In-Flight Movie Capsule Reviews

 I just returned from the USA. Flynn graduated high school. It was a good trip home, and it was great to see a lot of friends and family while we were back. 

I watched four films I hadn't seen before and one rewatch during both long-haul trans-Pacific flights. Here are a few thoughts. And no, not all of these movies are brand new, but they're ones I hadn't seen before. 

Also, the films were edited for content so curse words were removed from the films. No comment on how dirty the films' language gets unedited. 

On the flight to the US: 

Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants (Tsui Hark, 2025)

Any surprise that this type of movie would be my first choice? Probably not. This was a fun wuxia action movie, with some well done stunts, CGI, and fight sequences. The story felt a bit jumbled or rushed at first, and sometimes it wasn't clear what was flashback and what was the current narrative. But once the protagonist Guo Jing and his love interest Huang Rong were introduced and the stakes were set, we get a pretty good martial arts/love triangle/political/war movie. 

I suspect the English subtitles of the version I watched were AI translations, due to inconsistent usage and a few other clues. That may have contributed to the disjointed feeling of the beginning.  Otherwise, a fun watch...but a little long, around 2.5 hours. Not bad if you're on a 13 hour flight. 

Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

One I'd been wanting to watch for almost a decade now, but just never found the time to sit down and watch. Well, after a considerable nap following Condor Heroes, I cued it up. I really enjoyed it. There was less action that what I had been expecting, but the mystery that the replicant detective Joe follows was compelling and made for a fitting continuation of the themes of the original film. Some great acting, moody set pieces, and just the right tone. 

On the return flight to Korea: 

The Naked Gun (Akiva Shafer, 2025)

A sequel/reboot of the classic Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker comedy franchise. It was pretty funny, I'm not gonna lie, and I think Liam Neeson was a good choice for Frank Drebin Jr. But honestly, the writing wasn't quite as sharp as I remember the originals [although it has been many years since I've seen them], or maybe Neeson's comedic timing just isn't as sharp as Leslie Nielson's was. I enjoyed it, but I think there could have been a bit more silliness and a bit tighter editing/pacing of the non-sequiturs may have improved it. 

Tomorrowland (Brad Bird, 2015)

This one completely passed me by when it was released a decade ago. I didn't know anything about it other than the blurb on the in-flight menu [Something along the lines of "Older disgruntled scientist and optimistic teen team up to save a world outside time and space."] It's obviously inspired more or less in name only by the Tomorrowland Disney attraction, like the Pirates of the Caribbean films. And while it's a pretty typical Disney family-friendly feel-good movie, it was fun to watch and had some good character development. Bird is the creative mind behind The Incredibles, after all. I liked it, and the ending made me reminiscent of watching Disney stuff as a kid and feeling hopeful for the future. 

Superman (James Gunn, 2025)

 No notes. Go read my original review of the film for my thoughts. 

My Next Sci-Fi Campaign

I don't know if it would be Star Frontiers, Stars Without Number, or something else (never played Traveller...maybe I should give it a try?), but this galactic map would work well for whatever sci-fi game I decide to run if I ever wind down the Star Wars game. 

Movie Review: K-Pop Demon Hunters

I spent the past three weeks teaching the English camp I usually teach over summer and winter breaks. Yes, board games were played (Dungeon!, King of Tokyo, Werewolf Dead or Alive, Bang!). And this past week, my class watched K-Pop Demon Hunters for entertainment. 

 I head about the movie several weeks back when it came out on Netflix. Lots of people here in Korea were gushing about it. I'm not a fan of K-Pop, though, so I didn't rush to watch it. But my students wanted to see it (some of them for the Xth time), so we did. 

Parents wondering about Curse Words: None that I remember. There's some cartoon violence, but it's fairly kid friendly and wholesome. 

The movie follows a trio of K-pop singers who also happen to be the Chosen Ones to defeat demons and protect the magical weave of the world, the Honmoon. But Rumi, their leader, has a secret. And Gwi-Ma, the demon lord, has sent a group of demons to form a K-Pop boy band, Saja Boys, to compete with Huntr/x, the protagonists' girl group. 

The animation is for the most part really nicely done 3D animation mostly in a heightened reality style, but in anime fashion occasionally shots or scenes switch to more cartoony "chibi" or "kawaii" style. Yeah, it's Korean, but my language for discussing this stuff comes from Japan. Sue me. 

The story is fine for kids, but honestly, it's pretty cliche and predictable. But it does have compelling character arcs that pay off in the end (though you can see them coming if you've seen other Chosen One stories before), so it's competently scripted and the voice acting is good. And the music...well, if you like K-Pop, you'll like this film's soundtrack. It's not my style. 

I did appreciate the nods to Korean history, culture, myths, and legends. And as someone running an Asian fantasy D&D campaign, there's always something useful to snag from something like this. And some of the ideas in the film have given me ides for my campaign. 

In the end, yeah, it's not a bad movie. Just not my normal cup of tea. If you have kids and want to watch something together, there are worse choices could make. And even if you don't have kids, if you like Asian fantasy, K-Pop, Korean culture in general, and/or Chosen One/Magical Girl media, why not give it a watch? If you aren't into any of that stuff, you probably aren't missing much by skipping it. 

Final verdict: Not bad, but not something I'd likely watch again. 

Getting the Groove Back Over the Weekend

So my last post, I was complaining that I just wasn't feeling it with RPG stuff, and hadn't been for a bit. Part of the reason I wrote that and posted it publicly was to see if it would jump start my motivation to game/work on game stuff. And I think it did. Also, thanks to JB and Dick McGee for sympathizing with me. I think it did what I hoped it would, but not completely. A few things that happened over the weekend got me fired up again. 

My son started Korean high school this month, and hates it. I wasn't surprised. Korean high school is three years of suffering in order to get the highest possible score you can on the Korean version of the SAT test. Lots of stress, lots of late night cramming, lots of competition. So he asked if we could move up or scheduled plan for him to study in the U.S. My parents agreed, so we spent last week making arrangements. At the start of April, he and I will fly to Illinois and I'll get him set up to live with my folks for the next couple of years and finish high school there. Kinda stressful, but kind of exciting, too. 

