Nuts-And-Bolts

Had an email from a GM earlier who reaches out to me for occasional game advice/suggestions. In addition to wishing me well with my recovering wrist (it is recovering...slowly but surely), the GM mentioned they are "getting better [at GMing] with each game" played. 

Which is awesome...duh. If you have a calling as a GM/DM, you WANT to see improvement in your craft over time. Imagine how frustrating to love something and then struggle in futility with it for years (or more).

Last December, I wrote (briefly) about the number of YEARS it took me to learn how to run AD&D in (what I consider) an "adequate" manner. Not "great;" probably not even "good," really. But definitely adequate. And, it should go without saying that I'm judging "good" and "great" by what I know NOW...with the benefit of decades spent in this hobby, watching DMs both good and...not-so-good. When I was 15, I (and my players) would probably have called myself a "good" DM, if not a great one.

My, how low we set the bar back then.

But we were kids. And I'd guess that our MAIN concern at the time was simply one of FAIRNESS. Was the DM acting as an "impartial arbiter of the rules?" Or were they being an asshole? Concepts of 'storytelling' and dungeon design theory were definitely NOT concerns for us back then. Could the DM be trusted to play by the rules and not be a jerk...THAT was the main concern. 

Now...well, I have some higher standards. Because I'm older and wiser and (somewhat) more mature then I was. Funny how that happens. If you'd asked me a decade ago, I'd probably say I'd LOVE to be transported back to my teens or twenties with all the knowledge I have now. But now? I'd say I rather like being the age I am, even though it means I'm balding on top, my eyesight is going, and I don't heal as fast as I used to. 

[the eyesight part is the one I struggle with the most]

I rather love where I'm at in my life, despite the challenges that this decade brings (every decade of one's life brings challenges, that's just how life is). But this is a fun one right now. Kids not quite adults, but on the cusp of it. Routines settled into some sort of semi-organized chaos. Yeah, money's tight and you can't eat out like you used to, but I've really learned to enjoy cooking at home. Every day is a bit of a struggle, but you know and understand what the struggle is all for...there is value and meaning and purpose. It's kind of wonderful.

Anyway.

It takes time and effort to learn how to do things. For [reasons]. I've been reading up on the lives of famous guitarists. And the thing they all have in common is how much they worked and worked and worked at their craft...for hours and hours and hours, before they achieved any type of success and even afterward (if they had any consistency or longevity). I used to own a guitar...I used to be able to play a few chords on it. I wrote a couple-three songs even (for one of my former bands). But I never spent hours upon hours over days and weeks and months and years becoming skilled or even competent as a guitarist. I didn't care much for playing the guitar. It wasn't a passion for me...it wasn't even fun. For people who become virtuoso musicians (with any instrument) there has to be something that drives the person to immerse themselves in it. Maybe they love the instrument and the music it produces. Maybe they see it as a means to an end (i.e. a career). Maybe they simply have nothing else going on in their lives/brains. 

In the end, none of those motivations matter. All that matters is the time and effort put into honing one's skills. You do something 40 or 80 or 100 hours per week, and over time, you WILL get better at it. 

As a teenager, I worked at fast food joints over summers. I got really, really good at making a Burger King "Whopper." Even today (decades since I last stepped into a fastfood kitchen) I could put one together in seconds...probably blindfolded if I needed to. In a way, it was a complete waste of time, since I never aspired to being a lifelong "maker of BK burgers." But I use the example of how one can train themselves to do something, just by putting in the hours regardless of motivation. We learned to read and write and walk and talk the same way. I worked at another career...a much more complicated one...for fifteen years and learned to do THAT in my sleep, too. Could probably still do most of it, if I were to go back, excepting the technology has probably changed.

D&D...specifically Dungeon Mastering...IS a passion and calling for me. I don't know why, but it is. And because of that, I've spent long, long hours reading and writing and playing the D&D game for DECADES. Just like those virtuoso guitarists, I spent hours locked in my room with my dice and my books. To the non-gamer, this probably seems ridiculous...all the skills I could have been learning instead. Whatever. The heart wants what the heart wants. I wanted RPGs...many of them. And reading them, playing them, absorbing them, burning them into my brain's neural connections...that's what I've done over the majority of my life. And to the person who does enjoy and appreciate these games...well, my dedication in gaming circles is usually recognized, if not respected.

Which, by the way, doesn't matter to me. The heart wants what the heart wants.

And so we come to AD&D: a vastly complicated game by the standards of most games played around a dinner table, but the bulk of its rules still (mostly) fit in two slim hardcovers. Seriously. If you were to set the magic item descriptions and optional appendices aside, the DMG would clock in at the same number of pages as the PHB...about 250 pages total. Compare that to the 5E where the PHB alone is 300+ pages. Can you grind 250 pages of rules? Study them, learn them, burn them into your neural cortex so they're as ingrained as the plot of your favorite television series or the procedures in your favorite spectator sport? Can you do that? Or is it too much to ask?

Spending hours...TIME...grinding is, as said, the key to building skills. It's those "nuts-and-bolts" that are the most important part of mastering one's craft. You may have a tremendous imagination and a penchant for 'storytelling,' but if you don't have the nuts-and-bolts of the game nailed down, that's all for naught. 

You want to write songs? Better learn your scales.

It becomes amazingly "simple" to DM a session of AD&D if you put in the work learning the rules of the system. The rules of AD&D exist to describe and define and delineate the possible actions the players take in the (imaginary) "world." This is why...when running...I don't care overmuch about my players' depth of knowledge. I describe situations and ask what they want to do (occasionally presenting options)...and then I lean on the rules of the game to adjudicate results. I don't negotiate with my players...there isn't a need. I don't hem and haw and consider "what would be fun" or "story appropriate" for the session. I allow the players to immerse themselves in the game world, and then I use the engine of the system to drive the car. It's knowing the nuts-and-bolts that make this possible. 

Don't worry about being a good Dungeon Master. Focus on learning the system. Do THAT and everything becomes a whole lor easier.

Tis The Holiday Season

Just pumping out a post 'cause I'm not sure how much time I'm going to have to blog this week. Sofia's out of school, so while he's sleeping in (at the moment), I'm going to be hanging with her in my "free" time. Parent-teacher conferences at the middle school today...it will be interesting to hear what they have to say about my 6th grade daughter. I'm genuinely curious.

I don't talk as much about my daughter as I do my son. I don't know why other than I'm constantly amazed by his accomplishments. Sofia's amazing, too, but her "magic" is so much less demonstrative. I have a feeling that she will probably have the "bigger impact" on the world when all is said and done: she'll either end up some scientist that invents something brilliant or else she's going to wind up being some sort of famous film or music-related celebrity. But none of that is anything happening right now (other than she can astound people when she sits down at a piano in a hotel lobby)...right now she is this incredibly sweet, funny, friendly kid who just likes to smile and snicker and play. Since we brought my mom's piano home, not a day goes by without the sounds of music filling the house at some point. Right now it's a big Christmas piece she's working on. Delightful.

Yes, you heard me...delightful. I'm one of those curmudgeonly types that gets annoyed with people who start their Christmas-ing before Thanksgiving. Usually. This year has been...different. The "yacht rock" radio station that has long been on our satellite car radio...since at least 2019 as it helped soothe our nerves through the entire pandemic...disappeared a couple weeks ago to be replaced by the "Hallmark" channel which plays nothing but holiday music. And Sofia, of course, LOVES holiday music and so we've been listening to it, whenever we're out driving to one of her various things: school, church, soccer, basketball, piano, guitar. Whatever. And darned if I haven't gotten in to it, too. Like the yacht rock, it's soothing on the nerves.

Well, most of it (I'm not really into the "hip hop Christmas" stuff...give me Andy Williams or Nat King Cole any day of the week).

So, yeah. I've started the holidays early. I think we got our first thing of eggnog the week after Halloween? That went fast, and I haven't replaced it yet. Still have our "Autumnal" wreath on the door, but evergreen one is coming. We've got tickets to Mexico for Christmas...took us a while because they're so damn expensive (you can fly to Japan for half the price!). Not sure if that's just because the current administration is only interested in people taking one-way trips south of the border or what (*sigh*), but since they've made damn sure that's my in-laws can't renew their visas till 2027 (*sigh*) we must purchase four tix if we want to see our family, rather than just flying mis suegros up here. Too bad for the local economy, of course, as we'll be doing all our shopping down there...but then Trump has been nothing if not hard on the local economy. 

But enough of that...I've been in the holiday spirit, as I said, and I've been focusing on other things. My son, who I gush about far too much, has his first national volleyball tournament for his club in Los Angeles in a couple weeks, and he and I will be flying down there with the team. The last couple days we were at a local "exhibition" tournament...it was pretty wild. He's a U15, but his team was playing in the U16 division...four matches in the group stage on Saturday with two matches on Sunday in the playoff bracket; when not playing or warming up he and his teammates acted as line judges and scorekeepers for the various games going on non-stop on four courts in an airplane hangar-like gymnasium (they were running U14, U16, and U18 divisions...all men's volleyball). Holy smoke...what an event! And the L.A. one is supposed to be a LOT bigger...I can hardly imagine.

