Did You Know (Paraguay 1)? Also, Updates

There is no postal service in Paraguay? This explains why I have no mail box.

People still get things delivered, of course...it's just delivered by courier or whatnot (when my wife needs stuff for her work, it's often hand-delivered by a person coming down here from the USA anyway). That's just nuts. I mean, thank God for the internet! It's allowing countries like Paraguay to enter into 1st World realms of business and enterprise even without the infrastructure of mail carriers...or even decent roads!

It really is the infrastructure that's missing...there's plenty of money here (and monied individuals). The neighborhood in which we live is chock-full of BMWs and Mercedes vehicles (mainly SUVs with tinted windows), absolutely huge houses with security boxes/guards on every 2nd or 3rd street corner and high, high walls. But the streets (for the most part) are absolute garbage, and the local parks (more like vacant lots) are entirely overgrown and unkept, and it is a resident/owner's responsibility to upkeep (or build) any sidewalks in front of their homes...and few bother. The tax rate here is one of the lowest (if not the lowest) of any country in South America, and decades of government corruption has resulted in little money going to those public works most Americans take for granted. I'm not sure if I've actually seen police officers here, but there sure is a lot of private security forces (everywhere from the shopping malls to the taxi stands).

There's a lot more that can be said on the subject, but I'll abstain for the moment.

The point is, there's nothing I can mail to anyone (or have mailed to me) without a postal service while I'm here: email is it (thank goodness my house finally came on-line...yesterday, in case folks failed to notice the post). I will be back in Seattle for a couple-three months beginning mid-March, but then I'll be gone for a year (till May 2015).

While I'm away, someone IS doing my mailings for me, so yes, you can still order books while they are in print. I'm strongly considering doing a couple more print-runs while I'm back next month, in order to make sure there's plenty of books on-hand for delivery, but we'll see. Sales of print-books (and PDFs) have definitely slowed down...especially for 5AK...but I figure a lot of that has to do with my lack of marketing and persistent absence from the on-line community the last few months. On the other hand, I've continued to get email requests for print copies of the B/X Companion and PDF copies of The Complete B/X Adventurer, and it would appear there are dollars to be made on both those items if I can just get my shit together...something I'm hoping to do.

In fact, I'm going to get to that right now. Well, right after I wake up my family who has drastically over-slept (at the moment it's 10am, Paraguay time).

Reboot

It’s been a while.

As I write this I have no internet and have had no ready access to the internet for more than a week.

Not that this matters a whole heck of a lot…when you have little-to-no free time, there’s not much use for the internet except to listen to your local (Seattle) sports radio station, basking in the ongoing afterglow of a Super Bowl championship. The fact is, it is only recently that my child has become enrolled in daycare here in Paraguay and so I have been mostly on 24 hour nanny duty since we got down here (i.e. since becoming unemployed). Most of my waking hours have been spent playing Legos or Batman or Spiderman or Pirates or “Star Wars guys” or Zorro or soccer or the usual care and feeding of a small child. Since our interaction has been limited by environmental constraints (we were in a hotel until about a week ago) and his limited vocabulary and depth of experience (he just turned three last month)…not to mention short attention span…it has been a somewhat constant source of inconvenience and frustration.

I’m sure I will look back on it as one of the happiest times of my life, and a very cherished part of my personal history. How many parents wish they could have more quality time with their children…at any age!

The experience (especially the heat and surroundings) reminds me of a time way-way back in my life. When I was very young - six or seven years of age - my family spent a week or three in Kuaii (one of the Hawaiian islands for the non-initiated) due to my father’s work taking him out there for some type of convention. We were put up in a house, and aside from memories of coconut pancakes and body-surfing with my father, the thing that stands out most vividly is the hours I spent playing with little plastic soldiers on the cool tile floor of the house. 

They weren’t actually soldiers; they were cowboys and indians. But you probably know the type I mean: one-piece, single-color, molded plastic miniatures in various action poses. The indians were mine, of course, while my brother had the cowboys. I always preferred the indians (and to be clear I am aware of the politically correct terms associated with our indigenous Americans, but these are the stereotypical toys I’m talking about, complete with war bonnets, buckskins, bows and knives…hardly a historical, factual representation of our Native peoples) to the cowboys in our games. I can recall we (my brother and I) had a couple “Lone Ranger” action figures at some point (the 13” type with actual clothes and plastic horses) and I favored Tonto over the proverbial masked man. I have never really been a “gun guy;” I’ve always been drawn more to swords and knives and bows and axes (tomahawks) when it came to weapons and the indians were easily the action guys of choice. 

