War! Huh! What Is It Good For?

At Uni I had the ooportunity to see Edwin Starr play that song live. Awesome.

Anyway, I cannot escape the feeling that the battlelines are being drawn for a war in the roleplaying world. Since it's escalation a few years ago the war has pretty much gone cold but over the last few months the embers have been having a wind blown across them and it is about to go Hot! Hot! Hot!

I am, of course, refering to the hoary old chestnut of Trad vs Indie.

I first noticed the rumblings of something when a number of [4e] AWESOME! threads began appearing on Story Games. Not the place you would normally associate love of the Great White Trad Game Monolith but on closer analysis, yes. The reception that Red Box Hack got at SG was monumental and RBH is, under the bonnet, a distillation of the basic concepts of D&D. At the same time on rpg.net and uk roleplayers there have been some quite vitriolic threads about people 'not getting' story games/indie games but these threads seem to have taken the debate back a few years.

In some of them, attributes have been prescribed to indie gamers - they only like parlour games, they cannot do proper roleplaying, they can't handle rules, they need tools to help them handle relationships in games etc. Self-publishers are being questioned almost as meglomaniacs, setting themselves above the norm. The games are derided as a pile of low quality junk, not worthy of a 'proper' gamers attention. Pretentious twaddle to be ignored.

To be fair, the indie gamers have taken, this time, a rather silent stance. I haven't read a huge amount of vitriol in the other direction - although there has been in the past. There's nothing much you can do in the face of such an uprising of popular indignation except shut up and sit it out. Anything else would be an exercise in futility. However, never let it be said that the Indie Games crowd cannot entertain themselves. There have been at least a couple of occassions where the question has been asked - guys? why all the sudden 4e love? That's like, you know, the enemy? The thing we don't do? (OK, I'm dramatising that a little, but there is a definite 4e luv-backlash raising it's head)

I see a direct correlation between the release of 4e and this rise in indy/trad tensions. On the one hand you have a group of gamers who, maybe, see their treasured way of gaming under threat from these hippy loons and their insane mechanics and lack of range rules. As more and more designers seek to include 'indie ideas' in their games and industry types keep mentioning that the indie games areas are the place to see the new hawtness, then things could be a little uncomfortable. When one notable trad defender described the playtest of Dr Who as 'the frontline in the war against the Forgites' he wasn't that far off! 4e gives the trad gamers their fortress - its bringing the fucking Death Star of Gaming into the field against the indie pop guns. So much attention being lavished on 4e, it has to be 'Advantage Trad' right?

And on the other hand you have the indie gamers really digging some of the changes in 4e. It is being cited for having some of the best GMing advice ever put to paper, for having a number of mechanics that really aid cinematic play, for being a truly focussed piece of design. Or are the indie crowd trying a little too hard? Do the cool kids just want to come home again and stop the war? Like teenage rebels, eventually everyone has to get a sensible haircut, wear a suit and get a job - return to the mainstream. Could it be that? I doubt it, but its worth mentioning!

Of course, the entire 'debate' is a piece of internet driven bollocks. What one group or another does to have fun at their gaming table is absolutely no-one elses business but their own. And who the hell thinks they have the right to tell someone else whether the way they play is right or wrong? Its a totally false dichotomy. Gaming isn't Trad vs Indie - it's Trad AND Indie and everything inbetween. Still, if I find any juicy outbreaks, in my best Kate Adie impersonation I'll be your Trad-Indie War Correspondent!

A Tale of Two New Games

In something of a period of gaming renewal, I have two new systems on the horizon at the moment and both seem to be sharing some of the same traits.

The first is Age of Conan, a new MMO which has taken the place of WoW on my PC. AoC boasts better graphics, superior gameplay, an excellent boost to the start-game and a whole world of new stuff to explore and powers to master.

The second is D&D 4e, a 'new' rpg which will be taking its place at our gaming table. 4e boasts a better experience, superior gameplay, characters who are potent from 1st level (and they are!) and a whole new world of stuff for us to explore and powers to master.

See what I've done there?

Actually seeing the two games, they have had rather similar receptions. Controversial in their inception, lauded as the next big thing, overhyped by fans desperate for a change, positioned as revolutionary by zealots and derided as terrible by nay-sayers.

The truth, as always, is probably somewhere in the middle. AoC is a good game but it is still quite buggy and has pitiful support meaning that some 'features' are being claimed as bugs and some bugs are being claimed as features. No-one knows quite whats what. In the end its going to be a game that is going to have to grow up quite quickly to reach the levels of acceptance that will sustain it. D&D 4e offers many of the same challenges - its familiar on the outside, but under the bonnet it has some radical differences which mean that theres a lot of learning to be done. It's so different from 3e that in many ways it isn't a case of conversion - its more a case of learning a new game. That could well upset many people.

In the end though, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that these games are fun and fun comes from embracing differences as well as the warm acceptance of the familiar. Personally, I'm enjoying the new gameplay of AoC and the learning challenges that it brings - and I am wet with excitement about giving 4e a run out in the very near future.

Change is good.

Neil

Alas, too late - Pirates of the Burning Sea

For the last week, since my new computer arrived, I have been wasting away the hours playing Pirates of the Burning Sea. This was my MMO of choice to replace WoW for some time and but for one piece of off-spec hardware on my laptop I could have been playing it for months. Sadly, the game looks to be in a state of ill-repair. The not-particularly ambitious 11 server launch has been crushed down to 4 (interestingly, the EU servers) and even then the server loads on each Nation are 'light' or 'moderate' - nowhere near the Nation Cap.

The game itself, at low level, takes a little getting used to. Whilst it shares all of the common tropes that I associate with MMOs, the ship-to-ship combat is very different and the crafting/production stuff is very different indeed. I think it's a game where you have to be willing to make some mistakes in order to learn correctly, but when you do, it opens up into a nice little distraction.

One thing that strikes me is that it is slow. Hand-to-hand combat has a lot of whiffle, with parry, block and dodge counted in. I've discovered buffing drinks but no pots and in most encounters, which are instanced, there is little chance of you being able to escape. You win or you die. Ship-to-Ship combat can take a long time, even if you are a 'get up close and blow the fuck out of them' player like me - 8-12 minutes for an encounter. Its all very apt for the genre and you really do feel like you are a Captain, having to deal with reloading guns, wind, boarding and such but to can be a little dragging.

It is, however, a game that I reckon would be fun to play, PVP, with some friends. You could become the scourge of the seas etc. However, it just doesn't seem to have anything that gives it that biting grasp that would hook people in - and thats a damned shame because it has some innovations which really work for the genre.

Alas poor Lieutenant Tomas Cochrane - newly promoted officer of the Bermuda Sloop 'The Sea Wolf' - you may have sailed your last voyage as my attention turns to being a Bear Shaman in the Age of Conan.

Neil

Got Game?

Perennially I will use the old blog to set a challenge, or at least question something. This time it's a bit of reflection on gameplay at the table. The question is quite simple. What ONE thing could you do to improve your roleplaying at the table?

Naturally, I'll kick off.

FOCUS

Thats what I lack sometimes. Its the ability to settle down and focus on the game. Its something that I have been absolutely atrocious at in the past. I recognised that in the early days of Pendragon I was the instigator of maybe 90% of the WoW-analogies and it had to stop because it was spoiling the game. Nowadays, its about getting into my gaming headspace and staying there, quickly. It sounds pretty easy but sometimes its just not. The act of actually sitting down, putting the chat aside and getting down to the gaming can sometimes be gargantuan to me. Now, some of you might be thinking that this 'invitation to play' is the realm of the GM but I would disagree. I think it is totally the responsibility of the player to come to the game ready and willing to play or to have the guts to 'fess up to the GM that they are not ready to play. We're all adults and we should be able to gather that focus amongst a group of friends. Once I get started and worked into a game, I'm absolutely fine and indeed, for me finishing is as hard as I just want to play on and on. But starting - thats proving more difficult.

(I'll add that this is doubly so for GMing. My willingness to do anything but start a game is sometimes startling. I want to, but its so much easier not to. Tired, lazy, jaded? I dunno. But this isn't about GMing - this is about play)

So come on - on reflection, what could YOU do better at the table to enhance your gameplay?

Neil

Resolutions Revisited

Well, nearly six months on I thought I would look back at the progress of my five 'gaming' resolutions, that I made in December last year.

1. No More Games

Well, this one has been easy to achieve as the gaming calendar has become reasonably threadbare. Ben's shifts being haywire, Matt's sojurn to the Phillipines and the general craziness around this time year when four of a group work in and around education has wrecked chaos on anything that could be called a concrete gaming schedule. Group Three sort of fizzled at birth because of this as well, which is probably a good thing. D&D4e is on the horizon as a sort of spiritual rebirth of the groups focus.

2. Go to more conventions

Easily achieved - Conpulsion was a cracking little convention and I'm off to Games Expo in a couple of weeks as well. After that we have Continuum in Leicester, Furnace in Sheffield and probably some D&H promotional work at Dragonmeet in London. We've also had CottageCon II in this timeframe as well. The casualty of this excitement has been GenCon US, which has had to be dropped for 101 reasons.

