The Age After 12

In an effort to shake free of my FC-induced drudgery [1], I've decided to attempt to inflict 13th Age on my standard gaming group.

The timing, as it turns out, is pretty good; one of them is going to be out of town (and without reliable internet access) for a month, and another one is going to be leaving in about a month to get some job training. [2] I knew about the job training in advance but the out of town is a bit of a surprise, and our Skype chat is a lot more lonesome without him.

Anyways, though, there's a lot that I like about 13th Age, including the part where I'm allowed and encouraged to make things up again. And so is everybody! The players all have their backgrounds and Unique Things (which can be anything), which means that the campaign is exactly as high or low fantasy as everybody at the table agrees. Like any game where everybody is coming together to make things up, you kind of need to set a baseline of what sort of game you're interested in playing, and I imagine that explicitly saying what it is sort of wrecks the "illusion," [3] but honestly this is exactly the way I like to run my games anyways. It's nice to read through a PDF and think to yourself, "Oh, exactly! This is exactly a thing I've always wanted to try!"

Plus the designer's notes. Oh man, do I love those designer's notes. They lay out exactly where they disagree on things and sometimes both of the designers don't even play by the rules they wrote down for you to try out, instead telling you where the baseline should probably be and then both running in opposite directions. It's really freeing, and nice to see a "standard" fantasy game treat itself like a set of suggestions instead of The One True Law. This philosophy carries into every description of every class, and in every monster's writeup. They give you some ideas and then let you pick any of them, all of them, or none at all and there's not even a hint that there's a "right way" to do your fluff. It's great. 

The closest the game comes to having a One True Way is in the description of the Icons, which are technically not necessary but if you don't use them then you're sort of going against the spirit of what they're writing. The Icons are written into a lot of the fluff and, as I'm finding out, if you want to do away with them, you have to invent your own and they're probably going to be kind of similar. You can't quite create them in pairs, but you do need your Icons to tell a certain story about your world. It's a bigger task than it seems, but I can't blame the designers for wanting to include their new idea strongly into the world. It's just that if the Icons don't fit into your idea of the world, you've got a bit of work ahead of you.

Still, though, I'm excited. Maybe more excited than I should be, given that one of my group apparently doesn't want to play but is too polite to bring it up. I'm sure he'll be passive-aggressive but I really don't have time for passive-aggression...





[1] The way that I've found FantasyCraft most tolerable is if I ignore wide swaths of the rules in favor of running games more or less the way I usually play them. The longer I play the system, the creakier it feels, and I can only slap so many patches on it before I wonder what the point was.

[2] And then one of them doesn't want to play, which is whatever. Your loss, man. He doesn't seem to want to play anything that isn't FantasyCraft so I'll have to look for a new player soon, I imagine.

[3] I used to be more tolerant of this sort of thing, to be honest, but long years reading the uninformed and ignorant opinions of random internet strangers has soured me on this sort of thing. If you rely on some sort of illusion of "realism" to get your jollies in games, then you are reveling in ignorance and I can't take that any more seriously than I can take somebody who thinks that movie critics are "ruining things they liked" by pointing out flaws. Things you like can have flaws, and your group can (and should!) have frank discussions where you explicitly lay out what your expectations are for this game and what kind of themes you like. It's like pulling teeth from my players (many of whom are uninformed and a little ignorant) [4] but then when they tell me that they don't care, I just look at the character sheets they hand me as implicitly informing me as to what kind of game they want to run.

[4] There's nothing wrong with being uninformed or ignorant, to be honest with you, it's just people that think they're informed and urbane that rub me the wrong way. I remember reading from person on Reddit sagely declaring that a game mechanic was bad because it was "immersion-breaking," as though looking at your character sheet and rolling dice to beat a target number provided by another human being in front of you narrating a situation could possibly be "immersive." Ugh, please.

"What is an RPG" introduction: Necessary?

From KORPG's blog:

From a historical analysis, I can recall that virtually every RPG rulebook I’ve ever opened had a section explaining what RPGs are, how they’re played, how they (usually) use dice, how player take on the roles of characters in a world of the GMs devising, etc.

All those over-arching things about a RPG that we already know are sometimes condensed at the beginning of a rulebook. Almost as if reading that specific rulebook might be the very first introduction a reader would have into the world of RPGs.

But why is such a section even in the rules any more?

If you ask me (which nobody did, but hey, bite me), I don't think that section is necessary anymore. Let's be realistic. Any product that we, as hobbyists, make is for hobbyists. That's the simple truth, and has a couple of important consequences, the most important of which is that you're writing to people who already know the subject matter. The guy who's wondering what an RPG is, is not opening up your self-published book and reading what you wrote there.

