GURPS Myth: Now that I've introduced you all to GURPS and Myth in previous posts, I think I'll start sharing some of the setting that I've fleshed out for my players. Those of you playing other RPGs might take direct or indirect inspiration from it, and the rest of you can simply enjoy it as I share a bit of the story of our Myth campaign.
My approach to world-setting for the Myth campaign is exhaustive and ongoing. I already showed you a peek of the Myth map that I've broadened and deepened, which also represents a significant addition of population distributions, political boundaries, and ethnicities. Oh, and I also dubbed the world in the setting 'ceorth', since there's no reference to the actual name of the world in the official literature. What I've done to the official Myth map, I've also done to the Myth calendar by adding holidays and related histories, traditions, and festivals throughout the year of the setting.
The official canon for Myth didn't offer a lot of guidance for the calendar. The journal entries from the game were all dated with familiar days and months. The flavor text for the Journeymen and members of the Heron Guard also make mention that their names--Nine Skull Crocodile, for example--are taken from the year in an ancient Cath Bruig calendar. Finally, the thousand-year ages that define the Myth series take somewhat whimsical names--such as the Wind Age, Wolf Age, and Sword Age.
So, as I fleshed out the calendar with holidays, I had a lot of room for creativity. I began by looking at medieval holidays for inspiration, and so a lot of holidays that revolved around agriculture were set up to define the planting and harvesting seasons. I liked the idea of taking the old-style Day of Fools and making it a late winter holiday at the end of February--a time for the free peoples of ceorth to cut loose and enjoy themselves before spring duties and the potential of military action could begin. But there was one anomaly to consider: leap year. Based on the cyclical nature of the Myth setting, I decided that leap year would be a fun parallel to the fatalism of the cycle of Light and Dark. Specifically, it's a time for people to indulge in acts they view as aligned with the Dark and lose their stuff in wanton acts of medieval tea-bagging. So here's a sample of the descriptive text for today's holiday. In the course of our game, as the march of time reaches a specific holiday, I normally present the players with note cards with info on the pertinent holiday and their specific culture's traditions. There's currently three cultures represented by the players' characters, which will consist of something like the following:
Fool's Day (February 28) and Vandal's Day (February 29)
A day of revelrie, outlandish costumes, and the Fool’s Parade. Fool’s Day is a throwback to a festival of violence, said to pre-date the Cath Bruig, which held that the world needed a day of excess vice to minimize that of the rest of the year. It is thought that the Dark Gods require a certain amount of chaos to exist in ceorth, and so the people seek to placate the gods and maintain balance with outrageous acts of frivolity, pranks, and minor violence upon their neighborhoods. It is considered especially bad luck to discourage or refuse fools on this day, as though doing so dares the forces of chaos to visit their wrath upon them. The leap-year extension is even more raucous, with the fools resorting to mass pranks and acts of vandalism, and so it is called Vandal's Day.
Cath Bruig: The people of The Realm are especially stoic and worship the meritocratic elements of their society. And since the Church of Wyrdras, their patron deity, is especially devoted to service, order, and excellence, local temples of Wyrd receive particularly bad treatment on Fool's Day. The Fool's Parade in any town or city normally features a march of revelers in ghoulish garb circumscribing the city and then moving into the settlement and ending at the Temple of Wyrd. Along the way, the participating fools release crows, get raucously inebriated, and splash paint over windows. On Vandal's Day, marked windows get kicked in, all alcohol is taken outdoors and left in the street to be drunk by revelers, and fights swell throughout the settlement. These excesses are normally followed by ritually killing boars as part of a penitent meal sometime on March 1, embracing the values of discipline once more.
The Province: In The Province, Fool's Day is in particular about the commoner's relationship with the local nobility. The Fool's Parade is more gluttonous than elsewhere, with revelers inviting themselves into noble kitchens--kicking down doors if necessary--and feasting in the streets. Wise nobles will usually leave the doors open to their kitchens, or even lay out a feast in advance of the parade. On Vandal's Day, however, the participants often strip down to their small clothes in and around the lord's home. Servants of the lord are known to be beaten in proxy on this day, and many nobles take to dressing in rags on Vandal's Day in order to embrace the chaos of the day and mitigate any violent urges towards them specifically. Still, most commoners know that being a conspicuous Fool or Vandal, while ostensibly protected by the traditions of the day, is a good way to find one's dues inexplicably increased.
Gower: Fool's Day in Gower is especially grim. Participants dress in funerary garments, act out scenes of death, and leave grisly totems and talismans at the doors of homes. It's a rather more serious, close to home, observance than those in the rest of the Empire, in which Gowern embrace death and chaos in a more sober manner. The Fool's Parade will normally employ at least one Doom-sayer, a soothsayer employed specifically to cast dire predictions as part of the public spectacle. Fool's Day dinner will normally be especially opulent and decadent--symbolizing one's last meal. Vandal's Day, on the other hand, will see a fantastic amount of creativity as participants dress up as ghosts and spirits and haunt local burial sites, even going so far as to eat, drink, fight and otherwise indulge themselves over their future resting places.
Hope you've all enjoyed your Vandal's Day, and be sure to split a boar tomorrow to pay for it.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
First Blog Anniversary: State of the Nerdery
It's now been one year since this blog started. In that time, I've posted 79 articles, which amounts to one article about once every five days. That rate is certainly better than a lot of blogs out there on the inter-web, but it's not good enough for me. The last few months have been unacceptably sparse on the blog, and the backlog of posts-in-process has swelled to a dozen. But the pace of posts is increasing, and my goal for 2012 is to have at least 100 articles for the year. Of course, much of this goal is supported by the fact that the line of nerd topics is stretching around the hangar bay and halfway to engineering, so here's a few tidbits on what the second year of the Nerdery should bring.
Games
The coming months should be a rich bounty for gamers. In the next week or two I'm going to relate more details about the games I played at Fire and Ice, which will serve as dual reviews for the games and the convention itself. Also, there is a bevy of small and independent games that I've been meaning to plug for some time--expect to see those soon, too.
In seven days, Mass Effect 3 will be coming out. In no more than ten days, I'll be posting my review, replete with fan-boy conniptions and streams of sci-fi ardor. So there, you have a hard date for my Mass Effect 3 review: March 9.
There's a half-dozen long-term gaming projects under-weigh right now that will be featured on the blog here. The first of them is the ongoing GURPS Centurion examples that I started last year. That project hasn't been forgotten, just abandoned during a strategic reallocation of support assets. Secondly, I have been working on a fleet of Battlestar Galactica miniatures for some time. Those will be revealed piecemeal as I paint them, but the first reveals will coincide with my review of a space fleet strategy game to use with them. And thirdly, I have three special projects for 28mm miniature gaming that will be occupying a great deal of my time throughout the next year and will therefore be big on the blog, too.
The articles and reviews will be supplemented by Nerd Bread and Butter articles to help set the table for this feast of fantastic gaming, so hopefully none of you will be left in the lurch about these games, either.
Movies
Don't worry, though. The Nerdery is about more than just gaming. The next few months promise to be frakkin' awesome for nerd cinema, and I hope to be able to get a few opening-weekend reviews posted for some of them.
The Movie Web has been tangled lately, due to a persistent fly buzzing around my brain getting the whole thing messed up. I'm untangling it--in fact, I really already have--but the initial miscalculation of the Movie Web's progression made me think I'd made a mistake previously. I hadn't, though, so things should be getting kick-started there soon.
More Rants
There's still a whole cast of essential rants sitting out there, and don't think I've forgotten about them. "Don't Be That Guy", "Dumbasscience", and "Stolen from the Editor's Desk" are all fat and juicy topics that won't be neglected for too much longer. And "The Time for Dick Measuring" has been neglected for too long, so expect to see something in that field within the next month or less.
A Surprise
In addition to the announced projects above, I've been working on a special project that will be revealed within the next week or so. I won't name it right now, but it's something I'm sure excited to finally see happen and something I hope will help spread the word about my little not-so-humble blog.
In the meantime, filmatleven.
Games
The coming months should be a rich bounty for gamers. In the next week or two I'm going to relate more details about the games I played at Fire and Ice, which will serve as dual reviews for the games and the convention itself. Also, there is a bevy of small and independent games that I've been meaning to plug for some time--expect to see those soon, too.
In seven days, Mass Effect 3 will be coming out. In no more than ten days, I'll be posting my review, replete with fan-boy conniptions and streams of sci-fi ardor. So there, you have a hard date for my Mass Effect 3 review: March 9.
There's a half-dozen long-term gaming projects under-weigh right now that will be featured on the blog here. The first of them is the ongoing GURPS Centurion examples that I started last year. That project hasn't been forgotten, just abandoned during a strategic reallocation of support assets. Secondly, I have been working on a fleet of Battlestar Galactica miniatures for some time. Those will be revealed piecemeal as I paint them, but the first reveals will coincide with my review of a space fleet strategy game to use with them. And thirdly, I have three special projects for 28mm miniature gaming that will be occupying a great deal of my time throughout the next year and will therefore be big on the blog, too.
The articles and reviews will be supplemented by Nerd Bread and Butter articles to help set the table for this feast of fantastic gaming, so hopefully none of you will be left in the lurch about these games, either.
Movies
Don't worry, though. The Nerdery is about more than just gaming. The next few months promise to be frakkin' awesome for nerd cinema, and I hope to be able to get a few opening-weekend reviews posted for some of them.
The Movie Web has been tangled lately, due to a persistent fly buzzing around my brain getting the whole thing messed up. I'm untangling it--in fact, I really already have--but the initial miscalculation of the Movie Web's progression made me think I'd made a mistake previously. I hadn't, though, so things should be getting kick-started there soon.
More Rants
There's still a whole cast of essential rants sitting out there, and don't think I've forgotten about them. "Don't Be That Guy", "Dumbasscience", and "Stolen from the Editor's Desk" are all fat and juicy topics that won't be neglected for too much longer. And "The Time for Dick Measuring" has been neglected for too long, so expect to see something in that field within the next month or less.
