RPG Notes

I’ve been trying to find a post on Steve Darlington’s LiveJournal for the past ten minutes (this is one of the reasons why I don’t blog on LiveJournal; there’s no way to search someone’s archive). Some time ago, maybe a year, maybe three, he was posting about a D&D campaign he was in. He wrote something along the lines of the inherent silliness of the setting, and how he couldn’t help imagining cavalry charges straight up castle walls whenever he read the spiderwalk potion description.

In the meantime, I found a more recent post where he relates his reactions to D&D 4th Edition, which is just as relevant. Oh, sorry: The reason I’ve been ransacking Steve’s LJ is because I’ve been listening to the podcasted Actual Play recordings of Tycho and Gabe of Penny Arcade and Scott Kurtz of PvP playing Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition with Wizards of the Coast’s GMs. The recordings are pretty damn fun. All three of the players are witty, creative guys – which, as they’re behind two of the most popular webcomics out there, is no real surprise – and they attack the concepts of the session and the results of their rolls with gusto. Probably the most hilarious moments come from Mike Krahulik, who has never played a tabletop RPG before, and his character Jim Darkmagic, to whom he always refers in the third person – “Jim thinks you guys are pretty fuckin’ lucky to have Jim”, “Jim casts Jim’s Magic Missile”, “Jim goes to the bathroom and deals 5 damage.” It seems like an example of the kind of silly that Steve was advocating.

Continue reading "Bringing the Silly in D&D" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Further to my rant about what I want out of an RPG yesterday, I'd like to draw your attention to a YouTube video posted by a man whom I think is heading down a road I'd like to follow on.

Continue reading "I Think John Wick Said It Best..." »

Posted by IMAGinES at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I believe every set of rules is intended to support a particular flavour of awesome, even though it mightn’t necessarily succeed. D&D supports a different kind of awesome than Dogs in the Vineyard. Feng Shui is pretty clear on its awesome, though. Its awesome comes about in the fight scenes, when the players are firing off each other and the GM to create memorable, fast-paced, stunt-laden action. It virtually requires players to be not only primed to fire when the fights roll around, but also be economical with between-fight scenes. In order to keep the snap of the session going, each scene that occurs between fights must either tie directly into one or more PCs’ melodramatic hooks or feature some really cool interplay (a’la the Vince & Jules “Big Macs in France” scene at the start of Pulp Fiction); otherwise, they should be excised swiftly and cleanly.

Continue reading "Standing Up for My Tastes in RPGs" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It was a pretty geeky weekend. Friday night saw some of The Forsaken Ones getting together for a training session. Karlos had found some neat cubbyholes in the geometries of the Halo 3 maps Guardian and Construct, so we spent a little time getting to know them before launching into a game of Team Oddball using the AussieXbox.net Team Rumble variant. I go into some more detail here, but suffice to say I found out a few things about how my fellow clan members play, especially those who reckon they despise the objective-based gametypes. I’m hoping we can get some more training in this coming Friday evening, and I want to try and give the session some more structure.

Saturday was busy. My former mentee got back in touch a couple of months ago, and Vickie and I have been hanging out with him and his family lately. Mid-last week he called and asked whether I’d like to go and play some laser tag at Crystal Cascades with him and his stepdad; unfortunately, when we got there for the early morning session no one else showed up, so I wound up driving back home a half an hour later. Kid and his stepdad are pretty cool, though, so I had a good chat with them in the meantime!

Continue reading "Feng Shui Forsaken" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In a little under sixteen hours, I’m going to be running the fourth session of my Star Wars: Tarmadan Sector campaign for my players. Naturally, I’ve saved all the prep-work until the last minute. I doubt I’ll be burning the proverbial midnight oil, as I have some shopping to do tomorrow morning, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be up until around twelve to finish things off.

Last week’s Feng Shui session was fun. If you’ve never played it, Feng Shui is meant to encourage the kind of frenetic, stunt-laden set pieces seen in Hong Kong action films. Our GM, Leon, stripped out the standard setting in Feng Shui for one of his own, a cross between Blade and The Terminator where we players (Tracey, Patrick, Tracey’s daughter and myself) are trying to halt a future vampire apocalypse. I found myself coming up with lines of dialogue for my character more readily than improvisational stunts, and it was a great relief to be sitting on the other side of the GM’s screen again!

