On Winning

 For one, brief moment...in this moment...I feel like I'm on top of things.

This is not a very common feeling for me; so much of the time I feel like I'm running behind...like I'm constantly trying to do the bare minimum to tread water or stay afloat or get just enough done so that things don't completely fall apart. It's like the pressure (I imagine) of going into the 9th inning of a ball game with a one run lead...you're winning, but it's a struggle to make sure you don't give up the tying (or go ahead!) run, knowing that you'll be batting the bottom of your order against a really good closer if you somehow screw things up.

Or something like that.

At this moment, I'm feeling comfortable. To continue the baseball analogy, this morning feels like we're in the 4th inning and have a five run lead. Yes, there's still ball to be played...several innings worth...but for the moment, we're taking a breather, cruising a little bit. It's not so imperative to press at the moment...it's not so necessary to hold on for dear life. 

I savor these moments: they're few and far between, and they don't last. Tomorrow, for example, is Saturday and we have a soccer game at 9am (Sofia), a playoff volleyball game at 2pm in Bellevue (Diego), and 5pm Mass in Shoreline for the anniversary of my mother's death. On Sunday we'll be hosting Sofia's birthday party (I'll be picking up cupcakes at 10am), Diego's golf at 11ish (unless he skips it for Sofia's party) possibly another playoff volleyball game at 1pm (if we win Saturday), plus a flag football game at 5pm, and (hopefully) dinner reservations in the evening. And sometime between now and tomorrow, I have to pick up supplies and such for the party, and it would probably help to get her a gift of some sort...tricky since the kids get out of school at noon today.

This moment is simply the calm before the storm.

Sometimes, I wonder at how games like Dungeons & Dragons...complex games that take time and effort to master...were ever invented, let alone became popular. Because they WERE popular when I was a kid; popular enough, anyway, that most kids had at least heard of D&D (and, thus, their parents), even if they hadn't played the game. We had sports and school and church and stuff, too, back in the 1980s but we seemed to have far more time for playing D&D then we do now. Hell, we had more time for a LOT of stuff that my kids don't seem to have: bike riding and camping trips and books...man, I read so many books in my youth. So many.

But I know what's different now: we live in the Age of the Screen. The television, the game console, the laptop, the smart phone, the streaming services...all things the eat up the time. 

Yes, of course they offer plenty of convenience and time-saving: my wife only needs to go into an office twice per week, I can write books while parked on my couch, birthday parties can be stocked via Amazon orders and bills can be paid without needing to write checks and place them in the mail. No need to take cooking classes or higher handy-people when How-To videos abound for free on the internet.

And, yet, the screen is mesmerizing, hypnotic, consuming. I can waste hours over the course of the day reading wikipedia entries or streaming useless videos on worthless subject matter. My family can (and does) spend hours of our "free" time watching television shows in the evenings and filling "empty" moments on the weekends. My kids will (when allowed) blow hours of their childhood lives playing nonsensical video games, rather than exercising their own creativity and imagination...and they fail, so often (so, so often) at any sort of self-direction outside of using a game console or screen device for game play. 

At least the weather is getting nicer and I know they will (of their own volition) spend more time in the yard, playing football and baseball and badminton. But indoors, when the sun goes down or the rain comes out? It's back on the screens, more often than not, rather than choosing something NON-screen related. Unless I am there and available for them.

This was not the case in my youth: we had only one screen (the television) and it had less than a half-dozen channels. When my parents were unavailable (which was MOST of the time), my brother and I were forced to entertain ourselves: reading, playing, gaming, or just making shit up. I feel like we even talked more...with each other, with our friends...but perhaps that's a false memory. My kids certainly talk with us (parents) a LOT, if not each other, and there were plenty of times I was absorbed in some book or other rather than engaging with my brother. 

Yeah, that one's probably inaccurate. 

*sigh*

I sat down to write an article "On Winning" and its turned into the usual Old Man Yelling At Clouds post. I am getting to be a geezer, darn it...just in case there wasn't already enough evidence of that. Mm. Let's try to salvage something:

With regard to volleyball, I wrote back in February that youth sports are a wonderfully safe way for kids to learn how to fail, building character calluses that will give them some durability against the future blows life deals out. I also wrote that I expected a lot of failure this season and hoped that it would still be both fun and useful.

Well, it turns out we've had much less failure then I anticipated. The players have been eminently coachable, and the amount of effort and athleticism they've squeezed from their bodies is simply remarkable. We have, for the most part, been under-sized and under-manned in every single game we've played (the sole exception was against a team comprised entirely of 7th graders playing up a year) and still managed to roll out enough victories to be playoff eligible. Every single player on our squad of nine is lacking in one or more key areas: size, speed, skill, confidence, discipline, jumping, serving. And yet they compensate for each others' weak ares and they are scrappy as hell; even the games we've lost (with one exception) have been "tough outs" for our opponents. 

I am immensely proud of them (in case you hadn't guessed). They are playing their best volleyball right now, at the end of the season, and they are excited and eager to play more, to win, in the playoffs. 

And this is the other wonderful thing about youth sports: when it's working, it should be building kids' confidence and sense of self. Team sports, especially, are useful as players find ways to contribute to the team's overall success: yes, some players are stronger than others, but everyone gets their moment to shine. Everyone can celebrate their teammates' individual victories; everyone can be there to support each other in hard moments (and know they have that support). It is so easy to get kids...young, impressionable humans...to gel as a cohesive unit, when you give them an opportunity to play and have an objective for their focus. School pride, for example, or a championship run.

Again, old edition D&D is much like this. Players are a team of disparate individuals, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and yet each necessary and valuable contributors to the team's success. And when they are successful...working with and for each other, picking each other up, doing their own part...that success breeds enthusiasm and energy, eagerness and engagement. All rallied around - and directed towards - a common, shared goal or objective.

Coaching and DMing aren't all that different. In both cases, my work mainly consists of opening my players' eyes so that they SEE what it is they're doing and why. To help them understand the value of both themselves AND their teammates. To FOCUS them so that they can be successful, together, despite their differences.

There is, sadly, not enough of this in our world today (yes, yes, the curmudgeonly opinion of one old geezer). For my own kids, it's important (to me) that I wring out every last drop...for their sake.

Happy Friday, folks.

: )

The Vids

[man, I've been writing some longwinded posts lately]

Waaaaay back in the comments on my "Drift" post, John Higgins wrote:

When I started playing in the 90s, we had two texts to draw from when learning how to play D&D: we had the Classic D&D Game boxed set (which has pretty much all of the same rules as Mentzer Basic and Moldvay Basic, any differences are minor to the point of trivial), and we had whatever AD&D 2nd Edition hardcovers and splatbooks we could get our hands on with what little money I and my fellow teenagers could scrape together (and the text of 2nd Edition is *terribly* prescriptive, always harping on the reader to practice "good roleplaying" over desiring high stats or powerful magic items or a powerful character, really driving home the dissonance between the venerable AD&D rules and the then-ascendant "trad" culture that said RPGs were all about story and character). 

And what did my friends and I learn from these texts? Very little, actually, because before we had ever rolled our first d20, we had already been thoroughly corrupted by JRPGs - Final Fantasy VII in particular - and assumed without even paying a jot of attention to the texts or the rules of (A)D&D that a role-playing game was a story simulator with some combat rules bolted on, just like the console and PC RPGs we were already familiar with. And so that was how we (mis-?)(ab-?)used (A)D&D.

