The beginners choice – Adventures in D&D and Pathfinder

Six weeks back, I got both the Pathfinder and the D&D starter sets and got a group of beginners to take a look at what they thought of each.  The results, to say the least, caused a bit of a firestorm, which hadn’t been the intention at the time, and after checking with a bunch of people, I asked the beginners if they would (suitably bribed with milkshake and Oreo’s) consider playing through the adventures that were presented in the sets to see what they thought of them.

They finished last week, and while I’m not going to go through each set of adventures in massive detail, I will put the blow by blow account of the first adventures as they went through it.  In both cases, I sat on the sidelines while they played, making notes on what was going on while they made their own mistakes.

That wasn’t easy…

I’d forgotten in both games how much you just need to know the system before you can play it with anything resembling fluency, it’s been that long since I did anything as an absolute beginner that things like hit rolls and saving throws have been a part of my standard vocabulary for as long as I can remember.

Not so the beginners…

We started with the Pathfinder adventure, mainly because the D&D adventure is not so much a single adventure as a whole mini-campaign, and we did this because the thought had been that if they played one game for a month and then had to switch to a new rules system, they might find that more difficult than having a single week on one game and then switching to something else.

Pathfinder

It’s a dungeon crawl, there’s no other way around it, the paragraph that the GM read was enough to get them into the idea that they’re going down a dungeon, there to smack the dragon up and loot its treasure. 

So far so good…

The interesting thing here was that none of them had a moment of panic about the idea that there was a dragon down here in the dungeon, which I can only put down to them not really knowing just how dangerous dragons can be at this point.  That said, their previous experience of dragons was the talky bugger encountered in the last Hobbit film, which couldn’t fry a dwarf to save its own punctured ass and was easily outsmarted by coinsurfing hobbits, rather than the tank chewing psychotic in Reign of Fire…. 

First encounter, goblins, mown down like grass, much celebrating, through to find treasure and goodies in the next room, all is well and getting better. A fork in the road and the players went right to a room that had treasure at the back of the room.  A warning of “Approach with Humility and Live” had two of the older players (both Indiana Jones fans) on their knees and crawling to the edifice to retrieve the gems and then south to the area below. 

Filled with Spider webs, big spider webs…

As one, the players looked at each other, one of them asked if it looked like the lair of Shelob from lord of the rings, the GM nodded and as one, the players retreated without looking any further.  Next room was a room full of goblins, who pulled a mind scrambler by talking to the PC’s.  One PC made the charisma check and the goblins talked, telling them about the dragon and the weakness of it’s belly (many smaug comments ensued, but all of them were of the opinion that it couldn’t be much of a dragon if it fit in the small cave…), then through to the Deadly pool and the encounter with the Reefclaw, which dealt them a few nasty blows before they downed it.  The GM followed the instructions on the treasure section and got the players to find the Dragonbane longsword before they went on to the Dragons Den…

And it all went a bit Pete Tong…

They’d agreed beforehand to roll all dice where they could be seen, so there was no suggestion that any of them (including the GM) could fudge the dice rolls either way.  So the Dragon on turn one turning the magic user into a puddle of dissolved sludge wasn’t avoidable.  The others charged and the Dragon responded by causing serious damage to all three (there was no doubt from any of them they wouldn’t be making it through the next round).  It took a hit from the fighter with the dragonbane sword but no one else managed to hit it, but that was enough, per the encounter, to have the GM cause the dragon to run away.

And thus three of them lived to fight another day, tons of treasure, magic items everywhere, and only the scooping up of the magic user to consider the day a bad one, and with a new character rolled up by the time they’d got back to the town, they weren’t much dismayed by that.

Thoughts on Pathfinder

Thoughts on the adventure were varied, they liked the puzzles, they liked that there was loads of treasure, the Dragon neither sounding like Benedict Cumberbatch nor talking in the first place took them all by surprise, and melted mage on turn one really put their head in the game in a big way.  They agreed that overconfidence was a bad thing, and that their perception of things being coloured by films probably hadn’t helped.  When they found out that there was a specific clause in the dragons combat entry that indicated “Run Away If…”, they did feel a little cheated at the outcome and wanted another shot at it, only this time when they’d got a few more levels and a lot more goodies…

D&D Campaign

So thus week one down, it came to the turn of the D&D campaign.  Again using the Pregens from the starter set, they set out on the road to Phandalin.

First encounter, Goblins, four of them, and unlike the ones found in the first Pathfinder encounter, the party actually took a few hits from these, giving them pause for thought.  The comment issued at the time was “If the goblins are this tough, I’m not going near any dragons”.  But, passed the encounter with no fatalities and a few light wounds and set about searching the area for the Goblins trail, found it and set off with the fighter in the lead.  Noticed the first trap but fell down the second and passed again for a second, these new, not negotiating goblins were something that they weren’t happy about…

On and downwards to the Lair, where they found wolves waiting for them which they proceeded to shoot from a distance before the wolves broke out and attacked.  Not a difficult fight as the two wolves that made it to the party were both wounded and went down in the first round without managing to hit back.  The fissure at the back looked too narrow for their liking, so they came back out and up to the steep passage where it got dark and out came the torches.  Around to the Bridge, where they spotted the goblin at the same time as the goblin spotted them, wounded it but didn’t manage to kill it before it got the warning off and a few seconds later, the torrent of water came smashing down to sweep two of them to the bottom of the caves, then the second a moment later.

