Whether or not you choose to use the mechanics of the game, the book is a good sourcebook for gaming in the Warring States period of China's history. There's around a hundred pages just on the history, politics and life of the period. I've read a number of games set in the history of either China or Japan, and this is the first to really give me a sense of how to run a game in the setting (admittedly somewhat enhanced by having watched Hero and other movies set in the period).

The mechanics of the game look interesting, but reviews by those who have actually used them indicate there may be some weaknesses. Namely, criticals seem to give too much power to the "mooks" in the setting, taking away from the ability of powerful martial artists to deal with hordes of mooks like they do in the movies and legends of the period. Also, characters not overly specialized in combat turn out to be relative weaklings due to the way the number of actions allowed to each character during each combat round is calculated. Rather than canceling each other out, these two factors together seem to make some character concepts less viable than others while at the same time undermining a core theme of the setting.

For now I'm taking those reviewers' word for this. I can see by reading the rules that this might be a problem, but I haven't actually played the game to see for myself.

My main concern with the book is the mythical back story that the authors have created for the metaplot that they intend to run throughout the game as it is developed in further products. I'm not against metaplot, but the one they have constructed seems to miss one of the main points of the Warring States period.

As far as I can tell, this backstory is largely a creation of the game's authors, and not based on an existing legend. I could be wrong, as I'm no expert on the period, but some time spent googling the issue didn't turn anything up.

Their secret back story turns Qin into the "good guys". The Qin were not "good guys". They won, and the fact that they won probably led to a better existence for most Chinese of the time, but they won through ruthless tactics and were led by a man that some consider to have been insane. This contradiction is one of the unique factors to playing a game in the period, and by making Qin the "good guys" you miss out on this and eliminate some very interesting roleplaying opportunities and choices.

Fortunately, you can ignore the back story whether you use the system or not, and the book is still well worth checking out if you have an interest in the period.

Worth noting is that this is a translation of the original French game. So far only the core rules, the Game Master's Screen with a small supplement, and a bestiary of fantastic creatures have been translated into English, but there are over a half dozen other products already produced in French.

Changing Links (Again)

2010-06-10T00:07:00.003-05:00

Just another maintenance post. After talking about changing the links around the other day I decided to go ahead and break out the blogs from the other links, and now have a blog list in addition to the link list. This shows other blogspot blogs I follow in order of the most recent update, along with a little snippet from that last post.

I also took the opportunity to add a couple more blogs that I follow to the list.

Most everyone else I know who is blogging uses this app already, and I like it, so I figured it was time I added it. Enjoy!

Dogs in Liz' Vineyard

2010-06-09T14:27:00.000-05:00

We had our character generation session for Liz' Dogs in the Vineyard campaign on Monday, and despite two of the five players having to bail at the last minute, we still had a good time. We only had one complete newb to the system, but it had been long enough since I ran my one-shot that the rest of us had to get re-acquainted with some of the rules.

Liz came prepared with a questionnaire about our characters that she wanted us to fill out. While I didn't find every question on the questionnaire useful, overall it was a great idea, and helped focus some of the ideas I had for my character.

I also got to scratch my GMing itch when Emily came up with an initiation concept that Liz didn't feel like running. I had an idea on how to do it, so she let me run it instead, which I really appreciated.

While it was fun to do a little GMing, it also made me realize that I'm going to have to work some to keep from "back-seat GMing" the game. Hopefully once we're actually playing I'll be too busy playing my own character to interfere much.

I like my character. I deliberately made him a little bland to start with, because I want to play a sheltered character going out and running smack into the real world. Because of this I had some trouble thinking up traits at first, but in the end I came up with a set that I'm pretty happy with.

I'm also liking what I've seen of Emily's and Jonathan's characters. It should be interesting how they all develop over the course of the game.

I'm now looking forward to the first full session. Unfortunately, that's probably not for another three weeks as we have a NWARPG meeting and a Magpie Gaming Night first.

Changing Paradigms (Or At Least Links)

2010-06-06T13:43:00.001-05:00

I'm not sure how many have noticed them hidden amongst all the other apps I have on the sidebar here, but there's a handful of links to other sites I find of interest. Specifically, there are links to my other blog, blogs by a couple of my friends, a couple of forums I frequent, and links to two of my favorite game stores.

It's these last two links that are undergoing the change. When first adding the links I linked to the websites that the stores maintain, but those links seem to be less and less relevant. One has never had much more than a placeholder page linked to a forum that gets little traffic, and the other has been deliberately moving more content over to their Facebook page, going so far as to take down their private forums in favor of moving discussion over to Facebook.

With this in mind, I'm changing my links to point to the Facebook pages for both stores, rather than their websites. Those pages either include all the relevant information pertinent to their store, such as address, phone number and store hours, or at least link back to their website that has that information. In fact, one of the stores has far more information on their Facebook page than they do on their website.

I decided to make a post about changing the links simply because I find it interesting that such a change seems to be appropriate, and to alert anyone who reads my blog to the Facebook presence of these stores. Just in case they didn't already know.

Store Tour - Northwest Arkansas

2010-06-05T14:13:00.001-05:00

A while back I read a thread on EN World (not a forum I frequent, but the thread was linked off another blog that I do), I decided that it would be a good idea to do a run down of the local retail gaming establishments. Then I promptly procrastinated. It turned out that I wasn't the only one thinking along these lines, as Liz created a Google Map showing local stores for the NWARPG forums, which eventually caused me to stop procrastinating and actually finish this "store tour" idea.

The problem with doing what the guys on EN World were doing is that I'm cheap and lazy and don't really feel like driving around to the various stores in the area just to write up a blog post, so instead I'm going to go by memory with a dash of rumor thrown in. Not ideal, but better than nothing, and I suspect that after I post this, I may end up getting more information. Also, since there's only really one "true" game store in the area, I'm going to include all the stores that I'm aware of that carry at least some hobby games.

Barnes & Noble: First on the list because it begins with "B". There are two locations in Northwest Arkansas, one in Fayetteville, and one in Rogers. They generally carry a number of RPG books, mostly D&D with a handful of other titles. The one in Fayetteville had some Shadowrun books, and some Dark Heresy books the last time I checked. It's been well over a year now since I've been to the one in Rogers, but they had a similar selection back then. The Fayetteville store now has a permanent board game section (as opposed to the seasonal section it had in the past), and I imagine that the one in Rogers may as well. It's mostly full of dreck like Monopoly variants, but has a handful of good games as well.

Castle House Hobbies & Games: Next up in alphabetical order is the only "true" game store currently in Northwest Arkansas. Located in Fayetteville, this store carries board games, miniatures games, card games and roleplaying games. It has the best selection in Northwest Arkansas, but that's not to say there isn't room for improvement. I wish there was a bit more selection in some areas, but it's still one of the best to ever grace the region. They do have the largest gaming area in Northwest Arkansas and are fairly free with its use as long as it doesn't interfere with a scheduled event. They have several such events that run there, including regular ones for CCGs and the Boardgame Night I run, as well as several RPG groups that meet there regularly, and periodic Warhammer 40K tournaments.

Dickson Street Used Books: This is an awesome used book store located in Fayetteville, but its connection to gaming is pretty thin. There's often a small selection of used RPGs available here, but it's very hit or miss as to whether or not there's anything worth buying.

Gamer's Utopia: This is a new store that apparently just opened up in the Frisco Station Mall in Rogers. I know nothing about it beyond the fact that they hold Magic tournaments. This may be a second "true" game store, but I don't know yet if that's the case.

