Chatty’s “Get it Together You Bum” game, V 2.0
This is a revised version of a post I published on our sister Tumblr site: Roll. As I realize it’s usefulness, I decided to move it here.
A few days ago I bought Chuck Wendig’s “Confession of a Penmonkey” eBook. I’m loving it so far, funny and insightful stuff!
Chuck’s a blogger, novelist and long time RPG designer. He wrote a ton of World of Darkness books I’ve never read…No offense man, I spent the early 2000′s elsewhere, but my friends tell me that Hunter: The Vigil was teh awesomez.
In his second essay titled The Writer Starts his Day where he discusses the eating habits of the efficient writer (stay away from processed carbs kids and love them eggs) this one snippet struck home:
...if you’re one of those writers who has a hard time Getting His Shit Together, you might want to cast a wary eye at your diet.
I so totally am such a writer. Not so much that I’m not prolific, I’ve proven I can churn tons thousands of words in mere hours. It’s just that I don’t do so in a disciplined and consistant manner because I’m so damn easily distracted and flake out on any effort that is “good for me” at the drop of a rationalization hat.
I want to become better, more efficient so I can handle more freelance work and actually get in that zone where I can stop procastinating (I’m writing this on my lunch break).
Oh that and seeing my growing-again paunch on last weekend’s convention pics… I’m a very vain person and that lard of tub needs some harsh discipline.
So armed with my newfound resolve and the gamification tools at my disposal, I present to you my newest Lifestyle game!
Chatty’s Get it Together You Bum: The Rules
I play to score the most point in a day. I score points by reaching incremental goals I set for myself. I’m considering using the iPhone’s “Epic Win” app to track them.
I keep a weekly scoreboard of daily high scores.
Scoring Sheet:
Productivity
- Write 1000 words = 4 points
- Doing it without interruption = 8 points
- Each additional 500 words = 4 points
- Sans interruption = 8 points
- Completing a significant work-related task = 2 points
- Sans interruption = 4 points
Health – Exercise
- Exercise 30 minutes = 4 points
- In one session = 8 points
- For each additional 30 minutes of exercise = 8 points
- Exercise with family for at least 30 minutes = 8 points
- Picking Bike over Car = 4 points each time
Health – Diet
Current “No” food: Candy, Fries, Beer
- Eat under my daily Calorie budget = 8 points
- Doing so without any “No Food” = 16 points
- Each fruits/veggies portion of a meal = 2 points
- Enter meal in My Fitness Pal = 2 points
Health – Family Life
- Each hour spent with family members= 4 points
- Each unbroken promise (to myself or family) = 4 points
- Perform housekeeping task = 8 points
That’s it. I’m starting this morning, by scoring 2 points for completing a significant, but interrupted task (darn IM and Twitter).
I’m open to suggestions.
Con-Versations: Highlights of The Grand Roludothon
A local group of dedicated gamers worked really hard these last 2 years to foster a local bilingual gaming community that meet on a semi-regular basis to play RPGs and board games. Having dubbed the movement Roludo, they setup a friendly forum and organized a couple of well-received mini-cons .
Over the weekend, they held the Grand Roludothon, a larger gaming convention. I could only attend for the first day so I made sure I packed it with the best I could offer in terms of sharing cool games with fellow geeks.
I GMed 2 games: A session of the Dungeon Reality Show in the morning and a session of The Old School Job, my Cortex Plus Hack, in the afternoon. In the evening, I “rested” by playing a game of Fiasco.
Much fun was had, as usual. Here are the main highlights I recall.
The Dungeon Reality Show: D&D Essentials
This game was a shortened version of the original game I ran a few months ago (Parts 1 and 2). If you haven’t heard about it yet, The Dungeon Reality Show is a silly a strange campaign setting I created where down on their luck adventurers find themselves on the Plane of Games, thrust into a dungeon crawl broadcasted throughout the multi-verse. It’s filled with snazzy one-liners, shameless product placement, freeze-frames, reshoots and a healthy dose of diva-drama.
One character, Elan the Eladrin Mage stole the show, not because his player hogged the spotlight, far from it, but because whenever he had the spotlight, he used it masterfully for maximum hilarious effect. It’s the way the player stumbled onto the concept that was genius. He’d never played this edition of D&D and during his first encounter, he decided to fire his magic missile. As he was looking on his Powers sheet, I asked him:
Chatty: Why don’t you describe what your Magic Missile does?
Player (Looking unsure… then light dawned in his eyes): … Elan, points his target and out comes…. a Rainbow!
From that point on, the player re-fluffed all his powers to paint a powerful, dangerous and angry wizard who had unfortunately been taught magic by Hippy “Flower Mages”. When he vanquished the 1st encounter’s “Boss” he described his Spectral Image spell as being a cute unicorn running and impaling the poor bloodied orc.
Elan: I swear guys, If I ever hear you say anything about the Unicorn, I’ll kill you.
He later made his Spectral Cage spell into an Akira-like giant bear that sits on people.
Elan: I’m a Happymancer. Bitch.
(As usual, I’m taking some artistic licence in how and when quotes were thrown about)
Highlights:
1) The players killed a bunch of kobold:
George Sagging (Halfling Thief): Who shot shit at me?
Kobold Tunneler: It wasn’t me it was (gurgle gurgle)
Saggins: Oops, my bad.
2) They entered a tomb:
Narrator (Deep voice): As you enter this tomb dedicated to valiant heroes…
Cleric of Pelor (In character): Shut up, we don’t care!
Narrator: Screw this, I’m off to lunch!
3) They killed a bunch of Zombies and Skeletons:
Elan: I roll my sleeves stretch my arms, splay my fingers like that and I launch… BUBBLES!
Chatty (Groaning and throwing an Awesome Bead): Oh man! I’ll go smash my head on that hotel partition.
For the rest of that fight, I had all the encounter’s zombies try to grab the Mage, groaning “Buh Buh-les”
4) The final Final Encounter:
Chatty:…
Players: And?
Chatty: Oh right, here’s a dragon, 2 hobgoblins and a bunch of orcs, there’s some shit you might feel like looking at here, here and here.
Cleric of Pelor: Oh right… no narrator.
My friend Charles played a female dwarven Slayer as an ultra-PC feminist adventurer. At one point in this fight, he forced me to “re-film” a scene because the dragon made “an inappropriate and non-inclusive comment” about the sexual proclivities of Elan. GOLD!
Charles wrote this jingle toward the end of the adventure:
They’re Dragon-Killing Bubbles, from the bad-ass Eladrin: Try “Elan’s Burnin’ Bubbles” And you’ll be sure to win. Elan’s burning Bubbles-Death with Sparkles!
Great session overall!
The Squeaky-Clean Job
Let me think about a good complication for you....
In the afternoon I got to play another session of my very own Cortex Plus hack based on the Leverage RPG. I had randomly generated the adventure and, after a bit of artistic tweaking, found myself with the following:
An Ogre-Mage has consolidated and fortified an area of the Monte-Cookus sewers underneath the swanky neighbourhood of ‘nobtown. This causes disgusting sewage flow-backs in the manors of the cities’ richest families. Under huge pressure to provide results, the area’s consul asks the PCs, old acquaintances, to help him out where countless city guards and adventurers of lower statures have failed.
As is usually the game when I run one-shot games, the adventure was silly as hell and mostly improvised based on the scaffolding I had generated. The initial scenes were very good and most players took to the game rapidly.
Some highlights:
One PC was a Gnome G-man summoner. He kept talking with a bad gansta’ accent, asking for the first half of any rewards offered upfront, including the Manor the party was offered for this quest.
Chatty: You want half of a manor, like just now?
G-nome: Sure, why not?
Another PC mixed potions in his mouth hoping to create a fire breathing effect…but got permanent Arcane Halitosis instead.
A scoundrel got hit with the dreaded Red Wizard curse, a growing semi-sentient affliction with a somber agenda. He eventually found a Remove Curse scroll… but it was ALSO cursed. So while half of the Red Wizard curse was nullified… he caught the Blue Wizard’s curse!
Player: Does that mean I have the Purple Wizard’s curse now?