And I was so busy with those arrangements on Friday that I completely forgot that I was supposed to get on Discord to make a new Call of Cthulhu character with the guys for Richard's new adventure. Luckily, Richard texted me, and after getting Steven ready for bed, and finishing up the translation of Flynn's high school class schedule, I joined up. 

I had no real idea what sort of PC I wanted to make, but everyone else did. I rolled for my abilities instead of using the standard array, and I'm glad I did. I rolled horribly overall, but Education was really good, so while my basic abilities are not good, I've got good skills for my super nerdy 1920s version of an FBI forensics/CIA analyst guy. And discussion with Richard about character generation and OD&D during the session gave me inspiration for my next blog post, about whether to roll and figure out the PC, or figure out the PC then try to build them. 

On Saturday, I finally got to watch Godzilla Minus One, and really liked it. Good film. It makes you actually care about the people in the film, while having some great (if not quite enough) monster smashing Tokyo mayhem. And that's tickling a few ideas that I might also be able to work into some game-able material. And possibly a blog post. 

Oh, and some of you may have heard that NASA put out a D&D (5E-ish) adventure! I downloaded it, read through it briefly, and unfortunately I don't think I'll be using it after all. 

On Sunday, I had my TS&R Jade session coming up, so I got off my ass in the morning and wrote up another location on the map, and have been working on some ideas for another one. I want to do a fairly Jacquaysed map, with lots of verticality and multiple pathways for this second location, so that may take a bit of time to do. But I'm hyped by the possibilities of that map and location. The location I did add is fairly simple, a barbarian encampment that could be attacked (type A treasure, after all!) or could become a resource since they specialize in animal training. If the party makes good relations with them, they could buy trained animals from them, or capture animals to take to them for training. 

And then the session was Flynn's final session before he heads to the U.S. We've got other things planned for the next two Sundays, so no more D&D. Going into the session, he was thinking of trying to go out with a bang, and get his PC killed in a fun and memorable way. But then in the game, he changed his mind and did his best to keep his PC and henchman alive, so that he can keep playing them whenever he comes back to visit. And after the session, we discussed some of the ways he could use the down time to improve his character (martial arts training, spell research, etc.) which we can do via emails or whatever while he's away. 

So, yeah, I've got my gaming groove back. I'm looking forward to getting some content up here on the blog, as well as working on the campaign and my TS&R GM book this week.

Thoughts on the Pre-Modern Mindset

I recently finished reading Juval Noah Harari's Sapiens. Yeah, it's a decade old by now. I'm behind the times. I may finally get around to watching Black Mirror or Star Trek: Enterprise now that I'm done with the book. 

I received the book a few years back from a friend who was leaving Korea. He dumped a bunch of books on me. This one intrigued me, since a libertarian friend of mine had sworn up and down that the book was total garbage. I was curious about what the book might have said that would make him hate it so much, especially since I'd mentally lumped it into the "Oprah-lectual" category with books like anything by Malcolm Gladwell or Thomas Friedman. The sort of book that's a best-seller because it's just smart enough to make the uneducated in a particular field feel educated about that field after reading it, but it's really actually fairly superficial. People who've read it pretend they're experts on the subject at cocktail parties. That sort of book.

Wow, I sound like such a book snob, reading that over again. Well, so be it. I'm not too particular about the fiction I read. B-class dreck, if it's entertaining, is fine with me. But I read way too much serious academic writing for work to be impressed by these pop-academic works. 

Well, Sapiens was interesting, after all. I have some quibbles. Harari seems suitably cautious with some of his pre-historic claims early in the book, but presents other claims about pre-history as dead certain. That makes me wary of his historic claims as well. But overall, it gave me not so much better insight into humanity as a whole, but some ideas that might translate to better gaming. So that's a win. 

The final third or so of the book, if you haven't read it, makes a big argument that the Scientific Revolution, Capitalism, and Imperialism are intricately linked and without all three happening in Europe around 500 years ago, the world would have just kept chugging along Medieval style until now. The reason is that people before that time, or in other areas of the world around that time and for some time after, were convinced that there was nothing new to be learned about the world. The Ancients had had it all figured out (or it had been handed to people by gods in ancient times) and so there was no need to be curious. No need to innovate. And even if people had been curious, without capitalism to fund it and imperialism to support capitalism, the science never would have caught on. 

I'm a bit dubious of that claim. But I'm not a historian, so I'll not try to argue the point. 

I will focus on that mindset Harari presents for the Pre-Modern. 

There's no need to innovate, we already do things in the best way possible. We (as a society) already know all there is worth knowing.

Obviously, that isn't true. Technology did advance over the centuries. People did learn new things. People did go out and explore beyond the horizon. Sure, the pace was slow, compared to the Renaissance through Industrial Revolution, and glacial compared to the rate of change these days. But there still were people who were curious, and who figured new things out. 

But the vast majority of people were still pretty complacent. Really, the vast majority still are today. That's why you get people at school board meetings or elected officials saying things like "I didn't have to learn all this new-fangled gobbledy-gook when I was a kid. Readin', writin', and 'rythmatic is all the kids need to learn today."

So how does this relate to D&D (and other medieval-style fantasy games)? 

First, I think it would argue against the idea of "magic as technology" seen in settings like Eberron. As post-moderns, we might like to think that trains and telephones and the like would inevitably be developed by industrious mages. But if we consider the pre-modern mindset as laid out by Harari (assuming it's true), that likely wouldn't happen. 

Most wizards and clerics would be hoarding their magical powers, leveraging the rarity of them for their own benefit. Making magi-tech that benefits all in society, or assuming that there are hundreds of low level craft-mages making society chug along, would weaken the power of the mighty wizards and patriarchs/matriarchs. 

Besides, those clerics have access to commune with the Powers that Be. Surely, if non-spell imbued religious leaders in our own history could make the real-world populace believe that all the insights of the Heavens had already been laid out in a book, clerics with actual spells and actual access to the words of the gods would foster that mindset even more strongly. 

So even more so than in our own history, a fantasy setting's populace should be pretty set with the idea that society had its peak back in some fabled Golden Age, and it's all down hill from here. There's no progress worth working for, as we're already at or past the peak. We know all the spells that are worth knowing. We have all the weapons and armor we'll ever need.