[not that I don’t (now) enjoy a good Spaghetti Western shoot-up or game of Shadow Run, but in real life I can’t even stand the touch of a handgun…they just feel “icky” to me, and I have no idea why. Perhaps I was killed by firing squad in a past life…or maybe I shot a loved one or something (accidental or not)]

Anyway, my brother and I (he was a couple years younger) would play out little wars and adventures (cooperative) with these little plastic figures, spending hours making up stories about these two cultures and their interactions with one another. Not all of these were of a hostile or action-oriented nature…as I recall they had other dramatic events happen (flooding rivers, starvation, etc.) and our little “people” would have to figure out ways to survive. My brother and I developed stories and characters on that cold tile floor in the Hawaiian heat and humidity, and had a helluva’ time doing it.

We spent a lot of time making stories in those days, pretending all sorts of things. Once, I can recall my mother finding my brother and I crying in our downstairs hallway because we’d been playing out some sort of fantasy where we were on a raft in a flood (or river) and everyone had drowned/died and we were very sad. This would have been before age six or seven probably. 

“Playing pretend” on the playground was a common pastime of my friends and I, probably up until age 10 or so (when we were hardcore into D&D)…we were never much for shooting hoops or playing “flyers up” or four-square. If we used monkey bars at all, it was solely to navigate some imaginary obstacle (lava being the usual favorite) during our adventures…as knights or elves or Star Wars characters or Indiana Jones types or even Willy Wonka. Nothing so mundane as “cops & robbers” or “cowboys & indians” would have satisfied us.

My son seems to have the same “play pretend” itch I always did…almost always involving superheroes (Batman and Spiderman are the favorites), and often involving firefighting. Of course, he’s also exhibited a profound fascination with the ritual of the Catholic Mass, and likes to march around holding a cross, chanting “Amen, Amen” or hand out Eucharist wafers to people (though this behavior was more regular when we were still in Seattle).Encouraging his play, participating in it, and trying to steer it in positive directions (“Batman doesn’t shoot people with guns” or “a superhero’s priority is to help people before fighting bad guys”) has been a priority for me the last few weeks. 

And occasionally constructing paper batarangs.

*ahem*

But now it’s time for me to button down and get back to work. D has his school, and we’ve almost got our house and schedule in order. I’ve made some commitments to myself to get up early and focus my head in the right place. Even though the internet is still not working (latest glitch: no power to the router and the electrician can’t make it today due to heavy rains and random flooding throughout the city), I’ve had the chance to use the WiFi at the office down the street from our house. Mainly I’ve been using it to check on long-neglected email and catch up on the book orders.

[FYI to folks who placed orders in February: your books were mailed out from Seattle on Monday]

But now it’s time to get back to writing. And for myself, writing begins with this blog.

It’s time for a reboot.

When I first sat down to start Ye Old B/X Blackrazor blog, I wrote out a list of 100 potential topics to post. I did this because my prior blog (combining astrology with professional sports) had dwindled and dried up within three months after starting strong. I wanted to make sure I had enough I wanted to say, before actually throwing my hat into the ring, so to speak.

I probably only made it through half that original list before the ideas for blog topics took on a life of their own (responding to comments, reading other blogs, picking up new books, following the gaming industry, off-topic world events, etc.). Still, I knew that if I needed it, I could probably pull out the list and get back to the 50 or so posts I never got around to writing. It’s a comforting thought to have…plus, just the act of writing the list gets the creative juices percolating a bit, you know?

Well, that list is long gone (or, more likely, buried somewhere in an old notebook in my Seattle home). This morning after breakfast, I sat down and wrote up a new list of 100 topics (“Reboot” was the first item on the page), and I’m hopeful that these will lead me back into regular blog posts…which will feed my other creative endeavor of writing and designing games. It took me a little effort to start, but it was worthwhile…already my brain is starting to get back into “game mode” which it’s been lacking of late. I’m actually pretty excited about a number of the ideas on the list. And some are actually B/X related! Yes, really!

[there’s also some good stuff about wolves]

All right…that’s enough for now. I’m going to try to get this sent off today…which means going down the street before D gets home from school! Later, gators.

: )

Super Bowl, Super Game

It is 9:30am local time, which means 4:30am in Seattle, meaning most of my friends and family back home are probably still snoozing, perhaps with dreams of Seahawks bouncing around their noggins. After all, the big game is today...in a few hours...and from all the accounts I've been able to gather, the city is a little football crazy at the moment.

People who know me know that I'm usually crazy about football and the Seahawks year round anyway...regardless of whether or not they're in the Super Bowl. So it is perhaps ironic that I've been out of the country since January 16th, bopping around Chile and Paraguay and Uruguay and (now) back into Paraguay. A couple things folks might want to know (I'll probably elaborate on South America in later posts): it is damn hot here (summertime, thanks in part to the reversal of the seasons) and most folks don't give a rip about American football. I've got a few dozens/scores of channels in my hotel room

[quick side note: I am fucking sick to death of living out of hotels]

and at least six or seven of them are devoted to sports. And you know what they'r playing?