This was a comment I meant to come back to, but never did (in my defense, I did have a lot of other stuff I wanted to jot down on Ye Old Blog before forgetting about it). However, John's comment in Friday's post about Second Edition Story Awards gave my brain a poke:

While I would never defend 2nd Edition's XP system, I'll say that it at least gets a perfectly functional implementation in the Infinity Engine video games (Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale). Monsters are worth exactly as much XP as in the tabletop 2e core rules, but every time the party completes a task or mission or quest (or slays the "final boss" of a dungeon), some fixed XP award is granted which appears to bear no formulaic relation to anything else (beyond, likely, the built-in assumption that the party will be of a certain level when they complete the task, and so the reward is vaguely commensurate with the difficulty and XP needed for a party of that level). I would even go so far as to say that Baldur's Gate is an example of the 2e XP system "working as intended" - insofar as it deviates from the text of the rulebooks but lines up quite well with how I remember every single 2e-playing group I've ever encountered actually running things.

So let's talk about the video game thing. Specifically computer RPGs that emulate fantasy adventure gaming in a style similar to Dungeons & Dragons.

I have, of course, played a couple/three of these over the years, but probably not as many as one might expect of a geeky D&D blogger. Fact is, my family didn't even have a personal computer in the house till sometime around 1988 (an Amiga 500 for the curious), which was purchased around the same time I was entering high school. This probably seems crazy to folks now, but my parents even debated whether or not we NEEDED a computer (this is before the ubiquitous internet, young 'uns) and while, sure, it was easy enough in those days to say "computers are the FUTURE," there wasn't much imagination for what one would USE a computer for in the home. I mean, we had a typewriter for goodness sake (which I used to type term papers and such in middle school). Would a word processor alone be enough reason to justify the expense? 

Because the MAIN thing most kids were doing with PCs in those days was playing video games, and my parents weren't big fans of such things...for any number of reasons (most valid). They certainly weren't getting the 'puter for that. We may have had some idea that I would have learned how to code or write BASIC with the thing...but once we got it home we found the thing's proprietary "user friendly" OS was absolute shit for this purpose (you couldn't even ACCESS code with it), so those dreams died on the vine. In the end, it did turn out to be a pretty shitty investment. I wrote a few papers using Word Perfect in high school (that I could just have easily done by hand), and I played a handful of video games before the system became obsolete (sometime around 1992). But my parents were divorced by then, and I was in university (or, later, work) where I had access to computers when I needed them.

I didn't buy a computer for myself (my first laptop) till after I was married and had purchased my first house (circa 2005). And that was with the idea that I might start doing some writing stuff (like games or books or something). 

I give this brief history as a way to explain: I have never played games like Baldur's Gate or Pool of Radiance...computer games published in collaboration with TSR and aimed at emulating the AD&D game. For gamers of a certain age, these video games were their introduction to tabletop gaming...their development as D&D gamers were largely informed by these games, and their assumptions and expectations of play exhibit the sentiments instilled by these products.

Contrarily, I was tabletop gamer looong before I ever fired up "Bard's Tale" on my old Amiga, and as such I come to the CRPG genre with a different perspective: here is a way to play (in abbreviated fashion) D&D when D&D isn't otherwise available to you. At times when I didn't have a solid gaming group, and yet still had a deep desire to play, it was something that could scratch an itch. These games SUCK compared to the thing they were supposed to emulate, but they were OKAY.  Plus, no need to juggle schedules with all the players: fire the thing up and the entire party is present. Sure, they lack the personality of real players (I hope!) and probably the creativity when it comes to challenges....but they are, at least, absolutely reliable.

Not D&D

But I'm not relying on these games to teach me how D&D works or plays. I am not looking at these games to show me how (as a DM) to design a campaign. I see them as the limited entities that they are: SSI's game Phantasie III is cool enough to have PC's travel to other planes of existence (the Plane of Light, the Plane of Darkness, and the Netherworld)...and, at the end, also gives you the choice whether to join the bad guys or good guys by the end (saving the world or damning it)...but compared to an ACTUAL game of D&D, even such choices and options are incredibly limited.

At least, if you're used to running a game that isn't a railroad / adventure "path" travesty.

Hey, I played one or two of those old "Fighting Fantasy" books (Choose Your Own Adventure with dice); they were a little better than a CYOA (or TSR's "Endless Quest" series), but you're still only playing someone else's story. A computer RPG is a bigger, sweeter version of the same thing, using the computer's computing ability to juggle and care for all the fiddly bits and dice rolls. But it's still just playing out someone else's story. And it is constrained by the limitations of the medium, in a way that the human mind and imagination just is not. And fun as it is, as awesome as it may be to play, NONE of these CRPG's provide adequate teaching or preparation for running your own campaign as a Dungeon Master; at best, they can give you some ideas on how to be a storyteller, which...apologies...is just not the same thing.

Because it's not just about drawing dungeons or wilderness maps, and it's not just about coming up with good "scenarios." To paraphrase an old war aphorism: all campaign ideas seem good until they make contact with the players. Managing that, is really what being a Dungeon "Master" is all about. 

[though being a "master" of the system is also an important bit]

Now, I joke fairly regularly about being an Old Man...I do that on the blog, I do it with my family, I do it with 20- and 30-somethings I come in contact with. But I'm not really that old at all...I certainly don't feel "old" (middle aged, yes...and I've got some creaky past injuries that bother me from time-to-time). Despite my slow start with getting into the "computer thang" I'm not completely hopeless/lost/uncomfortable when it comes to technology...if I'm resistant to it, it's mainly due to my annoyance with having to learn new ways of doing things, not an incapacity/fear of doing so. But while I'm not really an "old man," I am old enough that (especially with regard to gaming) I straddle two worlds: life before ubiquitous (user friendly) computers/tech, and life after. And because my formative years were from "the time before" so, too, are my sensibilities about a LOT of things. I watch too much TV and read too little compared to what I once did, for example, but my opinion of what is "too much" and "too little" is directly informed by the fact that once there was less TV to watch and more books worth reading on the shelves.

[ooo...someone's probably going to get mad about that last statement]

My particular perspective is a shrinking one: the more years pass, the more folks are born on the other side of the Great Divide. Plenty of people born before the advent of the "smart phone" have grown up never really knowing the "inconvenience" of a phone tethered to your wall. Plenty of folks in their 30s have never known a television that didn't have at least "basic" cable...or even the days of changing a channel without a remote control (can you imagine!). I was just explaining to my kids how, when I was their age, MOST of the home baseball team's 162 games could only be heard on the radio...and how that allowed folks to do other things (while still listening to the call) instead of sitting on their ass in front of their video altar.

The Dungeons & Dragons game was published by a middle aged man, but it was written for folks of a younger (and more imaginative) persuasion. And it is still being published for those types of individuals. But the number of "young people" of the '70s and '80s, are far outnumbered by the "young people" of the '90s, '00s, '10s, and (now) '20s...and that outnumbered sensibility is only going to get greater the more time passes. My own kids, now D&D players, have never yet played a computer RPG...but even their sensibilities are colored by the time in which they live. They have so much more need of attention...so much more need of being entertained instead of finding ways to entertain themselves. Video games and tablets and cell phones and laptops are just such an easy drug to hook up to...let alone a television set with a gazillion channels and streaming services.

