Planet Story Games

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The Mummers: Gaudily dressed mummers and madmen walk the streets of Schermo, begging and selling, singing mindless songs and dancing daft dances. These are the Mummers, in their public face — a group of daft folks, lost to their own mind, who beg and cavort to raise money for the asylum that houses them.

What fewer know is that not all the Mummers dress in motley, and most of them do not beg. The costume they wear is often that of a priest, as they sell false relics and blessings, spread heresy and steal alms. They do this because their lord has taught them to hate the Church, a Church he once served.

Ptamic Harlequin-Eye (one eye red, one eye white) was once a Sandman and servant of the Zultanate and the Church. That was before they put fetter upon him and tried to teach him to hate himself for his gifts. Learning to accept himself for the Koldun that he was cost him his home, his pride, and nearly cost him his hand. In the dark time after the loss of his home and faith cost him his sanity as well. Now, years later he has come to Crail to pursue vengeance against the Church, to help those who did lose their minds, and to learn the secrets of madness.

The Mummers work out of The Pazzarella, the largest asylum in Agua Azul, lies just across the street from Schermo, technically in the Buitre district. A former monastery, it is built almost like a fortress, with narrow windows and thick iron bound oak doors front and back. It is three stories tall, though it is said to have more levels below the street than above. Inside the mad of the city stay or are kept, some in locked cells, some in their own rooms that they keep themselves. The Mummers have littered the buildings with traps, especially in the subterranean levels where they keep their real work.

Ptamic Harlequin-Eyed (2 Extra Fortes)
Foible: Scrupulous if insane sense of justice and fairness.
Motivation: Destroying the Church. Good +2
Nationality: Zultanate. Good +2
Past: Sandman. Expert +4
Swashbuckling Forte: Koldun. Expert +4 (Manticore, Chimera, Qilin, Griffin, Merhorse)
Forte: Lord of the Mummers (Minions). Expert +4 (Either Good Spies or Good Thugs)
Forte: Sanctum — The Pazzarella. Good +2

Notes: Ptamic is both scrupulous and insane, much in the tradition of the anti-heroes in Batman’s rogue’s gallery. His hatred of the Church is based on both its “betrayal” of him, and his vision that the Church restricts the gifted and Kolduns in order to secure their own power and control, making people fear and loath themselves so that they stay weak and needy. The only things he cares about beyond his crusade is his care of the mentally ill, whom he really does care for. As a result of that care he has more resources in the community than one might initially suspect — after all, several of the mummers (or those who are cared for in the Pazzarella) are the secretly disavowed but perhaps still loved members of important families.

Ptamic is an obvious suspect in any crime against the Church, its congregation, or anyone who is suspected of preying on the mentally ill. Even though he doesn’t specifically hate the Zultanate (outside its connection to the Church) he’s also had a history of causing embarrassment and harassment to the embassy, and so the Mummers may come up in any investigation into crimes in that area.

The Rough Tribes: Everyone knows that the Rough Tribes are trouble, but most folks think they’re only trouble well beyond the high walls of Agua Azul. The truth, however, is that while the rough tribes may be barbarians, they aren’t stupid. They know that the raids into their lands come from the city, and at any time one or more of the tribes will have an agent in the city keeping an eye on things and stealing any goods the tribes deem essential to their survival.

Ragara
Foible: Addicted to soft civilized pleasures.
Motivation: Gaining status by harming Aqua Azul. Good +2
Nationality: Rough Tribal. Good +2
Past: Tribal Ranger. [Athletics, sword and spear, track, survival, tribal lore] Good +2.
Swashbuckling Forte: Smuggler. Expert +4 (Situation: Agua Azul)
Forte: Thunderbird. Good +2 (Maneuver: Blind Luck)
Forte: Leader of the Rough Tribe Runners (minions). Good +2. (Foe: Falcons)

Notes: Rough, tough, and with a wicked sense of humor, Ragara has found herself in a natural alliance with Ptamic. The two work together to smuggle artifacts into or out of the city, disrupt Church missions to the wastes, and steal Church resources to send to the tribes. Ragara also hires out as a smuggler for whoever can pay, and her ability to use the land outside the city walls is in high demand for those who wish to avoid the pratfalls of civilization — things like taxes, laws, and people asking questions when bodies are found. On a less intelligent note, her fondness for hard liquor often ends with her in drunken brawls or public benders, and its likely the PCs have had her in the drunk tank a time or ten.

The Pirates: Once upon a time, Crail was part of Ilwuz (or vice versa) and there are still ties that bind between the two islands. Not the least of which is that pirates need a place to sell their loot, and Crail is always open to the redistribution of wealth, especially into its own pockets. So at any given time any number of pirates can be found in Agua Azul, many of them on shore leave, many of them up to no good. (And most both.)

Misha the Knife is the unofficial representative of the Illwuzzi Congress and Clockkeeper to Crail. Its unofficial on both ends, as the Congress doesn’t normally send diplomats and Crail doesn’t officially accept diplomats from Illwuz. None the less, everyone knows the score, and this “reformed” pirate captain is well respected by the Illwuzi in Crail, and acts as their advocate when they get in trouble beyond simple fines for drunken debauchery. And while she doesn’t engage in piracy (at least around Crail), she does give information, haven, and support to those who do.