Hastings: Another big chain, it's been a couple of years since I visited, but when I did it had a selection comparable to Barnes & Noble, with a bit more variety, as well as a handful of used game books. As something of a historical footnote, this store once carried the full GW line of miniatures and a huge selection of CCGs, but that was well over a decade ago. There are stores in Fayetteville and Springdale.

Rock Bottom Books: This store in Fayetteville is one of the comic shops in Northwest Arkansas. The only reason I included it is that they sell a few CCGs and have a couple of bookcases of used games, mostly RPGs with a few wargames. Prices tend to be a bit high for the used games, but partly as a result of that they usually have a better selection than Dickson Street Used Books.

Tshirt Explosion: I have yet to go to the new location in Springdale, but I have it on reliable authority that it is like the old location in that from the outside there is no indication that this business has anything to do with gaming. On the inside is a large selection of GW product as well as several gaming tables. I'm unsure as to the hours those tables are available. Based on posts I've seen it seems rather hit and miss. The owner runs two annual miniatures tournaments, one for Warhammer Fantasy and one for Warhammer 40K. Both are fairly well attended, drawing quite a few players who make a trip here to play in them (incidentally, Patriot Games, the 40K tournament, is going on as I post this).

Vintage Stock: The other comic store in the area that I'm aware of, Vintage Stock has three locations: Fayetteville, Springdale, and Rogers. Although in the past they had a rather extensive selection of GW merchandise and RPGs, today they only carry CCGs, which is just enough to justify putting them on this list, but not enough to make me a customer.

That's pretty much it. As far as I know, you have to travel at least 120 miles in any given direction to get to another game store, (Springfield, MO; Tulsa, OK; and Russellville, AR being the closest three that I'm aware of).

There's some small possibility that the Hobbytown that recently closed in Bentonville might reopen under new ownership, but that's just rumor at this point, and not very reliable rumor.

Rolling it Old School

2010-06-04T13:32:00.000-05:00

We finally got in another session of Magpie Gaming Night this past Monday, and I ran a one shot adventure for Swords & Wizardry White Box. It wasn't anything too fancy, but I had fun, and I think the players did too. After a lot of indy games it was nice to get back to some classic hack and slash for a little bit.

The players each rolled up a 4th level character. We ended up with a Cleric, a Magic-User and an Elf. The adventure found them killing time at a tavern (imagine that!), when the small town they were in found themselves inundated by a horde of undead, mostly skeletons and zombies. The cleric went to turn them, but found them strangely resistant to his efforts. He could still turn them, but it was not as easy as it should have been.

The group held back the major push of the undead long enough for most of the villagers to make it to the keep before being forced to retreat into the keep themselves. As the drawbridge was being raised the cleric fell, and the others pulled him back into the keep where they were met by a Lieutenant Nunoz who led them to the makeshift infirmary to drop off their fallen comrade before heading to a meeting with the commandant.

The commandant outlined the situation, which they were already mostly aware of, and then conscripted them into the militia for the duration of the siege. He explained that they could spend the time on the walls if they wished, but that he had a special mission that he believed they would be perfect for, if they were willing to volunteer.

He had reason to believe that there was a necromancer behind the attack, and he wanted the group to find and deal with the necromancer in the hopes that once the necromancer was gone the siege would be lifted. The party agreed, and the cleric was raised from the dead by the local priestess so that he could help them (don't ask why a priestess of high enough level to raise dead couldn't deal with a horde of skeletons and zombies on her own, this is not the plot hole you're looking for...).

If this had been a campaign I would have come up with some sort of system other than the default one of zero hit points leading automatically to death, but as a one shot I tried to just let the dice fall where they may for most of the adventure.

Lieutenant Nunoz led them out of a secret tunnel that opened beyond most of the siege lines. A short skirmish got them the rest of the way through, and they eventually decided to follow the tracks of the shambling horde back to where they came from in the hopes of locating the necromancer.

They managed to track him down to a broken down tower on the edge of an old battlefield. On the way they destroyed one of his wight lieutenants. In the tower they found another wight along with the necromancer working on animating more undead. They destroyed the wight, but only after it drained one of the cleric's levels, while the necromancer decided to exercise discretion and used a combination of hold portal and dimensional portal to delay the group long enough for him to get away and join up with the main part of his undead horde.

This was the one point in the adventure where I decided to pull a punch for the good of the game. The necromancer had a fireball ready to go, but as I looked over the spell again, I realized it would almost certainly lead to a total party kill if he used it on the group, so I decided that instead of using it on them, he was going to use it to attempt to breach the walls of the keep.

So, instead of using his one fireball on the group, he escaped from them and returned to the keep, where he used it to burn through the gate of the keep.

It took a while for the group to figure out where the necromancer had gone, so they arrived just in time to see the gate on fire and getting ready to collapse, with the horde of undead getting ready to storm in.

They attacked, and while the cleric kept the undead away with successful turning, the others managed to take down the necromancer. As he realized he was about to be defeated, he polymorphed into a small dragon to gain the protection of its scales and to fly away, but just as he was about to escape, the magic-user thumped him on the head with her staff and brought him down!

All-in-all I thought it was a fun little adventure, and I think the ending worked out pretty well considering that I really didn't have anything planned beyond "confront the necromancer".

It was definitely a big change from the kinds of games we've been playing up to this point. We've been playing mostly games with systems built in for handling social conflict, and Swords & Wizardry doesn't even have skills!

Milestone!

2010-06-03T19:21:00.000-05:00

We had our first Board Game Night where we had too many players for the featured game! I've been saying that this has been coming for a while now. I think it was Liz who even suggested that I was jinxing it by predicting it, but thanks to Seth bringing his wife and a couple of friends we finally did it!

This meant that we got to break out a second game to be played simultaneously with the featured game. While I explained the rules to Ideology to the main group, Jonathan set up and figured out the rules to Horus Heresy.

Liz ended up winning the Ideology game, while I proceeded to lose a game of Horus Heresy.

While I don't think this will be an every week occurrence yet, I certainly hope this isn't the last time that we have this many people! For those keeping score, eight people showed up, although once chose not to play.

Incidentally, I don't know if I'll do a full review, but I wasn't impressed by Horus Heresy. It wasn't because I lost, but how I lost. I think the odds were that Jonathan was going to win anyway, but instead of a hard fought game coming down to the wire, I saw all my hard work undone by a single random event card draw. Just about the worst way to lose a game in my opinion, and something I consider to be a serious flaw in the game. I may give it another try eventually, but where I'd been looking forward to giving it a try, now I'll probably have to be talked into it before giving it another go.

Two Hundred Best Games

2010-05-20T14:45:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd reviewed Hobby Games: The 100 Best here back when I read it, but either I did not, or I simply can't find it now in my archives. In either case, now that I've just finished Family Games: The 100 Best, I'm going to go ahead and review both.

The premise behind both books is to get 100 people involved in the gaming industry to each review one of their favorite games. The first book focuses on the broad category of "hobby games" covering everything from RPGs, to CCGs, to miniatures games, to board games. The second book narrows the focus a bit to cover games that can be enjoyed by the "family" and covers everything from, well, RPGs, to CCGs, to miniatures games, to board games.

The nature of "family" is only vaguely defined, but can be loosely interpreted to mean games that can be enjoyed by casual gamers, while "hobby" games are more geared towards people who consider themselves more serious gamers. Where Hobby Games includes Dungeons & Dragons, Family Games includes Faery's Tale Deluxe. Where Hobby Games includes Magic the Gathering, Family Games includes Pokemon. Where Hobby Games includes Flames of War, Family Games includes HeroScape. Where Hobby Games includes Squad Leader, Family Games includes The Game of Life.

