Origins 2010 Day 3 and Day 4

Friday

I sort of want to burn through the rest of my time at Origins.  I'm sure I'll talk about it more in future posts and through other venues, but there are some noteworthy things from the 3rd and 4th day of the con.

World Building in an Hour
This seminar with Filamena Young and David A. Hill Jr. was basically a brainstorming session in the style that Filamena has experienced in her work as a feelancer in the gaming industry.  We tried to work as if we were writers pitching a concept to Filamena and David, our editors.  We started with a general statement about our genre - we came up a setting which was a non-Earth with about our technological level world populated by humans who are not connected to Earth in the wake of an apocalypse.

When then moved on to talk about the "currency" of the setting, which we decided would be the past itself, since as was pointed out, in a post-apocalypse world, the past was better than the now in ever way.  We talked about who the protagonists would be, and who would be the big groups, each motivated to go after the currency of the past for a different reason.

Our efforts were hampered by this guy who kept interrupting and answering every rhetorical question as if it was aimed at him.  If you've met my wife - he even moved Pam to tell him off.  So he was that serious.

Asshattery aside, I actually got a lot out of it, but I had to leave, because I'd seen a tweet from Ryan Macklin (yes, "Ryan Fucking Macklin from the Internet", which he had custom laser-etched on a huge stainless steel flask that he bought at the con) who was going to be running a demo of The Dresden Files.  I got in!  The game was good. Here is our group - Chad Underkoffler was there too, but he was out of this shot.

That game was definitely one highlight of the con.  I played Salvador, a monster-hunting social-worker in Gotham City.  We went through abbreviated character-creation and a whole intro scenario, worked out at the table by Mr. Macklin.  It was good fun, and I'm very impressed with the way they've adapted FATE to Dresden.

I next returned to the vendor hall and went to find the Jolly Roger booth and talk to Jim Dietz about the state of Parsec, the rpg I started working on for him 3 years ago now.  We have new plans, and I'm ok with them -  they're kind of a step down but also possibly a step in the right direction.  You can bet I'll talk about the new plans for the game a lot in the future.

Pam was getting stir-crazy with con-fever, and so we left the con for a while and walked down the street to Com Fest.  Com Fest is a lot of fun - lots of live music and hippies and weed and dogs and delicious Jeni's Ice Cream.

We returned to the con reinvigorated (and also overheated), and ended up playing board games with Pam, among others, a college friend we bumped into the previous day at the North Market.



Saturday

I am a bad, bad gamer.  I slept in, mis-setting my alarm for the wrong day, and I slept through a demo of Free Market I was signed up for with Jared Sorenson running it.  This is one significant regret, but we'll see if I can get some other chance sometime in the future.  (I did get a glimpse at the boxed set, since I only have the beta, and it is fantastically gorgeous.)

We arrived late and wandered for a bit.  Moods were fraying at this point, but we ended up in the vendor hall, which was a great thing.  The highlight was getting to listen to Rob Donoghue pitch Evil Hat's game line to my wife with Fred Hicks interposing now and then.  It was a geek moment, and I enjoyed it.  We ended up with a copy of Don't Rest Your Head, which Pam is very excited about (and I am excited that she is excited) as well as Action Castle, a one-page game by Jared Sorenson designed for up to 300 players at one time.

After another delicious lunch at North Market with our friend Sarah, we returned to the vendor hall seemingly Hell-bent on spending money.  It was a lot of fun - and I hate shopping as a rule.  We picked up a cool hand-carved wooden puzzle-box from New World Mugs & Woods:

We also went back to the Jolly Roger booth to continue talking with them, and in the meantime Pam picked up Clocktowers and Grave Robbers:

We also found copies of Lost Cities, which we had played the night before and enjoyed, as well as a copy of The Hobbit board game for only $15.  Being who I am, I could not resist.

We stopped by the Looney Labs room before moving on to the art exhibitor hall.  We ended up collecting a lot of business cards from artists:

We ended up talking to a lot of artists, and for us this was the sleeper hit of the entire convention.  I want to at least mention each of the artists we spoke to.  If nothing else than because I have designs - wheels within wheels.  I hope to work with some of them in the future on publishing projects.

