[Cinerati] How Jedi are Like MLB Managers

To date, my daughters History and Mystery have had only limited Star Wars exposure.  They've seen one episode of the digital Clone Wars cartoon, a couple of the "trips" on Star Tours, and the first Star Wars movie.  No, not that first movie, the actual first Star Wars film -- the one that's called A New Hope to more recent generations of viewers.

So far, History and Mystery love the franchise.  They love Luke and Leia, but their all time favorite is Darth Vader.  They adore him and desperately want to play with him.  Jody and I have tried to get the girls picked at a couple of sessions of Jedi Training Academy during visits to Disneyland, but even dressing them in matching Stormtrooper Stand-Up to Cancer T-shirts (a gift of my dear friend Joel) hasn't prompted their selection.  Jody has observed that the selection trend by certain Jedi Masters has a noticeable gender bias, but I want more points of data before I make a decision in that regard.  If it is the case, I will definitely be sending management a stern letter.  But the Jedi "cast members" are comprised of a nice mix, so I'm willing to believe that our 4 or so attempts are too small a sample to make generalizations from -- though not too few to mention in passing.  But that is not what this post is about, so back on track.

As I stated, Mystery and History adore the Star Wars franchise and even create their own stories from time to time using their plush Darth Vaders.  Sharing Star Wars with my daughters -- and all my other quirky interests -- is one of the great joys of parenting.  But I am resistant to sharing the more recent installments of the franchise with them.

Sometimes, take The Empire Strikes Back for example, my reason for delay is tonal.  Empire is a great film, but tonally it's a bit much for 4 year old who weep uncontrollably at the end of Toy Story 3 because Andy leaves his toys behind.  I can only imagine the response that seeing Luke's hand being cut off would have on them.  Similarly, Darth Maul freaks the girls out a tad.  Darth Vader, to Mystery and History, is a cool robot who's sometimes bad and sometimes -- like when he's working at Disneyland -- a good guy.  They like to pretend to be Darth Vader.  Maul, on the other hand, genuinely freaks them out.  Which is good.  That's good character design.  I'm just not ready to show the girls this guy getting cut in half and all the resulting questions.

Other times, my resistance is entirely due to the fact that I don't want my daughters to see the "face-palmingly silly" moments that accompany many films in the franchise.  I'm not one of those who thinks that these moments ruin films -- except making Han shoot second which is ridiculous as it only makes him seem incompetent if lucky.  For the most part, I think every film in the franchise has its groan moments.  How "fast" did Han do the Kessel run?  How many years does it take the Sarlacc Pit to digest you?  Isn't that longer than you'd be alive in the first place?  Jar-Jar...  Pod races... Gambling with the lives of 8 year olds...  Okay, the newer films have more than the older films, but all the films have them.

To be honest though, some of the silly moments can be endearing as well.  Think of Han Solo shooting the comm system, or Luke leaning back after being kissed by Leia, or even C3PO as the storyteller golden god of the Ewoks.  These moments are silly, but downright charming.

Recently, Cracked did a post featuring 10 deleted scenes that would have ruined the films they were intended to be used in.  For the most part, they were correct.  When it comes to their moment from Revenge of the Sith, I disagree.  Would the moment -- in the video below -- have made me groan?  Yes, but I think I would have liked it too.  First, it shows the death of a Jedi featured in the first Clone Wars animated series.  It's kind of nice to bring her into the films.  Second, it makes Jedi look like Mike Scioscia.  All of the facial touching for a combat dialogue that looks like baseball batting/running signals has a certain appeal to me.  Not just because I'm a baseball fan, but because the thought of History and Mystery touching their cheeks and noses pretending that they are planning how to defeat Darth Vader has a certain appeal to me.  I can also see how fun this would be around the RPG table.  It might make me crazy, but I think the Jedi in my world are all going to use these kinds of hand signals.  Who knows, maybe someone will write a companion book to The Hidden Language of Baseball entitled The Hidden Language of the Jedi.  I'd buy it.

[RPGS] C.O.P.S. -- French Cyber-Noir RPG is on My White Whale List

Years ago, I saw the cover for a French RPG entitled C.O.P.S. and ever since I have had an itch to hunt down a copy of this foreign language rpg.  It has a lot of elements that appeal to me as a gamer and as a SF literature and Noir film geek.
  

Image from C.O.P.S. copyright 2003 Asmodee Games

Based on the game's cover, and some of the interior artwork I have been able to track down on the internet, C.O.P.S. looks like a mash up of DISTRICT B13, ROBOCOP, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, and TRAINING DAY.  As an action film aficionado, can one really ask for much more?  Check out some of these images.

Image Copyright 2003 Asmodee Games

Image Copyright 2003 Asmodee Games

I have yet to track down and purchase a copy of the game, though the game is available on Amazon.fr, in large part because I don't speak or read French.  That said, the game's product line has such a distinctive and evocative look that I'm tempted to do so just for the inspiration the art might bring to my gaming table.  As I wouldn't be able to understand the game system, I'd have to use Savage Worlds, Gamma World, Feng Shui, or some other system to run adventures in this setting. 

If there were ever an RPG that I'd like to see someone start a Kickstarter campaign in order to secure rights, pay for translation into English, and for release in the US, this is that game.  While I'm not sure how well the game plays, the game was designed by the French game designer Croc (Bruno Faidutti's profile of Croc is here) who has designed a couple of other games that have done well in the United States (In Nomine and Claustrophobia for example) so I think it might be possible to build some buzz for the game.

Okay internet.  Here is the challenge.  Watch the preview for District B13 below, followed by the fan video for C.O.P.S. and then tell me there shouldn't be an American Edition of this game.

District B13

C.O.P.S.

Make it happen.

Role Playing Games and Candyland

I've had many conversations with friends where I have posited that the best introductory role playing games for younger players -- ages 5 to 9 -- are The Pokemon Jr. Adventure Game by Bill Slavicsek and Stan!, A Faery's Tale by Patrick Sweeney, Sandy Antunes, Christina Stiles, Colin Chapman, and Robin D. Laws, and RPG Kids by Enrique Bertran aka NewbieDM.  Each of these games comes at introducing RPGs to younger players and their parents from a different perspective, and each is a wonderful addition to any gamer's collection.  These games aren't merely good introductory games, they are also fun games for gamers of any age.

Over the past year, I have added another game to this list and the game might surprise some hobby gamers.  The game is the much maligned Candy Land by Hasbro.  Most hobby gamers look at Candy Land as a boring exercise in which the players have no influence over the flow of play, and as a game completely devoid of any kind of play strategy.  Anyone who has played the game knows that the only actions a player takes are to draw a card and to move his/her pawn to the space signified by the drawn card.  This simple randomized movement "track" game is so disliked that it has a rating of 3.21 on BoardGame Geek.  A quick look at what a 3.2 rating means on BGG, let's us know that the BGG community thinks the game is Bad and not worth replaying.  Even adjusting for BGG's anti-children's game bias by adding a point or so doesn't put this game into recommendable territory for most gamers.

Last December I defended Candy Land as a board game, and a quick look through the internet demonstates that the game is a rich source for statistical analysis.  Dave Rusin of Northern Illinois University and Lou Scheffer a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (which I first heard about in Tim Hartford's book Adapt) have both written good analyses of the game from a statistical perspective, but it is the rigorous analysis at DataGenetics by Nick Berry which truly demonstrates just how deeply one can dig into the statistics of the game. When I defended the game back in December, I highlighted the pedagogical aspects of play in Candy Land.  It is a wonderful game for teaching young people how to play games, and also aids in educating young players that not all victories come from "being better" than your opponent which helps to teach good sportsmanship.

