Risus Monkey

Anglo-Saxon Hoard

2012-02-21T19:58:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was President's Day in the US and I made the best of the day off by taking my family to see the Anglo-Saxon Hoard exhibit at the National Geographic museum in DC. For those of you not in the know, the Staffordshire Hoard is the largest (only?) hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever discovered. Discovered on a working farm by a hobbyist with a metal detector, the collection consists of over 3,500 items, nearly all martial in character (ornamental bits of swords, helmets, and such). Estimated value: £3.285 million. Can you imagine the luck?

Anyway, as is usual for these sorts of things [see my trip to see the Terracotta Army two years ago], thoughts went immediately to gaming applications. I have a periodic (if infrequent) fascination this period of British and Northern European history. Not only does it scream D&D to me, but it also screams Tolkien. With all the castles and knights in fully articulated plate armor, most people seem to play D&D in a setting more reminiscent of the late middle ages. But I dig the grim look of these Anglo-Saxon Warriors and the pre-feudal period seems much more magical and pregnant with possibilities for grubby treasure hunters. Besides, you've got the historical King Arthur, the post-apocalyptic fall of the Roman Empire, and Beowulf.

I'm going to allow my thoughts to dwell on running a game with a Dark Ages aesthetic for a few days before shifting to a much earlier period for my Hillfolk play test on Saturday night. Hmmm, Lamplighters seems tailor made for Dark Ages imagery (even though I had mentioned a desire to avoid western influences)...

Knights of the Astral Sea #26

2012-02-17T16:44:00.002-05:00

In our previous session of Knights of the Astral Sea, we reached a significant campaign milestone with the defeat of Chairman Meow. Genevieve was now restored to the throne of the Autumn Court of Faerie (having dropped a house on the previous monarch way back this session). Having accomplished that, the players were somewhat anxious to get back to Tudor and help Queen Artoria's ongoing war with the mysterious Spanish Empire.

Lacking our usual chroniclers, I'll do my best to summarize things for the absent players and anybody else that is interested.

The session opened with the crew of the Lady Blackbird discussing their options in the aftermath of the counter revolution. There was still the matter of the Spanish Cardinal Vicente Diaz's interrogation and Lord Tybalt was eager to get started. So, over the course of several hours (with human party members assisting Tybalt in interpreting the very human memories of the Spanish bureaucrat), the party learned that Diaz was set up to fail in Faerie. The Empire's real business in Autumn (involving the transport of dozens of large boxes filled with disassembled machinery) was conducted by an unnamed and seemingly very competent "advisor" (handler?). Diaz, it should be said, was anything but competent. Being directed to advise the Autumn insurgency and manage things until a Spanish governor could be appointed, all he did was was set himself up for luxurious living in Genevieve's former palace.

It took a lot of invasive probing to discover useful information. That information included hints of a possible Spanish Homeworld and the path that Diaz and the others used to travel to Faerie. For the record, there was a gateway in the blasted remains of a pseudo-Britain [the Avalon of Theah], one world out from the Spanish Homeworld.

Before returning to Tudor, Tybalt suggested that the Lady Blackbird make a bit of a tour of the four courts of Faerie, in order to use Diaz to demonstrate the Spanish threat. This was especially pressing after information gained from Diaz helped the party to find the blasted remains of the region where the Spanish entered the Realm. Elspeth suggested that nuclear weapons may have been used to blow up the gateway (as was likely the case with Camaret-sur-Mer). At the very least, weapons of mass destruction were used to obliterate the pseudo-Britain on the other side of the portal. The party did not attempt a crossing for fear of contamination.

In Summer, the party retrieved Jude Averill, under house arrest by King Oberon for the "affection" shown to him by Queen Titania. Never mind that she had already achieved everything she wanted from the young mage.

In the Winter Court, the party granted Lord Garavan the right to conduct his own "interrogation" of Cardinal Diaz. He was returned in "reasonable" condition and mostly suitable for ransom, should the need ever arise (he was born into enormous wealth and achieved his rank through familial influence).

