The Look and Feel of a Hive City

I've been digging on Dark Heresy lately, and a recent browse through the Fantasy Flight Games forums yielded this gem of a thread. The original poster asked what hive cities -- the ubiquitous urban megalopolises in the Warhammer 40,000 universe -- actually look like. The responses were amusing, along the lines of "Imagine New York City with a roof over it, with Los Angeles stacked on top of it, followed by Tokyo, Houston and so on for about 30 miles straight up."

Eventually a commenter named Jephkay posted a quick list of interesting features that can be found in these huge, ancient, decaying structures. Other forumites chimed in with their own ideas, adding to the list and no doubt firing the imagination of every Dark Heresy GM who stumbled across the thread. Here's a quick taste from Jephkay's original post:

Tactical Thinking in the Hive
I try to convey the multi-layered nature of Hives by making sure my players are aware of stairways. I'm constantly mentioning balconies, overlooks, bridges, gantries, catwalks, ducts, railways, sewage pipes, effluaries (not a real word, BTW, I made it up to describe the rivers of sludge that move waste around the underhive). They face attacks from all directions in a hive. Clever enemies will encircle the intruders, attacking from several angles at once. And there is always cover available!

Gates
There are also massive gates that close off various portions of the hive. These are most common at the spire/hive interface, but even then, there must be a few hidden ways up into the nicer areas. Also, I imagine some areas are off limits for other reasons, or once were, and the gates have been repurposed. Perhaps, a thousand years ago, there was a reason for a certain gate to close and lock for 12 hours at a time, but that's been forgotten, now there is a lockdown imposed on an area. No one knows where the cogitator is that controls the gate, so the dome in question has adapted to their imposed lifestyle. Perhaps they are unaware that no one else has such a limitation. These gates were intended to hold off armies, no force the Acolytes can muster can break through them.

Bridges
I can also see massive bridges across great chasms between building blocks. The bridges themselves have buildings on them. The folks on either side of the hab-canyons occasionally get riled at one another for reasons known only to them. Every once in a while, a krak missile is launched across the void to avenge some slight. It escalates, and the bridge areas become warzones. Certainly, they can't take too much of this, and might eventually fall into the abyss between hab-zones. Of course, that's where the Acolytes have to go to collect some important scrap of information, just as a hab-war breaks out over breakfast...

Effluaries
Being a made up word, it should have made up rules. Perhaps falling into one counts as taking a toxic hit. 1d10 wounds, no armor or TB allowed? Drink up!

We're All Human on the Inside

A couple days ago, Dice Monkey tossed out a few possible explanations as to why some players groove on playing nonhuman characters. I wrote this comment:

Here’s my take. In most RPGs, despite what we tell ourselves, we are essentially playing ourselves on some fundamental, id-versus-ego level. As such, we offer up our most frank, honest roleplaying moments when we’re playing a character that’s fairly near to our own selves.

I mean think about it: when the DM takes a moment and describes something stunning and/or magnificent in the game, you don’t automatically say “By Alrindel’s fair eyes!” if you’re playing an elf, or “Stroke my beard if that isn’t a wondrous sight” if you’re a dwarf. You say “Sweet! That’s awesome!” — and then you scramble to “get into character” and react the way you think your character would act.

That’s why humans are so appealing. They allow us to experience the game through familiar eyes. This in turn preserves the wonder and majesty of the game.

Definitely worth repeating here. I always play humans, and I tend to have a more satisfying time as GM when I’m running a group of human characters. The best moments, most sublime flashes of in-character inspiration, come when we’re confronting things that affect us on a human level. No amount of character immersion can replace the unfiltered utterances that slip out in the heat of the moment.

This, I think, is why OD&D had such a mythical quality attached to it. You were basically playing yourself. You had a spear and maybe some leather armor, or a couple minor spells — but mostly, you were playing a scrub adventurer trying to stay alive in an environment that wanted to kill you. To play a human in such a setting is to enter into a social contract with the game itself. The price of admission is participation.

Review: Keep on the Borderlands

Over the next few months, I'll be reading some of Gary Gygax's more well-known works and writing about my reaction to them. I've been a gamer since 1993, but I've never actually had the opportunity to read anything by Gygax -- though his old-school approach has influenced my gaming sensibilities of late.

