Gencon SF RPG Roundup!

Hokay, chums! I went to Gencon and got stung by a bee on the way back. No, really! We were going down Lick Creek Rd in Morgantown, doing 45. I had my window down and I was reading Starblazer Adventures when all of a sudden something went SPLEKT! on my temple. I reached up and pulled off something that felt all buggy; on my second go I pulled back a stinger. Sure enough, there was a little pinhole on my face and the pain started. Weird, huh?

Anyway, I bought two SF games at Gencon. I haven't plunged into them absolutely, but I do have some very strong impressions of them. Would you like to know more?

Hey, let's start with Stablazer Adventures. DISCLAIMER: I contributed, in a roundabout way, to this book. This thing is HUGE. We're talking 600+ pages of FATE-based space opera adventure. It's extremely flexible, and it has plenty of ready-made stuff for you to go get into trouble with.

That said, I have some problems with it.

Well...maybe not problems. Just some headscratchy stuff. Starblazer, being a FATE game, uses Aspects -- brief descriptors that can be applied to just baout anything. Characters, places, equipment, even scenes can have Aspects. For example, your ship could have the Aspect "She'll do point five past lightspeed", while your character can have the Aspect "Never tell me the odds!" and a particularly dangerous scene can have the "I don't know...I've got a bad feeling about this..." Aspect. PCs have these assigned to them during chracter creation, which is done in Phases of life. Clever, and not really the problem.

The problem is in the mechanical applications of Aspects. The basic mechanic is this: if you are aware of an Aspect, you can "tag" it (at the cost of a Fate Point, a metagame resource like everything else called a 'fate point') and get an in-game bonus. For instance, if you, the PC, figure out that Lord Brasso of Mujibur IV is sensitive about his height, you can "tag" that Aspect to get..I dunno, say a +2 to intimidate him. So far that makes sense, but it's about to get weirder.

If you, the PC, are the cause of an Aspect that's applied to a character/thing/scene, then you get to "tag" it for free -- but everyone else who wants to "tag" it has to pay up. An example given in the book is that you are being pursued by bad guys, so you overturn a barrel of oil in their path. Now the floor has the "Slippery" Aspect, and you can use that for a bonus against your pursuers. But if Chewba- uh, one of your comrades wants to take advantage of the floor's slipperiness, which has already been established, he or she has to put in a Fate Point to do so.

...

...what?

There's a part of me which thinks about this and says, "So we get rules to adjudicate common sense?!" It seems kind of weird to me, kind of like we're over-codifying creativity and the experience of the game. But wait, there's more.

Every character has Skills, and those Skills are pretty broad. As such, you can refine them with Stunts, which are specific uses of your Skills. Maybe I have the Artist skill, but then also have the "Weight of Reputation" Stunt, which means that I can forget to shower for a month and then wear a Hooters t-shirt and a pair of hip-waders to dinner at Spago but no one jacks with me because Oh my god it's JACK LORD!!! This part makes sense.

Here's where it doesn't: First off, some Stunts have prerequisites. "Weight of Reputation" requires "Do You Know Who I Am?" which itself requires "Virtuoso". but, uh...what's stopping me from taking "Weight of Reputation" (or something with similar effect) as an Aspect? What's the difference between an Aspect and a Stunt? And why do I hafta pay to use your slippery floor?!

So this stuff kinda bugs me. Maybe it's the old-schooler in me, but remember, I was an early Theatrix adopter. Maybe it's just that this "tagging an Aspect" business seems somewhat superfluous to me. Not useless, not pointless, no -- again, I think it's clever. It's just that I also think it's kind of unnecessary. This doesn't mean I think the game is poopies, nor that I won't try it; I'll just be wondering why I'm doing some of the stuff that I'm doing while I'm doing it.

Congrats to Chris Birch and Stuart Newman for writing this massive tome -- and, from what I hear, selling it like gangbusters.

If it's clear to anyone that I totally misunderstood the game...GOOD. Please come correct me. Also, can you tell me where the rock 'n' roll part is? I didn't see it.

Okay, that's enough typing for now. NEXT: I will discuss StarSIEGE - Event Horizon, which is totally not "Castles & Crusades In Space" but which totally can be. Stay tuned!

Or...you know...come back a little later.

BADGER! BADGER! BADGER!

Dude I know from waaaay back, goes by the online name "Badger", is an old fan of Star Frontiers. Having read my blog posts about a space opera game, and that the SF rules were in the running, he decided to do me a solid and -- well, see for yourself:

Yes, that's a pair of fully-printed, color-covered, spiral-bound copies of Alpha Dawn and Knight Hawks. They arrived via FedEx just this morning, and let me tell you somethin'...

...this is a very nice pair of books. You can't tell from the pics, but that's heavy paper he used. He put those translucent plastic covers on 'em, and separated them with dividers. He didn't skimp on production values, either; check out the fold-out color map of the Frontier:

...man. All this because he thought I might like it. I shudder to think how much it woulda set me back to've done this myself, but Badger had the time and resources and the willingness, and he took a bit of each one to make this and send it to me.

I can't thank you enough, dude. This is great. Thank you very, very much. It was kind and generous and you bet your bippy they'll get used. This is what makes our hobby so damn much fun -- sharing our passion for it.

I thereby close with this:

Enter...QUAZARN!

It can be argued that Quazarn kind of had it coming.

A warlock of dubious real talent, Quazarn the Arcane worked his way up the ranks of Remulaki thaumaturgy on the strengths of his near-genius intellect and his charismatic personality -- not due to magical prowess, of which he has embarrassingly little.

