Sorry I haven’t been around. I’ve been busy. I have a bunch of interests that have nothing to do with games or media nerdery; one of these caused an ulnar nerve injury, making extended typing an incredible pain in the ass.

But I feel good again, and as the balance of the cosmos reasserts itself, my renewed pleasure will no doubt lead to someone else’s pain. So here’s what’s what lumbering through my mental/creative stomping grounds:

Aeternal Legends: The Spheres supplement is delayed, and this is pretty much my fault. But Stew has come through with a free PDF to respond to fan demand for running spooky creatures in the game. Download it (along with lots of other stuff) at the Aeternal Legends downloads page.

Conventions: I’ll be a guest at Fan Expo again this year, and will try to put in an appearance at my local convention, Phantasm as just a community gamer-type guy.

Dungeon Crawly Fiction: I’m readying a chapbook to sell cheaply, dirtily and zinely at Fan Expo. If you think 10 x 10 rooms don’t have enough sex or class consciousness in them, you probably won’t hate my work.

Knights of the Hidden Sun: You have to understand, this game is now about 3x the size I expected it to be, but it’s over half developed. I hope to have an ashcan-style draft for Fan Expo.

100 Million Days: The game’s still running — I just don’t like reporting my “Actual Play.” The PCs are 5th to 7th level and appear to be getting into the classic GDQ arc. I’m starting to chop away some rules I liked better at lower levels, and plan to blog about that a bit.

Creative Work: I have a few irons in the fire right now, but nothing I can talk about much. I wrote some material for an upcoming squad-based MMO, for example, but it’s busy doing whatever business stuff such things do before they surface.

Gen Con is King Shit of conventions. I get that. I understand that many — too many — tabletop gamers are so dedicated to the convention circuit that it’s their primary venue for face to face play. But convention games don’t have anything to do with the kind of bread and butter RPG play that allows a sustainable hobby to exist beyond the commercial con circuit, and the irony is that the more folks talk about how they want a grassroots hobby, the more they tend to depend on these contrived venues to not only get a game in, but analyze RPGs at all.

Think of how many recent games are designed to fit a whole story arc or tour of the game in one convention game slot and you’ll see how conventions damage our thinking about what’s possible for games. The more strictly a game regulates social roles and the right to speak, the more likely it is that the game was designed to support  nervous interactions between a handful of anynerds over four hours. I don’t care about any of that except to see worst case scenarios play out. I certainly don’t want to play in those situations, and it sure is sad to see people assume that this is what the hobby is all about.

What else? Well, I know it’s a great way for freelancers to hobnob and look for work, but I don’t feel like going to Indianapolis to sell myself. I’ve worked on some of the most successful games of the decade,

Panels? Not interested in the whole ritual. Hell, if I had a choice I’d break my panels up into small groups and do a non-hierarchical hobnob with plenty of snacks. Buying things? I can wait. I already have lots of things. Awards? Okay, I’ll use them for promotion when I remember, but it’s not like these things aren’t riddled with cheating and publisher-driven voting blocs so they’re nearly meaningless. Otherwise, I can experience noise, bad food, people who are way too into the Waffen SS, and military recruiters taking a long view by courting 14 year olds with an America’s Army booth.

(Did I mention the ethnic divide between venue workers and con goers? Creepy.)

Again, I had a pretty good time at Gen Con because I went with awesome people. That was a big enough deal that I’d really rather go on the road trip without the crowded money sink at the end. Nowadays I attend conventions when friends ask me to go. I’m not ruling out Gen Con but my main interest isn’t in the RPG hobby as a series of contrived performances, but as a regular affirmation of friendship.

I don’t know. Pretend I told you to hire me at a bar or that I’m glad I won or was nominated for whatever I did that was up for something, that I wish you the best at your creative work. It’s all probably true. I’ll be spending the weekend playing D&D and riding my bike in the country. Hope we all have a great time!

I’ve been pretty sick for about a month off and on due to strep. That’s why this blog’s been silent. What’s going on?

