Chatty’s Quest : A Twitter Adventure
On October 2011, I started my move into my new apartment and was sitting alone and dejected, waiting for people to deliver my new furniture.
(Yes I am recently separated. Everything’s fine now, including the kids.)
I picked up my smartphone and sent a call out on Twitter for some entertainment.
Chatty: Spending day alone in new unfurnished apartment, awaiting for new furniture and services. Keep me company plz?
That’s when my good friend FDL, sent me this completely unexpected response:
FDL: Ok. you see a grue. What do you do? 
(I was thinking: “Hey cute joke…. Let’s see how it plays out.”)
Chatty: Wave torch
FDL: As you wave your torch, you set your furniture delivery guys on fire. Game over. Restart? [y/n]
(I fell down my flimsy beach chair onto my hardwood floor laughing. This could become fun.)
Chatty: LOL yes. Talk Grue.
FDL: The grue says she’s your upstairs neighbor and she hopes her noisy Angry Birds parties won’t bother you too much. What next?
Chatty: examine exits
FDL: There is only one exit, a hangar bay door.
Chatty: kick door
FDL: Door says “Ow!” and kicks back. Grue looks at you in disgust.
(Very funny man… At this point it was clear we had a Parsely text game going. The fact that it worked so well on Twitter was awesome. People had started reading it and reacting to it. I was having fun, my woes forgotten.)
Chatty: Apologize door.
(I was still playing it old school with 2 words)
Chatty: Inventory
FDL: This game uses the Diablo II inventory screen, so assume that you can’t find anything useful, ever. Assume your hands are empty.
(Har har har…)
Chatty: Exit room
FDL: The grue locks the door behind you. It is very cold outside. And you forgot to say “wear pants”, didn’t you?
FDL: It’s Friday. You never wear pants on Friday. Lord knows you said so on Twitter often enough.
(Smartypants, stop reading my Tweets.)
Chatty: Scoff about need for pants.
FDL: As you exit the apartment pantsless, you run into your other new neighbors who wanted to welcome you. All of them.
(*Facepalm*)
Chatty: Do dance of pantless pride
FDL: Neighbor’s kid takes a swing at your pantslessness with +5 Vorpal Steeltoed boots. Rolls a natural 20. You’re in ER.
(That was a low blow FDL)
Chatty: (ouch…) summon nurse
(There was a missing, untagged tweet here about a nurse casting Cure Critical Wounds and an Orc lying in the next bed, a Battleaxe embedded in its forehead, smiling at me.)
Chatty: Examine room
FDL: Well, it IS an examination room, so you sorta have to do that, yeah. BTW, the Orc says: “You pretty!”
FDL: BTW, the grue called and said you missed your cable guy. He rescheduled your appointment for March 14th, 2177.
(Sigh, it’s funny because it’s almost true)
Chatty: Ask orc for battleaxe
FDL: Orc smiles (toothlessly), hides battleaxe behind his back and says: “You no say magic worrrrd, pretty one!”
(Sigh… time to test the parsely engine.)
Chatty: Smile sweetly and tell orc “give me the (censored) battleaxe you (censored) or I’ll (censored) your (censored) (censored) please.
FDL: Orc hands you the battleaxe and says: “You not gotta be big meanie, hurt Ogg-Bogg’s feelings!” Nurse frowns at you.
Chatty: Kiss orc on forehead and say “I was speaking Bromantic Orc you dummy” then find pants… Any pants.
FDL: You put on clown pants. The clown you take them from looks pissed, until he sees your battleaxe and your Orc.
Chatty: Search clown pants pocket for clown car keys and go out into parking.
FDL: 12,000 evil clowns pile out of the car and squirt unholy water at you with their lapel flowers. Roll saving throw.
(I gotta hire this guy for my next adventure)
Chatty: I’m wearing a gown, clown pants, a battleaxe and an amorous orc with a splitting headache; I make the damn save.
