random average

Grey Ghost Press is going to use the Fatigue Rules I wrote up for Fudge (and Swift) a few years ago -- incorporating it as part of the magic system in their upcoming Deryni RPG.

I'm pleased about this -- I'm not a big Fudge-gamer (through I've picked at it off and on for years -- since '93, actually), but I have tremendous respect for the author of the original rules and I remember many Saturday afternoons in high school spent reading the Deryni books -- I loved the juxtaposition of the weird, almost psionic-type 'magic' and the strictly orthodox religion, (although I'm much less enamored with the writing now than I once was).

Anyway, I always liked the way the author worked mental fatigue into the stories as the real limiter on the power of the Deryni, and I'm tickled that that element of the story will be represented by a system I came up with.

Posted by Doyce at 9:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Just for reference, this is the game schedule for Casa del Testerman for the next two months.

It is... not to put it too bluntly... fucking insane, due mostly to an effort to wrap up several long-running campaigns in the next two months.

Sept 30th, Tuesday: Chrysalis A

Oct 2nd, Thursday: OA
Oct 3, Friday: No game?!? Wow...
Oct 4, Saturday: Cry Havoc
Oct 5, Sunday: OA(?)
Oct 6, Monday: OA

Oct 9, Thurs: OA
Oct 10, Friday: OA
Oct 12, Sunday: Chrysalis C
Oct 13, Monday: Chrysalis A

Oct 16, Thursday: OA
Oct 17, Friday: DnD (sans Margie)
Oct 18, Saturday: Rey & Juli's party
Oct 19, Sunday: OA?
Oct 20, Monday: OA

Oct 25, Saturday: Chrysalis C

Oct 27, Monday: Chrysalis A

Oct 31, Friday: (appropos one-shot?)
Nov 1, Saturday: Cry Havoc

Nov 3, Monday: OA

Nov 7, Friday: DnD
Nov 8, Saturday: Chrysalis C
NOv 10, Monday: Chrysalis A

Nov 14, Friday: OA
Nov 15, Saturday: Cry Havoc

Nov 22, Saturday: Chrysalis C

Nov 24, Monday: Chrysalis A

Nov 27, Thursday: Thanksgiving

Posted by Doyce at 11:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sunday: Finished up the second serial in Dave's In Deo Confidemus :: Spycraft campaign in a blaze of gunfire (mostly not ours, surprise surprise) and a couple of fine moments for [self-centered] my own character[/self-centered], the most married man in the entire intelligence community, ever.

(Crap, Dylan still needs to call his wife.)

Posted by Doyce at 10:36 PM | Permalink

Saturday: First half of the second session of the second story-arc in Nobilis (which of course would be designated Session 8C... don't ask). Four players who have never gamed with each other as a gestalt (or, in some cases, at all), so I'm really still working on getting the group to gel and build some momentum. Folks are still finding their sea-legs, I think. I hope.

To aid this, I've hit on the simple solution of taking two fairly complicated plots (1. political wrangling over key 'geographic spiritual resources' and 2. a plot to frame the familia for treason) and starting them up simultaneously while the familia is still making introductions. Not satisfied with stopping there, I've also introduced a few key NPCs that should loom large in the story for some time and made notes about the far-reaching consequences of some player actions.

Things are coming along well, mostly: I'm a little unhappy with my own ability to keep gametime even (it *felt* about right to me, but I'm not sure if it did to everyone else), but I'm pleased with the group and the dynamics that are being introduced. I'm looking forward to these initial plots (esp. the frame-job) concluding and where some of the loose threads might lead -- also, I have some characters who are really designed to tell a strongly internal, personal story and I'm looking forward to exploring that some more.

Favorite bit: Jurai of the Cammora's introduction and explaining his desire to meet everyone 'just say Hellooooo.'

Also... tumescence in it's creepiest form EVER. Bwuuahh ha haaa.

Posted by Doyce at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Friday: DnD. Talked about what we might like to do as a sequel game with a smaller group of players. Beat the crap out of everyone (killed the party thief, in fact), for which they earned a measely 2k in xp. To get big xp at that level of power, you have to pull out the world-shattering stuff.