Aeternal Legends: It’s available in print and PDF, still. Stew and I are slowly talking about some cool stuff to come, but we’re both pretty busy. Why don’t you buy that sonofabitch?

Knights of the Hidden Sun: Still on Chapter Three (not many in the book, so this is further along than you might think). Looking at the engineering and programming aspects of soul manipulation. It’s coming.

World of Darkness: I did some work on World of Darkness: Mirrors and the Mage Chronicler’s Guide. Some of it’s very rules heavy. Some of it involves creatures made from the still-bleeding wounds of the dismembered universe.

Eclipse Phase: I did some work for an upcoming book, but can’t say much more.

Other RPG Thing: I’m working on an adventure for a TBA client. Should be fun.

Other Other RPG Thing: I have in my files an amazing game from a Famous RPG Designer. I hope I have time to do him a small service, because the game is amazing, and I would like to help with it.

Other Other Other RPG Thing, What For Charity: I’m currently in the early stages of designing a game as a permanent charity effort — this is what I wanted to get to in February. If you’re a non-flaky creative interested in this sort of project email me.

Conventions: I’ll be at Anime North again this year. Details to come.

Electronic Projects: I recently finished the first phase of concept and setting design for an ambitious multimedia property but again, I can’t say too much.

Playing: I’m still playing Cinnabar, the warforged ranger. 7th level now. Still enjoying 4e. I tease Steve about it not being the Best Thing Evar, but I like it.

Running: Star Wars Saga. One of the PCs is Darth Vader’s artificially created sibling. The PCs just got captured by the Death Star, which contains 6 million Dark Side Adepts trained to use the Force in concert, not a giant laser.

Planning: Might be the SF game, Indigo. Might be World of Darkness. Might be a light fantasy game. Chris Huth said something about playing a mix of old-style D&D and GUMSHOE. I am very interested in this and might try it myself.

Mage: The Dirty Version: I plan on getting back to entries here.

Bloggage Reading: I finally headed to Zak Smith’s D&D With Pornstars blog. I think the mashed up game and visual bricolage is cool, even if the tone and dungeon focus doesn’t appeal to me.

Your Game: I still judge it and find it wanting! I still think your desire for structure comfort and easy answers is making you bad at playing RPGs and really appreciating what they are, and I’ll tell you why at length!

Seriously though, I have some ideas, you have some ideas. Let’s work so hard it turns into play.

This year I ran a 4 hour modified World of Darkness game with pretty much no preparation. This wasn’t an intentional challenge; I’d just been really busy and didn’t have a chance to throw a scenario together. But as a challenge it worked remarkably well. It helped that I took some systems from the Mage Chronicler’s Guide that allow fast character creation, some mods from World of Darkness: Mirrors to tune the action ad made up a few systems on the spot. The players (five of them, all younger than me — the WoD fan demographic was teens and twenties compared to 30 to 40+ for everything else) had fun. They all played psychics fleeing the Cheiron Group, who were planning to harvest their central nervous systems to make implants and drugs and things.

I played Knights of the Hidden Sun, which was awesome. Yeah, I’m biased, but getting a full adventure in with Chris Challice helped reinforce some of the charms of the game, since I’ve been getting a bit of writer/developer fatigue lately. The game was positively rejuvenating. Chris will start posting about the game here himself, and I hope to get more of Jenny’s art up for everyone to see.

Ed Greenwood is a tradition at the convention. He runs a game and busts out a short lecture over dinner. This time around he did something very interesting. You may remember the “20 minutes of fun in four hours of play” design problem, where doing stuff just takes too damn long. Ed turned it around into something that wasn’t a design issue, but a demographic one, since he argued that this slow pace of older games versus the sorta-faster pace of them now really reflects upbringings that evolved from a more relaxed, self-directed pace to instant, externally-driven entertainment. Ed gave examples from wargaming when he was young: a hobby where 70s RPGs’ 20 in four pace was considered far, far too hasty.

