The What Have You Been Doing Lately Post

It's been a while since I did one of these, and I kind of like the moment in time feel of them.

Last (non-RPG) Book I've Read...

The Third Secret by Steve Berry.

Treading much the same ground as Dan Brown's terrible novel turned into a mediocre movie, Angels & Demons.  This one treads much the same ground.  In this case, the camerlengo is the hero, the Pope is murdered (and anticipates it), and the newly elected Pope pretty seems like he modeled his life after the Borgia Family.  It's a better read just because the characters involved in a lot of instances have conflicting agendas and loyalties.  Worth a read if you enjoyed either of Dan Brown's novels that tread the same territory, as I consider Berry to be a better writer.

This would make a great d20 Modern Blood & Relics game, if I ever found the time or the group.

Last Music Listened To...

Black Rain, Original Soundtrack, Hans Zimmer

I've been on a soundtracks kick again recently, and I've been collecting a lot of Hans Zimmer's early work.  While his later stuff is a lot more orchestral, and enters the same bombastic territory occupied by John Williams, a lot of his earlier stuff is more synth/light orchestra/chorale heavy, and trades the same ground as some of Vangelis's early stuff.  Most recently, I picked up a copy of the Black Rain soundtrack.  The movie was eh...but the soundtrack just screams cyberpunk to me...without being quite as familiar as the Blade Runner soundtrack, but treading some of the same ground.  It may wind up at the gaming table some day for a cyberpunk or neo-noir game.

Last Movie Watched...

Inception

Rewatched Inception a couple of days ago.  I tend to watch more TV series than movies these days.  I don't go to many movies and I tend to occasionally go on DVD/Blu Ray buying binges.  I'm about due for another one.  Anybody got any suggestions?  I'll certainly be picking up John Carter (I'm a Burroughs fan) and a few others.

Last Television Watched...

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Heroes, Supernatural, Fringe, every Sunday night.

I don't have cable, and I don't have Netflix (though the later should be rectified soon), as I read a lot more than I watch, but the family and I got in a habit of watching television series on DVD a few years back on Sunday nights, starting with Firefly and the reimagined Battlestar Galactica.  Since that time, we've worked our way through X-Files, seasons 1-9, and are currently working our way through Heroes, Buffy, Supernatural, and Fringe.

Supernatural is brilliant.  If you haven't been watching it, you're making a big mistake.  We're about halfway through Season 5, and loving it.

Buffy I saw bits of this series on the WB back in the day, but frankly I worked a lot of nights during its run, and I missed a lot more of it than I remembered.  It's been fun, though frankly, I thought the series may have jumped the shark in Season 4 a bit, and I'm hoping Season 5 (which we started just a few weeks ago) tries to restart some of the momentum.

Heroes we just finished Season 1, which was brilliant.  I understand the remaining three seasons represent a huge drop in quality.  But the complete series was $8 a season on a Black Friday special at Target last Christmas, and I'm figuring I'll get $24 of enjoyment out of the last three seasons at some point.

Fringe we just started with Season 1.  Looks like early X-Files with fewer supernatural terrors and more alien weirdness.  I understand it got better with later seasons, but so far, I could take it or leave it.

I'm also collecting True Blood and Game of Thrones as they come out.  Both television series are amazing.

Last RPG Book Purchased...

Physical Books:
Hollow Earth Expedition, Exile Game Studios
Wild Talents Essentials Edition, Arc Dream Publishing

PDFs:
d20 Deadlands Hell on Earth & d20 Deadlands Hell on Earth Horrors of the Weird West
Thrilling Hero Adventures (Hero System)

I'll talk about these in order.  Both were purchased from Darren from Imperial Outpost Games at Conflagration.

Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX) scratches my pulp itch.  For those who know me, pulp, horror, and noir are basically the main themes that run through my games.  Even when I run other systems, they wind up with noir or pulp elements, depending on the mood appropriate for the game.  Although I'm still learning this one, the Ubiquity System looks like it would fairly easy to run, and most of the obvious pulp archetypes can be created readily.

One of the things I like about HEX in particular is that unlike a lot of pulp RPG games and settings, its very tightly focused.  Most pulp games try to cover the gamut from boxing stories, to westerns, to car racing to space, to 1930's adventure yarns, and so on.  HEX's emphasis and inspiration, is based on things like Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar novels, and other novels using a Hollow Earth or Lost Island style adventures.  The setting is pretty tightly focused on that style of fiction, and doesn't try to be all things to all people.  If somebody's looking to dip their toes in the water with classic 1920-1940 style pulp gaming, you could do worse than HEX.

