ChrisTalbot.com

One thing I've been trying to figure out how to do for some time is to get the players in my RPG group invested in the creation of the campaign itself -- whether it's offering ideas for storylines, explaining to me what kinds of subplots they'd like their characters to be involved in or otherwise helping to find an appropriate direction for the plot and/or character development.

The typical game group (and the Sunday night group is no exception -- and neither am I, for that matter, although I've been trying to change) has a GM who does all of the preparation for a game, including writing the adventures, coming up with villains and long-term plots, figuring out what would be a good subplot for characters (hopefully with a little help from the character's background) and basically doing just about everything to keep the game running. It's one hell of a chore, and I'm sure it's a contributing factor to GM burnout.

For players, their responsibility is limited to character creation and simply showing up for a game session to play (although some players don't even take responsibility for showing up on time).

Perhaps I read too many "theory" threads on RPG.net or maybe my big burnout that ended my D&D campaign made me change my priorities in roleplaying, but the end result is the same: I want the entire group to take responsibility for the adventure and campaign. Not only should this all but eliminate GM burnout, but it should also create a better playing environment, as it's not just one person's creativity that's dominating the show -- it's three, four, five or even six people that are contributing.

Starting in mid-September, the Sunday night group will be re-forming once again to try playing RPGs on a regular basis (or so I hope). Logan and I have been reading Blue Planet books all summer, but we're far from being ready to run the game. Until we are ready, other games will have to fill in.

First up will be Wushu. As I've mentioned before, I've been dying to try Wushu out. However, I didn't really know what exactly I wanted to do with it. I put it to the players. I suggested an Ancient Japan setting (I was thinking during the war time period of the Muromachi Period) or a modern setting involving Yakuza and gun-fu. I crossed my fingers and hoped I'd get some ideas. I poked and prodded a bit before the ideas started flowing.

Now we have some strong ideas to build stories from. I'm a happy GM.

And just when I thought PvP was about to get into marriage humour, Scott Kurtz knocks one out of the park. That has to be the best answer to the question: Will you marry me?

Despite it being little more than an equipment guide, Fluid Mechanics turned out to be an interesting read. I'm amazed at the level of detail given for the technology available in Blue Planet and the thought that went into the science around it.

After reading several other RPG books, I'm turning my attention back to Blue Planet. I picked up and read the intro fiction for First Colony last night, and then realized it was the second supplement released. As anal as it may be, I want to read the supplements in order -- so once I figured out the order of the supplements, I started reading the first one, Fluid Mechanics.

I'm skimming a fair bit of Fluid Mechanics, as I don't really find equipment lists and gear descriptions all that interesting. I'm reading bits and pieces here to get a better idea of the nature of Blue Planet technology, but I'll leave the reading of specific items for when I need to bring them in.

I'm actually looking forward to quickly getting through Fluid Mechanics so I can get back to First Colony (which is all about Haven). After that, it'll be Frontier Justice, Natural Selection and Ancient Echoes. By the time I'm finished reading the last supplement, I'll either be so sick of Blue Planet that I won't want to play or I'll be dying to get a game underway.

Over the weekend, I had the chance to try out a couple of games I hadn't played before. On Friday night, Dave M. finally busted out Amazonas, which turned out to be a rather pleasant and light strategy board game. It's fairly light on direct conflict, but with some more experience playing it, I'm pretty sure intuitive players could boost the screw factor.

While not a game I'd want to play all that often, Amazonas fits well into a beer-and-pretzels type of game night.

Even more of a beer-and-pretzels game (with an emphasis on the beer -- or your alcohol of choice) is 1000 Blank White Cards. I've been dying to give this a try for the past couple of weeks, and five of us played it on Saturday night. Of the five, only Jacquie didn't like the game. Of course, she was also the only one who wasn't drinking, so maybe that has something to do with it.

