Reading: I picked up two books at the bookstore, basically on the strength of their covers and back cover blurbs and put them down after a few dozen pages, never intending to pick them back up. I’m still picking at Honeybee Democracy but I’m hungry for some fiction.

Got some Civil War-related comics coming to me through the public library’s inter-library loan and I’m re-reading Runaways for work. I forget how good Vaughn’s Runaways was. That was some fun comic bookin’.

Planning: Off to New York City for some belated birthdaying.

Writing: It is all cover letters and resumes and datafiles around here. I’ve got some more ideas for some funky blog posts but I’ll get to that next week.

Fun Side Note: Michael Miller is rocking the DC Super Hero Draft on G+ and it is good fun.

And you?

I have been noticing tweets here and there about Save or Die in the upcoming new edition of D&D.

I don’t mind Save or Die if I can make a character fast and painlessly or take over an NPC as a new character, getting back into the mix quickly and easily. I wonder if having a batch of pre-gens could help with this? Maybe. This reminds me of another Save or Die option, Dark Sun’s character trees, a mechanical sign that the setting is going to be harsh on your character and license for the DM to take the gloves off.

When something has a Save or Die effect, it has to be cool. It doesn’t have to be epic, not every Save or Die effect needs to be Dragon’s Breath but it should be something that we can remember, something descriptive.

I’d like some way to remember the dead, the stacks of dead hirelings and low level characters who paved the way for the survivors who made it to the higher levels. This might be a moment at the beginning or end of each game where we remember dead characters or a little character graveyard, a bunch of folded up index cards with the dead’s names, deeds and how they died, like a little adventurers’ graveyard.

I do mind Save or Die if I have been asked to make a story for the character, or if the character creation is longer than a few minutes or if the character creation asked me to make difficult decisions that left me with a strong attachment to the character.

I’m fine with games where folks venture into dangerous, monster-infested, highly trapped, arcane holes in the ground and perish. I’m fine with playing a character who ends up being a cautionary tale but get me back into the action fast and give the table a way to remember the dead.

• System matters, so play games that will best support you and your friends’ play.
• Publish your game without risking more than you are willing to lose and when possible, if it is important to you, keep ownership of your creative works.
• Talk and reflect about play earnestly and honestly because it is rewarding and will help you and others understand our hobby better.

System matters, so play games that will best support you and your friends’ play.

John Q. Forge thinks that games are more important than people, GM’s or anything. They think that other shit doesn’t matter and rely on mechanics to solve everything!

No, that isn’t true. Mechanics can help make a good game great and a good night shitty but other elements are important too, from relationships at the table to food.

Publish your game without risking more than you are willing to lose and when possible, if it is important to you, keep ownership of your creative works.

Forge Mc Forgey of the Forgingville Forgers thinks that freelancing for gaming companies is amoral and they hate every publisher and game company.

No, lots of folks who have published their own games and have participated in the Forge and the Forge booth have freelanced. Some are not interested. There is no trouble here. Move along.

Talk and reflect about play earnestly and honestly because it is rewarding and will help you and others understand our hobby better.

Lady Forge Indie RPG of the Forgia uses Actual Play to make their games look good and lie incessantly about how their games work at the table and how real role-playing games cause brain damage.

Yeah. I like to talk about trouble I’ve had with games, be it Burning Wheel and Apocalypse World or whatever mainstream game you like. I’m sure someone, somewhere has lied or resorted to hyperbole about a game. I’m not the AP Police.

GURPS is an indie RPG!

Okay.

GNS is a lie!

I never particularly liked it, myself. Not grokking GNS never got in my way when I was gaming but it did get in my way of participating in some discussions that don’t really interest me.

Creator Ownership is a brand!

Okay.

I went to the Forge/Forge Booth/Gaggle of Indie RPGerati at a con/friend’s house and indie RPGers treated me really poorly, if you all policed your community with more dignity, you wouldn’t have these problems and the indie community would love me!

I’m sorry someone treated you poorly. That sucks. Do you want a hug? I…man, for a hater-voice inside my head, you are exhausting.

I’m just getting warmed up!

I know.

Reading: I’m on the last pages of The Risen Empire and have The Killing of Worlds, the second half of the book, ready to roll. I’m enjoying it, a fun space opera.

