23 Answers

Forgive me readers, but I have been really busy. It's been more than a week since my last post. I'm still really busy but I did want to take a moment and answer the 23 Questions that have been popping up here and there across the OSR/RPG Blog community (first posed by Zak S. at Playing D&D With Pornstars).

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?

There have been a raft of interesting little things that have appeared in my games over the years - cool artifacts, compelling NPCs, recurring locales. In the grand scheme, though, I'd be hard pressed to pick out a single one that makes me especially proud. Settings are another matter, though. I am still proud of the world building that I have done for my all of the games that I have run. But what makes me most proud with a capital "p" is my evolution as a game master. I've long considered myself to be a pretty good GM. But since I have been interacting with the RPG community at large (GenCon, Gamedays, and the OSR), I feel that I have really achieved a consistency of performance and comfort with improvisation that would amaze my younger self. I'm proud of being confident enough in my own GM skills to feel like I can offer useful tips to others. I'm also proud of the fact that a few people have actually learned something from me. That gives me the warm tinglies. 

2. When was the last time you GMed?

I ran Gurps on December 17th. We have a game of BtVS:RPG scheduled for this upcoming Saturday.

3. When was the last time you played?

November 19th was a rare game of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: RPG where I was an actual player.

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven’t run but would like to.

The player characters are apparently regular people who are thrown together and forced to survive during a magical apocalypse. 

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

I listen to what the players are talking about and write down ideas of how I to riff off of what they are doing. After that, I jot down more ideas.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

We almost always eat Thai food (it's the best food close to where we play). There are invariably chips, salsa, and evil brownies. If we're lucky, Pad Thai cookies.

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

Not really, but I do feel a tremendous release after a session. The pre-session hours are still a little stressful and during the session I'm running on all cylinders. After, I just want to chill.

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?

In our last BtVS:RPG game, my character traveled back in time 24 hours (or was it 12?) and immediately called himself on the phone. That conversation was one of my best memories as a player, ever.

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

Not terribly seriously. My Knights of the Astral Sea game is supposed to be serious, yet one PC is a psionic cat and another is a flying monkey. 

10. What do you do with goblins?

The last time they showed up in Knights, they represented an iconic D&D-fantasy humanoid monster (it was the first D&D-like world that the party had visited). In Buffy, I turned the entire party into goblins (a la Gurps Goblins) for a very funny episode.

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?

Oddly enough, the whole Chairman Meow subplot in our Knights game was inspired by Kung Fu Panda 2. I also ran an episode of Buffy that was lifted from Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

12. What’s the funniest table moment you can remember right now?

Gaptooth and the inflatable sword. Actually, the entirety of our recent Old School Hack sessions.

13. What was the last game book you looked at–aside from things you referenced in a game–why were you looking at it?

Just purchases Cosmic Patrol and I'm also enjoying the heck out of Trey Causey's Weird Adventures. I read game books because I hope to one day use them or find some interesting nugget that I can use. But I'll be some games just because I love the setting or genre.

14. Who’s your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?

Otus for Basic D&D nostalgia, Tramp for AD&D nostalgia,  Ian Miller for Warhammer nostalgia, Wayne Reynolds for not-so-medieval D&D, and Tim Bradstreet for World of Darkness. 

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?

Alas, not that I can remember.

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn’t write? (If ever)

I ran S. John. Ross' A Kringle In Time twice and had a blast in both instances.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?

At my own home, with the family out of town, with lots of good food and good drinks. I have a great dining room table and it's nice to have all my crap handy. But it is not a common set-up, given that I live out of easy public transportation range and my young kids make regular games at my house impossible.  

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?

Microscope and Gurps 4e.

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?

OSR Bloggers for their immense storehouse of nuts-and-bolts advice and their passion for the hobby. Indie/Story Game luminaries for really pushing the craft in interesting directions and giving me lots of new techniques to experiment with. 

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?

Friends or potential friends who are committed to the shared experience of having a great time.

21. What’s a real life experience you’ve translated into game terms?

My brief time at Burning Man '98 still manages to work its way into my games, though not always in ways that my players can detect.

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn’t?

I have this fantasy version of Old School Hack in my head that captures that old-school Moldvay/Cook D&D feel and yet plays like Old School Hack. I'm talking Otus art, quirky writing, and ability to advance to higher levels and manage strongholds.

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn’t play? How do those conversations go?

My co-workers don't play P&P RPGs, but they play CRPGs and it's not to great a leap for them. Beyond that, though, I'll talk to anybody about games if it brings something to the conversation. D&D is mainstream enough that I rarely have anybody that reacts poorly. That being said, I have not been able to recruit non-gamers to play with us in a while.