We began by talking to Matthew Lee Keith, fantasy artist and web developer with Arcane Machinist.  He caught my eye with his graphite art as well as with the fact that he is a newcomer to the gaming art scene - meaning I might actually be able to afford some of his work.

Next to him in his booth was Lance T. Miller, who is not only an artist using vector art to great effect, but also a magician with custom-made playing cards serving as his business cards.  His vector art is an advantage because it is fully scalable without losing detail, meaning an image can be shrunk or stretched and not get that grainy effect you get with, say, all of the art in H.A.R.P.

We also took a look of the metalsmithing knotwork of Loren Damewood from my old stomping grounds of St. Petersburg, Florida.  She is far beyond our means at this time, but has a lot of beautiful work, such as Celtic knotwork chainmail pieces.

We ended up talking for a while with Doug Kovacs.  Turns out, he grew up going to a Presbyterian church, and though he is an Atheist now, we had a lot to talk about, or at least it seemed so.  He also cut us an incredible deal on prints of some of his work.  He broke our resistance, and we picked up a triptych of his works:

We ended up next coming to rest at the booth of Andy Hopp, the illustrator of Where the Deep Ones Are written by Kenneth Hite.  he chatted us up and invited us to come to Con on the Cob, and we ended up registering for it in October of this  year near Akron.  In return, we got both a tee-shirt and a print of some of Andy Hopp's work.  Not only that, but if Con on the Cob is not the most fun we've ever had standing up and clothed, we can punch him in the stomach.

He has not been punched yet.

Next we ended up talking with Lydia Burris, looking at some beautifully eerie art. She has worked on a couple of books already, and said she was most excited by the prospect of her stuff being in print.  That's exciting, because that is exactly how I feel.  I hope that we can collaborate in the future.  Here is her work on her bookmark, postcard, and two magnets that we picked up (at this point, we were running very low on money, but we wanted to support her in some small way).

Pam ended up visiting with Kelly Brightbill, and we ended our visit to the artist hall by talking with Allison Minor, who is as enthusiastic as she is talented.  She is also way out of our financial league at this point - certainly after a long convention.

It turns out that the art hall was a fantastic way to end our Origins 2010 experience.  I hope it leads to some future collaboration.

Origins 2010 Day 2

(Links to follow when I've had some sleep)

Huge, wonderful, exhausting day at Origins 2010.

It started off with standing in line once we finally wended our way to the main exhibit and gaming halls floor.

We spent some time getting ourselves situated, and suddenly found ourselves recruited into a demo of Morton's List.

I'll take more time to talk about Morton's List later.  It's a really interesting concept - essentially the group, called the Inner Circle, agrees to undertake whatever activity they find in the List (which has 900+ entries).  There is a little bit of culty stuff which the kindly co-designer Nathan showed us (he had a strong smell of incense but didn't come off as creepy - a relief).  Really, Nathan was kind of like Willy Wonka.

Alas, tragedy ensued:

We drew, as our activity, something broadly related to the Internet, and the teens ended up taking over and shooting/photographing a melodramatic soap opera storyline.  The hormones kind of went crazy and after things got too out of hand for us oldsters we bowed out with lunchtime as an excuse.

Grandma and Grandpa thirtysomething have to have regular meals at our advanced age.

We had a fantastic lunch at the North  Market in Columbus - amazing food all around - and we ended up literally bumping into someone from Wooster we hadn't seen in ten years.  Hi Nevin!  So that was cool.

Actually, a lot of today I forgot to take pictures of.  We'll see how tomorrow goes.

Pam took a break to regain energy and I wandered the dealer room, somehow walking right past the Jolly Roger booth without noticing.  In my defense, there are hundreds of booths and thousands of people walking around.  I walked the whole area, taking it in, and will return again for more specific purposes.  Pam and I also got pulled into a demo of Martial Fluxx, which was much more fun than I expected.  The guy next to me was completely losing it with the rules-changes.  He just couldn't relax, and added to the entertainment value immensely, literally shaking his fists at the sky more than once.

