Using Disney Infinity to Teach Kids to Code

When I was young, my family didn't own any computers. We had an Atari 2600 and a Nintendo NES, but we didn't own any personal computers. Thankfully, I had friends who did. I spent hours playing classic games like Bard's Tale with my friend Sean, and hours playing Maniac Mansion and Zak McCracken with my friend Ron.

Who am I kidding? I spent days playing these games, especially Bard's Tale. I still remember the answers to many of the BT riddles and have fond memories of the frustration of encountering our first "spinner."

Many of the schools I attended, and I attended 12 schools K-12, had computer labs. I spent a fair amount of time in computer labs fiddling around with Oregon Trail and Summer Games. All of this gaming led me to an interest in programming. My Junior and Senior year of High School I had a Zero Period class in computer programming where we learned Basic and used our knowledge to create our own programs. The first year was spent working on projects that the instructor designed, but during the second year students were supposed to design their own projects. My first computer program was a character creator for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, but working with my friend Travis we designed character creation programs for Twilight 2000 and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles role playing games. These programming sessions often lasted into the wee hours of the morning.

My senior project was a piece of computer animation that featured a character walking up to a dragon and having the dragon breathe icy breath at the character as it ran away. It was a relatively simple animation in its results, but it took me weeks of one-hour class sessions to program. The dragon graphic was a bit map rendering of the white dragon from the Monster Manual and it took nigh on forever to enter the coordinates in the data file.

My program won second place at a computer programming competition at the University of Nevada. I think my dad still has the plaque I won, but the money I won was spent quickly.

As much as I liked computer programming as a "hobby," I stopped studying it formally after High School. I decided I wanted to be an attorney and began studying Political Science. This happened after my famous 4-year Semester off from Undergraduate education, something I don't recommend to anyone. I still love Political Science, and am working on a Ph.D. in it, but I have zero interest in becoming an attorney. Had I known as a wee lad that my interests would be when I was older, I'd have continued in Political Science and minored in Computer Science. This is especially irksome now that I'm in the Ph.D. program and am having to take time to refresh on my Calculus using MIT's excellent Single Variable Calculus class and the Khan Academy's World of Math refresher. I'm also taking time to learn the R programming language to make myself more marketable.

It's my frustration at never continuing to expand my programming instruction, even on a personal "hobbyist" level other than learning some HTML, that makes me so excited about the fact that Disney is partnering with Code.org to use Disney Infinity characters to teach young people how to write computer programs. While I believe that most of the "killer apps" of the future will be designed by creative people who have a broad "Liberal" education, I also believe that the ability to write code will be the future equivalent of being able to type. It's just something you have to be able to do in order to operate in the business environment.

I look forward to working through the code challenges with History and Mystery in the coming months. Maybe we'll even replicate some of those late night programming and playing sessions I loved so much in my youth.

Another Lankhmar Update: Don't Forget Savage Worlds LANKHMAR!

Earlier this week, I shared my excitement that Goodman Games had acquired a license to release adventures that take place in Fritz Leiber's classic Lankhmar/Nehwon setting. Toward the end of the post, I mentioned that Pinnacle Entertainment Group's Savage Worlds role playing game was the only other game that I thought had the potential to capture the Sword & Sorcery feel of the setting. When I wrote that, I knew that Pinnacle was planning to release their own Lankhmar related products, but I did not know when that release would occur.

Now I do. The Savage Worlds setting book for Lankhmar: City of Thieves will go on sale April 14th. At that time, purchasers will be able to pick up copies of the PDF and pre-order the print copy of the book.

Pinnacle has also given us a glimpse of what the rules will look like with the "No Honor Among Thieves" rule.

No Honor Among Thieves

Betrayal is a part of life in the City of Thieves. Sometimes a companion double-crosses his mates over a few gold pieces. Other times he might cheat on a friend over the love of a woman. Most of these betrayals are met with a wry smile and a vow to reciprocate at some future date. There is no honor among thieves, after all.

Sometimes the betrayal is more personal. In Lankhmar, whenever a character is betrayed by a close friend or associate (a trusted ally or even another player character—Game Master’s call), he cannot spend a Benny to reroll any opposed defensive action.

If the betrayal is an actual attack (almost assuredly with The Drop) and the victim doesn’t Soak all the wounds and / or remove the Shaken, he must make a Vigor roll versus the damage or go unconsciousness per the Knock Out Blow rules on page 25). He may not spend Bennies on this roll.