Misha the Knife (3 extra fortes)
Foible: Lecherous
Motivation: To build a secret compact between Crail and Illwuz. Good +2
Nationality: Illwuzzi. Good +2
Past: Pirate Captain. Good +2
Swashbuckling Forte: Brotherhood of the Skull. Expert +4 (Idiom: Taunting, Situation: Against Men)
Forte: Dangerous Beauty. Good +2
Forte: Reputation - Pirate!. Good +2
Forte: Dread Ship Revenge. Expert +4
Unchained Technique: Foe: Officers of the Law.

Notes: Misha is actively trying to work out a deal with the Commandant to secure a long term partnership between Crail and Illwuz. So far she’s met with little luck, and so she may start looking for those with an eye to the future and fewer scruples than greed. (More or less everyone on Crail, really….) As a result she’s likely to offer aid for future favors to just about anyone involved in shady dealings, from smuggling Church missionaries out to the Rough Tribes to helping to hold local authorities for ransom.

The Thieves: Its no surprise that in a city as rich, as corrupt, and as hierarchical as Agua Azul there would be a thieves guild. The current guild, which has been the dominant force in organized crime for almost a full generation, is said to have been founded by a Barathi Imperial Spider who had to flee his country after nearly sliding himself into the Imperial Throne. (Not true, he was an Avokato who was ruined by the Spiders for forging a morgani contract.) Once in Crail he set up shop and took over the other miscellaneous thieves’ guilds by extortion, murder, informing on rivals to the Falcons and getting immunity for his own crimes to it, killing Falcons and Judges who wouldn’t work with him, and even seducing the former Commandant. (All true.) In time he was replaced by his hand chosen successor, a native Crailese who had worked his way through the ranks. (Not true, he was killed and replaced by his eldest son, who then killed all his brothers to be sure.)

Now days the guild is known as the Tarantula, the Eight Legs of Crime, or the Family Web. The guild consciously uses bastardized Barathi spider symbolism and methods, partly from tradition and partly as a form of low-grade terrorism, borrowing part of the Spider’s mystique as their own. The Spiders occasionally object to this, but by and large their attempts to punish the Tarantula for their temerity have backfired, and have even lead the thieves to work with the Falcons to foil Barathi espionage in the city.

The eight “legs” of the guild are each lead by a guild leader, and the eight guild leaders together report to the arch-deacon of crime: Taranto, the Tarantula Himself. The Tarantula is run for the power, profit, and protection of those on this top tier, and they routinely use, abuse, and betray their underlings in order to put themselves ahead. The lower status members are thus afforded some degree of freedom, so long as they follow the rules and pay their cut, they’re able to do more or less what they want. The middle tier is sandwiched in between, without the freedom of the lower levels or the power of the upper, and as a result are the most bitter, given to selling each other out, and given to taking the biggest risks in order to try to rise in rank.

Each leg is run by a lieutenant to villain level foe. The eight legs are:

• Assassins — The most feared of all the legs, for obvious reasons. There are only about 4 active assassins at any time, but the leg also includes all their support (spotters, contractors, runners, weaponeers, etc) and the lesser “hitters” who are barely more than jumped up thugs.
• Beggars — Probably the most numerous leg, and far more brutal than most would expect. They guy and starve babies to get sympathy money, cripple children, and run blackmail in addition to haranguing and harassing folks in public and private events.
• Grifters — The con artists, actors, witnesses for hire, and gambling cheats. A large and well organized leg, but with a noted tendency to fuck themselves when members grift or inform on each other. They’re also currently in a low level war with the Mummers, who’ve managed to take most of their business in fake religious artifacts.
• Thugs — Muggers, muscle for hire, protection rackets, and enforcement for the other legs. Looked down on by the rest of the guild, surly, and often with a brand new leader who took power by braining the old
• Fences — Those who move goods, launder money, and provide fronts. A few are members of the Merchant’s Association as well, with various degrees of loyalty and fear.
• Street Thieves — Pickpockets, pennyweighters, snatchers, shoplifters, anglers, and so on. Many in this leg are young, ignorant, and more than a little impulsive. They’re usually run by an adult spotter and handler, and often work together with beggars to distract and poach large amounts from a single crowd.
• Burglars — break and enter experts, second story girls, infiltrators, resurrection men, and all the thieving that requires going into someone else’s house or property and removing what they value. A very large leg, but with a very cell-based structure that often leads to anarchy at the lower levels of operation
• Forgers — check writers, art forgers, figure dancers, and dirty lawyers. This leg also includes the prestigious “handlers” — the folks who bribe, interface with, and sometimes blackmail, seduce, or kill Falcons.

Taranto (6 Extra Fortes — Arch Villain!)
Foible: Secret Identity: The Drunkard Rinaldi
Motivation: To become the defacto ruler of Crail. Good +2
Nationality: Crail. Good +2
Past: Rogue. Expert +4
Swashbuckling Forte: Firearms. Master +6 (Idiom: Precise, Foe: Falcons, Maneuver: In the Back, Weapon: Pistol, Weapon: Dual Wield)
Forte: Sanctum — The Heart of the Web. Expert +4.
Forte: Minions: Tarantuals. Master +6
Forte: Has a Plan. Good +2.

