Our Last Best Hope

One thing I'd like to get back to one of these days is the dozen-or-so, half-finished drafts sitting in my blog's memory. I mean some of them are still pertinent. However, for the sake of "just doing something" (baby steps, right?) I'll write about something more current:

The last month or so, I've been dipping my toes back into the Magic: The Gathering world. The reason for this is pretty simple: my son has discovered Magic cards. Back in June, he be can collecting and trading Pokemon cards, and was gifted with a huge stack of the things from an older kid (11? 12 years old?) who'd moved onto MtG. While we played these earlier in the year, what's become a big part of the fun for my first grader is trading cards on the playground (before and after school), and Magic cards became the currency of choice sometime around the 2nd week of September.

I have a fairly substantial collection of MtG cards, most of which were purchased off an old roommate back in 1999 or 2000. We...myself and my housemates of the time, including my spouse (before we were married)...found the cards enjoyable for casual play, especially down at the Baranof, over breakfast, while nursing our tremendous hangovers (ah...wasted youth). But casual play was all we ever did with them. While it was fun to build decks and tweak them with the nickel cards you could pick up at Gary's (back in the day), none of us wanted to invest substantial amounts of money in them. For us, it was just a cool substitute for Rummy or Cribbage...something fun to play while relaxing with a beer (or whatever) in the evening.

While I did end up amassing a couple thousand cards, they got boxed up and (mostly) forgotten sometime around 2000 or 2001...after my wife and I moved out of that house and "grew up;" getting married, buying cars, and houses, etc. But as with many of my gaming products, I kept the cards (still in shoeboxes), figuring some day they'd get brought out again. And now they have.

[just in case anyone's wondering: I am a packrat, but I wouldn't call myself a hoarder. I have been known to part with things, even things of substantial nostalgic or symbolic value (my old electric guitar, for example). And some things...like my 2nd Edition AD&D books...I found exceedingly easy to discard. I don't hang onto EVERYthing, folks!]

However, after a couple-four weeks of deck building and playing and attending one local, MtG competition (at a local shop with a substantially younger crowd), I find myself kind of sour on Magic, again. The cards are still neat and I really dig on the newest series (it's all inspired by South American-flavored pulp: lost world dinosaurs, Aztec-ish vampires and conquistadors, plus various South Seas pirates)...but I don't want to invest in a paper product that disintegrates in water, and certainly not to the extent that I could compete in a competitive environment. And just beating up on my six year old is kind of a dumb exercise in gaming. At least when we play Rummy he can win a hand or two.

But the boy still likes the cards and I picked him up a booster pack for him this weekend, as well as a new RPG for yours truly: Our Last Best Hope, a GM-less story-game by Mark Diaz Truman, inspired by the disaster movies of recent years that focus on world-threatening melodrama. Films like Armageddon, Interstellar, The Core, The Day After Tomorrow, and any of various zombie-apocalypse films that have graced the screen...stories where a small band of heroes must work together and overcome various obstacles to save the human race from extinction.

It's a well-known trope these days, and I'm kind of surprised at how familiar I am with it, considering these types of films bore the shit out of me. I mean, the formula's pretty tired, the drama pretty contrived...and yet these stories remain popular and (probably because there are so many of them) I've seen more than my fair share of them. Heck, some of 'em (like Armageddon) are a lot of fun, even...or especially...when they are at their most ridiculous. Regardless, the game is exceptionally well-crafted, and playing within such a recognizable genre gives players a real chance to ham things and have a great time.

Underrated classic

Hell, you could use it to model a lot of high stakes, crisis-type situations. Something like the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage...which I just re-watched with my kids a couple weeks ago (despite its age, I still find it a great film)...would be perfect for Our Last Best Hope. Even though humanity isn't on the brink of destruction, The Fate of the Free World is!
: )

I won't get into the specifics of the rules here except to say that compared to other "Story-Now" indie-games, it's very concise and focused with excellent practical in-game resources and a lot of new-tech support (including QR codes throughout the book that you can scan with a phone app for video examples of specific rules). But for me, it shows that there ARE real reasons for playing other RPGs, and other systems. You could not use (for example) the D20/Pathfinder system to emulate the large-scale disaster drama with the same kind of laser-focus that Truman brings with Our Last Best Hope.

