tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-320293862024-02-28T18:42:58.610-05:00How to Start a Revolution in 21 Days or LessNataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.comBlogger651125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-18563399580610962522015-07-13T12:17:00.004-04:002015-07-13T12:17:45.809-04:00I ran Torchbearer<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I ran Torchbearer this weekend. I had fun, and I want to run it again.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-3d9b3795-8832-da43-d3c5-0e41cf92e0d9" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Damn does this game have a learning curve, though. We were fumbling around with the rules the entire session, and once I sat down and re-read the book I found a bunch of places where I’d missed subtle rules or screwed up completely. I can see how it’ll come together once I have more of it internalized, but my players especially (Kiel, my brother, and my brother’s fiancee) found it frustrating.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I knew that going into it, though. This game was a test run, so I could get a feel for how the game works in play, and get prepared to run a proper campaign once I move to San Francisco. I want to write my own stuff but didn’t trust my ability to do that without actually playing, so this was a chance to try out the intro adventure, and get my fumbling done with people who I expect to laugh at me anyway.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We played the starting adventure that comes with the book, and didn't get very far. They delved into the cellar, fought some rats, went further into the caves, discovered kobolds, tripped over an alarm the kobolds had set, attempted to scare the kobolds off by making spooky noises and shouting the name of their god, and then ran away when that failed and made camp.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The main thing I screwed up was actually the main mechanic, which is subtle enough that I missed it the first time, even though it’s a very similar one to the classic OD&D-style dungeoneering that I’m especially fond of. I default to my more 3e-ish habits, and it had a definite negative impact on play.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Basically, Torchbearer has in common with OD&D that play should proceed primarily by players and DM trading descriptions of action and reaction, until you get to the point where the DM thinks something bad should happen-- the players did something stupid, or inherently risky. At that point in OD&D, you’d roll a save-- you screwed up, but I’m going to give the game a chance to save you-- or get into combat. In Torchbearer, you roll a “Test,” which uses the skill system but is actually quite different from the 3e and later subsystems of that name.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In newer editions of D&D, and a lot of “traditional” (as opposed to old school or indie/narrative) the consequences for failing a roll is that you don’t succeed at what you were trying. They can be either player controlled or triggered independently by the DM.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Torchbearer, the consequence for failing a roll is that something bad happens, even though you succeed at what you were doing (with a couple of exceptions, mostly having to do with recovering from consequences like injury). They’re always (a) triggered by player action but (b) called for by the DM. So none of that “roll a perception check to see whether you notice (secret thing) when you enter an area” business (which is where I messed up-- in my defense, the intro adventure implies that you should do this at one point, at least if you’re coming into it with D&D instincts). Either the information in question should be given to the players when they enter the area, or when they take an action to directly uncover it. Because failing a roll always imposes negative consequences, imposing a roll without the players feeling like they directly triggered it can be frustrating.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I also fumbled on the conflict rules (deciding when to start a conflict is actually kind of tricky, and I hadn’t read the rules for setting up the monster side at the start of them carefully enough), didn’t realize how nasty adding another 6 kobolds would make an encounter for 3 players, and didn’t handle people asking if they could apply this or that trait to a situation well-- I should have just asked them “what are you actually doing that’s using that trait?” and decided based on their description. I also nudged them a little too hard towards collecting checks. I suspect after re-reading that section the most natural way for new players to discover checks is through tiebreakers, and that once they got the hang of that they’d start looking for opportunities to get them other ways on their own.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All that said, I’m pretty psyched about running Torchbearer again. I’m re-reading the rulebook, and have a better idea how to read it now that I’ve run it once. I’ve started thinking about how I’ll set up the actual campaign, and making notes on the first adventure. (Still deciding whether to use my existing San Draso setting, or try something totally new.)</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am a little wary about introducing it to new players, and to players who aren’t already enthusiastic about learning the game. The nice thing about Basic or OD&D is that I can get a new player up and running in about 5 minutes (“roll what I tell you to roll, when I tell you to roll it, otherwise don’t worry about it”) and there aren’t many rules for them to deal with. While I’m optimistic about my ability to interface with the system for new players as they get their bearings, at least once I get a solid handle on the rules myself, there are a lot more bearings to get in this system.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m also concerned that it could be pretty punishing to players who aren’t interested in engaging with the rules, and I suspect the potential frustration factor is a lot higher than in D&D. In D&D usually if you screw up the worst thing that happens is that your character that you spent 5 minutes making dies. In Torchbearer you can get saddled with conditions and get abilities taken away from you during play, and character creation takes a little longer, so you have more invested out of the gate.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In general I don’t think this is a game that most people who’re already happy and well-served by old school D&D dungeoneering are going to be interested in, at least for extended play. The game is probably worth playing a few sessions of, especially if you don’t already feel confident with the way you manage dungeon atmosphere and the resource restriction of low level play, and the encumbrance and light rules are potentially worth borrowing. But it’s really more “an introduction to dungeoneering for people who like Burning Wheel or indie/narrative games” than an alternative to Basic per se.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For me, though-- not only do I like to kill people, and otherwise inflict nastiness on their characters, I’m pretty much all about emergent behavior arising from proceduralism. D&D does a lot of that on the DM side, but it’s interesting to see a game that really brings that to the player side of the table. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m particularly interested in the opportunities that the trait system affords for “emergent roleplaying.” At one point my brother was looking for a way to use a trait against himself, and came up with the idea that “maybe the gods are telling me not to kill this rat, and that makes me doubt myself.” Then the other characters picked up on that as the cleric being not quite all there, and started roleplaying that.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I do agree with the creators of the game that it’s not terribly well suited for one-shot play, and I’m hoping to get the chance to run a continuing game soon. I really appreciate that it has clear guidelines for how to prepare a campaign, and how to run a game that starts with just a single adventure prepped and builds out from there. I wish there was a little more discussion of building out the campaign world as play proceeds, and procedural generation for adventure sites in general, but I can lift a lot of that from D&D.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, I’m also not sure how long it’ll hold my attention. I’m focused on it for now, but it’s definitely possible that a few sessions in I’ll get tired of futzing with the shiny rule set and get back to Basic.</span></div>
Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com306tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-63004725604951059842015-03-14T20:09:00.003-04:002015-03-14T20:09:39.222-04:00Twenty Questions for the Sewers of San Draso<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jeff’s <a href="http://jrients.blogspot.com/2011/04/twenty-quick-questions-for-your.html">twenty campaign questions</a> for my Sewers of San Draso campaign, part one.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-bf68d7b8-1ac2-b2aa-e616-074d9d18e95b" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What is the deal with my cleric's religion?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You’re probably a priest of the elven Moon Empress or one of her many attendant saints-- mostly other gods absorbed into the imperial religion and ancient deified elven heroes, though there are a few more modern heroes mixed in as well. It’s possible that you’re the follower of one of the local gods that hasn’t been absorbed into the Hierarchy, or something even weirder.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where can we go to buy standard equipment?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are a variety of blacksmiths and alchemists who provide equipment for soldiers and mercenaries, and more ordinary goods are available at the daily markets.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where can we go to get platemail custom fitted for this monster I just befriended?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Zanz, a half-giant, half-elf armorer, will give you a discount if you commission him to make armor for a kind of monster he’s never worked on before.</span></div>