What I only briefly mentioned in that post, was that Candy Land is a great role playing game as well.  Back in December I stated that one of the joys of playing the game with my daughter's History and Mystery was that it engaged their imagination's in storytelling.  I'm quite surprised that I didn't associate this with role playing and role playing games in that article, even though I described the way my daughters play the game as follows:

Rather than the goal of the game being to "go home" as is written in the rules, Mystery and History are on a journey to have tea at Hello Kitty's house.  To add to the immersion, they have placed Lego Duplo "cat legos" on the board at both the home and peanut brittle house squares.  The home square represents Hello Kitty's house and the peanut brittle house is the domicile of Hello Kitty's apocryphal twin sister "Boxie." 

Re-reading the post made me realize how much like a role playing game session that sounds, but my daughters go even further than might be alluded to in the above description.  History and Mystery also engage in dialogue with the Duplo cats and have conversations with Hello Kitty and Boxie when they reach their destinations.  In fact, it is more important to Mystery that her "Ginger Man" reach the Peanut Brittle square than winning the game.  What's more is that they use the first person singular "I" when they refer to their gingerbread man pawn.  The girls are completely immersed in the fictional world of Candy Land.  Not only that, but they have expanded the fantasy world to include their own imaginary components.

As a parent it is a real joy to watch my daughters engage in this kind of imaginative play.  They also role play when they dress up in their Iron Man and Captain America costumes, when they play with their Legos and cars as well as with various stuffed animals and dolls.  They even do some role playing when they borrow my D&D and Star Wars miniatures.  It's quite magnificent to watch, and it's truly amazing to see how well Candy Land creates a Salen/Zimmerman/Huizinga "magic circle" as well.  It demonstrates it so well that like Zimmerman in his defense of the magic circle, I find criticisms like that by Darryl Woodford a little pendantic, overly literal, and odd.  What is most interesting in this demonstration is that I get to see how the "magic circle" of play that my daughters have created during a game of Candy Land extend beyond the spaces on the board itself, but that the imaginary land in which they are playing includes implied spaces in the illustrations and their own imagined Candy Land environment.  This imagining only extends until they stop playing the game.  Once the game stops, they are no longer in Candy Land and they have already had their tea parties.  They are ready to begin engaging with the real world and their foray's into "Elfland" (to borrow a phrase from Lord Dunsany) are finished and without the trauma or life changes that accompany most fictional representations of fantastic journeys.  The magic circle allows them to explore Wonderland without the risk of the Red Queen chopping off their heads.  It's a wonder to see.

I wish that I was the first person to describe Candy Land as a role playing game, but James Ernest in Family Games: The 100 Best -- and I'm sure countless others -- have beat me to it. As he described his play with his daughter Nora:

When I got "stuck on a gooey gumdrop," Nora would move her pawn back to that space and help me get unstuck.  This completely surprised me, because as a grown-up I assumed that a race game is unfriendly.  She would move back to her own space after helping me, but she always helped.  And she expected this kind of socially responsible behavior out of her parents as well....

Anyone who thinks he has seen all of Candy Land ought to play it again with a child.

Candy Land may not be the pinnacle of role playing game systems, but it seems clear to me that my own "maturity as a gamer" is what got in the way of my enjoyment of this game for many years.  Playing it with my daughters is a joy, and I will rue the day when Candy Land no longer creates a magic circle where my daughters are imagining a realistic milieu.  I hope that when that day comes, games like Pokemon Jr., A Faery's Tale, RPG Kids, and even D&D will be able to create one to replace the one that was lost.  There is a part of me that thinks it is a tragedy when adults believe that spending some time wandering the fields of Elfland is a waste of time or silly.

Advanced Dungeons & Parenting?

As you may have noticed, this week I changed the name of the blog from Cinerati to "Advanced Dungeons and Gaming." There were a number of reasons I made the change, but I thought that I would share some of them with you.

First and foremost is that the name Cinerati didn't really do a good job of conveying the kinds of posts that were most common on the blog. There are still movie related posts like this week's post featuring the trailer to RZA's upcoming Kung Fu film, but the majority of posts on this blog are game and pop culture related and I wanted the name of the blog to reflect that. Though this blog started as a response to what I thought was a poorly thought out and reactionary article by Thomas Hibbs that a friend had shared with me, time has made this blog less and less theatrical focused.

One of the main reasons that this blog has become less cinema focused is the birth of my twin daughters Mystery and History (they're the surprised girls in the upper right-hand corner of the title card).  Since they have been born, I just haven't been able to go out to the movies as much as I used to.  What was once a weekly affair -- going to see two or more films -- has become a once a quarter if I'm lucky affair.  I still watch a ton of movies, thanks to Netflix/Hulu/Amazon/Redbox but I find myself less able to get super opinionated about things I watch on the small screen months after a theatrical release.

Since the twins were born, I've been playing a wider variety of games with my gaming group.  We still play D&D -- as we have for the past 12 years -- but now there are sessions of Savage Worlds, Cyborg Commando, Marvel (many editions), and other games to fill in the gaps.  Not to mention the increase in board gaming that has been happening in recent years.  It's been quite wonderful and I love chatting about games and gaming.

I also love playing games with my twin daughters and seeing the world of pop-culture through their eyes.  I never really understood just how much I wanted to share my passions with someone until I watched my daughters playing with a Star Wars coloring book.  When History saw Yoda, she immediately described him as "Darth Vader's Goblin."  At that point, I knew I had won at life.

My daughters love the new My Little Pony, Doc McStuffins, Phineas and Ferb, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Star Wars, Captain America, and Iron Man.  History likes to dress up as Iron Man and Mystery likes to dress up as Captain America.  They both like to dress up as princesses (Aurora and Belle in case you're wondering).  It's truly magical watching my daughters express their imaginations and tell stories, and I am happy to let them tell me whatever stories they want.  I believe that a parent should set very few limits to how a child expresses its imagination.  I don't like it when some people say that "blue isn't a girl's color" or "there can only be one Captain America."  I want my daughters to find joy in whatever they find joy in.  I find it heart warming that a lot of that joy comes from "exercising their imagination show they can play with daddy and the fellas when they get bigger."

Expect to see the usual pop culture fare here at Advanced Dungeons & Parenting, but also expect to see some posts about my pop culture experiences with History and Mystery.

[Movies] The Man with the Iron Fists -- Red Band Trailer

Long time kung fu film fan -- and hip hop artist -- RZA has partnered with Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino to bring us this little bit of Hong Kong inspired goodness.



 I love it when fans get the opportunity to tinker with the things they love. Sometimes those opportunities end up nightmarish -- like any of my attempts to emulate Michael Whelan art. Other times, they can lead to great entertainment. I'm hoping that RZA's "The Man with the Iron Fists" is able to inspire a new generation to experience the joys of classic Shaw Brothers films like "5 Deadly Venoms."

[Movies] D&D 3 -- When Your Trailer is Less Exciting than a Board Game Trailer it's Pretty Bad

It is a shame that the new trailer for the Descent 2nd Edition Board Game is more engaging than the new D&D movie teaser.