Anyway, their team is great and pretty talented. They ended up winning their division, winning in straight sets for both of their playoff games. They were rotating liberos between Diego and another, more experienced kid (except for D and Jesus, all the other kids have been together for two or three seasons), but by Sunday's championship game it was just Diego, clearly in command, exhibiting presence and leadership on the court, making spectacular saves, picking up his teammates...all the usual "Diego" stuff. When they were down 18-9 in th second set of their first playoff match, Diego came in as a DS to serve 15 straight points and put them up 24-18...he didn't come out after that. Just great stuff from the kid. We had been contemplating trying to get to his soccer game Sunday afternoon and said we'd think about it after we saw how the morning match went...he came of the court and just said "I'm staying for the volleyball." 

[fortunately the club was playing the no-win bottom of their division and got a 4-2 result even without their captain]

But it was an exhausting weekend. Diego had a hard time getting up this morning (he still has a couple days of school before break)...though he's excited because "cousin Spencer" is picking him up from school today! Yes, my 27-year old "nephew" is back in town...all 6'1", 205# of baby-faced kid. He just finished up a year long stint of chefing at some fancy restaurant across the street from the Opera House, and now he's back in the PNW before doing another jaunt, this time in Japan (his dad's originally from Canada so he has joint citizenship and can do a work exchange on the maple leaf passport). Anyway, hanging with us all weekend at the volleyball stuff, he's taking Diego rock-climbing this afternoon (just what my kid needs...to be introduced to another recreational hobby...). Fingers-crossed that Diego doesn't fall asleep in class or on the boulder....

Hopefully, I'll get a chance to run some D&D for Spence while he's in town...I know he digs that. He's heading out to Spokane on Wednesday (Thanksgiving with his mom's mom), so our window is tight, especially with the kids' soccer practice on Tuesday. Wait, wait...just checking and it looks like they might have the night off!. All right, maybe Tuesday evening then. If we DO get our game on, I've already decided I'll be breaking out C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan...a perfect little scenario for Diego, Sofia, and Spencer.

Mmm...looking through Ye Old Blog archives, I don't see I've ever written much of anything abou Tamoachan. It's a decent enough tournament adventure...probably my favorite of all the old TSR tournament modules (looking at both the A- and C- series). I've run it at least two or three times in the past, usually with the three pre-gens designed for the scenario. It's pretty tight, design-wise, and even though it's a fairly linear gauntlet (much like the tournament portion of S1) it has a ton of flavor and a lot of interesting bits and bobs. Though, man...I don't think I've run it since the early 90s (maybe the early 2000s...?). I should probably give it a quick re-read. I have no idea how the thing holds up in my current "paradigm" of game play, but Philippe ran it at Cauldron for some folks who had a good time...it should still work for a one-off.

Other than that....

I'm working on the book. It's slow going. I started writing the section on running combat...turns out this could probably be a whole book, in and of itself. Which is not really what I want, so I probably need to rethink the section. 

It's tough. I'm trying to condense and consolidate decades of knowledge and essays into a practical guidebook that IDEALLY would have a smaller page count than any of the existing (AD&D) rulebooks. It's a rather daunting prospect. This is far less about writing "AD&D for Dummies" and more like a Strunk & White's Elements of Style. Lord, how I wish I'd studied technical writing in college. Maybe I should go back and re-read my Strunk & White...it's still on the book shelf somewhere. 

Yeah. Probably going to end up bigger than S&W.

But I am writing.  A little bit óvery day. Except when I'm at all day volleyball tournaments. But OTHERwise...one brick at a time. Just laying one brick at a time. 

*sigh*

I should be publishing a couple adventures soon, too, depending on my illustrator's time schedule. Hopefully I'll have a couple PDFs out by year's end. We'll see. December tends to fly by when you're in the midst of holiday cheer with friends and family. And  now that my brother's hash is finally settled (he was evicted on the 12th...a day before my birthday)...I need to put the sale of my mother's house into overdrive. Sofia and I might be working on that a bit the next couple days, depending on when I can borrow my buddy's junk hauler. A lot to do but it is finally getting done. Finally.

Mm.

My apologies...did not mean for this post to slide into a downer note. It's the gosh darn holiday season! And I'm excited about all the stuff I've got on my plate right now. Yes, the busy-ness is off the charts. Yes, finding time to take a breath is a challenge. BUT:

- volleyball tournaments

- guitar recitals

- holiday feasts and get-togethers

- trips to see family and friends in Mexico

- school Christmas concerts

- running D&D

- publishing adventures

- writing books

- closing my deceased mom's estate

And just listening to cheerful music as I drive around town on my various errands...man, that is all GOOD STUFF. I am enjoying myself. I am really, thoroughly enjoying myself.

And I'll admit, part of it is that I'm home in Seattle for Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday of the year) and that I get to eat some God-honest turkey for a change. I seem to be the only person in my family that craves a drumstick and a pile of apple-sausage stuffing drenched in gravy. My goodness! I am SO looking forward to Thursday!

Hope ALL of you have a happy one...I pray that all of you find some joy in season, and find a way to share that joy with others. Even a smile goes a long way this time of year.

Cheers.

: )

Poison

This is not what I should be doing.

I am sitting at the car dealership, getting a 75K service and oil change (as one does). I am eating a fresh baked cookie some lady just brought around (chocolate chip), and I am putting off the adventure writing that I've been doing the last two days, in order to write this post. Because I feel bad I haven't posted anything in a couple days.

What I should be is writing that darn adventure...and I will be getting back to it today (maybe after a second cookie). But I fell down the rabbit-hole of checking Ye Old Reddit feed and Oh. My. F'ing. God.

It makes me want to cry. Just sob.

The title of this post is "Poison." Because I was just listening to the band (Poison) in the car on the way up here. I was not a fan of Poison back in the day...they were all that was wrong with the crass commercialization of rock music, they were all about the "big hair," they were a "chick band," whatever. Reasons, all right? But they have exactly TWO great songs: Talk Dirty To Me and Nothing But A Good Time.  Both of which, at first pass, feel like throwaway pop metal with a catchy guitar riff (which they are) but which have the ability to evoke far deeper emotion...a nostalgia that conjures memories of early sexual encounters as a hormonal teenager and the alternating hopelessness and hedonism of a young person in their twenties with a few bucks to spend but nowhere near enough to 'make a life.' I don't know about kids these days who just live at home till there 30 and crush out on video games and internet porn, but back when I was growing up (the 80s and 90s) these were fairly universal experiences for "us kids" to go through.

Point is: I appreciate them now.  I wonder if they'll ever speak to my own kids some day.

This Reddit roll, man...just look at these titles from the DnD channel with the topic heading of "DMing:"

Any Tips For A New DM?

Where Can I Find The Text In Each Book Describing How The DM Can Change Or Ignore The Rules?

Awkward Silences With The DM

How Do You Create A Campaign?

Any And All Tips For A Brand New DM?

How To Make Low-Level Encounters Fun And Challenging?

Story Telling Struggles

How To Make Players Engaged In RP?

I'm Very Confused On New DND Content??

Trying DMing For The First Time

How Do You Kick Off And End A Session?

DMing My First Table

Guys, It's My First Time DMing. I Am Starting A PbP Campaign. Am I Being A Bad DM?

Potential Ideas For My Campaign?

What's The Best Starting Campaign For A 1st Time DM?

DMs, What Are Some Skills/Things You Had To Learn Before A Session?

About To Be A New DM, Any Advice You Wish You Got?

Need A Campaign Idea

Need Some Advice On My Story

Need Help Looking For Boss Music [sigh]

All of these have been posted in the last 48 hours. Almost all of them start with some sentence or two describing how they are new to DMing or first time DMing or have no experience DMing or...whatever. The point is: most of them are newbies. AND THEY ARE COMING TO REDDIT TO FIND OUT HOW TO RUN A DUNGEONS & DRAGONS GAME.

Do people not see how RIDICULOUS that is? Is this not the kind of information one might assume would be in the INSTRUCTIONS MANUAL of the game they are playing? And be fairly clearly laid out? Like, maybe on PAGE ONE? Or (if not on page one), wouldn't you think that Page One would say "Hey, in Chapter 5 we describe how to run the game as a DM." You'd think this, right? I mean, I would think this.

But I am old. See my reference to "Poison" above.

On the first page of the Introduction to Moldvay's Basic set (in the first column) I find this:

"Part eight, DUNGEON MASTER INFORMATION, gives a step-by-step design of a sample dungeon level plus tips to help the referee."

I mean, it's D&D right? Not rocket science (which I presume is difficult). All these questions, all these subjects should be addressed right out of the box. Why are people going to the internet for answers to basic questions about DMing? WHY?

