Kickstart Your Weekend: Mighty Morphin' Weekend!

Kickstart Your Weekend: A series in which I occasionally spotlight Kickstarter projects that are ending soon and deserve a little nerd love. Also, I'll highlight some past projects as well, as you never know when these enterprises are going to turn up again.

Another busy week for Kickstarter nerds. While I said from the start that Kickstart Your Weekend wouldn't be a weekly feature, it sure is shaping up that way. This week we've got updates on past projects and a new set of highlights. Next week I anticipate doing a highlights selection of past projects, and after that it looks like there may be a lull in truly exciting Kickstarter projects, though you never know when a new campaign might pop up. Kind of like pseudo-nazi societies in science-fiction, they turn up whenever things get stale. And, if you're lucky, they're worth the effort to vanquish them rather than becoming just another clumsy cash-in for some bland action scenes and ham-fisted morality tale (I'm looking at you, Stargate SG-1's Eurondans).

Sorry about that, back to Kickstarter stuff...

Jagged Alliance: Flashback--which I was most worried about over the past week--finished its campaign well, just squeaking by to collect its first stretch goal. I'd waited on this one until the last minute, but in the end the promise of Mac support plus the fun skin packs they were previewing helped secure my moneys. They also have a slacker backer program in the works at their main site, which will give users the chance to belatedly pre-order now that the Kickstarter campaign is finished.The steampunk air skirmisher Guns of Icarus: Adventure Mode funded at just over two hundred grand with outside supporters included, punting their MMO dreams a little further down the development gridiron. You can keep following their puffs of white steam and black smoke over at the Guns of Icarus site. Robotech RPG Tactics blew through stretch goal after stretch goal to claim a massive 1.442 million dollars, making it one of the most successful projects in the board game category on Kickstarter. Anime mecha fans should pop on over to Palladium Books to check out their RPG products and watch for the release of Robotech RPG Tactics in early 2014.

Bear: A First Time Parent's Continuing Journey is doing solidly well and is on track to get funded in twelve days.  Browncoats: Independence War just achieved full funding with 3 days to go, so I'd say they'll hit a stretch goal or two. And keep in mind that unless you back and get a download or DVD of the movie, it probably won't be available to see outside of con and special event screenings. So something to ponder, that. Finally, Deadzone is over $500,000 pledged with 9 days left, meaning it is almost guaranteed to be Mantic Games' most successful KS campaign yet. Seriously, don't forget about them and their enkindled Chovar model.

So with the past campaigns' roundups out of the way, I've got another set of three projects for you, this time featuring a second edition for a successful RPG, a superhero board/miniatures game mash-up, and a dark revival of a Saturday morning dynasty as a web series. Woot woot.

OVA: The Anime Role-playing Game

The art looks beautiful and perfectly evokes classic anime tropes.

What it is: OVA is an RPG tailored and streamlined to put players in anime-style adventures quickly and with a minimum of effort. Written by Clay Gardner, OVA (Open Versatile Anime) was originally published in 2005 and though it was a very small release, the unique and straightforward approach to the genre was fairly well-received. Eight years later, a wiser and more seasoned Clay Gardner is returning to his first effort with an eye to refine and deepen the rules and throw a hefty amount of artist glamour over the whole effort. The most interesting aspect of the game is the elegantly simple character creation process, which is supposed to take only a matter of minutes if you want. You design only the remarkable aspects of your character--there are no specified stats, no core abilities you need to define whether or not they're important to the character concept. If they're very good or very bad at something, that is what defines them, and that is what shows up on the character sheet. It's a novel approach and perfectly fits the anime genre, where mundane activities and attributes are hand-waved as a matter of course.

Why it's exciting: I'm a fan of GURPS, a point I've belabored on this blog several times already. But I have also said just as often that I'm a sucker for great art and for eccentric game mechanics. And OVA has both in spades. Mr. Gardner has also put up a couple of character books on his campaign's main page. I love character books--they're a combination of character background, detailed character sheet and illustration, and a summary of the core rules that apply to playing that character. It's a great play aid for learning the system, looks terribly attractive, and is useful for convention purposes for getting players into the game quickly. They're already fully funded and past a long list of stretch goals that include a mobile app to support the game. So OVA has definitely secured my pledge. And, as I said in my GM Tips post last week, a well-constructed system with a narrow focus trumps the best generic system in its realm of specialization, and OVA has me really excited to play some bright frenetic anime action. And, due to come out by the end of the year, I hopefully won't have to wait long.



Guardians Chronicles

What it is: Guardians Chronicles is an ambitious board game coming from Iello Games. In it, players take up dice, cards, miniatures, and play heroes assaulting the lair of the mastermind Professor Skarov. One player takes control of the villain and his base full of henchmen, trying to hold off the heroes while they vie to foil each other and score the most headlines by the game's end. The characters are all original heroes inspired by classic heroic paragons and villainous archetypes. And by that I mean they're totally defensible and creative designs that are obviously inspired by Dr. Strange, Captain America, Iron Man, and so forth. The play mechanics involve each hero wielding a small hand of cards to upgrade their hero with abilities and stat boosts on a turn-by-turn basis, battling robots, ninjas, and supervillains on their way.

Why it's exciting: Iello Games has already produced some very well-received, albeit more shallow, board games in the past. King of Tokyo in particular got a lot of great reviews over the past year. Guardians Chronicles looks like a colorful super-powered riff on the asymmetrical gameplay of Descent, with up to four players ganging up on a powerful mastermind controlling multiple characters of lesser ability. I love the artwork, and now that the game is fully funded with 24 days to go, I bet we'll see all or most of the stretch goals they've laid out funded before the end, which will unlock a dozen heroes and villains and bonus henchman for the larger pledges. I haven't pledged to them yet myself, but the colorful characters and action-packed game mechanics have me tempted.



MMPR

What it is: When you consider all the iterations as one, the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers has been one of the longest running shows for kids. And that goes back to my generation, with the show premiering on Fox Kids in 1993. Twenty years later, the Power Rangers are still doing their thing. Still appealing to the same age demographic with the same pratfalls, bad comedy, and cheesy but kinetic action sequences. We all grew up, but the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers didn't. That's where MMPR comes in. A fan tribute web series, MMPR aims to bring our Saturday morning fondest memories into a contemporary light with a post-apocalyptic, more serious tone. Their campaign aims to fund the fan-series pilot episode to the series, plus any further episodes they might get via stretch goals.

Why it's exciting: Honestly, I want to see some of the action for this show before I get too excited, but that little teaser and the synopsis has got me perked up. A post-heroic, blasted setting that is somehow the result of evil being defeated in the past also strikes me as an interesting and unexpected angle to take. And I was always a dork for the Green Ranger, which means I'm fairly hooked by the plot conceit of a new generation of Rangers looking for Tommy, who's now in hiding. If MMPR can just give me a little bit of that old spark I used to feel when I'd watch the Green Dragon Zord rise up out of the water without making me feel like a dork? I'd get on board. Heck, who am I kidding--I've watched old episodes of Fraggle Rock on my own in the past few years--I'm not afraid of feeling like a dork.

