GenCon Want List (if only I were going)

Among the stuff coming out at GenCon that I find myself jonesin’ for:

The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild – This looks too beautiful to pass up. Art by John Howe? Designed by Francesco Nepitello (who did the excellent War of the Ring boardgame)? Sold sold sold!

Burning Wheel Gold – Never got a game of BW Revised off the ground, but with some Burning Empires and a whole campaign of Mouse Guard now under my belt, I feel much more able to get into BW now.

Black Crusade – Yeah. Of course.

I know there is a ton of other stuff I’d insta-buy if I could.

Too bad I’m not going… Actually it’s a good thing I’m not going because I’d come back broke.

 

Finish what you start?

I asked the office crew, the group I play Legends of Anglerre with, how many campaigns they have ever finished – that is, played out to a conclusion and then put the game away. The actual hobbyists among them (three players) all said one or none. In almost all cases they said, their games simply went on and on and on until they ran out of steam and the game died or the group broke up. I actually found that kind of sad.

For many years now, when I get an rpg campaign going, I rarely don’t finish it. I’ve had a couple here and there that didn’t make it, but generally speaking, I run my campaigns to conclusion. Three-session mini-campaigns are great for trying out ideas (like our Godlike: Nazi Hunters game). In fact for me, three is the magic number – I like the inherent structure a start, middle and finish provide. And you can make this a modular thing too, running a six-session game, a twelve-session game (which allows for three sets of four arcs if you want to do that). My big Godlike campaign a few years ago ran 15 sessions, which gave me three sets of five sessions (though in retrospect I had only planned on six sessions for that game – it grew in the telling).

Ending a good campaign gives everyone a big sense of accomplishment or even anticipation. Case in point – our Dark Heresy campaign is ending next session, but events in that game have established things for the Rogue Trader game that will follow, so everyone is excited about it. And when it’s all over, people can point to it and talk about as something that was undertaken and resolved. It’s a good feeling.

Sticking with the same game year after year (we’ve all heard of the 20-year campaigns out there) may indeed be enjoyable for some, but I’d be tired of it for sure. There are too many cool games out there and so many interesting ideas to explore it’s almost criminal to limit yourself to a single narrow experience.

What campaigns have you run or played to conclusion?

Games played since January

Since January, I’ve been making an effort to log all my RPG sessions on RPGGeek. So far I have logged 24 sessions! Yikes! That averages out to something like one game a week. So  in short, I’ve been gaming like a madman!

To break it down by game:

Legends of Anglerre, 7 sessions – The weekly lunchtime game at the office continues. We don’t play every week but we seem to get a game in fairly regularly since we started. I’m enjoying it and I really like FATE for ease of play. I would like for the office crew to learn the rules a bit more (since they’d get more out of the game) but as fast as we go and as much as we get done in a single hour (not too much), it’s working out just fine.

Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy, 5 sessions – My main monthly campaign with the regular crew. I think we’re all having a good time with this and there seems to be a lot of enthusiasm for moving on into the Rogue Trader and Deathwatch segments once we wrap the Dark Heresy segment. I’m feeling confident and comfortable with the system by now and looking forward to the next game.

Eclipse Phase, 4 sessions – The only campaign I’m in as a player at the moment.

Godlike, 2 sessions – The first was the big TOG302 air combat game I ran at DunDraCon back in February. Was really nervous about it but it went well. The second was the kickoff of our short Nazi Hunters campaign. Next session is next Friday and I can’t wait!

Agon, 1 session – Played at DunDraCon. Kinda like to try this again with the regular crew.

The Laundry, 1 session – Played at the January Minicon with Wayne in the GM’s seat. Like to play this again too.

Rogue Trader, 1 session – In January. This seems to have been the last session of the campaign (we only played twice though) which petered out. The GM and the other players seemed to have lost interest, though I was raring to go. Playing the Rogue Trader let me chew the scenery to my heart’s content. But I learned enough about the game to feel confident about running it myself.

Warhammer FRP, 1 session – My first game of the year actually, which I ran for some people from work. It went well, though three out of four of the players were beginners. I’d like to play this again too, and just get in there and kill stuff!