Soccer. Soccer. Tennis. Soccer. Soccer. Racing.

Yes, yes...I don't expect Latin America to care nearly as much about football as the U.S. (it's been Super Bowl media week the last few days and I'd expect a ton of coverage on the ESPN channels back home). But do they really care more about what's going on in Italy's local soccer league? Or who's currently leading in Formula Four? Come on!

No, they play the (playoff) games on the television here...I was able to watch Seattle's smack down of the Niners in the NFC championship game. But there's no other news coverage. I didn't even get to see the presentation of the NFC trophy, as they switched away to cover French premier league soccer. France?

But whatever...it is what it is, and American football is probably a tough sport to figure out if you haven't played it or watched it for years. It's a lot more complicated to get into then soccer where the goal is to stick the ball in the net of the other side...or racing, where the object is to be faster than the other guys. I didn't fully grasp the rules of the game till I was 10 or so and I grew up going to Seahawks games at the Kingdome with my folks from the age of 7 or 8. My son enjoys the games immensely, but he really only knows to yell loud on defense and that touchdowns are good. And he recognizes the 'Hawks by color and logo, of course.

For folks who do understand the rules and nuances, football is immensely satisfying and much more interesting to watch unfold on the field than other sports...even though there's lack of accessibility to the average person. Perhaps the sport of cricket is the same for the cricket fan; I've never been able to figure out that one myself (admittedly, I haven't tried terribly hard).

There's a parallel that can be drawn between this subject and gaming, by the way.

Unfortunately, that parallel is going to have to wait for a later post...right now, my family's up and I've got to help get them ready for church. I never bother praying for a Seahawks win, but I do like to ask no one (from any team) suffers injury. And world peace, of course...can't forget that!

Later folks...to my American readers: hope you all enjoy our semi-national holiday! Go Seahawks!

Playoff Football, Baby

Since the NFL realignment of 2002 (12 seasons and counting), there have been 114 home playoff games played. Eight of the NFL’s 32 teams (one-quarter) have hosted five or more playoff games, and of those eight teams the Seattle Seahawks have the best record: five of six (.833) with the single loss coming in 2004, their first playoff game in their current (then new) stadium.

This year, the Seahawks’ record ensures that all their playoff games will be played in Seattle. The teams that remain alive in the NFC play-offs – the Panthers, the Niners, the Saints – have all been beaten by the ‘Hawks this season. New Orleans, the team they play this weekend, was blown out in Seattle just last month…and while Drew Brees and the Saints have proven they can win on the road in the playoffs, they face a rested Seattle team after an emotional, physical road win in Philadelphia.

Now this doesn’t mean the Seahawks’s path to the Super Bowl is clear, nor easy. Brees and the Saints have won in Seattle in the past…in October of 2007, in fact, on the Seahawks’ road to their fourth straight division title (since the realignment gave the NFL its current structure and roster of teams, only three teams have seen more post-seasons than Seattle: the Colts, the Patriots, and the Packers...just FYI). Brees and head coach Sean Payton are no strangers to the Seattle waaagh both in and out of the playoff setting…a difficult challenge, certainly, but not a surprising one for a veteran team.

Can the orks once more pummel the Nurgle team into a gooey pulp?

We’ll see. Marshawn Lynch can trigger “Beast Quakes,” but Jimmy Graham IS a beast…a Beast of Nurgle in Blood Bowl terms, though an extremely fast and agile one that few players can bring themselves to guard or tackle. In the December game, he was excellently shadowed by dauntless lineork KJ Wright…but Wright broke his foot in the ‘Hawks December battle versus the Niners and will be unavailable till the NFC championship round at the earliest…assuming the Seahawks can get past New Orleans.

If I was a betting man, I’d still put my money on the orks, because A) I’m a huge-ass homer (duh), and B) because it’s the smart money. Brees is a Hall of Famer, but the Seahawks are the better team.

I know, I know…few enough of my readers care about football at all, fewer still are still watching with any interest (perhaps because they still have a team left in the race to root for), and even fewer dig the Blood Bowl. Sorry, folks...I’ll talk about the nuttiness of the latest Hobbit movie in another post.

Playoff football, baby. When your team’s in the mix, it’s just about the best time of year.

Up until you lose, of course. My wife reminded me the other day (in conversation, with other people) of my general demeanor after the Super Bowl loss of 2005. That year, we felt like Seattle was a dominant, can’t-lose team…and then we lost to a sixth seed wild card team and a second year QB who appears descended from the mercenary Swiss pikemen of two hundred years ago.