A Day in the Nerdery: Power-Armor-Shattering Pelvic Thrusts

A Day in the Nerdery: Being a nerd is fun. There's a peculiar level of joy that can only be enjoyed by someone who knows how to properly visualize 'power-armor-shattering pelvic thrusts', 'brace-for-impact bathroom breaks', or 'thing-foot'. I'm here to share that joy, whether you like it or not.

This is a childish bit of whimsy from years ago. Pardon my nostalgia.

I used to be a big Games Workshop fan. I may be a jaded iconoclast of the company now, but when I first heard as a seventh grader about their store's grand opening near my home, I was immediately struck. My friend, Chris, had wandered into their outlet in the local mall, and his reports were intoxicatingly imaginative and strange sounding:

"They have this game, it's called like Sword 5,000 or something, where you have armies of models fight each other. There are these guys in big suits of armor--but not like knights' armor. It's like high-tech armor."

"Like Starship Troopers?"

"I dunno, I haven't read that yet. But it's like Aliens, except the armor doesn't have gaps."

"Like Exo-squad?"

"Maybe. But they're fighting these space pirate elves in purple, spiky armor, and they're in these buildings that have been destroyed somehow. You move your guys 6 inches, and then you roll dice to shoot at the enemy."

"Sounds awesome."

"It is awesome, but you don't even know. When you get close, your guys can charge into melee..."

And so it went, until I harangued my mom into driving me there the next day. I played a demo game of Warhammer 40,000 and didn't leave the store until I'd plunked $80 down on a boxed starter set, paint kit, and hobby supplies. Within hours, I was thick into laying a foundation in a hobby of poring over rules and charting the perfect force composition, nicking my fingers with craft knives, and eyes watering at the near-sighted strain of late night painting sessions. Two years later, I had three armies of miniatures, each numbering at least 50 models about the size of a fat thumb. And kind of a fourth army, too.

See, within a couple of weeks of that first purchase in the hobby, I became an insufferable proselyte for my nerdy addiction. I went to school with my rulebook, and spent passing periods, lunch time, and study hall either outlining my future unit purchases or showing off the fantastic illustrations to my friends. In a middle school of maybe sixty kids, it's accurate to say that I was known as "Ben the Wargame Kid" by the second Friday.

Surprisingly and despite my best exertions, Chris never got bit by the bug he gave me. He never picked up any models or books or got any deeper into 40K than a couple of shallow games we played with that starter boxed set. But oh, did we play those starting forces to death. No 30 models in all the hobby were as thoroughly used and abused as those 10 Space Marines and 20 Dark Eldar (space elves) with which my hobby began. And I did manage to recruit one of my friends. My buddy Tyler latched onto the game in much the same way I did, marveling and pondering over the huge swathes of arcane fiction in the rulebook, enjoying the endless plotting involved in devising a potential army's makeup, and the painting.

No, not the painting. Tyler hated the painting. Assembling his models was good fun for him--a much more utilitarian and rewarding hobby than the four or five unfinished military models he had at the time. But painting was a gross requirement to expect from Tyler. His first army was the Space Marines' Blood Angels chapter, and his preferred method of detailing them was upending the Emperor's Finest one at a time and dunking them into a paint pot of blood red paint. It looked awful--as anyone familiar with paint, models, or even nail polish could guess. I begged him to let me paint his army, and being the good, lazy friend that he was, Tyler let me. Making his force my kinda-fourth-army.

"...it's accurate to say that I was known as 'Ben the Wargame Kid' by the second Friday."

Those first years were great for us and our hobby. We made monthly purchasing trips to the local Games Workshop, and once our armies were ready we went to the mall every Thursday after school to play 40K against other kids. Of course, this is when GW's fanbase and target demographic was a lot older than it is today, so by other kids I mean 3 high schoolers and a dozen overweight bearded guys. I loved it.

But we ended up playing a lot more at Tyler's house, confiscating his family's large dining room table for games once or twice a week. At that point, Tyler had a plus-sized Blood Angels force with a passable paintjob commissioned from me, and I was fielding an army of fancy-pants Eldar against him. Tyler's army revolved around two tanks, some heavy support, and a cheesy overpowered guy in gold plate named Lord Dante. Now, Dante isn't a specific model--he's the El Guapo* of Warhammer 40,000 3rd Edition. Dante is that guy or effect or level in every hobby that makes nerds gush with ire and overused jargon. When you walk in on a bunch of kids arguing over Pokemon, getting way too worked up over the ultimate evolution of the best undefeatable Pokemon, they're arguing over Lord Dante. When D&D nerds talk about that old school dungeon from the 80s that was insanely cheap and impossible to beat--they played Dante. Dante is the unfair cheap-ass bogeyman of nerd hobbies. My Dante just so happened to be the actual Lord Dante.

A single miniature only slightly bigger than any other infantry model, Lord Dante would lead Tyler's forces into the thick of my superbly painted sissies and have his way with them wielding a master-crafted power axe (sci-fi turkey cutter) and a inferno pistol that makes every raygun in everything else look like a hair dryer by comparison. And he had a jetpack. Now, Tyler didn't always win. In fact, I'd say I won more often than not, but Lord Dante always defied me. Either I'd have to redirect my entire army of proudly garish Eldar to focus their puny might against him to bring him down, or even in the face of my victory he'd survive--an immortal atom left in the wake of his force's slaughter. My answer to Lord Dante was Baharroth--a brightly painted Eldar with a peacock helmet, Swooping Hawk wings, and basically half as good at everything as Lord Dante. Baharroth got it rough from Lord Dante almost every time Tyler and I played. And I got trash-talked a lot because of it.

"Dante is that guy or effect or level in every hobby that makes nerds gush with ire and overused jargon."

Oh, the trash-talk. As a pair of nerdy junior high boys with no aspirations for girlfriends at the time, we took trash-talk to a new degree of obscurity. Sometimes the trash-talk was just stage-whispered proto-swears and crude gestures, but for most of it we really elevated our banter to match our nerdy pursuits. At school we'd randomly throw insults at each other about how the other one would doubtless fall beneath our mighty tank treads and cry for mercy (Tyler's trash talk), or how the other guy would get turtled over onto his armored back and drowned in the blood of his own fellows (my trash talk). Or it'd be as simple as saying that the other kid couldn't know the right answer in history class because he couldn't roll a 3+ on four dice to save his command squad. In the middle of class.

Yes yes, it is good we weren't angling for girlfriends at that phase of our lives.

