One thing that surprises me, looking back on nigh-unto a decade working for the same place, is how few friends I have here. Plenty of cheerful acquaintanceships. Lots of people who say they'll miss having me around. Not many folks that I hang out with, though.
Enemies, however... I do have enemies. One of the highlights of recent weeks was seeking out my campus arch-nemesis and making peace with them. It was a nice piece of closure. I still despise this person, you understand, but we're formally at peace now.
I can't tell how I feel about the relative lack of friends here. It's the first place I've worked in a long, long time without having a posse. And I've gotten accustomed to it over the last 8+ years; I have a real-life posse. But it does add to my feeling that I've gotten dull out here in the provinces.
Friday, April 24, 2015
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Giant squid + giant squid
So much is happening that it's hard to write about any of it. My drafts folder is littered with abandoned proto-ideas, each dropped when the next came into focus. Maybe it's best to start with what's stable.
Things with the wife are good. We both took yesterday's Google Earth quiz to see what animals we are, and we both came up with "giant squid." I think this augurs well for my marriage. The wife herself is middlin'-fair; she doesn't enjoy change as much as I do, and she shoulders more of the household logistics than me. Moving is therefore much more stressful for her. She's also hunting for jobs, which isn't as comforting as accepting job offers. But marriage-things are good.
The dog's still a dog. She's very Zen about it, in a pop-culture sense of Zen.
My new job, on paper, will be very similar to my current job. That counts as stability, even though it also means a (relatively benign) minefield of wrong expectations I'll have to undo. I'll give people advice. Some of them will listen. Life will interfere with their plans. Repeat.
Pizza's good. That hasn't changed.
Things with the wife are good. We both took yesterday's Google Earth quiz to see what animals we are, and we both came up with "giant squid." I think this augurs well for my marriage. The wife herself is middlin'-fair; she doesn't enjoy change as much as I do, and she shoulders more of the household logistics than me. Moving is therefore much more stressful for her. She's also hunting for jobs, which isn't as comforting as accepting job offers. But marriage-things are good.
The dog's still a dog. She's very Zen about it, in a pop-culture sense of Zen.
My new job, on paper, will be very similar to my current job. That counts as stability, even though it also means a (relatively benign) minefield of wrong expectations I'll have to undo. I'll give people advice. Some of them will listen. Life will interfere with their plans. Repeat.
Pizza's good. That hasn't changed.
Monday, March 30, 2015
Agents of A.G.E.N.T.S.
When I've got a big thing to do, it helps me to do a completely useless small thing.
I'm changing my job, employer, and city in the next few weeks. After the longest stable period of my life, I should add. Lots of big things to do. Naturally, this seemed like a good time to make a Random Agent Generator for some kind of spy-supernatural-superscience RPG. Which, in turn, led me to brainstorming some basic fixes to Hero. The relentless pull of All The Big Things will probably turn that brainstorm into brain-reality soon enough.
These are the bones of the agent generator. I've gone ahead and worked it out in enough detail to make 100-point Hero System characters, which may be posted some other day. Everything is rolled on a d12; you make 5 rolls total.
1: WHAT'S YOUR STRONG SUIT?
I'm changing my job, employer, and city in the next few weeks. After the longest stable period of my life, I should add. Lots of big things to do. Naturally, this seemed like a good time to make a Random Agent Generator for some kind of spy-supernatural-superscience RPG. Which, in turn, led me to brainstorming some basic fixes to Hero. The relentless pull of All The Big Things will probably turn that brainstorm into brain-reality soon enough.
These are the bones of the agent generator. I've gone ahead and worked it out in enough detail to make 100-point Hero System characters, which may be posted some other day. Everything is rolled on a d12; you make 5 rolls total.
1: WHAT'S YOUR STRONG SUIT?
- 1 - 4 = Research
- 5 - 8 = Fieldwork
- 9 - 12 = Confrontation
- 1 - 2 = Military
- 3 - 4 = Public Safety
- 5 - 6 = Intrigue
- 7 - 8 = Deep Scholarship
- 9 = Action Science
- 10 = Monster Hunting
- 11 = Crime
- 12 = Something Boring
- 1 - 2 = Barehanded
- 3 = Melee Weapons
- 4 - 6 = Sneaky Guns
- 7 - 8 = Scary Guns
- 9 = Weird Weapons
- 10 = Powers
- 11 - 12 = Creative Non-Linear Problem Solving
- 1 - 2 = Sneaking
- 3 - 4 = Talking
- 5 - 6 = Cunning and Trickery
- 7 - 8 = Big Ideas
- 9 - 10 = Dumb Luck
- 11 = Powers
- 12 = Violence Is Really All I've Got
- 1 - 2 = Normal Science
- 3 - 4 = Human Studies
- 5 - 6 = Physical Training
- 7 = Weird Science
- 8 = The Supernatural
- 9 = Tinkering and Gadgets
- 10 = Forgotten Things
- 11 = Politics, Power, and Money
- 12 = Living To See Tomorrow
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Thus begins my feud with David Cross
I've been trying to write about Mr. Show, and it's not working.
I tried a long narrative that tied a bunch of concepts together before reaching a conclusion. I tried a short, punchy summation. There was even a footnote at one point. I've been grappling with Mr. Show, and my reactions to it, since I first saw it a couple months ago. I came to that party 20 years late and with very high hopes.
Mr. Show disappointed me and pissed me off.
There probably isn't much point explaining Mr. Show if you haven't watched it yourself -- sketch comedy, 1990s HBO, Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, you can use Wikipedia and Google. A lot of it is available online; this is a pretty representative sample if you're curious. It's a critical darling, a hotbed of alt-comedy, the breeding ground for many of today's influential creators.
It's kind of dumb and predictable.
Lots of things piss me off, but I have a special place in my anti-heart for smart people who choose to make stupid stuff. There's not enough smart stuff in the world as it is. Turning your back on being smart so that you can have the vile smarmy Jack Black prancing around in a sketch about someone sticking his penis in an automated milking machine? Not gonna forgive that any time soon.*
Now, most of their sketches weren't that dumb. Instead, many of them were flat -- they telegraphed punches, their humor was only going to resolve in a certain way. Some were great, thankfully; I have a particular fondness for the "Blowing Up The Moon" sketch on several levels. Mr. Show could have been an entire program of things like that. It wasn't. Was it budget? Laziness? A different view of what constitutes comedy and/or entertainment? Snakes?
Doesn't matter. The show's beloved. And it's been dead for 20 years. And I still don't like it.
The most useful observation I've come across -- the catalyst for writing this, really -- was an AV Club review by Leonard Pierce. He wrote of Mr. Show that "many of their sketch ideas were pretty fucking stupid. They were not, as a rule, telling ten-percenter jokes." That frames it up nicely. I'm a ten-percenter; I want smart stuff. There isn't enough of it in our world. I get tired of wading through the sludge to find the occasional gem. And Mr. Show occasionally sparkled. But that mostly just cast light on all their dumb stuff, and that somehow makes it all worse.