3. Finish Duty & Honour

Well, we're nearly there. I have one bit of fresh material to write (The French bit), one bit to seriously rewrite (the way the Missions/Challenges actually works) and the examples to rework and then it's edit/layout. In my head I've pushed release back a little because the end of term and my teaching course are simply eating my time. However, it's nearly there!

4. Resume by position as the Iron DM

Just not going to happen in the near future. I don't have time to dedicate to a game in the way that I like to and neither game group has the calendar space to incorporate one. Andrew is set for a long run on 4eD&D and Group Two has BAYUHC and BAYUHC:The Moderning in the near future. I'm not unhappy about this at all.

5. Start gaming with the kids again
As the summer approaches, this comes higher on the agenda. Both of them are still interested but in the end its a time/quality issue again. I suspect we will do something over the summer holidays

Neil

Only The Good and the British, Die Young

Two things struck me (again) this morning:

First, why is it that in a society that increasingly seems to be typified by gangs of rude, violent and feral youths roaming the streets causing damage, chaos and death, do the young people who die always have exemplary school records, wonderful personalities and a great future? The tragic case of Jimmy Mizen is one in a long line of such deaths.

The second is whether it is wholly appropriate to point out that in the midst of tens of thousands of Burmeese dying in the aftermath of a typhoon and thousands being killed by an earthquake in central China 'we have lost contact with 15 British people'. I always find this inevitable news titbit to be so unnecessary, as if nationality makes their possible death or suffering more important.

Neil

Collared!

I was sat in the car, telling my wife that I was roleplaying this weekend and a voice chirped up from the back.

"Daddy. Speaking of roleplaying - when are we going to play again?"

It would appear that it is that time of year again. Time to dust off A Faerys Tale

Neil

Pleasant Surprises

What a pleasant twenty four hours I have been having!

Lets see? Eldest child has work shown around youngest child's class as an example of the quality of work they should aspire to when they reach Year 5. Proud Dad? Check!

Wife getting a simply ludicrous amount of job offers at the moment with the best being a 'Senior Training Advisor' which is a million miles better than the one she is in now.

Wife generously buys me a quite magnificent scale model of the HMS Victory to put into my study when it gets built. Its fantastic!

Use my newly found student status for the first time to get into the cinema for cheap tonight. Turnabout is truly fair play.

And the crowning glory - I thought my Aberdeen playtest group started their D&H playtest tonight. They don't. They finish the five week playtest campaign that they have been running and loving. How many games get an external campaign test? I dunno, but I am chuffed as a chuffed thing.

To balance things, Iron Man is destined to be monkey balls.

Neil

Games Chef - Cooked!

Well Games Chef is over for another year and this time I managed to submit a game! Well, sort of. Its not really a roleplaying game - more a sort of short parlour game which involves roleplaying. You can read 'Toybox of Terror' here

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg7pcbmq_13f5mdfpng

What was the competition like? Well it was ... OK. I have no qualms in saying that I am not going to win or even get near to winning. Not even in the same atmosphere of the winners. The game is far too simple, not straight-up and nowhere near 'indie' enough to get near as a Games Chef winner. It references the art, but it doesn't use the art in any meaningful way. Its ... there. However, the winning wasn't the point. The Super Secret Hidden Agenda was to give my brain something else to fixate upon before I start the final attack run on Duty & Honour, this week. That worked quite well, for a while, but as always real life intervened to muddle the mix.

I don't feel I was a massive part of the much vaunted Games Chef community, but then again I didn't really go out of my way to take part either. There's not really a lot of time to dedicate to your own game and other people's games as well. The feedback groups are a great idea but if you get a dud one (not that mine was, but it only really had input from three members from the six) it must be a lonely experience. Get a livewire like Jason Morningstar and well, you're going to have a very different experience!

Was it worthwhile? Sort of, yeah. Will I do it again? If the ingredients are right, its a nice mental exercise. Otherwise its like forcing out a really determined to stay turd. Will I do anything with Toybox of Terror in the future? Doubtful. I suppose it could be easily turned into some sort of multiplayer card game with barely a flick of the wrist, but thats not where I am at.

Neil

Being ... Right!

It's not often that I watch Points of View - usually because I hate the bile filled reactionary claptrap of Mrs Davies of Chippenham, complaining about a bare female ankle being shown before the watershed. In fact, I am not quite sure why I was watching it yesterday, but I was. And this was a Good Thing because I saw some Head of- woman from BBC3 announce that 'Being Human' was being commissioned as a series for BBC3. And indeed, on the BBC website, there's actual confirmation!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2008/04_april/24/human.shtml

Being Human was one of six pilot dramas shown a couple of months ago on BBC3. Its the tale of a house-share between a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost. I thought it was excellent and apparently, so did a vast number of other people because it got riotous reviews. (Obviously the guys in my previous blog-post were on their venom recycling day... *wink*)

I'm thrilled. Not only because it is a good series but because for a flicker of a second it appeared that something had gone right. Victory had been snatched away from the jaws of defeat. Something I liked was getting a break! Hurrah!

And then Songs of Praise came on. Well, you can't win them all!

Neil

In Which I Lambast the Critics! [spoilers]

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Nerves!

I am not a nervous person. My ability to be cool, calm and laid back in even the most stressful situations has been pointed out to be numerous times over the years. I was still engaged in matters of the flesh minutes before my first finals. I never flinch when walking on a stage or speaking before a large audience. Through family bereavement, loss of jobs, chaos and general confusion, I know that I keep a cool head and a sensible demeanour.

I am also chronically shy. For those of you that know me, that may seem like utter bullshit, but it is true. I find it hard to ring a taxi for fear that I will say something wrong and offend the person on the end of the phone. I almost never instigate conversation with someone I don't know. I have never chatted someone up that I didn't already know. My ability to avoid conflicts is legendary in my own head.

I have to admit that I am bricking myself about Duty & Honour. The game is so close to completion and therefore release that I can almost taste it and all that taste is doing is making me more and more nervous. I have, for a couple of moments, considered just leaving the project there as it is. There's no need to take it any further. What good will that do? Of course, that is bollocks and a total disservice to all the people who have bought into the project and of course to myself.

This isn't a cry for help or affirmation or what not. Its more just wanting to get things out into the open so that I can deal with them. I don't know whether it is confidence, fragile ego, hidden concerns or whatever, but something is nurgling away inside me about the game. Last night I had to remind myself that in the end I know at least one group of players who love it and have had a great time playing it and thats really all I have ever wanted to do with the game. It isn't going to be for everyone because of the subject matter so what the fuck?!

My problem is that I cannot juxtaposition the way I am feeling with my usual confidence and cool. I fronted up two CCGs in the UK without the slightest tremor of performance anxiety. I crisis manage every day of the working week and my work is constantly on the front line of criticism and yet, no nerves.

And yet with this, nerves by the bucket full. Maybe its just ego? Maybe its just knowing what a vicious cess pit of bile it will be released into. Maybe its just total and utter illusionary bullshit. I don't know.

Its strange. I can recognise and handle my shyness. Nerves are a new thing to me.

Neil

Iron Game Chef 2008

This is not a Game Chef...



But if it was, it would be taking part in Iron Game Chef 2008. Its the annual 'make a game in a week' competition ran by some of the guys involved in Story Games. Last year I 'tapped in' but never even started my game. Older and wiser, I've jumped in this year and I have the bare bones of something already.

Each year the competition has ingredients which the chef has to make into a game. This year the ingredients were art drawn by fellow gamers. Some were ... well, terrible. Some were almost too good to be true. Others made me feel railroaded into a certain game. There was only one set that really stood out instantly and those were the Toybox Terrors of Ashok Desai.

http://game-chef.com/af2008/comments.php?DiscussionID=58&page=1#Item_1

From them I have concocted a simple game of abuse and mental torture called 'Toybox Terrors'. In the game you play one of six toys who have realised that the next morning The Kid is going to be throwing all but one of them away. So that night the toys have to destroy each other in every way imaginable, whilst maintaining their attractiveness, so that they are the chosen toy. It's competitive, GM-less quick play stuff. I can see it being played for laughs or I can see it being played in a very black comedy-horror style. Christ, I fear for the person who brings a real childhood toy related memory to the table!

And yes, its another one of my '4xA4' sized game ideas. Easy to play, read, learn and carry for a quick fix rather than a massive campaign.

The rough first draft is http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg7pcbmq_12rn4jk4g2

I'm not winging to win the contest, but it's nice to know that given a couple of hours thinking and a couple of number matrices I can rattle something vaguely playable out. I'll keep everyone informed as to what is going on!

Neil

How Are You?

You don't care how I am.
I don't care how you are.

Please do me the courtesy of not answering my enquiry as to your state before I have even asked, in expectation of the now ubiqitous greeting. It makes you look like the superficial idiot that you are.

Please do not sound flustered or offended when I answer your question with 'OK, but I didn't sleep too well last night and my back is giving me a little trouble, oh and I have two overdue bills as well.' You asked - I answered. Live with it.

Please do not stop in your verbal railroad tracks when I say 'Canny' rather than 'Fine, how are you?' like the rest of the braindead sheep in the telephone world.

Thank you!

Aliens! Dragons! Monkeys! ... it has to be RBH!

