Writing A Sample Scenario for Parsec

Back in the saddle again.

With the layout almost complete for Parsec, we find that we have 7 or 8 pages yet to fill. There will be a couple adds for other games from Jolly Roger Games of course, but it also turns out I'll be writing up at least one sample scenario for the game.

It's very odd coming back to something that I basically finished writing almost two years ago now, which has spent a lot of the intervening time in stasis, and trying to write for it.  Possible, but odd.  I know for a fact that my style has changed significantly since I began the project, as have some of my thoughts about games themselves.  I guess I just hope that I can make it so the two years don't show, and aren't jarring to the reader.

I'm just going to use one of the playtesting scenarios that I used, called "Stealing the Drake".  It's all about this group that is brought together to steal a near-priceless, top-secret FLT drive from the world government.  It's kind of like Shadowrun, only without magic or Elves, and with zero-G.  The other playtest scenario I ran played with the idea of freedom fighter versus terrorist, and I'm not sure that's a great one to put in the core book.  

That scenario can come in the "Uncomfortable Moral Ambiguity" supplement - which, now that I think about it, I'd really like to write.

GURPS Midnight - Heroic Paths

A while ago I said that I would get into my system for handling Heroic Paths in GURPS Midnight.  In the original D20 Midnight, Heroic Paths were a way to augment your character in a setting where magical items and magic itself are both rare and illegal to possess.  Each level, your Heroic Path would give you a bonus, or a spell-like ability or free Feat that fit with the theme of the Heroic Path.

At the beginning of the campaign, I had the players go through a few pages of images I'd picked to represent each Heroic Path.  These were just culled from Deviant Art or wherever - my apologies to dozens of artists, but I didn't charge money or anything.  For the list of Heroic Paths, I went with the Midnight Campaign Setting, Second Edition.  The players chose: 

Chanceborn, Faithful, Fey-blooded, Shadow Walker, Spellsouled and Sunderborn

What I decided that I wanted to do is to have various powers from the Heroic Paths manifest at dramatic moments during the game.  At the end of each session, each player gets 5 character points, and I also put 5 character points into their Heroic Path.  (This leads to faster-than-average development for GURPS, but we only play once a month on average, and I actually haven't found it to be unbalancing or anything so far)  When there are enough points in a Heroic Path to justify something manifesting, it happens.  Usually this is around 15 character points or so, so once every three or four sessions for each character.

Here's what I've done so far.  Most of the characters are in their third manifestation, and the Heroic Path totals are at about 50 character points.  Again, this is pretty powerful, but because it is incremental, I haven't found it to be unbalancing.  I can still threaten the PCs pretty easily because it is GURPS after all.  When choosing powers to manifest, I'm looking at what is offered in the Midnight core rulebook and expanding on those ideas. I'm also thinking "What would this player enjoy?"

Chanceborn

Jin is a Sarcosian smuggler and horse-trader who has a strong penchant for fighting and a great deal of pride.  The player playing Jin is also a big fan of fighting characters with a lot of braggadocio and taunting who rely on luck.  Perfect.

First manifestation: Serendipity Level 1 [15pts]

Second manifestation: Hard to Kill +2, Hard to Subdue +2, Damage Resistance 1, Fearless +1 [15pts]

Third manifestation: Incredible Luck (every 1/2 hour of game time), Damage Resistance 2 [20pts]

Faithful

Callan is a Halfling ex-slave who went to Baden's Bluff to free his wife and daughter.  Callan's player loves cooking, and tends to play characters who are excellent cooks.  When he chose "Faithful", which in the core rulebook means kind of religious, he meant it as faithful to his family ties, that sort of thing.  This player hasn't been with us in a while, so I haven't had a lot of input on his powers.

First manifestation: True Faith [15pts] - representing not religious faith, but sort of like true love

Second manifestation: Regeneration (1 HT/hour) for those who eat special food he prepares, and he can also now roll Cooking and have it count as being under the care of a medical professional, restoring 1d-3 HT per day [30pts?]

Fey-blooded

Maeve is a half-Elf, which in the setting is not something that is supposed to be possible, but her mother was an Elf and her father an Erenlander.  She was taken as a slave and was liberated by the other PCs.  I imagined this Heroic Path as her becoming more and more Elf-ish.

First Manifestation: 15 Perfect Balance; 5 Illusion Disguise @12 [20pts]

Second Manifestation: 5 Dodge +1; 5 Move +1; 5 Night Vision +5; 5 Shape Plants @12 [30pts]

Shadow Walker

Kenneth is a rogue, sneaky and thief-like, living off of what he can steal and dealing with horrible memories of what happened to his family.  He really found his niche, though, as someone who stabs servants of the Shadow in the throat.  I liked the idea that this Path would have him kind of walking the line between hero and villain.

First manifestation: Chameleon +3 (modified: functions through clothing, only functions near ambient shadow) [15pts]

Second manifestation: Blind Fighting 12, Dodge +1, Fearless +1 [21pts]

Third manifestation: Shadow Step @ 12, High Pain Threshold [15pts]

This Heroic Path introduces an idea that I imported from GURPS 3rd Edition - the idea of magical Knacks.  You can do the same in 4th Edition with a lot more work, but basically my rule is that as a 5pt Advantage, you can take a spell as a Knack, at either a skill level of 12 or IQ+Magery, whichever is higher.  That's where he gets the Shadow Step from.  He also gets Blind Fighting without being Trained by a Master - part of the Heroic Paths is that you get Advantages and Skills and so on that you wouldn't normally be able to get, those included.

Spellsouled

Emre is a business-Gnome and an accomplished smuggler at this point.  He has a natural talent for channeling, and can manipulate minds and emotions with ease, but what he really wants is "elemental kill-you magic", so that's just what I give him through his Heroic Path.  What his Spellsouled path provides is access to spells that no one in the current setting could teach him.  He already has Magery 3.

First manifestation: Ignite Fire, Create Fire and Shape Fire at IQ+Magery [12pts]

Second manifestation: Purify Air, Create Air and Shape Air at IQ+Magery; also the ability to spell-sing (lower cost, 10x longer casting time) and Singing at HT+1 [14pts]

Third manifestation: Seek Earth, Shape Earth, Earth Vision, Seek Water, Create Water, Icy Weapon all at IQ+Magery [24pts]

Sunderborn

Verrick is a bureaucrat, and has been incredibly effective as such, shuffling around paperwork and records and committing dozens of forgeries for the Resistance.  He has also successfully infiltrated the Order of Legates, and is posing as a Legate, doing damage from the inside.  For his Sunderborn Path, it took me a while, but I eventually decided he would be manifesting powers of a Star Archon.