It was a shy crowd this year, so I think, looking for something to say when nobody asked questions, Ed managed to really open himself up with some of his more considered thoughts about the hobby. It was refreshing too, because if you think the Realms is getting long in the tooth in your neck of the woods, try it living in the region the Dales are actually modeled on, from the drumlin-festooned terrain to the bizarre mix of promiscuity and rustic grumpiness. All respect to Ed and the Realms, though.

I asked Ed what he thought could be common ground between different eras and styles, suggesting it was the narrative. He agreed and elaborated that he thought meaningful narrative experiences (victories, turning points) in the moment of play did it, creating memories worth holding on to (and he said that this memory made in the moment is why hearing about somebody else’s character is pretty boring). This fits pretty closely with my thoughts on what RPGs are really good at. Plus, regardless of pace, it seems that those big memory-generating moments don’t come any faster if you tweak the game — not even for “narrative” games that try to hit that stuff hard. It really does throw things back at player skill.

I met a number of great people, but I wanted to keep this post focused. I think Ed really hit a home run talking this time around, and it was a pity I was so exhausted I didn’t have a chance to talk to him later.

Great convention. You should all go next year.

I did panels on freelancing and White Wolf; sadly, I couldn’t make the publishing panel due to confusion over the schedule. It was great to talk with gamers throughout, especially since the convention had a stronger RPG presence than ever before thanks to the Canadian Camarilla, Toronto Area Gamers and other folks — it was definitely an example of area gamers joining forces to get things done.

The only thing lacking was game companies. The Cam ran a White Wolf booth, Steve Jackson Games had a demo team and Fiery Dragon had a booth too (though they never left it to socialize, it seemed) but given that this year Fan Expo seems to be approaching major media con status by continental standards (people were turned away because the con’s MTCC section was over fire code capacity). The convention is hardly perfect (Hobbystar’s . . . not great) but there’s plenty of room for the gaming segment to grow in gamers and company exhibitors.

As I said, aside from playing a great Euro board game with Jonathan I mostly stuck to conversation, and co-sponsored a meet and greet at a local bar to get away from the hierarchical panel structure. I really wanted to play an indie game called Psi-Run, but panel confusion prevented that. It made me think of my own local con, Phantasm. There, you’ve got a big room full of roleplayers, and more wandering around and casual conversation.  I’d love to see a bigger room for RPGs – a space where play and discussion happen side by side, just as it does there.

I would also like to be able to drink booze while I game, like I did in Ottawa.

I wanted to do and see more, but I ate a very nice piece of cake, and as I hardly ever eat sugar these days I rapidly fell asleep for most of Saturday. That occupied some time. Sorry!

Geist: The Sin-Eaters

I wrote the (unfortunately, somewhat version-dated, compared to post-playtest revisions) krewe rules and I hashed out their role in the setting. Previews made some people assume the krewes were all gang-like, but the other half of that section shows that this isn’t the whole story.

One thing I wanted to do in my section is get rid of one of the big barriers to using mythology and the occult in RPGs: the sense of ownership, expertise and authority some folks feel they have over it, which drives people to avoid hacking together things as they see fit. Ironically this makes it more like actual occultist or mythology, which is pretty much cultural Lego anyway. In Geist, people have revelations that don’t make sense, don’t have to make sense, and combine all the chunky debris of pop culture with the cool flow of recurring motifs. Nobody gets to play the expert, and everybody does.

I also wrote some stuff on antagonists.

Eclipse Phase

I didn’t do any writing for this one but Rob Boyle and co. kindly asked me to drop in and participate in initial brainstorming. I helped out with some names for things, (the Exsurgent virus) suggested an embryonic version of the tagline, warned of a terrible Putonghua pun and took a strong AI/digital consciousness stance in discussions about psychosurgery and forking. This wasn’t because I’m a transhumanism geek but because I happen to be familiar with the more extreme end of the stance and thought it should be considered.