FDL: OK. Just in the nick of time, the Orc dives in front of you to take the Unholy water blast. He dies with a smile.
(Nooooooooooooo…… Ogg-Bogg, our bromance was too short.)
FDL: And then the grue swoops by and steals you away from the angry clown mob. You’re back home, safe. You win. 5000 XP!
That was a great little game. It helped me pass the time and I thank FDL for having taken some time and invested significant creative effort in doing this. So you see, Twitter can be used for parsely games after all (and others too). Provided both parties are willing to play some give and take for entertainment value.
Also, if you haven’t tried them yet, give Jared Sorensen’s Parsely games a try. They are a great way to pass time in between games.
Special thanks to Dr.C., the new special someone in my life, who safeguarded this exchange so I could make a post out of it. Also thanks to Tangent128 who made the TwitRPG logo back in 2008 when I played my first RPG game on Twitter.
Chatty’s Dream Design Project: An Interactive Primer-RPG
Tomorrow will be one of the year’s slowest days on the Bloggosphere: the American Thanksgiving weekend. Of course, that’s when I feel the biggest urge to write in a long time.
But that’s never stopped me before.
So after asking my Twitter readers for inspiration (thanks Christian), I settled on a question that’s been on my mind for a long time:
Given no limits in ressources, time and talent, what would you design?
Hmm, that’s an easy one; I’d design something along the lines of the “Young Ladies’ Primer” found in Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age. The Primer was a nano-computer with one main function, to act as an interactive smart-book that taught children through a long interactive storygame.
So when I say I’d like to do something like that, I’m not thinking about an actual book-shaped computer made with nanotech (although it would be cool), rather I’d like to do something that could, eventually, evolve into just that… with a tabletop RPG spin.
Here are the basic pitching points:
- An application for a tablet PC like the iPad or the equivalent
- The app features a richly illustrated (animated?) adventure story aimed at tweenagers, I’m thinking 8-12.
- The story progressively becomes fully interactive as a CRPG with elements such as dialog choices, character sheets, conflict resolution mechanics and character growth (XPs).
- The game should last between 5 and 10 hours depending on side-quests completed.
- A simple, yet complete set of tabletop RPG rules that allows readers to continue the adventures of the characters of the story
- Stats for all main characters for the story and rules to make new ones.
- A primer to teach parents how to play tabletop roleplaying games with tween-aged children, complete with advice on preparing new stories, inserting educational content (if needed) and letting the creativity of children drive the show.
The tabletop game would most likely be narrative-driven. So far, the mechanics that I envision fitting the most with what I need is is John Harper’s Lady Blackbird as it has just the right amount of rules element (fitting on a demi-page) to make it into really enjoyable roleplaying game for people of all ages.
I don’t know if the technology is there yet or if parents would be interested in this, but as a customer, I’d snag such a product (and pay more than once for different stories) in a minute.
What about you? Do you like the idea? What elements would you like to see in such a app/story/game?
More importantly, if you were asked the same question I was, what would you design?
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.
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
The Dungeon Reality Show, D&D Essentials Edition, Part 1
In mid January, I followed up on a wild idea and got 4 local media geeks to join me for a session of D&D Essentials. It turned out to be one of the best D&D games I’ve played, one of those sessions where the stars are aligned and everything just works.
The reasons for that are manifold. The players, mostly newbies to D&D 4e or tabletop RPGs, were all very enthusiastic about the game. The energy level was just right. My design decisions were near-perfect for the event and I likely managed to put all the lessons I learned from my gaming pilgrimage of the last months in practice.
Time for another Play Report, Chatty DM style!
The Setup:
Since most players had gigs with specialized Geek TV shows/channels (and associated websites) , I thought this would be a great occasion to revive my old Dungeon Reality Show shtick and adapt it to the scenario at hand, a level 2 D&D Essentials Adventure called “Sunderpeak Temple” featured at last summer’s D&D Gameday.