Posted by Doyce at 10:33 PM | Permalink

While talking about something else, Bryant mentioned something called the "No Myth meme", which sounds vaguely interesting, especially when combined with task resolution:

The No Myth meme rejects preplotting altogether; a No Myth GM doesn’t know anything about the world other than what the players have seen; a failed task resolution check doesn’t mean the players have failed, it means there’s an additional obstacle in the way of reaching whatever objective the players have chosen. And that’s a reasonable approach.

This gives me something of an insight into how one would logically be able to run certain kinds of games in d20, even with low-level characters: if failure (one a skill check, for instance) actually just results in the situation become one level more complicated, then you have a framework in which a 1st level character can play in any sort of game at all -- some situations may be (or become) too complex to be worth the effort of resolving, but you don't have to worry about a situation where simple low-level skill scores make it impossible to succeed at certain tasks.

GM: "The door's locked."
Player: "I pick the lock. I did that last time I was through here."
GM: "Let's have a roll."
Player: [rolls] "Ulp... umm... how about a 5? Total."
GM: "Well, it was easy enough the last time you worked this door, but this time you get over-eager and snap the lockpicks off in the lock. How will you approach the problem now?"

Granted, I'm not sure this can apply in 'opposed' situations (sneaking versus someone else's listen, or, more obviously, combat), but in most other cases it should be pretty doable.

I can certainly see applications for this in some genres. Pulp is a good example, as is any sort of fantasy setting with lots of intrigue, and of course I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that it works really well in a Spycraft campaign. I can think of any number of situations in, say, Alias where, by failing, the protagonist simply causes the situation to become more complicated.

Sneak in and steal something.
Snag fingerprint to get into door.
> Take too long in the lab (blew the first search roll).
>> Have to talk your way past guard who, since you took so long, noticed you leaving the area.

Eventually, you get to a point where, if you've screwed up quite a bit, you find yourself strapped to a chair and getting dosed on sodium pentathol, but really that's just another level of complication to deal with.

(Or, in a 1st-level Amber campaign, Corwin just built up so many complications in his first assault on Amber that he ended up blinded and stuck in a dungeon cell. :)

Posted by Doyce at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

OGL, D20 compatible CROSSGEN Campaign setting?

Hmm.

Posted by Doyce at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hi-res, printable Monopoly money. It's uses in various board and rp games should not require explanation.

Posted by Doyce at 2:23 PM | Permalink

Evil Animal Minion Generator.

Posted by Doyce at 10:55 AM | Permalink

Lately, I've been pissing people off.

No, I can't point at anything specific for this statement, but I'm vaguely (disquietingly) aware that I'm rubbing folks the wrong way. It's not intentional -- I make a comment here and there that are simply a truth (or a truthful retelling) and I end up with someone less happy with me than they were previously. Maybe I'm just not guarding my words as well as I have in the past -- that's certainly possible.

Why mention it here? Mostly because it's got to do with gaming. I ended a game recently due to similar problems, and I'm due to wrap up two others within about 7 sessions each (though those two are largely going away simply because they've gone on long enough).

It might be that I'm stretched thin creatively (and if so, spread twice as thin on patience), but I don't know if that's true. In my experience, going back to the well for more inspiration doesn't dry it up, it digs it deeper.

Maybe I'm just ready for new things. The DnD game is about two years old this month (and I was talking about ending it over a year and a half ago in March of 2002), the OA game apparently started around February of 2002, Cryhavoc's about a year and a half...

I think I'm just ready for other things. The stuff I'm really enjoying right now are the new things. That's not a coincidence: anyone is going to be more energized about new projects than about stuff they've been involved in since Millenium Bug was a serious threat.

What's that got to do with my mood? Well, that frustration is starting to build up to the point where it's overflowing into other things. The fact that it's having that kind of effect is enough to annoy me even more.

Posted by Doyce at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Monday Mashup #9: West Wing

Bryant's comment:

I think the most interesting thing about West Wing is watching the relatively inexperienced crowd deal with power.

Okay, I can work with that.

Setting: Fantasy city-state. (I'd end up using Caercala a.k.a. Haven)
System: Fantasy system of your choice.
PCs: 1st-level characters.

In this scenario, I'd borrow from Henry 4 and Henry 5 a bit, mixing liberally (har) with West Wing. The central character in all of this (who, in this setup, would probably be an NPC) is a young man suddenly thrust into the role of Arch-Duke of the City-state. Like "Prince Harry", the fellow grew up as something of a hell-raiser and a ne'er-do-well: lots of natural charisma, but not a lot of good common sense.

