Claimh Solais

Ambercon 2004- In review

I'm back from Ambercon and I had a great time. Every year, I seem to enjoy Ambercon more than the last and this was no exception. All of the games were fun and it was great seeing everyone.

As for the games:

Slot 1: The Shattered Mirror The Shattered Mirror was an Amber scenario I ran for the elders. Set directly after the Corwin series, the family returns home to Amber and starts preparations for Random's coronation when things immediately start going wrong. The characters slowly start going insane. The plan for the game was to not tell the players "you are now have an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder" but to describe the world to them in a way that someone would with the different types of mental disorders would perceive it. For example, instead of telling Fiona that she has become a Schizophrenic, I described voices that began speaking to her whenever she opened a trump contact and eventually when she was not. Eventually the family would find that the existence of a new Pattern (Corwin's) had thrown the universe out of balance and only the destruction of Corwin's Pattern or the creation of a new Logrus could balance the universe. In the end Vialle ended up creating a pattern. The game wentwell and everyone seemed to have fun. The revelations of insanities did not go as subtly or as balanced as I wanted. I wanted all the PCs to get to play out dealing with this (with the exception of pattern-less Vialle), but there was not enough time to build up enough insanities for everyone.

Slot 2: Matrix Diceless The GM created an excellent character creation system for this diceless game based on the Matrix movies. Set 100 years after the trilogy ended, we played "Inquisitors," humans who police the Matrix. It was a very fun game, althugh it was a little lighter on action than you would expect a game based on the Matrix movies to be. It was more of a Matrix detective story, which was neat.

Slot 3: The Crystal Ship A mystical ship sailing through shadow takes the PCs out of the universe and a trip through a dream-like landscape to prepare them for the next world. This game if the one that I went in to with very little plot and based it off the characters I received and whatever popped into my mind. I knew I wanted a "trippy" game with a ride through shadow, but that changed in the game to a trip through a dream-like landscape where PCs dealt with personal issues in tehir subconcious o exorcise their ghosts before going to a world far away from Amber and Chaos. The players had a lot of fun, it seemed, but I felt that I could have done a lot beter with this. I ended up falling back on a few cliches and also ended up being forced to basically "club" the PCs into the plot because I did not have a clear enough beginning to hook the players on the plot without "clubbing" them. ("Clubbing" is my new term for when a GM forces PCs into a plot by knocking them unconcious, kidnapping or some other way dragging the character where you need them to be for the plot to continue. A despicable thing to do...but every GM ends up doing it at some point. The Gamecat says: "Best avoided.")

Slot 4: The Longest Fall This was the game that I was most worried was going to fall flat on its face but the game proved to have wings and took off. Between the excellent players and a terrific co-GM, everyone had fun. This was my second year ranning the LARP and I've still never played in one. This years plot revolved around a party in Hell and certain poor souls who were close to Lucifer when some imp tries to get rid of the prince of hell so his master, Beezelbub, could rule in hell instead. The party guests joined Lucifer where he was teleported....a place outside of God's creation and only by creating a world where it is possible for the natives to travel outside their own dimension could any of the characters return to their home dimension. In this new world, all PCs became "godlings" with power over creation and they could work together or resist eachother in an attempt to create the world they desired. My co-GM, Matthew, played Lucifer with the PCs as they all stood around in their heavens and overlooked creation, while I spoke with players about what things they were doing to the world below. A race of intelligent otters who worshipped Mephistophiles ended up fighting a war with an atheist lizarman race with wings while the intelligent apes hid in caves and bred with angels.

Slot 5: Unto the Third Generation I joined DJ Quinn's campaign this year and played Anoki, a character of mine that I've not been able to play much yet and was a perfect fit into his game. Unfortunately, I ended up spending very little time where the other PCs were, in Amber so didn't get to roleplay with a lot of people. Hoowever, I could see why a lot of friends like DJ's GMing and it was one of the few games I've been in where I've really been entertained watching others doing the roleplaying. It was an interesting group with a lot of good roleplayers.

