AI Panickans will never lear

Here's an interesting article: https://aicentral.substack.com/p/verified-human

And here's another: https://sigmagame.substack.com/p/why-deltas-hate-ai

And here's one of my AI generated character portraits for Dominic Clevenger, using a Hero Forge model that I made as a reference. I'll make another post sometime later showing all of the variants. Clearly I'm not afraid of using AI. I have used it to generate images of ... OK quality for my campaign setting. I've used it to help generate first (poor) drafts of fiction text. I haven't even gotten around to really seeing if they're sufficiently decent to be used as a basis for editing it into something workable, or if I should just ignore what it generated and write it the old-fashioned way. I'm not one of those AI panickans who is terrified that AI will make me obsolete. My job is unlikely to be successfully rendered obsolete by AI, and while AI can be a shortcut to some of my hobby endeavors, it's not likely to be a suitable replacement for a person there either, except in limited manner, like I can get mediocre images to use on my blog posts and in my pdfs. I could possibly get a passable book cover from AI. With a lot of effort. The propaganda that AI is going to replace people's jobs really only applies if your job is a make-work busy work job that... honestly, probably doesn't need to be done at all. There's a lot of those. SWFs hardest hit. 

To get any good results out of AI, you still need a lot of human shepherding. Those who are capable in their fields will inevitably find that AI can be a useful shortcut and time-saver, but that it won't literally replace their need to manually intervene in the results. Those who are fearful of all of the propaganda about AI coming for their jobs will—mostly—discover that propaganda is just propaganda, I'd guess. They're either adapt what or how they work a bit, or the whole thing will fizzle anyway. 

Because I also read Ed Zitron. Here's one example: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-subprime-ai-crisis-is-here/ The AI bubble is just like every other bubble; a lot of hype, a lot of shady claims by shady people, leading to a lot of transfer of money to said shady people, leading to an inevitable failure to be able to deliver on the shady promises. AI isn't completely a scam, of course. It can do a lot of pretty cool things. But I'm pretty skeptical about a lot of the narratives that we're being fed about it at the same time. 

Anyway, the main point of all of this is that I find the AI panickans at places like reddit and ENWorld extremely tiresome. Of course, people at those places are tiresome about almost everything that they say, do, believe, claim, and worry about. But their visceral reactions anytime the trigger word AI is posted in any context is becoming a particular pet peeve of mine. AI Slop, which usually accompanies AI, isn't any worse than human-created slop, of which there's way too much. I'd honestly rather read an AI slop replica of some old-fashioned pulp stories than human-created woke garbage. Hollywood in particular has been banging the "AI is scary" drum for a few years. But Hollywood produces tons of slop that people don't like, and their livelihood is directly threatened by AI democratizing the ability of normal people to get past their gatekeepers and produce content that competes directly with them. Average writers  of all kinds of slop, which sells as ebooks on Amazon are also worried... but that's because fundamentally their business model is to try and monetize slop, and AI slop is faster, more prolific, and unlikely to really be much worse than what they're producing, causing them to inevitably get lost in the crowd. 

I recently read the following passage, which I think sums up my perspective on AI. It's about AI being used to write fiction, but it really applies to almost any usage of AI:

Writing fiction isn't like riding a bicycle. You don't just figure it out once and coast forever. It's more like learning to play piano, where your first attempts produce noise instead of music, and only through deliberate practice do you develop the skills to create something worth hearing. This reality becomes even more important when you're working with AI. You can't edit what you don't understand. You can't guide AI toward quality output if you don't know what quality looks like. You can't maintain consistency across a novel if you don't grasp the fundamental elements that need to remain consistent. The writers producing AI slop aren't failing because they chose the wrong tool—they're failing because they never learned their craft. The writers succeeding with AI assistance aren't lucky—they're skilled enough to make informed creative decisions regardless of their tools.

Does system matter?

Question of the day: does the system that you use in your RPG actually matter? Naturally, I'm not going to offer up a pat and simple answer, because there's a lot of "it depends" and other caveats. Part of this is because of trends in the RPG market that have gradually offered up a slightly different take on what exactly "system" even means.

It used to be that the system was just the rules that the game used. Back in ye olden dayes, especially with regards to TSR games, this was a pretty simple question, because different games used very different rules that had little in common with each other. However, there were some other companies that did things differently, even back in the day. Chaosium used their BRP system as the basis for their games, and had differing, yet obviously related systems for RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer, for instance. But this was seen as merely convenient, and I know that I didn't think of them as a "system", merely that the systems for each game had the same basic framework in terms of how they worked. But gradually, this morph of system into being the system for a specific game and more of a higher level structure that could span multiple games started to gain traction. In the middle/late 80s, Steve Jackson Games released GURPS, the Generic Universal Roleplaying System in a core set, followed by tons upon tons of supplements that tweaked various buttons and levers within the system to allow it to play in various genres with various tones. This was seen as kind of unique at the time, though, and although perceived as a cool innovation, I don't think the market was entirely ready for it yet; most people liked (still) that different games felt different mechanically and didn't use the same chassis, so to speak, to get to the same result. Later, in 1990 or so, the old Champions superhero roleplaying game was repurposed as the Hero System, which had the same intention; it could be used for anything, and supplements that were broad but also different from each other, like Pulp Hero, Fantasy Hero, Star Hero, etc. came out for it. I don't know how much this caught on; I never saw anyone use it, but I heard chatter on the internet in the later 90s about it. My impression is that it was a niche product in terms of its appeal. White Wolf also had a house system, although most of their games were released in the same setting, had similar tone and themes, and it was kind of seen that they were meant to interact with each other and be compatible. This wasn't entirely true, of course. Few people remember the Street Fighter game (except me, because I was a huge fan of both Street Fighter and roleplaying games) and Exalted, although it used the same system base, is usually seen as too different.

When Wizards of the Coast released D&D Third Edition, it also spawned the d20 family of games, and over the next few years, a number of games, both "official" and third party were spawned that used this system as its framework. From WotC officially, we had d20 Star Wars (in three editions), d20 Wheel of Time, d20 Call of Cthulhu and d20 Modern, the only one of the batch that was truly built as a toolkit approach. Unfortunately, I think they inadvertently set back the migration to common systems by released tentative and timid interpretations of the system that didn't sufficiently change the rules. Certainly this was a complaint that many had in particular with Call of Cthulhu, which of the batch is the one most dissimilar in terms of genre and tone. Around this time, Savage Worlds was also released, which has become a very popular "universal" system.

I may be charting my own perception of things more than any actual trends in the industry, but it took until d20 for me to actually really see what the appeal of having a single higher level system was. I do think that there was a sea change in perception across the board, and I remember lots of people saying things like "one system to rule them all" and whatnot at the time. d20 didn't end up being the system for me, or not unless you consider Microlite to be a radical variation on d20, which in reality it is. I've since pulled back just a little bit from some of the radicalness of Microlite; Dark Fantasy X, and all of the X games (if I ever get around to spelling them out) will now use all of the original D&D attributes, or stats, for example, and will have six skills. This 6x6 is as important to me for, if no other reason, so my character sheets are visually balanced. 

So, when we say system, what we tend to mean more often than not nowadays, in contrast to year past, is this higher level system, and in my opinion, no it doesn't matter. Pick one that you like and stick with it; there's no problem with that. Any system can be tweaked, house-ruled or modified to accommodate any genre, tone or playstyle preference, although clearly most systems also have some element that they do relatively well and is a key component of them. For example, the tactical grid-based combat of d20 is kind of core to the system, and almost every iteration of it requires it unless you eliminate all kinds of tactical and positioning rules. If that's something that you enjoy regardless of genre, tone, etc. then d20 is a good higher level system for you to use. If it's not, you might want to consider a different one. But even d20 can be modded down to a rules-light theatre of the mind variant, such as Microlite, so again, I don't think system matters. If this is what you mean by system.

Or rather, it doesn't matter in that any system can be modded to do anything, but it could very well matter in terms of picking a system that you like, prefer to use, are comfortable with, that your players intuitively handle well, etc. And it could matter, as noted before, in terms of how much you enjoy one system versus another. In that sense, system can matter a great deal. But I also believe that most people are simply most comfortable with whatever system that they've used the most. I prefer D&D-like systems, because those are the ones that the majority of my games have used since the early 80s, and even in the 00s when I was playing a lot of different things, I used d20 for most of them, including Star Wars Cthulhu, Modern and more. I certainly no longer enjoy system for its own sake, and now prefer a common background higher level system. Ideally, I'd use a common higher level background system for every game I ever play. Ideally, I'd use my own system, although I'd never actually play if so, I'd only run. But that would probably be OK too, honestly.

Now, if you pull back and refer to system as all of the rules, like we used to, then system matters a great deal, of course. The fact that a system can be used to successfully emulate the genre and tone of Star Wars and Call of Cthulhu means, of course, that they need to have some rules that make significant changes to the way in which some of the details of the game work. I've actually come to quite enjoy seeing and thinking of ways to make different systems work in different ways, and I've obviously given a lot of thought to how to do so with my own custom system for my own setting. And I think that the changes have had significant effect on the tone and mood and feel of the game. But I'm starting from a higher level system that is well-suited to my playstyle and to my history of the hobby, because it's super familiar to me from my past games. I no longer, if I ever really did, honestly, value system for its own sake, and I actually am sometimes annoyed by the requirement to have to learn a whole new system to use a given supplement easily. I simply no longer have time or interest in learning whole new rules systems; although modular-like rules that can create significant changes to the way that different variants of the system work from game to game are actually very interesting to me.

