Spell Works (Part 2)

[continued from here]

Abstract magic systems can be a bit overwhelming for players used to more traditional (spell list type) magic systems. Plus it can just be tricky to provide the game information to know what is and isn’t possible…what fits within the scope of the game. To off-set this, you find many abstract systems will include a certain number or specific, named spells for players to choose. Ars Magica, for example, has each mage select a certain number of specific, named formula (spells)…though the presence of these spells does not prevent a character from  using spontaneous magic or developing new formula of their own.

On the other hand not all abstract systems do this. When playing Dresden recently, my pregen character simply had “air evocations” and “water evocations” and I was left to my own creativity in determining how this magic worked. For me, this provided a lot of freedom of expression and my character was damn effective…however, the other mage player ended up “sitting on the sidelines” most of the time, only using his magic in a reactive fashion (like offsetting the antagonist mage’s magic), despite having more raw power than my own character. Abstract systems don’t work for everyone.

But throwing a giant list of spells at players and saying “choose” can be at least as over-whelming as creative freedom.  The lists in D&D and other systems contain hundreds of spells…how would a new player be expected to choose their spell “inventory.” Usually, the offset to this is to limit access so that spells are digested in chunks: a 1^st level magic-user in D&D only needs to worry about the magic-user spell list, and only needs to select from the 1^st level spells. By the time the character reaches 3^rd level (which might take weeks or months) it can be presumed that the player is fairly familiar with the level one spells and is ready to move onto to spells of the 2^nd order of magnitude.

[my guess is that limited spell access in D&D has more to do with “game balance” and that particular game’s cosmology, but it DOES provide a mechanical way to introduce players – over time – to a gradually expanding content. Anyone who’s ever tried to start a “high level campaign” from scratch will know how painful it can be for a player to create a Start-at-10^th-or-12^th-level magic-user because of the time spent choosing spells]

On the other hand, some games with specific magic systems grant “full access” but simply limit the total number of options available to the player. A sorcerer in 1^st Edition Stormbringer has the possibility of possessing every spell I the book (especially Melniboneans or the priests of Pan Tang)…however, the total number of spells is limited to summon elemental, summon demon, summon elemental ruler, summon beast lord, and summon demon lord. Yes, there are four different elementals and six different demons meaning the total number of spells is 13, but as the mechanics for summoning a fire elemental or water elemental is exactly the same (as is the summoning of an attack demon or a defense demon, etc.), it’s hardly a huge amount of information that needs to be digested by the new player’s brain.

For the “introductory” game I’m talking about, I find myself torn between the two possible types of system as each has a number of drawbacks.

Abstract System

- Requires a creativity that might be hard for a new player (aimed at kids, remember?)

- Has the tendency or propensity for making mage characters too effective, shifting focus and upstaging other characters

- Can be a bitch to design and explain/write (I’ve tried my hand at this before, more than once)

Specific System

- Can be a long process (with regard to time and page count) creating all inclusive “spell lists”

- Limits player creativity somewhat (I didn’t really want to include “spell research” rules)

- Not sure it works with the themes I originally discussed, unless I open access to the whole “spell book” (thus risking over-whelming the new player).

I will say that I find the idea of doing an Ars Magica Lite really distasteful. For one thing, Ars is already quite well done. For another thing, I’ve found Ars mostly unplayable as an adventure-oriented RPG (which is kind of the point of my game). Plus, this game ain’t going to be any kind of “historic fantasy” game…I already did that with Five Ancient Kingdoms.

But the system I was dreaming up before…a riff off B/X, natch…welp, now that I’ve been thinking and mulling it over, I can anticipate some possible problems. What I wanted to do was base spell knowledge (i.e. spells known) on a combination of INT, character level, and age…regardless of spell magnitude. However, that means providing access to the whole spell book – which might not be too bad if I limit the number of spells in the game, but I wasn’t thinking of something as small as Stormbringer. More like B/X with 60-70 spells spread between five and seven orders of magnitude.

I think…I think that what I need to do is consider a few things about the game before I actually start working on the magic system. I mean, I’ve got the basics in mind, and I should still be able to write it up…getting the geezers I want, at least in a house-ruled type B/X game. But I want to take a few moments to think about something someone brought up a little bit ago.

In fact, it might require another rambling blog post to address.

