Author Archives: Rick Neal

Anti-Climax – The TPK

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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Last night, I killed the entire party.

It was a 3.5 Eberron game, and we were playing through the Age of Worms Adventure Path from Dungeon Magazine. We have been for a couple of weeks more than three years. We try to get together every second Sunday, but we’re all people with busy real lives, and it doesn’t always work out, so the sessions are a little irregular.

It’s also a verys social, beer-and-pretzels game, with a lot of non-game directed table talk, and a tendency to drift off topic. In the three to four hours we meet each time, we get through one, maybe two encounters.

So, after three years, the group was almost finished with Spire of Long Shadows, which is the seventh of twelve adventures. They had only the Harbinger (an advanced spellweaver lich) and the Kyuss Knights (very tough combat monster undead) to face, in two separate encounters.

They picked the room with the Harbinger, and died.

A big part of it was the the thing was ready for them, with a high Spot and Listen check, so it heard the people in the hallway and had a couple of rounds to buff and prepare. The good guys got a face full of empowered level 17 chain lightning when they opened the door.

And then the monster beat them all on initiative.

Well, the prismatic spray kicked the dwarven cleric/fighter and the half-orc barbarian right out of the world with the violet ray. Bam. Two of the heaviest hitters gone in the first round. Everyone did their best, but it wasn’t all that much of a contest after that, although the rogue did almost take it down (within 20 points, Erik) before succumbing to the frost bite of the cold fire shield. The warforged juggernaut sucked up waaaaay too much damage the next turn, thanks to the thing being able to cast three scorching rays in one round, and that left the wizard and the druid.

At this point, the Harbinger turned invisible and healed itself up to about 80 HP. The druid summoned some girallons to try and find it and deal with it, while the wizard made a mad dash for the bodies of their comrades, in a bid to dimension door them out. One attack of opportunity from the invisible monster, and it was down to the druid and his monkeys. When the Harbinger sealed the way out with a wall of force and used a power word stun, the fight was essentially over.

Everyone sort of sat around and went, “Well. That sucked.”

And it did. A TPK is no one’s idea of a good time. Not even the GM. Sure, I could have pulled some punches, and fudged some rolls, but that minimizes the excitement and challenge, I think.

The turning point was that prismatic spray. I’ve never really liked save-or-die effects, from a play perspective, because it takes people out of combat and prevents them from having fun. Prismatic spray has two or three such effects. The plane shift that got our heavy hitters basically turned them into spectators for the rest of the combat. So, not only did it suck for their characters, it pretty much sucked for the players, too.

So, the characters failed in their quest. Kyuss awakens, and ushers in the Age of Worms, spreading death and destruction across Khorvaire, waking the other Rakshasa Rajahs, and dooming the world, despite Dragotha’s interference. Which would have been cool if the characters had died a little less anticlimactically.

Oh, well.

I want to say thanks to my players:

  • Chris, who played an elf druid with the biggest, baddest doggy in the whole, wide world.
  • Erik, who played an Extreme! explorer and rogue, for the sheer zest he put into shouting “Extreme!“
  • Pedro, who played an inexplicably scottish dwarf fighter/cleric, and incidentally gave us the place to play.
  • Dan, who played a ranger who grew up to become a wizard. Mainly for the imaginary chicks.
  • Paul, who played a warforged juggernaut who really liked to break things. And wander around underwater fighting squid.
  • Mark, who joined the game later on as a far-too-civil half-orc barbarian with a great name.

It’s been fun. Also deeply offensive on many levels, but still fun.

Now, on to our 4th Edition game.

What’s the Story? – RPG as Narrative

By | | What's he playing?
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I’m gonna get a little philosophical in the following post, so be warned. There’s some musing ahead.

I play a lot of RPGs. Right now, I’m playing in three different games, and running three more, not counting the computer RPGs that I indulge in as time permits. I also read a lot of books – got four of them on the go at the moment. And I write a fair bit. Writing is my day job (technical writing), and I’m currently trying to finish writing a novel.

This means that I think a lot about stories.

I’m thinking now specifically about stories in RPGs, because I just finished writing up the character diary for one of my characters. This is something I decided to take on because my character is a bookish, scholarly sort who would keep a diary. My GM in that group has asked me to post it on the game’s forum site, so that it can serve as a recap for the players, and I’m cool with that. It’s fun to write, fun to explore the development of the character out of game time, and fun to let his voice mature through the entries. I’ve done similar things with other characters, but this is the first time I’ve decided to keep a game diary from the get-go, and to make it public. Well, public among the others in the group.

But it’s got me thinking about narrative structure and convention within RPGs, and whether we are, in fact, generating stories when we play.

(Now, when I say “story,” I’m using the word in a very particular way. I’m referring to something that would appear in a novel, short-story collection, movie, or television. That’s a pretty formal and narrow definition, I know, but that’s really part of the point I’m trying to make.)

Yeah, I know, the current trend is to view RPGs as collaborative improvisational storytelling, but are we really telling stories?