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<ol start="4" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Who is the mightiest wizard in the land?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Probably some unassuming member of emperor’s court. Within San Draso itself, most likely Tiago ve Moril, who few men have seen, and who is rumored to be a half-dragon.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Who is the greatest warrior in the land?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Though saying so will get you uninvited from certain kinds of parties, it’s undoubtedly Amerincio Callan, an elven assassin of local ancestry who caused a minor scandal a few years ago by turning down the governor’s offer of adoption, and then making off with his daughter </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">both of his sons. (Who are, by all accounts, perfectly happy with the arrangement to this day.)</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Who is the richest person in the land?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Urraca ve Durran, whose mother bankrolled a great deal of the early exploration and settlement of San Draso and who has been assigned to oversee her family’s holdings for the next few centuries. </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where can we go to get some magical healing?</span></div>
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</ol>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Any imperial cult will be happy to provide this service to citizens in good standing of Her Celestial Empire.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where can we go to get cures for the following conditions: poison, disease, curse, level drain, lycanthropy, polymorph, alignment change, death, undeath?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The imperial cult is still a good option, although depending on the problem, a local shaman may be cheaper and less annoying.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<ol start="9" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is there a magic guild my MU belongs to or that I can join in order to get more spells?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The two main colleges with satellites in San Draso are the Eye and Triangle (specializing in abjuration, evocation, divination, and conjuration) and the Dragon’s Teeth Conclave (specializing in enchantment, illusion, transmutation, and necromancy). The Eye and Triangle welcomes non-wizards of a scholarly bent into their debate halls, while the Conclave hosts other kinds of arcane spellcasters seeking camaraderie as well.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<ol start="10" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where can I find an alchemist, sage or other expert NPC?</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The merchant’s quarter, inside the second wall-- at least if quality is more important than price. There are also a number of “experts” of various kinds on the outskirts of town.</span>Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-36214506716473584212015-03-07T14:32:00.000-05:002015-03-07T14:32:21.509-05:00Tiki Season<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sometime in mid to late February, I get sick of snow, and I start making daiquiris. Mai Tais. Drinks with little umbrellas in them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Some people think that tiki drinks (“faux tropicals”) are summer drinks. Not me. I made my first daiquiri last month, then a Hai Karate, then a ginger-liqueur variation on the Carioca Hawaiian Cocktail last night. I have pomegranate molasses and orange flower water, and a glass bottle with a pour spout to hold the grenadine I’ll make once I get the pomegranate juice. Or it might end up being a bottle of cinnamon sugar syrup, if I decide to go a little more Don the Beachcomber and a little less Trader Vic.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This time next week, I’ll probably have an order in for Small Hands Orgeat Syrup (it ain’t worth making on your own, and the commercial stuff I can get in that fancy Italian grocery store is crap, and I have all the other ingredients you need for a proper Mai Tai). I already picked up a package of tiny umbrellas, and I’ve been eyeing my rum collection and considering my next purchase. I have a bottle of cachaca, some Martinique aged rum, a bottle of 7 year Angostura rum, but not much in the way of the real staples. I’m still missing the Virgin Islands light and amber that do the majority of the heavy lifting in my tiki bar, and I’m painfully low on the dark Jamaican rum that carries the rest.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I gave away almost all my tiki stuff when I moved to New York last summer, figured I’d get back into classic cocktails. Which I did, for a while-- notwithstanding a brief tiki itch brought on by discovering St. Elizabeth’s Allspice Dram at the shop down the street.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The tiki thing always comes back, though. I fell in love with plastic swords and drink umbrellas in the Tonga room in 1994, and I’ll never fall out again.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Some of that is just practical. I like sour drinks in general, I like rum. Rum is cheap, compared to whiskey, and there’s nothing in tiki that’s as perishable as vermouth and as hard to find in small quantities. I like the colors, I like the history, I like putting together a drink that takes eight or so different colored bottles to mix together. Makes me feel like a wizard.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Mostly, though, I like drinks that admit that they’re sort of stupid. Drinks that are kind of tacky, where it makes sense that you're giggling uncontrollably after a few of them. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I don't mean that I drink tiki drinks ironically. I like them because they’re good: I love them because they’re sort of stupid.</span>Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com81tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-61396667154734901802015-03-02T20:11:00.000-05:002015-03-02T20:24:38.740-05:00On Randomness In Character Generation, and Why Old School D&D Is Awesome For New Players<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">So: Old school D&D is a terrible system for playing the game most people want to play when they pick up something called "D&D," not having any prior experience with old school D&D. The texts don't do a great job of communicating their purpose, and honestly, the other things that people want to do are fun and it's reasonable that they want them.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">One of the big things that people want when they pick up something called "D&D" is a game where they get to craft exactly the guy that they want to play. Old school systems by and large do not deliver this, especially on a mechanical axis: Your initial character generation is random, and your advancement is usually relatively fixed and relatively random.</span><br />
<span style="color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">The thing is, most of the folks I've met like that got into the game before I got them-- middle or high school, or occasionally college. These are people who saw "fantasy adventure game" and opened it up to find that there was also a bunch of math and were super happy about it. (I'm in that camp myself-- I've had few happier days than the one where I discovered the interlocking logic of the 3e EL and XP tables.) But there's a big, big pool of people I've gotten into the game who got scared away by all that math and all those decisions, even though they desperately wanted that fantasy adventure.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">But those people already get enough air time in the OSR. One of my favorite things about old school D&D is that it's made it much easier for me to run games for a mix of highly invested and brand new players than any other edition I've encountered (except maybe also 5th-- still gathering data). While really serious D&D strategists will get annoyed by the shenanigans the newer, less death-hardened players get up to, it's much easier for brand new players to contribute to the gamier side of the game than with the newer, more character-build focused versions. You don't have to read the book and absorb the rules system to play a really powerful character in old school D&D: You just have to be quick on your feet, and the right mix of careful and reckless.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Random chargen helps make generating a new character fast (important when death rates or high, or you're playing with different people every week so you need to be able to get the new guy into the game fast) and can create interesting tactical and expressive challenges for experienced players: "Well I would never choose to play this guy but now that I've got him what do I do with him?"</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Fixed advancement and random advancement also make leveling easier and faster, which is important when your character is more a token that lets you interact with the game-world than an end to be developed in itself. It also really helps players who like developing their character's personality but either don't care about or actively overwhelmed by mechanical differentiation.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">In general they all can make getting into D&D a </span><b style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">lot</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"> less intimidating for new people. Generally my experience with getting brand new people into 3x/Pathfinder has been "Oh my god I have to read that entire book? Oh okay, just these bits... uh... which feats do I want... wow, it's going to take us a really long time to make all these characters, this is kind of boring." </span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">My experience with getting brand new people into old school D&D has been more "Oh my god I have to read that entire book? Oh, okay, just these bits... </span><b style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">rolls stats </b><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">my intelligence is really high so I guess I'll be a wizard... oh wait no, I want to be a bard, my charisma is really low but that will be hilarious."</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Or even "okay, so what are all these numbers on this index card? oh, okay, you'll tell me when I need them, cool. oh, sweet, I have a grappling hook, I wonder what I can do with that."</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Not that Pathfinder is a bad system for newbies-- I've played with new-ish people who expected mechanical character differentiation from video games and were disappointed/frustrated by old school games because they didn't provide that. One of the things I like about 5e is that it potentially bridges the gap between those folks and the systems I like.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">The old school character generation and advancement are also fantastic for the players who want a strategic resource management game that's mostly about their lateral thinking cleverness. For those folks, choices about what widgets to give their character would be choices they weren't making about things that they care about.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-40567019890394611402014-12-04T17:23:00.002-05:002014-12-04T17:23:22.375-05:00On 5e: Complexity & Character-FocusI have the first two books. I've seen the DMG but I don't have my own copy yet. I've played a fair amount (all online) and am beginning work on my own game.<br />
