* (2:17) Ira Glass on overcoming creative perfectionism.

* (5:06) Keeping dice in the roleplaying continuity.

* (9:21) Pat’s pickled pigs feet…?

* (10:44) Health advice disclaimer.  You can find the organization Chris is certified with here.

* (15:26) Improving what you eat at the gaming table, with tangents on peer support, calorie counting, and making sustainable changes.

* (39:10) Picking the right exercises for you and integrating them into your life.

* (48:49) Chad’s pep talk and a story about Tex.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, Pat, Wayne

The most common supporting fact used in the argument that Superheroes should kill is that police and soldiers kill.  I would like to point out that killing is a last resort for police, and they are trained to wound.  Every shot fired has to be accounted for and paperwork has to be filed.  In these cases the position comes with jurisdiction and accountability.  Superheroes typically don’t have either of these.  They appoint themselves and by killing would be saying that they know who should live or die.  I do concede, though, that it does not make much sense for a government sanctioned team that is part of the military to not kill unless it is a PR decision.

Would anybody accuse a doctor of being immature?  Doctors take an oath to do no harm, and this concept constantly comes up on TV shows.  Every medical show on the air has dealt with doctors getting a questionable patient and having to make the hard decision of whether or not to save them.  I have never heard anyone call these stories immature for exploring that concept.  Is ER immature because its doctors don’t kill?  If a firefighter were to save the life of a murderer would they then be called immature?  I would argue that these two professions are more closely related to Superhero, because their primary function is to save lives. Still in both cases there is an authority and accountability that Superheroes lack.

While I feel that killing your enemies when you have the power to do otherwise is taking the easy way out, I do enjoy these darker stories as well.  These stories explore concepts that would taint long standing characters.  Superman for example should never kill, but Hyperion can give you those stories while Superman remains untouched.  Killing, though, seems to be a throwaway action for these types of characters.  The slippery slope of who and what have earned death is very rarely explored.  Even rarer is dealing with the psychological turmoil that killing could cause a person.

I personally read just as many stories about heroes that kill as I do about those that don’t.  There is a distinctly different feel between the two, but neither is inherently more mature than the other, and both types have their merits.  Too often titles that call themselves mature focus less on the story and more on the nudity and foul language.  They essentially become shock titles.  Murder is never a requirement for a story to be mature, but it could be a strong component in exploring the psychology of a hero.

* (1:35) Get your health questions to Chris for episode 180!

* (2:09) A big thanks to Totten for the pizza.

* (3:10) DriveThruRPG is running a charity through Doctors Without Borders for medical relief in Haiti.  You can make the donation here and see what RPG products that donation will get you here.

* (6:59) D&D gets banned from prisons.

* (15:02) Fear the Boot fans in prison…?

* (17:17) You are wrong to enjoy certain things.

* (20:26) Overcoming perfectionism as a GM or player.

* (42:12) Fear the Con 3.

* (43:23) Why don’t players trust their GMs more?

Hosts: Chris, Dan, Pat, Wayne

They’re only running this event through the end of the month, so if you’re interested, be sure to get out there soon!

* (4:07) Fear the Con 3!

* (4:43) Soliciting questions for the upcoming episode on gamer health.

* (7:05) How Chad keeps his incidental GM decisions straight without notes.

* (17:08) Preparing the right amount of notes.

* (18:12) Notes and improv for a game’s opening scene.

* (24:02) Using the conclusion of one session to help kick off the next one.

* (26:18) How notes (or improv) affect the GM’s game style.

* (28:38) Crossing styles.

* (31:52) Getting back to the structure of game notes.

* (35:51) Notes don’t need to be a script.

* (42:10) The notes you take during the game.  You can create a free Wiki here.

* (48:52) The “what’s really going on” document.

* (50:55) An example from our current game.

* (54:45) Notes kept by the players.

* (57:59) Background notes on your own character.

* (1:00:03) Noticing your ruts.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, Pat, Wayne

* (1:15) Dan’s rant on impassible terrain.

* (7:13) How Pat made Chad and Dan proud with his first MMO.

* (9:19) The GM and player toolbox.

* (11:29) The moment of zen.

* (15:56) Taking a week off.

* (17:47) Useful lists.

* (19:50) The double-edged sword of an internet-ready laptop.

* (22:06) The role of the toolbox in the game.

* (23:35) The players don’t know what you don’t know.

* (27:36) Taking on-going notes.

* (28:23) Preparation prior to the game.

* (30:25) Player character motivations, observations, and side projects.

* (31:47) Borrowing ideas from fiction and real life.

* (34:28) Internal roleplay and contingency plans.

* (38:13) Drawing from the larger community of roleplayers.

* (39:23) Putting yourself in the spotlight and carrying the right attitude.

* (41:22) The cheap and simple supplies.

* (44:05) Tracking the scene.

* (48:20) Tools for helping you get in character and stay in character.

* (53:36) Tracking initiative.

* (56:11) A cheat sheet of player character names.

* (57:13) Players taking notes.

* (1:01:17) Podcasts, blogs, and gaming magazines.

* (1:04:04) A rules cheat sheet.

* (1:07:41) Robertson Games’ dungeon room design contest.

* Dan’s surprise can be found here.  And just in case they changed it, I archived a screenshot of it here.  Journalist + Google image search = pure win.

Hosts: Chad, Dan, Pat, Wayne

* (1:56) Why you don’t want to miss the Wing Night beforehand.

* (2:40) Some highlights for people that aren’t going to the con.  If you want to help promote the con, you can find a Fear the Con 3 flyer here.

* (5:08) Sign-up and find information at http://www.fearthecon.com or http://www.conplanner.com.

* (8:05) Con Planner’s privacy policy.

* (9:15) We’re at a new hotel this year.

* (9:50) Ticketing details.

* (11:57) Fear the Fruit.

* (12:48) A call for Game Masters!

* (15:03) The roommate thread and carpooling thread.

* (16:01) Mikey Mason and the game lending library.

* (17:32) Our vendor will be back.  You can post requests for him here.  You can find Geeky Clean here.

* (19:05) A call to our fellow podcasters.

* (21:38) Come for the con, stay for the caves.

* (1:44) Thanking our secret Santas.  Legos, Confessions of a Part-time Sorceress, Master of the Game, and SPANC.

* (8:40) Swapping games to expose people to new material.

* (10:53) The original Fear the Boot logo.

* (11:36) Setting up this episode and the next one.

* (12:04) Leadership and structure in a roleplaying game party.

* (13:59) How leadership helps the Game Master.

* (14:59) Players that reject any form of authority.

* (19:30) Picking the right player to be in charge.

* (23:42) Keeping leadership from becoming a railroad.

* (27:32) Making an ever-present NPC leader work.

* (35:26) Dealing with the guy that will not tolerate any structure in the party.

* (38:41) When having a boss is too close to real life.

* (42:13) The role of a GM when players are doing sidebar RP.

* (44:34) The GM shouldn’t kill the moment.

* (47:17) How the GM can profit from what he overhears.

* (48:18) Dealing with bored players outside of the RP sidebar.

* (50:55) GMs not being overly helpful.

* (55:35) Intrusion by other player characters.

* (59:53) Player etiquette.

Hosts: Chad, Dan, Pat, Wayne

With time travel all the greatest questions about history could be answered.  Scientist could research and catalog extinct species of plants and animals.  In our world paleontologists have done their best to determine what Dinosaurs looked like and how they behaved.  These are still mostly theories though.  In a world with time travel we would know exactly how dinosaurs looked and be able to study their behavioral patterns.  Quite possibly the most important thing we would learn about Dinosaurs though is exactly how and why they died.

Any event in history that is disputed could be viewed, studied, and documented.  Documentaries could contain actual video of the events they are describing instead of recreations, though the recreations may be more detailed and entertaining than the actual events.  The great mysteries of the world like the original use of Stonehenge or the method used to build the pyramids would move from the category of mystery to a documented process.  The exact location of Atlantis would be added to historical maps.  Suddenly the skills needed to uncover history would drastically change and the need to keep the subjects from realizing that they are being studied would be far more important as they are now living breathing specimens.

Knowledge of most past events would not have a major impact on a society, but knowledge of certain key events could.  Certain events that touch on subjects that we do not discuss here could be viewed and would have dramatic impact on society as details were clarified or collaborated.  It is hard to believe that events of religious significance would not be some of the first to be witnessed.

There would be many temptations to use time travel in seemingly beneficial ways.  Trips to the future could cure diseases or bring back medical technology to save lives.  With the technology already available there would be no need for the research to actually develop it.  Both this and the survivors would change the future that the technology had come from.  If future technology were to be banned in an effort to avoid this, then patients with enough money would be tempted to travel to a time when they could receive better treatment.  Petitions would likely be drawn up to restore extinct species or to perhaps intervene in tragedies throughout history to save lives.  Every tragedy that happens would lead to an immediate call of fixing it just this once.  Even the best intentions, though, can have unexpected consequences.

For these and tactical reasons, if government scientists were the ones to discover time travel it would likely be classified and kept secret.  Only the highest ranking officials would be allowed to know that this technology was available.  These politicians then would be subject to the same temptations of time travel that the general public would be if they only knew of its possibility.  Political campaigns would be much easier if the person in power could see the events of the future and proactively deal with them.  In times of war, leaders would be tempted to view the future battle and change plans based on effectiveness.  In the case of a failed operation they would likely send back communications to themselves of its failure.  While this has the potential of saving lives, it also becomes far more complicated if the other society also has access to time travel technology.  The potential for a time war or an inevitable temporal cold war would grow with each society that discovers time travel.  That possibility and the implications will be the topic of my next blog.

http://www.conplanner.com

http://www.fearthecon.com

So what’s Con Planner?  To help make running FtC a little easier, we decided to build our own convention software.  We’re running it in a limited beta during Fear the Con 3 to see how it works, what features get requested, and what bugs people stumble across. We’ll keep adding onto it between now and the convention, and thereafter, we may open it up so other small convention organizers can use the software to host their cons.

Being a new site, don’t hesitate to tell us about bugs, feature requests, or even things you just find generally annoying.   We already have a long list of new features and improvements we’ll be trickling out, but we’re interested in your ideas as well.

Get out there, create your own games, and sign up for stuff that sounds fun!

Also, if you want to help us promote the con, tell your friends or email them the URL.  If you’re a real trooper and want to go the extra mile, you can find a PDF of the ad flyer here. Tack one up in your local gaming shop, bookstore, homeless shelter, or county jail!

* (2:22) Fear the Boot made it to 175.

* (3:19) Fear the Con 3 online ticketing and sign-up will be live on January 1st.

* (6:06) Chad has a sexy voice?

* (7:16) John’s current gaming situation.  You can find MapTools here.

* (9:48) Why John hates player characters.

* (11:25) A quick gaming story to explain an example.

* (13:32) Why GMs often make better players.

* (18:01) People that refuse to GM even once.

* (25:49) Players that lobby for power without conceding anything to the GM.

* (32:35) TPKs, challenge, and losing characters.

* (36:33) Why John loves PCs, starting with those that latch onto plot elements.

* (39:46) PCs who roleplaying in a meaningful manner.

* (45:53) PCs with connection to the setting help make the game more engaging.

* (48:54) Dan bitches about Chris.

* (57:05) When Dan loves his players most.

* (1:01:36) Upcoming topics for the next couple of shows.

Hosts: Chad, Dan, John, Pat, Wayne

To deal with that, I switched us over to PowerPress. The transition seems to have gone smoothly, but if you notice anything strange on your podcatcher over the next few days, please let me know.

Also, our RSS feed has gotten too large for most aggregators to handle it anymore. iTunes is truncating it and BluBrry won’t even process it. To deal with that, I’ve had to set our feeds to only show the 100 most recent entries. Shouldn’t be a problem unless you’re way back in our catalog of shows. I’m annoyed I had to do this, but the technology isn’t giving me much of a choice.

* (4:57) The additional costs associated with LARP.

* (8:27) Setting and time periods.

* (12:08) Where someone looking to join the hobby should start.

* (21:55) LARP as an educational tool.

* (22:40) Rule 7.

* (24:03) Trying new systems and more thoughts on finding a group.

* (25:01) Character death.

Hosts: Dan, James, Michael, Nathanael, Wayne

* (1:45) Fear the Con 3 sign-up is coming very soon.

* (2:20) Introducing our guests.

* (5:05) What separates LARP from tabletop RPGs?

* (10:32) The negative image of LARPers.  The infamous Lightningt Bolt video.

* (17:07) The seemingly insular nature of the LARP community.

* (28:03) Flirting, physical contact, and other boundaries.

* (31:38) The flow of LARP as compared to a tabletop RPG.  You can see the Oak Island Mystery videos here: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

* (36:08) The role of NPCs in LARP.

* (39:45) Character advancement and player attachment.

* (43:48) Representing magic.

* (45:11) Honor and honesty in sparring.

Our guests were also kind enough to provide links to the Amtgard and Insurrection LARP systems.

Hosts: Dan, James, Michael, Nathanael, Wayne

* (2:13) A childhood full of toys.

* (11:51) The limited release of The Road.

* (14:36) Predictions on the future of  media distribution.

* (28:55) Picking the right resources for a brand new GM and gaming group.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, Pat, Wayne

One day I discovered that the makers of Cool Whip had come out with a new product.  Behold! Cool Whip in a can – just like Reddi-Wip!  Now I could spray Cool Whip onto my favorite dessert targets just like real whipped cream.  Excitedly, I bought a can and tried it out.  It was exactly what it claimed to be.  Before I finished it,  I realized that if I had really wanted whipped cream in a can I would have bought Reddi-Wip.

And so I did.

I found that I liked Reddi-Wip better than the Cool Whip I had been using for four decades.  Now I buy Reddi-Wip.  Ironically, or perhaps tragically, in an effort to make a product more like their competitor’s product, Kraft Foods convinced me to buy their competitor’s product instead.

What does this have to do with role playing games, you ask? Well, one night, I was sitting at my computer desk, contemplating my defection in the battle of whipped topping loyalty,  enjoying a bowl of bananas and Reddi-Wip (my new favorite snack), when I looked down and noticed my recently purchased Savage Worlds Explorer’s Edition sitting on top my well-loved and much used Dungeons and Dragons Version 3.5 Player’s Handbook – and it all became clear.

I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons – in various editions and with some of the same people – for almost thirty years. There were a couple of side trips to other games, like Alternity, but we always came back to D&D. When the announcement for 4th edition came out, it was at a time when I was starting to want something new. Now 4th edition was coming out and it was going to be just like the D&D I love, only better, faster and more fun than 3.5; but this didn’t make me want to try the new edition.  It made me want to try another game system.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not interested in starting (yet another) edition war.  I know nothing about 4th edition.  I just wasn’t interested in trying a new version of the same thing.  If I was going to try something new, I wanted it to be something totally new.  I looked around at several things and eventually decided to try Savage Worlds.  Our group tried it out, loved it and wants more of it.

