E6 Freeport News #1

Well, the campaign has been kicked off. One group, doing the "Murders in Scurvytown" adventure are currently finding that their ship is stuck on a reef and they're under attack by orc pirates.

So no Scurvytown yet, but we'll get there soon.

The other group, the "Blasphemy in Bloodsalt" started their game on the pier as fresh-faced arrivals in town, and were almost immediately accosted by a gang looking to shake them down. So yeah; not much plot yet, but both groups are engaged in combat. I always find that "Roll for initiative" is not a bad way to start any campaign, and if sets up the idea from the get-go that this isn't going to be a plodding, existential exploration of morality and characters, but a wild ride with adventure, horror, death and the threat thereof pretty much constant.

I'll keep you posted as the fight's wind down and the roleplaying begins.

Freeport Shipping News

Huh. That sounds like a good temporary title for my blog.

In any case, I've somehow found myself committed to running a Play-by-post game set in Freeport for 12 players. Yes, twelve. I'm going to have two concurrent storylines and try to wind them together somehow.

Anyway, it sounds really fun and exciting, but also fraught with potential to fall apart if it doesn't work. I'll keep everyone posted here on how it's working out. We're due to have all characters in and ready to go and start on Monday.

Roots

I've been fascinated with the beginnings of the tetrapod invasion of various terrestrial ecosystems, and of course, you can't talk about that without talking about Ichthyeostega, famous throughout most of the 20th century as the "first amphibian", found in Fammenian rocks in eastern Greenland. For fun, here's a picture of "Ole Ichthy."

Ichthyostega isn't actually an amphibian, as it turns out, although he's a "pre-amphibian tetrapod." He was discovered in the 1930s in a famous paleontological expedition.

Some fragmentary Acanthostega material was also found, although it wasn't until the late 1980s that really good material was found on this cousin and contemporary of "Ole Ichthy." There's also some pictures of him attached:

With this new material, though, it doesn't look like "Ole Acanthy" was actually very adept at getting out of the water, and it's not believed that he did. The same is often said about Ichthyostega too. In fact, even slightly younger basal tetrapods (still not amphibians) like Hynerpeton and Tulerpeton seem to be adapted to swimming around in shallow, clogged swampways more than coming up on land. I guess that's to be expected; they've gotta handle that environment first, after all.

A couple of little guys that I wasn't aware of were discovered in the 90s that are actually even older and more primitive basal tetrapods than this crew, though, found in the Upper Frasnian in Scotland. These are Elginerpeton and the closely related Obruchevichthys. I can't find any images of the latter (and he's known from some pretty spotty skeletal remains anyway) but here's Elginerpeton for your perusal.

As you can probably see quite well just from these illustrations, these basal tetrapods are extremely primitive, and only barely removed from the sarcopterigian (lobe-finned) fishes from which they descended.

In fact, here's a sarcopterygian fish very similar to the first tetrapods for you to look at, if you're interested, weird little Tiktaalik, which frankly is as much notable for it's bizarre name as for it's position close to the ancestry of all Tetrapoda. In fact, it's so close, that cladistically, it's in a group falled Tetrapodamorpha, in which Tetrapoda is closely nested.

From these images, hopefully it's obvious how fishlike the first "amphibians"; the basal tetrapods truly are.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is roots. The root of all land vertebrates in the entire world, which showed up in the late Devonian, 380 million years ago for the earliest examples pictured above.

Some stuff...

Changed the title again. Blood on the Asphalt is actually the name of a free online "CD" you can download that takes the melodies of the familiar Street Fighter 2 songs and "remixes" them. Remakes them, honestly. It's a tribute album. Some of them are pretty weird. Many of them are excellent. Anyway, I'm going to temporarily steal their name because it's cool. http://sf2.ocremix.org/

Other than that, I've been keeping on keeping on. Not much to report. For fun, I've been creating a spreadsheet of all the earth's ages, their names, subdivisions, date that it started (in millions of years ago) and ended, total length, and a few comments. Unlike most such lists, mine doesn't start at the top and go backwards, which I've never found intuitive; it starts at the beginning and goes forward. Imagine that. That's the main reason I did it; to have it all in one place in an intuitive format, but it's also fun to see the time frames. One interesting side effect of looking at all this has been surprising to me.