It really warms my heart. Damn, there are some designers doing good work out there.

Anyway, Diego's not old enough to play (he's still a little young, even for D&D), so it'll probably be a while before I get a chance to try Our Last Best Hope. But it's definitely worth keeping on the shelf for some future, rainy day. Unlike the Magic cards, I doubt it'll take sixteen years for me to find an excuse to play it.
; )

Games

I'm sure I've written this before, but I'll write it again: much as I love the game of Blood Bowl (and the latest edition might be the best version yet)....much as I love the game, there are a lot of ways in which it fails to mimic the actual game of American football on which it's based. While the various discrepancies could be written off as just a post-apocalyptic fantasy world's imperfect interpretation of the ancient rulebook (so would say the original "fluff" of the game) there are other, non-field aspects, that simply cannot be emulated. The current brouhaha in the NFL, for example, where players are using their public platform to bring attention to the continuing racial injustice in our country that has led to more inappropriate outbursts from our sitting POTUS. While some non-field events and antics can (and are) emulated with the use of random event cards, in the existing fantasy setting the various Blood Bowl teams play for different nations and species, rather than a single country. There can, thus be no single cause or rogue leader against which to rail and bring unity between teams bent on mutual annihilation in the name of sport.

As usual, reality proves itself stranger than fantasy.

Even so, Blood Bowl is a great game, certainly one of my All-Time Faves. Diego and I have had the chance to sit down and play a game or two since the NFL season started. As said, the current release might be the best iteration yet published (previously, I would have given the nod to the 3rd edition), at least in terms of rules. But then, Games Workshop has been publishing and evolving Blood Bowl since 1986...thirty years!...and while the main "overhaul" of the game was the '94 version (when they introduced time limits and turnovers) the last 20 years have simply been tweaks and tinkering based on actual play and feedback in an attempt to make the gameplay experience better. Blood Bowl isn't the flagship game of the GW brand; hell, there have been periods in their history when they weren't even publishing the game. Their business strategy for getting new cash infusions from BB fans is based on newer, shinier releases (better game pieces, cooler models), not some false proclamation that the "older version" is no longer viable as a system. The game is still about 16 fantasy figures taking the field 11 at a time, and I still can (and do) utilize the playing pieces I've owned since I got into the hobby circa 1989 (with the 2nd edition).

The reason I bring all this up is the recent series of thoughtful posts from Alexis over at the Tao. For reference, you can check out:
Noob-Talk
Measuring Yourself as a DM
Those Who Quit the Game

They're all short, but particularly thoughtful (and thought-provoking) posts on Dungeons & Dragons. One thing Alexis has been good at over the years is reminding his readers that D&D, for all the wonderful things it is and all the joy and meaning it may have given us, is still a game. A game that has to be played to have any real value. A game that we can...and perhaps should...strive to become better at.

Last week I received a comment on an ancient blog post in which the reader expressed doubt of my actual experience with the game (and, presumably my authority to blog about it). It's true that I've played D&D since 1982, but those 35 years have been "off and on" and the last five years or so have been mostly "off." If I really consider the actual years I've spent playing and running D&D...not just acting as an "armchair DM," my actual experience probably amounts to only 15-17 years...and maybe not even that. Reading and designing and prepping are all a part of the game (especially for would-be dungeon masters), but most of the practice is only accomplished at the table. Like flight time for a pilot...there's a difference between hours spent in a simulator and hours spent in the air. It is quite possible that there are people out there who only started playing D&D with the 3rd edition (released in 2000) that have more hours "in the chair" or "behind the screen" than I do, despite my decades of involvement in the role-playing hobby.