It was at this point that the players got really serious about the game, these weren’t just creatures waiting in a hole for them to come and loot, these were intelligent enemies and needed to be treated as such.  The PC’s went back up into the caves where the goblins had been forewarned.

I have to say that at this point, I’d have had the goblins lining the area above with bows ready, but the person in charge was doing it by the book, so the goblins were still waiting by the pools, ready, but not being proactive.  One goblin had gone to warn the boss in the back and they were lying in wait.  The two goblins outside didn’t last long, and the players moved through to the back room where the others were waiting for them.

It was at this point that the mage asked what point there was in the Sleep spell...

Burning hands and Magic Missile he understood (having had the same spells in the Pathfinder game) but what was the point of the Sleep spell, singular most useless spell ever...

Briefly to the rulebook...

Lightbulb....!

One ambush later, the enemy having got one hit off before the sleep spell wiped them out wholesale, the players looked over the bridge to areas unknown, possibly containing far more goblins and traps, then at each other and voted a short rest to get the slot for the sleep spell back...

An hour later, refreshed and reloaded, they went back up and made a spectacular run at the remaining goblins, the fact that the gobbo’s were all dead or sleeping by round two notwithstanding and excellent dice rolls for initiative cannot be discounted, but now armed with every first level mage’s ideal weapon, small level encounters suddenly ceased to have real meaning. 

Having managed this part of the campaign, they promptly looted the caves, expecting to find perhaps the same level of treasure that they’d found in the pathfinder adventure, only to be reasonably disappointed when they found that the amount of treasure was nowhere near what they’d found in the previous adventure.

Thoughts on D&D

This was week two, and I spoke to the players both individually and as a group at this point, seeing what they’d liked about both and what they’d disliked about the adventure.

They’d very much liked that it was a challenge, they liked that it was gritty and harsh, rather than the elaborate traps and complex dungeons of the previous adventure.  However, in the next breath, they also indicated that they’d very much liked the traps and layouts of the previous dungeon.  They’d taken this adventure much more seriously than the pathfinder one, a combination of the first fight causing them injuries and then the intelligent tactics of the creatures they were up against, whereas the other adventure had been a wipeout, a conversation, then a dragon and death…

Given that the D&D had a number of other stages to it, they elected to keep going with that adventure and are still playing it at this point in time, having now got to the stage where they’d got involved in the game and unlike the pathfinder, there was something else to run straight at.  When last we played (this is now week four of the D&D campaign), they were as far as the ruins of Thundertree and were in the process of running away when they encountered Venomfang, the general thought being that so far, none of the creatures they’d encountered had given them any sort of quarter, and the only reason they got out of the last Dragon encounter was because it had a run away clause built in...

 

Remember what happened the last time we came up against one of these?

Systemworks

They didn’t find much to discuss when it came to basic game play, they liked the choices of feats with Pathfinder and they liked Advantage/Disadvantage (but mostly Advantage) with D&D.  The big difference came in when it came to gaining levels and they checked the different amounts required, at which point D&D came in for a very large win with the 300 against Pathfinders 2000, but the thought on it was that the D&D encounters for the most part had been far more lethal (until they discovered Sleep...), so getting players off that first level death row was absolutely vital, whereas in Pathfinder, Dragons notwithstanding, players could get through without really craving those extra levels.

Conclusions

The interesting thing here is that from an experienced player and GM perspective, I know that modules, adventures, and campaigns vary wildly, and expectations from the starter sets can be something that colour perspective quite strongly, even if the follow up material is nothing like the material you were presented with in the first instance...

However, from an inexperienced point of view, the players liked the challenge of the D&D adventure but the rewards of the Pathfinder adventure, something combining the two would have been ideal.  They certainly didn’t mind having more difficult fights and things to puzzle over, but they wanted the rewards that went with those risks. 

From the inexperienced GM point of view, the notes and details on the pathfinder adventure were very useful, particularly when pointing out ways that the players could go about things and places in which GM intervention to prevent TPK (Total Party Kill) may be required.  However, the sheer mass of adventure presented in the D&D set still has them playing through at the moment, because after the first session, they got the idea that this might be a little lethal and have been playing cautiously (Even though they’re at third level now) since that point.

The groups thoughts were that they’ll probably return to pathfinder after finishing this campaign and see if they can get the same enjoyment out of taking characters up the levels more slowly than they have been doing in D&D, but they’re new to all of it and it’ll take time.  The main point that was made was that the D&D adventure may take a little more to get in to in the beginning, but with the sheer amount of it present, it forms a solid base for the first few months of play for absolute beginners (which it wouldn’t for experienced players), and that goes a long way when you’re just getting into something.

