Fight On! #5 & my AD&D alignment spread

Skimming through Fight On activated my somewhat dormant AD&D-cortex (hindbrain? ganglia?) - totally tangential - but I figured out the percentage breakdown of alignments in my AD&D universe.

So anyway! Had a chance to look through Fight On #5 - not yet to read the adventures in-depth, but man it looks good. Standout to me so far has been an article called "Dungeon Motivations" (by Paul Vermeren, with acknowledged shout-outs). The title suggests perhaps some musing on the ever-rich question WHY DO DUNGEONS EXIST?

No no. Better. 100 answers to the ever-droll question WHY IS MY CHARACTER GOING INTO A DUNGEON ANYWAY? Having been flustered by this question before (is this not something that the player should have already come to terms with?) I think the table is Totally Brilliant! answers provided by d100...some shining examples include:
20 Was double-dog dared to enter the dungeon
and the old double whammy of:
69 Seeks to disprove the existence of the Hollow Earth.
70 Feels a need to do what everyone else is doing.
Though there are plenty more 'conventional' results...and some pretty far out ones also...

And I can't possibly reproduce any of the effects of the Table of Fables (by an author called Age of Fables) - they are too good to extract and view in isolation. I'm a table fan, admittedly. This one is wonderful for generating strange magical effects (I'm a strange-magical-effects fan too.)

Seven Kings Mountains by Judd Karlman (methinks this is his site)is a pretty amazing setting, Dwarf-centric! Yargh! A discreet area with history, and the prime artefact of history - war! It looks like a great place to start an adventure and could open up in a million directions for longer campaigns.

David Bowman's Delver's Delve column shows several different methods toward giving beginning characters a 'fighting chance' - several different ways to 'cheat death' in the interest of keeping a game going without fudging harsh rolls or coddling fiat. I've used some of these techniques before, passed on some before, but just plain never thought of many of them, and it is really interesting to see all of them examined side-by-side.

There's a lot more. The reactions above were induced by about a grand total of 9 or 10 pages - less than 1/8th of the issue. I'll probably post more reaction later - the whole thing is pretty
awesome!

Superjail

Holy shit

T&T Solo Combat Matrix

The matrices in Tunnels and Trolls solo modules served many different uses. Common were Spell Matrices, cross-indexing your paragraph number with the spell you wished to use would yield a result. The matrices were used to add some variability to an otherwise rigidly serial format. And in the case of magic, writing down explicit choices to use specific spells seemed a signal that their use was crucial to proceed (or a temptation to doom oneself!)

As the 'golden age' of Tunnels and Trolls solo module publishing matured, the matrices were applied to more aspects of game play. I've been thinking a lot about solo module writing in general and I'm starting to mess around with more matrices.

One way that solo-module play suffers as compared to GM-player(s) sessions is that the negotiation of Saving Roll levels (for anything, but specifically here) for combat tricks/actions/maneuvers is impossible. So I was thinking about a matrix of combat manoeuvres, yielding a Saving Roll level and stat, to allow for more combat flexibility. It's not the kind of thing that is necessary, but it can lead to breaking a stalemate, creating an opportunity for escape, bypassing armor, etc...

Following is a table giving a rough idea, where the columns are 3 creatures (instead of the paragraph in which that creature is to be found...)

Move	Skeleton	Wolf	Rock Troll	Effect
Desperate Stab(DX)	bad	ok	bad	Roll 1/2 damage and apply it, bypassing armor.
Stunning Bash(ST)	good	bad	ok	(good party!)
Trip(DX)	ok	bad	bad	Flee or foe at 1/2 CBT next round
Disarm(DX)	ok	no	ok	??
Riposte(ST)	ok	no	ok	Deal damage to foe equal to its CBT
Feint(DX)	ok	no	ok	Foe at 1/2 CBT next round
Fighting Retreat(IQ)	ok	bad	ok	??
Flee! Flee!(??speed??)	ok	bad	ok	??

