30 Ranks In Use Trope
We’ve all been there. The campaign has slowed to a crawl, morale is low, and players are getting more and more physically violent with every session. Soon, the blood-harvest comes. As a DM, you already know none of this is your fault. However, as the sovereign of your gaming group it is your right, nay, holy duty to return the light of goodness, truth, and the Gygaxian Way to your table. Allow me to assist.
Spunky Sunshine Mephit
Some DM’s, myself included, find a familiar albatross around their neck in the form of the same tired old plots week after week. There’s nothing worse than having the D&D equivalent of Spaghetti Thursdays at your gaming table.
What your game needs is a little help… or should I say, a little helper?
One commonly used tactic in many popular TV shows over the years is to add a cute and sassy kid to the mix to freshen things up. Let’s call this kid Cousin Olefar.
Always brave and daring, but just too darn spunky to have any regard for the well-being of any creature, Cousin Olefar can brighten up even the dullest combats. Now every combat has an exciting secondary objective!
Just imagine how the players would feel if they let the cute little bugger die.
Jumping The Bulette
Your players are probably bored with the standard fare of mystery, exploration, exciting combat, and deep roleplay. They can get that anywhere. You should give them something cooler. Remember the early seasons of Happy Days when it was boring and about stupid stuff American life and emotions? Remember when all the girls got anachronistic perms and Fonzie started getting superpowers he could invoke with a simple “AYYYY?”
That’s what you can do for your campaign. It works, too. Historically, the best campaigns are the ones where about halfway through, you drop everything and decide that you already know what’s going to happen. You tease your players incessantly about it for about 2 weeks beforehand, even dropping little hints about “wormsign” and “the likes of which God has never seen.” Everything leads up to a super exciting moment that you’ve been dreaming of for so long, and it’s gonna be so cool, and you don’t even need game mechanics you just make it happen.
When everybody sees the mage (with a brand new perm) riding bareback atop a half-lich bulette tarrasqueomancer through no real conscious choice of his own after an unlikely but charming sequence of events, they’ll all understand it was worth it.
Then you blow up the PC’s lair and have a guy from Murphy Brown chase them through time. Aww yeah.
Fuggedaboutit
Another fantastic TV trope you can use in your campaign is the old “amnesia caused by a bonk on the head” trick. I recommend you invoke this every time a player takes damage or fails a DEX check.
No metagaming, players! You’ll need to take another bonk on the head to remember who you are. Also, if a monster uses Claw / Claw / Bite, you may think of it as Forget / Remember / Forget.
Freaky Friday Night Magic
How many times over the years in movies and TV has a magic spell been cast or a lever been pulled causing characters to swap bodies? Countless. And it’s a thing of beauty every single time. Every DM should do this to their players at least twice in a given campaign.
Fun fact: skills, spellcasting ability, and weapon/armor proficiencies don’t transfer along with a person’s consciousness. Just their voice, memories, and a schedule that really isn’t conducive to having another person at the wheel much less a dwarf NOW I’LL NEVER GET MARRIED.
It’s science.
Quest For The Closet Of Elemental Water
PC’s never fear death anymore. Not with healing surges and resurrection and rings of regeneration all ready and waiting to save their imaginary butts.
Solving this issue means gleaning dark knowledge from the vilest master of terror that ever whitened a hair or startled an innocent puppy — Wakko Warner. To know true fear, a PC needs to be faced with a fate worse than death. A potty emergency.
Everybody always wants to know the secret of making 4e combat run fast and exciting. If every PC has an overfull bladder and cursed pants they can’t remove until they find and defeat the end boss of the dungeon, this problem is now officially solved.
Be warned, there are some minor mechanical issues to work out if you decide to go this route. For instance, who can say if the PC’s should be making Fort checks, Will checks, or a combination of the two to avoid certain embarassment and chafing. Regardless, I recommend making this check every 5 minutes of actual time, starting the DC at 0 and raising it by 5 after each check.
Bonus Tip: in the original Oriental Adventures book from TSR, there is a Wu Jen spell called Urine to Acid. Use this in the event that your players still fail to become excited at these new developments.
