Well, That Was Quick

You’ve done it again, internet.

I’ll be seeing some of y’all at the gaming table. And at Gen Con.

“Story” Games

This is coming out of a discussion at Dexcon with Rob and Eppie and Terry.

So, like, Story Games is a great label, and it has a lot of legs (as we can see). We’re at the point where you can have conversations like “yeh, check out this game, it’s a story-game…” or “here’s how story-games tend to work…” and have them be useful, cuz the shorthand works.

But they’re not really story games, right? I mean, most of them are Character games. Some are Theme games. There’s some Plot games. And so on.
I dunno. It seems to me that, in terms of generating fictional narrative, we’ve successfully caught up to a screen writing 101 class. Which is great! These games are fucking fun, and don’t let me make you think I’m saying that they’re not!

Part of it is that whole pesky intrinsic nature of what roleplay is (the whole audience-participant thing). Another is the youth of the medium. But I just think there’s (the constant) danger of being satisfied with the state of the art, and it’s worth mentioning that there are so many other places to start expanding with what we do, as designers and as players.

darkpages - Mrs Might-Have-Been

She has no face anymore. She did, once, and it was a pretty face. But now?

She remembers so clearly when Tony came home, that one day. Came home and literally dropped his breifcase in shock, staring at her in the kitchen.

“Martha?” he had asked, incredulously. “What the hell are you doing here? I haven’t seen you in….my wife must be home right now…how did you get in?”

And she just opened her mouth soundlessly, no words coming, seeing the look in his eye that she hadn’t seen since…well, since they got married, she has to admit. That look of desire, and of a little bit of fear, but the fear feeding the desire.

“Who’s Martha?” she has asked him, holding the cucumber she had been slicing, making a little quizzical motion with it.

Over the course of the conversation she came to realize that he couldn’t see her anymore.

Now she can’t go down the street without causing a double-take every step, a half-asked question, a raised hand from a stranger. She spends a lot of time alone. She would watch TV, but for that poor sad face half-reflected in the glass of the screen.

The face of the girl who decided not to throw her life away for the promise of love. The girl she might have been.

You Almost Broke Me Again, Internet

*sigh*

I think I’m finally done being mad at myself for being mad at something on the internet, this time around at least.

But man, it doesn’t take much.

A Room for Gen Con (Edit: Taken!)

If anyone needs a place to sleep come Gen Con, drop me a line (n-dot-d-dot-paoletta-at-gmail-dot-com). I’ve some changes to my situation, and I’m leaving an open slot in an Embassy Suites room. I’ll get you in touch with the guy who’s organizing the room, but no promises (he’s looking for people as well).

Edit: And it’s taken. Good times!

Prospectus: How To Roleplay

A Beginners Guide to Roleplaying

Introduction

• A Brief History of the Hobby
• Definitions of Roleplaying
• Good Terms and Ideas to Know
• What’s In This Book

Picking A Game

• What’s Out There?
• Genre, Style and “Footprint”
• Free Stuff
• Conventions and Low/No Commitment Gaming Gatherings

Creating A Group

• How Many People Do I Need?
• Where Do I Find Them?
• What If None Of Us Know What We’re Doing?
• Do I Need the Same Group Every Time?
• Playing On-Line

The Group

• Where Do We Play?
• Talk To Each Other
• Who’s Responsible for the Fun?
• What If We Don’t Have Fun?
• I Want To Change/Leave/Add to the Group

The Game Master

• The Game Master Is Not A Person (He’s A Set of Responsibilities)
• Games With A Game Master
• Games With Distributed Game Mastering
• How The Game Master Contributes to the Fun

Playing A Character

• How Do I Make a Character That Is Fun?
• Do I Need to Play the Same Character All the Time?
• Where Can I Get Inspiration for my Character?
• I Don’t Understand All of These Numbers
• What If I Don’t Like My Friend’s Characters?
• What If I Don’t Like My Character?
• How You Contribute to the Fun

Shortform Play

• What’s Shortform Play?
• What Games are Good for Shortform?
• How Do I Get the Most out of Shortform?

Longterm (Campaign) Play

• What’s Longterm Play?
• What Games are Good for Longterm?
• How Do I Get the Most out of Longterm?

Conclusion

Resources

• The Internet
• Your Local Library
• The Local Favorite Game Store
• Other Resources

—

Thoughts?

Let Me Tell You About My Character…

So at Origins Mel White and I did an interview with a guy named Mark Van Fleet, who was recording oral histories of roleplaying game character. Mel recorded it for his podcast Virtual Play, and you can check out the interview here. And the general page for the podcast is here.

