Maybe I'm Addicted to Ascension Just a Little

I can't say Dominion isn't a good game. It is a good game, it's just not my cup of tea.
At Origins, I was introduced to Thunderstone, a card game that simulates the D&D experience (you go to town and buy equipment and hirelings, you go into the dungeon and fight monsters, you go back to town...). Although Thunderstone was just as much a deck-building game as Dominion, I liked it more than I liked Dominion. Part of that had to do with the way the mechanics worked, and part of it had to do with the theme. While I was there at Origins, there was a lot of buzz about Ascension, but I did my best to ignore it. I think my early addiction to collectible card games may have soured me on cards a little. I just dumped a worthless collection of Legend of the Five Rings cards at Gen Con last year--gave it to those guys who build the big card sculptures in the lobby. I'm also the guy who traded away his Black Lotus. You don't forget that.

It took until D&D XP this year when a "friend" introduced me to Ascension via the latest expansion, Storm of Souls, which can be played as a stand alone game. I liked it (and hey, I won!) and learned that I could download it and play it on my iPod. I did so.

Then followed the addiction. On the train. In the bathroom. In the kitchen, waiting for the coffee to brew. Lying in bed. I'd play Ascension anywhere and everywhere. Then, for my birthday, another "friend" gave me a physical copy of the game. I introduced my wife to the game, who soundly kicked my butt. She asked for a rematch today and kicked my butt again. So of course she likes it now, and supported my compulsive decision to go down to the local game store and pick up a copy of Storm of Souls. I dropped her off where she needed to go today, but on the way home, the compulsive completist in me brought me back by the game store where I picked up Return of the Fallen, the "middle" expansion I didn't own in print. Now my failure is complete.

I've been thinking about what I like about Ascension, and here's where it hits my particular tastes:

1. It's easy to learn: The rules are pretty basic. It's completely uncomplicated. You have a limited number of choices, but they are significant and meaningful choices in your deck-building strategy.

2. It's fast: Maybe it's fast because it's easy to learn. But you can play the physical game in about 20 minutes or so, and you can play the electronic version on the iPod/iPad in 10 minutes or less. Because it's both easy to learn and quick to play, it makes it off the shelf more often than not.

3. It's a competitive play with a noncompetitive theme: In a lot of card games, you're trying to screw the other player over. In Ascension, the theme subtly changes that paradigm. Sure, you're trying to win the game, but in the story of the game you're not actively waging war on the other player. You're assembling an army of champions to take on cultists, devil-worshipers, and other baddies so you can gain the highest amount of honor and be the one to fight/destroy the ultimate enemy. So you're competing against the other players, but in a weird way you're not fighting them. I don't know how that really changes things, but it sorta does change the feeling of it in a small yet significant way.

4. The art is beautiful: The cards look very cool. I'm still very taken by the physical cards, since I'm used to playing on my tiny iPod. Every time I play the game, I find myself oohing and ahhing over the cards. I love that the cards are suggestive of a story that they don't really tell you in full. You're left to imagine what this world is like, though (through the art direction) the cards give you a very specific feel for it. I remember this was something I liked about Magic in the early days.

5. One and done: Buy a set and you can play it two-player. No random boosters. You don't have to buy more. Somehow, I ended up buying both expansions, the iOS app, and the iOS expansion. Oh well. No regrets. It's a gorgeous game that my wife will play (asks to play). Can't ask for much more than that.

Steve's Storytelling Rambles:

As I look over the art on the Ascension cards, I'm inspired to dream on new worlds and monsters to explore in RPGs. Great fantasy and science-fiction art always makes me feel that way. Presently, I have too many campaigns running to even think about starting something new. But I'll stow this inspiration for a rainy day, get it out when it's time to make some magic.

If you're ever at a lack for ideas, I suggest checking out a library or book store and sorting through their books of visual art and photography. I can virtually promise you that within 10 minutes, you'll have had more ideas than you know what to do with. Sometimes we get stuck in the words, high concepts, and plot points. Other times we get caught in the same routine: fight some monsters, take their stuff, rinse and repeat. Try some art books in order to break that pattern. They work on a different side of your brain (the fun side!) and they'll push your ideas in unexpected directions.

One thing I like to do when setting up a new campaign arc is (and I think I've mentioned this before on this blog) create a movie trailer on paper. Modern movie trailers usually do a great job getting us excited for an upcoming film--even one that's bound to be crappy (Sucker Punch). I often lay back and let myself dream on the coolest images I'd like to see in that trailer. I don't have to have any idea what they mean--in fact, it's best if I don't. What we're looking for is the strong emotional connection to that image. That's where the soul of the idea is--the part you're passionate about, that will inspire the audience if you can figure out how to communicate it. At any rate, you write all of these images down, describing them in the way a movie trailer would.

Keep that "movie trailer" as a reference. In time, those abstract and exciting images will begin to make sense to you. They'll flesh themselves out before your eyes as the story progresses and you'll figure out what most of them mean. Some may be dead ends or smaller threads that won't be developed or will only receive a small reference in the course of the entire campaign. The point is that you do this and get yourself psyched for the campaign, expand your mind beyond what is immediately evident and obvious, work more on the level of image and emotion, since that's where your true center is. That's where your heart and spirit is, where anything original to you, anything unique to your expression and creativity comes from.