Photo Credit
Special thanks to TvTropes.org (especially their “Random” button) for all the article ideas and for straight up murdering my productivity for many years.
And yes, you can probably blame Chatty for this too.
You’re Out of your FAQing Element
Ryan Macklin wrote a blog post about problems he sees with “use-whenever” stats in RPGs, using my FAQ hack for Leverage as an example. There are somegood ideas in there, and I encourage reading it. When it comes to the FAQ hack, though, I think it’s missing the point. I’m fine with Ryan using it as an example, to illustrate the problem, but I think it’s suggesting that the FAQ system isn’t doing what it should in the system.
I don’t think that’s true. Maybe it will help if I explain the intent of the system. So here’s my mission statement for the FAQ system:
The purpose of the FAQ system is to change attributes into an easy decision that gets out of the way of the more interesting ones.
I found that, when using attributes, it took a while to figure out which one would apply to each roll. Each GM picked differently, and for the player it didn’t always make sense. And in the end, it was just a die, nothing more. Too much time spent on an uninteresting decision. I wanted that part of the game to step aside, to stop hogging the spotlight with I had distinctions to apply and plot points to spend!
With attributes or FAQ approaches, a Leverage game will be interesting. FAQs aren’t meant to add another decision point: They’re meant to be damn fast. They’re meant to give a character something to default to. When Ryan says that he could come up with justifications for using the same approach in a bunch of situations without putting much time into it, that’s great. That’s the whole point!
I’m a big believer that not all rules need to be created equal. They don’t all need to have knobs to turn. Sure, there are ways to encourage changing up approaches (hell, just making the lowest one a d4 would do that on a small scale). But I think Ryan’s character will be more memorable because he tries to solve everything with aggression first. Let him use his big ol’ d10 if it encourages him to use a distinction against himself at the same time. He’s doing what a Leverage character ought to be doing.
FAQing Expectations
I also wanted to work with FAQs as a DM tip-off, much like Roles do. If you find out most of your characters have d8 Grifter, that tells you a lot about what sort of game they want to play. It’s much tricker to do the same thing with the original attributes. Using FAQs makes it easier to tailor your session. If you get a bunch of Analytical players, it gives you a good sense of the types of obstacles they’d like to deal with. It also lets you know that situations that are more easily solved using Forceful or Quick are going to give them some trouble, whether that’s using a lower die or coming up with something truly ostentatious in order to use the better stats.
A FAQed Up Play Style
I also think Ryan likes a different style of Leverage game than I do. I like to run one-shots, so I use FAQs. I also have players put a d4 in only one role, which I know Ryan isn’t a fan of. For me, this makes it easier as the DM to put that character in tricky situations. (I realize this is counter-intuitive, since having more d4s would seem to make it easier. This is definitely a YMMV situation, but I prefer having a clear “this is my Achilles heel.” I think it makes the flaw more iconic.)
I think Ryan prefers a longer-term campaign or mini-campaign with more subtleties. My house rules are absolutely pointed at running the kind of game I want. I’d love to see the hacks Ryan would make to get the kind he’s into.
Playing Leverage with Just the FAQs
Leverage: the Roleplaying Game does so many things right. It’s quick, collaborative, easy to prep, iconic, and tethered to a great back-and-forth mechanic and play style. But still, every plan has room for improvement.
The first two times I played Leverage, and the first time I ran it, I noticed the same thing: Attributes were difficult to apply consistently, and there was frequent confusion between the Fixer and the players about what attributes should be called for on each check. This isn’t to say there was argument (everybody was too polite), but an experienced gamer knows the look of “Oh, I thought this type of check would use a different attribute, so that’s my high one.”
When I played with Dave the Game running, he called for Willpower checks pretty often. When Rob Donoghue ran, he asked us to roll Strength, sometimes for the same type of roll Dave would have wanted Willpower for. All the attributes are meant to be used sometimes for mental checks and sometimes for physical checks. In theory, this is a way to make sure all the stats matter for all situations. In practice, it’s more confusing than helpful.
So What’s the Hack?
