You are welcome to what this house holds

Jumping ship!

2011-02-17T22:13:00.001-08:00

This blog is now an archive. All future updates will be here.

My new campaign

2011-02-13T07:40:00.000-08:00

I've begun an experimental game. It consists of a game of factional diplomacy and treachery by a group online (old gaming buddies and friends), and a tabletop game in "the meatspace" as one has called it. Both are using rather improvisational Fudge-based rules (I can't stand the capitals to write it properly: FUDGE). The players on the internet are part player and part-GM: they have to fight and faction, but they get points for writing game material and

This is the first time I've ever GMd in Fudge, and I finally get what the other GMs are raging about. No, I'm not claiming a wealth of comparative experience. For me, this is literally "So this is life outside of Dungeons and Dragons..." Obviously I've read other sessions. I got interested in Burning Wheel for how it linked story to game mechanic; I liked a lot of the minimalist systems I'd seen (just a few main attributes, a couple of distinguishing marks).

But Fudge is quite nice. I literally make the game up as I go along. The character sheets were composed of a mental list

What am I going to roll when bad stuff happens to them?
What am I going to roll when they want to do things?
What plot hooks can I use to make them dance?

That's about it. The players are doing the same thing I did when reading the rules, and using numbers instead of adjectives. Fudge attributes are rated on a scale of Terrible to Superb. I find it easy to generate enemies appropriate for a situation. If they're getting in a barfight, I figure everyone there is basically a mediocre fighter. Not poor or terrible, to be sure, but with no real skill. Or it could be a rougher bar, and a few fair combatants step out of the pack. But from a word I have an instant combat skill.

Then I just adjudicate the players' tactics. The first fight was pretty simple, not much to it. I think I have to put the players in "chunkier" terrain. The docks aren't flat wharves. Piers extend into the water, pyramid of wine casks, merchants stalls, and of course rigged ships. I haven't got any such thing as hit points, weapons, or armour yet, and I think even there I'll just distinguish between armed and unarmed, and allow for light or heavy armours (and heavy armour will have severe drawbacks: maintainance costs and the turtle-on-its-back effect).

This absurdity has gone to the point where the faction players and the tabletop players are working on two different kinds of character sheet. Why did I do that to myself? I've stopped asking for character sheets and I ask for paragraphs instead. One by myself:
A scarred veteran of the crusade against the Naratoi heresy, Sir Hector of the Redbanner Guard is a fearsome man. He served with distinction during the entire war, and after the fall of Narat he was knighted by his master the Count. A hard-headed, devout individual, he represents a pillar of stability as he leads the Redbanners through the streets of Umwart.
I had a discussion with my uncle the other night about the use of adjectives; we agreed that an adjective needs to justify itself in a text: if it doesn't tell you something pertinent, it doesn't belong. Here, the use of adjectives is strategic. I sit down at the table with a list of extras generated by the faction players (who score points to be used for deviousness whenever I use their characters). One good paragraph tells me what I know to put a character in any situation.

It's a similar experience to coding text adventures in Inform. Every word matters. You come up with a list of elements that can be manipulated, and you decide on their properties ad-hoc. So I find myself noting the prowess of the fighting challenge in the adventure, or the difficulty of a task. But really, apart from a list of characters (and after my first experience, plot hooks!) there isn't any real plan. I'm going to try to keep the system light and easy (complexity online is another manner... this thing will be a rulebook when it's done), and keep improvising. But I wouldn't mind enough rules to run one session as a tactical wargame (even a loose one), or to run a decent duel. I guess I just need a sentence, and figure out where the adjectives are justified.

An experiment in the second person

2011-02-08T08:08:00.000-08:00

Long time no post... I haven't had much to write about for a few months, but today I played the first session of what's looking to be a promising campaign. Afterwards we got to chatting and I admitted I had been thoroughly unrested for the game due to having discovered the strange and wonderful thing that is Omegle, in which you voluntarily dump yourself into a random chatroom with a random stranger. Yes, it's as masochistic as it sounds. Lots of horny men. Quite boring. One of my friends pointed me towards this strip from penny arcade (detailed exposition here). So I thought I'd vary the theme. I entered the chat room equipped only with this paragraph:

The dust sloughs off your boots as you enter the dimly lit saloon. The piano plinks away in the background of noisy cattlehands wasting their wages on two-dollar whisky and ten-dollar whores. But all of this fades into insignificance, for across the bar you see him, the man you've been hunting for all these months. At long last, he stands before you. He sways uneasily in his seat, having clearly over-indulged, but you feel not a hint of sympathy for the bastard. Crazy Zeke Williams...

A lot of instant disconnects. I got called a jerkoff. Several people asked me whether I was writing a novel, or assumed I was quoting something. Quite flattering. Some clearly had their own agenda, and pasted various links to sex links into the chat window as quickly as I pasted my western. But I did generate two gems. The first related the story of a young woman hunting down her sister's rapist. Having killed him, she is confronted by the Deputy, her former something (backstory was implied, but hardly explicit). In the end, she dies rather than facing a trial. It was actually one of the most fascinating gaming experiences I've had in ages.

Unfortunately, the computer ate the chat log. So you're going to have to content yourself with second place.

I will chase you across time and space for your crimes

You: The dust sloughs off your boots as you enter the dimly lit saloon. The piano plinks away in the background of noisy cattlehands wasting their wages on two-dollar whisky and ten-dollar whores. But all of this fades into insignificance, for across the bar you see him, the man you've been hunting for all these months. At long last, he stands before you. He sways uneasily in his seat, having clearly over-indulged, but you feel not a hint of sympathy for the bastard. Crazy Zeke Williams...
Stranger: reading
You: The piano picks up a familiar tune. A few of the boys sing along drunkenly.
Stranger: does he know I am looking for him, or is bhe oblivious?
You: Zeke belches.
Stranger: my actions depend on if he knows I am coming for him or not.
You: (You tell me.)
Stranger: he doesn't
Stranger: because I was stealthy
You: An argument seems to be brewing in one corner over a card game.
You: It settles down to dull grumbling.
Stranger: I use this distraction
Stranger: I walk around the opposite side of the room, while zeke looks at the argument
You: Zeke grunts, "More whisky, Sam..."
You: "Hoo boy!"
You: He laughs at what he imagines is his own wit.
Stranger: I signal my partner to set off the bar-room clearing distraction
Stranger: the distraction is an old-time flash-bang grenade
You: Your radio crackles.
Stranger: during the ensuing confusion, I take out my knife and gut Zeke from belly to throat and flee the scene
You: "You got ten minutes left, Captain. The wormhole's destabilising!"
Stranger: ten minutes? no problem
Stranger: I tell adam (partner) to high-tail it back to the wormhole
You: Your partner nods curtly as he lays the incineration charges on Zeke's body.
Stranger: too gruesome... ?
You: "No problem Captain. Just lemme mem-zap 'em."
Stranger: I say to adam: "this is what the man deserves for letting lose Barney the Dinosaur onto the world...AND inventing the teletubbies"
Stranger: no one who invents those things should be allowed to live
Stranger: ok adam, go for it. zap em
You: As the flames consume Zeke's body, Adam throws a few memory grenades at the startled denizens of the nineteenth century.
You: He rushes for the door to avoid the blast.
You: Someone says, "Now what in tarntion..."
You: BOOM!
You: You have been caught in the radius of a mem-zap.
Stranger: damn!
Stranger: wait, what in tarnation....
You: Standard protocol means Adam must abandon you.
Stranger: was adam caught too?
You have disconnected.

Mind-Mapping Tools for Gaming

2010-03-11T22:30:00.000-08:00

Hello reader.

I'm currently doing research for my Master's degree. One of the biggest headaches is keeping it all organised. I have several notebooks full of notes from my reading. I have dozens of links to policy documents, speeches, and news reports online. I am constantly inventing structures for my writing, and re-inventing and re-shuffling. I am in desperate need of some kind of filing system.

One thing I often notice is the overlap between education and gaming. For instance, this recent article about designing a gaming space has a lot of similarities with how teachers try to design their classrooms. So it occurred to me that the solution I've found for organising my research could help with my upcoming campaing. (I say "upcoming..." It depends on player apathy!) I've found two free (hooray!) mind-mapping tools: XMind and Personal Brain.

XMind
XMind allows you to create rather traditional mind-maps: a central topic with sub-points coming off. My favourite feature is the ability to hyperlink either to files on your computer or to web sites, which helps me organise my links thematically. There are plenty of keyboard shortcuts so after a bit of practice the interface is a breeze. XMind is best suited for hierarchical data, because its diagrams all assume that the parent-child relationship is the most important for your information. This mind-map is an interesting demonstration of the format. I use it for my research (central topic, subdivided into schools of thought, again subdivided into researchers, with subtopics to take notes on my reading). Because it is hierarchical, it would really be most useful for game notes that are also hierarchical: maps in mind-map form (divided into regions, smaller areas, and individual places), hierarchical organisations in your campaign world, or a campaign structure (divide into adventures, encounters, NPCs...).