; )

The Dresden Files

Okay, first a quick 5AK update: almost all my mailings have gone out, and I should have the last three in the mail today. I have the car this week (one o the “perks” of the wife being out of the country) and I’ve been using the opportunity to make daily post runs on my lunch break.  Postage costs have been higher than I anticipated because all the packets have been an ounce heavier than my original “test” mailing…which is just weird. Did I use a different size envelope with first one? Did the addition of the adventure really add a full ounce?

Well, whatever…I’ll just eat the cost for now. The thing that REALLY bites, though, is the way the post office has changed their customs forms. They now have to manually enter all the info off the customs form into their computer for each mailing? WTF? I never had this issue with my last two books…just sending a single packet to Canada added an extra 5-10 minutes to my time at the post office yesterday. And today I’ve packets going to both the UK and France! Good thing I’ve got a Jimmy Johns just a couple blocks away.

[my lunch break is only 30 minutes]

So, yeah, people should start seeing their books arrive in the next few days. I know Gary’s Games (my local retailer) has sold a couple copies and asked for more, so the game is already in the hands of some folks.

Okay, so…Dresden Files. Had the chance to play this at Dragonflight this year and wanted to talk about the experience. Especially with regard to “role-playing” and in comparison to my recent play-test of D&D Next (i.e. 5^th Edition Dungeons & Dragons).

[oh no! Not this can o worms again!]

Yep…a little bit.

Dresden is one of those games that I don’t own, haven’t read, and (previously) had no interest in purchasing or playing. It uses the FATE game system, itself a derivation of the FUDGE (universal) game system, and I’m not a fan of FUDGE. I’m not a fan of “universal systems,” as they tend to be bland and generic (duh), drawing any flavor from the setting material or theme assumptions you try to slap on…and I prefer a system that synchs game mechanics tighter to the gameplay/style of the game. FUDGE with its subjective, descriptive phrases makes me cringe even more. What’s the difference between “good” and “great,” really?

Whatever…I’m an old fuddy-duddy curmudgeon in that regard. FATE offers a couple upgrades over FUDGE, and I enjoyed playing Spirit of the Century (which uses a version of FATE as well) the last time I was at Dragonflight. A lot of fun actually.

But then, SotC allowed me to live out some of my pulp fantasies (I absolutely love early pulp...). The Dresden Files? It’s “Harry Potter” meets detective noir. At least, that’s what it looks like, and I’m not a fan of Harry Potter. Yes, I’ve read the books and watched the films, but that’s because I’m a completest: I want to know how the story ends…even if the story’s not particularly compelling. The idea of a magical world living side-by-side with a mundane world, basically cooperative, kind of not-so-but-somewhat-secret…it’s like “World of Darkness Lite.”

More fun than it looks.

So yeah…not a big fan of the “fudgy-ness” of FATE, not a big fan of the Dresden theme (haven’t read the fiction nor watched the show), so why would I be interested in the game?

Well, turns out it’s a lot of fun actually.

And in ways I wasn’t really expecting. For one thing, the game made it very easy for me to role-play, and here I mean it in my own terms of putting myself in my imaginary character’s shoes. And this despite being an “indie” game…remember me talking about how “authorial stance” doesn’t facilitate role-playing because it takes you out of the character’s perception? You don’t remember that? Well, it was a pretty rambling set of posts.

Let me walk you through my experience: I wasn’t doing anything so I showed up at the Story Games Lounge just as they were deciding what game to play. A couple people voted for Dresden and I wasn’t about to rock the boat. Ogre (the GM) had a “canned adventure” ready for Dresden and handed out pre-gen characters…characters that had been played before and thus were a little developed based on past players.

My character sheet was a mass of gibberish…or rather, a mass of jargon with which I wasn’t familiar. I had a bunch things that looked like skills, ranked from +1 to +5. I had a bunch of magical gear, some of which was self-explanatory (healing potions), most of which weren’t (“vial of tears?”). I had a bunch of “aspects” which were descriptive one-liners…these things I remembered vaguely from 2010 (when I last played a FATE game) but I didn’t remember exactly how they worked mechanically. Some, like “good kid from a bad family” looked useful while others, like “channel my inner Admiral Ackbar,” were baffling to me (and I say this as a Star Wars fan who knows Admiral Ackbar). My character’s concept was something like Young Wizard Malcontent or something…a slacker 20-something who’s part of the local “wizard council” (or whatever) but has issues with authority (mainly due to his own apathy, probably).