Hailing from the Sea-Cities of Aquanorr on Remulak, young Quazarn used his charm and wit to make himself welcome among the Mystical House of Tarn-Egris -- the most prestigious thaumaturgical society on Remulak. Upon receiving accolades from his peers (albeit under false pretenses), Quazarn let his newfound fame go to his head: Soon he was abusing the trust and friendship of the other warlocks, making himself a sudden pest with his pretensions and fakery.

His ruse, however, did not last long; the other warlocks of the society, seeing through him like a sheet of plexifilm, conspired to rid themselves of him by dispatching him on a "brief research trip" to Vanth. They never planned to send the ship back for him, but little did they expect the failure of God City's launching beam. In any case, Quazarn was left stranded on Vanth.

Quazarn is slowly learning a lesson from the event, but his overt personality and gregariousness are his blessing and his curse, no matter what else he may be. As a result of his 'betrayal', he suffers from Recurring Psychometric Morbidity, which manifests itself as occasional (25% chance/week) bouts of depression, somnolence and (15%) long-term insomnia.

¡Vota Por Los Jueces De Los Ennies!

In other words, "Vote For The Ennies Judges!" And when you do, you'll wanna vote for the judge who won't let you down...

...and you can vote for Zach Houghton, in full confidence.

HERE ARE SOME REASONS TO VOTE FOR ZACH HOUGHTON!

• Zach has been an Ennies judge already.
• Zach loves this hobby, and does this stuff because of that. He is a gamer like you.
• Zach is not a dirty brain-eatin' zombie robodroid.
• Zach actually reads all the stuff he's asked to review for judgement.
• Zach does not try to set you on fire every Thursday at 9.
• Zach is fair and level-headed, having proven himself in discourse time and time again.
• Zach once fought Harlan Ellison to a panting standstill in a favela in Rio de Janeiro, and Ellison even had his towel on and everything. (This one is not actually true)

So! Aside from the outrageous lies I just told about him and Harlan Ellison, you can totally vote for Zach Houghton and know that you have chosen a judge who is fair, rational and dedicated.

Also, he can kickbox better than John Cusack.

"Run out and find me a four-year-old child, I can't make head or tail of it. "

I was gonna post about my efforts to choose a system for this space adventure game I keep talking about, but...

...I'm not.

I'm not going to, because -- well, here.

The other day my daughter asked me if we could go out for a walk. I said yes, and off we went. Not a hundred feet from our house, she asked me to carry her on my shoulders, which meant that she wanted me to walk, but...I digress.

"While you're up there," I said to her, "Maybe you can help me with a problem."

"Okay," she replied.

"Well, I want to do this science-fiction game, see, and I'm having trouble picking a system." I told her which ones I was considering, and then asked, "Which one do you think I should use?"

"Fuzion."

"Really?"

"Yep."

"You sure?"

"Yup."

"Why?"

"Just 'cause."

So, in essence, I should worry less about what system to choose, and instead just pick one and go with it. No more dorking around with pro/con lists...no more deliberating. Just fun.

Instant Lightspeed it is. DONE.

Anyway, it made me think of that line in Duck Soup, and there's the title of this post. Taaaa-daaaah!

Man...I love that movie.

Mrs. Teasdale
Notables from every country are
gathered here in your honor.
This is a gala day for you.

Rufus T. Firefly
Well, a gal a day is enough
for me. I don't think I could
handle any more.

I Wish I Were Playing Encounter Critical.

It's a simple statement; to say anything else would only complicate the issue.

The GM, The Mind's Eye, And Great Things To Do To Spandex

Oh! Boy. I'm liking this a lot right now. Maybe it's the meds, I dunno. Probably not.

One of my strongest tools as a GM is having a good visual grasp on my campaigns. If I can picture my game, I can inhabit and describe that world, and I can get a whole feel for it more than I can with any other resource. If I can picture it, it can exist. My C&C game is all Elmore, Parkinson, Caldwell and Easley; that cyberpunk game I never get around to looks like a Thompson Twins video shot on the Blade Runner set.

So. What's up with this SF game I've been yammering about?

I explained my new SF adventure setting to my wife last night, over a casual and relaxing game of Fluxx. I didn't get very far into the explanation when she said, "Like Buck Rogers!"

And the words...they pushed a button in my brain. "Yeah," I replied, gathering momentum; "More like the show and less like the original comics." (She said she doesn't know the old comics anyway, so we were on the same page from the get-go.)

I zeroed in on the look -- and that gave me the feel.

The game I'm picturing feels kind of how I remember that old Buck Rogers show feeling, only with a bigger budget and better writing. I haven't actually seen the show in a long time, and when I went to buy the DVD set it had been discontinued by Wal-Mart, but I still get a "right" feeling from it. (Erin Gray gives me a different feeling, but I digress.) The show was mentioned in a related discussion on The RPG Site, and I think I'm starting to feel the connections.

Now...I'm not going whole-hog on this "Buck Rogers TV Show" angle. I don't want a guest appearance by Arnold Jackson or a robot with a metallic glans for a head. No no no. I just want --

Okay, here it is: I want that late-70s/early 80s post-Star Wars wahoo feel with a solid pulp core and no damn camp. More SF than fantasy, but definitely rubber science. Yes, I am totally down with the Star Frontiers flavor, despite never having played it and my recurring ability to forget to have my copy of Star Frontiers Digitally Remastered printed and bound. I am circling other game systems, however.

Really, I want to talk about that, too, but it's better if I stay on topic for now and get to matters of system choice and all that later.

But for now, let's finish this post off solidly on-topic, shall we?


I only made it about 30 minutes into this movie.

Replies, Replies For Everyone!

