14 Years

Yeah, it's blog-versary day again. I started the blog 14 years ago. Recently, my posting has been erratic. Life is just too busy, and sometimes I feel like I've pretty much discussed all I need to discuss. But I want to keep plugging my games, and talking about my process for developing them. And I enjoy talking about my campaigns. And every once in a while, I think of something that might actually be useful to my readers. 

So I'm going to keep at it. But no promises about consistent posting. 

Yesterday, my TS&R Jade campaign had a session. It went well. The party realized they could follow up a rumor and also get close to an area of the map where one PC could try to achieve a personal goal, so they did both. They followed up the rumor and got some information about how to deal with a problem, and the player got part of what they wanted for their personal vanity project. So I think the players were happy. And with the "quest" lined up for next session, I think there will be some anticipation for it. But we've got to wait maybe 3 weeks for the next session. 

My PbP Gamma World game also started over the weekend. One or two players are much more frequent posters than others, and the slow posters took a while to get their characters created. But now we're off and running...well, it's PbP so not really running. But we're off. 

And my boys and I are enjoying Star Wars: Ahsoka, so that will likely get me to work on the Star Wars campaign soon. But real life is not giving me much time for that.

Well, this is interesting

 Prince of Nothing apparently wrote a scathing post trying to destroy the Art-Punk movement, which has been deleted and I missed it. In its place, he sets out 10 (plus a few more) axioms that define non-Art-Punk OSR to him. It's worth taking a look at them and seeing how they can be deconstructed, criticized, modified, or accepted. 

0. The resurgence and longevity of the oldschool playstyle is no mere happenstance but an indication that there is something fundamental to its merits which modern TTRPGs largely fail to capture.
1. The greatest DnD is neither a slavish imitation of the past nor a wholesale rejection thereof (conscious or unconscious), but a continuation of that old craft, with syncretic improvements from other areas.
2. DnD is at its core about the emulation of fantastical adventures and expeditions in the spirit of the Appendix N. Deviation from that spirit is possible but if one strays too far something essential is lost.
3. DnD is, at its core, an Activity. This does not preclude a host of other things (e.g. subject of theoretical discussion, vehicle for creative endaevour, personal hellscape, lucrative side-hustle) but as in all things, Actually Playing the game is its purest expression.
4. Playing good (that is to say, entertaining, challenging, rewarding, fascinating) DnD and making good adventures is primarily a craft, which relies on knowledge and experience, and secondarily a factor of innate ability.
5. DnD is primarily a game to challenge the players. However, great DnD is also about exploration, and so incorporates elements of wonder, horror or whimsy against a versimilitudinous (?) backdrop. It is rooted in the real but contains the fantastic.
6. A good adventure is neither about pure system mastery nor abstract challenge resolution, but incorporates a variety of challenges (lateral, tactical, logistical, social, strategic) which tend to allow a variety of approaches. The answer is not always on your character sheet.
7. DnD play-skill grows as characters gain in levels and good adventure takes that growth into consideration. A level 20 wizard played by a new player is not the same as one that has incorporated every spell and magic item into his routine and knows how to use them.
8. DnD is at its finest when it is open-ended and allows for player decision-making; Maps, Sandboxes, Strategic options, side-quests, factions to ally with etc. etc.
9. DnD is more about mastering your environment then character building. You take what is given and put it to use. This does not preclude logistical challenges.
10. Standard practice is standard for a reason. It is possible to break with procedure, but consider the change in terms of trade-offs, not as the fruits of your brilliant auteur imparting his wisdom on DnD.
11. Art, Layout and Aesthethic Shall Be in Service to the craft of adventure writing, not an end unto itself.
12. DnD is a pasttime and place of solace from the evils of the world. Woe unto him who brings politics unto the gaming table, or by gaming seeks to further his political end.

