All About the Benjamins (Part 1)

Damn, it's hot again.

Sitting in the bar, in a t-shirt and my phone reads its about 77 degrees and it feels quite a bit hotter. No, Seattle is not Montana but it's still sweat-worthy (town hasn't had rain in more than a month...ugh). I'm sure it will cool down by the Seahawks first home game (a week from Sunday) and I should probably be enjoying it now...but I get thirsty when it's hot and strong drink makes my head swimmy and my spelling messy. Well, messier than normal anyway.

[okay...short interlude while I grab another drinky...hold on...]

All right...all good.

So, quick update before I begin. No apologies this time: my family (wife and child) got back in town Sunday before last after being gone a week-and-a-half and I've spent the time since mainly enjoying the pleasure of their company. Took a long weekend over Labor Day and travelled to Montana to visit the relatives and unwind a bit and did...um...pretty much ZERO writing when I was out there (though the wife and I did manage to power through most of Downton Abbey, season 2, on DVD. Best show I've seen from TV land since, perhaps, Firefly for sheer damn quality: acting, writing, emotion, art direction...good stuff and top notch). Now, well...the wife leaves for Paraguay again on Saturday and I am preparing to once again be a single parent for a week. What with the NFL season breaking into full force on Sunday, you can expect little blogging out of me in the foreseeable future.

Well, maybe. Thing is, it's just been a bitch getting on the internet weekdays the last couple weeks because of my job location. The only place I can hit up to post is a school campus library (don't ask) and it's been mostly closed during the last couple weeks for the school break. Since nights aren't free...well...

All right, like I said I just wanted to do a QUICK update. Now, prior to my family coming home folks might remember me doing a scratch poll asking what folks would like me to work on, writing-wise, while my fam was out of town. The Top 5 requests were fairly surprising to me:

#1 D&D Mine (?!)

#2 Land of Ice

#3 CDF

#4 B/X Space Opera

#5 Clockwork (?!)

[oh, and just by the way...it appears there is a current crowd-funding project going on to raise money for a new Clockworks RPG (note the "s") using the Savage Worlds system for a web-comic by the same name. Personally, the numerology isn't good enough to fight someone over the name, so I will probably rename my cyborg-Boot Hill mash-up. However, I will note that MY Clockwork micro-game was first published (on this blog) 9-8-2009. On the other hand, the webcomic is older (having begun June 2009) though the settings bear little resemblance to each other...whatever]

Well, anyway, I'm sure folks are anxious to know what I spent my 10 free days working on. Right? Sure you are.

None of the above. I wrote a new game.

Even had a chance to playtest it a couple weeks ago. Basically I took a lot of the ideas I've been working with in D&D Mine, wrapped it around a turn-o-the-century (1900, not 2000) setting and added all the old school Lost World tropes found in Verne and Haggard and Doyle, etc. Dinosaurs, people. I don't know why but these days I have an unhealthy obsession with hunting dinosaurs with elephant guns.

The great thing is, using a B/X starting point allowed me to simply adapt X1: The Isle of Dread as a near-perfect introductory adventure.

I say "near perfect" because I grow more and more tired with "generic adventure modules." Not because they aren't useful or well-done but because the systems I've been writing lately all make the player characters (slimly out-lined though they are) more richly detailed...in such a way that they call for tailored adventures specially made for their own particular foibles and extravagances.

For example, our Lost World characters (in the play-test) consisted of a debonair (if debauched and corrupt) Portuguese criminal, a disgraced and exiled Moscovian scientist-professor, and an American ex-pat, Davy Crockett-type living in Panama (these all created by the players...I don't like to play-test with pre-gens as part of the testing involves testing the chargen rules). While it was fairly easy to shoehorn the three together after a little discussion/consensus-building by the time they got to the "mysterious south Pacific island" I was wishing I'd set the whole adventure in the Amazon, preferably with ties to each character's background. It just would have made so much more sense.

As it was, it was still fun and many of the rules worked (though I acknowledge the info I provided to the players was pretty damn scant: "roll this." "roll that." "take damage." etc.). However, there were definitely things that didn't work, especially with regard to motivation and the push-pull dichotomy I intended to set-up with PCs between ethics (Victorian or otherwise) and temptations to be bad. And while players (and designers) of indie-games will say "duh, you need to sculpt a game with those things in mind, not based on a wargame chassis, doofus," I know what I'm aiming for and one-off, premise addressing narrative game design is NOT it.

And after some contemplation, I realized a very fundamental concept of fantasy adventure games which is what I'm more and more becoming interested in and that is...

Wait. Wait. "Fantasy adventure games?"

Yeah. I'm getting tired of "story games" and "role-playing games" (the term...really) and I'm not very good at "war games" due to my somewhat over-competitive nature (my buddy Mike used to tell me 'it's not that you're a sore loser, you're just such a bad winner'). And, of course, the whole boxed-board game-thang of 4th edition really isn't my cup-o-tea.

