The One About Cons

This year, Harbinger and I went to GenCon for all 4 days, and Saturday only of Dragon*Con. So I am going to talk a little about those, though it's been... a minute since GenCon, and I have likely forgotten everything, or most things.

The really awesome part was that we got to play- and run- a bunch of games. I definitely want to do more GMming at GenCon, though getting to run around and do whatever is a blast. We played:

• Most of a session of Grim War II (a sequel to this), run by Greg Stolze, though I had to leave in the middle to run a game, which I'll talk about later.  Note: I am one of the writers on the game! Whee! 
• A playtest of the Talisman RPG by Pegasus Spiele, run by Ian Lemke. This is mostly notable because Harbinger and I are also writers on this game, and this was the game that we both spent a lot of the con running. I can't talk about this a ton, except that yes, it is a conversion of the board game to an RPG, and it is very much in Alpha-Alpha versions. 
• 13th Age: Carnival of Masks (I think that was the name), which was fun and awesome, and deeply enjoyable. I forget the GM's name, but she was pretty excellent. I played a Ironforged Cleric who was forged out of a sacred reliquary, and was stolen by the Thief Icon dude, who he felt he owed for teaching him about the rest of the world.
• Shadow of the Demon Lord, run by James Introcaso, which kind of... happened late, late, late one night in Open Gaming after we'd been hanging with some folks in the Alexandria RPG Game Library- which, by the by, deserves all the donations, as it is awesome. Seriously, they have amazing stuff, and are a fantastic resource. As for the game, it was absolutely balls-out gross and crazy in the best way. It all sort of blurs, except I was playing a changeling and I kind of really enjoyed the single d6 resolution mechanic. 
• The King in Yellow- Gumshoe-based horror; I kickstarted this one, and was super excited to play it. Not sure what I think about Gumshoe, except that I think it's really hard to write adventures for it which aren't deeply railroady. I was playing an androgynous muse bohemian type, which was like... barely roleplaying. Also, our dice were cold as ice for the main battle part of it. And there were a lot of /awful/ French accents. The GM's was kind of amazing. This was the one game that Harbinger did not join me for, as he was running more playtests. 
• Illimat - Dealers' room demo! Resulted in us purchasing the game. It is gorgeous.
• Dragonfire - Another dealers' room demo! We did not get this one, though it was very tempting. Just too much of a time sink.

Now, Panels!

• Over The Edge, which was kind of a... bizarre cabal meeting where 5 True Believers, Jonathan Tweet and Cam Banks worked to convince one Interested Seeker to Immigrate to Al-Amarja. A note that I backed this kickstarter for embarrassing sums of money.
• Eberron, which involved Kieth Baker looking for ideas for what else people wanted to see re: Eberron content. 
• Ars Magica, in which the room scandalized John Nephew by insisting that the actual magic mechanics were more important to them than the Order of Hermes. Which is a vast oversimplification, but the real important part is that now Harbinger has agreed to run Ars Magica for a bunch of us, which is excellent.

I feel like we might have done some other panel, but I don't recall. At some point, everything blurs. Also, I should really get into what we purchased game-wise, but I do want to post this someday. Lots of good stuff. 

As for Dragon*Con... well, that was pretty much a trip to the dealer's room and some room party time, though we did get to play Secret Hitler, which I have mentioned in the vague elsewhere. Actually playing it... well, it does make you confront that most useful competitive RPG mechanics can be pretty easily classed as fascist- a number of the fascist policy abilities are char powers in the Battlestar Galactica board game. Would play again though... it probably deserves it's own post, here or in the ol' Cringing in Terror DeadNazi blog. Now, the list of Cosplays we saw, since that's the most important part of D*Con (nobody but nobody was getting into any panels; they were all crammed): 

* fewer Deadpools and Harley Quinns than years past

* Some excellent T'Challas and Erik Killmongers

* A decent number of Pearls, Steven Universe, and Rose Quartz

* A fairly excellent Slipknot

* Classic Mario characters seemed to be the by quantity winners as far as property goes. 

* Probably the best Billy Dee Williams Two-Face I've ever seen

* A spot-on Mad Eye Moody

* A fantastic Thormund Giantsbane, who was only a bit shorter than the dude what plays him

* At least 3 classic Scarlet Witches. This makes me incredibly happy.

* A dude playing DKR Bane, with two giant mastiffs (they were his service animals). He was standing in front of a real van legit painted as the Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo. There might have been some cognitive dissonance going on here. 

* Some MtF Crossplay, but less than at GenCon. My favorite was a pair of middle aged dudes doing the two creepy twin girls from the Shining. 