At first blush, Dungeon Module B2: The Keep on the Borderlands comes off as exceptionally detailed (dense?) and quite spartan in its visual representation. The text starts in the upper left-hand corner of the second page and continues virtually unimpeded through page 24, broken only by a handful of tables and black-and-white illustrations.

It's interesting that this module contains a fairly thorough introduction to roleplaying and a primer for first-time dungeon masters; pages 2-6 are mostly rules recaps and tips for running the module itself. Considering this adventure clocks in at just 28 pages, that's a large percentage of content devoted to first-time gamers -- especially considering this module was bundled in the D&D Basic Set.

Of course, the intro is pure gold from an old-school gaming perspective, chock-full of Gygaxian goodness intended to guide players new not only to this particular adventure, but also to the entire roleplaying hobby. It's accessible enough, though Gygax isn't prone to providing a great many examples to illustrate specific rule situations.

The substance of the adventure itself consists of a setting (a castle in fairly close proximity to the Caves of Chaos) and a few adventure hooks to get the party out into the wilderness. It's a sandbox setting for sure, and I understand that Keep on the Borderlands was one of the first published module to attempt such a presentation. Even so, it's clear that the wilderness setting is, by and large, just a vehicle to move the characters on toward the caves. Just a handful of encounters exist outside the Keep and the Caves -- though it's worth noting that Gygax offers up fairly diverse fare that ought to certainly spark the imagination of DMs and players who aren't interested in charging directly into the Caves of Chaos.

The most interesting aspect of the module is the cave complex itself. To me, the presentation doesn't evoke the feel of a warren of caves crawling with orcs, goblins and hobgoblins. Rather, each region (the Kobold Lair, the Orc Lair, etc.) feel more like a battle area in a miniatures wargame -- which makes sense, of course, given that D&D was less than a decade away from its roots as a tabletop wargame when Keep on the Borderlands was published. But still, each "lair" is essentially the same: several rooms stuffed with enemies and loot, culminating with a "boss" character who, in the module at least, appears willing to wait patiently in his chamber until the adventurers burst through the door. Though there are a few deviations, most of the lairs in each cavern seem to follow this pattern.

This is a bit at odds with my understanding of humanoid monsters. I have trouble envisioning female hobgoblins tending a cooking fire or bugbears keeping their loot in a locked storage room. Thankfully, I've read the various treatises on of Gygaxian naturalism that are floating around on the Web, so I understand completely why the module's author went out of his way to note how many kobold children might be present in a given room, or how easy it is to bribe the ogre who lurks in the caves. He was creating entire races and cultures, not just set pieces for the PCs to battle.

I think I understand the logic of the uber-detailed lairs, too. Gygax wanted the DM to have all the quantitative details (monster stats, patrol routes, rumor tables etc.) ready at hand, leaving him or her free to get creative with the rest of the Keep, the caves and their denizens. In fact, none of the NPCs are even named, not even the evil priest encountered deep in the Chapel of Evil Chaos; even this storytelling aspect is left entirely up to the DM.

Indeed, one could even say that Keep on the Borderlands is, by design, meticulously detailed but story-starved -- without condemning the module's author or early D&D in general. Gygax encouraged DMs to add or jettison anything that they felt appropriate. He provided the barest framework of a setting, confident that the circa-1980 gaming scene would offer up inspiration aplenty. Only then would a module like Keep on the Borderlands come alive and become a true adventure.

Reading Gygax for the First Time

I entered the roleplaying game hobby in the early 1990s, when story-driven games like Vampire and Shadowrun were all the rage and TSR staggered through financial hardship. Consequently, I never played classic D&D; indeed I’ve only ever played in two short-lived D&D 3.0 campaigns and a single session of 2nd Edition AD&D — amounting to, at most, 20 hours of play.

It shouldn’t come as a revelation, then, when I say that I’ve never read anything by Gary Gygax. I’ve never thumbed an issue of Dungeon or Dragon magazine, never sent in my own campaign notes to TSR’s Lake Geneva mailing address, never enjoyed Gygax’s elegiac prose on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

That’s going to change. Over the weekend I bought both the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide and Keep on the Borderlands, a module that’s informed many of the current products and writers I follow closely today. In coming weeks, I hope to chronicle my reaction to these and other works by Gygax, as I acquire and read them. Frankly, I’m interested to see how these volumes have weathered the decades since their publication. I also wonder much my own age might affect the outcome — after all, I’m 26 and have become accustomed to well-organized RPG books replete with tables of contents, indices and helpful reference guides.

