Saturday, April 18, 2009

 

The SLAVE QUEEN for DINO-PIRATES

posted by barsoomcore

The first official adventure for the DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND game has now been updated to use the official DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND rules.

THE SLAVE QUEEN OF THE RUINED CITY

These rules feature all-new variations on skills like Diplomacy and Intimidate, a revised, streamlined damage system, and completely revamped systems for Reputation, supernatural powers and Recovery. This hard work has been done mostly by the amazing group over at the True20 forums, whose creativity and intelligence has made an already great game even better. It's been inspiring working with that crew, and the game wouldn't be half as cool as it is without their efforts.

The SLAVE QUEEN OF THE RUINED CITY has been run at numerous events, in cities around North America, and it's never failed to provide a great afternoon's entertainment. This package includes maps, sample characters, handouts -- along with the online rules it's everything you need to start playing DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND.

Well, except for some friends. You have to provide those yourself.

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Sunday, January 18, 2009

 

DINO-PIRATES UNLEASHED!

posted by barsoomcore



AT LAST!

The DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND complete rules are now available online. This is a full-blown system reference document for the game, and includes absolutely everything you need to run your own DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND adventures. Create characters, resolve challenges and get on with the cool part of the story-telling. All you need is here. Now. Free.

Except of course for the setting. That's still underway.

But this is a big step for the DINO-PIRATE faithful. Combined with the release last year of SLAVE QUEEN OF THE RUINED CITY, you can now play this legendary game in the comfort of your own home. Without needing to invite me over.

Although I am available for most of January, if you have a last-minute booking you want to make. My rates are very reasonable.

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Saturday, October 04, 2008

 

DINO-PIRATES and the Importance of Being Ignorant

posted by barsoomcore

Been sick for a few days and coming off that, I'm feeling rambly. Realised I never posted a GenCon report -- so here you go, point form:

  • Wireless Connectivity at GenCon sucks like something that sucks a lot.

  • Hurray for Paul coming all the way from AFGHANISTAN just to help me demo a very cool game that I'll be talking a lot more about Real Soon Now.

  • REFORM SCHOOL NINJA GIRLS was actually MORE fun than it sounds like. I know you're skeptical, but I was there, and you weren't, so I know. MORE fun. Where else can you have ninja chicks cutting boats in half, dressing up like geishas, and building giant transforming Godzilla robots? Only in DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND, I'm telling you.

  • I'm not as good at improvising adventure stories at three o'clock in the morning as I wish I were.

  • I am, however, a phenomenal impersonator of Scooby-Doo. I may have found my life's calling.

  • It's important to know you can't recreate improvisational greatness. Trying to do it again, once it's been done, is a fool's game.

  • I missed JD.

  • It's entirely possible to spend almost nothing at GenCon on anything game-related and still have a great time. Assuming you spend a sufficient quantity on alcohol. Or, even better, your roommates do.

I'm sure that answers all your questions. The good news is that all four DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND games went like stink, largely due to the fantastic players at every session.

I also picked up a comic book for Steph that has turned out to beat expectations: Artesia. I met the creator and seemed like a nice enough guy, and the art was very compelling, so I picked up a hardcover compiled and brought it home and I've just now read it and I have to say, I'm planning on collecting the rest. Mark Smylie has really done his research and produced a fantastic story that feels deeply rooted in a world that operates on different assumptions than ours.

Too often fantasy authors produce cultures that operate according to the assumptions that drive our modern world, with ideas on justice or morals or social structure that don't reflect the trappings of the world they're supposed to be a part of. I'm no historian (Hi Stuart!) but even a little bit of research can make most modern fantasy writers pretty much unreadable.

So DON'T LEARN ANYTHING, for crying out loud! It only leads to trouble.

Unless you're Mark Smylie. You keep reading, Mark. Anyway, Artesia was a welcome acquisition and marks a new story for us to obssess over. Hurrah.

In other news, the game we demoed that I'll soon be telling you all about received a solid going-over and some basic usability issues were uncovered that determined craftsmen are even now working hard to eliminate. Determined. Hard. Honest.

And finally, the rules for DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND have finally begun to stabilize. The stunt mechanic is solid now, as is the damage system (thanks, Baduin), and I'm working now with the clever crew over at the True20 forums to normalize the powers and the Fatigue mechanic. Once we're reasonably sure we have something that works, the full rules will become available online, and then ANYONE can play this game. Oh, yeah. DINO-PIRATES for everyone.

