Reminder on Green Devil Face

Deadline for contest entries to Green Devil Face is 11:59pm (US West Coast time!) February 28.

I'll go ahead and call general deadline March 31, and hope we've got more than a 5 room dungeon to present. ;)

Edition Wars

I've got other things going on for a week or two so posting will be light. But when something must be said...

This post here bemoans Tim Kask's editorial in the newly-released Knockspell. More specifically, it complains about Kask's antagonistic tone.

Readers can guess how much sympathy I have for that complaint.

Antagonism is a completely natural, and perhaps unavoidable, when it comes to the "Old School Renaissance" (or as I like to think of it, "The Age of the Return to Reason," to continue the antagonism). For several reasons.

1. One, being reasonable doesn't prevent the detractors from taking shots. It doesn't matter how calm and cheerful and friendly an argument is made, people are going to be nasty and it's going to be vicious at times. I have myself been a target, in real-life, not from bloggy/forum types, of people pissing all over me for daring to put up flyers and trying to run not-current-edition games.
   
   (and after Grognardia's whine/rant a couple days back, I think that a reasoned approach is even more antagonistic than a spirited rant... someone calmly and logically and authoritatively picking something apart is certainly more dangerous and upsetting to the (fans of the) picked-apart than a foaming diatribe, which is more easily ignored)
   
   
2. I believe, with all my heart, that saying, "I prefer this edition," is the same thing as saying, "The other editions aren't as good." It has to be. That one is considered impolite is simply a way of controlling the terms of the discussion so as to conceal one's own weaknesses. One edition's strengths and features aren't the only story, and attempting to portray only positivity regarding this is simply lying in an attempt to manipulate and lubricate a more unpleasant message for easier consumption. Different editions don't just lack specific traits, they possess additional features and traits which repel and cause that edition to be the non-preferred. So sometimes one's preferences of one variation of many is defined by the lack of added shit when the actual favored features are more or less shared between all the variations. And different rules promote (if not necessitate) different playing experiences. Pointing out the bad of other editions is a natural part of stating why you enjoy your preferred the most. And a completely valid way of doing so.
   
   Now all of this is magnified to a greater degree within the "discussion" of different editions of the "same" game than it is comparing the positive and negative points of completely different games, and I think that is because of the illogic of discussing differences within something that appears to be one thing anyway because it shares a name.
   
   
3. The goals of the "Old School Renaissance" are no less than to change your game of choice and indeed your entire gaming philosophy. Sure, nobody else will come out and say it. That would be rude. And cries of "You're doing it wrong, motherfucker!" don't tend to bring people around. But really...
   
   
   • We're not selling products, we're advocating a way of doing things. Sure, some of us have a product to sell but I daresay if the magic genie came up to us and said, "You can have a thousand sales, with 100 people using it for play," or, "You can have a thousand people using your product in play, but you'll never sell more than a hundred," every single one of us would rather be played than bought. Traditional marketing blather doesn't work because we're not selling a product, we're selling an anti-market philosophy. "Play old stuff! Download it (with serial numbers filed off!) for free! Ignore the supplement bloat of the current RPG market! Pick and choose amongst these totally unessential optional releases! Most importantly, Do It Yourself!" And for all the attempts at establishing "alternate brands," the retroclones are smokescreens that want you and "allow" you to play and publish for Another Game with a Trademarked Name.
     
     We're the New Wave of Old School Gaming. It's 1979 all over again in multiple ways, as my metalhead readers will recognize from the reference. OD&D is Sabbath. 1e is Priest. They've been around, but then a bunch of upstarts aren't playing the flavor of the day and can't get industry attention so they press their own records and then press their friends' records. We're Saxon. We're Angel Witch. We're Venom (well... Geoffrey's Venom). We're Holocaust. We're Diamond Head. (does this make Castles and Crusades Motörhead, the Last Thing before the New Wave? eek!) Somewhere amongst us is Def Leppard (sellouts!), but also somewhere amongst us is Iron Maiden, waiting to break out.
     
     I want to be Demon. Dave Hill has the best voice.
     