The scenario was a dead simple “invade and vanquish” 5 encounters adventure about reclaiming a recently destroyed Temple from the clutches of a Black Dragon and his band of humanoid minions.
If you never read about the Dungeon Reality Show and can’t spare visiting the link above, just know that it’s a silly D&D 4e variant where adventurers are desperate participants in a lethal show featuring NPCs as 3rd rate actors, callous cigar-smoking producers and crafty, tightly-wound Chronomancers.
All participating adventurers are given a “sponsored” magical item created from existing Items and adapted to the pre-generated characters I created for the adventure.
I posted about the item on our Tumblog here.
Success Factor Aside: Giving everyone an item that was 2-4 levels higher than their levels makes players happy to have a “cool toy” right off the bat.
I had another TV Show trick up my sleeve I held in reserve for the first fight… yet, I ended up being so inspired by the game that I came up with several more!
Read on!
Dramatis Persona
- Maïwenn Amandil: Elven Warpriestess of Pelor, sporting the luxuriant Divine Boon known as Pelor’s Spray Tan and Facial
- Played by Caro, who hadn’t played RPGs for at least 8 years
- Frank the Tank: Beeraholic Human Knight equipped with Morshon’s Stout shield
- Played by… Frank the Tank, who had never played a tabletop RPG
- Seaendithas Steelfarmer: Halfling Thief of great skill, wearing Dr Stealth’s Orthopaedic Adventuring Slippers.
- Played by Stef, long time friend who plays RPGs only occasionally
- Todd Darkmagic (Adopted): Eladrin Mage yielding the legendary “Jim Darkmagic Showman’s Staff”
- Played by FDL, a freelance writer and regular radio-TV host and guest.
I’m not going to go for a blow by blow retelling of the game… I’ll focus on it’s main highlights and lessons.
Lesson: Don’t Fake freedom when unnecessary
Another lesson I’ve learned from small press games and one shot scenarios:
Don’t ever try to give the illusion of freedom to players if the adventure you play doesn’t call for it.
The chosen adventure required PCs to investigate a ruined temple and clear it. Thus, I told players that
A) They all knew each other from a previous, disastrous adventure, explaining the whole “being desperate enough to participate in the show”
B) They had already accepted the thin plot the Quest Giver (a Dwarf merchant they were travelling with) gave them .
Thus no time was lost on building a premise that wasn’t necessary to our current goals as a gaming group.
Lesson/Highlight: Say Yes and Exploit Details
As the players approached the temple, I offhandedly described bodies of priests and monks strewn about. When Caro asked me if her priest found someone alive she could heal I decided to say yes and find a way to make this cool…
Chatty: Hmmm, sure, there’s a guy standing just over there. He’s really badly injured. If you make a successful difficult heal check you’ll get info on what he saw, if you fail he will die at your hands.
Caro: Gulp…
FDL: Todd will help you.
(Clatter clatter, success)
Chatty: The priest’s eyes open suddenly and he cries “DRAGON!” before falling unconscious.
Good start! Taking a page out of the Apocalypse World playbook, from then on, whenever someone asked me to do something that wasn’t directly covered by the rules, I’d pick a skill and a difficulty, explain what would be gain on a success and what kind of dramatic twist would happen on a failure and asked who was ready to help.
The players liked this a lot.
Highlight: The Knight Does Not Fight to the Music, the Music Fights for the Knight.
During the first combat encounter, Frank the Tank enthusiastically embraced the concept of tabletop RPGs. He kept describing cool moves for his Knight and didn’t bother with realism much. When he activated one of his PC’s Combat Stances, he described that he got a Ghetto Blaster out of his backback, put it on the floor and started going all Technoviking on the baddies.
This was very funny… especially when that was later exploited by Todd Darkmagic (adopted) who created an illusion of another Knight holding a Ghetto Blaster over his head. It was topped off when Frank did a power move to deal lots of damage, describing it as breaking the Blaster over another monster’s head.