Anyway, that's what all stands out in my head at the moment. I'm working on some game systems of my own, also, so y'know, I should actually post about that sometime, when I actually... post. Ever. Yeah. 

In which I am not alone.

Aaaand here's a small collection of links to other people's blogs, who have ideas I love, or have posited elsewhere in this blog. Seriously, keep it coming.

Dear Wizards of the Coast... -- from UAD&D. Talks about Multiple Editions and Print on Demand, a welcome echo of my post on the Two State Solution some time ago. And from a pro! A righteous read.

The Threefold Path of RPG reading. -- Robin D. Laws has some excellent insight on Information Presentation, a subject dear to my heart.

I Made a Board Game! -- Shieldhaven discusses Stones of the Wall, a game he invented for DtD. It's pretty cool. :)

Among the topics which I intend to discuss in future, there are some reviews (Toys for the Sandbox and D&DNext/5e/whatever), and also more on information presentation as regards the Dust to Dust Rulebook and Website, which are of perhaps more immediate concern to me than other topics.

Speaking of Dust to Dust, we just had our fourth three-day event! Which may lead to some ruminations.

I suppose we shall see.

Brain Dump.

Taking a hiatus from Roundups, due to excessive work on DtD, and general exhaustion. Which, I realise, is kind of lame, as I really owe a re-cap of Don't Rest Your Head and our latest Mage session, and this weekend will be AE... well, perhaps I'll get my brain together enough to deal with it sometime next week. I'd like to (if I can muster enough will) switch up a bit to other topics, and finishing outstanding projects like the Three Gates Dungeon and the pWnies.

In the meantime, you should check out Shieldhaven's 4e Crafting Hack here, and yes.

Also, the combination of FATE, Technoir, and Don't Rest Your Head has me thinking more about adjective application RP systems (instead of hit-points exactly, you apply adjectives that do bad things to people, or accept conditions) and how that might work for a psionic and/or horror system. I like them for being RP tweaks, by and large, kind of like... well, one thing I always kind of enjoyed in early D&D was making people switch up their alignment, as a way to have them tweak their RP, you know, "Okay, so what does Lawful Neutral look like on this PC?" Now, as a rule for the length of a campaign, Alignment is kind of lame, but as a temporary effect, benefit, or penalty, I like the idea of the consequences being manifest that way, in concert with the actual, mechanical penalties (whatever they are).

Also have been talking to Shieldhaven a lot about Echo Bazaar style menaces as tabletop consequences, and how that sort of thing might work, esp in Mythos Horror. Because the tradeoff of sanity v. mythos is ultimately pretty limiting, imho.

Anyway, now that I've dumped the things that are in my head for later reference, perhaps I'll be inspired to make a more thorough post, later.

Not-Roundup #7 and

So, as you may have noticed, there was no Roundup Last week. This has to do with how Friday was start of the first ever Dust to Dust event, and now, I am all but a corpse.

I have quite a bit to talk about this week-- a bit about the event itself, and also a game of Technoir run by Systems Sans Setting-- and hopefully we'll get to it on Thursday, but it's possible that I will still be too corpsified for it. Mais alors, this has been your friendly neighborhood heads up.

Not-Roundup #6

Having failed at Roundup for the past week (though I do, now, have some stuff to talk about), I am going to do a momentary driveby to deposit this link, about Ponyfinder, a My Little Pony variant of Pathfinder.

Yeah, you're welcome. :D

Not-Roundup #5

Super belated edition, as we didn't really play anything much-- I mean, barely even Spiral Knights-- between my last post and last Thursday. Well, I've played some random hidden object games, which I have to confess a weakness for. Also, I have been thinking about game economies, and the kinds of games like Pony Island and Neopets which are, well.. pure economy games. The genre is fascinating, as it's amazing how much trading pixels becomes the entire mode of play-- and how hugely popular those things are.

Next in Pwnies-- Air Ponies.

First, Section 2 of Dungeon.

Not-Roundup #4 -- Also, Changeling-Stylez.

So, haven't played much of anything for the past couple of weeks apart from Spiral Knights and Portal 2. I have a couple of larger projects in the works for this blog, both of which I've mentioned here and there, so we'll see if any of those actually get done.