Not every character at the table was a wizard: one dude was a (mundane) cop assigned to the Special Investigation (“supernatural”) unit. One was an older wizard “warden” (like the badass, magical “sheriff” of the territory). Two characters were supernatural non-wizards: a half-goblin/fae/changeling prankster and a dude who was like Wolverine without the claws (a brawny brawler with super-hard bones and regenerative abilities). The adventure was the kind of throwaway one-off you’d expect: someone got murdered, the police figure out supernatural beings are involved, SI cop drags his usual supernatural cronies into the investigation, and hilarity ensues. Or bloodshed. Or whatever. You get the gist.

What I’d like to do, though, is note the similarities between the (real life) circumstances of this game and my play-test of D&D Next. In D&D Next I also sat down with a group of (mostly) strangers and (very) casual acquaintances. I was given a rule set similar to something I’d played before, but that I still needed a little over-view of. I was given a character sheet for a semi-developed character with a bunch of (to me) gibberish…about the same length, too...including equipment, skills, and some special feats/stunts, abilities. Like the Dresden game, I was presented with a fairly obvious scenario: there’s a subterranean gnome community that needs help reclaiming their ancestral caverns that have become infested with non-friendlies. The players have a diversity of character concepts, all of which interact (mechanically) with the game environment in similar ways, if with different color.

Challenges will be presented. Players will address those challenges. “Stuff” will happen.

Now there WAS a difference in the type of character I played in the games: my DDN character was a dwarf fighter, while I purposefully decided AGAINST taking the “basic fighty-guy” in Dresden. It was offered to me (perhaps because it was my first foray into Dresden and only my second time with FATE), but I declined it in favor of the “snot-nosed kid.” I wanted to try something different.

[not that it really matters that much…I tend to play all characters the same regardless of concept]

The scenario in Dresden unfolded the way one would expect: you find clues in a scene, it leads you to a different scene. Sometimes there’s a fight at a scene. All leading towards the inevitable showdown with the “main bad guy” in a final, climactic scene. I’ve seen this kind of thing a lot over the years (typical World of Darkness type scenario). Having not read the rules, I don’t know if this is the typical Dresden scenario (the protagonist, Mr. Dresden, is a detective, right?).

All in all, pretty standard…which is what I would say of the D&D Next scenario, too. Not much surprising, fairly linear in the lay-out from “start” to “objective.” The players in both cases were a mixed bag, both regard to skill level (with the rules) and level of engagement (with play itself). In both case the DM was perfectly competent to run and referee, neither limiting the players through their decisions, nor providing exceptional surprises or “twists” in the action of the game.

I should also point out that both systems (DDN and Dresden) provide little kewl things (feats, stunts, powers…whatever you want to call it) that allow your character to operate outside the standard rules of the game, generally as an expendable resource. Okay? Same stuff with different jargon.

Having said all THAT, I will say that the Dresden Files most definitely facilitated the act of role-playing and D&D Next most certainly did not.

The difference was not the GMs running the game. The difference was not the players participating or the quality of their interaction with each other. The difference was not an exciting “adventure” that required a bunch of brain power or socializing with NPCs. The difference wasn’t minimalist rules or character sheets. The difference wasn’t a “lack of dice rolling” (I rolled more dice in Dresden than I did in the game of D&D Next). The difference was a lack of combat or danger: I actually missed a good section of the adventure (as I explained before) but came back in time for the whole climactic showdown with big, mean sorcerer and bunches of gun-wielding goons.

The difference was the SYSTEM…the mechanics of the game. One game (Dresden) forced me, again and again, to consider who I was as the imaginary character. It put me firmly in the shoes of my character…making me consider my game play from my character’s perspective. Here’s how:

When your character tries to do, well, pretty much anything at all interesting, you roll four “FATE dice” to see how effective you are. A FATE die is a six-sided die with two sides marked “+,” two sides marked “-,” and two blank sides; these stand for +1, -1, and 0 respectively. The result of your roll is added to your skill (+1 through +5) to arrive at a number that tells you how good your attempted action turns out. Especially with regard to combat and damage, these results are fairly objective…many times you have to overcome a specific target number (like the skill level of an opponent) in order to succeed.