Also a quick shout-out to the Boston gang for some fantastic games and good times. Especially K and J, who were kind enough to put me up for a couple of nights. They did, however miss the comical moment where I was walking around downtown Boston and suddenly said, "Hey! This is the same Boston the Bruins play in!" Carl was amused.

So there you have it. GenCon 08. Nothing but good.

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Friday, October 03, 2008

 

Creating Space

posted by barsoomcore

A couple of things came together for me today and as per usual, in my head they turned into ideas about making stories about imaginary people even MORE exciting.

I've been re-reading Harrison Owen's Open Space Technology, which describes a type of meeting ("Open Space") that I've been dying to run for years. Yeah, it's weird. I wouldn't really care what the meeting was ABOUT, I just find the process so thrilling to consider that I just really want to see what it's like in "real life".

"The job of the facilitator is to create the time and space in which the group can realise its potential."


Also Steph was talking about what she loved about the book club she was part of back in Vancouver: that it was a place where each and every person was given time and space to speak and to share their ideas. She loved helping the group create that space, and found it extremely rewarding to be part of what they created.

Naturally I immediately thought of Dungeon Mastering.

I don't think it's quite as big a leap as it may appear to be. The job of the DM, after, is to create space and time for the players -- both in the imaginary sense by describing the scenes and characters encountered, but also in the actual, "real-world" sense. When the players come together at the table, and begin to interact, the DM has to manage the social situation, making sure that everyone around the group gets their chance to shine. While at the same time describing scenes that will give the players chances to do what they each long to do.

Great DMs listen to their players and identify what they need in order to realise their potential. EVERYONE at the table will have more fun if EVERYONE at the table has more fun. The biggest challenge a DM will face is making sure that all the varying definitions of "fun" around the table are manifested without destructively conflicting with each other.

The first step is understanding those definitions, and embracing them without demanding they conform to one's own. No player is ever going to have exactly the same definition as I do, and so it's futile for me to try and bend my players to MY definitions of fun. All I can do is try to understand what my players think is fun, and match that.

Of course, if my players think throwing dice at each other is fun, maybe the whole thing is doomed from the start.

I've remarked before that Dungeon Masters are a strange breed: like goalies, drummers and QA Analysts, DMs must have a very narrow set of skills, traits and interests in order to be good at the job, and not many people come with that mix. But how many other pastimes allow you to create space -- on two levels at the same time?

Photo by Barun Patro

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Monday, September 15, 2008

 

Them Bitey Jaws

posted by barsoomcore

I've been playtesting a variety of rules for the DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND game, and they're starting to settle down into a pretty cohesive whole. The process has been interesting on a lot of levels, but one in particular struck me -- the ability to adjust one's die roll AFTER one knows if that roll was successful.

Virtually every system that allows such adjustments (through some sort of point mechanic that allows the player to add to their roll or to re-roll a given die) requires the player to apply the adjustment before they know the outcome of the roll. The player is asked to gamble that A) the adjustment enabled by the resource will increase their result sufficiently to succeed, and B) that their original result was insufficient in the first place.

When I started working up the Stunt mechanic for DPoNI, which I originally got from iwatt, I used the same thinking. You could apply bonuses to your checks based on your skill ranks, if you got creative and gave me a good description. But folks didn't use the stunt rules all that often. Usually they'd forget in the heat of battle, or just shrug and hope for a good roll without the bonus.

I hadn't gotten the rules right. This was a cool idea, something very much in line with the feel I want for DPoNI, but my players weren't naturally gravitating to it. I took out a few of the other optional rules I'd implemented, but stunts remained a little-used feature.

It turned out the best way to get players to consider stunts was for me to suggest them -- and this started happening AFTER the die roll. If somebody had missed by only a little bit, there'd be a scramble to look over the character sheet and find some over-looked bonus that might apply. Stunts fit the bill admirably. Because they work as a static bonus, rather than a re-roll, they represent sort of that little extra effort that a character makes, using their existing skills, to just do a little better. And because you can apply them after discovering your roll wasn't quite enough, you don't need to keep track of every possibility while making your decisions -- you can discover possibilities afterwards, when you know you need them.

It means characters in DPoNI are a little tougher than standard True20 characters. They'll make successful rolls some 10% more often, depending on their level. And that's okay. DPoNI is meant to be more about coming up with cool stuff to do rather than managing resources and surviving (once again, like ALWAYS) by the skin of your teeth.

