Author Archives: Josh

Rise! Rise from the grave!

It has been just over a year since I have posted anything.

Yikes.

There’s a lot of stuff I’ve been turning over in my mind lately, trying to come up with a way to get some forward momentum going. So today will be (relatively) short and sweet.

I recently watched the TV adaptation of Stephen King’s Bag of Bones.bagofbones

It wasn’t very good.

Bag of Bones is probably my favorite Stephen King novel, and maybe one of my all-time favorite novels. I actually read this novel to my wife when we were first together. The book is a beautiful, haunting love story that I would probably recommend as a good introduction to King’s work.

The TV movie is poorly paced, and loses a big chunk of a key part of the book — the relationship that develops between Mike Noonan, Mattie Devore, and her daughter Kyra. It just isn’t in the film. We have a couple of key plot points, but the story spends a lot of time focused on the mystery of Dark Score Lake and what happened to Sara Tidwell back in 1939.

Not recommended.

The Dark Side (of Fandom)

So… how’ve you been?

I’ve been good. Life continues. Work. Family. Gaming.

So here’s the thing. I’ve been sitting and mulling on something for a bit, not sure how to approach the topic, given my position in the online RedBrick/Earthdawn community. So let me preface this by saying I really don’t have any insider knowledge in this particular situation, and everything I say here is purely my opinion and in no way reflects on the opinions or positions held by anybody else, anywhere, at any time past, present, or future.

A couple weeks ago, Angus McNicholl uploaded this post to his blog, announcing that he had been removed as primary author on Fading Suns Third Editon — with (apparently) no warning or reason given. The new edition had been in development for some time, and according to earlier announcements from RedBrick, was slated for release later this year.

Things got a little heated online in the wake of this, with a thread on RPGnet  reaching nearly 500 posts, and a couple of threads on the RedBrick forums. Since the news broke, the RB forums have been closed down, with only the admin-only ‘news’ posts available but nothing else.

Again, I want to stress that I don’t know what was/is going on. I was not involved with Fading Suns in any way, and only have a passing acquaintance with Angus. I have known James Sutton (head of RedBrick) for quite a number of years, but I haven’t really spoken with him at all since the announcement. I have no insight into what is going on — I’m as in the dark as anybody else.

I can certainly understand where many of the folks who have commented on this are coming from. All that is out there is Angus’s post, and — effectively — silence from RedBrick. The shutdown of the forums, facebook page, and the like in the past weeks certainly give the appearance of a company that is not interested in addressing the concerns of fans and followers. From the position of somebody outside looking in… it doesn’t look good.

But in all honesty… what is RedBrick going to say? What could they say? This is an internal company matter, and James is under no obligation to anybody to explain the reasons for his decisions. It is his company, and (to shamelessly steal a paraphrase from the much more erudite blog post by Neil Gaiman) he is not your bitch. This matter is between James and Angus, and that is all.

I’m not going to get into a discussion over who has or has not behaved well. That’s not really what I’ve been turning over in my mind the last couple weeks.

What bothers me most about this whole thing is the sense of entitlement that I feel coming off some of the internet commenters — the feeling that they, by virtue of being fans, must be told what is going on. In my opinion, the only thing the fans are entitled to be told is the change. Anything beyond that….

*Shrug*

Don’t get me wrong, I like knowing as much as the next guy.

But it isn’t any of my business.

And… this may make me sound like some get-off-my-lawn, uphill-both-ways-in-the-snow fogey… but this idea in the internet age that everything needs to be made public, and is subject to some kind of faux-democratic court of public opinion? A market-based referendum on somebody’s character rather than their creation?

Fuck it.

There are lines. Some content creators are more open to their fans and the public — but that doesn’t mean that all creators need to toe the same lines. We — as fans — are entitled to exactly as much information as they choose to give us. We aren’t part of their lives, and while it is great to be engaged by a creator, and feel a kind of  shared ownership in their creations because of the fan community around it, they produce a product, and we decide whether to consume it. There are lots of reasons to do so, and certainly the public character of the creator can play a part.