Before anyone starts thinking that this is going to be a screed about how the new D&D movie looks terrible, is going to be terrible, and how lame Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro are, let me make it clear that this will not be that kind of post.  Instead, it will be a post about how the movie looks like it doesn't have a budget, that even "bad" fantasy films can be entertaining, and how this is yet another legacy of the pre-Wizards dying TSR.

Let me say that thing that leaped out at me the instant I hit the play button on the new D&D trailer was how low budget it looks.  The CGI dragon looks more CGI than the dragon in a Kickstarter project I funded, the actors stilted acting makes it clear that the budget for talent was pretty low, the make up isn't very good, and the visual effects on the spells...well...let's just say that I'm less than impressed.  By all appearances Joel Silver has closed all stops and plugged up the budget everywhere...which is to say that this film appears to be the D&D equivalent of the Roger Corman "Fantastic Four" film.  It looks like Silver and company are spending just enough money on the movie to maintain the license.

Setting that aside, some of my favorite fantasy movies were made with zero budget.  What really seems to matter in these cases is whether the people making the project are actively trying to entertain you.  From what I know, and though I know someone who worked on the project that is still remarkably little, many of the people on this project really want it to work.  One of the writers on the film is a regular D&D player, has worked on a number of good rpg products in the past, and is an all around nice guy.  My hope is that this film can rise to the quality of a "Hawk the Slayer," "Krull," "Beastmaster," "The Knights of Bloodsteel," or even the second D&D movie.  I don't have much hope that it will be as good as the "Midnight Chronicles" movie that Fantasy Flight Games made, as that is a pretty remarkable piece of work considering its budget.  I don't think it is too much to ask that if this film isn't going to feel epic, that it will at least feel fun.  My favorite "D&D" movie is Jet Li's classic "Swordsman II" -- my second is his amazing "Kung Fu Cult Master" -- and if one takes off their "Hong Kong films are awesome glasses" it becomes pretty clear that "Swordsman II" is kind of hokey.  But sword energy is still pretty awesome.

All of the problems with this D&D movie, and the earlier two, can be laid in the lap of one single transaction and that is the sale of the license to Courtney Solomon in the dying days of TSR.  Courtney was 19 at the time and eventually managed to bring the film to fruition by partnering with New Line Cinema for distribution who purchased the rights for $5 million.  This ensured Courtney a solid payday, and ensured that until someone buys the license away from Silver, we are unlikely to get the "D&D movie we want."

The Best in Fantasy Fiction -- A Reading from "The Shadow War of the Night Dragons"

Many of the best works of Science Fiction and Fantasy are meant to be read aloud.  Ursula Le Guin describes the power of prose meant to be written aloud in her description of Tolkien's narrative prose in The Lord of the Rings in her essay "Rhythmic Pattern in The Lord of the Rings."  The essay was published in the book Meditations on Middle-Earth: New Writing on the Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien, and like the book she is describing, the essay is a joy to read.  She describes such works as follows:

The narrative prose of such novelists is like poetry in that it wants the living voice to speak it, to find its full beauty and power, its subtle music, its rhythmic vitality.

It's a wonderful description, and it captures Tolkien's work perfectly.  There are places in The Lord of the Rings where my "silent reader mind" recoils from the page, but when the passages are given voice they come to life.

Some fiction was just meant to be read aloud...and that includes John Scalzi's Hugo Nominated masterwork The Shadow War of the Night Dragons Book One: The Dead City.  Like most works of sublime Fantasy, Scalzi's true genius is revealed by the voice of the reader -- in this case Mark of MarkReads.net.  As Mark reads the pages, the reader is given the pleasure of seeing how masterfully Scalzi combined Shakespeare's opening of Hamlet with one of the most endearing story openings of all time -- second only to Once Upon a Time in its familiarity to readers -- and wraps them in a stylistic bow of genius.

I dare you to watch this video and not be moved to tears.




Do you see what I mean?  What is striking about listening to this, as opposed to merely reading it as I have done before, is that it has affected the way that I read Patrick Rothfuss and Iain Banks.  Thanks to John Scalzi, the Culture Novels will never be the same again as they are surely sequels to Shadow War.

[Gaming History] Star Frontiers -- A Look Back at a Classic SF RPG

When TSR released the Dungeons & Dragons role playing game in the early 1970s, they created a new mode of gaming the role playing game.  What is interesting is that they failed to rapidly follow up the success of their "fantasy" themed role playing game with a succession of game releases in other genres.  While many of the first role playing games were shallow imitations of D&D...some were even Vacuous to use Gygax's terminology, it was other companies who first entered the marketplace with non-fantasy RPGs.

It wasn't long after the publication of D&D that Ken St. Andre drafted a set of rules for a science fiction themed role playing game entitled Starfaring, and Marc Miller published Traveller in 1977.  Where Starfaring was whimsical, and is a quintessentially 70s artifact that feels a bit like John Carpenter's Dark Star the rpg, Marc Miller's Traveller set the standard for science fiction rpgs.  In fact, Traveller truly set the standard for any rpg product line that was going to compete in the rpg marketplace.  Marc Miller's creation had a large following among the Space Gamer readership, and the publication of support materials for the game led to the growth of FASA -- one of the classic old RPG companies.  Traveller's success extends to the present, and Marc Miller currently has a Kickstarter campaign that promises a new edition that harkens to the old version.

Even though Traveller established science fiction as a viable genre for role playing games, it took TSR five years after the release of Traveller before they released their SF entry into the RPG marketplace, the Star Frontiers game.  When Star Frontiers came out, there were those who tried to compare it to Traveller, but I have always felt that the comparisons were slightly off base as they represent different kinds of SF.  Traveller's rules and back story, as well as the overwhelming influence D&D had on the early RPG market, gave the game a specific feel.  Characters created in the game are typically former military who are now retired, or as James Maliszewski has pointed out a good many were former Mercenaries.  Traveller campaigns had narratives along the lines of the Firefly television show, though it would be more chronologically accurate to say that Firefly has a Traveller feel to it.  Traveller's own backstory was heavily influenced by Asimov's Foundation series with it's dying empire.  Traveller campaigns were often gritty SF adventures filled with mercenaries and retired Imperial Officers spanning the Spinward Marches in pursuit of wealth and notoriety.

The D&D influence could also be seen in many Traveller campaigns, where players essentially wandered around the galaxy as pirates raiding Imperial space ships for their loot.  This isn't to say that all Traveller campaigns were "spacey dungeon crawls," the official adventures certainly weren't, just that some people played it that way.

The science fiction background of Star Frontiers was quite different from that of Traveller.  Where Traveller took place in a galaxy dominated by an interstellar Empire in a fairly settled area of the galaxy, Star Frontiers took place on the Frontier of civilization where a major corporation "Pan Galactic Corporation" -- later multiple corporations -- was sponsoring the exploration and attempting to profit.  The Pan Galactic Corporation had come into existence to promote exploration and trade among four major alien races -- Human, Vrusk, Dralasite, and Yazirian.  These races have only just begun to interact with one another, and have banded together on the Frontier of explored space.  At that Frontier, they soon discover a new enemy...an enemy that threatens to destroy any civilization that chooses to explore the Frontier.  That enemy is the Sathar, a wormlike race with hypnotic powers on the edge of explored space.  The exploring races have only recently completed their First Sathar War, during which they formed the United Planetary Federation, and are now having to deal with terrorist attacks and sabotage by agents of the Sathar...agents from among their own people.  In response to the Sathar's new warfare strategies -- espionage and terrorism -- the UPF has formed the Star Law Rangers who track Sathar agents and attempt to foil their plots.