And that actual, hands-on experience makes a real difference. It does so with any game or sport, and the more challenging and complex the game, the more difference that experience makes. When I play Uno or Rummy 500 with my son, he beats me nearly as often as I beat him. With Cribbage, I generally beat him (even though we don't count muggins and I help him with counting). When we've played Magic cards...recently discovered this month...he's beat me a single time in a dozen plus games (random draw should preclude this from happening). And I've never lost a Blood Bowl game to him. But then, I can only remember losing a handful of Blood Bowl games, ever, to anyone...BB is just my wheelhouse.

And it's not just about winning (after all, D&D isn't about "winning," right?). The boy and I were at the local game shop where we completed a full game of Blood Bowl in a couple-three hours...and during the same time period we watched a pair of adults struggle to even complete a half in the same time period (Blood Bowl, like soccer, is played in two halves)...despite having been set-up at the table before we even sat down. When I've simply acted as referee for two players (I do this sometimes), I've managed to facilitate complete games far quicker. That's just experience that comes from playing.

D&D is a game. A special game, sure, but still a game. A complex game with a strange set of rules, some of which are unwritten, some of which can only be parsed out in play. Especially for the development of a competent DM, real experience is needed at the table...hence, the often heard phrase, "you learn to be a DM by running games."

And yet, imperative though it is, just running games is not enough to hone your craft as a DM. I've run the Hickman module Pharaoh two or three times (boxed text and all), but if that was all I did I wouldn't develop anything except my ability to run that particular module. I think Alexis is right when he states part of the reason people quit the game (assuming that they had an enjoyable experience with it when first played) is that they reach a point where the game's perceived limitations fail to satisfy their expectations of entertainment. "I'm tired of killing things and taking their stuff," or even "I'm tired of pretending to be something I'm not," especially when one can instead escape into the easily accessed television program.

There are several strategies for enhancing and retaining player enjoyment...and I think those strategies are ideas worthy of exploration. But that's going to have to wait for a follow-up post.

F You, WotC

They say there's no such thing as "bad" publicity. So this post should be a batch of goodness for Wizards of the Coast.

I was down at Gary's today, shooting the breeze and browsing for copies of SpellJammer or the 2nd Edition PHB (for info on arquebuses and smoke powder, dont'cha know?), when Tim said, "hey...here's something for you to blog about!" And handed me a big steaming pile of Gamma World "Roleplaying Game."

[quotation marks added by Yours Truly]

Ugh.

Folks that love-love-love 4th edition are probably really going to get their rocks off on this stinker, but for me it once again filled me with a mixture of loathing and sheer "what the f...?" $40 (plus tax, of course) buys you a 160 page rule, the requisite board game parts (maps and tokens, 'cause that's what an "RPG" is, right?), a couple decks of cards, as well as a "booster" pack.

"Booster pack?" Yeah...you know like Collectible Card Games? Because GW4 (as I'm going to call this shit-pile) is ALSO a CCG. In addition to the Box, you have to buy booster packs...little 8 card packs of random mutations and technological wonders. "Collect all 120!" says the booster pack box. I suppose making players collect random cards is better than making folks buy "splat books"...since knuckle-draggers that play this game can't read.

But, hey, anyone notice what's NOT in the $40 box (I mean, BESIDES a complete rule set or something)...DICE. Dice needed, but not included...says so right on the back of the box! But don't worry. "Do you need dice?" the box asks. Check out the WotC web site to see how you can get a set!

Fuck you, Wizards of the Coast.

Also advertised on the back of the box are the upcoming "expansion packs:" Famine in Fargo and Legions of Gold. No more adventure modules, just "expansion packs." Just recycled from adventure modules. But that's okay, since adventures don't really seem to be part of the equation. This is a game about fighting monsters...mutants or robots or whatever...not about exploration or re-building a civilization on the ashes of the old. And assuming it has the same kind of 4E "healing surges," probably not much of a grim struggle for survival, either.

But GW4 doesn't seem to be a post-apocalyptic game anyway. Instead, it's a cool-action, genre-colored, ass-kicking board came with a CCG gimmick. And just in time for Christmas, kiddies!

Who the hell is this supposed to REALLY appeal to, anyway?

