Margaret Weis Drops #MarvelRPG #RPG #gaming cc:@GamingMeerkat

FrylockLeave a comment
I’ll miss you, old friend … until I play you again a week from Saturday.

Despite my many hours playing Dungeons & Dragons since 2005 (after a 24-year absence from the game), I’m really not much of an RPG gamer. I love FASA Star Trek RPG, but what do you expect? I loved Enterprise! I’ve played Gamma World 4e, Legend of the Five Rings (3rd edition) three times, Dragon Age RPG (Green Ronin Publishing) a few times (mostly as Game Master), and Star Wars Saga Edition once (again, as Game Master). I enjoyed all of those games but played Call of Cthulhu d100 twice and hated it. If I’ve played any other RPGs with dice, I don’t remember it off the top of my head, so apparently they didn’t make much of an impact.  (I’ve also played the diceless RPG, Fiasco, which was great.)

I’d like to broaden my horizons as far as RPGs are concerned, so when my friend, Rishi, offered me the chance to join his new Marvel RPG game, I jumped at the chance. I’ve heard good things about it, so I was intrigued even though I never read comic books. (Come to think of it, I’m not a good geek in general. I don’t play video games, and I find Dr. Who to be retardis.) I wanted to play the mechanics everyone was talking about, so I agreed to play for a couple of sessions before gracefully bowing out.

I don’t think I’ll be bowing out. Our first session was a lot of fun for me. My approach to RPGs has always been to focus on a character concept, where the character has some interesting, overriding character trait, usually but not always a flaw. I then play that trait to the extreme. With my group, that wasn’t only tolerated but welcomed with open arms. As comic book fans, the other players liked the fact that I played my character’s traits so faithfully, even to the detriment of the team, because these are the characters the players love.

Clearly, I’m the baddest ass of the bunch!

Incidentally, I played a guy by the name of Hank Pym, a.k.a., Yellow Jacket. I’d never heard of him but am sure that means something to a lot of you. It also meant something to my cousin, Tom, who still collects comics. When Rishi gave me a list of characters from which to choose, I passed the ones in favor of the Super Human Registration Act to Tom, who told me to pick Yellow Jacket. It’s worked out so far. An insecure, nerdy guy who 1) supports government registration of people, and 2) gains experience points by blaming his own major failing on a loved one? Yeah, I can do this.

Mechanics

And that (finally) brings me to my first point. The mechanics of the game have their flaws, but overall it’s an fun system, especially for someone like me.

The Bad: The dice rolling is unnecessarily convoluted, requiring you to figure out which types of dice to roll (d4, d6, d8, d10, or d12) and in what number every single time you roll. Once I’m used to it, it’ll probably become second nature, but it creates a barrier for entry. If I were the rule rather than the exception, the group probably would have moved on and never played it again. Instead, I was the odd man out. I was the only one that didn’t have experience with the game and wasn’t a comic book reader. Keeping this game going will be easy despite the unnecessary complexity, but I don’t think that will be the case for all groups.

The Good: Rewarding me for domestic violence? Brilliant! I know that sounds bad, but stay with me. No one’s perfect, not even superheroes. We all have flaws, and a role-playing game that doesn’t hide from that fact, even among the heroes, is exactly what I need to make me happy. (Also, I don’t actually have to beat my wife in the game. It’s not necessarily that specific.) Needless to say, this doesn’t always go over well in other systems. In 4e D&D, I have a stereotypical, senile old man, Luigi, who’s great for comic relief, but when I play him in character during combat or role-play, he usually makes bad decisions. It’s never once actually hurt the group when all was said and done  — he was responsible for winning a “social skill challenge” in one adventure despite his eccentricity — but while it’s occurring, it’s tough to convince the other players of that. Some people get very annoyed by his erratic behavior. With Marvel RPG, no one is complaining, and I doubt this is a characteristic of my group itself. The mechanics of the game actually encourage me and them to act the fool at times. And it works.

The Good but with a Caveat: The initiative system is fantastic, but it wouldn’t work in a game like D&D where building a character to go first has so many advantages. Other game systems would have to be tweaked dramatically to allow for the Marvel RPG initiative system. Still, it’s something every game publisher should at least consider.