I tend to play more of a style where a player says what they want to TRY and do, and then makes a roll, the result of which tells us how WELL they did. So the actual narration of the event simulated by the die roll naturally comes after the roll is made and success is determined. The Stunt bonus, in this context, is more a function of the narration than the attempt. It works like this:

Player: "I attack! I get a... 14."
DM: "Oh, dear. You need at least a 16 to hit this guy."
(player looks over character sheet and notes she can get a +2 stunt bonus from her Acrobatics skill)
Player: "Okay, but I'm using my Acrobatics."
DM: "Okay, you'll just barely hit if you can do that. How are you using Acrobatics here?"
Player: "I run up the side of the cavern, somersaulting backwards and landing behind him, catching him just off-guard enough to skewer him before he knows I'm there."
DM: "Sold."

When a player rolls well, often the satisfaction of the roll is reward enough -- not all players feel a need to narrate something cool at that point. And likewise when a player completely botches a roll -- they're cranky and frustrated and not inclined to jump in with a bunch of creativity.

But nothing spurs creativity like the knowledge that if you can come up with something, you can snatch victory from them bitey jaws of defeat. So what do you think? Is this a reasonable way to run things? Does it require too much adjudication on the DM's part? Should NPCs get the same benefits?

Fish photo: Gavin Mills

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Sunday, September 14, 2008

 

The SLAVE QUEEN Arriveth!

posted by barsoomcore

She's been promised for months, but at last here she is. THE SLAVE QUEEN OF THE RUINED CITY is the first official DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND product available anywhere! On sale now at YourGamesNow.com for the low price of $6.00!

With a fantastic cover from Claudio Pozas (who also provided a number of full-colour character illustrations), this True20 adventure provides plenty of thrills and chills, along with seven sample PCs, two 1"-scale maps of key encounters, new monsters, and handy NPC stat charts, all designed to make the job of turning these 32 pages into an evening's entertainment as painless as possible.

THE SLAVE QUEEN OF THE RUINED CITY promises pulpy goodness from start to finish. This adventure includes all five of the necessary elements for any DPoNI adventure:


  • Dinosaurs

  • Pirates

  • Ninjas

  • Monkeys

  • Robots



We're awfully excited about this release, and it's only the first in what promises to be a long line of thrill-laden products from Scratch Factory Productions. This release of THE SLAVE QUEEN OF THE RUINED CITY uses the standard True20 rules, but soon we'll be making the official DPoNI rules available and when that happens, you'll see a revision to this adventure to use those.

Just read the opening paragraphs and if they don't grab you, then what are you hanging around here for, you snot-nosed brat?

Hidden amongst the tangled archipelago off the coast of the Empire, the cliff-ringed haunt of the legendary SLAVE QUEEN is one of the most feared and storied of all. Legend says she lives in barbaric splendour amongst her pathetic thralls, always seeking more captives to bend to her will. Night and day, hellish screams echo out from the high cliff-side caverns. Even in the thrashing midst of a storm like the one you're sailing through, you can hear those screams.

Even over the crash of your ship running aground on the knife-like rocks beneath her cliffs. Your ship is taking on water. The captain just fell overboard. Things don't look good.


Huh? If that doesn't sound like the right way to start an adventure, I don't know what to tell you. I mean, either I had you at SLAVE QUEEN or I didn't, is pretty much my thinking.

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Saturday, July 12, 2008

 

ENnies, Here We Come!

posted by barsoomcore

Fantastic news the other day -- our wildly-hyped product Fire and Brimstone was nominated for a prestigious ENnie award (the primary awards of the tabletop RPG industry) in the "Best Web Enhancement" category.

This is really thrilling news for all of us who worked on this product, tirelessly playtesting rulesystem after rulesystem to ensure our elegant yet simple yet not-very-complicated rules properly delivered every nuance of the sophisticated lava experience so many games fail to deliver.

We are thrilled to be nominated for this award, and expect to deliver the lava experience of a lifetime at this year's ENnies show.

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Friday, May 23, 2008

 

Robert Lynn Asprin: 1946-2008

posted by barsoomcore

Wow, the past few months have been alarmingly full of significant losses. I guess I'm getting to the age where the folks who were my heroes in my youth are hitting that black wall at the end of the race.

Man, I'm so not prepared for Bobby Orr passing on. There'd better be angels and trumpets, is all I can say.

But today it's Robert Asprin, at 62, the creator of the Thieves' World books (which laid the foundation for the Bordertown books which I know you've never heard of, maybe I need to do another in my "Ones Nobody Knows" series) and the writer of the Myth Adventures books, both of which started off so well I can't help but be indulgent towards how they ended up.