A Surprise
In addition to the announced projects above, I've been working on a special project that will be revealed within the next week or so. I won't name it right now, but it's something I'm sure excited to finally see happen and something I hope will help spread the word about my little not-so-humble blog.
In the meantime, filmatleven.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Budget-Nerdery: Fire and Ice Convention
Budget Nerdery: I've often said that nerdery is about enthusiasm. And let's face it: enthusiasm can be expensive. Fortunately, experience is often a good way to help curtail expense and find great ways to enjoy yourself, indulge a lot, and still spend only a little. So let me share some experience so you too can enjoy similar hobbies without spending too much. That is, without spending more than is necessary...you still might spend a good deal, but that's not my fault.
This past weekend, the wife and my sidekick joined me on our first family vacation. I've always been a homebody when it comes to the typical beach/resort/clubbing vacation. I enjoy doing different things with my time off. Such as writing, painting, and fleshing out the fantasy medieval economy of my current RPG campaign. Nerdy things. So we treated ourselves to something special--our kind of special. A nerd smorgasbord, with sprinklings of several new experiences cemented by some of our favorite hobby game types. This was found at the Fire and Ice Convention in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. It was awesome, friendly, and full of all sorts of activities and games that we utterly devoured like a pair of ravenous wolves tearing into a defenseless Cheese-head granny.
I'll be enumerating many things that I enjoyed about this trip, but one of them that really struck me was just how much enjoyment the three of us were getting out of our weekend for such a good deal. So here's a quick-but-total itemization of our expenses for the weekend, so you can appreciate similar opportunities in your own area. Heck, if you're anywhere near northern Wisconsin this time next year, you should definitely consider joining us.
2 Weekend passes: $50
A weekend pass gives you six raffle tickets for the daily door prizes and access to all of the weekend's game events. There's about two dozen tables devoted to board games of various types and lengths, a dozen for miniature games and card tables, and a handful of booths for role-playing games all interspersed with some vendor tables for several local hobby shops. I'll detail things more later, but for now here's a list of the games I played over the weekend: GURPS: Thundercats; Eclipse the board game; Mechwarrior the miniature game; a Dawn of the Dead miniature skirmish game; the SPANC card game; a session of the Deadlands RPG; a session of GURPS: Justice League; an epic game of Memoir '44 Overlord; and a soon-to-be-published RPG called Mistrunner. And that was with sleeping in and a big lunch on Saturday and leaving at four on Sunday.
2 Night stay, Super 8: $107.35
The Manitowoc Super 8 is ridiculously close to the venue site, clean, and well-maintained. The front-desk staff were nice and friendly, and tolerated the wife and I playing a late night game of SPANC in the lobby so ourhellion offspring could terror-ass around the dining chairs and into the lobby and cook off a little Con-infused hyperactivity before bed.
Gas: $43.29
This is included for completion's sake, but we really only used about two-fifths of a tank of gas, as the trip was only about a hundred and ten miles for us. A word of warning for anyone traveling through Milwaukee to the Con, though: that vaguely urban center is actually a driving proficiency anomaly for the entire state of Wisconsin. While you can trust Cheesers to drive a good 10 miles over the speed limit on most rustic roads and cruise in the fast lane at 75-85 miles-per-hour, those who congest Milwaukee's arteries clot at no more than 60 mph--65 if you're lucky--in the fast lane. Practice your G-rated curse-words before leaving.
Pizza Ranch: $17.83
This place was great. It's a small chain of Midwest pizza buffets with great food, wonderful service, and a wonderful atmosphere that's rustic but still bright and clean. In addition to buffet staples and your typical basic topping pizzas (fresh and piping hot), they make specialty pizzas that have haunted the last ten meals I have had since trying them. Chicken and broccoli alfredo pizza, complete with creamy sauce that completely transforms the pizza slice. A tomato-basil pizza with actual whole slices of spiced tomato nuzzled beneath the cheese layer. And those were just the ones I could pack in three slices at a time before my gorram stomach and gaming schedule demanded we head to the Con and register. If you're ever within a twenty-mile radius of a Pizza Ranch, you owe it to yourself to swing by and give it a try.
Taco Bell: $9.42
This requires almost no explanation. Gamers love the Bell of Taco. I love the Bell of Taco. In fact, I noticed that of the major fast food chains near the convention venue, Taco Bell's was the most busy throughout the weekend. Hmmm...nachos.
Wal-mart: $10.37
Mostly, this was to snag some last minute Imodium and Gas-X. Apparently, my beloved thought that my fellow gamers might appreciate these OTC stop-gaps after I spent two hours in the car, followed by a pizza buffet. To my credit, I hardly needed the latter, and the former was completely unnecessary. Really. And don't think it's gross--I'm really a companionably hygienic gamer. I just have trouble over-sharing.
Food bought at the Con: $9.75
This was for two or three quick meals between games over the weekend. The small-but-essential concessions menu consists of things like nachos, grilled cheese, burgers, hot dogs, and a bunch of sweets. They're all good and priced reasonably--which is to say, a bit more than what you'd pay in a grocery store, but less than what you'd get saddled with at a high-school or college sporting event.
Auction board games and books: $40
Gamers can bring their own games to Fire and Ice and put them up for auction, with each day serving as a separate round of bidding. It's a great way to quickly get exposed a broad range of new and old gaming gems, with a chance to peak at the components, too. For forty papyrus notes, we went home with games normally worth a total of $90 that we'd never have noticed otherwise. I'll let you know what I think of two of them--SPANC and Red Dragon Inn--in the coming weeks.
One-page sketch by Kurt Wilcken: $25
Kurt led the GURPS games I'd played in, and as a cartoonist he'd sketched out some character illustrations on 3x5 cards for us to use. After our GURPS Thundercats game he gave Abi and I the cards for our characters--Panthro and Liono, respectively--and I just had to see more. They'll doubtless all get posted up here on the blog when I get the full-page illustration, too.
Culver's: $13.63
Culver's chains are a staple of Wisconsin--they're frakkin' everywhere here. So it was only a matter of time before our weekend saw us at a Culver's location. Plus, I'd forgotten to get some fried cheese curds, so I guess we'll be hitting up a local Culver's this week or next.
Buffalo Wild Wings: $20.55
At the end of a long, full weekend, we decided to splurge one last time and get some "tatonka" as I like to mumble whenever we pass by. It seems like every time we want to get some beedubs to-go, however, it falls on a Sunday evening and we have to deal with crowding and a longer wait than usual. Oh well, epic weekend anyways.
Total: $347.19
After this inaugural weekend, we've decided to make Fire and Ice (and Pizza Ranch!) an annual family outing. It's fun, special, and quite cost effective for a family to do. Kids five to twelve get into the convention for just ten or fifteen dollars a head, as I recall, and the food at the convention is a convenient way to save hassle and money. We probably could quarter our food expenditure by eating at the Con more, and certainly will in the future.
In any case, I hope you've appreciated this purely mercenary break down of the experience. Later in the week I'll post more about the games and my experiences and impressions of them. But for now: I'm pooped.
This past weekend, the wife and my sidekick joined me on our first family vacation. I've always been a homebody when it comes to the typical beach/resort/clubbing vacation. I enjoy doing different things with my time off. Such as writing, painting, and fleshing out the fantasy medieval economy of my current RPG campaign. Nerdy things. So we treated ourselves to something special--our kind of special. A nerd smorgasbord, with sprinklings of several new experiences cemented by some of our favorite hobby game types. This was found at the Fire and Ice Convention in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. It was awesome, friendly, and full of all sorts of activities and games that we utterly devoured like a pair of ravenous wolves tearing into a defenseless Cheese-head granny.
I'll be enumerating many things that I enjoyed about this trip, but one of them that really struck me was just how much enjoyment the three of us were getting out of our weekend for such a good deal. So here's a quick-but-total itemization of our expenses for the weekend, so you can appreciate similar opportunities in your own area. Heck, if you're anywhere near northern Wisconsin this time next year, you should definitely consider joining us.
2 Weekend passes: $50
A weekend pass gives you six raffle tickets for the daily door prizes and access to all of the weekend's game events. There's about two dozen tables devoted to board games of various types and lengths, a dozen for miniature games and card tables, and a handful of booths for role-playing games all interspersed with some vendor tables for several local hobby shops. I'll detail things more later, but for now here's a list of the games I played over the weekend: GURPS: Thundercats; Eclipse the board game; Mechwarrior the miniature game; a Dawn of the Dead miniature skirmish game; the SPANC card game; a session of the Deadlands RPG; a session of GURPS: Justice League; an epic game of Memoir '44 Overlord; and a soon-to-be-published RPG called Mistrunner. And that was with sleeping in and a big lunch on Saturday and leaving at four on Sunday.
2 Night stay, Super 8: $107.35
The Manitowoc Super 8 is ridiculously close to the venue site, clean, and well-maintained. The front-desk staff were nice and friendly, and tolerated the wife and I playing a late night game of SPANC in the lobby so our
Gas: $43.29
This is included for completion's sake, but we really only used about two-fifths of a tank of gas, as the trip was only about a hundred and ten miles for us. A word of warning for anyone traveling through Milwaukee to the Con, though: that vaguely urban center is actually a driving proficiency anomaly for the entire state of Wisconsin. While you can trust Cheesers to drive a good 10 miles over the speed limit on most rustic roads and cruise in the fast lane at 75-85 miles-per-hour, those who congest Milwaukee's arteries clot at no more than 60 mph--65 if you're lucky--in the fast lane. Practice your G-rated curse-words before leaving.
