Quick Hits: Comics Subscriptions

So here we are again.

Call this the remix. Or maybe Quick Hits II: Electric Boogaloo.

Anyway you look at it, it's another venture into my life outside of gaming.

That's right dear reader! If you'd rather not hear me blather about anything but games, you can simply not read anything titled quick hits and you'll be safe (although you'll still have to skim my ramblings away from games within posts).

This quick hit is brought to you by the US Postal Service.

Yesterday, as I approached my mailbox, I could see from the end of the soggy, ice blanketed driveway that there was a comic waiting for me.

I love comics, always have always will. However, a casualty of my aging process has been my willingness to haul my ass out to the store every week and see what's here.

When I was a kid it was different. Sanders Drug Store in Tampa had a spinner rack and every time I had some allowance Id spin that rack, thumb through what looked good and buy more than my fair share.

Iron Man, Avengers, Legion of Superheroes, Peter Parker the Spectacular Spiderman and the X-men.

Then there was the Walgreens in the mall that sold the magazine size comics that Marvel was experimenting with in an attempt to boost sales by getting comics on the, well, magazine racks.

Then there was the comic shop on the road south. Anytime we were going anywhere on the Tamiami Trail, which wasn't often, we had to stop there on the way. This was the first honest to god comic shop I had ever seen. And it was as close to Nirvana as I got as a kid.

They had the elusive X-men #137, the "Death of Phoenix". This was the first direct sales comic Marvel had done to my knowledge (comics sold only at comic shops- a move the major producers made to encourage the opening of these stores).

And its sad to say that, having missed the ending of the best comic story of all time, the Hellfire Club/Dark Phoenix saga that, as the family piled into the stationwagon to head to Cape Canaveral I was more excited about the possibility that X-men #137 wasn't sold out and would still be available (not only was it not sold out, it was still available at cover price several months after the issue had been released- ah times of innocence).

These days I wait till a comic is in tradeback compilation most of the time.

Most of the time, which brings us back to the driveway and my joy at seeing the cardstock backed "dont bend" plastic wrapped comics envelope tucked behind the mailbox.

Some comics are too good to wait for. Notice this still isnt motivation for a weekly (or even monthly) ass-dragging to the comics shop. Maybe enthusiasm dims with age. Maybe my ass is bigger than it used to be.

Currently, the list hovers at a whopping 5 comics: Ultimates, Astonishing X-men, Ultimate Spider Man, X-men and Uncanny X-men.

Hmm, for all the ass-dragging that has gone away, it seems my love for the X-men is still around.

Nice to know the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Chuck

Always an adventure

Something I am going to be doing more of in the future is adventures. I always loved writing adventures, but my first experience doing one for someone else's group (Raw Recruits by Mystic Eye Games for the Dragonstar game) didn't exactly go well. Although I enjoyed working on the project, I felt like my adventure could have been much better.

This led me to the conclusion, one that I still hold today, that writing adventures is the hardest thing in this industry. It was very hard for me to wrap my mind around the myriad groups that were going to be playing the adventure. Writing an adventure for my group is the easiest thing in the world. I know where they were last week and you build from there.

Maybe this sort of psychological hurdle is unnecessary, but I really found myself wrestling it.

Since coming to work for RPGObjects I have been asked to come up with adventures on occasion but I always begged off.

However I have been doing adventures for the dispatch, and am now ready to take the plunge once again. Some adventures should be forthcoming from me in the months ahead for Legends of Excalibur, Legends of the Samurai, Blood and Guts, and Blood and Vigilance.

Sheesh, makes me tired just looking at that list.

One thing I have been doing is going back and looking at what I consider to be the best modules ever written, and I came up with an interesting list:

Temple of Elemental Evil by Gary Gygax

Easily the best adventure ever written. This should be put in a safe at the HQ of every RPG HQ and made required reading for anyone planning on writing a campaign adventure.

Its also an unapologetic dungeon crawl, which means most reviewers wouldn't give it high marks.

It took Diablo to remind some designers (though still not the reviewers) of the charm of a big honking dungeon 16 levels deep with a big badass villain holed up at the bottom.

And no, it doesn't make sense.

Funny how the FANS never forgot how cool dungeons are. Those were the same fans playing Diablo even as the reviewers told them it wasn't any good.