Of course, there's some overlap, and Family Games even has an appendix listing games from Hobby Games that would also fit the criteria for Family Games if they weren't already in the first book.

One interesting thing about the core concept of both books is how the context of who is doing the review can sometimes be as interesting as the review itself. If a designer of a game I really like has chosen to include a game I've previously dismissed, then I will probably take a second look at that game. Also, if someone who I haven't heard of before has included a game I really like, I'll probably at least take a look at what they've designed, as we obviously have at least some sensibilities in common when it comes to games.

Of course, this can work the other way too. The fact that Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games chose to include Monopoly as his entry for Family Games just furthers my impression of him as a designer of games I'm unlikely to enjoy.

Both books are good, but if you can only afford one of them, then I'd recommend getting the first one. Hobby Games simply had more entries that I found interesting than Family Games did, and I think this will be the case for most gamers.

Family Games is still a good read, so if you really enjoy Hobby Games and want more, then get a copy of Family Games as well.

I'm pleased to have both books on my shelf.

Podcasts 2010

2010-05-19T16:56:00.001-05:00

My podcast lineup has changed quite a bit since I last blogged about it. Only three of the podcasts I was listening to back then are still on my list: The D6 Generation, World's End Radio, and This Week In Wargaming.

The D6 Generation is still one of the top podcasts on my list. Although for a podcast that proclaims "no hate" they sure seem to have a lot of hate for some things. Their constant put-downs of Agricola are wearing a bit thin, as was the irrational hatred of Avatar, and even the rational hatred towards Twilight. I know they're trying to be funny, but it's one of the few cases where their patented "not too horrible" humor really is pretty horrible.

Mini-rant aside, it's still a great podcast with tons of good information and humor in every episode that covers a wide variety of games.

World's End Radio is my token GW podcast, but still pretty high on my list. The combination of Australian accents and some coverage of non-GW games keeps this one on my list. They really do put on a good show.

This Week In Wargaming isn't quite so high on my list, but is one I still listen to. The original host, Troy McCauley, had to leave the podcast, and I'm still getting used to the new host, Ken Whitehurst. I loved Ken's segment on music for gaming that was part of the D6 Generation, but his style of delivery isn't quite to my taste for a full podcast.

I really hate to criticize something like this in an amateur podcaster, but he has a rather monotone style of delivery that I sometimes find difficult to pick out of the background noise when I'm listening to the podcast, to the point where my mind will wander and I'll suddenly be thinking "wait, what did he just say?" I'm hoping that either he'll grow into a slightly more dynamic style of presentation as he gains experience, or else that I'll get more used to his delivery, because the content of the show is still excellent. I'm not suggesting that he try to be more dynamic, I just hope that he grows more comfortable with the medium that he'll become more relaxed and his delivery will develop naturally. Once again, I hate to even bring it up, but it is a major factor why the podcast is not higher on my list.

Now for the ones I've added since last year: First up is The Dice Tower. This is one of the bigger board gaming podcasts and has been around for quite some time. It probably should have been one of the first podcasts I listened to, and I'm not sure why it wasn't, but now it's up there at the top of my list, vying with the D6 Generation to be the first I listen to when new episodes are up.

The hosts have a good presentation (the co-host, Eric Summerer is actually a professional voice actor), and while Tom Vasel once had a reputation for loving every game he ever played, as time has gone by he's become more critical, which I think makes his reviews even more useful than they used to be.

Fear the Boot is a general RPG podcast that has been entertaining to listen to as I get back into roleplaying. It's not at the top of my list, but the group has a nice dynamic.

Actual People, Actual Play is another RPG podcast, but where Fear the Boot is more about theory, Actual People, Actual Play is about recaps of gaming sessions. This is more entertaining than I originally thought it would be, and actually more useful for me given that the games they've been playing are mostly ones I want to run or play. I started listening because their first game was Burning Empires, but I'm still interested even though that campaign ended. I'm currently several episodes behind because I thought I was subscribed when I wasn't, but I'll be catching up with it as soon as I'm able.

One more primarily board gaming podcast I'm listening to is Game On! with Cody & John. This one is borderline for me. The hosts are entertaining, but I know more about the games they talk about than they do. Admittedly, they don't pretend to be experts, their pitch is that they're just normal gamers. The problem is that I don't really get that much out of listening to them. This one is likely to be one of the first ones I let get behind if I get less time to listen to podcasts.

Ninja vs. Pirates is a somewhat unique podcast in that it's all about game design, and each episode is an interview with a game designer. While some episodes are more interesting than others, there are a lot of interesting interviews that have been done.

Voice of the Revolution is the "house" podcast for Indie Press Revolution. I'm giving it a try right now, but haven't decided yet if it will stick around on my list. For what is essentially an infomercial, it's interesting and leans far more heavily on the information than it does on the commercial.

Finally, there's 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction. This one is the most sporadic of the podcasts I listen to, but is always interesting and entertaining when it comes out. One of the hosts of the podcast is associated with Endgame, a game store in Oakland that I used to go to occasionally. I probably met him at some point, but I never got to know those guys that well. Both hosts seem to have a lot of friends in the industry, or at least the West Coast gaming scene, and a lot of them seem to make their way onto the podcasts.

That's pretty much it for now. I fully expect this list of podcasts to continue to evolve over time. As it does I plan on continuing to post about it in the hopes that maybe someone else will discover a podcast that they like from the ones I mention.

Game Nights Update

2010-05-16T15:53:00.000-05:00

It's been a couple of months since I last talked about our Wednesday night board game night at Castle House Games. We continue to meet every week, and have increased the number of regulars. Including me, we now have around five players that are there on a semi-regular basis, along with one or two more that attend intermittently as schedule and interest permits. We're reaching the point where we can start thinking about having more than one game being played at a time. We're regularly maxing out the amount of players that the "featured" game can handle. Although we haven't been forced to pull out a second game yet, I think it's only a matter of time.

Magpie Gaming night, our RPG night, is pretty much a wash for May. A combination of factors means that we won't have another meeting until the 31st, although after that we should be meeting every Monday for either Magpie night, or Liz' Dogs in the Vineyard game. While the lack of activity this month is mildly frustrating, it appears to be a temporary thing, and not a real threat to the continuing viability of Magpie Gaming night. I'm looking forward to what we have planned with this group.

The Third Imperium

2010-05-15T13:49:00.000-05:00

When Mongoose first released their version of Traveller, I was fairly enthusiastic. With a few minor glitches, the core rules got things right. It didn't take too long though before the kind of slipshod editing and production errors that have come to be associated as typical of Mongoose products began to appear. Missing paragraphs, incorrect tables of contents and typos galore. Combined with a few questionable editorial decisions *cough* 760 Patrons *cough* I soon lost the urge to collect all the books as they came out.

I do still have to give credit for at least one thing they're doing right : the setting. They decided from the beginning to split the setting from the rules. This let's them use the core rules as a generic system, which they've already used to support supplements for Hammer's Slammers and Babylon 5. And, perhaps unintentionally, it lets fans of the Third Imperium just buy the Third Imperium books and pass over the rulebooks.

While the separation between the two isn't perfect (supplements like Fighting Ships are full of Third Imperium specific designs), it is good enough for my purposes.

