RPGaDAY 2017 #30 and #31

From the #RPGaDAY 2017 challenge (information here):

And we've reached the end of these posts...and because I completely spaced that YESTERDAY was the 30th, I will be doing yet another combo-post. Sorry about that (but at least it's over)!


#30 What is an RPG genre-mashup you would most like to see?

This is another fairly easy one to answer: some sort of mash-up of dinosaurs and (modern day) warfare. M16s versus velociraptors. Dudes in a Bradley fighting vehicle being chased by a triceratops herd. That kind of thing.

I love this kind of thing.

This goes back to my longtime interest in "lost patrols" stumbling into some kind of Land of the Lost, prehistoric dimension. Like The War That Time Forgot or my one-time micro-game Out of Time, I just get a thrill off the idea of pitting automatic weapons against gigantic killing machines. I know I'm not the only one who digs on this (Jurassic Park, anyone?) but it seems to be a genre-mash that's gone largely unexplored. Yes, I already have a copy of Hollow Earth Expedition...it's not enough.

And, just in case anyone's interested, I did find my old copy of Cadillacs & Dinosaurs (I was cleaning/organizing my office last week. Fortunately the chewed portion was limited to the back cover and index). Maybe I could adapt the dinosaur stats to Twilight 2000...


#31 What do you anticipate most for gaming in 2018?

This is a tougher question. "Anticipate" means "expect" or "predict," but do they want an answer with regard to my gaming? Or to gaming (the "state of gaming") in general?

I'm not expecting much, truth be told. Regarding my own gaming, I predict more Blood Bowl and Pokemon and the same drought of RPG gaming. With regard to gaming in general? I don't see a 6th edition of D&D yet on the horizon. The indie market seems to be striving right along. FFG will probably roll out a new Star Wars supplement based on Episode 8, hoping to capitalize/cash-in on a tie-in with a popular film. The Old School community will continue as it has.

Yeah, I really don't know. I know that *I* have a LOT on my plate these days, but my hope is I'll be more active in blogging, designing, and publishing than I've been the last couple years. And hopefully (hope-hope!) I will be able to produce some stuff that inspires some folks. Especially around this corner of the blog-o-sphere.

But even if I'm not as active as I hope, I hope other folks will pick up the slack. And while that's for selfish reasons...well, it's my hope.

All right. That's it. Thanks for reading.
: )

RPGaDAY 2017 #2

From the #RPGaDAY2017 challenge (info here):

[as I'm starting this thing a little late, I shall be doubling up on my daily posts until I catch up. Early posts will be post-dated to the date they were originally supposed to appear]

What is an RPG you would like to see published?

Again, this is a question that's easy to answer with "my own," but I'll leave aside MY various works in progress. and give you something I'll probably NEVER publish, due to licensing reasons:

XENOZOIC TALES the RPG.

I am a huge fan of Mark Schultz's work, though I admit to only knowing it as Xenozoic Tales, not Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (I never purchased the Marvel comics, nor did I watch the cartoon that shared its name). Yes, I'm fully aware that GDW put out an RPG for Cadillacs & Dinosaurs years back. I own (owned?) a copy that my younger beagle chewed the corner off. Using the same basic system as the excellent Twilight 2000, I can honestly say that GDW's Cadillacs & Dinosaurs is the most boring RPG ever published. Oh my gosh it's dull...which, if you're familiar with Shultz's setting, you've got to find pretty damn amazing.

Here's the thing: the Twilight 2000 RPG was written for a very specific setting, namely, soldiers operating on their own, wandering through a post-WWIII Europe. It's like a combo of Saving Private Ryan and Mad Max, without the gonzo mutations and monsters found in post-apoc games like Gamma World or Mutant Future. The players' concerns are with finding food, fuel, and ammunition (not necessarily in that order), and unlike more cinematic games, bullet counting is absolutely necessary...as is receiving the brass shell casings from the floor of your HumVee.

The Cadillacs & Dinosaurs RPG takes T2K's system, strips out all the military trappings (weapons, vehicles, ranks and occupations), all the setting trappings (Europe, radiation, combat stress, etc.) and adds a couple stat blocks for basic dinosaurs plus a synopsis of Mark's world setting. That's it. Fin.

I did not shed any tears for my copy's destruction. Buddy the beagle was simply putting it to better use...as a chew toy.

Come on...this deserves a cool game!

Xenozoic Tales is a fantastic setting with lots of things weird and wonderful to explore, not to mention action and adventure. It's a setting that really cries out for its own system...one that digs into the setting and facilitates exploration of the ideas and concepts it creates, not just a handful of percentile-based skill choices and a bag of hit points. Hell, even Gamma World would make a better fit as a system, if you limited the character choice to pure strain humans and added some (abbreviated) skill system to model engineering and lost science arts.  You could 'port the dinosaurs into the game from your AD&D Monster Manual using the conversion notes in the 1st edition DMG...I mean it wouldn't be that hard to do!