Origins 2007 after-action report (Part 2)

And just in time for Dex Con…

Anyhow, when last we left off, I was sitting down with Alexander, Michael Miller, and Peter and Gary Adkison to play Ganakagok. I played the Arrogant Shaman, Michael was the Intrepid (or something) Whaler, Peter was the Youthful Explorer, and Gary was the Wise Stargazer. Though Gary had to retire after the first player-turn, he really put a lot of oomph into his character, narrating how he spilled out a glass vase (the only glass object in the village) full of wolves teeth to show the village how they were allowing themselves to be divided (by an argument between my character and the village chief). The Stargazer than went out into the frozen wastes, ending up in an ice chasm, confronting the spirits and the stars and allowing them to convince him that he had to go back to heal the rift in the village. It was really awesome, and I think we were all a little surprised to see Gary (an elderly gentleman with a mainly traditional gaming background, AFAIK) bring the awesome like that. It was good surprised!

Anyhow, after he left we managed to get through the rest of the game before it got too too late, and it was really fun. My Shaman ended up dying of a plague brought upon the village by his wayward apprentice, but in death he chose to follow his people and be their spiritual guide rather than rest with his ancestors. This was noble, but ultimately futile; the Nitu got absorbed into a southern people within two generations of leaving a melting Ganakagok, and with that my shaman’s soul was cast adrift in the void, forever without companions or anyone to watch over.

I love this game.

Saturday

Another less-than-intense sales day, though I tried to put more time in at the booth to make up for my wandering about on Friday. However, I did get to do some fun stuff. I did an interview with Michael Erb, a journalist who writes game reviews for a print newspaper. (Note: this may have happened on Friday. I don’t honestly remember). Audio will be posted at some point, I am led to understand. Later that day I crushed him in a demo of Burning Wheel’s Duel of Wits, which was fun! I love crushing!

Our Saturday was about as good as our Friday. After hours saw some solid hanging out and drinking at the Big Bar, including a big ol gang of people getting revved up for the Origins Awards ceremony. Earlier in the day I had been informed that Jake Norwood has never played Dogs in the Vineyard, and Alexander asked me if I would run it. I hemmed and hawed a bit (I’ve run exactly one game of Dogs, for one Dog), but finally decided to give it a shot.

Weevil Gulch

As the crowd swept their way to the Origins Awards, I got some dinner and started prepping a town, calling it Weevil Gulch (don’t ask why, I don’t know!). I ended up running it for Alexander, Jake, Thor Olavsrud and Ralph Mazza. We could have had a bigger group, but I was nervous enough about handling four players, so we kept it to that. Character creation and initiation conflicts went very well (Jake was the only one who lost his), and we went right into the town.

It was a simple enough town, and I did my best to just lay out the pertinent info. It was about 10.30 or so by the time we started playing proper, and I think we were all set to cut to the chase. A brief but exciting time later, we had a dead ruffian, a deposed Steward, and a quartet of Dogs that knew a little bit more about each others theological leanings. And gunplay skills.

My brain totally shut off right at the ultimate conflict of the town, and I just had the Stewards wife confess her sins to the Dogs, after which they narrated how they dealt with the problem, and we called it a game. It was fun despite my brain freeze, and Jake said that he had a good time, and that now he saw what all the fuss was about. So I call that one a win.

And The Award Goes Too…

Oh yeh, during the Dogs game we got word that Burning Empires won the Origins Award for Best RPG. So that was awesome.

And The Rest

The rest of the night was spent hanging out, shooting the shit, and generally basking in the reflected glory of Luke’s award. I stayed up till 4.30, got back to my hotel at 5, and left at 6am for my flight. So, that was the end of my Origins. And it was a hella-good time.

I’m definitely gonna be back next year.

Origins 2007 After-Action Report (part 1)

So I went to Origins for the first time this year. It was rockin’

I was staffing the IPR booth, alongside veteran taskmasker Alexander Newman, “real IPR guy” Fred Hicks, and dedicated foot soldier Bill Segulin.

Arrival

My roommate and I had thrown a…uh….tiny little soiree the night before, so my flight on the 4th was…less than pleasant. However, as chance would have it, Alexander was taking my connecting flight from NYC to Columbus, so I got to hang out with him and catch up. This continues my streak of running into someone for second leg of a convention flight (last year was meeting Clinton in Baltimore on the way to Gen Con). Somebody fun better step up for Gen Con this year!

Anyway, we got into Columbus in good order, checked into the hotel, then went over to the dealers hall. The rest of our motley assemblage trickled in, including Michael “The Pack Mule of the Revolution” Miller with the shelving, and we got everything checked in, arranged and stocked by the time we got kicked out at 6. I think we were all pleased with how the booth looked, with a semicurved velcro display wall and giant placards that you could see across the room. You can see some of Freds cameraphone pics here.

After getting that all done, we set out on the quest for food. The 4th of July is a bad time for getting a bite to eat in downtown Columbus, apparently. After asking a scarily friendly passerby, we ended up at a bar & grill that did us right with good beer and tasty burgers.