Early hashed implementation.
good = level 1 SR
ok = level 2 SR
bad = level 4 SR
no = SR cannot be made.
something I'll be working on some more - along with trying to get my head wrapped around the process of writing solo module in the first place...ugh

FLGS: The Griffon Bookstore (1)

A while back I tracked down and contacted the propriators of the book and game store that really molded my gaming (and reading) future and asked a few questions, which they were kind enough to answer. The Griffon has been the 'go-to' place for gaming in South Bend Indiana for more than 30 years now and I cannot help but wish that it was not 7-8 hours away from me now (oh, to browse the used-book shelves...)
It's taken me too long to get this posted, and I plan to do some follow up questions too. Thank you Ken and Sarah for taking the time to respond, and thank you also for all the years of providing a welcoming environment!

When did you open The Griffon?
1976

Why did you? It's obvious that the early seventies saw a sort of phenomenal growth of the gaming-market - but it seems the case that small business book stores/game stores are often opened more out of the proprietor(s) interest in the subject itself than making money off it.

Sarah and I were both teachers and the job market at that time especially for Russian language was very soft so we saved up for two years by working various minimum wage jobs to open the Griffon. Yes, we wanted to carry items that we were familiar with and that included both books and games although we thought then that the games would play the minor role.

Was it more 'game-oriented' at the start? I have only vague memories of the original location. Was there as much of a selection of books at the first location? Did either of you run RPGs there? I remember (again vaguely) a pretty large area dedicated to gaming tables there. Mostly miniatures?

For the first 5 years books dominated both sales and square footage of space by a 80 to 20 margin. By the time we were in our 10th year the balance was 50/50 and after 20 years the pendulum had swung to 75% games and 25% books mostly due to the appearance of the book superstores such as Crown, Borders and Barnes & Noble. Today, even though we devote 40% of our square footage to books, it still only accounts for about 15% of our yearly sales. We stay with that mix however because it provides the academic atmosphere we prefer in a gaming store rather than the comic book look.

Ken, I remember interrupting a pretty involved strategy/wargame you were involved with on the second floor of the Colfax store. What kinds of rules have you played, or if that is too inclusive, perhaps a better question would be - what rules do you prefer to play under?

The game you are referring to was Empires in Arms, produced by Avalon Hill. Now out of print. We play more games that involve less setup time and can be finished in one evening of play. Usually no more than 5 hours. That eliminates quite a few of the longer game systems. We particularly enjoy being able to play three 90-minute games in one setting rather than one long game.

What years did you put on conventions? I seem to remember two of them. What are the event count/attendance figures? - if that information is handy (or a ballpark...)

We ran Griffcon for 5 years and the attendance by the end was 300 people over a two day period. We also helped stage the Michiana Valley Wargamers conventions at IUSB for 4 years and the attendance there was about 200 for a two-day convention. We stopped running them because of the constraints due to increased rental prices, fewer people willing to run games, and little profit for a lot of work.

Character's Ultimate Fate (when player stops showing up. 2d4. Stat modifiers applied to player's next character if they return.))
2	Wanders into the hills one summer afternoon. Eaten by a giant spider. -1 IQ.
3	Finds a cursed ring of invisibility and winks out of existence when it is put on. -1 LK.
4-6	Retires and fades into obscurity.
7	Converts to a religion and is exalted on comfortable passing. +1 LK.
8	Becomes Lord of the Spider Hills. +1 CH (son/daughter of said lord...)

Star Trek

to boldly rant where no ranter has ranted before...
I'll not spoil a thing.
You know how some movies grow on you over time?
I believe this one will shrink on me over time.
Kirk, out.

