Right, so, last week, I posted about how I did a bunch of stuff that wasn’t on the #spuc list.

I did it again.

Not only did I take on new projects, I put up an album for sale. So the list is going to get all wonky for a bit.

However, the new work was from my Will Work Or Design Game For Food post, so that’s a Good Thing.

I also finished something. GO ME!

On The Table:

1. RPBGN – I’ve shut down new applications until I can get some infrastructure updates in place. Some of them are a direct result of the survey that I ran last week.
2. Codename: One Hour Night – I’ve been contracted to develop a custom board game. It’s an exciting project that I can talk about more in six weeks or so.
3. Codename: Lunar Kitsch Missile – I’m very excited to be working with
   David A Hill Jr, Ryan Macklin and Will Robot on this project. There will be a more formal announcement as things take shape.
4. Shambles Source Material #1 – I got a few more pieces done on this, but not as much as I wanted.
5. Codename: Insignificant Diversionary Anaconda – I received an unexpected bit of art update in the mail for this earlier in the week. I have a question out to them to see if the things I thought needed to be done still need to be done, but I haven’t heard back.
6. Codename: Pandoran Apothecary Chest – Unchanged
7. Codename: Gremlin Persistent Malice – Unchanged
8. Codename: Simulated Jocular Anaconda – Unchanged
9. Codename: First Rural Delusions – Unchanged.

In The Closet

1. Mobile Audio Rig v2.0 details here- Mothballed 2/24/10
2. Unfinished – (NaNoWriMo 2009 Entry) – Mothballed – 01/28/09
3. Codename: Enormous Intersected Automaton – Mothballed 11/04/09
4. Codename: Big Audio Dynamite – Mothballed 11/04/09
5. Codename: Unwashed Repeat Pedestrian – Mothballed – 11/04/09
6. Codename: Cackle Smash Soup – Mothballed 10/28/09
7. Codename: Tactical Plastic Laser – Mothballed 10/28/09

In The Trophy Case

1. NEW – Maschine Zeit Material – I did some work for the upcoming game Maschine Zeit (mostly some fiction stuff to flesh out part of the setting). I knocked this out over the last week, and it’s in the can! I’ll share details when it’s made available.
2. A Single Moment Of Weakness – A piece of Flash Fiction I wrote for a little roundup. Read it here
3. Shambles – My RPG about life as a Zombie. First revision. (read about it here) – Completed on 2/17/10
4. Obnoxious Howler Monkey – An Arduino driven, VMUSIC2 bases soundboard designed for use as a mood-setter for tabletop games. (read about it here) First Revision. – Completed on 11/18/10
5. The Grognards Of Gygax – My entry into the “Best Quest” contest for Legends of Zork. It won Second Place – Completed on 11/11/10

Excuse Of The Week: Still not getting the things done I NEED to be getting done.

Every now and then, there comes a need to raise some extra funds on the quick. Maybe your car blew up. Maybe you need to make an unexpected flight back home. Maybe you’re trying to bail someone out of the drunk tank after they threw up while trying to give a lap dance to a traffic cop who was really just doing his job.

Yeah. I’m there.

It’s nothing quite so exciting in this case. I’ve just been whacked with a poorly timed bill for several hundred dollars that I wasn’t expecting, and cannot shift. You might have noticed my getting a little creative lately in terms of hocking my wares and that’s all coming from this.

So this is me, putting out the call for work. If you need a little writing done, I’d love to do it. If you need a LOT of writing done, I’ve love to do that too. I’m open to creative suggestions. Feel like getting a few people together and sponsoring a Creative Commons game? I’d love to do that too. Ever wondered what it would be like to play an RPG that used cheese instead of dice? I’m your man. Want someone to write an RPG based around that sci fi show you love that never got enough respect? Hit me, I’m open. I can even give you a flat fee for “Write up the weirdest RPG Idea you’ve ever had.”

If you’re interested, or leave a comment below.

