My Wife's Gameblog, Suckas!

Formerly known as "Random Access Memory", it is now called "Nerdy Girl's Game Blog" and you can go look at it right here. It'll give you some insight as to why I married this woman.

She's got two posts up today (one about Conan) and they are in English, so you have no damn excuse.

Conan, man. Conan.

This Is What It Sounds Like Inside My Head.

What Are You Waiting For? WATCH THIS VIDEO!

The Airship Has Docked.

It took long enough, too. Let me explain:

There's a campaign setting that's been sitting in my head for...I dunno, three, four years now. It was vague and disjointed; nothing more than a few flashing images, some concepts, some influences. It began when I started to read The Mad King by Edgar Rice Burroughs; or maybe it was when I read a comic book that featured blue-skinned faeries with airships. Perhaps it sparked when I saw the cover of the novel Fitzpatrick's War...then again, it may have burrowed into my head while watching the magnificent swordfight in The Great Race with Tony Curtis. Or maybe it was during The Golden Compass? Of course that my first glimpse at Kurt Busiek's Arrowsmith comic might have --

I don't know. That's how vague the whole thing is -- a disconnected, incoherent webwork.

All I had down was this: It's set in an analogue of Europe, right before The Great War -- only it isn't Earth. There are automobiles and airships and sabers and firearms, and royalty in sashes and epaulets -- real Prisioner Of Zenda stuff. It's not "steampunk"-- the technology is a bit advanced in comparison to our early 1900s, but steam has taken a back seat to...something else. Some kind of technology that straddles science and magic.

There are faeries, and princesses, and castles and dashing scientists and brave soldiers and dastardly villains -- but it's not Castle Falkenstein. It's not all Victorian and stuff; it's a little more like Sky Captain Meets Graustark. So it's got it's own thing going. In fact --

In fact, there might even be aliens.

...

...yeah, I know, right?

And it all crystallized into a vague but specific image: A group of people, obviously the PCs, standing upon a towering platform, a neoclassical analog of Star Wars: Episode I's skyscraping landing pads, bathed in sunset pinks and oranges -- and they're in trouble.

It looked great. Beautiful. Evocative.

But it meant nothing.

Or rather, I wasn't sure what it was about. Who are the PCs supposed to be? How do they fit into this world -- and what's going on it? What's the trouble? No answers ever came. The pot would not boil.

It's been on my mind the last couple of days, although I'm not sure why. It's just been...there. Hovering, insinuating. Taunting.

Today, on the drive home...WHAM.

For centuries, Man followed his own path -- albeit by the grace of the Fae Lords, who made possible the little dollops of magic that Man used to supplement his inventiveness. But with the science of (TBA), Man is ready to make a break from the Fae. With his new science, Man can make almost anything happen -- as it's a process by which a formerly ignored mineral can be converted directly into energy. It's clean, it's safe, and its miraculous. It's Man's own magic.

The Fae are resentful, stewing in their dreamland. They don't want Man to be so independent. They want this technology gone.

Upon the development of the new technology, however, Man found that not only was he not alone on his own world, but that he had other neighbors -- neighbors in the stars. For soon after the development of electro-whatsits, strange but friendly beings came from the skies. They spoke to Man of worlds in the distant starry night, nebulae, whirlpools of matter, ships that can cross the emptiness between the spots of light. And they would give Man the keys, the Stardrive...

...if Man would share his new science.

Man's reticence makes the aliens impatient. They have other motives -- but what do they want? Why are they so anxious for this trade? And will they go so far as to steal it?

Meanwhile, the Continent (read "Europe") is starting to fracture, as kings and revolutionaries plot to control the new technology, or share it with the aliens, or surrender it to the fae. Yet others see this as the End Times.

Yet more see the new technology as a way to pierce The Veil Of Fire, a huge wall of flame that separates the Continent from The New World. What lies beyond it? Who will go? WILL anyone go? Will the Fae make war? Will the Aliens make war? Will the Continent tear itself apart under the strain?

Hmm.

I wonder.

A(rt Nouveau) D&D

I'll get to the point -- what would an Art Nouveau-inspired fantasy RPG feel like?

It's no secret (or, if you know me, surprise) that my head is full of stupid ideas, and today being an especially good day for the spontaneous generation of obtuse thought, I happened upon this particular notion. It actually began with the idea of making a custom character sheet with Art Nouveau motifs and fonts, which led to the thought, "What kind of game would need THAT?" and thereafter to the question which opened this post.

I loves me some Art Nouveau. It's one of the few art movements that truly appeals to me; I like other styles and ideas and so on, but only Nouveau moves me. (Deco does, too, but that's another post.) It says things to me -- things so graceful and wondrous and fantastic and deep that I --

-- Nouveau is such beauty as to steal my words away.

...Okay, now that we've determined that I totally want to make out with the stuff, let's get back to the point. Like it or not, certain types of game go well with certain types of art; they can inspire and inform each other. A game that's inspired by Frazetta art is probably going to have a different vibe from one whose GM has a lot of Elmore on the old hard drive. Some games kinda feel like barbarian skulls-and-boobies art, some feel like renfaire photo galleries. Am I right?

Let's pretend that I am, if only so that I don't feel like an idiot typing all of this. Please? Thank you, you're so kind.

Anyway. The art style lends itself very well to fantasy, I think, because it's obviously inspired by the natural world, but it stylizes it. It suggests real stuff (plants, flowers, insects, etc.) but depicts it in unrealistic ways. To me, it's inherently fantastic.

Remember that Spelljammer d20 game in Dungeon magazine? It was a...well, kind of an alternate take on Spelljammer, and the illustrations were all in the Art Nouveau style. It worked very well for me -- it hit kind of a Little Nemo groove which made it feel different, unique.

It felt truly fantastic, and it made me want to play it.

So now, here I am, wondering -- how can I bring that look to my vanilla-fantasy games? What kind of feel would such a game have? Does it matter? How would it color my game? How would my players react to it? Would it make me do anything differently? What would translate to my fantasy game, and how?

Would it feel any different?

Or would I just have some pretty character sheets for the same-old same-old?

Man, I Don't Even REMEMBER March 5th!

Apparently, I was real busy that day, though...check it out (click to enlargerate):

Jacob said, "Ive never played trav is it worth it?"

Okay, first -- let's talk about The Weblog As Gamer Social Networking tool.

Long story short: Jeff Rients reported thta someone from Bloomington, IN had sent him a package, and it wasn't me, so I was like, 'Who?" the guy is like, "Me!" and Jeff is like, here's his e-mail address" and I'm like "*email*" and he's like "*reply*" and I haven't actually made the face-to-face yet but he can get me a good deal on car parts.

Now. To answer Jacob's question: In my opinion, Traveller is one of the best RPGs ever published. That's just my opinion, of course, and those are highly objective as we all know. Trouble is, whenever I try to articulte reasons why I think Traveller is so damned great, results in something like this:


...except for one time when it didn't, and that's been a hard incident to replicate.

Can anyone else chime in on why they ♥ them some Traveller?

Getting High At The Movies

I went to see Up. You ought to do the same. Not only is it primo Pixar work (except for the short in front of it, which I felt was weak), it manages to articulate its theme in a way that other films of the sort never did.

Seriously, what I got out of The Wizard Of Oz was, "Look, there's no point in daydreaming, because satisfaction is available to you right here in the goddamn dustbowl. Oh, and Uncle Jed's allergic to silver paint." Not so Up; this movie says, "Life is an adventure to be savored, so don't overlook the details while you dream your dreams."

Plus: talking dogs.

Pixar, man...I have no interest in seeing the car movie, and that damn fish movie annoyed the crap out of me. But everything else has blown my damn socks off. Even Ratatouille, about which I was indifferent at best, ended up pleasing and surprising me. To say nothing of Wall-E and Toy Story 2...

So. Up. It's Cosgrove-tastic. Go see it, go.

Traveller Book 6 Broke My Brain!

It's not really that I need to create an entire star system using the extended system generation rules in Traveller Book 6: Scouts; it's that I'm enough of a big damn dork that I had the idea, Hey! I'm on vacation! What the hell, I'll roll up an entire star system using the extended system generation rules in Traveller Book 6: Scouts! and it sounded like a good one.

