San Check..or How I Learned to Love Cthulhu

For the better part of 20 years, I've been a fantasy gamer, a fantasy GM specifically. I've dabbled in Sci-Fi, Modern, and other genres along the way, but the focus has always been low-magic low-level fantasy. I have fond memories of my first foray behind the shield, sending the drunken warrior, stupid ranger, busy mage, and Charles' half-elf backstabbing with a bardiche through the Temple of Elemental Evil. Despite my desire to run Recon, Rifts, of dozen or so other games for mini-campaign, the player pool for fantasy was always ready and able to play.

Call of Cthulhu could finally supplant fantasy as my go-to game.

After reading post after post on yog-sothoth.com (the go-to CoC site) of people wishing to become new Keepers,and the difficult transition they are having, it's certain that CoC is a different animal than traditional (re: fantasy) role-playing.
Horror, even hiding in the distant shadows, usually conflicts with the average gamer's desire for role-playing. They want larger than life, might is right games of actions. Everyday people finding out the thought-bending secrets of the universe with investigation and role-playing? No so much

There are people who have written about the differences between fantasy and horror (D&D vs CoC, specifically), so I won't go that route. I will cover the major differences for me as a Keeper, however:

1 Game Prep: Fantasy (outside of 3.x/4th edition) is way easier. Perhaps I've run too many modules or memorized the books, but I could run a passable fantasy game on the fly. CoC has me reading over sections, outlining story progression, and ensuring proper PC/NPC interaction. The graph paper focus of the fantasy (Area 5, Room 12 B - 3 goblins looking to exact a toll for access into 12-c) versus story driven focus of Cthulhu drives me to perfection.

2 The personal touch. This may be true for most modern games, but Cthulhu characters are more fleshed out at the start than most 8th level fighters. Granted, in our game, the investigators are 1920's versions of themselves, but the players have even shown strong attatchment to the replacement characters.

3 Material: I've noticed an online argument over which edition brings more back for the buck. It's immaterial to me, since CoC books present weeks, if not months of play time in a campaign book. Let's see: Spawn of Azathoth - 6 sections, Escape from Innsmouth - 8 sections, Day of the Beast - 12 sections. And we're not talking about dungeon levels, or steps of a quest. We're talking about open-ended city scenarios that ENCOURAGE independent action. Hell, Masks is broken down into six sections, yet I never see anyone finishing the campaign in six sessions. There's just that much stuff. In addition to that, I'm much more possessive of my CoC books, than the Hackmaster books I've devoured and used for years. The times, they just might be a-changin in regards to preferences.

Gaming with the Viscount X

I like to place our rare game days on Facebook events, just in case we can get an extra player, or on the off chance that someone new expresses interest. I've been labelling these session "Gaming with the Viscount," and they've varied from fairly big affairs, to just Nichols and me playing some card game.

Gaming with the Viscount X occurred in East Stroudsburg on Sunday afternoon. It was nice to see the Carsons again, as well as a surprised visit from Scott, who just magically showed up. Thank God we had no-shows, as I would be short material otherwise.

We managed to run the third game for the Tanga Campaign for Gnome Wars, and then a very good Call of Cthulhu game, with nearly all new characters for the same campaign.

I'll have write-ups for both sessions hopefully soon... and the previous CoC write-up completed.

A couple observations from Sunday: Either the Tanga tables need to be 5x8, or troop selection needs to be curbed on a smaller table. And the new CoC Keeper Screen passed it's first test. I do need a sticky with (IDEA, KNOW, LUCK) on it to aid with game speed, but the skill chart was useful, and Resistance Table rolls I need were literally off the charts.

And having my daughter steal my dice, put them in her purse, and have Daddy take the purse to gaming to avoid delaying things will make one lose street cred.

Historicon Mailer Received

Mail this week had been dreadfully unexciting until I got my CoC Keeper's Screen yesterday. Today, they imporved a bit more, as the offical Historicon 2011 mailer hit my mail box. Twelve pages of info about the convention, to entice more people to make the trek down to Valley Forge.

Years ago in the local con scene, the two things that would make or break a con were (a) store advertising and (b) a great pre-reg book, with a good bulk of them mailed out. A prospective attendee wanted to know what was being run, what was being run, and, oh yeah, the events. The right mix, and you could get people from all over to descend upon a Legion hall, a rundown motel, heck even a Farm Show building.