Later, the G-nome whipped out a wand of Earth Digging from their stash (the players totally embraced the ”create your own magic swag” rules) and dug holes to drain some of the stuck sewage… only to meet a grateful, trash-starved Otyugh from underneath.
Trash_Eater: Thanks, I was STARVED man!
Once in the sparkly-clean Sewer-Forteress of the Ogre-Magi, facing a bunch of sleek, groomed ratmen, a character crawled into one of the numerous rat tunnels.
He then took out and cut the Apocalypse Cheese with the Knife of Ancients naming himself the Lord of Filth.
Best.line.ever.
He called to all the rats of the extensive warren to overthrow their germophobic master and join him! Which they did…provided he marry their goddess, a trapped Avatar of the goddess of adventurers.
They managed to escape as PC-generated chaos struck!
A great game!
Based on the excellent feedbacks I got from the game so far, I realized that this Hack is not so much a tribute to Old School gaming than a thrilling and rethinking of the Dungeon Crawling experience. My initial clever joke has been outgrown by the actual experience delivered by the hack. Thus I’m thinking of renaming it “The Dungeon Job” to better reflect its Leverage RPG influence.
Fiasco: Midtown USA
We closed out the evening with a 5 player game of Fiasco. I know from experience that trying to explain a scenario always ends up as a tangled mess so I’m going to keep it short.
I was Stan Merlotte, an aging, bald, paunchy ex-bowling pro and bowling alley hustler. I really wanted to get laid with an old flame of mine: 425 lbs “Maman Denise”. I ended up with my thumbs sawed off by the local dentist.
A friend on Twitter perfectly summarized how things went for poor Stan:
Who got two thumbs and just got laid? Not this guy! (thanks @JBMannon)
A great weekend. I want to thank the organizers who worked really hard to make this con a reality, I had lots of fun.
Photo Credits: Christian Jarry (@sicnaxyz)
Chatty DM, Freelancer, Part 2: Lessons from Day Jobs
Hey, I’m holding on to my promise and I’m posting a new post this week! Yay! Yes, its still autobiographic but I’ve got gaming stuff coming on the horizon and I’ll return to good old gaming posting soon.
In part one, I mentioned how cathartic it could be to write without boundaries (although I often write better when I have creative constraints). Just to prove the point, what was supposed to be a post about freelance writing advice more or less morphed into an autobiographical piece about what led me to acknowledge I was a writer.
So why not take things where we left off?
Of Water, Sludge and Paperwork
Armed with two diplomas and all the aspirations of a young wolf pup, I took a part-time job as a water samples analyst for a company that manufactured and sold pumps. Working 20 hours a week allowed me to bring back together the old RPG group I had left behind when I moved to the Great (mostly) White North. I called back Math (with whom I’d played RPGs since we were 13), Yan (from Pre-college) and Baboune (from my college years, he since moved to Sweden).
We played a bitchin’ Gurps campaign about sick dragon monarchs, scheming scaled siblings and daring heroes rising from the ranks of indentured humanoids (and a wight named Barry). I’m getting sidetracked again, and I’m sure I mentioned that in my “Gaming DNA” series a few months ago.
My stint as a water tester didn’t last very long, I made a few newbie mistakes and the signs of 6-months-itis started to show, a condition my new wife would soon learn to dread.
I left the company for a job as “research agent” for an environmental consulting firm. I was following the footsteps of 2 of my former Graduate student colleagues who’d held the position before. In fact that’s how I heard about the job in the first place…
Phil (on phone): So I hear you’re going back to do a Ph.D, how was the job? I’m interested.
Ex-Employe: It sucks rotten balls, don’t take it!
But I had set my mind and I took the job. I worked as a research microbiologist, writing academic-sounding material on the results we got on this huge bio-reactor contraption supposedly able to treat contaminated soil with bacteria.
I mostly remember getting up at 11 PM every other night to go and check on the reactor, which often spilled and lost all its content on the floor (that’s 400 liters of hydrocarbon-contaminated sludge as I recall) which I had to vacuum back into oil drums so we could restart the “monster” the next day.
For those keeping tabs on my players, that’s where I met Franky, then an environmental tech and Steph, the lab tech in charge of hydrocarbon analyses.
I did that for about 6 months, (yeah, that’s a pattern all right), before I started growing bored with it… Fortunately, the company’s ISO 9000 coordinator left the company and I applied for the position and got it.
Quality, Assured.
And thus started a decade-long history with Quality Assurance and the wonderful world of auditing processes and writing reports. Most importantly I started writing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), lots and lots of them. Ask anyone in an ISO environment, they’ll tell you SOPs are boring as hell to read, and people usually HATE writing them…
But I don’t, I actually like writing them a lot. However, writing things no one ever really wants to read only gives you so much job satisfaction.
About a year after joining the company, I felt the urge to leave it… badly. Oh look, another 6 months gone by!
I joined a Montreal-based generic pharmaceutical company as a Compliance Auditor. I was the guy in charge of inspecting pharmaceutical plants and paperwork against regulations and document non-compliances in reports. Oh boy did I go to town with reports, emails, quality agreements and, again, SOPs. I developed a lot experience in the next years as an SOP writer and reviewer. Trying to make them interesting, complete and, later, simpler and less verbose.
(That’s what pays my bills as a freelance writer and consultant now ).
I’ve learned many lessons during my tenure in that company, the main one was, again, linked to editing one’s words…
One day I was working at my desk when the director of purchasing, this big german guy, came into my office and asked me if he could “borrow my computer”.
Phil: Well sure…
Herr Director (Fiddling with my Outlook): I know English is not your first language, and you are a good writer, but have you ever heard about spell-checking?
And he turned mine on and left my office.
Humiliating? Yes. Did I start hating the guy? No. He was right. And he had approached me face to face, not in front of my bosses, nor, as many assholes do, during a meeting. I appreciated that. He would later give me many more lessons about life in a large company… and an unplanned one about how NOT to talk to Parisian waiters… but that’s a story for another day.
I eventually became supervisor of the compliance group. One of my teammates, Eric, even joined our D&D 3.5 crew!
One of our team’s responsibilities was to oversee the writing, approval and publishing of all of the company’s 700+ SOPs. That’s where I learned another peripheral lesson:
Not everyone’s a writer…Nor is everyone a reader.
I didn’t stumble on long form blogging by accident, I started my short management career by writing emails that went on FOREVER. When an issue would creep up at work and I wanted to address it, I would often turn to writing ponderous emails first and go in excruciating details about the things I wanted fixed and how to go at it. Most of the time, people replied in (shorter) kind and we fixed things.
But every so often, I discovered that some individuals just.didn’t.get.it. They’d fly off the handle completely misinterpreting some of the things I wrote, ignore most of it or just get everything wrong. At first I became really frustrated and had dark thoughts about those colleagues; I put in doubt their intellectual prowess and willingness to do actual teamwork in the enterprise.
Then, one day, I set a face to face meeting with that one person that gave me the most trouble… and everything got cleared within minutes. That’s when I realized that the written media is not the best communication tool out there… it just was the one I had the most affinities with and that many struggle with it mightily, from both sides of the keyboard.
Chaos sets in
This brings us to the mid ’00s and where signs of my first severe depression started to show. During that period, I changed jobs three time. Fleeing stress and unresolved work issues became a sure sign of psychological distress. I kept telling my wife that the next job would be the correct one, that ‘this last company sucked” and “the next one will be perfect”.
I even left the generic pharma company and came back…
Herr Director (Sent by the company’s owner): You understand that by taking you back, the company is clearly saying they value your work and potential, but you leave again and you don’t get to come back.
Phil (gulp): Understood…
I left for a second (and last) time 15 months after my return. In that time I learned more about project management that I ever want to learn, but at least I now have many tools to plan and execute complex, multi-part projects, something that’s VERY useful when dealing with overlapping freelance assignments.
After having left Quality Assurance to try my hand at corporate training and Project Management , I returned in its loving arms and joined a human genetics research lab in late 2006 as a Quality Manager… shaking off my last depression symptoms.
