Long time no post, and this one will be short.  Expect a much more regular posting schedule in the near future once I find a job and leave academia behind me.

Just a short note to let everyone known that in order to comply with the new GSL from Wizards I will be removing all of my 3.5e material from the website.  If you want a copy, download it now, because it’s not going to be here for very much longer.  In the future I’m going to go with 4th edition material, most of it focused on my new campaign setting (and yes, you will see bits of it here and on the wiki).

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As the summer approaches and I find  myself with a new job looming and more free time, I’ve started thinking about getting together a proper weekend group.  I’m one of the fortunate gamers who has a deep pool of potential players from which to draft.  It makes starting a new group easier, but not completely painless or easy.

While attempting to get together my own group of players I’ve also been talking to others who have been attempting to get any sort of game together at all.  It got me to thinking about strategies for finding other players and ensuring that they’re compatible.

In this age of the internet, finding players is a lot easier than before.  We’re no longer confined to simply posting a little note in the local game shop and hoping someone notices it.  Message boards, social networking sites such as Meetup.com, and plain old fashioned instant messaging all make it a lot easier to find potential players.  While this increased player pool is a real boon for forming groups, it also comes with a big problem.  It’s very impersonal.

Even if you can find several players, you actually haven’t met them face to face.  You also really don’t know them all that well.  What I do (and recommend) is meet potential players at a neutral location.  This being the Pacific Northwest, that location is often a coffee shop.  Once I manage to set up a time I meet the potential player and just sit down and talk.  Generally you can get a good read on someone in about 15 minutes.  If they seem like a good match then I’ll start bringing up the game itself.  If I get a bad vibe, I simply tell them that I don’t think it will work out and politely excuse myself.

This is really the key of finding a good and long lasting group; being picky.  I find that if you have a large enough pool of players it’s fairly easy to pick and choose for the optimal setup.  I try to find players that like similar games and play styles.  That way you have to bend less around several different types of players and you can instead focus on the game itself.

It’s far better to build a group slowly, starting with one really solid player that’s compatible than to grab a huge group and then weed out players that aren’t working.  Of course this isn’t always possible in some areas, but even if you have a tiny pool of players it’s better to stick with a very small section of compatible players than to try and shoehorn disparate styles into one game.

If you’re really stuck with a small player pool, there’s always another option; create more players.  I’ve done all I’ve can to teach folks new to the hobby how to play.  Often this tends to work out really well, as new players are a blank slate of sorts  You can actually train them in your favored style of playing with your favorite system, creating an excellent group from the ground up.

How do you find potential players?  Generally you want to start with folks who have similar interests or friends who have shown at least a little interest.  Don’t pressure anyone, but if someone shows a bit of interest try to show them the ropes slowly.  Really resist the urge to cram an entire game down their throats in your enthusiasm.  And if they say they’re not interested, don’t press the issue.  That just results in bad blood and negative opinions.

So, here I sit dreaming up new game ideas for this summer, gleeful that I have the chance to run for some different folks.  If only half of them hadn’t decided to move away or join other groups I’d be doing good.  As it stands now, I more or less have to start from scratch, just like most of you.

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Today, while reading through the first few pages of the old 2nd. edition AD&d “The ruins of Undermountain”, and seeing The Yawning Portal Inn mentioned (the everpresent inn run by a retired high level adventurer that was so prominent in the Forgotten Realms), I came to the realization that we didn´t ask ourselves so many questions about gaming back in the day, and that it was both a good and a bad thing. It was good because it meant that we would simply concentrate on the fun side of things, and less on the metagame. Things were that way just because they were that way, and it wasn´t important if it didn´t make much sense, as long as it was fun.

On the flip side, gaming has evolved much thanks to those very same questions. It is undoubtable that RPG´s have become more playable, streamlined and user-friendly with time (using logarithms for Traveller space combat, anybody?), and that they are better because of that. The only question that remains now is: “are RPG´s more fun thanks to that evolution, or not?”. Given that the simplicity of 1st. ed. D&d is still appealing to many people, and how a greater complexity, rules-wise is not always a good thing, it´s not an easy question to answer, and the most likely way to do so is to say “it depends”.

Ultimately, I think that a game is only as fun as the GM and the players make it to be. No amount of good rules can save a bad group, nor can a bad system throw good players off the right track when it comes to having fun… And that is the beauty of our hobby .