Somewhere with the advancements with email and the internet, that physical touch disappeared, and while websites and online registration makes national cons like Origins and GenCon bearable, the local cons relying on Facebook get about 60% of the numbers they should be getting.

Historicon is somewhere in the middle between the big cons and the local shows. Pre-registration, GM event registration, even HMGS membership can be done online, and it looks as if that is the preferred method. The one nice thing they still do is put the old fashioned pre-reg form on page 11 of the mailer, chock full of anything you might want to spend money on, outside of the dealers' area and the flea market.

So, avoiding all the crazy behind the scenes talk one could get from sites like TMP, what's going on at the con?

It's still at the Valley Forge Convention Center, and there actually is a mention of the convention being slightly smaller this year. The hotel listings wisely do not include either the Scanticon or the Radisson, as both have been booked solid since just after Cold Wars. For a near holiday weekend, in the middle of a Philadelphia Summer, seem reasonable but not fantastic.

For someone who usually hits a con for two full days only, I was kindly reminded that scheduled gaming runs from 10am Thursday through 5pm Sunday, and that doesn't include impromtu games running Wednesday night!

This year's theme is "Brother Against Brother," covering the whole gamut of the American Civil War. The art for the souvenir t-shirt is a piece from Osprey showing General Armistead leading troops during Pickett's charge. I'm more of a simple t-shirt guy, and the two large Confederate flags limit my use of the t-shirt outside of gaming events. Trust me, dealing with the culturally sensitive and insensitive over the course of one of my days is just not worth it.

Special Non-Gaming Events
There a raffle for the chance to win two separate art prints by Keith Rocco: "Devil's Den" and "140th New York at Little Round Top." There is also a donation drive to support "Project Hougoumont" a project to save the Hougoumont Farm on the site of the Battle of Waterloo.

Of course, there are the standards: HMGS War College, The Hobby University (hoo-ray painting minis!), and the dozens of tournaments for DBA, DBM, HOTT, and a bunch of other abbreviations I must confess ingorance of... And Flames of War gets to be a pain in the ass by taking up a vast expanse of space for their tournament, which I never saw played last year!

The coolest thing is sponsored by the HAWKS. There are two separate games which are for the under-12 crowd. At the conclusion of the game, the young players get to keep their fully painted, plastic AWI armies. This is certainly a great effort and should be worthy of a donation or six to keep it going every year. As much as seeing the kids playing games is great, it is even better to have them play a historical game at a historical wargaming convention (and this is one of the Gnome Wars guys saying it!)

Perhaps the one final piece of noteworthy info is a lack of it. Under future convention themes, both 2012 and 2013 are listed as July TBD. Hopefully, we'll get some clarification at Historicon, or the rumor mill will be rumbling mighty fierce.

It brings me joy to see next year's theme is "Empires at War" - Colonial Warfare Imperialism, and Gunboat Diplomacy 1837-1937. Looks like my Rorke's Drift game idea might come to fruition (click on the Zulu War tag for more info).

The theme of 2013 is "Scots at War." I just picture a big-ass game of Gnome Wars with hordes/clans of marauding Scots. Sounds like fun.

Another Burning Plastic?

Perusing this internet thing I discovered that someone else has used the Burning Plastic name!

http://sites.google.com/site/burningplasticwargame/Home

It looks like a bunch of teenagers sick with GW, adapted some existing rules (Fighting Plastic) and tried playing some skirmish level games.

At first glance, the rules are definitely passable. Target number or lower to hit. Lots of +1/-1 modifiers. Nothing too crazy. The biggest problem I saw was movement. A foot for infantry, two for tanks, three for helicopters. What pictures were on the site showed small battlefields, so maneuvering is basically turn one only. Maximum movement for a tank equals maximum movement for infantry.

The website hasn't been updated since 2008, so I don't we'll ever have a copyright lawsuit.

Anyway, I like my suicide bombers to be self-destructing robots.

(Review) Call of Cthulhu 6th Edition Keeper's Screen

I did receive my 6th Edition Keeper's Screen in the mail yesterday. Again, a shout out to www.rpgshop.com for getting it to my door in three business days.