Most of the decisions they've made regarding the development of the Third Imperium Setting have been good ones. They started by resetting the clock back to the year 1105 by the Imperial Calendar (5626 AD), the year that GDW started with back when they first created the setting. A lot of later developments in the setting weren't appreciated by all the fans, so by doing things this way, they don't totally alienate anybody.

Next, they picked a single region and chose to expand outwards from it. The original Traveller made the mistake of having two settings: The Spinward Marches, and the Solomani Rim. The problem was that while both are sectors of the Third Imperium, they are on opposite ends of the Imperium. Due to the sheer size of the overall setting, no campaign would ever end up using both settings. Mongoose wisely decided to just pick the Spinward Marches (the more popular of the two settings) and expand out from it.

The first Third Imperium product from Mongoose was a book about the Spinward Marches. While they didn't attempt to write the definitive text (after all this time such a thing would probably take multiple volumes), they did add some new things and set up the seeds for a series of possible futures, not just the one future that occurred in the original setting timeline. There's enough there for people new to the setting to get going, but presented in such a way that those already familiar with the setting now have a lot of new options to toss into the mix.

One of the biggest changes is the shift of focus in the political sphere. The focus of the original setting was Duke Norris of Regina. A clash between the Imperium and the neighboring Zhodani led Norris to take a prominent role in Spinward Marches politics, becoming the Sector Duke and eventually Arch-Duke of the re-established Domain of Deneb. In the Mongoose setting, Norris is still a relatively minor player who barely gets a mention. The focus is instead on Duchess Delphine of Mora, an important trade world. This simple shift in focus adds a lot of interesting new detail to the setting, and several different options for where to take a Spinward Marches campaign other than through the events developed in the original timeline.

Next, they introduced the first alien book, Aslan, covering one of the major races that has a presence near the Spinward Marches. In addition, they covered the entire Trojan Reach sector that lies immediately to Rimward (towards the galactic rim) of the Spinward Marches in as much detail as the Marches themselves were covered in the first book. They followed this up with the Vargr module and the Gvurrdon sector to Coreward (towards the galactic core) of the Marches.

The latest book is another sector book, like the Spinward Marches book, but this time covering the Reft Sector that lies to Trailing (Spinward refers to the direction the galaxy is spinning, while Trailing is the opposite direction) of the Trojan Reach. This sector includes the Islands Clusters subsectors that have been a part of the Traveller universe for some time. While in the original timeline these subsectors were cut off from the Imperium and waged a bloody multi-sided war that started sometime after 1106, this book changes things a bit by establishing a minor Imperial presence in the region prior to the outbreak of war, and presenting alternate future possibilities that don't necessarily end in war.

In addition, Mongoose has been releasing "map packs" for each sector they detail, which are simply a poster sized map of the sector in question.

I hope that Mongoose continues releasing information on sectors that connect to the sectors already released.

I also hope that they stick with their "snapshot" approach to describing the Third Imperium. So far every product has been created as if it were a snapshot of the situation as it exists in 1105. There is no attempt to move the timeline forward as each product is released, as was done with the original Traveller products. This lets a GM move the timeline forward on his own, either following the original metaplot, creating his own, or letting the actions of the players have more influence over the course of events.

At this point I don't really ever expect to run a game set in the Third Imperium again, but I do still like reading about it, which is why I'm still buying these books despite no longer collecting the rules.

World of Dorkness II

2010-05-06T00:27:00.003-05:00

As I suspected, the second session of Liz' World of Darkness campaign was more enjoyable for me than the first one was. I ended up choosing a Fairest Draconic as my Changeling template. This is a template that basically means my character is related to dragons in some way, increasing both my social and combat abilities.

I chose this in order to shore up my weaknesses instead of playing to my strengths. My strengths would have dictated that I go with something that would have increased my academic skills, but that seemed likely to be boring in play, so instead I decided to go with a template that would increase the areas that were weak on my original character. It worked out well.

The situation presented by the scenario consisted of two of us being sent out with a number of NPCs to hunt two of the other PCs for the amusement of the "big bad". The fifth PC was the, *ahem* "prize" for the most successful hunter.

The course of the story was fairly simple but in the process of working through it our characters all began to recall their past existence in the "real" world, and as a result all of them ended up becoming the hunted, not just the original two. This led to a final confrontation with the "big bad" that resulted in our victory and allowed us to escape back to the "real" world.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the simplicity, it was quite enjoyable. Lots of good table banter in addition to good roleplaying.

I've always wondered if I'd actually enjoy playing in the type of game I like to run, and since Liz' style of GMing is very close to my own, this gave me a good opportunity to find out. I liked it!

May the 4th Be With You!

2010-05-04T14:53:00.007-05:00

No, I'm not typing with a lisp, it's International Star Wars Day!

I just can't let this date go by without some sort of comment, so here it is!

World of Dorkness

2010-04-20T16:45:00.001-05:00

See, we're dorks playing ourselves in World of Darkness... OK, the joke's been done, but it's still an appropriate title for this post.

We had our first of what will probably be two sessions of Liz' New World of Darkness game, and it went about as I'd expected. Everyone seemed to really enjoy it except me, and I enjoyed quite a bit of it, but was unable to generate a great deal of interest in the play itself. I enjoyed the character generation, and I was a bit surprised at how much I liked the system, having mostly stayed away from White Wolf games over the years. The humor at the table was quite strong and I laughed myself silly at a lot of the table talk. I just couldn't get into my character.

Which, of course, is pretty strange given that I was playing myself. As I explained to Liz after the game, rather than dispensing with the layer of separation between self and character, it seemed to instead add another layer. Instead of just playing myself, I was myself, playing a character, that was supposed to be myself. This was taken to yet another level by the nature of the scenario which caused us to lose our memory of our identity.

So just as I was getting used to playing myself, now I was myself, playing a character, that was myself, but without a sense of identity! No one else seemed to have a great deal of difficulty with this concept, but I was a bit flummoxed trying to determine what that would actually mean. I didn't know my name, but did I remember my alma mater, or what town I was born in? I had so many questions that I didn't really know where to begin, so I simply sat back for a bit and watched what everyone else did, only really taking part once things shifted to action.

I think I would have had an easier time adapting if I'd been playing a fictional character put into that situation rather than myself, because there would have been less "background" to worry about in terms of what I knew and what I didn't.

That said, I think I will enjoy the second session much more, as I'm no longer playing myself, but playing myself as a changeling. I think that should prove more interesting.

If you're curious, you can get a description of the play itself from Liz' writeup here.

Diaspora In Play

2010-04-07T13:27:00.000-05:00

Diaspora went well, if not quite as well as I'd hoped. While I've been familiar with Fate for what seems like ages now, I had yet to actually play a game using it, so it was a little rough getting up to speed with the mechanics.

Also, we quickly stumbled across some glaring holes in some of our character designs. Namely that having at least one social skill is a good idea, as well as having either a defense skill or good armor. I should have probably suggested that we stop and tweak characters mid-session once we realized the problems, but it didn't even occur to me to do so until after the game was over. If we come back to these characters in the future I will definitely allow rebuilds of the skill pyramids at the very least.

The adventure itself went fairly well. I tried to structure it around the abilities of the player characters and I was at least partly successful in getting everyone involved.

We started with a social conflict involving the crew trying to get their cargo out of impound while others tried to have it confiscated. We stumbled a bit with this, but I knew that was going to happen. I wanted to start out with the mechanics so that we could hopefully get the hang of them with a situation that wasn't crucial to the main scenario. The group ended up handling the situation fairly easily, despite all the questions with the rules, and we then moved on to the main part of the adventure.

