The Rationale for Simple

I know.  I know.  The last word in the title should be "simplicity" but "simple" is just so much more... simple.

I've been thinking a lot about the objectives of the game I've been working on.  Which I am calling The Broken Veil.  At least for now.

Anyway, objectives.  What do I want the game to accomplish?

• Atmosphere - I want to create an atmosphere of dread and horror.  I want the players to be scared.  I want the game to have the feel of a gritty survival horror video game.
• Easy-to-Learn - I want the core mechanics to be easy to learn.
• Quick Yet Robust Character Creation - I want the players to be able to quickly create a character that they can identify with and customize.
• Dramatic Support - I want the system to support the atmosphere and drama, not take the players out of the game.

With that in mind, I'm giving strong consideration to reducing the number of Attributes to 3 Core Attributes:

• Body - This attribute represents the character's physical abilities, from strength to agility to endurance.  
• Mind - This attribute represents the character's mental abilities, including intelligence, reasoning and wit.
• Spirit - This attribute represents the character's social/emotional strength, resilience and flexibility.

In addition to an adjective-based rank in each of the three attributes, the player would select a primary and secondary attribute, with the remaining attribute becoming the tertiary.  Skills associated with the primary attribute would be easiest to learn and advance, with secondary being next easiest.

Following the adjective-based theme of character creation, the prime Skills are also descriptive.  The player would write down a number of descriptive phrases for the character, based on the Skills she wishes to possess.  For example: Player 1 is creating a character named Justine, who is a reporter for the local newspaper (cliched, but this is an example).  He decides that she is going to be "witty" "flirtatious" and "easy to talk to."  These are the Skills that are going to help her get the good stories despite not being the best writer at the local rag.  Perhaps the Justine is "agile" as well.  Depending on the number of points the player wants the spend, the the character gets a rank in each of these Skills from Mediocre to Excellent (the default level for a character who doesn't possess the Skill is Poor).  Note that these names are not written in stone.  I am working on the names of the Skills I plan on using.  In addition to Attributes and Skills, there are also Gifts and Faults.  Gifts and Faults aren't ranked.  The character either possesses them or doesn't.  

What do you think of a system that keeps the required Attributes simple, but allows the player to customize characters through skill depth?  

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In Space No One Can Hear You Game

If you know me well as a gamer, you know that my gaming preferences lean away from sci-fi gaming.  This goes not only for tabletop rpg's, but also video games.  Sure, I've played some Mass Effect.  I've played most of the Halo games (though I am considering trading them in... GASP!).  I've played Dead Space.  I've loved me some Fallout 3.  When I was younger... okay, much younger, I played a tabletop rpg called Gamma World.  Does anybody remember Gamma World?  I think WotC did a 3E/D20 remake of the game that never really took off (there were actually 5 editions of the game), then it was lumped in as a campaign type for D20 Future.  Now, they're actually re-booting the game again for an October, 2010 launch.

Also, if you know me well as a gamer, you know that my above mentioned discrimination against the sci-fi genre actually bothers me.  I've explored it numerous times, prodding it with sharp sticks.  Picking at it like a scabbed-over, weeks-old sore.  I've squeezed the icky pus out of it.  I've tried to figure it out.  I have conclusions.  I'm not sure if they're final conclusions.  But they're what I have at this point.  I'll still keep prodding at it.

What brings me to write about this today, you ask?  Okay, so you didn't actually ask.  Actually, my last few in-post questions have gone unanswered.  But I'm stubborn.  I'm a persistent bastard.  I'm going to keep at it, because that's what I do.  What brings me to write about this today is a short post over at Gameplaywright where Will Hindmarch asks a seemingly simple question.

"Why don't sci-fi games sell like fantasy games do?"

There it is.

Will got me picking at that scab again.

Will has a good point.  In order to try to sell sci-fi games, especially of the tabletop rpg variety, the designer mixes in strong elements of fantasy.  Gamma World did it.  Warhammer 40K is an excellent example of the phenomenon.  D20 Modern/D20 Future were redolent with fantasy elements (doesn't help that they were WotC products).

There are some excellent comments on Will's short post.  Rob Donoghue mentions the lack of a "shared shorthand" akin to fantasy's "Tolkien standard."  Several others talk about the fragmentation of the sci-fi fan base.  There are several other great ones to read if you click the link.

For me, the conclusion I have come up with thus far is fairly simple.  It's space that does me in.  There's just too damn much of it.  Justin Alexander writes that "Sci-fi games are often guilty of selling the setting instead of selling a game."  He's right.  The infinite boundaries of space are an attractive selling point.  The writers plug in some cool weapons and some neat looking alien races.  They throw in some spaceships and a backstory for the world that is supposed to draw the consumer in and give them plenty of room to customize the setting, bt then they drop the ball.

The truth is, there's just too damn much space to fill in... well, in space.

If you look at the sci-fi games I've played and enjoyed, video or otherwise, most of them are pretty tightly focused.  They aren't concerned with the infinite expanse of space, but rather with the human (or inhuman) drama of fairly tight locational boundaries.  Whether they are a single spaceship (Dead Space's Ishimura), a single city (Fallout 3's DC Wasteland), or a single planet (as in Gamma World or Borderlands), the focus is tight enough to provide a large enough setting to encourage diverse encounters and scenarios, but small enough to provide boundaries.

Sometimes, a canvas can be too large.

Giant empty swaths of blank space to fill can be intimidating and stifle creativity.  Sure, we love Star Wars and Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, but we aren't creating those settings as we play.  We're just partaking in someone else's creation as we watch the movies, or expanding on it slightly as we play the games (but gaming in those settings is still too limitless for me).

An example of a focused sci-fi game (so far as I've seen it) is David Hill's Maschine Zeit.  I've written a bit about it here previously.  It does feature a setting where space travel is a given.  But it concentrates that setting on the human and inhuman dramas that play out in focused, if not confined, locations.  David has done a good job of setting specific areas of exploration and interest and encouraging play in manageable bits.

My idea for a sci-fi game?  Take sci-fi back to its roots.  Focus on a single planetary system.  Make space travel limited.  Short distances are possible, but the longer the voyage, the riskier it is.  Exponentially.  The traveling fleet is old and unreliable.  Something happened in the past that has taken away the money or incentive to build new ships.  Maybe this is a somewhat post-apocalyptic game.  The characters are in an outpost system, far from the space traveling civilization to which they once belonged.  Some war or other catastrophe has caused most, if not all, of the military and space-worthy crews and vessels to have been long since redeployed.  Now, this small outpost is cobbling together some ships for bold adventurers to take huge risks to attempt to explore nearby planets and learn what happened, or just gather resources and pool knowledge.  Star Trek was once described as "Wagon Train to the stars." I think that this brings us back to a limited, focused setting that feels more true to that concept.  We're in a lawless frontier.  Scope is manageable.  As characters become more accomplished, enterprising GM's may wish to introduce technology that can expand the world.  It's like a space western.  I like it.

Damn.  Now I have more ideas on my plate.

What do you think?  Feel free to post your thoughts about any of this.

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Shepherd's Pie: Fourth Helping

Everybody knows what a link dump is.  Well, almost everybody.  I assure you it's not a bunch of turds all hooked together and floating in the porcelain pond.  Though I did have Turd Pudding a few weeks ago.  One blog I read calls its weekly link dump post "Applesauce."  Chuck Wendig's "Painting With Shotguns"  paints a much more gruesome and catchy title.  Pun intended.  Deal with it.  I call mine Shepherd's Pie.  Everything, all the week's awesome goodness is thrown in and mixed around.  Sometimes it comes out pretty appetizing and sometimes it just looks like puke on a plate... or on a page, as the case may be. It looks like Wednesday has become the de facto Shepherd's Pie day.  At least on Wednesdays that I decide it is.  Otherwise, it's luck of the draw.  I can do it on Saturday if I want.  It's my place.

