I Want to Play This Game and Never Stop

This eagle is stunned by all the awesome

Like them or not, Muse has an awesome song called Knights of Cydonia, with an equally awesome video that you need to go watch right now. Go. Okay, back with us? Awesome, right? Yes, I know this is old news, just humor me here. I first got hip to this song through Guitar Hero III, and then to this hysterically campy video through some casual YouTube surfing. I watched, mouth agape, and in the silence I looked around at Jacko and Munin and Riff and Shade and everybody else and said, "We need to play this game, right now!" I do that a lot. I'll see some crazy thing like the Knights of Cydonia video or get really into a book (or series) and decide that I need to do some role-playing in that setting. So, let's talk about great and/or hilarious settings we want to play in, shall we?

Snow Day!

The view from my office...

So, we're just going to go ahead and pretend that I've been updating like normal and not been a slack-ass for the past month and a half. Let's just dive right in, shall we? Winter has come at last to the Detroit Metro Area. It snowed like a bastard all day yesterday, this heavy slurry of rain and snow that was great for snowballing and clogging the shit out of my snowblower, but not so great for staying warm or dry or shoveling without having a heart attack. Like a fool, I did all my snow removal and de-icing the walks after only five hours of constant snow, and by the time it was dark it looked like I hadn't done a thing. It was goddamned Sisyphean. Not that I have it that that bad honestly, seeing as how Ragnarok has apparently arrived for Ross and Sam up in Minneapolis where the Æsir have become manifest and the Metrodome collapsed under the weight of all the snow.

Anyway, I awoke to a blasted, frozen hellscape winter wonderland this morning with about five inches of snow under an inch of ice and a temperature of about a million below zero. Making my car drivable was more akin to getting this guy out of his glacier than civilized snow removal. So of course, as I'm standing there hacking my way through all the ice that entombed the Saturn while the dog and cat both watch me smugly from my office window, my thoughts obviously turn to using weather in role-playing games.

Gilding the Lily

You have got to be shitting me...

So, I've got this thing where I see wonder in relatively ordinary things. When you look around, you can find a lot to be amazed at in your surroundings. Little things like the fact that this computer I'm working on has more computing power than was used to put a man on the moon or build this beautiful thing, and big things like, well, the fact that we put a man on the goddamn moon. I've said it before, but if you look at something hard enough you can always find something about it that's fascinating. I find more beauty in the gaunt symmetry of a turbofan engine, and more terror in the simple thoughtless, workaday evils that we perpetrate on one another, than in a million horror movies or sci-fi epics. What drives me crazy is the tendency some writers and game designers have of embellishing something that is already perfectly awesome and, well, ruining it frankly.

Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together

What the hell is this? Awesome, that's what.

So, today's post isn't going to be very long or insightful, 'cause I've got Rogues and Traders to write about. I've got something on my mind though, and that's the time-honored tradition of the mash-up.

Let's Go To Work!

Meet our new art director...

Journeyman

jour·ney·man   

[jur-nee-muhn]

–noun, plural -men.

In modern apprenticeship systems, a journeyman is a man who has a tradesman certificate that required completion of an apprenticeship. This is the highest formal rank, that of master having been eliminated; it allows them to perform all the tasks of the trade within the area where they are certified, to supervise apprentices and to become self-employed.

As the descendant of hard-working and hard-drinking Eastern European immigrants, the iconography and symbology of the "working man" resonates in me like a genetic memory. For over a hundred years the men of my family have been creators. The first generation came to America from countries that don't evenexist anymore. They tilled the land, built towns, forged lives in a strange country, and toiled endlessly in the hellish steel mills of Eastern Ohio, Western PA, and Northern West Virginia. Their sweat, and much of their blood, tempered the steel that forms the bones of our great cities. Their sons were masons, carpenters, bricklayers, farmers, ironworkers, and steelworkers. They worked ceaselessly building this country, and in what they had of leisure time they built their own homes, made music and musical instruments, made art, brewed and distilled, and even found the time to win a war. Their sons, my father among them, were creators, too. Engineers, mechanics, contractors, welders, ironworkers, and entrepreneurs. Like their fathers, they created for work and they created for play. They built lasting things, great things, and took pride in a job well done. Now here I am, not a bricklayer or a carpenter, but a creator nonetheless. This is my inheritance, the creative impulse, an I'm here to tell you about a new creative endeavor that I'm about to embark upon.