Continue reading "Movies and Movie-Based RPGs" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 09:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just thought I'd hip you all to a neat little podcast by a pair of fans (and GMs) of the Star Wars Saga Edition roleplaying game. The hosts talk about general Saga Ed. system matters (the second show has an interesting discussion on why it's better to multiclass into Jedi than take it at level 1), particular issues (is the Ithorian bellow too overpowered? did the Gamorrean get boned in Saga?) and general silliness (including guest spots from good-ole-Stormtrooper TK-421 and postcards from Commander Cody).

The home page is here, and you can subscribe via your favourite podcast manager here.

Posted by IMAGinES at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You're not going to believe this. If it weren't so utterly in character for me, I wouldn't believe it either.

I'd spent a lot of time last week prepping the next session of my Star Wars Saga game, which was meant to be on Saturday at 1PM. I was pretty happy with what I had; I spent Saturday morning printing out NPC stat blocks, writing a session summary sheet and thinking about fight scenes. I hole-punched everything neatly and put it in a ring-binder, then put binder, rulebook, the notebook I've been using exclusively to make campaign notes in, dice and pencils in the draw-string D&D bag I got at last year's Spring Revel.

Twelve PM rolls around, so I say goodbye to my wife and take everything out to the car - whereupon I realise I've forgotten my car keys. I put the bag on the roof of the car, go back inside, get the keys, start my car's engine, open the gates, drive through them, close them again, then drive down the road to the petrol station, fill the tank, pay, then start the twenty-five-or-so kilometre journey to Simon & Cristel's place.

Continue reading "Another Campaign Almost Toast..." »

Posted by IMAGinES at 04:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

For those of you not really familiar with my little hobby, let me offer you some links to those better able to express the influence that two guys in a garage had on today's world:

• Ross Winn, formerly of R. Talsorian Games (tabletop RPGs) writes, Farewell, Seeker.
• Tabletop roleplayers talk about what they did the night Gary left.
• Popular computer and video game review site GameSpy posts reminiscences of noted electronic game designers.
• Wizards of the Coast, home of Dungeons & Dragons since the early part of the decade, says farewell to Gary.
• Wil Wheaton, arguably the most popular geek on the Internet, shares his love of D&D.

Finally, Steve Jackson, head of Steve Jackson Games (probably the second-biggest RPG publisher behind Wizards of the Coast), sums Gygax's influence up best: "If not for Dungeons & Dragons, "adventure game" would still mean "cardboard chits on a hexmap." Which I love dearly, but would it ever have gotten out of the garage? And that's the least of it. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson didn't just remake a hobby. They impacted all of Western culture. Fantasy fiction would still be a backwater had not D&D built an audience and a new generation of writers. Lord of the Rings would be something taught in college English classes, not a blockbuster movie trilogy. And consider: The direct lineal descendant of D&D is World of Warcraft, which is, all by itself, what? A billion-dollar business now?"

Posted by IMAGinES at 08:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s old news now, I’m sure, but I didn’t want to let it go without a remark. Yesterday, one of the two creators (certainly the better known one) of Dungeons & Dragons, E. Gary Gygax, passed away at his home. He was 69 years old.

If you want to find tributes to Gary, Google will fix you up. Personally, I like this one by Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade – the strip is pretty good, too. While, like nearly every gamer, my first exposure to the hobby was D&D, I’ve never laid eyes on a copy of the original rules and only bought a version of D&D - 3rd - for the first time back in 2001. My first actual game of D&D is a study in irony; EvilHayama DMed his “red box” Basic Rules for the Cazman and I in the first or second year of High School, and of the three of us, only I became a serious hobbyist (and primarily GM). I feel I owe a more direct debt to designers like Wujcik (himself battling life-threatening illness), Costikyan and Pondsmith for hooking me into RPGs than Gygax.

Continue reading "RIP Gary Gygax" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s been a pretty damned good month so far. Quite a bit of stuff’s been going on; I’ve just not got around to blogging about it yet. An exhausting weekend of garden work and Halo 3 has cleared enough junk out of the way of the writing urge. Let's kick this off with some gaming.

To start off with, I’m GMing a roleplaying campaign. If you’ve been keeping up with my RPG-related posts over the past few years, you’ll have read about my increasing interest in independently-published RPGs and my desire to run titles like Dogs in the Vineyard, Primetime Adventures and Burning Empires.