Repeat: Big. Damn. Dork.

...Well, anyway, I figured I'd take a stab at it just to see what's what, y'know? So I sat down with my reprints and a notebook and my pencil and some dice and what-the-hey-ho attitude, started labelling fields on a hand-made form, and commenced, as they say, to rollin'.

Twenty or thirty minutes later I had a size V class M main-sequence star with spectral order 0, 4 max orbits, a gas giant aaaaand...uh...

...like that.

I don't know if the rules are disorganized or unclear, or if besides being a titanic nerd I am also a collosal illiterate, but -- damn! Amongst all the page-flipping, dice-rolling, DM-applying and chart-misreading, I had the distinct and undisguisable feeling that I had no forking clue just what the hell I was doing.

For now, I'm going to lay the blame squarely upon the rulebook's ill-defined shoulders. More specifically, I find the author culpable, becuase the writing was unclear and disorganized and kind of incohesive. A process like the extended star system blah-blah-blah stuff really requires a clear, concise explanation -- a hand-holding, one might say. Or, hell, how about a freaking example? If I can watch somebody do it right, I can figure out what I'm doing wrong.

A quick look at the MegaTraveller Referee's Manual shows that the system in question had been edited, laid out very legibly and made more approachable in its publication in that second version of the venerable game. But supposing it were 1983, I'd just brought home the yellow-striped LBB from the hobby shop, and I sat down with paper and pencil and dice and what-the-hey-ho attitude to create a full star system for presentation to my players later on? What then? Should I sit and agonize over not being able to instantly play with my new toy? I'm a gamer, so of course I'm used to some assembly being required; in fact, that's why I'm a hobby gamer. All the same, it should be a game, and fun -- not a chore, and frustrating.

Harrumph.

Of course, there's always the possibility that it is a lot easier than I think, and that I am simply a moron.

A Brief Digression: Serpens Sector!

This blog is about rattle-rattle games, not click-click ones. But even I like a good click-click game now and then, and I sure do like Space Exploration: Serpens Sector.

Not an MMO! Not for sale! Just a nice, solid computer game with which to amuse yourself for a while. You're the captain of a ship on a mission to explore worlds and do stuff on them. You get to explore ruined cities, give people rides (and gain them as crew), send off away teams to fix comm satellites that will probably kill them, and also kill monkeys.

I've only played one game and I am HOOKED. Funny thing, I was looking for a game with X,Y and Z specifications and I swear this one meets 'em all. It's light on resource management, full of surprises and doesn't need to gobble up all your time.

Okay, I'm going back to playing it now. Doc Rotwang! sez check it out.

Defintion Of "Old School" Gaming, You Say...?

Well, see, it's when you --

-- exc--excuse me, folks, I've just been handed this very important message:

"Take him to... Detroit!"

Star Trek TOS Narrator's Toolkit SCORE.

Seventy-five dollars online! NINETY dollars online! Out-Of-Print! Blah, blah, blah!

My wife found one on Craigslist for less than 4 bucks. Plus shipping and the money order, less than nine. And this one isn't all stuck together.

I could give you a full review of the thing, but I won't -- I'll just skip to the bottom line. Whether you play Trek or not, this is a book that belongs on your shelf. Hands-down, this is as good a book about GMing as you will ever find. Each page is crammed with practical advice on the design and execution of game scenarios -- and you can absorb it all in one afternoon.

It even comes with a fully-developed adventure. I will confess to not having read the whole thing yet, but I can tell already that it applies some of the scenario design advice presented in the main section of the book, so you have an example of what your new tools can do. (Hey, S John -- Forbidden Planet, right?)

Get it. Go. Now. NOW. If I could afford the lawyer, I'd buy it back from Wizards.

Winging It

Recently, the subject of "Winging It" came up on The RPG Haven. Since that's kind of my...uh...what I try to do without sucking, I figured I oughtta chime in, 'cause I have some thoughts about the subject. You'll find the content of this post copied over there, as well.

I liken the process of winging it to having a destination and some landmarks...but no map.

One or two of ya just read that and went, "Well, DUH", but some of you are probably thinking, "Wha....?" Most of you are probably thinking "Screw this, I'm'a go read Cracked.com", but for the few of you who aren't, here's more detail.

When I say I have a destination, I mean only that I form a general idea of how I want things to turn out in a broad sense. In fact, I really just set a goal -- just like I do with The Adventure Funnel, The Internet's Favorite Gaming Article Since 2006 Or Whatever.

In this case, though, the goal is a little more than just a plot objective -- it's a thesis statement. In a sense, it's a goal for the gamemaster, not necessarily the PCs. "Cause a ruckus", "Establish and maintain a sense of cosmic dread", "Articulate the importance of keeping your cool under fire", "Show how bad-ass Chico Pistolas is, so that when the PCs kack him, it's even cooler"...stuff like that. It's kind of a guide to how to get to where you wanna go.

So now that we know where we're headed, let's see about some landmarks. These are really just details, gimmicks, events, examples, little scenes and the like -- a few modular bits that I have on hand and shove in as I go. If my Hyborian game is all about rescuing virgins from a temple of Set in pure bad-ass "the mad exultation of battle when the blue baldes flame and crimson" mode, then a big, bloody fight against a bunch of Stygian temple guards might come in handy, as might a willful princess who knows steel as well as she knows men. If I know that the head priest in charge of this hoe-down is a towering figure with a booming voice, I might try to get a feel for the types of things he might say and how he might move and what kind of crazy faces he might make. That temple probably has snakes in it, and snakes that slither around in the darkness and leap out from dark crevices are scarier than the ones that rattle and make snake-face at you.

It's more important to know how it's gonna feel than how it's gonna go down. Dig?

So let's say that you want to follow this advice, because maybe the article on Cracked was shorter than you thought. So you assemble some quick ideas about 5 minutes before your next game, and there you have 'em -- maybe written down, maybe not. This is great, Doc, you say, but how do you make it actually happen? Where's your plot? Am I really gonna be able to make THAT up as you go? What do I need for THAT?

Confidence.

No, I'm serious. You need brash Han Soloness, you need that Conan readiness. You're not jumping in blind, either -- you've got what it takes.

You've seen a bunch of movies and you've read a bunch of books. You know how this stuff goes. You are prepared to Wing It.

Look. Think about it. All that a plot really needs to move forward is momentum. Start rolling that ball and don't stop pushing. You know how it's supposed to feel -you decided on your thesis-, so push that way. You have some landmarks, so steer towrads them. Listen to what the players are doing, or not doing. When it feels, according to your goal, like it's time for the giant crab or for the princess to flip out and start stabbing people or for the communicators to stop working -- make it happen. Push that ball. The players'll push back.

Now all of you are playing. Even you, the GM. Now you're on the road to wherever you're going; you know where it ends, so you know when to stop. Meantime, keep moving.

You want an example? Check back soon. My lunch is over.

The Rotwang! Guide To So-So Gamemastering: Appendix N

The thing of it is, you see, that if Jeff Rients and Zach Houghton ever jumped off a bridge, I'd be swan-divin', too.

Here's my so-called "Appendix N". You will find here no semblance of order, because when it comesto stuff like this, that is simply not how I roll. Movies next to books next to music beside who-knows-what-the-hell-else. Put on your hip waders and jump into the stream of consciousness, baby.

• Star Wars (no, not "A New Hope". Freakin' Star Wars.)
• The Empire Strikes Back
• "Neuromancer" by William Gibson
• Robert E. Howard's "Conan" stories
  
• The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai
• Thomas Dolby's "The Golden Age Of Wireless" album
• Blade Runner
• "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" by Douglas Adams
• "The Far Kingdoms", "The Warrior's Tale" and "Kingdoms Of the Night" by Allan Cole and Chris Bunch
• Rush's "Moving Pictures" and "Signals" albums
• Living in Mexico City in the 1980s
• The Warriors
• Streets Of Fire
• 1980s Duran Duran videos
• Willow

Buck Rogers WTF FTW!