Damn frigging insidious.

To all my "young" readers that are trying to unlearn D&D lessons taught to them by computer games...or the lessons of editions of D&D that were written to emulate video games that were created to emulate D&D: I feel for you. And I don't judge you or your particular notions of what D&D "is." And I will try to help (if I can) or point you to better bloggers/writers than myself (when I can't) to try to offer you different options, a different perspective. I'll try. 

But right now, I have to wash some dishes. They haven't yet invented the app to do that.

Other People's Stuff

Ugh...just spent two plus hours on the phone with Mac and Microsoft support trying to get my MS Word issues resolved...the new operating system didn't support my old Office products which rendered me incapable of opening ANY of my documents...things like, you know, the books and such I'm working on? F***...

But I won't regale you with any (more) tales of woe for THAT stuff...suffice is to say it was resolved (with cash expenditures) and now I can once again access what I've been working on the last couple days: Cry Dark Future.

[more on this in a later post]

Instead, allow me to pour some of my Christmas cheer into your stocking. My family was kind enough to gift me this year with something I really wanted, but really didn't need...in other words, the kind of thing I call "the perfect Christmas gift" or PCG. PCG's are great when you can find them; I pride myself on usually being able to find them (for others), but my family ain't as adept. Here are things that don't rate as PCGs:

• Things you think I want, but don't (a replica lightsaber one year, for example)
• Things you think I need (if I needed it, I probably would have bought it...unless it's really expensive, in which case you probably shouldn't be giving it to me as a gift!)

And having to come up with "gift ideas" for people kind of defeats the whole exercise really; do you wrap up the groceries on your shopping list? It's like they don't have a whole lot of imagination when it comes to this stuff; though to be fair, the whole "on-line shopping" thing has kind of destroyed the lost art of mall browsing.

[and just so you know, holiday shopping is the ONLY type of shopping I actually enjoy]

But this year they DID come through with a PCG for me, something I certainly wasn't expecting: the Game of Thrones-themed RISK board game. Ha! I probably haven't written much (or enough) about my love for this classic board game...I've held onto my own copy since the 80s (itself, I believe a Christmas gift...I honestly can't remember), and played the hell out of it, back in the day. But this GOT-box is fantastic...it may be the most beautiful board game I've ever owned. And while I have some gripes about the updates to the system (they're not bad; my designer mind simply has half a dozen ideas for making them better) the maps, pieces, and gameplay are all excellent.

[though've we've so far only had the chance to play one game, it was fun to watch House Lannister (played by me) stomp the hell out of the Seven Kingdoms]

One of Two Map Boards

But...and here comes the real point of this post...I had another, stronger reason for salivating over the game. In working on building a new D&D campaign, I have been considering how best to map out a world, and I was strongly considering borrowing/stealing Martin's geography for my own...or at least for a starting point. And the two large territory maps of Westeross and Essos that came with the Risk game looked to be the perfect tools for just such an exercise.

[previously I had been strongly considering the Evergreen Playground map from Kroll as a possible framework. Heck, I'm still considering it. First saw this one on the wall at my favorite BBQ joint up in Ballinger, Gabriel's Fire]

However, a funny thing happened on my way towards plagiarism...I encountered the migration and demographics blog of Kentuckian conservative Lyman Stone, In a State of Migration. It's not bad reading: Stone appears to be an intelligent, thoughtful human being, his research seems solid, and his writing is excellent, if a bit dry at times. However, he's also a big nerd (as if "migration expert" didn't already suggest that) and his writing sometimes veers into the realms of fantasy world-building, whether based on historic medieval economies and movement, fantasy novelists like George Martin, or the demographics of Star Wars. Here are some of the articles I've really been digging into:

Westeros is Poorly Designed
Why is Planetos So Poor?
Notes on Medieval Population Geography

Rather than bastardize the hell out of Stone's work, I'll simply point folks at his blog and tell you that there's a lot of good food for thought in there regarding demographics, migration, and population density. The links from the links can give you e-surfing material for days (at least, it did with me). For folks who'd rather work on their campaigns than watch playoff football, I'd suggest checking it out.

For my part, I'll say I'm now far LESS inclined to use Martin's world as any particular sort of setting. Still, the Risk game is nice to have.
: )

In related links (yes, I'm being lazy...three hours on the phone today, did I mention?!)...have you seen this cartographers guild site? I must be incredibly stupid, because it appears to have been up and running since 2006 and I'm only now stumbling across it. Even at the risk of tarnishing my (already iffy) reputation, I figured I'd go ahead and mention it for others who might have missed it. Also, I now have a link to it on the blog, so that I can peruse the work of many deeply talented peoples. Maybe at halftime.

All right, that's it. For now.

The Limits of Technology

Still haven't started packing yet, but I think we'll be okay. Mainly, we plan on packing empty suitcases in empty suitcases for the journey home...suitcases that will be full upon our return in June. That's the kind of logistics issue that is easy for a bone-head like me: stuff it so it fits.

What's the harder thing is getting my computer to do what I want it to do. Spent most of the morning (so far) surfing the internet and "help" sites and coming up empty on a variety of topics.

I woke up this morning (blearily) with the great idea of rewriting Cry Dark Future as a "smart document;" something that links weird, technical terms with the rules and definitions within the document; something having pop-up boxes for equipment items (like guns and whatnot), rather than forcing players to scroll by finger through their ebook (or comb through a thick print-book by hand). It seems to me that here would be a great use of fancy-shmancy technology and the young 'ins preference for hand-held devices. And CDF is small enough that this wouldn't be too burdensome, and complex enough that such an undertaking would be worthwhile for navigating the game.

Unfortunately, Mac Pages cannot create links to other sections of the document. Nor can it create pop-up text. Nor can it create a damn index. What a stupid, worthless waste of my time.

I will be purchasing Word (again) when I get back to the U.S. I should have got a frigging PC. Arrgh!

Fiasco

A quick side note: I received a new laptop from my wife for Christmas, due to my old one being fairly out-o-date (I think I got it back in 2007 or 2008), the expected emphasis on my “writing career” (ha!) while unemployed, and the difficulty with finding quality hardware (for reasonable price…even American-brand toys manufactured in China are two or three times as expensive as they are in the USA, and I don’t even shop at WalMart!).

On my old Mac, I had copies of MSOffice for Mac so that I could use programs like Word and Excel. The reason for this was two-fold:

MS programs like Word and Excel are the ones I’m familiar and proficient in, due to using them for years on my (prior) job’s PC computer.

As a person who sometimes found time (or made time) to work on personal projects ar my (prior) job, I needed the ability to work in the same software both at home and office.

Mac’s equivalent programs (Pages and Numbers) can “translate” Word and Excel documents, but the process is only really one-way, and I learned early on during the book writing thang what a pain in the ass it was to try working in two different systems…plus my lack of familiarity with the Mac software made me uncomfortable (that’s putting it mildly). Sure, “Mac Word” isn’t an exact duplicate of MS Word (there were issues with missing fonts and margin limitations), but the differences were small enough that I could work with them with only minor frustration.