But my preference would be to see a new game, designed from the ground up within Mark's strange and beautiful world. A game designed with consideration for the material, rewarding the recovery of knowledge, perhaps expounding the theme of ecological preservation and natural balance that runs through the setting. Plus giant spiders, subterranean lizard folk, dinosaurs, and crawling telepathic brains.

Yeah, I'd love to see such an RPG get published. Hell, I'd settle for Schultz writing more Xenozoic Tales (where's that kickstarter?). But it probably won't be me publishing it...I sincerely doubt I could afford the license.

Dinoriffic

Last night (Thursday) I was out gaming again, but I was back at the Baranof again, for the first time in many moons, and my usual table of players was nowhere to be found. That's because they're still back at Cafe Mox enjoying Dungeon Crawl Classics and I...well, I wanted to try something different.

Yes, I've made a split from my gaming group...an amicable split (I hope). But after doing DCC for a few (six) weeks, I've decided I've had enough and want to get back to something else; however, most of the other players are still greatly enjoying the game and I want them to keep playing/enjoying it if that floats their boat. I am about encouraging table-top role-playing and growing the hobby, after all.

: )

So, I've withdrawn from that group (for the time being anyway) and now find myself back where I initially started, more than a year ago: in a booth at the Baranof, sitting across from a single player with a pitcher of beer between the two of us.

[the bartender was so happy to have us back, SHE bought the pitcher...nice!]

There were a couple-three differences between that 1st session at Baranof's and this week. For one, the player at the table was Josh from the regular Thursday night group instead of my brother (who doesn't show up anymore). For another thing, I'm not feeling like "oh the group will never grow to be bigger than me and one dude." I've done the "build-from-scratch" thing once already and know it works (too well...the regular group has just gotten bigger and bigger over time!).

The main difference, though, is we were playing my new micro-game, Out of Time, instead of B/X. Really wanted to try out the dinosaur thing (in case you haven't gathered that from my recent posts).

All things considered, the game worked pretty good, even with only one person. Josh hadn't actually bothered to read the rules (one page, dude! C'mon!) but it took very little time to explain things and character creation was extremely quick (as designed). The most difficult part for me was the prep time involved in creating an "adventure;" however, even that yielded some good thoughts/fodder for game design theory, and I'll be posting a series here shortly about RPG objectives...or rather the lack thereof in many (most?) RPGs.

For this first session, I limited the character concept somewhat in that all PCs (in this case, just Josh) would have to be someone who'd be found in a Humvee driving around Afghanistan. This could be US army, UN peacekeepers, imbedded reporters or foreign correspondents, etc. Josh's character turned out to be an army engineer/demolitions guy and (as a sergeant) the highest ranking enlisted man in the Humvee.

There were three other army guys in the Humvee (NPCs): Sally the driver/greasemonkey, "Tex" (he had another name, but I can't remember now) manning the coaxial machine gun, and Bill who had some medical training (at least, he was the guy carrying the medkit). While in hot pursuit of some Afghani patriots...er, "insurgents"...the Humvee crew managed to drive through a dimensional warp and into the Land of the Lost, smashing their rig into a huge-ass, prehistoric tree.

Much hilarity ensued.

I like the system of the micro-game a lot, and I'm thinking of ways to incorporate it into other, non-dinosaur-themed games. Josh was rolling well all night, and never had to burn cards to get "extra effort," nor did he spend them to offset the damage he took in the single actual combat encounter (a fight with some dire wolves that killed good ol' Bill). Combat worked well, though I had to invent some spot morale rules (which were fine). It sure is tough to hit a pursuing t-rex with a vehicle-mounted machine gun while bouncing across a grassy savannah at 50 mph.

Anyway, that's enough for now...I need to catch up on some sleep. More later.

Yakima Gold

So we spent most of the day in Yakima today (that's in Yakima County, Washington...named for the Yakima nation, which was the largest American Indian population west of the Mississippi prior to several bloody massacres at the hands of the U.S. Army). It poured rain, which didn't stop me and the boy from heading out on foot to explore the town. Nice as the hotel was (fantastic biscuits and gravy!) it was boring to hang around and the baby just did NOT want to nap. Something about the excitement of being alive and all, I guess.

However, the rain DID stop our (my) initial plans to hit up a few used book stores that I found on line...they were just too far from our base o operations and I did NOT want the boy to get pneumonia. Fortunately, we stumbled across a little collectibles shop called Ron's Mini-Mall and found a couple nice pieces of swag for the collection.