Murderous Ghosts, Zombie Cinema

The theme is not intentional, though for the past couple weeks I've been back playing indie games with the inestimable Rob Ryder.

I met Rob in summer 2011. He's one of those rare role-players who can adapt like a chameleon to any role, any game, and he has an exceptional sense of give and take.

A tangent:
If you were to ask me what I think the best quality in a player or a GM is, I think I'd say that a well developed sense of give and take is the penultimate goal a gamer should strive to achieve. We've all played games where a GM with little sense of give and take puts the players on the plot train and doesn't allow them to deviate from the tracks. We've all played games where a diva player makes the game about himself or herself or dominates the game with his or her character's agenda.


The best GMs are open to any avenue the players pursue. They're flexible and adaptable enough to follow the characters' leads and open up possibility to their whims. The best players are those who abandon their own "plot trains" and projected courses and choose to "yes and" whatever the other players, or the GM, throws out there. I have the very good fortune to play with just such players, and Rob is just such a player. 

Last week, Rob introduced me to a two-player RPG by D. Vincent Baker called Murderous Ghosts. It's something like a choose-your-own-adventure and something like a playing card game, but it's dominated by a shared narrative negotiation between the player and the emcee. The premise is that the player is someone who's trapped underground when he or she discovers evidence of some terrible violence which soon leads to, you guessed it, "murderous ghosts."

Our game was pretty dark. Rosco, an urban spelunker, discovered a hidden sub-basement beneath the remains of a decaying 19th century factory in old New York. He soon discovered the bones of multiple women and fetuses. As he put the story together, he learned that the foreman had raped and abused the women, then given them abortions in the sub-basement before murdering them (and in some cases mounting their heads on the wall of his office a la Sin City). Yep, pretty sick. I confess Rob is blameless for those particular details.

At one point in the game, I diverged from the rules to ask if Rosco ever had a girlfriend. I wanted to ask because I thought I'd mess with him in regard to the abortions (maybe he got her in trouble at one point). Rob came back with a story about how he'd never had the courage to ask a woman out. In the end, the foreman was the black mirror of Rosco. There was a theme running through the game about how Rosco had nearly fallen while spelunking once, and had come so close to plummeting into a bottomless darkness that would have meant his doom. Every time he looked into a ghost's eyes, he saw that darkness. When the foreman finally "killed" him, Rosco said, "You can't kill me. You're me." The way we narrated it, instead of dying, Rosco became what the foreman had been, victimizing one woman after the next and hiding the bodies, his soul a nihilistic, bottomless darkness like the eyes of the ghosts. We left it open to interpretation as to whether Rosco had ever actually seen any ghosts or not--the entire episode may have been the delusion of a lonely man snapping, going mad. Anyway, it was a fantastic (if disturbing) session, and a very cool intimate role-playing experience.

The next week, Rob brought over Zombie Cinema, a game where you play characters facing a zombie apocalypse. The characters essentially struggle against one another to escape, and most are going to get killed by the zombies. In our scenario, we decided (all six of us) that we were on the maiden voyage of the Titanic's sister ship in 1912 when the zombie outbreak happens (on board the ship). Our characters were the ship's (very religious) captain, the engineer, a trumpet player in the band, two rival scientists (one a crippled man who fought in the Spanish-American War, who was responsible for the original serum, and another who'd twisted it), and a middle class bureaucrat. In the end, the captain "won" by taking his own life (with an elephant gun) rather than letting the zombies eat him. The crippled scientist who had made the original serum was left when the mutant zombies swarmed him on the sinking ship. He injected himself with the serum and surrendered to his fate, calling the zombies his "children" before they got to him.

All in all, two very cool story-based games. Pretty disturbing and horrific, but absolutely awesome and fun to play. Thanks to Rob for introducing us to them!

Palace of the Silver Princess

In 1981, Jean Wells wrote an adventure for TSR called Palace of the Silver Princess. The original module was released with an orange cover; it was immediately recalled and all of its copies (TSR could find) were destroyed. Later in 1981, it was rewritten by Tom Moldvay and reissued with a green cover. The reasons for the recall are allegedly an issue with quality, playability, and objectionable art. You can read about it all in that link or in this one.

In my continuing quest to unearth the wisdom of old TSR modules, I considered running B3: Palace of the Silver Princess, since I was so impressed with it after buying it at D&D XP this year (green cover). For easy reference I opened a pdf of the module I had stored on my computer (Wizards of the Coast posted the module on their site several years ago, and although that link is dead, others have re-posted the original orange cover adventure). I'd since forgotten about the controversy surrounding the original module, so imagine my surprise when the adventure I was looking at bore so little resemblance to the one I'd just read!

I've taken the time to read through Jean Wells's original work over the past two days, and the experience has fairly blown my mind.