Thus, it may come as some surprise that I'm running Star Wars: Saga Edition, a game about as un-indie as I can get (it's from the same company that publishes the venerable Dungeons & Dragons). I played it at Spring Revel Down Under at the beginning of October and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I’d like to say that I enjoyed the session so much I bought the rulebook except I caved into my gamer-geek urges and bought the bloody thing the day before.

Continue reading "Star Wars: A New Campaign" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 08:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The 360 went in the post to Xbox Customer Service on Wednesday, so with any luck I should have it back by mid-November. I doubt I’ll have any trouble; Podge’s 360 got all Red Ring of Death on him a few months ago and he got it back in fairly short order (the refund of the repair charges took a little longer, though).

Which has, of course, given me more time to get some other things done. The first is to get back into the garden; I mowed the lawn and fixed the fence of a smaller garden bed near the front gate that we turned over a couple of weeks ago. Tomorrow is whipper-snippering and clearing the yard of dead leaves (not to mention dog poo – Vickie’s granted me the household title of “bomb disposal expert”).

I’ve also got back into RPGs. I think I’ve already written that the “Prelude to Defiance” module I played at Spring Revel Down Under back in October had me keen on playing some more. Well, thankfully I have my chance. On Saturday October the twentieth, I trooped up to Edge Hill to get together with Simon and Cristel, Patrick and Tracey, and Sam to make characters and do a touch of world-building for the Star Wars campaign I’m going to run using the Saga Edition rules. I’m pretty happy with how we went, although I still think I could’ve done a few things better.

Continue reading "Gardens and Gamorreans" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 06:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I read a couple of posts online recently that helped me put into words some thinking I’ve occasionally kicked around my brainspace in the last year or so.

Via the Burning Wheel forum, I came to a post on the web log of a fellow named James Wallis (the name rings a bell, but I’m not sure from where). Anyway, in this posting James discusses heroism and how both computer/video games and tabletop RPGs treat it. Please, go and read it, even though I’m going to tell you the gist of it, which is that computer/video games have made failure uninteresting and dull, and that the best, most meaningful way to reverse that is to give the player “actual challenge”, which Wallis basically defines as the consequences of risk to more than just the character’s life, to what the character holds dear outside of personal survival.

Continue reading "Heroism in Digital and Tabletop Gaming" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 04:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Spring Revel Down Under 2007 wound up a couple of hours ago. My general experiences at the event were chronicled over on the MySpace, but I’d like to add some more detailed thoughts about the experience here.

Firstly, I think I’ll take a bit more time for my next con and try a broader variety of stuff. I mentioned in the MySpace post that the Ruins of Discovery back-to-back module was very much a dungeon crawl, which suited the very tactical players at my table fine but left me, an inexperienced D&D player, a bit out in the cold; my sole effective capability was the casting of magic missile and any other action or suggestion was criticised as a bad move (the annoying thing was, from a “get the party in and out alive” standpoint they weren’t wrong).

Continue reading "Spring Revel Down Under 07 Review" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 09:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the last week, some big news spread across the RPG hobby ether, news that I think many had been halfway expecting for a while. Wizards of the Coast, publisher of roleplaying games, colelctibe card and miniatures games, finally announced that it will release a fourth edition of the grand-daddy RPG, Dungeons & Dragons, in mid 2008. As with the previous two editions (well, technically, edition and a half), this new edition will consist of three core rulebooks: the Player’s Handbook, the Dungeon Master’s Guide and the Monster Manual. If the third and 3.5 editions are anything to go by, each of these books will be at least two hundred and fifty glossy, full colour pages long, with hard covers.

Now, I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one hand I own the 3.5 editions of all three rulebooks, plus the Eberron Campaign Setting. In total, these cost me around $170, and I find myself a bit sore at the thought of these books made redundant in one fell swoop.

Continue reading "Fourth Edition" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 09:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I’ve been sampling the wonderment that is an iPod nano for the past couple of months now. Young Brook’s hand-me-down is now full of Steely Dan, Def Leppard, The War of the Worlds, Flogging Molly and assorted other musics (yeah, okay, fine, including John Farnham). Bu the really great thing about it, especially combined with its iTunes master application, is podcasts. The iTunes service will track podcast feeds via XML and RSS and will automatically download the latest shows of any podcasts I subscribe to. I can take them with me in the iPod and catch up on subjects of interest during my lunch hour, all without bothering Vickie with any annoying voices or accents.