But one particular night, when Tyler and I were bargaining over territorial rights over his dining room table, there was a moment of absolute epiphany. Lord Dante and a couple of over-powered minions had cleft their way deep into my Eldar formation's glass flank. Desperate to humiliate the shining compensator, I dropped Baharroth and ten of his Swooping Hawk meat-shields bodyguards subordinates directly on top of the assaulting marines. It was a bloody mistake. Dante and his wingmen turned and let into my fiery-painted turkeys like they'd just gotten back from a day-long hike. A turn later, and the fracas had dissolved down to Dante and Baharroth. It was a familiar scenario that always ended with the Phoenix Lord of the Swooping Hawks spread-eagled and whimpering at Dante's feet. Only this time, Baharroth's rolls were teasing me:

6. Roll again to keep striking until I miss. 6. 6. 6!

I did a pissy-giddy dance, pat-pat-pat in place, clapping like an idiot as I racked up a respectable final blow against Dante before he'd inevitably counter-attack and blood eagle me. All Tyler had to do was make a couple of armor saves.

1. I giggle. 1. A gasp and with my hands primed and held in upraised fists. 1!

"Bam! Lord Dante goes down to the queen of the sugar-plum Eldar!" I shout and throw down an epically-scaled series of table-shaking pelvic thrusts. "Do you feel that?! Those are the power-armor-shattering pelvic thrusts of Baharroth ruling Lord Dante's dead body!" I crowed as I pronounced the ultimate trash-talk of our gaming lives.

Funny enough, Tyler's dining room table was like a six-foot-long four-inch-thick oak monstrosity, and I bruised the heck out of my hip mimicking Baharroth's victory corpse-hump. So the power-armor-shattering pelvic thrusts also happened to be pelvis-shattering pelvic thrusts.

Now, the Eldar and Blood Angels are sold--eBayed off to pay bills and free up shelf space long left untended. But those memories will never fade. The nostalgia is eternal, and only highlighted by the contrasting ire I now feel for Games Workshop and what has become of Warhammer 40,000. And always, always there is the eternal joke of the power-armor-shattering pelvic thrusts.

I hope you've enjoyed this unannounced detour down my memory lane. If not, mental bleach is available for a small secondhand premium. You can have it as soon as I wash away the rest of Disney's Star Wars dance-off from my mind...

Ha. Now you need a double dose of mental bleach. That'll be two premium fees.

"Bam! Lord Dante goes down to the queen of the sugar-plum Eldar!"

*Three Amigos reference, folks.

Don't Be That Guy: Microsoft Building Bridges

Oh no, they're doing that other thing.

Microsoft has probably been one of the most talked about nerd topics over the past 48 hours. With its announcement yesterday for a next generation gaming console called "Xbox One", the much beloved company has injected the intersphere with healthy debate and carefully-worded critiques.

Now before I get into it, let me stress a few things. First of all, this is all a confusing mess of rumor, opinion, and spin. But Microsoft has been building up to this conference for months, and the fact that they gave such a poor showing (few really exciting game announcements and then horrible spin on policy issues they should have anticipated) makes you wonder what they were doing with the extra delay. Secondly, things might not be as bad as they seem right now, and--much more likely, considering how bad a bath Microsoft is taking over this--it is possible some or all of these problems might be addressed before the system's release.

So Microsoft's big reveal of Xbox One. Terrible name. Let's just get that out of the way. Xbox is the console brand, so when referring to the three generations of console, we're supposed to call them what? Xbox original, Xbox360, and Xbox One? That sounds dumb and not at all like a progression. The conference focused on non-gaming assets for the console, including an exclusive NFL partnership, interactive TV, and a Spielberg-produced Halo live action series exclusive to box users. That's pretty darn cool. But they showed virtually nothing exciting on the game side and only offered a vague promise for fifteen exclusive year one titles, eight of which will be new franchises.

Greeeeeat. Anyone thinking we're going to get at least three or four Gun Valkyrie? Decent games with wasted potential that will never be realized due to lukewarm sales, at best. Plus, with previous generations, each system had 15-20 games at launch, so having only 15 exclusives lined up for the first year is kind of weak if you figure than half of them are probably shooting for system launch releases. Especially when you figure in that the first year of a console's life is the best time to get exclusive titles on it. The longer a system is out, the more its age becomes a liability, and the more likely it is that developers would rather cross-platform.

Anyways, there's a degree to which we're all left waiting the next two and a half weeks before the gaming side of things is cleared up, but there are four steamy loads that have dropped this week, and they're creating most of the buzz around Microsoft and the Xbox One.

1. Always On

Microsoft is a bunch of lying liars who lie. First they confirm that there's no "always online" requirement to play games on the Xbox One, but then they turn around and say a connection is required ("daily" is the latest iteration) as part of handshake protocols to confirm your library. But requiring that you're online for any interval is the same as always on, because: A) the installation management system as described can't work without online verification; B) the primary reason to play offline is to avoid using the internet altogether, either because you don't have it or don't want to use it--Microsoft is thumbing its nose at all such players in this move; C) Microsoft is setting the interval for these mandatory online handshakes, which means that their system will dictate how often you need to be online and when. That effectively gives them control over when your internet is allowed to go down or otherwise be unavailable, as your connection going down close to the required check-in time means no Halo 5 for you.

Furthermore, Always On is really about the Kinect needing to be on and connected to your Xbox One at all times--always watching and listening. Forget the Orwellian implications for a moment. I don't want to have to get into a shouting match with my two year-old over what we watch because Xbox One has hijacked my television. That's not a service, that's a major handicap to anyone not living alone.

My son has trouble enunciating the word "Percy"

2. No Backwards Compatibility

The lack of backwards compatibility shouldn't be a surprise, but the fact that not even Xbox 360's top selling games will be supported sets a dangerous precedent when you consider Xbox One's other policies. It indicates they have no desire to allow gamers to use their products past the console's expiration date. In the case of previous generations of consoles, that's not a big deal--you could just keep your old console and game on it whenever. The stringent online handshake requirements of Xbox One as outlined so far, however, change all of that. Eventually, when Xbox Two comes out in six years, they'll start phasing out the server-side support for Xbox One games, and you'll never be able to use the old hardware again once they make that decision because a network connection is required. It's not like they're going to suddenly phase in a legitimate offline mode out of pure charity when they're about to release a new product, right?

Microsoft trying to out-jeffries Mike Jeffries

3. Mandatory Installs + 500GB Hard Drive

 Looking at the next gen of console games, a 500GB Hard Drive is a big fat joke, especially since the new system's physical architecture is non-modular. Even if you don't use your box to store video and music (and with the new concept of the all-in-one entertainment center, they really want you to download other media to your Xbox One), I'd be very surprised if next gen games used less than 20GB per installation. And that's before you start snagging the superfluous DLC that's becoming more and more common, or the huge save files attached to most console games. My Xbox 360 has several games installed on it, and they take up an average of 7GB--and that still relies on the disc for essential assets. Essentially, the combination of drive sizes and markups plus mandatory game installation means that you're going to have a cap on the library of available games you can use on your Xbox One. All this on a system that doesn't permit users to swap out the paltry 500GB drive means that, assuming an average game clocks in at 20-25GB installed, you'll be able to fit maybe twenty games onto your Xbox One before you have to start uninstalling things.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO.