At first, I felt a little outraged. Jean's module begins with an exceptionally cool map and background with all sorts of interesting hooks for adventure, compelling NPCs, and mysteries to unravel. There's something to be said for the power of suggestion in a story, and Jean Wells's adventure sets the imagination in motion. The back section of the module is stocked with new monsters--there's even another level to the palace. Like B1: In Search of the Unknown, the original B3: Palace of the Silver Princess leaves several slots open for monsters, traps, and treasures for the DM to assign--but not to worry, since the back of the module contains a list of monsters, treasures, and traps to assign to those areas. This was an adventure designed to introduce DMs to the core ideas behind D&D, but it takes great strides ahead of B1: In Search of the Unknown and B2: Keep on the Borderlands. B3: Palace of the Silver Princess comes with a wealth of interesting story ideas far more compelling than its predecessors (in which the characters pretty much slice their way through orcs, kobolds, and other level 1 D&D monsters). The original Palace of the Silver Princess is ambitious in its invention. There are numerous new monsters, interesting characters, and strange locations, objects, and puzzles to fiddle with.

The green-cover version of the module, which included rewrites by Tom Moldvay, removes several of the very cool illustrations as well as the (imo) extremely cool mini-setting with all the great adventure hooks and mystique. It removes most of the new monsters in the adventure, and the additional maps. The green-cover version also adds an (imo) unnecessary choose-your-own-adventure style opening in which the party tries to figure out how to open the palace gate. Not terribly exciting. In many ways, the green-cover version waters down the innovative new ideas Jean Wells was pushing in her orange-cover original, and for that I'm very sad. On the other hand...

On the other hand, there are some things that the green-cover version does better than the orange-cover version. In Jean Wells's original, there's a real mystique about exactly what went down at the Palace of the Silver Princess all those years ago. The evidence is vague, and while I do very much believe in the power of suggestion--leading the imagination on so that the players and DM can make their own decisions about the story--I think there are things in the original that greatly benefited from the cohesion that Tom Moldvay's rewrite did for it. For instance, in the original version one of the rumors about the palace suggests that it was destroyed when the palace wizard accidentally mixed the wrong components for a spell (apparently this is a "true" rumor--but there's no other reference to it in the adventure, and that explanation is kind of, well, mundane...). There's a lot of mystery surrounding the princess, a warrior in blue and silver, and the red dragon he rides, but it wasn't evident to me how this all fit together (other than that the warrior married the princess). While the story elements are exceptionally cool, they also feel somewhat disjointed. For example, the ghosts of the princess and the warrior attack the characters at one point in the adventure, but it's not really clear why they do this, other than that they're guarding the princess's ruby; the mystique behind their fate seemed like it ought to add up to more than that.

Moldvay's version, however, tells a story of a malignant entity tied to the ruby, which cursed the place and even now tries to enter the world by escaping the dimension in which it has been entrapped. The princess and her warrior are victims of this powerful being, and the Protectors (a fey race mentioned in passing in the original) try to help the characters stop the spread of the evil and save the princess and her knight. So while Moldvay's version strips away some of the things that were the coolest about the adventure (and adds that questionable "how to open the gate" introduction), it also pulls some of the disparate elements of the adventure together and makes them more of a cohesive story.

If I were to run this adventure, I'd do it as a fusion between the two. I'd use Jean Wells's original maps, setting, and most of her encounters, and I'd apply the story cohesion that Moldvay introduced in the rewrite.

I'm sad we never saw any other adventures from Jean Wells. Palace of the Silver Princess is one of the most fondly remembered oldschool D&D adventures, and rightfully so. I think it was an adventure far ahead of its time, and the attempt to destroy the original was ridiculous. Maybe reprehensible. I learned that Jean Wells passed away a month ago. I hope she had some notion of how interesting and cool her work really was, although I suspect she was hardly given a chance to show what she could do.

It's probably not fair to declare it "sexism" since I wasn't there. We can only speculate on what was going on. According to Wells, she was the only woman in the department, she didn't know much about game design, she was twenty-three years old, and this was in the late '70s/early '80s. To hear her relate the story behind what happened, it sounds like she was treated pretty poorly by several of the men at TSR, though Gary Gygax was always kind to her and believed in her talents.

I think TSR needed people like Jean Wells on staff--creatives who can think beyond the rules and inspire compelling new ideas that push the boundaries of the form. That's the only way that adventures like Palace of the Silver Princess (or Ravenloft) come about. TSR was lucky to find Tracy Hickman when they did. The innovation Tracy and Laura Hickman brought to D&D (imo) filled the gap left by people like Jean Wells.

By comparison I've been fortunate. In my first few years as a freelancer for WotC, even as a new guy I was given practically royal treatment and my ideas and writing were valued by the leads I worked for (Mike Mearls, James Wyatt, Chris Perkins, Rodney Thompson). In this era my work included Monster Manual 3, Demonomicon, the section on Story Items in Mordenkainen's Fantastic Emporium which was written for another book, Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale, Madness at Gardmore Abbey, and Heroes of the Feywild. I'm pretty certain that none of what I wrote for these books would have been accepted prior to this period. But during that time, these folks were willing to take a chance and divert from what was typical and ordinary in D&D. I wish Jean Wells had been trusted as much. I wish she had been given that chance.

