Reports are trickling in from Gencon that Fantasy Flight Games has stolen a march, as it were, and is selling products people didn't think would be available for months yet, if not longer. Of particularl interest to me is Black Goat of the Woods, an expansion for their Cthulhu-based boardgame, Arkham Horror. I think this is the first time I actively wished I could be at Gencon, just because I don't want to wait for the product to trickle its way through the normal distribution chain.

And to think just a a few weeks ago, I was patting myself on the back for not feeling the urge to indulge my "gotta catch 'em all" compulsion with the acquisition of The King in Yellow. My brain betrays me and immediately starts figuring out who I know at Gencon I could wheedle into getting a copy for me.

But no! I will stay strong, enjoy what I have and not worry about Black Goat until it shows up at the FLGS. Unless, y'know, someone offered to pick up a copy for me. But really, what are the odds of that?  

Tags: Gencon Ffg Fantasy-flight-games Arkham-horror

There's a post on the Wizards of the Coast's website, announcing they will be releasing a revised GSL, the license that allows third party publishers to create D&D 4E compatible products and say so on the cover, some time in the "very near future."

Tags: Wizards Wotc Gsl D&d

Almost a year ago now, I bought two PDFs from Steve Jackson Games' e23 site: GURPS Technomancer and GURPS Technomancer: Funny New Guys. The setting is one where the first nuclear test at Trinity, New Mexico, completed a ritual that brought about the resurgence of magic in the modern era. From then on, the world changes to adapt to and take advantage of both science and magic. It's a setting that's highly spoken of and the original books are hard to track down.

Things being as they are, and my apparent inability to read long form documents on a computer, I only just got these PDFs printed out and bound today. I'm looking forward to finding out for myself what life on Merlin-3 -- as the folks at Infinity Unlimited call it in the Infinite Worlds meta-setting -- is like. I don't think there's another RPG setting quite like it.

Tags: Gurps Technomancer Pdf

It may be unfair of me, but the term "homebrew system" immediately brings to mind the image of a heap of three ring binders and spiral notebooks filled with photocopied pages and hand-ruled tables, rendered in a handwriting indicative of someone undergoing a major coronary event. Surprising as this may be, I'm not a huge fan of the stereotypical homebrew. In fact, I tend to turn my nose up at them almost immediately without even giving them a chance. It's a failing of mine, but one with which I am comfortable.

Thirty minutes pass, marked by bursts of typing and then pounding the backspace key.

I've been trying to expand my initial thought -- I instinctually don't like homebrews -- into a fuller blog entry, complete with exploring how cheap desktop publishing and print on demand services have allowed them to infiltrate the gaming marketplace, but I'm not coming up with anything that doesn't sound mean for the sake of mean.

The fact of the matter is I believe in Sturgeon's Law: ninety percent of everything is crap. It holds as true for amateur material as it does professional work. Moreover, there are fewer layers of control and vetting in the self-publishing world than the professional one. My time is limited, and while choosing one thing over another to read is always a gamble, I'm going to hedge my bets towards the books put out by the bigger publishers. At least then I know what I'm getting into.

Tags: Homebrews Rpgs

Wizards of the Coast just announced they are backburnering their social networking site, Gleemax, in favor of concentrating resources on their other two internet endeavors, Magic Online and D&D Insider. Apparently the site will be shut down in September and the message boards will be rolled back into the wizards.com URL.

You can read the official post here: http://www.gleemax.com/Comms/Pages/Communities/BlogPost.aspx?blogpostid=96074&pagemode=2&blogid=2158

Tags: Networking Websites

Unwinding during the three hour drive from OGC to my house this morning, I had plenty of time to ruminate on everything that went on this weekend. First, much fun was had. I played some games, ran some other games, met up with old friends and made some new ones. I call that a highly successful convention.

Friday, I played in Nine_Hands' Iron Heroes dungeonbash. I love Iron Heroes because it emphasizes the characters' abilities, rather than the items they carry. That and it's awesome getting bonuses to beat people up by beating them up. It's a wonderfully vicious cycle.

That evening was StupidSmurf's Call of Cthulhu game Everybody Dies. For the record, it does precisely what it says on the tin. StupidSmurf's an awesome GM and this adventure was no exception. It had a clever set up with great chances for roleplaying and even the opportunity to save the world. After playing the game, the next best thing was listening to everyone else who played it during other time slots that weekend and comparing notes.