I can still buy Cool Whip in a tub.  I’ll probably enjoy some at mom’s house over the holidays.  We can – and still do – play D&D 3.5.  In fact, my group will be enjoying some of that on the day I wrote this post.  Will we ever try 4th edition? Probably, along with some other games.  Some day we might even try an MMO.  (There are those who would claim that an MMO would complete the analogy.)  In the meantime, there’s going to be a lot of Savage Worlds in our group’s future.

The game was on the lower end of the epic spectrum, being at level 12, and in contempt of the power gaming prestige class monstrosities in the party, I made a pure fighter. Here is where things get interesting, because after choosing the regular feats (Power Attack, Cleave), I went directly for the Improve Disarm, Improve Trip, and Improve Bullrush. Normally these are combat tricks you use once in a while because of the hefty page flipping and calculations you need to do to perform something that (without the proper feats) will probably fail. But these were first on my list.

Why did I choose them?

Because I pulled out index cards immediately after I choose my feats and got to work crunching the numbers on those abilities so that I can use them on the fly in combat. I got halfway through the first one when I realized I was playing fourth edition. And through thinking back to the fighter powers in 4e, I realized that I was preparing my fighter to play exactly the same as the class does in fourth edition.

So I get into playing later on, and as we go tromping through the dungeon, my fighter is continuously being called to make die checks for his spot. Right away I start to miss the passive perception stat, but I don’t complain. A few hours go by and while in combat I hear something that hasn’t been said around me in a long time, “I am out of spells.” Until then we have had a few small skirmishes, but now this player had to kick back and make conversation with the other magic user who had run dry. They were completely out of the game for about an hour, and I had forgotten just how much that sucked thanks to new spell system in fourth edition.

Those are some of the things that came up that made me appreciate fourth edition a little more. Before this, I was a 3.5 fanboy when fourth edition was releasing, and was for quite a while after it dropped, I actually owned the book for a year before I played it. But now that I am looking back instead of forward, that system was super clunky, and while fourth edition didn’t necessarily fix that, they streamlined it enough so that it was easier to do cool stuff. From now on, I am proud to say I am a 4e fanboy.

First, there are ways to horn-shoe the players back into the more convoluted plot the GM had in mind. Those are discussed elsewhere. I just want to explore why the players so quickly find a solution that the GM did not. Second, you’re probably screaming that there are twelve bad assumptions with my example and that would never happen, like that, in your campaign. OK; just think back to a case in which your players bee-lined directly through or around your hazards and left you scrambling for something to throw in their way. Then, pretend that was my example, instead.

My point, is that GM’s often get fixated on a point and lose the bigger picture. It’s like they slowly build up a path of, “First A then B then C … and finally, Z!” But they rarely step back and say, “If the PC’s start at A, is there an easier, faster, better way to get directly to Z?” Instead, GM’s will attempt to complicate matters with more steps, or by creating ‘false bifurcations’, as in “they can choose C or D, but either way, they end up at E.” This over focus or Point Fixation keeps the GM looking at the trees but not lifting his head to examine the forest.

One possible solution should be screamingly obvious by now. Stop and look! If you have to set aside your work for a day or two, then that’s what you have to do. Come back with fresh eyes. Don’t ask yourself “what would I do, if I were a player” because though that is the oft quoted panacea, it rarely works. Not all players have the same strategies, and you know much more about the backstory and the plot than the players do, and you can’t really simulate ignorance to get at their viewpoint, so don’t try. Instead, cast the complex plot you’ve been working on out of your head (for a moment or two!) and simply state, in a single sentence if possible, what the ‘goal’ actually is. Write it out; it helps to look at the words. Then look at your plot and see if the actual, written goal can be achieved through a simpler, more direct means.

For example, the PC’s will be told that a certain senator is corrupt and fomenting dissent within the senate while simultaneously paying barbarian raiders to attack villages at the edge of the empire. He’s trying to create the situation that will allow himself to seize absolute power “for the good of the empire.” Assuming the PC’s have a strong motivation to stop that from happening, what is their actual goal? Is it to keep him from pronouncing himself emperor? Is it to expose his plot? Is it to just remove him as a threat? Because if the actual goal is just to remove the threat, then the fastest way to do that is to remove the man, and the PC’s are (probably) damn good at killing. Skip the long way round, just find him and run him through – problem solved.

If you don’t want that solution, then you have to remove that goal. Come up with a reason why killing him would make things worse, or would lead to extreme sanctions against the PC’s, or would cost the empire much more then his current machinations do. In order to produce a different answer, you need to change the question. And, that’s not done by adding more points on the map for them to pass through or more monsters to the dungeon. In fact, by asking the ‘big question’ and changing the scenario until the question works for what you have planned, then it won’t matter what plan the PC’s come up with. You’ll be able to stay flexible and react to them, because there won’t be a path to keep them on, there will be a giant target they move towards and whatever path they choose to take to that target will be the plot.

Don’t lose the forest for the trees; ask the right questions, and let your players have the creative freedoms to find whatever paths need.

* Dan is answering his Fear the Boot email account again. Let’s see how long that lasts.

* Fear the Fruit is back at Fear the Con 3. You can find information on how to make a donation here.

* Revisiting old campaigns.

* Mikey Mason’s beer sites are Good Beer Show and Beer Safari. The two non-bitter beers we took to are New Glarus Belgian Red and Schlafly #15.

* Where theater practices and roleplaying overlap (and don’t).

Hosts: Chad, Dan, John, Mikey, Pat, Wayne

* Checking in on how Wayne’s Mutants & Masterminds game went.

* Getting your players unstuck.

* Bickering about bards.  If you don’t have a 3.5 rulebook handy, you can follow along here.  If you’re interested in entering Critical Press Media’s bard contest, you can find details on their site.

* The reciprocal relationship between tabletop roleplaying games and video games.

Hosts: Chad, Dan, Pat, Wayne

Wayne joined Funnybooks with Aron and Paulie to talk about comic books.  I realize Fear the Boot doesn’t talk much about that corner of geekdom, so if you’re interested in hearing what they had to say on the latest in the comic book world, you can find the episode at this here link.  I believe their rating is the same as ours, so expect a clean show.

I joined Kicked in the Dicebags for another episode.  This one was a round table discussion with me, Bill Coffin (author of Pax Morgana and recovering Palladium writer), Aron Head (Ideology of Madness and Funnybooks), Mark Kinney (All Games Considered),  and Apollyon (a cross-show forum user).  In case you missed the prior crossover or have a very short memory, I want to remind you that Kicked in the Dicebags is an explicit show! Unlike the previous episode I was on, this one has a very “adult” ice-breaker near the start but then moves into a more intellectual conversation about the predictions of science fiction and other traditionally-geeky topics, without really straying into politics, religion, or general depravity.  Just be prepared for some cussing and a really long show if you choose to tune in.

Disclaimer: I should say up front that I have known Tracy Hickman for many years. Despite that, I shall endeavor to give this book a fair review. ;-)

XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery is written by New York Times bestselling author and game designer Tracy Hickman and his son Curtis Hickman, with illustrations by Howard Tayler. According to editor Sandra Tayler, Tracy and Curtis “wanted to find a way to help role playing gamers remember to enjoy their games rather than get caught up in the mechanics of systems.” This book does just that.

Throughout XDM, one theme is clear: ditch the rules, the fiddly bits, and anything that gets in the way of having a good time at the gaming table. XDM explores making the game the best it can be, both from the player’s standpoint and from the XDM’s. Yet the book does so with the right touch of humor to set the tone.

I should probably mention that several of the chapters in this book are based on seminars that Tracy Hickman has given over the years. Much of this is familiar to me from the GenCon I spent stalking Tracy at his various seminars.

After the obligatory introductions, the book begins with the “Secret History of XDMs.” This chapter is an account of the “history” of XDMs, from ancient Babylonian times up to the modern day. This chapter is just for fun, but it gets into the mood of the book.

We move on from there to Getting Started as an XDM. This section deals some with some fun initiation material, but has a really good page on what an XDM does and what he doesn’t do. This is an invaluable tool for understanding the content of the book.

The next section is on the theory of XDMing. There is a good section on the types of players an XDM may have at his table. While not as detailed as what we’ve seen from Robin Laws or in the 4th edition Dungeon Master’s Guide, the three archetypes presented here are a fairly accurate summary of the types of gamers.

We move on from here to a section on storytelling, which is one of the gems of this book. This includes a variant of the Campbellian Monomyth, designed for use for storytelling. I’ve been using the monomyth in my current game, and the results have been great!

We move on to designing games for story, which takes the premise of story and moves it to practical gaming application. The next few chapters adds on to the foundations of the prior chapters.

From there, we move on to a section where we go beyond normal game mastery to the realm of the Ultimate XDM. Imagine adding sound, lights, lasers, holograms, and fog to your game! And yes, there’s even a bit of pyrotechnics.

What throws the book off, though, is the next chapter, on magic. This chapter talks a lot about various magic tricks, but doesn’t really explain much about how magic tricks deal with a role-playing game. This chapter really felt like it disrupted the flow of the book, and was hard to get through.

However, the book is saved once again with the next chapter on Killer Breakfast, a fun event that Tracy runs at GenCon. I’ve played in Killer Breakfast for several years, and this is a nice behind-the-scenes on how to do it. I’m not certain this is something you can do with friends, but it would be great for a game at a convention.

We then move on to another gem in the book – How You Play the Game. Tracy’s GenCon seminar on this very topic has been quite inspirational to me. One story in particular regarding a barbarian Tracy once played really set the mood.

From here, we go into the next chapter on the XD20 role-playing system. It exemplifies XDM principles in its simplicity. Despite knowing what the authors had in mind, it just wasn’t engaging to me. In a way, having a game system may run counter-intuitive to what this book does best – giving advice on making your game great.

The book finally ends with an afterword called “Waiting for Gygax.” Truthfully, this section should have been the forward. It sets the tone perfectly, and would have been a great place to start. In fact, many of the ideas in this book would have been better served if organized differently. I think some editorial reorganizing would have helped tremendously.

The illustrations helped to make the book what it is. Each one was fun and funny, and I had a good time going through them. It’s too bad that the book wasn’t in full glorious color.

Overall, this book has a lot of great ideas. Yet it has a few flaws, too. The biggest flaw of the book is the excessive amount of typos. It is my understanding that the book was produced in five weeks. It shows. Grammar mistakes run rampant throughout the book, making it distracting. Likewise, the book comes with footnotes. A few here and there would have added just the right spice to the book, but I felt that there was so many footnotes that we were drowning in flavor. Plus, the paper stock reminded me of the type of paper used in the 1st edition AD&D books.

The book seems to be designed for players and GMs who have played RPGs for a while. It’s also a great resource if you’re a Tracy Hickman fan, or a fan of adventure writing.

This book is a masterful resource, one that every GM should have. However, the book is in need of some editing to make it shine. Certainly, for the information inside, it is a valuable and indispensible resource. Yet the book comes across as a bit of a diamond in the rough.

I give this book 3.5 out of 5 stars.

* Chad makes a special presentation.  You can find the RPG swap thread on our forum.  Be sure to check out Atomic Robo!  The story of Steve Jackson getting in trouble with the government can be read here.

* Running a roleplaying game system or setting for the first time,

Hosts: Chad, Dan, Pat, Wayne

* Keeping your players focused on the game and stopping the table talk.

* Getting your players to be more proactive about roleplaying.

Hosts: Chad, Dan, Pat, Wayne

Predestination Paradox, causality loop, and retrocausality are all terms to deal with essentially the same concept.  Instead of the typical cause and effect relationship in this case, the effect actually operates as the cause.  To give a very simple example of this concept let’s say that you are given a picture of yourself with a future date on it, at a location you have never been to.  You are curious as to how someone would get this picture and why you would be in that location, so you go there at the time listed on the photo.  You have now taken the action of going there, because you saw that you were going to go there.  Again this is a very simplistic example, but it should explain what I am talking about here.  In most cases, the characters actually discover something unpleasant is going to happen and end up causing that very thing to happen by trying to prevent it.

I personally have a few huge issues with causality loops.  Essentially, they are an accepted paradox where there is no explanation of the original source.  If we look at time as a line where point A is the time you are presented with future knowledge and point B is the future event actually happening, we see the loop then created between these two points in time.  This loop would essentially continue into infinity, because each time it occurs it generates another instance of itself.  The events of the future would not have happened on their own without knowledge of them, though.  Something had to have set this loop into motion the first time, but that aspect of the story never seems to be told.  These stories can get particularly frustrating for me when the characters give up the free will of their actions to just act based on what they know of the future.

Ontological Paradoxes take this concept to their extreme.  In the case of an ontological paradox, an object from one point in time is taken to another point in time (usually the past) and becomes the very thing that is discovered in the future.  As an example, a father gives his son a pocket watch.  The son then travels back in time and in some strange turn of events ends up giving his father the very watch that he will someday be given.  In this case the watch is stuck in a paradoxical loop.  It doesn’t seem to have a creation, and despite going through this loop an infinite number of times it does not seem to be aging as would be expected.  The object simply exists with no explanation of how.  I have read many stories that involve this concept, but I have only found one that actually dealt with the origins of the object.  In the worst case, a person can end up becoming their own ancestor, thus creating a real paradox where a human being exists that shouldn’t.

My basic issue with all of these concepts is that they don’t make logical sense.  Not everything in entertainment needs to make sense, but Science Fiction is based in science, and circular logic just doesn’t fit.  I also cannot see any way a causality loop could work in a game since it is essentially forcing the players into a situation that they will likely try to avoid just because they feel railroaded.  That being said, I am currently enjoying a TV show based on a causality loop, but it does frustrate me.

If you can travel through time, can you make changes?  There are many scientific theories that deal with this very question from the standpoint of paradoxes not being possible.  The Novikov self-consistency principle for example states that if an event has the chance to create a paradox, the probability of that event occurring will be 0.  Essentially this theory proposes that if you try to change the past something will happen to prevent you from making the change.

This can be interpreted two ways.  One would be that the universe will not allow the paradox to happen.  I personally discount this entirely, because it would require the universe to have desires and intervene.  The other concept is that the past has already occurred, so if someone goes back to try to change it, they obviously have failed because here in the present that change did not occurred.  This is a far more acceptable theory, but leads to a boring story.  If your time traveler cannot make changes, then what is the point of the trip.  It could be a trip of discovery, but following this theory puts many limitations on your story.

The only theories scientists seem to take seriously in regard to making changes revolve around alternate realities.  If a person makes a change they are then creating an alternate reality.  Their original reality still exists, but they are now cut off from it and there is the potential for a temporal clone to exist.

Alternate realities provide many options, but they also present one major issue.  Any time traveler from the future — by the nature of just being there — has cut themselves off from their own time.  How big of a change would need to be made before a temporal clone situation arises?   Because decisions have not yet been made and time travelers can change things, then any trip to the future would have to be only a potential future.  By seeing that future you are then ensuring that at least minor changes will occur because of your knowledge.  You also then have to deal with many potential futures for every universe.  If time travel occurs after the split why wouldn’t multiple versions of you from different alternate realities run into each other when they go back to a time before the split occurred?  This methodology can be interesting, but tends to just be too convoluted for my tastes.  A paradox cannot occur because there are an infinite number of realities.