Of course, if D&D products start appearing at the speed that Pathfinder products normally make it out, then they may just stay with the game that they’ve got going with and that’ll be where the matter rests.

So to continue the Game of Thrones analogy from the first review...

In the matter of Pathfinder’s Viper against D&D’s Mountain, it looks like the Viper may have just got his teeth knocked out, but it remains to be seen whether or not the Mountain will come back as Strong...

But more on that in three months, and the good news is that I’m not having to bribe them anymore...

#rpgaday A note to the creator...

On the subject of the rpgaday posts that have been going around, I don’t know how many people know who actually started all this, but I thought it important to make a mention of him at the end of the challenge, because I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this and it’s got a lot of people talking about RPG’s in a way that we don’t do that much of any more.

So it’s a swift note to say thanks to Dave Chapman, whose blog can be found at http://autocratik.blogspot.co.uk/ and here’s hoping he comes up with other things like this, because I believe that we as a people could do with more talking about the good things and less bitching about the bad... 

#rpgaday Day 31 - Favourite Game of All time – Werewolf the Apocalypse

 

In the early to mid nineties, I ran a campaign in the world of Darkness, starting out with Vampire Dark ages and then moving on from there.  We started out with five players, at one point going up to eight players and ending up (six years later) with four players for the finale, the other players having either moved away or given up playing in general (I like to think not as a result of my GMing) when the world was finally brought to an end and I moved back to the grim north.

We started on Vampire, and through the time, we had a few people who wanted a mage, so we got the books for that, then somewhere in the middle of the game, we found out that there was another game called Werewolf...

At the time the book was on this edition with the claw strikes down the front of the book...

I was sold...

Werewolf was a revelation for me, I’ve always been attracted to the furry psychotics in one way or another, the idea that every person has an animal somewhere inside them has always resonated fairly well for me. 

Ask anyone who’s met me face to face, they’ll tell you all about it...

The thing here is that when you looked at other peoples takes on werewolves, they tended to be of the D&D “Kill them all” perspective, whereas here was a game that not only accepted werewolves, it encouraged people to get in touch with their inner Furry...

Not that kind of Furry, just so we’re clear in what I’m saying here...

So, looking through everything, I found that there were a number of breeds, tribes, and various different auspices that the characters could be born under, and all of it wound together into a compelling tale of a people on the brink of destruction who were doing all they could to find a way to fight back against the minions of the Wyrm, and for those that aren’t familiar, that’d be the bad guy personified...

  

So here’s me, Homid (Born Human), Fianna (Celtic types), and born under the auspice of the Galliard (that’d be the fighter who can also talk their way out of things), whereas my friend Jay was straight down the line with Lupus (Born furry), Get of Fenris (Norse Berserker), Ahroun (Warrior).  There was a combination for everyone, with the only common ground between everyone the fact that they were a member of the tribes.  There were already a number of sourcebooks out there and the World of Darkness movement was only starting to build.  Over the next few years we got most of the books, and so we were there when Hunter got introduced (quickly renamed Human: the Screaming), we raged through all the different countries, we walked the spiral, we walked (not danced) back up the other side, and we were there when the dark times fell, and it was all changed to be something that wasn’t the world that we’d been fighting for.

When the new edition came, and Werewolf went from the Apocalypse to the Forsaken, we felt as if we’d been forsaken as well.  That I’m given to understand, a whole bunch of research was done (that’d be books being sold rather than opinions on the net), and the mages were the ones outselling everything at the time, which is why Vampires, Werewolves, and Humans ended up at the bottom of the ladder and the mages went climbing up to their awakening.  This was not the world that we’d fought and died in, this was not what we had worked for, and so the adventure ended for us there.

We could always go back and play through the glory days, the times when we might indeed have made a difference, but the dice of history had been rolled, and whatever else we did in our chronicle, there was no way that we could change history, and so we played the last book, Apocalypse, and went down fighting, because to do anything else would have been showing dishonour to the characters that we’d played so fiercely.

I know that Werewolf: The Apocalypse is now being looked at for a regeneration of sorts, and in truth, a large part of me wanted to back it, but the problem for me was that the fight had been fought...

And we lost...

But this was a game that resonated for me at a time when I was all but a feral lunatic myself, and for that reason if nothing else, it remains my favourite game of all time.

And I'm a day early with this, I'm a day early because I found out earlier that it's Mark Rein-Hagens birthday today, so Happy Birthday Mark, and thank you

For everything...

#rpgaday - Day 30 - Rarest RPG I own - Affiliates RPG

When I looked at this particular question, I had another one of those Quandaries, the question to be asked was...

Did it have to be any good...?

Now lacking any sensible way to give myself an objective answer on this, I turned to the font of all knowledge (that’d be Tiny Wife), and asked her the same question.  Her answer?

“If you only look at games that were any good, by extension, they won’t be rare because they’d have done a second edition and sourcebooks...”

