Two quasi-nostalgia threads worth reading

Ever play a game that was more fun to read than play?
My anecdote about this comes from eavesdropping at a games shop: I overheard a guy who runs a FLGS tell this story once. He participated in a retail program for one of the publishers at one point a while ago, where he had to complete phone surveys with the publisher for hours on end (about volume of sales, demographics, etc.). After one particularly tedious survey, at the end he said, "Look, can you tell me what you are finding from all of these, so that I can better position your products?" And amongst the many marketing talking points the surveyor rattled off, the one that stuck with him the most was, "Well, a lot of customers are guys in their 30s and 40s who buy the games but basically just read them - don't play too much."

Weigh in here:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/295071-games-more-fun-read-than-play.html

AND

Ever play a game that was more fun to play than read?
Here's what I posted there: For me, I'm a HUGE fan of the Runequest rules, but the campaign setting of Glorantha is so dense that I've had trouble getting players interested in an ongoing campaign over the years. By the time they've wrapped their arms around heroquesting, the various empires, etc., it's hours into the first session. Unlike say the Forgotten Realms, where granted there is an unapproachable amount of history, you actually have to get into this stuff in Glorantha (what tribe are you from, what deity do you worship, what are your views on the world) to make the game actually fit the setting, unlike FR where even if there are thousands of years of history you can say, "Well, you're a halfling from the south, and you're a pickpocket." The tropes and archetypes of Glorantha are less approachable to a typical fantasy player, in my opinion, but if you can get into it it's fascinating great stuff.

On the rules/presentation side, there are plenty of games that I've played where due to budget or whatever the game was presented in a haphazard fashion, but once you cut through it it was hella fun! TWERPS comes to mind - it was obviously photocopied from pages that were typed on a typewriter, but if you got past that, it was a great beer and pretzels game.

Weigh in:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/295072-games-more-fun-play-than-read.html

Bonus thread - nostalgia kicks about games from your youth:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/295121-games-my-youth-rolemaster-express.html

The Christening of the Man Cave

Major kudos to Josh for helping me assemble the last set of shelving for the garage, so that we could clear enough room to make it into a "man cave." After we got it all together, we finally got a chance to play Rune Quest II. The Obsidian Portal site has my update on the campaign, here. Long and short, we found the new combat rules to run more quickly and smoothly, and the reorganized skill system definitely made play even more fun. The combat maneuvers system made combat more cinematic, and we lucked out enough with our rolls to use 3 maneuvers in one combat - blinding, maxing damage, and calling shots. Combat is still hella deadly, but the nerfing of some weapons damage seems to have gone a little way towards minimizing the "Oh, I hit you - you're crippled or dead," scenarios that we encountered during the last edition. If you have a chance, check out the new system published by Mongoose - it's a great time!

The new Glorantha setting drops in a week or so, so stay tuned for more Rune Quest goodness...

Updated The Destroyer

Sorry for the cross-post, but I wanted to plug that I updated my Obsidian Portal wiki for my RuneQuest campaign that I'm in the midst of re-launching, here:

http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/runequest-the-destroyer/adventure-log/converting-to-runequest-ii

Also note that to avoid having to cross-post in the future, if you look left on the homepage of Tyler is Gaming..., you'll see a scrape of recent posts from The Destroyer showing up automatically.

Take that, Web 1.0!

Obsidian Portal

I'm building out my old RuneQuest campaign on Obsidian Portal, tonight. Has anybody out there used this for managing a campaign? It's got some great features for managing your maps (you can drop markers for different adventures and locations on the map), integrating a forum tool, wiki pages... Lots more cool stuff. Check it out!

Also, major points for leveraging Vimeo streaming video as the instructions for using the tools. Very cool!

PS - I'm also updating the campaign to RuneQuest II. Any advice there is appreciated.

http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/runequest-the-destroyer

RuneQuest: When Last We Joined Our Intrepid Heroes...

The last game of RuneQuest I ran, last month, was in my opinion a step in the right direction. The players started coming into their own as characters, grasping the different Gloranthan themes like the Empire of Wyrm's Friends, the God Learner Empire, and furthering the overall plot related to the humble rogue of the Clanking City who has found that he is to bring about the world's destruction (The Destroyer). Also noteworthy was the first "in the flesh" appearance of The Interloper.

