Mice in a Box

Via the Hopeless Gamer blog, comes word of a new boxed set, this one for the Mouse Guard RPG.  For those not in the know, Mouse Guard is comic of anthropomorphic mice in the wilderness of medieval Europe.  It's all about loyalty and intrigues, legends and betrayals, and courage and death.  Heady stuff, and ripe for RPGing.  The game itself is a variant of Luke Crane's Burning Wheel game.

I'm not sure how much crossover potential there is here, and I doubt we'll see this box in places where we don't already expect to see RPGs (comic book stores and FLGS).  Still, it promises to be a lovely box with unusual goodies in it.  And, I must admit, I'm still buzzing from how the boxed set has gone so quickly from the pariah of gaming accessories to the must-have new product of the decade.

The Great Purge

In the future, I'm thinking it would be appropriate to wait until May Day to commit such atrocities...  ;)

I've gone through and cleaned up my RPG links along the right side of the blog.  It's been long overdue.  I was sad to see so many blogs had gone dormant (many, for some reason, last saw action in July '09).  Still, I've been adding new ones, and the old ones were making it impossible to find them.  I'd especially like to draw your attention to Henchman Abuse,  Gaming All Over the Place, and New Fish in an Old School.

Bigger, Better, and Quite Insane

So if you've been following along in the RPG pundit-sphere, you know that there's been some thought that RPGs will go the way of wargames and model railroading. That is, as the niche shrinks, more and more products will become very high-quality collector's treasures, and will be priced accordingly.

There's a push-me-pull-me effect right now. In addition to WotC's very cheap new Red Box, there are lots of projects with a strong do-it-yourself vibe, like Fight On! and now Paizo's talking about an intro set to their Pathfinder game.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have things like Raggi's boxed set and the latest version of the Warhammer RPG. I'd thought that things like that, and the Ptolus mega-book, would be what premium RPG products of the future would look like.

That was, until Raggi linked to this today. Ye gods...

I'm a little torn when I see something like that. On the one hand, yeah, very cool. I'd love to be involved in a product that looked like that. On the other, I have to wonder at the utility of most of it. CoC has long been a game associated with props: photographs, coffee-stained letters, edlritch inscriptions and rubbings, and other such. Creating the proper mood and atmosphere is vital to the game, and the props help.

That said, some of this looks cool, but extraneous. The box, for instance, is awesome, but would it really help to set the proper mood? Ditto for the flag. I suppose we could mount it on the wall, crank the AC down to 30, bundle up in our sweaters and turtlenecks, and try to recreate the feeling of being at the bottom of the world, but...

Still, if you shoot for the moon and miss, you're likely to land among the stars. You certainly can't fault the French here for a lack of audacity. If nothing else, they've created a piece of gaming history.

MZB Takes JB to School

Hey, remember me waxing enthusiastic about books targeted at gals? JB over at B/X Blackrazor has a fascinating post up today, inspired by his recent reading of some of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover novels. Here’s a teaser to whet your appetite:

In some ways, she’s RE-teaching me things I already knew but forgot. For example, fantasy/sci-fi adventure doesn’t have to include combat to be powerful, dangerous, dramatic, or life-and-death.

Really.

I remember reading a comment on someone’s blog (maybe even mine), that fantasy role-playing games require some sort of combat system because, for a game to BE a fantasy adventure RPG, COMBAT needs to be involved. I know this echoes a sentiment expressed by my brother in a discussion we had awhile back (when talking about RPG design) that people EXPECT some sort of combat/fighting action to take place in any role-playing game.

Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

All I’ll say on that front is that it’s been literally over a month of real time, with weekly playing, in the game Oddysey is playing in, since we last rolled for to-hit. And that was in a game of skill, not combat. And we’re having a blast! Though she does accuse me at times of playing not-D&D with her. ;)

As for JB's discussion of motivations, this is also great stuff. Speaking of Paizo, one of the things I appreciate about their Pathfinder adventures is the option for personal motivations and quests for the PCs. I do think they work better if they come from the players and the intersections of their interests and the themes of the setting, but having a goal beyond just completing the grand quest (or amassing great wealth, as is the default in traditional sandbox play) just makes the game richer to my mind. So it’s not something I push on players; if that sort of thing interests them at all, there’s more than enough time after the game begins to develop goals, rivals, and conflicts a-plenty.

Sandbox-finder?

There are so many good blogs out there! I might almost say too many; I'm having a devil of a time keeping up with all the good stuff going right now. Case in point: nearly a month ago, Navdi posted about his desire to use Pathfinder materials to run a more sandboxy, Old School game. I just discovered this last night. It struck a chord with me because 3e in all its incarnations leaves me cold, but I love Paizo's design style, artwork, and just the look-and-feel they give their stuff. So, how to infuse a more Old School feel into a game that is based on Paizo's rules and Pathfinder adventures?

I offered some suggestions in his comments, and this is expanding on what I wrote there. Generally, what the players want from 3e and its ilk is a sense of story and verisimilitude to their adventures; they don't want to just whack random monsters for random amounts of treasure. What DMs pining for a more Old School game often want is a more open-ended story and a more proactive approach from players towards tackling challenges; they don't want the players twiddling their fingers while they wait for the DM to deliver the adventure on a silver platter. With a creative and flexible DM, those goals are absolutely compatible. (Where you'll run into trouble is the conflict between the players' desire for mechanical customization of their characters and the DM's desire for simplicity. If you find a good way to harmonize those discordant themes, please let me know.)

I don't know any of Paizo's adventure paths well enough to say, but the ones I have read at least make nods towards player choice (and their latest, Kingmaker, promises to do more than that), and as Navdi points out in the comments of his blog, Paizo does a great job of establishing settings that are larger than the mere adventure path and its dungeons. With all that in mind, here are my suggestions to Old School-ify your existing collection of Pathfinder adventure paths:

1) start the players off with a clear, obvious, but open-ended problem. My favorite is a shipwreck (players need to gather supplies and find their way to civilization), but you can also use a natural disaster or alone in the wake of a military defeat for their side.

This works great because the players are presented with concrete, obvious problems to solve, but while there's no dungeon in sight, they're immediately put into the proper, creative, open-ended problem-solving mode that is the backbone of Old School play.

2) Once they've reached civilization, shift the focus to an urban environment. Everyone knows that Old School play and city adventures are incompatible, right? (We just won't mention Aerie of the Slave Lords and Vault of the Drow. Or the Random Harlot table. ;) ) Give them something concrete to do as soon as they get into the city, or better yet, have it be something they need to do that they discovered while solving the issues of the start of the campaign. During the course of this first urban adventure, start planting the seeds of conflict that will inspire the players to make choices: let them hear rumors, find treasure maps, or make enemies that will guide them to your adventure locations. Let them choose sides in local conflicts, and make those choices matter. Most importantly of all, make it clear to them as early as is reasonably possible that their choices have a direct and powerful impact on the setting. If they're not utterly bizarre, they'll love it. And again, that puts them in the proper headspace for Old School play.