I ended up in two game design seminars with Luke Crane and Jared Sorenson, which was probably the high point of the con for me so far.

Much confusion came in trying to get Pam a ribbon for full access to the 'Board Room' where almost all the board games are (Mayfair Games has their own special elite room across the hall).  While she settled in to play (and win!) a regional Ticket to Ride tournament qualifier as well as GIANT Settlers of Catan, I went upstairs to play a session of Cthulhutech.

The session was inaptly named "Everyone Has Secrets", implying subterfuge and intrigue.  Instead, it was an underwater railroad ride into a buried Deep Ones temple.  Basically, it was four mecha combats separated by reading flavor text and me trying to force some roleplaying into the situation.  My mech was a recon mech, which meant I had the lowest combat skills, dealt the least damage, and had the least armor.  As a result, I goofed around and tried to be tactically helpful, becoming the de-facto leader.  Insofar as one can "win" at roleplaying, the group voted me the winner:

Pam, by far the bigger winner, as I said, won both the tournament qualifier and a game of GIANT Settlers of Catan.  She also got free games:

And:

***

Now I"m officially both happy and completely blitzed with exhaustion.  Tomorrow is a later start if we want it, and I'll see if I can get a few more pics to put up.

Origins 2010 Day 1

I'm not there today, which is really unfortunately but to be expected.  My wife still has to work, and we had to find a place for our dog at the last minute, meaning we also had to bring him to the vet to update his shots and whatnot.

I am extremely excited, and I am even more excited because this will be my wife's first time to attend any gaming convention.

I am not excited about the fact that she has suffered what looks like a meniscus tear, meaning she may need to spend her time moving around the convention in a wheelchair.  That is not fun at all, but it's a big convention center so it'll be accessible and everything.  Hell of a bit of timing though.

As far as scheduled stuff:

Tomorrow night I get to play a Cthulhutech adventure.  Friday I am attending a seminar on world building and another on designing an RPG in an hour, both free and both very cool, and both things my wife will also be doing.  Saturday morning I'm starting off with some Free Market with Jared Sorenson, then we're doing a Krav Maga seminar (I sort of couldn't resist) and then a self-publishing seminar.

I've found that the gaming at a convention can be pretty cool, but gaming with total strangers is going to have a ceiling of fun that is hard to get past.  The free seminars are often really good, however.  The main thing is just wandering around, meeting people whose books I've read or whose games I've played or whose podcasts I've been listening to for years.

The wife:

Tomorrow she gets to play a Ticket to Ride regional qualifier.  Mostly for the fun of it - she's not that competitive a player really.  Then she's going to play some GIANT Settlers of Catan on their huge 3D game board (which may or may not look like that picture.  At Kublai Con the giant Shadows Over Camelot table I played at was ten times cooler).  Friday she's with me for worldbuilding and then she's going to play some Catan: Seafarers.  Saturday while I'm on the DONUT with Jared, she'll be playing Catan Histories: Settlers of the Stone Age as well as some GIANT Pompeii. After that, we've got Krav Maga and the self-publishing crash course together.

I know this will be fun for me - it was last year and I didn't have time or money to sign up for much of anything and just mostly wandered around.  I hope it is fun for her.  The meniscus tear is not going to help.

When I've got more time, I'll add links to all the different things I mentioned.

CCT Journal 7: Danger

My players think I am a vicious son of a bitch. I don't know how much that is the typical playful banter between D&D players and GM where they assume I am out to destroy their characters, or how much that is a reflection of my style being different from what they are accustomed to. I am NOT a sadistic or vindictive GM though. I am on the player's side. We are all here to have fun and tell a good story. I want them to succeed and come across as big heroes as much, or maybe more than they do. The catch is that a good story requires sacrifice and danger. My heroes are going to bleed before they win.

D&D often has a way of killing any tension or excitement in combat by making it overly technical, slow, and well.. not dangerous. If you follow the advice in the DMG for how to build encounters your characters will rarely be in any serious danger - especially if they are good at gaming the system. Combat that is not dangerous is not as meaningful or fun. So how do I fix this?

