Category: Gaming

Are you playing Button Men — online?

Why the heck not? It’s free.

Weird idea, while drifting off to sleep:

A Lexicon of Lost Hollywood. Each entry is a movie review of a movie that was never made; each movie review must refer forward and back to other movies. You can make up actors and directors and screenwriters if you like, but they cannot be entries: they will always be defined only by the reviews of their movies. Or, if you wish, you can use the stars that we know.

The slots are not alphabetical: they are chronological. 1940-1945; 1945-1950; 1950-1955; 1955-1960; 1960-1965; 1965-1970; 1970-1975; 1975-1980; 1980-1985; 1985-1990; 1990-1995; 1995-2000. 12 slots. The secret history of Hollywood (and Bollywood, and the BBC, and Hong Kong) is revealed slowly as the needle of time moves forward.

I’ll have a formal Actual Play post at the 20’ by 20’ Room later, but right now I just want to say that Dogs in the Vineyard rocks hard. Whoa, but that’s a strong game with a beautiful clarity to it.

At first glance it maybe doesn’t look like the setting and the system are so tightly linked. But they are, maybe not so much in the details of place and time but certainly in the moral certainty aspect. The key aspect of the system is the ability to escalate: the ability to slap down a bunch more dice and say “I’m willing to go this far to make this thing happen.” That is reinforced by the moral correctness of the player characters and creates a very powerful dynamic at the table.

I had probably too many people — five is more than is recommended — but I wouldn’t have wanted to lose any of the PCs. There’s this nice touch in character generation where you don’t say “My character prioritizes skills over stats.” Instead, you say “My character had a complex upbringing,” and the prioritization of stats, skills, and relationships falls out from that. It encourages one to think about one’s background. My PCs were great. Also, you get to use the conflict skills during character generation, so you’re used to the system by the time it’s time to start thinking about shooting people.

“My father was a Dog, but he was also an alcoholic and I learned growing up that you fend for yourself or you go hungry.” “I’m an orphan, and I loved the Temple, and I’m wearing a coat that was made for someone else because I have no family to make a coat for me.” “I’m a sinner waiting to happen, because I want to be with another woman and I’m slipping over the line from ‘I do what is right’ to ‘It’s right because a Dog does it.’” “My mother was a Dog but I got lost as the youngest sister to six brothers, and I’m looking for people to stick up for.” “My father was a Dog, and of course I’m a Dog, and of course Dogs are better than others, and of course I’m going to be the best of them all.” See? Awesome PCs.

I’m head over heels with this system. I imagine that’ll fade but the immediate reaction is huge. Oh — here’s my town writeup, which is OK for players to look at if they’re curious. Wow, but it’s easy to run Dogs.

Andrew Hackard (a member of the Role-Playing Game category jury for the 2005 Origins Awards) notes that Lumpley Games didn’t submit five copies of Dogs in the Vineyard, so it wasn’t eligible for an award. Given that, I gotta back off some of my criticisms of the awards this year. Who knows how many submissions actually qualified for the voting?

The 2005 Origins Awards nominees have been announced. The nomination process was very different this year; in each category, a jury voted on the nominated products in order to select five nominees. Some of the results are fairly interesting. At first glance, I can’t say I think the process was a success.

The Best Role-Playing Game category is fairly heavy on the retreads. In particular, Dungeons & Dragons Basic Game is not a new role-playing game by any definition. The Authority RPG is borderline. A new edition of GURPS seems reasonable — oh, but of the five jury members for this category, two of them were Steve Jackson Games staffers last year. Well, OK, then.

And there’s no wholly new product among the nominees. Surely at least one of the five top products from last year was fresh and new?

Best Role-Playing Game Supplement, which shares the same jury as Best Role-Playing Game, has two GURPS supplements on the list of nominees. Gotcha. I will say that I agree that all the nominees I’ve read on the list are very good. Um, but there are six nominees listed, and the rules say there should be five.

I can’t really claim expertise on the other categories, so I won’t comment on them. The full list of nominees is in the extended portion of this post, for the curious.

Read this first.

I spent a while pondering this one during my vacation, and I think the system is a modified Feng Shui with revamped templates. Not as many hit points, to get it more gritty — possibly even a wound system. Steal the madness meters from Unknown Armies and turn them into corruption meters and you’re good to go.

Yeah, someone wrote fanfic about my RPG character. This goes in the hall of fame next to getting asked to autograph one of my books at a con, you betcha.

Even if I did have to cajole Ivan into it.

For the interested: the Whitey’s Boyos character sheet. Comments welcome. Warning: contains language.

“Whitey’s Boyos” movies and television shows include the following. There are other obvious candidates; if you haven’t seen every gangster flick Scorcese ever made, well, you’re like me because I haven’t seen Gangs of New York yet either. But you know what I mean. These, however, are the direct influences and recommendations.

• Mystic River: not as good as the book, but still very very good. Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon were on fire.
• Monument Ave.: Denis Leary was born to play an Irish thug; this is the movie where he does it best. Also with Colm Meaney, Martin Sheen, and a bunch of other good actors. Directed by Ted Demme.
• The Boondock Saints: yeah, that’s Boston for you, with a whole lot of Irish insanity.
• Good vs. Evil: the tone maybe goes a little bit too far towards the humor, but the image of a rough-edged group of amateurs fighting very bad things stuck with me.
• The Shield: wrong era, wrong side of the law, right ethos. Whitey’s Boyos are bad men doing good things, while Detective Mackey’s strike team is the opposite.

This list may also be useful.