B3: Palace of the Silver Princess is Jean Wells's only D&D adventure, and I think it happens to be one of the most interesting and memorable ones TSR ever produced.

AD&D Modules, Part 2

I wanted to pop on for a minute and update my "read" list. I've been taking advantage of the trend I'm in lately, and continued to read the hits of the past. Here's what I've read since last time.

L2: The Assassin's Knot, by Lenard Lakofka

I don't know if it's nostalgia--the fact that Cousin Dave used to love this adventure--or the charm of the Lendore Isles series itself, but I'm really digging the modules in the L-series. L1: The Secret of Bone Hill, seemed to hint that much of the sequel would use the setting established in L1, when that's hardly the case. I'm curious as to what caused that change--whether Lenard Lakofka had a change of heart, or whether TSR imposed the changes. Granted, I haven't read every module from this period (yet!) but in comparison to what I've read thus far, the Lendore Isles modules are definitely outside the norm. As I may have mentioned in the previous post, Bone Hill's mini-setting is quirky and weirdly obsessive in its detail... but in its own way I think it's extremely cool, in that the module aims for something (a detailed starting scenario) that no other module from that period attempts (Edit: The original orange-cover version of Palace of the Silver Princess attempted it, but this version was Alderaan'd by certain persons at TSR). Similarly, in this stack of dungeon crawls I've been reading, the mystery plot in The Assassin's Knot stands out as something completely different from everything else. There are some assumptions the module makes in terms of the characters' actions that I'm somewhat dubious about in a modern group (I just don't see every group of PCs trying to raid the castle--though in the olden days of D&D I can see how that would be a much safer assumption), but all in all the adventure is innovative and cool, and boy it's all about role-playing. I have to admire it for that. Unlike the other modules of its time, there's no real dungeon, and the module relies on, well, role-playing and investigation. I've read some harsh reviews of Assassin's Knot, but I disagree with them. I feel that the module was simply ahead of its time, and definitely not for the hack-and-slash crowd of the day. Those Lendore Isles modules may be a little crazy at times, but they sure are growing in my esteem.


C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, by Harold Johnson and  Jeff R. Leason

I had my first glimpse of this adventure at D&D XP 2011 when Greg Bilsland ran Stephen-RadneyMacfarland's 4e version for myself, Jerry LeNeave, and others. It was the first time in many years that I'd wanted to poke everything in the corridor with a 10' pole to see what happens (not as sexy as I make it sound). From what I recall of last year's D&D XP session, the original plays just like SRM's module. It's unique in its Native American Mayan-Aztec theme, and although it's a dungeon crawl filled with nasty surprises, most of those surprises make sense in the context, and the names, themes, and imagery of the adventure are aptly chosen. This was the first in TSR's "competition" series of modules, so the things you run into can be pretty devious/nasty/horrible at times. The idea behind competitive play in D&D was that there was a scoring system that determined how well the best group had done in the module. So yes, in a way you could "win" D&D. I think the notion of competitive play in D&D is... well, let's just say it's not for me, but I'm happy that the model served to create adventures like this one. It's very cool.


C2: The Ghost Tower of Inverness, by Allen Hammack

I've been commenting on interesting ways these modules have pioneered new adventure ideas. Ghost Tower, on the other hand, seemed to me a more typical D&D experience. It begins with a pretty awesome storyteller voice: "Know you that in the elder days..." so it does a nice job setting the mood. Your characters need to go retrieve the "Soul Gem" from the ruins of an old castle that was once ruled by a powerful (not to mention crazy) wizard. There are some really neat puzzles and a cool twist partway through the module (which is much shorter than any other oldschool module I've read, coming in at a mere 18 pages without the illustrations) when you enter the tower proper, however the nature of the encounters following that is generally what we've come to expect (find the parts of the key, fight these 4 varieties of creatures, which always attack instantly). I'm not saying that I think it's a bad adventure by any means--only that it tends toward what I think of as a more standard play style. It's also a C-series competition module, so there's a lot of text detailing how to score it--an artifact of its time. There's a merciless deathtrap and a goodly amount of save-or-die type stuff, and the adventure recommends a large cast of characters. Were I to run this one, I'd keep the core elements and expand on the really cool ideas inherent in the module. I think there's a lot to love here, I'd just work on populating it with wonders and weirdness while pulling back on what I perceive as the more tried and true monster-combat-trap format.

Right now, I'm reading I-3: Pharoh, by Tracy and Laura Hickman, and browsing the Greyhawk setting, which almost puts the obsessive detail of Bone Hill to shame.

AD&D Modules

At D&D XP, I played the D&D Next playtest, and by sheer coincidence I ended up in a great group run by Monte Cook, which also hosted Rob Schwalb, Bruce Cordell, Miranda Horner, Shawn Merwin, and three other cool folks. If you're keeping track, that's a table of 8 players and most of the D&D Next design team. 