Notes: Taranto is the Tarantula, and if he has his way he’ll soon be more powerful than the Commandant. Through his spies, informers, thieves, and assassins he’s involved and taking a piece of the majority of underhanded dealings in an underhanded city, and he’s starting an aggressive bid to make it every underhanded dealing. He’s got no conscious to speak of, but he always has a plan, and a plan after that plan. Make no mistake, he is the big bad, and even most Falcons think of him more like the boogeyman than like a real person.

Ulema (2 Extra Fortes)
Foible: Devotedly Loyal to the Guild
Motivation: Arete: To pursue a life of excellence in all things. Good +2
Nationality: Hekuban. Good +2
Past: Rogue. Expert +4
Swashbuckling Forte: Stalker of Men. Expert +4 (Idiom: Patient, Situation: While High, Weapon: Crossbow)
Forte: Streetwise. Good +2
Forte: Alchemist. Good +2 (Drugs)
Forte: Connoisseur of All Things. Good +

Notes: Taranto’s right hand, Ulema is the head of the Assassins. A former killer for the Queen of Hekuba, she left the Queen’s service due to boredom, feeling the Queen kept her too safe and constrained. Ulema seeks for excellence in all things — what she eats, what she wears, what she reads, and of course who and how she kills. She is a connoisseur, a sophisticate, and just a little bit of a hedonist. She frequently makes alchemical drugs to heighten her senses during a hunt, which give her an air of surreality during her bloody business.

The Unaligned: And then there are the folks who just don’t fit anywhere else. Independant operators following their own dreams, sometimes in ways that help the Falcons, sometimes in ways that might cause their posteriors large amounts of torment.

Shuk-Jai
Foible: Bird Brain!
Motivation: To find respect amongst a new tribe. Good +2
Nationality: Sha-ka Ruq. Good +2
Past: Been Just About Everywhere. Good +2 (Maneuver: Haven’t we met before?)
Swashbuckling Forte: Ruq Rider Good +2 (Idiom: Idiotically Reckless, Situation: On Silvertongue, Maneuver: Death From Above)
Forte: Sidekick — Silvertongue. Expert +4
Forte: Likable if a bit impossible and twee. Good +2

Silvertongue: Ruq +4; Smarter than Shuk-Jai, Good +2; Willful Average +0 (War Trained, Be Where He’s Needed)

Notes: Shuk-Jai is an exile from his tribe, due in part to accidentally blowing up part of their village. For years he’s wandered from place to place, avoiding death mostly only because his Ruq, Silvertongue, has more brains than his master. Now Shuk has settled in Crail, working as a mercenary and messenger. But he desperately wants not just friends but a new family, and combined with his dim little brain, that makes it all to easy for the bad sorts of Crail to use him to do things far more wicked than he’d ever do on his own.

Pierre Jean-Luc
Foible: Arrogant
Motivation: To found the greatest school of fencing known to man. Good +2
Nationality: Royalist. Good +2
Past: Musketeer. Good +2
Swashbuckling Forte: Fencing. Master +6 (Idiom: Precise, Weapon: Rapier, Situation: Outnumbered, Maneuver: Riposte, Situation: Formal Duel)
Forte: Devilishly Handsome. Good +2

Notes: Pierre is a simple man — simply the best man. Or so he says. He’s recently come to Crail to start his own school of fencing, using the new scientific and honorable techniques he has perfected since leaving the Musketeers. Of course, to do so, he may need to wound or kill a few of the best fencers in Crail in order to prove his mettle. Isn’t it lucky the Falcons have a reputation as the best?

A couple of weeks ago, Atomic Array interviewed me and John Stavropoulos (Jenskot around here) about Dogs in the Vineyard. It was a fun interview and they promised they'd edit me to sound smart, so go have a listen:

Dogs in the Vineyard (Atomic Array 026)
By Vincent Baker in anyway. Filed under rpglink curious. 2009-07-03

Reading: Finishing up The City & the City. Enjoying it quite a bit.

Wearing: Jeans and a new button down with a muscle-y tank top underneath.

Planning: July 4th trip this weekend.

Writing: Outlining a sci-fi thing and continuing to edit the sci-fi story that looks like the first chapter of a novella. You know me, pushing the line from affectation to full-on masturbation.

That said, I am not allowing anymore comments in the thread concerning Malcolm's comments on the Dictionary of Mu. It was just on the breaking point of turning lame and petty and I'd like to keep it civil rather than have bullshit in my digital living room.

What is your weekend looking like?

This video has appeared on a couple different RPG blogs, including RetroRoleplaying.  After watching it, I thought it might be fun for my readers to turn it into a bit of a challenge because it’s filled with art that spans much of the history (especially from 1E & 2E) of D&D.

Here’s the challenge: For each piece of art, give us (via comments) the time stamp and then name the supplement (book, module, or otherwise) and edition the art originall appeared in. Bonus points if you can name the creature, person, object, or location pictured.

For example:

0:44 – Fiend Folio from AD&D (1E). Githyanki

So… Ribbon Drive. The most emotionally touching con gaming experience I’ve ever had. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, given my previous experience with Joe’s Perfect.