It’s All About IP

My second point is, as always, that the world lives and dies based on intellectual property law, and this is the more important of the two points. IP law governs everything, and there’s a lesson to be learned here. RPG publishing is a low-profit exercise. It’s tough to do well in it, and whether most publishers will admit it or not, it’s ability to succeed as well as it has depends a great deal on the continued success of Wizards of the Coast. WotC produces Dungeons and Dragons (among others), and does so with the mighty weight of Hasbro behind it. They’re able to do things no other RPG publishers can do, and the entire industry benefits as a result. However, even WotC could hold on to the Star Wars license for only so long. With such a low profit-margin in the first place, having to give up a non-negligible chunk of that in the licensing fee reduces the profit margin even more. Also, unless you’re willing to give up and even bigger chunk of the profits, you have to settle with a non-exclusive license (if it’s even offered), meaning you won’t even be the only game of your kind available. It’s a no-win situation over the long haul.

With that in mind, be disappointed but not angry. I’ve never met or spoke with Margaret Weis, so I have no inside information here, but I’d put good money on the bet that she had a very good reason for letting the license go. This isn’t the fault of Ms. Weis, or of Marvel. It’s just the nature of the industry. The game was selling well, but the numbers just don’t add up in the long run. Everyone needs the core rulebook, but sales of add-ons will always be at least a little less, and often will be much less.

Fortunately, there’s a lot of material out there with even more to come, and many gamers will put together supplemental materials in the form of PDFs freely downloadable from their private sites. This game won’t die anytime soon, and that’s a good thing.

The End

Despite my optimism in the two sentences immediately preceding this one, it feels like there’s been a death in the family (not that bad, though; on the level of a step-cousin). 🙂 I just wanted to offer a eulogy of sorts, if for no other reason than to make myself feel good about it. It’s a good game, we’ll all continue to play it, but like all good things, eventually it must come to an end, and no one is to blame for that. Gaming will go on.

As always, happy gaming!

Follow me @GSLLC
Follow Rishi @GamingMeerkat
Follow Green Ronin Publishing @GreenRoninPub

“Shall We Begin?” #StarTrek into Darkness Anyone?

Frylock4 Comments

Star Trek into Darkness opens on Friday, May 17, which happens to be this Trek-nerd’s 45th birthday. So, anyone in the Washington, DC area (Northern Virginia) wanna go see it with me that night?

Follow me on Twitter @GSLLC

The #Matrix: A Fan Theory That Changes Everything #science #computer #intelligence #emotion #startrek

FrylockLeave a comment

I’ve have the Matrix movies playing in the background while I work on some trademark matters. I know that many people hated the second and third movies, Reloaded and Revolutions, and I wasn’t a big fan of them either. I find it annoying that no one in the movie can speak in a normal tone of voice, using either yelling or a whisper. No, that doesn’t make you sound cool. It makes you sound like a pretentious idiot who thinks he’s cool. However, I had to watch them again because I wanted to do so within the context of an interesting fan theory I learned by spending too much time reading Cracked.com.

The theory goes like this: What you know as the Matrix is a computer simulation. That’s simple enough; no surprises there. What you know as the movie’s real world is also a computer simulation. The Matrix is a simulation within that outer simulation. What this means is that Zion is a computer simulation, and Neo, Morpheus, Trinity, and all the other pretentious serial whisperers are computer programs. The reason for the existence of the layers is that the computer programs (i.e., Neo, Morpheus, etc.) are being trained to think like humans. They’re being taught to express love, to place the needs of others over themselves, and generally to govern their behavior by more than mere statistics. (Think of Will Smith’s monologue in the also-maligned I, Robot. He points out that a human being would have known to save the girl rather than him despite Will Smith being the statistically-correct choice.) The fan theory also explains Neo’s superman powers outside the Matrix. If the “real world” is just another computer simulation, then it’s explainable that a blinded Neo can see the machines, that Neo can affect them with his powers, and that Agent Smith was capable of “possessing” a “real world” character, Bane. Finally, this also explains that the trilogy didn’t really have an ending. Neo just won, not for some logical reason, but because … he just did. All the Agent Smiths just exploded because Neo … I don’t know … infected them? Well, who cares? No explanation for how that happened is necessary. It’s just important that he did. I guess the programs learned their lesson, so it was no longer necessary for there to be a war.

