eddyfate

The latest chapter of "For the Free" is now up. Tonight is what looks to be the final chapter of the cycle.

I had originally envisioned this to be a eight to ten chapter cycle, but the players are very on the ball, and a lot of the curves I threw at them they dodged really well (in fact, I expected this final story would take two chapters, but since that's been consistently wrong thus far, I'm planning for one). They even managed to completely bypass a couple of the fights I put together. Chapter five is the only chapter thus far where the player characters went too far off my radar for any length of time (the entire party scene), although it ended up being probably my favorite part of the session -- even if I was totally making it up on the fly.

While I originally had plans for a Demigod and God cycle for the game, I think I need to take a break after this cycle wraps up. One of my co-workers is considering a game of In A Wicked Age, and I have a couple of ideas for much lower-prep games I could run. But this has been a really fun experience for the past six months, and I think six months is about the right amount of time to get a good amount of gaming in without burning me out.

I'm starting up a Scion cycle for some friends, which I'm currently calling "For the Free." [1] In the process of reading through the book and thinking about the kinds of problems that always seem to crop up in more traditional role-playing games (not necessarily in those fancy-pants "indie" games, mind), I worked up a few rules for character creation in my cycle.

( These might not make any sense if you're not familiar with Scion )
[1] The title comes from a quote from the poem "Marco Bozzaris" by Fitz-Greene Halleck:

But to the hero, when his sword
Has won the battle for the free,
Thy voice sounds like a prophet’s word;
And in its hollow tones are heard
The thanks of millions yet to be.

I suck at titles, so I steal from dead people.

(This is what happens when you have to work late three days in a row -- I end up regurgitating a ton of entries.)

Atomic Array (Podcast): I've heard about this for a while (primarily from Ed Healy's insistence that I give it a listen). I admit that I was just letting it pool in my iPhone until I got around to it, because the idea of yet another RPG review podcast didn't spark my fire. But when I noticed that there were a lot of products being reviewed that I was actually interested in, I spent the past week catching up. And I admit, it's pretty good. After the first few episodes the dynamic between Ed and his co-host Rone starts to click, and they sound more natural. Each episode is exclusively devoted to one game or product, which actually makes it easy to skip episodes that I'm not interested in, but also gives in-depth treatment to the ones that I am. Each episode has a short segment of Ed reviewing a product that relates somehow to the main theme of the show, and Rone ranting about whatever appears to have passed through his brain before recording time. Once in a while, they have short skits or "phone calls" with related guests breaking up the main interview. And they give away massive amounts of stuff every single episode. If you're looking for an RPG review podcast, pick an episode or two and see if it's to your taste; I think this one will get better as continues.

Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future (RPG): Labyrinth Lord is, essentially, a free PDF RPG that recreated the original (late 70s, early 80s) Dungeons & Dragons with about 98% accuracy, a self-proclaimed "retro-clone." It's been created via the OGL, and the developers admit that it's primarily to allow new support for the original style of D&D. And it's free. This was the game I cut my teeth on, and I admit to a hankering of nostalgia for a D&D where the PHB, DMG and MM all fit within 160 pages.

But even cooler to me is Mutant Future. Like LL, this is a stab at the original Gamma World. Unlike LL, though, it's not a faithful recreation of the game, as the original GW rules aren't under the OGL. Instead, it's a different version of LL that feels like GW. The two systems are very compatible (and MF even includes an appendix on how to combine the two), but the game is actually something new instead of a mechanical recreation of a previous game. And it has spidergoats.

Just reading over the files made me want to break out the graph paper and notebooks, dig up my dice and run a session or two of old-school fun.

Surprisingly, this year actually worked out about the way I expected it too. If anything, it was far, far better than I anticipated. Sure, there were some bumps, but I can honestly say that overall 2008 was a good year for me. Here are my resolutions for 2008. Let's look at the scoreboard.