It didn’t take me long to figure out how I wanted to hack the rules. (To paraphrase Will Hindmarch, you “hack” games that are cool, and you “fix” games you think should have been cool. In a Hindmarchian milieu, I definitely hacked Leverage.) Instead of using typical RPG attributes, derived from your physical and mental qualities, I phrased them as “approaches.” These are adjectives that describe the action you’re undertaking, the attitude you’re assuming as you make your move. I boiled it down to three: Forceful, Analytical, or Quick (FAQ for short). At the right, you can see their short descriptions.
I avoided passive approaches. There’s no tough, for example. Leverage is a game about competent professionals. If they’re backed into a corner, they aren’t simply going to endure. They’re going to counter. They’re going to improvise. They’re going to escalate.
Selecting your approaches is pretty simple: Assign a d10, d8, and d6. A forceful hacker, an analytical hacker, and a quick hacker all take a different approach to hacking.
Some problems can be solved with an Analytical approach, but there's no reason not to have a Forceful backup.
Did it Work?
I found the system did what I wanted it to do, making it more intuitive to determine what to call for when someone was making a check. And it’s fast. It’s very fast. I find when running Leverage, I call for very few checks. This makes it so when I do, it flows more smoothly into the rest of the game.
It’s also easier for a player to apply a strategy to a situation and add in a little more of a flourish to the action. Instead of trying to find a way to make a high Attribute come up in the checks within a scene, the player can decide how to approach a person or problem. Personality can drive the scene. Your high stat provides a handy hook when you’re in doubt about how to approach an obstacle. If you have a high Forceful die, you might be driving through that locked gate. With a high Analytical die, you could figure out the password. With a high Quick die, you might just scale the fence before the camera turns back your way.
Intimidation? Yeah, that's usually a Forceful approach.
Can I Give it a Shot?
Sure!
I pestered John Harper for a copy of his excellent character sheet. (You can find the original here.) I modified it for the approaches hack, and added in numbers and instructions to help in character creation. You’ll want to look over the sheets before you use them. I made some other small tweaks, like removing specialties and changing the role dice to replace one of the d4 roles with a d6 (because I find it works better for the one-shots I usually run).
By all means, take it for a spin, kick the tires, and let me know what you think!
Download the Approach sheet PDF!
This includes a sheet for each class, along with a rap sheet page that also describes open talents.
The Leg-Lamp of Vecna
I don’t know about the rest of you, but for me, Christmas just isn’t what it used to be. That is, a full month of anticipation slowly gaining steam into rabid impatience culminating in a berserk frenzy of presents-opening. Sure, I was pretty focused on the materialistic gains. But the holiday just felt special somehow. As I got older, and especially as I became more able to buy my own stuff, the jubilation at getting a bunch of new stuff subsided. Then came the year Mom left out cold french fries and water for Santa instead of milk and cookies. She wasn’t fooling anybody, though. We all knew it was my parents behind the presents on Christmas morning. Also, I was 20. Mom’s really into traditions.
That’s not the point. The point is, it feels like it all changed. I cringe when I hear Christmas music now, a result of having worked at a Radio Shack during the holidays in 1995. I hate seeing the Christmas decorations go up in department stores the day after Halloween. I love my family and my in-laws, but it’s stressful dragging your toddler to celebrate Christmas multiple times every year. I’m annoyed by the repeated festive shotgun blasts of joyous holiday messages on TV that just don’t feel realistic or sincere, and then I feel like a Dire Grinch. And nobody wants that. (Fun holiday fact: a Dire Grinch’s heart has to grow at least five sizes in one day before he starts performing good deeds. Also, he is one size class larger than a standard Grinch and his sled is pulled by a worg with an antler tied to its forehead.)
I’m fully aware of the fact that growing up ruined this just like everything else. It’s easy to enjoy Christmas when you don’t have to do anything except for flip out after you open the thing you totally wanted that you’ve been going on endlessly about since late August. It’s so easy to look at the world with scorn and sarcasm, and let all the stuff that annoys the crap out of you overshadow everything else, and I think that’s where my Christmas went. Crushed under the enormous pressure of a bunch of annoying crap, and turned to coal. And you thought it was naughty children that got that. Add one more bitter yule log to the fire.