I’ve played with Joe several times before, consider him a friend, and have a good baseline of trust with him. I’d played with Julian and Jonathan the night before, in a game of Julian’s design (”Storyjamming”) where he specifically had differently-colored chips to indicate how vulnerable you as a player want to be at a given time in play, so I felt that they were aware of the possible impacts of emotional play, which was good. It was the first time playing with Shaun, but he seemed like a cool guy (which it turned out he was). So overall, I felt like I could take some risks in that group.

For those of you who haven’t heard about it, Ribbon Drive is Joe McDonald’s game of musically-inspired road trips. If possible, players create mix tapes/CDs/playlists with a theme of their choosing, though in the con environment we picked from what Joe had on hand. The first mix we picked, randomly, was called “The Good That Won’t Come Out.”

Next, the players listen to the first song (without talking) and read its lyrics, then create the road trip situation from that. Our song was Blue Ridge Mountains by Fleet Foxes, and after tossing around several ideas, we decided that our characters were headed for the funeral of Caspian Godat, an abstract artist who used to be full of life and charm and passion, but who also fathered several children with different women and didn’t stick around. (Quote from one of the characters later in the game: “He started a lot of projects he never finished: my family, and yours, and yours…”)

Our characters were to be based at least in some ways directly on the second song, to which we all again listened silently. It was Westfall by Okkervil River. Now, wow. A song about murder and the banality of evil, about a guy who seems completely normal, but just “happens” to kill some random girl (”It was so easy to kill her, I just wanted to kill her again.”). Somewhat hard for me to listen to, as someone who’s unusually sensitive to stories about these kinds of things (I always choke up when reading news stories about bad things that happen to good people, especially children), but there it was. Given my level of trust with the group, I decided to take a risk and embrace my discomfort: Sophia, my character, was the youngest child of Caspian whose mother was murdered 20 years ago, when Sophia was 4.  When Caspian slid into dementia in the last 6 years of his life, Sophia took care of him, because she was the only one left.  Sophia was currently enrolled in nursing school.

Characters have a couple of traits and two futures that, in the course of the game, they may either embrace or reject. Sophia’s traits were “I take pictures for solace” (some of dad’s artistic talent), “I can see through their skin” (quote from Westfall), and… something less important, I guess, because I can’t remember. Her futures: “I will never go home again” and “I will never have Faith.”

I’m shocked to realize that I have a hard time remembering the other characters’ names.  We didn’t use them much, because for a lot of the time we were more acting directly through dialogue rather than narrating, and when I was narrating, I’d usually use “you” instead of the character’s name. It felt more personal that way.

Let’s see. Joe’s character was an artist who had studied under Caspian decades ago. He also was the only non-family member. There’s more to him, but I’ll save that for later. Then there was Julian, who played the oldest son, who carried a lot of anger with him (and had his father’s tendency for passionate outbursts). He had deep emotions but trouble talking about them.  One of his futures was something like “My life will always be unjust and miserable.” Yeah, anger. Jonathan played Barry, Caspian’s younger brother, who had fond childhood memories of him–this later caused him to clash with the abandoned sons. And Shaun played another son who’d never even met Caspian, and whose future was “I’ll find out who this man was.” I think he rejected that one toward the end of the game. His main trait was “Commensurate Fuckup”, which just about summed him up. The character had that vibe of being happy-go-lucky and careless to avoid really dealing with anything.

Now, after setup, players take turns framing scenes after listening to the first bit of a song from the mix. The song’s mood, then, mainly inspires what kind of scene we’ll play next. Players are encouraged to bring out their traits and start addressing their futures to either embrace or reject them later.

I felt that our game played out like an art house indie movie. We were a bunch of emotionally troubled people, all linked through Caspian, captives in the crucible of the car.  Everyone was initially caught up with their own troubles, which led to some interesting clashes. For example, the other characters didn’t understand that Sophia took frequent breaks on the road to take pictures to distract herself from her loss and to delay the inevitable funeral and thereby the decision point of where to go from there, so they were quite annoyed with her. We soon started to have deeper conversations, all colored by our character’s relationship to Caspian, about religion and art and, most strikingly, parenthood and family. The characters had a huge debate about whether or not people, when they become parents, suddenly must devote their whole lives to their children. Sophia thought that was too much to ask, and some resentment came out that she was stuck with taking care of Caspian for so long. Basically, due to Caspian’s dementia, it was like she’d had a child at 18 that she had to take care of because there was no one else, and that was just thrust upon her.

The two sons soon butted heads, with Julian’s rage burning hotter because Shaun appeared to be so nonchalant about the whole thing. Shaun was trying to figure out who Caspian had been, as the accounts of a genius artist and inspiring professor, absentee dad, and older brother who took Barry fishing when they were young just seemed too incoherent in his head.  Ultimately, at the cottages where Barry and Caspian had spent many summers of their youth, the two sons ended up in a fist fight (proving that they both had their dad’s outbursts), while I finally allowed myself to cry on Joe’s shoulder (unaware of the fight going on outside).

