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Emoticon (MHRP)

February 24, 2012
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As one does, I wrote up my old superhero PC Emoticon in the hot new superhero RPG. This time, it’s Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. MHRP character writeups are tied to specific versions of the characters, both in powers and in XP Milestones, so I decided to do this writeup as the youthful, optimistic Emoticon. In actual play he went all the way through the Weight of Responsibility Milestone, but I don’t think he ever finished up the True Teen Love Milestone.

I’m not sure how I’d add the martial arts he picked up later — actually, he had a bit of it early on, too. But that’d be a third Power Set, which is a bit more spread out than typical MHRP characters. You could drop it into the Projective Empathy Power Set, but the Limit doesn’t make sense.

There are a couple of small tricks in the original Champions UN PEACE gear package that I skipped. Flash Defense never came up, so you could represent it with a stunt, and the radio headsets are most easily handwaved.

Oh, and I added a Social Specialty, because it’s missing and there clearly ought to be one. Cite: Johnny Storm, socialite extraordinaire, with no particular business acumen at all. Emma Frost might also fit in that category.

Continue ReadingEmoticon (MHRP)

Mike Doughty

February 15, 2012
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Mike Doughty, acoustic guitar, around 150 people, “Country Roads.” So that’s a nice way to spend an evening with one’s beloved. If you didn’t know Doughty was touring solo to promote his new book, now you know. If you didn’t know you should go see him, you know now. If you don’t like music that’s so dry you might not realize you have to drill through the bedrock to get at the vast lake of pain underneath, that’s a fair objection and I won’t think the less of you for passing it up. He’s kind of an odd taste. I love what he does with sound and the way he uses his voice, but it’s a pretty idiosyncratic little corner of the musical universe.

He’s pretty fucking bitter about Soul Coughing. I had no idea. I can’t blame him given the stories he tells.

During the encore he said that piracy is A-OK with him, and if you bought the album he wanted you to burn a copy of it so more people can listen to it. Works out for him artistically and economically. Bug me if you’d like to talk more about that. Encore, yeah. He’s still doing the deal where he turns his back to the audience during the encore ritual.

Oh, his girlfriend’s from West Virginia, so he learned “Country Roads” for her. Although he’s been a fan of it for a while so who knows? But he does it straight, no irony, and it’s lovely.

Poll Promotion

February 7, 2012
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So C. E. Murphy is up for a Rose & Bay Award for crowdfunded fiction. You should vote for whichever fiction you like best, but if you don’t know the others and you like Catie’s stuff, you can take my word on it: she’s the right choice. LJ membership not required. Also, if you want to continue voting in that vein, you can vote for me as crowdfunding patron of the year. I think Catie nominated me for this because I pestered her until she tried patron-funded writing, which is totally kind of her.

Chronicle

February 2, 2012
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Chronicle is a sort of unfortunate title. Hard to search for it, and it’s a lousy entrance point into the film. If you hadn’t seen the trailer, you’d never know what it was about. On the other hand, once you’ve seen the movie and you’re done getting smacked around by the turbulence caused by all your exploding assumptions, it’s a huge clue about the underlying mise en scène of the movie.

If you have seen the trailer, you only sort of know what it’s about, but that’s par for the course. Let me fix that for you. Have no fear; I won’t spoil anything you don’t find out immediately. At least not before the cut.

Here’s the important thing: it’s not a found-footage movie. The movie you see on the screen cannot be an artifact from the fictional reality. Everything’s framed as a camera shot from within the fiction, but there’s nobody who would or could piece together the varying footage into what we see. At the screening I saw, Josh Trank referred to it as a PoV movie, which is a much better term. The secret piece of knowledge you need is that his dad’s a documentarian, and Trank’s intimately familiar with that form. The movie is titled Chronicle because it’s a documentary. Sort of.

It’s not a documentary from the world of the film, though. It’s a movie that’s made in the documentary style. There’s no voice over, no connective tissue, no explanation: just footage from a variety of sources. That choice works because it’s a mirror of how Andrew, the protagonist, sees the world. He fits right into the isolated teen niche, unable to relate to his peers because his adolescence has been stunted by his abusive father and the emotional absence of his dying mother. His environment is established in the first minute of the movie. He’s filming everything because it allows him to both hide and document.

Trank also mentioned that his goal is to make character-oriented films that happen to be genre pictures. He nailed it. The powers are a device to heighten the drama of Andrew’s journey. I found the movie to be rather harrowing at some points, because it’s so raw and painful. Andrew is a sympathetic character all the way through.

Spoilers and loose thoughts coming up next.

