Zelazny Hypotheticals

I began role-playing in the early 80s, just like those Stranger Things kids. I’m probably more familiar with the RPGs of the 90s, for the few years I spent working in a comic book store. The most popular game of that era was not Dungeons & Dragons, but White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade and its associated spin-offs. Seen through the eyes of the adult, the entire setting is the very epitome of cringeworthy pretentiousness.

 And yet…I can’t bring myself to sneer at its horde of befanged arrested adolescent katana/trenchcoat murderhobos, because I really do think it came from a place of sincerity for its creators (at first, at least) and they built a unified mythology for the modern world.

 Each of the game lines came with a built-in expiration date, because each group of monster characters was fighting a losing battle against a greater evil, and one of the game designers came out and said something along the lines of, “You can’t say the world is ending for fifteen years and not deliver.”

And, yeah, on one level it was a way to sell more books, but there’s a certain satisfaction of ending a campaign in style. Werewolf: The Apocalypse did it best. I was never the biggest fan of the line. The veneer that the characters were anything other than meatgrinders with legs (the legs were also meatgrinders. With meatgrinders of their own. It was meatgrinders all the way down) seemed thinnest here, and the pretention at its zenith. You’re a bunch of genocidal furries, with more than a little bit of cultural appropriation thrown in for flavor. But there was something about the way its apocalypse scenario was written.

One chapter holds a particular wealth of possibilities, offering an explanation of why each of the game’s tribes of werewolves could be the baddies in the end. Something about that approach fascinated me, I think because the authors understood the nuances of how a characteristic that could be a virtue in moderation could become a vice in its extreme or if placed in a different context. Which brings me to the point of this post.

I do enjoy What If? speculation about works I enjoy. It’s part of the fun of being a fan! To that end I’m going to engage in a bit of speculation along these lines in a series of posts, asking in turn, “What if Benedict/Fiona/Corwin/Prince or Princess X had been the villain of the Corwin Chronicles?”

I’ll do my best to stick to a schedule, one post a week in the series on Monday evening, starting with “What if Random had been the villain of the Corwin Chronicles?”

Mazeworks Recruitment Drive

Once upon a time, in the misty recesses of 2001, I started a Play-By-Email Game. I ran it for fifteen years and then decided to wrap it up on a high note. The players liked the world, so the game went on under new management. That GM passed away unexpectedly, but we didn't want to end the game under those circumstances, so another player picked up the GM duties. Real life has caught up with him, so I am once again taking reins of a Zelazny-influenced play-by-post. Please drop me a line if you're interested.

The Mazeworks Play By Email

"We need to stop Cthulhu - right meow!"

As hard as it is to believe now, Dungeons & Dragons was once a mainstream activity. It’s what the kids were playing in E.T. and I’m old enough to remember D&D clubs in my grade school. Someone once remarked that President Obama probably tried it at least once as an undergrad. Its ascendance was due to a confluence of circumstances that are never going to be repeated, but for a while it was HUGE.

D&D’s Golden Age is over, but role-playing still persists. The internet has been the perfect medium for Indie RPG projects and while none of them have a fraction of the market penetration that early Dungeons & Dragons did, the variety of games out there is mind-bogglingly staggeringly bonkers, and I for one am pleased beyond words that I live in a world where I can choose from several independently developed games where I can play as a cat fighting the forces of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Doctor Who:Night of the Jackal

I had planned to run a Doctor Who RPG session at my birthday party last year, but that never came to pass. However, we managed to do it this year and it was a lot of fun.

Our characters were:

Bob Ross: Soft-spoken be-afroed painter of public television fame. In this universe, he has some kind of a Dorian Gray kind of immortality (he keeps meaning to complete that self-portrait, but always gets distracted by all those happy little accidents)

A time-displaced Anne Boleyn: Rescued the day before her execution. She is not sure what to make of the futuristic world of Victorian London, but she is determined to live her life to its fullets.

Coraline Magnus: Apprentice Time Lady working who had heard from her friend Romana that earth was a pretty great place. She’s working at the Red Tavern.

We also had two characters who dropped out of the game after an hour. Both players were kids, and they were expecting something different than what they got.

Chrysanthemum “Chrissie”  Íroas: A gallfreyan Time Tot who was enrolled in Hogwarts and sorted into Ravenclaw. She graduated at fifteen, but was unable to go home, because the Time Lords weren’t scheduled to pick her up for three more years and there were no protocols in place to bring her back early. Her player decided that her parents had sent her to earth because Gallifrey was going to be destroyed, which was news to Coraline.

Reaper from Overwatch: Hilariously violent and inappropriate. The party was attending a funeral as part of their investigation. When asked by the dead man’s sister how he knew the deceased, Reaper(falsely) claimed, “I killed him.”

Also of note was the Terminator trying to pass (unsuccessfully) as Sherlock Holmes. He overshot his mark by about a hundred years and he's just killing time solving mysteries while he waits for Sarah Connor to be born.
                     
I modified a published adventure, Night of the Jackals, from Cthulhu by Gaslight.  My original intent had been to run A Night in the Lonesome October game, but that idea fell by the wayside and the only vestige of it was that the two games happened to share the same Victorian London setting.

Of our three adult players, only one had ever played in a tabletop RPG, but they really took to it extremely well. Most people with whom I played began in adolescence.  They were great for first time role-players. They even came in costume!

We opened with Coraline receiving a message on her space-time telegraph.

Just then, Alan Paice, the owner of the Red Tavern (in this continuity) showed up and apologized to Coraline. He’d have to miss their weekly lunch because he had to attend the funeral of an old army buddy.

The party tagged along to the funeral and began investigating.  The kids disappeared at this point, and we all agreed that their characters were keeping an eye on Alan.

The other characters unraveled the mystery and the whole thing went very smoothly. I’m of the school of thought that players should never miss a vital clue due to a bad roll.  The trick shouldn’t be getting the information; the trick is putting it together correctly to reach the proper conclusion.