That guy has either already picked up an RPG (probably Dungeons and Dragons, but possibly a White Wolf game or  some other mass-produced game you can pick up at your Large Bookstore of choice) and read what they had to say, or he's been taught by somebody who already knows what's up. Our hobby is fairly unique in that it rarely spreads by the raw materials. Usually, it spreads, memetically, through people. You get taught by some guy, who got taught by some other guy, and so on and so forth, until you get to people who either taught themselves with a mass-marketed game's introductory product, or you get to Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson or whoever.

These people don't need introductions. The purpose of an introduction to "shared make believe time" has already been served. You don't need to do it.

I mean, really. Is there anything more of a waste of space than including how to roll dice and which way to round numbers? If somebody's reading, say, my Aremorican Addendum, they already know how to roll dice and what character sheets they're using and which edition of D&D they're grafting it onto. They know what hit points do, and what spell levels are, and the difference between divine and arcane magic is. You don't have to explain that any more than a magazine aimed at aviation buffs needs to explain what in the world a "bushtail lightwheel" is. You already know, or you wouldn't be here.

Computer games don't come with instructions on how to right click and drag things anymore. You don't have to explain the basics of a 30 year old hobby to people. You're writing to an advanced audience. You don't have to pretend otherwise.

Great Ideas

From toothpastefordinner.com

It's one of the more frustrating facts that great ideas always come about when there's absolutely no way to express them.

For instance, yesterday I took a nap at midday, because I'm on spring break and I'll do what I please, thank you very much.

When I was dreaming, I dreamt that I was in this place where I'd hung out with my friends, like a hockey rink, and everything was so different but so familiar. I found these old notebooks of mine, and opened them up, and there were these bizarre pictures of men with swords and with these wierd, gun-arm things. In the background were enormous white, patchwork-steel towers that projected a translucent blue sheet into the sky. The combination of them made them look like transparent blue plates of glass riveted together, and I knew that the world was ancient, that the technology that goes into protecting the world is being destroyed, and that the blue plates were what were keeping people alive, between the devastated atmosphere and the meteor showers, and acid rain and all of that beauty. The natives were half-barbaric savages, the last remnants of a planet-spanning empire that permeated all of their stories and subconcious. It was a world of destruction and remnants of ruined dreams.

When I got up, I wrote it down immediately.

This stands in stark contrast to when I look at my blog and say to myself, "Dude, you haven't updated in like a month, go write something about that stuff you were thinking about," and so I lazily slap together some words and call it a day because if you don't stay in the habit of writing you'll never write anything.

The other cool thing I thought of in a dream is basically a plugin for magic, where in order to get any magic the spellcaster has to sacrifice something or obey a taboo for each spell, like if they want to cast fireballs they must have a taboo to always carry an open flame, or to always eat raw meat. The cool thing is that it starts with low-level spells so even if the player is smart and gives himself minor taboos, by the time he wants to learn Grobar's Deliberate Frostfire Beam he has to decide that he's plucking out his own eyeball or scarring his face with hideous tattoos or something. And that's if he hasn't already done that...

Hamingston and the History of Our Game

I think one of the most important aspects of roleplaying is the character creation process. I probably think that because of the experience Ive had playing for many years with my good friend and your author, Mister Wright. We have always had me and him, but who wants to play a RPG with one other person? That elusive third person would show up from time to time and we would game.

But by the next time we met #3 again, we managed to either lose the character sheets or forget what we were doing anyway. So we would reroll, and reroll again the next time. Which isn't a bad thing unless you have some sort of byzantine rule system to try out, or have to write down all those silly powers (I'm lookin at you 4e).

Muttonchops included.

But it really is something when you find a system that you can take a little bit to make a character, then get the details in what we are all here for, which is roleplaying, and not making characters. I think it goes without saying that I have made many, many characters over the years. I have an image and a name that I usually use, for convenience sake. The character I play is how I would really act (with some exceptions) in that world. Given that I don't see a need to develop pages upon pages of back history for my character, he is what I have been roleplaying for so many years.

Bald.

The Best Retroclones

Since my other post was extremely (excessively) negative and it didn't let me stretch my writing wings hardly at all, here's another post to tide you over, one with a little more positivity. Yes, it's time to write about the Best Retroclone.

It's a distinction with highly subjective statements that may or may not apply to you, my gentle, well-mannered, and undoubtedly attractive reader. You may howl in rage at my gross miscalculations, and scream in impotent rage at my idiocy. Bear with me, as my opinions are not without reasons.