Mr. Asprin was able to communicate a love of the absurd, the zany, and the unrepentantly sentimental. The first couple of Thieves' World books contained some great stories, and the whole idea of a "shared world" anthology was part of the cultural shift that Gary Gygax also contributed to.

In the 80's, fantasy culture began embracing the ideas of world-building, ideas that perhaps had been first developed by early pulp writers like Howard and Lovecraft (working as they did upon speculative writers like Verne and even More), and then suddenly Tolkien put a level of detail into it that went beyond what anyone had seen. Gygax and his cohorts, not content with just doing their own world-building, turned that activity into something with social worth -- if you were willing to put some effort into it, and had the requisite skills, you could gather a social group ("Demented and sad, but social,") and work together to generate stories in that world.

Authors continued to work in that style, and Asprin had the genius idea to bring together a number of well-known (and not so much) authors in a single setting. I remember reading his foreword (or possibly somebody else's, talking about him) to the original volume, and how at first the idea was to bring all the famous characters of fantasy together -- so that you could have Conan confront Elric, or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser slit purses in Minas Tirith. But that turned out to be impossible -- probably my first encounter with the idea of "Intellectual Property" -- and so a new world and new characters were created.

It was a grand vision. It was a Good Thing To Do. The Sanctuary stories were part of the "gritty" trend in fantasy writing -- more Leiber than Tolkien, and better suited to short stories than to novels.

Sanctuary gave rise to numerous other shared projects, none of which ever carried the same cachet as the original. But the idea has stuck around, and moved into different media, and even for myself, has influenced much of what I think about IP ownership and creativity.

DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND is going to be a shared setting. It will be open for folks to contribute to, and to take from. I'm still working on how exactly the presentation will happen, but when it rolls out, I think it will be quite unlike any fantasy setting ever seen before -- at least in terms of HOW it gets created and fleshed out. It will be an exciting project, and given that I've spent several years of my life just getting it this far, I think it's fair to say that Mr. Asprin has had an immense impact on my life.

Thank you for Sanctuary, for Skeeve and Aahz, and for the lofty idea that creativity is better when it's shared. I believe you were right.

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Tuesday, March 04, 2008

 

RIP DM 1938-2008

posted by barsoomcore

Goodbye, Gary. It's a better world because you were in it, and I'm glad I got a chance to thank you for that. I can't imagine what I would have done with most of my life had you not been the very clever man you were. It was thirty years ago my parents brought home that mysterious box with the blue rulebook, those first adventures, and the little chits you cut up and used instead of dice. Even with the crude materials I started with, I knew this was something special.

My condolences to the Gygax family.

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Friday, February 29, 2008

 

Now You Get It, Right?

posted by barsoomcore

Here's Scratch Factory's True20 Prehistoric Bestiary as an Issuu display. I'm pretty thrilled about that. I mean, that's just cool, right there.

Not sure I'm crazy about the thickness of those borders. Well, it's a work in progress. You know how it is.

The other thing to announce is that tomorrow is Haru Matsuri at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Center, and we of Tokumeikan will be demonstrating. Demonstrations are always very exciting. I will have more to say on this topic (or perhaps some related topic) soon.

Finally, Gordon Liu is only in Peacock King for about ten minutes, but it's worth watching the whole film for those ten minutes. Man THROWS DOWN.

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Saturday, February 16, 2008

 

Art n Stuff

posted by barsoomcore

This guy makes me very happy. Go browse around the site of Erwin Madrid, artist. I love especially the stuff displayed under "Personal Projects", like the image here -- lovely colour work and such specific lighting you can almost feel the sunshine on your face.

A lot of his Drake's Fortune stuff evokes the kind of feel I have in my mind for DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND, the forthcoming logo for which I think I'm probably driving Claudio completely insane over with my endless suggestions for changes. But I know he doesn't mind.

Do you, Claudio?

And the logo is going to be majorly BAD-ASS. And I have previously demonstrated my expertise on that subject, so listen up.

In other news, Chuck Rice over at RPGObjects/Vigilance Press has announced plans to create a Clash of the Roses True20 game. Gaming in the world of Henry IV (parts one and two). As long as the soliloquy mechanic is good, I'm on board.

And my buddy Joshua notes that as AWESOME as Hot Pursuit was, it probably suffered from the "too many rules" disease that afflicted the d20 scene. I agree. And I think the right place to address that problem is the True20 release of my chase rules -- which will probably happen sometime in May.