Saturday was mostly given over to the two roleplaying adventures I had signed up to run, GURPS Discworld and B.P.R.D.. Discworld went pretty well, with a caveat. I had a table full of Terry Pratchett fans, so they got right into the mood of absurdisms and punnery. I was a little stunned by how quickly we tore through this one: two hours! If I run this in the future, and I think I will, because I eventually want to submit it to Pyramid, I know now to add in more encounters and things to do. Still, everyone laughed and enjoyed themselves, so all was well in the end.

B.P.R.D.: The Celestial Legion took the afternoon slot. It was a smaller group, but I think that was good, in a way. The three players each got to take a bigger role in the course of events, and had to hustle a little harder in those parts where someone else's abilities would have come in handy. The adventure was pretty well received and I had a blast improvising in and around the players choices and questions. (See? I know I can improvise and expand on the fly; now I just need to apply it more to the next time I run Discworld.)

This slot also marked the metamorphosis of Field Team Bravo into Strike Force Gonzo with the reinterpretation of a Venezuelan martial artist into the Ecuadorean Batman, complete with smiley bat symbol calling cards (thanks, Andy!). I'm seriously considering revamping the concept into a connected series of one-shots of over the top action with crazy loons because no one sane will possibly do the job.

After the drain of GMing for eight hours -- and not having a ticket to a particular game -- I decided to take the evening off to hang out with convention friends. These are people I only get to see at conventions, since we live in completely different states. I like listening to the back and forth, and glimpsing into people's lives outside the circle I have at home.

Sunday morning I refereed a board game, Fantasy Flight Games' Marvel Heroes, to keep with the year's super hero theme. It is an admittedly imperfect game in several ways, but it's still highly enjoyable. All four players said they had a good time, and one even asked me if I planned to run it at Carnage (probably not, as Carnage has become my "dedicated shill for Steve Jackson Games" convention). This particular session now holds the record for Longest Game of Marvel Heroes Ever, clocking in at four hours.

The board game ran so long, in fact, I completely missed the lunch break and couldn't find the Cutthroat Caverns GM before he joined a Munchkin game, so I went to the movies to see finally The Dark Knight. First time I've ever been a movie theatre that served food as the movie played. This movie wasn't bad, either.

For the remainder of Sunday, I helped break down some of the convention gear and then chilled out at the after-party, which was a nice way to wind down. Woke up this morning, got packed and was on my way by 10:30.

It was a fun weekend all around. I'm really glad to have met up with old friends and made some new ones. I'm already looking forward to next year, although I have no idea if I'll come up with anything for the "evil wins" theme.

See you all there (if not sooner)!

 

Tags: Ogc Conventions

So Green Ronin just announced they will not publish any books for the fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons in the foreseeable future. You can read the whole thing [url=http://greenronin.com/2008/07/green_ronin_and_4e.php]here[/url]. In particular, Chris Pramas cites the owners of Dungeons & Dragons' ability to alter the Game System License at any time without notification, the potential financial liability if a third party publisher is sued by the owners of D&D and the license's generally restrictive nature.

As always, I am interested in how this will affect the state of RPG publishing, particularly with the exceptionally polarized reception of the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Green Ronin isn't a top tier publisher, but they are certainly a medium sized one. Moreover, they have a reputation for creating quality books. I'm curious to see not only what this will do to the pool of third party publishers for the world's most popular roleplaying game, but also where Green Ronin's excess creative talent and financial capital will go.

I think it's fair to estimate that whatever they publish in the stead of 4E books won't see as well, so revenue may drop and thus their overall output. But there will still be more time for games like Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying and Mutants & Masterminds, so I'm hoping Green Ronin can make the best of their other existing properties.

In the end, Green Ronin has to do what will keep Green Ronin in business. If they think the potential costs  of publishing for 4E are greater than what they'd make in sales revenue, then they gotta do what's good for the company. 

Tags: Rpgs D&D4e

Last night's playtest of the GURPS Discworld adventure went well. We identified rough spots in the action, and I got some good feedback on how to refine the presentation and execution of the player characters. Now I know I need to give more time in the beginning to not just the city of Ankh-Morpork, as I did last night, but the set-up and the NPCs in that first scene.

