SF and Gaming Blog

The August issue of Dreamscribe is now online. This one contains the fourth of Amadán’s Online GM Tips, and my own review of Summer Stabcon.

There is going to be a major revamp in the next month or so, giving Dreamscribe the improvement in appearance and navigation it urgently needs.

Game Dream 6 asks us:

Have you attended a game or media (i.e. comic book / SF) convention? If not, what’s kept you from doing so? If so, how was your experience, and what can you share with others to nudge their decision one way or the other?

As regular readers of this blog should know, yes. Since I moved up to Manchester three years ago, I haven’t joined up with a local gaming group, and have been relying on cons for my gaming fix. This has included big conventions like Gencon UK, one day events like Dragonmeet, and smaller residential cons like Stabcon and Conjuration. There’s also the private ‘mini cons’ at people’s houses, mostly by assorted members of Dreamlyrics, or it’s predecessor, the long-dead RPGAMES forum on CompuServe.

Each type of con has it’s own atmosphere. The larger conventions like Gencon UK are more gaming industry orientated, with game companies launching new products, lots of traders selling stuff, often a great place to get that obscure long out-of-print supplement you’ve been looking for for years. Many of the games are demos run by representatives from game companies; sometimes you get to be GMed by the people that wrote the games. They’re also places where you can meet some of the names from the gaming industry and get the opportunity to shamelessly namedrop; Yes, I did attend the dinner at Belgo’s in London with Ken Hite and Phil Masters during Gen Con UK 2002. I even spoke to E Gary Gygax once!

Smaller cons like Manchester’s Stabcon tend to be more friendly and informal compared to the sometimes impersonal larger events. Games run on a turn up and go basis rather than being organised two months in advance and printed up in a glossy programme. The emphasis is more on the actual gamers and less on the game companies.

The private ‘mini cons’ are something different again. In a way, these are a glorified version of a regular gaming group, only with a few more people meeting once a year rather than every week, although gaming-wise they’re still structured around one-shot convention style games rather than episodes of continuing campaigns.

I’ve played in some great games at conventions; the one-shot format gives the opportunity to play a lot of different systems and styles of play. My convention attendance has significantly reduced the number of games I own but have never played. I think the last eight games I’ve played have been seven different settings and six different systems. Some memorable ones over the years include the demonic In Nomine game run by Jo Hart at GenCon 2000 ending in the firefight with Tony Blair’s angelic bodyguards at a village fete in Devon, the very emotional Angelic In Nomine game run by Mark “L’Ange” Baker at summer Stabcon 2002 set in Naples, and the completely twisted Unknown Armies game run by Maria Whittaker at Sashcon in a hotel in Leicester.

There’s only one problem with cons. Since I guess I’m one of the few people in Britain who’s into both RPGs and model railways, convention organisers and model railway clubs make no attempt to avoid conflicts of dates!
I see Warley MRC Show clashes with Dragonmeet again this year. At least the coming Winter Stabcon doesn’t clash with the Marlow and Maidenhead show, unlike the past two years!

DreamLyrics has an all-new look!

DreamLyrics is a friendly online message gaming community dedicated to role-playing gamers, where new members are made welcome. The site is mainly focused on role-playing via message games, though we do have a live chat room and our own RPG ezine, DreamScribe in addition to other tabletop games.

Check out the two games I run, Arrhan Empire Frontiers and Kalyr. The latter is the other half of the game I run on The Phoenyx.

This independent site is active and well organized, run by gamers for gamers. In fact we have several published authors, including those who have written role-playing books for GURPS and In Nomine. The bulletin board has been running since May 2000. A small charge is made for annual membership to cover running costs and to ensure continuity.

If you’re into message board or PBeM style gaming, you should take a look at this site. Most of the message boards are viewable by all, but read-only for non-members.

Doc’s Game Dream is the successor to Game WISH. I’ve got some catching up to do on this one, it’s already got up to Game Dream 5, which asks:

To what level (if any) do the groups you usually play with encourage communal creation of the game world? Are the players spectators, or do they actually have a say in the plot (moreso that just guiding it by the actions of their characters)?

The two online games I run (with many of same players) are very different in this regard. Kalyr is very much a labour of love, something I’ve spent fifteen years developing, with reams of backstory, politics, culture and religion. It’s also a world with a lot of deep mysteries, and one of the themes of the game is about the players finding out the truth behind the various cults and guilds. Because so much of the world is predefined, there’s not much space for the players themselves to add much more than local colour; I compensate for this by giving the players a lot of plot freedom.

The second game, Ahrran Empire Frontiers is a very different beast. It’s a space opera game I inherited from another GM, with a big universe for which very little is predefined. Since I’m more or less making up the whole thing as I go along, there’s no good reason why I can’t let the players do some of the work. Some of the planets, such as “Esturia” and “The Scouse Cluster” came from one of the players in an online chat. The whole concept of “exchange” comes from an in-character post from another very creative player. I see my job as GM as trying to keep the whole thing coherent and providing some overall direction.