Basically, the crew found themselves stuck in a quarantine as a pandemic broke out in the world they were on. Liz' character was able to identify the disease and propose a cure, and determined that the cure would be greatly accelerated with the proper technology. Unfortunately, the use of that technology was prohibited by the theocratic government of the planet. This eventually led to a second social conflict in which the players managed to convince the relevant government officials to approve the temporary use of the technology.

This kept Liz and Jonathan's characters fairly involved due to their skill sets, and kept Josh fairly involved due to his character's background and beliefs, not helping the others, but instead arguing that they didn't have the right to interfere with the religion of the people of the planet. This led to some interesting in-character discussions as to the proper course of action.

Unfortunately, I don't think I did as good a job at keeping Seth's character involved. I had planned to give him some opportunities to bring his mechanical skills into play once approval had been made, as he worked to alter some of the necessary equipment. We touched on that in passing, but I failed to make as big a deal out of it as I had originally intended.

We ended with a quick combat as some fundamentalists attempted to remove the "foreign infidels" that were daring to interfere. The players managed to pull things off, although Jonathan's character was seriously wounded in the process. From a game perspective I missed a real opportunity to make things interesting as Seth came up with a really cool course of action for his character to take, but I failed to make sure that it actually influenced the course of the battle. Part of that was simply my own unfamiliarity with the rules, and part simply because it was getting late.

There was still lots of praise for the character design. People seem to really want to play these characters again and I think that says a lot about the strength of the underlying game. I expect this one will come around again. Next up for Magpie Gaming Night is Liz' New World of Darkness game, so I get to take a break from GMing for at least a couple of sessions and just play!

Dresden Files

2010-04-05T01:30:00.004-05:00

The Dresden Files RPG is up for pre-order. I'm more of a Fate fanboi than a Dresden fanboi, but I still placed my order. A bit pricey for the complete set (two volumes at a total of $89.98), but you can buy them individually if you want. They're essentially divided into a player's book (Your Story) and a GM's guide (Our World), with the first containing the rules and the second background and monster stats.

The pre-order comes with pdfs for immediate download. I've been skimming over them, and they're very pretty. The game is written with the conceit that it's actually being written by the young werewolves from the books and are filled with sticky notes and hi-lights from Dresden, Bob, and Billy. If you've read the series then it might help to realize that the game is Billy's modern day attempt at re-creating Stoker's Dracula: an expose of the weaknesses of various supernatural creatures masquerading as fiction.

This will definitely be making an appearance at Magpie Gaming Night in the future (assuming that I don't totally botch Diaspora to the point that no one wants to try Fate again...)

Caveat: this blurb is based totally on Evil Hat's pre-order page and my having skimmed maybe two dozen pages of the pdfs. I hate reading pdfs, so a more extensive review will probably have to wait for the arrival of the print versions some time in late June or early July.

Magpie Gaming Night

2010-04-02T21:24:00.000-05:00

It's time for an update as to how RPG Night is going. We're now calling it Magpie Gaming Night, to differentiate it from other gaming groups meeting to play RPGs. I believe Liz came up with the name based on my self-described magpie gaming tendencies. I got the term from the D6 Generation, which I believe got it from somewhere else. Basically it refers to the tendency to be attracted to anything new and shiny, which perfectly describes my gaming habits, and was one of the primary motivators behind establishing RPG Night.

I've already described the 3:16 game and the Dogs In The Vineyard game that we ran as our first two games. We've now started a Diaspora game. We met to create characters on the 22nd and had a really good time generating the cluster and characters. Seth wasn't able to make it, but we added Josh to the group, and Seth should be there for the actual adventure.

You can check out the results of our session in our thread on the NWARPG Forums. This Monday we'll be running an actual adventure using what we created. I suspect we'll finish the adventure in a single session, but I'm usually wrong about this stuff, so it may take two sessions.

After that, Liz has an idea for a game set in the New World of Darkness where we play ourselves. I'm a bit leery of this idea as I've got a real "been there, done that" vibe when it comes to playing myself in an RPG, but I'm trying to keep an open mind. Liz seems really enthusiastic about the idea, and that's always good to see in a GM, so I expect we'll have a good game

Jonathan also feels he's about ready to run Mouse Guard for us. He's been running a game of it with another group. He was really pleased with how his first session went. He had reservations about his second, but it sounds like they still had fun. I've been looking forward to trying this game for a while now.

If he's not quite ready to run that after Liz' game, then I'll probably run something. I'll certainly be itching to run something after it if Liz' and Jonathan's games are run back to back.

I've got a number of potential games I'm considering. Since we'll have had a mix of sci-fi, western, and modern day up to that point, I'm leaning towards a medieval fantasy game. Third Edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WHFRP), Chronica Feudalis, and Reign are all strong contenders. I think I actually like the system from Chronica Feudalis the best, but the setting is the least inspiring of the three, which is ironic considering my normally strong interest in history (the setting is 12th Century Europe).

I really want to explore the mechanics of both WHFRP and Reign. I think Reign might be more interesting to the group as a whole due to the Company mechanics that focus on the organizations the characters belong to, but I also think it would require more than just a one-shot to explore those mechanics.

Then again, there's always Burning Wheel or possibly The Mountain Witch. Fortunately, I have some time to narrow down my options.

After Jonathan does Mouse Guard, we may try to run a Burning Empires game. Jonathan picked up a water damaged copy of the book on sale from Castle House Games, which makes the logistics of running it much more practical, and some of the core concepts are shared with Mouse Guard, which should smooth the learning curve a little. It would definitely be a bigger commitment than any of the other games we'll have played up to that point, since we'd likely play a full Phase rather than just a one-shot, which would probably take around a half dozen sessions according to the book, plus a session of world building.

We've also started talking about maybe doing a campaign on the Mondays between Magpie Gaming Night, and if we do that, that might be the best way to do Burning Empires. I don't know if I can do a weekly RPG night yet, so that's still just an idea.

Overall, we're still going strong, and I'm very happy that we got this thing off the ground.

I See What You Did There...

2010-04-02T00:01:00.000-05:00

I recently acquired a copy of the new Doctor Who RPG. I still have my copy of the old FASA Doctor Who RPG, and while the system was a bit clunky in places, I always really liked the freedom it gave you within the Doctor Who universe. One of my biggest concerns with the new edition was that it appeared that they were sticking strictly to the current series where Doctor Who is the only Time Lord left, therefore you either play as the Doctor or with no Time Lord at all.

Skimming the book did not initially alleviate my concerns. There's lots of talk at the beginning of the players guide about different options for play, which basically include playing with the Doctor or playing without a Time Lord, just like I'd heard before getting it.

I highly suspect that the reason for this is that the terms of the licensing agreement prevent the designers from overtly including the option to play other Time Lords. The book barely mentions previous incarnations of the show prior to the most recent one. The BBC obviously wants to focus on the show that they have on the air today, and not the past.

Fortunately, the designers snuck in the ability to play other Time Lords anyway. They did this by including Time Lord as a trait in the traits section rather than as a unique ability for The Doctor. They even split the trait into two: Time Lord and Experienced Time Lord. This allows you to create either beginning Time Lords like Romana, or more experienced ones like The Doctor, without having to houserule anything. It's all right there in the rules already, just not explicitly presented as an option.

I've only skimmed the rest of the rules so far, so can't give an overall impression of the game yet, but thought I should point this out since it was probably my biggest concern with the new game.

I'm currently re-reading parts of Diaspora preparing for Monday's game, and am also trying to finish up reading Reign, so it will probably be some time before I get around to digging into the new Doctor Who in more depth.

