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Author: Bryant

OK, *mutter* World of Darkness

June 24, 2008
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Obscenity ahead. You have been warned. In order to provide a proper buffer, I give you this picture of a typical pastoral landscape in Warhammer 40K:

There. Now. Where was I about to be? Right.

Fucking World of Darkness! I was looking at jeffwik’s list of systems and thinking about my go-to systems, which led me to think about Adventure. I’ve run Adventure in the D20 version and it was fun cause I had great players. But the system was a bit of a hack and eminently prone to abuse, so why was I not going “Oh, yeah, the original version, yeah.”?

Well, because there’s this stunningly elegant skeleton in the middle of Storyteller. Dots are great, the attributes are great, every shuffle of the names of the attributes and skills and shit has been just fine. Skill plus attribute is the best system, because even if you’re mostly using Guns and Dexterity, hey, the ability to use Guns plus Intelligence is fun. Yes it is.

And then there’s this steaming pile of wacky complexity called the combat system, and I lose it entirely, because I hate it, and while various and sundry people at White Wolf have made great attempts at revising it — the Aeon version of the system is pretty OK! — it’s still just oh god my head hurts. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. I get trapped in this every single time, too, I go “but the character creation system is great, how bad can combat be?” and it’s bad.

You roll! And then you maybe roll again, or maybe there’s soak, and you lose some dice for armor, or do you lose successes based on armor? Do you add Strength to your damage? Do you add Dexterity? Do you add an attribute sometimes, but not sometimes? Does it matter how much you succeed by? Can I dodge? Can I parry? Do I roll for dodge? What do I do with my dodge successes? FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!

I mean. I play Champions. For fun. Don’t get on my ass about complexity, it’s my breakfast cereal. This shit makes no fucking sense!

Fuck this noise. I’m rewriting it. I even have design goals. Look, here they are.

Continue ReadingOK, *mutter* World of Darkness

Wizards' GSL and Restraint of Trade

June 19, 2008
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This is the bit where yet another uninformed non-lawyer spouts off. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Wizards has released a license for third parties who want to publish 4e compatible work. It’s much more restrictive than the analogous license for 3e, which is Wizard’s right. One of the interesting sections is section 6, reproduced in full down below, but which in short says that once you publish a work using the new license, you cannot publish an OGL version of that work or of any works in the same product line.

I.e., Green Ronin has this popular and successful Freeport product line. They’ve published a generic book that describes Freeport, and they plan to publish system-specific books for a number of systems which contain stats and mechanics. So far they’ve done three of those; one for Savage Worlds, one for True20, and one for D20. The latter two are OGL products.

If Green Ronin wanted to do a 4e system book for Freeport, they could. But they’d have to stop publishing the True20 and D20 system books. And they’re not allowed, by the terms of the license, to go back and republish those even if they stop publishing the 4e book.

Ooof.

Now the uninformed question: does this constitute restraint of trade? (Oh, god, linking to Wikipedia in relation to legal questions. I’m going to hell. WINAL, as they say.) I note that Wikipedia claims that restraint of trade is generally applied to post-employment clauses in employment contracts and conditions on sale of business. The former is why it’s hard to enforce non-competes in California employment contracts, for example.

So probably not; but it’s an interesting question. My instinct is that Wizards would argue that the clause acts to protect their interest in their logo and brand — another clause sets standards of quality for licensed material, and allowing a third party to publish material in the same product line which does not fall under those quality standards perhaps risks brand dilution.

But yeah, not a lawyer.

Continue ReadingWizards' GSL and Restraint of Trade

I'm Not Gonna Run This

June 12, 2008
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But I did just shell out $4 for a PDF of Against The Giants so I could convert it to 4e.

Edit: the tournament characters included in the back of the book are named Gleep Wurp the Eyebiter, Cloyer Bulse the Magsman, Roaky Swerked, Frush O’Suggill, Fonkin Hoddypeak, Flerd Trantle, Redmod Dumple, Faffle Dwe’o-mercraeft, and Beek Gwenders of Croodle. So there’s my money’s worth.

On Gumshoe

June 3, 2008
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I owe Simon Rogers some conversation about Mutant City Blues, but I haven’t had time to play it yet. On a readthrough, however, I’m quite impressed — all the usual Gumshoe goodness, plus a creative implementation of superpowers, plus excellent material on running a police-oriented investigative game. The section on roleplaying police interrogations ought to be stapled in front of any police procedural game ever. Which, come to think of it, includes Dark Heresy.

