On the Balanced Encounter

I am not sure if anybody is noticing but "balance" in role-playing is eroding like sugar does in water. The concept of fixed expectations and success based upon an understood mathematical equation, the basis for a consistent board game, has been an axiom since the second week of the RPG's existence, I'll blame Bunnies and Burrows just for fun. It's been plaguing our hobby milieu as well. Of course like sugary water filling up our convenience store coolers, those that keep talking about it take up more than most of the space on the shelf of RPG gaming ideas.

It seems though that as many Gamers are being a bit more adventurous these days. The one example I can think is in an interview with Jeremy Crawford where he states, " ...We do not expect every time that adventurers come face to face with a monster that it is what we would consider to be a balanced encounter. Sometimes it's happening because it's right for the story and what that means is sometimes the smartest thing to do is to negotiate or run for your life... " Coming from a D&D-head, that is like Pope Francis saying, "Do what you want, I am about to go balls deep into that pool boy and his wife." on national TV. Finally someone realizes that thrilling can be fun even if overly dramatic-- amazing how many people think that drama ought to be removed the hobby of Adventure Gaming.

I bring up this topic for the T&T tinpot and the creators of the forthcoming "DT&T." From what I've been reading they've been overly concerned about making T&T "more balanced. I say it two years after they received their crowd-sourced moneys because I am getting the notion that they haven't really started on producing anything as of yet. I bet there is a good chance to avoid another D&D clone, especially now that D&D itself is trying to be more like T&T.

GenCon2014 O'Rama

Back from the big event and all I can say that it was awesome. I had to leave on Saturday PM, luckily past the crest of the party, for an emergency. Peryton and JerryTel, along with TimS and Darren, took over the booth and we had bumper crop of sales on Sunday. Oh yeah Ken St Andre was there, and he hard sold more copies of this or that than anyone, including myself, in 20 minutes for the whole four days.  So, let's talk about the games that I ran, or didn't.

"Temple Of the Time God" was a decent T&T scenario.  Michelangelo's David was there, which made me quite happy. Cramm was there running his own game. At my table,  there were three and a half new players. I had to shortcut the adventure because because a player named Sam figured out how to be a Wizard just by looking at the first level spells--oh look someone knew how to read words written in English, someone ell the folks in Phoenix. Never mind, they're stoned. The theatrics by the new guys (without even knowing the rules) during the scenario were outstanding. David knew when to help and when to stop.  

Wobble's "Corporate Raiders" had only one player, so I bought her ticket and regaled her with how the scenario has played out from sessions before for about half an hour. Someone remind that the NPC The Weeb has to be added to the multiversal mix. The woman had some good ideas herself.

I jumped in as an NPC and a Co-GM, to help out a bit, during his Glow session for "Valley Of the Towers." The kid GM while wading his way through the slog that is my rules came up with some good crunchy one-on-one combat ideas. The group was pretty awesome and patient. The fem-bot assassin knocked us all out. It didn't hurt that the player was easy on the eyes. Guess what. She won the best player award from her fellow players as well. Funny how that works.

My own "Valley Of the Towers" session had Darrenn Canton finally make some time hanging out with me. Had a fellow from a previous Spacer's game about eight years ago jump in. Had a very full table, then three of the rowdys slipped out to head to the game that they actually had tickets for. One dude was so slick that he offered to get us shots during the break. When I declined until after the game, that is when he informed me of his gang's departure. Hey, I killed their characters quickly. The folks that stuck around moved the plot forward very quickly.

I glimpsed over at TimS's second Glow session "The Temple Of Elvis" during the above session, you know, just to check, multiple times. He was doing just fine. Probably because he'd just finished his indentured servant status as a PeryPubber for the polyglot sprawl that is GenCon.

My Crawlspace game, "The Book that Dripped Blood" had a couple new players and Caed dragged Paul 2.0. It was a great session. Had a hilarious moment went someone crawled next to a missing corpse, that everyone was looking for, while trying to hide from somebody and she had no idea what was going on. Then there was the bathtub scene... . Remember Crawl is PG until after 11, and it was 1am folks. Ended up being three out of the four players already owned the rules. The fourth bought the game the next day.

We don't jump the shark, it jumps us.

Speaking of the next day, Spacers "A Fungus Among Us" had two of three players from last year, Brian and Drew, which was awesome because they are becoming fast friends as well great spacemen. The adventure is a re-boot from some 1999 chat-room sessions and this time around it turned into more of a space travel technical drama, lots of in-ship problems and spacewalks. When the fungus showed, it provided a great climax. This session was a Godzilla Spacers story. I am working out which actors are going to play the PCs in the movie as we speak. 

Sligo jumped in to GM the Qalidar session for the evening. Instead of "There Be Dragons" he ran "The Dust Factory," an homage to a favorite movie of his. Later on he'd do an impromptu session of something else to another group whose GM had not shown up afterwards. The man just can't be stopped.

Stay tuned for more pictures being edited in as we recover our full internet functionality. Check out my travel-blog for the details here sometime this week or weekend as well.

asd

Aug. 11: What Did I Do For GenCon

Quite a bit. Paycheck came in don't you know.