First up was a copy of the collected issues of DC's The War that Time Forgot...another 1960s piece of weird extravaganza featuring WWII soldiers in a Lost World (i.e. dinosaur) setting, reminiscent of the Turok Son of Stone comics I remember from my youth. Although the collection is black & white, printed on cheap pulp, and hopelessly dated, it is EXACTLY the kind of thing I am in the mood for right now with my recent dinosaur fetish. I'm going to have to clear some shelf space next to Xenozoic tales for this bad boy. Apparently, another comic company is putting together a similar-themed "re-boot" using 21st century soldiers of a Special Forces type, to be issued later this year. Whatever...I just need to know how many Thompson machine guns it takes to bring down an allosaurus.

[my Out of Time micro-game has been downloaded more than 120 times, by the way...still intend to get back to answering the questions/concerns certain readers brought up]

The second thing I picked up, though, was even MORE interesting. In one locked shelf, I found something that looked suspiciously like role-playing games (they were next to a big bowl or two of dice), but that I'd never heard of. Turns out it WAS a role-playing game I've never heard of: Chris Weedin's Horror Rules: The Simply Horrible Role-Playing Game. After some inquiries I was able to discover Mr. Weedin is a local author (well, he lives in Selah, just outside of Yakima) and he writes/designs RPGs for his own (indie) company. Horror Rules has been around the Yakima area for a few years (the copyright is 2003) and they have an annual Horror Rules tournament over Halloween, no less. The little old lady who was giving me the low-down said it was "quite different but a lot of fun." If she was a regular participant, she is definitely the oldest RPG gamer I have ever met.

Anyway, I picked up a copy of the basic game (Weedin has another nine or so supplements for HoR that adds on various genres and such), and I'm about halfway through it. And so far, it ain't half bad. I'm not much into horror role-playing, though I have a bit of experience with both Call of Cthulhu and InSpecters. Horror Rules seems about halfway between the two in terms of tone and technicality.

And it's barely 100 pages long (including a sample adventure). Nice.

: )

Anyhoo, I'm sure all be posting more on that later...if you're interested in Weedin's stuff you can check out his (very nice) web site, which has buttons to browse and order. Considering the quality of the book, his prices are pretty low...I don't know if he's nutty or if printing costs are cheaper in Eastern Washington, but I should probably find out as it might be worth the gas to get out there for my next print run.

So, yeah...back in Sea-Town now, safe and sound after a nice little visit over the mountains. Books to read and wine to drink (visited a couple wineries on the way out of town and picked up some good stuff). It is pouring rain in Seattle which means autumn has officially started in the Pacific Northwest. Personally, I love it. But I'm kinda' weird.

; )

Dealt Dinosaur

All right, you can download my new, one-page micro-game here:

Out of Time

Personally, I think it's pretty sweet.

This is actually the foundation/skeleton for a decent little Lost World RPG. The full version would have fuller examples and elaborations on how to use the ability scores for task resolution, not to mention more stock antagonists (cannibals, Vikings, Roman legionnaires...plus more dinos, of course!). It would (will?) also furnish rules for scenario creation, probably with a few random tables.

The "end game" included with the micro is a simplified version of what I would use for a full game. It should be enough for play-testing. Unlike some RPGs there IS an objective to the game: getting the heck out of dino-land. As with the D&D endgame, not everyone will choose to pursue this goal, instead continuing to wander ("adventure") or settle roots in the prehistoric world.

Those folks will probably be eaten.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it; any and all feedback is appreciated. In addition to six-sided dice, you will also require one (1) deck of playing cards. I recommend using ones with a dinosaur theme. I picked up a set for myself today ($6) from Top Ten Toys: The Age of Dinosaurs.

Garden of Eaten

Hmm...I've been meaning to write up a post on why I find all dinosaur-friendly RPGs suck, but I just haven't gotten around to it. The truth is, it takes me nearly as much time to write up a semi-coherent, negative critique of...well, anything...as it does to write something positive and useful.

So instead, I just wrote my own game.

Still in the "one-sheet" phase at this time...but I have got the one-page (i.e. "micro-game" version) done, and will be uploading it to Ye Old Blog here, sometime tonight. If I'm lucky, I might even get a chance to play-test it a bit this Thursday at the Mox (we're down a couple-three people this week, which makes it a good night for a one-off).

Rawr!
: )

Getting My Dino On (Terra Nova)

Back in early February or late January I saw a television commercial (probably during last year’s NFL playoffs), previewing some crazy-ass new show featuring 21st century people (humans) being menaced by dinosaurs. I had no idea what the hell this show was about, but I was damn excited to check it out.

No such TV show ever appeared.

This last week, while again watching football, I saw another ad for this same TV show. Apparently scheduled to start up at the end of the month (appears the thing might have experienced some shooting problems through most of 2011).

The show will be on Fox, a station that has managed to put out some quality fiction shows over the years (The Simpsons, Firefly, Arrested Development, the first season or two of 24), many of which they completely mishandle and wreck/cancel (Firefly, Arrested Development). The prospect of a decent (if quickly cancelled) series is a real possibility, but who knows...TV execs often make decisions that are a complete mystery to me; chucking good, creative art in exchange for the most insipid and ridiculous of “reality TV.”