I'm used to looking at dinosaur ages, and I guess it never occurred to me just how remarkable it is that dinosaurs were on the earth for 160 million years, and that they dominated the fauna for a good 140 or more of those 160 million years. Mammals have been around a good 200 million years and dominated the world for about 65 million---but the terrestrial megafauna dynasties prior to the dinosaurs are surprisingly short. In fact, I never really thought about it, but it was less than 150 million years before the first dinosaur that Ichthyostega and Acanthostega were the first tetrapods to lumber their way out of the water on occasion. At the K-T extinction event, when the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct, they had dominated the terrestrial megafauna for more than half of the time that there had even been a terrestrial megafauna to dominate!

Really old grass

This is actually somewhat old news (reported almost two years ago) but since I don't get the opportunity of working as a specialist, I often miss stuff like this.

I was watching the documentary disc 2 section of Walking With Prehistoric Beasts last night, and the scientist they were interviewing made the common claim that even the earlier parts of the Age of Mammals were incorrect to show grass, which didn't arrive on the scene until 30-40 million years ago.

Oddly enough, phytoliths; cells that are specific to grasses, have been found in dinosaur coprolites from about 70 million years ago. This was startling, not only that grass was obviously around that long ago (and part of a titanosaur diet) but that they found five varieties of phytoliths, which is a good marker for types of grass. This indicates that grass had already undergone a fair amount of diversification and speciation; enough so that estimates for the arrival of grass were instantly extended to 100 million years ago or more!

Now truly is a great time to be alive and a fan of dinosaur paleontology. Almost everything we thought we knew about dinosaurs when I was a child has been overturned and we have an entirely different view now of both dinosaurs and their environment both. Not only that, more dinosaurs have been discovered in the last decade than had been discovered in all the time that dinosaurs were known to modern, Western science prior to that. And many of them are truly bizarre. We have the Antarctic fauna, for example. We have the incredible wealth of the Yixian feathered dinosaurs. We've discovered small, feathered and very early tyrannosaurs like Dilong paradoxus, Guanlong wucaii and Eotyrannus lengi. We've discovered the entire radiation of abelisaurs after declaring that Ceratosaurus nasicornis was a late surviving "living fossil" and a dead end. Whoops. We've discovered the amazing diversity and success globally of titanosaurs after saying that the sauropod heydey ended at the end of the Jurassic. Whoops.

Dinosaurs have never been sexier.

E6

Well, I've hit upon another idea for running Dark•Heritage even better. This is the E6 suite of houserules, originally designed for D&D, but applicable I'd think for any d20 game.

Essentially, the idea is that if 95% (or more) of the people in the world only have a level or two of commoner, expert, or some other NPC class, then someone who's about 6th level or so will seem epic. The 6th level fighter can take down a dozen 1st level warriors without going down himself. A 6th level wizard can blast your home into oblivion.

The idea is that since the sweet spot of any d20 game seems to be after you've got a few levels in, but starts to degrade seriously by the time you hit 10th level, this houserule extends the sweet spot indefinately. Essentially no matter how long you play the character, you can still get upgrades without ever moving out of the sweet spot.

Since my prior solution has just been to stop the game and reset with new character by the time you hit 10th level or so, I think this is a wonderful solution. I think I'm going to apply the concept to my d20 Modern and d20 Past ruleset, which means that I'll essentially have to write an all new rules document applying the E6 concept to them.

Oh, well. So much for simplicity.

Flash Gordon

Just a quick heads-up; the campy 1980 or 1981 or so movie Flash Gordon just got a DVD release a few weeks ago. When I went to go add that to our Blockbuster Online queue, I also found that the old Filmation cartoons for Flash Gordon have apparently also been released.

w00t! I mean, they're probably terrible, but I have very fond memories of them nonetheless.