Everytown

2010-03-18T17:40:00.000-05:00

A few of my regular blog readers don't know Griffin, so I thought I'd just point out that I now know a professional game designer, as his first paid work just went up for sale on DriveThruRPG.

The work in question is Everytown, a supplement for the Twilight 2013 RPG. It presents a small rural town that can be dropped into just about any part of the world for the players to encounter. It sets out stats and motivations for the town's residents, a description of the important physical features of the town, and a recent history of the town and its internal politics. The names are left for the GM to set in order that they be appropriate to the region where the town ends up being placed.

I'm biased, but I think it's a solid piece of work that could easily inspire at least a few sessions of play just with what's there, and there are apparently follow up products planned that will present adventures that use the described setting.

It's pretty specific to the Twilight 2013 game and its post-war setting, but could work in some other similar settings. I could easily see it being used as a small town in a WWII game, or a different post-apocalyptic setting with only a few tweaks here and there.

So, congratulations to Griffin (and also to my friend Max McGloin who contributed to it), and I hope that anyone with an interest in the game will check it out!

Self Analysis 101: What I Like In Games

2010-03-18T02:00:00.001-05:00

Lately I've been thinking about why I like certain games more than others and I think I've come up with at least one reason I hadn't thought of before: I like building infrastructure. I thought I'd share this as a way to maybe help others to identify what it is that they like about games because the more you understand about this the easier it is to find games that you'll like.

After playing Finca at board game night a few weeks ago, I was wondering why I don't enjoy it as much as I enjoy playing Agricola. They are both farming games, so it isn't the theme. I tend to be more successful at Agricola, so that might be a factor, but that usually only comes up if I can't seem to ever win at a game, and I've won at Finca, so I don't think that's it. The game mechanics of Finca are fine and I enjoy playing it if someone else wants to, so it's not that it's a bad game.

Then I realized that I was building something in Agricola, but not in Finca. That got me to think that maybe I liked games where I built stuff, but I realized that building just anything didn't make it interesting for me. A game about building a skyscraper or a pyramid wouldn't necessarily catch my attention. Building up a company that builds skyscrapers, or a civilization that builds pyramids, now that will get my attention!

Building up a good infrastructure can be rewarding whether or not I actually win the game. In Agricola you're building a farm that produces crops and raises animals. You gather resources in order to build stuff. You're creating infrastructure. I think this is also why I like so many 4x games (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) and civilization games. They usually involve building infrastructure. It also explains why I can lose interest in 4x games that are too focused on the combat, and why I tend to lose interest in real-time strategy (RTS) games so quickly, because while building your infrastructure is key to an RTS, the vast majority of the action is focused on combat, and that's not really what I'm playing the game for.

Taken further, I recognize that it's also one of the factors that attracts me to roleplaying. Over the years I've learned to appreciate the storytelling aspect of RPGs, but the development of a character in mechanical terms as you gain experience has also always been a big attraction: do things to improve your character so you can do more things, in other words, building infrastructure.

As I look at other games I've liked I see this as a pattern. It even applies to some of the wargames I used to play. I've always been a big fan of the Operational Combat Series (OCS) from The Gamers, although I haven't had the chance to break one out in years. The games are centered around combat, but you also have to manage the logistics to be successful. While the logistics model in those games is extremely simplified (actually they're probably appropriately modeled for the level of command the player represents, but that's something for another discussion), they do represent setting up a basic infrastructure before the player can take action.

Now that I recognize this trend in my tastes, I'll be keeping an eye out for games that include an infrastructure building element, and I suspect that I'll be more likely to identify games that I enjoy.

Dogs In Shepherd's Rest Part 2

2010-03-12T11:41:00.002-06:00

We wrapped up our Dogs in the Vineyard game, and it went pretty well. The players identified what they believed to be the root causes of the problems in Shepherd's Rest and came up with a solution that didn't involve shooting anyone in the head... maybe next time.

The short version is that while questioning one of the townsfolk about something completely different, one of the dogs uncovered an illicit affair between the two single women of the town. The dogs' solution was to quickly marry off both women to the two eligible men of the town. They had actually joked about this affair existing earlier in the game, but it was apparently a bit of a surprise when they found out it actually existed.

It was interesting to see how the group suddenly reversed their own successes from earlier in the game in establishing their chosen solution. The group had been focused on matching the younger woman with the younger man and convincing the older suitor to go after the available widow instead, and had run several conflicts in an attempt to further that goal. When it became apparent that the younger woman was actually the instigator in the illicit affair, they decided it would be better if she was married to the older man after all as he would be able to exercise firmer control over her (remember folks, this game is set in a fictional 19th Century Utah, and the players were playing characters that have bought in to the morality of the setting).

After arranging the marriages, the dogs then left Shepherd's Rest confident that they had set things to rights. Too bad they only discovered one of the two illicit affairs going on in the town...

We had a shorter session this time as there was a meeting of the NWARPG prior to the session, and so I decided to let the group implement their chosen solution without further conflict resolution. After the session was over, I probably got a bit too chatty about the affair they missed and some other details of the motivations of the NPCs, but I usually can't help myself from revealing those kinds of details after a game is over. In the future I'll try to restrain myself more, at least delaying the reveal so that the players can dwell on their own resolution for a few days first.

Overall, an enjoyable and satisfying session, and it's highly likely that we'll be returning to this game after trying out some others. I'll also probably get to try it as a player at some point as Liz has expressed interest in running a town either for RPG Night or for a NWARPG Game Day.

Fragmentation

2010-03-07T07:40:00.000-06:00

Lately there's been a real fragmentation of social tools online. Maybe it's been around for a while, but I'm really starting to notice it now. I first started seeing it on Gary's Black Diamond Blog, which was something he noticed as well. I'd seen it a little here as well, but since I started using Google Buzz I've seen it a lot more.

When I update here, in addition to alerting whoever has subscribed to the posts, I've also set it to update my Facebook page and on Google Buzz. The result is that people are commenting on the posts in three different places.

This is great in that I'm getting more total comments, and feedback is great! Still, I have two concerns. First, I can't help thinking that if everyone posted in one place I'd get even more feedback as people play off each others comments. Second, Facebook and Buzz are both fairly ephemeral. Posts on Facebook scroll off in a matter of hours, and the only reason that Buzz doesn't disappear even faster is that I only have three friends that have even posted to it yet!

The blog is more lasting. Posts to the actual blog can be referenced any time that the blog is referenced, which allows people to comment days, weeks, or even longer after the original post was made, which I consider to be a good thing. I recently got an encouraging post on my Panzer Tracks blog that hasn't updated in nearly a year!

Then again, Facebook and Buzz allow for more casual comments and digressions into unrelated topics, whereas the blog itself feels a bit more formal and constrained.

For now, I'm just happy that people are commenting.

Dogs in Shepherd's Rest

2010-02-23T16:09:00.005-06:00

We had our first session of Dogs in the Vineyard on Monday. I can't go into too much detail, because the story of Shepherd's Rest hasn't yet finished, but I can at least describe the cast of characters so far.

To start with we have the dogs. Melissa "Missy" Whitehoof (Liz) is a half-breed with a mountain-folk father who comes from a troubled family. David Snow (Jonathan) is a pious student of the Faith. Kimble Smith (Seth) is a not-so-pious young man with a temper. They're all newly initiated members of God's Watchdogs out to do good, and their first stop after leaving the temple is Shepherd's Rest.