I absolutely love it when players create scene elements and then others interact with them. It makes scene so much more lively.
New Mechanic: Advertising for Rewards
Once combat started, I implemented another of my new Dungeon Reality ideas. I had the one at the top of the initiative order (PC or myself for NPC) improvise a short advertisement bit about fictitious products in exchange for a one time bonus during the encounter.
For example, Stef told us about Tylenorc, the pain relief medication of true bad asses. After the laughter died down, I surmised that this message would grant stef’s thief with 5-10 temporary Hit Points for the encounter.
The endeavour was a smashing success, beyond what I expected even! Players jumped on that and even started writing copy during downtime between their turns. Hell, they even started gaming the system and created spots targeted to gain specific bonuses (like doing an anti-aid ad during a fight vs a Black Dragon). Of course, I tried to embrace that…Although, by the end of the evening everyone was running out of juice.
I stopped giving my monsters bonuses early in the game… while I participated in making ad spots, I felt like I was taking away from the players fun and abusing the system by giving my side bonuses when I could just as well play with the numbers like all DMs are allowed to in the spirit of keeping the game fun for all.
Highlight: A Knight and his Beer
Chatty: After combat, you smell something strong, yeast-like coming from the well…
Frank the Tank: BEER! I JUMP in it!
Chatty: All right, the challenge for you will not be how you get in there or how you leave it, that’s boring. Rather I wanna know in what shape you’ll be when you leave it. So you’ll have to roll a hard Athletics check to simulate you drunkenly climbing out at the end of this short rest period.
Frank: okay! Burp!
Chatty: If you succeed, great! You’re out and more or less sober. If you fail, you’ll still get out but I will reserve the right to give you the mother of all “Oh man I HAVE to pee NOW” moment whenever I chose. It will daze until you spend an embarrassing Standard action sighing very noisily… we cool?
Caro: Can my priestess help him climbing out?
Chatty: Sure, what skills does she have?
Caro: Hmmm, Religion?
Chatty: Well…. How about you berate him while he climbs? “Motivating” him to abandon his sinning ways?
Caro and Frank: Yeah!
Caro failed her roll (her first time of many that game, poor her) but in spite of the penalty that gave Frank’s PC, he succeeded.
Frank: As I exit the well, I tell the priestess “Fat loads of help your preaching did dude!”
And so the love story began…
In part 2, I’ll explain the mother of all fun skill challenges (new version) and how the Beads of Awesomeness saved the day.
(Photos courtesy of Stéphane Vaillancourt and Caroline Cloutier)
P.S. Yes, I’m starting to have fun again with 4e… many thanks to all those extra tools I’ve been picking up. Can’t wait to tell you about the rest!
Chatty’s New Lair, V2.0
I’ve just spent a lot of the last few days shopping for new office furniture and building it with the help of my buddy PM. Since I’m now fully self-employed and work 95% of my time at home, I decided to blow a bundle of (tax deductible) cash and refurbish my old office so I’d have the perfect lair to hatch my evil 2011 plans.
I’ve spent many hours cleaning, building, sorting, throwing trash out, fighting wires, tie-wrapping and what not. Now I’m exhausted but too damn excited to go to bed yet… so I decided to share some pics of what my new abode looks like (click images to embiggify).
It started with a simple, glass desk that takes 1/2 the space of my old “L-shaped” press-wood monstrosity.
My new desk... with a tamed snarl of wires.
Then since I’m stuck with the house’s electrical box on the wall to my left, I improvised to recuperate the dead space.
Complete with Jared Von Hindman originals!
Then I built one of those friends-in-a-box from Ikea, name of Billy and filled him in on my latest projects and blog subjects…
That Gnome sure isn't as happy as in the initial 4e commercials huh?
Then, I really needed to find a place to store all those dice, minis and dungeon tiles. Ikea once again rescued me!