First manifestation: Power Investiture +1, Bravery and Sense Spirit at IQ+PI [18pts]

Second manifestation: Tongues [15pts]

Third manifestation: Haste, Minor Healing and Levitation at IQ+PI [12pts]

***

Another option, if you want to give the players more choice (I'm always open to suggestions or what they want to see) is to give the players extra character points, and let them buy Advantages they normally could not buy during the course of the game with them.  This is a good option for a group that is accustomed to playing GURPS and knows the rules well - this group is pretty new to the system, so I thought I'd just take care of the specifics, and we could always negotiate if they weren't happy.  So far, they all seem to be enjoying it.

GASPCon - Pittsburgh 2011

I'm wirting this sitting in the hotel room I'm sharing with Pete Figtree at GASPCon in Pittsburgh.  So far, it's been awesome.  I've already had a chance to play Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition as well as Kenneth Hite's Bookhounds of London playset for Fiasco.  Later that night, I got a chance to play Dread, and then the next day, I got a chance to play both Summoner Wars and then Ganakagok.  I just want to briefly give my impressions of each.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition





I haven't played any other edition of WFRPG, nor have I ever played any of the minis games, the Warhammer 40k RPGs, or the MMO.  Warhammer is not in my geek curriculum vitae, as it were.  That being said, while working at Gamescape North I did get a chance to go through the WFRPG box when it arrived in the store and I loved the design of the game.  I love the custom dice (like Descent, but with a bit more depth and complexity) and I love the card that players can slot tactics into so that other player-characters can use them.

The scenario was pretty straightforward - a group of Dwarves are going to Blackfire Pass to recover an artifact and find out what happened to their brother.  I played a Trollslayer and had fun splitting foes in half with one shot and wringing blood and ale from my beard.


Fiasco





Kenneth Hite being awesome aside, Fiasco was a lot of fun, but I can see how it could be a lot more fun.  My group was good people, but three of us had never played Fiasco, and two of the players were clearly having trouble with framing scenes and reacting to things and knowing what it is they were supposed to do when confronted with a challenge.  These are new skills for most gamers, though, so no worries.  I got to play Aleister Crowley, and I ended up trying to make amends for all the terrible things I'd done by feeding myself to a huge demonic cat-beast.


Dread





The triumph of Dread, in this session, was that even though our GM wasn't doing a very good job, there were still plenty of moments of tension at the table.  (Granted, it was a very late game, and maybe he was just off his mojo, who knows?)  This would never have been the case with another system, period, and I really see the strength of the simple but brilliant insight of using Jenga as a resolution system for a horror rpg.  It definitely made me hesitant about doing anything risky, and at one point I was very tempted to push the tower over and sacrifice my character to save another character's life.  At that point, though, it looked like we were going to make it out of the scenario alive - and we did.


Summoner Wars





I never got into Magic or any other CCGs or TCGs.  I feel like, with a lot of them, there are so many sets and so much complexity that the game becomes a race to see who can find the most rules exploits.  This appeals to some people but not really to me.  I did enjoy Summoner Wars very much, though.  I like that the decks are pretty simple, and that they are pre-built.  I played the Cave Goblin army, and the tactic was simple enough - summon out zero-cost fighters and slingers, swarm my opponent, and use event cards to let them gang up on single units.  I'm sure that the game is less fun when you aren't beating the crap out of Pete Figtree, but still, a cool game.


Ganakagok





Ganakagok is one of my new favorite games.  The Game Chef event that gave rise to Polaris, Ganakagok and Mountain Witch must have been some kind of celestial event that rent the world open and let creativity pour out into game designers.  Or something.  Pretty much everything about Ganakagok is fantastic, but I'll try to keep it to just 3 things I'll mention.

1. I love a game where we end up with some kind of game-artifact that we made.  It's a reason I loved the Heroes of Karia Vitalus campaign so much - we ended up with literally hundreds of little short stories from that one.  In Ganakagok, you end the game with a psycho-socio-mythical map of both your village and the outside world, and on those maps are written all of the major relationships and the major elements of the story you just told.

2. The resolution system leaves a lot of hard choices open.  You work to move dice around a continuum between Good Medicine and Bad Medicine and at the same time try to win narration rights.  You tap things in the world and aspects of your character that are involved in the conflict to move dice.  You can gain Good Medicine but lose narration rights, or you can take Bad Medicine but keep rights, and so on.  Whoever is at a disadvantage during the dice-moving portion has the advantage of going last in the conflict.  Very, very cool, and far deeper than any resolution system I've seen in any other game (including very deep ones like Dogs in the Vineyard or WFRPG).

3. All of the players are pushed to collaborate and tell stories and bring the important things in the setting into play, but there is still someone pushing back as hard as he can.  A lot of endings are possible - things can go well or poorly for each individual character, for the village, and for the world - any combination.  Your character can win but the village can lose.  The village can lose, but the world can flourish.  Etc.

I will have to think long and hard about whether Ganakagok supplants Mouse Guard as the best game out there, in my view at least.

Parsec Again

I just got a copy of the full PDF of Parsec, complete with most of the layout and a lot of the artwork.  It's really cool to have it to go through - I find places where I'm proud of what I wrote, as well as places where I'm thinking "Oh crap, this is going to be published?"

The upside is seeing a project I worked so hard on develop further.  The downside is that I have 120 or so pages to go through and re-proofread and re-edit on top of everything else.

Still a labor of love, though.

A Real-Life Bard

Ever wonder what it would really be like to travel the world, have adventures, and pay for it all by performing for random strangers?

Meet Keiichi Iwasaki.

Burning Wheel Gold is Up for Purchase

Yeah, you can buy it now if you weren't at GenCon.  From what I heard, they burned through the copies they had.  Even with the baby coming, I'm going to buy this.  It'll give me something to read to take my mind off of baby-related stress at least.

I'm very curious to see what changes they made.  I personally think of Mouse Guard as Burning Wheel with a lot of the problems fixed.  I wonder if the changes they made were to simplify or to add complexity to a game that already has a vast learning curve, or whether they made the idea that you can layer on levels of complexity as you go more explicit (in the BWR text it is there as a suggestion of doing so, but it is possible to pass over it, as I've noticed other people who read the game sometimes do).