It hurts to lose. It hurts to lose most everything…though the degree of hurt is generally commensurate with the thing lost. With regard to the entertaining pastime of football, losing a game in the regular season is disappointing, losing at home is rough, and losing one’s chance to advance to (or through) the playoffs can be devastating….assuming the rest of your life is in order. I’m sure there are Bengals fans that were immensely disappointed after their team’s loss to the “barely in” Chargers…and yet even the most diehard fan would be terribly disinterested in the game result if they were facing the loss of their home to an unpaid mortgage, or the tragedy of a loved one dying from cancer before their time.

I myself am in a fortunate position of “things are going well at the moment” so I can spare the emotional energy to get worked up about the home team. And I want to win…a lot. I want to win a lot more than I want to lose. I want to win convincingly. I want to win easily.

I’m as superstitious as any other sports fan. Superstition would generally say keep your expectations low, approach the game with humility, hope for the best, don’t “tempt the football gods.” But I know there are fans on both sides of the fence that shoot their mouths off, just begging for negative (football-related) karma…and we can’t both lose the match. So I’m done worrying about it. I want to kick some ass. And I think the circumstances are good enough that the better team (i.e. the Seahawks) should kick asses of the Saints, on both sides of the ball.

Here come the Rotters.

How do orks generally fare against Nurgle teams? Pretty good, usually. Like all Chaos teams, the mutations available to a Nurgle team can make them versatile and specialized with the right combos, but the right combos (like NFL wins) are never guaranteed. Without those advantages, the default is a slow, stompy team that infects injured opponents with The Rot, bringing other team’s players into the warm, slimy embrace of Grandfather Nurgle.

However, the orks are some serious tough buggers, making them less likely to be injured than most other teams (except with a string of bad luck, which sometimes happens). Because of this toughness and their natural versatility (they can acquire a wider range of skills than the Nurgle team) they tend to be more balanced than Nurgle and thus able to out-play plague teams.  Plus, depending on which version of Nurgle you’re using (there have been several different ones over the years), the players tend to be slower and weaker than a “normal” Chaos team, making them a team the orks can rough up pretty good.

People may think I’m disrespecting the Saints by comparing them to or by representing them with a Nurgle team, but the truth is I’m a HUGE fan of Chaos teams, especially Nurgle. My collection of Warhammer 40K minis is far more extensive than my Blood Bowl collection, and my Nurgle army is second only to my Khorne dedicated army in number, including some of my most expensive pieces (including a 4^th edition Chaos dreadnought and Chaos landraider)...and almost all have been customized/modified with extensive putty-work (“greenstuff”). My Nurgle BB team is unfinished only because…well, mainly because my painting/modeling hobby has been put on indefinite hiatus (probably till my children are teenagers and/or older). I like teams that stomp the hell out of opponents and convert them to their own, and who aren’t as fragile around the edges as skeletons and the undead…and Nurgle’s “fluff” is some of the best GW has to offer.

Sean Payton: Offensive Guru, Sorcerer

The Saints are a good team…that’s why they’re Nurgle and not, say, halflings or hobgoblins (that’s the Jets and the Browns respectively…*ahem*). They take prime players from other teams…like Brees and Darren Sproles…and make them starters on their own. Stylistically, they’ve got that bayou swamp-voodoo-thang going on (which totally shrieks ‘Nurgle cultist hideout’) and I usually equate “dome teams” with the darker, Chaos-oriented teams in BB (Skaven, Dark Elf, etc.). And Mardi Gras is, of course, an annual Chaos ritual of epic proportions.

But being a “good” team isn’t going to be enough to knock the Seahawks out of the playoffs in their own stadium. Good enough to beat the high elves, sure (i.e. the Philly Eagles…you have to know the BB fluff regarding high elves to see the parallels with the “City of Brotherly Love”) but not nearly what they’ll need to stop the Seahawks, especially with second-string beastmen in the backfield. It isn’t like the ‘Hawks forced three or four interceptions when they hosted New Orleans in December; the Saints coughed up the ball exactly once. Instead, they were simply manhandled by Seattle for the majority of the game…both offensively and defensively. I’m hoping to see something similar when the two teams play again this Saturday.

If only so I can continue the dream another weekend of playoff football.

; )

Who Dat? Not as scary in our neck o the woods.

Ending the Year

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.

[how many bloggers have written THAT over the years?]

I myself have written next to nothing in recent months, and I’m not just talking about the blog. Sorry folks, but I’ve been kept very busy and my mind has been on a lot of things besides gaming...well, gaming has (of course) been on my mind, but finding the time and energy to put together a string of coherent thoughts on the subject has been nigh impossible.

Here’s the skinny: I’m moving to Paraguay.

