time for a new avatar

Look for a variations on the images below next to my name at all the various message boards where you can find me. Original art by David Deitrick, coloring by yours truly.

six small items

• I can't make up my mind whether I'm delighted or disappointed that someone is already using None More Black as a band name. "It's like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black." is my favorite Spinal Tap line and I was sorta saving None More Black for my Tap cover band. Not that I have a band. Or any musical talent.

• My local library has some metal in the CD collection! I am rocking out to Black Sabbath's Paranoid even as I type this. Last week it was Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden. Wicked. Thanks again to everyone who offered advice in my ongoing quest to be more metal.

• Holy crap, this WoAdWriMo thing has gotten big very fast. It's freaking me out more than just a little.

• Before e-mail our ultra-ridiculous crap advertising wasn't junk mail, it was the tiny little ads in comic books. Dig this winner from issue 6 of John Carter Warlord of Mars (November 1977):
  
  
  Can you believe the sheer audacity of this guy? He doesn't even tell you what the collectible is! He might as well have took out an ad saying "Hey, stupid kids! Send me a quarter!"

• I've got this nagging idea for a superhero setting but I've more than half-convinced myself that I absolutely suck at supers games. I just don't feel the same level of mastery over supers gaming that I do when it comes to dungeon crawls. At least part of my problem is that I'm licking my wounds from my last supers attempt, but the reason the last game floundered was mostly my own lack of abilities.

• Legends of Wrestling II for the X-box may be bit of a crap game, but until recently I have gotten a ton of fun out of it. Right now I'm stuck in career mode where I have to win a 15-man Battle Royal to get a title shot against Ted "The Million Dollar Man" Dibiase. This battle royal is kicking my ass. More specifically Harley Race and Bob Backlund are kicking my ass. I've played this fight more than twenty times now and I can't get past being sixth or seventh man thrown out. Did I mention I regularly whomp Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant in this game, but legitimate hardass Harley Race schools me every time? That's six shades of awesome. Still, after last night's eighth straight loss of this same event I had to pour myself a drink. A stupid video game shouldn't be so frustrating.
  

I am a dirty spammer

I just got done announcing Worldwide Adventure Writing Month on theRPGsite, FudgeForum, GameCraft, Story Games, Animalball, Dragonsfoot, Knights-N-Knaves, Citizens of the Imperium, EN World, The Forge, and RPGnet. I know I'm not really a spammer, but it still feels a little naughty to zip through all these sites at a breakneck speed in a frantic rush of self-promotion. Especially the Forge and RPGnet. There's history there, you know?

New game store in Bloomington, IL

On Saturday my sister and I attended the open house for Gryfalia's Aerie, the new friendly local game store in downtown Bloomington, Illinois. Don't let the artsy-fartsy name fool you, these people have a good solid focus on stocking the material that actually sells: collectible miniatures and cards, German-style and other high-end boardgames, and D&D. The roleplaying selection is strictly limited to Wizards' D&D hardbacks, but they had a good number of them on the shelf. Although I would have personally benefitted from a larger array of RPG products let's not kid ourselves about how hard that can be on the owners. A store that only stocks the stuff the sells will last a lot longer than one that panders to my tastes by carrying all sorts of crazy crap no one else buys.

With Christmas coming up I only bought a couple of things for myself. ("Waitaminute. This book is on my Amazon wishlist. I better put it back.") They had a great selection of Steel Sqwire Flip-Mats, so I bought one of the original blank ones. My BattleMat is really showing its age. Some of my wet erase markers don't completely wipe off of it. Purple and red are especially likely to stay on the mat and after 2 years of use it really starts to show. I should probably namecheck Treasure Tables here, because I'm pretty sure I learned about the Flip-Mat via an old post of Martin's.

I also got a handful of the new d4's, the kind you can read from the top:Remember back when I talked a bit about how dice are a technology? This is the exact sort of die that gets me excited, because it's a better tool than its predecessors. You can keep all the fancy new gemstone, prismatic, speckled, rune-etched dice. Give me polyhedrals that are easy to read.

I also got my nephew a handful of cheap Magic cards. He's too young to actually play the game but he finds the overall concept and the artwork positively hypnotic. He spent the rest of my visit absolutely obsessing over the cards I got him, to the point of aggravating all the adults. Best dollar I've spent in a long time.