This rule is an example of how easily the Savage Worlds rules set, and in particular it's ability to incorporate "Setting Rules," make it a good fit for the Lankhmar setting.

I do have one minor complaint though. The image of Fafhrd in the banner ad above doesn't capture the humor he is often expressed as having in the stories. Fafhrd laughs in the face of danger and is often boisterous in the face of adversity. To be fair, the image looks to take place after a particularly dire moment in the series (no spoiler, but rage would be an appropriate expression), but it is too rare that Fafhrd is show smiling. Thankfully, the Pinnacle website has what must be one of the first illustrations of a happy Fafhrd, made all the more enjoyable because he is too rarely illustrated this way.

Lankhmar the Dungeon Crawl Classics Way

Goodman Games announced at Gary Con that they have been granted a license to produce Lankhmar themed Dungeon Crawl Classics products. The Dungeon Crawl Classics role playing game is the first role playing game since the original D&D rules that has been expressly designed to capture the tone and feel of the fiction Gary Gygax highlighted in his famous Appendix N.

Most early post-D&D role playing games fell into three camps. They were either designed to be easier to play versions of D&D that shared some of the inspirations (Tunnels & Trolls falls into this category), designed to emulate more realistic combat and character creation with a consistent world mythology that varied from D&D (Runequest and The Fantasy Trip fall into this category), or D&D micro-improvement clones (Arduin and Warlock) fall into this category. None of these games quite fit into the category of "Fantasy Heartbreaker" coined by Ron Edwards, for reasons that become clear when one reads the full Edwards piece.

Many of these games, The Fantasy Trip I'm looking at you, were designed to present consistent mechanics that emulated some kind of physics. In moving this direction, these games actually moved away from Appendix N influence and became something else. D&D was a hodgepodge of influences, all narrative. Runequest too had a hodgepodge of influences, but one of them was SCA combat experience. Basing combat on real world experience is a solid design goal, but it isn't a design goal driven by an attempt to emulate the fantasy in Appendix N. It's hard to imagine someone attempting Fafhrd's escape from the Ice Witches by strapping fireworks to his skis using the Runequest or The Fantasy Trip rules. They weren't free form enough.

To be fair, it's hard to imagine that happening in AD&D either. I can see it happening in Moldvay/Cook Basic, but interestingly enough that game actually falls into that first category of post-D&D design. All of this brings us back to Dungeon Crawl Classics. It is very easy to imagine this game inspiring such a scene, and Doug Kovac's strong focus on what Jeff Vandermeer calls "The Weird" only adds to the seeming natural connection between DCC and Lankhmar. There is only one other game that I think can capture the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser well, and that's Savage Worlds. A game that I believe also has a license to make Lankhmar based products. The Savage Worlds game will likely, in my completely uninformed opinion, focus more on the street level heroics of Nehwon and so there will be little cannibalism between the two games. In fact, I think there might be some great synergy between publishers.

Goodman Games is running a contest which will allow people to playtest their upcoming adventure at Gen Con.

As an aside, I think that the DCC cover is a nice homage to the old Fantastic cover that featured Ningauble, Fafhrd's weird and enigmatic patron.

Skylanders vs. Disney Infinity SAVAGE WORLDS Style: A Father After my Own Heart

When I first started this blog it was called Cinerati due to my love of film. I started the blog because a friend had shared an article from the conservative website National Review Online that was criticizing an entry in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill saga. I found the article to be reactionary and not very well versed in the genre the author was criticizing. The article seemed to me to be a typical "Culture War" and "High Art" claptrap that raises my ire. I was especially irked by the phrase, "

these films are but vulgar distortions of Japanese film culture."

Someone on the internet was wrong, and I needed to fire my own salvo off into the battlefield. Never mind that the author of the piece was also arguing something that I agree with, that Akira Kurosawa's films are brilliant. The professor had insulted one of my favorite directors and I was going to the mattresses! Even in those days, I was careful to be polite in my criticisms, but I was enjoined in battle.

 

Interestingly, I didn't end up writing as many film related posts as I wanted and ended up writing far more posts about other geek related things. There was a short period where there were other authors on the site, but that eventually faded and I was left as the sole author on the site. I wrote about whatever I wanted, and in 2008 what I wanted to write about took a pretty significant shift when my twin daughters were born.