My family and I, that is. My last day at my job will be January 15^th (or sooner, should I decide to cash in my “sick leave”) and our plane tickets are for the 16^th. Prior to that we’ll be, you know, buying giant suitcases and packing and whatnot. We’ll be gone for a couple months, then back for the (impending) birth of our second child before returning to Asuncion where we are scheduled to remain through May 2015.

For myself – a guy who just turned 40 and who’s lived in Seattle his whole life – it’s a pretty big change. I’m leaving my regular job-type job (where I’ve been gainfully employed since 1999), as well as my rainy-gray skies, and the “running beagles” (the airline can’t guarantee the dogs’ safety/survival and it’s too long a journey for them). Hell, I’m leaving in the middle of the NFL playoffs in a year where the Seahawks seem poised on the brink of the ultimate prize! I tried to push the move back till after the Super Bowl, but no dice.

[the folks responsible for moving us has assured me they will get me cable or satellite or whatnot to watch the game, but still…]

We’re keeping our house, and we fully intend to move back to Greenwood (“God’s Country”) at the end of our sojourn, but who knows how much things will change in eighteen months? Who knows how much we will change in that time?

For my blog readers and occasional customers: the “biz” (such as it is) will continue. I’ve made arrangements with certain game-business folks in Seattle to continue the distribution of my books while I’m gone (i.e. I’ve got people willing to pop items in the mail for me and, yes, they are reliable). In fact, they’ve expressed their willingness to pick up any new print runs from my SoDo district printer when inventory runs low. However, I’m a little too “control freaky” to put the operation entirely in the hands of folks not myself so that’s unlikely…when the current print runs are gone, interested parties will probably have to settle for electronic (PDF) copies.

[hmmm…I should probably check my account balances one of these days. I really HAVE been busy…I haven’t even answered personal email in the last couple months!]

Being in a strange country with no job and few friends, I anticipate having at least some time to get back to the blogging/writing thing. I even got a new phone so I might be able to finally get this “twitter-thang” up and running. However, I will also have a ton of work just settling in, learning the culture and history of the place (it’s not required…that’s just what I do. I could write a month’s worth of posts with what I’ve learned already), and trying to polish up on my Spanish (which is pretty pathetic at the moment). In addition, the daycare situation is pretty uncertain right now (for both the boy and the “upcoming arrival”) and I anticipate being on extended parent duty a lot in the first few months.

Maybe I’ll even learn to cook (something besides coffee, bacon, and oatmeal, I mean).

BUT regardless of what I end up doing (and there’s been much talk of me getting a job while I’m in-country besides), I am very hopeful the writing/blogging thing will start-up again after we get through the initial transition period.

After all, the main reason I started this blog in the first place was a desire to express my thoughts, feelings, memories, and concepts with regard to games and gaming…and I really had nowhere else to go. Sure, NOW I’ve made the acquaintance of other gamers, designers, and biz-folks (thanks to the blog) and thus have people with whom to talk and bounce ideas…but that will mostly be going away once I’m in Paraguay.  As it was circa 2009, I’ll have little recourse but to shout myself into the void of the internet…it’s not like Greenwood where the game shop’s just a quick stroll down the street for shooting the shit with the likeminded.

But that’s a good thing (I think, anyway). I’m looking forward to working on some of these things I’ve been neglecting…things like web sites and old design projects. My INTENTION is to get a new laptop prior to the move (yes, I’m cutting things close, I realize), perhaps one with a layout program that is simple enough for a simpleton like myself. I’m excited about drinking coffee out of tiny cups while sitting in the sun and writing…or maybe I’ll take up the yerba mate habit if I can find a blend that doesn’t taste like “sock tea.” Heck, maybe I’ll find some time to exercise for a change (Lord knows I’ll need something, what with the Italian food and beef-eating thrice daily).

What I probably will NOT be doing is much actual gaming, unless it’s of the online variety (something I’m loath to do). Paraguay, so far as I know, is not much for tabletop RPGs. There was some discussion, a few months back, about moving to Montevideo (Uruguay) instead of Asuncion and I thought, hey, maybe I’ll get a chance to make the acquaintance of the RPG Pundit, in all his smoky glory. Unfortunately, such was not to be…though I will be in Uruguay later this month for a wedding.

[I should note that this isn’t a terrible thing, by the way. While landlocked Paraguay does miss the beautiful coastline and excellent soccer of Uruguay, most would agree the food is better in the former country…and such is a major consideration when living anywhere for an extended period of time. Besides, I’ve never been a big fan of the beach]

Okay, that’s about it: the update in brief. To all the folks who’ve been trying to message me or send queries on my health and well-being: thanks. I do appreciate your concern. For the most part, I am just fine except for the over-whelming stress of life-changes and whatnot (I won’t bother detailing the holidays and random family health issues…you people have those, too, I’m sure).  Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas all went off without a hitch (well, not much of one)…but again, these things have not been the foremost in my mind of late. Nothing really has…nothing besides my family and the move, that is. But I figured I’d better drop y’all a line before the New Year. Jeez!