Planning: This weekend will have ice, stretching and mobility work. I am sore. The cover letter and resume work continues.

Writing: Banged on a cover letter all week and it is getting there, should go out in the next day or two. The Ballad of Hal Whitewyrm got an update, should be a tense couple of moments, looking forward to seeing how Hal works out in Westgate.

NOTE: I forgot that I am playing writing back-and-forth ping-pong with Drew on Google Docs. Federal Book Enforcers started out as a joke but it is becoming a really interesting science fiction story with a whole lot of what we both think about librarians spilling onto the page in sci-fi-noir spurts and starts. We each write a few hundred words at a time and then send it back and it is more fun than a joke on G+ has any right to be.

And you?

Reading: Poking at The Killing of Worlds by Scott Westerfield, hoping that I get hip deep into it before a fun fantasy novel arrives on my desk.

Planning: Getting prepped for something important and getting my disaster-area room into some kind of order this weekend.

Writing: Same as it ever was, cover letters and Marvel Heroic Milestones. I’m tinkering with a review of Dark Knight Rises and a post about how to do a post-Nolan trilogy re-boot but after the tragedy, it just feels wrong and disrespectful to geek out right at this moment. So, for now, I’m exchanging geeky e-mails with Witt and furrowing my brow.

And you?

J.C. mentioned that he was reading a Vampire sourcebook while watching Game of Thrones. Game-deprived as I am, I replied with the following:

Or you could just rip-off the plot, whole hog. Your buddy is prince and needs you to take a job in the city that does not suit you. You live in the country with the werewolves in relative peace. The vampire clan you deposed has a lost bloodline in exile somewhere. In order to secure the princedom, you had to bond your friend to a vicious clan in order to secure your power-base and they have taken over his court.

This act and its consequences came about as an oblique result of discord among the arch-magicians of the land. At this time they numbered eight: Murgen, Sartzanek, Desmei, Myolander, Baibalides, Widdefut, Coddefut and Noumique.*

*Whenever the magicians met together, another appeared: a tall shape muffled in a long black cape, with a wide-brimmed black hat obscuring his features. He stood always back in the shadows and never spoke; when one or another of the magicians chanced to look into his face they saw black emptiness with a pair of far stars where his eyes might be. The presence of the ninth magician (if such he were) at first made for uneasiness, but in due course, since the presence seemed to affect nothing, he was ignored, save for occasional side-glances.

I’m enjoying the book but wish it was more petty magicians feuding and less nobles.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 23,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 5 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

Reading: I read a few chapters of The Death of Bees but the truth is I was so distracted that I was not productive. My lunch-time and before-bed reading routine was kaput this week.

Planning: I cannot plan anything just yet. This weekend I plan to continue to prune my belongings. Roller blades I have only put on once in the past decade…gone. Books I have read that I don’t plan to re-read or reference…given to friends to the Friends of the Library Book Sale.

Writing: Lists but I’m also conducting some exciting e-mail interviews for my Monday Interviews that have been going up on the blog. The next 3 are ready to roll and they are really exciting and a bunch more are brewing.

And you?

Most of my buddies are responding over on G+ nowadays.

The interview are going to be bi-weekly, every other Monday until I settle in to the new city/apartment/job in the next month.

But there are some exciting interviews coming up:

• Emily Care-Boss talks to me about Jeep.
• Cam Banks on Dragonlance.
• And unfinished interviews about Parlor LARP, Boffer LARP, Adventure!, Unknown Armies and Nobilis with amazing and exciting gamers.

I am excited.

How pompous does that title sound?

No, I’m talking about the new Spider-man title in which Doctor Octopus is stuck in Peter Parker’s body. The idea doesn’t thrill me in isolation. However, once you think of Superior Spider-man as a template things get interesting. I’d imagine it as a solo campaign or a campaign where the players have agreed that one person is the main character and everyone else is playing supporting roles, it could get interesting.

In the template, you aren’t taking the heroes’ arch-villain but someone from their rogues’ gallery with perhaps a shot at redemption. Don’t stick Red Skull in Captain America’s body (yuck) but maybe Taskmaster. What would happen if Bruce Banner had the Leader in his noggin.