I have an episode of Buck Rogers In The 25th Century on right now. Buck's following a woman through a spaceport, right, and he gets stopped at the boarding gate by a security-type guy. I hear the guy's voice: "I'm sorry, sir," he says to Buck, "Flight 409 has just completed boarding." I think to myself, hey, wait -- I KNOW that voice...! I look up -- WTF, it's Dennis Haysbert in an afro!

So I barely have enough time to chuckle and say, "Ha! It'd Dennis Haysbert...!", when there's a lull in the dialogue and a voice on the spaceport P.A. says...

"Captain Christopher Pike, please report to the veteran's affairs office at once."

BWAAH! BWAH HA, HA HA HA!

Score Trek II: The Wrath Of Krull

I popped Khan into the mini-DVD player last night and watched in bed, instead of sleeping. So the movie starts up, and the music gets going, and I’m, like – “WTF, is this Krull?! It totally sounds like the music from Krull!”

Sure enough, in just a few moments, the music credit comes up: Composed by James Horner.

James. Fonking. Horner. James Horner, who’s had, like, three original ideas and continues to use them over and over and forking over again. James Horner, who blatantly plagiarizes himself to the point that all his gorram movie scores sound the bloody ducking same.

James.

Got-dang.

Horner.

The rest of the movie is totally bad-ass, though. “He tasks me! He tasks me, and I shall have him! I'll chase him 'round the Moons of Nibia, and 'round the Antares Maelstrom, and 'round perdition's flames before I give him up! Prepare to alter course!” Montalban-tastic.

Say, why hasn't Mike been by to give me crap about the Trek talk...?

Full-On Bummer At The Half-Price Books

This actually happened last year, but I'm just now getting around to writing about it because it's become relevant again, what with me being all jazzed up about yon new Star Trek movie, y'see.

The closest Half-Price Books is in Greenwood, IN, and we only go up there two, three times a year -- tops. So when I go to the HPB and don't find any sweet, sweet used gamebook love, it's a bummer.

It's even worse, though, when I do find something that I really want, and it's --

--well, here. I've wanted a copy of the LUG ST:TOS RPG Narrator's Toolkit ever since its author, S. John Ross, mentioned it to me. I'm not a huge Trek fan (I like it just fine, but not as much as some folk) but I am a fan of S. John. His material in the main TOS book was aces, so the thought of having a whole book of it made my leg jiggle like a doggie's.

Last Summer, we popped into the HPB and I didn't find anything. I was bummed. Still, I took a last look on the shelf just in case I'd missed something and -- OH MY HOKEY SMOKES.

A copy of the Star Trek: The Original Series RPG Narrator's Toolkit. Still in the plastic baggie.

So I brighten up, and we get in the car, and I open up my prize, and I turn the cover open...

...and it's all stuck together. Water damage. Unusuable. Illegible.

Ruined.

Just like my day.

I guess I could cruise eBay to find the damn thing, yeah. But what I can't buy at auction is the sudden, surprising thrill of finding the last thing I'd expected to find, and for cheap.

Okay. Sob story over.

The Dukes Of Biohazzard, You Say?

DONE AND DONE.

Sometimes, I Amaze Myself.

Hokey Smokes! Did I draw this sweet dungeon map?! I think I did!

DAMN!

Sorry, I'm -- I'm just, uh, I'm...I'm really proud. Usually my dungeons look like crap. Somehow this one doesn't, so...this is a novelty, y'see. You can't see the grid lines (they didn't scan), so I think it looks even better on paper.

Huh. It's the layout, I guess...I dunno. I'm still populating it. Still...

...huh.

I guess it helps that I took my inspiration from the map in Blue Book D&D.

Hmmm.

I read Alan Dean Foster's Glory Lane back in the summer of 1990 or so, and found it entertaining if not inspirational -- one of the protagonists, a mouthy, hyperactive punk rocker named Seethe Ransom, surreptitiously burrowed himself in my brain and later re-emerged as a cyberpunk character whom I really need to do something with...but i digress.

Anyway, I'm reading it again. It's a breezy read, even if the plot drags -- 115 pages into it (it's 295 pages total), still not much has happened. The premise can be summarized thusly: "The Breakfast Club Hitchhikes The Galaxy". Sure there's more to it but that's a good place to start.

What leaps out to me as potentially gameable is this part of of it: Earthlings Meet Outer Space, Hijinks Ensue. Truth be told I think I've actively resisted the idea of running a game based on that premise, but all of a sudden --perhaps because I am now older and therefore infinitely wiser-- the idea is more attractive. Today, I am more interested in a game which pits hapless 21st Century humans against the wild and wooly worlds beyond the blue, where accountants and stuntmen and art students and other mundane folk rub elbows, against their will, with --

-- well, with the crazy crap you see on the cover of that book.

The whole thing screams creaitivity, potential, fun. Naturally, it'd be a funny game, and if run as a sandbox it would require -- no, invite me, the GM, to make up all kinds of the aforementioned crazy crap to keep things going. A planet whose economy has so severely boinked itself that the only thing of real value is Tijuana Bibles? Sure. An interstellar cargo cult based on decades-old TV transmissions of Soap? Yes, please. Bargon Kaz-Moootsie, Lord Of Space, who rules the Flimpoid sector with the threat of his hideous parasitic chihuahuas? Yeah, OK. This place? Why not?!

What's amazing to me is that I started gaming in 1988 and I'm just now interested in doing it.

"YEEEEEE-HAW....!"

"Honey!" I said to my wife once upon a time, "The Dukes Of Hazzard Role-Playing Game!"

"NO," she replied. It was one of those anvil-grade 'no's, the kind that smashes a proposal as if it were a coyote. But I heard it whistling through the air, so I stepped aside.

"Think about it!" I enthused. "You can drive around in the General Lee, shooting dynamite arrows out the window as you jump over a crick!"

"No." This one was sharp, like a needle. I'm not into pointy things so I shut the hell up...

...for a while.

Of course there wouldn't be a market for such a thing (who would actually PAY for it?!), but I'm surprised to have never heard of a fan-made Dukes Of Hazzard RPG product. Not a full set of rules or even a supplement to another game.

Why is that?

Let's straighten something: I'm not exactly a fan of the show. Oh, you know, I watched it as a kid, back in the late '70s. Everybody did. It had everything: Car chases, Catherine Bach, stunt driving, Catherine Bach, goofy humor, Catherine Bach, laughable villains, Catherine Bach...like that. I've seen an episode since then, and...uh...hmm.

Still, I know potential RPG shenanigans when I see 'em.

Of course you can make a viable game out of it. There's a stable-enough premise: "A True Modern-Day Robin Hood". It's right there in the lyrics. Good Ole Boys (never meanin' no harm) fighting against corruption in the deep South. There's your theme and your setting, right there. Easy.

So you roll up some Cousins (the game's lingo for PCs), design a car (or just use the General Lee), stock up on dynamite arrows and away you go.

As for the tone of the game, I present the following image:

Why isn't anyone playing this?! I don't understand!

It Ain't The Size That Matters, Baby...

...it's the trouble you can get into with it.

I'm not talking about weiners -- I'm talking about campaign settings! Ha ha, I gotcha! You thought I was...uh...talking about...

...yeah, it's not that funny at all. Let's start over, OK?

So, I Waste The Buddha reader Forge sent me an e-mail recently, stating that he read about my C&C sandbox game and that now, he wants to develop his own sandbox setting for his Labyrinth Lord game. Good for you, Forge! Not only that you're having fun with the notion, but that you even made sense of my disjointed ramblings in the first place.

Anyway, what he really wanted to know was this -- how big was my sandbox? I replied as soon as I read the e-mail, by which I mean I totally got on my sandbox and started preaching at the poor guy. I completed my masterpiece, THE definitive word on how big a map should be, and declared it the greatest thing anybody ever said about the subject, even you.

No, seriously. What I did was to mull over some ideas and type them out, and after clicking "Send", I thought -- "Hey, this would totally not suck as a blog post."

So if Mr Forge does not mind, I'd like to share my response to him, with you. Here it is, with a few tweaks to correct spelling.

Okay, lemme pontificate on the size of a sandbox. My first advice is as follows: Don't sweat it overmuch. I did and believe me, it ain't worth it; the sandbox's size, in my opinion, is less important than the shenanigans available therein.