In the meantime, I will post instead: The Kingdoms and basic synopsis for the Theoretical Changeling: The Lost game I've been considering and considering:

Players are all Changeling-types who live in a place of a Thousand-Thousand Kingdoms, all embodying some sort of idea. Seven of the Kingdoms are available to players, as they tend to be clustered in groups of seven neighbors, even though they don't all get along. For purposes of meshing with Changeling, the Kingdoms are all located in what is more-or-less the Hedge, with Arcadia, or Avalon, as an adjunct realm, and The Kingdom Right Proper, or the mortal world, on the other side. Belonging to a Kingdom will be more-or-less analogous to belonging to a Court in the Changeling rules.

More or less Below the Kingdoms are the Shadowcities, which are reflections of things in the Many Kingdoms, and in the Kingdoms right Proper, though among its many other differences, Arcadia casts no shadow.

The Adjacent Kingdoms:

The Kingdom of Thieves -- inhabited by sneak-thieves, traps rogues, confidence men, gamblers, ragpickers, safe-crackers, card sharps, Marks who've been conned into living there, and assassins. They are exactly what you expect, for the most part, and when talking to Marks they call their Kingdom Innisfreigh. They are best aligned with the Kingdoms of Masks and Manikins, are neutral with the Kingdoms of Mendicants and Wrights, and don't get on at all with the Kingdoms of Knightly Vows and Locks and Eyes.

The Kingdom of Masks -- Also known as the kingdom of Artifice, the Masks are liars, actors, dramatists, dancers, puppeteers, stage-duellists, quick-change comedians, tightrope walkers and acrobats. They are best at seeing things that are hidden, and understand lies better than truths. They get on fairly well with the Kingdom of Thieves and the Kingdom of Mendicants, they do frequent business with the Kingdoms of Manikins, somewhat less with that of the Anvils, and are violently opposed to the Kingdom of Knightly Vows and to a slightly lesser degree, the Kingdom of Locks and Eyes.

The Kingdom of Knightly Vows-- also known as the Kingdom of True-Spoken words. The Knights are Chivalric lords, paladins, champions, honest courtiers, statesmen, judges, keepers of records, poets, and idealists. They represent the perfect ideal of a Kingdom of Paragons, and deal fairly with those about them. They mislike deceit, save in service to an oath. As one might imagine, this puts them at odds with the Masks and the Thieves, and aligns them just fine with the Watchmen and the Mendicants. They have a great deal more use for the craftsmen in service to the Anvil than the makers of Manikins, but don't seriously object to either.

The Kingdom of the Anvil-- Also known as the Wrights, these are largely craftsmen, smiths in metals and workers in wood and stone. They build things for use-- they are carpenters and tinsmiths and blacksmiths and architects, makers of tools and builders of castles, miners and lumberjacks, sculptors and shapers of clay. They are very workmanlike and dream on grand scales. They are kin with the Kingdom of Manikins, though they consider them less useful than they. They have no real alliances or enemies, though they frequently receive custom from the Watchmen, the Knights, and the Thieves. Though in the case of the latter, they always check their purses after. They have little use for the Mendicants.

The Kingdom of Manikins-- Inhabited by makers of little crafts and clockworks, they shape things into man-shapes. They are scientists and theoreticians, inventors of gadgets, locksmiths, clothiers, dollmakers and toymakers, builders of simulacra, alchemists, witches, scroungers and carvers in wood and stone, they make idols and fetishes of straw, feather, and clay, the latter medium they share with their siblings of the Anvil. Like the Anvils, they have no real alliances or enemies, though they have a particular friendship with the Ragpickers of the Thieves. They welcome the patronage of the Kingdom of Masks and betimes the Mendicants, welcome the protection of the Watchmen, and are generally ignored by the Knights.

The Kingdom of Locks and Eyes-- Those who dwell here are called the Watchmen, and they are the vigilant protectors of the Kingdoms at large. They are spies and police officers, private investigators, clerks, builders of traps, marching soldiers and honest guardsmen, vigilantes, seekers of security, builders of walls, commanders of fortresses, and other seekers of justice. They are very good at ferreting out wrongdoing and, as one might imagine, are fundamentally opposed to the Kingdom of Thieves. Their best allies are the Knights, and they tend to offer their services to the Mendicants, the Kingdom of Manikins, and the Wrights, though in the latter case it is largely in trade. They don't really get the Masks, and as such, do not trust them at all.

The Kingdom of Mendicants-- Also known as the Kingdom of Seven Tongues, it is a Kingdom of superstition, myth, and many, many temples. Here might be found supplicants, pilgrims, lay brothers and sisters of a number of Orders from every Kingdom, oracles, tellers of fortunes, mystics, readers of cards, casters of runes, bishops and cardinals, acetic monks, vestal virgins, sacred prostitutes, storytellers, lore-keepers, dervishes, Ecstatics, revivalists, and other worshippers of one god, faith, tradition, superstition, word, or another. They are also the keepers of what little Lore which belongs to the Kingdoms alone, the Rules of Other Worlds, of which there are Seven. Every Kingdom has something to serve here, and something that makes them a bit uncomfortable. They frequently operate on gifts and offerings, which is pretty much all right with everyone but the servants of the Anvil, who trend against superstition, and dislike parting with the work of their hands except to receive coin.