So this place is on the 400 block of North Main, if you want to visit it yourself. The shop was clean and neatly arranged, the folks at the gaming tables weren't offactorial disasters, and the owners were polite. The only oddball thing was that they've got those weird "we're doing this part-time" hours some gamestores keep. Tues through Friday the Store doesn't open until 5pm. Saturday they open at 9am. They're closed Sundays and Mondays.

Official store website here.

A Trick from 007

James Bond 007 (Victory Games 1983) was one of the Five Overlooked RPGs I talked about last month. This design was lightyears ahead of most of its contemporaries. In some ways you could call author Gerard Christopher Klug the father of heavy genre emulation role-playing. Heck, there are licensed properties published within the last few years that don't compare well to this design from over 2 decades ago.

Klug's GM advice chapter (Chapter 12: How To Be A GM,pages 93-99) is absolutely rock solid. If you got a copy of this baby its worth cracking open just to re-read this one section. Klug shines his laser-like focus on 'the mission', getting the players into their mission and keeping them on a frantic pace as they chase their mission goal. Most of this stuff is old hat nowadays (keeping a timetable of future villain plans, tips for when your players wander away from the mission or miss clues, etc.) but this stuff is old hat because of pioneers like Klug.

One of my favorite bits from this chapter is when Klug explicitly tells GMs to not write an ending to the mission. He puts the onus of concluding the adventure right on the shoulders of the players and makes the GM settle for reacting to their whims. If you'll allow me to be dogmatic for a moment: That's exactly the way adventure roleplaying should work. The GM sets up the canvas, but the players paint the picture.

Upon recently re-familiarizing myself with this book I found a bit I did't remember from when I first purchased a copy in 83 or 84. Most RPGs advise all particpants to use the first person when speaking in character. Author Klug actually makes a compelling argument that mixing first and third person usage can help signal which NPCs are extras and which are key figures in your game. Dig it:

It is interesting to note that in the movies Bond never seems to waste time with people who are not important to his mission. When your players' characters interact with NPCs, they should be able to discern the important encounters from the mundane ones. One simple method to help your players identify major NPCs (the ones important to the mission) is for you to speak their lines in the first person. If the NPC is not important, you can relate his dialogue as, "He says he'd be glad to let you stay here for the night." If the NPC is important to the mission, you might say, "I'd be honored to have two such fine people grace my establishment." Since you can help the players immediately identify the important people by your method of presenting them, you will be able to avoid having the mission become slow and ponderous.

That, my friends, looks like a hella tight technique when you want to avoid bogging down your game as your players try to figure out which NPCs matter and which are window dressing. This method will not work in every game. For instance, if you're doing an Agatha Christie style murder mystery every NPC will need to look equally important to the case. But for games like James Bond 007, where you're supposed to get straight to the sex and violence, Klug's advice looks like solid gold.

Quick WoAdWriMo Update

I'm working on a dedicated blog for World Adventure Writing Month. That will be a low impact affair, maybe once a week I'll drop off my thoughts on the upcoming writing frenzy. The first post ought to be up as soon as I figure out exactly what I want to say. EDIT: The first post is now up!

But more importantly that nifty guy Martin Rayla of Treasure Tables has agreed to host both a subforum and any downloads that result from the project. The aforementioned blog will be where I occasionally pontificate about the project, but TT will be the Official-type Home of WoAdWriMo.

Also, we have a third person in on the WoAdWriMo Challenge. Dave Hoover is now all-in with WoAdWriMo. Yay! Dave is a wicked cool guy and sort of a local GMing legend. He once ran a game in every single 4-hour slot at our local 3-day convention. Several people thought this was going to quite literally kill him. But he survived. He could barely speak a coherent sentence at the end of the weekend, but he survived.

A brief transcript

My Wife Amy: While you were at your game last week A Charlie Brown Christmas was on. I tried to get Elizabeth to come watch it, but she was too busy playing her Dora computer game. What's wrong with her?

Me: We've got that on DVD now. She can watch it 365 days in a row if she wants. It's not like when we were kids and if Charlie Brown Christmas or Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer were on you came a-running, cause you couldn't risk missing it.

Amy: Yeah, but there's still something special about the network broadcast!

Me: Speaking of Rudolf, we should get that on DVD.

Amy: I dunno. I never much cared for Rudolf.

Me: Well, what I really want is The Adventures of Yukon Cornelius.

Amy: ...

Me: Except that show doesn't exist.

Amy: [dirty look]

Me: Did you know Yukon Cornelius once wrestled the Abominable Snowman? And they both went over a cliff?

Amy: [rolling eyes] Yeah, I know.

Me: That guy is awesome.