Wild Talents scratches my One Roll Engine itch.  I've come to admire A Dirty World and Nemesis, and the simplicity of One Roll Engine, so I picked this up for a song.  It's strictly the rules, but I'd probably roll my own as far as setting if and when I ran it anyway.  I mainly just picked it up ($9.99 sticker price, but I got a bit of a deal) to check out the mechanics.  One of these days I'll get around to picking up Reign as well...not enough money, too many games.

The d20 Deadlands stuff is a bit peculiar for me.  I love the Deadlands settings (including Lost Colony and Hell on Earth), not so fond of Deadlands system (or its successor, Savage Worlds, for that matter, which I know puts me in something of a minority).  Thought this might be fun in case I ever try to do a d20 version.  Besides, RPGNow was selling them for $5 apiece as part of their promotion for the recent release of the Savage Worlds compatible Hell on Earth Reloaded.  If nothing else, I've got some more creatures to throw in a Darwin's World game, so it's all good.

Thrilling Hero Adventures is more pulp.  Although I'm great at math, I don't run Hero System, as I prefer not to be that rules heavy these days, but this was a $10 volume, has a number of great pulp adventures, a lot more great pulp ideas, and heck, I'll convert some of it to d20 Modern Thrilling Tales or maybe even Hollow Earth Expedition one of these days.  I usually buy pregen adventures to steal ideas from, rather than run them whole cloth anyway.

What I'm working on currently...

I'm a bit of a gaming floozy.  Even when I've got campaigns running, I like to tinker around with campaign ideas for other genres.

As far as games I'm running, I'm running a Pathfinder game based on RPPR's New World Campaign.  It was originally written for 4E, but I'd rather rip my toenails out than play 4E, so I retrofitted it to Pathfinder.

For Basic Roleplaying (Chaosium's house system), I'm running my take on S M Stirling's Emberverse novel series.  The grittiness of BRP seemed to fit Dies the Fire rather nicely, and its an easy system to adapt to new settings and genres, and an even easier one to teach.

Stuff being worked on, but not run at the moment...

I'm working on another one shot for A Dirty World...going to be setting this during the Cold War, but still toying around with ideas.  No big rush, as con season is about over for Phoenix this year.

We're about to return to our Star Wars Saga Edition campaign, but I'll leave that for another post.  Needless to say I've been working on that.

I'm tinkering with adapting the first scenario from Thrilling Hero Adventures to d20 Modern Thrilling Tales for use as a one shot the next time the mood strikes me.

I'm also working on the beginnings of a cyberpunk setting.  Probably d20 Modern/Future, but I may try it with BRP...I'm not sure which direction I'll go.  It won't be run for a while yet.

I've also been asked to run a Supers game.  I'm actually thinking I may combine this with the Cyberpunk feel, and create sort of a Neo Postmodern/Iron Age in the near future sort of game.  Not sure yet.  At this point I'm just bouncing around ideas in my head, and haven't put pen to paper yet.

D&D 4E dying?

OK, let me set some expectations here. This isn't a value judgment. I'm not interested in an OGL 3.5/Pathfinder vs. 4E edition war. When I run D&D, which is not often, I run 3.5. I like Pathfinder, but haven't taken the plunge yet. I've looked at 4E, and while I think it's a dramatic departure from 3.5, I'd suggest it's actually less of a departure than 3.0 was from AD&D2. Still, in my mind, it's a perfectly serviceable, if complex, system for running a Heroic Fantasy RPG. If I were just starting out, I'd probably pick Pathfinder, but I have no strong feelings against 4E.

We all know about the WotC layoffs. I'm not sure that alone they tell me much about where WotC is going, other than we're in tough economic times, and that WotC is going further down the road of a freelance model than they have in the past (and as just about every other RPG publisher already has for some time).

What I'm really surprised by is what I discovered yesterday. To back up a bit, when it comes to print RPG books, I'm a bargain hunter. While I do buy things from an FLGS, for every new print title I buy, I'm liable to buy a lot of PDFs via RPGNow or others (the iPad makes reading a PDF about as easy to deal with, if not easier, than a printed book), and if its an older system, I'll often buy used. To wit, I often will troll the shelves at Bookmans, a great Arizona-based chain of used bookstores that beats Half Price Books all to hell.

