staying up late, playing games
John L. Morton of the University of Glamorgan wrote into the Guardian on July 21st with a rather excellent letter. It finishes with the following line.
So, biblical fundamentalism only makes one testable prediction, and it’s wrong.
I guess this is the whole point. We’re meant to take everything on faith…
Our beginning characters in SeaFarers are going to be inhabitants of the fishing port of Theeport which lies on the West coast of a large country. The Narrator has decreed that we should all know each other to start, come from Theeport and know a little about boats or the sea.
I use the term Narrator to describe Paul as we’re using a “story game” approach to making characters and resolving conflict.
Here’s the first sample character, a girl called Turi and a brief description of the system we’re using.
Traits : “Turi is a shell diver like all of her family. She is tall, thin and wiry and like most in the region is dark, with coppery-brown hair. She lives with her three brothers and her father – an arrangement which has made her tomboyish and she’s a capable wrestler as a result. She carries a steel knife and a diving shell which allowed her to stay underwater for nearly 10 minutes. She has collected a small fortune in pearls and semi-precious stones from her diving exploits. She never knew her but her father claims her mother was a woman of influence from one of the big inland cities. Her family are somewhat devout to the Old One and still have a small shrine to her in their basement.
Drive : She is Driven by her desire to gain wealth and travel to see if she still has family in the cities.
Flaw : Due to an overdive when she was younger which caused her eardrums to burst, Turi is 40% deaf
In addition to the details above, each character has three scores: Hand, Wounds and Story Points. We’re using a playing card resolution model.
Hand: the number of cards the player can hold.
Wounds: The character can take up to three wounds
Story Points: representing opportunities for the player to take control of the outcomes of scenes.
Conflict is resolved for the most part by the player choosing a card from his hand and playing that against a blind draw from the deck. There’s a randomising element (the Deck) and a small amount of control the player can exert on the outcome because of the cards she may hold in her hand. She might play a high value card to win a conflict or might choose to play a low value card in a low stakes conflict as an opportunity to get a better card on the next re-draw. Underlined traits allow the player to play a second card (adding to the value of the first) if they choose.
We’ll continue to add more to the system and background as time goes on and transpose highlights to the WIKI. We are also still recruiting for a couple more players from the Greater Belfast area?
As I mentioned before, we’re losing our Pendragon GM to the greener pastures of London and I was quite enjoying playing rather than being the GM which is why I’m not rushing in to start up either the Zombi game or continue the WatchTower game (which would need Gav back anyway as we’re down too many players).
A couple of months ago, Paul mentioned he’d like to run a fantasy game which started out small and built up big, reminiscent of my Ars Magica game from the early 90s where I started all the players with Grogs to allow them to get a flavour for the region before allowing them to have a Magus or Apprentice.
So, over the last couple of days we’ve been building a background on the WIKI, making a new game system and writing snippets as well as generating characters and personalities, gods and towns. I’ll dispense some of the stuff I’ve written here on the blog too for public consumption.
As most will know, I’m an RPG-slut. But we’ve had some upheavals recently with people coming and going due to really crap reasons (getting married, moving out of the country, etc).
So we played a card game.
Super-Munchkin only took about an hour to play with three players so it’s decent enough for evenings when no-one has anything prepared. We only got a third of the way through the event deck so there was probably room for a couple more players.
I’m wary of card and board games obviously being an RPG-slut as I mentioned, and doubly wary of a card game which makes a farce out of superhero-gaming – the genre I like most of all.
It’s a fun game, not perhaps as fun as Zombies!!! but worth a look. It only takes a few rounds in the game to go from donating free cards and assistance to other players, to bargaining for cards and treasures to then deliberately hamstringing them. Kinda goes against what we claim is part of the spirit of the RPG (teamwork etc) but it’s just a bit of fun, right?
Would I recommend it? Maybe. The original game, Munchkin, was perhaps a little more groundbreaking and some of the cards are a little but stupid but as I said, we only got a third of the way through the deck as Paul trounced us and got to level 10. To extend the game, had we thought, we should have insisted on level 20 being the end of the line. but simply doubling the level required is more likely to triple of quadruple the amount of time it takes to play (as level goes up as well as down).
Due to life and circumstance, I’m looking for a couple of extra people for our weekly game sessions. The Monday night/TTN group needs at least one person maybe two, the “various nights call of cthulhu” group needs only one.
So where are all these gamers?