Thus it was decided, and so to the library of all things that have been seen once and never played, and right to the end, where those that have been there a long time have been steadily pushed back, and there I find the Affiliates RPG, Player and Games Masters Guide.  There is every probability that you’ll never have heard of Affiliates, and the chance of you finding it anywhere apart from ebay isn’t high at all, so I did a web search to find copies of reviews done at the time, found one here...

http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=6632

The problem inherent with the game is that the creators had a vision, of mafia and Mafioso, and they built a system around it (based on D4 and called the Caltrops system), the copy I have is from a time when I was doing reviews  some years ago.  I know that it made it into circulation, but it didn’t make it anywhere past that.  The problem was that in a lot of ways it looked like a game that had been made as a vanity project, several of the people involved in the game were photographed in the NPC section while the other drawings were of very low quality.  The Caltrops system didn’t work except in the minds of those who invented it who knew all the things you needed to do to make it work but hadn’t put them down on the page. 

And then there was the content itself which, if I’m honest, wasn’t thought through very much.

To put that in perspective, the initial fiction in the players guide had two Mafioso talking about a recent hit while trying to escape in a  car that could only do 47mph, one of them was called Fett and was complaining to the other that they shouldn’t have “Pulled the Sithlords”, in the next section, they talk to some of the other affiliates, codenamed “Urza, Starscream, and Gandalf...” the players guide had 17 pages of NPCs (without stats), and the GM’s guide with 102 pages complete, had 70 pages of the same NPCs (this time with stats) and six more pages of NPC’s that were just random mooks.  Running a campaign was three pages and sample scenarios took up four pages.   

It was a very limited world that could only be played with the specific NPCs that had been listed already and did not recognise that people might want to do their own thing with the world, going to far as to not provide any sort of framework that could be used to make a more compelling universe.  I spoke to the creators at the time and tried (gently) to point these things out, at which point they explained their master plan of producing loads of supplements that would have all the things in them.

Still, it has been the best part of ten years since it was released, and I’d all but forgotten I’d got it till this review, but there you have it, the rarest game I own...

I think I may have the only print copy... 

There's Anarchy in the Household...Sons Of Anarchy Board Game Review

I’m always torn when it comes to games that are tie ins to shows that I really like, because on the one hand I already like the show, so that scores a plus for the game, but on the other hand, I already like the show, which means that if the game isn’t true to the show, there’s going to be a problem...

And when I really like the show, sometimes that stops me from even picking up the game in the first place because I’m too worried about the game not being true to the show. So it was with some trepidation that I took a look at Sons of Anarchy: Men of Mayhem. 

It’s a simple premise, everyone gets a gang, and you try to control locations, along the way you throwdown with other gangs, skim money off the top, run contraband and in general act in an unsociable manner, with the proviso that all blood feuds are off when the game is over. 

After the first time of playing, I’m pretty sure the blood feud didn’t leave the table immediately...

The thing about the show is that it’s not about the various criminal activities that the gang gets up to, it’s about the family and friends that make up the gang and their associates, so it’s interesting to play a game where the primary focus is all the things that the show is supposed to be about.

Presentation values are extremely good, at least on a par with Fantasy Flight, and there’s a good number of plastic counters as well as press out pieces.  A turn consists of each player taking a number of orders (actions) equal to the base number of orders plus the number of members (that’d be guys on bikes) that they have.  Actions include Ride (move to another location), Exploit (use a location you control), Throw down (fight at a contested location), Recruit (add a new prospect to the clubhouse), Patch in (Pay cash and guns to promote a prospect to full member), and Sit tight (do nothing...). 

The immediate thought for one of the players was that more members equals more actions, and as a result, more win in the turns to follow, and so followed that strategy, one of the others instead went after the locations, and the third took a mix of both.  As it turns out, none of these strategies is an immediate game beater, and a lot depends on what cards are drawn through the course of the game.  In order, players claim the order tokens for their turn, reveal new cards (Sites and Anarchy cards), issue orders (in rotation around the table, not one player takes their whole turn then the others and so on), Black market (how much contraband is being moved that turn), then Last Calls (typically problematic events) and clean up, including checking if any of the gang have been killed in the turn previous.

 

It plays well, little slow to begin with, but once you’ve got the hang of the orders and moves system, you can see strategies evolving quickly, but you have to be way of the cards that are revealed every turns, which escalate from one card in the first round, then adding one card every round till there are six cards revealed in the final round.  It’s possible for a gang to be eliminated before the end of the game if they don’t have any gang members left to take a fall when one is called for, but this didn’t happen in our game and I suspect you’d have to be extremely unlucky to get that to happen.

The game plays straight to six rounds, at the end of which, the person with the most money wins, in the event of a tie, the player with the most guns wins and if that fails, both gangs throwdown against each other to see which one wins.

On the one hand, being a fan of the TV show, my thought on the victory was that it should have come by wiping out the other players, but the other players aren’t fans, and the six round limit worked very well for them (translation: I didn’t win...).  Overall it’s interesting, the three player minimum, four player maximum, will limit the playability of it in some quarters and it’ll never get the same level of interest as things like X wing because of the way it’s going to be played that can’t be expanded upon.  That said, the rules are simple enough that it can be played by casual gamers and hardcore alike, and will provide an entertaining break for both, but remains true to the TV show from which it originates, and so for those who are picking it up because it’s tied in to the TV show of the same name...