Slot 6: Morpheus Defiant The continuing series of games based around an Amber where the Amberites were defeated years ago and kept prisoner by Chaos in a Matrix, had an explosive episode. The PCs discovered shadows returning to "The Desert of the Real," witnessed the death of King Julian and the beginning of Queen Keely's reign, discovered and witnessed the destruction of Dworkin's "first draft,"and a chase through the Matrix that led to first sighting of the Serpent. This game crossed over with Patrick Franklin's "Lords of Chaos." The game went very well. At the end of it, I was so wired that, even though the game did not end until about 2:00 in the morning, I ended up lying in bed thinking about it until 4 in the morning. I can't wait to see what happens next year in the game world.

Slot 7: Pools of Red, Flashes of Amber This game was a last minute addition to the game book and becuase it came in so late, noone signed up. I cancelled the game and hung out with Ray L. and Ben B.. Ben ended up telling us about one of his other hobbies, and we ended up going out to try it. The hobby was geocaching where you go out and look for things that other people hid places. It's a weird form of hide and seek that uses a GPS tracker and was a pretty neat way to spend a few hours. We even ran into a couple of other Geocachers at one of the hidden locations.

Slot 8: Confessions This was the soap opera game. PCs were "shadows" of the true Amber family and had gathered at a party where Owen Barimen, the family patriarch, was announcing his engagement to his next wife (what number was this one?). All the PCs were played overdramatically in the style of day-time soaps and came with their own secrets. I played Benedict Barimen, the eldest son and the man most likely to take over father's company, Oberon Industries, if only I weren't being blackmailed by my dastardly, evil brother. It was a blast and a terrific way to end the con on a light note. Their were fights, assassination attempts, brainwashings, incestual relationships and deaths. Everything a good soap opera needs.

Wednesday Weird: Hiatus

Just a quick note to everyone: Due to a very busy week here in Nuadha-land, the Wednesday Weird will be cancelled for this week. We'll be back next week.

Now, I'm off to Ambercon. Have a great weekend, everyone.

Ambercon 2004- Pools of Red

Since there was a need for more games in slot 7 of the con, I have submitted a pick-up game, a fifth game that I will be running at Ambercon this year. I'm almost caught up with C.K..

Here's the game description:

Game Name: Pools of Red, Flashes of Amber

Using the innovative Pool RPG system, this scenario
allows players a little more control over the story
than in most games. Characters will be created at
the game by writing down a few sentences about your
character. All rules will be explained.

I've got some rule variants I've thought up for The Pool and will test them out at the con with this Amber scenario. I'm really looking forward to it.

Quote

Take something you love, tell people about it, bring together people who share your love, and help make it better. Ultimately, you'll have more of whatever you love for yourself and the world.
-Julius Schwartz (1915-2004)

Wednesday Weird #7: The B&E

This weeks Wednesday Weird is a crime that is bound to get some jail time if caught. It was also the plot that inspired the Wednesday Weird. Breaking into someone's home to steal an item or search for clues, the characters could get in and out without a problem....or any weirdness. Where's the fun in that?

Your challenge is to describe a scenario of breaking and entering where things go horribly wrong....and then get bizarre. We're talkin' frozen lizard bizarre, folks.

The PCs of a Modern espionage game break into the home of Dr. Charles S. Brown, a man believed to be a spy for another government. They are looking for some top secret blue prints that were recently stolen. While searching through the desk, they hear something moving in the bedroom. If they enter the bedroom, they find Dr. Brown sleeping peacefully and are suddenly attacked by an oriental guy with the moves of Jackie Chan. The guy moves all about the room and from room to room as he fights them, using every bit of furniture in the house. If they outnumber him too greatly, he is fighting them as he tries to escape. Otherwise, he is trying to find out who they are by beating them up until they talk. "Who sent you?" He uses all the weird furniture and items that someone might grab in a house, squirting shampoo in the eyes of the PC, swinging a waffle iron around by its power cord like nunchakus and throwing a box of porn magazines at the PCs. At one point he leaps on the edge of the bed, flipping it and sending the sleeping Dr. Brown as a projectile towards one of the PCs. Dr. Brown sleeps through everything as he collides with the PC or the wall behind the PC. (Dr. Brown was drugged by the unknown "ninja.") Eventually, the fight goes into rooms and closets where Dr. Brown stored all of his sex toys. ....and things just get weird.

