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...

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.

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 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.

We did the same thing for equipment. Since they woke up in a trash compactor, there was a lot of miscellaneous stuff they could try to use as weapons, tools, barter, shoes, etc. I usually don't run an equipment-centered game; this was a nice change of pace for everyone. Having an unreliable vibroknife was better than the alternative.

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.

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?



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*Typing that sentence reminded me that the college gang is one of only two all-male roleplaying groups I've been in. Huh.

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.

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.

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*Yes, we have two Matts and a Mateo. Everyone turns their head when you call.

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.