When last we met, the brave adventurers Garoc (Warrior), Pharos (Magus), Screwtail (Fox) and Balan (Bear) had successfully recovered the Dragonheart Emerald from the minions of the One Eyed God and were rest on their laurels in the wilderness town of F'ked

Whilst they were resting Garoc took his leave of the party to store their ill-gotten gains (the player could not attend the session) whilst the remainder drank and made merry. Their merriment was interrupted however by a massive explosion. Upon investigation the conflagration they discovered that the smithy had been totally destroyed. Smoking pair of shoes for the Blacksmith etc.

After some cursory investigation they were approached by an irate merchant who told them that the blacksmith was working some strange metal that he discovered off the Road of Broken Glass in the lands near the Crater of the Fallen God. The metal was pocked with gems and shone with a weird light and he was told by the smith that it could be made into an amazing set of armour. The merchant would gladly pay the adventurers an impressive amount of money if they were to travel to the smoking crater and retrieve more metal. How could they refuse.
Setting off they reached the Forest of the Lonely Druid by nightfall but after Screwtail pissed in the druids bed the last time they were there they decided they would camp out rather than visit. Sadly they were assailed by a pack of carnivorous semi-intelligent Iron Monkeys in the night but after a few scrapes saw them off and hightailed it out of the woods towards the crater.
They reached the crater at the dead of night but decided that they would press on, being determined adventurers - and blatantly mad. They scrambled over the rubble and pressed through the savage rocks for the rest of the night, coming across nothing except a few tribal carvings making groaning metal noises. Confused, they pressed on and at morning they reached the lip of the crater to look down and see a palace had been built there! A beautiful towering city built from strange materials and populated by genderless, featureless automatons.

They decided to approach the automatons but the workers scarpered and a ball of fire came to greet them. Sadly, Pharos had a sparker moment which the guard took as an attack, spawned into a fully fledged Fire Elemental and attacked them. There was a lot of Assisting from Screwtail and the elemental was seen off but they didn't have time to rest on their victory as they were being pressed by more guards so they barrelled into the palace, with singed tails for their troubles.

They descended down into the depths of the palace, where they encountered more automatons, weird technology and eventually an Air Elemental guard which they beat - oh, and a doorway with strange glowing lights around it. Curiosity overwhelmed the fox, who dived through causing his fellows to follow.

They appeared before more automatons - gold, silver and bronze ones - who they interrogated for a while about their purpose. They were aboard the Sky Chariot of the Great Hunter God Akuma! And yes, they were indeed, in space. Balan professed that there were no gods whilst Screwtail was adamant that the Fox god brought all good foxes a mate with many cubs. Before the philosophical debate could continue they were greeted by a human called Carin, who claimed to be the son of the Great Hunter God Akuma.

Carin explained that Akuma and his kin travelled the void hunting dragons and the Black Dragonlord Bazal had landed on this sphere. He was currently burying into the planet and when he reached a deep enough level he would lay his egg in the planet and leave. When the egg hatched the planet would be destroyed and a new dragon would be born! Akuma would stop Bezal before he could destroy the sphere. He had gone down to settle his palace and then gather forces to assault Bezal - much as Bezal would gather forces to defend his egg.

Slightly taken aback by all of this, the adventurers decided that they would leave. Fast. However Carin was quite taken with Screwtail - a species he had not seen before - and he wanted to examine him. Words like dissection were used. At this point everyone decided to fight their way out but Carin and his 20 mooks were beyond them and they were all KO'd. No-one died.
Later they were awoken to discover they Carin had examined Screwtail but he was so impressed by the Foxes art with the bow they he realised he was way beyond animal and didn't operate. Carin then confessed that he had not heard from Akuma for some time and he was concerned for his whereabouts. His sister, Darra, had decided to travel down to the sphere herself and carry on the hunt for Bezal but she would surely die.

He asked the players if THEY would find Akuma for him and tell him that his daughter had gone to finish the job he started. He promised the players riches beyond their wildest imaginations if they succeeded. Naturally, they agreed. Finally he gave them each a pendant to wear which would allow them in and out of the palace freely without troubling the elemental guards.
They travelled, with the metal they needed back to F'kd, collected their reward and then continued to the small village of Totalee. Totalee used to be part of F'kd until the Independent College of Invokers moved into it and F'ks shuffled across a little to get out of the way of the random magical explosions and sporadic mutations.

They visited the magical school (which is bigger on the outside than it is on the inside, after a particularly annoying mistake) looking for a scryer who could find the God Akuma. They went into the Scrying Tower (which is taller than it appears, but the College has never secured levitation funding). The Scrying team (wearing large lens arrays on their faces and looking through massive lens windows in their tower) placed in the rose-tinted filters and looked out for a god. Which they could not find. They looked everywhere for a number of things and could find nothing.

It was then that the players asked the scryers to look for the merchant they had been initially hired by and he was running from a giant black wyrm, attacking F'kd.

They were teleported back to F'kd (1 in 12 chance of losing a random stat for Teleport, I decided) and attacked the Wyrm, who was hammering home the message of the huge illusionary dragon in the middle of the town. 'All those who wish to live will join the army of the Black Dragonlord Bezal'

The Wyrm was a stern test of the team. Pharos couldn't hit the broadside of a barn. Screwtail lifted Balan and threw him onto the Wyrm. We had a small debate on whether a Bear with a Heavy Reach Club in a Wyrms maw was a Close or a Hazardous arena! The bear was chewed up and spat out. The Magus was clubbed down with a flick of the Wyrm's tail and finally it came to flying dogfight between Screwtail and The Wyrm, which the fox won... just.

Recovering from their injuries and watching the people of F'ked picking over the remains of the corpse, the heroes reflected on the fact that they are the only ones who know the truth about what is about to happen to their world...

Character Changes
Balan added +1 Size and gained Yari Mastery (to combine with his Heavy Reach Weapon ... ouch)Screwtail added +1 Eloquence and gained Commanding VoicePharos added +1 Stubborness and gained Enchantment

Game reflections?
It's still very fun to play and the system melts into the background pretty well. I used the 'harm' rules more this time around and they worked a treat. Balancing the monsters is still a skill that you have to learn rather than something that happens easily. Both Carin the Godspawn and The Black Wyrm were really hard work for the players but we reckoned that with the Warrior present they would have been easily overpowered (Long Shadow allowing him to tank)
we do have a situation with one of the characters, who is Screwtail the Fox. He has now taken Strategist and Commanding Voice, which allows him to use Eloquence for Assists. He now gets +8 in total to his Assist which means he can never fail to add Awesome Tokens to his party. He will never ever get involved in a combat unless he is the last person and on average he is adding 4 tokens a turn, without fail. Additionally he can fly, which means that I have to come up with some quite curious methods for people to hit him... every time.

+1/+1 Awesome tokens work fine. No problem there. Inner Fire will have to be reworked so that it mirrors the nerfing of Awesome Tokens.

Finally the monster version of Blast doesn't have any additional damage on it, so it divides 1 between the adventurers that are hit. There should be some guidance (like 'round up' or minimum of 1). It only really became useful when the monster had Awesome Tokens.
I'd also like to see a Regeneration monster power. Just a simple 'The monster regains 1 HP at the beginning of each round of combat'

Neil

Avast!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting the Hartlepool Maritime Museum including going aboard the HMS Trincomalee (a frigate built in 1817). I was never really taken to museums when I was a kid but the girls love them so they're a no-brainer for our holiday trips and naturally a proper 19thC naval fighting ship is right up my alley! The attraction itself was remarkably, a full afternoon's entertainment. There was a good number of highly detailed harbour shops with loads of stuff to do and read in them, a short film about being pressganged, a really quite impressive tour called 'Fighting Ships' and naturally, the ability to wander around the Trincomalee herself. And you could wander everywhere - the Captain's cabin, the Ward room, the tiny magazine room, the huge hold. It was brilliant!

And of course it got me thinking about some of the changes that I will have to make when I convert Duty & Honour to Hearts of Oak. One of the major challenges will be that the disciplinary divide onboard a ship is far bigger and stricter than in the army. I suspect that the Captain will remain a NPC role. I'm toying with the idea of a wholly midshipman and lieutenant 'party' or a wholly seaman party, or even troupe play. However, I am also aware that I want to differentiate the game from In Harms Way as well. On the more positive side, the place that the ship takes, akin to the regiment in D&H, is even stronger and naturally the breadth of the adventures to be had is even more varied. The character generation will have to be broadened as well to cover a lot more nationalities, which will test the system to its limits. The stuff I have added to the Expanded Skirmish rules will act as a model for ship-to-ship combat, which is something that I am quite excited about.

All in all, it's going to be a bit of a challenge, but one that I am looking forward to embracing.

GameTech

As some of you might know, I have a simpleton's fascination with collaborative technology. I don't think I'm particularly good at it but it sits out of my reach like a beautiful siren, calling to me.

I think part of the impetus has been that I have been part of so many collaborative projects in the past. I never did archive fanfiction - I jumped straight into the wacky world of shared universe chronological fanfiction. Essentially setting up a faux comics publishing company. Its a lot more work than just writing some fanfic - there are release schedules, editors, continuity and web presence to consider. Back in the day, the coordination of these things was a nightmare. How much easier it would have been with a wiki and a Facebook Page.