<br />
So far my reaction is broadly positive. My main comment so far is that it strikes me as "old school character-centered D&D," which was definitely an open spot in the D&D pantheon.<br />
<br />
There are at least two axes that have separated the editions that I think of as "new school" (3e, 4e) from the editions I think of as "old school" (everything else, more or less) but until now they were always paired. On the one hand, old school D&D tends to be focused on the world more than the character. Your character develops over time and maybe accretes some kind of individual identity, but they don't start out that way, and their fate is a lot more random than it is in the later games. In those, you have a lot more control over your character "build," and your dude is a lot more durable, so it makes more sense to put some effort into them up front.<br />
<br />
This goes hand in hand with the another major difference I see between the editions, which is that the older versions are generally a lot simpler than their descendants. It's faster to build a character and easier to run an adventure. This fits with the focus on world rather than character-- if your character can die easily, then you want to be able to roll up a new one quickly, and if less of the fun of the game comes from your character being unique and special then it's less important for character creation to be complex-- but one doesn't necessarily follow the other.<br />
<br />
5e is a very character-focused game. I have a lot of options when I sit down to make my character, and my character is pretty tough and capable. They dish out a surprising amount of damage, if you're used to older editions. But it's the first "character-centric" game where character creation didn't drive me completely up the wall with fiddly nonsense.<br />
<br />
That's mostly because 5e strips out the complexity that's unnecessary to that goal of "making my character interesting." Individual skill points are out, and skills themselves are largely side-effects of other decisions. Feats are strictly optional-- they're relatively small modifications to your character, so the complexity cost was always a lot higher than the customization value. Instead, the character complexity comes more in big "packages" that do a lot of work for you at once: You make a couple of big decisions (which kind of fighter am I? what's my background?) that quickly narrows the focus of the small decisions you need to make down to a manageable size.<br />
<br />
Which is, I think, a very good thing, and so far I'm glad they went in that direction. I don't always want to play that kind of D&D, but I am sometimes in the mood for it, and now I have an option that doesn't require a spreadsheet or five to build my character with.Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-72601359861097913322014-09-05T15:11:00.000-04:002014-09-05T16:41:44.458-04:00Khans of Tarkir + Diablo II's SanctuaryFigured I'd do a bit of public brainstorming<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Archdemons/Prime Evils</li>
<li>Angels with mysterious agendas</li>
<li>Many races of fiends swarming over the world</li>
<li>Soul-trapping gems</li>
<li>Magical gems in general</li>
<li>Magic item crafting</li>
<li>The Church of Light</li>
<li>Corrupted jungle temples</li>
<li>Desert tombs</li>
<li>Towns built on the borders of great evil wastelands</li>
<li>Cathedrals</li>
<li>A distinct sense of East and West</li>
<li>Clans (of mixed races)</li>
<li>Steppe nomads</li>
<li>Warbands</li>
<li>Desert fortresses</li>
<li>Jungle palaces</li>
<li>Tundra encampments</li>
<li>Mountain monasteries</li>
<li>Rakshasas</li>
<li>Ancient dragon bones</li>
<li>Poison</li>
<li>Martial arts</li>
</ul>
Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-1258736542626860732013-10-03T11:17:00.002-04:002013-10-03T11:19:01.104-04:00Absolute vs. Relative TimeHow often do you actually refer to a specific date (October 1st, third
day of the first moon of spring, etc.) or year in your campaign, rather
than a relative date? (Next week, two days from now, next summer?)<br />
<br />
I've used the relative time a lot but it occurs to me that even when I <i>know</i> the former, it doesn't actually come up in play much. In <a href="http://www.risusmonkey.com/"> Risus Monkey</a>'s Buffy game I usually knew the exact date, but that was because it
was a real historical date, (the game was set in the early 90s) and
since we were college students, what holidays were coming up and whether
it was the weekend or not was pretty important. Also, because we used
the actual weather in the area from that date, part of the "beginning of
session" ritual involved looking up and discussing the date.<br />
<br />
In <a href="http://trollsmyth.blogspot.com/"> Trollsmyth</a>'s game I have no idea what the calendar date is and never have. This is
partly because the pace of that game tends to be really slow, but also
because, as adventurers, what I care about in terms of time is "how long
until we get to the dungeon?" and "how does it take to recover from the
last dungeon?" It also just doesn't come up a lot from other
players/characters in the game. If Brian mentioned it at the start of
every session I'd probably remember.<br />
<br />
I seem to remember doing
that in the cyberpunk/post-apocalyptic d20 Modern game I ran in high
school, and I think the people who cared remembered and wrote it down. I don't know that we used it that much, in play or in talking about play, though. Same with the Arcana Evolved game I ran at the end of high school. I don't know that I've even known myself in all the games I've run since then, although that's partly because they've been rather scatter-shot. I haven't started keeping real thorough track of time in the ACKS game, but I've been keeping the notes that I'll need to go back and normalize it if/when I decided specific dates are important.<br />
<br />Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-26891346809930525852013-09-23T16:52:00.003-04:002013-09-23T16:52:47.723-04:00New Adventurer Conqueror King Campaign<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Here's an e-mail I sent to the players in my new Adventurer, Conqueror, King game this morning. We've had one session, mostly character creation crawl and a little "oh shit! we're 1st level! this game is scary!" but they were asking a bit about the setting so I wrote some stuff up. I'm trying to take it easy and build stuff as I go with this one.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Basically, this is what I’ve got for the world so far: Sword & sorcery, ancient empires, a little more psycho-fantasy dreamscape than realistic. People use swords and ride horses, magic is around and people have heard of it but no one trusts sorcerers. Priests are a little more common (the town has one or two) but there’s a cacophony of minor gods and weird cults more than any kind of organized religion.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The town, Khujak: It’s a river town, built near where the Muar river meets the Diamond Sea, and mostly built on stilts because sometimes the river floods and then everything is terrible. It’s a trading town, where merchants pass through on their way from the civilized lands of the east to the pirate lords and barbarian kings of the west, and back again. It’s run by a man named Baron Svandir, who theoretically pays homage and tithes to the Thousand Faceless Kings, in the east, but an emissary of the Faceless Empire has not been seen in this land for more than a generation.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The area has been a crossroads of trading, empire, and barbarians for more than a thousand years, and there’s ruins of various ancient empires (the learned among you might have heard of the Hora Quan, an race of undersea vampire sorcerers, the Nephilim, men who were half angel and half demon, and several kingdoms of elves) all over, as well as, perhaps, stranger things.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br class="kix-line-break" />Directly to the west of the town is the Black Marsh; to the the east, the Bay of Eels, with an ancient lighthouse on the other side. The Diamond Sea proper, and its many islands, is to the south; to the north are fields and forests, and snow-peaked, brooding mountains rise out of the horizon.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s a small library in town, funded by the Baron himself in imitation of the old ways, that copies books brought through by travellers, though its texts are often mistranslated and incomplete. The scribes there can answer general historical and factual questions, but often will have to direct you to experts elsewhere for more detailed information.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The town has a several taverns, bars, and inns, the main ones being Istvan’s Meeting House, The Stump and Claw, and The Goat’s Tavern.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">What you know about what the locals call the Old Tower:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It was built by an empire of Men, said to be necromancers, who carried golden blades, and who conquered this area and drove the vampire sorcerers back into the sea. </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s lain in ruin for several generations, but recently seems to have come under occupation by a group of goblins; goblins have been harassing travellers on the main road in that area. </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The guide you acquired last session (Oldrich, and a friend of Art’s, mentioned below) says that goblins this far south is very unusual, especially at this time of year (late summer) but not entirely unheard of, and that they can likely be bribed or threatened into leaving.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The witch, Nergui, who lives deep in the Black Swamp (will mark on the map) knows a great deal about the Necromancers who built the place, and is said to be interested in objects of their power. However, the price for her help can be high, and she cannot be paid in gold.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Other News & Info You’ve Heard</span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ancient elven priest-kings buried a fantastic treasure in the black marsh.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Pirates, always a nuisance, have been attacking ships in greater and greater frequencies lately.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The old lighthouse across the bay has recently started shining again.