Opportunity Knocks
I stuck around there for 4 years… the longest I ever held onto a job. During that time I built a whole quality system from scratch as I saw one should be built. It was also one of those academic places where things moved so slowly and expectations were set very low. So much so that I initially bristled at it all.
That’s when I realized something fundamental: Having an insufficiently challenged set of talents was not so much hindrance as an opportunity. While I found the job decreasingly satisfying (while still achieving great success), I could not, yet again, switch jobs without putting my credibility as a worthwhile employee at serious risk.
Or my marriage.
That’s where I started shifting my “untapped” potential into a blog……and the light finally lit up.
What about you, what lessons from work and day jobs has given you good lessons for later careers changes?
Up next: Lessons from blogging about RPGs and bipolar disorder.
Chatty DM, Freelancer, Part 1: Lessons from Academia
Warning: This post turned out more of an autobiographic piece rather than writing advice. Still, my key writing lessons of that period are outlined in there.
Right before sitting down to write these lines, I sent a pair of outlines for Dungeon magazine that, baring no major revisions, will lead to writing my first official D&D articles. My first in nearly 30 years of playing the game.
Looking back at one of the busiest springs I’ve had in a long time, I’ve come to terms with the reality that I’ve become a recurring freelance writer and game designer. My prior experiences from 2008-2010 were not just statistical flukes; it seems I really made it.
The plan that I set out for myself 2 years ago (get better, get projects, go part time, go freelance) as I took the reigns of my life back from depression and bipolar disorder is unfolding beyond my initial expectations. I’m now fully self-employed as a writer and my wife tells me I’ve never been happier.
The upcoming months are shaping up to be as busy as the ones before. Back in 2010, I put aside my gaming so I could keep up with writing for the blog and prepare my training seminars. This year, I wanted to keep gaming, so I set aside blogging. I argued that I usually blogged about what I did and could’t blog about what I was writing… what with being under so many Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs).
The thing is, blogging is cathartic for me, I write what I want, when I want, with no clear deadlines, no imposed subjects and no specific word count except the ones that I impose on myself. Hell this post’s not even going where I initially intended!
I LOVE blogging, I miss blogging… hell, aren’t I blogging about blogging right now?
So that’s why, as I laid to rest my last “rushing to deadlines” bits of work, I decided to take back control of my writing schedule to include a weekly blog post. I know, it’s a fraction of what I use to do, but now that writing is actually what I feed my kids and pay my house with, the era of blogging 5 nights a week has long passed…
…and asking you for dough is OUT of the question. At least, until I publish a book and kindly ask you all to buy it or help my kickstart it.
So that’s why I thought I’d start this new weekly habit by starting a new series (god knows when I’ll finish it) on my personal experience with writing and freelance work. Many of my Critical-Hits colleagues have already done so, chiefly among them my friends Chris (here and here) and Shawn who both had great things to say about freelancing.
I think I have a few, interesting insights to bring as I might have been one of the first RPG enthusiasts to have successfully managed the “Blog to networking to freelance” path.
So here goes.
The Early Years: French.
First off, while I only realized it late in my life, I’ve always been a writer. I became a voracious reader of novels during late grade school. I only slowed when I stopped taking public transport when I hit 19 and bought my 1st car.
When we started writing essays and stories in high school, I loved it! I was allowed to use verb tenses that we hadn’t yet covered because I convinced my teacher that “the story would sound better like that”. In later years, I would learn from younger students that some of my stories were being used in reading comprehension tests. I was pleased but I never thought about it as a career.
The Early Years: English
Being a Montrealer, I was raised in a French family (although my parents spoke fluent English) and went to French schools until my early 20s. I learned English watching Sesame Street, MASH reruns with my dad and deciphering Gary Gygax’s prose while in Junior High; I bought the 1e Dungeon Master Guide when I was 12, my first RPG book ever.
I started writing English essays in high school (as our academic curriculum dictated) and set out to devour English novels by the hundreds. My first authors, proposed by my mother, were Dean Koontz, David Eddings and Margaret Weis/Tracy Hickman. None were pinnacle of literature, but all made for great, accessible reading for a 13-16 year old teenager.
When I turned 18, in what we call CEGEP (pre-university), I took my first English writing class. That’s where I made two horrifying discoveries:
1) English has a grammar. Up to that point I had been surfing with good grades by basically aping the sentence structures I had gleaned from books, unaware of the existing rules.
2) The torture that is multiple drafts. Each week we’d spend 3 hours (plus about the same at home) doing the following: Write and hand in a new text based on an imposed subject, correct the edited 1st draft we handed in the last week and correct the 2nd draft we had handed 2 weeks before.
While I “forgot” about that draft business, and consistently failed to apply it during my early blogging days, I now realize that writing is so much more than an easy game. The core of quality writing is editing and re-writing… no matter how much I still hate doing it sometimes.
I’m 38. I’ve known about the importance of re-writes and editing for a long time. Yet, I’m finally learning to respect it as a necessary step that separates good from great writing.
I passed that class with flying colours; the teacher told me I was one of the most creative writers he’d taught in years. Yet, once again, I failed to acknowledge I was a writer because I was too focused on studying science.
Mother: You have too keep all options open son.
Me: Hey that new AIDS thing looks like a cool thing to cure!
The second fundamental lesson I got from my pre-college years, I owe to my Modern History of the World teacher. In the first class, he (tried to) teach us the importance of building an outline when writing essays and, more importantly for the class, reverse engineer a complex text into its bare bones concepts by distilling it back into an outline.
Teacher: Each paragraph is a concept, an opinion. Each sentence an idea that supports that concept. You should be able to distill each paragraph in a single sentence and each sentence in one key word.
Like Neo, I got my first glimpse at the Matrix… I really did.
Adulthood, English Undergraduate College
I studied in Montreal’s most prestigious English university. Not so much out of pretension, but mostly because microbiology was taught directly as a major instead of a third year minor like in the other university I was considering.
Lab reports, academic papers, essays on the difference between men and women, the Scandinavian model of retail economics, the state of Multiple Sclerosis research and so on… I wrote a ton of stuff, stuff that would make me cringe if I had to re-read it.
By that time I was also writing my own GURPS RPG adventures as scene-based narratives; each containing way too much details but I relished doing it! If you see me at a con one day, ask me to tell you about the Monstrous Brotherhood, an adventure with all monster PCs tackling a Dark Tower that seemingly builds itself at night.
During my last year as an undergrad, I took an English class called “Fundamentals of Academic Writing for English Speakers”, yeah, don’t ask. This class taught me, among other things, how to do proper research, quotes and paraphrasing of research papers and academic journals.
At the end of the class, as I was focused on graduating and starting my master’s in environmental microbiology, the English teacher called me to his office and asked me if I would be willing to allow one of my essays to feature in an academic writing textbook his department was working on.
I said yes… Suffice it to say that I still refused to consider myself a writer. I was a scientist damn it!
Adulthood, Graduate Studies, French
I spent the next 2 years in a French applied microbiology lab, reading tons of scientific papers about bacteria and fungi that could degrade diesel, gas and oil spills. I worked with some crazy bugs that could eat stuff less soluble than your average rock!
My research director drilled a few very good writing lessons in my college-hardened brain: write simply, don’t fear reusing the same words and verb tenses all the time and consider your reader to be a complete neophyte in regards to the subject I was writing about. That’s where I learned that overuse of jargon was a common pitfall of writing.
Director: Assume I’m four years old…
Phil: That would mean you can’t read.
Director: Nobody likes a smart-ass Phil.
By the end of my second year, I moved 800 km north of Montreal, following my wife for her first post-graduation job. We spent 2 years there, I wrote my Master’s report while working as a high school science teacher; I generated 175 pages of ill-written, dubiously researched, greatly illustrated prose.
My research report was accepted with minor corrections. In my director’s comments, he wrote ”Phil has had a relative ease in writing the report”.
Yeah, I have a hard time getting a hint sometimes… but the light was starting to flicker on.
And so I graduated (1999) and started looking for “real work”.
I’ll tell you more next time.
What about you, what early writing lessons stuck with you?