Over at Robertson Games they ran a little contest where they asked people to design a room for a dungeon that fit on a single page. They’ve announced the winners and you should really check it out. I tossed in an entry of my own. It didn’t win, but it was fun to write. Plus all the entries have been made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. Below is my entry:

Room Name : As Through Fetal Hell

Description : This room is round, 50′ in diameter with a single door leading into the room. Spaced evenly along the interior walls of the room are thousands of small holes, too small for a human finger but large enough for a dart, flechette or crossbow bolt. The roof disappears into the darkness some 100′ up, but if illuminated the ceiling hangs with large, sharp stalactites, some of which look quite precarious.

The room is floored in cobblestone, some of which are subtly different colors than the rest. The cobblestones are laid out in an uneven mosaic that with lines that, on closer inspection, occasionally converge into pentacles. The gaps between the cobblestones are inconsistent. Some of them have no mortar between them, while others appear to be more recently mortared into place. Along the outer edge of the room, right up against the wall, is a six inch gutter that appears to have been carved out of the native stone. It is in one solid piece, and drains into five small drains spaced equidistantly around the outer edge of the room.

In the center of the room is raised, star-shaped dais. In the middle of the dais is a large stone statue depicting a creature of indescribable horror. It does not correspond to any monster they have encountered, or any monster in any book the players might have read. The statue is rendered in perfect detail, as if someone summoned a monster into this room and turned it into stone. It appears to consist entirely of eyes, teeth, claws and muscle, and in several of its many mouths and claws one can see the unmistakable bits of several adventurers (also rendered in stone) who were in the process of being torn apart and devoured. The statue itself exudes evil magic at am extremely high level. If at any point no one in the party are observing the statue, the room fills with the sound of stone grating against stone. This sound stops when anyone is observing the statue.

Underneath the center of the statue is the unmistakable glimmer of treasure, though it’s hard to tell what it is. The treasure itself is giving off good magic at a reasonable level The bottom of the statue is covered in sharp teeth, and two of the many arms of the statue appear to be in the process of reaching under the statue. On close inspection (someone will have to get under the statue to see for themselves), the item appears to be an amulet of some kind. In order to dislodge it, the adventurer must reach well into the toothy mouth from which it hangs and dislodge it. The amulet will give the wearer a +2 rating in whatever stat would used to determine their Courage.

Notes : There is only one trap in the room, it is magical in nature and is tied to the statue. If the adventurers attack the statue, the stalactites will fall from the ceiling on everything but the statue. The statue is a work of art. It is also the focal point of a scrying spell cast by the owner, who thinks it’s both beautiful and funny to watch people tiptoe around the room in fear. The grating of stone on stone is another spell from the owner, an intentional trick to make people think it’s moving. The amulet is a genuine reward to anyone who has the balls to just go for it. This room is probably only going to work on new players. It would probably work best if it was in a dungeon where every other room was filled with death-dealing traps and hazards. I’ve written the description to be generic, so that it could be used in any system. The name is an anagram for “The Halls Of Laughter.”

This work is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ca/

In more general update news, I’m running a new Shambles scenario at the Endgame Oakland Minicon and you should come play it.

I’ve also put some pendants and such up for sale in my Etsy store – it’s mostly backstock I’m clearing out, but we’ll see what else turns up there.

Also, it’s GM’s Day tomorrow, and there’s a big sale going on at DriveThruRPG.

Finally, threw down a piece of Flash Fiction that I’ve added to the Trophy Case.

As for the regular SPUC stuff… not a lot of traction. At all. On anything.

On The Table:

1. RPBGN – I put up a member survey, and have collected some good information from that.
2. Shambles Source Material #1 – I got off to such a strong start, but I’m not much further than I was last week.
3. Maschine Zeit Material – Mostly in the planning stages still.
4. Codename: Pandoran Apothecary Chest – Unchanged
5. Codename: Gremlin Persistent Malice – Unchanged
6. Codename: Insignificant Diversionary Anaconda – Unchanged (double erp).
7. Codename: Simulated Jocular Anaconda – Unchanged
8. Codename: First Rural Delusions – Unchanged.