Every week I seem to discover a new Google toy to play with. Google documents are a really interesting way of document sharing, Google calendar sort of works, but like so many other things it only works when everyone uses it. Google Alert is amazing when you want to know what people are saying about something on the web. GTalk (the instant messaging function of Gmail) is really useful as it is a messenger that you can have on any PC, wherever you can log-on.

Of course, there is always something in the back of my head that is crying 'tech for tech's sake!'. For years our gaming group has managed to get by using a messageboard, the pub and the worlds most elaborate IM system (some people call it World of Warcraft...). However I can't help thinking that there is a gaming solution out there that can use these new collaborative technologies and bring them together to enhance and enrich the gaming experience.

The question is, what is it?

The no-brainer would be a wiki or a set of Google documents that would hold collaborative world data for your campaign. If a player wanted to add something, it goes into the shared documents and is approved by the GM. A Google calendar can be added, not for the group's timeline, but for the game's timeline. Could the social aspects of Facebook somehow be brought in to allow for some sort of bluebooking affair online? What sort of game could use access to Youtube videos or Flickr photo archives to it's benefit?

Could this open your game up to more participants? I remember the nature of the old Chains of Steel vampire larp I was part of and wonder how that would have used this new technology? The LARPers played the national politics out and that formed the backdrop to the on-the-table game. How would that work now with the possibility of international participants having a real impact and adding that extra layer to the gaming experience?

And the greater question - would this media rich gaming experience actually deliver anything more satisfying that you would get from pen and paper and a bit sheaf of loose leafed notes?

It fascinates me. I'm pretty certain it can only be of value in a game which is longer term and greater depth than some of the ones that we have been playing recently (Pendragon excepted, obviously) but it would be a case of making the technology fit the game rather than the game fit the technology...

Neil

Evil Neutral : It's The Future

No, this isn't a roleplaying article.

Long-time readers of the Bottom of the Glass will know that I have a bit of a thing about moral hypocrisy, the media and the way that the masses tend to latch onto whatever is dangled in front of them as 'truth' without questioning it once. Yes, I said 'the masses' - sue me!

Well, whilst I was being told that I should that I should be pumping students full of caffiene in order to help them burn through their busy lives whilst also only selling them stuff that enhances their need for organic, natural and traceable produce, I had a revelation.

It is actually impossible to live in this world without stumbling across hypocrisy.

Everything you do has a fucking carbon footprint. Everything you eat is either destroying you, the planet or both somehow. Every job is either a cynical manipulation of the capitalist system or exploiting someone or something. No-one can be trusted, no-one can be believed in, no-one is good anymore. Really, it's all a bit shit.

So how do you live in this whirlpool of personal effluent? Well, I've decided to champion a scheme similar to that which our green friends have been doing for years. They have 'carbon neutral'? Well, I'm going to have 'evil neutral'.

What is Evil Neutral?

Well, everytime you do something heinous or wicked, something that exploits someone or something, destroys you or the planet or generally fucks about with people, you have to do something kind or generous, something that helps or heals someone or something, something that improves you or the planet or generally makes people better.

Can't get by without your cheap-as-chips £1.99 chicken breasts, even though you know that they are cut from cruelly treated battery farmed fowl? That's fine - you can always buy some overpriced organic cheese from a local farm to balance things up. Send someone a rip-snorting flame of an email? Why not write a review of your favourite fanfic writer as a balance? Cut someone up on the motorway yesterday? Help an old lady across the road today!

You cannot escape the shitstorm of the world we are living in, but you can do your bit to make things not quite so shitty all of the time.

Think Good. Think Evil. Think EVIL NEUTRAL TODAY!

Neil

Conpulsion

So, you're sat in a pub in Edinburgh, nursing your lemonade (because you barely have any cash because you have lost your wallet) and you are sitting with people you have spoken to online but barely met but who all know each other. Opposite you is one of the world's most well received independent games writers and to your right is arguably one of the most influential men in rpgs. You've decided that, at this moment in time, it might be better to hold back your normal gregarious nature, shut up and listen. And then one of the people turns around and says ' Hey Neil? Did you get anywhere with the Sharpe licence?'

Welcome to my weekend!

In many ways Conpulsion was a mixed bag of successes and failures. On a personal note it was a massive success. I got to finally meet a slew of people from the etheral world of t'interweb face to face and see them at their gaming work. I ran a really rather pleasing successful demo/test/session of Duty & Honour which ran perfectly well and gave me a great deal of enthusiasm back after a week of what could have been termed hard slog. I did a fun session of Hot War which was horrific in a pleasing fashion for me. I played Piledrivers & Powerbombs, an excellent light wrestling game and won the World Title and I played Burning Empires and saw what happens when you take all those words and turn them into a game - and it works really well.

On the downsides, the convention was sparesly attended and there were so many fractured events running at the same time that the crowd was spread very thinly indeed. Plenary events were booked against normal sessions (I was in competition with the Auction, for example) which seemed like a schoolboy error. As a result the Collective Endeavour stall never seemed too busy with custom although it took a fair bit of cash. From a CE point of view I think that there were a number of organisational balls dropped which hampered things at points and a general lack of leadership and discipline that lead to a few questionable decisions being made by individuals. I learned a lot.

Indeed yes, I learned a lot. I learned that the people posting on Story Games about mutualism being dead have never obviously experienced the people associated with Collective Endeavour! I was humbled by the enthusiasm and support that these relative strangers gave to me for my project and how they offered up so much in the way of advice and general egging on. When someone who you have never seen in the flesh before PIMPS you and your game to strangers better than you can yourself, thats something to behold! Any cobwebs of self doubt definitely get blown away in those circumstances.

So yes, that was my weekend. Swimming with the sharks, warm cuddly sharks with tangy lemon pie and plentiful advice about printers....

Neil

Deathball!

I have a secret passion. I'm a massive fan of 'future sports' comics, TV and films. When I was a kid I was enthralled by Harlem Heroes, Inferno and Mean Arena in 2000 AD. They really connected with me in a way that I could never really explain. Maybe it was the mixture of SF and sport? The theme of heroic sacrifice? The inevitable setting in 'working class' venues? I have no idea, but it has lived with me into my adult life, festering. Recently, 2000 AD has reprinted Harlem Heroes and Mean Arena in their entirity which has triggered my interested again and naturally my game writing gene kicked in!

The product of all of this was squeezed out in the last 24 hours as a simple 'pick up' game called Deathball. The central mechanic is a simple target number roll but the real meat of the game comes in linking a characters personal issues into their ingame performance. Tougher issues make it easier to succeed but failure is inevitable and the crash from a tough issue could take the character out of the game permanently. Does it work? Who knows - its just meant to be a bit of fun.

http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/deathball/deathball.pdf
http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/deathball/deathballsheet.pdf

Neil

ps. my other childhood obsession was big production musicals. Expect 'Fiddler on the Roof: The CCG' anytime soon...

Pre-Conpulsion Thoughts

Well, this weekend is Conpulsion - the start of this years convention season for me (Conpulsion, Games Expo, GenCon US and Furnace plus hopefully another CottageCon?). Its based in Edinburgh and I have very fond memories of playing Raw Deal there in years gone by. This time the con has a little more hanging on it as it is my first outing as an official 'member' of the Collective Endeavour stall and play team.

I think its fair to say that CE has been having a bit of a tough time of late with some painfully public arguments about convention organisation. I see Conpulsion as a bit of a watershed - a chance to refocus and get a little momentum going.

I'm going to be running Duty & Honour on Saturday morning and Hot War on Saturday evening. Both games are still playtests but thats no excuse not to deliver quality gaming. Hot War will probably be the easiest as I have a full scenario written already. D&H offers a wholly different challenge as the very nature of the game dictates that the players have a lot of input into the way the scenario develops. All I can do is get into the correct mindspace and go for it! Honestly, why do I do this to myself? *rolls eyes*

Regardless, this is the beginning of the home stretch for D&H. Version Three has been finished and I'm very pleased with the results so far. It feels, once again, better than the last version by far. I found the original Pendragon hack that started the entire thing off last weekend - its almost unrecognisable!

Neil

Art! More D&H Art!

Schwing!

http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/art/1.jpg
http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/art/2.jpg
http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/art/3.jpg
http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/art/4.jpg
http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/art/5.jpg
http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/art/6.jpg
http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/art/7.jpg
http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/art/8.jpg
http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/art/9.jpg
http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/art/10.jpg
http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/art/11.jpg
http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/art/12.jpg

Neil

Context

I was dreaming about cannons a couple of weeks ago. It was a surefire sign that I have read far too many dense fictions and non-fictions about the Napoleonic Wars and that I needed a change of reading matter. I am very much an intellectual chameleon-cum-method actor. When I am writing fanfiction I will read loads of comics, when I am running a fantasy RPG campaign I will watch loads of fantasy films and when I am writing a Napoleonic rpg I will read and watch loads of ... well musket and cannon stuff. It gets me in the correct headspace but it also messes with your mind if you do it too much.

So I changed my book to something else and finally picked up 'Storm Front' by Jim Butcher, the first of The Dresden Files. My relationship with this book is a strange one. I wasn't aware of it until I heard that the guys who made Spirit of the Century were making a roleplaying game based on it. Thats kind of cool as it is 'urban fantasy' - my absolute favourite genre of trashy fiction, especially the 'strong and resourceful female protaganist' style of Kim Harrison and Laurel. K. Hamilton. Oh I know, its dreadful, but sue me! However, before I found time to read the book the TV series came out and well, it was just ... nothing. Dull. Uninspired. Flat. Lifeless. Missable. And that was a great disappointment to me. It didn't make me want to read the book!