Rich, Christine, Logan and I got into the spirit (and spirits) of the game. Sadly, I think I was the least creative card creator, but each of us got a few zingers in there. I don't even remember who had the most points at the end. I just remember it wasn't me. After the game was over, we went through a quick "thumbs-up/thumbs-down" exercise to decide which cards would be kept as seeds for the next game, and we ended up with quite a pile of keepers.

I think 1KBWC, as it seems to be affectionately known as, is one of those games that will only get pulled out once a month (or even less frequently). I couldn't even imagine playing it with a bunch of serious people or teetotalers, though. In fact, I don't think Jacquie is ever going to play it again. She kept trying to prematurely end the game through "game end" type of cards (which we kept vetoing), so it was clear she wasn't having a good time.

Still, I'm looking forward to breaking out 1KBWC again in September.

After some consideration, I decided that instead of trying to find and/or import a copy of Ca$h'n Gun$, I'd just make it myself. I stopped off at a dollar store yesterday and bought a couple of Uzis, three .45 semi-auto-like pistols, a big-ass Dirty Harry revolver and a shotgun -- all of which have electronic bang-bang sounds (well, until the batteries run out).

Now I'm just working on the cards and standee characters. I thought about going all-out with a Reservoir Dogs theme, but I decided to use what I could of the original images. It won't be purty, but it should work.

And if I ever come across a copy of C'nG in a store, I'll plunk down the cash for it.

The Law sent me this link. That has to be the best coverage of the planet declassification of Pluto I've seen. Why take such silly things seriously, eh?

I'm pretty much ready to give 1000 Blank White Cards a try. I bought and hacked up some index cards last night. I'm creating a few stock cards to seed the initial deck with. Now I just need to convince everyone to give it a try.

I think Levi Kornelsen's The Twelve is going to make it into my permanent list of gaming links on the right. It reminds me a bit of when our game sessions were getting a bit out of control a couple of years ago, and everybody had a hand in drafting up a "rules of conduct at the gaming table" document. This is much less sarcastic and a little less specific than what we put together, but I think it says many of the same things.

Chad Vader. So wrong.

Take a look at this RPG.net thread about courtesies extended to the GM. To my players: Pay special attention to the fourth post ... and then be thankful I don't demand such courtesies.

Euro games on Xbox Live? Neat.

I've been going through my wanted and wish lists on BGG, trying to pare down the list to a more reasonable level. I do this every so often, so it's not like the lists get way out of control or anything. Still, when there's a combined seventy games on your wanted and wish lists, it's quite a few. And a good portion of them were added when I first heard about the game. If a concept sounds neat, I throw it on the wanted or wish list (or both). A couple of weeks or months later, I look back and wonder why I put specific games on the lists. Then I take them off and forget about them.

Thankfully, I've been able to pare down the list a lot this time. There just aren't all that many games I still want to buy. However, there's one that I feel like I absolutely have to have: Ca$h'n Gun$.

If you're wondering why I would want the game, take a look at the rules and then try to tell me it doesn't look like a hell of a lot of fun. If you're nodding and saying to yourself, "buy it, Talbot," then you probably have the same sick sense of humour as me (and I applaud you for it ;)).

So if there aren't all that many games I need to buy, that probably means my board game spending is going to plummet. Yay!

Although I've only tried it a handful of times in the past, I keep thinking about one-on-one roleplaying. While the default RPG group is at least three or four players and a GM, occasionally groups are smaller than that -- sometimes so small that it's just one player and one GM.

Of course, my good friend The Law considers such play "mutual masturbation," meaning he basically finds the premise to be unappealing. I can understand that. It just feels weird. However, when you have a very specific type of story you want to play out or you simply don't have a group with which to play, is it so bad? Also, it works wonders to introduce someone to concepts and mechanics of RPGs. I used a short one-on-one session to introduce Jacquie to D&D a couple of years back. I had intended on running multiple one-on-one sessions with her, actually, but it didn't work out that way. After one such session, she joined the Sunday night group.