Yesterday, I breezed in for a few minutes, not with the idea of purchasing anything specific, but just to see what might have been turned into them in the intervening few weeks since I've been there.

Bookmans has about 16-20' foot of typical bookstore shelving devoted to used RPG books. You can find some great bargains, particularly if you happen to hit it on the right day. I've amassed a solid collection of 3.5 stuff I missed the first time around that way in recent years. The mix of stuff that their shelf traditionally has had in recent ventures can be summed up by a lot of D&D 3.0 stuff, a lot of Old World of Darkness, some old GURPS 3rd Edition stuff, a lot of older White Dwarf and Dragon issues, some really old Champions/Hero System books (all 4th Edition or older), way too much RIFTS stuff, much of which looks like nobody's ever cracked the spine, and a smattering of odds and ends (old Traveller stuff, odds and end sourcebooks for Spycraft, Shadowrun, third party OGL 3.0/3.5 stuff, OCR/RCR Star Wars sourcebooks, even a few of the old d6 Star Wars). That was until yesterday. Typically, the WotC/TSR published D&D stuff takes up about 4 feet of shelf space. In the past, it's been about two-thirds 3.0/3.5 D&D (more 3.0 than 3.5, as the 3.5 stuff tends to fly out about as quick as it comes in), maybe the occasional d20 Modern book (those don't last long either), and about 1/3 older editions of D&D (mostly AD&D 2nd Edition stuff that will probably be there years from now, by the looks of things). I've never seen a Pathfinder book there. Star Wars Saga Edition books wind up there once in a while, but those fly off the shelves pretty quickly as well.

That was, until yesterday. The 3.0/3.5 stuff had shrunk down to about half of what it normally was (not surprising, as I've noticed the stuff getting thinner in recent months already). There was still a sprinkling of 2nd Ed AD&D (that stuff's been slowly selling down, and most of what's left likely won't sell anyway until they cut the price further), and there was an entire shelf of 4th Edition D&D books. Four copies of the Players Handbook. Four copies of the Players Handbook 2. Three copies of the Monster Manual I. Five copies of the Dungeon Masters Guide. A large sprinkling of other books. All of them used, all of them formerly belonging to different people.

I also used to shop a whole lot of Used music stores. There are some great ones in the Phoenix area. Back when I was doing a lot more CD buying back in the 1980's and 1990's (iTunes and Amazon has pretty much killed my desire to do record hunting that way anymore), I noticed a phenomenon I call the Used Record Store Review. It works like this. If a new album from a popular or semi-popular act comes out, and you visit the local Zia Record Exchange a week or two later, only to notice a dozen used copies of the CD or LP sitting in the used racks, you know the general verdict amongst people who bought the CD is that it was terrible. I found it be a lot more reliable indicator of what I might think of a CD I was on the fence about buying than any music critic.

Again, I haven't played 4E, and haven't looked at the game beyond thumbing through it on the shelves of the FLGS. I can't comment and won't try to comment first hand on its qualities or lack thereof. But it's a very bad sign in a used bookstore where getting your hands on a core rulebook of any edition of D&D is challenge (they don't last long), and where I've never seen a Pathfinder book of any stripe, that I can lay my hands on enough used copies of the 4E Players Handbook to outfit my whole gaming group.

My question, to those who have played 4E in the past, is are you still playing it? Are you thinking about giving it up, or have you given it up? If you have given it up, what has pushed you to this point? I'm curious to know if this admittedly anecdotal evidence is backed up by anything more.

How Are You? What the hell happened, man...

Since my last post, the flat panel display on my notebook died (since replaced). I also got sick. And I'm still fighting a very balky router, whose replacement is now on order. Posting anything of length was out of the question, and still is of a sort, which is why the historical gaming series was put on hold.

Still, here's what I've been doing lately, since I've been incommunicado for a few weeks.

What I've been reading:

After finishing A Dance With Dragons (Book Five, of A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin), I've been reading the three books of S M Stirling's Nantucket Trilogy. The gist of it is that Nantucket Island, circa 1998, finds itself transported (along with the immediately surrounding waters), dropped back to the Bronze Age. It's an interesting example of what happens when you drop a very small slice of a modern society back into a different epoch, and leads to some very interesting and believable results. Worth the read.

What I've been watching:

Picked up a couple of movies on Blu Ray: The Magnificent Seven, The Adjustment Bureau (a great adaptation of yet another short story by Hollywood's go-to guy for near-future science fiction, Philip K Dick), and I'm ocntinuing to work my way slowly, with the family, through several seasons of Supernatural, Buffy, and X-Files with the family).