That’s probably one of the reasons I’m not a wealthy business tycoon. Anyway…

Called Terra Nova it has an interesting premise that blah-blah-blah HUMANS VERSUS DINOSAURS!

That’s really all you need to know. Well, all I need to know anyway.

I love most anything that mixes “modern man” with dinosaurs…it’s just one of my favorite pulp fantasies. Peter Jackson’s King Kong, the first Jurassic Park book/movie (before the Goldblum character got resurrected…wtf?), S.M. Stirling’s Sky People novel, all those lost/hollow world kind of movies, not to mention the Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX) Role-Playing Game (though why does it have to have Nazis, dammit).

I don’t know why I dig it so much. As a kid, Land of the Lost was definitely one of the weirdest/coolest TV shows on Saturday Mornings (at least with the original cast). I still love the premise of the show and would love to do something with it (what exactly? Who knows…).

Also as a kid, I remember reading old Turok Son of Stone comics. Back in Montana, my uncles weren’t too much older than me (maybe 10 to 15 years) and there were always old comic books of a “non-superhero” variety laying around: The Two-Gun Kid, Sergeant Rock, the Unknown Soldier, Turok, House of Mystery, Dracula, etc.

Turok was about an American Indian and his younger brother (?) who had somehow been transported to prehistoric times where, duh, they were often hunting or running from dinosaurs. I don’t remember any of the specific stories/plots from my childhood, I just remember being very taken with the illustrations, even (or especially) non-action ones: a half page image of Turok and his brother over-looking a bluff, watching a herd of honkers grazing in a pastoral valley, for example. Things like that.

The last couple years I spent a lot of time looking for old issues of the awesomely illustrated Xenozoic Tales (author: Mark Schultz). I had finally given up when I happened across the recently published trade paperback collecting every issue into a single volume. It took me a few days to read it cover to cover, but the thing is a real work of art, with beautiful story, pacing, characterization, and illustration.

[I’ll talk more about Xenozoic…and its associated RPG…in a later post]

No, I really don’t know what it is about the mix of people and dinosaurs that get me juiced; it’s just one of those things like Vikings/axes and sand-and-sandal fantasy that tends to fire my imagination. Dinos are just so HUGE and monstrous (always depicted with big, sharp teeth) and the idea of hunting them so ridiculously foolhardy…I mean it can’t result in anything but crazy heroics (or digested heroes).

Strangely, I almost never use dinosaurs or lost world tropes (Neanderthals, ape-men, etc.) in my D&D games, B/X or otherwise. The Isle of Dread is the only “dino-sanctuary” I’ve ever depicted in the game, and then but rarely. For whatever reason, the thought of fighters in plate mail attacking a T-Rex with his trusty magic sword just seems wrong.

But modern day heroes (18th century and later)? That seems the perfect protagonist for a dinosaur-infested campaign. Silly perhaps, but that’s just me.

I would love a good pulpy game that pitted dinos against heroic player characters. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to find such a game (more on that in a latter post, too).

All right, all right. I've got some stuff to take care of right now. Perhaps more dino-stuff later.

Intimidating Artwork

[saw the Captain America movie last night...sorry, Josh!...and will be posting about it later today after I've reflected on it a bit. This little "tide you over" post is somewhat related]

I just want to say a brief word or two about visual artists...you know, folks that draw and paint and sketch and whatnot. I throw around the word "artist" a lot in reference to any creator or undertaker of creative endeavor, but for this post I'm discussing those guys (and gals) that make pictures using something other than a camera.

There is a huge amount of talent floating around right now.

I mean, the overall quantity of quality art to be found on the market today is just astonishing. To me, anyway. I've read comic books since I was a small child, I've seen masterworks in Italy and Spain and France and London (not to mention the museums of the good ol' US of A), and the stuff in-between (I like to go to art showings or peruse the paintings on the walls of coffee shops and cafes or the prints at sidewalk-street vendors)...and I am AMAZED at the sheer amount of high quality artwork that can be purchased all over the place.

Where do all these folks come from?

Lil' D and I stopped into the local comic shop the other day to get the proprietor's take on the recent comic book movies...

[yes, yes, I read film reviews, too, but you know the quality of your average superhero flick is generally less-than-Oscar-worthy. I'm not going to see 'em for quality cinema, and I want the comic-quality-control opinion of a Subject Matter Expert on the subject. Jeez!]

...and as usual I am blown away by much of what I see. Rows and rows and pages and pages of high quality artwork for sale. More than any one person could read in...well, perhaps ever. Certainly one person couldn't subscribe to ALL those mags!

I even picked up a little something-something: a compilation of Mark Schultz's Xenozoic Tales (something for which I've been searching about two years...). More on that particular find later. Yes, I know it is not recently drawn (artwork from the 80's), but it's still excellent art in addition to being well-written.