And, just by the way, not ALL of the questions are from "newbs." Here's a gem:

So im running a new game for some friends who are brand new to dnd. Ive been dming for 12 years now so i tend to run my own adventures instead of the books. However this is my first time running more than one campaign at a time and ive put so much time and effort into my main group that ive drawn a complete blank on what I should do with my new group. If you guys have any ideas for cool stories I could run them through that would really jump start my creativity and then I can take it from there. I just need something to get me going. So any suggestions?

Yeah, I've got a suggestion: run your new group in the same campaign world as your current, on-going group. Why are you trying to make more work for yourself (when you're already making more work by running multiple groups)? Again: not rocket science. You have 12 years of experience. You are adept at making and running your own adventures. Surely you have already created/run material that could be recycled for the new folks...why are you trying to reinvent the wheel from scratch?

Also: learn punctuation. It's a life skill.

I really, really, really want to take a break from the internet...at least, from all the "interactions." The blogs, the discords, the reddits, the forums, etc. It is all so non-helpful, so non-constructive. And it makes me sad. It saps my energy. I, again, (briefly) considered actually creating a profile on the reddit to address these querying questioners, to get involved in the verbal sparring and disinformation and misinformation that is being promulgated by "D&D experts." I considered it...as if this would be a good use of my time. As if trying to put out each small fire on an individual level would somehow keep the  forest from burning down around my ears.

No. Poison. This shit is poison. 

SO, I'm going to step away. Going to take a deep breath. Brew a pot of coffee, throw on a little Sade Love Deluxe (I thought about the Eagles, but that way leads to day drinking). Going to buckle down and see how much of this adventure I can knock out today. I'm hoping to, at least, finish the crypt portion...that part's easy.

Let Rome burn, while I fiddle away. Ain't looking for nothing but a good time right now.

Different Strokes

The other day, I was looking for video reviews of old adventure modules (something to listen to while doing housework) and stumbled across an old Goodman Games video in which four of their prominent designers, listed their Top 10 D&D modules (TSR era) of all time. 

As such videos go it was...eh. Par for the usual (as in, no mind-blowing opinions/info got dropped). And, yet, I was fascinated enough to go back and re-watch the thing and make up a spread sheet charting everyone's individual list. Because what was interesting was just how surprisingly crappy their favorite picks were and their justifications for including specific adventures.

That's "crappy" in my opinion...but my opinion is one of an adventure designer. And these guys are adventure designers...like long-time ones with more book credits under their belts than I will ever have. That is what caused me to sit up and take notice. You know, if three out of four designers list Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh as one of their Top Ten faves, then, hey, maybe there's something to take a look at there. On the other hand, when they blather on about Ravenloft being one of the greatest of all time with regard to design, it makes me question their abilities at all.

So I rewatched the thing and dived deeper. Some of the dudes had picks I agreed with. Some (clearly) did not. But what I came to realize, as I watched this video was that their lists were largely based on something more than "design." They were influenced by nostalgia, reputation, size/scope and...more than anything else...fond memories they've had of times actually running/playing these particular adventures. The guy who picked Ravenloft as his number one claims to have run it 5 or 6 times (even taking the same players through it more than once). The guy who listed the Desert of Desolation series as his favorite has run the entire thing more than once and had a blast doing so. 

The fact that they have fond memories of playing/running Ghost Tower of Inverness or Palace of the Silver Princess or whatever...because that's what they had the opportunity to play/run as a youth...should not be a knock against their opinions, any more than it should be a knock against MY lofty opinions of Forbidden City or Tomb of Horrors or whatever. The fact is, it's tough for MOST of us to be critical against the things we hold in esteem due to rose-colored glasses of the past.

And as my son likes to point out: different folks have different tastes. 

[of course he only points that out when it excuses his enjoyment of a song like Pitbull's "Fireball," which I am absolutely convinced is THE WORST SONG I'VE EVER HEARD. I don't know that it's the worst song ever written (that "honor" may go to some other Pitbull song), but it is hands down the absolute most awful piece of trash masquerading as "song-writing" that has ever tortured my ears. Worse than "Party in the USA." Worse than "I'm Too Sexy For My Shirt." Worse than "You Remind Me Of My Jeep." Worse than Crazy Town's "Butterfly." I would almost...almost...be willing to put it second to that stupid "Good Is The New Bad" song I had the misfortune to hear on Disney radio the other day (that one even makes Diego cringe), but then I hear Pitbull's opening "lyrics" and want to punch my face through a wall of glass. 

Yet everyone else in my family dig that stupid-stupid song. Even my wife (who claims to not like Pitbull). There's no accounting for tastes. I consider "The Hotel California" one of the best songs of all time, and some people hate the Eagles. But I would rather listed to Ice-T singing "Evil Dick" (from his Body Count days) than Fireball. F**k that garbage. I won't say I hope Pitbull dies a gruesome death...but if he were to spontaneously combust some day and all his gazillions of dollars be donated to some worthy charity, well, I can't deny I'd be more than content]

*ahem*

Now, as I wrote in my last post, all RPGs provide rules for participants to explore an imaginary environment, but they are distinguished from each other by HOW they execute this exploration. And it is in the execution of these "HOWs" that we can best judge them.

And, yes, because of the limitlessness of the (RPG) medium, it is possible to contort mechanics into doing all sorts of things that the design doesn't support. Back in the day, we transported a couple of our high level AD&D characters to the Marvel Superhero version of earth, converting all their stats and abilities to standard FASERIP scores. That was some bunch crazy (and I don't recommend it)...but for us, it worked and we had half-elf weather goddesses and psionic-slinging bards brushing up against mutants, cyborgs, and aliens...for a while anyway.

BUT, as I wrote about recently, different RPG groups have different priorities of play, similar to what Ron Edwards once termed "creative agendas," a term from the (now more-or-less obsolete) GNS theory postulated on the Forge. Dungeons & Dragons (the old pre-1983 version about which I'm concerned) pushed a particular priority of play and conceptually executed it rather well:

• the premise contained a joint objective (everyone wants treasure)
• deadly challenges force engagement (pay attention or die)
• asymmetry forced players to cooperate (different classes bring different skills to the table)
• simple mechanics increase accessibility (roll dice, look at chart)
• kitchen sink setting provides many possibilities for exploration (the length and breadth of pulp fantasy fiction)

For those who wonder why it is that D&D has remained "king" of the market for so long, one really only has to look at the excellent way in which the game executes its objectives. It's not that people LOVE "pseudo-medieval fantasy" ...some people want to retch at the idea of "high fantasy." It's the fashion in which the system functions and interacts that makes it the master of the RPG realm. 

The ONLY game that really comes close is Shadowrun. It has a joint purpose (players need to complete missions...for money). It has high pressure (i.e. deadly) stakes. It has SOME asymmetry...magic and cybertechnology don't mix well, and both are (generally) useful for completing missions. Plus the priority system of chargen ensures PC types have different strengths. But its setting...being both near future and far more defined...is far less mysterious (less avenues of exploration). And EVERYone has the ability to use firearms (the great equalizer) making many teams feel a bit "same-y." Also, the premise (PCs being beholden to missions given by Mr. Johnson) makes the game the equivalent of "quest-giver-at-the-tavern" Every Single Time...a rinse-n-repeat that gets old with no endgame in sight.

Unlike Dungeons & Dragons.

And that's the BEST of other RPGs...most fall down in even more ways. Asymmetry is the usual one; while most of the challenging RPGs do well forcing cooperation between PCs (safety in numbers!) none have quite the distinction...nor emphasis...between different PC types, even in games that have "classes" (including Marvel's "power types," Rifts' "O.C.C.s," Vampire's "clans," etc.). It's not like the VtM group is saying, "man, we really need a nosferatu to round out our coterie!" 

Here's the thing, though: that ain't a priority of play for MANY players of RPGs. Being challenged is a priority of play supported (and enhanced) by the design of Dungeons & Dragons, but some people aren't looking for that. Some people just want to explore a particular genre/setting. 

Westerns, outer space, superheroes, Lovecraftian exploration, Cold War spies, post-apocalypse, secret vampire society, zombie survival, steampunk time travelers, whatever...there are RPGs written to provide rules for just about any "imaginary environment" one might want to experience. You read it in a fiction novel, you saw it in a movie, you had a weird dream...wherever the strange inspiration came from you think it would be "cool" to live in that particular setting for a while. And that kind of play appeals to some folks: a shared daydream, if you will. 

Most RPGs fall into the category of facilitating this style of play. Most. 

D&D isn't about genre/setting satisfaction: there are better games that explore "pseudo-medieval" (Chivalry & Sorcery, Pendragon, Ars Magica, etc.)...better games, even, that explore struggles between law and chaos (Stormbringer, Warhammer) in a "realistic" fashion. D&D, as originally written, is wholly unconcerned with realism and almost unconcerned with genre emulation...save for the tropes of adventure fiction. 