Second, it would help set the PCs as "adventurers" even further apart from society. What's over that hill? What's down in that dungeon? What's across the sea? What would happen if we overthrow the tyrannical dragon that plagues our town? Most people think it's a bad idea to even consider it. But not those pesky adventurers. And their meddling is going to bring us a whole lot of trouble down on everyone else.

It would just make things a lot more interesting, I think, if the "spirit of adventure" wasn't lauded in the society of the D&D world. 

Third, though, is the effect that those adventurers have on the society, which logically would go against the above. Following Harari's argument, it was the invention of the concept of 'capital' as a loan leveraged against the future profitability of a venture, rather than loans leveraged on established wealth, that led to the development of modern society/scientific revolution/imperialistic expansion. 

Before that became a thing, the wealth of a society was relatively static. 

Adventurers going out and bringing back the long lost wealth is going to disrupt that. 

Now sure, we've all seen the advice given to explain pricing in the various D&D editions as "boom town" pricing based on the influx of wealth from the megadungeon. And yes, some DMs do depict the disruption to society caused by the influx of wealth from adventuring. But in my experience, this is the exception not the norm. 

Adventuring brings surplus wealth to the society, and it's surplus wealth (or the expectation of future surplus wealth, according to Harari) that allows for science to develop, but also creates the need for imperial expansionism of the European imperialist tradition, rather than those of earlier empires like Alexander or Genghis Khan. 

Adventurers (and by this I mean specifically the player characters) are likely to be the impetus for all of this revolutionary change in the game world. They're going out and conquering new territory, plundering the wealth of the conquered areas, and through inventiveness and application of their resources, creating new spells and magic items, eventually becoming rulers of territories, and possibly setting up the magical industrial revolution -- or trying to, at least. 

Society as a whole, especially if it's even more fanatical about the concept of "all that the world needs to know is known and was passed down from the Golden Age/the gods," is going to be dead set about stopping this from happening. 

Religious groups and powerful wizards don't want their mystique shattered. Kings and nobles don't want their authority challenged. Wealthy landowners or merchants don't want their wealth devalued. And John Q. Serf doesn't want to deal with cognitive dissonance. All levels of society are going to be against a group of upstart adventurers trying to "make the world a better place" if they do go about trying to revolutionize things. 

And if the players just go along with things the way they are, using their wealth simply to increase their own power/prestige, but not change the world, there will still be conflict over that, but it wouldn't turn the world into the magi-tech world of Eberron.

Again, this is just from my limited gaming experience, but it seems like most campaigns never really touch on the political and social implications of adventuring. And this is most likely because of the mindset of the players and DMs being post-modern. We've all grown up with stories of plucky businessmen who founded simple businesses that became multinational corporations. Explorer/conquerors like Columbus, Magellan, Cook. Inventors and scientists as kooky geniuses creating marvelous gadgets and uncovering the mysteries of the universe. That's all normal to us. 

And so, we make all that seem normal to the NPCs of our game worlds. But there's probably a lot more interesting game to be made if we stop giving post-modern world views to our NPCs, and start giving them pre-modern ones instead.

Serendipitous Afternoon

I had my first free afternoon in quite a while. Classes are finished, grading is finished, papers are at the journals. Plus, this morning, we made food to take to my son's school for "international lunch" (we made Kraft mac-n-cheese, plus homemade taco salad). So I didn't go into the office. 

Instead, I decided to sit down and work on my TS&R Jade campaign notes, fleshing out a few more areas to explore. At the same time, my wife decided to watch a show she'd heard good reviews of on Netflix...and I ended up watching it, too! 

I did get some work done on the campaign. Fleshed out the locations and residents of a yokai village near the home town, complete with a threat that the PCs may choose to deal with if they visit that village. Also rolled up a few more random henchmen to replace the ones slain by the evil Coiled Serpent martial arts acolyte the party faced last session.

But mostly, I was watching the show. The English title is Alchemy of Souls (환혼 in Korean). It's a pure fantasy, set in a fictional kingdom of Daeho (Great Lake), where four families of mages run things, although there is also a king. 

In the prologue, the king is sick, and asks one of the mages if he could transfer his soul to a healthy, younger body. The mage is reluctant, but agrees. Somehow, the king ends up stealing the mage's body, and then when the mage's son is born soon after, puts a spell on him to keep him from using magic, and forbidding anyone to teach his son magic. 

20 years later, the son is grown up and on his 12th magic teacher, but still failing (because they won't actually teach him). At the same time, an assassin is trying to kill the (evil king) mage father. She fails, and escapes, but is wounded. She transfers her soul into a blind girl who is about to be sold to a brothel. The mage gets her body (and sword). 

Although she possessed a blind girl, the assassin can see in the new body. She escapes and runs into the son. Somehow, he helps her escape the brothel, by claiming she's his new servant. They go back to the fortress of the mage, but it is attacked by the people who hired Naksu (the assassin) and they steal her body and sword, which she needs as the blind girl's body (her name is Mu-deok) is too weak to perform magic. 

Anyway, that's a brief synopsis of episode 1. We watched part of the second episode as well. I haven't seen a lot of Korean fantasy works before, so this is pretty fun for me. The show uses CGI for the magical effects. Besides soul swapping, there are magical blasts from swords, ice arrows, swirling wind/water attacks, a summoned dog spirit that can sniff out evil spirits, petrification, and some other cool stuff. 

It's a Korean drama, so of course there's also the soap opera melodrama. The four mage houses each have a young heir, each representing one season. The "spring" heir is female, and formerly engaged to the "winter" heir, the son whose magic ability was blocked. The "summer" heir is the winter heir's best friend and seems like a bit of a goofball. The "fall" heir seems to have had some relationship with the assassin Naksu before she went bad...but since her soul is in a different body, he doesn't recognize her. 

And "winter" wants the assassin to unlock his magical abilities since no one else will. So there's the comedy aspect of her playing as his servant when others are around, but him being her underling when they're in private. Maybe a bit of romance brewing between them, as well. 

I have no idea if it's available on Netflix outside of Korea, but if it is, and you're looking for some Asian fantasy inspiration, I can recommend the first 1.5 episodes at least! Season 1 has 20 episodes, and season 2 is broadcasting now on Korean TV.