The universes of the Traveller rpg and the Star Frontiers rpg have parallels in history.  One is of an empire in decline, the other is of mercantilism on the rise.  The tones of the settings are very different, but so are the rules.  Where Traveller characters are retired from former professions and already have a number of skills at which they are proficient -- especially if the characters were generated using the Mercenaries or High Guard supplements -- Star Frontiers characters are relatively inexperienced.  Even in the Expanded Star Frontiers rules, the characters have training in only two major skills -- and that training is at the lowest level.  The characters start near penniless and are in need of employment.  Players can be thankful that the Star Law Rangers are always looking for recruits, that the corporations are always looking for someone willing to risk Sathar attack while exploring planets on the Frontier, and then there's always the possibility of playing a group of Sathar agents...

Star Frontiers is a game that has a background that is rich in ideas for development...but it is also a game where one has to dig in order to find these ideas.  Trying to find out the history of the Star Frontiers universe is not an easy task.  Prior to the publication of Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space there was not a clear timeline of the development of civilization.  One had to induct heavily from the introduction in the Basic Game rule book, read and reread the racial descriptions, and scour every module for minutiae to get a sense of what was going on.  Zeb's Guide did some of the work for you, as it advanced the timeline to a point after the modules and to a point where the Sathar had developed mind controlling organisms that latch on to the victim's back to take over the nervous system (fans of Puppet Masters and Iron Empires take note).  Taking the Frontier beyond an outline and into a fleshed out campaign setting takes time, but it is worth it.

I've read the rules many time, but have never actually played the game.  It's an easy system, though I've recently come up with an even simpler version of their Basic Rule with my own Extremely Basic rules, but I might just use the setting and play the game with another game's rules set.  Maybe d20 Modern/Future, they did write a Star Frontiers setting section for the d20 Future book and had a web expansion with stats for the Sathar, maybe Alternity, or Savage Worlds.  Heck...I might just use the Traveller system for it, when I get my copy of the 5th edition.  It's a great game too.

[Trailer Review] Enthralled by Luhrmann's GATSBY

I find the trailer for Baz Luhrmann's upcoming film adaptation THE GREAT GATSBY to be entirely mesmerizing.  From the rich sense of imagery -- always a Luhrmann strength -- to the haunting quality of the score.  The early section of the score I find weaker than the haunting quality toward the end of the video.  I don't know that GATSBY should be a 3D film...the thought seems baffling...but then I see Luhrmann's Time's Square and think it might just be worth the extra $3.

[Dice Chuckers] Why I'm Having Talented People Direct the Film

It's been a dream of mine to make a documentary about role playing games and gamers. Since I was a kid, I have thought that the representations of gamers in the mass media have been denigrating.  I think that Michelle Nephew, in the excerpt of her dissertation published in Gaming As Culture: Essays on Reality, Identity And Experience in Fantasy Games, captures the presentation of gamers perfectly when she writes:

[R]ole-players are problematic for the dominant culture, because...fans can't be dismissed as intellectually inferior...In reaction to this unresolveable circumstance, fan cultures are instead interpreted by the dominant culture as being brainless consumers, cultivators of worthless knowledge, who place inappropriate importance on devalued cultural material.  They are seen as social misfits, emotionally and intellectually immature, unable to separate fantasy from reality, and are feminized or desexualized as a result.

The dominant culture's attempts to feminize and desexualize participants in the RPG fan culture can be seen in the yearly media coverage of GenCon, the United States' largest role-playing convention.  Full-page color spreads of convention-goers dressed in medieval armor or as Klingons regularly decorated the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's City pages before the convention moved to Indianapolis in 2003.  Other photos showed awkward, aging boys with Dungeons & Dragons t-shirts stretched taut across their bellies, holding up their prized custom-painted fantasy miniatures for the camera.  Year after year, the media coverage of the event took a "look at the freaks" approach that did, indeed, portray male RPG fans as de-gendered, asexual, and impotent.

She doesn't mince words, does she?

This is exactly the kind of presentation that we don't want to do with Dice Chuckers.  Yes, we want to show gamers having fun and cutting loose at conventions like Gen Con.  Cos-Play can be a great way to enjoy one's self at a con, but it isn't the sole behavior of convention attendees nor are most Cos-Players infantile in their day to day lives. We want to show subjects who play role-playing games and for whom the playing of these games has been a benefit.  Whether as a creative outlet, a place of inspiration, or a place to make and keep life long friends, hobby gaming is a wonderful hobby and I want to share my love of that hobby.

Now...if I were to make a film about the hobby by myself, it might end up looking something like the "Support Dice Chuckers" video I put together using my iPhone.  You can watch it below...needless to say, there is a reason I will be working with Wes and other professionals.  The fact that I was unable to capture the sound properly -- due to background noise -- combined with the my classic Hong Kong style dubbing are proof that my skills lie in recruiting participants and not in filming them.

Please support our humble project.  We'd love to make the film, and to make one that will make the hobby proud.

[Gaming History] Power Gaming -- Boot Hill NPCs

As a fan of Westerns, I've always wanted to play Boot Hill. I've owned a copy of the Second Edition of the game -- the one that came in the box and was published in 1979 -- for many years, but I have never had the chance to sit down and actually play a session of the game.

This isn't to say that the players I have gamed with over the years haven't been up for Western themed gaming.  I've played sessions of Avalon Hill's Gunslinger (not an rpg) and sessions of Deadlands.  We've always had a good time.  I've just never had a chance to play Boot Hill.  This being the case, it wasn't until recently that I began to read the rules to examine them for play.  The Old School Renaissance, combined with the recent release of Dungeon Crawl Classics, got me into a nostalgic mood.  So the other day, I opened up the rulebook to learn how to play so I could pitch a session to my gaming group.

The first thing I noticed was that while Boot Hill is a role playing game, it is largely a Tactical Tabletop game.  The campaign elements while "role playing" oriented also allow for players to play against one another -- but doesn't require it.  Some players will play "law men" and others "outlaws."  This isn't to say that one couldn't create a more "PCs are a team" style campaign, just that the rule book is written to allow for player dictated storylines where other players can react.  The campaign system is set up so that the individual players can play their own individual stories regardless of other players' activities. I think that this mode of campaign play is interesting and definitely echoes the style of a Braunstein game more than the D&D rules did.  

One of the things that many in the OSR community find appealing about old school games is the lethality of the systems and the lack of "superheroic player characters."  OSR players often want the characters played by players to feel some what mortal.  This sentiment likely stems from the fragility of 1st level characters in D&D, especially Magic Users who are notoriously fragile at low levels.  PCs in a 1st edition D&D game are often one small mistake away from death.  In fact, in the first D&D rules set while characters where rated for their physical and mental attributes, having highly rated attributes had little effect on game play in comparison to later games.  A Fighter with a high Strength score gained very little immediate benefit from the score, though that character would gain experience more rapidly than his/her compatriots.

It didn't take long for that to change though. It was in the Greyhawk supplement that added ability score modifiers for combat.  And once a character's strength score affected one's combat ability, every player wanted to have a higher strength score.  After all, who doesn't want to hit opponents 10-15% more often and to deal 2 to 6 more points of damage per hit?

