23 Stoopid Answers to 23 Sensible Questions

(JOESKY Tax content at bottom of post for those who don't fancy reading a bunch of egoblogging wordswordswords.)

In accordance with my informal policy of leaving no passing bandwagon unmolested, and because I need to type something to get my fingers limbered up, I hereby present my answers in brief to the open interview questionnaire posed by that odd arty bloke with the eyebrow-raising resume. Thus spaketh the Zak:

Repost and answer. Or, if you don't have a blog, answer in the comments. Or be a big rebel and do neither.

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?
I don't invent. I steal, file off the serial numbers, and exploit to the hilt. Original ideas are things that happen to other people.
I am quietly pleased with the Chambers of Devouring Night though. I've had to institute a Jeff-style XPloration bonus just to get people to set foot in them, the cowards.

2. When was the last time you GMed?

Sunday 22th Jan. GCX playtest. I learned many valuable lessons in 'theory != practise' and 'the wastepaper basket is your best friend' that day.

"Why did you think I meant critique when I said critique? Don't you know that's code for 'massage my ego subcreature'?"

3. When was the last time you played?

An RPG? September 2011.
Any fantasy game? Sunday 29th Jan.

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.

Spelljammer Ulysses 31 using a Terminal Space/Mazes+Minotaurs mash-up system.

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

Scribble notes. Smile enigmatically. Roll dice for the noise they make.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

Wine gums or hard candy. I'm a bit of a stickler for no crumbly foods (and no glasses!) at the table. Children get food on their books, adults should not. Especially not my books. I will use a cigar trimmer to take fingers in payment!

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

Mentally draining, yes. Hell on the vocal chords, yes. Physically exhausting, no.

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?

Pass. It's been entirely too long since I've played in a truly memorable game. We had fun a lot of fun with moral dilemmas in an L5R game a few years back...

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

Everything turns into Nextwave or Metalocalypse in the grubby hands of my players. Everything. Nothing is sacred; everything is there to be mocked, then stolen or destroyed.

10. What do you do with goblins?

Nothing! Any rumours you have heard to the contrary are scurrilous calumnies on my good character. Srsly? Generally they turn into a vicious version of Froud's "Labyrinth" goblins, or possibly L5R's bakemono: funny right up until their clownish antics turn nasty and start downing PCs.

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?

A lot of the gadgets and gimmicks from issues 1-24 of "Transmetropolitan" (yes, people still read that).

12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?

In-game: Possibly the First Annual Vaults Spontaneous Mook Convention. You know the situation, it was that one time that *every* WM roll came up a 1 (memo to self: check Eye of Sauron d6 for excessive evilness). Halfway through a pretty standard fight more creatures turned up.
"Uh oh!"
The fight continued. Check for racket: more monsters.
"Fight on!"
Check again (#=1) And more...
(#=1) and more...
(#=1) and more...
Eventually the party clear the area, settle down to bind their wounds and loot the dead. I tick off the turn and note it's time for another WM check. *clatter, clatter* "Hey, guess what lads..."
"Don't care. Routing. Dump the swag. Leave the dying. Devil take the hindmost!"
They hared it back to the surface like rats out of a drainpipe. First time I've used the pursuit rules in a while...

Meta/Tabletalk: The Manifestation of the OmniFred. It was deemed by the usual decision-making process (hubbub and half-heard drunken inferences) that individuality was merely an illusion, and that all people and objects were actually aspects of Fred. Our apprehension of the inherent Fredness of all things lasted the rest of the evening. It got very weird. Thankfully no pianos required shifting.

13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?

Chaosium/GW "Stormbringer". I was looking at it coz that's what was propped on my printer.

14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?

John f***ing Blanche and his scritchy, mad, fever-dream art.

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?

No. Only my arousal.

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)

It was a TSR adventure we played back in the day. I vaguely remember it being some "But thou must..." Dragonlance railroad. The players - trained in the school of hard knocks (and sly shankings) that is WFRP - said "screw the plot" and instead set about harvesting wandering monsters for their skin and organ resale value (weasel fur, fire beetle glowpods, Vilstrak gullet gems, etc). Fine by me; I'd only read a couple of pages ahead anyway. IIRC it all went TPK when they decided to raid a Roc's nest to steal the eggs.