I think the biggest failure of the night was on me. I introduced the baddie later than I should have, and the scenario is set up to establish another character as a red herring. I didn’t want to lead them to the wrong conclusion by not giving them enough information. That’s not fair to do to new players and it’s a good way to sour them on the game. Unfortunately, I think I laid it on a little too thick. As soon as he showed up they called a sidebar and basically said, “This guy is obviously the villain.”

(In my defense, we were four hours by that point, and I think hurrying things along was probably the best choice, but it certainly could have been handled with a bit more finesse.)

We had some memorable moments, like the women putting on pants in order to pass as men to sneak into a gentleman’s club and the climax of the adventure came when Anne Boleyn chopped the head off the jackal-headed monster. Everybody was good, but Anne’s character was simply born to play that role.

It was all delightfully silly and everyone had a lot of fun.

#RPGaDay 2017 Day 3: How Do You Find Out About New RPGs?

How Do You Find Out About New RPGs?

In Order: 

1. Kickstarter:  I kind of love Kickstarter, mostly because these things take so long to put together that I forget I have something coming to me until the package arrives on my porch. Kickstarter is perfect for a niche hobby and allows the production of narrowly focused books that wouldn't be feasible. Also, creators use funded campaigns to advertise new or related projects. "Hey, you backed Unknown Armies. Do you want to back the King in Yellow?" Hell yes, I would.
2. Humble Bundle/Bundle of Holding: These are "new to me", rather than entirely new, but this is a cheap way to build a quality PDF library.
3. Friends: I have friends! For real! We occasionally discuss games.

#RPGaDay 2017 Day 2: What is an RPG You Would Like to See Published?

What is an RPG You Would Like to See Published?

 My first instinct was to say Avatar: The Last Airbender, but I don't think that would be the best property. I'm not sure that it's robust enough to support a campaign outside of an Avatar and pals adventuring group. (Though if some enterprising game designer out there wants to prove me wrong, I would be delighted. Also, this would hardly be the first time I bought a book for the fluff alone.)

I would be quite happy with an official release of Timothy Ferguson's Lonesome October mod for Amber Diceless. I'm going to try to run it this Halloween.

#RPGaDay 2017 Day 1: What Published RPG Do You Wish You Were Playing Right Now?

My buddy Eric posted this and I thought I'd get in on the fun. Just what the title implies; thirty-one days of RPG questions.

 What Published RPG Do You Wish You Were Playing Right Now? 

If we're asking about a specific game with the same group of people, I think I'd like some resolution to a DC Heroes game from a few years back. I loved our group of superpowered idiots.

Lily is officially a gamer

Me: I got an email from mommy saying that you were interested in continuing our RPG together tonight, but I don't know if she meant the Mutants & Masterminds campaign or I am Setsuna on the Playstation.
Lily: (Dismissively) Oh, I don't consider video games true RPGs.

It's like a rite of passage for our kind.

He is Risen

After a conversation in a cemetery yesterday, my daughter wanted to spend Easter morning looking through my All Flesh Be Eaten books.

Either I've done something terribly wrong as a parent, or something very right.

Sky High: It was the finest, fanciest Science Fair anybody's ever seen.

We had this session about two weeks ago. Lily wanted to co-blog the account of the session, so here it is. Her comments are in italics.

Yeah I did!

We open directly after our last session. At Doctor Mordred’s invitation, Doctor Doom will be a special guest judge at the school science fair, and if our heroes can scan Doom’s armor, they will be able to replicate its power source, thereby acquiring one of the three components they need to repair the Ewok ship.

The title of the post is a reference to the Trout Fishing in America song.

Before the fair starts, Summer talks to Amy about Winter. Ever since their parents vanished Winter had always been mean to other kids, but very protective towards Summer. She’d been distant after the events in the museum, and now she’s taking Dr. Mordred’s special classes, and basically ignoring Summer. Just this morning, she said she had to talk to Summer about something “very important”, but Summer is still upset, and isn’t sure if she wants to talk. Amy advised her to talk to her sister. The most interesting part of this was that immediately after she said that, Lily started second guessing her choice. I explained that there was no right answer, or even a best answer, and she could do whatever she wanted.

I had the right answer.

The heroes head out to the gym and the science fair opens with a brief speech by Vice Principal Hodor “We have called those who participate in science fairs geeks and nerds. We are right. But this year, we have a participant who may make science cool.” He then hurries out of the room with his Chihuahuas yapping behind him. Asami, is like “All right, that was weird. Allow me to introduce my fellow judges.”

Asami rocks so hard. 

She does, and there are five.

• Asami Sato – Assistant Amy Midnight
• Doctor Doom – Assistant Zod
• Lucy, Sr four time second place winner of the Sky High science fair. (Lucy Sr. is our cross-eyed cat in real life. In the game, she has heat vision, but it always comes out at weird angles because she’s googley eyed.)
• Neil, four time winner of the Sky High science fair. He’s greeted by crazy cheers. Even Zod claps for Neil, though he’s careful not to let anyone see him. Neil gives a thumbs up to little brother.
• Leonardo DaVinci – Guest Judge – tiebreaker.

Leonardo DaVinci only comes in if worse comes to worst.

Neil comes over to congratulate Zod and he’s got good news of his own. If he gets Doom to sign his letter of recommendation, he’s a lock for an internship at the Baxter Building.

The heroes then go around to the convention and interact with the participants. We went kitchen sink and threw in everybody who was even slightly applicable.

Gizmo, from the H.I.V.E. was grouped with the Teen Titans. He was quite proud of his anti-gravity machine, and proclaimed it would revolutionize everything. Cyborg interrupted him and pointed out that the entire school they were on floats through anti-gravity.  Gizmo shoots back with “Oh, yeah, what do you have?”

Cyborg unveils his “refrigerating machine”, a.k.a a refrigerator.  DaVinci is profoundly impressed . “It’ll revolutionize everything!” Asami and Amy exchange looks.  We continue the gag of DaVinci being impressed by entirely mundane technology throughout the session.