4. Secondhand Fee

Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb said on his blog this morning that you get access to your installed games while signed into your own profile. So if you have Halo 5 installed on your machine but aren't logged in, you can't access it. (How is that for offline-friendly?) Also, the only 'potential scenario' for this fee that has come out of an Xbox rep is that a new game's secondhand fee would be retail. Retail! So if I get Call of Duty Recursive Ops: Collector's Edition and really don't like it, the best I could get on eBay would be $5 to $15 at best for the game, since anyone who got it from me would have to pay full price to use it. Otherwise, it's just a coaster. In a world where publishers are forcing pre-order and collector's edition bloat, this secondhand fee is going to damn gamers who do and who don't get games early. Either you pre-order and get screwed over by the Duke Nukem Forever and Aliens: Colonial Marines of the industry, or you wait and get screwed over having to pay a premium for pre-order DLC to complete the game experience.

Steve Ballmer is confused by the idiot masses and their misleading memes

The crux of the Xbox One as a gaming platform is the mandatory elements, and they've bungled it completely. The plan as outlined so far is vastly inferior to established, successful digital distribution models ike Desura and Steam, and instead of doing the logical thing and using discs as an offline handshake protocol, they're trying to set themselves up as a cable service alternative where every game is pay-per-install.

Now retailers like Gamestop will work things out with Microsoft, probably arranging for a mass markdown on their secondhand fees as part of the refurbishment process. But that deal, which Microsoft will bilk for whatever they can get, will result in a poorer deal for individual gamers who get stuck having to foot the bill on that deferred fee. That games aren't going to be permitted personally-initiated and arbitrated sales is ridiculous. Sure, they're going to have an as-yet-to-be-revealed service for exchanging games online, but I guarantee you that that service will come at some sort of premium, if only as a perk of having a paid membership. This is just another policy that is trying to Falcon Punch individuals and small businesses in the balls--any local retailer chains or rental places are going to get reamed by this policy, and I bet Microsoft won't care enough to work something out with them.



I really wanted to stick with Xbox on the new generation. I got the 360 early on for games like Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Mass Effect, Dead Rising, and the Halo franchise. I want to keep riding the horse that brung me here. But right now I don't foresee myself buying anything but a PC for the time being. And for those of you kids who want to say something idiotic like "this is the future" or something like that. No. No.

No.

Offline play does not mean you are a grognard or a pirate. It just means that if you're going to have a system in your house that aims to be the hub of your entertainment center, it had better actually work the way you want.

Microsoft has a lot of damage control to do before E3. If they're even neck-and-neck with Sony in terms of showing there, they'll have lost the next console war before it began.

In related news, Sony's stock got a 9% boost the day of Microsoft's terrible announcement, and Microsoft has dropped more than 1% in the same time-frame. Classic.

Microsoft: don't be that guy.



Also, if you think I'm harsh (and don't mind a lot of fuming f-bombs), check out Angry Joe's thoughts on the subject.

GURPS Centurion: Quintus

GURPS Centurion: In my introduction to the Generic Universal Role-Playing System, I proclaimed that it had unrivaled versimilitude and granularity. To illustrate this, I will take some of the main characters from the Neil Marshall movie 'Centurion' and assign them stats according to GURPS. I'll also take a scene or two from the movie and use that to illustrate the deadly versimilitude of the combat system.

Gugh. So this is yet another long neglected series that hasn't seen any new material since 2011. But it's received good traffic despite that, and as a GURPS fan I've always wanted my blog to have a hefty chunk of GURPS material on it. Now I'll throw down some mandrake, wiggle my toes, stretch out my fingers, and we'll see if I can bring back the GURPS Centurion project.

Today I'll stat up and elaborate on the main character of the movie Centurion, Quintus Dias, who is played by Michael Fassbender. He's a centurion--in fact, he's the eponymous hero--and at the beginning of the movie he's stationed at a garrison that gets sacked by the Picts. Eventually he regroups with Virilus and the Ninth Legion and they set out north to attack the Picts on their own ground. Quintus is a natural, scrappy fighter that was taught to fight and understand his enemies by his father, a retired gladiator. He's got a limited, more persuasive form of charisma than Virilus, and since the men he interacts with are new acquaintances, much of his social acumen with them is displayed over the way he gets to know the group in order to better motivate them.

Once again, this is made with a focus on the GURPS Basic set, with only a little taken from Low-Tech and GURPS Martial Arts. Quintus Dias is basically a more adventure-conscious version of Virilus. Like the general, he has social and leadership qualities, but to a lesser degree. Also like Virilus, he gets his gear provided by the Roman military, although in the plot of the story he loses all of his gear right away only to get it replaced when he joins the Ninth Legion.

Quintus Dias [187 pts total]
Attributes [76 pts sub-total]: ST +2 [20]; DX +1 [20]; IQ +0 [0]; HT +3 [30]; HP -2 [-4]; Will +2 [10]; Per +0 [0]; FP +0 [0]

I viewed Quintus Dias as more of a glass hero than Virilus, so right off the bat I lowered his Strength by one and brought his HP down to the default of 10. This is largely to represent that he seems to take virtually no wounds in the course of the movie without getting seriously messed up, unlike many of the other protagonists who soldier through insane amounts of injury--Brick for the win, yo. I kept his Dexterity at a reasonable 11, since even though he's a capable fighter, he has a more flat-footed bearing, too. The amount of endurance Quintus displays in the course of just a few days of activity is amazing, though, and so I decided to give him 13 Health. Which is pretty rare for me, since in GURPS a little Health can go a long ways and I normally consider Health 13 or 14 to be borderline superhuman. Then again, him escaping shirtless through snowy ridges and out-hiking pursuers on horseback is kind of just the right amount of superhuman to merit Health 13.

Influence and Wealth [44 pts sub-total]: Languages: Latin (native), Pict (fluent) [4]; Cultures: Roman; Attractive [4], Wealthy [15], Military Rank 2 [10], Status 2 [10], Reputation 1 (large class of people, recognized on a 7 or less) [1]

One of the big things that sets Quintus apart from the other characters is his familiarity with the Pict language. Now, in an ordinary GURPS campaign I'd probably charge an Unusual Background of 5 points for that (basically, a GM-determined premium on something that should be more rare than the standard cost). But since it doesn't amount to that much of an advantage in the plot of the movie, I'd say the surcharge is unnecessary. I also gave him attractive, as I've recently discovered that Google's first two search suggestions for Michael Fassbender are regarding a previous role in which he went nekkid--I think that means he gets at least +1 reactions from the ladies. Alright, probably more, but since it doesn't come up in the plot of this movie we'll assume he's just everyman beefcake. He's got Wealth, Status, and Military Rank that fits his position as a centurion (which has some suggested stats in GURPS Fantasy on p. 222 and 223), and a minor Reputation to show Virilus' recognition and apparent admiration for his pedigree.