The Kingdom of Shadows-- Beneath all of the Realms except Arcadia, where the Faeries live, there lie Shadowcities. That said, the people of the Kingdoms do not themselves cast shadows, by and large, when light is shone upon them. Only mortals cast shadows. In the Kingdoms, Shadows dwell in their cities when their light-halves in the mortal world are asleep, or away from light. There are ways to sever a Shadow from its light-half as well, but this "freedom" for the Shadow often leads to other, more unfortunate vulnerabilities. In many kingdoms, severed Shadows are kept as indentured servants.

Arcadia, where the faeries live-- The term fey or Faerie in the Kingdoms refer only to what in the Changeling rules are called 'True Fae'. These beings dwell in Arcadia, by and large, although they frequently come into the Kingdoms for revels, or to conduct business, or whatever other reason takes their fancy. They are ruled by one queen with two faces, called Mab on the dark side and Titania on the light side. She has seven daughters, seven sons, and any number of consorts.

Not-Roundup #3

So, having completely failed at everything last Thursday, I am declaring this the Not!Roundup, and I'll resume regular updates on this Thursday. I have a few other projects for this blog that I want to work on too... not least of which is the next three rooms of Three Gates Prison for this project.

In the meantime, I recommend you check out Shieldhaven's second entry in the Dungeon of Three Deceits , and also Random Generators what rock and suck from D&D with Porn Stars. Yes, I am linking this here largely so that I can find it again later.

Oh yes... I wished to draw attention to one other of Haven's posts: The Strength of His Convictions, in which he puts a little more flesh on the psionic bones I maundered over in this post. I am also likely to maunder a bit more about how I want these things to work, and what systems I would base a psionic game on... I am a bit hesitant about using World of Darkness, although it is probably more suited, because I really don't like the way that one starts out at a lower base competency if they've got no dots in a given skill, than, say, in FATE. That is to say, in a modern game, I like to assume that people can do things like turn on a bloody computer and use google without having to go out of their way to spend build on same. I figure skill points should buy you real abilities, like-- I dunno, basic coding, or the ability to know your way around terminal, up to being able to build and maintain databases, program massive banks of servers, script the hell out of AI, or know like, Ternary.

Haven, Stands-in-Fire and I just got back from a LARP this weekend, so the thickness and fury of various design ideas was something to behold. Stay tuned for the off-chance that I am not a lazy ass.

Not-Roundup #2

So, you'll note that this is rather late, and for that I'm quite sorry. Anyway, last week was pretty much all videogames all the time, mostly Shadow Hearts: Covenant and Rock Band 3. I have to say, the third iteration of the game is so far my favorite, mostly for band customization. Also, Paradise By The Dashboard Light, by Meatloaf, is fucking epic for singing.

Tomorrow will be the AE game, which means that there will be actual Roundup content next week. In the interim, I've got Dungeon Rooms to design, and DtD writing to do.

Salve!

Taking the compel.

I will cover this more in this week's Roundup, but I wanted to take a moment to say that so far, I really like the FATE system.

Also, I find that lately, when I make characters, since I am mostly making female human characters (modern games), I almost always build a mixed-race girl of some kind. Which I suppose makes sense, as I am a mixed race modern girl. But my last two are Black and Sindhi (Over the Edge) and Black and Mexican (Dresden Files). Which would be curious if I were a (not-mixed) white person, but... well, whatever.

Anyway, Over The Edge and Dresden Files, if you hadn't guessed, will be the subjects of this week's Roundup, and are both games that I am seriously looking forward to playing more of.

Not-Roundup, #1.

So against all probability, there were no games at all this week. Instead, there was a ton of work on the LARP that I am staffing with Shieldhaven, Stands-In-Fire, Basics, and others-- Dust to Dust. I am working on the website.

What-no-link, you ask?

No. None indeed. Not for another few days, anyway, as we go live on February first.

In the meantime, we will be gone for an In-Play Party and One Day event for Eclipse this weekend. Yes, LARP events count for the weekly roundup.

So... watch this space. There may be also some discussion of the necessity of the familiar in games. Which puts me in mind of one of my lj icons for my instinctive reaction, at least.