Another method that allows for changes to be made is similar to the previous method.  In this case an alternate reality is created by the change, but the original one now no longer exists.  There is only one timeline and any change causes it to readjust itself.  This is my preferred method of dealing with time travel.  It allows for changes, paradoxes, and can provide the largest sense of drama.  If your actions can risk your own existence, it makes everything you do that much more important.  If you subscribe to the butterfly effect this method also has the most potential for suspenseful stories.

The down side is that this method also doesn’t attempt to answer paradoxes at all.  Your characters typically have to find a way to avoid changes themselves and are thus combating paradoxes.  The real question is that if they change their world enough for them to have never time traveled to begin with, if they were to return to their own time would it have to be a temporal clone?  Also since the characters are typically trying to fix what they have changed, you generally don’t see what would happen to the world if the character that made the change had suddenly never been born and thus could not have traveled back in time.  The way comic books typically deal with this concept is to say that while the person may not exist anymore in the future, they did exist at a point before the change was made since they were the one making the change.  Thus a character may fade, but their actions did occur because they were there before the timeline diverged.

However you want to handle time travel in your story or game, you have to decide in the beginning if the past can be changed, and if so what method you will be using to show these changes.  While I’m sure it is possible to make it work, I just don’t personally see a way to make a game work if you are traveling through time but cannot change it.  That would likely just lead to frustration from your players.

Like Dan, I have a Science Fiction passion that I have spent years reading about and pondering.  In my case it is Time Travel.  Unfortunately I find that there are far more bad time travel stories out there than good ones.  That tends to lead into long rants in person where I can’t help but get off topic and bore people to tears.  So in the vein of Dan’s Capital Ship Combat articles I, too, would like to explore my Science Fiction passion and share my views in a series of blogs.  If you have any interest in Time Travel or just Science Fiction in general, I hope you will enjoy this series.  I also hope it will give everyone something to think about and generate many interesting debates and conversations.

What kind of Time Travel will we be discussing?

When it comes to time travel there appear to be two options.  You can either send your physical body through time, or you can project your consciousness back into a previous version of yourself or others.  The physical travel seems to be the most common method used by Science Fiction writers, but there have been interesting stories about both.  If you are sending only your consciousness, you usually have the extra plot hooks of having to live the day-to-day life while doing whatever you have come back to do.  Physical travel tends to put your characters outside of day-to-day events until they ultimately make a mistake and change something they were not supposed to.  For the case of these articles either method of time travel could be used, but from this point on I will focus on physical travel unless otherwise stated.

There are many concepts and many different takes on Time travel and how it would work.  I will avoid going into too many Einsteinian principals except were absolutely necessary such as when discussing absolute time and space and spacetime. To be clear though, at least at first I do not want to get into the actual methodology and theory behind how the travel itself works.

Ok, but what about Time Travel do you want to talk about then?

I want to start off by framing my initial discussions.  The far more interesting conversations revolve around how Time Travel works once you reach your destination and what that means to the travelers and society.  To give you a framework: drafts of the first three installments are already written and will focus on whether you can change the past, having the effects be the cause, and how a society would be impacted by time travel technology. I will keep this very high level at first to see what kind of feedback I receive, but in each case I could easily go into much more detail on any topic if there is an interest.

Finally I will be giving examples for many situations, but I will be creating each example myself and will intentionally try to avoid giving TV, movie, or book examples because I feel that will lead to conversations about those properties and not about the intended example.  That does not eliminate the chance of a future installment focusing on time travel in various media and what I think some of the major stories did right or wrong.

* Our struggles with miniature war games.

* Keeping roleplaying alive in combat.

Hosts: Chad, Dan, Pat, Wayne

I will state up front that I think Chad is fan-tastic!  He has a lot of good thoughts, and I truly enjoy him on the show.  

However, I have to call shenanigans on this one.  I have been in too many games where we role-played in combat to think that it doesn’t exist when the dice are brought out.  Are we not role-playing when we make a skill check?  Now, if you say that role-playing changes a bit, I won’t argue there.  There is always a different vibe role-playing out of combat and role-playing in combat.  But the role-playing doesn’t have to go away.

Need an example?  In my current online game, I have a three-way battle going on.  There are no real good guys and bad guys, just folks on different sides of the fence.  Had I just rolled dice, we would all be pretty bored right now.  However, I didn’t.  We have a lot of banter going back and forth.  One character is goading another, who is obsessed about his cause.  Meanwhile a third is trying to stop the combat from escalating.  It’s all very tense.  It’s the type of epic role-playing that really helps to shape and mold the characters.

So how do you keep the role-playing going while in combat?

Imagine what your character is going through in combat, and then act it out.  Is he afraid?  Maybe he stutters a bit when combat begins.  Maybe he begs the bad guys not to hit him. 

Does he use witty banter?   Think of Spider-Man here.  Spider-Man often uses witty banter in combat, whether it’s to calm his own fears or to lure the bad guys into dropping their guard and making a mistake.  This is particularly good for your roguish scoundrels. 

Or perhaps your character is more on the serious side.  Does he like to intimidate his foes?  Personally, I’d be a bit scared if a dwarf yelled at me before going into a rage.  Or maybe your character is very devout and swears an oath to his god before going into combat. 

Also, be sure to play off of the other characters.  When your character is surrounded by three ogres and the other player just dispatched his foe, feel free to say, “Hey, could I get a little help over here?”  Or you may just say, “Not bad, for an elf.”

I will admit that there are some limitations to watch out for.   You don’t want to be so busy bantering that you forget to let everyone have their fair turn.  Many game systems allow you to have a free action during combat.  Banter during that time.  Sometimes, the banter may come up naturally in a combat, so go with the flow.  Just remember that when the turn is over, let the next person join in.

I submit to you that role-playing and combat are not independent.  With a little practice, role-playing can take your combat from being a matter of rolling dice to a scene straight out of Hollywood.

If you’re guessing it’s because it focuses on a little known federal agency that only deals with crime related to the Navy and the US Marines – you’d be wrong. There are only a few plot lines involving “he’s a spy” or “she’s involved with terrorists” – the rest are right out of the procedural crime drama playbook (serial killers, crimes of passion, insurance fraud, elaborate revenge schemes, etc.) and would fit in just fine on any of the three (!) CSI’s.

No, the “special something” that makes NCIS stand out is its unique and quirky characters. Gibbs isn’t just the team leader, he has a “hick” name – Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and besides being a Marine (one is NEVER an ex-Marine, just a Marine not on active duty), he also has several ex-wives and other closely guarded secrets in his storied past. Abby isn’t just another lab tech in a white lab coat – she’s a super quirky goth grrl with a caffeine addiction and a penchant for Super Big Gulps. This goes on and on: for each main character there is something unique, fun, and memorable. They are not only different from each other (very important in an ensemble cast) but from other, similar crime shows.

Furthermore, they are more than a team. They are a family, and this isn’t even displayed in some subtle way. They come right out and say it. When three team members were reassigned and (temporarily) replaced, Abby demanded of Gibbs, “Bring them back!” They are a family, and her family was splitting up. In fact, each main cast member fits into the family template.

• Gibbs is the gruff but fair father
• Ziva is like his eldest daughter
• Abby is the younger daughter he dotes over, and who pals with Ziva like the big sister she never had
• DiNozzo and McGee are like a pair of squabbling brothers, vying for their fathers approval
• Even Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard is much like a kindly, and eccentric uncle

In fact, on closer analysis, NCIS is actually a family drama wrapped in a crime drama and disguised as a federal agency!

What can we, RPG’ers, learn from this? First, PC’s should be unique! Not just unique in the “race / class” sort of way, but unique in their quirks and mannerisms. Unique in their varied back-stories. Unique in their weaknesses and in their strengths and in the way they relate to one another. They should not only be different from each other – but from other adventuring groups!

Most of the groups I play with are all male, and the characters are all male. The only relationships the PCs tend to have is friend / ally / frenemy / rival. (“Frenemy” is a horrible portmanteau, but it serves a purpose. “You’re my friend, we fight side by side, and we share the spoils! But, I don’t trust you not to stab me in the back and steal my stuff when I sleep at night – so I always keep one eye open.” Of the four relationships listed, this is the most complex.) But, in a successful show like NCIS, the relationships are more complex and varied than that; beyond just a “found family” there is the complex back issues each character has that they bring into this “family.”

So, if you want to increase the drama and the uniqueness of your gaming party, you may have to look somewhere other then the dungeon or starship or which secret cabal you all belong to. Look to the group itself and how unique and interesting each character is, and how they relate to each other in complex and complimentary ways. Go ahead, be brave ‚ form a ‘family’, even a dysfunctional one, and play the hell out of it! You may make it to your seventh season, too.

* The odd obscurity of (or at least our ignorance regarding) LARPing rulebooks.  You can find the Fallout LARP pictures here.

* The effect of minis on tabletop roleplaying games.  In case you’re not familiar with the annoying Wilhelm Scream, here’s a compilation of them.

Hosts: Chad, Dan, Pat, Wayne

When you went to a BBS everyone knew your name.  It might be a handle, but it was you nonetheless.  It didn’t matter how popular you were in the everyday world.  You could play games with these people and just generally hang out.  There was a mechanism for file sharing so you could post pictures or files that others would find interesting.  The best part though was that you could talk about anything you wanted and someone would probably be interested.

The days of the BBS suddenly became numbered, though.  With the spread of the internet, new communication technologies started to eat away at the popularity.  The idea of a small, local community suddenly gave way to national or international chat rooms.  These had none of the small charm of the BBS and were all about instant gratification.  My collection of boards slowly shrank from 12 down until there were none left still running.  It was sad to see these go, but to be honest by the end they were barely echoes of what they once had been.

As this wave of nostalgia hit me I suddenly came to an obvious conclusion.  The BBS didn’t die; it just migrated to internet forums.  Internet forums provide all the functionality that a BBS ever did.  If you need information on a specific topic there is a forum out there dedicated to it where people will have no problem telling you everything there is to know about that topic, and just like on the old BBSes, some of it will even be accurate.  These very forums have proved that local events can still occur.

It seems like such a simple concept, but I for one had never really made that connection until now.  So in the new age of Twitter, texting, Facebook, and generally the second age of instant gratification communication technologies, I can’t help but worry about the future of this technology that has taken the place of my beloved BBS.  It is important to remember though that the BBS didn’t die — it just evolved.   It was my own unwillingness to accept change that kept me from seeing this.  If it happens again and someday forums don’t get traffic anymore, there will be another technology to fill that need.

I experienced this phenomenon a couple of times myself. I will say upfront that I, as (a much younger) game master, was as much at fault as anyone else, if not more so. I knew that evil campaigns ended badly, but I didn’t heed the warnings. 

In one case, I ran a Realms game where the player characters were determined to kill, rape, and plunder everyone in sight – often in that order.  It didn’t last more than two game sessions. By the time it was all done, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth.  A gamer should never leave a game with that sensation.

In another case, I thought that a couple of bounty hunters in a Star Wars game could still work within the mold of a heroic game.  As it turns out, heroism doesn’t pay well.  The players abandoned the whole premise of the campaign in one fell swoop.  Before I knew it, the party was somewhere else in the galaxy other than where my game was, and I sat there staring.  I was a game master defeated.

Mercenary games, in general, are not to my liking.  I like some of the concepts of games like Shadowrun, but the idea that all you’re doing is adventuring to get more money so you can buy more stuff is just not something that interests me personally.  Plus, mercenaries can be jerks at times.  I like heroic games, where you fight for some greater cause and some better purpose.

Yet can’t evil fight for a greater cause?  Many evil organizations do just that.  Look at the Empire in Star Wars, or the Knights of Takhisis in Dragonlance.  Both entities seek to bring order to their respective settings.  It’s when evil puts aside its own ambitions for something greater than itself, whether misguided or not, that it becomes palatable to play.

If you are dead-set on playing an evil character, then my recommendation would be to assign characteristics to the player character that makes him more than some murderer.  If you want him to gel with the party, give him a reason to.  Maybe he’s working under orders, or has a code of honor he cannot break.  In these cases, I would recommend using a character with a Lawful Evil alignment.  They seem to be more likely to work well with others, whereas Chaotic Evil would just kill and maim everything indiscriminately. 

Maybe the character has something he cares about more than being evil.  If his wife has come down with the plague and the party is questing to get the antidote, he might decide to play nice.  Or, maybe the character was once good, but was misled, and so now he lives a life of evil.  I would recommend placing some chances at redemption if you go this route.

While I still do not recommend evil characters, I think they can work so long as the players are experienced and willing to put aside any issues that would disrupt game play.  Use the group template, and talk to the other players and GM about how you can make this work.

* Fear the Con 3 has dates!  March 11, 2010 for Wing Night, March 12 – 13 for the con, March 14 – 17 for additional social events.

* The City of Villains supergroup on Pinnacle server is still going strong.  Free account reactivation and double XP this weekend.

* What makes a game system a LARP?

* Why we won’t try to define the terms RPG or LARP.

* Recovering momentum in a dying campaign.

Hosts: Chad, Dan, Pat, Wayne

1)   Locations are your background not your plot.  On my second week I prepared my location too much.  I had fully written descriptions for each room, but realized quickly that my players were getting bored with it.  They didn’t care to hear about a room that wasn’t related to the plot, and to be honest, I wouldn’t have either.  I was so worried about making sure my locations were well thought out that I allowed them to become the focus instead of the story I was trying to tell.

2) NEVER allow any one person or item to be essential to your plot. I was not at all prepared for the players to decide that my creepy character deserved to be attacked.  I knew that I couldn’t anticipate everything that they would do and was able to adapt, but when my whole plot required interaction by a single character and they wanted to kill him, I looked like a deer in the headlights.  Experienced GMs would know how to react to this, but as a new GM you can’t have a single point of failure.  I did let the players kill my creepy character, but I had to find a way to make them wait until he had done what I needed him to first.

3)  Prepare stats for characters even if you don’t anticipate a fight. I didn’t expect my players to attack my creepy character, but they were so freaked out by him that they really wanted him dead.  I didn’t have anything prepared for him or his guards in combat.  It wasn’t opposed to a fight and I did during some periods of stalling figure something out for them.  I just didn’t ever think I would need stats for these characters.

4)  Don’t feel like you have to stick to a script. Players will always do things you don’t expect and these can be the best moments of the game.  In my first week one of the things that I did particularly well was react to player decisions that I did not expect.  Subplots quickly grew out of these actions that I had never intended and I found afterward that these were the moments everyone talked about the most.  The players will latch on to things and you will be presented with opportunities during the course of the game that you never anticipated.  Don’t be afraid to go down these tangents, because you will be surprised how easily they can fit into your plot.  If your players are having fun with something it only makes the game easier for you, and they never need to know that it wasn’t something that you had planned.