NOT running

At least not yet. We voted to continue our current campaign, which could take up to ten more sessions, although our DM thinks maybe he can pare it down to less.

So we deferred the decision on what we'll do next until we're closer to finishing this one. In any case, I'll still officially throw my hat in the ring when it comes to it.

Dr. Strange

I watched the new Dr. Strange movie from Lionsgate Studios and the same animation team that brought us the two Ultimate Avengers movies and the Iron Man movie.

Not bad. In fact, probably my favorite of the Marvel animated movies to date. Didn't feel particularly comic bookish; more urban fantasy combined with wuxia or something, but that's OK.

I've also picked up Walking With Dinosaurs, Walking With Prehistoric Beasts and Prehistoric America. I've also recently seen When Dinosaurs Roamed America, Before the Dinosaurs and of course Chased By Dinosaurs which I actually bought.

All of them are very interesting, but at the same time, all of them are disappointing. In most cases, it's because either the CGI, the artistry (or lack thereof) of the CGI models. It's extremely disappointing, for example, to see the Allosaurus fragilis in Walking With Dinosaurs because the skull would have to be grossly swollen and deformed and the jaw would have to be dislocated for that to look accurate. On the other hand, When Dinosaurs Roamed America has fabulous looking allosaurs, but the writing and voice-over narration is almost painfully terrible.

On the other hand, we've got movies like Jurassic Park and King Kong which care little for biological accuracy, yet which have absolutely fabulous looking dinosaurs and other "prehistoric"---or better yet, fanciful---creatures. I guess that's the difference between a blockbuster budget and a BBC/PBS special budget. If I were independently wealthy, I'd love to finance and have some oversight over a really good documentary series chronicling the history of life on earth from the Pre-Cambrian all the way to the extinctions that took place a few thousands years ago with the end of the last glacial maximum.

So, if anyone wants to give me money so I can be independently wealthy and accomplish that... ;)

Running again?

Well, there's a possibility that I'll be running a game here in the very near future.

I don't know how good a possibility it is, but I'm going to throw my hat in the ring, anyway.

Given the group, I think I better stick with D&D (although I'd rather not) and since I've somewhat recently acquired The Pirates' Guide to Freeport (which I better hurry and finish, it seems) I'm thinking of pitching the game as Pirates of the Caribbean done in D&D. I mean real D&D, with dwarves, elves, orcs, wizards, etc. But the setting is very definately pirates.

Anyway, I'm excited. I hope it pans out. I miss running.

Alternate history

Well, I found the list I made of changes. This is still fairly summary form, but it's enough to put together a game, I think. I don't know if I'd still stick with everything here (the moreau's, for instance---do I still care about them?) but otherwise it's still something that intrigues me greatly.

1. Japan was the first WWII nation to develop the atomic bomb. Their plan was to put it on submarines that would run suicide missions into US harbors. However, the first one developed cracked a leak and detonated in Yokohama harbor, where it was berthed, preparing for the first nuclear attack in the history of the war.
   
2. After the launch of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler died in 1943. The new leader of Germany – General Erich von Manstein, a military man and fervent party member, pulled back from the war with Russia and didn’t expend nearly as much resources in the Holocaust as Hitler did in real life. Von Manstein was a shrewd politician with an eye for the long-term survival of the Nazi party, and his decisions, while often criticized by war hawks within Germany, have stood the test of time as decisions that put and kept Germany at the forefront of the world geopolitical map throughout the 20th century.
   
3. Following the pullback from Russia, Germany concentrated on the invasion of Great Britain, but found that their blitzkrieg stalled under much stiffer resistance from the Brits (bolstered by Americans) than they had in France. When the Germans had access to the Bomb, they fired one on a V2 which exploded near London in an effort to move forward their stalled blitzkrieg.
   