I mean, the Moldvay Basic set was for adults ages 10+. Mentzer's Basic set was for kids ages 10+. I don't remember the age bracket for the original Gamma World, but I know my little brother was playing it (and loving it) around age 10-11. But it was slim enough, and simple enough, that he could pick it up and figure out how to play it (of course, it DID come with dice).

What 10 year old is going to want to pick up and play this monstrosity? Why not just spend $40 on some post-apocalyptic video game like Fall Out 3? That would probably appeal to more kids, ages teen to twenty-five. Probably quicker to pick-up and learn to play, right?

Hey, but what do I know? I'm just a dude with a blog and a chip on my shoulder that the world has changed, I guess. Maybe I'm just hungry...I'm going to go get something to eat.

Temporary Parenting

Welp, it’s Friday, which means I finally have a break from the daily tasks and craziness in order to do a little writing, my teenage nephews have been staying with the wife and I since last Thursday, and that means my writing time has been shortened with the day-to-day tasks that come with being a temporary parent. Hey, this has been a crash course in teen warfare…you “old hands” at the kid-raising have had years of practice.

Fortunately, M and I are pretty smart and sturdy enough that we can force a little self-discipline on ourselves for the time being (skipping our adult TV shows, getting to bed early, getting up early to make breakfasts and drive the kids to school (actually, this only force M to get up early…I’m up at 5:50 anyway) and making healthy, wholesome dinners).

Not that it hasn’t been a blast entertaining the little nerdlings…I’ve played a lot of Magic cards the last few days, and I forgot how entertaining that could be. You know…kicking someone’s ass over and over again (and yet, they keep coming back for more…go figure).
: )

One thing the kids have been clamoring for all week is to play “D&D.” And I mean, every day since they got here. Now unfortunately we’ve played precious little which I know may seem like madness to regular readers of this blog. After all, I love B/X play (or so I’ve written) and it’s been hard the last few years to find folks who are as into these games as me (people with Old School game fetishes can surely relate).

But it IS tough when there’s so much else going on in life. As a kid, I had lots of free time and was a “self-starter” when it came to gaming…I’d get home, crack the game books, and set up the game. Now, I don’t get home from work till after 6, usually have to run errands, help with homework, drive/pickup kids from football/drivers ed, eat dinner, and then maybe an hour or two of entertainment (often continuing to watch a show or movie that got started during the dinner hour) before packing the kids off to bed by 10pm (the older one has a later bedtime, but he usually has some extra homework and/or “texting” to get to). If I was home by 3pm, I’d certainly be putting the extra hours to good use, but I’m not.

Is this why so many kids feel like they don’t get enough attention/entertainment from parents? Because after 10-15 years, parents are burned out of spending all their free time “playing” and so tell the kids to go read a book or whatever?

When I was a young kid, my parents played games with me (though perhaps not as much as I would have liked), but as I got older this trailed off…through mutual consensus as much as anything. I remember coming home with Dungeon! (the board game) and playing it with my brother and my mom…that was the closest thing to D&D I ever played with EITHER parent, and one of the last board games I remember playing with my Mom until adulthood. She liked Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble and knew how to play cards (being from Montana), but she just wasn’t much of a game player. I don’t remember my father playing games with us at all as a child (though I know he played cards and parlor games with other adults at social events). At least, indoor games…he was often up to doing things with a bat and softball or other outdoorsy activities. But I was always more of an indoor person.

[No, I am probably NOT going to be very well prepared for the 2012 Earth changes]

Huh, now that I’m thinking about it, I realize I have no idea where my inclination for game playing comes. Certainly I have an Mars in Aries in the 5th House which can make a guy highly competitive, and the 5th House traditionally rules “games of chance.” But as far as upbringing goes…I don’t know. Maybe I never got ENOUGH gaming as a kid…certainly we were never allowed to play much in the way of video games (the Atari 2600 spent most of its life locked in a closet and only brought out on the occasional rainy Saturday).