_____________________
*It seems apropos here to note that I also just watched Animal House for the first time ever. Or at least I got through about 2/3 of it before just shutting it off and finding something else to do. "I was surprised you watched that at all," said my wife, who knows me well. "You don't like crude." NOBODY SHOULD LIKE CRUDE. ESPECIALLY NOT SMART PEOPLE.**
**Hey, we got a footnote after all!***
***It wasn't that Animal House was crude, anyway. It was, again, dumbness and predictability. I've already seen MASH, and the original had better acting and directing.
I tried a long narrative that tied a bunch of concepts together before reaching a conclusion. I tried a short, punchy summation. There was even a footnote at one point. I've been grappling with Mr. Show, and my reactions to it, since I first saw it a couple months ago. I came to that party 20 years late and with very high hopes.
Mr. Show disappointed me and pissed me off.
There probably isn't much point explaining Mr. Show if you haven't watched it yourself -- sketch comedy, 1990s HBO, Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, you can use Wikipedia and Google. A lot of it is available online; this is a pretty representative sample if you're curious. It's a critical darling, a hotbed of alt-comedy, the breeding ground for many of today's influential creators.
It's kind of dumb and predictable.
Lots of things piss me off, but I have a special place in my anti-heart for smart people who choose to make stupid stuff. There's not enough smart stuff in the world as it is. Turning your back on being smart so that you can have the vile smarmy Jack Black prancing around in a sketch about someone sticking his penis in an automated milking machine? Not gonna forgive that any time soon.*
Now, most of their sketches weren't that dumb. Instead, many of them were flat -- they telegraphed punches, their humor was only going to resolve in a certain way. Some were great, thankfully; I have a particular fondness for the "Blowing Up The Moon" sketch on several levels. Mr. Show could have been an entire program of things like that. It wasn't. Was it budget? Laziness? A different view of what constitutes comedy and/or entertainment? Snakes?
Doesn't matter. The show's beloved. And it's been dead for 20 years. And I still don't like it.
The most useful observation I've come across -- the catalyst for writing this, really -- was an AV Club review by Leonard Pierce. He wrote of Mr. Show that "many of their sketch ideas were pretty fucking stupid. They were not, as a rule, telling ten-percenter jokes." That frames it up nicely. I'm a ten-percenter; I want smart stuff. There isn't enough of it in our world. I get tired of wading through the sludge to find the occasional gem. And Mr. Show occasionally sparkled. But that mostly just cast light on all their dumb stuff, and that somehow makes it all worse.
_____________________
*It seems apropos here to note that I also just watched Animal House for the first time ever. Or at least I got through about 2/3 of it before just shutting it off and finding something else to do. "I was surprised you watched that at all," said my wife, who knows me well. "You don't like crude." NOBODY SHOULD LIKE CRUDE. ESPECIALLY NOT SMART PEOPLE.**
**Hey, we got a footnote after all!***
***It wasn't that Animal House was crude, anyway. It was, again, dumbness and predictability. I've already seen MASH, and the original had better acting and directing.
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Retooling for 2015
At first this was going to be an RPG blog. That was fun for a while.
I don't play or run a lot of RPGs these days. So I'm going to write about more things. I hope that'll be fun for a while.
Why don't I play or run RPGs much? I'm getting old. That has two consequences. One is time -- I have more to do with my days. Working my day job, working my side gigs, doing some parenting, doing some now-the-kids-are-out-of-the-house-so-who-is-this-person-I-married stuff, and just wasting time. After grad school and then the rush of other family graduations, I like having time to waste on pointless solo projects.
The other is what, for lack of a non-snobby term, I'll call refinement. Not in the sense of "being better," understand, but the sense of "honing and sharpening." I've been roleplaying for a couple decades now. I have a pretty good sense of what I enjoy: PRETENDING. I like being a fictional person in an imaginary setting. I like character history, troubled pasts, shiny goals, personalities. I like players who are allowed to make up stuff about their characters and I like GMs who use that stuff to help everyone tell cool stories.
I like RPG groups made of people who are actors but who weren't theater majors.
And those people are hard to find. Lots of people roleplay to solve puzzles, or to imaginarily kill imaginary monsters and get imaginary treasure, or to have weird power trips, or whatever. That's fine by me. But that's not fun for me. I like games with players who pretend to Be Somebody and then Want Something and then Pursue That Something Goddammit Because It's IMPORTANT. Plus, y'know, playing nicely with everyone else in the sandbox.
That's hard to arrange.
I don't need an all-actor group. But I don't enjoy no-actor groups anymore. If rolling up stats or assigning character points or being handed a sheet and told "This is you" doesn't wake something up in the pretendy part of your brain, the bit that generates names and histories and a drive to explore/create simultaneously, we might not be a good match. So it goes.
We'll talk about more stuff down the road. It's good to be back.
I don't play or run a lot of RPGs these days. So I'm going to write about more things. I hope that'll be fun for a while.
Why don't I play or run RPGs much? I'm getting old. That has two consequences. One is time -- I have more to do with my days. Working my day job, working my side gigs, doing some parenting, doing some now-the-kids-are-out-of-the-house-so-who-is-this-person-I-married stuff, and just wasting time. After grad school and then the rush of other family graduations, I like having time to waste on pointless solo projects.
The other is what, for lack of a non-snobby term, I'll call refinement. Not in the sense of "being better," understand, but the sense of "honing and sharpening." I've been roleplaying for a couple decades now. I have a pretty good sense of what I enjoy: PRETENDING. I like being a fictional person in an imaginary setting. I like character history, troubled pasts, shiny goals, personalities. I like players who are allowed to make up stuff about their characters and I like GMs who use that stuff to help everyone tell cool stories.
I like RPG groups made of people who are actors but who weren't theater majors.
And those people are hard to find. Lots of people roleplay to solve puzzles, or to imaginarily kill imaginary monsters and get imaginary treasure, or to have weird power trips, or whatever. That's fine by me. But that's not fun for me. I like games with players who pretend to Be Somebody and then Want Something and then Pursue That Something Goddammit Because It's IMPORTANT. Plus, y'know, playing nicely with everyone else in the sandbox.
That's hard to arrange.
I don't need an all-actor group. But I don't enjoy no-actor groups anymore. If rolling up stats or assigning character points or being handed a sheet and told "This is you" doesn't wake something up in the pretendy part of your brain, the bit that generates names and histories and a drive to explore/create simultaneously, we might not be a good match. So it goes.
We'll talk about more stuff down the road. It's good to be back.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Dungeon World quick review
The usual Star Wars gang tried something new last weekend -- Dungeon World. I was impressed. While it has the trappings of older D&D-style games, Dungeon World uses some interesting bite-sized mechanics called "moves" that streamline play. You can hunt up the official page for yourself, but since it's based on OGL content, a lot of it is online for free.
It's a simple game. Not as bare-bones as the original Gnomemurdered!, which still sets the standard for ease of play, but you could teach it to your eight-year-old kid or your fortysomething-friend-who-hasn't-roleplayed-much. Character generation is basically a flowchart. The idea of moves makes it easy for players to decide on their actions. Its skeleton is D&D, so it's a snap to pick up if you know that game already.
Dungeon World also buys into some of the things I don't want in a game. Classes? Yes. Hit points? Yes (although I don't think they increase with experience, which is a plus). Halflings? Yes. Railroading PCs down specific stereotypical developmental tracks? Yes.