Shepherd's Rest is a small community overseen by Steward Matthew, a middle aged man that the dogs have not had a great deal of interaction with yet, although he was the first man they talked with upon arriving at the town.

Next they met Widow Joanna, the woman who is providing them with room and board while they stay in Shepherd's Rest. She is frustrated by the lack of attention that the available men of the town are paying to her.

Brother Silas is one of those available men, an older gentleman recently granted permission to take a third wife by the Elders of the Church.

Brother Caleb is the other available man, a young man looking to find his first wife.

Sister Sarah is the young woman that both men have set their sights upon, but who desires neither of them.

Sister Mary and Sister Rebecca are Brother Silas' first and second wives respectively.

Finally, Brother Giles is Sister Sarah's father, who wants to see her married to the relatively well-to-do Brother Silas.

Oh, and there's something about some bandits who have robbed a supply wagon, killed the driver, and stole some sheep.

So far the dogs have dealt with relatively mundane matters, but we still had a good time exploring the mechanics of the game and getting to know Shepherd's Rest. I'm looking forward to seeing how the dogs decide to resolve the problems of Shepherd's Rest in our next session!

NWARG Game Day

2010-02-15T01:00:00.005-06:00

The Northwest Arkansas Roleplaying Gamers puts on a quarterly game day. It's sort of a one day mini-con where people throw out pitches for one-shot RPG sessions they'd like to run, and then if enough people express an interest they run them. From what I've seen on the boards there's usually only a couple of games being run, but the people who attend always seem to have a good time.

This past Saturday was the first time I was able to attend, and I am glad that I did. There were two games being run, one was "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies!" (shown above) and the other was "3:16 - Carnage on Pandora." I don't know anything about the former other than the name and that it was being run by a guy I've gamed with a couple of times who is a fun guy to game with. I played in the second, which was a sequel to the recent movie Avatar in which we played part of a force sent back to Pandora to secure unobtanium, and teach those blue monkeys a lesson!

The game went quickly, but was a lot of fun. Lots of mindless mayhem which ended with our winning the day for the forces of capitalist imperialism in something close to a replay of the finale of the film, but with us grunts better prepared to deal with traitorous grenade wielding avatars than was the previous garrison.

Once again, a complete session of the game went by in about two hours. If you have limited time for roleplaying then 3:16 just might be the game to try given how quickly it plays. It's a straight up bug hunt at the beginning, but after a couple of plays I'm starting to see how it could develop into something a bit more interesting by the end of a campaign, with characters really starting to question just what it is they are doing.

If you want to participate in a future game day you can check out the NWARG forums.

Comments on the history of Diaspora

2010-02-14T10:55:00.002-06:00

In writing my review of Diaspora I started with what I know of the history of the development of the game, and my interaction with it. As I continued writing I realized that it didn't really contribute to the actual review of the game, so I removed that section and included it in this separate post instead, as I feel it still might be of some interest to those who are unfamiliar with the game.

I first became aware of this game back when it was called Spirit of the Far Future, which was an attempt to develop a version of Traveller using the Fate system. This was a couple of years ago, just before the release of the Mongoose published version of Traveller. It had been announced that Traveller would be released under the OGL, and I believe that the designers of Spirit of the Far Future hoped that the application would be broad enough to allow for a version of the rules to be developed using the Fate system. When more details came out about how the OGL would be applied I believe it became apparent that this wouldn't be the case.

At this point they shifted gears and decided to take the work they had put into Spirit of the Far Future and apply it to the game that eventually became Diaspora. Unfortunately, I also chose to stop following the project at this point. In my defense, I was really excited about the concept of a Fate powered Traveller, especially how it was being developed in Spirit of the Far Future, and was thus equally disappointed when that project ended.

It wasn't until a few months ago that I again became aware of the game as I started hearing rave reviews about a game called Diaspora, and it gradually dawned on me that this was the game that came out of Spirit of the Far Future (although I wasn't sure of that fact until I actually had a copy in my hands). For the record, I believe that credit goes to Paul Tevis and his recently ended podcast "For a Few Games More" for first making me aware that the game had been published, while Chris Hanrahan and Brian Isikoff's podcast "2d6 Feet in a Random Direction" caused me to pull the trigger on ordering it.

Most of the systems developed for Spirit of the Far Future are still present in Diaspora, although they tend to be better developed, while others are completely new to Diaspora, like the cluster generation system.

I'm still a bit sad that Spirit of the Far Future will never see the light of day, but Diaspora appears to be a more than worthy successor, and if you haven't already done so, I encourage you to check out my review of the game in the previous post.

Diaspora

2010-02-14T10:50:00.005-06:00

Diaspora is self-described as a hard science-fiction role-playing game. One of the biggest issues for me with role-playing hard science-fiction in today's world is the trans-humanism element. If you're unfamiliar with this concept, it's basically the improvement of human mental and physical attributes through technology that seems probable based on where modern scientific research is headed. Combined with the tendency of scientific progress to increase exponentially, and it becomes hard for me to identify with what my descendants are likely to be like in just a few centuries.

This contrasts with what hard science-fiction was like when I was younger, where the characters were pretty much identical to modern humans, just transported into other settings.

Diaspora gets around this with the concept of "collapse." Basically, the authors postulate that once technology reaches a certain point it inevitably leads to the collapse of the society that develops it, at least from the point of view of societies less technologically advanced. Whether that's because the people in the society ascend to a higher level of consciousness, or destroy themselves with their folly, is irrelevant. From the viewpoint of the average human the society collapses and a new one grows from its ashes. As a result, humans in the game are basically the same as humans today, without the kinds of changes that could result from certain advances in technology.

In terms of the setting of the game, the development of faster than light travel occurs some time before the collapse, and has led to humanity spreading to the stars at some time in the past. How long ago this first happened is up to the individual game, and is likely unknown. The nature of the way FTL travel works means that it tends to be confined to clusters of a half dozen to a dozen systems. In game terms these clusters are created at the start of a game by all the players involved in a collaborative process that both creates the setting and begins to define what the players expect out of the game.

This process is continued in character generation. The game does not assume that a gamemaster has yet been chosen at this point. All the players are equally involved in creating the cluster, and all of them create characters. Even if the group does know who will be the GM, the GM has no special authority at this point in the process. By the end of the process, whoever does become the GM should have a fairly clear picture of what kind of game the group is looking for based on the decisions everyone made in cluster and character generation.

Mechanically, the game is based on the Fate system, most famously used in Spirit of the Century, and I think the way they've tinkered with the core system is excellent. My favorite bit is how they handle stunts. The biggest problem I have with Fate as implemented in Spirit of the Century is how stunts are handled. They're presented as a catalog of abilities which means it can take a lot of time for a player to browse through and find the ones he wants to take for his character. In a system that's supposed to be designed for pick-up games, this has always seemed to me to present problems.

The designers of Diaspora decided against the catalog method, and instead distilled stunts down into four categories that many of the more detailed stunts seemed to fall into, plus the ability to make up stunts that don't fall into one of those four categories. So, instead of going through a whole catalog, players just have to look at four things, or better yet, decide what they want their character to be able to do, and then with the help of the other players create a stunt that allows them to do it.

Another innovation is the addition of a wealth track to the health and composure tracks. In Fate, damage is handled by the use of tracks. Health for physical damage, and composure for damage taken in social situations. Diaspora adds Wealth to handle the monetary economy of the game. It makes for a nice abstract system that creates economic pressures for the characters without requiring actual bookkeeping by the players. Damage to the Wealth track represents debt. Take enough damage and your character could be taken out of the game just as he could be with health or composure, in this case sent to debtor's prison, or stuck in a dead end job to pay the bills.

