Post Holidays roundup

Today was my first day back at work since December 23rd--not a particularly happy occasion.  However, I've got a handful of minor updates and heads-up to pass along.  Most of these are of no interest to anyone but myself, but since I use my blog as much as a rambly journal for my own enjoyment later as for any potential readers who may stumble upon it, that's OK.

First, I blogged in the past about Chris Perkins' column at Wizards website, which features every Thursday, and has since... February, I think, so nearly a year now.  Whether or not you took me up on my suggestion to go try and find the column, you might be interested in knowing that for last Thursday, the 29th of December, rather than posting a new colum, the update was a 107 page pdf compilation, with new layout for the pdf format (although curiously in a landscape rather than portrain layout) of all of the columns of 2011... which is all of them that exist so far.  Since it's free, it's reasonably interesting and entertaining to read on a regular basis, and it's probably the best column in RPGiana going right now in terms of giving GM advice (I'm not sure if I like it better than Ray Winninger's classic run on Dungeoncraft or not yet) it's a bargain.  Go check it out!  http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4dmxp/20111229

Secondly, I've made some pretty good progress on some of my books since ditching the Ancient Blades trilogy that I was reading, but probably not much that warrants a full report.  Part of the reason I've made good progress was because I decided to make some headway on the 6 titles that I had in gaming books.  But that's a bit of a misnomer, right?  Four of the six titles actually weren't "books" they were issues of No Quarter magazine that I'd picked up but not yet read.  Of the first... 22 or so issues of No Quarter, I have all but three or four, and then I have a more recent one, #37 as well.  No Quarter, for the uninitiated, is like the White Dwarf magazine for Privateer Press.  The early issues focus on the games of Warmachine, Hordes, and the Iron Kingdoms D&D setting, and actually featured quite a bit of RPG content... one of the main reasons I started getting the magazines (the other reason being the art.  Well, and I also hadn't completely decided that I wasn't interested in miniatures yet at that point.  I still appreciate a well-painted mini from time to time, even if I'm very unlikely to pick anymore up again.)  And for that matter, even when it wasn't printing RPG stuff specifically, there was a lot of setting stuff that could easily be adapted to the RPG.  And, for the heckuvit, it had RPG stats for a lot of the warjacks and whatnot that appear in Warmachine (most of the Hordes warbeasts were in Monsternomicon vol. 2 already, with a few exceptions.)  The issues I read were 19, 20, 22, and I believe 37.  The earlier ones still had some RPG content in it, including an alternate base class (the combat alchemist), stats for a warjack or two, some equipment and feat stuff here and there, and several encounters--mini-modules, if you will, although those required the Monsternomicon books to be used.  Not a problem; I have them both.  I found, though, that I was skimming the painting, terrain building, and wargame strategy and tactics articles.  By the time we got to the more recent one, the RPG stuff was completely gone.  Iron Kingdoms as a D&D setting is dead except in the games of those who still play it.  Word on the street, which I've mentioned here before, is that a new book is on the horizon which will introduce the setitng anew with a house system that is more compatible with the wargames.  Whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing is debateble, I think, but at the very least I'll probably pick it up for the artwork.

Curiously, this means that No Quarter kinda paralleled the development of White Dwarf in many ways.  White Dwarf used to be a gamer hobbyist mag for Brits that focused on a lot of different games.  I have one reasonably old issue (#100, to be exact) which still features modules and ads from a variety of different companies and games, although its evolution into just being a house arm for Warhammer, 40k and Citadel miniatures was well on its way.  Most of my heavy exposure to White Dwarf comes after it lost its earlier diversity.  No Quarter always was a Privateer Press house arm, but its focus was more diverse.

Cryx, the biggest villains in the Iron Kingdoms setting

I'm curious about Privateer Press as well.  Originally founded by Brian Snoddy, Matt Wilson and Matt Staroscik, with an early bringing in of Mike McVey, it's really just Wilson's company now--and I wonder if the focus on the miniatures games just wasn't the cuppa for Snoddy and some of the others.  Just speculation on my part, but you've got to wonder.  The setting has also evolved since those earlier days... a lot of the grittier dark fantasy elements have given way to ZOMG fantasy warfare, and the elements of it that used to be more traditional fantasy have been de-emphasized to focus on an almost fantasy WWI like vibe.  A lot of the changes to the setting (consolidation of a number of threats into fewer "factions", state of more or less open warfare between two superpower nations in the setting, etc.) also limit possibilities for the roleplaying game, in many ways, while opening them up for the miniatures game.  Clearly, Wilson knows where the money is, as he's presumably making quite a bit of it, given the success of his games.  Warmachine is second only to Warhammer 40k in the fantasy miniatures wargaming market, and Hordes comes not far behind, just behind Warhammer.  Privateer Press have made a great run at challenging the market leadership of Games Workshop and making themselves a big, 800-lbs gorilla in the market.  With the upcoming release of the Warmachine video game, they're really pushing themselves into the big time.