And so the party finally made ready to cross back over to Tudor. Unfortunately, they were left in a bit of bind. Other than Iris (who arrived on the Lady Blackbird after the excusion to the Cloudlands), the party members had all crossed over by following a very specific path on foot. Flying the Blackbird along that path proved to be extraordinarily difficult.

It may have been problems with the crosing or it may have just been the nature of Faerie, but when the party arrived back in Glastonbury, they soon came to realize that roughly a year and a half had passed in their absence. They learned this when captain Alastair Hawkesworth confronted them via semaphore from the HMAS Lemon Lander. Amazed and overjoyed at their reappearance (though heartbroken that Genevieve was not yet with the party), Hawkesworth called upon the Lemon Lander and other airships in the region to escort Lady Blackbird back to London.

In their brief voyage, Hawkesworth marvelled at the strange and obviously Spanish Airship. He also recounted what had transpired in the intervening months. It would seem that the war on Tudor had finally been settled, after decisive use of air power had decimated an armada of continental forces (local Spanish and their allies). In Scotland, Queen Mary's insurgency was put to rest and Kelley's treasonous faction of demon worshipers was purged from the Royal Society. For the moment, at least, the local and colonial populace had rallied around their Queen and the Dominion of Tudor was booming with new construction and renewed offworld commerce.

That offworld commerce was still limited to select out-bound paths, as mysterious Spanish raider ships (not unlike the Lady Blackbird) continued to plague the paths leading to the core worlds. Very little traffic was getting through, and what traffic did get through required enormous convoys for protection.

To make matters worse, the Spanish and their local allies had decisively won on Geneva, Mehrikah, and Murnau, cutting off nearly half of the known worlds from contact. Even on worlds that could still be reached, Spanish influence/espionage complicated efforts to secure invaluable orichalcum resources. At this very moment, Britannic forces were reinforcing the early medieval world of Daer and anticipation of a Spanish invasion.

With Hawkeworth's briefing in mind, the party landed in London as greeted warmly by Her Majesty the Queen. Artoria had grown into her office in the last year and a half and now seemed to possess an aura of stately command. Marcus also noted (to his dismay) that she also seemed to command an inordinate amount of attention from captain Hawkesworth. A lot had happened in the intervening months and clearly there would be some interpersonal issues that would need to resolved.

But first, the party had to get settled in Whitehall. Iris was welcomed as visiting royalty and Elspeth was charged with outfitting her in proper local attire as befitted her station. Jude met with his father and his subordinates at the Royal Society. And George Rasmussen was immediately enlisted to help rebuild the decimated Magickal Corps. Marcus, to his pleasure, was ale to locate the long-lost Sophie, who had absconded with the Fair Leonore shortly after the death of Lord Crabbe.

Finally, the session ended with war council with the Queen and her advisors. Echoing their own thoughts on the matter, the Queen orders the party to attempt passage to the Cloudlands in the Lady Blackbird. Their objectives are threefold: 1) recapture the Britannic outpost and restore the flow of gravity-defying etherium, 2) reconnoiter the Spanish outpost and cut off their access to Cloudlands resources, and 3) overthrow Iris' father and install her on her throne (if possible).

Risus Monkey at Gen Con

2012-02-13T12:23:00.002-05:00

I don't have my badge yet, but I will be attending GenCon this year. I'm really excited because it's been several years since I last made the trip and previous trips were uniformly awesome. This will also be the first time out since I became active in the DIY RPG blog community and I'm eager to meet readers and other blogging confederates.

I'll be easy to find in the exhibit hall as I'll be pushing DungeonMorph Dice with Joe Wetzel at the Inkwell Ideas booth. As a direct result of this, I won't be doing quite as much gaming as I would otherwise be doing. Gaming for me will be pretty much limited to off-schedule evening sessions. While I want to play in at least one game run by an EN World/Game Day/OSR Blog luminary, I promise that I will be running games as well. Matt Jackson has already requested the next installment of Moon Soldiers Must Die! (well received on the Game Day circuit) and I'm really tempted to mash up Old School Hack and Trey Causey's Weird Adventures.

