Re-readable Scenes

A friend who has started writing wonderful novels mentioned that he’s looking for great scenes, scenes that are wonderfully well-written even if you aren’t necessarily reading the rest of the book.

So here are five scenes I remember rereading immediately, and in each case have reread a few times since.

Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash. You know this one already, right? The opening pages about the Deliverator and the deadline-challenged pizza delivery that gets it all rolling? Hard to improve on this opening, and it’s beloved by friends of mine who don’t normally care about science fiction. (As an aside, man there have been a lot of interesting covers for this book.)

Ian McEwan; Enduring Love. The opening scene is an astonishing balloon crash. I can’t speak for the rest of the book because as soon as McEwan’s books continue past their set pieces, I tend to get more and more irritated and stop. If I grow out of that, his prose will be the reason. But you won’t go wrong with this opening.

Guy Gavriel Kay; Under Heaven. The opening chapter details the protagonist’s period of mourning for his dead father. He spends two and a half years on a remote battlefield where his father had commanded, burying a fraction of the tens of thousands of skeletons left over from the battle, sheltered each night in a cabin among the weeping and screaming ghosts, and sometimes realizing that a voice he has gotten used to hearing has gone silent, meaning he has put their bones to rest. (Yes the book is also great.)

Naomi Novik; Uprooted. The wizards’ astonishing tower-defense against the army of the Queen.

Ian Banks; The Hydrogen Sonata. The scene in which a Culture ship lectures a rival ship about the dangers of playing soldiers. It’s a perfect bully-shutdown, and the moment when a character who happens to be a ship reveals to their rival, and the reader, what they truly think.

Helllo, Gen Con!

As photographic evidence reveals, I’m thrilled to be at Gen Con this year! This my first convention-chance to talk with people about 13th Age 2e and to sell the new boxed set.

I’ve also got exciting 13th Age publication news to share with people! If you’re not at the convention, those plans will also be revealed on Pelgrane’s web site soon.

We don’t have seminars scheduled this year. You’ll find me and Ken Hite and the other Pelgranistsas at the booth except for a) Ken’s podcast and panel excursions; and b) my jaunts to demo a new card game to a couple publishers at the show. Oh, and lunch. It wouldn’t be in the spirit of the current Merryshire campaign if I forgot to mention lunch. I’m generally going to be taking lunch at 11 a.m. If you swing by booth #423 at other hours and I’m not there, I’ll be back soon.

Strange Stories Now on Backerkit (Guest Post!)

Here's a guest post from Jonathan Tweet. I'm one of the players who he forbade from looking into this game, so I publish this with less oversight than you'd think! --Rob

This new TTRPG looks so good that I told the players in my game group not to read the titles or descriptions of the adventures. Thay way I can run Strange Stories without the players having a clue as to what sort of strange story is coming their way. Normally I’m wary about praising any new game because even games that look good are easy to design badly. In this case, however, both the format and the creative team are solid. I’m going out on a limb to say that this game is going to deliver the experience it promises, and it’s an experience that I want for my group.

Take a look at their Backerkit page and you’ll see that Strange Stories is rules-light a system for one-shot adventures anywhere in the pulp genre. My game group sometimes needs something to fill an evening when the regular campaigns aren’t running, and maybe Strange Stories will replace Magic as the game we use on those nights.

Back in the late ’80s, we in the Lion Rampant crew would speculate about what roleplaying games might look like in the future, and sometimes we imagined games a lot like Strange Stories: one-shots with light rules, pre-gen characters, and a dice pool mechanic. Now here’s Strange Stories doing just that.

Over the years, I’ve played several one-shot designs, and I’ve liked them enough to keep trying new ones. Robin D. Laws’s GM-less game Pantheon also offers a series of one-shot roleplaying scenarios, and I’ve had fun playing one of the scenarios twice. Live-action, one-shot Parlor Larps sure looked fun, and I had a good time running one of the games for a mixed group of gamers and non-gamers. My group played The King Is Dead by D. Vincent Baker & Meguey Baker, although I don’t think we got fully into the spirit. Vincent’s game Midsummer Wood is on my list to try, when I get the right group together. In addition, I’ve run a couple one-shots of my own invention for my game group over the years If I’m right about Strange Stories, it will give my regular playing group a kinda trad roleplaying experience that will fit into schedule gaps when the regular campaigns are not running. I sometimes put together one-shots for my group, but that’s a lot of work, and Strange Stories does the work for me.

Pulp seems like the right genre for this format. It’s casual, it’s familiar, and reality’s restraints are loose so there’s room for the designers to make up all sorts of fun stuff.

The promise that the authors will release a podcast covering a discussion about each adventure is a big plus. It’s hard to run a new game system, even if it’s “rules-lite”. After Everway shipped, the joke was that what the game really needed was me in every box to explain the game to people. With Strange Stories, this podcast could go a long way to making play more successful, especially the fateful first session.

On a personal note, Chris Lackey and I have been friend since the ’90s, and I’ve admired his work all that time.