Take the hero as written, maybe switch around the Distinctions but don’t get rid of all of them, keep something about the hero that the villain will be figuring out from that non-heroic point of view. Taskmaster is a mercenary, figuring out what it means to be American and give back to his nation. The Leader has to deal with his anger issues in a visceral way, no longer able to think through his troubles.

You get the idea.

Here are some milestones:

Herosim?

1XP when you ask questions about what it is a hero is supposed to do.

3XP when you do something heroic and find it enjoyable.

10XP when you either find a way to bring the hero back to their own body, bringing your newfound heroism back to your own mortal shell or bring this hero’s body into villainy, betraying everything they once held dear (after which you could switch back and play the main hero trying to hunt down the villain).

Philosophical Problems

1XP when you struggle with the hero’s major philosophical questions.

3XP when you find a new answer to those problems from your unique point of view.

10XP when you find an answer to those problems and find your own heroic philosophy or toss their issues aside and descend into villainy.

It has been over a week of a brutal heatwave. Today the air doesn’t feel harsh for the first time in a while.

Reading: I’m going back and forth between 20th Century Boys, Captain Alatriste (time to re-read those and catch up on the series), some books on astronomy and the solar system and Summerland by Michael Chabon.

Planning: A game night with some local buddies, some shopping for apartment stuff…a low-key summer weekend.

Writing: Jotting down notes and about to fill up a notebook. It is time to look it over and transcribe some stuff onto a computer.

And you?

Convicts have escaped from the Merciful-Class Stellar Prison V-917x. Bring them home. Earn your pay, bounty hunter-scum.

Crew
Everyone plays a Bounty Hunter. Take turns asking each other questions about your crew until each player has answered 5 of them. Of those 5, one must be from this list:

Why should you lead this posse?
Which escapee scares you and which one reminds you of someone you hold dear?
Which of your high profile collars have your fellow bounty hunters heard about?

The Re-Purposed Vessel
What was your ship built to originally do?
What is wrong with the ship that the bureaucratic powers who pay you refuse to fix no matter how much your gripe?
What have you added to the ship that is pretty damned cool?

What did you bring to the vessel to remind you of home?
What aspect of the ship do you find ugly?

Creditors want their  Merciful-Class Stellar Prison V-917x back. It has been re-purposed as a far orbit colony craft, or at least that is what it says on the registration. Bring the ship in. Earn your pay, repo-folk.

Crew
Everyone plays a repo agent. Take turns asking each other questions about your crew until each player has answered 5 of them. Of those 5, one must be from this list:

What did you do for a living before this?
How do you feel about your profession?
Which recent repo job left an emotional mark on you?

The Re-Purposed Vessel
How does your ship evade other ship’s sensors?
How is this ship different from others of its make and model?
What have you added to the ship that is pretty damned cool?

What did you bring to the vessel to remind you of home?
What aspect of the ship do you find ugly?

Fuck you. You owe it to me. Tomorrow I’m gonna wake up and I’ll be fifty and I’ll still be doin’ this. And  that’s all right ’cause I’m gonna make a run at it. But you, you’re sittin’ on a winning lottery ticket and you’re too much of a pussy to  cash it in. And that’s bullshit ’cause I’d do anything to have what you  got! And so would any of these guys.   It’d be a fuckin’ insult to us if  you’re still here in twenty years.

Let me tell you what I do know. Every so often we team up…World’s Finest…whatever, and we have a few laughs. But you know what the best part of my day is? The ten  seconds before I drive the Batmobile up to the Hall of Justice ’cause I let myself think I might get there, and you’d be gone. I’d get to the table and you wouldn’t be there. You just left.

Now, I don’t know much. But I know that.

I was IMing with Jim, talking about gaming and we both had a situation like this.

I was in a young teenager and the players were caught and put in the dungeon under the castle. I don’t remember much about the adventure, only that the castle was controlled by this bad-ass troll I had grabbed from Dragon magazine; I think it was half-demon or something and could throw lightning bolts. It had a hammer that had a unicorn horn driven through the stone of the hammer-head. I thought that was pretty cool and now, decades later, I still remember that detail. I have no idea if I made that up after falling asleep with the movie, Legend, on the TV or if I stole it.

So, they got stuck in the dungeons and I refused to let them go free. They failed rolls and couldn’t trick the guards. I just fucking sat there while they bickered at one another.

Hours went by.

Hours.