Beast Boy had “ Stuff I found between my toes”,  Robin had his 16 Bit training simulation,

Starfire had “A study in linguistic paradigms: Challenges and opportunities in adapting Tamaranian syntax to a majority English speaking environment, with particular emphasis on Lexeme-based morphology”, and Raven’s project was titled “I am sad, so very, very sad.” It was black Nail polish on a Smiths album, and she dotted all I’s with little skulls.  When she saw the PCs, she promptly abandoned it and said “Come on, Zod, let’s make fun of the geeks”.

Zod’s scanner went off periodically, indicating that it was time to scan Doom, except Doom kept ordering him on errands. He tells Zod to get him a half-caf, soy milk vegan mocha latte with minimal foam, with Doom’s face drawn in the foam. Zod failed his intelligence roll when it came time to order, and thought Doom wanted a pumpkin spice latte. Doom does a spit take when he takes a sip.

Anne (of AnneDroids) and Anakin Skywalker were sitting next to each other, and both answered whenever anyone said “Annie.” Doom tried to melt down C-3P0, but the heroes convince him not to. Doom sends Zod to Reddit to downvote all of Reed Richards’ posts and to steal and repost an image of a kitten that Richards had posted.

A very large student with a nametag that reads “Shmice Schminipal Schmodor” rushes into the room and quickly sets up his display about teaching his Chihuahuas how to spin. The heroes exchanges glances and hurry on past. From across the room, Doctor Doom says “Doom wearies of perpetual motion machines!”

Doom sends Zod on an errand to make sure that the Doombots are taping his soap operas in the AV room. Zod convinces Raven to go in his place. She goes, and sees the best Doctor Doom poster of all time.

The heroes talk with a couple more participants. We had a fictionalized version of Lily with her own award-winning science fair project.

Ash Ketchum was there with a Starwhal he had captured in his PokéBall He demonstrated it for Zod…by releasing it. “Starwhal! Face slash! Starwhal, testicle slash! Starwhal, go for the eyes! THE EYES!” Zod manages to subdue it, and Amy distracts Ash allowing them to stick the thing back in its prison. Ash is like “So, do I win the science fair?”

Okay, that was like the best scene in the science fair.

President Dog and Lucy Junior have spots right next to each other. President Dog invented the poop funnel (we have to keep the dog in our house away from the cats’ litterbox, otherwise she’ll gorge herself and become sick. Thus this picture)

 and communicates through calligraphy. He has wonderful penmanship.

Lucy Junior had a voice synthesizer, which she used to discuss her invention of the automatic door butler. She and President Dog got in a fight, with hissing and barking, but then it turned into making out, and our heroes hastened on their way. Doom sent Zod out for Latverian caviar. 

While we were trying to figure out where to find the caviar also had a throwaway exchange about Amy's Aunt Girtha.

Zod's player: The caviar is probably someplace cold, like a refrigerator.
Lily: Aunt Girtha has eight refrigerators. (Beat) (Sheepishly) She likes to eat.
Me: And she likes to kill transients and freeze their bodies.
Lily: What?
Me: Never mind. Where are you looking for that caviar?

Zod retrieves it, and Doom proclaims, “Doom does not feed himself! Feed Doom like a baby bird!” Zod does so. “Open wide, here comes the airplane.” “Doom does not want a plane! Doom wants the Fantasticar!” *Sigh* “Here comes the Fantasticar!” “Excellent!” (Powering up gauntlet blaster) “Doom shoots down the Fantasticar!”

Asami sees Franklin Richards and H.E.R.B.I.E. Franklin claims that he built H.E.R.B.I.E. and H.E.R.B.I.E. denies it. Asami doesn’t care; she just wants to keep Doom away before there is an incident.  Amy agrees to babysit Franklin Richards in exchange for his cooperation in leaving the gym as soon as possible, and Zod focuses Doom’s attention away through careful positioning of the caviar spoon.

Doom assigns Zod the task of sockpuppeting support for Doom on the Baxter Building forums. Zod dutifully created accounts Doomlover17 through 34.

Other participants include Hiro from Big Hero Six, Young Syndrome from the Incredibles, Fio Piccolo and her air pirate cheering section from Porco Rosso, Brainiac 5 with a force field belt and flight ring and Belle from Beauty and the Beast. She has her father’s wood cutting machine from the movie.  She’s constantly trying to break into song. Doom tries to silence her, but secretly wants to sing along. 
 
Zod asks Doom to sign Neil’s letter of recommendation, and he reads it and signs it. “Yes, let this young man serve as Doom’s herald in the cursed Baxter Building!”

We go into voting. After some discussion the prize is awarded to Lucy Junior. Doom’s smartphone buzzes, and he sees an email that his account has been suspended at the Baxter building forums because a number of suspicious account signups all originated from the same IP address he was using. He cuffs Zod with his gauntlet, and looks like he’s about to do more. Neil intervenes and sticks up for Zod. Doom backs down, but takes the letter of recommendation and rips it up.

After that, Lucy comes up and accepts the trophy full of tuna. Doctor Mordred, who has a more ostentatious costume every time he appears, heads up and places his hands warmly on Neil’s shoulders. His eyes glow orange, his hands glow orange, and then Neil’s eyes flare with the same orange glow. The glow is only visible to heroes. We end on that note.

We all really enjoyed the session. I think it was the best game of the campaign so far. I forget who said it first, but I remember reading that comic books that people really remember are the ones with a lot of sitting around and talking. (I always think of X-Factor #87 when somebody references this, the issue where the team goes to Doc Samson for therapy after a mission.) This game felt like one of those issues. We had some one-off silliness, running gags, we advanced our short term goals and the main story too. I can’t think of what more I would want out of a game.