However, when we got the new laptop, I decided NOT to get the corresponding MS programs loaded on my computer. My thought was that I needed to learn how to use Pages, etc. and I would never do that with the MS programs…plus, since I’m not actually working anywhere besides my personal computer, there’s no reason or requirement for me to have PC compatibility. I figured by the time I got back to the USA, I’d be fully proficient (or at least competent) in my Mac programs and all my writing/publishing/whatever would be handled in the Mac programs.

Of course, I completely forgot that ALL my documents (including all my books, published and non-) are still in MS Word format. Trying to edit them for typos, or get them ready for upload (I was planning on making The Complete B/X Adventurer available for sale as a PDF), has turned into a giant clusterf**k. Crap on a stick.

But that’s not the “fiasco” to which the title of this post refers. That refers to Jason Morningstar’s excellent and award winning game, of which I’d never heard…up until December.

Bully Pulpit Games first released Fiasco back in January 2010…back around the time I was trying to figure out how to make a cardboard box for my B/X Companion book. Gosh, only four years ago? Comparing Mr. Morningstar’s work to my over over the last few years is an exercise in envy (on my part)…not only has he won multiple awards and sold thousands and thousands of books, the guy seems to design nothing but GM-less RPGs, of the kind I’m only now starting to really explore.  It’s really enough to make you feel like an antiquated schlub.

PVP Action? Yes!

*sigh*

I was introduced to Fiasco through a friend of one of my semi-infrequent, drop-in gamers. I mentioned (back in November or early December) of my interest in checking out a collaborative RPG or two (I’d previous had some experience, as mentioned with games like Capes and Pantheon) and Jon (Redbeard) suggested Fiasco. His buddy and his buddy’s wife (really don’t remember their names at the moment…sorry!) showed up to the Baranof one Thursday night, and we ran Fiasco with my brother, AB.

[my brother has recently returned to Seattle in October and has since been attempting to reenter “normal society” after a couple years of homeless wanderings and mental illness in the Hawaiian Islands. He’s not what one would call an “indie gamer” by any stretch of the imagination. In a conversation about game design, he once espoused that a game could not be a “real” role-playing game without a combat system and some method of character advancement. He is (or rather was) also a big fan of World of Warcraft…]

Fiasco is a great game. Very fun, very interesting and a real collaborative challenge to craft a good story. We all enjoyed ourselves…even my brother, who was extremely hesitant to try such a game. Usually, AB is the type of gamer who will poke fun at/derail games that he doesn’t understand or doesn’t appreciate or that I am taking “too seriously.” He doesn’t do this to be malicious…it’s just how he is, that “little brother” annoying prerogative. However, he actually had a good time and was able to get into the spirit of the game quite nicely, making for a satisfying, Story Now gaming experience.

For people who aren’t familiar with Fiasco, the idea is for 3-5 players (though I’ve been assured four is the optimal number) create characters from a number of random narrative elements (rolled on tables) that define what they have in common with each other. It’s quite simple in practice, and negotiating how the distributed elements interact (i.e. what they signify) both creates the characters at the table and creates an idea of the story at hand. Game play consists of players taking turns to create scenes with negotiation and dice rolls helping determine how those scenes play out. The game session is divided into acts with twists (or “tilts”) that help the story slide in unforeseen ways until you have some climactic resolution (that’s “climax” in the narrative sense…it’s not necessarily a big, blow ‘em up kind of event).

The original game setting is built on the “crime caper gone horribly wrong” premise…the film Fargo is the often cited sample inspiration (not to mention all those British films by Madonna’s ex-husband). However, what makes Fiasco so playable (and commercially viable) is the ability to change and customize the setting to all sorts of different “plans-gone-wrong” ideas; Bully Pulpit Games was issuing a “playset” of the month (with new random element tables and “tilts” specific to each new setting) and many fans of the game have contributed their own playsets. For our game, we used a “high fantasy” setting…D&D-esque…based on my brother’s request, though we could have done Renaissance or Elizabethan England or Old West or whatever. The folks who ran the game (why am I blanking on his name? Kevin? Phil?) has a whole folder full of  possible playlets he’d printed.

The fantasy setting was a concession to my brother, but the story was nothing like a dungeon crawl. “Phil” played a the daughter of the local thieves guild master, who masqueraded as a man, my character was an elven princess who was his betrothed (the guild master’s plot being to move up into “high (elven) society” or possibly blackmail the elven nobility by the scandal), my brother was the princess’s bodyguard/master-of-arms/champion (who also happened to be female AND a werewolf), and “Sarah” (“Phil’s” wife) was the wolf that AB’s character sometimes turned into…she was kind of like the Dark Side of the PC’s consciousness (or her “kill ‘em all” id) while AB was the honorable, duty-bound warrior-woman.

[why did all the guys end up with female characters? It just worked out that way based on the elements that came up and what would make for a good and coherent story…I don’t remember anything requiring that any of us had to be specifically female and (at least between my brother and I) we aren’t ones to play “gender-bended” characters in RPGs. We all remarked it was a little weird, but as said, it made for a better story/adventure/session and we all did our best to play our characters in serious fashion]

Anyhoo, it made for a good night’s play, though I can’t recall exactly what happened (this was back in early December and, as usual, there was a lot of drinking involved). At one point, my princess led a big battle charge against an orc village, and there was a lot of discussion about the “wolf fighting style” that she needed to learn to be a true leader of her people. I think the characters did actually end up getting married and being “unhappy ever after,” but I don’t really remember. Like I said, it was an enjoyable and satisfying, story creating experience, and another good foray (for me) into the world of collaborative role-playing.

That being said, Fiasco felt much more like a parlor game to me (albeit a very fun parlor game that did involve role-playing and characterization). It’s not really designed for long-term or serial play, and thus lacks the development over time (and subsequent character identification and attachment) that I enjoy. There were also some difficulties with the “choose to set the scene or choose to resolve the scene” mechanic that is inherent in the game. Either Phil and Sarah didn’t explain this succinctly enough, or I was too drunk to understand, or it’s as murky in the rules as it was at our gaming table (having never read the rules, I can’t say). Whatever it was, at some points it felt like we were just negotiating what happened and kind of “winging it” depending on A) the needs of the story, and B) the dice rolls. And in that regard, Fiasco was was a little loosey-goosey for my taste.

I tried to get hold of a (print) copy of the game before I came down to Paraguay to study up on it, but was unable to do so. Fiasco’s a good one to have on-hand if you’ve got enough players and nothing else planned for the evening.

35% Power

That's how much juice I've got left in my laptop...and when it's gone I'm SOL because my son managed to chew through the power cord.

Actually, that's not completely accurate. My beagles chewed the power cord about 20 minutes after I opened the box. However, despite the frayed cord, it's still managed to keep me supplied with power (and able to write books and blogs) for about 4-5 years. Last night, though, Baby D appears to have managed to finish the job, somehow destroying the conductivity enough that, well...

35% power...and that's still keeping the thing plugged to prevent as much "seepage" as possible.

AAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!

Well, I'll pop down to the Mac store tomorrow, but any serious writing tonight is probably a lost cause. I'm going to try to answer some email and then I'm just going to curl up with the Tomb of Horrors until I fall asleep.