Top Ten (or so) Non-D&D Games

I saw this topic on someone else's blog, and I thought it looked fun. I don't pretend to have played or be familiar with all of the major games that have been in print over the years, but I have played or read or at least am familiar with an awful lot. However, I'm also less and less attracted to mechanics and systems as time goes on. I mostly play D&Ds (with a pretty broad definition of what counts as a D&D) these days just because I don't care to mess around with different systems. And even the games that I'm going to list, if I were to play them again, I'd probably use them in a different system than the one that they've been originally written in. Maybe, anyway.

Let's start with a few fantasy games. I'm even more inclined to use a D&D for fantasy. Anything that's clearly derivative of D&D, like an OSR game or a d20 game, etc. counts as a D&D to me. That would include Pathfinder, Tales of the Valiant, 13th Age, ShadowDark and Knave 2e, and even my own DIY game, for that matter. So none of those count here; I'm looking a little bit beyond that for what I'm considering a "non-D&D" game.

1. WFRP: Warhammer is an interesting game. As mentioned above, I don't really much like complex or fiddly systems, and this is one that qualifies as too complex and too fiddly for me. However, the tone, the mood and the setting is what makes this one a winner. In general, I don't love games that are too closely tied to the setting, because I almost always tinker and modify it. WFRP is right up my alley in tone and mood, and there's a lot about the setting to use as is. The Enemy Within campaign is largely seen as one of the best written long-term campaigns out there; a real precursor to the adventure path methodology, written much like them, and one that really prioritizes investigation and intrigue over straight up combat. I'd even be willing to suffer through the system to play in this campaign... although I wouldn't run it personally myself.

2. Shadow of the Demon Lord: This game honestly does offer some pretty cool mechanics; kind of similar to D&D, but sufficiently cleaned up and streamlined that it doesn't feel like "a D&D." Like the above game, the tone and mood, as well as the implied setting is also a draw, although like with Warhammer, there are elements of the setting that I don't like (the countdown to the demon apocalypse being the main one.) If a game were to replace various versions of rules-light D&D variants for my fantasy gaming, this would probably be the one that I'd pick.

3. MERP: This is another system that I don't really love; and frankly, it's been replaced twice since it went out of print; once by a Decipher game based on the movie licenses, and one by a Cubicle 7 (now reverted to Free League) game that came out after that. Of the three, Middle-earth Roleplaying is both the most primitive in terms of mechanics and in terms of look and presentation, but it's also the most imaginative of the bunch. It's certainly quirky, and by quirky I mean that it often frustrated me by not really attempting to hit the tone and feel of Middle-earth and trending too often to "generic" D&D-like stuff. Then again, if I were to run Middle-earth again, I'd probably deliberately make it an alt.Middle-earth that's more sword & sorcery and was based on Tolkien's own brief discourse in the forward where he described what the story would be like if it were an allegory of WW2; i.e., Gandalf took the Ring from Bilbo and set himself up as a rival to Sauron and Saruman.

"Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Númenor and the gleaming cities, and the years of the Fourth Age, there was an Age undreamed of, when realms of Man lay spread across the world alongside those of fey Elves and sullen Dwarves like blue mantles beneath the stars. . . Hither came Aragorn of the Dúnedain, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a ranger, a wanderer, a chieftain, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the thrones of Arda under his feet."  

- The Red Book of Westmarch

But I still found plenty to like reading all kinds of MERP books over the years, and I do still have an older copy of it in my stuff that I don't intend on getting rid of. I also have an art book that Iron Crown put out with all of their Angus MacBride Middle-earth art. Although honestly much of his historical art is higher quality, I still wouldn't get rid of that for the world. 

4. Savage Worlds: Savage Worlds + Fantasy Companion would be fun; I actually think it would be better for certain settings like Eberron than D&D is—even though Eberron was specifically designed to be the 3.5 D&D setting, it feels like it really wants to be a Savage Worlds setting in some ways. And clearly, the Savage Pathfinder stuff seems to have been reasonably popular more recently. There's some other Savage World settings, like Totems of the Dead, for instance, that I really quite like. Maybe Savage Worlds would be another good alternative for any game, except that it's still a little rules-heavy and jargony for me for every day usage these days. I've lost my appetite for more mechanics and system that I used to have twenty years or so ago. There would have been a time when Savage Worlds could have replaced d20 maybe as my go-to "universal" system of choice, but it didn't quite happen, and now it's too late; that ship done sailed.

But rather than mention Savage Worlds below for modern and for space opera, I'll mention here that one of its big attractions is that as long as you mean a reasonably action-oriented or swashbucklery tone, Savage Worlds is a credible universal system that I could use for any genre. I'm actually going to be rereading it plus some of the companions here in a little bit, thinking about how I could still find a place for it in my gaming, potentially.

Honorable mentions: These games I'm not familiar enough to say. They look nice, but I've neither read them all the way through nor played them, although I'm somewhat familiar with how they play... a little, at least... and I'd potentially give them another whirl. These include EZD6 and Index Card RPG. The latter, in particular, seems great based on how I've had the game described to me, but I struggle to read it; it's written in a somewhat strange style, and is maybe a bit too radical for my taste. I dislike anything that uses cards or other "props" on principle. I've also played some BRP Cthulhu before, so I'd be willing to try another BRP or BRP-like game, such as RuneQuest or Mythras, although I'm not in any kind of hurry to do so. 

Let's next have a look at modern games. This is actually a multi-genre designation, as broad as fantasy is, if not even moreso, and would include everything from 1920s-30s pulp, Westerns, Lovecraftian horror, modern spy thrillers, alternative history, or near future hard(ish) sci-fi, and everything in between. For here, I'm only going to pick three games, and all are games that I've played before and still own copies of.

5. Top Secret S.I.: I still quite like this game, although after I played it twice, I ran it, and realized that the game that I'd played was pretty heavily modified/streamlined by the GM... in exactly the way that I'd have done it, honestly. It's been many, many years, and I'd probably need to start from scratch remembering how to run the game... and I'd probably not bother, because I have other options (see Savage Worlds above, and the two coming up below) but I had a lot of fun with this system back in the day.

6. Call of Cthulhu: This is probably my absolute favorite, although I wouldn't use it for anything other than horror. And I like it better for past; but not too long in the past. ~100 years; back in the 20s—y'know, when Lovecraft actually wrote the stories (and he set them in what was for him at the time his "today"). I have an older version of the BRP game, 3rd edition, in good shape. I see Professor Dungeon Master of the Dungeon Craft channel is selling that same book in probably about the same condition for $100... maybe I should see what I can get for it! The d20 book, on the other hand, is probably my single favorite game book. I don't think that it's a great system, but it works well enough. And it's still both a beautiful book to look at, to read, and to peruse for GMing advice. I'll never get rid of that one.

Delta Green was the setting published by a third party (and now republished again for a different system) that was more modern and X-files/spies take on Lovecraftian horror. Super popular, and quite interesting, but I admit to preferring a more classic Lovecraftian time-period for Call of Cthulhu, and modern games being more like Dresden Files or Supernatural.

7. d20 Modern: The first attempt at a universal system that I took seriously (GURPS was never up my alley—not actiony or swashbuckling enough. Although I think it worked better for more investigative or horror genres, it still wasn't likely to ever be my go-to option. And the Hero System was always way too crunchy). I'd probably prefer Savage Worlds if I needed one now, but I had a lot of fun using this for a variety of games, and entertaining it for games that I didn't actually run or play. I even created a fantasy equivalent to try and get away from the D&Disms... after I did that, WotC released d20 Past which covered much of the same ground. Dark•Heritage, the predecessor to Dark Fantasy X was actually "meant" to be run with d20 Modern + d20 Past Shadow Stalkers campaign model rules for a time. They were options that I could "turn on" as is without many house-rules that did the job credibly well, until I decided that d20 was too rules-heavy for my taste after all. Although, with a group that didn't have any power-gamers or rules-lawyers, I could still have tons of fun running d20 Modern. 

Some of my favorite d20 Modern games were convention one-shots where I adapted "Exit 23", the scenario included in Alternity's Dark•Matter campaign setting (where I got the affectation for years that I wrote Dark•Heritage with a • —because Dark•Matter did it first, and Dark•Matter was cool! In fact all of the old Alternity settings were kinda sorta adapted into d20 Modern, as well as plenty of other older TSR properties, such as Star Frontiers, etc. which was another pretty cool point in its favor. Although they didn't go much with these; you'd still need your original material to effectively run them. d20 Modern was also the mechanical chassis for all, or at least most, of the Polyhedron mini-games, quite a few of which were really pretty awesome, like Hi-jinks, the Scooby-doo game (kinda), Iron Lords of Jupiter, a Barsoom-like game, Omega World, a Gamma World rip-off, etc. And Dark•Matter was cool enough that it got published as only one of two full-blown campaign settings for d20 Modern; the other was Urban Arcana, which was D&D in the modern age; probably the literally least interesting concept that they did. Sigh.