Yes, you'll need a map. Maps have scales. Really only two things matter in determining the size of your sandbox: how much stuff there is to do, and what scope you want for doing it -- and even that one needn't matter so much.

Still, some kind of logical framework is handy for sketching out the sandbox, therefore it's not a bad idea to toy with verisimilitude a bit. I wanted my scope to start out small; local stuff, daytrips to adventure, but with no shortage of danger. So I said to myself: Figure the average party can travel...what? 20-30 miles a day over clear terrain? That's a 20-30 mile radius in which to contain adventuring shenanigans. A little math says that's an area of 1256.63708 sq. mi. to 2827.43343 sq. mi.

Uh...okay.

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't know dingus about how big that really is. I found it easier to translate all of this into real-world terms by looking at a map of my state and seeing what's in a 30 mi. radius from my house. Easier still -- I know it's a 10-mile drive from my house to the mall. I know what THAT looks like first-person.

A-HA! NOW! Now it's real to me.

What kind of trouble can lie in wait on that route? That depends on your setting. Is it wilderness? Is it settled? Is it just kinda settled? Desert? Coastline? Islands?

At this point, I said, "Screw it. This is too much thinking."

In the end, I wound up running those games with my wife within the confines of three contiguous five-mile hexes. I figured a 5-mile-wide hex could hold plenty of stuffs, and so I got some hex sheets from the Judges' Guild website and went to town. I placed home base and an adventure location in one, a town and castle in another, and another town in the third. I dreamed up reasons to go to these places and called it a day. Anything else I came up with could be appended modular-like.

Of course, you may be dreaming of a wider scope. You may want stories wherein the PCs have to travel for days on end across haunted plains and through scorpion-infested mountains just to get to the Dungeon of the Ill-Fitting Princess. Make that map big, then. Maybe the adventures will be low-key and can occur within the confines of, like, Hazzard County. Really, any area in which the PCs can poke stuff with the proverbial stick is go.

Like I say, don't sweat it. Throw some stuff on paper and start playing.

However, if you want a little insight as to what distances really mean, click on this link see what's within 30 miles (or 5 or whatever) of you. Just don't get all obsessive about it like I used to...

Doodles, Part 4 -- A Story! (Kind Of)

Okay, I'm back again. Here's another set of doodles.


By the way, my Dad's in town this week so I have a REAL excuse for not posting as often. ZING!

Doodles, Part 3 -- Getting Sticky

While looking around the web for Inkscape tutorials, I found a page that teaches how to draw your own liitle stick-figure dudes in Rich Burlew's "Order of the Stick" style. I played around with the style on paper, and said to myself, "MAN! This is a great way to say a lot with very few lines!"

Soon, I decided to try it out in a comic. This was the result:


As you can probably tell, I had already begun to think of this style as a viable one to use for a comic series. Doing this comic was my way of talking myself into it.

I actually doodle a LOT at work. I pass them around to my buddies and the patient, supportive people kindly take them and laugh at them. I started to think -- why not draw pictures of them, too, and not just of Angie, myself and Jena (whom we'll meet soon enough)? Hmm. I wondered.

Then, my wife expressed a little bit of envy that I draw stupid cartoons of my friends at work but not of her. The next step to take was clear, and you can see that I had already decided on it by the end of that last comic. Naturally, this one followed:

There are some in-jokes here, as is to be expected. The big boots are worn, in real life, by both Kim "Killenburg" Hillenburg and Allison "Yucky" Gross, but only during the winter. Leaky Pete there often makes "i'm pretty!" jokes, and they're great fun. Tony really wears that ankh -- in fact, he's the one I mentioned back in this post! I poke fun at Jena a lot because she is a truly sweet, funny, kind and admirable individual. And my wife has big boobs.

This series stretches out for 7 more strips, with an eighth one that I pencilled and began inking today. So...pack a lunch.

Doodles, Part 2 -- The First "Angie & Andrew" Comics

Angie is the aforementioned Anjiko-Z. She is my homey, my "work spouse" (well, she gives me candy, anyway), and one of my best friends. Naturally, I drew doodles about us engaging in moronic misadventures together.


By the way, I once asked my wife if she were bothered by my close friendship with Angie. In response, my wife paused a moment, scowled in confusion and said, "Umm...No. She's just your friend. I like Angie."

My wife is cool.

Doodles, Part 1 -- The LCBs

Now let's move back a bit, to last November. I had a trainee with me at work (a great guy named Armando, aka "El Pionono", who moved to Texas and whom I miss very much), so I was able to let him take some calls while I listened...and doodled.

I produced these three cartoons. They are in English. Enjoy them.

What Have I DONE?!

Seriously, now -- if I haven't been bloggeratin', what have I been up to? Where has all my stupid been going? Surely I haven't just bottled it all away, letting it fester inside me and turn into goof-mulch? Worse still, I haven't gone greyface and given it all up -- ?!

*gasp*

No, no, mah bruthas and sistahs. No.

I have been drawing cartoons.

They are terrible cartoons. The art is amateurish at best, and in a style totally ripped off from Rich Burlew at worst (except I don't try a fifth as hard as he does). The lettering is pooptacular (it's a word -- well, is is now). The inking looks like a third grader did it with his eyes closed and a bucket on his hand.

My co-workers, however (Goddess bless 'em) are kind and supportive people and they tell me that they enjoy the cartoons, and since I don't think they're all lying to me nor could they all possibly be suffering the same hallucination, perhaps there is a speck of truth mixed in with their patient compassion.

The cartoons are about my co-workers, though, so they're biased, each and every damn one. They just want to see more, more, more of themsleves rendered as badly-drawn stick-ish figures engaging in stupid SF adventures, is what it is.

I'm still gonna show 'em to ya.

Here's one to start with -- I drew it as a farewell gift (of dubious value, but a gift nonetheless) to my buddy Mike before he transferred to another state. He was kind enough to put it on his blog, and you can go look at it if you click here. It's from before I started ripping off Burlew and it's chock-freaking-full of in-jokes, so you probably won't think it's funny; don't worry, though, because you're right: It isn't.

Incidentally, I don't give a rat's poxy ass about college basketball, and "March Madness" can CENSORED my CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED with a CENSORED at Howard Johnson's.

EVERYBODY RHUMBA!

Once More, I Am Mighty!

Well, folks...I just played Encounter Critical.

Kyle and John, my two best friends from high school, came over and rolled up some characters. Neither one could resist the lure of the mutations chart, so we ended up with Routh, a human psi witch with lowered luck and a Barnabus, a blind, cursed robodroid warrior. After priming some minis for John to paint as we played, I ran "The Curse Of Count Obonos", an excellent module by Jeff Rients.

Oh, man.

I started things off with some embellishments of my own. I placed a wrecked damnation van in the center of town, and right away they decided they wanted it. They went into the tavern to ask if anyone claimed ownership to it, but none of the locals could say it was theirs.

Then Kildar walked in.

Kildar was a character played by a high school friend of ours, back in the day. Arrogant, lascivious, annoying as hell and a 50th-level demigod paladin or...something...I dunno. we all hated Kildar. We all wanted to bump off Kildar. We never got to bump off Kildar.

Until today. Sure, on Vanth he was just a 2nd-level Planetary Ape warrior, but it felt good to include him as a purely juvenile gesture. He ended up getting robo-kicked in the monkeynuts, after which a Lesser Feat roll was made to snap his neck.

Off to a good start.

Pretty soon Lady Bella showed up, offering the quest as detailed in the module. The player accepted the quest for 1000 GC and repairs for the robodroid (Kildar actually put some hurt on him). They then dawdled around playing in the van, wherein they found three skeletons: one an elf in chainmail and the others human, one in a jumpsuit and the other in a leopardskin bikini. No wounds were apparent on the skeletons, but further examination of the van gave a clue as to the cause of their deaths when Kyle's character opened a door and found a four-eyed, needle-toothed skull which began to wail horribly, eye sockets blinking rapidly and causing 2d6 damage to him. Yikes! I made that up on the spot. They were taking too long with the van so Bella told them that if they'd just get going, she'd have the van fixed up, too.

They left so fast...

The trip to the wreck was uneventful because I wanted to get them to the adventure site. Plus, the notion of a dungeon crawl through a crashed spaceship really seemed to tickle them, so I headed straight for the action.

