Category Archives: Gaming

Stranger Things is Honest in its Love of the 80s and D&D

Finished watching Stranger Things. Loved it, but I’m pretty much the ideal audience. It’s not for everyone, but like True Detective Season 1, it rises above and entertains better than most.

But hey, some people are sticklers and parse everything out, looking for every possible fault before deciding from on high whether something is good or bad. Some people need to make their opinion bigger and more important than the art they are commenting on. Here, cruising along in the 21st century, everybody thinks they know better than artists who pour everything they have into a project.

Me? I want to be entertained. But more importantly I want to be entertained honestly. I want to see clarity of vision, risk taking, and art with boundaries. I want to see love and passion for a project, brought to life with care and creativity. And while I loath both laziness and complacency, I mostly hate those who compromise a vision because they refuse to be honest. With themselves. With their characters. With their audience.

You may find fault in Stranger Things because it’s not perfect. You may not like it because you can’t relate to the characters. You may think its horror-SF trappings cliche and dated. And that’s fine. Good for you.

But I liked Stranger Things. A lot. Because it was written for me, and not just 12-years-old and playing D&D in the early 80s me, who is basically a composite of many of the main characters. But also the me who is a father who loves his child and would do anything for her. And also the fanboy me who likes to be entertained.

And finally for the writer-me, who wants people with my upbringing and interests to be successful and create more cool stuff. The show is honest with its characters, its setting, and, most importantly, its audience. It gives us everything it’s got and asks for little in return. So yeah, I liked Stranger Things. A lot.

I hope you do too.

New Kickstarter “Sun Spots” is coming in September

Things are finally underway! Again! Less than two months until I kick off the Kickstarter for my Cthulhu Dark scenario “Sun Spots” and momentum is gathering as we speak.

Here are components of the project that are already complete:

  • The core text, playtested multiple times (~27k words)
  • The cover art by Chris Huth
  • Multiple interior illustrations by Jason Eckhardt
  • Interior art by Caleb Cleveland

Furthermore, I am already assembling the following items to be ready for the Kickstarter launch:

  • Interior art by Reuben Dodd
  • Blind playtesting
  • Layout and design by Gregory Geiger
  • Maps, including one hand-drawn, by Jake Coolidge
  • Interviews and press
  • Budget, pledge levels and possible stretch goals
  • Tentative “Director’s Cut” version of the book

So everything is coming together for the actual book. The video for the launch is nearly done, as is much of the art for the project page. I’ve got plans under way, and deadlines on the calendar. And over the coming weeks I will post here regularly, sharing planning and providing visibility into the project itself.

I can’t wait to share more with you. In the meantime, read some previews here.

The D&D TV Show was Horrid but Necessary

For a brief minute in my ADHD-rattled, socially-awkward childhood, things actually seemed to come together. Sixth grade for me was a last great height of childhood innocence and fun before the truly disapproving and unhappy adolescence (heralded by arriving at middle school) sucked the wind of out my sails, and one of the main components of all that fun was all the great role-playing materials I got to play with during that time.

The years of 1982-1983 were a time of tremendous growth for the tabletop RPG industry, and I was lucky enough to bathe in all of its nerdly glory. I had all the AD&D books, many of the adventures, and played regularly with a few of my friends (though most of my time was still relegated to sitting alone in my room, rolling up characters and creating dungeons). There was a peak moment where I had all the toys and wonders of childhood (which still included Legos and Star Wars figures), as well as stacks and stacks of AD&D books, dice and modules, all at my command. Reagan’s economy was in full swing and my upper middle class family had disposable income that gave me access to all the new RPGs starting to come out of TSR, games with crazy cool names like Top Secret, Gamma World, and Gangbusters.

Imagine my surprise, when, much to my delight, a D&D television show was announced in the summer of 1983, right as I was unknowingly transferring from child to adolescent. How cool is that? A TV show based on my favorite game! Things could not get any better.