Masters' Council

The Masters' Council has moved to join the SkySeaStone community! If you're a GM, DM, Storyteller, Director or Hollychock God, come check us out! We're a forum for Gamemasters to workshop with other GMs and discuss the craft of running successful roleplaying games! You can find us at http://www.skyseastone.net/masters/

Rest in Peace

The newest issue of Locus has Julius Schwartz on the cover. He passed away on February 8th. He was 88 years old. Rest in peace, Julie.

The Master's Council

So, after all the talk on the 20' by 20' room and seeing no message boards specifically dedicated to gamemastering, I've started a message board. This message board will be for gamemasters to talk about all the issues that can come up when running games. It can be found here: http://pub34.ezboard.com/bmasterscouncil

I haven't set up cetegories or even filled in all the information you would normally fill in but I want this to be a community thing, so I'd rather get some input from the people who will be involved before making all the decisions.

Superheroes and the Moral Greys

In the comments for a post below about the appeal of superhero gaming, Meera asked:

How recent is the "moral grey" of superheroism, though? One of the reasons I stayed fairly far away from early Superman was because of that boy scout demeanor, the, "I've got the Great Responsibility part down," where I love the stories of his struggle with his power. Is that struggle really "superheroic"?

The struggle is certainly superheroic, although not every superhero fan may appreciate it. Look at the early Marvel comics (particularly the early Spiderman comics) for a great example of a character struggling to deal with the responsibilities and troubles that come with great power.

I think the struggle has always been there. Having more stories that focus on the moral grey areas and conflicted heroes is a new development but the fact that you have a hero struggling to do good in an often dark world has been there since the beginning. Sometimes it was just something you had to read between the lines for.

As far as Superman goes, he wasn't the black and white character that people now see him as in the beginning. He was more of the tough-guy, social crusader than the patriarchal image he developed through the fifties and sixties. However, even in the midst of the sixties camp, Superman comics dealt with Superman's survivor's guilt, his fear of being alone because he could never get close to anyone (lest they discover his secret) and many other more personal stories that most people that dismiss the "silver age" of comics overlook. I may read a lot between the lines, but when I read Superman comics from any era, I see the same kinds of stories that Smallville.

For more of an idea of how Superman has evolved over the years, read this paper I wrote last year for a Composition class. (Rereading it, I realize that it's a very rough paper and I can't believe the teacher gave me an A for it. Feel free to comment on it to me as I'd love to clean it up and some more detail to it someday, since I believe it could be a good paper but right now need a lot of work.)

[EDIT- I realized something while looking at this that explains a lot. This was my rough draft. I'm not sure what happened to the final.]

Wednesday Weird #6: The Wizard

They have beards. They are masters of the mystic arts. They have pointy hats!

This week's Wednesday Weird isn't about just any old hedge Wizard, but the classic wize old wizard that is a staple of the fantasy genre. Although Merlin is a heck of a lot older than Gandalf, I'm not sure if he started wearing the pointy hat before Tolkein's wizard. However, since D&D and most fantasy fiction has (for better or worse) been heavily derived from Tolkein's work ever since, we've seen a lot of wizards in the Gandalf/Merlin mold. They've been dispensing sage advice and assisting heroes for ages. Sometimes they have the hat. Sometimes they don't.

Some examples of the wize old wizards can be found in Record of Lodoss War's Wort, Yoda, The Oracle from The Matrix and Fizban from the Dragonlance series.

Now, a bunch of characters are about to meet with one of these wizened old wizards. All seems pretty standard about the wizard at first. How does it get weird?

For my taked on the wizard weird, I am picturing an adventure for D&D or another sword and sorcery setting.