Things will firm up in the coming months. If you are interested in meeting up for games or just socially, drop a comment on the blog sometime.

Hot Off The Presses: Weird Adventures!

2012-02-09T22:19:00.000-05:00

I returned home from work today to find this on my doorstep. Hot cha! With convention season coming up, I feel a tremendous urge to run some Weird Adventures one-shots. Also, watch this space for some Weird Adventurers posts as I develop those scenarios and explore tools that might be helpful for adventures set in Trey Causey's marvelous setting.

Lamplighters

2012-02-09T22:04:00.000-05:00

With yet another version of D&D in the works, my thoughts turn to the initial excitement that I felt in the run-up to the current version of D&D. I remember really getting sucked in by the pre-release setting/concept art books and the whole "points of light" campaign frame. I thought the idea of isolated settlements in a very dangerous world really got to the heart of what D&D felt like to me. I remember working out a pseudo-Points of Light campaign set in an alternate version of New Zealand that was tailor-made for the new system.

Well, long-story-short, I decided I wasn't all that keen on 4e.

There was a lot that I liked in the initial batch of 4e books, especially the DMG and Monster Manuals. But in play it just wasn't my thing. I moved backwards (OSR) and sideways (Old School Hack) and tried to stay out of the edition wars.

Unexpectedly, my thoughts have returned to fantasy. I'm not even really tuned in to the 5e discussions. I just want to do a little world building in anticipation of squeezing an occasional fantasy game into our already crowded schedule.

So here's my thought:

I was thinking about Justin Cronin's The Passage and how the vampires were kept at bay by electric lights in the post-apocalyptic world. Why not have a fantasy world where the creatures of Chaos (i.e. pretty much the entirety of the Monster Manual) could be kept at bay by lighting lamps that burned a combination of rare materials?

The lamps would create light in their local area, but nothing as bright as the stadium lights of the colony in The Passage. I'd still like to have night in the settlements.

The lamps would be large and bulky because if they were really portable, adventurers would be able to keep monsters at bay in the wilderness (and the dungeon!). I do imagine caravans carrying slightly less bulky versions of the lamps, but these might have their own difficulties. Portable lamps, might not be effective enough to keep monsters at bay but they could, perhaps, provide some benefit (that may or may not be worth the expense).

The lamps would require three or more ingredients from disparate geographical areas. That pretty much forces the existence of tenuous trade routes, linked by the aforementioned caravans. I'd do this because I've been itching to run a silk road campaign and I have some specific imagery in mind for the various settlements.

Finally, I imagine that world wasn't always like this and that some kind of apocalypse wiped out a grand civilization. I do not think that this civilization was our own and I think I would prefer to have it be distinctly non-medieval (and non-western). I think the level of pre-apocalyptic technology would at least be industrial, though much of that technology has now been lost (waiting to be discovered in the ruins).

Dave's Mapper and Side View Geomorphs

2012-02-07T21:55:00.000-05:00

David Millar of Dave's Mapper fame is starting to tackle a back-log of geomorphs. The big news is that he has added side-view geomorph functionality. Look for the "SV" designation under Map Types. I only did a few of these, but it's cool to see a bunch of them linked together. It's especially cool to see them linked together with the awesome side-view tiles of Matt Jackson, Stonewerks, and Dyson.

Terra Tori Episode Summary

2012-02-01T15:33:00.000-05:00

After a rather long delay, we are finally catching up on our Slaying Solomon episode summaries. Up first, is episode 6.5: "Terra Tori", which initially "aired" back in October of 2010! Reading Jodi's write-up, I can only smile at what fun that session was. There are not very many games where you could pull off adventures featuring "evil" (sort of) alternate versions of a player character with such satisfaction and style.

Episode summaries for the sixth and final season of Slaying Solomon can be found here, on our ENnie Award nominated 1990s-stye "fan site". More will be posted soon.