The theory has one downside I see: An anticlimactic ending. If what I’ve described is what was going on the whole time, then as the credits roll, you’ve got to be thinking, “So no one was ever in any danger? This whole thing was essentially an elaborate movie … to the characters _in_ the movie? Awwwwwww, shucks! I was apparently watching some nerd writing lines of programming code for six or seven hours.” On the other hand, that’s what you’re doing in real life anyway when you go to a movie, especially one like Megamind that’s nothing but computer animation.

While I didn’t need to watch several hours of the movie to appreciate the fan theory — I probably could have not watched it as all — it made the movies completely different films at least worthy of the rewatch. Neo, et al. the programs are learning hope, love, forgiveness, and many other things that machines currently can’t learn, but above all else going beyond one’s programming and exercising free will. Perhaps it’s only through “living” these experiences that the lessons can ever sink into artificial intelligence.

Or not. I’m no expert in artificial intelligence. It’s a neat theory, though, and one that makes for decent drama. Just ask Commander Data.

Follow me on Twitter @GSLLC

#TabletopDay! @slyflourish @rosamoonshadow @nullzone42 #fluxx #ascension #dungeon #cah

FrylockLeave a comment

table-top-logoYesterday was Table Top Day, and it didn’t disappoint. For one, my hosts were Mike and Michelle Shea (aka @slyflourish and @RosaMoonshadow respectively), who have both earned the title of Gamer Extraordinaire. I also played with Jorge, someone I’d never met before (always a plus in gaming) as well as familiar friends, Nate (@nullzone42) and John (not on Twitter).

For me, the company you keep is always more important than the games you play, but for the games themselves, I played the newest version of one of my favorite games from childhood, Dungeon!, and one of my favorite relatively new games, Cards Against Humanity. I usually lose the latter because I’m completely immersed in the humor of the game, whereas it often offends everyone else’s sensibilities eventually. With offended people judging my outrageous plays, it’s hard to win that game. Still, I tied for first place against Michelle. Dungeon involved a character death, and a series of ridiculous rolls that resulted in a ridiculous (but fun!) showing.

More importantly, I played three games I’d never played before: Ascension, Fluxx (twice!), and Pandemic. Pandemic is a cooperative game, and we lost. It’s well-balanced, and you’re always just one step ahead of failure, not knowing whether you’ll win. In an apocalyptic scenario, that’s exactly how you’d expect a real world scenario to play out.

I played Fluxx twice, winning the first and losing the second (to Mike). If you haven’t played it, you need to play it. It’s fun. It’s a card game by Looney Labs  in which the rules themselves constantly change. The second game was themed around Monty Python, so that really played to my interests.

Ascension was interesting, but it’s not a game I’d have to play again. I could play it and enjoy it, so feel free to invite me to any games, but there are better games for me. Mike scored an 86 (IIRC), and Nate and I tied at 66, so surprisingly I didn’t do poorly for a first timer, but I wasn’t much of a threat for winning. In fact, for all I know, I miscalculated my score, so I could easily have come in third.

Overall, a Saturday playing games with good people, some of whom I had never met before, and playing games, some of which I’ve never played before, is about as ideal a situation as any gamer can have. Mission accomplished.

Thanks for hosting, Mike and Michelle!

Follow me on Twitter @GSLLC

#ADnD Mod B1: In Search of the Unknown Free PDF Download #WotC #DnD #RPG #Loremaster

FrylockLeave a comment

EDIT: This post from January 24, 2013, is one of the first links provided by a Google search for downloading this module, but it’s understandably a bit out of date. The PDF is no longer free to download, but the current link to purchase it is here: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17081/B1-In-Search-of-the-Unknown-Basic?term=b1+.

In case you didn’t hear: You can now download PDFs of prior edition Dungeons & Dragons materials over at http://www.dndclassics.com/. My first mod, B1: In Search of the Unknown, is free to download … 100% legal. With that, I point you appropriately to my article from Loremaster.org, The Rise and Fall of Norrin the Barbarian (Loremaster.com is no longer available).

