Loot and Plunder have arrived, from Lulu!

So now I'm finally the proud owner of some more excellent gaming materials, of the old school variety. Fight On! is just as good as always and the other stuff was also very nice indeed. Undoubtedly I will post more about this hoard later. Today I will note one of my impressions of the bundle.

After having browsed Stonehell, by Michael Curtis, I still think it would have been better if he had reworked it a bit from the original format. While the One Page Dungeon template might be a good focus for your creativity, I don't think it works as well as a quadrant of a bigger dungeon map. On the earlier maps I think it is clear that the connections between the quadrants are few, and it doesn't look like one big map. It looks like four maps with some connectors. The lower levels look more "organic" so I guess he felt more at home with the template as he kept chugging along.

Now, don't get me wrong. I think Stonehell is a marvellous piece of work and my first thought on cracking it open was "Now I want to find someone to play this with!" It's that inspiring. But, I think Mike could make something even more exciting without limiting himself to the template.

If I weren't so unfocused on my own writing I might try to learn something by this for my own. Having my dungeons shaped by the limits of my medium have been on my mind before.

Well. Go get Stonehell yourself and see what you think! I'm very happy I got it.

Best and worst of 2009

At the end of 2009, I have taken a few moments out of the family holidays to summarize the year. Tomorrow I will post my vision for the new one. Here we go.

Worst all categories – Outlaw Press

Thinking back on 2009, nothing stand out as clear as the scandal of Outlaw Press. While D&D have seen some support for multiple editions all through the years, T&T have fallen to the wayside since the late eighties. One fan publisher have, using POD technology, been fanning the flame and been publishing a steady stream of adventures and rules. You can see that for us T&T fans, that fan publisher was our pride and a focus of interest and fan writing. Then it turns out that James Shipman, the publisher in question, had stolen materials he published, and reprinted without permission. Also, nobody knows where that art he used came from, and it sure have been stolen, by Shipman or his source. Shipman do have some bad habits so who knows?

Hopefully it will end up in court finally and some sort of restitution made. It's not exactly strange that all that pride and focus of interest have soured, and while the feelings are still strong they have changed flavour. I could strangle that guy! But this is for the lawyers to take care of, and I only hope lack of funds wont stop justice from being served.

Worst game experience – Primetime Adventures

Now, this is an odd one. PTA is not a bad game per se, but it is my worst game experience this last year. The mechanics are well crafted to emulate the way a story evolves in a tv series. But, if you had strong Traits that tied your character into conflicts and relations with the other characters, by necessity all Traits would be used in every scene and conflict. It made the Traits mechanically useless and all conflicts always had the same chance of success. Was this really the intention?

But, what make PTA my worst game is that I played it for social reasons and not because I liked the game. I hated it, but wanted to hang out with my friends, and I really wanted to have a game group to play with. If you wonder why one of your players is kind of vacant and don't seem to really engage with the group, check to see if he might be hanging around for social reasons and would prefer to play another game. I got to play another game later on.

Saddest news – Dave Arneson (and way to many more)

Since our hobby is fairly young, we still have our founding fathers among us. Or at least a few of them. A sad effect is that the hobby have left the toddler stage, and some of the Great Old Ones are getting old. While the death of Dave Arneson inspired me to share my love, hopefully other more joyful happenings can inspire us to share as well.

Best Game – T&T

For me this was the year when Tunnels & Trolls became my gaming focus. Having read about old school gaming, about Megadungeons and how it was the hobby was shaped in those elder days of yore I managed to get some people together to actually play. That, and the fact that the game works so well for what it is intended to do, won it a place in my heart as a favourite.

Best Adventure – The Fane of St Toad

While the death of Dave Arneson was a blow to us all, the memorial session of Mike Curtis' froggy adventure The Fane of St Toad was very emotional for me, but in a good way. It was a victory for T&T as a simple a quick system for on the fly conversion of adventurers written for other games, and a victory of mood and glorious combat against insurmountable odds. Exploding frogs, who can resist that? Thanks Mike! Thanks Dave!

Best news – the OSR publishing effort

Once the hobby was all about making shit up. Then the idea got lodged in the brains of people, as witnessed by Tim Kask, that the company they bought the game from had better ideas than they. Nothing exactly helped people get out of that mindset when Gary Gygax wrote his rants about the true way to play D&D. When I first laid eyes on Pegasus Magazine, and other publications from Judges Guild, I loved them all. That cheap newsprint and the oozing feeling of hobbyists pouring out their love for the game reached that soft spot. Seeing that going on once again, this time as a pdf freebie online, a cheap booklet available from Lulu or somebody's webpage or blog is heartwarming. The publishing efforts in the OSR is one of my best memories of 2009.

Best Game supplement – Fight On! Magazine

Having said that, Fight On! Magazine must be mentioned as a inheritor of Pegasus or Dungeoneer. That rag have the same kind of wild and crazy mix of just about anything. I love it.

Making interesting characters

I read a good blog post today, which got me thinking about how I generate the characters I play. Our Sunday Group have been playing different kind of New School, indie games, for a while now. Many of these games come from the movement to empower the player which can be said to have started at The Forge. In those games you usually focus a lot on the player characters, naturally. To then just roll the bones and play what you get is kind of antithetical to that idea. My problem is that rolling the bones is how I go about such things!

I was once very fond of GURPS. My love with that system ended when I tried to make some characters in that system. It's a great system in many respects, but it showed to me an aspect which I know about, but hadn't felt before. If you ask me about what kind of character I'd like to play in this or that game, I usually think a bit and then give a few words of the attitude I'm aiming for. When using GURPS that is usually where you have to start, but for me that is the end. Sitting down and actually design a character built upon that vague attitude and you'll find me flailing about indecisively. I don't design my characters. I play them, from the start.

Rolling the bones and making up something as you go along is my way of doing it. I have nothing against detailed concepts, but I suck a making them up on the spot. Using life path systems is something I love, since it gives me a character with a lot of interesting wrinkles and also helps me start imagining things. So, having a table like the one on bloodlines which Mike is working on is right up my alley. Something like this in the rulebook of my beloved T&T would make me happy. As far as I know, neither Flying Buffalo nor anyone else have every published anything like that. A new character could always use some polish, right?

Here's some rough sketches, and a few newly cut facets which shows the jewel beneath. Now, imagine the hell out of it!

The Dungeon Alphabet will be published by Goodman Games!

If you're a regular reader of Michael Curtis very entertaining blog The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope, then you know that he has done an alphabetic rundown of all the tropes and elements of dungeons. I think he managed to nail down a lot of the feel of a good dungeon in those entries.

Now Goodman Games have decided to publish the alphabet in a book! Go to the web page for the book, and look at who's involved in addition to Mike. Impressive. Here's the announcment.

Make a note of that one. It will be good. Really good.