The PCs have been asked to go to the home of a well-known and highly-respected wizard. Upon arriving at his cottage home a few miles from the city, they find all sorts of chickens, rats and other animals around the place, but otherwise everything seems fairly normal.

The Wizard wants the PCs to help him get some rare ingredients for a spell. To get them, he will have to go to some underground caverns. He has a cold and sneezes here and there, but still....little is out of the ordinary.

As they travel with the wizard, they encounter several animals along the way...many of which are rare or unheard of in these parts.

Eventually, as they explore the caves they start encountering all sorts of magical beasts.....many of which are not normally found underground....like Gryphons and Pegasi. Due to his cold, the powerful wizard is little help and the PCs have to deal with the magical creatures themselves. It keeps getting worse and worse..

It turns out that the old wizard had a spell backfire on him and now has a magical cold. Everytime he sneezes he summons a new creature to this plane. It starts hamlessly with rats, hares and chickens but the longer the "cold" goes on, the more dangerous the creatures. Only finding the ingredients in time for the spell that will remove the magical cold will stop him before he sneezes in a dragon...or worse.

The Pool

The Pool is a diced roleplaying game that includes one of my favorite elements of Nobilis, the resource-based chance of success. In The Pool, as in Nobilis, a character's chance of success is determined more by how bad the player wants that characters to succeed. The character has so much of a certain resource (in this case the dice pool) and they can use the amount they think they need to get the job done.

Check it out. It's a fairly complete RPG that's only two pages long. You can take the time to read it.

My favorite part? Character creation. Write about your character in 50 words or less.

I like it.

I like it a lot.

This game fits more into the cooperative storytelling types of game that I like while stilling have that element of chance that dice brings to a game. If a player really wants to succeed in The Pool, they gamble all their dice. Of course, if they end up losing all their dice on that action, they'll have less chance to control later scenes.

Check out the the variant rules as well. Particularly, check out the "Anti-pool" variant, which I think should work much better than the normal tradition.

This wouldn't work for all RPGers or all games, but could be a lot of fun to run occassionally. In particular, I think some setting require a little more detail on what a character is capable of, particularly what kind of powers the character has. However, I plan to run a game of "The Pool." Someday.

D&D Minis: Archfiends Gallery

Wizards has a gallery of the Archfiends expansion set for D&D Minis up. Check it out!

Ambercon 2004- Game Lists

So here are my games for this year:

Slot 1: GM - "Shattered Mirror"
Slot 2: "Matrix Diceless: the Railroad" - New character to be created
Slot 3: GM - "The Crystal Ship"
Slot 4: GM - "The Longest Fall"
Slot 5: "Unto the Third Generation: March to War" New Character to be created
Slot 6: GM - "Morpheus Triumphant"
Slot 7: Off. May create a pick-up game for slot.
Slot 8: "Confessions" Alternate Amber Elder Game (based on Soap Operas, it should be slightly silly fun)

I'm kind of sad that I have no games in which to play any of my older characters, mainly Alexander, Anoki or Gareth. However, I'm looking forward to seeing what the GM does with The Matrix game and playing with an excellent group of roleplayers in Unto the Third Generation.

Wednesday Weird #5: The Mobster

Listen up, punks. This week's Wednesday Weird isn't for wimps. Here's how it's going to go down. The characters are going to have a meeting with one of the bosses. Who knows why they're meeting with him. Maybe they're underword types themselves. Maybe, they're undercover cops. Whatever the reason, they've got a meeting with a local captain. One of the big bosses. What!? Do I gotta spell it out for you!? I'm talking about the family. The mafia! Organized Crime!

We all know the stereotypes. We see them all the time. But these poor saps, they don't know anything about this boss. This situation has a lot of potential to get a little weird. It could also stick to the cliche. The meeting could take place at the local pasta place with a whole bunch of stereotypical goons over his shoulder.... but what fun would that be?

You like a good challenge, don't you? Then, get to it. Go back to your own blog, livejournal or whatever and tell us how this situation can get completely screwed up. Let's see what your deviant little minds can come up with.

