But, today is about good stuff, specifically: the release of Dungeons & Dragons, 4th edition. Thought I tend to play mostly Burning Wheel these days (especially for high octane gritty fantasy) I’m liking 4e so far, and I’m looking forward to playing it with my gaming group when we want to bring the big-action high-fantasy awesome.

All good, right? Right. So what did spend way too much of my time thinking about today? Starting a group to play some beer’n'pretzels dungeon crawling using Castles & Crusades (or AD&D) to run a bunch of those Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Crazy, huh?

I think the reason why is that I’ve finally — FINALLY! — figured out some issues I was having about gaming. As Tim will attest, I’ve spent way to much time bellyachin’ about trying to reconcile a lot of nostalgia for playing D&D when I was a kid and the sort of games we tend to play now which are polar opposites of what D&D has become

I LOVE LOVE LOVE collaborative world/setting creation, player authorship, conflict resolution, setting stakes, etc. etc. — all those new school RPG techniques, but I also have this real soft spot for classic D&D style fantasy that stems completely from all those years of playing AD&D from age 12 to about 17 or 18. It’s almost all pure nostalgia, because what I remember most about those years is hanging out with my friends (ostensibly playing D&D) and playing D&D with myself (making charactersheets with a typewriter, drawing maps, creating dungeons, etc.) when I wasn’t hanging out with my friends. There’s more of that than actual in-game memories (though there are plenty of those, too).

I ran a D&D 3.5e Eberron campaign last fall that ended in a real crash and burn. The problem? I spent a lot of time trying to drift D&D into something more like Burning Wheel, with predictably disastrous results. In fact, you can see it unfold in real time in my “101 Days of D&D” series here on the blog. Even though we gave up on the D&D campaign, I never gave up on that dream of revisiting my youth through D&D. It’s been an annoyance in the back of my head as regards RPGs for the last nine months or so.

At GenCon, I came to a realization: that I can both revisit my youth AND move forward with the world of RPGs that really excite me, but I just can’t do them both at the same time. The quandary now, though, is that I want to be able to game more than one night a week, so that I can run an old school game for fun and nostalgia and play in another group to enjoy the “now” stuff. That problem, though, is a welcome change from trying to hold both goals in my head at the same time.

1. Tim (no link) and I are finally inspired to get with it on our game design. We’ve talked about it on and off for a couple of years. Now we’re going to do it. Hanging out at the Forge booth and with a bunch of indie game designers gave us the kick in the pants we needed. We’ve both been involved in creative endeavors over the years (I’m a published writing in several fields and we’ve both recorded and released music). And though we’ve both roleplayed for over 20 years each, this will be our first true game design. Watch this space for more details soon.
2. Everywhere I looked at GenCon, I saw pretty much the same-old, same-old. Tons of card and miniature games (99.9999997% of which don’t interest me in the slightest — except for MechaTon!) and roleplaying games that just rehash the last 30 years worth of RPGs. Except for the Forge booth. It was definitely the booth with the most energy, with its constant demos and enthusastic designers and supporters ready to talk up the awesome games or demo one (their own or another’s). It was inspirational (see #1 above).

Okay, maybe just those two things. And they’re mostly one thing, I guess. Oh, well…

There are photos from GenCon taken by Dro and Tim from a couple of the games I was in (Burning Wheel and Burning Empires). The Burning Wheel game was one of the highlights of my RPGing career. The Burning Wheel guys (Luke, Thor, Dro) were super-nice and really made us feel welcome at GenCon, going out of their way to include us in stuff. Thanks, guys!

If you look closely, you can see my two favorite event tickets, too: (1) Luke Crane’s “Fires Over Omac” Burning Empires session and (2) Luke Crane’s “Inheritance” Burning Wheel session. Tim and I both are playing in both sessions, and we’re really looking forward to the Luke Crane Experience ™.

P.S. GenCon people: your website SUUUCCKKKSSSSS!! Seriously. Hire some serious usability experts next year to redesign the information in your site, not just tart it up.

There IS a sort of assumption in roleplaying that killing is just something that PCs do. It’s rarely — if ever — questioned and even then it’s usually in something like a horror game where the PCs are “regular” people. It’s not always something that you need or want to worry about, sometimes when playing an RPG it IS just about killing things and taking their stuff. But, sometimes it’s about more than that.