There’s win to be had...

#rpgaday Day 29 – Most Memorable Encounter – Advanced D&D Blue Devil

The most memorable encounter I ever had in a game was not one that I was playing in, it was one that I was the GM of.  Back in the mid 2000’s I was running an AD&D campaign that had been going a few years, the players had had chance to get around the world for a while and they’d been recently hired on to provide caravan support for a merchant running goods into an area where other caravans had gone missing in recent times.

In this particular group, there was a reasonably amount of conflicting personalities, didn’t help that at least two of the group were going out with each other and that everyone else had their own issues, but of conflict is made great drama, so there they were, inspecting the things that were being transported by the caravan when they came across something unexpected.

A long limbed blue skinned creature that would never be found in an AD&D monster manual, the eyes were those of an intelligent creature, but it had the poise and attitude of an animal. The lock had been scratched in various places, and on the ground, as one of them approached, it scratched in the ground.

“One of Us...”

It covered the markings up before anyone else could see what was going on, but it was clear that what they had here was an intelligent creature that had been caught up against its will.  It made the same markings every time one of the characters came past, being careful to cover things up before anyone else could see them.  The master of the caravan pointed out that the creature had killed a number of people before it had been brought down, and that when it was finally caught, it came quietly, just laying down and waiting to be chained.  It escaped three times as the caravan moved on through its drops, each time being recaptured within a short while, each time not giving any resistance as it was put in a better cage.  The last two cages had been magically sealed but it had still found a way to break out of them.

The interesting thing for me was that the person who had the strongest reaction was the Mage, and a little background story is needed here to put this in context.

The mage had a name, I forget it now, because no one ever used it, his name to all of us was...

Excellent...

And we called him that because a truly excellent mage will stand in the front line of any conflict, he will use all the powers at his disposal to make sure that his colleagues are protected and safe, an excellent mage will stand for the right and true cause every time...

And that explains the difference between a truly excellent mage and this one...

Excellent the Mage was in it for himself, he didn’t give a damn about anyone else, he’d sell everyone out given the choice and make sure that none of them knew that he’d sold them out, something he’d done before, something he’d certainly do again.  The thief used to look at him as the example of what happened to people who fell too far from grace...

So what happened next could be considered out of character for him...

Excellent decided to go freeing Slaves, the rest of the group were divided in their opinion of what they were doing, some of them figured that it was a in a cage for a reason, some of them figured that nothing intelligent should be in a cage.  In the end, Excellent went wandering in the night and let it loose...

So off it went, there to vanish into the night, leaving no traces behind as to where it had gone.  The reports of a village being attacked came back within a day and the characters were asked by the caravan owner to go out after the creature and bring it back.  Not a slow creature and not one to let itself be caught when it didn’t want to be, it fled to the high passes where the rocky ground would cover its tracks more efficiently than any amount of intelligence.

But the players played well, for once all of them working as a team rather than following their own disparate goals, they hunted it down and got close, wounding it and bringing it to a halt where it crawled into a cave at the far end of a valley to wait for them.  At the entrance to the cave, it had again scratched “One of us...” into the ground.

It was at this point that the ranger realised that they weren’t alone anymore...

Not a few, but dozens of the creatures were lining the top of the valley and looking down towards the cave.  One of them came down the hill with hand raised, pausing before the cave and scratching the word “Not” before the other words.

It was then that everyone realised what had been breaking the creature out, the only problem that its own people had was that it knew they would kill it, so when it knew that they were getting too close, it let itself be captured, as the creatures would not risk getting themselves noticed by the rest of the world.

What made this the most memorable encounter for me was the level of involvement the players put in to it, they were focussed on what this thing was and what it was doing, they wanted, needed to bring it down, and for those five hours that they were chasing it, everyone, myself included, was completely in the game.

I can’t claim the creative grounds for the creature, and a little more background is called for at this point, I read a short story some years previously.  It was called ‘Killer’ and it ranks as the single most interesting short story to this day that I’ve ever read.  It was about a creature, looking remarkably like the thing the players had found in the cage, and the hunter that went to hunt it down, not realising what it was that they were chasing down.  All I did for that session was recreate that particular encounter.

I enjoyed that session most of almost any game that I’ve ever run, not because of the level of involvement I had, but because of the lack of involvement I had, it was like watching a film unfold before my eyes, and I liked it so much, that in the end, one of the creatures in my upcoming game was designed around the blue creature and pictured at the top of this page and at least one of the scenarios that will be put forwards for the game will be that scenario, in the hopes that others can get something of the experience of that Saturday so long ago.

Sessions like that don’t come often, but when they do, you remember the events, you remember what people were wearing when they turned up, they become amongst the most memorable times that you have, because your characters were doing what they were supposed to be doing...