So anyway, with nothing else pending in the reading pile that didn't involve killing the French, I delved in and it was a surprisingly good read. Not inspiring and not troubling the Booker Prize judges but a pretty good read with some excellent characterisation. I quite like Harry Dresden.

So, yesterday, I downloaded an episode on SKY Anytime for free and watched it. And it was something. Good. Inspiring. Vibrant. Full of life and very watchable. It struck me that it was all about context - because I had read the book, I 'knew' the characters a little better than when I watched the series first time around. I understood some of the relationships and that made them easier to understand in the TV series. I have a sneaking feeling that the Dresden Files may have suffered from a Firefly scheduling problem and the originally intended #1 episode may be hidden in the middle of the series.

So I have a new series to read and watch - which is groovy, especially as it gets me into the headspace for the forthcoming 'Ben's As Yet Unnamed Horror Campaign: The Moderning'. Oh dear, this is where we came in, isn't it?

Neil

Waterloo!

Finally facing my Waterloo!

Barring a 'Dummies Guide to the Peninsular War' and some examples of play, the latest iteration of Duty & Honour is finished. I have to say that the game is getting to the point where the changes are becoming smaller and smaller each time and the additions are more like chroming the rims rather than a full scale MOT.

The major additions in this iteration have been around expanding the Skirmish rules to add a little more tactical play and more granularity rather than the one flip conflict resolution version. Thats still there, if you want to use it, but the new optional system adds a whole lot more to the game. Its also allowed me to add a simple system to handle cavalry and artillery to the game as well -and indeed, has given me the framework to create the sort of battles I want when I expand the game to the sea in Hearts of Oak.

The other major change has been the expansion and promotion of the regiment section. This was a direct response to feedback from my awesome team of playtesters and some reflection on my thoughts on player ownership following my recent experiences with Hot War, Red Box Hack and Primetime Adventures. Its interesting that what started as a few card flops has turned into an integral part of the game as it has developed.

The rest of my art arrives on March 10th from Peter, which is really exciting and now I have to consider my options for layout and printing of some ashcans for Conpulsion. Oh and I probably need to find an editor. And some more playtesting. And those examples.

It will end sometime soon ... sometime very soon!

Neil

Gary Gygax RIP and the Social Politics of Death

Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons died yesterday. He was 69. Across the internet literally 1000s of gamers have been expressing their feelings at his passing with a mixture of sadness, shock and mellow contemplation.

As I noted in a previous entry, my friend Barron Vangor Toth - another games designer - has also died. Whilst I know Barron never saw the point of rpgs, I doubt even he would have put himself on the same level as Gygax.

And recently actor Heath Ledger died. Ledger will be the Joker in the upcoming Dark Knight film, the sequel to the highly successful Batman Begins franchise relaunch.

I have been watching how people have related to these three deaths on messageboards and how people are reacting. I think it says something about each one.

Ledger's death was met with shock and regret on my Squared Circle messageboard but quickly this shock was followed by calls of dramatics and hypocrisy from some members. No-one had ever met Ledger - they had only ever seen him in film - and hundreds of other people who may have lead more credible lifestyles died each day but were not mourned, so why him? Why take a knee at the alter of celebrity for this young death and ignore the others? Its a valid point I suppose but in the end it speaks to the link that we make in our minds with the people we see on the screen more than the people that may be living and dying around us.

Barron's death has been met with a number of tribute threads across the sites that he impacted - SQC, Team Canada Online, Gutshot etc. The Raw Deal related ones have been curious in the tone of their comments. Barron was an incendiary figure in Raw Deal and created a lot of enemies because of his style and manner. He was indeed, by some, 'hated' - in that horrendous internet exaggeration that really means 'annoys me' rather than 'I would stab him in the face rather than speak to him'. Therefore a number of the tributes have been cautious, guarded and balanced. Those that met him are able to seperate the Online BVT with the Offline BVT. Those that have not do not have that option. Only one poster on TCO has stood up and said 'the truth' (ie. you had nothing good to say about him when he was alive...) and he has been roundly lambasted. What I wonder here is whether this event has made people realise that messageboard communications are not cast-iron spoken contracts but rather interactions with a dash of drama, acting and impersonation? They are rife with overexaggeration, posturing and hyperbole and the reactions that people have to them are such as well.

Gygax has gone beyond that. Very few people knew Gygax but they knew his game and his legacy. It appears that the legacy is by far and away the most important thing in his case. Without Gygax there would not be a roleplaying hobby and by extension there would probably not be a CCG hobby, a LARP hobby, a Games Workshop hobby or a MMORPG hobby. His impact on world hobby culture has been immense and I was pleased to see that even the BBC acknowledged it, deep deep into its pages.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/03/farewell_gary_gygax_the_dungeo.html

I doubt there will be a Gygax backlash, not after all of the posts on the messageboards I have read. There would be a lynch mob.

I guess its really about legacy. Ledger left little legacy and what he did leave was a fleeting touch from a screen. Barron created an experience that cemented a community and despite his failings, his successes far outweighed that. Gygax was the Father of Gaming and without his inspiration the world would be a very different place today.

Watch a film, flop a card and roll a funny shaped dice and appreciate what people bring to us all - because you never know when they might not be here.

Neil
p.s. No more death posts, I promise!
p.p.s. Well, unless someone else of BotG importance dies!

Barron Vangor Toth R.I.P.

Over the weekend I discovered that my friend Barron had died of cancer, aged 34.

Barron was the co-creator of the Raw Deal CCG and was, for quite some times, essentially my 'boss' although it was a lot more complicated than that. We remained in communication for many years from my creation of Squared Circle to his seclusion during his battle with the disease.

I had to pleasure of meeting Barron four times when I was taken out to Wrestlemania to report the Raw Deal World Championships. There are many things that strike you about Barron. His size (he makes me small), his presence, his intellect, his force of personality, his beligerent attitude, his amazing self confidence for a man of his size and his sense of humour. I remember having long debates with him on wrestling, cards, comics, politics, Babylon 5 and the cultural differences between the US and the UK. I even taught him to swear in English so he could insult me correctly.

In his corner of the internet, and therefore the world, Barron was a provocative personality and earned himself as many enemies as he did friends. I have been proud to see however, tribute threads appearing on a number of websites and people putting their grudges aside to acknowledge the man who was the powerhouse behind the Raw Deal CCG.

My personal feelings on this are strange. I don't usually feel grief when people die. Even the death of my mother last year was met with a sort of stoic acceptance of reality. What I did realise at that time was that my immediate family was becoming radically smaller and smaller as the years passed, with only myself and my father remaining (and my wife and kids, obviously) and thus I combat a profound feeling of loneliness with an affirmation of the importance of my friends as an extended family.

This is the first time one of my friends has died since I was five years old. The world suddenly seems a little smaller, a little colder and a little bit more isolated.

Wherever you are now, BVT, I hope you and Canaan-Axl are happy and at peace and writing the great CCG in the sky.

Neil

CottageCon II is over!

Many years ago we suggested that it would be good if we all got away for a weekend and went to the countryside for gaming. Last year we grabbed the bull by the horns and CottageCon was born. This year we ploughed on for CottageCon II - it could have been 'that difficult second venture' but it wasn't. We had one more player, one less game and about a ton more snacks. It was great. The cottage itself, in a remote village between York and Hull, was perfect for the event with excellent facilities and more importantly a load of single beds!

The gaming was excellent - Andrews 'Spirit of the Exalted' game (he might not call it that but I do) was his now expected tour de force of high drame, epic powered, explosive action and as a self-contained experience a perfect way to visit the world of Exalted without all of the clutter that I associate with it. Matt's 'Ravenscar Manor' game of Call of Cthulhu had some excellent strong characters and was exceptionally atmospheric (especially as we were in a remote cottage in the moors at night with a gale howling around us!!) but I think we all agreed that the system sometimes doesn't help with the storytelling. My game of Pulsars and Privateers was, I believe, a qualified success for Primetime Adventures. It was definitely a very different play experience from our normal games and took a while getting used to which didn't quite give it the impact of some of the other games. However it was very pleasing to see the Khanjar in play again and to add (former) Ambassador Carabdis and Samono the Priest of the Fifth Creation to the crew.

Obviously there will be more expansion on the games in the future but I wanted to mention how valuable CottageCon is to us as a group. Rarely do we have the time to play out a game, relaxed, to the full. Rarely do we not have a pizza break. Rarely are we ever able to 'live' gaming for more than a few hours at a time and beyond the group that meets in the pub together, rarely do we get to really socialise. All of these things we did at CottageCon. It makes our gaming stronger. It gives us a chance to try something experimental and new in a safe environment. It allows us to grow together as a group of friends.

For £40 each, incl petrol, its an absolute bargain - roll on CC3 (bagsy no GMing this time!)

Neil

RPG or MMO? U Decide!