Also, it's perfectly okay not to have an ending in mind even for a pre-written scenario, as the players are going to come up with their own anyway, so why not run with that?

And I've decided it's actually useful to have memorized whole swathes of the Discworld novels, as it really helps in pulling out NPCs as needed and tossing off quick one-liners.

Tags: Gurps Discworld Rpgs Ogc

Thanks to my procrastinatory tendencies, I often leave things too long and the work piles up. Case in point is creating characters for convention games.

Typically, I get two or three good ideas for characters that I get really excited about and wish I could play myself. Those ideas run around in my head for months or weeks. Catchphrases and mannerisms start forming in my conceptions of them. Usually some less exciting ideas for the other three characters -- I like to have six characters max in my games -- pop up as well.

When it finally comes time to write everything out, usually in one session because I've been procrastinating, I usually do the characters I like a lot first. Then come the ones that were "Well, I guess they'll need a sneaky type," or "That'd be kinda interesting." By the fifth or sixth character, I'm throwing almost anything on the page, just to get it over with.

Horrible, but true. In my defense, though, I haven't procrastinated nearly as long this time. I'm actually far enough in advance to get some playtesting done with my regular group. So that's awesome.

I wonder if having convention characters I'm invested in, even in a "I wish I could play this one" way, is a good idea. It creates false expectations in my head of what the character might say or how they may act. I might react adversely to how the player chooses to play, or not play, the character.

My strong idea of how the character should be played might bleed into their write-up, causing people to pass it over because it's unappealing in its narrow focus/one-note-iness. Maybe I should write all my PCs more loosely, with less strong ideas on how to play them, so as to give players more room to make the characters their own.

It's something to think about.

Tags: Rpgs Characters Gming

July is World Adventure Writing Month! The challenge is to write a complete RPG adventure for your favorite system in the month of July, not unlike National Novel Writing Month in November.

I've got a couple projects I'm working on that had better be done before July's over, because I gotta run them at OGC at the end of the month!

Tags: Rpgs Adventures

In GURPS Cabal, magic is controlled by the thirty-six decans of the astrological zodiac. Each decan has its own sphere of influence and personality. You might have two or more decans of knowledge say, where one reveals hidden information and secrets, and another focuses on the destruction or creation of knowledge. The turning of the zodiac and its symbolic elements -- gold, an effigy of a ram, etc. -- affect the efficacy of each decans magic. If the house opposing the spell you want to cast is rising, you're going to have a hard time casting it. Mage: The Ascension, on the other hand, has a less finely-grained division of magic, having nine spheres of influence like Life, Matter and Time.

So, I just thought, why not mash the two together? Nine goes into thirty-six evenly four times, so each sphere could have four decans. Each decan represents a different application: creation, destruction, alteration and sensing, maybe.

I'll have to let that percolate in the back of my brain.

Tags: GURPS Cabal Mage The Ascension

So today is Free RPG Day, a promotional event not unlike Free Comic Book Day, where RPG publishers make quickstarts packs and sample adventures available for free through brick and mortar game stores. To find out if your Friendly Local Game Store is participating, visit the Free RPG Day website, as well as find out what companies are offering what.

At my local store, Quarterstaff Games in Burlington, VT, I got to play through a little of the Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition adventure. I liked the straightforwardness of what I saw. I only played part of it because I thought there was going to be a demo of Green Ronin's A Song of Ice and Fire game, but unfortunately there weren't enough people. I went home with the ASOIAF quickstart, as well as an adventure for Hunter: the Vigil, about which I am decidedly enh. I had been looking forward to the packet for Trail of Cthulhu, but Quarterstaff didn't get any of those, unfortunately.

In the online gameosphere, I know the Hunter adventure is available for download for today only from RPGNow.com. Noble Knight Games will reportedly include freebies in orders made this coming Wednesday. I imagine other items will become available for download sooner or later, including those things being given away in stores today.

Has anyone else gotten to enjoy Free RPG Day?

Tags: Rpgs Free

In the past, I have been more than slightly flummoxed why, when in the middle of a roleplaying session with wizards, or super heroes, or aliens, or what have you, that a player will take issue with some minor point or technical detail, saying some historical event wouldn't go that way, or that's not how a particular gadget works "in real life."