Time will tell, so check back for more!

Spells Inspired by Heavy Metal, Part One

Ever since Jim Raggi over at Lamentations of the Flame Princess casually tossed out a half-dozen OD&D spells based entirely on metal song titles, I’ve been excited to try my hand at this sort of music-infused creativity. These spells were all created in about 30 minutes, intended for use in the Savage Worlds ruleset. The band names for each song are included in parentheses. Consider this the first entry in an irregular series; I'll write up more as the mood strikes me.

Rust of Coming Ages (Serenity)
Rank: Veteran
Power Points: 5
Range: Smarts, Circular radius centered on caster
Duration: Instant
Description: The spell causes objects within the caster’s Smarts radius to age instantaneously. Most metal objects will corrode and rust; leather will break; wood will rot and degrade. Gear that is already ancient (like heirloom weapons or artifacts) will crumble into dust. Weapons that aren’t destroyed will have their damage decreased by one die (down to a minimum of d4) and exhibit extreme signs of aging, making them worth one-fourth their average resale value. These weapons have a 30% chance of breaking each time they are used in combat.

Shadowgate (Battlelore)
Rank: Seasoned
Power Points: 3, 5 vs. an undead Wild Card
Range: Smarts, in a straight line from caster
Duration: 1 round
Description: When faced with undead creatures, the caster is able to open a gaping pit beneath the fiends, allowing the infernal darkness to reclaim its minions. On a successful Arcane roll, an inky black chasm opens at the feet of the target, which must then make an Agility check or fall in. With a raise, the check must be made at a –2 penalty. On a critical failure (snake eyes in Savage Worlds) the pit opens normally, but disgorges another undead foe instead of reclaiming one (GM's choice).

How Heavy This Axe (The Sword)
Rank: Novice
Power Points: 1 per damage die
Range: Touch
Duration: 1 day
Description: By touching a weapon or item, the spellcaster is able to increase or decrease its relative weight as perceived by the bearer. This weight change is variable, but can be no more than half of the object’s original weight.

The Fire Still Burns (DragonForce)
Rank: Novice
Power Points: 2
Range: Touch
Duration: As long as fuel is available
Description: By holding a piece of charred wood or fuel in his hands, the caster is able to kindle a new flame. The flame must have been extinguished within a number of hours equal to the caster’s Smarts.

Spirit of the Hawk (Falconer)
Rank: Seasoned
Power Points: 4
Range: Line of Sight
Duration: Smarts in minutes
Description: The druid is able to see through the eyes of a soaring hawk or other bird. The caster cannot control this animal, however.

Fantasy orcs and the stormtrooper syndrome

There are two types of orcs in fantasy roleplaying: the kind that PCs routinely slaughter by the dozens, and the kind that offer an unexpected (and thoroughly deadly) threat to players who were expecting the aforementioned variety. Which type you meet in your campaign depends largely on the stormtrooper syndrome.

In the d6 Star Wars RPG, players coined this rather hilarious observation to describe the notion that stormtroopers -- described in game material and official canon as elite soldiers armed with the best weapons and equipment-- couldn't hit the broadside of a barn. They were little more than scrubs whose flashy armor couldn't protect them from the heroes' blaster bolts; it took just a single shot to drop them, both in the movies and in the game.

Now, this worked fine for Star Wars players who wanted to emulate the best space-opera moments from the original trilogy. But a small subset of GMs chose to make stormtroopers powerful and rare, more like the intergalactic special forces they profess to be. In these games, regular Imperial Army troops filled the drop-like-flies stormtrooper role, and players quickly learned to dread seeing a flash of white armor in the distance.

It warms my heart when lowly fantasy orcs get this same treatment. I've modeled my own orcs on Fantasy Flight's Midnight campaign setting, which sees these brutes as the garrison troops of a victorious army, lording over the cowed populace and striding with confidence across the ravaged countryside -- kind of like how Middle Earth would have looked, had Sauron won.