And you're my guests.

Welcome to the 4th helping of Shepherd's Pie.

I'll keep it short, sweet, and to the point today. If you love dice, or playing love games with dice, and want to write about a dice-centric topic, Gameplaywright is hosting a Blog Carnival to commemorate the release of The Bones. There's a lot of discussion going on about the role of "just having fun" in role-playing games.  Will Hindmarch shared an excellent quote from that discussion that really spoke to me.  Here is a link to it, but I am also posting it in its entirety here:

"Because a game is about much more than 'fun.' Game play is a meaningful part of our culture. Game play engages a significant part of our personalites. Competition, strategy, puzzle-solving, collaboration, fairness, uncertainty, risk, reward -- these are elements of games that make them fun. When we play a game, we enter a special mental space, separate and different from all others in our lives. We agree -- explicitly or implicitly -- to abide by the rules so that all of the players can engage with the activity in a fair and reasonable manner. Now, 'fair and reasonable manner' can mean that I get to shoot you in the face during the game -- and you have to leave the field when I do -- but once the game is over, there's no more face-shooting.

Thus in roleplaying games, we engage with a system that challenges us. We use a set of rules that forces us from our comfort zone and encourages us to think and act in a manner we would not otherwise. We play the game. We don’t need the game to have fun. We can have fun anywhere, any time. Rather, we use the game to create unanticipated, unexpected results. We use the game to give everyone at the table a role in play. And we engage with that game as a neutral arbiter, to ensure that play is fair."

I think this is a key thing to remember.  Balance in gaming, as well as in any other facet of life, is important.  It's vital.  I'm not talking about game balance.  I'm talking about social/emotional balance.  If you feel you need the game to have "fun" with a particular person/group of people, you should take a step back.  You should be able to have fun playing the game with these people and you should be able to have fun doing other things with them.  Ideally, they should be your friends.  If every gathering you have with them is "gaming only" then why is that?  Whenever you get together, do you only play, or talk about, the game?  Do you get annoyed when people in the group want to do other things or have other interests or commitments?  Do you ignore anything they say that isn't about the game?  This seems to me to be a balance issue.

A few days ago, I shared an amazing piece by Jesse Burneko.  Well, Jesse's at it again.  He and Justin Achilli always seem to challenge me and make me think about games and my views on games.  For that, I thank you both profusely.  I have had my fair share of games that have ground to a halt or collapsed.  I think Jesse's nailed it again when he says that a major contributing factor in this phenomenon is the lack of a clear objective in the game.  He says that most role-playing games (he uses GURPS as an example) are toys.  I prefer to think of them as toolkits or frameworks.  A working game has to be compiled from this framework.  He's correct when he says that most games cannot be played straight out of the box without a lot of customization from the gamemaster.  Most of the time, the gamemaster writes plot hooks, defines characters, creates of fleshes out a game world, etc.  Rarely does the gamemaster, at least in my experience, set out a clear objective for the game.  And Jesse's right, "Have fun" is not a clear game objective.  If you read the above link, you know that everyone's definition of "fun" is different.  One paragraph in particular of Jesse's article resonated with me, because I have seen it happen at my table several times:

"In our Diaspora game Will, as the GM, was operating under the assumption that the game was fairly episodic in structure. He assumed the object of the game was to deal with a string of sci-fi space encounters as you moved relatively quickly from place to place. I, on the other hand, assumed the object of the game was to pursue my character’s personal goals (my default assumption and preference when the game fails to tell me otherwise). Since we were playing towards two different objectives the game ground to a halt. Will kept considering things done and resolved while I was considering those same situations just the tip of the iceberg."

I own this situation.  This is my fault.  The only thing that really matters is, "What am I going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again?"

I finally started playing Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption yesterday.  The game is even better than I thought it would be. I've been calling it "Grand Theft Horse" for weeks, but let me set the record straight.  This has so much more depth than a Grand Theft Auto game.  There are lots of cut-scenes, clear cut objectives, a ton of story.  John Marston is an engaging character with superb voice acting.  On top of that, the world is huge and beautifully rendered and exists with minimal loading screens.  The graphics are far better than even GTA IV.  This is a beautiful game.  I strongly recommend that you check it out.  I'll be writing a more thorough review when I get farther into the game.  I've played for about 8 hours and have barely scratched the surface.

If you have anything to share about any of these topics, please comment.  I loves me some commentage.  Also, check out the links.  There's good stuff there.

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The Hollow Kingdom: Camelot

I've been thinking for several weeks about writing a post on Camelot as the perfect fantasy setting.  A few days ago, I got the prod that I needed to make this post a reality.  Thanks to Justin Achilli for kicking me into action.

"Ask ev'ry person if he's heard the story;
And tell it strong and clear if he has not:
That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory
Called Camelot."

Camelot.  It's one of the most enduring "fantasy worlds" ever created.  The earliest stories of Camelot, of King Arthur and his court, were written in the 8th century.  That means that for about the past 1300 years, there have been stories, poems, movies, songs, video games, and all sorts of things created, all based on this same fantastic kingdom.  Forgotten Realms, eat your heart out.  Azeroth, you're just a baby.  Greyhawk?  A drop in the ocean of time.  Even you Middle Earth, are a youngster compared to that grand-master of fantasy worlds, Camelot.

This is a world so enduring, so accessible, that it became the symbol of a period of American history known for both its prosperity and its turbulence.  Like the Camelot of the medieval romances, John F. Kennedy's American Camelot was known for sterling ideals and unrivaled prosperity, set against a backdrop of lies, betrayal, family rivalries and, ultimately the destruction of the ideal.

Almost everyone knows the story.  The boy, Arthur, is merely an innocent lad.  He is seemingly not destined for power or greatness, but he is chosen by the universe to lead.  He establishes a grand kingdom.  A seat of reason and enlightenment called Camelot.  From there, Arthur leads his kingdom to a time of great peace and unparalleled achievement.  Chivalry rules the day.  Knights pick flowers for the ladies.  Things can't get any better.

"The candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long."
        - Dr. Eldon Tyrell, Blade Runner

Everyone also knows the rest of the story.  The king's love and bride betrays him.  His family, his queen, his best friend all set the stage for the fall that must come.  We know it must, because nothing that seemingly perfect can last forever.  Even Kennedy's American Camelot ended in a dramatic, violent collapse.  The thing is, with any Camelot, we know it is coming right from the beginning.  We can sense it.  There is an undercurrent of impending doom even in the beauty and perfection.  It is the imperfect fantasy.

The imperfect fantasy.  That's the thing.  I've spent a lot of time over many years constructing fantasy worlds for my players.  If there's one thing that most world builders know, it's that the perfect fantasy is just too damn boring.  There has to be conflict to move the story.  You have to know, in the back of your mind, that Camelot is likely to fall.  Almost sure to collapse.  But for that one special band of heroes.

Look at our literary fantasy worlds.  Middle Earth is on the verge of falling to the Dark Lord of Mordor.  There is corruption everywhere.  It is only by the successes, against all odds and all reason, of the most unlikely band of heroes, that the dark tide is beaten back.  This is not the story of a perfect kingdom.