I got interested in the idea of Passively Multi-player Online Games (I think via Metafilter), which then led me to the ideas of ludology, which have been helpful for me in clarifying what I find wrong about the notion that video-games form an important new art form. Ludology is the study of games AS games (as opposed to the study of games as narrative, or as demonstrations of economic choices, yada yada yada). And I came across this paper that outlined the following definitions of play and game:

Paidea [play] is "Prodigality of physical or mental activity which has no immediate useful objective, nor defined objective, and whose only reason to be is based in the pleasure experimented by the player".

Ludus [game] is a particular kind of paidea, defined as an "activity organized under a system of rules that defines a victory or a defeat, a gain or a loss."


Not bad definitions, all things considered. But interesting to note that under these definitions, RPGs don't actually have to be games. A table-top RPG doesn't have to provide for victory or gain via the rules. Many do, but they don't have to. It's possible to run a game where gain is acquired externally to the rules -- through the story being told, or just by DM fiat.

For example, my Barsoom campaign eschewed such mechanics as experience points -- I simply decided when I wanted my players to go up a level, and they did. There was no rule that defined that gain for the players. Under the definition above, Barsoom was play, but it was not a game.

Well, you can get too tied up in definition. But I've always been fonder of playing without rules than with. I just like making up stories with my friends.

Finally, Steven Brust is a great writer, and he wrote a Firefly novel that's free. Go. Read. Play.

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Another Sort of Value

posted by barsoomcore

So a while back I posted on how Paizo is providing a certain kind of value to my gaming. Something interesting in the whole "providing value to gamers" world has been going on over in the True20 world.

Green Ronin seem to be taking almost the direct opposite approach with True20 that Paizo is taking with Pathfinder. Instead of providing specific, encounter-level detail, GR are working on providing genre-level rules detail. I think it's an approach that will bear dividends. True20 is turning into the ultimate DM's toolkit system. Instead of releasing adventures and campaign setting material, GR put out non-genre-specific rulebooks that invite DMs to pick and choose, selecting just the components that will suit their games.

There can't ever be a "standard" way to play True20 -- any incarnation of the game will have to embody a set of choices on the part of the DM as to what the setting will be, what backgrounds will be used, what options will be available to the player. The game is literally unplayable with all the options included. It's fascinating, and very suited to my "kitbashing" approach to DMing.

They're now releasing a set of "Handbooks" for each "Role" in the game -- Warrior, Expert and Adept. And while that may sound like the "Classbooks" that Wizards releases for D&D, the difference here is again that the options provided are not all consistent with each other, and no campaign could ever support all possibilities. The DM has to decide what kind of campaign to run and then make choices as to which options support that.

Green Ronin's strategy appears to be to allow third-party developers to create campaign settings and adventures for their system -- they're opening up the True20 license later this year to make it easy (and free) for folks to create True20-compatible products. Interesting how this is pretty much exactly the strategy originally designed for D&D with the creation of the Open Gaming License. Wizards is moving away from Open Gaming with the forthcoming edition of D&D, and GR seems willing to take up the mantle.

It's an interesting move and it should prove to be a fascinating year in the industry. As a believer of the idea that free markets generate the most value, I'm obviously rooting for True20. But we shall see what we shall see.

In other news, 2008 remains murky.

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Friday, December 07, 2007

 

Bodging, True20 Style

posted by barsoomcore

What's this? It's the Damage Conditions portion of the True20 Narrator's Screen, an indispensable aid for all True20 GMs, who have to refer to the complex damage conditions of the game nearly every combat round. Without this little chart, gameplay can slow to a crawl anytime somebody gets injured. Combat would be excruciating without this guy.

What's that you say? The True20 Narrator's Screen DOESN'T INCLUDE a Damage Conditions chart? Can it be true?

Why, yes. Yes, it is. The Green Ronin folks are obviously quite a bit more adept at this stuff than I am, since they apparently don't need to refer to the Damage Conditions every round the way I do. Which I'm sure is fine for them, but I just can't keep all that stuff straight in my little head, so I need some help.

And otherwise the Narrator's Screen is AWESOME. It's pretty, it's made of sturdy stuff and it has lots of useful info on it. But it doesn't have the Damage Conditions.

But never fear! We here at Scratch Factory are not the sorts to just throw our hands up and make the best of a bad situation. No sir. We'll make the WORST of a bad... Wait.

No. What I mean to say is:

Here's a replacement chart you can print off and affix to your Narrator's Screen. It replaces the "Concealing Items" portion of the existing chart, which I frankly feel I can do without. If you feel likewise, you're welcome.