Relevant anecdote: The only time I'd met Monte previous to D&D XP was at Gen Con 1999 when he ran my table for the D&D 3rd Edition announcement and playtest. At XP, Monte joked that he'd see me back here for 7th Ed.

As has been reported pretty much everywhere, the adventure was the Caves of Chaos, aka Keep on the Borderlands, and it was a blast. Afterward, I was near the vendor area when some old modules caught my eye. I don't need to own old modules, but the playtest had me excited and I was overcome with nostalgia. I caved, and bought a stack of them. I followed up on Ebay the next week and bought another stack.

The thing is, I never had money to buy modules as a kid. I saved my pennies for the game books, and back then I only cared about being a player--I didn't want to DM. My cousin Dave ran me through the modules he had, though. His favorites were The Lost City and The Assassin's Knot. Last year, Bart Carroll asked me in an interview which module was my favorite. I didn't have much to pick from. I told him Ravenloft. That's probably still the right answer, but in the past few weeks as I've started to devour this stack, I've come to appreciate the fun and quirky elements of the old AD&D adventures. Monte's playtest felt so much like AD&D, I'm determined to run my own D&D Next playtest with those old modules so I can experience them in all their glory. Here's what I've done so far.

I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City

I read this module first because I somehow misread the levels appropriate for the adventure (I thought it was lower level). It wasn't long until I was completely taken by this one, and I wanted to go on the adventure all by myself (memories of lying on my bedroom floor in 1984 with my red box set, rolling up characters and then DMing myself through the adventures I made up--how else could I have achieved a 36th level fighter/magic-user/thief/cleric? But I digress...
What I love about this module is how much like a Conan adventure it is. Snake people in the jungle, sacrifices to dark gods, ruined civilizations full of degenerate people... it's Conan all right, and man is it ever cool. Another neat thing about the adventure is that the adventure is largely about choosing how you want to get to the city. What you do when you get there isn't written out as an adventure, but many suggestions are listed as to which way you can take it with your campaign. That's the gold in this one.

B1: In Search of the Unknown, by Mike Carr

This one was an introductory adventure where the rooms are described, but as the DM you're supposed to fill them in with treasures and monsters. A list is provided at the end of the module. What I love about this one (apart from the way it teaches DMing) is that the background of the module is: two hooligans named Roghan the Fearless and Zelligar the Unknown established a hidden base somewhere and stocked it with all kinds of decadent things. When a barbarian invasion came, they fought the horde off and were recognized as heroes (the background implies that they really weren't). Then they go off to invade the barbarian lands and never return. You find their hidden fortress and loot it. I like this somewhat ambiguous story the module gives you, the mystique behind these two "heroes" of questionable character. There's some great DM advice in the beginning of the module that's still very relevant today.

B3: Palace of the Silver Princess, by Tom Moldvay

B3 is pretty amazing. I hadn't been too excited by Tom Moldvay's introductory adventure to Star Frontiers when I read it last fall, so I wasn't sure what to expect from him in D&D. Although I believe both Crash on Volturnus and Palace of the Silver Princess were published in the same year, they couldn't be more different. In Crash on Volturnus, the characters (are hijacked by space pirates, crash on Volturnus, make friends with an alien tribe of sentient octopuses) wander around a lot. There's very little story to it. Palace of the Silver Princess, on the other hand, has a whole dramatic background behind the events that take place. These early adventures have lots of dungeon crawling, but the reasons you're doing the dungeon crawling are--especially in this case--very cool, and story-oriented. Love it.
Edit: I've since learned why B3 is so different.

L1: The Secret of Bone Hill, by Lenard Lakofka

The Secret of Bone Hill threw me for a loop. I just didn't know what to make of it. On the one hand, there's a meticulously detailed setting here, a setting that includes the specific flora and fauna of every region. There's a whole village where all the buildings are named and the people that live there given statistics. The level of detail is obsessive. The adventure, on the other hand, only ever hints at what's going on. What's the Secret of Bone Hill? That's kind of for you to decide. The elements are there to create a secret, but it's really up to you. At first I thought this module was a little schizophrenic, but the more I've read over it the more I like it. It's quirky, it's eccentric, but it does give you a whole setting in miniature, ideas for adventure, and places to explore (not to mention a sequel in L2: The Assassin's Knot). I've even discovered a cool blog that explores its eccentricities. For the purposes of my campaign, I've combined B1: In Search of the Unknown with L1: The Secret of Bone Hill. Roghan's & Zelligar's fortress is hidden among the hills outside Restenford. Since Bone Hill gives you a little sandbox to play in, I've simply added a site to that sandbox and combined the rumor tables given in both modules. Done! Also... rumor tables are as wonderful as I always remembered. They add to the mystique about a place.

B4: The Lost City, by Tom Moldvay

Another Tom Moldvay module, this was one of my cousin's favorite adventures growing up. Now I see why. It's another Conanesque story, just about as rich as B3: Palace of the Silver Princess, and there's a ton of cool directions you can take the module. There's a lot of role-playing in it, cool places to explore, and a neat history to be unearthed. Loved this one even more than when I was a kid.

