10 Years Ago: Mazes

I am the Warden!!

I can't recall today how this memory came to me, but it did nonetheless. It wasn't through an email or any visual reminder (seeing the old cover again), it just slipped into the conscious part of my brain and gave me cause to stand back and literally say "Whoa" out loud. I know, total Keanu moment.

Ten years ago at this time, I started work on my first RPG supplement. Originally called Mazes, the name was changed to d20 Options: Mazes and finally resulted in Campaign Options: Mazes after being told there would be legal complications in using "d20" in the name of the product.

Whoa.

Today, I dug through old CDs and "flipped" through the pages of this PDF, reflecting back on the work poured into this first book with fond memories and deep regrets. I can remember pacing in the parking lot next to my rental house with my dog, Rusty, running around sniffing the grass for signs of pee and squirrel droppings while I pondered the next step in the design process. Any day I had off work was dedicated to the book with a fervor I couldn't understand at the time and all my thoughts were on mazes. Why should people use them? How do I make them more exciting? What are quick tips to building one? I had never been the type to race a pencil through 2D mazes in the paper or in one of those supermarket activity books, yet I became consumed by the concept of incorporating mazes into D&D. Hell, I even wrote new rules for using the minotaur's path memory ability when using a minotaur PC.

Sex, Fantasy, and Game of Thrones

I am the Warden!!

I'm a big fan of Game of Thrones on HBO. As I've never read the books (I tried, but loaned the first one out to a friend when he went into the hospital and haven't seen my copy since), I'm experiencing the show with fresh eyes. Like everyone else out there, I find it incredibly refreshing to see fantasy taken as a serious medium for storytelling, character development, and mature yet SFX-laden cinema. So everything I'm about to say is given with love and appreciation, spoken as a male member of a burgeoning household which includes a non-fantasy loving female fan.

Why the rampant sex, dudes?

Around my house, Game of Thrones is known as "that porn show." As much as I'd like to argue against it, the sex is really pornographic at many parts. I'm not a prude and appreciate a good hip-to-hip bump in the buff as much as the next straight guy, but there are still ways in which it gets viewed around here (by waiting until it's late at night and the missus is fast asleep upstairs). When I first started watching the show, I thought George Martin must be a real perv until friends told me the books did not have all that sex (at least as frequent and as bumpy as the show) and the sex scenes are used by the show to reveal intimacy between the characters. On some fronts, I would totally agree (everything involving Daenerys and Drogo, for example) while there are others which make it very difficult to convince others the show isn't just an excuse for porn. You know, like my mom.

Last night's 2nd season premier almost made it to the end without gratuitous sex, up until the last five minutes when we see two escorts learning their trade in school. Was it necessary? Not really, if at all. It was literally the regulatory tit shot HBO's become famous for and it's the one thing Game of Thrones has not done to improve the view on fantasy.

When I was growing up, it was impossible to find a fantasy film without T&A, thereby making it impossible for me to watch them as a kid because my parents would screen it with me. Violence was allowed, not boobies. "The violence isn't real," I was told. "Those boobs are." Dragonslayer and Krull were the only fantasy films I can remember as a kid because they weren't stopped halfway through by my mom. Having tits pop up on the screen was the standard in fantasy films and it's one of the ways, IMO, fantasy has never been taken seriously. For everything certain films, like Lord of the Rings, have done to sway opinion on the matter, fantasy remains an excuse for naked tits and sex for the sole purpose of having tits and sex.

As hypocritical as it feels to advocate against it, the sex hurts the genre. In many ways, it feels like a ploy by HBO more than a necessity to the story. If the show could go even one episode without it, I'd feel more confident in its ability to lure and maintain viewers through everything which makes it such a powerful show: story, acting, scope, all of that award-winning stuff. But as soon as an aspiring actress whose dreams of finally being taken seriously as a skilled thespian are sidetracked by the fact that she's licking her way up and down another chick enters the frame, it's an overplayed distraction when used constantly. It feels like a cheap trick, the meddlesome hand of a worried producer concerned the ratings will plummet if a woman with naturally voluptuousity doesn't jiggle her gagas in front of them camera.

(I really do feel bad for some of the actresses who have to play those scenes, especially when there is dialogue. Those are people who probably went to professional acting schools and dreamed to act in a costume/period piece written by Emmy-winning writers, only to find out she's going porn in the background and needs to show the director how big her tits are before she can get the part. Progress?)

Too Many Dice?!!

I am the Warden and this is a quote from Robert Schwalb on his recent post on sneak attack in D&D Next!!

"The rogue in the current playtest document has sneak attack, and it’s a combination of the 3rd Edition and 4th Edition rules. The extra damage as of right now goes all the way up to 10d6 at the highest levels, but a rogue can use the damage against anybody. At first glance, this feels right, but the more I turn it over in my head, the less satisfied I am with how it works. For starts, an extra 10d6 damage whenever the rogue hits with advantage? At the highest levels, a rogue’s dishing out 20d6 damage a round before we even get to weapon damage and other damage boosters. Sure, this is fun for a while, but I know people who trip up adding together 4d8 or even putting a d20 result with a single number."

It's the last sentence that's bugging me, almost as if it were an affront to RPGs as a whole. Sure, sure, I can go into the whole "When I was young and played AD&D..." blah blah blah, but that'll just be mistaken as an old school argument and stray from point about dice and gaming in general.

When I read that sentence, my initial reaction was "Are you fucking kidding me?" In an age where computers are at our beck and call and DMs use dice rolling apps and games are played via computers, are we really that concerned about having dice numbers toned down because we're concerned about players having trouble doing basic arithmetic? Where the game is taught by reading a 200+ page tome? And sold in book stores?

Tony Jaa Built The Optional System

I am the Warden!!