I want my damned Christmas back. The one I enjoyed and looked forward to. I may not get that, but what I can do is use this red-and-green-hued mass hysteria to my advantage. There are two times of the year one is most likely to get presents: one’s birthday, and Christmas. Only during the latter are people prone to fits of needing to feel togetherness at all costs. This is when you can strike.
Now all you have to do is ask for games for Christmas, and talk people into playing them with you.
That’s right, my nefarious Christmas scheme is to get people together to play games. Why? I’ll tell you why. Because a couple years ago, I borrowed a Wii just so I could get my whole family together on Christmas to play Wii Bowling. It was the first time we’d played videogames together since I was a kid and we all played Time Pilot and Ladybug on the Colecovision. I’m not even remotely exaggerating when I say it was the very best Christmas I’d had since I was a kid. For those couple hours, it was fun again, and it was special because I knew I wouldn’t have this chance very often. This year, I got a Kinect, and I would like to engage in similar Christmas shenanigans. I’ve tried a couple times since then to pull this off again, but never to the same effect. I suppose this will be the unattainable goal I chase after instead of reliving the innocent joy of a child on Christmas. You gotta have one, right?
On a smaller scale, this is also a great excuse to play with my family. Specifically, the portion of it that lives in my house. My son’s only 2, and the games we play together may not make a particularly large amount of sense, but they’re still a lot of fun. Once he recovers from the initial shock of getting ten thousand Hot Wheels cars for Christmas from the grandparents, I don’t doubt his little imagination is going to invent several new kinds of racing. I cannot freaking wait until he’s old enough that one of us opens an Xbox game and we’re both giddy that we can play it together. And I’m not afraid to bust out some old-school Scrabble or Monopoly to play with relatives who don’t consider themselves Gamers (with a capital G). I’d kill to play games all day over Christmas break with my wife and kid. (And I wouldn’t regret it, even with faced with the electric chair!)
It’s always been odd to me (and a giant pain in my ass) that the Christmas season seems to nuke the crap out of everyone’s availability to play D&D with their friends. Especially since I had my regular group break up about a year ago due to people moving and other real-life obstacles, it hits me directly in the face how much I miss getting together with them too. I don’t care how many puppies save Christmas or how many sitcoms show me the “true” meaning of the season. I don’t care what kind of fake togetherness crap is being served in the fruitcake. I don’t even care if any games actually get played. I just want to have fun with the people I care about. It’s what a good Christmas means to me now.
God bless us, every one (giving us +1 to attack).
And rocks fall on any creepy uncles, killing them instantly. No save.
Photo credit
Nerdy-Five
“You’re going to be thirty-five?” – Vanir’s wife Sarah, upon hearing the tragic news.
In a couple of days, the Earth will complete thirty-five rotations around the Sun since I was unleashed upon this world. Being born in mid-October, it’s always neat to have all the trees in full color around my birthday. I guess I can either look at it as capping off a great summer, or have it bittersweet as the cold and snow and ice prepares to crap frostily on my head for 5 months. You know what I want for my birthday every year? No #*&$^# WINTER.
When I was little, I’d count down the days until my birthday for a whole month. I was a greedy little fellow, and I wanted PRESENTS. Star Wars toys were usually a central pillar of the bounty both at birthdays and Christmas, and I had a habit of giving my stuff names. I have a Tauntaun named “Bryan” and a Wampa named.. well… “Wampy”. As the years passed, the action figures changed but the goal remained the same, and I accumulated lots of He-Man and Thundercats and Real Ghostbusters and even some totally sweet AD&D figures (which I deeply regret getting rid of now). In 6th grade, my great grandma got me a Nintendo Entertainment System, and my focus pretty much shifted to the acquisition of as many Game Paks as I possibly could.