When he's thrust into the role of Duke, he's suddenly surrounded on all sides by stodgey, old, stuck-up advisors who, in his opinion, are one of the main reasons that all of the same problems keep cropping up year after year. We continue in this vein for a few sessions until the Duke gets fed up and kicks out the Old Guard (with the exception of one really cool mentor-type Uncle played by Brian Blessed) and brings in all of his old drinking buddies to be his Council and help him Fix Everything Up.

The fact that they aren't entirely qualified, are quite scared by the idea, and frankly don't want the job doesn't seem to bother him very much: they're the people he wants running things, and if they screw up or (gods forfend) he's somehow usurped by one of his sinister relatives, things will probably be even worse than they are already.

Posted by Doyce at 12:30 PM | Permalink

Population: One: Monday Mashup #8: Beach Boys

Without pushing in any particular direction, I’d say there’s potential for romantic scenarios, ecological scenarios, fun-oriented scenarios, or even auto racing scenarios.

System: Big Eyes, Small Mouth
Setting: Anime-style school/resident training for Beach Patrol! (lifeguards crossed with the coast guard)

1. Take You're Under Arrest, Oh My Goddess!, the Beach Boys, and mix thoroughly.
2. Separate into self-contained episodes involving smugglers (for the more serious action sequences), vandals, competency testing in various areas of skill for members of Beach Patrol, surfing competitions, drag-races, and beach parties organized by the PCs (for the completely transparent goal of getting two characters 'together'), et cetera.
3. Bake under a summer sun.
4. Cover in tanning lotion.
5. Serve.

Posted by Doyce at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Population: One: Monday Mashup #7: Shogun

If I was going to boil Shogun down to a sentence of summation, I’d say it was about a man plunged into a culture he considers barbaric, and how he learns to understand it.

Since I've never seen it or read it, I'll have to take Bryant at his word.

Okay, let's keep this one quick and dirty.

System: Supers (dealer's choice)
Setting: Earth
PCs: Metahumans, largely of Extraterrestrial origin.

Through cataclysmic engine failure, a dimensional-warp mixup, or wormhole accident, the PCs (natives of a pleasant, perfect, civilized world that they have little to no hope of ever returning to) are dumped on Earth which, to put it nicely, it a festering pile of immoral politicians and citizens who richly deserve them.

This Busiek-style game would focus to a large extent on the group's initial attempts to "lead by example" as they try to get the world to pull itself up to their high standards, then a more hands-on approach as they (perhaps) try to create a Utopia somewhere on (or above) Earth that hearkens back to their homeworld, and perhaps finally the gradual realization of the Good Things that are there to be found in the world if one looks hard enough.

The final evolution of this would be their own society finally 'rescuing' them and, in the process, deciding to bring Earth into the ever-growing "Enlightened Galactic Republic" that the PCs might now realize would stifle the beauty of individual societies, no matter how backward. The PCs would then be put in a position of trying to stop their own 'home world' from steamrolling Earth (and, were the campaign to continue, to keep them from doing the same to other worlds).

I'd probably call it something like "God is in the Details".

Posted by Doyce at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

WISH 65: That's My Job

Does what you do for a living have any impact on your gaming? Have you had occupational details intrude on your descriptions of how something works? Have you ever dared a player to go “Hotwire a car, then, if that’s how you think it’s done?”

There are elements of my life that have definitely impacted my view of some games. With high-tech or sci-fi games, I constantly finding myself using real-life computer tech examples to explain why something isn't working, why it is working, or how the player needs to manipulate it to make it work.

Me: See, the sensor suite on your ship isn't the stock module that comes with the ship, but in the hardware config, the system is still set to the 'default' sensor suite, so the sensor screen is constantly popping up with 'COM not Found' errors, when it works at all. Them: Then we'll install drivers for the right suite. Me: That's the problem: the system can't detect what the real suite is, and there's nothing on the hardware itself to give you a clue as to who the real manufacturer is.

Needless to say, this kind of knowledge drives me absolutely batty in some games -- for example, when a "Computer Whiz" character is being played by someone who, while a competent computer user, is not and has never been a computer support technician -- I just start to twitch when they say "I'll open up my (US-made) laptop and plug into their (European-based) network. Does that take one round or two?"

Forget shutting down the self-destruct countdown, folks -- just getting a valid IP is going to take you a couple hours :)

Solution? I try not to think about it.