That being said, BW changed both how I play and how I run games.  BW Gold might do it again - we'll see.

More on The One Ring - Designer Interviews

I'm playing GenCon catch-up, and am hunting down what information is coming out about the things that I'm interested in, like Burning Wheel Gold and The One Ring.  On rpggeek.com, I saw that someone had linked a bunch of designer interviews which can be found on YouTube.  Here is the link to the list.

Here's what I'm watching right now, a discussion of the tighter focus for The One Ring than in past games.  You won't be able to play a Rider of Rohan or a Knight of Gondor right off the bat, and I think it may be a good thing, design-wise.  It's definitely a good move, supplement-wise.  Assuming the game takes off, it'll probably be a bit like Dark Heresy leading to Rogue Trader - new settings and options released as semi-new games in themselves.

It's Up - The One Ring is available for purchase as a PDF

The One Ring is up for purchase as a PDF.  Partly because of my broke-ness, I'm waiting for some reviews before I drop the money on it.  If it seems awesome, I will also want a hard copy.

The One Ring Update

Cubicle 7 continues to release information about their upcoming game The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild.

Here's a link to what a friend just point out: some information on the mechanics of the game and a preview of the character sheet.

From what they've posted so far, it seems like they've taken some cues from other 'standard' fantasy rpgs with their roots in wargaming (you know the ones), a bit of the group mechanics found in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (a game I find very impressive), and some conditions mojo from games like Mouse Guard.  I'm pretty sure the d12 is just a gimmick, which is fine with me - I'm not anti-gimmick.  If there was a custom nine-sided die for an LotR game, that would obviously be better, but you can't have everything.

So far, it looks like a game I would run.  At this glance, it might be the best LotR game to date, at least by my standards.  Definitely worth checking out, and almost certainly something I'll end up buying.  Whether it means I drop my Servants of the Secret Fire project remains to be seen.

Monsters and Other Childish Things - Pocket Edition

Just a brief note - it's been a few years since I got to play Monsters and Other Childish Things, but I noticed at a recent trip to a gaming store (Valhalla's Gate in Columbia, MO) and now on IPR that they have released a pocket-sized version of the game.

If you want to pick it up from IPR, you can check it out here.



Looks pretty cool, eh?  And it is.  Monsters is one of my favorite games, both for it's presentation and for the system itself.  Children team up with hideous monsters from nightmare who protect them and also provide a constant steam of trouble for them to deal with.  The childrens' relationships with others give them the strength to overcome what happens - and guess what?  Their monsters eat relationships.

Anyway, it's a fantastic game, and I recommend it for someone who wants a superb, rules-lite game about children, monsters and relationships.

Plot, Story, Character, Person

This is a post I put in the comment thread over at Devil in my Dreams.  I just thought it was interesting to think about it - I hadn't articulated these things quite this way before.  Anyone else do that - figure things out in the moment?

I think that Plot is one step removed, one step into the abstract, away from Story.  A Plot is a plan, a schematic, something you can diagram on a dry-erase board.

Same with Character, which is one step abstracted from Person.  A Character has attributes you can list - you could fill out a character sheet.

For both Story and Person, though, you can only experience them.  They exist as unabstracted as possible.  You experience a Person.  You experience  Story.

I think it's telling that your example is presenting something on a stage - a performance piece exists only as long as the performance exists.  A play or a musical performance is like a sand mandala - it is only present for a moment before it is gone.  You can record it and replay the recording, but a recording is not the same as a live performance.  A photograph of the sand mandala is not the sand mandala.

The Plot is not the Story.  The Character is not the Person.

10,000 Hours

I've been reading Outliers by Malcom Gladwell - a little bit belatedly, since it's been out for a while now, but I'm a slow reader and there you have it.

One of the things that Gladwell talks about is that things like talent and genius don't really exist - or if they do exist, they don't matter all that much.  We tend to attribute great success to great talent or great virtue, and Outliers does a great job of demonstrating how success has much more to do with a person's situation than a person's sole capacities.  Really, it's a fascinating book, as are all of his books that I've read.

The title of this post mentions 10,000 hours - according to a lot of research in the lives of brilliant, successful people, 10,000 hours is a number that keeps coming up again and again.  In brief, it takes 10,000 hours to become a virtuoso, to become good enough at something to have a huge impact through it.  The Beatles had their 10,000 hours playing strip clubs in Hamburg; Bill Gates had his 10,000 hours programming by the time he got to college.  (Of course, as Gladwell demonstrates, if Gates had been born three years earlier or later, his practice would have mattered much less)

But this idea of 10,000 hours got me thinking - is there anything in my life where there is a chance I'll practice that much?  The only thing I've done that much is writing - and I have to say writing in general, rather than, say, fiction or nonfiction.  Now, this has to be 10,000 hours of concerted effort to get better at something - so obviously I can't count things like writing letters or writing Facebook posts or things like that.  Even most of my blogging probably doesn't count - at most maybe half of it.  Time spent working on actual books, stories and poems for publican counts, I think.  Editing other people's work counts maybe half.  Writing papers for college and graduate school, half at most.

I'm too busy lately to do the math, but I wonder - how close are you to your 10,000 hours?  Have you already crossed the line?

As a point of reference, 10,000 hours is full time practice at your art of craft, 40 hours a week, for 5 years straight.  With no vacations.

That's a lot...but it's also a powerful number in the lives of some of the most famous people in their fields.  It is also measurable, which makes it a nice goal to have in mind.

Origins 2011

Last night I got back from Origins - this year, unfortunately, I was only able to be there for a single day.  I chose Saturday for obvious reasons - if you're just going to be there for one day, that's the one.  I didn't get a chance to do any actual gaming - I only really had the time to go through the exhibitor hall, talk to some people I needed to talk to (more on that later), go to the art room and a couple other things.  Still, I feel like I did a lot, and had a good time.  The convention seemed more subdued than last year, and it was also about 10 degrees cooler (though still warm).

At the very first booth we visited, my wife found something that I just had to buy: the original, out of print boxed set for the Lord of the Rings Adventure Game by Iron Crown Enterprises, circa 1991.  Here's a pic of the find:

I only had a chance to glance through the box, which is in decent condition for something 20 years old.  Inside are all of the books, character sheets, and un-punched cardboard cutouts of the characters and enemies that come up in the included adventure "Dawn Comes Early".  It is a rules-lite version of the Middle-Earth Roleplaying (MERP) system, but using d6s instead of percentile dice.

