It's strange how things come full circle. Yesterday was seijin no hi, the day when everybody in Japan who turned twenty in the past year officially becomes an adult. As well as being a national holiday, it's naturally one of the best nights out in the year. All the clubs in Tokyo throw massive parties and Roppongi, Daikanyama and Shibuya are thronged with twenty-year-olds in various states of intoxication and extremely high spirits. You can't swing a cat without hitting a young lady (or young man) who's single (or maybe not so single) and looking; put simply, if you can't pull on seijin no hi you might as well put away your pulling hat forever and devote yourself to a life of celibacy.
A couple of years ago wild horses couldn't have dragged me away from Daikanyama on seijin no hi. But you know what I did instead? Stayed in and wrote a blog entry about Fighting Fantasy Books. (Not just that, of course; now I'm a married man and becoming sensible so the wife and I sat indoors with a few bottles of wine watching DVDs and scoffing pizza. But for an hour before that, it was Seas of Blood all the way).
Life's a funny old thing. When I was 13 or 14, reading a Fighting Fantasy book on one of the best club nights of the year wouldn't have seemed at all unusual. I barely knew what a club was. 15 years of progression, of growth, of experience, and I seem to have found my way back to that point. Is this a good or bad thing? I can't quite tell.
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Monday, 11 January 2010
Fighting Fantasy Monday: Seas of Blood
Here's a little experiment. We (me, the writer of this blog; you, the collective reader) are going to play us some Fighting Fantasy. The way it's going to work is this. Every Monday I will post a "turn", with the options given at the end. You, the gentle readers, will then comment on the entry voting for the option you would like to go for. Over the course of the week I will collate this data, and post again the following Monday with the "move" which gathered the most votes. And so on until completion. The book we'll be using is Seas of Blood, and its thoroughly fantastic cover is provided for your enjoyment below. (Weirdly, the Japanese title translates as Pirate Ship Banshee [Kaizoku-sen Banshii-gou]. Not nearly as evocative, is it?)
Here is the blurb:
Yes, you, I tell you. YOU!
First things first, we have to determine the nature of our slovenly pirate crew. The key attributes here are CREW STRIKE (how good we are in ship battles) and CREW STRENGTH (the manning level on board our ship, the Banshee). And I rolled a 6, followed by a 5 and a 6, giving us a CREW STRIKE of 12 and a CREW STRENGTH of 17. Not bad at all. Abdul the Butcher stands no chance. I only hope I haven't squandered all our good luck on the ship.
Next, it's our (YOUR!) abilities. Skill, Stamina, Luck, as with all FF books. And I rolled a 6, a 3 and a 4, and another 6, giving us a Skill of 12, a Stamina of 19, and a Luck of 12. This is some seriously good dice rolling. It's pretty much impossible to complete most FF books if you don't have a skill of at least 10 (there's usually a guaranteed fight with a Skill 12 monster at some point) so we're good to go.
Finally, the book tells us we also need to keep a Log. This is a record of how many days our voyage has taken; this is a race, remember.
And off we go. Here's the intro:
[In case you're wondering, no, I'm not typing all this out. Don't be silly. I scanned it and copy-pasted.]
And here we come to our first choice:
Here is the blurb:
The seaport of Tak is the largest den of thieves, pirates and cutthroats the civilized world has ever seen. In this city of corruption there are two pirates known for their ruthless greed, their daring raids and their countless skirmishes with death. One of these infamous men is Abdul the Butcher. The other is YOU!
Only one of you can be King of the Pirates, but who will it be? A bet is made that the first to reach the distant Isle of Nippur with the greatest amount of gold wins the crown. But beware! The seas are treacherous, and many horrible dangers
await you. . . .
Two dice, a pencil and an eraser are all you need to embark on this thrilling adventure. YOU decide which route to fol low, which dangers to risk and which monsters to fight.
Yes, you, I tell you. YOU!