I don’t know why but I just decided to sit there through sheer cussedness.

Then, one of the players looked at his character sheet. “I have a sleep spell!”

They got the guard to sleep and grabbed the keys. I have no memory of what happened after that.

I only remember being a young DM, refusing to let them off the hook, even if it meant having a shitty evening in my friend’s living room. I don’t think I was wrong, necessarily.

I was just wondering if anyone else had experience with that kind of thing, recently or in their younger days.  Chime in with any odd hiccups at the table or advice for that 15 year old kid.

“For the crime of poaching, your sentence is to bring back a map of sub-level 3, just below the giant griffon skull. If the map is of insufficient quality or is proven false by future delvers, you will be hanged until you are dead, dead, dead.

“For the crime of theft, your sentence is the retrieval of the lord-mayor’s sentient dagger, lost by his great-grandfather when level 7 was discovered by the Municipal Delving Teams. If the dagger is not returned within five years or if you are located under the sun by any of noble birth, your family will be forced to send one of your blood to work in the dread mines in your stead.

“For the crime of murder, your sentence is to bring back the heads or identified dust (the price of the Identify spell will be billed to the guilty) of the Tri-Lich. If the Tri-Lich should be slain, you are to turn yourself in to the city gaol for further sentencing or being back proof that you rid the world of an equivalent evil presence. If you are seen in daylight by anyone of noble birth, a municipal hunter clone will by fed your blood and sent to destroy you, taking your place in this world.

“You will all be sent into the Under together with food and water enough to last you all 3 weeks, a map of the first 4 levels, municipal delving suits, backpacks, staves, knives, lengths of ropes, lanterns, oil, one bow with 20 arrows, one spear, one spellbook with a full compliment of first level spells deemed useful by the city archmage, 10 sticks of chalk, 20 iron spikes, 2 hammers, 10 rolls of vellum, a writing kit and a domesticated delving owl.

“Take this word of advice from a magistrate who carved his name into the pillars of level 6 in his youth. Don’t split up the party. Move briskly but do take the time to look around you; details can save your lives. Know when to run; violence often not the answer. Mercy will get you killed down there. The sun’s light doesn’t reach; the sun’s love is lost to that world down there and only hell’s breath moves the air.

“Think on your crimes that got you sentenced below and use that time to become something greater than just a poacher, a thief and a murderer.”

But that is never how it ends. The Lord-Mayor came to me, letting me know that if I didn’t deliver a missive to the death knight in the caves, he would see that I was sent right back if I ever surfaced with my sentence completed. The gaoler hid a chest with our gear, demanding the murderer deliver it to the toad-god somewhere on level 4. And the thief was told to steal a key from a prisoner sent below ten years ago, the legendary Queen of the Under, who taunts the world above with her acts of derring-do, stealing from the rich and giving to the kobolds.

There are municipal markers for the first few levels, even helpful constructs on the first two with some healing and magic mouths with advice and wisdom but after that it is nothing but darkness and unmapped chaos.

Still, I reckon it is better than the mines any day.

During my lunch break today, I rolled a bunch of results from my Into the Odd tables and the second of five really grabbed me. I knew what it was, what it looked like and what the challenges would be. I jotted down maps, wrote up a d6 random encounter table and perused the game during my commute.

We still got a few things wrong but after re-reading it and looking more carefully at the example of play, I get what happens when someone hits 0 hit points now. Got it!

Chargen is fast. Roll 3d6 for stats, switch a pair if you want, roll 3d6 for equipment, roll a d6 for Hit Points and roll a d20 for Arcana if you have one because you positioned your Will as your highest stat. Pick a name and go for it.

I talked about the setting a little bit, saying that Bastion was the only known city and it seemed to me that it was built on layers of civilizations that are now long dead. Bastion seems to be the first place where folks are getting their shit together enough to industrialize after a long post-apocalyptic dark age of some kind. I skimmed over the tables I used to make the dungeons with their strange epochs inspired by Dying Earth.

They started at the foot of a 10 story high cube that was grounded on the beach near a fishing village called Fishgut. They found a water vent in and worked their way up the access passages to the roof. I was working on not giving away every detail on their first glance around with varying degrees of success. It is a nice table for that and Bret will tell me when I am being too nice and has a good eye on the rules that I always appreciate when I game with him.