A cascade of geekiness in cheap red metal called Helmer
Of course, an at-home office would not be complete without a Kids’ art corner. Witness the talent of 7 y.o. Rory, the house’s graphic artist.
That's our family up right, with age labels...
Finally, I (well, my wife Alex) added a white shelf over the monitors and I nerdified the whole place with some of my favourites toys…
...including an autographed pic of a certain net famous actress
Now I’m ready to take on a CRAPTON of new challenges.
Bring ‘em!
Happy belated New Year.
Friday Chat, Early Edition: The Geeky Road Trip
In about 24 hours, I’ll be leaving for the Toronto Fan Expo with my friend PM. The Expo is Canada’s largest event for Sci-Fi, Horror, Anime and Gaming fans where they get to meet some of their favorite industry personalities and stock up on merch.
So soon after Gen Con and after having been at Ground Zero for Pax East, I’m not sure how to set my expectations for the Fan Expo. I have no ideas what the show will be like nor what I’ll be doing except game for most of the day on Saturday.
Regardless of what awaits us over there, I still have a 5 hour car trip to plan so I thought I’d reach out and share/ask how the travelling part of the trip should be prepared! [Read the rest of this article]
Chatty’s post-Gen Con Prologue: The Power of Fun
Don't be offended, there really was a lot of that this year... Too much even, and I'm French!
I’m back from Gen Con.
I didn’t live blog, because I decided to sleep more and the Internet connection of the hotel was, at best, as fast as a horny turtle trying to reach a lonely Crocs at the end of a garden. I didn’t Twitter much either because I don’t yet have a phone smart enough to handle it… nor a data plan that allows me to use it in the US without bankrupting the State of California (which, I’m told, is not that exaggerated a claim).
I didn’t GM games for any companies this year. I ran only 2 sessions: Drunken D&D and Mouse Guard.
I skipped all industry parties because I had other things that came up that worked better toward what I was looking for.
What I did have though is have fun. Turns out that fun was exactly what I was looking for.
I hung around with friends. I walked the floor a few times, gave a seminar to a full room (of chairs… with people on all of them!). I had an awesome interview with Chris Perkins (Killer of PCs, maker of TPKs). I ate high calorie comfort food, signed and sold lots of books and gamed gamed gamed!
This translated in very high values of fun. Fun to the Nth power…
(Rimshot)
I attended Gen Con as Press specifically for Musings of the Chatty DM and as such I intend to cover it, but not like Dave and Bartoneus will (they’re the real ‘journalists’ here). I will do it in my own, stream-of-consciousness style.
Here are some of the subjects that come to mind that I could tackle, alone or grouped, in the upcoming weeks.
- Learned lessons from Gen Con 2010
- Forget freelance, band together, rebrand and launch
- Drunken D&D highlights and sneak peek
- Mouse Guard demo and how GM better at cons (self reflection)
- Free Market (Demo game with Luke Crane)
- The games I bought (Savage Worlds, Free Market, Apocalypse World, Last Night to Live expansion)
- The games I played: D&D (Drunken, Dark Sun, Chaos Scar), Mouse Guard, Zombie/Chthulu Dice, Free Market and a real Magic the Gathering draft!
- Gaming Advocacy is a very rewarding job!
- Hawking one’s book at a booth
- Meeting fans and dealing with them
- Re-evaluating our role as bloggers.
- Nico’s new game!
In the mean time, I’m not jumping back in the blogging routine too fast, mostly because today and tomorrow are dedicated to playing with my kids and spending some quality time with my incredibly understanding, supportive (and not to forget, insanely hot) wife.
Have a good one!
See you later!
Chatty’s Gen Con 2010 Schedule
That's what I look like, don't mind the Hawaiian shirt-wearing tourist leaning on me.
I’ll be at Gen Con for my 3rd straight year, my first as part of the Critical Hits team.