3) Use more than one Pathfinder series. Since you're giving the players choices about what challenges to tackle, you'll likely need more adventures than one Pathfinder series can provide. So feel free to seed your CotCT adventures with some cherrypicked from Rise of the Runelords or Legacy of Fire. If they don't know much about the OSR, you might be able to squeeze in a Raggi adventure or something from Fight On!

4) By the time the PCs reach 4th or so level, most of the work should be done; they'll be interacting with the world as a place, rather than looking for the markers pointing them towards the next adventure. Don't be surprised if it takes that long, however. Even when the players are all on-board for that sort of thing, it can take some time before they know enough about the setting and the NPCs to really start being proactive and taking their destinies in their own hands.

Fabulous Wealth

This grew out of a number of conversations (some online) about the massive amounts of wealth old school characters (who earn most of their EXP through treasure) tend to acquire. Carousing rules work great, but if you don't want to use those for some reason, the PCs are going to end up with giant piles of treasure. Here's what I've done in the past to allow the players to fritter that great wealth away:

Potions and Magic - I've usually had a very small local market (usually one hedgewitch or the like) selling potions and a few magic spells. The potions are usually utilitarian things, like healing potions and waterbreathing potions, and sell for 100s of gp per use. Even first-level spells should probably sell for no less than 500 gp. Nothing above 2nd level is available, and little of that.

I also allow the PCs to pay sages and such for identifying magic items plundered from the dungeon. This also tends to be expensive, usually costing 50 gp or so to identify a potion and 300 gp for weapons and armour.

Fates Worse Than Death - catch a nasty disease from the giant rats? Or get cursed by the witch? Getting that sort of thing undone can cost some serious coin. The typical price I've seen for having a spell cast for you is 100 gp per level of the spell, making cure disease and remove curse cost 300 gp for each casting.

Transportation - Do the PCs need to travel by sea to get somewhere? There won't be regular cruise-ship traffic to the Isle of Dread, so they may need to buy their own war galley (60,000 gp) and crew it with rowers (300 at 2gp per month), sailors (30 at 10 gp per month), and a captain (250 gp per month). If the trip requires they sail out of sight of land, they'll want a navigator too (150 gp per month). Some marines (up to 75 at 4 gp per month for hazard pay) might be nice in case they run into pirates or sea monsters as well. And all these people will need potable water and provisions to consume on the voyage.

Throwing Money at Problems - Allow the players to solve some problems with money. Let them hire and outfit henchmen to accompany them on their adventures. A sage (2,000 gp per month) might be able to learn more about the dungeon or the evil duke who is threatening the region, while a spy (500+ gp per mission) might be able to ferret out the Duke's vile plans. Maybe the orc tribe will take a bribe to go pillage elsewhere, or could be hired to help take on the hobgoblins next door. Maybe the dragon won't eat you if it let it eat your horses.

Making Friends and Influencing People - Being known as philanthropists and high-rollers can result in beneficial modifiers to local reaction check rolls. This can include things like sacrifices at the local temple of a patron deity, weregeld paid to the families of henchmen who died on the last adventure, or rebuilding the orphanage burned down by the goblin lackeys of the evil duke. My college crew celebrated important milestones and achieving long-term goals with wild parties, in which they invited many of the important NPCs from past adventures. These were fun to RP, and allowed me to sow the seeds of future adventures. And, of course, they required the spending of lots of coin on food, entertainment, and clothes.

Bling - Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man. Allow them bonuses to reaction rolls when they dress to the nines (after spending money on it, of course). Maybe a high-plumed helm or banner gives a morale bonus to their henchmen in battle. You're more likely to get an audience with the Lord Sheriff if you're dressed like someone who ought to be given an audience with the Lord Sheriff. A few bribes and a fancy gift might make things go smoother, too. If you really want to look the part, you'll need servants and a carriage and all of that as well.

And if you're knighted after rescuing the count's daughter, you'll owe him a certain amount of military service every year. To avoid having dull patrols and sentry duty interfering with far more profitable dungeoneering, pay enough scutage to his lordship so he can hire mercenaries instead.

Property - There's no need to wait until reaching "name level" before allowing the PCs to start spending money on lands and property. A small house in town can serve as a start, with a few servants and guards to protect it while they are away on adventure.

The nice thing about most of these suggestions is that they don't make the PCs feel like they are being punished for their success. Taxes and theft only make the players suspicious and angry. They can be used, but only with moderation. Instead, let the players use that money to make the lives of their PCs more fun and comfortable. Once you get the ball rolling, the players are likely to make suggestions of their own. Whenever possible, let them get what they want; "no" just shuts things down, but "yes, and..." creates new adventures and new fun.

Art by Joseph Mallord William Turner, Jean Limbourg, and Hans Makart .

New Monster: Merochi

Merochi

AC: 6 (+4 if using ascending AC) for males, 8 (+2) for females
Hit Dice: 3
Move: 120’
Attacks: 1
Damage: by weapon type, or 1-3 for claws and 1d6 for bite
Number Appearing: special
Save As: Fighter 3 or as a witch, when applicable
Morale: special
Treasure Type: A
Alignment: Neutral

Merochi are lion-like humanoids who inhabit tropical and sub-tropical plains and jungles, though some prides have been known to stake claim to lands in more temperate zones. The males stand near 7’ tall with the females rarely more than half-a-foot shorter.

The leonine merochi lay claim to broad territories far beyond what would normally be expected of their limited numbers. This is largely due to the structure of their civilization. With an economy based heavily on hunting, and only supplemented by agriculture and herds, the merochi require large territories which are jealously guarded. Poaching on merochi territory carries the most severe penalties, especially if those poachers are male.

Gender roles are strictly observed among the merochi. The principal, some say singular, duty of the males is warfare. There are only three acceptable professions for males: warriors, sorcerers, and the craftsmen who make weapons and armor. They'll spend the majority of their time training, caring for the youngest cubs, teaching the next generation of males, and overseeing the slaves that care for their fields and herds. When necessary, they also spend a considerable amount of time patrolling the borders of the territories claimed by their pride.

The duties of the female are to hunt and bear young. Indeed, they are even expected to do both at once; until the final stages of her pregnancy, females continue to bring in their share of the meat. Females may also be priestesses or witches, overseeing and caring for those spots within their territory deemed sacred.

This is probably due in large part to the fact that only females may own land. The males patrol and defend it, but it actually belongs to the females of the pride. Females born into a pride tend to stay with the pride their entire lives, and so inherit their land from their mothers and bequeath it to their daughters. Hunting grounds, fields, water, and the structures built upon the land remain the property of the pride, for as many generations as the pride lasts. The only thing a male may bequeath to his sons, and very few do even this much, is his weapons.

Young males who survive the arduous rites of passage to adulthood are ceremonially ejected from the pride. Those who would not live as landless brigands or mercenaries in distant lands must claim a pride for their own. The traditional method for doing this is to drive or slay current males of an existing pride. Warfare among the merochi is in the heroic style. The only ranged weapon allowed is the spear and the javelin. Indeed, so strict is the adherence to gender roles, the male will not touch bows, arrows or slings, since those are traditionally weapons of the females. Likewise, the female will not touch a shield or a sword as those are strictly weapons of war. The favored weapon of the merochi warrior is the spear. They usually also carry a shield, and will often wear breastplates of hide sometimes reinforced with metal. Ambushes and subterfuge are allowed, as are potions and spells to increase the vigor and strength of a warrior, but poison is forbidden. Among wealthier warriors, chariots are common, but only to transport the warrior to the battle. Once he has arrived, the warrior dismounts and fights on foot.