And isn’t that what games are all about...?

Day 240 - Blame it on the moles... - Required 660000, Achieved 660506

Two thirds of the way through the year, two thirds of the way through the challenge, still on course...

Got a lot of things done today, most of them dull and without thanks, but they're done, and that can only be described as a good thing, however the lesson for today must be that when working out with a hammer, do have something indestructible to hit, because otherwise you find yourself looking around after repeatedly striking the floor with said hammer thinking to yourself...

"I'll blame it on the moles, that's it, an army of moles, led by the MOLE MAN, came to the house and proceeded to lay waste to the garden..."

Which of course would be terminated by Tiny Wife turning up, knowing far more about what a mole hole looks like and going "That's no mole..."

And me being banished to the naughty step for hammering the garden...

If it doesn't make any sense, look on the bright side, it's going to be a picture at the breakers yard tomorrow when I go there looking for a tyre and only a tyre, especially if they ask why I need it...

"Oh I've got a hammer..."

I forsee notes to Plod...

Still, worse things in love and war...

This is John Dodd in the socialist republic of South Yorkshire and Goodnight england, wherever you are...

#rpgaday Day 28 - Scariest Game I've ever played - Jovian Chronicles

In the aftermath of the long SLA campaign that I played between the late 90’s and the early 2000’s, we gathered together and decided which game we’d have a go at next, everyone in the group put forwards an idea of a game and a scenario, and then we had a closed vote as to which game would be the one that we would play.

The game turned out to be Jovian Chronicles…

For those that aren’t familiar with it, Jovian Chronicles isn’t Hard SciFi, it’s part Heavy Gear (Same design studio), part Traveller, all Space Opera, and the group that we put together was very much in the Firefly tradition.  AI’s and other worldbending tech are mostly outlawed in Jovian chronicles and despite the universe being a vast and dangerous place, we were expecting something with high adventure in the open space lanes and firefights around every corner.

We couldn’t have been more wrong…

First mission was to deliver an encoded transmission to a destroyer on the outer rims, not able to be transmitted due to the lack of secure transmissions out in the belt.  We had a small ship, the pilot was one of the players, and we had a good range of skills and clearance to do the job properly without any serious issues.  We cut in the sublight engines at a reasonable distance and broadcast the short range greeting hail.

No response…

They could have been delayed at a previous engagement, so per our orders, we waited a short while, broadcasting the hail every hour or so.  After half a day waiting, we decided that something else had happened and checked up on the last recorded position of the ship, making best speed for that position.

It didn’t take us long to find what had happened…

The ship was a few hundred thousand miles from us, A Valiant Class attack cruiser (think star destroyer), it had been split in two by what appeared to be a single hit from a double mount cannon into the spine of the ship, whereupon whatever had attacked them had simply departed, there was still air streaming from the ship in various places, there was some power on board and it was evident that not everyone must have been killed immediately…

Though the characters could not have known it, the players definitely had “This is Free Trader Beowulf,” going on in their heads at this point…

We docked, up to the bridge surrounded by the dead crew, looking like the impact had been sufficient to tear the grav generators off line and pulp most of them into boneless masses floating in space, took the flight recorder and downloaded the last ship logs.  The quandary now was whether or not to call in the destruction of the ship, after all, there might have been other ships out there with the capacity to take on any wounded still left on this ship.

There might also be whatever did this still out there, waiting to strike at the next target that came along, and anything that can sucker snipe a star destroyer is not to be underestimated.  We went back to our ship and downloaded the details, the ship had been proceeding for rendezvous with us when strange readings were detected on the portside, and an incoming transmission sent seconds before the shot went through the ship, single shot, straight through the primary reactor which split the ship clean in half, cameras on board caught the second before the attack, and then everything went red…

The senior analyst did a few rolls against various tech skills and the GM passed him a note.

The Player went white and their character ordered us to shut the ship off…

“Why?” came the collective cry

“Because otherwise we’re next…”

So there we are, sitting next to the broken remains of one of the most powerful ships in the quadrant, waiting for whatever it was out there…

“It’s not certain…” the analyst said, “But it might not be Human…”

“What then?” 

“Not even Organic…” the analyst said, “We need to get out of here somehow.”

The transmission inbound signal came up on the ships dash, the gunhead character reached to answer it, and found themselves pinned under the other four of us.

“That’s how it pinpoints…” the analyst whispered, “Only humans have curiosity…”

“What is it?”

“Not Human…”

It took us more than three hours (our time, not the characters) to get to what we thought might have been a safe distance, by which we measured the amount of time between transmissions from whatever it was and when the transmissions stopped for more than a day, we fired up the main drive and got out of there…

What was scary about it was that we didn’t know what it was, but whatever it was had the power to wipe us out without even an afterthought, and it didn’t follow normal rules of engagement, it hid and waited and struck without warning and any human in the vicinity with any sense of decency would only be prey for it, even those travelling in one of the most powerful ships in the galaxy.