Personal Brain
Also a mind-mapping program, but one I found immediately more useful for gaming (and less useful for my research). Personal Brain allows you to establish information hierarchies, but it also lets you create information that cuts across those relationships. Check out some of the samples to see what I mean. When you view your data, you look at one item at a time and things that are within one or two relationships of it. I've found this amazing for developing a campaign setting. My central topic is my city, divided into people and places. Under "people" I have little hierarchies described (most of the organisations in my city are hierarchical), and under "places" a list of sites in the city. The city also links to rival cities in the region, useful for long-term campaign development (eventually these cities can develop their own internal mind-maps). However, because you're not as restricted in how you describe relationships (any datum may have as many links, horizontal or vertical, as you like), it's better for describing a dynamic city. Within every hierarchy I've tried to create relationships that go across to different organisations (so some priest has a rival in the count's court, or one of the council members has a brother in the priesthood...). This makes the world feel less disconnected, and if I use my laptop at the gaming table (it's small, so I think I will), it's easy to situate any NPC in the grander setting. Another fun trick is putting the party in as a part of the mind-map so I can track the allies and enemies they make and how that entangles them in politics. The biggest downside about PersonalBrain, however, is the inability to visualise ALL of your data at once. I like it because you can establish the relationships between details, but if you want "big picture" software, go for XMind. (Or both!)

A Template for Improvisation

2010-02-22T00:21:00.001-08:00

This is a response to Martin Ralya's nice little post on improvising your game. It is a template designed for a low-notes, improvisational approach to gming. As I mention in my response to his article, I see templates as a great tool for organising your thoughts and developing your skills. With a lot of experience, they're probably unnecessary, but for those of us who lack that advantage, there are tools. I've tried to incorporate Martin's six points as to what constitutes good improvisation. The bold represent section headings; the underlined are sections to fill out; the italics represent my commentary on how to use the template.

PRE-GAME
I think this section is probably the bare minimum for what you need to prepare for an adventure. Of course, some GMs might require even less. If you're going for improvisation, bare minimum is probably the right amount.
Adventure name:
Good note-taking practice more than anything.
Main task:
A conflict to be resolved or task to be completed. Anything that lends tension can be a task, as it takes tension to drive the game. Doesn't necessarily have to be a "task" as such. Make the task clear as early in the game as possible.
Necessary objectives:
A brief list of encounters that will probably play out as a result of the main task. These are the plot points that piece the adventure together. You will probably want to develop them seperately in some kind of detail.
Supplementary objectives:
A set of encounters which MIGHT occur in the adventure. In a murder-mystery, a duel with the villain, or a shoot-out with gangsters, could very well happen, but a lot of it is down to player initiative. This list will flavour the adventure. If your supplementaries are full of violence, you'll have a violent adventure. If they're mostly about negotiation, you'll have a diplomacy-heavy adventure. It's worth thinking these through as possibilities so that you have some good encounters to use "on the spur of the moment" without binding yourself to them as tightly as your necessary objectives.
NPCs:
Work out the main cast. Minor characters can be improvised on the fly. Remember, if you're not going to re-use a character after a single encounter, or if they're only meant to pose a minor annoyance, you're better off using templates. No one's going to care that "Sergeant Lathias" of the Elven Guard is just a stock Elven Warrior with a Dex bonus and a cool sword rather than a unique NPC worked out in exquisite detail.

EARLY GAME:
Following Martin's first point, in the early game you should explain the tension to the players and let them make some initial probes into it. Be open to their suggestions, let them catch some easy clues (nothing too vital, but be generous), and use it as a time to set the mood and, more importantly, to gather information about the party's intentions. Remember Martin's second point, to make sure the first encounter is a detailed one, and take your time. It will give the players their best clues as to what the adventure will be about.
My players understand the adventure as:
You may have planned a diplomatic adventure, but the players quickly decide they're here to be assassins. Oh well. Don't try to railroad them back onto what you hoped the adventure to be about. Enjoy the collaborative process.
My players are mostly interested in:
If the players are making plans, talking about future directions for development, or otherwise expressing interests in what they want to have happen, write it down immediately.

Therefore...
As you observe what the players are saying, jot down some ideas below.
I should emphasise:
Which of your pre-planned encounters should be played out in full? Review your notes you wrote before the game.
I should down-play:
You can strike from the list any supplementary objectives that seem irrelevant at this point. But maybe you have some vital plot-points. Include them, but expedite them. They'll probably bore your players. Of course, if they show more interest when you introduce them, feel free to play them out in full. This corresponds to point three.
I should modify:
If they're in a mood for a fight, add more goons. If they're in the mood to wheel and deal, remind yourself that the NPCs will ask questions before they shoot. And so on. "Raid the camp" will play out differently with stealthy, combative, and diplomatic emphases. This is related to Martin's fifth point.

MID-GAME
As you meander through to mid-game, quickly take stock of the following. This is about gauging energy levels, Martin's sixth point.
How is everyone feeling, or what do they want?
Bored? Excited? Unsatisfied? They want a final fight? They want to figure out whodunnit? General mood at the table.
I should end the adventure:
Give yourself either a hard or soft time limit (30 minutes, or "soon", or "whenever.") Give yourself enough time to wrap things up to a satisfying conclusion, without having the feeling that something was missing. Of course, you can violate this self-imposed limit, but forcing yourself to consider the end of the adventure at this stage allows you to adapt your pacing to the mood of the group.
Scenes left to run:
Jot down a quick list of scenes you want to run. Maybe you decide that a scene previously vital is now not worth including. Maybe you decide that a scene previously unimportant would now add something interesting. Once again, this is about adjusting your pacing to the development of the game, adapting your plans to the real situation.

FINALE
Take a big breath before the finale. Allow a brief lull. This corresponds to Martin's fourth point, and allows a bit of a drumroll before the narrative climax. The players should probably be aware that the finale is coming, though they might not know exactly what form it will take. Include a scene of either the night before the battle, them riding the train before the outlaws attack, looking over the blueprints of the bank vault, whatever. Again, listen to your players. Then go for it. Here is a checklist, as you've probably already planned out your final scene better than any other.
Are the other points in the plot resolved?
You may have to jetisson bits of your plot, remember.
Are the players properly prepared?
Decide for yourself what "properly" means. It may mean armed to the teeth and well-rested, or it may mean exhausted and on the edge of collapse, or anything in between. It depends what mood is needed for the last big scene to be effective. Remember, a sudden find or a boobie trap can shape the party faster than a bunch of long and drawn-out encounters. Let them do any planning they need to at this stage, assuming it's appropriate.
Has everyone had enough?
Not as in fed-up, but if the party still wants to interrogate one more witness, let them. If everyone's having a great time, you can add some more minor encounters that you wanted to, but once all the loose ends are wrapped up any more will reek of stalling.

END-GAME
After the final fight, take some time to wrap up the adventure. Use this section THROUGHOUT the adventure to remind yourself what should be addressed to wind down the game, recap progress, and give significance to events.
Minor victories:
If the party helps out a minor NPC, it might be worth having them named in the cheering mob at the end that greats the victorious conquerors. Or if they made a minor enemy, maybe that enemy can send them a nasty letter, reminding them they have unfinished business. As you go through the game, note down little victories so you can remind the party of everything they've accomplished.
Loose ends:
If you're forced to cut off a sub-plot for the sake of the session, remind the players that they never DID find Farmer MacGreggor's chickens, and that The Green Ghost is still at large. Note these down as the party turns away from minor threads. Of course, they may be utterly important by the end. In that case don't bother, or else risk a "so what."
Campaign framing:
In the course of one adventure, the party may change allegiances, influence the course of an ongoing conflict, or in some other way change the status of the campaign. Take note of how the party is altering the game in the long-term, to lend significance to their actions.

POST-GAME
Your group may or may not have a post-game ritual. Maybe everyone goes over high points and low points in a formal way; maybe people just make some odd comments as they pack up their things; or maybe you just think about it on the ride home. Whatever you do, jot down some notes for future development. This is essentially the "PMI" (plus, minus, interesting) model for reflection and criticism.
Things that fared well (and why):
Things that fared poorly (and why):
Things that surprised me during the game:

Fudge, with bells on it

2010-01-13T10:03:00.000-08:00

I've started outlining my new Fudge campaign. If it gets off the ground, I'll let you know how it goes. At this point, though, I want to write about two tools I've used at this stage in the design theory: Long Knives and Island Design Theory. I encourage you to check them both out, as well as the sites that host them. Amagi Games, which I've only just discovered, has a ton of little plug-ins and tools for planning and running RPG sessions. They're all extremely simple to implement, system-neutral, and clever. Gnome Stew, home to Island Design Theory, is a GM's blog, run by a bunch of wonderful fellows, gives general advice for running your games. It's worth your time trawling around the archives, and checking it when you get up with a cup of coffee (or whatever your morning ritual is).

I'm trying to create a campaign set in a city-state with numerous internal factions vying for control. Long Knives is absolutely perfect for designing this. At first I thought it was a bit extraneous, but forcing yourself to map out all of the relationships between factions, design a few plot hooks, and considering interests is worth the effort. On the one hand, it suggested relationships I hadn't thought of before. As I filled out the chart, I saw that some factions were diametrically opposed, whereas some had possible common interests. I know now that my campaign could take several directions. A, B, and C could ally against D and E, or A D and C, or whatever. This unstable state of affairs makes the actions of a few motivated individuals a lot more important, so the party will have a real role to play. It also helped me when I went onto the second phase of planning.