#1 Wounds & Vitality. Hit Points are just about the worst possible way to measure damage in combat. There is no difference between a character with full health and one with a single hit point left. They are identical in abilities. The Wounds & Vitality system originally developed for the Star Wars RPG is way better. It tracks physical health (Wounds) and energy (Vitality) separately. You lose vitality as the combat wears on and you get more and more tired. But Wounds can be lost even if at full Vitality any time an enemy critically hits. It means that from the very first attack in combat you are in danger. Wound pools are small and the moment you get wounded you take a -2 on all rolls from that point forward. This single change will instantly make your combats go from ho-hum to 'oh shit!'.

#2 GM by Feel. I am not a rigid GM when it comes to the numbers. Who cares if the monster entry says it has 10 hit points, if it makes the fight more interesting I'll let that thug keep swinging till he's at -15 or whatever, until he's made an impression. Conversely if a character gets in a dramatic critical hit that would make an epic killing blow I won't spoil it by insisting my NPC still has 2 hit points left. Fudge the numbers for drama's sake. Your players will thank you. Fights should be punctuated by a certain frequency of hits and damage, risk, and victory. Get a feel for the rhythm and bend the facts a little till reality matches what is fictionally appealing.

#3 Vivid Description. Don't bore you players with 10 minutes of description for each round of combat, but don't let a round go by without at least one or two descriptive comments about the progress of the battle. It makes an impression on players when a hit doesn't do 6 points of damage, but instead puts a crimson gash in their femoral artery. Don't shy away from gore and learn to make your descriptions proportional to the drama of the scene.

#4 Make 'em Pay. You players will be happier about a victory that was difficult to achieve. Don't hand it to them. Make them work for it. Make them expend concrete resources in the form of health, spells, scrolls, potions, damaged gear, reputation etc... If they take risks (as they should) reward them with drama. A character who leaps across a chasm will be much happier if they barely make it, hanging on by a fingertip, than if they clear it by 40'. Make it seem like success was unlikely and they will be thrilled. Furthermore, reward them with interesting failure periodically. A character can't get up and make an exciting come back if they weren't knocked down the first time.

CCT Journal 6: NPC's

We're just over halfway through the first module in this adventure path, now. I'm pleased with how much time and fun we're getting out of it (so far 5 sessions). It makes the price on these modules very reasonable if you calculate that out (4 hours per session for 8 sessions to complete the module = 32 hours x 4 people = 128 hours of fun for $20 or approximately $0.16/hour). It's a better value the more players you have.

So, halfway through the first module what do I think of "Edge of Anarchy"? Mostly, I'm very pleased. We're having fun and that is the main point. The presentation and layout and stuff is all very very good. The encounters are not all ingenious. There has been a lot of groups of "1st level warriors/thugs". But there have been occasional good surprises as well, like the crocodile at the beginning. The thing this module has pleasantly surprised me with is the quality, quantity, and diversity of the NPC's.

There are ALOT of NPC's to introduce in this first module. It makes sense. It is set in a city and the players are being set up to play a major role in the politics of Korvosa. There are a lot of important people to meet at the beginning. Many of the NPC's they are meeting now are ongoing allies/enemies through the whole campaign. What is nice, is that this cast of NPC's is really quite deep and diverse. Each one, even inconsequential characters that end up getting killed in a single encounter, has a backstory, motivations, personality quirks, and these are up front enough that it is easy to incorporate a lot of it into the game. The effect is to create a pretty richly textured city full of personalities.

My players are definitely picking favorites among these NPC's and making choices based on those allegiances which affect the outcome of events. So far, fortunately, they haven't decided to try to break the module by attacking a crucial NPC, but you can see how the designers have created something that will be very different group to group based on how they choose to interact with the NPC's presented to them. It is effective design which creates a lot of fun at the table which isn't just another combat encounter. In fact, our games have been a lot more roleplaying and interaction than violence so far (though there has been plenty of violence as well).