; )

Thanks for the great year, folks. Have a merry, merry one…and expect more from me later!

Resources (No Not Really)

Hope everyone had a happy Halloween last night. I did, for the most part (the knob on my front door fell apart(!) but we were able to get it back together after an hour or so of minimal tinkering). I’m feeling a little hung over from all the candy “sampling”…or maybe it was that single “Bud Lite” I consumed that one house was giving away as “treats” to parents. Wow…how anyone can drink that dishwater on a regular basis is beyond me. Even the non-alcoholic beer I’m currently stocking my fridge with (something called Buckler) tastes more like beer than that swill.

[some might ask why I’d even bother drinking it…well, wasting beer is something hard for me to abide. Normally, I would have passed on a Bud completely (thus not taking it home, thus not having to worry about “wasting” a beer at all)…but the sheer novelty of getting a beer while trick-or-treating with my kid tickled my fancy. Having said that, though, I’d point out that if they’d been handing out Coors I would have passed. As I’ve stated on multiple occasions, I’d rather take a silver bullet than drink one]

Man, I am sniffling and sneezing today like I over-taxed my immune system with sugar and chocolate…which is probably true. It’s funny (well, to me, anyway): back when I used to play AD&D as a kid, and we were so hard-core about following the Rules As Written (weapon length and speed factor, helmet rules, wandering monsters even in town, etc.) the one thing we didn’t use EVER, as far as I can recall, were the rules for disease and illness given in the DMG. Maybe the whole concept of illness was counter-productive to the escapism of the game: as a kid who had more than his fair share of head colds, did I want to worry about my adventurer needing to blow his nose? No, not really.

Not that the rules for disease and illness in the DMG are terribly realistic (I use the adjective loosely, with regard to fantasy adventure games). One might imagine that “historical” type folks were of hardier constitution and were sick less often than us pasty-types living in the over-stimulated, stressful society of the 21^st century. And yet the lack of modern medicine meant illnesses, when acquired, tended to be a lot more deadly.

And it’s not like adventurers are carrying around a tube of Neosporin to slather on the lacerations they get from goblin blades. Hell, I use that stuff on any burn or scrape I get!

But in designing a game…any game, in fact, though here I’m speaking about RPGs…it’s important to consider what you want your game to be about when deciding what to include in the rules. Do you WANT your player characters to have the possibility of death by tetanus or infection of some sort? Is the Black Plague a part of your pseudo-medieval setting (I’d imagine that’s the basis for rats inflicting disease in D&D…but what about other rodents?). And if that’s a possibility (due to say, an attachment to “realistic” hazards of the ancient world)…how big a possibility do you want it to be? Should adventurers be sterilizing their wounds with fire after every battle? Should infection-killing ointments be made available at the town apothecary?

These are rhetorical questions by the way…my urge to play something as complex as even AD&D has faded as I’ve gotten older. Not so much because it’s uninteresting to consider such things in the game, mind you, but because in practice it tends to “bog down” play.

Allow me to diverge on a short tangent. As I wrote a couple days ago, I’ve been a little busy for the blog-o-sphere I usually surf, so I missed any debate of “light” rules versus “heavy” till I was catching up my reading of The Tao yesterday. As usual, Alexis raises some good points…the best one being the one about simplifying a system leading to a dependence on DM fiat which has the potential to be grossly unfair.

Looking back at the disease/infection thing, for example: what if I (as a DM) think it’s both appropriate and interesting to include a chance of PCs dying from an infected sword wound...yet am faced with a game system (like B/X) that doesn’t provide rules for such a hazard? Well, I’d suppose the usual response would be “make something up.” I might require any wounded PC to make a saving throw versus poison after any fight in which they took damage, or a certain amount of damage, or lost a certain percentage of hit points. I might give any PC a straight 1 in 6 chance (or 1 in 8 or 1in 10 or whatever) of developing an infection anytime they take a wound from a monster in a certain dingy dungeon location. I might simply say, “these goblins are using rusty, filthy blades that ABSOLUTELY WILL give a character a nasty infection on a successful attack roll,” or on two successful attack rolls or whatever.