If I were to try to boil these down to their essences (as I interpret them, of course, YMMV), I'd restate them thusly: 

0. Older D&D has merit as a game.

1. Some parts of D&D can (and sometimes should) be changed, but a core essence of "D&D" must remain.

2.  D&D works best for pulpy style adventure. It can do other genres but it is at its best pulpy.

3. Talk all you want about the game, but it's only relevant when we PLAY.

4. Good play requires players and DMs to develop skill over time.

5. Without challenge, there is no game.

6. A well-run game has a variety of challenges, some within the game system, others independent of it.

7. The game's challenges needs to to evolve with increasing player skill.

8. Without freedom of choice and consequences for those choices, there is no game.

9. Your character is a tool for interaction with the game world.

10. With great power to change the game comes great responsibility to keep to Axiom #1.

11. Providing good content is more important than surface presentation of that content.

12. Keep your politics out of my game.

Hmm, lots to think about. I definitely agree with some of these points, disagree with others, and have caveats about some as well. Looks like good fodder for a series of posts!

Director's Cut

Last night, obviously, I was not in the best of moods. I'm in a much better mood today. Friday night, the kids and wife are in bed, I made some progress on my work this afternoon. Feeling relaxed.

Thanks to JB for his comment, though, it did help put things in perspective. I like what Alexis has been posting about his Other D&D. I like it a lot. But as JB said, to reach that level of detail and setting knowledge to allow the sort of off the cuff gaming that Alexis is encouraging takes quite a bit of effort and keeping things always running in the background of your mind. And for me, right now, this year at least, that's the problem. These days, the back of my mind is taken up with work and family stuff. We've got a lot to juggle right now. So gaming has to take a hit. And that's fine. When things slow down, I can pick up the gaming steam again. 

And also, JB's comment made me think about the fact that even the cheapest, cheesiest Roger Corman flick must have had a script bible of some sort to help keep characters, settings, and situations sorted out. Every movie and especially TV shows need these. They provide all the background details that allow for meaningful drama to happen. If an actor or director is unsure what the character's motivation in a scene is or should be, they can turn to this and should be able to work out an answer. 

Basically, Alexis's method of Other D&D is telling us to make a script bible for our game world. And then to know it. Or at least the parts that are immediately relevant right now. We don't need to know the name of every villager. But if we know the village, and we know the types of people (culture, socio-economic status, professions) we can invent realistic villagers on the spot when needed. Alexis is telling us to prepare just enough info, and KNOW that info, so we can not only invent NPCs or monster encounters or whatever as needed, we can run them in a way that is both verisimilitudinous with our real world expectations and also in a way that suits the game world and challenges the PCs. 

Yes, it's a lot of work. But as JB pointed out, it can start small. Alexis has been running his game world for 40 years. I've been running my West Marches for only 3 1/2. No need to feel overwhelmed by the scope of Alexis's world building compared to my own. Just keep working at it so I know my setting (I do), and the types of peoples that inhabit it (again, I do), and the sorts of places that could be visited (I do). I know all this stuff. And I run the game as best I can in a way that requires the players to be active participants in the world, rather than reactive ones. In time, I'll get better at it. As I mentioned last post, some things Alexis is encouraging are things I used to do, but stopped doing because like many I was fooled by the people telling us we could get by with just the facade. The cardboard Western town in Blazing Saddles that the bad guys rampage through. 

My campaign is more than that now. Not quite as real as the real world yet. And I may never develop it as highly as Alexis has developed his game. But that's OK. I'll make it as well as I can for now, and just keep plugging away at it. 

It doesn't matter whether it's a Scorsese, Peckinpaw, Brooks, Tarantino, Spielberg, Corman, Lee, the other Lee, Kubrick, Wachowski, Miller, or any other director's movie. Serious or silly, profound or profane, convoluted or laid bare. They all involve script bibles to try and keep things sorted, and in their own ways they're trying to make something real and meaningful.

Malaise and Movie Directors

Not much posting here the past month or so. I've been busy. My father-in-law lost his 6+ year battle with lung cancer two weeks ago (the doctors had given him 6 months when diagnosed almost 7 years ago, so it's not like it was unexpected). My older son has three separate health issues (orthodontic work being the most expensive, but the others pretty time consuming with hospital stays and doctor visits...thank God for Korean universal national health insurance, and low cost no-fuss supplemental private insurance for what the national system doesn't cover!). I have two academic papers under review at the moment, both submitted mid-October -- so revisions from peer review coming up later in the month most likely. And planning/researching background info for the next paper. Oh, and teaching classes and doing a weekly radio show and general husband/father duties.