Finally, we retired to the infamous Big Bar on 2, and ended up playing a game of Kat Millers Serial (which I dunno if there’s any info about on the intarwebs). It’s a serial killer game where you play the victims and investigators. I enjoyed our session of the game, but it’s not really my style, in terms of subject matter or mechanical backbone. (Though, Dev, I bet you would dig it) My understanding is that Kat ran a bigger game of it on Saturday night and got some good feedback on it, which is great.

Oh! And, when going to the dealers hall, I was waylaid by a very friendly fellow who was looking to record accounts of peoples RPG characters, This American Life-style. I sat down with him and Mel White (of the Ganakagang) and talked about some of my characters, with diversions into how story-gaming developed and how actual play accounts happen and what they mean. I talked about my character from my Ganakagok game from last Dreamation (the one who ended up stabbing someone in the face with his scrimshaw tools, and then setting him on fire, and ended up frozen in the ice), and my character from Hare and Hound. It was fun, and I’ll post links when/if he gets the audio up somewhere. It may broadcast on a couple of local radio stations, which is totally neat.

Thursday

Thursday morning, 8.30 am. My mission is to find shopping bags, so we can actually give our wonderful customers something to carry their purchases in. Unfortunately, the area around the convention center is ill-equipped for such things, and I ended up walking around for over an hour, and finally getting a stack of Kinkos/FedEx bags from a friendly employee (oddly appropriate, neh?)

With tired feet but plenty of coffee, I got ready to greet the Thursday crowd. Thursday tends to be a big sales day, and this one was no exception. Alexander had to prod us to step up and draw people into the booth, but once I got my legs under me I felt pretty comfortable. I have some thoughts about sales strategies for another post, but for the most part we were pretty aggressive in terms of getting peoples attention, tho we respected people who weren’t interested once the initial contact was made. I hope.

Anyway, Thursday was long but busy, so it didn’t feel too long, and at the end of the day we had done more business than IPR had done all of last Origins. So that was a good feeling.

Towards the end of the day, the Burning Wheel Crew and Memento-Mori Army showed up (i.e. Luke, Thor, Dro and Jared, respectively). Jake Norwood of The Riddle of Steel fame was also in attendance, and it was cool to meet him. I saw some older friends and acquantances as well (Ralph Mazza, Mike “Papa” Holmes, Clyde Rhoer) and some internet-made-real friends (Jamey). I’m sure I saw, met and hung out with more people, but my brain was in ConMode - it all blends together, yo.

After-Hours it was back to the Big Bar on 2, and we ended up playing a rousing rendition of *jazz hands* Juuuungle Adventuuuure (a parsley game). Even tho Dro effed us out of a save point, we eventually got the treasure, and we only died about 7 times.

Someone proposed playing a real game, and we ended up deciding on InSpectres (cuz we like to have fun). I really wanted to play, cuz I’ve only ever been the GM, and we somehow convinced Dro to run the game. Hell proceeded to freeze over.

In any case, it was Dro running, me, Fred, Bill, Thor and Alexander playing. I was the CEO of the franchise, a division of the Columbus Chamber of Commerce, and I ended up being inhabited by an Aztec Death Parrot which Alexanders character, an ex-Marine, ended up shooting with an RPG rocket inscribed with my name - because we, in the end, really loved each other. Due to the clever use of Confessionals, we actually ended the 25-dice mission up a couple dice, even tho Dro threw me about a million Stress over the course of the game, and it was, as always, a great time with InSpectres.

If anyone is wondering why we all spent the rest of the convention running around, flapping our arms and going “KA-KAAAAW!”, thats why. I apologize for any annoyance this may have caused, but really, it was that funny at the time.

Friday

Friday I had the pleasure - nay, the honor - of walking the 10 blocks back to my hotel from the Convention center because I forgot my freaking badge. So, another day, another solid 45 minutes of walking. I wasn’t in the greatest mood when I finally got the dealers hall, but Friday is quieter anyway, and we really didn’t need 4 people in the booth at all times.

I saw and/or re-met some more people (Paul Tevis, Ken Hite and Phil Reed among them), and generally got a sense of the hall. Origins is a lot quieter than Gen Con (duh), but it also has a pretty chill, family-friendly atmosphere that was pretty cool. I wandered over the Burning Wheel booth fairly often, and it’s always good times hangin out with that crew. We had an ok day sales-wise, which was pretty much expected, tho we did sell out of a number of titles of which we had only brought 5 copies.

At some point during the day, Alexander got in touch about playing Ganakagok that night, to which I was all “hell yes!” Ganakagok is really high on my list of favorite games, and this would mark the second time I’d get to play it. Turns out that this whole deal was happening because Peter Adkison wanted to get some story-gaming in with his dad Gary.

Well, once I stopped geeking out (playing a game with Peter Adkison! and his Dad! and playing a weirdo hippie storygame! whoa!), I got excited, and that excitement was not in vain. Alexander ended up running the game for Peter, Gary, Michael Miller and myself, and it was a total blast.

But more about that later…