I haven't looked over the GM rules carefully yet. They have a weird storygame vibe, but they might also make the play experience more fun.
I think you could easily fix most of the things I don't like --f'rinstance, make the list of starting moves open to all new PCs, to get rid of that musty 1970s smell. It's simple and modular enough to accommodate that. Dungeon World looks like a solid little game that's worth your attention.
It's a simple game. Not as bare-bones as the original Gnomemurdered!, which still sets the standard for ease of play, but you could teach it to your eight-year-old kid or your fortysomething-friend-who-hasn't-roleplayed-much. Character generation is basically a flowchart. The idea of moves makes it easy for players to decide on their actions. Its skeleton is D&D, so it's a snap to pick up if you know that game already.
Dungeon World also buys into some of the things I don't want in a game. Classes? Yes. Hit points? Yes (although I don't think they increase with experience, which is a plus). Halflings? Yes. Railroading PCs down specific stereotypical developmental tracks? Yes.
I haven't looked over the GM rules carefully yet. They have a weird storygame vibe, but they might also make the play experience more fun.
I think you could easily fix most of the things I don't like --f'rinstance, make the list of starting moves open to all new PCs, to get rid of that musty 1970s smell. It's simple and modular enough to accommodate that. Dungeon World looks like a solid little game that's worth your attention.
Friday, August 15, 2014
SHAMAN SHAMAN SHAMAN SHAMAN SHAMAN
This thing from the False Machine blog is simple and brilliant and you should read it.
That, to quote John Hodgman, is all.
That, to quote John Hodgman, is all.
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Booze + Lumberjacks = Goofy Monsters
There just ain't much to do, here in the woods of 19th-century North America, but drink cheap whiskey and hallucinate monsters. Gotta hope that people write books about our tall tales, and maybe a century later Wired will be invented and do an article on those books.
The whole thing is worth browsing through. Some of the illustrations are charming, and a lot of the critters are a weird blend of wilderness and steam-age imagination. Like the Tripodero here...
...who's supposed to have a rifle-style scope on his nose, in addition to his extensible legs. You could easily adapt a bunch of these beasties to a game of your own -- fantasy, sci-fi, steampunk, cyberpunk, weird modern, whatever. Here, let me give you a system-neutral hand with the Tripodero. I used an arbitrary points-out-of-seven scale:
TRIPODERO
Health: 4/7
Armor: 3/7
Speed: 4/7 (legs extended) or 2/7 (legs retracted)
Attacks: ranged 5/7 (clay spitshot), melee 2/7 (kick)
Stealth: 1/7 (legs extended) or 3/7 (legs retracted)
Etc: Enhanced vision; accuracy bonus with spitshot
Details: The tripodero is a carnivorous mammalbird that travels in small packs. It hunts by spitting small clay shot (also called quids) at high velocities; these are comparable to a medium-caliber bullet or heavy sling stone in terms of damage. A tripodero will forage for mineral-rich mud, which it "chews" in its mud gizzard to create the shot. Patient creatures, the tripodero will stalk prey from hundreds of yards away, combining its scope-sight with its eerie telescoping legs for maximum sight range. The clak-clak-clak of tripoderos raising and lowering themselves in the distant brush has haunted many explorers, and is often followed by the whizz-thak of its spitshot.
The whole thing is worth browsing through. Some of the illustrations are charming, and a lot of the critters are a weird blend of wilderness and steam-age imagination. Like the Tripodero here...
 |
| Drawn by Coert Du Bois, apparently, and written up by William T. Cox |
...who's supposed to have a rifle-style scope on his nose, in addition to his extensible legs. You could easily adapt a bunch of these beasties to a game of your own -- fantasy, sci-fi, steampunk, cyberpunk, weird modern, whatever. Here, let me give you a system-neutral hand with the Tripodero. I used an arbitrary points-out-of-seven scale:
TRIPODERO
Health: 4/7
Armor: 3/7
Speed: 4/7 (legs extended) or 2/7 (legs retracted)
Attacks: ranged 5/7 (clay spitshot), melee 2/7 (kick)
Stealth: 1/7 (legs extended) or 3/7 (legs retracted)
Etc: Enhanced vision; accuracy bonus with spitshot
Details: The tripodero is a carnivorous mammalbird that travels in small packs. It hunts by spitting small clay shot (also called quids) at high velocities; these are comparable to a medium-caliber bullet or heavy sling stone in terms of damage. A tripodero will forage for mineral-rich mud, which it "chews" in its mud gizzard to create the shot. Patient creatures, the tripodero will stalk prey from hundreds of yards away, combining its scope-sight with its eerie telescoping legs for maximum sight range. The clak-clak-clak of tripoderos raising and lowering themselves in the distant brush has haunted many explorers, and is often followed by the whizz-thak of its spitshot.
Monday, August 11, 2014
The perfidy of memory, or, At least we have pants
I dusted off an old idea and ran a Star Wars game where everyone woke up with amnesia. Nothing innovative there. But the execution worked so well, so smooth and unnerving, that it might interest people who aren't me and/or aren't running Star Wars games.
The session started with everyone waking up, dazed and with a weird taste in their mouths, surrounded by garbage. Nobody knew why. Everyone was wearing matching coveralls and had no shoes. Nobody knew why. All their equipment was gone, which is a great way to terrify players and motivate swift action. The one thing they were sure of was that they had agreed to do... something? With a deadline? Probably?
That took all of 30 seconds. Then I told them they could roll to remember things -- I like it when people are rolling dice. So they rolled dice for their Knowledge stats. Alas! Nobody had prioritized that stat! But they limped along as best they could, and for every 5 points in their total, they got a memory back. I mean, I actually handed them a tangible memory.
I had a deck of index cards. Each card had a sentence or two written on it. Got enough points? Get a card. Every now and then they could take time to try remembering more. Of course, time was in short supply. Eventually they stitched together an idea of What They Were Doing and did it. It even ended up being close to What They Had Agreed To Do.
These are the cards available. The players ended up with about 2/3 of them. It might make more sense with more campaign information, like knowing about the sinister purple-lightsaber-wielding Jedi who's hunting them, but the general flavor of the cards is there:
The session started with everyone waking up, dazed and with a weird taste in their mouths, surrounded by garbage. Nobody knew why. Everyone was wearing matching coveralls and had no shoes. Nobody knew why. All their equipment was gone, which is a great way to terrify players and motivate swift action. The one thing they were sure of was that they had agreed to do... something? With a deadline? Probably?
That took all of 30 seconds. Then I told them they could roll to remember things -- I like it when people are rolling dice. So they rolled dice for their Knowledge stats. Alas! Nobody had prioritized that stat! But they limped along as best they could, and for every 5 points in their total, they got a memory back. I mean, I actually handed them a tangible memory.
I had a deck of index cards. Each card had a sentence or two written on it. Got enough points? Get a card. Every now and then they could take time to try remembering more. Of course, time was in short supply. Eventually they stitched together an idea of What They Were Doing and did it. It even ended up being close to What They Had Agreed To Do.
These are the cards available. The players ended up with about 2/3 of them. It might make more sense with more campaign information, like knowing about the sinister purple-lightsaber-wielding Jedi who's hunting them, but the general flavor of the cards is there:
- The code phrase is "The Jawa flies at midnight."