The only thing I disliked about it was that some of the lower levels are filled in with a crazy ecosystem of monsters packed in right next to each other in the kind of silly way that we make fun of D&D adventures nowadays. To be fair, this is only in the "suggestions for expanding the adventure" section, and the rooms aren't written out with the story and care that the actual adventure employs. I have to imagine this was Tom Moldvay's way of keeping the hack & slash crowd happy back then. "Like this adventure? Here's more monsters. Have fun."

UK1: Beyond the Crystal Cave

I read this a year ago in preparation for my own adaptation for D&D Encounters. However, this is the first time I've owned a print copy. I think I just have a better appreciation for what this module did in comparison to the others of its era. I want to run it. I've been thinking a lot about how a module is a template for the DM, to be strayed from, altered, combined, disassembled, and reformed at the will of the DM and the players; the D&D Encounters reports have really shown me that. I'm used to making my own homebrew adventures in which the player characters have ultimate freedom; I've always felt a little restrained by modules. But thinking of modules as flexible templates rather than iron shod plot lines helps me see the inherent potential when combined with my passion for homebrew/world-building. At any rate, if I run BtCC, I'll likely use some of my takes on the story, many of which didn't see print in the Encounters season. I'm excited to give that one another go at some point, now that I own it in glorious paper.

That's what I've read in the past couple weeks. I'm currently reading L2: The Assassin's Knot, following up to L1: The Secret of Bone Hill. What else is in my stack? I have several: there's the Desert of Desolation sequence, The Ghost Tower of Inverness, one of the slaver modules, Descent into the Depths of the Earth, The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, and some I have on order. There are also a few on my shelf that I've never read fully, such as Dungeonland, The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, and I should read Ravenloft again cover to cover.

I think what strikes me most about these modules is seeing what each one of them was working towards. None of the ones I've read approaches a D&D adventure in the same way. I've read criticisms of all of these modules, but I'm not sure they deserve the criticism they receive. I think each one strives for something different, and thus it's not going to suit every taste... nor should it. Thinking back on the past couple years, Madness at Gardmore Abbey (goal-oriented sandbox) is a completely different kind of adventure than The Siege of Gardmore Abbey (character and choice-driven story), and both of these are entirely different from Beyond the Crystal Cave (plot-driven episodic narrative). I've never designed an adventure the same way. They all have different goals, different things that make them unique. That's what I'm finding I love about the oldschool modules as well. I have a big reading list!

The Year in Review

It's been a while since I've posted anything, so I wanted to post a note addressing that a little.

What a strange, strange year it's been.
There have been blessings and there have been misadventures. Triumphs and tragedies. Here's the rundown:

January: Began the year working on The Siege of Gardmore Abbey, a rewarding project where I was able to experiment more with character motivations and inter-party dynamics in a published adventure, as well as color in the lines I'd drawn the previous year in Madness at Gardmore Abbey. The plan was for it to be released publicly after the PAX Prime convention, but sadly this never came to pass.

February-March: I wrote my adaptation of the Beyond the Crystal Cave season for D&D Encounters, a massive effort that tied in with my work on Heroes of the Feywild. What began as a paint by numbers approach to adventure design (i.e. set up one encounter per week) became an ambitious, all encompassing project where I tried to push the envelope as far as I could in order to make the most involved Encounters season of all time. Too ambitious, perhaps. But I put my heart and soul into it.

April-June: I visited Wizards of the Coast. There was a possibility of a position there, though whether for the short or long term I'll never know. In the end, the budget didn't work out. Perhaps strangely, I wasn't too bothered about that, if at all. At least at this point in my life I enjoy freelancing and having some distance from D&D. I can focus intensely on it for 6 months at a time, but after that I need some distance or I start going crazy. This was the third time I'd been passed over for a WotC job, and I took that as a sign. Instead, I stayed in Chicago and decided to become a homeowner. After 14 years in the city, I finally decided that I liked it well enough to stick around. While I was engaged in the home buying process, everything that could go wrong went wrong. It sucked up all my time and energy, and I turned down a freelance assignment for the first time. My workplace moved to a new location as well, changing up the way I went to work, the places I shopped, etc. The depression that encompassed me during this period so entirely consumed me that I could hardly focus. Fortunately, I found a coping mechanism in electronic games. I don't usually play electronic games anymore, but they were a godsend during this period, as they helped me to externalize the problems and focus on something else. Namely God of War 3, Uncharted 1 and 2, and Mass Effect 1 and 2. Also, tequila. I won't go into detail about the troubles of the period, but suffice it to say that at the time it seemed as though everything I had attempted in 2011 had utterly failed. One bright moment was the release of Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale, a product I'm extremely proud of. Hell, I think it's the best monster product that Dungeons & Dragons has ever released. Sure, I wish it was a hardcover or the boxed set it was slated to be, but it's still a damn good product jam packed with story seeds, interesting mechanics, cool maps, and way cool monsters. The team that put that one together (Brian R. James, Matt James, Sterling Hershey, and Myself, working under Chris Perkins) was awesome.