[I'm kind of on the same page as Jim Shooter regarding the state of today's comics and the lack of story-telling ability]

But of course, my passion isn't comics (or movies) anyway...it's GAMING and the sheer amount of incredible artwork used in recently released games is simply astounding.

Card games. Man, I'm not even talking collectible ones (like Magic, etc.)...just one-off card games by a variety of companies, all with different themes and rules, all with gorgeous artwork. $30 and $40 card games...hoo-boy!...that are so beautifully illustrated, who cares if the game is as playable as Uno. Mad Zeppelin really caught my eye for its artwork (I was browsing Gary's today also), even though the game itself didn't sound all that great.

I was talking to Casey (an artist and gamer herself) who was working the counter and asked "where do these companies get all these fantastic artists?"

Well, that's where the money is these days if you're an artist, she replied.

She went on to explain that, tough as ever as the graphics biz is, for some steady pay one can do illos for card and game companies, although there's a catch: companies only pay you if they actually use your artwork in the game and if they don't use the artwork they still own the rights (!!!) to the stuff you've created.

Apparently companies will commission 10 or more illos, but the terms of the contract (all illos submitted are owned by the company and artist only gets paid for illos published) is fairly standard.

Why the hell would anyone sign a contract like that?!

What part of "that's where the money's at" don't you get, pal.

Ugh. At least when I've exploited artists (er...got people to give me stuff for free), I've said they retain their rights to said art and are welcome to re-sell and re-use it. But perhaps that's not enough. Maybe I need to pay people in the future, too.

*sigh* I don't have a business right now. I have a hobby. And if it were to ever turn into a "real business" (a la one of the large scale game companies), I'd probably have to start running it like one (i.e. cutting costs and exploiting starving artists as much as possible). Only if I wanted to keep afloat that is.

Shoot. For now, I'm just going to enjoy the pretty pictures.

Development

There are two things I’m musing about today. The first is people hunting dinosaurs with guns…that’s going to be its own post. The second is an adequate development system for characters in a Fantasy-Punk RPG.

As in, “character development,” as opposed to advancement. I’m tired of the term “advancement.” Characters can develop in a number of ways, including “in-game effectiveness” without necessarily becoming “advanced.”

For example, in a world where characters are members of a freelance covert ops team doing black ops missions for competing corporations (and others able to pay their bill), there are a number of ways characters can develop (good and bad):

• Karmic Development: Doing good things reaps good returns and bad things the opposite.
• Reputation: Success and integrity (“professionalism”) increase rep; screwing up and hosing your buddies wreck it.
• Experience: Skills and abilities develop with practice, but age and fatigue build up as well.
• Relationships: These can be built or burned over the course of a career.

One thing that’s always semi-disgusted me with certain RPGs (like D20, though there are many) is the one-way development of characters: it only goes up. Characters get better and better only facing penalties as/if applied by a GM.

For example:

• D20 provides no “karma” penalties to dice rolls based on prior actions.
• A poor “reputation” has no required effect on reaction/skill rolls except as applied by GMs (perhaps as a “circumstance” bonus)
• Experience points only go up unless characters on subjected to permanent energy drain; aging penalties are only enforced if GMs keep a strict record of “campaign time,” and generally won’t affect most demihuman races in a “human scaled” campaign
• With regard to relationships…well, there’s always another adventure right? Always another meet in the local tavern and a tale of treasure and danger to pursue. Otherwise, there’s no game, yeah?

Again, GMs can certainly create their own house-rulings on this issue (“Your Chaotic Evil character is no longer allowed in the campaign as he’s created too many problems.”) but many times, GMs will attempt to find a way to justify the PC continuing to adventure as if nothing has happened. Only a failed save or reduction of hit points is going to end a character’s adventuring career, never blacklisting or fatigue or their “sins catching up with them.”

Personally, I’m tired of it. Stagnation and “player/GM burnout” are the outcomes I’d expect with a one-way advancement scheme.

I suppose you can keep your game fresh by continuously adding new game content (tied to advancing to new levels or purchasing new source books or whatnot). But it seems (to me) to be more elegant to include the balancing act, the tension, in the game rules.

Look at Call of Cthulhu. Yes, you have a constant upwards trend of character effectiveness (skill percentages only go up)…but you also have a downward spiral of Sanity. AND that sanity is inversely tied to one of the most useful skills I the game (“Cthulhu Mythos Knowledge”), which ensures the better your investigator gets at investigating, the more likely he is to end up in an asylum, gibbering and drooling.

In the past, my Shadowrun “campaigns” never lasted very long as characters generally went one of two ways: cybered to the hilt (the money sink) or magicked to the max (the karma sink). Either way, it was just “play until play gets boring because all the players are ultra-effective” and then FINITO. Great…so much for entertainment "limited only by one’s imagination."