I’ve been noticing that, as I write up my diary entries from my notes during play, that I have to do a fair bit of fleshing out of things that didn’t actually happen in play, or smoothing over and conflating things that did happen in play. And even then, it’s hard to call my finished product a story. Even when taken together, the entries from an entire adventure don’t really make up a story. Here’s why:

  • Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. RPGs certainly have a beginning, and a whole lot of middle, but the ending is very often not a clean, defined thing. Sometimes, games fade out as interest wanes, sometimes they are abandoned when something new comes along, sometimes they’re ditched after a TPK. Sometimes they make it to a defined ending point, but even those often leave many loose ends and follow-ups. And the middles sort of go on forever, which is really part of my next point.
  • Stories have focus. They tell a tale, and show you what’s important to the narrative progress. RPGs may have that sort of thing set up in their structure, but focus tends to go out the window once the players get involved. Because people pick up on different things, are interested in different things, and think about things in different ways, they don’t always spot the plotline right off the bat, and tend to wander around a bit trying to find it. Even when they do find it, they rarely want to focus specifically on it – their characters all have other interests as well as the main storyline.
  • Stories are (generally) controlled by the teller. This is what give stories their structure and focus. One voice, one vision, one direction*. In RPGs, the control is split among all the participants, players and GM alike, and each has a different agenda. Each player views his or her character as the main character in the story, and views the story to be about them. Plus the others, but mainly them. This is what weakens** focus and structure in RPGs.

When I look at my completed diary entries, or talk to people about what happened in a game, it doesn’t come out very storylike. The diary entries feel like diary entries, in that they are a strung-together account of events. They may have a little more focus and direction than real-world diary entries, but not a whole lot. Talking about games is the same way – outlining everything that happens in a game doesn’t provide a clear, focused narrative, because of all the little things that clutter it up. If we want to talk about the experience in a meaningful and interesting way, we tend to string together anecdotes from the game to highlight moments that had an impact on us.

Let’s look at the standard D&D*** game. If you tell the “story” of the game, it goes something like:

Goblins were attacking the town, so we went out into the woods, and fought some goblins. Then we fought some goblins with wolves. Then we camped overnight, and a bear attacked us. In the morning we followed the goblin trail to the caves. Along the way, we fought goblins twice more. One of the groups had a shaman. At the caves, we fought goblins with wolves in the first room, then goblin archers behind stacks of haybales in the second room. In the third room there was a pit trap, and we fought some more goblins. Finally, we got to the leader, and he was a bugbear, so we fought him and won. Then we went to collect our reward.

As a narrative, it’s not all that interesting. You fought a lot of goblins and things, and saved the town. There. I just boiled it down to a single sentence. Even if you have a group of very skilled roleplayers who are totally immersed in their characters, it’s not going to really add all that much to the story except some filler scenes to separate the fights.

I wouldn’t buy a book that told that story.****

And have you ever tried to tell a game story to a non-gamer? Don’t even bother. Their eyes glaze over pretty quick, even if they understand what you’re talking about. Even with gamers, what interest there is comes from comparison and identification with their own gaming experience. And a lot of gamers you tell your game story to are just nodding and smiling until you’re done flapping your gums so that they can tell you a real cool gaming story from their own lives.

Now, the argument could be made that I’m oversimplifying and that some RPGs are rich in story. I don’t think so, but I’m fine with being told I’m wrong. What we call story in RPGs is primarily background – the stuff in behind the stories. Or the infamous metaplot, which is closer to what I think of as story, but that I don’t think really comes on stage properly in the average game.

You could also say, “It’s the GM. My GM makes great stories.” And you may be right, but I don’t think so. It’s not that your GM isn’t great, but your GM is making campaigns and adventures, which are story skeletons that get fleshed out by play, and it’s the play that keeps the RPG experience from being story.

I’ve done it myself, creating a campaign that ran for just about eight years, with a storyline running through it, and a beginning, middle, and end, but I have to admit, after the fact, that it wasn’t a story in the way I’m talking about here. It was a collection of events, with a common theme and a sense of linkage to lead from one to the other, and a resolution that tied up most of the loose ends and put a lid on things. But it wasn’t really a story.

So, by my definitions, as outlined above, I’ve pretty much proved***** that what happens in RPGs is not story in the strictest sense. What is it then?

It’s a game.

Now, that may sound obvious or ridiculous, but I think it’s an important distinction. It’s a game, with rules that simulate events in which we participate. It produces a series of linked, simulated events that occur because of our interaction with the rules. These series of events can be adapted and restructured to produce a story, if we put in the effort to weed out the extraneous and add the missing. By applying the structure, focus, and control I mentioned above.

It’s fine that RPGs don’t produce stories as I’ve defined them. In fact, it’s a good thing. The bits that keep RPGs from being the same as novels are the interaction and surprise that emerges from play. Those are great things to have. Control of narration in the hands of the participants is a whole lot of fun. As a GM, not having to flesh out every detail of a plot, and relying on my players to supply the exciting parts is fun. As a player, knowing that I can steal a moment or two in the spotlight, and watch each of my friends do the same is fun.

What about the repetition? Well, that’s fun, too, because in the simulationist rules of the game, it produces varied and interesting results. What does that mean? It means combats are exciting. Introducing a random chance element into play is exciting. It doesn’t look exciting when it’s written down on the page, but man, when you’re rolling and praying for that natural 20, you are excited.

It just doesn’t make for such an interesting story.

So, enjoy the game for what it is. And enjoy stories for what they are. The two are not the same, though, so think about that the next time you read a book or play a game. Look at the differences between the two. It can tell you a lot about the nature of narrative and play.

And, in closing, lest you think I’m picking on games, it happens elsewhere, too. The musical Cats, for example, is a wonderful show, with good music, good lyrics (yay for T.S. Eliot!), good dancing, and great look to it. I love it.

But it ain’t got a story, neither.

 

*Now, admittedly, this isn’t always the case, but I’m playing it up as a rule to heighten the contrast of my argument. So all you postmodernists out there just bear with me.

**I say “weakens,” but it’s not necessarily a negative. I could also have said “increases the freedom and spontanaeity,” but I am, once again, trying to make a point.

***If there is such a thing. This may be the same sort of philosophical construct as the square root of -1, which doesn’t exist as a number but makes some important high-level math work.