Despite all that, I've been tinkering away at both East Marches and my Star Wars d6 game when I've got some time. The newest SW adventure, based on feedback from the end of the previous session, is more or less ready to go. I could run it as it is now, but adding some detailed stats for a few NPCs that could be encountered will save me from having to wing it in the game. But I could easily wing it. Smuggler? Sure, he's got...5D in Space Transports. But having some of that stuff already on paper before the game will make me more consistent. This weekend, though, most likely I won't have time to run it. Or rather, I have some time Sunday afternoon, but my older son will be at his Python coding class all afternoon so he'd miss the game, and he's into his Mando character just like my younger son is into his Jedi character (who did a lot of shopping between sessions, including a new C1 series astromech droid companion/sidekick -- yes, we've been watching Rebels). 

I skipped the previous scheduled session of my West Marches game because of the funeral. I could schedule a make-up session this Saturday night, but I'm not really in the mood. I feel like re-tooling some parts of it, especially the areas where I dropped classic D&D/AD&D modules into it. They've found  or had solid rumors of a few of them (Caves of Chaos, Quasqueton, Xak Tsaroth all explored, The Moathouse partially explored, and rumors of White Plume Mountain & the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief have been heard). I've actually placed a couple other modules that they haven't heard about or found clues to yet, and I had plans for even more even farther out. Now, though, after the long slog in Xak Tsaroth that in the end wasn't super fun for me (although the players seemed to enjoy it a lot), I'm thinking of stripping out these modules they haven't encountered yet. Maybe replace them with similar themed but smaller dungeons of my own. I've found that for West Marches style play, small dungeons of a dozen or fewer rooms work best. But again, not much will to get cranking on modifying that stuff at the moment. Real life has drained me. 

Anyway, enough personal blather. What about the movie directors? 

I've mentioned before that when I was gaming in Tokyo, Steve and Pete dubbed me the Mel Brooks DM (to Steve's Quentin Tarantino and Pete's Terry Gilliam). I think it's an interesting shorthand to let players know what sort of games to expect. NOT that I think RPG play should try to tell stories the way a movie does, just that in my games, expect plenty of humor and tropes stood on their heads. In Steve's games, things could go from conventional to very bloody on the turn of a dime. Pete had lots of whimsy but also a dark undercurrent to his games. 

I've been reading and enjoying Alexis's recent series of posts on how to create a more compelling, deeper campaign world and use that in play to make D&D play more meaningful. Some of the advice he gives matches things I do now. Some match things I used to do but stopped somewhere along the way. Some are things I've never tried. Part of me wants to really up my game (I think my Chanbara campaign burned out quickly because I wasn't doing enough of these things, and it made the game feel cheap to me). 

But another part of me, the part with malaise from all the real life stuff I'm dealing with mentioned above, is just like, fuck it. There's room for deep, epic Oscar contender films, small, personal Oscar contender films, big damn roller coaster blockbusters, scrappy independent films, avant-garde art house films, cheap comedies, and endless remakes and reboots and continuations of old IP in cinema. 

Sure, a game by Alexis is going to be pretty awesome, the way watching a finely made film is deeply satisfying. But you know, I still enjoy the MCU movies despite them being fairly formulaic. I could watch Dazed and Confused or Aliens or Austin Powers for the 100th time and still enjoy it. Nothing wrong with some sometimes campy special effects in a John Carpenter movie. Kevin Smith is working on Clerks 3 and I'm actually looking forward to it despite most of his recent films not being so great. 

I hope Alexis, if he's reading this (and he probably will get around to it eventually), understands what I'm trying to say. I'm not trying to knock what he's been doing. I admire it a lot. And I don't doubt him when he says his method has elevated his games and could elevate mine as well. I want to give something like that a go. But honestly, right now I just don't have the mental energy to commit to that sort of game. I'm doing fine with my Mel Brooks West Marches and my Star Wars game that is a bit more Spielberg to be honest. Maybe after they've run their course, and life has settled down a bit more, I'll be ready to take on a Kurosawa epic of a campaign. I think my players could really dig into it.