John declared that Barnabus, his PC, would try to hack the disabled lock on the airlock at location F. He rolled a 01 on his Machine Friend roll, so I ruled that he was able to reprogram every door on the ship. Not only did that reward him for good thinking and good luck, but it eliminated a lot of futzing later on.

They actually made fairly quick work inside the ship, hitting up and getting the goodies from rooms 10, 12, 13 and 14. Luck was with them in the Prismatic Crocagator fight; I painstakingly sought 4d8 from my pile, rolled them for the monster's hit points...

...and got a total of 6. One mighty strike from Barnabus (using a bastard sword claimed from Kildar) slew the beast, and it also allowed the robodroid to level up. ZING!

They found the idol soon after, and a bad LUC roll caused Routh to mistakenly grab Volutina's representation upon the generous Impervium funbag; he'd made a good Seduce roll ahead of time, to explain to the idol what they were doing, though, so he escaped becoming a jackaltoad. When asked if they should haed back or keep exploring, John simply said, "Mission accomplished" and they got the hell out.

I threw in a quick encounter with some bandits, really just as an excuse for Kyle's character to level up, which he did. They got some GCs and Lynrd Skynrd 8-tracks, as well as some ammo for their new rocket pistol. Then my mission was accomplished, and they got back to the castle.

I didn't linger long on the epilogue. Suffice to say that they accepted the hands of the other two daughters, and soon found out about their tendencies, so they snuck off to get their van and get lost. First, though, Routh talked Lady Bella into joining them, which she did. The End, For Now.

THAT FELT SO GOOD.

In fact, what with the casual miniatures painting, the delightfuly warm weather, the invite for the sexy female NPC to join up and the occasional boob jokes...

...I felt young again.

....So.

What the hell, right?

Well, here it is. I 'm kind of honked off about gaming right now, actually; specifically, about my lack of it. I just don't get to game. From 1 January 2009 to 17 March 2009, I have engaged in no more than 3 short gaming sessions, totalling about 15 hours of time. Hey, kids -- let's do some math!

The year is 76 days old. Let's divide that by 7 and call it 10.85...okay, 11 weeks. Let's assume that I work 5 days a week, so that's 76 days minus 55 = 21 days off. 21 days equals 504 hours. Let's assume that I sleep for 7 of those hours each day, leaving me with about 17 hours a day. 17 hours times 21 days is 357 hours not spent at work. Of those 357 hours, 15 of them have been spent in the enjoyment of the hobby that I love the most in the whole goddamn world.

15/357 = 0.0420168067.

Percentage of free time this year spent enjoying the hobby that I love the most in the whole goddamn world: 4%.

Okay, now -- why? What else am I doing? Not having players show up, for one. Not having time to host a game, is another. There are ways around it, but in practice that's pretty dang hard to achieve. I work Saturdays, now, so I really only have Sundays available for gaming, and I like to include my wife in such stuff. She works 3 Sundays a month.

I cannot tell you how much this pisses me off. Not that she has to work -- but rather, how little time I can devote to playing, and how little of it can actually get bloody USED.

The worst part is when I see all the other gaming blogs out there, people talking about how they played this and they got together with the friends and played that. And I'm sitting here like a fucking chump with my dice bags and my notes and my rulebooks and my eternal enthusiasm and I can't help but stop all of a sudden and feel like Robespierre shopping the Stetson catalog.

Let's make it even more pathetic, shall we? Consider this: I'm still really, really, REALLY enthused about the hobby. I take a gamebook with me to work every day; I brush up on rules. I even make occasional stabs at adventure notes. But that's slowly stopping, because I start working on something and then I think, "What's the point?! Ain't gonna happen."

Julia Roberts is really unattractive.

I've really wanted to run Fading Suns lately. I'd love to do something with Savage Worlds. Now and then I think about a Star Wars game and my leg starts jiggling like a happy puppy's. And then I think...

"...oh, yeah."

THAT'S why you haven't heard from me. That's why there hasn't been a blog entry, that's why there haven't been any posts on The RPG Site, that's why there haven't been any comments on my homies' blogs. I'm a pissed-off gamer, all dressed up and nowhere to fucking go.

Tomorrow I have the day off. Two of my high school buddies are supposed to come over and play Encounter Critical. We'll see if that pans out.

Thanks to jake and Jason, who posted comments on my last entry. jake, you nailed it when you said " just curious about how much you roll compared to thinking wishing hoping blogging hahaha" -- got it right on the nose.

Review: Genre Diversion 3

...Aaaaah, that's better.

First, some backstory. I really wanted the previous version of this game (genreDiversion-i) and its sister FRPG, Iron Gauntlets, to be THE go-to games that'd live on my shelf. They hit all the sweet spots: fast, uncomplicated, sturdy and inexpensive. GD-i was nice and generic, but had two great games attached to it (Hard Nova ][, a space opera action game and Vice Squad: Miami Nights, which is excatly what it sounds like). Iron Gauntlets was a vanilla fantasy RPG, practically begging for user-made content. Top it off, both systems used the same stats -- only the actual mechanics were different. So stuff I made with one, I could use with the other.

I shoulda been in heaven. But I wasn't.

In actual practice, things didn't feel right. Sitting down to run the games, my enhusiasm would stumble and pause at little grievances -- tiny things, like a pebble in the shoe. Something would not feel right, and--

--there went my game.

Recently, I found out that Precis Intermedia Games would be releasing a new edition of genreDiversion. The author, Brett M. Bernstein, was kind enough to give me a .pdf copy (doubtless because I'd needled him about IG so much, so maybe he's trying to shut me up), which I soon printed and read over in the space of a day.

And that's how we get to the beginning of this post:

...Aaaaah, that's better.

genreDiversion 3 (henceforth GD3) is a 130-page genre-neutral RPG. It allows for any type action-adventure game you care to get up to. Characters aren't much different from the way they used to be. They have 5 core abilities: Fitness, Awareness, Creativity, Reasoning and Influence. Skills (renamed Pursuits) define more of what your character knows and can do. Gimmicks color the character (think 'advantages & disadvantages') and new, optional Drives give your character a "why" to go out and do what they do.

The real changes come in the system proper. GD3 is not the roll-under game it used to be; it's now roll-over, with 2d6 + Ability + Pursuit trying to meet or exceed a target number. The impact on the game is, to me, a huge one. I don't know if it's just psychological or what, but now I feel like a character using this system is somehow more capable, or at least less prone to fail. With GD-i and IG, I never got a good feel for how my characters would perform at tasks; they always felt limited, somehow, like no matter how good they were the odds were still stacked against them. That problem is gone in GD3, and I'm glad, very glad, to see it go.

GD3 characters are sturdier, too. They can take more damage, now -- or maybe it's better to say they're not so fragile as they once were. In the older systems, a character could take 5 points of damage, one for each 'grade' of injury, before crapping out. Now, characters have multiple points per grade, meaning that they're not as likely to get taken down in one or two rounds of combat; only weaklings and cannon fodder will drop that easily. To me, this is quite gratifying -- not because I think my characters should be invulnerable supermen, but because I want my fights to go on longer. With GD3, they can.

Weapons do fixed damage aainst two types of tracks (Fatigue and Injury), but armor protects randomly; an 'abatement' roll is made for each point of damage dealt, and if the roll surpasses the armor's rating, a point gets through. This isn't different from prior iterations, it's just kinda cool. Alternate damage tracks are proposed, so individual GMs can emphasize the things they want in their games; you might track a character's Sanity along with their Fatigue and Injury, or perhaps their Social Standing, or their Stress Level, or their Tolerance to alcohol, or...whatever. The concept is entended to turning damage tracks into Magic Point calculators--there's even this clever idea:

A signature meter measure’s an electronic device’s
electromagnetic radiation. While the degree of this meter
has no direct effect on the device, each successive grade
can decrease the difficulty required for sensor systems to
detect the device. The signature increases by one mark
with each use of the device.

Things like that may be a little too much for some game-play styles, but for some, they're ideal, which is why they're optional.

There's a chapter on magic, which I'll admit to not having read yet, though I should. Magic was one of the biggest sticking points I had with Iron Gauntlets, because my players and I coudn't figure out how to throw a damn fireball. I promise I'll read this and get back to you.