****To be fair, I have bought books that tell that story. And I’ve enjoyed them. I just wouldn’t call them good stories.

*****And if I haven’t, sshhh. I’m bored now, and moving on to the next section.

Actually Playing 4E

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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I know! Two posts in two days!

So, despite my resolve to wait until there were more options out there before starting a 4th Edition D&D game, I broke down and started a 4th Edition D&D game.

Those who know me are not surprised.

I wanted to get some practice running the game, get familiar with the rules and things, while I prepare the campaign I’m going to launch some time next year. This would give me a chance to build some proficiency with the new system, and get my head around what sorts of things a campaign needs that can be best modeled by the new rules.

Now, because I was coming in green, I wanted to use a pregenerated campaign, and Wizards of the Coast graciously provided their Scales of War adventure path. That made it easy. So, I sent out invites to eight gamers I know, hoping for four or five acceptances.

I got seven.

And then one of them asked if they could bring a friend. Back up to eight players.

Well, I decided, I wanted to see how much faster these rules were in play. This would give them a damned good stretching.

So how’s it going? First, some observations about the adventures.

  • They are (so far; we’re at #3 right now) fairly well-written. There are some nice encounters, and some interesting decisions to make.
  • There’s plenty of dungeon crawling going on. Too much? That’ll vary depending on your group, but it’s pushing the limits of my tolerance.
  • There are interesting little links, mainly using skill challenges, that break up the dungeon crawl monotony.
  • Starting especially in the second adventure, there’s plenty of opportunity for improvised little side adventures and extended roleplaying. Not so much in the first, which tends to drop you in the middle of the action and then give you a time-sensitive mission.
  • The editing on the second adventure is really sub-par, with missing labels being one of the more annoying aspects.

Now, as to playing the adventures:

  • After character generation, we had a tiefling warlock, a tiefling rogue, a dragonborn fighter, a dragonborn paladin, a human cleric, a human wizard, a half-elf ranger, and a half-elf fighter.
  • There are issues with running this large a group in any system. These were exacerbated in this game because none of us were overly familiar with the rules. Things dragged, no one got enough DM face time, and little timing misjudgements I made snowballed into huge problems.
  • Two players bowed out after the second session, saying that the group was just too large. They were right.
  • Six is much more manageable.
  • Leaving your rogue out front with no back-up in hostile territory will do bad things to the rogue.
  • Skill challenges have a lot of potential, but some practice is needed to run them as something more than a non-physical combat. Also, having skills that automatically grant failures seems designed to punish players for trying to stick to what their characters are good at. Skill challenges should encourage players to take risks, not devolve into a guessing game to see where the booby-trapped skills are.
  • Combat encounters still take a fair bit of time to run. Now, part of that is lack of experience with the system, and part of that is the fact that monsters have significantly more hit points on average, which makes the combats run a larger number of rounds.
  • The new system actively rewards you for co-operating in your party and playing to your strengths. After some shaky combats, the players started to see how to make their characters work together to support each other. The last fight of the last session was a complete slaughter of the monsters.
  • Adding Campaign Coins to the game has been fun.
  • Doing up customized cards for powers and magic items can greatly speed play. You can check out some templates here. Personally, I use the Power and Item Cards by JFJohnny5. Thanks, Johnny!
  • I got some Alea Tools magnetic markers to track bloodied, marked, and cursed conditions, but they were too attractive to each other, and wound up being more trouble than they were worth. Apparently, if you have a magnetically receptive play surface, they don’t push and pull your figures around nearly as much. I’ll have to see what I can find, but for now, I’m looking for a different way to handle this. Any suggestions are welcome.
  • Speaking of marked, I like what this condition is trying to do, which is make enemies attack someone who is very much a threat to them, but I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a less fiddly way of handling it. It can be a bit of a challenge to keep track of whom has been marked by who.
  • There has been some comment that combat seems very repetitive, because characters use the same powers over and over again. I find this confusing to me, because in 3.5, characters just used the same attacks over and over again, and the people complaining didn’t find that repetitive. Maybe this is an artifact of the low level limited number of powers; we’ll have to see how things change as the game progresses.

So, what’s the verdict? Among my players, it’s that 4E is a good system. It’s not the second coming, it won’t end world hunger, or bring about peace in the Middle East, but it works for what it sets out to do. Mostly, anyway. It’s easily as good as 3.5, and if there are places where it doesn’t quite measure up, there are also places where it outshines the former system significantly.

And my opinion? Well, let me put it this way. The adventure path I’m using is written for five characters. When I found out I was going to have eight, I went through and beefed up the encounters to be appropriate for that number of characters. The guidelines in the DMG on how to do this are very, very clear. The process is very simple. It took me under an hour to update over a dozen encounters, and that includes a couple where I had to increase the level of the monsters, rather than just add extras. When two players dropped out, it was even faster to adjust for that. And I’ve been getting faster with each adventure. This means I’m spending my prep time fleshing out background, making props and cards for treasure, updating power cards for the players, and reading the next adventure.

This, I like. This is what sells me on 4E.

Back in the Game – The True Game

By | | What's he reading?
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Hey, folks. Did you miss me?

I’m going to stop apologizing for long dry spells between posts. I want to shorten them, but sometimes I just don’t have much interesting to say, and why bore you?

Anyway.

Today, I want to talk about a series of books that I just re-read. Specifically, I want to talk about how the experience of reading them was very different this time around, thanks to a comment made by an acquaintance of mine.