The most important thing to remember is to just have fun.  If you are having fun, then your players are more likely to have fun.  Your first game won’t be perfect and you will make mistakes.  These are your friends or else you wouldn’t be gaming with them, and they will understand that you are new.  Your worst critic is likely to be yourself.

* Why the website has been coming and going.

* Fear the Con 3. After recording this episode, we got the location reserved and dates locked down.

* The history and meaning of names.

* Video game length.

* Superstition and mythology in fantasy roleplaying games.

* Psychoanalyzing Pat.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, Pat, Wayne

Trying to pin down the exact date of when we are going to hold this con is tricky. On one hand, I’m moving the date away from what we had last year for purely selfish reasons. It fall’s on my boys birthday. No big deal the past two years as he was to young to care but now he’ll be three and birthdays have become serious business. On the other hand, no one date will work for everyone. This con is a largely community based event although we are going to try and get more local people involved this year, more on that later. But it’s hard when you say that the con is going to be on X date and a community member from out of town says they can’t make that date. I know these people and I really want them, all of them, to be there. Do I reschedule around two or three people? The answer is no, I can’t. If I move the dates around for the sole reason of making sure one or two community members can make it then the new date might exclude two or three different community members. When a con has thousands of people coming to it that is no big deal but when our little con only has one hundred and twenty people show and you know almost every single one of them then it stings a little bit when you can’t make all the stars and planets line up just right.

Anyway, our target date for the con is: World Wide Wing Night/Pre-Con party Thursday March 11th with the con on Friday March 12th and Saturday March 13th 2010. Note that this is our target date right now. We are not able to book the hall as of yet and the hall might be unavailable on those dates.

I verified our vendor this year. The wonderful Casey and his Gamer Ground store. He set up shop and sold all sorts of gaming books, dice and other gamer stuff (he even had old school video games!) in the last two fear the Cons. Last I talked about it with him he was closing his B&M store and going to only doing cons and events and possibly some web stuff. In this economy who can blame him? Him and his wife put up a really good display. Prices are reasonable and it his whole set up is really slick. I never met the man before FtC 1 and when I was told we were getting in a dealer I had imagined a comic book guy style fat beard sitting behind a single table with a cash box and about five or so books laying scattered about charging triple what they were worth. Luckily, I was very wrong.

Well enough, jerking off Casey. The real question is, why even have a dealer for a small con of only 120 people? The most practical reason is that people like to spend money. They come to these sorts of things and want to take something home with them. Personally, I always ‘forget’ to bring my dice so I have an excuse buy a set at the con. Say you just sat in on a game that you have never played before and it blew you freaking socks off. More than one person goes running from that game and buys the books off of Casey, possibly stopping for a beer on the way into the dealer room. Another reason we have a dealer is that is just looks so right. There is something about having a gaming con with all this play going on and someone right there, right in the con, selling almost everything you need, selling the games that you are playing. The hobby shop is an important part of the gaming experience for a lot of people and we want one right in the middle of the con. It also works out that this is a largely community based event, Casey can get on the forums and ask people what they want to see for sale or if they have any special orders.

Current Con Status: We have the dealer! Not much else. Next item on the agenda is for me to put together ‘The List’.

This time was different. You see, it seems that StarWarsShop.com wanted to get an early start on Halloween this year, so they sent out an early Halloween newsletter. I opened the e-mail, and to my horror (pun intended), I saw a picture of Princess Leia as a vampire.

I was utterly disgusted. First, to use Princess Leia as a vampire is just ridiculous. This was originally some sort of Halloween party invite that was turned into a product to sell. Fine, I get that. No problem with them wanting to make a buck. Then they made the pic look like it was straight from the pulp era. Fine, no worries there. But Princess Leia as a vampire?

Vampires have gone from being unique, or at least rare, monsters who scare you to being the everyday, average monster on the block. We no longer have Dracula, Nosferatu, or Strahd. Now we have entire vampire societies, roaming about. In Stargate: Atlantis, you have the Wraith, who are little more than space vampires. Even in Dragonlance, you have the Beloved of Chemosh, who are a variant of vampires in their own right. No matter how you disguise these monsters, they keep coming up as vampires.

Let’s also consider why we glorify them so much. There’s supposedly some sort of sex appeal there. Beyond physical beauty, I don’t see it. I don’t find sucking blood to be attractive – not unless you happen to be a leech. Maybe it’s the horror factor. We have been bombarded by vampires so much in the last few decades that they no longer seem to scare. It’s kind of like how you watch the evening news and are no longer shocked by a murder. Likewise, vampires just don’t scare me anymore.

Why did Lucasfilm do this? Because it was easy. Vampires sell, and making money off of this is a guarantee. Yet in the process, the Princess’ image of a strong female protagonist is tarnished. How could the Princess fall prey to the likes of a vampire? Why should a company known for its creativity resort to the most uncreative thing they could do?

There are a few lessons that we, as gamers, can learn from this. First of all, a unique monster is more memorable than several. Dracula scares me. The umpteenth vampire that Buffy slays doesn’t. This is also true of other gaming elements too. Let’s take Tasslehoff’s Magic Mouse Ring for example. As a unique magic item, the ring has a certain notoriety. When they revealed it to be one of many, the ring became lackluster.

Be true to the characters. If you have a white witch NPC who suddenly dresses in black and wears a rainbow wig, your players will look at you funny. If your dumb goblin suddenly sprouts off Shakespeare, something isn’t right.

Don’t take the easy way out. Let’s say your players are fighting against a cult dedicated to your local God of Death. Good thus far. But then the cult reveals themselves to be vampires, or sends zombies after you, etc. etc. You might as well give all your players pillows for their nap. Mix it up some. Find a new monster from your latest monster book, or invent something new. If you must use a vampire, then at least take some time to give it some unique qualities. Maybe your vampire absorbs natural light, or is blind, or is a vegetarian due to his religion.

I am very disappointed in Lucasfilm, as I expected better. Certainly, they deserve a punch in the junk from Krazy Joe of Slice of SciFi fame. However, this is part of a larger issue that permeates pop culture. We need to get away from this vampire hysteria so that they can become a monster to be afraid of again, rather than being commonplace, like goblins.

What path will you choose? Will you take the easy way out, or will you push the bounds of your creativity to come up with something unique to wow your players with?

Obviously, the primary draw of Play-Doh is its edibility.  Its second draw is its near-infinite flexibility.  You can shape it into anything you can imagine.  But let’s be honest: most of us aren’t artists.  So over the years, they’ve released a variety of molds and presses to help you get started on your creation.  I don’t think those tools were meant to replace your creativity, but rather give you a needed boost.  For example, we had Star Wars themed presses for making Darth Vader and R2-D2, but that didn’t stop us from modifying the squishy sculptures, building props to pose them with, or making them out of really peculiar colors.  In other words, we already had a finished product in mind, and those molds helped us speed up the process and bridge skill gaps on the way there.

The d20 system is a lot like Play-Doh.  It’s a generic system you can reshape to fit any setting you have in mind.  Many people have done so quite successfully, releasing a variety of custom d20 settings and rules variations.

Continuing my analogy, along comes a product for the d20 system that’s something like my Play-Doh molds.  It doesn’t give you a finished product, but instead gives you a jump-start in the process of building your own RPG setting.  It’s a toolkit designed for people that are creatively minded but feel more comfortable working with tools that will help them keep their creation consistent and balanced.  The kit in question is Mastercraft, which is meant to work in a variety of settings and time periods, just like the d20 system it’s derived from.  The incarnation I was given for review is Fantasy Craft, which is the book for (duh) fantasy-themed games.

There are a lot of options in the game. Character creation starts by picking from one of twelve races and twelve character classes.  You’re also allowed to pick a Specialty which describes your character’s background or the “spin” on how he approaches his class.  For example, you might be a human lancer (a horseback soldier), but whether you’ve spent your life wandering the world, sitting around a castle, or living amongst a tribe will modify your stats a bit.

The monster section gives a small set of sample villains, and you’re also provided with an easy-to-follow system for creating your own.  If you can describe a monster’s abilities, how it moves, and how hard it is to kill, the game will give you an XP value and challenge rating.  There’s even some help for randomly generating names.

The world building section has a lot less charts and math than the monster section, but it asks useful questions to make sure you’ve thought your world through.  It asks you about the technology level, governance, religion, economy, and the impact of magic upon society.  It also offers a few tropes you can consider using as the basis for your setting.

Perhaps the part I appreciate most is the amount of questions the writers keep asking in every single chapter.  You’re not just told how to construct something, but you’re challenged to first think about how and why a character, monster, or town works a particular way.  They really want you to think beyond the numbers.

The book is over 400 pages long, and it’s not bloated with half-blank pages or filler art, so you’ll get your money’s worth in that regard.  And since it’s the first thing I look for in any RPG book I pick up, I’m pleased to say this bulky fellow does have an index in the back.

For anyone that’s an RPG veteran, I don’t think you’ll see a whole lot of breakthrough ideas in this book.  Like the Play-Doh molds, Fantasy Craft is not going to do much for the experienced sculptor, but it will help someone that’s new to roleplaying — or even a veteran that would rather focus on storytelling than minutiae and math — leapfrog right into game play.  And that’s where this book really shines.  It asks questions, gives examples, and (where necessary) provides charts to make sure you’ve given detail and depth to the components of your world.

Want to learn more about Fantasy Craft? Read on…

• Atomic Array: Fantasy Craft (Atomic Array 032)
• Game Cryer: Review by Chris Perrin
• Questing GM: Questing with Fantasy Craft
• allgeektout: What Fantasy Craft Has to Offer
• Campaign Mastery: Mine Fiction for Campaign Qualities
• Emerson’s Bookshelf: Fantasy Just Got Crafty
• Critical Hits: Critical Review
• Fear the Boot: Fear the Review
• Gnome Stew: What Fantasy Craft Brings to the Table
• Uncle Bear: Fantasy Craft Chargen
• Flames Rising: Dark FantasyCraft Review

Drop by Crafty Games today!

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, Wayne

Guests: Jim Pinto

1. It has very explicit language and covers very explicit topics.

2. Race, religion, and politics are all fair game for discussion.

3. This particular episode runs over three hours in length.

So if it breaks pretty much every rule FtB has, why am I pointing you that way?  Because if you’re not easily offended, there’s some stuff in there you might be interested in.  We talk quite a bit about the making of Fear the Boot — including where it’s been, where it’s headed, the hosting mix, what you can expect from Fear the Con 3, what’s happened to Skies of Glass, and some breaking news on previously unannounced projects we’re about to release.

If you want to skip most of the off-topic conversation and just hear the distilled FtB content, skip forward to 1:35:40.  If not, set aside a large block of time and enjoy the whole episode.

Also, our rules have not changed!  If you want to post comments/questions here or on the forums, that’s fine as long as it conforms to our normal rules.  This is not an excuse to bring politics, religion, or any other drama over here!  Also, they have their own forums, but if you post over there please be a good ambassador for the show and respect their rules as well.

With all that out of the way, you can find the episode here.

One of the best card games I’ve been introduced to is Fluxx.  And, no, they’re not paying me to say that.  I genuinely mean it, and if you haven’t tried the game, you ought to at least borrow a copy to see how it runs.  They’ve released several versions of Fluxx, each with a different theme.  There’s the original version, which is honestly a bit bland, though they do offer mini-expansions to give it some spice.  After that came Monty Python and zombie themed games, which I think are a lot more fun.  All of them are lighthearted and focus on the joy of playing over any sense of competition.

In case you’ve never played Fluxx, you only have a few rules…

1. Everyone draws three cards to start with.

2. If you have a bad guy (called a Creeper), you have to play it immediately and draw another card.

3. You pick a player to start and work around the table clockwise from there.

4. On your turn, all you have to do is draw one card and play one card.

That’s it!  Sound boring?  Let’s go back to the name of the game.  It’s called Fluxx because the game is constantly changing.  The cards allow you to keep modifying the rules and objective of the game.  Maybe you draw more cards, play more cards, trade hands with someone, kill off a Creeper, or do silly meta-game things like talking in an accent.  If the rules become too burdensome, there are cards that let you wipe them all out and return the game to its original state.

Looney Labs has been admirably creative with the variety of cards, so each game will play a bit differently.  The rules are so simple that you can teach even the biggest moron to play in a matter of seconds.  And since the game is constantly changing, you can easily add players at any time.  I’ve joined games 10 minutes in and won within a couple of turns.

If you’re still not following, let me give you an example from the zombie version of the game.  When the game starts, you’re in a zombie apocalypse, trying to get away.  The Creepers are zombies which can keep you from winning.  But you also get good guys (called Keepers) like friends, chainsaws, and food rations.  The game’s objective — which changes whenever someone plays a new one — generally involves having the right combination of Keepers, without any Creepers that preclude your victory.  For example, having both the gasoline and car, in which case you can drive away.

On September 25th, they’ll be releasing a version of the game called Martian Fluxx, which is based on campy, sci-fi movies.  You play an alien trying to — well, it depends on the cards in play, but you’re trying to do something.  And those pesky humans (the Creepers) keep getting in your way.  Fortunately, you have Keepers like ray guns and abduction machines to help you out.

Each version of Fluxx plays a little bit differently, and the Martian version is no exception.  But for anyone that’s new to the game, I can assure you they’re similar enough that you don’t really need to stress over which one has the best rules or most entertaining cards.  Simply pick the one that fits the interests of your group of friends.  If you’re more into Monty Python than Martians or zombies, there ya go.  It’s like picking a setting book for a generic RPG system: whether you go with aliens or wizards, you’re still playing the same game.

For anyone that’s familiar with the prior incarnations, we tried several rounds of Martian Fluxx to see how it plays.  It’s not a radical departure from anything you’ve seen before, but we did notice one major thing.  In the zombie version, Creepers had a lot of their own rules and behavior mechanisms, which was something not really seen in prior versions.  For example, killing one zombie in a crowd might send that crowd running to a neighboring player.  Martian Fluxx draws that back a little but introduces a lot of rules for the Keepers.  For example, you can use an abduction card to make the presence of humans irrelevant, or you can use your ray gun to blast things out of existence.

My final analysis is that the game is enjoyable, but as I stressed above, the important thing about Fluxx is picking the right flavor.  If you’re not that into Martians, stick with your zombie, Monty Python, Jewish, Christian, or even marijuana (?!)* flavors of the game.  But if you like little green men with big brains picking on hapless humans, this will be worth your $14.97.

* I didn’t even know that version existed until doing some site look-ups while writing this review.

UPDATE: After posting this article, I was contacted by Looney Labs with some interesting tidbits, quoted below…

Since you mentioned it in your article, I do want to let you know that Stoner Fluxx has been out of print for over 4 years.  Looney Labs recently launched a second imprint called Fully Baked Ideas, which we will use to release games with adult themes.  The first Fully Baked Ideas release will be a new and improved version of Stoner Fluxx on November 13, 2009.  The reason Looney Labs created Fully Baked Ideas is to keep all consumer marketing separate, so that children on our family games website will not be exposed to adult oriented games.