23 Answers

2012-01-26T16:43:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-17T21:55:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-12T17:46:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-10T21:56:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-07T21:44:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-05T21:33:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-03T22:20:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-02T21:34:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-01T23:13:00.000-05:00

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.

Chairman Meow Is Dead, Long Live The Queen!

2011-12-20T22:08:00.000-05:00

With the assistance of her faithful companions and a newly repaired jet-powered skyship, Queen Genevieve successfully deposed Chairman Meow and finally regained the throne of the Autumn Court of Faerie. Thus concludes a major story arc in our Gurps Knights of the Astral Sea game. Once again, Jim DiBenedetto provides the play report:

5 May, 1939 ???

Capt. Alastair Hawkesworth
HMAS Richard Lemon Lander

My Dearest Alastair,

As I write this letter to you, I sit again in the palace of the Autumn Court, where my rightful rule as Queen has been restored.

As you know, I had been negotiating with Oberon, King of the Summer Court, to obtain his aid in reclaiming my throne. While I was engaged in that pursuit, my companions, with the “help” of Mirya the gnome, managed to transport themselves to another realm. As time does not move at the same rate in Faerie as it does in other realms, what was a few hours to me was several days for my companions. They returned somewhat the worse for wear, but in possession of a remarkable craft – a jet-powered airship, along with a pilot, Iris, who had joined them having no wish to remain in her own world.

This airship, the Lady Blackbird, was a wonder, and it will merit much further study (alas, my companions did not agree with my desire to rename the airship. I felt that christening it Jeanne D’Arc would have been most appropriate, but I was sadly outvoted).

The airship proved useful not only in itself, but as an aid to negotiations. I explained to Oberon that I and my companions had perfected a means of reliably bringing technological devices and vehicles into Faerie, and offered to forswear the use of said means in return for his assistance. You would, I think, have been proud of my “poker face” (that is the phrase, yes?).

After much discussion, and having secured Oberon’s agreement, we arrived at a modification of our plan to retake Autumn. We would use the Lady Blackbird, and fly directly into the Court at top speed, hopefully surprising the usurper. To help, I was able to devise a new fuel for the airship, rather than the diesel fuel it was designed to consume. The use of rendered firedrake (a type of small dragon) as fuel increased the efficiency of the airship markedly.

We flew directly into Autumn, encountering only one difficulty along the way: a massive black dragon! Elspeth used the “ray gun” (something else that merits further study) in the turret of the airship to attack the dragon, but, unfortunately it was able to launch an attack against us in return – not fire, but a sonic blast. The force of it caused the airship to tumble in midair, and the engines to fail.

Thinking quickly, Iris tried to keep the airship under control, while Elspeth continued to shoot at the dragon. It occurred to me that the problem with the engines was a lack of air flowing into them, and that the best way to rectify that would be to get the maximum speed and airflow – by flying straight down, towards the ground. At approximately 200 feet altitude, the engines restarted, and we were again able to fly under power.

During this time, unknown to us, Lord Tybalt had teleported himself atop the dragon, and had controlled its mind, forcing it to break off its attack. It was not until we were again flying safely and level that we learned this, and we were most grateful for it.

After that harrowing encounter, we were only a few hours’ flight to the Autumn Court. We opted for the most direct strategy possible – we planned to bring the airship to the highest tower, where we thought the usurper would likely be lurking. Upon our arrival, Lord Tybalt teleported himself in, while General Pickton flew in, carrying a rope down which the rest of our group could enter the tower.

The usurper was not there, but instead Lord Tybalt and General Pickton found an envoy of the Spanish Empire along with several servants. He was quickly subdued, but not before an alarm was raised and musket-armed troops began to arrive just as I and my companions entered the tower. General Pickton departed, upon seeing a detachment of Singes Avion preparing to take flight and attack us, and Lord Tybalt joined him.