On Artpunk and 5E

 First off, let me say that I do appreciate the aesthetics of the OSR "artpunk" movement. Make the game more weird. Move it away from the bastardized Tolkienisms that have become the "D&D genre" and make your products look visually interesting. I get it. There's definitely appeal there. 

And when I look at things like the artwork from people like Jason Sholtis (Operation Unfathomable) as just one example, I dig the visual style and the oddity of his art. But as you might have guessed from my previous post, I would want stuff like that in my game only in small doses. I wouldn't want the entire campaign to be about making deals with eldritch slug-beings while battling off the hordes of mutant bug folk in a topsy-turvy underworld. The occasional foray to that underworld is fine, but not the whole damn campaign. 

And things like Mork Borg just don't interest me in the slightest. It could be the most revolutionary slimming down of the D&D chassis ever but the idea of using intentionally discordant layout/font choices keeps me away. I'm pushing 50, I can't really wear contacts anymore because I can't read with them in, and I need to take the glasses off to read. Yeah, bifocals are in my near future. Make your damn book easy to read, and I'll take a look at it. 

So yeah, consider me an old fuddy duddy, at least when it comes to my games. The big announcement yesterday of more splat books for 5E -- more races, more subclasses, more monsters, whatever. 5E games - at least the big one I still play on RPoL.net, is already this weird menagerie of kenku and genasi and kobolds and lizard folk and yuan ti and warforged and... I don't want my D&D to be like a shot of the Mos Eisley Cantina. I've got d6 Star Wars for that. The older I get, the more human-centric I think I want my D&D games to be. 

That way, when the players encounter the slug-traders or the birdman empire, it might still seem somewhat whimsical or interesting. Not pedestrian, like in 5E.

Tiers of Complexity

 I'm almost done with my new versions of character classes for TSR. I just have the Warlock (Magic-User/Thief hybrid class) left to go. And then a few tweaks to keep certain options viable and prevent one from being the "go to" option. At least as I see it. How they end up in play will remain to be seen, as I don't know if my West Marches folks will go for another rules switch. [Plus I was just bitching about Jeremy changing the rules all the time in the weird body-horror fantasy game he's running.]

Anyway, the thing I'm kind of proud about with these rules is the modular nature I'm building into it. 

A really basic game might have only humans, who can be Cleric, Fighter, Magic-User, or Thief. 

A slightly more complex game might still be human-only, but add in subclasses.

Or human-only, but adding in the advanced classes.

Or adding one set of demi-humans (Euro-Tolkien, or Asian fantasy), but keeping the basic four classes.

Dial up the complexity a bit more, you get humans & demi-humans, with the four basic classes with subclasses allowed, or four basic plus the advanced classes. 

[A few more tiers exist, adding in certain combinations but not others, like limited demi-humans but all classes/subclasses, or allowing some subclasses/advanced classes but not others, etc.]

Most advanced would be to allow all demi-humans, all classes and subclasses, and letting the advanced classes choose subclasses of their basic class counterparts. The big kitchen sink approach. This would be 13 races and if we count each subclass as a class of its own, we get 112 potential class combinations. Some of the advanced class options won't work too well together. The Monk (Cleric/Thief) would lose much of its monkishness if it were a Darkstalker/Outlaw instead of a unique Cleric/Acrobat, but that still might be a cool option for some people. Likewise, a Bard that's Druid/Geomancer (Wu Jen) might feel off stylistically. 

I think the ideal would be to allow a select set of demi-humans (and feel free to mix Tolkein with Asian, why not have Elves and Dokkaebi but no Halflings or Kumiho?), each base class with its subclasses, and the advanced classes without subclass substitutions. But if someone came to me with a concept that called for an advanced class with variation, I'd consider it. Also, I'd encourage DMs to tweak the advanced classes to fit their campaign. If they want more Asian influence, Bards and Paladins should use the Shaman spells instead of normal Cleric spells, and Bards, Larks and Warlocks should use the Geomancer spells instead of the normal Magic-User spells. 

Anyway, it's customizable and easily dialed down or dialed up in complexity/options. If I ever get this in a publishable state, I'd likely give away a "Bare Bones" PDF for free, and then charge for the more detailed version.