It's exciting to see the responses I got for my last post. I feel like replying to them all.

You cannot stop me. I do as I will.

IGNORING THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN DEPT.
Catdragon sez, "I've always wondered how other game master decide what and how to run their games/campaigns. And now you've given me a peek."

That's always been an interest of mine, as well: How do creative people do what they do? I can comfortably admit to being a creative people, but I have always looked to see how others tame their ideas, for lack of a better term. In fact, I have been known to worry too much about how it should be done; that's the mentality, in fact, that led to the establishment of this blog*.

I used to feel so...powerless next to my creativity. Not that it was greater than me or something, but rather that I had no idea how to actually use it. I'd have ideas and then get discouraged because they weren't perfect, or because they lacked definition, or whatever. So I felt that they weren't good enough. So I figured I was lacking training, so...off I went, looking for some well-researched process or formula or magic spell or psychological blah, blah, blah or something to help me become a fully-capable creative individual.

Huh huh huh. Man, was I being dense.

Somewhere along the line, I hit a piece of advice: Just do it. So I did. It turns out that the best, most effective way to organize and develop my ideas was simply to throw shit on a piece of paper and see what it looks like. So that's what I do, and that's what you're looking at.

Well. When you click on the pictures, I mean.

CHOICE OF SYSTEMS DEPT.
David Dorward sez, "Have you considered Traveller for the system?" Will Douglas, for his own part, suggests helpfully, "I would go for either Savage Worlds or Big Eyes, Small Mouth (especially since they have a supplement dedicated to space opera!)".

Yes, fellas; I've considered all three. I eliminated Trav right off because I purposefully wanted to play something a little different. I loves me some Traveller, there's not doubt of that, and I think that once you read Rule 68A, Classic Traveller magically becomes like 200% jawsomer than it was before. But I was aiming for different, so here we are.

Savage Worlds, now...I can't tell if I like it or not. I might need to just try running it, I guess. I have the Explorer's Edition and I like how it reads, but I need some experience. As for using BESM, I actually feel kind of stupid for not writing it down in my notes, because I'd actually considered it. I have the robust 2nd edition and it might be just what I'm looking for; we'll see.

So. Does system matter? Well...I think it kind of does. I haven't thought about it as much as some theorist-types almost certainly have, but I treat the question the way I treat anything related to this hobby: with my gut. I can't tell you why but sometimes one system just feels better than another one. *shrug* I dunno, man. IT'S ART, OKAY?!

While at Gencon, I may pick up a copy of the BESM space opera book, if I can find one. I know there's a SW SF toolkit, but although I'm OK with .pdfs, I'd like to have something I can sit down with and read. Okay, I know, I could print out the .pdf, but...oh, you know what I mean.

Still. Thanks for reminding me, fellas!

YOU MUST BE THINKING OF OUTLAND DEPT.
BeRKA has one of the first Traveller websites I ever found, back when I fell in love with the game, so I actually take him seriously when he says, "Nono... The #1 item should be: Shotguns!"

I'm going to disagree, however. This game, unformed and swirly in my head, does not feel shotgunny. That said -- his comment gave me an idea, and it is this: One of the Bad Guy Groups ought to develop an energy weapon that fires little beads of force (or whatever), and they start wreaking havoc all over the place with these particular boomsticks. But OMG! that technology totally does not make sense to the Good Guys, so they kind of want to know...where did the Crabulons (or whatever) get those wonderful toys? And can THEY get one, too? Enter the PCs, sent to capture a few samples for study. Hijinks develop, and there's probably a building that gets blown up. Yeeehaw!

I TOTALLY DIG IT, SISTER DEPT.
Geek's Dream Girl opines, "Seriously, what's a space opera without LASERS? :)"

Totally, sister. Although you could run a space opera without lasers, it'd be kind of like a fish without a corncob pipe and a Vegas showgirl outfit: conceivable, but lesser.

On a related note:

I BET YOU HAVE THAT WEIRD ITCH ON YOUR TOE, TOO, DON'T YOU? DEPT.
Well, Jeff, I think that our shared...psychological peculiarities are well-documented.

Okay, done.


*Pffffft. Listen to me. "The establishment of this blog". It's enough to make you hoity in your toity.

Gaze Past The Veil And Behold -- THE INNER WORKINGS OF GENIUS!

...well, umn...actually, it's...just...some pages from my notebook.

Sidewalk Chalk

This morning, my daughter asked me if we could go outside and draw with her sidewalk chalk. It sounded like fun to me, too, so we were out there pretty soon thereafter.

Naturally, Daddy had more fun than Lily did. Dig:

Rip Van Rotwang!

No, I'm OK. Really. Sorry. We're good.

I'm gonna drop a few items on ya here, just to play catch-up. Ready? Lemme tell you about...

...MUTANT FUTURE
It rocks. There. The sky is blue, Vesuvius is a volcano, tacos are good and Mutant Future rocks. Oh, I know, I'm late to the MF love-in, but that's not gonna affect the fact that this is a solid game. I finally got my book, and although I haven't read it cover-to-cover, I've looked at the real meaty parts already and that is some fine, fine meat. Now all I need is a free afternoon with some of my buddies, and we'll have ourselves a cookout.

...TRAVELLER
The new one, from Mongoose. Fellow RPG Site dude Jeff Hopper (aka jeff37923) was kind enough to put some copies of the book into the hands of Doubting Thomases like myself, he likes the new game so much. I'm gonna tell you what I told him:

So my wife and I sat down to make a Traveller (as opposed to CT, I guess) character tonight. She liked it OK -- not as much as she likes doing it with MT, but she was pleased. I like it OK, too, with a very few quibbles and reservations -- VERY few.