The idea of genre emulation or setting exploration has a vast appeal. It's super cool! I get drawn into it myself! My shelves are filled with RPGs for settings/genres that are wicked-awesome. Zombie cowboys (Deadlands), pulp adventure (Hollow Earth Expedition), time traveling zeppelins (Airship Pirates), etc. In my experience all these games tend to be extremely short-lived, no matter how heavy-handed the GM (and it generally takes a heavy-handed GM to get the game even beyond the chargen stage). None have any long-term duration. And yet some people desire nothing more from their RPG than the type of exploration afforded by these genre-specific RPGs, happily jumping from one to another. One day ElfQuest; the next day Star Trek.

Different strokes for different folks.

There are other priorities of play found in those who regularly play RPGs...two more really. I don't really want to discuss either one of them, however, as I have nothing positive to say about them (different tastes, fine); likewise, of the two "unmentionables," one is only designed for incidentally. But neither is conducive to long-term play except in the most toxic and/or insular fashion. And these days, I am all about the long-term play. 

What I am now wondering...and what I have sometimes wondered in the past: is it possible to design an RPG that functions conceptually as well or better than D&D. AND...a "flip-side" thought...is it possible to write a genre/setting-specific RPG that generates the same type of "perpetual game experience" that D&D does. 

Considering it right now, I actually think the latter has already been done, at least in one genre. Heavily developed Traveller or games like Ashen Stars or Bulldogs...RPGs in which the PCs represent the crew of a single ship provide a reason for players to cooperate and "adventure" together, unfettered from the needs of being challenged in a D&D-type fashion...so long as the table is cool with that type of play. Lots of "imaginary environment" to explore in space; shared/joint concern (maintaining the ship); need for cooperation among the PCs...although the asymmetry isn't quite there. And with good reason: if each PC is responsible for one aspect of "ship survival" (engineer, pilot, etc.) and any PC gets killed, the entire ship goes down. The perils of operating in a hostile environment (same would hold true in submarine-type RPG).

Genre exploration is most usually executed with scripted stories...and while that's functional for that priority of play, it cuts out the beating heart of D&D, destroying what makes D&D great. And, yet, that is what many MANY individuals equate with fun, authentic D&D play...so much so that some DMs simply cannot run a game of Dungeons & Dragons without some sort of storyline/plot. Sad (to me), because the game as written takes care of player motivation, leaving nothing for the DM but to construct a world that is sound...an imaginary environment worthy of exploration. 

Why must you force story down the players' throats? What are you trying to prove? What has destroyed your trust in your players?

Different tastes. 

All right, that's enough for today. I want to take the dog for a walk before I pick up the kids from school. Next week they have the week off, so posting will (probably) be light. Have a happy one, folks!

Loot The Music...Er...Body

When I say "I live in Seattle" I actually mean it (unlike some folks)...my home is about 3.6 miles south of the northern city limits. Seattle is a big town (or small city, depending on your POV) and trying to get scheduled for a Covid vaccine in town is tough to say the least. So it was that Saturday morning found me driving north on Interstate-5 to the Skagit County Fairgrounds vaccination site for an 11am appointment...about an hour's drive...to get my first Pfeizer shot.

One of the things I enjoy about the new car the family purchased 2-3 years ago, is the "satellite radio" subscription we got with it: instant access to good music based on genre depending on whatever mood you're in, and even if there's a lousy/annoying song on your favorite genre station, chances are you can find something good on one of your other favorites, without commercials. It's not PERFECT, but for road trips it beats the hell out of the old alternative of slugging away a ton of CDs or mix tapes that you've already listened to a gazillion times. Saturday was a loooong drive (as noted) and rather than listen to the usual hair metal stations I gravitate towards, I listened instead to a rebroadcast for Casey Kasem's American Top 40 from the week of April 21st, 1973. Like, the whole thing (minus commercial interruption). 

It was a good time, and one thing I noticed about the top pop hits from that week in history (the year I was born) was the songs tended to fall into three general categories: 1) songs that I'd never heard before that seemed to be "gimmicky" (like Funky Worm by the Ohio Players), 2) workman-like songs from established artists (both Neither One of Us from Gladys Knight and Call Me by Al Green were completely forgettable pieces), or 3) true classics that I have heard countless times over the last 47+ years including Killing Me Softly (Roberta Flack), Danny's Song (Anne Murray), Stir It Up (Johnny Nash), Love Train (O'Jays), Space Oddity (Bowie), and Drift Away (Dobie Gray).

And the thing that classics like Stevie Wonder's Sunshine of my Life or Steely Dan's Reeling in the Years have over songs like Skylark's Wildflower or the Stylistics' Break Up to Make Up isn't necessarily head-and-shoulders better musicianship or better production values. It's a combination of songwriting (lyrics and instruments) with interesting, memorable touches that makes a song stand out from what has come before. Some cats just have that "it factor" and you can hear it in the way the song has been put together and recorded...even if you don't like a particular song (I'm not a huge Stevie Wonder fan), you can appreciate why he's one of the all-time greats.

I say this by way of introduction to the band Loot the Body, who just sent me a preview copy of the new album Hex for review. Spoiler alert: probably not destined to be a classic.

Loot the Body is "the brainchild of singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Levi Nunez." Nunez writes songs "based on classic D&D" and cites "proto metal" and "proto psychadelic rock" as his musical references. I explained to Mr. Nunez that I wasn't a music critic...I'm not steeped in the industry, I haven't the practiced vocabulary for the writing or the library of musical knowledge to draw upon...but he still said he'd appreciate me writing my impressions of his songs. Says the "music blogs" don't really know what to do with him. 

Okay.

Hex is a six song EP with each track taking its name and theme from a classic D&D adventure module: White Plume Mountain,  Dwellers of the Forbidden City, Castle Amber, Tomb of Horrors, Ravenloft, and The Keep on the Borderlands. I've had some previous exposure to Loot the Body through The Barrier Peaks Songbook, which to me seemed more like a fun little project/experiment than a serious attempt at...well, a serious attempt. The new EP shows, no, Nunez IS actually serious about this wedding of D&D and music...there's a lot of obvious effort here...and whether he's trying to carve out a niche for himself or this is "just what he does," it's certainly doesn't appear to be throwaway trash.

That being said, the first word that came to mind as I listened to to Hex was "sophomoric," despite this being his third effort (I only just discovered he has an earlier album, Random Encounters, which I haven't had a chance to hear). I actually dig on the concept of the album (the idea he was going for) but my overall impression is one of flawed execution, and the thought that the music could have benefitted from some collaboration, or a strong hand in the production/editing with regard to the songwriting itself.

Musically, Hex reminds me quite a bit of Blue Oyster Cult, and shares some of the issues I have with BOC, especially the vocals. I'm okay with BOC (I've seen them live in concert) but they only have three songs I care to listen to, and despite their talent, I find most of their music to be disappointing and forgettable. I'm just not a fan of wispy, gutless singing that takes few chances vocally or lyrically. That's probably too harsh, but (for me) I like my singing to stand out and apart from the other instruments, not just become a drone in the background. I have this problem with more recent bands like Muse and Radiohead, too, although the latter band makes up for it with layering and originality. Perhaps it's music that's designed to act as a soundtrack to the group gathering around the bong, without "harshing the buzz" or acting as a distraction...and, sure, that's "okay." Elevator music is okay, too...in an elevator. But, man, it gets old after a (very short) while. 

Nunez does have musical chops, but his singing talent doesn't stand out, and his instruments...at times creative, at times highly derivative...suffer on most tracks from composition. See, this is the part where me NOT being a music critic fails me: I don't have the words to describe it. Often, he fills up the song sheet with lyrics withOUT musical breaks, rushing to get the words in, rather than letting the ear rest from the drone and just groove into the hooks and melodies. There are parts in every song where the ear wants a break from the singing...and gets none (or not enough). The bridges are too short. Another verse is needed instead of another repetition of an overlong chorus. Things like that. 

Lyrically the songs are hit-and-miss. To ME...an old school D&D guy...some of the songs are especially grating when they lift whole swaths of background text from the adventure modules from which they are derived. The album is at its best when Nunez goes "off script" with his lyrics...writing about the feelings and actions of adventurers in the dungeon, rather than the dungeon itself. 

I've listened to every song on the album multiple times. For me, the best of the bunch are Dwellers in the Forbidden City, Castle Amber, and Tomb of Horrors with Dwellers being my favorite track on the album. Castle Amber has some of the best lyrics on the album, but is scattered in its musical themes, and needs tightening. Tomb would be pretty good (despite some fairly derivative musical hooks) but suffers from the aforementioned issue of arrangement/composition...too bad, because it has one of the best bridges/choruses on the album.