Look at our comic books.  Gotham is beset by vile villains on all sides.  Crime is rampant.  The city's leading philanthropist is murdered in cold blood on the streets of his dark Camelot.  If it were not true, Gotham would have no need of the Dark Knight.

Look at our video games.  Rapture, the ideal society, is sinking into chaos while Andrew Ryan practices at golf.  Frank Fontaine plots to control the citizenry.

There stories of Camelots are innumerable.  There is always the veneer of prosperity and perfection, but under it all lies the ugly truth.  The queen is false.  The best friend a betrayer.  The energies of the realm's protectors are spent in fruitless pursuits.  They are off questing for their holy grails while the kingdom's seamy underside is asserting itself.  The hero's family are plotting against him.  It is up to the most unlikely of heroes to, if not attempt to save the kingdom, at least to tell its tale so that Camelot may live on.  Sometimes they succeed.  Sometimes they fail.  That is in the hands of those who weave the story.  Maybe your protagonists are agents of the fall.  That is up to you.

In the end, it isn't Camelot's shining example of the ideal society that makes it the perfect fantasy setting.  It's the coming fall that makes it engaging.  It's the imperfection that makes it the enduring legend.  After all, it's but a thin veil that separates the shining Camelot from the abyss.  It could all come apart at any moment.  With as little as a single bullet or a well-placed spear.

Do you find this model to be present in any fantasy worlds you may have built?  Are there any examples in popular culture that I've missed (I'm sure there are)?

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My Gaming Evolution

Since I started using Twitter again, it's been a rare day that I don't come across a link or three that lead to interesting reading.  Like most people, I retweet the ones that I like.  I usually use TweetDeck or (more recently) HootSuite to send them to both Facebook and Twitter, since I have almost 400 people on my Facebook friends list and only about 30 followers on Twitter.  In my post last night, I shared a number of them here.

One "meme" that I've seen on gaming blogs lately is the sharing of your "RPG DNA."  This means sharing what I think of as your gamer biography.  Sharing the influences that you've had, the games that you've played, since the very beginning of your life as a gamer, that have shaped your development into who you are as a gamer today.  Back in February, Rob Donoghue of Evil Hat Productions shared his.  Several others responded to the meme (links at the bottom of Rob's post), including the "Chatty DM" Philippe-Antoine Menard.  His second contribution to the meme was published yesterday, while I was mentally chewing on a piece that I'd read the previous day.

After reading all of these RPG DNA profiles, I was struck by how sheltered my life as a gamer was when I was younger.  As I've previously shared, I began playing in 6th grade, at age 11.  Some kids I knew at school bought the AD&D hardcover books to start playing the game, but they quickly lost patience with reading all of those pages of text and consulting the dictionary for unknown words, so they just passed them along to me so that I could read them and then teach them how to play.  Thus was my entry into gaming.

From then (1982) until I got married and started working full-time as a high school teacher in 1992-93, my gaming consisted mainly of a steady diet of Basic/Expert/etc. Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  As I posted last week, I hacked out my own game, Terrorist Wars, which we played off and on for a few years, along with Top Secret, Boot Hill, Star Frontiers and Gamma World (notice what all those games have in common? hmmmm).  I also played some Stormbringer, and in the mid-80's Twilight: 2000.  I even tried my hand at some Rolemaster, but it never stuck.

In the mid-90's, disappointed by 2nd Edition AD&D and an overworked new teacher and newlywed, I took a break from gaming.  After a few years, I began quietly introducing some of my students to gaming and fostering the interest of those who were already gamers.  I used to leave my classroom open late one day each week for the gamers to play while I worked in my office.  This was dangerous, since I taught in an extremely conservative rural southern school whose administrators still saw role-playing games as inappropriate material.  It wasn't until 1998-99 that I began playing again.

After a move back to the town where my parents lived in 1999, I was unfortunate enough to live in the path of Hurricane Floyd.  The storm caused extensive damage to my area and left me without power for a week (my generator was enough to run a single lamp and the refrigerator).  The school where I was teaching also closed for the week.  So, I spent my days at a FLGS.  I struck up a sort of friendship with the owner and a few of his employees and when 3rd Edition D&D was released, I was tapped to be the store DM.  I always had dozens of people who wanted to get into my games and I did this until a change in ownership and atmosphere at the FLGS.  Throughout the 1st decade of the 21st century, I played exclusively 3.x D&D and D20 Modern until I went through a life "reorganization" in 2007 and stopped gaming for a few years.  When I started gaming again, I quickly discovered that I had grown out of D&D/D20 or something.  I drifted over to White Wolf's Storyteller system and found Hunter: The Vigil.  Due to some life challenges lately (including starting to write again), I haven't gamed in a few months and turned my Hunter game over to one of my players to run.

Since I turned my game over, I've gone back to "gaming school" to write my own game and I've discovered something else.  The vague, general unease I had been feeling during my return to gaming over the past two years is likely due to another evolution in my gaming preferences.  I wasn't really able to put a handle on my thoughts until Tuesday night, when I read the piece by Jesse Burneko over at Play Passionately (Thanks go to Jef Godesky for tweeting the link) about the "social risks of story creation."  That article blew me away.  I've been turning it over and over in my mind ever since I first read it.  I knew I needed to not only link to it, but also to write a response to it.

Jesse articulates beautifully what I've been thinking, but haven't been able to quite grasp in a full, coherent manner.  He connected, for me, all the dots I've been seeing, but didn't know how to interpret.  Jesse writes that "a good story must reveal something about the characters as real human beings no matter how fantastical their circumstances."  He goes on to mention his craving for "emotional intimacy, revelation and resolution that speaks to recognizable human issues."  This goes beyond the role-playing vs. roll-playing discussion.  This speaks directly to the quality and resonance of the role-playing story creation experience.

Then, he hits the nail on the head and taps it home:

"Since role-playing happens face-to-face getting that kind of emotional resonance requires a degree of honesty, self-reflection and social vulnerability in ways that I think many gamers find uncomfortable.  Indeed I think that a great number of 'story oriented' gamers have spent a great deal of time and energy developing techniques that remove that need for vulnerability.  By removing that risk these techniques not only diminish the emotional rewards of story creation but also unintentionally introduce new social tensions and stresses that further complicate the role-playing experience."

Think about that for a minute.  He is basically saying that some gamers develop a defense mechanism to decrease the social/emotional risks of gaming, which decreases the chances of them receiving the desired outcome of their gaming experience.

Later in the piece, he elaborates:

"Somewhat ironically I believe that such behavior is an attempt to reduce tension.  I have come to the conclusion that many gamers value drama but actually shy away from tension.  By drama I mean emotive character play such as lying, betrayal, threats, grand speeches, mysterious behavior and so forth.  By tension I mean actual trepidation over potential outcomes when characters come into active conflict.  In many ways, it is emotionally safer for a player to manipulate his character into a calculated dramatic failure rather than honestly pushing the character’s agenda with no certainty to how things will resolve."