But maybe my imagination IS limited. Or maybe players’ attention spans are too limited these days to care (“we only play for a year and it takes us two months of sessions to get through a single mission anyway”) and it’s effectively a non-issue. Fine and dandy; I have had my bouts with “gamer ADD,” myself.

However, I still think it is more interesting to look at character DEVELOPMENT over time rather than character ADVANCEMENT. And while some games may be better as one-way development trains (my space opera game only differentiates between “slow” and “fast” development in Old School style…reward the good game play, baby), I feel that any game with a dystopian setting (say, any game with the term “punk” in the theme or title) should have the possibility of two-way development (positive AND negative).

Just what I’m thinking. Today, anyway.

[***actually, this is just what I was thinking about two weeks ago...I wrote this February 3rd and never posted it (nor did I get to the "dino-hunting" post). Since that time, I've accounted for 21+ pages of the new 64 page game, and it DOES incorporate most of these "development aspects" in its design...all four plus a fifth, in fact. However, the "negative development" is definitely "toned down" compared to my earlier rant...in fact, there are no rules (currently) for decrepitude or age...though they might not be a totally bad idea to work in somehow!***]

Post-Apocalyptic Fantasies

The sun was shining today…I mean REALLY shining after weeks of grey, wet misery (that January-February kind of Seattle weather that will eventually beat down even diehard rain lovers like myself…too much mud and sickness) and even though we haven’t even got to Groundhog’s Day it feels a tiny bit like the beginning of Spring…I mean you can feel we are on the upside of days getting longer and such.

And so I find myself thinking of the Apocalypse.

I don’t know why…the last couple-four plus years that’s just what Spring and Summer start doing to me. Thinking about The End of the World is hard to do when in the midst of the happy holiday season…or is perhaps too depressing to take out and look at period during the grey, wet winter days. But Spring time…the Easter season, a time of renewal, etc…makes me think about the death of our world and the rebirth of the next.

Not to be morbid or anything…I don’t clean out the bomb shelter or re-stock the canned goods and ammo or anything. Me…I start getting in the mood for post-apocalyptic fiction and role-playing.

Post-apocalyptic fiction/lore (I’ll just call it PA for short from now on, or this post will get waaay too long) is something that’s held great interest for me for a looong time…so long I’m not sure when it started. It’s like my interest in astrology or fencing…from the moment I discovered such a concept existed it has held a great and terrible fascination for me (not that astrology or fencing are “terrible,” but they would draw my interest to the point of distraction even years..decades!...before I started practicing either).

Using Wikipedia to see the release dates of the earliest pieces of PA fiction I remember might give me a clue to when I first started dwelling on the subject. The Day After (1983) was a horrific made-for-TV movie that I remember watching as a 9 or 10 year old…though I also recall falling asleep before the end and having to ask my folks what happened (spoiler: everybody dies). Thundarr the Barbarian I watched religiously on Saturday Mornings and it aired from 1980-81 (age 7 to 8). Sometime around the same period I recall watching George Peppard in Damnation Alley on television and wow, did that one haunt my nightmares as a kid…but it was released in the theaters in 1977 so it was probably not broadcast on television for at least 5 years (’82 or so). Definitely I saw Planet of the Apes early-early in life, and found that pretty horrific…though I’m sure I didn’t see that until the 5-7 year old range (again on TV). My aunt and her friend almost took me to see the Road Warrior in the theater (US Release circa 1982), but at the last minute ended up taking my brother and I to see The Secret of NIMH instead…and I can recall vividly having a long conversation about the Apes movies on that summer day in Montana, so I must have already seen a couple of the films (possibly more than once).

But the earliest PA fiction I can recall is watching the Logan’s Run television series on TV (broadcast 9/77-1/78…’round about the age of 3-4!!). While not dealing with the horror of nuclear holocaust (or did it? Was that the one where there were these crazy scarred mutants wearing gold masks and black cowls to hide their disfigurement?), it certainly involved dystopian societies and bubble cities.

Hmm…I wonder if I can get that one on Netflix. I might need to re-watch it.

Anyway, I’m sure growing up in the Reagan "2^nd Cold War" 1980s helped fuel the paranoia/fascination with the coming apocalypse and “what happens thereafter.”

[Hmmm…just remembered that I also saw the 1978 version of the Time Machine on television when I was 5 years old, and the whole Morlocks/Eloi-cannibalism depiction of THAT film had more impact on my young psyche than any other version of the Time Machine I’ve seen since…this might even have something to do with my whole squeamishness regarding cannibalism]

Yes, long before I ever picked up a copy of Gamma World (2^nd edition, found used in the usual Montana bookstore) I was watching and reading tales that would depict (either in plot or background) the End of Civilization as We Know It. Hell, what 13 year old spends his own money to pick up a paperback of After the Bomb? Probably the same kind of kid that grows up watching Buck Rogers (with the nuked Earth surrounding “New Los Angeles”) and videotaping Chuck Heston in The Omega Man to watch multiple times. Yes…I am weird.