Here’s my official schedule for those who hope to catch me:
Wednesday:
4 AM: Leave Montreal
5 AM: Play Nice with the US Border guard going into Vermont
8AM (ish): Fly from Burlington, short layover in Chicago O’HAre
2 PM (ish) Land in Indy. Book at the Hyatt, crash for 1 hour or so.
Early evening: Pre-Drunken D&D party: Boardgames, meeting with friends, etc. Location to be disclosed once we get there. (check Twitter).
8 PM: Drunken D&D: Dave and I will DM 2 simultaneous groups of 6 players through the fiendish dungeon of Miller the mad wizard. The games’ location to be disclosed on Wednesday afternoon. An audience is encouraged as they’ll get to participate!
Thursday:
11 AM: Doing a very special interview for Dungeon Master Guys along with Dave and NewbieDM
1 PM: D&D 4e tips Seminar (Westin-Causus). Chris , Dave: The Game and I will share our wisdom about running 4th Ed. The room is already sold out but drop by, we may be able to squeeze you in. And we’ll record it for later sharing!
2 PM: Playing in Chris Sims 1st “Welcome to Dark Sun, Bitches” game.
7 PM: I’ll be one of the RPG bloggers playing in StupidRanger.com‘s Roleplaying Therapy for the Severely Disturbed at the Westin-Causus room. This you gotta see: We’ll try as hard as we can to break the DM.
11 PM: Mouse Guard, I’ll be showing the game to a few friends, I’ll announce where if you are curious to see how it plays.
Friday:
11 AM: Wil Wheaton’s panel, I have a nerdy-cool question all ready for him.
2 PM: Playing Free Market with Luke Crane. This is a new Sci-Fi RPG created by Crane and Jared Sorenson. I’m sooooo looking forward to this. Playing with Luke is quite a cool experience, he’s enthusiasm incarnate when he GMs. I thank my good friend DNAPhil who invited me!
8PM: Ennies Award, we’ll see if Critical-Hits wins “best RPG blog”. Plus its a cool evening to meet industry peers.
Post Ennies: If we win: party! If we lose : Party and gaming! I’d love to do a Magic the Gathering Draft at a bar!
Saturday:
I left this day more open to meet with people and do unplanned stuff, like an official Magic Draft if I didn’t get to do one before.
10 AM-noon: I’ll be signing copies of the One Page Dungeon Codex (Color and CD versions) at the Tabletop Adventure booth (booth #530) hell, I’ll sign printouts of any of my posts if you want! Come and chat!
8 PM: Media meet and Greet (Union Station) where bloggers and podcasters will mingle and drink.
Sunday:
Wide open, usually a grand tour of the exhibit hall and chillin’ because I’ll be dead tired by then.
Dave vaguely mentioned running a game of Fiasco. I’d love to try that.
4 PM: Fly back home.
On my “must buy” list:
Free Market (if available)
Savage Worlds Explorers Edition (used?)
Additional copies of Mouse Guard for my players
See you there, see you then
For those going to Gen Con, I look forward to meet you/see you again. For those stuck at home, I will be blogging about it, if not during Gen Con, right after.
5 days!
The Soft Landing: Pax East Highlights
I’m baaaack! Did you see that new banner? Isn’t it awesome? My friend Eric Maziade redesigned it using the best elements of past banners, making it fit with the color scheme of the blog’s new home. Thanks man!
Here’s a quick recap, Pros/Cons style.
Pros
Thursday Night Paradise
Our arrival at Boston was made of incredible. We discovered an awesome Burger Pub, where I promptly managed to spill a beer on myself… twice. And yet, at the same time, I managed to strangely endear myself to the very cute waitress (“Hey, I like drunk you”).
The meet-up and play event we organized in the Sheraton lobby (there was this big ass glass table big enough for 4 board games) was one of the highlights of the con. A bunch of strangers instantly connecting and having fun is what makes gaming so damn cool.