To me, this ties into the basic social insecurities of gamers.  We are not the most socially/emotionally adept creatures ever to grace the face of the earth.  Most of us have passion in spades, which leaves us emotionally vulnerable.  We have also adapted to being slightly outside the circle of conventional social norms.  This means that we've developed defense mechanisms to protect us and reduce our vulnerability.  I've been at tables where a lack of emotional trust has made navigating the game the role-playing equivalent of whistling through a minefield.  This lack of trust and emotional connection between everyone at the table, and believe me all it takes is one person who has fallen into these patterns to cause the behavior to spread like wildfire around the table, leads into a downward spiral of dramatic one-upsmanship:

"Emotional engagement has ceased to arise from honest connection with the characters and their crises and moved into the social arena where 'dramatic effect' is to be owned and delivered to each other with calculated effect.  The behavior often leads to social competition under the guise of co-operation as players begin to 'one up' each other for status and recognition over their dramatic contributions."

I have seen countless hurt feelings and misunderstandings arise from this behavior.  I'm also definitely not innocent in the lack of trust department.  We all share the geek DNA and we all fall into the common geek social traps from time to time, especially if we fail to understand the problem and commit to its solution.  I definitely wasn't aware of what was happening at the time, but I've seen one of the best games I've ever run dissolve under the weight of this emotional baggage, where the mechanics "ceased to resolve imagined tension between characters within the fiction and instead... moved to resolving real creative tension among the players."  The "wrestling match between the players over narrative direction" that Jesse mentions takes over the game.  At that point, neither the players nor the gamemaster is in control.  Instead, the social/emotional tensions are in control of the game and nobody enjoys the end result.

The revelatory part of this piece however, lies in Jesse's suggested paradigm shift (for me at least, and most players I've ever played with) from defining characters based on their abilities and capabilities to defining characters based on their crisis.  He's right.  Looking at characters based on their abilities and capabilities leads to a "niche-driven spotlight rotation method" that can and often does "lead to immense disappointment and frustration."  Not only are players disappointed with their share of the "spotlight" time, which is never enough in this system, but they are also disappointed when their character fails at something in which they have invested a great deal of game resources in ensuring that they will succeed.  These failures are directly at odds with how the players have defined their characters, resulting in the necessity for the player to redefine that character.  I've also seen the lack of sufficient spotlight time, especially if the character's capabilities were ill-designed for the story as it evolved, cause a player to have to redefine character.

To this end, Jesse has laid out the deceptively simple solution to a problem that has dogged me for years:

"The key to avoiding this disappointment is to shift focus away from thinking about what the character is supposed to accomplish and start thinking about the character in terms of what crisis he is confronting.  When a player invests in the character’s crisis the paths to satisfaction become less confined.  If my character is defined by his struggle with his religion then any set of events and resolutions which speak to that struggle will be satisfactory.  Maybe he drives his family away with his zealousness.  Maybe he abandons it all together.  Maybe he learns to keep it quiet so he can co-exist with his best friend.  What happens almost doesn’t matter because what the player and the group care about is the character’s struggle with his religion.

That isn’t to say that a character’s approach to that struggle isn’t important.  If part of the character is that he’s willing to shoot someone to back up his religious beliefs then that matters.  In fact, it’s vital.   But saying, 'This is a guy who’s willing to back up his beliefs with a gun' is very different from saying, 'This is a guy who never misses a shot.'  The former raises questions and introduces elements of narrative risk.  Who is he going to shoot?  What happens if he succeeds?  What happens if he fails?  The later introduces a comfort zone in which the character can safely take action without risk to his image or ego."

BINGO! YAHTZEE!  DING DING DING!!!  LADIES AND GENTLEMEN WE HAVE A WINNER!

It seems so simple, yet so revelatory at the same time.  It's a paradigm shift for most of us, I believe.  Those can be incredibly difficult when we are trying to give up decades of habits, ingrained defense mechanisms and conditioned responses.  He is asking us to think about the game differently.

Ironically, in that game I mentioned earlier that dissolved into social conflict, one of the things I had the players do during character creation was to "build-in" a crisis for the character.  One character was dealing with the aftermath of losing the wife and child he loved so dearly due to alcoholism fueled spousal abuse, the stress of which caused him to make mistakes at his construction job that resulted in the deaths of some of the men under his supervision.  Another character was an actor whose lover died in his arms on the set due to a prop malfunction.  I just failed to utilize these crises fully over the next 18 months of play.  At some point, they took a back seat to the "story" that we were creating.  It didn't help that we were using D20 Modern, which lends itself to ability defined characters, in my opinion.

So, once we make the shift to crisis-defined characters, the natural question seems to be, "How do I decide what crisis to use?"  Jesse cautions us not to just pick a standard literary conflict, like the stereotypical "religious figure who has issues with his faith."  He urges us, and I believe this is a key concept especially in a game like the horror game I am working on, to pull "from something that personally frightens you or that you struggle with."  He gives some excellent examples in the piece itself, which I consider a must read for all tabletop gamers.  This allows the players to "buy in" to the game on a personal, emotional level, which seems to naturally circumvent the emotional guarding that was discussed earlier, ironically by increasing the emotional exposure and vulnerability.

The one caveat here is that this has a chance to fail and that chance can be greatly affected by your group.  If you fear failure and the social risk involved, this will not work.  Not every player can play every type of game, even if they want to be at the table for other reasons.  Everyone has to commit to sinking or swimming together and if the game doesn't work, moving on to something else.  Jesse's final paragraph seals it all together for me, so I will leave you to check out this excellent article for yourself.  Hmmm... three links.  Have I recommended it strongly enough yet?

I kind of combined two topics here (and wrote an extremely long post in the process), but I feel that the evolution of my RPG DNA was a key component of the epiphanies induced by Jesse's piece.  I definitely feel that I am about to explore some "passionate gaming" at this point in my gaming life.  It is definitely a logical step and coincides with what I am trying to do with the game I'm developing.

So, where are you in your gaming life?  What is your RPG DNA?  Do you "play passionately?"

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Behind the Shift

This morning I was having some internal debate with myself about mechanics vs. setting in THE GAME.  Thankfully, it didn't come to blows.  It remained a civilized discussion.  The internal discussion revolved around which sections I am working on writing and in which order (setting my writing plan).  At the core of it is one of those chicken or egg questions that can be answered different ways by different people, but I think defines the core of any game (notice that in any incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons, the mechanics are the first thing in the book, while in the White Wolf games, the setting comes first).  What comes first, the setting or the mechanics?

Obviously to me, the setting comes first.  When I began to hatch this diabolical plot to actually sit down and write the game I wanted to play, I had to define the setting first.  I didn't decide on a set of mechanics, then build a setting to fit.  For that matter, are setting and mechanics independent of one another, or can they be?

When I think of setting, I am thinking of more than just the world in which the action of the game takes place.  I am thinking more along the lines of the "story-world."  In my mind, the "story-world" is the combination of the meta plot of the setting and the environmental factors that directly influence, or are directly influenced by the circumstances of the world that are unique to this particular game setting.

For this game in particular, my first thought was that I needed a world that was dark and threatening.  Also, I wanted it to take place in the modern world.  From there, I started listing some preferences.  I didn't want the game to rely on the typical tropes of modern horror tabletop role-playing games.  Hence, I wasn't too keen on zombies, ghosts, vampires, werewolves or mages being the major players in the game world.  Those are all excellent horror tropes, and work well, but I wanted a departure from that.  The average horror gamer knows a lot about all of those things.  Hell, the average gamer or would-be gamer knows many different varieties of them, their ecology, their habits, how they live (unlive?), how they are destroyed, etc.  There are tabletop rpg's out there that handle all of those tropes quite well.  That is not territory I wished to tread.