And that is why you do not play Dragonlance ever! after immersing yourself in wildlife documentaries for an extended period.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?

Semi-circle of sofas with a large low table in the middle. Side table for refreshments. Good lighting. Instrumental background music turned low. No TV. Phones set to silent/emergency only, thank you.

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?

K.A.Pendragon and HoL. One is a serious-minded evocation of myth and literature; other is like someone made the inside of my nasty bogmonkey head into a game.

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?

Terry Gilliam films, HMHB, 2000AD, Cinnabar, Gear World

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?
People who don't take themselves too seriously. We're adults playing Lets Pretend with our toy soldiers FFS! Punctuality (the courtesy of princes), attention to the matter at hand, and not being a rowdy attention hog are also appreciated. People bothering to learn the rules seems to be a hopeless pipe dream though...

21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?

My fear of centipedes.  Although I've yet to introduce my players to the recurring nightmare of having one hatch out through your eye...

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?

The Concordance of Riskail by Netherwerks - the only role-playing product transmitted back to the Toxic Era by a surrealism-loving insectile hivemind. I would buy it SO HARD! And so would all other right-thinking people.

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?

Lisa (Mrs Chris). Her geekery is Errol Flynn films, baking and arts-&-crafts, she's only ever played Heroquest, and she doesn't read extruded genre product. She understands the appeal of creating emergent improvised adventure stories, but has no desire to partake. All this - combined with a patient, understanding nature and a dry sense of humour - makes her a fantastic 'outside the bubble' sounding board for ideas.

-----

JOESKY TAX:

Spell: Deliquescent Transition (Wiz2)
Caster's body, clothing and held items melt into a varicoloured fleshy ooze. In this form the caster may squeeze through any non-air/watertight space at 1/2 normal speed. Yes, they can climb walls and ventilation pipes. 1 Round to dissolve flesh, 1 round to travel, 1 to reform. While in ooze form caster is AC 9[10], no Dex bonus.
Additional complication: encountered dungeon oozes think the caster has a purty mouth.

(yeah, like a potion of gaseous form, only less so.)

How Much is a Dovecote Anyway?

I've recently noticed a certain desire to play house among my D&D players.

No, I don't mean they want to emulate the antics of the infamous misanthropic doctor, or that they want to prod at one another in a NSFW way (at least, no more so than normal). But rather that, in a game predicated on playing out a chaos-fucked version of the gangsta aesthetic (to whit: "cap doodz: gain bling, hoes* and respect."), my players seem really keen on nest building.

* Quite why rappers regard gardening tools with such ardour is beyond me.

It starts small, with hirelings, henchmen and various pets. Then, as comfort level with the game world (such as it is) and available party cash increase, my players tend to start looking to put down roots fast and early. As in 'settling down by 4th level' early.

They're like rivers. Sure, they'll merrily babble through the glens, crash over the rapids, or throw themselves off the precipice if that's what's required by circumstances. But the moment the pressure comes off they slow down, drop their luggage everywhere, and start to think the place would look prettier with a water meadow over here, some alluvium there, a reed bed along the margins, an ox bow lake over yonder...

I don't recall people wanting to play Barbie Dollhouse Adventures D&D (I thought of it first Hasbro!) quite this much in my/our younger days. Maybe it's because we have a number of gurlz (chiz, chiz) in the group; or maybe it's because in our 20s-early 30s we're all slowly turning into fat and happy clichés of self-satisfied bourgeois. Whatever the reason, there's suddenly a desire to have a little pied a terre within the game.

"Gimme!"

I cite pulp heroic precedent for perpetual (skint) peripatetism, link to Al's S&S Greyhawk posts, sink their barge to keep them lean and hungry, and even wave the carousing tables in their faces. But my piteous, nasal, Cartman-like whinings of "But you can't settle down: it's not genre appropriate." have begun to sound pitiful and strained even to my own ears. Obviously people want to lavish care and attention on their particular little personal corner of our 'shared world'.