4th Best Retroclone: Basic Fantasy

Basic Fantasy: Old-School, redesigned

I'm not a big fan of Basic Fantasy. It's an old-school game bolted onto the chassis of 3rd edition gaming, and it shows. It's better than 3rd edition, but it diverges in order to make efforts to "improve" the game and make it more "modern" while still having the spirit of old-school. The spirit is admirable, and it's a good effort, make no mistake. But there's something about it that just isn't for me. I wish I could articulate it. Maybe a greater mind than myself will be able to do so?

I suppose it might be the way that it takes the trappings of all editions and bundles them together which throws me off a bit. I may be in the minority, but there are distinct flavors of gaming between AD&D, oD&D, BECMI, and the like, and each flavor is delicious in its own right. But some things aren't meant to be mixed together?


3rd Best Retroclone: OSRIC

OSRIC, the AD&D retroclone

OSRIC almost got chosen as my favorite Retroclone. This is from a man who has played almost no AD&D, who is notorious for ignoring vast swaths of rules he doesn't like. But it was the first retroclone I discovered.

I can't remember how or why I discovered it, but I do remember why I liked it so much: It has half orcs, and assassins, and rangers. Half-Orcs are awesome; they have a mixture of sadness and raw power, a sort of sullen majesty. They're men of mixed descent, looked down on in most "civilized" society for faults which are not their own. They didn't ask to be born of the mixture of man and orc any more than other men asked to be born of two men, or of two dwarves. But still they are sneered at, mocked, and unwelcome. This sort of pathos appeals to me, and ensures that half-orcs get a spot at my gaming table where few other demihuman races do.

But as a game, OSRIC suffers from the same faults that AD&D does as a whole. It's a little clunkier, a little more obtuse. It has non-weapon proficiencies, secondary skills, sub-classes, and the like. Much like AD&D proper, it simply feels like it's been cobbled together from bits and peices.

Still, it's a good game. A very solid choice for anyone, though my heart lies elsewhere.

2nd Best Retroclone: Swords and Wizardry

Swords and Wizardry: A 0e D&D retroclone.

Swords and Wizardry is a fantastic game, and always draws me nearer and nearer to its clutch every time I read about it. It's simple, eloquent, and easy to modify, which is the whole point of old-school games.

You'll notice that the image is of the S&W Whitebox, rather than the S&W proper. That's because of the two, I prefer the Whitebox for its open-canvas feel. Both of the editions are spectacular, and are covered in evocative art, excellent writing, and clear statements. It has "optional rules" that have become standard features in other games, such as Strength increasing your damage scores, or Dexterity improving your Armor Class. It also features a single Saving Throw, which is nice and easy to remember, and still allows for plenty of customization (by, for example, allowing Dwarves a bonus against saving throws for poison). Swords and Wizardry is a beautiful, beautiful game, and the Knockspell magazine published by the same company is a great companion.

Best Retroclone: Labyrinth Lord

This writer's favorite retroclone.

If you didn't know I was going to say this, welcome to Lawful Indifferent. This is a blog about retroclones, old-school games, and wargaming.

Bad humor aside, this is my favorite retroclone. Not only does it emulate one of the most popular editions of old-school D&D, it does it well. Beautifully, I might add. It retains the race-as-class feature, multiple saving throws, and easy to digest and understand formatting. The layout is heavenly and the interior art is awesome.

I prefer the purple and black cover of the older edition, but I also supported getting the full-with-art interiors for free, so what do I know? Despite the new free to get edition not having any interior art, this version is still my favorite. It just plain plays well!

In addition, it has the extremely useful and very well received Advanced Edition Characters, or AEC that adds the Ranger, Druid, Assassin, and other classes into the game. It's like taking the best of AD&D and sticking it directly into basic D&D. Not to mention the Original Edition Characters, another "expansion" of the core rules that emulates the "Little Brown Books" of oD&D. I don't have much experience with them myself, but they seem to have gotten fairly high marks from those that have used it.

There's just something about Labyrinth Lord that really gets my creative juices flowing, and the spark in my belly fired. It makes me want to create endless campaigns and design stuff until my fingers wear grooves into my keyboard. You really need to try it if you haven't already.

The Sand Elemental

In the session I DMd the other day, one of the things that stuck out in my head was the total lack of interesting desert-native creatures. Desert locations are extremely cool, and they can be underused except in the "plunder this pseudo-egyptian tomb" location. But even that is underused, considering how vast and varied such a location has the potential to be!

In an effort to reconcile this, here's the Sand Elemental, a creature I'd created for the session but (sadly) never was encountered. Such is life!

The Secret Of Steel Notes III: Fascination

Although my long, rambling notes hardly make this clear, my labor of love is formed of a great many things. First and foremost is an improvement of the hobby that started when, rummaging through the boxes in the basement of my parents' house when I was but a wee lad, was this:

And so it was born.