Midnight's orcs got a stat boost, sure, but they got a much more subtle treatment in the fluff of the game. Simply put, they're terrifying, and everyone knows it. To the average commoners, orcs embody the horror and savagery that lurk just outside the town walls. A hero of great renown might be remembered in songs for facing down three or four of these monsters -- and dying in the process, of course.

These are the orcs of my campaign world. There will be plenty of low-level encounters populated by goblins and kobolds, sure, but the orc will be special.

[Image credit: ~Geistig, deviantART]

Days gone by...in-game, that is

One thing I always keep an eye on when GMing is the passing of each day. Unless you’re gaming in a realm with dramatically different solar cycles, it makes sense that most days should start with a sun(s)rise and end with the reverse about 12 hours later.

This daily cycle provides delicious opportunities for detailed scene-setting and cinematic visuals, but it also tends to get ignored in a lot of games. The GM simply says “OK, you spend the day in the city researching the nobleman’s estate. It’s night out now — do you want to go to the tavern?”

Sometimes that’s a necessary step to keep the game going; other times, it’s a missed opportunity. Cities and wilderness locales can undergo pretty substantial changes in flavor as the day transitions to evening and night. I’ve put together a brief list of “actionable” details that can be easily inserted into fantasy campaigns to better describe the passing of the day.

Urban environs

• In the morning, streets might be empty save the vendors setting up shop in the market district. It’s often unnaturally quiet, so any disturbance would be magnified manyfold and would likely wake nearby sleepers.
  
  
• Noon is usually the hottest part of the day in non-polar climates — a town might shut down during the afternoon so its denizens can retreat to cooler refuges.
  
  
• In the evening, there’s often an influx of people, as farmers and laborers head into the village after a long day in the fields. Traveling merchants arrive after many days on the road, eager to rest and relax.
  
  
• At night, there’s often a changing of the city watch, as the daytime soldiers head home to the barracks and the nighttime detail moves in. This would be a time of relative disorganization for all but the most disciplined brigades.

Wilderness environs

• In temperate areas, dew accumulates overnight in grassy areas. Footprints from travelers passing in the night are easy to discern in the morning dew.
  
  
• In the evening, nocturnal predators come out to hunt, and prey animals hunker down to await dawn. Flowers often close up, too, and mist can develop in humid, lowlying areas as the ground cools.
  
  
• After nightfall, the temperature can drop dramatically, and travelers without proper shelter can left to the mercy of the elements. Trees creak and groan as they cool in the night air. In very cold regions, water can freeze, leather can crack and metal blades become brittle with frost.
  
  
• At night, a slight elevation can give travelers a sweeping, panoramic view of the countryside. From there, it would be easy to pick out the flicker of campfires that might indicate other wayfarers in the area.

A new name and a campaign intro

All great campaigns need a name, right? I actually didn't know this until I read Ben Robbins' post on the topic (written in 2006, stumbled upon by me yesterday). It got the gears turning, though, and I think I've finally settled on a name for my Points of Light fantasy campaign, to be run using Savage Worlds. Here's the intro I'll be distributing to the players:

The Autumn Frontiers

The world is an unforgiving place. We forget this sometimes. A well-honed blade can safeguard a man's family. Strong walls can hold back invaders. And a disciplined army can protect an entire realm. But what would happen if these mainstays of civilization should falter?

This is the world of the Autumn Frontiers. After decades of bloody conquest, the high lord's army is pulling back, ending an ill-fought campaign and abandoning the frontier to the barbarians and savages. But even in defeat, an enterprising few can find opportunity. Soldiers returning home whisper tales of ruined fortresses filled with plunder unimaginable, of foul raiders that stalk the moors at night, of windswept mountains that hide the armories of kings. Evil has crept back into the world, nipping at the heels of the fleeing soldiers. Will you venture forth into the wilderlands?

Autumn Frontiers is a fantasy game for Savage Worlds, set in an untamed land that has shaken off the trappings of modern civilization. Exploration, discovery, and survival are the game's key themes, and every major decision will be left to the players. This style of roleplaying cuts both ways: If the players choose not to rescue a convoy of traveling mages, for example, then the wizards' arcane plunder will no doubt fall into the hands of fiendish outlaws — and these foes will almost certainly use their newfound power to exert greater control over the lawless lands. Similarly, rumors of a loot-filled dungeon may prove to be little more than conjecture if a rival band of graverobbers raids the catacombs first. Decisions have consequences.