Now, I'm a big believer in suspension of disbelief. I also believe that a balance has to be struck. For the aliens, wizards, et al, to be accepted, there has to be a veneer of reality, usually in the form of the every day details of the world. Water runs downhill, toast lands butter side down and fire uses up oxygen. But I hate it when someone, often unthinkingly, because they're concerned about verisimilitude, derails the group's concentration on the game over what is, ultimately, a minor inaccuracy

Until now, I didn't have a pat answer, something that could halt the discussion in its tracks without giving preference to for or against. After dealing with such situations several times last night and sleeping on it, I've devised one: "It's not up for discussion."

Right now that sounds heavy-handed to me, so I'll smooth the phrasing, but that's the jist of what I want to be saying when someone wants to dither over how a character's STR score translates to "real world terms" when there's a tanker truck hurtling through the air that needs catching.

Tags: GMing Roleplaying

So I'm brainstorming setting history for my superhero mash-up of Green Ronin's Freedom CityParagons settings. The age of paranormals kicked off when a cosmic string (understand this is a very inaccurate, comic booky interpretation of what a cosmic string is and does) whipsawed through part of the planet in 1908, ending in an enormous explosion that came to be known as the Tunguska event, perhaps most famously referenced at the end of Ghostbusters. Areas through which the string passed suddenly start experiencing a lot more Fortean phenomena, as well as become the regions where people eventually manifest superpowers as time passes and the noetic seepage from the quantum substrata increases. and

I started thinking about what other places on Earth would be affected by this, so I downloaded Google Earth and drew a line around the globe from Tunguska to where Freedom City is located, which is roughly Bostonish. I discovered that not only did the line pass through a lot of empty territory in the Arctic circle, but also a lot more of Russia, southeast Asia and a tiny bit of Australia. To me, that put a new spin on the Cold War and the purported fight against Communism.

The United States poured so much into military spending because they were disadvantaged in the paranormal race. Far more talents and psychics arose in Russia, China and neighboring countries than in the US because of how the string passed through the planet. So America not only put what few paranormals it could muster to work to keep the whole super powers thing under wraps, but it poured gas on the military-industrial complex as well. It could even be the secret reason behind questionable wars like Korea and Vietnam.

Now, one hundred years after Tunguska, paranormals are breaking out more frequently and with greater power than ever before. The time is ripe for the public to discover the truth about the last century of human history, and what's really going on. Naturally, the PCs will be right in the thick of it. 

Tags: Superheroes Rpgs Mutants Masterminds Paragons

I just checked the tracking info on the prize support for this Saturday's Munchkin tournament at the FLGS, Quarterstaff Games. The box is on the truck to be delivered today. Excellent. *strokes kitty*

In the past, the Munchkin games I've run as an MIB have been rather plain jane, usually the newest set or expansion of the moment. This time, I'm trying something different. The munchkins have become unstuck in time and randomly jump from universe to universe. So they'll start off crawling through a fantasy dungeon for a few levels, and then be abruptly transported to a space station filled with aliens and ultra-tech gadgets, and then to the streets and backroads of Arkham County.

Can't wait for Saturday! If you're in the Burlington, VT, area, stop by and play!

Tags: Munchkin Tournaments Mib Sjgames

Okay, so it wasn't a true gamer sighting, but I did run across the leavings of one. By the printer in the computer lab, I found the second page of a D&D character sheet. It had been mistakenly printed over something else, so I suppose the gamer in question threw it away -- unsuccessfully, since it was just sitting next to the printer.

Tags: Real Life

Last night, I did some research for the GURPS Discworld scenario I want to run at OGC. I watched an Opera Australia production of Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore. It makes sense, honest.

This adventure's going to be about Ankh-Morpork's first amateur theatre group. The city already has a traditional theatre, the Dysk, and an opera house. Clearly, the next step is to mash the two together into proto-musical theatre. And this being the Discworld, it's all happening for the first time, and following structures no one recognizes, but feels to be somehow right.

So Pinafore gave me some ideas for plot elements to include in the overarching story, as well as what I don't want to include in the play-within-the-game I'm toying with including. Next up, Pirates of Penzance.