I've looked over the rest of the book and theres' stuff I like, stuff I REALLY like, and stuff that I'm just alright with. Nothing offends my CT-lovin' heart, so we're good.

That said, I'm NOT sold on the presentation. Some of the art is disappointing and the cover is, in my opinion, a pale imitation of a classic, elegant cover, but...IT'S JUST A COVER.

I would like to review the game later on, in full, on my blog. For now, though, I want to thank you again for your kind and generous gift, and to assure you that I do like the dang thing after all. It's not gonna replace CT in my heart, but it's certainly welcome next to it as much as MT is.

There. You done been tole'.

...THE DEATH OF D6
...has me bummed, but excited at the same time. If you've not followed all the hoopla, here's the pill: Eric Gibson, current owner and publisher of West End Games and the D6 System, is calling it quits and selling off the properties, following a spectacular burn-out of dramatic proportions. I hate to see the dude's life ruined when all he was trying to do was to keep alive a game he loved. I love it too and I don't know that I could've done any better.

What has me excited, though, is the prospect of the D6 system ending up in other hands and seeing it go Open -- or, better yet (as this RPG Site thread, warts and all, describes) that it could go public domain, so anyone can do stuff with it, period. I've said my piece in the aforementioned thread, but I gotta say this here, now, again: Bill and Levi, I'm totally down with you; and Bill, I'm game if you are, despite my...

...HOMEWORK SYNDROME
Max has it, too. Can I finish Wilderlands of High Dumbness in...what, is it 6 days, now? Yikes.

...HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY
One word: Slamtastic. To elaborate: Gorgeous, funny, touching, breathless, engaging and Selma Blair is in it. Del Toro WIN -- Nerdtality.

Okay, you're caught up. Sorta.

Okay, it's here.

It arrived yesterday. The book is aces. I still feel like I waited a long time to get it, though...

Lulu Update

Okay! Here's what happened.

I ordered the book. I was charged on 6/25. It shipped from Lulu on 7/7; it shipped from Ohio on 7/12. So hopefully I'll have my copy of Mutant Future today when I get home from work.

6/25...7/7. Hmm. 12 days?

Dear Lul, Pt. 2

You told me it shipped on 7/7 but USPS says it shipped on 7/12.

I was charged on 6/25.

Is this kind of delay common? I hope it's not. I'd like to be able to, you know, purchase things.

Dear Lulu,

Remember how I paid you for a hardcover copy of Mutant Future a few weeks ago?

Why did it only ship last Monday?

Oh, My, Metropolis!

Let's talk for a moment, you and I, about a movie that I love. Can we?

I first saw Metropolis when I was just out of high school, and fell in love with it immediately. It was Giorgio Moroder's 1984 reconstruction with the pop music in it; that edition makes it plain that lots of footage had gone missing, but a few stills had survived -- and here they were, integrated into the film along with songs by Bonnie Tyler and Cycle V.

BRILLIANT.

I wanted that footage so bad. It was an unattainable treasure, I knew; a kind of Holy Grail. It lay beyond the horizon, a gauzy temptation, impossible -- but it had once been real, and that made a difference.

A couple of years back, I got a definitive, As-Restored-As-Restored-Gets DVD copy of the film. I sat on my mother's couch that Christmas Eve and read the liner notes. They told the tale of how the film, brought across the Atlantic in '27, was trimmed, cut, sliced and hacked and --

I knew that day what it means "to see red". I wanted to hurl myself bak in time and leap upon the editor's hand, tearing the scissors from his fingers and dashing them to the ground.

Time. A gulf, yawning, widening between us.

Sadly, I resigned myself to the knowledge that that footage was gone forever and, at least, I owned as complete a DVD copy of the film as ever I could.

Guess what?

Special thanks to Natebot.

Whales On Stilts!

Look, I have a lot of catching up o do, here in Blogsvania. But I want to lead off with this little treasure that I got for two bucks at Ye Olde Half-Price Bookes: a kids' adventure/comedy called "Whales On Stilts".

My friends, this book rocks.

It's a gentle riff on pulp adventure novels, told with an absolutely absurd sense of humor -- in fact, I'm jealous that I didn't write it. The characters are charming and endearing, the writing is sharp and incisive and it's genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, even to grumpy old grown-ups like you and me. (Of course, we tend to be the type of grown-ups who would enjoy brief, humorous asides explaining why someone would NOT feel the jolt of a laser striking a mirror, but I think you get my point.)

The best thing about this book, though -- the thing that really hit me where I live, is that it's shot through with a deep, serious feeling of longing. Longing for youth, for endless Summers, for those hazy, gauzy things that make friends friends. Trying to explain what I mean wuld require more time than I have at the moment, so...just go read the book.

Doc Rotwang! sez "Check it out."

Darn Kids.

"Oh, hey!" I remarked to my daughter as we strolled through the local Barnes & Noble. "The new Traveller!!"

I stopped us in the aisle and reached for the book; she perused the spines of the D&D 4e and White Wolf stuff sitting below. She's not yet 4; she doesn't understand what gaming is, but she does know that it involves dice and books, and she knows that Mommy and Daddy play Castles & Crusades and Traveller.

I thumbed through the book a bit and then put it back. Then, I voiced to her my opinion. (I'm in the habit of occasionally speaking to my daughter as I would to a grown-up, which I believe helps her language skills, but what do I know? I'm just a simple sandwich man.) I said to her, "Well...I dunno. I dunno if I need this new one...I mean, I have all of the Classic Traveller stuff -- on that CD-ROM, you know, ll the GDW stuff...plus a copy of MegaTraveller, and almost all the GURPS Traveller stuff, too. So I dunno if I could really get this one."