It's probably entirely my own fault for making the 'soap opera with ultraviolence' of "Deadwood" such a touchstone of the setting. That brings in - as a less than subtle subtext - the whole Western trope of settlement, civilisation and rising gentility. Which is all well and good, until people become more interested in playing Settlers than D&D.

But I think the single worst thing I ever did was let people read the (adapted to D&D) master price list from the K.A.Pendragon RPG.

Player: What's By-zan-ti-ney garb?
Me: *sighs and hands over History of Costume book*
Player: Oooh, pretty.
-----
Player: Can I buy a castle?
Me: When you're 9th level.
Player: What about a (*squint*) manor house? I have the cash, and an entourage to house, and you said the area was looking for people to settle...
Me: Ok, ok.
Player: Now, these tapestries...

It's like watching Clint Eastwood's laconic Man With No Name morph into home improvement fetishist Steve Thomas before your eyes. I'm thinking of burying the Pendragon Book of the Manor under 6' of concrete for the duration. They haven't noticed it yet, but I fear what will become of our sessions if they ever do. I'm not quite ready to have the game transformed entirely into some social media site farming sim.

Greyhawking the place? (in the "pillage the décor for resale" sense) The nearest we've had to that traditional dungeon crawler modus operandi is a particular form of magpie-ism that I call Beckfording. Unlike the traditional "Get the crowbars. It's all coming with us!" form of tomb robbing, Beckfording is where people seriously plot how to unseat that one particular fresco/mosaic/statue and transport it back home. Not for resale value; but simply because it'll look good in their house.

"Yeah, that Green Devil Face we hauled out of the Tomb of Horrors really ties the room together..."

Seeing my players try to get a favourite fresco (a cycling illusion of a pastoral scene) off a wall in one piece is possibly the hardest I've ever seen them work at any form of tactical/logistical planning! Forget searching for secret doors and treasure, they wanted this magic mural. I actually had a bit of a hint of a smidgeon of a twinge of guilt when I invoked the old "magic fades if removed from the room" rule and left them with only a few crumbling fragments of their prize. Had to throw a silly-dense combination of trap rooms and wandering monsters at them just to make the grizzling stop. :/

(grog hivemind query: What exactly is an appropriate basis for an Art Conservation check in B/X D&D anyway?)

So D&D as Grand Tour with added violence. Anyone else experienced it?

Grumbling and random links aside the K.A.Pendragon RPG is probably good (nay, excellent) fodder for a pre-Name level land-holding game of D&D. Even a fighter of 4th level will be a person of note in his local area, having pumped ~6,000gp into the economy (assuming 3/4 of his XP comes from loot) in the time it took him to rise that far. And all but the most insanely dedicated monster-slaying knight errants settle down eventually...

Re: the Pendragon price list. I just treat 'd' as 'gp'. Weapons aside, the price approximations are generally usable.

Unintentional Frugal Gaming

Dave the Frugal Gamer set a challenge for these financially straitened times early last year. To whit:

pay less, play more, and try new games.

I'd like to take a moment to see how I stack up as a frugal gamer. Please indulge me (or leave abuse in the comments).

Pay Less
Switching from high production value, high street games (WOTC 3E, WFRP) to the less glossy, but often more useful, hobbyist products of the OSR has definitely shifted the spend/play value ratio in favour of play. As for price, totting it all up (books, pdfs, minis and plastic monsters) I come out with a grand total spent on gaming for the period Jan-Dec 2009 of:

£81 (and change).

£81?! That's chicken feed! It works out at about £6-7 a month (a bit less than the price of a paperback or DVD here in the UK). To put that into a more hobby-specific perspective:

• a Games Worshop starter army box is £50 retail,
• the D&D 4E Core rules set is £75-80 (although WOTC's new Essential D&D Essential Starter Essential Series releases might lower the ticket point to play in their particular walled garden a little),
• the new Space Hulk and FFG's WFRP(INO) are £75 and ~£100 respectively.

Of course, thanks to the generosity of the grognosphere I did get for free a lot of stuff that, by rights, people could fairly have charged for. But hey, their insufficiently lauded generosity* is my gain. I'm too busy filling my boots to look the gift horse in the mouth. ;)

Play More
We certainly seem to be. Games are still only weekly, but we're getting a lot more done in the few hours we can steal from the world of tedious grown up concerns.