The Old School Job, Part 2: The Lich-Sorceress’ Release
In Part 1, I gave a short description of the Old School Fantasy Hack I was doing using the Leverage RPG as it’s basis. I also set the scene for a an adventure I recently played. Now let’s dive back in.
Dramatis Persona Prise Deux
Var: Beastmaster Ranger-acrobat.
Legodrtz Lolthklorian: Lofty Neutral greyish elf Arcane Sniper-Archer
Elvis the Swift: Chaotic Goo revivalist of the Church of the Holy Tentacle
Tue: Chill Neutral monk of the Boot to the Head Dojo
Valoooovia: Chaotic Horny Amazon psychic sex-mage
The Pre-Crawl: Research
Things started out with the adventurers splitting up to gather info on the temple, its background and its newest occupants. I was curious to see how well this would go.
Valoooovia went to look at various records and found out that the temple had had a great many different denominations over the last century, many Good, most Evil. Her presence didn’t go unnoticed as she attracted the attention of a lovelorn spirit that attached itself to her, incessantly flirting with her.
Elvis and Var went to track the temple’s current “landlord”, a minor burocrat who was more than happy to discuss opportunities with the young, charismatic Lovecraftian revivalist.
Real Estate ‘crat: Did you know there are extensive catacombs below the temple? Perfect for dark ceremonies and having “guests” over for extended stays.
Elvis: What about pools? Do you have a pool down there that could house, oh I don’t know, a few cubits of tentacles?
Real Estate ‘cra: Why yes, we do! In fact, if you could help us with the troublesome, late paying scum exploiting such prime space, we’d be happy to rent it to you at a premium rate!
By that time I was completely off script… not that I had much to begin with. I was enjoying this growing story with the bumbling Priest-Bard so I grabbed at the idea and went to town with it.
Real Estate ‘cra: Here’s a map indicating a secret access to the catacombs and the pool in question. Good luck.
Tue and Legodrzt prowled around the temple when night fell, following up on rumours that some hunting “mommies” were out at night. Turned out that there was a group of 6 or so mummified hunters prowling around the temple, coming out from its main entrance.
Tue went out and tried to kick a few to pieces (catching a bad case of “A Mummy’s Touch”, a rotting disease with creepy maternal overtones, in the process). He took down most of them but missed one.
Legodrtz followed the last one from rooftop to rooftop and invoked a magical tracking arrow-head to embed in his quarry. While he succeeded, he got struck by some sort of psycho-necrotic whiplash, opening his mind to some tenebrous consciousness.
Chatty: Just know that “The Dark Heart Suspects”…
Legodrtz’s player: Hum, okay?
He also witnessed the mummy jump on a hapless bystander, rip its heart out and carry it back to the temple…
The Crawl – Short and Tentacle-y
I was now certain that this could be a “split-the-party”-friendly game, as long as I didn’t go into fully fledged combat scenes with a subset of players. This fits with what I recall from my experiences with AD&D 1e, the core inspiration for my hack (sans all the subsystems).
Using the newly found map and tracking the tagged mummy, our characters explored the catacombs, heading deeper toward what they assumed was “the Dark Heart”. I had them roll one simple orientation challenge before reaching their destination. They succeeded so I set up a confrontation (using the newly minted combat rules my friend Yan and I developed ).
The heroes arrived on a U shaped ledge connected to a lower level through a slide-like stone outcropping. The place was crawling with spineless/headless zombies as were two animated snakes-like creatures, each made of a freshly discorporated human spine and skull. There was also a pair of those Tomb Stalker mummies.
At the extreme end of the ground floor rose a ghastly wall of putrid, pulsating flesh: The Dark Heart. This was an undead construct made of the hearts of all the slain souls in and around the temple these last few days which in turn controlled all the mindless undead of the complex (the Bone Snakes and Zombies).
The fight lasted a good 60-80 minutes. Among it’s highlights were:
- Var, going all dual-sword crazy, took down a bunch of zombies in one go
- Legodrtz made his embedded arrow explode just to have the mummy take it out and throw it among the zombies near it… splattering them all over the Dark Heart, earning him “The Dark Heart Beckons” complication.
- Elvis summoning a tentacle pod that embedded itself in his flesh, which kept growing throughout the fight
- Chucking monsters down the ledges onto others.
Once the monsters were vanquished, leaving only the Dark Heart behind, Elvis tried to weaken it by transplanting his increasingly worrisome tentacles from his flesh directly into the Heart.
Chatty: All right man, usually the tentacles would play against you but this is kinda cool and “it” wants that. They’ll help you (hands a d8) BUT for each “1″ you roll, I can make them grow 2 dice levels. Once passed d12, you are consumed… you cool with that?
Elvis’ player: Oh yeah!
He rolled a one… and failed to weaken the Dark Heart enough…
Chatty: One more “growing”‘ and you’re tentacle compost friend.
Elvis: That was a bad move…
The situation was saved by Valoooovia who took out her wand of uncontrollable orgasms (I’m not making this up) and used it to summon the spirits of cheap doxies, slovenly trull, brazen strumpets and all the other shady characters featuring on page 192 of the the AD&D 1E DMG.
She sent them all to take down what was left of the Dark Heart.
Chatty: As the spirit-whore cries of enraptured bliss assault the mass of abandoned hearts, you feel a stony mass in the middle starting to tremble. One that hasn’t known such pleasure and abandon in centuries.
Valoooovia: Wha?
Chatty: Yeah, the middle of the Dark Heart is actually a Lich Sorceress’ phylactery. She hasn’t had “a good one” for so long that it basically explodes in orgasmic shards of sharp stones and pent-up arcane-energy. You win the scenario!
Epilogue
In hindsight, I feel I expedited the end a bit. I could have had the Lich-Sorceress come out during combat and create a race against time where the heroes would have to take the Heart down while the Lich blasted away. Yet, I hit the game’s core goal: successfully entertain a group of players for a few hours, including character generation. I’m quite happy.
The hack is a great success. It feels like a complete RPG. I just need to make a few final tweaks to the draft and it will be ready for editing.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. It feels good to be back!
The Old School Job, Part 1: The Temple-Brothel of Monte-Cookus
In a recent post, I alluded to working on something really cool that I couldn’t really talk about yet. Well I now can… As long as I don’t go into details.
Earlier this year, Margaret Weis Production put a call out for submissions of hacks of the rules appearing in the Smallville and Leverage RPG. Called The Cortex Plus Hacker’s Guide, it brings together many game designers contributing to the sheer fun of hacking a game engine that just begs for being tweaked with.
The Old School Job
As I mentioned on Twitter a few weeks ago, my submission for 2 such hacks were accepted. What started as a “Hey wouldn’t it be neat if…” comment dropped by Cam Banks (Leverage RPG co-designer) and Dave: The Game turned into a fully fledged obsession and 8 000 words of playtested material.
I wrote a series of Leverage variants aimed at recreating the classic feeling of dungeon crawling adventures. The first hack, dubbed “the Old School Job” introduces rules for creating fantasy characters and mechanics to recreate my favourite elements of old school gaming (ignoring what I never cared for). The second hack, provisionally called the Dungeon Fixer’s Guide, is basically a Gygaxian dungeon fantasy primer presented through the lens of the Cortex Plus system.
I also presented two more submissions. One is a combat system that embraces the “we each get to fight” aspect that Leverage didn’t do so well (or as entertainingly). Finally, taking a page from the excellent “job generator” from the Leverage book, I wrote a series of tables that generate, within minutes, a fully fledged dungeon quest. I’m VERY proud of that last one.
I won’t go into more details but I can tell you that everyone who played it so far liked it. My players want to start a campaign with the system, how’s that for feedback?
What I can do, is deliver an actual play report of last Sunday’s game, it will showcase what the hack can handle.
Dramatis Persona
Var: Outcast ranger-acrobat possessing the power of befriending beasts.