In our current BW game (desert people working to overthrow the evil sorceror king dictators and restore the rightful prince to the throne of their oppressed and enslaved people), I’ve been searching for something to back up my character’s Belief about whether or not he’s evil (really quick: he used to be a membe of one of the sorceror king’s elite assassin/spy cadre, but saw the light and is now working to overthrow the sorceror kings).

The Belief is “I have done evil things, but I am not evil.” Yeah, I know it sucks. I’m still working on that Belief, because it doen’t really convey what I’m after — which is a way to externalize (through the mechanics of the game) an internal struggle, specifically, whether it’s possible for Khasid to turn to the good side after a terrible life and a career as a killer. He has to come to terms with the fact that he needs to put those skills to use to fight for good instead of for evil. Can he take the same actions — though for different reasons — and consider himself “good” now? Is it the act or the intent that defines “good” or “evil”? Or is there some grey area?

Those are the internal things that I have this character struggling with. I don’t know that it IS possible to deal with that explicitly in-game without some whining and moaning via “pure roleplay” (something I’m not always very good at). But BW makes me want to be a little more serious and examine things a little deeper than some other RPGs that I’ve played (Note to Martin: I won’t specifically slag D&D here!).

Luke’s post has inspired some good discussion (on the BW forum and amongst my group via email) about the role of combat in RPGs and specifically of Fight! (the BW combat system) in BW. I’m not sure I agree with his contention that “[t]he mechanics in Fight (and Armor and Injury) are about one thing — killing and surviving an attempt on your (character’s) life. Burning Wheel — the entire game — is about this struggle.” I think he better expresses it in this quote a little later in that post:

The implicit objective in every Fight is survival — humiliation and murder are sister satellite goals — but it is your very life that’s on the line in these conflicts. Will you die for what you believe in?… The game is not about random murder. It’s about being forced into this situation by your Beliefs — right or wrong! — and laying your life on the line.

I think we flirt with that state in our BW game. We can definitely feel it when we’re there — and especially when we’re not. And Luke’s right: when you’re in that state, the game just burns.

It’s been one of the best games I’ve EVER played in (in 25 years of off-and-on roleplaying), though it hasn’t been a completely smooth ride. I’d like to point out some of the things we’ve done right and some that we’ve done — and continue to do — wrong.

The first is: in a player-driven game the players have to freakin’ DO SOMETHING.

Seems like a no-brainer, huh? My Wife would call it a B.F.O. — a Blinding Flash of the Obvious. But, it’s not, especially for players who grew up playing old school RPGs like D&D. We’re used to reacting, not ACTING. We’re used to the GM presenting us with a situation and then us figuring out how to react to it. BW isn’t like that. The action should stem right from the players’ Beliefs and should be OBVIOUS.

Now, we really did a good thing when we started this game. We sat down as a group at the table and hammered out the game world from scratch as a group. EVERYONE had input, and everyone riffed off of everyone else’s ideas. It was a great session. We proceeded to create some great characters out of that first session. But, I think we made a mistake with the Beliefs.

Our game was purposely designed to be short term and have some pretty obvious goals. Briefly: our group are trying to overthrow oppressive occupying tyranny. One of the characters is the legendary rightful heir to the usurped throne, and the rest of us are all focused on getting him to that position. The game is pretty epic in scope (though we’re struggling with the pulp concept and the gritty feel of BW — more on that in a later post). The problem is that so are our Beliefs.

In a recent thread about Beliefs on the BW Forums, Luke Crane (creator of BW) said:

[Y]our Beliefs are passable and playable. The third one gets resolved in the first session, the second one shortly thereafter and the first gets teased out over time — as the other two change and color just what you will do to achieve your primary goal.

And a little bell went off in my head: Beliefs can (and should) vary in scope. They can change (and should) during the course of play.

The GM in this game and I discussed this very thing in our usual post-session breakdown. We were disappointed with how the action (didn’t) went during the session. One of the reasons we seized upon is that our Beliefs are too big, too long-range. They don’t have much immediacy about them, so it’s hard to play on those beliefs down in the dirt of the actual events of the game when the Beliefs are floating way up in the sky above all the time. We need to bring those Beliefs down to where the game’s being played.

Since all of us at the table suffer from Abused D&D Player Syndrome (ADPS?) and tend to re-act instead of act, we NEED some gritty Beliefs to chase. Because our existing Beliefs are sorta large and amorphous, we’re having trouble doing things that seem to focus on the Beliefs. We’re not powerful enough as a group to directly challenge the Sorceror Kings, but each one of us has a Belief akin to “Malik is the rightful king, and I will restore him to his throne or die trying.” While that’s an okay Belief in the big scheme, it doesn’t give me anything to do RIGHT NOW, and BW should almost always be about the RIGHT NOW.

