Steve's Gamer Blog

The Year in Review

2011-12-19T10:41:00.002-06:00

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

2011-11-07T10:46:00.000-06:00

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.

The Stars Our Destination

2011-11-01T15:40:00.002-05:00

Star Frontiers.
Last week was our first character creation session. The players asked me what my concept was, but I turned the question back around on them and asked them what kinds of people they want to play. From there we began building the setting.

Here's an example.
One of the players wanted to play a guy that works in a garage in farm country. He's the local boxing champ with aspirations for bigger fights beyond this podunk agricultural colony on this planet in the middle of nowhere.

Another player wanted to play a character that had been from a wealthy plantation society before his prospects dried up; he signed on as crew on a trading vessel that did business with everyone they could afford to... including the underworld. Now he's inherited the old junker, but he's also inherited some of the past that comes with it.

I asked the players if they'd mind coming from the same place, just to unify some of the ideas on the table. They decided that the planet had once been prosperous, but in the recent alien war much of it had been slashed, burned, and irradiated. Thus, our plantation-man-turned-trader goes to the space lanes to earn a new living and make a new life for himself. He hires on a mechanic from his native world--somebody who wants to get out badly so he'll work for cheap--a tough, imposing looking guy to discourage anyone from messing with them.

That's one set of characters. The other two are a war-journalist-turned-author and an embittered veteran (sniper) of the last war between humanity and a more advanced alien race called the sethi.

I have a lot of weird plans for this game. I'm having everybody make at least 2 characters apiece, partly because I expect the game to be more lethal, partly because I'm experimenting with the way plot and scenes can work in RPGs... but I'll get to that another day. More characters are being generated tonight.

I've opened the doors for anything the players want or can imagine, and I'm trying to yes-and that and stick it into this universe. Since most of the characters are (so far) noncombatant types, their adventures are going to be focused on different objectives. Blasting somebody probably isn't going to be the best option for these guys most of the time. This presents a most welcome challenge to me as GM.

I remember back in the '80s and '90s my friends would make all kinds of characters for RPGs. Of course you had the folks that came in with the tricked out power builds, but you also had a lot of people who focused on fun, flavorful characters with loads of personality. Like that protocol droid that couldn't fight, but he sure was good at working the shields. The key was to make adventures that suited those quirky characters, that were tailored for their specific skills and abilities and role-play styles.

That's what I'm hoping to do with this game. If I didn't love the tactical element, I wouldn't have sought a game in which combat (imo) can be run like a streamlined D&D. However, I only want it to be an option. I don't want it to be the default assumption of the game, nor do I want to avoid it entirely. Military (or just plain violent) characters can seek out fights, but there should be plenty fun for characters that aren't combatants. They should be able to avoid fights if that's what their characters chooose to do. That's the goal anyway. We'll see how it goes.

Feywild by Way of Weepies

2011-10-31T10:22:00.001-05:00

Today there's an excerpt from Heroes of the Feywild on the Wizards of the Coast site, detailing fey magic items.

Designing these was an exercise in thinking outside the box. They had to be strange, different, and magical, but they couldn't be powerful. They had to be items that would be neat and fun to play with, but not something a character would trade for their own magic items. These are the kinds of things you see in fairy tales and stories--strange and quirky knicknacks that the fairy tale protagonists encounter on their adventures. I did a section on Story Items that appeared in Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium, which fulfills a similar role; story items are used to overcome obstacles in the plot. These items and fey gifts in Heroes of the Feywild can do that as well--I think they should do that--but they're also designed to lend a fun flavor to characters that venture into the Feywild were magic is ever-present. I think one of the themes we worked with on this book was that magic permeates the Feywild/Faerie so thoroughly that it doesn't work in accordance with the strictures (read as "normal D&D rules") of the mortal world. Hence, these items. Like the gray rain cloak that's woven from the substance of a rainy afternoon in Faerie. It doesn't make logical sense. It makes story sense in the vein of fairy tales.

So how do you come up with these kinds of oddities? Me, I was listening to the Weepies, writing down poetic phrases, rearranging them, filtering through Neil Gaiman, Peter Beagle, and Grimm, and bending them into magic items. It sounds weird, but that's the way it went.

Honestly, I think the best ideas come out of that space, more dream, fancy, and poetry than logical progression.

2011-10-29T19:57:00.001-05:00

I need a break from the internet.

Our group finished the adventure I've been running for the past month, and I feel like it was successful. The adventure had many colors, a variety of encounters, lots of story, a nice helping of role-play, some light puzzling, and lots and lots of choices. Usually I let those choices lead anywhere, but that this point in the campaign the choices generally extend to the parameters of the adventure. I'm learning that the further a campaign advances the fewer choices the PCs generally have. When a campaign is young, the characters are free to go where they will, starting new story threads as they wish. At higher levels, at least in a very story focused campaign, those choices become a lot more limited as the plot accelerates.

We're taking a break while one of our players performs a show on the Second City mainstage here in Chicago for the rest of its run. In the meantime, I'll fill in with Star Frontiers on game night. With all the little tweaks we've added, I think Star Frontiers will run splendidly. We had a character creation session last Tuesday and the players really rose to the occasion, making some exceptionally compelling people. That'll be my playground for a while, a fertile ground for experimentation.

First, though, I need to get away from the internet. It's a bit too noisy, a bit too crowded, and far too rude. 2011 has been a roller coaster year. A lot of blessings, a lot of misfortunes. I need to find a place of quiet where I can retreat for a while and think about what's important.

Banderhobbs for Halloween

2011-10-27T10:52:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, two of my articles appeared on the Wizards of the Coast site:
Ecology of the Banderhobb
and
Creating the Banderhobb

It's been a year and a half since the gorgeous Howard Lyon illustration of the banderhobb first appeared on the back cover of Monster Manual 3. There are a lot of things I'm proud of in my D&D writing career, and the banderhobb is certainly one of my fondest. I'm convinced that the biggest reason for its success as a popular new creature is the Mike Mearls/Howard Lyon combo. If Mike had kept the book under tight control and dictated every detail of the content, the monster would never have appeared. Mike is a very strong leader. He gave me the freedom to create and trusted that I'd give him something cool. Given that opportunity, I strove to hand him the very best material I could. He had me write the art orders too, so I opened wide the floodgates and let the terrors in. Through some strange alchemy of luck and divine goodwill, Howard Lyon was assigned to it, and Howard just "got" it. I tried to give the monster the most evocative design I could, but Howard is really the one who sold it. Now I need to get him to sell me a print for my wall (and one of the nymphs and of the wandering tower, too!). I love every illustration he does of my work.

When I was submitting article pitches for Dragon Magazine around 2001, I had a small list of objectives:

- I wanted to do a Halloween issue
- I wanted to do an April Fools issue
- I wanted to publish some monsters
- More than anything, I wanted to see an illustration of something I'd created

Monster Manual 3 fulfilled half my goals in one fell swoop. I got to do a handful of awesome monsters paired with gorgeous illustrations. The catoblepas picture is another one that rocks my world.

Last year I got to check another goal off my list when my Ecology of the Scarecrow was printed in Dungeon. This year, I get to dance on that ground again with the banderhobb piece. If you haven't checked out Ecology of the Scarecrow, please give it a read this Halloween. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

So what's my wish list now?
- I want to see the art order I wrote for Oublivae, Demon Queen of Desolation, realized.
- Miniatures. It's just not fair that I started freelancing for D&D just as the miniatures line stopped.
Speaking as a guy who owns at least one of every D&D Miniatures sculpt from Harbinger to Legendary Evils, you can imagine how tragic that was for me.

Witches & Warlocks

2011-10-26T12:14:00.000-05:00

"Why isn't the Feywild witch a warlock build?"
A few people have asked me this question in regard to the witch in Heroes of the Feywild, and as the designer of the witch subclass I figure I should write it out so I can just copy and paste the link. I know I've addressed it briefly before, but here's a (more or less) full explanation. I'll begin by examining what a witch is, and continue on to talk about its mechanical expression, at least as far as we've seen in the preview. I can't discuss further mechanical specifics beyond the preview in any amount of detail at this point.

What is a Witch?
Heroes of the Feywild is a book based on the land of Faerie from folklore and legend. As an optional supplement, or rules expansion, it adds a different aspect to the standard D&D game, giving players the option to create characters that feel like the ones from fairy tales and Celtic mythology.

As we discussed ideas for the book, we looked at the quintessential tropes of fairy tale and Celtic myth. Witches play a huge role in both, so I bid for the inclusion of some sort of witch in the book. Rodney (Thompson) asked what a witch would do in D&D, and my task was to figure that out.

The red box had just hit store shelves. In that product, there's a spell called slimy transmutation, which turns an enemy into a toad. Classic witch territory. Every other fairy tale, from Grimm to Hans Christian Anderson to Disney to Peter Beagle to Neil Gaiman and beyond, a witch is turning someone into something else, or transforming herself into an animal (or monster). It's the classic witch thing to do. My favorite from Disney is Maleficent turning herself into an enormous black dragon. (The polymorph duel in Sword and the Stone is also fun.) So I knew that an element of transmutation was definitely going to be at the heart of the class.

Looking at other witches from fairy tales and folklore, the witches that aren't transforming creatures are enchanting them. Some control their minds, many lay down curses with special conditions. Morgan Le Fay is a good example. I like this one, from Neil Gaiman's Stardust: "Not forever," and at that the faerie girl smiled. "I gain my freedom on the day the moon loses her daughter, if that occurs in a week when two Mondays come together."

Researching further, in folklore a witch's spells are often referred to as "charms." Charms aren't strictly persuasions in this sense, but usually enchantment type spells--usually the words to invoke them are delivered in rhyme. These go hand in hand with the sorts of hexes and curses a witch is known for (I'm talking about the "crop-blighting, boils on your face, prophecy of doom upon you forever" type hexes, rather than the temporary D&D 4th Edition curse that a warlock character uses mechanically in combat; these are similar in name only). The other thing about the witch is her bad reputation for dabbling in necromancy, especially raising the spirits of the dead.

In Celtic mythology, witches are especially fearsome. Morrigan of the Badb was a goddess-like creature that transformed into a crow, predicted prophecies, and confounded the enemies of the Tuatha De Dannan. These myths are far older even than our fairy tales, and the witches therein are essentially the template for the witches that followed. The very definition.

So how did witches come about? In fairy tales and mythology, they're often magical beings with no explanation of where they acquired their power. Some of them may carry books of spells, but I was surprised at how few of them did (I actually can't name any good examples). The most formal that most witches go are rituals.

Speaking of rituals, witches in fairy tales don't use them much. They say the magic words and transform themselves and others; they work their magic. When you look to folklore and real world superstition, that's where you find stories of witches using all sorts of spellcasting paraphernalia. Unfortunately, a great deal of superstition was placed on women, especially unmarried women (wisewomen, midwives) who knew how to make herbal medicines, balms, and other such craft. Superstitions arose around such figures and their constant companions (cats, for example), their medicinal ("it's not science, it's sorcery!") practices, and so forth. Sadly, these women were probably the ancient equivalent of the modern day cat-lady. Lives alone, keeps to herself, surrounded by her cats. Superstition led to rumors about consorting with demons and devils, etc, and for a long time (and still) this was the way witches were seen. Thus, it's something that needs to be considered when thinking about a witch class.

There were other traditional elements to consider too--black witches vs. white witches, good witches vs. evil witches, for instance, and I'm not just talking about neopaganism. I'm talking about the Wizard of Oz too, the Chronicles of Narnia, and a heap of modern fantasy. The witch as herbalist and healer is incorporated, as mentioned in the preview. There's also the witch's association with a coven, with the full moon as a time for witches or the new moon (the blackest of nights); there's the neopagan association with the Goddess as a source of power--which this version of the witch presents as an option (by giving Sehanine a cameo in their story), but not a rule. It attempts to include as many options as possible so that players can tailor the witch to the archetype they most associate with it.

All of these things need to be considered when creating a witch class for the game. It's important to know what you're making the class of, what its bones are, its traditions in history, myth, folklore, fairy tale. It's hard to be all-inclusive (though the witch class in this book certainly makes the effort), but I think a designer owes it to the players that the concept of the class or race is going to be something they can culturally identify, something they can play and say oh yes, it's like this character or that character from any number of sources. It's important to nail that. With a classic archetype there's an expectation that it will behave a certain way. If the designer changes that archetype and redefines it as something else, he or she undermines that expectation.

Mechanics, Witches, and Warlocks
After a copious amount of research, it turned out that fairy tale, Celtic myth, and folklore had defined the witch pretty clearly. The definition of what they do and how they behave was relatively consistent, and came down to a few basic elements, summed up nicely at the beginning of the witch entry for Heroes of the Feywild: You practice the first, most ancient form of arcane magic, which allows you to charm, transform, and curse your enemies.

First, most ancient form of magic? Witches are down in the roots of most mythologies. You can find them in the Book of Invasions, you can find them in the Old Testament, you can find them (in most cases) long before wizards... historically speaking of course, and as we think of wizards in D&D as tome-wielding academics. At any rate, the witches of lore charm, transform, and curse their enemies; again, we must make the distinction here that a witch's curse is (in the lore) usually a kind of enchantment that the cursed have to bear. Sickness, plague, boils, transformation into an animal, bad luck, etc.

Creating a class that transforms itself and others, that casts enchantments, summons the dead--what kind of role does that fulfill in D&D? As a defender or leader, it would be a stretch. And none of those typical effects implies "megatons of damage." So striker is a pretty dubious choice unless each and every witch spell is written so that its effect equates to damage (like laying down big conditions like stun) instead of "actually" dealing damage. Polymorphing, enchanting, "necromancing," and "cursing with ill fortune" just aren't striker style abilities. Trying to make them so is to whack a square peg repeatedly into a round hole where it just doesn't fit. These sorts of things very naturally fulfill the controller role. In previous editions of D&D, witches have typically been a wizard subclass or kit, so if the witch was to be a "build" of any given class, the wizard is the best choice for it. Finally, there are few witches (I can't think of any) of myth and legend that mostly concentrate on blasting things to smithereens striker-style. There may be some, but they're definitely against type. So making the witch a subclass of a striker-oriented class like the warlock pretty well goes against most of what defines a witch.

Also, to make a typical witch into a warlock means creating a library of transmutation, charming, and control powers for that class and then giving the warlock access to them. Now the warlock has a full arsenal of wizard-like control powers, stamping out the line between the two classes. Plus, now the striker-y warlock gets a library of transmutation powers and the wizard doesn't; and now you have to justify why the transmutations do striker damage or replace striker damage.

But what about the story text? What about the witch's connection to some outside power? Isn't that what the warlock does?

Yes and no.
In fairy tales and Celtic myth, witches are usually magical beings born with power (like the D&D sorcerer in story, but very unlike the sorcerer in effect). In folklore, witches get a bad rap, consorting with demons, devils, and spirits for their power (like the D&D warlock in story, but very unlike the warlock in effect). The 4e witch from Heroes of the Feywild is defined as a being that inherited power from elsewhere, but is instructed by an emissary of that power, a familiar, as is common in our folklore and legend.

The familiar's instruction is somewhat academic; that's why it takes the place of the wizard's spellbook. The witch needs to know how to cast a certain spell, and he or she asks the familiar how it is done. The familiar instructs the witch what's necessary to cast the spell, and the witch prepares it using whatever herbs, components, eye of newt, ritual elements (or lack thereof) that you decide. At least this is the way it's presented. The relationship between the witch, the familiar, and the power source is intentionally left open (and relatively free of mechanics) so that the player and DM can choose to incorporate it as much or as little as they please. By default, there is no pact or obligation to another entity; the text even mentions fairy godparents, as well as unknown/anonymous sources. The point being, while the source of a witch's power may come from elsewhere, the witch learns by instruction much like a wizard. The spellbook just takes a different shape.

The witch can (probably, I haven't seen the whole thing yet) stand on its own as a class that, while it resembles the wizard and can borrow the wizard's spells, is its own bag of tricks. As a wizard subclass it shares wizardly abilities that it ought to possess--access to a wider range of necromancy spells, for instance, or the ability to transform into mist, and much, much more. Though archetypal witches typically transmute, enchant/curse, and charm, their catalog of abilities throughout literature and lore is so expansive that only a spell catalog as varied as the wizard's can fully support the character concept. Though the definition of the D&D 4th Edition warlock is somewhat similar to the witch's flavor, after examining the archetypal witch from every angle the warlock's mechanics don't match up to the witch's modus operandi. Aside from a similar origin and a few shared terms, a D&D warlock and an archetypal witch don't have much in common.

As to why there are several supported wizard builds in D&D, I can't speak to that. When I designed the witch, only the original (arcanist wizard) and the mage existed. At any rate, that's the long answer for why the Feywild witch plays on the wizardly side of the arcane playground.

The Witch Preview (Heroes of the Feywild)

2011-10-24T10:53:00.003-05:00

There's a preview for the witch up today on the Wizards of the Coast site. The witch was a subclass I worked on for Heroes of the Feywild. It can do all kinds of nifty things, like turning people into frogs and predicting the future. The witch stays true to its roots in fantasy and folklore--it consorts with a familiar, which acts as its teacher; the moon is an important factor for the witch, especially the full moon or the new moon; it leans toward nature type skills and religion; it can shapeshift itself and others...

There are a number of elements that were designed for the class that I don't yet see, so I can't really comment on them at the moment, as they may have been removed from the class or simply placed at higher levels. When all's said and done, the witch should not only present a subclass that works very much like the iconic witches of fiction and fairy tale, but it will hopefully present an interesting and viable alternative to the standard wizard builds. Depending on what's made it into the final version, there should be a lot more surprises coming our way from the witch.

The way I wrote it, the witch feels similar to the D&D warlock, storywise. It's also something like a druid. And a little like a priest. The witch, however, is a proto-wizard. They were the first ones to wield arcane power; they didn't learn it from books--there weren't any magic books--they learned it from intermediaries that instructed them on the casting of spells (familiars). They don't have pacts with the entities that instruct them. In fiction and literature, there's a pretty wide range of things that witches can do. Some of them throw fireballs and call lightning, others raise armies of the dead, others are master enchanters. In D&D, these tend to be wizardly abilities. The witch has its own focus--mostly involving charm, transmutation, and calling down ill fortune on their enemies--however they can easily tap into the wizard's massive inventory of spells every time they consort with their familiars.

That's the thing about the witch, and why the common folk, jealous wizards, and priests hate them: the powers at their disposal are vast, changeable, and don't require years of formalized academic study or merit. Just about anyone--even the lowest of the low--can become a witch and call down powers beyond mortal ken.

There's an art order I wrote for the iconic witch that I don't think made the cut--not for the witch illustration anyway. The art reference was inspired by this wonderful photograph by Ed Vallette, and portrays a village witch.

I'm excited to see the class in its final version once it appears in the book. Again, I anticipate the class will open up some significant--and very, very different--kinds of characters for D&D. Want to know more? Crack open a book of fairy tales, do some internet research, or go read Stardust or The Last Unicorn. The witches in Heroes of the Feywild are firmly grounded in real world legends and lore; that's the best place to go to learn more about them or get ideas for playing one.

They'll be doing some pretty crazy stuff. To say the least.

Heroes of the Feywild excerpt: The Three Fair Beauties

2011-10-21T11:04:00.000-05:00

Today, the Wizards of the Coast site released a preview of the satyr race, brilliantly written by Rodney Thompson.

Inset within the entry is one of the four short tales I wrote for Heroes of the Feywild. This one is called The Three Fair Beauties.

I'll re-post this tale from the excerpt and, in honor of today's satyr preview, I'll re-post one of the others I wrote for this book, The Ugly Satyr, which appeared on the WotC site earlier.

The Three Fair Beauties

Once upon a time, a prince rode through the wood regaling the animals and trees with songs in praise of his true love.

“She sings more sweetly than thee, little blue- bird,” said the prince. “I’ll wager my heart there’s no lady more beautiful in all Faerie!”

Just then the bluebird alighted in his path, trans- formed itself into a resplendent fairy damsel, and accepted his brash challenge.

The prince tried to rescind his words, but a wager spoken before the fey cannot be unsaid. The damsel said that she would show him three fair beauties in that very wood, and if his lady proved superior to them all, the fey would bless his wed- ding. But should the prince speak falsely, he must yield his heart to the shapeshifter’s dagger.

The damsel showed the prince a spring nymph that enticed his lust, and a hamadryad that awak- ened his wonder. As splendid as they were, the prince swore that neither was as fair as his love, and he spoke truly from his heart.

“But is she more beautiful than I?” said the damsel at last. The prince looked upon her dark eyes, her shapely form, and the sapphire feathers strung through her midnight locks.

At last, after great deliberation, he said, “Aye, even more so than thee.” The lady transformed into a bluebird and flew away, and the relieved prince was spared his life.

The prince married his true love and ruled his kingdom, but for the rest of his days, he never looked upon her or anything else of beauty without yearning for the fairy damsel, who possessed his heart as surely as if she had carved it from his chest.

* * *

The Ugly Satyr
Once there was a young man who loved a lord's daughter. Night after night he came to her window to woo her, but each time the lady refused him, saying, "My love's face is secret, my love is most rare, my love plays the music upon the night air."

One night, as the young man went out to woo his lady, he heard a beautiful melody in the wood. He followed the sound to a glade where an ugly satyr played the pipes with skill beyond mortal reckoning.
"If you would teach me that tune, I would give you anything you ask," said the young man.
The satyr agreed in return for a small vow, and he taught the man the tune upon the pipes. When the man played it at the lady's window, she consented to marry him. A wedding day was set, guests were invited, and all was made ready.

On the eve of the wedding, the ugly satyr arrived to claim his due: a kiss from the lady who adored his music. The young man scoffed at the request and turned the satyr away. The man then set a circle of cold iron around his beloved's chamber, for the creatures of Faerie cannot cross such boundaries.
That night, as the man slept, a beautiful new melody drifted from the forest and into the bridal bower. On the morning of the wedding, the lady was gone from the tower. The only trace of her was a single delicate footprint outside the circle of cold iron. Try as he might, the man who broke his vow to the satyr never discovered where she had gone.

No Char Con

2011-10-20T23:40:00.002-05:00

After a great deal of planning and daily hotel negotiations, it turns out I'm not going to Char Con for a reunion with my college gaming buddies because all but one of them canceled at the last minute. A non-reunion wasn't worth the 20 hours of driving we'd be doing, despite how much we love our one friend who would still be able to attend. I lost money on the hotel reservation because all sales are final. The Hotwire staff were mostly abrasive and combative and I'm out almost $200 for a hotel I never stayed in. Safe to say I'll never book with them again.

Dogs in the Vineyard, session 2

2011-10-18T10:38:00.001-05:00

Last night the indie RPG group came over for a full session of Dogs in the Vineyard.

I know people who rave about this game, so it's nice to finally get a good look at it and see what it's all about. I was not disappointed.

So far, the game is an excellent alchemy of character and mechanics. As a 'Dog,' your objective is to act as the mortal hand of the King of Life (God), and your decisions are the word of God. At one point in the game, I said to the GM:

"In this world, what is the proper procedure for dealing with this kind of situation?"

and the GM said:

"What do you think it is? Your words and actions are law."

It puts you in a unique psychological position because your character is often beset by human problems and human drives. Knowing your word is law, do you take those as divine guidance, or do you trust in your conscience? Regardless, no matter what you do you are "right."

This came to a head when our group of dogs came to different conclusions over what ought to be done with a woman who had been possessed by a demon--and when we were debating what was to be done with someone we suspected to be a sorcerer. Furthermore, my own character, Enoch Taylor, had to struggle with his own emotions when a wealthy smith wished to take the woman Enoch had adored from afar as a second wife. There were a lot of moral quandries.

The mechanics are pretty neat too. I said a few weeks ago that I didn't like the way "social combat" was done in Burning Wheel (by way of Mouse Guard) and I'll stand by that. I prefer straight up improvisation and scene building. Dogs in the Vineyard, however, incorporates its own mechanics for social (or any other kind of) conflict, involving dice pools where a player makes an argument and then sets out 2 dice to support it. The other player or NPC tries a different tactic and then sets out 2 dice to raise/counter. The difference is that you're not blindly choosing your action; you're narrating it and then grabbing dice to support it. You're looking over your character sheet for character traits, relationships, and objects (that you made up and assigned dice to, rather than selecting them from a list in a rulebook) to add to your dice pool, trying to be as resourceful as possible... or even not as resourceful as possible if you think you may "lose" the conflict or if you think your character should lose. Even losing can provide new character traits, improve your character, and make him or her better for future conflicts. They benefit from the experience. Or they suffer from it for a while. It really is in the player's hands.

I'm only scratching the surface here, but this is the gist of it. Last night, Enoch lost the argument about whether Alexandrina (the girl he likes) should become a second wife to the smith. One of his traits is "tries to play by the rules but his heart gets the better of him." To the detriment of my character, I allowed him to have an emotional outburst and storm off (behavior unbecoming of a 'Dog'). I decided that Enoch went to meditate and pray, and confess his pride to the King of Life. Since I was the only one out in the night on my own, Enoch actually witnessed one of the townswomen be possessed by a demon (the town's problem reveals itself). Taking this as a cue from the King of Life, Enoch went forth fearlessly to confront the demon and redeem himself. Where my dice had failed me previously, this time they sang. Gandalf-like (or Exorcist-like if you choose), he pursued the woman and drove the demon from her. This experience taught him about what was important to a 'Dog.' Or at least, he sees it as a sign that if one is humble and forsakes his pride, the King of Life will reward him with an opportunity to serve.

It was cool to wrestle with the moral dilemmas facing the group. It was cool to have a scene where I was like a paladin casting out demons. I'm still new to the game, but so far I really like the way its mechanics further the story. Like Kagematsu, these sessions of Dogs in the Vineyard are indelibly etched into my heart and mind. This is the good stuff. Real role-playing experiences rich in story and substance, and a whole heck of a lot of fun.

Heroes of the Feywild Excerpt: Welcome to the Feywild

2011-10-17T11:11:00.001-05:00

Today, the Wizards of the Coast site posted an excerpt from Heroes of the Feywild. If you follow the link, you can download the excerpt in pdf format.

This is some of the opening material I wrote for the book and it comes with some gorgeous illustrations. You get a look at some pixies, a couple witches, a satyr, a gnome.. it's jam packed with awesome.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm immensely proud of this book. I strove to encapsulate the wild and beautiful feel of Faerie, while offering a glimpse at the dark and dangerous side as well. It's not so much a completely made-up D&D Feywild as it is a direct homage to the traditional Faerie of lore. The "it's beautiful-yet-perilous" tone runs throughout the book, I feel--in the races, magic, and character classes as well.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Rodney Thompson, the book's lead designer, and Jeremy Crawford, the lead editor, for letting my work come through here. I'm especially excited to see more of this book in the coming weeks--the witch in particular, I think; I look forward to bending the "laws" of magic in knots, setting them on fire, and blowing away the ashes.

Core Settings

2011-10-13T18:42:00.001-05:00

Just a brief two and a half cents about core settings.

I grew up using the settings presented in some of the old D&D modules, which were later combined and published as the world of Mystara. I liked that setting because (at first) it wasn't too complex and there was a lot of room for development. The "Grand Dutchy of Karameikos," "The Isle of Dread," the "Principalities of Glantri..." these were the names of places in Mystara, which also contained another setting called the "Hollow World." Later on, all the lands of Mystara were developed in gazetteers (which I never owned). That was a bit too much information for me.

When D&D adopted Greyhawk as its default setting in 3rd Edition, I wasn't sure what to do with it. It's not like there was a map of Greyhawk in the book or something that told you how society worked in Greyhawk. I don't remember a whole lot of product support for it either. So it really didn't mean much to me.

D&D 4th Edition's Nentir Vale setting, on the other hand, feels just right. You get a map, you get a smattering of cool names like the "Keep on the Shadowfell," the "Winterbole Forest," "Gardmore Abbey," and brief descriptions of each, you get a detailed town, and then your imagination is set free to expand from there. I feel like it's just the right jumping off point for a player new to D&D. You don't feel like you have to keep track of a massive world before you're ready to do so. More advanced players can buy Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or Dark Sun; those options are there for them.

Similarly, I'm finding a lot to like about the default setting for Star Frontiers. I'm not sure how much of it I'll use--I'm a world-builder heart and soul--but its at least a great base for me to start from. It gives enough information without overwhelming a new GM stepping tentatively into sf gaming, a nice simple jumping off point for your imagination.

Speaking of Star Frontiers and jumping off points for the imagination, I have to mention that I purchased Bill Logan's Adventure Factory last night and I'm absolutely loving it. It's simply a random adventure generator for sf games, but I love how well it's executed. Top notch.

DM Wounded in RPG Combat

2011-10-12T14:18:00.001-05:00

Last week I started running our old campaign again--the one that began in 2003 when D&D 3.5 was released.

I knew I had limited time to run the game--everyone's a lot busier than we were eight years ago. So I plotted a small arc out over 5 sessions and off we went.