Around college, a funny thing happened. My birthday would sneak up on me, and I wouldn’t have any idea what I wanted. In retrospect, it’s easy to see why. I started getting disposable income, so I was buying all the stuff I wanted when it came out, instead of locking all my wee capitalistic fury away until OH MY GOD I CAN FINALLY PLAY SUPER MARIO BROS. 2. Well, actually, in college it wasn’t so much “disposable income” as it was “a massive credit card balance I would pay off ten years later”, but it’s the same idea. I already had almost everything I wanted, and the stuff I didn’t have was either too expensive or too complicated to make a good present from non-techie relatives. My birthday just sort of became that time of year to get family together, eat cake, and to open a whole bunch of envelopes with money in them.
At my son’s first birthday party, it occurred to me exactly what I was doing a year ago on that day (namely, watching him come out and not sleeping for 6 months), and suddenly the “birth” part of “birthday” took on a lot more meaning for me. I can only begin to imagine how my parents must have felt, watching their present-crazed little boy running around screaming year after year, a birthday hat clinging to dear life by its uncomfortable rubber chinstrap. At the very least, it has restored a little of the magic for me, albeit in a dramatically different way.
I didn’t feel old at 20. I felt awesome. I didn’t even feel that old at 30. This birthday, it’s starting to hit me, but more because I’m noticing how old other people are relative to me. I have a brother and friends who are over 40. I have friends who are in their mid twenties that weren’t alive when I was in 5th grade. I’m used to seeing my dad and my teachers and other, well, adults as being in their 40s. What the hell, time? Who authorized this crap?
It’s especially bad when I see, for instance, some teenager walking around ironically wearing a Centipede t-shirt. Listen, you little punk. In my day, we were making corridors of mushrooms to guide the centipedes driven mad by the scorpion’s poisoned mushroom straight into my oncoming line of laser death, maximizing my score by hitting only 100 point heads so go buy a Justin Bieber shirt or something. Oh great, I just told some kid to get off my digital lawn.
It’s not so bad, though. I have to admit, I still don’t feel old. Sure, my body doesn’t quite work the same (and I’m told it just goes downhill from here), but I haven’t let life beat all the kid out of me just yet. I’m looking forward to my son getting old enough to play some more complex stuff with me. I want to keep imagining and creating and getting weird looks from coworkers. I want to be running a daily D&D game when I’m in a nursing home. Give me another 35 years, and we’ll see how that turns out.
Photo Credit: ME! From my 31st birthday fleet of Galacticakes.
Solving The Sith Problem
Anakin Skywalker prepares for a night of extremely mundane sex.
Since the beginning of Galactic history, there has been the Force. Eventually, sentient beings learned to harness its power for the good of all civilization. Those who chose this path were known as Jedi, or “lightbringer”. Approximately fifteen minutes later, a Jedi decided he’d had enough and decided to not only rebel from the teachings of his Jedi master, but to go murder a busload of space nuns as the first step in a mad plot for galactic domination. This phenomenon proved to be uncomfortably common among Jedi, so much that the Jedi Order decided that there were in fact two sides of the Force — the Light Side and the Dark Side. It is not known at this time when the Jedi Order figured out that the Force was comprised of tiny microorganisms known as midichlorians, but experts speculate this occurred when Dark Jedi provided the Jedi Council with many freshly-killed Jedi for study. Allying with and eventually taking over the Sith pirate organization, these Dark Jedi took on cool names starting in Darth, meaning “bad mother watch your mouth I’m just talkin’ about”. Their last names were always chosen in a secret ceremony involving a great deal of alcohol and the ancient Sith incantation “you know what would sound bad ass”?
For hundreds of thousands of years, the Light and the Dark have clashed — spanning several wars and the deaths of billions of innocent bystanders. Both sides took heavy losses. The Light side was eventually weakened and made progressively more stupid to the point where they were hunted down to near-extinction by people who can’t shoot straight. The Dark side seems to have fared better, having been apparently deprived only of any moisturizing skin products. Therefore, I have studied closely the journey of many Dark Jedi down the road of corruption, and I have come to a simple conclusion:
The Jedi are idiots.