I want fantasy adventure. No, I'm not being dumb. Try to catch my drift from this point o view: it's not about being an interesting character. It's not. It's about doing interesting things. You can use your imagination to daydream about about being...well, pick your well-cut action hero celebrity of choice. But I can do that withOUT a game. What I can't do is have an imaginary adventure...where the plot is unknown and the ending is unknown and my reaction to events is unknown until they're presented. I want to have a fantastic, imaginary adventure...something outside the normal adventure of average life.

Not that there ISN'T adventure...perils and intrigue and romance and whatnot...in daily life. There is (it really is a matter of perspective)...but still, you can't fly through space or fight trolls or wear a six-shooter on your hip in daily life (at least, you probably shouldn't). The fantastic experience, coupled with the (melodramatic perhaps) adventure is what I'm looking for.

And shit...I got distracted by DNC highlights and now my computer's almost out of juice and I haven't even gotten to the tagline. (*sigh*)

To be continued...

Halloween's A-Coming...

And I've got nothing to wear.

Also, I don't have any specific Halloween gaming tales to spin (this is a gaming blog after all). Heck, I just picked up a new board game and it doesn't even look like I'll get to play that unless I'm lucky.

Makes me a wee bit jealous (though that ain't unusual) of the stuff I'm reading around the blogs. I've just never been THAT into horror games (haven't even picked up Death Frost Doom yet!). Even though I own Call of Cthulhu and Trail of Cthulhu, but I'd much rather read an H.P. Lovecraft story than try to make one up. That's just me.

White Wolf games are NOT my idea of horror, by the way (once you humanize the monsters, they lose their scare factor, even the Antediluvians...and Mummy, sheesh! WW made these guys the Dalai Lama of the World of Darkness!). World of Darkness my ass. This is a series that, in my estimation, has lost more and more with every revision.

Tell you true, here's MY idea of a horror RPG (it's even orange for Halloween):

Deadlands is one of my favorite "new school" games I own. Western? Check. Cannibal zombies? Check. And really, that's all I give a shit about, though I love games that empower American Indians as well (we'll have to talk about Shadow Run sometime...).

Plus, any time you're feeding meat to a horse is downright creepy.

But the system. Ugh! Deadlands is yet another game that I purchased, sold, and re-purchased simply because I love the entire concept of the Weird West. But for all the coolness the game is practically un-playable.

Why? Well, it's got a steep learning curve for a system (trying to explain the concept to folks who don't own the game takes long enough...trying to explain the system as well...?). Not the kind of RPG you can just introduce one evening as a "change of pace."

Then there's the extensive chargen. Fortunately there are archetype character templates to choose from, but for anyone who likes making their own character from scratch, it can take awhile. And long chargen systems, as I believe I've posted before, contributes to an expectation of "no character death." No character death? In a zombie western?!

Of course killing anyone in the game is made hard enough due to the over-complex combat system. When you have to track wounds and "wind" (fatigue) and bleeding and actions in a round and hit location and combat maneuvers (auto-fire? Fanning?)...well, heck I guess Boot Hill has spoiled me for life because I expect gunfights to be fast and furious, not slow and tedious.

In the end, Deadlands is a game that remains firmly on my shelf (I won't make the mistake of selling it back again!) as well as my favorite supplements (The Quick and the Dead and the Book of the Dead). But I probably won't get around to playing the game until I've had a chance to work it over and tweak it simple. Maybe I'll make it a micro-supplement for my microgame Clockwork....

Happy Halloween, folks!

Clockwork FAQ

Hmmm…weird to write an Frequently Asked Questions document for a one-page game, but here are a few answers to a few questions that have come up:

RE Bravery (Brv): Do NOT round when calculating Draw or TAC. For example, a Draw of 5 + 3.5 + 2 = 10.5; 10.5 is higher (faster) than 10 but lower (slower) than 11. A TAC of 10 + 3.5 + 2 = 15.5; characters must roll equal or below 15.5 to hit (in other words, roll 15 or less; a 16 is over 15.5 and thus misses).

RE Draw: If Draw is equal, individuals shoot simultaneously. Yes, this can result in Tarentino-esque shoot-outs.

RE Pistols shooting twice: Each shot requires its own TAC roll. Both shots occur at the same time (so the person with Draw 10 shoots twice AFTER everyone with Draw 10.5+ and BEFORE everyone with 9.5-).

[On a related note: if your two-fisted gunman wants to empty both smokewagons at once, all shots go off at the same time...don't forget those TAC penalties!]

RE Clockwork prices: Man, make something up! Generally, never more than a couple hundred dollars (should cost less than a good horse). For pricing in general, I use the costs listed in TSR’s Boot Hill game for both goods and services. Doctor’s fees aren’t THAT expensive (compared to hospital care in the 21st century), and neither should be man-sized clockwork parts (compared to good-excellent horseflesh). Repairs of existing prosthetics should be cheaper than installing new parts (which also require surgery). I assume I’ll be including full price lists in the full-length game (when I get around to writing it).