- Someone in Engineering was flirting with you.
- You snuck one of the droids on board with you.
- After the jump to hyperspace, security will be much tighter.
- Zal Duster is alive! AND HE'S A WOMAN!
- Someone kept saying the name Ventik Doha.
- The Engineering section is on lockdown.
- Security Code 303736. That must mean something.
- Desti Daven is pretty harmless for an Imperial bigwig.
- You hid some gear in a cabinet in the Engineering sector.
- Is that her? Dammit! That's her -- the angry one from the junkyard planet!
- The ship's self-destruct has been activated.
- Hold on... that guy's not "auxiliary security." He's a bounty hunter!
- The most influential governor in this sector is Jessa Makepeace.
- Garbage is dumped before every hyperspace jump.
- That guy. Purple. Purple... That guy.
- It's a diplomatic ship. Violence is not a good idea.
- His "assistant" is an agent of Imperial intelligence!
- Yes, but WHY was Dash wearing hooker makeup? And where did Hawke find that banjo?
- Someone in Engineering is helping you save the governor.
- The ship's main lounge has no security or monitoring.
- Someone has poisoned the ration bars.
- When it's done, you should escape on his ship.
- You have to contact him BEFORE the jump to hyperspace.
- Jessa Makepeace is the governor of the Oolooda sector.
- A grinning face, big teeth, two horns...
- Diplomats from the Lycu system smuggled you on board.
- Gas. Yellow. Smelled like burning soil. Big smile... horns...
- Governor Tarvo of the Lycu system has some Rebel sympathies.
- Rogan A'Gamar is also Desti Daven.
- An Imperial governors' conference? Could you be on a duller mission?
- She has a hooked nose and you shouldn't trust her.
- Boolan Sector. Good. Tovian Sector. Bad.
- The counter-code is "Not without his golden slippers."
- Then the R5 droid aimed its firefoam nozzle at you and chattered menacingly...
- Yellow means unlocked. Red means locked.
- One of the Zzohren brothers was seen talking to Imperial intelligence agents.
- The command center is at the top deck of the bow.
- One of the ship's security officers seemed to recognize Victarian.
- While you were unconscious, they implanted cybernetic weapons in your face.
- Someone in Engineering is helping you set the bomb.
- If you persuade him to defect, several other Imperial governors may follow.
- Jessa Makepeace can drink enough to kill a Gundark.
- You don't have your ship. Why do you not have your ship? How will you escape?
- Garbage pods aren't locked unless they're full.
- The ship's captain is marrying... someone to a woman who looks like Greedo.
- Lieutenant Ariella Forn, of the ship's security detail... she's not bad looking.
Friday, August 8, 2014
How To Not Libel People
There's been drama... no, there's been DRAMA!!! with the launch of the free D&D 5E rules. If you're reading this, you probably know what's going on. You can check out Fail Forward or D&D With Porn Stars if you need to see what's what. I also liked this analysis by Mollpeartree and this evaluation by Richard and this essay by Mandy Morbid. There's tons more if you want to go down the rabbit hole.
Okay.
If you accuse someone of things, you should provide evidence of your accusation. It's courtesy, it's intellectual honesty, it's sometimes even the law. Saying "these people told me in secret and I'm not sharing proof because secrets" is rarely enough. Your source's discomfort is not a defense. If you're reporting that Someone Said Something, you say who they are. People who won't go on the record are people you can't trust. Not everyone has the luxury of an adequate education at one of our nation's most publicly-funded journalism schools -- but I do. I paid my rent for years by reporting on what people said. Anonymous sources are bullshit.
Bullshit.
To be fair, some people need anonymity to protect their lives or their livelihoods. I can see that. Heroic truth-tellers, whistleblowers, people who've suffered at the hands of the powerful. But these exceptions are rare. As far as I know, nobody's life or fortune is on the line here. Nobody in this fight is stabbing or stealing.
You don't have to like Zak S (I do, based on reading his stuff) or the RPGPundit (I mostly don't, based on reading his stuff). But if you attack them -- if you attack anyone -- you need to show your work. If you feel you can't, you need to show the reasons why not. If you can't do either of those things, you've crossed the line into libel.
Don't libel people. Don't hide behind anonymity. If you're in danger, get the police. If you're not in danger, own your statements.
Okay.
If you accuse someone of things, you should provide evidence of your accusation. It's courtesy, it's intellectual honesty, it's sometimes even the law. Saying "these people told me in secret and I'm not sharing proof because secrets" is rarely enough. Your source's discomfort is not a defense. If you're reporting that Someone Said Something, you say who they are. People who won't go on the record are people you can't trust. Not everyone has the luxury of an adequate education at one of our nation's most publicly-funded journalism schools -- but I do. I paid my rent for years by reporting on what people said. Anonymous sources are bullshit.
Bullshit.
To be fair, some people need anonymity to protect their lives or their livelihoods. I can see that. Heroic truth-tellers, whistleblowers, people who've suffered at the hands of the powerful. But these exceptions are rare. As far as I know, nobody's life or fortune is on the line here. Nobody in this fight is stabbing or stealing.
You don't have to like Zak S (I do, based on reading his stuff) or the RPGPundit (I mostly don't, based on reading his stuff). But if you attack them -- if you attack anyone -- you need to show your work. If you feel you can't, you need to show the reasons why not. If you can't do either of those things, you've crossed the line into libel.
Don't libel people. Don't hide behind anonymity. If you're in danger, get the police. If you're not in danger, own your statements.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
The Shadow of the Past
It's been a couple years since I did any real roleplaying. A couple of pick-up games for the teenagers, one Star Wars adventure that I'll remember to my grave, but other things needed to get done.
Now they're done.
I turn 40 this summer. What I really wanted for my birthday was a reunion of my old college roleplaying group. Long story short, it's happening. They're coming from hundreds and thousands of miles away to visit our old Fantasy Hero setting one more time, to see how 20 years have changed it. And changed us, of course, although that will probably just be "we're thicker and balder and have pictures of our kids."*
We played a lot of games in a lot of settings, but for three years this campaign was The Main Event. I ran it, so that's nice for my ego, but I can't take credit for its success. The world of Gorbadin is a pretty generic place. I literally threw it together one afternoon because a couple of my players said "We made these Fantasy Hero characters -- can we do something with them?" Sure, I developed the setting over time. I'm a world-builder. Not a world-innovator, though; my skills lie elsewhere. Gorbadin became the favorite because of the group's PCs. If you want to invent some critical jargon with me, think of the setting as an "OOTS world" -- like the background to Order Of The Stick, the world of Gorbadin is designed to be set dressing. The PCs were our focus. Joys, sorrows, goals, all that actor stuff (even though most of the players weren't actors). Gorbadin lasted for years because the guys wanted to keep being their characters, whether it was one PC the whole time or an improbable 37 of them.
So, having pulled this whole deal together, what do I do now?
__________
*Typing that sentence reminded me that the college gang is one of only two all-male roleplaying groups I've been in. Huh.
Now they're done.