This also comes up quite frequently in the (rare) Pulp Adventures stuff that I run, since I play with a number of experts in various fields (at least when compared to myself. That's proven to be very useful in some cases ("I've got a book that details the various advances of the Nazi party throughout the 20's and 30's.") and less in others ("the muzzle velocity between the .45 1911 pistol and a comparable revolver really doesn't warrant different damage dice"). Sometimes helpful, and sometimes it's chafe.

(In retrospect, I should have set the whole thing in an alternate-history world with a pulp feel and less-specific real-world elements. :)

Posted by Doyce at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I will not be GMing any games this weekend, including Friday night.

As near as I can tell from my Palm calendar, the last time that happened (not counting the weekends when we were out of the state for some reason) was November of 2002, and I'm still not sure about that, cuz I think I might have been running OA on Sundays even then.

That said, this is definitely one of the first times in... I believe FOREVER that I'll go the full weekend without GMing, but still playing something every day of the weekend.

Posted by Doyce at 5:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Some more character background for Dylan MacEvitt, member in good standing of The Agency.

Name: Dylan Thomas MacEvitt
Description: Age 28, Married, Male, 5'11", 170#, Blue, Dark hair
Code Name: Poet
Date of Birth: 03.13.1975
Place of Birth: Twin Lakes, Wisconsin
Gaming notes: Faceman; High CHA, High WIS.

Family:
Wife: Jessica, 27. Investments Broker for Morgan Stanley.

Previous: Bachelors Degree in Psychology (minor in Theatre), Master's Degree in Criminal Psychology.

Home: Dylan lives in a Boston 'suburb' that is, in his opinion, merely one more tiny east-coast village justifiably lost in the tangled undergrowth. He gets to work by commuting to an unremarkable underground parking garage and using a fire exit that no one else does -- on a normal day, the fifteen-mile trip takes an interminable forty-five minutes and boasts only three stoplights largely ignored by the other drivers.

Profession: Jessica knows only that he's works 'analysis' for an Intelligence agency and doesn't want to know more. They tell their friends that he works with a communications development company wholly owned by AOL/Time-Warner and everyone drops the subject.

Languages: Whattya need?

Background: Dylan's a US-born citizen who spent a great deal of time abroad in his youth -- his father was a diplomat, which translated into expensive boarding schools on both the American coasts as well as Great Britain, Japan, and Italy. He has never cared for France but prefers not to go into it.

Claim to fame?: Dylan excels at reading people: he is a natural profiler and uses that talent to good effect when attempting to pass himself off using a cover identity or when interrogating suspects.

Hobbies: Dylan jogs, as much to 'get away from everything' (the job, his private life) as for any health benefit. He will freely admit that it is a mind-numbingly boring activity with very little to recommend it -- he finds it useful because the boredom gives his mind a chance to "turn things over" -- he often comes back from a run with a new idea or solution to a problem.

Biggest source of trouble?: That would probably be the problems/stress caused in his personal life by being part of the Agency. Dylan's wife (Jessica) knows that he works for an unspecified intelligence network, and knows that she can't tell their friends, which is fine with her -- she finds the whole thing vaguely embarassing. Frankly, she doesn't really want to know any more about what Dylan does; she is a very no-nonsense person who wants the American (yuppie) dream of a lovely house, nice cars, sophisticated friends, and one or two kids in the very, very distant future -- the fact that Dylan gets phone calls and pages at "all hours", even on the weekends, is a continual low-grade bone of contention for the couple. Jessica wants Dylan's job to "behave like a 'real' job", because "this nonsense" doesn't fit in with her picturesque goals at all.

As far as she knows, Dylan's a desk-bound analyst.

Favorite gadget?: When it comes to high-tech gizmos, Dylan prefers the subtle: a PDA with full connectivity to the Agency network, a telescope/pen, or a radio/wristwatch. His only unbending preference is for U.S.-made handguns, especially Colts (which generally means using pistols in a very unsubtle .45 caliber) -- his current sidearm is a modern, sleeker version of the classic Colt 1911, the 'Defender'. He'd actually love to put together a collection of Colt pistols, both antique and modern, but Jess would never let him keep them in the house -- to Dylan, one of the fringe benefits to actually getting a private office in the Agency would be the chance this might give him to start such a collection.

