Aug 11
Posted on
Wednesday, August 11, 2010 in
Roleplaying GamesI recently pulled out my copy of Afghanistan: d20 and had a look through it for the first time in years. I don’t know how many people bought it when it was released in 2002, but I was one of them and I was well aware of the controversy surrounding its release.
The argument against Afghanistan: d20 was that it was somehow disrespectful to the troops fighting there to make a game of their hardships and, yes, their deaths. My perspective was that we have successfully made games out just about any war you care to think of, from WWI to Vietnam. Some have been wargames, some roleplaying games, but they were all still games. Did these efforts, too, qualify as disrespectful?
I guess on the one hand I can kind of see the argument against a roleplaying game. With a wargame things are abstracted. The death of one or a dozen or a hundred is just numbers on a sheet of paper. Properly executed, a roleplaying character has a life of his or her own and that character’s death is going to be felt more acutely as a result. Assuming the player is the empathetic sort. Some aren’t.
In a less touchy-feely but more practical sense, there’s the argument that there is little to do in an Afghanistan: d20 campaign. I believe this comes from a perspective that doesn’t see the United States’ involvement in Afghanistan as a fully fledged war, but as some kind of low-intensity peacekeeping mission. War is full of plot hooks, as anyone who’s run a WWII game or the like can tell you.
At any rate, America’s war in Afghanistan has become our longest. It seemed like the right time to look at Afghanistan: d20 and review not only the controversial origins of the supplement, but what we can do with it now to tell meaningful stories.
(more…)
Aug 10
Posted on
Tuesday, August 10, 2010 in
Roleplaying GamesUncle Chu: China is here Mr. Burton. The Chang Sing, the Wing Kong; they’ve been fighting for centuries.
Jack Burton: What the hell does that mean? Huh? “China is here”? I don’t even know what the hell that means. All I know is this Lo Pan character comes out of thin air in the middle of a goddamn alley while his buddies are flying around on wires cutting everybody to shreds, and he just stands there, waiting for me to drive my truck right through him, with light coming out of his mouth!
When it comes to Story Games I sometimes wonder if I’m in the right place talking roleplaying with folks. The feeling comes and goes, but it’s never stronger than when I run across one or more threads that read like total gibberish to me. An example: “Keys, aspects, beliefs, etc — are they really all that?”
I have no idea what anybody’s talking about in that thread. I haven’t played the games, am not familiar with the concepts… it’s like a foreign language. A friend of mine to whom I recommended the site had the same problem; if you don’t have at least a basic grounding in the “new wave” of roleplaying, you’re quickly going to find yourself adrift.
I’ll freely admit that I’ve been more or less out of the roleplaying scene for ten years. My last regular game was a D&D Third Edition campaign that, to put it mildly, didn’t go particularly well. I certainly don’t have experience with the narrative-heavy games that dominate the discussion at Story Games, ones that give over substantial portions of control to the players to do with as they see fit. The kind of games I do understand are what the Story Gamers dismiss as “trad,” for traditional.
(more…)
Aug 3
Posted on
Tuesday, August 3, 2010 in
Roleplaying GamesI’m a hard player to find matches for, thanks largely to a strange schedule and other niggling details that I’ll not bore you with here. But I do want to get some gaming in, and there seems only one way to do: run something myself at the local game store on their open-roleplaying night.
Despite the fact that I have a wealth of indie games to choose from, what I really want to run (and play) is Dark Heresy, a game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe in which characters assume a part in the Holy Orders of the Emperor’s Inquisition. It’s the first of three 40K roleplaying games and a good place to get started with the setting, thanks to all the supplemental material and whatnot.
Anyway, Dark Heresy is clearly set up with a classic gaming group in mind: a GM, plus 3-4 players. Realistically I’m not going to see that kind of turnout from whatever ad I might place seeking others. Chances are good it’ll just be me and one other person and things are mighty dangerous in the 40K setting for a man or woman alone.
So I guess the question is this, directed to those who know Dark Heresy: is the game viable with a single player or will I have to surround the PC with a complement of NPCs just to keep the mortality rate down?