I still have a lot of really fond memories of d20 Modern and could probably pretty easily be prevailed upon to use it to run all kinds of different things... but again, only if the people I'm playing with don't mind me playing pretty fast and loose with the rules, because there's way too many.

Honestly, Savage Worlds would probably do everything d20 Modern can do, and probably better, but I'm very familiar with d20 Modern, and not as familiar with Savage Worlds, which I've only played a few times and don't remember very well.

Lastly, science fiction, futuristic, specifically space opera would be next. As an aside, I could easily use d20 Modern for this, and d20 Modern in fact published several books that supported this, including d20 Future, d20 Apocalypse and d20 Cyberscape and an equipment book called d20 Future Tech. However, because I already picked d20 Modern above, I'll just mention that here and move on to other games:

8. Star Wars: There's been a lot of different Star Wars games. the old West End Games d6 system Star Wars game actually contributed a lot of material that was eventually "canonized" such as it is. Any of the Star Wars games would probably work relatively well, but what I'm most familiar with is the d20 Star Wars. In fact, I have two (of three that were released) versions of it; the original and the Revised. It was later revised again to the "Saga" version, which is generally believed to be the best one, but I wasn't interested in buying a third copy of a game that I still hadn't actually played. 

Now, I did play quite a bit of d20 Star Wars, but it wasn't the "official" d20 Star Wars; some guy in our group just modified D&D to be Star Wars. It was very similar, and I didn't see the point, since it wasn't that hard to just go buy the official d20 Star Wars, but maybe he just really didn't want to spend the money, so he reinvented the wheel to get almost the exact same result. I also spent a fair bit of time creating a Star Wars Remixed setting that was set a thousand years after Return of the Jedi and ignored a lot of stuff from the EU, and the sequel movies as they started coming out. Honestly, at this point, I wouldn't be interested anymore in doing that. I eventually even took the "serial numbers" off of my version of the Star Wars setting, and as I did, it became much less tethered to anything specifically Star Warsy. I could even run the Space Opera X setting happily, but I haven't given a ton of thought as to what system I'd prefer to do that with anymore. My old m20 adaptation should be brought up to date as modern and future universal games based on DFX, actually. 

Wow, there's a whole big project that I just thought of. Ooof.

9. Traveller: I actually have three versions of this game too, although there are more than three or four times that many that have actually been in print. I have the old Classic Traveller black book (plus some supplemental stuff), I have the MegaTraveller boxed set (plus some other MegaTraveller stuff) and I bought T20, the d20 version of it, as well. Again; after owning three versions of a game that I still haven't played, I wasn't interested in buying any more, but the Mongoose Traveller was well received. I doubt I'd play Traveller again anymore, but even in Space Opera X I did take a lot of ideas from the game, especially the method of space-mapping and the system data sheets (mine are streamlined, of course. Actual Traveller has had a lot of detail that is nerdy and nobody cares about.)

10. Stars Without Number: A relatively newer entry, this is a tremendous toolkit. I wouldn't be interested in actually playing it, but no matter what game you actually play, it has stuff that you can use. Anyone who does any kind of space opera gaming should own a copy.

Honorable Mentions for Modern and Future: I've enjoyed reading games like Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX). Evil Hat seems to do decent work, or at least pretty work. Their Spirit of the Century is still one of my favorite RPG covers. Who doesn't love a gorilla flying a bi-plane and fighting a Dr. Doom lookalike on the wing while a flaming dirigible looms directly overhead? The Dresden Files game was a fun read, but I've never tried to run it. I have fond memories of Star Frontiers and Gamma World, and Alternity's Star*Drive. I was for a few years pretty invested in the Storyteller system, and still own a bunch of Werewolf books in particular, although I wouldn't have any interest in either the system or the settings either one today. White Wolf is the company that turned me forever against pretentiousness in gaming, against metaplot, and against games that are too tightly bound to a setting. 

There's no doubt many other one-offs that I could possibly be prevailed upon to play, or even systems or settings that were relatively big in their day, but which are kind of forgotten anymore, like Legend of the Five Rings or 7th Sea. If I ever want to play superheroes, Mutants & Masterminds would be my go-to, but again, I have the first version; it's been revised multiple times, I believe. Obviously, I don't really play supers...

But now I'm lingering in the long tail, way past the ten (or so) games that I'd call any kind of favorite, so it's probably time to wrap this one up.

Leveling in my m20 games

I came across some of my older posts and saw where I'd made an offhand comment about leveling up near the beginning of a game about once ever 4-5 sessions, and having that slow down, and that an ideal, full 10-level game could have about 100 sessions. I whipped up a quick chart showing what level I'd expect the PCs to be at at every session. Realistically, of course, I probably wouldn't be this rigid, but setting it out like this would make it much less likely that I'd get carried away and start doing things too fast, or forget about it and do it too slow. It also could serve as a baseline to use to put off-set with the main chart if I have a new character join at 1st level. Although typically, I usually have new characters join at the same level as the rest of the group when I've done it in the past.

UPDATE: That's a ridiculous ridiculous way to lay this out. Let me summarize it more easily. The numbered bullet point would be the level of the characters in the session.

1. Sessions 1-4
2. Sessions 5-11
3. Sessions 12-19
4. Sessions 20-31
5. Sessions 32-43
6. Sessions 44-55
7. Sessions 56-67
8. Sessions 68-79
9. Sessions 80-91
10. Sessions 92-100
11. No more play. Game is over.

GMing advice

Well, I've now read the entire run of Ray Winninger's Dungeoncraft and the entire run of Chris Perkins' DM Experience.  I've done that before, mind you, but not in several years—and I was reminded of a number of cool things (the three act encounter structure, for instance, or Perkins' campaign ties as part of chargen.)

Now, just because, I'll read the Duets column, and I'll probably be overloaded on GMing advice for a time.  But I've been somewhat separated from the hobby for a little while, due to circumstances beyond my control, mostly (extreme real life busyness for everyone concerned.)

I'm thinking of popping by my local hobby store after I get back in town from my delayed backpacking trip (which will at least give me Colorado fall colors with spectacular aspens) and seeing about setting something up, with players that I can hopefully count on to meet regularly.  My old group, much as I enjoyed gaming with them, were not only too busy, but also too geographically separated and spread out. But I'd really like to put some of the techniques I was reminded of, plus the work that I've put into FANTASY HACK and CULT OF UNDEATH to use in a way that's not merely hypothetical.  (Some readers may also wonder what in the world happened to AD ASTRA too.)

Anyway, I guess there isn't really a lot of content here.  Here's links to the columns I'm specifically referencing, and I recommend you read them yourself too.  And speaking of AD ASTRA, the wonderful ersatz Star Wars Galaxy's Edge is due to get its fourth volume in your hands (or on your Kindle) next week.  If you still haven't taken the plunge, you're missing out on what is one of my absolute favorite series right now.  And if sword & sorcery is more your thing than space opera, just for the heck of it, I'll throw in a recommendation for For the Ashes of Ruin by Matthew D. Ryan.

• DM Experience by Chris Perkins
• Dungeoncraft by Ray Winninger
• Duets by Kirk Johnson-Weider

I may also consider implementing some of the advice that I'd forgot about until rereading these columns directly into my CULT OF UNDEATH while there's still plenty of time to tinker with it too.  We'll see.

Chris Perkins DM Experience Part III (Concluded)

The last of the DM Experience columns lightly annotated bibliography.