What I've been gaming:

Not much with the computer down.

Now that it's back up, I'm working on some more ship designs/conversions for the oft-delayed New Jedi Order Sourcebook for SWSE. I've finished the Shieldship, the Jade Sabre (Mara Jade Skywalker's ship), and the Ralroost (Bothan Assault Cruiser, pretty much saw every battle of the Yuuzhan Vong War).

I'm making preparations (read as reading the 200+ pages of the book) to run the classic campaign for Call of Cthulhu, Masks of Nyarlathotep via Skype once the new router gets up and running.

I'm also continuing to run the Alternate Timeline Star Wars "Anakin Takes a Bullet" campaign (which I promise to post about in length at a later date).

I've also been fiddling around with the Dresden Files RPG, but I'm not ready to run it yet. I scooped up a bunch of Green Ronin's Mythic Vistas Settings for 3.5 and have been reading through them. One of these days I'll get Eternal Rome on the table.

Finally, I'm getting ready to run Arc Dream Publishing's One Roll Engine film noir game, A Dirty World. It has a fascinating game mechanic and I'm rapidly becoming fond of the simplicity of running and teaching the One Roll Engine. Picked it up on RPG Now for $10 a couple of months ago, and can't wait to give it a whirl.

What I've Been Doing, Week of June 15, 2011 Edition

What I've Been Playing:
None on the RPG front, though I'm beginning plans to run a Skype Call of Cthulhu game...probably Delta Green, but that's to be determined.

Prepping:
Working to revive a long-dormant Skull & Bones game that started as a one-shot, but will probably become a campaign. Also prepping another Star Wars adventure and possibly a Call of Cthulhu one-shot for the two week vacation coming up.

Reading:
Still working on A Feast of Crows. I've been doing so much game prep that it's been put on the back burner, though I am about a third of the way through it.

Watching:
Finished up True Blood, Season 3.
Currently watching Season 2 of Supernatural.

Games I'm Running, Part II: Midnight: Dawn Breaks

I've talked about this one on Facebook from time to time, but I'm running a D&D/OGL 3.5 Campaign using Fantasy Flight Games' excellent Midnight setting.

For those unfamiliar with Midnight, the mythology of the setting posits a dark god, severed from the planar home of the Gods, who falls to Earth (Aryth, in the setting) but in the process, severs the world from the rest of the Gods. This means that the only divine magic on the world is that of the priests (called Legates) of Izrador.

The fallen god, Izrador, then begins to gather the forces of darkness, to enslave the peoples of Aryth so that he can accumulate the power to return to the immaterial planes. His intentions are basically to take the life and magic of Aryth, chug it down, and then toss the world over his shoulder like an empty beer can.

Through the course of millenia, he launched three such invasions. In the first two, he was resisted and thrown back to the frozen North of the world in a desperate and bloody fight by a coalition of elves, dwarves, and humans. The third time, however, in a fight marked by the betrayal of several key allies, Izrador wins. Imagine a Middle Earth where Sauron wins, but only after much of the Fellowship betrays its own races, and you get the idea.

Midnight picks up 100 years later. The human lands have been conquered, subjugated, and humanity enslaved. Minions of Izrador ruthlessly crush opposition. Merely forging a weapon is a capital offense. Magic items are destroyed when found. Arcane magic users are hunted down and executed if too dangerous, reeducated to serve Izrador if still useful. Elves and dwarves are ruthlessly exterminated where found.

Still, some resistance remains. In the West, guarded and buttressed by the enchanted forests of Erethor, the Elves still resist, slowly losing a battle of attrition against the forces of the Dark God. In the East, the dwarves have gone underground, and still resist in places against the orcs and other foul creatures.

In the human lands, restlessness has led some to resist, forming raiding parties, offering passive resistance in the cities and towns, and more active resistance where possible.

This is where the players begin. After recovering an important artifact from dwarven lands, they have linked up with the elves. In the process of the long journey, they come upon a woman who claims to be the widow of a descendant of the last King of Central Erenland. They have escorted her to safety, and in the process, befriended her. It is here that they have begun to gather followers to coalesce into a resistance group in the shadow of the great forest of Erethor.

Against the backdrop of the next great invasion of the Elven lands, they must fight to preserve the forest, and their hard won freedom.