My wife promised she would play a one-shot with me, which is awesome.  That'll have to happen.

The rest of the dealer room felt very busy, but not packed or claustrophobic.  The room was dominated by a huge Mayfair Games area, including a dozen or so round tables, all of which were filled with players the whole time I was there. As usual, there was no Wizards of the Coast Presence, nor a White Wolf presence to speak of, and if Indie Press Revolution was there this  year, I did not see them, nor HERO Games, which is too bad.

Once again, business brought me to the Jolly Roger Games table.  I finally got to meet the artist for Parsec in person, which was cool, and the three of us got a chance to sit down and iron out the last details of what needs to happen before Parsec goes up on Kickstarter.  Overall, I'm very happy, and whatever happens with Kickstarter, I feel like I'm doing all I can.  I got to go through the contract I'll have with JRG, and speaking without a lot of experience, it seemed like a great contract to me, so that's a good thing as well.

It was cool to see the cover art out on the JRG table - one small step closer to A Real Thing.

I'll be posting about other things I saw at and around Origins this year, but one thing that somehow I hadn't heard about before is Cubicle 7's new LotR game, The One Ring.  (Is it the Chosen One at last, or do I need to keep designing Servants of the Secret Fire?)  I've looked around for more information on the game itself, and there isn't that much, from Cubicle 7 or otherwise.  Here is a site where they are promoting the game by posting characters who will be in it.

From what I've read, a few people are comparing The One Ring to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition - a big boxed set that contains all the things you need to run the game, like dice, character sheets, the rulebooks and that kind of stuff.  I personally am both excited and unhappy - excited because I think WFR is an awesome game design, but unhappy because I hope that The One Ring won't have a price point anywhere near $100 (there's a reason I really like WFR but don't own it - I can't afford to).

The model for the game is clearly it's own supplement treadmill, which is also unfortunate.  The first game will focus on Wilderland, Mirkwood and the Lonely Mountain in the wake of the destruction of Smaug.  Future releases will expand that focus to other parts of Middle-Earth.  One review that I found stated that the game's storyline assumes that the heroes of the Lord of the Rings do not exist, and explores the storyline in their absence (or, at the least, they are not brought together, etc.).  I think that idea is awesome, and is a game I would love to play, I just hope it isn't too expensive - and that it's, you know, a good game.

In August, almost certainly with a GenCon release, we'll find out.

That's enough for now - next time, some more from Origins, as well as other Columbus stuff.

#h2o4all

Well, it's the 24th of the month, which means I need to post about water issues.  The idea, you see, is that on the 24th of each month, a bunch of people will write blogs and post to facebook and tweet about water issues, and that if we get enough people doing this, we will make a significant ::ahem:: "splash" and possibly foster greater awareness and even action.

It is very early, but I want to briefly talk about Advent Conspiracy.  Advent Conspiracy is a group of people of faith who actually think that the Christmas season should be about helping people who are poor, vulnerable and dying from preventable causes instead of a hysterical orgy of consumerism.  400+ billion dollars are spent each holiday season on...stuff.  What if we took 10% of that and spent it on living, breathing human beings who need access to clean water in order to go on living and breathing?

How many people can be provided with clean water for 40 billion dollars a year?  Damn, I bet it's a lot.  Why don't we find out together?

For more information on h2o4all, check out the website for Unco-nditional.  It'll explain from whence the idea came.  If you tweet, blog or post to Facebook regularly, consider being part of h2o4all.  Check us out on Twitter with the hashtag #h2o4all (but you knew that already, didn't you?  Smarty.)

Hard Reset

Current goings-on in my corner of the world, combined with a question posed by Margaret Weis this morning in Facebook, have combined to get me thinking about the idea of the hard reset.  Holding down the power button and counting slowly to ten and then powering back on.  The technological nuclear option.

I think about the need, sometimes, to hard-reset a creative project.  Margaret Weis's question this morning was about writer's block - when does it happen, what do you do about it, etc.  I realized that writer's block happens for me sometimes (often?) because I am avoiding the fact that what I'm doing is going nowhere and a big chunk of work has to be tossed.  On a few projects, this has meant completely re-writing the whole thing, starting over essentially from scratch (Epic is definitely one of those, and continues to be).  Other times, a project dies on the vine because I am not willing, or ready, to prune as drastically as is required.

Ironically, I have just recently had to hard reset this very blog.  It was hacked, and had was registering with Google as spyware.  My RSS was spamming and soon.  So I migrated, brought my posts over with me, and restarted.  I have no idea if this will work out - we'll see.

I'm part of a number of institutions, one of which is the Presbyterian Church (USA).  I honestly believe that this institution, if it is to return to functionality and meaning, is going to have to hard reset.  One good example - of the students who graduate from seminary (which is graduate school for ministers), only 20% of them have any hope of getting a job in the thing for which they just spent tens of thousands of dollars and 4+ years training.  There are only jobs accepting first-time pastors for 20% of the people looking for those jobs each year.

Life is kind of a roller-coaster sometimes.  Imagine if a roller-coaster cost $40,000, not counting cost of living (you still had to pay rent and get groceries while in line), and the line lasted 4 years, and then once you got on, there was a 80% chance the ride would break down.

We would rightly shut down that roller-coaster, fire everyone involved in building it, and apologize to everyone who has ever ridden on that disaster.

For those following along at home, the roller-coaster is the PC(USA) ordination system, and among other things in the denomination, it is time for a hard reboot.

GenCon 2011 Vampire the Masquerade LARP "The Forgotten"

I've been asked to help with the writing and preparation for a VtM LARP, The Forgotten, which friends will be running at GenCon 2011.

The LARP will be held in the Hyatt Regency Ballrooms A and B Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 6pm to 1am.  I can definitely recommend playing - it looks like an excellent concept with a lot of interesting characters.  It's an official LARP, so you can sign up for it when you register for the con.  And no, I'm not just saying this because I am writing some of them.

But the most interesting ones are mine.

I've also tweeted back and forth with one of the developers for V20, and hopefully some of them will get a chance to come by the LARP and see how it is going.

Not for the last time, like Bilbo missing his Hobbit-hole, I am wishing I could be at GenCon this year.