• By The Nose — as you might guess from the title, this is on "when to nudge the players."  Even the most self-motivated players will occasionally stall, due to confusion, feeling that they've gone into a dead end, etc. in the type of game that I prefer to run.  While it's not to be encouraged, helping them out occasionally has to be a tool in the GM's toolbox.
• Necessary Evil — on using plot devices successfully.
• Death-Defying D&D — another post where Perkins has to wrassle with the system not doing what he wants it to do.  Normally, I'd say these can be more or less skipped, but as it happens, there's some advice that is good here, even if you're sharp enough to either fix or replace systems that don't do what you want them to.
• Goldfingers — on tinkering with the rules; kitbashing elements in from other editions (or other games) mostly.  Fer instance; I picked up Action Points from d20 Modern (and then modified them significantly), Healing Surges from 4e, although I borrowed the concept rather than the specific rules, and Minions (also from 4e) and then grafted it into m20, which was a brusque restructuring and condensation of d20.
• Acts I, II, and III — on using the famous three act structure at the session level.
• Spin the Cliché — on adding twists to well-worn and well-known elements of the game so that they feel fresh and interesting.
• The Third Rule — trust issues with NPCs.  I gave some similar advice long ago here as well.
• Gang Aft Agley — sometimes the PCs do something so clever that they basically circumvent your entire adventure.  It's OK.  Think of it like when Indiana Jones shot that swordsman rather than having a big, physical fight scene with him.  Let them enjoy their little victory... for a time....
• Sudden Death — I'm not sure I can summarize what this is "about" in terms of GMing advice, but it's a great campaign story that can ring helpful in indirect ways easily enough. I also really like the notion of an "epilogue" session after the game itself has ended; especially if it ended, as it did here, with a tragic yet noble sacrifice; a Pyrrhic victory over the god of Undeath himself. Recommended.
• All Around the Campfire — a bit of a rambly column comparing D&D to the grand oral storytelling tradition.
• Lego My Ego — on common GM failings and how to avoid them.
• Humpty Dumpty Conundrum — on using your notes to prompt interesting twists on past events when your current events wind down and you feel stuck.  Recommended.
• Yippy Ki-Yay In D Minor — On the ways in which villainous organizations can be superior to villainous individuals—or at least offer things that the latter does not.
• Dial M for Melora — on using divine intervention as a play aid, and not a cheat.
• Unflappable — on GMing style, and rolling with the punches.
• The Old DM and the Sea — on learning lessons from various systems, and retrospective on 1st through 4th editions (at the time of its writing, 5e was in development.)
• Let The Conversation Begin — dialogue is the lifeblood of any interesting NPC, but it can't really be planned ahead of time effectively.  This column gives four archetypes to facilitate helping you improvise interesting dialogue.
• Best Supporting Character — some players naturally gravitate to a "leadership" role in the social dynamic of the gaming table, and become the "stars" of the show, while others will tend to fall into a slightly more passive supporting character role.  This is perfectly fine, as that usually fits the personality of the player.  But be aware of it, and pay keen attention the dynamic, and make sure all of your players are having fun, if you want to be successful as GM.
• Ulterior Motives — on creating NPCs that drive intrigue.  It's more of showing rather than telling, and although there's some good advice there, you'll still be on your own without too much of a road-map when all is said and done.  
• Where's the Love? — a brief flirtation (no pun intended) on the topic of romance in-game between characters.  This could have been really cringey, but luckily, Chris Perkins sees the issue as one that only rarely can be successful, and he's never really tried it.
• A World Worth Saving — make NPCs likable and competent enough that the players don't get sick of them and the whole setting, not caring to even save it when it's facing threats.
• Master of Suspense — on using suspense effectively.  Also, an example of an interesting epilogue for a group that made a heroic sacrifice; TPK to save the world.  Fun read.
• Make It Big — on boldness as a GM—make stuff memorable.  Great read.  I'm reminded of my own DEMONS IN THE MIST game, which in many ways was my most memorable; mostly because I wasn't afraid to do anything that seemed fun, even if it was well-beyond what staid, serious, Tolkien-loving D&D players would have applauded.
• Where To Begin — the final column; Perkins talks about starting over.  Echoes of Ray Winninger's "campaign hook" advice echo here.  It's a short post, but includes a "campaign bible" for the next campaign he was to run using (presumably) 5e.

With regards to the final, in my experience, it's way too long.  I've talked before about using campaign briefs (here and here) and I think the key is to make them considerably shorter.  The rest of the information included in the campaign bible can be pull-information; i.e., if players ask about it, you give it to them, or it can be "discover through play."  Or, as I advised back then, relegate more information to a wiki that the players can peruse as they please, but if they don't please, no big deal.

In any case, I never claimed to agree with everything Chris Perkins did or wrote, merely that he was a great example of the kind of GMing style that I prefer, and that he had done a good job of articulating a number of great skills and techniques that make it work.  I still highly recommend his column—the entire thing (minus the odd post or two that is either irrelevant, or where he went somewhere weird that I disagree with)—he's got a reputation as a great GM, and I suspect that it's well-warranted.

Chris Perkins DM Experience Part II

More of the Chris Perkins column summaries.

• Real Complicated — on planning pre-arranged complications, as well as taking advantage of opportunities for unplanned complications, that make the campaign more interesting.
• Slave to the Rules — on rewarding PCs for making bold decisions, even if the rules "should" make such bold decisions tactically or strategically unsound.  This is less an issue with a rules lite game as I prefer.
• Unfinished Business  — on PCs leaving behind certain plot hooks unresolved to pursue something else, and what to do to make that work out.
• Shiny New Thing — when another idea crowds out your love for your current campaign and tempts you to divorce it, or have an RPG affair.
• The Circus Is In Town — on having a bizarre collection of characters that look nothing like the population of the setting in which they are adventuring.
• Stephen King's Third Eye — advice from a popular writer on descriptions
• The Storytelling King — lots of DMing advice borrowed from the literary advice of Stephen King (and I will note: although Perkins is obviously a big fan of King; I am not.  But the advice is still mostly sound.)
• I Am Devastatorz Megabomb, Destroyer of Worlds! — when the PCs have a powerful artifact that changes their interaction with the campaign in potentially unpredictable (or at least unpredicted) ways.
• A Lesson in Mediocrity — on those sessions when you're just not on your A-game for whatever reason as GM.
• Waxing Gygaxian — dungeons for a campaign and GM that doesn't normally use dungeons (interesting for me, at least, since I absolutely fit that description.)
• Never Surrender — when PCs fight to the death... and die.  A lot of advice around GM/player trust as well.
• Cuts and Splinters — when the party splits, and a technique to manage without losing the attention of the guys not in play at the moment.
• Acererak's Apprentice — some dungeon concept ideas submitted by readers
• Kitchen Sinks and Frying Pans — encounter balance, and how it's been bad for the game
• Ice Capades — on structuring a session for best entertainment value to the players
• Know-It-All — on the value of an NPC that the PCs can trust to give them good information that helps the game progress when needed.
• Triple Threat — on GM skills, but especially the importance of improvisation
• Demigenius — on borrowing and kitbashing ideas to create something that feels fresh and original—without necessarily being really cleverly innovative or truly new.
• Extra Ordinary — on the uses of truly ordinary NPCs as "extras" to flesh out the campaign setting as one populated by things other than antagonists, patrons, treasures and monsters.
• Stan! Down — guest post by a player who died after getting himself into an implausible pickle, but how it was an organic and predictable (and predicted) outcome from choices that his player made over the course of many, many sessions of play, and how it's not good for GM's to save PCs from themselves (or their players.)
• The Moral Compass — on dealing with a group of anti-heroes, or even outright villainous player characters.
• Whedonism — (I also consider Joss Whedon to be vastly over-rated as a "geek icon."  Plus, he's a sexual predator and psychopath, as has been recently revealed.  But the advice is good, regardless of how it comes to us.) On challenging the players' expectations and surprising them.
• A Suite Alternative — a detailed rules-related article that only applies if you're using highly complex and complicated game systems (like 4e, in this case) but your style isn't really suited to that type of game.  I don't know why he wouldn't just change systems instead, but it is what it is.
• Die, DM, Die! — more complicated rules specific advice—this is all completely irrelevant for a player of old skool, OD&D or B/X level complexity games.
• What's My Motivation? — on working with the players to flesh out their characters and their connection to the setting.
• The Well — on dealing with long-campaign fatigue, on dealing with interesting (and unexpected) PC choices, etc.  Maybe a bit all over, but this one is really interesting to me.
• The End Is Nigh — on wrapping up long-running, complicated campaigns.  Highly recommended column!
• From Jose Chung — using pacing and structural elements from TV shows to improve the development of the session; treating a session as something equivalent to an episode of a complicated show (in this case, The X-Files.)
• Old School — an interesting discussion on the exact same sentiment that I express about myself as "I'm not old school, but I am old-fashioned."  Plus, some cringey name-dropped of perennial geek culture Fake Celebrities and all-around shameless betas Wil Wheaton and Ed Greenwood.  Luckily, that's a minor part of the column.  Blech.
• I Got Your Back — using history to inspire NPCs and plot hooks.  Coupled with a spectacularly misinformed and "spun" narrative about Sir Richard Owen as a devious supervillain and Gideon Mantell as a poor, downtrodden tragedy.  Nobody who's ever read a dinosaur book or seen a dinosaur documentary in the last thirty years should say that they've never heard of Gideon Mantell, fer cryin' out loud!
• Trust Gnome One — on player vs. player conflict (or more accurately, on PC vs. PC conflict, and how to make sure that it isn't actually player vs. player conflict.) Recommended.
• Leap Year — an experiment in advancing time one year after an extended period (4-5 weeks) of being unable to meet.  Advantages and disadvantages of doing something like this.

Chris Perkins, DM Experience

I made reference to the Chris Perkins DM Experience column, although I said that the archives need to be searched at WotC to actually find the articles.  It looks like Scribd has backed up the column, although the formatting leaves a lot to be desired...

https://www.scribd.com/document/294290659/The-Dungeon-Master-Experience-Chris-Perkins

While I obviously don't agree with literally everything Perkins wrote, this is a really good column, it describes quite well the playstyle that I prefer and how to do it well, and it actually has some moments of absolute brilliance here and there.  Even me, and I consider myself a pretty good and experienced GM who's had some really good success in the past and stumbled across a lot of techniques that work well for me.  But there were at least three or four specific techniques that had absolutely not occurred to me here in this half of this column alone.  And even then, when he's describing things that I've kind of learned intuitively how to do, it's always nice to see it spelled out clearly rather than intuitively.  Sometimes the guy who learns all of this skills technically can outperform the one who does it all by intuition if he's learned them very well; and the guy who has both is unstoppable.