I also decided early on that it was a must that the characters play ordinary schmoes.  I didn't want supers or monsters as characters.  I didn't even want characters who knew what  the hell they were getting into.  I wanted "Joe the Plumber."  I think that some Cthulhu games (not Delta Green) manage that pretty well, but I don't want the characters in my game to have the gradual spiral into insanity be their only option.  As I've written before, pre-existing games come with a built-in mindset.  Players who know the game almost unfailingly play it a certain way.  So, if I announced that I was playing a certain game, even if I set it in a completely different world and changed most of the rules, but called it... I don't know... Picking Daisies With Cthulhu or Vampire: The Office, people would approach the "hybrid" game the same way they approach a typical game of CoC or Vampire.

So, I knew I wanted ordinary people as characters in today's modern world.  I also knew that I had to do something that would enforce that this was a horror game.  I had to isolate the characters and, vicariously, the players as well.  One additional concern I had was something that has always struck me about horror games in general:  It is damned hard to instill and maintain that feeling of horror (or dread or terror) for long.  In a movie, you have a two hour (or so) timeframe.  In a novel, the reader can put the book down when the tension needs to be released.  I wanted a game mechanic that reinforces breaks in tension at the appropriate points.  Who is to determine these points?  That is where "the shift" was born.

"The Shift" is the defining feature of the setting.  It in fact makes the setting what it is.  Yet, at its heart, it is also a mechanic (perhaps also the defining one) .  To me, it is a marriage of setting and mechanic.  When the players (and the characters) first realize "the Shift" is happening, or even worse has already happened, that reinforces the horror.  It is an unknown thing.  It is dangerous.  It is surreal and extra-normal.  It gives the players the sense, like good music in any drama, thriller or horror movie, that "something is about to happen."  The gamemaster can make the Shift happen when appropriate to the story.  Or maybe the players can, through their characters, eventually find ways (albeit unreliable ones) to spark the event.  Then, when the tension needs to be ramped down, or cut off completely, when the players need to piss or eat or smoke or just tell jokes and talk about video games (or better yet, tell jokes about video games), the Shift can happen again.  The characters are back in the real world.  The immediate danger is past.  The characters have time to rest, research, resupply, and recuperate.  The 4 R's.  The scene, the episode, is over.  Then, before plunging them back into the unknown, the gamemaster and players can do a brief recap of events and  prepare for the next episode.

Props to Alan Wake for showing me what that structure could do for (and to) a game.  I started working on this a few months before that game was released and had no idea that I would see glimpses of the potential for what I was working on actively demonstrated in that game.  Silent Hill has always used it, but Alan Wake makes it even more of a narrative technique.

Now, it's your turn.  What games have you played that have a setting/mechanic feature that reinforces the game to you?  What is that setting element/mechanic?  They can be video games, board games or tabletop role-playing games.  Share with me!

Photo Credit: Stephen Calsbeek

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Game Hacking in the Cold War Era

If you read my first post on Geekcentricity, you know the bare bones on how I was first introduced to role-playing games.  That was almost 30 years ago.  I know, I'm ancient.  I'm that old guy saying, "back in my day, we walked ten miles to school in four feet of snow."  But there were some great things, as far as gaming goes, happening then.  The first was, in the days before the internet (yes, Virginia, there really was a time when we didn't have that) - accessibility.

Back in the early 1980's, there were "mom & pop" toy stores around town.  There was even one in the local mall.  That toy store, which was later bought out by a national chain and then closed, was where I bought most of my first Dungeons & Dragons books, dice and miniatures.

There was another large toy store a few miles down the road from the mall that also carried Dungeons & Dragons materials until the whole anti-D&D craze took off in the area.  The one benefit of that is that when they discontinued everything in the gaming section, I was there with my friends to buy it all at greatly reduced prices.  I even found an original printing of Deities & Demigods, with the two extra chapters, that had fallen behind the rack long ago.  They sold it to me for $5.  Most of the adventures were marked down to $2.  We cleared that place out in a hedonistic frenzy of consumerism.

There were even a few dedicated gaming stores around town then.  If it was published, you could go to one of them and purchase it.  Every now and then, my friends and I would find a way to make the nearly two hour pilgrimage to the Green Dragon in Charleston.  I think it's still there, though I haven't been in years.

Now, we have the internet for accessibility.  There are still some exciting things going on in the hobby.  To me, the most exciting is the number of "indie" game publishers quietly turning out excellent products in the shadows of the juggernauts (Wizards of the Coast, White Wolf, etc.).  There are dozens of small companies and individuals creating some great games with either fresh ideas or revisitations of classic ideas in new ways.  I've heard many people say that the tabletop rpg hobby is dying, being eaten alive by console gaming and mmorpgs.  Personally, I think there is a renaissance on the horizon.  The electronic publishing formats, coupled with technology like the iPad, have a universe of untapped potential to change the gaming hobby as we know it.

Personally, I just hope to get something out there that somebody wants to play.  I want to write something that I want to play and then make it accessible to others.  I'm not talking about a revolution.  I'm just talking about finding a hole, a niche, and filling it.

Back in the early 1980's, D&D was the only game in town and Ronald Reagan was playing cold war chess with Leonid Brezhnev.  I wanted to play a game that reflected all of the cold war angst that was in the air.  The problem was, it didn't exist.  Sure, there was something close.   A little game called Top Secret.  Which was close, but not quite what I wanted.  To use modern video games as an analogy, Top Secret was Splinter Cell when I wanted Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.  It was also brand new and not very fleshed out.

So I did a little game hacking.  I worked from my beloved Mack Bolan: The Executioner series of books (along with all the other tie-in series') by Don Pendleton (and others).  I borrowed a few things from Top Secret, but mostly just hacked Dungeons & Dragons into a game that I called Terrorist Wars.  It was about as immature an effort as you would expect from a twelve year old kid.  It was about as comprehensive and complete as anything an obsessed twelve year old could create.  I filled a pretty thick loose-leaf notebook (on college-ruled paper - I always use college-ruled paper) full of rules.  I had stats for just about every gun you could think of (I got them from a Mack Bolan weapons locker book I had and created stats for them).  I had character classes from Soldier to Spy to Assassin, complete with character advancement charts and everything else that standard D&D classes had in the Players' Handbook.

The game was actually pretty popular among my friends for a few years and several groups I played with seemed to always want to play Terrorist Wars instead of Dungeons & Dragons.  I was always happy to oblige and constantly revised it.  Somewhere around 1985-1986, the game got put away and never taken out again.  Maybe it was Glasnost.  Or maybe we had finally outgrown the game.  Either way, I look back fondly on my first game hack.

Okay gamers.  Here's my question of the day: Have you ever hacked a role-playing game and made a new game out of the rules?  Tell me about it.  What was it called?  What was it about?  Did you ever play it?  How did it go?

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Turd Pudding

In the proud tradition of "Shepherd's Pie" (or Sheppard's Pie, as the case may be)... I bring you "Turd Pudding"...

As promised, I have a quick teaser with some information on the game I've been working on, which I'm giving a new working title (since it's what I've been calling it anyway lately and since nobody really like the first working title - which was way too long).  But first, a few words about Geekcentricity and search engines.

If you run a blog or a website, there are a few tools available that can give you a picture, or more like a few snapshots, of what your web traffic is like.  I primarily use two of those tools: Google Analytics and Sitemeter.  Before you chastise me for even caring about who visits my site and/or how often, you should know that I realize how inaccurate these things are.  A percentage of my readers get their Geekcentricity fix from the RSS feed.  I use Feedburner to track that, but with all of these tools, I know I still don't get a realistic picture of my traffic.