There are a few franchises out there, but they seem to be the exception that proves the rule.  In each case the franchise is a regional store, and the region rarely extends past the county or city.  These are not true franchises, because they are typically owned by the same individual.  Everywhere this occurs, these stores seem to do better and last longer than the stand alone competition.  I’m not entirely convinced this is due solely to name recognition though.

Comic Book and Game stores are typically opened by fans that have a passion for the hobby.  They want to make their hobby their career, so they take out loans or use their own collection to help fill their shelves.  This is the passion that drives the business forward, and in many cases that alone keeps the shop open.  The problem is that passion is not business sense.  The typical shop owner has motivation and many of the qualities needed to run a business.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that they know how to set up displays, advertise, or handle the finances of a business.

Comic and game stores typically look horrible.  They typically look like a college dorm room exploded inside a strip mall.  Posters wallpaper the room and cover the windows.  Displays typically are poorly lit and there is little to no striping.  This is partially due to the small order sizes, but also due to a lack of experience.  Expensive collectible items that likely will never sell are hung all over the store.  The general atmosphere just does not look like a serious business and thus people outside of the hobby are less likely to feel comfortable coming into the store.

Comic shop owners eventually need to hire employees.  The shop owners typically look to friends or customers for this role.  They think that others with a passion for the subject will be able to talk intelligently about it and won’t mind the slow periods because they can read.  The problem there is that these are not salesmen.  They don’t have any form of training to teach them how to treat costumers with respect or to try and upsell without being pushy.  More often than not they simply ignore the customer or drive them from the store with high pressure sales techniques.  At worst they are paid in merchandise that would have been bought by customers but they held aside for themselves.

There is a very small markup to this merchandise and a market that is gradually shrinking.   This leads to even someone with a strong business sense and a good crew not making much profit.  Successful shop owners can make a good living, but that isn’t enough to be able to afford opening a second or third shop, let alone building a franchise.  The few franchises that do exist I strongly feel do so due to their owners having a better business sense than many others.  That is not to say that some owners don’t have an excellent business sense and are just satisfied with a single shop.

There is a great potential for a comic\game store franchise, but the steps needed to create mass appeal are the very things that could drive away existing customers.  These are niche markets and part of the appeal of going into shops is their atmosphere.  While that atmosphere may prevent new customers it also provides the money needed to keep a shop running.  It doesn’t matter how many customers you pull into your store if they are not going to spend money.

What I do know is that I have searched out a comic shop in almost every town I have visited, and they are typically difficult to find.  You never know what you are going to get until you get there.  Some shops have custom made fixtures and work on providing a very professional appearance.  Others I wouldn’t want to touch the counter without disinfectant.   It would be nice to know, but since I already have a pull list it is this mystery of what I could find that drives me to the stores.  I have seen a number of stores over the years that have not fallen prey to these common business shortcomings.  Only time will tell though if these shops last longer than their more typical counterparts.

Now, we’re all mature, astute members of the gaming community, right? We know that there are many, many female gamers out there. Some of us are lucky enough to have one of them for a S.O.! We’re probably even so erudite as to have previously assumed that women played fantasy football. Even so, I know that most folks in the gaming culture (especially we that spend any time on the Internet) have had these conversations at least once.

The first conversation goes like this:

“There aren’t any/many female gamers. I’ve never had one in my game.”

“No way, there are tons of female gamers. I am one / have had one/several in my gaming groups.”

“Oh, wow. I’ve never met a female gamer.”

“Yeah, they’re everywhere. Tons of girls play roleplaying games now.”

Granted, this one is falling in frequency, especially among gamers that spend time online. Females are, at least in my experience, fairly well represented across the board in the RPG community these days. I still talk to the occasional female gamer that feels a bit like she’s in a boy’s club environment, but generally speaking, most female gamers I know are “just gamers.” They identify no more as “female gamers” than I do as a “male gamer.” This is true even in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where gamer shame is actually still fairly prevalent. But even so, this conversation still happens with enough frequency that we’ve all heard it at least once in some form or another.

Then, there’s the story of the guy who got his girlfriend or wife to play RPGs. (Yes, the opposite is also true, but to compare it more directly with the story I linked I’m using this particular direction.) There’s the “girlfriend gamer.” There’s the girl you found that already games. There’s the wife that once she sat in on one of your games, she realized she genuinely liked it and now she’s a “full fledged gamer.” We’ve all heard or had this one, at least those of us that have seen enough seasons that this is a concern for us.

So there you go. It’s not only in roleplaying game circles that some guys are still amazed that women, well, do stuff.

I find myself wondering if there’s more chauvinism in the sports world when it comes to this than there is in gaming, but sadly, I’ve also known a few (thankfully very few) male gamers that treat women in the hobby with a degree of disdain, so I suppose there’s progress to be made in any hobby.

* Happy birthday to Chris!

* Pat finds Devil Cremes.

* Sherlock Holmes, the upcoming movie, and reimagining popular stories.

* Old games that we miss…!?

* The creep of roleplaying elements into non-roleplaying games.

* Failures of outreach in geekdom.

* Bringing roleplaying games into the mainstream.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, Pat, Wayne

Usual fair warnings, I don’t know how frequent these posts are going to be and I’m not sure if I’m even going to be able to make any after this one. That’s not to say I’m not going to update this at all after this post, I just don’t know myself.

This is going to be the planning blog for Fear the Con. I’m Chad, one of the hosts of the podcast Fear the Boot. I’m also the guy who is heading up the Fear the Con 3 effort. I got into running Fear the Con with #2 but I helped with #1, abet very little. I got in on the very end of that one and attended one or two meetings and just helped set up some chairs. With Fear the Con 2 I ran the whole show. To much of the show in fact. It was pretty stressful for me and consumed a lot of my time. In the end it was all worth it. We had great fun, wonderful people and and some fantastic games. The whole con was declared by all a smashing success. Dan made a little speech at the end of it saying I was one who made it all happen. I got a rousing round of applause and a few cheers. That was a nice and much needed ego boost. :)

I had my 1st meeting with Dan, he’s the money man, and hopeful the last face to face meeting that will take place for this FtC. We talked about some ideas of what we wanted out of FtC 3 and what worked and what didn’t in 2. We also set the tentative times and talked about the secret project…. DUN! DUN! DUN! Well we have 2 secret projects planned for the con and the whole reason for keeping it on the down low is that we don’t want to disappoint if we can’t make them work. But don’t worry, I’ll reveal them if we can’t get them started.

Right now I have a lot of ideas that I need to turn into action. To do this I will use my two greatest weapons: email and the Fear the Boot forums. Communication is key because the whole con lives and dies on the action of others. I need to start listing my ideas, turning them into jobs and then assign them to the different people on the con staff. I also need to start getting the ideas from rest of the staff. This can be a hard part sometimes. On one hand, you need perspective that only other people can give and they might think of some really cool stuff or have contacts that you didn’t think of. On the other hand, people can have some really dumb ideas and it’s a real waste of time and resources to chase everyone of those ideas down.

Current Con Status: Concepts and nothing more. Time starting pulling ideas and people together and turning that into action.

Let me say off the bat that I love me some Lovecraft in a creepy leave me alone in a room with it kind of way. It’s intellectual horror. I can enjoy a good thrill and look down on those who do not understand it. Ahh God the sweet, sweet joys of elitism. So I’ve been slurping on that teat for years when I first discovered Call of Cthulhu and what a moment of elation that was! And then I sat down and played the damn thing. It worked well enough but it was thoroughly ummm… what’s the nice way of saying it… craptacular. Years later I found Trail of Cthulhu and I knew peace. It delivered authentic investigative horror. And then I hear rumors about a new Cthulhu game. One that mixes Anime and Lovecraft. I suffered Sanity loss as images of La Blue Girl and Legend of the Overfiend came back to haunt me but, being the obsessive Lovecraftian fanboy that I am, I was determined to give it a shot. If only to bitch about it later.

And was pleasantly surprised by this shiny book that between well written – and often disturbing – fluff and very well done artwork actually was what it promised. A blendered mix of Lovecraft, Guyver, Gundam, and Evangelion with a story that skillfully binds them all together. Like any good shake it has a few lumpy bits but they are surrounded by a gooey mix of city destroying mechs, daring sorcerers, shapeshifting monsters, soldiers on the frontline of humanity’s defense and topped by a creamy coating of madness from the Outer Dark. Here is where the review really begins.

Player POV

Pros: Setting, Awesomesauce

The setting is awesome. Earth is almost unrecognizable. Two interstellar wars, the public acknowledgment of the occult, the creation of an inexhaustible source of power in the D-Enigine, the appearance of monsters on the battlefield and at home, and giant rampaging mechs have done a decent job of re-arranging the realty market. Multiple warfronts – both foreign and at home – combined with enough enemies to choke a goat with provide fodder for backstories, story hooks, and character ideas.

And now for the awesomesauce. While you can play the archetypal investigative horror here you can really do that with any decent Cthulhu system. CoC or Trail of Cthulhu. What this game really delivers is the chance to really take on the Mythos. Sure. You might go mad or break down in gibbering fear but you can take the bastards with you. Magic, hi-tech weaponry and armor, psychic powers, powered armor, shapeshifting symbiotes, building sized mechs, and living warmachines capable of leveling small cities. A multitude of ways to make a Deep One shit an inn table at the sight of you. It’s nice knowing that you can actually fight back when the slavering monster shows up.

Cons: Die Mechanic, Nazzadi

The die mechanic isn’t bad. It’s just bloody strange. You roll a dice pool equal to your skill plus modifiers and add your attribute. That’s pretty normal. Here’s where it gets weird. You play poker with the results taking the highest number, the highest pair, or the highest straight. It’s odd, esoteric, and has a steeper learning curve than most of the pre-eminent systems. If your players like poker though they will take to it like a deep one to a lonely New england housewife. I know I did.

Now the Nazzadi… they just puzzle me. Alien race, built from our own DNA, and sent to make us go boom in high style. Got that. Themes of racial and cultural tension are good for rp fodder and story hooks. Gotcha. Wanting to wipe us out like interstellar cockroaches. I can understand – and depending on the day highly sympathetic – this but why on earth would the migo make dark elves? I am certain that the creators of the game have a good story in mind for them but dark elves?

GM POV

Pros: Metaplot, Genre and Power Sliding

Metaplot is an ingredient that has to be used carefully. Too much and a story can become unwieldy and spawn abominations.* Too outrageous and you lose immersion by way of insanity. A good metaplot gives you a direction and story hooks. A map with little x’s on it saying here there be goodness. And there is no shortage of that here. A good one also reinforces the feeling the setting is trying to convey. Between the chaos in distant lands and the corruption at home Cthulhutech provides an edgy desperate dyning of the light mojo. For a gm it’s always nice to have a world realized in it’s foundations but vague enough on the details to mold to your needs.

As for genre and power sliding that’s a fun topic here. One of the problems with niche games is that they often have no real wiggle room for genre or power sliding. Most setting specific games have a fairly narrow definition of things. Who you can be, what you can do, the kind of adventures to be had but Cthulhutech definitely does not have this problem. Genre alone can slide between investigative horror, war stories, spy thrillers, and high action all within the course of a single adventure. Power sliding is just as flexible. Street level investigations into shadowy cults, special forces backed up by powered armored troops taking on monsters, psychics causing fatal cases of dain bramage, shapeshifting Tagers taking on vicious Dhoanoids, mech pilots deployed to the frontlines in multi million credit warmachines, and pilots cybernetically linked to biotech mech Engels. You can go all over the place in this setting.

Cons: Darkness of Setting, Combat Clunk

I understand that this is a dark and desperate setting but you can go too far. It’s not prevalent in the game but some of the fluff and adventure ideas are just a wee bit too dark to be really fun. Some topics can hit too close to home for some. I don’t want to really delve into the topics too much as some of them are not my favorite subject in the world. Let me sum this up by asking a question. Which adventure would you remember? Stopping a Deep One incursion into a town in ruined New England led by their poster boy – and real life Deep One – Michael Phelps# or freeing the terrified and brutalized women of a Deep One rape camp.

I say combat clunk but it’s not a bad case of clunk. The system follows the attack/defense and damage/soak cycle. The basic part of combat is pretty simple. Anyone with any familiarity with rpgs will recognize the flow and follow along. And it does flow pretty fast and furious once you get used to the die mechanic and the combat mechanics. I call clunk because I have always hated soak rolls of any kind. They have pissed me off since OWOD. The first time I hit with a metric assload of successes but none of that mattered because he rolled great on his soak roll. A human soaked a damn near perfect shot from a handgun at point blank range. It still pisses me off thinking about it. Can someone toss the soak roll concept in the bin? White Wolf has and you can too.

Overall I give this game an enthusiastic and hearty approval. It holds a warm and fuzzy niche in my heart right. The same kind of feeling I get when I beat a hard game or dangle a piece of candy just above a child’s vainly reaching fingers. Cthulhutech: why settle for the lesser evil?

* See OWOD and discover the joyful awfulness of Samuel Haight for a perfect example.

# He really is! He was raised by a single mother in New England and i swear I saw gills during the Olympics. That wasn’t pot in that bong. It was a potion to slow down the change.

* Nerd d**k waving.

* The soda map.

* Chad’s Fear the Con 3 blog.

* Bookstores and bookstoring.

* Character advancement and atrophy.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, Pat, Wayne

* What is your favorite word?  Super Troopers meow clip.

* This is Chris’ 50th episode!

* Pocket gaming books.

* One-shot roleplaying games.

* Special thanks to Zircher for the Baron’s reply tagged at the end of the episode!

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, Pat, Wayne

* Comic books, trade paperbacks, and graphic novels. Wayne provided links to The Boys and an online “pull” service.

* An apology to Rhiannon.

* Acclimating a new player to the roleplaying hobby.

* Julie Hussey’s Power 16 II acceptance speech.

Hosts: Chris, Dan, Pat, Wayne

The “launch party” was an interesting concept that involved a live concert intercut with footage from the video, tying it all into a single event. It was similar to how I remember the launch of the RPG back in ‘99, when they used actors to stage a short performance in the Exhibitor’s Hall that dealt with subject matter from the game.

And here is the ‘Red Rover’ incident. To recap what happened. On Saturday night at the Con, the fire alarms went off, and everyone was forced to leave the convention hall. This, of course put plenty of gamers in the streets, so much so, that they spilled over to both sides. I shot some general video, then came upon a group doing a reading of a Jack Chick track. When they were done, I made the joke to the crowd (off camera) that the other side of the street wanted to play a big game of Red Rover. To my surprise, they bought into it, and had some fun.

And as long as we’re talking about BattleTech, Chad was kind enough to shoot some highlights from my running of a TOPtBCH BattleTech event on Thursday evening. The clip doesn’t tell much of a story per se, but just shows some of the action and a bit of chat with me afterward. So, if you have a free eight minutes, go give it a shot!