The first session concentrated on role-play and exploration. There was an option for combat, but the characters were able to say and do the right things to avoid the confrontation. However, a D&D 4e character sheet is jam packed with combat options--at level 12 there are several pages of combat options--and I knew it would be only a matter of time before the players got restless watching all those nifty powers go unused. So at the end of session 2 I forced a fight.

We have a pretty strict cutoff time of 10 p.m., and I've promised the players I would abide by it. Since there wouldn't be a standard 3 encounter combat arc (about the amount of time it takes for the PCs to expend their resources before an extended rest), I increased the difficulty slightly. Five level 12 PCs vs. seven level 12 monsters. That's almost 2 encounter levels higher. Not bad for characters with all their resources.

Nevertheless, despite prompting the players to keep things moving, the encounter lasted until 10:30 p.m.

Ironically, the monsters were fast-moving wights. I pictured them moving like the zombies from 28 Days Later. As usual, I prompted the players to describe their actions cinematically, but that was probably only fun for about half an hour or so. Around 45 minutes in, I think we were all getting weary but the monsters were still coming on strong. After that, I feel like the battle boiled down to die rolls. Both the PCs and the monsters were positioned optimally so there wasn't much reason to move, just hack and slash.

By the time we finished, I think we were all pretty tired. I hastily cleaned up. The players said they'd had a good time and they left, but they're my friends and they have good manners.

I went to bed worn out and agitated, woke up five hours later annoyed and a little depressed. Something about that fight rubbed me the wrong way. I compared the monster stats to other monsters of the same level, but there was no discrepancy. I looked over the characters to make sure they had all the "equipment bonuses" they needed at their level, but that checked out too.

I think what bothered me most was that the game had consisted of two hours of real time role-play and exploration/challenges where lots of things had happened over the course of a few days (game time), whereas the next hour and a half of play (real time) had been dedicated to about a minute or two of game time. And how important was that combat really? In our previous campaign I usually chose the battle pretty carefully. For the most part they occurred at dramatically appropriate moments (and they were all heroic tier combats). Even though I'd pushed role-playing and character in last night's session, I feel that the fight overshadowed those elements and became the most important part of the session--perhaps in a similar was that the players' character sheets include combat mechanics that overshadow the "human" aspects of the character.

I'm going to take the blame for all of this. The fight wasn't completely arbitrary, but much of it was. Going forward, I think I'll return to "fights as options." That is to say, there won't be much combat in the game that the PCs don't initiate themselves.

It could be that I've been playing too many indie RPGs or falling too much in love with the simpler mechanics of early RPGs like Star Frontiers, but it's probably both of these at once. I've always been a story/role-play DM, and I'm only becoming more so in my (relative) old age as a gamer. Fights should be exciting. They should be tense, dramatic, suspenseful, or else they should be light, fast, and fun. They should be quick duels to the death or a few minutes of swashbuckling action. They should move the story along, not drag it down like a millstone. A week ago I saw Lifeline Theatre's phenomenal production of The Count of Monte Cristo (extended through November 13th--go see it!). There was a tense sword fight in that show that seemed to last about 45 seconds; it was quick, impassioned, and it looked extremely deadly. When it happened, the audience sat up in their seats, leaned forward. That's what a fight should feel like. You can see a snippet of it here, 37 seconds into the video (side note: there's a strong D&D contingent at Lifeline; the combatant on the right is a renowned Pathfinder GM in these here parts).

The Count of Monte Cristo, trailer from Lifeline Theatre on Vimeo.

So what am I going to do about it?

I'll be phasing out any combat that's not absolutely necessary and letting the player characters pick their fights more often than not. I may rule that critical hits either bloody or kill non-elite and non-solo creatures automatically (but not PCs); it's easier to bring in a new monster into a fight to make it harder than to seamlessly get rid of active combatants. I may tax PC resources a little more so that their daily powers and some healing surges return more slowly (i.e. after 3 encounters regardless of extended rests). These are all just possibilities that I'll likely improvise as I proceed, trying to find the right mix for my D&D group. Mostly, though, I'll just focus on character and story like I usually do. I still hold that combat should be a single interesting part of the story; it should not be the story. Last night I let it get out of hand.

Siege of Gardmore Abbey at New York Comic Con

2011-10-11T11:42:00.002-05:00

According to the Wizards of the Coast site, players will have an opportunity to try out the prequel to the Madness at Gardmore Abbey super-adventure at the New York Comic Con.

The Siege of Gardmore Abbey is a character-and-story-focused role-playing experience I wrote to lead in to the super-adventure. In many ways it encapsulates the sorts of things I concern myself with here on this blog, and really in everything I write for RPGs. I'm very proud of it, and I hope you have a chance to play it at the con.

Dogs in the Vineyard (Character Creation)

2011-10-11T10:21:00.002-05:00

Last night the indie group began character creation for Dogs in the Vineyard.

If you haven't heard of Dogs in the Vineyard before, it's a lauded indie RPG where you play the equivalent of Mormons in the Old West. You are the literal hand of God, and your decree is the word of God. Here's a brief summary of what the game's about.

So far, there are several aspects of the game that impress me. Character creation is very thorough and very... well, "character focused." Everything on your sheet gets a dice pool assigned to it, but all of those details have something very personal to do with your character. How to explain that... In D&D, you can roll up a character, assign him feats, skills, and powers, and then tack on a background if you want to. In Dogs in the Vineyard, it works kind of opposite. You can't stat out your character until you've decided who your character is; once you've done that, you decide how many dice (there are given numbers in the book) to divide amongst each of the character aspects, or "traits," that you've made up. You're essentially deciding how good your character is at whatever it is you want your character to be good at. Then the GM interviews you and starts up some role-play interactions between your character and the others, and between your character and NPCs.

Once the GM has all of that information, he or she takes some time to "create the town." Now, not having read the rules, I can't tell you what goes into this, but I'm assuming the GM simply sets up the scenario based on threads from each of the PCs' stories and picks one of the standard challenges that the Dogs might face (exorcising demons, making deliveries, pronouncing the word of God, or whatever) and weaves it in.

Although this is nearly identical to the way I set up my D&D games (filter through my early "Strongwood" posts on this blog), that's a stylistic choice I've made and applied to D&D because my passion is character development and human drama. "Dogs" incorporates that style into the core of the game so that I don't think it's possible to play "Dogs" as-written without going in that direction.

This goes back to something I was musing on yesterday in the post on Star Frontiers and how the way a game's mechanics are focused determines the way most people will play that game. I know that sounds terribly obvious; I'm just making an observation--particularly in relation to D&D, which is part war/board game. Personally, I love the war/board game elements of D&D; I think they bring a level of strategy and fun to the game that you don't get in an indie RPG--heck, in most other RPGs period. Nevertheless, the board game elements of D&D take up a lot of space in the rulebooks, so how are most people going to play the game? They're going to play it like a board game. There's loads of story guidance in the various DM supplements, but the players generally aren't seeing that stuff--they're seeing the mechanics and they're trying to quantify everything in the game by those mechanics. I think that's regrettable, the cart being pushed a mile ahead of the horse as it were. This is why there are 15+ page threads about the physics behind the mechanics of a pixie's altitude limit while flying or the mechanical categorization of the witch subclass... instead of any discussion whatsoever about what it might be like to BE one.

A Slave to Principle (Character Development)

2011-10-10T15:55:00.003-05:00

Hashing out session 2 for tomorrow's D&D game, I'm tempted to create cool tactical environments, interesting locations to explore, crazy challenges, and weird monsters to savage the party. For the past two hours I've let the garden of my mind grow wild with these ideas. But the truth is, I've been letting them choke out the only truly important element: character.

In any given adventure session, one or more characters must experience an emotional or psychological challenge. It doesn't have to be major, but it has to be there. In fact, the external physical encounters should ultimately reflect one or more characters' inner state in some form or fashion. Without that, there is no story. It's adventure porn. It has no real substance or meaning.

D&D gives us many shiny tools: monsters, treasures, locations, skill challenges, NPCs, skills, and powers. It's sometimes tempting to put them into some combination and call that a game. And by definition, that would be a game. A game, but not a story. In a story, the characters' emotional vulnerabilities need to be pushed. Without that...

More Star Frontiers Madness

2011-10-10T11:12:00.001-05:00

I'm continuing to dig Star Frontiers.

For the past two weeks, I've had two dialogue settings.

Setting 1: George R.R. Martin ("Have you read FEVRE DREAM?!!?")

Setting 2: Star Frontiers.

I'm not sure if this obsession is madness or epiphany. Perhaps both.

I've discovered a few online communities supporting the game with a wealth of new content.

If I didn't explain before, the appeal of Star Frontiers is that the system is relatively simple, but those mechanics cover a good deal of what you'll want to accomplish in a sci-fi setting. There's also a lot they don't cover, however Star Frontiers comes from that era of RPGs where the GM was given a basic set of tools and rules, and then encouraged to make the rest up. That is to say, the mechanics are based on some core values and the rest is relatively abstract.

That's appealing to me, probably because I'm a story guy. Gigantic tomes full of systems and subsystems--be they entire RPGs or supplements for particularly crunchy RPGs--have always been kind of a turnoff for me. I know I can't memorize all those rules, and I don't want to spend the game looking them up and cross-referencing them. Instead of adding to the "reality" of the game, constantly referencing rules breaks the immersion as much as players quipping jokes. In the words of Mike Kuciak (said to me as I consulted a rulebook for 15 minutes trying to "be correct"): "Dude. Put down the fucking book, and DM."

What I love most about the new content in the online communities is that they haven't changed the rules to the game. Rather, they've added new options and story that expands on the game without replacing the simple core. I'm a little tickled to find that when I read a new "character build" option, the whole article consists of different directions one might take the character and a brief section that pre-builds that kind of character, complete with equipment. Usually I can't stand when a source pre-builds an example character, but the fan publications get this exactly right: the example mechanics occupy a quarter column and those apply to every story seed in the rest of the piece.

An RPG is, I suppose, the sum of its parts. If it's full of crunchy mechanics, that's what people will focus on. If its focus is on characters and scenes (Fiasco, Kagematsu, etc.) that's what people will focus on. Star Frontiers, like the D&D of old, is light on rules and heavy on character/story building. Some of that is likely due to what might be perceived as the system's shortcomings: it didn't have a massive world setting like Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms; it didn't have a whole lot of product support from TSR. I'm cautiously thankful that the game didn't receive a massive development push, and that Zebulon's Guide--the one attempt to change the game--seemed to sort of fall flat. Its legacy is a game very much like the game it used to be, with light (yet relatively inclusive) mechanics, ever-expanding options, and a vast frontier for stellar exploration and worldbuilding.

Then again, perhaps this obsession is merely the urge to justify the Dwarven Forge Sci-Fi sets that have been sitting unopened in my closet for the past four years. Hopefully not!

Heroes of the Feywild Preview: Pixie and Witch

2011-10-07T08:54:00.001-05:00

There is a Heroes of the Feywild preview up on the Wizards of the Coast web site today. It features the pixie and the witch, two of my creations for the book.

I'm extremely happy with how they've turned out so far, especially that so much of the writing I did made it to the final product.

The pixie was a debt I owed to a friend who played one in our 2e game. His character was a vicious little bastard that didn't fly, but he threw globes of exploding light/dust (not sure whether that option made the final cut; we'll see). We began with the Tiny rules, more simulationist than abstract, but when I playtested it, those rules were hard to manage and, well, broken. Fortunately someone had the good sense to tweak them more to the abstract side of things.
I think this version will work very nicely.

The witch. Last year I played a red box wizard who used Slimy Transmutation to turn people into frogs. I loved using that power so much I wanted to build a class that did that kind of thing A LOT, based on the archetypal witches of fairy tales and folklore. Not enough of the witch has been previewed yet to see how it works, but it's quite different from your typical wizard. I've seen some commentary about what "build" the witch should be, but this class is built on the sorts of things archetypal witches of fantasy, fairy tales, and folklore do; it wasn't designed toward any particular industry trend. They're kind of like warlocks, except they don't blast things to smithereens; they're kind of like druids, except they're far more into the arcane arts. In flavor, they're even a little like clerics I suppose. The sum of all those parts, and that story, however, is the witch of myth and legend. I have yet to see the final version, but I'm very, very excited to play this class.

I like that, as mentioned in the preview, the witch has access to all wizard spells. This rounds out the witch with practically unlimited magical options. Options are a big part of the witch. Every extended rest, they can switch out their utility or daily power for _ANY_ other wizard power. Like... even ones they don't know. That, to me, is crazy cool. But I like options. So there you have it.

Star Frontiers and Star Frontiers 1.5

2011-10-05T12:05:00.002-05:00

My recent Star Frontiers obsession has taken me through the Alpha Dawn boxed set (the original rules) and the introductory module Crash on Volturnus. I've browsed through the other modules in the Volturnus line, the ones that follow "Crash," and I've read through the basics of Zebulon's Guide, a Star Frontiers rules expansion/revision that was released in 1985. It's been educational.

Reading through the original (Alpha Dawn) set, I was delighted with the similarities between that system's core design and the current edition of D&D. They're by no means the same system, but they're similar in that the rules are relatively simple and there are a surprising number of correlations to modern D&D.
A few basic examples:
- Star Frontiers frequently uses a grid for combat and movement; its illustrations for cover are pretty similar to those in 3e and 4e D&D.
- Star Frontiers uses opportunity attacks for characters that move 5 meters (more than 1 square) while within range of somebody's loaded firearm.
- There are skills--which weren't really part of mainstream D&D in 1981--and each skill has a base difficulty percentage and rules of thumb for adjusting those difficulties. The skills are clustered into small groups that cover a number of tasks (like in D&D 4e).

I don't want to make it sound as though Star Frontiers is identical to modern D&D, but again I'm impressed with the similarities and the aspects that are easy to adjust. Each race, for example, has a movement rate in meters. Some are slightly faster, some slightly slower. If I were running a Star Frontiers game, like D&D the base movement would be 6 squares; fast races would move 7, slow races would move 5. Minor tweaks. Like 4e, there are 2 modifiers for cover (hard or soft).

There are a lot of differences, of course. Star Frontiers, while more complex than the D&D Basic Set of that era, is still pretty simple. There are no classes in Star Frontiers. You choose your race, pick a primary skill group (there are only 3: military, technical, and biosocial), and then another skill from any group. The skills you choose define your character. Like D&D 4e, there aren't lots of skills. There are 13--that's 3 less than 4e. As you advance, you choose whether you want to specialize in a few skills or branch out and learn a little of everything. I like that it's a very basic system with just enough structure to differentiate your character from the others. Since I feel that a character is only truly differentiated based on his or her role-playing choices, I like the basic mechanics Star Frontiers provides for everything else.

Then I started reading Zebulon's Guide.
Zebulon's guide was an effort to provide more options in Star Frontiers, to overhaul the system in order to make it more versatile and exciting. It provides more races and more equipment, which is awesome. It provides a whole mentalist class, which is even more awesome--introducing psionics to a sci-fi setting. But then it does a few things that should be awesome but, at least in my estimation, take a step forward while taking two steps backward. I should make it clear that I'm not knocking the designers here, especially since I have yet to actually play the game; I'm only commenting on what works or doesn't work for me. So please take all of this for the opinion that it is.

Zebulon's Guide adds professions to the game. These are like light character classes, but they're really just skill lists that come with a default skill. Zebulon's Guide then adds lots and lots of new skills to the game. Unlike the original Star Frontiers where skills were grouped into broad categories, Zebulon's guide changes the game so that each character will be more specialized. While that kind of sounds like a good idea, the problem (as I see it) is the D&D equivalent of the Cooking skill. How often does it come up in play? How much actual fun will that (mostly unused) skill average per session? What if you could be an excellent cook without a skill for it--would that break an average game of Star Frontiers? (I doubt it). The other problem with extremely specific skills is that it's tough to make adventures where those skills all come into play, as opposed to broader skill groups that come into play often.

Another thing Zebulon's guide does is it introduces a whole new way to roll dice in the game. I'm a big fan of TSR's Marvel Superheroes game, which uses a series of multicolored columns to determine degrees of success on the dice. Zebulon's Guide introduces the same kind of column. However, I think that where Marvel used that column as a core element from the beginning, slapping it onto Star Frontiers only confuses things. The base Star Frontiers game advises an adjustment of plus or minus 10% to 30% when adjusting for the ease or difficulty of a task on the fly. Since the entire system is based on percentages, that's pretty easy. So, if you want to include a system for degrees of success, why not just say that failing a roll by 10% - 20% is a partial success and have done with it? Or that succeeding by 30% is an outstanding success? Did the game really need a chart that spans from -X, -5, -4, etc, all the way to +X and includes the categories: cobalt, blue, green, and yellow? Though it's Star Frontiers's version of the Marvel Superheroes chart, it feels more like Thac0 for Star Frontiers. In the end, I suppose I'd rather roll to hit a target number than be bound to a chart for all my rolls.

There's one last quibble I want to make about Zebulon's Guide. I'll just quote the book.

"The fourth race, the Mechanons, is included because its presence on the Frontier has had increasing impact in the last few decades. The Mechanons should be used only as non-player characters, like the Sathar. They are not, however, an evil race. It just so happens that most Mechanon interests conflict with the interests of the Frontier and the UPF."

So you can't play a robot. Even though the designers took the time to include their race writeup in the book. Instead, you can be a kangaroo, a naked dwarf, or a spindly, stick-like reptile. Here's the second passage that bugs me:

"Occupational standings and professions that are not acceptable are those that are illegal: assassins, pirates, terrorists, and professional criminals, Sathar agents, and so on. Those types of characters cannot be considered as anything but the enemy. Players should not be allowed to play these types of characters."

I think my problem with it is that the game is Star Frontiers. It's set amidst a sprawling background of limitless possibilities. Heck, a role-playing game is a mind space of infinite possibility. So putting that kind of stricture on the game is silly. I can get behind the idea of a limited setting RPG where the characters take on specific roles--like Kagematsu (you're villager women in feudal Japan) or Mouse Guard (you're mice employed in the Mouse Guard) or Dogs in the Vineyard (gun-toting Mormons acting as divine law)--but that kind of thing shouldn't be imposed on a vast setting like Star Frontiers. Players enjoy the game of make-believe. We occasionally enjoy playing vampires, werewolves, blackguards, or sleazy con-men. Not many like being straight-jacketed into a code of behavior. We enjoy playing and watching interesting characters of all kinds. We don't want to be teased with options that aren't options.

In conclusion, I think there are two designs for Star Frontiers. One is a basic, relatively accessible game open for expansion and loose interpretation. It seems easy to run because while it's not terribly complex, its rules cover a wide array of possibilities and situations while giving advice for running games, creating creatures, and expanding on the base setting. It feels a lot like the D&D I was introduced to when I first began playing, around 1982.

The second design of Star Frontiers gives it a lot of neat looking frills that--to my eye at least--hinder the game more than they help. Or maybe it's that there are two types of gamers: there are those that delight in specificity and simulation, and those like myself who prefer the mechanics to be a bit broader and more generally applicable in each session. Also, extensive rules and modifiers require extensive looking-things-up-at-the-table which, if you're a storytelling or role-play-focused group, continually breaks the immersion of the game.

As I proceed in Star Frontiers I think I'll stick closer to the original game, streamlining things here and there to be in concordance with some modern design philosophies. As I continue to read and post about Star Frontiers I'll also put down some thoughts on the adventures I've read so far.

Quest-Givers

2011-09-28T16:20:00.002-05:00

A quest-giver is an NPC that sets the characters out upon their quest. They're usually not heroes themselves, but people who require heroes to "deliver the hook," usually by accomplishing something something they cannot. Damsels in distress, oppressed peasants, rich nobles and merchants, and mysterious men in black cloaks that frequent inns and taverns looking for adventurers to bother. Sometimes they're overextended heroes in need of champions or they're prophetic wizards placing weighty tasks on their young apprentices. Every once in a while they're something weirder.

I can recall a time, back in high school, when I couldn't figure out how to get the characters moving on an adventure without someone showing up and saying, "I'm looking for adventurers!" or some variation thereof. Having played a number of Living Forgotten Realms adventures over the past few years, this still seems to be a pretty regular hook.

I didn't really get hooks when I first read about them. Mostly because I couldn't find out what made a good hook. Still, most of the hooks I read involved some stranger approaching the characters with information or a "quest" that the characters are free to take or refuse. Sometimes this requires some false negotiation, where the characters ask why they should do it and the NPC tries to make it worth their while, but eventually they cave in because the players are there to have an adventure.

Over the past week I've been thinking of quest-givers as optional tools to use or not use in an adventure. In D&D, quest-givers are a meta-element of the game: somebody has to go up to the characters, tell them about the adventure, and let them choose to accept it, even if it's actually a false choice since the players want to go on an adventure anyway. But I think the best adventures are the ones where the quest-givers are transparent, unseen. These are the ones where the characters are so motivated by what's at stake in their own lives that the only rational thing to do is undertake a dangerous mission to protect that stake.

The key is to make the "quest" organic to the campaign situation and personal to the characters. That way, the characters are motivating the action or responding to events that have meaning to them as people. When Kederena's sister is kidnapped by slavers, Ked goes after her sister because she has a personal stake in her sister's welfare. When their superior officer gets knifed by the tanner's guild and a threatening note pinned to his body, the constables under his command rise up to deal with matters themselves. Because those are personal and the characters in the story have an emotional attachment to them.

It's not wrong go on quests in exchange for gold pieces or magic, but unless the story explores the inner motives, desires, or greed of mercenaries, the tale of accumulation of treasure isn't that interesting a story. Creating compelling situations that force the characters to act for their own emotional interests or react to a situation that threatens their stability or way of life is a good start.

Carrying this over into dramatic structure:
A typical story establishes the status-quo and then disrupts it with an event that puts the protagonist(s) at a decision point. Sometimes the protagonist tries to avoid dealing with the problem, but they soon come around when the problem becomes more complex or refuses to go away. In three act structure, the protagonist begins grappling with the problem at the end of act one, when the status-quo has been soundly shaken up. In D&D, this is often where we find our "quest-giver." The PCs are having a grand old time at the tavern or whatever when the quest-giver enters. Drama--movies, stories, novels, plays--can show us better ways to introduce those elements and make them so much less blunt and obvious. Again, it's not that there's anything inherently wrong with a quest-giving NPC; the problem is that the quest-giver and all the tales he tells and all the gold he promises is often a false pretense to go on an adventure. I think the stakes are highest, the adventure the most organic, when the situation at hand involves the PCs, their wants, dreams, and concerns, personally.

Star Frontiers!

2011-09-27T11:04:00.001-05:00

In our recent move, as I went about tidying up my bookshelves, I removed my copy of Star Frontiers from its taped-up, dilapidated box, put the books in a plastic sleeve and the counters in a plastic bag, and tossed out the box. The books started on my shelf, but soon migrated to the bedside table and then to the bag I take with me to work. In short, for the time being I'm a little obsessed.

My cousin Dave--my first DM, and the guy who taught me all my dirty tricks--used to own Star Frontiers back in the early '80s. Whenever we met up, there were two options: Dungeons & Dragons or Star Frontiers. As I recall, D&D won out every time. But Star Frontiers has always held a special place in my memory as TSR's premiere sci-fi adventure game. Delving into these old rules, I'm surprised to find out close they are to the current edition of D&D. Granted, these rules use percentages and everything's metric, but on the other hand I'm seeing a fairly standard combat round, a skill system, opportunity attacks, a grid for movement and vehicle maneuvers, and pretty similar rules for cover and concealment. There are a lot of things that could stand some streamlining, but by and large it seems relatively viable and (at least at the moment) I'm determined to run it.

One of the things that excites me most about it is learning the system by running classic Star Frontiers modules written by such designers as Douglas Niles and Tom Moldvay. Sometimes I want to try running classic AD&D modules, but that's not too likely to happen; I have too many homebrew D&D campaigns going--campaigns focused on individual characters and their stories--I don't have time to run yet another sequence of D&D sessions. But Star Frontiers--something exciting, different, and classic all at once--that I can get behind. Well, someday. Hopefully. TSR's Marvel Superheroes is also on my list--that one I used to play a lot.

Give 'Em What They Want (More Design Posts!)

2011-09-21T13:50:00.001-05:00

Today my Design & Development column on the Madness at Gardmore Abbey super-adventure went live on the Wizards of the Coast site. Since I linked this blog a couple times, I came over here to manage comments and such (for some reason, though my settings appear to be correct, I'm not notified when comments are posted here). During this process I stumbled upon the blog stats and the posts that people seemed to hit more often than others. Those posts were the ones where I'd put down thoughts on certain monster designs.

I enjoyed doing those, but once I started doing more work, keeping up with them seemed like a daunting task. Since there seems to be some interest, I may reconsider and put down some posts exploring the process of creating certain monsters, articles, or adventures for published D&D 4e products I worked on. When I say 'process,' I mean I'll speak a little bit about inspirations for this or that and comment on any particularly inspired mechanics or design philosophy. I might not have that much to say about a given creature, or may feel those thoughts have been adequately covered elsewhere (like on the Wizards site), but I'll link those sources too.

I always feel a little weird about it. I guess I just want to make it clear that by writing about such things (as well as anything else I post here), I'm only talking about stuff I'm happy to have done, stuff that excited me, work I'm proud of. I'm not saying that the way I did anything is awesome or trying to come off like I have some inflated opinion of my own work. The true fact of the matter is that I usually spend a lot of time on each individual element I work on and I'm usually excited by or invested in the work. So naturally there's a lot that goes on in my head that's only implied on paper. Hopefully the implications are clear and convey the mood, tone, and design of the game elements I've created. But the blog affords me a place to expound on them a little bit, talk about how these things evolved. I think that's really what I want to do in these posts: talk about the process of how things evolved, what decisions were made, why they were made, and when. I'll try to do more of those in the future. I'll put them under the "RPG Philosophy" label and name them "Steve's Designs: ."

Expect to see a few of those trickling out now and then.

Don't Rest Your Head

2011-09-20T12:45:00.000-05:00

Lately the indie RPG group has been playing Don't Rest Your Head, a game where you set up a character with problems so deep and personal that you're suffering chronic insomnia. As lack of sleep takes its toll, dreamlike elements begin to shape the world around you and madness starts creeping in. Simultaneously, your character begins to develop the powers of a lucid dreamer--able to affect the world with abilities that, outside of a dream, would be considered supernatural.

I've been playing Trebonius Lipschitz, a closeted gay Jewish man who served as the clerk of a general store in Cross Plains, WI, until he was outed to the community by a rival and lost everything. He's a somewhat overweight, balding guy who's lived in denial about everything in his life--until his outing, his life was hunting trips and sporting events with the guys, who've now ostracized him from their circle. He's so desperate for acceptance he's been faking it as a Christian for his whole adult life, attending the local Episcopalian church with his buddies and their families. He's also kept his appreciation of the arts--especially dance; he's always fancied himself a dancer--strictly private. Our story opens on the day after he's been named by a rival "as an openly gay man" in the local paper. He has lost his job, lost his friends, and his parents won't answer their phones. His first scene begins with Trebonius at home doing a Google search to research various methods of suicide, trying to figure out which one is the least painful and easiest to pull off without botching it up.

The other characters are Amadi, a horn player in the Madison symphony, whose mother has just passed away, and Serena, a speed addict and law student at the University of Madison.

The first session of the game was mostly set in the modern world, but touched on the weird. In the second session we became fully enveloped in the dreamlike world that's unfolding around us. I'd describe the game as Dark City meets Neverwhere meets Ink. I'm not sure if Rob, our GM, is familiar with all of those references, but thus far an amalgam of those three sources would very adequately describe our game.

My objective in creating Treboius was to challenge myself to play a very different kind of character with lots of emotional issues ripe for story development. Improvising my way through Tre's character, however, I've often found it challenging in the context of the story. In fact, playing a character who's lost everything, I've found it easier to embrace the crazy dreamlike stuff happening around him. Since he began the game ready to kill himself, any alternative to his previous life seems worth pursuing. That's one part of the game I've perhaps found the most difficult. Amadi's player, Todd, is playing a man struggling to accept the reality evolving around him; Amadi is in denial of the dream world and tries to deal with everything rationally. He's doing a convincing job playing the struggle between the dreamlike world and reality.

On the other hand, I'm still trying to figure out the line between verisimilitude and willing suspension of disbelief. At what point is it believable for a character who's just been plunged into a fantasy world to accept that world and try to deal with it on its own terms? When I was trying to justify it to myself, I thought about the way I dream, and how in dreams your subconscious mind has no choice but to accept the reality in which it exists; when you're dreaming, rarely do you stop and think about the absurdity of the situation you're in. People and places are morphic, transitional, they move and shift at will and you never really question it. That's part of how I'm justifying Tre's acceptance of the dream world. The other part is that the crazy, dangerous dream world offers both anonymity and super powers, and Tre is in just such a place in his life where those two aspects would be more welcome than anything else.

Right now his goal is to find acceptance, both within the group and in the dream world. I'm doing this mostly by improvising the character in relation to the other PCs. I think that's fine, but I feel that Amadi's player and Serena's player have found some greater personal depths to explore, and the players have painted these elements in detail as physical aspects in the dream world. My character's goals have been a little more external than internal. I think that's partially the result of not having written out a full character description beforehand and partially due to the character's circumstances. Still, the other players are doing some impressive work manifesting bits of their psyches as elements of the dream and I'd like to climb aboard that wagon.