Advantages [23 pts sub-total]: Combat Reflexes [15], Fearlessness [8]

For his remaining advantages, I kept Quintus pretty much the same as Virilus. As a fighter, he shows a fair amount of skill, but nothing I'd deem worth any specific Advantages other than Combat Reflexes and Fearlessness. If he'd taken more injury at the end of the movie, I might have given him some Hard to Kill, but as it is it appears he pulls himself onto his horse just to bleed to death in front of his lady-friend. Also, if I were focusing more on Martial Arts, I'd probably give him a perk for knowing the fighting style of the Legion and the gladiatorial arena, since he seems to have the best dueling skill in the movie.

Disadvantages [-34 pts sub-total]: Broad-minded [-1], Code of Honor (Soldier's) [-10], Duty (extremely hazardous, always on-duty) [-20], Selfless (16 or more) [-3]

Quintus doesn't have a lot of disadvantages. Code of Honor (soldier's), and Duty are prerequisites for any of the protagonists, so really the only two flaws he displays that I felt fit GURPS disadvantages were Selfless and Broad-minded. Yes, both of those are disadvantages in GURPS. Selfless is a trait governed by self-control rolls where if you fail you put the needs of others ahead of your own. Since this is an RPG in a very violent campaign, being selfless can be stupidly dangerous--so I helped Q-ball out by making him resist his stupid altruism on a 15 or less. Similarly, Broad-minded is a low-level variant of Xenophilia, which is a character flaw where any new or strange culture enamors a character to an inordinate degree. I felt this represented Quintus' appreciation for the Picts and the way he and Arianne hit it off so quickly without having a remotely common cultural basis. Other than hot bodies in the Caledonian winter, that is.

Skills [78 pts sub-total]: Brawling DX+2 [4], Broadsword DX+2 [8], -TA(Broadsword thrust/Vitals) -2 [2], -TA(Broadsword swing/Neck) -1 [5], Knife DX [1], Shield DX+2 [4], Spear DX-1 [1], Animal Handling (Horses) IQ-1 [1], Riding (Horses) DX-1 [1], -Cavalry Training (Broadsword) -1 [2], Armoury (melee) IQ-1 [1], Carousing HT [1], Cartography IQ-1 [1], Diplomacy IQ-1 [2], Hiking HT+1 [4], History (1st Cent. Empire) IQ [4], Interrogation IQ-1 [1], Law (Roman) IQ-2 [1], Leadership IQ+2 [8], Navigation (land) IQ+2 [8], Savoir-Faire (Military) IQ+1 [2], Strategy (Land) IQ+1 [8], Tactics IQ+1 [8]

I gave our hero a bit more skill with the Broadsword, and I significantly boosted his neck-chopping technique since he gets the flashiest decapitation in the whole bloody flick. I nerfed his riding skill, which is probably unrealistic for a centurion and unfair for the character, but we never see him successfully ride a horse for very long when the fur starts to fly. I boosted his Tactics one increment, and then lowered a number of the IQ-based skills Virilus had, and dropped Politics and Public Speaking completely. Other than that, though, his skill-set is very similar to Virilus'.

At a total of 187 points, Quintus is significantly lighter weight overall than Virilus, but in a combat encounter he'd probably do better than Virilus despite the 18 points discrepancy. That's because Virilus is much more focused on social skills and advantages, which I already mentioned, and it also helps that Quintus is so light in disadvantages. If a typical GURPS player were making Quintus, they'd probably buy even more disadvantages for him to try to take the max discount the GM would allow. And if they were being a cheesy power-gamer, they'd probably have Quintus take a few more significant social Disadvantages to keep his points down while still leaving his combat prowess unhindered. But I don't like optimization as a GM or a player, and when representing a character from a movie or show optimization goes right out the window--I'm just statting what I see, folks.

You can review Etain and Virilus, along with my solemn pledge that the next addition to this feature series will take significantly less than two years to come.

Movie Web Monday: Morgan Freeman

Movie Web Monday: Each week, I'll look at a specific actor's roles across three good movies. The third movie will in turn tie into the first movie of the next week's actor, whose third movie will continue the pattern. I will go through actors and movies at this rate, with the following limitations in mind: every movie(or television show) invoked will be one I either own, or wish to own; no movie or actor will be invoked twice. So sit back and enjoy as you fall into the nerdery's movie web. (Oh, and I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, telling you just enough to know if you'll enjoy the movie)

Morgan Freeman: Salt of the Earth

Before I resume the long-neglected-but-popular series Movie Web Monday, let me explain something I said a long time ago. Back in October of 2012, I mentioned that the long suspension of Movie Web Monday could be blamed on Morgan Freeman. And while I love him--more and more it seems--I have to say it really is his fault. Freeman is in just too many movies that I own and love, and he straddles so many genres and functions that it was a terrible pain in the butt to pick just two more movies to link into his cinematic chain. Now, when I first began this series, I wrote down a master road map for Movie Web Monday, which would span fifty-four actors and more than one hundred movies, and Morgan Freeman is not even halfway down the list. So how could I be stumped when I'd already committed, hm?

When I first set out to write this article, I suddenly realized that I hadn't included Dreamcatcher in Morgan Freeman's length of the Movie Web Monday chain. And that movie is a dear one of mine--not just because I enjoy it or I like pairing it up with John Carpenter's The Thing, but also because, like its namesake, Dreamcatcher links together some really great actors that are not currently on the Movie Web Monday road map. Namely: Timothy Olyphant and Thomas Jane. And as it stands, even if I took the road map down Mr. Olyphant or Mr. Jane's side-streets, I'd still be neglecting the other. I hope to incorporate them into this feature on down the line, but the agony I felt and still feel over having to exclude them from the current course was crippling.

But not anymore, so on with the blog post.

Movie: Unleashed (Own it)

Morgan Freeman plays Sam in Unleashed, a blind piano repairman who sits on Danny's other shoulder opposite Bob Hoskins' Bart. Where Uncle Bart is blithely crass and violent, Sam is gregarious, wise, and soft-spoken. But, as with any Morgan Freeman role, Sam is also his most potent when he's soft-spoken. And in delivering a fantastic performance, Freeman also cements the primary dynamic of the movie in opposition to Hoskins--the dueling natures of sweetness, innocence, and kindness standing opposite violence, revenge, and cruel causality. It's a role only Morgan Freeman could fulfill, as virtually any other actor would badly mangle the sappy homilies that he drops on us with pitch perfect droll. Like when he first meets Danny and drops the premise of the film:

Stuck behind sunglasses for almost all of his screen time and playing a hopelessly optimistic single father, anyone else would probably flounder in the role of Sam. But instead he anchors the movie with wry, understated humor and everyday life parables for living simply and honestly, which is exactly what Danny craves. It's really fun watching Danny absorb everything Sam does like a sponge, and in those scenes I find I'm jealous of the surrogate father and the son in those moments. Which is probably Morgan Freeman's greatest contribution to the film--he sells the patchwork family so well, that despite everything Sam goes through and everything Danny goes through, you can't help but feel a little envy for them. And not just because I'd like to one day be able to throw two guys at once by their junk.