But… really… this whole thing? Grumps me right the hell up.

When do you roll?

There was a thread on the Redbrick LLC forums a few weeks back talking about “cooperative actions” and how they should be handled in Earthdawn — using an airship captain as one of the examples. Rather than have each individual sailor roll, the poster wanted to know how to apply the crew as a bonus to the captain’s roll. Earthdawn doesn’t really have any kind of default method of handling things like this — something the original poster felt was a shortcoming.

As I was exploring the idea and how I would handle it, I kept coming back to the question of why you need to come up with a general rule for a situation that varies depending on the circumstances. Personally, the way I would handle it would depend on what was going on at the time, and what the roll is trying to accomplish.

Which brings me to a more fundamental question. When do you roll?

If you’ve spent any time in the role-playing game community, you will probably have come across a couple of different schools of thought on this question. Personally, I think that rolling should generally be reserved for times when the outcome of a particular action is in doubt and the results have potential that affect or be affected by the player characters.

This second part, I think, is the most important. The player characters are the most important characters in the game, and the only part of the game world the gamemaster does not have control of. One of the main purposes of an RPG rules system is to define (and limit) the interactions of the shared play-space. The amount of influence the rules have can (and frequently does) vary from group to group, session to session, and even within the session — combat, for example, generally has a much larger rules influence than any other  part of the game.

When the outcome is not in doubt, there is no need for a roll. When the outcome has no effect on the PCs, or cannot be affected by the PCs, there is no need for a roll. These are pretty straightforward, and I don’t think anybody would argue with them. Combat typically has a large degree of uncertainty, and the outcome can have a significant — potentially fatal — effect on the player characters, so rolls make a lot of sense.

It’s the edge cases that are interesting, and where you are likely to find the most range of opinions (exactly where the edge falls is another point of debate). Let’s take a look at an example from an old Earthdawn adventure — Terror in the Skies. At one point during the adventure, the player characters are riding an airship to Talon Kaer, and there are strong winds and nasty weather to contend with.

When do you roll?

Do you make rolls for the large airship approach? The smaller airboat heading toward the cave entrance? Setting aside what the adventure itself presents, the decisions of when to roll say a lot about the individual play style of the person (and group) making the call.

I don’t have a solid answer — and that’s the whole point. But it is a question that any GM worth the title needs to keep in mind when planning their game — and during the game itself.

New section – Articles

If you take a look at the very top of the page, you’ll see a new “Articles” link. This will give you a drop-down menu where you can go to a page where I have written a more full-fledged article about something or other. Right now there is only one article, Step by Step — an article that looks at the underlying mechanics of Earthdawn’s Step System. The original article appeared on the old RedBrick forums, but since they moved, the article hasn’t been available online.

Check it out, and I will add more articles to the archive as I continue to work on the site.

The Campaign: First Session

Last night was my first night running a tabletop game in… three years? It has all faded into the B.C. mists — the time “Before Children”.

Wait, that’s not entirely accurate. I did try running a D&D (third edition) game at one point, and we didn’t get more than a session or two into it.

This was my first time running Earthdawn in about three years.

Boy was I rusty.

I think the session went well, all things considered. I kicked things off with a group of ork bandits attacking an inn which the PCs had to defend. Nobody died (well, none of the player characters… maybe I’m losing my touch), though it was a tough fight and the two melee heavy-hitters came away with a bunch of damage and a wound each.

I am reminded, however, how I do not like brand new characters in the Earthdawn system. The mechanics with low steps can get kind of frustrating if the dice happen to be going against you. This is made even tougher in the first session, when players do not have much karma to help offset the low average numbers. Armor is also pretty powerful at low circles, because armor defeating hits are rare, and the average damage can have a hard time getting through chain mail and shield — even the troll Swordmaster with his two-handed axe was having trouble doing significant damage.

Still, we had fun, and it is good to be behind the screen again.

