ChrisTalbot.com

The new World of Darkness versus D&D.

It's been a very long time since I actually played in a PBeM/PbP RPG campaign, but I managed to get into an It's A Dog's Life PbP game over at RPG.net. The game has just started, but I'm really looking forward to giving It's A Dog's Life a try ... even if is only via the Web.

Sean was in town on the weekend for Easter, and the two of us made a short trip to Oshawa on Saturday. He wasn't feeling well, so we really didn't do much but go to Wyldstar. Then I dropped him off at my parents' place afterwards.

I picked up the thirteenth issue of G.I. Joe: Reloaded, and the letters column held a bit of a surprise -- and not a good surprise. Devil's Due Publishing is cancelling the title after the next issue so they can focus on the other Joe titles. This is very disappointing, as I really do enjoy Reloaded and I'm not really interested in their other Joe titles (or any of DDP's non-Joe titles, for that matter).

Oh well. One less comic to buy. :(

Are you a roleplaying game player or game master (or both) in Durham Region? Then join The Durham Region Roleplayers Meetup Group.

Do you prefer or also play board games? Help fill the ranks of The Oshawa Boardgames Meetup Group.

During a business trip into the city today, I took the liberty of hoofing it up to Silver Snail on Queen West while waiting for the next GO Train back to what The Law calls Not-Toronto. I learned two things.

One, I'm way too out of shape to be walking anywhere in the downtown core. I really need to get out more and get some exercise. Maybe there's a jogging group in Ajax or something. I think I'm the type that needs company when exercising. I need to get in shape and drop a couple of pounds off my love handles.

Two, the Snail licks donkey dick these days. For games, the Snail's selection sucks. They seem to have everything under the sun published by Wizards of the Coast these days, but if you want something else, forget it. The store had a bit of White Wolf's new World of Darkness stuff in stock and a few odds and ends here and there, but the gaming selection is getting smaller and smaller. It's being replaced by more action figures and a bigger anime section. Even the board game selection has gone to shit.

Giving NPCs life is one of the hardest jobs a GM has. I might even go so far as to say it is the hardest -- unless the players are rambunctious, in which case I'd say keeping the players on track is the hardest job.

But really, think about it. As a player, all you have to do is keep one character's personality in your head. You try to act as that character, but even that can be difficult. Most of us aren't professional actors, now are we? So usually, at best, we're able to pull off some half-decent roleplaying and some good impromptu dialogue, but sometimes the only thing players can pull off is not using too much out-of-character knowledge while in character.

Flip over to behind the GM's screen, and there's one individual that has to play a cast of dozens or even hundreds. Thankfully, the GM doesn't have to play all roles at once, but there are many occasions where a GM has to keep half a dozen personalities at a time in the forefront of his mind (or her mind, as the case may be). Trying to act out one character is tough enough -- trying to act out a whole ensemble cast is next to impossible.

So what usually happens? Looking at myself, I know what happens. In many cases, my characters are one-dimensional, and a few manage to make it to two dimensions. It's a rare occasion I'm able to pull off a good three-dimensional personality while GMing (hell, it's probably rare when I'm a player, too). I tend to fall back on the basics. Character X has to perform Actions One, Two and Three while giving the PCs Bits-Of-Information A, B and C.

Unfortunately, that means NPCs all too often come off sounding like they belong in a computer RPG, not a tabletop RPG.

In Mechamorphosis, I had a hard time getting into the role of the mechamorph NPCs. Granted, only one really took centre stage in the first session -- that being the head of the Exiles, Aegis. In my mind and in my delivery, Aegis was as flat as a glass of Coke that has been sitting on a counter for a week. He was dull and lifeless. Even for a machine, he deserved better.

I watched the entire first season of Transformers on DVD this week, and I realized that some of the Autobots and Decepticons came across as certain celebrities or stereotypical movie/TV personalities. The best example is Optimus Prime. Tell me the Autobot head honcho doesn't come across as John Wayne without the long drawl.

So I think I have my solution to put some life into characters. I'll try assigning them celebrity or character roles I get from movies and TV. If Aegis is the proud leader, then I'll look for a role/character type like that ... and then make his personality match.

I've been trying to analyze my game mastering style lately -- well, really ever since the Mechamorphosis session over a week ago. For the last few years, I've mainly run pre-packaged Dungeons & Dragons adventures, which generally have an emphasis on searching dungeons, bashing monsters, stealing treasure and solving minor intellectual problems. Unfortunately, since my D&D game has been of this fairly traditional sort, the amount of storytelling and roleplaying that has happened during sessions has been slim to none.