White Plume Mountain, and Keep on the Borderlands are just heartbreaking (or embarrassing, depending on your point of view). When you have one of the worst villain names in the history of D&D ("Keraptis" sounds a bit too much like "crap") you don't spend the entirety of the lyrics on the dude and his history in the module's "background" section, and nothing about the adventure itself (what? no mention of Blackrazor, Wave, and Whelm? Come on). Definitely NOT the song to lead off the EP. TKotB isn't quite as bad, and is fine sitting at the end of the album as coda...just wish it was more than adventure background. 

Ravenloft, like the adventure it's based on, is just gimmicky in tone. It feels like the worst of BOC and irritates me every time I've tried listening to it (it's a struggle to listen to the track for more than two minutes,)...and yet it's the ONLY track that has a decent musical interlude (sans vocals) in the middle. Unfortunately, while it may be the best composed track on the EP it has an incredibly annoying chorus. Ugh.

Should you buy this album? Mmm. There's definitely worse musical projects to throw money at. Like anything produced by Pitbull. AND if you're a fan of droning, stoner rock...especially if you're tickled by themes inspired by classic D&D adventures...then, sure, yes. Because chances are, that's the only way you'll be getting a chance to hear these tracks. I don't think you'll be hearing these songs on the radio any time in the near future. 

And as I come to the end of this review (marveling at how any sane person would ask me to express my honest opinion of their work knowing how caustic and negative I can be..."gutless?" really?) and I finish listening to Hex for what must be the 10th time, I find myself coming to the conclusion that the best track on the album, despite its flaws, is Tomb of Horrors and not Dwellers of the Forbidden City. Even though I prefer the rock hook and lyrics of Dwellers, Tomb is the better song...Dwellers is just too short, needing more time to unwind, gel, and melt into your mind. Plus, Tomb's got the better, hookier chorus; I'll probably be humming it the rest of the day.

All right. That's enough of that.

Loot the Body's new EP Hex is scheduled for release June 4th and can be found on Bootcamp and elsewhere.

Elegant Design

I don't write a lot of posts about "the biz" of publishing books, but this is a little strange...there seems to be a slight resurgence in interest in my books.

The B/X Companion for sure: just checked the PDF sales report on DriveThruRPG, and it's on pace to have its best year since 2013. Just to put that in perspective: my Companion was only made available as a PDF in 2012, and the total sales for the first two years exceeds all sales combined from 2014-2019.  

[which is still peanuts, of course (total sales over the life of the product is a bit north of 1000), but considering my lack of business skills and marketing savvy...not to mention the niche market to which my product belongs...I'll take pride in my home-baked slice of the pie]

If I had to guess about a reason for the recent sales spike, I'd probably give credit to the expanding popularity of the recent Old School Essentials (B/X) retro-clone. Back in "The Time Before Covid" I had a chance to take a look at Ye Local Gamestore and it was a pretty nice set of books. Didn't purchase it myself (money's a little tight for picking up products I already own in their original form), but I've heard plenty of praise for the thing, both in-person (from actual people) and on-line (from virtual people). 

ANYway, that's the only reason I can think of...I don't see any reviews or internet mentions of the Companion more recently than 2012 or so. Regardless, my thanks to all the people doing the purchasing...considering the many pirate PDFs of my book floating around the internet these days, I appreciate the money some folks are actually willing to put in my pocket.

Now the stranger part: while OSE offers some explanation for my B/X Companion, I don't know what could account for the renewed interest in Five Ancient Kingdoms, which is also on pace to have its best sales since 2013 (the first year it was published). 

Are people actually playing 5AK?

Allow me to be a skosh amazed at the idea. I mean, I'm not playing the game at the moment, though maybe I should be. I spent much of yesterday reading through the PDFs (for the first time in years) and, man, there is some good stuff in there. Elegant design, if I do say so myself (and I do).  Yeah, yeah...patting myself on the back again. But I like how I solved a lot of particular design issues I had with D&D, adding interesting nuance while still keeping the system streamlined and abstract.

Why did I abandon this line of gaming? 

Now THAT is a good question. I definitely remember feeling a bit pingeon-holed by the setting...even thought the books themselves offer ways to modify the system for other settings. But mostly, I think, that I felt the game lacked appeal...I could never get more than 2 or 3 players together that were willing to give it a go, back during the play-testing stage. Compare that with the offer of most any edition of D&D and you get half a dozen hands (or more) go up in the air, crying to join the table.

*sigh* I'm such a slave to what is trendy.

But no, it's more than that, I think. I worked hard on the probabilities and dice outcomes for 5AK, and they work well, but they're not as intuitive to grasp as a more granular, incremental system based on a D20 or percentile dice. Or perhaps it's just me...I am too used to these simpler granular systems, having been steeped in them for decades. Rolling 2d6 and tossing out "zeroes" just seems too "weird" from my perspective. I need some sort of damn chart/matrix to reference or I feel naked out there!

*sigh again*

As I continue to work on my own world and tinker the rules to better match the parameters of my design needs I read through these books...the three volumes of 5AK...and I keep coming across things that make me wonder "is there a way to add this to D&D?" A way to somehow incorporate these ideas into the standard D&D design without upsetting the entire apple cart? Sadly, I'm not sure there is. Systems in 5AK are built to inter-lock with each other. D&D is a hodge-podge of mechanics created on a "need" or "cool idea" basis (and often as patches when "cool ideas" ended up creating other "needs"). Functional as D&D is, fun as D&D is, its very nature precludes the addition of elegant mechanics.

Doesn't it?

Mentzer's BECMI tried to file off a lot of the "rough edges" and the game suffered for it (in my opinion). Same with 3rd edition...and 3.5 and 4th and 5th. The more well-oiled the machine becomes, the less room there is for imagination. 5AK works because it is, in the main, small scale and firmly based in its fairy tale genre. But D&D's heritage is founded in a wilder and woolier period of imaginings. 

What was it I was listening to the other day? Oh, yeah: Mother Love Bone. Andrew Wood is one of the greatest singer/songwriters that...unless you're really deep into musical lore...you've probably never heard or heard of. Unless you're, like, my age (mid-late 40s) and grew up in Seattle and liked rock music instead of pop and rap. Because Wood died right on the verge of becoming famous, and his bandmates ended up becoming Pearl Jam instead. And Vedder's a great singer and frontman, don't get me wrong, but Wood was a special talent. His music mixed the sacred with the profane, at time profound at times adolescent, all combined with sincerity and humor and beautiful singing ability, emphasizing love in all its expressions (for God, for children, for sex, for the world). I found my old CD in a mislabeled box and ended up listening to it 3 or 4 times through, just feeling...sad.

Because even if I played their CD for, say, my children or some 20-something year olds, there's just such a depth of meaning that would be lost on kids from a different generation. They just wouldn't grasp references because there's so much that doesn't exist anymore in this day and age of internet saturation and multi-hundred TV channels and social media bubbles. It's like: once upon a time the world was a smaller place, but so much more specific...and now its not. Once upon a time, every kid watched Bugs Bunny or Scoobie-Doo because you were a kid and you watched cartoons and there was only a couple channels and a couple times a week that you could watch them. Once upon a time there was only a handful of news outlets and rather than market themselves to a particular "fan base" they tried to report as quickly and accurately as possible. Once upon a time everyone knew the same songs because radio stations that catered to a particular taste only rotated the same handful of bands. We had shared understandings, shared touchstones.

We have so few of those these days, except for world-shattering events. Good things? Or fun things? Or nice things? Those are all over the board. You might know something about it if you're In The Group that cares about a particular thing (role-playing games, for example)...otherwise, it's outside your bubble, outside your sphere of interest. And you chance of having a shared knowledge with someone outside that thing is...slim. I can bitch about Trump or Covid with the other soccer parents while watching our kids practice or I can talk about soccer and soccer kids. Anything else? Chaff in the wind.

D&D...the D&D that I play and that I prefer...belongs to that older time. It wasn't created to be elegant or universal or easily consumed. It gained ascendance by being pretty much the only (or main) game in town at a time when the world was a much smaller place, when choices were more limited, and when people...players...had more shared understandings. Me writing 5AK was an attempt at...hell, I don't really know (or remember) exactly what I was attempting. But with regard to mechanics, I tried to make it as "elegant" as possible, while maintaining some sort of soul and imagination. I just don't know if imagination can exist alongside "elegant" design...it certainly seems more readily found in the inelegant systems of the wilder, woolier past. 

Ugh. This post has gone completely off the rails. Probably need to reset (and maybe eat some breakfast).  Later, gators.

Cranky Pants Bastard

I've had more than my fair share of game-induced nausea the last couple days...so much so that I have to write a blog post about it just to keep from having my head explode.