You also get vehicle rules, with some chase mechanics that actually work pretty well for providing dynamic pursuit sequences. There's a scaling mechanic, delightfully illustrated via examples of starship-vs.-dinosaur combat, which is of a very rough grain but easily refined, if you feel like it. Speaking of dinosaurs, there is a brief but satisfactory bestiary included, and it integrates one of my favorite things about Iron Gautlets: variable monster abilities. Critters are given a range within which their stats may fall, and the GM can randomly determine the actual values, making each encounter a bit more unpredictable.

It's also worth noting that, just like characters, vehicles and equipment can have Gimmicks, too! I love this kind of thing, as it helps out in making one star freighter different from the next, or sharpening (ha ha) the differences between, say, a longsword and a cutlass.

There's a section on converting material between the company's other games, followed by a full-blown setting--a modern horror game called Unbidden & Forsaken. Not my cuppa, but it's detailed and shows well the system's flexibility.

There are a few flaws, but not many. Mostly, there's the occasional typo, or something that just doesn't seem to make sense and could use some explaining (why do I use my Brawling rating to defend myself in a Dueling conflict?). Minor gripes, really, and barely worth my mention.

So.

Is GD3 the go-to game that its predecessors were going to be? I must be honest: for me, it won't be. But it's a damn fine game to have in my library or yours, and though it won't be my one-and-only, it'll sure be a top choice. In fact, the prospect of playing Hard Nova ][ and Steampunk Musha is much, much more appealing now, because the rules make more sense in my head.

Good job, Brett.

genreDiversion 3E Manual is available from Precis Intermedia Games for less than 10 bucks.

That Piece Of Art...

...is called Saving The best For Last by Daniel Horne.

Game On!

New Year, New Game. My wife and I decided we were -once again- sick of NOT playing, so we're doing something about it.

The plan: One or two Sundays a month, our daughter goes to Grandma's for the day. Around Noon or so, our friends come over and we play Castles & Crusades.

It's simple! So simple. So simple, in fact, we never got around to it. Ever since we had a kid, I think we sort of deluded ourselves into thinking that our time was no longer our own.

That was stupid.

We're going to trade off GMing, too--the group we're assembling has 7 people in it, 5 of whom are experienced gamers and GMs. My best friends John "Party Gorilla" Buchanan and Kyle "Hamster" Mayes and I of course have been playing together since high school; my wife has been gaming since she was out of high school, which amounts to the same amount of time. Leaky Pete is no stranger to these shenanigans, so he's cool. The other two are relative noobs; Anjiko-Z has already played a bit of BESM (and that Traveller PBEM that I've discussed here before), while Allison "Yucky" Gross has, like, no clue, but she's game. Plus, she and my wife are getting to be "besties", as Yucky puts it. These twenty-somethings, they talk funny.

In other words: not only will I get a break from GMing once in a while, I'll get to play with great friends AND hot chicks.

I am excited. You should envy me.

Here, check out the invite I e-mailed to everyone:

Falling In Love Again.

Holy CRAP, have you SEEN this movie?! It's so AWESOME! It's like -- like -- WAAAAAA!

I mean, damn!


Sure, sure. We've aaaaall of us seen it. Big deal. But that's the problem--me, I got so familiar with it that I kind of forgot what makes it special.

I also kind of turned my back on it for a while.

Now...I'm not one of those "George Lucas Ruined My Childhood" types, but I'll tell you straight away that those prequels simply do not do the trick for me. I went to see them, yes. All three. Bought the DVDs. But I really don't like them! And this whole "Clone Wars" business is getting out of hand. I'm just tired of it.

And I shall not get started on the "Special" Editions.

The truth is, though, that thirty-two years later, that damn thing is still going, and there's a reason for that: It worked the first time. It worked damned well, it set the freaking world on fire, it came out of nowhere, into a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate world, and it brought space battles and a princess and a rogue and a young knight and a Wookiee and a wretched hive of scum and villainy and no irony at all and masterful editing and stuff you'd never seen before and by god it took you places and it found your WOW button and it mashed it over and over like a jackhammer and YOU LOVED IT.

We ALL loved it. People who didn't think they'd love it, loved it.

All of that because, in the end, it's a good movie. Really, you wanna know what I mean? Sit down and watch it sometime, and keep track of how it moves, what it does. Make note of how the characters are brpadly--but strongly--defined, and how the world is immersive and astonishing but casual in its wondrousness.

Then, pay special attention when Luke and Han take Chewie into the detention level, to bust Leia out of the pokey. There's that little bit of tension--"Where are you taking this...thing?!" And Luke and Han kind of fumble through and they're about to get caught and BAM! HELL BREAKS lOOSE! PYEW PYEW PYEW, ZAP, BOOM! "RRRRRAAAAAAAWWWWWRRRR!!" PYEW PYEW PYEW! THE MUSIC, AAAH! WHEEE!

And from there on out, it's a rollercoaster. The pacing is bloody brilliant. You're on pins and needles for these characters, you care about them, you're SO SURE THEY'RE GOING TO GET SMASHED IN THE TRASH COMPACTOR, but when the droids shut it down you let out a breath--didn't you? You'd been holding it, probably didn't know it. Then, you laugh nervously when C-3P0 says, "Listen to them, Artoo! They're dying! Curse my metal body, I wasn't fast enough!" And then you get a chance to breathe, and it starts up again. Then, the good guys win, and they get medals.

Movies kinda weren't like that in '77, and I think that, today, they sort of still aren't.

That's what makes Star Wars special.



Happy New Year, by the way.

Alienses!

HOLY FRIJOLES! Two-hundred and te--REALLY?!

You gotta be JACKIN' me! I only pa--

...but I get ahead of myself.

Back in the--well, effectively, at the end of the 1980s, Leading Edge Games published an Aliens boardgame. I saw an ad for it somewhere and ordered it sight unseen. As the internet was not then what it is now (meaning, 'every-damn-where'), I had no way of reading reviews, doing research, getting opinions...nothing. I just wanted it, so I ordered it from Mike Redman down the 25th Century Five-And-Dime, my comics/games shop of choice in those days.

Now...I was then -as now- primarily an RPG guy, so ordering a board game was a little unusual for me. Still, I figured: Hell, why not? Space Marines versus Aliens, and you could play SOLO. Heh! That oughtta be pretty OK.

Then I got he game, and it wasn't OK.

IT WAS TOTALLY AWESOME.

It was simple, it was fast, and it was challenging--best of all, it was EXCITING. There were times when I played almost with literally held breath, hoping I'd manage to get my little cardboard Marines out of that damn reactor room. It was never easy, but I tried and tried and no matter how many times I failed, I kept coming back for more because it was so damn ENGAGING. One day i actully got everybody but one dude out, and I actually bragged about it to my parents when they came home. It was THAT exciting.

By sheer dumb luck, I was in a hobby shop in Kansas City one Summer and I ran across the expansion to the game. My grandmother, saintly old woman that she was, bought it for me. I had more Aliens, more missions, more maps and more ways in which to get my guys killed up. I could even do "what-if?' sceanrios if I wanted to. I wanted to. I did.

Heavenly.

I haven't played it in a while. In fact, it's sitting in my closet right now, but I think I might have to. This post on The RPG Site brought it up in passing, mentioning as it did a Flash version of the game, which I promptly found and played (I lost everyone but Dietrich. AGAIN) and I remembered how tense the game can be. I think it'll have to come out some day, with friends or without.

Go play the Flash game. See for yourself. It's worth it, totally worth it.

And...uh...let's just say that playing the Flash version is quite a bit cheaper.

'Twas The Night Before Geekmas

'Twas the night before Geekmas
And I was up late
To watch DVDs
Of the old Lost In Space,
When all of a sudden
From outside my door
Came a thunderous thumping
And a grouchy-type roar.
I furrowed my brow
And put Doc Smith on pause.
I peeked out the window
And saw Santa Claus!

The jolly old elf
Was sprawled on the lawn;
His sleigh had rolled over
And his reindeer were…gone.
He raised up a little
And groaned like an bear.
He got to his feet
And shook sod from his hair.
"What's buggin' you, Santa?"
I asked from the door.
"Why is your countenance
Looking so poor?"