As the party adventured down river, they came upon the small city of Tinaros on Felster Lake. In Tinaros, they got into a tussle with some dock hands that were trying to exact tribute from our intrepid heroes. They investigated the city briefly, saw that a pageant for Sacred Time was being held in honor of the legendary Arkat, but they returned to the docks and recruited some of the thuggish dock hands to be essentially their pirate crew. Yarrr. (Yes, Jon was behind this piratey turn of events - all worship the Mighty Flying Spaghetti Monster...)

Making their way to Kustria, where the Destroyer was told he'd find out more about his heritage and where his path was taking him, they arrived in one piece, tussled with the Kustrian Longshoreman, shared some loot and looked into possible trouble to get themselves into while the Destroyer did his soul searching. Rather quickly they stumbled upon Mad Maud's Brass Horn inn, where the crazy proprietess added another bizarre NPC to the mix (who could forget a barkeep who had mice living in her hair). Staying there, they found that like much of what Glorantha (and all of RPG-dom) holds to offer, if you are an adventurer, hanging out in the common room of an inn will result in people searching you out for hire.

A Messenger of St. Beaud (a young street urchin in the Lampwick mould) brought news of the framing of a timinit (antman) monk for the murder of the abbot of the Arkat Cathedral. The party reached out to the antman, who runs the Rug Seller's Guild, and agreed to help clear the young monk's good name. They also caught wind of an evil gangleader named Ava who is in charge of a band of thugs called the Renunciators - rivals of the Vadrus Runners (who, coincidentally comprised part of the group of thugs that accosted the party at the docks).

After several days of searching, including a day the Destroyer spent at Church Row researching the Interloper and the tales of the Destroyer, the party had a run in with insane Ava and her gang. Ava, it seemed, had muttered more than a few words about The Interloper during her and her gang's attacks on the citizenry. While attacking her hideout, and completely decimating the gang (gotta love RuneQuest's vicious combat rules), the Interloper appeared out of a mirror in her hideout and assaulted the party. A vicious demon, he evaded many of their blows and managed to escape into the mirror before it was shattered in the midst of the combat. He revealed himself in one of his many guises - primarily, to make it known to The Destroyer that he was aware of his presence. The city guard appeared as all of this was occurring, and The Destroyer realized that Ava was aware of his true identity. Risking being revealed as "the Destroyer" and likely being sentenced to death for crimes he'd yet to commit, the Destroyer reluctantly killed Ava, and turning in her body for the bounty. Jon's pirate recruited the survivors of her gang to join their band of pirates, and paid the crew out of the booty in The Renunciators' hideout.

A thread that I thought was a little too tidy had the timinit monk actually framed by Ava's gang, and so his name was cleared in the process. Basically, I was working to have as many arrows pointing to Ava's hideout as possible, so that there'd be a run in between the Destroyer and the Interloper, and a potential unveiling of the Destroyer as the man he truly is (or will be). In a sense we got that, with the Destroyer's reluctant killing of another, furthering his story a little bit more, actually in the vein of Ben from Carnivale, without the player's having seen that program before.

After the game, I arranged for the RuneQuest Pirates, Glorantha: Blood of Orlanth, and another Runequest book or two to find their way to me just in time for Father's Day. ;) I wanted to add more to the game to help cater to the players' interests. There's only so much within the actual Glorantha sourcebook (lots of resources, especially about the small region of Safelster), but I wanted to create more of a sandbox for the game itself. Interestingly, I found out that part of the reason why one of our usual players didn't come to the last session is that he found the campaign to be too event-oriented instead of sandboxy. Something I'm trying to remedy. I felt the first couple of games had to help establish some landmarks, and hopefully now that the players "speak" Gloranthan a bit better, I can kind of leave them to their own devices, to find adventure where it suits them.

Any other DMs out there struggled with that issue in the past? The balance between keeping thigns moving, and keeping things open ended? I'd appreciate any advice.

Next RuneQuest Game - Sunday the 17th...

Picking my RuneQuest game back up on Sunday the 17th with the usual gang of idiots. The Destroyer - the hapless, unintended bringer of doom upon the world - and his co-horts will find themselves sailing downriver on their Dragonewt boat to the God Learner city of Kustria. Options will be laid out for them to stay local for a while and try to research more about this great plot against the Clanking City's defenses, or they may go out in one of many sandbox-y directions to adventure further - perhaps furthering the meta story, perhaps not.

