If I were a CEO: Tabletop Games, #1.

This pair of posts on This blog that Shieldhaven reads and I really should read too, because it's pretty awesome, got me thinking about an idea I'd had on one of the many, many long-ass car rides I go on with Haven and/or Stands-in-Fire (I am pretty sure Stands-in-Fire was there for this one), about how I would run the D&D side of WoC, if I owned it. Also, refined the ideas somewhat through conversations with Four Color Criticism, who understands far more about publishing than I have any hope of knowing ever.

Keep in mind that this is the hypothesis phase, so I haven't thoroughly or crunchily weighed or vetted any of these things, and this can hardly be called a proper business plan. Rather, I am going by impression and wondering if these things would work. But nu, to the stuff:

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

Session Roundup #16

Two weeks out of date, alas! But with good reason-- Shieldhaven and I were out of the country for a weekend, and friends getting married on a tropical island do take precedence. Not that there's been much to report, game-wise... I've gotten to disc 2 of Shadow Hearts, and Haven and I, with the help of one of his co-workers, Spirofin, managed to make it to the 3rd tier of depth in Spiral Knights. Which is a ride we are not even a little bit tall enough for. Time to work up to that 5-star gear, which will require a profound investment of time, money, or both. Which is a difference in philosophy between Haven and I-- he will Never Ever Pay Real Money For a nominally Free To Play Game, while I will apply Arcade Logic: that is to say, I am having a good enough time that I would totally feed quarters into this if I were in an arcade, so dropping 10 bucks on energy to craft faster doesn't bug me. I want to write about micro-transaction models and De Biz more, but... well. Time. We'll see.

Thank goodness it's not pinball. My Biggest Weakness!

Also, there was Arcana Evolved the weekend before last, a short session. We spent the first half-hour or so of the game addressing the question of whether we'd be charged, and how much, for using the Library of Eradnos (sp?), to which we'd finally made it last session. The answer was that they'd accept payment in trade, which, luckily, people who weren't Basel took care of, because I think they have Magisters to do... well, pretty much everything she can do.

We didn't have time to trigger the fight with the Rune Reaver before Haven and I had to leave for the Eclipse One Day, though we came up with some pretty nifty plans to fight it (three cheers for access to seventh level spells, and the Dragon Template!), so we spent the rest of the time chatting with the Rune Angel who had come to help us fight it. There was some discussion of whether or not she'd give us info as to the plot macguffin that brought us together, which boiled down to... well, sort of but not really. Self-directed... stuff isn't really the point of this game, though. It's more... well, here's the stuff that is happening, and we can react to it or not, mostly through where we decide to go. That said, helping to defeat this Rune Reaver thing is pretty cool, while I'm still at a loss as to the whole spreading cold and what we can do about it. Though we've apparently done some! Which is good! Stupid ice devils.

Which brings me to the Eclipse One Day! That was pretty darn excellent, all told. They rented Safety Wolf; a paintball facility in Conyers, GA. It used to be a cheap-o hotel, and now is a creepy, multi-room, no air-conditioning hellhole that was the perfect place to take down a horrible terrorist and yes. Of particular note were some utility boxes they set up, where mucking with them with a number of skills, including Security Counter measures, Energy-tech, and the like produced different results, and combined with info from a computer that the hackers had to get into. It was _awesome_. And there was much fighty. There had been a conversation earlier that day about how NPCs didn't use guns often enough; yeah, that was definitely not the case here. So many guns! The only thing that would have made it better would have been the lights flickering, instead of just being turned off.

Also, kneepads. I am wearing kneepads to every event from now on. My knees love me so much for it. And I need to get gel-pads for my boots. So badly.


Spacepunk Samurai Knees.

No Mage tonight, as there is too much writing to do-- this post being one thing, and much belated Website Updates for Dust to Dust. And Culture Packets. And, if I can manage it, any of the other posts I want to do. Meh.

RoadTrip Inspiration

As may have been mentioned before, Shieldhaven and I go on a number of road trips, usually to Georgia, which involves many hours of natter. And not a little of this natter, of various sorts, is about random design ideas and the like. The chief topic of discussion this time were a pair of branching ideas, stemming from his thinking about how to make martial combat in D&D 4e feel more parry and thrust... have a certain amount of dynamic action, where one can actually respond to attacks in a way that is logical given one's particular class (read: Martial School). One hopes he will expound further on the topic, as it was a really cool idea, and I contend that it is not that difficult, in 4e, to do something like this by adding minor action powers to classes.

However, when he was first pitching the idea, I managed to completely misunderstand what he was trying to do, sticking on the point of, "a purely martial system." Which made me think about, "wait, why no mages? What if there were NOTHING BUT mages?"

Now, it occurs to me that most of the time, when one winds up talking about any given tabletop game system, one is actually talking about combat systems. There's a number of reasons for this, but the main one is that it is more clear-cut to reduce combat actions to roll something, do something, than the huge and open field of social endeavors that people can undertake.

And then there's magic. Magic, especially in earlier editions of D&D, is pretty much a box of tools a mage can use to fight, sure, but realistically they have a potentially huge number of applications, limited only by whether or not you're the sort of person who would do well in Spontaneous Competitions in Odyssey of the Mind. So what happens in a world where everyone is basically a wily tool-user, and there's none of the beloved hack-and-slashers to stand before our dress-wearing wimpiness and take the damage?

Well, first of all, rather than dispense with the question of why there are no fighter PCs, let's come up with some answers.

Session Roundup #15

Had Mage: The Awakening tonight, which was entertaining, as it was the first encounter with our Cabal (we've decided we're a Cabal now!) and the Boston Consilium. We managed to gain status with them through describing our encounter with the Cult of the Red Word, and explaining how we fought them, and turning the horribly evil Abyssal artifact we recovered to the Witch King of Angmar Nemean Hierarch. Clearly, his cabal, the Ebon Noose, are Ring Tainted a little corrupt already. But nu. Also we picked up some quests from various other members of the Consilium, were solicited by some orders, and set up an arrangement to trade some of our Hallow's Tass for Rotes. Which is good, because we upgraded to Hallow 3, and because I don't think any of us are in much of a hurry to jump into orders.

Even better, no one went out of their way to make themselves Odious to Volchik, so we're actually on pretty good terms with everyone so far.

Eclipse event and Arcana Evolved coming up this weekend. I know I haven't run my D&D game in a while; we're waiting until after Dahlia's player's wedding to pick back up.

And now, Spiral Knights. :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.

Pwny Island, 4e Act 2: Earth Ponies

Now that I've posted the base stats and some design ideas for the pritty ponies, time to fill out the roster with powers and abilities. Each of the breeds belongs to an elemental type, because, well, of course they do. Today, we shall focus on the Earth-based ponies:

Earth Ponies: +2 STR, +2 to any one other stat.
Unicorns: +2 INT or CON, +2 WIS
Kirin Ponies: +2 INT or DEX, +2 CON
Purr Ponies: +2 DEX, +2 STR or CHA
Reindeer Ponies: +2 DEX or CHA, +2CON or STR