Meanwhile, Elspeth and Marcus engaged the oncoming guards, Elspeth with gunfire and Marcus with his sword, and then by means of a large sofa which he hurled down the stairs to scatter the troops. They then pursued the retreating troops, after which Elspeth soon ran into an old acquaintance, Lord Rakat. As she reported to us afterwards, she was torn between her heart and her head, but her head won out, and she shot Rakat dead.

Meanwhile, General Pickton performed remarkably, rallying the Singes Avion from the usurper’s service and back to their rightful monarch. It was at this point that the usurper made his appearance. Emerging from a blocky, ugly building he had had erected on the grounds (and which shall shortly be demolished. I shall personally supervise that operation). He had with him a bodyguard composed of large armored bears.

I then took action, choosing the only possible course at that moment; I took careful aim with my weapon, on the setting that translates as “Kill Everyone”, and fired. The usurper was vaporized, along with most of his bodyguard, in a glorious flash of Tesla Rays, and thus his vile reign was ended.

Now we must commence the work of rooting out the usurper’s followers and determining who is loyal to their rightful Queen, and then repairing the damage done by the usurper to the Court and to its relations with its neighbors. Once that is accomplished, some arrangement will have to be made to oversee the Court while I am gone, as our true enemy, the Spanish Empire, remains out there plotting against us at every moment (on that subject, we did take the Spanish envoy prisoner, and Lord Tybalt is taking the lead in his interrogation, if that is the correct word for what is being done to him).

But once the Spanish have been defeated, I am most anxious for you to visit the Autumn court and see my beautiful realm. I am more anxious, however, merely to see you in any capacity, and I pray that that day shall be sooner rather than later. Until that happy moment, I remain your most devoted and grateful friend,

Genevieve Chantal Therese de Lisieux Lamballe, La Reine du Le Cour d’Automne

Risus Monkey Is A Code Monkey

2011-12-15T21:58:00.000-05:00

I just wrapped up a multi-month push towards a pretty big deadline at work. I'm not about to go into specifics other than that it involved a lot of coding (C++ and Python). I'm a software engineer by trade and I enjoy my job but it has been a long time (since my first child was born) since I have coded that furiously. While it was completely exhausting it was also exhilarating.

I mention this because my software engineering brain and my blog-writing, geomorph-drawing, game mastering brain haven't really had much to do with each other lately. It used to be that I would write character generators, combat simulators, and gaming utilities for kicks. It's what I did in my spare time before I really started blogging. It was fun and it kept my technical skills sharp when work got boring.

But with kids, I found that I no longer had the time for such things and switched almost entirely to writing and other analog pursuits. Coding isn't just something you can easily squeeze into the corners of a day. If I start a software project, I kind of obsess about it. I always want to get to the code to a state where it does something useful or interesting. If I find a bug, I want to fix the damn thing. Now.

Anyway, I now find myself thinking about coding game apps again. But I'm feeling a little gun shy because if I do, I have a sense that it may disrupt my other interests. My efforts at developing a writing habit my slide and blogging may prove especially challenging.

But I have a kind of neat idea that involves old school Interactive Fiction (like Zork) and the geomorphs that everybody was doing not so long ago. It would be nifty if I utilize some of the Interactive Fiction frameworks out there to explore a random assortment of geomorphs (stocked with monsters and treasure for good measure).

Sigh. It's a crazy idea and I may drop it if it becomes too much. But I'm going to take advantage of some possible holiday free time to see what can be done with it.

Release The Dice!

2011-12-13T17:57:00.000-05:00

There have been sightings in the wild, so I can now safely post that I have them as well! Yes, I have the DungeonMorph Dice! Joe Wetzel has done an amazing job of putting these suckers together and I'm honored to have some of my designs included alongside a host of cartographic luminaries.

The dice look awesome and feel great in the hand. I've already been using them for dice games with my kids and I hope to use these real dungeon crawls at first opportunity.