Year in Review

 I was sure on the blog a lot more this year than I have been in recent years! And without going through all my old posts for the year, here are my gaming related remembrances from 2020.

Started off the year high on The Mandalorian and running some WEG d6 Star Wars along with my ongoing Classic D&D West Marches game. Both games are still going. West Marches is pretty regular, Star Wars is pretty irregular, but the players are enthusiastic whenever we play it. Need to get the next SW adventure prepped...

As a player, Dean and Jeremy ran a few games here and there, but the big game for me as a player was Nate's (one of my West Marches players) 5E Lost Mines of Phandelver game. He got a bunch of WotC's free giveaway stuff, and decided to run this online for us. And while I have my dislikes about the 5E system, this was a really fun game to play in. Especially challenging was that I purposefully chose only one weak cantrip that could cause damage for my Conjurer Wizard character (infestation, 1d6 poison damage), although by the end I had cast a fireball from a scroll and had a wand of magic missiles. Still, spent most of the time using my spells to make things easier for the party/harder for the monsters, and I really enjoyed it!

As a game designer, this was a dud year. Well, I had a lot of ideas, but when my wife and kids returned to Korea from the US in the spring because of covid, my game design time was limited. And pretty unfocused. I started the year excited about finally doing something with Krynn, having picked up the Dragonlance Adventures hardback, and reading through the Immortals Set. Quickly lost interest in both of those. 

East Marches is still something I want to work on, but my TSR-East houserules are a bit of a mess right now, and I'd like to get them in a satisfactory form before working on East Marches in earnest. Or maybe I should give up on that and just make EM for Chanbara. Sales have been sluggish lately, may want to put something out for it next year (like my Ghost Castle Hasegawa adventure!). I did spend a LOT of time working on (redundant) GM rules for TSR-East in case I ever release it. I've decided not to mess with phased initiative anymore after it just complicated my West Marches game, though, so they will need a small rewrite there.

And these days, I keep fiddling around with Chainmail combat, and trying to figure out how to make sense of it for D&D. I guess I need to just play it that way, but it seems like played straight, it will be very deadly and very arbitrary. But fiddling around with numbers has been a headache. I should just give up on it, I guess.

Another anniversary for the blog!

 What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse... keeps chugging along. I'm not nearly as active this year as I was last year, but most of last year my family was in the USA and I was in Korea. So plenty of time to write stuff up. This year, not so much.

I'm tinkering with ideas for Chainmail Arena. 

I'm in the middle of writing up the next adventure for d6 Star Wars. 

I'm filling in more of my West Marches map. Stocked seven or eight hexes this afternoon. Over three years into the campaign, and I still have only stocked around half of the map's hexes. But only around a quarter to a third have been explored, so I'm still ahead of my players. 

East Marches is stalled, and may become vaporware. Not sure. I did a lot of preliminary work for it, but actually starting in on describing the locations on the map, building up the home town, etc. seems daunting. Maybe I should draw a new, smaller map and expand it later? Or break things up by zones. 

On the plus side, I have decided that I'm fine with my current house rules. No converting back to race-as-class, although I might revise how multiclassing works based on my recent revision ideas. Basically, multiclass characters will get a set hit die and set XP track and advance both classes on a level up (the way BX/BECMI Elves do). It simplifies things. No more splitting XP, no worries about energy drains, no trying to remember if hit points get rounded up or down or just halves are recorded. 

Nothing going on (in my head space) at the moment with Flying Swordsmen or Chanbara, and no more paper minis projects in the works. Sales are sluggish, but then they usually are at this time of year. Maybe I need to come up with something new to revitalize them? 

Anyway, that's the state of things right now. If you were curious. Thanks as always to my readers! Expect more silliness, random thoughts on gaming, and occasionally insightful pieces in the coming year.

Getting Old?

A week or so ago, I had a bunch of ideas for blog posts. Of course, this was right before bed time, but somehow in the morning I still had them in mind. But I didn't write them down, and since I've been so busy the past few weeks, they've completely slipped my mind now. All I can remember is that I had interesting ideas for things to write about here. Frustrating!