4. By this time, the Americans, with the help of defectors from Germany and their own scientists had successfully tested nuclear bombs and had developed a different delivery method: B1 bombers. Dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t have quite the same effect, since Japan had already shown that they had bomb capability, and Germany had also already used them. However, the devastation caused by these bombs was so immensely shocking even to those that developed them, that the state of open war came to a de facto end, and treaties limiting the use of atomic weapons (called the Stockholm Accords, because they were signed in neutral Sweden) were drafted by Germany, the US and Japan.
   
5. Shortly thereafter, the Soviets were able to develop nuclear technology and became the fourth atomic superpower. Because the Soviets had not signed the Stockholm Accords, this precipitated the arms race which was not terribly different from that which actually happened in our world – each of the four superpowers continuously raised the ante on atomic weapons for the sake of deterrence.
   
6. During the late 40s and early 50s, somewhat “hot” action occurred in the Middle East, which became the “Vietnam” styled debacle of Germany, the US and the Soviets as guerrilla warriors kept any superpower from controlling the oil reserves.
7. Finally, Ahmed Al Rahid, an Arab king, was able to unite many of the Arab tribes under his banner. In a political move, both the US and Japan recognized him as the legitimate ruler of the “Arab Empire,” and Germany and Russia pulled back after seeing the favorable trading agreements that they were able to maintain because of this recognition. The Arab Empire has thus maintained the status quo for nearly sixty years due to their economic shrewdness and dominance of the largest oil reserves on the planet.
   
8. With Russian pressure in the west and north and Japanese occupation of much of eastern China, Mao Tse-tung is not able to unite all of China under his banner. In fact, two Chinas eventually form, the Peoples’ Democratic Republic of China in the northeast and Nationalist China. Tibet and possibly even seccesionist Xinjiang remain separate entities unconnected with China in this scenario.
   
9. Some other features of the cold war include prolonged tension between Germany and the West over South Africa, German and Russian conflict over Scandinavia, Japanese and Western conflict in Singapore and many South Pacific islands, and Russian and Japanese conflict over Communist China. Despite several attempts by many, especially the Germans, to weaken their position, the US retains tight control over the politics of Latin America.
   
10. Both the Germans and the Japanese lead the charge on eugenics programs which leads to the development of – among other things – the moreaus.
    
11. Following the incident at Roswell in 1947, the US becomes aware of the gray aliens and that the Germans have been experimenting with extra-terrestrial technology for a few years. Germany is the first to launch satellites in the early 50s, although Japan, Russia and the US all have satellites up before the end of the decade.
    
12. In the early sixties, communist Cuba is overthrown after the assassination of Fidel Castro. Although the CIA is suspected, it is never proven. This prompts a crisis with the Soviet Union that very nearly leads to the launch of atomic strikes.
    
13. In the 1967 the Germans launch the first successful manned flight to the moon. Oddly, though, none of the superpowers make any attempt to do much of anything with the moon, although US astronauts also land there.
    
14. In the very late sixties, the Soviets develop the first psychic agents for the KGB. The Germans also develop occult agents.
    
15. In the early years of the 21st century, intelligence suggests that the state of the world is as follows: the Soviets are stretched financially tighter than they can afford, the Japanese are also stretched too thin over overtly hostile territory in the Philippines, Korea and Manchuria. The US is facing restlessness from much of Latin America and the Germans are facing increasing opposition from non-Nazis. There is also some kind of occult threat – the details of which are not known at the present, which seems to be occupying the Germans and threatening to spill out over the rest of the world.
    
16. A security agency that is jointly chaired and operated by the CIA, the FBI and the NSA is formed in the 70s called the Paranormal Defense Agency (PDA) specifically to deal with occult and psychic threats. The PCs are all members of this agency having come from law enforcement, intelligence or military backgrounds of some sort, although they may have been analysts, programmers, or any number of more mundane “career paths” and still come under the auspices of the PDA.
    

Tannhäuser, yo!