"You call that a rhyme?"
Santa admonished.
"With the words that YOU know
I'm frankly astonished!"
He sighed, "Look, I'm sorry,
It's just a rough time."
"No worries," I said,
"Why not come inside?"
I led the way in
And he stumbled behind.
Once he sat down,
I said, "Speak your mind."

The once-jolly fat man
Now said, "I'm depressed.
I've just seen a movie
And wasn't impressed."
I scratched at my chin
And said, "Was it THAT bad?
What possible flicker
Could make SANTA sad?!"
He said, "This is the worst
Of all Christmas Eves!
I've just seen a movie
That stars Keanu Reeves!

"He's wooden!" he bellowed,
"And yet, he gets parts!
I've seen more emotion
From cats with the farts!
Oh, he played Ted
And THAT he did well.
But as anyone else,
He can go straight to hell."
I never imagined
He'd rant such a screed…
But all truth be told
I really agreed.

"Gee-willickers, Santa,"
I said right away,
"Is that all it takes
To bonk up your day?"
"Oh, that's not it!"
He screamed in my ear--
"It's crap that's been happening
All through this year!
It's bail-outs! It's gas prices!
It's stuff of that sort!
And I always forget
To watch The Colbert Report!"

The poor fellow crumpled
And started to weep.
If I didn't help him,
I wouldn't get any sleep.
I said, "Dude, this year
Wasn't too bad!
Some stuff that happened
Was totally rad!"
"Oh, really?" said Santa,
"So tell me—like what?
It better be good stuff.
Else, keep your yap shut."


"Oh, there was plenty!"
I told him, "you'll see!
They finally put Square Pegs
Out on DVD!
Iron Man rocked,
And Wall-E; Y'ask me,
That totally makes up
For the new D&D…
And, hey, O.J. Simpson
Lost out to a jury—
And Samuel L. Jackson
Showed up as Nick Fury!"

"That's stuff's terrific,"
Said Santa with woe.
"It's not a reunion
Of Bel Biv Devoe."
"Uh…Santa?" I said,
"Now you're the one reaching.
Perhaps you should practice
What you have been pre—"
"I got ya, I got ya,"
Said Santa, annoyed.
"Perhaps I need something
To fill in the void
That's carved from my jollies
When Keanu makes movies.
Maybe a hooker,
With big, bouncy—"

"HO-KAY, Santa," I told him,
Opening the door,
"I've had all I can stands
And I can't stands no more!
If you wanna be mopey,
Have it your way.
Just deliver some toys
On your damn magic sleigh."
He shuffled back out
And climbed up on his sled.
I said, "Merry Christmas!
I'm going to bed!"

Gcarrier Fandango Continued

Very well, legions of faithful readers! I know you wait, breath in throats, rapt with attention turned toward the continuing adventures of that Traveller PBEM thing I'm doing!

Not likely, you are. Ehhh...I'll recap anyway.

So! Yes! Last time! The gcarrier! Its turret's targeting system had painted the NPCs who were in the garage, and Leaky Pete had Eddy try to shut it down before it fired. No luck; the thing blew up a flunky and knocked a big damn hole in the wall. Then, it started looking for Robaur Maccardo, the party's employer. Uh-oh...

"So, about my last action," said Anjiko at this point. "When I tried to pull the plug, so to speak. Was it that I didn't FIND it, or didn't PULL IT in time?" A fair enough question; I left it up to luck. I had her throw 2D and hope for big money, no whammies.

Bingo! She threw a 12! I declared that her fingers alighted on the whatzits JUST as the gun went boom, and that she was able to yank it clean out right away. Crisis averted...kind of.

The employer went berzerk, and started yelling at them--prompting some fun role-play banter from Anjiko ("Whoa! US what the hell? YOU what the hell! This is YOUR heap!"), and Leaky Pete both. I think they're even developing an enmity between their characters. Anyway, they got the guy calmed down and got back to work while he called in a cleaner. Luckily, no cops showed up (Law Level 5, rolled a 7) and they were able to resume their tasks without any troub--

AHA! Gotcha! Damn straight, there's trouble.

Just as they got settled back in, there were shouts and gunfire to be heard. Maccardo skinned a smokewagon* and took cover just before a trio of Sonny Crockett-lookin' dudes with machine pistols walked in and sized up the sitch. Spotting Eddy, Celeste and the tank, they pointed guns at the PCs while the leader addressed Maccardo. "Nice try!" he said, nodding to the PCs. "We'll take them, too."

Rational people try to solve this kind of thing rationally. Anjiko has Celeste pull her own heater** and yell, "The hell you will! Come another step closer and I'll put bullets in all of your heads!"

And now I'm taking lunch.

Damn, this is turning out to be fun.

*That means he drew a gun.
** That means she skinned her smokewagon.

PBEM -- At Work!

We have e-mail access at work, as part of our job, and our limitations on its use is fairly lax -- think "Don't send porn and/or dirty jokes" kind of lax. Plus, we're actively encouraged to goof around a bit while we're here, to keep morale up (and if you're familiar with the FISH! Philosophy, you know what I'm talking about).

So I'm running a Traveller PBEM with some pals.

Anjiko-Z is playing Celeste Francisco, a 1-term ex-Navy gunner; Leaky Pete has Edward "Eddy Drake" Mallard, a 4-term Doctor. Circumstances have brought them to Valdaris (B774915-6 N Ga Hi In), where non-natives have a hard time getting employment within the corporation that rules the place. Ergo, Celeste and Eddy end up doing some, uh...freelance work.

You dig me.

Robaur Maccardo, a fellow of their mutual acquaintance, needs some work done--he needs a vehicle repaired. It's an antigrav vehicle, quite the rarity on a TL 6 world; it'll start up but it won't get off the ground, and its computers won't boot up. Celeste has Mechanical-1 from the Navy, and Eddy's a Medic-4 but he has Computers-1, so thy have the skills. He'll pay these two Cr2000 apiece if they can fix this thing for him. They accept, even though it seems too simple AND after he says, "I offer you this work in confidence."

You might not know EXACTLY where this is going, but you have an idea of the neighborhood, don't you.

He drives them around startown to a fenced mechanical yard. "Remember," he says, "in confidence". He opens up the garage, and there's the vehicle, just waiting to be repaired:

If you're not a Trav fan, that thing is called a gcarrier; you might also call it a gravtank. As in, "military". "For him to have this," I explain to Anjiko and Leaky Pete, "is like your neighbor having an F-14 Tomcat."

So the two start poking at it. Celeste spends 10 minutes opening up panels and tightening bolts and so on, but can't figure out what's wrong. Eddy takes 20 minutes or so to readjust some power relays and stuff, and he succeeds in getting the computers to boot up...

...but the mainframe's boot order is jacked all to hell, so the turret's targeting program comes up first and starts acquiring targets.

Like, say, their employer.

Celeste declares that she'll start popping off panels and trying to cut power to the mainframe before the gcarrier starts killing everything in sight; I give it a 7+ chance that she gets that done (it's not that hard to pull out cable swhen they're all exposed to begin with, but it's NOT so easy to pull the EXACT one.)

The roll, of course, is a 5.

I told Leaky Pete that Eddy can try another roll to either interrupt the boot order or just shut the thing down, but he has't mailed me back yet. Until then, the tension holds!

The only trouble is, we're fairly busy at work, so this has all taken 4 work days. It's slow going. I'm not put off by it, though, because it's FUN and it's WORKING. We're into it, and we are successfully goofing off without ngative effects on our job performance.

Still, I'd like to bust outta here with the two of 'em, go grab my wife, get a bunch of tacos and some Sangria Señorial and play on a tabletop like normal people do.

Crotch Monsters On Parade

For the second year in a row, my Mom has taken us out to see "The Nutcracker" ballet at Indiana University's Musical Arts Center. It's her intention to make it a tradition for Gradndma to take Lily to see the show, and as long as the kid digs it, it's cool.

I go along because I am invited, and there's dinner in the deal.