Next up are Rob Boyle and David Cross from Catalyst Game Labs, talking about their new RPG, ‘Eclipse Phase.’ It’s sort of a sci-fi-horror-transhuman-other stuff kind of game. Very interesting.

Finally, we talked with two of the guys behind the web series, GOLD. It’s a humorous take on the world of competitive gaming, and is really well done.

A final note on updates. Been having some issues embedding video, so Dan has been handling that, which is making things slow. Dan isn’t slow, but the coordination between the two of us is slowing things up. I hope to get another update tonight, and maybe sneak in a photo-only update as well. Stick with us and point your other gaming friends here!

And of course, Gen Con wouldn’t be what it is without the gamers. And they are an interesting lot. We cornered some of them in the elevator as we rode up and down to our room.

What also impresses me are gamers who will wait to be the first in line to get the gaming product they want. I talked to these folks about it.

And speaking of gamers wanting what they want, we got inside the Exhibitor’s Hall to talk with Paizo about the release of the Pathfinder Core RPG. Of course, we also got the rush of those gamers who wanted to get the book. Or books in some cases.

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We dined on chili concocted by Martian Bob himself, and tasted a variety of micro brews scrounged up (and some brewed by) Killercheesewedge. Plenty of gamer talk abounded, as ‘Return of the Jedi’ played on Spike TV in the background. Of course, we paused to listen to Admiral Ackbar shout, “It’s a trap!”

Photos below, as well as a brief audio commentary by Chad & John on their journey up (Dan will be uploading this).

Tomorrow the coverage begins in earnest, so keep checking back for more updates daily.

Some photos of the gathering here. Expect more tomorrow.

With the success of Wii Sports, it is safe to say that Wii Sports Resort has to once again raise the bar  to be worthy of the name.  This time the new technology being demoed comes in the form of an attachment called Wii MotionPlus and gives the Wiimote a greater ability to sense player movement.  This is most clearly seen in games like swordplay, frisbee, and tabletop tennis where you are holding objects that move completely freely in your hands as you twist and turn the controller.  The impact of Wii Sports on the system is undeniable, but can Wii Sports Resort and the new Wii MotionPlus live up to the original?

The game intro tries to pull you in and get you excited about the new technology.  Unfortunately the first time you play the game you have to sit through a three minute video explaining how to hook up that technology.  There is no magic “I’m not an idiot just load the game” button to let you skip past the video either.  Once you do get past this tutorial — assuming you didn’t break your TV from throwing your controller at it — your Mii goes into a skydiving mini-game.  It is an amusing introduction to what the controller can do, but you cannot pick your Mii.  In my case, to start the game I had to skydive as my wife instead of myself.   For those that do enjoy this pointless mini-game an expanded version is included in the Air Sports section.   Minor changes like the addition of legs and Wii Fit inspired menus are welcome additions.

I have gotten more questions about Swordplay than the rest of the game combined.  Under the Swordplay category there are three games.  Duel is a fight on top of a raised platform where the goal is to knock your opponent off into the water.  The sword does move exactly like you are holding it and shows the true potential for a sword fighting game.  Unfortunately the AI is ridiculously easy to defeat at first.  As your score goes up you are presented with more difficult opponents, but to be honest none of them have presented a challenge thus far.  In Speed Slice an item is presented, and you have to slice it in the direction shown on the screen quicker than your opponent.   Finally Showdown is a throwback to all of those old Kung-Fu movies.  You are presented with waves of one hit-point people coming at you, swords raised.   They even included the setting of an old rope bridge.  Overall this category is one of the best in the game and shows the potential for sword fighting games to actually be fun.  Of course it is now up to the game manufacturers to follow through.  Ubisoft is the first to step up to that plate with Red Steel 2 later this year.  Only time will tell if it’s successful or disappoints as much as the original Red Steel.

The hidden gem is Archery.  If you play right handed you hold the Wiimote in your left hand and the nunchuk in your right.  You aim the shot with the Wiimote and pull the arrow back with the nunchuk.  The faster you pull back the nunchuk the faster you will focus on the screen.  Wind and arch have to be taken into account when aiming instead of just setting your sites to the bull’s-eye.  The thwipping sound coming out of the Wiimote’s speaker added an extra level of immersion into the game.  I hope that if there is another Legend of Zelda game for the Wii, it will steal this mechanic.

A few other games deserve noting, but there are far too many for in-depth reviews.   Bowling, Golf, and Tabletop Tennis all got mechanical upgrades from previous versions in the Wii series.  Frisbee Golf was a true standout on this game by far overshadowing the Frisbee Dog that unlocks it.  Wakeboarding was surprisingly fun, but the directions are not the most intuitive.  Finally Dogfight is an aerial battle between planes to gather balloons and shoot your opponent’s balloons.  The flight controls are simply the best I have ever experienced on a flying game.  Dogfight and Skydiving leave me hoping for both a more advanced jetfighter game and a superhero game.

Every game can’t be good though, and Wii Sports Resort has a few that either needed more work or just aren’t fun.  The game that stands out most in this category is Cycling.  You are riding a bicycle by moving the Wiimote and nunchuk up and down rapidly.  You steer by tilting them left, right, and up.  The mechanic is not fun and leaves you exhausted by the end of the race.  It isn’t innovative game play and I don’t see any reason the MotionPlus is even needed for this.  Also, a personal pet peeve of mine with game developers is that they don’t realize that most people HATE split screen multiplayer mode.  For games like cycling it is necessary, but for Duel most players don’t need to see thru their character’s eyes just to fight.  The recently released Punch-Out also suffers from this.

Final Recommendation:  Wii Sports Resort buy, rent, or avoid?  BUY.  It will quickly become your new go to game to show people what the Wii is like.  Now if only it actually represented what most Wii games were like.

* Gencon is upon us!  If you haven’t already, get signed up for the guerrilla events.

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* Rolling dice versus roleplaying social skills.

* Could there be a future without mainstream gaming?

* City of Villains guild.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, John, Pat

Let me start off by saying this. We should have had a cannibal hero years ago. Knock out your enemies? So early 90s. Kill your enemies? Even my mother plays games where you kill people. Digital people. Eating your enemies – or allies or bystanders or that unsuspecting old lady down the road – is a breath of fresh air. I mean, be honest, how many times have you hated a character so badly that you would give a limb just for the chance to kill them? Now imagine the joys of not just fragging that person but eating their heart just to possess some of their power? Or to quench a quick snack attack? Whichever. And think of how many games would have been better for the addition of cannibalism? Resident Evil would have become Resident Lunch – the all you can eat zombie buffet. But enough about my newfound joy of digital cannibalism. For now.

Prototype is supposedly an action/superhero/sci-fi – though the science is so soft you could spread it with a butter knife – game released on the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. Why isn’t it on the Wii you may ask? Because old people don’t like games about eating people, and they couldn’t figure out how to do cannibalism with wild flailing motions*. The game genre is wrong, I realized, about halfway through. It’s none of the above. This is the world’s first cannibalism simulator. It’s what you will spend a good majority of your game doing. Sneaking and eating… fighting and eating… sneaking then fighting then eating… eating then fighting …sneaking, fighting, eating, and then marauding in a vehicle. That’s about every mission type in the game.

Let me break the game down for you.

You play convenient amnesiac Alex Mercer. All you remember is a few flashes. A minute or two into gameplay and the cannibalism comes in, but it’s not just a neat and horrible way to end human life, it is Deus Ex Canniblus! With each person you eat you gain their memories. Amnesiac and cannibalistic memory taking… I think you see where this is going. Mercer goes on a rampage of eating people, being angry at whoever did this, and evolving into something that can stop armored tank divisions. That’s the main gist of the story. Eat someone, learn part of the puzzle, pursue the puzzle piece, fight monsters or the military, and then eat someone else.

Sounds boring beyond the gratuitous eating of people? Wrong. Prototype made sure that you would never get bored doing what it does most often. Killing things has been taken to a new height in this game. Claws, blades, bludgeoning fists, cars, tanks, helicopters, extendo limbs, new combat moves including powerbombing people from 30 feet in the air, forests of spikes, rocket launchers, machine guns, and that isn’t all. Combine this with regeneration, armor, and acrobatics that would make Tony Jaa blush with envy, and you have an awesome combat experience. Even the movement is fun. You can run up walls, glide from building to building, leap city blocks, and outrun cars.

The graphics are nice. Pretty enough to be entertaining without being ground breaking. The animations are nice and varied. Different weapons give different cannibalistic animations, which is a nice touch. Lots of blood and collateral damage to be had. I honestly can’t tell you how good the soundtrack is, because I really couldn’t hear it over the sounds of wholesale slaughter. One nice thing they did was the flashes of memory you get from cannibalizing important targets. Unique voice action and cinema for all two hundred and some victims, too.

If you can’t tell by now, I had a blast playing this game. All in all for fans of carnage and superhero style mad science I highly recommend this game. I give it four cannibalized bodies out of 5.

But, as an aside or addendum to this review, I want to bring up the prevalence of the whole cursed with awesome trope. As explained here at the excellent TV Tropes site. How am I expected to believe that someone with the power of a god is really sad about it? Especially when it comes with no drawbacks? I would gladly take Alex Mercer’s place in a heartbeat. Power of a god and only the occasional desire to eat people so you can evolve? I’ve had days where the thought of eating people has crossed my mind. Usually when my wait for food or service has taken longer than Moses did crossing the desert. Where do I sign up? Why do game makers – and writers of all types – do this? I want to know what you all think about this particular issue.

First, being a software developer, I didn’t know a whole lot about configuring an email server. I just learned all about DomainKeys, DKIM, SPF, and all kinds of other junk.  For those not following, the punchline is that our Fear the Boot emails should no longer be treated as spam or (in some cases) outright blocked by your mail provider. I’ve successfully sent registration emails to both Gmail and Yahoo, and they appeared right in the inbox.

If you’ve registered for the forum and never received your confirmation email — and followed up with Chad and never gotten a reply from him either — please follow-up with us one more time.  Our spam issue should finally be resolved, and messages from our domain should start going where they belong.

Second, Jeramy Ware is up for reelection as an ENnies judge.  He’s been an outstanding voice of reason within that organization and a real champion for gaming podcasts.  I hope you’ll go out and give this guy your support.  He’s not affiliated with Fear the Boot — nor have we submitted anything for consideration this year or currently plan to next year — so this isn’t some form of self-promotion.  I just feel that keeping this guy in the mix is a real boon for gamers and podcasters alike.

* Battletech’s 25th anniversary and the unseen ‘Mechs.

* Sign-up continues for our Gencon guerrilla event network!

* A big thanks to Kellum.

* Midnight RPG movie.

* The Ghostbusters video game and never-made movie sequel.

* Overall balance in a roleplaying game.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, John, Pat

* Power 16 II final battle this week!

* Numbering churches and banks.  (Note from Dan: I checked the ending credits of Contra and realized I had games mixed up.  It was from the credits of Mega Man 3.  It’s around 2:20 on that clip.)

* Urban legends.

* City of Villains guild on the Pinnacle server.  It’s NOT a FtB sponsored guild, but a lot of us have joined it.  We have a dedicated forum area, and you can find the client download here.

* Players that refuse to learn the rules of an RPG.

* Game completionism.

* Questioning magic user balance in RPGs and video games.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, John

* The new Mechwarrior game.  After watching the trailer, seeing the restored “unseen” ‘Mechs and flavor they’re going for, Dan retracts his initial disdain.

* Our hope for a new Crimson Skies video game.

* Deciding what’s worth tracking in a roleplaying game.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, John, Pat

* This week, the Power 16 II enters the finals for the Denny’s League.

* If you’ve enjoyed Skullossus’ bracketology art, check out his comic, The Princess Planet.

* Sign-up continues for our Gencon guerrilla event network!

* Chris wins an Edward R. Murrow award!  You can watch his entry here.

* A debate on the usefulness of utility spells.

* Pocket Tanks.

* Dealing with the first game in a campaign.

* Melodies of Life.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, John, Pat

* Be sure to get signed up for our Gencon guerilla event list.

* Chad’s random aside on industrial music.

* Five upcoming movies we’re looking forward to: Surrogates, 9, District 9, Zombieland, Where the Wild Things Are.

* Epic player quests.

Hosts: Chris, Chad, Dan, John, Pat

* Power 16 II rolls on!  This week is the second round of the Denny’s League.

* Can’t Stop the Serenity charity.

* Some mathematical facts about 153.

* Reverse picture-preview episode.  The 10 pictures forum users submitted to inspire this episode can be found here.

Hosts: Chad, Dan, John, Pat

Fast forward to the emergence of “Sandbox RPGs” and the global popularity of “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.” Open and “do what you want” gameplay is the standard. So where does that leave rpg’s? Tabletop rpg’s helped influence the first video games, and now in some cases, video games are influencing tabletop rpg’s. An excellent example of a MMORPG inspired rule system is the fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons, and more specifically, its power system.

MMORPG’s standardized method of giving all the players activatable powers that will do everything from swinging a sword to casting a spell makes using the interface simple, and quick. Dungeons and Dragons took a page out of this book and made all character abilities “powers”, making it easier for players to pick up new classes (because they didn’t have to learn how a magic system worked), but still kept the classes unique.

Another example is from more free form video games, like Morrowind, and their effects on games such as Savage Worlds. In Morrowind, while initial stat choices will have a major influence on how well you do certain tasks, the system allows you to still develop skill in other areas. Fighters can cast magic, Wizards can wear heavy armor, Morrowind’s rule system allows for full customization, given a little time. Savage Worlds does similar things with its own system. Through gained experience, characters expand their skills in any field they want, there is no restriction of a “class” system.

Now lets discuss the influences on the actual stories. I consider my gaming streak to be a colorful one, and one common trait I have found in most games is that there is a Morrowind style of plot development. While the entire campaign is “open” to the players, there always seems to be one major plot that the characters are meant to follow. When the players break away, the missions tend to be briefer and easier to accomplish. This may predate Morrowind, or even video games, but this has certainly become increasingly popular as more people claim to be “Sandbox GMs”. Another variation of the typical “Sandbox GM” is more of a MMORPG style of games, very brief quests with no larger plot arcs to be seen.

So what does all of this mean to the respective hobbies? I have only been playing long enough to get a glimpse of the pre-MMORPG era, but I think that tabletop games have gained many improvements from their video game counterparts, and have made cousins in the geek culture. As technology becomes increasingly sophisticated, we may continue to see ground breaking concepts come up that can be readily harvested for the tabletop community.

* Power 16 II, round 2 of the Shadowrun League. Get your votes in! You can find the on-going bracketology thread here.

* When is it too soon?

* Handling failure as a Game Master.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, John, Pat

Story has the most emphasis. Our games are like a story where the protagonist is a varying group of characters instead of a single one. Characters don’t develop in the literary sense. If Blasto the 1st level wizard is an overbearing oaf, then Blasto the 16th level wizard is likely to still be an overbearing oaf, just with a lot more firepower. It’s unusual for a character’s personality to change over time, but it has happened.