Tags: Gurps Discworld Rpgs Conventions Ogc

Back from Ubercon, and I am seriously beat. Let me tell how this state of affairs came about.

I drove down Friday evening after getting out of work. After some requisite wrong turns, I found the hotel in Edison, New Jersey around 10:30. Picked up my badge from the evening con ops and found my friend playing Cranium WOW. That was an entertaining hour and a half, particularly when one player had to act out being Tickle Me Elmo.

Around midnight, my other friend kicked off Betrayal at House on the Hill, which I was seriously looking forward to. There was some wonkiness with the scenario as we were using the unerrataed first printing or something, but we got it all worked out in the end. The worm Ourouboros killed everyone but the plucky little kid. My cheerleader was a freaming machine for a while, though, as she had found the blood dagger while rooting around in the cellar.

The next morning, I realized I had failed to plan ahead by not printing out the games I had signed up for. I couldn't access the user area of the website for some reason on a laptop, so I was kind of lost as to what to do. Happily, I discovered the Rock Band/Guitar Hero corner. Not surprisingly, I was just sucked in to Rock Band, which I hadn't played before yesterday. I think I literally spent seven or more hours on Saturday strumming away at either RB or GH. I'm not a great player and it took a while to get used to the differences between the RB guitar and the GH one, but I think I improved a bit. Red-blue chords continue to be my bane, but maybe a little less so. Oh, and I absolutely suck at drums. As of now, I just can't play them at all.

Like Slurm, this game is highly addictive and I wouldn't have it any other way. Boston's "More Than a Feeling" had to be the top song of the weekend. There was one group of four who absolutely nailed it when I saw them play.

When I finally tore myself away from rocking out, it was like 9:00 Saturday night. My friend was playing in a Trivial Pursuit variant. I got to slip in when someone else was called away. The game was unfortunately marred by a quasi-dispute over how the GM chose to end the game in a sudden death in order to finish on time. Note to GMs: if you're going to insist your game end at a scheduled time, or find yourself having to wrap up before the game finishes in order to meet another commitment, be sure to have an exit strategy! Sudden death has to work and be fair, not just be something you make up off the top of your head.

It looked like I was going to be drawn into The T-Shirt Game with the same general knot of people, but then I spotted someone walking by, looking for players for Arkham Horror. I knew then where my fate lay: in a sleepy little town out to be overrun by squamous servants of an unknowable, uncaring god-being. It was 10:30 PM when we finally began the game and 3:30 the next morning when we wrapped up, having sealed six gates and prevented Azathoth from bursting into reality and automatically killing us stone dead. Except for like the last forty-five minutes, when everyone's exhaustion was really beginning to show, the game was a lot of fun. The GM brought CDs of mood music, but we were seated so close to the Rock Band corner there was no way we could have heard it. But the thought was appreciated, as were the Cthulhu miniatures he brought to supplement the standard cardboard tiles that represent Mythos beings.

We were playing with the Curse of the Dark Pharaoh expansion – surprisingly out of print, I learned – so there were not many Elder Signs available. As it happens, I pulled the only one seen all game during an encounter with a monster in the Black Cave. Otherwise, all five of us were hustling all over town looking for clues as to how to stem this seemingly endless tide of monsters. Instead of new portals opening, the ones already existing kept spewing forth more monsters. The terror level jumped by leaps and bounds for a while. I think the Curiosity Shoppe and Ye Olde Magick Shoppe closed in the same go. Things looked grim for a while, particularly the way monsters kept piling up on the Unvisited Isle, making it more and more unlikely anyone would be going to seal that portal. But the rolls went our way and everyone pulled together, in spite of over-tiredness and general fatigue.

In spite of falling asleep around 4:00 AM, I managed to roll out of bed around 8:30 AM. Plenty of time for a run to Dunkin' Donuts and a couple rounds of Guitar Hero before the main attraction – for me – of the day: Hex Hex. I first played this game back at OGC last summer during the wrap party. It was awesome then and just as fun now, despite the damper of one player feeling singled out for attack. After being the slowest to avoid Hex Hex Next – drop your cards and put your hands on your shoulders – I managed to take care of myself the rest of the game. Never lost Voice again and even managed to get a point back. Granted, it was mostly luck that I had the cards needed, but still, it felt like an accomplishment. What's more, I won a neat bit of swag since the proper recipient didn't want it: a tin customized to hold Hex Hex and Hex Hex Next together, with a nice magnetic decal for the lid. Admittedly, this means I need to buy Hex Hex Next to fill the tin properly, but I'm okay with that.