In The Closet

1. Mobile Audio Rig v2.0 details here- Mothballed 2/24/10
2. Unfinished – (NaNoWriMo 2009 Entry) – Mothballed – 01/28/09
3. Codename: Enormous Intersected Automaton – Mothballed 11/04/09
4. Codename: Big Audio Dynamite – Mothballed 11/04/09
5. Codename: Unwashed Repeat Pedestrian – Mothballed – 11/04/09
6. Codename: Cackle Smash Soup – Mothballed 10/28/09
7. Codename: Tactical Plastic Laser – Mothballed 10/28/09

In The Trophy Case

1. NEW – A Single Moment Of Weakness – A piece of Flash Fiction I wrote for a little roundup. Read it here
2. Shambles – My RPG about life as a Zombie. First revision. (read about it here) – Completed on 2/17/10
3. Obnoxious Howler Monkey – An Arduino driven, VMUSIC2 bases soundboard designed for use as a mood-setter for tabletop games. (read about it here) First Revision. – Completed on 11/18/10
4. The Grognards Of Gygax – My entry into the “Best Quest” contest for Legends of Zork. It won Second Place – Completed on 11/11/10

Excuse Of The Week: Still not getting the things done I NEED to be getting done.

Let’s talk about CthulhuTech

When this game first came out, I didn’t pay much attention to it. It’s not normally the kind of thing I play, and I’m coming to feel like games based on the Cthulhu mythos have just lost their magic. There’s a solid market for mythos inspired games, and it seems like everyone’s angling for a piece of that market. Sometimes, the games are excellent. But the bad ones are really bad. If you combine that with me being more or less an indy snob, this game just wasn’t really on my radar.

After having met the brains behind the game at a private horror gaming event, I added the book to “The List Of Games I Need To Look At Closer.” When I was offered a review copy of the main book, I jumped at the chance.

Obvious things first. The book is 50 bucks (with PDF it’s $60). It’s gorgeous, and it’s full of stuff. The setting is a mixture of Cthulhu Mythos and Giant Mecha Anime. There’s more than enough here for you to start running your game or writing a campaign. If you’re already on the fence, then I’ll say it now: You Want This Book.

The system used is called Framewerk, a custom job that will probably remind you of White Wolf’s Storyteller system. They mix up the dice rolling a little by letting you pick different combos of dice from your dice pool for success, which is cool but may seem a little too fiddly for some. There’s some structure in place to spend points to affect die rolls, a mechanic I always like. And they stress pretty heavily throughout the book that telling a good story is the most important thing.

Which brings me to the setting. As far as the Cthulhu Mythos goes, if you’re looking for something that sticks closely to what Lovecraft wrote, this game isn’t for you. I’ll go further, and say if you are looking for something that sticks to what people traditionally think of as the Cthulhu Mythos, this game isn’t for you. The game takes great liberties with the source material and the Mythos – indeed, there would be no way to write this game if it didn’t. The question is, is the end product worth it. In this case, I have to say yes. The book lays out a rich history and background for the setting, and a judicious use of fiction in the book helps bring the setting to life. There’s a lot of meat there, and it’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into it. The setting alone can suck you in.

As for the Mecha, when you’re dealing with any game with giant robots, there is only one question to answer: Are The Giant Robots Awesome? In CthulhuTech, I can pilot a Mecha that has a plasma cannon, a tentacle sheath, and a tongue I can use as a weapon. The Mecha are also partially organic, and they heal on their own. In other words – yes. Yes, the Mecha are awesome. But as with the Cthulhu Mythos, if you have particular ideas about what Mecha are and how they work, you may not like how these Mecha work.

You can also play what they call a Tager – a human merged with a creature from beyond time and space in a kind of symbioses. Shifting between human and alien forms, Tagers are strong, but horrific. It’s a nice touch to the game, and I could see a lot of great story coming from dealing with being a Tager.