Janaki climbed the thing, despite starting the game with only 1 hit point. I was sure she was going to perish on her first roll of the game but luckily, Hatchet, named after a weapon her explorer parents found, survived the ascent.

There were tech-mummies in diving suits and a dolphin in a humanoid mech (inspired by this AW playbook, one of the folks who left shit behind is the Dolphin-Whale Alliance). Because I knew what the purpose of this beached cube was and how it was later re-purposed, I had a good idea of where things where along with how and why they worked. That context helped a whole lot.

Carly figured out how to avoid the bio-luminescent jelly-fish’s sting and used one as a light source for most of the session.

Tonight’s delve had a good mix of climbing, running, pushing some buttons while not pushing others, fighting, half-submerged & submerged levels, shooting and of course – salvaging shit to take back to Bastion to sell. They got out of there with one of the three kids from Fishgut who is now Bret’s character’s lackey. We rolled her stats on 2d6 and she is tougher than many of the PC’s. Also, she leveled up with everyone else at the end of the session. Matty is a bad-ass kid who saw her friends die at the hands and harpoon guns of mummies and a dolphin.

It was a fine night of gaming with good friends. I felt like I got to sharpen my dungeon refereeing, learning new tools for the GMing Toolbox. Good stuff.

The Dyvers blog had a Great Blog Roll Call and he wrote nice things about this blog and I’m not ashamed to say it made me feel pretty damned nice:

An enjoyable blog written by one of the most inventive authors on the list. The author challenges himself and his readers to explore new avenues of play, whether through new games or new ways to do the same old, same old. Occasionally the blog will meander into short fiction and then into a discussion of what’s going on in the author’s life. A good read. Updates: About three times a week.

Thanks!

The blog list compiled is well worth checking out if you want to add some blogs to your RSS feed.

I like those forum threads where we get together and make shit up, here’s one:

Lets populate the Tomb Hills with feuding clans who flout, imperial tradition.  Please go through the following steps and write few sentences about your clan below in the comments or on the Google + thread here.

The Tomb Hills are a few weeks’ journal from the monolith that marks the southern border of the empire. Your family is here, occupying some ancient hill-fort or nearly hill-top tower.

You can choose 3 that appeal to you and catch your eye or roll 3d6 to find out the details of your a family’s take on imperial traditions.

Holy Animals
There is a baroque pantheon of holy beasts in imperial lore. Your family puts 3 above all others.

1) Cobra, Elephant, Eagle
2) Boar, Wolf, Dragon
3) Lion, Stag, Unicorn
4) Ant, Horse, Hound
5) Zebra, Antelope, Lioness
6) Gorilla, Vulture, Hyena

Holy Things
What iconography from the imperial world does your family hold dear and holy?

1) Sun, Moon, Stars
2) Barrows, Streams
3) Prophets, Tomes
4) Swords, Smiths
5) Dusk, Dawn, Noon
6) Bones, Fire

Tradition
Your family goes against orthodox imperial tradition.

1) Marriage
2) Sorcery
3) Landlord/Tenant Relationship
4) Martial traditions
5) Death
6) Hospitality

By now it might very clear to you why your family is in the Tomb Hills. If not, choose or roll below:

1) Heresy
2) Failed Coup
3) Debt
4) Sorcery
5) Willing Exodus
6) Always been here…

Reading: I just finished a brutally unsatisfying read and moved on to Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone, which is a real hoot with a fun fantasy world and a neat premise. Wizards-for-hire come to a city whose deity appears to be dead and have to figure out what happened before the city falls to pieces. A Godswar in the distant past, The King in Red, priests of a fire deity who smoke…I’m seriously digging it so far.

Planning: Getting to parts of NYC that we haven’t seen yet this weekend and buying some more comfortable kitchen chairs. Exciting!

Writing: Yes, writing. I’m writing a game-thing, feverishly hoping to have a playtestable copy soon after uncovering an old idea from 2007 and getting excited about it thanks to G+ community and energetic friends.

And I continue to fill up notebooks on my way to work with stories and odd ideas. I have to start transcribing them now that I have Discuss, my shiny new Mac. I have to get my Whitehack summoning rules onto the blog from the notebook but I can’t find my copy of Whitehack. Frustrating as hell.

And you?