Why do I bother?  Because it amuses me.  I basically track it for shits and giggles.  And yes.  I can giggle with the best of schoolgirls.

Where was I?  Oh, right.  Tracking worthless statistics with inaccurate tools.  Gotcha.  I'm a baseball fan, so I know all about worthless statistics.  When I go to a game, I don't just watch the game while consuming overpriced food and drink that will speed me to an early heart attack.  I do all that with a pencil and scorepad in hand.  Also, I was DMing when TSR introduced the Comeliness stat, so don't even chastise me about useless statistics.

Sometimes, though... Sometimes I find something interesting.  For example, when I first started Geekcentricity, I got a few visits from someone at LucasArts.  I was all geeked out.  Someone from LucasArts visited my new little blog!  It was like being visited by angels.  Then I started to wonder if I'd inadvertently screwed up and violated copyright or something.  Since my door is still intact, I have to assume that I didn't.  I just wish whoever it was would come back and check out the site now.

Another thing I find amusing is looking at what search engine terms people use to find Geekcentricity.  They used to just be boring and predictable.  I used to read Chuck Wendig's posts where he mentioned the bizarre shit people typed into Google to find his Terrible Minds blog and wonder how he got listed as a result for some of those searches, and lament over why I didn't get any hits from interesting searches.  I lament no more.  Instead of lamenting, I can share some of the wacky shit people have entered to find this place.

Fittingly, the two most common search terms people have been using to get here are geekcentricity and geekcentricity.com.  The 3rd most common result is still "i4e iPhone" which I have never used, reviewed or discussed here.  Below that is the ever popular "'mi llamo es' 'Bob Brent Spiner'" and my two strangest search terms "laxatives she shits herself" and "pissing video."  What the hell?!?  Unless I've been sleep posting (again), I've never written about these things.  You won't find either of those things here anywhere, I promise. Just don't look behind that door.

In case you missed my whole Geek Day post, I've been spending some time playing Alan Wake the last few days and I am really impressed.  The game is divided into episodes (which I mentioned as a preference in my post yesterday).  Each episode after the first begins with an intro of "In the Last Episode of Alan Wake" much like a television series.  I also have to say that the soundtrack is the best in any video game I've ever played (not exaggerating, I pay attention to music), with the music being arranged and positioned just like it would be in a tv series.  I also can't wait to play the travesty that is Deadly Premonition.  The more I read about this game, the more anticipation I build up for it.  Not to mention that I still need to finish Bioshock 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction and haven't even started Red Dead Redemption yet.  Did I mention that Alpha Protocol releases in a few weeks?  More on that title closer to launch.

Finally, I haven't written much about my game over the past few days.  I had a busy weekend with the day job, but I've been working on it whenever I can.  I have two things I can share with you.

First, the working title.  I knew that my previous one was not the best, but for my own brain's sake, I needed to call it something.  I also  knew that I'd probably burn through a dozen or more working titles before I settle on one that's worth using.  With that in mind, I have a new working title.  For the time being, I'll be using:
The Dark Shift.

What do you think?  I am again soliciting your feedback for this working title.  Please, let me know.

I have also settled on the core attributes I will be using in character creation.

Since a portion of my backstory for the game is derived from Hopi prophecies about the coming of the "Fifth World" (too bad that title is already in use for an RPG by Jef Godesky), I will be dividing attributes into three categories: Body, Mind and Spirit.  The attributes in each category are as follows:

Body
Strength
Stamina
Agility

Mind
Intelligence
Reasoning
Perception

Spirit
Will
Stability
Charm

Each attribute will be ranked on an expanded 9-point Fudge scale (which uses adjectives to describe all traits) as follows:

• (Legendary)
• Excellent 
• Great
• Good
• Fair
• Mediocre
• Poor
• Terrible
• Abysmal

Legendary is in parentheses because it is a level on par with the Strength of Hercules, the Reasoning of Stephen Hawking, or the Charm of Don Juan. 

I'll let you process the above and be back in a few days with more detailed explanations.  Comments are welcome.  Just keep in mind that I have more than this written and have not posted the full explanations of everything at this point, but if you're familiar with Fudge, you should be able to dig into it pretty quickly.

Also, I can see the need at some near future point, to move the more specific game information to a more private location.  With that in mind, I will be creating a site accessible to my playtest group and others who will be giving input into the process.  Stay tuned for details on that as well.

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Star Wormwood, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Backstory

Note:  Before you read below and assume I've gone completely batshit insane and have joined the ranks of those predicting the end of the world in 2012, I want to warn you that this is all backstory for the game I'm working on.  I'm still crazy, but the following is just one possible explanation I will be including as to what causes the incredible conditions of the game world.  I will explain more in a near future post.

---

"On the 17th of June, around 9 in the AM, we observed an unusual natural occurrence. In the N Karelinski village (200 verst N of Kirensk) the peasants saw to the North-West, rather high above the horizon, some strangely bright (impossible to look at) bluish-white heavenly body, which for 10 minutes moved downwards. The body appeared as a "pipe", i.e. a cylinder. The sky was cloudless, only a small dark cloud was observed in the general direction of the bright body. It was hot and dry. As the body neared the ground (forest), the bright body seemed to smudge, and then turned into a giant billow of black smoke, and a loud knocking (not thunder) was heard, as if large stones were falling, or artillery was fired. All buildings shook. At the same time the cloud began emitting flames of uncertain shapes. All villagers were stricken with panic and took to the streets, women cried, thinking it was the end of the world.

The author of these lines was meantime in the forest about 6 verst N of Kirensk, and heard to the NE some kind of artillery barrage, that repeated in intervals of 15 minutes at least 10 times. In Kirensk in a few buildings in the walls facing north-east window glass shook."
                  - Sibir Newspaper, 2 July, 1908

30 June, 1908 - 0 hours, 13 minutes, 35 seconds Greenwich Mean Time:   A powerful explosion occurs near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in a sparsely populated region of Siberia.  The cause of the explosion sparks decades of debate, with the most commonly held explanation being the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment approximately 3-6 miles above the Earth's surface.  The energy of the blast is believed to have been the equivalent of 10-15 megatons of TNT, or about 1,000 times as powerful as the atomic bomb that would later be dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.  The blast leveled more than 1,000 square miles of forest.

"Kezhemskoe village. On the 17th an unusual atmospheric event was observed. At 7:43 the noise akin to a strong wind was heard. Immediately afterwards a horrific thump sounded, followed by an earthquake which literally shook the buildings, as if they were hit by a large log or a heavy rock. The first thump was followed by a second, and then a third. Then the interval between the first and the third thumps were accompanied by an unusual underground rattle, similar to a railway upon which dozens of trains are travelling at the same time. Afterwards for 5 to 6 minutes an exact likeness of artillery fire was heard: 50 to 60 salvoes in short, equal intervals, which got progressively weaker. After 1.5 - 2 minutes after one of the 'barrages' six more thumps were heard, like cannon firing, but individual, loud and accompanied by tremors.

The sky, at the first sight, appeared to be clear. There was no wind and no clouds. However upon closer inspection to the north, i.e. where most of the thumps were heard, a kind of an ashen cloud was seen near the horizon..."
                  - Krasnoyaretz Newspaper, 13 July, 1908

 13 August, 1930 - 08:00 local time:  During the annual Perseid meteor shower, three house-sized meteorites fall from the sky near the Curuca River in Brazil, close to the Peruvian border.  The blast energy, which registered on seismographs in La Paz, Bolivia, is believed to have been close to 1 megaton of TNT.  Less than a tenth of the energy released in the Tunguska Incident, but still many times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.  The resulting fire burned in the Brazilian Amazon for months, deforesting an extremely large area.