Originally, I had intended to introduce her to roleplaying through a one-on-one Vampire: The Masquerade game. We even went so far as to create a Gangrel character for her. I suppose I was lazy about getting the game off the ground, though, and it never even got beyond chargen (although Jacquie and her Gangrel did find their way into my New Orleans By Night PBeM chronicle for awhile).

As I understand it, a couple of RPGs have even been designed with one-on-one play in mind. I don't own either, but I have been tempted to buy them. Ghost Dog is based on the urban samurai movie of the same name, and the folks on RPG.net keep saying that its design intention was to provide a one-on-one gameplay experience. Trollbabe is supposed to be of similar design intent, although my understanding is that it's really designed for men to introduce their girlfriends/wives to roleplaying.

Typically, my regular (ha!) gaming has been of the game group variety. I don't think I've run a game for less than three people (with the exception of Jacquie's intro to D&D) in years. When you have fewer than three people, I generally find that it becomes very difficult to push a story ahead. More often than not, the players -- and even the GM -- are not proactive enough to make it work. It requires a lot more effort on the part of everybody.

The only reason I even bring one-on-one play up is that some of the adventure/campaign ideas I've had recently would work best in a one-on-one environment rather than in a group environment. I'm not sure if I'll flesh any of the ideas out; and even if I do, I don't know if I'll run them. Still, they're interesting to think about. I'm also curious about whether one-on-one play can be a lot of fun if some time is put in by both the player and GM to make it work and to make it fun.

Yeah, I know; this brainstorming crap just keeps on going.

I just finished reading Terra Primate, and while it's not bad, I have to say it's below Eden's standards. Or maybe it's not. Maybe I'm just expecting too much from a book that's basically about playing out Planet of the Apes-esque scenarios. Personally, I think most of the ideas aren't worth anything more than a one-shot.

However, one pulp fiction setting inspired me a bit. Of course, I have to give Pulp Zombies some credit, as well. Additionally, Rawl is probably a big factor in this idea. Really, the idea can be summed up in two words: Indiana Jones.

While pulp stories can be kind of fun here and there, they can also be pretty damn lame. The idea behind Indiana Jones is pretty damn cool, though -- and I know it's one of Rawl's favourite characters. So what if we took the basic ideas behind Indiana Jones and his adventures, and turned it into a series of RPG adventures that somehow feature the same player characters -- kind of like how the Indiana Jones movies feature Jones, Sallah and Marcus Brody appear again and again.

Anyway, it's a thought. It wouldn't even have to be a regular campaign. We could play it in stops and starts, and even have some guests come in to take on one-off PCs (like Indy's string of women, Short Round or even Henry Jones).

On another note: How would Stargate SG-1 or Sliders work as an RPG? Hmm...

Continuing on my journey to become an official Eden Studios fanboy, I started reading Terra Primate yesterday. As it typical with Eden books, the chargen and rules chapters are pretty standard, so I'm more-or-less skipping those. Of course, I'm not much beyond that yet, so I don't really have any opinions.

I suppose what I'm most looking forward to is examples of apeworlds that don't conform to Planet of the Apes style.

Babes With Blades. Someone on BGG posted this link during a discussion about booth babes at cons. I had to share.

Kill the monster. Steal its treasure. Lose some SAN?

I've been watching ThunderCats lately, so I went searching for some old audio outtakes I first heard years ago. Here they are. Beware: They will ruin your childhood memories.

So Vince and I connected at Xavier's house last night for a game of Blood Bowl. I think the idea was that there was going to be a game between Xavier and another, but the other couldn't make it. So while Xavier played with minis and occasionally interjected comments about our match, my humans beat the crap out of Vince's orcs. ;)

Of course, luck had a strong part to play in the game. Vince won the toss at the beginning of the first half and -- no surprise -- chose to receive. I booted the ball. It bounced. And then we rolled for crowd reaction. Apparently my 14,000 fans were just a little on the twitchy side. They hopped to their feet, rushed the field and beat the hell out of Vince's orcs. Vince's 9,000 fans also rushed onto the field, but apparently they were wussy orcs. While nine out of Vince's eleven orcs were knocked down, only one of my human lineman took a beating.