My favorite NPC's so far have all had bit parts. The prissy fencer Amin Jalento. The drunkard guardsman Grau. The brooklyn accented Cow Hammer Boys. These small roles really liven up a session and get chuckles. So much, that I can't help throwing in my own cameos. Much hilarity was had from the story of Mad-Murphy the doomed fisherman who has survived three separate attacks by devilfish with the help of his personal god 'Dribble'.

CCT Journal 5: Loot

One thing I don't like about D&D is loot. I know plenty of players just really love loot. They feel rewarded by it. They are motivated to seek it, and they feel their characters are defined by it. Personally I just think it is a big pain in the ass.

When I run a homebrew D&D game I put in a bunch of house rules putting the balance of power in character development on attributes and skills and such so that equipment is less necessary to advancement. Money and gear is then somewhat rarer than normal, and I don't usually let my players spend time in magic item shops (which I find obnoxious and dull).

Running a module, I obviously don't have that option (or not as easily). Furthermore, the designers couldn't have known what types of characters would be playing this module so the loot tends to lean more toward money and less toward unique items and gear. The players are expected to go buy the gear they want and will need to survive challenges later on.

So I've "solved" this situation by introducing the characters to NPC artisans. The Grindleknaut Brothers are new owners of a boutique custom magic item factory in Korvosa. The players have become members of their exclusive clientele and are able to order a wide variety of items made custom, or have items modified as they go along. The do all of this entirely out of game so that we're not wasting fun time looking over charts of crafting costs, but this allows players to "shop" in a way which is more original and fulfilling to me. They can keep that beloved mace or longbow and just "upgrade" it as they get the funds, rather than replacing it with the next +1 higher from a shop window. Plus these Grindleknaut Brothers have a personality and their magic items have little "surprises" built into them that give me great plot hooks and entertainment.

We're only just getting started, but so far I'm satisfied that this will be a good compromise with the format of the modules where almost all the rewards come in monetary form and I have very little interest in coming up with an endless list of vendors offering +2 Plate Mail and Cloaks of Resistance.

A Myth, A Fairy Tale, A Story, A Description

As is often the case, talking epistemology with John Shuck combines with my own reading in mythopoetics, fantasy and theology and results in me dealing with a few terms that I find helpful to use consistently.

In each case, I'll use a brief description, followed by a list of what is generally valued in each mode of expression. Lastly, I'll throw up a few examples that come to mind.

A Myth

In the comment thread conversation I had with John Shuck most recently, I called myths"structures of meaning that tell us the truth about ourselves and the world and invite us to live into that truth more fully." This isn't a bad definition, and I'll go with it for now. Myths can also be described as "stories that make stories". A myth is primordial because it gives rise to many other stories of other kinds. It is powerful because it guides people as they make stories of their own lives and experiences, as well as those of their community. A myth becomes a myth, in part, due to it's broad use. A myth that gives rise to no stories is no myth. It is much easier to recognize older myths because we can see whether they have stood the test of time.

Values: evocative power, invitation, broad applicability, iterative richness, "meaning", valuation, generative power (stories that make stories)

Examples: the Bible as a whole and many of it's parts individually, the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharata, the cycle of trickster stories of Coyote and Raven and Spider etc., the Koran, the Prose and Poetic Eddas, the Ennuma Elish

Myth is the purview of religion and spirituality.

A Fairy Tale

Tolkien gives the best definition of what he calls "fairy stories" in his essay and lecture "On Fairy Stories". It is a relatively long lecture, actually, and he has a lot to say, but in brief, he defines a fairy story as providing four benefits: fantasy, escape, consolation and recovery.

He is using fantasy in the medieval sense, that is, in using the mind's faculties to imagine things that do not or cannot exist. One example he uses is "green sun". For escape, Tolkien is reclaiming escapism as something good; 'the escape from a prison rather than the flight of the deserter'. Consolation doesn't need much explanation - a good fairy story provides consolation in the midst of life that is often unsatisfactory in some way. Lastly, Tolkien talks about recovery - that is, recovery of wonder at everyday things, or recovery of vividness of experience. He gives examples like "tree" or "fire" or "bread and wine", things that he feels he understands better thanks for fairy stories than he would have without them.