Posted by Doyce at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When the OA rules for d20 came out, I snapped them up -- I'd always wanted to run a proper Oriental campaign back when Oriental Adventures came out for 1st edition AD&D, but the whole thing had never really gelled, and I was really psyched to do something with the new rules.

On the other hand, I really didn't have time to mess around with writing out a whole new campaign in detail, so what I opted to do was the (slightly) less time-consuming solution of using "Living Rokugan" modules from the RPGA, coverting each of the ones I used from the original L5R rules into d20, while modifying each module to fit the "unifying story" at the same time.

The result is a bit more heavily influenced by Japanese themes than I'd originally envisioned (due to Rokugan's setting), but on the whole it seems to work pretty well. The group consists of:

• Hiruma Gu - Gu is a Crab-clan berzerker-fighter who owes Menho his life and serves him most willingly as a yojimbo and manservant. (Gu was originally envisioned as a clone of Number Ten Ox from Bridge of Birds.)
  
• Shishiko - A cat hengeyokai (essentially a benign bakeneko) who was caught stealing Menho's wakisashi by the samurai of Otosan Uchi. Menho saved her life by claiming that he had given Shishiko the wakisashi as a sign of her service to him. Shishiko functions as a sort of 'eyes and ears' for the samurai, as well as a sort of defacto eta.
  
• Kakita Mushiyamma - 'Mushi' is a female Crane duelist of the famed Kakita school who met Menho during his time in Otosan Uchi. She responded to his (unspoken) request for aid in the matter of his inheritance because she is (secretly) in love with Menho (something blatantly obvious to the 'commoner' members of the group, but utterly hidden from the upper class members).
  
• Kitsu Fenshen - a sodan-senzo (spirit talker) Shugenja-ko of the Lion clan. Fenshen's alliegiance to Menho are still a mystery.
  
• Tycho - A young member of the Ise Zumi monks, Tycho enjoys relative immunity from social conventions as a member of the monastic class: he occaisionally travels with the group for a period of time to 'enlighten himself', then vanishes again with just as little warning as before.

For the sake of clarity, I'm summarizing the scenarios the group has played through so far.

Campaign Kick-off
What happened: The PC's are called on by their friend/daimyo/master Shinjo Menho, oldest living son of a Khan of the Unicorn Clan to retrieve the ancestral blade of his forefathers from his father's tomb (the council that rules since the Khan's death won't let him go in after it). - The Ghost-Khan is disgusted that his son doesn't have the... steel to stand up to the council, and so will not relinquish the sword, which is the only way to claim the Khanate. He will only relinquish the sword when his son (and his son's "puppets") complete nine quests that mirror the trials the Khan himself had to go through before he claimed the Khanate himself.
Party level: 4

Satsume's Tournament
Time: Autumn
What happened: The Doji clan calls a tournament to name new Emerald Champions, and Menho has decided that this would be a good 'test' for he and his new companions. The PC's discover a Maho-user among the contestants, and both Kitsu Fenshen and a Dragonfly named Tonbo Genso are named Emerald Magistrates.

Face of Fear [*]
Time: Autumn
What happened: From the south of the Crane lands, the PC's journey to the Shadowlands to try to rescue a young-but-powerful Crane courtier's friend, encountering a corrupted Unicorn samurai in the process and developing a healthy dislike of the Shadowlands.

Winter Court - Asahina [*]
Time: Winter
Party level: 5
What happened: The PCs are invited to Winter Court in the Crane lands and end up (with Tonbo Genso) investigating the murder of a Scorpion courtier with any number of viable suspects (with the help/interferance of the Nezumi).

Kitsuki Evidence
Time: Winter's End
What happened: While traveling to Dragon lands, the PC's are asked by a senior Emerald Magistrake (Kitsuki Yun) to help her find a missing Emerald Magistrate. In the process, they expose the treachery of a local daimyo who hates Dragonfly samurai.

Blackest Stone Beneath [*]
Time: Winter's End
What happened: End-of-Winter Festival in Dragon lands. The PC’s reveal the treachery of the Daimyo’s son, who slew his mother several years ago to gain power that much sooner.

Legacy of the Dark One [*]
Time: Spring
Party level: 6
What happened: Menho volunteers the group to defend the honor of a Phoenix samurai-ko accused of Maho. They expose a Maho cult, led by a former Phoenix Shugenja named Gidayu. [The party spends almost a month in this area following the investigation, during which time Kitsu studies with the monastery nearby and Gu is found by a Nezumi of the Odd-Eye clan who swears loyalty to him in thanks for the events surrounding the last Winter Court.]