Subsystems As Gamer Toys

Way back in the distant mists of 1983-1985, I was young teen who was totally hooked on role-playing games. Alas, at the time, I had yet to discover my first real gaming group. With a friend of mine in 6th grade, I stumbled on the Moldvay Basic set almost my accident and when that friend moved on to other things, I found a slightly older mentor down the streets who brought me into AD&D. But that slightly older friend soon found other slightly older friends and I was left to tinker with various games until early in my sophomore year, when I would finally meet the guys who would come to form the core of a tight-knit gaming group and that remain among my closest friends to this day.

But back to that interregnum between groups. I was lucky, I guess. Without anybody to play with, I could have fallen out of the hobby. But I was bookish, a bit shy, and absolutely fascinated by both the fantasy/escapist element and the nuts-to-bolts of the rule systems.

And so, I spent much of my time with Traveller. Character generation was a game in itself and one that didn’t require a game master. Then there was the world-building. I can’t begin to recall how many hours I spent generating star systems and filling out subsector maps. And the spaceships! My proto-engineering self adored the spaceship creation rules. I remember writing my first computer programs on my Commodore 64 to handle all three of these subsystems.

And that’s something that you don’t usually see in today’s games - subsystems that are games in themselves and that lend themselves to this kind of hobbyist tinkering.

Anyway, I bring this all up because I’ve been kind of on a hobbyist tinkering kick for the last few days. My Slaying Solomon session got called on account of the plague. And having a little bit of extra time by myself, I indulged a long-simmering desire to create some GURPS Spaceships and GURPS Mass Combat spreadsheets for my Knights of the Astral Sea game. Nothing terribly polished yet (and certainly nothing that is remotely ready to share), but something that is already helping me generate airships and manage belligerent forces across the Multiverse. We had been using Gurps Vehicles do do our airships, but I had been wondering if Spaceships could simplify things. Well, with Spaceships 7 and Pyramid 30 and Pyramid 34, I finally have the tools (gas bags, combustion engines, mass combat stats) to make it worthwhile.

Why We Love Apocalyptic Fiction

Or, more to the point, why do *I* love apocalyptic fiction? It's not like I have some subconscious (or lord forbid conscious) desire to smash civilization into ruins. I like people and I can barely stomach reading about real-world disasters in which real people suffer or die. And as a technophile, I love the conveniences of modern civilization and would much rather live in a trippy Transhuman SF future than a Mad Max-style post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Yet, I can't get enough of apocalyptic fiction in which the modern world falls apart and a plucky band of survivors use their wits to survive and salvage something of civilization. I'm talking about works like The Passage, the Strain, the Stand, Dies the Fire, Without Warning, Y: The Last Man,World War Z, and now John Barnes' Directive 51 (which bumped everything else I was reading). All of these works wormed their way into my head because they present survival and rebuilding as an irresistible problem to solve. Reading these books, regardless of the implausibility of the premise, I can't help but imagine the "holy s$@t, what if it happened to me" situation. I'm *so* not a survivalist type of guy, but thoughts immediately run towards emergency planning and escape routes and figuring out exactly what kind resources to get myself and my family to safety.

Anyway, I mention all this because I still think one of these high-concept apocalypses would make a great roleplaying campaign. The GM just needs to set the storm in motion and it all comes down to how the player characters react. In some ways, my Knights of the Astral Sea game is an example of this sort of thing, though I also loaded it up with Arthurian themes and Traveller-style adventure trading. Also, destroying an alternate 1930's earth and having surviving ships flee into the Multiverse is very different than wrecking a contemporary civilization in which the player characters are forces to survive in the ruins. 

Someday, I hope to run such a game.

The System Is Down

I had a little iPad accident this weekend and had been fretting about what to do about my shattered screen. Would Apple replace it? Could it be fixed? Well, I went to the Genius Bar at the local Apple store tongight and they confirmed that accidental damage was not covered by Apple Care. But by Saint Steve in Heaven, they decided to wave the repair costs due to an extended wait (~30 minutes) and gave me a new machine. Maybe they do this all the time? Maybe not. All I know is that Apple earned some serious loyalty points with me tonight.

I'm currently restoring from backup. Because I use the iPad to compose posts, blogging will resume in a day or so.

(Still hoping to read Weird Adventures on this sucker, as that's what I was reading when I suffered my mishap.)

Weird Adventures

One clue that the 2011 holiday season was crazy and unforgiving is that Trey Causey's Weird Adventures was released in mid-December and I am only now getting around to buying it. This is the OSR/RPG Blog community product that I had been waiting for all year. I've been reading From the Sorcerer's Skull from the get go and I am continuously amazed and entranced by the stuff that Trey comes up with.