The mechanics are beginning to make sense. I won't go into them now, but suffice it to say you roll 6-sided dice and add more dice to your pool to risk exhaustion and madness. The one thing you don't want to do (so I hear) is fall asleep. Nobody's really in danger of that right now. As with Mouse Guard before, I'm a little more in favor of simpler mechanics, and though Don't Rest Your Head isn't terribly complex, I (so far) feel like action resolution seems to require a little more complexity than it needs.

Character creation does a great job focusing on personal issues in order to make each character invested and dramatically interesting, with lots of fuel for potential stories. As I touched on earlier regarding my uncertainty as to whether to embrace the dream world or deny it, I'm sometimes a little confused about how the story is supposed to "work" in Don't Rest Your Head. It's an unusual setup that--at least in our game--doesn't yet seem to have a solid objective. Your characters have objectives that you define, and ideally you want to go after these in the game, but it's not like: "You're adventurers questing for gold and glory when you hear of a quest in a dangerous ruin that could make you fabulously wealthy." Or, Kagematsu style: "You're the women of a rundown village victimized by 'a threat.' A wandering ronin appears in town; perhaps you can get him to deal with 'the threat.'" In Fiasco, the needs are shared between two characters, and with a couple needs on the table, there are a number of characters vying for objectives in the game and other players to set up obstacles for them.

I think that's the source of some of my confusion in Don't Rest Your Head: Not fully grasping the genre of the sort of story I'm in, in combination with actual real life insomnia prior to playing the game, as well as improvising my character's story rather than setting it down on paper and refining it beforehand. Such preparation may have helped to evoke some even deeper character specifics from which to draw.

At any rate, the game is lots of fun so far and keeps getting weirder. We'll see what the final session or two hold for us. In the meantime I'll push to find some more character specifics to affect the story.

Unplugged

2011-09-16T18:31:00.003-05:00

Over the past week I've been hypnotized by the internet. For reasons I don't fully understand, but probably have to do with lack of sleep, motivation, and direction, I've allowed myself to surf the web in my "off time."

This is a bad thing because "off time" is when I usually get important things done. Like working on a creative project. Or... working on a creative project.

I must credit a number of web forums for steering me back on task. One can find great treasures there glittering amongst the darkness of the interwebs, but oh the horrors...

The horrors!

Speak Out with Your Geek Out

2011-09-14T16:09:00.001-05:00

This week is "Speak Out with Your Geek Out," an internet movement started by author Monica Valentinelli that's kind of a week-long pride parade, coming out party, or counter-stereotyping festival for geeks. It's a time for people with interests that society may once have dubbed weird, eccentric, or overly intellectual, to step forward and, well, be happy about the stuff they like. As I understand it, that's the purpose.

Two years ago, I posted a blog entry here about the universality of the geek trait through every level of social strata. It was true before that, it's true now, it will continue to be true. The thing is, humans are passionate about stuff. The stuff changes from human to human, but we're all wired alike. The circuitry is the same. We only have words like "geek" and "nerd" in order to create false divisions and classifications between "this type of person" and "that type of person," as if one is inherently superior to the other or different from the other.

We all do this. We all use terms we shouldn't in order to generalize people. It's never going to stop as long as we have language. But I think we can be more tolerant, and more sensitive. I think we can do that by realizing that while our individual lives are unique, our emotional equipment is not. We all yearn, we all cry. This (playwright Charles Smith once explained to me) is why good movies and plays are popular; the audience shares the emotional experience, but what's strange is that when we're sitting in the darkened movie theater trying to keep from crying (or screaming), we somehow all feel that we're the only ones having the experience, like it's personal to us alone.

So what can one hope to accomplish by "speaking out with one's geek out?"

Self-affirmation: You see it done to death in every cheesy movie, but it's done to death (and often done badly) because it's true. "This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." I have found it more than true in my own life. Pretending to be someone other than who I am has only ever slowed me down.

Positive social reinforcement: If you are who you are, people respect that and they find it easier to be who they are. If you keep to yourself and pretend to be someone you're not, it's hard for people to trust you. Another thing I think everyone should understand: nobody really cares what you're into... people are generally mired too deeply in their own insecurities to care as much about your perceived failings as you think they do. Admittedly there are some people like that, but I find they're generally the exception.

Time to actually do the things you enjoy and people to do them with: Words are like action potential. When you say something, it becomes partly real. It's left your head and you've put it out there into the world. You don't have to go around evangelizing your geekiness, but if you make your interests known, other people with similar interests might just, I dunno, hear you and respond, and voila--suddenly you're not alone. Say what it is you want to do, make it known to those around you and the universe at large, and suddenly you're on your way. It's scary, I know. But it's the first step in the process.

One last thing...
This is about fear.
It's hard to be yourself when you think people are going to laugh at you. I can think of many encouraging words people have passed to me over the years (the foremost among them was from a brilliant improv teacher, Susan Messing, who used the phrase, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke" to dismiss each and every worry we experienced until that phrase became a mantra). However, as I think back on all the good decisions I've ever made, they have all been terrifying leaps of faith that I made to further my own geeky dreams.

For instance...

The time I decided to audition for that Canadian Shakespeare tour...

Or the time I asked that girl out who liked renaissance faires and Lord of the Rings...

Or the time I tried to write for Dungeons and Dragons...

Speak out with your geek out.

Be yourself.

"Make it so, Number One."

Prior Offenses (or "The Steve Townshend D&D Credits List," or "The Hall of Hubris")

2011-09-13T16:34:00.002-05:00

Lately I've spoken to a few friends who have asked me what I've written for D&D. I figure I should compile that list somewhere that's easy for me to get to so I can do a snappy copy & paste if anybody ever asks me again in the future history of my life. Most of the time I exclude the minor stuff, but this time I'll include most of it, in roughly chronological order. My D&D resume, if you will. It's a short list, relatively speaking, but there's a lot of stuff here I'm proud of.

* Polyhedron #76 ("Babette" contest entry) -- 1992

* Polyhedron #94 ("Sidekicks" contest entry) -- 1994

* Dragon #288 ("Four Faces of Death" feature) -- 2001

* Wizards.com (Gen Con blogger 2005-2007)
Here's the 2007 edition.

* Wizards.com (Reclamation Variants D&D Miniatures scenarios: The Partnership of the Thing and Toxic Zombies from the Infernal Depths) -- 2006

* Monster Manual 3 -- 2010

* Demonomicon -- 2010

* Dragon #385 ("The Minotaurs of Mistwatch") -- 2010

* Dragon #389 ("Origin Stories") -- 2010

* Dungeon #183 ("Ecology of the Scarecrow") -- 2010

* Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale -- 2011

* Madness at Gardmore Abbey -- 2011

* Heroes of the Feywild -- 2011

* The Siege of Gardmore Abbey -- 2011

* Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium (uncredited) -- 2011

* D&D Encounters: Beyond the Crystal Cave -- 2011

* Various excerpts & design columns for D&D Insider -- 2010-2011

Mouse Guard, session 2

2011-09-06T15:55:00.000-05:00

Over the Labor Day weekend, the indie RPG group got together to play the second session of the Mouse Guard game we began a few weeks ago.

I'd like to tell the whole story of everything that happened, but it would take too long and RPG stories you weren't there for don't tend to be all that interesting when told straight up (I think they can be told well, but that's another topic for another day). Suffice it to say, the game was excellent, the players brilliant, and despite playing in a game store where people around us were playing various other games, I think we got a taste of the sublime with this group once more. (The other time was Kagematsu: different game, no GM).

Why was Mouse Guard so dang good?
I definitely have to credit the players and the gamemaster first and foremost. It was an excellent feat of collaborative storytelling that came together to make something sweet and poignant. But all things considered, if I have to choose an MVP I'm going to hand it to Todd Nicholas, who ran the game. Todd gave me one of those jaw-dropping "Oh no!" moments of the variety that I try to give my players session after session, but that I've found so rare in my RPG career as a player. I'll try not to bore you with the details, but here it is:

- I (the young D'artagnan-esque mouse, Faolan) have a thing going with a young female mouse from the previous session.
- Faolan believes in the honor and ideals of the Mouse Guard above all. In the previous session, we dealt with a traitorous merchant.
- Our group gets an assignment to check out a scandal in the town Faolan's lady lives in. A veteran mouse of the Mouse Guard, "Grick," has sold some antique blades to a merchant, but the merchant claims they're forgeries.
- In order to impress everybody, Faolan decides to get info from his lady and find out what she knows about the scandal. I've also taken a very strong anti-merchant stance (this is in part due to the traitorous merchant from the previous session, but also a carryover from Kagematsu, where we learned that in ancient Japan merchants were lower than peasants in the great chain of being, because they didn't actually make anything).
- Faolan asks his lady about the scandal between the "Grick," the honorable Mouse Guard mouse, and "this merchant." And his special lady friend says, "What do you want to know about the dealings between Grick and my father?"

BLAM-O.
Suddenly I'm backpedaling, trying to come up with a new plan. Foot is planted in mouth and I don't know what to do. Faolan is in a tight spot now. He's caught between his ideals and the girl he likes. Which is he going to choose?

I feel like a lot of the time in RPGs I've made the safe choice, the "good" choice or the "right" choice when I'm a player. But I always encourage my own players to make the character choice, right or wrong. I decided to take my own advice and do as Faolan would do, pursuing his ideals.

What followed was a terrible clusterfrack of my oh so young little mouse making very bad decisions and saying some very bad things. I think I was on the way to becoming the Mouse Guard version of Darth Vader. But in the end, despite everything, the other players came around and acted as their characters would, talking young Faolan down, disciplining him, and giving him some solid life lessons. What had been a terrible, terrible path my mouse was on ended up as a really fantastic story where a young mouse learned a lesson.

But that wasn't all.
So far I've just been talking about my experience in this (three hour?) game session, but Todd found a way to set up conflicts for all the characters. Rob's character Florian is Faolan's brother, the second-to-youngest mouse, and he was equally at fault but for different reasons. Megan's character Jasper was the old veteran mouse who had served under "Grick" in the weasel wars of long ago. Jasper got to help his old boss find redemption, while Timo's character Nolan was the calm voice of reason who worked with Jasper to figure out and set right what had actually been going on.

It was a pretty amazing session where all the players listened to what their friends put out there and then heightened it, helped it out. That's some generous storytelling, the like of which I have rarely found beyond our own table where that kind of thing has always been encouraged. Except this time I get to be on the other end of it as a player. It's really a dream come true. As GM, Todd set up all the pieces and then made them work like only a good story can while the rest of us supported it as we were able. A truly satisfying session.

There was some post-game talk about the Burning Wheel social mechanics... I've heard people lauding it in various places on the web, but so far I must confess that--at least as a result of my limited experience with it--I don't love it.

As I've written at length here and elsewhere, I'm into the game of the scene. A scene is a game and you're trying to play it well. It has its own set of scene mechanics, or dramatic mechanics, and you need to learn how those work. In Burning Wheel, the way I understand it, if you're having an argument, you'll choose whether you're attacking, defending, feinting, maneuvering, and so forth--and you choose that at the top. Then you roll dice to see whether you succeeded at your maneuver and justify what happened (or some variety of that order). Under Todd's guidance we were able to make it work out. That, I think, is a credit to Todd as GM. However, I vastly prefer simpler, more goal-oriented mechanics like those in Kagematsu, Fiasco, and even (maybe especially) D&D.

It never occurred to me until playing Burning Wheel (er, Mouse Guard) how much I like the D&D 4e social mechanics. That is, in D&D there are as many or as few rules governing social interaction as you want there to be. You can roll checks like crazy, or you can role-play it all with checks when something seems dubious or important (that's my preference). You can play the game of the scene and play it all for the drama, character growth, and development inherent in the scene (in the old days we used to define that as role-playing). For me, that's preferable to a very mechanical set of rules for conversations or arguments. The Burning Wheel method sort of takes me out of the fiction, breaks the immersion for me somewhat. That said, it's a credit to Todd's ability that he was able to make it all work smoothly.

At any rate, I didn't think being a mouse could be so awwwwweeesssoooommmmeee.

Heroes of the Feywild is Coming

2011-09-06T15:11:00.000-05:00

Here it is, in the September: In the Works column.

This book was a big one for me. As things roll out, I'll probably comment here and there on it, but for today I'll just point at the pixie, the witch, and the hamadryad and say, "Good times."

There's a goodly amount of other content I wrote for the book, but those three are particularly special--not only in terms of fun mechanics but story, mood, and tone.

My secret favorite, however, are the fairy-tale-like stories I got to write. I think I only got in a handful, but The Ugly Satyr was the first of them. I'll re-post it here:

The Ugly Satyr
Once there was a young man who loved a lord's daughter. Night after night he came to her window to woo her, but each time the lady refused him, saying, "My love's face is secret, my love is most rare, my love plays the music upon the night air."

One night, as the young man went out to woo his lady, he heard a beautiful melody in the wood. He followed the sound to a glade where an ugly satyr played the pipes with skill beyond mortal reckoning.
"If you would teach me that tune, I would give you anything you ask," said the young man.
The satyr agreed in return for a small vow, and he taught the man the tune upon the pipes. When the man played it at the lady's window, she consented to marry him. A wedding day was set, guests were invited, and all was made ready.

On the eve of the wedding, the ugly satyr arrived to claim his due: a kiss from the lady who adored his music. The young man scoffed at the request and turned the satyr away. The man then set a circle of cold iron around his beloved's chamber, for the creatures of Faerie cannot cross such boundaries.
That night, as the man slept, a beautiful new melody drifted from the forest and into the bridal bower. On the morning of the wedding, the lady was gone from the tower. The only trace of her was a single delicate footprint outside the circle of cold iron. Try as he might, the man who broke his vow to the satyr never discovered where she had gone.

Gardmore Abbey and the Fall of Nerath (Steve's Take)

2011-09-06T12:14:00.002-05:00

In an earlier post about the opening night for the Siege of Gardmore Abbey, Jools asks about what caused Nerath's fall. I'd alluded to something in the Wizards of the Coast Design and Development column in regard to Gardmore being directly linked to the fall of Nerath. I haven't yet seen the version of The Siege of Gardmore Abbey that was run at PAX, but what follows is my take.

Disclaimer!
First, it's important for me to note that the way I portrayed the reasons for Nerath's fall in The Siege of Gardmore Abbey were purely speculative on my part. Essentially, I write the stuff, I submit it to Wizards, and then I see what shakes out in the end after the story and development folks have a go at it. Nevertheless, I thought it was a good speculation, and the reasons were more indirect than concrete. For instance, I didn't say "A big dragon destroyed Nerath." I tried to be subtle enough so that the explanation was plausible no matter what story was officially fitted to Nerath's fall.

The Hubris of Gardmore Abbey
My answer is that the knights had grown comfortable, secure, and proud. Nerath had prospered for many years without a significant threat to its security. Where the knights may once have been humble servants of their god, they began to think of themselves as deserving of their good fortune; they began to take credit for, and believe in their own legend. I'm not saying they were entirely corrupt--or even mostly corrupt. They were just human. Their pride causes them to act rashly, mistreat those that could save them (several of the PCs in The Siege of Gardmore Abbey) poorly, and ultimately draw from the Deck of Many Things--that final move being both an act of desperation and an attempt to wield reality-altering powers beyond their ability to control. In the subtext, Gardmore is just Nerath in a microcosm. The problems at Gardmore are symptomatic of what's happening throughout Nerath.

In terms of actual physical cause and effect, when Gardmore falls, hordes of monsters stream unchecked into the Nentir Vale from the Stonemarch. What happens then? According to the history of the Nentir Vale, they sack the city of Fallcrest soon after. What happens when Fallcrest--at the time the largest city in the Vale--is sacked? The roads are claimed by monsters, and the Vale is essentially lost to Nerath. Sure it has other protectors, but with the paladins of Gardmore out of the scene--its ruins infested with orcs, demons, undead, and dragons--it's not long before the Nentir Vale breaks down.

That's how I see Gardmore's fall as the beginning of the end. With Fallcrest and the Nentir Vale essentially lost, the forces of evil get a big morale boost and Nerath takes a huge hit. They've been comfortable and secure for time out of mind and now they've lost one of the greatest bastions of their strength. As for the rest, it depends on how you want to imagine it. I like to think that Nerath suffered the same problems as Gardmore Abbey--they were overconfident and unprepared for what was coming. Gardmore was the first domino to fall. Once it went down, the rest slowly followed. The Rome of its day. As with Gardmore, the people of Nerath had forgotten their history and the ideals upon which they were founded. In the end, everyone--including the discontented characters in The Siege of Gardmore Abbey--had to make that choice: do I fight for those ideals or save myself? Are those ideals worth dying for?

Thematic side notes:
There's an additional subtext going on in the adventure as well, and it involves the Raven Queen (Fate) and Bahamut playing a game (of cards, if I recall correctly). They're wagering on whether the knights will stay true to Bahamut or put their fate in chance (the Deck). Spoiler alert: the Raven Queen wins, and the age that follows--an age of death and change--belongs very much to her.

We know from the lore in the super-adventure that the knight-captain draws the skull card from the deck. From that action, we know that demons and undead are released within the abbey walls; immoliths are mentioned by name. When I was looking for demons of an appropriate level for the PAX adventure, I selected the fire demon because not only was it level-appropriate, but it check out that skull head and those horns. Skull card > fiery horned skull undead > fiery horned skull demons. In the PAX adventure, I wrote a big chunk of text about the clouds at sunset forming the shape of a horned skull over the abbey as the card is drawn. Since it just happened that fire was a major theme in the monster choices, I worked it into the adventure theme and from this came the adventure's SECOND titles, replacing the working title "Why We Fight." This time, the title was to be: The Final Flame of Gardmore, Gardmore's Final Flame, The Last Flame of Gardmore Abbey.

The idea was to cast a double meaning on the flame motif. The heroes are the last flame of Gardmore, but Gardmore is also condemned to the flames. What goes with horns, flames, and Bahamut? Dragons. So, following this theme, when the knights fail Bahamut, a blood-red dragon is his answer. Also, there's some lore I read associating the founder of Nerath with a great dragon--I wish I could recall the reference. But in that respect I thought it would be neat if dragons bookended the rise and fall of Nerath. What other themes did I cram into this one-shot? I compared the skull in the clouds to Orcus and Oublivae--horned demon lords of undeath and of ruin respectively. Appropriate, I thought, for what was going on. Finally, I believe I drew upon some things I'd written about the Grey Company (supposed heirs of Nerath) in Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale--about corruption tearing the empire apart--so in some strange ways I'm sort of quoting myself as a reference.

Like everything else I write, I put more time, thought, and work into this one than a sane person ought to do. It was a short convention adventure that dominated my life for a couple months. I hope that it's released someday for others to enjoy... it's something I had a lot of fun writing.

Kagematsu

2011-08-30T09:13:00.000-05:00

Last Monday, I went over to the indie RPG group I've recently joined. We played Kagematsu, and it was awesome.

Some background: a little over a year ago, I discovered that a friend I'd known for over a decade was a diehard role-playing gamer. At Gen Con 2010 she told me about all the indie RPGs she was playing.

Without knowing it, I'd been interested in indie RPGs for a couple years then. At Gen Con 2008, my friend Nate Scheidler, who organizes the Chicago Toy and Game Fair, fell hard for Dread, a horror RPG based around a Jenga tower. He shared his enthusiasm with the rest of us and sure enough we ended up playing it at my bachelor party later that month. In 2010 I discovered Fiasco, the "like-a-Coen-Brothers-movie" RPG at Gen Con. So I was slowly coming over to the idea of the indie RPGs that were coming out.
These new indie RPGs aren't about complex rule sets or heavy systems. In some ways they're more like the RPG equivalent of euro games. Most of them are comprised of a small paperback comprised of a clever mechanic or two, some story guidance that shows players how to play the game, and maybe a scenario or two. These aren't generally all-encompassing rule sets, but specific guidelines that relate to the (more specific) kind of game you're playing. They're simple, elegant, and they rely on the players to be storytellers engaged in the game. These games don't reward reserved play and they don't favor non-participants. It's also hard to "power game" these things, since a lot of them are built for one-shots and not for campaign play. They're very different animals from D&D Model RPGs, and I kind of feel that they suit my particular story preferences.

In Kagematsu, a female player plays Kagematsu, a wandering ronin. The male players (or whoever else is in the group) play the women of a downtrodden village where the men have all gone to war, died at sea, or what have you. There's a threat that comes about, which the women try to get Kagematsu to deal with. Each of the women relies on either her charm or her innocence to compel Kagematsu to action over a number of scenes. As the scenes progress, Kagematsu's player secretly tracks the love and pity the ronin feels for each of the women. At some point, one of them tries to convince Kagematsu to deal with the threat, and depending on how well they've done, it affects Kagematsu's chances to defeat the threat.

When Megan first played the game, the women failed to convince Kagematsu to face the threat. The last of them threatened (and then committed) seppuku in an attempt to get Kagematsu to stay and face the threat. We did a lot better; our story was touching and sweet, and in the end we knew that Kagematsu had begun to care deeply about the village and its people. Over the course of two nights (and probably six solid hours of play) we all developed different relationships with Kagematsu and we convinced him to save the village from "the Howling," a seasonal haunting where the waves took the shapes of dead samurai and stormed the village.

Sadly, Kagematsu was unable to defeat the Howling, the storm came, the village was destroyed, and everyone died.

Yep.

It was a touching ending, and an effective one. The curse on the village was lifted, but at the cost of the village itself. In the end, all of our characters and those relationships we had so carefully established were swallowed up by the sea. The dice fell where they would.

It was a rich, completely immersive experience where everyone pulled out their best storytelling skills and made the game happen. I feel as though I'm learning a lot from these experiences, that they're informing me in myriad ways. Due to schedule conflicts, Mouse Guard is on hold, but I believe we'll be trying out a different game in the coming weeks.

I'd strongly encourage anyone that wants to amp up their group's role-playing to try Kagematsu, Fiasco, or Dread. We tend to play D&D the way we play those games, but those games will keep you honest, keep you focused on story and character. Play one of those and then try to carry over that level of character and story into your D&D game. I highly recommend it.

Last day of Ebay sales for a lot of old D&D items. If you're keen to have some stuff from older editions, look no farther.

Writing and Life

2011-08-29T15:51:00.000-05:00

I'm going to talk about something that works for me, but which you probably shouldn't listen to if you want to write. You've been warned.

When I went to Ohio University as a young impressionable lad, I had no greater desire in life than to be an actor.

Okay, I also wanted to date a particular girl who worked at the Renaissance faire. That was high on my list, I won't lie.

I wanted to get a BFA in acting, but by the time I got to O.U., life (not to mention my parents) had other plans for me. I remained relentless in pursuit of my dream, despite a good deal of opposition. Eventually, through a series of hard knocks and misadventures, I acquired a mentor who advised me to pursue a BA through the College of Arts and Sciences, by which I could double major in Theater and (my other interest) Creative Writing. Like most foolhardy young protagonists, I ignored his advice, behaved like an idiot, and got into trouble, before he came to my rescue, pulled me out of danger, and gave me a stern talking-to. Once I got wise and started listening to him, I tell you it was amazing the things I began to learn.

In one of our "But I want to be an acting major" conversations, my mentor (his name was Bob Winters) said to me, "Look. Learn your basics. Get an education. Later on, if you want to concentrate on acting or writing or whatever, you can do that. For now, learn as much as you can. If all you know is acting, you're not going to be a very interesting actor."

Words to that effect, at any rate.
So after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I followed his advice. I took acting classes from him, and only through him did I learn the true essence of the craft. I took creative writing classes from the English department, I took anthropology classes, biology, history, logic, and so forth. At the end, I took something O.U. called "Tier 3 synthesis," which was a class that didn't belong to any particular program, but was supposed to draw from your knowledge in multiple fields and show you how to think with your whole brain (essentially).

All of this shaped and influenced my way of thinking so that by the end I was no longer absolutely 100% tunnel vision on a single path. I came to Chicago to be involved in the theater, but I was open to new experience. Turns out improv and classical theater were to become my foci, and while that certainly makes sense in retrospect, I didn't plan for that.

And so this is how it has been with me ever since. I enjoy learning new things, new perspectives, new art forms, scary though they are. I'm naturally terrible at some of them (alas, I'm just not a musician), but the lessons always come with their own personal growth. This varied experience has taught me that all things have their time, and as much as I want to commit to one thing with every fiber of my being, by doing that one can lose sight of very important things in life as that one obsession rules you entirely.

And so for me there are times when I'm productive and I'm turning out lots of words, but there are also times when I'm playing games, spending time with friends and loved ones. There are times when I'm absorbing and integrating media--books, movies, games--and times when I'm learning new things, having new experiences.

I mention this because while I do believe it's important to write every day, and while writing is everything to me, everything that matters, and everything worth doing... at the same time, it is not. I'm not saying it's cool to make excuses ad infinitum--the work is holy, and it is the only thing that matters. I'm saying that it is not the only thing that matters, and I'm saying that if the only thing one does is write, one is unlikely to be a very interesting writer. Stars must be seen, rainbows, mountains, coastlines, and the Arbys guy in Arizona who is somehow happier than anybody you've ever known. Roads must be traveled, companions met, love won and lost and won again. Friends must be maintained, food enjoyed, time passed in whimsy.

You should ignore all of this. You should embrace it. You should walk the path that calls you.

For me, it's a great big contradiction. It's frustrating. It's lovely. It's the only way I know to be.

Opening Night for "The Siege of Gardmore Abbey" at PAX

2011-08-26T14:33:00.002-05:00

Today at the PAX Prime convention in Seattle, the adventure I wrote to precede the super-adventure The Madness at Gardmore Abbey will be run.

It's called The Siege of Gardmore Abbey, and it takes place about 100 or so years before The Madness at Gardmore Abbey, back in the days when Gardmore still stood as a bastion of strength for the Empire of Nerath, protecting the Nentir Vale from the powers of darkness that would threaten to crush civilization. I spoke at length about The Siege of Gardmore Abbey the other day on the Wizards of the Coast site.

It feels a little like opening night for a play, but from a very detached perspective. I'll be at home in Chicago preparing to get rid of more stuff (comics this week) while the adventure runs. How many people will play it? How will it go? It looks like a one-night event, so what will the total audience for the module be? I expect some will enjoy it for what it attempts to bring to the organized play experience; others may dislike it for deviating from standard format (or complain that it was too difficult). As I had said on the Wizards site, I'm convinced that those who will have the best experience with the module are the players and DMs that embrace the characters, setting, and story, and do their best to play those moments for all they're worth.

My best wishes are with the players and DMs who play through the adventure tonight. In the end, only you can answer the question:

Are noble Gardmore and her valiant paladins worth fighting for, or merely a symbol of the Empire's decadence and pride, best damned to the dust?

Update: I understand that some players weren't given their character goals and backgrounds. I'm not sure how they ran the adventure, since those are key to the experience. I hope someone got to play the actual module as it was intended.

Dramatic Skill Challenges

2011-08-25T11:30:00.003-05:00

I did a Design and Development column that appears on the Wizards of the Coast site yesterday. The column is about The Siege of Gardmore Abbey, the adventure I wrote for the PAX Prime convention that takes place this weekend.

In the column I talked about bringing my own notion of skill challenges to the adventure. I called them "dramatic skill challenges." Here, in the past I've called them "organic skill challenges," but I'm talking about the same thing. On the Wizards site, "fictionalbeing" writes: Steve, I think this would make an excellent article for Dungeon, if not, please elucidate on your web page!

For fictionalbeing, here's a quick rundown:

I think there's a difference between the way I wrote them (dramatic skill challenges) in "Siege" and the way I run them in my game.

In my game, I don't usually set up skill challenges as mechanical elements anymore. I've stopped doing it because imposing a mechanical skill challenge on the narrative often feels artificial and takes us out of the story, i.e. "You are in a skill challenge now. Start rolling checks."

In a regular campaign, when the characters run into trouble or try something that doesn't seem like it will automatically succeed, I have them roll a skill check. Depending on what they try and how they try, I'll have them roll additional checks with each new tactic they try. If they do something ridiculously stupid or fail horribly, the story naturally evolves from there, with things getting worse in the plot.

At the end of the session, we'll look back at what the players did in the session, what they attempted, and so forth. I give them XP for the things at which they succeeded. I base the XP on the standard skill challenge table. How many checks did they make? That determines what the complexity was. It's totally retroactive, but there's no artificial structure. The skill challenges are automatically organic because they're not planned out. Same with the results of failure: the next logical thing in the story happens.
For a printed module like Siege, on the other hand, it's a lot more complicated as the challenge has to be written. Instead of unlimited actions that clever players will come up with, I picked specific actions directly relevant to the problems at hand. I made sure each of these actions tried to tackle the overall problem in a different way and thus appeal to different groups of characters (and players).