Pizza Ranch: $17.83
This place was great. It's a small chain of Midwest pizza buffets with great food, wonderful service, and a wonderful atmosphere that's rustic but still bright and clean. In addition to buffet staples and your typical basic topping pizzas (fresh and piping hot), they make specialty pizzas that have haunted the last ten meals I have had since trying them. Chicken and broccoli alfredo pizza, complete with creamy sauce that completely transforms the pizza slice. A tomato-basil pizza with actual whole slices of spiced tomato nuzzled beneath the cheese layer. And those were just the ones I could pack in three slices at a time before my gorram stomach and gaming schedule demanded we head to the Con and register. If you're ever within a twenty-mile radius of a Pizza Ranch, you owe it to yourself to swing by and give it a try.
 |
| My son, perfectly imitating my cheese-induced mania at Pizza Ranch |
Taco Bell: $9.42
This requires almost no explanation. Gamers love the Bell of Taco. I love the Bell of Taco. In fact, I noticed that of the major fast food chains near the convention venue, Taco Bell's was the most busy throughout the weekend. Hmmm...nachos.
Wal-mart: $10.37
Mostly, this was to snag some last minute Imodium and Gas-X. Apparently, my beloved thought that my fellow gamers might appreciate these OTC stop-gaps after I spent two hours in the car, followed by a pizza buffet. To my credit, I hardly needed the latter, and the former was completely unnecessary. Really. And don't think it's gross--I'm really a companionably hygienic gamer. I just have trouble over-sharing.
Food bought at the Con: $9.75
This was for two or three quick meals between games over the weekend. The small-but-essential concessions menu consists of things like nachos, grilled cheese, burgers, hot dogs, and a bunch of sweets. They're all good and priced reasonably--which is to say, a bit more than what you'd pay in a grocery store, but less than what you'd get saddled with at a high-school or college sporting event.
Auction board games and books: $40
Gamers can bring their own games to Fire and Ice and put them up for auction, with each day serving as a separate round of bidding. It's a great way to quickly get exposed a broad range of new and old gaming gems, with a chance to peak at the components, too. For forty papyrus notes, we went home with games normally worth a total of $90 that we'd never have noticed otherwise. I'll let you know what I think of two of them--SPANC and Red Dragon Inn--in the coming weeks.
One-page sketch by Kurt Wilcken: $25
Kurt led the GURPS games I'd played in, and as a cartoonist he'd sketched out some character illustrations on 3x5 cards for us to use. After our GURPS Thundercats game he gave Abi and I the cards for our characters--Panthro and Liono, respectively--and I just had to see more. They'll doubtless all get posted up here on the blog when I get the full-page illustration, too.
Culver's: $13.63
Culver's chains are a staple of Wisconsin--they're frakkin' everywhere here. So it was only a matter of time before our weekend saw us at a Culver's location. Plus, I'd forgotten to get some fried cheese curds, so I guess we'll be hitting up a local Culver's this week or next.
Buffalo Wild Wings: $20.55
At the end of a long, full weekend, we decided to splurge one last time and get some "tatonka" as I like to mumble whenever we pass by. It seems like every time we want to get some beedubs to-go, however, it falls on a Sunday evening and we have to deal with crowding and a longer wait than usual. Oh well, epic weekend anyways.
Total: $347.19
After this inaugural weekend, we've decided to make Fire and Ice (and Pizza Ranch!) an annual family outing. It's fun, special, and quite cost effective for a family to do. Kids five to twelve get into the convention for just ten or fifteen dollars a head, as I recall, and the food at the convention is a convenient way to save hassle and money. We probably could quarter our food expenditure by eating at the Con more, and certainly will in the future.
In any case, I hope you've appreciated this purely mercenary break down of the experience. Later in the week I'll post more about the games and my experiences and impressions of them. But for now: I'm pooped.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Remembering Myth
Bah--these gaps between posts, while diminishing, are not deliberate. Think I'm going to assault you with a flimsy excuse about "life issues", "work schedule", or "It's so hard being a new parent"? Hah! Shows what you know. I'm a nerd, and while all those things have been occupying me, I've been dinking around doing nerdy things, too, so I'm not giving any excuses. Nope.
Think that I'm going to start making it easier on myself to update the blog more regularly by cutting content, depth of posts, or posting link-filled drivel like most other blogs? Hah! Shows what you know. I don't believe in lowering the bar, and I certainly don't believe in using only ten words to make a point when one hundred words will reinforce the position and a thousand words will completely sponge out opposition.
Think that I'm limiting myself by the intense, nerd focus of the blog? Hah! Shows what you know. Today I'm going to drag you back to 1997, when Bungie was not yet a household name but no longer a garage-sized developer, either. When games were pretty much always 2D and resembled their topics of violence like Picasso paintings resembled his subjects. When the only way to get a "visceral" gaming experience was to take shots in between matches with your favorite Street Fighter character--it's Chun-Li or M. Bison, you know it--and shake your head a lot. That's right, we're going back to the release of Myth: The Fallen Lords.
Now I permit two divergent opinions of Myth: The Fallen Lords and its sequel Myth II: Soulblighter. The first opinion is that it's the best frakking game ever made. The alternative opinion is that it's one of the best frakking games ever made. See what I did there? The only other valid opinion to have regarding Myth is ignorance, and that won't hold up by the time you're done reading this.
Early in 1997, my big brother drove me to the local Computer City in the outlet mall near our house. Handing him a five-dollar bill and letting him foot the change, we bought a boxed demo of the game Myth: The Fallen Lords. Since this was still a few years before the internet became the favored medium of distributing software demos, and since it was also the first game that actually captured my interest before release, it was and has remained the only boxed game demo I've ever purchased with my own money. Plus about 70 cents of my big brother's cash, and about a quarter of a gallon of gas thrown in for audit purposes.
I've mentioned Myth a few times in the blog so far. It was one of the first games I really played to death in its heyday and even in the years after Bungie was sold to Microsoft. Featuring the proper blend of storytelling and intuitively addicting gameplay, Myth: The Fallen Lords and Myth II: Soulblighter were all kinds of inspiring and fulfilling. Upon its release, Myth: The Fallen Lords became an instant personal hit for striking three chords that no game before it--and few games since--have done.
Myth was... awesome tactics
The Myth series of games were real-time tactical computer games. Real-time sub-genres encompass any game in which time passes at a steady rate. The alternative to this is the turn-based game, in which time passes in discreet chunks at uneven intervals, much like your average board game. Another typical aspect of the tactics genre is a lack of unit or building construction. In a strategy game, like Starcraft, you construct a barracks using some largely conceptual resources and then use those same resources to build marines in that same barracks--all of which occurs in real-time while managing the rest of the game. Not so with a tactical game like Myth. You start off with a specific number of units, who may or may not be surviving veterans from previous missions, and you receive no additional units except for finding the occasional stragglers elsewhere on the map. It lacks the resource management and base-building that makes the strategy genre so popular, but it also demands more decision-making precision on behalf of the player, as mistakes and losses are more costly and irreparable.
The other thing that really made Myth shine as a tactical game was its approach to simple-but-dynamic combat. With forces that typically fell around thirty men for a given mission, you'd have to pay careful attention to how you moved your soldiers and in what formations. While strategy games at the time and many still have at their heart a simple rock-paper-scissors mechanic, Myth innovated with dynamics that emphasized timing and position instead. Getting your archers in a line formation on a ridge or having your dwarves flank a force of undead axe-wielders was the key to victory, and made it more viscerally engaging than simply knowing when to spam air units to counter enemy tanks.
Myth was... a technical innovation
Even though Bungie was a cottage game company at the time, Myth was part of the leading waves of the computer game industry. Its in-game graphics were a combination of 3D rendered terrain and 2D sprite collections for units and viscera. In one of my earlier Mass Effect posts I mentioned the nature of 3D rendering--adding skins to a mesh, which moves based on the keyframes of an animation skeleton. Well, Myth was still a little before those days. The terrain itself was a very simple mesh, not having the contours or fine details of a human figure, with a very low resolution skin. And, since it's terrain, it doesn't need to move, so no keyframes were needed. The units and most of the games' other details, though, needed to move. And, with a freely rotating 3D camera, they needed to be drawn at all sorts of angles. In steps the ancient and venerable 2D sprite.
A 2D sprite is a collection of flat image files that are called up based upon the perspective of the camera in a game. If, say, you're looking at a standing warrior unit from the three-quarters perspective, then the sprite references the appropriate image and displays it. It makes for a rough equivalent for 3D units, and requires a lot more work for the artists, but in these early days of 3D gaming it was simply the only way to have 3D game-play in real-time.
Imagine you're looking for someone in a crowd, only you don't know what they look like. 2D sprites would be like having a handful of photos of the person from different angles, whereas 3D rendering might be represented by having someone with you who knows what the objective person looks like. Having those photos handy for comparison is quite a bit less reliable, but it's something that you could mass produce even when it's too much trouble to get a first-hand witness. That's what 2D sprites are for, and they're still used in less noticeable roles in modern games, too.
Above you can see what the game actually looked like with the two elements coexisting on the screen. Note the rubble in the foreground and the building's corner to the left--these too are rendered in true 3D, hence the lines are more clearly defined and the objects have more consistency as the camera moves around them. Still, the ability to have tactics and gameplay that were not only three-dimensional but also embraced a freely controlled camera made Myth: The Fallen Lords a novel and thrilling experience at the time. And when Myth II: Soulblighter added the ability to save your completed missions as 'films', allowing you to roam around and survey the battle from different camera angles than you used the first time, well it went to a lot of gamers' heads. As happened again when Bungie brought that feature to Halo 3 ten years later.
Myth was... a fabulous setting
There are two general ways to creatively react to your inspirations: imitation and emulation. Imitation is easy to recognize and easy to tackle, and it involves you picking what you admire from the inspirational source and simply shoe-horning it into your own material. Emulation, on the other hand, involves more research and insight, and if it's done right or wrong your fans might not even see the relation to the source material. Because emulation involves trying to recreate and adapt the methods by which the inspirational material was created--to divine the process and re-tool it to create something of your own. I believe Myth is inspired by and emulates the works of Tolkien. That is, without being very much like Middle Earth in any superficial ways, Myth tackles the setting in a way that I think Tolkien would have if he were a game designer in the 90s. You see, Tolkien was all about creating a syncretic sort of mythology that incorporated themes from the Germanic and Old English myths that inspired a lot of his early academic career, but with a keen focus to create a thoroughly British fantastic folklore. I'm pretty sure the guys at Bungie had a similar goal--in addition to their seven step plan to world domination*.