Island design theory uses individual events or encounters as its building-blocks. These are loosely linked into a story, but players can skip between them or go back and forth. The order isn't set in stone (even though actual ISLANDS are, in fact, set in stone). This allows the GM to react a lot better to player initiative, while still retaining some narrative control, and some ability to plan ahead. After filling out the Long Knives chart, I found it very easy to write out 25 possible events (one for every interrelationship on the chart) on scraps of paper. I sorted these events into three piles. Because I had been brainstorming, I found that my largest pile was events that could in and of themselves form the basis of a gaming session. A few events were totally earth-shattering (coups and assassinations and things like that), and really couldn't take place without the players first becoming immersed in the campaign and having a hand in events. And a fairly large stack were somewhat interesting, but contained no possible plot hooks for the pcs, and really didn't stand up on their own as adventures.

I knew I wanted my first adventure to be interesting, to get the party involved immediately, and to set the tone for the campaign. So I randomly picked one event from the first pile (reasonable adventures) and two from the third (slightly interesting events). I looked at the three I had selected and saw that because of the interrelationships set up with Long Knives, these events were all far more interesting in relation to each other than they would be individually. I sorted them out into a logical order (one order out of several possible orders). These will form the central events of my first adventure. I have a lot of detail to fill in, but it's obvious at this stage which characters I should prepare, what settings I should put together, and some of the encounters, combat or otherwise, I should be ready to run.

I'll probably run an island process again for this adventure, writing out linking events that lead from A to B to C, and roughly arrange them. This will give some narrative structure to my adventure, while still allowing a fair bit of player control. Rather than setting up a flowchart, I'll instead make a timeline. The timeline will be structured as such:

Event A --- Linking group A --- Event B --- Linking group B --- Event C

I'll know roughly that after event A, the players will head in one of several likely directions, and I'll be ready to engage them. Come event B, they'll have explored the world a bit, be more committed to events, and start to understand a few of the ramifications of what's happening. Similarly, the linking group B events will allow players to start situating themselves in the world (I work with These Guys, Those Guys are my enemies) so C will be able to wrap the adventure up nicely with a decent cliffhanger, leaving them wanting to know more.

I have been using these tools partly because I haven't GMd in a while, and in the interim have read a lot of ideas about it. I've been eager to try out some new tricks. Please share any experiences you have with any of these.

Regarding Education

From an educational standpoint, both of these tools would also be useful. Long Knives would make a good worksheet for students trying to understand complex political events (like the French Revolution, for instance). The first section would allow them to jot down some initial impressions about the actors, the second would allow them to decide what events leading up to the crisis seemed most important, and the third would let them explore the interrelationships in a tense situation, and see why a crisis had to occur, but also that it could have gone several ways. Comparing results between students would make for fruitful discussion.

Island Design Theory would make a perfect planning tool for teachers. Have a good look at the curriculum and figure out what the main concepts you want to explore are. Give each of these a colour code and use coloured post-its or index cards. For medieval history, you might make pink cards about society and culture, blue cards about historical change, and green cards about historiography and history skills building. Write out every lesson and activity you have on one of these cards. Sort them roughly into units of work, of 2-4 weeks. This is your semester plan. You can always grab a later lesson and move it up. You can add cards if students show a particular interest in a given topic. If you have more possible lessons and activities than you have teaching time, you can ask students to pick which ones they would most like to explore. Inform them that they need a few from every colour, and let them collaborate with you on curriculum development. Cards could carry reminders about lesson timing, resources you will need (dice, videos, construction paper, etc), and links to other topics. These cards are also re-usable from year to year, assuming you make them sturdy enough.

A Fudge Campaign

2010-01-11T00:18:00.001-08:00

I'm looking over my Fairy's Tale game, and it's very railroad-y. I might give it a shot as a one-off, and if the system turns out to be oodles of fun try a mini-campaign, but I'm starting to find my thoughts turning back to Fudge, aka the Freeform Universal Do-It-Yourself Gaming Engine. Go read the rules if you've never heard of it, I guarantee you'll be intrigued. I am. The DIY aspect in particular.

I've been hesitant about starting a Fudge campaign, though, for several reasons. First, the sheer amount of effort. I can be a perfectionist, so making a game from scratch invites disaster. My last attempt spun out of control and into nowhere. Second, I've got no experience with the system, so it's tempting to fall back on something I know how to use. Third, connected to the second, and perhaps the most important, Fudge could be any setting I want. It could be any game I want. The burden of coming up with a setting, and at the same time limiting myself to one, is a bit intense.

Still, I'd like to see if I could write something up by the time I get back from holidays, and run it by my local gang. I've got a week and some change, so let's see if I can commit to a reasonable project. I think I would like some sort of back-stabbing cloak-and-dagger game, with light magic and brutal violence, but with plenty of room for good characterisation. I'm leaning towards a Renaissance feel. This suggests the magic would be somewhat occult, curses and seances or something, more than fireworks. I'll figure that out later, though. The most difficult thing for me will be pacing: having enough long-term action to keep the story on track, as well as enough short-term action to keep players motivated before the story comes together. A friend of mine did a good job on one campaign in this regard, slowly revealing clues to build up a big picture. I'm bad at it, as the big picture is usually what I'm most excited to share with my players.

So, a few commitments:
1. I will map out a few main rivalries to happen at an "upper" level, that the players will begin to discover after 3-5 sessions, and have influence on in the late campaign.
2. All of the main actors will have minor bullies and thugs for the players to grapple with as they work out who's working for whom.
3. There will be a murder in the first session. It will remain unexplained for at least one adventure. That should set the tone, get the players on their toes, and keep them there.

Recent gaming action

2010-01-01T21:49:00.001-08:00

I've got two things going right now. The first is an adventure I'm designing, the second is a computer game I'm playing.

Fairy's Tale
It's a cute game, I must say. I explain the nuts and bolts a bit more in this post. I started writing an adventure based on a Russian folk tale. Since I don't think any of my prospective players read this blog, I'll summarize my efforts.

The story
The story starts with a brother and sister, prince and princess of now-deceased monarchs, wandering through the wilderness. They pass a series of water sources, each with a herd of animals (pigs at a lake, cows at a river, and finally goats at a well). Each time the sister warns the brother not to drink, and in true fairy-tale repetition he does not, until he finally drinks from a well in extreme thirst, and turns into a goat.

The pair travel through the land, and word of her beauty spreads through the usual rumour mill. A king sends his emissaries to fetch her, and they are promptly married. All is well for some time, until the king goes on a hunting trip. Now it gets good.

While the king is out hunting, the princess is visited by a witch, who puts a spell on her that makes her ill. The king is concerned when he returns, but naturally goes hunting the next day. The witch returns to the castle, and promises to cure the princess. The princess follows her to the sea shore, where the witch ties a stone around her neck and throws her into the water. She promptly sinks. The witch makes herself look like the princess, and goes back to the castle to take her place.

The king is pleased that his wife has not only recovered, but seems more jovial than ever, though strangely she now has an extreme aversion to her brother, and refuses to spend time with him as in the past. In time, she encourages the king to prepare a feast. She lets him know that she would like nothing more to eat than... the goat that is her brother (awesome). The king is slightly shocked, but agrees.

The feast is to be in the evening. In the morning, the goat asks leave to go out for a walk. The king feels sorry for him, so he allows it. The goat goes to the seaside and says "Oh my sister!" The sister calls out from the water that the witch has trapped her. In the afternoon, the goat again asks to go for a walk. The king agrees, and again the goat calls out to his sister, who again informs him of her predicament. In the evening, shortly before it is time to be slaughtered, the goat persuades the king to come out with him for a final walk. They go down to the water and the goat calls "Oh my sister!" The princess again relates her story. The king dives in and releases her. They chase the evil sorceress away and life happily ever after.

Making a game of it
The first changes are cosmetic. The king's court becomes a fairy court. The king becomes a supernatural being himself. This much was obvious to me.

Beyond that, I needed to insert the players. Obviously, they can't be any of the main characters. Main characters have to follow too structured a path for gaming, and the players should have choice (within reason). So I'll make them servants of the king. This has three advantages. First, I get to assign them tasks to carry the tale forward quite easily. Second, I get to show a side of the story not represented in the version I read in my book of fairy tales: that of the servants. They are vaguely referred to: they bring word to the king of the princess' beauty, they fetch her for him, and they must be helping him with his wedding, feast, and hunts. I think I will make their lives suitably miserable. Think of Puck compared to Titania and Oberon. Every telling of a fairy tale ought to be a re-telling... Third, their position sets up a nice reward structure. As mentioned in my earlier glance at the game, it has very little detail about magic weapons, gold, and other trinkets, but lots of detail about getting rewarded with rank, prestige, and other social gains. Thus the early phases of the campaign can be about the rise of menial servants to prominence in the court.

With the players' roles settled, I now have to modify the structure of the fairy tale somewhat. I need to make the main cast of such calibre that they carry out their parts faithfully, with nudges from the party. I have made the king a drunken partying idiot. This fits well with a man being taken in by a rather stupid ruse. To expand on it, I have made him a satyr: instead of hunting, he goes out partying in the glades, and does not take his mortal wife with him, lest she escape. This means that the players will have to uncover the witches' schemes, and convince the king to see what is going on.

I have made the princess a reluctant bride of the fat, ugly king, meaning the players will have to use their magic to convince her to marry him. Fairy magics are pretty powerful in this game (only a tiny in-game sacrifice is needed for major effects) so this is a nice warm-up task for the party. I've scrapped the bit about the brother turning into a goat, though that can be backstory that the players can reveal in their investigations.