Learn As Much As I Can. Oh boy, did I. I read a lot, I did a lot, I talked a lot and I listened a lot. I still feel some days like I'm learning, but if I got nothing else from my experiences this past year, I learned a hell of a lot. Exceptional Success

Improve My Current Writing and Design Skills. I didn't have as many opportunities to improve my writing as I thought I would, because honestly most of my writing is filling in gaps in projects as they pop up. On the other hand, the opportunity to just sit and talk with my peers about writing, design and other elements of the job has really helped me think of things very differently, and I'm already looking at 2007 and 2006 projects and seeing where I could improve. Success

Become A Better Manager. Well, only my freelancers can tell me if I'm a good manager, but I have certainly learned a fair bit about management as a skill, and some of the roadbumps I hit early on are old hat to me now. Success

Get To Know The People I Work With. Actually, most of the people I work with are pretty fucking cool. I can't say I want to hang out with every single one of them (more because I'm pretty introverted than any comment on them as people), but I can't count the number of cool conversations and good times I've had in the lunch room, let alone at company parties. But there are certainly lots more people I could get to know, and I look forward to getting to know. Success

Play More Stuff Just To Play It. For a while I thought this wouldn't happen, but I did get to play in a few short games (including a hella fun D&D4e game with some work folks), and I did manage to get into a regular Mage game just before the year ended. Success

Read More Stuff Just To Read It. I actually get bursts of space where I can read, and I got a few books read while I was in the UK on vacation. I'm currently juggling work reading with the Night Watch trilogy, in fact. Success

Improve My Health. Eh. I am, in fact, healthier than I was in St. Louis -- my dizzy spells have gone down considerably, and I'm generally not claiming as many sick days as I was in my old job. On the other hand, I do sometimes come into work or telecommute when I'm feeling blah. Further, I have noticed that when I get into a good exercise routine, I'll come down with a short cold or my ears will ache, and I'll have to stop. So, I'm healthier, but I'm still not healthy. Minimal Success

Total: Success

This year, I actually have to come up with four New Year's Resolutions for work. Rather than coming up with two sets of resolutions, I'll just put those resolutions here.

Personal Goal: Get out more. It's weird, given that I've traveled more this year than in any other year previously, but a lot of times it's work or work-related. Spending ten days just doing whatever came to mind made me realize that I should make more attempts to get out and try things more often, with real people.

Professional Goal: Try new things. I spent the past year learning and building my skill set. I've tried a tentative experiments -- many works, a few failed. Now it's time to push myself and my craft and really try to innovate within the space I have.

Fun-Oriented Goal: Run a game. All I've really run this year was a haphazard Hunter game at lunches over the past several months. It's been fun, but I've spent far more time playing than running, and I've got the itch to run again. Nowadays, it's the constant struggle with the ancient demon Scheduling.

Overall Life Goal: Write a novel. It's weird, but I've never really had the opportunity to do it, and I've always wanted to. I'm confident that I have the collection of skills to pull it off, but I'm not in a rush to crank one out. At some point in my life, though, I'd like to do it.

Deimos Masque from the WW forums posted this recently, and it's a really cool idea: He's using Google Maps to track important locations and domains for his Vampire: The Requiem game.

I totally plan to steal this idea at some point, but I can envision this being a great resource for LARPs that often deal with matters of what location is in relation to what other location.

For a while (over a year at least, maybe longer) I've rallied against people using the term "metagaming" as synonymous with "cheating." Today I discovered that there is a common use for metagame that involves a particular kind of cheating, specifically "using information outside of the game to benefit your game strategy." So, in terms of role-playing games, it's using out-of-character information to benefit your character. Some games actually build such knowledge into the game structure (InSpectres jumps to mind first), but typically this is indeed perceived as a form of cheating.

My outrage is once again crushed under the stone wheels of the progression of the English language.

Steven Colbert continues to be completely awesome:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycLc1QZnVTs

"Gaming As Culture: Essays on Reality, Identity And Experience in Fantasy Games" by McFarland & Co was released last week. ( Information below. )