Movie: Unforgiven (I keep on renting it, should probably buy it)

Unforgiven is a great western that stands firmly in the deconstruction side of the genre to the point that deconstruction is one of the primary themes of the movie itself. It's a western about four legends of the wild west, all past their prime, and their relationships with who they choose to be and their reputations' take on that. Clint Eastwood directed and played the main protagonist, Will Munny, who after years living as a simple farming widower and father, is forced to take one last job to save his farm. Munny sets out to recruit Ned Logan, Morgan Freeman's character, as they rode in the same gang in decades past. Ned serves as a universal anchor in a movie where most of the characters are full of beans and half-baked legends they concoct about themselves. He's constantly correcting Munny's version of past events and making practical observations about their situation, while Munny himself is so grimly set on his course that everything becomes understatement and assumption to get them one step closer to cold-blooded killings and their reward. Ned also gets a chance to pry some wry humor out of Munny's scenes, as Munny himself as a character is worn down to only two grits of sand rubbing together. As they set out on their journey, for instance, Munny grumbles about Ned being homesick, only to get a curt response:

He briefly elevates the film into feeling like it might slip into a buddy cowboy movie. Heck, if it wasn't so raw, depressing, and thoroughly grim, it'd be Space Cowboys without the space. Really. But when Ned steps out of the bloody business, or tries to, the audience is dragged down to a sad certainty that there is no happy ending for this western, and it's the common charm of Morgan Freeman as Ned that helps to establish him as one of the last good things in the whole dreadful affair.

Movie: Shawshank Redemption (Own it) Minor spoiler ahead

Shawshank Redemption is a period prison movie about human spirit and determination. Which sounds like a crap introduction to a high school English paper, but despite the hackneyed themes the movie tackles, it unveils and copes with all of the characters' baggage so well that it easily surpasses those limits and becomes a movie beyond its tropes and genres. It is simply good. And Morgan Freeman's character, Ellis Boyd Redding, or Red, is the standard bearer for that honorable distinction. Focusing on a group of endearing inmates beneath brutal and hypocritical prison staff, Shawshank Redemption leads us through the lives of the protagonists as though it were a slice-of-life movie in the vein of the Wonder Years, except that Wayne Arnold is a billy-club-wielding thug, Winnie Cooper is replaced by a gang of prison rapists and Paul Pfeiffer and Kevin Arnold's friendship is that of Tim Robbins' and Morgan Freeman's characters. Freeman's character Red is a wizened, cynical old convict who takes Robbins' character, Andy Dufresne, under his wing and into his friendship, and in the process Red finds that the surprising determination and hope Andy displays helps restore his own faith in life and not giving up. In a kind of sardonic way, it totally crystalizes for Red at the end of the movie when he faces his last parole hearing, and he sees that the system has been used to rob him of his hope and dignity rather than empower him to be a more complete person:

Freeman burns throughout the movie with a subdued intensity that makes you feel like he'd ooze Red's history if someone bumped him the wrong way. He at once understands almost everyone in the film, serving as the narrator, and yet his awed descriptions of his friend Andy help to show that no amount of experience can completely sponge away wonder and whimsy--even if we lose it in ourselves, it's possible to find it in the sincerity of others.

Movie Web Monday will continue next week with a new actor, picking up with some other prolific player from the last movie listed above.

GM Tips: Know Your System Expounded

GM Tips: 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 one nerd shoulders the burden of the Game Master.


Before I get into today's tips for GMs, I want to point out that early yesterday morning May officially became the highest traffic month in the history of the blog. Woot! Also, with nearly two weeks left, May is going to be the first month to reach a personal goal for me since I started the blog. It's an embarrassingly modest goal, and I originally thought I'd hit it in month three of blogging, so I'm not going to share it right now. But I wanted to thank you guys for reading and to let you know that it means a lot to me. Now tell your friends, you anti-social dorks.

*fist-shakes*

As a completely pointless token of my thanks, here's a pic of something fun I made on Friday. Yeah, sometimes this is what I do, too.

Check out my under-moisturized hand and freaky ET fingers.

Okay, now to your almost regularly scheduled Nerdery: In GMing 101 I stressed first and foremost that you know your system. Knowing your system is an invaluable element of situational awareness as a GM, and it goes beyond the rules found in your core game book and extends to understanding your perceptions and those of your players. If you want the lay-abouts to enjoy the game, that is. If you don't, then by all means plow into whatever rules system you fancy and bedevil those silly fun-seeking players.

Here I'll provide some examples of RPGs that I own, their most important mechanics, and what factors normally lead me to play a game with that system. This is a good principle to ply when in the early stages of planning an RPG campaign, and it extends to any discussions you should have with your core players before putting too much work into a game. It really would be unfortunate to get three sessions into a new campaign to find out that your players, system, and setting are a poor match for each other. Unfortunate, but not atypical.



GURPS
Primary Mechanic: Roll 3d6 and total the rolled result, looking to get under your effective skill for the action.

For being so notorious for math and character-building minutiae, GURPS has one of the most straightforward primary game mechanics of any dice-based RPG system. You throw your three six-sided dice and want to get low results--at most equal to your skill for the specific action. That's it. Physically, a player is doing the same thing whether jumping a bridge or fast-drawing a pistol--throwing 3d6--and it's only the specific modifiers and player choices that change. Now, damage does call on players to roll different numbers of six-siders, but that's a small, clear deviation from the gold standard. GURPS players need no odd-sided dice, don't have to alternate between mini-game diversions for game mechanics, or hover over whether or not they want to roll high or low. You want high rolls for damage, and low rolls for everything else.

Now, that simple game mechanic has a whole range of applications, and because of that the core books for GURPS are really thick with well thought-out and detailed rules. And the huge library of supplements out there are usually an expansion and explanation of the simple guidelines in the two books of the core set. For instance, the Low Tech series of GURPS supplements build on the ancient arms, armor, and economic aspects of playing a gritty game in eras before firearms became commonplace. But there are basic lists of swords and medieval weaponry in the core books, but they tend to be a shorthand list meant more for simplistic and stylized games with action movie mentality--equipped with Low Tech, you can specify weight and cost for pauldrons rather than an entire suit of armor. This pattern means that a GURPS supplement often fits in well with the core set, but it also isn't as likely to be a game-changer as other RPG expansions. Depending on your personal sensibilities, this could be an asset or a liability.

Breadth: Anything.

GURPS is the Generic Universal Role-Playing System, fool. Of course you can cover any setting. And Steve Jackson Games has supported GURPS so well that there are probably multiple supplements to the rules to cover any genre or setting you might have in mind, whether it's spy action movie, transhuman punk sci-fi, or frakkin' Watership Down. GURPS has it covered. Now, it doesn't mean that GURPS covers all genres equally well--it's generic, so any game system that's tailored to a setting and well done should be better than GURPS in their specific goals. But if the governing factors lean the right way, you can totally get into just about any sort of game with GURPS.