"What?" she demanded. She said t flatly -- not as in "what did you say?" but rather as in "Get what?"

"The new edition of Traveller," I repeated. "Since I have so much of the old stuff, I can't justify getting the new one."

I put my hands on my hips and looked down at my cute little blue-eyed child, who looked up at me patient and in a gentle but very matter-of-fact voice said:

"Then why don't you not get it and not worry about it, then?"

...

...it's funny. Until I became a parent, I did not know it was possible to love a human being quite as much as I love my kid. But now, she's constantly doing stuff to remind me that I do.

Reminding me of that, and also the fact that she's smart.

More Cyberpunk; Or, How Do We Measure Dumb?

"...so I've been...continually frustrated by my efforts to take these ideas of what cyberpunk is in my head," I was saying to my wife, "and translating them into some sort of gameable --"

She reached over and tapped me on the chest. I shut up.

"You're trying too hard," she said.

And transcendent realization showered upon me, like an upturned bucket of trout.

I was giving my wife a condensed version of yesterday's blog post (Condensed...! Don't you envy her?) when she just kind of pointed that out. She knows me. Right? 'Cause, you know, we're married.

But...yeah. I think I've been doing this thing backwards. It's like I've been trying to take this nebulous, hazy notion of what type cyberpunk game I want (in terms of plots, mood, theme and setting, not rules) and have been trying to solidify it into something palpable. Well, no, it doesn't solidify, because it's a damn haze.

What I should be doing instead is taking the more concrete -but still metaphorical- structures of standard adventure gaming (like these, duh) and wrap my cyberpunk touchy-feelies around them, which is what auras do.

How stupid do you have to be to overlook such an elementary thing?

I hereby propose that we begin measuring cluelessness in rotwang!s, where 1 milirotwang! is "Honey, where's the vacuum cleaner?", 1 centirotwang! is "Why is my VCR blinking '12:00'?", 1 decirotwang! is "That girl in the short skirt keeps winking at me...what's her deal?" and 1 rotwang! is...

...well, this post.

CYBERPUNK!!!!!

Listen to me -- I - LOVE - CYBERPUNK.

♥♥♥♥♥ Like that.

I don't talk about it often because sometimes I take a break; I don't actually stop feeling a burning affection for the stuff, I just put a little distance between us so that we don't get tired of one another.

Here lately and from out of nowhere, my eyelids have been all fluttery for it again and I have no idea why. You may recall that, in my last post, I mentioned the abortive plans for a "Burning Chrome" movie, right? Well, I have no idea what I was thinking the day that I dug up that info, how I ended up Googling Neuromancer or even why I decided to read the Wiki entry about it. I only remember finding and reading.

I fell butt-over-teacup in love with cyberpunk pretty much sight-unseen. I was in high school, and it was about 1989 or '90 or so, and somehow I found out about it. I had seen the old Cyberpunk boxed set in at the games/comics/head shop, but knew next to dingus about it. I'm pretty sure that I'd also seen the cover of Mona Lisa Overdrive, the black one with the chrome face on it. No clue about any of it.

But one day that changed, and I've no clue about that, either.

Somehow, I got filled in -- and, suddenly, my imagination was on fire. Burning! Lighting up! Razornails! Direct neural interface! Cybernetics! Cyberspace! Smartguns! High Tech, Low Life!

MAN! I was a teenager and good lord I'd had crushes on girls, but look at this I had an honest-to-god crush on a genre.

I borrowed money from a friend, bought a copy of Neuromancer, and failed most superbly at trying to understand it.

Oh, I eventually did read it, though. Let's be frank, Gibson's prose is not 'zactly what Los Marketing Folks might call "accessible". But the fact that I was having trouble processing his book made no difference to me at all. I was delving into the worlds, the moods, the themes and the looks of cyberpunk, and I was in it for the long haul. I even developed my own setting, complete with a couple of screenplays I never dared to finish -- or, hell, to even properly start.

Strangely, I didn't buy a cyberpunk RPG for a few years -- and when I did, it wasn't the one you'd expect. No, no, no -- I went down THIS road:

Yee-up. That game clicked for me and my friends and I had a lot of fun with it. I'm not sure I'd run it again, but I still have it; it brings me joy.

So let me get to a gaming-related train of thought, here. I've had real hard time running cyberpunk stuff for a while now. I can never settle on a game system, despite all the ones I've tried, and I think it's because I'm finicky about it. You see, to me, cyberpunk as a whole is about so much more than equipment lists, shopping trips, armed assaults and guns. Sure, sure, that stuff is fun, but I discovered that I'm more into the world-building and the mood than anything else -- or, more succinctly, the immersion into what I want my cyberpunk to feel like, to be, to evoke.

A thumbnail of Rotwag!ian cyberpunk: A Duran Duran video shot on the set of Blade Runner, with a little of The Warriors and my memories of Mexico City thrown in.

That's not gameable. Not immediately, anyway.

Mood without, you know, a plot is kind of boring, especially in an RPG. Players don't want to sit around listening to me talk about how their hearts are pounding as they stand on the corner across from the record shop, on that hot Summer night, and the neon from the store reflects in the little rivers of their sweat as the girl they want the most comes sashaying down one side of the street, poured into her jeans and earring LEDs, and on the OTHER side of the avenue they spot that guy, that bastard, the one they were sent out to hit, and the promise of a cool three grand if they do it just right -- pinched there between pure desire and cheap humanity, those that heart pounding, pounding, POUNDING --

Zzzzzzzzz

Naaaaaah. PCs wanna blow shit up! They wanna hack databases and run away from corporate security guards and generally be cybernetic Leon from The Professional. I want that, too, frankly. That's exciting to me, too.