The books are Sherri S. Tepper’s True Game books, a trilogy of trilogies. Here’s how it breaks down:

The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped

  • The Song of Mavin Manyshaped
  • The Flight of Mavin Manyshaped
  • The Search for Mavin Manyshaped

 The True Game

  • King’s Blood Four
  • Necromancer Nine
  • Wizard’s Eleven

The End of the Game

  • Jinian Footseer
  • Dervish Daughter
  • Jinian Stareye

From what I can tell, only the middle trilogy is currently in print, and it’s in a collected volume called The True Game. It was actually the first trilogy written, and the first one I read, but The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped comes first chronologically in the story. You don’t have to read all three trilogies to get a good story; each book stands alone, and each trilogy stands alone, but they do build on each other to tell a deeper, broader story together.

The books tell of a world where people have various (for want of a better word) superpowers, that they call Talents. These Talents are rigidly classified and chronicled, with eleven pure Talents, and thousands of combinations between the eleven. The society is a sort of mediaeval feudal culture, with Talented people, called Gamesmen, ruling over unTalented folk, called Pawns. All the actions we think of as wars, plots, schemes, covert action, etc. are rolled up into the idea of the True Game, where the Talented Gamesmen vie against each other to impose their will on their surroundings.

So, you get Kings and Queens (with the Talent of Beguilement), with their ranks of Armigers (Flight), Tragamors (Telekinesis), and Sentinels (Pyrokinesis) running around, getting into battles (Games) and hatching plots (Games… starting to see?), and generally running roughshod over anyone who gets in their way.

That’s the background.

Enter into this a trio of characters over two generations who want things to change. First is Mavin Manyshaped, a Shifter (Shapechanging) who wants to escape her rather abusive family. She does so, and travels the world, getting pulled into situations where she winds up righting wrongs and saving underdogs. Next comes her son, Peter, also a Shifter, but raised not knowing that, or who his parents are. Peter isn’t really as meddlesome as Mavin, but he’s inherited her enemies, and picks up a couple of teachers along the way who are obsessed with an ancient word – “justice.” The last trilogy features Jinian, who becomes Peter’s lover. She has less Talent (well, maybe… you have to read the book to judge), but more of a drive for justice, and she winds up even more in the middle of things, dragging Peter and Mavin along with her.

Throughout the trilogies, you find out some very interesting things about the world, the people, the mysteries they live with, and the origins of the Talents. And, in the end, it comes down to a group of well-meaning, conscientious people making important decisions to try and make the world a better place.

They’re good reads.

Now, when I first read them, I thought they were great adventure stories. There is danger, and action, and quick thinking, and desperate plotting, and wild hope masquerading as a plan. The villains are interesting, and the heroes are likable, the plot twists enough to keep things interesting, and the endings are very satisfying. Good, standard fantasy escapism.

I mentioned them to an acquaintance some years ago, and he said something that has stuck with me. He said, “Sherri Tepper writes stories about people in appalling situations who are so used to them that they don’t even realize how appalling the situations are.”

Now, I sort of dismissed this at the time, because I had a very rosy memory of the books – how much fun they were, how light and entertaining. But it’s stuck in my head for all these years, and it really coloured my re-reading of the series.

Because he’s right.

When I went back and re-read the series, I started to see just how horrific the circumstances around the characters were. Never mind the abuse in Mavin’s family home; that was pointed out as a bad thing, and she got out of it. No, it was the little things that didn’t really get commented on, or only slightly in passing. The fact that people sent their children away to schools if they could at all afford it, simply because it kept them out of the way of Games which tended to kill them. The fact that people readily accepted the power of Kings and Queens, knowing it was a psychic imposition of will. The casual acceptance of having your mind read by any passing Demon who cared to.

And the frank admittance that all the Rules of the Game were noted most in their breaking, rather than in their following.

The Gamesmen are portrayed as having a casual sense of entitlement to anything they have the Talent to take, and Pawns are only considered if they are useful, or a hindrance. If they’re a hindrance, they’re dead. Talents feed on ambient heat to power them, so there are a couple of incidents of passing by battlefields where Pawns have frozen to death in the middle of summer because of all the heat being taken by the Gamesmen.

And slowly, slowly, over the course of the books, a handful of people look around, see that things are not right, and say, “Enough.”

I found it very interesting to read this series again, after so many years, through a completely different filter. It makes me think about the other filters I use as I read books: what expectations, assumptions, and beliefs colour my interpretation of the text. And I notice things.

I have, for example, a genre filter: I compare a book I’m currently reading to other books in the same genre. I have an author filter: I expect certain things from certain authors. I have nostalgia filters when I re-read some things (interestingly, not all things – some get trashed on re-reading, and I can’t imagine what I ever saw in them).

And there are certain archetypes of story that I filter for. For example, I like heroes who are clever and outmatched and succeed primarily by outthinking their enemies (Mavin Manyshaped, I’m looking at you). I also like heroes that struggle to do what’s right instead of what they want (FitzChivalry Farseer, for one). And when you combine the two, the results are especially pleasing to me (Miles Vorkosigan, for instance). When I read, I filter for these things, too.

In one interview I read with Guy Gavriel Kay, he talked about how, when he wrote Tigana (a great book, by the way), he tacked a sign up above his desk that said, “I want them to stay up crying with me.” That’s an interesting way to focus a book, and it lends a certain something to the finished product. Tigana is, in many ways, an anguished book, full of characters making difficult choices in impossible situations. And, though it is very satisfying, the ending isn’t one of unalloyed happiness.

I have a friend who loves Charles de Lint books (and rightly so, says I), but he only reads them during the fall. Somehow, they just don’t work for him at other times. Another interesting filter.

This summer at GenCon, I picked up Ken Hite‘s Tour de Lovecraft, a short critical review of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu stories. I’m starting to re-read some of the stories now, and am interested to see how they change based on what Ken has said about them.