If I were redesigning Star Wars d6

JB's comments in my previous post, discussing differences between WEG's 1st and 2nd editions of d6 Star Wars were part of the impetus of this post, but the core idea is something I'd actually thought of before that and just had been letting tumble around in the old brain for a while. 

My SW game is, as I mentioned, a slight mishmash of the editions. We started out with the fan-edited REUP (Revised, Expanded, & Updated) rules, this massive poorly organized PDF that contains game elements from the original and prequel series movies, plus some stuff from novels or comics, I assume. It doesn't have anything from the sequel trilogy or more recent Disney+ shows, though. 

While it's a great resource if I need stats on a certain alien species or type of vehicle, as I mentioned it's a bit hard to find the rules you need when you need them, even with PDF search functionality. The rules are mashed together with background information, advice for running games, and sample adventures. 

So when I saw that the 1st edition reprints were available, I scooped it up. And found that I like some of the simpler systems in 1E better than 2E. But since we'd already been playing 2E, we have a sort of mash-up game now. At the moment, I'm pretty much only using the space combat system from 1E, and not allowing PCs to improve their ability scores, only their skills. Oh, and I took this house rule from someone running a PbP game: There are no melee parry, brawling parry, etc. skills. Just use melee combat or brawling for those. Oh, one more thing I I changed is that I went through the REUP list of Force Powers (compiled from various supplements) and eliminated some that were clunky, overpowered, weird, or extraneous (two different Force-assisted Astrogation powers? Why?).

If I were to start over, I'd probably hew closer to the 1E rules. Especially the Force rules. 

In 2E, Jedi (and other Force Users) have to select various Force Powers that they've mastered as they improve their Force Skills. In 1E, there are no "Force Powers" but there are examples of doing things that were done in the original trilogy movies to suggest which Force Skill(s) would be needed and provide them with target numbers for difficulty to help the GM adjudicate the Force. If you have skill dice in Sense, Alter or Control, though, you can attempt to do whatever with those skills that makes sense. 

Or in other words, in 1E if you have trained in Sense, you can try to sense someone's presence, heighten your own hearing, discover something hidden, feel how strong someone else is with the Force, etc. No need to learn those as separate "powers." 

So what would I do different if I were redesigning the game? 

I'd make The Force into a seventh Ability that governs the three Force Skills. 

In the movies, there's a lot of talk of Yoda's species, Skywalkers, and Palpatines being innately stronger in the Force than everyone else. I think it would make more sense to emulate this with this change. Characters who are not Force Sensitive would not get this ability. Those with Force Sensitivity would get 1D. Various Force-user templates would get 2D. Especially strong NPCs would get 3 to 4D. Skywalkers get 5D. 

Yeah, that would necessitate reshuffling some dice from other abilities for non-Force users depending on if they're Force Sensitive or not. But that's not so hard.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and Star Wars: Andor (and other shows)

Last week, we got the (series? season?) finale of She-Hulk, and also we're halfway through the first season of Andor. I have a few thoughts.

She-Hulk: [minor spoilers ahead]

First off, I was really happy that they tried to do something different with this show. Not only was it a half-hourish legal comedy that just happened to involve powered individuals, it broke away from the mold that not only Marvel movies, but the other Marvel Disney+ shows have given us so far. And that's saying something, since WandaVision, Falcon & Winter Soldier, Loki, and Hawkeye are all really different shows. She-Hulk is a completely different beast, and yet it still feels like part of the greater whole. 

Was the CGI great? No. Some episodes were worse than others. But was it good enough? I think so. It's a legal comedy, not a big summer blockbuster movie. Could Disney/Marvel have done better if they'd thrown more money into it? Apparently so. The CGI firms they contract with are apparently overworked and underpaid. But for what the show was, it didn't need top of the line CGI. It's a show about learning to live both as a productive member of society and a superhero, and also jokes. 

Not every joke landed, but I found things to laugh at in every episode. I'd say the Madisynn/Wong episode was the funniest. And it was fun seeing characters I remember from the comics (Manbull! The Wrecking Crew! Titania!), and characters I wasn't familiar with as well. And when they needed to do action, they did it well. The Daredevil episode in particular had some fun fight choreography in it. 

And the fourth wall breaks? Used really well. They provide exposition. They provide laughs. They help direct the series away from the Marvel Studios formula. Especially in the finale. It starts out giving you what you'd expect from a Marvel finale, then...everything changes. In a really silly but good way, that is true to the original comics. 

Andor: [more minor spoilers]

Star Wars always has been media aimed at kids (of all ages). It's got that Campbellian Hero's Journey, stark black and white morality, and plenty of swashbuckling derring do. Well, the best Star Wars does, anyway. And even when it's not at top form, it's always been aimed at a young/family audience. 

But then there was Rogue One. The prequel that was just a little bit more rough around the edges. It was still a B&W morality play at heart, but it was a little more grown up in certain ways. And Andor is a prequel to this prequel. 

Andor is not a show for kids. My 8 year old is continually frustrated and bored with it whenever we watch it. It's about complex characters, and complex situations. It takes a more serious look at what it would be like to live in an authoritarian space empire. It's not about derring-do or simple morality. It's finally Star Wars for grown ups. 

We're only halfway through the season, but we've already had a lot of decent drama out of the series. Andor's struggle to fit in while not wanting to fit in. Luthen and Mon Mothma's struggles to build a rebellion while living under constant state surveillance, and in Mothma's case also while living with a fascist sympathizer husband. Karn struggles with ambition and failure, and high hopes his family places on him that he fears he won't be able to achieve. The ISB agent (forgot the name) who knows something's up but whose superiors/coworkers refuse to help or allow her to succeed. It isn't always perfectly scripted, but they all seem like real people with real issues. 

The down side of the show is that the endings of the first couple of episodes are anticlimaxes. Anti-cliffhangers. If they hadn't released the first three all at once, for people to binge until they get a satisfying conclusion, I bet a lot of people would have not followed the show. 

In Other Viewing: 

My younger son and I continue to make our way slowly through both Futurama and Stranger Things. We're somewhere in the middle of season 4 of Futurama, and just watched the first episode of Stranger Things season 3 last weekend. 

And my older son is suddenly interested in military history again, after watching Black Hawk Down, so we've been watching Tour of Duty the past couple of evenings. He's really getting into it, and it was one of my favorite shows back in the day. We have some good discussions about the war, and the politics behind it, when we watch. 