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Friday, November 23, 2007

 

Fire and Brimstone!

posted by barsoomcore

Lavatastic!



Today was a pretty exciting day in some parts. Today marks the official release of Fire And Brimstone! A Comprehensive Guide to Lava, Magma and Superheated Rock! Indeed, the thrills are practically non-stop around hereabouts.

See, WAY back at GenCon, there was a group decision that a comprehensive set of rules to govern all situations regarding the use of lava in role-playing scenarios needed to be published. The group making this decision was well-informed, experienced, energetic, astonishingly good-looking and thoroughly drunk. Most of us, I suspect, promptly forgot the decision had been made and all would have come to naught.

But no.

For TONY did not forget, and got the ball rolling in the post-GenCon haze, and so many people contributed that it's impossible to list them all. Luke and Matthew (hm, but not Mark or John) and Deb stepped up with mighty gifts, and tons of folks just threw ideas into the pot and it all honestly and truly came together. Joe and Suzi over at Expeditious Retreat Press offered to host it and we were off.

And THEN somebody suggested we get some celebrity quotes to plaster the back cover with and to throw around in our marketing efforts. And hoo boy. Did we ever get some celebrity quotes.

Let's start with GARY GYGAX. Just the guy who invented the whole hobby in the first place. The Grand Old Man of D&D. Wow.

But it doesn't stop there.

Ed Greenwood, creator of the Forgotten Realms D&D setting. Steve Kenson, creator of True20. Scott Rouse, Senior Brand Manager at Wizards of the Coast (they publish D&D, for those of you in bleachers). Speaking of Wizards of the Coast, how about PETER ADKISON, the guy who started the company in the first place? Or how about Robin D. Laws, creator of the awesome game Feng Shui and one of my personal game design heroes? How about Sue Cook, half of the Sue and Monte team that are responsible for much of what happened to this hobby over the last ten years? How about Wil Wheaton, who I believe is an actor. And plays D&D. And Paul Campion. I know you don't know who he is, but he was the lead texture painter on the Balrog for Fellowship of the Ring -- so he's got, like, lava expertise. You know.

All these folks gladly donated their time and their brainpower to supporting this project. It's been a long haul from GenCon and without everyone's enthusiasm and hard work, it wouldn't have happened. It's very exciting to have the opportunity to work with some of the funniest, smartest, and (as mentioned before) most astonishingly good-looking people I've ever met. I fit right in.

And no matter what, you gotta admit that's a pretty stellar lineup of celebrity quotes. If that doesn't encourage you to download this FREE PDF RIGHT NOW, I don't know what to say to you people. Kids these days, I don't understand.

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Sunday, November 04, 2007

 

Rrraaarrrrr

posted by barsoomcore

That was a dinosaur noise, if you couldn't tell. Me and dinosaurs go way back. Dinosaurs have never let me down, I have to say. In fact, they just go on getting cooler and cooler as the years go by. I mean, they have feathers now, and they run around, and they're even BIGGER than they used to be, and some of them are just totally BIZARRE.

And by BIZARRE, of course, I mean AWESOME.

So one could probably win some easy money that at some point, betting that Corey's going to be involved in an RPG product that involves dinosaurs. Seriously.

And here it is, the:

True20 Prehistoric Bestiary



Packed full of REAL dinosaur-y goodness, even fully illustrated (thank you, WikiCommons) -- True20 statblocks for all the well-known dinosaurs, and a few beasties that aren't so well known.

It's all kind of Joshua's fault. He was complaining that nobody seemed to be using the latest in paleontology to create cool beasties for gaming. He was right, too, and it got me thinking. And me and Joshua thinking in the same channels? That never ends well.

Anyway, the book lists off 25 creatures of all levels, with (as I said) full-colour illos all the way through (only the Dragonfly, Giant, doesn't get a pic), some details on how these beasties are encountered in the DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND campaign setting, and even a "battlemap" of a fun-to-ride-on-and-even-more-fun-to-jump-off howdah that one might find mounted on a triceratops.

Because if you had a triceratops, why WOULDN'T you ride it?

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Tuesday, September 25, 2007

 

Providing Value

posted by barsoomcore

For those of you who don't hang breathlessly on every development of the forthcoming new edition of the Dungeons and Dragons game, you may not be aware that, er, there is one. But there is. This is the fourth new edition of the game, sort of. Anyway, they call it Fourth Edition.

AND Wizards of the Coast (a very tiny division of Hasbro, which owns D&D) is publishing little updates on the design and development process as part of their marketing efforts for this new edition.