N

J.R.R Tolkien         Everything (up to publication of Silmarillion)
Edgar Rice Burroughs  John Carter of Mars, Tarzan
Robert E. Howard      Conan
Fritz Leiber          Fafred and Grey Mouser
Fred Saberhagen       Empire of the East, The Books of Swords

Harvard Lampoon       Bored of the Rings
Douglas Adams         Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy
Various               Thieves' World
Michael Moorcock      Elric Saga, Chronicles of Corum
H.P. Lovecraft        Everything

George R. R. Martin   Song of Ice and Fire series
Jack Vance            Lyonesse Trilogy
Gene Wolf             Book of the New Sun, The Knight
Brian Aldiss          Halyconia Trilogy

I read The Lord of the Rings over and over and over again when I was a kid. I'd estimate that there's easily 6 cover-to-cover-to-cover-to-cover-to-cover-to-cover reads before I was 15. Then there were the times I felt like re-reading Moria, Bombadil, Helm's Deep, Fangorn, etc etc etc.
Saberhagen's Empire of the East (collected trilogy of novels) and then his Books of Swords (even the early Lost Swords) - which I read just after finishing the first Shanarra trilogy, thank ye gads! - really blew my mind. I was able to decouple from an absolutely Tolkien-centric universe.
Enter the Multiverse! The Crawling Chaos! Etc. Then I really stopped reading fantasy for a long time. All of the books mentioned had a bearing on my game-play - though many histories, philosophies, and other non-fictions (Machiavelli, Loren Eisley, John McPhee) here go unmentioned. And a boatload of sci-fi and other fictions (Murakami, Borges, Margaret Atwood, Stanislaw Lem, Phillip K. Dick, Bester, Bear, Benford, Brin, Brunner, Niven & Pournelle, etc etc etc)

I don't remember who tipped me off to Game of Thrones, but I do remember that it was late summer of 2003. It was the first thing that I'd read in years that really just made me want to play RPGs.
Other readings had inspired some writing, brain-storming development sessions, but as I continued that series, I just kept getting more and more steam up to play a damn game. So I went to the FLGS (Collectables, Etc.) and played some 3rd. Didn't 'do it' for me, but whatever.

Since then, Aldiss and Gene Wolf and Mr. Vance have each had a huge impact.

Micro-Fanzines?

This exhortation after a 1/2 month of no-blog...nevertheless - Knockspell is accepting articles for upcoming issue. This issue is without theme, and the magazine itself will accept submissions for any and or all of the OOP's and their attendant clones, now freed from their nutrient bath vats.
This is the relevant thread at the ODDBOARD.
I think that it's safe to assume that most of we who read these RPG blogs enjoy DM/GM/Referee -ing, and so probably have some corner of the game that we have and/or do love obsessively and craft wonderous subsystems, lists, tables, lyrical elucidations, etc - or have designed some interesting set pieces, spells, items, traps, monsters, etc, or suites of these in dungeon levels, sub-levels, upper workses...

How many POD fanzine style things are going right now?
Fight On!
Knockspell
Green Devil Face (someday I'll write a trap worth a delver's weight...)
(is Wilderlands of High Fantasy doing a subscription service?)

Here's my 2 ideas for fanzines
Towns, Villages, Cities - like the Catalyst Citybook Series. I like my settlements, but in general, I like other people's more often. Large settlements especially - I've NEVER invented one - just cribbed things from EVERY fantasy town/city I've encountered.

FRICKIN' TABLES!!!! Like the Ready Ref Sheets - all kinds of tables - all kinds of dice - matrixes! All kinds of subjects - maybe grouped in categories of purpose - or just one category: FRICKIN' TABLES!!!! Or maybe 3 subjects per issue...I dunno...I'd get it.

And I'm still waiting for the Earthwide Sandbox Adventure Megazine (ESAM - a world with no oceans...better draw a big lake every once in a while...)

If I could grok working with PDFs and such...ugh...

perusing GenCon list

(warning: gratuitous and arbitrary use of exclamation points!)
Not a single game of Rolemaster!
A couple Swords & Wizardry!
One Tunnels & Trolls!
Several Traveller and AD&D!
Nice to see Toon!
What the F is True Dungeon?(!)
Diplomacy!

I really just want to know how much space is given over to pick-up games and such!

whatevs

Tunnels and Trolls play-by-post is going pretty well. It's been going for about 2 weeks now. Some players bounce in and out, some are daily, some are 2-3 times daily - there's a total of 8 that have made characters, and all but one have participated to some degree. I'm glad to run a game again. It's been too long since I've run anything except what came to be one-offs, auto-aborts,
etc. I feel like I could do this for the rest of my life. I don't mean that in a dramatic sense - I mean it in the sense of 'as long as there's an internet and players' (both of which factors will certainly outlast me). I've tried to open it up as a sandbox and keep accepting players, but the idea was put forward to run an immediate adventure so that we could get out feet wet, get used to PBP. They're proving an inventive lot, really entertaining.