In his fandomlife.net blog, Ian mentioned that our session of Red Box Hack (detailed below) was very much like a face-to-face version of WoW. We created a WoW zone, we had characters which developed into WoW archetypes and we followed a WoW style quest path. A number of threads of Story Games have asked the question - 'Why has RBH taken off so quickly?'. I've been trying to unpack both these things for the last couple of days and the answers I have come up with are very, in my opinion, illuminating.

I have a couple of oft mentioned beliefs around this topic. The first is that WoW does D&D better than D&D does D&D. The second is that a lot of our roleplaying hang-ups are tied to the hobbies wargaming background.

The first one can be seen as a little glib but from a 'kills things, take their stuff, get harder so that you can kill harder things and take their stuff' point of view - that being the core mechanic of D&D - WoW simply presents a more accessible, better presented and more integrated and fundamentally more fulfilling play experience. Note that I have not mentioned roleplaying in that lot. Controversially, from my memories of Red Box D&D and my crumbling AD&D books I cannot remember a whole helluva lot of guidance on roleplaying. To mentions of story or plot, motivation or arcs - it was just 'find patron, kill monster, take stuff, level'

However when you try to inject roleplaying into WoW it all takes a horrible nosedive into madness. Name-Nazi's report players for having names that they believe are not in keeping with the rules. The very worst excesses of faux-Shakespeare come out as everyone gets a little Kenneth Branagh on their ass. And strangely, all of their personal quests have stopped being to confront the Lord of Molten Core and now rotate around Outland. Hmmm.... It just doesn't work in the same way.

Addressing my second point, what D&D also suffers from is a heavy reliance on some very pointless rules. Movement, Range, Encumberance, a Vancian magic system that would never have made 'Mage' a choice to be given at a Careers Day etc. The problem with all of these is that they tend to be quite abstract things. In WoW they are not - you move as fast as you move, you carry whatever you can until your bags are full, you are either in range or you are not and you either have the mana and components to cast a spell or you do not. The machine engine does the work for you - no book-keeping needed.

What 'out of the box' D&D and WoW do share is a very straight forward adventure structure based around questing. Get quest, go here, go there, go back again, go here, kill Big Monster, get treasure. Thats basically it. Where WoW wins again is that D&D has these annoying things called Wandering Monsters whereas WoW has mobs which you can run around (unless they are bloody hyenas or murlocs!). Wandering monster serve no purpose except as a resource depleter.

So whats this got to do with Red Box Hack?

I believe that Ian is spot on - the design of RBH is like an MMO transfered onto a tabletop. Its stripped down all of the shite from out of the box D&D and replaced it with transparent and easy to handle subsystem. Range is simply a matter of arenas and movement is similarly a simple matter of move or fight. Encumberance is now a case of 0,1,2 or 3 'slots' being taken up by weapons or armour. Spells and abilities are constantly available but limited in scope.

And it is at a table - and that makes all of the difference. It takes that simplicity of execution from the MMO stance and places it down onto the familiar gaming surface, thus allowing us to inject the personal into the play. This happily removes the pitfalls of RP servers that I outlined above. So MMO playability and personal social interaction in a face to face environment? Sounds appealing... I think so.

I firmly believe that RBH has tapped into the fun that we all remember from our youth playing D&D and WFRP and Rolemaster and a number of other old school dungeon bashing systems - a fun that we are increasingly familiar with from the MMO side of things. Its a testimony to the breadth of the hobby that a game which is so unashamedly rooted in old-school play is so popular in the face of the more serious, self-reflective, heavily narrative structured games that are being published by the same sources at the moment.

We all need a bit of fun once in a while! Whether RBH will be able to maintain this momentum into the future or whether the joke will run thin quickly is another matter altogether.

Neil

Hack'd!

We played Red Box Hack - a distillation and then mutation of the basic core concepts and feelings of D&D, sort of, if you squint your eyes. It was a lot of fun and what looked to be just a filler session appears to be being extended to a few more by popular demand (trust me and my cliffhanger epilogue!). Anyway, for posterity, here is the AP that was posted on Story Games.

So we sat down to play our first ever session of Red Box Hack. We've just finished a 18-month game of Pendragon and we are searching for our new game. RBH was going to be a stand-in one shot. It might be a lot more...We whipped through the oh-so complicated rules in about five minutes and then ploughed into character creation. This lasted a little longer than I expected - mainly due to the fact that three of the four players rolled two sets of stats, each as bad as the other. Oh how the other player laughed!In the end we had the following

Pharos the Magus
Al: +4
Da: +2
El: +0
Sn: +3
Sz: +1
St: +3

Talent: Blast

Gear: Dagger (Light), Dragonhide Robes (Heavy)
Special Gear: Imp Familiar
Motivation: Make money for more spell research

Garoc the Warrior
Al: +0
Da: +0
El: +0
Sn: +1
Sz: +3
St: +2

Talent: Armour of Scars
Gear: Big Sword (Heavy), Plate Armour (Very Heavy)
Special Gear: Battle Standards with the heads of his fallen foes
Motivation: Seeks fame and fortune but mostly fame

Screwtail the Fox
Al: -1
Da: -1
El: +2
Sn: +2
Sz: +0
St: +1

Talent: Three Tails
Gear: Bow (Ranged), Fix Sized Samurai Armour (Light)
Special Gear: Quiver of Arrows he can stab people with
Motivation: He has a vixen and 24 cubs to feed...

Balan the Bear
Al: -1
Da: -0
El: +2
Sn: -1
Sz: +2
St: +0

Talent: Heart Song
Gear: Mace (Very Heavy), Loincloth and Battle Harness (Light)
Special Gear: A dope pipe with spreads intoxicating fumes
Motivation: To spread the love and bring the party

And with that I drew a small village in the middle of a piece of paper and offered the players the opening sentence of the game.

"And thats why you have to retrieve the Cursed Emerald!' said the scarred bear in the smokey tavern.

We each took turns to add a geographical feature to the map until we had done three rotations around the table. Then moving from left to right on the map we created the details and linkages between the various areas. So 'Madga the Witch' became 'Magda the One-Eyed Witch who was once the Queen of the Amazon Warriors who guarded the wall between the Kingdom and the Wasteland. However the One Eyed God, who lives in the mountains to the North fell in love with her and cut out her eye to make her in his image. Her scarred ugliness was shunned by the Amazons and she was cast from their martial refuge into exile. She lives alone but secretly she is loved from afar by the insane old hermit, Archimedes the Druid who lives deeper into the Wasteland' etc etc.The basic gist of the area was a sort of 'Cursed Earth' wasteland, decimated by a magical accident many years ago. The Kingdom has walled itself off and the survivors of the city of Nephos, the epicentre of the accident now find themselves isolated in a small town they created. We called it F'ked. We thought it was appropriate.

(you can download the map HERE)

The party questioned the Bear and they discovered that the Emerald was the Dragonheart Emerald and it was blessed to protect the Bear village at the foot of the Dragons Peak Mountains from being attacked by the deadly spirits that roam the wasteland. Without it the village would surely fall. Additionally the Emerald was cursed and if it was removed from the village it would act as a beacon for the deadly spirits, drawing death and disaster to those around it. The Emerald was taken by spindly spiked black humanoid creatures. The players decided that they sounded like the sort of constructs that Archimedes the Druid (who is a friend of Balans) would make, so they set off along the Road of Broken Glass to the Forest of the Lonely Druid. However, that was in the morning - the Bear decided to kick up a massive party, upset the locals and ended up in the stocks (failed Eloquence challenge) overnight. He was a sad, wet bear...

Some way along the protective road, it had been broken. The Fox, being a talentless but desperately inquisitive sort was flying overhead and was acting as a scout. He failed his conflict to notice the ghoulish dead waiting for them to cross the road and they were beset by a pack of 12 spirits desperate to feed on them. After a few spluttering starts the despatched them with little trouble and Balan used his Heart Song for the first time (Every time he does that, the player gives the wounded player a big happy grin, double thumbs up and a Fonz-like 'heeeeeey' to signify his happy aura of healing. So funny...)

Arriving late at night they gain entry to Archimedes towering oak tree home, but only after he has shown his disdain for the Fox. The part question the druid about the assailants but he knows nothing about them - but he could if he knew what they were made of. Meanwhile Screwtail secreted himself into the druids room and pissed in his bed in revenge for the insult - only to notice a flying black obsidian barge, trailing ropes holding dozens of spikey creatures drifting towards them over the forest, helmed by a giant version of the spikey things (Obsidian golems for now on!)Raising the alarm, the heroes rushed to meet their foe. Archimedes used his plant magic to deal with the mooks (window dressing only) whilst the players dealt with the giant golem, which was despatched with little effort by an ably assisted Magus!