Some other items of note:

• The restaurant attached to the hotel, Harold's Deli, serves absurdly large portions of food. Like a sandwich serves four people kind of absurd. We got an order of chicken parmigiana that was a platter of chicken breasts lost in a sea of sauce and covered by a huge mass of cheese. Then we got what was practically a log of fudge cake to share. So big it had to be held together with a stick.
• Ubercon has an interesting prize system: each hour a game is played, the GM gets a prize button to award. The buttons are used to redeem prizes, with bigger items requiring more buttons. I was a little surprised when people started dickering over how many buttons would be given out, or who should get them. In my admittedly limited convention experience, prize tickets/redemption is usually a minor matter at best – probably because the currency in question is often much more scarce than it seemed to be at Ubercon. Which is good in a way, because it means more people get to take home freebies.
• The con suite surprised me as well. They had a space for convention attendees to relax and get free snacks and drinks. There were chips and soda, as well as vegetables, which was nice. That's another think I haven't yet encountered at other conventions.
• I saw Timothy Zahn, author of a number of Star Wars novels, holding a platter of doughnuts for the morning meet 'n greet with the guests of honor, including Zahn himself. Just wanted to throw that out there.

 

Ubercon was a lot of fun – more than I had thought it would be, to be honest. Getting away for a couple days was just what I needed, particularly to something awesome as Rock Band. It was interesting to hear snippets of conversations I've heard at my own area's conventions: dealing with the hotel, where and when is next year's con, did you notice what that one guy did? Some things are the same all over, I guess. I don't know if Ubercon was a rental car, twelve hours driving roundtrip and two hotel nights' worth of fun, but it was definitely a solid weekend for me. It also holds the somewhat dubious honor of Convention Where I Spent the Least Amount of Time Sleeping (eight hours over threeish days). If I go again, I think I'd like to pull together a group of people to make the trip and weekend more enjoyable.

Tags: Ubercon Conventions

Let's talk about My Bits Are Better Than Yours Syndrome. Tonight, I encountered it while playing Marvel Heroesi Friendly Local Game Store. While remarking to a Heroclix player visiting our table that the Hulk was ready to do some smashing up in the Bronx, his response was to plunk a Nightwing figure on the board, announcing he would own the town.

I get that it was meant to be funny. And I'm sure it was, back in 1968 when someone dropped their Civil War era artillery models into a hex 'n chit recreation of Agincourt. But not anymore. Not the first time I saw it when someone put his Warmachine 'jack in the middle of our Frag board, not anytime since and not tonight.

Call me humorless if you must. I often am, and typically about things that don't really matter. This is one of those things. If you want to watch the game, fine. But don't throw your pieces into our game just because you think it's a funny juxtaposition. Barely funny then, not funny now.

Tags: Etiquette Tabletop Gaming

A lot of game companies have volunteer representatives/demonstrators. They're fans of the company's games, and often the company itself as well. They're slightly crazed sort of fan, who loves a game so much they want to help other people love it, too. Steve Jackson Games' slightly crazed^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H dedicated volunteer reps are the Men in Black, that elite cabal that serves the secret masters' inscrutable agenda -- okay, no. We're straight-up gamers who like showing off and teaching people new games.

I realized today that my two year anniversary as an MIB passed at the beginning of April. Most of what I do is playing games at the local store or the conventions I attend in the region. It's a lot of fun, but it's also really tiring. Those six hour Munchkin sessions begin to take a toll! Roundabout the end of fall last year, I got a little burned out on demoing and general MIBbery. So I took a little sabbatical from all that.

The local con a couple weekends ago convinced me my batteries are recharged. I'm ready and itching to teach people games, give 'em some free swag and generally show how awesome my favorite games are. I've got demos lined up at the local game store again, I'm looking ahead to conventions and I'm excited.

I'm back, baby! And in black, naturally.

Tags: Mibs Steve Jackson Games Demoing