I turn 40 this summer. What I really wanted for my birthday was a reunion of my old college roleplaying group. Long story short, it's happening. They're coming from hundreds and thousands of miles away to visit our old Fantasy Hero setting one more time, to see how 20 years have changed it. And changed us, of course, although that will probably just be "we're thicker and balder and have pictures of our kids."*
We played a lot of games in a lot of settings, but for three years this campaign was The Main Event. I ran it, so that's nice for my ego, but I can't take credit for its success. The world of Gorbadin is a pretty generic place. I literally threw it together one afternoon because a couple of my players said "We made these Fantasy Hero characters -- can we do something with them?" Sure, I developed the setting over time. I'm a world-builder. Not a world-innovator, though; my skills lie elsewhere. Gorbadin became the favorite because of the group's PCs. If you want to invent some critical jargon with me, think of the setting as an "OOTS world" -- like the background to Order Of The Stick, the world of Gorbadin is designed to be set dressing. The PCs were our focus. Joys, sorrows, goals, all that actor stuff (even though most of the players weren't actors). Gorbadin lasted for years because the guys wanted to keep being their characters, whether it was one PC the whole time or an improbable 37 of them.
So, having pulled this whole deal together, what do I do now?
__________
*Typing that sentence reminded me that the college gang is one of only two all-male roleplaying groups I've been in. Huh.
Friday, October 19, 2012
His analysis is quite cogent
It's Chris Sims talking about D&D monsters. What more do you need?
Good to be back. Somebody did something to the firewall at my day job that makes it impossible to update ye olde roleplayinge blogge. But this was worth noting.
Been doing some stuff with the 5e playtest, and I'm still fooling around with a stripped-down Champions hack, and the idea of a superhero hexcrawl is in my brain, and now that XCom has rebooted I might dust off my XCom/Cyberpunk combination to see if it's any good. That's what I've been doing on the RPG front lately. Thinking about adventure ideas for a friend who's been approached to write for the DCCRPG and is stuck, but I don't know if that counts since I don't know the system very well.
Good to be back. Somebody did something to the firewall at my day job that makes it impossible to update ye olde roleplayinge blogge. But this was worth noting.
Been doing some stuff with the 5e playtest, and I'm still fooling around with a stripped-down Champions hack, and the idea of a superhero hexcrawl is in my brain, and now that XCom has rebooted I might dust off my XCom/Cyberpunk combination to see if it's any good. That's what I've been doing on the RPG front lately. Thinking about adventure ideas for a friend who's been approached to write for the DCCRPG and is stuck, but I don't know if that counts since I don't know the system very well.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Take my wife -- please!
I dunno what else we've learned from the 5e playtest, but it's exposing a fault line in my marriage.
Deidre and I played our first game together in 1989 or so. It was probably Marvel Super Heroes. A pretty good foundation for a relationship, but even the strongest foundation will settle a little over the years. And so it was that, during a postgame critique, we defined the sharp line that's separated our play styles for the last 23 years. As a GM and as a player, I think it's up to the players to drive the action and come up with the goals. She thinks it's the GM's job. CAN THIS MARRIAGE BE SAVED???
Yes, but we're going to annoy each other whenever I'm running a game that she's playing in, because my wife loves the Star Trek model of roleplaying. She has no interest in creating a character backstory or advancing a PC's goals -- she wants to be told where she is and what she's supposed to do, because that stuff isn't fun for her. I, by contrast, want the PCs to have backstories and goals and hopes and dreams and plans and etc etc etc. Not only is that my kind of fun, but I'm a very lazy GM who doesn't like to plan and I prefer it when my players are doing the heavy lifting for me.
I feel a taxonomy coming on.
My wife is what I'd call a Driver. Her PC is, very simply, herself with different abilities. It might have a history tacked on, but it's not something she wants to explore -- and she'll get mad if the GM starts mining it for material. The character exists so she can maneuver it through obstacles and use it to solve puzzles. She enjoys playing with it, but she doesn't identify with it just like you don't think of yourself as your car.
One of the other guys who's helped with our playtesting is Matt F. He's what you'd call an Actor. His main joy is creating a distinct persona, different from his own, and then getting that persona into conflicts. For example, the 5e playtest has two dwarf characters. Matt played the mountain dwarf and Deidre was the hill dwarf. The playtest doesn't give you any idea as to how the two kinds of dwarves differ, if indeed they do; their mechanics seem identical. But Matt was still trying to start some subrace rivalry with Deidre, sniffing and snorting about how We do things and how backward They are. That's what Actors enjoy.
Drivers don't. Deidre ignored it every time.
The other guy who's been involved is Mateo.* As a roleplayer he has a lot of the same tendencies that Matt F does -- the love of interpersonal tension, the desire to explore some other identity -- except that Mateo is, well, squirrely. While the Driver is solving puzzles and the Actor is interacting, Mateo is just making things happen. Often complicated, unorthodox, eventually-helpful-but-how-the-hell-did-we-get-here things. I'd call him an Imp. He likes to play.
It's hard to say what I am when I play; the subject is too close for me to examine it clearly. Of these three types, I'm closest to the Actor. My great joy is all that persona-stuff, but I'm not interested in being someone notably different from me, which is part of what an Actor is doing. I'm more interested in rooting myself in the setting and history and culture... I'll cop out and call myself a Historian. My approach, both playing and running games, is pretty close to what the excellent Lowell Francis described a few weeks ago.
Of the four, my play style is my favorite -- and Driver is the one I like least. It has the coolest name, though.
______________
*Yes, we have two Matts and a Mateo. Everyone turns their head when you call.
Deidre and I played our first game together in 1989 or so. It was probably Marvel Super Heroes. A pretty good foundation for a relationship, but even the strongest foundation will settle a little over the years. And so it was that, during a postgame critique, we defined the sharp line that's separated our play styles for the last 23 years. As a GM and as a player, I think it's up to the players to drive the action and come up with the goals. She thinks it's the GM's job. CAN THIS MARRIAGE BE SAVED???
Yes, but we're going to annoy each other whenever I'm running a game that she's playing in, because my wife loves the Star Trek model of roleplaying. She has no interest in creating a character backstory or advancing a PC's goals -- she wants to be told where she is and what she's supposed to do, because that stuff isn't fun for her. I, by contrast, want the PCs to have backstories and goals and hopes and dreams and plans and etc etc etc. Not only is that my kind of fun, but I'm a very lazy GM who doesn't like to plan and I prefer it when my players are doing the heavy lifting for me.
I feel a taxonomy coming on.
My wife is what I'd call a Driver. Her PC is, very simply, herself with different abilities. It might have a history tacked on, but it's not something she wants to explore -- and she'll get mad if the GM starts mining it for material. The character exists so she can maneuver it through obstacles and use it to solve puzzles. She enjoys playing with it, but she doesn't identify with it just like you don't think of yourself as your car.
One of the other guys who's helped with our playtesting is Matt F. He's what you'd call an Actor. His main joy is creating a distinct persona, different from his own, and then getting that persona into conflicts. For example, the 5e playtest has two dwarf characters. Matt played the mountain dwarf and Deidre was the hill dwarf. The playtest doesn't give you any idea as to how the two kinds of dwarves differ, if indeed they do; their mechanics seem identical. But Matt was still trying to start some subrace rivalry with Deidre, sniffing and snorting about how We do things and how backward They are. That's what Actors enjoy.