Vince tried his best to work with the poor kickoff situation, but it really wasn't much of a surprise when one of my catchers rushed across the line of scrimmage, grabbed the ball and crossed into Vince's endzone for a touchdown. After a short Happy Snoopy Dance, we were setting up again, and I made another kickoff.

This time, things went well for Vince. He grabbed the ball and had his goons shoulder their way down the field on the right side of the field (well, right to me, left to Vince). After breaking through my pathetic line, Vince made a pass and had one of his running orcs make it to my endzone. Only two or three turns into the first half, and the score was tied at one. That was soon to change. >:)

Vince made his kickoff. I grabbed the ball with a thrower and handed off to a catcher, who then hid like a little coward behind a blitzer and a whole bunch of lineman. Our two collided in the middle of the field on the scrimmage line, pounding on each other for a few more turns of play. Eventually, my blitzers and linemen managed to punch a hole big enough for my catcher to get through. Dodging, dodging, dodging -- and hey, look, he's heading for the endzone! Yay! Another touchdown on turn seven, and my humans had taken a two-to-one lead over Vince's green folk.

Things had started going well on the kickoff for Vince around this time. On the kickoff rolls, he got a blitz, a high kick he was able to catch and even a rush. However, that was coupled with some nasty dice rolls against him.

As the second half began, I knew I had to keep my lead somehow while trying not to get pounded by the orcs (as they were pretty mad and ready to start fouling by this point). Once again, our teams slammed into each other. Vince had set up a good defensive position this time, so it was going to be hell for me to punch through this time.

Once again, my thrower got the ball and handed it off to a catcher (what -- throwers are actually meant to throw the ball, you say? Pshaw!). Hiding once again in the mass of human linemen and blitzers, I looked for an opening. No such luck for a couple of turns, though. The orcs and humans wanted to fight it out in the middle of the field again. After a couple of KOs and having my catcher knocked out into the crowd and put into the reserves, sadly I had taken an even greater lead over Vince. It was three-to-one as we entered the second half of the ... well, the second half.

Vince grabbed the ball and bunched up on my left/his right side, trying to bust some heads and get through. Well, I knew I just had to tie him up for awhile, so I played a little more conservatively than is proper for Blood Bowl. I slammed into some orcs here and there, but mostly, I just tried to tie up the big, green guys by putting them in my tackle zone.

In what could've been the play of the game, Vince made his move on the sixth turn. His blitzer had the ball, and the linemen, black orcs and the other blitzers had managed to pummel the crap out of my humans. Far too many of my players were lying on their backs. Vince's blitzer rushed across towards centre field, where he then tried to make a pass to a lineman near the endzone. The pass was good. The catch was not. If the lineman hadn't been so clumsy, that play would've been a well-earned touchdown. Sadly, Mr. Slippy Fingers dropped the ball.

After some fighting over the ball near my endzone, one of my blitzers took possession and raced up the centre of the field. It was pretty much over at that point, but we played out the last turn just to see what would happen. Nothing overly spectacular, I'm afraid.

Besides a quick game on FUMBBL about a month back, this is the first time I've played Blood Bowl in years -- and I can't, for the life of me, remember why I stopped. This game is too much fun. And it's even better when you can do the Happy Snoopy Dance at the end of the game. :D

Good game, Vince.

Animator Vs. Animation. Check it out.

A gaming opponent that's about my level.