The players choose an action. In a module as well as in a home game, choosing an action--a way to grapple with a problem--begins a scene. It's really hard to explain in brief, but I think the important thing is to imagine a skill challenge as a scene in a movie, book, or tv show instead of a "mini game" within an RPG context where you're "button mashing," i.e. rolling to hit certain target numbers so you can "overcome the challenge." That's kind of boring.

We all know instinctively how scenes work: there's a problem, people grapple with it, someone wins and/or someone fails. Regardless, a scene is about characters struggling to do something. Characters are the key element in a dramatic challenge. Thus, in the written adventure module, the scenes around each skill check or set of skill checks involve characters trying to accomplish something. These characters talk to and interact with the PCs. They literally set up each scene at the beginning of the adventure with a line of dialogue. Depending on who's attempting the action, the NPC could very helpful or they could be a jerk. After that, as the DM says in the Dead Alewives D&D sketch: "Okay, you can talk to each other now."

In long-form improvisation, the first thing the actor does at the beginning of the scene is what we call an initiation. It kicks off the scene and gives us a hint of what we're in for. In this case, the NPC initiates the scene with the PCs. That sets the tone of where things are going. For example, picture a scenario where the PCs are lost in the wilderness during a winter storm. The challenge: they're trying to survive. They can hunt for food, build a fire, or gather wood for a shelter, or split up and tackle all of these at once. Each character chooses an action. Each action will constitute a scene of its own where the characters in that scene will use their skills to try to succeed.

So far that sounds pretty much like a typical skill challenge in a module. What makes it different is adding a dramatic initiation, adding role-playing. Again, if we were playing a home game, improvising this challenge, we wouldn't be thinking about this. It would just happen automatically. I'm only trying to code it into the structure of the adventure module. Let's say some of the adventurers trying to survive the winter storm have focused on building a fire. For variety, and to give more characters a chance to play, I might think of having them roll Athletics checks and Nature checks to gather wood, Intelligence checks to build a solid fire away from the wind, or to use a spell to effectively ignite the wood, Dexterity checks to strike a good spark with flint and steel, Endurance checks to keep the fire going, etc, etc, etc. But in order to make this interesting, we need some kind of character or story element that could make the task easier or more difficult. In a home game, this would take care of itself naturally. In a module, I'm going to set up a scene around it and (because I can't depend on unknown players to start this scene) I'm going to have an NPC initiate it.

In the fire-building scene, this could be an NPC traveling with the characters or one that shows up on the scene. It could even be a lone wolf slinking along the edge of the campsite, eying the party's food (or the leanest party member), but too weak to fight--we don't want to turn it into a combat encounter. It could be a fur-clad man appearing from the forest, who says, "The Company of the Shattered Fist... the king isn't going to be pleased if he hears you're alive." I think it can be anything interesting that happens alongside the skill challenge and heightens the conflict.

The point is that the dramatic skill challenge always has something else going on with it apart from the skill checks. This extra element should be a narrative, story, or role-play element that focuses the scene. In "Siege," it's most often a role-play element that takes the focus.

At any rate, that's where I'd start when constructing a "dramatic skill challenge" for a module. If it sounds kind of nebulous, that's good. It is. What works for "Siege" may not work for every adventure, and certainly not for every challenge. Sadly, I find that every product I work on for D&D (heck, any creative project I do in any form) is a bit like reinventing the wheel. I learn something new from every experience, and no two experiences have been alike, even when working on similar kinds of books, like monster books for instance. Right now I'd say that each project or adventure has its own structure that works best for it. The key is spending enough time working on it to figure out what that structure is. The dramatic skill challenges in "Siege" were what I felt I had to do in service of a character-motivated adventure, but I might not use them the same way in another adventure.

I'd like to say that the creative process gets easier, but that's rarely proven true for me. I can say it's become less confusing, and the signposts are more familiar than they once were. But for me each new endeavor begins with a blank map, a blank page. Even in acting this was so. There are actors that rely on a bag of tricks just as there are writers who rely on their formula and style to carry them through. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, and some of those people have become fabulously popular and wealthy this way. It's just not right for me. I like to experiment, fail, and (hopefully eventually) succeed having found the best expression for the idea. I am not rich or even fabulously popular.

Stuff, I Purge Thee!

2011-08-22T11:07:00.000-05:00

It was a long weekend of Ebay and Amazon.

I did other things. Saw Conan. Saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes. But my focus has been on getting all this stuff out of my place.

I'm putting the stuff up in lots. Ravenloft lot. Forgotten Realms lot. AD&D lot. In a few cases I'll list a single item if the item is worth something. For instance, I have two copies of H-1: Bloodstone Pass, and one is still in the shrink wrap; the other is open but the contents are all intact, the cardboard unpunched. Those get listed as single items.

This weekend I learned that comics are worth nothing. Back in the day, I remember the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons comics went for a few dollars--the first issue was going for $12 way back when. However, time has only diminished its value--as well as the value of every other comic I owned back then. My next task is to get rid of my comic collection. I don't have a large collection as compared with someone who's an actual collector, but it still comes down to a few boxes... and that's a few boxes too many. "A few boxes" stacks up to a small waist-high wall in my dinky storage space. The last time I read those comics was when I bought them... back in the early '90s. Out they go.

I have to say, my memories of the old AD&D comics from the early '90s are certainly candied. My teenage self remembers them as the most awesome comics in the history of the world. My adult self feels differently. There are a few movies like that--films you loved as a kid, where it's better to treasure those memories than try to re-experience them years later. I imagine this generation will eventually come to feel that way about the Star Wars prequels.

Lately, the only thing I've sold that's been worth anything has been D&D Miniatures. I didn't get rid of my D&D Minis, only several boxes of old duplicates. They are, it seems, still popular (I should know; I can't part with my collection).

Concerning Stuff

2011-08-19T15:51:00.001-05:00

Stuff.
In 2002, when Mike Kuciak left for Los Angeles, he gave me his entire gaming library. He stocked my closet with multiple editions of D&D, White Wolf, and a few card collections. While I had no immediate need for all that stuff, I was grateful for it and I thought it would make a nice addition to our gaming lair. That was in 2002. In the years since, I haven't cracked a single one of those covers. When it came time for us to move this summer I looked at the shelves upon shelves of unused stuff in my gaming closet. Then I looked at all the shelves of unused gaming stuff in my room.

On these shelves was a decades-old gaming treasure trove packed with memories, old character sheets, maps, notes, and so forth. But for the amount I actually used all this stuff it was more like a densely packed block of wood, crammed into the shelf space. Did I dare take it with me?

I contemplated the RPGs I play. What do I bring to the table? Maybe a computer, a set of notes. Miniatures. Dice. In the old days it was a couple books, some paper and pencils, and dice. As the game has become more complicated we've added a whole lot of "stuff" to it. Stuff I've been scaling back in my games. Protagonist-antagonist-conflict-climax. Those are your basic story elements right there. The trick is in making them interesting and different, not necessarily more complex or complicated. Having experienced some amazing sessions of minimalistic games like Fiasco and Dread over the past couple years, I decided it was better for me to strive for an ideal of less stuff, more story, more drama, more character development, and less distraction from shiny rules or gaming tech. This decision ALMOST made me decide to liquidate the Dwarven Forge collection I'd been amassing through Ebay (and gifts) over the past seven years, but it survives... for now. Instead I started shedding books.

I dumped most of my collection and Mike's collection at Half Price Books, where I got a (very) few dollars for them. Amazon may have been better money, but that takes time and effort I didn't have. I couldn't quite get rid of my 1st Edition and 2nd Edition D&D stuff, though; most of it still has sentimental value. However, almost all of my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition D&D books now fit on one shelf.

At first I felt weird getting rid of RPG books, since I work in RPGs. But once they were gone, I felt a tremendous sense of relief. Suddenly this mass of stuff I hadn't been using was no longer taking up a gigantic wall of space, I had a few dollars in my pocket, and absolutely nothing had changed about the way I was going to run games. Not even the stuff I consult would have changed. Maybe it would be nice to have everything on PDF, but I'll tell you--I bought the CD-ROM TSR released in the late '90s that held the first 250 issues of Dragon Magazine. Guess how much I look at those? About once every five years, just for fun, usually when I'm organizing my software.

I still have some stuff to get rid of, things I don't think I'll ever really have a use for, including books like Van Richten's Guide to Werebeasts, The Nightmare Lands (Ravenloft Module)... I think I even have a spare copy of I-6: Ravenloft lying around. I'll be putting those on Amazon and Ebay very soon--maybe as soon as this evening--in my continued effort to purge.

Some good players, a strong story, and a flexible storyteller is the key to a good game, in my opinion. Stuff is fun, and it can add some interesting elements, but I find that stuff doesn't have all that much impact on a group with fertile imaginations.

Reset Button!

2011-08-18T15:50:00.000-05:00

Summer is historically the worst time for me to run RPGs, and although this summer is no exception, I've been farther removed from the RPG scene than in recent years when I've taken on big projects for Wizards of the Coast.

Grappling with huge, stressful real life issues has demanded all my focus and drawn me away from games since April. Now that those dragons have mostly been slain, my appetite for role-playing games has slowly begun to rekindle.

Gen Con wasn't quite the usual insanity for me this year, though I still had a great time and managed to sell some old miniatures for cash. Apart from "Drunken D&D" with some crazy industry folk on Wednesday night, I didn't do any RPGs--just a WotC playtester dinner and the annual freelancer roundtable. I did play a fair number of board games, though. My con purchases were lighter than ever: I bought two small expansions for the Days of Wonder game Small World, and that was it.

Since returning from Gen Con I've written a Design and Development column for the Wizards of the Coast site, detailing my take on the design aspects of The Siege of Gardmore Abbey. The Siege of Gardmore Abbey is an adventure I wrote for the PAX Prime convention that will take place at the end of this month. It's a prequel to The Madness at Gardmore Abbey super adventure I co-wrote, coming in September. "Siege" is a convention game that's jam packed with role-play potential, dramatic elements, story. That said, I think its success or failure will have to do with the group playing it. I'm not saying it's a flawless adventure. What I'm saying is that I can only do so much to set the stage and make it rife with opportunities and incentives for role-play; if the group isn't into that type of play or the DM doesn't set the tone for it, they're not going to have that experience--and that experience is a significant part of what makes the adventure interesting and different.

Next up, I'm ready to get some of the old campaigns running again, and for the first time in months I'm actually excited about doing so. It's possible that having taken some time away, my whole play style will have changed. I'm not feeling too crunchy right now. I'm feeling very storyteller. Very improvisational. Very "play make-believe." Finally, I think it's time to make some new maps. I've been away from those for too long.

Cooking?

2011-07-06T10:23:00.005-05:00

I've been reading Patrick Rothfuss's The Wise Man's Fear lately, and I'm very much enjoying it. Not long ago I stumbled upon an interview with Pat where he talked a little about RPGs. In that interview, he said he liked the Hero system because he could build a character (like Kvothe in his Kingkiller Chronicles) from various skills, rather than a class template that gives you a general package of abilities with customization options.

I've been thinking on this a lot, and how over time we've embraced various skill based character creation systems, or different class based character creation systems, for better or for worse. On the one hand, a skill based system is appealing because you don't feel restricted to the options set down in rulebooks. On the other hand, I've played games where having an inordinate number of skill options led to some crappy games. Some of my players laud D&D 3rd Edition for its many skill options, but I'm torn in that regard; the idea of making a character that's unique because of his or her individual skills appeals to me, however in reality the guy who takes the Cooking skill is less effective than the guy whose skills yield frequently applied mechanical benefits. This wouldn't be such a problem in a non-adventuring RPG, but in Dungeons and Dragons, Cooking will seldom have an impact. The problem (in my experience) comes about when the player with Cooking, Dancing, or Basketweaving skills starts to feel less useful because, due to the nature of the game or campaign, the guy who optimized his skills gets all the spotlight. The DM should take everybody's character choices into consideration, but again--unless the campaign is based on Julia Child, or on adventurers that seek out monsters to hunt and eat them (I do have a friend who plays this campaign), the Cooking skill just isn't going to get that much use. The other players may even get frustrated with the player that can't pull his own weight in the party, having chosen a number of bizarre options. Sigh.

Thus, the class based system as it's done in D&D 4e appeals to me because it pretty well nukes that problem. It's difficult to make a character that's completely suboptimal. Since there are only a few skills in the game, and each of these has a mechanical function, you don't have the problem of the Cooking skill--you just say "My character is an awesome/horrible cook." Free from the mechanical strictures that come with a glut of skills, you can essentially just make up any character you want with whatever myriad (non-mechanical) skills you want, and story-flavor that character however you like. The 4e mechanics do their part making the character competent; it's up to you to play make-believe and use your imagination.

And yet... as I've implied lately, I've been feeling that for as sleek and powerful an engine that D&D 4e utilizes, it can often seem like one of those tricked out computers that generates so much heat that the fan is constantly powered on full; you've gotta pump up the volume to drown it out. By this I mean to say that--in my opinion--the mechanics are so well balanced that they've taken center stage in the eyes of many of the game's players and become the game, and thus they seem to become the focus of all things D&D. For as long as I've been working on D&D products, Wizards of the Coast has made some very bold strides in terms of providing excellent story content--I'm just not sure that the majority of D&D players have absorbed that in their games. I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. But from conversations in real life, at cons, and on the internet, I don't feel like I'm wrong.

What is to be done about it? I'm not quite sure. D&D is as D&D does. Alignment, class, race, saving throw, hit points, armor class... It's difficult to change the game in any significant way without upsetting its player base. The first three editions of the game provided some base rules and then added expansions for greater rules complexity; 4e has done that as well, only it's happened mostly online through DDI so it's more difficult for me to wrap my head around how much is out there.

In the end, I think it may all come down to the type of game that's being played. I think Fiasco is the best role-playing game I've played, but I think that's because Fiasco is a long-form improvisation disguised as an RPG (and I think that's awesome), and because Fiasco's one-shot nature encourages strong bold choices. Like Call of Cthulhu--a game where skills will get you far and fighting abilities will get you killed. If you were going to play a campaign style game that was more like Fiasco or Call of Cthulhu, or a game in the storytelling/improvisation vein, I think the skill based character will thrive. But in adventure games with lots of combat, I think I'm in favor of the class based character that comes equipped with the means necessary to have an impact on the game (and thus keep tensions low amongst the players).

I think after this blog post I've resolved it for myself, at any rate. It all comes down to what kind of game you want to play. You can play a story-based D&D game like we do, and your characters can be as varied and unique as you can imagine--but you have to bring your imagination to the table; the game is going to provide you with the mechanics to make competent characters, but creating the depth and the illusion of the fantasy world is up to you. If you need the structure of the game to push the story and role-play, you should look to the Call of Cthulhu kind of game, where skills are king and combat is not. Ultimately, you're responsible for the way the game is played, whether there's character depth and strong story or there isn't, and in the words of Susan Messing, "You are only limited by lack of imagination and fear of appearing stupid."

As for me, despite my strong preference for character depth and story, I don't know that I'd enjoy a long-running RPG that didn't have some sort of combat. Perhaps. Battlestar Galactica is kind of my idea of the perfect campaign; every week was filled with some amazing character/story stuff, and usually one severe threat for people of action to take care of. I think the key to RPG happiness is not to expect everything from one system, but to enjoy each system for its individual strengths; get your "basic food groups" of story, combat, character, from the ones that do that well--while encouraging the key elements you enjoy in your own campaign or system of choice.

Why Do We Play (Pencil and Paper) RPGs?

2011-07-05T12:29:00.002-05:00

I've been in a strange sort of limbo over the past several months. If you're following along, you'll notice this little log has taken a few turns: first, the new posts and updates all but vanished for several months; then, rather than hitting the regular storytelling elements purported to be the focus of this thing, the blog took a more personal--I'd say more rambling--bent.

While it's true I've been wrapped up in a number of big LIFE issues this year, I've put a lot of thought into the nature of these games we play as well. These thoughts have led to questions. I don't think there are right answers to these questions--it's more like I feel I need to gather data and synthesize it so that my own answers, the answers that make sense to me, will make themselves apparent.

A few years ago I was introduced (kicking and screaming) to the new Battlestar Galactica series. I started watching it at the tail end of my acting career, around the time I was finishing up my last gig. Although I was initially very resistant to the idea of a Starbuck that wasn't Dirk Benedict and "hot chick cylons," the show quickly won me over. By the fifth episode I was moved to the point of giant man-tears; I was head over heels. That was the day that I woke up and realized that television had suddenly become awesome. I followed Battlestar with a number of other outstanding tv dramas--Lost, Rome, Deadwood, Slings & Arrows, Avatar the Last Airbender, and others. But after I had been exposed to all this great media, a conflict started brewing deep within my soul. I began to wonder if theater, the art form to which I'd dedicated most of my life, was relevant. A conversation with one of my first roomates in Chicago came back to me in a memory.

When I was a fresh-faced kid just arrived in the big city, one of my roommates at the time questioned the relevance of theater. He said theater was expensive and elitist--that it wasn't for the people, just the people who could afford it; he said kids (in general) didn't care about theater because they could go to the movies and see films with huge budgets, special effects, etc, for $5 as opposed to going to the theater and paying $20, $30, $60 or more to see a play. With a movie, you can see the trailer and have an idea what you're getting. In theater, you can blow your money on a terrible production and you're not going to know it until it's too late.

As I watched Battlestar Galactica for free, I considered this. Phenomenal acting, direction, writing, effects, and right there in my home for very little cost. What did theater have to offer that was better? When I was seeing shows regularly, I'd estimate 2/5 were quality and the rest ranged from mediocre to excruciating. As I began to let go of my previous career and look at it strictly through the eyes of a theatergoer--instead of a fervent evangelist of the form--I began to lose faith. I might have given up on it entirely were it not for a magical ticket offered me by a friend.

I was given a ticket to Lookingglass Theatre's prodcution of Argonautika. Lookingglass is the Chicago company David Schwimmer co-founded before he made it big on the tv show Friends. Directed by ensemble member Mary Zimmerman, Argonautika told the story of (you guessed it) Jason and the Argonauts. Mary Zimmerman is famous for directing groundbreaking productions that feature extremely creative staging and visuals. In Argonautika, the only Zimmerman production I've seen, she was true to her name. It's difficult to describe, but imagine watching a show onstage where everything is completely morphic; the pillar in the center of the stage is the ship's mast, the stake to which the princess is tied for her sacrifice to the sea monster, etc. The sea is a huge, rolling tarp that begins to rise as the monster emerges; two white globes given to the actor beneath the tarp suddenly form the eyes of the monster as it emerges from the deep. At the beginning of the show, the actors invoke the stars above to tell them of the trials of the Argonauts; at the end, they sing the same song--but this time, high up in the fly space the actors appear strung with Christmas lights, but they're taking the shape of the constellations representing the characters they played (standing ovation).

Argonautika confirmed for me that theater was relevant, wonderful, beautiful, and necessary. Because what I saw live onstage that night could never be replicated on film or in any other medium. It was all about the suggestion and transformation and the live energy that made all of this happen. It redeemed the art form for me, and I understood once again what I had forgotten, and why it was important.

So now I'm likewise turning the sights on pencil and paper RPGs. Lately I've detected a general lack of interest and enthusiasm amongst my friends, and I worry that it's been infectious. I've begun to ask around, interviewing people on why they like RPGs, why they play them, what's important to them about RPGs. I've been reflecting on my past experience with them, gauging what was important then, what's important now, and how RPGs have changed since the olden days.

Then
The Age of Enchantment (age 7-12): Growing up, my friends and I were lost in the worlds of wonder that games like D&D revealed to us. Mostly we made up our own worlds, cobbling stuff together from movies, books, and whatever else struck our fancy. D&D was like the best tv show, movie, book, or game you could experience, full of endless possibility, limited only by our vast childhood imaginations. We played because we could do anything, be anyone. We were kids, it was fun, and the game gave us a little focus and structure to playing make-believe.

The Age of Fancy (age 13-17): Being a teenager is hard. At this age, we were reading DragonLance, Forgotten Realms, X-men comics, and anything else we thought was awesome. The kinds of games we were playing then were a little more structured and a lot of them drew on published materials (like Forgotten Realms for us). We weren't devotees of Realmslore, but at that time the Realms seemed "Forgotten" and it seemed there were endless frontiers to explore. Yeah... It also bound us together--my friends and I. We were a pack, our own clique, we looked out for each other; we had the game--something we could always come back to, a common ground. Our characters were the dramatic types we were reading about in comic books and movies. We played because it still captured our imaginations and it gave us a circle of friends where we felt safe in the jungle that was high school.

The Age of Wonder (age 18-24): The experimental college years. This was the time I created my own worlds, influenced by all I was learning. I always called my "homebrew" world "the landscape of my subconscious" because that's precisely what it was. I played Star Wars, Call of Cthulhu, Marvel Superheroes, D&D, and many other RPGs in this time. Each one was a chance to try a new kind of character and take a crack at immersion in a whole other world. We played Ravenloft in the dark by candlelight and a player got so scared he threw a chair. This was a time of real immersion in the medium. Immersion, experiment, and play. The social aspect was still a huge part of it as well. I began to notice my best, longest-lasting, and truest friends always came from my RPG circles.

The Age of High Fantasy (age 25-33): Now my interest in RPGs gets a little harder to figure. However, I'm certain the primary draw for me was world I'd begun to create when I was 18. I wasn't finished spinning stories there, and as D&D rolled from 2nd Edition into 3rd and the Lord of the Rings films became all the rage, everyone was excited about high fantasy. Once again, a tight group of friends came together to play and for two years we filled our Saturday afternoons with one of the most dramatic games I've ever played. Though I'm calling this the Age of High Fantasy, I actually played the opposite. My game had always been a low fantasy setting stocked with the common ailments of the medieval age. It was around this time someone gave me A Game of Thrones because it reminded them of our campaign. I loved RPGs during this time because everything coming out seemed so dang interesting. There were miniatures, endless d20 products, and a feeling like the RPG market was thriving. It seemed like it just kept getting better. I desperately wanted to work in the industry, got a Dragon article published, a few web features, and a couple job interview from WotC. I played because the world and characters were interesting, popular media was thrumming with fantasy, the industry was buzzing, the circle of friends was tight, and it was something I'd always loved.

The Age of Innocence and Experience (age 34-36): This is where things get confusing for me. Looking back, it seems like everything that looked great about the last age came crashing down with a glut of too much. Too many RPGs in the industry, too many d20 products, too many sourcebooks, miniatures, and fiddly mechanics. Too many rules for every tiny little thing. Rules people loved to argue with the gamemaster. When D&D 4e came along, I was looking for an escape from all of that, and my friends--exhausted from the epic high fantasy style of Lord of the Rings that 3e seemed to push--were looking for a return to wonder. 4e's abstract rules put the storytelling back in my hands as a DM and the campaign I began was probably the finest I've ever run. However, it wasn't long after that I began actually working in the industry. Working in the industry, I became more aware of others' opinions on the game, or maybe I just paid more attention. In the old days, the battle was waged firmly between hack & slash players and role-players. Now there was a full scale edition war going on, and a pretty passionate one at that. Furthermore, regardless of the type of game my friends and I were playing (i.e. the really story-oriented one that used the more abstract mechanics to push story, story, story), I started to notice that most conversations about D&D revolved around the mechanics. Powers and feats that were/weren't balanced, etc. People were talking about classes and their mechanical benefits or lack thereof. That seems like the focus of the conversation over the past few years. Finally, my friends are now in their thirties. They have homes and jobs and spouses and children. They would rather play 45-minute board games than gigantic epic campaigns. It's hard to get them all together. It takes a lot of energy, and it makes me a little bit tired. Plus, companies like Bioware have figured out how to make amazing video games with incredible graphics, top notch voice talent, compelling writing, etc. And dang if those euro games haven't all but taken over the conventions (Mayfair is co-sponsoring Gen Con this year). Maybe I'd have a problem with that if those video games and those euro games weren't so incredibly awesome. But where does that leave the pencil and paper RPG?

Now
Thus, the conversation I had at a 4th of July barbecue over the weekend: Why do we play pencil and paper RPGs? What is it that brings us back to them? In today's world, why are they important? And how do they adapt going forward? Do they deserve the slice of our time we could give to other games (i.e. euro games, computer RPGs)?

The first person who's answered that question so far said that he loves RPGs because they give him a kind of expression in the world of make-believe that he doesn't normally have. For instance, it's like writing a book without having to actually write the book--something he has no interest in doing nor the craft to execute well. Or making one's own movie. It's about gathering together with good friends and hanging out.

All of those reasons make sense to me. All of them resonate with me, and are part of the reason I played in the first place and continued playing. But I'm looking for more data. I'm looking for that Argonautika experience that forms the answer to completely justify the existence of pencil and paper RPGs in this day and age. The resounding "THIS IS IMPORTANT, VALUABLE, and NECESSARY" that I've lost track of lately between life issues, mismatched schedules, and a million zillion nerds on the internet arguing why such and such a feat/class/skill/power totally ruins their imagination, absolutely prohibits storytelling, and "epic fails" to please them to the nth degree. I'm looking for that affirmation of the RPG experience--a little magic, a little wonder, a little enchantment to immerse me in another world. I'm looking for an experience.

I've been invited to participate in an indie RPG group, and I'm hot to take up that offer. I'll put the question to them and (hopefully) get to try various games as I seek my answers. In the meantime, what is the purpose of pencil and paper RPGs in your eyes? Why do you love them? Why are they important, valuable, and necessary in your life?

An inquiring mind wants to know!

You Are What You Eat at the Media Buffet

2011-06-30T09:51:00.001-05:00

Ever notice how you're influenced by whatever it is you're reading or watching at the time? Elements from this show or that book make it into your games, or the way you use language slants toward the author you've been reading. I've noticed it a lot in the past, so I try to keep up with a good healthy diet of media that's both delicious and nutritious for the creative mind. Much of the time, I think the influences are subconscious. They work their way in when you're not even thinking about it.

I'm probably not absorbing the right stuff to help with my current project (a D&D Insider article with a heavy Shadowfell influence). I should be reading Lovecraft or searching out the eerier horror movies. It's just that I'm in the midst of a lot of other wonderful works. Here are the courses my mind has been feasting on:

Breakfast and Second Breakfast: These days I've been working myself into the frame of mind where the DDI article lives and chipping away at that. Before and after I work on that, I've been reading The Wise Man's Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss. When I read the first book in that series, The Name of the Wind, there was one chapter I liked more than all the others--a beautiful, lyrical chapter that completely moved me. The sequel feels as though he took what was great about that chapter and spread it out over the whole book. The language is pretty dang impressive. Well, I'm impressed anyway.

The Light Lunch: When I get home from work, I usually get in a jog by the lake in the summer (the advantage of living on the far east side of Chicago). I want to take in stories of all kinds, so I've taken to listening to audiobooks while I walk or jog. Usually I do classics because I find I'm less likely to read those, and I enjoy having people read them--people with trained voices and an exceptional talent for interpretation. Right now I'm going through the Sherlock Holmes stories and figuring out what those are all about. I usually get in about a half hour.

Tasty Snack Food That's Light on Nutrients: When the wife isn't home, I'll sometimes eat dinner while watching The Tudors. I'm not quite sure what I get from The Tudors, or whether it's good for me. But I keep coming back to it. See also, True Blood.

A Hearty Dinner: I'm hooked on Mass Effect 2. At times it seems strange to me how drawn I am to games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, but hey--they're well-written stories with lots of choices, dynamic characters, dramatic storylines, and more quality world-building than is probably necessary. It's like walking in another world. And there is a lot of reading. Frankly, it boggles my mind.

Some Low-fat Dessert: Late at night we'll sometimes catch an episode of Modern Family, Community, or 30 Rock. This is some of the best comedy TV writing I've seen in years. I'm not sure how it factors into anything I work on, but it makes me laugh.

A Feast of Awesome: Then there's our once-a-week viewing of Game of Thrones over at our friends' place (they have HBO). Honstly, one episode of that show could feed me for a week. They're far better than I even hoped they would be.

How does all this media feed me? A bit here, an inspiration there, an observation, a note, taking stock of things I'd like to try and things I'd like to do better. It used to be that television and video games were considered a kind of junk media (and comic books!), but these days that no longer seems to be the case.

As for this blog, it serves a different sort of purpose. When I work on D&D games, I tend to write slowly and deliberately with a lot more consideration. This place, on the other hand, is a space where I can unwind a little and remember how it is to write a bit more freely.

Julia Cameron's Horses

2011-06-29T14:20:00.001-05:00

Many years ago when I was working as an actor and touring with Shakespeare companies, I did the Artist's Way. The Artist's Way is a twelve-step program that focuses on developing creativity. Most people do the Artist's Way by purchasing the book and then disciplining themselves to walk through the program's twelve weeks on their own. On the Artist's Way, the participant focuses on a different level of developing creativity each week, with regular assignments and daily writing; the writing is a kind of journaling that Julia Cameron terms "morning pages," and they're meant for individual reflection, self knowledge, and truth. Many of the activities Cameron urges the participant to engage in are about taking risks and trying new things, particularly things the participant has always wanted to do but had been afraid to try.