With good games, plots are malleable with different threads to follow, each emphasizing different skills of different characters. If the fighter is missing that evening, then the party may chose to wait until next week to try and invade the orc’s lair. Instead, the bard may want to investigate the murders down by the waterfront. It’s like a buffet table of fun activities. There’s always something there you want to try.

Our campaigns tend to have a lot of combat. Remember, we’re talking about D&D here. It is designed around “kill monsters and take their stuff” so every class has some way to contribute in a fight. They are easy to set up and they work for everyone – regardless of the party mix. In a good game, the fights have a reason for happening beyond “they are between us and the treasure.” Winning (or losing) should advance the plot. When the campaign becomes pointless combat, just an endless series of fights, it usually means that the GM has run out of ideas. That’s when I know a campaign has gone on too long.

While our sessions are short, our campaigns can last for a very long time. Only one player in our group has never sat behind the GM screen, so we have a lot of GM’s in our group. We take turns and those turns generally last for several months – until the GM decides that he is done. They usually don’t run the entire campaign in one series so it may be a year or more before they get to run the next section. We have one unfinished game run by one of the players that is currently on hiatus. The game has been on hold since 2001. We’ll get back to it someday.

While a lot has changed in 30 years, one thing that hasn’t is our desire to play. We still refer to it as simply “the game.” We started playing one night a week more than 20 years ago. I don’t see us changing our ways any time soon.

* Wii Fit.

* Chad gets screwed by another video game.

* Breaking the fourth wall of electronic games.  You can see Project NATAL here and Milo here.

* Player Character failure in roleplaying games.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, John, Pat

I should mention that the 4th edition D&D character builder is addictive. It’s relatively quick, it presents choices and suggestions. I love it. Combine that with a love for all the options 4th edition has to offer, and I’m like a kid in a candy store.

I decided to go hard-core. I pulled out my old half-giant gladiator from Dark Sun. He was an NPC I had who followed around one of the player characters. In Dark Sun, every character gets a psionic wild talent. My character, Kalador, had this power from the Dragon Kings sourcebook titled Strength of the Land. It had two prerequisite powers that he gained automatically as well – Lend Health and Share Strength. Something about a half-giant who could give of his strength and HP to fellow adventurers seemed great. The fact that he could draw power from the very earth beneath him was just awesome.

Imagine my surprise when I got the PHB2, cracked it open, and saw the warden class. Here was a class that seemed to be based around the Strength of the Land theme! I was so excited. I also had my eyes on the goliath race, which had awesome written all over it. I knew what I had to do.

Using the character builder (Did I mention that I dearly love this program?), I transformed my old half-giant gladiator into a goliath warden. I won’t bore you with all the details, but I found a few tricks that may help you if you decide to re-invent your character. And since Dan loves numbered lists, I shall follow suit.

1. It’s okay to change the race. If a new race works out better, or if the race is thematically similar to your old one, give it a shot. Sometimes you will find some new gem, whether rules-based or fluff-based, for your character.
2. Ditto with classes and powers. In my case, I went from an arena gladiator to a primal warden. Yet they share certain similarities. I went from one defender type to another, and I maintained the Strength of the Land theme. In fact, I built upon the theme. I’m not certain yet about the other powers, but maybe PHB3’s psionic power source will have something to offer.
3. Backstory can be modified, but you can also keep it as-is and provide an in-game explanation for the change. I had a 3.5 wizard recently that just wasn’t cutting it for me. An in-game change made him into a favored soul. The cool part about this change was that it added some fantastic story to the game.
4. You will always lose something, but you will always gain something. It’s the trade-off of making a change.
5. Did I mention themes? You won’t ever get a direct translation, but you can use the themes to re-build characters from the ground up. Just remember to build them within the game system you’re using, keep your foundations, and be open to change. My goliath’s tattoo pattern, for example, is eerily similar to his old slave tattoos.
6. Above all, have fun with it. This isn’t too serious of stuff here. If the changes fit, great. If not, don’t convert!

So give it a try and see what becomes of your old characters. You may find new life to old characters, and the desire to play them once more.

* The Power 16 2 begins today!  The first round of competition within the Shadowrun League will run for a week or two.  Get your votes in here! Remember that we’re giving away Catalyst gift cards, so if you want to enter for those, be sure to leave your name and email address at the end of the poll.

* Aliens in television and movies.

* Humans and colonization in science fiction.

* Changing character traits mid-game.

* Over-discussing your game.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, John, Pat

The biggest thing we had to change was having major plot points that were derived from individual character backgrounds. Darth Vader being Luke’s father is interesting but if Luke only plays six games out of ten, then timing that big reveal is difficult. What if Luke went on a business trip after his training with Yoda and didn’t return until he knocked on the door of Jabba’s palace?

Encounters have to be scalable. The big fight against the gnoll horde might involve anywhere from two to five PC’s. The prescription for scaling a horde is easy – just add or take away gnolls as needed for pain. Scaling something like a dragon is not. Make it too small and, though it may be a tough fight for two PC’s, it looks too small to have been the big menace of the story. Make it too big and its breath weapon kills everyone in the first round. Sometimes you just can’t, or shouldn’t, scale an encounter. If you are setting up campaign’s big finish, you might have to tread water for a session or two until everyone can be there. The trick is to make it look like you aren’t really treading water. I often keep extra encounters in reserve in case I need to pad a session enough to postpone the big fight until next week. It’s hard to pull off without frustrating the players. If you drop in an extra encounter of some type, you have to make it look like it’s been waiting for them the whole time, not just something that appeared suddenly out of nowhere.

Every obstacle has to have multiple solutions. While this is true in general it becomes much more important when you don’t know which players are going to be there. Getting past the trap you designed for the thief is harder when said thief is stuck at home with a sick kid. You need to make sure that if there isn’t any way past the trap, the party at least has some other place to go. (Consider this another argument against using a railroad plot.)

Plot elements have to be short and portable. Having an encounter with the wizard’s long lost brother is fine, as long as you can drop it into any session and conclude it in the same session. If you span sessions, the wizard’s brother may end up wondering where the wizard went. This is easier in a sandbox style game, but the more linear your plot, the more difficult this becomes.

All these limitations may sound like they suck the fun out of our games, but they don’t. We wouldn’t put so much effort into continuing our gaming if we weren’t enjoying it. Next up, I’ll talk about how our games play out.

Over the years City of Heroes has had to adapt to the market and fan requests.  PvP, crafting, and special drops were all added to the game in a manner that allowed them to be completely optional.  PvP was first introduced as an arena, and later as zones dedicated to that purpose.  Crafting was introduced as something to expand your Supergroup base and has expanded to enhancements, temporary powers, and costume pieces.  With crafting came rare drops, an auction house, and an in game economy.

The developers of City of Heroes have introduced some truly innovative game mechanics in response to fan requests.

• The sidekick\exemplar system allows players of different levels to adjust themselves up or down to the other players’ level. This was designed to let new players play with veterans without the veteran players needing to create new characters.
• Global Chat channels allow players to communicate with each other regardless of the character or even server they are playing on.
• Players are given rewards based on the amount of time they have subscribed to the game. These can be powers, costume pieces, or other in game extras. They give veterans additional bonuses to deal with some of the limitations of new characters.
• Ouroboros missions allowed players to go back and complete any story arcs that they missed when they played through the game or just replay their favorite arcs any time they want.
• The badge system gives rewards to players that want to explore maps and provides something for completionists to strive for.
• A difficulty adjustment system allows advanced players to increase the difficulty of their missions to present more of a challenge.

So innovation is nothing new to city of Heroes, but with their latest free expansion “Issue 14: Architect” they have introduced a feature that is truly unique among MMOs.  The Architect system allows players to create their own story arcs and publish them for other players to experience.   A player creating an arc chooses the number of missions, the objectives, and all text associated with the missions.  This allows a player to create anything from a single mission to an Epic Taskforce.  The arcs are not limited to in game villains and villain groups either.  The innovative City Of Heroes character creator is available for players to create their own custom villain groups to inhabit their missions.  You can adjust the look, difficulty, and powers of these villains while creating your story arc.  Also as an added incentive to play other users missions you receive tickets that can be turned in to unlock additional content for your own missions.

While City of Heroes may not fit what everyone is looking for in an MMO with this issue it continues to provide features that other development teams would be wise to pay close attention to.  COH has a strong community and while it might not have as many subscribers as some other games, its fans are easily more vocal and supportive.  That is in no small part due to the creators focusing on ways to expand on that community.  Early in the game’s life one of the developers spent some of his off time to code a dance club because players were requesting a save non-combat location to meet and just hang out with their friends.  Costume contests, trivia games, and hide and seek are events frequently run by super groups in the starting zones.   This new Architect system just expands on those concepts.  If you have a group of people that love your product and spend a lot of time thinking about it they will keep the game interesting if you just provide them the tools and get out of their way.  The true key to being successful in the MMORPG business is to make your players feel invested in the game so they don’t want to leave.

If this blog has interested you, you can try a free 14-day trial of City of Heroes.

* Fear the Boot TOFtBCHes at Gencon!  If you want to be a part of the action, get signed up!

* Power 16 II, starting next episode!

* Television ratings, cancellations, and DVRs.

* Adding depth to your player character.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, Pat

* Fear the Boot float trip and camping trip June 5th – 7th.  You can find the Facebook event page here and forum thread here.

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* Mistrust at the gaming table.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, Pat

* If you register for the forums and don’t get your confirmation email, send a message to the General Mailbox with your forum user name.  Don’t expect a confirmation email from us, since that will probably be blocked as well!  Just keep checking back over the next day or two.

* Fear the Boot float trip and camping trip June 5th – 7th.  You can find the Facebook event page here and forum thread here.

* Fear the Boot TOFtBCHes at Gencon!  If you want to be a part of the action, get signed up!

* The things being a long-time gamer have taught us.

* Dungeon building part 2.  We mentioned a few resources I’ll provide links to…

• dungeon tile sets
• How to Host a Dungeon
• Dwarven Forge
• Dundjinni
• Dwarf Fortress map archive
• Reaper minis
• World Works

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, Pat

* “Dan’s not quite long enough” is in its last week!  To make your donation to March of Dimes’ Raina’s Wings charity, do so here.  You can see Chad bald on our forums.

* Skies of Glass comic artist search!   The character document is here.  Send submissions or questions to skiesofglass@gmail.com.

* Discerning when it’s close-mindedness versus the right time to say, “No.”

* Dungeon building (first half of discussion).  Next week we’ll be back to talk about history, ecology, traps, tools, and tricks!

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, Pat

Over the past several years, there’s been an increased awareness of the danger of massive asteroids striking our planet.  You get a big rock moving at high speed, slamming into our fragile world, and you may be looking at the end of mankind.  Many sci-fi buffs have proposed using this situation intentionally.  Accelerate an asteroid toward an unsuspecting planet and watch chaos ensue.

However, FTL engines offer an even better (worse?) weapon.

If you’ll recall from the last article, I talked about how ships approaching the speed of light also approach infinite apparent mass.  An asteroid weighing billions of tons hitting our planet would do a lot of damage, but even a tiny shuttle moving near or above the speed of light would hit far, far harder.

While I’ve been familiar with this concept for a while, I was recently introduced to its proper name: Relativistic Kill Vehicle.  Take an object, push it close to the speed of light, and let it hit something.  Or even if you can’t quite hit it, just get it moving really fast and break it into pieces, slinging its bits (which also now have an incredible apparent mass) in a shotgun pattern.  (Credit to poster Rick Smathers for correcting my word choice there!)

Welcome to a universe with weapons far worse than nuclear bombs.

War Without Extinction

During the Cold War, many famous novels and movies were made about World War 3 between America and the Soviet Union.  Obviously you can’t tell much of a story about conventional warfare or guerrilla resistance when both sides wipe each other out with nuclear missiles, so a variety of excuses were found to keep them off the table.  You may feel the same thing is true in your science fiction setting, so let me propose a few ways you can get RKVs out of the picture.

First, both sides just agree not to use the option.  It’s better to lose a war than be driven extinct, so there’s a written or unwritten agreement to simply not employ these weapons.  I’m sure that agreement will get harder to stick to when one side realizes they’re losing, but that’s a challenge for your ability to maintain suspension of disbelief with the audience.

Second, offer a defense against it.  Perhaps there’s sufficient technology in regard to sensors and interception vehicles that RKVs can be detected and either shot down or deflected.  We’re moving deeply into the territory of handwaving, but the option is there.  Your future society may have some working equivalent of SDI that keeps their planets safe from these mass bombs.

Third, make it impossible.  If we assume FTL engines exist in your universe, anything moving below the speed of light (presuming you can spot it) can probably be intercepted.  An object moving FTL may not be so easy to catch.  But as I noted in the last article, we have no truly sufficient model for FTL engines anyway, so add in your own limits.  Perhaps whatever field that makes FTL travel possible doesn’t work close to large masses.  The missile warping toward our homeworld hits Earth’s gravity well, the bubble collapses, and since it was never really “moving” in the traditional sense to begin with, it just pops-up near the planet at all-stop.  Yes, this is more handwaving, but I wanted to list the option.

Fourth, it’s possible your FTL mechanic works by moving objects moving into “hyperspace” or some parallel universe/dimension.  In this scenario, ships are never moving all that fast in our universe anyway, so they can’t really collide with anything in dangerous ways.  And even weapons being aimed at your planet at near FTL speeds could be yanked into this alternate plane by a defensive mechanism that extends a hyperspace field around them.  (Credit to poster Nentuaby for pointing this one out!)

Whatever your choice regarding RKVs (including them or nudging them out of the picture), I hope there’s one major thing you’ll take away from this article.  As I’ve tried to communicate from the start, space warfare (and the technology that allows it) introduce a variety of issues that don’t always have a perfect parallel in terrestrial warfare.  The important thing is to have some basic understanding of what’s possible, remain consistent, and above all else, tell a good story.

However, there’s been a negative side effect: many legitimate users aren’t getting their confirmation emails.

If you’ve signed up for our forums and have not received your confirmation email, please use the contact form on this site.  Send an email to the General Mailbox with your forum user name, and we’ll get you activated immediately.

* Skies of Glass comic artist search!   The character document is here.  Send submissions or questions to skiesofglass@gmail.com.

* Concepts we all understand but can’t quite define.

* Broadening Dan’s horizons.

* How to overcome the roadblocks to running a super hero game.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, Pat

“GI JOE” would be a playful nickname given to a crack team of operatives put together by Washington – they would be the best of the best from each branch of the military and Intelligence agencies. They would be all our old favorites. I wouldn’t change them at all.

I would make those evil Cobra twins Senators instead of business men.