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In hindsight, maybe the baby unicorn should have been a tipoff

Of course, as we all know, the D&D TV show, which ran for three seasons and had 27 episodes, was pretty much crap. And I rediscovered how total crap the show was recently when I borrowed the entire TV series from the local library and sat down to watch it with my 10 year old daughter, hoping that a) the show was much better than I remember it, and b) her blossoming tastes in TV would be more open to liking this ancient relic than my cynical old man soul would (she does, after all, like The Phantom Menace — clearly I’ve failed somewhere). Neither, unfortunately, came to pass.

Because, quite frankly, the show doesn’t hold up to any discrete sense of viewership, especially now, in our golden age of TV. Even 30+ years ago, it was clear that the TV show was written around the structure necessary for a TV show: 22 minute format, standard characters with simple characteristics, and the need for neat and tidy resolution at the end of every show. And there was no dungeon delving, no tavern introductions, no inventory management, and every character had only one (just one!) magic item that allowed them to navigate whatever conundrum the Dungeon Master allowed the group to get into.

Oh yes, this is perhaps the strangest component of the show — the Dungeon Master is an actual character in the show! Just to quickly reprise the premise of the show (which is covered in the 30 second series introduction but otherwise never examined in detail): six kids go on the Dungeons & Dragons amusement park ride, which magically transports them into the realm of the Dungeon Master, where they are transmuted into different characters in an attempt to get back home. They each get one magic item and are put in various classes (Ranger, Barbarian…), and the DM shows up every episode as they fight Tiamat and Venger, the main villain, in whatever wackiness the DM throws at them.

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Not someone I would allow my children to “play make believe” with

Back in the 1980s, we quickly realized that the D&D TV show was a scam. Sure, it was great that our favorite hobby was now a national TV show, but there was very little in common between the two. Sure, we watched it because that’s what we all did back then — watch as much TV as possible. But there was always a nagging sense of loss opportunity after every show when, after Uni the Unicorn gets lost, or Presto the Magician pulls something wacky from his hat, that kids who knew nothing about D&D would come away with the wrong understand of the show.

So now, after my daughter gave up on the show for more exciting territory (who knew there was a new Inspector Gadget TV show?), we returned the DVDs to the library and moved on down the path of memory lane. But something about the D&D TV show stuck in my head, and it wasn’t the world map that supposedly portrayed a world where these six adventurers are presumably still stuck.

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I’m guessing the missing booklet is still in someone’s bathroom To-Read pile

Fact is, regardless of the quality of the show, the D&D TV show was totally necessary in the early 80s to exploit the growing interest in table-top RPGs, and while we don’t really know the impact it had (positive or not) on the hobby, certainly there must be some people who it helped bring to the table. Well, it does actually seem that a lot of people really, really liked the show, and there must be a thread between sitting a 10 year old down in front of the TV and his (or hers, but probably his) asking his parents to buy the Basic Ruleset. Remember that the 1980s weren’t a very friendly time for RPGs, and for D&D in particular. So having a TV show based on the game was a bit risky (and, strangely, risque too) and probably even fueled a bit of the backlash.

But here we are, so many decades later, with D&D still strong, and the not-aging gracefully show still available for a trip or two down memory lane. And yes, it’s bad. Not horrible, but not anywhere near the quality of TV that we’ve grown accustomed to. Yet with all the sophistication and violence in our TV shows today, it’s nice to know there’s still some easy way to introduce younger children to the hobby. Whether you pick it up at your library or cheap on Amazon, the Dungeons and Dragons show is a fascinating view into where we’ve come from.

Tales of the Caribbean Kickstarter

It seems like such a long time ago, but sometime in 2014, I submitted a scenario proposal for a Golden Goblin Press book of Call of Cthulhu scenarios set in the Caribbean. Much to my surprise, my scenario was selected, and I spent some time this spring writing the dang thing up in preparation for the book’s Kickstarter.