The Theme is Burial

So much has been going on lately - a possible book deal with Chalice Press; three or four other book ideas with my collaborators over at Two Friars and a Fool; helping friends with a Vampire the Masquerade LARP for GenCon this year; a rough draft of the character sheet for Parsec; continuing work on a rough draft of Reckoning; and that on top of everything else.

Hence the longer-than-usual languishing of this blog.

There's a lot of writing inside me, and it is coming out like one of those old-school lawn sprinklers - in multiple streams and all over the freaking place.  That being said, if I didn't enjoy it, it would be the easiest thing in the world to just...stop.

But that won't happen.

I'll be at Origins this year for at least two days - Friday and Saturday.  I want to make sure I get a good look at the dealer floor, maybe try to awkwardly schmooze with people, and also check out the art room, since that was awesome last year.  Also, you know, Columbus is no slouch as cities go.  I wish I had more time to prep and run a game, but honestly we need a final character sheet for both Parsec and Reckoning before I want to do a full-on convention demo.  I feel like, especially for a convention game where people are paying to play, there should be a baseline of quality, and we're not quite there yet.  It's one thing to hand friends something you laid out yourself in Microsoft Word three years ago.  It's quite another thing to do that with strangers who you want to turn into fans, you know?

Reckoning Playtest and Our Audience

This past week we got to run another Reckoning playtest while we were at Unco11.  The playtest was drifting the system a bit, outside the settings (modern) for which it is designed.  The situation was that the players would be in the midst of the Fourth Crusade, either Latins or Greeks.  If they had chosen to be the Greeks, they would be inside the city, centered on one of the monasteries in Constantinople, and their horror would be the impending doom coming down on them from the west.

The players chose to be Latins - their horror would be the horror of moral culpability as they sack and destroy cities of their brethren (Zara and then Constantinople itself).

The playtest went really well - the system works.  It does what we want it to do.  People have fun.  Every group tells us that character creation is the best part of the system, and it led to a lot of interconnection and buy-in among the players.

The players were basically a group of five who normally play D&D (one has called every character Ham Samich since he started playing in middle school) and one player deep-friend in the simmering vat of story games, someone with an entirely different gaming background, different expectations at the table.

What I suspected, what was reinforced, is that not only is Reckoning not a story game, it is potentially not fun for story gamers, unless they are interested in playing something like a hybrid.

It was interesting to see this person's discomfort.  We spent three hours after the session discussing the game, and it seemed like our story gamer enjoyed parts of it, but felt a lot of anxiety around the idea of a GM having lots of control over what was happening.

The thing is, the game is solid.  We know a little better about our target audience - basically, people who play D&D or other similar games will have a lot of fun with Reckoning and be introduced to a few ideas that don't exist in D&D.

We did what we set out to do.  We wanted to create an excellent horror rpg that we would want to play more than any other horror rpg.  That's what we have.  As a wonderful bonus, most other people who have played the game in the past have a great time with the game - all but one, actually, though I don't want to imply it was something wrong with this player.  It's just - well, not everyone is going to enjoy a given game.

This thing is sharp, man.  It does what it's supposed to do from a design standpoint.  We got some good advice from the one less-satisfied player that we need more time to consider, but what we really need is a rough draft to start having readers look at.

Recent Developments in V20

I'm very excited about the release of Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition - I've already ordered my own copy and it'll be a great early birthday gift when it comes out.  You can see the huge banner above.

I'm also following the open development process, reading and commenting in the few cases where I think I have something smart to say.  Here is some of what has been going on lately:

The Tzimisce Clan document is up, as well as the Gargoyles and Giovanni.  These have been out for a few days, but I was away at UnConference11 and didn't have time to do much reading while I was getting ready and certainly not while I was there.

I'm currently working on a one-shot to possibly run with friends while on vacation in a couple of weeks.  I actually don't expect us to have the time, nor for enough people to have the inclination, but it takes my mind off work.

With any luck, when my V20 book arrives in October, I'll have figured out the basics of keeping a human larva alive and will be able to have some bitey adventures.

Reckoning RPG Comes to Unco11

In a couple days I will be packing up, picking up a stranger, and driving nine hours to New York for UnCo11 (UnConference 2011).  While there I will get to hang out with cool people - among others, I will meet my semi-twin Mick Bradley at long last.  I say semi-twin because we apparently share a great number of interests, a birthday, and a denomination.  We seem similar enough on paper that he thought I was a spam-bot when I first contacted him.  I'm pretty sure I'm not a spam bot.

At least as far as I know.

One thing that we are hoping to do (we being me and Aric) is to run a session of Reckoning at UnCo11 for some people who are gamers and some who have never gamed before.  It occurred to me that I have not really run a playtest for more than two years, and oddly, I'm nervous.  There's always the nervousness of showing your creative thoughts and work to others - the very real chance that they will be thinking "what a load of crap" while smiling politely and trying to play through.  Maybe that's the reason I haven't worked very hard to find a writing group, I dunno.

With any luck, the game will happen and will go well.  Given the mixed group, as well as doubtless mixed sensibilities, and the fact that we're running a horror game, we had to be careful.  To stay with a religious theme, we're going to run this session set in and around the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade.  Hopefully we can build up enough moral horror at what was perhaps the greatest crime against humanity in medieval times since I'm not sure how comfortable anyone might be with other kinds of more immediate horror.

It's the kind of dicey balancing act that could go really well or could just as easily go off the rails and offend someone we don't want to offend.

I think I'll bring Mouse Guard just in case.

What Would It Look Like...?

What would it look like if I got my shit together?

I have what seems like a relatively common problem - I care about too much.  I want to do too much. As a result of the overload in my life, I'm either working all the time on various projects, or wasting time and trying not to think about all the things I'm not doing.  The switch is on or off.

Periodically, I even finish things.  Over a year ago, I finished the final draft of Parsec, and we're now working on getting it up on Kickstarter.  I finished what I think is an excellent resource on the issue of the ordination of sexual minorities.  Every week I finish a sermon and other stuff for worship, as well as the many other things that I do for work.  I finished editing the first five chapters of a friend's novel as well as editing the system chapter of a friend's roleplaying game.  I'm collaborating with two colleagues on a new website, including weekly video posts and building up a Twitter and Facebook audience.