The "To-Do" List:

 

1.) Pre-generated characters for all the scenarios.
a. T&T
b. Glow
c. Spacers
2.) Check with folks to see when they want to help out at the booth.
3.) Make poster for Crawlspace Deluxe
4.) Make poster for Qalidar Resistance
5.) Make Robin finish the 13 Hour Clock design for Crawlspace sessions.
6.) Get Glow scenarios to newbie GM.
7.) Get Crawlspace character sheets printed up.

I also want to do a shout out for Charles Flemming and his "Rarr! I'm a Monster!" games. This fellow from somewhere south and east of Cleveland, who I've known virtually know for a decade is producing some of the best small press items that I can think of these days. One day, I hope to meet him at GenCon.

A sample of his work.

Aug 8 & 9: What Did I Do For GenCon?

Nadda, really .

But things are still very adventure gamey in my life. I've started re-booting our guest bedroom as a gaming den, hey it's an excuse to clean and fix-up my 120 year-old townhouse. Jotting down various little add on notes for "A Fungus Among Us" but in a convention game, high detail rarely gets much play. I just may be revising the whole TROTT mechanic again while working through some ideas for Glow and Spacers, or I may just be going to campaign settings for them and not releasing a game system for them. I suppose once I get some actual playing done that's what will really matter.

Tonight is the road trip to Columbus to game with JerryTel and Action-Liam. Peryton is frittering around the house with excitement this AM. If I see another damn picture of the 5th edition D&D book on my on-line feed today, I'll scream. Guess I had better avoid the internet.

Aug 7: What Did I Do For GenCon Today?

Still working on the Glow pre-generated characters. I feel bad. Wait a second, I've only been writing the game for two years, and the latest rough-draft print copies came in today.

Aug 6: What Did I Do For GenCon?

About a quarter of the way done with the Glow pre-gens. Then I took sometime to work on a 90 minute Wobble (or WOBBL, as Jerry and I play around with) scenario for this coming up weekend. It's a soccer and role-playing road-trip in Columbus. For some reason that man from Toledo isn't happy unless we're a little stretched when GenCon rolls around.

Still working on Wobble is always fun, and I got to come up with some concepts for my fake... err adoptive nephew Action-Liam's character. He's from the future or so he thinks.

Aug 5: What Did I Do For GenCon?

I did finish the Spacers pre-generated PCs, and made some notes on some game mechanic changes for the next edition of the game. Tomorrow when I wake up, let's see about some Glow PCs.

Aug 4: What Did I Do For GenCon?

Kind of a day of moving backwards.

This scene did not occur today

1.) Pre-generated characters for all the scenarios.
a. T&T
b. Glow
c. Spacers ...
6.) Get Glow scenarios to newbie GM.
6.) Get Glow scenarios to newbie GM.

Still working my 36 hour weekend, as I do every other Sat through Mon, so it's not the end of the world. By step backward I mean, that I've discovered that my junior Glow GM's email account is not working and the scenarios that I sent to him have not read him yet. I think he's out of town right now as well and not near an email outlet. I also didn't get the Spacer's PCs done because I was distracted in rewriting the scenario. Still six paragraphs is six paragraphs, and I at least love the product.

To talk a bit the scenario "A Fungus Among Us" has gone from chuckle title with a slight philosophical bend, to that and a RPG session that will get the players into the nitty-gritty feel of space exploration as well. Like I've said, at least I'll be happy with it.

Aug 3: What Did I Do For GenCon

With it being a working weekend I am not doing anything great, but at least I feel I am getting there.

1.) Pre-generated characters for all the scenarios.... c. Spacers

I didn't actually finish the pre-gen characters but I have six conceptualized. Upon looking at the notes for the scenario, I started some serious revision of "A Fungus Among Us."  I think the makings for some real nuts and bolts sci-fi is in the making. Shouldn't take me more than a few more paragraphs to have the adventure coming from a totally new angle.

Aug 2: What Did I Do For GenCon

1.) Pre-generated characters for all the scenarios.
a. T&T
b. Glow
c. Spacers
2.) Check with folks to see when they want to help out at the booth.
3.) Make poster for Crawlspace Deluxe
4.) Make poster for Qalidar Resistance
5.) Make Robin finish the 13 Hour Clock design for Crawlspace sessions.
6.) Get Glow scenarios to newbie GM.
7.) Get Crawlspace character sheets printed up.

Got the T&T PCs up, some 10 of them.
Emailed "Temple of Elvis" to TimS.

Aug 1: What Did I Do For GenCon?

Wat did I do today for to get ready for GenCon?

I came up with a task list of things needing to be done. Listed not in the order of priority.

1.) Pre-generated characters for all the scenarios.
a. T&T
b. Glow
c. Spacers
2.) Check with folks to see when they want to help out at the booth.
3.) Make poster for Crawlspace Deluxe
4.) Make poster for Qalidar Resistance
5.) Make Robin finish the 13 Hour Clock design for Crawlspace sessions.
6.) Get Glow scenarios to newbie GM.
7.) Get Crawlspace character sheets printed up.


And I opened the door to receive our printed works for sale from UPS.