Tomb of Horrors by Gary Gygax

Not only is this a dungeon, its a KILLER dungeon. That gives it about a million strikes from most reviewers. WOTC even tried to pussify it for those parties who whined when they all jumped headfirst into the sphere of annihilation.

Duh, that's why no real adventurer would be caught dead without a 10 foot pole.

Or a hireling.

Not quite as big a dungeon, but the attitude more than makes up for it. If you aren't prepared to brave its dangers, go back to Hommlett and be a bartender you wussies.

Legion of Gold by Gary Gygax

This Gamma World really cemented EGG as the best adventure writer of all time for me.

I mean, sure he wrote my all time favorite D&D adventures, but he created the damn game, so he must have designed it to his tastes right?

Well without the home court advantage Gygax still manages to pen the best GW adventure ever.

City beyond the gate

Lest you think Im an EGG fanboy (I am but why quibble) this adventure from Dragon 100 was simply great. PCs trapped in modern day london with a chance to nab the mace of st. cuthbert if they're willing to rob the British Museum (which we all know PCs are).

Reminded me of my favorite What IF? of all time. Conan winds up in the modern world, becomes a pimp (a real one) and puts a sword through Capt. America's shoulder blade.

The PCs who survived this roller coaster carried their revolvers as momentos for the rest of their days, long after the ammo was gone.

There's a bunch of other modules that would round out my personal top ten, but I should probably get back to the next BNG II book: Soldiers of the Special Operations Command.

Chuck

Google Toolbar

So I am publishing this post (as I did my last) directly from the google toolbar with the aid of the Blogthis! feature.

And this has prompted me to take this moment to say that the google toolbar might be the best damn thing I ever bought.

And since the price was NOTHING that makes the price-value ratio infinity.

Seriously, it can search from any web page (I do so much research for my modern stuff that google used to be my home page so I could constantly go back to it with one click), it blocks popup ads *and* now I can blog from anywhere.

Here's to google, for being cool as hell and crushing yahoo search like a grape.

Chuck

Passing the torch

Well, the revolution began today.

As BNG II picks up steam, some big changes were called for.

All the original Blood and Guts products (and its a lot... 3 major source books, 2 Modern Dispatch articles) were deactivated as individual items and placed in a discounted bundle.

In a way this is bittersweet, and in a way I feel like a guy who just said "I do".

In other words... I have officially crossed the rubicon. I can't go back on this whole "second edition" idea.

On a related note, I added some flavor text to the first book of BNG II that is the first step in bringing an idea to light that has been floating around in my head for a year or more: Blood Blizzard, a campaign sourcebook for Blood and Guts. This idea will serve as the unifying theme in all the BNG II flavor text, so I hope you like it.

I pitched the idea quite awhile ago and was told (more or less) that it was "too ambitious".

However, I think the time is right for it, and if I can make my case for it you will get to see more about the worst winter in human history than some flavor text.

Here's to snow and lots of it.

Chuck

Reinventing the wheel

I love making new rules.

Feats, skills, classes... mmmmm crunchy. Although I have accepted the will of the masses that new skills are bad! Bad game designer! You will always find plenty of the rest in any book with my name on it.

I see the occasional rant online by folks who want less of this sort of thing, or even none. Several popular books have been done advertising themselves as containing NO crunch *shudder*.

Before this turns into a crunch v. cream debate (and before I get hungry), let me say that I would never buy a book that contains no crunch and you can also take that statement as a pledge that I'd never write one (yeah, I'm one of those selfish bastard writers who writes the books he'd like to buy).

I know plenty of people think any monkey can write crunch and the real test of a writer comes in his setting material.

Maybe, but I still don't want it.

I don't GM to live someone ELSE'S vision. Certainly not some game designer. RE Howard maybe. But when I GM I play in my own world.

And for a long time that world has included crunch of my own design. From the klingon-esque High Orcs of my beloved home brew fantasy to junking the alignment and spell slot system for Legends of Excalibur, I have always wanted to open the hood... throw out the parts I don't want, and see if I cant make this baby go any faster.

Chuck

You should never go grocery shopping when you're really hungry...

This is one of those old sayings.

You know, like don't mix beer and wine. EVER.

Maybe I need to make a new maxim for role playing design: "Don't design a game when you're having a nostalgia jones".