That's about as brief a summary as I can do. For me, this process was more beneficial than I'd like to admit. It taught me a little discipline and gave me some of the prodding I needed to make fearless choices in life and in art. All in all, a very good thing. Fundamental in my development as a person.

A few years later, I picked up another Cameron book. As I recall, it was Vein of Gold. At the time I felt a little lost and wanted another dose of creative inspiration, trying to get myself back on track. But I wasn't far into the book when, as I was reading a certain passage, I screeched to a halt and abandoned it for good.

Cameron was honestly reflecting on times when she didn't have the energy or inspiration to engage creatively. I'd been feeling the same, so I was glued to the page--eager to touch on that vein of gold she was about to reveal. But as Cameron continued to describe her struggle, she began to describe how in those times she would look out her window to where her horses grazed... and that's where she lost me.

"Horses?!" I said. "HORSES?!?!?"
Here I was, an artist struggling to pay my rent and sliding further and further into debt, reading about the trials and tribulations of an author with her own horses. Any advice Julia Cameron had to offer after that, I would have to regard with great suspicion.
(Important side note: I have nothing against Julia Cameron. In fact, I owe her more gratitude than I could ever express. And to be fair, I never finished Vein of Gold, so maybe it got better--I'm just using this example to make a point).

The point I want to make is that when an author seems like they're living high up in some ivory tower, it's hard to relate to their personal struggles without rolling your eyes and muttering "Pobrecita!" It's also easier to criticize that person because when they're in print they somehow seem to transform into some nonliving entity--some persona that exists only on the page (and the internet).

This year and last year I've felt the backlash that comes with being one of those nonliving entities. Not a lot--fortunately for me most of the feedback I've seen on stuff I've worked on has been absolutely thrilling. Generous. Lovely. But man, when it goes the other way it's nasty. I've encountered people who think that I think I'm better than they are (what?!) and have taken it upon themselves to write me nastygrams in order to knock me down a peg, I guess. I've also experienced the nastiness that can only be found in the darkest corners of the internet forums where hate and vitriol spew freely. What bothers me most is the lack of respect and the lack of empathy in those places. I'm not sure if those folks assume I live in an ivory tower or they just think I'm an idiot. Either assumption is hard to swallow as I get up before 6 a.m. each day to put in an eight-hour shift giving people their usernames and passwords and attempting to solve their technical issues before returning to my cluttered rental apartment that reeks of the rotten vegetables our roommate put somewhere in the kitchen and (once again) forgot about. Sure I work on fiction and games, but when you add up the hours I put in I make far, far, far less than minimum wage doing that.

I'm not complaining; this is just how it is. I used to think if you had your name on a hardcover book, you were making bank. Not so.

Before you roll your eyes and say "Pobrecita!" please know that I do not have, nor could I afford to keep, a horse.

Origins 2011 (Sunday)

2011-06-27T11:22:00.000-05:00

Finished out the convention with a bit of exhibit hall wanderings, lunch with friends, and the active not purchasing of a Geek Chic table. Make no mistake: I'd really really like one... but the problem comes somewhere between wanting it and actually coughing up the cash. I have no doubt that it would be awesome, and as we're moving into a new place without furniture now's as good a time as any... but man are they pricey. Still, I spent many hours staring longingly at the tables and trying to figure out exactly what I'd want--also trying to figure out how best to budget for it. The decision would be easier if I actually owned a table. Then I could say, "I already have a fine table" and be done with it. But since I don't own a dining room table and I'm going to spend at least some money on a dining room table it makes more sense to put that money toward a dining room table I'd really like. But sadly for me, I'm not wealthy. In the end, I just wasn't able to swallow the cost but that doesn't mean I'm not still mulling over it, reserving a place in their queue for the day that extra money magically rains down from the sky.

I said goodbye to the friends I'd hung out with for the past several days and made the drive back to Chicago on time to catch the last two episodes of Game of Thrones with the couple we've been watching the show with (extremely well done). All in all, I had a wonderful time at the convention and enjoyed every game I played; most of them I really enjoyed.

Con purchases:
- Seven Dragons, from Looney Labs (I like Aquarius, but don't own a copy; Seven Dragons in Aquarius except with Larry Elmore dragon art... win-win).
- a couple Reaper Legendary Encounters pre-painted plastic minis--the giant rats and vampire
- Fiasco Companion (I will read this cover to cover and enjoy every bit of it)
- Dungeon Decks (all the new ones; I think these cards are fun for idea generation)
- a moustache monocle from Think Geek (gift for a friend)
- Skyline 3000 (technically not a purchase; got it as part of my board game hall pass)

It was a nice, relaxed con. Tons of fun. Now it's time to rest up for Gen Con.

Origins 2011 (Saturday)

2011-06-26T00:04:00.000-05:00

Morning: delicious waffle and cappuccino from North Market
Then, headed to the exhibit hall for a little bit. Picked up the Fiasco Companion because in terms of story and character development, I think Fiasco might be the best RPG I've ever played. It strongly appeals to my acting, improv, and writing background(s). Very strongly. Very very strongly.

Played my new game, Skyline 3000, and really liked it a lot. You're trying to construct skyscrapers on a space colony in the year 3000; I see it as an area control type of game. I came in dead last, but went down having a good time. That's one of the marks of a good game, for me. I'm lucky that was the "free" game I was given with entry to the board game room. Such a deal.

Later on, I tried out Theophrastus. You're young alchemists trying to guess senior alchemist Theophrastus's secret formulae. For some reason this one also appealed to me quite a lot. I'll gave to gather the ribbons at Gen Con and try to get it for half off. Also: small box, so it's portable.

We played Piece of Cake, which is a short, fun game about, well, pieces of cake. Great cake illustrations on wedge-shaped pieces. Extremely simple.

I feel like there were other games we played today, but I can't think what they may have been. At any rate, I was pretty satisfied with today's variety. Looking forward to wrapping up the con tomorrow.

Origins 2011 (Friday)

2011-06-25T00:59:00.000-05:00

It was a full day of gaming and hanging out.
Highlights: I got to hang out with the wonderful Dave Chalker and E. Maureen Foley.
Bought some new Dungeon Decks, and Looney Labs "7 Dragons" game, illustrated by Larry Elmore. I guess it's just like Aquarius but with a couple new rules. I'm cool with that since I like, and yet do not own, Aquarius.
Got a couple Reaper pre-painted plastic miniatures.
Played Thunderstone. Liked it.
Played R-Echo. I know that one pretty well.
Played Loch Ness. Enjoyed it.
Played Agricola. I still don't quite grok that game.
Ate some heavy Bucca di Beppo.
Now it is time for sleeeeeeeeeep.

Origins 2011 (Wednesday and Thursday)

2011-06-24T00:00:00.000-05:00

So far I haven't done too terribly much at Origins. But no complaints. I'm reconnecting with a lot of old friends, meeting new people, playing games, and eating way too much amazing Columbus, OH food.

Wednesday I played Dominion and learned Hacienda. Hacienda is about my speed; it's complex enough that I can wrap my head around it, but not overly complicated. There's a breakoff point where I stop enjoying a game when every move presents a wealth of options and extremely careful analysis to make the optimal choice. I know a lot of people who are good at those games, but for me too many options leads to analysis paralysis. These days I like games that move relatively quickly. Most of what Days of Wonder and Rio Grande put out are about my speed. Mayfair too, most of the time. Of course there are notable exceptions.

Today, I hung out at the Geek Chic booth for hours trying to figure out what kind of table I might like to eventually acquire. I wasn't able to make a decision. Unfortunately this means I'll be going back tomorrow for more of the same. Hopefully I'll do a better job getting in some games.

The trouble I'm having with the Geek Chic table is getting something narrow enough to be a dining room table but with enough room for character sheets and books on the edges, and enough play space in the middle. I'm not a big fan of the player drawers on the sides because in a storytelling game (the kind I like to run) I want everyone gathered in close. Also, I want to enjoy a diner close to the person I'm sitting across from. Finally, most of the games played on that table are likely to be board games. It would be best if those were close to the players, not farther away. Yes, painful dilemma. I shall think on it more tomorrow.

We Do It Because We Are Compelled

2011-06-22T23:56:00.002-05:00

Anyone that wants to break into the gaming industry may want to read my friend Robert J. Schwalb's snapshot of the rigors and realities of being a freelancer in the game design business. Rob delivers the hard truths and the practicalities most of us don't want to face, and he does it with a well-reasoned no-bs approach. And I think he's absolutely right. It is hard, if not impossible, to make a comfortable living as a game designer or writer if you don't have special circumstances or something else supporting you (having filed "writer" as part of my taxes for the past two years, I have documented proof).

Be that as it may, you have to follow your bliss. And if you want to be a writer or game designer, that is--in my opinion--exactly what you should do. It isn't easy. It's hard as hell. And there are few that last for long. Then again, what does last?

I think that everything you do in life colors your experience and shapes the continually-evolving person you are. At some things you will not succeed. Or your success will be limited. For example, I studied long-form improvisation under Del Close in the first few years I lived in Chicago. Self-assessment: I was an adequate improvisor, but not a great one. For the most part I lacked the drive, passion, and perseverance of the other improvisors that performed on that stage in those days. Some of those people are famous now. But most of them--no less talented--are not. The ones that succeeded were people like Jack McBrayer, John Lutz, and Jason Sudeikis; those guys had the drive, the passion, and the perseverance. And yet... though I wasn't terribly successful as an improvisor, what I learned from that experience was foundational in my development as an actor, as a writer, and as a human being. There is not a single creative endeavor I undertake that doesn't in some way correlate to my long-form improv experience and inform my choices.

So it is with game design. Or writing. Or theater. Or visual art. Or whatever it is you want to do. Anything you pursue will teach you something. It will level you up. It may not give you gp, but the pursuit will award you XP comparative to the level of your striving.

And in the end, none of it really lasts. It all goes away. It will all be forgotten in the next "now."
So you might as well try your best. Then try again. And again. And again. And again. And again.
Until you stop enjoying it.
And at that point?
Follow your bliss.

Origins Bound!

2011-06-21T13:32:00.001-05:00

Origins Game Fair in Columbus, OH this weekend!

I'm going!

This is the shortest blog post I will ever write.

Play?

2011-06-17T10:29:00.008-05:00

Due to various circumstances I've been taking a break from actively participating in role-playing games for a little while. It wasn't a conscious choice. This change in course began with a heavy RPG design workload, which was only exacerbated by scheduling conflicts within the group. Throw in a few big picture life issues, and time for games became scarce.

Usually when life gets in the way I'm still wistful about returning to the story/stories left unfinished. This time was different, though. This time the emotional tug-of-war left me so exhausted I lacked the will to do much of anything whatsoever. Furthermore, I think that being intensely involved in the bigger picture (RPG design) caused me to lose some focus on why I liked RPGs in the first place. That's going to be tough to describe but I'll give it a shot:

The stories I tell have never been what most would think of as traditional D&D. To me D&D is storytelling is improvisation is theater is art. It comes from spirit, imagination, inspiration, and not so much from analysis. It's more right-brained than left. It's about characters (PCs and NPCs alike) making choices and watching where those choices take them. I'm not saying this is the "right" way to play, but it's the way that fulfills me.

When I design RPG products, I try to bring that perspective to everything I do. I want people to be able to feel the fantastic worlds their characters occupy. I want immersion. Mechanics are also important, and I do try to make them creative and interesting, but for me mechanics exist in RPGs to fulfill a story need.

Even though I try to maintain a storytelling style in the RPG work I do, I find that the more immersed I become in design and "the meta," the less in touch I am with the kind of story flow that brought me here in the first place. When I say "the meta," I'm referring to the stuff people talk about when they talk about D&D "the game." The stuff people discuss on web forums and gaming stores. I'm talking about builds, paragon paths, powers, skills, feats, items, edition wars, and game companies. I don't participate much in these conversations because for me those are all secondary or tertiary concerns. They don't make a good story or a good character, and such elements eventually become obselete whereas a good story or a great character endures. Heck, even game designers are forgotten as the gaming industry moves on--if their names were ever noticed in the first place.

Tangent: I should make it clear that I'm not condemning anyone for having an interest in the meta or saying people shouldn't discuss it. I'm interested in it. Very interested. But I feel we can be overwhelmed by it, drawn too much into it, and I think in a lot of cases it works to sap our enjoyment of the game and the stories and characters we bring to the game. It's a little like talking about one's relationship--the more you analyze, scrutinize, or attempt to perfect it, the more you tear it apart piece by piece.

So, having had a vacation from role-playing games, I find myself slowly regaining some perspective. On the train home last night I was reading a book (it was The Wise Man's Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss), when it suddenly dawned on me how much role-playing games used to strengthen my own character skills and storytelling skills. They're an improvisational outlet that gets me out of my head and gives me the chance to explore new ideas. That is to say, they give me an opportunity to play. To try new things.

Play is the keyword here. Play as a free-form creative activity. Play is what we begin to lose (imo) when we get too wrapped up in analysis, debate, and the meta. I think that's impossible for me to avoid, but it's important to remain aware of it. The rules aren't going to save us--we have to save ourselves.

To encapsulate the entire concept in a single anecdote:

In 1999, as I was running a game I stopped in the middle of the action to consult a rulebook so that I could fairly adjudicate the action in the game using the rules as written. After 3 minutes or so, Mike Kuciak shouted, "Dude, put down the fucking book and start DMing."

I think we'd go far to apply that mantra to a lot of things in life.

The play is all.

What We Can Learn from Video Games

2011-06-16T08:32:00.000-05:00

Quite a lot, I think.

As a kid, I loved computer games. We started off with a Texas Instruments T994A. Munch Man, Alpiner, Parsec, Tunnels of Doom...great early computer games. My cousin and I impatiently waited as the cassette tape that accompanied the Tunnels of Doom (it was like D&D... for computer!) cartridge loaded the binary code that would run the game. For a while I had even memorized parts of the binary "song" that would play from the cassette whenever we booted up the game. We went through a series of computers in the '80s and '90s, but never owned a console. There were great puzzle games like The Secret of Monkey Island and anything made by Sierra (Space Quest, Quest for Glory, Police Quest, etc). There were great RPGs like Pool of Radiance and Champions of Krynn. But somewhere along the way, computer gaming dropped off my radar. I think it was around when first person shooters and MMOs became all the rage. I liked arcade style games like Golden Axe and Altered Beast, or story and puzzle oriented games like those from Lucas Arts and Sierra.

In early 2007 I bought a PS3 strictly as a blu-ray player. Since I didn't care about console games, it didn't really matter to me that they were the PS3's primary purpose. But lately, after being introduced to such titles as God of War (all three), Uncharted, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect, I'm changing my tune.

These games are like works of art in their own right, with intricate stories, detailed history, deep characters, interesting challenges and strategies, top notch voice cast, music, and writing. Games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect are staggering in the scope of their totally immersive world-building. In short, these games not only inspire, but there's a lot to be gleaned from them as well. Game design ideas, story ideas, puzzle ideas, and an emotional experience to go along.

Adversity

2011-06-14T10:18:00.001-05:00

Some folks are at their most creative when they're in the worst states of their lives--brokenhearted, destitute, defeated. In this state, they're able to create amazing works of art and rise to the height of their creativity.

I'm not sure I'm one of those people. Rather, when I have the crushing shadow of despair looming over my heart and mind, that's when I worry more about finding a place of equilibrium. If I'm broke and in debt, I focus on fixing that situation so I can stop worrying about that. If I'm broken-hearted, I search for a way to mend my spirit. I don't stop doing creative things during those periods, but the things I do tend to be a little more personal, and on a smaller scale than what I'd attempt at equilibrium.

The past six months have been extremely trying. Not compared to what's going on in other parts of the world--Japan, Oklahoma, Afganistan, etc--but there's been quite a bit of chaos within the parameters of my everyday world. To the casual observer, my life is pretty boring--I haven't been affected by anything that would impress anyone. But I once compared my life with a friend whom I thought had it much worse than me. I expressed how sorry I was that things had happened to my friend the way they had. I reflected on how much less I had had to deal with. But when I offered her my sympathy, she said, "Pain is pain. And all pain is the same."

Thus, the emotional ups and downs of 2011 haven't been cataclysmic, but they've been difficult to deal with. While I've been dealing with them, my creative life has suffered. I'm gradually easing back into things, but it's like working out: jumping in full force leads to a quick burnout. It's necessary to stretch the muscles and condition, working slowly back to one's previous level. My tiny dramas have involved buying a home (and failing), a cool new job that fell through, my identity stolen, some writing I put 200% into seems misunderstood or disliked, and these failures have occupied most of my time and energy in 2011.

Some thrive in adversity. Me, I can handle a few fires at once, but when they threaten to consume me, my attention goes to putting out the fires so I can continue to survive. I'm not sure what I've learned from all this. The way these things usually go, one can only get perspective with a little time and distance. We'll see. Off the top of my head:

- Espresso is safe, but big cups of coffee aren't recommended in this state.
- Coffee in the morning and tequila at night, while enjoyable, isn't recommended on a daily basis.
- It's important to have close friends, and especially important to have close friends outside of gaming.
- The PS3 plays games as well as movies. The PS3 is psychological morphine: it'll numb the pain, but it's also addictive. You've got to know when and how to wean yourself from it. (Side note: God of War 3, Uncharted, Uncharted 2, Dragon Age expansions, and Mass Effect... this time was well used).

Talking About Monsters

2011-06-13T12:33:00.002-05:00

June is a good time to talk about monsters. Last week, some premiere game stores received the new D&D product Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale, which I had a hand in designing along with Brian R. James, Matt James, and Sterling Hershey, under the direction of Chris Perkins at Wizards of the Coast.

I spoke a little bit about the design of the wandering tower over on the D&D web site, and a few of the creatures I designed have already been previewed there. You can find them at the following links:
Penanggalan
Mages of Saruun (partial entry)
Hound of Ill Omen
Boggle (partial entry)

I'm exceptionally pleased with what I've seen so far from Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale. The product was designed to give players and DMs immersive story and cool mechanics for 4e monsters, and I did my very best to make that happen with the entries for which I was responsible. Sometimes the end result of a project can look quite different from the original design. I'll admit, when that happens it can be hard to take, since for me the right words are everything, and I'll often spend hours searching for the right words to create the desired effect. But apart from some good, clarifying edits, Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale keeps the words and ideas intact. I think it's going to be really, really good. I'd think I can credit Chris Perkins, the project lead, and Jeremy Crawford, the project editor, for letting that happen. I think this may turn out to be the D&D print product of which I'm the proudest.

Since the product is already out in premiere stores, I'll list the other entries I did for this lovely product: the Gray Company, the white dragon Bitterstrike, the Tigerclaw Barbarians, the Raven Roost Bandits, the Felldrakes, and the Dark Drake of the Moon Hills. Also... the forest battle map.

I really can't wait to have it in my hot little hands.

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed

2011-04-19T11:33:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time since I've updated this blog, but not a moment has been spent idly.

Before the last update, I was just about to turn in the organized play adventure for the Penny Arcade convention. However, even before I turned it in I had another assignment: the fall D&D Encounters season, Beyond the Crystal Cave. I wrote that adventure and playtested it simultaneously (not the whole thing--just about six sessions), while doing some rewrites and playtesting notes for Heroes of the Feywild and the Penny Arcade adventure. I'm not sure how much that sounds like to anyone reading this, but suffice it to say, I was insanely busy. Here's an overview of my life as a freelancer:

Sometimes I feel as though I'm very slow compared to other D&D freelancers. Most of the time I feel like the time I spend on a project is necessary for the quality and consistency of the final product. I'm confident in my ability to put out 60k words a month. I've accomplished this feat numerous times and it's not really a problem. But that's more stream of consciousness writing--some is alright, some touches on good, lots of it is garbage. On the other hand, when I'm actually writing for quality, I'll spend two, three, sometimes four hours on a few paragraphs--say 400 or 500 words. My output decreases significantly when I'm really working to make things as clear and sound as possible.

That's the pace I've been working at consistently for the past six months. I work a regular job 40 hours a week that has nothing whatsoever to do with writing (though a lot to do with clarity of instruction). So every project I do for D&D, I do in addition to this other job. In my first couple years freelancing, I'd stay up 'till 11 or 12 every night, then get up at 6 the next morning and repeat. I'm able to sustain that schedule for two months at a time--four at most--but in this past six month string I've had to put an 8 p.m. cap on my work for the day. That gives me two hours to not work, so that I can have time to decompress before going to bed and getting up to work (my two jobs) again.

When I turned in Beyond the Crystal Cave, I took a much-needed vacation to the Pacific Northwest to visit some friends in Vancouver. While I was in the area, I stopped by the Wizards of the Coast offices for the first time and got to go to lunch and play games with some of the folks I work for. I was also asked to redo some work for Beyond the Crystal Cave, so I took a couple of those days and worked in a cubicle at WotC. After that, I had a chance to explore the natural beauty of the area, and made it up to Vancouver, fulfilling a long-held promise to some dear old friends.

As I wind down from vacation and from the past six months, I'm beginning to consider what I want to do next, gaming-wise. One of my players has been absent from the table from some time, and this is usually the time of year when I consider winding down the current "season" of the game. Last fall I began the second season of Strongwood, and the campaign was going swimmingly until work and schedules intervened and the game came to a screeching halt. I'm not sure how or when to try to resurrect that campaign, only that it must happen and when it happens it needs an unobstructed road upon which to travel, if that makes any sense.

That's what I've been up to, that's what I've not been up to, and there it is in its entirety.

Ramblings

2011-01-25T10:09:00.000-06:00

My last D&D project was a big one. The current project is comparatively small. For most designers worth their weight in electrum, I fancy they'd have turned it in weeks ago and be begging for the next one.

I seem to find that whatever project I work on occupies my full time and attention. I think the only real difference is the level of stress and level of absorbtion of all other things in life. For instance, this time around I've felt a little more at liberty to do the little things in life--take some nights off to watch movies or whatever.

I've been working on adventure design so I've been playing a lot of organized play events (as per my previous few blogs posts) to get close to what's being done in that area lately. The experience has been an interesting one. When I work on a D&D product I always try to make it as story-focused and immersive as I possibly can, and I take that approach from every angle--mechanics, wordcraft, mood, etc. So when I see the kinds of tricked out characters that show up in organized play, I always feel a little out of my depth, and the reality of the game shifts for me--it goes from a storytelling sort of game to a "deck building" game where the object is to deck yourself out with all the best mechanics. Naturally I'm resistant to this, but I confess it's hard not to be influenced by it on some level. For example, when I started my Living Forgotten Realms character, his abilities were all relatively good, with no extremely high scores, and I took Damaaran as a language. But after feeling subpar in comparison with the rest of my group, I switched those scores around and replaced Damaaran with a language that's actually used in adventures (one of the standard D&D languages).

I don't have much else to say at the moment. Gotta finish a project. Gotta go to D&D XP. Looking very much forward to playing Dark Sun (I will be a thri-kreen at last!). Perhaps I'll post from XP if I have the time and energy after each action packed day of gaming.

Prepping for XP (and Some Cool Organized Play Stuff)

2011-01-19T22:07:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago I was musing a bit on how I think it's kind of up to us to make organized play fun--and how sometimes you're stuck in a game with a referee style DM or an extremely lax one.

I received an e-mail a few days ago from Baldman Games (D&D XP) with some organized play guidelines for the new Dark Sun Ashes of Athas campaign, and I was pretty delighted with what I found there. Lots of great advice for both DMs and players designed to make those organized play games feel a lot more like home games. For instance, the advice to DMs encouraged allowing the players to try anything, while the player guidelines pushed for immersion, speaking in character, and so forth. At any rate, I found it extremely encouraging and I'm very excited to build my Dark Sun character. I've had a lifelong fascination with Thri-Kreen, so I'm going to take this opportunity to play one. I'll probably be a psionic character too, since I haven't had much opportunity to dabble in those arts.

In the days leading up to XP, I'm finishing up a Wizards of the Coast project that's supposedly quite small. I say "supposedly" because at first, second, and third glance, it should be a pretty small project compared to most of the other assignments I've had (aside from magazine articles). Most = all.

Still, I don't seem to be able to let well enough alone, and the more invested I became in the project, the more I tried to do. I wrestled with one small section for an entire week until I figured out a way to crack it (er... I hope). I still feel like there's a ton of stuff yet to do and a lot left to polish. I feel like I'm a long way away from the home stretch, though milestone-wise I'm pretty much there. As in, I've written it all in one form or another. Now I have to rewrite sections carefully and make things work that don't work that well right now. I wish I could say more, but anyhow that's what's keeping me busy and keeping me from building my Dark Sun character.

Last thing I've been doing to prepare for XP is playing a few LFR games at the local game store. I've changed my paladin over to an Essentials cavalier and I've been experimenting with that a bit just as I hope to experiment with that character in the paragon tier a little (hopefully at XP). In playing those games, I've tried to soak in the organized play experience a little more (as I do every time I play some LFR) and observe the way adventures run and what choices are given to the characters in each. It's been interesting to see which ones succeed and which ones fail, and which ones might succeed or fail under different DMs or with different players. But that's a whole other conversation.

Sadly, my own game is back on hiatus while the players' schedules work themselves out. :-(

Into the Woods, Into the Woods, Into the Woods (and home before dark!)

2011-01-05T20:31:00.001-06:00

Maybe I'm crazy. Probably. I'm going to repeat myself here a little.
The summer between my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college, I auditioned for the musical Into the Woods in the park. I wasn't cast. Instead, I was cast in Funny Girl, but that's another life and D&D altering story for another time.

That summer, I listened to Into the Woods constantly, and perhaps by osmosis, in addition to the Ohio Renaissance Festival and the works of Anton Chekhov and Henrik Ibsen (as well as every D&D product ever written), it influenced my campaign world and my approach to D&D.

18 years later (it was 1993), Into the Woods is just as profound to me as it was when I was 18 years old. I'm beginning to think maybe this is just a singular obsession with me, but perhaps it's not.

I won't spoil it here, but Into the Woods is a two-act show featuring fairy tale characters like Cinderella, Jack, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and so forth. In the first act, all the characters go about to accomplish their quests like they do in the stories. They're all woven together into a pretty nifty structure that makes perfect sense. But that alone is not what makes it great.

Everything in the musical is a metaphor for something else. I mean, we're dealing with fairy tale archetypes in this show, so each character has deeper symbolic meanings and reflects us as we are in broad strokes. It's no mistake, for example, that the actor who plays the wolf who "seduces" innocent Little Red Riding Hood from her path and "shows me things many valuable things that I hadn't thought to explore" is double cast as the philandering Prince Charming.

When the first act closes, all the fairy tale characters have gone through their tales, and done so with astoundingly intelligent wordplay and extremely cunning turns of phrase (replete with double meanings that Shakespeare would be proud of). In the production I saw, a good part of the audience left when the first act closed, thinking the show was over.

But then the second act begins, with the narrator emerging to announce: "Once upon a time... later."

What follows is a dark descent into the trials and tragedies of life that beset us all after we've gotten what we wish for and had our happily ever afters... and it questions the validity of our desires. "Do you know what you wish? Are you certain what you wish is what you want...?"

Suffice it to say, things at the end of act 2 are not as they were at the end of act 1, and our heroes' desires take them to dark and dangerous places. Once established fairy tale characters start dropping over dead, the play gets real.

At it best, my campaigns have sort of shadowed this general feeling--the elements you find in Into the Woods. I'm not sure I can even explain it well. You have to experience it for yourself. I have never been able to stomach the video production they did of the show; it has to be experienced live with a good production (preferably outdoors as the sun sets).

I only mention it because I keep returning to it over and over and over again. The deep metaphorical context of the show drew me in and has never let me go. Sadly, I've only ever seen it once, 18 years ago; the rest exists in my imagination when I listen to the music from the show.

Maybe this is all nonsense. I don't know. I just know that the archetypal characters continue to resonate with me just as strong as they ever did all these years later.

Kind of a Follow up

2011-01-04T10:33:00.001-06:00

Last night I accepted a friend's invite to go to the local game store and play some Living Forgotten Realms. The DM started off a bit apologetically, saying he thought everyone else at the table probably knew the rules better than he did. But undaunted he plunged into the adventure. He played fast and loose with us, but the game was challenging and fun and he really did his best to make sure everyone was having a good time. And as cliche as it may sound, at the end of the night that's truly all that matters.

Organized Play

2011-01-03T15:22:00.004-06:00

I have signed up for another D&D XP convention and crammed my schedule full of Living Forgotten Realms and Dark Sun games. I even shelled out the cash for the Dark Sun campaign setting last week in order to ground myself in the setting while creating my character. I'm pretty sure that like last year I'm going to have a blast. And yet...

And yet organized play is like a potluck. Some experiences are going to be great, and some are going to feel like a tedious exercise in fortitude.

I feel like we can do better with organized play in general. I'm not pointing any fingers (I wouldn't know where to point). But my experiences with it thus far have been a mixed bag. For every great session I play, I seem to also play one or two mediocre ones. To venture a guess, I think improvement begins with the judges. In my organized play experiences it seems to me there are approximately two or three kinds of judges, with a very select few straddling the line between one type and the other. I'll call one type "referees" and the other type "directors." There's a third category I'll call loafers, but thankfully I've only played with a few of them so far.