Wow, I have been busy! And July’s still not done yet! More Godlike next week and then Dark Heresy the week after!

 

 

 

3:16, 1 session – Run at the January Minicon. Best game of 3:16 yet.

Play “under” a GM? Not “with”?

I’ve probably gone on about this before, but I’ve seen the term “play under a GM” used to talk about playing with a (given) GM in a few forum threads lately and that usage has always rubbed me the wrong way. I once voiced this opinion in a forum post and most of the responses indicated they’d never head the term being used and thought it was really curious or I was just seeing things.

No. It’s out there. People use it, often, online and in person. Google it up, you’ll find it.

What bothers me is the phrase’s straight up positioning of the GM above the players. I’m sure the people that use it don’t think much of it, if they think of it at all, but to me, it indicates that person has put the role of the GM on a pedestal. There’s also the image I get of the players being under the GM’s thumb, like he’s the cruel oppressor.

Yes, the GM naturally has a certain amount of narrative authority, but as far as I’m concerned it’s more of the “governing with the consent of the governed” variety than some sort of iron-fisted tyranny. I think I also bristle at the implication that the GM is simply there to entertain the players and it all flows from him. Everyone has a role at the table and everyone is responsible for each others’ fun. The GM’s role is different from the players’ in a trad RPG but any good gamer knows it’s not all on the GM to bring it.

I never say “I play under a great GM” or “He’s the best GM I’ve played under”. You’ll always hear me use “with” instead of “under”. Whether I’m playing in a game, or running one, everyone there at the table is with me – no one is under me nor above me.

I suppose this makes me some sort of gaming communist, but there you go. Don’t let me hear you saying you’ve played “under” me!!

Slam Dunk

Nothing to do with RPGs (unless I ever do one about basketball players – hmm, that could be an interesting challenge) but I’m editing Takehiko Inoue’s Slam Dunk and it really is as good as you might have heard. I just hit a scene in volume 22 that perfectly foreshadows the end of the series nine volumes later in volume 31. I’ve read ahead of our translations (we’ve currently got up to v.17 in print and scripts up to 23 in the works) and while I thought the end of the series was pretty brilliant (roughly half the book has no dialog and covers the last 30 seconds of the championship game in totally kinetic panels), seeing it set up in such a cool way in v.22 made my hair stand up.

I don’t know if Inoue had the whole thing plotted out to the end when he drew this one little scene – he might have – but he and his editor were really on the ball to have been working on the ending and then reached back nine volumes to this one little three page scene. And it’s not just those three pages, there’s a lot of story and character development before that and when you connect it to the ending, man, it’s good!

Seriously, I don’t watch or have any strong interest in basketball at all, but Slam Dunk is as  much about basketball – even with most of it taking place on the court – as it’s about the characters and their story, and because they’re good characters and Inoue invests you in them, you get hooked.

Inoue followed up Slam Dunk with Real, which is about wheelchair basketball and is, if anything, a more realistic if darker story and just as compelling. Then he went on to work on Vagabond, which is currently on hiatus but is certainly his magnum opus. Takehiko Inoue is a manga genius, no lie, and there’s a reason Slam Dunk is one of the most loved manga in Japan.

Could I do a basketball rpg game? There’s the one you want to use the chess clock for!

p.s. The anime is ass, read the manga!

Brain fart – Akira

I’ve been re-reading the Akira manga and I watched the anime again recently. There really isn’t anything I don’t like about Akira. I came to it, like most people outside Japan, through the anime back in the late 80′s. I remember being in Japan for the first time in January of 1989 and scouring the local shopping arcade in Kobe for the video (the movie had come out in Japan the year before). Back at my host family’s house, I rewired their VHS players together and made myself a copy – now that I think of it, I may have been one of the first people to “import” Akira.