34% power.

Micro-Game Download

I'm not sure why folks are having a problem with this: I just followed the link in yesterday's post from a random computer at the library (without signing in to my accounts) and the download worked just fine. The library computer now has a copy of the one page micro-game .pdf on it. It looks great!

I don't know what to say except, "try it again." When you get to the mediafire screen, click on the yellow box that says:

Click here to start download from mediafire

It asks whether you want to just open the .pdf or save it. It really should work, folks!
: )

Back On-Line, (Near) Awards, and Reflections

So it appears my internet woes have finally been resolved as of this time yesterday. Turns out my internet provider upgraded the technology of my area without upgrading my modem, causing me to have on-going "spectral interference" for the last several months. And because the "tech support" people I've called, oh, half-a-dozen times are in f'ing India (or some Asian country overseas) they had no idea what the hell was going on and simply read me the same damn script every time I called.

Bunch o BS.

Anyway, now I've got the new modem and I can get on-line and check my email without running down to the damn library on my lunch breaks (only open Monday to Thursday) and I can stream the Bakshi/Frazetta film Fire & Ice from Netflix without wanting to throw something through my TV screen.

[by the way, if anyone was wondering why I hadn't posted anything till now, the weather's been absolutely gorgeous this weekend, and me and the fam spent most of the day down on the waterfront, feeding seagulls and browsing high-class toy stores for rubber blocks. Nice]

But right now it's back to business...catching up on forums and email and the blogs and such. Found out that my B/X Companion placed in the Indie RPG awards this year (no, I did not enter it in the Ennies, though I was tempted to do so). "Placing" isn't really the right term, as there was no 2nd place award, but I came in as 1st runner up to the winner for Best Indie Supplement of the Year with 20 points. Pretty good considering this is my first (self-)published product and I didn't do anything particularly innovative (um...compared to many indie RPG game designers that is...).

You know, I used to spend a LOT of time over at The Forge and swimming in indie waters the same way I now sail through the OSR blog-o-sphere. I enjoy playing other games, especially the weird and intimate or desperate or innovative or straight-up bizarre...but I don't get the chance to do so as much.

And that's fine. I mean, my current game group is a bunch of guys who work in the computer industry and are returning to Old School tabletop gaming for the first time in years (or ever, for some). This process of starting a game, theorizing, and testing has allowed me to do some serious deconstruction of the D&D game, and I've just gotten a greater and greater appreciation for it over time (as well as gotten a lot of good insight into game design).

One thing I've noticed...just about all the "house rules" I've implemented have been discarded by this point. They just haven't been necessary at all to the play of the game and the game works better without 'em. Other than the new classes I've been play-testing, there are only two house rules that continue to stick around:

- Clerics don't need to "memorize" spells at the beginning of the day

- Thief skills automatically succeed

Oh, yeah...we're also continuing to use the "two-handed weapons strike last and do D8 damage" (as opposed to all other weapons, which do D6), but since no one is using a two-handed weapon, it's kind of a moot rule.

I'll have a chance to write more about B/X game play in the coming days, as I fully expect to be drawing comparisons between it and the game play of DCC (have to go make some characters!). But it's just something on which I've been reflecting lately.

All right...that's enough blogging for now. Have to go check some forums!

: )

Good Fantasy: Tron Legacy

Just finished watching Tron Legacy (something I've had from the Netflicks for about two weeks now...it's just tough finding time to watch movies, ya' know?), and I have to say it's one of the best fantasy films I've seen in the last couple years.

For what it is...I mean, it's so bizarre it can really only be described in terms of high concept fantasy. It's not "science fiction," there's nothing scientific about it, really. Sure there are computers (kind of) but as with the original film (from what I remember), these get left behind pretty quick and we are transported to this crazy world with its own "natural laws," customs, society, and bizarro-weirdness. It was quite interesting to watch, and for me, that made it enjoyable.

I'm not sure how it did in the theaters...it's so different from what one normally sees. It has some action, but it's not an action film. It has some special effects, but it doesn't linger on them much. It's got a nice pacing that pushes the plot along quick enough that kids don't get bored (this is a Disney film, right?) and yet, and the background narratives are kept mercifully short and sweet.

In a way, it reminded me of Dungeons & Dragons: at least of the "old school" variety. The flimsiest of plots coupled with the exploration of the strange and unusual, with a couple fights, and some puzzles/challenges thrown in. I could probably draw some half-assed parallels between gamers and games and users and programs and such...but as with D&D, I don't think the film was meant to be particularly high-brow or make a whole lot of "sense" in terms of the real world.

Ha! I especially liked how they spent absolutely zero time trying to explain how or why a person can get "zapped" into a computer (or come out again). This is like Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever knocking himself out on occasion and just waking up in never-never land (or John Carter ending up on Mars in the same fashion). Right on...let's just get to exploring!

And what a weird and gorgeous visual spectacle...I can only imagine it would have been super-cool in the theater, but I still liked the art direction immensely...all those lights/colors on darkness gave the impression of an alternate dimension without making you go crazy trying to pick out every little detail. Heck, I even liked the constantly droning soundtrack that gave the whole thing a kind of dark, Blade Runner type vibe...never any upbeat tones of excitement to this weird adventure in a totalitarian universe.

Anyway, it's probably not one I'd buy or need to watch a second time, but it IS one I'd like the boy to see eventually. It's a good fantasy/fable film...and so much better than, say, the latest Clash of the Titans or even Avatar (the latter of which was, admittedly, visually stunning in the theater). I liked it.

: )

"You're Fired!"

That's what I will be telling my internet provider in the extremely near future.

Regular posting should resume shortly thereafter. Sorry, folks.

: (

Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure

I should totally swipe this idea for a low level wilderness adventure. Magic gates, challenging the player not the stat-block...Cassie has all the makings of an Old School DM at age 5. Cool!

Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure

Check it out.

Vulture Droids

No not the things in the Star Wars prequels. I'm talking about one of my many guilty pleasures.

It's been a looong day folks. Not that they aren't all long days these days, but most of today I felt less than stellar (I'm fighting some sort of hay fever or something). And the only thing going through my head this afternoon was the Vulture mecha, aka the Clan omni-mech Mad Dog.

Now, I should probably note that I haven't played an actual game of BattleTech in years...like so many years ago it was before there was even such a thing as Clans.

"Back in MY day," says the Old Geezer, "we used cardboard cut-out figures and maps with little hexagons; none of these new-fangled miniatures and terrain model."

I never bothered keeping up with BT over the years. I've picked up the BT Compendium (used) and I've read up on the "on-going timeline" via the internet, but I wouldn't know a damn thing about the clan mechs themselves if it wasn't for video games.

Yes, I do play video games...or I have. Haven't played any for many months now (the amount of free time remaining to me is near zero), and that's just fine. Like television, you rarely miss it when it's gone.

['course I'd probably spring for a new 360 if they came out with a Rock Band disk containing the music of Queensryche's The Warning...I've had that one stuck in my head for awhile now]

Video games can definitely be fun, especially for games like BattleTech; that is, war games with a ton of minutia (critical hits and hit locations and weapon variation and special options, etc.). But for the table-top I want something simpler (like my War of the Mecha game). It demands a faster pace...even when I played BT in the past it was sloooow...at least if you were using more than a couple mechs on each side of the engagement.