July: I wrote the Ecology of the Banderhobb article and did some columns for Bart Carroll. At the very end of June I went to the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, OH, and hung out with my old friends from high school and college. I was working at a leisurely pace, which was necessary for the home-buying drama going on in the background. Our first deal had fallen apart and cost us some money. The second was proving equally as challenging, and when it began to fall apart, it imploded with as much fervor as the first one. However, I've learned that whenever you wish to plot a new course in life, the universe will throw up obstacles just to see how badly you want it. It always comes at some cost. Fortunately, at the end of July, the deal miraculously came through despite all detractors, and we had a home. Three days later we went to Gen Con.

August: Went to Gen Con. Had a great time. If you were there, you know how it is: a crazy buzz of gamers, schedules, merchandise, and good times. If you haven't been there, you just need to experience it. Around this time, I was invited into a group that played indie games. I began hosting at our new place. At the end of the month, my adventure The Siege of Gardmore Abbey was played at PAX Prime, and the reviews were favorable. Most of all, I was happy to hear how well the players had embraced the characters and motivations I'd set up for the adventure. For many years I'd wanted to have a hand in influencing D&D, making it a game about good storytelling as well as exciting battles and strange adventures. The reception that Monster Manual 3 and Demonomicon had received the previous year hinted that the D&D audience would be receptive to that. The stuff I'd worked on for 2010 was proving it, at least as far as I could tell.

September: Madness at Gardmore Abbey was released, and people seemed to enjoy it. Another product I'm extremely pleased to have had a hand in, another crack design team consisting of James Wyatt, Creighton Broadhurst, and myself. Those guys were a joy to work with. I restarted my D&D campaign after a long hiatus, but I only planned it for 5 sessions since my players are tough to nail down for an extended period of time. As soon as the game started, our elf ranger (Shad Kunkle) was promoted to the Second City Mainstage, one of the most prestigious honors in comedy theatre. Fortunately, we were able to get our 5 sessions in and bring a satisfactory conclusion to the adventure before he went off into awesomeness.

October: I read the original Star Frontiers game and found a fantastic online community that still supports the game. I decided to finally run SF after decades wondering about it. The players created the world and the races in an ongoing group brainstorm, and the resulting game has been incredible. The rules are old, and more than a little wonky, but the beauty of those old games is that the rules are loose and flexible enough that they're easy to improvise and adapt. We love our beautifully intricate modern RPG systems, but playing these older, looser systems--and in some cases the modern indie games--feels incredibly freeing.

November: My dad collapsed on a jog, broke his nose and teeth the day before his last physical before he could return to flying (he'd been out of the air since his heart attack in 2010). We went home to see him in the hospital on the day that Heroes of the Feywild came out. I picked up a copy at the game store, hoping it would bring him some measure of pride, and take his mind off the fact that his dream of returning to the commercial airlines had been permanently shattered. The next week I was evicted from the indie group I hosted at my place over a difference of perspective over PvP. As the new guy in the group, I had a hard time being bullied and attacked in-game under the excuse "but that's what my character would do," and said so. Adults work these things out and move on, no harm done. Not so with this group. However, Heroes of the Feywild was released and people seemed to like it. To risk sounding like a broken record, I'm extremely proud of it. Rodney Thompson and Claudio Pozas were a dream to work with and I think it's a beautiful product. Finally, the Beyond the Crystal Cave Encounters season began in the game stores. My friends who adapted it did a nice job making it suitable for D&D Encounters, and from what I've read on the boards and elsewhere, people seem to enjoy the role-play, puzzles, and quirkiness that the season presents.

December: The year has come with its fair share of triumph and tragedy. It's been a roller coaster of a year to say the least. I was very sad to learn that Steve Winter and Rich Baker were laid off from WotC (and Bill Slavicsek and Stephen Schubert earlier this year). I see these guys as luminaries of the industry. I've worked with them personally over the past few years, and I've come to know them as incredible designers and as friends. I will say that when people who are far more talented designers than you are get laid off, the news comes with some serious perspective. What would I have done at WotC anyway, when guys like these are moving out the door? I felt the same way when Stephen Schubert was let go, and Rob Heinsoo, and Jonathan Tweet, and so on and so forth. One of the nice things about being a freelancer is that you don't really get fired. You can be quietly left behind and forgotten, but you're spared the humiliation of cleaning out your desk.

Changes
In December, I brought the Star Frontiers game to a good stopping point and went home for the holidays. My parents told us they were planning to sell our childhood home and move away. Reflecting on this over the break, I soon realized that there would be little reason to return to that little town, the stomping grounds of my youth, the place of so many (now ghostly) memories. It's a strange feeling, wrapping my mind around this kind of change. Especially in light of my turbulent 2011. As the New Year approaches, I feel that sense of impending change coming on like a storm. I'm uncertain what the future will bring, only that change will come with it.