Which, predictably enough, has a certain portion of the Internet in an uproar.

Is there ANYTHING that doesn't cause an uproar on a certain portion of the Internet? I mean, besides my blog posts?

Honestly, I have a point in here. Stay with me.

So the latest of these little marketing "Inside Peeks" came out yesterday, and it outlined how demons and devils are going to be treated in the new version. A little cosmology, a little campaign setting history, and some basic ideas on what's fun in gaming. All reasonable stuff, actually. Pretty good ideas, to my thinking.

But here's the thing: it's just one possible way of handling such things. It's not a bad way, in fact it's a pretty good way. But there are plenty of pretty good ways. I'm absolutely certain that just about anyone I've gamed with in the past few years could come up with a cosmology and a history just as good.

So how much value is there, really, in Wizards providing this for us? Maybe I'm off, but I'm thinking, not a lot. Even for folks who don't want to do all that thinking, is there really an advantage here? I mean, there was already a pretty good idea in place from the last edition. Is it just novelty for novelty's sake?

And is THAT a viable business plan? I know it works for the fashion industry (now THERE'S a parallel), but really?

Thing is, if I want some good ideas on a new way to handle demons and devils, honestly, I go online and ask the folks there. I'll get half-a-dozen sharp, creative (and probably play-tested) ideas in a day. That even goes for rules, not just fluffy stuff like this. And the situation is only going to get worse (or rather, better) as time goes by. My interest in paying $40 for a hardcover book full of rules I can get elsewise isn't going to rise, I'm pretty sure.

So where is the value? What is a viable business plan for this industry?

I think the good folks at Paizo are onto something. Their new monthly publication, Pathfinder, offers up a host of useful stuff -- a fully detailed adventure (for those of you not in the know but gamely keeping up, that means that all the math I would normally need to to do before running a game is already done for me -- this is a good thing) (and yes, doing lots of math is actually part of these games), new monsters I can drop into my own games, no matter what the setting (or the ruleset, to some degree), pages upon pages of gorgeous art...

Now, much of this sort of thing I'm sure I'll find in the new D&D books, but those are going to be immense hard-bound volumes selling for $40 a pop. Ish. These Pathfinder books are ten bucks.

And they're more SPECIFIC, and I think that's really where the value is going to be in the future. For better or worse, the Open Gaming License has released the basics of solid rules design into the world for all to observe and make use of. Providing large-scale generic-ish rulesets just doesn't strike me as a solid play for the future. Not compared to providing detailed, specific value.

Heck, I don't even play D&D and I love Pathfinder already.

Remember my original goal with my Mini-Games? Well, that didn't end so well, honestly, but not, I think, because the idea itself was flawed. I think the value in this industry is in making it easier for folks to get together and have fun. The obstacles to me running a game aren't in the rules. I got rules coming out my ears. They aren't in the cosmology and big-picture setting details. The obstacles I face are in getting characters generated, in having some notion of what's behind that door RIGHT THERE, and having some sort of answer when my players ask, "What happens if we just, you know, SET IT ON FIRE?"

Paizo seems to be helping me help my players set things on fire. I appreciate that.

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Wednesday, September 05, 2007

 

True20 Ship Combat Rules! Available Now!

posted by barsoomcore

Hey all you wacky True20 fans out there in radio land -- have we got a deal for you. A whole 11-page PDF of shiny new rules for handling ship combats in True20. With pictures even! And, wonders of wonders, a whole set of example ships (well, three) drawn from the hitherto-unplumbed depths of the legendary DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND campaign setting, which is slowly but surely heaving towards a welcome harbour.

These rules were born on a thread on the True20 forums, and most of the credit for their cleverness goes to True20Chick and iwatt for their creativity and ingenuity in developing and analysing the rules as they were developed. I was late to the party and mostly just brought snacks.

But now there's a PDF! And snacks, tasty.

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Monday, September 03, 2007

 

Bigger Than (Imaginary) Life

posted by barsoomcore

One of the greatest joys of GenCon was getting to observe so many other GMs and their GMing styles.

We're a curious breed, those of us who run our own games. You can play in a game and never really take any of it all that seriously; but if you're going to RUN a game, on some level, in some way, you need to be able to convince yourself that this really needs doing, and furthermore, you need to believe that you are just the one to do it.

It's been said (by me) that the one real requirement to being a film director is simply having the balls to tell other people what to do, for no other reason that YOU think it's a good idea. The same applies to running games. All you really need is the cojones to be able to tell other people what happens next.