Maybe next weekend I can ad hoc something with the back of the book adventure. Anyhow.

I’ve also been playing the Penny Arcade game. (Fine. On the Rain-Slicked Precipice of Darkness.) For the record, point and click adventure games are remarkably suitable for the Gumshoe engine. It’s the same investigative model — clues are there when you look for them. Less room for improv and branches, of course, but that’s why I love tabletop.

(Knowledge: Mimes.)

The fights in OtRSPoD are pretty pre-ordained as well. You need a bit of reflexes, but you can always run and start over, and death is no big deal, and the combat system is not hard. In fact, the fights are almost just a mechanic to time-delay the delivery of the story. Hm.

The Inquisitor’s Library

May 18, 2008
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The Dark Heresy game outlined here seems to be about to take off. In the interests of screwing around with new ways to manage information, I started a blog for this one rather than a wiki. We’ll see how it goes. I’m offering all the players posting access to the blog.

Redbelt

May 13, 2008
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Redbelt wound up being ultimately unsatisfying for me, which was all the more regrettable given that 95% of the movie rocked. Jeffwik noted last night that he’d never seen a Mamet movie which progressed towards an emotional climax in the way Redbelt attempts, and on reflection I think that’s exactly it. Mamet was working a bit outside his comfort zone, and almost nails it, but I’m not sure the guy knows how to do a story in which good guys win at the end.

Which is a pity, because he builds tension and despair about as well as anyone in the business. The story is positively claustrophobic, not in the scenery but in the way Chiwetel Ejiofor’s options contract and dwindle. He’s in a bad state, and then there’s a ray of hope, and then it vanishes hard. He’s the perfect actor for this, too — it’s another movie where he nails the tough determined moralist who suffers for his morals. See also Dirty Pretty Things. So you’ve got this foreboding, mannered atmosphere to work with.

About five minutes before the movie ended, I thought it was going to be another despairing Mamet ending, which would be OK by me. The moment when Ejiofor turns back was beautifully staged, too: silhouettes with no dialogue, just an action and a decision. That worked. And the culminating fight scene was unlikely, but on the margins of plausible. And again, it’s Mamet. One can accept some artifice in a Mamet movie.

But the last two beats fall flat. Perhaps one would have been all right. The fact that the two redemptive moments are identical, two separate people performing the same action — that was leaden for me. Yes, we get it. Ejiofor is noble and is recognized as such. Just… not twice.

Of course, this is the story equivalent of the repetitive overlapping Mamet dialogue I love, so perhaps I’m getting what I deserve. Still, it just broke my acceptance of the artificial world.

Which is a shame, because other than that it’s one of the best things he’s done in years. There’s the usual cast of Mamet regulars doing the things they do, plus Ejiofor, plus Tim Allen (who’s awesome). The aforementioned tension hooked me emotionally; I cared about the outcome. I’d even still recommend it. I just wanted the climax to match up with the rest of the movie.

Who Games?

May 10, 2008
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“It was Dungeons & Dragons, but I wouldn’t have owned up so quickly a few years ago. But it gave me a really strong background in imagination, storytelling, understanding how to create tone and a sense of balance. You’re creating this modular, mythic environment where people can play in it.”

— Jon Favreau, director of Iron Man

So there you go.

Sequel

May 9, 2008
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It’s 2020: Orlando. Walt Disney World is bigger. Universal Studios has become a true rival to the Mouse. The rulers of Miami are emerging from a brutal civil war; Tallahassee has been disturbingly quiet for over a decade. An old Prince is sleeping; a disbarred lawyer who started his political career in a nursing home watches over the city. With a Sheriff’s approval, of course.

One day, there’s a letter.

“Hey, kids. Long time no see. You guys ought to drop by Dubai; the moonlight is thrilling. Bring the ambulance driver.”

Dubai by Night

Orlando Trash 2020: Dubai Trash.

Esoterrorists: Actual Play

May 8, 2008
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We played some Esoterrorists over at Jere’s last night, and it was awesome. I may have some more analysis-like thoughts later, but I wanted to get down some actual play stuff before it faded from memory. One of my questions going into the game was how smoothly the flow of play could work; would it be awkward getting clues? Would point spends work well? Turned out that all that can work very well. Here’s how it played out, more or less.

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