SF and Gaming Blog

Just back from four solid days of gaming at Gypsycon in deepest Cambridgeshire, hence the total lack of blogging for so long that the blog disappeared!

Gypsycon is hosted by one of the founders of Dreamlyrics, and attended by about two dozen members of that site. Over the course of the four day weekend eleven day-long RPGs took place, including one GMed by myself; I’m sure you can guess which one.

If the games we played are typical of what gamers are up to, the “All your game are belong to d20″ plan for world domination just isn’t happening:

• Castle Falkenstein
• Call of Cthulhu
• “Work in Progress” (Completely systemless, with no character sheets!)
• Fudge
• Cyberpunk (2 games)
• GURPS Kalyr
• Adventure!
• D&D3
• Conspiracy X
• Marvel Superheroes

I can’t comment on the games I didn’t play in, although the MSH game ended up in the swimming pool!. The games I played in involved preventing Confederate terrorists with a midgit submarine from blowing up the Brooklyn Bridge on it’s opening ceremony, finding a subterranian city of snake people ruled by a corrupt Frenchman, and keeping alien weaponry out of the hands of the Chinese military. Meanwhile the game I ran demonstrated just what happens when you fire an electrolaser inside a flour mill.

With this long standing gathering over the Easter weekend, I was disappointed that Gen Con UK chose to move from their long established September date to the same weekend. For me, it was no contest as to which one to go to. Now I hear reports that attendance at GenCon UK is sixty percent down this year. Serves them right!

And I’ve still got “If I was a Deep One” from “Shoggoth on the Roof” stuck in my head.

Bloblobloblobloblobloblobloblobloblobloblobloblob!

Perverse Access Memory: WISH 40: Preferred Style

What style of game do you prefer to play in? Style here does not mean genre, although certain styles work better under some genres than others. Style is more about the elements that predominate in a game: combat, politics, mysteries/puzzles, romance/interpersonal relations, etc. What three adjectives best describe your favorite game style? Does this style lend itself to particular genres or games?

There’s been some discussion on the message boards of Pyramid Online on very similar subjects lately.

The genres I like the most are low fantasy, realistic SF, and horror. I’m not so much a fan of D&D style high fantasy, over the top cinematic action, or four colour superheroes. I’ll try and identify what it is I like or dislike about these genres.

Games with solid settings: This is probably because I’m a GM as well as a player, but I’m not a fan of games where the setting is little more than an empty stage set and the focus is exclusively on the characters and their ‘kewl powerz’. I believe settings give characters context; I find it much easier to create a character if I know something about the culture he’s from. An ideal setting is exotic, richly detailed and most importantly, internally consistent. I’m not too bothered about adherence to genre conventions; in fact I consider ‘trope’ to be a synonym of ‘cliché’. I’d rather play something a bit more original. For published settings, I much prefer Glorantha to Forgotten Realms.

As for level of detail, I can remember when I first got involved in on line gaming on the Compuserve RPGAMES forum, I ended up joining the two games with the largest volume of gameworld description.

Lower power levels: Some of my most enjoyable games have featured characters as relatively ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events when a great big plot device lands on their heads. I don’t find it necessary to play characters with cinematic or godlike power levels to have an enjoyable game. The ideal power level is one where the players are powerful enough to make a difference and affect the world, but not so powerful that the either face no real challenge or trash the gameworld as collateral damage.

Not all about combat: While most games benefit from some action, I don’t like game sessions that consist of nothing more that a succession of fights. I’m more interested in role playing than tactical wargaming.

Problems must make sense within the game: Solving mysteries within the game is fine, but I can’t stand silly riddles or the sort of artificial abstract logic puzzles that used to infest D&D modules.

Variety: I like to play different genres, but not all at once! I’d rather play three separate short campaigns in different genres than a single long running game in a multi-genre monster-mash setting like TORG or Rifts. Sometimes a one-shot in a completely different style makes a good change of pace.