Sadly for me, however, I think that means my interest in No Quarter has waned to the point where it won't revive.  I'm not that interested in the wargames or minis anymore and with the lack of RPG content, the magazine doesn't really offer me anything I don't already have.  What I really would like to do, however, is find a way to better utilize the RPG Iron Kingdoms material I do have.  While I will never actually run the Iron Kingdoms as is, I liberally steal from the setting, and there are a lot of great ideas that could make an appearance in a DARK•HERITAGE game here and there.

And finally, I stumbled across this article recently: history's most under-rated mysteries.  Fascinating stuff.  Check it out:  http://www.livescience.com/11361-history-overlooked-mysteries.html

Iron Kingdoms

Well, I'm not doing part 2 of DARK•HERITAGE ethnicities yet.  I have a head-ache, and frankly I just don't have enough energy to compose that much original material.  Rambling about something else that I don't need to think too hard about; that seems more my speed right now.

Although I'm in the middle of reading the third Conan compilation--and in fact, I only have two stories to go; one of which is the famous "Red Nails"--I've gotten kind of distracted from it by picking up The Monsternomicon by Privateer Press.  This is one of the early books from PP--long before the Warmachine or Hordes games were a glimmer in Matt Wilson's eye.  Back then, the company was Matt Staroscik, Matt Wilson and Brian Snōddy (I don't know if the line over the o is just an affectation so folks pronounce his name correctly or not, but I've seen it thus spelled online recently--at his website, no less).  Only Wilson remains today, and the company has grown tremendously--but at the same time, it's no longer what it used to be.  The Iron Kingdoms setting was, once upon a time, a roleplaying game setting; specifically a D&D setting, albeit one with a twist.  For quite a long time, that's where Privateer Press put their efforts; the Witchfire Trilogy modules (which actually also contain a 4th entry; "Fool's Errand" a small minimodule that slide in between the 1st and 2nd published module.  It had a pdf only release, until it was bundled with the other three in a reprinting of the entire trilogy.)  Then there was Monsternomicon.  Eventually there was even the Lock & Load Character Primer.  Privateer Press had a reputation back then of being high quality (especially the monster book) but very slow to put new stuff out, and any release dates they projected were taken with a truckload of salt.

A few things happened to this picture in the next few years.  I don't remember exactly the order of each, but they all became pretty important game-changers for Privateer Press.

• 3.5.  While in the middle of writing the campaign setting book, the system of the SRD changed from 3e to 3.5.  Privateer were left a little in the lurch.  Do we go back and fix everything to be updated to the new system, or carry on as is?  They ended up doing the former.  What was already a very lengthy project that we'd been waiting literally years for dragged on even more.  Not only that, the book grew to a size that defied reason.  There were 800 pages of the setting book.  It was eventually released in two massive 400 page parts; the first being mostly (but not exclusively, as is sometimes claimed) rules and setting basics, the second being almost completely systemless.
• Warmachine got released.  At first it was a pretty modest, small skirmish game.  It sells like hotcakes.  It makes much more money (presumably) than the RPG.  Eventually, the game grows to encompass large battles with lots of miniatures, gains a few new factions, and becomes the second best selling miniatures game, after Warhammer 40k.  The "savage spin-off" hordes becomes the fourth best selling miniatures game, after Warhammer.  (For the math impaired, yet that means that 40k was 1st and Warhammer is 3rd.  Based on the most recent sales data for summer 2011, that is.)  Because of this, the RPG line suffers, getting only two more books after the setting, as well as a reprint of the original modules.  A few articles with RPG content appear in the No Quarter magazine, but after a while even these dry up, and No Quarter becomes the Iron Kingdoms version of White Dwarf.
• The tone and feel of the setting start to change.  Whereas at first, Iron Kingdoms in the RPG line is presented as a kind of grim and gritty, pseudo-horror-like dark fantasy, struggling with a burgeoning industrial age, and peppered with a lot of independent threats and weirdness, it starts to coalesce into a setting that favors the wargame.  Independents are vaccuumed up into the factions.  There's no reason for some of the countries of the RPG setting to exist anymore, so they're invaded and incorporated into the bigger superpowers.  A state of open warfare between the countries is now presented as canonical; whereas before, it was a kind of tense cold war feel, but clearly characters could be well traveled (look at Professor Pendrake's notes in Monsternomicon for an example.)  As opportunities for the wargame were favored in the setting, opportunities for the RPG were sacrificed.
• In addition to that major change, instead of a darker, primitive fantasy just starting to get some industrialization--very early industrial age feel--the setting is advanced to a nearly modern, or at least WWI in fantasy feel.  Suddenly firearms are nowhere nearly as rare as the RPG implies.  Warjacks of various kinds start to spill all over.  The whole feel of the setting is less grim and dark and now more "HOLY COW, WE'RE TURNED UP TO ELEVENTY OVER HERE!!!!  AREN'T WE AWESOME?!?!"  This is reflected in the art as well as... well, as well as everything else.  Heck, they even get a computer game developer to pardner up with them.