People's Expense [*]
Time: Spring
What happened: The PC's lay the troubled ghost of a peasant girl to rest and expose a treacherous samurai plotting revolt.

A Chance Meeting [*]
Time: Spring/Summer
Party level: 7
What happened: The PC's protect the Fox Clan from some of its own hidden shame, and deal with the Scorpion Clan trying to expose the same.

Ties the Bind [*]
Time: Summer
What happened: Drawn to the City of Lies by Menho's nightmarish visions, the PC's are called on to investigate the death of a Crane coutier visiting Scorpion lands, revealing a Maho cult (and encountering the spirit of Gidayu again, who is now the Dark Oracle of Air). They leave the city feeling that somehow they were being used.

Falling Darkness [*]
Time: Summer
Party level: 8
What happened: The PC's help a Kuni witch-hunter pursue a body-hopping Maho-user named Yajindin as it/he moves north from Centipede lands to the Phoenix capital in search of secret lore.

Lies, Lies, Lies
Time: Early Autumn
What happened: A Sparrow-clan marriage to the Crane is complicated by the death of the bride in some sort of lover’s tryst. [Menho reveals a possible romance between himself and the Crane courtier the group met during Face of Fear. Despondent, Mushi drinks heavily during the wedding preparations and narrowly avoids embarassment and dishonor a several points during the investigation.]

Evil Feeds Upon Itself [*]
Time: September
Party level: 9
What happened: The PC’s search for a missing Lion samurai, eventually discovering that he was killed by an Oni who holds a village in fearful thrall.

Posted by Doyce at 1:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Note to self: preparing a list of likely (and point-balanced) qualities for a well-known Chancel and Imperator does not appreciably make the Chancel- and Imperator-creation process go any faster than doing nothing of the kind beforehand.

Posted by Doyce at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Friday, the DnD group continued to wander aimlessly through a deadly forest that drives people insane, rots your food, and attracts things that go *munch* in the night. Huge surprise, there was combat, and lots of it.

Saturday was Jackie's "high level" Necropolis game. (I put that in quotes because the group is three levels lower than the Friday night group, and smaller. Dave encountered first-hand one of the truisms of the d20 system:

In a module designed for high level characters, assume that all or nearly all encounters will factor in that level and be a threat to you, logic be damned. Bad guys, even in obscure little towns, will all effectively be 12th level, too, and be ready to deal with 12th level characters, even if that makes no sense. Consider yourself 1st level, and be appropriately cautious.

I think that might be a trifle overstated: it may be more accurate to say that the 'lesser' threats are simply so minor that higher level characters don't notice them -- what they do notice are the things that can hurt them -- thus, from their point of view, "everything that happens" is stuff that can kill you.

Or, using a rule that applies more directly to the situation that brought Dave's anthropomorphic elephant barbarian/fighter down: "If the bad guys see how big you are, they put more poison in the glass."

Not that I haven't said as much before. Once upon a time, I wrote:

it does not matter that a 15th fighter can crit and do 45 points of damage and a first level fighter can crit and do 16: the chunk that they take out of their opponents will remain roughly similar.

In fact, swing-by-swing, the amount of damage done by the hero vs. damage sustainable by the bad guy goes DOWN as you level -- this is made up for by giving higher-level folks more attacks to bring the ratio back up.

Number of rounds to take down the main bad guy at level 1 or level 15 doesn't change -- number of hit points left on the fighter when the fight is over -- almost exactly the same... about five.

The only things that change is that the costume budget for the main heroes goes up, and the bit actors run around inside bigger monster suits.

I was pointing out that the variations between power levels is largely cosmetic in ANY game (it's not just d20 -- in any game system, as you get tougher, the bad guys get tougher as well). The only real reason to begin play with higher-power characters is so you can play concepts/critters that don't balance out at first level (or, if you're thinking inside the box, you want the higher level to justify extensive character history).

One danger of the higher level game is that some folks who look for that sort of power level expect the skill/power of the character to counteract a certain level of player laziness.