Poaching in the pride’s territory is seen as a challenge to their control of it. It is also seen as a direct challenge to the males whose duty it is to protect these territories. For their part, females rarely involve themselves beyond tracking poachers and pointing them out to the males. Should the males in the pride be slain the females will engage in the traditional three-day period of mourning, after which they will engage in a traditional seven-day period of celebration and revelry, welcoming the victors as the new males of the pride. Even though they may not be able to mate successfully with victorious males who are not of their race, they will still expect such males to take up the traditional duties, since "furless" protectors are better than none at all. Males who refuse will be viciously hunted by the females, and if caught, will be butchered and their meat spoiled and ruined, then scattered along the edge of their border as a warning to others.

Merochi align themselves into loose nations based around large ceremonial sites. These religious complexes are dominated by ziggurats and pyramids and include broad courtyards, arenas for sporting events, granaries and storehouses, and long, low dwellings. Most of these latter remain empty for most of the year, but fill up during important religious festivals. Males are forbidden to linger longer than a week in these places; those who remain longer will have their manes shorn, and may even be castrated or have their thumbs cut off.
Merochi huntresses encountered in the wild will almost certainly be hunting. Roll a d6 to see how many are encountered; if a 6 is rolled, roll the d6 one more time and add the two rolls together to see how many are encountered. A group of eight or more will include two young huntresses recently elevated to adulthood who have but two hit dice. A group of ten or more will include one witch between 3rd and 6th level. There is a 1-in-20 chance that any group of huntresses encountered will include an apprentice witch (2nd level), though there will never be more than one any group of huntresses encountered.

Huntresses hunting for game have a morale of 6 when facing organized opponents. However, they will never flee when defending their homes and sacred sites, and all fight as if one hit die higher when defending their young.

Merochi males on patrol are encountered in small groups of one or two, but will be accompanied by a slave shieldbearer (who does not fight) 25% of the time. There’s a 1-in-10 chance that the merochi will be mounted on chariots, in which case the chance of a slave to drive the chariot is 75%. Merochi warriors have a morale of 8 which rises to 10 if their females are in sight.

A merochi warband includes 2-8 individuals. In groups larger than four, half of them will have 1-2 healing potions, and two will possess potions that provide +2 on attack and damage rolls due to strength enhancement.

Art by Wilhelm Kuhnert and Johann Jakob Frey.

Some Quick Pathfinder News

A bit late to the game, Paizo decides to jump on the intro-set (and possibly boxed-set) bandwagon. That could be huge for them, since they appear to be really popular already. Unfortunately, the general consensus appears to be that selling rules promotes the sale of adventures, and the last thing Pathfinder needs is more rules. Here's hoping the market doesn't push them into a ditch on this front.

4e Schadenfreude

Old conventional wisdom: old school games are nothing but a string of combats in rooms just large enough to host a fight in.  Newer games have skills and social mechanics that allow for more role playing and less tactical-minis play.

New conventional wisdom: 4e adventures are strings of combats in featureless rooms just large enough to host a fight.  Meanwhile, Raggi's Tower of the Stargazer barely has any combat in it at all, but is thick with mood and atmosphere.

There's a lot of interesting thinking and tinkering going on in regards to 4e these days, brought on, I suspect, in part through the release of the Essentials line. As some have pointed out, a lot of the issues may be due to what the game rewards, specifically combat. EXP are not everything, however. There's the relationship between resting and recharging powers which is central to the mechanics of 4e. The game has a number of systems that interact in complex ways which give rise to all kinds of unintended play styles.

I'll grant you, I saw a bit of this resting-in-the-dungeon-after-every-second-or-third-encounter stuff in the 2e games I played in college, so these issues aren't new. I do think there's a cautionary tale in there for those of us who like to kit-bash various incarnations of D&D into our own games. The urge towards modeling everything and building greater complexity brings with it the greater chance of really skewing things in weird directions. It's why I'm not a huge fan of adding lots of new classes to the game (even though I can't seem to stop doing it myself ;p ).

Common sense and a few good rules of thumb seem to work pretty well. Honestly, the game I'm playing is probably a lot more complex than I need; there are huge swaths of rules in Labyrinth Lord I don't really use. This is why I keep harping on understanding what the rules do, and how they aid or inhibit getting what you want out of a game. Some of the poking at 4e is exactly the sort of thing I do with Moldvay/Cook D&D: tweaks to optimize the game for the way we play. In other cases, I can't help but think they'd be having more fun with a different game. In either case, there's a lot to learn, and it's always fascinating to see what folks who are working from a completely different set of principles and goals do with a hobby I spend so much time poking at myself.

Story vs. Railroad - A Reaction

Jason, over at the excellent Wasted Lands, doesn’t like people dissing on his story-based RPing style:

There seems to be this attitude that's become more prevalent over the past few years, which says that any GM who wishes to have a plot or story arc for his campaign is a shit GM and is just railroading his players…

I find this attitude from old-schoolers, who tend to champion concepts like the megadungeon, baffling. Let's look at the megadungeon concept. A dungeon is completely scripted out in advance, unless you're using a random dungeon generator as you go (and let's face it; random dungeon generators as a general rule don't work well on the fly). Every room in the dungeon is mapped out. Wandering monster tables are set. Key rooms with monsters and treasure are placed with care and detailed. Players are deposited in the dungeon and their meaningful choices amount to not much more than up, down, left, right, forward, and backward. They can choose to sally forth or leave, parlay, flee or fight.

That's...really about it. And every one of those choices exists in a story-based game as well. A plot hook is not a railroad, because you can always choose not to follow it, in which case the GM has to come up with a new hook (and a good GM will do so, even if on the fly).

Of course, not everyone agrees with Jason’s views on dungeons. For instance, pages 104-15 of Gygax’s DMG details suggested responses monsters might take, both when they are first attacked by the PCs, and then after the PCs retreat and regroup. These responses include fleeing the area before they can be attacked again, laying traps to cover weak points in their defenses, and even joining in alliances with other nearby monster groups for mutual defense.

So what gives here? The issue really comes down to definitions. Railroads don't just constrain choices; railroads dictate the end-point. The problem with Dragonlance wasn't that it was “too… Tolkien, and not enough Vance and Howard” but rather that at the end of every module the PCs must have accomplished certain goals and be in a particular place, and that they then must move on to the next module in the series. There was no option for jumping off the tracks. Paizo's Pathfinder adventures are the same way (though Kingmaker has been described as a "sandbox" so maybe it's different? Anyone who's played it want to give an opinion?). When you finish an adventure, you must have achieved certain goals and be in a particular geographic location, and you must begin the next adventure.