But sometimes I miss that minutia...endo steel structures and ferro-fibrous armor and the distinction between pulse lasers and beam lasers. Mech construction is one of those little "games within games" that is so much fun. I've used snatches of this and that off the web to deconstruct Clan mechs using the BT Compendium even withOUT the actual Clan stats.

Yes, I am a big nerd. You don't have to tell me.

Unfortunately, having deconstructed 'em...like the ultra-cool Vulture/Mad Dog...I simply have no desire to do anything with 'em. I mean, I'd like to drive one and blast shit, but actually playing BattleTech sounds so tedious. And frustrating. Trying to play the way the game is written (as opposed to using my micro-version) would consist of me spending a lot of time teaching someone...or me getting totally pwned by someone who's an even bigger nerd than me.

[I have a similar issue with other table-top war games...Warhammer 40K, for example]

Anyway, that's just what I'm thinking about...and I really wanted to post a good pic of the Vulture. Tomorrow, I've got some orcish scenarios to finish statting out.

G'night, folks.

: )

The Mean Streets of Skara Brae

There are some items and events from my past that have effects that carry over even unto the present day…film and fiction from my formative years that STILL impact my imagination and my ideas on both “what’s cool” and what I’d like to see in my gaming. Some of these things are sooo far back in my memory that I can only recall snatches of them…like the black and white serials of The Masked Marvel that I remember watching on TV circa 1975 or ’76 (age 2 or 3 in other words). Just these “remembered flavors” of the past have influence over my psyche…and when I’ve managed to reclaim some of these things (thanks to the magic of eBay or Scarecrow Video, I’ve not been disappointed.

In no particular order, here are some of the items that go into making up MY personality matrix:

Films
- Star Wars
- The Hobbit
- The Last Unicorn
- At the Earth’s Core (with Peter Cushing)
- The Secret of NIMH
- Dragon Slayer
- Xanadu (which, strangely enough, did more to encourage an interest in Greek mythology than Clash of the Titans!)

TV
- Sid & Marty Croft stuff, but especially H.R. Puff & Stuff, Land of the Lost, and Dr. Shrinker
- Tales of the Gold Monkey
- The Day After
- Shogun (to a small degree)
- Logan’s Run (ditto)
- The Masked Marvel

[I should note that I’ve watched a lot of TV over the years, including a lot of the “boy fantasy” crap of the 80’s: The Dukes of Hazard, Knight Rider, Buck Rogers, The A-Team, The Hulk, etc…none of this seems to have had a recognizable impact/influence on me]

Books & Comics
- Mainly Marvel comics of the early ‘80s
- Old DC horror comics, westerns (Jonah Hex), and WW2 (the Unknown Soldier, etc.) that I’d find around my grandma’s house.
- Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series
- Many random Halloween and/or Witch-themed books

Games
- Dungeons & Dragons (of course!)
- Dungeon!
- Risk
- Dark Tower
- The Bard’s Tale

When I say these things have an influence on me, I mean that they exert influence even when I’m not directly referencing them. While the list is by no means exhaustive, I think I’ve really captured most of it…other influences on my imagination and gaming are more directly referenced in my mind…for example, I’ve seen The Road Warrior many times…when developing a post-apocalyptic game I often consider how (or if) that film does or should influence the material.

MOST influences on my writing/gaming/preferences ARE conscious. I say, “right, I want something that feels like Indiana Jones.” But sometimes I do weird things and it’s only later that I say, “huh…I think that came from waaaay in the back of my subconscious.” Like maybe my “borg love” has to do with watching the Six Million Dollar Man duke it out with replicants or something. Or maybe that was J.J. Hands.

ANYway, it’s the last thing on the list that I wanted to talk about: the old Electronic Arts computer game The Bard’s Tale.

Back in 1985, this was the game EA was known for, not console sports games, and whenever I see the name Electronic Arts, this is the first thing that pops into my head. No, EA didn’t design Bard’s Tale, but they distributed it and their logo was featured prominently on the box…a box that was necessary to keep around as it featured a map to the town of Skara Brae.

Skara Brae…oh, the frustration you caused me.

I was reminded of Skara Brae recently when contemplating my recent D&D sessions (yet another trip to the Baranof is scheduled for tonight…looks like there will be four of us for a change!). Skara Brae was a dark and dangerous town. Worse than film portrayals of Detroit...I mean BAD. Even a heavily armed party of half-a-dozen couldn’t walk more than a block or two without getting jumped by a bunch of monsters…and that was in broad daylight! At night, it was even worse, and the vermin would be all over you like stink on shit. Really…two steps and whoa! ANOTHER encounter.

At higher levels of experience it was easy enough to avoid these monsters simply by ducking down an alley (i.e. typing “Run”). And one would have to do this in order to get anywhere in a timely fashion (just running down to the corner store? Careful…there’s a half-dozen orcs down on the corner spoiling for a rumble). At the lower levels however, monsters were much more likely to catch you and force combat.

And this led to a lot of death.

See, players used to playing oh, say, D&D were going to want to make their own party of adventurers for a computer game like Bard’s Tale. Not that “Omar” or “El Cid” aren’t fine names and all, but I always enjoyed making characters after the players in my OWN game. Plus, didn’t you want to have a Halfling Monk? I ALWAYS wanted to make a Halfling monk! And let me tell you THAT little guys was NO ONE to F with once he hit level 12 or so.

But getting to level 12 was a bit of a problem. All your characters started with only the most basic of basic equipment…I think a robe and a staff was all any character received at 1st level. And since the shop was down the street from the guild hall (yes, you belonged to an Adventurer’s Guild…just like Dragon Quest!), and you had to walk down the street to get there, and the intervening streets were teeming with threatening monsters…well, your party suffered an awful lot of TPKs.

Not that you had the money to afford a whole lot of fancy equipment anyway…your 1st level characters just weren’t going to survive very long on the streets. And the handful of times YOU got the drop on a single orc or two? You’d probably end up with three gold coins (and at least one or two dead halflings) for your trouble.

Getting to that 2nd or 3rd level was pretty f’ing tough in other words…unless you wanted to A) use the pre-generated party (“the A-Team”) or B) take all of the pre-gen party’s stuff and equip it to your own characters. The pre-gens were pretty weak, too, but they had a single HUGE advantage…the bard owned a magic item called a “Fire Horn” that could breathe fire on an entire group of critters. Without El Cid and his magic dragon breath, you would die many, many times until you put together a big enough string of lucky victories to level up. I don’t remember ever doing this myself…I ALWAYS took the Cid’s fire horn.

Even with the fire horn, you were likely to get smoked a helluva’ lot…and since you were broke and lowly, your options for raising party members was, well, non-existent. You ended up heading back to the Adventuring Guild…often…to drop off corpses and roll up new characters. Praying that you could level up a few party members before your fire horn ran out of charges (it wasn’t an “endless fire horn” after all).

Does this remind you of anything? It reminds me of my recent gaming sessions with my brother and Steve. All this party death and not a single character going up in level…just more “go back to town and roll up new guys” going on. In four sessions, my brother has created four characters. That’s Skara Brae statistics, folks.