Player: "I question the people in the bar." GM: "Who?" Player: "I don't know... the barmaids." GM: "What are you asking them?" Player: "I don't know... I'll ask them what's going on that's interesting in town. I roll a 33 Gather Information, can we find our Secret Contact guy?" GM: "Umm... with those questions, no." Player: "But... it was a 33."

Or to use an example of my own laziness, allowing an NPC to partially get off the hook during a "Truth Serum"-style interrogation, because I asked one my big wrap-up question so poorly that he could, in essence, lie by using an easy loophole.

Anyway, live and learn: higher power characters still have to be careful and think: it's an obvious rule that we missed, simply (I think) because we jumped right in at high level and expected, looking at our character sheets, to waltz through things -- if we'd started out at lower level (which wasn't really an option anyway), we'd have already been careful, and just continued to be careful.

Sunday was one of the two Nobilis games that I've created by splitting up the original group and adding a player. After the mess of Imperator and Chancel (re)creation was finished (taking a mere hour and a half :P), things got underway.

Most of what I have to say about this is very positive: I was really surprised and pleased by the Chancel and the Imperator that the group came up with -- it immediately gave me ideas for any number of interesting stories -- and I like the possibilities in the tension between some of the characters. It's not exactly "Locus Partytown" by any stretch of the imagination, but it's still an interesting group with some great players. We'll see how far that gets us.

Posted by Doyce at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

The Vulcan Bros. Industrial Heritage Plusurewerks -- great art, interesting flash.

Posted by Doyce at 10:06 AM | Permalink

Related to this post on Justin's ongoing struggles to improve (and our ongoing struggles to help him), I felt I had to add this addendum:

This Saturday, Justin decided that he wanted to GM a DnD game for me, Jackie, and 'maybe a few others'. (Ironically, I'd just commented to Dave the day before that I was hoping he'd find a few gamers around school, since that was at least odd, deviant behavior that I understood.)

He dug through the $2.50 'pocket adventures' that we've been accumulating for the last couple years, found one he liked, commandeered every blank battlemat in the house, and spent most of the time we were playing Nobilis on Sunday "prepping the module" upstairs, by transcribing all the maps in the module to the battlemats.

He's informed me that 4th-level characters will be 'workable'.

Remembering the ways in which roleplaying helped me learn to ... well, learn ... how it helped me meet and make friends in school, and how it kept me most importantly occupied during high school and college, I have to say that I'm very pleased that he's interesting in trying his hand behind the Screen.

Posted by Doyce at 3:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Stumbled across an old article on Pyramid's site entitled "How to keep Gaming after Adulthood". The author makes some excellent points about what makes gaming as an adult more difficult than it 'used to be'.

[...] the conditions under which most of us learn to roleplay -- high school and college -- are ones that afford us more free time than we ever see again. As a result, we tend to develop a roleplaying style that involves hanging out for hours, slowly meeting NPCs in town adventures or making our leisurely way through a room-by-room dungeon or a massively epic adventure, secure in the knowledge that whatever doesn't get finished can be picked up next week. After all, you have the time and no one's going anywhere.
Gaming in [your youth] is a form of hanging out that actually seems to invite a time-wasting approach -- one that lends itself to very intricate game worlds modeled on all those bulky fantasy trilogies that have maps at the front, or sci-fi novels that have the answer to every technical question worked out in advance. The GM probably whiles away the idle hours during the week by adding new game-world information for fun

... looking at ***Dave, here :) ...

and the players (if they're anything like me and my friends were) make up characters that will never see use, just because they can.

Umm. Guilty. Duh.

This is all well and good for that life-stage, but if you try this as an adult, you're going to spend a few bored hours waiting for the excitement and then going home wondering if it was all worth the time. Usually it isn't.
What you need to do to survive the transition is to rethink your playing style. This is a fairly major shift that encompasses everything from session length to genre to player selection.

I didn't wholeheartedly agree with everything the author had to say, but by and large the thing was packed with great tips (and good advice on using genre television as good outline for scenario design).

I have thoughts on a few of the 'for starters' bullet-points, specifically.

Keep the Party Size Small: In college, when everyone was simply hanging out, seven players was not an unheard-of size for a party. That won't wash anymore. Two to four players is all you should need.

This is something I really need to heed. I've been unconciously doing this with some of my more recent games, but in at least a couple cases (DnD, Nobilis) reverted to the 'youthful' group size and suffered for it as a result.

