So, You Guys Are In This Inn...

Welcome to the Adjective Animal...

So, yesterday I spent the day doing actual work to avoid blogging. Doing actual work to get out of doing fake work, what has become of me? Anyway, since I need to write about something to justify calling myself a writer, howsabout we talk about starting campaigns?

Slow Burn

Welp, looks like my Saturdays are free again...

There is a very interesting conversation going on over at Penny-Arcade regarding the relationship between players and game masters. Specifically, how the vagaries of herding cats managing players while they run roughshod over your carefully crafted world can burn a GM out quicker than a dollar store light bulb. They pay too much time obsessing on red herrings, they don't take things seriously enough, they take things too seriously, they ignore plot, they don't respect the setting, they don't get it man, they, as Tycho puts it, dick around and eat pizza, and eventually the whole gaming experience for the game master can be summed up with this wisdom. It's true, players can shit up a game quicker than anything, and will do so at their earliest convenience. You know what though, that's their job.

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.

Putting the Pro in Procrastination

If writers are, in the words of the inestimable Chuck Wendig, procrastinating shitheads, then I am their high-priest. Origins is six days away. Guess who has two thumbs and has only one of his four games ready for Origins. This guy. Right. Six days to port three games into new systems, build characters in those systems, and get familiar enough with those systems so that I don't look like an idiot. But that's not really what I came here to talk about today. Not really anyway. There's something else I've been putting off. Something in regards to Origins, and something that I need some advice on.

Anatomy of a Con Game

Okay, you guys are here, this door is open but it's dark inside. Who's going first?

Hot damn, two updates in as many days! I might just make it in the high-stakes game of RPG blogging after all. What I need now is a montage of me typing, staring into space, drinking coffee, changing diapers, and doing push-ups or jumping jacks or something backed up by the A-Team theme. Anyway, I woke up this morning in a cold sweat with a terrible realization. Origins is twenty days away! Twenty! Know how much of the prep I have done for my games? None. Well, hell. This is pretty typical, for me at least. I'm a terrible procrastinator, why put off 'til tomorrow what you can do next week? So, I've got a lot of work to do. A lot. But I figured I could procrastinate just a little longer and make a post about what goes into a good con game.

Mr. Mom

This isn't fiction, it's a goddamned documentary

So, last September when I got laid the hell off from Palladium, I'll admit I felt a little bleak. I hadn't lost a job since before The Wife and I were married way back in '02, when I got fired from selling Harleys because I liked motorcycles too much. Anyway, as I stood there in my hallway staring at my phone trying to process what had just happened, my brain shifted on down into survival gear. Well, to be honest, first it shifted into "crawl into a bottle of Wild Turkey and listen to a lot of Hank Williams" mode. Then, as I struggled through the five stages of grief and helped an Austin Nichols exec make a boat payment, and after I dealt with, "Fuck, I'm a freelancer again!", I had a little epiphany. I had a baby on the way, I was a writer, I work from home, I'm good at multi-tasking and staying work focused, I keep long hours, I'm not necessarily opposed to bodily functions...I was going to be Mr. Mom!

In Defense of Dwarves

Pretty much every dwarf ever is this guy.

Confession time. Dwarves are far and away my favorite demi-human race. Their industriousness, their pragmatism, their vitality, their sturdiness, and their acceptance of technology in fantasy settings appeals to me on a visceral level. Given the choice, I'll always play a dwarf character in any setting, save for maybe Shadowrun. Shadowrun's about the only game where I simply can't abide demi-humans, but that's not what we're talking about here. What we are talking about is A: how much I love dwarves, B: why they're awesome, and C: why so many gamers seem to miss the point.

A Question of Scale: Size Matters

Those AT-AT pilots have a hell of a penalty to hit, but if they do connect...

So, I'm taking a break from writing about eight kilometer long spacegoing cathedrals to pound out a blog post today because, well, I need a break from the aforementioned spacegoing cathedrals. I believe I've made it perfectly clear throughout our time together that I have some very specific ideas about game design, especially when it comes to realism or the illusion thereof. Since I play a lot of sci-fi games, and those mostly dealing with giant robots, powered suits, and other powerful vehicles of war, something I've always been concerned with is the question of scale. No, I'm not talking about weights and measures or a C minor or something. I'm talking about the fact that some things are bigger than you, and bigger things are invariably harder to kill and more deadly than things that are your size. Would you like to know more?

