Blogroll up and running

Did ya see the new blogroll to the right of this page? It's something I've meant to pull together for quite a while, and until this morning I didn't realize just how easily Google makes it. With just a few mouse clicks, I was able to import all of the gaming blogs in my Google Reader. Didn't have to retype a thing. Most of these blog deal primarily with D&D, and I hope to add a few more focusing on other cool games.

The Great Old Ones

While we're all talking about our favorite games other than D&D, don't forget Call of Cthulhu. Cthulhu is the shit!  

There was a long stretch when I didn't play rpgs at all.  We're talking from the end of middle school through my first year of grad school.  On our way back from Mardi Gras (which was toward the end of our first year), my buddies and I bashfully started talking about rpgs.  We decided to give it a whirl again, and my buddy ran a couple sessions of Cthulhu.  

I remember the end of the game so vividly: We stood by as some weird bird creature stole this poor lady's baby.  It was all our fault.  Madness and tragedy.  We were all so scared that we had to go immediately to the bar afterwards.  At that point, my friend from Minnesota started talking about the benefits of allowing concealed weapons under law.  Because, you know, someone on the Minnesota subway could pull out a gun and pop you at any time, and you need to be able to defend yourself.  

Anyway, Cthulhu officially got me back into rpgs.  I haven't played it in years, but I fucking love it.

I used to really like Car Wars too.

There's no room in my schedule for D&D

Unlike most of the gaming bloggers I follow, I don’t actually play much D&D. It wasn’t the game I started with, and over the years I’ve been lucky enough to find players willing to try out a myriad of different (and better) fantasy RPGs. So while I’m eager to share my own list of games enjoyed (piling onto the ongoing meme that’s swept the RPG blogosphere over the last couple weeks), this list isn’t so much an aberration as it is a simple illustration of my gaming tastes. I’ve probably played 10 sessions of D&D, all told, in my life so far.

Star Wars d6 – My first RPG experience; hugely fun if only because of the insane scaling rolls required to model the differences between the Death Star and, say, an X-Wing. The Death Star rolls 30d6 to kill the X-Wing...nice... Alas, it's out of print.

Blue Planet – Easily one of the most detailed, immersive sci-fi settings ever published. I’ve had the privilege of knowing Jeff Barber (the game’s creator) over the years, and his pure, unadulterated enthusiasm for the game proved absolutely infectious. Jeff is a gamer’s gamer, and Blue Planet exudes quality from every page. In the last couple months, it was announced that RedBrick Limited (an Australian game publisher) had acquired the rights to re-publish the line and, possibly, put out entirely new products.

Savage Worlds – It is what it says on the cover: “Fast! Furious! Fun!” With all the attention that OD&D retro-clones have received lately, it’s important to remember that newer games can pull of the same stripped-down style as well. Savage Worlds is a generic ruleset that I’ve used for Star Wars, post-apocalyptic and superhero games.

Everway – Want a rules-lite game? Try Everway — it uses a funky Tarot-inspired deck of cards to resolve encounters. This, in turn, puts a lot of responsibility on the players and GM to avoid abusing the system, but it’s a great game for a relaxed, mature crowd. I’ve used variations of the Everway system for dark fantasy, Star Wars, superheroes, Little Fears and my friend’s DIY steampunk setting.

Dark Heresy – The much anticipated game set in the grim, dark Warhammer 40,000 universe has the highest production value of any game I’ve ever played. The main rulebook (400+ pages of full-color gothic goodness) is pricey, but a reprint was just released by Fantasy Flight Games, which as plans to continue publishing the game line.

Fading Suns – It’s sort of like Dark Heresy, but with more of a Dune-inspired slant. The future is still dark, the spaceships are still ancient and cumbersome, but the overall setting is a tad brighter and (more importantly) populated with alien races that aren’t automatically classified as enemies. Ironically, the game line is currently supported by RedBrick, the same group of Aussies keeping Blue Planet alive.

These are just a few standouts from the many RPGs I’ve known over the years.

Steampunk: The humor hammer falls

Here's the bookend to last week's gushy post about the cool new steampunk newsletter:. In a blisteringly funny essay, McSweeney's has taken the genre apart and reduced it to its most embarassing elements:

This looks like a late-18th-century organette, correct? Look again. It hides the Dell laptop you got me when I went to college. This bronze hand crank turns it on, and I've hidden a miniature photo printer where the tune sheet is supposed to go. I even installed Linux. I've put a lot of time into this since I quit my job at Anthropologie, which is something else I wanted to tell you about. Don't get up and go to Lowe's yet. But when you're there can you get me a two-speed fan capacitor?