Here's a quick summary of the "episodes" covered by the first half of the column.  I'll do another one for the second half at some point.

• Surprise! Epic Goblins! — Go above and below the PCs level; not only to build verisimilitude and tension, but to also give the PCs challenges that they can't easily overcome, as well as opportunities to kick butt.
• Previously in Iomandra... — The quick summary the players need before each session starts; how to maximize.
• I Don't Know What It Means, But I Like It — use ideas as they come to you.  They don't need to be fleshed out to introduce them. You don't have to know where they'll go.  Throw them all out, see which ones the players latch on to, and go with it.
• My Campaign: The TV Series — how to adopt what makes good TV shows entertaining to your D&D campaign.
• Instant Monster — some specifically 4e related advice on how to reskin monster stats and make them up on the fly.  
• Point of Origin — some great advice on how to make player characters immediately latch on to the world as part of chargen.  Highly recommended.
• A Moment in the Sun — how to involve all of your players in the game, and give them all a chance to have the spotlight here and there.
• The Dastardly Duo — villain NPC advice.
• She Eats Babies! — more villain NPC advice
• Best Villain Ever — reader submitted villain NPCs
• Man Down! — when a player leaves the group (i.e. moving away out of state, in this case.)
• Big Map Attack — how to on making digital campaign maps
• Constellation of Madness — advice on being unpredictable as GM and giving challenges that challenge the players at least as much as the characters.
• Post Mortem — player character death and how to make the most of it
• Special Guest Star — a concept on having a guest player, and how to use them effectively to make the thing more fun for everyone.
• Popcorn — advice on using minions
• The Wyrmworn Experiment — working through an involving character arc (secret: it involves much less planning than you think, and no railroading...)
• Magnificent Minions — player submitted minions
• Joy and Sorrow — on the player contract, on mature players, and how to pull things off that challenge them without pissing them off.
• All Talk — on the combat-free session (and when to go ahead and indulge it anyway)
• It's About Time — using time travel to challenge your players (ed. no thanks)
• What's In a Name? — on names and NPCs and what kinds of development activities are actually useful to an under-preparing, wing-it style GM.
• Voice Talent — on modeling NPCs to make them memorable
• Intervention — the player who isn't on the same page as the rest of the group
• Maptism — site maps
• DM's Lib — don't over-prepare.  Don't railroad. If the PCs do something really unexpected, roll with it.
• Epic Fail — on how to turn failure into entertainment for the players anyway. (Hunt: without DMus ex machina to undo their failure, of course.)
• The Villains Fault — more advice on running villains effectively
• T'wit — on pacing and contraction and helping the players stay on track without dragging them to the game.
• Lies My DM Told Me — more great advice on running NPCs
• C'est La Vie — PC death (note: the assumptions are for modern D&D where resurrection magic is relatively commonplace.)
• The Invisible Railroad — it's not as bad as it sounds...
• The Covenant of the Arcs — building campaigns around "story arcs" and NPC motivations rather than hex or site based exploration or module running and railroads
• Setups and Payoffs — general GMing advice.
• Love Letter to Ed Greenwood — not as cringey as it sounds (although Perkins is also Canadian...) More about NPCs, really.
• 3DNPC — effective NPCs.  Echoes some Ray Winninger advice, actually—specifically his Second Rule of Dungeoncraft
• Boo Hoo — on challenging the PCs.  A lot.
• Catapult — on risk taking as players, and how to manage as GM
• Lloyd the Beholder — on humor
• Event Horizon — on session planning
• Behind Every Good DM, Part 1 — player feedback
• Behind Every Good DM, Part 2 — more player feedback
• Riot Acts — on the three act encounter.  Highly recommended.  Brilliant stuff.
• My Campaign Has Issues — on political and social issues that are "real life"
• Player vs. Player — a specific kind of challenge for players.  Recommended too.

Space opera via superheroes

Well, the new Star Wars is all set to come out very shortly.  My wife and I have tickets to see it on Thursday evening.  However, for a variety of reasons, my excitement in space opera is in settings that are more like the Cosmic Marvel arena.  If you've never read the entire saga of Vulcan and the stuff that follows, you should.  Although the now-famous Guardians of the Galaxy make an appearance in some of the crossover stuff that appears in War of Kings, it's really more about the Starjammers, which I would easily have called more well known (and more interesting!) than the Guardians prior to the release of the unexpectedly excellent movie last year (or was it the year before now?)

Also, I got a new phone recently, and on a whim, I installed a small handful of games (three).  However, I've only actually played one of them, because it was sufficiently engaging that I haven't bothered clicking on an of the others yet.  This one is Marvel: Contest of Champions, which takes place in the "battle-realm"—a pocket dimension created (I presume) by the Collector, for him to pit champions that he's collected against each other.  You play the role of a "Summoner" and you collect your own stable of champions (which are drawn randomly, with some qualifiers).  You go through a loosely told (and somewhat incoherent) story; but really the point is that you fight duels in a game that's a little like a simplified version of Capcom's old Marvel Superheroes line of video games.  These battles earn you stuff that allows you to improve your champions, and expand your stable of characters, as well as improve your own ability to play the game at a somewhat meta level as well.

While I find the game as an RPG of sorts with a story of sorts to be dreadfully lacking, and as a guy who grew up on the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat series, I don't find the actual fighting to be particularly tactically rich necessarily, the game provides just enough of a lot of fun elements that it's been quite engaging to me for over a week now.  Collecting and improving your heroes, and managing the resources necessary to actually play the game, combined with the fighting itself, has been reasonably fun.  And, of course, half the fun is that these are Marvel characters, and I've been a Marvel guy for as long as I've been even halfway interested in comic books.  Because the movies have been so spectacularly successful, pretty much everyone knows who a bunch of these Marvel characters are, even formerly really kind of bizarre and esoteric ones like the Guardians of the Galaxy.

So it makes it easy when I've got two space opera settings under development to turn to the superhero-themed one rather than my 1,000 years after Jedi Star Wars one, even though the Star Wars movie is literally right on the horizon.  Plus, my STAR WARS work is fairly complete, at least in terms of what I want to do with it right now—I've got a complete rule system in place, and a setting outline.  Until I'm actually playing it, why do I need more?  My AD ASTRA which is more Guardians or Starjammers like in intent is nothing more than a high concept: superheroes in space.  So, it's time to turn to that one and get some development done!

First, though—let me quickly review what I've got on this Contest of Champions game, just because I'm kinda interested right now.

Characters are ranked from 1 to 5 stars.  I'm not really at the point where I'm expected to have any 5-star heroes, and sure enough I don't.  If I'd been more lucky, I might have 4-star heroes, but as it happens, I haven't been lucky enough (my son has only 1 himself; he got his game the day after me, and has probably spent more time on it already.)  I've long ago divested myself of any 1-star heroes, but I've got a big pool of 2-star heroes and five 3-star heroes—a pretty decent roster given how long I've been playing.  Advanced 2-star heroes can be significantly better than newbie 3-star heroes, but no hero can ever acquire more stars than it starts with, and of course, 3-star heroes can be advanced to well beyond the capability of a 2-star hero.

Characters come in one of six classes: Cosmic, Mutant, Mystic, Science, Skill and Tech.  This refers to the source of their powers, for the most part: a cosmic hero has an alien source (black Spider-man's alien symbiote suit, or Drax—who is an alien, for instance) while Captain America, Spider-man and the Hulk are science heroes, because their powers came from a science experiment; either gone awry in the case of Spider-man and the Hulk, or working as intended in the case of Captain America.  There's also a rock/paper/scissors aspect to the classes; while certainly no class automatically beats another, each class has an advantage against another class (and is neutral against all others.)  When you have the opportunity, which is most times, you need to make sure that you position yourself for the class advantage.  If you can't get advantage, at least make sure that you aren't putting yourself in a position where you're disadvantaged; fighting against a class that has the advantage against you!  If you can't swing it, well all isn't lost—it's a nice thing to have advantage, but it usually doesn't make or break a match.  The pairings are as follows:

• Cosmic champions are advantaged against Tech champions.
• Tech champions are advantaged against Mutant champions.
• Mutant champions are advantaged against Skill champions.
• Skill champions are advantaged against Science champions.
• Science champions are advantaged against Mystic champions, and
• Mystic champions are advantaged against Cosmic champions.