So, here's my take on the weird mobster meeting:

The PCs get the call. The meeting will take place at "Mama's Pasta Palace" on Wednesday....or Thursday depending on how busy the boss's scedule is. The plans are made and the PCs show up. The Pasta Palace is a bit of a dive but nothing too weird there.

It's the boss that's weird. It starts out normally enough but as the food arrives, one of the goons hand him a ziplock bag with plastic silverware. Instead of using the silverware provided, he uses his own. If asked he explains, "Do you know how many people have used those forks?" He offers the PCs some plastic forks.

He also keeps asking his goons strange questions in the middle of the meal. "You did lock the back door when we left earlier, right?"

The boss is basically a cross between Monk from the tv show and Jack Nicholson's character in As Good as it Gets. How did someone with all these mental difficulties become an organized crime boss?

He's the local capo's brother. He developed all these obsessive-compulsive traits over time and noone could say anything to his brother and his brother seems to not notice all of his quirks.

...and of course noone would think of suggesting that he see a psychologist. What kind of a mobster sees a shrink? It's just not done.

Superhero Gaming: Beyond the Capes and Cowls

By far my favorite setting for roleplaying is superheroes. One of the reason I think I'm having an easier time running the Buffy campaign over the World of Darkness games is that, at it's heart, Buffy is a superhero story. It's the story of a person (or people) with extraordinary powers fighting as heroes, not for personal gain or revenge...but because it's the right thing to do. There's no capes or cowls, but it's still a superhero story. I ran a Heroes Unlimited campaign that ran for over four years. I ran a GURPS campaign based on DC Comic's Checkmate series. I've run Champions and several other games that were basically games for superheroes.

One of the things I think way too many people think about the superhero genre is that characters are simplistic or that morality is black and white. Anyone who reads comics knows better than that.

So, I found this article on RPG net that's worth reading on the topic. The author sums up my feelings on the topic, " I like superheroes; because at their heart they are morally gray, at their core they are mired in human complexities, yet shine because amidst that gray, some few rise out shining, triumphant iconic beyond the dimness that surrounds them. "

Superman is my favorite superhero and it's exactly for that reason. I like that he shines so bright as some iconic beacon of goodness because I've read the stories and through them I see someone who isn't just two-dimensional "goody-goody" but someone who struggled with and struggles still with what it means to be this extremely powerful being in a world filled with lots more extremely powerful people who want to do horrible things with their powers. (Since most comic book heroes have several villians, the bad guys outnumber the good guys by a great majority in most comic book universes.)

...and how easily that level of power could corrupt. Think about it. I've always thought that I would do a lot of good if I were given Superman's powers but how long would it be before I'd decide that I could do a lot better for the world if I became its emperor? The road to hell and all that.

The fact that superheroes become these great heroes amidst all that is what attracts me to the setting. I think it's also why most of my characters always start out tragically flawed in some way. I'm trying to simulate what I like in comics.....overcoming the the darkest parts of your being to be a great hero when at your heart, you are still a human being. You are good and evil all wrapped up in one package. That's where the struggle is.

Reaper mini preview

Reaper has a preview of a bunch of Werner Klocke greens on their website. I like Freya Fangbreaker the best. There aren't a lot of good female dwarf minis out there.

I like Klocke's elf minis a lot, but the way he sculpts eyes looks very strange on humans. He seems to have an anime inspiration in the faces that gives that alien feel to his elves.

Ambercon 2004- Character Creation Rules

I still need to fix typos and grammar, but if anyone is interested in a sneak peak, this is the character creation information I will be sending out to players of the Shattered Mirror and The Crystal Ship.

Ambercon 2004- Player Lists

Although they aren't official yet, I got player lists for 3 of my 4 Ambercon games in my email last night. It's a happy mix of people I know and people I don't know. Of the people that I know who are in my games, they are all excellent roleplayers. I'm really looking forward to the con this year.

The Ixslaw

Planning for "The Crystal Ship," I was thinking of how I want to apply the Amber IDIC to the game and particularly how I wanted a sign that shadow is infinite to show up in the early scenes of the game.