Referees
The referees run modules as though they are video games. If you don't hit that button exactly right, you fail. There is no real margin for error because the referee adheres precisely to the words as they are written upon the printed page. Characters in these adventures seldom behave like heroes because the players will act upon an imperfect understanding of the situation, or they will fail to understand the clues as written in the module (which a referee will not elaborate upon). At the other extreme, players may become so conscious of checking their every action that the adventure will crawl along while the PCs make sure to tiptoe through the referee's extremely technical mine field. There is little to no suspension of disbelief because the characters do not live in this world; their character actions and creative thinking will never be rewarded because the module does not allow for such things.

Directors
Directors fancy themselves role-play-friendly gamemasters. They tend toward the opposite extreme of the referees; they're breezy about rules and the requirements of the module. I notice that they often announce at the top of the adventure, "I'm a role-play GM," as if it's a point of pride. You get the feeling they're the substitute teacher that wants to be cool and be friends with the class. Directors often require the players to role-play, however in most cases it seems there is a right and a wrong way to role-play; if the players don't say or do what the DM has in mind, they fail. Since most players aren't mind readers (or close friends with the DM) this can be pretty frustrating.

Loafers
There's another class of GM as well, and these are the ones that assume the players are just there to put in four hours or less to get as much experience and treasure as possible. These GMs breeze over just about everything, at times poking fun of the module for being poorly written or cumbersome or what have you. These sessions can be a real test of one's endurance, as it matters very little what you say or do; after about half an hour nobody wants to be at the table and everyone's doing their best to speed things along (sometimes skipping over entire encounters) just to get the experience reward and move on.

The Best Organized Play GMs
The best organized play GMs walk the line between director and referee, and don't belong in either category. These GMs are patient and prepared. They allow the players to role-play at the appropriate times and do their best to respond as the NPCs. Perhaps most importantly, the best organized play GMs give the players credit where it's due. By this I mean to say that if a player is about to make a dumb move out of character, the gamemaster will clarify the situation for the player without condoning or discouraging the action. For example, if the wizard's player moves her miniature through the square with the open pit trap, the gamemaster makes sure the player intends to go that route over the pit (as opposed to immediately telling the player how much damage the character just took). If the knight's player commits a breach of etiquette in the duke's court, the DM points it out to the knight (who would know such things) and asks if that's the character's intention, explaining that it's totally cool if it is...

The best organized play GMs seem more like fellow players in the game than overlords. They're not only running the module for the players, but they're also working to give the players a sense of immersion in that world. I feel like in this day and age people who play D&D are not just looking for the epic win--I mean, they can get that satisfaction way, way, way faster in a video game or an MMO. People who sit around a table playing a character from their imagination (I'm guessing) want at least a little bit of immersion into the world. I think some have forgotten that as they've ground their way through module after module, but I think it still exists there at the core. I also think that most people are generally afraid to role-play beyond the, "My character is a drow with purple eyes. He has white hair and chainmail. He carries a sword with a dragon in the hilt. You get the feeling he is dark and secretive," kind of stuff at the beginning of the organized play session. Ruthless GMs that demand perfect answers to either module or role-play challenges and obnoxiously loud players only push most folks farther into their shells. One of the best GMs I've played with was a woman who had been assigned the module on the spot. Undaunted, she took it in stride and ran the adventure to the best of her ability, taking her time and painting the scenes for us while listening to what we wanted to attempt and accomodating those actions as best she could under the circumstances. She was a rockstar.

How Can We Improve?
So how can we improve the organized play experience? I really think it has to start with the DMs. They're running the session. It's up to the DM to make the environment a friendly, open, encouraging place to play. I have played with several organized play DMs who meet this ideal (the woman who ran the impromptu game, for instance), however I've spent an unfortunate number of hours playing with those who don't. There are some theater and film actors that use the script or the direction or the other actors as an excuse for a poor performance. The best actors, however, make the best of what is given them and do their best to turn limited circumstances to their advantage without making excuses or phoning it in (watch Jeff Bridges in Tron Legacy). So should organized play GMs take the perceived faults of the module or the players in stride and try to make each session the best it can possibly be. Ideally I think GMs should treat the players as though they're guests he or she would like to impress--and that not only means running a challenging game by the rules but also by being accommodating and, y'know, generally cool to be around. The DM can't please everyone all the time, but the players' excitement or boredom should be a pretty good barometer for any DM running a game.

I think that bears repeating: the players' excitement or boredom should be a pretty good barometer for any DM running a game. Take a measurement and adjust. It's all about fun.

"Witches can be right, giants can be good. You decide what's right. You decide what's good."

Looking Back at 2010: A Self Analysis

2010-12-31T20:26:00.001-06:00

2010 was strange for me. Lots to celebrate and lots to mourn.

I started out the year with different goals that I thought were important and I didn't accomplish. They weren't terribly ambitious, but I guess you could say they were more spiritual in nature. I don't really want to talk about them because then I'll feel like more of a failure.

Instead of accomplishing the goals I laid out for myself, I ended up completing a few D&D projects for Wizards of the Coast, and was happy with how most of them turned out. Here's a brief rundown of my publishing life over the past year:

The Magazines
The Minotaurs of Mistwatch: this was a piece for Dragon Magazine detailing a minotaur settlement. I'm afraid it will be all but forgotten amongst the piles of Dragon articles over the years, but I put a lot into the setting, its customs, and its ways. Mistwatch is still a special place for me.

Origin Stories: Origin Stories was a Dragon article that gave player characters a conflict-filled background to start their stories. It also provided mechanical boons as rewards for characters that pursued the conflicts inherent in their backgrounds. I had fun with it. Overall it was more of a template for how to put that kind of thing together yourself.

The Ecology of the Scarecrow: Technically I wrote this piece in 2009, but I rewrote it from the ground up this year and got to turn it into something I was quite proud of. It appeared in Dungeon Magazine around Halloween.

2011 Products
Monster Vault--The Threats to the Nentir Vale: I had a lot of fun doing this one. I feel like the new Monster Vault supplanted Monster Manual 3 for best D&D monster book ever with its cool format and flavorful content. So Monster Vault Nentir Vale should echo that; I worked hard on it, that's all I can say.

The Madness of Gardmore Abbey: While I was preparing for this project I read a lot of stuff online about how people don't like WotC modules and why. Those people should give Gardmore a shot. It's my first go at DMing the world in general. What does that mean? Well, check this blog out and you'll see what that DMing means to me. I'm proud of it.

Project X-Factor Monkeybunch 0: Its true name was already leaked to the internet by some weird data quirk, but even so I can't talk about it. It's the most words I've written for a project though and it was right up my alley.

The Releases
Monster Manual 3: Even though I only had an additional design credit on it, I feel like I worked on much more of it. Since it was my first real assignment I had a lot of time to work on it and go over and over and over my concepts. I'm very proud of a lot of the stuff that I did for it: banderhobb, catoblepas, kraken, mimic, nymph, and yeti.

Demonomicon: My name was on the cover and I got to create the demon lord Oublivae and her layer the Barrens. Nuff said.

So at the end of the year that's six published pieces, three of which are pretty sizable, one of which I turned in enough content to hit novel length. In some ways it's a lot more than my goals had been, but even so... I failed to meet my specific personal goals.

Not that I'm unhappy--I'm very pleased with the year's writing turnout. Heck, it far exceeds anything I've done before. I also wrote about seventy odd drafts of different short stories, though alas these were just drafts and exercises and fun stuff.

In D&D land I began the year experimenting with epic games and playing with lots of different folks. Near the end of the year I got to return to the Strongwood campaign where my heart is (and for which I've written a not insignificant number of plots, characters, and so forth, and I'm still pretty much head over heels in love with that game).

Yet despite all of this, I lost two close friends and my father had a heart attack. It was an emotional roller coaster of a year. I am happy for the happy times and sad for the sad times. I couldn't say the year was good or bad--like any year, it was both. I suppose it's all a matter of perspective--of valuing the moments of joy and of wonder that are given to you and reflecting upon them when the dark times come. In the words of Hamlet, "...there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

A Monster Vault Epiphany

2010-12-23T10:55:00.000-06:00

I'm a D&D Miniatures man to the core. I have a bajillion little plastic dudes, and despite all that, if they were still rolling out, I'd buy a half a bajillion more.

When I picked up the Monster Vault, I was thrilled with the way the monster entries were rich with important (and practical!) story details about the creature rather than formulaic sections on possible encounters or combat--I very much prefer that stuff to be mentioned where it's important and omitted where it isn't. And of course I love the new monster stat blocks. But as much as I admired the tokens, I wasn't quite sure what to do with them. As I said, I'm a miniatures guy to the core. But what was probably obvious to everyone else just came clear to me this morning.

I'm going on a trip. I might want to play D&D. I don't have anything prepared at the moment. However, I now have representations of every monster in the core of D&D and they all fit nicely into a small box.

Ok, that's pretty awesome.

Some Musings...

2010-12-21T23:00:00.000-06:00

Lately my ambition has been larger than the time or space I have to run my campaign. Though it may not always seem like it from my side of the screen, I do believe that for the most part the Strongwood campaign is a story that contains characters (both PCs and NPCs) of considerable depth and definite human motivations.

Over the past week I've had some time to sit down and consider the game, see where it's headed (in general terms), where I'd like to push the themes and characters, and where it could ultimately go. There are some aspects to it that are so intricate and thematic I almost feel bad they're being used in an RPG for a mere audience of four. Of course they're not really the audience--they're the actors and writers in this unfolding drama.

When I spend a couple months on an official Dungeons and Dragons product for print, I try to carry over the magic of our campaigns and instill it in the stuff I work on; I don't tend to lift elements from our game, but I do try to carry over the mood and feel I like to build here--just applied to the D&D world. When I'm doing that intensely, I sometimes worry that I'll lose touch with my center and the campaign that means so much to us, but that hasn't been the case. If anything, when we return to our campaign I may be even looser than ever before; I'm doing my best to be as flexible as possible while propelling the campaign ever forward.

This is all very ambiguous, I know. I'm not yet certain whether this game will end with the heroes triumphing or being utterly destroyed. I'm willing to let either happen. Lately it's the heroes' choices that have driven the plot, so they have the potential to be their own greatest help or write their own ends. We shall see what transpires...

It's Always the Players

2010-12-15T15:18:00.000-06:00

I want to take a moment to talk about some awesomeness that happened in last night's game.

In last night's game, some goblins attacked the town of Silvertree. It's the first time I've used standard goblins in Meathra, so I'm breaking a seventeen-year ban. The goblins of my world have always been similar to what the world now knows as "banderhobbs." At any rate, these critters came marauding from the fairytale world next door and posed a significant menace to our heroes. I'd planned to have them turn into vines and earth when they were slain, but forgot about that at first.

Pilgrim, the devout follower of Stomra, god of humankind, had been in a cell (accused of witchcraft) in the last episode. When the goblins attacked, Lowell, Pilgrim's player, did a lance of faith attack on the lock. But Lowell framed it as a prayer to Stomra; he just wanted to deal enough damage to join the fight. I'd forgotten he was behind bars at the start of the fight, so instead of looking up item hardness, hit points, etc, the door simply swung open upon Pilgrim's prayer.

Then, later in the battle, Pilgrim warded off one of the Queen's minions (a goblin), and when it fell I asked Lowell to describe what happened, he said, "It turns into a bundle of sticks shaped like a man." I'm pretty sure he used lance of faith for that too.

I thought this was an awesome idea, so I went with it, and this also reminded me of the idea I'd had about them turning into leaves, vines, and sod. Though I described the rest of them perishing that way, when I begin next week's session I'm going to inform the players that beneath each little pile of earth and vegetation is the scarecrow frame of a creature--furthering and heightening Lowell's idea. I wish I'd made that clarification at the time, but I was preoccupied with the battle and remembering the original intent.

In my notes I had written, "In the morning there is no physical evidence and it all seems like a dream that fades away. PCs will ahve to role-play this."

What I meant was that as the physical remnants of the battle faded, so did all memory of the battle. I wasn't sure about that choice. Unless you have really good role-players (which I do), and even if you do have really good role-players, it's hard for players to just pretend that one of their battles never happened.

Well, when Kat stabbed the first of the goblins with the cold rapier with the pearlescent basket hilt that she had taken from the son of the frost king, the goblin cried out that his lord's blade had pierced him. So at the end of the battle, when all of their memories were slipping away, Liz, who plays Kat, told me that she would cut her hand with the frosty blade and bind the wound with ice, to solidify the memory in her mind.

I thought that was about the most kickass thing I'd heard all night. As DMs, we're always tempted to have the players roll for stuff like that, but I thought to myself, "What if she rolled a 1?" Fact is, it was a brilliant idea and having that fail in the story would have been the lamest thing ever. So by virtue of it being a damn fine bit of storytelling, it worked, and Kat can recall the whole battle though the others cannot (she can, however, tell them what happened, and they can imagine it for themselves).

Baxter and Jonathan Crisp had amazing moments too, with Jonathan Crisp rolling 3 critical hits in a row and Baxter almost died--though not from Jonathan's crits I should note (side note: the new organized stat block format in Monster Manual 3 and Monster Vault ensures that I no longer forget to use monsters' abilities in concert).

To resurrect, beat, and rebury a dead centaur, it's the players that make the game.

2e Nostalgia

2010-12-01T10:09:00.000-06:00

Flipping through the first printing of the 2e Players Handbook last night and I was swept away in nostalgia. Mostly I was just looking at the art. There were a lot of illustrations in that book that seemed... how do I say it... They didn't necessarily seem connected to stuff you could do in the game. Or at least they didn't refer to specific abilities. And there were several historical-type illustrations; stuff you could imagine seeing in the real world. A little less fantastic, perhaps.

I'm not sure if those were good things or bad things, but when you spend so much time with a book in your teenage years, you can't help but attach fondness to it. As I looked the illustrations I kept wondering what they all meant, what was going on, who the characters were. At the very least it encouraged me to dream.

How Does One Prepare for a Campaign?

2010-11-12T19:42:00.002-06:00

A friend asked me this question today, and I responded by e-mail.

However, I'm also going to be lazy and use it as an excuse to update my blog with actual content. Here are my general, certainly far from complete, notes on preparing for a campaign.

As for what I prep before starting a new campaign, that's a great question, and one I'm a lot more prepped to answer.
This is what I do:

1. Figure out the mood - first I decide on the mood I want the campaign to have. Mood is like the FEEL you get from playing it. Do I want people to feel like they're in Battlestar Galactica or Star Wars? Do I want people to feel like they're in the Hobbit or the Black Company? Or a Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett book? Or a horror novel, and if so, which one--slasher or gothic?
Example: In 2003 I wanted to run a long LotR-like journey, heroes on a quest through enemy territory--lots of mistrust and hiding out. By 2008 we were tired of that style and we really wanted to play something different. I asked the players what they were in the mood for, and they were in the mood for something a lot lighter and more fun. So the game we play now is like that.

2. Dreamstorm - sit down and start jotting down IMAGES that strike you and resonate with you emotionally. It helps if you choose music that you feel describes the tone/mood you want to hit. And then just lay back and dream, jotting down whatever image comes into your head. Think of this like you're creating a movie trailer for your campaign. You don't know how everything fits together or what it means, you're just writing down the coolest stuff that pops into your head. You'll figure it out later. I believe "dreamstorming" is a term that Robert Olen Butler uses to describe his process, but we all do it; I appreciate Butler for coining the term, though!

3. Get the lay of the land- draw up a SMALL map. Don't go overboard with gigantic territories unless you have to for the campaign. Concentrate on the immediate surroundings. A castle, a town, a village, or two of those. A forest and a town. Focus in on where you're starting. You'll fill in the other stuff later as the PCs explore it, and it'll be exciting for you to explore because it'll be new. As the campaign takes shape, it's best to organically move with the PCs instead of trying to force them in a predetermined direction that you may have had while drawing the map.

4. Create a buttload of NPCs. Let me say it again: create a BUTTLOAD of NPCs. For me, this is the most important step. Thing is, you're creating a story here. A story involves characters who want stuff coming into conflict with other character who want stuff. It's easy to focus on the mazes and monsters, but they won't save us. I'll include some notes from the start of my campaign--your NPCs only need to be that detailed. You don't need to go overboard. Just write down a physical trait, their role in society, and what they want and let your imagination fill in the rest.

Chandler - One of the guild heads, now senior officer of the watch. Unlike tanner's guildmaster Rennik, he didn’t grow old watching the guilds lose their power. He walks with a cane because he was injured as part of a previous watch effort that didn’t go well and he was relieved of duty by Kassandara. This was the first Strongwood Watch, and arrested and held several citizens he thought were guilty. Accused of burning down the house of someone who robbed his relative.

Col the Blacksmith and his brother, Anton - Col is a young giant of a man, bunched with thick, corded muscles and a hood of dark, smoky hair. He speaks deep, direct, and to the point. He allied with the tanner revolt in order to lend strength to the guilds. He fears the reeve's taxes, for they seem to result in new laws and the enforcement of laws, and thus the blacksmith sees his coin building a cage to trap him. When Baxter felled him in battle, Col gave the watchman his respect, and they became drinking buddies. Col's younger brother Anton is a smaller version of the huge blacksmith, half of his brother in everything.

Daper Dell - captain of a clan of hunters living in the Nulmorian Mountains near Strongwood. Daper is renowned for his skill in archery and the fine polished blackwood bow he carries. Daper is a pragmatist. His wife perished in childbirth with his stillborn daughter over ten years ago, leaving him only with his son Dalen, whom he strives to teach the ways of the wood. Daper is thin, of medium height, with short, straight sandy hair and scruff.

Helios Kassandara - father of Katerina Alexandra Kassandara, Helios was the first constable of the Strongwood Watch as appointed by Mortimer Schteck. Kassandara settled in Strongwood in his youth, hailing from parts unknown. Months ago, he departed on a training assignment in a foreign land and has not been seen or heard from since.

5. Tell the players the general kind of campaign you want to run. Sit down with them (one by one if you can, or by e-mail) and really talk them through the campaign mood/feel. You don't have to reveal explicit details, but it's like you're the director and you're casting characters in this thing. It's best to be fairly open, but you can sort of help curb things toward what might be best for the campaign. For example, in our campaign humans run the world and there isn't much fantastic stuff running around at all. I communicated this to the players and they all chose to play humans... which is good because I don't have tieflings or dragonborn in the world, or a number of other official D&D races. Heck, most of them. Really listen to what the players want to play. You'll already have a good idea of what kind of campaign you want to run, so as the players are talking, it will trigger ideas you already came up with. Find a way for those characters to exist in the world. I like to start the characters out as ordinary joes, usually, but that's the flavor I like to play--so I want to know what their normal lives have been like up until this point.

6. Figure out the PCs' vulnerabilities. Not their low stats, but what affects their characters emotionally. "My family was killed by orcs, so I hate orcs," is fine, but it's a bit generic. "The miller's daughter broke my heart and now I don't know what to do with myself" is delicious. You can use that as a hook, the player has just given you an NPC to use. You can also "Gwen Stacy" the miller's daughter later on and kill her in front of the PC's eyes in order to make him HATE your villain, or you can use her as the ideal woman that he always wants to come back to... the one thing that forms his base. Character vulnerabilities are pure story; don't let any player get away scot-free, figure out what motivates them because THOSE are your best adventure hooks. It's all fine and good to hunt orcs, but if the characters hate the orcs for a character reason, they will write your campaign for you (which is all the better because you're not railroading them).

7. When you create your adventures, 3 things happen. Decide what you'd like the ending to FEEL like. That's the likely climax of the adventure. Then think what's the opposite of that--that's the beginning of your adventure. Then figure out what sort of event might move events from one state to the next. That's your middle. Now it's about coming up with those events (i.e. encounters) to put in those places. Now you have a skeleton of an adventure. If the players go off track, that's fine. You've got the skeleton so you can improvise within it.

I realize all of this is very general, but it's a start. These are the things I think about. Here's an interview I did on Critical Hits where I spouted off about some of this more at length. Finally, click the Strongwood, Storytelling, and RPG Philosophy links on this blog to see a bit more. I can't promise it will be useful, but, well, I do my best. ;-)

-Steve

The Process...

2010-11-09T11:30:00.002-06:00

...changes each day, and changes depending on what I'm working on.

Today the process consists of listening to a Weepies album and writing down all the most inspiring lyrics, then transforming them into different "stuff" by applying my interpretations and discovered associations to the RPG.

So far that's proving more effective than you'd think.

Random Thought: Gamer Elitism

2010-11-09T09:38:00.001-06:00

Earlier this year I heard someone say they wouldn't respect somebody who didn't play indie RPGs. That's not an exact quote, but that was the essence of it.

I also heard someone dis someone else's process out of hand.

And it may come as a shock, but I have also heard some mention of one edition of an RPG and all of its players being far superior to another version of the same RPG and all of its players, and vice versa.

You know what? None of this is cool. Such judgments as these display an alarming lack of empathy, and I think they only foster ignorance and breed contempt.

There's always going to be someone who can make a higher claim. Professional actors, for instance, could claim, if they were so inclined, that all gamers are posers or that the "art" of gaming is an amateur's waste of time. I've heard actors say such things. However, I also know a vast number of actors who are gamers. Literary authors and readers can (and some do) look down their nose at those they consider "genre" writers, dismissing anything and everything fanciful as the work of a hack page turner (actually, fantastic prose they can't decide upon gets labeled "magical realism," which somehow makes it acceptable).

This list could go on and on. The problem is, in every field of which I'm aware, there are folks who separate themselves from their colleagues as if to say "this work is good and this work is bad." It's all driven by ego and insecurity so far as I can tell, but it's doing nobody any good.

I'm pretty familiar with this ridiculous behavior because I used to practice it regularly. Back in the days of AD&D 2nd Edition, mostly. The game we played was a (cue holy music and streams of light from heaven) "role-playing" game. The game most other people played was a (cue leaping flames and discordant organ chords) "hack and slash roll-playing" game. I remember we were pretty proud of ourselves back then, my group and I, for being so cultured and so educated and so much smarter than everybody else. We didn't go around advertising our opinions, but they lived in us, in our attitudes.

Nowadays, I still prefer story focused campaigns to endless waves of combat. But if some folks prefer going through the Monster Manual alphabetically and slaying every living thing between its covers, so be it. Great. Maybe they have a different idea of fun than I do. Maybe they live under different circumstances, different values, maybe they have a different outlook on life. That's okay. People are allowed to be different here. "Different" is what brought many us to RPGs in the first place.

I've heard some gamers look down their nose at D&D (doesn't matter what edition) because to them it's least common denominator or it's too abstract or too corporate or whatever. It's usually the same attitude I hear about this edition over that edition. It always manages to cheese me off somewhat because I feel our groups have proven time and again, from edition to edition and from game system to game system, that it's really what you put into the game that makes the game. The rules don't run themselves. Likewise, in any given work of art one can find truth, and exceptionally profound truth. I've read at least as many terrible lit fic stories as I have bad sf/fantasy stories, and I've seen as many horrible plays and movies as I've been in painstaking RPG sessions.

So let's all just loosen up a bit, shall we, and assume everyone's doing their best under their own given circumstances? Nobody has a monopoly on the truth.

Silencio, por favor

2010-11-08T19:13:00.000-06:00

Even when I don't post to this blog, I think about it.

So what happens when I'm not writing stuff here?

Chances are, I'm writing stuff elsewhere.

Also, that my players' schedules have been pretty bad lately, which means our game gets canceled and postponed all over the place. This makes me sad, kind of, but I'm busy enough lately that I can't really think about it much.

What's new? I'm excited to see the November D&D releases (Monster Vault, Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms).

Building the Scarecrows, Part 2

2010-10-22T10:41:00.002-05:00

Continuing the blog about the process of writing the Ecology of the Scarecrow article, the second full rewrite I did was the one I submitted to Chris Youngs at Wizards last year. I was happy with it at the time I turned it in, but the piece was not printed in 2009. In 2010, Chris told me that he meant to publish the piece this fall, and when Steve Winter took over as editor, I relayed our conversation.

Steve said that sounded good to him. I said there might be a few tweaks I'd like to make, since I thought the scarecrow variants should appear in the new monster format, and Steve said I could tweak what I liked. Awesome, right?

Awesome until I read over the piece again and saw what my hands had wrought!
The piece I'd been happy with last year left me cold. The "new" fable stretched on for two whole pages! There were mechanics for the new scarecrows of course, but I felt the other sections were kind of scant, like I tell you the scarecrow has a head, and that's important, and it has thread, which is also important, blah blah blah. So I rolled up my shirtsleeves and dove in, making massive rewrites, and reality checking the powers (the originals were uh... yeah). In the end, I came up with material for the thread to be used as a magic item, I came up with a whole ritual to create scarecrows (and not have them run amok in game), and replaced the fable while still communicating it. Again, it's very important for me to mention that nobody at WotC asked me to rewrite a word of this, so any perceived tedium is all 100% due to my obsessive-compulsive behavior.

That said, here's the second scarecrow fable. Was I wise to have cut it in favor of other things? I think so. I think I tried to shoehorn all of the scarecrow variants into one tale, and for that reason I felt the fable was kind of wooden. Still, I have a little fondness for it, since I spent some good thinking time on it in the summer of 2009, and I do love the last line.

I'm thankful to Chris Youngs for giving me the assignment and to Steve Winter for printing it and giving me permission to go hog wild with edits.

I hope you enjoy rhymes.

The Second Scarecrow Fable
After the townsfolk burned her sister, the witch vowed revenge. In the brown autumn fields she swore to the horned demon moon to pay mankind back by fear or by fire. She would have sworn it by her soul, but this she had sold to the devil long ago.

She was a proud and ancient woman and magic ran in her blood. Some say she was called Baba Yaga, some Morgan, some Iggwilv, although time has forgotten the proper truth of it.

Now, in those long-ago days, at the time of reaping the souls of the dead hovered close to the world, and farmers crowned their scarecrows with death’s-head jack o’ lanterns to appease the dead spirits. And sometimes, on a peculiar night when the moon wore its horns, and deviltry and mischief flared throughout the land, a departed spirit would happen by and spark a scarecrow to life, and thus would a harvest king flare into the world. And all the living hid in terror, for these were heralds of the dead, which roused the departed from their graves to revel and gambol on the face of the world once more. And the witch said, By fear shall I punish them, by fear they shall pay, I’ll charm my own harvest king ere dawn the next day!

And so the witch watched as the harvest kings danced to the rattling of bones and the keening of banshees and led parades of the dead in their macabre solemnity. She approached the harvest king at the head of the procession, a tall scarecrow with fingers of long dry leaves and shriveled husks, and she gazed into its fiery eyes and she said with all the power of her magic, Heed me now spirit, and do all I say. Thine only course is to hear and obey.

The scarecrow’s grin smoldered, the night wind stalled, and everything in the darkened world ceased to move. The scarecrow glared down at the witch and its slow, hollow laugh was the deep timbre of the earth.

“We are the spirits of the reaping and our master is the harvest,” it said. “We dwell where the shadows end, and none commands us but the season.” And with that the harvest king departed and the procession moved on behind.

But the witch was determined to have a scarecrow, for in those days the harvest kings commanded more mortal terror than any creature in all the world. She mused to herself, And yet, if plots of fear shall go amiss, then fire I’ll call from the Abyss.

She stole a scarecrow and a rusty scythe from an old farmer’s field and she nailed it to a tree. Then she reached out with her black arts and beneath the sharp crescent moon she called to the Horned King. And no sooner had she concluded her black ritual than one of his demons answered.

She channeled the thing into the scarecrow’s straw limbs and the demon thrashed mightily, but it could not loose itself from the tree. Using her magic words of binding, the witch said, Heed me now demon, and do all I say. Thine only course is to hear and obey.
And the demon roared and raged and its eyes flashed with fire, but within its straw frame it had neither talons nor teeth. The witch said to it, In that town do mortals dwell, cut loose their souls and thou hast served well. She gave it the scythe, and the demon scarecrow departed toward the town.

But anyone who knows anything about fire knows that it cannot be left to burn on its own. Fire burns where it will so long as there is fuel to feed it. So it was with the demon, and on the road to town it went wild, as demons and fires are wont.

First it spotted the farm where the old farmer and his wife lived, and it did as demons do. It slaughtered all the cattle and butchered all the pigs. It tore apart the chickens and killed all the goats.

When the old farmer and his wife came out to investigate, the demon scarecrow invited them to join in its fun. But when they tried to flee, it cut them down and it peeled off their faces. It stuffed the scarecrows in the field with their insides and attached their faces with metal hooks. And this time when the demon invited them to join in its fun, they did so, for now they were unliving horrors beholden to its will, and they had no choice at all in the matter.

And so the scarecrows ambled on towards the town. But on the way, they stopped at every house and farm and incited the same bloody mayhem, until at last, as they massacred the livestock in a barn, a lantern fell from the wall. The dry straw caught fire and the entire barn went up in a ravenous conflagration, and the murderous scarecrows were burned all to ashes.