Typing things like that makes me feel a little better about the whole situation, but I don't even want to start listing the unfinished projects - even if I limited myself to only listing ones that I'd spent, say, a hundred hours or more working on.  There are - Way.  Too.  Many.

If I was inclined to triage well and to discipline myself, this wouldn't be a lingering problem.  I have yet to figure it out.

I imagine that the answer is to say no, to say goodbye, to projects that I really care about, but which I don't have the insight or time to bring to fruition.

I really don't want that answer.  Which means it is probably the right one.

CCT 18: Fungeon Crawling

Book 5 of this adventure path, Skeletons of Scarwall, is one huge dungeon crawl. I have previously said that dungeon crawls were one of my least favorite aspects of roleplaying and I feel like this journal and the next few entries could be a series of apologies as in "I don't like dungeon crawls but.."  The truth is that any scenario can be lame and any scenario can be awesome depending how it is handled. I've played games about escaping from slavery in the South that were incredible. I've run games where absolutely everyone died in a miserable painful gory failure and it was a blast. Anything can be fun when handled well and I've learned by now that Paizo is capable of handling almost anything extremely well.

So no more apologies. This book isn't fun despite being a dungeon crawl. This book is just fun. Here is what they have done right so far in this book:

• They have set the dungeon up as an epic and terrifying place and you believe it. It has a creepy history and the players have a good reason for needing to delve into it. We aren't just poking in caves for treasure. We are braving something absolutely no one else wants any part of because we're big damn heroes.
• The difficulty of the encounters lives up to the epic reputation. We don't have room after room of goblins to slog through till we get to the boss. This place will kick your ass before you even get in the gate and then keep kicking it till you call mercy.
• It is soaking in atmosphere. They give you a history for every encounter and lots of flavor stuff to plug in as the GM so that the place has a personality. Scarwall is the major antagonist of this book, not just the monsters inside. The players in my group are already referring to the place as if it was sentient.
• The encounters follow a logical progression and the dungeon itself responds to the choices of the players. Monsters don't sit in their rooms waiting for the party to kick down the door. The dungeon develops as the party accomplishes certain things. There is a sort of meta-puzzle to be 'solved' here.
• There is immense variety, but all within the theme. One encounter to the next very different skills and tactics are called for from the players, but all of it fits well. Nothing seems random or stupid like gelatinous cubes randomly wandering down hallways.

Paizo keeps bringing the win.

New Parsec RPG Sketches

Once again, I got to see some new sketches for the game.  Those of you who know where the art blog is for Parsec can check them out.  Otherwise - here are a few samples:

Yes, my friends, that's a cover mockup.  Not sure the buggy will stay in the final version.

That is a zero-gravity ju-jitsu knife fight.  Zero-gravity because people will fight there, and it will play out differently from fighting in gravity (yes, there are rules for that).  Ju-jitsu because when I imagined the fighting, it would quickly become close-quarters, and once you grab someone in zero-g, the two of you start spinning and jerking around with each push and pull, and something like full guard would help you keep control of an opponent, just like in gravity.  Knives because I don't imagine lots of discharging firearms in a spaceship, and because I really like an action sequence that results in globs of blood floating around the cabin.

This is an idea we talked out (the publisher, the artist and I did) about a flag-raising image, a take on Iwo Jima, but it is of Silva Energy raising their corporate standard over yet another fallen Latin American nation.  The new world order in the ruins of the old.  Impending privatized dystopia and all that.

There's more but you'll have to support the game when we go live on Kickstarter to see it. :)

V20: Vampire the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition

Not too long ago, White Wolf announced that they would be releasing a 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire the Masquerade.  20 years ago, VtM's huge impact on the gaming industry and overall geek culture began.  In terms of system mechanics, Vampire was a hymn to Shadowrun and others before it, but there was some kind of sweet spot that was waiting for something like Vampire the Masquerade to strike home.

According to demographic research done for Wizards of the Coast, Vampire is responsible for bringing in a huge number of women into the gaming hobby, what was up to that point apparently the purview of war-gaming grognards...or something.  I didn't start gaming until around 1991, and I started with Mythus and then GURPS, but one can imagine what a hobby with even fewer women would have been like.

From their official comments, it would appear that V20, as they are calling the anniversary edition, would only be available to those who are attending the Grand Masquerade in New Orleans this year.  Fortunately, I am pretty sure this is not true.  I asked the question via Twitter, using their preferred hashtag #v20, and got a quick response that the book (which is going to be around 400 pages) is going to be available apart from the Masquerade - they just aren't sure about the details yet.

I like how White Wolf is going about this process.  They are actively soliciting and responding on a forum devoted to the topic of the new edition, and they are also posting drafts of the rules and text that will go into the final book.  The book is going to have new, full-color artwork from 'classic' Masquerade artists, and will not be a new edition, nor will it be the beginning of a new round of book releases for Masquerade.  They are saying that it is simply something for those who have been playing Vampire since it was released 20 years ago.

That's what they're saying now anyway.  As always, we'll see.

I've been following the hashtag #v20 on Twitter, and that is where I am getting most of my information and updates, apart from the documents they release and the forums, where I am participating as time allows.

I can honestly say that this announcement has re-ignited my desire to play Vampire the Masquerade.  I started in 1998, my first year of college, and I played in games for the next 7 or 8 years with the same group of great people who are still some of my closest friends.  Before I played VtM, I was actually kind of contemptuous of a game that seemed to be all about being goth and bemoaning one's fate and blood fetishism.  And yeah, there's some of that.  What I got was a fantastic game and great memories and friends.  I'm not really a fan of vampire fiction or movies; I've never been even remotely goth; but VtM is still one of my favorite games out there.  I'm really excited about the new edition, and will definitely get myself a copy when it is available.

In the meantime, for any other fans, I recommend checking out the open development documents and blog, the forums, and also following the news as it comes out.  You ask questions and much of the time, one of the guys working on the book answer you.  That's one thing I really like about our little hobby - the people at the very top are not so high up as to not be accessible to even casual fans.

Updates:

Justin Achilli posts about the weirdness of dice, botching and probabilities.

Eddie posts an exhaustive (?) list of Vampire bloodlines to be included in the V20 book.

CCT 17: Oops

Well... that was a near TPK.