Well, now the day is finally here, and the Tales of the Caribbean Kickstarter is live!

You can even see a picture that’s already done for my scenario…

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It’s so amazing to work with talented people! So you should go back it, now!

What I’m Working On

I’ve been a bit silent here lately and not without good reason. Things have been very busy not only with real life but with my writing life as well. So I wanted to take this moment and update my blog on what I’ve been working on…

But first, I wanted to talk a little about real life. Last month I started working at Apple, going back to JIRA administration as a full time job. The most important part of this pertains to how program management and working in a larger role (with more responsibilities) really seemed to sap my energies and take from my abilities to write consistently. With my new job, I certainly work hard, but I have a lot of time at my desk, working, as opposed to spending my days in meetings, getting people to do their jobs. It was a critical change for me to move away from a more intense role and to a position that allowed me to process my work and get things done during the day.

Now I come home and have still have mental energy, so I can wake up refreshed and ready to write. This has been a great change for me and I’m very excited for my new opportunity. Back to my current writing projects…

1. Recently I finished a first draft of a Call of Cthulhu scenario for the upcoming Golden Goblin Press Kickstarter, Tales of the Caribbean. It was a unique honor to be approached by Oscar Rios and asked to submit a proposal for a Caribbean scenario. It was an even greater honor when they accepted my proposal! So I was on the hook, and got to work immediately (this was last fall). But then work got really busy and my mental space got gobbled up (see above) and I put off writing for far too long. There was a convergence in the late spring when I realized I needed to get a new job, partly because I wasn’t writing at all! But the new job came through, and I quickly retooled my lifestyle to get back to writing. So the first draft has been delivered. Lots of work still left, but the big effort is complete.

2. While my scenario He Who Laughs Last was delivered last summer, I still have one remaining stretch goal — a fictionalized version of the scenario.  I have it mostly outlined and some of it written, but still need to just sit down and write the damn thing. If I had been more productive last winter, it would already be done. But I aim to finish it soon because…

3. I am poised to launch my next Kickstarter on July 26th, 2015, for my Cthulhu Dark scenario Sun Spots. This scenario is actually 95% complete already, and there is much history to this project that I started in 2007. Suffice to say that I’m very excited to finally have this see the light of day. You will definitely hear more about this very soon. But even though the writing is done, there is a ton of project management and preparation for this next KS project. I’ve learned a lot from my previous project and aim to make this one even more successful. Stay tuned.

So that’s it — a lot on my plate and I’m really looking forward to moving through it all. I hope you’re as excited as I am about Sun Spots (and the Caribbean scenario as well), and I can’t wait to share more. Soon!

The Companion is Finally Live!

The Masks of Nyarlathotep, if you didn’t know, is often hailed as the greatest Call of Cthulhu campaign of all time, and even gets logged as one of the all time great RPG campaigns of any genre. But one of its problems is that there is a lot of room left in the story — there are so many details undocumented, questions unanswered. It’s a great campaign but could really be so much greater.

More than five years ago, Bret Kramer came up with the idea of building a companion for the campaign, and the Kickstarter for that companion is finally live. Back in 2009 I wrote a number of pieces for the book, one of which was about how to run and organize the massive game. Apparently I had some good stuff to say, because it’s one of the first pieces in the book, and my name ended up on the cover.

There is a lot of vaporware in the tabletop RPG world — material that people write that never sees the light of day. The Companion was definitely heading toward that and I am so excited and proud that it is finally going to be published. I distinctly remember writing my Companion pieces on my deck in Oregon, with my work laptop in front of me and a beer next to me and trying very hard to stay focused on completing what I had agreed to. I was so desperate to complete something, to be a part of a project, and I had no idea it would take so long for it to see print.