Warhammer FRP continues, in which I play a Dwarf named Yrkoll. The name: its all about the Yrk to me - I don't know why I've always been fascinated with that glob of letters. Yrkoon? That's the only citation I can think of (and only thought of it after I named the charater Yrkoon, and then remembered where it came from...early-senior-moment. One of those naming things...we're in the middle of out first combat, and I think I had a bursh with death in the form of an arrow graze, knocking my leather cap off...

The apothecary at Vedron's is starting an OD&D on rpol that I've joined, and I'm thinking about jumping into something really heavy over at AlternateHistory.

I'm trying to help the Swords & Wizardry project by categorizing creatures for the Monster Compendium encounter tables. It is exactly the kind of RPG-as-OCD task I love love love
and I think that S&W and OSRIC are both really relevant projects. It took some lurk time at the boards before I began to realize that I could help these worthwhile projects - to realize how easy it was even just to offer help.

Starting now to plan for GenCon. Never been. Kinda scared. But, I think it's time. I went to small local conventions in the Northern Indiana area when I was young. But the biggie? I generally avoid crowds as much as I can - and I'm pretty good at it. But there's just too much going on, and over the last few years I've really become very comfortable with how important gaming (and non-mindless escapism in general) is to me. Always has been. Gaming was a huge determinant in my life-of-the-mind (Barton Fink anyone? hoot hoot!).

I started an email interview with the owners of the Griffon Bookstore in South Bend Indiana. This is the FLGS I grew up with. Grew up in is more accurate. The owners (Ken and Sarah) have taught Russian for many years, and provided the only real outlet in town for minatures, a variety of RPGS, board and wargames for more than 30 years now. Unfortunately, I have totally let myself get wrapped up in other things (mostly the games listed above...) and haven't finished it up yet. Dammit! Gotta do that soon...

EDIT: and now helping the computer-translator English of Epées & Sorcellerie become human-reader English. This game is really cool!

Internet vs Books

7 years ago I made a New Year's Resolution (with capital letters) that I actually fulfilled! Read. Constantly. That was it. No real aspirations towards massive life overhauls or anything so dramatic - self-improvement? Bah. I'll go browse Barnes & Noble if I need some of that...

I've always read anyway, but it really did become something that I was dedicated to. Stopped watching TV. Rarely watched movies. Free time was generally spent somewhere in the middle of a sci-fi novel, histories, "literature" (you know, fancy writing about made-up stuff), sometimes game-books.

Now there's the Internet.
My resolve has crumbled. I've got 6 books started (6!), and I can't finish any of them - haven't been able to finish an actual book without a great deal of effort over the last few months (i.e.
since I got on the Internet last November)

So I do end up reading all the time now, PDFs, blogs, forums, articles, etc - it is amazing how
much information is available (I'm sure I'm the first to have noticed that...) Anyway - it looks like the Internet has won this particular face-off.

Is this natural? How long does this dubious honeymoon last? I miss my long attention span! If I could keep it in mind long enough to search, maybe I could remember where I left it...
pg 62 Forever Peace - Joe Haldeman?
pg 84 The Dwarf - Par Lagerkvist? (a nasty little book about a nasty little guy...)
lost in between two articles in a John McPhee collection?
some random amalgamation of texts in noisms' Borges Library?

...there's no telling. Maybe I should do a Google search for my lost attention span...

At some point, I'm going to read a damn book again (waiting on a friend who's getting the last book of Lyonesse soon...). Leiber is one author I'd like to revisit - My guess is that I was too young to catch as much as is probably there (I was a 10 year-old reading things I could find out of Appendix N...and LotR OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN!). Moorcock stands up on re-reading (though Elric pales _heh heh_ against his weird-pulp and Dancers series...