The point is the hazard that I, as DM, would like to see can be addressed in any number of arbitrary ways, but A) there’s no guarantee that my ruling would be fair and balanced, and B) there’s no guarantee that the inclusion of such rules would be fun. In fact, the odds of even accidentally hitting on a “fair” way to implement such a thing (we’ll talk about the “fun” part in a moment) are pretty infinitesimal because I am not designing a new game from the ground up, but instead “patching” an existing game, without respect to the ideas, concepts, and objectives of the designer. I’m doing what I think “feels right” when one might (logically) presume the designers didn’t include such rules because they were inappropriate, unnecessary, and/or unwanted to the game itself as intended.

Maybe the PCs are supposed to be heroes of mythic proportion with a destiny that doesn’t include dying from an infected sword wound. Maybe the only type of misadventure peril they’re supposed to face is a glorious death in battle, or incinerated by dragon fire, or the venom of a hydra…hey, the latter was a good enough death for Heracles, right?

Regardless of the intention with regard to concept, it is very difficult to try patching rules once the rules have already been set (like concrete). I look at the XP system in 2^nd Edition AD&D, so different from earlier editions…a system based on the idea that it’s “more correct” or “appropriate” for PCs to gain XP for different activities than gaining treasure and slaying monsters…and the train wreck that the game devolves into. Leaving aside the absurdity of it, such a system creates a conflict of objective within the player party, doing the opposite of encouraging “cooperative play,” all in the name of patching the treasure hunter mentality that is the foundational design concept of the D&D game.

But even without THAT issue (i.e. the issue of trying to design for a game that’s already been designed), there’s the question of who actually benefits from these new rules? Who gets to experience the “extra fun” from their inclusion? Yes, I understand that a long-term game can get stale after a while (and back in the day, new “options” culled from Dragon magazine provided much enjoyed injections of “freshness” to our campaigns), but I’m not talking about the addition of a new monster or a random table for determining what’s in the pockets of the citizen being picked by the party thief. I’m talking about straight-up rule changes that transform play into something (the DM deems to be) more “realistic” or “appropriate.”

I suppose some players might think it’s cool to have a chance to die from an infected sword wound, or to bleed to death from a severed artery, or to suffer “critical hits” that break bones or shatter weapons. But I’d guess most players would be hoping none of these things happened to their particular characters. Given a choice between having more “realistic,” complex rules and being left with little to worry about except their dwindling supply of spells, HPs, and torches, I’d imagine most players would opt for the latter...especially when the only option for the former is to have them implemented in an arbitrary patch fashion by the DM.

However, these things ARE interesting (if only "fun" for the cackling DM and bystanders), and people who read adventure stories or watch fantasy movies can see these types of challenges arise to their favorite characters. And because the characters in our favorite fiction encounter these difficulties and overcome them, they are more heroic (and more beloved) for their effort. In Wendy Pini’s ElfQuest comic series, we find the main character, Cutter, hallucinating and dying from an infected squirrel bite that he suffers while doing nothing more innocuous than walking in the woods. The infection lasts the length of the issue, and allows the writer to further the plot of the series in a number of ways…but this is (comic) literature, not role-playing. Do you want this kind of thing to be a part of your game?

Surprisingly dangerous.

If you do, or if you want other interesting complexities to be included in the rules, then you really have only two options: run a game that includes those complexities (so that they are an objective part of the game, incorporated with regard to the game’s design concepts), or have your simple game “boosted” by arbitrary DM fiat and house rules. For some people it’s interesting and important to know how much rock can be quarried by the charmed hill giant, and the speed with which the castle wall can be raised (to keep out the approaching barbarian horde) is important to the game at hand. You have rules for this in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons; objective rules written by a man who (presumably) tested his own system to make sure it worked with the rest of the game’s parts.

On the other hand, if you’re playing a simpler game like Moldvay’s Basic you can have your DM “wing it” – either using a 50-50 die roll or perhaps using some elaborate self-made system – or you can ignore such complex scenarios in your game play. Stick to your dungeon delving, in other words, if you don’t want your DM just making shit up.

It may be difficult to tell from reading this just which side of the debate JB is on. That’s because I’m not picking a side. Oh, I have a preference for running a simpler game system, mainly because I want something easy to run and easy to teach (to new players, for example). But I tend not to tinker too much with a system as written, because I think it invites a lot of the problems that proponents of more complex systems detest. My “fix” for a game that’s getting stale or that doesn’t address things I want address is to play a different game (duh, I like to play different games), or write my own, from the ground up.

Hmm, this “little tangent” has turned into yet another long-winded digression. I guess I’ll talk about resources in another post.

"Grotesque"

That’s the word that’s been on my mind of late: grotesque.

Not because of that travesty of a performance for the Seattle Seahawks on Monday Night Football a couple days ago (though “grotesque” would certainly go a long way towards describing the play of our offensive line). Nor was the word on my mind because of my sympathy for the St. Louis sports fans that same evening…sure, they might have been expecting a loss for the Rams, but as America’s Greatest Baseball Town (self-proclaimed), I feel for them watching the Cards lose on the same night.