Now granted, he’s had some bad luck as well as some bad planning…but is it possible that he’s in need of his own fire horn?

Maybe not…after all, Shmutzy DID have a wand of fireballs...which he used to injure his own party members nearly as often as his opponents. As I said, poor planning has been part of his woes. We’ll have to see how tonight’s game goes.

Anyway, that’s what I’m thinking about this morning…that and the old encounter tag line from Bard’s Tale:

“Once again you face DEATH ITSELF in the form of [insert monsters here]!”

Computer Issues

I've been having some computer issues the last couple days, so please forgive the lightness of posting. Right now, I'm at a local coffee shop, but my time is limited.

Along with the last LAST push for publication/printing/assembly of my B/X Companion this has led to a little crankiness on my part of late...which might explain some of my ridiculous, armchair-philosophizing/ranting posts the last few days. Trust me...I really DO intend to get back to normal stuff rather than trying to "score points" by beating up on WotC (and everyone else).

Your patience is appreciated.

: )

More World Cup Madness

I suppose the blogs have all been quiet because most folks are (like myself) gearing up for the World Cup opening tomorrow. Right? Right?!

I've spent pretty much the entire evening compiling the picks for our "fantasy World Cup tourney" and creating a Yahoo groups page. Me...I'm not very good with computers. I can type, and I can read, and for the most part that the extent of my ability which allows me to blog. D&D nerd, yes. Computer nerd, no.

Which is kind of funny when you think about it (or funny to me at least), when one considers how long the one has been associated with the other. I can recall watching that film Cloak & Dagger (circa 1984) with that kid, Elliot, from E.T. the Extraterrestrial. He played some kind of RPG type spy game with some over-weight uncle-type guy (who eventually gets shot between the eyes! What a way for an Old School DM to go!)...who, while an obvious D&D nerd-type is also heavily into computers, computer games, computer hacking...whatever.

I'm surprised War Games didn't have some sort of RPG reference imbedded in it. Maybe Twilight 2000 by association.

Anyway, it is officially 1am, I don't have to work tomorrow, and apparently no one else does either, as a whole passel of folks are coming by the house at 6:30am to watch Mexico versus South Africa. And eat breakfast, of course (I hope someone's bringing Bloody Marys...the red, green, and vodka will go well with the Mexican uniform). We're all rooting for my wife's home country, but I have a feeling South Africa is going to go pretty far in the tournament. Of course, I did just watch Invictus last weekend, which may be coloring my perception.

There will be more RPG stuff this weekend, I promise...my cover artist is trying to get things sewed up by the end of the weekend. However, the posting might be a bit sporadic depending on the excitement of the games (we've got eight or so to watch, I think).

All right...time for a few zzzzzzz's...

A Bunch of Random Stuff

Wow...I've got so many thoughts blazing through my head right now I'm a little overwhelmed with where to begin. For having "a day off," I sure have expended a lot of mental energy this morning!

No writing yet, though. Ugh...I am NOT putting stuff off, I'm just getting all my other ducks in a row, answering emails and such, while eating a big, traditional English Breakfast at the Four Spoons. I am a great believer in Lincoln's philosophy, "if you only have eight hours to chop down the tree, spend the first seven sharpening your axe!"

[of course, this is sometimes at odds with my loved ones. My wife would say, "if you start chopping now you'll probably get finished in six hours!" while my brother would spend NINE hours sharpening the axe, bargaining for more time by saying he'll do the cut job for free]

Point is, I'm not actively TRYING to procrastinate, folks. Though I did get a little side-tracked by Jim Mora's firing as the Seahawks head coach. Ugh...the play-offs start this weekend! I've got work to do!

The box place turned out to be a dud (they had nothing in the dimensions I want)...at this point it appears I will be making my own. Heading out to a supply shop today, and will be deriving a template from my old TSR boxes (yes, I still have some for whatever reason...God knows I'm a packrat and these poor things are crushed to death at the bottom of a large box of papers and whatnot...no B/X boxes, though, unfortunately). Something to do while watching football.

First art submissions received...o boy o boy o boy. So far so awesome. Will be working on lay-out today as well, and will also be turning my "reading .pdf" into a printable mock-up.

Speaking of the .pdf...have received feedback from the Doctor, and he thinks it's great, though he seems to have missed the point as he tells me, "dude, I think you should publish this!" Dude, what the hell do you think I'm doing? He does not read my blog, so he seems to have missed this little detail.

Interesting side benefit...the Doc appears to be an excellent target sample for feedback. As his only reference to B/X is through Labyrinth Lord, he is able to address the game in how it works with LL. He asks why I bothered to duplicate many of the spell lists from LL, for example (because the early level spell lists of both are based on B/X...I don't bother describing the effects of these low level spells, but I include the entire B/X list). He likes the monsters and magic items included. I am hoping for more feedback on some of the system stuff as he gets deeper in his perusal. He likes the lay-out...yay!

Talked to Joel, last night...he's going to send me some artwork. He's doing the World of Warcraft thing these days, god help him. Oh, well. We'll see if he's up to some painting.

Oh...and a new interested party wants to submit art, and may have been wrangled into doing stuff for my module. Better get that done.

Figured out how to configure my scanner/printer and download the necessary software onto my computer last night...made my first run at scanning and it worked great! I am so excited! My wife will be so proud that I did something technical all by myself!

: )

Yesterday, I posted some thoughts on adventure design, which in analysis seems to be an overall negative critique of the length of the design. Sorry for the negativity; doesn't mean I don't love and continue to use these adventure modules...just think maybe they need to be used in a slightly different way. I want to address this more at length later, and in addition want to post about something from this awesome article on Prokopius. The awesomeness is NOT the lambasting of the thief class...it is the adventure design implications that are worth the read. Check it out.

Picked up Wormwood a couple days ago. Damn you Palladium! As with Rifts Russia, in re-reading this gem, I see so much squandered potential. I don't think I will ever play another Rifts game again, but damn if I'm not going to riff on their ideas for my own private games (due to Palladium's policies, I will probably NOT be posting anything to this blog in the near future). However, let me just say that Wormwood makes an EXCELLENT setting for B/X or OD&D and I fully intend to use it as such. So there!

All right, I got quite a bit to do today (including cleaning the yard of my dogs' leavings...man, this is the one time when Seattle rain makes life suck!). I'll be checking in later!

Have a great Friday everyone!

MS Word...You Son of a Bitch!!!

Ugh! Word processors. Microsoft word processors. THIS is why I wanted a Mac. Unfortunately, I am too comfortable with Word and too lazy about learning Pages to actually use my Mac processor...plus, no Mac at the regular work place (where I might occasionally jot some ideas or do a touch-up) so MSWord is the convenient medium for my writing projects.

But, O does it bite sometimes!

After close to 5 hours I FINALLY put my B/X Companion together in a semi-finished form...well, a readable form anyway, not a printable one. I had written in chapter by chapter so it was saved to various files (though with universal formatting except for the charts and such), so putting it together into one 64 page document (well, 62 pages with a couple blanks for artwork) was a necessary next step...not to mention headers and page numbers.

O You Bitch!

Finally, though it's done and ahhhhhh...it looks so nice. Almost good enough to print out. Oh, but not quite yet... Urk! I hate delayed gratification!