Here's the trouble: I have a really hard time reconciling the two. Hell, I have a hard time fully expressing what I want.

Which, inevitably, causes the trampoline effect every time. I get reeeeeal excited abot cyberpunk again, try to play a game, get frustrated, and BOINNGGGG! Bounce right off.

That said, I did run a pretty successful one-on-one game with my wife last year. It was simple stuff; she played an amnesiac gun-chick who was asked by an acquaintance to rescue someone from some Russian mafiosi. It ended up being pretty exciting if small-scale, and it ended up hinging a lot on the personalities and relationships between the PC and the NPCs (I'd used them before). I used Fudge, by the way, and it worked out pretty well, but I'm still not sure. Maybe my search for a system is over but I can't see the forest for the trees.

So! Here I am, twitterpated with cyberpunk again -- and afraid I'm gonna bounce off again, back into the cycle.

What to do, what to do...?

Animation Rumination

Okay. I'm sick of anime.

I'm tired of how it looks, in a general sense; yes, I know there are tons of variations from one show to the next but, by and large, I'm giving it a pass. Oh, no, you cannot have my Bubblegum Crisis, Robotech and Akira DVDs -- those, I like. I'd like to see some more Miyazaki stuff. And one of these days I'll watch all of Cowboy Bebop because what I've seen is aces. If I could find a copy of the original Sol Bianca on DVD, I'd totally punch a trucker to own it.

Still. I'm...just...I dunno, I'm just not drawn to it (ha ha) anymore.

You know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see more genre animation, crafted with the same skill, dedication and love as the Japanese stuff...but in a totally western style. Look, I respect the eastern style. It has a lot of fans and it makes a lot of people happy but I'm not one of them.

I want to see something that's not overly-stylized. I really enjoy Samurai Jack, but the style remains a grain of sand forever under my skin when I'm watching -- small enough not to annoy, but present enough to be noticeable.

So. Why am I on about this, all of a sudden? Well. Y'see, today, I was looking at The William Gibson Aleph and I read this:

Burning Chrome The rights to 'Burning Chrome' were optioned by Leonard Mogel in the mid-eighties, even before the short story collection appeared. It was supposed to become a sequel to an animated SF feature, The Heavy Metal Movie, and had six script drafts by Scott Roberts with input from Gibson. The Heavy Metal Movie however failed at the box office and caused the project to halt.

I finally found my jaw somewhere under the desk, re-attached it, and freely wept over what might have been. Holy cow!

I want to see stuff like this. It can be done; hell, Heavy Metal was 27 years ago, so what the hell? Did we suddenly forget that this can be done? Is there no one putting two and two together and saying, "It's a different audience now, a different market; we can try this again"?

Or are they looking at that new audience, that new market, and saying, "They'll only buy it if it's anime or looks like anime"?

There's a glimmer of good news: Turns out someone's looking into another Heavy Metal -- R-rated, adult-themed feature, according to Variety. Here's hoping it gets made and, hopefully, makes a little money. I don't necessarily want my genre animation to be R-rated and adult-themed all the time; a straight-up adaptation of, say, oh..I dunno...Neuromancer, why not, or I, Robot, or maybe even something original?

Oooh! Oooh! How about Robert E. Howard's Red Nails? No? Not ever? Can't get finished, you say?

...

...well, I guess not, then.

Maybe if Conan had big eyes and Valeria made his nose bleed.

Summer - It Turns Me Upside-Down

That's true -- I love Summer the most of all the seasons (actually, of the other three, only Spring escapes my disdain), but I'm not gonna blog about that, today.

Instead I'm gonna point you to a neat post that someone else already wrote -- namely, this blog post by Max, on his "Malevolent And Benign".

Funny thing is, for a while now I've been thinking about personalizing my C&C campaign by changing the spell names, why not. I agree with Max -- "Color Spray" sounds...well...colorful, but "Sleep"? "Summon Monster"? "Magic Missile", even?

They are too prosaic. Dull. They do not evoke magic, beyond being recognizable as FRPG spells.

Whether they be Vancian or no, I fully support the idea of re-naming FRPG spells in one's campaign. Thus, I add my voice to his. Furthermore, I think I just might start working on a list of re-titled spells and share them here, why not. You totally got what the title of this blog post has to do with the subject, right?

Here, let me try some.

Sleep - "The Slumber of Alun-Zaad"

Magic Missile - "Demon-Bees", "Tizmanthur's Bolts And Arrows", "To Sting A Foe From Afar"...really, it could have all kinds of different names, based on what the caster decides they should look like.

Summon Monster - "The Master Calls The Servant"

Or, hey -- you could go all Rowlingian (WTF?!) in naming your spells and name them after the very words you speak when casting them! They can be fakey Latin, or just nonsense words. But be careful:

Player 1: "I cast Caraz Un Klecto at the orc, for...let's see...dee-four, dee-four, plus one, plus one..."

Player 2: "Cast what?"

Player 1: "Caraz Un Klecto. It's Magic Mi-"

Player 2: "Klaatu Barada Nikto?"

Player 3: "Klaatu Barada Necktie!"

Player 2: "This is my BOOM stick!"

Player 1: "Okay, that's good. Thanks. Anyway, I rolled--"

Player 3: "Good, bad..I'm the one with the wand."

Player 1: "Shut the hell up, all of you, or I'll cast Foot To The Junk on all of you."

Hmm...this idea needs work.