Pandemic, Battlestar Galactica, Bang, Fluxx and other many others were played.
As the evening wore on and my friends retired for bed at 11ish (a mistake they swore never to repeat), I was pointed out to by a kind reader that Wil Wheaton was having dinner with a small group at the bar near our gaming area. Transgressing a few rules of social etiquette, I approached him gently, crouched so we’d be eye to eye (I hate having people look up when we first meet ) and introduced myself.
Some very friendly banter occurred for the next few minutes about my blog (we both like each other’s writing, yay!), D&D and D&D geeks. He even introduced his wife and a couple of his friends. I was trying very hard to keep it together while at the same time totally relating to the guy (we’re the same age). He was a complete class act and even laughed at my dumb Phil jokes (my friends know what that means).
Wil, I apologize for crashing your dinner and thanks for being such a good sport about it. Next time I’ll air high-five you from a safe distance. Ohhh and that keynote… dude, made of awesome. I can assure you that the relative calm of the audience in the middle was not because of any drag, it was pure trance-like attention. You told us our own stories in ways most, if not all of us couldn’t have expressed so eloquently. Thanks man.
D&D with the Boys
On Friday night, I got to DM my Challenge adventure to my friends Dave: The Game and E (you know from here and here) and the Wizards of the Coast D&D crowd. Chief among them were Chris (The guy in charge of organized play), Trevor (Community Manager), Greg (Editor and Designer) and Logan (freelance designer and writer). We had an awesome roleplaying intro with many improv moments and played out the first 2 encounters, a trapped door/skill challenge and a combat. I got great feedback from it that I used in the DM challenge the next day.
The DM Challenge
With a table-full of 6 players featuring 4 Chatty DM readers, we had a LOT of fun. The adventure was complex and the second encounter (the temple’s entry guardians) was BRUTAL. We had so many funny roleplaying/exploration/combat elements in this adventure that I plan to write a short series of game reports featuring what I recall from both groups playing through it.
But here’s a quick bullet point rundown:
Game 1
- PCs intimidate insane Gnome Bling-Wizard to perform CSI analysis of corrupted water sample in his laboratory.
- Ardant PC passing as a Doomdreamer cause elementalist scholar to fawn like a fanboi, giving quest away sans skill roll.
- Shardmind Psion blows Arcane Lock/Glyph of Warding skill challenge and gets sucked in a room full of Icy Spray Wraiths (and a Ghostskull)… and survives.
Game 2
- Shardmind broadcasting telepathic ‘request info about elementalists’ announcements causes panic in college plaza.
- Shardmind, when asked to identify himself, telepathically data dumps his entire life since birth in one long string.
- Mort the Ghostskull/Brain in a Jar trying to use loop holes in his ‘eternal undead guardian curse’ to have PCs free him.
- PCs fumbling the religion check needed to free Mort from the clutches of the Elder Elemental Eye while he’s slowly dissolving in a pool of acid… then dropping ritual book in said acid pool…
- As it dissolves, Mort’s undead brain tries to take over Shardmind only to realize: “Where the F..K is the brain?” before being absorbed back into the shard’s thought matrix.
- Spurt the Silvered Bulette… with crazy skill challenge.
Chatty DM (Going on and on about how cool and dangerous the bulette is): Hmm, am I overdoing it?
Players: Yes Chatty, we know how badass your Bulette is.
Chatty DM: Come on guys! This monster is SO badass that it eats Space and Time and craps black holes!
Good times.
Oh and incidentally, our very own Dave won the challenge. Congrats friend, I shall have my revenge and I will NOT advertise my presence so publicly next time. I bow down to your skill in grace and humility… even if you used cheap parlour tricks like plunking an awesome Dwarven Forge set for the final encounter.
I love you man.