Lily: I didn't write enough. Type a bunch of letters after lily!!! .;.fvhkrfjhbkutfhbugvygbh type type typety type type gfhgfjhjvdghvgfdghjcfgvfhcvgbnvhv hjfcvjhgvjhghvhchgvjhgchgc, am I right?jbghjbdfjh gdjfhgbfhdjb jhdb gj,hbsgdjh dbgfdb g  SSSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!!!!Aw, yeah ma peeps!(I don't really talk like that.)

RPG Review: Yes, Virginia, there is a Feng Shui 2

I love the word “Zeitgeist”.  It’s a German phrase, meaning “spirit of the times”.  It refers to the dominant influence on the culture for a given period of time.

I was thinking, and it seemed to me that the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and the X-Files are the shows that best capture the Zeitgeist of the 1990s.

I showed the Fresh Prince to Lily a couple months ago, because somebody had made a reference to the song, and she wanted to know what was up. So we tracked down an episode, and watched it, Korean subtitles and all.  Look at the aesthetic.

It’s more 90s than a Furby wearing a slap bracelet.  It’s firmly set in the 90s, and yet it had instant appeal to a kid born in 2006. And sure, part of it is because it’s a pretty decent show, and because Will Smith is insanely charismatic.  But it has an appeal that transcends its time and place.

The X-Files is different. The two leads had just as much charisma as Smith, and great chemistry besides. The 90s were the perfect time for it to exist, they were the only time for it to exist (as we will doubtless soon learn from the upcoming series revival.) The world has changed sufficiently that the tropes on which the X-Files is built no longer function. That, and while it was genuinely revolutionary in its time, it's been imitated and improved in so many ways, I don't think you can update what did work without losing that distinctive character, and just coming across as another X-Files imitator.

This brings us to Feng Shui. It’s not a period piece, but, like the X-Files, arrived at the only time it could have. Jackie Chan was at the height of his power, Jet Li was breaking into the mainstream, John Woo had yet to trade in Chow Yun-Fat for John Travolta.  Most importantly, Hong Kong was on the cusp of the return to mainland China. It was a time of change, and it seemed like anything could happen.

But it's 2015 now, and the world outside my window is no longer the world of Hong Kong action moves. Look at their list of recommended viewing. It's not exclusively from the late 80s/early 90s, but that's the era that dominates, and the few suggestions from this century seem like pale imitations of those artist's earlier works. That's all I have to say about it now, but I'll come back to this point at end.

The Good: I received my physical copy in the mail last week, and it’s an extremely nice looking book. Of all the books I own, only second edition Nobilis looks prettier.

The art is beautiful and evocative, but it’s also inclusive. This is something that almost every game gets wrong, limiting pictures of PCs to body builder dudes, and lingerie model women, each of them lily white, but we get characters in all shapes and colors, and men and women are evenly represented. I even came away with the impression that the gambler was gay, which was kind of cool.

I haven’t had a chance to run it, but my impression is that the mechanics are an improvement over the old game.  I particularly liked the inclusion of “Blue Moon” rules set off in their own section, which cover niche rules for situations that occur rarely.

The Bad: They lifted an awful lot of writing from the first edition. I thought the update to the spy’s quote was clever, and would have liked some more of that. (Original: "They never tell you this in training school, but really, the best thing to do in a situation like this is to get yourself captured so you can figure out what the enemy is up to." Updated: ""With all the torture these days, getting captured is plan B. But it's still a plan.") That's pretty much it for the bad stuff. It's a great book.

The Ugly: I’m not sure there is still a place in this world for Feng Shui, but you know what? I'm not going to be Feng Shui concern troll.

Maybe I’m wrong. I’d love to be wrong. It was a huge hit at Gen-Con this year. I think it's disappointing they rarely make kickass martial arts movies like they used to, but that doesn't mean I don't love the ones that there. So what if the real world has moved past the world of Feng Shui? It's brilliant thematically, and solid mechanically, and I love the stories you can tell with it.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Feng Shui 2. It exists as certainly as Hopping Vampires and Bags Full of Guns and Shaolin Warriors with bad attitude and Attack Helicopters exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Feng Shui 2! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which asskicking fills the world would be extinguished.

Sky High: Starwhals!

We returned to our superhero campaign last week. The first half of this session was a confused, muddled mess of space narwhals haunting the steam tunnels. The less said about this, the better.

Also problematic was the lateral thinking puzzle. I thought it would be interesting to have a weirdo pose riddles to the PCs. Putting aside the fact that the weirdo posing riddle thing never works, I underestimated how well known the riddle was. Zod’s player was in Gifted & Talented classes from an early age, just as I was, and I had heard the riddle a million times, so I figured he had too. But no.

(It’s the one about the man who lives on the twelfth floor and takes the elevator down to the lobby every morning. But when he gets home, unless it’s raining or there is someone else in the elevator with him, he takes it up to the tenth floor and walks the remaining flights of stairs. Why? A: Because he’s too short to reach the button for the twelfth floor. If it’s raining, he can use the umbrella to press the button.) Apropos of nothing, I imagine the man in the riddle looking like Peter Dinklage in the Station Agent.

Like I said, I thought this riddle was extremely well known, and the plan was to let Lily try to solve it, with Zod providing hints and prodding her in the right direction. But it didn’t work out like that. They weren’t even in the right county with their questions. After ten minutes of painful flailing, I just said that Summer looked up the answer on her cell phone.

We broke early and had the rest of the session the next day.

Booster Gold wanted to meet with Amy and Zod at the local hangout, Nothin’ but Empanadas.

At the restaurant, the group meets Asami Sato and her technical advisor, Gadget Hackwrench.

Yes, that Gadget Hackrench.

At another table President Dog is dining Lady and the Tramp style with Lucy Junior, and their date is not going well.

Gadget tells the team that they’ll need three components to fix the Ewok ship, a power source, materials and operating system.

For the Power Source, the team will have to steal it from Doctor Doom, who will be guest judge at the school’s science fair, at Doctor Mordred’s request. Amy will be Asami’s personal aide, and Zod will be Doom’s.

For the Operating System, they’ll have to get it from a self-aware robot.