Consider, for a moment, a typical Jedi Padawan. They are found as children, and taught to suppress their emotion for fear they will turn to the Dark Side. This means no anger, no fear, and no strong emotional attachments (especially love). So now take this army of the socially and emotionally hamstrung and then arm them with laser swords, superhuman athletic abilities, and the ability to control minds. They are then sent all over the galaxy and placed into incredibly dangerous situations, putting them under an enormous amount of psychological strain, and then forbid them to so much as go on a date or have a BFF. We’re lucky the Star Wars saga isn’t all about The Galactic League of Super-Rapists vs. the (comparatively) heroic Sith.
The Jedi sit and meditate a lot. You’d think they’d have figured out the reason their pupils keep freaking out and going all chokey and shocky is because they’ve been repressed their whole lives. You’d think they’d figure out that perhaps people who haven’t been infected with mystical bacteria, even those in power, frequently do not try to take over the world when their girlfriend breaks up with them. But no, the Jedi Order likes to tell their students tales like “you can’t love anyone because this one time these two Jedi twins loved the same girl, and then they fought, and the whole planet blew up”. What better reason to let your students vent once in awhile than if they are giant bombs powered by repressed emotions? It’s SCIENCE, people.
Fortunately, since the entire Jedi Council was killed for being stupid, starting over will be easy. The new guy wasn’t raised by emotionally-crippling idiots (though he does get a little whiney at times and was trained hastily in a swamp by a Muppet). Let’s make sure new Jedi don’t wind up all screwed up by treating them like regular folk. Let’s let them have families. Sure, they’d be away for long periods of time. Just think of them as truckers who only carry one thing — AWESOME. Seriously, how much different would the prequels have turned out if Anakin hadn’t been denied anything but a secret relationship with Padme (provided they could get past that 20 year age difference)? They’d meet, fall in love, and then when Palpatine started going around spinning lies Anakin would just slice him up and serve him at the Jedi Holiday Banquet. Little known fact: the Jedi are cannibals, but they can only eat meat carved by a lightsaber. That’s why they use them instead of blasters. Do you think they let all that delicious hand-meat go to waste? Mace Windu’s famous Manual Chili begs to differ.
As for the existing Jedi, let’s take them out and get them laid. Let’s take them to a bar, making sure to tell them not to focus on the guy selling death sticks but instead to levitate a drink over to that hot Twi’Lek in the corner. Let’s let them shove their lightsabers into something besides a blast door. Let’s make sure a Light side Jedi never has to Force Choke anything ever again. Or we can get them therapy. But that doesn’t have any good double entendres.
Together, we can save the galaxy – one Jedi’s virginity at a time.
(Photo credit, and apologies to Chris Pirillo. )
Tales of Horror: D&D for TWEENS
Picture, if you will, a mysterious and terrifying future. The entire marketing team at WotC comes down with a mysterious illness, mostly for purposes of artificially strengthening the gossamer-thin threads of plot of this article. Additionally, every person with a marketing background in the entire world contracts it as well. This is completely plausible.
Regardless, WotC bravely soldiers on. WotC, having recently caused a stir among environmental groups over a controversial plan to convert any resource into mana and further taxing the world’s supply of fossil fuels, scraps their plan. However, it is secretly revived in order to ensure good holiday sales numbers, drastic measures needed to be taken, so they applied the technology to something far less inflammatory: 11 year old children.
No, they did not grind tweens up and collect their dust. That would have contaminated everything, and would have yielded more lawsuit mana than any other color. They simply rotated them all 90 degrees and told them to come up with the best ideas they could or else they would destroy the Jonas Brothers’ magic rings of chastity.
The results would chill even the most hardened adventurers’ blood.