[yes, yes...another rant. I know there are several readers cheering at the moment]

Hmm...let's see. Just to try to diagram my map of spewing bile, we can start over here at All Dead Generations discussion of 5E's most recent starter set. Then there was this post over at What a Horrible Night about a meme discussing the difference in D&D cultures between the Old and New. Alexis's blog directed me to this post about 5E advancement from DM David, after which I found myself to read both the post that preceded it and his trainwreck conclusion.  This was then followed by Fr. Dave's referral to just a hummer of a post from the Alexandrian and an in depth perusal of the distressing comments it elicited. Finally, Trollsmyth's recent post on the non-imminent appearance of "6E" brought my attention to the disturbing article that prompted him, a list of concerns 5E players "want" and "worry" about with regard to any new version of Dungeons & Dragons.

Look. I get it. I'm old. Some people love the hell out of 5E. Some people think "Party in the USA" is one hella dope jam. I am a cranky-ass geezer with no right to dictate to people.

But man o man...I could write a whole series of posts addressing the particular idiocy found in each of these brain-bursting missives. And I have! (over the years, in various forms)

But what good would it do? What good...really? Would it DO "good?" It would just be one cranky old man pissing all over someone's good fun, right? Just once more trying to rain on everyone's parade. 'Hey, Old Man: how is Party in the USA any worse than Gettin' Jiggy Wit It?' It's not, jackass...but I thought THAT was a stupid song at the time, too. Besides, that was 1997...I stopped listening to music after '95.

[did you know that Party in the USA was #29 on Billboard's Top 100 for 2009? Not that 2009 was a fantastic year for music or anything; Pittbull had a song at #17 the same year and his "music" is absolute garbage]

See? Just a cranky old geezer am I. And no one gives a flying f*** what I think. Certainly not in the numbers that would generate the amount of ca$hflow for folks to care.

Tell me this...what kind of cynical SOBs must industry designers be these days? Was catching up on my tenfootpole the other day and read a comment from a particular Adventurers League writer whose work had been lambasted by Bryce (as AL stuff often is) in which he confessed the difficulties writing to WotC's required specifications. Yeah. I'm sure it's a tough gig, writing creatively within structured parameters. Really rough. Probably with deadlines, too.

Did you know? The average budget for a feature film in Hollywood is $100-$150 million. "Blockbuster" films can have budgets two to three times that amount (Avengers: Endgame had a budget of $356 million). You know what the average budget has been for feature films that won the Academy Award ("Oscar") for Best Motion Picture the last ten years? Just over $19 million ($19.2 to be exact).

And that average is thrown off by Argo (2012) which had a budget of just under $45 million.  You can go back 20 years and the average increases to $34 million thanks to a couple big budget winners (Gladiator, The Departed, and LotR: Return of the King), but they're still mostly in the "under $25 million" range. If you think I'm trying to imply something like money and commercialism damages quality (or that overproduced products are lesser works because of artists kowtowing to the "demands" of the "masses")...well, yeah, that is what I'm doing. That is exactly what I'm implying.

But I'm an ass. A cranky old man. Me scribbling angry diatribes means nothing, does nothing, is just a waste of everyone's time. Besides, what the hell am I angry about? The trials and travails of the 5E player has ZERO effect on me as I don't play 5E. It's annoying that there aren't more folks playing a brand of D&D I prefer (so that I'd have more tables to sit down at when I go to conventions)...but since the pandemic continues, it's not like I'm actively recruiting new players (nor going to cons).

[similarly, who cares about the dreck produced in Hollywood when I don't have enough time to watch half the films I'd like anyway. "How is that possible, JB, when you're in lockdown?!" Yeah, well, I'm in lockdown with my family, people, and most of the films I'd like to watch aren't stuff they could or would watch...and in my free time I'm writing blog posts, of course! Duh]

So, yeah. Much as this stuff turns my stomach, just writing it all out helps defuse my anger and irritation. And anyway, there's plenty of worse stuff to get angry about these days (police murdering folks, for example...Jesus, this country!).

How about THIS for an idea: I'm going to STOP being Mr. Cranky Pants. I will continue to blog about the goodness of my own brand of gaming (or complain, as the mood strikes me) but instead of complaining about the state of things in the ongoing industry, I will simply make fun of it. Instead of yelling (virtually) at folks who insist on playing 4th or 5th or 6th edition whatever...as if doing so would actually change their minds or something...I will (gently) poke fun at them and laugh about the foibles and flaws of their game.

This will, of course, take some practice. My skill at purposefully producing good natured snark and sarcasm is, sadly, a little rusty these days...the last few years of blogging I've mostly tried to be sincere and helpful (if not always respectful). Most of my snark (especially the mean-spirited stuff) has come from "lapses" due to off-the-cuff (emotional) writing; what I've attempted is to be open and up front with things I dislike, reasoned or (at least) somewhat logical, rather than snide, backhanded, or clever. But that's just butting my head against a wall...might as well find a way to laugh instead!

Yep, time to take off the cranky pants; time to try on some snarky shorts. It's a sunny day, after all!
; )

Y is for Yolanda of Luln

[over the course of the month of April, I shall be posting a topic for each letter of the alphabet, sequentially, for every day of the week except Sunday. Our topic for this year's #AtoZchallenge? Revamping the Grand Duchy of Karameikos in a way that doesn't disregard its B/X roots. I got behind by a couple days because of the Easter weekend, but I'm trying to catch up as quickly as possible]

Y is for Yolanda of Luln.

I’ll admit that after re-reading the description of this NPC, I’m feeling a little less critical than my initial impression. For those of you who don’t own GAZ1, here’s the gist:

Yolanda as she appears in GAZ1

Yolanda was born in the Black Eagle Barony. Not desiring for the child to grow up in such a terrible place, her parents fled with the baby; her father died during the escape. Yolanda grew up in Luln with her seamstress mother. Yolanda was blessed with great beauty and musical talent; she “trained” rigorously until the age of 18, after which she moved to the capital, where she became the most famous entertainer in Specularum. Now 22 she uses her money (after paying her expenses...including sending money to her mother in. Luln) to influence Ministers and officials at the palace to curb the degradations of Baron Black Eagle. She is described by Allston (in GAZ1) as “A Woman With A Cause,” and a possible source of adventure hooks.

The reason I was feeling critical earlier was that I had an inaccurate memory of this particular NPC. For some reason I thought (or assumed) that she was attempting to foment rebellion (or stir up trouble) against the Black Eagle Barony, using her music. Like, I don't know, Gold Moon doing her little song and dance in Dragonlance, trying to inspire folks to help her people. I mean, I realize folk musicians inspired people to activism during the latter part of the 20th century, but I'm not sure this was ever true of individual minstrels in earlier centuries. Did Yankee Doodle fire up American colonists against the British? Or was it simply a song sang as a sign of their (already) defiance? My general feeling is that the local nobility's reaction to songs of revolution would be something on par with Game of Thrones: "Would you prefer to lose your tongue or your fingers?"

But that's not what going on. Yolanda is a successful entertainer who came from humble origins who's using her newfound money (not her music) to secretly (not publicly) influence the aristocracy against a corrupt vassal. And that's just fine and dandy...except that I don't necessarily see the Black Eagle as all that "evil," and I certainly don't see Archduke Stefan as some wise and just ruler.

ANYway, she's an interesting NPC to have floating around Karameikos and other than leaving her as is (a famous entertainer...thank goodness there's no "bard" class in B/X or BECMI because I'm sure she'd have 10+ levels and a bunch of random spells), there are only a couple-three ways I'd choose to resin her:

Option #1: Make her an actual Traladaran revolutionary, but financing the guerrillas in the capital in order to overthrow the corrupt and decadent invaders (i.e. Duke Stefan himself). In this scenario, Yolanda sees the Black Eagle as only a symptom of the actual problem: foreign occupation. Instead of money going to bribe ministers and officials, she could be buying swords and arrows for the true revolutionaries hiding under the nose of the Duke. Of course, there are sharper knives in the drawer who would be aware of her schemes and would oppose her activities: individuals like Anton Radu (head of the Veiled Society) who has made money hand-over-fist since the corrupt Thyatians came into the picture.

Option #2: As option #1, but now she IS the very public, folksinger activist inspiring rebellion and dissidents with her coded lyrics of her music. The Archduke is aware of the problem, but most of the actions he could take to silence her would simply make her into a martyr...and because of her overwhelming popularity amongst the people her arrest and/or execution m might actually be the spark that sets off a firestorm! Stefan may need the aid of some mercenary minded troubleshooters (i.e. the player characters) to discreetly deal with the singer...

Diana Damrau as Yolanda.