So it's loaded onto the precious... I mean the iPad and I'm looking forward to giving it a nice leisurely read. My players in my Knights of the Astral Sea game can expect to visit the world of the City at some point. If the stars align, I might even try to launch a new campaign there (system to be determined). Weird Adventures presses all my buttons and I can hardly think of a setting that resonates more perfectly with my sensibilities.

Apocalypse World Moves In Risus

A reader writes:

Wondering if it is possible to add a bit of crunch to the Risus system by adding in Apocalypse World moves. How would you do it?

Interesting question! Though I've been making great use of techniques learned from Apocalypse World in my BtVS:RPG and Gurps games, I confess that this particular question wouldn't have occurred naturally. In Buffy, I use Apocalypse World MC moves, front worksheets, and countdown clocks for trying to get a handle on a very complicated collection of competing plots and characters. I do that as well in the Gurps game, but I also use the elementary move mechanic to streamline action scenes and to make narrow successes more interesting (succeeding by 3 or less would be the equivalent of a weak hit in Apocalypse World).

But adding crunch to Risus with Apocalypse World-style moves? Hmm, that's a stumper.

In the great debate between hacking Risus and playing it straight, I kind of fall in the middle. I'll gleefully hack the combat rules but I do like my Risus characters to be free of extraneous fiddly bits. For me, one of the main appeals of Risus is being able to represent a character with a single collection of cliches, some narrative fluff, and maybe a Hook, a Sidekick, or some Lucky Dice. That's just how I roll.

So I wouldn't personally tack on the type of moves that appear on the various AW play sets (Angel, Battlebabe, Chopper, etc). In my humble opinion, each of those playsets is already a cliche and all that stuff would come under the preview of stuff that the cliche is good for. Of course, a Brainer can touch you inappropriately with his/her/its violation glove. And of course, the Driver is unquestionably awesome when behind the wheel of his bitchin' ride.

Of course, I'm an excellent driver

But that's not the end of the story. I think there are things that can adapted from Apocalypse World to improve or at least flavor the experience of post-Apocalyptic games run using Risus.

Thoughts:

• Hx: This is a mechanic that has no Risus equivilent and is, in fact, really cool. You could implement it as a special form of Lucky Dice, but that seems a little too static. I might import Hx wholesale and use it as a means of advancement, much like in AW. Of course, it should be scaled appropriately so that it can be used is regular Target Number rolls or combat. So instead of Hx going from -3 to +3, I'd say it should go from 1 dice to 6... Maybe... 6 dice in anything is a lot. On second thought, maybe the +/-3 is better and would be applied as a modifier to other cliche rolls (straight modifier rather than changing the number of dice in play). 
• Countdown Clock injury. What a great way to mitigate the death spiral! Replace cliche damage with a tick on the countdown clock. And like AW, a player can take debilities (Hooks) instead of taking harm. (I'd make it much like Risus in that damage on the clock doesn't have to physical injury) 
• Strong hits, weak hits, and misses. For TN rolls, there should be a TN for a strong hit and a TN for a weak hit and weak hits should always introduce interesting complications. Similarly, Single Action Contests and Combats can be adapted to include two levels of success as well (similar to standard AW moves). I like the choices you get to make at the various levels of AW success. 
• Sex moves. Ok, every character should get to pick the most appropriate sex move (if that's an important element in the game and your group in comfortable with that sort of thing). It would most likely relate to your primary cliche and players would have latitude to invent new ones that are comparable to those listed in the AW rules. 
• Moves (take two). For the various moves on the play sets, I'd assign them different Target Numbers depending on the character's focus. Let's say, pick a favorite and even a putz should be able to succeed easily. But the other moves are more difficult and may only become viable as the character advances. 
• Vehicles and Crews. With Grunt Squads and Yes Men, Risus already handles crews, gangs, and holdings quite well. But I do like the color that you can assign to them with AW. Would I use Sidekicks for vehicles? Or Lucky Shots? As per Q is For Questing Dice, I think I favor the Lucky Shot/Questing Dice approach (and each AW-style qaulity can be represented by a single Questing Die. 
• Barter. AW barter is about the right level of resource management for a Risus game. I'd steal this wholesale. 
• Basic Moves. I might adapt the various basic moves as Target Number rolls. This wouldn't be a new rule, per se, since Risus already supports treating any challenge as a TN roll depending on the whims of the GM. But adapting a specifically AW-style approach to move and counter move might make the game feel more like Apocalypse World. And it doesn't have to totally replace full combat.