Anyway, back to the present…the kids have been clamoring to play D&D since Day 1, and M has been encouraging the clamoring though not so much that she wants to play (to be fair, she’s more than a little fatigued this week as she’s been getting up earlier than normal, working full days, and making dinner, all without the benefit of my usual foot massages in the evening. Hey, I offered to do “burrito night” last night and she turned me down!). I told S that we would play Saturday if he won his football game, which he did…but then we never did, getting distracted by Dark Tower and Magic Cards. And Sunday we had the Seahawks game to go to which is kind of an all day event with the Seattle traffic.

So it wasn’t until Wednesday night that we actually got around to making characters. Last night (Thursday) we had the opening encounters in the classic solo B/X module M1: Blizzard Pass. The players took a pounding but survived, and after many high fives between the players, we found a good stopping point and everyone got packed off to bed. However, having “whet our whistles,” I have a feeling that tonight is going to be a long and epic session to confront The Master of Blizzard Pass. Stay tuned!

: )

Wizards of Marketing

So I "took possession" of my nephews yestereve (their parents are in Spain for the next ten days), which means I was up making breakfast before school this morning at 7am after being up till 1am or so organizing Magic Cards and watching Project Runway.

[yet another side note: I watch three reality shows with startling regularity: Top Chef, Project Runway, and The Amazing Race. The first two are simply an exercise in bottled creativity, and results are judged by experts of the field rather than BS call-in proletariat...something I love. The latter show is about a group of competing cooperative couples ("parties") traveling around the world ("adventuring") exploring crazy locales and overcoming obstacles ("tricks/traps" and sometimes "monsters") in order to win a million dollars ("acquire treasure")...YOU do the math]

Ten days of watching the (teenage) kids means ten days of entertainment for yours truly, though it also means a dearth of my own side projects I'm afraid. Sorry...I unfortunately continue to belong to the non-gaming rat race (unlike some lucky Old Schoolers) and consequently need to put in 50 hours or so (including commute/lunch time) per week doing things other than writing and gaming in order to maintain my wife, beagles, and mortgage in the manner to which they've become accustomed (my wife works even more, so I thank my lucky stars...of course, she gets to travel).

However, the little extra stress of caring for two kids with football practice and high school dances (not to mention fixing real meals and getting 'em to school/bed on time) is small potatoes compared to the fun factor. My wife is already telling them (the kids) that they should take the opportunity to start "a series" with me (her word for a D&D Campaign). They (the kids) are very enthusiastic...in fact, the 15.5 year old may forgo hanging out with his hoodlum friends after school in order to get home early and play with Uncle JB.

Of course, D&D won't be the only game we play. For one thing, the kids brought their Wii over to the house. Normally, I would work covertly to ensure the game system never got turned on (distraction and attention is an amazing way to keep kids off the vids, I've found) but this time it appears we'll be playing it as they brought over Rock Band which my wife loves and has been jonesing to play ever since our XBx 360 burned out.

*sigh*

Another thing is the kids' personal vices. For S, this is Warhammer 40K which he ALWAYS wants to play when he comes over (I've put that off for over a year, but the minis might be coming out this week). For Z., this is Magic: the Gathering and THAT's already out (as I said). He made sure to bring his shoebox of cards and is anxious to test his "kick-ass black & white" deck against me. Poor (6' tall) kid...I've got FOUR shoeboxes full of cards. I should probably just put together a deck of Swamp-walk and Plains-walk banding critters to shut him up.

>: )

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I'm from Seattle which is fairly near the birth place of Wizards of the Coast (I'm not sure exactly where it started, but their headquarters were located in Renton for a looong time and they had several flagship stores in the greater Seattle area for years). Strangely enough, I came pretty late the the Magic Card craze. I wouldn't buy my first deck until 1999 or so, more than six years after the initial release of the game.

I had been aware of Magic Cards, of course. The first time I saw them was my third year of college, which would have been...well, 1994 come to think of it. The guy who ran the Call o Cthulhu game at one of the dorms was the roommate of my (non-gamer) buddy, Matt. O, jeez...I can't remember that guy's name! Paul? Maybe...he was from Kelso, Washington which is pretty much saying "from the sticks." I had to ask Matt "what the hell are those?" To which he told me, "some sort of card game, I don't know, he plays ALL the time." I never saw Paul play. He did end up joining a very short-lived Vampire game (mmm...that one's a LONG story...), but he never "showed me the Magic."