The next morning, Julian tried to leave Shaun behind, but we persuaded him otherwise. Shaun was too cocky about that, resulting in more clashes. It was really amazing to see the characters just bounce off each other like that, and I think we all were immersed into the whole thing at least to a certain degree. I surely felt some of Sophia’s sorrow, but also how she worked through it. She figured out that being a family was a choice, and that we didn’t have to repeat Caspian’s. We could break free from his shadow. (So I abandoned “I will never go home again”. Also, a bit later, she made peace with the fact that she wouldn’t have faith; one can have a meaningful life and connections even without that.) I think it helped that we were on our second mix by that time, themed “What Keeps Mankind Alive.”

We had another rough scene where, finally arriving at the town where the funeral would be, Joe explained that Caspian’s painting on display from 20 years ago was the last one he did from his heart, and that it was about suicide. Julian exploded at him, especially when Joe said that after that, the other paintings were all about mortgages (i.e., he painted to support his numerous children financially, even if he couldn’t be there for them emotionally or even just physically present).

At the funeral, Sophia was to give the eulogy. At this point, I felt like she had grown up a lot through the course of the road trip, and I’d learned a few things with her along the way. She began to talk about Caspian, and about how none of us knew all of him. You can never know a person fully, she said, but we can all share and get a better picture of him who touched all of our lives. But Julian jumped up and said, “The only thing we all have in common is that he abandoned us.” His outburst got worse from there, until Julian stormed off and drove away. Joe left as well (each one abandoning “I will learn to forgive him/love him again”).

We mostly left it at that, except with some epilogues: Julian drove our road trip car off a cliff soon thereafter (committing suicide), and Sophia stopped going to nursing school after realizing that she’d been pushed into it by taking care of Caspian.

Now, one more thing, and I’m not sure yet how I feel about this. At the funeral, Joe revealed that his character was the one who’d killed Sophia’s mother 20 years ago, out of jealousy. I had completely forgotten that part of his character soon after the game began; either I didn’t catch it when he first said it, or I just got too deeply into Sophia to remember. So I realized at the funeral that the man who had done this to her was also the man who’d comforted her and helped her overcome her grief, and that happened naturally from us playing our characters, not from deliberately steering it in any way. So, I’m not sure what to make of that yet. Part of me feels bad about that, like it’s some kind of cruel joke on Sophia. Part of me thinks it might say something connected to the part about not knowing people fully, ever, or about getting over the past, or about making choices. In any case, I guess it fits with the art house style we had going. I could see this happen in that kind of movie.

So, we agreed that, while a lot of the characters were in a hole, there was a sense of hope. One can, with the right choices, make their way out. Some manage, some don’t, and that’s part of life. Family is what we make of it.

Alright, that turned out longer than planned.  I really want to talk about the fact that, after the setup, we only ever used the resolution mechanic once, but I’ll do that in another post.

Wow, GPNW was fun in a bag. A goblin-head bag, apparently.

Here’s a post on the two Fiasco sessions I facilitated, both of which went well, and both of which churned up some interesting edge cases I need to think about before the text is locked down.

I also facilitated The Upgrade! with Ryan Macklin and also a game of Carolina Death Crawl. The former was smashing and the latter was, as might be expected, a little rocky. It suffers from “Jason designing for his tight circle of friends” syndrome right now.

I played Steal Away Jordan, House of Cards, and Twilight Blackbird as well. There was a lot of gaming going on. I loved every single minute of it.

Here are some photos of GPNW 2009 ephemera.

Graciously thank the reviewer for taking the time to read and review your work.

Thank you, Malcolm.

"Dictionary of Mu marked the final degeneration from “trend” to “affectation” and finally, “masturbation.” By and large, strangeness for strangeness’ sake (mixed with pulp pastiche as part of a male-nerd thing) is getting monotonous. “It has a noble title as long as your arm! Mighty thews. Steam power. Spider vaginas!” Yeah, just shut up."

EDIT: Spider vaginas? There are no spider vaginas. Witch-kingly cock...YES. Arachnida cake? No.

Quote added to the IPR site? Why, yes, it is.

EDIT II: Discussion is closed. Good night, internet.

Second strip from Dragon #19

When 4E came out I had total nerdgasms over all the funky powers, the interactions of abilities and the wonderful crunchyness of it all. I thought it was a really revolutionary step for D&D, kind of the culmination of a direction D&D had been heading for a while. I read the books pretty obsessively, gleaning every nuance from the powers, working out optimal builds, designing adventures, and getting right into the game, all before actually playing it. It was a time when my opportunities for gaming were pretty limited, so I had a bunch of anticipation before I could actually play the game.

When I played it, I had a pretty good time. The combats were, as advertised, interesting tactical excercises, with nice emergent properties as players discovered interactions between powers and began utilising them in combat. In fact, the most fun we had with the game was just fighting a series of random combats in a dungeon. Nothing but a series of fights. So I enjoyed the game, but as time went on, I began to find it a little unsatisfying. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it just felt like the game was not for me. There was something about the combats that just felt a little empty to me. The whole game had a slightly removed-from-reality feel, that I couldn't quite place. It felt like an abstraction of a roleplaying game.