More Human Than Human: Body Modification in RPGs

Only .001 essence left? No sweat, I've got a Willpower of 6...

I tend to play mainly sci-fi or modern style games. I rarely play fantasy, as it holds little interest for me unless it's a setting like Iron Kingdoms where there's a fair amount of technology. Aside from my fetishistic love for technology and machines, one of the things I find most compelling about these games is the theme of human modification that runs through them. Think about it. Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Rifts, and a dozen other games like them all allow the player to make a Faustian bargain wherein they trade greater or lesser degrees of their humanity for some amount of power. Why? What would drive a person to graft machine parts to their body or submit to dehumanizing brain implants or accept a swift and painful death by narcotic overdose? That's the question I'm curious about, and what I want to talk about today.

Friction: on PVP in Role-Playing Games

So, back a few years ago I was playing in a Rifts game run by ace GM Levi. I came to the game late, probably a month in, right about the time all the characters were getting comfortable with each other. The gag was that while I was travelling along with them, I wasn't as big a part of the team as everyone thought. My character was a plant. I was there to pass information to my employers. So, we get to playing and I settle in, doing my best to charm my teammates and appear to be one of the gang. The team leader, a cyborg named Hunter, was terrible at his job. His player was one of those guys, the guy who thinks that his collection of stats makes him invincible and there are no consequences for his actions. He managed to get the team nearly wiped out three or four times and finally my character, who was pretty much just in it for himself, decided to take steps to ensure that Hunter would never be able to harm the party again...

The Deepest Cut of All: Wherein Jason Does Rewrites

We'd like you to make a few small changes...

So, a couple of weeks ago I got my very first rewrites back on a recent project I did for Fantasy Flight. Now, this may sound strange to you gentle readers, but I was stoked. I know, right? What a weird-ass thing to be excited about, that I got back every document I sent all marked up for corrections and changes. It's true though. I was excited to see what I'd done right, what I'd done wrong, and how I could improve. So here I was with a stack of rewrites, marked up documents full of both praise and criticism, and a few days all to myself in which to work. Here's how it all went down.

What's My Motivation? Escapism in Gaming

You're going to have a hell of a penalty for that. You know that, right?

So, I've been thinking a lot lately about the whys and wherefores of the hobby. Specifically, what is it that drives us, largely grown-ass men and women with jobs and families and mortgages, to sit around a table on a regular basis and play pretend. What, for lack of a better term, is our motivation? I touched on this a little in last Friday's post when I talked about our characters as avatars of ourselves that portray us as we'd like to be. But why? Why do we pull on the cape or the body armor or the pointy hat? Why do we take up the plasma rifle or the staff with the knob on the end? That's the question that fascinates me, gentle readers. That's what I want to touch on today.

Something new! Designing new items and gear for your games.

What do I do with this?

So, today is all request Tuesday here at the Gamewerks, Gentle Readers. My good, good friend from the Great White North, Dr. Braden Campbell GM;Phd, dropped me a line last night to let me know that he'd finally gotten around to reading Motor City Gamewerks. Apparently they get the internets delivered by mule up there in Canada, or all their tubes are clogged with maple syrup or something, 'cause it sure took him long enough. Anyway, he wanted to let me know that he was enjoying what he read. So I asked him if he'd like to see anything in particular here, and he suggested that I do an article about making item and gear for your game. Specifically, items and gear that fit, make sense and don't break the setting when they ultimately fall into the grasping hands of your players. So, come on down to the lab with me, and see what's on the slab.

On Character Death: Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Beautiful Character Sheet

It's better to burn out, than to fade away...