First things first, we have to determine the nature of our slovenly pirate crew. The key attributes here are CREW STRIKE (how good we are in ship battles) and CREW STRENGTH (the manning level on board our ship, the Banshee). And I rolled a 6, followed by a 5 and a 6, giving us a CREW STRIKE of 12 and a CREW STRENGTH of 17. Not bad at all. Abdul the Butcher stands no chance. I only hope I haven't squandered all our good luck on the ship.
Next, it's our (YOUR!) abilities. Skill, Stamina, Luck, as with all FF books. And I rolled a 6, a 3 and a 4, and another 6, giving us a Skill of 12, a Stamina of 19, and a Luck of 12. This is some seriously good dice rolling. It's pretty much impossible to complete most FF books if you don't have a skill of at least 10 (there's usually a guaranteed fight with a Skill 12 monster at some point) so we're good to go.
Finally, the book tells us we also need to keep a Log. This is a record of how many days our voyage has taken; this is a race, remember.
And off we go. Here's the intro:
The city of Tak, at the northern end of the Inland Sea, is the greatest den of thieves, criminals and cut-throats the civilized world has ever seen. Every form of vice and illicit activity is not only permitted, but even encouraged, in this city of scum. This, your home town, is where your adventure begins.
Of the numerous pirates drawn to Tak, you and Abdul the Butcher are recognized by all as being the kings in daring and greed. However, neither of you are particularly wealthy, as your love of gambling consumes all the riches that you bring back from your journeys against the enemy cities of Lagash,
Marad and Kish.
The infamy that the two of you have bred is also the source of a great rivalry; you each try to outdo the other in increasingly dangerous but breathtakingly successful raids. Your goal - the title of King of Pirates, the Sacker of Cities, which is never bequeathed, but only earned.
One evening, while dicing against each other in one of Tak's gambling-pits, somebody suggests that the two of you should have a contest to determine, once and for all, who is the greatest pirate. The idea appeals instantly to your audacious spirits. 'Yes,' says Abdul, 'let us have a race of speed and treasure.' You agree upon the terms of the contest. Each will take only one ship and, sailing from Tak on an appointed day, will head for the distant isle of Nippur, which lies deep in the great Southern Sea.
The journey must be completed within fifty days and, at the end, whoever has the greatest amount of gold wins the bet.
With shaking of hands all round and much toasting, the deal is sealed. Your journey is about to begin.
[In case you're wondering, no, I'm not typing all this out. Don't be silly. I scanned it and copy-pasted.]
And here we come to our first choice:
So have at it, readers. 55, 20 or 76? You decide. Then tune in next Monday to find out what happens...
On the day appointed for the beginning of the race, you take the Banshee out of the towering granite bay of Tak and into the Inland Sea. Abdul the Butcher's Haveldar cuts quietly through the water beside you.
Far to the east is the hostile but rich port of Lagash; to the west is the Scythera Desert, across which the caravan routes to the cities of Kish, Calah and Assur run. To the south is the mountainous isle of Enraki.
Will you:
Head towards Lagash for a dangerous but daring raid against its coastal shipping? Turn to 55
Travel to the Scythera Desert to plunder the rich western caravans? Turn to 20
Patrol the Inland Sea via the isle of Enraki? Turn to 76
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Note: Your victory is very improbable.
If you were ever a fan of adventure gamebooks as a kid, I heartily recommend this thread by Melan at therpgsite. It had me laughing so hard I was fighting for breath, partly because his commentary is so funny but partly because the younger him sounds so similar to the younger me; the only difference is that he was slightly more diligent in his efforts to create the ultimate adventure gamebook.
There's something rather life affirming about the fact that adolescent boys, whether in Britain or Hungary, can have exactly the same sort of weird interests. One of those "we are the world" moments.
There's something rather life affirming about the fact that adolescent boys, whether in Britain or Hungary, can have exactly the same sort of weird interests. One of those "we are the world" moments.