When the townsfolk saw the destruction, their anger made them bold.

“’Twas a witch’s evil work,” said one. “Let’s find it out and burn the hag likewise!” And the townsfolk cheered and prepared themselves for another witch hunt.

Now the witch didn’t know what to do. Enchantment had not worked on the harvest kings, and summoning the demon had only rid the world of a few paltry farmers. Most disturbing of all, none of the scarecrows had displayed the complete obedience she required. Neverthless, thinking on the farmers gave her an idea…

She went to the valley where her scarecrow demon had killed the old farmer and his wife. There was little left of them, but she was able to salvage the woman’s heart, and this pleased her much, for it was tight with fear. She brought with her the blackened stake that the townsfolk had used to burn her sister and she planted it in the ground. From the farmer’s field she gathered strong straw, and she bound it fast into the shape of a man and a woman. Into the straw woman she placed the heart. Then she took the tattered and bloody clothes from their bodies and dressed the scarecrows in them, and bound the effigies to the charred stake. And once again she called out to the horned moon and spoke words of magic. Spirit of man, of thy corpse lately shorn, come hence to the body thy clothes now adorn.

Spirit of woman with heart full of fear, return to the form thou once held so dear.

When the scarecrows began to move the witch wasted no time. She stitched the clothes tight around the effigies, sewing their spirits up in cloth with thread she had spun from a nightmare, in order to keep them frightened and subservient. When she had finished she commanded them, Heed me now scarecrows, and do all I say. Thine only course is to hear and obey. And the scarecrows heard, and they obeyed.

That day the townsfolk came.

They came through the woods with torches and with swords, but when they came to the place where the scarecrows were, they halted as the one in the farmer’s wife’s clothes unfastened itself from the tree, and the forest chattered with whispers that came from no mouth, and the townsfolk’s torches guttered out all at once. Then the other scarecrow freed itself from the tree. When it cast its terrible gaze upon them the townsfolk froze and trembled in fear, and begged the witch for mercy. But the witch had none.

Thy fire killed my sister and would have killed me; by fear thou art beaten, by fear I’ll slay thee, the witch decreed in triumph, and she commanded her scarecrows to destroy the townsfolk.

But the scarecrow that had been the old farmer paused, considering the witch’s words. And when the witch ordered it forward again, it refused.

“Seems to me,” said the scarecrow in its slow, rustic way, “ye already spent your revenge and more.” It brushed its bloody clothes. “For by my own look, I think I were that dead old farmer you killed from the valley down below, and this maybe was his wife.” And the townsfolk were amazed, for they saw it was so.

Furious, the witch commanded them again. Heed me now scarecrows, and do all I say. Thine only course is to hear and OBEY!

But the old farmer scarecrow only shook its head and led the fearful scarecrow away that had once been his wife. And they departed with the townsfolk, leaving the witch all alone.

After they left, the witch chuckled to herself. She had learned the secret of trapping souls in straw, and she would spread it, oh yes, to every hag and oni there ever was, and together they would create legions upon legions of scarecrows, and keep their obedience with stronger magics and threat of fire. In the end, her only regret was that the townsfolk had killed her sister because, all things considered, the witch had deeply longed to murder that despicable old hag herself.

Building the Scarecrows, Part 1

2010-10-22T10:22:00.000-05:00

Today, my Ecology of the Scarecrow article was published in Dungeon Magazine, and I'm very happy to see it finally in print. The story of this article is kind of a long one that involved several huge rewrites, none of which I was asked to do. Why rewrite a piece that will likely be forgotten a few days later? Well, heck, I just didn't want it to suck.

I received the scarecrow assignment in July 2009 from Chris Youngs, then editor of the D&D Insider magazines. I was very busy with an unreleased product I can't talk about, but was able to square away a little bit of time now and then to work on the piece. I had an early draft of the Monster Manual 3 scarecrow entry (I did not write the MM3 scarecrow; I don't know who wrote it).

I struggled a lot with the piece in the beginning because I wanted it to be heavily story focused and include a narrative of the origin story told like a fable. I wrote two versions of the piece, and each included a completely different fable. What follows is the first fable I wrote from the first draft of the scarecrow piece, which I never submitted. You can see traces of elements that remain in the final version in the first, but there aren't many. As I recall, the reason I trashed this version was because after I'd finally finished it, I was like, "Is this even about scarecrows?" It seemed like they were incidental to the story. And I'd focused on the new variations, not the MM3 scarecrows that were supposed to be the core scarecrows in the game. So yes, this is a tale of me self-editing myself into oblivion, but I think I made the right choice.

The First Scarecrow Fable
Once during a harvest long ago, when the demon moon cast its sickly grin upon the reaped and barren fields and the first wisps of winter chased summer’s last golden warmth away, a young lord and his lady journeyed through the black and tangled wood to consort with a witch. The couple wished to marry but their parents had forbidden it, so the young lovers sought a witch’s charm to convince their parents to agree to the match.
    But as they came near to the witch’s hut they were afraid, for many strange things had been said of her. Some said the witch consorted with devils and had traded her soul for visions of the future; some said she dwelt in a hut that stood upon chicken’s legs, and was called Baba Yaga, or Morgan, or Iggwilv, but time has erased the truth of such things.
    They found the witch at her cauldron, in a small yard surrounded by a rickety fence with high posts like tree trunks. She was an ancient, stooped, frail-looking woman, and they marveled that she lived alone in the woods save for the lithe black cat that sprawled by the fire.
    But when the lovers asked to buy the charm, the witch said, “No charm can I make thee, for charms are of spring flowers and of fancy, and the season is harvest and the hounds that precede winter have gnawed them all away. But visions I can sell thee—visions of the future true and wise if you but pay my price.”
    For her vision of prophecy the young lord offered her jewels and gold and servants, but the witch refused all.
    “Such as these are worthless to you,” she said, “but give me the jeweled ring on your lady’s hand and you shall have the vision you desire.”
The lovers protested, then they argued, but the witch held firm until at last they gave in, and the young lord assured his lady he would buy her another.
    Then the witch made her prediction.
    “You shall love each other for the rest of your lives,” the witch said, “and die by one another’s hands. Thus ends my prophecy.”
    The gentleman grew angry at her for her ill words, but the witch shrugged and said simply, “I guarantee my fortunes to be accurate, I do not guarantee them to be satisfying.”
    When the lovers left, the lady lamented the loss of her beautiful ring, and she asked the young lord to return and fetch it. But he was fearful of the witch’s powers, and refused to go back.
    “If you love me you will retrieve it for me,” she said. “Bring your men with you if you can find any who aren’t frightened of an old woman.” And so the young lord agreed to return and take the ring back from the witch.
    But the witch’s curious black cat had followed them and heard their conversation, so she ran back to tell the witch.
    “A once-offered caution is good advice, and a twice-proffered warning ought to suffice, but the thrice-coffered augury demands a harsh price,” she said.
    So from her hut the witch retrieved the blackened stake that her sister had been burned upon, and she planted it in the nearest farmer’s field. She stole a scarecrow from the farmer’s fencepost and mounted it upon the stake. And she called out to the horned demon moon.
    When the scarecrow lurched to life, the witch cast a spell to bind the demon she had caught inside it. “None of your talons and teeth,” she said. “Let your weapons be of cloth and of straw. And the demon thrashed in its straw prison and demanded to know what the witch wanted of it.
    “Stand watch over my dwelling place this night,” she said. “Mortals come with their souls loose around their bodies. For those who will not heed your warning, you shall cut their souls free. And liberty shall be yours if you tell me how to catch them and gather them up.”
    So the scarecrow-demon taught the old witch how the spirits of the dead lingered a while before passing to the Shadowfell, and how they might be bound into shapes like the ones they held in life—shapes like the one to which the demon now was bound.
    No sooner had the demon finished instructing her than they heard the baying of hounds, and the cacophony of men moving through the woods. The witch took the scarecrow-demon to her hut and placed him outside the fence, and she put an old rusty scythe within its straw grasp. “And ye can keep what ye may reap,” she said.

    When the young lord did not call upon his lady the next day, she decided he had not retrieved her ring as she commanded, and she ordered her heralds to spurn all messages from his courtiers. But she received none.
    But after a week she swallowed her pride and sneaked away to see the witch to plead for an augury to tell where her love might be.
    She traveled through the wood again and briars cut her ankles to bleeding. The sun set and the horns of the moon grew fat, but still she pressed on. When at last she came near the witch’s hut, her heart sang out for joy, for by the moon’s light she could see the silhouettes of the young lord and his men outside the witch’s yard. “My love!” she cried, and quickened her pace.
    But as she came close, she saw they were only straw scarecrows, each dressed in the semblance of the lord’s men. It was remarkable how the stitching on their cloth faces imitated their features.
    She went to her young lord, but his face was masked by his wide-brimmed hat. Nearer and nearer to the scarecrow she came, until she looked up beneath the hat’s brim.
    And there she saw the dead flesh of her lord’s face, staring back at her with buttons for eyes, his head sewn on to the scarecrow’s garments at the neck. The thing that had been her love moaned and then it fell upon her and strong hands fastened around her throat. She screamed, clawing at its stuffing, but instead of straw she grasped another substance—something long, slick, and stinking. She recalled a slaughtered pig she had seen once, its guts spilled all about the kitchen; her mother had warned her not to look, but no one could ever warn her of anything and she had barged in anyway.
    The other silhouettes came to life in the night around her, shambling towards her with grasping arms of straw, but as her breath choked away, darkness began to overcome even the moon. She released the remainder of her breath one shrill scream, and her life passed with it. And then the forest was silent but for the sound of shifting straw.

Only What You Take With You (Soapbox)

2010-09-29T21:34:00.004-05:00

As a side note, I think it's worth mentioning that everything I'm talking about in regard to the success of the Strongwood campaign comes purely from story and character choices. The mechanics make the game run, and they help decide on the outcomes of this fantasy story, but they're inconsequential to what makes this a great campaign. It's the players' investment in the world and their willingness to make character decisions and contribute to the lore, and just fracking suspend their disbelief to make believe they're flesh and blood people with different circumstances living in another world. This only bears mentioning because I feel as though lately I've seen a lot of angst about this system vs. that system--how this system "makes role-playing good" and how that system is "just terrible, what the frack were they thinking." But I've played phenomenal campaigns in every edition of the game and I'm playing the best one ever right now. Last night we canceled the D&D game and played Fiasco, an RPG with virtually no mechanics--and it was great.

I've heard that some people can't role-play or don't do well at role-playing. I'll admit that I've played with some folks who sat at the table like soggy clams and hardly spoke a word--yes, in my life that has happened. However, whenever that's happened in a campaign I've been running, after I've spent some time with the player and worked to make the group a safe environment, that person has come out and contributed on an equal level with the rest of the players. With a different energy level, maybe, but no less commitment and character focus. This has always come from the other players and I taking note and making an adjustment so that the group functions better with all of its members.

I'm not saying anything new here. I'm not changing anybody's opinion. But in my myriad experience, the fun comes from you. The horror comes from you. The realism comes from you. The way you deal with the abstractions of the game comes from you. You and the people at your table. And like anything, putting forth the effort you can make greatness. Del Close used to say about improv, "We can all do this. We improvise every minute of our lives. It's not like basketball. Michael Jordan is a great basketball player partly because he's a freak of nature--he has a physical advantage you don't have. In improv we all have the same equipment. We all have our emotions and we all tap into them."

Given any edition of a role-playing game, what will you find when you venture into the dark cave? In the words of Yoda, "Only what you take with you."

The Best Campaign of My Career...

2010-09-29T21:23:00.001-05:00

...is the one I'm running now.

At least half of this has to do with the players. Maybe 75%. Let's not quantify.

Making up for last night's lack of an adventure, I was at home tonight putting down some notes for next week when lightning struck and I suddenly realized that everything we've done so far is significant and important and moves the story in a way such as perhaps I've never experienced as a DM... and I've had some really great campaigns. It's suddenly realizing that all the random stuff suddenly makes complete sense--and a lot of impulse decisions seemed like they were cunningly planned from the start. I thought we'd been doing well, but now it's like seeing the larger picture for the first time. Who knows--maybe I'll royally screw it up--but right now I'm sitting staring in awe of the layered little world and story we've been building together.

What do I think the key to keeping it good might be? I think the key is to accept that I now understand the campaign very well up to a certain point and to stick with that understanding rather than introducing random new elements that distract from that focus. Also, to keep the campaign moving forward instead of letting it get sidetracked because I feel like the pacing is too fast. Let the pace move forward as it will and hang on for the ride. Campaigns always stall out and die. Don't be afraid to let a good campaign run toward the destination it likes.

Lost is a good example of what I'm talking about. Like my last major campaign, Lost didn't feel like it was done telling stories, so it kept on coming up with crazy new elements and getting farther and farther off track with more and more new elements to justify, and I kept watching to find out what they meant in the overall story. As it turns out, a lot of them didn't mean anything. And so, though I enjoyed all the episodes (don't freak out, Losties--I enjoyed the show), in retrospect the story seems like it was all over the place. The TV show Avatar the Last Airbender, on the other hand, accelerated toward its destination, recycling every bit of lore it put on the screen, and creating a conclusion that was the sum of its parts. Lost: 6 seasons. Avatar: 3 seasons. But I'd watch Avatar again in a heartbeat.

Sometimes Ya Just Gotta Call It

2010-09-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

We began our Strongwood campaign again at the beginning of September, and so far it's been great. The players and I have made some storytelling breakthroughs I'd like to talk about at some point, but while it's fresh I should talk about last night. But first, some background.

Last year, when we were on hiatus from Strongwood due to scheduling issues, I took some time to brainstorm about what the next arc of Strongwood should be like. The second season of a show (in my opinion) needs to further the concepts laid down in the first, while also exploring new ground, or covering things from a different angle. I had a lot of ideas I was excited about during the hiatus and wrote them down one day. The problem is getting the players--who are attached to the viewpoint they're familiar with--to embrace the unexpected turn and to follow where it leads.

When the campaign began this year, I had an adventure destination in mind, but I wasn't sure how to take the players there in an interesting and natural way. Around the end of August (in my last post) I discovered it, and put all of my energy into making it work. I think it worked well. The stage is set for the concepts and adventures I wanted to introduce, but oh no! I had to concentrate so much on the beginning that suddenly here we are ready to explore and I haven't developed anything for the bulk of the campaign.

Normally this isn't a problem for me. I can improvise through a session pretty well when I know what's at stake, and 4e makes it simple to pull monsters together in an encounter on the fly. So why didn't I follow through last night?

After a hell of a day at work and some time consuming pregame tasks, people were arriving at the door and I hadn't even had time to warm up leftovers, let alone set the table for a game. No prep time, no head space for improvisation. Worse, and most important of all, I had realized at the end of the day that my adventure was little more than a string of NPC conversations in which the PCs had very little choice. I had set up a few interesting sights, but nothing the PCs could interact with in a meaningful way. Having been down that road as a player countless times, I had no desire to put others through it, and I knew that with a little more time (now having realized the error of my ways) I could give the PCs a kickass adventure.

Instead, I brought out Fiasco and some board games. We never got to the board games, but we certainly did get our role-play on in Fiasco, which took us up through the regular end time of our D&D session.

In the end, I feel like it was the right choice. We all had a good time, we all got to role-play, and we told really fun stories. The sanctity of our Strongwood game didn't get trashed by a session I absolutely had no compulsion to run, and now I get another shot to learn from my design mistakes and make it more interesting for next week.

Again, the fundamental error in the game I had planned was that there were no meaningful choices. The session was to be a day's journey from one place to another. But it was late in the planning when I realized that the journey should actually be the length of one encounter, no more, and it should come at the top of the adventure. That's definitely not always the case. A lot of times a journey can occupy the entire campaign. In this particular scenario, though, the destination is really a starting point. So let's not belabor the getting there (even if, ironically, not belaboring it means waiting another week to play).

Holy Epiphany, Batman!

2010-08-31T16:12:00.003-05:00

The entire time I've been running my homebrew world of Meathra, ideas have integrated themselves organically into the setting. Sometimes I've had to be patient and wait for them to show up. Most of the time, I mean. Used to be, I'd wait until something made sense on a gut level before I incorporated it into the world or into the adventure path. But that tends to mean a lot of waiting and not a lot of playing. I started to learn how to move forward with ideas and develop them on the fly, forming them into concepts that made sense with the world. The times when that didn't work are amongst my biggest DMing failures--the times when I plodded forward heedless of direction and hoped to end up somewhere but, in the end, didn't.

For months I've been thinking about the "Season 2" arc of my Strongwood campaign. After a year's hiatus, I wanted the new season to start out strong but it couldn't just pick up where the last session left off. The next season needed to introduce new patterns and complexities and heighten what came before. And even after months of new material it still wasn't working for me.

Sure, you can always have an NPC point to a map and say "here be treasure and monsters," but Meathra has never been that kind of game. Meathra is about the characters and the decisions they make, and it's about story above all else. So while we're all certainly interested in playing through this story using the mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons, that's sort of a secondary concern. In Strongwood, the game serves the story, not the other way around.

Today, as we come close to our first session of the game, I resolved to spend some prep time to try to figure out a little bit more about how I wanted to run the first session. A few weeks ago I had an idea that would give the PCs a tangible goal in the "intro" adventure that establishes the world of season 2, but had been uncertain how to execute it. As I puzzled over this today, I began thinking about shaking up the game by running the first episode in a slightly different genre--or at least using the tropes of that genre in my first session. I made a list of the most common elements found in that kind of story and then, next to those, I wrote down how I might use them in an adventure.

It was like the divine light of God streaming down from heaven, illuminating the path. Suddenly the way was clear, and the further down that path I went, the farther I could see until I saw a direct route to everything I had previously brainstormed.

I realize that's pretty hazy. I'll talk about it more specifically after I've run the game. But for now, maybe there is something to that genre thing--laying the common tropes of a different genre on top of a D&D adventure and planning an adventure that way. I'll have to muse on it some more.

To make a different metaphor, it's like the players were on a ship heading toward an island, and the island is called "adventure." But for months, there have been coral reefs ringing the island and no perceptible way through them. I could always run the boat over the reefs, but that would mean a significant amount of strain on the part of the players as they struggled to reach this island and as I struggled to get them there. Discovering the lighthouse, however, I feel like I've found the connection between the ship and the island. They're going to see the light and head for it because they want to know what's on that island... whereas before, they'd say, "Are you kidding? There's a reef completely encircling this place. Maybe we should go somewhere else."

That's what I mean. Kinda sorta.

Edit: Here's a better example.

It's kind of like if you were writing Lord of the Rings, and you had the whole thing with Rohan and Gondor and Sauron written down in notes--that the players could explore however they wanted--and you had the Ringwraiths and Sauron, Gollum, Denethor, all of that... but you couldn't figure out how to involve hobbits.
Like, the PCs are hobbits and you're like, how can I even put them in this story? Why would they even care?
And then you figure, "What if Bilbo's ring was one of the rings of power? And it falls into Frodo's hands?"
Suddenly you have a campaign.

There's a First Time for Everything

2010-08-30T08:41:00.000-05:00

Yesterday when I was playing Merwyn the Magnificent, we encountered a nymph that used the whisper game power I created for Monster Manual 3. It's the first time I've encountered something that I designed.

I was scared.

The character introduction went off well in that I felt instantly grounded in the character. At the first opportunity, I asked everyone to drink from the same flask. At the end of the adventure we had to be part of a ritual where all of our characters ate of the same fruit--so that character intro I came prepped with ended up mirroring events that happened later in the game. I'd established that Merwyn had a cat named Sam as well. There was a point in the game where we had to consult an oracle made up of black cats, and I'm looking to find a way to connect Sam to that, storywise.

By the end of the game I was able to use my three cantrips, my three at-will powers, my encounter power, and my daily power. I got to turn a bullywug into a toad (maybe not such a big leap). All in all a satisfying session, and one in which I felt not only useful but grounded in exactly who I was. When it came time for Merwyn to ask the cat oracle a question, he said, "How do you like being a cat spirit?" The DM asked what I was trying to accomplish. I said, "Oh, Merwyn just wants to know." Assigning my abilities and skills toward role-playing choices instead of min-maxing helped me slip through all my skill checks, even stuff I wasn't trained in. That felt pretty rewarding as well.

The Essence of Character Part 2: First Impressions

2010-08-29T14:12:00.001-05:00

Most people I know get a little intimidated in the first session of a new campaign, or when joining a new group, when it comes time to go around the table and introduce each character. Typically, I find that character introductions go something like this:

"My character is Lothar the Black. He's a dark elf ranger, about five foot four. He has long white hair and red eyes. He carries a crossbow. On his right shoulder he has a tattoo of a scorpion. He really hates gnomes." (Nervous laughter around the table, as the next player gets ready to introduce his or her character.)

Now, that intro tells me next to nothing. It's a drow. He has a mean streak. There's nothing wrong with that, necessarily, except that it describes most drow. The point I'm trying to make is that physical description tells us very little about a character. It tells us something, yes, but in the scheme of things what it tells us is pretty ephemeral.

I propose that with a new character introduction, we look at our characters a little like the monsters in the new Monster Vault. As you can see from the recent preview of the beholder from Monster Vault, all the standardized headings like "in combat," "encounters," and "lore" have been removed from the monster entry, and in their place are three or four essential elements of the monster--the three or four different things that sum up the monster in the best possible way.

Looking at the elf wizard I created for today's game, let's boil down the three or four essential elements of that character and come up with a character introduction that tells my fellow players everything they need to know about Merwyn the Magnificent so they get a strong handle on who he is from the moment they set eyes upon him.

The three elements I'm going to choose are that he's good natured, that he's a fey trickster, and that he's an eager explorer, because I think those sum him up pretty well.

Now I have three things about his character that I want to express to the other players by showing them in action somehow. I want to do this by assigning each of those traits to one of the following categories: something he says, something he does, some physical detail.

Good Natured (something he says): I want to come up with two lines of dialogue--one line that captures this trait and introduces my character, and another that captures this trait and works as a tagline or a common saying I can slip in anywhere I like. I notice a lot of people I know have little phrases they say again and again (some cliche, some marvelously original). I want Merwyn to be the type of guy you'd enjoy having drinks with at the pub, and for one of those lines to say something to that effect. For my introductory line, I'll go with... "Merwyn the Magnificent, at your service. Wonders and merriments, illusions, curses, and dooms, and tornadoes made o' fire." I think this gets across his good natured demeanor (imagine this in a lower class British accent, the way I intend to play him). My second line of dialogue, which I'll try to slip in to conversation wherever appropriate, will be: "You know, I've always found things look clearer at the bottom of a flagon." At which point Merwyn will offer to buy everyone drinks at the nearest establishment.

Fey Trickster (physical detail): I'm going to say that the corners of his lips seem to turn slightly upward, even when he keeps a straight face. His eyebrows arc upward as if he's in a constant state of amusement.

Eager Explorer (something he does): When the other characters meet him, he's explaining the history of an old building to some newcomers in town, or (if in the wild), making notes on a map or inventorying the equipment in his adventurers kit.

Now, I can certainly go over a brief physical description of Merwyn's whole self (and should, perhaps), but the point is that the these character details will go farther toward capturing who this character is and showing the other players who he is. For most of the game, the miniature I've chosen will serve as the physical avatar of my character. However, having this character information at hand from the beginning will give the character a good solid push toward becoming immersed in the world and coming alive as a living, breathing character. It's not the pages of background I usually like to write, but it will serve as a quick, solid introduction when it's time to meet the rest of the group for the first time.

The Essence of Character

2010-08-29T13:07:00.000-05:00

I needed a character for a game today where I didn't know the parameters of the world. I wanted to try one of the character builds from the D&D red box starter, and chose an elf wizard. The DM asked me about the story of my character, and having little to go on, I boiled the character down to three essential elements: a stream of consciousness summary, a want, and a vulnerability.

This is the way I create NPCs most of the time. I begin with a general outpouring of whatever's on my brain and then make certain that each character wants something and is vulnerable in some way. The want and the vulnerability have to be emotional. They can manifest themselves as physical goals, i.e. "I want to reclaim the treasure horde the dragon stole from my ancestors," but the underlying emotional goal is the true driving force, and players should always ask themselves why their characters truly want these things. In the case of the dragon's treasure, it's likely for the sake of the character's pride--the desire to restore one's honor and name, or make something of oneself.

A character's vulnerability is the chink in the character's armor that can affect him or her emotionally and do the greatest harm. The thing that can push the character's buttons the easiest. Usually I recommend that players in my games make a strong choice and select something dramatic, but it's okay to play a character who lives in denial of their vulnerabilities too, just so long as their vulnerabilities are there beneath the surface.

For the elf wizard, I wanted to play a more lighthearted character. Thus, I picked a want and a vulnerability for him that would let me play him in a lighthearted way, but would still be a dramatic choice. This is what I came up with, starting with the brainstorm and moving on to want and vulnerability:

I feel like I've been sent away from my people in order to make my way in the world. My people are growing weary of the world, maybe, or dying out or leaving. But I'm relatively young and don't understand why they shun the world they way they do. I think they're old and set in their ways and they haven't looked at the world with fresh eyes.

Since I'm an elf and have lived at least a century, I've seen and experienced the horrors of the other races--men, orcs, dwarves, etc--but I'm not too bothered by them because I believe myself to be cleverer than they are. I secretly believe myself above them. I play tricks on men sometimes, the way an adult would play tricks on a child, for to me they are all young enough to be children. I don't take things seriously most of the time. When I first left home, I saw many towns and cities of men, but I eventually retreated to the woods where I concentrated on magic for a time and increased my capacity for my peoples' native gift. I kept company with gnomes, nymphs, dryads, and other fey. I have a wood nymph concubine whose tree I live in; she doesn't like it when I go away and tries to keep me around, but I always manage to talk my way out.

Now that half a century has passed since I last saw the lands of men, I'm interested to see them again. Men change so quickly that the world undoubtedly looks different already.

Want: I'm looking for inner peace, but I don't know it. I'm like a teenager who's left home to go to L.A., but ended up living in the far suburbs for a while and now I'm ready to go there in earnest. I don't consciously know what I'm looking for in the world of men, but I'm hoping to stumble across it. I don't have a concrete goal as the story begins, but as the story develops I will find it. I live my life that way, moving from impulse to impulse, pursuing the fun path, the path of least resistance as it often happens to be. At the top of the story my goals are not hugely dramatic; the drama is my inner fight to deny my inner conflict (see below). My primary (subconscious) want is to prove my parents wrong about the outside world. I'm probably willing to live in denial in order to accomplish that.

Vulnerability: Though I'm mostly happy, I'll become sad and sullen when I see forests destroyed or nature blighted or benevolent fey killed (I decide what's benevolent). On starry nights, I sometimes look to the sky and wonder if I'll ever go home. Deep inside, I resent my parents for their provincial views, and for wanting me to "grow up" (i.e. see things their way). This is partly why I refuse to grow up, partly why I excuse the other races' barbarism at times by walking amongst them; I'm in denial of the fact that, really, we should kill all these motherfuckers before they kill us.

I think this will suffice for a first adventure. It gives me a good idea of the general nature of my character and I have a direction to travel in my character development; the want and vulnerability also give the DM some hooks to monkey around with in upcoming adventures. Next it's time to figure out how to present my character when I first play with the group. That will be my next post.

Ah, Memories (the Red Box)

2010-08-27T09:54:00.001-05:00

I picked up the D&D Red Box set last night at the local game store and am now forming a mental list of kids I need to give it to.

Basically, the red box is a perfect gateway into D&D for those who have never played before or those who haven't played in forever. There's just enough in the set to get some folks together, create characters, and run some adventures. I love the "choose your own adventure" format that the players book adopts.

I do notice, however, that the box reads "Age 12+" whereas I'm pretty sure the original was for ages 10 and up. Which made it easier for me to swing, to start playing D&D at age seven!

One of the Best Things Pat Shay Said

2010-08-21T17:44:00.000-05:00

Pat Shay is a talented improvisor (formerly of Chicago, now of New York) and friend I used to enjoy watching in shows back when he used to live here. I always admired Pat's improv--he never seemed to lose his cool, and he was so versatile it seemed to me he could do anything.

I asked him once about his technique, and what he thought about when he did a show. Pat said, "Before I go onstage, I think of one thing I want to do well in the show, whether it's character, scene work, etc, and I concentrate on that aspect in the show."

This proved to be exceptionally sound advice for me, not only when I was doing improv, but in gaming as well. When I DM a story game, it's often hard for me to wrap my mind around all the different story elements I want to bring in (and how often do those plans survive contact with the players anyway?). So sometimes I'll choose to put all of my focus for a given play session into one element and make that element as strong as I possibly can. For instance, I might do one session where I'm putting focus on the tactical environment, making really dynamic encounters with ever changing circumstances. I might focus the next session on characters, and in that session just play the hell out of the NPCs--give them strong motivations and push those motivations aggressively. In the next session, I might focus on environment, creating the mood wherever the PCs tread, evoking the mood as much as I'm able.