Now Eclipse Phase doesn’t entirely adhere to the strong stance and this is a good thing. When people complain about the limits of some version of transhuman technology they often don’t consider the global picture. They want effortless body-swapping and personality apps, but don’t deeply examine the combined effect these things have at “maximum setting” in RPG narratives: They totally trash them. Yes, that even includes your funky nu-game POV nobody’s thought of before, because you’re just not thinking big enough. Egan’s Diaspora is too weak as well, for that matter. The primary issue is the nonexistence of real risk or tension in characters that simply cannot have involuntary experiences in any way, shape or form.

(This kind of reminds me when people didn’t get my work on the old Mage‘s Ascension, because they figured it was “One side wins!” or “We get to ride unicorns!” No, it’s bigger than that. The ultimate potential of idealized, Singularitarian transhumanism is bigger than our narratives too.)

Fan Expo

I’m going to Toronto’s Fan Expo this weekend. I’ll be doing panels and maybe handing out cards but no table – I want to get out there, game a bit and look around. I’ll be co-sponsoring (putting in for snacks) a Meet and Greet at Hoops, a nearby bar. Feel free to drop by and chat! People sometimes seek me out to sign things and I’m always happy to do it. This event is your best bet.

What Else?

This is the first blog entry in a while because I’ve been very busy with an electronic gaming project (not the WoD MMO). I will have more stuff on GMing, more announcements about upcoming games — just not right now.

To kick things off, we’re offering a PDF of the core book for free via RPGNow. Furthermore, anyone who downloads the PDF will get an $11 print edition discount from Lulu.com by following a special link in the free PDF. This drops the core book’s print price from $26.95 to $15.95.

August 28-30: Fan Expo, Toronto Convention Centre

I’ll be on several panels. We’re also planning something a bit different from the usual panel format . . . more on that as it gets settled.

September 26-27: Phantasm, Peterborough Public Library

This is my hometown convention. I’ll be running a World of Darkness game and might organize an unscheduled get together.

The R2R demo was pretty successful, considering that I didn’t really have time to prepare. I basically winged that mother with the core rules and the outline for an upcoming creator-owned project from a partner, This actually worked pretty well, since R2R’s strength is that it’s supposed to move through the prep/play barrier as smoothly as possible. Making characters at the table took about 20 minutes for 4 participants who’s never played the game before.

Peterborough, ON has a pretty good gaming community. It has three games retailers (well, two, but one has two locations), two LARPS and an interesting mix of students and local gamers. But I have a confession: Cons are my absolute last resort for gaming.

The RPG community has increasingly rebuilt itself to compensate for not having a regular game and not gaming with your friends. I am now more convinced than ever that much of my alienation from other gamers come from the fact that, to sound immodest, I actually *play* RPGs more often than they do. More and more, I read about the objective of game theory being to smooth over encounters between strangers to hack together games. No wonder “Fun Now” infects the climate of ideas and no wonder rigid social rules, pathological distrust and rigid consensus enforcement are the trends of the day. I’m sure I’d feel this way too if I had to get my fix from people I didn’t know on the odd occasions I could catch them.

But if this is the face of RPGs and what people are designing for, I have a question: Why the fuck are you playing RPGs? Why don’t you give up?

I’m serious. Isn’t it kind of stupid to approach a hobby like a beggar or a junkie looking for a fix? Isn’t scrounging odd games with fellow net-based hobbyists at rare get-togethers a sign of something kind of pathetic? Shouldn’t you just *pack it up* on anything that requires Web 2.0 idiocy to even maintain activity?

If you can’t game with your friends, why bother?

I think the secret to Peterborough’s gaming community is that members actually game. Phantasm went pretty well because we’ve all experienced the foibles of friends, screwed things up and generally want the game to succeed. So even when you are playing with strangers, you’re treating it as an extension of a positive, friendly experience in your everyday life.

I suppose my problem is this. If you can’t come to the table with this feeling, if you are unpracticed at actually gaming in an environment of trust, I have almost no interest in designing for you or playing with you. Y’all should’ve gotten over this shit when you were playing teenage D&D.