Oh, I still wanted to write about everything I had been writing about, but now I couldn't wait to write about my gaming experiences with my daughters. Given my busy schedule between work and school, I haven't written about gaming with History and Mystery as much as I'd like. Heck, I haven't even gamed with them as much as I'd like. I have played a lot of games with them though and hope to share more of those experiences as time presents itself. I am particularly excited to share our first Heroquest experience and discuss how badly my daughter History wants to play the Indiana Jones Role Playing Game. She wants to play it more than almost any other game I own.

All of this is my way of saying, expect to see more writing about gaming with kids in the coming months/years. I'll be mixing it up with content about gaming in general, including some 5th edition and Savage Worlds modifications.

Why the sudden inspiration you ask? Well...I saw a father running a Savage Worlds skirmish between Skylander and Disney Infinity characters with his kids and that is pretty awesome.

Asymmetry and Class Design in RPGs

Source: Stuart Robertson

In the early days of role playing games, there was a lot of push back against class based games like Dungeons & Dragons. Critics didn't like the inflexibility of classes and believed that they were overly restrictive to player options. This criticism still exists today in the debate between skill based versus class based games, but as strong as these debates seem today they are muted versions of games past.

I believe there are a couple of reasons why the debate has become less heated over time. The first reason is that class based games have expanded the options available to various classes. Most class based games allow Wizards to use swords and armor, though they might have to forgo certain other advantages to do so. The second reason is that the underlying logic behind having class based games, as articulated by J. Eric Holmes in his classic Fantasy Role Playing Games, is that classes were created to foster teamwork and that they are very good at creating fun shared experience play. One of the advantages of table top role playing games is their ability to foster friendship, and one of the best ways they do this is through the synergies created by soft-asymmetrical classes. A final reason I believe that the debate has become muted is that modern class based games are often even more asymmetrical in play than earlier ones, even as the mechanics seemed to become more symmetrical.

Where different classes played slightly differently, often using wildly different mechanics, in early class based games, in modern class based games players can choose to play entirely different game experiences. How so? In Dungeons & Dragons 3.x, players can choose to play a tactical miniatures game, a skill-intensive dungeon crawl, or a narrative storytelling role playing game. These are all potentially completely different experiences. You could do this with earlier editions of the game? Yes, you could. What makes 3.x different is that you can play these three ways, plus you can play a pub running simulation where you never interact with other players, a magic item design factory game, an art dealership game, or a mercantile simulation. Interestingly, with the exception of the magic design factory game, you can do all of these as solo game play experiences. The 3.x game system has mechanics that allow for simulated economy games. All you need is to take your character with a high Craft(Beer) and have that character make decisions about what kind of beer her or she wants to make, buy the supplies, make the rolls and you know how many cp, sp, or gp the character earns each week. You can do this until the character dies of old age.

If an economic Sim is what you want to play 3.x can accommodate you. Come to think of it, when I look at most of the complaints against 4e they actually come down to a complaint about the reduction of asymmetrical play more than anything else. You can narratively role play the crap out of 4e. You can free-form play it without miniatures. You can story tell with it. There are tons of game design options as you add more sourcebooks. What you cannot do, is run an inn using the basic mechanics of the game.

This trend of asymmetrical play in D&D, and in RPGs, started early. You can look at the War Machine and Dominion rules in the old BECMI Dungeon & Dragons game, GURPS, Champions 4th Edition, or Runequest. These games all have mechanics that allow for simultaneous asymmetrical play experiences. Not just the soft-asymmetry of classes having defined roles, but actual different play.

If you want more discussion of asymmetry in game play, here is a video by Extra Credit discussing asymmetry in computer games. It inspired this post and has me thinking about whether I've personally experienced periods of simultaneous and asymmetrical play in any past campaigns and wondering if you have any stories of your own experiences of asymmetrical play to share.

Intrigued by 20th Century Fox's FANTASTIC FOUR

I've fluctuated in and out of being a fan of Marvel's iconic family superhero team The Fantastic Four. I love reading some of the original stories due to their raw Kirby-ism. Similarly, I enjoy much of the John Byrne era for the way it incorporated X-men style soap opera drama to the book. And the Waid/Wieringo era is wildly entertaining. As a whole though, the Richards family has always seemed a little out of place in the Marvel Universe. Sure Reed stopped Galactus, but that victory merely highlights the separation. The Richards family are first and foremost explorers who encounter cosmic entities of vast power and keep them destroying mankind through a combination of scientific know-how and a never-say-die spirit.