The sorceress has changed little. She's an awful hag with the power to beguile others and transform her appearance. Most of the considerations about her are tactical. Her banishment of the goat becomes an effort to keep the king in the dark, giving the players a chance to talk to him in secret. I've also made her the ruler of an evil realm, so sporadic attacks by goblins and trolls as she draws closer to taking over her rival will tip the players off that something isn't right (because, after all, the queen recovering from an illness doesn't seem like a bad thing at first). I'll make her disguise somewhat imperfect as well. Perhaps the princess had brown eyes, the glamoured sorceress has green ones... She's using her magic to keep the king fooled (he's drunk, so it's easy), but again the lowly servants notice what's going on.

The goat/prince/brother is the hardest one. I have to make him a little bit pathetic, so he doesn't just assert himself and say it's a trick. But if he's too subtle, the players may not figure out that anything's amiss until he's turned into stew. If they don't seek him out, I suspect I will:
1. Have them overhear some goblins talking about the queen's plan.
2. Emphasise at first how the new queen was good to the servants, but after her recovery she's cruel (an incentive to depose her!)
3. If all else fails, arrange a meeting and have the goat beg for help.

Of course, if they're really switched on, I'll throw up obstacles. The queen will try to prevent them from meeting with the king, goblins will waylay them, the king won't believe their story when they reveal the truth...

The hardest parts will be individual encounters and pacing. But there are enough events in the story (the king fetches the princess, marries her, she gets sick, she gets well, she banishes the goat, she decides to eat the goat, the goat makes his escape, the sorceress is driven away) for decent encounters. Early ones will focus on menial servile tasks (collect food for the feast, run errands) of various danger levels, the latter ones will lead to an outright confrontation. I'll give them a shot at killing the sorceress. If they succeed, her second-in-command will become a campaign villain. If not, she's perfectly established to do so.

A game
I've been playing Dominions 3. It reminds me of Warhammer, in that you spend most of the game crafting your own army, deciding on your strategy, deploying your troops, then watching the fights play out. It also has a wealth of races to play, which is great. I spent a Christmas gift certificate for it, and it was well worth it.

What to do?

2009-12-10T22:11:00.000-08:00

I'm in a stretch of unemployment at the moment that I suspect will last for a while. I'm doing a bit of community work on the side, but I'd like to get back into game design. The more interesting ideas I've had so far are:

1. Resurrect the Arthurian RPG
This one has been around and around. This was its last incarnation, involving a deck of cards with quotes from Malory to stimulate story-telling, with every player playing a knight on a quest of some sort. I'm thinking of doing something similar, but different. The setting is a knight and his retinue on a quest. The knight will achieve some sort of resolution (success or some sort of revelation about himself). The players of the game play the knight's hangers-on. (A sage, a rogue, a dwarf, a damsel, whatever). They players compete, somewhat, to decide the fate of their "extras." Who will turn out to be an evil villain? Who will turn out to be a hero(ine) in their own right? Etc. Character creation will be based on the use of adjectives. I'm sure the more I think about this concept that I want to avoid numbers as much as possible. Still, it's a bit like "London Pleasures" from Keep the Aspidistra Flying: the work that the young would-be poet continues adding to, editing, and carrying around, trying to convince himself that he'll finish it, trying to convince himself that he really is an artist...

2. PeasantKwest
Or something similar. I'd like an rpg in which the players are peasants, rather than heroes. Wat Tyler meets the IRA?

3. Just a regular old adventure
I've got my hands on a few new manuals that I'd like to try out: Fairy Tale, Kobolds Ate My Baby, and Burning Wheel. All look vaguely interesting, and maybe it would be nice to just try one of them for a laugh, and do a bit of GMing, rather than trying to make an entirely new system.

4. Some sort of educational games
I'd like to design a unit of medieval history based entirely on the use of games. Hmm.

I miss gaming. I haven't had any time for it in months.

The Shared Reality

2009-12-03T20:23:00.001-08:00

Huizinga said that the spoilsport is more reviled than the cheat, because while the cheat at least preserves the sense of importance of the game, the spoilsport destroys the magical circle in which it occurs.

Years ago I went on holiday with a friend of mine back to his home town. We did the usual laddish things with his mates that have no place on this blog. We also played D&D.

I had been quite eager to have a hand at the game. I'd been DMing back at university, but hadn't been on the other side of the table for a while. His mates had had a campaign going on for several years, off and on, so I prepared my character. Gareth was a bard in the old sense of the word: an adviser, diplomat, and occasional spy. He was imperious, proud of his position, and relied on a +20 Diplomacy bonus (don't ask) to get his way.

The party had been acting as a mercenary gang in the employ of a powerful warlord, sorting out his business in the provinces, extending his influence, shaving off a generous portion of the profits for themselves (including the entire output of a silver mine they captured from, who else, kobolds). Gareth was introduced into this scenario as an agent from the warlord sent to check up on his gangsters. During the introductions phase, Gareth made his disdain quite clear to the party, insinuating that a shake-down was intended at that no nonsense would be tolerated. A member of the party, an ogre monk (ogre monk! honestly!), promptly punched Gareth in the face. Healing potions were applied.

I was furious (read: your author, not your author's character, though he was not too pleased either). I don't know how they play D&D in the sticks, but where I'm from people can define their characters without having the rest of the party beat them down (note: this is a lie). My hangover (see "laddish activities") didn't help the situation. As we drove out to get breakfast, the monk's player apologised, but assured me that is, indeed, how they play in the sticks. I rethought my position.

The thing is, the campaign had been run up until then on the basis of the party as a private army, barely held in check by their superiors. They did not so much "take orders" as "quest hooks." As high-level combat-focussed romper-stompers, (see ogre monk and his companion, half-dragon fighter), they were not accustomed to taking orders from anyone: least of all a weedy little human bard.

That afternoon, after we had indulged in coffee and fried food, I returned to Gareth. As he recovered from his "introduction," I decided to play him differently. He was NO LONGER an inspector sent to check on the mercenaries. Now the party consisted of a brutish mercenary gang... with a very persuasive agent. He negotiated higher pay, he negotiated past troublesome garrisons(towards the people we REALLY wanted to smash), and he gambled incessantly. In return, he used the party's muscle to set himself up as mayor (we deposed the old regime) of a small logging town, where he settled down to set up his own bardic college. (Translations: settled down means I wasn't going to get another chance to play, and a bardic college is a guild of spies).

In game, the whole situation was mildly hilarious. Gareth had the pomposity literally knocked out of him and became a sniveling hanger-on of very violent people, which was the career path he had suited himself for. Out of game, it involved a serious argument, the liberal application of breakfast, and a compromise. What was the problem and how was it resolved?

The problem was that I had very different expectations about the game to anyone else at the table. This isn't surprising: they were old mates who had been playing the same game for years. With only a few hints to go on, in my mind I decided the game would be about my great and amazing bard leading the party through intrigues. I wasn't quite sure what the rest of them would be good for, but I was pretty sure my character was going to rock. They, of course, thought of the game as being about them going around the world beating up whomever they pleased with little or no oversight of any kind. Those two realities literally collided in the game. Being in the minority, of course, it was obvious my reality had to go.

We solved the problem by building a shared vision of the game, one that incorporated both their traditional playing style and my vision of my character's role (who the hell plays a bard?). The DM was happy to accommodate me, strewing our path with dupes to be duped, and fools and money soon to be parted. The party was pleased to let me scheme and plot, and even pull the odd one over on other party members from time to time, as long as they got to play their parts too.

Games are based around a shared premise. You can't play magnetic golf according to the rules of electric bumble-puppy (a can of tuna to whoever gets that reference). Often in play the players have to renegotiate the premise, but it has to be agreed or else there is no game. If you call out the premise as ridiculous, you're a spoilsport. And that's worse that loading the dice.

Designing games for education

2009-11-29T22:27:00.000-08:00

(this is an excerpt from an e-mail I sent to a friend)

I've started thinking whether one couldn't make a textbook of games. Rather than reading two pages in a text and answering set questions for each lesson (which is what happens in most classrooms I've seen), students would play a short game then reflect on the experience, or a component of a game designed for 4-5 lessons. It would still appeal to teachers who lean on textbooks as the entirety of their course (truly inexcusable, but it's a market). It would appeal to schools worried about kids getting disengaged and dropping out. And if it were well-designed it could have all of the learning merit of a textbook, combined with the merits of games.

In my experience, there are a few restrictions on designing games for educational settings, which actually make them easier to design as they set convenient boundaries on the project. Note that most of these apply to games to be played in a single period, I'd have nothing against a game designed to take 5 periods.
1. The rules have to be simple enough to explain in ten minutes or less. If your rules fill more than an A4 sheet of paper, they're too complicated.
2. The game needs to be playable within a confined time space. Either design it so that it ends when certain objectives are achieved, which one can expect to be achieved reasonably soon (sometimes with teacher coaching), or it can be cut off partway through with no real consequences (i.e. a trading game where students are trying to make a profit, so you cut it off after X minutes and ask who's the richest).
3. The game needs to achieve certain clearly defined learning goals. A good educational game will introduce two or three concepts (supply and demand, the floating value of money) and open up some questions for discussion.
4. The game should fit into a program of teaching. What do students need to understand to play? What will they learn and be able to use after they play?