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Dreamblossom reputedly grows where things have died recently in the Black Marsh. The opium dens in town will pay a great deal for fresh pollen, but collecting it is treacherous.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">There were reports of a huge green dragon in the forest a few months ago, but since then no one has heard any sign of it.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">An old bridge on the Muar river, built by the Imperials, collapsed two springs ago. The Baron would like to send out a party of workers to repair it, but so far his attempts have been foiled by weather, bandits, and the river’s more exotic dangers.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A fortress manned entirely by skeletons lurks somewhere within the Black Marsh.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">No one’s come through the northern mountains at all this year. One trapper, a man named Art, went north to see if he could find out what was going on, and hasn’t been seen in two weeks.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Any man or beast you meet in the northern mountains could secretly be a goblin in disguise.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-70391516744734718702013-01-06T13:48:00.003-05:002013-01-06T13:50:39.826-05:00More on Amateur HourWhen I say that RPGs are "amateur hour" I mean a couple of different things. On the one hand that term has a pretty negative connotation-- of unprofessional-ism, etc.-- and I very much do mean that. Not just that there's a lot of badly made, badly edited products out there (although I do mean that) but also that I see, compared to other game design communities, a lack of seriousness in a lot of the RPG design <i>discussion </i>that goes on in various quarters.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What's the challenge of game design? Making games that are fun. What do Magic designers talk about? What different people find fun, and why, how to make cards that appeal to those people. What do RPG designers talk about? Why my fun is better than your fun. Not all of them, mind you-- but that this conversation happens at all is a supreme waste of time.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There's another side to the "amateur" coin, though, and it's that there's a lot of RPG products and content produced by people who are doing it just because they love the game, not because they have any professional aspirations. You can do that in RPGs because the physical barriers to entry are so low, and it's a good thing-- my own RPG bookshelf certainly attests to that.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Magic has consistently higher quality than 95% of the published RPGs out there-- including and really especially the professional stuff. They have a bigger budget for everything, and they're rewarded much more for "getting it right"-- for tight design and art everywhere and good visual design and good copy-editing. People have more fun, they can measure it, they get paid.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But the most interesting stuff that Magic makes isn't near half as interesting as the most interesting stuff that's come out in RPGs-- even in just the last year. Magic doesn't do <i>weird. </i>They don't do <i>specific. </i>They do well-produced, slickly-rendered, everybody-kinda-knows fantasy with a slight Magic: the Gathering twist. This has gotten even worse in the last few years, as they've gotten more successful. One of the lessons they've said they learned from <i>Kamigawa </i>block, their Japanese themed world, was that they should have been less specific and less culturally accurate and stuck more to what their players "know" about Asian fantasy.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Which is fine. I enjoy what Magic does, and they do it well. But I enjoy weird and specific and particular, and it makes me sad that Magic doesn't-- can't do-- more of that. One of the advantages of RPGs relative amateur-osity, is that they can do a lot more of that.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If they can quit arguing about who's way is better long enough to just <i>do it.</i></div>
Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-4529061197869568842013-01-05T00:48:00.004-05:002013-01-05T00:49:08.498-05:00What I've Been Up ToWow has it been a long time since I posted. Some updates--<br />
<ul>
<li>I play a lot of <i>Magic </i>now<i>. </i>It's basically a once a week (or more) habit. That's cooled off a little in the last couple of weeks but I've been busy with holiday stuff and a new set comes out at the end of the month so who knows.</li>
<li>I play RPGs once-or-twice a month with Risus Monkey and his crew. We're starting a new campaign and ending an old one soon so that should be fun.</li>
<li>I'm on G+ on-and-off, and I talk a lot with Trollsmyth. That's where a lot of the game thoughts that once-upon-a-time would have ended up on the blog have been going.</li>
<li>Work lately has been being on the computer a <i>lot, </i>doing very repetitive, computer-y tasks, so by the time I get home I am sick of it and want to be off the screen for a while.</li>
</ul>
<div>
And here's a thought:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
RPG design is in a lot of ways amateur-hour, compared to the games that make Real Companies Real Money. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Getting outside of D&D for a while and playing a lot of another (much more financially successful) game has been eye opening in that regard. There's a lot of stuff that people in <i>Magic </i>design know and think about and talk about that just never comes up in RPGs. Or the reverse-- there's a lot of pointless stuff that RPG people fight about that never comes up in <i>Magic </i>because people have better things to do with their time.</div>
<div>
<br />
Like: different people play the game in different ways and for different reasons is basically taken for granted in <i>Magic. </i>When players complain about a card the standard response from the designers is "Of course you don't like it. It's not for you." Everyone with aspirations to <i>Magic </i>design accepts and understands this. Understanding this makes Wizards an awful lot of money, so they have an incentive.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There are still fights on the player/community level, of course. But RPGs are, in comparison, basically <i>all </i>player/community.</div>
Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-16477474265068736912012-07-09T13:28:00.000-04:002012-07-09T13:58:59.941-04:00Magic 2013 Pre-Release ReportI spent most of this weekend at or recovering from <i>Magic 2013 </i>pre-releases. I have a great game store (Comics & Gaming in Centreville) and the Friday night post-FNM midnight pre-release was a great time. (Had to spend all of Saturday in bed or on the couch, and I'm <i>still </i>not fully recovered mentally, but totally worth it.) Sunday wasn't quite as good since it was mostly a different crowd and people were kinda hung over, but it was still fun, especially since I won prizes for the first time ever-- 5 packs after going 3-1 with a black/white life-linking deck. I probably could have gone 4-0 if I'd played better, but I'm still happy about that.<br />
<br />
Some cards I liked, and am looking forward to first-picking in draft:<br />
<br />
<b>Rancor</b>: I got blown out by this, Odric's Crusader, and 2 Captain's Calls in my first game on Friday night. It won't be nearly as good in draft once people learn how to counter it, but it's still sick.<br />
<br />
<b>Ring of Xathrid: </b>Get this on Nighthawk Shaman or Tormented Soul and bad things will happen. Won me almost all my games.<br />
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<b>Nighthawk Shaman: </b>See above. Lifelink is good and it seems like there's a lot of it in draft. Paired with evasion and removal and it wins games. Nighthawk gets you the whole package.<br />
<br />
<b>Murder: </b>Have I mentioned that I really like black in this set?<br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">And a very special honorable mention to Duress,</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">which won me my first match on Sunday. It revealed to me my control deck-playing opponent's Planar Cleansing into Stormtide Leviathan game plan, and knocked out the Planar Cleansing. Stormtide is surprisingly easy to deal with if you have a few turns to plan for it and a deck that runs 2x Murder and 1x Public Execution. Hold back a game-winning creature the 2nd game and you're good.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><br />
I'm looking forward to drafting versions of two decks I saw this weekend: A better version of the BW lifelink deck I ran Sunday, and something like the GW aggro deck I saw a fair amount of running around on Friday. So far I'm not super-impressed with Exalted, but I love almost everything else the colors do, and green has some sweet tricks going for it as well.<br />
<br />
In general I'm pretty psyched about M13 as a draft format-- I was definitely ready for something new after like 7 weeks of triple AVR. While I made a lot of play mistakes this weekend, and desperately need to improve my ability to keep track of the board state, I also feel like I've made some serious progress in the last couple of weeks. (Perhaps due to the Duels of the Planeswalkers I've been playing on my iPad? The puzzles in particular have really helped me expand my thinking about Magic.) I'm really starting to think in terms of a game plan, and beginning to learn how and when to hold back creatures and whatnot, instead of just dropping everything as soon as it I get the mana for it.Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-30288454364299384312012-06-11T13:44:00.001-04:002012-06-11T13:44:11.155-04:00Crazy Traveller Campaign Set UpSo say I wanted to run a <i>Traveller </i>campaign. And say I wanted to do it with an irregular player base-- potentially a large one, and potentially one divided between an online and an offline group, or even several offline groups.<br />
<br />
One option would be to do like Jeff Rients and <a href="http://jrients.blogspot.com/2012/04/troupe-traveller.html">have everybody be the crew of one big ship</a> (or other relatively stable focal point). Divisions in the player base (as opposed to simply irregularity of attendance) can represent either different shifts on one very large ship, or the different crews of one or two different ships.<br />
<br />
This solution is a pretty good one, but the problem with it for me is, I haven't run a lot of <i>Traveller, </i>or played a lot of <i>Traveller. </i>If I'm going to run <i>Traveller </i>I want to do "normal" <i>Traveller </i>and explore that for a while, and "one massive ship with a giant crew" feels too high concept for me. I think of <i>Traveller </i>as a game about independent operators, probably with their own small ship, trading and fighting their way across the galaxy. "One big ship" would be a cool campaign, but it seems more like "<i>Traveller-- </i>the Trek way" or <i>"Traveller-- </i>the WH40k way" than straight up, old-fashioned, truck-drivers-in-space <i>Traveller.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
