Boxing Things Up and Beyond in December

 The day after Christmas, Boxing Day, the second of three Christmas Days in Germany, my RPG clique has pulled it off. Despite some fatigue from video facing because of the Viddos over the last few months, we've finished two of 2020 campaigns and "piloted" one for 2021. The vid-face syndrome was occurring because lack of real life tabletop outlets from our normal conventions. Mind you, we are very used to on-line events-- where we don't need a lot of formatting and still use manual dice and draw maps and pictures.

I was able to conclude my Killing Hitler for my Red Bat die-hards last Tuesday (22.Dec). My agents of SEWA 66 (Society of Extra Weird Affairs 1961-1970), traveled through southern France and into Gambia chasing aging Nazi mad scientists. They encountered old men in wheelchairs that could turn into werewolves and chased WWII submarines down the River Garonne. The climax involved lasers glancing off of glittery purses and exploding space ships. 

Iron Curtis wrapped up his ICONS campaign in the alternate universe, The Black and White World, just tonight. Sadly the Crew, not the Scrap Pile, destroyed the whole thing using that world's very own cataclysmic plot device, the Chrominator of Doom, on itself. If you've never seen a moon made of cheese suck in its colonies and a flat world of the Map of Earth crumble upon itself to form a sphere, you should game with this GM to get a taste of it.


About two weeks before either of these, I started my '21 Icons-Supernatural campaign, Scraps of Magic: Mythos. I have written about how our gaming group was really developing the mystical superhero hero milieu, well it's starting to coagulate and shape into some serious high urban fantasy here. Hopefully the trend of curious bypassers stopping in to play continues. They helps avoid the Vid-Face during these Viddos.

As we, well me at least, will be breaking for the month of January because of the big life move and all, I hope to get started on my Mythos in earnest and get my Gonzop  dabbles running as a lively campaign. And Iron Curtis has not satisfied his thirst for something Scrap Pile for our superhero RPG subculture.

13-Page Worlds now 50 Cent Wonders

 Yes, Trent-Vor. Yes. I am still working on Red Bat: Playtested settings and T&T scenarios. I have six lined up, even roughly formatted, while I decide on how much help like say for editing and illustrating. Now I know most Batty buyers don't mind if it's just me doing the post production, but when it comes to illustrations I suck. When it comes to editing, I can barely type in English despite my creative affliction. I am still trying to up my game and if failing thinking of outside ppl to help while budgeting for them.

I have six of these so far needing refinement. See. I am working.

 
The "13-Page Worlds" has evolved into "50-Cent Wonders" as I usually can't keep the settings down to thirteen pages. And there is this currently amorphous need to revamp a web page just for Red Bat. Sorry they're taking so long, but things are going.

Older, Lazier GMs: Comic Book RPG and Rule Debating

In the days where the Rona wolves savage our lands for their dark Viddo bat-kings by attending family Thanksgivings, my play-groups have boiled down to close and familiar friends. I haven't had the chance to lay bear-traps at conventions where hapless attendees get dragged into my events, giving me the exercise of dealing with strangers and invigorating my somewhat shotgun-pellety creativity. Before of late. I have been a guy that often writes entire worlds for single shots as well as campaigns. Since then, my notes for a scenario in practice has turned into a the background for entire campaigns.

Using other people's systems, like our ICONS groups, is advantageous for this. Before, I compiled pretty complicated "Yes/No" charts to follow as to not be narrative-driven but to maintain a pace for the session. Screw pacing among friends, my friends will wonder if I have a fever. Well yes, I do, but not yet hallucinating. I am kind of sitting back and letting rules and PC tangents take up sessions.  People arguing about mechanics has allowed me to single-line in a few NPCs, some vocabulary (items, groups, and external factors). 

Is it all X-Mas Fudge? Naw. But there is cocoa.

What I worry about is the tone of the events of the session not the action per se. When my players get to some place when some narrative is required, that is when I bother to do the bedazzlement. I just go into more detail on my one-line entry in my notes, often typing the new details into the notes at the breaks in play. Still pacing is important, despite what OSR fans say, the convention tried and true form of "Intro-Event-Recoup or Event-New Obstacle-Climax-Outro" works just fine.

Efficiency from experience; or expedience because of exhaustion?  That is the question and the answer is both. But a good game is still it's own reward for me as a GM and the players around me.

Autmunal Awesomeness

 All Saints Day, the hangover of Summer's end harvest festivals comes rolling in. Appropriately in my region, the mild fall weather is giving into the mix of snow and wetness, driving any revelers from the ditches of their drunken stupors into the church pews and back into the humble abodes. Snow could be very well on the way. Where if one listens they can hear the howl of winter, as the cold front moves in.

Pumpkin Spice and Awesome Sauce

With a little help from some friends.