Free-flowing, transparent but solid game mechanics: There’s nothing worse that the story grinding to a halt for two hours of die rolling to resolve a simple barroom brawl. I also have an strong aversion to many of the funky dice pool systems that have been all too fashionable for the past decade; not only do they obfuscate the probabilities, but often produce too many freak results. Sometimes I suspect not even the designers themselves know the probabilities of their own systems. At least when I’m playing a percentile or 3d6 system, and keep rolling 01s or 18s I know I’m having a bad day with the dice. When I get loads of ‘botches’ in a dice pool system I have no way of telling if I’m unlucky again, if I’m attempting tasks I don’t have the skill for, or if the GM doesn’t understand the probabilities either and is setting the target numbers too high.

On the other hand, I don’t mind some degree of complexity provided it doesn’t slow down actual play. I have no problems with the detailed character generation of systems like GURPS.

On Rock Scissors Blog, White Wolf writer and now Gamma World developer Bruce Baugh talks about playtesting.

Likewise, if the design goals include doing something new, then you have to be prepared to tell some existing customers that they won’t necessarily be interested in this new thing. This is a very tricky matter in gaming, where a small fraction of the audience is very loud, and of that fraction a significant number of people are willing to carry on with obsessions that border on (if they do not cross into) the realm of the genuinely clinically disfunctional as well as socially disruptive. When you put out a new game and run into someone who lies about its contents in an effort to strike back at the company for something done fifteen years ago by someone who isn’t at the company and may not be in the field at all anymore, you are not dealing with an essentially healthy audience. And I know that every developer and most authors reading this are nodding along, thinking of multiple examples of the sort of person I just described.

If you the reader have never encountered that sort of obsession, count yourself lucky. It is in any event part of the social context of presenting new games. A vocal portion of our audience wants nothing but more of the same, whether their preferred “same” is 1st edition Dungeons & Dragons, GURPS as of 1990, White Wolf as of 1994, or whatever. And if they are allowed significant input input into the playtest process, they will bully down anyone who wants anything else, and if they don’t get what they want, they will go off and malign the developer and publisher. It is better to act as gatekeeper and deny them entrance at the beginning, and let the preferences of existing customers be represented by people who are prepared to be more temperate about it.

You may think Bruce is being harsh, but I have to agree with him. I’m not a game developer or writer, but I can name some of the people he’s referring to. I suspect one of those individuals is a former denizen of the Pyramid Online message boards, who eventually become one of only three people to be banned from that venue. Of course they’re a minority, but they’re a loud and annoying minority. I find people who’s entire meaning for existence is defined by a roleplaying game line, comic book series, movie franchise or even a rock band to be profoundly scary people.

Of course, there are some egotistic and socially dysfunctional prima donnas amongs game writers as well, including another of the three people to be banned from Pyramid. Not that I’m going to name any names. And I have to say the all game writers I’ve actually met have been perfectly charming people.

Perverse Access Memory: WISH 36: Supplements

What do you think about supplements to game systems? Do you like the additional material, or are you just annoyed about spending the money for the additional rules? Name up to three supplements you’ve really enjoyed, and describe why you liked them.

I have many shelf-feet of gaming books, about half for GURPS, about half for other systems. Naturally, the vast majority of these are supplements. I’ve also got very clear ideas of what I like and don’t like in supplements.

Let’s start with what I don’t like, and use as an example of the worst series of supplements in my game collection, the “Relevations Cycle” for Steve Jackson’s Angels and Demons game, In Nomine. These were unfocused scattershot books, a mixture of rule expansions (half of which were later superceded), further detail to the game world, adventures, and that abomination of things, metaplot. You needed about 10% of each book to play the game. Ugh! Sadly In Nomine never really recovered from this disaster, even though later supplements were much improved. Then there are those supplements containing material that really belongs to the core rulebook; Castle Falkenstein‘s “Comme Il Fait”, while excellent in itself, falls into this category.

The best sort of supplement, for me, is a book that does one thing, and does it well. Many, if not most GURPS books fall into this category, which is why GURPS remains my favourite game line even if the system is probably a bit rules-heavy for my tastes nowadays. GURPS supplements generally fall into two categories, those that are mostly crunchy rules, such as the magic, martial arts and technology books, and those that give game worlds to adventure in, with little in the way of game mechanics and much in the way of game setting.