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As has been reported around the world and internet, Ernest Gary Gygax died this morning. I found out during class when a class-mate of mine, a non-gamer mind you, told me during a break. She’d read about it on some website. At first I accused her of joking, but it soon became apparent that she wasn’t. It was a kick in my very soul, as if I’d lost a very dear friend suddenly.

I never really knew Gary, not in any sense of the common word. Sure, I gamed with a friend who’d learned to game under him in college, I’d talked to him at a few conventions, but I couldn’t call him a friend or even an acquaintance. Still, the two times I had the pleasure of meeting him he was kind, courteous, interested and attentive. He gave me words of encouragement and a smile with a handshake. It’s not often that you get to meet one of your heroes and he turns out to be a wonderful human being.

Wherever he is (and surely it is some great celestial realm filled with ambrosia and never-ending dice), I hope he’s happy. He helped to create a game that changed my life in dozens of small ways and a few big ones. Without Dungeons & Dragons I’d never have met most of my closest friends. I wouldn’t have the wonderful job I have now, or have my name in the credits of RPGs. I’d probably have gone crazy in high school in my tiny town with nothing better to do. Or even worse, I might have turned to drugs or other delinquent behavior.

The game he helped to pioneer changed my life in such a profound way that I feel like I’ve lost a second father. That’s a hard blow to take, especially early in the morning without enough sleep. My thoughts and condolences go out to his family and friends.

Yet, in some very real sense, he’s not completely gone from the world. His legacy and his game lives on in thousands of homes every week. I myself will be running a game tomorrow. The edition may be different, but I’ll be damned if anyone says it’s not a direct result of his hard work. The world may be darker for his passing, but it’s also brighter than a thousand suns thanks to his work. He has brought joy, laughter, relationships, friendships, and countless other wonderful things to millions of people with nothing more than his wits, a friend, and some pencils. That’s a legacy that will live on for generations to come; a legacy that the greatest of men would be proud to call their own.

End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it; White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.

Rest in Peace, Gary.

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The news even made CNN and BBC. Gary Gygax, father of the roleplaying game, died today.

I dont it can be adequately be explained how much impact D&D and other roleplaying games has had on my life or the person that I am.

There’s only a small list of people I consider heroes in this hobby. Greg Stafford, Steve Perrin, Greg Stolze.. and Gary Gygax.

If we can see the world of our imagination, its because we stood on the shoulder of a giant.

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Ernest Gary Gygax passed away today at the age of 69 in his house in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. This is a piece of news that hit me, and many others, like a sledgehammer when we read about it earlier today. Apparently, his health had been failing lately, as his wife reported, and soon we will know more about it.

All in all, this is very sad news for every single gamer, whether they know it or not. Gary, together with Dave Arneson, brought us the first commercial RPG, Dungeons and Dragons. Without what the two of them brought us, videogames, roleplaying, miniature gaming, and many other of our little hobbies would not be the same. We would probably not be enjoying so many fantasy and sci-fi novels as we can enjoy nowadays, we wouldn´t spend countless hours in front of a table, with friends, pizza and mountain dew, slaying dragons and taking their loot just for the sheer fun of using our imagination and enjoying the company and the presence of our friends. Our lives would simply not be the same.

If that was not enough, Gary left behind many great things as a legacy: he took part in creating the wonderful Dungeons and Dragons cartoon series, he was both approachable and friendly whenever the fans interacted with him, and above all, he was The Original Dungeon Master.

Whichever plane you are now in (and I am sure that not even Elysium and Mount Celestia are good enough for you), you have our love, and you live on in your legacy and memory, Gary. May we meet behind the DM´s screen.

Javier.

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While getting over the last of this illness, I decided to finally check out this T.V. show Supernatural that everyone’s been talking about so much. I have to say that I’m very glad that I did. So far I’ve managed to rip my way through most of the first season DvD, and boy it’s been very enjoyable. What’s more, it actually runs a lot like an RPG to me. The two brothers are obviously player characters in both tactics and demeanor.

It’s given me a renewed interest in the World of Darkness mortal line, actually. I’ve begun to think that a good old fashioned monster hunting game with urban legends and monsters would be a whole lot of fun. I’ve just been trying to figure out a way to do something like this with an entire group of characters, not just two. It’s nice when a show gives you ideas like that.