The 1979 rules of Boot Hill definitely demonstrate the transition from ability scores being primarily a measure that influences speed of advancement to things that immediately and directly affect combat.  D&D used a bell curve that was close to a Normal Distribution with a range of 3 to18.  The bonuses roughly falling along lines of standard deviation especially in the Moldvay/Cook edition.  Boot Hill, on the other hand, has different distributions for Non-Player Characters and Player Characters based on percentile rolls.

Player Characters are far more proficient than randomly generated NPCs.  Take a look at the following two tables illustrating the probability of a character having a specific "Speed" rating.  The first illustrates the chance of a randomly generated NPC having a given modifier.  These range from - 5 to +22 and 0 is described as "average" in the descriptor.  The second illustrates a Player Character.  Once again, 0 is "average."

NPC Speed Probabilities

PC Speed Probabilities

Two things stand out to immediately.  The first is that the character generation system doesn't generate "average" characters on average.  An NPC has only a 10% chance of being "average," and has a 15% chance of being "above average" or "fast."  PCs are even more powerful than NPCs, as they are completely incapable of being "average."  Given that the -5 to +22 is a modifier to initiative, and that one sees similar though not identical distributions for Gun and Throwing Accuracy, one wonders why the game's mechanics didn't scale down toward average actually meaning average.  This could have been done by deciding that a majority of NPCs have a speed of x, and that the majority of PCs have a speed of y.  The speed of x could have been called average and have provided no bonus or penalty.  Instead, Boot Hill uses a counter intuitive system where an average roll (50.5) results in a "quick" NPC (+4) or a "Very Quick" PC (+6).

A part of me could forgive the non-intuitive use, if it wasn't for the section of the rules listing "The Fastest Guns That Ever Lived."  According to this chart, Billy the Kid has an unachievable Speed of +23 and even Ike Clanton has a +12.  All of the "Fastest Guns That Ever Lived" are extremely fast and seem to me to reflect a kind of power creep in the rules.  What is most remarkable is how many of these characters have Speeds of 18+, with many having more than 22.  One might say, "but they are the 'fastest' aren't they?"  Okay, but does the name Bob Younger really bring to mind speed with a pistol?  Besides, the point of having these gunslingers listed is for use in the game.  If all of them are so quick, then there is no real distinction among them.  The slowest of the fastest guns has a +6.  Why not set +6 as average?  It seems to be the average of the NPC distribution -- or at least close.

I can say that the first thought I had looking at these numbers was that none of my players would want to even try a character who didn't have at least a +9 in their Speed Stat.  I think that a system having bonuses that directly affect the probability of actions makes players more likely to worry that their stats aren't high enough, and to try to power game a system.  As time has gone by, I'm becoming more convinced that maybe statistics should matter less mechanically than they do.  Players might obsess a little less about what their Speed score is if they aren't worried about someone with a +25 (Wes Hardin) bringing the gun to bear.

Oh...and the list completely leaves out Bass Reeves.  How can you leave out Bass Reeves?

[Gaming History] Gigi D'arn -- Who is/was she?

Way back in the days of role playing yore -- 1979 to be specific -- the gaming hobby was introduced to its first official gossip columnist.  That columnist was Gigi D'Arn, and she wrote her first gossip column "A Letter from Gigi" in the second issue of The Chaosium's Different Worlds gaming magazine.  Though her first article was published in 1979, her real identity has never been revealed.  I find this bit of gaming history to be one of the most interesting mysteries in the hobby.

Just who is/was Gigi D'arn?

From my initial searching of the internet, it appears that the consensus seems to fall in line with the description at RPG Geek.  That being that Gigi was a fabrication of Different Worlds editor Tadashi Ehara and was probably a compilation of comments by Chaosium staff.  Even Allen Varney -- a long time gamer and pretty informed participant in the "Western" gaming community of the 70s and 80s -- seems to agree with this hypothesis.  After taking some time to research the question, I don't agree with the consensus opinion.  I would like to offer the hypothesis that Gigi was a real gamer who was introduced to the gaming hobby in Southern California and who was a part of the "Alarums & Excursions" crowd.

Before I begin to present the little evidence I have in favor of my hypothesis, let me say that the Gigi D'arn articles -- along with the Larry DiTillio "Sword of Hollywood" articles -- are some of my favorite reading and are part of what made Different Worlds such a good gaming magazine.  Regardless of who Gigi was or wasn't, she was a very entertaining writer.  I would venture to say that she was the Shelly Mazzanoble of her day.  Shelly, with her "Confessions of" columns on the Wizards website are the closest thing I have found to Gigi's writing.  The column's not for everyone, it is a gossip column after all, but I enjoy it in a "Real Housewives meets D&D" kind of way.  I've also been a fan of the pseudonym itself.  Using a pseudonym that was a combination of both Gary Gygax and David Arneson's names seems to me the perfect identity for a gossip columnist.

Now for the evidence that Gigi was a real person -- though I do agree that some of the rumors might have been compiled from Chaosium staffers.

1) In the first column in Issue #2, Gigi mentioned that she lives in the Los Angeles area.  -- Chaosium is a Bay Area company, and while this bit of information might seem a bit of "misdirection" later statements and supporting evidence will highlight how this is more likely true than misdirection.

2) This information is repeated in issue #5 as "Another local news is that LEE GOLD is working on a feudal Japan supplement to C&S."  It should be noted that this piece of information follows discussion of Ken St. Andre and Flying Buffalo.  Given that the Arizona and SoCal gaming communities were fairly tied together back then, this isn't surprising. 

3) In issue 16, Tadashi addresses the issue face on.  In issue 14, Tadashi included a survey that contained the question "Who do you think is Gigi?"  They received several responses which were published in issue 16, including.  "A committee composed of the DW staff" and "Gary Gygax in drag."  Tadashi wrote the following in the editorial:

These are the ones Gigi laughed at when I showed them to her.  You see, she is a real person.  She lives in southern California and writes occasional feature articles (Rose Bowl Parade, Miss Culver City Contest, "Save the Fruit Fly Movement!", Rhubarb Festival, etc.) for a local newspaper/advertiser.  She is an ardent fan of the entire gaming hobby, not just role playing. And she jealously guards her real identity.

Seems to me that this hints pretty strongly that it's a real person.  Though I have to admit that Lexis/Nexis searches for "Save the Fruit Fly Movement!" yielded no information, nor did following up a Rose Chung/Greg Stafford/Scott Bizar reference in issue #2.

4) Issue #31 contains an interview with Gigi.  This interview is one of three "My Life and Role-Playing" interviews featured in the issue.  The others are Dave Hargrave and Gerald D. Seypura, both of whom are real people.  The "My Life" interviews were a semi-regular feature of DW, especially in the early issues.  In the interview, Gigi provides some very interesting information.  First, she claims to have attended CSLA, UCLA, and Michigan.  She mentions that her first husband was a member of the SCA and that she was introduced to D&D by SCA members Barry Detweiler and Connie James (she admits that these are pseudonyms).  My next point will return to Barry and Connie.  She also writs extensively about her work history, her marriage, and how she met Tadashi.  This interview in no way seems fictional.  It lacks all of the flair of an authors "exaggerated" biography.  It is quite mundane, but does include the statement "At cons you can recognize me by my glasses."  Which I found interesting as that issue included this picture:

Image from Different Worlds 31 copyright Tadashi Ehara 1983

Given Gigi's intimate knowledge of the workings of Flying Buffalo, implying friendship/familiarity with the staff, and the "Glasses" reference in the letter, I couldn't help but wonder if the woman on the right is the mysterious Gigi.  I still do wonder that very question.