Drivers don't. Deidre ignored it every time.
The other guy who's been involved is Mateo.* As a roleplayer he has a lot of the same tendencies that Matt F does -- the love of interpersonal tension, the desire to explore some other identity -- except that Mateo is, well, squirrely. While the Driver is solving puzzles and the Actor is interacting, Mateo is just making things happen. Often complicated, unorthodox, eventually-helpful-but-how-the-hell-did-we-get-here things. I'd call him an Imp. He likes to play.
It's hard to say what I am when I play; the subject is too close for me to examine it clearly. Of these three types, I'm closest to the Actor. My great joy is all that persona-stuff, but I'm not interested in being someone notably different from me, which is part of what an Actor is doing. I'm more interested in rooting myself in the setting and history and culture... I'll cop out and call myself a Historian. My approach, both playing and running games, is pretty close to what the excellent Lowell Francis described a few weeks ago.
Of the four, my play style is my favorite -- and Driver is the one I like least. It has the coolest name, though.
______________
*Yes, we have two Matts and a Mateo. Everyone turns their head when you call.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
The Diceman Cometh
I like rolling dice. I like making my players roll dice. Part of it is that I'm easily bored and rolling dice means that Something Is Going On both in the game and in the mundane world. Another part is that I like a character-centric game, which includes regular use of characters' mechanics to help resolve game situations.
And we brought all these dice with us anyway. Might as well use them!
So one of my favorite things about the 5e playtest is the advantage/disadvantage system. Getting to roll 2d20 and take the better one when you have an advantage, or having to roll 2d20 and take the worst one when you're at a disadvantage, is simple and neat and fun. It's like a house rule that made it to the big leagues -- a more entertaining option than the interminable bonus-stacking of some previous D&D editions, and more dramatic than the no-modifier-but-the-GM's-judgment of even earlier editions.
Have other games done this already? It's so simple than I can't believe nobody's done it yet, especially with the proliferation of systems that use a single die roll to get results. But I haven't run across it before.
Advantage/disadvantage also makes things more random... or are they less random? Mechanically, this will swing your chances in a predictable non-random way. But the execution of the mechanic will vary in a meta-random way. Some GMs will stick to offering it when the rules say so, i.e. The Boring Method. I'll offer it when characters and environments make it seem plausible and sometimes when table dynamics are such that we'll be more entertained, i.e. The Awesome Method. The key is that randomness helps the underdog. Most GMs like underdog PCs -- will we deploy this mechanic in a way that reinforces this? Will our PCs be able to use ad/dis to challenge ridiculous odds?
I hope so.
On the other hand, most PC parties are actually the overdog, capable of steamrolling the individual rooms and encounters and traps and everything else they stumble into. Event by event, they're the ones most likely to be hindered by randomness. Could be a fun dynamic.
It's a spiffy little mechanic. One thing does bug me. This is a Matt-specific complaint, I think, rather than a broad existential problem: I don't like mechanics that carry over. If something grants advantage/disadvantage, I want it to happen RIGHT NOW. Mechanics that you have to remember through X actions or keep track of for X rounds annoy the bejesus out of me. Having written a couple of (poorly-received) modules for Iron Heroes, I know that Mike Mearls is a huge fan of carryover mechanics, so I'm sure that this is just the way it is.
I can live with that. Maybe it'll grow on me.
And we brought all these dice with us anyway. Might as well use them!
So one of my favorite things about the 5e playtest is the advantage/disadvantage system. Getting to roll 2d20 and take the better one when you have an advantage, or having to roll 2d20 and take the worst one when you're at a disadvantage, is simple and neat and fun. It's like a house rule that made it to the big leagues -- a more entertaining option than the interminable bonus-stacking of some previous D&D editions, and more dramatic than the no-modifier-but-the-GM's-judgment of even earlier editions.
Have other games done this already? It's so simple than I can't believe nobody's done it yet, especially with the proliferation of systems that use a single die roll to get results. But I haven't run across it before.
Advantage/disadvantage also makes things more random... or are they less random? Mechanically, this will swing your chances in a predictable non-random way. But the execution of the mechanic will vary in a meta-random way. Some GMs will stick to offering it when the rules say so, i.e. The Boring Method. I'll offer it when characters and environments make it seem plausible and sometimes when table dynamics are such that we'll be more entertained, i.e. The Awesome Method. The key is that randomness helps the underdog. Most GMs like underdog PCs -- will we deploy this mechanic in a way that reinforces this? Will our PCs be able to use ad/dis to challenge ridiculous odds?
I hope so.
On the other hand, most PC parties are actually the overdog, capable of steamrolling the individual rooms and encounters and traps and everything else they stumble into. Event by event, they're the ones most likely to be hindered by randomness. Could be a fun dynamic.
It's a spiffy little mechanic. One thing does bug me. This is a Matt-specific complaint, I think, rather than a broad existential problem: I don't like mechanics that carry over. If something grants advantage/disadvantage, I want it to happen RIGHT NOW. Mechanics that you have to remember through X actions or keep track of for X rounds annoy the bejesus out of me. Having written a couple of (poorly-received) modules for Iron Heroes, I know that Mike Mearls is a huge fan of carryover mechanics, so I'm sure that this is just the way it is.
I can live with that. Maybe it'll grow on me.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
The Caves Of Chaos
Drunken dwarvish architecture.
Maw Of The Beastmen.
Mimeographing your setup.
Not-sense is not nonsense.
Sentence fragments bounce around my head when I look at the Caves of Chaos. Classic module, repurposed for the 5e playtest, I've never seen it before, no idea if it resembles the original, wouldn't run it as-is. I like the notes on Why PCs Are Here, and also the encouragement to play through it however you're inclined. That never hurts.
DRUNKEN DWARVISH ARCHITECTURE: Phrase coined by my wife to describe floorplans like this -- bad flowcharts of random boxes connected by random lines. Spaces nobody would live in; spaces that don't take life into account.
MAW OF THE BEASTMEN: I'm reskinning most of the inhabitants to manimalist hybrids -- ratmen, boarmen, etc. Not especially original either, but more exciting than yet another warren of orcgoblinhobgoblingnollblaaaarrgh. Plus assigning them to familiar animals will make it easier to improvise details about their lives, lifestyles, living quarters, preferred food, and all the other stuff that my players will want to know. Please let's not keep moving PCs through arbitrary underground deathtraps populated by the same old same old. Sucks the sense of wonder right out of the room.
MIMEOGRAPHING YOUR SETUP: This place is Levittown for humanoids. Entrance, guardroom, another guardroom, maybe storage, chief's quarters, big warren for everyone else. One race might live that way, maybe. Six wouldn't.
NOT-SENSE IS NOT NONSENSE: There's a difference between "dungeons are different and weeeird and reflect our unconscious surreal fears" and bad layout. This is bad layout. It just doesn't make sense, and it's not interesting enough to be nonsense.
I'll still run it for the wife and kids. We'll test-drive the proto5e mechanics. I hope that the next playtest phase moves out of the dungeon -- an updated Isle Of Dread would be pretty sweet.