More on Failure

Pat has been posting a lot.  I have not been been posting at all.  This is because he succeeds, while I fail.

This success to failure ratio has been reflected in our Wild Talents game, as Pat noted.  I'm the GM, and Pat's right: these high level characters succeed a lot, like 95% of the time.  I've generally found this to be pretty satisfying so far.  This dynamic allows the players to drive the story forward where they want it to go by choosing what types of rolls they want to make then, and then having the story travel down the avenue opened up by their success.  This also is fun for me, because I get to make fun stuff up about exactly how they succeed and thereby steer the story within the frame I've come up with.  (I particularly like it when the scientist succeeds on any of his multiple different types of knowledge skills, because I get to make up wonky sci-fi explanations about why the world works the way it does.)

But we are missing the element of uncertainty that flows from the clattering of the dice.  One of my friends who I used to play with (in law school, of course) is a bit of a gambler, and the only reason he played was to throw those bones and hope to catch lightning in a bottle.  Without the uncertainty, the electricity's all gone.

Here's our theorized solution (with a prelude): We're using the one roll engine mechanics, which not only tells you in a single roll if you succeed, but also how precisely or efficiently you succeed.  Moving forward, I'm going to focus on the narrative consequences that flow from inefficient or imprecise success.  If pc's don't succeed precisely, consequences will flow.  For example, if the diplomat manages to gather facts for an upcoming trial, but does so imprecisely, I'll say that he pissed off some other diplomats...and that'll be something the players will have to deal with.

From all this discussion, you may be able to tell that this game has really been challenging for me as a GM.  I'm very sensitive to the railroading issues Pat discusses below, and I try to avoid them at all costs.  I'm also trying to let the pc's shine because it's a high level game, but I want to put them in some tough situations (which I haven't yet, but trust me, it's coming soon - third session is coming up.)  And there's other usual GMing stuff, like keeping everyone involved, giving each character a chance to shine, being fair, keeping up pace, etc.  It's a fine balance, and it's become clear to me that context really matters.  I think the system we're using is really cool, but it's definitely making me think about GMing from new angles.   

Failure's never been so much fun.

Ultra-high-level roleplaying, and the perils thereof

A few quick hits from the weekend...

***

We played our second session of Wild Talents on Sunday, and a few things became clear. We are — by choice — playing a very high-powered game, with each character being the head of some guild or private army or merchant union. This means, by extension, that our story involves very high-level, world-threatening themes. Again, this is cool. What we realized in our Sunday session, however, was that our very powerful characters were going to succeed in most die rolls put before them, so we had to figure out a way to keep the game challenging while we mobilized starfleets, influenced planetary law and rerouted energy shipments (all high-level stuff that went off without a hitch due to our insanely high stats). But failure — or the threat thereof — is a good thing, and we’ve made some changes to ensure that the dice still serve a purpose in our Wild Talents game.

***

Black Sun Games’ official Web site is up and running, though most of the links don’t work. I’m continually impressed by these guys: By all accounts, they’re doing everything right as far as opening a successful, long-term game store in Chicago. Check out their banner...looks like some Flames of War minis in the background? I’ll have to check that game out.

***

I joined Dark Reign, the Warhammer 40k RPG fan site, and was simply bowled over by the volume of fan-generated content on there. They’ve got GM aids, full-fledged sourcebooks, adventure hooks, random encounter tables and alternate rules. The best part is that (it appears) any member can contribute articles, which really has my creative gears turning. Shouldn’t be tough to find inspiration — I’m about 200 pages away from finishing up the massive Eisenhorn omnibus by Dan Abnett, which means I’ve been totally immersed in 40k for the last month or two.

From the shadows of a Cold City, a Hot War

Cold City is a lean, keen game about monster hunting in the ruins of postwar Berlin. The players are American, German and Russian agents motivated as much by their mutual distrust of each other than by the actual task at hand. It’s a fun premise, and the game system itself includes a robust trust mechanic to model those complex interpersonal relationships.

To me, Cold City seemed like a great one-off game, something that couldn’t really support campaign play. And although that hypothesis is still untested (I own the game but haven’t yet played it) the mythos got a little richer this summer with the release of Hot War.

Billed as the spiritual sequel to Cold City, Hot War imagines London 1960s as a tense, apocalyptic powderkeg of a city, strewn with scheming politicians, twisted science, demonic creatures and a healthy dose of paranoia. The review is on RPG.net; I don’t know much more, but I’m thoroughly interested in trying out this game.