I believe this leads to a common trait amongst GMs: they're all, in some fashion, bigger than life.

And I further believe that their ability as a GM increases as they develop the quality they have that makes them so. This is why so many great GMs have such diverse styles.

I think of Kevin, who ran a tremendous game of Dread -- he's got a gift for straight-up oration, and can just reel off spectacular descriptive passages seemingly without reference to any notes. Gift of the gab, they call it. Dread is perfect for him, with its simple mechanic and narrativist structure.

Or Liz, who gesticulates wildly, demonstrating to her players what's happening or how NPCs are reacting. She's a natural performer and her liveliness makes for such an exciting game table you barely notice the rules.

Gabe's dry wit and self-deprecating humour create a game space full of hilarity and yet with a compelling story as we tried to figure out just how all the pieces fit together.

Alan ran a Mars-based game that somehow brought X-Files-like subtlety to fantastic planetary romance and his serious demeanour and careful attention to detail (even when his players were distracted just making up wild conspiracy theories) kept the whole thing grounded and our character's struggles all the more thrilling.

I was really too drunk to evaluate Kirin's performance, but the fact that he handled a dozen drunks in a riotous game of Kobolds Ate My Baby and managed to keep the game on track says everything that needs to be said about his force of personality.

And that's just GenCon GMs. Nobody's going to convince me that Chris doesn't bring that wacky, "What the heck did he just say? Oh wait, that actually does make perfect sense. Weird." sensibility to his games. Nor that Paul's Empires In Collision isn't the perfect vehicle for his obsessions with history, adventure stories and detailed re-creation. And what to say about Stuart and his stunning capacity for developing complex puzzles and relationships?

Us GMs have to be bigger than life in some way -- to possess some quality that we elevate beyond just sad obsession into true creative energy. And I think we all get better the more we give way to that quality and lose our fear of being sadly obsessed. The more enthusiasm and joy we have in our particular gifts, the more memorable a game we can deliver to our players.

Our gifts are different -- a joy in delivery, an obsession with detail, a determination to overcome the obstacle of inattention -- but common to us all is a recognition that we do possess gifts and that we can bring joy and good memories to those who we can convince (cajole, entreat, swindle) into joining us.

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Tuesday, August 21, 2007

 

Back, Baby!

posted by barsoomcore

The only bad thing about going to GenCon 2007 is that it makes me wish I'd gone to GenCon 2006.

Holy fun.

I think I continuously giggled for five whole days. Them's funny peeps.

Crying out "GOD OF JENGA!" at the assembled guests of the Embassy Suites was definitely a highlight.

As was assassinating not one, but TWO toads in Talisman, and taking their stuff. Toads = good times.

There was the drunken game of "Kobolds Ate My Baby" at midnight on Thursday. THAT didn't end well.

And I totally stood right beside Phil Foglio. I did that. He was RIGHT THERE.

Apparently I surprise others with my great tallness.

And sometimes, it turns out that people who seem cool online are really and truly even cooler in person. I met so many great people on this trip. It seems weird I hadn't already known them for years.

And I discovered if your players are killer, it doesn't matter how unplanned your game is. I realised I have been extraordinarily blessed with great players pretty much as long as I've been running games. Everyone at GenCon was absolutely amazing. Pretty much like the old gang back in Vancouver, and Stuart's crew here in TO.

There will be another DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND campaign, that much is certain.

The SLAVE QUEEN OF THE RUINED CITY met another gruesome end. I think I need to toughen her up a little.

And the MONKEY WARRIORS OF THE WALKING SWORD did their best a couple of times but beyond headshotting over-confident ninjae, they were reliably unable to prevent our heroes from saving the day.

Good times.

Next year's adventures are already named:

REFORM SCHOOL NINJA GIRLS

and

LORDS OF THE LAVA LANDS

The latter will of course incorporate our forthcoming comprehensive Lava Rules PDF. Stay tuned!

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Tuesday, August 14, 2007

 

Off To GenCon!

posted by barsoomcore

Tomorrow's the day! W007! I'm going to GenCon. I'll be running three instances of DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND, and playing a whole pile of awesome games run by folks I'm dying to meet, and generally I'm just stupid with excitement over the whole thing.

It's been stressful getting prepared (HOURS in the Passport Office. HOURS!) but at last I have everything I need. One more round of printing off a bazillion pages and I am good to go. Whee!

In 36 hours I'll be playing Original D&D "Assault on the Temple of Elemental Evil". That's pretty close to my definition of "fun".

Yay!

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