Friday Filler: Sometimes a D20 is just a D20

"Ja, unt now tell me about your relationship with your first GM"

So, way, waaaaaay back in 2005 while my entire life felt like it was collapsing around my ears and I was an absolute emotional disaster, I manned up and called the mental health number on the back of my insurance card. The catalyst for the call was, of all things, an Iron Kingdoms game that I was running, or, well, failing to run because I had the attention span of a crack-addled hummingbird. Anyway, I was sick and tired of the way I was feeling, the way these feelings were affecting my marriage and my friendships, and just generally feeling like shit all the time. So fast forward to today, where I'm still in therapy with an excellent therapist who I credit with saving both my marriage and, well, my life. What does all this have to do with games and werks you ask? Read on...

Monday Filler - Lydia Strange

Girl Mechanic image courtesy of David Cousens and Cool Surface. 

http://www.coolsurface.com/

Okay, kids. So, I've got a heap of shit to do and not enough hours in the day to do it. Since I've been lagging on my makeposts here, I figured I needed to get something up but didn't have the time to wax philosophic about, say, class/level systems. That's for later in the week. Right now though? Oh, yes. Yes Gentle Readers, it's time to meet another cast member. This time it's Lydia Strange, a tall, red-haired drink of water with a tendency toward both fast machines and fire magic. Here she is with everyone's sidekick Bela, awaiting the arrival of some friends from out of town.

I Love It When A Bonus Post Comes Together: When Life Imitates (sorta) Art...

As one of the bajillion children born around our nation's bi-centennial, fully half of whom were named Jason and the other half Jennifer, I had the pleasure of growing up in the golden age of affable, cartoony, fantasy violence of 80s television. It was as fun time, a lighter time, a time before every other program was a Law and Order spin-off about rape. These were the days when you could trust Sledgehammer to shoot that big-ass magnum of his willy-nilly and blow up half of LA to catch a purse snatcher and no one would get hurt because he knew what he was doing. A time when Hulk Hogan could tie the spine of some poor, nameless heel into a pretzel on Friday night and be solving mysteries with the whole WWF gang on Saturday morning. And, most importantly, when you could watch a fugitive secret commando unit who had been imprisoned for crimes they didn't commit, and were currently operating as soldiers of fortune in the LA area, blast through the streets of Riverside or Glendale or wherever in a homemade IFV welded up from an old Delta 88 and some rusty-ass sheet steel while hanging out the windows rattling off full-auto bursts from their M-16s or Uzis or whatever was in the budget that week and generally having a ripping good time while no one really got hurt. "But Jason" you ask, "What does all this nostalgia for hilariously weak plots and hokey, poorly delivered dialogue have to do with games?" I'm glad you asked, gentle reader. It has everything to do with an idea I had about the A-Team as a party of player characters. Would you like to know more? Well, carry on..

Hell Among the Playlists: Finding Inspiration in Your Music Library

Okay, this will probably be the last post I make on the subject of inspiration and idea generation. At least it'll be the last until someone asks me to do another. Anyway, today I'm going to talk about plumbing the depths of one of the deepest wells of inspiration ever, music.

The Place Where I Come From is a Small Town: or Everything is Interesting if You Look Hard Enough

 So, in Monday's post I talked about where ideas come from and suggested that a lot of them come from your surroundings. Later that evening I was speaking with one of my regular readers and he put this question to me, "Yeah, but what if you don't live somewhere interesting?" to which I responded, "Everything is interesting if you look at it hard enough" Then, of course, he asked me to prove it. So, without further ado, I'm going to talk about finding ideas somewhere not terribly interesting. Somewhere like my hometown, Wooster, OH.

Catching Fireflies: The Place Where Ideas Come From

I've been asked, on more than one occasion, where I get my ideas. Every writer gets this, and the question never gets easier to answer. I've never come up with what I consider a decent answer to the question, either. An earnest fan or budding writer will corner me at a con or drop me an email and hit me with the idea question. Typically, my response is kind of flip. I'll shrug my shoulders and say, "I don't know, magic?" See? Not very satisfying. So, I want to take a minute to talk about ideas and inspiration here. For today's example, I'll use my constant and reliable muse, the great City of Detroit.