Option #3: None of the above; Yolanda is actually a centuries old Nosferatu masquerading as a normal human entertainer. She was one of the many undead wives of Lord Zemiros Sulescu, but he tired of her some decades ago, and when she she'd finally had enough of lurking around his castle and preying on the odd gypsy...er, peasant...she decided to try her hand among the living. Her fame and popularity is as much due to selective use of her vampiric charming ability as to her natural beauty and talent. No one's yet caught on, and she's considering forming her own faction in the city of Specularum: a contingent of lovers and admirers converted to vampires and under her absolute sway and domination. One of the things I always liked about the random town encounters in the original DMG (besides the extensive list of "wandering harlots," of course) was the possibility of bumping into a vampire or greater undead on the city streets. Put one there: Yolanda, Queen of the Night!
: )

Classic Rock

I've been a fan of KJR, "Seattle's classic rock station" (what my brother and I call "contractor radio"), ever since last summer when I spent 4-5 weeks hand-laying (literal) tons of stone and gravel to create a backyard "patio." Most of the station's music is square in my wheelhouse, and I can't for the life of me figure out why I never listened to it before (KJR has been around for decades)...save perhaps that they play too much Pink Floyd and Beatles for my taste.

[the Stones as well, and their songs are a little hit-or-miss for me. I'm much higher on other 70's rock bands]

But as the decades of my youth (i.e. the '80s and '90s) fall into the era considered "oldies," I suppose it's only natural that I'd evolve a taste for such programming. When I was a kid, you'd have to tune into the "Metal" station to hear acts like Metallica or AC/DC. Now that they're considered "classic rock," I roll with KJR when I'm cruising down the highway, looking for cheap tunes to blast out my windows.

Which is one of the reasons AD&D keeps poking its head into my brain.

I've written before how, in many cases, I associate particular music with particular games. There's a good reason for this: it was not unusual for me, in my youth, to close myself in my bedroom with both a new RPG and a new album, listening to the latter over-and-over on my headphones even as I read, reread, and learned new game systems and settings. This is why, for example, I associate Vampire the Masquerade with Faith No More (The Real Thing), and Rifts with Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti. Sometimes I don't even remember (usually) what I was listening to at the time...it's actually hearing the music that triggers the memory of a game...games never trigger memories of music, for whatever reason.

So it is that lately I've been hearing a lot of the music from Def Leppard's album Hysteria on the classic rock station and having AD&D flashbacks.

Their best album? Maybe. It's
this or High N Dry.

Of course, I played D&D (and AD&D) long before I started listening to Def Leppard (or any music that was personally owned...as opposed to being standard pop radio fare). But by the time Hysteria came out (circa 1987) I was very, very deep into AD&D gaming. There was no B/X in those days; the transition from D&D to Advanced and from pre-published modules to our own campaign settings, story arcs, and adventures was (more-or-less) complete. Hearing its songs, I find myself constantly being surprised by the depths of nostalgia that come gushing out of me. Really startling!

You see, I haven't really listened to that music in decades. When I was a kid listening to it, I didn't even own an official copy of the album, just a dubbed cassette tape made for me by my best friend and co-DM. And can you imagine how long it's been since I've listened to a cassette tape...any cassette, let alone a copy that had been worn thin and tired by constant repetitive play? By the time I moved into CDs, I wasn't listening to Def Leppard anymore, and when music went electronic I never went out and acquired it...it was never uploaded into my iPod or laptop.

Furthermore, it wasn't anything in rotation on the radio since the 1980s. Def Leppard put out that stupid commercial album Adrenalized ("Let's Get Rocked?!") that even my mother bought (I never did) and went onto the pop stations before fading into the background. The metal stations (of which there were never many) played Metallica and Megadeth and (later) stuff like Korn and Disturbed, while "alt rock" stations started a heavy rotation of grunge and indie bands (or later imitators). Hysteria, despite being a huge commercial success at the time, all but disappeared from public airwaves and from my thoughts, save when I heard someone doing a karaoke version of "Pour Some Sugar on Me."

Man, I remember going to Laser Def Leppard at the Pacific Science Center as a young teen (with my fellow AD&D players), almost certainly getting a contact high from the weed being smuggled and smoked by the older folks at the midnight showing. Way back before I had ANY vices to speak of.

(*sigh*)

I suppose what I need to do is pony up the cash and download the album onto my iTunes app and give the whole thing a solid listen. Probably in a dimly lit room, surrounded by copies of my 1st edition AD&D books, wallowing in nostalgia. I'm not really sure what the effect would be: would I feel transported back to my youth? Or would I simply feel as ancient as I do every time I tune into the "classic rock" station and do a mental calculation of how many years its been since an old favorite was first released.

I'm the one in the chair:
the rotting corpse.

Jeez. This must be something like what my father used to feel when he listened to his "Oldies" station, back in the day. Rocking out to the tunes of the 60's when he was living in the 1980's, complaining at the lack of decent music.

I am such an old man.

B/X Companion - Now Available in PRINT

As the title says, I am now in possession of a couple crates of my B/X Companion. For those who have been clamoring for a print copy, you may once again order it directly from me through PayPal by clicking on the drop down menu in the sidebar (make sure it's the menu underneath the correct image), and selecting the book's destination.

Sorry to have made you folks wait so long.

Anyway, my excitement is marred a bit today by the passing of one of the greatest rock vocalists to ever come out of the Seattle area: Chris Cornell. Like me, Chris was a local boy...attended the same elementary school my boy goes to, went to the same high school I would have (if I'd gone to public school) and worked as a sous-chef at a restaurant just down the street from my (current) home. I've had the pleasure of singing his music on occasion, but I'm a poor imitation (at best) being about an octave shy of his full range...and unlike me, Mr. Cornell was an accomplished and excellent songwriter, musician, and wordsmith. Prince and Bowie were losses that most of the world could grieve, but losing Chris...well, that feels much more personal.

Andrew
Kurt
Layne
Chris

Rest in peace, boys.

Louder than Love? Damn Straight.

Amusing

99 Problems and a Lich Ain't One.

Well, Crap.

Do I need to say something about DriveThruRPG's new policy regarding offensive content?

Probably. But I'll keep it short.

As I grow older I find myself tending to become more conservative regarding a number of issues that, in the past, I was uber-liberal regarding. It happens, especially after you have a couple kids and you want to protect them from the insanity of the world that they, at this moment, are totally unequipped to deal with.

Even so, I understand that the best thing I can do to protect them is to provide good parenting, acting as a "gatekeeper" (of sorts) while they're young, and arming them mentally with good information and supplemental education drawn from my own experiences and reflections. Do I want my children to be pack-a-day chain-smokers (as I was for a decade)? No, of course not. But there's little I can do to stop them once they come of age...should they choose that path. The best I can do is model what I consider "right behavior" (I haven't purposefully put anything in my lungs besides air for 14 years), and share my experiences and knowledge, hoping that they'll make decisions that are beneficial rather than detrimental (for themselves and others).

It is unfortunate that there is a market for things that are, well, terrible in my opinion. Check out the documentary Hot Girls Wanted regarding the "professional amateur" porn industry. I disagree with some of the people interviewees that they are simply "fulfilling a market demand;" I believe it is possible to create market demand. But once that demand has been created, it's a pretty tough thing to turn off. The Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s failed dramatically and, as far as I can tell, the War on Drugs is a continued failure after 30+ years of effort. Will banning something "bad" (physically, spiritually) stop people from wanting it? Generally speaking, no. And for many folks, forbidding something automatically ups the attraction of the thing.

I think I can honestly say that, 25 years ago, I would be doing all in my power to buy a book called Tournament of Rapists...just to see what's inside...the same way that, at age 11 or 12, I was doing my damnedest to get a copy of Purple Rain to hear the song Darling Nikki. And in retrospect, I'm glad I did, since the music of Prince is excellent and has led to much enjoyment over the years.

Ridiculously inappropriate.

The same could not be said of 2 Live Crew's As Nasty As They Wanna Be. It yielded a couple afternoon's worth of interest before being quickly forgotten, except anecdotally. At least it didn't permanently scar me or transform me into a misogynist. But, then, I had some good core values instilled by good parents...I don't think any piece of artwork (good or bad) could've overwritten my basic "programming."

So...I suppose I'm on the side of anti-censorship. But I'm not about to go all nuclear about it. DriveThruRPG is a private business, and they are allowed to cater to their customer base in a way that allows them to best make money and survive. If hot-button books are a turn-off for the people they wish as their clientele, I think it's fair for them to do some policing on behalf of their target demographic...Reader's Digest doesn't publish the same jokes as Hustler, after all. Having said that, I find myself disagreeing with part of their reaction, namely their intent to:

code more customer-facing options to allow customers to report potentially offensive content to us.

I would think the proper method of gatekeeping would be the way they responded to the complaints regarding Tournament of Rapists: allow offended folks to contact DTRPG and then follow-up with scrutiny (against company policy) and dialogue (when appropriate). Giving the public a "This Offends Me" button, seems a little too prone to abuse and/or overreaction misuse.

And that's as much as I want to say on the subject.

Home Stretch on the New Book

The new book is nearing total completion. The art is there, the formatting is done, and the page numbers are loaded. I've got two more charts to stuff, a table of contents to write, and some credits to give, but I hope to have all that done by tomorrow.

Which would be a very good thing, since I have an appointment with my printer on Monday.