Saturday, 9 January 2010
Man on Wire and the Never to be Played Games
On the subject of games that I would be running in an ideal world but never will, we just finished watching Man on Wire. (The life of a married man on a Saturday night in the biggest and most exciting city on earth, ah, glory days. At least I had a few G&Ts.) In case you don't know it, you should. In case you haven't seen it, do so immediately. It's the story of Philippe Petit, the man who in 1974 walked on a tightrope between the Twin Towers in New York.
The genius of Man on Wire is that it's presented almost like a Heist movie. Petit and his gang made scale models of the Twin Towers, sneaked inside on numerous occasions, made fake IDs for themselves, took aerial shots by helicopter, observed the comings and goings inside and outside the building for hours at a time. Because the event was technically a criminal act, it required meticulous planning. In the end it went off without a hitch.
So my never-to-be-played idea is this. The PCs are a bunch of thrill seekers, performance artists, extreme sportsmen and general glory hunters. (Rogues, if you will.) They exist to pull off heists just like Petit's, planning and executing daredevil stunts to impress onlookers, bring beauty to the world, pick up chicks and/or self-aggrandize. The cities and extreme environments of the world, from Tokyo to Everest, are their sandbox.
What the game would need to really make it work is two things:
1) Mechanics for making stunts at least a little tense. You can't get much more bathetic than a long drawn-out break-into-the-twin-towers sequence followed by "Roll 14 or more on a d20 to walk the wire."
2) Mechanics for garnering glory/attention or whatever you want to call it. What motivates the PCs in this game is accruing fame and attention, so there need to be awards which cover it, with mechanical effects in game. If you pull of a truly world-shattering stunt like the Twin Tower Wire, it will surely give you a boost in confidence and charisma and a warm glow which will have some sort of effect on future success or failure.
Some bastardized form of Risus with extra bells and whistles, maybe.
The genius of Man on Wire is that it's presented almost like a Heist movie. Petit and his gang made scale models of the Twin Towers, sneaked inside on numerous occasions, made fake IDs for themselves, took aerial shots by helicopter, observed the comings and goings inside and outside the building for hours at a time. Because the event was technically a criminal act, it required meticulous planning. In the end it went off without a hitch.
So my never-to-be-played idea is this. The PCs are a bunch of thrill seekers, performance artists, extreme sportsmen and general glory hunters. (Rogues, if you will.) They exist to pull off heists just like Petit's, planning and executing daredevil stunts to impress onlookers, bring beauty to the world, pick up chicks and/or self-aggrandize. The cities and extreme environments of the world, from Tokyo to Everest, are their sandbox.
What the game would need to really make it work is two things:
1) Mechanics for making stunts at least a little tense. You can't get much more bathetic than a long drawn-out break-into-the-twin-towers sequence followed by "Roll 14 or more on a d20 to walk the wire."
2) Mechanics for garnering glory/attention or whatever you want to call it. What motivates the PCs in this game is accruing fame and attention, so there need to be awards which cover it, with mechanical effects in game. If you pull of a truly world-shattering stunt like the Twin Tower Wire, it will surely give you a boost in confidence and charisma and a warm glow which will have some sort of effect on future success or failure.
Some bastardized form of Risus with extra bells and whistles, maybe.
Friday, 8 January 2010
Amorality in the Sandbox and GM as Performing Monkey
Excellent stuff from Zak Smith today on the importance of rogueishness in sandbox games.
What I'd add to it is that not only do rogueishness and sandbox play go together like [insert analogy of choice here; I recommend "chips and gravy"]. The also make it a heck of a lot easier to GM.
This may be controversial, but I've always thought that the plotted, story-driven style of play so popular in the Silver Age of roleplaying games (and depressingly still the dominant paradigm today) puts a heck of a lot of pressure on the GM. Not only does he have to structure his campaign and give it a beginning and a middle and an end. He also has to create scenes, build climaxes, lead his players on a consistently entertaining merry dance; he's worse than a puppet master because at least a puppet master is under no pressure to entertain the very puppets whose strings he holds. While admittedly the scope of a plotted campaign cuts down on prep (if you more or less know what's coming, you don't have to worry about unforeseen circumstance), it more than compensates with the workload it generates in just dragging the entire campaign along.