I shouldn't complain - the net is pretty astounding - and the sense of community is singular and something I have found myself really valuing more than I would have anticipated. But these days all I can bring myself to buy are reference materials (good reference books are such amazing things...) - and there are still so many books I really really do want to read...

anyway. enough rant.

EDIT: While I was writing this the Web blowed up with the WotC PDF news.
Whadda Maroon! This post has nothing to do with those pdfs

Play Reports vs Calindrical Events

I know play-reports are hit-or-miss - so bear with me.

Had a pick up game last night, a couple of friends came over unannounced kinda late-ish. Pulled out OGRE and my homemade hex-map (400x400, full color, cool cities and roads, wow!) that went with the scenario for the evening...
Empire Invades Fracticious World!
Player A (Imperial-Alexander):50 pts infantry, 3 Mark V Ogres
Player B (Supermen-Sun Tzu):30 pts infantry, 30 pts armor, 4 sabotages*
Player C (Techlords-Clausewitz):30 pts infantry, 50 pts armor, 1 Mark III Ogre
* sabotage means a 3:1 attack on any target

Despite the Techlord's scheme of an all howitzer buy and the skillful use of the Superman sabotages, the Imperials rolled over them. This meant that the world was under Imperial control.

So...We rolled up Traveller characters and ran them through their service careers(no scouts, one marine, one merchant). They got so old, we decided they had kids, so we rolled up the kids too. We mustered them out young and rolled on a table of worlds to determine where in the universe they mustered out (convienently together and coincidental)

1. Thool
2. Earf
3. Leng (named after the huge plateau in it's ecliptic 'northern' hemisphere)
4. Trantor

Now - before I move on to the roll on this table, we realized that having two generations 'modelled' we could flesh out the 'future history' of this homeworld. So I too rolled up a character (first gene-mush product of the two PCs...gross!) and then we decided to calve off doubles. With a cursory reconfiguration, and a brief pause to autofab, we let them loose in a safe sandbox program which we checked periodically...we were here to GAME not simulate...but old habits being what they are...

Anyway - back to what gaming is REALLY all about...the roll on the table came up 3 - Leng. Awesome! Marines vs Cthuloids! Break out CoC, the Night Gaunts tickle!tickle!tickle! and the scions of the Empire find themselves before the Masked Priest...

They waste him with their needle guns!

(At this point, not only was the sun rising, but our pseudo-selves had generated 34,000 generations on the homeworld! It had become a pastoral world of centaurs! Huh!)

Nevertheless, the Crawling Chaos responded - changed a subtle energy-state of the phlogiston, rendering jump drives inert - the shock wave emanating from Leng 'moving' so much faster than light that none had a moment to prepare (indeed! our sub-selves crashed! We spent the next few hours examining the error logs and dump. In their game they'd destoyed the universe several times and recreated it without our having noticed - gotten bored, retired to castles & keeps and spent most of their time trying to build the perfect 10' pole. Looks like they were really on to something when the Eldritch foulness took them...)

Yep. Just another pick-up game.

(tomorrow's game loop: ...Gamma World->Quirks->4e->Napoleonics->Aftermath->Gamma World...

link

This is a pretty funny (and brief) write-up about reacting to earth-collisions.
(has a cool map too!)
(from link in blogroll)

25 meme table

(why so much space above the table?)
(while you're scrolling, consider buying print versions
of Fight On! They're on a push to win a contest!)

d100	Descriptor	d100	Descriptor
01-04	Swamp	53-56	Vast Mountains
05-08	Dark Fae	57-60	Animal Languages
09-12	Local Gods	61-64	Dangerous Wilds
13-16	Sandbox	65-68	Costly Magic
17-20	(Brian Aldiss)	69-72	(Jack Vance)
21-24	Rituals	73-76	Reality Warps
25-28	Boring Towns	77-80	Demons
29-32	Ancient Underworlds	81-84	Orange/Red Sun
33-36	Evil Elves	85-88	Strange Plants
37-40	Cannibal Cultists	89-92	Hill Tribes
41-44	Underwater Horror	93-96	Poisons
45-48	Jewelled Throne	97-00	NO RAILROADS!
49-52	Astronomy

meh...general whatever

I think I'm getting my head wrapped around Play By Post. I've just started a game up at Vin's Trollbridge (had the last few days off to work on stuff...). It's primitive, and I'm wondering if all of the five players are going to 'show-up', but I think that running this is going to be a blast.