Enter Mechamorphosis. The adventure I planned out was based on certain events taking place, the PCs dealing with those events and some rewards thrown in for roleplaying and Transformers-ish dialogue. The first session was also based largely on running things fairly fast and loose. Things didn't go so well from my perspective. The kick-off of the session was lame and seemed cobbled together with rusty nails. The session maybe improved a bit as we went along, especially during the topsy-turvy trip through the white hole a couple of hours in. I think the white hole scene was the session's high point, and that part was actually fun for me. It helped that Logan had settled into the story element and was actually helping to guide things a bit (not that the other players didn't also contribute, but the spontaneous "starboard stabilizer" remark was a big help, even though he probably didn't realize it at the time).

However, I notice from that one session that there are some GMing points that I'm rusty on. Storytelling is one. Winging it is another. My dialogue was also pretty crappy, and most of my NPCs came off (to me, anyway) as one-dimensional morons. I think I have some solutions of my own, but I'm also going through the Roleplaying Tips Weekly for some ideas, too.

Storytelling isn't something that lends itself to an easy fix. Practice and planning are pretty much the only things that will improve my storytelling. I've got a Unisystem one-shot game coming up on April 10th that I'm looking forward to. The Unisystem kind of lends itself to adventures with a strong focus on plot (or so it seems to me). That one-shot, as well as other one-shots I have planned, will give me some practice. My D&D campaign really won't give me the right kind of practice, as it's basically a huge dungeon crawl right now. I'll also admit I want to burn through combat encounters in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil fairly quickly so we can make some progress toward the climax (and I don't want it to take years to get there).

For the Unisystem one-shot, I'm also planning as much as possible without entering railroad territory (but since it's a demo adventure, it's still a little railroady). I remember when I started my D&D campaign, I read, re-read and re-read again the first adventure. I don't remember how many times I read it, but I had it almost committed to memory by the time we started to play. Running it went so smoothly that it barely seemed like work at all. That kind of planning is tough at times, especially when I'm really busy, but I know that level of planning is important for a good, smooth game.

Winging it is something I used to be very strong at. From the time I started gaming through to the end of high school (and maybe even into college), that's how I played. I made a few notes of things I wanted to happen, and then I let the players guide the campaign's focus. I wish I could say that my plan was to let the players create the focus, but the truth is I was just lazy. As a lazy GM, I learned to wing it. I think I was actually half-decent at it, but the complete lack of story eventually got to me and I started running campaigns that were more focused. Winging it dropped by the wayside.

Now I think I want my style to take the best of both worlds. Enough scripting to be comfortable, but also enough flexibility to throw out the whole evening's preparations and go with the flow. It's not going to be easy. I'm almost thinking I might look to sit in on some other groups' games to see what other GMs do. I don't mean play with another group. I mean ask to be an observer for a session or two. Both Logan and Rich play in other groups, so it would probably be worth asking if their GMs would mind me observing a session one night.

Here's the link for Killer Bunnies.

Last night was board game night in place of our regularly-scheduled D&D session. At the end of the night, most people told me how they would've been up for D&D instead of board games. ... You'd think that maybe people would read my damn emails and reply to them before the session if they have an opinion, eh? I'm pretty sure I gave everyone a couple of weeks notice. All I got was an "I don't care what we do" from one person and a "board games are good, but so is D&D" from another. So since the only real vote I got was from the second responder, and that person named board games first, I opted for that.

Not that I'm complaining about going the board game route, mind you. It's nice to actually be able to play a game without worrying about being the game master ... and then worrying about how certain parties will try to abuse the rules. Last night was a lot of fun. We started with a trivia game called Urban Myth. Logan won. Then we played a card game that Logan brought over called Killer Bunnies & The Quest for the Magic Carrot. Rich won that. Incidentally, Killer Bunnies was a lot of fun, but it'll probably get to be even more fun as we learn the rules better.

One of my first RPG was the Marvel RPG from TSR. Now Heroplay has it up for download. And it looks like a lot of the supplements are there. Everything is in PDF format. Very cool.

One of my first RPG was the Marvel RPG from TSR. Now Heroplay has it up for download. And it looks like a lot of the supplements are there. Everything is in PDF format. Very cool.

I finally saw The Incredibles last night. An excellent movie. Possibly Pixar's best so far. Still, one thing did bother me about the storyline. If all the superheroes were sent away to be hidden and forced to retire from the biz of fighting crime, where did all the supervillains go? Surely they didn't also pack up and go into hiding, did they?

