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

1 on 1 Adventure Gamebooks: Castle Arcania

While unpacking more boxes after my move I came across a few of the classic TSR 1 on 1 Adventure Gamebooks sets including Castle Arcania, the first of the series.  Flashback!  I hadn't seen these books in years, and immediately flipped through them.  Most of them were given away to buddies as gifts after this discovery, to share in the mutual nostalgia kick.  

These books were the logical extension of the Choose Your Own Adventure kick - stat up the protagonist and his/her enemies, put an illustration on each page, and add an element of random encounter resolution.  The Lone Wolf books accomplished something similar, frankly to a better result.  But the 1-0n-1 books had an interesting kick to the young gamer in training circa mid-1980s - you didn't play these alone, you played them with a friend.  For me, that friend was more often than not my older brother, Chris.  Many a long car trip or rainy Summer afternoon were spent flipping through these books together, asking each other "What location are you in?"  You see, in order to allow the players to compete with one another, each story set had an artifact or ability of some sort that allowed the players to somehow detect where the other player was at all times.  Through the use of a map in the book, you could essentially chase the other player, and confront them once you had amassed enough loot or information to defeat them.

Castle Arcania's plot was essentially a "valiant knight versus evil wizard who has kidnapped a princess" old saw.  For me, it presented a first, though.  The "good" character embodied by the Knight looked like a jerk on the cover of the books - to me, he looked pissed off an angry, not heroic.  And Neves, well, he just looked badass.  Evil wizard or note, he rapidly became my favorite to play between the two characters.  (The random elements allowed massive replay for a product of its time.)  

This was a first attempt by TSR to really expand upon the success of their Endless Quest choose-your-own-adventure-style books, and it's amusing to see the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach that was employed.  The setting is massively inconsistent, with the princess' bodyguard being termed an "Amazon", conflicting with some elements of Western Europe ca. the Dark Ages, and with a dash of Egyptian imagery (fight Anubis, kids!) tossed in for (good?) measure.  That said, being thrown into the deep end of the mixed-campaign-and-monsters pool made for a fun ride.  Further books (Druid's Grove, and others) got a bit more consistent and developed more interesting plots, making them almost grow with the players who had bought this first book set and moved on to the rest.

If you can find any of them up on ebay or at used shops, grab one set - it's worth the ride.  If you want to join in on the nostalgia, post any comments here or visit this site that has a bunch of reviews of these books up: http://www.gamebooks.org/show_item.php?id=1828.  

Just added FeedBurner to "Tyler is Gaming..."

Followers and Readers, go out and share the things you love and hate within this blog!  I've added FeedBurner features to make it easier to share content from this site, allowing you to more easily subscribe via email, share postings via email, share via Facebook and more.  Frankly, this is almost more of an exercise for me than something that I thought the masses were awaiting, but I hope you get some use out of it, and it adds to your enjoyment of the blog.

Enworld.org Community Supporter

I just became a Community Supporter over at Enworld.org.  I feel very strongly about the communtiy that they provide online for gamers, and have taken great advantage of it to better understand my hobby over the past several years.  Joining helps support their infrastructure and endeavors to serve the online gaming community through providing resources, forums, news, and content.  Also, with the Ennies around the corner, knowing that I'm helping support a gaming awards show makes me feel chic and nerdy all at the same time.  

If you want to help support Enworld, visit their Community Supporter page.

Sunny Day in Washington Square Park

"There'll be laughing, swaying, music playing, dancing in the streets."

College kid on the bench next to me, to her friend: What's on your mind?
Her friend: There is so much strife and brutality in the world...
College kid: It's too nice a day for this sh*t, man.

What Would Google Do? - the Wizards of the Coast Edition

Over the weekend, I read Jeff Jarvis' "What Would Google Do?" - a treatise about how Google's business model and overall philosophy are changing the way that many think of not just their workplace but also the world itself. 