I think Vincent's essay on fictional causes has finally given me the language to describe what I think the problem was. To my mind, the most accessible of Vincent's essays on this is this one, but to go to the root of the discussion, you could start here. I'm not going to bother to restate what was said there.

Someone started a pretty abortive thread at Story Games about this, but the thread got swamped by bickering as if it was on the internet or something, so I wanted to try again here. 4E doesn't have enough fictional causes during combat, which means that the details of the fiction ceases to matter in play, especially in combat, and gets less and less important. People still care that you're saving the villagers or stealing some loot or whatever, but the small details fade into the background. Then people end up playing it like a tactical board game. Which is fine, but not what I want in a roleplaying game, y'know?

Here's why:

In 4E, when you want to know what's going on in a fight, what all the relevant factors are in your decision making, and what rules are going to apply to your actions in your turn, you look at the board. Every relevant fact about the situation is conveyed in information in the "real world" of play. The position of enemies is indicated by tokens or miniatures on a grid. The conditions affecting them have concrete rules that you can look at in a book. "Prone" means -2 to AC and attacks, or whatever, not "lying on the ground, with whatever effects make sense based on that".

When I play Labyrinth Lord (which I'm doing a bit at the moment), the details of the fiction are intensely important. That's because when you want to make a decision about what your character is going to do, you have to look at the fiction. Do you get an advantage when a monster is knocked down? What kind of monster is it? What knocked it down? What did it fall onto? How are you attacking it? The DM makes a judgement call, based on the details of the fiction.

In D&D, the details don't matter. You don't need to refer to the fiction at all. Everything you need to know is in the "real world". You can refer to the fiction if you want to, and you can add as much fictional content to your action as you like. The game doesn't stop you from adding to the fiction as you play. But the fiction never gives anything back.

"Page 42" is the argument I hear most often against the "4E as board game" approach. Page 42 of the DMG has rules for "Actions the Rules Don't Cover", that give guidelines for adjudicating actions that draw on the fiction to have concrete, real world affecting effects (like hit point damage). In essence, it's true that Page 42 is all about fictional causes. My sense though, is that in play the rule doesn't often play out like that. I think that elements of the fiction that are able to inflict real-world effects quickly become "game tokens", represented in the real world, with their effects on the game carefully adjudicated and deliniated. The example in the text of the DMG, and the examples I hear about in discussion are very much pre-determined, well defined game effects introduced by the GM, with an expected and defined method of interaction from the players based on the rules in the book. The opposite of fictional causes.

I'm not saying that 4E is bad game. My Life With Master, for example, is in my opinion pretty similar in this regard, and I had a good time playing that. I'm just saying that I'd rather play HeroQuest

The Brainstormer is a Flash powered oracle-type random generator by Andrew Bosley that’s simply awesome for generating some ideas for a game session or situation. If you’ve ever played In A Wicked Age, you already know how an oracle works. If not, basically it throws three descriptors (typically a place or object, a goal, and a location/setting/situation) to create a game setting and/or premise on the fly – a group takes the results and then melds them together. It’s awesome for one-shot or pick-up games, but also can be really great for creating situations for longer term games.

Here’s an example of how we took the results of an oracle from IAWA and created a game from it:

The oracle yielded: the ghost, the wet nurse, perhaps the child, the scholar, the treasure seeker, the hunter, the wolf

Within 10 minutes of discussion this was the premise and lead in to our game for the night: In this wicked age, a small village lies nestled amidst the jungles of the Congo. Oliver St. John (the scholar & treasure seeker), noted explorer has returned to the village of Ubuntu, following the journals of colleague, Sir Raymond Hillard, who disappeared in to the jungles of the Congo four years ago.

He has returned for the 2nd time, bringing along a beautiful, young, doe-eyed woman named Rebecca d’Neuve (the wet nurse) with him from England to act as the nurse and babysitter to his adopted daughter, Kimberly, an African child (the child) whom he adopted on his last trip after her mother died during childbirth.

In the village of Ubuntu, St. John and his makeshift family have returned, to find the treasure he seeks. All is not well in the village though: A rogue lion (the wolf) stalks the villagers, apparently having gained a taste for human flesh. This has drawn the attention of William Hodsworth (the hunter), a guide and big game hunter.

The temperature and humidity are oppressive, leaving both Kimberly and Ms. d’Neuve clearly fatigued from the long trip.

BAM! Instant game.  The resulting game was really cool with a very Tarzan meets The Ghost & the Darkness.  In the course of play St. John came out as a pretty sinister guy, while Rebecca was shaping up to be the heroine and love interest of Hodsworth.

However, oracles aren’t just for IAWA.  You can use them with almost any game to create a situation. For example, here are a couple of quick examples of what the Brainstormer generated and how I might spin it to create a scenario for a couple different genres:

Disaster, Ghetto, Playground

• Supers Game: A huge explosion and fire erupts, trapping some poor children in a school playground. The heroes naturally need to rescue them.
• Fantasy, ala D&D: An earthquake opens up a fissure into the earth, revealing a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the city’s ghettos.