RPGPundit puts it well.
…today, the average parent doesn’t fear RPGs will turn their child into a satan worshiper; the average parent fears that RPGs will turn their kid into a mouth-breathing basement-dweller who they’ll have to support well into their 30s and who will suffer from a host of psycho-social disorders, as well as lifetime virginity.
This might explain why there seems to be a dearth of gamers. I admit, had I not been totally busy on the weekend of Q-CON XIV that I might have tried to recruit.
How many games put you in the role of playing Ordinary Joe?
Not many.
A recent thread on TheRPGSite talks about:
Originally Posted by The RPG Cliche List
Nephilim Law. In modern-day occult games, mortal humans are considered to have the same intrinsic worth as cattle. (So named for Nephilim, a game that is particularly blatant about this.)Now, Exalted isn’t a modern-day occult game, but you can definitely view it as an anti-humanistic game: in the setting, the various Exalted are the important people in society, and mundane human beings are nigh-irrelevant.
Apart from Nephilim (which Lesley refused to play because she valued the lives of the humans in the game), there are heaps of games which treat the rank and file of the world as nothing but cattle.
The thread at TheRPGSite derails nastily into accusations of racism and a lot of debate about whether the issue is with player characters given their powers or player characters who earn their powers. Those aren’t the issue at all.
The issue is more how the game empowers the players and how thy are encouraged to treat humanity in game.
Nephilim treats humans as disposable underwear. Their incarnations destroy the lives of those they inhabit. And they’ve been doing it for centuries. This provided an issue for many people. The alternative was to inhabit a Thermos and not interact meaningfully in the game (or become a Dr Theopolis-style advisor)
Vampire dehumanises the brutality and violation of feeding in allowing a player character to have a “Herd” score where they can treat humanity like a fast-food restaurant. The designers are at fault as they lost the “tragedy” of the Embrace and the Hunt and chased the gothic-punk “everyone wears leather trenchcoats and hide Katanas up their sweaters” market.
In Exalted, the players are encouraged to become a super-elite. This is based on my interpretation of the Exalted rulebook. You exalt and the game changes into something like Godzilla versus Mothra. Sometimes you catch a glimpse of humanity.
SLA Industries creates inhuman combat monsters who fight contract killers – serial killers with advertising – both of whom take very little notice of the rank and file of humanity. They’re bullet-catchers. They’re incidental damage in the firefight. They’re categorically tragically killed by passing Fire Engines. It’s crap being Joe Ordinary.
I must say, I’m not keen on the idea of humanity hate. I think there is a lot of it owing to the idea that gamers are mostly maladjusted teenagers who want to play out power trip fantasies. It’s sadly true.
Back in my teens I was really uncomfortable playing games set in Northern Ireland. It was just a little close to home. You’re a being of power – do you take a side in the Troubles? And the one game we did play had one player work out his revenge fantasies on people who bullied him in school. Healthy therapy? I doubt it. It felt unclean and voyeuristic. Brr.
Are there many games where you play normal humans? Zombi would be one. In The 23rd Letter it probably pays to be a normal human.
We’ve begun an investigation as minor members of the Golden Dawn as a break from our Delta Green game. We’ve now got two more sessions before Graham goes on holiday and I doubt we’ll get things finished in time.
The game has progressed quickly enough with us witnessing assaults by re-animated blind men bearing heathen daggers. We’ve seen the effects of a powerful mentalist and his two Sikh guards. We’ve found the heart of Dr Dee’s sanctuary in Mortlake.
Guided by the Tarot, we find ourselves at the horns of a dilemma. We feel we must act quickly and put an end to the black, unfolding darkness. But doubt about the nature of our enemy has stayed our hands.
Graham plays Logan, a historian with a beard. He seems reticent and slow to act and I am afraid that his caution may be our undoing.
Fintan plays a doctor who has been called away from the action by a sick relative. We hope he remains to minister to our injuries which become ever more life threatening.
Jim plays Philip, a laissez-faire scoundrel who pretends at painting and Tarot reading when he is not drinking the Milk of Paradise. He is flanked sometimes by his man, Dai, a welshman and petty thief.
I play Franz Ritter von Becke, an Austrian nobleman and expert duellist. I bring my valet, Josef Bauer, everywhere with me and allow his taciturn wit to steer my intents.
Most recently we have found the very forces of nature arraigned against us. The oppressive English summer has attracted swooping ravens, stinging bees and the attacks of savage wild dogs which were no match for my sabre.