I've also been occasionally watching Star Trek, original series and Next Gen, when I've got a free hour. It's been going on for a couple of years now. I'm somewhere in the 2nd season of TOS, and 3rd season of TNG. Seems like I'm watching all sorts of shows these days, but the Star Trek really gets strung out. I go in spurts where I'll watch two to four episodes fairly close together, then go weeks without watching any at all.

Volcanic lava caves

Quite a few years back, I blogged about the Mark Twain Caves in Hannibal, MO. They're the cave system I'm most familiar with, having grown up in that region and visited several times. The cave system is full of twisty passages, narrow passages and wider chambers, rough terrain, elevation changes, and so on. Very much like the maze dungeon I was defending in that post seven years back.

My family spent the 4th of July weekend visiting Jeju Island. Obviously the 4th isn't a holiday in South Korea, but I'm on summer vacation and we took the boys out of school for a couple days to avoid the vacation rush. For some stupid reason, South Korea has decided that the final week of July/first week of August is when EVERYONE in the nation should take their summer vacation. We got lucky that a typhoon that had been headed our way veered off to Kyushu. Got a little rain, but not too bad. 

Anyway, one of the things I was most interested in seeing was a place called Manjanggul Cave. It's a lava tube cave, created by a series of volcanic eruptions. 

The cave entrance (and my boys' heads)

And it's pretty much just one long snaking tunnel. It was wide, around 30-40' for most of the length. There was a stretch where it narrowed to I'd guess 10-12' for a bit, and a few places where rocks blocked parts of the main floor. The ceiling was also high, usually around 40' or so, I'd guess. The floor was rough and pitted, with pools of standing water common, but it was generally fairly easy to walk. When we got to the end of the tour area (after about 1km walk), the boys sped back to the entrance while my wife and I took our time. They say they didn't fall while doing this, and Stevie, my younger, is pretty careless. If he could hustle through the caves, it's not so bad.

As you can see, there are lights every 15' or so, staggered left and right, so each light on a side is around 30' apart. And they used colored lights for effect.

Not as claustrophobia-inducing as the Mark Twain Caves. Well, I say that as someone without claustrophobia. So I could be wrong on that. But it's much roomier than MTC. 

Anyway, this cave is just one big long snaking tunnel, like what might be left behind by a purple worm.

The map

No defense of dungeon mapping in this post, but thought I'd share the cool caves I "explored" on the trip. Aside from the cave, we did some fun stuff for the boys, like go-kart riding, a maze experience zone (that was a workout!), and did some archery! 

The boys had shot my old recurve bow when they were in the U.S. a few years ago, but I'd never had any proper instruction in archery. The guy at the archery range spoke perfect English (he'd lived in Singapore and California), and was a really nice guy. Since he wasn't busy, he let us shoot a few extra rounds for free, and gifted Stevie with some 8-bit glasses as a prize for hitting a bullseye in one of the rounds. He taught us a hybrid of traditional Korean and Olympic style archery, and we all did fairly well with it. Flynn, my older boy, did the best, but that's not surprising as he's always taken to any sort of sport quickly (unlike his old man).

The archery range is the one thing both boys agreed they'd like to return to the next time we visit Jeju.

Also, in ALMOST game-related stuff, the view from our hotel room included this place.

Unfortunately, I was correct in assuming it actually had nothing to do with D&D.

Not all that glitters is golden

So yesterday, I had a bit of free time between administering final tests so watched a few YouTube videos. First two were political/philosophical in nature. Then one of the suggested videos was about D&D, titled "The Problem with D&D Rangers" by someone called Pointy Hat. Obviously, it's 5E centric (that's what gets the views), but it did discuss how the class has evolved over the years and came up with an answer to the title question that I think is prescient for the 5E Ranger and why people say it sucks: 

Too many gamers have too many disparate ideas about what the ranger is and what its role in the game should be. 

Is the ranger a ranged combat specialist? 

Is the ranger a wilderness expert and guide? 

Is the ranger a guy who tames animals? 

Is the ranger a two-weapon fighting specialist?

Is the ranger some sort of half-fighter/half-druid?

Is the ranger a guy with a magic energy bow?

Is the ranger a specialist at combating one type of monster? 

Is the ranger an attempt to make one specific fictional character into a playable class?

Is the ranger some sort of elite guerilla fighter? 

Is the ranger something else?

OK, jokes aside, there are too many ideas about what a ranger is supposed to be, and the video rightly pointed out that the class sucks because it's trying to be all of them at once. 

In 1E, the class was heavily inspired by Aragorn in Lord of the Rings. 

In 2E, it got heavily influenced by Drizzt and that set the tone for many players in the 90s.

In 3E, it tried to be both Aragorn and Drizzt at the same time. It wasn't great. 

Not sure about 4E. Never got that into that edition, and never tried to play a ranger. I think they were all about sniper DPS though...

Anyway, 5E has tried to make a class that covers pretty much everything above (except the pickup...unless that's covered in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything or one of the other splat books?). As the video pointed out, there are several versions of the ranger for 5E, and multiple alternate abilities that can be taken to cover most of the archetypes above. But since the designers can't pick one lane, the class sorta sucks. And players coming to the class expecting one (or maybe two) of the above archetypes end up disappointed. 

Anyway, it's a long way around to pointing to MY latest update to my ranger class for TS&R Ruby [Classic (BX/BECMI style) D&D]. 

My revised version hews somewhat closely to the 1E class in inspiration, but may be a bit more like the 3E or 5E classes in mechanics. 

But what it has that other previous ranger classes lack are some bonuses to the actual game rules related to wilderness exploration. 

Classic D&D has wilderness rules for moving through different types of terrain (speed reductions), rules for getting lost, rules for hunting/foraging, and rules for evading encounters. These are actual rules systems, not just "roll a survival check" or some bullshit like that. 

My ranger starts out based on the Fighter (attacks increase every 3 levels, Fighter saving throws, d10 hit die). They start out with Dwarf class XP requirements (2200xp to level 2) but that diverges a bit at higher levels. They can use any weapon, and armor up to chain mail/lamellar, plus shields. 