For the materials, they will have to go undercover in a Stark industries manufacturing plant.

I'm looking forward to the next session. The first part of this one was a mess, but we've got at least three sessions of good adventures to look forward to.

Sky High 2: Sky Higher

We ran the first installment of what will hopefully be a long-running superhero campaign. This one was very short, and mostly just served to establish the setting and the characters. Lily was pretty good for the whole thing. She was very excited to be playing with grownups, and she wanted to co-GM (“How about he says this instead?!”) but she settled down when I told her that I’d do most of storytelling, but I’d listen to what she said after I described something and we might incorporate her embellishments.  (And like every new role-player, she wants to roll for every action, no matter how trivial.)

Dramatis personæ

Amethyst “Amy” Midnight, aka “Night Glory”: Player character. Fourteen year old Freshmen at Sky High, and inheritor of her family’s secret ninja techniques. When she was five years old, her superhero parents (Golden Moon and The Shadow Flame) fought off a pair of supervillains (Crimson Thunder and Winter Rose) They saved the city, but heroes and villains alike were hurled into another dimension and Amy was paralyzed from the waist down. She was sent to a maximum security evil orphanage, but managed to escape. She wears a mystical ninja uniform that heals all wounds suffered by the wearer prior to the donning of the uniform. Consequently, she can walk when wearing it. She is a master martial artist, to the extent that she can paralyze her opponents and nullify their powers by blocking the flow of their chi. She is enthusiastic and upbeat. Her pet peeves include DJs, snobs and Chihuahuas.



Dru-Zod Periwinkle, aka “Zod”: Player Character. Fourteen year old Freshmen at Sky High.

Gangly, pimply, emo teenage version of General Zod, fostered by the Periwinkle family. Like Supergirl in the upcoming TV show,  he spent several years in the Phantom Zone, and is thus several years younger than his Kryptonian peers. It’s unclear why he was in the Phantom Zone in the first place, and Zod doesn’t like to talk about the subject. He is conceited and bombastic, and has a ridiculously one-sided rivalry with Superman, who barely knows that he exists. His parents are well-meaning, but clueless. They dote on their talented biological son, and can’t understand why Zod can’t be more like him. (It’s always Neil before Zod at the Periwinkle house) They’re constantly lecturing about how he should get out, get a little more sunlight and start applying himself, instead of sitting in his room all day, listening to the Cure and painting his toenails black.

Summer: Non-Player Character. Fourteen year old Freshmen. Younger child of the supervillains banished by Amy’s parents, and Amy’s best friend.  She has control over heat and fire, but lacks the confidence to make full use of her powers. One of the nicest kids on campus. A little bit naïve. Close friends with Night Glory. She loves her parents, but understands that they were criminals, and doesn’t blame Amy for what happened.  She has strawberry blonde hair that becomes more red the more emotion she feels.

Winter: Non-Player Character. Seventeen year old Junior. Think Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls, the villain in every Disney Channel TV movie. She controls cold and ice. She would probably hate Amy even if their parents had no history together, because Amy is kind and sincere, and Winter hates that kind of thing. She places full blame on Amy’s parents for what happened to her parents and will stop at nothing to make Amy’s life miserable.

Neil P: Non-Player Character. Nineteen-year-old graduate of Sky High, and student teacher. He was the valedictorian  and captain of the Sportsball team when he was at school, as well as Prom King. Beloved by staff and students alike, with the exception of his foster brother, Zod, towards whom he is loving, but patronizing. Has vaguely defined energy control powers, and might have some luck powers, since everything always seems to break his way.

Ursa: Non-Player Character. Fourteen year old Freshman. Kyptonian, like Zod, but can never remember who he is. The most popular girl in school. She’s a member of Winter’s clique, but not as nasty.

Vice Principal Nairn Hodor: Non-Player Character. Nearly seven feet tall and built like a vending machine. Super strong and nearly invulnerable. His hobbies include DJing, snobbery and teaching his Chihuahuas how to be DJs.  His detention is thing to be feared. The student body suspects that he was (or is!) a supervillain. (Kristian Nairn, the actor who plays Hodor, is a DJ in real life, thus the reason for a name that may otherwise have seemed completely random. No word if he is also a snob, a Chihuahua maestro or a supervillain.)

President Dog: Non-Player Character.  Super-intelligent cairn terrier, but no one knows it because he can’t talk or build things with his stubby little paws.  Everybody loves President Dog.

"Arf!"

We open with Amy eating breakfast before her first day at Sky High. She was raised by her aunt after her parents disappeared. Her aunt has some super-powers of her own, but she gave up heroing to take care of Amy.  She made Amy her favorite for the first day of school, buttermilk pancakes with Andes mints.  She meets up with Summer and they head to the bus stop.

We then turn to Zod at the Periwinkle family. He wakes up to a giant pimple on his forehead, and it joins the constellation already there. He wants a milkshake for breakfast, but his parents remind him that milkshakes always make him break out, so he has banana pancakes instead. His mom gives him a bagged lunch, reminds him to be more like Neil and sends him on his way.

The kids meet up at the bus stop and make small talk for a little while until the bus arrives to pick them up. Their bus driver is named Steve.

When they arrive at the school, Zod strikes up a conversation with Ursa, prettiest girl in the Freshmen class, and Zod’s fellow Kryptonian. Zod is doing pretty well until Ursa notices that Zod’s mom had written a note to him on the outside his lunch bag: ”I love you, little man”

Vice-Principal Hodor arrives and gathers up the group and takes them to Summer’s sister Winter, for orientation and a tour of the campus. This passes uneventfully, though Zod uses his X-Ray vison to scope out any areas that might be restricted. Winter nicknames him “General Zit.”

"Arf?"

Then it’s on to power placement. Coach Boomer wants to relegate Amy to sidekick status, but she activates her costume and impresses everybody with her ninja skills. President Dog is automatically promoted to hero status without the need for an assessment, because, hey, he’s President Dog.