So what am I subscribed to?

Continue reading "Podcast Preferences" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over on the MySpace page, I mention that I’ll be running a roleplaying game session on Saturday week. Instead of contacts I’ve made through the hobby, though, my players will be friends to whom I’ve explained the hobby and who expressed interest. I, of course, worked myself up into a bundle of nerves after sending out the invitation – yes, the usual “giving up gaming” crisis – and Vickie prescribed a course of yardwork. She’s been going like gangbusters in the yard while I’ve been at work this past while, and last weekend was my turn to do some honest work for a change. I wound up helping Karl cart around forty concrete sleepers from his stepfather-in-law’s place to our yard, then yank up our hardwood sleepers- most of which had rotted through – and take them to the place of a friend who has a pit in his backyard that needs filling. We still need to get the concrete sleepers in and bedded properly, but that’ll most likely be a job for this weekend.

Anyway, now that the usual panic is over, I’m looking forward to Saturday week. I know of at least one of the people I invited is really looking forward to the day, which, if Vickie is amenable, means I can run something like The Shadow of Yesterday. I have the feeling that InSpectres is going to be the game of choice. It’s always been the go-to game around here for introducing people to roleplaying games because it’s an almost-guaranteed fun generator.

Posted by IMAGinES at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I popped into my Wiki today, fearing that it had become a haven for Wikispam in my absence, only to discover that it seems to have broken down. Every page is giving me an SQL database error message.

I’m not sure if I’ll ask Marcus whether he can fix it up. I think today was the first time in a good couple of months that I’d gone anywhere near it. Also, it’s not really being used as I hoped it would; the various campaigns mooted in the last six months have all tripped at the gate and I lost interest in the last Lexicon game I tried to organise, many moons ago. In that regard, I think I’ll just take it down to make room for more blog posts. (I still have to do some fix-ups on Vickie’s blog…)

Continue reading "Wiki Down; Gaming Down" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 05:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So as I mentioned in the last post, Karl's over here today finishing up the panelling of the laundry walls. Ten minutes ago, Vickie tells me that Karl's just been showing her this new tool he's got: a knockrometer. "You know what it is?" she asked.

"What, he knocks on the wall or something?" I said.

"No, a hammer," Vickie replied.

I had a chuckle, then went back to getting changed after a hard day in the garden (Vickie had a harder one, but still).

A minute later, I was suddenly seeing an Alpha Complex R&D lab, with a high-end-of-the-spectrum technician handing a knockrometer to some hapless RED-clearance Troubleshooter.

"Wait a second - this is a hammer!" the 'Shooter says.

"No, citizen, it's a knockrometer," the tech replies.

"Now hang on, I wasn't born yesterdaycycle," the 'Shooter insists, "and this is definitely a hammer."

"Oh, really? And what security clearance are you, friend citizen?"

"RED."

"No wonder, when you can't tell the difference between a hammer and a knockrometer."

Ahh, PARANOIA. Someday, I must run thee again...

Posted by IMAGinES at 06:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

You know, I noticed that roleplaying games seem to be dominating my waking thoughts much less than they used to. I think my last post related to RPGs was, what, mid-March? Strange, only a month, but it seems a long time ago.

As Vickie recently observed, I tended to filter everything social through an RPG filter. If I were organising a get-together, it would be oriented around the local gamers, and although I liked them, it was our common interest in the hobby that I was organising the meet-up around. I’ve been turning that around recently; David dropped over last night for a good chat with Vickie and I (and, I’ll confess, I showed the 360 off), and tonight we’re off to a mentoring scheme get-together and a dinner with some friends whom I met through work. There’re still quite a few folks we haven’t seen in a while and would like to get together with, and some of them are gamers, but the shared interest is only part of why we want to keep in touch (and no longer the dominant part for me, either). Given half a chance, I’d still love to run a Burning Empires campaign, but I don’t, you know, need to. "Successful Gamer" isn't really tied into my self image any more.