I’m not so into the idea of running CthulhuTech. I’d much rather play it. And I haven’t had a chance to do either yet. I don’t think it’d make a good game for a brand new player. As a game it just feels a little too involved to use as someone’s introduction to gaming. But if you dismissed it off hand, like I did, then I’d encourage you to give it a chance. It’s a great looking game, with a lot of meat to it, and conceptually it just works.

Clearly, at 50 bucks, the game is not aimed at people who want to run a one-off. I think it would take a couple sessions to get into the swing of thing. Buy this book to set up and play a campaign. If you want more detail than that, you’ll need to do some more reading:

• WildFire: CthulhuTech Quick-Start Rules
• Atomic Array: Episode 013: CthulhuTech RPG
• Mad Brew Labs: CthulhuTech: The Game That Almost Wasn’t
• Critical Hits: When Horror Meets Awesome: CthulhuTech
• Kore Dice: Interview with CthulhuTech’s Mike Vaillancourt
• Stargazer’s World: Review: CthulhuTech
• Stan!: The Stars Will Be Right
• Arcane Underground: The Saga of CthulhuTech (Updated)
• Atomic Array: Episode 040: CthulhuTech
• The Village Barbarian: Review: CthulhuTech Core Book
• Dice Monkey: Review: Vade Mecum
• Blog of a new RPGer: Review: Dark Passions
• Stargazer’s World: Review: Damnation View
• allgeektout: Review: Mortal Remains
• The Spirits of Eden: Review: Vade Mecum
• Creatively Anomalous: Review: Dark Passions

So I have this problem somtimes, as you may have noticed from my Secret Project Update Club posts.

Sometimes, in the middle of working on a project, I get hit with an idea that I just HAVE to work on. Sometimes they are little things, sometimes its a short project. Sometimes, it’s a massive undertaking that would require several months of work by more than one person.

Like the one that hit me today.

To say that I got kicked in the head by the muse today would be like saying I have a couple irons already in the fire. The idea is fantastic, compelling, exciting, and everything I want to work on right now.

And I can’t. Not without shelving every other project I have on deck. Some of which have deadlines, others of which have momentum. I can’t just drop every other game I am working on right now to work on the new one.

I know other people deal with juggling projects. What do you guys do when this happens? Do you sit on it? Do you clear your table and dive in? Do you try and juggle? How do you keep you brain from catching fire?

I’m currently thinking about taking a new approach to my tasks that might make Secret Project Update Club more or less obsolete. But until I do so, I’ll still try to get updates in here, at least on an every-other-week basis.

On The Table:

1. Codename: Simulated Jocular Anaconda – It’s entirely possible at this point that I will need to scrap everything I’ve written to date, and start over.
2. Shambles Source Material – This is starting to take a little shape.
3. Codename: Gremlin Persistent Malice – Had an idea that might necessitate my completely changing the system.
4. Codename: Pandoran Apothecary Chest – I’ve got a quote, a plan for proceeding, and an agreement with the designers on how to proceed. I should have a prototype by Kublacon.
5. Codename: First Rural Delusions – This one might be floating to the top of the list.
6. RPBGN – Treading water a bit on rpgbloggers.com until a couple other things get sorted out.
7. Codename: Insignificant Diversionary Anaconda – There is still some outstanding work to be done before I can kick this back.

In The Closet

1. Codename: Cackle Smash Soup – Mothballed 10/28/09
2. Codename: Tactical Plastic Laser – Mothballed 10/28/09
3. Codename: Enormous Intersected Automaton – Mothballed 11/04/09
4. Codename: Big Audio Dynamite – Mothballed 11/04/09
5. Codename: Unwashed Repeat Pedestrian – Mothballed – 11/04/09
6. Unfinished – (NaNoWriMo 2009 Entry) – Mothballed – 01/28/09

In The Trophy Case

1. Shambles – I finally feel like I can put Shambles in the trophy case. It needs a revision and a little layout work, but I can print copies, and bind them, and I call that a win.
2. The Grognards Of Gygax – My entry into the “Best Quest” contest for Legends of Zork. It won Second Place – WOOT!
3. Obnoxious Howler Monkey – I completed the first version

Excuse Of The Week Month: It’s been a busy busy time.