- Justin Bieholder
Part terrifying monster from the darkest corners of the imagination, part pre-teen heartthrob, this creature just wants to be loved. That’s why eight of its eyestalks shoot powerful Charm spells. One eyestalk has evolved to hold a pen to sign autographs, and the remaining eyestalk shoots hairspray – which the monster needs a constant supply of. Unlike most dungeon-dwelling creatures, the Bieholder always surrounds itself with backup dancers significantly older than it is. All party members must save vs. Rap or be forced to join the monster’s entourage. The Bieholder is nigh-invulnerable and highly resistant to magic. The only sure way to defeat a Bieholder is to break up with it, which will not kill the beast, but will buy the adventurers 1d20 rounds of the monster crying in a pillow and writing song lyrics about the experience to use against future victims. - iBigby
Forget what you know! Bigby’s back as a perky 14 year old girl with her own web show! Join iBigby and her best friend Otilucy as they explore the most terrifying dungeon of all: HIGH SCHOOL! Don’t miss the upcoming iBigby specials: iForgot My Homework Because I Use Vancian Magic and iDon’t Have A Date For Prom Because All I Can Cast Is Spells About Hands. - Hannah Undermontana
The mad wizard Halaster finally unleashes his most terrifying creation to date: his 16 year old daughter! Torn between her desire to live life as plain old Haley, a normal peasant girl doomed to a life of manual labor, and superstar sorceress Hannah Undermontana, the world becomes distracted enough not to notice Halaster’s ulterior motive: to unmake reality via country music. Can he be stopped before he releases “Achy Breaky Wight”? Can Haley bring a boy home to meet her father in less than seven pieces? Can she balance her skills and feats to meet the needs of her real life and of her alter ego? Will she spend a daily power to take care of her pimples OR one of her friend’s pimples? Even though they have a crush on the same guy??!
I apologize if anyone soiled themselves.
Not Without My Beholder: A Mother’s Tale
Before today’s featured presentation, allow me to present the trailer for this year’s Roleplaying For The Severely Disturbed with StupidRanger.com event from Gen Con. It is an hour and a half long. We realize this is a little long for a trailer, but we wanted to give our readers a faithful representation of the actual event, if they were so inclined to watch it.
Roleplaying For The Severely Disturbed with StupidRanger.com
And now, for the main course:
The unaired sequel to "Invisible Child", set in Eberron.
I’ve spent the majority of my blogging career trying to figure out how to make it easier for people to roleplay better. To get them emotionally invested in their characters. To make them feel and act as their character might. To dance into the danger zone where the dancer becomes the dance. I believe I have finally discovered the secret to doing so:
The Lifetime Movie Network.
Who better understands the human condition than the people who prepare us for the worst life could ever throw at us with their delightful training films? I now have deep insight into how to cope with discovering that I have a secret baby while a serial killer stalks me trying to steal my face. If, in my work as a traveling nanny, one of my clients has an invisible child, I am prepared.
Therefore, I propose a series of similar films be created for gamers. Imagine the unbridled freedom. Nobody is invested in their characters now because there’s no real sense of peril with the mere threat of simple death, dismemberment, undeath, conversion into ettin feces, demonic possession, and banishment to other planes.
These are nothing compared to the sanity-destroying terror of discovering that the mind flayer you shared one night of passion with had your half-Illithid love child and that now grown child is now a fireman, your home is on fire and your wife is sure to recognize your eyes above his tentacle-nubs. THAT is true terror.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine having to plan the double shotgun wedding for long lost hobgoblin sisters. Imagine being a wight with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. What if your character’s son had a crippling addiction to drawing cards from the Deck Of Many Things to feed his drug habit? What if you woke up from a coma and discovered all your body parts had been replaced with body parts of Vecna – and your husband, intimidated by your newfound power, doesn’t find you attractive anymore?
If you are not weeping uncontrollably by this point, you should get yourself checked out. You are probably malfunctioning, ROBOT.
Other possible titles:
- Warforged and Pregnant
- Tasha’s Uncontrollable Hideous Addiction To Methamphetamines
- Prom Night Mummy Rot
- His Mistress’s Daily Power
- In Love With A Police Gnoll
- Holy Avenger: The Source Of My Paladinhood Is The Idiot Little League Umpire
- Divine Teen, Arcane Father
- Mindflayer, Homeflayer (with Delta Burke)
- Circle of Lycanthropy: The Wererat’s Mistress’s Wereboar Lover’s Weresnake Mistress’s Friend with Were-Benefits
All we need now is Bigby’s Press-On Nails, Otiluke’s Everlasting Quart of Chubby Hubby, and Leomund’s Negative Gender Stereotypes.
My work here is done. Enjoy the revolution.