RE Normal folks: Abilities vary by background. Average townsfolk should have total attributes of 24 or so (Spd 4, Acc 4, Brv 6, Str 10) with only the elderly and young children having less than 7 in Strength (Str). Women of the Old West were just as hardy as the men-folk, as far as I’m concerned.


For those wondering where the hell I got the idea for Clockwork…well, basically I wanted Boot Hill (which I consider to be a mighty fine RPG) to be a bit less deadly, withOUT scrapping the excellent combat system. The only way I could think to do this was to force occasional re-rolls (or “safe” hits) of certain body locations. Since folks in the Wild West didn’t wear Kevlar, I had to think of a way to make limbs resistant without armor. Cybernetic prosthetics sprang to mind, and coupled with the images of the steam-punk anime Steam Boy…well, you end up with Clockwork.

As far as adventures go…heck, pretty much any of the old BH modules can be adapted to Clockwork (just add gears!). I suppose I could write up some quick conversions notes between the original game and the micro-CW, but that’ll have to wait till a later post. Interesting design note: my current “full length” version of Clockwork is much closer to Boot Hill, but due to space limitations of the micro-format I was forced to simplify both character creation and combat immensely…and I think it actually makes the game better (i.e. smoother and faster). I’m beginning to think that the final version of Clockwork will be much closer to the one-page version, rules-wise, than to BH…but we’ll see.

AFTER the B/X Companion of course…
; )

Clockwork Changes

Changed the link to Clockwork (even though it was downloaded 40+ times, I was having problems with it on the Mac...I am so retarded when it comes to this computer hocus-pocus).

The link to A Chronicle of Mutation remains the same. 

Ugh...tomorrow I'll answer some questions. I'm going to bed now (letting the wine do its work). Hasta manana, folks!

; )

A Chronicle of Mutation

In a decidedly inspired fit of creativity, I created my second one-page micro-game today (my first being the “Weird Western” micro- Clockwork, for those who missed it).

The new one is called A Chronicle of Mutation and is available for download here.

Heavily based on the setting of the old Heartbreaker game The Mutant Chronicles (duh!), the rules are a fairly radical departure from the original. It’s also greatly reduced in scope, something that I see as a decided plus (if I do say so myself). The earlier RPG suffered a bit from the over-whelming options: if one person wanted to play an Imperial Blood Beret, one person an inquisitorial assassin, and a 3rd a Mishima corporate samurai in giant robo battle gear, and the last one as a freelancer journalist…well crap, how are you supposed to GM THAT type of freakshow? My micro-version tunes it down to the simple freelancer level, though with a twist: you’re nominally associated with the Holy Inquisition (my version of the Cathedral) and thus have a definite type of objective (sniffing out heretics) for missions/adventures.

All-in-all, I’m quite pleased. As with Clockwork, any comments, suggestions, and feedback are truly appreciated.

Back in Civilization (Almost)

Welp, me and the fam are almost back to Seattle (been up on Flathead Lake in Montana the last few days) and I finally have a place to connect to the internet: the Oxford Suites in Spokane, Washington. Spokane (or "Spokavegas" as my friends from WSU always called it) has grown up a lot in the last 20 years...for a change, my wife and I have decided to linger a bit in the town rather than drive straight through, and it's quite nice. Riverfront Park has many of the same sights I recall from my youth (the Carousel, the mechanical goat) but also has new stuff (a friggin' gondola?!).  I am forced to admit it's quite beautiful...though I think I'm still too much of a "city slicker" to live in Eastern Washington.

Anyway, it's been very relaxing...I've let my cell phone run out of juice (not that I'm a big cell user...I only picked up my first one in January...talk about geezers!), and I didn't turn on a television my whole time in Montana.  I didn't crack a book, either...instead simply enjoying the outdoors, the company of my family and relatives, and lots of card playing.

My family are game players from waaay back, though mainly it's cards. Not poker (they do some of that but mostly they're not gamblers) but rather pinochle, cribbage, bridge, and rummy. Montana winters tend to mean lots of snow, and all my relatives are skilled card players...most of my card knowledge was taught to me by my grandmother.  Like Old School RPGs, cards have a simplicity and portability that allow for hours of entertainment with very little space requirements. Personally, I love playing cards...which is probably one of the reasons I have so much fun in Montana despite my general aversion to hunting and fishing.

Anyway, despite taking my computer and references with me, I did very little writing.  Well, I DID write up my own one-page micro-game a la Searchers of the Unknown, Mutant Scavengers of the Ruined Earth, and Scavengers & Spacewrecks. My little game is called  Clockwork...it's a one-page version of an RPG I've been working on for awhile. Those familiar with Boot Hill will recognize some of the obvious similarities in the game system...it's not really compatible with the other micro-games, because of this. But hanging out in Montana always gets me fired up about the Old West, so Clockwork is what I wrote up.

Actually, I found the one-page model to be pretty fun to work with...I have a couple of other half-written RPGs that might be good in this format.  As well as one more knock-off of an existing RPG....

Oh, any comments on Clockwork are appreciated. I'll probably get back to the full length version once I've completed my B/X Companion (one thing at a time).