So. I’m rambling. To sum up:

  1. Sherri S. Tepper’s True Game books rock.
  2. Despite the fact that this sounds suspiciously postmodernist, the mental filters you bring to a book can greatly change your experience of it.
  3. Everyone has different filters, and they can be interesting to think about.
  4. Understanding your own filters is an intriguing exercise.
  5. Guy Kay, Robin Hobb, and Lois McMaster Bujold rock.
  6. So does Charles de Lint.
  7. Ken Hite and Cthulhu go together like chocolate and peanut butter served up by something formless and cthonic.
  8. I want to try and post more.

And there you have it.

Rammed by the Black Goat of the Woods

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Just finished our first Arkham Horror game using the Kingsport Horror and Black Goat of the Woods expansions (along with the other three: Curse of the Dark Pharoah, Dunwich Horror, and The King in Yellow). It was a lot of fun, but ended badly for humanity.

Some observations:

  • I had to put a leaf into my dining table to hold all three gameboards, and use two side tables to hold the various stacks of cards and tokens. The game has always been big; now it’s BIG! We had to walk around the table a fair bit to move our characters, read the monster stats, reach our clue tokens, etc.
  • The rifts mechanic in Kingsport is a potentially fatal distraction. You can’t ignore it, but you can’t really focus too much on it. We had only three players, and that meant that we were pressed to try and get everything done without worrying about the rifts. By the time we started paying attention to them, everything was getting out of hand.
  • Heralds and Ancient Ones: Having a Herald in play makes the game more difficult. Having the Ancient One associated with the Herald in play makes the game especially hard. We played with Shub Niggurath and the Black Goat Herald, because I wanted to see how the new stuff in the expansion worked, and the synergy between the Herald and the Ancient One was pretty overwhelming. With a couple of extra players, I think we would have had some breathing room, but it still would have been a real challenge.
  • Kingsport recommends playing with multiple characters per player if you have a small group; once you add the third board in, there is a lot of territory to cover. And Kingsport can’t be ignored as safely as Dunwich could, because of the whole rift thing. In future, I think running with two characters each if we have fewer than five players is a good idea.
  • The Epic Battle variant added a lot of flavour to the final battle when Shub Niggurath broke through. The new mechanics were good, and the flavour text was great. However, the “You Lose” card came up as the first red card, which was somewhat disappointing. I think it would be a good idea to expand the two decks, and pick the appropriate number of green and red cards randomly at the start of the game. Just to shake things up a bit.

We all died in the final battle. Tom went down when Shub Niggurath arrived, because his previous character had been devoured trying a courageous stunt to take a token off the doom track, and his new character didn’t have any monster trophies left. I fell next, to a Dark Young that got summoned as part of the Epic Battle and the customized Ancient One plot decks (my ninth injury was a duplicate – another sprained ankle). Fera held on to the bitter end, but then that damned “You Lose” card showed up, just when she had Shub Niggurath on the ropes.

Anyway, it was one of the more brutal games we’ve played, and everyone said we needed to play more often, which I took as a positive sign. I mean, we’d just had our asses handed to us by Shub Niggurath and her flunky, and it made us want to play again.

That’s a good game, in my book.

Home Again

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I’m back from GenCon. As always, it was a real blast. I got back around 9:00 last night, and had to be up for work this morning, so my recollection is kind of chaotic, but I want to talk a little bit about it while it’s fresh.

Here we go, in no particular order:

  • Once again, I spent my time with Scott Glancy of Pagan Publishing and Jared Wallace of Dagon Industries, both fine gentleman. We shared the both with Shane Ivey and the Arc Dream Publishing crew, and they were a good bunch of fellows, as well.
  • Greg Stolze spent a lot of time in the both, flogging his games Reign and Dirty World. I got to know Greg back in the days I was writing for Unknown Armies, and it’s always a pleasure to spend some time with him.
  • Ken Hite, one of my favourite connoisseurs of the weird and the real and the intersection of the two, stopped by a few times. He’s got a new book out: Tour de Lovecraft. It’s a collection of his blog entries, and takes you on a tour through all 51 of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu stories. Good, good stuff. I bought two.
  • I got to touch base with Fred Hicks and Lenny Balsera of Evil Hat. They were both pretty busy, but it was good to shake hands and attach faces to names. Nice folks.
  • At the Pagan booth, we had the printer’s proof of one of their next books, Mysteries of Mesoamerica. My good friend and GenCon traveling partner, sculptor Clint Staples, wrote a big chunk of the book, and it’s been a long time coming out. But it’s more than worth the wait. This book is absolutely beautiful!
  • Had dinner a couple of nights with Gwen and Brian from Sigh Co. Met them last year, and they’re very nice people. Good to see them again.
  • Fantasy Flight Games is rapidly becoming the powerhouse of the show. I bought a new expansion for Arkham Horror from them that I didn’t even know was coming – The Black Goat of the Woods. There were about four other games I would have liked to pick up, but the budget can only be stretched so far.
  • Last year, I passed on the Campaign Coins, and I regretted it. This year, I bought the starter set, and feel much better about myself. They’re very nice.
  • Also picked up Aces & Eights, BRP, and Alpha Omega. Haven’t had much chance to get into them yet, though. Look for thoughts in future posts.
  • Didn’t get to play in Scott Glancy’s playtest this year, but he did talk to me some about the scenario and his thinking behind it. I just want to go on record as saying that there is something broken inside his very soul if he can come up with stuff like that, and I thank him for it.
  • Seemed to be a larger female turnout this year. More, there seemed to be more females buying game product for themselves this year. I like to see this; the hobby has a lot to offer everyone, regardless of gender, and it’s good to see it grow.
  • For those interested, the final tally for the count on Saturday was 43*.