Anyway, things are going well on the gaming front. My West Marches game is coming along well. We had a great session of it over the weekend. The party managed to explore a bunch of hexes on their way to the Ruins of Xak Tsaroth, and scouted it out a bit. No one died, and my younger son got his first taste of D&D (he turns 6 in two months, so he wasn't really paying that much attention, but had fun clicking on the button to roll dice in Roll20 and enjoyed making a character).

The Star Wars d6 game is also going well. But my wife and kids are back in Korea (if you couldn't guess) so my gaming time is going to be much reduced. When it was only me, it was no problem gaming two or three nights a week. Now it's going to be once a week if that. And with West Marches on a regular schedule, Star Wars is going to be much less frequent.

Dean's 4E game is going pretty well. It is fun, despite the drawbacks of the 4E system, and I'm enjoying my quirky character.

Nate, one of my regular players in West Marches, has started a 5E game using the free content WotC has been putting on their website over the past couple of months. I didn't get to play in the first session, but I made a PC -- a human conjurer with a pointy hat as his arcane focus. Named Preston. Any resemblance to 80's cartoon characters is purely coincidental!!! Honest!

Then there are the PbP games I'm involved in on RPOL.net. I've joined too many games, I think, but players in games I'm enjoying were starting new games, and I jumped in on them (along with my previous games). I'm running two (Classic D&D megadungeon, and my d6 Star Wars stuff) plus playing a dozen characters in eight different games (in two games I have three characters each).

And then I'm still plugging away at Treasures, Serpents, and Ruins - East. Once I get the main rules set (working on the GM stuff now, which is tedious and going slow) I'll get back to work on the East Marches setting/module idea I've got. But again, with work stuff and my family back with me, don't expect it any time soon.

Does it make the game more fun?

 As a DM, especially one who likes to toy with the game and make it my own, I constantly ask myself this question. If I'm going to add a new class or race, switch from race-as-class to race-and-class (or back again), if I'm going to reskin everything to make it feel like Asian fantasy or Star Wars or whatever, even if I'm just adding in some new monsters, the question that's always on my mind is:

Does this make the game more fun? 

And the question has more than one answer. Who's fun will the change enhance? Whose will it detract from?

In my current state of Treasures, Serpents and Ruins, I added Dragonborn and Changelings (Tiefling/Aasimar) because I started my West Marches game in 5E and those races were popular with my players. I'm not overly fond of either one, but removing them would make the game less fun for my players. So I made simple 1E/BX/BECMI style versions of those races.

Yesterday, a new player came to my game. She thought she'd play a Druid. But the stats she rolled didn't have a high enough Con score (a requirement for Druids in my game). In order to let her have her character which she would have fun playing, I let her change the score to the minimum needed. Problem solved, she had a great time.

The switch from 5E back to Classic (with heavy house ruling) was necessary for ME to have more fun with the game. Yeah, I lost a few players. But the ones that stuck around, and the new players that joined, are having a blast. And I am, too. I'm a lot more confident running the game, and prep for the game is much easier as well.

If a change to the rules, the systems, or the procedures of gaming make the game more fun for one or more participants, and don't significantly reduce the fun for other participants, then that's a good change to make. Even if it doesn't enhance the fun, if it makes things easier for some participants without reducing anyone else's fun, it's probably a good change.

Yes, "fun" is subjective, impossible to quantify and define in a satisfying manner. Yes, what seems fun now may seem less fun in the future. If the "fun" is decreasing over time, that 's just a sign to either go back to the way it was before, or else try something new again.

If you're thinking of making changes to your game, of course you should ask yourself "Is this necessary?"  If the answer is yes, keep going. But don't give up on the idea just because the answer is no. Also ask yourself next if it makes the game more fun. Only if the answer to both is no should you abandon the idea.

A few complaints about DMing 5E D&D

In general, I've found that as a player I really enjoy 5E. The system is fairly slim, the options aren't overwhelming (at least if you stick to the PHB only), and it feels like D&D again (sorry 4E fans, you know I wasn't a fan myself, and although it's not a terrible game, it just isn't what I want out of D&D). As a player, I really like it.

But a few months back, I started DMing a face-to-face game again, using 5E. My son wanted to play in a game, and our normal Saturday night G+ games are too late for him to finish. So I started up a West Marches game using 5E. And while it's not a bad system, I keep constantly saying to myself, "Why didn't I just try to run this with my Classic D&D houserules, or Labyrinth Lord?"