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My god, I just get over being sick last week and now I have a fever in the triple digits. Dragging my butt over to the computron was hard. Want to write more, but having trouble sitting up straight. Will post more when I feel human.

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For those of you who don’t know, gencon filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. While this is of course horrid news for the convention and gamers everywhere, I’m not going to suggest we all panic quite yet. The main convention (Indy) is still a good money making prospect, so I don’t think we need to be canceling those hotel reservations quite yet. I still plan on going, of course (love the Con).

So, don’t panic but be aware. Now would be the best time to support the convention, as a good year of GenCon Indy could really help things out in the long run. We all need conventions, for gaming is a social activity and such large gatherings of players are good for the hobby as a whole. Plus, this year sees the release of Hunter: the Vigil and 4th Edition! Who wants to miss out on that?

But now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

This is just a little idea I worked up for a thread over at RPG.net. I thought it was interesting so I’m going to share it here. Basically it’s a slightly tweaked format for a street level supers game.

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Seems like there’s one of us in every precinct these days. We don’t announce it, it’s not quite so you’d notice, but some of us are different. Just a little bit tough, or stronger, or faster. Me? I took a bullet that should have landed me in a grave. Three shots right to the chest with teflon coated bullets. As it was I was laid up for a good seven weeks and landed a desk job down here in records. But I lived.

I thought about what had happened long and hard as I was recovering. I should have been dead, but I wasn’t. Most of the guys on the force just told me I was too damn stubborn to die, but I knew the truth. I was just a little bit more than human, just that much tougher. Once I recovered I started checking all the incident reports and discovered something rather startling. In my town alone there were three other guys and two women that had survived unusual incidents. Reports of an officer dead lifting a car off a wreck victim which was officially cited as him pushing it off in a surge of adrenaline. Well, I talked to Lt. Williams and told him my suspicions. He then showed me that he could bend a 1 inch steel bar almost three inches. Nothing like you’d see in the comic books but he sure as hell had more strength than anyone else alive.

So Frank and I began our search for others like us. We managed to gather almost four hundred people from around the states with varying powers. One kid, only thirteen at the time, managed to create some sort of super cell phone for all of us. It could scan things, take pictures, do conference calls and do rudimentary chemical analysis. Granted none of us but that punk kid really understand how they work, but they’re still helpful.

To what end? Well, once I started working in records I started noticing a trend with a lot of these unsolved and cold cases. Strange evidence patterns, unusual suspects, just all manner of strange things. I suppose folks who watch too much TV would have claimed they were X-files or something. I didn’t, I knew the truth. Just as there are hundreds of us who have these special gifts and live normal lives, there are hundreds of criminals. Probably twice the number that we have, since power tends to corrupt. This isn’t great power, but it sure is good power. And it’s corrupting people pretty damn well.

Problem is, there’s no real evidence to close these cases. Trails have gone cold and killers, rapists, and worse have gone free because we simply don’t have the skills to put them behind bars. Well, that changes now. We’ve got our network of people all over the states and you’d be surprised just how many of us are in law enforcement, or the justice system, or the medical field. See, those of us with these powers who don’t become corrupted often have a draw to serve the public good. We’re never going to be funded or recognized by the police departments or the U.S. Government. So our job is to find these bastards, collect the evidence to link them to the crimes, then arrest them with that proof.

Every time someone like me somewhere in the U.S. finds a case that’s been shelved due to inconclusive evidence or strange circumstances we send out the call for heroes. We don’t wear tights. We don’t go in and beat up the bad guys and leave them in front of the police station. But we sure as hell put them behind bars. The old fashioned way; with a badge and good investigation work.

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Basically this is a low powered street game that follows the rules of the real world. You can’t go in and beat up the bad guys - you have to gather evidence and arrest them. Sure you might get shot at and sometimes you’ll have to make a citizen’s arrest (or a real arrest, if you’ve got a law officer in the team) but by and large you’re doing real investigative work. This is basically a weird mish-mash of a mystery game, Global Frequency, and low powered supers. It also owes a bit to Hunter: the Reckoning in that you might sometimes fight out and out supernatural things that aren’t human.

If I were to run this using Mutants and Masterminds I’d go a straight Power Level 6 but with about 100 points to build with. I’d limit everyone to about 1-3 powers in a very closely themed power set. The idea is that you’re not clearly above humanity, only at the very peak of human potential with a few extraordinary powers.

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