I played the boardgame Tannhäuser at GenCon. While the game itself certainly isn't bad (I had a good time) I honestly think that the real strength of that game is the setting and the artwork.

For the uninitiated, the idea essentially is that it's 1949 in an alternate timestream. The Great War (WWI to us) never ended, but dragged on into a semi-Cold war state. The Alliance (US and Brits, I presume) have reverse-engineered crashed alien technology (from Roswell?) to get cool weapons, while the Kaiser's troops have taken to demonology to get their special weapons. Future expansions look to expand into what the Soviets are doing as well.

Freakin' awesome. However, what it really prompted in me was a desire to utilize the material for an RPG. That brought me around to my old attempt at developing an alternate history; in mine, the aesthetic was similar, but I got there a little bit differently. Hitler died earlier, and the Nazi party was taken over by the Wehrmacht, and actual competent leaders. The Germans got the bomb first. Anyway, I'll spill all the details later, but the short version is that the cold war happened with four superpowers rather than two; the US, the Soviets, the Nazis and the Japanese. I also thought about layering in some Hellboy and X-files type occult/alien secret history, so it really does end up being nearly the same.

Anyway, I'll try to post the details of that later today, but in the meantime, here's some images cribbed and cropped from the Tannhäuser site so you can see what I'm talking about.

Ask me about 4e!

For many, the big news of GenCon 2007 was the announcement that Wizards of the Coast will be releasing the 4th edition of their flagship RPG Dungeons & Dragons during the summer of 2008. And yet more than a week has gone by, I've made a good half a dozen posts and I really haven't said anything about it other that a reference in passing.

What gives?

Mostly what gives is that I'm not a huge fan of D&D. Way back when I started this blog and I tossed a few placeholder topics up, one of them was D&D editions through the ages and I never did that, so maybe now is the time.

I first played D&D, like many others, in the late '70s, using the old Basic Rules that came in the red box. It actually didn't take for me right away (I do have a memory of an old friend of mine named Clark who was trying to run a game for me, but all I cared about was playing with his massive collection of Kenner Star Wars action figures.) I did kinda catch on and had my eye on the hobby a little bit later; in the early 80s, still with the Red Boxes and eventually also with the AD&D books. I also discovered things like the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks and even Rolemaster and MERP, Top Secret, Star Frontiers and a ton of older games, mostly by TSR, during these years. However, I left D&D behind before the 80s were over and before the second edition came out. Primarily this was because D&D did not do what I wanted a roleplaying game to do.

Later on, a friend of mine in college and I used to play some old Top Secret S.I. and MegaTraveller, so I kinda got back in the groove with RPGs. I had always kinda sorta had my eye on them even when I wasn't playing, but for some reason I got big into it in college, when I had no time and no money. I still managed to scrape together a fairly decent collection of Werewolf: The Apocalypse books. At the time, the Storyteller conceit appealed to me; that games were more than just going in dungeons and killing things for XP and GP. Looking back at White Wolf now, it all seems so pretentious, but honestly I was probably a pretty pretentious prick back then as well. Not sure that's changed.

In fact, I became almost an anti-D&D advocate. I was a latte set gamer who couldn't be bothered with such low-brow entertainment. All that changed during the summer of 2000 when I quit school, started working, and discovered that a third edition of D&D was about to come out. It did, I bought it, I liked it. It had enough flexibility that I could conceivably take it away from it's roots and play whatever game I liked with it. Wizards then released a Star Wars and a Wheel of Time game using the same basic mechanics, and they were fairly well done. But wait! I said. After all, Star Wars and Wheel of Time use fairly similar conceits to D&D, so it's no surprise that d20 works well for them too. Then WotC produced d20 Call of Cthulhu. I was sold.

From that moment on, I decided that d20 was mutable and modular enough that I could do anything I wanted with d20, and there was no reason for me to look at other systems anymore. My interest in D&D itself actually waned considerably, as the inmistakable "D&Disms" started to annoy me more than ever, but I still maintained (and maintain today) that d20 itself is a flexible enough mechanic that I prefer it to any other still. It's not perfect, but barring the release of a Holy Grail system, which I can't see happening, it does the job. Not only that, it's got so much source material, especially via the OGL and d20 license, that I feel there are tools out there for anything I could imagine.