WWGD? - The PowerPoint

View more presentations from jeffjarvis.

The tenets - seen nicely in the author's corresponding Power Point on slideshare (above) - can be roughly summed up as:

• give control over to your customers
• pursue your own niche well and support others who fill in your gaps
• be transparent and open
• provide elegant solutions
• free is a business model
• trust the people
• make mistakes
• and don't be evil.
  

Now, as I read the book, and I reviewed Jarvis' examples of how these tenets are being applied to many industries (think: the Android cell phone, better ways of managing health care documents, better ways of managing energy consumption), I kept coming back to Wizards of the Coast.  As early peeks at 4th edition started to roll out about a year ago - with the hype machine telling us what to expect, and playtests of the early edition of the rules appearing at gaming conventions - it would seem that WotC was off to a very promising and "googley" approach to their craft.  The scale of playtesting - involving actual end-users on convention scale, instead of just in isolated groups - was tremendous compared to any other RPG roll out that I am aware of.  The lurking on enworld.org and other message boards by the designers and staff was apparent.  WotC was so bold as to roll out a few versions of the rules through convention sample games before the rules were done - to let us see what they were cooking in the kitchen before it was even done.  And perhaps most of all, the open game license was reported to be alive and well.

And now here we are a little over a year later, and I'm kind of confused.  For all the promise of those early days, and the continued promise of "join dndinsider and playtest the new barbarian class" and other steps that seemed intended to take the players into consideration, how did we end up here?

• PDFs of Wizards products - even old school d&d ones that can't be assumed to have tremendous marketshare against 4e - have been yanked from PDF vendors like Drivethrurpg.com.
• The GSL - open gaming license of 4e - has gone through a tremendous amount of examination by the industry.  Products compatible with 3rd edition may no longer be published if a publisher wishes to create an identical 4th edition flavor.
• Additionally, third party products that were common during 3rd edition as game aids - things like spell cards that put the Player's Handbook spell lists in index card format for easy reference at the game table - have been banned as WotC starts to roll out its own versions of those products.
• Gleemax - the social networking site for d&d fans - has been abandoned, with no clear image of a social medium of choice for d&d fans to fill the void.
• Similarly, while WotC is clear that it is not dead-in-the-water, the online support for d&d through dndinsider has become little more than a web-based version of Dragon and Dungeon magazines, with little more than a few other gadgets to round it out.  Not - yet - the online gaming table with craftable player minis that was promised well over a year ago.   

The above is just an anecdotal summary based on the news shared on the enworld.org news page over the past few months.  My goal is not to beat up on the big dog in the gaming world.  But I am wondering, after reading Jarvis' book, if some lessons might be applied here to make WotC a company that more clearly serves the needs of its customers (and would likely turn a nice profit in the process).  

A few suggestions:

1. Yanking PDFs from the market over a handful of pirated copies that replicated out quickly into thousands of pirated copies is understandable on one hand - free is a business model, but letting others bootleg your work with no remuneration is not a business model.  On the other hand, it really seems like a baby-with-the-bathwater situation.  It can't be assumed that the first PDF that showed up on a torrent site was the Player's Handbook II, which prompted last week's decision.  Why didn't WotC put together an amenable alternate plan before all of a sudden nixing e-books as a viable platform for their gaming products?  Without this kind of foresight, I'm admittedly concerned that whatever platform they do pick may not stick and I'd be again stuck with having an online edition with no platform to support it.  This lack of trust of the overwhelming majority of their players is a PR mistake.
2. WotC needs to find its niche.  Part of what made 3rd Edition's open license so compelling for me and many other players who returned to the hobby was the fact that there were all of a sudden lots of creative individuals and companies churning out adventures and support materials.  While we've seen a few publishers dive into publishing adventures, companies seem less actively publishing products that extend the hobby beyond just scenarios.  I almost wonder if the aforementioned power cards scenario may have an impact.  Is WotC really going to make a break even on power cards?  Was it worth pressing the issue and preventing others from releasing these, albeit leveraging WotC's intellectual property?  No, but is it likely that there were folks who bought the 3rd party power cards without having first purchased the core rules from WotC?  The same line of thought applies to Dragon and Dungeon magazines.  Paizo had been doing a great job with them - probably the best gaming writing since the mid-80s Dragon magazine.  Why take that away from a company that was doing a skilled job with it and turn it into part of a yet to be completed online initiative?  I'm all for staggering the roll out of features, but if Dragon and Dungeon were to be the cornerstone of something else, where's the something else?  The other whiz bang features (aside from some tools that are not whiz bang) have yet to arrive, essentially leaving us with online editions of publications not up to their former glory.
3. Likewise, why was Gleemax chloroformed?  Not that creating a platform to compete with Facebook and MySpace was a wise idea to begin with, but now that it's gone there is a void that the players themselves will fill on their own.  By the time WotC gets around to a stronger Facebook presence or finds a creative way of connecting with their players through social media, the players will have created their own niche groups on Facebook and obviated the need for something generated by WotC itself that would have reportable metrics and added value for the consumer.