     
   • Traditional gaming is not designed for one-shotting. Sure, it can be used that way, but it's designed for long-term campaign play. Dungeons and Dragons, one example of choice, has different modes of play that naturally evolve over the levels. These games were designed for frequent, long-term play. We're advocating a return to these games and that way of playing. How can anyone honestly sit here and do a blog promoting the virtues of these traditional games, and that mode of play, and expect that telling someone "frequent, long-term play" with the conciliatory add-on "but you're free to like and play other games as well," doesn't result in a conflict to people claiming to lead busy lives? Come on. Our biggest wish, deep down, is that playing our game (which isn't even any one version of the game!) and gathering players (or finding DMs! You think all of us hardcores that are running games wouldn't love to play once in awhile?) is no more difficult than finding players for the latest edition, or better yet no more difficult than finding players of WoW. Yeah, that's unrealistic, but our actitivies are a goal to get us closer to there (and further from here), even if we can never be there.
     
     
   • Traditional gaming is a social and malleable experience, not only in actual gameplay with the home group, but across groups as well. This is where the public awareness and "market share" become important.
     
     Newer editions of the game are published by a division of a multinational corporation and a vested interest in promoting their vision, and guess what, that vision ain't ours. One is going to be a bit cranky when there's a giant gorilla jumping on your head.
     
     Sentiments like "Nobody is taking your old edition away from you," really means, "Shut up and let that gorilla dance."
     
     And we say, "No."
     
     The increased prevalence of not-traditional games really does hurt our efforts at our table, and not just on the "finding people to play with" level. The exchange of cross-campaign ideas becomes more valuable with more input. Right now it's a bunch of hobbyists on blogs and and message boards and POD. I actually got a book containing the words, "This document is 100% compatible with any and all classic, class-based-with-six-ability-score fantasy role-playing games published before 1989 by those with knowledge of Tactics, Strategy, and Resourcefulness. It’s also 100% compatible with modern recreations of those same games," picked up by a publisher and put into retail distribution. I think that's huge. Imagine if that happened more often, with bigger publishers, and what that might inspire by the "rank-and-file" (you and me) that would see it.
     
     

Now then, what Kask is saying (and the funny thing is, I haven't even read the editorial in question... but I have read his thoughts on the subject in his thread (this post in particular, which I commented on in this blog last May) on Dragonsfoot, and that's what I'm using as my basis for "What Kask Said") is a barrage of the edition war on a completely different level. First, two quotes.

From the final paragraph of the OD&D box set:

In this light, we urge you to refrain from writing for rule interpretations or the like unless you are absolutely at a loss, for everything herein is fantastic, and the best way is to decide how you would like it to be, and then make it just that way! On the other hand, we are not loath to answer your questions, but why have us do any more of your imagining for you?

And Kask's own words as Publications Editor from the foreword of Eldritch Wizardry (written April 1976):

D & D was meant to be a free-wheeling game, only loosely bound by the parameters of the rules.

Kask knows what he's talking about. He's not an outsider. He is not saying, "Those fuckers did this! You bastards!" He was there. He knows what happened and why it happened. He knew the feedback that TSR was receiving and he knew how it affected TSR and the D&D game.

And 30 years later, he's saying, "We screwed up. We were wrong." And as his 1970s words above show, this isn't even a change in his philosophy. To say that his printing those sentiments today is some sort of attack might be fair. To reply, I could ask, "Why are you being so defensive about it?" Better yet, how can you say he isn't right? Does the fun you are or are not having with later D&D, or another game, invalidate the statement that he thinks they monumentally fucked up by setting D&D down a course of standardization instead of local, home customization? If the Publications Editor (and the guy in charge of Dragon at the start) says that certain changes were made in reaction to fan pressure to not make their own decisions at their own table, who are we to say that isn't so? (see also his July 1976 foreword to Gods, Demigods, and Heroes, D&D's Supplement IV, for more of this same attitude)

... and...