[and let’s be honest, here…as a Seattle-ite, I really can’t bring myself to root for Boston. Yes, they have great beards and bats, but cheering for the Red Sox in the World Series would be almost as bad as cheering for the Yankees or the Rangers. Almost.]

Still, the word is embedded into my mind due to recent television broadcasts, even if they’re not sport-related: I’ve been watching the FX TV series American Horror Story: Coven.

Grotesque. It’s the best word I can use to describe it.

And yet, great television. I say this as a person who does not particularly like horror stories…at least not of the cinema variety (I’ve read a lot of H.P. Lovecraft but I’ve yet to watch a single “Saw” movie). Hell, I think I’ve only watched three zombie films in my life – Night of the Living Dead, The Re-Animator, and 28 Days Later – well, unless you want to count that Friday the 13th movie with the Alice Cooper soundtrack. Oh, yeah, and The Omega Man with Charlie Heston (though that’s because of my post-apocalypse fetish). I’m just not that much into “scary” type movies, let alone those designed to disgust or shock folks.

The American Horror Story franchise (can it be called such after three seasons? I guess) seems to have been created at least partially with that in mind. Made by the same folks who created Glee, the writers wanted to do something…um…a little darker. Yeah, I’ll say.

I didn’t watch any of the earlier seasons of AHS…hadn’t even heard of the show before a couple days (despite constantly referencing television programs on this blog, I don’t watch that much TV…just more than I should and a lot more than I used to). I found it while surfing around the On Demand section of the TV guide one night after I’d gotten my sick child to sleep and was suffering from coffee-induced insomnia.

[oh, yeah…hi there, people. Sorry about not blogging the last couple weeks. Life’s been crazy-hectic as usual]

ANYway…great show.  Yes, twisted and grotesque, but still great. I suppose it falls into that “dark comedy” category that I am (generally) a fan of, at least in moderate amounts. And it has great writing and performances and a horrific manic-ness highly reminiscent of some of the darker Story Now indie-games. It’s like watching a show that was based on play reports from a few sessions of Ron Edward’s Sorcerer RPG. And I really do mean that in a good way.

It’s positively inspiring. It’s given me a huge swath of ideas for a new gaming project.

Yeah, even though I haven’t been blogging (or writing at all) the last couple-three weeks, I’ve actually been immersed in gaming. I’ve been reading (and rereading) a lot of games, both old and new. Some I’ve owned for a while: Sorcerer and its supplement Sex & Sorcery, 3:16 Carnage Beyond the Stars, InSpecters, Holmes D&D…just to name the ones in my backpack at the moment.

But mostly I’ve been reading new stuff that I’ve purchased or borrowed: Polaris, Trollbabe, Mouse Guard, the short-yet-sweet Bad Attitudes, and the 7.5 edition of Tunnels & Trolls (which I’ve never before owned in any edition). Heck, just picked up a copy of Jorg Dunne’s Western City yesterday while looking for a used copy of EverWay. I’ve been looking at how games “do what they do” especially with regard to explaining/molding game play, paying special attention to rules and writing for “scene framing” (a term that I’m coming to hate, actually, though I understand the reason behind the term’s use). I’ve been reading a LOT lately…more than I have in a long time.

I’ve also been reading other blogs, outside my couple dozen that I normally scan (though I admit at this point I’m just “lurking”). I’m still hopeless when it comes to this whole “G+” thing, but I’m getting sucked in to some of the conversations going on in that realm of Ye Old Internet. It’s a tad disappointing how much I still need to learn about 21^st century technology.

Grotesque.

Did I mention I’ve been gaming with a pair of complete newbies? I had four players at the bar the last time I got out (two Thursdays ago), two of which had never played an RPG ever. Ever. Hell, they’ve had barely any exposure to computer RPGs…the barest basics were absolute mysteries to them. Fortunately, my latest rework of D&D (designed at new people) seemed to draw them right in and “worked.” But man-o-man, it sure has given me a lot of food for thought on how to meet my objectives of game design (i.e. designing for the non-gamer). I’ve spent so many years playing with people who had at least SOME background in gaming (at least the slightest of inklings) that I just have a huge blindside when it comes to the total novice. Hell, even when I was introducing B/X D&D to my teenage nephews for the 1^st time, they had some ideas of class and level and “ability scores” from video games they’d played.

The new RPG gamer needs something better than Pathfinder. I’m sorry, they do. Grotesque.

All right, I’ve got to go…lots of breaking news stuff on the home-front which I’ll blog about later (in the next couple days). Have a good evening, folks.

Oh, yeah…good luck St. Louis!

: )

Need more beard?