Follow me @gsllc

Rotting Toes: An #Orcish Dice Game #DnD #4e CC: @Erik_Nowak

Frylock1 Comment

Yeah, this game is probably fair.

This is a guest post from DM extraordinaire, Erik Nowak. I was one of the players in this game and have used Rotting Toes in the last season of D&D Encounters. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

==============================

In a recent D&D 4E session set in Neverwinter, the players needed access to the city’s orc-controlled River District. They approached a gate guarded by several bored orc soldiers. Some of the orcs were lightly dozing, while others were gambling, playing a dice game in the dirt. It was to be a simple role-playing exchange: the orcs act tough and demand 10 gold pieces per character to enter their territory – either the heroes paid, or they act tough and refuse and a fight breaks out. Instead it went like this:

“Can I make a check to see what game they are playing?”, one player asked.
[Rolls a skill check; super high result, of course.]

I responded, “Um… sure. It’s called, uh, rotting toes.” That sounded fittingly orcish.

“How is it played? And can we join in?”

“Sure, the orcs are happy to take your gold.”

Then I found myself in a pickle: I needed a dice game! I don’t know any dice games other than craps, and I didn’t want to use that.

So I made one up on the spot.

The first thing I thought of was the old school AD&D method of rolling for ability scores: roll 4d6 and drop the lowest die. I started there and was able to tie it in with the name by thinking that the die-dropping represented a toe rotting away from a diseased foot. Then I made the rest up right there and let the players have a go!

History

The game has its root in the story of an orc warrior who was suffering from a wasting disease of the foot that resisted magical healing. A shaman of Yurtrus, the orc god of death and disease, told the warrior that his fate was in the hand of Yurtrus alone, and the inscrutable, silent god would do as he pleased, unmovable by deed or prayer. All the other orcs could do was bet on whether or not the warrior’s toes would rot off.

(What happened to the orc, you ask? His toes all rotted off. Then his foot, followed by the rest of the leg. Then he died. Orc tales don’t have happy endings, people.)

Pictured: Someone who didn’t take the feat, Skill Training: Math.

Playing the Game

To play rotting toes, you need 4 six-sided dice and a group of several players with coin, one of whom is the Hand of Yurtrus, or “the Hand” (the dice roller). The role of the Hand switches to a new player each round.

The Hand places a bet, typically 1 gold piece. Other players place bets on whether the Hand will lose or win (“rot” or “not”). The Hand has three chances to roll doubles in 2 separate throws of the dice. If 2 throws yield doubles, the Hand wins, and the players who bet on a loss lose their coins, which are distributed evenly amongst the Hand and the players who bet on a win. Otherwise, the Hand loses, and his coins, plus the coins of the players who bet on a win, are evenly distributed amongst the players who bet on a loss.

Order of Play

1)      First Throw: The Hand rolls 4 dice, looking for any set of doubles. Regardless of whether or not doubles were rolled, the lowest die is removed from play (a “toe” has “rotted away”), and the Hand rolls again.

2)      Second Throw: The Hand rolls 3 dice, again looking for a set of doubles.

  • If doubles were rolled previously, and doubles are rolled here, the round ends and the Hand wins.
  • If neither throw yielded a set of doubles, the game ends and the Hand loses.
  • If doubles were rolled in one of the throws, play continues to a third throw with the lowest die removed from play.

3)      Third Throw: The Hand rolls 2 dice, again looking for a set of doubles.

  • If doubles were rolled previously, and doubles are rolled here, the round ends and the Hand wins.
  • If a second set of doubles is not rolled, the Hand loses.

Playing Rotting Toes in Your Campaign

To play rotting toes in your D&D game, have a PC take the role of the Hand and place a bet. Allow other PCs to make win or lose bets as well, but these bets are optional.

The Hand then rolls the dice until he wins or loses, as outlined above. For ease of use, I didn’t bother recording the number of actual rotting toes players or how each one of them bet. I simply said that when the Hand won on a 1 gp bet, he gained 2d4 gp to represent the winnings taken from the pot. Anyone betting on the Hand to win gains the same amount. If the Hand loses, any PC who bet on the Hand to lose gains 2d4 gp.