Obsidian Golem
HP 10 AC 12
Al: +2
Da: +2
El: -1
Sn: -1
Sz: +5
St: +2
Thick Skin, Impressive Heavy Reach Weapon (large stone shards from fists)

The druid soon identified the rock and challenged the Magus to also identify it - which he did as a rock natural to The Mountain of Black Rock in the Dragon Peaks. He also said that it was emanating evil and destroying the natural (Yes, Blackrock Mountain - the game was scattered with WoW references but in a very good way.)The party then headed south towards the mountains, stopping first at the Monastary of the Sun, a polished stone outpost (the monks polishing it with their bare hands - hardcore!) of warrior monks who watch over the ruins of Nephos. The monks leader - the Most Enlightened Eye, Do - met with the players to answer their questions. Now he is a right piece of work as he believes in accuracy in everything. So when they presented them with 'the Evil rock' he questions whether the rock is, in fact, evil or whether it is an innocent bystander caught up in the evil acts caused by the magic that animated it. Queue five minutes of infuriating conversation with the players who were tearing their hair out. Eventually he twigged that the players were going into the Ruins and he said they could not pass. Even though they pledged that they were 'just passing through' the motivation of the Magus was visible to his Enlightened Eye and he knew he would pilfer the ruins. To prove their point they entered Trial by Combat - Garoc vs Do! Sword vs Naginata! Loincloth wearing monk vs loincloth clad warrior!As the battle raged, Screwtail attempted an Assist by screaming 'Oh My God, you can see his bollocks through that!' which failed, not bothering the monk but making Garoc look instead! He still won however and shamed, the monks let them pass into the Ruins of Nephos.

The tiered city of Nephos was destroyed by the magical disaster and lay in ruins. The players mentioned that they had heard there were vampires in the ruins, which made the mages determined efforts to find the Library of Mnemnos all the more silly! But find it they did, underground. As they descended they found a large room filled with broken shelves and destroyed books, laid out like a large campsite, with a fire pit in the middle of the room. Around the firepit they found pots of cold stew - human head stew!!! They then heard the inhabitants of the camp site returning - miners from the Tribe of the Severed Tongue (worshippers of the One-Eyed God who cut out their own tongue so that they will only hear the words of their god!). The heroes ran ... straight into something even worse.A barge laden with black obsidian rock from the mountain was floating into a newly opened magical rift, powered by a Severed Tongue Sorceror, and hundreds of miners had come to see it off! The heroes decided that this had to be stopped so the Magus opened up on the Sorceror whilst the Bear and the Warrior tried to grab ropes and swing onto the ship. Both failed and crashed down next to the Magus. They protected him from the mooks whilst he battled it out with the dark magician - who lost and fell into the portal. The magic flared and went haywire and the Magus tried to use it to stablise the portal but failed horribly and everything and everyone was sucked through to the other side of the portal!Which lay on the other side of the map, in the lair of the One Eyed God!! The mooks were all killed by the magical trauma of the journey but the players survived to face the wrath of one of the Sons of the One Eyed God, a furious and immense hairy cyclops monster - around whos neck the emerald lay!Balan then engaged the fuming monster in the most charming bout of doublespeak and distracting placating language, explaining that they were there to broker a deal rather than fight and that fighting just wasn't really on the cards at all, here have some beers etc. This gave the party the chance to let his Heart Song ability heal their minor wounds. It would have been churlish not to have allowed it as it was inspirational!

Son of the One Eyed God
HP 10 AC 12
Al: -1
Da: +2
El: +0
Sn: -1
Sz: +5
St: +5
Very heavy Obsidian Club, Thick Skin,Bloodlust,Vicious,Second Weapon (Ranged, Thrown Rocks)

This was a much closer fight, with Balan the Bear being injured, Pharos being knocked unconscious and it all coming down to whether Screwtail could hit the giant for 1 point of damage before he unleashed his stack of Awesome Tokens on the players. The Bloodlust+Viscious combo is particularly brutal! However, they did defeat him and retrieved the Emerald, saving the village.

Everyone had reached level 2 and for a one-shot the players took great efforts in deciding what role they should take in the team and what talents would aid that.

Screwtail is 'primary assist' and added +1 Alertness and took 'Strategist'
Garoc would be 'Tank' and added +1 siz (upgrading his weapon) and took 'Long Shadow'
Balan would be 'off-Tank' and took 'A Mighty Grasp', upgrading his mace
Pharos continued to be a boom-mage but added one to Stubbornness and took 'Illusions'

As a epilogue I showed the scarred bear enter a large cavern with the emerald. He transformed into a Lizardman and bowed before his Dragonkin lord, who was pleased that the emerald was now his and civilisation was doomed!!!

Neil

March is Duty & Honour Month

Sometimes you have to shit or get off the pot.

I think D&H has reached that point. I have a slew of playtest reports that have to be polished into a product. I had an epiphany last night about a structure within the game that doesn't exist but must for it to work as anything other than an intuitive rpg-as-has-always-happened. I'm fucked off with work to a degree unknown to man. CottageCon II will be finished by then and SunRaven, my rogue, has reached level 70 in WoW. At the end of March I have to run D&H at CONpulsion in Edinburgh with a number of my Collective Endeavour peers - its the games Prom Night - it gets a fumble but not a full-on shag. For all these reasons and more I have to get the damned thing finished, or as near as dammit, by March 20th.

So March is Duty & Honour Month. Nose, meet grindstone.

Neil

The End of an Era

When I originally wrote this the title of this entry it had a question mark at the end. I think that represented a vague hope of some future in this enterprise. Reality would inform me that the question mark was delivering a falsehood. This weekend has been a very sad one for me as I see it as the all-but-certain end of an era.

Keen readers of this blog will know that I have been part of the Raw Deal CCG scene for many years and even after I stopped being actively involved in the management of the game I was still part of the community and I was still the owner of the community website. In the autumn Comic Images announced that the game would ending and after some weeks we decided that we would have one final event - One Last Match. That event happened this weekend in Newcastle. It was a great event. About thirty people arrived and played in a sealed deck tournament. I did rather well for a change. We ate some food, drank some beer, dished out some silly awards and then drank some more. And the next day some of them left and some of them played another CCG that might be a worthy successor to Raw Deal. I went down to that game and I said goodbye to everyone, but when I left I realised this really was goodbye.

When I think about a number of these people, today will probably be the last time I ever see them. A slack handful of us may bump into each other at conventions for other things, or look each other up if we are in town on business. Thanks to the wonders of Facebook we might never really lose touch but this is the last time we will see each other as a group. These are people I have known for years now and I have met up with them on a regular basis during that time. I've seen young lads grow into accomplished men. I've seen people pair up as couples, others get engaged and married. We've had children, we've travelled around the world and we've done great things together. But most of all we have grown up.

There's no room in my life anymore for collectible card games. I no longer have the time, the money or the independence to be able to pursue them on any sort of level. I've definitely had my fill of being a leader of a community and organising things on a massive scale. I don't want to carve a niche for myself by working as a volunteer for another company - hey, I'm making one of my own! My lifestyle has changed and I have different priorities now.

But it still doesn't make it any easier to know that barring a scant handful of lucky coincidences, thats it for all those people. God that sucks hard. No, not an easy weekend at all.

Playtesters are ACE!

I know, I know, I have said it before but honestly the lengths that some people go to in order to help you out in a game really makes my jaw drop. I just received the report back from my playtest group in Aberdeen. Now, I expected a few bullet points, a paragraph or two talking about play experiences etc. No. Not at all.

What I got was a 2500 word document that ran through the scenario they played and some of the exciting things they did with the system and then an excel spreadsheet noting every single issue that came up, even the most minute - with a number, date, seriousness level, identified problem and the work-around they used. 51 seperate areas in detail.

Want more? OK, they are going to be down in Newcastle this weekend and we will be able to sit down and have a long chat about the game and what they liked and didn't like and how it could be improved.

Seriously, I am spoiled. I read on sites about designers who sent out dozens of playtest packs and receive nothing back - or moreover they cannot find anyone who will give them the time of day. I have been blessed with a network of testers who seem to be trying to out-do each other in the quality they are adding to the mix.

I'm a very happy man

Neil

ps. Oh and they liked the game an awful lot!!

Scary Stuff

We often take things in the world for granted - I'm not talking about things like Dr Who or Jessica Alba or the existence of Pepperoni - for once I am being a little more serious. I'm talking about senses.

For the last week I have had periodic hearing from my right ear. It comes and goes and when it goes I feel like I am underwater. It also comes with a nice bit of pressure running through my head. Now, I have to admit, the novelty has worn off and the fact that the antibiotics I have been prescribed are doing fuck and all has hit home. Add to that the fact that my other ear is starting and I am slightly worried. What if this is something serious?

What if I go deaf?

I think deafness is seen as one of the least serious disabilities. You can still see, read, speak, taste, move etc. However to me it is horrific. No more television except for subtitles and silly signing people. No more music. No more cinema. No more roleplaying! My work - mostly done on the telephone - would be almost impossible. My entire way of life would have to change radically. Its actually shook me to the core a little.

We take things for granted until they are taken away - lets hope this is just an infection that won't budge!

Neil

Childbirth was easier!

Well, for me anyway

Duty & Honour is out into its third round of playtesting and this time it's blind public 'beta' testing. No contact with me allowed. The text has to live and breathe by itself. I sent out abour half-a-dozen packs to willing vic---volunteers and then the wait began. I waited and waited and waited until finally last night I received this:

Right; that's session one complete - a marathon 9 hours, with about half spent on character and regiment creation, and half spent on play! Much fun had, and a rack of notes taken We're about halfway through their first mission, which involves hopping behind Frog lines to try to work out when the French will be moving against the British lines, and how. The complication is that the encamped French are holding a hostage in the form of the local Contessa to keep the local people (and the Count) in line. They've got the plans, but have just found the hostage - we'll see what they do next Sunday !! Proper report will follow once I've typed it up, but everyone was very positive about the game

Which is awesome - but now, NOW, I have to continue my waiting even longer until the report comes back. Honestly, labour was easier - at least I could have a sly chug on the gas and air occassionally!