Basically it comes down to a few points. I may elaborate on each later in their own blog posts (I need some impetus to get back into blogging semi-regularly). For now, it's just a list with a bit of commentary for each based on my WM game.

• Lack of Morale rules. I've been estimating what I think a creature's Morale score should be, and rolling 2d6 like in Classic D&D. Yes, I could just wing it and have creatures flee or surrender when I feel like it, but I like the uncertainty of the dice.
• Not much variety in treasure. There's no risk/reward analysis when it comes to deciding to face a monster or not, it's simply a threat assessment. 
• Spell lists are too combat focused. This is actually something I chafe at as a player as well. It's hard to plan interesting encounters where magical utility spells might make the difference between an easy encounter and a too tough one (something I like to do) when there are so few utility spells, and spell durations are for the most part just not that long. As a player, it's hard to come up with that creative solution with a well-used spell when most just do damage.
• Too much player rolling, not enough DM rolling. Maybe some DMs like that. They can focus on the details of the adventure, the NPCs and monsters, the "plot" and whatnot. Let the players make all the rolls. As a DM, though, sometimes I want to build suspense by making the roll myself (and having the option to ignore a result I don't like). This applies to things like getting lost or foraging in the wilderness. 

None of these things are terrible in and of themselves. I can work with them, and we're all having fun with 5E. And it's working out fairly well, actually. But I have worked in some old school mechanics into how I run the game because I feel it's just better that way. 

And I'm still wondering if I can convince the group to switch to my "D&D Mine" rules. And if I should try to convince them, or just let this campaign play out in 5E and when it's petered out try something else. If I want to get my son on board, though, I'm going to have to come up with a Dragonborn equivalent for my D&D Mine rules. He doesn't want to play anything but a dragon-man.

The Underground Railroad (rant-ish)

Several disparate influences coalesced in my head this evening, as I was on my way home from work, and I came to realize how to express verbally my distaste for "indie story games" of the Forge variety. Sure, I've talked about it before, and I always assumed it was the people I played with rather than the games. Now, I think it actually is the games. But, as Dav Pilkey says in his Captain Underpants stories, before I can tell you that story, I have to tell you this story...

Years ago, so long ago I can't remember if it was on an RPG forum, a blog, or where, I remember reading someone expressing the opinion that any player that wants to play a Paladin is tacitly giving permission to the DM to make them fall from grace. This esteemed sir or madam espoused this as an absolute. Any player who chooses a Paladin is asking for a fall, and any DM with a Paladin in their campaign is duty bound to make them fall at least once during their career.

Now, that's literally ridiculous. Literally, as in I shall now ridicule this idea.

Every player who plays a Magic-User (Wizard in newer editions) is asking the DM to take away their spellbook at least once during their career, and any DM worth his salt must take away the spellbook of any Magic-User that survives past the goblin warrens and giant rat tunnels of low level.

Every player who plays a Cleric is just begging the DM to take away their spellcasting ability due to an alignment issue. Often. DMs need to be on the watch for any potential slip by the Cleric's player to take away their spells and make them atone.

Every player who plays a Dwarf is fully expecting to be cast out of their clan-hold, beard shaven off, and exiled on pain of death. DMs will make sure every dwarven clan is a bunch of judgmental assholes in order to make sure that any adventurous upstart gets taken down a peg in this way.

Ridiculous, no? It shows such a lack of imagination, such a lack of narrative principle, to assume that just because some player wanted to play such a class/race wants to play out that tired, cliche story line every time they play the game. Sure, there may be rules in the books for what to do if it does happen, but that doesn't mean it's the only way a Paladin's (or MU, Cleric, Dwarf, whatever) story can play out. It's not how every character X's story should play out. To force this on the players and to assume it's with their consent just because they chose option X at character generation instead of option Y is a form of railroading.

Now, there should always be the risk of these things happening, but whether it does come to pass should depend on the player's choices in the game, rather than through a no-win situation engineered by the DM.

And that brings us back to indie story games.

