A trip to the game store

I took a little side trip to the Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS) when running errands during lunch today. Once upon a time, trips to game stores would cheer me up and leave me feeling excited and energetic (or something like that). Now it seems the trip tends to depress me more than cheer me up. There are several reasons for this. This particular store carries TONS of stuff, a lot of which is older gaming material. While I enjoy browsing through all this, seeing some of the older stuff that i used to play reminds me of games once played, and seeing various miniature and board games (some that I already have, some that I've been interested in) reminds me that I don't really have anyone to play them with. But this time, I ran across a few things I'd been thinking about getting! While none of them are particularly hard to get, they're not something I'd been inclined to order online yet. The first (and largest) is the hardback FUDGE 10th anniversary edition. While I already have FUDGE, this tome contains about a dozen extra sections covering a variety of genres and implemenations. Another interesting book is Sorcerer and Sword, even though I don't own Sorcerer (but am somewhat familiar with due to online readings and the free "apprentice version"). I was quite interested in this book since there's alot of theory in it and a discussion about classic Sword and Sorcery (Heroic Fantasy) literature and the "betrayal" of the genre in the 70s and beyond. There's a funny story about this next book, Cute & Fuzzy Cockfighting Seizure Monsters. It's a Big Eyes, Small Mouth (BESM, anime roleplaying) book, and I like the system and enjoyed most of their books despite never actually playing it. Obviously, it's about the whole pet monster / pokemon / monster rancher, but takes a satirical look at it. Now, if you're familiar with the genre (and who hasn't at least heard of it these days), you know the basics: two people each own monsters, and pit them against each other for fun/profit/status/whatever. The closest real world comparison is cockfighting, when you get right down to it. Many stores and distributors refused to order or carry the book because of the word "cock" in it's title, or because of the negative connotations of cockfighting... So the "cockfighting" was removed from the interior text and two versions of the COVER were made. There's a note on the back of the book that shows the "safe" Cute & Fuzzy Seizure Monsters" cover stating that this is the exact same product with a different cover and title. Fast forward to me picking up the book and buying it. When this particular item is rung up, I get asked for my birthdate. ... Yup. I suspect if I looked really young, I'd have been asked for ID. All because of a word on the COVER. Which, of course, anyone could already see. If you bought the version without that word, you're fine. The contents are all the same (although i should mention that you can't easily see those contents at this FLGS, as they shrinkwrap everything, so if the questionable content were inside they'd be fine.) Really, that was what inspired this whole long-winded write up. There are a decent amount of mature-themed ("adult") RPG products out there, but this was NOT one of them. I could go on about those in control of America being uptight, hot coffee, etc, but anyone who reads this already knows that.

Anyways, I've been carded buying an RPG book. At least they didn't wrap it in brown paper.

Harry Potter

I saw the latest Harry Potter movie last Friday and enjoyed it quite a bit. I liked it better than the last movie, for two reasons that I can think of. First, it'd been longer since I'd read Goblet of Fire, so rather than movie omissions irritating me, my subconscious just filled in the blanks. Two, it didn't have an absolutely pathetic CGI "werewolf". The effects were pretty good, and now I'm ready to reread the book. Or all the books. I'm not sure where to start. I faced this dilemma after reading the Half-Blood Prince (It WAS Hagrid, all along, Prince of the Giants! ... Just kidding Ann.)

After reading HBP, not only did I want to reread the books again, I was somewhat inspired to try and fiddle with running a Harry Potter based RPG. This desire meant that if I were to re-read the books, I'd be sitting there taking notes all the time, writing down characters, spells, shops in Diagon Alley, broom types, wand cores, etc. Why? Well, because I'm an infophile, which is to say, I'm a geek. (Note: There's a popular definition of infophile that differs from my personal definition, but we're not going to get into that now.) Lucky for me, there are now millions of other geeks out there to do that for me. Wikipedia has an article on Spells in Harry Potter, as well as Magic in Harry Potter, and much more. The spells list not only describes what is known about each one, but also has a list of non-canonical spells (those from video games and the movies that did not first appear in the novels.)

As I was browsing through these spells, characters, etc it occurred to me that there's more than enough info there for an RPG, and all you really need to do is wrap the system of your choice around it. For me, I think FATE would be an excellent choice. Were I able to make the Harry Potter RPG, I would steer clear of d20 and it's ilk, and release what would amount to a giant sourcebook with a bit of system (FATE, as I said) in it to help guide newcomers into their own role playing in the world of Harry Potter. It would definitely be geared towards those new to role playing, and the target audience would be kids/teens/adults who are huge fans with great imagination. Anyways, most experienced role-players who wanted to play Harry Potter would have already adapted it to their own system of choice. Or maybe played Broomstix (Nice PDF). The experience system based on House "virtues" inspired my initial fiddlings with a Harry Potter RPG using Fudge and a version of Spiritual Attributes (from The Riddle of Steel). Essentially, Spiritual Attributes are a combination of your character's goals and virtues. SA's would work in your favor, providing benefits and increasing their own rating, when you acted in tune with them, and they were also the currency used for character progression (stat/skill increases, etc). So, really, you only grew when you followed your heart, or your destiny. This fit in really well with the aspects that the Sorting Hat used to select someone's house. Courage, Wisdom, Loyalty, Cunning, etc. In FATE, these virtues or house qualities would be Aspects, and they'd generate Fate Points for you to use for later benefit and story control.

To sum up, I now really want to re-read the series... and maybe try running a Harry Potter based game sometime.