If you're not familiar with it, here's how "The Nutcracker" goes down:

In 1800s Vienna, a family is having a Christmas party. One of the guests is a one-eyed dude named Herr Drosselmeyer, who lets us know early on that he's a wizard when he starts throwing glitter all over the place and casting hold person on people.

Herr Drosselmeyer has brought a special gift for the family's daughter, Clara--a wooden nutcracker fashioned to look like a soldier. (It's worth mentioning that I only know their names from a Little Golden Book. There's no dialog in ballet, and I'll get to that later.)

Clara digs the gift to the max, but her little brother dorks things up for her by playing too rough with the nutcracker and he breaks it. Clara weeps, but Herr Elminstdorf fixes things or something. Anyhow, it's late so Clara hits the sack.

Here's where stuff gets crazy.

Apparently, an army of man-sized, anthropomorphic mice lives in Clara's house, and this nutcracker biz has them all riled up. They attempt to steal him from the kid, but Gandalfmeyer shows back up and my wife pokes me to wake me up and then HOKEY SMOKES THE NUTCRAKER IS ANIMATE. Not only is he skipping around the living room waving his cav saber but he's also in command of a bunch of soldiers. Generalisimo El Crackonutero gives battle to the mice, who haul out their secret weapon--The Mouse King, whom we know is The Mouse King because he is a mouse who wears a crown.

Fightification occurs. The Mouse King overpowers The Nutcracker. Before Mickey can deliver the death-blow to his prone victim, Clara tugs off her slipper and throws it at him--thereby distracting the tyrant long enough for the soldier to skewer the rodent. Fight over. Mice carry away fallen ruler. Nutcracker, uh...he...

...

I dunno where he goes.

Next thing, Clara and The Wiz are out in the woods. Some girls come out and dance, then Drosselmeyer summons up a boat. He and the girl hop in and sail off, stage left.

Did you get all that? I hope so, because that's the end of Act I and, incidentally, the plot.

After the intermission, we find our protagonists (but not the titular one, who is no longer invited or something) in The Land Of Sweets. Drosselmeyer introduces Clara to some folks and Clara recaps Act I for those who didn't bring wives. So the Sweetsians--I guess we can call them that--put Clara in a chair, and show her some dance routines.

It's not clear why they do this, but I like to think that it's because they peg the girl as an experienced, accomplished regicide who enjoys the tacit protection of an eye patch-wearing badass planes-hopping spellcaster, so they decide to play things safe by keeping her entertained lest she start throwing footwear and the halls begin to echo with the ringing of blood-stained crowns striking the flagstones and THAT, my friends, is a pair of NPCs to use. We're still a gaming blog, after all.

Anyway, there's a whole fnordload of ballet as groups of dancers come out in turns to do their thing. Some of the dancers represent different nationalities, while some are flowers and some are candy. A gigantic woman with inhumanly wide hips gives birth to octuplets live on stage. More dancing. Finally, Her Drosselmeyer comes to take Clara home because the show is over, and I get to go to Cracker Barrel an have a steak.

The experience isn't an unpleasant one for me; it's just a weird one--ballet is like a foreign language to me. It doesn't click in my head. You see, I'm one of those uncultured idiots who needs to have his hand held by things like plot, dialogue, narrative, characterization, drama and rising and falling action, so a medium whose primary expression is movement--graceful and beautiful as it may be--come across to me as a joke told in Japanese. I mean, I can tell what it is, but not what it means.

Add to this the fact that the plot and one of the main characters gets unceremoniously shoved off the stage and into the orchestra pit halfway through the show, and it's a recipe for explosions inside the minds of the dramatically-inclined.

Okay, MY mind, anyway.

Tchaikovsky's music, now...that's aces. That Arabian number in particular thrills me for sure. Still, I'd rather just enjoy the music on its own without the 'noise' from the dance getting in the way.

I accept that it's just a different medium, but I also acknowledge that it's a medium that I can't really interpret.

And then there's the dongs.

Look...I'm sure there's an audience for it, and I'm not gonna dog on anybody who belongs to it. But when you go to the ballet, you're gonna see more vac-packed man-meat than you probably EVER HAVE BEFORE IN YOUR LIFE, and it's distracting.

The steak was good, by the way.

Swords & Wizardry: A Review

Know, O Gamer, that there was once a time before skill lists--before the rise of the thief class, before the designers unified task resolution. Return with me to the days of high adventure!

Okay, now without the hyperbole: Matthew Finch's Swords & Wizardry is an honest-to-goodness retro-clone of the original D&D rules from 1974-75--sometimes referred to as "0e". It's not an exact replica of the Little Brown Books, however, as it incorporates a few rules and developments that came after. S&W aims for a goal loftier than mere reproduction, anyway: the preservation of not just 0e's rules but its play style. S&W is a hobbyist's game.

"IMAGINE THE HELL OUT OF IT!"

To understand what that means, let's talk mechanics. Compared to the average modern game design, Swords & Wizardry's rules are pretty sparse. You get character creation and advancement, combat, magic rules, spells and a bunch of monsters. There are no skill lists, no comprehensive combat modifiers and certainly no feats; there's not even a task resolution system beyond that necessary for beating stuff up. And PCs have only one saving throw! So how do you get anything done?!

Enter the hobbyists' approach.

In true old-school fashion, the noticeable gaps are not an omission--they are implicit carte blanche to do whatever the hell you want for your players and your game. This requires creativity and effort on your part...hence, the 'hobby' concept. The result is refreshing, as you have a few basic rules to handle the essentials and free reign to dictate everything else.

THE MYTH OF HACK-AND-SLASH

In the act of being a 0e retro-clone, Swords & Wizardry exposes an often-overlooked aspect of the old game it's based on: a heavy role-playing element. With no diplomacy skill available, what are you going to do when it's time to talk your way out of trouble with the city guards? Well, the GM may call for an off-the-cuff die roll that somehow takes your Charisma stat into account...or he may just ask you to role-play your way out of it. That's why we call them "role-playing games", and have since 1974.

In fact, the superimposition of the players' creativity and imagination is arguably the key to making the game work as anything more than a skeletal collection of basic ideas. For instance, consider that S & W offers only three character classes--Wizard, Fighting Man and Cleric. By themselves, those classes describe a very basic concept (fighting men fight, wizards cast spells, etc.) and no more. By not fleshing these out for you, the game encourages you to define the character yourself. Is your Wizard really a cackling sorceress, or an insightful, sagely scholar, or perhaps a nobleman with magic in his or her veins? In S & W, the difference between a swashbuckling pirate, a grizzled veteran soldier and an energetic young barbarian is not one of game mechanics; it's one of character concept and its execution by the player.

THE OLD SCHOOL MEETS THE NEW

As mentioned above, S&W isn't an exact recreation of the 1974-75 rules. I haven't ever seen those rules, but I have it on good authority that variable weapon damage is not a feature from that edition, and S&W incorporates it. The game also includes a very modern option: ascending Armor Class. AC can go downward as it improves, or upward; GM's choice.

And what of demihumans? In character creation, players have the option of playing an elf or a dwarf, which are treated as classes unto themselves, but with a strong rationale to support the fact. The ideas are fairly clever, and make these seemingly restrictive options surprisingly flexible in play.

ANY PROBLEMS?

Any game is only as good as the experience you have with it. The quality of _Swords & Wizardry_ as a game experience is going to depend, ultimately, on the audience's approach to it. Simply stated, aims for a goal and hits it square on...but it may not be the itch that you need scratched, and there may be things about it that don't do a thing for you.

Gamers who don't want the hobby-game experienced are, obviously, cautioned; the make-it-up-as-you-need-it mindset is absolutely integral to playing this game. The lack of some classes (read that as "thieves") may bamboozle if not completely turn off some players; it is assumed that traditional "thief functions" (searching for and removing traps, climbing walls, moving silently, etc.) can be attempted by any character, and a GM who doesn't prepare room- and trap descriptions ahead of time will be at a loss to run the game this way. Some folks may balk at the low amount of hit points that Fighters get. Strokes and folks, after all.

ROTWANG!'S RULING

You can get this game for free, so the price is right. The approach is refreshing and the love and care put into the project is obvious. You can't lose if all you do is check it out; indeed, you might find a new favorite game.

...Screw It.

I'll fix Windows over the Holidays or something.