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Open Licenses & Gaming Part I

January 10, 2012
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A while back I promised I think Adam Jury and Fred Hicks a post on Creative Commons, the Open Gaming License, why I think the OGL has problems, why Creative Commons licenses don’t always work for tabletop gaming publishers, and so on. This is too much for a single post, so I’ll start with my technique for emulating the OGL using Creative Commons licenses. It has the virtue of being productive thought as opposed to criticism, and it seems more useful to lead with something someone might actually use some day.

Continue ReadingOpen Licenses & Gaming Part I

Reverb Gamers #5: Gaming With Kids

January 7, 2012
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Prompts courtesy of Atlas Games.

I have gamed with kids a little bit. I ran a mini-campaign which included a friend’s… 10 year old? I think? It was fine; I played to his needs a bit more than I usually do and his dad helped him on the rare occasions he needed help with dice or advice on what to do. It wasn’t his first experience with the game. I am probably not a great choice for teaching someone how to game; I’m not super-experienced with kids and appropriate educational techniques. But if the kid knows the game, I like making it fun for her or him. You get better

Reverb Gamers #4: Are You A Closet Gamer?

January 7, 2012
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Dear Reverb Gamers: nope. I work in computer games, which makes it very easy to be out without consequence. It’s actually a career bonus to be a tabletop gamer, despite the fact that my day job is unrelated to game design. Even before I got into computer games, the Silicon Valley dot-com was a pretty friendly place for geeks of all stripes.

Even if I went into something more conservative, I’d still keep a D20 keychain ornament on my shoulder bag, though.

Reverb Gamers #3: What Kind of Gamer Are You?

January 7, 2012
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See here for prompts.

I’m going to the old 1999 WotC survey for this one, because I kind of like it when types are developed via research than just out of a fevered gamer brain. (But I’m an Method Actor with a side of Tactician, as one may have guessed from the previous post in this series.) That said, on the WotC chart I live on the tactical side of the strategy/tactics line. I generate strategy by improvisation, which is no strategy at all, but sometimes I make it look good enough to pass. Between story and combat, I lean strongly towards story. That’s a less important division to me; I think tactics over strategy matters more.

Reverb Gamers #2: Why Game?

January 4, 2012
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Prompt courtesy of Atlas Games again.

“What is it about gaming that you enjoy the most? Why do you game? Is it the adrenaline rush, the social aspect, or something else?”

I think it comes down to the fantasizing. When I’m actually gaming, I love roleplaying and immersing and speaking in my character’s voice. When I’m not sitting at the table, I’m still having fun thinking about what the world’s going to be like or how those NPCs are going to act or how my character might develop. I read sourcebooks because I like things that trigger my imagination.

There is also a hefty side order of strategy here. I like moving pieces around, which is why I like card games as well as roleplaying games. Although let’s be honest here: I like feeling smart, and strategizing feeds that desire. At the tender age of 41, I have more or less gotten away from the need to win, as long as I feel like I’ve done smart things. (Sometimes I slip up there. Sorry about those twin TPKs, guys.) Other people will also do smart things, and that’s okay; losing cause someone else is also smart is fine.

It’s mostly about fantasizing, anyhow. Shadowfist was my CCG of choice because it’s the one with the resonant world.

Reverb Gamers #1: First Roleplaying Experience

January 4, 2012
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Prompts courtesy of Atlas Games.

I was, I’m not sure. 14? 15? Something like that. We were living up in New Hampshire. There were these family friends, who we met I don’t know how; probably one of those hippie connections we were rich with in those days. Teo was four years older than I was. Huge Rastafarian. If I remember right, his family’s lore said they were related to Haile Selassie? Seems unlikely, but who knows.

I was over at their place one day: a little apartment, filled with tapestries and rugs, and Teo dragged out this book. I was pretty weirded out, since he wasn’t much of a reader. It was Tunnels & Trolls, with a couple of solitaire adventures. He showed me how to play, sort of, and I was totally hooked. I extracted all available information about where you could get this stuff and went home with a head full of wonders.

Next Thursday — I know it was Thursday, because Thursdays were mall days — I hit the hobby store in the Mall of New Hampshire. It’s not still there, although the Mall is. They had the old line of Steve Jackson Microgames, and Traveler (whoa), and miniatures, and Dungeons & Dragons, but most important T&T. Fifth edition, great stuff. I do still have my copy. I also have a bunch of the old solos, and the Dungeon of the Bear, and Uncle Ugly’s Underground. The dungeons were three hole punched for inclusion in a binder.

I didn’t play in groups till I hit college. I was insufficiently social to get a group going, and my school was too small to have one already. I played a lot of solo adventures, though. I suspect I could still find my way through Naked Doom and City of Terrors from memory.