Deciding factor: Weight and encumbrance.

The encumbrance system of GURPS is emblematic of what makes it unique as a system, and I find that if I'm looking to play a game where I don't care much about encumbrance, then GURPS might not be my choice. For example, if I were to play a super-powered genre game, I'd probably think twice about using GURPS. And this isn't just because I'd ignore the encumbrance system in a GURPS Supers game--the finite one-second resolution of a GURPS turn feels contrary to the pacing of a comic book story. The only way I'd want to do a GURPS Supers campaign would be as a gritty deconstruction of most genre conventions, but as a four-color game I doubt I'd use it. For my current GURPS Myth game, however, one of the central themes of the campaign is the journey and daily survival of the characters. The system's way of handling hiking, fatigue, encumbrance, and the deadliness of medieval combat were central considerations for me when planning the style and plot of the campaign. So even though medieval fantasy settings are the most common amongst RPGs, there's really no other system I know of that I'd consider using to run my Myth game.



World of Darkness
Primary Mechanic: Roll a 'pool' of d10s and count the number of dice that come up as 8, 9, or 10. The more dice that 'succeed' the better. 10s get rerolled and any extra successes added.

World of Darkness is a game tailored to a specific campaign style, and--while it's not strictly limited to the default setting--it is distinctly geared towards evoking the themes of the main setting. Called the Storytelling system, World of Darkness is geared towards a more conceptual method of role-playing games. Rolling in combat covers hitting, damage, and defense in the same dice roll. There's also a sort of mini-game related to characters' morality and sanity that is the cornerstone of the game, where PCs who commit immoral acts relative to their current level need to test for declining morality and any eccentricities or delusions they might develop at the same time. Finally, it's worth mentioning that World of Darkness is actually a collection of different related games all based on the storytelling system. One game focuses on vampire PCs, another on werewolves, one for mages, one for Frankenstein-type monsters, and so forth. They all share the same core rules and some straightforward variation of the morality system to represent the values peculiar to the sub-game's protagonists and their own eccentricities.

Breadth: Supernatural and occult games, especially ones based in a modern setting.

World of Darkness is nothing without eldritch, magical, or at least weird powers at play. There's also a lot of drama stemming from internal party and character angst, so if you don't want monster PCs to be at least somewhat conscious of their metaphysical problems, it might be a poor fit. A recent supplement, Mirrors, gives some high-level suggestions for porting the game into a fantasy, sci-fi, or post-apocalyptic setting. But even so they still need to accommodate or at least address the key themes above.

Deciding factor: the morality system.

I love the morality system, and because of that World of Darkness is one of those games I'm always interested in playing. Because the morality mechanic features a different set of standards for slipping morals, characters tend to skirt the fine line of sanity and ruthlessness in a world of monsters. It's evocative and rare, and to even try to make morality and sanity similarly large elements of other games takes a lot of shoe-horning and handwaving.

Dungeons & Dragons (or any D20 really)

Primary Mechanic: Roll 1d20 and add relevant modifiers, comparing the total against a target number.

D&D is the ultimate representative of RPGs for most people--nerd, gamer, or otherwise. But I'm another story. Sure, I'd always heard of D&D, but I didn't get into a game of it until I'd already gotten three or four other systems under my belt. It may be mitigated by my prior experience, but the core mechanic of D&D is kind of clumsy to me. The simple 1d20 mechanic is complicated by the addition of action points, which can be used for extra actions, special abilities, or to add 1d6 to the main roll. Then weapons' damage are based on any dice but 1d20. So even though it's a classic legacy game mechanic, it's really the least comfortable system for me.


Breadth: Niche stylized action and heroes.

Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition has little breadth in the main system--the company Wizards of the Coast is currently only making the standard D&D setting and Gamma World variation, which is a wacky post-apocalyptic setting. But there's Pathfinder and the True20 systems based on the third edition of the game, made by Paizo Publishing and Green Ronin Publishing, respectively. Pathfinder is still a traditional late medieval fantasy setting, but True20 is designed to cover almost as many settings as GURPS, albeit with less depth and scrutiny. But the core of all of these d20 games are still fundamentally limited to high action, low-grit campaigns.

Deciding factor: setting.

Frankly, I don't think I'd ever run a fantasy game with D&D. The rules are hamstrung by classes and mechanics that really take a lot of tweaking or handwaving to make it mesh with my approach to fantasy games. However, for a comic, irreverent, and ludicrously lethal short-run game, I love Gamma World as an easy game to get into. Ironically, the only game I'm really interested in running based on the D20 system is Mongoose Publishing's out-of-print Starship Troopers RPG. There, the class system fits military specializations reasonably well, the high-action rules fit with the war angle, and the tweaks to the core of the D20 system make it lethal enough for players to feel fragile in the face of their alien enemies.

Fire and Ice Roundup: 2012 and 2013

Today I put to rest another post that's been lingering for far too long. Last year, just after going to Fire and Ice 2012, I pledged to give a more detailed discussion of the convention... later that week.

Well, frak. That sure as heck didn't happen.

So now, having been haunted by that particular failure for over a year, I've added another victim to my unfinished business: Fire and Ice 2013. This actually works out pretty well, as in 2013 much of my time at the con revolved around the games that I'd volunteered to host. Since I didn't do this the first year, it makes for a good comprehensive perspective of the small gaming convention.

This review I'll break up into the types of games I've played at Fire and Ice, and a brief run-down of my specific experiences.

Role-Playing Games

I've mentioned in the past that I love being able to play several RPGs in one weekend. It's a great way to try out different game systems and with players of diverse role-playing styles. This second part is really fun and unique. You can always play a new game with your same old gaming group, but forming a whole new group of role-players is slow at best and at worst it's more agonizing than the first season of Star Trek Next Generation. Of course, playing with new people presents its own difficulties, too. You need to spend a lot of game time feeling out the others' play styles and expectations of the game, and it's easy to fall back more on humor than you would otherwise do in a typical session.

"Well, frak. That sure as heck didn't happen."

What first brought me to Fire and Ice 2012 was a conversation with Kurt Wilken on the GURPS forums at Steve Jackson Games' website about running a one-shot GURPS Thundercats game for a local convention. My enthusiasm for both GURPS and the Thundercats led me to bring my wife and son to the small Wisconsin convention in search of games, and Kurt's GURPS Thundercats happened to be in the first slot for that Friday, too, making for an easy integration into the event. His game was GURPS lite, which is pretty essential for a con (remember my intro to GURPS), and he had a lot of fun with the cartoon characters that made it enjoyable. So much so that the next day I had to join his GURPS Justice League game as well, which was probably even more fun despite my distaste for the DC Universe--and it was probably helped by the fact that the Justice League game had five players who were a bit more into the game than the two others who sat in on the Thundercats game. The one minor note of disappointment, however, is that I was looking forward to seeing how another GM tackles the complexity of GURPS, since I've never played the system as PC before. Much to my chagrin, Kurt's style was largely the same as mine--thanks a lot! That teaches me sooo much.