So what to do?<br />
<br />
A potentially much crazier option would be to just have a big player/character pool of relatively "normal" <i>Traveller </i>characters. If they've rolled up ship shares or enough credits to buy into a ship, then they're attached to a ship (maybe the same one as a few other characters-- they can work that out themselves at character creation). If they haven't, then they're independent operators-- freelance mercenaries and the like. I keep track of what system each ship is in, and when, and which characters are or were on each ship.<br />
<br />
Whatever offline adventures I run are assembled in the normal fashion. Online, sometime before every session I randomly determine which character is the "expedition leader" for that session, in the manner that I think <a href="http://zzarchov.blogspot.com/">Zzarchov </a>was using at one point and the way Jeff is running his <a href="http://jrients.blogspot.com/2012/05/doom-of-jaredites.html">magical Mormon campaign.</a> If that player has a particular mission they want to execute we can do that; otherwise, I hand them a couple of patrons they've been in contact with recently and they choose one. Then they're in charge of getting together the rest of the group to take on the mission. They can add anyone from their character's ship, and anyone in the "shipless" part of the pool (we'll come up with some explanation for how they came to be working with that group that week). They can add characters attached to other ships (and potentially those second ships as well-- sometimes, you just want an armada) if they're close enough by that it makes sense.<br />
<br />
With a small group this wouldn't really be necessary, of course. You'd just have the one ship. But the method of "select mission lead" and "mission lead selects mission" would still be useful, I think, for focusing the sessions themselves so you can get to the action quickly, and so that I have a day or two to prepare.<br />
<br />
With a bigger group, you'd just have a handful of ships tooling around the subsector/sector. There'd be a bit of paperwork to keep all the ships and the characters roughly on the same timeline and to keep the world integrated, but I think that's a doable with a variation on the system Ben Robbins used to keep track of his <a href="http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/130/mixing-players-mixing-plots/">incredibly complicated large player-base superhero game.</a><br />
<br />
The really neat thing is that this opens up the possibility of having a bit of a trading sub-game for Captains of ships and other interested players-- between sessions, by e-mail, they can direct their ship's movement and buy and sell and whatnot. If they don't turn in their moves before I need to normalize everyone's locations for a session, then I can just say they were shipping standard freight along normal trade routes.<br />
<br />
I'm not sure yet if I'm actually going to pull the trigger on this. I spent the weekend getting to <a href="http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-make-traveller-sandbox.html">step 11 on Rob Conley's Traveller sandbox guide</a>, so there's definitely some enthusiasm for this potential campaign. At the very least, it's something I want to have in my back pocket for if I'm ever called upon to run a quick one-shot. Eventually, I want to have a binder containing a <i>Traveller </i>scenario with pre-rolled characters and a megadungeon suitable for brand new players, so I can take that baby with me and be ready to game with a couple of options wherever I go.Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-39108844444745791022012-05-29T11:37:00.000-04:002012-05-29T11:37:04.834-04:00Deckbox!I've been playing tons of Magic lately and I spent the weekend loading almost all of my collection into Deckbox. (There are a couple of strays that have yet to be categorized, and <i>somewhere </i>I have Thrun, the Last Troll, Mirran Crusader, and one of the swords. This vexes me.)<br />
<br />
If you happen to be of the Magic persuasion yourself, everything that mtgtrader values over 25 cents is on <a href="http://deckbox.org/sets/179422?o=a&p=1&s=a">my tradelist</a>--and pretty much everything in my inventory is for trade as well, but I wanted the tradelist to match my trade box/binder for ease of reference. I have some fairly broad goals for my collection beyond just my wishlist-- I'm thinking about getting into Standard after the next rotation, but I haven't settled on a deck I want just yet. So I'm interested in really anything that I might be able to trade to someone else for cards I want in the future.Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-74430282459715790082012-04-25T13:25:00.001-04:002012-04-25T13:25:35.757-04:00Recent GamingI've been doing surprisingly little gaming recently. There's the Buffy game and the GURPS game and little bits of craziness in between, but that's been about it. Which for me isn't that much-- remember that I went 3+ nights a week for a good chunk of college.<br />
<br />
I've been doing a lot of board gaming. Well, a fair amount, anyway. My friend/co-worker/neighbor Andy has a bunch of board games and we've been slowly working through them. Lately, it's been:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><b>7 Wonders </b>-- My current favorite. Played that one for the first time this weekend. I like how different it is from most of the games we play, and how much the landscape upon which you pick your strategy changes based on what your opponents/neighbors are doing.</li>
<li><b>Stone Age -- </b>Another favorite. Unfortunately, only played this one once. Reminds me a lot of Puerto Rico and Agricola except that when you get to the "good bit" where you can actually do things, you're only halfway through the game.</li>
<li><b>Smallworld -- </b>The simplest game that we play, and really good for that. This one handles the mix of skill levels/interests we sometimes have at the table the best. This one was my "favorite" before we played Stone Age, and it's still up there.</li>
<li><b>Arkham Horror -- </b>Fun, but very complicated, and some members of the group have played it much more than the others. Which causes problems, above and beyond the problems that co-operative games in general cause us.</li>
<li><b>Pandemic -- </b>Fun, but waaaay too co-operative for this group.</li>
<li><b>Puerto Rico -- </b>The game about slavery! See: Stone Age.</li>
<li><b>Agricola -- </b>The game about subsistence farming! See: Stone Age. Also, when I first played this game I'd consumed 2 Michelob Ultra Dragonfruit (to my unending sorrow) so I'd probably like it and understand it much better if I was sober.</li>
<li><b>Illuminati </b>-- Played this one for the first time in high school. (Game design class.) Still a classic.</li>
<li><b>Twilight Imperium </b>-- Fascinating. Unfortunately, takes way too long for a weeknight, and tough to get enough people together who are into that kind of thing to make it worth it.</li>
<li>There are probably some others that I'm forgetting right now.</li>
</ul>
I keep meaning to start up the text game I was running for Trollsmyth again, but life keeps interfering. I've discovered over the past couple of weeks that I am terribly, terribly sensitive to disruptions in my routine.<br />
<br />
I'm currently planning/pondering my summer game. My little brother will be back from college in a few weeks and I want to run something with and for him while he's down here. That's what that <i>GrimDark Racing </i>business was all about. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find my copy of the <i>GURPS </i>corebooks and there's a little bit of prep-work that I'd want to do before he gets back next weekend.<br />
<br />So, instead, I might just run Regular Fucking D&D. I've got that itch again-- the hexcrawl, wilderness exploration, race-and-class, dungeoncrawl itch. I flipped through a copy of the 3e Forgotten Realms guide and that got me thinking in terms of straight, "high fantasy" D&D for the first time in a while. It bugs me that this is something that I keep wanting to run even though I've never had any particular success with it.Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-41584213476168663382012-04-19T11:38:00.000-04:002012-04-19T11:38:26.669-04:00CampaigneryThis was originally an e-mail to one of my players.<br />
<i><br /></i><br />
<i>In the GrimDark Future, There Is Only Racing</i><br />
<br />
<div>
<div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
You're a racing team in an over-the-top cyberpunk/post-apocalyptic future. Some of you are drivers, some are mechanics, one or more is possibly a financer (we'll have to talk about where exactly the team you put together gets its operating capital from), and others might have more exotic skills, depending. You might run more than one character so we can be sure to have at least 1-2 drivers and a mechanic in every session.</div>
<div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Each session is a single race. Activities include: Repairing/upgrading your vehicles. Repairing/upgrading yourselves. Haggling over parts & medical care. Arguing over who gets to drive in the race and who's fault it was the the XL-SR5 is banged up and won't be ready for the next one. Advancing personal subplots. Investigating the other teams. Sabotaging the other teams. Dealing with sabotage by other teams. Doing shady-ass things to get cash. And, of course, driving!</div>
<div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
System: Probably GURPS. I'm familiar with it, most of the potential players are familiar with it, it would have sufficient crunchy detail to make the vehicles interesting, and if it doesn't already have a crunchy racing system it wouldn't be too hard to come up with one.</div>
<div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<div>
<i><br />In the GrimDark Future, There Is Only Home Invasion</i></div>
<div>
I forgot to mention-- I have Leverage, the RPG! It's about running cons & heists. So yeah. You're a crew of conmen and thieves in an over-the-top cyberpunk/post-apocalyptic future. Every session is organized (in a way partially controlled by the system) around a heist. Exactly how Robin Hood vs. grimdark mercenary you are is up to you.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
System: Leverage, obviously. With a few hacks to make it Cyberpunk ready but that actually should be super-easy.</div>
</div>
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<i>In the GrimDark Present, There Is Only This Shitty Bar Full of Vampires</i></div>