Years later, I spoke to the GM at length (we never did manage to complete that campaign, the world got too involved for a number of us and we drifted apart slightly) regarding that campaign, and found that it was indeed something straight out of the book, and that all the GM had done was modify its behaviour slightly to make it a little more dangerous.  When you look at it on paper, it doesn’t seem all that terrifying, but for those three hours, everyone one of us was absolutely in the moment.

I’ve played games where going insane is a part of the game, I’ve dispassionately counted down sanity points to invariable wibbling, and I’ve failed horror and terror rolls all over the place, never once being anything other than mechanically interested in what’s going on and counting down the rounds till I was a functional character again rather than someone idly standing by. That’s when I began to understand that to get people to feel things, it takes more than an understanding of sanity rules and fear effects, it takes an understanding of players and what’s close to them, and if the GM is willing to put the time in to craft something that’ll get the players thinking, then the players will repay them with their involvement.

And there’s no better reward for a GM…

And Sometimes, you've just got to eat a Beef Donut...

So this evening, having found myself up to date with wordcount and almost everything else, I decided to take the family on a bit of an adventure.  Being an avid watcher of TV programs such as Diners, Drive ins, and Dives, I've been fascinated by the american way of cooking things for some time, and this in turn has led to a promise to myself to investigate barbecue as a foodstuff when next I'm over there.

Turns out I don't need the flight to get american food over here...

Following a recommendation from my oppo on nights, we went to check out Reds, an american style barbecue joint in the centre of leeds, mile walk to get there not withstanding.  As it happens, the walk was needed, because when we got there, there was nothing in there that could have been described as anything other than "oh dear god...".

So, Mark had a bacon cheesburger with fries, Sylvia and Jude had pulled pork with (cole)slaw and fries, and I...well, a Donut Burger was on the menu, and this had to be done, and this may require a little explanation...

For some time, all members of the family have been teasing Tiny Wife that the cats would like a Beef Donut, now at the time, we all considered that such things did not exist, but that hasn't stopped us from relentlessly commenting every time the cats stop near Tiny Wife to the effect of...

"I am a nice cat, I deserve Beef Donuts..."
"I will trade strokes and purrs for Beef Donuts..."
"I want no biscuits, only Beef Donuts..."

And so on, till it became a running joke with all of us commenting on Beef Donuts and Tiny Wife getting ready to nut the lot of us...  Then came the moment last week when I found that these exist, and from then, it was only a matter of time before we got up there to prove the existence of these mythical foods...

And with Mythical foods must come Legendary Service, they don't do reservations at Reds for parties less than 8, and on Friday to Sunday, they don't do reservations at all.  We got in, got a table in five minutes, ordered drinks and food and somehow, the food arrived before the drinks, and to put that in perspective...

The drinks arrived within two minutes...

Delicious is the word, no other way to describe it, perfectly tender meat cooked slow (12-14 hours in the smoker), fresh slaw, all the sauces you could want, crisp fries, and of course...

Donuts...

In truth, the Beef Donut was a little much, even I had trouble finishing it, and those who know me know that I'm into my good foods in a big way, but I had to write about this, because from start to finish (literally, walk in to walk out), we were less than thirty minutes. Massive portions, excellent atmosphere (all country and rock music), reasonable prices, and service that was indeed Legendary...

I'm taking all my friends here, even the Vegetarians, if ever there was a place to convert someone to Carnivore status...

It is here...

#rpgaday Day 27 - Game I'd most like to see a new or improved edition of: A/State

I first met the guys from Contested Ground about a decade back, and at that time, they were only just coming into their own and hadn’t released such things as Cold City, Hot War, 3:16 and all the other things that they’re now renowned for.

Back then they were all focussed on putting out a game called A/State, in which the characters were all living in a place known only as the city, which was a massive walled complex divided into several different sections based around a circular canal system and surrounded by impenetrable walls.  The difference between this and my day six choice, Mechanical Dream, is that all the sectors were neatly laid out, there were personalities, there were ideas, there were things that you could do within the city, even if you couldn’t make a change to the status quo, there were things that could be done, and that was enough for me.

The other thing was the presentation, it’s always possible to tell when a games company has an artist in their midst, because the amount and quality of artwork will always be more and higher than those games produced by companies that don’t have an artist working on staff.  In this case, the images of the city were all computer rendered and produced, which gave the game a very distinct feel when it came to how it was presented.  This, combined with the hints of what was going on in the world, inspired me sufficiently to write a novelette for the game, in the hopes of getting more people interested in the game and improving the sales for the company.

If I’m ever interested in a game enough to want to support it, I don’t do things by half, the book only came out to somewhere near 37 pages, and it’s still available at www.thedodd.com for free. 

The problem was that while the game won the Indie Award for Best production and was nominated for another five awards including two Ennies, like a number of other excellent games before it, the enthusiasm of the fanbase that it had wasn’t enough to keep it going, and contested ground moved on from this to the other games that the individual members are now famous for and by the late 2000’s, most of the team were working on other projects as well as this which led to the eventual cessation of the line when Malcolm Craig took a break from writing for a while.