You all know Ron Edwards's pet game theory, the Three-Fold Model (and his later Big Model, which was as far as I remember the same thing with more jargon to keep the newbs from acting like they understood it) of Gamist/Simulationist/Narrativist games. Said theory posited a triangle of three things that games can be, and the closer a game came to one of the vertices, the more pure it was, the better that game was. A good "gamist" game focused ONLY on gaming the system. A good "simulationist" game focused ONLY on recreating a "realistic" fantasy setting. A good "narrativist" game focused ONLY on providing a coherent story for the players. A game like D&D, despite its vast popularity, sits somewhere in the middle of the triangle of competing forces, so obviously must be a craptastically designed game, no matter how many people have years and years worth of fun playing it. If only they'd move to a game a the point of the triangle that best matches their interest, says the theory, they'll be having ever so much more fun.

Now, Edwards and the Forge heavily biased their community towards "narrativist" play. Edwards was always political about saying that gamists and simulationists could have their fun playing games their way, but in his opinion the narrativist way was the best way.

But you know what? Those story games have a BIG problem. The "best" of them are nothing more than railroads, similar to the type described above. No one's making you do X instead of Y, no one's pulling a quantum ogre on you in these games. You're free do do whatever you want!

...as long as whatever you want is what the game is "designed to be about."

You can't just do anything you want in these games. If you play, for example, Dogs in the Vinyard (full disclosure, never had a chance to play it, but heard/read plenty), you can't escape the game's theme of dispatching justice to a small town in the Old West. Sooner or later, the game is going to force you to do just that. It's designed to bring these situations to a head so that your Mormon gunslinger can settle things the Mormon gunslinger way.

You're not playing these games to make up your own story. The game designer has already predetermined the story for you. It's a railroad, but it's subtle. Hence the title of this post.

And the funny thing? Now that I've come to this realization, I get the feeling that I now "get" story games, and might actually be able to have fun playing one now. But for the time being, I'll stick to D&D and play-testing Chanbara.

Last Day of the Year

Yes, the obligatory year in review post! Luckily, it's going to be short. There's not a lot to review.

So this year, I started the year off by getting back to work on Chanbara with a new revision mostly from the ground up. I'm now happy with that revision (a few things need tweaking, and I'm still undecided on how much setting info to include, and whether to revise the adventure/campaign advice chapter). I'm going to start play-testing it both on G+ with the guys, and on RPOL. Anyone interested in joining? So far, one guy, a friend of friends from two other RPOL games, has agreed to play. If you want to try it out, here's the link:

http://rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=65385&date=1449791951

Other than that, there's not much gaming related to say. I tried to get a GamMarvel World (Gamma World in the Marvel Comics Universe) game going, but got sidetracked by real life. I tried to get my Mentzer Cover to Cover series going again, but got sidetracked by real life. I tried to game as often as possible, but usually got sidetracked by real life.

Well, them's the breaks when you're trying to adjust to a new job (teaching at a university instead of a kindergarten), work on a PhD dissertation (more to come in 2016!), and raise two boys (one seven, the other one-and-a-half).

Happy New Year to all of my readers, and I hope you all have great gaming experiences in 2016!

Content Posts?

Gaming content posts have been sparse around here lately.  Posts in general are down thanks to grad school and fatherhood and real life stuff, but the biggest reason has just been a lack of much to interest me game-wise.

I'm not really that interested in 5E anymore.  What they've been showing and telling on the WotC site, and general commentary around the blogs, has left me feeling like I'll skip it.  Or maybe just pick up the PHB if people in my gaming group want to play it.  Doubt I'll dive in deep with that one.

I don't have the money to be investing in the multitude of OSR Kickstarters.  So nothing to hype.

Our Saturday night Labyrinth Lord games on G+ are going well, but since I'm a player, aside from the play reports, there's not much to get my juices flowing about the game.  DMing tends to do that to me, but not playing.  As a player I just analyze things less.

And I'm kinda tired of just hyping Flying Swordsmen.  And it's been a scheduling bitch to get people to play it (mostly due to MY schedule).  Hopefully I'll be able to get some more games in over the summer though, and put out a revised edition to work out some of the kinks.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll have stuff to say about gaming styles and game systems and house rules and all that again in the future.  Just don't expect much in the coming weeks.