Sandbox gaming spreads out that workload and creates equality. While there's an onus on the GM to do the groundwork with hexmaps, weather tables, random encounter generators, and adventure hooks, it's up to the players to be the engine of the game. They're the ones who make the decisions and drive whatever "plot" arises. And of course rogueishness helps enormously in this; heroes need villains to fight and plots to foil, which again forces the GM to come up with narratives. Rogueishness generates its own stories.
This is one of those areas where the oldest of old school, and the newest of new school, find an overlap. The Kewl Kids over at Story Games spread the workload by giving narrative control to players through explicit mechanics. The fatbeards do it by saying "fuck story, be a rogue". But the end result is more or less the same.
What I'd add to it is that not only do rogueishness and sandbox play go together like [insert analogy of choice here; I recommend "chips and gravy"]. The also make it a heck of a lot easier to GM.
This may be controversial, but I've always thought that the plotted, story-driven style of play so popular in the Silver Age of roleplaying games (and depressingly still the dominant paradigm today) puts a heck of a lot of pressure on the GM. Not only does he have to structure his campaign and give it a beginning and a middle and an end. He also has to create scenes, build climaxes, lead his players on a consistently entertaining merry dance; he's worse than a puppet master because at least a puppet master is under no pressure to entertain the very puppets whose strings he holds. While admittedly the scope of a plotted campaign cuts down on prep (if you more or less know what's coming, you don't have to worry about unforeseen circumstance), it more than compensates with the workload it generates in just dragging the entire campaign along.
Sandbox gaming spreads out that workload and creates equality. While there's an onus on the GM to do the groundwork with hexmaps, weather tables, random encounter generators, and adventure hooks, it's up to the players to be the engine of the game. They're the ones who make the decisions and drive whatever "plot" arises. And of course rogueishness helps enormously in this; heroes need villains to fight and plots to foil, which again forces the GM to come up with narratives. Rogueishness generates its own stories.
This is one of those areas where the oldest of old school, and the newest of new school, find an overlap. The Kewl Kids over at Story Games spread the workload by giving narrative control to players through explicit mechanics. The fatbeards do it by saying "fuck story, be a rogue". But the end result is more or less the same.
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
This is Relevant to my Interests
Lord of the Rings gaming. A project near to my heart. Pendragon. Another project near to my heart. By some strange vagaries of the cosmic ballet the planets aligned themselves yesterday into the perfect positions, and lo! somebody on rpg.net picked up my challenge to him to create a Lord of the Rings Pendragon ruleset. He did so, in not many pages at all. And pretty nice it is too.
Because Venus was in the 7th House, Pluto was a little bit to the left of Jupiter, and Makemake was, er, off over by the Oort cloud somewhere doing something or other, another very intriguing LOTR project then came to my attention not an hour later. Truly the universe is a magical and marvelous mystical mystery. Coincidence? I think not!
Because Venus was in the 7th House, Pluto was a little bit to the left of Jupiter, and Makemake was, er, off over by the Oort cloud somewhere doing something or other, another very intriguing LOTR project then came to my attention not an hour later. Truly the universe is a magical and marvelous mystical mystery. Coincidence? I think not!
Monday, 4 January 2010
Giant Koi Carp
There is nothing alive on this planet that is as ravenous or as stupid as a koi carp. To gaze into the eyes of one as it opens its maw at you with blind hunger, thinking only of filling its grotesquely distended belly, is to gaze into the eyes of gluttony itself. Their baleful rapacity is unmatched.
Here's a picture of one I took yesterday, to prove it.