The past two Fire and Ice cons also gave me a chance to try a number of new RPGs, too. Last year I'd also played a game of Deadlands, which felt to me like a compromise between the Serenity Cortex system and D&D. The setting is fantasy-steampunk-western, where Jules Vernian devices can be used by divinely-blessed gunslingers to fight off Apache werewolves. Yeah, it's that crazy. And I don't think a stranger has ever made me laugh harder in my life. The Deadlands game was played during the last slot of the night, and as such we got pretty crazy flogging our characters through the climax of our zombie-infested vampire ghost town. Literally, in the case of one of our players, who played an older preacher who could literally call down brimstone from on high. In order to bring his six-barrelled shotgun to the enemy, he had to whip his mule-spirited horse into a frenzy that was punctuated by hoarse-drawled homiles screeched in a perfectly evocative and ridiculous pitch. The game itself wasn't  interesting enough for me to seek it out, and the setting felt like a cliche pot-pouri, but it was magic hour with our improbable crew that night.

"You can always play a new game with your same old gaming group, but forming a whole new group of role-players is slow at best and at worst it's more agonizing than the first season of Star Trek Next Generation."

One of my favorite games from last year was a session of Mistrunner, which remains the most capably run RPG I've played in anywhere. Mistrunner is actually a small independent RPG system and unique setting that was released this past year, and at Fire and Ice 2012 we were being led by the game's designer, Glenn Buettner. Set in a future, devastated version of Earth where magical races suddenly entered the world and destroyed everything familiar, this game avoided the traps of a typical fantasy RPG. There were no humans, and the limited amounts of steam and old tech meant that it had a little more refinement than a medieval RPG without the unrestrained insanity of the Deadlands game. The game system itself was interesting and easy enough to get a handle on, but the pre-made PCs were so well done it's hard to tell how much control players have over character creation. Pretty much all of the game's characters were magic users and/or casters, which is not something I like, but that worked in this system. Magic in the game basically revolved around tapping into pools of magical influence over your specific element--fire or water, etc. You watched Captain Planet, right? Except in here Mr. Buettner really rewarded creativity, and our magical improvisation was key to resolving the different fights. I opted to play a troll mistrunner--the Ma-Ti of these Planeteers. I know--I got stuck with heart? When I don't even like being a magic user? Well, this particular troll was awesome. As a mistrunner, I was the guide for our group through the magical fog that dominates the setting, and I had physical control over it as well as an astral ability to tap into the mist realms connected. Or something. I just loved that Mr. Buettner gave us a chance to buy gear in the beginning of the session and let my troll pick up a perfume  bottle with an atomizer, which I used to materialize steps in the air, projected like shotgun blasts, and used to detonate a giant spider's head from the inside out. It's just too bad that we weren't supposed to kill that spider--but that's the kind of crap that goes down when a troll is calling the shots, dog.

This past year, at Fire and Ice 2013, the only RPG I played was a game called Microscope, which is a super quirky anti-RPG. You don't assume the roles of characters, there's no dice-rolling or stats, and there's no one GM. Instead, armed with note cards, pencils, and in an exercise that reminded me of my fondest memories of theater at school, you take turns fleshing out a timeline. It's very much a high concept game that is designed to help brainstorm settings and chain of events for proper RPGs, but if you're like me and too anal to consider giving up your GM reins to let the players collectively create your setting, it might just be a fun novelty instead.

Board Games

The board game scene at Fire and Ice is great. There are tons of tables devoted to games of all types, and if not there's a big library of games that they loan out to people looking to try out something specific that isn't part of a scheduled event. They even have little "looking for players" signs that you can set up on a table beside your game to let people know that you don't have any friends want to beat some new people have available seats. At Fire and Ice 2013, I dropped in on a pickup game of Axis & Allies (where I led the Soviet forces to resounding victory and much mocking of the high schooler commanders of the Axis powers), and I used a sign to get a five player game of Marvel Legendary started--which was frakkin' sweet.

"...that's the kind of crap that goes down when a troll is calling the shots, dog."

And the con is a great place to play new board games. There's no better way to learn a board game than to simply sit down and play it under the direction of a player who loves the game. At Fire and Ice 2012 I played the massively popular game Eclipse when it was sold out in most of America, and that was a fun stretch for me. A Euro-style board game with its sights set on Twilight Imperium's throne, Eclipse put us in command of sci-fi human empires looking for a reason to sponge out our fellow players from amongst the stars. I liked the fleet customization aspect which let us change our ship's abilities as the game progressed, but I wasn't a fan of getting rolled over by a girl's dreadnought fleet of nuke-dom. I'll stick with my good old Twilight Imperium, but it was a might fun game to play.

Similarly, I'd never gotten to play a game of Memoir '44 Overlord before Fire and Ice 2012. I have Memoir '44, and recommended it in my Memorial Day post, but the Overlord variation of the game is epically prohibitive to set up spontaneously. You need two sets of the game, a lot of space, and exactly four people on both sides of the table--three players each commanding the left, right, and center sections of their side's forces, and one honcho calling the shots for all three. I got to play as the grand marshal of the German forces in our epic game, and I'm proud to say I got my Jerry subordinates butchered terribly. All in terrible fun.

Miniatures Games

For 2012, I played only two short miniatures games, even though a full third of the game floor was devoted to Heroclix, Warhammer, and Warhammer 40,000 tournaments. Not wanting to miss out on the clix action, but not yet into it myself, I played a fun small intro scenario of the out-of-print Mechwarrior Heroclix game, which was an intuitive but difficult-to-master variation on the core clix system that added a second clicker. For those of you who don't know, the clix system is basically a model on top of a decoder-ring type setup the size of a bottlecap with character stats on it. As your characters take damage, you click the decoder towards their death, and the stats change to reflect diminished abilities or building desperation. The Mechwarrior game was fun, and the appeal of getting into a fully fleshed out game appealed, but I just wasn't that into the figures and scale that I felt conflicted a bit with the system. But, by the time The Avengers came out three months later, I was totally primed to start collecting Marvel Heroclix. So boo-yah for guerrilla marketing.

"I wasn't a fan of getting rolled over by a girl's dreadnought fleet of nuke-dom."

For Fire and Ice 2013, I actually led three games of space fleet battles in the miniatures gaming section. Playing a personal variation on Colonial Battlefleet, I let players command the ships of the show Battlestar Galactica against each other in scenarios modeling the Battle of the Tylium Asteroid, the Attack on the Resurrection Ship, and the Rescue on New Caprica. I love Colonial Battlefleet and hope to talk more about it, but for me the highlight was busting out my painted models and impressing people with a really good looking game, even if the rules are virtually unknown.

Well, that's it for a very late addition to my blog. One more plodding step towards being up-to-date and ever-timely.

Psssh. Like that's ever going to happen.