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]
The Lord of Troma
This week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Lloyd Kaufman, President and co-founder of Troma entertainment and creator of the Toxic Avenger. I had a lot of nerves going into this – I’ve been a big Troma fan since I was 13 and used to spend every Friday and Saturday night watching horror movies on USA Up All Night.
Things actually started here a bit before my phone interview. I had the privilege of attending Mr.Kaufman’s “Make Your Own Damn Movie” masterclass at Gen Con a few weeks ago, and he was very knowledgeable and willing to answer any questions audience had, but the answers were sometimes surprising. Several people asked what sort of equipment to use, and he would always fire back with some variation on “Depends! How much money do you have? You can get by with consumer-grade equipment.” Then everyone would discuss their shoestring budget success stories and we’d move on. It’s how Troma works. Make your movie the best way you can with what you have. (You can find out way more by buying Lloyd’s book, Make Your Own Damn Movie, Secrets of a Renegade Director!) It was inspiring to see so much enthusiasm and resourcefulness surrounding the making of so called “schlock” movies. I’d find out a little more as to why when I spoke to Lloyd this week.
I started off the interview by asking Lloyd what the word “Troma” meant. He told me a short story about how the word Troma is Latin for “excellence in celluloid”. Having taken 3 years of Latin in high school, and knowing the ancient Romans probably didn’t know what “celluloid” meant, I was inclined to think maybe he was pulling my leg. (I was right. He told the real story when he was doing a guest stint writing for the DVD Talk horror blog.)
One of the very first things I discovered during my audience with the Lord of Troma is that he suffers no fools. I had a few “fluff” questions prepared, stuff like “who is your favorite villain of all time, and why?” Writers like that one. I figured Lloyd would too, being a creative type. I was wrong. He wouldn’t answer that one, and dismissed a few others like it as stupid questions. I also found out another thing right about this time: I gurgle audibly when surprised. Good to know for next time.
Thankfully, I soon started getting into questions that didn’t irritate Lloyd, and we talked for awhile about independent media and Net Neutrality. I was floored by his answer when I asked him why independent filmmaking was so important: “It’s not. It means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. You have kids starving in Third World countries and they don’t give a damn about movies. Cinema is something useless rich people like all of us here do to entertain ourselves.” I suddenly found myself not caring so much about how bad the BSG ending sucked, and being very thankful for the burrito I had just eaten moments prior.
We talked a great deal about Net Neutrality. “Without Net Neutrality, there would be no Troma. There would be no Critical Hits. You’d only have whatever insipid crap the networks decide to give you this week”. Lloyd asked that we link to his Youtube video on the subject, which we’re more than happy to do. The Internets would suck without this.
Probably the single most surprising thing I learned about Lloyd Kaufman is that he doesn’t think his movies are as funny as you probably do. To him, each is “real filmmaking” with a political message. Yes, I thought he was kidding at first, too. His tone convinced me otherwise. That and him calling Inception a piece of crap movie full of plot holes. Them’s fightin’ words, Mr. Kaufman. But who am I to say what a work doesn’t represent? Is art not subjective? Is this less effective than starving some poor attractive vegan celebrity and having them sit naked in a cage for PETA? I’m just a blogger. I’m not equipped for this. (I do, however, ponder the political ramifications of Teenage Catgirls In Heat.)
We wrapped up the interview by talking about some of Troma’s upcoming work. The big news is that the Toxic Avenger is getting remade, big budget style, and he dropped all sorts of names like Tom Cruise and Megan Fox. That was all neat and everything, but I forgot every other detail when he said Justin Bieber was going to play the kid who gets his head smashed under a car. I’m praying he wasn’t kidding. I will weep openly. The film isn’t getting made by Troma, they’re “just accepting a big check”. Despite taking some recent heat over the remake, Lloyd was surprisingly not too concerned with whether they keep the political message of the original intact – his movie would stand on its own for all time.
In the end, I’m honestly still a little befuddled. I can’t decide if he was messing with me or not. Either way, the man marches to the beat of a hideously deformed monster drum with superhuman size and strength, and I very much want to be like him when I grow up.