Yes, ideally you want every story and game element working to its fullest potential in a given session. But, as that will probably never happen (or at least making it happen usually falls outside of your control), picking a focus point and making sure you're giving the players one really strong element in that session usually guarantees that you're going to create something memorable. Hopefully all the other elements fall into place as well. However, alternating foci from game to game also gives all your storytelling and GMing muscles a workout, increasing your efficiency and your "story craft" over time.

That Pat Shay is a pretty smart guy.

Thoughts About Overall Campaign Structure

2010-08-19T10:45:00.001-05:00

This is the part of campaign planning--a couple weeks before the start of play--when nothing feels complete and the whole thing seems like it might be a big disaster.

That's probably not going to be the case, but it always feels like this.
The complicated part is that the upcoming campaign is a sequel to the first season of the game, which we played from fall 2008 to spring 2009. It's complicated because a good sequel needs to accomplish a number of difficult acrobatics or else the whole thing falls apart. Sure the players still have levels, powers, and mechanical stuff for their characters to gain, but that's not why most (any?) of us are playing this game.

The sequel needs to build upon the foundation established in the first season, but it also needs to approach the story from a different angle.

The television show Heroes never figured out how to do a good sequel; instead of coming at the show from another angle, Heroes stumbled over itself rehashing the same themes and bringing back the same villains the heroes had already defeated in the first season.

Lost found a way to propel the audience forward by throwing a monkeywrench into the show's plot at the end of every season, shifting the circumstances over and over again--the heroes get off the island, they time travel, they "become" the Others in a sense... This kept their audience coming back. On the downside, Lost never seemed sure what all of this amounted to, so none of those monkeywrenches ever really adds up to anything much. Still, Lost knew how to keep things moving and keep them interesting.

Battlestar Galactica is my favorite example of how to do a sequel. Instead of turning on the season ender, that show usually turned at the midseason break, then again at the end of the season (with the exception of the first, shorter, season). At the midpoint and end of every season, the heroes reach a crisis point where they can't go on the way they've been. What follows builds upon what came before, but the circumstances change significantly. All of those turning points are significant to the overall plot and theme of the show.

So with Strongwood it should be the same. Each season should build upon what came before it, but change the focus and circumstances significantly. The events that came before will have a tremendous effect on the current timeline, naturally. In the middle of the first season of Strongwood, I felt compelled to push the characters into the land of the fey. I was anxious about that decision, but felt that if they didn't go to it immediately, the first year of the campaign would be spent without the characters understanding/experiencing one of the main elements of the campaign. The adventure where they ended up in the idealized world came at about the midpoint of the first season. The first half of the season dealt with the characters in the world of men, witnessing the influence of the fey queen's minions. At the end of the season, they got themselves back to the world of men. Looking back on that first season, I'm exceedingly glad things happened the way they did. Had I wussed out on moving them into the fey realm, the campaign would have lost some momentum, I think.

Going forward I need to be thinking of major turning points that not only heighten the tension of the campaign but also, and most importantly, explore it in a different light.

Tonight I Am Loudain the Avenger

2010-08-18T15:17:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking about my character in the Keep on the Shadowfell game my friend Nate is running. And, you know, he's kind of ridiculous.

I am on my way to the Keep on the Shadowfell.
I avenge stuff. Mostly for my god, Ioun, who's into knowledge and books and stuff.
Me, I'm kind of a nerd. I like books too. And when people damage them by dog-earing the pages or creasing the binding or writing small notes in pencil in the margins, I cut them in two with a gigantic sword. Because my god told me to.

Now, you may think that you can do away with me and get off scot free, but I'll have you know that I'm sort of a deva. That not only means that I require your undivided attention (no distractions please) while hacking your head off and casting oaths down upon you, but also that I'll keep coming back lifetime after lifetime to carry out the same task. I'm kind of like a robot that keeps getting reassembled. So rub me out, you'd better just hope you don't live long enough for me to be reincarnated, or I'll hunt you down again. But this time you'll be OLD and weak when I slice you to ribbons.

So what I'm saying is, my best advice is to be very careful with books. Or I will hunt you down and kill you.

Rewatching Battlestar Galactica is Good for Me

2010-08-16T09:16:00.000-05:00

Ever since I picked up the entire Battlestar Galactica series on blu-ray, I've been slowly rewatching it.

I began with season one last July, and one year later I'm nearing the end of the second season. I've been through the show about three times (except for the fourth season, which I've only seen once), so none of this is new to me.

The first couple times through the series were emotional experiences; I didn't know how it was going to end, or what it would all amount to. Knowing that changes the experience a little. This time through I'm not only taking the show (and the character journeys) as a whole, I'm seeing how individual episodes break down--looking at the mechanics, as it were.

In last night's episode, The Captain's Hand, I was tracking three different elements. There was the story of the missing Pegasus raptors, the story of the woman seeking sanctuary so she could have an abortion, and the story of the coming presidential election (which linked directly to the abortion story). In most episodes of Battlestar Galactica, there are about three things going on--the key whether or not those elements work well together (in season 2 they do, except for the episodes Black Market and Sacrifice).

Tracking through the Captain's Hand, you can see how the individual components of those stories turn--how most characters enter a scene wanting one thing and end the scene with an altered perspective. The episode gracefully turns, turns, and turns again, and after its climax, the disparate elements weave themselves together and the story is concluded.

That's the way most episodes of Battlestar Galactica work, and the way a really good RPG session works. Sure, when we first start DMing we begin with a bunch of rooms branching off a network of corridors. But as we refine our DM skills I think we want to shoot for the stars.

One of the great things about a Harold improv form is that it begins with three disparate scenes which, by the end of the show, somehow end up linking together in some way. I challenge myself (and anyone reading this) to plan a future RPG session that way. Meditating on my "in a story three things happen" mantra, I'm going to try to plan an adventure by setting down three seemingly disparate elements in one location and then explore how they're related. This kind of play, I think, is what can give a session "levels," and by "levels" I mean different tonal/emotional pitches within an episode.

I think this can be a good stress free way to plan out a session, as it takes the impetus off of you to justify everything and plot it within an inch of its life (only to have the PCs go in the opposite direction). Not only that, but chances are the players will create the link between your three separate characters/elements/events, or even become that link between them. Start with three different situations or characters with three different problems and put them in one location. You may figure out right away what they have to do with one another, or you can let the PCs explore the situation(s) and let them piece it together. As they posit theories, pick the one you like best and let that be the truth.

At any rate, forming a few sessions from seemingly unrelated events or characters can be a lot of fun and give an interesting depth to the game, since you're not just hitting the same note over and over again.

I Need to Spend More Time in Other Places

2010-08-15T14:19:00.000-05:00

Growing up an Air Force brat I had to move every few years.

I got used to this--in fact, I came to expect it; it's in my blood.

Somehow I've managed to stay in Chicago for thirteen years, despite my touring theater bug that took me across the U.S. and Canada.

As many times as I tried to leave Chicago after that, I never succeeded.

I think I've come to a place now where I love the neighborhood I live in, the friends I have. But there's a "sameness" to this home that needs to get scrambled every now and again. The more enriching experiences I've had have come when I've experienced other places. I think those experiences are vital, or at least they're vital to me.

Too many of my vacations over the past couple years have been to places in the Midwest. While most of them were necessary, it stands that my most vivid memories and inspirations come from having traveled to other places. It's part of filling that creative well--not just with media but with experience, with adventure.

I'm working on a personal project at the moment where the key elements come from my experience in foreign cities. They're details I'd never have understood had I not visited such places.

What does this have to do with RPGs? Well, everything in fact. At least for me. In order to narrate an adventure, I need to know what an adventure is.

But more than that, this is a note to self--lest I forget--that I need to get the hell out from time to time, though I tend to flinch at the travel expenses; when all's said and done those experiences always seem to be worth it.

Next Week: More Indie RPGs?

2010-08-13T15:03:00.002-05:00

After the fun with Fiasco, I think I'd like to play some more light RPGs that focus on story. Not only does that promise to be a good time, but it'll start getting me warmed up for Strongwood in the fall.

As I was sorting through my RPG closet this week, I found my copy of The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen RPG that's been sitting there for about a decade. When we played it back in the day, we didn't exactly play by the rules, but rather we made up stories on the spot. While that was fun, I think having a little bit more of a game structure might work better (or maybe not; I haven't read the rules, and what works for Fiasco may not work for AoBM). Regardless, I remember it being pretty enjoyable. I own the game. The rules are short. There's no reason not to bring that out and incorporate it into this RPG trend I'm in.

At Gen Con I ran into my friend Megan, who plays a number of indie RPGs, and we'd discussed getting folks together to try some of them out. I'm particularly interested in expanding at the moment, trying new storytelling techniques, or revisiting old ones. Megan knows games like Dogs in the Vineyard and others by the same designer--stuff I've only ever heard of but would like to try out. I think it would be cool to bring out Once Upon a Time (although it's technically a card game, myself and the playwright/poet/actor Sean Critchfield made up a handful of fairy tales we quite enjoyed using that game back in 2003).

On the slightly crunchier side, I have half a mind to delve into Marvel Super Heroes, Call of Cthulhu (the version from the early '90s that's on my shelf) and West End's Star Wars RPG, just to expand.

I've been feeling a little lackadaisical lately, which at first I always mistake for laziness, but usually means my subconscious is trying to tell me something--in this case, I think I'm being pulled toward breaking out of my routine and experiencing new things so that once I establish a good working routine again I'll have a wealth of experience to bring to it. My current routine or trend is one of absorbtion/input.

"What a fracking fiasco this is," he said. "Am I wrong?" (The Fiasco RPG Monologue)

2010-08-12T15:58:00.001-05:00

I've got Fiasco on the brian, no doubt, and I'm thinking of some scenarios I could write up for it. But in the course of all of this I'm getting new ideas of small things that could be done with the game. So here's an option:

The Monologue: In the middle of the game, after Act One is complete and the Tilt elements have been determined, the player who rolled the lowest score on his or her tilt dice can opt to do a character monologue that takes place as an interlude between Act One and Act Two. This is a color scene, and should have little to no effect upon the plot (unless the other players agree). The monologue can flow directly from the last scene or introduce the first scene of Act Two, or it can appear anywhere in time as a flashback (or even a flash forward). While it's probably best for this monologue to come from the character whose player rolled the lowest score, it can conceivably come from a side, or supporting, character in the game if the player wishes.

The object of the monologue is for the controlling player (who likely either has few dice or a close to even ratio of contrasting dice) to give his or her character a moment in the spotlight and speak his or her inner thoughts and subtext--it's the player's chance to make an appeal to the other players, an argument for the character for good or for ill. The player giving the monologue establishes the scene for the monologue (other players can help if it's okay with the monologist) and the other players resolve. The character carries out this monologue for at least 30 seconds per die in front of the player (minimum 30 seconds).

--Karmic Resolution: If the other players approve of the monologue or have sympathy for the character, that player can swap out one of his or her dice for a die of any color in the remaining pool. On the other hand, the other players can decide that the monologist's character deserves the path he or she is on, and deny that player the opportunity to swap dice (especially if the player doesn't complete the monologue).

--No Dice!: In the event that the monologist has no dice at the end of Act One, but the other players approve of the character's monologue, karma kicks in: the monologist causes any player to swap out one of their dice for a die of the opposite color before the start of Act Two. The character forced to swap dice may instead donate a die of his or her choice to the player with no dice.

Here are three good examples of film monologues. There are hundreds more.

Al Pacino, Glengarry Glen Ross

Frances McDormand, Fargo

Christopher Walken, Pulp Fiction

I haven't tried this yet, but I have a feeling it could work rather well as an interlude between the two acts, delivered to the other players during the break, perhaps (as an interlude), or as an extra scene that precedes Act Two without interrupting the established turn order. Again, it's there to build in an extra bit of color for the underdog character, who may or may not be getting exactly what they deserve. I'll try it out after I have a couple more regular Fiasco games under my belt.

The Fiasco Game Elements (for those who wish to know)

2010-08-11T17:59:00.000-05:00

What follows is a list of the game elements selected by the players (from the dice we rolled) for the game of Fiasco. This will make sense if you take a look at the rules to the game or download one of the scenarios. These are the elements of the game that we determined based on the dice we rolled at the beginning and then incorporated into the story in appropriate (or, in the manner of Fiasco games, highly inappropriate) cases.

Players: Lowell, Steve, Liz

Relationships:
Lowell/Steve: Romance---> one wild night
Steve/Liz: Business--> entertainer and agent/manager
Liz/Lowell: Family--> twins

Object:
Liz/Steve: Weapon--> a suitcase full of guns

Need:
Lowell/Steve: To Get Even--> with Big Jack at the Paradise

Location:
Liz/Lowell: The Paradise Casino & Resort--> heavily secured counting room

Tilt Elements (we let Liz add an extra one because she wanted to):
Steve: Mayhem--> a dangerous animal gets loose
Lowell: Guilt--> a showdown
Liz: Failure--> a tiny mistake leads to ruin

Final Scores:
Lowell: 4 white (bitter)
Liz: 7 white (weak)
Steve: 13 black (awesome)

So the weakling coward whose idea this whole fiasco was in the first place wriggles away and ends up living the high life while the people who bought into his shit end up suffering (more or less). Yeah, pretty much like a Coen Brothers movie. Can't wait to play again.

Fiasco in Vegas, part 2

2010-08-11T15:37:00.005-05:00

This post covers the second half of the very first Fiasco role-playing game session played by Steve, Liz, and Lowell.

As we open our second act, things have gone to hell. Fade in on Sally Snakeyes sitting at the casino bar drinking a martini, while chaos erupts in the background.

There's a young tiger loose in the Paradise casino and a local gang of nogoodnicks have spotted the suitcase full of guns and they're making their own move, robbing everyone in the casino--some have even made a break for the counting room. All the while Sally keeps on sipping at her glass like nothing's happening.

Meanwhile, outside the Paradise, Bobby and Sal are just about to make their move when they hear the gunfire and see people fleeing the casino. They stand paralyzed for a moment, when from the crowd one of Big Jack's enormous goons grabs hold of Bobby and says, "I thought Mr. Jack told you what he'd do if he ever saw you here again." Sirens start blaring down the strip as police cars rush toward the scene. At which point Sweet Sal takes off running.

All notions of getting his own back against Big Jack are thrown to the wind, as Sweet Sal tears off down the strip sprinting for his life. Out of breath and sweating in the hundred degree heat, Sal flags down a taxi cab, only to see what appears to be a bengal tiger at the wheel. He blinks, trying to shake it off, and hails down another cab, which pulls over for him. Sal jumps in the cab and says "Get me away from here now."

But then the cabby turns around in her seat. It's Grace, Big Jack's leading thug. "Hi Sal," she says.

Back at the Paradise, Bobby confronts the big security guard. The giant hauls Bobby up by the front of his shirt and says, "You got something to do with this, don't you?" and gets ready to beat the truth out of Bobby.

But Bobby pulls out his handgun and shoots the security guard in the stomach. "I got something to do with Big Jack," he says, and he walks into the casino just on time to see Manticore, the young bengal tiger, tear through the place and spring outside and into the taxi cab stand. One of the cabs takes off with its door hanging open, but the tiger leaps inside it. Amidst the screaming and the gunfire resounding throughout the casino, Bobby marches toward the elevator looking for Big Jack.

Cut to: a private suite in the Paradise. Big Jack is lounging on a plush couch, smoking a cigar. Sweet Sal is next to him. He's a complete mess, shaking, trembling. Grace is there too, as is Sally, pinned down to a chair under Grace's firm hand. Bobby enters through the door.

Big Jack warns Bobby that his little stunt is up, and that he's going to be behind bars for the rest of his life if he even walks out of this room alive. Bobby accuses Big Jack of ruining everyone's lives and taking advantage of his sister. As he reaches for his gun, Grace trains her own gun on Bobby. Unphased by any of this, Big Jack pulls his gun and puts it up against Sweet Sal's head. Big Jack says this complication is between him and Bobby, and maybe they should just rid themselves of any extraneous complications. He cocks his gun and makes as though he's going to shoot Sweet Sal in the head. Smug and certain of himself, he grins at Bobby.

Somehow this throws Bobby over the edge. Bobby says, "You threaten me all you like, but you don't threaten my Sal."

Bobby raises his gun and the screen goes black. Three gunshots are heard in unison.

Next scene, Sweet Sal stumbles through a hall in the Paradise. It looks like another floor in the Paradise, with 50s decor, or else a rich wing of the hotel casino that's been preserved. He stumbles left and right, blood all over the front of his suit (but whose? is he alive or dead?), as he knocks on doors but no one answers. A plaque on the wall commemorates the Paradise hotel casino as Sal's and the date is 1952. Sal takes it off the wall and hugs it. Blood streams out one open door.

Cut to 2010, forty years later. An old Sally and old Grace are drinking at the bar in the Paradise. Sally is clearly the owner, and almost has a kind of hard wisdom to her. Grace is clearly her second in command, close companion, confidante, maybe lover. Tourists swarm in all over the place enjoying the remodeled casino. Grace says, "I couldn't pull the trigger. What you and I had was too strong." Old Sally clasps her partner's hand.

Back in the 1970s, we see the police arresting Bobby, who's been shot in the arm. They arrest his twin sister Sally and they arrest Grace as well. Sweet Sal throws up his arms and protests his innocence. We see Big Jack in a wheelchair, hooked up to a machine, surrounded by lawyers. We see Sweet Sal in a white suit surrounded by other lawyers, disavowing any knowledge of the heist or his accomplices. We see the twins doing prison time as Sweet Sal acquires the deed to the Paradise and sits behind his desk smoking cigars and living the high life. We see Sally grow older and older in prison. Eventually Bobby is released, but his arm's no good anymore. He works in Branson, doing any manual labor he can get hired for. In the 1980s we see federal agents swarm the Paradise for some illegal scam, but Sweet Sal is long gone by the time they arrive, living under an assumed name, first in Florida then Cuba. He seems happy, but inevitably gets older and infirm. However, on his death bed, he seems disconsolate, lost in his thoughts and tortured by inner demons and regrets. He signs a piece of paper, handing over ownership of the Paradise to Sally Snakeyes.

Sweet Sal's last thought is of the day he met Bobby and his twin sister Sally. Bobby is walking down the strip at night and Sweet Sal pulls up in his Cadillac and says, "Hey cowboy, you looking for a ride?"
As he passes away, Sweet Sal thinks of the one night stand with Bobby that connected him with the twins, the thing he and Bobby never talk about. He feels regret for abandoning his sometime lovers, sometime children, the only family he had, to save his own skin.

As he passes away, in modern Vegas a yellow taxi heads down the strip driven by an adult bengal tiger.

The end.

Fiasco in Vegas, part 1

2010-08-11T12:51:00.008-05:00

Last night we played the Las Vegas Fiasco scenario that came with my purchase of the RPG at Gen Con, written by the man who sold me the game (Steve Segedy). Here's a brief summary of what I can remember.

Dramatis Personae:
Bobby - (Lowell) a man down on his luck who's ended up in Sin City with his twin sister, Sally, with whom he may or may not have an incestuous relationship. Was recently kicked out of the Paradise hotel and casino, where his sister works. Suffered complete humiliation from Big Jack, the owner of the casino. Big Jack treats Sally like dirt, and essentially "owns" her.

Sally Snakeyes - (Liz) Bobby's bimbo twin sister and Las Vegas showgirl working at the Paradise. Her smarts are equivalent to the intellectual capacity of the Welcome to Las Vegas sign.

Sweet Sal - (Steve) Sally's agent/manager. Wears a grey suit, pink ruffled shirt, and panama hat, smokes cigars. It's inferred that he was involved with Sally, but that's likely a cover for his obsession with men whose names begin with the letter 'J.' His rare exception to this rule was when he hooked up with young Bobby. Sal used to own the Paradise, but its current owner, Big Jack, "robbed" it from him years ago.

Big Jack - owner of the Paradise, he's a gigantic, beefy oaf who rolls over his competition and gets whatever he wants whenever he wants it. One of the wealthiest men in Vegas. Cheated Sweet Sal out of his deed to the Paradise many years ago.

Little Jack - Big Jack's spoiled and studly son, who runs the counting room at the Paradise.

Grace - Big Jack's bodyguard and head of security, also a lesbian.

Manticore - a young bengal tiger from Circus Circus.

The story opens with Bobby walking down the Vegas strip in the 1970s smoking a cigarette. He's burned out, down and out, has lost all his fortune and luck. He hates Big Jack, the owner of the Paradise casino, for shutting him out and wants to get even with him but doesn't know how. As fate would have it, his sister's agent, Sweet Sal, pulls up in his Cadillac and asks Bobby if he needs a ride somewhere, says he's heard about Bobby's luck and has an idea that could help them both out. Bobby gets in the car.

Sal presumably met Bobby through his twin sister Sally about six months ago, and something happened between them. There's a memory there that neither of them talk about, but it's almost tangible in the room. Sal explains to Bobby that Sally's gotten close to Big Jack's son, Little Jack, who runs the counting room at the Paradise. While they drive, Sal outlines a plot where Sally can use her charms to on Little Jack and get them all access to the counting room to steal a fortune from Big Jack, paying him the humiliation he deserves and making them all fabulously wealthy. They set the plan down and put it in motion. It seems like a relatively simple endeavor that preys upon the notorious lust and irresponsibility of Little Jack. The only real hitch is that they're going to have to rely on Sally to pull it off, and it's very difficult to get Sally to follow directions without forgetting them halfway through.

The plan goes like this: Sally seduces Little Jack on his shift and he sends his flunkies away for a few minutes so they can get down and dirty in the counting room. Sally sneaks a suitcase of kinky toys with her that's actually a suitcase full of guns. She places it in a designated spot where Sweet Sal and Bobby can slip in and access it. They'll catch Little Jack by surprise in the counting room and overwhelm him. Then, placing all the big bills they can grab into the suitcase, they sneak out of the casino.

Setting the plan in motion, Bobby goes down to the local pawn shop to buy some guns for the heist. He uses all the resources at his disposal, and buys the suitcase to carry them around. As he's checking out, the store clerk scans and copies his id, and assures Bobby that he'll be getting a call from the police in the next couple of days after they do a background check on him. This presents a major complication for Bobby.

In the meantime, Sally goes over to the Paradise to work her shift. Beforehand, she meets Little Jack by the counting room and puts on the charm. But she overdoes it by degrees, making an awkward public display of how she plans to get dirty with him, and she urges him to free up the counting room for a few minutes on Friday night so they can have some privacy. Little Jack is visibly spooked by her aggressive come-on, and (though Sally doesn't know it) he decides to switch his shift with someone else.

The next day, everyone has second thoughts about the heist, but Sweet Sal talks them into it, saying it's their chance of a lifetime, their chance to get back at Big Jack for all the harm he's done. Thus rallied, Sally makes the opening moves, taking the suitcase full of guns into the performer's entrance of the Paradise. She looks around for Little Jack, but of course he hasn't shown up for his shift; he's poolside drinking margaritas with some other chick. With nothing else to do, Sally goes into her dressing room and begins putting on her makeup before the other dancers arrive. But in the backstage area she finds a young tiger from Circus Circus locked in a cage, apparently part of the Paradise's next act. Unable to resist the kitty, Sally takes it into the dressing room with her and lets it roam around. The tiger, however, begins to play with the objects in the dressing room, and eventually tears open the suitcase full of guns. Before Sally can stop it, the little tiger swats the guns around.

From the casino's main room, the sound of automatic gunfire can be heard, followed by a roar and a scream.

To be continued in Act 2...

Fiasco!

2010-08-11T11:12:00.003-05:00

Last night I got to try out both games I purchased at Gen Con in about two and a half hours (or less). To refresh, the games were the RPG Fiasco and the board/card game Dixit (a game at which I seem to be terribly unskilled, yet I still enjoy it thoroughly).

We began with Fiasco. I think I'm going to summarize the entire game in another post, but here's a couple things about the game...

It's been years since I've purchased a role-playing game that hasn't had the words Dungeons and Dragons on the front cover. The reason for this is, in the past every time I'd buy an RPG, it followed this specific cycle:
1. Buy RPG
2. Read rules
3. Tell friends
4. Talk about playing
5. Wait for schedules to clear
6. Forget rules
7. Play D&D

I hate to admit that, but the crunchier the RPG and the more tables, charts, and modifiers, the harder it was to store in my memory. D&D, on the other hand, is a little like a universal language--people know it, so finding a group interested in playing is a lot easier than finding a group to play some other game. So it was with great trepidation that I purchased Fiasco at Gen Con.

I had first heard of Fiasco on Dave Chalker's Critical Hits site, in the excellent review by Linnaeus. To me, it seemed very much like the sort of D&D we run (i.e. very story-based, lots of character development and improv), only with fewer mechanics. (Tangent: yes, D&D games can be just as incredible as role-play experiences as any other RPG--it only requires the players and DM to let go of the easy fixation on crunch , and focus on story as a means of playing/winning, and story goals as a means of advancing one's character; I feel like I talk about that a lot on this blog, but I feel it bears repeating.)

Since Fiasco removes the shiny crunchy bits from the RPG experience, and since it's played in one session, it has some of the manic energy of the old Call of Cthulhu games I used to play in college, where you knew that at the end of the session you were either going to be killed in some horrible way or else end up going insane. Because the players aren't concerned with playing their characters over several sessions, they tend to make much more interesting choices. If you're unfamiliar with Fiasco, a read through Linnaeus's review (above) will give you a thorough idea, but for the moment I'll just say it's like an improvised long-form that uses dice to provide suggestions for the players. Apart from that, it's all improv and role-play.

In fact, the whole game is an improvisation and screenwriting manual in disguise. The way the game works, the players have to work together to support (or totally screw) one another by setting up scenes, resolving them, or adding crazy elements that works pretty much exactly like an improv long-form show done with a team of improvisors. The way the game is structured, however, takes the necessary elements of any good story and incorporates that into the basic foundation of the game. That is to say, every character has a relationship, they're all driven by desire, and they're all about to do something interesting that will inevitably bring a heap of conflict upon them. It's story formula comprising the skeleton of the thing itself.

Unfortunately, everyone I called wussed out on coming over to play last night, so we only had three players. I was anxious about the way that would go. Would we have enough people? Would the story suck? Would people freeze up trying to come up with scenes? To our advantage, we had one actor, one writer, and one actor/writer (me) in the group, so maybe that gave us a bit of an edge... but the way the game works, everyone is supporting the main scene and talking out what they want to happen. So even with three people, there's a good support network built into the game, and if one person lacks an idea, the other two are sure to provide.

In short, it went off really well. Better than I could have hoped, and I'll certainly incorporate some of its lessons into the D&D games we run.
I'll talk about it in another blog.

Dreamstorming the Trailer

2010-08-10T16:14:00.001-05:00

It's that time again. Er... it continues to be that time (again).
The date for the "second season" of our campaign approaches (after a one year hiatus) and here I am procrastinating and trying to figure out to do.

I've come up with a bunch of great NPCs for one part of the game, but since then I've solicited player feedback to find out what they're looking for in particular. With that feedback in mind, I'm going to build some other parts of the campaign set to satisfy their immediate whims. After all, I've been thinking broad whereas they're thinking of things in terms of the last time they played. Good thing they keep me grounded.

But I still need a bit of a broad overview. Hence, the movie trailer technique.

I started doing this in the summer of 2002 for a Star Wars game for which I unfortunately only ran one (kickass) session. I was thinking about the way a great movie trailer promises something extraordinary, and how one's mind often dreams up far more fantastic situations than the actual movie delivers (i.e. The Phantom Menace).

For the Star Wars game and for games since then, what I'll do is listen to the score of a movie and then just write down whatever images come to mind. Robert Olen Butler uses this term "dreamstorming" in his fascinating book on fiction, From Where You Dream. It's essentially what I do for this process--just write down the images that come with the music. Heck, I used to do this all the time while mowing the lawn in high school.

At any rate, in the end you have a number of cool scenes that come from images in your head. Now it's time to explore those images, deconstruct them a bit, and see what they mean, or where they take you in the campaign.

To this purpose, I've reorganized my iPod. I went through my soundtracks and tagged everything that's strictly orchestral music as "genre: score." Then I play those one the iPod and shuffle all songs.

I'm happy with the amount of different music/images I get from that. Musicals are now under "musicals" and songs that are on movie soundtracks are now under "soundtracks." Except I filed Slumdog Millionaire under "world," but that's neither here nor there.

A couple examples from today:

An elven creature singing alone on a summer’s day, with long blonde hair and a gown of shimmering white brocade—singing a song sad yet hopeful.

An image of a tournament of knights. A knight wearing red and white clashing against another, his lance splintering as he falls from his horse. Cheers from the crowd. One shady character who thinks this is barbaric.

Ghosts fading back to rest after release from unlife.

Will these appear in the game? Maybe so, maybe not. But they're good suggestions to get things moving, and they cause one to wonder how they connect, make you want to know more about them. It's like a movie trailer in this way--a series of exciting, random elements that set a mood and tone for the narrative, and give you ideas of vastly different places where you might take it. It also gets you out of your head (a place I've been too much of late) and just get stuff down on the page.