Undoubtedly, there will be some strange ships coming through Amber's harbors and while many of them will appear as shadows of the people of Amber they will not be the only types that Amber would deal with.

So, I offer to the crowd, a new race: The Ixslaw

Who knows where the name came from. The Ixslaw do not speak as we know it, so they would not have named themselves. Maybe Ixslaw means "bugs" in some obscure language.

The Ixslaw are a seafaring race of intelligent carnivorous insects. They stand about 5 feet tall and 6 feet long and have six spider-like legs. Their bodies are segmented like an earwig's and, like earwigs, they have a large abdomen. Unlike earwigs, the Ixslaw have very long legs with multiple segments and each leg ends with several several digits much like a human hand that can be used to manipulate objects.

Countless generations ago, the Ixslaw's homeworld experienced a horrible flood. The Ixslaw built large ships to live on. In giant flotillas, they built societies on these "Hive-ships." They survive to this day off of a diet of mostly fish and birds.

Inside any one of their ships can be found a room or two where eggs are kept. Ixslaw eggs are white and about the size of a volleyball. Their young mature quickly after hatching but in the riggings of their ships, their young can sometimes be seen learning the skills most imprtant to Ixslaw survival.

At some point, the Ixslaw learned to sail through shadow and eventually began regular trade with the people of Amber. They trade silk goods they create on their ships for various goods, including lumber and metals. Ixslaw silk is coveted in many of the Golden Circle lands as it is one of the sturdiest yet softest fabrics known. (There is a theory that the Ixslaw came into being when Princess Dierdre of Amber went out into shadow after having one of her favorite shirts ripped in a sparring match with one of her brothers.)

The Ixslaw ships that travel to Amber are like smaller versions of the ships that make up the flotillas at home. They are large black ships made of a mix of metal and wood. Giant black sails are operated by dozens of the giant insects crawling through the riggings. Few are invited on board an Ixslaw ship but the harbormaster of Amber has described the interior of the ship as having a great open area with small rooms alongs the sides of the ship's hull and there are Ixslaw crawling every which way. The interior of the ships have no way for a humanoid to travel through the ship as there are no conventional floors halls or stairs. The Ixslaw crawl up and down through the ship as they do horizontally.

Ixslaw communicate with eachother through either telepathy or sign language. They have tried to describe to Amberites how it works but have been unable to put into the right words so it can be determined which. Assumedly, it is something in between. When communicating with humanoids, they often carry pads of paper with which to write or if the person is familiar with the code, they make a clicking sound that works much like earth's Morse code.

Although they have no vocal cords, the Ixslaw do have hearing and enjoy music as part of their culture. Ixslaw have written and performed some of the most beautiful symphonies. The primary instrument they use to play is their own legs. Their legs have a fine serrated edge that can be rubbed together much like a crickets. They have also developed many string instruments.

The serrated edges of their fronts legs have also been used as weapons. Ixslaw warriors sharpen them to make them deadlier.

Using Ixslaw in games other than Amber: Hey, I created them for an Amber game but the Ixslaw could easily fit into other settings with some changes to their back story.

In D&D, Ixslaw would need to have weapons and armor specifically designed for them, but could actually make a decent PC race. Their forearms would count as weapons doing d6 damage and can be outfitted with special blade sheaths that are magic or do additional damage. They would have a large negative to Charisma checks when dealing with other races. They would have a +2 bonus to their AC for their "armored" skin. The biggest ability they would have is to "cling" to any surface but the smoothest surfaces. (Treat this as a natural climb bonus and allowing climb checks only applying negative modifiers for the smoothest surfaces or wet surfaces.)

In Savage Worlds, the race could have no modifier to attributes and just the added power of wall-crawler and perhaps a +1 to toughness.

In Unisystem, "Ixslaw" could be a package Quality that provides the toughness and clinging abilities with penalties for any persuasion rolls when dealing with other races.

In GURPS, the Ixslaw could easily be created using the rules in GURPS: Fantasy Folk (an excellent book that I would suggest to anyone playing GURPS) or GURPS: Aliens (another great book).