When Gary Gygax played D&D himself in his final years... what version was he playing? House-ruled OD&D is my understanding. What does Arneson play these days when he plays D&D? I would think that the people who made the game have a good understanding about what it's about and the attitude you're supposed to approach with it. But one of D&D's strengths is its versatility, so what Gygax and Arneson and Kask do or did isn't the be-all-end-all. And certainly the fact that Arneson didn't play "AD&D" doesn't mean much. But the fact that the anti-AD&D sentiment was in print by Kask in officially released D&D supplements, and that AD&D was not played by the man who claimed sole authorship on the AD&D books, certainly suggests that Kask isn't even being particularly curmudgeony when claiming that AD&D was the start of the Edition Parade of Successive Rot.

(cue lots of links from people that focus on one sentence, or part thereof, and make fun of that as a complete absurd statement, without acknowledging the further explaining afterwards of the sentence)

(damn I thought this was going to be a quick 5 minute post on the subject... I've done a great many things between waking up too early to start this and finishing it... including gone back to bed... and still... too much writing and the girlfriend is hinting that I need to hurry up so we can walk the dog and have breakfast...)

Green Devil Face

'allo 'allo...

What a busy few days. Two games since Friday. NAPALM DEATH concert Monday night. And yesterday and today I'm sick as a dog.

But I've been procrastinating in making my plans known.

Green Devil Face.

It's the classic trap. It sits there in the open, tempting and daring characters to just mess with it. And I want to develop the concept more.

So I'm announcing a print traditional gaming zine under the Green Devil Face name. It will have a more narrow focus than Fight On! or Knockspell, in that it will be specifically about individual dungeon rooms that feature obvious traps/hazards/puzzles that require players to experiment and reason through them instead of making a traps roll to detect/disarm them.

But I am not going to do it all myself. No... I want this, like the aforementioned zines, to be a community project, with the goal of providing referees with rooms and ideas that they can plop down in their own dungeons (or use all together, as each issue's rooms will be strewn together as a makeshift traps-and-puzzle dungeon).

The submission must be your own original work. It must be compatible with one of the games this blog talks about and be OGL-ready (Labyrinth Lord/Swords & Wizardry/OSRIC/Spellcraft & Swordplay/BFRPG compatible, basically). You retain the full rights to your work, but of course submitting it gives me permission to publish it for the purposes of this project only (including reprints, compilations, etc) and no other.

This will be sold in print (printed locally) and pdf, at cost + 25 cents euro.

For those submitting a room before the end of February, I am running a contest where I am giving away two sets of Creature Generator/Creature Generator/FFV, one for the best lethal trap and one for the best non-lethal trap.

So submit a room! Spread the news around! Let's make sure this experiment doesn't fall on its face. :D

Just a Crass Commercial Reminder.

SUPER-FABULOUS MEGA LotFP HOOHAA SALE!

(Only 3 left!)

You get:

• The Random Esoteric Creature Generator for Classic Fantasy Role-Playing Games and Their Modern Simulacra: GOODMAN GAMES PROFESSIONAL VERSION WITH NO NAUGHTY WORDS! SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR! (the only way you can get this signed by the author!)
• The Random Esoteric Creature Generator for Classic Fantasy Role-Playing Games and Their Modern Simulacra: LotFP Edition with some RANTING and A FEW NAUGHTY WORDS! SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR! (the only way you can get this version at all these days!)
• Fantasy Fucking Vietnam (the only way I can get rid of this!)

Price if you're in Europe: 15,50€ (includes 2,55€ shipping price)
Price if you're not in Europe: 18,50€ (includes 5,40€ shipping price)

Paypal this amount (in euros!) noting your address to lotfpeurope@lotfp.com

We've got very few of these sets (I only got 10 author copies, and I'm doing stuff with a few of them, you know?), so don't dilly-dally if you want this. No, LotFP edition Creature Generators aren't for sale separately. Yes, Fantasy Fucking Vietnam is!

I Play SUNDAY EDITION!

Better game today. I think we may be finished with the Pod Caverns with this group (but who knows if they'll want to go explore the few caverns they have not yet...)

Three things...

One, I keep forgetting to take pictures of my girlfriend's baking before we devour it.

Two, the fat naked goblin woman made me decide that goblin nipples aren't only pointy... they're spikes!

Two B, piercers are joke monsters. All five missed and really, what else have they got after that?

Three, "You have to speak in rhymes from now on," is really, really cruel when you're not playing in any of the players' native language. heeheeheeheehee!