The game's setting is inspired by the fatalism of Norse, Celtic, and Germanic myth. It's set in a world without elves, where the dwarves are surly tinkerers rather than axe-swinging braggarts, and where evil wins fifty percent of the time. Literally. See, in the Myth setting, time is on a cycle of Light and Dark, and each rules for a thousand years before falling to the opposing order (or disorder, as the case may be). And each time civilization sways, it is conquered by a Leveller--a spirit that is a champion of order and justice to end every age of Dark, or a malign destroyer to end every age of Light. It's very Norse and gloriously stoic, as the stories plod through grim humor, violent heroism, and constant sacrifice. And the voice actor, the James Schneider, who introduces the missions captures this perfectly. Listen to his Old World brogue and seasoned ramblings at the Myth journals website--simply click on the sound bar to the right to enjoy quality, intriguing story-telling and tingling tension--that is Myth, baby.
I'll go on about the setting more in later posts as I share bits of my ongoing GURPS Myth campaign, but for now, I'll share a comparison. One of these things is not like the other...
The first image is the starting map used in Myth: The Fallen Lords. The second image is my RPG campaign map, shown at one-third of its maximum size to maintain a certain geographic mystique for my players. I've added something like two hundred towns, settlements, rivers, lakes, highways and other fine details to the setting--and you know what? I'm still working on this bad boy, too.
I'm a sick, sick nerd.
*No, really. Seven steps and Bungie will rule the world, provided we aren't first destroyed as part of a demonstration of Christopher Johnson's righteous wrath. Hurry, Bungie, hurry!
Think that I'm going to start making it easier on myself to update the blog more regularly by cutting content, depth of posts, or posting link-filled drivel like most other blogs? Hah! Shows what you know. I don't believe in lowering the bar, and I certainly don't believe in using only ten words to make a point when one hundred words will reinforce the position and a thousand words will completely sponge out opposition.
Think that I'm limiting myself by the intense, nerd focus of the blog? Hah! Shows what you know. Today I'm going to drag you back to 1997, when Bungie was not yet a household name but no longer a garage-sized developer, either. When games were pretty much always 2D and resembled their topics of violence like Picasso paintings resembled his subjects. When the only way to get a "visceral" gaming experience was to take shots in between matches with your favorite Street Fighter character--it's Chun-Li or M. Bison, you know it--and shake your head a lot. That's right, we're going back to the release of Myth: The Fallen Lords.
Now I permit two divergent opinions of Myth: The Fallen Lords and its sequel Myth II: Soulblighter. The first opinion is that it's the best frakking game ever made. The alternative opinion is that it's one of the best frakking games ever made. See what I did there? The only other valid opinion to have regarding Myth is ignorance, and that won't hold up by the time you're done reading this.
Early in 1997, my big brother drove me to the local Computer City in the outlet mall near our house. Handing him a five-dollar bill and letting him foot the change, we bought a boxed demo of the game Myth: The Fallen Lords. Since this was still a few years before the internet became the favored medium of distributing software demos, and since it was also the first game that actually captured my interest before release, it was and has remained the only boxed game demo I've ever purchased with my own money. Plus about 70 cents of my big brother's cash, and about a quarter of a gallon of gas thrown in for audit purposes.
I've mentioned Myth a few times in the blog so far. It was one of the first games I really played to death in its heyday and even in the years after Bungie was sold to Microsoft. Featuring the proper blend of storytelling and intuitively addicting gameplay, Myth: The Fallen Lords and Myth II: Soulblighter were all kinds of inspiring and fulfilling. Upon its release, Myth: The Fallen Lords became an instant personal hit for striking three chords that no game before it--and few games since--have done.
 |
| CD Art to 1997's classic Myth: The Fallen Lords |
The Myth series of games were real-time tactical computer games. Real-time sub-genres encompass any game in which time passes at a steady rate. The alternative to this is the turn-based game, in which time passes in discreet chunks at uneven intervals, much like your average board game. Another typical aspect of the tactics genre is a lack of unit or building construction. In a strategy game, like Starcraft, you construct a barracks using some largely conceptual resources and then use those same resources to build marines in that same barracks--all of which occurs in real-time while managing the rest of the game. Not so with a tactical game like Myth. You start off with a specific number of units, who may or may not be surviving veterans from previous missions, and you receive no additional units except for finding the occasional stragglers elsewhere on the map. It lacks the resource management and base-building that makes the strategy genre so popular, but it also demands more decision-making precision on behalf of the player, as mistakes and losses are more costly and irreparable.
The other thing that really made Myth shine as a tactical game was its approach to simple-but-dynamic combat. With forces that typically fell around thirty men for a given mission, you'd have to pay careful attention to how you moved your soldiers and in what formations. While strategy games at the time and many still have at their heart a simple rock-paper-scissors mechanic, Myth innovated with dynamics that emphasized timing and position instead. Getting your archers in a line formation on a ridge or having your dwarves flank a force of undead axe-wielders was the key to victory, and made it more viscerally engaging than simply knowing when to spam air units to counter enemy tanks.
Myth was... a technical innovation
Even though Bungie was a cottage game company at the time, Myth was part of the leading waves of the computer game industry. Its in-game graphics were a combination of 3D rendered terrain and 2D sprite collections for units and viscera. In one of my earlier Mass Effect posts I mentioned the nature of 3D rendering--adding skins to a mesh, which moves based on the keyframes of an animation skeleton. Well, Myth was still a little before those days. The terrain itself was a very simple mesh, not having the contours or fine details of a human figure, with a very low resolution skin. And, since it's terrain, it doesn't need to move, so no keyframes were needed. The units and most of the games' other details, though, needed to move. And, with a freely rotating 3D camera, they needed to be drawn at all sorts of angles. In steps the ancient and venerable 2D sprite.
A 2D sprite is a collection of flat image files that are called up based upon the perspective of the camera in a game. If, say, you're looking at a standing warrior unit from the three-quarters perspective, then the sprite references the appropriate image and displays it. It makes for a rough equivalent for 3D units, and requires a lot more work for the artists, but in these early days of 3D gaming it was simply the only way to have 3D game-play in real-time.
Imagine you're looking for someone in a crowd, only you don't know what they look like. 2D sprites would be like having a handful of photos of the person from different angles, whereas 3D rendering might be represented by having someone with you who knows what the objective person looks like. Having those photos handy for comparison is quite a bit less reliable, but it's something that you could mass produce even when it's too much trouble to get a first-hand witness. That's what 2D sprites are for, and they're still used in less noticeable roles in modern games, too.
 |
| So maybe it's not so pretty anymore, but the graphics were cutting edge at the time. I think. |
Above you can see what the game actually looked like with the two elements coexisting on the screen. Note the rubble in the foreground and the building's corner to the left--these too are rendered in true 3D, hence the lines are more clearly defined and the objects have more consistency as the camera moves around them. Still, the ability to have tactics and gameplay that were not only three-dimensional but also embraced a freely controlled camera made Myth: The Fallen Lords a novel and thrilling experience at the time. And when Myth II: Soulblighter added the ability to save your completed missions as 'films', allowing you to roam around and survey the battle from different camera angles than you used the first time, well it went to a lot of gamers' heads. As happened again when Bungie brought that feature to Halo 3 ten years later.
Myth was... a fabulous setting
There are two general ways to creatively react to your inspirations: imitation and emulation. Imitation is easy to recognize and easy to tackle, and it involves you picking what you admire from the inspirational source and simply shoe-horning it into your own material. Emulation, on the other hand, involves more research and insight, and if it's done right or wrong your fans might not even see the relation to the source material. Because emulation involves trying to recreate and adapt the methods by which the inspirational material was created--to divine the process and re-tool it to create something of your own. I believe Myth is inspired by and emulates the works of Tolkien. That is, without being very much like Middle Earth in any superficial ways, Myth tackles the setting in a way that I think Tolkien would have if he were a game designer in the 90s. You see, Tolkien was all about creating a syncretic sort of mythology that incorporated themes from the Germanic and Old English myths that inspired a lot of his early academic career, but with a keen focus to create a thoroughly British fantastic folklore. I'm pretty sure the guys at Bungie had a similar goal--in addition to their seven step plan to world domination*.
The game's setting is inspired by the fatalism of Norse, Celtic, and Germanic myth. It's set in a world without elves, where the dwarves are surly tinkerers rather than axe-swinging braggarts, and where evil wins fifty percent of the time. Literally. See, in the Myth setting, time is on a cycle of Light and Dark, and each rules for a thousand years before falling to the opposing order (or disorder, as the case may be). And each time civilization sways, it is conquered by a Leveller--a spirit that is a champion of order and justice to end every age of Dark, or a malign destroyer to end every age of Light. It's very Norse and gloriously stoic, as the stories plod through grim humor, violent heroism, and constant sacrifice. And the voice actor, the James Schneider, who introduces the missions captures this perfectly. Listen to his Old World brogue and seasoned ramblings at the Myth journals website--simply click on the sound bar to the right to enjoy quality, intriguing story-telling and tingling tension--that is Myth, baby.
I'll go on about the setting more in later posts as I share bits of my ongoing GURPS Myth campaign, but for now, I'll share a comparison. One of these things is not like the other...
 |
| This one's MINE! |
The first image is the starting map used in Myth: The Fallen Lords. The second image is my RPG campaign map, shown at one-third of its maximum size to maintain a certain geographic mystique for my players. I've added something like two hundred towns, settlements, rivers, lakes, highways and other fine details to the setting--and you know what? I'm still working on this bad boy, too.
I'm a sick, sick nerd.