Interesting things happening over in Twitterland. Earlier today, Shaun from This Modern Death made a simple proposal:

I propose a new non-sacrificial time of the year – What are you going to take up for your #40DayProject?

The idea here is to turn Lent around, and instead of using the next 40 days as a time of sacrifice, using them as a time for getting something new done. I don’t figure this is a new idea, but it’s a timely one for me, and I don’t appear to be alone. There’s 9 or 10 people so far who have chimed in with different ideas, some game related and some not. I’ve chimed in and decided that I’m going to use the next 40 days to complete the SPUC project labeled “Shambles Source Material” – though I am going to rebrand this as “Shambles Source Material #1″.

This will dovetail into some other thinking I’ve been doing about how to get things Done. Let’s see how it goes.

Interested in joining in the discussion? Use #40DayProject on Twitter, or go over to Shaun’s blog and join him in the discussion.

My experiences at Dundracon this past weekend have left me a little more introspective than normal. Which is saying a lot, considering I spend a lot of time in my own head as it is.

To sum up if you haven’t already read, I ran two games this weekend. One was a fun and funny game of Shambles. I could describe the plot to any GM in about four sentences and they could put the scenario together on the fly and run it for at least 4 hours. The other was a custom job, a horror scenario with mature themes, that would take a great deal of explaining, setup and prep, none of which would involve learning the system (which is essentially LAFFs, the same system from Shambles). Players left both games with high spirits, having had a good time, yet I view the first game as a smashing success, and the second game as an unmitigated disaster.

What I can’t decide, is why I feel that way, even now.

The scenario was advertised as being “heavy role-play”, and before the scenario started I indicated that this was the case. Without going into specifics about the scenario, it was written such that the characters were gradually learning and remembering things, in some cases by experiencing visceral and violent moments of altered reality. These things were printed on individual note cards and given to the players throughout the game. In the beginning, the players dug into the roles a little, but at a certain point, the idea of role-playing through memories went completely out of the window, so far so that whenever something new was handed out, rather than reading the note card and having the character respond, the players would read the note card and then just pass it on to the person sitting next to them, sometimes without even responding or indicating a character reaction. In some cases, they did this even when the card indicated something that was physically happening to the character, rather than something that was observed or remembered. This practice began while I was doing a consult outside the room, and by the time I came back in (only a couple minutes later) the note cards were already being passed around.

As a GM, and in particular as a GM who usually only runs at conventions, I’m accustomed to Things Not Going According To Plan. As a player I’ve frequently caused things to go in unexpected directions. I’m used to that. They definitely took the game in unexpected directions, which I found exciting and intriguing. So that wasn’t something that bothered me.

And I’ve had the occasional game where the players just weren’t buying what I was selling, so to speak. I know what that feels like. It feels like I’ve failed to successfully engage them, and I either make adjustments on the fly, or accept that it’s not working. This wasn’t really that either.

Looking back over the session, I can see where I could have made some decisions that would have helped to adjust things a little better, but that’s easy to do from here, a couple days later. Having run the game a couple times before, I always find ways to tune it a little better. But I’m not really bothered by thinking about the things I may have done “wrong” in the session.

What’s been eating at me, is why I feel like the session was an “unmitigated disaster” despite the fact that everyone had a great time, or at said they did in a believable fashion.

If I write or run a game, and someone enjoys it, isn’t that a win?

Shouldn’t I be measuring the success of a gaming session based on the enjoyment of everyone involved? I’m pretty sure that if the answer to that question is “No” then all I’m really doing as a GM is partaking in some sort of dice-driven onanistic “love me” party. If I say “Yes” then is the game is a success even if the GM hates running it? That somehow seems unfair – but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

It can’t be about achieving goals, passing objectives, beating the bad guy, and gaining experience. At least, not completely. For some, any session where they get to level up is a good one. But I can’t think it’s really that simple. Sometimes you lose, terribly, and enjoy the ride. Sometimes you get to the end, and it wasn’t worth your time. So it can’t be this.