I'm not quite as enthusiastic about the four combat mini-games: personal combat, space combat, social combat, and platoon combat. This may just be because I haven't yet had the chance to use them in play. They are all map-based to some extent, and I have a preference for more narrative combat systems. There are also some issues with how range is handled in personal combat that I initially had a hard time wrapping my head around but I think I understand it better now. Of the four, I think space combat is my favorite based just on reading it, possibly because as GM I don't have to come up with maps for each encounter (it uses a simple range band system).

I'm probably most leery about the very mechanistic social combat system, but I think the key there is the advice they give on using it as a tool when the roleplaying is bogging down and isn't going anywhere rather than as a replacement for traditional roleplaying.

I don't want to overstate how I feel about the mini-games. I suspect that my reservations are mostly due to not having had the chance to actually use them in a game.

A brief note on the production quality of the book itself: it's excellent. Currently only available as a hardcover from Lulu.com, the bindery is very well done. The layout is attractive and functional. There is both a table of contents and an index. The contents are black & white, and the artwork is sparse, but this did not detract from the product for me.

I do wish the authors would work through their issues with releasing a pdf of the game, if only because my likely players would appreciate having one available, but they have released pdfs of the charts and forms useful for playing the game, as well as making an SRD available online.

Overall, this is an excellent book, both as a stand-alone game and as a toolkit of ideas for anyone who wants to tinker with the Fate system to create other games.

I hesitate to mention, but feel it is my duty to do so, that the authors are working on a revised edition of the game to be released in both hardcover and softcover versions. I've gotten the impression that this will be released shortly, but I have no insider knowledge as to exactly how soon this might be, especially given that "shortly" is an extremely flexible unit of time in the world of indie RPGs.

Edit: The corrected version is now on Lulu. You can safely order the book knowing you are getting the most up-to-date version. They're describing it as "corrected" rather than "revised" as it's apparently mostly fixing typos and grammar.

Board Game Night Update

2010-02-04T02:26:00.002-06:00

Our weekly board game night at Castle House Games is still going. The regular group is just three of us, but I've been assured that part of that has just been that people have been busy with the holidays and other things. I also suspect that my often waiting to the last minute to post what the featured game is has had some negative effect on attendance, so I've been trying to post that information earlier in the week, and we have indeed had at least one extra player the last couple of weeks, possibly as a result.

We have been getting a good variety of games in, as you can probably tell if you've been checking the sidebar showing my "Recently Played Tabletop Games" as nearly all of the games that have shown up there, other than RPGs and miniatures games, have been played at board game night. I've been trying to encourage the other attendees to suggest games to play, but as the person with the largest collection of games, they seem to trust me to make that call most of the time.

For a while we were trying to stick to the idea of playing games at least twice in a row. I borrowed this idea from my friend Joe at Black Diamond Games. That was the method used when I played there, but the feedback I've gotten from the players here is that they'd rather not play the same game twice two weeks running. Instead I'm going to try to intersperse games that are new to the group with games that we've played before so that we still get at least two games in of each game played, just not always in a row.

For example, last week we played Dominion, a game that was one of the very first games played at board game night, and long overdue for a return. This week we played two games new to board game night: Conquest of Paradise as the featured game, as well as Sorry! Sliders as a filler game. Next week we'll likely play Finca, a game that we first played two weeks ago. We won't always alternate between new releases and old favorites, but something close to that will probably become the norm, rather than the two weeks in a row of the same game that I had originally planned.

By the way, I enjoyed both Conquest of Paradise and Sorry! Sliders, although the latter was probably the bigger overall hit. It's a surprisingly fun dexterity game, especially given that it's a mass market game. Not as good as Pitch Car, but not nearly as expensive either.

The Future of Retail RPGs

2010-02-01T14:20:00.001-06:00

My friend over at Black Diamond Games has been musing lately about the future of RPGs from a retail point of view. Sadly for him and other retailers, I'm beginning to think that there isn't much of a future for RPGs in the retail market.

I've been saying for years that tabletop RPGs are destined to follow the same path as tabletop hex and counter wargames. Wargames got started in the fifties, grew in the sixties, and were really becoming a big deal in the seventies. In the late seventies and early eighties you could find Avalon Hill games in major bookstore chains and other retail locations, but in the early seventies something happened that was destined to cut short the popularity of wargames: tabletop RPGs.

Most know that tabletop RPGs grew out of wargaming (in fact, while D&D is the first published RPG its roots can be traced not only to Chainmail, but the unpublished wargaming/RPG hybrid Braunstein). Many people, in fact the majority of people, who had once been consumers of wargames, found RPGs to be more to their liking. The development of the personal computer further hurt the wargaming industry as those for whom RPGs weren't to their liking found that computer games often were. Computers could both streamline the handling of complex rules as well as provide an AI opponent, both big attractions for people dealing with games which were both hard to learn and difficult to find opponents for.

From a retail perspective, wargames were dying. First SPI disappeared, then Avalon Hill was eventually acquired by Hasbro, and today traditional hex and counter wargames are effectively dead in the retail market.

At the same time, there are more and better hex and counter wargames available today than ever before. New companies with different business models arose from the ashes of SPI and Avalon Hill. GMT Games, Multiman Publishing and Avalanche Press are the big boys, with a host of smaller companies also in the field.

They thrive in a market that sells directly to consumers, mostly over the internet. They still sell the occasional game in the retail market, but it's not their focus, and they seem to treat it more as a marketing expense than an opportunity for direct profit.

I think that RPGs are destined for a similar, but not identical, future. I think that we will see the industry go down two different paths. The first is being pioneered by Dungeons & Dragons and their DDI program. Whether or not it was deliberate, having so much information available online for a subscription is cannibalizing the sales of print products at the retail level. If this is not also cannibalizing the bottom line of Wizards of the Coast, then this trend will likely continue and may come to replace the "supplemental" model of RPGs that most "mainstream" RPGs now follow. This model involves the release of core rules followed by regular release of new content in the form of supplemental books until such time as it's felt that sales would best be served by a new set of core rules.

The second path is one of small press publishing, and more importantly, print on demand. The "indy" model where a game often consists of a single book, and where if additional books are produced their production is usually based more on what the game needs than on increasing sales. Few are likely to make their living designing games this way, but then few make their living designing wargames anymore either.

Small press games have always been around, but the availability of print on demand changes things. The difference between small press and mainstream used to mean the difference between a hardbound book and a bunch of photocopies stapled together (or bound with a plastic ring binding if it was "fancy"). Now the only difference between a print on demand book and one from a major publisher is the use of color, and maybe artwork.

I just received a copy of Diaspora, a game only available for purchase on Lulu, and its production quality beats anything that I've seen from mainstream RPG publisher Mongoose (admittedly the whipping boy in the RPG industry for poor production quality). Only the lack of interior color separates it from other major releases, and the creativity and editing quality is arguably far better than most.

Alternate paths, like that being followed by Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, with its custom dice, are unlikely to start a general trend. They seem too gimicky, and are too obviously an attempt to solve problems with the business model through game design. If they were operating in a vacuum then they would likely succeed, but they're operating in an environment where others are simply abandoning the business model in favor of ones that work better.

Personally, I would like these alternate paths represented by Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to succeed, because I think it's important that RPGs maintain a retail presence, both for the health of RPGs and the health of the retail game industry, but I suspect that they will instead become increasingly a niche within a niche.