Madness, small town, gods

• Pulp, Horror, or investigation:  People have been disappearing from a small town – a few each year. Investigation reveals the town is the center of a cult worshipping the gods of the Aztecs which demand a yearly blood sacrifice.
• Sci-fi:  A small generation ship, thought lost for more than a century, suddenly reappears, it’s inhabitants having all gone insane (or perhaps put a Reavers spin on this ala Firefly/Serenity).

Give it a try.

 

Yes, that’s right.  MonkeyDome.  Didn’t get your free copy at Jiffycon?  Download it right here:

Monkeydome Printable PDF

MonkeyDome Screen PDF

MonkeyDome is the Imagination Sweatshop’s “Game in a Jiffy” for JiffyCon 2009.  Last year it was Trial and Terror.  This year it’s MonkeyDome.  This is becoming a bit of a habit for us.  It’s a “Game in a Jiffy” because it was created entirely from conception to publication during the week prior to the June 6th, 2009, JiffyCon where it was distributed for free.  We have since corrected some typos and added a chapter that was originally left out due to time constraints, and now you can download it via the links above!

What is MonkeyDome, you ask?

MonkeyDome is a schizophrenic game of shifting tones and harsh lessons in the cruel world of the future where life is ruled by Grim Violence or Zany Action, and either may strike at any moment. Sometimes you just got to swing that shovel to see if you can end a man with a sickening crunch, or knock him out with “Dong!”

Together you and your friends will be making Survivors who are pitted against the crème-de-la-crème of postapocalyptic horrors, cannibals, and marauding hordes for their space in this ravaged world. Survivors who’ve learned harsh lessons and seen the worst life has to offer. Survivors who do whatever it takes to stay alive. Survivors occasionally played by Brendan Fraser.

Still need convincing that MonkeyDome is awesome?  How about this cool flowchart?

And it’s got these guys:

Epidiah Ravachol, Jim Sullivan, Emily Care Boss, Jason Keeley, and John Stavropoulos designed, wrote and developed MonkyDome. Special Thanks to Michael Cooper who helped conceive of the game, Scott LeMien for his beautiful cover art, and Terry Hope Romero for her assistance with editing.

Just finished a six-session Burning Wheel game, which was pretty successful. None of us had played the game before, and we were all keen to try it out. I was excited to scratch that fantasy itch finally, and it's also a game I've been curious about for a while.

I talked about the game a little bit in this post, so I won't go over the details again. I'd like to talk a little bit about how the game worked out in terms of my GMing, and the development of a theme and a kind of premise through play.

The first lesson I learnt was about how to GM this kind of game. We were playing a very politics-heavy game, with lots of intrigue and scheming. There was a secret plot I'd planned, which the PCs would discover through play. In the first few sessions of the game, as GM I was much too concerned with getting the information out "right", rather than just responding to the characters' actions in a sensible fashion, and letting them drive the game. This led to dumb, blocking play from me, which really held up the first two sessions. Eventually I worked out what was making the game suck, and I remedied the problem. I started just prepping each NPC's plans for the session, and played them according to their motives, letting the PCs interfere with those plans as they wished. Once the PCs had uncovered enough of my secret plot, the game really ran itself. They had goals they wanted to accomplish, and as GM my only role was to judge the reaction of my NPCs to those actions, and to set difficulties for rolls.

The other thing I found interesting in the game was the development of thematic play that happend during the game. The players were a pretty broad mix of backgrounds, from a guy who is heavily into hippy story-games, to an old friend of mine who is more focused on tactical simulation and playing his character to win (whatever winning means for that character). I was a bit worried about how this combination of players would work out, in terms of conflicting play styles. I think this started out not working quite right. We had to look closely at some beliefs after the second session to target them more appropriately, but once we did this, things started to fire.

Our characters were three brothers who had made their fortune in piracy, and were trying now to go legit. We did a neat thing with the lifepaths, and made a little timeline of the characters, working out what each was doing during the others' lives. We found some neat coincidences, and worked from those to generate some interesting situations. One of the younger brothers went into the "desperate killer" lifepath just as the elder brother started the "merchant" lifepath. We decided it made sense for the younger brother to have been killing on his older brother's orders, to further the business. This set up great conflicts for the game.

The theme that emerged was all about family loyalty. The brothers were feircely devoted to each other, but also had motives driving them apart. The eldest was driven by profit and greed, and the youngest was enraged by what he'd had to do to help his elder brother succeed. The action in the game continually tested their familial bonds.

I wasn't expecting great character portrayals or highly emotional scenes from this game, but we actually had some pretty powerful material. The final scene was a great reversal of our starting position, with the youngest brother arguing for killing the mastermind of the plot against them, while the eldest argued for working with him. Their argument got personal fast, and all their repressed issues came to light. It wasn't Shakespeare, but it was a good scene, and I think it surprised all of us.

I'm really interested in playing with this group again, to explore this territory more.

• 09:31 It's a little funny to see how many 4e books have been stolen from the King County Library. Maybe it's time to donate some replacements...
• 15:58 Sitting outside in the shade, sipping a drink, reading a good book. What more could you ask for? Besides an army of giant robots, of course.