*No, really. Seven steps and Bungie will rule the world, provided we aren't first destroyed as part of a demonstration of Christopher Johnson's righteous wrath. Hurry, Bungie, hurry!
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Don't Be That Gal: Painting-Pisser
Don't Be That Guy: One of the best things about being one out of several billion is that there's always somebody doing something stupid. If you keep your eyes open, you can usually wait for a stupid person to try something first. Watch them fail, laugh, and be sure not to repeat their mistake. Or read my blog and get the skinny straight from the Nerdery.
Oh well, there's an impressive backlog of article ideas and stubs waiting in the wings, so hopefully I'll be able to nudge towards my original goal of one hundred posts in the first year of my blog. Unfortunately, some of the once-topical posts will be a little outdated, but they still make great fodder for the Nerdery.
Speaking of which, there was an article from last month that qualifies for a Don't Be That Guy post with a healthy helping of 'what-the-frak!?' on the side. A woman named Carmen Tisch walked into the Clyfford Still art museum in Colorado, punched an offending piece of art, dropped her pants to rub her flank against it, and finally shared some...'water' with the exhibit.
No, really.
This is so easy I'm not even going to really make fun of Ms. Tisch, who supposedly has a history of alcoholism and driving while inebriated. She also had an armed robbery charge that was later dismissed against her. If her behavior in the Still exhibit is a typical intimidation tactic for her, I'd wonder if her charisma is what got the charges dropped. In any case, I'm not going to attack this peach. She's a winner, and I don't think you need convincing on this point.
Instead I want to understand this. What drives this kind of behavior, in any state of mind? First, let's look at the victim of the inablution, "1957-J-No. 2":
I must say, I don't appreciate modern art. This painting impresses me even less than Chicago's "Cloud Gate," and that's saying a lot.
Given the context of the Tisch event, my eye is drawn to the lemonade-stain on the right edge of the piece. Could this be some sort of dark prophecy, foreshadowing 54 years ago the ignominious fate that would befall this noble canvas? Perhaps Still is a much more modestly endowed American Rimbaldi, his prophetic art limited to un-classy reactions to his work. If that was the case, can we really hold poor Carmen Tisch responsible for her actions, or was she caught up in the holistic power of Still's transcendent genius? Was she an offender, or merely unhinged by the realization that as she was looking into the departed Still's painting, he was staring back at her from the 1950s...
Or, perhaps with the appropriate prescription of beer goggles, this painting looks like a public toilet. That might draw the sequence of Tisch's actions into better focus, if we imagine her bleary logic. "Ugh, I hate it when the person before you doesn't flush," she bemoans, striking the lavatory. She claws, looking for a handle, before making her seat of the artwork and relieving herself. "Ahh, that's better, now I can go outside and enjoy the art exhibit...Why is everyone looking at me? I hate it when people make eye contact in the bathroom."
Carmen Tisch: trans-temporal victim of eldritch art or beer-addled misunderstanding? Eh, don't be that gal in either case.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Happy Nerd Year: 2012
As we move into the new year, we're often bombarded with vain nostalgia for the past year and cacophonous pledges to accomplish this or that in the coming annum. In the interest of actually posting a somewhat timely topical article, I wanted to post something about the coming year. But, rather than add to the din of New Year wishes, here's a tribute to Nerd Year 2012--a preview of movies, games, and other nerd bread-and-butter coming up in the next dozen months.
Movies of 2012
John Carter of Mars
Coming out March 9, 2012
This is a classic piece of pulp-era nerdery, based on a series of books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It is a sci-fantasy epic about a Civil War veteran who finds himself transported to a brutal, dying Mars--dubbed Barsoom by the Martians. Once there, John Carter finds that he's imbued with terrific strength on this other world, and he quickly becomes a sensational hero to the disparate tribes of Martians. Despite being set on Mars and featuring a few pieces of shiny that the uninitiated might mistake for technology, the Barsoom series is a fantasy series of eleven books that spans a couple generations of characters in a romantic, flesh-baring vision of Mars as a paradise slipping into a desert. The film adaptation is supposed to be based on A Princess of Mars, and--while a few changes have obviously been made--the previews so far look very promising for this to be a faithful translation to screen. The cast features some strong, seasoned actors in key roles to anchor the film--Dominic West, James Purefoy, and Willem Dafoe--while some standout young actors play the leads. If nothing else, John Carter of Mars will be a completely unique action-adventure experience, with spectacle and glitter amongst hard pulp-era muscle and excitement.
Battleship
Coming out May 18, 2012
This film, if you can take the fickle opinions of internet personalities seriously (which you can't), signals the downfall and low-point of western culture. Forget about Mamma Mia, the Clue movie, or the whole debacle that is the SyFy channel: basing an action special effects movie on the Battleship board game is the death knell of western culture. 2012, indeed.
Or, you know what, I could admit that I'm excited to see this movie. It'll probably be bad, predictable, and justifiably panned as a franchise-exploitation flick. But you know what? Battleship can use some cross-market franchising--Hasbro basically tanked the awesome Battleship Galaxies board game before it was even released, and that was the first notable product in this line for years. So who cares if there's a rushed crappy video game based on the movie, or lunch boxes, or plastic alien masks that croak "you sunk my battleship"? The movie will be starring Liam Neeson, feature yet another set of aliens in giant spaceships covered with oil refinery greebles, and the latest trailers show boarding actions and alien power armor. That's cool. It also looks like it wants to be a US Navy promotion vehicle, with a lot of first act glamor shots and steel-jawed squids making Nelsonian calls. This, too, I'm thrilled about. And, if more people can be a little less concerned about the negative hype the movie's getting, I bet the theaters will be populated by entertained popcorn-munchers.
The Hobbit
Coming out December 14, 2012
This is the big one: true nerd bread. Seriously. After a little period of production limbo, The Hobbit is nearly out, and with Peter Jackson directing once more. With a full-length trailer out, you can get a glimpse of everything any real nerd needs to get fully pumped: all of the original actors reprising their roles, with the marvelous Martin Freeman playing the young Bilbo Baggins; thrilling visuals; the combination of humor and dark adventure particular to The Hobbit; singing. That's right, the singing excites a real fan of Tolkien's premier work. A central narrative and immersive element of Middle Earth, songs are a colorful cultural thread of ancient sensibility throughout the books--especially The Hobbit. The latest trailer shows the dwarves singing about the Lonely Mountain and seems to show clips of what can only be the "Crack the dishes and chip the plates" song, too. Provided they include the warg-riding goblins singing "Fifteen birds in five fir trees" I will be over the moon. Singing orcs are just plain cool. On the one level, it's important to illustrate that orcs have a culture and social independence of their own--they're not just mindless antagonists, they have an oral history and social joy of their own. On the second level, you know you're in trouble when orcs start to sing about killing you.
Between the fidelity apparent in the previews, the return of the established masters of The Lord of the Rings, and the elegant shift in tone to a story that starts out much lighter and transitions into dark foreshadowing, The Hobbit is going to be the perfect way to end 2012.
Games of 2012
Mass Effect 3
Coming out March 6, 2012
I've already touched upon my enthusiasm for the Mass Effect series in previous posts, so you should know by now that I'm waiting with bated breath for the concluding chapter in Shepard's struggle to save the galaxy. Bioware has already announced that Mass Effect 3 is going to have multiplayer content, melee abilities, and vertical level design. That's great news, and I can't wait to hear more, but I really want to see if they include any of my hit list for Mass Effect 3.
Aliens: Colonial Marines
Coming out spring 2012
Over the past 26 years, James Cameron's movie Aliens has maintained its status as the best and most popular of the Alien tetralogy. This is probably at least partly owing to the pubescent bad-ass bliss embodied by the Colonial Marines in the action flick. Hudson, Hicks, Apone and the rest of them may fold like a deck of cards when the space-carnivores start tearing into their squad, but the look, the feel, the tech, and the swagger of these space marines are still some of the highlights of the whole setting for a lot of fans. Who cares if they're just a facile vehicle to set up a poorly justified anti-Vietnam symbol with absolutely no logistical probability whatsoever, right? Well, with Aliens: Colonial Marines, fans of the movie are finally getting the game they've wanted for the past quarter century. An immediate sequel to James Cameron's film, Aliens: Colonial Marines puts players inside the head of troopers investigating the fate of Hadley's Hope on LV-426. Unlike any franchise game before this, however, this game strives to capture the small-scale tactics and gadget-fun that has thus far eluded gamers. If the much-vaunted 'Alamo moments' of the game are done well, I know what game I'll be playing on a regular basis every time I watch the sci-fi classic.
XCOM
Coming out March 6, 2012
In the early 90s, a computer game series strove to give gamers a complete tactical and strategic experience as they defended the planet against mass UFO invasion. It was called X-COM and had five installments from 1993 to 2001. Players controlled individual squads in small-scale conflicts, fighting aliens in house-to-house combat, and then, between missions, spent their time coordinating research and investigation into the alien threat on a global scale. It offered a tremendous amount of variability and choice to players, delivering a stylish combination of gameplay experiences that is lacking in the contemporary gaming landscape. The imminent remake, simply titled XCOM, is going to revive the spirit of the game while still tweaking the core formula: players will assume the role of a 1950s-style man-in-black investigating early extraterrestrial incursions, all from a first-person perspective. The developers promise that investigation, team tactics, and research will still be major factors involving gameplay, so hopefully developer 2K Marin will be able to bring fire to sci-fi tactical gaming after an 11 year absence for the series.
Blog posts of 2012
Dumbasscience
There's a few Dumbasscience posts stewing in the Nerdery's to-do pot. I've got several old issues of Popular Science magazine to harvest for great examples of bad ideas getting good money. There's the whole Pluto planet re-definition debacle to rave about--it shouldn't be a surprise that I've got a lot to say about that one. There's even a film to go along with the Pluto post. There's another movie that will be reviewed in concert with a Dumbasscience post: Fathead. And since 2012 will doubtless have plenty of new bad ideas being proposed, there will be even more developments in this category later on.