The only snag here was the release of 3.5. This fell very flat with me; it changed stuff for the sake of change and to get people to upgrade their books when IMO there was no real need. While it did make some improvements, some things it did were worse, and tons of changes were just different for no net benefit or loss, but suddenly stuff we thought we knew we didn't really anymore. All in all, the update was poorly timed, IMO, it came way too early, it wasn't a good upgrade that made it seem exciting, and it felt like a money-grab opportunity to sell more core books. I was not impressed, I only bought the Monster Manual and simply used SRD print offs for other upgrades, and it's part of the reason I turned away from D&D again.

Of course, that brings us to the 4e announcement. As of right now, I don't know how much 4e will differ from 3e. Hints are that there are some fairly massive changes, and hopefully most of them will ease playability, especially at higher level. Things that were clunky or frustrating from d20 as it currently stands will be replaced by streamlined systems. The "sweet spot" will be extended. So all this means, I don't know if 4e will really be compatible with my current d20 stuff or not. Honestly, I'm not terribly intrigued by D&D itself anymore, so I could take it or leave it, but I'm intrigued by these putative improvements to the system. If I can take some ideas that work really well, reverse engineer them into d20 Modern, and release a "hacked" d20 Modern pdf to my players that gives me the best of both worlds, while still maintaining enough compatibility that I can use all my material that I currently have with a minimum of fuss, than that's great.

If I can't, chances are I'm not going to do much beyond picking up the 4e core rulebooks and occasionally playing a game with my group when they're in a D&D mood. Because otherwise, I'm pretty happy with d20 where it is now. Not D&D d20, but d20 as a complete suite of modules that can be layered to create the effect that I want.

So I haven't really talked much about 4e because I'm not that excited about it. I don't think it's the end of the world, because I'm already not playing D&D anymore anyway, so I don't care if it makes putting together a 3e group hard or not. I don't care if it's a massive improvement, because I'd still prefer to play something other than D&D. I'm hopeful that it's got some nifty ideas I can mine to improve my game, but if not, I'm not really at that big of a loss.

Dark•Heritage tidbit

Part of the reason I created this blog was to talk about my ongoing campaign setting that I'm always tinkering with. One of the things that I always wanted to have in Dark•Heritage was zeppelins. Big ole honking dirigibles crossing the desert. I had initially imagined them sorta like the Hindenburg only perhaps covered in a thick coat of light-weight lacquered scales to provide a sort of armor to the ballon portion. But then I saw this picture.



And honestly; isn't that a much better image right there? I kind of Spruce Goose suspended from a gigantic balloon; that's awesome. So there you have it. And to the artist, Steve Thomas; you da man! I didn't see him myself, but apparently he was at GenCon, and reading a GenCon-goers blog, I was pointed to his website. That kind of pulpish old-fashioned sci-fi travel poster is brilliant. And he's got more. At least four in all in that style.

Flower list

Sweet! I was monkeying around in the code for this blog template and found (among other things) the way to take away those ridiculous flowers that the template used for lists. Now my ordered list looks like an ordered list with numbers and stuff, just like it should.

Next post... actual content. I promise!

Construction

Well, I'm playing around with some new templates and stuff. Don't mind things if the blog looks different when you check in. I'm trying to find a template that's closest to what I want, then I'll probably see about hand-customizing it in the html code or something.

Anyway, I've got more post GenCon blathering to do still. I haven't even mentioned the big 4th edition announcement yet!

Yet again: More GenCon ramblings

I had an odd thought. I played in Gabe's Saturn game. Planetary Romance. I played in a Mars d20 game written by lizard, which was almost exactly Barsoom really. I played in Sky Galleons of Mars, and although the source material there is technically scientific romance a la Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, that's only at most a hop, skip and a jump from planetary romance, and the game itself really was more plantetary romance than scientific romance anyway. I also spent a reasonably fair amount of the con hanging out with a guy who's username features Barsoom.