Awww, Maaaaaan...!

NOW what do I do on my 10-minute break?!

...Oh, wait.

Temple Of Doom

People give Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom lots of grief. They talk all kindsa smack about the movie, saying it's...I dunno, silly, or...goofy, or...I dunno.

I tune them out after a while.

It's on TV right now, as I type this. My wife and I were just talking about this phenomenon, and...

...jeeez.

It's goofier than Raiders. So what? This is a fun movie. Great dialogue, memorable characters and scenes, totally bitchin' music, a relentless pace...the damn thing is engaging. You can't get bored watching this movie, and if you do, I don't understand you.

Is Willie Scott annoying? Yes. Is she useless? As anything but a foil for The Man With The Hat, sure. Are the Sankara stones less epic than the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail? Yup.

There. Those are its sins. Notice that "boring", "talky", "traveloguey" and "half-hearted" are not among them.

Conan stories had varied tones, too. Think about that. Conan was in a freaking murder mystery. Pulp is many things.

I think we're done here.

Plus, it's almst time for dinner...and Doctor Who.

Renewal Of Purpose (Sort Of)

Yesterday I was looking at the Risus Companion again. Hands down, it is the best book on GMing (and gaming as a whole) that I have ever read. My experience may be limited, but I know quality, OK?

Anyway, I was doing so idly. I arrived at the section on creating adventures, and I read the bit about starting the process by writing down a bunch of one-line premises to get you started. I thought, Hey, I haven't sat down and just done that in a while. So today, at work, I took pen and paper and started writing stuff down.

The first thing I wrote, with no prompting, no ideas, no nothing:

The PCs must deliver a Philter of Attraction to the princess before she attends the ball - or else, the kingdom will be at war!

At war, you say! With who? Why does she need the philter? Is she trying to mack especially hard on some randy beau who can stop the war? Is she ugly? Rude? A pariah? Does he hate her? Who's trying to stop the PCs from getting there? Where will the chase scenes be set? Is this SF or fantasy? Who's the heavy? How do things go down if the PCs fail?!

I've been really into doing this lately. I'm really into the groove of grabbing a slender idea and fleshing it out. It's nothing revolutionary, nothing fancy; just something fun. This is play, to me. It exercises creative muscles and amuses me at the same time.

I love how you -anybody who tries, anyway- can just slap these ideas on paper and, with a little chin-tugging and giggling to oneself, can turn it into a story, an RPG adventure, a comic, a movie. Whatever. You just look at the premise and start asking questions -- and making up the answers.

Again -- this ain't magic. I'm not a prophet. This is just one of the ways in which this creative stuff gets done, and always has been done. And it's not that it's all that new to me, either.

I'm simply, honestly, and unconditionally amazed by the process, its simplicity, and mostly by how much freaking fun it is.

It makes me want to do something bigger with it.

Back To The Butcher's Shop

I haven't played GURPS in 4 years.

For a long time, its 3rd edition was our system of choice. My wife and I used it for dang near everything, and she professed it to be her favorite rules set. We bought tons of supplements and looked up house rules and fan-created materials and even bought GURPS Character Builder and updated it rigorously.

About 4 years ago, we purchased our new house and moved in to it, because that's what most sane people do with a new house and we decided to try things their way for a while. We promptly set up bookshelves and stuff, and placed our GURPS library on a shelf, easily accessible. Then we played other games instead.

I have no idea why. I think I may have got a little tired of how much detail and prep you can (but don't have to) invest in it, and since I've been deconstructing myself as a GM these days (hence this blog), I may just not have been drawn back to the thing.

My recent purchase and perusal of Harkwood, however, has me pulling those books back off the shelf for their value as GURPS books -- thinking again about the "RPS" as opposed to just the "GU". I think it's because Harkwood has a neat little suggestion for handling mass battles -- instead of futzing around with mass combat rules, just make opposed "Quick Contests Of Victory" between the two forces, applying a few sketchy modifiers where needed.

That rung a bell in my head.

Once upon a time, you see, I explained GURPS' massive heft with the following words:

"GURPS is like a cow. Select the cuts you want; you can't eat it whole."

'Cause -- look. When it comes down to it, that game is really only as complicated as its very, very basic rules: Roll 3d6, equal to or less than your modified skill. There's a little more to it but it's all permutations of that. GURPS Lite is concise, brief, and utterly, utterly usable. All the extra fiddlt rules about hit locations and strikes to the brain and blah blah blah are just that: fiddly.

I'm not ready to start playing the game again. I am, however, circling it, sniffing the edges anew, re-acquainting myself. The other night, f'r'instance, I made a character for my daughter, with her input -- I ended up with a 150-point fairytale princess with Dancing-16 and Fencing-13.

Hmm. Just -- just 'hmmm'.

4E Or Whatever.

The new edition of D&D is out. You already know. I know. Great. Everybody knows.

I don't care and I play something else.

Dragonpantsless

I have been quoted as saying that I'm not yet tired of plain-vanilla, bog-standard fantasy role-playing gaming because I am simply not finished with it. When I say that, I really mean two things -- one, that I'm really not burned out on it, and I really haven't been there, done that and bought the t-shirt; and also that, truth be told, I have a lot of catching up to do with the rest of you FRPG veterans.

For instance, I'm pretty sure that up until last night, I'd never run PCs in battle against a dragon.

No, for real! All this time I bitch and moan about how all I ever do is GM, so you'd think that I would have hit that up by now, right? Well...no. I've been traipsing around between genres so much that I've never really focussed on any one to exclusivity yet nor am I goldang likely to, either. As a result, a lot of stuff is new, untilled ground.