Giant Koi Carp
Armour Class: 4
Hit Dice: 6*
Move: 180' (Swim)
Attacks: 1 bite
Damage: 2d6+2, special
No. App: 2-40
Save As: F3
Morale: 9
Treasure: V (in belly)
Intelligence: 0
Alignment: Neutral
XP: 650
On a hit which does more than 10 damage, a koi will swallow its victim whole. The unfortunate will then die within 2d6 rounds from a combination of drowning and stomach acid unless the koi can be killed.
Here's a picture of one I took yesterday, to prove it.
Giant Koi Carp
Armour Class: 4
Hit Dice: 6*
Move: 180' (Swim)
Attacks: 1 bite
Damage: 2d6+2, special
No. App: 2-40
Save As: F3
Morale: 9
Treasure: V (in belly)
Intelligence: 0
Alignment: Neutral
XP: 650
On a hit which does more than 10 damage, a koi will swallow its victim whole. The unfortunate will then die within 2d6 rounds from a combination of drowning and stomach acid unless the koi can be killed.
Sunday, 3 January 2010
No Shoes, No Shirt, No Dice
I play a bit of Play-by-Post and Play-by-Email, so I'm no stranger to its advantages and disadvantages. The chief of the latter is well known: it's godawfully slow. This makes detailed planning and complex inter-character interactions (the most fun aspects of RPGing, to me) very difficult if not impossible.
I've been thinking recently of using diceless systems as a way around this. Amber DRPG and (if I understand it correctly) Nobilis allow the player to take far more 'narrative control' than dice-lead games. In Amber, player-characters automatically succeed in any given task unless they are opposed by another player-character. In Nobilis, the spending of tokens achieves a similar effect.
This does away with one of the major stumbling blocks to progress in a PBP game, namely, the Everybody Waits for the DM Song and Dance Routine. This will be familiar to anybody who's tried a game with this format - whereas in a tabletop game the DM can give the players instant feedback on the success or failure of proposed actions, on the net the process becomes attenuated by log-in times, typing times and time zones, making creative thinking and problem solving a frustrating process at best. However, with a game like Amber, where success in many situations is guaranteed, this problem fades to insignificance unless two players are in conflict against one another - rather than the usual "Can I climb that wall/open that chest/break that vase" sort of questions that get posted in a trad PBP game, instead you get stuff like "I climb the wall, then at the top I open the chest and then break the vase". Hey presto, things are moving faster than the pace of a snail on barbiturates.
This only works for a specialised type of game, and part of the fun of traditional RPGs is that failure is a big possibility in most situations. But in the glacial world of PBP it may be a better option.
(There's a good thread on diceless games here at rpg.net. Occasionally that site does throw up something useful.)
I've been thinking recently of using diceless systems as a way around this. Amber DRPG and (if I understand it correctly) Nobilis allow the player to take far more 'narrative control' than dice-lead games. In Amber, player-characters automatically succeed in any given task unless they are opposed by another player-character. In Nobilis, the spending of tokens achieves a similar effect.
This does away with one of the major stumbling blocks to progress in a PBP game, namely, the Everybody Waits for the DM Song and Dance Routine. This will be familiar to anybody who's tried a game with this format - whereas in a tabletop game the DM can give the players instant feedback on the success or failure of proposed actions, on the net the process becomes attenuated by log-in times, typing times and time zones, making creative thinking and problem solving a frustrating process at best. However, with a game like Amber, where success in many situations is guaranteed, this problem fades to insignificance unless two players are in conflict against one another - rather than the usual "Can I climb that wall/open that chest/break that vase" sort of questions that get posted in a trad PBP game, instead you get stuff like "I climb the wall, then at the top I open the chest and then break the vase". Hey presto, things are moving faster than the pace of a snail on barbiturates.
This only works for a specialised type of game, and part of the fun of traditional RPGs is that failure is a big possibility in most situations. But in the glacial world of PBP it may be a better option.
(There's a good thread on diceless games here at rpg.net. Occasionally that site does throw up something useful.)