I Play... Friday the 13th Edition!

Ay ay ay, that didn't go well.

First off, the blue (OK, OK, turquoise) bread I baked that wowed everyone so much in Vaasa a couple years back was not so impressive to the Helsinki crowd. Frickin jaded big city types. :P Then there was a bit of trouble since the game was at my place and two of the players got a tad lost on their way so we didn't get settled in until a bit later than planned. And then we started playing...

... and the party demonstrated an absolute lack of cooperation and cohesiveness. This is either the third straight session (or the third out of the last four, I forget) where there has been a PC fatality (nevermind hireling fatalities). In addition to my belief that the lack of overall cooperation has led to two of these deaths, the latest two to die (same ones...) were "senior" members of the party (they've been there every session from the beginning) and the ones that everyone else seemed to look to for guidance. When the last PC fell, a disorganized situation devolved into chaos.

In total, they explored less than a dozen rooms, netted about 90xp/gp each, and face an uncertain future as a party. I hope they get their acts together because I enjoy running for larger parties... it gives so more options for them as far as strategy (and they practice almost none of it beyond a few basics). But if smaller, separate groups end up being what's called for (remember I'm aiming for a West Marches campaign), I can do that too. But a party that doesn't work together will get chewed up by the opposition pretty bad...

The good thing is total Olden Domain playership went up to 9 total participants from 5 different nations.

Ahhh, gaming days here again.

I have an Olden Domain game tomorrow, expecting six people. It might be the first game outside the Sunken City area. The BFRPG campaign on Sunday, hoping for five, and we should get through the Pod Caverns at last and into the Valley.

I priced paper cutters and long-arm staplers today. Finding a long-arm stapler in Finland in the first place is a pain in the ass, let me tell you. But, yikes. Being able to staple in the middle of a piece of paper and trim the edges is expensive. Maybe the next couple of offerings will be done at the local Multiprint after all... still, it is a bit of a waste to print up enough copies to make a decent price point for each if only half of those are going out the door anyway. Argh.

Gods. Gods. Gods. Gods.

Grading the Blogs On Name Alone

I'm bored, have about a half hour of time before I need to leave, and don't want to do anything of substance. So here is RANDOM RANDOMNESS of ABSOLUTELY NO IMPORTANCE that will PROBABLY hurt FEELINGS.

Just because it's been awhile.

What I'm going to do is go through the 44 blogs on the blogroll to the right (44? Holy carp!) and rank them, from worst to best... BASED ON THEIR NAME ALONE. Content is unimportant. Style is unimportant. Here, only the name matters! And I'll also tell you the first thing I think of when I see the name.