GURPS Psionics is my favourite book in the first category. Probably the most well-thumbed GURPS book apart from my 15-year old Basic Set, this book expands the Psionics system, with a range of additional powers, psionic drugs and psionic technology. It gives a lot of advice on running psionic-heavy campaigns, and includes a sample modern-day setting, the Phoenix Project. This book has been a major influence for my own psi-heavy fantasy world, Kalyr.

GURPS Alternate Earths is one of my favourites from the second category, and tops my list of ‘Campaigns I’ll run some day’. It’s intended for parallel worlds dimension-hopping games, describes six parallel worlds where history took a different turn. Three of the are alternate history staples, ranging from Reich-5 (where the Nazis won the second world war), Dixie (where the South won the American Civil War) and Roma Aeturna (where the Roman Empire never fell). The other three are perhaps the more interesting. Gernsback, who’s pivotal figure is Nicolai Tesla, is a wierd-science 50s sci-fi world, Shikaku-Mon is a cyberpunk world with a four-cornered struggle between a Catholic Japan, France, Brazil and a frighteningly totalitarian Swedish empire. Finally Ezcalli features a world where Europe was crushed by the Mongols, and the major world power is the Aztec Empire, which has managed to cross the Atlantic with the intention of invading Europe. Each world is described succinctly in about 20 pages or so, giving a flavour of the world, but giving GMs plenty of freedom to improvise.

Finally, let’s go back to the early days of gaming, for a supplement I don’t actually own, but have used a lot. Cults of Prax was the first supplement for Runequest. While AD&D expanded their system with more and more monsters to bash, Runequest started out by describing a dozen religions for player characters to follow. This not only expanded the magic system, for the cults were the main source of magic, but gave shape to the culture of the world, and the adventurers place within it, an idea that was quite revolutionary at the time. Example cults were the pacifist healers of Chalana Arroy, the fanatical warriors of the Storm Bull, and sages of Lhankor Mhy.

Perverse Access Memory: WISH 35: Music

How does music influence your campaigns? As a GM, do you feel there are “soundtracks” for scenes, and as a player, do you perhaps have “songs” for characters? Name three songs that relate to favourite characters or situations.

Interesting question. I’m a big rock fan, such that this blog is as much about music as it’s about gaming, so this ought to be much easier to answer than it is.

I don’t tend to think of music for individual scenes in games, but I do occasionally hear songs that strongly remind me of characters, not only my own, but sometimes other player’s characters in games I GM. For instance, the song Paper Chains (The Crime Part 3) from the now-defunct British prog-rock band Grey Lady Down is to me the theme tune of Kalnyr, the demon-possessed wanderer of Kalyr. Not sure what his player would make of that, as far as I know she’s not much of a prog rock fan.

Of course, I have to mention the rock musician character I play, Karl Tolhurst. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to come up with a list of songs that illustrate how I imagine his band Ümläüt to sound. They’re influenced by the 1990s British goth-metal scene, including such bands as Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, and most of all, Anathema. I actually bought several albums by these bands as ‘research’. Probably Anathema’s album “Alternative 4″ is the closest; when I first listened to that album, my first reaction was, “That’s Ümläüt!”. There is of course the infamous Ümläüt tape recorded by my brother, which Karl’s original GM (also Kalnyr’s player) stubbornly refuses to listen to. At the moment I’m trying to come up with a list of covers the band played before they started writing their own material.

Now I could try to link my first long term character, Mudgard, with Yngwie Malmsteen’s ridiculous “I am a Viking”. But I won’t.

Finally not so much individual characters, but a couple of songs who’s imagery evokes scenes from published game settings; I can’t hear Black Sabbath’s “Neon Knights” now without thinking of Malakim from In Nomine. And the song “Master of the Wind” from the mostly risibly awful but occasionally brilliant Manowar powerfully evokes the storm-god Orlanth from Glorantha.

Not much blogging recently; I’ve been concentrating my limited time on keeping my on line games running; you can see what I’ve been up to here and here.