Yes, there are occasionally side quests. But those side quests, and the players choices to pursue them or ignore them, do not change the important fact that the PCs must finish the adventure in a particular way at a particular endpoint, and then move onto the next adventure in the series. There is no other alternative.

Here's where the issues of storytelling come in. Stories are structured to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. In computer gaming, RPGs typically have a single story with a few branching options which will eventually feed back into the main trunk. Therefore, it is very easy to give them a beginning, middle, and end. Dragonlance did the same thing with pen-and-paper RPG's. The adventures of the PCs had set beginnings, middle, and a single end, and all were pre-scripted before the players even rolled their first die. This is incredibly useful for somebody who wants to tell stories. It allows for such techniques as foreshadowing and the use of a rising and falling action to set a certain pace to the story or adventures. It does so, however, at the cost of freedom; if the Dark Lord is to be present at the grand climax in Chapter 10, it really makes a hash of things if the players kill him in Chapter 3. It also means that if the players decide they don't give a hoot about the Dark Lord, well where's your story now?

This isn’t exactly how Jason is using the term “story.” Jason is talking about something a little more complex. Jason is talking about creating a living, breathing world that reacts and takes the initiative every now and then. Or, I think in Jason's case, takes the initiative every chance it can get. This is not the same as railroading. In Jason's version of storytelling, the end is not predetermined. Certain things are going to happen, unless the PCs get involved. They might choose not to, in which case the Dark Lord’s evil will sweep across the land! Or, they might fight the Dark Lord and be victorious, in which case happiness and butterflies for everybody. Or, they could decide that the Dark Lord's offer of six figures, four weeks vacation a year, and generous dental plan sound pretty darn good. These are extreme (and extremely silly) examples, of course. I suspect what actually happens in Jason's games is that sometimes the heroes win, sometimes the heroes lose, and sometimes the heroes are just in the absolute wrong place to get involved at all. The map becomes a patchwork of victory, defeat, and detente for both sides. And since nobody knows what that that's going to look like when the game starts, this is not railroading. Technically, I'm not sure I would use the term story telling either. But that's just me being anal; my battle cry in college was, “Situation, not story!” I offer players the opportunity to tell their story based on the situations I hand them, or those that resulted from what they had done in previous sessions, but if anyone was crafting stories, it was the players. Not me.

I like this sort of play because it keeps everything fresh and surprising and I don't know what's going to happen next. I suspect this is very much what Jason is doing, and what happens in Dwimmermount and at Raggi’s table as well. The give-and-take and back-and-forth between the PCs and the world is what makes these games fun for many of us. And I think it’s exactly what A Paladin in Citadel is talking about when he describes implied narrative as:

No writer-defined (or Dungeon Master defined) narrative. I think this is the key (or what we imagine to be the key) to the appeal of Trampier's artwork, and the appeal of old-school gaming. The lack of agenda on the part of the Dungeon Master when it comes to what story will be told.

Like a good Dungeon Master, Tramp wasn't necessarily rooting for the good guys. Heck, we don't even know that characters in his illustrations, or the player characters in our games, are the good guys! That is up to the players themselves, or the art-viewers, to decide.

Just like the ending to their story is up to the players.

Art by Friedrich Stahl and Charles Marion Russell.

Images of D&D

Mr. Maliszweski has posed a fun question over at Grognardia: what cover art "encapsulates... 'D&D' in a single image"?

Having really gotten into D&D in the Silver Age, Elmore, of course, springs first to mind, and I think I'd have to go with this one. It's from the cover not of a rule book, but one of the early Endless Quest books TSR put out way back when. In this one, Return to Brookmere, you're an elf returning to your family's ancestral home after it's been overrun by monsters. The story is fun, and mostly consists of you sneaking about, trying to find your way out after a bad cave-in nearly crushes you.

There's a lot to like in this picture. The humanoids with their horned helmets, banners and skull-topped standards, the sinister wererat on his throne, the subterranean locale, and the bar of gold caught in the decorative border.

But most of all, I really like the hero. He (She? It's appropriately androgynous for a first-person choose-your-own-adventure style protagonist) has stolen a humanoid helmet and cloak to hide the finer garb of an elf warrior, including bright mail and soft boots. As decorative as his crenelated cuffs and purple tabard might be, his notched shield and long blade certainly look all business.

But if I'm willing to follow the lead of my fellow bloggers and not limit myself to simply covers, I'll have to go with this image. Yep, that's Elmore again, and I think it was originally released as a promotional poster at Sears (buy a certain amount of TSR stuff at Sears and get this cool poster type thing). I love the stories this one tells. Does the dragon know she's down there? Is he only distracting the dragon to give her a chance to get away, or to set up a back-stab? Clearly, an attempt to steal some gold without attracting the dragon's notice has gone awry. Do our heroes have any other tricks up their sleeves?

And I love the little details: the mountainous background, the clearly functional but not historical armour, the expressive faces of everyone in the painting, including the horse. This is a great painting, and has, for quite some time, been the picture that epitomizes D&D to me, and the you-are-there feeling I've always tried to evoke in my games.

But if we're not going to limit ourselves to just D&D and the clones, I'd probably have to say that this (NSFW!) painting by Keith Parkinson comes closest to encapsulating my gaming these days.

Podcasting Part Two: Weird Finnish Boogaloo!

Hot off the success of our first podcast, Oddysey and I return with a second.  Since we've run out of things to say (Ha!  Not!), we're joined this time by James Edward Raggi IV to discuss his newly released (and soon-to-be-sold-out-in-its-first-printing) boxed set, Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying.  It was a very fun interview, in large part because Raggi is a great guest.

A few words of warning: James asked us at the beginning of the interview what our language policy was.  We told him the truth: we don't have one.  So the interview is liberally sprinkled with the occasional four-letter word.  We also (briefly) discuss the whole "Spokesmodel of the OSR" thing.  So don't say you weren't warned.

Links of interesting stuff we talk about:

The Infamous Spokesmodel Image (WARNING: not safe for your SAN score, forget viewing at work!)

James (have you noticed just how many of us Jameses there are in the OSR) Maliszewski discusses his theories on the different Ages of D&D.  And more on the Silver Age in particular.

Elmore and the "you are there" school of fantasy art.

Cynthia Sheppard's art page.

The Patty Duke Show.  (No, really, this is a vital part of Raggi's design process.  O.o )

In related news, Oddysey has tracked down an option for proper podcast posting, and I'm still trying to figure out how to make it work.  (Utter troll fail! D:< )  The plan is to have it properly set up before the next part of the interview is posted.

Power to the People

I’ve ranted about capitalism before, and so far as that goes, I have to disagree with JB on this score. Capitalism has made our country great, but greatness isn’t measured in the philanthropy of our wealthiest. It’s measured in the breadth of our wealth, and in the fact that a truck-driver and factory worker can pool their money, buy a nice home to raise their daughters in, and give those daughters dance lessons and horseback riding lessons and send them both to college, while still having enough left over for when the Red Cross calls for donations in response to disasters around the world. Granted, most of that happened midway through the previous century, but it did happen and it did happen in America, and it happened because of capitalism.