Then it’s off to lunch, where we get a couple cameos from superheroes from other shows, including Robin, begging to be upgraded from sidekick status, which will probably become a running gag.

After lunch, the kids picked out their classes. Zod is very excited to learn that Professor Doctor Victor Von Doom would be teaching a class on the History and Application of Mad Science. He quickly signed up, and rushed off to the class, but when he got there he saw a sign on the door that announced that the class would be taught by a substitute for the duration of Doom’s confinement in the Negative Zone.

He was disappointed, but still interested in the class. When he entered the room, he heard the teacher call out to him. “Hey, baby bro? Did you miss me? I picked up some credits over the summer. I’ll be student teaching here!”

That’s where we wrapped up for the day. Like I said, just a short introductory session. I’m pretty happy with it, though. We’ve set the stage, and we got most of Star Wars out of the way, so now we can jump right in with The Empire Strikes Back. J

Final Thoughts:

I think that Young Zod is a brilliant idea which promises to be a huge amount of fun, and the concept has a ton narrative hooks.

I’m surprised how committed Lily is to the idea of playing a character with a disability. She’s always had a lot of empathy, and she’s putting a lot of thought into the difficulties such a person would have with tasks that most people can do without a second thought.

I’m really into this.  Yeah, it’s a bit goofy, and painted very broadly, but I think it will be a lot of fun for everyone.  That’s what I like about role-playing games. You get together to tell a story with your friends that none of you would have come up with independently, expanding and riffing on each other’s contributions.

First Quest, or the family that slays together, stays together

Lily played her first game of Dungeons & Dragons on Saturday. Role-playing games have been a big part of my life since I was her age, and they were something that I wanted to share with her. I didn't want to be the jerk parent who forces his kids into his favorite activities whether they like them or not, but it was something that I thought we could enjoy together. So I approached Lily, and boy, was she enthused!

Me: Do you know what Role playing Games are?
Lily: No.
Me: They're games where you pretend to be someone else.
Lily: Like playing House?
Me: Um, I suppose.

She was initially reluctant, because she thought I was talking about Double Dragon.  Once I explained a little more, she agreed to give it a shot. She said she wanted to play a ninja, so I gave her the rogue character, which she customized to her liking. She grew more enthusiastic as the date drew near, even asking for her good art supplies so she could make a character sketch.

I asked her to think of a reason that she would be traveling into town, and she suggested that her crown had been stolen, and she had heard it was in town, so she was on her way to retrieve it. I thought that was a pretty decent motivation.

Also on the team we had:

• Tim: Nedstark Orcstomper: He played the dwarven cleric pregen mostly as written, aside from giving him an outrageous accent. Tim is my best friend from way back, and the guy who introduced me to role-playing when we were kids. He lives up in New Hampshire, but I'm really glad he could be here for Lily's first game.
• Dave: Bob the Fighter, the fighter. Dave is another long time friend. He was the DM from my second edition days.
• Jen: Hagatha the Wizard:  Not my wife Jen, but my friend Jen. She's a lifelong geek who has somehow never previously picked up a twenty-sided die. But she was saying "I cast...magic missile!" before the night was through. 

Dave and Tim also did character sketches, but they were not as awesome as Lily's.

We played the first part of the adventure in the boxed set. Our team got really lucky, and they played extremely well. I don't think that anyone took a hit until the third or fourth fight. I was surprised at how well Lily did. She played better than some adults with whom I've played. She was certainly better than I was at her age, I think in part because she's been exposed to a lot of the game concepts through video games and such. She stayed focused and used her characters skills to sneak around and scout. She even mastered the art of passing notes to her fellow players.

I like your cloak, classic majishon. Very fashionable. And yes, I am a ninja.

I think I should have helped Jen prepare a little more, because she was lost in the way new players can get and didn't know what to do. Sleep is still a devastating spell at low levels, and that gave them some early victories (to the point that Dave called her character "Sleepspell"), but she had used all of her magic by the time we got to the final encounter, so she was forced to spam cantrips for the final fight.

It was heavier on combat than I would have liked, but not so much that it ruined the adventure for me or anything. The more I read 5th edition, the more I like it. I was also happy with how well Lily did. I would take her with my to play with my grown up friends.  She was losing interest near the end, but I think that was a function of "Blahblahblah, flavor text, and this room has SIX goblins in it! Roll for initiative!" sameness of the encounters.

Tim has gone back home, but Lily has expressed interest in continuing to adventure, to see if Kairi can find her missing crown. If she does, I'll be sure to post about it here.

Dungeons & Dragons: Edition Wars

I ran my my first game of Fifth Edition (D&D Next) Dungeons & Dragons on Saturday for a small group of friends and family.

D&D has been a part of my life for years. I was born in 1974, and, as hard as it may be to believe now, Dungeons & Dragons was once pretty mainstream. It's what the kids in E.T. were playing, after all. You could go in to just about any store and find the books on the shelf. I remember looking through the Monster Manual for the first time in a local hardware store in about 1982.

My friend Tim moved to my town when we were in the second grade. He had already played D&D at his old school. For our first adventure, I played his 10th level ranger ("Strongbow") through the Tomb of Horrors. I managed to avoid killing myself with the Sphere of Annihilation,

Me: I stick my torch in the gargoyle's mouth.
Tim: It is "completely and forever destroyed"
Me: All right, then.

but Strongbow's came to an ignominious end when he touched some trap that reversed his alignment and gender, which effectively ended his her career as a ranger.

We played a little bit, but he moved away when we were in the fifth grade, so that mostly marked the end of my time playing first edition.

Second Edition: I found some fellow gamers in high school. We were those kids with more money than sense, who bought every expansion that came down the pike. There were days in the summer when we played D&D every day for a month. After my last day of high school, I walked directly to a friend's house, and we continued our campaign.