Nerd Bread and Butter
There's still a good number of nerd cornerstones to be covered with Nerd Bread articles--the fantasy and science fiction genres, for two to start. Analyses of the three game media are also going to get articles: board, video, and miniatures games. After that, there's a whole world of Nerd Butter to go through while I'm at it--including a rant about The Lord of the Rings at some point, a selection of exemplary comics, and a few for requisite pieces of modern science fiction, too.
And more...
Rants on the nature of nerdery, superheroes, and more GURPS action are all going to get served up by the handfuls. I'll be posting a few RPG freebies that should be of general use, some more Nerd pics, and maybe I'll finish the GURPS Centurion thread sometime in the coming months. I'm sure there a few idiots waiting to explode in the new year, so expect a "Don't be that Guy" article or two in 2012, too.
So that's a preview of Nerd Year 2012 for you. Enjoy, and keep following. Filmatleven
Movies of 2012
John Carter of Mars
Coming out March 9, 2012
This is a classic piece of pulp-era nerdery, based on a series of books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It is a sci-fantasy epic about a Civil War veteran who finds himself transported to a brutal, dying Mars--dubbed Barsoom by the Martians. Once there, John Carter finds that he's imbued with terrific strength on this other world, and he quickly becomes a sensational hero to the disparate tribes of Martians. Despite being set on Mars and featuring a few pieces of shiny that the uninitiated might mistake for technology, the Barsoom series is a fantasy series of eleven books that spans a couple generations of characters in a romantic, flesh-baring vision of Mars as a paradise slipping into a desert. The film adaptation is supposed to be based on A Princess of Mars, and--while a few changes have obviously been made--the previews so far look very promising for this to be a faithful translation to screen. The cast features some strong, seasoned actors in key roles to anchor the film--Dominic West, James Purefoy, and Willem Dafoe--while some standout young actors play the leads. If nothing else, John Carter of Mars will be a completely unique action-adventure experience, with spectacle and glitter amongst hard pulp-era muscle and excitement.
Battleship
Coming out May 18, 2012
This film, if you can take the fickle opinions of internet personalities seriously (which you can't), signals the downfall and low-point of western culture. Forget about Mamma Mia, the Clue movie, or the whole debacle that is the SyFy channel: basing an action special effects movie on the Battleship board game is the death knell of western culture. 2012, indeed.
Or, you know what, I could admit that I'm excited to see this movie. It'll probably be bad, predictable, and justifiably panned as a franchise-exploitation flick. But you know what? Battleship can use some cross-market franchising--Hasbro basically tanked the awesome Battleship Galaxies board game before it was even released, and that was the first notable product in this line for years. So who cares if there's a rushed crappy video game based on the movie, or lunch boxes, or plastic alien masks that croak "you sunk my battleship"? The movie will be starring Liam Neeson, feature yet another set of aliens in giant spaceships covered with oil refinery greebles, and the latest trailers show boarding actions and alien power armor. That's cool. It also looks like it wants to be a US Navy promotion vehicle, with a lot of first act glamor shots and steel-jawed squids making Nelsonian calls. This, too, I'm thrilled about. And, if more people can be a little less concerned about the negative hype the movie's getting, I bet the theaters will be populated by entertained popcorn-munchers.
The Hobbit
Coming out December 14, 2012
This is the big one: true nerd bread. Seriously. After a little period of production limbo, The Hobbit is nearly out, and with Peter Jackson directing once more. With a full-length trailer out, you can get a glimpse of everything any real nerd needs to get fully pumped: all of the original actors reprising their roles, with the marvelous Martin Freeman playing the young Bilbo Baggins; thrilling visuals; the combination of humor and dark adventure particular to The Hobbit; singing. That's right, the singing excites a real fan of Tolkien's premier work. A central narrative and immersive element of Middle Earth, songs are a colorful cultural thread of ancient sensibility throughout the books--especially The Hobbit. The latest trailer shows the dwarves singing about the Lonely Mountain and seems to show clips of what can only be the "Crack the dishes and chip the plates" song, too. Provided they include the warg-riding goblins singing "Fifteen birds in five fir trees" I will be over the moon. Singing orcs are just plain cool. On the one level, it's important to illustrate that orcs have a culture and social independence of their own--they're not just mindless antagonists, they have an oral history and social joy of their own. On the second level, you know you're in trouble when orcs start to sing about killing you.
Between the fidelity apparent in the previews, the return of the established masters of The Lord of the Rings, and the elegant shift in tone to a story that starts out much lighter and transitions into dark foreshadowing, The Hobbit is going to be the perfect way to end 2012.
Games of 2012
Mass Effect 3
Coming out March 6, 2012
I've already touched upon my enthusiasm for the Mass Effect series in previous posts, so you should know by now that I'm waiting with bated breath for the concluding chapter in Shepard's struggle to save the galaxy. Bioware has already announced that Mass Effect 3 is going to have multiplayer content, melee abilities, and vertical level design. That's great news, and I can't wait to hear more, but I really want to see if they include any of my hit list for Mass Effect 3.
Aliens: Colonial Marines
Coming out spring 2012
Over the past 26 years, James Cameron's movie Aliens has maintained its status as the best and most popular of the Alien tetralogy. This is probably at least partly owing to the pubescent bad-ass bliss embodied by the Colonial Marines in the action flick. Hudson, Hicks, Apone and the rest of them may fold like a deck of cards when the space-carnivores start tearing into their squad, but the look, the feel, the tech, and the swagger of these space marines are still some of the highlights of the whole setting for a lot of fans. Who cares if they're just a facile vehicle to set up a poorly justified anti-Vietnam symbol with absolutely no logistical probability whatsoever, right? Well, with Aliens: Colonial Marines, fans of the movie are finally getting the game they've wanted for the past quarter century. An immediate sequel to James Cameron's film, Aliens: Colonial Marines puts players inside the head of troopers investigating the fate of Hadley's Hope on LV-426. Unlike any franchise game before this, however, this game strives to capture the small-scale tactics and gadget-fun that has thus far eluded gamers. If the much-vaunted 'Alamo moments' of the game are done well, I know what game I'll be playing on a regular basis every time I watch the sci-fi classic.
XCOM
Coming out March 6, 2012
In the early 90s, a computer game series strove to give gamers a complete tactical and strategic experience as they defended the planet against mass UFO invasion. It was called X-COM and had five installments from 1993 to 2001. Players controlled individual squads in small-scale conflicts, fighting aliens in house-to-house combat, and then, between missions, spent their time coordinating research and investigation into the alien threat on a global scale. It offered a tremendous amount of variability and choice to players, delivering a stylish combination of gameplay experiences that is lacking in the contemporary gaming landscape. The imminent remake, simply titled XCOM, is going to revive the spirit of the game while still tweaking the core formula: players will assume the role of a 1950s-style man-in-black investigating early extraterrestrial incursions, all from a first-person perspective. The developers promise that investigation, team tactics, and research will still be major factors involving gameplay, so hopefully developer 2K Marin will be able to bring fire to sci-fi tactical gaming after an 11 year absence for the series.
Blog posts of 2012
Dumbasscience
There's a few Dumbasscience posts stewing in the Nerdery's to-do pot. I've got several old issues of Popular Science magazine to harvest for great examples of bad ideas getting good money. There's the whole Pluto planet re-definition debacle to rave about--it shouldn't be a surprise that I've got a lot to say about that one. There's even a film to go along with the Pluto post. There's another movie that will be reviewed in concert with a Dumbasscience post: Fathead. And since 2012 will doubtless have plenty of new bad ideas being proposed, there will be even more developments in this category later on.
Nerd Bread and Butter
There's still a good number of nerd cornerstones to be covered with Nerd Bread articles--the fantasy and science fiction genres, for two to start. Analyses of the three game media are also going to get articles: board, video, and miniatures games. After that, there's a whole world of Nerd Butter to go through while I'm at it--including a rant about The Lord of the Rings at some point, a selection of exemplary comics, and a few for requisite pieces of modern science fiction, too.
And more...
Rants on the nature of nerdery, superheroes, and more GURPS action are all going to get served up by the handfuls. I'll be posting a few RPG freebies that should be of general use, some more Nerd pics, and maybe I'll finish the GURPS Centurion thread sometime in the coming months. I'm sure there a few idiots waiting to explode in the new year, so expect a "Don't be that Guy" article or two in 2012, too.
So that's a preview of Nerd Year 2012 for you. Enjoy, and keep following. Filmatleven
Saturday, December 31, 2011
GM Tips: GMing 101
GM Tips: I've presented articles extolling the role-playing game as a great past-time that is an intelligent, imaginative, and creative way to spend your time and money. It's a growing hobby that has become much more popular since the formative days of 1979, but there's still a huge hurdle to getting involved: the GM. It's easy to get into any number of RPGs as a new player, but getting started is a rocky, uphill battle for the Game Master, as he must wrangle player personalities, schedules, and the rules of the system in addition to developing his own plot. Hopefully, a few personal lessons will ease your GMing burden, or at least illustrate how I shoulder the burden of the Game Master.
As the year ends, the crush to get a few more blog posts finished mounts. Will the stress of publishing three (or more!) articles in one week make my head explode in a viscous explosive aneurism of productive overload? Only time will tell.
This article has been stewing for a while, and I'm quite ashamed to admit it. It's been promised to a young friend of mine for several months now. Well, reminiscing about early RPG experiences and then distilling them into productive advice has been an invigorating and frustrating process. I hope these tips, meant for brand new GMs especially, will help other nerds elsewhere pool their collective imaginations even more harmoniously due to their elegant wisdom.
Either that, or at least you'll get a better idea of how I personally harangue my players into serving my RPG plots.