"When the sun began to rise on the morning of 13 August 1930 like any other morning, little did the inhabitants along the banks of the River Curuçá in the Brazilian Amazonas region, near the Peruvian frontier, realise what was about to happen. The women of the community had started washing clothing and the fishermen and rubber-tappers had begun their days work. Suddenly, at about eight o'clock, the sun became blood-red and a darkness fell over the region. A large cloud of red dust filled the air, and then a fine white ash descended to cover the trees and plants. There then followed ear-piercing whistling sounds, three in total, after which three mighty explosions were heard in rapid succession. Immediately after the explosions, the whole forest became a blazing inferno which lasted for several months, depopulating a large area. These terrifying events caused the inhabitants to believe they were about to face death."
   - John McFarland, The Day the Earth Trembled

6 June, 2002:  As India and Pakistan stared each other down with nuclear threats over the disputed Kashmir region, early warning satellites detected an explosion in the Earth's atmosphere roughly the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.  Instead of occurring in the disputed region, this blast took place over the Mediterranean Sea.  It was the result of the atmospheric entry of an asteroid about 30 feet in diameter that had approached the Earth undetected until the blast occurred.  If the explosion had taken place 3 hours earlier, on the same latitude, India and Pakistan are likely to have escalated their conflict into a nuclear war.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Dyer

"And this is the Ninth and Last Sign: You will hear of a dwelling-place in the heavens, above the earth, that shall fall with a great crash. It will appear as a blue star. Very soon after this, the ceremonies of my people will cease."
- White Feather, Hopi Elder of the Bear Clan Tribe, "Prophecy of the Blue Star Kachina"

¹When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. ²And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets.
 ³Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar before the throne. ⁴The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel's hand.⁵Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake.
 ⁶Then the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to sound them. ⁷The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up.
 ⁸The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, ⁹a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.
 ¹⁰The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water— ¹¹the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.
 ¹²The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night.
 ¹³As I watched, I heard an eagle that was flying in midair call out in a loud voice: "Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels!"
                    ~ Revelation 8 (NIV)

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What's In A Name? Announcing My Working Title

Just because I haven't added anything new to Geekcentricity for a few days (I sure fixed that today) doesn't mean I haven't been involved in the writing process. I'm working on setting and mechanics for the game I'm writing. I have the second draft of my outline finished and I even have a working title.

That's right.  I finally have a name for the damn thing.  It's really too long and not nearly catchy enough, but I just like it.  I like what's behind it and I just think it fits my concept well.  So, unless I come up with something better, this is the name I'm using.

Are you ready?  Drum roll please...

A Hollow Rumble of Wings

With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,

And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama

And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away

                    - T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

What do you think?  Please let me know.

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Sharing Cool Stuff - Maschine Zeit

I share things that I like.  That's what the internet is for, right?  I find something out there that I think is cool and I pass it along to you.  Ah, the power of having a blog.  But, as the legendary Stan Lee once penned, "with great power comes great responsibility."  Oh yeah?  I flaunt that responsibility.  I thumb my nose at it.  I...

What was I saying?  Oh yeah.  Right.  Cool stuff.

You know I'm a big fan of horror.  Well, David A. Hill, Jr. at Machine Age Productions is going to be releasing an awesome looking horror game called Maschine Zeit.  It's a space-horror game in the tradition of the Alien movies and Dead Space that looks pretty amazing so far.  You should definitely check this game out.  Besides, David is a great guy who has tolerated my forwardness and pain-in-the-ass questions.

He's made an excellent trailer for the game that has caused several people I've shared it with to ask me what video game system it's going to be released on.  It's not a video game.  This is a tabletop/pnp RPG.  Enjoy the trailer.



Cool, isn't it? I told you so.

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12-Bar Blues In the Key of Some Psycho Is About To Rip My Face Off... and Eat It

Here's the situation:

You're on your way home from work.  It's rush hour and traffic is backed up as far as you can see because some idiot was paying more attention to his cell phone than to the car in front of him and now, two lanes of traffic are squeezing into a single lane to get around the fender bender.  You keep looking at the clock on the dash because it's already getting close to 6:00 p.m. and you are supposed to have a table full of gamers looking at you for their weekly fix of role-playing goodness in about an hour.  Normally, you spend some time during the week preparing for your weekly sessions, but this week you've been slammed at work, the kids needed help with homework, or the dog had fleas, or whatever.  Your slack ass didn't get the prep work done and now you're brain dead from a day in the coal mines and you have a deadline.  You can't jab that role-playing needle right into their junkie brains if you don't figure something out, and quick.

I really don't know if you've ever been in that kind of circumstance, but I damn sure know I've been there, done that.  Unfortunately, my gaming group can vouch for me on this one.  Sometimes I need something... some kind of framework to help my already tapped-out brain get jumpstarted for a session.  Sure, there are published adventures out there, but I usually run an on-going campaign and it still takes lot of work and preparation to fit them in there.  If I run a published adventure, it's never right out of the box.  It's usually heavily customized, almost to the point of unrecognizability.  If I haven't finished that work, I can't use it.

Though I don't play nearly as often as I should, I'm a musician.  I love to play some jazz.  I'm comfortable improvising, but man I need some changes.  Throw out some chord changes and give me a rhythm section to lay it down for me and I'm good to go.  In the above situation, what I really need are some chord changes.  I need the gaming equivalent of some good old 12-bar blues so that I can lay down some riffs.  Thankfully, those types of things exist.  There are actually a bunch of them out there on the market, whether for download as PDF's or to buy as hard copies from either an online retailer or your FLGS.  Since I usually run modern horror games, I need to find products that are geared towards that genre.  Say, 12-bar blues in the key of some psycho is about to rip my face off... and eat it.

Two of the products I have found extremely useful in this regard are 100 Horror Adventure Seeds and 100 Dark Places by Postmortem Studios. You can download them as PDF files from RPGNOW for a pretty good price ($7.50 each)  Hopefully you find them useful as well - after all, why else would we be having this little show and tell?  Okay, so I'll be honest.  I'll level with you here.  Lean in.  They're offering up some of their role-playing goodness for me to shoot directly into my brain just for sharing this with you.  Have I sold out?  Maybe.  Do I want to get free stuff?  Of course!  I promise that after I receive it and read it, I'll tell you all about it.  I'll let you live vicariously.

What do these products do?  They lay down some solid chord changes that you, as gamemaster, can improvise on with fairly little prep time.  Each product lays out 100 story starters for you to take off with.  They're easily good for a night of gaming and many of them, if you're players are digging what you're laying down, can spin off into either recurring encounters or an on-going scenario.

In 100 Horror Adventure Seeds, each "seed" is conveniently laid out on its own page.  This makes it easy to print out just the page you need for that night's gaming session.  There's lots of negative space around the text, with simple illustrations (or no illustration) and clear margins.  This way, you can write all over the page.  There's plenty of space to make notes, take food orders, or whatever you want.  Each "seed" consists of a description of the event, location, antagonist, or circumstance that forms the basis of the "seed", followed by a number of potential twists.  You can incorporate any of these twists as desired, combine them, or use none of them.  The "seed" then concludes with an epilogue that sets out some of the conditions for resolution, some possible outcomes, and often some potential for taking things further.