• Finally, after years of sitting fallow, Privateer Press announces that they are going to release a house roleplaying system, the Privateer Press Roleplaying Game, to come out sometime in latish 2012 (it's not clear to me if PP has become trustworthy on release dates due to their Warmachine experience or not.  I'm crossing my fingers, but at the same time, I won't be surprised if 2012 comes and goes without this being released.)  The system is going to be at least somewhat based on the Warmachine and Hordes game in terms of rules.

See, to me, I don't know if this is a tragedy or a cool thing, or just a thing.  I don't really play, nor am I interested in playing, any more systems.  I don't actually use the Iron Kingdoms setting, although I liberally steal stuff from it, and like I said, the Monsternomicon is by far my favorite monster book(s).  So material in a new system?  What am I going to do with that?  Unless I love the game for it's own sake (unlikely) it'll just be a (hopefully) pretty book of art and fluff that I turn to occasionally to look at the pretty pictures. 

Speaking of which, Privateer Press have released this relatively lo-res sneak peak of a pretty picture, supposedly from the game.  It does look nice.  Like I said, I'd buy the book probably for the artwork alone (just like I did Warmachine: Escalation and some others) but I'd like to think I could get some more usage out of it than that, if I'm lucky.

Steampunk in Dark•Heritage

While I'm not exactly a fan of the steampunk movement, certain elements of it have percolated into DARK•HERITAGE and left an important mark on the setting as it's developed. Before I describe this at any length, let me first define what I mean by steampunk, because I think that's a bit of a nebulous term that means different things to different people.

Steampunk was coined in the 1980s and became more well-known during the 1990s as a somewhat flippant riff on the term cyberpunk. In many ways, it's just an aesthetic, not a genre per se. Even the earliest steampunk didn't necessarily have any genre conventions; it just had a lot of references to steam and clockwork powered technology; a kind of runaway Victorian era, if you will. As steampunk has matured and evolved into this decade, that's if anything, been an even stronger focus on the movement; it's more about a sense of style, a look, an aesthetic, than it is about anything else. There's not a "steampunk worldview" or conventions of a "steampunk story" that need to be met other than an application of the aesthetic. Heck, Disney did a line of steampunk pins that illustrated this concept more than anything else; putting a mechanical monocle on Pete was nothing if not pure aesthetic overlay.

Me, however, see, I like to use steampunk as a label that's closer to its roots in cyberpunk. It's not just steam-; I also need to have a hefty dose of -punk. So to me, urbanization, dystopian societies with all kinds of social ills--a kind of exaggerated Dickensian London approach--are as important as anything else to be steampunk, not just wearing tophats and goggles. I also shy away from a pure Victoriana approach, mostly because I like fantasy that takes place in the so-called "secondary world"--an author-created world, not the real world that's been "fantasied-up." There's no Victoriana, because there's no Queen Victoria because there's no Great Britain at all.

That said, I backed off from some of my earlier approaches, where the steampunk aesthetic was fairly prominant to one in which it's fairly low-key. Rather than run-away crazy steampunk inventions, I only have a handful of clockwork and steam-powered devices, and rather than letting my stories and games and settings really hinge on them, they just provide some background and color here and there.

One way in which I've done this is to suppose that urban areas--some of them, at least--are known for having clockwork "bugs" that crawl around on the walls and streets and rooftops, taking messages from one place to another before needing to be wound up again. They don't speak; you can just fold up a parchment message, put it in a small container in the bugs chassis, and then let it go. Because these bugs are large enough to resist tampering by birds, cats, or other wildlife, yet which crawl around in areas where other people cannot easily intercept them, it is seen as a fairly secure way to send message across town without having to go in person.