 

The chainsaw burr of Joseph's SAW and the rhythmic thumping and booming of Piotr’s grenade launcher mixed with the screaming of the frenzied angels that kept pouring into the warehouse. They came to protect their boss, their patron, the Archangel Raphael who stood raging and howling at the center of an ink-black sphere of magical darkness. He was pinned there to the floor, pinned to this world by silver spikes driven through his feet and legs, spikes forged in the Vatican’s armories and blessed by the Holy Father himself to assist the team in their job, the total destruction of the renegade angel. Bogart was down, felled by Piotr’s stun grenades after Raphael had taken control of Bogart’s mind. Hunter destroyed one angel with a long burst from his SPAS 12, wiping the smug look from his face and sending him back to heaven. Half a dozen of Raphael's cohort appeared on the catwalk with Piotr and Joseph, only to be vaporized by a massive breaching charge that Piotr had rigged by way of a trap. The big Russian stood next to Joseph and lobbed grenades into the fray, alternating between the Lord’s prayer and prayers to Saint Barbara. Joseph made a quick mental calculation, turned to Piotr and said, “Give me range and bearing.” Piotr could just make out Raphael’s vague shape through the darkness, and gave Joseph the numbers. Joseph handed Piotr his pocket sec, went down the rope they’d rigged to escape, and walked straight into the darkness with Raphael. A moment later there was a shattering, fiery explosion as Joseph embraced the renegade angel and detonated all of his grenades, sending both to their respective rewards. Piotr, weeping and offering a prayer for Joseph’s soul, read the message on his friend’s pocket sec, “Bleeding one of us to bleed Raphael is worth it”.

The Old Girl: Vehicles as Characters in Your Game

 

"She's not old, she's in her prime."

I'm not going to lie to you gentle readers, I'm an inveterate gearhead. I love machines of all kinds, but vehicles especially turn my crank, as it were. Anything from a 50cc minibike to a five-kilometre long starship capable of blowing suns all to hell and back, you give me an owners manual and a little time and I'll obsess over every little niggling detail from cylinder compression to the exact placement of the heads. I've also got this tendency to name and anthropomorphize my own vehicles, which is kind of a common quirk among gearheads. I name every vehicle I own out of a mixture of love and superstition, and feel that you can't keep a machine running without love no matter how well you maintain it. Sadly, in role-playing games, modern and future ones at least, any vehicles the players might have are often treated as background. Sort of a simple, bite-sized deus-ex machina that magically moves players from one spot to another in game without a thought. This is a missed opportunity, though. A missed opportunity for adventure and hilarity that can come from making the vehicle itself a character.

Well, Would You Look at That! The Fine Art of the Random Encounter.

 Kobolds!?

Okay, looks like this week has turned into advice week here at the Gamewerks. Today, I'm going to discuss yet another tool that every GM should have in their toolbox, the random encounter table. Gamemasters, has this happened to you? Your players have to travel from point A to point B, where A and B could be different sides of town or different continents, and you think to yourself, "You know, something should happen here to spice things up and keep these guys on their toes but I don't have anything prepared!" Don't you fret, 'cause I've got the answer to all your problems...

Building Better Worlds: Making the Most Out of Your NPCs.

 

So tell me, gentle readers, how many times has this happened to you? You're in the thick of a gaming session, and the time has come to meet with a contact. So you get to the appointed meeting place, you size each other up and someone asks the question, "So, what's this guy look like? Any distinguishing features?" or a million little other questions that players want answered and the game master shuffles through his papers and says, "uh, I don't know. Guy McPersonson? It's not important." and bang, you're out of the story. Why do gamers ask these questions? Why do they care? Are these details even important? Yes, yes they are, and I'm here to tell you why...

Finding Your Focus: How to Actually Work When Working At Home

 

 Maybe I should have apprenticed at the Consulate...

Okay, Caine up there is about to burn the shit out of himself in some masochistic, quasi-Kung Fu ritual that looks awesome in a 30 second television intro but might be of dubious historical accuracy. Accurate or not, Caine's suffering is a pretty decent analogy for attempting to be a professional writer working from home. While you're probably not carrying a flesh searing fifty-pound iron tub of red-hot coals around all day with your forearms, or maybe you are, I don't know how you do things in your house, what you are doing is attempting to make a go of concentrating on making art in an environment specifically engineered to keep you distracted, your home. So today I'm going to talk a little about finding your focus and working from home.

On Hitting Your Target

Sorry today's post is late, kids. Today I had a long lunch at my local rifle range with an antique Russian Mosin-Nagant, the latest addition to my budding WWII milsurp rifle collection. So, while I was sending my fifty year old Bulgarian surplus ammo downrange and giggling like an idiot at the fireballs the Mosin produced, it got me thinking about guns and writing about them.

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.