See, when I designed Blood and Guts, I was on a serious nostalgia jones. Remember those old Danger International and GURPs special ops campaigns I mentioned? While running those, I always thought about how cool it would be to do it under a class based system.

I thought about what a cool campaign it would be to run a Special Forces unit with each specialty represented by its own class: Special Forces Medical Sergeant, Special Forces Engineering Sergeant, Special Forces Weapons Sergeant and Special Forces Communications Sergeant.

It really had a vibe that I liked, like when you were running D&D out of the old red box and you have a Fighter, a Mage, a Cleric and a Thief.

So when I started work on Blood and Guts, despite the fact that the broad range, infinitely adaptable model of Blood and Fists was being very well received, I decided to do something old school.

It would have a ton of classes. Each of them very specific.

Over time, I started to realize that wasn't as good a model as what I had done in Blood and Fists. But hell, the book was already out, it was selling well, and people seemed to like it.

So screw it.

Except that, as time goes on, your first inclinations of a design problem seem to grow on you. Doing a book about terrorists required its own classes. That was ok from an old school point of view- bad guy specific classes have a certain vibe. They make the players a little uncertain.

However, when I realized each military from around the world would need its own book, and actually assisted Fraser in the making of one (In Her Majesty's Service), I realized that I didn't care for that. I wanted something more flexible.

But again, the book was out. Nothing I could do then.

However, there came a day, a day like no other... oops sorry that's the Avengers isn't it.

I was talking to the boss one day, and he mentioned a Blood and Guts hardcover would be cool, a compilation of all the books we had done, big and small.

And of course a rules revision.

So I asked him... what would you think about an actual, honest to god new edition, done the way I'd do it if I were starting from scratch?

Perhaps not surprisingly, he liked that idea. I was asked to come up with an outline and then we would revisit the topic.

So one outline later, and we had something both Chris and I thought was a winner. A longer product. More ambitious in many ways. Able to handle militaries of various cultures and times with relative ease.

Yet despite the fact that the book was longer, the individual PDFs would be shorter. This would leave me more time to attend to my growing list of responsibilities like the Modern Dispatch adventure ezine and the promised adventures for Legends of the Samurai (mmm I can't wait to get started on those).

So, having just wrapped the first draft, a process of more than a year's worth of thought and playtesting is finally going to come to fruition, Blood and Guts II. Or more appropriately, Blood and Guts 2nd edition.

I really hope you guys *like* what I've come up and look forward to hearing your thoughts on it as you see it, read it and run it.

Chuck

Quick Hits

Ever wonder what games designers run when they're sick of playtesting their own stuff?

Glad you asked!

Looking to my near-left (bigass gaming pile #1) I see:

M&M

I reallllllllly wanted to hate this game. Hell I wrote a game that directly competes with it (I use that term very loosely in this instance).

I wanted to be the guy who noticed that fatal flaw and could stand and shout to the world that CHRIS PRAMAS HAS NO CLOTHES.

But alas, it turns out the game is actually good. And I am currently running the occasional pick up game using it.

It actually has most of the virtues of Hero's character creation system with none of the mind numbing complexity of its combat system.

The Marvel Universe Game

Even simpler than M&M. Unfortunately its also not quite as good. Plus, I prefer my games with dice. Call me old fashioned.

Also, something about the way they told me 200 times how "revolutionary" the game was grated.

However, it is pretty as hell, and since my M&M game is set in the Marvel U (sort of) it rides shotgun at #2 in the pile.

Medieval Player's Manual

Nice book. Crunchy and full of historical goodness (which you know I love). Plus it works pretty well with Legends of Excalibur. Another plus. This book just reeks with options, something I love about Unearthed Arcana.

GURPs Magic, Magic Items I, Fantasy

Man... I just love GURPs. I love running it sure. But you know what? I also love reading them. GURPs books are plain well crafted, and they, along with the collected works of Aaron Allston, taught me most of what I know and feel about how game design should be done.

Conan

Ahh... here's a sentimental favorite. I love Conan and I love this game.

I hear a lot of whining about the typos, but honestly, I never noticed them.

If you don't like this book, well I just don't understand.

It's one of the best RPG books I've ever read, and I'd consider it an honor to have my name on this book as a PLAYTESTER.

Ok?

Ok.

That's it for now. Next time I think I'll bore you with what I'm reading.

Chuck