More importantly, I really wanted to write something that other people would read and understand and be thankful for. My key contribution for the Companion is the keeper introduction, wherein I try to help keepers wrap their heads around the enormous task of running Masks. I really enjoyed writing the piece because I felt like I had something to say and the writing came easily and naturally. You mean people want to hear what I have to say about how to run a better game? I was glad to step up and write all I could on the matter.

And with the Kickstarter now up to 20k pounds (~$30k), it’s clear my contribution is part of the greater whole that people are excited to support. The project is finally a success, and though my part in the overall book (which is bigger than Masks itself) is relatively small, it’s huge for me.

For me, 2015 is a year of “out with the old” as I not only take care of some health issues that have been dogging me for a while, but also try to clear my backlog of personal and writing projects. That the Masks Companion is finally done and going to print is very cathartic to me as it validates some efforts that have been sitting around for at least five years, and allows me to move onto other pastures.

The timing couldn’t be better.

4 Keys to Preparing for Successful Con Games

This weekend is one of my favorites for the whole year — Dundracon, the longest running gaming convention in the San Francisco Bay Area, is here! I have been attending DDC since seventh grade and, aside from some gaps in the mid-90s, I’ve been to most of them since. I love DDC for many reasons — it’s got all sorts of games, is run very well, and all my friends go there — and every year I run (at least) one official RPG that both keeps my GMing skills hot and gets me in the door for free.

Last year I ran HWLL twice and it was too much. When you’re running your own RPG, especially when it’s tied to an in-progress Kickstarter, there is a lot of pressure to do it right. Running two games last year was too much of that pressure and I promised myself I would run only one official game this year. Well, I may be running only one official game, but I have been pressured into (okay – volunteered, I’m an attention slut and I just love running games too much) running two more games, so now am running three games — one Trail of Cthulhu, one 5th edition D&D, and my own Cthulhu Dark scenario Sun Spots.

The TOC and D&D games are really just for friends, are not “official” games where I have to wonder at what sort of gamers I will get, and will start when I get my friends together, not at a specific time. They’re also written by other people, which is something I don’t normally do but realized that was the only way to run additional games and not lose my mind. But still, it takes effort to run a good game, whether official or not, and I want to cover the things that I do to prepare for running RPGs at conventions.

The feedback I get tells me I run a pretty good game, but not only am I always looking to improve my game, I also hold myself to pretty high standards. I also know some pretty awesome GMs who do many of the same things I do to prep for their games and I like to steal good ideas whenever I can. Here are some things I’ve found are key to running a great RPG at a convention:

  • Own It – First and foremost: be a goddam professional. You need to treat this like your job, and show up firing on all cylinders. To start, whatever it takes, show up 10-15 minutes early, all your materials in hand and ready to go. There is nothing that builds early player skepticism than having all the players sitting at the table 10 minutes early but the GM is 10 minutes late (this happened to me last year). Especially if you are fortunate enough to have people show up early because your game is overbooked, you want to show that this is your game. Then, start on time, unless you need to wait for pre-registered players. Even then, only wait ten minutes maximum. If a player can’t make it to your game by then, too bad. And again, if you’re lucky enough to have a full game and people are waiting to get in (what a compliment!), communicate directly with them on what they can and cannot expect. For me, I take players first-come, first-served, and will take the names of people like waiting for a table in a restaurant. Other GMs randomize. Regardless, communicate what your plan is, how many possible spots you have, and set expectations out the game. Own the game from the go and your players will quickly realize who is in charge.
  • Provide Everything They Need – I know it seems odd, but some GMs barely provide enough to get the game going. You, as a player, must provide dice, pencils, scrap paper, etc. Some GMs may even expect you to bring paper to use for your character sheet. Screw those guys (it’s unprofessional). You bring PC sheets, probably already filled out as pregenerated characters, but hey why not also bring snacks, chocolate or even bourbon. I like my players to use special dice, so I bring those too. If I’m playing in a game I’ll bring the rulebook and other supplements to share. Basically, bring everything your players need to play your game — everyone will love you.
  • Be the Ball, Billy – What does your game look like when it’s a total success? Can you see it in your mind? Athletes have been using visualization for years to win medals, so why can’t you? Days before the con, picture in your mind how the story will go, where the fun/quiet/exciting parts are, and how the whole thing will end. See yourself and the whole group having a great time, see everyone creating great memories and collaborating on an amazing game, one that people talk about for years. Spend some time thinking about your game well in advance and give yourself room to improve and grow. Sure, it may not go perfectly, but the preparation will help you create the best possible experience.
  • Go Big or Go Home – Finally, if you’re running a game at a con, you have all the permission in the world to make your game as memorable as possible (as you’re not restricted by an ongoing campaign or your friends’ pre-existing expectations), so why not make it as great as possible? Just as you’re going to own it and be a professional, don’t be afraid to put all your eggs in one basket (as it were), killing, maiming and driving PCs mad, all with the goal of creating (with the help of your players) the best game everyone had all convention. Nothing bugs me more than a tame con game — people pay good money to come to a con, and it’s your job to make it worth their while. Bring all your best ideas, craziest stories and wild inspirations for your players. Whether this is just from creating cool props and PC sheets (see above) or by killing everyone off in one big explosion in the end, leave nothing out. Give people something to talk about, and they will tell their friends (awesome) and come back for more (even more awesome).