Ring of Thieves

2011-12-09T07:16:00.003-05:00

Do you fondly remember those old "Choose Your Own Adventure" book from back in the Eighties? Do you like Risus? If so, you owe it to yourself to check out S. John Ross' Ring of Thieves solo adventure, available for free on the Cumberland website. It's been available for almost twelve years now and Risus grognards (is there such a thing as a Risus grognard?)will certainly be familiar with the original PDF. But the classic adventure has been reformatted as a stand-alone print-on-demand book, available at Lulu. Alas, it is not free. But with all the Lulu sales popping up, it may occasionally creep down into the not-so-unreasonably-priced range. At the very least, you can ask Santa to stuff it into your stocking rather than the travel-sized bath accessories that you usually get. It would also make a great white elephant gift for your next office party. Just imagine the confused look on the faces of your non-gamer co-workers!

Reflections on Solo Game Appreciation Month

2011-12-01T18:44:00.002-05:00

November has come and gone and with it many of my grand ambitions for Solo Game Appreciation Month. I *did* manage to restart my long-dormant Ebon Knight Mythic GME/ICONS game, and for that I should be thankful. It was over a year ago when I left off with page 16 of my pseudo-comic. It was right around that time that my schedule took a hit and solo gaming fell off the table. But I've picked up the story and I have managed to crawl my way through page 20 by stealing a few minutes here and there after work and at lunch. The pseudo-comic format works really well for folks with a tight schedule, as you only really need to do a panel at a time.

So, yeah, that was a success. I'll even post some AP once I'm closing in on the end of the first "issue".

But my grand goal for the month was to come up with a new kind of card-based solo system based on the beats of Hamlet's Hit Points. I started hashing out some ideas HERE and the project seemed to have so much promise. But I found that my system kind of fell flat once I started to use it.

In a nut-shell, I basically came up with a system that translated draws from a standard deck of playing cards into emotional beats. Most cards resulted in procedural or dramatic beats (determined by context) and the number of pips determined if they were positive or negative (as per Robin's analysis, there was a definite negative bias). Face cards yielded special beats like Questions, Pipes, Reveals, Commentary, Gratification, Anticipations, or Bringdowns. Suit would provide additional inspiration, as per my Practical Cartomancy article.

The problem is that I totally got everything backwards. The reason the Mythic GME works so well is that the GME just acts as a glorified Magic Eightball with random twists thrown in for good measure. When playing a Mythic game, there is this natural kind of flow and you only really need to consult the GME when logic fails and answers are non-obvious (or when you just really want to allow for some unpredictable weirdness).

My so-called "Beat System" kind of put the cart before the horse. Given a situation, I'd draw a card and flail about trying to interpret it. I was hoping the cards would provide a cool dramatic structure, but in reality they just simultaneously provided too much and too little.

I still have hopes that I can do something with Hamlet's Hit Points because it really has been on my mind lately. But I'm most likely going to take my ideas and apply them more directly to play with the GME.

And speaking of Hamlet's Hit Points, Robin Laws will be crowdfunding a game called Hillfolk, which will be the first to use his "Drama System". Essentially, it's genre emulation for television dramas. Sounds fascinating!

The Black Helicopters Arrive

2011-11-29T17:48:00.002-05:00

Yes, that's a Black Helicopter hovering over my house. I'm not sure what we did to deserve this at way-too-early on Sunday morning, but it did add a bit of excitement into our day. We heard this ungodly and completely unfamiliar noise coming from the back and when I looked out, I saw trees swaying and debris flying in every direction. Then I looked up. I half-expected to see repelling MIBs but after a few minutes, the menace eventually flew elsewhere.

Not something you see every day. I suspect it was inspecting power lines, but I can't really be sure.

In other news, I'm facing a HUGE deadline here at work. Posting will continue to be light until about mid-December, though I will post if I get a few spare moments.

Timetravel Hijinx

2011-11-23T06:58:00.001-05:00

Last Saturday's episode of Slaying Solomon was a real treat. While I am the series creator and usually run things, we regularly feature guest directors. This allows me the pleasure of playing Erik as a real PC, which is an absolute joy. There's just something wonderful about playing that lovable, stinky, muscle-bound slacker that couldn't keep a secret if the fate of the world depended on it.