FATE & The Dresden Files

About two years ago I ran across a Fudge based/derived RPG named FATE (see my "other stuff" links). I liked alot about Fudge, the dice, the probabilities, the trait ladder, the scale system, it's whole open source toolkit make-it-your own structure... but never was really able to find a good use for it or way of making it appeal to anyone I'd been gaming with. At the time, I also had some issues with the inherent skill/attribute disconnect. I'd sorta started planning out a Harry Potter campaign idea using it (and tacking on something akin to the Spiritual Attributes from The Riddle of Steel RPG) but that didn't quite pan out. That's around when I found FATE. It takes the basic structure of Fudge and ditches attributes in favor of Aspects which give the player extra ability to influence the story. Aspects could be like an attribute (strong, intelligent), a bit more than an attribute (bookworm, charming ladies man), part of the character's history or future (War Veteran, The Chosen One, The Boy Who Lived), something important to the character (Ancestral Home, Excalibur)... just about anything that you want to have important to the story. Aspects allow many things. One thing that I rather liked is that t hey make "attributes" only as important to the story as you want them to be , and give a direct influence for them when needed (Conan might have "Mighty Thews" to invoke when his strength is important.) Basically, they highlight what's important to the character and their story, and they can be used to influence the story, both by the player and the GM. Another thing I liked alot was their Skill Pyramid. It costs the same to increase any skill by one level, but you need to balance your skills in a pyramid, with higher rated skills supported by a great quantity of lower rated skills. This seemed pretty natural to me, under the reasoning that you're bound to pick up a little bit of different skills over the time it takes to increase your primary/ higher skills noticeably.

Well... I strayed a bit. Basically, I think FATE rocks. I've been keeping up with the evolution of FATE, and the creators are getting ready to make their first licensed product, an RPG based off a series of books called "The Dresden Files." I hadn't heard of this series, and the descriptions I saw interested me. Basically, it's a detective/noir style story set in the modern day, except with alot of the supernatural tossed in (the main character's a Wizard, but they're always down on their luck like a hard-nosed private eye.) The writing might not be top-notch, but the story makes for a pretty fun read. It's nice to see new game designers getting to publish a pretty cool licensed product, even if it's somewhat of a niche. I'm definitely looking forward to it, and hope a game like this could find it's way into the mainstream.

(Note: This is one of those babbling about games things I mentioned in the first post. )

A chance to game?

A little over a week ago I ran across a site called FindPlay (http://findplay.anvilwerks.com/) where you can find gamers (specifically, role-players) in your area with similar interests. You enter your location, the last three RPGs you played, your three favorite RPGs, and the three RPGs you have NOT played that you most want to play. Then it does some matching to show you gamers with similar interests somewhere in your area. It doesn't have a very interactive search, you can't specify within 10 miles or anything like that but it's alright. Returned a fair number of matches for me with several similar interests, but it was late at night when I'd filled it out, so I didn't copy down any contacts and forgot about it by the next day.

A few days later, my inbox had an email for a contact from FindPlay! A gamer who recently moved into the NoVA area is looking to start a group. I've been itching to game again for quite awhile, so hopefully this will work out. He's looking to run Earthdawn, Warhammer FRP, Savage Worlds, or Risus (A Kringle in Time). I'm interested in those, although WH would be at the bottom of the list. I did play a really fun game set (mostly) in the WH universe, but it was run using the Earthdawn system (again, mostly).

We'll see where this leads. If it goes well, maybe I won't be an armchair gamer for a while!

Han shot first

Being a geek, I obviously have lots of geek shirts, many of which don't really make sense to non-geeks, or different flavors of geeks. One of these proudly states in the Star Wars font, "Han shot first". It's also the geek shirt that my wife likes the most. So, I was wearing this shirt when we were shopping at target about two weekends ago, and one of the stockboys ran up and said "Cool shirt! I wanted to ask..." and I interrupted with a description of where I got the shirt, since he seemed interested. Then, as he's walking away, he said that he was wasn't sure what it meant. Gosh, silly me, I would have thought he'd know what the shirt meant if he thought it was cool. I explained it to him, and he nodded and said cool, but there was definately something lacking.

Then, this past weekend, we were getting a bird cage at a pet store and while checking out the cashier grinned at me and said "Cool shirt," at which point my wife began relaying the story of the stockboy at target. Of course, the cashier's face dropped a bit, and he interrupted "I wanted to ask what it meant." What's up with that? TWICE? Is there some sort of unconcious "that's cool" vibe that other geeks get, even when they have NO CLUE as to why it's cool?

And if you don't know what "Han shot first" is referring too... you're just gonna have to google it.

More of a Renaissance Geek, really...

Well, in order for the birth of this new blog to be assigned it's virtual SSN and start paying taxes, I need to post something. Perhaps some of my intentions for this are the way to go.

The most common topic I'll be babbling about is games. Role-playing games, to be specific. I don't have as much time and ease of access to actually play them very often anymore, so I tend to keep myself occuppied reading about them and discussing them on certain forums and mailing lists. I enjoy reading about and talking about the design and manipulation of a system, and find certain gems of interest within them. Those gems are probably what I'll be babbling about the most.

However, I'm not quite that one-dimensional, and will go off on tangents all the time. I'm not just a gamer, I'm a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Or maybe I'm just stealing quotes from The Breakfast Club. Mostly though, I'm a geek for more than just games, so you never know what's coming next.

Assuming I manage to keep up with this, that is.