Since there's no linear plot in this game, you shouldn't feel compelled to react in any particular way over the course of the game. You won't hurt my feelings. Every choice you make is one more chapter in the unfolding saga of the Autumn Frontiers.

Putting Points of Light through the creative meatgrinder

This past weekend, I went ahead and put Goodman Games’ Points of Light through the ringer. I gutted the setting, redrew the map, discarded a quarter of the content, reworked another quarter, inserted my own goodies — and had an absolute blast in the process. In retrospect, I think the Goodman team would be proud of my efforts. After all, Points of Light is nothing if not immanently gameable, as Jeff Rients so eloquently put it.

Most of this weekend, you see, was spent sitting in a coffee shop in St. Louis, killing time while my fiance busied herself as a bridesmaid for her friend’s wedding. I had no role in the wedding, which meant I had huge blocks of downtime while the bridal party shuttled around the city for photos, hair appointments, champagne brunches, etc. So I plopped myself down in a coffee shop, pulled up Points of Light on my laptop and started hacking.

As I’ve mentioned in a few previous posts, I’m hoping to run a sandbox-style fantasy game using Savage Worlds as my system of choice. I took the Wildlands map from Points of Light and dumped it into Photoshop; an hour later, I had the beginnings of my setting: a savage frontier punctuated with crumbling castles and keeps, the population reeling from a recently-concluded military campaign that ended in defeat for the invading empire. The army has retreated, leaving a shocked populace that now has to deal with invading orcs, hobgoblins, ogres and more.

I tried really hard to avoid scripting plots or connecting too many dots — that’s for the players to do, after all. But the seeds are definitely there.

Update: Goodman Games may be the best game company on the planet. I was planning to write an email asking for blank maps of the various kingdoms for my players to draw on. They pre-empted my request by releasing said maps last Wednesday. Wow. Get 'em here (PDF).

Meet the magnificent bastards

For a long time, I resisted the idea of morally gray characters — those self-serving scoundrels who would just as soon ransack the crypt than save the curator, for example. To me, they were the crutch of unimaginative players. Twas infinitely better, I thought, to dig deeper into the game’s source material and craft a nuanced character festooned with plot hooks and ulterior motives — red meat for the GM, in other words.

Gradually, though, I’m coming to appreciate the idea of the “magnificent bastard” — the magnanimous, perpetual ego trip of a character whose only goal in life is to leave behind a handsome corpse in some lonely, forgotten dungeon. These adventurers have as much of a place in today’s fantasy gaming as the Tolkienesque Dwarf fighter and Elf ranger. Right now, at least, I'd like to see more of them.

Taking the long way home

In the last couple of days, Joshua over at Tales of the Rambling Bumblers has offered up a couple posts about sandbox-style roleplaying that bear repeating. Today's entry in particular hit on a key theme.

In Sandbox play, it’s important not to gloss over travel with “And three weeks later, you arrive at the gates of Port Autumn.” If you do that, you’re robbing the game of one of the chief features of Sandbox play, the chance to interact with all the tiny details that make up the texture of the world.

Or, to put it another way: The party doesn't move at the Speed of Plot. Rather, the plot moves at the speed of the characters. Which is something like 6 miles per hour on foot, barring injury. Heh.

West Marches via Savage Worlds?

If I ever get around to sketching out my West Marches-style sandbox fantasy game, I’ll probably run it using Savage Worlds. When it comes to crunch, Savage Worlds and D&D 3.X are about the same (despite SW’s claims to the contrary). But for my money, SW is so much more fun, what with its exploding dice and playing cards and hyper-intuitive character generation. Plus, with the $10 Explorer's Edition, it's cheap and easy to equip your group.

My enthusiasm for running a character-driven sandbox game got a big boost this weekend, when I got my hands on the Savage Worlds Fantasy Bestiary Toolkit and the free 11-page PDF preview of Goodman Games’ Points of Light. Really, that 11-page preview is about as much as I need right now; it includes a detailed hex map and several dozen three-sentence entries for various map denizens. Combine that with a handful of critters from the Bestiary and the game pretty much writes itself. Which is the point, of course: the GM shouldn’t be doing much planning. Rather, the players should be driving the game forward by looking at the vast, empty, unpopulated map and making decisions as to where to go and what to explore.