Legend Points are not real!

One of my pet peeves when it comes to the Earthdawn system is the idea that Legend Points (Earthdawn’s equivalent of Experience Points) are real within the context of the game setting. This is, I believe, largely the result of so many other abstract concepts from other RPGs (like levels, classes, and so forth) given in-game reality (Circles, Disciplines, etc), as well as a system called “Legendary Status” that uses a character’s Legend Point total as a measure of how famous (or infamous) they are.

Here is an example from RPGnet:

And all of this ties (sorry for the pun) directly to how fame and XP are interconnected. A famous weapon (like Nioku’s Bow) is powerful because it’s famous. And it’s famous because Nioku was famous, and did legendary things with her bow. You tieing your personal pattern (via threads) to the pattern of a famous weapon make both of you more potent via the fact that both of you have fame. As you make legends with an item both you and it become more potent.

Don’t get me wrong, one of my favorite things about Earthdawn is how it gives in-game reasons for a lot of the common fantasy RPG tropes. But the idea that a character’s power is the result of his fame is putting the cart before the horse.

If you think about the idea of Legend Points as an in-game thing, it leads to some interesting (and problematic) places. If you can earn ‘experience’ by telling stories, does that mean an individual can become a great swordsman by telling stories about being a great swordsman?  If an adept kills a horror in the forest, and he doesn’t tell anybody, does he earn the Legend Points? Neither of these really make any sense.

Take a look at the Awarding Legend Points section of the Earthdawn Gamemaster’s Guide (it starts on page 97). There are several elements that result in Legend Awards for characters:

  • Completing goals (session and adventure)
  • Conflicts
  • Gathering Magical Treasure
  • Individual Deeds
  • Roleplaying

In other words, a character earns a Legend Award for doing stuff. Telling tales (aka ‘building your legend’) certainly qualifies as doing something, but it doesn’t have its own category (depending on your play style, it could be counted as either an individual deed or roleplaying).

Legend Points are a character advancement mechanic. They are a way to model a character’s experience, placing that in a mechanical framework. They are not “real” in the setting of Earthdawn. A character may talk about their ‘legend’ but there is no in-game quantification of this — unlike “Third Circle” or “Warrior Discipline” which do have an in-game reality.

If an adept kills a horror in the forest, he has an experience that teaches him something that allows him to advance in the practice of his Discipline. It doesn’t matter if he tells anybody or not he still has the experience and would, in game mechanical terms, earn Legend Points.

Legend has a thematic importance to Earthdawn because of the post-apocalyptic nature of the setting, highlighting the importance of discovering that which was lost, it is a real thing — the history and oral traditions of the setting. Legend Points are not a quantifiable thing to the people of Barsaive, and these two things should not be conflated.

Nioku’s bow is famous because it has a lot of magical power. It doesn’t have a lot of magical power because it is famous. The last line in the post I quoted is true — as you make legends with an item both you and the item become more potent but that power is because you are doing things and those things you have done lead to legends.

 

Campaign Design: Wonderful players

Preparation continues for my upcoming Earthdawn campaign. Tonight my players came over and we made characters. I’m a GM that likes to have some idea of what characters I am going to have, because then I can tailor particular aspects of the game to suit them. This leads me to a subject near and dear to my twisted gamemaster heart — a player who is willing to give me rope to (potentially) hoist him in the air, twisting in the wind. At my table, this player is Doug. Every game should have a Doug.

As I’ve mentioned in my past entries about this game, I am going to be setting it (at least initially) in the area around Landis, Cara Fahd, and the Twilight Peaks. Doug handed me a gift by making an ork Sky Raider.

I’ll take that intake of breath as a sign you know what that means. Still, for those of you not as familiar with how this character is a gift, Cara Fahd is the newly (re-)formed ork nation in the southwestern corner of Barsaive. Having an ork means that I have an interesting “in” for any kind of stories I may want to pursue relating to politics relating to the ork nation. The nearby Twilight Peaks are home to a large concentration of troll Sky Raiders — who have a tradition of capturing individuals on their raids and having them serve in their clanholds.