Is this an actual trend, or is it just me? I also noticed that lots of pulp inspired stuff is floating around. This is incredibly exciting to me, because frankly I think that vaguely Tolkien-like fantasy is somewhat boring, and worse; since nobody else does it as well as Tolkien, and it compares very poorly as a result.

In any case, although I'm probably not really looking too hard at planetary romance per se, except for one-shots and stuff, my own setting, which I use for both fiction and games both, definately points toward Barsoom as one of the most significant influences and the conceits of Barsoom are the same as what I've used. Layer in some Charles Dickens, H. P. Lovecraft and even Sergio Leone, and have plots that read like modern thrillers a la some of the earlier Robert Ludlum books (back when he was still good) and that's what I call my ideal fantasy setting now. Clearly I'm a huge fan of what planetary romance has brought to the table of fantasy as a whole.

In any case: Gabe, Scott and Alan, who ran my planetary romance games at GenCon--thanks, guys! Great games! Exactly what I was in the mood for, too.

Another post-GenCon ramble 2

Liz's Dangergirl game was awesome. Sadly, I was stuck playing Abbey Chase herself, and not have a good read on what the character was like, I wasn't able to come up with a better schtick other than jumping on enemies and trying to squeeze them to death with her thighs. Kirin totally pwned that game.

Gabe's Saturn game is already legendary. Tony's totally inept Captain was a blast and Travis's "Communications officer" coined the wink and double gun "Hola" routine that's still haunting my dreams to this day.

My Dark•Matter game was largely saved by my incredible cast of characters, because the ending sadly turned anticlimactic when they didn't do what I thought they would. But it was fun because everyone in it was so awesome. Anyway, by the time I ran the second instance of it, I had thought of a better ending that wasn't so dependent on what the players would do, so I think it ran better. Sadly, nobody played Bruce Gamble, out of work B-movie star that time, because I had six instead of seven players. Bruce will be greatly missed.

Sky Galleons of Mars is also legendary. We had freakin' Kevin Kulp for cryin' out loud. Any game he's in is bound to r0xx0rz. And it did. But we also had Matt(hew), Davest, Scott, Jeff, Eridanis (who's real name I forget)---I mean, this was an all-star production. I have no idea what I was doing in that game, because everyone there was so much cooler than me.

Alan's Mars d20 was a blast. I got to be the naked red Martian slave princess. I got to traumatize Corey with my terrible portrayal of Derah Thojis. Sweet. Fun system. lizard is da bomb, once again. Next time I go to GenCon, I think I want to run an Iron Lords of Jupiter game, by the way.

Did I forget to mention Kirin's Kobolds Ate My Baby game? I think I did. Holy crap. Kirin is made of win. That game is another legendary one that people will be referring to for years. barsoomcore's anal bestiality rape death scene is one that'll be remembered for a long time. And it wasn't even the funniest thing that happened.

DINO PIRATES is already legendary even before I get to it. There's a reason it was one of the fastest filling slots around when it opened up. And it lives up to the hype. If nothing else, the absolutely brilliant lava rules will live forever as a work of genius. And I have to admit the description of the main BBEG as "an evil Dejah Thoris" was super hot. Maybe that's why I couldn't actually hit her, failed my will save against her domination attack, and ended up spending the rest of the game as a gigantic gorilla (sans biplane, sadly) trying to kill Rystil Arden's character.

The last game of the Con for me (besides the second instance of Dark•Matter I ran) was the Halfling Musketeer game. Holy crap. Again. Already legendary before I get here, and again; totally lives up to the hype. Fighting gigantic wine bottles was a work of genius, and prompted one of the funnier lines I heard all week: "I am French and you are my natural prey." Or something like that. It was probably better when Matthew said it than me paraphrasing it later.