The plot would be about them coercing China into invading Taiwan, Egypt invading Israel and Iran invading Iraq, all at the same time. Their goal would be to spread the American military too thin to defend its international interests. Then there would be this badass scene where Destro and the Baroness walk into the Pentagon. It would be like that scene in the Matrix when Neo and Trinity kill all those security guards then go up the elevator. They would get in and steal plans for some kind of new secret nuclear weapon that is like a million times badder than regular old nuclear weapons.

I would also have the balls to have them set off a nuclear explosion in Washington DC. Tripwire would stay behind trying to disarm it, but would be killed in the explosion. The other Joes would escape.

The climax of the movie would be Sgt Slaughter punching Destro in the face and putting a dent in his metal head. This would happen on top of the Eiffel Tower. There would also be a funny part where Slaughter doesn’t like french food.

Also, it would be cool if Snake Eyes had to infiltrate a ninja academy in Japan that is operated by Imperialist Japanese dudes who want to reinstitute the Emperor. They would be working for Cobra also, and as part of his initiation he would have to fight Quick Kick, who is a hostage.

The whole time, Cobra Commander is running the show from a bunker in Kazakhstan. He is surrounded by a cadre of genetically modified super soldiers. Duke and the Joes humiliate them totally at the end of the movie. Like, they are built up the whole time as being so bad as hell that no man could ever take them, but then at the end it would be like that part in Ong Bak when Tony Jaa takes out that dude with one kick to the face. It would just be five minutes of all our favorite Joes beating ass left and right and not even taking a lick. Then Cobra Commander begs for mercy and Duke slaps the cuffs on him.

Just before the credits, it shows Cobra Commander with a hood over his head (you never see his face) but otherwise stripped naked in a dirt cell in Guantanamo Bay. He would look real badass and have all these snake tattoos all over him. He would yell about revenge and then the camera would pan back to show two dead security guards and one of the twins holding the key to his cell.

The End?

Here are some of my picks:

Sgt Slaughter – Stonecold Steve Austin
Quick Kick – Jackie Chan
Snake Eyes – Tony Jaa
Destro – Patrick Stewart
Duke – Bruce Willis
Tripwire – Paul Giamatti
Scarlett – Kate Winslet
Lady Jaye – Angelina Jolie
Cobra Commander – Gary Oldman (uncredited)
Evil Twins – William H. Macy
Roadblock – Shaquil O’Neal

So how would you guys improve the upcoming flick?

* Fear the Boot community’s Neverwinter Nights mod.

* We discuss a commentary by Isaac Asimov on whether “true” science fiction can ever sell in a mass market.

* Why Dan struggles constructing super hero campaigns.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, Pat

* Things that wouldn’t work as roleplaying games.  Apparently clips of The Letter People aren’t hard to find.

* Playing animals or anthropomorphic animals in a roleplaying game.  You can see a picture of the guy that inspired this show on our forums.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, Pat

So, here’s the question: How can a GM claim the pearls of wisdom from the dungeon of maturity without falling victim to its perils? In this article, I will attempt to give more concrete than esoteric advice, but who knows where this is going to go? I’m winging it – and that’s point #1. (Remember: this is about gaming like you used to, and you used to come unprepared.)

1) Wing it!

1.5) Ok, ok. So don’t wing all of it, necessarily – unless that’s your thing. But leave some blank spots on the map. Put a hallway in your dungeon and don’t draw the passages it leads toward. Have your players visit a town about which you only know the name. Be unprepared. You will amaze yourself. I promise.

2) Missing sucks. Make your bad guys easy to hit. Make important bad guys easy to hit, but hard to kill. That said, protect your main villain. I know this runs counter to most of the advice given on the podcast; but if you want to play like a kid again, shield your villain with the GM screen and do not let him die unless you absolutely cornered. Or it’s fun.

3) Throw in a liberal number of barrels of black powder, roofing tar, pitch, brandy, etc. When a player sees something flamable, there is a 10-in-10 chance that he will light it up and remember that session for the rest of his days. The temptation to blow things up is juvenile, sure – but it’s also awesome.

4) Give your warriors a chance to fight in an arena as gladiators. If you’re like me, this happened in every game when you were younger and was one of the first things to taper off as you grew up.

5) Trash your house rules that limit resurrections.

6) Two words: MAGIC CRYSTALS. As a prank once, one of my players said he was going to GM our game and started off telling us that Gandaldorf the Wizard wanted us to retrieve the Jewel of Magic from the Cave of Peril, lest evil shadows consume the land. Point being, it shouldn’t have been a prank. This is one area in which JRPGs have it right.

7) Go epic from the start. Make the PCs important. Let them meet with the King. Let them attain treasures far beyond their challenge rating. If all it takes to break your game is a longsword +5, I don’t know what to tell you.

8) Have a main bad guy. Have the party encounter him regularly. Have them foil his plans. And have him escape. Nevermind what the FtB guys say on the podcast – protect your villain with the GM screen. That’s what it’s there for.

And again, I want to invite you guys to speak up in the comments. What did you do as a young GM that you haven’t done lately? Give us some ridiculously bad, incredibly fun advice!

* Chris introduces his son’s friends to D&D.

* We ponder why video games aren’t held to the same product standards common to every other industry.

* Roleplaying with your kids.  The toy company Pat mentions is Schleich (WARNING: this site plays music when you open it).  The roleplaying game Chad keeps referring to is QAGS.

Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, Pat

So, as proud as I am about coming up with that metaphor – especially as I read, examine and think about various game systems – it obviously is incomplete. Further, there was something I was trying to describe, which I find hard to put into words. In cases like this, it’s often more useful to write around the problem, hoping to discover it’s edges and infer it’s shape and then begin taking stabs at what I sense but cannot wholly describe. Or, I can just blog about it and count on those with greater insight to speak up!

The issue I’m trying to describe has to do with the way RPG scenario outcomes feel. If a fighter is hoping for a +3 Sword of Flames, and the GM just announces, “you stumble into the darkness of the empty room and find one at your feet” or the hero’s defeat a horde of undead goblins and find the sword in the pile of detritus collected from their previous victims, the end result is the same. The fighter got the sword he was hoping for. Yet, it doesn’t ‘feel’ the same – at least not to me. Even if the sword was rolled up on some random treasure table, it feels more earned then in the first scenario. It also feels ‘realer’ then a sword suddenly dropped out of the ether by a generous GM.

I’m not just talking about stuff, either. Any challenge resolution has the same problem. If the Shadowrunner is trying to renegotiate with his Mr. Johnson and suddenly Mr. Johnson acquiesces and the characters get exactly what they want, the reward does not ‘feel’ as real and as earned as when they have to drag it out of him with negotiation rolls, bluff checks, and intimidation tactics. Somehow, the easy give makes this whole thing feel more like “make believe” then a game. But, this is a game of make believe! What’s going on here?

One possible area to explore is the Foci of Authority (FoA). Who / what has the final say? Does the GM rule by fiat, dishing out curses and benedictions in the way he may feel is best? Are narration rights shared with the players, with each one acting as co-creators in the story and pushing the plot and props as she thinks would produce the bestnarrativist options? Or, do the rules sit above both the GM and the players as a neutral arbiter, dolling out monsters (via random encounter tables) and treasures (via random treasure tables) and keeping both the GM and the players in check by clearly delineating what happens when, to whom, and how?

Obviously, any real game / group / system / campaign will have some measure of all three (and probably others I have not thought of) to some degree. Saying, “some of each!” is an easy out and does not explore how the amount of power sharing and location of the Foci of Authority changes what feels real and what feels like a cheap and arbitrary give-me. I’ve seen games in which a player picks up a cursed object and tries it on … when the GM springs the surprised curse on him, he’s not mad! No one is. That’s just the nature of the game. Further, there are spells and precautions just for checking on such things. On the other hand, I’ve seen the GM declare a character was cursed by his patron deity for a particularly poor decision. This was taken in a totally different way, by both the affected player and the other players at the table. When the source of the curse (the FoA) was the GM acting in a subjective way, the curse felt much more personal and vindictive then when the player just picked up and tried on that cursed item. [For the record, neither case was my character - I don't have an axe to grind. I was just the observer.]

This leads back to the original concept, how do the players interact with the setting and when do their interactions “feel real” to the players and when do they “feel fake” or just arbitrary? Which does, talking your way past a guard (with no bluff check) count as? How about being an expert in demolitions and botching a skill check because the systems dice mechanic favors extremes at both ends of the curve? To me, these are answered internally, in a felt way. Using the rules and rolls of the game, nearly always feel real to me – except in the case where some poor mechanics seem to lead to a lot of PC failure. RP’ing a scenario feels real when the player really has to try, speaks in character, and all parties involved (NPC’s included!) act in character and the outcome seems reasonably feasible. That’s why, to me, a good system with lots of controls and methods available to the players increases the ‘reality’ of the game experience.

It’s also why I may like Narrativist game systems in theory, but have such a hard time with them in practice. When any fact can be created on the fly, by anyone at the table (within the constraints of the system) then nothing feels real. When character death is only by player consent, then it doesn’t feel real nor threatening.Narrativist games that allow the most imaginative descriptions but boil it down to a single push button effect of “roll your plot control dice pool” are just as limiting and even more ‘unreal’ then a traditional game that lets you describe your attack any way you want but only recognizes the push button effect of “melee attack with sword.”

Let me know what you think of this in the comments below, and describe for me what makes RPG scenario resolution feel ‘real’ to you. Thanks!

* Fear the Boot will soon be joining the Pulp Gamer network.

* Introducing Darren Lacoste, winner of Mayfair’s Catan tournament.

* Gamers as an underserved demographic.

* Expanding the appeal of gaming.

* Areas we’d like to see focus on the gaming demographic, and what we can do to help make that happen.

* A look at what’s coming up at Mayfair Games.

Hosts: Dan, Derek, Don, Larry, Kim

NOTE: While I was on this trip, I also guest hosted episodes on some other shows you might want to check out:

• Kore News – Episode 75
• Kore News – Episode 76
• Pulp Gamer, Out of Character – Episode 72

In Isaac Asimov’s “Robot Dreams,” we see a robot that was created using a new method. Because of this new method, it was questioned quite extensively. In particular, the robot mentioned that it dreamed. Being something robots were not known or meant to do, the scientists questioned the robot extensively.

The robot dreamed of a field of robots, all toiling and doing the labor they were programmed to do. In the dream, the robot sees one man. As the dream continues, it is revealed that this is not a man at all, but the robot. He is leading his “people” to freedom. The robot also is able to ignore the first two laws of robotics and focus on the third. The end result is that the robot has gained self-awareness. The scientists shoot him with an electronic gun of some sort that scrambles his positronic brain.

The film “I, Robot” sees some of this plot, but expands it greatly. In the film, Will Smith plays a police officer who hates robots. In his past, a robot was able to save him from an accident, but not a little girl. By using logic, the robot went for the person who was most likely to survive. A human may have made a different choice, going for the little girl. Since the robot acted in this manner, Will Smith’s character hated robots.

This movie also contained the dream scene, but the idea of the man who turned out to be the robot was addressed and dismissed. Later on, when it turned out to be the robot after all, the feeling was different. Rather than this being a bad thing, this was portrayed as something good, as Sonny had learned to be “good.”

The difference between the two stories lies in the level of fear. In “Robot Dreams,” the scientists all know full well that there is the potential for robots to rise up and replace humanity. In I, Robot, this fear is gone. The only one who distrusts robots is the detective.

Rather than the robot being the one who learned to ignore the first two laws, it was VIKI, the central robotic hub of the movie. In this version of the story, she follows the first law, but is able to interpret it. She won’t harm humanity, but she won’t allow humanity to harm itself. So she will kill in order to stop the killing. She sees this as logical, though there is some fallacy to this logic. Perhaps one of the laws of robotics should cover not denying a human his free will unless it violates the first law.

We should also look closely at the evolution of free will in robots. In the short story, it’s almost an accident to have free will. Yes, a new design equaled new possibilities. Yet the robot evolved on its own. It wasn’t programmed to dream. In the movie, it was purposefully made to ignore the laws of robotics. This was no accident of evolution. Dreaming came about because of that, but the dream was almost by design to lead the detective to where he needed to be. Only at the end did the prophetic aspect of it come about.

Personally, I think the movie suffered for going this route. While the same basic plotline was followed, the plot suffered by not having a natural evolution. The “ghost in the machine” was eluded to, but it was never said how that caused the robot to evolve.

The setting of I, Robot was also different in that it was near-future, 31 years after the movie release date. I felt this was a bit ambitious on the part of the writer and director of the movie. The odds of us having robots, especially ones that ingrained in our society, by the span of a generation are slim. Rather, I would have given it about a hundred years or more.

The point of view also differed. In “Robot Dreams,” the point of view is that of the robot. In I, Robot, the point of view is that of the detective. While this made for a decent story, I found the movie version to be all-too-predictable. Our hero hates robots. Therefore, robots must go bad and he saves humanity from its own folly.

Personally, I find it more interesting when the protagonist is the robot. This allows for a certain alien mentality. It also raises the question of whether destroying a free-willed robot is moral or not. After all, if a robot is alive, would destroying a robot then be murder? The movie simply removes a threat from humanity. The book causes one to think about the morality of the actions.

Critique of Technology

Both the short story and the movie look at the impact of technology upon humanity. They both question whether humanity’s own creations will turn upon them. In the short story, we see how the robots will eventually rise up and supplant humanity. In the movie, the robots essentially enslave humanity “for its own protection.” This is a subtle difference. At the end of the movie, we see a return to the short story, though you don’t get the feeling that robots will supplant humanity. Rather, you feel that they might co-exist.

Each story has its own limits on what it can tell. Short stories can go more in-depth into character. Movies can be more visual, while short stories force the reader to imagine the robots. In the short story, we go into depth into the robot character. However, our mind’s eye see him in a limited capacity. In the movie, we can see the robots in action. We can see the visual cues of Sonny’s facial expressions. While visually more attractive, the movie does not go into as much depth with characterization.

Role of Technology in Today’s Society

In today’s society, technology can do so many things for us. It allows us to communicate like never before. I’ve managed to contact old high school friends through Facebook, and have made new friendships through AIM. Yet at the same time, these friendships are not as personable as talking with friends in person.

Technology has allowed for newer and greater opportunities. New media is the latest craze, phasing old media out slowly but surely. Newspapers are dying as people gain their news online. Why buy a dead tree with day-old news when one can have instant gratification by going to an online news source?

At the same time, I have critiques of technology. Remember when we used to be able to go to the gas station and just start pumping gas? Now we must first enter in a credit card, punch in our PIN, then go on. It takes longer. Aren’t computers supposed to save us time?

A personal pet peeve of mine is phone automation systems. Sometimes, it’s a struggle to get through the maze of possibilities before you can talk to a real human being. Again, a time waster and something that is not only impersonal, but also detrimental to business. Why do business with a company that puts you through hell before you can even talk to someone?

Another pet peeve is when automated checkers replace human beings. Those are lost jobs.

While technology offers many possibilities, it seems that it doesn’t truly save us a significant portion of time. Sometimes, new possibilities equals too many possibilities.