So it might strike some as odd that I’m kind of indifferent about most PA RPGs on the market.

But allow me to clarify: I love-love-LOVE the IDEA of the PA RPG. When I first started designing RPGs myself (as a hobby…my B/X Companion is going to be the first thing I actually publish, folks), I had a half-dozen fairly different RPGs all of the PA variety. I even figured I would call my “company” (whoa! Delusions of grandeur!) something like “Post-Apocalyptic Games.” I just felt there was such a dearth of material out there…and I wanted MORE.

Here’s the short-list of published PA RPGswith which I’m familiar:

Gamma World (1^st through 3^rd editions)

Rifts (and After the Bomb, etc.)

Twilight 2000 (and Cadillacs & Dinosaurs)

Deadlands: Hell on Earth

Car Wars (post-peak oil)

Mutant Chronicles (more Cyberpunk than PA)

Shadow Run (more Cyberpunk than PA)

Cyberpunk (see above)

Paranoia

And of course other assorted weirdness that can be categorized as PA: Obsidian, HOL, World of Synnibarr, some versions of Terra Primate (of course) and AFMBE (zombie apocalypse!), etc. And of course there’s Mutant Future, the OSR’s current darling of whimsical PA mutation & exploration.

The problem for me is: none of these games really satisfy my itch for PA role-playing.

I suppose I should look for a copy of Aftermath! (which I’ve never owned, nor read). But the reputation for being especially fiddly is off-putting to me, even as I like the idea of a grim survival based game.

'Cause that’s 50% of the problem…”grim survival” is the thing that is really missing from all the RPGs I listed above. Gamma World has the potential to be an excellent metaphor for man and his relationship with technology (especially the 1^st edition with some minor 2^nd edition tweaks), but usually gets bogged down in silliness like fish that turn people to stone and rabbits that turn guns to rubber (not to mention all the rest of the well-known gonzo mutants). Rifts and DL:HOE are waaaay too over-the-top to ever be considered grim in a semi-realistic way...and most of the other games don’t even come close.

I’ve never owned Twilight 2000. My friend Jocelyn DID, but we never played it…and her descriptions of the game to me did nothing to entice me to play (she made it appear to be a WWIII simulation fought with conventional weapons only, rather than a broken military in a PA world which might have been intriguing). I DO own Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, a true PA meets Lost World type pulp game that uses the same system as Twilight 2000. Unfortunately, I find the system to be incredibly BORING. I’m not sure exactly why (I’d have to pull it out and read it again), but after picking it up (recently…within the last 12-18 months), I was left feeling like I REALLY wanted to read the Xenozoic Tales comics instead of playing the RPG.

Grim survival ain’t present in these games, system-wise…and that’s something I’d want to see (yes, yes, a GM or referee can certainly tailor events to be “grim” but I want it INHERENT, dammit!) for a real PA game no matter WHAT the nature of the apocalypse. I mean, look at Reign of Fire (the film). Here’s a world that’s been burned to a near-cinder by DRAGONS but (as with all the best PA stories) still there is the over-reaching story of the GRIM STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL. Not, oh dragons exist maybe we should study magic. Not whimsical stories of captured maidens or bad guys allying themselves with the beasts. This is HIDE OR BE EATEN. Which is a common theme in many types of PA fiction (even without dragons).

But as I said “grim survival” (or lack thereof) is only 50% of my dissatisfaction with PA RPGs. The other 50% of my dissatisfaction comes from the other missing integral part of the genre: COMMUNITY BUILDING. The PA story is NOT simply concerned with 'O woe is us we don’t have electricity/plumbing anymore.' Most PA stories involve some sort of rebuilding/rebirth…a rise from the ashes and possibly a redefining of what community and “civilization” means to those left behind.

Now maybe this is just the Plutonic/Scorpio part of me (Pluto, ruler of Scorpio, is greatly concerned with volcanic upheaval that leads to karmic transformation within our lives) but that shit fascinates me. Surviving the apocalypse? That’s tough enough. But re-building the world from the rubble up? Now THAT’s a heroic task.

And again, while this can be simply “injected” by the GM of the game, I’d prefer it to be a real and integral part of the rules, hopefully directly linked to the “reward/advancement” system in the RPG. Reward systems based on behavior encourage that behavior that engenders rewards. Call that Axiom #3 of RPG design. If characters are only rewarded for killing monsters and getting treasure, guess what: that’s what they’re going to do (unless they wander off on a tangential Creative Agenda like, say, Story Now…hello Trollsmyth and Oddysey!). If characters are rewarded for “good role-playing” (whatever the F THAT means) then you’re going to get some hammy play-acting from your players (or you’re going to get players leaving the group disgruntled ‘cause they’re not into being judged on their improv abilities).