I know there’s not some neat answer, some magic formula that I’m missing here. And I’m certainly not covering any new ground here. In the end, like everything else, it’s a judgment call. Some games, it’s easy to say “That was a good gaming session,” while sometimes you find yourself adding the words “except for…” to the end. When it goes good, it’s easy. When it goes bad, it’s easy.

In this case, I think I can only figure it out with metaphor. And I feel like a 50’s wife who spent hours slaving over a hot stove, set a nice table, and watched her husband come in the door and eat the roast with his bare hands in the kitchen.

Which leads me to the only reasonable conclusion : if that’s how I’m going to feel when the players don’t play the game my way, I should start wearing an apron when I’m behind the screen. And possibly stockings.

Game sessions are good because they are. Sometimes, they aren’t. This last game session was good, just not so good for me, and not the kind of good that I wanted it to be. That’s going to happen. If I can’t handle that, then I shouldn’t be a GM. Or, I should wear stockings and an apron. Either would probably solve the problem.

Dundracon 34 wrapped up yesterday. I don’t know why, but conventions always make me feel like I’ve just gone toe-to-toe with a gorilla. This one, this year, especially so.

This convention was marked by two very different gaming experiences as a GM. But I’ll come to those in a minute. First, let’s talk about everything else.

I was thoroughly uninterested in the dealer’s room as a whole. I don’t know why, I just couldn’t get into it. Maybe it was the people selling spray-painted Nerf guns as steampunk-kitsch. Maybe it was the t-shirt booth where I almost buy a shirt every year, but end up not buying a shirt because either the boothie is a prick or their designs are clearly bootleg. Maybe I was just penny-pinching. I have no idea. But where I usually spend an hour or so in the dealer’s room, this year I was in there maybe 10 minutes total, over 4 days. But, the dealer’s room didn’t lack for dealers, and their shelves were filled with wares, so I suspect this was My Own Damn Fault. It was, however, awesome to see Shambles on the Endgame shelves.

I set out this weekend to do several things that did not happen. I didn’t manage to meet up with many people who I knew would be there. I didn’t run the pick-up games I’d intended (probably a good idea). I didn’t broaden my gaming horizons. I didn’t put up Shambles posters. Some of this was just poor time management on my own part, and some of it just Didn’t Happen. The rest I blame on wine that comes in juice boxes.

I did play in an original Marvel Superheroes game. That was weird and fun, as Marvel was what I cut my teeth on all those years ago. I also got to play in a drop-in game run by a friend, a tradition of sorts at the local conventions. Monday, I was trying (and failing) to sleep off the night before.

Which brings me to the two games I ran. I ran a game Saturday night, at 6, and a game Sunday night at 10.

Saturday’s game was a Shambles game, about eating partying teenagers in the woods.
Sunday’s game was a custom horror game about a disoriented military unit, dealing with mature themes.
Saturday’s game started at 6:00pm, and was slated for 6 hours.
Sunday’s game started at 10:00pm, and was slated for 6 hours.
Saturday’s game, 6 people signed up to play. I had 14 people show up at game time.
Sunday’s game, 6 people signed up to play. Only 3 turned up at game time. We scrounged from semi-known quantities to find the other 3.
Saturday’s game started on time and ran 7 1/2 hours, until about 1:30am.
Sunday’s game started half an hour late, and optimistically ran 5 hours until about 3:30 or so.
I had run Saturday’s game twice before.
I had run Sunday’s game twice before.
Saturday’s game required character sheets, a cocktail-napkin’s worth of notes and some blank paper.
Sunday’s game required several pages of notes, 24 personalized note cards per player, a map, 8+ NPC character sheets, and about two dozen props, some of them hand-assembled.
Everyone left Saturday’s game in high spirits, having had a great time.
Everyone left Sunday’s game in high spirits, having had a great time.
Saturday’s game was wildly successful.
Sunday’s game felt like an unmitigated disaster.

I’ve been reflecting on these two games and how they went ever since the con. I’ll probably have a post about it later this week.

All in all, it was a Good Weekend, even if few things went according to plan.