Last night, my wife and I hosted our good friends Kyle Hamster and The Party Gorilla (those are nicknames, duh) for a little old-schoolish Castles & Crusades misadventuring. We ended up with a barbarian chick based on Lux* (My wife's PC), a half-elven assassin with a silver tongue (Kyle's PC) and a gnomish wizard/snake oil peddler with a cart drawn by wolves (in the capable hands of Mr. Gorilla, which, again, is totally not his name). I made them all 5th level, they rolled up some magic items from Unearthed Arcana, and shenanigans soon commenced.

I'd cooked up the plot the night before, and it was a simple, direct one: "Go find out what happened to the last party of unfortunate mofos who got sent out into the wilderness and make sure that the package they were sent to deliver GETS delivered". Why bother with too much complexity? Let the game live and breathe because of its protagonists, I say, and leave Byzantine plotting to...um...the Byzantinites.

Whatever.

Anyway, the night before the hoedown, I was putting together this game, see. And I was waffling about on the identity of the opponents (in The Adventure Funnel you'd call 'em "Obstacles"). I had my main bad guys sussed out, and I'd come up with a story point where the PCs would gather a vital clue, but my dramatic intuition (actually, 'sense of not being boring') told me something spicier needed to happen about that time. I felt that my reveal needed a bit of physical action, not to develop the plot so much as to just be fun. Keep the blood flowin'.

(A QUICK ASIDE: STEVEN SPIELBERG AND GEORGE LUCAS APPEAR TO HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO THIS.)

So I was, like, "Ambushed. By forest-monsters."

I grabbed my trusty old AD&D DMG, rolled on the random wilderness encounters, and got a green dragon.

Now...something in my head used to shy away from dragons as opponents. "Too powerful," I'd think to myself. "Wipe out the party, game over."

But that night...that night I took that nay-saying 'something' and slapped it with a truck.

It's like I said: I'd never run an encounter with a dragon before. Why continue that trend? It's a STUPID trend! Gary Gygax called C&C "The game as it was meant to be played", right? And we all know that "the game" means "Dungeons & Dragons" and so what the hell was I waiting for?

So! On game night, the PCs went off looking for the messengers, found their clue, and then, WHAM! Green dragon. No good reason other than "dude, green dragon!".

Now...for some people, running a dragon may be old hat. Some GMs may be so tired of the damn things that they wish for -or make up- fights with necromantic poodles or incendiary kangaroos or rogue Adrienne Barbeaubots** or something. But let me tell you, running that dragon was fun. I had available to me dragon tactics and stunts that I didn't even think of until this morning. Plus, got to roleplay a proud, greedy beast -- stalking pantherishly toward the PCs, demanding tribute in exchange for their lives. Through the dragon, I had the opportunity to project sheer lust for useless wealth.

And the players got to have fun, too! Kyle got to use that cool death attack ability that C&C assassins get, Amber got to rage on a classic FRPG monster, and John (The Party Gorilla! There! At last, he stands revealed!) got to pummel the mofo with magic missiles.

And they killed it. They knocked my dragon out of the sky.

That's OK; I'm not an adversarial GM. I am a facilitator of awesomeness. Last night, they had a pretty awesome fight and I played an awesome monster. The encounter didn't advance the plot -- hell, it didn't even advance their wallets, because the dragon was out of its lair. Better than that, we made a fun gaming memory.

And I got a taste of tasty, tasty vanilla.


*From the D&D movie that wasn't a steaming pile of crap.
** Hmmm...

GURPS Fantasy Harkwood

Okay, first off -- to whomever it was who unloaded this little gem at the Half-Price Books in Greenwood, Indiana...

...thank you. Thank you so, so much. Between this particular find and the Rocky & Bullwinkle coffee table book my wife found there for me on the same day, our Thursday haul was the best from the HPB, ever.

The rest of you are probably wondering why I'm so excited about having this product. In fact, many of you might even be wondering just what this product even is. So let's clear that up.

GURPS Fantasy Harkwood is 64 pages of campaign setting, customizable adventure, NPCs, maps and (then-) new GURPS rules, written by Aaron Allston and J. David George. It details Caithness, a kingdom on Yrth, the default GURPS Fantasy setting. There's with plenty of information about all the lordings, baronies, noble NPCs, etc. within -- and how they relate to each other and to the 19-year-old king who can't bring them all together.

It details the Barony of Harkwood, along with its ruler, and the bi-annual tournament that happens there.

It gives you a full action/intrigue adventure, which -as I mentioned before- you customize by choosing which of 6 villains is the mastermind behind the plot against the king.

It also gives you some new rules, but if it's no longer 1988 they're not so new anymore.

The adventure, by the way, is just a starting point for PC activities in the kingdom of Caithness. There are bunches of little adventure seeds scattered about for you to use at will, and of course the NPCs all inspire plots and stories on their own. It's useful, useful, useful.

Now...not only is this supplement impressive by virtue of putting so much information into a comfortable 64 pages, it pulls a second duty that's not as obvious: it's a hellaciously good template for creating, detailing and totally messing up your own fantasy kingdoms. I'm two whole chapters in and already thinking, I need to something like this for my stuff.

I found it in a stack of game stuff that hadn't been shelved yet; pounds and pounds of RIFTS stuff mixed in with GURPS stuff new and old (a copy of Callahan's Cross-Time Saloon, in great condition, for instance; I passed on it) all were sitting there on a cart opposite shelves of White Wolf and d20 products. Good thing I peeked.

Harkwood is out of print, but e23 sells the .pdf, cheap.

You're welcome.

"And Don't Forget The Joker!"

Check this out!



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