The fun thing about being a teacher is that you can make a game designed for twenty players and be guaranteed enough people to play. You can watch, or design a role for yourself (banker, journalist, whatever). Keep in mind that games vary. Educational games tend to sit on a spectrum between Simulation and Role-play. A pure simulation, like a card game or board game, creates rules and structures for players to work in. They have clearly defined goals and chase them. Then they can reflect on how the rules and constraints of the game reflect the real world, or not. Role-plays are much more about discovering the motivations of actors in the real world, and examining how they interact. A lot of games can incorporate elements of both.

South Africa Simulation

2009-09-03T19:56:00.001-07:00

(discussion of this game available on the Story Games for All forums).

TOWNSHIP REBELLION SIMULATION RULES

HOUSING: Unemployed workers must return to their Bantustans. There they may suffer from disease or starvation. The best solution is to find work in Johannesburg. If you can afford the rent, stay in Soweto. If you can't, stay at Crossroads. But remember: Crossroads is an illegal squatter settlement. The police may disperse it at any time.

FACTORIES AND MINES: Workers enter, sit at a chair, spend 1 energy token, and produce either 2 machinery or 1 diamond. No chair, no work. Chairs count as machinery, which must be replaced each year. Workers waiting for work should form a line leading to the factory or mine. After they work, they must return to their place of residence before getting back in line.

SABOTAGE: Some subversives are attempting to sabotage workplaces. To do this, they deposit a sabotage counter where their energy counter for work would go. That immediately destroys all machinery in the mine or factory, which must now be replaced by the owner. Needless to say, sabotage is illegal.

LAWS: As long as the government is in power, it may add or remove any laws it deems necessary. If the government is seen to be too soft on terrorism, or the economy starts to fail, other parties may start winning more seats in parliament. The government may ban any individual or organisation for subversive activities.

ROBBEN ISLAND: The police may throw people in jail, up to five at a time. They can be kept there for a few minutes (90 day law) or the government may make a good case (or new laws), in which they can be kept there as long as needed.

GUNS: Several parties in the game have access to guns. To use a gun, give it to the target. Tear the ticket in half. The target is now dead. They re-incarnate the following year. Roll a die. 1-2, Zulu. 3-4, Xhosa. 5, Tswana. 6, White (may be hired by police, government, or factory owners).

INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT: Every time the government commits an obvious injustice, international support falls. Significant reforms may make it rise (but irritate South African conservatives). If support falls too far, there may be some form of sanctions. Maintaining law and order is not in and of itself considered an injustice.

IMPORTS: Factory and mine owners have to import new machine parts each year. The store owner as to import foodstuffs (energy tokens). The costs are the following:
Machinery - 120 rand per chair, divided by the current strength of the rand. (So 24, 30, 40, 60, 120).
Food - 7 rand per token - current strength of the rand. (2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
If there is large-scale rioting or strikes, the rand will fall in value.

TIME: Each year lasts 5 minutes. The teacher will announce year changes.

For questions about the rules ask the teacher during the game.

Scenario: It is 1983. The National Party, under Prime Minister Botha, is desperately trying to hold the country together. The government must avert economic crisis, electoral defeat, and the revolution that is brewing in the townships and the countryside.

Timing:
Before class, arrange classroom with 3 Bantustans, Zimbabwe (no SA police allowed), Soweto, Crossroads, a mine, a factory, a store, a jail, and Johannesburg. Draw up all current variables on board.

Government support: 75% (lose 5% for every reform, 10% for every year in which businesses lose money)
International support: 7 (1-year boycott of SA goods at 5, investments withdrawn at 3, sanctions and a total shutdown of intl. trade at 1).
Strength of the rand: 5
Current legislation
Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949)
Suppression of Communism Act (1950, bans subversive organisations)
Group Areas Act and Pass Laws (1950)
Immorality Amendment Act (1950)
Bantu Education Act (1953)
The Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act (1959)
Internal security act (1976, bans public meetings)
Black Trade Unions are legal

10 minutes to explain rules.
-Everyone plays a role. Try to act in character. If you have any questions, ask the teacher.
-Please follow the rules on the first page. You may also refer to your textbooks at any time (unless the government bans them as subversive literature).
-The teacher may alter the rules at any point in the game due to unforeseen circumstances.
-NO actual violence, needless to say.
-I will act as moderator, international trader, and timekeeper. For the most part, the game is in students' hands.

30 minutes to play
-5 minutes per year. Spend your time ad-libbing mine shaft collapses and natural disasters.
-If game-play stalls, try a UN resolution, get harsh about international approval, start an economic crisis, or egg on the political organisers. If all else fails, have the Conservative party pick up 20% of parliament in 1987, or hand the SACP a huge arms cache (drop it off in Zimbabwe). The country should be in crisis by 85 or 86, and meltdown by 88. Stop the game in 1990.
-When in doubt, rule on the side of the apartheid regime. Enforce jailing and massacres (at a price in international support).

10 minutes to reflect
-How hard was it to govern the country?
-How hard was it to organise resistance?
-What did this simulation leave out?

Prime Minister Botha
Locale: Johannesburg
Objectives: Avoid electoral defeat, a collapse of the economy, and revolution. Preserve apartheid as long as possible.
Special powers: May ban any organisation. Controls the police. May introduce or revoke any law, as long as parliamentary majority holds out.

Agent for Anglo-American Diamond Company
Locale: Johannesburg
Objectives: Sell diamonds abroad as profitably as possible. Tackle strikes and demonstrations. If international support drops too far, however, the parent company will pull out its investments (80%).
Special powers: Runs the mine. May hire a worker to spend 1 energy token to mine 1 diamond. Every year, mine machinery will need to be maintained, requiring imports from abroad.

Agent for British Tractor Manufacturers
Locale: Johannesburg
Objectives: Hire workers to create farming equipment, which can be sold to other African states and western countries. If international support drops too far, however, the parent company will pull out its investments (80% rand).
Special powers: Runs the factory. May hire a worker to spend 1 energy token to produce 2 units for export. Every year, factory machinery will need to be maintained, requiring imports from abroad.

Landlord
Locale: Johannesburg
Objectives: Collect rent from the residents of Soweto. Sit back. Be rich. Mwa ha ha.
Special powers: Collect rent. Suggested start is 5 rand per year in Soweto (blacks only), and 50 rand per year in Johannesburg (whites only).

Minister of Police
Locale: Johannesburg
Objectives: Root out the communist, the agitator, the terrorist. The state must be secure.
Special powers: Controls the police. Has a giant supply of guns. To use a gun, present it to a target and tear the counter in half. Now they're dead. You may also arrest people and take them to jail. If need be, recruit spies among the Bantu, and distribute arms to factions in the movement to cause infighting. Remember to keep the blacks scared, in their place. Have police harass them, demand to see their papers constantly.

Policeman
Locale: Johannesburg
Objectives: Root out the communist, the agitator, the terrorist. The state must be secure.
Special powers: Supplied with guns. To use a gun, present it to a target and tear the counter in half. Now they're dead. You may also arrest people and take them to jail.

Policeman
Locale: Johannesburg
Objectives: Root out the communist, the agitator, the terrorist. The state must be secure.
Special powers: Supplied with guns. To use a gun, present it to a target and tear the counter in half. Now they're dead. You may also arrest people and take them to jail.

Bantu Nelson Mandela (Xhosa)
Locale: Robben Island
Objectives: Stay strong. Try to communicate with your supporters on the outside. If more of your comrades are thrown in jail, do your best to keep their spirits up. Be ready to negotiate with the Botha government, but not unless they agree to end apartheid!
Special powers: They wouldn't dare kill you.

ANZAPO Organiser
Locale: Soweto
Objectives: Organise black workers into the Azanian People's Organisation. Organise a rent strike! Ally with the trade unions and support a general strike in all industries. Overthrow the imperialist capitalist pig-dogs. Create a worker's state.
Special powers: Your identity is SECRET as you are a member of a BANNED organisation. Use these false papers to avoid attention from the police.

+

Bantu (Tswana)
Locale: Bophuthatswana Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short.
Special powers: None. No rights either.

Bantu (Xhosa), COSATU Organiser
Locale: In every mine and mill.
Objectives: Organise all workers in the mines and factories into Congress of South African Trade Unions. "To hell with politics, the strike is our weapon!"
Special powers: Strike! Strike! Strike! You are lucky that you can carry out your work openly, since black trade unions were legalised in 1980. The government wouldn't dare reverse that law... would they?

Bantu (Zulu)
Locale: KwaZulu Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short. Unless, of course, Chief Buthelezi figures out how to change things.
Special powers: You have the right to join the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Bantu (Zulu)
Locale: KwaZulu Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short. Unless, of course, Chief Buthelezi figures out how to change things.
Special powers: You have the right to join the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Chief Buthelezi
Locale: KwaZulu Bantustan
Objectives: Organise Zulus into the Inkatha Freedom Party. These ANC commie nutcases are going to ruin the country. You don't care about this "Black Consciousness" nonsense either. You are proud to be Zulu, and want the government to grant rights to the Zulu homeland. See if you can make a deal with the government. If they grant you a few concessions, it might be worth forming an agreement with them. Particularly if that agreement gets you the guns you need to raise up the Zulu Empire again. Remember Shaka!
Special powers: You are the Prime Minister of KwaZulu, under the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act. Your party is perfectly legal, as is your power.