For those of you gents in the campaign, what do you want to see? (comment here, if you'd like) For those of you running RuneQuest games, what is working for you in the current Glorantha setting?

Thanks!

-Tyler

Rune Quest Redux

Yesterday, Josh, Mark, Benni and I gathered to play Rune Quest again. Our pals Stephan and Travis joined in for the festivities, as well. The weather was practically balmy, so we set up shop on the picnic table outside with some beers and snacks and rolled our percentile dice.

The game went well - we're rapidly adapting to Rune Quest as a rules system for our games, and many of the kinks of the first session have been ironed out. I had allowed Benni's witch to overuse her runes during the first game (forgetting to county magic points spent during a given day - bad GM, Tyler!) and also we had played a little loose and free with the Dodge and Parry rules. That was probably all for the best, so that we adapted to the system as a whole rather than getting mired down in metchanics. Yesterday's session allowed us to correct those errors, though, and we really felt like we were getting a better flavor for how the game played out. Travis rightly pointed out that much of the mechanics sytem - especially location damage - is similar to the Warhammer Fantasy RPG that we played for a while. (RQ actually predates WFRP by a few years.)

With the mechanics in hand, we were able to focus more on the campaign setting of Glorantha, and a story arc that I'd written out in my moleskine notebook during my day off on Friday. Borrowing liberally from Daniel Knauf's Carnivale, I laid out a good old fashioned rail road set up wherein one of the player characters finds out that he is destined for greatness and will be opposed by a mysterious figure of darkness. I selected our thief, a survivor of the siege of The Clanking City, as an individual known in myth as The Destroyer - one who would destroy a great mechanical city. The thief doesn't want this destiny - he wants to protect his home, not destroy it. His party doesn't want him to destroy the city either, and it was with tongues not planted too firmly in cheek that many of them considered turning him in for some sort of reward. On the horizon of the story arc is a figure named The Interloper - one who really does want to destroy The Clanking City and all it stands for. Motives are still being discovered, but it seems that The Interloper is a puppet master using others to get to The Destroyer, to help him fulfill his star-crossed destiny...

This particular week's scenario found the player characters meeting a shaman of the Tribe of the Hunter, who informs the thief of his destiny. The party fought their first Fachan in the woods outside the shrine (a tall, tree like monstrosity that preys on adventurers carrying magical weapons), and then came across a party of Dragonewts (scouts from a rival empire of half-dragons). Shortly after, they headed down stream to the village of Beltos, where they were hired by viscount Sultos Silvermask to cleanse the town of an enclave of chaos cultists. Shenanigans ensued as the party chased down every red herring and two members even bald-faced accused a known innocent, but by the time the adventure wrapped, the corrupt monk who ran the enclave had been captured and the party had their next clue in hand to help them along their path towards learning more about The Destroyer and The Interloper.

Campy, over the top stuff, to be sure, but a good time was had. For what it's worth, I'm raiding lots of sites for Rune Quest ideas, including The Mongoose Rune Quest Wiki and the Mongoose Rune Quest Forums. Anybody have anything else they suggest? Anybody have a good 1-2 pager about Glorantha that I can share with my players?

I survived the Ides of March

Benni, Mark, Josh, Jacob and I played through "Rune of Chaos" yesterday - the introductory RuneQuest module from Mongoose Publishing.  Aside from a few road bumps getting used to the BRP-cum-MongooseRuneQuest combat system (roll to hit, measure against dodge roll, find target location, measure damage, subtract armor...) the game went rather well.  The party completed the module in one long session, and we only had to fudge one set of mechanics.  (The arena scene pretty much depleted the party's resources just before the final battle.)  One complaint with the module - it doesn't leave enough open threads at the end of the adventure to really keep the storyline going beyond the published content.

The campaign setting of Glorantha is something we had some trouble integrating.  Aside from some flavor text about Gloranthan elves, there wasn't much to set the module in a particular location, so I picked an area to the South West of Peloria, and gave the party some introductory motivation of heading towards the Clanking City to help free it from the siege described in the Gloranthan campaign setting.  The text in the setting wasn't particularly helpful in tying in the module or finding a good place to start - I'll have to do some more research on that front, as I write the scenario for our next game.