The various labour-saving devices created or rescued from obscurity by the efforts of the myrmidons of the OSR (sandbox hexcrawls, one page dungeons, random tables, the aforementioned buckets of good free content) have allowed me to DM smarter, faster, and with less wear-and-tear on the old grey matter. Cheers lads!

Of course the single biggest liberator of my time was switching my primary game from the multi-volume monster that was D&D 3E to the quick-and-easy joy that is Labyrinth Lord. Swapping a version of D&D which utilised several hundred pages of rules for one that uses a single 128 page book was, in retrospect, a no-brainer decision. I've become quite the evangelical little bore about it. I wouldn't go back, not for all the lotus in Stygia!

Cost per hour of play? £81 (the sunk costs of the 20 year of gaming stuff I have lying about isn't being counted here) divided by 4 hours of serious play/week for 50 weeks = 40p/hour. Pretty frugal, non?

Try New Games
Being a contrarian stick-in-the-mud by habit and preference I've chosen to try old ones. That said, I have developed a new appreciation for a couple of 'old flame' games.

I've recently nabbed a copy of coopdevil's Axles and Alloys revival playtest, and might start mucking about gluing guns to corgi/matchbox toys in the near future. What can I say? My recent re-reading of GW's old Dark Future novels has been fun, and Gorkamorka ("Mad Max" -Aussies +Orks) is an old fave in our circles. It's the right game at the right time.
Anticipated cost: £5 for toy cars + whatever a sprue of GW weapons is going for these days.

I've also found an old toy soldiers vs dinosaurs mini-game (*GRAR! dakka-dakka-dakka ARGH!*) in an old issue of Dragon magazine that simply /begs/ to be played on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Anticipated cost: about £3 for a couple of packets of dinosaurs and army men.

Oh, and we have to start playing Mordheim again! Anticipated cost: the price of printing gang sheets and tables. The minis, terrain and suchlike were paid for years ago.

-----

* People who should be charging for their stuff. Just off the top of my head I can think of:

• the pre-release version of Doug Easterley's Athanor,
• Greyhawk Grognard's ongoing Castle of the Mad Archmage project,
• Amityville Mike Curtis' pre-publication versions of Stonehell and the dungeon/city alphabets,
• Sham's What Price Glory and OD&D Cover-to-cover insights,
• Beyond The Black Gate Al's dungeontastic musings,
• kellri's map geomorphs and CDD#1-4 quick reference guides,
• dysonlogos' geomorph-a-day output and excellent BD&D/LL character sheets,
• Taichara's exquisitely described and innovative BECMI monsters and items

(apologies to the sundry deserving names omitted. The fault is in my poor memory, not in your excellent work)

Oh, and WOTC. I'd have been happy to carry on giving you money for old rope (the content of your pdf back catalogue), but you decided my money was no good. So yeah:

The Rake's Progress (gamer edit)

Nick Bielik, the lord of Castle Dragonscar commands that we reveal our gaming histories. Squishy-minded and prone to drone-like following as I am ("Will minion for food. Can provide own cult robe"), who am I to argue?

~ = magazine/comic
* = board/table top game
# = books
-- = related event

Primary School
Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harryhausen movies and fantasy films
# Greek and Norse myth, Arthuriana
# The Hobbit

Secondary School/Sixth Form
# Lord of the Rings
~ 2000AD comic (UK)
Fighting Fantasy
Lone Wolf
# Michael Moorcock
* Heroquest
* Space Hulk
Mentzer Basic D&D
~ White Dwarf (UK)
Dragon Warriors
AD&D1-2E (any setting; we weren't picky)
~ Dragon magazine
* GW Warhammer (FB/40K/Epic) + Dark Future
TNMT/Heroes Unlimited
MERP
WFRP
~ Game Master magazine (UK)
Elric, Runequest
WH40K Rogue Trader roleplay homebrew
~ Arcane magazine (UK)
Megatraveller
Rolemaster