Oddly enough (!), playing more has cut into 'blog-time'...

The pace of online gaming is still a little rough for me but I'm getting used to it.I'm playing in a Warhammer FRP PBP and a couple of the players are in Israel, so there's next to no chance that we'll be online at the same times...so I don't have expectations of 'instant-action' or something...

This mode of gaming lends itself well to 'parlour-games', more abstract gimcrackery, woodshedding, strategy games. Thinking about the Play-by-Mail model - which I admittedly have never done, just read about it...I think it would be really interesting to run a sandbox game where every player<->GM channel had its own thread - or an approach that considered threads calving and merging a trivial thing.

I've been thinking about ways to deal with the absence of players. My inclination is to post up a table like this and let the players know that I'll run them as NPCs if I need to to progress the game. What player would want that? The DM is not to be trusted!

Cue Random Tables! It's just like AI!

Based on what kind of situation the characters are in, the actions of a character-sans-player are 'determined' by a die roll...

d6	COMBAT
1	Stumbles and falls down (momentarily helpless)
2	Decides to change weapons then changes mind (no action)
3	Moves to defend ally
4	Attacks nearest opponent/Casts sub-optimal spell
5	Attacks random opponent in reach or moves to nearest opponent/Casts optimal spell
6	Goes Berserk

d6	SOCIAL
1	Says something really insulting and wont retract it
2	Tangential mouth-mush leaves people confused and suspicious
3	Mumbles and grunts at some appropriate places
4	Doesn't say much
5	Lends good support to own or party's goal/agenda
6	Steals the show, very convincing arguments for own goal/agenda - may try to cast an 'appropriate' spell toward this end
*	"own goal" meaning maybe the GM's interpretation...

d6	EXPLORATION/STEALTH
1	Gripped my 2 minute choking and coughing fit (very noisy, takes no actions)
2	Lazy (-1 search or stealth or whatever negative modification os appropriate)
3	normal
4	normal
5	Is double-checking already explored areas/normally stealthy
6	Is searching (and finds 10 gp!)/sneaking at +1 (or whatever)

ha ha! wouldn't that be cute!

maybe in my lifetime

we'll find out that this is the 'answer'
(?!?)

RPGs vs Music

A war of attrition is always won. (look it up)

I've recently found myself drawing analogies between music and RPGS. I started playing D&D when I was 9. Started playing the bass guitar at 14. Being in a band is a lot like being in an adventuring party (with the singer as 'caller' I guess). I speak of small-potato bands - I have no idea what it was like to have been Fleetwood Mac, Celtic Frost, etc (tho I believe that Simon LeBon of Duran Duran has tried to exert psychic control over me for years...another story..another time...)

Some analogies ensue:

+ Run what you know:
RPG: the system you feel comfortable with, the one that already is the back of your hand. Not to say that one shouldn't use other games - but there's mostly likely one game that you know well enough to run 'off-the-cuff'.
MUSIC: Over the years I've developed some varying degrees of proficiency with a variety of instruments. There's the piano which is a constant struggle for me - it is on the edge of my ability to play it in a way that is satisfactory to me. But when I just want to play some damn music, it is not my instrument of choice.

+ Play what you don't know
RPG: this is one way to stretch out and broaden your vocabulary. Try different games, different settings, etc - try games that seem antithetical to youtr 'normal play'.
MUSIC: Listen to everything! Try to appreciate the best that each 'genre' of music has to offer. Sometimes it's hard to dig through the shit to find the diamond buried beneath - but you can always wash your hands afterwards! And once you have that diamond, appreciate it, yes - but there's something to be learned from it too.