ANC Organiser
Locale: Soweto
Objectives: Organise people into the ANC. Sabotage the racist apartheid regime. Bring forth a new democracy that provides for all its citizens. Use acts of civil disobedience (demonstrations and riots) and the sabotage of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) to make the country ungovernable, as Comrade Tambo has called for. ...Good luck.
Special powers: You have three sabotage counters. Distribute them to operatives who you can convince to join Umkhonto we Sizwe. To activate sabotage, alert the teacher (to enforce the rules), and then bring the sabotage counter to either the mine or factory. See if you can co-ordinate a mass attack on industry, perhaps followed by or just after a strike. In addition, your organisation is BANNED. Use these papers to fool the police:

+

Bantu (Xhosa)
Locale: Transkei Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short.
Special powers: None. No rights either.

Bantu (Zulu)
Locale: KwaZulu Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short. Unless, of course, Chief Buthelezi figures out how to change things.
Special powers: You have the right to join the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Bantu (Zulu)
Locale: KwaZulu Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short. Unless, of course, Chief Buthelezi figures out how to change things.
Special powers: You have the right to join the Inkatha Freedom Party.

SACP Organiser
Locale: Soweto
Objectives: Organise the working class into the South African Communist Party. Obtain arms from your Soviet allies and overthrow the capitalist imperialist government of South Africa. Create a Marxist-Leninist workers' state. Workers of the World Unite!
Special powers: You have a small cache of arms from the USSR. To use a gun, approach your target, present them with the ticket, and tear it in half. They are now dead. You may be able to get more guns. If you get well-organised, distribute these to the workers and prepare for the revolution... But beware! The SACP was the very first banned organisation. Keep your work a secret. Use these papers to fool the police.

+

Bantu (Xhosa)
Locale: Transkei Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short.
Special powers: None. No rights either.

Bantu (Zulu)
Locale: KwaZulu Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short. Unless, of course, Chief Buthelezi figures out how to change things.
Special powers: You have the right to join the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Bantu (Zulu)
Locale: KwaZulu Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short. Unless, of course, Chief Buthelezi figures out how to change things.
Special powers: You have the right to join the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Bantu (Xhosa)
Locale: Transkei Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short.
Special powers: None. No rights either.

Bantu (Xhosa)
Locale: Transkei Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short.
Special powers: None. No rights either.

Bantu (Tswana)
Locale: Bophuthatswana Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short.
Special powers: None. No rights either.

Bantu (Tswana)
Locale: Bophuthatswana Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short.
Special powers: None. No rights either.

Bantu (Tswana)
Locale: Bophuthatswana Bantustan
Objectives: Try to find work in Johannesburg. Soweto is miserable, but life in the Bantustans is brutal, miserable, and short.
Special powers: None. No rights either.

Shop Owner [This was actually played by my supervising teacher]
Locale: Soweto
Objectives: Buy energy tokens from abroad, sell them to black workers.
Special powers: Being white, you have the right to operate a store. You can hire shop assistants if you please.

Teachers should be Gamers

2009-08-04T04:59:00.001-07:00

At the very least, I don't think my fellow humanities teachers have any excuse. I follow Costikyan and Aarseth I view games as a form of text capable of conveying certain kinds of information more efficiently than others. Specifically, as Costikyan notes, games are systems and they are therefore amply suited to convey information about systems. This includes social structures, economics, environments, physics, chemical reactions, demographics, and politics. Teachers, think of your domain, and think of the overarching interrelations you wish to convey. A game is a much more efficient (and engaging, as the lingo goes) way of communicating them than a block of text.

Why are games so appropriate for education? To begin, no one can be forced to learn. Learning is an active, not a passive, process. End the days of didactic education: get the students moving, talking, arguing, and learning. I have students that can talk my ear off about celebrities, cars, sports, music, mythology, and (big shocker) GAMES. Why can they do this? Why do they display such motivation and commitment to becoming experts? Because they give a damn. They do not give a damn about the textbook.

A game conveys a depth of knowledge that is simply impossible to convey via other media, precisely because it offers alternatives. Play the Battle of Waterloo and learn why it happened like it did. Play third-world development (a simulation I currently have in the works for my year 7s) and understand why there still is a third world. Play political corruption and learn more than any newspaper would ever have taught you.

Of course, sometimes after playing a game, a student will discover that a winning strategy was not (or is not) the strategy taken. This sets the scene for a great inquiry project. Students will be desperate to know why Henry V didn't take Paris, since it won the game. They will critique the game, a vital skill for all kinds of literacy. They will encounter the fallibility of leaders, the contingent factors that shape history. And, with your support, they will design their own games to enable an expression of what REALLY happened, games that other students can play and critique.

And, of course, there is a political dimension to all of this. As an anarchist-communist, I desire the abolition of the distinction between work and play. It's part Aronowitz part Mary Poppins, I admit. But I don't give a damn.

Teachers of the world, play! You have nothing to lose but the dirty looks from your students, you have a world to win!

For f's sake

2009-07-14T06:48:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader,

I briefly played "Evony," a MMORTS... I guess. Something like that, anyway. It was alright, if you're into resource management games and mmo's you might want to give it a shot. I got quite obsessive about it though (I had spreadsheets, and diagrams... my alliance was starting to hate me) so I quit.

But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about Evony's banner ads. They used to look something like this, and look at that guy complain! Now they look like... well, it's a bit absurd. What I love is that they advertise that you can play from home, school, or work.

Shameless.

Bercilac

New Stuff!

2009-07-07T01:14:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader,

My friend and I went to a slew of games stores in the city today. It was pretty weird seeing all of the shelves loaded up with D&D 4th Edition, made me feel pretty old. It also tanked one of my ambitions, which was to try and publish some of my 3rd Edition adventures for a few extra bucks. I have no idea how much money I could have made doing that, probably not very much, but it would have been neat, and a good way to get started in the industry.

I saw some wonderful stuff out there. It's been ages since I was in a proper games store. I was horridly tempted by the various board games set in Renaissance Italy, but I resolved to wait until I'm teaching (tax deductible!). I did, however, succumb to a few temptations. I am the proud owner of three shiny new translucent d20s: one yellow, one dark blue-green, and one clear. I saw my friends tossing around some translucent d20s at our last session of Dread Ilk and I resolved to own some myself (in addition to my sparkly apple-green one). I much prefer them to those illegible speckled monstrosities, or simple opaque colours (I have a white one: how boring is that?).

I also gave in, to a somewhat pricier tune, to a neat little rpg called "Faery's Tale: Deluxe." I have yet to figure out what's deluxe about it, but as you might guess it's all about playing as sprites or brownies or what have you. I'm a bit disappointed to see goblins and the like as evil NPCs, and the game centred on being kind and nice, but that's true of most systems I've seen and hasn't stopped me from running a monster campaign yet.

Apart from the wonderful artwork and fluff, what interested me in the game is that it's geared towards children. Don't think this makes it a frivolous system: it has nice simple dice-pool mechanics based on body, mind, and spirit, as well as gifts/traits, and a wonderful system of "Essence." Essence functions as your hit points, as you lose it in a fight; your experience points, as you gain it for desirable behaviour or great success; and as mana to fuel certain abilities and spells. There's also a great system of boons, which are essentially roleplaying rewards in the form of NPCs owing you a favour, which can be traded in for magic items, stat increases, or titles ("from knight to faery princess" boasts the blurb). It's a lightweight tome, at 90 pages of A5, most of which is taken up with flavour text and lovely illustrations, and certainly the simplicity of the rules lends itself to playing with kids (though I also find it appeals to my gaming instincts).

There's a lot in there, however, that is much more considered in how it approaches children. For starters, there's a section which introduces the concept of developmental stages (taken from good old Erikson) in how you should write your adventures: younger children are likely to have trouble with empathy and moral dilemmas, whereas as children get older they are more interested in what their personal characters are doing and more difficult challenges. There are plenty of places where the game can be tuned down: either mechanically (simplified combat, diceless, character creation based on sketches done by the child and interpreted by the GM) or emotionally (simpler challenges, avoiding death scenes with "falling into a magical slumber" or running away). And there are, of course, opportunities to take it the other way: there's a decent section on LARPing as pixies, which sounds fantastic, and encouragement for props, costume, et cetera. It suggests scenery such as couches, rugs, et cetera, but I can imagine taking a whole primary school class out to a park one day and going nuts...

I'd really like to run this game with my group, but I'd need to toughen it up slightly. The system is geared towards encouraging children to behave nicely to one another: you get Essence for being kind and considerate in various ways, and "Dark Essence" for being nasty. I'd have to develop the Dark Essence bit, since I know my group wouldn't view it as a bad outcome. The combat rules are probably fine left simple, but to hell with falling into a magical slumber: if the goblins beat you, they're going to chew your limbs off. I had an amazing idea for an adventure based on a marauding entomologist.

Bercilac

24 Hour RPG: Out of the ashes of a failed attempt

2009-07-04T06:59:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader

I tried my hand at the 24 Hour RPG competition, and failed. I had picked the phrase "semi-disposable," and was beginning to structure a game based on the experience of Soviet soldiers at Stalingrad. Each soldier had an individual dice pool and battles were played out in a series of scenes inspired by Grey Ranks (there were, in fact, a lot of similarities between this game and Grey Ranks or Carry). In each scene, every soldier rolled their dice pool to determine what contribution they made to a plan negotiated between the GM and one player who played the Sergeant. Successes (5 or 6) contributed to overcoming the Germans, failures (1) didn't detract from that but put the soldier at risk of death.