But I’m not writing now to disagree with JB, but to agree with him. Capitalism works best when buyers and sellers send clear signals to one another. Unfortunately, advertising is frequently a murky business. But when you buy something, especially when you buy a lot of it, that’s a signal that’s heard loud and clear. You’re saying you value that thing, you’re saying you want more of it. You’re making it possible for the people who made it to spend more time (time they might otherwise need to spend keeping the lights on and putting food on the table) making more of whatever it is you liked so much before.

This gives you power as a consumer, power you need to wield responsibly because, yeah, it really is voting. And, at the end of the day, what products rise or fall is entirely up to what you buy and what you pass up.

I used to love reading DRAGON magazine. I never had a subscription, but I probably should have through my junior high years, when I purchased three of every four issues published. It was a fun read, with a wide range of articles, some of which had nothing to do with D&D, and saw me through brief periods of gamelessness. But, as time went on, I read it less and less. During my college years, it was an occasional read, and I was down to probably buying two a year. By the time 3.5 came out, I was buying maybe one every two or three years.

And here’s where things get interesting. I was still playing a lot of D&D back then (usually two games per week, and rarely as few as one), but I wasn’t buying much of anything. So far as the market was concerned, I was invisible. TSR and the others couldn’t tell what I wanted because I wasn’t buying anything they were selling. So far as they could tell, I (and, apparently, many others like me) simply vanished. In response, TSR flailed around; they tried making a CCG thinking maybe we’d left to play Magic, they tried converting Ravenloft into a gothic setting to lure us away from White Wolf, they made new game systems thinking maybe we were just tired of same-old D&D.

Nobody seemed to know much of anything about this hidden market, lurking about playing old games and having fun, until the OSR popped up. And then, as if from nowhere, there were magazines like Fight On! and games like Labyrinth Lord seeming to spring up out of nowhere. Only it wasn’t “nowhere” really; we’d been here all along. We’d just been ignored.

And that brings up another aspect of capitalism most folks miss: there’s very little preventing a buyer from becoming a seller. That’s why I bridle a bit at the “we don’t need no stinkin’ industry” talk that sweeps through the blogosphere every now and then. The truth is, we are the industry. Or we can be. The barriers to entry are pretty low these days in RPGs. There’s nothing stopping any of you from throwing together a module, a supplement, heck, even your very own boxed set. Raggi’s shown that you can push pretty damned close to industry-standard visuals and production values. He’s about sold out of his original run on his box. Swords & Wizardry did damned well with their box sets, too.

You think WotC hasn’t noticed?

Seriously, where do you think the idea for a nostalgia-focused boxed set came from? Sure, they may have come up with it on their own, might have realized the conventional wisdom about boxed sets was flawed without having watched what’s happened with Mythmere and LotFP, but you really think they haven’t noticed? You really think our enthusiasm and productivity didn’t plant a few idea-seeds?
So WotC’s come out with their boxed set. I’m pretty sure we’re not the target audience; it may have Elmore on the cover, but it’s 4e inside, and we all know that. Sure I could have bought it, but instead bought the LotFP boxed set which costs more than three times as much. Why? Because the WotC box isn’t much use to me, but I’ll play with the stuff in the LotFP box.

Really, how much more of a “duh” decision could it be? ;)

And I’ll likely also buy the more-than-double-the-cost-of-WotC’s-box Pathfinder GameMastery Guide because it looks like a great companion to Gygax’s DMG, the most used and abused book in my gaming collection. And I’ll almost certainly be getting JB’s B/X Companion because my players may be using Labyrinth Lord’s rules, but I’ve got Moldvay’s and Cook’s books sitting on my desk right now, and I reference them nearly every game.

So now the ball’s in your court. This is a golden age for RPGs. There’s never been such a wide array of products out there. The reviews are being posted all over the ‘net. It’s up to you to vote with your dollars, either by buying products that improve your gaming, or in making products you haven’t seen yet but would love to have. What happens next, as in all good RPGing, is entirely up to you.

Tracking Down the Flame Princess

Raggi is trying to find out where his Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying box set has shown up. I've been busier than a one-armed paper-hanger this week, so I haven't even been by Tribe or Dragon's Lair this week. Any fellow Austinites been in either store recently? I'd be surprised if either had it, but I've seen Dogs in the Vineyard at Dragon's Lair and bought Savage Worlds at Tribe, so it's not entirely out of the question.

Diesel's TSR Collection at ArmadilloCon

If you're in the Austin area and a fan of old school D&D, run, do not walk, to ArmadilloCon at the Renaissance Hotel this Sunday morning or early afternoon. Diesel has his collection of art from his TSR days on display in the art show.

When he told me he was bringing this at GenCon, I thought it was just going to be some of the stuff he did, which would be cool enough. But he's got stuff from a wide range of artists, including Elmore, Otus, and others. He's even got the beholder piece that would become the cover to Greyhawk book of the original brown books (apparently rescued from the trash!). It's an amazing and very cool collection, some it of never released commercially.

The art show is only open from 10 AM to Noon on Sunday, so be sure to get there in those hours to see it. It's a really cool slice of the hobby's history.

Proving Grounds of a Million Mad Overlords

A bit over a year ago (Friday, July 17, to be exact) I complained about the lack of outreach to potentially new gamers. Apparently, I should also start complaining about not having a million bucks because oh what a difference a year makes. Old conventional wisdom: box sets are impractical and led TSR to financial ruin. New conventional wisdom: box sets are teh awesome! It's like everybody and their grandmother has a box set coming out now. Troll Lord Games has something like a dozen of the things now, including rules, campaign settings, and adventure construction sets. The two biggies right now are, of course, the D&D Essentials starter set and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying. Both of these are ostensibly aimed at new players. This is undercut somewhat in Flame Princess by the cost of the box and the game-store and online-order focus of Raggi’s distribution model, which seems more aimed at existing gamers, and the nostalgia-based design of Essentials. In spite of these issues, both boxes have contents clearly designed to get the neophyte up to speed. They both have a choose-your-own-adventure style introductory adventure (Flame Princess actually has two), they both sport simplified rules, and they both include an additional DM-run adventure as an example of how these games can be played.

Of course, I'm going to give the advantage to the OSR. Granted, it's a very slim advantage; the Essentials box is inexpensive, designed to grab the attention of lapsed gamers more likely to introduce the game to their children, and it'll show up in places where non- and lapsed gamers are likely to stumble across it. It's an exceptional piece of marketing, and is likely to sell 100 times more units than Flame Princess. And I, for one, hope this is a pessimistic prediction.

Still, I think the OSR has an inherent advantage in the simplicity and flexibility of its games. For instance, check out this character sheet that Robert gave out at the Old School game he ran at GenCon. In spite of the fact that over half the table didn't play these games regularly, we had no problem generating characters, even though there wasn't a single rulebook at the table. That's right, we did it all based on the character sheet and these other handouts. Now it is true, all of us were familiar with gaming. We were, after all, all attendees at GenCon. Still, making characters was a snap.