+ Structure vs Improv
RPG: This is so contextually dependant on DM/player group style - but there's always a sweet spot to be found. Some players actually appreciate being lead around by the nose (I am baffled by this, but I have seen it happen...). Some people like to play with meticulous notes and plans for every contingency they can think of - others like to wing-it, riff, or whatever.
MUSIC: I have come to appreciate structure more and more - having been guilty of countless hours of improvisational wankery (some of it good - most of it boring). There's sometimes the magical moment when structure arises from chaos like an emergent system or something - but more and more I don't see these things as ends-unto-themselves. Improv is the woodshed, structure is the home.

+ Human Interaction/Social aspects/Group Dynamics
RPG: Gamers are weirdos. Perfectly normal people - I'm sure (I mean no offense) - but gamers are dedicated to a bundle of specific (various) interests. There's solo modules and the interior times of world-generation or 'game-think' creation sessions - but eventually most every RPGer would like to sit down at (or pace near, or loom above) a table with other like minded folks. We are idiosyncratic. This can make for some tensions (usually inadvertant), but by the nature of gaming, it seems most of us are actually interested in subsuming our own personality/ego to some degree, in the interest of play. Those of you blessed with regular consistent groups of friends and people you know well are lucky indeed!
MUSIC: The only set of people that I think are weirder than musician are people who run small record labels. Let's not start on 'the guitar hero' or (ARGAGRRGAAG!) "The Singer"... Performance brings out the best and worst in people - and barring any ideas of 'making it' in the music business, being in a band is (in most of my experience anyway) kinda a nightmare. Bandmates are like ugy smelly girlfriends that you don't even get to cuddle with...unless you're packed in the back of the van for the 17 hour drive to Missoula ...anyway - I consider myself more a craftsman than an artist and have seen ego and inflated expectation ruin more promising bands than I want to think about right now. Idiosyncatic. Generally stressed out and poor and driven by some combination of impulses to make music. Tough crowd. Of course, I haven't tried to play lounge jazz...or muzak. Betcha that would be pleasant...

go read Lord of Green Dragons

In addition to the fact that every damn post has been really interesting and well thought out and well written, this one about the Ranger is just amazing.
This just really made me so happy. So I'm a tree-hugger.
As a rule, I'm a total sucker once someone sayd 'liminal'...

warning:nostalgia

I've contacted the propriators of the game store I grew up with. This would be The Griffon in South Bend Indiana. A few nights ago, in a fit of nostalgic desperation, I started doing a web-scour for them and - guess what? No website! Talk about 'old-school'(!). But I did find an email buried deep in antiquated city listings...and it worked!

I spent a lot of time there - it's a new/used book store in addition to being the only real game store in the town. The Griffon really ended up having a pretty big influence on me - as a gamer, sure, but also in a more general sense, and I know I'm not alone in being subjected to fits of nostalgia for the 'FLGS'.

The owners, Ken and Sarah, have agreed to participate in a little email-interview thingee and I'm pretty excited. I'll post up this interview as it progresses.

I'm a shitty trapper

I am.
I try. Grimtooth's Traps? Love 'em.
Spring loaded darts? Cool!
Covered pits (with or without spikes)? Rowdy!
Weighted/counterbalanced floors - man that stuff is fun!
Gears? Falling ceilings? Scything whirly-gigs? Count me in!
The stairs just collapsed and became a slide into a lava pit?
WHHEEE!
I really appreciate good clever traps and stock mediocre ones too!
but I can't write them.

I've gotta back off of simulation and get back into gaming.

Traps have always suspended my suspension of disbelief, so I think that the way to deal with this is just to remove the expectation of the suspension of disbelief (no more prepositions...)

The dungeons I've always loved have been the ones that Don't Care - EX:
Player: Why is the poison on the blade hidden in the treasure chest still 'active'? Aren't we in the untouched Tomb of the Ultra-Ancients? How could it have stayed potent over the last 28 million years?
DM: I dunno - Ultra-Ancient secret formula...Funny that they used to put gold coins in chests 28 million years ago too...Roll your save...

That dungeon Doesn't Care. It doesn't have to explain itself - and if it called upon to do so would respond with silence or scorn. The 'why' doesn't matter...

OK. This was supposed to be about me not being able to design a trap.
Maybe I can't write about them either...