The interesting bit of the concept was to be a communal dice pool called the "Tactical Situation." These dice would be at the disposal of individual players, who could roll tactical dice to protect themselves from the dangers of failure. Any that weren't used in this way would be at the Sergeant's disposal to help beat back the Germans. So there was to be a tension between individual survival and group success.

The concept was flawed in a few ways:

1. I wasn't quite sure what the overall goal was, except perhaps to play until the squad was exterminated or the GM decided they'd had enough and the Germans would get defeated. It made it difficult to predict progress through the game, and how to set the stakes at each point.

2. I had a roll outlined for a political commissar, who could theoretically sack the Sergeant. But I had no idea how, or why, he would do so.

3. The game was lacking in motivation, not just for the group as a whole, but for individuals. Why would they sacrifice themselves for group success? Then again, there was little room for individual development, so why not?

I have thought of how to salvage some of the work, however. I might recast this as a medieval rpg. By that I mean emphatically NOT a fantasy rpg, but one depicting the struggle between lord and villein. Perhaps this is because I know a lot more about medieval society than the Red Army in WWII, but this causes the roles to come into sharper focus: the Sergeant becomes a Lord, the Commissar becomes a Priest, and the soldiers become peasants. The game is about the peasants trying to eke out a living, playing mostly as a team that rolls a dice pool called "the commons," or working small freeholdings of their own, while the Lord and Priest are trying to appropriate as much of the peasants' wealth as possible for their own enrichment and goals.

Possible "adventures" would include the black plague (creates a land surplus or labour shortage, depending on how you look at it), wars with France or Scotland (calls men away from their farms, threatening famine, but also offering riches), or simply start conditions off as gruelling (high taxes, incessant persecution of heresies) and see how the parties work things out (google 1381 if you want my prediction).

This game would probably be best played without a GM, with Lords or Priests initiating most of the action by naming their own goals (fight a war, build a cathedral) which would necessitate a high rate of taxation. It would need means of tracking construction projects, accumulated wealth of various sorts, and a rudimentary combat system.

It would be quite nice to design this so it could be played with up to 25 players, including several lords, priests, and even a few townsfolk, with a wide range of dice pools representing productive land all over the place, and let the rivalry of the lords (both spiritual and temporal) drive the game. Then I could use it for introducing students to medieval history.

Hmmmmmmmmm. Sorry for the rant, an idea is forming.

Bercilac

Housekeeping

2009-06-23T07:07:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader,

If you're reading this at the time of publication, may I apologise for the dreadful state of this page's layout. I was planning something rather ambitious, but I only went halfway with it. Maybe I'll clean it up some day.

I've thought of three tools that I need to develop to give focus to my Swamp campaign:

1. A clear system for hunting. At the moment, I'm leaning towards a Wilderness Lore check to find food of some sort, then have a mini-encounter for actually getting it. In some cases this will be simple.

"You find some fruit trees. What do you do?"

"I pick it."

"Roll a reflex save..."

Other times, the food might bite back. I want to put a lot of emphasis in this campaign on survival, so the roll=rations equation ain't working for me. Plus, once players are used to roleplaying their food-gathering, I can use it as a springboard for whole adventures. Perhaps one day they hunt a whale or something...

2. The success of the wilderness lore check will determine how much food they find, I suppose. Assuming there are no problems, I'll give them that many rations. But rations are going to be like currency so, following on from this article about money, I'm going to have a physical representation of rations. I think I'll take the obvious solution: a candy dish. "Okay guys, three days pass. Everyone have three smarties!" There are two obvious pitfalls: not enough candy, so the players absentmindedly scarf a week's work of rations in one handful, or (quite possibly) too much candy, if the players get sick of it. But who the fuck gets sick of candy? I might have a separate "Out of Character" dish to combat the former, or just eat them myself to combat the latter, or if they share food with NPCs, which brings me to my next point.

3. The tough part I'm having is how to simulate a gift economy, so that the players have concrete goals and receive concrete benefits. I think the way I'm going to do this is by having them make diplomacy rolls when they give gifts. If you have the 3.0 DMG handy (you don't?!!) the rules are on page 149. Essentially, NPC attitudes are rated on a scale from Hostile to Helpful, and depending on where they lie at the moment there are different difficulty classes to improve their attitudes to a given level (and low scores resulting in a worsening of attitudes, as you might imagine). I'll give the players bonuses to the roll for presenting a particularly extravagant gift or a particularly glowing speech about the friendship between their communities. If they get another clan to "indifferent," it will respond with the occasional mundane gift. If they get it to "friendly," it will frequently offer minor assistance. If they get it to "helpful," then it will give them some outrageous gift. Performing quests for another clan always counts as a great gift, and will shove them up the scale dramatically. A group that is "helpful" to the party will consider its debt repaid after one great gift, and return to "friendly" dealings. This means I need some treasure tables for what clans will regular give, and a list of services a player can regularly expect from friendly clans. Of course, certain things will tend to hurt a character's relationship with others: too frequent requests for assistance, failing to pay back a gift, or running counter to their interests in one way or other.

Anyway, this should provide me with a nice, characterful setting, as well as plenty of plot hooks. Always a bonus.

Bercilac

Back in the saddle again

2009-06-21T05:16:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader,

I suspected that I wouldn't really get started on this blog until I finally launched a campaign, and now I have. So here is a post. After discarding several ideas (drafts for future work, perhaps), I finally settled on a nice old D&D 3.0 campaign. But I've subverted the mechanics in a few ways.

The setting is "the swamp." It is mostly based on my memories of doing social anthropology, in particular Levi-Strauss' Structural Anthropology and a film we watched called Onka's Big Moka, about the amassing of social capital, commodified mostly in the form of pigs and yams. These ideas were bubbling in my brain back when I ran the Green Isles and I had a little gang of native folks that I drew some genealogy charts for, but that was about it. It was mostly about mercantilism, in retrospect.

This one is totally about a different mindset. Alliances and obligations are all structured by clan relations. There are about a dozen clans, each with multiple villages, organised into five tribes (for which I'm using 5 D&D races). I've thrown out D&D's steady old equipment creep based on set treasure rewards and spending money in appropriate market places in favour of a gift economy. Gift economies are not unstructured, however. Far from it. Rather, by gathering prestige and doing favours for other groups, the players will wrack up a lot of credit around the swamp. Eventually that credit will be received both with support (places to rest, food, healing, all free of the normal cash charge you pay in D&D towns), as well as a few more major items in return for great services.

The first adventure went quite well. A minor ecological catastrophe has disrupted fish stocks for Mannanan, one of the oldest crocodiles in the swamp. He went in search of greener pastures... er, waters. This involved a rampage through the Bullfrog clan's territory, right at the end of the monsoon season when they were starting to lay eggs (is this ecologically correct? I'm not sure I care...). Many in the Bullfrog clan (Nixies) blamed Crocodile clan's (Lizardfolk, go figure) witchcraft, and gathered under a young turk named Gwair to demand vengeance.

They set out on their canoes to the Crocodile clan's village, where the party, consisting of a Crocodile Barbarian, a Birch (Wild Elf) Bard, and a Sorcerer (Grig, but exiled from the Wasp clan as all Sorcerers in my setting are regarded as contacts with the spirit world) were involved in a ritual exchange of gifts (quite an important part of the setting, and I gave the players the mantra "Who gives must receive" to structure their thinking in this way). The Bullfrog warriors demanded Crocodile Clan's eggs as payment for their young killed, under the same reciprocal logic of "Who gives must receive." The PCs drove them off without much trouble, taking several captives in the process.

I explained to them that warfare in the swamp was viewed as disequilibrium and the goal of violence was to restore equilibrium. The Barbarian took up the chant, again, of "Who gives must receive" and sent out the call to other Crocodile villages to gather up a warband to return the attack on the Bullfrogs. The warband paddled across the swamp, stumbling through a Wasp village. They failed to make the proper introductory rituals when entering Wasp territory, and the malicious Grigs (impervious to the attackers, as they were all invisible and their home was up in the trees), responded by giving them bad directions. This led them to a small lake, full of fish who had been swept in there by the monsoons (this is good wetland ecology, I did SOME research before designing the setting). The warband settled down to gather provisions and were attacked by a Tendriculous. This was, in a way, revenge on my GM who had sent one after us, nearly eating my character, in a previous campaign. Except that had been a level five party of three characters, this was a mob of level 1 and 2 weaklings, so it took a bit longer to break and managed to munch a few of the Crocodile clan in the process.

They eventually found the Bullfrog territory, to find it had indeed been ravaged by a horrid beast, as the rather aggressive "emissaries" had implied. With the help of allies they stumbled upon by "pure luck" (I asked all of my players to give me an ally, an enemy, and a goal or belief for their character before the game), they located a surviving Bullfrog village. A druid came forth to see them, receive the prisoners, and explain what had happened to them, and how the attack had NOT been sanctioned by the elders of the clan. He gave the party a ring of speak-with-animals. Equipped with this, they went to meet the crocodile.

Mannanan explained to them how hungry he was, how his home waters had been poisoned... He nearly made a meal out of the whole canoe full of the party (except the sorcerer, who, being insectile, was prepared to fly away) until they dumped a basket of fish. The party returned to the Crocodile village to rest and recuperate, and to prepare to investigate Mannanan's old hunting grounds and locate the source of the infection. We ended there, on a decent cliffhanger.