Legodrtz Lolthklorian: Lofty Neutral grey elf (i.e. 1/2 Dark + 1/2 High) Arcane Sniper-Archer
Elvis the Swift: Chaotic Goo swashbuckling revivalist of the Church of the Holy Tentacle
Tue: Chill Neutral Zen monk of the Boot to the Head school
Valoooovia: Chaotic Horny Amazon psychic sex-mage
(Yes, you read that right)
Establishment Flashbacks
The game started with establishing a bit of the PC’s past. Each player set a short scene that lead to a challenge. Players then attributed a distinction to the character based on what occured.
Tue: Under the tender heckling of a ranting Timothy Leary-like sensei, our Zen Warrior-Monk attempted his final challenge: walking on a tightrope over burning embers whose heat was blown up from below the firepit. While he did fall, he managed to walk the rest of the way on the coals, scarring his feet but leaving him otherwise unhurt. That earned him the “Cold Feet” distinction from the other players.
Valoooovia: At a yearly ceremony where the sex-sorceresses of the jungle temples choose mates from the surrounding tribes, Valoovia decided to take upon herself to console that one male who never, ever got picked, year in, year out. She was “successful” in that he volunteered to become one of the temple’s eunuch… if and only if Valoooovia did it. (Table cringe) That gave her the “Ball Breaker” distinction.
Legodrzt: Having once again angered his step-mom, the High-Queen-Spider-priestess of the Dark Elves, our trademark-dodging satire elf found himself fleeing the underworld. Chased by a bunch of really cool looking androgenic guards, he found himself at the edge of a narrow cliff. He failed jumping to the other side, falling to his apparent death. He awoke, unhurt, on a stone funeral bed, surrounded with valuable offerings. He grabbed some and went his way. That earned him the “Leap before you Look” distinction.
Var: Tracking a sleek, legendary panther, the ranger-acrobat found himself face-to-snout with it and only managed to trade blows (getting a bit bloodied) before it fled. While he lost it tracking it down a ravine, he found a funeral site, with a recently dead greyish elf, surrounded with valuables. He swiped some and went his way, quarry-less. That earned him the “Wounded Pride” distinction.
Elvis: Our neophyte priest summoned an aspect of the Great Old Tentacular One during a revival. As things went awry, and the enraptured cries of bliss of the newly converted turned to the screams and the sounds of crushed bones, he tried to slowly creep away. Stopped by a distracted guard, he used his silver tongue and a hefty serving of Chaotic Goo to slip out of that thorny situation, pocketing the guard’s pouch at the same time. That earned him the “Trust me, I know what I’m doing” distinction.
The Quest
The adventure started in the grand city of Monte-Cookus, a sprawling megapolis so large that it’s almanac is almost 3 inches thick and weighs 6 lbs. Our protagonists got summoned by an old adventuring friends, who, following an unfortunate treasure distribution session, found himself wearing a cursed ring of lust. Never one to shy away from an opportunity, he rented-out one of Monte-Cookus’ innumerable ”pay-by-the-month” temples and established “The Church of Ste-Luscious” (AKA the Holy House of Flesh).
He says it’s a tax write-off
He explained that he recently got chased out of the temple by some strange zombies whose skull and spine seemed to have been ripped out from the back. He escaped before getting hurt but he was ashamed to confess that he left a group of influent wives to fend for themselves within the confines of the temple. He asked the party to clear the temple of this threat.
Elvis: And what is to be our reward?
Pimp-Priest: Hmmmm, well there’s a sizable chunk of my monthly tithes in there, if you bring back my already late monthly rent you can keep the rest.
And so the adventure started…
In part 2: A Dark Heart, A sleazy real estate agent, spirit whores and tentacles with abandonment issues.
Chatty in Washington: Highlights of DC Gameday
I just got back from Washington DC where I spent a great weekend with a bunch of cool gamers where I attended a one day gaming mini-convention called DC Gameday.
Here’s a rundown of the cool bits of this weekend of fun and friends.
Dirty Spot it
On the evening before the con, Dave:The Game introduced us to a simple, quick game called Spot it one of those tin-can games you find in book and toy stores. The game is made of a pile of circular cards, each featuring a dozen or so different images. Each card has one, and only one, common image with any other given card.
There are 4 different mini-games that exploit this. The gist of them is that several cards are going to be seen by all players who must spot 2 identical images, call them and then perform an action depending on the mini-game being played (i.e. taking the spotted card or giving it away) until the game’s winning condition is met.
Now this is where things became more interesting. Spot it is a 100% family friendly where people shout “dragon”, “kitten”, “cactus” and what have you. Dave introduced us to the NC-17 version of the game, which is very simple: “You need to add a cuss or an insult whenever you call an image”.
Add beer and your favourite selection of words from Kevin Smith’s extensive thesaurus of sex and coprophilia and you’re in for a half-hour of uncontrolled laughter and groans.
Beavers and Bandits
On gameday, I ran a Mouse Guard session with a great group: my friend E (from Geeks’ Dream Girl), Sean (Your Sword is Mine on Enworld), Kirin (Creator of the Old School Hack) and his charming wife Sabrina. The adventure was my classic con adventure about beaver dams and mice mobsters.
The action revolved around the guard mice having to obtain specific chemicals on the black market of a city called Port Sumac. The chemicals were necessary to repair a “scent barrier” at the northern borders of the mice kingdom that keep predators out. Like all good “burning” games, the characters were put at odds with their beliefs when faced with the choices they had to make to achieve their objectives.
The game rapidly devolved into an argument conflict. On one side, the guards, led by ex-con-turned-patrol-leader Malcom and the other, Big Louis, the local crime lord that had originally ousted Malcom from Port Sumac.
During this argument, two of the guards managed to negotiate a side-deal with a weasely “merchant” to cough up some chemicals. They achieved it at the cost of revealing the paths taken by the guards around Port Sumac and the Scent Border.
This went much against the beliefs of Edgar, the honour-bound guard, forced to let pragmatism trump the guard’s ethos.
Sabrina: “I’m well aware that Edgar is betraying part of what he believes the guard stands for, but our ultimate mission is to save all mice and we can’t afford the delays to do it otherwise.”
Awesome roleplaying just there; this is what Mouse Guard is about.
At the same time Malcolm and his tenderpaw (read padawan) was going for something much more insidious: attempting to establish the presence of the Guard as much more than what it’s mission called, a civil police force. Kirin was playing Malcom and he was totally going for the “Ex-con forced into becoming a guard to avoid jail yet keeping a criminal agenda” Xanathos Gambit trope.
During his quips vs Big Louis, he brought his tenderpaw (Jasper) down a darker path of deceit and lies which yielded a perfect victory, putting the fear of the Guard in the crime lord’s heart when Malcolm and Jasper convinced him that the Guards could muster a punitive strike within weeks that would wipe out all criminal elements of Port Sumac.
Chatty: Throughout the town, you can hear mice whispering “Malcolm is back”
Kirin (with a huge grin): YES!
The rest of the mission was completed without issues and we started the “Player Turn” which is where players get to set their own scenes to catch up on unresolved goals or, had this been a campaign game, set the story for the next session.
E’s character, Jasper the tenderpaw, organized a beer making festival in the hopes of turning some of the criminal elements of Port Sumac toward other, more legitimate activities. While she failed her challenge, she managed to get one of the named thugs, “The Big Cheese”, to stop being a leg breaker and open up a brewery… at the cost of a bad hangover (i.e. Thirsty/Hungry in Mouse Guard terms).
The ultimate highlight of the session for me was when Kirin wanted to set a scene for Malcolm, who, having seen the heroics and selflessness of his fellow guards, felt torn between his felonious nature and his rising sense of worth and honour as a guard.
Chatty: That’s not really a challenge in itself, you totally are allowed to change outlooks and beliefs between games. What do you want?
Kirin: Hmmm, I don’t know… I’m torn.
Sabrina: He ALWAYS does that.
Chatty: Well, the designer in me would want to explore how we could let the dice decide…
Kirin: Yeah that’s cool, I totally want that!
Chatty: Okay, tell me, what side do you secretly hope will win?
Kirin: I kinda hope the Mouse Guard side to win.