University
Amazing Engine (TSR generic system - Bughunters, Once and Future King, etc.)
GURPS
-- discover internet --
Cyberpunk
Call of Cthulhu
* GW Necromunda
Vampire
Shadowrun

World of Work
-- LARPing --
Pendragon
Ars Magica
* GW Mordheim/Warmaster
* DBA
Fading Suns (longest campaign)
LUGTrek
Dune
D&D 3.5
WFRP 2E (like tonsil hockey with an old flame: familiar, but still exciting)
D&D 3.5 + Tome Series
-- discover grogblogs --
Castles & Crusades (briefly)
Labyrinth Lord

I am such an archetypal British gamer it's not even worth joking about it. I came up during the 80s NWOBCF (New Wave of British Cynical Fantasy), and it's marked me indelibly.

My Appendix N (let me show you them...)

Zachary The First over at RPG Blog II has thrown down the gauntlet and asked a bunch of bibliomane bloggers what their personal version of the Blessed St. Gary's infamous, and much-debated, Appendix N would be. Caught between the blogger herd instinct and my reflexive nerdish need to categorize, what else could I do but offer my 2cp-worth?

What follows is my - partial and prone to emendation - homage to what I like to think of as "Appendix N: Inspirational And Instructive Reading in High Fantasy, Sword-and-Sorcery, Sword-and-Planet, and Other Esoterica"

Fantasy/Horror

Adams, Richard - Watership Down (and "Tales from..."), Shardik
Anderson, Poul - The Broken Sword
Barker, Clive - Books of Blood series
Dahl, Roald - omnia opera
Gemmell, David - omnia opera
Harrison, M. John - Viriconium stories
Hodgeson, William Hope - Carnacki stories
Howard, R. E. - Conan, Solomon Kane
Kay, Guy Gavriel - The Fionivar Tapestry
King, Stephan - omnia opera
Lewis, C. S. - Narnia stories
Leiber, Fritz - Swords against * series
Lord Dunsany - Pegana stories
Lovecraft, H. P. - Cthulhu Cycle stories
Lumley, Brian - Titus Crow/Dreamlands stories
Mieville, China - Bas Lag series
Moorcock, Michael - omnia opera
Newman Kim - his Warhammer novels (written as Jack Yeovil)
Peake, Mervyn - Gormenghast trilogy
Poe, E.A. - omnia opera
Pratchett, Terry - omnia opera
Tolkein, J.R.R. - omnia opera
Wagner, Karl Edward - Kane stories
White, W. H. - Once and Future King
Williams, Tad - Memory, Thorn and Sorrow trilogy

Harrison and Holt - The Hammer and the Cross trilogy
Weis and Hickman - Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends trilogies
The Maginobion, Arthuriana, Greek and Norse myth

Sci-Fi

Anderson, Poul - The High Crusade, Flandry of Terra
Asher, Neil - omnia opera
Ballard, J. G. - omnia opera
Baxter, Stephen - Xeelee sequence
Bear, Greg - Eon
Clarke, Arthur C. - 2001, Rondevous with Rama
Conan Doyle, Arthur - Professor Challenger stories
Herbert, Frank - Dune series, Eye, Helstrom's Hive
Heinlein, Robert - omnia opera
Lewis, C. S. - Silent Planet trilogy
Miller, Walter - A Canticle for Leibowitz
Saberhagan, Fred - Berserker series
Simmons, Dan - Hyperion Cantos
Verne, Jules - omnia opera
Wells, H. G. - omnia opera

Comics

Gaiman, Neil - omnia opera
Mills and O'Neill - Nemesis the Warlock series
Moore, Allen - omnia opera
Talbot, Bryan - The Adventures of Luther Arkwright

Art

Albrecht Durer
Hieronymous Bosch
Wayne Barlowe
Ursula Vernon
Keith Thompson

Honourable Mentions

Bengtson, Franz T. - The Longships
Cornwell, Bernard - Arthur trilogy, Stonehenge
London, Jack - Call of the Wild, White Fang

~ END ~

So, yeah. The usual suspects, plus some 80s Brit comics

(image yoinked from Neil Asher's series on Reader's Bookcases)

edit: art section added 11/05/09