The key point here is that the Richards (and Grimm) are explorers. They are Marvel's version of the Challengers of the Unknown, another Kirby creation, with the addition of superpowers and foes the like that only Superman would encounter in DC. As great as the powers of the Fantastic Four are, they pale before Galactus, Annihilus, Ronan, and Kang. When the FF books are at their best, they focus on the super-science, exploration, and family elements. When they are at their worst, the writers portray the team as a superteam more like the Avengers than the explorers they are.

Neither the Roger Corman, nor the more recent Chris Evans vehicle, captured the team in all of its glory. The Corman movie gets some things right, but it also gets so much wrong. Similarly, Chris Evans and Ioan Gruffud are perfect casting for their characters, but the interaction with Doom was off and don't get me started on the Silver Surfer film. I really wanted to like that movie, and I own it, but it just falls flat. With these failures, I wasn't surprised the 20th Century Fox would attempt something completely new with an "update" to the franchise. Like most fans, I was baffled by the choices they were making. The actors cast in the film have talent as performers, but they somehow didn't match what my concept of this team should be.

Then I saw today's teaser trailer. Now I'm intrigued. It looks like the movie will be focusing on a Challengers of the Unknown style narrative, and that is where the FF really shine. I know it's just a teaser, and that teaser's always look good, but I'm willing to give the film a chance. It may not be THE Fantastic Four, but it might just be A Partially-Exciting Four. Besides, the final shot of the trailer is just so STAR TREK V that if the film is terrible, it may just be terrible in the best ways.

Now to decide what game system to use when I convert the film into a campaign.

A Savage Worlds Christmas Adventure for Necessary Evil

I originally posted this adventure on my Savage Worlds Character a Day blog...a blog with a far too ambitious name.

THE NIGHT THAT HOPE DIED -- A Christmas Themed Necessary Evil Savage Tale

Background:

The V'sori have successfully conquered the Earth. Very few are powerful enough to oppose their occupying forces to free humanity. Many of the world's villains have been gathered by Dr. Destruction to resist the occupation and inspire others to join the fight against the alien overlords.

Up until last year, most people had completely lost hope and have become "good citizens" of the V'sori empire. Few noticed that their neighbors were disappearing, while the numbers of drones grew. Few realized that the Earth wasn't merely being conquered, its residents were being "altered." No one was fighting back. It's hard to be inspired by news of Dr. Destruction's recent terrorist assault against the local television network.

That all changed last year on Christmas morning. Children across the world received Christmas presents for the first time since the V'sori invasion. The V'sori had come to expect a few underground Christmas celebrants, but they were not prepared when all the world's children received gifts...gifts that included cards reading "Merry Christmas to All! S. Claus."

As news spread of the magical gift giving -- gift giving that had evaded V'sori surveillance, many of the people of the world began to experience a new emotion. They began to Hope. Here was someone, or potentially someone, who could evade/outsmart the V'sori who hadn't historically been bent on global domination.

The V'sori had to stop this S. Claus at all costs. And so began Operation Toybreaker. If the V'sori could capture this Claus, and transform him into a Super Drone, they could ensure that the toys delivered from here on out contained appropriate "citizen conditioning messages." They could take this figure of hope and transform him into a figure of domination.

Two weeks ago, while battling Omegans at a site where the frozen bodies of WWII heroes had been located, V'sori radar picked up an odd signature -- it appeared to be a flying reindeer. They followed the signature to its final destination and the location of Santa's Village had become revealed. It took the V'sori seven days to overcome Santa's defenses and capture this bastion of hope. It took another five days to convert all of his remaining elves into drones and to reprogram Santa's Toy Soldier Defense Androids. It will take two days for the V'sori to convert Santa into a complicit drone.

The Adventure:

Dr. Destruction has intercepted a broadcast outlining the V'sori's capture of S. Claus and their plans to convert him into a Drone. Dr. Destruction desperately wants to use Omegans to rescue the figure of hope as Santa would make an amazing gun runner for the Omegan underground, but he knows that Omegans are unlikely to rescue this saccharine sweet icon without some deception.

His plan is simple. Convey to an Omegan cell that the V'sori have captured the worlds "Last Figure of Hope" a person capable of supplying the criminal underground with a steady supply of weapons. The person has technology that can evade V'sori communications satellites and can make large simultaneous deliveries.

(At this point, most players will get what's going on, but their villain PCs should remain clueless).