Anyway, the last episode (entitled "The Ghosts of Christmas Future") was directed by Greg*, who normally plays Drew. It was a brilliant, high concept episode involving a very focused application of time travel. We started the episode in the middle of an oh-my-god-we're-going-to-die brawl in the we hours of Christmas Eve/Morning. An established NPC demon with time travel powers was available to facilitate a desperate evacuation to 12 hours prior, whereby we had to relive the previous day's events as our past selves and struggle with our future selves to find a way of winning the battle once we had caught up with real time.

I had been hoping to run an episode something like this for a while because it seemed like one of the few genre TV tropes that we hadn't used yet. But as I was still trying to figure out how to make it work, Greg beat me to the punch.

And it did prove to be a small wonder of organized chaos. Greg allowed us a great deal of narrative power to define how we actually ended up in that fight. A rule of time travel (for the episode if not the entire series) was that we absolutely could not change history. So when we declared that our future selves "remembered" something from the previous 12 hours, we miraculously managed to make it happen for real.

Of course, Erik instantly remembered the he had received a call from himself (thus kicking off the whole series of events). Erik can't keep a secret, even from himself. The conversation between future Erik (played by me) and past Erik (played by Greg) was one of the highlights of my RPG life.

Now the Greg has done this episode for Buffy, I can't imagine doing it again for this particular campaign. *But*, Oh My do I want to try something similar in the next game that I run! And it doesn't have to be time travel. This episode also served as a model for how to one of those "start the party in a cliffhanger and explain how they got there before the resolution" type games.

* By some strange coincidence, Greg has run most of our Christmas episodes. Weird.

I'm A Sorcerer?

2011-11-18T15:17:00.000-05:00

Interesting Friday afternoon Internet time waster courtesy of What D&D Character Am I? Not too shabby, though the class choice is a head-scratcher (and very non-optimal).

I Am A: Lawful Good Human Sorcerer (6th Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-15

Dexterity-16

Constitution-13

Intelligence-16

Wisdom-14

Charisma-13

Alignment:
Lawful Good A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment when it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Teaching The Kid To Game

2011-11-17T07:01:00.000-05:00

It's Teach Your Kids to Game Week, which is very timely given that I'm trying to teach my own boys how to play something closer to the games I like to play. After various experiments in pushing miniatures (and Lego figs) around a map and rolling dice, I think we've fallen into a bit of a rut. Mostly, we pair off combatants, roll dice (the number and type vary from day to day) and the winner knocks out the loser. It's getting old for me and I've had limited success in persuading them to introduce other elements.

That is, until now. Last night I feel like we had a breakthrough. With my youngest asleep, my first grader and I got out the box of minis and some previously unused poster maps that I discovered in the lower reaches of Gen Con swag bin. Not having had much luck in exploratory games, I instead opted to construct a military scenario. My child would assemble a squad of 6 heroes from among the miniatures (and Legos and actions figures) and I'd do the same for the villains. Then, and this is the key point of departure from previous efforts, we each made up extremely simple character sheets for our guys. On the spot, I made up a rule that said we could distribute 4,3,3,2,2 values amongst our team members in both attack capability and defense.

For the first time, the boy was able to make interesting and significant character creation decisions. Which of his team members were the strongest attackers? Which had the highest defense? I swear, I think I saw a light bulb go off in his head.

Playing out the scenario was a lot of fun. I played it out mostly Risus-style, with the attack and defense values indicating the number of dice rolled. We even tracked damage with hit points equal to the sum of the dice. Movement rules were simple (characters could move one "zone" or engage one target in melee combat) but we did include rules for ganging up, which added a nice tactical element.

The obvious next steps:

* Try to craft a more traditional adventure

* Introduce more complicated movement rules

* Introduce range combat

* Move to an established rules system

* Finally, the holy grail would be start an actual mini-campaign.