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You're all neonate vampires. You're connected because you all hang out in the same bar-- for various political reasons it's safe for neonates there. Probably vampire owned, possibly an official Elysium. You are kinda sorta friends, in a human/drinking buddy kind of way. Vampire life is organized around feeding rights, parceled feudal-style by the Prince to the politically connected or personally useful. Your problem: You don't have any feeding rights, so you have to beg them from your sires/other older vampires in exchange for dubious favors.</div>
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Activities include: Feeding. (It won't be played out every time, but definitely the first few will be done in detail.) Bargaining for access to other vampire's demesnes. Holding up your end of those bargains. Sneaking into demesnes you're <i>not </i>allowed to feed in, and dealing with the consequences if you get caught. Tying up loose ends from your mortal lives. (Or ravelling them out, as the case may be.) Maneuvering to get granted your own demesne. Possibly, investigating suspicious-ass things and getting involved in vampire politics in other ways. Negotiating with each other about feeding rights/other issues.</div>
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System: Vampire: the Requiem, naturally.</div>
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<i>Regular Fucking D&D</i></div>
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This one's still kinda rattling around in the back of my head so I'm not sure if it's ready to run yet. But I was reading the <i>Forgotten Realms </i>book the other day and I was all like "you know, I've never run a 'normal' fantasy campaign, but I bet I could do that."</div>
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Broken magic castle would be a good basis for a dungeon, yah. And I guess if I'm going to do "normal" D&D that implies that there should just be like a little village nearby and a bigger city somewhere further away.</div>
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System: S&W/OD&D <i>(or ACKS, now that I think of it)</i></div>
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</div>Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-24325287673478854312012-03-27T11:49:00.000-04:002012-03-27T16:47:24.172-04:00ATTENTION MISCREANTSJoceyln the cabbage-growing peasant has had a VISION. The slitherous <a href="http://jrients.blogspot.com/2012/01/blessed-saint-serpentor-preserve-me.html">ST. SERPENTOR</a> has come to her IN A DREAM and told her to GO FORTH! and retake THE SNAKE MUSEUM from the fiendish WHITE APES that therein dwell, so that it may be consecrated as a monastery in HIS name. She seeks fearless companions to aid her in this worthy quest, and to share in the TREASURE!<br />
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The expedition will take place on <strike>Saturday</strike> Friday 7pm Eastern / <a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20120331T19&p1=263">23:00 UTC</a> (follow the link to the Event Time announcer for times around the world) on Google Plus. I'm playing, Trollsmyth is running. The game is run under the FLAILSNAILS conventions. Jocelyn is a 1st level Labyrinth Lord character built with <a href="http://strangemagic.robertsongames.com/2012/03/paladins-and-anti-paladins-for-basic-d.html">Stuart Robertson's Paladin subclass</a>. Trollsmyth will be running a bastard version of Moldvay/LL, with his usual house rules. Check out his blog for <a href="http://trollsmyth.blogspot.com/2012/03/flailsnails-ho.html">more details</a> about the world.<br />
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EDIT: Trollsmyth informs me that characters above 3rd level will be subject to handicapping, per FLAILSNAILS conventions.Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-28250315442861404672012-02-28T11:11:00.000-05:002012-02-28T11:11:14.807-05:00Why Sexy Costumes For Female Superheroes Piss People OffJust to be clear, I'm talking about an emotional response. I don't have a problem with <a href="http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2012/02/hire-women.html">Jim Lee drawing sexy women.</a> He's good at it, and he should continue to do the world that service. I'm just trying to explain where the counterargument comes from.<br />
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And this really isn't in response to Zak's post, specifically, but to some of the comments on it, and on comments that I've seen pop up in this kind of discussion elsewhere.<br />
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So.<br />
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Has everyone here seen <i>Transformers? </i>The first live action movie.<br />
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Don't go see <i>Transformers</i>. Let's all just pretend that we've seen <i>Transformers</i>.<br />
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There's this scene where Megan Fox's character is fixing Bumblebee, before we know that he's Bumblebee. She's leaning over the car. She's wearing this revealing outfit. Bare midriff. Etc. And the camera moves up and down her body in imitation of where Shia La-whatever's gaze is presumably travelling, and where (attracted-to-lady-bits) part of the audience is following.<br />
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I'm not going to rewatch the movie to be sure but I'm pretty sure there's not an equivalent scene where we see Sam from his girlfriend's perspective.<br />
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Okay. Does this make sense in the movie? Yeah. Sam is the main character: the camera represents Sam's perspective.<br />
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But it does imply that the audience is assumed to be male, too. Again: Okay. Sure. Giant trucks smashing into each other? Guy stuff. Guys and girls are different, like different movies, making some for one and some for the other, no big deal.<br />
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But like, just staying in the realm of action movies for a minute, you get to the point where you're like, Jesus--<br />
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Every time I go to see a movie with a male protagonist blowing stuff up, he's a sexual actor and we see the chicks around him from his perspective and sometimes he's hot so that's cool and sometimes he's just some average-ish dude who the ladies are all nuts about for no well-defined reason and that's annoying.<br />
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And every time I go to see a movie with a female protagonist blowing stuff up, she's either super-hot and we see her from her male companion's perspectives, or she's like a mom figure and she's all badass in defense of her family/husband/children and that's cool but<i> </i>not really all that sexy.<br />
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I say this as a woman who likes guys. I like to look at guys and have sex with guys and it gets frustrating sometimes that a lot of media doesn't do much for me or represent me or even really acknowledge that I exist. Especially when it's not just action movies but advertisements and media that's presumably "for" me. Or media that is absolutely for me, like RPGs.<br />
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It's not something I personally get pissed off about these days, and I understand why it happens and I don't think it's some vast conspiracy to keep women down. But it frustrates me.Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-23265833437911609322012-02-24T21:28:00.000-05:002012-02-24T21:28:06.932-05:00QuipstarI don't usually post about my personal life or work here and I plan to keep it that way, but I thought I'd just post a few of these to let you know what's been keeping me busy and away from the blog for the last couple of weeks. Also, because it's fucking awesome.<div>
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The guy in the backwards baseball cap is my man Andy. He was in my old high school group and he got hired here shortly after I did.</div>
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What people have on their iPads is our software, live. It's sorta hard to tell but the same software is also running on the podiums. (Or rather, as it's a web-based app, on a server in the back room. The computers in the podiums themselves are mostly running Firefox, plus some stuff for the buzzers and whatnot.) It's a clinical documentation app with a ton of medical data in it. Contestants are using it to answer medical and medical coding questions.</div>
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"Inga" is an anonymous health IT industry news blogger. She's in disguise so that her secret identity isn't revealed. Her security detail is two of our programmers. Her martini glass is filled with green M&Ms because she's a diva. You'll notice we set up a whole extra big screen TV to her left so we could show a live video feed of her shoes.</div>
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I'm in this one. Set up the day before the convention opened.</div>
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Post-show inventory and office clean-up is probably going to eat up next week's computer and work time, and just recovering from Las Vegas (Medicomp parties even harder after the show than we do during it) is going to take most of this weekend, so don't expect me to be back to blogging and whatnot for a bit. </div>Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-45109824376337800702012-01-23T16:04:00.001-05:002012-01-23T16:56:55.802-05:00Why D&D Has Lots of Rules for Combat: A General Theory Encompassing All EditionsD&D, in all editions, has a lot of rules for combat. That's generally what the majority of the game's rules are for, even when it's got fairly detailed rules for non-combatty type things. That doesn't mean that D&D is "about" combat, though, at least in all editions. Sometimes, in fact, it means that it's very much not about combat.<br />
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Obviously, sometimes D&D <i>is </i>about combat. 4E is the big one here. If you're not spending a decent chunk of your sessions fighting monsters in 4E, you're playing waaaaay outside of what its designers intended for it. This is a function of the complexity of the rules 4E has related to combat: in 4E D&D, you have a lot of interesting decisions to make inside of combat, and you're not risking much by initiating it. Your guy has a lot of neat things he can do in combat, the rest of the party has a lot of neat things they can do in combat, and the monsters, terrain rules, encounter design guidelines, and other DM advice and features of the game make it fairly easy to set up a particular kind of "interesting encounter." And the DM has to step outside of what the game rather strongly recommends to even be able to kill the PCs. It's tough to do accidentally.</div>