All told, I think WotC is a much more progressive company than many consumer-product-driven companies out there.  But there have been some missteps lately that adversely affect the image of the company to the players who are expecting more for their gaming dollar than just a book and a game to play with friends.  Dungeons and Dragons is a cult classic, and the affinity we players have for the game and for one another is a tremendous opportunity for WotC to create long lasting relationships with its consumers, not just for the feel good story, but for building onto those relationships to make the product even stronger, and one that we'll continue to expend our ever decreasing expendable income upon.  Come on, WotC - be Googley.

Living in a Cloud

Just landed one of them new, cheap as sin Acer D150 Net Books.  The intent being that I can now draft blog postings more easily on the fly while in transit (no, not when driving), and more importantly, spend more time working on my writing (both fiction and the games materials I design).  

All of this is letting me explore technology in some new and interesting ways, and figuring better ways to create content in a mobile world.  I've installed Google docs w/ offline support, Google Calendar and some other google apps that will frankly replace how I'd used MS Office on previous machines.  I've also amped up the way I have the machine configured for speed and security.  Lastly, I've set up Juice and Google Reader (w/ offline support, again - thank you Google Gears) so that I can just fire this puppy up in the AM, download my latest podcasts, and RSS feed articles, and digest them on the way to work or over my morning coffee on the days I'm at home.  

Yes, maybe I've just been drinking a serious amount of Jeff Jarvis' Kool Aid, but I'm excited at diving into the deep end of cloud computing with this 3 pound netbook after a couple of years of finding ways that I can use the world-as-a-platform to help drive the organization of my writing, my ideas about technology, and the way I communicate.  Now, to put all of these tools to good use...

Geek Orthodox: Come Sail Away! Come Sail Away! - Dragonriders of the Styx Toys

Geek Orthodox: Come Sail Away! Come Sail Away! - Dragonriders of the Styx Toys

Saw this today in a deep link within a geek-orthodox posting. Holy crap, I hadn't thought of these action figures in a loooong time. I vaguely remember a set with a plastic map and plastic dragons that the action figures could interact with. Awww, nostalgia...

The man with the tin foil hat helped me fix my blog...

A wrap up to a fun April Fool's day on me (issues w/ formatting my blog, then my internet service dropped out for much of the day wrecking my ability to work...)... Watching VH1's The Greatest One Hit Wonders of the 80s, and catching up on all of the important stuff I needed to be doing all day, as well as, y'know, fixing the formatting on the blog.

Major kudos and a shout out to Chris Lang at googlingsocial.com for helping me fix the blog's Google Friend Connect features, today. You rock, man!

To make up for a lack of content, please check out my "shared items" on the left-hand navigation, where I was able to flag some of the better April Fool's posts from nerddom, today. Enjoy, folks.

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?