Chatty (Taking a page straight out of Free Market) : All right so you’ll roleplay your case for honour and the pride of being a Guard; you’ll roll your Persuader skill for that. I will play your criminal mind and darker agenda; I’ll roll your Deceiver skill. Whomever wins, sets your outlook. You cool with that?
Kirin (eager): Totally!
Kirin (In character): So In the last few days I’ve seen my comrades stand for more than merely protecting the weak and following orders. They went beyond and even against their own beliefs to achieve their mission, yet they still trusted me though I had sinister, selfish plans.
Chatty (Same): Stop that drivel! You’ve worked that angle too long and played your cards too well to let a moment of weakness bring everything crashing down. You’re better than that, you’re better than them all!
Chatty (Out of character): Oh by the way, since you kinda want to have the honourable side of your internal conflict win, I’m going to use your own cunning trait against MY side of the inner monologue, awarding you an extra die.
(Clatter, clatter) He won… and he was very happy!
Sean’s moment came when he set the scene for a great challenge to prepare the redirection of scent chemicals to anther destination than Port Sumac, such to eventually cut off supply to criminals. The challenge involved blazing a new path while rushing to the Territories’ capital to send more chemicals to the jury-rigged border the patrol had just fixed.
When they failed that particular challenge, I made all mice tired and Malcolm (who led the challenge) injured. That’s where Sean, invoking his goal of preventing the death of any of his comrades, requested to take the injury intended for the patrol leader.
Great moment of roleplaying there too! I really love that scenario as it always plays out so differently.
Spies out of Gassy Waters
In the afternoon, I got to play a game of Blowback, a “spy out of the water” RPG inspired by the Burn Notice TV show. This is a small press RPG where players control two characters. One’s a recently “extracted from snafu” spook. The other is a civilian that’s related to all other spies through various relationship ties (spouses, siblings, children, friends, etc.).
In our case, our spies were shipped off to a Maryland mountain resort shortly after a major snafu where we thought we were invading Bin Laden’s house but instead busted a Pakistani intelligence command post, unannounced and guns blazing.
The adventure got our characters embroiled in a story about exploding trailers, fracking (the methane sort, not the euphemistic one), crooked natural resources bosses, a low level thug and corrupted cops.
I’m a bit conflicted about the game and I can’t spare the word count for a full analysis based on just one session. On one hand, I LOVE having to play civilian characters that interact with spy PCs and makes their lives more problematic. I also find it cool that you can ask for favours, lie or break promises and that such actions are backed by game mechanics to simulate the stress this puts on relationships.
What I liked a LOT less can be summarized in 2 words: Analysis Paralysis. The game has a whole phase called “analysis” where players try to piece together enough info on the bad guys’ scheme to move on to the next phase. I don’t think the game has a fundamental flaw about how it handles investigation and spook-like analysis, I just highly dislike investigation and the pitfalls they create with certain styles of play. Anything that makes the story grind to a halt as players get lost in conjectures and chasing chimeras grates on my impatience.
Fortunately, with the help of the GM who eventually morphed his original plan to allow for some plot holes, we ended up the session with a wonderful takedown of the boss and one main character suffering a pileup of trouble.
Bad Guy (Being turned by spooks) : Okay, I’ll squeal if you guys find a good foster home for my kid
Agent (Whose wife took the child temporarily as a favour): No way! No deal!
Wife (played by me, calling on cell phone): Honey, We have to talk now… I’m seeing someone else, I can’t deal with you being here now. This baby reminds me that I want another one, but not with you.
Agent: What?
Agent’s Son (Texting): Oh Dad, like your friend Alex (my character) told you (I hadn’t), I’m gay.
Agent: WHAT?!?
Great finish. It saved the aggravating middle part of the session for sure. Enough that I want to play it again, but mostly to explore, from a designer’s point of view, whether I want to “hack” it or “fix” it (as coined by Wil Hindmarch)
I want to go back
Suffice it to say that this trip, and all the social activities that occurred before and after made for a very cool, relaxed weekend. I got to play test my Leverage hack once more, finally getting the last bits of advice to cinch my draft. I may describe the game if I can secure permission. I also got to watch both “The Gamers” movies and play some Portal 2 coop with Dave.
I’m going to come back for sure. All this was well worth the lengthy train rides. Thanks to all the organizers and to my friends who lent me their guest bedrooms and provided car lifts at ungodly hours to get me from and to train stations.
I promise I’ll be more insulting and less Canadian next time.
P.S. I didn’t talk about the sights and sounds of Washington and the are surroundings. To quote my host Tom, it’s kinda weird to see all that neo-classical architecture without a bunch of alien ships trying to blow them up. I was glad to see them with my eyes. Washigton is a great city to see… when there’s no traffic and it’s not raining hard enough to drown in. 
P.P.S: I may have fallen in love with Alexandria, Virginia.
Chatty’s Adventure Scaffold #1 : Words with Fiends
As some of you may know, I’ve spent the last few weeks working preparing my latest batch of seminars and writing freelance assignments. Last March, I sent off a 4e article for Kobold Quarterly (to be published in the Summer issue). I’ve since been working on two big projects for Margaret Weis Productions (publishers of the Leverage RPG among many other licensed RPGs).
One such project is the upcoming Dragon Brigade RPG, a Swashbuckling game in a world of airships, dragons, intrigue, and magic . The other project is a series of hacks destined to get people who already own the Leverage or Smallville RPG books, to play alternate themes or with new options.
Just like when Wil Wheaton works on a TV series and can’t talk about it, there’s a ton of things I’d like to share with you that I can’t right now (one of the infuriating aspects of freelance writing for a blogger). My need to blog is driving me nuts and I feel the strongest urge to blog about what I’ve been doing lately… and I know that very few people want to read about my “Writing effective Standard Operating Procedures” seminar.
So here’s a little something something related to my working in the freelance cave this last month or so.
In one such project, I came up with a few tools to help me playtest the material I wrote. I can’t share the tools outright but I can surely discuss the new form my prep session output has taken, which I dubbed “the adventure scaffold”.
What’s this you ask? Well have a look, it’s better than 500 words of explanation.
Words with Fiends
Quest Summary: One of the heroes’ older brother, a crippled ex-adventurer, obsessed with finding the one responsible for slaughtering his old adventuring party, comes up to the party with a solid lead to the killer who’s apparently working some sort of dark ritual hidden somewhere in a natural cave formation near a mining port city.
The crippled brother wants revenge and asks the party to exact it. However, the villain is not quite what the party expects. He’s a damned soul sent back from the infernal planes with an impossible diabolical mission. But the soul is quite the hustler and found a loophole to achieve its goals…
The Patron: Family/Ally
An older, handicapped brother comes to one of the heroes, convinced he’s finally tracked the man that killed most of his adventuring buddies 10 years ago. He implores his sibling’s help.
The Quest: Red Herring + Stop the Villain’s Plan
Exact vengeance on the villain. The Dark Lord is up to something involving dark elves and people from the city disappearing into the Mines. Find what he’s up to and stop it, making him aware who sent the heroes (a red herring, see The Dungeon’s Secret).
The Dungeon: A natural cave formation
The various mines surrounding the port city are connected to natural sea caves that pepper the rising cliffs forming the city’s natural harbour. The caves go deep, reaching the Underworld, where a dark elven outpost lies, guarding the way to one of their undercities.
The Dungeon’s Secret: I am NOT your Father!
The Hell-bred Dark Lord’s body is that of the sibling’s party killer… but it’s just the shell of a low-grade villain who signed away his soul and lost it while his body was still useful. The Dark Lord, a damned soul, got a reprieve to return from Hell in this body in exchange for turning in souls at an impossible rate… which the Dark Lord has managed to deliver so far.
The Lord has NO idea who was the person whose body he now occupies.
The Main Villain: Dark Lord
A reincarnated damned soul, living in the body of the ex-villain who killed the brother’s adventuring party. A very powerful infernal being, with one wing, horns, claws, Hellfire and all.
Features: Soulburning; Great sword; Soulforged armour; Hellfire blasts; “I’m smarter than everyone”; Greedy; Deadly afraid of getting caught
Agents: Devilish Thugs and Dark Elf Scoundrels (see below)
Minions: Imps and lot’s of them!