As always, any feedback or recommendations are appreciated.  How are you running your games of RuneQuest?  What are good hooks to get an actual campaign underway, and what areas of the map are most easily used as starting points?  

Prepping for the Ides of March

So, Sunday is almost upon us, and I'm prepping big time for my annual Ides of March gaming day.  This year, we're playing an inaugural game of RuneQuest.  My fellow players have played plenty of Call of Cthulhu over the years, but that's the only foray into the Basic Roleplaying System we've tried.  RuneQuest and its classless, skill-based take on fantasy roleplaying is something we're looking forward to after trying to wrap our heads around the broken prestige classes of 3.5 Edition and the uber-powerful-to-start-but-slow-to-develop classes of 4th edition D&D.

In prep for Sunday's game, I have RuneQuest Deluxe (core rules + companion + monsters), Gamesmaster's handbook, the Rune of Chaos adventure, and even a DM's screen.  (ooo - accessory)  Probably the most loot I've bought for a game I've never played, so I hope the players enjoy it.  Learning the rules system hasn't been hard - it's very similar to Cthulhu - but I have been working to make sure I have the highly precise combat system down.  Josh and I even played an encounter last Sunday just to try out some of the options.  Now I'm working on absorbing as much of the campaign setting as possible to make for a memorable and integrated first session.

Tangentially, I've been playing lots of Elder Scrolls Oblivion, and the more I play it, the more I see how similar its rules system, skill-based progression, fairly even handed use of fantasy-races as player types, magic available to all characters, and even some of the setting are to RuneQuest.  Maybe I'm just seeing other games through that filter, right now, but I'm intrigued as to how this sort of skill based progression works very well in a social gaming atmosphere, as well as in a single-player video game.  Less of the "waiting around to level" stuff that mired down Neverwinter Nights and other video games I'd played heavily.

Wish me luck.  If anybody's played some RQ and has recommendations on how to expedite combat, encounters, handle the fantasy world of Glorantha or anything of the like, please feel free to comment.  Thanks!  I'll post a recap - hopefully with some photos - after the game itself.

A Week in Gaming and Blogging

I've been trying to get the most out of Blogger, all while I work on upgrading my old website using WordPress.  Blogger's got some nice strengths to it, especially with this week's incorporation of Google's Friend Connect.  (I for one worship our new overlords from the Googleplex...)  Incorporating authentication, commenting and social elements to an off-the-shelf blogging tool - in a way that ties into authentication used by millions - is very compelling.  Sure, I realize Facebook is trying to head towards this with Facebook Connect, but using your gmail login for...well...everything on the internet it seems is nothing to sneeze at.  I've added the Social Bar (see up above), the superfluous-but-why-not ratings box, and noticed that the Followers box has automatically updated to the Friend Connect model.  Hopefully, they'll roll out some new templates to support these widgets a little bit more smoothly, shortly...

So, all the while that I've been farting around with the new Blogger features and widgets, I've also been trying to do less navel gazing and read more of what others are saying on blogs about gaming - 'cuz that's what it's all about, right?  Gnome Stew has been a constant for me, and I'm proud to see them get props from Gamer cum Laude Wil Wheaton, recently.  I've grown quite fond of Grognardia (although I still find the flamewars on the comment threads to be startling and at times bizarre - no fault of the blog owner, and commentary solely on the public square that is the internet), and through seeing my friend Kerry's Adventurer: The Card Game plugged on it, I've started to take note of Back in '81, another great nostalgia site for all things early RPG-ish.  If anyone has any good RPG blog recommendations, feel free to message me or leave them in the comments, below.  I'd like to see what everyone else is reading.  

And outside the confines of my precious computer screen and its 8x11 window on the world?  I've recently picked up the RuneQuest RPG re-releases by Mongoose Publishing (see post, below) and am enjoying those a great deal.  The CoC mechanics mixed with a world that is part Norse myth, part Warhammer fantasy, and part Brothers Grimm is a compelling stew.  I've been adding a good deal of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion on the XBox to my repertoire as well.  One of the best sandbox RPGs I've played on a computer or console.  Good stuff.

Soon spring will be here, and the great outdoors will beckon.  For now, I'm maxxing out the time on the couch, being a loaf, and enjoying some good old nerding.