I don’t own FATE dice, so I was rolling a set provided to me by the GM. My dice rolled shitty the entire session, mostly rolling negative and never rolling higher than +1 (that I remember). To compensate for this, you are allowed to tap “aspects” (those one-line descriptions) if you can apply it to the action; each aspect can be tapped once per action and gives you a +2 bonus to the result of your roll. You are also required to spend a FATE chip (like a poker chip) for each aspect tapped. Whether because my character was a wizard or young or both, I started with fewer chips than the other PCs (I believe I started with three), but I was awarded one every time I did something clever or interesting or made a cool choice of action based on my character’s descriptive aspects.

The thing is, I was forced to take actions (or motivate my character) based on my descriptive aspects because of my shitty dice rolls. Even when I didn’t roll terrible, I was still spending chips and tapping aspects because I wanted to get bigger successes. I was milking the system, constantly emptying my chip total as fast as they were awarded, and fully engaged in the mindset/personality of my character, because that was the only way for me to achieve effectiveness in the game. It didn’t matter, that my character wasn’t the strongest-toughest, or the biggest badass wizard, or the goblin-girl who’s stealth rolls ended up with “legendary” results every time because of various stacking feats and stunts and circumstance bonus. I, as a player, was fully in the mindset of my character AND still affecting the outcome of the adventure scenario simply by using the built-in mechanics of the game. I was the character that ruined the Big Demon-Summoning Ritual, and put a bullet in the Head Witch, and then later found said-witch (after she made a magic “quick escape”) with a ritual designed to follow the bullet I’d left in her. Pretty good considering my character seemed to have been designed to control wind and water and heal folks.

[as I’ve said before, I don’t really do “cleric.” In the end, as usual, I ended up leading the charge into battle and mucking everything up for the bad guy in my typical show-boat fashion. The GM later told us he’d run this scenario several times in the past and this was the first time anyone had ever actually stopped the demon from being summoned…most times the Wolverine guy would charge the summoning circle and get possessed and then turn on his buddies. I used my “wind evocation” to fly ahead of everyone and then used “water control” to wreck the summoning circle. The gun-play only came about because there’s a prohibition on wizards using magic to kill people, but in the end it worked out for the best when I had the idea to track the bullet]

I never did “channel my inner Admiral Ackbar,” though.

The aspects I did use included things describing the character’s personality, ethics, likes and dislikes. Things like “my friends are my family,” “mortal lives are in danger,” and “Erik’s not a bad guy…when people are trying to kill us.” The last referred to the character’s prickly relationship with the wizard warden – the stereotype “old guard vs. young buck” kind of dynamic. The other PCs used their aspects to do cool things as well: in one memorable instance, the cop used his cop authority to make all the mook cultists throw down their weapons, instead of doing the otherwise inevitable (and drawn-out) gun battle with a bunch of AK-47-armed, meth-head Satanists.

[just to contrast, back in my Vampire the Masquerade days, this is exactly the kind of thing that would take up hours of game play without being exceptionally interesting to the game]

SO…fun time had by all and quite a bit of (what I would consider) actual role-playing. Based on the mechanics of the game and the way the game-play unfolded. Now, am I anxious to get down to the shop and pick up a copy of Dresden Files? Or some other FATE-based game? No, not really.

Why not? Because, fun as it was to play I’m not terribly interested in running the game. I had a blast playing a character in the game (even someone else’s pre-gen character) but I would not want to act as a GM for the game…and if I purchased Dresden with the idea of introducing it to the players at my table, chances are I’d be running it. And the GM part of Dresden just doesn’t look all that fun to me. To me, it looks like the GM’s game (with Dresden) is very much dependent on what your players are bringing to it.  In D&D (and similar games), this isn’t the case: if the PCs don’t bring their “A” game, it just means they get killed…and killing players is plenty fun. I get the impression that character death isn’t really a feature of game play in FATE (judging by how difficult it is to even damage a non-mook NPC)…so unless your players are ready to dive in to the role-playing and start burning those chips, your game’s just going to be dull, dull, dull. I’m also not sure if or how the “character development” works in FATE; as a one-off session, the game worked great, but how do characters change over time in an extended campaign/saga?

ANYway…I was impressed with the gameplay and wouldn’t mind playing again (as a player, mind you). After dipping my toe into FATE on two occasions, I find myself a bit intrigued with its particular mechanics, wondering how it might be used in other settings/themes, perhaps in a streamlined form. Maybe I’ll check out a couple of these other FATE games (like Bulldogs! or John Wick’s Houses of the Blooded). I just wish the books had fewer pages.

DF 34: Just the Facts, Man

Mmm-mmm-mm. A lot to talk about, and not sure where or how to begin.