I fear we must act quickly. Upon our return to Henley, I will introduce my sabre to Kendall, the mentalist and his burly Sikh henchmen.
A few months ago I posted on Six Word Stories here and here and on One-Sentence Settings here.
Similar to PostSecret comes One Sentence
Some of them are just….fantastic.
Last night we decided to give The WatchTower a rest as we’ve lost Yellowfist for a couple of months due to his impending martial marital duties.
Thus ensued a discussion about what to play instead. A long discussion.
We eventually settled on Pendragon. Paul is playing a Roman Christian from Dorset. Rob is playing a Saxon from Silchester. And I’m playing a Cymric Christian from Lindsey.
My character, Uwain, a stocky Northerner is overshadowed by his bearlike Saxon friend and his Roman friend in terms of family glory (he starts with 15 whereas the others start with hundreds). He’s also the only player to start without a proper warhorse. He is, however, the better swordsman, lancer and horseman of the three and has gained some reknown for his valor.
At the start of next session, we journey to a tournament…somewhere…for something…
Watched it last night round with Aidan, Abi and some ice cream. It’s a good movie – personally I don’t think it’s the same sort of emotional tour-de-force as perhaps Fight Club or American History X or even Watership Down but it’s a good movie nonetheless. They manage skillfully remove a lot of the anticipation and wonder from the movie with what can only be described as fumbling with foreshadowing.
On other news – I left my three books of occult philosophy (trois libres de occulta philosophia) with Aidan to read and perhaps start to distill into something resembling a game that wouldn’t need me in the room if you wanted to run it.
“This is Kitty Thoreau for LCI News Dakota in a prefab cabin built by the newly inaugurated WatchTower New York. What are they doing in Dakota? Good question and something we’ll answer after the break.”
RASA Fashion, the leading bespoke tailors are now touring the Dakotas. Call 1-80-555-5555 to find your nearest store.
The amazing thing is that this building was created from the air by Balance, the leader of WatchTower New York. We’re currently being held aloft by Yellow Fist, the superhumanly strong scrapper who provides WatchTower with much-needed muscle. I’ve been talking with Indigo, the wearer of the Torus Research prototype “Rescue Suit” designed to help locate and rescue people in danger and two senior technicians from Torus; Mikey and Pete. I’m told we also owe some thanks to SkyCrane who is acting as a forward observer ten miles up.”
[She pauses and walks around the prefab, pointing at the individuals and the equipment]
“This device, dubbed the VacScoop, is removing all of the pollutants collected on our nations beaches and removing them, dumping them into deep space. The process of cleaning all the world’s oceans of 90% of pollutants is apparently going to take less than 12 hours. The question this journalist has is: Why hasn’t anyone done this before?
[she pauses and the sound goes out]
“I’ve just been told we’re going to teleport to the Indian Ocean, on the other side of the planet, to continue this work. I can really see this being a viable alternative to aircraft flights with instantaneous travel, no risk of deep-vein thrombosis. Yes, it can send you to the Bahamas but you have to purchase your ticket 30 days in advance.”
[she grins an award winning smile]
“Just joking folks, this advanced tech is still in testing which does make me a little nervous but it seems to be working fine.
Just so we’re clear: we’re saving the world here….on live TV….”
I was doing my six-monthly browse through the stacks at Replay in Bangor and as usual found myself not wanting to leave without parting with some cash. It wasn’t due to the intrusion of the proprietor who helpfully inquired if there was something he could help me with (wow, it was kinda irritating), but because I like to support my local game store. The plight of game stores is legend.
So this is why I find myself with a copy of the main book from White Wolf’s latest line: Scion
Scion Hero is about people finding out they are the sons and daughters of gods long past. To their credit they include a good description of the pantheons they think would be fashionable (Norse, Japanese, Aztec, Egyptian, Voodoo, Greek) and if the company’s past is anything to go by there will be new pantheon splatbooks out in the next few months as well as some net-pantheons created by rabid fans.
It’s not a bad book, ideal for the generation of low powered heroes along the lines of Hercules, Perseus and other offspring of the gods. Of course I’ll never get around to playing it having neither the players nor the GMs available even though it’s a low level superhero game.
Scion Hero is the first of a series of books which continues in June this year with Scion DemiGod which will be covering the more powerful scions – I suppose it might be the equivalent of the D&D Expert or Master set if Scion Hero is to be considered the Basic set.