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It's about an hour and half since we arrived home from Origins 2009. I sit here with more caffiene than blood in my veins and try to unwind enough to go to bed. It was a great con. Attendance looked light, but the folks that were there had a good time. Here's my high points of the show:

Tuesday
A rush to pack and an error made months ago with the rental car was a bit of a scare, but by the time Bill arrived, everything was A-OK. Got to bed late, but raring to go in the morning.

Wednesday
The Drive. Michele was battling a cold, so we took plenty of rest stops. I didn't mind because we had no booth obligations and therefore no deadline. We left at a sane 7 AM and arrived about 4 PM, which allowed us to eat at the fabulous North Market. My pad thai was hotter than I could stomach, but that proved beneficial later on. We got checked in, taught Michele how to play Euchre, and got some sleep.

Thursday
Both Kat and I wisely scheduled our Thursday games to begin at noon, so that we would avoid the early-morning lull that sometimes occurs when there's a hiccup in the registration system. This time, there was no hiccup to worry about, but there was also a noticeable shortage of attendees. Even with a huge swath of the breezeway missing due to renovation, the place didn't feel crowded enough. I think I got a picture of the crowd present at the opening of the exhibit hall, and it wasn't nearly as large as it's been in the past.

Anyway, I kicked the day off w/ dropping off 5 copies of SHU with the ever-gracious and ever-upbeat Andy Kitkowski. He and his boothmates allowed me to grab a bit of space in his booth to make SHU available for sale. It was greatly appreciated.

At noon, Kat ran a new WGP... scenario, and I ran Ganakagok. I had 2 players: Cary and Amber. Thinking that 2 characters would be too few in the reaction rounds, I also made a character myself. In the end, it added nothing to the game, and I wouldn't do it again. The game was good (as always), and I even found a few ways to improve the text that I had overlooked while editing.

After dinner, I hung out a bit w/ Luke, Thor, Jared, and Jamey. We caught up on RL stuff. I got to see the tail end of Jamey's satirical Nicotine Girls hack. Plus, we playtested ... Yonder Knights! I never would have imagined playing that in my wildest dreams! The game doesn't really work, but there was much discussion and diagnosis of exactly WHY it doesn't work, which was really super helpful.

Friday
Friday started w/ both Kat and I having 10AM games. Hers was, of course, some incredible, amazing WGP... and mine was SHU. I had two great players: Todd and Lisa. We stopped a serial killer whose profile was that he was hunting down children's entertainers. As often happens, the kinda silly profile did not impede the drama and tragedy of the inevitable deaths. I can't think of a game that I enjoy more consistently than Serial Homicide Unit.

After the SHU game, I checked out the maiden voyage of Luke and Jared's new seminar: Practical Game Design. It was a clear and informative roadmap to take someone from the Three Questions to being able to judge whether dice or cards will do the job their game needs done. It gave me much food for thought, particularly in light of the previous night's unfun playtest.

One of the great disappointments of this year's construction was the closing of the kitchen in the Krema Nut Company store. NO PEANUT BUTTER MILKSHAKES! However, Thor's clever cell phone knew of the company's headquarters store 2 miles away. Being New Yorkers, they were going to hoof it. But with my power of Rental Car, I got us to the peanut-flavored heaven and back again in air-conditioned comfort!

Friday evening saw a nice dinner w/ Kat, Bill, and Michele, and then chatting till midnight w/ the NYC crew.

Saturday
Saturday was supposed to be my busiest day. I was scheduled to run SHU from 10AM to 2PM, and help Luke run a seminar from 1PM (fun scheduling error!) to 3PM, and then run Ganakagok from 8PM to midnight. Unfortunately, I had no players for SHU, which gave me far too much time to shop. I looked at every booth and still had time to spare before the panel.

The self publishing panel is, as Luke likes to call it, a firehose of information. We ran right up to the full 2 hour mark, barely stopping for questions and could have kept going. It's a thrill to give that panel.

Afterwards, Luke was running a demo of Mouse Guard for a reviewer named Ben and his girlfriend Danielle. I sat in to bring the group up to three, and got to deliver the killing blow to a vicious milk snake that wanted to devour us all!

A surprising one-on-one dinner w/ Kat followed, which allowed for a nice de-stressing to occur.

After that, it was back to frozen lands of Ganakagok, where 6 players showed and we made a great myth about the splintering of the island and its fertile ground floating into the sunlit worlds.

Sunday
Today started with some great news: Mouse Guard won the Origins Award for Best RPG! Congrats to Luke and the Burning Crew for another game well-designed (and one I can actually play this time!)

Then there was just last minute shopping, lunch, The Drive, and now this. An excellent weekend in an excellent city at an excellent con. You can't ask for more than that.

My friend and editor Ryan Macklin has posted about his experience developing A Penny For My Thoughts. I’ve been incredible thankful for everything Ryan has said about the book so far, and this post is no exception.

• 10:41 Man, the dogs do not like the clackity clack of the bulldozer down the street. Lots of barking, running around the house.
• 18:43 Ignorance abhors a vacuum.
• 19:52 OK, so I have 36 hours of games scheduled for GenCon. Why yes, I am going for vacation, not work.

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Mouseguard took the Best RPG of year at the Origins 2009 game fair, beating out 4E and Trail of Cthulhu. Congratulations to Luke Crane and the whole Burning Wheel HQ crew for the win.