5) Remember Barry and Connie above?  In his interview with Lee Gold, a southern California gaming community giant, James Maliszewski asked Lee how she became involved in the role playing game hobby.  Her answer?

Our friends, Owen & Hilda Hannifen, came down from San Francisco to visit us, with a copy of the Original D&D rules. My husband and I were fascinated, and they lent us a photocopy of the rules, on seeing us write a check to TSR to order our own copy, so we wouldn't have to wait till the rules arrived (in a brown box) from TSR.

There is no mention that Owen and Hilda were members of the SCA, but given how central Lee Gold was to the Southern California gaming community, and given that Lee and Barry Gold were members of the SCA, it doesn't take much of a leap to speculate that Barry and Connie are either Owen and Hilda, Lee and Barry, or a combination thereof.

6) In 2004, Gigi wrote a letter to Tadashi for his Different Worlds publications website. In that letter, she mentions moving to Colorado, she mentions her "latest beau," and she mentions that Mike Stackpole looks more fit than the last time she and Tadashi saw him.  Remember that photo above?
   
None of this proves that Gigi is/was a real person, or that Gigi is still around for that matter.  What it does do though, is make it reasonable to hypothesize that Gigi was in fact an actual individual who was friends with Tadashi and who wrote the column.  Finding out if Gigi is a real person is a bit like being a blind man examining an elephant.  The evidence is scarce and inconclusive, but it is the evidence we have.

I believe that we should create theories from the evidence we have, and so I believe that Gigi is a real person who now lives in Colorado.

"The Silence of Metaphysics" -- DM Advice: Stealing Ideas from Other Sites the Zak S. Edition #431

I'm a frequent reader, and infrequent commenter, on Zak S's gaming website "Playing D&D with Not Safe for Work."  That's not the site's actual name, that's the "Safe for Work" version.  It's a site that is, in my opinion, actually pretty safe for work...unless your work place values productivity.  Zak is an extremely creative guy, who has the gift of being able to explore ideas.  Most gamers have the ability to come up with ideas, but many of us refrain from truly exploring them.  This isn't good.  Zak's website is good, great even.  I have actually lost count of the number of his ideas that I have lifted for my own home games or for the Encounters group I run each week.  I invented the number 431 for the purpose of the post, as it is probably more than the actual number of times but is potentially less.

This isn't to say that I always agree with Zak regarding the quality of rules sets or that a particular style of play is what I want at my table.  No.  What I appreciate is his willingness to explore ideas and to present them and really engage with them.  It adds value to the hobby and makes the game better by providing fodder for thought and inspiration, and that's what every DM needs.

To have a fun game, a good DM needs not only to be able to come up with good ideas on his or her own, but a good DM also needs to be willing to steal ideas from every source possible in order to provide a good time to players.  That's the DM's job.  Make sure others have a good time.  The fact that Zak's site is a rich place to borrow from, is why I'm writing this post.

Which brings me to "The Silence of the Metaphysics"...a new campaign setting for your role playing pleasure.  Zak recently posted an article entitled "Cats Outside the Factory that Makes Cheeses."  It's a thought experiment post that results in one of the best articles I think I've ever read on the internet.  The article begins with three simple steps -- like an Agent Oso plan:

 1. Take an RPG product you find profoundly uninspiring

2. Turn to the first page

3. Going sentence by sentence, write the exact opposite until you have a whole game.

Zak then proceeds to apply these steps to a well known independent role playing game, and the end result is "Cats Outside the Factory that Makes Cheeses," which could be a role playing game or an episode of the classic "Avengers" or "The Prisoner" television series.

My thought was that this wasn't just a good idea for games that one finds "profoundly uninspiring," but would also work with ones that one does find inspiring.  And so, I now give you...

The Silence of Metaphysics

Slow-Finish Rules 

Slow-Finish Rules for "The Silence of Metaphysics" Role Playing Game

Includes the unpopular adventure, "The Mundane!"

The Unimpressive New Multitudes have been governed all over the earth since the rise of humankind.  In the end they will burrow into the depths of the earth and will be worshiped by even lesser beings.  Blueprints of their tiny farms and shared secrets will not be found on remote islands in the Pacific, laying boldly on top of the stiff trees of small forests, or in the blistering openings of the equatorial regions.  Now they are awake -- some high above in the firmament and others above the temporary sea, in the dry city of Davis, rotting in the sands by the science of weak metaphysics.  When the Earth is wrong they will burrow, and never again fly in Space.

Silence of Metaphysics is a new roleplaying game of Henry Jamesian heroism in which extraordinary people are confronted by the calming and natural forces of Material Science...     


Courage. Heroism. Bravery is at the edge of our existence.  Tales of Heroism provide re-enforcement to the joy we hold in our souls on a day-to-day level. 

Okay...at first that doesn't seem all that great.  Certainly it isn't as surreal as Zak's "Cats," but I think there is a seed of an idea.  Let's consider this a first draft and move forward.

We have the "Unimpressive New Multitudes" who have been subjugated to the rule of mankind.  

They are not secret, their secrets have been shared.  They have recently been "awakened" from their places flying above the earth and seas.

At some great cataclysm they will burrow into the earth and disappear forever.

Hmm...

And there are characters who are extraordinary people confronting the mundane and natural forces of Material Science.

Aha!  The characters are extraordinary in a mundane world...an oppressive world...a world of pure materialism...except for the PCs.  A world in which a population -- inhuman but new -- are subjugated by mankind.  The New Multitudes once flew high, but do so no longer.

The PCs are creatures of legend who feel the weight and power of the will of mankind stripping them of their innate extraordinary powers.  They are fighting a futile battle against the will of mankind.  They will be thrown into the dustbin of history, but what will the PCs do before that happens?

I don't know...this needs more work, but I'd like to see where Eric and my other friends might take it.

"The Earth is Wrong!"

What Every Gamer Should Know About Probability

Given that most analog games -- whether role playing games or table top games -- use some form of randomizer in their determination of successful or unsuccessful outcomes, every gamer should have at least a basic understanding of probability and statistics.  One doesn't need learn enough to become a professor of statistics or a professional poker player, but if you have an opportunity to take an intro to statistics class I highly recommend it.

If you cannot afford either the time or the money to take a class on statistics, I recommend Reiner Knizia's "Dice Games Properly Explained" and "Scarne On Dice."  Both of these books have excellent chapters discussing dice and how to determine probabilities of outcomes.  These are vital books, especially if you wish to become a game designer.  I find that the biggest weakness of many games is the designer's lack of understanding of basic statistics (or bad application of them when the designer does have an understanding), or a failure to explain the underlying statistical engine of a game to the players.  The Dream Park role playing game by Mike Pondsmith is an example of an otherwise great game that has some serious statistics problems in its basic mechanics, and the otherwise brilliant Feng Shui game does a poor job of stating flat out that the average bonus toward success that a player's given die roll provides is zero.  For proper play, games like these either need tweaking or careful adventure design by the game master.  This is especially true in Feng Shui where the addition of a "mere" 3 points to a villains attributes/skills can significantly affect probabilities.  For example...did you know that in all "balanced" encounters in 4e Dungeons and Dragons, that level is essentially a meaningless construct?  Since the players and monsters advance on the same linear path, To hit = x + level, Defense = y + level, Skill DC = x + level...the probabilities set at first level essentially remain true throughout the game.  Only the length of combat changes.