Among their special abilities, they can Sweep (1 attack per HD against 1HD or lower opponents) and gain extra attacks at higher level like Fighters. At 8th level, it's 2 attacks per round when not using Sweep. At 12th level, they gain a 3rd attack but only if using ranged weapons (Fighters get a 3rd attack with any weapon at this level).

They can cast a limited number of Druid spells, starting at 2nd level, and getting up to 4th level spells. They can select from the entire Druid spell list. They just don't get as many spells and never get 5th or higher level spells.

Finally, the abilities that are unique to the ranger: 

Rangers are only surprised on a 1/d6. If the party is surprised on a higher roll, rangers get to act when everyone else is surprised. 

Rangers add +10% to the chance to evade encounters in the wilderness (max 90%). 

Parties with a Ranger become lost only on a 1/d6 regardless of terrain type. [A nice combat bonus available any time, and two abilities that interact with the wilderness exploration rules! Useful, but not overpowered.]

Rangers gain a +2 bonus to hit, and add their level to damage, when fighting goblinoids or giants [I considered 2E style "select your favored enemy" but really, that's one of the things that makes rangers suck if that type of monster rarely appears. Most games will have kobolds, orcs, goblins at low levels, more of these at mid levels plus ogres, bugbears, trolls, and at medium-high to high levels lots and lots of the below plus plenty of giants and giant-kin. So the ability is very likely to remain relevant in the typical campaign. DMs can switch this up if they have a special campaign world without lots of goblinoids or giants.]

Rangers gain animal companions at 4th level. They get a number of normal or giant animals equal to their level. So you could have one hefty animal like a bear or ape as your combat buddy, a growing pack of wolves, or a variety of creatures like those of Dar the Beastmaster, each with its own purpose (scout, mount, thief, guardian). If slain, they can be replaced after one game month.

Finally, at Name level, if they build a stronghold, they attract some mercenaries like a fighter, and some lower level ranger apprentices, and may also, at the DM's discretion, attract monster retainers of similar alignment. 

I've play-tested all of the features of the class except the animal companion rules (new) and the higher level monster retainer rules (no one's gotten that high level yet). Everything else seems to work. The ranger is different from the Fighter. They don't overshadow them. And since I no longer have a Barbarian/Berserker class, Rangers get to shine in the wilds. In dungeons, they still have enough useful features to make them valuable.  

Oh, and my recent TS&R revisions use BX/BECMI level caps for demi-humans of 8, 10, or 12 (I previously had limits more like 1E, with some as low as 5th or 6th level, but decided those are too low). Humans have no limit (although my rules only go to 15th). Elves and half-orcs can go to level 8 as Rangers. Halflings can go to level 10. Other races don't get to be rangers.  

So, my Ranger class is still a bit of a mixed bag. Fighter abilities. Druid spells. Wilderness bonuses. Favored enemy. Animal companions. But I think, at least, it's a bit more consistent than the 5E Ranger class. At the core, it's the wilderness survival guy. Everything else flows from that. No need for special dual-wielding rules, or spells for magic arrows, or selecting one favored terrain or favored enemy type that may be super useful occasionally and worthless the rest of the time.

Archetypes on my Mind

Character classes perform several functions in D&D. First of all, they provide some information to the players about what the game is about, and what sorts of characters fit in the milieu of the game. The archetypes of characters, in other words. Secondly, they provide game mechanical distinctions and roles for each player to engage in within the game world. They show players that there are trade-offs to be made in the game, as to be good at one thing necessitates being poor in some other area. Third, they facilitate easy (in theory anyway) character creation, as players don't need to micromanage every skill and ability of their PCs. This is a result of the first and second functions, but certain systems that load on carte blanche skill/feat/ability choices on top of a class system may not function this way in practice.

Game design, if we're working in that class-based paradigm, requires an understanding of these functions in order to make the game interesting mechanically as well as thematically interesting. 

In a game of near-future dystopian adventure, classes like Mercenary, Hacker, Driver, Smuggler, Criminal, and Mechanic might make sense. Adventures would likely include fights, computer problems, lots of crime, escapes, and equipment/vehicle repair. They're the archetypes (well, some of them) of the genre. And while there are other archetypes in the fiction we might use as inspiration, something like a tattoo artist or rave DJ doesn't really provide much to work within the likely game mechanics of the system (assuming it's adventure based, rather than social role play based). Your mercenary may well be a rave DJ by night, but that's just extra color, not necessarily something that needs its own character class. 

And no, I'm not about to try and steal JB's thunder by releasing a cyberpunk game while he's taking a break for Lent. Just using that as an example of potential classes in a non-medieval fantasy type game. 

And so, we get to D&D. It has some archetypes from source fiction, of course, but also some that have just sort of become D&Disms over the years. 

OD&D's LBBs had Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User as its archetypes. Well, also the Elf (Fighter and/or Magic-User), Dwarf (Fighter plus dungeoneering skills) and Halfling (Fighter plus a bit of wilderness skill).

But then supplements and later editions added in more archetypes. Thieves and Paladins, Druids and Assassins, Monks, Rangers, Bards, Psionic dudes, Illusionists, Barbarians, Cavaliers, Acrobats, Samurai, Shukenja, Sohei, Kensei, Ninja, Wu Jen, Knights of Solamnia, another simpler Bard, specialist Priests and Mages, Sorcerers, Warlords, Warlocks, Artificers, and on and on and on!

And of course, multiclassing and dual classing rules allow for mixes of the archetypes. 

Most of you know all this already, but I wanted to get it down because what follows stems from this. 

What exactly are the appropriate archetypes for a game to feel like D&D? Is it the bare minimum from OD&D of Cleric/Fighter/Magic-User? Is it those three plus the Thief? Is it Fighter/Thief/Magic-User as a few people have suggested? Just Fighters and Magic-Users, all the rest is fluff?

Or do we need a bit more to get the D&D feel? This is where I wonder what classes are in D&D simply because they're expected to be in D&D. Paladins and Rangers and Druids, for example. Obviously, we can have D&D without them. I grew up mostly playing BECMI, which only allowed druids and paladins/avengers once characters got to 9th level (if you played by the book), and the closest thing to a ranger was the Halfling class with its bonus to ranged attacks and 1-9/d10 ability to hide in the wilderness. 