Actually been up a couple of weeks now. There’s a bit more meat in the July issue, most notably Amadán‘s article on Online GM Tips. There’s also Pit Fiend’s overview of Paranoia, one of those games I’ve always wanted to play but never got round to. And there are some thoughts of mine in the member survey.

I still don’t like the layout and navigation; some of my comments do appear in letters to the editor.

Your essential reading for today is the RPG Cliche List. Some randomly quoted examples:

Amber Law. Gamemasters and players can be fully expected to try and screw each other over, even during character creation. (So named for a game that actively and legendarily encourages this. For similar reasons, this also could have been called the Synnibarr Law, but there is no reliable evidence that anyone actually plays that game.) See also Mode: Zero Sum Game.

I’ve only played Amber once, but everything I’ve heard from Amber fanatics suggests there’s more than a little truth in this one.

“I’m Different, Too!” Law. In a typically feeble effort to establish their own style, most games (especially modern-day occult ones) will invent alternate terms for “gamemaster” and “campaign”. The worst of these games will also find alternate terms for “player” and “game session”. This law is also known as Ackels’ Law, after the creator of Immortal: the Invisible War, a game that redefined almost every single gaming term (yes, even “character action” and “levels you have in something”).

Who remember Aria’s “Mythguides” (i.e. GMs) and “Dramatic Personae” (otherwise known as Player Characters)?

PBEM Law. Play-By-Email RPGs invariably fail. Those that don’t are instantly relegated to the realm of mythology.

Hey, that means Kalyr (7 years and counting!) is now mythological!

Tavern Rule #1. In fantasy games, player characters usually not only start the campaign in a tavern or inn, but immediately become best friends. As with the Tolkien Law, this is one of the oldest cliches in existence…pretty much every fantasy gamemaster has used it.

What, you mean like in the Phoenyx Fantasy Game?

Weird Pete Myth. Many gamer groups actually do know a grizzled, thickly-bearded, overweight, irascible old veteran gamer. And this individual usually does (or did) run or own a game store.

I’m not even going to comment on that one…

Link from a post on the Fudge Mailing List.

All good things must come to an end. The 100th and final Game WISH asks us:

Tell me your favorite war story. Why is it your favorite? What does it show about your character or the game/campaign you were playing? What does it exemplify about why you like gaming?

The game was a one-shot convention game played at a Sashcon, a private convention at a hotel in Leicester about five years ago. The system was Unknown Armies, with the PCs as ‘normals’, volunteers at a centre treating sleep disorders. My character was a hacker with no social skills, but with a high skill in rollerblading (which she never got to use). Another player remarked early on out of character that “because the players know it’s a horror game we’re all acting paranoid, when the characters have no reason to”.

Still, it wasn’t long before weird things started happening; it became more and more apparent that the ‘sleep disorder treatment’ was a front for something much more sinister. Not only that, half the PCs had Dark Secrets.

What makes the game memorable is the ending. My PC plus one other ended up hanging upside down above a pit full of grey dust. One other surviving PC tried to rescue us, made two critical failures and fell into the grey dust. Then he just dissolved. Then the final surviving PC battled his way into the chamber. “He’s come to rescue us!”, we thought. But no! He was from the New Inquisition, and shot us both, “to save our souls”.

I can’t restrict this to just one. I have to mention the grand finale of the In Nomine game at GenCon UK 2000, in Manchester, GMed by Jo Hart. I was playing a servitor of Vapula, Demon Prince of Technology. “I’ll take a raygun”, I said. “Bright green, looks like a child’s toy”. Entirely up the GM what, if anything, it actually did.

The climax of the adventure took place at a village fete in Devon, attended by Tony Blair. It ended up with a firefight against Tony Blair’s bodyguards, who turned out to be Malakim (think DnD Paladins in a modern-day setting and you get the idea). My raygun turned out to make a loud “RRRRRR” sound, and paralysed the target. I remember that, having been paralysed, one of the Malakim then died at the hands of a the Lilim in a portable toilet. A horrible way to go? Of course, after two uses, the gun overloaded and melted, leaving my character with a molten green mess stuck to his hand.

The Kalyr PBeM has just about reached the end of the quest! 7 years into the game, and five years into this story arc, the survivors of the original party have finally made it back to the city. All that’s left is a debriefing scene, and I’ll have to start thinking of the next storyline.

At the climax of the adventure, I introduced two new players, playing characters warped in from present-day Earth. I’ve been running the current thread detailing the return journey as a travelogue. I’d be interested in what people make of my descriptions of the world.