Neil
Waiting...

Top Three Gaming Moments of 2007

Inspired by Sons of Kryos - and knowing how much my delightful cabal of readers like adding to these threads - I thought I would share my top three gaming moments of 2007. And in true 411Wrestling Top Ten style I will add some honourable mentions as well:

Honourable Mention: Attending GenCon US
You'd think this would come higher right? Well, it was an amazing experience and just the most mind-blowing information dump of gaming goodness. However it was also a bit of a disappointment because of my foot problems and generally being unable to move or concentrate. I did hardly any gaming and was very weak and shite. This year will be different however. This year I know the score. This year I will be bringing the awesome back to GenCon.

Honourable Mention: Ben's As Yet Untitled Horror Campaign
It's Primetime Adventures but not as you know it when Ben takes centre-stage with his game. We hear a lot about player empowerment and shared narrative but sometimes - just sometimes - you want to sit back and watch a master GM practice his craft. I've never played with someone who does such evocative prep as Ben - its a pleasure to play.

Honourable Mention: Blood Opera Conspiracy of Shadows at FurnaceCon
This was one of those games where everyone was totally hitting the right spot and sharing the same idea about the game around the table. We grumbled, groaned, ranted and plain out shouted at each other in the silliest of faux-Russian accents but we were always totally in the game and ready for whatever shennanagins were thrown at us. Lord only knows what the other players at the 'Con must have thought!

Top Gaming Moment#3: The Fall of the Black Bear Clan in Pendragon
When Sir Brion's warpath against the Saxons resulted in this clan attacking his manor and killing his twin offspring, it sent him mad. He was only calmed down by his friend, the Christian Knight Sir Aeryn and pointed in the correct direction. He exploited his position as Sarum's warleader, his family connections with the King of the Forest Sauvage and his right as an Irishman to lead a warband and brought his forces to meet the Black Bears and their allies. He crushed them, cleaving their leader in half with one blow and satisfying his pact with the warrior goddess Morrigan. As a storyline it was excellent but as a series of play it hammered home exactly what Brion is about and marked his role in the campaign - War Leader.

Top Gaming Moment#2: Betrayal in Chicago at FurnaceCon
Playing Mob Justice with it's writer Iain McAllister I was playing one of three brothers whose father had just been assassinated. Revenge, violence, intrigue, loyalty - all of these things flashed through our minds but when the cards came down (quite literally in Mob Justice!) it became obvious we were on a losing streak. I had to make a decision. I had to switch sides. I nearly killed my mother. I did frame my brothers and put them in the middle of a horrid firefight. In the end my character was assassinated on a sunny beach in Cancun. Excellent excellent game.

Top Gaming Moment#1: The Tank, CottageCon I
Thrilling Tales, Spirit of the Century - 'What's that coming over the hill?' Grabs token, Tags aspect. ' Its a TANK!!' - in game terms I might as well have said 'Oh great, they've brought a Cave Troll!'. That was the moment when the wholesome goodness of SotC finally sank in and I GOT IT and then well, we just went wild. It was an excellent session with some superb stuff in it and easily ranks as my best moment of the year.

So, faithful readers - what are yours?

Neil

At Last! It's Done

I literally kicked everyone out of the house, turned off the radio and the TV, closed down my AIM and MSN utilities and went for it. After a night red-penning my manuscript came a day altering, editing and then rewriting a load of examples but .... finally .... the third iteration of Duty & Honour has been completed and is ready to head out to the playtesters. This time I have people in Newcastle, New Zealand, Ireland, London and Scotland all waiting to receive the manuscript and it is definitely more polished than the last one that went out.

There have been some definite changes to the way some of the things work - so 'Experiences' replace 'Years' in character generation as a really good solution to one of the problems that we experienced earlier. The Wealth system is in place, the role of the Skirmish Rules in Military Missions has been expanded and the system for designing your own Missions is included - which is pretty useful as it is the entire point of the Mission/Challenge/Reward system!

One or two things have been removed - the formalised 'background questions' have gone in this iteration as the new Experience and Regiment system produce more than enough flags and story fodder for a starting character to deal with! Upon reading more of the Matthew Hervey books by Allan Mallinson I've decided to remove the Cavalry option for play and instead develop a small addition to the rules that covers this area of Wellington's forces. It offers plenty of new professions, traits, skills and other rules that can be used. I'll use this as a test bed before I tackle the next big project which would be the naval version of the game, Heart of Oak.

So, as of Monday, the game will be in the hands of the playtesters and we will see whether it gets a better response than the last time. Thats not to say it didn't get a good response like, but I'm hoping it begins to move towards something that is at least ashcan-able.

Thrilling!

Neil

You May Never Game With Me Again

As I was wandering towards the Metro station this morning I was pondering some of the stuff that I have read recently on some message boards. Oh yes, what an amazingly exciting life I lead!

In this thread on Story Games, Judd is asking about examples of things that go on in roleplaying sessions alongside kickers and bangs. He calls them crosses, weavings, openings and bobs.

In this thread on Ian's blog he talks about putting some of the old 'indie games angst' aside in order to actually, you know, happily play.

And on this thread Ian points to a man who has a serious problem with some aspects of gamer theory and the way it can be represented.

These three all came to mind at once and I wondered what it must be like running a game where your mind is, in one small part, working on the theory side of things, whilst the rest is working on the imaginative side? Is it even possible to be doing that without being Deathstroke the Terminator (ok, DC reference, supervillain who 'uses 90% of his brain')? Does anyone actually sit down at a table and think "Hmmm... this is an intersitial scene between these two protaganists which will be followed by this bang, feeding off those three flags on the character sheet...'

(Warning - for those that find references to sex so cringeworthy that you feel the need to say things like 'Eww' and 'To much information!!' at the thought of basic human reproduction, best move on...)

It came to me that GMing is a bit like sex. When you start off, you know roughly what you have to do and you can do it, fumblingly. Sometimes it's good but most of the time it's too hard, too fast and rarely satisfying. As you become a little more experienced to realise that there's more to it than the actual act itself and that you can enhance things with a bit of technique. Later still you begin to learn just when to do one thing, then another and then another. You know when to speed up, slow down, move here, do that etc etc. It becomes ... instinctive. Later still, to carry on the analogy, some people like to add new things to spice it up a little, drift off from one partner to try something with another or eventually just find out they are doing it so intermittantly that they never bother again. (And of course to carry it to its furthest point, yes WoW is to roleplaying as online porn is to sex!)

My point being that rarely do people think 'Ok, time for a nipple tweak' or 'hmm, should I be changing angle here or waiting another minute or two?' - its just something that happens. So whilst I'm aware that being aware of these various GMing methods can help you understand what is happening when you play, I wonder whether they actually do HELP when it comes down to playing or whether, when the chips are down, we tend to resort to the instinctive practices that we are comfortable with and that have worked for us in the past? And is that necessarily a bad thing? I'm not sure it is.

I am now assured that should any of the games that I have detailed below happen, someone will be thinking ' .... he says its a fight, but is he really tweaking my nipple?!'

Neil

Nothing ... and then Three At Once

As I sat running my red pen over the final pre-playtest draft of Duty & Honour, it struck me that I might well have three whole games to run in the very near future. Bearing in mind that the most I have ran for the last 18 months has been a slack handful of one session tests, this is a remarkable sea-change and to be frank, quite a welcome one at this point in time.

The first, naturally, is the playtest of Duty & Honour. By the nature of the game it is quite an easy thing to run although mentally the challenges of playtesting whilst refereeing are far greater than those of just running a game. The previous two test sessions haven't really got beyond chargen but they have radically changed the game and improved it no end. I imagine I should run about a 4-5 session test mini-campaign over the spring months.

The second is another playtest - this time it is Malcolm Craig's Cold City follow-up creation Hot War. This is a post-apocalyptic setting in the 1960s after the Russians released nuclear and twisted technology weapons lose upon the UK. I'm planning on running it as a loose (and I mean very loose) sequel to the Cold City game that we have just played under Andrew and it should last again, about four sessions including one character generation session as this seems to be a tad more involved than the Cold City version.

The third, strangely, is possible return in some arena of Pulsars & Privateers! Ian has written in his 2008 Gaming Resolutions that he is determined to get me to resurrect this campaign because it was prematurely canned due to work pressures. I have to say, I agree with him - having looked back over some of the material I think there is a definite possibility of a revised and sharpened version of P&P somewhere on the horizon. I have NO idea what system it would use. Now that we have some experience of it I'm awfully tempted to suggest Primetime Adventures or I may lump for the more mechanical 'Fate 3.0 SRD' hack method. I doubt the Unisystem Lite rules will remain if I do. Looking back at the characters there's a ton of stuff that I see which should be exploited and a load of stuff that could have been done so much better.

Of course, the question will be - if the previous episodes were the pilot does it get another run or does it jump straight to DVD? It's a prime candidate for a game to play in a Pendragon break and its a prime candidate for a session at CottageCon II. We shall have to wait and see....

Neil