I pushed myself to finish reading Conspiracy X last night. Overall, my impression is positive. I like the setting. I like the politics of Aegis and the NDD. I like some of the conspiracies that have been worked into it. And I certainly like the idea of cells that basically have to support themselves. The one issue I have with Delta Green (based on my one experience in a PbP in progress) is that budgets for ops tend to have a very high ceiling, whereas Aegis cells don't get a lot of support from their parent cells and have to rely on their own contacts, abilities and resources. So if you want that Big Fucking Gun, you'd damn well better have a way to get it.

The tone of the book seems about right. Very little information about the paranormal or extraterrestrials are given throughout the book. The Greys, Saurians and Atlanteans are mentioned, but no information appears until you get to the very end of the last chapter. Then it offers information, but broken into two pieces -- what Aegis knows and what's really going on. Another nice touch.

The paranormal aspect of the game is something I'm not quite sure about. The idea that hunches, intuition and such are essentially low-level ESP seems a bit odd. I think I can get behind it, though. With enough training, just about anyone could make use of psi powers to an extent; and I can see some of my players really liking that aspect.

However, the paranormal/psi aspect of Conspiracy X is less interesting to me than the extraterrestrials. While there is a nice history of Aegis, the NDD and their contact with the various aliens, I felt like there just wasn't enough information about the aliens themselves. Some of their motives still aren't clear.

My biggest quibble: I don't like it when I'm reading a core book and it tells me to get more information on certain things to go buy a sourcebook. Throughout the book, the author (David Chapman) mentions The Paranormal Sourcebook and The Extraterrestrial Sourcebook several times. In the section about psi and the paranormal, he actually wrote that to get the full rules for psi that readers would have to go buy The Paranormal Sourcebook. This was less in-your-face in the part about the aliens, but considering there's not a whole heck of a lot of information on each of the alien species, it's safe to assume that The Extraterrestrial Sourcebook will contain more detailed information.

Note that I wrote "will contain." Neither of these sourcebooks are currently available. I wouldn't want to bet on their release dates, either. So far, they're not even listed on the Conspiracy X site as being in the pipe.

Oh well. The nice thing about Conspiracy X is the book is written in a way that suggests GMs and players make the game setting their own. I really got the sense that it was expected that GMs would take the idea of conspiracies, the paranormal, psi and aliens secretly living on Earth, and run with it by making up their own ideas, new conspiracies and even new aliens.

What I want to know is when are they going to add Dave and Alvin to the list of planets?

It's a reference to ALF, people. ;)

I'm now most of the way through Conspiracy X, although I skipped most of the character creation and rules chapters. I doubt they're all that much different than the chargen and rules chapters in every other Eden book. If I decide to run or play in a Conspiracy X game, I'll go back and read all that stuff in more detail; but until then, I'll just read the fluff.

And the fluff is nice. I do wish the book was a bit thicker, though. Is it me or is the book a lot thinner than other Eden books?

Oh wait, I know what it is. Eden used a thinner, glossy-finish paper instead of the thicker paper they've used in past books. The page count is still about the same as All Flesh Must Be Eaten and WitchCraft, but the paper is different. I wonder why the change was made. Not that it matters, though. I didn't pay a premium on the game or anything. In fact, I got it pretty damn cheap through Amazon.ca ($25 and change plus taxes).

What I am wondering about is how a Conspiracy X game can continue to seem fresh. I could see it quickly devolving into a monster-of-the-week game along the lines of The X-Files, and that would really detract from the coolness of the setting.

Another thing that might be annoying for some players is character survivability. I could see the body count rising quickly in this game. If I'm reading this correctly, PCs would typically go up against some rather powerful forces, and that would likely mean fatalities. Maybe I'm wrong, though. Maybe it's no different than any other RPG in this regard.

At some point in the last couple of weeks, I topped a thousands posts on this blog. I think I've been spewing B.S. here for too long. ;)

Linked just because it's probably the truest of them all.

It's brilliant! And it's true!

I can see myself and all my gaming friends in a lot of these RPG motivational posters.