We finished the fourth book in the adventure path this week and it ends in a giant battle with Red Mantis assassins, a deranged racist ranger (aren't they all?) called the Cinderlander, a host of Gargoyles, and the leader of the Red Mantis in this region an evil lady named Cinnabar. I honestly hadn't expected it to be that dangerous of an encounter, but I forgot to take into account several factors:

• Being ambushed in the middle of the night means no armor. Also no packs full of potions and other handy gear and no secondary weapons. They basically charged into battle naked with the weapons they grabbed from beside their beds.
• Being separated over a large area means no access to healing magic or buffs for some of the characters and a significant tactical disadvantage. The bow-ranger had to fight with his sword up-close with no backup. The rogue, couldn't hide and sneak attack. The oracle had no bulky fighter to hide behind.
• Sneak attacks are a bitch.

Result: 3/4 PC's, 1 Animal Companion, and 1 NPC cohort all dead.

It has been a long time since I've overseen a bloodbath that severe. It definitely served notice that I am not a GM who is afraid to pull the trigger - even if it was sorta unintentional.

No feelings were hurt. Two of the players opted for resurrections, while one opted to roll up a new character. I tried to give them all glorious and dramatic ends, and realized after the fact that the deathblows were coincidentally all delivered by one nameless Assassin who is definitely getting a promotion to named NPC so the players can have the satisfaction of wreaking revenge later on. Since the deaths came rapidly one right after another it was pretty hilarious to watch the stunned silence that followed as the lone survivor, a dwarf fighter, walked back into the camp to find his entire party had been massacred.

Oops.

CCT 16: Catching Up

It has been way too long since my last entry in this journal. I have infinite excuses. I will spare you.

Tonight we are concluding the 4th book in the adventure path "A History of Ashes." This makes it a good time for a bit of retrospective analysis on the series so far.

As was apparent from the first 15 posts in this journal I am very impressed with Pathfinder as a whole and with the Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path in specific. Book 1 was a solid B+ beginning. It introduced us to the city, contained some great NPC's and a memorable roof chase sequence which my players still talk about. It's downsides were that it was more or less a cliche series of quests for a patron. It could have done much more with the chaos in the city. Still a mile ahead of any other module I'd ever read or run up to that point.

Book 2 "Seven Days to the Grave" blew the first chapter right out of the water, and probably set a standard that the rest of the campaign will not be able to live up to. It is a definite A+. Great characters. Great mood. Creative encounters. Exciting plot. Nothing bad to say about this really.

Book 3 "Escape from Old Korvosa" was a major letdown after the second outing was so superb and will probably be the nadir of the campaign when we're finished. The story didn't give you very good reasons for being in conflict with the major badguys of the book. The Arkonas were interesting, but tangential to the main interests and concerns of the party. The Vivified Labyrinth which provided the climax of the campaign was a throwback to old-school trap-infested dungeons. There is a reason these dungeons are "old" school. A long sequence of nearly unavoidable "save or take tons of damage" situations isn't very fun. It might have been interesting if the dungeon had been a puzzle that could be solved, or a series of challenges that could be creatively overcome, but it wasn't. Still, this module was a step above anything non-Pathfinder I've ever run: C.

Book 4 "A History of Ashes" has been a major return to form. Some people in the forums have complained that it is too big a divergence from the main plot, but my group found it a welcome change of pace to be out in the harsh wilderness instead of the rapidly decaying city. The encounters have been creative, the NPC's are excellent and perhaps most impressively - the Cinderlands are a very interesting and well detailed ecosystem that in and of itself has been the source of a lot of fun. I have had the terrain itself serving as a major character in the game and the players have simply loved avoiding stampeding herds of Auroch's, or raging Emberstorms, or explosive Rockfire. This wasn't quite the apogee of moody goodness that was Book 2, but close: A.

We move into Book 5 "Skeletons of Scarwall" next. I am both excited and apprehensive. It has the obvious failing of being one giant dungeon crawl, but it is one of the most clever and interesting dungeon's I've encountered and chock full of creeptastic encounters. I am definitely running this one for maximum horror. We'll see how it goes.

bySwarm

There's recently been something of a burst of activity on the bySwarm site.  We're planning an online game for the purpose of playtesting and continuing to develop the setting, and the new players have been very eager to get started.

As a result, I returned to the forums today and updated a number of posts.  It's always really exciting for me when new ideas and new people start popping up on this project.  I've been part of it for more than a year now, and it keeps changing and morphing over time.  Most of the people who were involved a year ago are no longer involved, but that's part of the idea of the whole project.  New people bring new things to the Dark Golden Age, and the setting is the sum total of our work.  Still great a year later and going strong.

Glimmer: Orphan - start on a rough draft

The season comes at last, and with it, the monsoon clouds.  They sweep in from the southeast, rolling over the broad green Empire, the mangrove coastline, the terraced fields, the steep green hills and mountains, into the hinterlands, unloading torrents of warm rain as they go.  Life slows; animals are brought in from the fields and mud chokes the paths and roads.  Rivers swell and overrun their banks, depositing thick alluvial soil on fields, clogging irrigation ditches and drowning crops that are not prepared, or were planted late.

The rains always come - and with them, the monks.

Sliding and wallowing along choked roads, the wagons rumble down from the monastery.  Each is pulled by two buffalo; driven by a family that has had this job for generations.  In each is a monk, hidden from the weather by an lacquered wood awning, seated next to the driver, face serene.  Despite the awning providing shelter over the seat, their robes, like everything during the monsoon season, are soaked and heavy about them.  They travel to the orphanages that lie on the outskirts of the larger towns in the province, purchasing children.

**

Glimmer stands, his feet already soaked by a falling sheet or water running off the dormitory roof above him.  Across the courtyard of the orphanage compound, he can barely make out the girls standing in front of their own dormitory, obscured by a similar sheet of water. The rain is ten thousand tiny hands pounding on the tiles above him, day and night, as it always is in this season.  Weeks without sunlight have left the land both soaked and cold, but Glimmer knows better than to shiver where Mother can see him.

Mother is not his mother, of course - she is the headmistress of this orphanage, a member of an obscure sect of priestesses who have this calling and, if Mother is any indication, do not enjoy it.  There are times when she and her novices, two younger women, endeavor to teach the precepts of their faith to the children.  Glimmer does not understand any more than the other boys his age, but they know that if they listen quietly, they are fed.

He knows the wagon is approaching the courtyard because he hears the sudden lowing sound of a buffalo who has had enough of the rain.  The only animals near the orphanage are chickens and a few pigs - hearing the buffalo’s voice sends a thrill through his body.