Actually, come to think of it, my buddy Joel also had some Magic cards, but when I asked him about them he showed complete disdain for his own collection (Big Joel was always big on disdain regarding a LOT of things besides peace and justice and throwing down "the man"). Of course, most of the time I was with Joel was spent drinking and perusing...um..."other pastimes." He WAS rather passionate about Ars Magica, come to think of it, and he introduced me to that game back then....

So I managed to get through all of college with never buying or playing Magic at all.

It wasn't until I was unemployed and living in a house with two WSU non-alums circa 1999 that I picked up my first deck and laid land to laminate. Steve and Salter were non-gamers (though Steve had played some Rifts with me back in high school), but all of us were heavy drinkers and two of us were between jobs, so we had to find something to do.

Salt worked as a part-time caterer while going to cooking school, and he was the guy with Magic cards. He pulled them out one night after we'd been drinking a lot (I don't know what it is about Seattle-types being so nervous about being judged by others...maybe because we're so judgmental ourselves? Probably) and wanted something to do besides watching Strangers With Candy and smoking cigarettes. I think we probably ended up playing till dawn.

Of course, after that we were sold. Steve and I used Salt's spare cards to construct decks that we would play against each other and Salt, then we'd tweak 'em between games to better take on our opponent(s), then we'd rinse and repeat. My wife (at the time "girlfriend") got into it as well, and Steve, M. and I would show up at Baranoff's in Greenwood, eat a hearty (if greasy) breakfast and play Magic for two-three hours. We'd buy used cards from the local game shop (20 for a dollar? Something like that) and never actually gave WotC so much as a red cent all while enjoying the hell out of ourselves.

This went on for a couple months till we'd all found jobs. But it was definitely fun while it lasted!

It was also much MORE fun than playing computer games on-line, IMO. There's nothing like throwing down some big-ass monster with "trample" and seeing the crushed look on your opponent's face, or making bird "skraw" noises every time one of us summoned up a flying creature. We all had personal nicknames for our best cards. M. loved her blue deck specifically for this flying djinn card she somehow always managed to pull; she referred to him as "Superman" and still does (as she did last night...and she hasn't touched a Magic deck in close to ten years!). Good times.

Here's the interesting thing...the actual initial point of this post before I got a little side-tracked: Magic the Gathering has an incredibly low buy-in for its amount of fun/addiction. Kind of like Tom Moldvay's Basic set. Meanwhile, D&D in other formats also has a high fun/addiction factor but a terribly high buy-in. Most people just don't want to spend the money or the time necessary to learn the game themselves.

Case in point: my nephews. They LOVE D&D. If I had to ask, I think it would be one of their top two or three games of all time after only having played TWICE (by the way: they have BOTH cancelled their World o Warcraft subscriptions and sworn off the game). But even though I bought them their very own Labyrinth Lord (AND dice), they haven't yet read the rules or tried running games themselves.

Now, I haven't questioned 'em too closely about this (as I said, we just got 'em last night and they only had time for dinner, homework, and a some Must See TV before bedtime). But the impression I got is they simply don't have the patience to learn the game from a book. And this is Labyrinth Lord we're talking about...not even AD&D or Pathfinder! That's a pretty short book!

It reminds me of my brother and his console games...he enjoys video games but he never bothers to read the instructions. And these are SHORT instruction books. I read 'em and operate his console games better than him right out of the gate; he doesn't have the patience to learn the many intricacies until (maybe!) several hours of gameplay have elapsed. Are we just that impatient as a culture? That would probably explain my questions regarding WoW the other day (people just don't have the time and energy to play table-top RPGs or "create imaginary worlds"). Still and all, I find that pretty sad if it's the case.

Ah, well...enough whining. I'm heading for home to build some Magic decks.

: )