So, I think I’m going to mention this to the other players (or just point them here) and see if we can re-write at least one of our Beliefs by the next session that will give us and the GM something to bite down on in the next session.

I’m a half-assed follower of David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. GTD is focused on “Next Actions.” A Next Action is the next physical (more or less — maybe call it “tangible”) step that needs to be done in order to accomplish something on your to-do list (it’s a little more complex than that, but not really). I think a BW character will benefit from having at least one Belief slot occupied by a Belief that’s a “Next Action.” When a scene is completed and the player is wondering what to do next, the player should be able to look down at the character’s Beliefs and go, “Oh yeah, time to do THAT!” Once that Belief is addressed (if it’s something that can be “done”), it gets replaced with another, equally action-oriented, Belief that will keep things moving.

A player will be racking up the Artha if she follows a system something like that for her character’s Beliefs.

Comments?

But, I’ve been playing pretty regularly then (if not blogging), and I’ve got some things I’d like to write about. I hope to have one up later tonight and maybe another in a day or two with at least a couple more to follow.

See you soon…

1. RPGs: Haven’t been roleplaying for the last few weeks due to sundry other commitments for members of the group. It’s been a nice break, but I’m anxious to get back to it and soon.
2. Viewing: Just moments ago finished watching the first season of Deadwood. It’s one of the best shows on TV, right up there with Battlestar Galactica. It (like BSG) is a great example of what great stories can errupt when you throw a lot of characters that are full of conflict into a confined space and force them to confront their issues. To combine this item and the one just previous, I want to play some Dust Devils sometime soon. Deadwood also has two odd, almost competing effects on my speech. On the one hand, it strains mightily my efforts to rein in my pottymouth. On the other, it makes me want to talk (and blog) in a somewhat archaic and formal manner, which may permeate to some small extent this very post. Those of you who are fans of the show will most certainly know what I mean.
3. Weather: We’re about to get our first round of heavy weather tomorrow. For those of you that don’t live in — or, rather, near as is more accurate — Tornado Alley, that might not mean much. Those of you that do know that anticipation of a big storm system is complex. Having never faced war, I’d liken it to anticipation of a battle, maybe a battle against a stumbling blind idiot god.
4. Reading: Been re-reading a lot lately, actually, and enjoying the hell out of it. I’ve got a longer piece percolating about a handful of books with related themes that really shaped certain aspects of my personality. You’ll probably recognize just one of them, My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. It’s the only one of the three that’s still widely available in print. I just discovered last week that another one is now available from a boutique publisher in my very own state who is trying to revive the author’s list. I’m sending him some money (via the wonder of the Internets) today. I’ll report back at length when I’ve received and (re)read that one.
5. Sickness and health: After a weekend of gastronomic debauchery, my digestive system rebelled. It was a painful twelve hours but I hope to have learnt my lesson. if nothing else, it’s gotten me back on the clean livin’ bandwagon. In partial effort toward that end, I’ve joined the Mr. Bento Fan Club, enjoying my first meal with his assistance just today. See my Flickr stream (linked hereabouts) for the details.
6. Water: My primary means of recreating or hobbifying for the last ten years or so has been through flyfishing (and other outdoor activities like hiking and birding), mostly for warmwater species (especially smallmouth bass). The unfortunate downside to liking to chase the basses, though, means that there’s precious little to do during the winter (when about all you can catch on the fly is trout, which are plentiful herebouts but stocked, not native). However, the season usually kicks off in early March with a bang: the white bass spawning run. When the water temperature hits around 56F (the exact number is in question and the subject of much heated debate) they charge up out of the depths of the local Army Corps of Engineers impoundment (i.e., big-ass lake) and up the rivers that feed said big-ass lake. The run is on. I aim to do some fishing as soon as the big weather passes, as standing in a river waving a nine-foot length of graphite is generally discouraged when lightning is about.
7. Family: The Boy is three years old now. It goes fast, folks. Make no mistake about that. Lots of friends and family in town and around this past weekend for the Birthday Party. Much fun was had by all, not the least of which The Boy, who slept in his new tent in his bedroom that night. He’s a funny kid. He’s currently visiting The Wife’s grandparents in the care of The Wife’s parents. He’s only been away for 30 hours, but I miss him like crazy. I can’t even begin to imagine sending him off to college.

I guess that’s about it. If there’s anything else of note, I’ll let you know.