Cheating

One character in my game – the rogue, of course – asked if he could cheat. I allowed for it, but due to the number of eyes on the dice, it would be difficult to do unless the cheater brought his own weighted dice – which the orcs would never allow! To cheat, the Hand throws the dice and makes a Hard DC Thievery check. On a success, the Hand may change the result of one die thrown. A failed check makes the other players suspicious, and the DC for future checks increases by +2. A second failed check confirms the players’ suspicions, and will get the thrower ejected from the game (at best), or attacked. When playing with orcs, a Hand caught cheating is very likely to be killed immediately.

Additionally, it is a little-known fact that when playing with orcs, winning too many times as the Hand will also arouse suspicions of cheating, whether the winner actually cheated or not. Typically, if a player wins more than 3 times in a row as the Hand, he is given a savage beating – even if there is no evidence at all of cheating – just for being “too lucky” and making a mockery of Yurtrus’ judgment.

Follow Erik @Erik_Nowak
Follow me @GSLLC

The Worst #StarTrek: Original Series Quotes to Shout out During Sex @kesseljunkie @TheInsaneRobin @TheGornCaptain

Frylock2 Comments

Oh, please tell me I did not just say that!

Recently, I came across a site providing the 20 worst Star Wars quotes to shout out during sex. Well, this is the Internet, so that means I have only one choice: plagiarize! Here, then, are the 20 worst Star Trek: The Original Series quotes (or paraphrases) to shout out during sex according to me.

  1. You’d make a splendid computer.
  2. Do you want to tell me what’s bothering you or would you like to break some more furniture?
  3. Human bonding rituals often involve a great deal of talking, and dancing, and crying.
  4. This vessel…I give… she takes. She won’t permit me my life. I’ve got to live hers.
  5.  [In a gravely, reptilian voice] Hsssssssss!
  6. If you’re going to get nasty, I’m going to leave.
  7. Well, either choke me or cut my throat. Make up your mind.
  8. Sir, there’s a multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder.
  9. I have never understood the female capacity to avoid a direct answer to any question.
  10. Another dream that failed. There’s nothing sadder.
  11. We’re not here to conduct a field experiment in human biology.
  12. There’s nothing disgusting about it. It’s just another life form, that’s all. You get used to those things.
  13. Women are more easily and more deeply terrified, generating more sheer horror than the male of the species.
  14. Too much of anything, … even love, isn’t necessarily a good thing.
  15. Logic and practical information do not seem to apply here.
  16. I’m trying to thank you, you pointy-eared hobgoblin!
  17. You mustn’t stop me. You’re my lover, and I have to kill you.
  18. I am incapable of destroying or interfering with the creation of that which I love so deeply– life in every form– from fetus to developed being.
  19. Witch! Witch! They’ll burn ya!
  20. I’m not Herbert.

[See Kirk caption above]
Bonus quote for when you walk in on others having sex: You’re a traitor from a race of traitors. Disloyal to the core. Rotten! Like the rest of your subhuman race. And you’ve got the gall… to make love to that girl!

Now, Star Trek and Star Wars fans have yet another reason to be competitive with one another.

Follow me @gsllc

Post script

I know, including Gaila from the latest Star Trek movie is cheating. It’s not an Original Series picture, and the fact that it’s from an alternate timeline involving the original crew is no excuse. I don’t care, and neither do you.

In the mean time, keep your damn mouth shut, dumbass!
In the mean time, keep your damn mouth shut, dumbass!

#StarTrek meets #Firefly!

Frylock6 Comments

I’ve never seen a single episode of Firefly even though I’ve had a friend’s copy of the entire series on DVD for over a year now. Maybe I should watch it, or maybe, like Ferris Bueler’s Day off, if I watch it as a 44-year old-adult, it won’t be nearly as good for me as it was for you when you were young 20-something’s.

Star Trek meets Firefly!.

Hit Point Charts for #DnD #Encounters: 2nd Edition #RPG

FrylockLeave a comment

I’ve updated my hit point charts for the current season of D&D Encounters to include a “DCs by Level” table in the page footer. If you’re using the charts, you might want to replace them with this one.

Hit Point Charts

The link on the original page has also been updated.

Follow me on Twitter @GSLLC