Last night, I did something I've been waiting to do for months: I took my in-laws out for dinner. Since my accident, they have been incredibly helpful with so many little things and one of those has been taking my fiancee and I out to dinner every now and then. As a future son-in-law, it's tough to be on the receiving end of such charity when you're still "new to the family," but our situation left us with no other choice (though I suppose saying "no" was an option... no, wait, they don't take "no" for an answer). However, now that things have started to pick up and proceedings are finally moving forward, I made a point to take them out to dinner as a token of gratitude for those previous meals.

Then we did a little shopping. Which brings me to today's topic.

One of the DVDs I bought last night was Ong Bak 3 and if I seriously have to tell you who's in this movie, you need to open up a new window or tab and go to IMDb. Now! My hopes were high as I thought Ong Bak 2 was absolutely brilliant choreography and demonstrated Tony Jaa as a true powerhouse in the Asian martial arts scene. I picked up #2 shortly after I was released from the hospital and watched it three times in one day.

It was because of that film I started to work on the Optional System.

I Love It When A Game Comes Together

I am the Warden!!

After a dozen emails back and forth between players and DM yesterday resulted in our bi-weekly D&D game staying cancelled, it seems I have a little extra time on my hands today. Time leads to wandering thoughts and mine are centered squarely on the results of this past Friday's Killshot playtest and the opening scene of my next game.

To put it simply, the game went off without a hitch. No revisions or difficulties ensued. Whenever the players tried to do something, the game accounted for it. From a players standpoint, everything was perfect. From a Director's POV, I'm still a bit paranoid my text might be a little strict and not encouraging free thinking applications, but that's nothing another pass through Direction can't fix. At this point, I'm thinking of adding sidebars into the books for just such a purpose. What's written so far remains a fairly solid detail on the design of the game; sidebars will allow me to break off topic and go into how you can take that design and modify it according, playing up on Rule Number Two from a Director's angle.

The next playtest with this group will be the big one: a full-out, bullet-riddled action sequence. Mass carnage ensues at the very beginning of the third Killshot job, Final Justice, and if that scene goes off without a hitch, then everything I need to test and certify for this game will be good to go. The Optional System was originally designed as a heavy action packed RPG mechanic capable of handling intense combat while simultaneously breaking away from the all the standards of most RPGs, but such designs come with a heavy toll. By starting off somewhat smaller by designing a more strategic game (Killshot is just as much about planning as it is about execution, pardon the pun), I can build the design level-by-level until I'm positive it can handle a more fantastic setting and theme. I've been able to test the mechanics in a martial arts sequence and was very pleased with the results. Now it's all up to guns.

Canada's Know-It-Alls Know Better

I am the Warden!!

Bear with me for I'm breaking away from my norm today to wag my finger at Canadian TV producers. And since it involves the Discovery Channel and highly intelligent people, it shouldn't be too much of a stretch.

Last night, I caught the season finale of Canada's Greatest Know-It-All on the Discovery Channel. This is also the only episode of CGKIA (??) I've ever seen, but my fiancee has kept up on the show enough to explain any missing details. For those of you unfamiliar or outside of the Great White North, it's a contest in which 10 self-proposed know-it-alls competed against each other through a variety of mental events to determine who was the greatest. What I saw both pleased and disgusted me.

Disgusted because of the blatant attempts at confrontation the show splattered across the screen, from the host's loudspeaker efforts to demean the contestants to bringing back a truly detested former contestant eliminated long ago for the sole purpose of stirring up shit, it was so obvious the producers wanted confrontation. Count me amongst the minority, but this is why I detest most reality TV. If I thrived on watching people argue, I'd grab a chair at the mall and be one of those people watching couples, parents, and total strangers bitch at each other.

The Long Arm of the Law

Shh. I am the Warden and I have a hangover. Will I let that stop me from posting on my blog? Almost, so I'll keep this short.

As you may expected, work continues on Killshot and still I cannot keep my mind from wandering. Over the last couple of weeks, Killshot: Direction - the Director's guide to running the game - has forced me to reconsider many aspects of a career from the opposite side of the fence. More importantly, Evidence Points and how law enforcements conflicts with a job.

Around the same time I started popping out words up here, a friend of mine started his own projects and has released one PDF product thus far. That product, Book 'Em, had an interesting premise that's stuck with me as I've developed Evidence Points, yet this brain wonders about taking it a step further. An idea Mark had mentioned was playing a double life campaign. One night, you're the bad guys, the next finds you tracking the villains down. While the premise revolved around a modern crime campaign, it admittedly related to fantasy, sci-fi, and any other genre. Commit the crime, then create another set of characters to track your other characters down and bring them to justice.

I have a rule: if the idea doesn't fade into oblivion within a week, I must consider it. All told, it's been a couple of months at least. Not serious enough to actually consider adding anything to the schedule, but enough to place on my ever-growing list of concepts for Killshot. Having players roll up detectives or FBI agents to hunt down their wicked alternate persona and see which version wins. It's almost the ultimate PvP action for the tabletop.

Obviously, the assassins would step up to the plate first in order to determine how the detectives would follow leads and pick up on Evidence Points in the next game. And the first question I can hear is "What makes you think players would want to arrest their own characters?" I have two answers to that. First, stop yelling, I told you I have a hangover. Second, it's not exactly a career every group would sign up for, making it a perfect candidate for an issue of Killshot Files. Off the top of my head, there would have to be a reward system in place for players who stick to character and pick up the assassins' trail, something which can then translate into the assassins game. My main concern is making the detective side of the career interesting beyond simply following the path of the last game. It's a design creating more questions than answers at this point and the challenge speaks to me.

Speak to me, fair readers. Advice, counsel, share. Anything but dump.