There's something about the AD&D class set-ups, whether it's 1E with the Assassin and Illusionist, or 2E with its simple Bard class, that just feels right to me, even though most of my early years I played without. And of course for younger players who started with WotC editions, a game without Barbarians and Sorcerers as standard might feel a bit strange. Does the "savage warrior" archetype need to be there, either for fidelity to the source material (i.e. Conan), or because it fulfills a needed game mechanical slot (combat plus wilderness skill)? Or is "savage" just something descriptive to tack on to the Fighter, like a Mercenary rave DJ in my cyberpunk example above?

So, I'd like to run a little informal poll here. In the comments, please tell me: 

1. What are the bare minimum archetypes needed for D&D in your opinion?

2. What are the archetypes that give you the "D&D feel" and should be included beyond the bare minimum, if any? 

3. What archetypes, if any, break that "D&D feel" for you?

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.

Vanilla vs Artpunk?

It is a paradox at the very heart of fantasy fiction that, unless there is a consistent and convincing (read "realistic") setting for the characters and their actions, the story may well drift apart in flights of unbridled fancy. In order for the elements of fantasy to succeed, they must be grounded in a recognizable world inhabited by characters and creatures whose attributes and abilities are carefully delineated. For example, when Conan confronts an unnatural monster, the only valid way you're going to have hackles raised  on the audience's collective neck is if your  hero is vulnerable, his situation believably desperate, and the monster so real you can smell him coming! It's not just a willing suspension of disbelief we're talking about but an actual embrace of the fantastic images as true for the span of the tale.

[emphasis in original]

--Alan Zelentz, forward to Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian Vol. 1 No. 1 (Marvel, Thomas/Windsor-Smith)

A small paradigm shift

 This isn't an original idea of mine, I'm sure I read it on someone else's blog years ago. I have no idea whose blog I read it on, so I can't give credit, but I'll at least admit up front it's not something original. 

I've been reading Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. Over the weekend I read the chapter on game balance. It got me thinking of several things, but this was one that especially stuck in my head. 

In OD&D, the only real reward for high ability scores was a bonus to XP, that represented the aptness of a high ability score towards the chosen class. Then supplements and later editions started adding other bonuses for high ability scores. Yet, even though there were now other bonuses of high ability scores, the XP bonuses have remained, at least through 1E and BECMI. I don't have the books handy to check if they were still in 2E and don't remember off hand. They were definitely absent from 3E forward. 

Strength gives bonuses to hit and damage in melee, and to feats of strength like opening doors, bend bars/lift gates. The specifics and numbers vary, but Fighters get a bonus to their main function in added effectiveness, AND faster progression. 

Intelligence gives bonus languages, and in some editions additional spell power (more spells learnable, greater chance to learn a spell, etc.). And for Magic-Users, also faster progression.

Wisdom gives a bonus to saves vs spells, and in certain editions bonus spells to Clerics. And Clerics also then benefit from faster progression. 

Dexterity gives bonuses to ranged combat, AC, sometimes initiative, and in some editions bonuses to Thief skills. And Thieves of course get the bonus to progression.

But then, if we're playing in an edition that rewards high ability scores in this way, especially in editions like AD&D 1E that give more benefits for high scores, playing a character with average ability scores is a double whammy. You're less effective at your class's niche, and you progress more slowly. 

What if that was changed? What if the 10% bonus to XP was for playing a character with AVERAGE prime requisite? 

This small change would shake up a lot. It would add a new type of choice to character creation, especially when rolling for ability scores down the line. If you really want to play a certain class but don't roll high stats in that Prime Requisite, instead of point shifting, you would have some incentive to still play that class. 

By the way, I did consider the effects of giving a 5% bonus for an average PR, and 10% bonus for a below average score, but I think that would be taking it a bit too far. I still think character classes should play to type somewhat. A weak fighter or a dumb MU should not be seen as a good choice. But a choice between an average Strength high Intelligence Fighter who isn't quite as optimal in combat but levels a little faster or a typical Magic User with plenty of languages and spells in the spellbook but with standard progression is much more interesting. 

I haven't decided to try and implement this into my games yet. Since I run Classic D&D, there aren't as many bonuses for high scores, so this might only be a balancing option for Fighters (and demi human classes), with it giving too much advantage to the other classes to play a character with an average score over a high one. But it's an interesting idea to toy around with.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) Season 1 Thoughts

 I didn't call this a review on purpose, as I won't be touching on many things that I would in an actual review. So more just thoughts on the first season of the show, which I finished yesterday. 

First of all, one reason I avoided it for so long is that the 3D CGI animation thing often bothers me. It's not something I can really explain fully. It doesn't always. Shrek movies are fine. Incredibles? Great! But things that I originally saw in live action (like Star Wars) or traditional 2D animation (like Mickey Mouse cartoons) when translated to 3D CGI are just... hard to get into. For the first case, it could be uncanny valley reaction. But for the second, I don't know. I'm just becoming an old fuddy-duddy, I guess, as I approach my late 40's. 

As I watched this first season, some episodes bothered me more than others, but the more I watched, the more used to it I got. 

As for the show itself, it's great for fleshing out the Star Wars galaxy. Very useful to me as I plan the next adventure for my d6 Star Wars game. It's giving me some ideas for sure. There are some odd things about the show, though, and I don't mean that it's too heavily focused on Anakin and Obi-Wan always being in the most important actions. The first episode (maybe the pilot?) made it seem like this was going to be an anthology style show, jumping around the galaxy showing us different Jedi or other important characters in different systems. But only a few episodes were like that. Pretty much it's the Obi & Anni show. OK, I can live with that. 

Next, man, the Jedi and Clone army are ridiculously horrible at war. The first multi-episode arc is about the Separatists' "secret weapon" which is just a big ion cannon. And no one in the Republic stops to think, "Hey, we're fighting droids, maybe we should build one of those! Or at least issue ion rifles to our clones instead of traditional blasters!" Sure, we can hand-wave that way as Palpatine purposefully using substandard troops to play both sides off the other and make the war last longer, but no one thinks of that? They have "droid popper" ion grenades, so why not more weapons that can take out their enemies more easily? 