Strange Stories looks like a highly accessible way to run fun one-shots, and my hopes are up.

—Jonathan Tweet

What We’re Playing: Tabletop H through W

The upper end of the alphabet leans into games played with friends who prefer casual fare.

Hot Streak

Four hapless lower league baseball mascots race. You place your bets and contribute a secret card to help your wagers. Ridiculous silly fun playable by almost all ages and all but a few temperaments. This Boardgame Geek introduction sums it up.

Legendary: Game of Thrones

One of my designs, turning Devin Low’s wonderful semi-cooperative Legendary deckbuilding system into a fully competitive cutthroat contest between rival houses. I’m happy with how gameplay worked out and I’m happy with hand-painted card art, one artist per great House. Not as happy with an oddity of the game’s production, that somehow put terms on the playmats that don’t correspond to terms used during any stage of the game’s development.

Huh.

I got interviewed about the design of the game and the video eventually showed up on Youtube when I wasn’t looking. Here’s a link to that interview, featuring me blinking in and out of my very fancy background.

Richard Garfield’s Carnival of Monsters

This is another game that works well for most of the casual gamers we know. The land = buying power feels a little like M:tG but it’s a drafting game, pick one card and pass the rest on, trying to give a fickle public the monster shows they want to see that season. I think the game might have sort of fallen between the cracks because it had a flawed crowdfunding campaign that got called off. Published as a normal game, it’s fun and replayable.

Our favorite moment playing the game came from a game with Jonathan Tweet, who wasn’t paying careful attention as we began. As we played he grew increasingly complementary about several clever mechanics. Normally he is not impressed by many games, so this was a change of pace. The third time he thought something was really smart he said, “This is really well designed. Who did this?” Lisa got to lean forward and say, “Jonathan. The name of the game is RICHARD GARFIELD’S Carnival of Monsters.”

Sanibel

This is Elizabeth Hargrave’s new game of tide walking and shell-collecting. I’m not sure I’m the target audience for the game. People who like to organize things? Our house is full of wonderful talismans and we’re not the folks who need them organized. I suspect I’m going to give the game to friends like Lee Moyer and Venetia, since the collection/arrangement patterns of the game seem like their happy place.

Three-Dragon Ante

We’ve been playing a version of the game with a deck made of favorite dragons and mortals. It’s easy to bring out when visiting non-gamers or casual gamers say they want to try one of my games.

At the moment the only version of the game that’s in print is the Giants War expansion. I’m hoping to get the core game back in print soon.

Unidentified New Card Game

We’ve played a new card game of my design five times with different groups and it’s working great. Next steps: business related.

Hmm, that makes the process sound a lot quicker than it was. Depending on how you count, this final version of the game is the 5th or the 6th draft.

Wingspan

We still play this game with mostly North American birds, because Lisa uses the game partly as ornithology practice. I’m optimistic that we’ll be able to play a game with the Central and South American hummingbird expansion soon!

What I’ve Been Playing: Tabletop A Through F

Here are notes on games I’ve played in the past couple months, with game design comments where appropriate. Covering four games at a time means there’ll be a follow-up or two.

I didn't intend to begin with two of my own games but such are the gifts of alphabetical order.

13th Age

We’re getting close to the end of epic tier in the Teachers from the Court campaign that’s mentioned several times in 13th Age 2e. We started the campaign to test the living dungeon Jonathan wrote as the intro adventure at the back of the Gamemaster’s Guide. We liked our characters and wanted to keep playing so Paul Hughes transformed the dungeon run into a full campaign. Early in adventure tier, we posed as instructors from the Court of Stars sent to educate the half-elf children of our primary contact. We needed a cover-story because we’d entered a contested zone where the forces of the evil Diabolist/Archmage visited the town for supplies. ‘The Teachers from the Court’ became our nom de guerre, even after we’d qualified for several other higher ranking titles in the Elf Queen’s service.

When we don’t have a full crew, I’ve been running my deviant Arduin game, 13th Arduin, aka Arduin, Blessed Arduin.

And I’ve run a couple one-shots lately for diverse groups, one of them using the two-hour freeform adventure you can find here.

Armello: The Board Game

This gloriously beautiful board game from King of the Castle games shipped to all its kickstarter backers a couple months ago. It’s based on a digital game I like to call ‘the national game of Australia.’ With the help of an excellent development/playtest team, I reshaped the original digital game’s mix of quest movement and funny-but-serious-animal combat into a deckbuilding quest and combat game. Each of the four heroes has its own starting deck and powerful experience cards. Your hero gets more powerful by buying action and combat cards from the marketplace and winning treasures by finishing quests that send you criss-crossing the board. Unlike some deckbuilding games, that pretty much let people play their own solitaire games side-by-side, Armello: the Board Game rewards players who mix it up with their opponents.