As someone who once dreamed of being a creative writer for a living, I love writing exercises. Being given some keywords or simple ideas and then drawing on all of my creative powers to weave a piece of prose or a poem is a lot of fun. That's why I was quite happy to find The Burning Void Blog. I've visited the Website before, but I didn't know about the blog. Now that I know it exists (and has periodic writing exercises), I've bookmarked it and added it to my daily dose of blogs located on the right hand side of this page.

Some thoughts on the first session of my Mechamorphosis campaign...

The damage save rules need tweaking. Everything seems too powerful, and damage saves themselves seem nearly impossible. Perhaps the DC for the damage save should be 10 + Dex/Str + modifiers instead of 15 + ... etc.

I noted every weapon as lethal damage. I might change that, and then have lethal damage only when there's a badly botched damage save roll (like a miss by 15 or more).

I wasn't on the ball for GMing. I never quite got in the zone. Sucks to be me, eh?

There was a lot of bad punning, but I brought that on myself.

Working without a GM's screen is weird after not doing it for years.

I really don't have any idea what my players really thought of the session. I thought it was mediocre at best. I don't know if there was really any excitement throughout the entire first session (aka The Pilot, Part One). However, at the end of the session I asked the group if they wanted to continue. The answer seemed to be kind of a yes, but definitely not an exciting yes, so I think that says something about the level of fun. I guess it's at least worth trying out for the first four or five sessions. If it's still not fun, I'll can it.

Surgery is never something to take lightly. Poor Loki went in for his "fixing" today. Poor, poor puppy.

What the hell? Over a hundred bucks for public domain movies? Bastards!

This Edison DVD boxed set just looks too cool. Although much of film's history isn't really of interest to me, the earliest movies made are things I actually find kind of cool. Well, the Edison: The Invention of the Movies DVD set fits the bill. Some of the flicks collected here date back to 1893. I've gotta pick this up.

Check-out day ... and then a long flight home. I have a blister on my foot after walking for about three hours straight. I walked from the Renaissance Hotel down to the Sahara and the ... oh hell, what's the hotel/casino called with the big needle tower? Gah! I just can't remember what it's called. I'll have to check it later.

Anyway, I blew about seven bucks in the casino (that's me, the high roller). I still don't understand gambling.

That said, I think it would be neat to come back on vacation at some point and actually see some of the more theme casinos like Treasure Island and New York, New York.

What a busy day. Not "I'm going to go pass out for a week" kind of busy, but busy nevertheless. Dinner is soon. Then I think I'll try to get some sleep. I haven't really slept well the last couple of nights. I never sleep well the night before making a trip, nor the first night in a hotel. I'm hoping tonight I can sleep like the dead.

I can't remember the last time I ironed clothing, but I had to do it this morning in my hotel room. My shirt and tie got a little wrinkled during the trip.

I barely slept last night. Coffee will be the only thing keeping me running this morning.

My computer is telling me that it's a little after one in the morning on March 9th, but the clock in my hotel room insists that it's shortly after ten in the evening on March 8th. I'm going on very little sleep, but I'm really thinking I'd like to get myself downstairs to the bar for a beer.

So why am I in Las Vegas? I'm here for a short stay to attend a 3Com event that I'll be covering for eChannelLine. The event takes place tomorrow, starting around eleven in the morning (although check-in starts a couple of hours earlier). I got into the town of glitter and gold just an hour ago, and after a quick taxi ride, I ended up at the Renaissance Las Vegas Hotel. Seems like a nice place. The Las Vegas Convention Center is next door, and that's where I need to go for tomorrow's event.

Just a quick note before I sign off...

You know how some cities have stereotypes, and some of those cities fulfill their stereotypes? Well, you know what the first thing I saw after getting off the plane in Las Vegas was? ... Slot machines. Lots of them. They're everywhere in the airport.

I hate airports. I hate security checks. I hate long line-ups. I hate being treated like a criminal. I hate being cramped in a sardine can for hours at a time. I really hate connecting flights ... possibly more than anything else in this world.

Funny, though, I think flying is kind of neat. Go figure.

I finished reading through Zombie Smackdown! last night. The deadworlds (campaign settings for AFMBE) were pretty fucked up. Sure, the first three were fairly normal, and then it went all weird ... weird even for deadworlds, methinks.

One deadworld is basically a Mortal Kombat rip-off, but without the "save the world" theme. Another is kind of comedic, in that zombies have become part of everyday society ... and now part of the wrestling world. Another takes the MK "save the world" theme and turns it into an alien invasion story.