I won't bore you with another movie review (saw Rock of Ages today...for a film set in 1987, they sure had a lot of stuff from 1988-90. As usual, the biggest surprise was Tom Cruise, whose pipes on Wanted Dead or Alive were pretty good...it was a better rendition than your usual karaoke and his tenor felt metal enough I wondered if it was actually a "stunt voice" coming out of his mouth. Unfortunately, his other songs weren't as good, though he was entertaining enough as rock god Stacie Jaxx).

Instead, I'm going to get back to finishing up those charts. Later, Gators.

Riding that Nostalgia Train

I can only take a certain amount of Aerosmith. 

I’m back at the Baranof, knocking back a stiff martini, and have Wolfmother piped into my headphones as I type. Why? Because Janie’s Got A Gun was just calling up bad memories. Not even memories really (there were no images attached); just weird-ass, hinky feelings. That song was popular at a time when…well, I don’t remember exactly what was going on at the time, but it couldn’t have been all that great, as I’ve apparently blocked it out. Let’s see: per wikipedia it was released in 1989 with Pump. Yes, I remember that. Peaked at #4 on Billboard in 1990 and was probably on extensive radio airplay the same year. In 1990 I was 17…that was the year my father left my family. (*sigh*) 

High school was not a fantastic time (for a lot o folks it ain’t; that’s nothing special). There were certainly some high points to go with the lows, and things actually started up-swinging for me in a lot of ways with 1991 so I won’t complain (plus I still have a pretty positive, if distant, relationship with my Dad, which is more than a few o my friends can say). But I was definitely pining for Dungeons & Dragons in 1990, that’s for sure. I stopped playing the game, pretty much cold turkey, sometime around 1987 or ’88. Shortly before the release of 2nd edition, which happened around that time. No, it had nothing to do with 2nd edition D&D; if I’d still been playing when 2E was released, I probably would have jumped on the bandwagon and bought into the Forgotten Realms and all that nonsense. No, my reason was both more simple and more complicated…I didn’t have any players. At least not the players I wanted. 

In high school, I did play role-playing games…a number of them, many of the Palladium or White Wolf or Chaosium variety (how’s that for a “grab bag?”). Hell, I made some pretty good friends in high school, some of whom lasted through college and beyond, and who did indeed play (1st edition) AD&D, even in high school. Plus my younger brother still played for awhile (as did his best friend or two) and I acted as a 1E DM for them on multiple occasions (as I’ve talked about before in this blog). But my little brother and his buddies…and even my peers who were in the same age and class as myself…were not “my type” of gamers. I really don’t know how to talk about this without sounding insulting or snobby, but I’ll give it an (admittedly half-assed) shot: none of ‘em were mature enough to play MY brand of AD&D. 

Prior to high school, I had spent…oh, let’s say five or so years playing hardcore with a small group of friends. Five years is an eternity to a kid who’s 14…more than a third of his life. I’m 38 now…I haven’t even been married for a third of my life, and I’ve been married for more than 11 years. Five years is a shitload of time for a kid that age. And consider how much time we spent on the game of D&D. Sure we had sports, we did Boy Scouts or family activities, and school (of course). But we played at school…the same way people “play” on the internet when they’re supposed to be working at their jobs. And we didn’t have jobs or careers…no soul-crushing 8 hours torn from our waking hours. Hell, we could talk D&D on our “commute” (to and from school, via foot and/or dirt bike) as we wanted. We could talk on the phone after school. We could see each other on the weekends. The only relationships we were bent on maintaining were our friendships…and those imaginary ones created in the game. 

My little circle of friends tired of dungeon-crawling pretty fast, as I’ve discussed recently. After that, it was more about creating a real, living and breathing (if imaginary) world. A world in which we were the “movers and shakers.” Our characters had loves and hates, likes and dislikes, friends, allies, and enemies. Hell, we had “turn-on’s and turn-off’s”…all noted on our (rather extensive) character sheets. All aimed at trying to flesh out the imaginary avatar. Give it life, the way authors do their characters. 

Crazy kids. 

AD&D was our jump board to a “higher state” of role-playing. You may disagree that there’s anything “higher” about it (just “different”), but I’ll stick with the term for a moment. We were still “going on adventures” but the adventures had more to do with the characters themselves than with anything insidious in the virtual environment. And little had to do with “backstory.” 

For example, one girl (yes, members of the opposite sex like RPGs) who played with us, Crystal, created a female fighter named “Tangina.” By virtue of random rolls from the DMG, we discovered Tangina was pretty goddamn strong and over 6’ tall…an f’ing amazon, if you will. Tangina also had plenty of gold to equip herself and spent it on half-a-dozen plus weapons, including both a two-handed sword and a man-catcher (“in case I need to catch me a man!”). Typical low-level character derived from random generation. Her “backstory” was pretty short…her family had tried to marry her off to a minor noble who was an asshole (or she just didn’t want to get married, I forget), and she fled to pursue an adventuring life. No one got killed, there were rumors that her ex- was still “searching for her” but I don’t recall a single appearance by him or his henchpeople. Mainly, she was just a wanderer with a simple story explaining why she wasn’t a medieval (very tall) housewife. She had a Halfling henchman named Shorty who was none too bright (in our games, halflings were always NPC comic relief, never as heroic player characters…I don’t think any of us had ever read Tolkien at that point). The point is, with minimal “characterization,” Crystal was able to drop into an imaginary life completely alien to her 13 (maybe 14 or 15?) year old self. Interacting with NPCs (not just killing orcs), looking to make a good (if imaginary) life for herself and NOT worried just about “gaining XP and leveling up.” 

And Crystal was a very minor player in our circle. There’s a lot of talk (at times) in the Old School realm about “D&D’s endgame:” build a castle, gain a dominion, settle down. See, for us, that wasn’t the end of the game but something around the mid-point. Getting the castle and the followers put you on a footing to interact with other landholders (kings and barons and such). It opened up other “adventures,” more interesting than simply “going down the hole looking for loot.” Political machinations and alliances, romances and marriages and betrayals, power and land grabs, revenge and vendetta…not to mention the quest for godhood (a personal favorite, none of this silly “quest for immortality” schtick from Mentzer…I’m talking about displacing Olympians in the celestial pantheon through right of conquest or occult subterfuge). 

These were the games I played as a kid. This was the type of campaign (and we had several) that we adapted to the AD&D vehicle. This was the kind of campaign I was running as a DM (or running IN, as a player), form circa 1983-1987. And I started playing the game in ’81 or ’82. But I lost those friends when I went to high school: Matt, Scott, Jocelyn, even Jason and Rob. It doesn’t matter terribly why our circle ended…I’ve kept in contact with those folks (off and on) over the years…but we did stop gaming together. 

And while I continued gaming, finding new folks that wanted to game, they weren’t interested in the same things I was. They wanted to go into that hole in the ground looking for loot. They wanted to fight through 20 levels of The Temple of Elemental Evil. They wanted to set-up simulacrums of their high level magic-users, blissfully constructing magic items on other planes for fun and profit. Role-playing was still fun…but when you played AD&D, it all came down to who had the biggest sword. 

And I didn’t want to play that. So when I did game with them, we played other RPGs. Sometimes incoherent, poorly designed games…but at least it wasn’t AD&D. Because I couldn’t bear to play a poor excuse for something that had previously lived and breathed and transported me…as both a player and as a DM. 

And why do I bother to write all this tripe? Who cares, right? Stop living in the past and get on with the good gaming available now…people who care (like me) know AD&D is a pretty crap system as is. [and, yes, I still think that to a great degree] But I’ve started playing in Alexis’s AD&D campaign, and its quickly becoming obvious the guy cares a great deal about the game world he presents…more than anyone I’ve met since those friends from my childhood. His approach is different from mine…more logical, more reasonable, more intelligent…but underneath, driving it, is a very similar passion. 

Look, I am very happy to be living in the time and place and real world that I am. I would not prefer to have been born in a medieval-type world with magic and dragons…I like electricity and running water and not needing to carry a sword on my way to work in case there are highwaymen about. I don’t go to RenFairs; I don’t belong to the SCA. 

[I DO own a real (non-replica) sword…but then, I was a fencer for a number of years and when you’re in Toledo, you owe it to yourself to pick up a piece of Spanish steel when presented with the opportunity]

I am NOT saying that I prefer fantasy to reality. What I’m saying is I greatly enjoy and appreciate a chance to dissolve into fantasy as an escape every now and then. And on a regular basis, if at all possible. And in order to do that, you have to have a certain level of “buy in” that meets your personal expectations. Mine are high. Alexis’s are off the fucking chart. I dig on that. 

All right, that’s enough for now. I’m just glad I’m getting a chance to play AD&D with some like-minded folks after so many years (you should see how these players get into character…and there are no funny voices or accents involved. Nice). Can't wait to get me some land grants and titles.

; )