You can see this in Flame Princess as well. The last two pages of the rules book is an annotated copy of the character sheet, making it easy to understand what goes where and what rules apply to which parts. Even better, like with Roger’s character sheets, everything you really need is right there on it: skill rolls, to-hit numbers, even a quick and elegant way to figure encumbrance. If nothing else, the OSR is all about quick and easy.

It's going to be interesting to see where these developments take us. The starter set is, to the best of my knowledge, the only box set in WotC's Essentials line. Raggi still isn't sure if the next printing of his weird fantasy role-playing game is going to be in a box (which he prefers) or in strictly book form. 2011 should prove to be another very interesting year for RPGs in general, and the OSR in particular. And that's not even considering what Frog God Games might get up to.

Oddysey and Trollsmyth try that Newfangled Podcasting Thing

At GenCon, Oddysey and I decided to podcast our thoughts about some of the stuff we saw.  Attempts to do this at the con fell flat, but we managed to do it via Skype a few days after returning to our respective homes.  We talk about the Paizo and WotC booths, Pathfinder and D&D Essentials, shopping, catgirls, and other fascinating topics.  The full podcast is just over a half-hour long.

In something like the order they came up in, here are some links to things we mentioned:

Zak’s RPG Blog II

Roger’s awesome character sheets at Roles, Rules, and Rolls (Not “Rolls, Rules, and Rulings.”  Sorry, Roger.)

The Hook Mountain Massacre by Nicolas Logue

Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set

Dr. Rotwang plays with his daughter

Raggi sells his box at Ropecon

Eric Mona buys Swords & Wizardry

Fear the Boot interviews Ryan Dancey

Everything New is Old Again

Have you seen the box for D&D's new starter set? Check it out:

Oops! That's from the old Mentzer set. How could I have mixed those two up? Here's the box for the new 4E Essentials Starter Set:

I got to see this at GenCon, inside a large display showcasing Elmore's art. As we were looking at it, a guy came up behind me and said, "Now that's what D&D is supposed to look like!"

The similarities are glaringly obvious. It's not just the same Elmore art, and the exact same shade of red, and the exact same dimensions. It's also the exact same font and ampersand for the name. This box doesn't just harkin back to the Mentzer box; it is almost exactly identical, with only a little change in the text and the company logo at the bottom.

I think Oddyssey nailed it when she suggested that the target audience for this box is clearly lapsed gamers. Middle-aged parents are going to see this and it will evoke immediate memories of all-night summer marathon sessions and biking over to a friend's house to spend a rainy Saturday slaying orcs and exploring ruined temples. The similarities are more than skin deep. Check out these details. Rumor says that the pre-gen characters have Elmore art. And I don't think I've seen die-cut counters in an RPG box since Star Frontiers!

But the pièce de résistance is the suggested retail price: $19.99. Well within impulse-buy range. This is easily something Mom or Dad might buy for somebody's birthday. Heck, this is something Mom or Dad might buy for the child of some other parents birthday.

Quite frankly, this is the most exciting and imaginative thing I have seen out of Wizard's marketing since the OGL. It's a certain thing this box will be showing up in Borders and Barnes & Noble bookstores across the country. If they can take this to the next level by selling it in Wal-Mart stores, who knows how far this could go? Wizards has a really good chance to hit this one completely out of the ballpark. This could completely change the game.

A rising tide lifts all boats; bringing in lapsed gamers can only be good for the OSR. Some of the folks who buy this set and bring it home are going to be disappointed that Mentzer's rules are not inside. There's already been much discussion on the differences between the most basic aspects of 4e and older versions of D&D; no need to hash that all out again. Folks who don't like what they see in this box may go looking for "the real thing." That means now is not the time for the OSR to rest on its laurels. I don't think we'll get most of the people who buy this box, but I also don't think it's unreasonable to expect a new influx of interested and excited ex-gamers looking for a little bit of the fun of those glorious days of yesteryear. It's going to be up to us to make certain that they can find Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry and all the rest. Keep an eye out for questions popping up on message boards. Be sure to provide links on your blogs. And we really need to do something to make sure the OSR has a serious presence at GenCon next year.

Between this and the other boxed sets we've seen so far I think we can clearly declare 2010 to be the Year of the Boxed Set. Now is not the time to squander the gifts that have been laid before us.

Creative Exercises

Is [creativity] learnable? Well, think of it like basketball. Being tall does help to be a pro basketball player, but the rest of us can still get quite good at the sport through practice. In the same way, there are certain innate features of the brain that make some people naturally prone to divergent thinking. But convergent thinking and focused attention are necessary, too, and those require different neural gifts. Crucially, rapidly shifting between these modes is a top-down function under your mental control. University of New Mexico neuroscientist Rex Jung has concluded that those who diligently practice creative activities learn to recruit their brains’ creative networks quicker and better. A lifetime of consistent habits gradually changes the neurological pattern.

From Newsweek.

Keep practicing, y'all. :D

Personality Inventory

Odyssey asked:

Personality inventory? Like, "What are the important elements of my character's personality, and do I want it to stay that way?"

On the face of it, this kind of sounds like something you'd expect to see in a very modern game. In fact, this is a very subtle process, and until recently, I hadn't really been consciously aware of it. A year or so ago, I could've talked about the hell I put clerics through in my campaigns, which is an extreme example of what I'm talking about here. If it's more comfortable for you, think about this as stress-testing the character concept. The goal here is to make the character change with time in subtle and interesting ways.

When players create a character, they usually think about things they want to do and experience with that character. Sometimes it's fighting a particular enemy or wielding a certain powerful weapon or quite commonly walking in the footsteps of some of their favorite characters from literature and movies. This last can be especially interesting, because these characters are often defined by their weaknesses and their challenges. Elric has his thin the blood, Cudgel his poor luck, Darth Vader has the arc of his redemption, and Odysseus keeps annoying gods. It's the struggles and challenges, even more than the cool gear, which usually defined such characters. Maliszewski has mentioned how, in the groups of his youth, the listeners of heavy metal music made intriguingly dark and doomed characters. For certain sort of player, this is the stuff excellent gaming.

All well and good, but the point isn't to create an angst-fest where you just constantly dump horror and tragedy on the characters’ heads. Instead, the goal is to make the non-mechanical, more subtle aspects of characters important in the game. They're all sorts of little ways you can do this; old school games are rife with this sort of thing. Changes to the character, or the character’s circumstances, necessitate reevaluating the place of that character in the setting in relation to nearby cultures and how the character is expressed through play, the setting of goals, and the various attributes of personality. And you can find the mechanisms for this all over the place in the games you already play.

Charm: the granddaddy of them all. Even the otherwise laconic Moldvay rules mention “orders against [the target’s] nature (alignment and habits) may be resisted". These sorts of spells really get to the heart of what a character wants and what they're willing to do to get it. It's very much an invitation to review how the character has behaved up until this point. Characters willing to stab their comrades in the back to get what they want are less likely to resist these sorts of spells than those who adhere to a very strict code of honor. Most characters fall somewhere in between these two extremes, of course, but the basic principle remains. Who they've been and what they've done dictates how the spell works and its limitations.