What would also be sweet is the inclusion of the Keep On The Borderlands that was originally near the caves.
Maw Of The Beastmen.
Mimeographing your setup.
Not-sense is not nonsense.
Sentence fragments bounce around my head when I look at the Caves of Chaos. Classic module, repurposed for the 5e playtest, I've never seen it before, no idea if it resembles the original, wouldn't run it as-is. I like the notes on Why PCs Are Here, and also the encouragement to play through it however you're inclined. That never hurts.
DRUNKEN DWARVISH ARCHITECTURE: Phrase coined by my wife to describe floorplans like this -- bad flowcharts of random boxes connected by random lines. Spaces nobody would live in; spaces that don't take life into account.
MAW OF THE BEASTMEN: I'm reskinning most of the inhabitants to manimalist hybrids -- ratmen, boarmen, etc. Not especially original either, but more exciting than yet another warren of orcgoblinhobgoblingnollblaaaarrgh. Plus assigning them to familiar animals will make it easier to improvise details about their lives, lifestyles, living quarters, preferred food, and all the other stuff that my players will want to know. Please let's not keep moving PCs through arbitrary underground deathtraps populated by the same old same old. Sucks the sense of wonder right out of the room.
MIMEOGRAPHING YOUR SETUP: This place is Levittown for humanoids. Entrance, guardroom, another guardroom, maybe storage, chief's quarters, big warren for everyone else. One race might live that way, maybe. Six wouldn't.
NOT-SENSE IS NOT NONSENSE: There's a difference between "dungeons are different and weeeird and reflect our unconscious surreal fears" and bad layout. This is bad layout. It just doesn't make sense, and it's not interesting enough to be nonsense.
I'll still run it for the wife and kids. We'll test-drive the proto5e mechanics. I hope that the next playtest phase moves out of the dungeon -- an updated Isle Of Dread would be pretty sweet.
What would also be sweet is the inclusion of the Keep On The Borderlands that was originally near the caves.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Here's why giant centipedes need a Strength stat
The older kid, home from college for the summer, says to me "I feel like making a D&D character." There's not an active game right now; she just likes making characters sometimes. I do too. So we sit down with our supplies.
First thing she reaches for? The 3.5 Monster Manual. We have a lot of D&D 3.0/3.5 stuff around the house, courtesy of my freelancing. It's a good system for people who enjoy making characters. She flips and flips and flips through the pages. Options are scrutinized. The relative playability of the carrion crawler is discussed. Eventually the shortlist falls into place: centaur, gnoll, mummy. I'm a bit surprised by the mummy. For a few minutes, we look for an easy way to make a gnoll mummy. It's not easy.
The kid settles on a gnoll. Then, and only then, does she reach for the PHB to consider classes.
It's one thing to say "I want to play a gnoll!" It's another thing to have some mechanical skeleton on which our gnoll can be draped. With the latter approach, the gnoll feels different when you play it. You get some of this, you lose some of that, and you end up not being identical to the elf or the hobgoblin or the human. Race, with some mechanical definition, sends you spinning on a particular trajectory. The character sheet looks different, and the imaginary experience feels different.
I still draw a line between biophysical abilities like Darkvision and envirocultural abilities like Stonecunning; races are applied biology, so the former works while the latter should instead be part of the character class or background or something.
But that's a tangent. Our throughline is that the kid, looking for an interesting D&D experience, wanted to start with a non-standard race. This task was easier for us because we had some fun numbers alongside the implied cultural notes. If she really wanted to make that carrion crawler into a PC, it would have been fine, and the numbers make it possible. Anything sentient is a potential PC -- and in a high magic game, possible sentience is all over the landscape. That's how the kid and I like it.
She picked a cleric, by the way. A gnoll cleric of Vecna. Her family was destroyed by mysterious beasties, so she wanders the landscape seeking knowledge of these beasties. By "seeking" she means "killing various people and then eating them to gain their knowledge." Because that kind of thing is also how the kid and I like it.
While all that was going on, I finally made that minotaur rogue I've been talking about for years. He does his best to fulfill the usual thieflike functions. Not so good at hiding, but really, who's going to call attention to a minotaur that looks like he doesn't want to be noticed? Couldn't afford thief's tools for him -- I doubled all my equipment costs on the assumption that it needed to be custom-made -- so instead he bought a portable ram that he calls "Lockpick." I might run a game just so that we can play these characters.
I like having stats for my monsters. Pretty often, they aren't monsters at all. They're the other PCs.
First thing she reaches for? The 3.5 Monster Manual. We have a lot of D&D 3.0/3.5 stuff around the house, courtesy of my freelancing. It's a good system for people who enjoy making characters. She flips and flips and flips through the pages. Options are scrutinized. The relative playability of the carrion crawler is discussed. Eventually the shortlist falls into place: centaur, gnoll, mummy. I'm a bit surprised by the mummy. For a few minutes, we look for an easy way to make a gnoll mummy. It's not easy.
The kid settles on a gnoll. Then, and only then, does she reach for the PHB to consider classes.
It's one thing to say "I want to play a gnoll!" It's another thing to have some mechanical skeleton on which our gnoll can be draped. With the latter approach, the gnoll feels different when you play it. You get some of this, you lose some of that, and you end up not being identical to the elf or the hobgoblin or the human. Race, with some mechanical definition, sends you spinning on a particular trajectory. The character sheet looks different, and the imaginary experience feels different.
I still draw a line between biophysical abilities like Darkvision and envirocultural abilities like Stonecunning; races are applied biology, so the former works while the latter should instead be part of the character class or background or something.
But that's a tangent. Our throughline is that the kid, looking for an interesting D&D experience, wanted to start with a non-standard race. This task was easier for us because we had some fun numbers alongside the implied cultural notes. If she really wanted to make that carrion crawler into a PC, it would have been fine, and the numbers make it possible. Anything sentient is a potential PC -- and in a high magic game, possible sentience is all over the landscape. That's how the kid and I like it.
She picked a cleric, by the way. A gnoll cleric of Vecna. Her family was destroyed by mysterious beasties, so she wanders the landscape seeking knowledge of these beasties. By "seeking" she means "killing various people and then eating them to gain their knowledge." Because that kind of thing is also how the kid and I like it.
While all that was going on, I finally made that minotaur rogue I've been talking about for years. He does his best to fulfill the usual thieflike functions. Not so good at hiding, but really, who's going to call attention to a minotaur that looks like he doesn't want to be noticed? Couldn't afford thief's tools for him -- I doubled all my equipment costs on the assumption that it needed to be custom-made -- so instead he bought a portable ram that he calls "Lockpick." I might run a game just so that we can play these characters.
I like having stats for my monsters. Pretty often, they aren't monsters at all. They're the other PCs.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Stonecunning summary
It should be as easy to make a D&D dwarf who's a totem-channeling steppe-dwelling bear-riding spearman as it is to make a dwarf who falls into the easy, lazy, traditional axe-stone-gold-beer model.
You and me and 5e
We need to talk about the 5e playtest. We need to talk about...
That's plenty to consider. And that's before I've even run a session of it for the wife and kids; that may happen this weekend if we can fit it in between seeing The Avengers and playing Risk Legacy and watching Community from the beginning and... man, I live in the utopia imagined by my 12-year-old self. It's a good life.