Saturday, 2 January 2010
Using My Blog Like an Amusement Park
So a New Year is upon us, and it's time to do one of those year-in-review things. God knows this blog is enough of a self-indulgence as it is, so a little more mental masturbation can't hurt. Here are the top 10 most-commented upon entries for Monsters & Manuals in 2009, in descending order.
Joint 9th - Gaming Advice #1: Don't Be a Dickhead and Metal and Gaming (25 comments). The former a summation of my gaming philosophy and the latter a short musing on the association between musical genres and RPGs. I've since decided that though I declared that "I hate metal" in the second of these entries, there's a good case to be made I don't. I like hardcore, I like grunge, I like desert rock/stoner rock, I like space rock, and I like alternative metal, so perhaps I should have just said "I hate Metallica".
Joint 7th - Cool Cultures (26 comments), in which I (among other things) wonder why in geek culture Japan is cool but Poland isn't, and U-turning on Tolkien, where we have a love-in with China Mieville on how great Tolkien is, which puts entry number 1 into perspective.
6th - Bummed Out on Fantasy Lit (27 comments), a "pitiful whine" about the dearth of quality in the fantasy genre, which seemed to touch a nerve. I wish I could update the entry with pleasent news about some great new discovery, but the major foray into new territory for me things year (Erikson's The Malazan Book of the Fallen) ended in disaster after some early promise. Since then I've stuck to Gene Wolfe, GRRM and Mieville.
5th - On Warhammer, British vs. American Fantasy, and Pessimism (30 comments), in which I compared the bleakness of British approaches to fantasy with the quintessentially Optimistic Individualist American D&D.
Joint 3rd - The Children are our Future! and Top 10 Things that have Pissed Me Off about Roleplaying This Year (31 comments). Two rather depressing entries - about the hobby's future and its current state of play, respectively. Why do I play RPGs, again?
2nd - This is all very Ridiculous Shaped (36 comments). I managed to cut down on all the ranting this year, I feel. Here's one of the rare blasts that got through the net.
1st - No Revolutionary Socialism, Please, I'm an Escapist (87 comments). When I penned this rant about China Mieville I had no idea it would turn into an epic debate about art, socialism, nerdrage and war. Just goes to show.
Joint 9th - Gaming Advice #1: Don't Be a Dickhead and Metal and Gaming (25 comments). The former a summation of my gaming philosophy and the latter a short musing on the association between musical genres and RPGs. I've since decided that though I declared that "I hate metal" in the second of these entries, there's a good case to be made I don't. I like hardcore, I like grunge, I like desert rock/stoner rock, I like space rock, and I like alternative metal, so perhaps I should have just said "I hate Metallica".
Joint 7th - Cool Cultures (26 comments), in which I (among other things) wonder why in geek culture Japan is cool but Poland isn't, and U-turning on Tolkien, where we have a love-in with China Mieville on how great Tolkien is, which puts entry number 1 into perspective.
6th - Bummed Out on Fantasy Lit (27 comments), a "pitiful whine" about the dearth of quality in the fantasy genre, which seemed to touch a nerve. I wish I could update the entry with pleasent news about some great new discovery, but the major foray into new territory for me things year (Erikson's The Malazan Book of the Fallen) ended in disaster after some early promise. Since then I've stuck to Gene Wolfe, GRRM and Mieville.
5th - On Warhammer, British vs. American Fantasy, and Pessimism (30 comments), in which I compared the bleakness of British approaches to fantasy with the quintessentially Optimistic Individualist American D&D.
Joint 3rd - The Children are our Future! and Top 10 Things that have Pissed Me Off about Roleplaying This Year (31 comments). Two rather depressing entries - about the hobby's future and its current state of play, respectively. Why do I play RPGs, again?
2nd - This is all very Ridiculous Shaped (36 comments). I managed to cut down on all the ranting this year, I feel. Here's one of the rare blasts that got through the net.
1st - No Revolutionary Socialism, Please, I'm an Escapist (87 comments). When I penned this rant about China Mieville I had no idea it would turn into an epic debate about art, socialism, nerdrage and war. Just goes to show.
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