In addition, many quests have "gates" that can't be passed unless you have a character of the correct class in your "adventuring party."  So it's clearly to your advantage to have characters of every class at a reasonably competent level (or at least parity with the rest of your group.)  Of course, since the champion drops are randomized, this is much easier said than done, and you sometimes have to try an awful lot of times to get what you need.  I can make do, but as I said earlier, I've only got five 3-star heroes.  Luckily, they're all of different classes, but that still means that I'm missing one of the classes in 3-star format (Science, in my case) and I have to make do with a 2-star Science champion when I need to have a Science champion.  This kinda sucks sometimes, especially as some of the characters that I'd most like to have are Science characters (Hulk, Abomination, Captain America (in his WWII outfit), Spider-man, Spider-Gwen).  But I'm lucky to have one 3-star of every other class, even if I don't necessarily have the champion that I'd pick if I could pick.  For instance, my 3-star roster is:

• Daredevil (Netflix version)—Skill: My first 3-star, and a decent character, I suppose.  I'd prefer to have Moon Knight, the Punisher or Winter Soldier, but I do have 2-star versions of the Punisher and Black Panther.
• Ms. Marvel—Cosmic: My second 3-star champion.  She's actually pretty cool, although given the options in Cosmic characters, I'd probably have preferred Drax, Spiderman (black suit), Superior Iron Man (wearing a silver liquid suit of adaptive armor, so he's basically wearing a Terminator from T2) or even Thor.  I had a 2-star Black Bolt, which I ditched before I realized that I needed to keep hanging on to my 2-stars for the time being, and I have a 2-star Superior Iron Man.
• Magneto—Mutant: The next 3-star I got was Magneto—sadly, the original suit version, not the Marvel Now version.  For whatever reason, I've got a ton of 2-star mutants: Cyclops, Dead Pool (red suit, not white X-force suit), Storm and Wolverine.
• Hulkbuster—Tech: While it isn't necessarily obvious, since in the comics, Hulkbusters have been all kinds of things, this one is basically Iron Man in his "Veronica" suit from the second Avengers movie.  He looks really cool; he's arguably my first choice for a tech hero, although there's a lot of good choices in this class. I've also got a 2-star Iron Man and Star Lord, but there's at least six other champions in this class that I'd love to have.
• Lady Thor—Mystic: I got this one most recently for free as some kind of in-game reward for something or other.  It actually wasn't quite clear what I had done to win it (my son just got two random hero crystals that give you 2-4 star heroes—obviously much more frequently two-star ones.)  I guess I was lucky to get it, and I'm not exactly complaining, because I certainly need a 3-star Mystic, but Lady Thor?  C'mon, the character offends me with how it was developed.  The concept of another character having a hammer and the power of Thor alongside Thor isn't necessary a bad one (Beta Ray Bill, anyone?) but the longer Marvel decides to run Jane Foster as the Thor (while actual Thor is a powerless, one-armed cripple) who spouts anti-male sexist feminist talking points while fighting, the character might as well not even exist in Marvel at all. Do they want to actually sell Thor magazines, or have they given up caring what happens to the actual comics since the movies are where the money is?  I've also got several 2-star Mystic heroes: Iron Fist (in his regular green outfit), the Scarlet Witch, Juggernaut, and the Unstoppable Colossus, which is Colossus with the Juggernaut helmet and a few new moves.
• I don't have any 3-star science heroes, but I've got 2-star Ant-Man, Yellowjacket and Rhino.

I'm also engaged in a quest which gives, as a reward when it's all made available and I finish it, a 3-star Groot, which is presumably a Cosmic champion.  There's a few other characters in the game; or at least, their models are in the game and avid tech nerds have managed to extract them and show us, and I think the plan is to have characters roll out at a measured pace, probably somewhat indefinitely; because why not?  It gives players something to stick around for.  There's also a handful of non-player characters, like Thanos, Kan the Conqueror, etc.

Anyway; enough about that.  When I come back next to this topic, let's get the rules system completely worked out and put all together in one place for AD ASTRA, and then I can start working up some setting elements.

UPDATE: No more than about three hours after posting that, I earned a 3-star Champion crystal, and as luck would have it, it spun out Spider-man!  Although the WWII Captain America was my first choice for a Science hero to fill that last gap, Spider-man, Hulk and maybe the standard Spider-Gwen were all in a three-way tie for second place. (Abomination, Electro regular Captain America and Rhino in a four-way tie for third place, and Joe Fixit and Luke Cage in a tie for fourth place.  Although I would have reasonably happily taken even Ant-man or Yellowjacket.  I'm also almost done with the first Act of the Story Quest, which gives a Premium Hero crystal (usually turn out to be 2-stars, but who knows? I might get lucky and get a 3-star or even a 4-star champion) and a 3-Star Crystal.  Anyone else at this point is bonus; and if I get a repeat of what I already have as a lower level champ, I can sell the lower level and use the proceeds to start leveling and ranking up the newbie.

UPDATE 2: I mentioned that I haven't been playing very long yet, so I'm still discovering what is probably pretty basic stuff: the masteries have tabs!  I've been putting all of my effort into Offense, but there's a defense and a Utilities tab too.  D'oh!  Now I've got plenty of work ahead of me to get those built up.  I could recover, but I'm starting to feel the pinch on gold, so I'm not going to, I don't think.  I also wasn't really looking at the Daily Quests much, but now that I'm in desperate need of Catalyst, I've discovered it rather belatedly and just in time.  Because over the last couple of days they've had Catalyst quests for the Skill, Mutant, Science and now Mystic classes, my Magneto, Spider-man and now Girl Thor are my best characters.  Tomorrow and over the weekend, I'll presumably have Tech and Cosmic and can rank up Hulkbuster and Ms. Marvel (as well as my Superior Iron Man and regular Iron Man, who are in need of moving up and require class catalysts and this point.)

I also still have a problem remembering the rock, paper, scissors nature of class advantage, but here's a screenshot of the scheme.  Probably easier to read than my list above.  The teal Saturn is Cosmic, which beats the weird circuit board diagram in blue which is Tech, which beats the yellow DNA which is Mutant, which beats the red fist, which is Skill, which beats the green beaker which is Science, which beats the purple... whatever that thing is, which is Mystic, which beats Cosmic.

Why Microlite?

It's been a while since I talked preferences and theory about roleplaying games.  Maybe it's time I do it again.  I'm a keen supporter and partisan for Microlite20, or m20, and I'm going to explain my rationale and why I'll probably never really look back in terms of what my preferred system is.  That said, how often will I actually play an m20 game?  Who knows?  The last game I was involved in was a d20 game; D&D house-ruled to be used for the Star Wars setting in a way that largely was superfluous, because it worked very similarly to the (pre-SAGA) official d20 Star Wars game.  That game has now sat fallow for the better part of a year (maybe longer, actually) and we're now looking to reconvene at least a portion of our group, but we'll be playing Call of Cthulhu (as mentioned in my last post) not m20.

That said, for my setting, I recommend m20 exclusively, and although I still have all of the old documents for my Dark Heritage Hack and d20 Modern and even D&D gallimaufry rules-sets, they're only there for posterity's sake.  I don't envision ever dusting them back off again.

This right here from Saturday October 14, 2006, was the birth of Microlite, after (presumably) a period of labor on the evening of the Friday the 13th.  The original posting of the original version of the rules.  It moved, the next day, into it's own thread where it was hashed out, discussed literally ad nauseum, and eventually spawned a movement that lasted for years, and developed I don't know how many variants (two of my own devising, and I never even submitted mine for inclusion in the big collection pdfs.)

Some of the Microlite movement went down a road that is (perhaps) predictable; it became OSR.  Things like Purest Essence, often considered by many to be the apex of m20 development, along with equally popular (it appears) Microlite74, were specifically designed to refer back in many ways both subtle and not to the old school versions of D&D as many had played them.  I've said before (and will probably do so again) that when it comes to my gaming tastes, I'm old fashioned, but I'm not old school.  A number of my preferences were fixed if you will back in the days when I really first engaged with D&D, during the B/X Moldvay days, but there were always a number of aspects of that game which annoyed the crap out of me too.  And the advantage of Microlite is that it caters to the preferences that I have that were fixed based on B/X style play, while minimizing those that I always had issues with.  What are the things that it specifically allows which I like?

• Speed of play: One of the things that has certainly bothered me the most about playing the "modern" era is how bogged down the game actually gets.  Particularly combat, but not exclusively so.  I can't imagine ever again playing a game where a relatively routine combat operation takes literally several hours to resolve.
• Flexibility of play: Another aspect of the complexity of the rules is that there is a rule for all kinds of things.  Not in a robust sense, however, because the rules are usually too specific to be easily adopted to unique circumstances that might come up in play.  I prefer—in fact, that's too weak a word; I demand—that any rules system have robust, simple, generic rules that can be easily adopted via GM rulings to any situation that arises during the course of the game.
• GM Authority: Along those lines, I require a game that respects and defers to the authority of the GM.  A trend, purposefully adopted starting in AD&D and brought to the fore during the 3e era, was the notion that you couldn't trust GM's to "do it right" and therefore the game had to be designed so that they had no room to "mess it up" and play "incorrectly."  Totalitarian jerks.  A good GM is like any other good leader; you're happy to follow him because you trust his judgement.  Plus, next time around, it might be you in the GM's seat, and you want the same courtesy.
• Player Authority: The other side of that same coin is that players need to have the flexibility to exercise their "sovereignty" if you will; their control over their character and how he's defined.  As a very specific example of what I'm talking about, I'm a huge fan of the concept and archetype of the ranger—an outdoorsy fighter who's also somewhat sneaky, and survivalist, and "special forces"-like.  But I've almost never like the specific iteration of the archetype as represented by the ranger class.  One way around this is to go the Pathfinder route; i.e., create even more rules, like the archetypes that can be used to adapt the strict classes into one that's more your speed.  Another is, if you have a good GM, you can work with him to adapt the class yourself.  Another is archetypes that aren't like straitjackets in the first place.
• Ability to play "on the fly" with little preparation, if needed.  Sure, better game sessions happen with better preparation, but when that doesn't happen for whatever reason and you're left running the game without having prepared, can it be done easily?  Along with this, what if the players go on a complete tangent, making your preparation moot anyway?  The rules-heavy complex systems that require multiple books that all need to be referenced during play make this paradigm nearly impossible.
• Ability to support "theater of the mind" style combat.  I don't necessarily hate battle mats and miniatures, although I don't prefer them, and I recall back in ye olde junior high D&D days whipping out graph paper as a quick and dirty combat representation, but I prefer a game that doesn't require it.