Transformations: changes in circumstance require changes in behavior. Let's start with the most dramatic: polymorph other. A character who's been transformed into another race or even class is going to find people treating them differently. Their role in the party he changed. More importantly, their role in society may have changed. The extreme example is, of course, xenophobia. The elf becomes an orc, or the champion of the dwarves becomes a goblinoid. However, there are much more subtle options. A human transformed into a gnome suddenly has to deal with a world built for people twice his height. An elf turned human suddenly has their life expectancy drop to 10% of what it was before. Moving to or from the dominant form of life in a particular area can have significant consequences for characters’ social standing and opportunities. And we haven't even touched all the fun you can have shifting genders.

Things can get even more fun if you cast your net a little more broadly for opportunities. Usually, a character infected with lycanthropy or turned into an undead is no longer playable. However, you can have a lot of fun with the character who is trying to live with such a condition. Disfigurement in combat can subtly alter how a character interacts with the world, or even force them to be more dependent on others. Gaining the ability to use spells at higher levels can also dramatically transform how a character is perceived and in turn how they behave.

Getting rich and leveling up: nearly inevitable and usually momentous. Most games have mechanisms for characters to gain power through the mechanics. Even those that don't usually allow the characters to amass great wealth, and with it usually comes local political influence. That’s not everyone’s cup of tea, of course, but even if you don’t want your PCs wielding considerable political influence, you need to explain why they don't when they can toss fireballs and toast the entire local militia, or routinely lose more wealth in their couch cushions than the local nobility spends on the upkeep of their castle. Many players and DM's look forward to the day when their used-to-be-pipsqueak neophytes suddenly demonstrate their newfound confidence and abilities. It used to be fairly standard practice for GM's to introduce some sort of bully early in the campaign to annoy the PCs with who was later trounced handily, and publicly, by the player characters to demonstrate their growing power and confidence.

Such displays almost invariably change the opinion of those who witness it. It would be odd indeed if characters who had saved the realm a handful of times, defeated menacing ogres, and slew giants and dragons were not treated differently by those whom they had both helped and thwarted.

How players and their characters deal with success can be as telling, and is interesting, as how they deal with adversity. Into every life a little sun must shine, and most people don't pay as much attention to how they handle success. Good times are seen as a chance to let your guard down. The true nature of the character may be revealed in such moments, often with consequences that outlive any momentary good fortune.

Again, this is not something overt and certainly not something that should interfere with gametime. Instead it is very much part of the give and take of play. Characters change, and the world reacts to that change. Characters then react to the world’s reactions. This creates a chain of events that follow logically from each other in ways that are largely predictable, but allow for great variations. This is where players craft their characters. This is where two fifth-level fighters exhibit their unique individuality from each other. This is where the magic happens. This sort of thing is far more flexible, and infinitely more powerful, as well as frankly more interesting, than anything mere mechanics can achieve.

Art by Joseph Mallord William Turner and Claude Vignon.

"Who was Heinz Guderian?"

[M]ost people will guess "A ketchup genius?" Wargamers will be ones who answer: "The German general who invented modern tank warfare, and who wrote a famous memoir, Panzer Leader."

That's from a very interesting article on the intersection of geek culture and all matters military. I think, in addition, that geeks are drawn to situations where the gloves come off, the normally Byzantine rules of society (that geeks are notorious for barely understanding) are cast by the wayside, and the geeks can finally flex their full mental muscles in an ultimate test of mind, will, and body. Sometimes that means war, but it also shows up a lot in survival fiction.

The Long Game

Grognardia's recent post about gamer ADD reminded me that my experience is far outside the norm. Since college (1990 for those of you playing along at home) nearly all my games have been multiyear epics. I've played in a handful of short games and one-shots, but pretty much everything I've run has been long-term. The Doom & Tea Parties game has bifurcated into two sorta kinda parallel games running in the same campaign, and they've both been running on a weekly basis for nearly 18 months. (Oddysey reports we’ve had roughly 85 sessions of the older game.) And neither shows any signs of ending anytime soon.

So how does this happen? Part of it, I think, is simply expectations; I assume my games will last for years and therefore they do. Of course no plan survives contact with the enemy, er, I mean players. Luckily, my players seem very amenable to the idea of long-running campaigns. It's likely there’s some self-selection going on there. Still, I think there are some things I do which encourage long-running game.

Verisimilitude: my highest good. Which means I'm probably overstating its importance, but one of the keys to a long-running campaign is predictability. The players need to know that certain things won't change, or at least won't change without a good reason. This allows the players to invest emotionally in the world in their characters. Once they've done that, you've got them!

Flexibility: and now that I've said that, I'm going to contradict myself. The truth is, everything does become boring after a while. Things need to be shaken up every now and kept fresh, and players need surprises. There is a sweet spot between chaos and stagnation. I think the key to hitting that sweet spot is being just consistent enough to preserve the verisimilitude and not too much more than that. And this leads to all sorts of things. Such as...

Rules-lite: yes, I'm fairly certain you can run a long-term campaign with a rules-heavy game. I'm just not sure I can do it. Part of the problem with rules heavy games is that they constrain your flexibility. For instance, one of the things that I have frequently seen in long-term campaigns is that characters change over time. Granted, most advancement mechanics assume that the characters will change, and some even give the players options to define that change. But the more they do this, the more they also constrain how characters change. Games like GURPS can be the worst offenders, as they turn personality into mechanics. Changing the character’s personality over time and in response to events in the characters lives is one of the primary ways players in a long-running campaign keep things fresh for themselves. The naïve innocent who grows in sadness and wisdom, the rogue who reforms, the paragon who falls, and the lover (win, lose or draw) all transform slowly over time. The players can enjoy these transformations while leaving themselves open both to changes in the game and alterations to the vectors the PCs’ personalities seem to be moving in.

Rules-lite games also make it easier for more profound transformations that actually do have mechanical effects. Changing your character's race or class in 3E can be a nightmare, especially for a mid- or high-level character. Changing your character's race and class in Labyrinth Lord is a piece of cake; even a high-level character can generally be transformed in half-an-hour or less of fiddling with the character sheet. The less the rules get in your way, the more options you have to keep the game flexible.

Character-driven: I've been talking about characters a lot, and there's a reason for that. At the end of the day, the players are there because of their characters. No matter how amazing or wondrous your campaign setting is, it's the chance to play their characters that brings the players back week after week. It's vital to keep this in mind. Campaigns about your setting or about your wicked plots or masterful villains simply won't last. Players just are not that into it. This means you need to keep things at a very human level. Whether your campaign features the clash of empires, confrontations between gods, or the destruction of entire worlds, you really need to focus on what this means to the players’ characters and their immediate social circle.

Flexible characters in a player-centered campaign creates a feedback loop. The PCs interact with the setting, the setting responds and interacts with the PCs, and both are transformed. These transformations necessitate more interactions, which slowly, over time, keep things constantly moving. It's hard to get bored in this type of game so long as your players are interested in their characters and you are interested in the campaign. So long as the players remain flexible about their character concepts and you're flexible about your campaign concept, this sort of play constantly and consistently creates surprises for everybody.