Burning Luke and his Wheel of Awesome
On Saturday, while running around like a headless hen trying to fight windmills, I bumped into Luke Crane (creator of the Burning Wheel Roleplaying game) which I like to consider is a good gamer friend. I couldn’t chat with him much but asked him if he’d run a demo for my friends at an unspecified time to which he graciously acquiesced.
We managed to catch up on Sunday and played a 60 minute session of Burning Wheel’s “‘The Sword” where 4 shady characters with the moral fiber of recycled toilet paper fight over the ownership of an enchanted sword found at the bottom of a dungeon. It was phenomenally fun and Luke remains one of the few paragons of GMing I’ve met, representing the next level of standards and skills I aim for (another blog post or two just there).
(Yeah, I’m a D&D 4e blogger/freelance designer AND a Crane/BW fan AND an Old School gamer… Call it Full-Spectrum gaming, the best of all worlds if you ask me, you should try it).
Microsoft Surface D&D 4e Demo
Just too cool for words. Way more intuitive than the You Tube demo makes it out to be (I was manipulating the thing like Tom Cruise in Minority Report within minutes), fun and fast.
Unstable a bit… but then again, it is Microsoft-based.
The Tauntaun Sleeping Bag
My dearest E brought me a most amazing Tauntaun sleeping bag to give to my kids. While it was somewhat of a pain to carry around, it got me a TON of thumbs up and ‘man this is so cool’ comments. Gamer geeks are the best. Thanks sis, they love it!
Cons
The Participants to Events Ratio
At 30 000 participants per day and only a few score events everyday, it became very hard to participate in planned events at the con. On Saturday, I felt that all I did was wait, walk, wait some more and eat. Fortunately, things always livened up at night. Getting people organized to do things on a specific schedule is like trying to draw water with a pasta sieve. So much so that my inner leader/investigator was brought close to the breaking point a few times when shit didn’t happen fast enough around me.
That could have cost me dearly if my close entourage didn’t know me so well. Thanks guys.
The DM Challenge
(Fair warning, I switched brain-sides when I wrote that part)
This is a tad bit more touchy because I do NOT want to raise a stink. An organizational snafu happened with the DM Challenge when they announced, a few weeks ago, that people could register to play with a specific DM. Given my status as the ChattyDM and the advertising I did on the blog and on Twitter, I landed 4 readers who asked to play with me (out of a total of 6). The Wizards people realized (as I did) that this was a huge conflict of interest.
I had hoped that something was planned to deal with that but that wasn’t the case. Upon realization of the situation, the event organizer had to make a snap decision and he offered me 2 choices: I could take the players and forfeit any claim to the challenge or the players could be sent to other tables and I’d be able to run the challenge as intended.
I was really torn (and disappointed, in a day that had had its shares of frustrations). First because I had worked very hard at creating this adventure and I was looking forward to the actual competition. Second, especially because my frustration was mostly based on having spent a large part the day not being able to do what I planned to, I knew how disappointed those 4 guys would be if they didn’t get to play with me.
I finally went for playing with the players, following deeper instincts than my emotional state. Wil said that gaming creates lasting friendships and this very game may lead to just that, based on the awesome legendary stories we shared together…
I mean, come on, a data dumping shardmind? A Silvered Bulette that poops black holes? A brain that melts in a pool of acid because of a roll of 1 on an untrained religion check? That’s freaking priceless!
In the end, I was rewarded with an awesome game, great feedback and a lot of unexpected swag. Dave was a prince among men by sharing part of the prize packet with me (Hammerfast FTW) and the event organizer gave me a copy of the new Three-Dragon Ante and some more goodies!
And it makes me sound all badass when I tell people that I got disqualified from a D&D DMing contest.
So, what of next year? Well, Tycho says that it will be better and sleeker and more awesome. I’ve learned what Pax is and next year I shall be there, with friends, old and new, sitting in the queue room, playing Jungle Speed.
I shall learn to be the willow to the gales of awesomeness blowing out of that place. I have one year starting now.
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