: )

Had a "team meeting" today and spent the entire hour drawing some fairly inspired (for me anyway) sketches, some of which may well make it into the Companion. Not that I intended to get all "Siembieda" on everyone, but the thing needs sprucing...till the submissions start pouring in, my own artwork might have to stand in. Time to get the wife to teach me how to use the scanner.

I have mentioned I am techno-challenged, right? : (

Anyway, threw the document into a .pdf file and am emailing it to the good Doctor (he who shall be doing maps for the accompanying module). He will be the first person besides myself to read its mysterious pages. Pros: he's excited and likes D&D. Cons: he knows shit about B/X (well, he does own Labyrinth Lord, having been hipped to it by Yours Truly, but it's Not The Same, you know?). Oh and he and I don't always see eye-to-eye on things. Ah, well...I need some feedback and he wants to read it. Plus, he's probably too broke to buy a copy.

Mmm...let's see, other good news? Yes, actually. One of my co-workers is a bit of an entrepreneur on the side, and I hit him for a place to buy boxes. Turns out he knew one: an arts-and-crafts kind o paper company specializing in packaging that's near my work and sells boxes for $.23 a piece. Now THAT'S what I'm talking about! It's open till 6, so I'll be checking it out after work tomorrow. : )

I'm starting to get a good...scratch that...a GREAT feeling about this project, and it's kind of scaring me a little. One of my reasons for calling this blog Blackrazor is the soul-sucking properties this hobby can have on a person. But now I find myself confronting a different kind of void...one where I've never before ventured...private enterprise! Ha! Again, not that I plan to quit my day job or anything, but I AM having a tremendous amount of fun. I see why Gygax thought this beat the hell out of selling shoes....

; )

Oh, AB...

Forgot to mention earlier:

My brother (he, the one-time wielder of Blackrazor by the mailed fist of his avatar Alejandro) emailed me an "early birthday present" last week: a link to D&D On-Line. For interested parties, feel free to check it out.

Now folks who've been reading me for a couple months will recall that not only am I an avid opponent of on-line MMORPGs, but my Ables often gives me shit about my love of table-top RPGs. Asked if he's actually been playing DDO, he replied "yeah, the last couple days...I'm already Level 2!"

Ugh.

I did not even bother to register or create a character. Just seeing such a thing confirmed all my assumptions about 4E (that it was geared towards video gamers; that it was meant to be seague into an IP-driven on-line game). Barf!

I especially like how the female voice on the web site attempted to both cajole and goad me into joining, before finally berating me for not pressing the "Play Now" button. Pretty f'd up, all the way around, if you ask me...though it made me chuckle at the desperation in her voice. As if Hasbro realized it was on a goddamn sinking ship and wanted me to throw it a life raft.

Sorry, pal.

; )

Ooops...one minute to midnight. Almost time to wish myself a happt birthday!

And there it is...yay!

Gaming (Computer) Madness

Really...this is RPG related.

So we were test running the Skype/Gametable/AIM/What-Have-You this evening for our upcoming B/X game, care of Patrick over at OtBD.  Unfortunately, things were a little sketchy.

(just by the way, Meeps and Pat-Man seem great...I really looking forward to the game this Saturday, and they expressed the same)

Thing is...unlike some of you young whipper-snappers (yes, Oddysey, I'm looking at you) we are OLD.  Which is not a terrible thing by any means.  Speaking for myself, I am fairly secure, put together, and much more mature than I once was.  Even if I seem to have highly caffeinated fingers endlessly churning out posts for this blog, I've come a long way from the highly-strung days o my youth.

Unfortunately, computer networking is not one of my "class-skills."  When you've got folks sharing similar interests living all over the continent, being able to get in contact through the internet is a real blessing. But getting a dice-roller to work...ugh!  It took us more than an hour just to figure out, "um, we need to work on this a bit."

Yes, I am old.  I need a cane to push my mouse around.

Anyhoo, we at least got AIM and iChat to work, as well as Skype.  But the gametable program wasn't working for any of us.  Pat's already posted a help post at his blog (I've been busy ordering a pizza), but if anyone who's reading me and not OtBD has some experience with this application, let us know! Thanks in advance.

Mournblade! Wait A Sec...Mournblade?

It should come as no big surprise that as a D&D-playing child of the 80's, I had an obsessive love affair with the video game known as The Bard's Tale. I'm sure that any Old-Schooler worth his salt took a run at this game at some point, with an Apple or a Commodore 64.

Actually, I didn't get the game till high school, along with my first personal computer, an Amiga 500.  But I had seen (and sampled) the game earlier on at two separate friends homes (by "early on," I mean years previously), and so when I saw the chance to get the for the family's new Amiga...well, I shamelessly begged my parents to buy it.

Money well spent, says I...it provided hours of summer (and winter entertainment) as I groomed an adventuring party and mapped every single dungeon level of the game...which was quite a few, actually (somewhere between 16 and 21).  All right, all right...I skipped mapping the first 1-2 levels of "the Sewers" (the earliest dungeon)...those I just wandered around in, learning the game, until I found the entrance to "the catacombs."  Anyhoo, with strong mapping skills and a kick-ass party, I was easily able to triumph over y.Mangar and his minions...well, after several hours of game play.  

I was totally bummed when the Amiga failed to offer any of the follow-up sequels to the game...and eventually Amiga folded and I was left with nothing but an old copy of Word Perfect and a dot matrix printer with which to finish my college career. Boo!

So anyway, in the delvings of my youth I found numerous magical items, from fire horns to crystal swords, many of which were sold to good old Garth's equipment shop.  One thing I never sold, and frankly never could figure out, was a little item called Mournblade.

Mournblade, of course, is the sister sword of the infamous blade Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock's weapon of choice for his protagonist, Elric...and the inspiration for Blackrazor.  As a magical weapon in literature (as well as RPGs), Mournblade has duplicate characteristics of the the sorcerer's runesword...heck, they even look alike.

Personally, I was always more interested in Mournblade than Stormbringer. First, while both have cool names (sorry, I'm a sucker for that kind of thing), I prefer Mournblade to Stormbringer...it just feels more like the individual swordsman is going to inflict the suffering...rather than bring chaos down upon himself and everyone else. Which is probably why Moorcock named the blades such.

Secondly, Mournblade was infinitely more available than Stormbringer...after all, Stormbringer was wielded by Elric who had a disturbing tendency of slaying...um...everyone.  Mournblade was frequent lost in the books, and, hey, no one would really miss it if I found it and absconded with it, right...?

SO here's a "Mournblade" sitting in Bard's Tale (and I found more than one...maybe two or three).  But was it meant to represent THE Mournblade?  No idea.  It never demonstrated any special soul sucking or life-giving powers. It never flew around or talked. I had it equipped to my Hunter character (a combo ranger-assassin class), but he was such a high level he critically hit every round anyway.  Neither my sorcerer, nor my wizard could wield the blade...neither could anyone else in my party (later on, I tried developing a warrior, but I don't remember if he ever tried using Mournblade or not).

Ahh...I miss old Mournblade, though.  Bard's Tale was the only game that allowed me to use her in a game!  Even if she didn't really do anything...how many folks can say their DM allowed them to wield a Stormbringer, or Mournblade...or a Blackrazor?