Continue reading "Exchanging Addictions" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 02:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Now that I’m past yesterday’s minor bout of depression, let me have a look at what’s on my plate at the moment and how I want to organise it:

• First and foremost, as always, is Vickie. Our recent lack of readies means we’ve not been getting out much. This weekend we’re turning that around by going out to see Wild Hogs, as I mentioned. I don’t want that trip to be a flash in the pan, though, and after going over our income and budget again, we’ll be able to afford to go out more often. We have some friends who we’ve not seen in a little while, so it’s about time we made some phone calls.

My other priorities are, in no particular order:

Continue reading "Priorities and Scheduling" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 09:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Remember that Burning Empires campaign some friends and I were getting set to run? Unfortunately, one told me tonight that the game wasn't quite his cup of tea, and has decided to step away.

Although I could try and rope in another player, I have quite a bit on my plate at the moment: mentoring, trying to organise an extension on our home loan, committing to play in Simon's MegaTraveller game, making sure I actually work to keep the house we live in clean and well-maintained. This last I tend to neglect when I get a bee in my bonnet about a game; in fact, I have been neglecting it in my mania for Burning Empires. I might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but for the moment at least I want to try and get my life a bit better organised and disciplined.

Continue reading "On The Back-Burner" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 08:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I got game!

Post-game dissection of GM technique here. Also, mostly-burned world for new campaign here.

Posted by IMAGinES at 10:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Remember I mentioned Vickie's toothache? She has the feeling that it's due to an abscess underneath one of her teeth. For the past few days, she's been holding and wiggling the offending tooth to try and alleviate the pain. She's also been using Nurofen and toothache drops but to little avail.

Between various expenses over the past six months and helping out family members who haven't yet paid us back, our credit cards are maxed out again; Vickie cannot afford to see a dentist. I'm not willing to let that stand, so I'm getting rid of some RPG books that I've barely touched since we moved up here. By some, I mean forty-two, and by RPG books, I mean my entire Heavy Gear collection.

My asking price of $300 might seem a bit pricey, but that's just over $7 per book without even factoring in the cost of the tactical game boxed set. I'd appreciate it very much if you could bid and/or spread the word around to any of your gaming friends.

Posted by IMAGinES at 06:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Hello, everyone. The last week or so has been – well, exhausting, but not particularly busy. It’s just been so damned hot up here!

Long Weekend Gaming seemed like a good idea at the time, but although the gang at the meet-up were generally accepting of the idea, responses to the e-mails I sent out were slim. Instead, I had more interest in running a game on the weekend just gone, and not from any of the gang who turned up to the get-together! Patrick and Scott, the two guys who recently moved to Cairns, were keen for some game, any game, so I organised a session starting at 1PM on Sunday the 21st. I hoped I’d be able to run the Fires Over Omac demo for Burning Empires, but Vickie had previously made clear that she found the main enemy in Burning Empires repulsive, and the demo needs at least three players. And although Vickie is keen on Dogs in the Vineyard, she’s still suffering from not just neuralgia but also toothache (more on that later).

Continue reading "InSpecting Frustration" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 06:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the last week or so, I've had two people get in touch with me via e-mail after having moved, or moved back, to Cairns. Guess what? They're looking for a game. They found my web log, read a few posts and decided to get in touch!

This is bloody great! Putting "Cairns" and various phrasings of "roleplaying game" in my website's meta tags has really paid off. Last night, I sent out an e-mail to my gaming contacts about organising another gamers' get-together on Saturday, January the 13th, and I'm hoping both of the gamers who got in touch can make it!

Posted by IMAGinES at 08:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A couple of days ago, Vickie happened upon a printout I'd made of a post on the Burning Wheel Forum about the Vaylen, the alien enemies in the Burning Empires RPG. She read it, and found herself being repulsed by the description of the Vaylen's conquest of humanity, so much so that she wouldn't be interested in playing in a BE campaign. She compared it to the life cycle of the Alien in the Alien movies which I've long-known she has a negative interest in seeing (it put her off another chance to see her favourite aliens in action in Alien Vs. Predator).

Continue reading "Dogs in the Workplace" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yeah, I've been hanging out on The Burning Wheel Forum lately, kinda sorta to get my "lving vicariously through others' games" fix but also to get a better feel for how Burning Empires works before I play it. And regardless of the former, it looks as though I'm well on track with the latter.

Continue reading "Wherein I Grok Burning Empires" »

Posted by IMAGinES at 12:08 AM |