Anyway, one of the most striking sequences in the movie is the motorcycle gang battle at the beginning. It goes down rather differently in the manga but it’s just as kinetic as the movie. For a long time I’ve wanted to do some sort of cyberpunk style game set in Tokyo where the characters are biker gang punks. There would be lots of high speed chases and fighting with improvised weapons (because no one but the yakuza have guns in Japan), plus lots of other crazy stuff going on.

The main thing would be to bring the full-on sensory overload of Tokyo to the game, something I think I can really do.

Not so sure what system I might use for this. Some variant of FATE might be good.

Games I need/want to play

At the top of the list: Apocalypse World. Just way too many awesome AP reports I have seen for this game. Post apocalypse is a great genre and I love the source material to death (Road Warrior anyone?). Strangely, I don’t think I’ve ever really run a full-on PA game (even Twilight:2000). Need to remedy that!

Delta Green – Yeah, really.  I played in a very short-lived DG campaign maybe 15 or 16 years ago, and as I recall it didn’t go well (my character got shot early on and spent the bulk of the session unconscious – I spent a lot of time reading the GM’s comic book collection that day…)My buddy Cam did a very cool DG game a few years back that was a riff on 24 (it happened in one day of game time). I could probably do a really wicked DG game based on something similar, or the totally awesome Hastur stuff in Countdown.

Burning Empires – I’ve only run a single demo session of this, and when I did I could instantly tell BE would absolutely shine in full-on campaign play. But, BE definitely takes commitment from all involved to learn and grok those rules, and get their heads around the way BE does things. After running Mouse Guard, I feel suitably prepared to tackle Burning Empires full on. I would SO love to run Burning Empires!

2300AD – My favorite old school sci-fi game. Unlike the other games on this list I have run several campaigns of this within the last five years and got more out of it than I did when I originally played it 23 (!) years ago. With its relatively hard sci-fi setting and 80′s sci-fi movie vibe, it’s obviously something I’d pick up and run with little hesitation.

Weapons of the Gods – I’ve only run the intro adventure for this game (about 4 or 5 times I think), but each time I’ve run it everyone at the table has had a total blast. I love love love the Lore Sheets in that game and the way they hook the characters into the setting and provide built in character prompts and motivations. The kung-fu system is cool and the secret arts, while confusing as hell to figure out, promises awesomeness for those who crack the code.

Anyone out there down for any of these?

The amount of crap you have…

…Expands to fill the space available. Looking at my game shelves, I see this is true. Every so often it gets to the point where I need to cull the collection a little bit and that’s where I’m at right now. I’ve got a few things up on eBay for dirt cheap and I don’t care so much if I only get a few bucks for them – I just need the shelf space. Even with the stuff I’m selling gone, my game shelf is still packed solid.

Actually, what you see in this photo above is just my “main” game bookcase, which is full of RPGs. I’ve got all my boardgames and a few more RPG boxed sets in the closet on another shelf, and another smaller bookshelf in the living room for game spillover (and my carefully selected manga collection…)

Thing is, I’ve got the collection pretty well trimmed of the fat I don’t want to keep. So…the only solution is to get a new bookshelf and fill it with more games!! Woohoo!

What? Er, no dear, not buying anything new… (right now).

What do you need in a LRDG game (Godlike)?

So, reading up on the British Long Range Desert Group, as I expected most of their work was by stealth. In fact their motto was “Non Vi Sed Arte” which is Latin for “Not by strength, but by guile” which means these guys were the Solid Snakes of WW2 desert warfare. They were very much a recon unit. Yeah, they were pretty heavily armed for what amounted to a bunch of pickup trucks, but they usually didn’t go looking for trouble. On the rare occasions when they did have orders to go shoot something up, they often took a fair number of casualties (which speaks even more highly of their courage in going in on targets that could really stomp them if they weren’t careful).

Now, later on, they did provide a “taxi service” for the SAS, and of course their whole modus operandi was to go in there and fuck shit up. But the LRDG provided the desert expertise to get the SAS on target.

So, my question to you faithful readers (all six of you), what do you want from a Godlike game based on the LRDG? Assume that shooting up krauts and Italians is par for the course, and there will be some Talent powers going on. But beyond that, what’s going to make or break such a game for you?