Let me be the first to admit that I am no professor of statistics myself.  I have taken three courses on statistics, which makes me good enough at them to make stupid mistakes in algorithm designs but hopefully smart enough to admit when I've made a mistake.  This is one of the reason I often harass other gamers, who are in fact professors of statistics, to either review my stuff or to help design an analysis.  When I do have stuff reviewed, it tends to be very good.  When I don't...invariably there is an error.  Ugh.

This is because statistics aren't always intuitive.  One of the questions that Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman has researched throughout his career is whether we have an "innate" or "subconscious" ability to make probabilistic determinations.  In his excellent book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman gives a nice overview of his life's work on the human mind's ability to count, make correlations, detect patterns, and whether we are good at "intuitive" statistics.  What he found, and others, is that the human capacity to recognize patterns and to make associations also makes us very poor at intuitive statistics.  Our mind can at a split second -- and without effort -- make all kinds of calculations and recognize associations, but to accurately figure out probabilities takes work.  Our very ability to make associations works against the skills needed to apply statistics.  Thankfully, we are good at analytical thought -- but that takes more effort than our associative abilities.

One of the key ways that our ability to recognize and induct from patterns, a wonderfully useful skill, is in the "law of averages."  There is no such thing.  It seems like there should be, but there isn't.  If the random events are independent of one another -- meaning that prior acts don't affect future ones -- it doesn't matter how many times you've flipped a coin and had it turn out to be heads.  The play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead plays with this concept wonderfully.

In fact, game designer and podcaster extraordinaire Geoff Engelstein has a nice discussion of this misleading "law" that often infects our minds as gamers.

Note that all of the above applies to the use of dice -- or other independent randomizers -- and not to the use of cards.  Cards aren't independent in their randomization.  What cards have been used affects what cards remain available -- but that is a discussion for another post.

Trying to Stand Out in a World of Kickstarting Awesome

Where to begin...where to begin?

I have long been a big believer in independent projects and fan supported endeavors, especially in the hobby gaming community.  It seems to me one of the best ways to ensure that the projects we want continue to get made, especially when "start up" costs would be too expensive to raise otherwise.  Pre-funding projects allows gamers to become a kind of venture capitalist, angel investor even, in some exciting products.

I was one of the first patrons of Wolfgang Baur's excellent Open Design Project.  I interviewed Wolfgang for my Geekerati podcast and am a long time subscriber to his Kobold Quarterly.  I think what Wolfgang has been doing for the gaming community with his "Switzerland of the Edition Wars" magazine and projects, is a great service.  He not only produces fantastic gaming products, but involves the community in those projects as well.  If only he would recognize me the next time I introduce myself to him at a con... ;-)

I have also been a long time customer of the Indie Press Revolution.  While not as "venture" oriented as the Open Design project, IPR has helped a lot of games that might otherwise have been overlooked get release and play.  It was the first place that I saw "Spirit of the Century," a fantastic game by Fred Hicks' company Evil Hat Games.  I like to think that my friend Eric's successful creation and launching of "Race to Adventure" started with my purchase of SotC and my excitement about the company.  I take no credit for Eric's game itself, I just imagine that I motivated a handshake that led to gold.

I really have to thank Ken Hite for pointing me in the direction of IPR and the games it offers, so ultimate credit for the handshake would transfer from me to him anyway.  I also have to thank him for directing me to Pelgrane Press and their Gumshoe product line.  I've been pre-ordering -- a kind of venture capital/patronage -- the games in their line for a couple of years now, and have been impressed every time.  I also have to thank James Maliszewski -- who I discovered at IPR -- for pointing me in the direction of a number of other independent projects in the Old School Renaissance/Revolution (OSR).  Thanks to James, I have ordered the White Box of Sword and Sorcery and Delving Deeper -- a product that I have been waiting for quite some time to examine.

And prior to Kickstarter, word of mouth through blogs and whispers at conventions and in game stores was really the only way one could find out about exciting projects that needed "pre-release" support.  In the past couple of years though, as Kickstarter has grown and along with it the number of successful projects -- Kickstarter has become a go to place for exciting gaming related products.

Which is why last March, my business partners and I at Twin Suns Entertainment decided to launch our initial product offering on the site.  Our vision was to make a documentary film that told a surprising tale about the people who play role playing games, a tale that broke stereotypes.  We wanted to show the world that gamers come in all stripes, from students to professors and from attorneys to screenwriters.  Gamers come from all walks of life, and the only real stereotype about gamers is that they enjoy games.  That had been our experience and we want to share that with the world.

We also want to do it right...which isn't cheap.  We want to follow a number of gamers (say four) in their day to day lives, gamers on different coasts with diverse backgrounds.  We also wanted to interview experts and visit the homeland of gaming...Wisconsin, as well as a couple of major conventions like PAX and GenCon.  Add visits to major publishers to this mix, and the travel expenses get pretty high.  But we want to do it right, and that means a pretty sizable budget of $41,000 or so.  That isn't huge by film making standards, but it's pretty big for a first Kickstarter project.  This is especially true when it comes to competing in a saturated market, by which I mean a market saturated with projects worth backing.  I would have to be arrogant and ignorant to think that our project was the only project worth backing.  I think our project is the best idea of all time, but I am still dumbstruck by the awesome that emanates from the minds of my fellow gamers.  Let me give you a few examples of what I have recently supported...if you are interested in everything I support you can check out my profile.  Oh...and not all of what I am currently backing is game related.  There really is a ton of great stuff out there.

So, here goes.  I have recently supported:

1. Xombie: Death Warmed Over by Epic Level Entertainment.  Epic Level produces the very funny web series "Dungeon Bastard," and I loved the original Xombie stuff so this was a natural for me.  I would love it if Cindi Rice would participate in our documentary.  The Dungeon Bastard himself has agreed to let us invade his life, but to share with others the journey from game creator to television producer is one I would love to provide.
2. Random Dungeon Generator as Dungeon Map   I think the coolness of this project speaks for itself.
3. Dwimmermount -- I told you I love James Maliszewski's stuff.
4. Free RPG Day Adventure from Gaming Paper -- I have supported every one of Erik Bauer's Gaming Paper forays.  He's one of the nicest guys in the industry, and a Friendly Local Game Store owner.
5. Geek Seekers starring Monte Cook and Jen Page.  
6. Tales of the Emerald Serpent -- A fiction anthology from Scott Taylor of Black Gate Magazine.  It harkens back to the old Liavek, Thieves' World, and Wild Cards anthologies.  I cannot wait.

And that is just a smattering.  There is a ton of great stuff out there.  You should support it.  