The villains are sent to rescue this individual who is being held in a specially built temporary prison facility on Baffin Island in Nunavut, Canada. Once at the location the PCs will face 2 encounters.

The first encounter is an outdoor battle against the converted remnants of Claus's cohorts. The PCs should face 1 Toy Soldier and 2 Elves per PC.

After the PCs finish this battle, they will wander through what remains of Santa's Village. Don't hold back on the description. There should be dead elves everywhere, as well as dead snowmen, and the carcasses of Santa's Reindeer. Play up the V'sori cruelty. Feel free to have another small skirmish here, or roleplay moments where the PCs find Santa's list only to find out that they were indeed supposed to receive that Atari 2600 for their 10th birthday...or some other humorous moment.

Upon completing the visit to Santa's village the PCs will approach a specially designed prison containing 1 K'tharen Warrior per 2 PCs and 2 Drones per PC, as well as the unconscious body of Claus. Claus's body is encased in a DuraSilicon Container (Toughness 15) where robotic devices are slowly converting him into a Super Drone.

Once the PCs arrive at the prison, they will have 15 rounds to defeat everyone and free Claus before he is converted. Use the Toughness statistics in the initial Jail Break for the Claus prison, but modify the map to contain only one cell.

If the PCs rescue Claus, they save Christmas and have recruited the world's most efficient weapons smuggler to the resistance.

Mind-Controlled Elf

Race: Elf

Agility: d8 Smarts: d6 Spirit: d6

Strength: d6 Vigor: d6 (d12+2 on drugs)

Pace: 8 (d10 to run) Parry: 5

Toughness: 6 (11 on drugs) (2)

Charisma: 0


Skills

Fighting d6 Repair d10 Notice d8 Stealth d8 Shooting d8

Throwing d6


Marksman

+2 to ranged attack if Elf does not move.


Pain-Killers

If the elves have eaten their cookies or egg-nog, they fight fearlessly (+2 vs. fear checks) and feel no pain (+2 to recover from shaken, and can take two wounds instead of one before going down). Because of the unsafe levels of drugs in the cookies, the elves must make vigor checks at -6 when the drugs wear off 1d4 minutes after consuming. They take 6 levels of fatigue (death) on a failed roll.


Gear

Gay Apparel Kevlar Vest (+4 armor vs. bullets, negates 4 AP, covers torso)
Candy Cane-shaped Vibro-Knife Damage: Str+d6 Heavy Weapon, AP 2

Pop-Gun (Disguised .50 Cal Rifle) Range: 30/60/120 Damage: 2d10
RoF: 1, Ammo: 7 (Hero-killer Rounds), AP 2

3 Presents (Disguised Grenades) Range: 5/10/20
Damage: 3d6 Medium Burst Template


Notes: The V’sori have given the elves Christmas Cookies and Egg-Nog laced with vigor-enhancing combat drugs, un-safe levels of pain killers and other mind-altering substances. Since they V’sori don’t care if the elves die, they have put near-lethal dosages into the cookies, and instructed the elves to eat the cookies if they are attacked.

Life-Sized Toy Soldier

Race: Robot

Agility: d4 Smarts: d4 Spirit: d4

Strength: d10 Vigor: d10

Pace: 4 Parry: 5 Toughness: 13 (6, Heavy Armor)

Charisma: 0


Skills

Fighting d6 Notice d4 Shooting d6

Size +2

Toy soldiers are very large, about 7 feet tall.


Construct

These toy soldiers are robots and therefore get +2 to recover from shaken, immune to disease and poison. Arrows, bullets and other piercing attacks do half damage, and they do not suffer from called shots. Constructs do not heal wounds normally, and cannot recover wounds from the Healing skill or power. Repair is used instead. Each Repair roll requires tools and spare parts (-2 modifier without tools, another -2 without spare parts) and 1d6 hours work.


Fearless

As robots, these soldiers are immune to fear effects.


Darkvision

These toy soldiers have infrared sensors that can see in the dark.


Gear

Plasma Rifle (A Toy Soldier’s Fusion Reactor regenerates 1 shot every 2 turns)

Range: 12/24/48 Damage: 3d10 RoF: 1, Ammo: 12, Heavy Weapon, AP 2

Vibro-Bayonet Damage: Str+d10 Heavy Weapon, AP 2


Notes: Made of heavy iron plating, these robot soldiers are super-tough, but very slow-moving. They are powered by large internal fusion reactors, which also power their plasma rifles.