Follow your bliss: because you need to be having fun to. My original concept for the Doom & Tea Parties game was a Labyrinth Lord version of Birthright. Since I first started playing RPGs, I've always been fascinated with the idea of Arthurian style campaigns. But the truth is, my heart was really more into Swords and Sorcery. Shortly after I posted my gnome class on this blog, I switched gears, embraced my inner Robert Howard, and created the outline for the campaign as it exists now. I'm very happy I did this because I doubt the Birthright version would have lasted. I simply wasn't that interested in it, as much fun as it would've been.

Know yourself, know your interests, and don't shy away.

Be demanding: especially about the schedule. You're going to put a hell of a lot of work into this, and devote a hell of a lot of time to it. There is absolutely no reason why you should not expect the same of your players. If you treat it seriously, and if you demand that it be treated seriously, you will get players who treat it seriously. For instance, the Doom & Tea Parties games run weekly. Yes, both of them. There are weeks when we skip the game, but those are the exception and not the rule.

Keep on top of the paperwork. Expect your players do the same. Some will and some won't, and they’ll be the ones who don't have the 50 feet of rope when they find themselves at the bottom of a 40 foot pit.

And that, I think, is really the bulk of it. Really, when you get down to it, everyone having fun is the most important part. So long as people are having fun they will keep coming back to play. And that is the heart of longevity.

Expectations, Jerks, and Unintended Consequences

I got pointed again to Malcolm Sheppard’s Mob United blog recently, and he’s got another take on his “Fire the Fans” post from a while back. I find this one very interesting because I think it speaks to a disconnect between designers and players.

This is partly also inspired by his comments on friendship and how RPGs seem to be designed under the assumption that we don’t play with our friends. And maybe I’m believing the marketing too much, but I find it interesting how design features in modern games are described differently by the designers and by the players.

The designers speak of guidelines, things like treasure packets and not having rustmonsters, in order to reinforce the focus of the game. These are tools to help the GM hit the statistical sweetspots of the mechanics. Players, on the other hand, frequently speak of limits that keep the GM from being a jerk. One of the common complaints against Old School design and play style is that it puts too much on the GM, and allows the sort of “abuse” that gets bandied about on various forums.

Frankly, I don’t play with folks like that, certainly not more than once. Heck, most players I know won’t play with a GM even after single instances of lesser offenses. But the assumption persists that the game isn’t fun because people are not playing it right, and that you can force them to play it properly through the rules. I do have a hint of sympathy for this view, as I think rules do matter and having rules that reinforce your themes and styles is important. But that sort of reinforcement is a far cry from dictating the actions of others at the table.

This reminds me very much of common advice you’d see in the magazines back in the ‘80s. If the players decided to go off and behave “badly” during the adventure, you were to inflict nasty in-game consequences on their characters. In effect, GMs were advised to engage in passive-aggressive cycles of permissiveness and punishment, and this was supposed to be the key to avoiding railroading. At the time, I thought such advice was brilliant.

Hey, I was 13, what can I say? ;p

The problems with this sort of thing should be obvious. First, if the players are just exercising what they see as the freedom of the sandbox, then punishing them by having the internal world of the game react to them is like spanking a masochist; it’s likely to encourage what you want to discourage. If they don’t enjoy it, then you’re just frustrating and annoying your players, who may or may not (quite likely don’t at all) understand the bizarre map of cause-and-effect in your mind (unless you make it clear through bizarre monologues).

But this is all beside the point. The problem, at its base here, is frustrated expectations. People have conflicting ideas of what they want from the game. The classic example of this is the GM who wants passion and drama and the players who are simply playing the numbers, the classic “roll playing vs. role playing.” In another example, a game I was recently playing in ended because the GM wanted something more episode-focused while the players were all about the “B-plots” of personal struggle and interpersonal conflicts.

It’s easy enough to say, “just talk about these things before the game begins” but that only works if everyone really knows what they want. A lot of people don’t. I thought 3e was going to be the greatest game ever, even after I’d read through the PHB. My Doom & Tea Parties campaign isn’t quite what we expected it to be at first, and if we’d been rigorous about nailing down *exactly* what the campaign was going to be like, we might have locked ourselves too firmly in one style for it to have morphed into what it is now.

Right now, my style is very much based on finding like-minded people to play with, being as clear as possible about my style up front, and being open to pleasant surprises. It works for me (usually, but not always) and it seems to work for my current crop of players. It does require a lot of open communication (made a bit more difficult by all my current games being online and not in person) but that’s just healthy for relationships in general. I need to be better at recognizing issues and addressing them directly from the outset, but my players have been incredibly open to taking our games in strange new directions that would confound a game built upon a rigorous attempt to recreate a certain style of play.

Dawn Treader Trailer

I'm slightly worried about this one, since it's probably the most demanding of all seven of the books, but clearly has the lowest budget of the three released so far. Still, it ought to be a lot of fun.

Sneaking Up On Us...

Yikes!

I almost forgot that tomorrow, Saturday June 19th, is Free RPG Day!

Let the merriment and all that begin! :D

Austinites can join in the festivities at Dragon's Lair, Wonko's Toys (a place I haven't been yet, so it might need a visit tomorrow) and Rogues' Gallery in Round Rock.

Icon

The recent passing of Frank Frazetta finally spurred me on to get the book, Icon: A Retrospective by the Grand Master of Fantastic Art. I've had my eye on it for years. But I'm cheap, and I’ve always been able to see his work other places: book covers and comics and on the ‘net. The book arrived the other day and when I opened it up, it knocked my socks off. The ‘net and book covers and comic books are simply too small to convey the power of his work. When you can actually see the weave of the canvas, when you can actually see the lightness of the pigments, it really conveys that misty world of dreams feel that his work frequently captures.

In many ways, Frazetta's work bears a lot of resemblance to the you-are-there school of Elmore and Parkinson. There's the exacting anatomical detail, the wondrous creatures clearly modeled on real biologies, any expert use of light and shadow to add depth and realism. This however some vital differences. The most obvious is the backgrounds. Elmore and Parkinson have richly detailed, almost photographic landscapes. Frazetta's backgrounds are muddy, swirling colors with only hints of definition and form. Where Elmore crafted windows to other worlds, Frazetta evokes fever dreams. You could almost say that Elmore's you-are-there style and Erol Otis' fever dream-style are each facets of Frazetta's work. On his canvases the two meld seamlessly. The landscapes loom in the distance; the characters emerge from the backgrounds; the monsters rise from the terrain.

And yet, even in his most languid pieces, there is a sense of power. Often, it's physical: the swing of an ax, the charge of a horse, the fall of a body. Almost as frequently, it's sexual: the voluptuous siren, the broad shouldered barbarian, the slavering monster. His work isn’t calm and comforting, but pricks at the deepest strings of our hearts. Often, there's that same bizarre marriage of horror and nostalgia that Robert Howard can evoke.

I’ll be very curious to see what Robert Rodriguez does with a remake of Fire & Ice. I assume it’s going to be live-action, which will take us a further step away from Frazetta’s work. Still, he did such an amazing job with Sin City, I can’t help but be optimistic.