Fairy stories help us to see our world differently. The basic structure of a fairy story is an introduction to the familiar, a journey into the other, unfamiliar world, and a return to the familiar, having been changed by what was experienced in the unfamiliar world.

Values: fantasy, escape, consolation, recovery, otherworldliness, the familiar-made-strange and the strange-made-familiar

Examples: The Hobbit, Avatar, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,

A fairy story is a particular kind of story that is close to myth.

A Story

A series of events purposefully organized by an author or authors for a purpose other than description. It's actually pretty challenging to define a story, but for my purposes, I think the above will work. A story has to have a storyteller, either an individual or a community; it has to be intentionally arranged from start to finish, and it can't just be a bare recounting of events, because that falls into the last category that I'm looking at. A big difference one can see is between what makes a "good" story and what makes a "good" description.

Values: expressive craft, narrative beauty, coherence, characterization, drama, irony, evocative imagery

Examples: Beowulf, Anansi Boys, The A-Team, The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Story is the purview of authors and storytellers.

A Description

A series of events organized logically and chronologically. The assumption is that something has occurred, and has been observed, and then the description attempts to express those observations to someone who was not present.

Values: technical accuracy, functionalism, reductionism, efficiency of expression, clarity

Examples: the physical origins of the universe, a blueprint, an instruction manual, a technical schematic, a genogram

Description is the purview of science.

What's open is to discuss which of these we are dealing with at any given time. What is not an option is pretending they are all the same thing.

CCT Journal 4: Story Stream vs. Story Tapestry

As a Game Master my style is narrative. That is, the story is pre-eminent in how I plan and run a game. My story-telling style is also plot-heavy. As a metaphor I would say my games are generally rivers. There may be a variety of tributaries that run along side, but eventually they all feed into the main stream of the plot and the plot has choke point, narrows, unavoidable white-waters and cataracts, and eventually, inevitably, meets the sea. I think when I do a good job of this the plot can be quite subtle and players have a strong illusion of freedom, but it is also intense, exciting, and ultimately satisfying when you reach the conclusion.

Running Pathfinder is turning out to be less like a river and more like a tapestry. To construct a story for my PC's out of the encounters and events in the module I find myself presenting them with a wide variety of "threads" which pop up and reappear occasionally, but are not necessarily directly connected to any main thread except in the sense that it is creating an overall cohesive effect. Many NPC's, organizations, and future plot points have already appeared in the first few sessions. Most of them at first appearance are utterly random. They appear because the PC's happened to be wandering in that part of town, or because they were hired for a job in this instance, but that plot point may reappear later for totally different reasons. I find myself planning how I can reintroduce certain characters and items regularly enough to keep them in my player's consciousness so that there is the appearance of narrative continuity when an important event involving that character occurs later in the adventure.

It is an interesting change for me. In many ways it leaves it to the players to interpret the overall pattern of events in a way to make them a coherent story, which they naturally do. I hope it is having the effect of creating some intrigue for the players since they've been fed many different potential plot points and it is somewhat up to them to figure out how they're connected.

On the other hand, I find that it is not naturally as dramatic as my normal style. Drama comes from foreshadowing and other such literary devices which let players know that an event is important, which is difficult to do with a less focused narrative. Being a drama whore myself I miss it a bit, but I'm not sure the players I currently have would really get into that style. As it is they seem surprised when not every encounter resolves itself violently, or when they are confronted with moral repercussions for their actions. Stacia thinks I'm too hard on them and should just let them kill goblins more.

Mouse Guard Hacks - Check Them Out

Mouse Guard is an excellent game, the best work that Luke Crane has done. It is such a good game, it has inspired a number of very interesting hacks.

My favorite is Realm Guard, which is a hack focusing on the Dunedan in the north of Middle-Earth early in the Fourth Age.

The second, amazingly, also ties directly into one of my interests. It is called Lions of Judah, and has come out of the UK Burning Wheel community.

I've read through Realm Guard and can say that except for a couple typos I noticed on the first read-through, it is excellent work. I was impressed and interested, and might actually be running it this Sunday afternoon. We'll see.