So, it was a good trip, and I had a lot of fun. Thanks to everyone I spent time with down there. You guys are what makes the trip worthwhile.

 

*Those who know don’t need to ask. Those who ask don’t need to know.

Catching Up

By | | Dresden Files Playtest, Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?, What's he watching?
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Man, I have got to get on a more regular blogging schedule. Sorry for the neglect, folks.

Been a bit of a busy time round my place the past few weeks. Here’s what’s been going on:

Dresden Files RPG

Not a lot happening on this front. I’ve been lurking on the Burner list, and reading some blogs, and of course reading the new cut of the rules. The only real rules bit that’s come down so far has been the city creation stuff, and it’s pretty similar to the version we Bleeders saw. It’s nice to read the list and see that a lot of the Burners are having as much fun with it – and discovering as many cool things about it – as I did.

Mutant City Blues

I’ve had a few people say that they’re interested in trying this, but we’ve had scheduling issues. Summer is actually a pretty hard time to schedule games in our group. Especially pick-up games or one-shots. Many of the people I play with have kids out of school, and vacation trips, and all sorts of other things that come up in the summer. They’re willing to schedule around the regular, ongoing campaigns, but trying to shoehorn in a one-shot is difficult. Hopefully soon.

D&D 4E

I’m working on putting together a 4E campaign to start next year some time, probably after the Player’s Handbook II is released so that there are plenty of option for my players. However, people have been asking me to run a campaign – even a short one – and I wanted to try out the rules and get some familiarity with what works for me and what doesn’t. So, I started a campaign.

I sent out invites to eight people, hoping to get four. I got seven of the eight, plus one person asked to bring in a buddy. Yeah, I’m running with eight people. It’s a real crowd.

We’re using the Scales of War Adventure Path being published in Dungeon Magazine. We probably won’t finish it by the time I’m ready to start the new campaign, but it’ll give everyone a chance to have a taste of the system over a longer term than demos and one-shots. And I’ll get better at the game.

I’m not going to talk too much about the game – we’ve only had one session, and that was very combat heavy. What I do want to mention is the ease with which I was able to beef up the adventure to match my party. The adventure is written for five character; I have eight. It took me no more than an hour to go through and upgrade it to be a fair challenge for my larger party. Mostly, it just involved adding a few extra monsters, but I did have to add some traps/hazards, and I had to level up a solo monster to be a good challenge.

Under an hour. Sweet.

I also had to increase the treasure the way it talked about in the DMG; that took a little more guesswork, because the adventure had 14 treasure parcels to hand out, not the normal 10, so I had to increase the default numbers in the DMG to figure it out, but it was easy.

Anyway, it looks like it’s going to be fun.

The Dark Knight

Man. I love this movie. The performances, especially Heath Ledger’s Joker, are very good. The look is a little (well, a lot, really) brighter than Batman Begins, but there’s still the same sense of urban malaise that you need for Batman.

But the realy treat is the writing. The Nolans just get Batman. They get the rage and the obsession, which are easy, but they also get the hope and the diappointment, which are harder. Lots of times, they don’t come through.

But they do in this movie. You ache for Bruce Wayne fighting against the obsession that is overwhelming his life, all the while knowing that he has to give in to it if he wants to be able to live with himself. There are several moments throughout the movie where he reaches up to the light, hoping to leave the darkness behind, but, in the end, he always goes back to the darkness. He chooses to go back to the darkness. This is especially apparent in the last scene of the movie.

And the twisted, co-dependent relationship between Batman and the Joker is spot on. The Joker even sums it up at one point, saying (and I’m paraphrasing here), “We’re going to keep doing this forever. You won’t kill me because, well, you don’t do that. And I won’t kill you because you’re too much fun!” There are also a number of “jokes” by the Joker that simply happen and don’t get commented on, like the burning fire truck and the sign on the side of the semi trailer during the Harvey Dent assassination attempt. I like that the Nolans trust the audience enough to get these jokes, without having to shine a spotlight on them.

All in all, a great movie. If you like Batman, go see it. Even if you don’t like Batman, this movie may change your mind.

The West Wing

After talking to Jane Brooks, of MyLeftFootloose.com, at some length about Aaron Sorkin series, I started rewatching The West Wing. I’ve just finished the second season, which ends with one of my favourite episodes: Two Cathedrals. It’s a very powerful episode, with a lot of different threads coming together, and it ends with Jed Bartlet about to announce that he’s going to run for another term. The last eight or so minutes really stand out in my brain, because it’s set over the Dire Straits song, Brothers in Arms, and ends without Jed announcing that he has changed his mind and is going to run.

Another instance of Sorkin’s genius with storytelling, in my opinion. He often doesn’t show us the moment, because that would be anti-climactic. He shows us how you get to the moment, and then backs off to let us finish the job ourselves. He has the skill to lead us along with him, so that we know exactly where he’s going, and the trust to let us go the last distance on our own.

I love it.

GenCon Indy

My friend, Clint, and I are leaving very early tomorrow morning for the drive down to Indianapolis. We’re going to GenCon. Now, this isn’t something new for us – this will be our eighth trip down together, I think – but it looked for a while that I wasn’t going to get to make the trip. It worked out that I can, and I am almost as excited for this one as I was for the first one.

Anyway, I may be able to do some updates from GenCon, so check back. Of course, I may not be able to, so you might be disappointed. But I’ll try. And if any of you happen to be at the show, come on by Booth 1701, where I’ll be doing booth weasel duty for Pagan Publishing and Dagon Industries. I’ll be happy to say hello, and try and sell you some Cthulhu-related merchandise that you really don’t need, but really really want.