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Depending on the quality of the GM, of course, you probably have some interesting decisions to make outside of combat as well, but it's harder to say exactly what you're risking in those situations than it is when you're working within the game's combat system. 4E D&D is a game where you're supposed to spend a lot of your time hitting things.</div>
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At the opposite extreme, you've got OD&D/Basic and their retroclones. Combat in OD&D isn't that interesting unless the DM knows what he's doing and the players are active and creative-- neither the games rules nor its advice really funnel play towards "fun" combat. To the degree that combat is interesting, it's interesting because you're allowed to bring in whatever non-combat systems you have for handling problems-- the nets, 10-foot-poles, and spells of physical problem solving-- into the combat. If that's fun in the rest of the game, you're probably going to have fun with OD&D combat, too.</div>
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The main function of the combat rules, instead, is to make combat deadly, in a way that's fairly adjudication agnostic. If the DM is doing her job right, she's going to kill your character sometimes, and you're going to know that you deserved it. It needs fairly detailed combat rules because it's relatively difficult to adjudicate combat compared to most of what you do in D&D, and relatively important compared to most of what you do in D&D that it be adjudicated "correctly," or at least in a fairly neutral way. (Among other reasons-- to a degree <a href="http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2010/07/heres-some-advanced-rpg-theory-for-you.html">combat is always complex because combat is inherently interesting).</a></div>
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So here complex combat creates a situation that's the opposite of what it does in 4E: "If we get into combat we will probably die; as long as we stay out of combat we might die but we're not sure" vs. "If we get into combat we probably won't die; as long as we stay out of combat we might die but we're not sure." It doesn't change the fundamental D&D situation of "you don't really know what the DM is up to, and to play and have fun you have to be willing to trust her."</div>
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The combat rules create a particular environment for decisions to be made, and they create context for decisions made outside of combat. In 4E, combat is inherently interesting, and the context it creates encourages players to engage in combat. In OD&D, combat isn't inherently interesting, since its intended to create a context that discourages players from engaging in combat without pissing them off if that's what they decide to do. In each case you get different behavior. (Depending on the assumptions that the players themselves bring to the table. I've had players fling themselves into OD&D combat because they didn't understand the rules and they assumed that it was like the video games they were used to, or other games that they'd played.)</div>
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For me this is a simple and clear case of some general principles in game design. Just because a game has a lot of rules for something, it doesn't mean the game wants you to spend a lot of time doing that something. Player's may assume that's the case, if they mistake "complex" for "interesting," but they'll eventually learn better if it's not. If a game has a lot of rules for something that's a good sign that it's important, but it may be inherently important or it may be important because it's a failure state or other consequence of normal game play. 3E has fairly complicated rules for death and dying. That doesn't mean that 3E is "about" death and dying to the degree that it has rules about them.<br />
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As an aside, I feel like this combat/rules dynamic puts 3E in sort of a weird place. The volume and kind of rules that it has for combat indicate that combat is inherently interesting. For the most part, that's true. But it lacks a lot of the safeguards that 4E has built-in to combat. It's not nearly as deadly as OD&D, but it can still be pretty deadly, especially when the players misjudge the situation somehow. It extends a lot of OD&D's assumptions to their logical conclusions-- OD&D combat <i>can </i>be interesting, if the DM presents it in a sufficiently textured way, and the players have some toys to play with, so D&D 3E provides the texture and the toys. </div>
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Unfortunately, that makes it easy for things to guy awry if the players then take their inaccurate OD&D assumptions to their logical conclusions. Either they'll die a lot and get frustrated, or the DM will low-ball the challenge (and the 3E books don't give a whole lot of guidance away from this tendency) and the combats will get really easy. The underlying physics of D&D's combat can make for pretty boring combat if there aren't any interesting stakes involved; if you're not trying to achieve something in particular, or desperately avoid death. 3E makes it interesting to go "oh hey! this game is about combat!" then have that initial impression confirmed, and play that way until the game gets very boring and the DM gets annoyed.</div>Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-40214688461995892902012-01-20T13:24:00.002-05:002012-01-24T19:52:12.661-05:00What If Your PCs Were All on Drugs?In the comments on Zak's latest post, bombasticus writes:<br />
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Now that you mention it, though I almost want to run a really decadent Third Imperium "drift" game, Victor's European Vacation in space where they confront the inherent anomie of existence. And do space drugs.
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For some reason this really clicks with me. I immediately thought, "Well what if they were all addicts? That would be a pretty dang great reason for them to go adventuring. They'd need money, and that'd get them into the usual trouble, and then the drugs themselves would get them into even more trouble. It'd neatly explain the usual player character batshittery."<br />
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Especially if they weren't all the same drugs. Like if I was going to take this concept really seriously, I'd have a random table that told you what drugs you were hooked on at the start of play. Maybe more than one.<br />
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It even explains how the characters know each other: You met through your drug dealer. Or otherwise through that fraternity that always seems to exist amongst users and addicts. It'd be easy to integrate new characters into the game. Which would probably be necessary, for something like this.<br />
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<i>Traveller </i>is a pretty obvious system/genre for this kinda thing, but I think it'd work for any sufficiently urbanized setting. D&D and cyberpunk would both be pretty obvious options.<br />
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I might do it with <i>Traveller, </i>though, just because I've had trouble with that system in the past (for some reason) and that might help me get a handle on the shape of the campaign. Or not. I've been meaning to run a "wastrel noble scions" game of D&D for a while, and this might be just the thing.Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-60420592543401265912012-01-11T15:31:00.002-05:002012-01-11T15:33:36.208-05:00What have I done?Foxboy is getting old World of Darkness books in the mail. He's got players lined up and he wants us all to be Tremere in a small town dealing with creepy happenings. It was not six months ago that I talked him into playing in an Eberron campaign I was running. Since then he's played some Dark Heresy but a recent move has put that game on ice, so I guess he decided that he needed to take things into his own hands.Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-44862500961098885192011-12-21T14:50:00.000-05:002011-12-21T14:50:12.011-05:00Strategy & (Vancian) MagicI dig Vancian magic I think it makes sense, has a lot of flavor, and makes it pretty easy to handle magic. It also admits a lot of variations. 3e by default has a bit (compare wizard, sorcerer, and cleric), and a lot of later D&D 3e products were good about this. Reserve feats (as long as you have spell X prepared, you can create magic effect Y at will) are a pretty simple variation; <i>Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic </i>gave you some weirder ones. Even psionics, as implemented in 3e, is pretty much just Vancian magic with a different economy of slots.<br />
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My personal favorite is what Monte Cook did with the standard Vancian system in <i>Arcana Evolved</i>. A lot of little changes that really showed how you can stretch D&D's magic. One of the biggest is that all casters, instead of being divided into prepared and improvised casters, are a sort of hybrid of the two. Everyone has access to their full spell list at all times. (And everyone uses the same master spell list; depending on your class and your feat selection, each individual caster has access to specific parts of it.) You "ready" a certain number of spells at the beginning of the day, and then use your spell slots to cast those spells in any combination you like. Since you can also use one spell slot to cast several spells of a lower level, or several slots of a lower level to cast one spell of a higher level, casters have a lot more flexibility in their what they can do each day than is normal in 3e D&D.<br />
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Granted, this ups the complexity level of running a caster a <i>lot</i>. When I was running <i>Arcana Evolved</i>, my casters made printouts of different spell load-outs for different kinds of situations, because otherwise what you're doing is basically building a sorcerer fresh at the start of every session. It's not a system I'd recommend for DIY D&D except maybe for high level play. It gets worse when you consider that daily spell selection really only scratches the surface of the new complexity in <i>Arcana Evolved; </i>with three versions of every spell (one at, one a step above, and one a step below the level of the spell) and a bunch of feats that let you modify spells in various ways, there are a lot more decisions to make when building and playing a caster than in vanilla 3e D&D.<br />
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Decisions are good. One of the things that I admire about D&D magic is that there are a lot of decisions, they're all pretty meaningful decisions, and for the most part they're also avoidable decisions. In early D&D this is pretty simple. Play a caster or no? Which of two spell sets do you want access to? Accumulating the spells themselves involves a whole series of little decisions and challenges, and actually preparing spells each day gives a consistent and not-overwhelming suite of decisions to make. Then there's casting the spells, and you can get into a lot of creativity there, but most of the strategy is pre-loaded. Your success as a caster revolves around what kinds of situations your experience allows you to anticipate, and your ability to react when your plans go awry.<br />