So yeah; I could totally play and run CM games exclusively. I pretty much did, and I was not in the least disappointed. I would do so again in a heartbeat.

The only thing that was sadly lacking for me was some Cthulhu. I had my d20 Cthulhu book in my bag all week and never even broke it out.

Another post-GenCon ramble

So... I made that ordered list a post or two ago, and it came out as flowers?! I like this skin, because it looks like an old time scroll or something, but that's pretty whack.

I was thinking about writing up a bit more detail about all the games I got to be in, but I'm not going to put that much effort into it, because I'm trying to keep up with post-GenCon craziness at Circvs Maximvs and get caught up with all the stuff that happened at work while I was away. Typing really long involved blog-posts would interfere with either of those goals.

Instead, I'll point you towards the HEX website. I didn't get this book, but I spent a fair amount of time (an hour or two?) looking at Corey's copy, and I went over with Corey to talk to Jeff Combos (President of Exile Games) for about ten minutes, and I'm very thoroughly impressed both by Combos and by the book. They deserve a look-see, and after winning the ENnie for best cover art, they seem to be getting a surge of some much-deserved attention from the RPG market at large.

Congrats, Jeff!

More GenCon ramblings

So, yeah... as I said last time, I just got back from GenCon. There were probably a good two or three dozen or so people that I spent most of my time with while there. Many of them I had been excited about meeting in real life for a long time, and honestly... they lived up to the hype. They were awesome.

Others I hadn't really thought too much about and wouldn't have worried too much about going out of my way to meet, but I see now that I would have totally been missing out. They were awesome.

There were two guys that distinctly didn't like, but yeah... well, we won't go there. I didn't spend too much time with either.

There are two guys of the first group mentioned above that bear singling out and mentioned particularly. One of them is Stuart. Honestly, I think that for several years we irritated each other online more than anything else, but two watershed conversations really changed all that dramatically. The first was about campaign setting design philosophy, where we realized that in some major respects we had the same conceits that are NOT shared by the majority of GMs. The other was about religion, where I found out that his major area of research was Mormon folklore. In any case, after those conversations, the two of us became VERY friendly, I think we developed an incredible amount of respect for each other, and although we still differ about many major issues, I think we recognize at least a bit of a kindred spirit in each other. So I was very happy and gratified to meet and talk to Stuart. We only talked briefly until after the Ennies when I went to his room for an hour or two and we just talked and talked until neither of us could stay awake, and then Sunday he picked up an open slot at the last minute and slipped into my Dark•Matter game. Fun times. Very glad I met him, and even more glad that he wasn't one of the many, many people that I had been really excited to meet, but only ended up greeting and chatting with very briefly before not seeing them again.

The other is Corey. Corey and I have known each other online for a long time now. I'm not even sure how long, although it can't possibly be less than five years and is probably closer to seven or maybe even eight. Unlike with Stuart, Corey and I are in a really bizarre situation in that we apparently have 95% of our brain completely in common. We have the exact same taste about almost everything, and the funny thing is that it's not like we exactly have common tastes that a lot of other people share. So we already knew we were kindred spirits from the get-go. I was really excited to meet him; and especially to just chat about stuff and even more especially to GAME with him. Sadly, I did too little of both, but we did chat a fair amount, we did both play in the Kobolds game, the Mars d20 game, and I was also in one of his DINO-PIRATES games (he assures me that it must always be capitalized.) Part of the 5% in which we differ is that he is much more charming, polite and friendly than I am, though. He was a true delight to hang around with. I'm disappointed that of all the chatting we did do, we didn't get to talk more about gaming itself, though, which given the venue in which we met is kinda strange now that I think about it.

The funny thing about Stuart and Corey is that both are former Vancouverites who have both decamped to Toronto in just that last few years or so. The other funny thing about that is that I live only about 4-5 hours from Toronto. The other funny thing about that is that apparently I'm too stupid to have arranged some way to meet them before GenCon when it should have been relatively easy to do so.