If you don't like turning people away, consider breaking them up. Running two satisfying three-person campaigns is often much easier than running one satisfying six-member one.

Heh. This is the Big Debate I'm currently mulling over with Nobilis: I have a seven person group I'm seriously considering turning into two four-person groups -- provided I can figure out where to fit in the second game :)

Keep Player Expectations Modest. Let people know you will not be running epic adventures. There will not necessarily be full-color maps, dressing in character, sound effects records in the background, etc. You will probably not lavish time composing paragraphs of evocative description to read aloud at key moments. The point is simple social entertainment, not fictive absorption.

I'm not sure I agree with this 100%, since I still really want to see a lot of involvement in the story, but the he's dead-on when he talks about all the fancy game prep stuff that you just don't have time to do anymore.

In a related note, don't expect this to last more than three or four weeks. If it happens, as it often does, then great.

I would say instead that you should build the 'main' story arcs that wrap up in three to six sessions (perhaps ephemerally tied together with some nice 25-session Over-Arc), so that you can always be within spitting distance of some Closure if the campaign looks like it's not going to turn into a half-decade gaming zeitgeist.

Keep the Logistics Flexible. You'll want one or two people you can count on to show up every week as your core group. But after that, anything goes. This means that the party itself may not gel like the heroes of old, but it also means you can usually play regularly. If you have four regulars and only two can make it one week, fine. Play with two.

...and...

Don't Cancel Unless It's An Absolute Emergency. I particularly recommend not cancelling for the first three weeks, and never cancelling two weeks in a row. This way, you establish a habit of meeting and people learn to trust that the game will be there if they just remember to show up.

I think this is really what made TiHE work -- that was really the game that pulled in my 'core' group of gamer friends and got everyone into a habit of regular gaming. We started that game with seven people, immediately dropped to five, then to two and a half, then four, then five, and finished with seven again (after NINETY-ONE sessions and nearly three years of play): the important thing was always to make sure that the game happened.

These days, I'm more willing to cancel a game if one of my players can't make it (or simply run something else), since we've gotten to a point where missing one game isn't going to get us out of the habit -- our social life really revolves around those events (pity or envy us, your choice). That said, I tried very hard to be regular and dedicated with the first six sessions of Nobilis, simply because I really wanted to get people addicted (then we've had to go a month with no game, but that's life).

Have a Core Group. As mentioned above, you'll want one or two players you can always count on to show up, and who you will play with even if no one else can make it.

I'm lucky in that I have four such players (five, if you count Justin, which I usually do). I disagree, however, with the author's assertion that homeowners and people with families are bad risks for such 'regulars' -- children are simply something everyone eventually has to learn to deal with (and I'm not just talking about gaming), and if house-related emergencies are cropping up so frequently that they regularly intervere with weekly or bi-weekly games... well, there's bigger problems you need to deal with, there.

Posted by Doyce at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Cool cemetery photos.

Should be grist for at least one or two games. :)

Posted by Doyce at 10:08 AM | Permalink

kuro5hin.org || Introduction to the Cthulhu Mythos

Posted by Doyce at 12:41 PM | Permalink

So White Wolf is suing Sony for copyright infringement re: Underworld and Vampire: the Masquerade.

... alleging 17 counts of copyright infringement for the film Underworld, set for release on September 19. White Wolf alleges that Underworld characters, theme and setting are based on White Wolf’s award winning games Vampire: The Masquerade® and Werewolf: The Apocalypse™, both set in White Wolf’s fictional World of Darkness®.
Plaintiffs claim over 60 points of unique similarity between Underworld and their work. "Ours is a huge fictional world, supported by over 200 volumes of fictional material," asserts Mike Tinney, White Wolf’s President.

Well, yeah... I imagine that when you rip of use material from EVERY VAMPIRE AND WEREWOLF TROPE ever introduced in any medium and mash it into 200 fucking books over the course of the last decade, most folks won't be able to swing an undead cat without hitting something you've already ripped off for your own purposes.

One of the "copyright infringements" from the PDF copy of the legal claim:

'In WoD, vampires sometimes call each other "Vee," short for vampire. In Underworld, there is a vampire character named Vee.

One sweatshop writer working for movie studios wrote a 'love story between a vamp and were' that came off as being very much like a similar story idea written by a sweatshop writer working for a game company? I'm shocked.

Shocked, I tell you.

Posted by Doyce at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)