That’s about it for now. I promise not to take so long to post again.

First the Blood, Then the Fire

By | | Dresden Files Playtest, What's he playing?
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Looks like the second round of the Dresden Files RPG playtest is about to get underway. While the first round was the Bleeding Alpha, this one is the Burning Alpha, and it’s got a new graphic:

DFRPG Burning Alpha Playtest

DFRPG Burning Alpha Playtest

[EDIT: I am a moron. I haven’t been able to figure out how to put a graphic in this post yet.]
[EDIT: Got it. I think.]

We who were involved in the Bleeding Alpha are getting to see the files and try them out, and still talk about them, but the focus on this round is really on new folks trying out the game. The canny Evil Hat contingent is setting up a special mailing list for the Burners, while still encouraging us Bleeders to use our list.

So, what does that mean for me?

I don’t know that I can get the old gang together for another extensive playtest – it’s summer, now, and people are scattering. Also, I’ve run some number of one-shots and short adventures in the past several months, and people are starting to push me to do a longer campaign again. I don’t want to start a campaign using a test ruleset, so…

Besides, I’m still trying to find the time to do a test run of Mutant City Blues.

Still, I’m going to be reading the revised rules, and I’ll probably talk about some of the changes here. I may even revisit some of the play reports and characters, to show how they would change in the new rules.

Also, I encourage the new playtesters, you Burners out there, to send me a link to anything you post about the game. I’ll put it up here, and we can help keep people up to date on what’s happening.

The blood has been spilled. Now, the fire will purify.

Spies Like Us

By | | What's he watching?
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I’ve been watching a couple of TV shows about spies lately. I’m not sure why, but I am.  And I’m enjoying them. Both of them are really interesting looks at spies, from very different angles, with a lot of differences. But the thing that’s got me thinking is the fact that they have a lot of things in common, too; things that I like.

The first one is The Sandbaggers, which is a British show from the ’70s, and the other is Burn Notice, which is a current American show.

The Sandbaggers is pretty gritty, with most of the action taking place in the dingy offices and corridors of the British intelligence buildings, with occasional glimpses of the agents in the field. It is, in many ways, the polar opposite of the James Bond stuff. No one wants to use a gun unless they have to, and in that case things are already pretty much unsalvageable. There aren’t any cool gadgets or flashy cars or masquerading as international men of mystery. The story is all about gathering information, and making decisions when you know you don’t know enough. There are strong themes of loyalty vs. expedience, politics vs. patriotism, pragmatism vs. idealism, and the emotional toll that such questions take on people.

Burn Notice, on the other hand, is a fairly light show, with a lot more action. Every week, Michael Westen is taking on a new client, helping them straighten out a problem. There are guns, car chases, even a few gadgets. And it takes place in Miami, so there are lots of half-dressed women wandering around. There are some similar themes, though: loyalty vs. expedience, pragmatism vs. idealism, and the emotional toll are all explored, in addition to the question of who can be trusted when all your friends are professional liars, and your family is all accomplished amature liars.

So, what do I find in common between these two shows that makes me want to watch them both?

The trickster nature of the spies.

James Bond may look suave and genteel, but he’s not subtle; he’s intelligent, but not clever. He is, as M says in Casino Royale, a blunt instrument.

The spies in these shows are subtle, clever, intelligent, resourceful, and generally afraid of consequences. Willie Caine, the primary agent in The Sandbaggers, hates guns, and tries to avoid them as much as possible, though he’s skilled in their use. Michael Westen remarks how a hardware store is usually more useful to a covert operative than a gun, and proceeds to show you why.

There are layers and layers of deception in both the shows, showing the use of information and disinformation and information used as disinformation. The entire quest is to figure out what the other guy is doing, and what he knows about what you’re doing. Intelligence and counterintelligence.

Dirty tricks.

These are characters who live and die by their wits, not by their firepower. Sure, there’s a little bit of gunplay, and a chase here and there, but what’s really happening are the two sides are trying to outthink each other, to force their opponents to make a mistake, and then capitalize on it.

The other thing I really like about the shows is that they make it very clear the kind of price someone pays for living that way. Neil Burnside in The Sandbaggers is driven, alone, and very bitter. Michael Westen of Buirn Notice, though he comes off very charming when he needs to, seems almost dead inside – there are a few scenes when you see him put on his winning smile over a dead-eyed face when something unexpected happens.

They’re damaged goods.

Which makes sense when you consider the kinds of things they have to do every day. The lying, the deception, the danger… it’s got to wear on you. One of the lines in Burn Notice is, “People with happy childhoods don’t grow up to be spies.” You can see that.

Now, I know next to nothing about the real intelligence community. I don’t claim to be an expert on spies in any sense. I don’t know any, personally.*

But the way they are portrayed in these two shows makes dramatic, emotional sense. It feels right. And that’s what fiction needs more than actual accuracy.**

So, I like these shows. They appeal to my sense of what spies should be like. They are interesting, well-written, and tell good stories.

If that sounds interesting, check them out.

 

*As far as I know, that is.

**The value and cost of verisimilitude in fiction is a matter for another day.

The Name of the Wolfman… or something like that…

By | | What's he reading?
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I’ve been neglecting my blogging duties. Sorry. Busy time for me, settling into a new job, not much gaming going on.

But I have been catching up on my reading.

I just finished a pair of books that I really liked, and I want to talk about them. I found out about both of them through the news on Randy Milholland’s Something Positive webcomic*, and really, really enjoyed them.

(Incidentally, if you’re not familiar with Something Positive, you should check it out. It is brutally, savagely, often cruelly funny. I’ll warn you though; the language is strong, and some of the themes may offend you. They fill me with mad, vicious glee.)