Gaming friends. It's so true, but it's okay: I love you, anyway, guys. :P

Conspiracy X is reminding me a lot of Delta Green, although it's aliens and the supernatural instead of the Cthulhu Mythos. I'm not sure I like how so many PCs are psychics and psis, but I suppose it makes some sense in the grand order of things.

I'll move on to reading Conspiracy X now. I'm curious about what's between the book's covers.

I finished reading The Shadow of Yesterday, and I have to say I like it. There are a couple of elements that I'm not sure about, though -- such as the forced retirement of characters if a certain level of success on a check is made. Still, I really like the idea behind Secrets and Keys, as well as the campaign world itself. While I'd like to give this a try at some point, I don't think it's going to be immediate.

Going to Origins was my big vacation for this year. My quiet vacation was last week. I took the week off just to hang around the area and do as little as possible. Jacquie and I spent a couple of days at the zoo. I did some reading. I played some games (both board/war games and video games). I watched some movies. And I drank some beer and liquor. All in all, it was a good week. I needed some time off from the B.S. of daily work life.

If the hexes are the right size, this would be a good map for Star Fleet Battles.

I finally finished reading the Blue Planet Moderator's Guide this morning. The book had been sitting around with less than twenty pages left to read for more than a week before I finally got back to it this weekend. Now I'm done. Yay!

I'm taking a break from Blue Planet for awhile and turning my attention to reading The Shadow of Yesterday, an RPG described as "weird fantasy" that takes some of its elements from Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber. However, when I think of weird, dark fantasy, I always think of things like The Secret of Nimh and Ralph Bakshi's animated version of The Lord of the Rings. I'm not really sure if I have the right mindset for TSOY yet or whether the author also got some inspiration from those two stories.

Some jackass appears to be using my personal email address as the return address for various spam being sent out. Very annoying.

Jesus Camp -- yet another documentary I feel I need to see.

Is D&D 4E in the works or is this just bullshit? I wonder. I figure WotC will at some point start pushing towards a new edition of D&D. It's only a matter of time. And I'm sure the development will be underway long before we get official word about it.

Check out the Gatling rubber band gun. Sweeeeeet.

Is it just me or does this look really cheap for a sword replica, and especially cheap for a replica of something as well-known to geeks as the Sword of Omens?

Darth Kitty? Hello Vader? Either way, it's just so wrong.

With so much in Blue Planet, we could theoretically run a completely different type of campaign every couple of months for years on end. The setting really is that huge and that jam-packed with ideas. I've been trying to come up with some ideas for a campaign, and I've really been kind of stumped (again, too much to think about). So I went searching for what others have done and found this RPG.net actual play thread.

One post in particular has what could be a workable frontier law enforcement campaign. And it's funny that people keep mentioning the movie Outland. Maybe I should get a copy of it and watch it again. It's been years. Hell, maybe if it's such a Blue Planet-ish type of movie, the entire Sunday night group should get together and watch it.

I think a frontier law enforcement game where the players are deputies and whatnot of a town waaaay out would be kind of neat. They could answer to a local marshal who only really comes through maybe once every month or two. They'd be on their own to maintain law and order in the settlement. Of course, the scope of the campaign would probably have to deal with a group of individuals trying to undermine their authority or trying to use the settlement as a smuggling base or something else. Essentially, it would be necessary to have antagonists of some sort that would mark the start of the campaign (when the outlaws first come to town) and its end (when the outlaws are finally stopped for good).

Of course, a law enforcement game might not be as fun as if we flipped it around. An underworld game would be kind of neat, where the players could be various types involved in one of the local crime syndicates. We could almost do a Godfather-esque type of game, where they're up-and-comers in an organization or maybe even amongst the power players about to go into a gang war for turf on Poseidon.

I don't think I understand the minutiae of D&D chargen well enough to understand the horrible nastiness that is Pun-Pun the mighty kobold.

These examples of animated digital pen art are damn cool.

Booyah! Conspiracy X is here. More RPG reading material. :)