All of these things tend to drive heavily towards a much more simple system; one without unnecessary complications, without exceptions and weird rules subsets, one that is light, flexible, elegant and yet robust.

The B/X system, or the 0e system that B/X was meant to update, were built on this paradigm, and that's where my tastes and preferences were "frozen" so to speak, so all of those elements are still very important to me, and any game that fails to address them fails period.

But of course, B/X and 0e do a number of things that I don't like.  Rather than reiterate them again, I'll refer you to the tag OSR over there on my tags list, and suggest that if you need to, you read some of those posts again.  

But Microlite really kind of does the best of all worlds.  It provides exactly what I need with regards to the dot-points above.  It's sufficiently compatible (without any undue work) with d20 material that I can actually use d20 material if I want to in an m20 game.  And it's sufficiently flexible that it doesn't need to refer to the fundamental premise of D&D.  In fact, one of the things that I really like about it is that it's very flexible and the same system, with only minor tweaks, can be used in pretty much any genre.  I've already got a customized dark fantasy iteration that borrows from traditional D&D-like m20 as well as Western-themed m20 games, I've got a more D&D-like iteration (in my EBERRON REMIXED tag, and I've got an iteration that hybridizes those two paradigms too (CULT OF UNDEATH).  I've got a customized STAR WARS iteration, and I've got a superhero iteration in use for my Guardians of the Galaxy-like superhero/space opera setting AD ASTRA (which needs more work, by the way.)

In other words, Microlite is flexible enough that I can use it to play anything, and it is compatible enough with the majority of the RPG material that I already own that that's a major plus, and it excels at hitting all of the specific requirements that I have for a game that is customized to play perfectly to my tastes and preferences.  I can't imagine, at this point, ever again recommending any other system for any other game that I personally run or tinker with here on the blog or in person, or anywhere else.

Horror on the Orient Express

I'm not sure if I've really mentioned it or not, but our Star Wars game is essentially dead.  It's been probably a year—maybe even more—since we've played.

I got a call from one of my buddies in the gaming group a few days ago; a subset of the group—those who enjoy this particular genre, at least—are getting together starting in December for a once a month (or so) Horror on the Orient Express campaign, which was backed by some of the guys in our group when it was a kickstarter (an update to the original campaign released by Chaosium.)

So, there's our gaming as we wind up the year and get ready to start 2016.  2015 ended up being a complete dud of a gaming year, but 2016 looks to start off strong, with one of my favorite games in one of my favorite genres, with a group that really knows how to make that kind of game fun.  Should be great!

The Near Term Prospect of Gaming

After months of inactivity, I poked my old RPG group, and it looks like it's positive for us getting back together again soon.  I don't know if our Star Wars game will pick back up, or if it's faltered to the point where it's effectively dead.  Personally, I suspect we'll end up coming to the conclusion that the latter is true; I think the enthusiasm for the game is way down, and most importantly, I think the GM's enthusiasm seems to be way down.  He's had other things to worry about; just moved, etc., but I think we'll most likely decide that the game has stalled sufficiently that it would be difficult to defib it back to life.  Of course, my projection there may be wrong; it may turn out that everyone is really gung-ho to get it moving again, and that it comes back together.  But based on my prior experience; I doubt it.

So, that opens up the question: what do we play next, then?  I've tossed out there the concept of playing some shorter, old-school retro games; something between a one-shot and a mini-campaign, based on various older modules: B2 Keep on the Borderlands, N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God or U1 Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh.  Possibly, if we're still up to it, to be followed by X1 The Isle of Dread.  I might even play using the B/X rules, but probably not, because I don't remember them very well and I'm not very interested in figuring out how to play them again, honestly.  We're all very familiar with d20, and it seems to be the group's favorite, so most likely it would be via that system, were we to play this.

On the other hand, that doesn't get us very far, even if that is what we play, and most likely folks will be in the mood to start talking about campaigns again.  There was a thought many months ago that a Horror on the Orient Express campaign.  Two guys in the group contributed to the kickstarter, and although I haven't heard that it actually delivered or not, it's something that we had at one point all agreed to play, at least.

And finally, if old-fashioned D&D is our goal, I'll offer to run a modified and truncated or redacted version of The Carrion Crown; the early Gothic horror themed adventure path from Paizo.  Mostly, I'd want to make the whole thing shorter and eliminate almost everything that looks even remotely like a dungeoncrawl.

In fact, ideally, although I don't know if I can convince the guys to ditch their beloved d20, I'd run an abbreviated Carrion Crown, with the serial numbers filed off, using my own version of m20.  There's no reason I couldn't go ahead and use the corner of Golarion that these modules were originally meant to be played in, and there's no reason why I couldn't simply play it using locations and cultures from my own DARK•HERITAGE setting, but I'd actually want to do neither; I'd prefer to take the basics of Ustalav, at least the parts necessary for this series of modules, and rename to file the serial numbers off of them, rearrange them with a new map, etc.  Just basically simplify and genericize the modules even more than they already are.  And make them shorter, as well--my experience with Paizo adventure paths is that they turn into a Death March long before you're done with them, and I want it to be fast-paced and fun.

I created a new tag, CULT OF UNDEATH in which I'll actually go through the process here on my blog.  The end result of all of the posts with the tag will be:

• A generic mini setting element that I could use anywhere, which is not connected to nor meant to interface with my main setting, but which is meant to be a more generic sword & sorcery vaguely D&D-like setting.
• A slightly modified version of my m20 rules, but probably without the setting specific races, and with a few more "standard" generic fantasy races added in instead.
• A framework for each of the modules in the adventure path on how exactly I'd modify, truncate and redact them into an experience that is, at most, half the length of the original.

And because I like to recycle artwork that I find here and there on the internet, I'll tag this post with a picture of Nagash from the recent End Times event in Warhammer, who will stand in for whatever I end up calling my "genericized" version of Tar-Baphon, the Whispering Tyrant.  Hey, maybe I'll even borrow Corey's Barsoom version of the same concept and call him the Tyrant's Shade?  Or maybe I'll go more classic and call him the Witch-King?  I dunno.  Plenty of time to figure that kind of stuff out later.

Ad Astra

http://www.mediafire.com/file/sqhla8ekwaek3re/Microlite20-RPG-Collection-2012-Volume-I.pdf

Keep that link in the back of your head for a minute.  We'll come back to it.  I've long been a fan of space opera.  And honestly, besides Star Wars, some of the best space opera in the last few decades has been in the comics.  I'm thinking specifically about the cosmic Marvel stuff; the Starjammers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Inhumans, etc.  Thanos.  Galactus.  The Shi'ar Empire.  The Skrulls.  The Kree.  Silver Freaking Surfer, even.  In fact, after watching Age of Ultron on opening Friday, my parents blew through town.  They mentioned that they had not ever seen the Guardians of the Galaxy movie.  I whipped it out on blu-ray and we watched it right then and there.

So, I'm feeling it again.  Time to dust one of my incipient setting designs off the shelf and see what life I can prompt into it.

My setting design goals are really more like the old Polyhedron mini-games; not really fully fledged games, but seeds that someone motivated enough to do so could take and turn into a fun game.  Not meant to be fleshed out enough to be publishable either; more like an executive summary of a game that a creative person can use, however.

(Seriously, check out those Polyhedron mini-games.  They were really quite brilliant.  I'll include a list and brief summary as an appendix to this post.)

I've decided that my Microlite minigame is going to be space opera, but comic book style, so its basically superheroes in space.

The link above is to the Microlite system, which is now at least, apparently only available as a big collection.  You'll have to browse through the Table of Contents, but here's a teaser--starting on page 741 through pages 751 you'll have the rules for Superlite; an m20 superhero system that is sufficiently light and handwavey to meet my needs and yet flexible and powerful enough to do pretty much anything.  Go ahead, and read (or at least skim) through the rules--they're only 11 pages after all, and one of those is an entire page of an easy chart.  I'll wait right here.

Got it?  Now, assuming that you've read it, I'm going to make some allusions to those rules, so if you haven't, you might want to go back and do it now.