Fortunately, I was already able to “decompress” a bit with Tim (with whom I rode to and from the convention yesterday). Otherwise, this might just be a spewing of random, unconnected thoughts into the cyber-verse. Let’s see, where to start that will express my thoughts and capture my feelings?

Hmmmm…

Dragonflight ran from Friday afternoon till Sunday afternoon. Due to my regular obligations (work, family) I was only able to participate Saturday and Sunday. I signed up to run games in every available four-hour time slot during those two days…a total of five. Unfortunately (or not) I only ended up running in a couple of slots. I’ll give folks the briefest of briefs regarding WHAT happened, then I’ll dig a bit more into my impressions and analysis of events as well as “what I learned.”

Saturday I rode in early enough to set-up for 9am time slot in which I planned on running 5AK. This was to be a demo and I had a bunch of books in a suitcase for sale. As per the last Dragonflight I attended (2010?) the show was at the Bellevue Hilton and the (non-Pathfinder, non-indie) role-players were put down one particular corridor, waaaay off from the rest of the convention (war gamers, board gamers, dealers, etc.). This hallway has a couple conference rooms (with tables) attached to it, but also tables in the hallway itself…my table (where all my events were scheduled) was one of the ones IN the hallway, the second table from the very end of the hall, in fact. Geographically speaking, I was one table away from being the farthest away from the action of anyone there.

By 9am I was set-up. After a while of no one showing up at my table (no one had registered on the sign-up sheet either) I pulled my laptop and started making notes for Sunday’s game (specifically some pre-gens for 5AK , which I would be running a second time in the 9am time slot). I did not go out hawking players or stragglers to the table. I did not sign up for anything else myself. It is possible that someone was off-put by my laptop use. Whatever the reason, no one showed up for the game.

Around sometime between 10 and 11 I went upstairs for a coffee and breakfast sandwich from the Tully’s in the Hilton lobby. I then reviewed the other RPGs going on and decided to instead hit the “Story Game Lounge” where Ogre was again facilitating the a slew of various indie-RPGs for the malcontents that don’t want to play GURPS or Dungeons & Dragons. We played eXXXtreme Street Luge where your character has ability scores based on his comparison to Vin Diesel. That was fun, if pretty light-weight.

In the 2pm time-slot (might next one) I was scheduled to demo Cry Dark Future, and I had three people show up for the short adventure I’d written up. Unfortunately, my print-out of CDF is in an extreme state of disrepair at the moment, being a jumble of loose pages, notes, and edits as I work through the publishing lay-out I want (this was something I hadn’t even considered when I was putting together my “prep” for the convention…I was just like, “oh good; I have a copy of CDF in this binder, already printed,” but didn’t bother putting it into a reasonable shape for playing). Despite the lack of organization on my part, the game went off with very little hitch and the players appeared to enjoy themselves. One of the players wanted to know if CDF was available yet for purchase which of course made me realize the stupidity of demoing a game that’s not ready for sale.

[later that day, I would receive unsolicited feedback from another one of the players purporting to be game designer with 15 years of experience. In a nutshell, he would ask why I was bothering with such a project. More on THAT conversation in a later post]

My 7pm time slot was slated for the B/X adventure I had just written and play-tested Thursday. As with my 9am time-slot, no one showed up. There seems to have been some confusion because folks had been looking for a B/X game and instead ended up at the single table running Labyrinth Lord (and there were double digits worth of people at that game)…perhaps because that table was in one of the well-lit conference rooms while I was still down the at the end of the hallway (though now with dimmer lighting since the sun had gone down).

This actually turned out to be a mixed blessing because our babysitters flaked out and my wife was able to pick me up early, rather than dragging the toddler out to Bellevue after 11.

Sunday I was back at the convention early again, and hit up Tully’s first. Even though folks did not come to my B/X game the night before, I had had the chance to talk to several people…about both B/X and 5AK…and drum up a little interest. This time I did NOT pull out the laptop and (instead) had a nice display of books and such to entice folks. However, the 9am spot was pretty darn slim (for ALL tables in the role-playing hallway) and in the end only one individual took the plunge, enjoying the game enough that he was interested in buying it, save that he didn’t have enough cash on hand (and I didn’t have a phone app to run a card). I did get his email info, so that’s probably at least one sale.