There was a time when I was on tour in 2000, in San Antonio, Texas, after five nights of rain and canceled shows, that I sat in an outdoor hot tub surrounded by a garden buzzing with hummingbirds, across from a beautiful girl, and realized that the only constant I could embrace in life was change. As much as we want to hold on to the present, and the things we possess, these too shall pass from our grip no matter how hard we fasten ourselves to them. All we can do is our best, and so long as we follow that course we must satisfy ourselves with the results. Easier said than done, it's true. And yet, the doing is all. The practice of striving to accomplish one's best (for all my wistfulness over the first draft of Crystal Cave, it's hard to regret trying my best to make it the best possible experience I could). In improv, we used to quote, "If you're going to bomb, bomb at the top of your voice." Fail gloriously.

As we move into 2012 I reflect on 2011, keeping eyes and ears open and attentive to the change that's coming. For the moment I'm taking a break from RPGs, at least for a few weeks, and I think I'll go on hiatus from this blog for a bit. It began as a way to voice my thoughts about storytelling in gaming. I'm still committed to that (Star Frontiers is going very well in that regard), just need more time to reflect. Usually the best way for me to do that is to step away for a bit and observe from without. I need to fill the well and color my work with experiences removed from the constant flow of RPG content. I say all this, but of course I have a DDI article to work on in January and I plan to go to D&D XP, and I'm writing a piece for a friend's independent game, so all these words of stepping back sound a little hollow, even to me. Yet, I'm not quite the same person I was last year or the year before that. As our experiences shape us, the changes have shaped me, and I feel the winds of change only picking up, rather than calming down.

Let's see where these winds will blow us.

The Latest

Heroes of the Feywild is out in game stores. 

I picked up a copy. Very pleased to see that so much of my prose remains intact, since I put so much time into it. By and large I'm very pleased with the book. I wrote the first chapter and several of the bard tales (The Unruly Girl, The Ugly Satyr, The Three Fair Beauties, and The Lady of the Wood), as well as the hamadryad, pixie, tuathan, witch, "mundane" items, and some magic items. The witch text is of my design, the mechanics only somewhat; that's probably the most different part of the book from what I turned in. However, as a player sourcebook--and I'm talking both mechanics and theme--I think the book is very strong and it provides lots of fun options. I'm going to stand by the prose I set down in this book; it works to ground you in the land of Faerie as a player (and as a DM). I think it's one of the more evocative books for D&D... but I say that about every product I work on. Not because I'm some egomaniac... it's because that's my goal when I'm writing something. I want to bring you there. I want you to experience the world through a second skin. Hopefully it works for you. I'm happy with it.

Dogs in the Vineyard is over, Apocalypse World begins tonight

The indie RPG group I play with begins Apocalypse World tonight. They're all extremely excited for various reasons. Some are huge Vincent D. Baker (the designer of this game and of Dogs in the Vineyard) fans, and all of them have played, and enjoyed the game previously. I'm coming in fresh so I don't know what to expect. I'm sure I'll have a good time. We hit a snag in our second-to-last session of Dogs. One of our players moved to Germany, the group dynamic was skewed, we weren't on the same page, and there was something about the game's mechanics that drove our story in weird directions. Nevertheless, we reconnected for the last session and made it work out well. I'm very much looking forward to Apocalypse World and the new player we're bringing in. There's talk of an apocalyptic movie day where we'll do 12 Monkeys and Delicatessen. I'd like to include The Blood of Heroes, but a) I'm not sure I can find it, and b) what if it's not as good as I remember?

Finished the 5-session arc of our D&D game
I probably didn't post about this much at all, apart from the mention of combat going too slowly in the first session. I'm pushing the campaign forward in small, concentrated plot arcs when I can get the players together. Every arc is designed to push the story forward and move the campaign toward a conclusion. Said conclusion is still a long way off, but I think the days of wandering around the map are through. At least for this game. We need to bring these characters some sort of resolution or they'll linger in limbo forever (like so many other D&D characters we know). I highly recommend the 5-session arc. It was just enough time for the players to sink their teeth into the meat of the story, accomplish some incredible heroics, learn tons about the world, and have a resolution. This took a single month. I think that going forward (in D&D) I'm going to focus on doing this... at least so far as our 18-year-old campaign is concerned.


Working on bits and bobs
I have a Dragon article to work on. The theme's a bit more adult than most of the stuff that gets printed in Dragon, however, so I'm anxious: the thought of committing several hours/days/weeks to an article and then seeing it in print but aggressively edited, depresses me. So I feel a bit stuck in that regard. If I were to write it "lukewarm," I'm not sure it would encapsulate its subject--I wouldn't be happy with it. If I were to write it "general," I wouldn't be happy with it. I'm still working on a strategy here. Also generating ideas for a short piece for a friend's game.

Starting Star Frontiers, learning Star Frontiers

I'm starting Star Frontiers on Tuesday. Now I have to learn how to run Star Frontiers (hopefully before Tuesday). The characters are wonderful so far, though. The players and I have developed the world, the races, and the general starting scenario so it's been a wholly organic process,  a complete collaboration. I'm looking to experiment wildly with Star Frontiers, trying all different kinds of storytelling forms and innovations. The rules may be old, but they're light and customizable, and I mean to take full advantage of that.