D&D Comes Full Circle

Sometime in the winter of 1980-81, I played Dungeons and Dragons for the first time. I was in fourth grade and Ronald Reagan had just been elected to president. My friend Greg has an older brother who had started playing this crazy fantasy game, and we sat down and tried to figure out what all the Roman numerals meant in the adventure scenario as we fought monsters and collected treasure. It was so easy back then to just jump in and game — you had your character, some basic stats, a couple pieces of equipment, and you just played. Yes, there were a couple charts, but overall it was just easy and fun and you could really play with just the game book, some pencils, paper, dice, and, of course, your friends.

I was hooked for life.

My parents bought me the red dragon boxed set (the one with chits instead of dice – lame), and over the next few years I began collecting RPGs: first the AD&D books and modules, then other games (including Star Frontiers and Marvel Super Heroes), and I even wrote my first RPG: TimeLords. For these first ten years or so (including heading off to college), I played D&D off and on. I ran a short campaign in college, played the Warhammer RPG briefly there as well, and even ran a 2ed AD&D game for kids when I worked as a summer camp counselor in the early 90s.

Eventually, though, I just stopped caring about D&D. I would play it every couple of years at a convention (usually with 1st ed stalwarts), but other RPGs and genres became far more interesting. Superheroes, science fiction and of course the Cthulhu mythos all became much more intriguing worlds to game in — at some point I even hacked together a time travel campaign for GURPS using multiple sourcebooks, which I would never try these days. (Using GURPS, that is; clearly I still have a thing for time travel games.)

The last game of D&D I played was around four years ago when our high school gaming group reunited to play 4th edition. My entire experience with that trainwreck of a game system can be summed up with me attempting to read the flavor text from the spell card and being told in no uncertain terms from my fellow gamers to “shut the fuck up and just tell us what you’re doing.” The complexities and time it takes to move through 4th ed combat inspired, it seems, impatience with the actual role-playing part of the game.

So it was with slight trepidation when, 2.5 years ago (has it really been that long?) my gaming group at the time playtested D&D 5th edition (which was called D&D Prime at the time, I believe). Sure, of course I’ll play, nothing to lose here. We played through B1, the original scenario, and I sat down at the table to be handed a dwarven cleric and a beer.

I was immediately overwhelmed by how simple the game had become. It was like I had been transported 30 years into the past and suddenly I could just play. It’s like the game had circled back around and found me at 9 years old, except that now I have much higher standards to what constitutes a good and fun role-playing game. And yet, this game was good. This game was fun.