You seldom see much love for Second Edition online. When it was released, it was scarcely different from first edition. It cleaned up the weirdest of the rules (1st edition Bards, I'm looking at you), but it was a small change, at first. The big differences came with the supplements, The Complete Fighter's Handbook (and Complete Thief's, Paladin's, Ranger's, Druid's, Cleric's, Bard's and Magic User's Handbooks as well) There were so many option to customize your characters.

Also, Second Edition marked a sea change in the presentation. In First Edition, you were just assumed to be wandering murder hobos, kind of like off brand Conans or Grey Mousers, who didn't have goals any more grand than looting the ruined castle down the road. Second Edition assumed you were important and had grand goals and plans.

This is the edition which I have played the most. In addition to the campaign during high school, there were several after I graduated and moved out. I played with my friend Dave, other friends, and briefly with my coworkers when I worked at the comic book store.

Third Edition: This was a pretty substantial revision of the game. First and Second edition were cobbled together with a million legacy systems and special case rules and this was a big move towards a unified system.

I own a ton of third edition books, but I played only a handful of times. I still played RPGs; just not D&D. The reason that  I have so many third edition books is that a couple years after it was released, it was followed by Edition 3.5.

I might be getting some of the details wrong, but my understanding of the situation was that third parties could produce supplements, but they had to be compatible with the current version of the game. When 3.5 was announced, they realized that the wouldn't be able to sell those supplements written for 3.0, so they dumped them on the market at fire sale prices. It didn't matter to me. 3.5 was still largely compatible with 3.0, so I bought a bunch of books for prices as low as $1.

Most of my exposure to 3rd edition comes from video games. Neverwinter Nights was based on 3.0 rules and Temple of Elemental Evil was based on 3.5.

Fourth Edition: I was not a fan of this one. My friend Eric quoted someone as saying that Third Edition killed a couple of sacred cows, but Fourth Edition slaughtered the whole herd. I bought the books on Amazon, because they were cheap, looked through them and lent them to a friend a couple day. He returned them while we were hanging out with other friends, and I immediately lent them out to somebody else. I'm not sure where my books are, and I don't particularly care.

Part of my problem was the presentation. Other people have called it a tabletop MMO, and, while MMOs were certainly one of the influences on the game, they weren't the only one or even the dominant influence. The rules tended to explain things using MMO terminology because that's something with which the reader will be familiar. First edition used wargaming terms for much the same reason. That's not bad, in itself, but I think it does tend to skew the mindset of players towards that playstyle.

Also, the promotional material was aggressively negative towards earlier editions. "You know that game that we've been making and you've been playing for eight years? It's crap, and you suck for liking it! Luckily, we're releasing Fourth Edition to give you a second chance."

I don't like it, because game balance went too far. The characters seem homogenous in a way that wasn't true for earlier editions. The powers seems so banal and mechanical. I'm going to quote Grognardia, a blog that articulated my problems with Fourth Edition better than I could.

Take, for example, the old standby -- and something even I will admit is a rip-off from Tolkien -- the elven cloak. This is what OD&D has to say about it: "Wearing the Cloak makes a person next to invisible." Next to invisible? What does that mean? Contrast this to AD&D, whose description of the item, now dubbed the cloak of elvenkind, is much more specific:

A cloak of elvenkind is of a plain neutral gray which is indistinguishable from any sort of ordinary cloak of the same color. However, when it is worn, with the hood drawn up around he head, it enables the wearer to be nearly invisible, for the cloak has chameleon-like powers. In the outdoors, the wearer of a cloak of elvenkind is almost totally invisible in natural surroundings, nearly so in other settings. Note that the wearer is easily seen if violently or hastily moving, regardless of the surroundings.The description then goes on to give specific percentage chances of how invisible the wearer is, from 100% in heavy growth in natural surroundings to 50% while underground and illuminated by the continual light spell. I'm not keen on this degree of specificity, but, even with it, there's still some wiggle room for the referee -- and players! -- because what constitutes "heavy growth" as opposed to "light growth" is a matter of opinion. You can see, though, that, even with all the expansive physical/metaphysical description of the cloak, its functioning ultimately comes down to a D100 roll.

Third Edition, as it so often does, pares down Gygaxian flavor text and reduces AD&D's baroque mechanics to banality: "This cloak of neutral gray cloth is indistinguishable from an ordinary cloak of the same color. However, when worn with the hood drawn up around the head, it gives the wearer a +5 competence bonus on Hide checks." Fourth Edition is even more laconic: "Gain an item bonus to Stealth checks equal to the cloak’s enhancement bonus." There's not even a nod to flavor text.

I suppose that emphasis on mechanics is what soured me on the edition. I like tabletop games, but I like computer and console RPGs too, and 4th edition seemed to be emphasizing elements that are handled better in computer games. So, while I can respect certain elements of its design, I'm never really going to like it.

Fifth Edition: Well, I ran the first part of the adventure that comes with the boxed set. But that will be its own post. Look for it soon.

Retro Review: Terra Primate

Terra Primate is an extremely odd duck. It was produced under Eden Studio's Unisystem rule set. Eden once held the license to produce the Buffy RPG, which I touched on briefly, here, but these days they are better known for their flagship game, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, which ranks up there with I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream as one of the all time great titles. 

As the title suggests, AFMBE is a zombie game. The core book is extremely solid, and has several "deadworlds", each of which have a different type of zombie. There are the classic Romero zombies who started it all, but that's not the only possibility. Maybe they're alien parasites, a la Night of the Creeps. Or maybe it's some kind of bloodborn pathogen. Or fertilizer inadvertently tainting the soil and causing the dead there to reanimate.  Or the Wheel of Reincarnation There were a lot of possibilities, and Eden Studios explored them as only fans who really believe in their property can.

Then there were the expansions. Enter the Zombie is one of the all time great sourcebooks, in my opinion, and it was followed by rules for Pulp, Wild West, Future, Fantasy, Professional Wrestling.  You name it, they had it.