I’m not mad struck on the layout but then this is the first WW game I’ve bought in a long time. The art ranges from very good to “uh, what is that meant to be” which isn’t to say any of it is bad.
It’s a lot of fun to read too.
Heroes is a lot of fun, one of the two series that I can be bothered watching (the other is The Dresden Files).
Of course, they just revealed both Eric Roberts and Malcolm McDowell on staff. I’m sorry guys, but I realy don’t think this is going to turn out well for anyone. Eric was over the top and a major reason why the recent Dr Who film was such a stinker. And McDowell, whether you see him in Star Trek Generations or Tank Girl is just the same over the top villain.
If you HAD to cast them, why not break with tradition and cast them as the good guys?
northerain is the blog of the artist behind Bloodsong Media. I like his stuff which he describes as:
My style is more or less based on existing photographs. I use those to paint over them in photoshop. Since they’re not sketches, it’s impossible to do it in black and white.
Sounds perfect for both The 23rd Letter and what I also envisaged for Qabal. And I am interested in finding out what this image is about.
Mark notes that Diddlysquat is dead.
I didn’t know much about it, to be honest but reading the testimony of specky I’m reminded of lots of the silliness that went on within Crucible Design.
In the end, projects like this are fuelled by a small core of people (usefully termed schemers and collaborators.). Everyone else is pretty much surplus to requirements but as these types of projects tend to be started by friends, people can be a little over-cautious about being honest here. Allowing a project to slide (or worse fail) because you didn’t want to hurt the feelings of someone who isn’t contributing seems silly on the face of it. But we all do it (at least those of us who are human have).
The most annoying thing, when a project is failing or when someone is being asked to leave a project, is the tendency for some to be passively obstructive (or even actively destructive). I’ve seen this in the RPG industry as well as in The Real World. Failing to fulfill promises again and again, blame-shifting, becoming upset when duties are removed and yet, when the deadline comes, their inactivity causes the deadline to slide. Problems like this plagued our fanzine WildTalents and seriously delayed the production of every single book we ever published. And when I stopped propping people up, when I stopped doing the extra work to make things happen and when I refused to give credit where it was not due, then Crucible Design stopped producing books.
Q-CON, another project I invested hugely in (I did the preliminary research, coving everything I could from WARPS, got the budget for Q-CON 1, got the people together, ran Q-CON 2 and 3) was always beset at the start of the year by people who had ideas but no intention of implementing anything or completing anything. It meant that with 2 weeks of preparation (after 6 months of failed investigation by two people), I was left alone to run the convention and pull together the Star Trek Megagame. I had to rely on real people with real commitment to fun to get it done (and a wave goes out to Colin and Lesley on this one). Sure, we pulled successful profitable conventions out of nowhere but it wasn’t without a committee that was so supportive that they had a vote of no-confidence in my ability to run the convention which failed:- probably more to do with the individuals not wanting to have to take over…
When relations break down within a project, it’s best for everyone and best for the project if you take the steps to cut out the chaff. I wish I’d done it with Crucible wayback when but even now I find it hard to do probably because I’m not the git everyone thinks I am.
Really.
Now, identifying the difference between chaff and rot is difficult and I dont think anyone gets it right. Chaff are just people who serve no useful purpose. They probably slow things up because in a democratic committee you have to ask everyone’s opinion. Chaff won’t kill you but they may bore you.
Rot are much worse – these guys are scheming against you and against the success of the project. These are the guys who will plot with junior members of the team and do their best to make sure their name is at the top of the list of every success and nowhere to be seen in the event of a failure. When you’re presenting your work, at a convention or whatever, they’re usually the first out with the pen when someone asks for a book signing.
In my experience, the speed at which someone gets a pen to sign a book at request is inversely proportional to their contribution to the book and you can be pretty sure that if someone has their pen out before you ask then they likely were responsible for delays in the product rather than actually being productive.
Thing is: if you’re a team leader then you already know who the chaff and the rot are. Be honest with yourself.
Ghost Whistler on RPG.net came up with a23rd Planet idea. He was riffing off the name of the game but it made me think tonight about:
The 23rd Century
Fast forward events in The 23rd Letter by two hundred years and you might have an idea of a micro-setting.