Having only one player to run for (and having used pre-gens to boot), the adventure didn’t take all that long, so I was left with time on my hands to play. Again, I checked out the other games being run (including Shadowrun 4E, and more GURPS) and decided instead to head to the Story Games Lounge, where I got involved in a pretty beefy game of The Dresden Files.

[I have no experience with Dresden…neither the fiction or the TV show nor the game, but I have played Spirit of the Century before, which uses a similar version of the “Fate” system].

The game was going well and around 1pm I decided to cancel my last game of Sunday. That was my Star Wars supplement for Bezio’s X-Plorers, which I had planned on demoing at the con. There were several reasons why I decided to cancel. Firstly, after my CDF experience I realized it was pretty frigging silly to demo a game that was neither published (by anyone!), nor in any state ready to sell/give away. Second, I had done the least amount of prep-work of any of the games I’d scheduled to run (no pre-gens, for example). Third, I’ve only even PLAY-TESTED the rules once and the results had been, well, mediocre. Finally, I’d seen a ton of Star Wars games (RPGs) at the con already…using GURPS, D20, and other designers’ original systems…and had seen the lack of response most received, so I figured this would end up being another event with an empty table.

So I excused myself from Dresden to go write “cancelled” on the sign-in sheet. This would be the first thing written on ANY of my sign-in sheets (since even the players who had showed up to the other two games hadn’t bothered to register before sitting down). Or, rather it would have been the first thing…except that four people had already signed up for the game!

So I had four players (none of whom were anyone I knew) out of a six seat table, no pre-gens, nor print-outs, and only about 45 minutes before the time slot started. So I sat down at a quiet table with my lap-top and copy of X-Plorers with the determination to “make it work.” Or at least the intention.

That’s when I found my computer was dead.

Which I still don’t understand: I had charged it all night and it had held its charge fine the day before (from its Friday night charging). Hell, I’d just used it that morning (at around 5am) to print up the 5AK pre-gens I’d written (at the con!) the day before.

Frankly, I figured my 2008 laptop had simply “given up the ghost,” but when I brought it to an IT guy he did indeed confirm the battery was dead…and later Sunday night when I had it plugged directly into a power cord it turned on (that was the reason for my “test post” yester-eve).

However, at the moment I didn’t have a power cord. I had brought one the day before, but had used my computer so infrequently (there was no wireless access for convention goers) that it hadn’t been necessary…plus I had charged it the whole night. I had decided not to bother packing my cord…and since I use an older Mac (and all the folks with laptops at the con appeared to be using PCs), I was SOL.

And so were my players. There was NOTHING printed of the game…it is, entirely, stored electronically and was thus locked into a device to which I had no access. And so I was forced to cancel my game anyway, except NOW I was left with the embarrassment of apologizing to the players for being a complete dumb-ass.

Which I did. The four guys all showed up…punctually at 2pm. Young guys (certainly younger than me…I’d put them in the 20-25 year range) of exactly the type I’d like to expose to some “old school” style gaming. And me with nada to show ‘em. In hindsight I probably should have broken out another game to see if they wanted to try it…but I was so disgusted with myself and embarrassed by the incident that I just wanted to bring the whole thing to a close. I think they ended up playing 4E Shadowrun.

So, having (unsatisfactorily) resolved that, I went back to the Story Games lounge, where Dresden was still going on (I’d been absent for an hour or more) and helped resolve the story and its climax. That was fun. After Dresden, I helped Tim pack up his stuff and then hitched a ride back to Greenwood where the rest of my day was fairly mundane…though I was completely exhausted from the experience.

Let’s see…I want to read back over what I’ve written so far…

[okay, yes…a lot of pathetic parts to the story, but at least it’s honest]

So THAT is what actually happened at the con…I’ve left out a few things (like my wife and child taking me “off-campus” to lunch at Chipotle which turned into an absolute cluster) or anything non-convention related (like our current nightmare houseguests that decided to “invite themselves” into our lives this week). And, oh yeah: I completely forgot to mention my awesome score at Sunday’s auction (said score taking place between my one-player run of 5AK and my adventures into the world of The Dresden Files)…but that’s one that really deserves its own post, too.

But otherwise, that’s all the (basic) stuff that happened to/for me at this year’s Dragonflight. Over the next couple days, I’ll try to post up my thoughts and feelings on the whole deali-o, as well as my encounters with a number of game designers of various stripes and what I learned from them and about them and about the business of marketing one’s game in this kind of venue/setting.

Later, gators!