Overall, a good first session:

1. The players all had a few chances to shine in one light or another.

2. They got a vague sense of the different clans, abolished this concept of "wilderness" and instead realised that the swamp is actually teeming with different groups, with densely packed territories consisting of fishing and hunting grounds, water sources, and safe places to rest.

3. Except at a few odd moments, I managed to keep the story moving, with a good pace of action. I indulged in a few long dialogues (especially the sin of two NPCs talking: when that happened in the opening scene of the Bullfrog attack I had the NPC Crocodile representative suffer a seizure and prophetic visions to get her out of the way, and also add a bit to the story).

4. As indicated in the previous point, I improvised my head off in terms of game mechanics, tweaks to my (limited) adventure notes, and just about everything. And it worked pretty well, when I could remember it.

A few problems:

1. The players haven't really got a grasp of the kinship system. They learn pretty quickly by participating in things, so I'll need them to go to a wedding or something to show how that works, and how it affect politics... if only so they can have the opportunity to exploit it.

2. As one player points out, there were few tangible rewards. While, to some extent, it was my intention to throw away the whole D&D gold-piece counting, I was a bit vague in my replacement system to the point of devaluing it. Baskets of fish were flying right and left across the ceremonial gift mats, and the party was never in any real danger of hunger. I need to figure out a concrete system for tracking rations, determining roughly how much food a village might be able to give to friendly visitors, and polish up the starvation rules a bit so it actually matters to the party that some allies gave them ANOTHER basket of freakin' fish. But in the long run, as they get more involved in the setting, I will have allies come by from time to time to present them with the odd magic item or truly rare piece of equipment. I haven't quite figured out what's scarce yet. They're basically trading in social capital, which is cool, but doesn't give them much to write on their character sheet.

3. I need to draw up a decent map of the swamp with clan territories: I have a tiny speck of it mapped out now, and I re-arranged a few elements to suit the story. On the one hand this is fine, on the other hand I only did it because my notes were sketchy to begin with. I'd also like some diagrams of how each clan is relating to others, to show ongoing grudges, rivalries, and enmities. It gave me a pretty good adventure in this one, and I can see a lot of good ones in the future.

I'm actually stunned how quickly the players are taking to my setting. The biggest problem they're having is an ingrained ruthlessness from our group's other campaign which doesn't serve them well in a society based on mutual co-operation. I've had a few elders show up to chastise them a bit from time to time, including making up a lot of "wise sayings" on the spot. I think my favourite was "Small canoes and long journeys make strained friendships." But my dream for the campaign is to reach a scenario where the players are carefully weighing up their obligations and rivalries with half a dozen different powers, judging what gifts they might have to make to sway the neutrals, and really trying to establish themselves as the Big Men of the swamp, using all of the invented lingo and logic I've imagined. It's definitely an achievable goal, and it's going to be fun.

Bercilac

Staying sane

2009-05-05T06:53:00.000-07:00

Dear reader,

I've been working my green butt off on my post-graduate degree, but lately, between this, that, and the other piece of "legitimate" work, another work has started to take shape. I call it Lunarkis, and while I hate the name I like the concept.

Without going into the story that I have (poorly) planned, I would like to mention the mechanics. I have been, for a long time, a pretty solid D&D player. This is mostly down to tradition, I suppose. My first game was D&D, I received the 3.0 PHB as a birthday present, I got my hands on 3.5, and I'm passing into that grumpy stage where I refuse to look at 4th edition. In the meantime I've played Stalin's Story, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (an appendix to Second Person), and glanced at a few other systems. But in terms of ongoing role-playing campaigns, it's always been D&D. I have a love-hate relationship with the system, and have wanted to branch out for a while. I worked on a homebrew system that ended up as this bizarre affair after many incarnations (some of the earlier ones were probably more playable). I created a character for a Shadowrun campaign that never took off.

So now I'm working in FUDGE. As many of my readers will know, FUDGE asks the GM to essentially craft their own system, with nothing but a few ideas, guidelines, and some basic (but solid) mechanics. I'm having the most fun right now with the magic system. The setting is loosely medieval, and I'm trying to avoid a fantasy setting. But I still wanted magic... maybe this is a hangover from D&D. But my system is all my own.

I knew I wanted magic to be:

-Socially situated. Priests can perform miracles, which are looked upon kindly, and wizards can perform other acts, which basically amount to devil worship.

-Something that a character uses only after great consideration, in great need.

-Potentially very powerful all the same. I like the odd cinematic fireball, even if most of the focus of the game is on crossing rapiers.

I read the FUDGE rules, and one of the first questions was where magic came from. So I gave the medieval answer: God or the Devil. After that the system followed pretty quickly. Every spell uses the following format, based on The Rites of Passage, which involves opening a gate through which an otherworldly "Power" may enter (that's jargon, let it be noted):

1. Contact Power. The priest either prays to God, or the magician invokes some demon or spirit. Different Powers can do different things. Some can heal wounds (nicey-nicey deities or nature spirits, whatever), some can make fireballs (hellish demons), some can find answers to questions. Every Power has a difficulty that the character has to achieve (at least Fair, I imagine) with their roll to call it.

2. Power acts. Note that the character's stats do not matter at all for this phase! They merely become a vessel for something else acting. Hence, magic can be extremely powerful, even in untrained hands.

3. Return Power. This is the tricky part, and the crux of the whole system. The character has to make a roll against the Power they just summoned to force it back to the otherworld. If they succeed, the ritual safely ends. If, perhaps having bitten off more than they could chew, they fail by a massive amount, they can be possessed by that Power. Being possessed by God makes you into a Paladin, probably. Being possessed by a demon does something else entirely. Every Power has its own agenda.

Let's say you fail your return role, but only by a little bit. That means you've closed the gateway, but not completely. To some extent you're still channelling that entity. This is recorded as an Power's Influence, and it increases with every failed roll (starts at Poor, could go as high as Superb). Every Power has a short description of how its Influence will be activated. A healing deity, for instance, may have a taboo against initiating fights or slaying defenceless foes, which would activate any time the character tried to violate it. So priests that constantly worship kindly gods will actually be filled with the holy spirit, as it were, and become better people.

On the other hand, if you've been consorting with a fire demon, its Influence may activate once a week, at an opportunity chosen by the GM. If you fail your roll against the Influence, then the angry, jealous, insane demon drives you to attack the symbols of any other religious worship. If you fail the roll by a little bit, you might start shouting blasphemies uncontrollably in church, or rip pages out of a Bible. If you fail by a lot, the demon momentarily possesses you. You walk down main street, shooting fireballs out of your eyeballs at every church in sight. Or something.

Priests, under this system, will be quite free to use their Power. Everyone approves, but of course it means a certain kind of submission to that Power. The healing cleric of D&D will have to become a somewhat more saintly character, just by channelling so much of the presence of a healing god. Wizards, however, will have to be careful. If they indulge too heavily in the use of their Power, they will slowly become controlled by it. And this will not be socially acceptable. What do we do with witches?

I think it's quite a neat system, because there's no game-mechanical distinction between gods and demons. However, gods will influence characters towards an established social structure, demons will influence them against the structure. So the problems with consorting with Satan are practical more than anything else. At the same time, some characters may not wish to surrender their will to even a benevolent god. (Note, I still haven't settled on whether the official, acceptable pantheon will be monotheistic or polytheistic; if it's the latter, certain Powers will be proscribed as demons, just to get that inquisitorial feel).

Also, I can always add new Powers. I could have an entire subplot around the discovery of a cult worshipping (highly under the Influence, some Possessed, regular ritual proceedings) a plague demon, probably starting with a plague hitting the city. There could be hundreds of minor powers, the equivalent of first-level spells, that wizards will invoke without a second thought, because it's safe to contain. And there will be leather-bound tomes, locked deep within the city library, containing names of some of the most powerful and dangerous demons ever contacted...

Paradoxically, getting to do this is keeping me sane. Compared with the constant demands and requirements of "real work," the need to meet an external standard, this is entirely a creation of how, in my opinion, an RPG ought to work. Screw you, Gygax.

Bercilac

Introduction

2009-05-02T21:58:00.000-07:00

Dear reader,

You are welcome to what this house holds. These are the first words spoken by the Lord Bercilac to Sir Gawain as he entered his great hall. For those of you who are not familiar with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, I thoroughly recommend it. I chose the nom de plume Bercilac for my online gaming persona for a couple of reasons. First, my obsession with Arthurian myth in general. But, of course, all of the well-known names are taken, so I couldn't be Lancelot, Arthur, Tristram, Gawain, or Merlin. I had to pick something relatively obscure.

Second, I read and loved the above-mentioned poem. It's a great example of the English language. In particular, it features one of my favourite knights, Sir Gawain (Tristram and Gareth are runners-up). It also has a great feel to it, the structure of the poem being a mix of medieval romance and Celtic myth.

Third, the character of Bercilac himself. He is simultaneously the welcoming lord, and the Green Knight that tests the hero. This idea of a dual nature appeals to me (and green is my favourite colour). So, yes, you are welcome to what this house holds. Hopefully it will both nourish and challenge you.

The purpose of this blog is to reconcile a bad habit of mine. I've been posting on Play This Thing, Enworld, The Forge, and Gnome Stew on and off for a while now. But I often get carried away in responding to what others have written, producing vast tracts that have little relation to the subject at hand. So I'm writing this in the spirit of organisation, more than anything else. This is a place for my ideas about gaming, primarily Dungeons and Dragons, but also whatever else strikes my fancy.

Bercilac