One of my biggest reasons for designing the analog version of the game as a deckbuilder is that I dislike the way Armello’s beautiful cards are used in the video game. Some cards get played for their full effect, but a whole lot of cards in the video game are discarded to use the symbol that’s on the card in combat. In other words, you read the card, you decide it’s not something you need to play, and you discard it to get a hit or a shield or a save. When a game has beautiful and evocative cards, I like to try to make those cards matter. In this case, deckbuilding mechanics that bring cards through your hand multiple times did the trick, and opened a huge amount of design space. You’ll see my attitude towards cards that should matter surfacing again, below, in comments on Finspan.

I’m answering rules questions on BoardgameGeek, helped by savvy players. I’m not sure when there will copies going through distribution, but for now you can aquire the game by going through the Backerkit page as a 'pre-order.'

Dead Man’s Hand

My Desperadoes faced off against Chris Pramas’ Lawmen a few weeks ago. It was an appropriately desperate tie and a very fun skirmish miniatures game. I love minis games but neither paint minis nor invest in terrain, so it was good that Chris came prepared. We also used a couple buildings from a paper Belgian village that I used as terrain all through my childhood. Chris has now invested in a proper Dead Man’s Hand box, and we’ll definitely play again, probably with different factions.

Finspan

I quite love Wingspan. So does my wife Lisa. So do our ornithologist friends!

Lisa also loves Finspan so I’m going to need to relax my critical spirit and just-enjoy the good parts.

My disagreement with this iteration of the system is that you pay for most fish by discarding other fish from your hand. Yes, it’s that problem again, the same type of objection I have with the digital Armello cards. I’m looking through all my beautiful cards and constantly grading them, only a couple deserve to be played, the others will be discarded . . . and possibly returned to my hand if I get that type of engine working.

Discard-to-buy annoys me. Maybe it doesn’t annoy other people. I'll give it another try and whine less.

13th Age 2e: A Two-Hour Freeform Adventure

If you’re looking for a fun adventure to run as a one-shot at a convention, or for new players, or to jump-start a campaign when you don’t have anything planned ahead of time, check out the 2-Hour Freeform Adventure on the Adventures tab of the Pelgrane Press 13th Age Resources page. (It's now updated with typos fixed and better layout.)

It’s set up as a 2nd level adventure for a GM who knows the rules and between three and six players who don’t necessarily know the rules ahead of time. Characters sheets are available on the Pre-Generated Characters tab of the Resources page handle character spells and talents and feats, but not the fun stuff; the first hour is for players to make up a One Unique Thing and their hero’s backgrounds. The mini-adventure includes advice to help the GM tie the characters’ storylines into a plotline that will help focus the battle to come.

Instead of a set plot, the second half of the adventure provides five sets of monster stats, including the outlaws or cultists pictured above (art by Rich Longmore). As GM, you choose the opposition based on the uniques, backgrounds and icon relationships the players have created for their heroes. There’s advice about how to keep the action moving in a game with new players and some simple magic items that won’t add too much to the players’ brain-load.

Of course you don’t have to stick to a two-hour time slot. The four-hour freeform game I ran a couple weeks ago started as a botched library heist and ended as a heroquest-style ‘inquiry’ into resisting undeath fought out in a crypt-shadow spawned from a halfling tavern.

At the moment there are sixteen 2nd level pre-generated heroes on the Pre-generated Characters tab of the resource page. These are heroes put together by Jay Godden and Miguel Friginal as part of a bigger project to cover all the levels. There will be more 2nd level pre-gens added to the resource page soon. The freeform adventure adjusts to the heroes you bring to it, so feel free to bring your own 2nd level character into the adventure instead of using a pre-gen.

New for 13th Age: Monster Stat Descriptors

There’s something new in the way we’re presenting monster stats in 13th Age. Jonathan came up with it. I’m calling it the descriptor approach. After using something similar in Ars Magica and in Over the Edge, Jonathan was working on monster stats for a living dungeon on a spreadsheet. He found himself wanting terms to describe the raw numbers, especially for armor. So he came up with descriptors. It was too late to use them in the Gamemaster’s Guide, but you’ll see descriptors used in everything we’re doing now, including the upcoming starter set, Bestiary 3: Icon Followers, and the 13th Age Freeform Demo.

Each of the monster defenses and the hit point entry gets a word or a phrase that gives the GM something to play off when describing combat with the creature.

For example, here’s one of the descriptor sets that Jonathan originally used to sell the idea, stats for a humanoid-bug creature in a living dungeon:

And here are the stats and descriptors for a weird little messenger demon that plays an unusual role in the starter set adventure:

And a couple more that worked well for me in a demo game this weekend. First is the decayed wight, that made it clear it was not like other creatures by not bothering to dodge.

And finally, descriptors from a ghoul I referred to as ‘the ancient one,’ an NPC that one of the heroes had become acquainted with earlier in life while being raised on a “crypt farm” run by the Lich King. (Ghoul art above by Rich Longmore.)

You'll see more descriptors in the 13th Age 2E Freeform Demo that should be going up on the Pelgrane Press resource page later this week.