Anyway, the books.

The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

The series is named The Kingkiller Chronicle, and the book is touted as Day One. When you read in, you find that it’s probably going to be a trilogy.

Now, I’d seen this book before, and dismissed it. I’m kind of tired with standard, generic fantasy novels. Especially the big thick ones that claim to be something new and groundbreaking, but wind up being Robert Jordan clones**. And I don’t like getting into a series that’s not complete, because of the way some of them, like The Wheel of Time***, just go on and on and on, with no sign of an ending.

So, I avoided it.

Then, I read about it on Something Positive, and went, “Huh.” Then these stunning reviews started showing up everywhere, and I finally gave in a bought a copy.

It is an amazing book.

On the surface, it’s a standard fantasy story, but it pushes all the right buttons for me. Most of the story is a flashback, with the main character telling his story to a scribe. See, he’s a pretty famous hero, or villain, depending on who you ask. And he wants his side of the story recorded, because he thinks it’s coming to an end.

So, the story within the story tells the tale of his life with his parents, who were wandering performers, how he came to be a street beggar and thief, his journey to the University, and his studies on his way to becoming an arcanist.

(Yeah, there’s shades of Harry Potter in it, for those who look, but seeing as J. K. Rowling wasn’t the first to tell that story****, only one of the more well known, it’s not a fair comparison. And in the story itself, you won’t see any real shades of Harry.)

Throughout it all, the main character is tracking down some ancient lore to solve a mystery that has been plaguing him for most of his life. This leads to a few “story within a story within a story” sections.

That’s the story. So, why do I like this book? There are a few reasons.

  • The writing is solid. Except in a few moments, when language surges to the forefront and captures you, the prose is clean and unobtrusive, letting the story come through clear and strong. No overblown attempt at art, but when Rothfuss reproduces poetry or wants to hit you with a scene that has a little extra weight, he can sling words with the best of them.
  • The nested narrative. Rothfuss uses it nicely to play with perception vs. reality, with one person’s view vs. another person’s view, with parceling information, with controlling the flow and pace, and with establishing dramatic irony. He says a lot of very interesting things about the nature of story with it, and he does it without ever once losing his audience. The tension between the present timeline story, the flashback, and the legends and stories in the flashback could have been confusing; instead, they weave together, leading the reader flawlessly and cleanly where the story goes.
  • The hero. He’s everything I love in a hero: cunning, determined, clever, tricky, and human. He’s a trickster-type, an unapologetic liar, a careful planner, and he’s always just about to overextend himself and fall on his face. And he does fall, now and then. He makes bad choices, some of which he recognizes as he tells his story years later, and some that he doesn’t. When he’s a fifteen-year-old boy, he thinks and acts like a fifteen-year-old boy. And when he gets knocked down, he gets back up again.

So. The Name of the Wind. I recommend you read it. And the next book, The Wise Man’s Fear, is coming out later this month. (EDIT – As noted in the comments, I am wrong about this. It won’t be out until next year. Dammit.)

The Wolfman, by Nicholas Pekearo

Okay. I’m gonna tell you the set-up, but don’t just stop reading. Deal?

Okay.

It’s the story of a werewolf that stalks criminals.

Still with me? Good.

Because that’s not really what the book is about.

Really, it’s the story of what you do when you know you’re a monster, and you can’t stop being a monster. There’s no secret cabal of werewolves, or hidden shadow war where you get to be a hero. You can’t even embrace the wildness, go out to the wilderness and run with the other animals.

Because the wolf has to kill every time it comes out. Kill a person.

This isn’t some strange bloodline, or the result of a bite. This is a curse, and a curse has to hurt. Right in your soul.

And the best you can do is hang on to the one little bit of light: if you focus when you change, you can give the wolf a target.

What sort of accommodation can you make with yourself, to let you go on? That’s what the story is about.

The main character in the book is battered and broken, having held up under the curse for over twenty years. He’s not the nicest guy in the world, but he’s got his own ideas of honour and right. He’s made his accommodation with the beast inside him, and found a way to live with it, and himself.

And then it gets taken away.

It’s a short read, and the prose is very bleak and spare. It’s a first-person narrative that jumps around in time a bit, giving you the backstory in little dribs and drabs. And it doesn’t flinch away from the sheer horror of this kind of life; in fact, it throws it into stark relief with the calm, detached way things are described. When you realize that the horror has become an acceptable piece of this man’s life, there’s a special kind of chill that comes over you.

Read it. Trust me.

You may also have seen some of the press about the book: the author was an auxiliary police officer in New York City, and was killed in the line of duty before this book, his first published novel, was released. I don’t want to minimize that sort of sacrifice, but it’s not what makes the book worth the read. The story and writing do that all on their own. What the unfortunate loss of Nicholas Pekearo means to those of us who didn’t have the privilege to know him is that the series envisioned as following The Wolfman will not happen.

And that’s really too bad.

Because that man could write.

* My friend, Chris, will claim that he told me about The Name of the Wind, but I say that he’s a liar and a fraud, unfit for human company. Whaddaya think about THEM apples, Binky?

** He’s the big one to emulate these days, it seems. Ten years ago, it was Mercedes Lackey. Ten years before that, David Eddings. And, of course, every now and then, someone tries to redo Tolkien.

*** Don’t get me wrong; I liked the first few books. But stories need an ending, and the inestimable Mr. Jordan seemed to be wandering around blindly trying to find one.

**** Orson Scott Card wrote a rather sharp article about J. K. Rowling and her lawsuit against the publisher of The Harry Potter Lexicon. Amid the anger, there are some very cogent, interesting points about the originality of ideas.