Let's make some adjustments to the ranks.  I don't see the need for having any superpowers with 0 or below ranks.  If that's what you have, then you effectively don't have any superpowers.  So Feeble, Poor, and Typical are completely excised.  I'm also going to eliminate any ranks above Unearthly as simply too far beyond what I'm interested in to be available.  Also, I'm going to rename the ranks, because frankly the ranks as listed, with their cute little two-letter abbreviations don't mean anything to me.  They're too esoteric or vague to be useful.  Here's the new list of Beginning Ranks, as modified by me for this application.  (I imagine I'll eventually refit the entire rule set into what I need, rewriting and/or reprinting under the OGL so it's all in one place, combined with some setting info, as I've done for Star Wars.  Until then, this is just a note.)

Original Rank	New Rank	Bonus	Examples
Typical	None	0	Normal characters with no powers
Good	Pulp	+5	Dick Tracy, Rocketeer, Flash Gordon
Excellent	Street	+10	Daredevil, Rorschach
Remarkable	Sidekick	+15	Robin, Bucky, Speedy
Incredible	Typical	+20	Spider-man, Iron Fist, Flash
Amazing	Advanced	+25	Batman, Captain America
Monstrous	Superior	+30	Thor, Iron Man
Unearthly	Godlike	+35	Superman, Green Lantern, Thanos
Various ranks	Supervillainous NPCs	+40+	Galactus, the Celestials

Note 1: The first rank isn't really meant to be used.  If you're going to do that, stick with a system that doesn't have superheroes, because that's the rank for non-superhero NPCs.

Note 2: The final rank is also not meant to be used; it's a catch-all for anything more powerful than the starting level of Godlike, and would really only apply to threats that are meant to be faced by a full team, or even a team-up of multiple teams; kind of like how the Avengers and the Fantastic Four have to team up to take on Galactus or something like that.

Note 3: My examples aren't necessarily space-based superheroes, but rather commonly known and recognized superheroes.  Frankly, this system isn't necessarily geared towards reproducing space-based superheroes specifically; it's geared towards simplifying and constraining the superhero rules already in place in SuperLite.  If you want to use them with another setting, it'd be easy to do so.  I'm developing them sepcifically for use with my AD ASTRA setting, however, and I won't be presenting any other alternatives.  At least... not at this time.

Note 4: The rules don't include any provision for space ships, which is unfortunate, since I'll definitely need them.  Luckily, I've already got them available via my Star Wars m20 rules.  I'll just borrow them exactly as written there and apply them here.  All the more reason to create my all in one reorganization and collating of the rules at some point.  But first, let's design this thing, then we can make it pretty.

GMs playing an AD ASTRA game can pick the starting power level that they wish to, but clearly "Typical" is meant to be... well, "Typical" and probably the default.  Characters can, of course, advance over the course of their careers into more powerful characters.  I'd also redo the characterization of the teams as such:

Justice League: one broad power at Godlike, and 2 broad powers at Superior would be typical for a team member.

Avengers: slightly lower than Justice League; Godlike powers would be extremely rare and only for advanced characters; starting characters would most likely have one broad Superior power or two broad powers at Advanced.

X-Men: slightly lower yet; very rare Superior or higher characters, perhaps limited to NPC mentor roles (as in Professor X), while typical starting characters would have a broad power at Advanced with two broad powers at Typical.

Heroes for Hire: And slightly lower yet; starting characters would have two typical powers, or one typical power and two sidekick powers.

Power Pack: Sure, the game would work at even lower levels, but this is as far down as I'll go in describing; in the real world these guys would be amazing, but in a world of superheroes, these guys are rank beginners and not necessarily very impressive.  A broad sidekick level power, or two broader street level powers.

Characters can then use the rules for Buying Powers to tweak the characters; sometimes its fun to have characters that have more powers, even at a lower level.  I would suggest that the "default" mode for AD ASTRA would be X-men level, but that that could be tweaked to taste.

Next, we'll get started on the setting itself!

Appendix: As promised, here are the minigames and a brief summary of what each was about.

• Pulp Heroes; as expected, it is Doc Savage and Raiders of the Lost Ark kinda stuff.
• Shadow Chasers; Buffy the Vampire Slayer for d20 Modern.  This was later adapted into a campaign element for d20 Modern officially.
• Spelljammer - an adaptation of the old 2e AD&D setting.
• Thunderball Rallly - Every Which Way But Loose and Cannonball Run and The Dukes of Hazard.
• Omega World - a riff on the Gamma World game by TSR, which wasn't in print at the time.
• Mecha Crusade - Japanese anime giant robot pilots stuff. 
• GeneTech - the "lost" d20 Modern campaign element; a kind of near-future Island of Dr. Moreau with spies and stuff.
• V for Victory - WW2
• Hi-Jinx - 70s teenage kids; Josie and the Pussycats, Scooby and the Gang, etc.
• Knights of the Lich-Queen - a mini-setting that is modular and integratable into a D&D game.  Properly belongs in Greyhawk/Planescape, though.
• Iron Lords of Jupiter - planetary Romance, not unlike the various Barsoom ripoffs that spread through pulp novels in waves in the 20s and 30s and then again in the 60s.
• Pulp Heroes - an update of the earlier version.

Lots of fun in there, but as you'll see if you look at them, they're not really fully fledged campaigns.  For one thing, few of them are more than about twenty pages or so long.  They've got a few house-rules, a high concept, and some description of how to bring that high concept to ground.  That's what I've done so far with ODD D&D and what I'll do with AD ASTRA as well.

Ron Edwards on the state of fantasy and gaming in the "early years"

http://darkheritage.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-few-generic-rpg-and-d-related-thoughts.html

The third (of three) discussion points in that refer to Ron Edwards' "Naked Went the Gamer" essay, which treats--in a way--gamer culture and fantasy/sci-fi fandom culture in the 1970s and 80s and early part of D&D's life cycle, basically.  If you read that, you'll notice that I largely disagree with his essay, even while I concede that he has a point.

I just read another new interview with Ron Edwards, which I liked better, and which I found easier to agree with.  It's an interesting read for anyone who is a fan of D&D; especially older D&D.  I found his almost off-the-cuff references to the vector of folks who came into gaming as fans of fantasy fiction first to be interesting.  He may have thought that was rare back in the day (and maybe it was) but just a few years later, it was much more common.

Anyway, the new interview is here:  http://www.castaliahouse.com/a-conversation-with-ron-edwards/

Gaming in the new year

One might notice my general lack of gaming topics lately (which in turn, has caused this blog to slow down considerably, since gaming topics is its primary raison d'être, while other topics of which I'm a fan and occasionally like to blog have largely been removed to other blogs of mine.

Which are also moving slowly, I might add.  Part of this is simple; I've just been really busy, and I feel little intellectual capital remains to blog about things.  This can also be seen by anyone who's noticed that the books I'm reading haven't been updated in a long time either.  But with regards to this particular blog, and it's particular niche, I thought maybe a little more was in order.

Our gaming group has gone largely fallow lately.  We're at the point where we play, if we're lucky, once every two or three months or so.  And even then, I haven't been to the last two sessions that we've had, because they ended up falling on days where I had a conflict, but since everyone else was available, they decided it wasn't worth it to hold up the session on my account (a determination that I completely agree with, by the way, for what it's worth, etc.)  This means that gaming has kind of fallen into a state of disrepair when it comes to hobbies that are getting active attention and interest from me.  I've also been feeling that, while it needs a brusque restructuring and reorganization, my own DARK•HERITAGE setting is largely pretty complete--it doesn't really need a lot of new material in order to be useful to me.  Rather, it needs a project to put it to use.  This could be a game I run, although clearly I don't have anything in the hopper that's likely to happen in the near future.

Because I'm busy (and tired) when blogging, I'm not able to get excited about blogging about a hobby that I'm doing very little with, currently.  So, in a nutshell, that's why it's slowed way down and gotten very quiet.

What do I intend to do, then?  A few things:

• Probably mothball some of my esoteric setting development exercises, specifically SOLNOR, ODD D&D, REALMS TRAVELER, AD ASTRA, and HYBRID DREAMLANDS.  I'm not cancelling them exactly, but they are going into "development hell" as they say in the movie biz, to be pulled off the shelf and discussed maybe some more when conditions are more favorable again.
• Continue (or start, really) the restructuring and reorganizing of the flagship DARK•HERITAGE setting that was precipitated by the dying of free wikispaces wikis, and migration to Google Sites.  One thing that I've been very interested in doing for a long time is literally redrawing the map, renaming a few sites, and having it all established as a digital file that I can link to.  Discussing my setting in the abstract without showing a map has been difficult for me, as I'm a bit of a cartographic kinda guy; I've always loved a good fantasy setting map.  Give updates here as this progresses, including cutting and pasting some of the content that I think is interesting enough to warrant it here.
• Continue with my development of a 1,000-years Post Jedi Star Wars setting.  Maybe even attempt to run something in this space for my younger boys.
• Continue to update my other blogs, including my hiking and backpacking blog in particular (my paleontology, electronic music fan-dom and fighting game blogs don't have much going on, and probably will remain so for the foreseeable future.)
• Figure out some way to jump-start my long lingering fiction attempts in my flagship DARK•HERITAGE setting.  Finding time and mental energy to devote to to writing fiction has proven difficult at the end of long and busy days, but I'm going to come up with something, because if I don't, I'll be extremely disappointed.