The Villain’s Plan: Harvest a Resource + Perform a Dark Ritual
The Dark Lord harvests souls from surrounding humanoids by having them mind-controlled and sign faustian deals with devils… a few hours before they die.
FACTIONS
Faction #1: Goblin Warren, Outlook/Plan: Seeking
Goblins are among those being “stolen” by the Mind Parasites the Dark Lord uses (see below). Goblin elders are aware of the Dark Lord’s presence and suspect he’s behind the disappearances, but are afraid of confronting him.
Goblin Hunters: Spears and Shortbows
Goblin Witch Mother Crone: “I Curse You”
Faction #2: Infernal Lawyers, Outlook/Plan: Trading
A Group of devils are present in the dungeon, happily drafting and signing up very lucrative faustian pacts with appallingly short lived humanoids. They are unaware (and uncaring) of the loophole the Dark Lord is using.
Infernal Lawyers: “What we do is legal”; “Is the Paperwork in order?”
Infernal Assistants: “This Book of Law is Heavy!” “Right away boss”
Faction #3: Psychic Worms, Outlook/Plan: Trading + Allied With Main Villain
A race of physically weak sentient parasitic worm-like creatures (2” in length, mouth like Carrion Crawler, very slow) that feed on brains. They’ve entered a bargain with the Dark Lord. The Lord provides relative safe transport to defenseless “hosts”, the Worms burrow in the hosts’s spines, take control of the bodies and return to the Cave where they sign away their hosts’ souls shortly before consuming their brains.
Dark Lord: It’s the perfect symbiotic deal!
Psychic Worms: Hidden; Psychic Blast; Psychic Explosion (kills the worm); physically weak
Faction #4 : Dark Elves
Outlook/Plan: Seeking
Dark Elven Scoundrel are paid by the Dark Lord to seek out and deliver canisters of mind worms into the vicinity of likely targets. They use the gold and gem to finance a future excursion/invasion on the surface.
Dark Elf Scoundrel: Sneaky; Poisoned Weapons; Infravision; “We Hate elves”
Faction #5: Battered Infernal Auditor
Outlook/Plan: Hiding
An infernal auditor and his retinue of agents were on the trail of the Dark Lord’s scheme, trying to catch him red handed. However, the auditors were bushwhacked by the Hunter Construct (See Wandering Threat below) and barely survived. They are hiding from it, trying to find a way to achieve their objective.
The Auditor: Red Pen of Doom; ” Just one more question”; Badly wounded
Repo Devils: Grabbing Claws; lack of imagination; Badly wounded
Wandering Threat:Crafty Beast
The Discordian Hunter Construct
Sensing a significant infernal disturbance affecting the multiverse’s balance, the Discordian Council has sent a Hunter Construct to seek and destroy it. So far the construct hit the auditors but has managed to miss of the faustian lawyers who are protected by the Dark Lord’s forces.
The Discordian Hunter Construct: relentless; Crushing claws; Single Minded; Inflexible programming
How to play this Adventure
As you can see, the “Scaffold” makes no mention of maps, scenes, encounters, treasures or anything. Yet, I find it easily adapted to any fantasy RPG. By adding stats for the Villain, its Agents and Minions; factions and the “Wandering Threat”, an enterprising GM could improvise scenes solely based on setting an initial scene and then running with it based on player choices. More classical GMs could draw (or borrow) a dungeon map and create areas with the various factions, traps and treasures in the purest Gygaxian form.
However, where the model really shines for me is that they are totally compatible with “Mouseburning” game play. Players miss a skill check? Something goes wrong? Your game of choice wants you to implement a complication? Just look at the Scaffold and pick what could happen… maybe the Hunter Construct shows up? Maybe PCs get caught in a Goblin Trap? The Auditor may send his Repo Devils to try to enlist the PCs…
The possibilities are there, ready to be exploited!
Chatty’s Playtest
For instance here’s how my game went:
Scene 1: Players inquired in town about the mine. They were told that mining stopped in the northern shaft because it was run over by goblins. They were also told that people rose up at night and could not be prevented from walking into the mines short of killing them, they never came back.
Scene 2: Heroes laid watch at the nearest exit of the mine and caught a pair of Dark Elves carrying 4 ivory tubes each. After overpowering them, they found the tubes to contain disgusting, hostile worms with psychic powers, which they dispatched. Nobody came form the city that night…
Scene 3: Using a map found on the dark elves, the heroes navigated the mines, caves and upper underworld to find the dark elf outpost. They ambushed and kidnapped a sentry and learned about the deal with the Dark Lord, the worms nursery and the gold and gems mined by the enslaved goblins.
Scene 4: Heroes found cave where Dark Lord was hidden, discovered he wasn’t who they thought he was, fought him until he surrendered, begging for mercy. Heroes exposed his soul-stealing con and refused to let it pass so they dispatched him.
(Fin)
Many elements of the Scaffold never came into play, but that’s all right, they could fuel a further quest…. or not. We had fun for a few hours and that’s what counts.
Do you find an adventure “crib sheet’ written in this format helpful? Would you want me to share another one soon?
Let me know!
Soon, I’ll reveal how I got that adventure plan made.
The World of Exercising Experiment: The Mantearing
This is a post about being a geek parent, losing weight and making a game out of it all… it’s closer to Jane MacGonical’s gaming theory than anything RPG related. But if you are a gamer parent and face (potential) obesity problems, this may be of interest to you.
Last fall I was faced with a double conundrum. I was gaining weight at a steady pace, standing knee deep in rising cholesterol levels. I could see my wife’s growing concerned for my health. At the same time, my very cerebral 8 y.o son Nico, recovering from his 3rd ear surgery in 3 years, was getting into early onset childhood obesity.
I took my own health in my hands and went back to the gym, hired a personal trainer and a nutritionist and promptly started losing weight again (I’m at -15 so far). But I was a bit at a loss about helping Nico lose weight. Short of turning the house into a food police state, scrutinizing everything my children ate, my wife and I struggled to bring balance back to our typical 21st century “too busy for life” household.
That’s when I had an idea which I pitched to my wife Alex.
What if I we had Nico perform twelve 30 minutes bouts of exercise on a monthly basis with either of us? That turns out to 3 a week, which is what health guidelines prescribe as the minimum activity level people should have. Nico also has Phys Ed at school, swimming lessons on weekends and plays Soccer as an after school activity once a week, so all in all this looked like a good deal.
We also agreed that we’d reward the monthly efforts. If he hits his target, we’d give him something worth about 20$. I knew he liked Junk Food, so maybe he’d like to go out for poutine once a month.
Alex: Why don’t you ask him what he wants?
After a short discussion, Nico accepted to do it… in exchange for me paying his own World of Warcraft account. He argued that playing games was better than eating junk food.
Hey, who’s the parent here?
Of course, I agreed. I would keep paying the account as long as we did all 12 exercises sessions each month AND that he never played the game without my permission first.
So in essence we invented a game, where we played exercise games (and walks, bike rides, etc.) in order to gain “money points” to keep playing another game!
I think Jane would find this very cool.
So we started that way back last October. Want to know how the experiment turned out?
While Nico resisted doing exercise at first, he grew accustomed to it and it’s now part of his weekly routine. We biked till mid-November, we bought the Just Dance games for the Wii. We also made extensive use of Wii Sports and the PS2′s Dance Dance Revolution games.
As a very surprising turn of events, Nico took to Alpine skiing with Alex and he loves it.
Nico lost about 10 lbs, in spite of growing a few centimeters! He’s also calmer, less prone to mood swings and he looks and acts happier. His school grade even bumped a few points up!
Already a major win!
That I get to exercise more with him is a double win!
Nico and I took on playing World of Warcraft together. He got all the extensions for X-mas while I got the Cataclysm one for my account. We leveled up a bunch of characters and have tons of fun. Our Goblin Shaman/Warlock team just hit level 31 earlier today.
But here’s what I never saw coming: a few weeks ago I asked him if he wanted me to cancel the Wow account, possibly switching to a new reward. I wanted to make sure that he remained motivated to exercise.