I’m thinking I could get somewhere between 6 and 10 players to make characters for this game, then I’d run a session whenever any combination of three or more of them could get together.

Anyone else tinkering with a West Marches-type game right now?

Social codes and caste systems: Looking back at L5R

Last fall, my group took a break from our current campaign and played through a three-game arc from Legend of the Five Rings. It was my first time dabbling in L5R, a game I’ve resisted mightily due to my general disinterest in Asian-themed gaming and pop culture.

It proved to be a terrific experience and a high-water mark for me in terms of game immersion. I was initially put off by the rigid structure of L5R’s playstyle, with its emphasis on clan traditions and social codes. About 20 minutes into the character generation, however, I realized that (after months spent playing a free-form superhero RPG) I actually craved a little direction for my character.

It’s fun to create a brand-new character with an innovative worldview, but sometimes you want to feel part of something more. That was L5R for me — I felt like my character instantly stepped into a complex society and became a part of it. I spent less than an hour flipping through the rulebook, but I got a solid handle on the game and setting. My samurai had an extended family and a ready-made place in Rokugan. I wasn’t being pigeonholed; rather, the game made me feel like I was stepping up, ready to draw upon a rich clan legacy and take my rightful place in history.

What’s more, the emphasis on custom and clan expectations really served to homogenize our group of players, who come from a fairly wide variety of gaming backgrounds. L5R’s clan setup ensured that no matter how we crafted our characters, they’d all be bound by the same sense of honor and duty that drove samurai of old.

Where’s this post going? Well, earlier this week I got my hands on a copy of Legend of the Five Rings — the second edition, I think, but the price was right. So although I’ve not played L5R since that three-session arc last year, there may yet be room for one more Rokugan visit in the future.

The artifacts of our hobby

I’d rather have a pile of lavishly illustrated books spread across my gaming table than a PDF any day.

Sure, electronic documents are supremely portable, and I’ve relied on them many times in the past for their utility and portability. Moreover, their minimal cost has enabled many newcomers to enter the gaming industry, which has been a great boon for our hobby. These days, my gaming table invariably sees three or four laptops humming at each game session, the players themselves half-hidden behind computing hardware. In truth, this shouldn't be a big deal; at 26, I'm part of the generation that grew up with personal computers (specifically notebooks), and they'll only become a more integral part of our game culture from here on out.

But my fondest RPG memories involve “classic” gaming: a kitchen table strewn with dice, pencils, miniatures and battered, much-loved RPG books. These mythic tomes — imbued with an aura not terribly far removed from the spellbooks of arcane wizards — served as the birthplace of adventure and the last resting place of heroes. Worlds lived and died between their pages. They were filled with rich lore and lavish illustrations, yes, but what they held more than anything was potential: the promise, if you will, of worlds unexplored and games yet to be played.

The books on my shelf bear the war wounds of all the games I played. I still remember accidentally sitting on my Star Wars d6 core book, leaving a lightning-shaped crease in the cover. Pages 38 and 39 of my Mutants & Masterminds book are gone forever, having been fused together when I dropped a slice of pizza and then absentmindedly closed the book. For reasons I can't explain, my D&D 3.5 book falls open to the Monk's page every time I set it on the table.

The act of cracking open a new RPG book or penciling in a new skill on a character sheet is a part of the tactile appeal of gaming. Given this, it’s easy to understand how roleplaying sprang from a small group of overly creative tabletop wargamers. Dice, tokens, markers, miniatures, charts, books — these are the physical artifacts of our shared hobby, and I derive a strong sense of inclusion by keeping the tradition alive.

(As an aside, the inspiration for this post came from Xeveninti, a new blog from an old-school gamer who's just now finding his way back into the hobby. It's been fascinating to read about how he discovered roleplaying in the first place; I highly recommend checking in with him.)

Pictured above is my own RPG shelf. It's a work in progress.

What I love about RPGs, or The Problem of Logistics

If there's one thing I love about rpgs, it's playing them. And if there's one thing I don't like about rpg's, it's trying but not finding time to play them. The latter happens all too often.