What is wonderful is that Doug — like all wonderful players — is willing to write me a blank check, and go along with my ideas. He likes his characters, but doesn’t feel overly protective of them. He likes to have interesting things happen, and he trusts that I am not going to deliberately screw him over to give that to him. Part of this trust is the result of having played games with him for more than a decade — he is actually one of my oldest gaming buddies, and has been a part of almost every tabletop game I have run since I’ve known him.

The game is really starting to take shape at this point. The group has four characters: T’skrang Archer, Obsidiman Wizard, Human Warrior, and Ork Sky Raider. Our first play session is in two weeks, my next objective is to put together the framework for the first adventure, and start thinking about the larger pieces of my game and how I can tie these PCs together.

SOPA/PIPA

You’ve no doubt seen the news about a number of websites that are “going dark” today in protest against the SOPA and PIPA bills working their way through congress. Google has a good summary, as do a number of other places.

I don’t have anything new to add, except the change in background in support. These bills are poorly written and could cripple the internet. Make sure you let your Senators and Representative in Congress know that they should vote against these measures.

What I’m Reading: I Am Not A Serial Killer

What I’m Reading is going to be a semi-regular feature on the site. In it, I will write about a book I just finished, and see if there is anything applicable to tabletop gaming that I can pull out of it. There will likely be variants of this — What I’m Watching for TV and movies, or What I’m Playing for video games. These posts may contain spoilers, so be warned!

I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan WellsI Am Not A Serial Killer is the first in a trilogy about John Wayne Cleaver, a teenage sociopath and how he deals with the arrival of an apparent serial killer in his sleepy middle-america town. Some people have compared it to a young-adult Dexter, and I’ll have to take their word for it (since I haven’t read any of the books or seen the TV series). John is aware of his predilections, and has a whole bunch of rules to keep him from sliding into dangerous behaviors. In order to defeat the evil in his town he has to break his rules and let loose his inner monster.

I enjoyed the book quite a bit, and found it a quick read. John is an engaging character and the story is told first-person from his perspective. The characterization is probably the book’s greatest strength, especially when we start getting into the tension of John trying to harness his sociopathic tendencies for good, without letting it hurt those closest to him.

If you’re looking for a straight serial-killer story, you may be disappointed by the supernatural element — the killer that has come to town is a “demon” (to use John’s term) that kills people and steals their body parts to heal itself. There is no distinctly religious aspect to the book, and no sense is given of a greater supernatural world hiding behind the “real world” like a lot of urban fantasy.

When it comes to gaming, the demon is perhaps most directly applicable — something like this creature could be taken more or less whole cloth for a World of Darkness (or other modern supernatural) game. You could also include it in many fantasy settings to one degree or another (it brings to mind the Horror Nebis from Earthdawn).

But a more interesting lesson can be taken from how John finds the creature’s weakness and manages to defeat it — personal and emotional ties.  There is a school of player thought in tabletop RPGs that tries to avoid any kind of connection that the gamemaster can use against them — epitomized by the “lone wolf” archetype represented by characters like Wolverine. These characters have no family, and their only “friends” are passing acquaintances. In extreme examples, these players even have their character avoid connections with other player characters.

While a ham-fisted GM can certainly abuse this, I think personal connections are important to a game — they give player characters (and their players) a connection to the world, and frequently a reason to do what they do. It can be a weakness, certainly, but can also be a source of strength — when something you value is threatened, there is a reason to push a little harder, dig a little deeper. Without that emotional connection, what is to stop the characters from walking away if things get tough?

So when making a character for a game, give some thought to their personal connections, not only with the other player characters, but NPCs in the setting as well. GMs, try and use recurring characters in supporting roles to build connections for your PCs, and don’t abuse the connections too much — otherwise you will breed a party of sociopathic lone wolves that have no connection to anyone beyond themselves.