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One of the things I like about later editions of D&D, though, is the way that the more complex spellcaster ecosystem lets you fine tune where you want your strategy, and how much of it you want. In 3e, there are three big spell suites and a secondary one (divine, natural, arcane, and bard) to choose from, and a couple different levels of involvement in each. If you want, you can simplify your choices at-the-table by front-loading them into your build, by playing a sorcerer (or a bard). Playing a cleric is in a lot of ways similar, because if you screw up your spell selection, or if an educated risk in a situational spell choice goes awry, you can always default to a Cure.<br />
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Of course, 3e D&D also ramps up the total decisions you have to make a lot, which is kind of a double edged sword. Most of these you're going to make away from the table: Feats and caster special abilities mostly impact character creation and leveling, and the vastly expanded spell list is mostly something dealt with when winnowing your selections for your spellbook or spells known. No matter what class you're running, though, you're going to have more spells to cast, and that does increase the complexity of at the table strategy.<br />
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Changing the complexity level of the available decisions, and changing where those decisions get made, is the big thing that you're doing when you start messing around with the D&D spells system. You have a lot of leeway to do that with D&D and Vancian casting in general, because you don't just have a lot of decisions, in the sense that you have a long spell list. The decisions come in chunks. Character creation. Ongoing spell selection. Daily spell preparation. Casting during the encounter.<br />
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I really think that's the strength of the D&D spell system. There's a satisfying level of complexity and available strategy, but it's not overwhelming, because you don't have to deal with it all at once. There are a lot of ways to scale it up and down to fit your individual group's preferences, both at the system modification level, and as they make their characters. For a game that's often about the pleasures of logistic strategy gone horribly, horribly awry, that's a pretty good thing.Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-79871741692948073292011-12-02T14:47:00.004-05:002011-12-02T14:51:56.041-05:00NaNo & ScrivenerDidn't win NaNoWriMo, which I'm okay with. At about 35k and still working on it. We'll see where that goes. I'm trying to get 10k a week, as a general rule.<div><br /></div><div>I recently moved all my stuff to Scrivener, to test that program out. It's kinda neat. So far I'm mostly appreciating the ability to see my wordcount as I type, and to break out sections in different sub-documents. So far that's mostly just "each day's work is a new note," but I suspect that when I get around to editing it's going to be broke down a lot more like scene. There are actually two separate novels in this project, maybe more. Breaking away from the Word-inspired idea that a big project has to be written all at once, straight through, with no breaks in between has been liberating. Double plus the idea that I have to know what a project is about before I start writing. That's the big thing that I'm glad I've learned from NaNoWriMo now.</div>Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-27877064075727708162011-11-09T14:33:00.001-05:002011-11-09T22:23:42.220-05:00NaNoWriMo<a href="http://nanowrimo.org/en/participants/oddysey">I'm doing NaNoWriMo again.</a> That's one reason why I've been quiet lately. (Other reasons: Not gaming as much as I was, not running anything, busy getting settled into work/new apartment/post-college life.)<br /><br />It's weird. I'd totally sworn of NaNoWriMo the last time I did it. Forever. Succeeded twice, failed twice, decided I'd learned all I could from it and that it was time to move on to Real Writing. And now I'm back at it.<br /><br />I'm doing it partly because DrRotwang announced he was doing it for the first time, and it's always good to support first-timers. Partly to keep me busy while I get back on anti-depressants/anti-anxiety medication.<br /><br />Have I mentioned that here? I got whacked with the depression stick pretty bad in middle school. Managed to get that under control at the time, but looking back it was an issue on and off for most of college.<br /><br />It’s tough for me to get a sense of perspective on it because I don’t have the crippling, free-floating, self-esteem battering emotional regulation issues that have landed a couple of my friends and acquaintances in the hospital recently, and de-railed work and school for others. What I do have is a lot of anxiety and a hard time telling when I’m getting anxious, so it alters my behavior in ways I’m not always aware of. The last six to twelve months have involved a lot of both figuring that out and attempting to get a handle on it. One conclusion I’ve had to draw is that it’s started to affect my gaming (and maybe always has). That’s one of the big reasons I want to get it under control. Not being able to DM because of how nervous making things up on the fly makes me is no fun at all.<br /><br />Medication seemed to help towards the end of school, but then I stopped taking it for various stupid reasons, so now I’m having to go through the unpleasant, why-is-this-making-my-symptoms-worse?!! process of getting back adjusted to it. Writing doesn’t help, exactly, in the sense that it makes me feel better. It keeps me occupied, though, and it helps me feel grounded.<br /><br />It’s good to get back in touch with that. I did a lot of writing in college. I was an English major, as I will never tire of telling people. But it was a lot of very busy, very harried, very fragmented, very goal-focused, and often not-very-fun writing. I mostly lost track of my old high school habit of carrying a notebook around with me everywhere and writing whatever, whenever, wherever. I have an entire shelf full of these notebooks. If there’s anything you admire about my writing “style,” those notebooks are probably why. I’ve written a lot. Just sheer volume of words.<br /><br />And, you know, focus and goals and piece completion and all that is good. I’m proud of a lot of the work I did in that English program. Even the research papers, although mostly what I learned from them is that I don’t ever want to go near an English Masters program oh god get it away from me. The reading I had to do for those classes made me a better writer, and I absolutely, positively, one hundred percent am a better writer because of the things I talked about and learned and had to write for my workshop classes.<br /><br />But I kind of lost that sense of writing as this self-contained thing that lets me structure the world. It was constantly, as Steven King would say, “writing with my door open.” I got better at writing, but I was doing it for classes, for peers, for teachers, for friends. Sometimes for friends I was working on projects with. Not for myself.<br /><br />NaNoWriMo, and this story I’m working on? Completely, totally, one hundred percent for me. This is good. The story itself is kind of terrible, and it’s tough, but every time I knock out another two thousand words I’ve learned something new about it, and I don’t have to worry about how anyone else is going to evaluate it in two weeks. Or maybe ever. If I show it to anyone else, it’ll be because I want their feedback, and I want to make it better.Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32029386.post-20145379747728311172011-09-30T17:30:00.000-04:002011-09-30T17:30:09.066-04:00There's No Money in D&DSo on Google Plus the other day, in a discussion of why I don't read comics and maybe other people don't too (short version: they're bad, and they're bad because of artist/writer churn), I made the following comment:<br /><blockquote>I feel like DC/Marvel have the same problem that WotC has, or at least a similar one, in that they own this thing that everyone loves and knows about and looks like it ought to have all kinds of money in it, but in reality is fantastically hard to make money off of because they don't own the part of it that people really care about. They own the names, but they don't own the DMs or the artists or the writers.</blockquote>This is something I've been thinking about and talking about with people for a long time. I don't really know how serious of a "problem" this is for WotC at the moment -- the internet wisdom is that their corporate masters are desperately unhappy with the level of profit they're generating, but the internet wisdom, generally speaking, isn't.<br /><div><br /></div><div>Still. I think it's interesting that, with the rise of Paizo and <i>Pathfinder, </i>we're getting a look at just what it is that Wizards owns in "D&D." Fundamentally, it's not much.</div><div><br /></div><div>They don't own the concept of roleplaying, or any of the fundamentals you need to run a game. At one point maybe they owned the rules, but even that's kind of dodgy given the way U.S. copyright law handles game mechanics. They clearly don't now. They <i>can't </i>own the vast majority of what you need to run a game, because that basically comes down to a particular set of skills and talents that aren't all that hard to pick up, if you're willing to work at it. </div><div><br /></div><div>They don't own dungeons. They don't own dragons. They don't own most of what makes up "standard D&D fantasy" what it is, because most of <i>that </i>was based on older sources to begin with. They claim ownership of illithids and yuan-ti, but it's not like you can't easily make your own without referencing their versions. Which leaves... what, beholders? Rust monsters?</div><div><br /></div><div>These days, what they own is the ability to put "Dungeons Ampersand Dragons" on their books. What they own, really, is the ability to sell a particular set of tribal signifiers to geeks. They own the best way to sell something to someone who's never played an RPG before. They can sell the stuff that says "D&D" and makes you a part of "D&D." As <a href="http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/">Zak</a> put it:</div><blockquote>I;d say--they own the part that people who will buy shit whether it's good or not want, but not the part that matters to people who actually want it to be good care about.</blockquote>Nataliehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15528192783751011497noreply@blogger.com21