Making psychics essential for space travel just seems really tired these days, probably due to Warhammer 40K more than anything. If it were up to me I’d probably promote the importance of biofeedback in maintaining cold sleep. Telekinesis for construction or, probably more usefully, handling of hazardous materials or handling of goods in Zero-G and microgravity. Or the use of Regent for rehabilitation of criminals.
And if everyone had the opportunity to be psychic? If it became a natural part of humanity? Would you see a Gattaca-type society where there was a psychic overclass? How would you FAKE psychic powers in order to advance? Would they have found ways to reduce the Stress involved in psychic abilities?
What about alien contact? Do the aliens have psychics? Perhaps they do and thoughts are in their own language and therefore psychics are important as translators. Or are alien minds so different that they cause immediate madness in a psychic who tried to read one?
I’ve been writing a lot more these last few days – ironically not much on the two tasks I have been given – but plenty on other stuff which I shouldn’t be doing. I got some new books as well which I hope to tear through and get reviews up as soon as possible.
Maybe it’s because I have a lot more time these days to wallow in self-pity … read and contemplate the world.
Hm.
The Guardian has a book review on De viribus quantitatis (On the Powers of Numbers) penned by Luca Paciola, a man who was a personal friend of Leonardo da Vinci and who is considered not only the father of modern (double entry) accounting but also one of the leaders in magic tricks. The book covers mathematical puzzles, tricks, proverbs and verses and codes.
Don’t try this at home…
Take cool well water and soak your hands for a while; then shake them, you can put them in a pan full of melted lead over a flame, and it will not cook you. It is even better if you put some ground rock alum in the water … to the uneducated … it will appear to be a miracle.
I’m in a bad mood today and Crowley suits my mood. What are you meant to do when you’ve tried to sort out issues in your own life and someone interprets a “self-enhancing” action as “them-destroying”? Th reason? Because you didn’t come to them for assistance, because you might want to stand on your own two feet, they interpret it as rejection. People, on the whole are stupid. Crowds moreso.
It reminds me of the utter stupidity of adults who lay a whup-ass on their kids and when the kids say “What have I done?” the adult invariably replies “Oh, don’t play stupid with me!”
I was the recipient of more than one can of whup-ass ignorance during my early years. I came away with the welts of a leather belt and in some cases never knew what I did wrong. Partially for this reason I support the idea that “spanking” is something reserved for consenting adults in the privacy of their bedroom and not something applied to children in punishment for them being naughty.
If another adult was “bad”, would you strike them? No, of course not. What about a short adult? Still no? Okay, why is it okay for an adult to strike a child? Exactly, it’s not okay.
• Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law
Possibly the most famous Crowley quote, and later co-opted by the Wiccan cult.
Crowley was a nutter, this much we know, but he did come out with some fabulous quotes which I guess he borrowed and stole along the way.
• Love is the law, love under will.
I interpret this as Agapē. Love which is not sexual or filial. I interpret it as a non-discriminating general affection for everyone. The feeling of enjoying helping others without reward (a lot more apparent in these days of the Internet), of contributing to society (e.g. the Free software movements), of not complaining of hardships because you know others have it worse.
• I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics, or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.
A surprising quote here and I agree with it. I abhor the idea of a cult of personality (though I have it fully esconced in the notes in Qabal). Everyone must make their own stand in this world and we cannot always depend on others to be there for us. To a degree, this also tells us to not keep all of our eggs in one basket. Trusting only one person will lead you to ruin.
• The customer is usually wrong; but statistics indicate that it doesn’t pay to tell him so.
Not to be limited to monetary transactions but in any transaction: of ideas, of love and affection, of goods, of time. Any time there is a transfer and receipt, there is opportunity for the recipient to be disappointed. That said – sometimes it’s best to disappoint rather than further a sham.
• The supreme satisfaction is to be able to despise one’s neighbor and this fact goes far to account for religious intolerance. It is evidently consoling to reflect that the people next door are headed for hell.
Pick a topic that polarises. God or Allah. Mac or PC. Apple TV versus XBox. iPod versus Zune. Green, White and Orange versus the Red, White and Blue. D20 versus everyone else. I enjoy intellectual conflict for the pure exercise of my mind. I enjoy debate and the sharp edge of a sarcastic wit. I may shout and scream In CAPITALS during a debate but I’d still buy the next round if we were down the pub. Debate and disagreement do not equal hate. Or at least they should not.
• As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow.
It’s not just men though my experience is heavily biased towards believing that men can be both the best and worst of people. Sadly the latter more often.