He hears its hooves striking the cobbles, obscured under a layer of mud, as it enters the courtyard.  He sees them splash with each step, and one of the buffalo tosses its enormous head, snorting in the torrent, and shakes down the length of it’s body, shedding water which is immediately replaced.  

The look of awe he feels on his face is mirrored by the boys around him.  What a wonder!  Its shoulders would loom over him if he dared to come close to it; its horns would easily be the length of his arm if they were not sadly cut off just over its ears.

And behind the buffalo comes the wagon.  It is enormous - so large it barely fits through the large double doors of the compound, flung open before dawn in preparation.  Its wheels are as tall as Glimmer and studded with metal - the gleam is barely visible beneath layers of mud.  He sees a man sitting, holding the reigns of the pair of buffalo, his face obscured beneath a broad hat.  Seated next to  him is a figure Glimmer knows to be a Temple monk, layered robes plum and grey in color, her bald head gleaming like an egg.  Clinging to the side of the wagon is an older boy, seated on a small wooden seat and soaked to the bone from the rain.  As the wagon slows to a stop, he leaps down and fetches a stool from a shelf under the wagon and runs around to the side the monk is on, placing the stool on the swimming courtyard stones and producing a lacquered wood umbrella which he pushes open and holds out, as high as he can.

The monk leans down from her seat and climbs slowly and nimbly down.  Still, the time between the awning over her seat and coming under the umbrella is enough to soak her anew.  As she comes around the buffalo toward the boy’s dormitory, Glimmer stands straighter.  He puffs out his chest even though beneath it he feels his heart pounding so quick and sharp it is like applause.  He squares his shoulders the way he has seen soldiers do from a distance.  He is not tall for his age, but it helps.

He feels Mother’s hand come down on his shoulder, surprisingly gentle.  The monk’s eyes meet his.  There is a moment, like a flash of lightening, when he feels he may faint, but his vision clears and he is still standing.  The monk, umbrella still held over her head by the soaked older boy, is suddenly in front of him, looking him up and down.

Mother speaks up - her voice cracks slightly.  “This is the one - his name is Glimmer.”

The monk stares into his eyes and  he looks down after only a moment.  “He is small.”

Glimmer feels Mother’s hand tense on his shoulder like a bird’s claw.  “This is the boy.  He is the one.  He’s - “

“Very well.”  The monk leans down - she smells like something Glimmer has never smelled before, a mixture of otherworldly spices.  She smells like mystery.  “Boy.”  His eyes rise again to meet hers.  Mother’s claw on his shoulder tenses to the point of being painful, and he suddenly remembers to bow, deep and low, like he practiced.  “Boy.  My name is Sister Grey Sky.  Do you know why I am here?”

He tries to say something, still facing down in his bow.  

“You mumble.  Speak clearly.”

He glances up at her.  “You are...a monk.  You are here to take me to the Emperor.”

She shocks Glimmer by laughing at him.  “No, boy, I am not taking  you to the Emperor.  You have been chosen to serve the Emperor.  You are going to be his tool, to wield how he chooses for the betterment of all.  From amongst the other orphan boys,” - she gestures around him to the only family he has ever known - “you were chosen.”  She places a hand under his chin and firmly pulls him up out of his bow.  “I am taking you to a place where you will learn to serve the Emperor, with other boys and girls.  You will never come back here.  I hope you have said goodbye.”

Mother takes this moment to speak up again, addressing the silent gathering of orphan boys around her.  “The Emperor is our Father - he is Father to all of us, and he will be Father to Glimmer now.  It is an honor for Glimmer to be chosen.  Next year, another of you will be chosen to follow him and learn to serve the Emperor.”

The  monk glances at Mother.  “Even so.”

She turns to walk back to the wagon, and Glimmer realizes he is supposed to follow, rushing to catch up, and then at her hard glance, falling back a few paces, remembering his place.  A monk!  They are like soldiers - he has only seen them from a distance, along the road, while doing chores outside the compound, in their small fields or among the few animals.  Always in the colors of dusk, always shorn of all hair, traveling in small groups or alone.  His head fills with every story he’s heard of their magical powers - that their robes let them fly like birds, that the are as strong as ten men, that they can read your thoughts the way that a sage reads written characters.

None of these powers are apparent as Glimmer follows the monk to the wagon.  He steals a moment to glance back - Mother stands with the other orphan boys, still as a grey statue.  Like the rest, Glimmer was warned not to wave or to squirm to speak unless spoken to.  He cannot see if any of the others dare wave through the sheets of rain that separate them.  They are faceless, then formless, then gone.

He knows how proud he should be, but tears are hot on his face, mixing with the rain.

The monk - Sister Grey Sky she said her name was - leads him around to the back of the wagon.  Glimmer glances back at the driver’s bench, confused, but the monk continues, the parasol still held over her head by the older boy, and takes a ring of keys out of her robes.  There is a heavy iron lock on the rear doors of the wagon, and she unlatches it with a loud, sharp sound and swings one side open.

Inside are children.  At least a dozen - it is hard to see in the muted morning light.  The ones near the door shy back, pressing against the others, shielding their eyes from what is to them sudden brightness.  

Glimmer’s feet feel rooted in place.  He glances back at the boy’s dormitory, and can barely make out the shapes of the other orphans through the rain, filing back into the building.  It will be breakfast soon, vegetables and clumpy rice, and then chores, and then lessons.  Just like every day, until they are old enough to be sent on to find work in one of the nearby towns.

He takes a step back, but is stopped again by Sister Grey Sky’s heavy gaze falling on him.  They stare at each other for what seems like an eternity before, sighing angrily, she thrusts out a hand and grasps Glimmer by the front of his smock and pulls him toward the crowded wagon.

She leans down and speaks in his ear, her voice like a raincloud.  “This is not your home.  You belong to the Emperor now, mind, life and limb.  You are his.”  She holds his gaze, and he sees there the utter certainty of what she is saying.  “Get in.”

Blinking back fresh tears, he climbs into the back of the wagon.  It is dark, crowded, and smells like sick and unwashed bodies.  Someone in the back, far from the door, is coughing continually.  He shuffles awkwardly until he finds a place to sit, pressed between a larger boy and a girl who looks to be about his age.

The monk speaks to the children in the wagon.  “We’ll eat when we stop at midday.” She closes the rear door, and Glimmer hears the key in the heavy iron lock again.

***