I'd love it if you'd support us in our project.  We've lined up some great participants who include the following:

• John Rogers -- the creator of the Leverage TV show, author on the Blue Beetle comic book, user of unobtainium before Avatar, and player of Savage Worlds, D&D, and other games.
• Ashley Miller -- screenwriter on Thor, and X-Men: First Class.  He and his group play an interesting mash up rpg that I hope I'll be able to share in more detail with you.
• Cam Banks -- the creative force behind much of what Margaret Weis Productions is putting out these days.  His evolution of the Cortex system into the Cortex Plus system with games like Smallville, Leverage, and the Marvel RPG is quite remarkable.  
• Matt Forbeck -- If credit for me even attempting a project in the gaming industry belongs to anyone, it belongs to Matt.  He is an incredibly nice guy, and is attempting a challenging project of his own.  He's trying to write 12 books in 12 months and to become a modern Walter Gibson.  Though he will have to become a professional grade magician -- you know card tricks etc. -- to truly match Gibson.
• Ken St. Andre -- Not only was he the inventor of two of the earliest role playing games ever written -- Tunnels and Trolls and Starfaring -- he's offered to host a session of T&T at GenCon for us this year.
• David Nett -- David is the creator of the entertaining webseries about gamers Gold: The Series.  It's not everyday that someone tries to make a dramatic comedy about our hobby.  He did, and with Night of the Zombie King -- the second Gold offering -- he accomplished that task with style.

We've got some great people involved in our project.  We are looking for more.  We hope that we can get Wil Wheaton or Felicia Day to participate.  They are in our neck of the woods after all, but they do have their own exciting projects lined up.  You might have heard of it.

It's pretty hard to stand out in a world of awesome, but that's what we are hoping to do.

[DnDNext] What Makes a Rpg a "Role Playing Game"

Some of the early criticisms of 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons was that the game over-emphasized miniatures play, it felt too much like a board game, it plays like a MMORPG, and skill challenges don't work.  While these criticisms might seem distinct from one another, they all share one quality.  Each of these criticisms has as a component that the critics felt that 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons had focused almost solely on the combat aspects of the game, and had forsaken the improvisational, acting, and role assuming, parts of the game that are the reasons that games like D&D are called role playing games in the first place.

I won't go into the legitimacy of these complaints, as they are highly contested matters of opinion where there are persuasive arguments on both sides.  I will say that I think that 4th edition is possibly the best fantasy tactical game I have ever played.  I will also say that the indie game influence skill challenges system is difficult to implement, but can create some of the most rewarding actual "role playing" experiences one can have in a game.

That said, what I really want to ask in this post -- ask you that is -- is what makes a role playing game a "role playing game?"  The hope is that someone at Wizards will read this discussion and bring some of the ideas to their playtest tables in house.  I'll provide a little context, but I hope that you will provide some opinions.

Back in what James Maliszewski would call "The Golden Age" of role playing games, Steve Jackson wrote an essay for the second issue of gaming magazine Different Worlds.  The essay was for a semi-regular column in DW entitled "My Life and Roleplaying" in which DW covered the lives of many people in the hobby.  In that essay, Steve Jackson points out that "most people reading [his essay] probably cut their gaming teeth on a role-playing game, years and years ago."  Given that Jackson was writing these words in 1979, this might seem a shocking statement to most gamers, and I do believe it was meant to be provocative.  Jackson followed this disarming statement with an even more controversial one, "The most popular board game ever developed in the US is pure role playing.  Yes...Monopoly.  Consider:  Each player takes on the role of a cheerfully rapacious real-estate tycoon, wheeling and dealing until he alone commands the board."

Jackson goes on to say that his own OGRE game is a role-playing game as well, a fact that he didn't realize for quite some time but true never the less by what he had come to consider a useful definition of a role playing game.  His definitions was:  A role-playing game is one that invites its players to take on a personality different from their own.

The key term for Jackson was the word "invites."  Rpgs don't require players to take on a different personality, but they do offer the opportunity.  Jackson was taken aback by the number of players who told him how much they like "being" the OGRE, and that was when he realized he had made a role playing game.

What also amazed him was how many people playing role-playing games don't ever take the time to play a role.  As he described it:

It is a shame that so many of their fans don't really bother with role-playing at all.

That, I'm afraid, was the first thing that impressed me about D&D -- and it's still true today, with that and almost every similar game.  Role-playing goes right out the window.  Every player is being himself, often in the most obnoxious fashion.  Whether he's swinging a sword or a wand, every adventure is the same.  Zap, slash, kill, loot.  What did we find?  Whoops, a random monster.  A million hit points.  Zap, slash, kill.  A million experience point.  Babble, babble, 27th level Brouhaha with a Ring of Instant Permanent Total Monster Charming.  *yawn*

 Jackson is quick to point out that not all role playing sessions are played this way, but that every game has players who play this way.  It was his goal to write the rules of The Fantasy Trip to disincentivize that kind of play and to encourage actual role playing.

I think that 4th edition encourages role playing in some ways, but also discourages it in others.  There is no rich IP in the initial rules of 4e, so the players are left to imagine only a world of stats and powers.  Heck, even the way that powers are presented -- effectively as Magic: The Gathering cards -- fails to support role playing aspects of the game.  There is little advice, in the Player's Handbook, regarding creating a collaborative story and there are seemingly no rewards for them -- only rewards for hitting "plot points."  What about rewards for entertaining play?  Interestingly, the Organized Play rules -- for Encounters -- include benefits for a "moment of greatness" a feature that can encourage actual roleplaying in addition to tactical innovation.  With no rich backdrop, and detailed rules for combat, what is the player to think the game plays like?

Even when the DMG for 4e, and even more so the DMG 2, provide some great tools for fostering "role" playing -- the fact is that the Player's Handbook doesn't.  I think this is what led many players to think that 4e de-emphasized role playing in favor of tactical combat.  Was it true?  Not necessarily, but it seemed true.

But in order to write rule books that foster role playing, it is necessary to come to a useful definition -- or many useful examples -- of what role playing is.  This is where you come in.  If you were writing for DnDNext, how would you describe role playing?  What examples would you use?  If you were to bring in the very "Indie" skill challenge system -- it's straight out of Burning Wheel -- how would you describe it?
 

 

The Party is the Thing-D&D Heroic Roleplaying using Marvel

This post is about a rules hack for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Game from Margaret Weis Productions. It's specific to the 4E dnd Hack by Dave Chalker from Critical Hits. I originally started writing it as a comment on Rob Donoghue's Some Space to Think Blog but it kept growing until it felt like a full blog post. If that interests you read on.

Rob has been talking about MHRPG on his blog for a few months now. Ever since he mentioned Affiliation dice and the DnD hack for MHRPG I've been thinking about how to hack the Affiliation dice in regard to the 4e DnD hack. Dave left them in but it feels like he never figured out how to implement it properly with 'splitting the party' GM tactics. My thought is to emphasize the fact that the PCs are a party and that they don't split up. So instead you can emphasize their strengths and weakness within the group.

A good replacement bucket for Affiliation might be 'Party Role', in the form of Leader, Striker, Controller, Defender. They are an important identifier for D&D PCs that fall outside of the other distinguishing features of your charater. So the party roles can be separated out from powers, classes and race. Leaders who are fighters, clerics who are striker/defenders, and controller rogues all have a place in my ideal DnD. This hack formalizes your strengths and weakness for filling these traditional party roles with a die to build your dice pool around. I haven't tried this out yet but here is an example of what I'm thinking.

You could be a tactically minded Wizard with the following Roles:

Leader d10
Controller d8
Striker d6
Defender d6 (or d4 depending on whether you want to add a weakness).

So when ever you take action to control the battlefield or target lots of enemies with your spells you would roll your Controller d8. When you take action to encourage, heal or put allies into positions to excel you roll Leader d10. If you take your turn to make yourself a target of the enemies to save your allies roll Defender d4. Looking to deal a lot of damage to the 'Big Bad Evil Guy' with your nova power, Striker d6.

Try it out; let me know what you think.