One solution would seem to be to start the solo character with more baseline experience to make up for the missing party members. This is the first thing that occurred to me, as it’s what I would do if I were running, say, D&D. I think part of the fun of Dark Heresy, though, is coming up from the ranks of the lowly and you lose some of that by powering up the player early.
On the other hand, you have the NPC-party option, which has its own drawbacks. For one thing, it adds a lot of bookkeeping for me on top of what I would normally do as a GM, but you also run the risk of eclipsing the player’s accomplishments if the NPCs perform too well.
Anyway, both solutions have their drawbacks. And with luck they’ll only have to be employed for a little while as the group grows. Which seems like the better choice to you?
Jun 17
Posted on
Thursday, June 17, 2010 in
Roleplaying Games
Because of my ongoing fascination with all things Ninja Assassin (I got hold of the screenplay today, too), I’m going to put a new ad up at PBeM2.
What’s PBeM2? Well, it’s a successor to the now long-defunct site PBeM.com, where those folks interested in doing roleplay via email or message board — it’s more of a collaborative writing thing than roleplaying in the classic sense — could place ads for games they wanted or games they wanted to run. After PBeM.com abruptly quit doing business there was nowhere at all to go, until finally someone hit upon the idea of PBeM2: a wholly automated site that serves the same functions as the old clearinghouse.
So what am I posting there? This, under the title Ninja Assassin:
They are made of shadow and mystery and their history spans centuries. They are masters of body, mind and weaponry. They are ninja and they are unstoppable.
Rational men will say the ninja assassins vanished long ago, but these men would be wrong. The ninja are still here, training in techniques handed down from one generation to the next from the days of the samurai. Where some would use bullets, the ninja uses blades. Where some rely on technology, the ninja has only the power of ki.
— Fear not the weapon but the hand that wields it. —
For those not in the know, Ninja Assassin is a film that serves as an amalgam of both the “classic” 1980s ninja movies starring such luminaries as Shô Kosugi and modern filmmaking styles influenced by The Matrix. The idea of that mix has inspired me to seek out a PBeM or PBP experience that might approximate it.
(more…)
May 6
Posted on
Thursday, May 6, 2010 in
Roleplaying GamesSome years ago I picked up a copy of this then-new game Vampire: The Masquerade. It was full of all sorts of interesting, if undercooked, elements and I seriously considered running it for a time. I couldn’t get my players of the period engaged enough in the idea of playing vampires, though, and it never came to pass. Eventually I sold off all my Vampire stuff and moved on.
Well… almost. I recently reacquired the original rulebook for a song and started looking through it again. I remain interested in doing something with the concept and even took some time to map out a little “chronicle,” the Vampire name for a roleplaying campaign. This is the blurb I came up with to describe it:
Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for the blood is the life
~~ Deuteronomy 12:23
They have existed for as long as mankind and some, they say, are as old as the mountains and the sky. Preying upon humans for their blood. They are vampires… and you have become one of them.
Wherever their are people, there are those who feed upon them. The cities are their hunting grounds, unsuspecting mortals their herd. They have their own leaders, their own traditions, their own punishments and rewards. Some Princes are as old as their fiefdoms, but in Baltimore decades have passed without one clear leader to guide the unlives that thrive there.
There is word that some agreement has been made among the eldest and a new Prince will lead a united city. Not all accept the accord and still others disregard the authority of any vampire over another. The only constant is the need to feed and the endless pull of the Beast in the darkness, drawing a vampire’s humanity further and further into its domain.
Whether there is peace or more war, whether the new leader is strong or weak, unlife will continue. The mortals of Baltimore do not know of the night-creatures that thrive among them, nor do they know anything of the endless politics of undeath. They do know a fear of the dark, however, though they have forgotten why.
In the Blood is an open-ended Vampire: The Masquerade chronicle set in Gothic-Punk Baltimore. Participants take the role of relatively young vampires caught between the needs of undeath and the life-or-death chaos of vampire politics.
I don’t know that I’ll ever actually run this thing, but it’s nice to think about. I’m unsure I’ll have the opportunity to run anything at this point, given the restrictions placed on my time and effort. It’d be awfully satisfying to pay off the original itch, though.