The way the episodes begin is interesting, too. Since there are some stand-alone episodes and some small arcs, and they all begin with a recap, it can get confusing at times. Sometimes it's just setting up a new story (single ep or arc) and sometimes it's recapping the previous events in the arc. And I often went back to check the episode before the one I was watching to see if I had skipped one by mistake when it was a stand-alone or new arc. I was watching these during my lunch breaks and free afternoon time the past few weeks, so it could be easy to forget which episodes I'd watched already. I like that they do the intros, setting up each episode, as it allows for more casual viewing, even of the episodes that make up a minor arc. 

Finally, it's nice to see some of these characters I've heard/read about for years. Especially, I got my son a LEGO Star Wars sticker book years ago, and it has all kinds of characters I'd never heard of before that, like Kad Bane and Assaj Ventress. 

I will start in on Season 2 during my lunch break today.

This is the way.

 My d6 Star Wars campaign has floundered. Not from lack of interest. I enjoy running it, and my group enjoys playing it. It's just I don't have that much free time these days. It seems like just keeping up with the games I play in, and running West Marches (which has enough prepped material to run for quite a long time still, as long as the players don't go too far in one direction!) is all I can handle right now. 

But, The Mandalorian Season 2 debuts next week. Well, at the end of next week, so it's closer to 2 weeks away than one, but who's counting? (I am.) 

Hopefully, watching that with the boys will rekindle my desire to run some games set long ago in a galaxy far, far away.

New Reading Material

 Got a package from Amazon yesterday. 

Reading up on game design theory, motivation, and role play game history to build up some background knowledge to start some studies on language learning through RPGs. Hoping to get a group of my students to try out some RPGs, which I can monitor and interview them about, and write up some case studies and action research papers. 

So this is a research expense.  And they should just be interesting to read on their own.

Some days (most days) I really love my job.

A small bonus

 By switching from only thinking of man-to-man and fantasy table combat in Chainmail arena, I've opened up conceptually to a hopefully cool idea. I'd read that Gygax thought fantasy rules should only be paired with man-to-man, but several examples of the game in play, as well as many notes in the fantasy supplement, suggest using fantasy creatures in mass combat. 

The mass combat rules will probably speed up games. Since I plan to play these play-by-post, that will help. Faster is always better in PbP. 

Also, with each mook-type unit representing a troop of 20 (or so) combatants, it allows each to be flavored as such. I immediately thought of Magic: The Gathering, where usually cards for weak monsters represent squads. Like the classic Mon's Goblin Raiders or the Orcs of the Iron Claw. Yes, there are some individual weaker monsters, but I like the idea of players not recruiting 20 generic "light foot" or whatever. They have to recruit Atalanta's Amazon Skirmishers. 

 And I plan to fully take advantage of pop culture/fantasy media/D&D iconic characters for heroes, antiheroes, superheroes, superantiheroes, and wizards of all stripes. Conan, Elric, Simon Belmont, Warduke, Strahd, Merlin, Circe, Melisandre, Madmartigan, and so on. Makes sense to also have some flavor for the squads of troops. 

No Humanoids Campaign

Yes, I've still got WotC's changes to humanoid creatures on the mind.

And no, this is definitely not a novel concept, I even considered doing it years ago just as a way to make a game that felt more mythological and less like Tolkien or his many fantasy fiction descendants (Wheel of Time, Shanarra, etc).

I'd like to one day run a campaign with no humanoid monsters. No goblinoids, orcs, gnolls, lizard men, etc. Just get rid of all of them. No demi-humans, either. Let's get rid of the bandits, pirates, brigands, etc. while we're at it.

All the PCs would be human. All the monsters would be normal or giant animals, slimes and oozes, or non-tribal monsters. There would still be intelligent monsters, but any intelligent monsters encountered would not be organized bands larger than family units.

It would be a different feel for a campaign, and would make some classes (my homebrew Berserker [Barbarian] class, the AD&D Ranger) less than optimal. So maybe stick to the BX/BECMI classes.

Looking at Basic (Mentzer) that would leave us with:

Giant Ant, White Ape, Rock Baboon, Bats -normal, giant/vampire, Bears - black, grizzly, polar, cave, Giant Bee, Giant Beetle - fire, tiger, oil, Boar, Carrion Crawler, Great Cat - mountain lion, panther, lion, tiger, sabre-tooth tiger, Giant Centipede, Doppleganger, Dragon - white, black, green, blue, red, gold, Giant Ferret, Gargoyle, Gelatinous Cube, Ghoul, Gray Ooze, Green Slime, Harpy, Living Statue - crystal, iron, rock, Giant Lizard - gecko, draco, horned chameleon, tuatara, Giant Locust, [Lycanthropes -- keep them in or not? Hmm...], Medusa, Minotaur, Mule, Ochre Jelly, [Ogre -- again, keep or not?], Owl Bear, Rat - normal, giant, Robber Fly, Rust Monster, Shadow, Giant Shrew, Shrieker, Skeleton, Snake - spitting cobra, giant racer, pit viper, sea snake, giant rattler, rock python, Giant Spider - crab, black widow, tarantella, Stirge, Wight, Yellow Mold, Wolf - normal, dire, Zombie.

That's a fair amount. Adding in Expert, we get:

Animal Herd, Basilisk, Black Pudding, Blink Dog, Caecillia, Camel, Chimera, Cockatrice, Giant Crab, Crocodile - normal, large, giant, Cyclops, [Devil Swine if Lycanthropes are in], Displacer Beast, Djinni, Dryad, Efreeti, Elemental, Elephant - normal, prehistoric, Giant Fish - bass, rockfish, sturgeon, Giant - hill, stone, frost, fire, cloud, storm, Golem - wood, bone, amber, bronze, Gorgon, Griffon, Hellhound, Hippogriff, Horse - riding, war, draft, Hydra, Insect Swarm, Invisible Stalker, Giant Leech, Manticore, Mummy, Nixie, Pegasus, Pterodactyl - normal, pteranodon, Purple Worm, Rhagodessa, Roc - small, large, giant, Salamander - flame, frost, Giant Scorpion, Spectre, Water Termite - swamp, fresh water, salt water, Giant Toad, Treant, Triceratops, Troll, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Unicorn, Vampire, Wraith, Wyvern.

That's a good amount of monsters. And of course, there are the Companion/Masters sets, and AD&D Monster Manual to get more from. Easily possible to run a campaign this way.