Nico: No daddy, I want you to keep paying for our subscriptions, not so much because I love playing Wow, but because I really like spending time playing with you.
…
…
…
Epic win anyone?
Beyond the obvious lesson I was served by my 9 year old son, it made me realize that I took as much pleasure and comfort spending that time with him. That while the exercise was good for our bodies and minds… spending some fun, relaxing time with family was good for our souls.
That’s what caused the man tear.
P.S. Speaking of games to lose weight, E of “Geek’s Dream Girl” fame has taken inspiration from my “Keep Chatty off the Internet game” I’m currently playing. She created an “Exercise and stay Healthy” game over at the Plus 5 CHA forums. I happily joined, please join us if you want to!
Image from The Weight Lifter’s Blog
Chatty’s PaxEast Highlights: 3 days of Fun Among Friends
Yes, this site is run by insane people, but IT WORKS!
Mere days after the conclusion of the second PaxEast gathering of gaming geeks, I still struggle to reinsert myself in that pre-formed vessel that we call “normal life” (for a given value of normal).
As you may know, Dave and I obtained Media (and Speaker) passes for the event so why not meet the requirements of “talking about the show” by writing about the highlights of the time I spent there?
Thursday night:
After a day-long ride from frigid, stormy Montreal we made our way to the Intercontinental Hotel in South Boston. I had organized an evening of board game in the hotel lobby and, like last year, it was an instant hit.
Here are some of the games I played or recognized:
I ended the night talking to Tavis Allison (long time RPG Freelancer and blogger at of The Mule Abides) where we remade the RPG world from both ends of the Old/New school spectrum. The night was a blast and I already knew I’d spend too little time sleeping.
Friday: Convention Center, Keynote, Q&A and Showroom
The Premise was just plain gigantic and perfect. The Boston Convention Center is light years beyond the one we were last year. I wished there were nearer food outlets, but we made do.
The keynote, by game designer Jane MacGonigal was one of those life changing mind-rewiring events. My mind is abuzz with new game ideas that have real-life, practical applications.
We even broke a world record playing a 5000 players game of massive multi-player thumb wrestling , that was surreal… and plaguetastic!
The following Q & A with Mike and Jerry was icing on the cake, with a roomful of geeks sending waves of admiration, adoration and shameless gushing (and empty calories) towards our Maitre’d.
I mean, what the hell is Irn Bru?
PM: I don’t care if it’s all downhill from here, this was beyond awesome.
We walked the floors of the convention center after and realized just how immense it really was. And there was stuff to do everywhere. As it will likely grow from year to year, PaxEast will be one of those monster events you will never tame, experiencing only a tiny slice of it at every year, much like Gen Con.
I also made a quick tour of the exhibit floor with Yan and PM and we all agreed that it was way better than last year. Yes, there were some very long lines, but we managed to see some very cool stuff.
Friday: Return of the “Be your own Hero” (e)book
During my visit of the expo all, I made my way to the thin slice reserved for indie game developers and met with Neil from Australia-based Tin Man Games. They showed us their iOS-based Adventure gamebook applications. I hope to get a copy in the next few weeks and put up a review but suffice it to say that the 10 year old boy in me was filled with nostalgia and wonder at the sight of that beautiful game.
Highlights:
- Each game has roughly 8 times the number of entries than the 1980′s UK books pioneered by Steve Jackson (no, not that one) and Ian Livingston
- The game has an integrated character sheet that tracks stats, equipment and knowledge acquired.
- Built-in dice roller.
- Gorgeous artwork and a huge game world and accompanying ever updating gazetteer.
Plans are in place to port the game to Android and possibly the PC in the near future.
Friday: It all makes Sense Steve!
I teamed up with Dave and we interviewed Steve Jackson (yes, that one) and Phil Reed about the upcoming releases for SJ Games. Two things stood out for us:
- Ogre Boxed set: A large box set with map tiles, 3D double-sided Ogres and superstructures. The increase in size of the Hex map and the beautiful art of the playing pieces made me want to own yet another version of that game.
- Axe Cop Munchkin…
(Record scratching sound….)
Yes you read that right, Axe Cop, where a cop kills bad guys with his axe and a flute cop gets turned into a gun dinosaur and Unibaby has a horn that makes him super smart and evil Santa turns into…
Yet this addition to the increasingly out of control line of games now makes EVERYTHING make perfect sense… A Dutch accented level 6 Ninja Psionic Thief with a +4 Chainsword and a Cape of Invincibility? Perfectly logical.
This is a refreshing take on a franchise I found was getting a little on the stale side.
Friday: Panel
You can follow the story of it just here (and even listen to it). Suffice it to say that we went from nervous, to terrified, to engrossed, to relieved, to satisfied.
Friday: Fiasco!
I will never again try to describe a full Fiasco game but here’s the elevator pitch.
“A lesbian couple of Russian Spies decide to wreck vengeance on the small scientific community of McMurdoch Antarctica. They plan to poison everyone with a secret drug that turns people into zombies after death. As the infection spreads, the sole spy survivor leaves on board a Russian trawler, leaving undead ex-lovers and collaborators behind. The station, then the whole world, falls to a Zombie Apocalypse. She dies in the “loving” embrace of her zombified ex-girlfriend, on the front lines of a loosing war to save the fatherland”
I LOVE this game beyond belief. I was officially dubbed the “Craziest player ever” when I had my character say, while standing beside a 55 gallon barrel of urine : “time to remove that catheter Dr. Johnson”
Saturday: RPG day!
Saturday was all about RPGs… I played about 9 hours of them!
Dave ran us through his homebrewed hack of Mage the Ascension using the Leverage ruleset. It was awesome to play modern time reality-bending wizards with such a clean set of simple, yet rich rules. We invaded a tacky run down casino held by a Frank Sinatresque Vampire and brought the whole thing down (as well as one player’s clothes).
Dave (Playing our patron): Nice job…. Hey, what happened to your pants?
End Credits.
Made of win if you ask me.
Mike Shea (of Sly Flourish fame) ran us through a hyper rapid Gamma World adventure where we made characters (I was Le Grey Pupa, Cockroach Giant) and had 4 combat encounters in less than 2 hours. Quite a feat and quite an enjoyable game. I’m slowly warming up to Gamma World. I’m not quite sold but I could be after a few more games with GMs as awesome as Mike was.
My last RPG of the day was a Mouse Guard game with some Twitter friends I made over the last year. The game was my classic “Beavers and Bandit” adventure and it was beyond fun.
My highlight:
During an argument between the PCs and members of the city’s organized crime who wanted them to butt out of their business, I had scripted a Feint argument. I had to go for the throat of the opposing team…
Crimelord (to ex-con mouse Guard): So, your mom still lives around here ya know? She’s doin’ real good, in fact Moe over there just had tea with her last week, such a sweet lady huh Moe? Nice to know she’s still so healthy for an old broad like her…
Player (eyes and nostrils flaring): You did NOT just go there!
WIN!
The whole game was awesome but this exchange is why I GM!
Sunday: Gifts and goodbyes
On Sunday, after a stupidly short night (thanks to spring time and a late late Magic the Gathering game), I did a rapid last tour of the exhibit hall, bought gifts for my family:
- Stone Age for Alex
- Ascension for Nico
- A Skele-Pirate vs Skele-Ninja T-shirt for Rory
- Dixit 2 Extension for Rory
I then said my goodbyes to the awesome people I met and those I had seen again for a few short days. I already look forward to seeing them again in a few short months.
I left Pax with the certitude I’d be there next year. Better prepared… ready for even more fun.
A special thanks
I got to meet some very special fans this year. It was the first time that people stepped up to me and shared, in their own words, their appreciation for my work. While I have not yet mastered the way to gracefully accept praise, especially from shy people, please know that I was truly touched. Your nice words and courage strengthened my resolve to continue doing such cools things in our little corner of geekdom.
For those who could not quite work up the courage, I noticed some of you, know that there’s always next year or Gen Con, I’ll be happy to spend a few minutes talking to you.
Thanks again! All of you.
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