Now again, Gamma World (2^nd edition) comes O So Close to establishing this in its Status/Rank reward system…after all, what is being measured in GW appears to be characters value TO their particular community (or Cryptic Alliance, should they join one). Defeating mutants raises their “standing” in the eyes of their people, as does turning in valuable (and working) artifacts with the instruction book attached.

However, while community is INVOLVED in the advancement process, it is not being directly BUILT (perhaps INdirectly, depending on how many mutant monsters get killed and how many tribesmen the PCs arm with Tech III weapons). And community building is the main component of the PA genre…after the grim struggle for survival of course.

[as for the non-Gamma World games, they don’t even come frigging close to addressing this]

Community building or defining: you see it in the Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome. You see it in A Canticle for Leibowitz and The Postman. You see it in The Stand, The White Plague, and even Battlefield Earth and the Matrix films. In all these stories, the grim survivors of the Apocalypse (no matter what form the Apocalypse takes) must come together and redefine what their community is, what it stands for, what they’re all about and how they are going to relate to each other in this changed world. Heck…even those little rag dolls in 9 do this!

Yep, there is the ever-so-faint smell of Spring in the air and I’m itching for some Post-Apocalyptic action. I’ve yet to see The Road or The Book of Eli but I fully intend to see both if possible at my earliest opportunity (watched It’s Complicated on Friday which was very good but certainly not “apocalyptic” in subject matter). I’ve also been meaning to check out S.M. Stirling’s Dies the Fire, which seems to be a rip-off of Steven Boyett’s 1983 book Ariel (though without the unicorns). I just discovered Stirling in the last year with his throwback planetary romances (Mars and Venus) and Marching Through Georgia, but his PA series has gotten some of his ravest reviews and I’ve yet to peruse any of ‘em. As I finish up work on the B/X Companion and its companion adventure module, I find myself more and more enticed with doing a new 64 page RPG…and I wonder if I have enough junk material (and new ideas) to distill some sort of Post Apocalyptic goulash that will meet MY particular needs of gaming in a world gone mad.

; )

This One Goes Out to Demogorgon

See the Temple's post to know what I'm talking about.

I went to see Land of the Lost on Monday (my day off).  Hey, I donated blood...I'm entitled to a little cheap entertainment while sipping on canned apple juice.

When this movie was first announced, I was SO disappointed.  I actually found out about it because I was thinking about drafting my own LotL screenplay (I do this to myself sometimes) and first checked IMDB to find out if anyone had already beat me to it.  Of course someone had.

Anyway...I LOVE the Land of the Lost, and I actually find Mr. Ferrell quite amusing (like him, inappropriate things make me chuckle).  So I figured I'd see what it was all about.

Have to say it's a bit schitzo...I mean, it had some funny parts that actually made me laugh out loud (dinosaurs feeding on the ice cream truck was one of 'em), and you can see where all that big money went...it was definitely a big budget film.  I thought the pylons were super-cool, and the idea of a "time warp" parallel plane rather than a straight-up "lost world" was a nice update.  

And the dinosaurs were fantastic...I mean every movie that's come out just makes better and better use of CGI with respect to the T-Rex these days...hell, he's almost like his own name brand star ("Will Ferrell and T-Rex in Land of the Lost"). The characterization is so good, that watching a succession of films...say, Jurassic Park, King Kong, Night at the Museum, and LotL...is like watching the career of Arnold Schwartzenegger.  Sure, in the first couple he doesn't say much and he spends a lot of time posing, but by the end he's totally hamming it up and thoroughly enjoying his role, not taking himself too seriously.

And the sound track? Hell, they got Dave Mustaine to play guitars for the sound track?! Holy shit!

As far as the talent (i.e. the actors) goes, it was a bit of a mixed bag. Strangely, I felt Danny McBride really captured the character of Will Marshall.  That probably sounds insane, but it's as if they hired the original actor to reprise his role 20 years later with mustache, mullet, and beer gut...but with basically the same characterization and motivations.  Ferrell was hit and miss (as usual).  Holly was...um, British? What the f---?

Chaka was also f'ing amazing.  Whoever the hell Jorma Taconne is, he deserves a supporting actor nod (from the Golden Globes maybe) for his performance.  In fact, he made Holly a bit more bearable since she was translating for him through most of the movie.  How she did it with a straight face is anyone's guess.  Even though I'm not one for "low brow" humor, he was so earnest with his humping antics, I couldn't help grin.  Plus for me, he embodied the essence of the original Chaka much as McBride did for Will.

Ferrell on the other hand, had little of Marshall to him...instead he was Will Ferrell, providing a semi-klutzy "everyman" eye-view through the perspective of a Friends' Ross-like archetype.  It got old fairly quick.  Where was John C. Reilly?

Anyway, I wouldn't force my wife to watch it, and I'd rather my kids watch the original series.  I will note that I was the ONLY PERSON IN THE THEATER the whole time.  I can't remember ever being the only person watching a film.  Not even the ushers came in to watch. Wow.

Bomb City, folks.