AFMBE arrived in 1999, at the perfect time to take advantage of the zombiemania that is still sweeping pop culture. I don't know if this was calculated, or just a fortuitous coincidence, but it worked out great for them, with timing, quality and enthusiasm all combining to make a product that still sells well today.

In 2002, they released Terra Primate. It's like All Flesh Must Be Eaten, but with apes. Maybe they were hoping to capture the zeitgeist with what they expected to be a similar "Ape-mania" in the advent of 2001's Planet of the Apes movie.

I don't know how it sold, only apparently not well enough to justify additional support for it. (I couldn't find a picture of the cover much bigger than a thumbnail anywhere on the internet. What you see at the top of the post is a scan of my copy.)

There are "Apeworlds", but a big part of the problem is that there's not a whole lot of mechanical differentiation between the Doctor Moreau apes compared to the Post-Apocalypse Apes or the Planet of the Apes apes. Certainly not to the extent that there a mechanical differences between PHADE zombies and Sacred Soil zombies.When you've seen one ape, you've seen them all.

It's not a bad game at all. I happen to like Unisystem, and I think it's pretty great for a generic resolution system. I think, now that I'm looking at it twelve years after its release, that it would have worked better as a big supplement to AFMBE rather than a standalone game. It's an interesting footnote in the history of RPGs, however.

On Role Playing: Form follows function, setting shapes system

I've been a role-player for more than 25 years now. My friend Eric has been gaming even longer than that. Our interests diverged some time ago. Eric is a big booster of Savage Worlds, and I'm not a fan of generic systems. I understand the appeal, certainly. We're adults and parents, with the responsibilities that go along with that and we really don't have time to learn the ins and outs of a new system every time we want to play a game with our friends. There is certainly some virtue to a modular system like GURPS or Savage Worlds.

For my part, I like systems that do one thing and do it well. I guess I think of it this way: I've had plenty of terrible jobs, but I've never worked in a McDonald's, but from what I understand, they try to design their processes in such a way, that it's hard to do it wrong, that they've been engineered to such an extent that your first impulse on how to cook a burger will probably be the right one.

I like the same trait in RPG systems, where there is abundant mechanical support for the theme the game wants to convey, where emulating the actions taken in the source material will yield similar results. Older RPGs, hardly distinct from their wargaming forebears, barely did this at all.

And, for the purposes of this piece, I'm excluding games that have a great setting not specifically enforced by the rules. Delta Green, in my opinion, is one of the best settings out there, but that's on the strength of its writing and its fantastically imagined NPCs, not the rules, which are Chaosium's BRP ruleset, which I never felt particularly well-suited for the game. (Though the Viscount does make the system dance. However, I think that's more of a reflection of his aptitude as a GM, rather than on the fitness of the system. You can play Hamlet with Battletech if you try hard enough, but the rules aren't going to help you out.)

I suppose I've been thinking about this because I'm undergoing a resurgence (regeneration?) in my interest in Doctor Who. More on that a little later.

Here's a picture to tide you over

Mood is tricky to nail down in an RPG. Both the Amber Diceless RPG and the d6 Star Wars have quite a distinctive mood, but it's one that's really quite different from the source material. While I love them each for what they are, Wujcik's Amber is very different from Zelazny's.

I've always been fond of In Nomine, an RPG from the 90s, where the PCs can play Angels or Demons, which are mostly similar in capabilities. As Fallen Angels, the Demons tend to be dark reflections of their angelic selves.

I also happen to like the understated cover art

The mechanical bit I liked the most was that Celestials recharge their essence by acting in accordance with their nature. A servant of the archangel of animals might recovery a little essence by feeding a stray, or a little bit more releasing an abused animal from captivity. A servant of the archangel of trade might regain essence by earning $1000 in an honest transaction, etc. Whereas their demonic counterparts can recover essence through petty cruelties. A servant of the prince of Greed might regain essence through cheating someone out of $1000.

It's not a huge deal, and I'm not a big fan of the rest of the system (though I do still love the setting), but I really did appreciate that part. If you're going to give me manichaean duality, don't pretend that good and evil are just different names for the same thing.

CJ Carella is one of the great modern game designers and, even though I'm no longer the fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I once was, I still think the early seasons were brilliant, and the game captures them wonderfully.

My favorite mechanic for the BTVS RPG was that Vampires take five times normal damage if staked through the heart, but only if that damage would be enough to kill them. If it won't bring them below 0 hit points, then it only does regular damage. Carella came out and said this is a way to emulate the way Buffy usually slaps the vampires around for a little bit before staking them, and that's a great bit of design right there.

So....Doctor Who. I love this game. I sometimes have my problems with the show, but this game is great.  It seeks to emulate the game by giving adversaries like the Daleks stats that are difficult to best in straight combat, and prioritizing talking over other actions. (Actions have the following priority) "Talkers, Runners, Doers, Fighters."

I really, really like that the game has so much support baked in support for its play style.

I've been disappointed by a lot of supplements in my time, but those for this line have been consistently outstanding. The first Doctor sourcebook was good enough to get me interested in William Hartnell, but more than that, it really looked at and tried to explain what made the First Doctor's adventures different from what would come later, and there is such a wonderful...thoughtfulness to it. I don't think fans always make better products for properties we love, but we do tend to think about them at great length, and that does lend a depth not found elsewhere.

There's also a sly sense of humor to it. One of the disadvantages you can select for a character is an allergy to a specific item. "The substance should be something one could reasonably be expected to encounter occasionally (such as ammonia or aspirin), but not something so common the Time Lord is endangered every time he steps out of the TARDIS (such as rock quarries)" Heh.

It's really great. I'm trying to pester some friends into joining a campaign, but no luck so far.

So, feel free to use the comments section to talk about games you love. (Or volunteer to join my game if you are so inclined.)

I leave you this. I liked River Song at first, and much less each time she showed up. It seems my daughter has inherited this dislike:

Lily: Who's that lady on the cover?
Me: Her name is River Song.
Lily: That's a ridiculous name. If she got shot, she'd regenerate into
a My Little Pony.