100 Dark Places is very similar, but each story starter/plot hook is based around some version of the archetypal "bad place" that is so common to horror gaming.  Like in the previous title, the places are each laid out on their own page.  The margins are smaller on this one, with less room for notes and such, because the pages are crowded with text.  While this takes away some writing space for you, it gets a lot more juicy information on each page for you to use.  Hey, write on the back... or borrow some paper from your kid's school notebook (or your own, if you're still in school).  Each place starts out with a description that is followed by a section called "The Horror."  This section explains what is so dark or scary about the place.  After "The Horror" there is a layout of the place, but no map. While the inclusion of a map would've been nice, it would make for an unrealistically long product.  I use floor plan websites and real estate sites as the source for most of my maps, so it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a map if you or your players feel the need for one.  After the layout, there are three brief stories about each place that you can easily expand into at least a full gaming session, if not longer.  The stories are easily combined with each other, or you can go off on your own and throw your own story creation into the mix.

If you run horror games, check out the links above and take a look at these excellent products.  If you do, or if you already have, please let me know what you think.

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May the 4th Be With You, But I Need a Fifth

I know that I wrote a post only a few days ago that was basically a link dump, but here I go again.  I wish I had time for more today, but this is going to be one of those weeks where time is at a premium for me and I'm choosing to spend a good chunk of what little writing time I have this week working on the crunchy bits for the still-untitled tabletop rpg I'm developing.

My starting point for those rules is a framework called Fudge (which used to be called FUDGE, but is now "new and improved" with fewer capital letters - by "new" I mean about 10 years ago).  You can follow the link above to see what Fudge is all about.  I'll be using the Fudge SRD as my jumping off point (actually, I'm using this PDF of the SRD) and completely customizing Fudge, a bit like the guys over at Evil Hat did for the excellent looking new Dresden Files RPG, but I'll be going in a much different direction (they created a new system based on Fudge called FATE).  You can do that with Fudge, since it's more like a framework than an actual ruleset.  It allows you to build a ruleset out of that basic framework without tying you down.  A huge bonus is that it is royalty-free and completely OGL compatible, thus easy to license and customize.

As far as the game goes, I am still sans title, but otherwise, things are rolling along rather smoothly (other than my huge lack of time to write - damn that day job!)  Yesterday, I received some awesome fan art from someone I've been gaming with for a long time.  I also exchanged emails with someone about potentially doing the art for the game (I know that's a long way down the road, but it felt right).  Hopefully it will work out because she's really good, likes where I'm going with this game, and I'm giving her a free plug right here.

Since art really has the power to set the mood for a story, or even a game, I went looking for some art that I could share here that captured my "shift-world" of Morior.  Here is one to get you in the mood (wink, wink):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/subzeroconsciousness/ / CC BY 2.0

Tomorrow is Cinco de Mayo, which I think is Spanish for "get really drunk" and is somehow in direct competition with St. Patrick's Day, which is Irish code for "get really drunk."  That means today is that very special holiday known as Intergalactic Star Wars Day. So, "May the 4th be with you."  Which, coincidentally is Geek code for "get really drunk."  Happy holidays, everyone!  Please check out the posts on my game development and keep the feedback coming!

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Sheppard's Pie

Have you ever eaten shepherd's pie?  Unfortunately, I have.  From what I can tell, it's an unappetizing mish-mash of whatever happens to be leftover from previous meals.  At least it was when I was eating in school cafeterias.  Which wasn't all that long ago.  This post is the shepherd's pie of Geekcentricity.  These are odds and ends.  Leftovers that I covered in mashed potatoes and served up for your eating... enjoyment?  Or tolerance.  Yes, I know that some of you may like shepherd's pie.  Yes, I also know that I spelled it wrong in the title.  I promise I intended to spell it that way.  You'll understand in a few paragraphs.  Now, open wide...

I'm glad to see that things have picked up around here a little bit.  There are a few discussions that have originated on some of my most recent posts.  That gives me a clue about what you, my readers, find interesting.  Or at least care enough to comment on.  Which is actually easier to do now that I fixed my comment form.  Apparently the comment form was a victim of my redesign.  Anyway, it's all better now, so comment away.

Here are the posts that have been generating some comments:

• Laying the Cornerstone of Concept - Building an RPG, pt. 1:  The post in which I laid out the concept for a project that has been beckoning to me for a long time.
• Fear Itself:  A look at what scares us and why.  It is really more thoughts for the rpg I'm working on.

What those two seem to have in common is that they are the two posts about the survival horror rpg I'm working on.  With that in mind, look for the next installment sometime tomorrow.

I am now the proud owner of a shiny new (okay, so I've had it for a few weeks) Google Page Rank (cue the heavenly chorus of "Aaaahs").  It's only a "1" and I know it really means nothing at all, but still.  It's good to know that the Matrix has taken note of my existence.  Speaking of which, people are starting to come here from search engines.  The number one search term that people have used to get to my site?  Of course.  It's obviously "i4e for iPhone."  Something I've never written about.  Until now.  Here's a link to at least make your visit somewhat worthwhile.  I guess this means it'll continue to be my top search term.  Unless it get taken over by the ever popular "mi llamo es bob brent spiner."  At least I included Brent Spiner in my Geekcentric Guide to Twitter.  By the way, Mr. Bob Q. Googlesearcher, it should be "me llamo es bob."  I'm not sure why.  Actually, I know exactly why.  It should be that way because my wife said it should be that way and she's the Spanish speaker in the family.

Finally, I want to share another link that has been brought to me by the Great and Powerful Twitter.  Someone I should have included in my guide is Stephen Lea Sheppard.  You probably have no idea who that is.  Unless you've seen the excellent but short lived television show Freaks & Geeks.  Stephen played Harris Trinsky.  That's the guy who was Dungeon Master for the geeks on the show.  Yes, he's really a gamer.  He has actually written some gaming materials.  He also reviews video games.  I had the good fortune of participating in some great conversations with Stephen on the rec.games.frp.dnd newsgroup many years ago.  

Wait... I was saying something about a link...  Right?  Okay, right.

So, Stephen tweeted a link to the blog post he wrote today.  It involves something near and dear to my heart... horror gaming!  It turns out that Stephen is a fan of Dead Space, one of my favorite video games.  He too has read the interview regarding the upcoming Dead Space 2. I was disappointed to learn that Dead Space 2 would be more of an action game than a survival horror game.  Except that it won't be.  Yet, it will be.  Now I'm confused.  It will be everything!  It slices!  It Dices!  You can even make julienne fries with it while cutting through a tin can!!!  What???  I'll let you read the conflicting statements for yourself.  Visceral says they want to empower the protagonist.  But Stephen brings up an excellent point about horror gaming:

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't horror traditionally entail giving the audience the impression of a disempowered protagonist?"

That's exactly what I've been thinking since I first watched the interviews.  I agree.  That also sets the stage for tomorrow's (actually, now later today's) post.

EDIT:  Twitter brings me yet another example of a horror game being written with the "characters as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances" theme in mind.  The game is Razed, by Will Hindmarch.  Today, he tweeted a link to his latest design diary about the game.  That entry contains a quote I'd like to use here:

"This creates a hybrid environment where the familiar is rendered strange, yet the people who inhabit it are immediately understandable. They are us. My goal is to make Razed about ordinary people rendered extraordinary by their circumstances."

That's Once again, that's exactly what my thoughts are about the game I'm working on.  The world is going to be strange and unfamiliar, so I want the characters to be easy to identify with and familiar.

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