But that still leaves us with stonecunning. It's not new to 5e; stonecunning is like a persistent ugly rash that manifests in every edition, and no amount of scratching or ointment can make it go away.
Why am I complaining about stonecunning?
Ya gotta grasp the inherent duality of existence. No matter how holistic you are, ya gotta grasp that the things you are is a list that doesn't totally overlap the things you learn. Nature is not the same as Nurture. You remember the Enlightenment, right? I'm not asking you to sign on to Locke's tabula rasa here, just to grok that what your body does is not the same as what your mind knows.
If a dwarf has wondrous abilities related to stones and earth and underground-ness, where did it come from? Is it some kind of Spidey-sense tingling, some odd biological/mystical thing that's inherent to being a dwarf, something that even an orphan dwarf raised on the high seas by dwarf-stealing pirates can do under the right circumstances? Or is it something that comes after being raised underground by miners and stonecutters, something that even an orphan centaur could learn if it was adopted by subterranean folk?
Stonecunning strikes me as #2, something you learn. That's how it works in the actual world. Sure, we can also posit some biomystico affinity for rockwork, but it's entirely possible to learn this kind of stuff through repeated exposure and practice, the same way that after 5 years of professional clerking I could cut a ream of papers to the exact page you wanted. Anyone raised by stereotypical dwarves could have stonecunning. It's cultural, not biological.
Why am I still complaining?
Because stonecunning has been something every dwarf gets. Balthazar the silk merchant, Applefeather the monk, Durgan the Axeblighter, Katada Demonbeard the wizard -- in a typical D&D game, all of them get some variation of this ability whether or not it fits. It's just what happens to dwarves. This means one of two things:
1) The designers believe that all dwarves have a fundamental affinity for stonework, something bred so deep into them that it's as dwarfy as shortness.
2) The designers just threw in a bunch of stereotypes that were swiped from Tolkien, possibly dressed up with a paper hat labeled "Traditions of D&D."
Neither of these is a compelling case for its presence.
Stonecunning is something that a character could have. No problem there, chief. We can bicker about the exact way the ability works -- letting stonecunning folk know "how to retrace their path" when underground is full of problems, especially in a game heavily influenced by the Dungeons Must Kill You crowd -- but it's legitimately something that could be fun. Stonecunning is NOT something that every dwarf and nobody else should have. That approach doesn't make sense the way that, say, a racial immunity to poison does make sense. It's just a lazy handwave in the direction of a pointless tradition.
In earlier versions, we fixed this by letting PCs swap abilities around until they got 'em right. Looks like that's what we'll have to do again. But a man can dream big dreams, dream of a game that takes things like stonecunning out of the "racial" category and puts them in a "background" or "training" category where they belong.
We'll talk about this again if we get to the playtest monster writeups. We may contemplate Justin Alexander's phrase "dissociated mechanics." The difference between simulation and emulation might even be considered at painful ponderous length. But the key thing is this:
Dwarf is something you simply are. Stonecunning is something you would learn. And if you'd learn it, it's not racially innate.
...unless, I guess, the intent has always been that stonecunning should be intrinsic to a particular race, and I'm just not reading the fine print closely enough to catch that. Which moves it from "wrong" to "stuff I think is kinda dumb." I guess we'll see.
- Stonecunning
- The Caves of Chaos
- Which pieces of 4e we need to keep (hint: none)
- The advantage/disadvantage system
- Monster writeups
- Endless Magic Missile
- Stealth and Perception and Common Tasks
- Always rounding down
That's plenty to consider. And that's before I've even run a session of it for the wife and kids; that may happen this weekend if we can fit it in between seeing The Avengers and playing Risk Legacy and watching Community from the beginning and... man, I live in the utopia imagined by my 12-year-old self. It's a good life.
But that still leaves us with stonecunning. It's not new to 5e; stonecunning is like a persistent ugly rash that manifests in every edition, and no amount of scratching or ointment can make it go away.
Why am I complaining about stonecunning?
Ya gotta grasp the inherent duality of existence. No matter how holistic you are, ya gotta grasp that the things you are is a list that doesn't totally overlap the things you learn. Nature is not the same as Nurture. You remember the Enlightenment, right? I'm not asking you to sign on to Locke's tabula rasa here, just to grok that what your body does is not the same as what your mind knows.
If a dwarf has wondrous abilities related to stones and earth and underground-ness, where did it come from? Is it some kind of Spidey-sense tingling, some odd biological/mystical thing that's inherent to being a dwarf, something that even an orphan dwarf raised on the high seas by dwarf-stealing pirates can do under the right circumstances? Or is it something that comes after being raised underground by miners and stonecutters, something that even an orphan centaur could learn if it was adopted by subterranean folk?
Stonecunning strikes me as #2, something you learn. That's how it works in the actual world. Sure, we can also posit some biomystico affinity for rockwork, but it's entirely possible to learn this kind of stuff through repeated exposure and practice, the same way that after 5 years of professional clerking I could cut a ream of papers to the exact page you wanted. Anyone raised by stereotypical dwarves could have stonecunning. It's cultural, not biological.
Why am I still complaining?
Because stonecunning has been something every dwarf gets. Balthazar the silk merchant, Applefeather the monk, Durgan the Axeblighter, Katada Demonbeard the wizard -- in a typical D&D game, all of them get some variation of this ability whether or not it fits. It's just what happens to dwarves. This means one of two things:
1) The designers believe that all dwarves have a fundamental affinity for stonework, something bred so deep into them that it's as dwarfy as shortness.
2) The designers just threw in a bunch of stereotypes that were swiped from Tolkien, possibly dressed up with a paper hat labeled "Traditions of D&D."
Neither of these is a compelling case for its presence.
Stonecunning is something that a character could have. No problem there, chief. We can bicker about the exact way the ability works -- letting stonecunning folk know "how to retrace their path" when underground is full of problems, especially in a game heavily influenced by the Dungeons Must Kill You crowd -- but it's legitimately something that could be fun. Stonecunning is NOT something that every dwarf and nobody else should have. That approach doesn't make sense the way that, say, a racial immunity to poison does make sense. It's just a lazy handwave in the direction of a pointless tradition.
In earlier versions, we fixed this by letting PCs swap abilities around until they got 'em right. Looks like that's what we'll have to do again. But a man can dream big dreams, dream of a game that takes things like stonecunning out of the "racial" category and puts them in a "background" or "training" category where they belong.
We'll talk about this again if we get to the playtest monster writeups. We may contemplate Justin Alexander's phrase "dissociated mechanics." The difference between simulation and emulation might even be considered at painful ponderous length. But the key thing is this:
Dwarf is something you simply are. Stonecunning is something you would learn. And if you'd learn it, it's not racially innate.
...unless, I guess, the intent has always been that stonecunning should be intrinsic to a particular race, and I'm just not reading the fine print closely enough to catch that. Which moves it from "wrong" to "stuff I think is kinda dumb." I guess we'll see.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Not a 5e playtest post (yet)
Both Vornheim and Risk Legacy are on the Diana Jones Award shortlist. The secret committee behind the best award in game-stuff are doing a good job this year.
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