The task of leading a group of RPG nerds as Game Master is a daunting one. As I mentioned in my Nerd Bread post about RPGs, the GM has to be outgoing, coordinated, extremely well abreast of the rules and plots of the game, and really has to do all of this at a pace that keeps his players entertained. But, while there are numerous responsibilities to being a GM, I find that most new GMs (myself included, once upon a spaceship) neglect to realize that they only need to be responsible for a few key elements of the game at a time. Below I have four manageable areas that are pretty easy to address and go a long way towards setting the foundation for a long, successful, and fun RPG campaign.
Know your RPG system.
This bit might be easy to overlook, especially when you only know a single RPG system, but it is important if you're a first-time GM or an old beardy fellow like myself with a dozen systems on the shelf and another dozen on the computer. The key to knowing your system is knowing the features of your chosen rules set. This is different from simply knowing the rules. This is about enlightened awareness, not empirical knowledge of your game's book. Your system of choice might have rules for survival in the wilderness, but you really should know if they work well if those rules might come up in play. Knowing what does and doesn't work in your system--or how certain things work--keeps gameplay smooth and well-coordinated.
For instance, when playing a game of the latest edition of Gamma World, I keep in mind that gameplay is supposed to be tough, fast, and fun. So I cut loose on my tendency to have overblown plots, well-developed antagonists, and hyper-detailed combat. Players might have a poorly placed botch result in the death of one or more PC, but in a system where character creation is just a couple of die rolls, that makes it fun and quick to get back into the game.
In a GURPS game, on the other hand, I keep in mind that the system is all about detail and drama. There's a tendency for combat to bog down if you don't manage it properly, as there's a large number of great-but-overwhelming options for players. So when I use the full combat rules, I use the NPCs to drive player actions and lead them in how to fight. I might emphasize that an NPC is getting desperate and using Fatigue to make rapid attacks to help nudge players towards matching their frenzy, etc. But in any case, I try to keep GURPS combats shorter than most other RPGs when you look at it turn-for-turn, and instead emphasize the heavy cost of those intense, short sequences of violence.
When I first started to really GM games, it was to the sweet western tune of the Serenity RPG, which uses the Cortex system by Margaret Weis Productions. It's a fun, cinematic system that really dials in the dynamics of the TV show that gives players the ability to spend plot points to modify dice rolls or even spontaneously add plot twists to the story. At first I led this as I did other games I'd played in the past (notably Dungeons & Dragons 3.5), and that was an okay start. But when I started to properly direct the plot point dynamic by giving players unfair challenges that forced out-of-the-box solutions, that created some fun moments that my players still reminisce about nearly seven years later. Conversely, my early attempts to learn and memorize the nitty-gritty paraphernalia of the rulebook met with failure and frustration--remembering a lot of the fringe rules off-hand is nowhere near as important as mastering the system's core dynamic.
In any case, the habit I have formed for my own games is this: obsess over learning and refining the game's rules right until a session starts, and then stop. Once the game starts, I try to forget about the stack of rulebooks on my gaming shelf--it's just my players, our story, and my rules. Anywhere from twenty to fifty percent of all the judgments I make in a game are off the cuff, and while they're informed by the rules I read doggedly in my free-time, I try not to obsess over an abstract sense of whether I made the 'correct' call or not. I'm the GM; all my judgment calls are correct. Except when they're not.
As the year ends, the crush to get a few more blog posts finished mounts. Will the stress of publishing three (or more!) articles in one week make my head explode in a viscous explosive aneurism of productive overload? Only time will tell.
This article has been stewing for a while, and I'm quite ashamed to admit it. It's been promised to a young friend of mine for several months now. Well, reminiscing about early RPG experiences and then distilling them into productive advice has been an invigorating and frustrating process. I hope these tips, meant for brand new GMs especially, will help other nerds elsewhere pool their collective imaginations even more harmoniously due to their elegant wisdom.
Either that, or at least you'll get a better idea of how I personally harangue my players into serving my RPG plots.
The task of leading a group of RPG nerds as Game Master is a daunting one. As I mentioned in my Nerd Bread post about RPGs, the GM has to be outgoing, coordinated, extremely well abreast of the rules and plots of the game, and really has to do all of this at a pace that keeps his players entertained. But, while there are numerous responsibilities to being a GM, I find that most new GMs (myself included, once upon a spaceship) neglect to realize that they only need to be responsible for a few key elements of the game at a time. Below I have four manageable areas that are pretty easy to address and go a long way towards setting the foundation for a long, successful, and fun RPG campaign.
Know your RPG system.
This bit might be easy to overlook, especially when you only know a single RPG system, but it is important if you're a first-time GM or an old beardy fellow like myself with a dozen systems on the shelf and another dozen on the computer. The key to knowing your system is knowing the features of your chosen rules set. This is different from simply knowing the rules. This is about enlightened awareness, not empirical knowledge of your game's book. Your system of choice might have rules for survival in the wilderness, but you really should know if they work well if those rules might come up in play. Knowing what does and doesn't work in your system--or how certain things work--keeps gameplay smooth and well-coordinated.
For instance, when playing a game of the latest edition of Gamma World, I keep in mind that gameplay is supposed to be tough, fast, and fun. So I cut loose on my tendency to have overblown plots, well-developed antagonists, and hyper-detailed combat. Players might have a poorly placed botch result in the death of one or more PC, but in a system where character creation is just a couple of die rolls, that makes it fun and quick to get back into the game.
In a GURPS game, on the other hand, I keep in mind that the system is all about detail and drama. There's a tendency for combat to bog down if you don't manage it properly, as there's a large number of great-but-overwhelming options for players. So when I use the full combat rules, I use the NPCs to drive player actions and lead them in how to fight. I might emphasize that an NPC is getting desperate and using Fatigue to make rapid attacks to help nudge players towards matching their frenzy, etc. But in any case, I try to keep GURPS combats shorter than most other RPGs when you look at it turn-for-turn, and instead emphasize the heavy cost of those intense, short sequences of violence.
When I first started to really GM games, it was to the sweet western tune of the Serenity RPG, which uses the Cortex system by Margaret Weis Productions. It's a fun, cinematic system that really dials in the dynamics of the TV show that gives players the ability to spend plot points to modify dice rolls or even spontaneously add plot twists to the story. At first I led this as I did other games I'd played in the past (notably Dungeons & Dragons 3.5), and that was an okay start. But when I started to properly direct the plot point dynamic by giving players unfair challenges that forced out-of-the-box solutions, that created some fun moments that my players still reminisce about nearly seven years later. Conversely, my early attempts to learn and memorize the nitty-gritty paraphernalia of the rulebook met with failure and frustration--remembering a lot of the fringe rules off-hand is nowhere near as important as mastering the system's core dynamic.
In any case, the habit I have formed for my own games is this: obsess over learning and refining the game's rules right until a session starts, and then stop. Once the game starts, I try to forget about the stack of rulebooks on my gaming shelf--it's just my players, our story, and my rules. Anywhere from twenty to fifty percent of all the judgments I make in a game are off the cuff, and while they're informed by the rules I read doggedly in my free-time, I try not to obsess over an abstract sense of whether I made the 'correct' call or not. I'm the GM; all my judgment calls are correct. Except when they're not.
"...remembering a lot of the fringe rules off-hand is nowhere near as important as mastering the system's core dynamic."
Know your setting.
Knowing your setting is all about having the principles of the fictional universe well-established, even if the canon itself is hidden. It's a key to good fiction and to good role-playing. This doesn't mean you need to know every little detail about the farmer's outhouse in that little hamlet on your world map--it means you know why things work the way they do. That way when your players ask you an unexpected question--like how many strawberries they can buy for the party with ten shillings, or if they could hit an enemy boarding shuttle with the armored underside of an unarmed transport--you can come up with a reasonable, consistent answer even if the rules are coming out of your keester.
And this ties in to preparation. Preparation is good, and if you are thinking about the world and campaign as a whole, I don't think anything is wasted. That said, if you've got a game coming up and you've only put in 30 minutes of work into the upcoming session, don't panic. Don't panic. Just play the game, and let player decisions and curiosity fill out what you didn't plan. Besides, the average group of players will probably destroy your plans about one hour into the session anyways, so no need to stress over a little ad libbing. A lot of times when you find yourself making spontaneous GM calls in the moment you'll find that you make the game feel even more responsive to player choices and consequences, and that's the heart of role-playing in the end.
And another note on knowing your system, which I'll expound upon in later posts: change stuff. Make house-rules, redesign character sheets, cut and paste your own GM screen, and do anything else that makes the game more intuitive for you. Just because you're playing with professionally-made materials doesn't mean they best fit your gaming style or preferences--nerd up and make it fit.
And this ties in to preparation. Preparation is good, and if you are thinking about the world and campaign as a whole, I don't think anything is wasted. That said, if you've got a game coming up and you've only put in 30 minutes of work into the upcoming session, don't panic. Don't panic. Just play the game, and let player decisions and curiosity fill out what you didn't plan. Besides, the average group of players will probably destroy your plans about one hour into the session anyways, so no need to stress over a little ad libbing. A lot of times when you find yourself making spontaneous GM calls in the moment you'll find that you make the game feel even more responsive to player choices and consequences, and that's the heart of role-playing in the end.
And another note on knowing your system, which I'll expound upon in later posts: change stuff. Make house-rules, redesign character sheets, cut and paste your own GM screen, and do anything else that makes the game more intuitive for you. Just because you're playing with professionally-made materials doesn't mean they best fit your gaming style or preferences--nerd up and make it fit.
"...it means you know why things work the way they do."
Know your players.
No matter how well you do as a GM, you need your players. Even if you have a totally antagonistic play-style where the players huddle together and say, "oh sh1t, Benz got Trow nao, we're hozed"* you still need the players to enjoy the session if you want them to bother coming back. And if they come to game expecting a well-balanced combat-heavy experience and you instead deal a dramatic plot with high-minded social interactions, they will cry "OMG, hackz."**
So know what your players are expecting, and make sure you give them a good idea of what you have in store for them--in story terms, in content, in pacing, and in game mechanics. A number of GMs out there even go so far as to make prospectuses while planning out a new campaign, distribute it to interested players, and gather feedback before the first session even begins. That's a little overboard, but if you don't do something similar in an informal manner, at least, you're asking for trouble.