For me, it remains one of the more striking games of the 2000’s, with a visual style and starkness that only enhanced the product that was within and a game landscape that had not just enough to keep you going, but enough to inspire you.  I didn’t much like the system, but system is often something that can be supplanted with something else if you don’t like it, so it wouldn’t be an impediment to anyone if the system were retained.

The reason why I’d want to see a new or improved edition of A/State is because there was so much left unanswered, and in the manner of most explorers, I want to know what the Shifted were, I want to know what’s beyond the wall, what’s out there to be found, why the city was created, how the spire came to be, so many questions that presently will never be answered.  When you consider the interest being shown in games like Numenera and the Strange, there’s clearly a market out there that wants games that make them think, that makes them wonder what’s going on in the world, that makes them look into things and make things of their own up about the world, and while I have no doubt that the Contested Ground team (Now spread throughout the industry in high positions) have enough on their many plates, if there was a chance that one day A/State would be brought to the fore again…

I’d be buying…

Book Review - Wonderbook – The Illustrated Guide to creating Imaginative Fiction #amwriting

I like to read books on how to write, like many writers, no matter how much I write, I always figure there’s something else I can learn from others.  More importantly, like most writers, I always believe that whatever I’m writing isn’t imaginative and any time now, the teachers are going to come along and tell me to pack it in and start doing something that’s going to earn a real living…

The other thing is that a lot of the books that I’ve read have very similar advice in them, so much so that sometimes I gloss over the words as I’m going over them, and I know that that’s a great sin when it comes to reading, but if I’ve read the same thing a hundred times before, telling me one more time won’t make it sink in any more than it already has…

So when a book comes along with the legend that it’s a guide for creating imaginative fiction, so not just fiction, but imaginative fiction, well, get a lighter and call me petrol…

A word on the various books that I’ve read before I come to the book itself, I have a rule when it comes to books about writing, they have to be written by someone who’s actually written something other than the book about writing.  In todays age of self published books and everyone who ever thought they were any good giving advice about everything that their family ever told them they were good at, I tend to veer towards those with a proven track record rather than those who believe that because they have Internets, they must automatically be an authority on whatever they write about…

The author of this particular book is Jeff Vandemeer, three times winner of the World Fantasy Award and a variety of other things that I could spend some time on explaining, but suffice it to say that he’s done enough to be taken seriously, which was the first reason for buying the book.

The second was the front cover…

Shallow?

Maybe, but that’s what we start with, and you never get a second chance at a first impression, so the cover is something that’s got to get your attention.

It got mine…

When the blurb on the book says that it’s illustrated, it’s really not kidding, there’s artwork on every second page at the bare minimum, and it’s not the usual sort of thing where it’s an image immediately recognisable as being something that you can associate with the topic at hand, but instead something that takes the concept of what’s being talked about and expresses it in a way that compliments the subject being talked about.

As an Example, the lifecycle of a story…

And so it is with most of the book, there’s a colossal amount of artwork in here, articles from a number of very well known writers, and a whole bunch of exercises in writing as well as explanations of different styles and finding the narrative voice that you write with, rather than trying to force you into copying the style of those you read.

Now here’s the point where it gets interesting, if you read it as an occasional dip in to get inspiration or find a way to get around what you’re stuck with at the moment, it will fail.  This book is designed to be read and read properly, in the way that many writers don’t do because they’re too busy trying to write. 

So if you don’t read, don’t pick this book up in the first place, it’ll give you a few ideas, but the meat of the subject matter will be lost, particularly when you get to the last section that gives you things to do that require that you’ve actually read the entire book before it…

If, however, you do read, the book is divided up into a number of sections, each of them geared towards a particular aspect of writing.  I’m not going to list them, because there are some out there who’d do exactly what I do in these matters and go “Ah, but I’ve got a book that talks about them already, so I don’t need this book.”, and to do that would be to forgo the pleasure of this particular book, and that is the colourful way in which it presents the issues and answers the questions.

Colourful?

Yes, because the key here is that most writers see things in words.  If you put a wall of text in front of us, we’ll eat it for breakfast, never once wondering about the words that we’ve eaten and not giving further thought beyond the meanings of the individual words. However, give us something that presents words as something other than a thing to be read and it engages the rest of our non-text head, which in turns engages the creative wheels that a lot of us don’t use because we see everything as words.  That’s what I got out of this book, more than anything else.

Someone else’s perspective…

I’ve read On Writing by Stephen King, I’ve read How to write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card, both books that were excellent in their advice and told in a no nonsense manner that gave me the building blocks on how to get writing in the first instance when I’d previously had no discipline, but this book gave me the impetus to reach beyond my normal inspiration and look to things that previously I’d had no interest in.  To see beyond my normal perspectives and consider why I write the way I write, not just how I write, has been a very interesting exercise and one that I have every intention of continuing with…

The only proviso about this book is that it’s easy to get lost in, and while that may not seem to be a bad thing, remember that it’s a book for writers, and while it’s good to read…

It’s better to write…