And then there's the last one. Dubbed "The Fallen and Risen," this deadworld essentially assumes that the Bible is right, and there will be an end of times. And guess what -- it takes place in this deadworld. However, the end of times are just a wee bit different than what those ancient scribes wrote about. Sure, the dead rise, Earth is going to Hell in a handbasket and the big war between Heaven and Hell has erupted. However, the end of times don't really have an end themselves. The final war will go on for eternity, and those angels and demons too bored with killing each other over and over again have set up little kingdoms on Earth -- and they're using humans for entertainment by making them fight each other (in mortal or zombified forms) in gladiatorial style. It's kind of like Ancient Rome meets the Biblical end of the world. Truly, truly bizarre.

When D&D 3E first launched, I was quite thrilled with the new take on medieval fantasy dungeon crawling. I had long given up on AD&D 2E, and I was wary of this new version of the aging game when I first heard about it. Then I picked up the Dragon Magazine issue with the 3E preview, and I was stunned. It looked like WotC had taken everything that was wrong with the old editions of D&D/AD&D and actually fixed it. I was shocked. Flabbergasted, if you will.

When the PHB shipped, I plunked my money down on the local game shop's counter and said "gimme one." So did most of the rest of my gaming group. We started playing a D&D Greyhawk campaign shortly after all three of the core books were out. Life was good, because D&D was fun again.

More than four years later, my tolerance is wearing thin. D&D is still kind of fun, but the OGL licence for the d20 system took all the creativity out of the gaming industry (some chuckle at calling the loose collection of RPG companies an industry, but by the traditional definition, it's an industry -- or perhaps a branch of the overall publishing industry). Everything is d20 these days. Every time there's a licence up for grabs, there's a damn good chance it'll use either d20 or a bastardized version of the system. Conan, Star Wars, Judge Dredd ... even once-popular game systems are getting the d20 treatment. Paranoia XP shipped last year, and it's d20-based.

Y'know what? I'm really sick of it. I pine for the old days, when most RPG publishers not only created their own systems for whatever setting they were working with, but they also had a variety of different mechanics for the various titles they published. And few companies used competitors' mechanics. They came up with their own ideas, put them on paper, (hopefully) playtested them and then matched them with their settings.

Ah, what I wouldn't give to see some of that creativity again.

I've recently been eyeing and buying into non-d20-based games just so I have something else ... something different from the plethora of d20 titles on the shelves (far too many of which are just re-worked versions of the same old concept).

When the d20 OGL licence was released, there was a cheer from gamers and publishers (and would-be publishers). For the first while, d20 opened up a lot of possibilities. It fueled an industry that was fading, but now, more than four years later, I'm sick of it. I'm beginning to hate d20. I despise the fact that the majority of titles on my local game shop's shelves are based on the d20 engine. And I know I'm not the only one.

I picked up a copy of Zombie Smackdown! for All Flesh Must Be Eaten on the weekend. Essentially, Zombie Smackdown is the wrestling supplement for the game of zombie survival horror. I've been reading through it, and although I'm not too far in, I can start by saying it's not too bad ... so far. One thing really bugs me, though, and that's that in the first twenty-five pages, probably a good ten pages or more was filled up with fiction. I hate that. I don't buy RPG books for short stories. I buy them for games. I can tolerate a little bit of fiction just to set the right mood, but there's a point where it's just too much.

Anyway, I haven't been a fan of professional wrestling (a la WWF/WWE) since I was a kid. I think the last time I watched pro wrestling was when I was about ten or twelve years old. I just can't stand it at all now. Funnily enough, though, I really like wrestling video games -- and I think a wrestling RPG is just too damned funny ... especially with the crazy storylines involved in federations like the WWE these days.

Years ago, there was a WWF RPG released, but I think it got canned after one expansion. I'm sure the amount of mocking from the various game reviewers out there didn't help the game win any fans. I'm sure it probably drove a few away. Still, even though I laughed way back when, I think pro wrestling (or wrasslin', if you'd prefer) as an RPG is a pretty good idea. You can mix in all kinds of drama, and then bring that drama to a head with a good, old-fashioned squared-ring brawl. Tell me that doesn't scream "RPG" to you. Go on. Tell me.

Anyway, the WWF RPG didn't work out well, but people aren't about to give up on the pro wrestling genre. Zombie Smackdown seems kind of cool, and if you take out the zombies, I think you could probably run a fairly traditional pro wrestling game with it. However, there's a WWE RPG in the works now. Check out the link to Know Your Role: The WWE Roleplaying Game. Unfortunately, Know Your Role looks like it uses a bastardized version of the d20 rules ... and like I've suggested before, I'm getting a bit sick of everything being d20. From what I hear, this is supposed to launch sometime this spring/summer -- probably around the time of Wrestlemania (whenever the hell that is these days).