Our Wild Talents game got off to a really nice start, but weekends filled up fast, and football season (the real football, meaning NotSoccer) as about to begin. Through January, playing rpgs on Sundays is basically shot for me. Priorities, you know.

Anyway, we've been having trouble scheduling our game, and now we're batting around the possibility of splitting the group and running them in parallel for a little. In the meantime, we still haven't nailed down a time to play regularly, and this was what it was all supposed to be about: getting back into the groove of a regular, biweekly game. Something to depend on.

Now, this isn't the fault of anyone in particular, but it just stinks and is all too common with gaming groups. The hardest part about gaming isn't the johnny on the spot creativity, synthesizing a ruleset, or strategizing a character build - it's logistics.

I'm just thankful that I'm getting involved with a Play by Post game.

Scoring a Game

When I troll around rpg message boards (which is unsettlingly often), I'll see a thread on music pop up every so often. Folks will ask for music recommendations for certain kinds of games, and the response will often be something like, "Check out this site or this video game soundtrack, because it has great ambient tavern sounds. Clink clink. The voice of an old man in the back ground offering 5 strangers a bag of gold to save a princess. Etc." And then there are those who like movie soundtracks (but always shy away from known songs, like the Indiana Jones theme, because that would be gauche).

I love music when I'm playing and actively scoring a game, but I don't like either of these strategies. Some of my best game experiences have involved the kind of music I actively listened to at the time. In a Star Wars game, our seedy crew of a dilapidated starship flew through space and descended through the atmosphere to the sounds of Beck - funky, spacey, zany, with a drop of cowboy music. In a pulpy game built around kinetic action and fighting Nazis (of course), the drum and bass of the Propellerheads drove the action. If you like hip hop, I can attest that it fits in a huge range of scenes beyond the club.

The point is that many of my most fun game moments include the bobbing of the head. No matter how elegant the rules are or how robust the setting is, it's about being social with a bunch of friends imagining the same thing. Good music is one of the most underrated game aids in this respect.

And beer doesn't hurt either.

The shape of things to come

Back in 1995, I really didn’t have much of an idea what roleplaying actually was. I was 13 and had recently purchased my first Magic: The Gathering deck; I was utterly smitten by the brightly colored illustrations and the sparse, detail-soaked lines of flavor text on each card. Magic was a smashing success for me and my friends, but D&D was a nebulous concept — I knew older players enjoyed this game, and that (like Magic) it drew on Tolkien-inspired fantasy tropes. But as far as the mechanics and rules went, I knew only that it involved creating a character with stats describing how well he would perform in a given scenario, then rolling dice when those scenarios came up in the game (this, I hazarded, was the province of the gamemaster, a term that quickly joined my lexicon as I endeavored to learn more about RPGs).

Still, I was bound and determined to venture further down the path. This was pre-Internet, mind you, but I was lucky enough to have a subscription to InQuest, which at the time was a rock-solid gaming mag that fanned the flames of Magic’s explosive popularity. I had no RPGs of my own, so I decided to create one based on Deathlands, a a post-apocalyptic pulp series I’d been reading voraciously. In retrospect, my bumbling attempt at creating a game was comical. Lacking solid knowledge of what RPGs actually were, I went ahead and crafted a hybrid roleplaying board game, where the players explored an intricately detailed map of the post-nuke United States, trading merchandise (Food, Ammo, Generators, etc) and dealing with roving bands of raiders. Most of the mechanics involved moving your little miniature down a road, entering a city and then rolling on a table to see what happened. I’m not sure exactly where a character’s stats factored in — again, I was operating with very little hard knowledge of RPG mechanics.

But it was fun, especially because I put a lot of effort into solitaire play so I could tool around in my trading caravan even when my friends weren’t visiting. Again, a lot of that was just me rolling dice and consulting random tables, but still — in my mind, I was roleplaying. It was cool!

I wish I still had that game, even just the crude map I sketched out, but it’s all lost to the sands of time. No matter: six months after my Deathlands foray, I stumbled across West End Games’ Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2nd Edition, Revised & Expanded. And the rest, as they say, is history.

EDITED Oct 27, 2010 to add a photo dump from my recent post-apocalyptic miniatures painting. Recognize anybody?