My own Halloween works didn't make it into Elder Tunnels Halloween this release. Everything I started working on just became too large and too intricate to be wrapped into a ready to scenario for a quick zine. Naw, Guys like Werdna, Scott Malthouse, and JerryTel, Jerry Teleha can do the 14-17 thousand worded scenarios with enough detail and atmosphere without needing to draw out a whole world from the GM.

I have been more into Autumn than just the Samhain-spectacular. While the RPG group has been focusing on the superhero story line and our crises on multiple worlds, my own notes have been on the focused on the time periods where everyone dressed up like people on oatmeal boxes. You know the pirates and wagoneers that used pikes and muskets to spread religious love and harmony throughout Europe and the New World. Where witches were burnt at stakes and slaves were all the rave, because indentured servants had rights. A more horrifying than Halloween but still muskets mixed with magic i 

Contract Law not World Creation

Ah yes, original Dragonlance

So I hear Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman are suing Wizards of the Coast for like 30 million US because they as authors cannot finish a newly started project set in the Dragonlance setting which they designed. So why aren't the folks at Hasbiro just firing everyone at the D&D shop? The complaint shows how incompetent the WOTC staff is as well as how, well, let's say, smart the authors are.

In this age of brand-based literature, the phrase "D&D" is going to sell something to somebody. There is a two-fold problem for the business majors spoiling our hobby in this. As Nick (last name unknown at this time) at the Complex Game Apologist points out, WOTC selling any world setting does not really help out the bottom line of a publisher that is not the creators of said setting. But at the same time the bean-counters among them take a look at the sales of sublets of D&D and see their original sales, so they cannot let those titles go. Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Planescape  and a few other non-sellers in following years come to mind but don't have the energy to type.

So why did WOTC enter into contracts with Weiss and Hickman? Is it because Dragonlance would sell massively? Maybe it was the stars in their eyes, before they got all distracted by the Alt-Right VS the SJW marketing ploy to keep sales increasing among people that have high levels of interest in gossip if pathetic bank accounts. It was because of the glamor of superstar-ed-ness or something or another I suppose. So industry savvy authors contract with a butt of sly-kids without the skills of a bar-tender, baker, or candle-maker into getting out their WOTC-owned title's magnum opus. The sly-kids, now in their 30s-60s, get befuddled at all the stuff that they find controversial and then start doing contractually illegal crap. Spend money much for no reason? Yeah? Good. They've got practice for the next phase of things.

And if it's about the diversity quota, why isn't WOTC incorporating people like Milton Davis, Elois Lasanta, or Mark Hunt? My list is limited but there are so many others. People that have designed, marketed, and sold their own games to other people not made up markets. Let them handle the business end and then later indulge in their own bits of world building. Instead the cast and crew of the publishing organ seems to made up by, based off their past works, to be more infatuated with maudlin sexuality and depression not gaming.

At the same time, we could very well see Hickman and Weiss get full control of their created work. How well it does without hype from Hasbiro's petty cash account, we'll see. I am sure a year's rent will get paid though. Then whoever is running D&D shop for Hasbiro can heartbreaking buy up the brand again and let future widget-producers type up stuff for the title.

Two Worlds this Week: meh you already know them

 

Still working on Sevven

 

The middle Bronze-Age-ish world setting of Sevven is getting worked on. I have released the reigns to let it go gonzo, like say Dark Sun, more so than historical folklore, This has come about after I read Blood & Bronze by Johan Nordinge and Olav Nygard with others. As a serious Mesopotamian fan, I admire their work but see the compromises the authors made to develop a world for coherent play and trying to get some action that isn't ethnic groups warring and ultimately slaughtering each other. So Sevven, Luxxe, and Bugge are getting a bit more infused with magic and beings more of regional than pulled off of murals. 

Right now the cosmos around the Fifth World is being worked out. Readers of the short-lived DC comic Claw the Unconquered will be familiar with the Nine Worlds. Four realms of light, four of darkness; and a middle one-- a fifth one if you will.  Still it might have some serious Blue-hair atmosphere worked in so players can get some sword-axe action going on. 

Yes you've seen this one before.

The "Stragea Isles" ecology (it's so pretentious, even I can't stop it) is coming along nicely as well. Trying to keep this setting, which is rather vast in my head, from spilling over too much from thirteen pages. Adding some art will take up even more page space, but we'll see how it works out. 

Sometimes Just Stop Typing

So I am like rebranding a whole RPG system that I never published into a 13-Page World (mini-game/setting for Red Bat) . So at 3:30 AM I am in the middle of a paragraph and I can't do it. I start going through the handy print copy of base rules. Still not much help, my imagination racing more than my note taking fingers can do. And then...

Plan out the Character Sheet! WALLAH. Six pages done.

Not one of the everything you need on the Character Sheet things, but really helpful at a roadmap for progression.