Holiday Risus Adventures

Just before the holidays, Hank Harwell issued a call for holiday-themed Risus adventures. Alas, the holiday got the best of most of us and only Hank and Larry Bullock (the Ruminator) managed to post something. But both adventures are fine examples of what you can do with Risus, so I hereby direct you to the Risusiverse (one-stop-shop for Risus fan content) for both entires:

• Snowball Fright! (Larry's battle royale in the snow)
• Be Good For Goodness Sake! (Hank's holiday-themed Western monster mash or Scooby Doo homage) 

I'm Reading' Ya

Ok, before life got really complicated, I read a lot of RPG/OSR blogs. At least until the middle of last summer, I felt like I could still read everything on my blogroll within 24 hours of posting. Yes, not everything was strictly relevant but there was a heck of a lot of good stuff. Useful stuff. Stuff that actually improved my games.

And that's what this is all about.

Anyway, I can't even hope to remain that current anymore. But that's where Google Reader has come to my rescue. Now, I can work through the blogs that I like at my own pace and be fairly sure that cool stuff isn't going to slip through the cracks.

The drawback, however, is that I do not get the chance to comment on blogs as much as I used to to. I do a lot of reading in the corners of my work day or on a mobile device and it's not always convenient (or allowed) to drop comments. (Another drawback, is that I may be get to posts several weeks after the fact).

So please, do not interpret my lack of comments as lack of interest. I'm still reading most of you folks. I just may not always get a chance to tell you directly unless it comes up in a post of my own (or if I happen to be reading from home).

Reflections on 2011

Wow, for a year that started with so much promise, 2011 sure kicked my ass in the home stretch. I’m mostly talking about personal crap like getting hit by the mystery annoying Christmas virus (from which I’m only now recovering), trying to sell my house, having my writing/blogging routine seriously upended by an ultra-strict Internet policy at work and the continuing challenging of dealing with a horrible commute. For the last few months, I feel like I never really got back into my groove.

But even though the blog fell off a bit at the end there, it still was a pretty good year for gaming, blogging, and even publishing.

Let’s review:

Early in the year, I continued to crank out geomorphs (102-109), mostly according to my mini-theme of reinterpreting classic D&D illustrations. The geomorph craze was in full swing back then and so many of the cool kids were doing it. There were border tiles, corners, and eventually sidemorphs. Dave's Mapper aggregated all of it and it still remains one of the coolest RPG tools that I've seen to date. The geomorph craze also inspired Joe Wetzel to launch his DungeonMorph Dice project, which led me to my first paid RPG gig. I would have never imagined that I'd actually get paid to draw stuff but I was thrilled to be included with other luminaries of the OSR/RPG cartography community.

Over the course of the year, I continued to try to introduce my young boys (now 4 and 6) to real gaming. There were ups and downs on that front but for all the games of "dungeons and dragons" where we just play with Lego figures, there were a few startling successes, notably here, here, and here.  One of my goals for 2012 is to really take things to the next level, especially as my youngest catches up his older brother in grasping more complex rules and situations.

As for real gaming, 2011 was a banner year. My long running (and I mean long running) Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG series seemed to have caught a second a wind and we are now half-way through our sixth and final season. Our Gurps dimension hopping game continued to zing along nicely (leading to the death of Chairman Meow). The big discovery of the year seemed to be Microscope and Old School Hack continued to serve as our go-to game for one-shots.

And this wouldn't be Risus Monkey without Risus. I ran two "raygun gothic" games for the Gameday crowds. In January, it was Moon Soldiers Must Die! and I followed it up with The Moon Mistress Is a Harsh Master in October. Both games were very well received and I had a blast gaming with old friends and discovering other games like Fiasco and Savage Worlds.

In advance of the release of the The One Ring RPG, I did an exhaustive reread of the The Hobbit. It took a while to read the book out loud to be inquisitive and always-interupting youngsters, but it took even *longer* to finally conclude the write-ups. It was an illuminating endeavor as The Hobbit, taken in isolation and seen with fresh eyes, is really a great fodder for gaming and very different from the Lord of the Rings as a whole.

2011 saw the release of several mini-projects that I turned loose on the community. First and foremost were the DungeonWords series (DungeonWords, DungeonWords d30, WilderWords, and WestWords). A simple concept really, but I continued to be amazed by how useful they are. I still hope to do more of these, and I continue to collect words obsessively. The words themselves have made it out into the community and they inspired my own one-page dungeon, Karst Chantry, which I am particularly proud of (and used for an awesome Old School Hack game).

April, of course, was the A to Z Challenge. Yes, it was an Internet bandwagon thingy. But it also did wonders for my blogging productivity (not to mention site traffic). I suspect that I'll toss my hat in again if it comes up this year.

And speaking of site traffic. The hands-down winner of 2011 was The Ryth Chronicle. If it's one thing the OSR can't seem to get enough of us, is first-generation gaming artifacts. I obtained a copy of this piece of gaming history from to one of players (who worked for Len Scnensny at the time) and I continue to field questions from the community on a regular basis.