Flash forward to just a couple weeks ago and my 9 year old daughter was harassing me to play D&D. Last summer, when she had seen this video on girls playing D&D with boys, she shouted “I want to play D&D!” Since then, every couple of months she had asked to play, and I had continually put her off. Finally, realizing that a) WotC has posted the D&D rules online for free, and b) what the hell was I waiting for?, I got us playing D&D for the first time just two weeks ago.

The results could not be more amazing. Fifth edition is so easy to learn and run that I really have to give it up for WotC, who has done an amazing job at fully rebooting the game. Firstly, giving away a streamlined version of the rules online for free shows they understand how to market games and interact with their customers in the 21st century. Basically, anyone who wants to play D&D just needs the requisite pencil, paper, dice and friends (plus the free rules) to get started. This is a gateway game, folks, and they’re treating it that way.

Second, the rules have *finally* been streamlined to remove so much of the chart-referring, page number memorizing days of old that you sense a full understanding of how RPGs have changed in the last decade. All high rolls are good, all low rolls are bad (not the case with 1st-4th eds); a monster’s armor class is the number you need to roll higher than to hit them (goodbye THAC0!) — these are a couple examples of how much easier the game is to play.

And finally, and perhaps most importantly, the game has really made it easy for the old-school gamers (like myself), to feel right at home with a game world that can be fleshed out as you play. For starters, during character generation, the game helps build out PC backgrounds that not only provide context and history in categories such as Ideals and Flaws, but also tacks on game-world applications to these: character bonuses, special equipment and world-building opportunities (which guild do you belong to?) all help create verisimilitude out of the gate. But the game is also incredibly fun once you get into it. The ease of gameplay lets both players and DM focus on doing cool stuff and not having to refer back to the gamebook all the time.

This is incredibly important for first timers like my 9 year old, (and eventually her friends) who has never played RPGs before. If we tried to play 4th edition or some other new RPG that is more complex or awkward than it needs to be (Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, I’m looking at you), her first interaction with RPGs would just result in confusion and frustration. But with such an easy method for creating fleshed-out characters, with a fun and easy to understand game system, and with some excitement and passion for having a good time, my daughter was hooked.

Just like I was 33 years ago.

It seems far easier for a company with intellectual property, especially something as iconic and old as D&D, to lose sight of what originally made that IP special (*cough* George Lucas *cough*). Greed, ego and laziness can all get in the way of doing the hard work it takes to continually keep the IP fresh and evolving. This is what happened with 4th edition — changing the game system to hook in the “video game kids” is a good concept on paper (and I’m sure was a great pitch to the executives), but it lost sight of what the game really was about. Instead of making the game an easy way for kids to enter a world of fantasy role-playing, they made it about leveling-up your powers and reading really small text from cards.

With this new edition, though, they finally got it right. You should check it out.

Thanks to my Kickstarter Backers!

As part of my Kickstarter project for He Who Laughs Last, I promised to put a list online of all my backers, which you can now find here.

Nearly a year later, I still look back in amazement at my 385 backers who took a leap of faith in me and my project. Yes, I knew a few of them personally, but most I didn’t know and had not even encountered in the greater online community. Furthermore, I had folks like Shane Ivey and Kevin Kulp, as well as the amazing Oscar Rios, share my project with their own backers, which was a huge boon to our project. All of this help came during the project from people I’ve never met in person.

But that’s what the RPG community is about — we’re all geeks of varying degrees, and our support for everyone here cannot be overstated.

I think that, ultimately, the community is why my project (and others like it) was so successful. I’ve received amazing amounts of support and feedback (both good and bad) for this project, both on Kickstarter and when I’ve run the game at conventions. It makes such a difference to know that people enjoy the game and book, and that they look forward to more work from me and my team.

My next Kickstarter project is already being planned and I hope it is even crazier than the last. I look forward to working with my team again, and interacting with my backers. Thanks to you all.