• Prime Requisite Games™ Ads! Ads are happening here!
• Codeman's Nostalgia Gaming Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start
• RetroRoleplaying: The Blog Someone needs to tell these guys that people still play these games.
• Delta's D&D Hotspot Sounds like some "content provider's" way of giving their D&D section a hip and cool name... and some ointment will make that go away.
• American Barberica Conan in Vinland!
• Uhluht'c Awakens .kaerb a em eviG
• Semper Initiativus Unum Oh yay. Latin. Is this about a marine's paycheck?
• TARGA Foot powder!
• Bat in the Attic Someone's Meatloaf albums got put into storage...
• sword +1 Dude has that many magic items to name his blog after, and he chooses that?
• Sham's Grog'n Blog He better clean that up.
• Kellri I can roll on the tables in the books and come up with results too!
• Brave Halfling Publishing Hobbit fetishes are bad news.
• Strategy SCHMATEGY I click on it and there's nothing about no strategy!
• Silver Blade Adventures Teen fantasy novel series!
• A Hamsterish Hoard of Dungeons and Dragons Hamsters surely have shitty treasure types.
• Chgowiz's Old Guy RPG Blog "My fingers slipped when I was filling in the name and I don't know how to change it"/"I am a dread Hyperborean sorcerer with a twist... no apostrophes!"/How to role-play on a Social Security budget
• Advanced Gaming & Theory blah blah blah blah blah blah
• Adventures in Gaming "I discovered RPGs yesterday and I want to tell you all about it!"
• Apprentice of Old School What everyone else implies, this dude says!
• RPG Blog II Sequels are never any good...
• Back in '81 ... we gamed in the snow. Uphill. Both ways!
• Geoffrey McKinney's CARCOSA Dude's going to need a different blog for everything he ever publishes... I bet he talks about himself in the third person at home... "Honey! I'm hungry! Is Geoffrey McKinney's dinner ready soon?"
• Jeff's Gameblog "Yesterday I found this cool new game. It's called checkers! And today I discovered Connect Four... and it uses these checkers thingies too! Gosh!"
• The Call of the Dungeon Look elsewhere for wilderness encounter tables!
• Overheard at the Barking Dog Woof! Woof! Woof!
• World of Thool "Let me tell you about my campaign..."
• The Dwarf and the Basilisk ... and other fairytales like "How the Succubus got her tits."
• Some King's Kent He shouldn't use that word to describe a queen...
• The Grumblin' Grognard How many old farts bitching about everything do we need? (lots!)
• Greyhawk Grognard This must be Allan Grohe's site!
• Old Guard Gaming Accoutrements "Remember when we had dice made of glass and DM screens made out of tissue paper? Those were the days!"
• The Tao of D&D "Ease your mind as D&D philosophy reveals the truth of the world..."
• The Silver Key Just one of them?
• Grognardia One ZIP code over from Strongbadia...
• Trollsmyth This guy is making trolls?
• Vancian Magic Oh cool! New spells!
• The Eiglophian Press I am so behind on my wrestling... what kind of move is that and who does it?
• Places to Go, People to Be Best general RPG blog name ever... but my interests are more... precise!
• Save vs. Poison Or Die!
• Like Being Read to From Dictionaries Dude must be sooooo boring...
• The Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope These clever guys are going to seriously piss off their 4e DM as they duck by every single one of his traps and encounters and grab the loot without incident, causing the DM to complain, "If you did't want to play, why did you show up?"
• Confessions of an Amateur RPG Publisher "... and I took the boothbabe to the restroom, ripped off her chainmail bikini, and thrust my mighty..."
• LotFP: Heavy Metal Obviously concerning heavy metal, and the "LotFP" letters just ring together so magically it's just about perfect!

Ye Gods

... I'm thinking about gods and other such "superior entities" and how they relate to gaming and campaigns.

Religion isn't something that gives comfort, and worshipping a deity isn't done because you've picked a cosmic side or because you agree with what that god stands for. You follow a religion because the god is real and you worship it because if you don't, you won't gain its favor and the world out there is a very cruel place.

If there is a pantheon set up like the Greek or Norse gods, then you don't pick one of the bunch to worship. You follow them all, even the ones with alignments directly opposed to yours, because you still encounter their domains in your life and The God Of Random And Slow Deadly Death is probably the god you need to placate the most even if you like it least.

But on a pulpier level, the gods aren't the creators and wardens of slices of creation. The gods are just beings of great power who are drunk on that power and people worship them because they have power, and religion and worship is a zero-sum game to these entities. I'm thinking Hawks over Shem (forget the issues with de Camp's changing of a Howard non-Conan story into a Conan tale for a moment... and I only know the Thomas/Buscema/Alcala graphic adaptation anyway!), with King Akhîrom declaring himself a god (leading to a moment of supremely bad judgement) and outlawing the worship of Pteor, the previous chief religion of the city-state. The high priest of Pteor is burned alive (along with 100 noble children of the city). But this line: "Weep not overmuch, however, for Abdashtarth, priest of Pteor. He himself has slain thousands of Pelishtim children the same way, in times of crisis."

That's gamey-time religion to me.

Do Social Networking Sites Improve Your Gaming?

I'm talking Facebook, Myspace, or whatever it is you use.

Do you find new players this way? Keep contact with anyone in your group? Use any of their features for your gaming purposes?

Does anyone make business contacts or anything of real value on those things?

Right now I use Facebook more, and my Myspace is badly neglected (never mind that I approve every metal band that wants to be "friends" without even listening to them), but I really don't use them for purposes other than... well... I dunno. I used to just hit on girls on those things, so I can't find any real use for them now.