In describing the story to your players, let them know what stories inspire you, but also what specific elements inspire you. Saying you like The Lord of the Rings isn't as helpful as explaining you love the details of the journey, managing supplies, and crossing diverse terrain that is emphasized more in the book than the movies. Also be sure to give your players an idea of the content you'll be including in the story. A general movie rating is helpful, especially if you go by category: "PG language with R-rated violence" for instance. In my grittier campaigns, I like to plum the depths of my personal knowledge of anatomy when describing violence, and that's not something you should generally spring on unsuspecting players in my experience. Pacing is an after-thought for a lot of campaigns, but if you have unusual pacing in your games you need to be aware of it. I think most RPG players expect 1.75 fight scenes per session: two in an ordinary session, with one large boss fight every four or so sessions that takes up the majority of a night's game. My current campaign so far has had about .5 fight scenes per session: we might have two or three sessions pass without combat altogether, and then have one adventure dominated by a single fight scene or a couple of brief, violent ones. The pacing is sometimes dictated by the game mechanics and your own interpretations of rules, which is why it's important you spell that out to players ahead of time, especially if they have their own copy of the rules.
I'm good friends with the members of my core gaming group, so I've been lucky on these counts. Before starting our current game, for instance, we had a couple of nights where we just hung out, talked about the setting and their character ideas, and watched movies that I explained were inspiring to the composition of the campaign. Our first RPG together, however, was a more special case, and it helped me learn the lessons described above. Being a Serenity campaign, we already had a few of the elements of story, pacing, and content laid out for us, and since the Serenity RPG rules had just been released, I thought that was taken care of as well. Note that uncertain qualifier. The inaugural game night began with the players assuming a mix of ship crew and prisoners on a penal transport ship that struck disaster while under-weigh. When I described the grisly scene of one crewman who'd suffered explosive decompression, I realized that--while the women players' looks were tremendously rewarding--I probably should've warned them. Eh, tough cookies. Later in their adventures, the players balked at the prospect of buying food and fuel for their ship--issues that are normally dire but still glossed over in the movie and television series--when I prompted them to do so. And, even though the rules were designed for the setting, I still needed to house-rule after-market modifications to spaceships, specific strength limits, and the running rate of slaves on Whitefall. All lessons learned.
*Computer-gamer language, personally associated with the worst habits of RPG players.
**Hackz: Petulant players will usually attribute unexpected or unjustified defeat to being the victim of aggressive cheating through game-hacking.
So know what your players are expecting, and make sure you give them a good idea of what you have in store for them--in story terms, in content, in pacing, and in game mechanics. A number of GMs out there even go so far as to make prospectuses while planning out a new campaign, distribute it to interested players, and gather feedback before the first session even begins. That's a little overboard, but if you don't do something similar in an informal manner, at least, you're asking for trouble.
In describing the story to your players, let them know what stories inspire you, but also what specific elements inspire you. Saying you like The Lord of the Rings isn't as helpful as explaining you love the details of the journey, managing supplies, and crossing diverse terrain that is emphasized more in the book than the movies. Also be sure to give your players an idea of the content you'll be including in the story. A general movie rating is helpful, especially if you go by category: "PG language with R-rated violence" for instance. In my grittier campaigns, I like to plum the depths of my personal knowledge of anatomy when describing violence, and that's not something you should generally spring on unsuspecting players in my experience. Pacing is an after-thought for a lot of campaigns, but if you have unusual pacing in your games you need to be aware of it. I think most RPG players expect 1.75 fight scenes per session: two in an ordinary session, with one large boss fight every four or so sessions that takes up the majority of a night's game. My current campaign so far has had about .5 fight scenes per session: we might have two or three sessions pass without combat altogether, and then have one adventure dominated by a single fight scene or a couple of brief, violent ones. The pacing is sometimes dictated by the game mechanics and your own interpretations of rules, which is why it's important you spell that out to players ahead of time, especially if they have their own copy of the rules.
I'm good friends with the members of my core gaming group, so I've been lucky on these counts. Before starting our current game, for instance, we had a couple of nights where we just hung out, talked about the setting and their character ideas, and watched movies that I explained were inspiring to the composition of the campaign. Our first RPG together, however, was a more special case, and it helped me learn the lessons described above. Being a Serenity campaign, we already had a few of the elements of story, pacing, and content laid out for us, and since the Serenity RPG rules had just been released, I thought that was taken care of as well. Note that uncertain qualifier. The inaugural game night began with the players assuming a mix of ship crew and prisoners on a penal transport ship that struck disaster while under-weigh. When I described the grisly scene of one crewman who'd suffered explosive decompression, I realized that--while the women players' looks were tremendously rewarding--I probably should've warned them. Eh, tough cookies. Later in their adventures, the players balked at the prospect of buying food and fuel for their ship--issues that are normally dire but still glossed over in the movie and television series--when I prompted them to do so. And, even though the rules were designed for the setting, I still needed to house-rule after-market modifications to spaceships, specific strength limits, and the running rate of slaves on Whitefall. All lessons learned.
*Computer-gamer language, personally associated with the worst habits of RPG players.
**Hackz: Petulant players will usually attribute unexpected or unjustified defeat to being the victim of aggressive cheating through game-hacking.
"Even if you have a totally antagonistic play-style... you still need the players to enjoy the session if you want them to bother coming back."
Know the atmosphere.
GMing the right atmosphere is that little something extra that--when done right--can make a game session truly special. Good atmosphere--and being aware of it--can be the difference between a game of fantasy epic goodness and a night of combat-guessing-games. You can make atmosphere through vocabulary, voice, sounds, sights or even food. Vocabulary is one of the fundamental ways of creating atmosphere, but it is more often a pitfall for bad RPG atmosphere, because you and the players are improvising and it is therefore easy to say something ridiculous. For instance, in a medieval European setting (or any of the countless fantasy iterations thereof) your average town guardsman should never be heard to say, "You've gotta be frickin' kiddin' me!" no matter how apropos it may be. If you can manage a passable accent to fit a character, do so, but even if you're lousy at accents, a good GM changes his voice to match distinct characters if only to differentiate them from the dozens of speaking roles he will assume.
Sounds are my favorite tools in crafting a good gaming atmosphere. I now have nearly 9 hours of music in my iTunes Myth RPG playlist, and I've even split up the list into music appropriate for general mood, action sequences, tragic moments, or scary scenes. With the click of a button, I can queue up a good theme to supplement a grand speech or a disturbing dirge to set my players on edge in a dark cavern. I also have a couple dozen tracks of ambient sound effects--rainfall, campfires, marketplace noises, and battle clatter--that I pull up whenever players spend much time in a given setting. Sure, it requires a bit more preparation, focus, and coordination to play composer for your RPG, but it makes the emotions of your game run a bit higher.
Food can also create or interfere with atmosphere. As someone who personally doesn't snack, I don't usually choose to provide snacks in game. Fortunately for my players, my wife and one of the other wives who plays with us are big into bringing or making snacks for everyone. But crunching into a bag of Doritos when the player-characters are marshaling for grand battle can really tank an atmosphere as well, so I try to make sure every session has some low-key time that works for snacking. That manages the disruption of food on gaming atmosphere, but food can help improve gaming atmosphere, too. You can eat food that, if not the actual food eaten in your setting, invokes the same mood you're trying to establish. For an RPG session that coincided with my birthday in real-life and a winter holiday in our Myth game's timeline, for instance, we ate a meal that would be typical of citizens in the setting: coney and civey (rabbit stew) and Italian panforte for dessert, two entrees that date back to medieval times. It was a good meal, and made for a very focused gaming experience.
So there you go, GMing 101. Just remember: know your system, know your setting, know your players, and know your atmosphere. These are good principles for the preparation and execution of your games, and they span GMs of all rules sets and abilities. Next set of GM tips will probably provide some more concrete examples of how to make your game your own.
Sounds are my favorite tools in crafting a good gaming atmosphere. I now have nearly 9 hours of music in my iTunes Myth RPG playlist, and I've even split up the list into music appropriate for general mood, action sequences, tragic moments, or scary scenes. With the click of a button, I can queue up a good theme to supplement a grand speech or a disturbing dirge to set my players on edge in a dark cavern. I also have a couple dozen tracks of ambient sound effects--rainfall, campfires, marketplace noises, and battle clatter--that I pull up whenever players spend much time in a given setting. Sure, it requires a bit more preparation, focus, and coordination to play composer for your RPG, but it makes the emotions of your game run a bit higher.
Food can also create or interfere with atmosphere. As someone who personally doesn't snack, I don't usually choose to provide snacks in game. Fortunately for my players, my wife and one of the other wives who plays with us are big into bringing or making snacks for everyone. But crunching into a bag of Doritos when the player-characters are marshaling for grand battle can really tank an atmosphere as well, so I try to make sure every session has some low-key time that works for snacking. That manages the disruption of food on gaming atmosphere, but food can help improve gaming atmosphere, too. You can eat food that, if not the actual food eaten in your setting, invokes the same mood you're trying to establish. For an RPG session that coincided with my birthday in real-life and a winter holiday in our Myth game's timeline, for instance, we ate a meal that would be typical of citizens in the setting: coney and civey (rabbit stew) and Italian panforte for dessert, two entrees that date back to medieval times. It was a good meal, and made for a very focused gaming experience.
"Good atmosphere--and being aware of it--can be the difference between a game of fantasy epic goodness and a night of combat-guessing-games."
So there you go, GMing 101. Just remember: know your system, know your setting, know your players, and know your atmosphere. These are good principles for the preparation and execution of your games, and they span GMs of all rules sets and abilities. Next set of GM tips will probably provide some more concrete examples of how to make your game your own.
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