First off, the description for Chaosium's site:
A 3-Panel Keeper's Screen mounted on thick hardcover stock that folds out to 33 inches wide. One side, intended to face the players, portrays an investigative scene. The other side collects and summarizes important rules and statistics, to help ease the Keerper's task. The package includes a 22"x34" Mythos Vade Mecum poster by the mad french artists Christian Grussi and El Théo, postulating relationships between the deities and minions of the Cthulhu Mythos.

When they say it's mounted on thick hardcover stock, they're not kidding! My rough measurement makes each panel 1/5 to 1/4" thick, which is guaranteed to stop any projectile dice. The front of the screen is a beautiful, yet fairly generic scene:
The Center Panel of three

The Keeper side of the screen contains basic combat/injury info, a recap of insanity, and, of course, the resistance table. With CoC there isn't much that one needs to reference. On my own generic Gamma World 2nd Edition screen that I picked up for fifty cents, I have clipped on copies of all those items, save the size adjustments for ranged weapons. Still, the screen is solid, sturdy, and just useful enough for purchase. It is about two-thirds as high as a traditional screen, so that may limit my use of full page notes behind it, and a need to pack some post-its with me.

The Mythos Vade Mecum poster is nice, but I'm not going to hang it on any wall. I can picture throwing darts at it to figure out which big baddie is responsible for this week's session.

I was disappointed that there was no throwaway scenarion included inside. Even The Terrible Trouble at Tragidore, from the AD&D 2nd Edition screen was mined for useful items. Then again, the 2nd Edition AD&D screen was useful for the first month and disintegrated afters a few months of lugging it around to gaming sessions. This new CoC screen might actually survive being drug from session to session... dragging behind the car on a gravel road.

How d20 saved the gaming industry... and other fallacies

I need to stay off of rpg.net, just like I need to stop reading comments at the end of yahoo articles, and I don't need the extra cookie.

Although, while I'm in stream of consciousness mode:

Lesson from Maja: Horses eat pie and applesauce, but not apple pie.

I'm certainly amazed by the idea that 3rd Edition/d20 brought back the rpg industry/hobby from the dead. Let's look back, shall we...

The second half of the 1990's. TSR had reached the same glut with 2nd Edition AD&D, if not more, than it had with 1st. Magic had permeated all corners of gamerdom. Spellfire and Blood Wars fizzled and then the great chain store book return fiasco happened. TSR was in bad shape.

Let's change perspective. Imagine a small town gaming store. It's profit is derived from products the in-store gaming promotes. AD&D, both generic and RPGA are offered. Battletech leagues are played. Games Workshop is avoided, if only because the profit margins are so slim. AD&D is a solid, but not the majority of sales.

Add in the fiasco at TSR and the first question from the Store Manager? The only important one: "Can we get PHBs through distribution channels." That's it. For as much as new TSR product did drive in weekly/monthly customer visits, PHBs outsold everything, and I'm pretty certain this works the same in most other stores.

So, PHB delivery is sporadic at best. What's a store to do? How about diversify or die. Mordheim and Necromunda Leagues are the games of choice. Other rpgs are promoted, which increased sales, but not the entire amount lost by TSR. Accessories are invested heavily: dice, bags, bumper stickers. "Candy display" items that will eat away at the spending cash of the customer. And of course, an increased interest in Magic, so booster packs and singles are looked through again.

All-in-all, the store would have survived, so long as the staff was willing to experiment, promote, and listen to their customer base.

Then WotC bought TSR and the great 3rd Edition/d20 was released. Not that it wasn't a financial windfall, as 2nd Edition was as well. Three new core books and an ability for 3rd party publishers to release compatible product? Fantastic, until you notice the order book. Guys whose friend's cousin once did the dry cleaning for Gary Gygax's 7th grade English teacher jumped in to make a buck. Other rpg companies shelved production of their own books to make d20 material. Historical boardgame companies produced stuff. WHITE WOLF was making fantasy material for geeky D&D. I'm all for capitalism. I'm all for more choices for the consumer, but a store having to pick and choose which items to stock was difficult. There were just too many items to stock everything, and if you did, was everything worth restocking. Was a second copy actually going to fly off the shelves.

I will not comment on the core book price increases (which were expected) or the release of 3.5, as these disgruntled D&D fans only. I won't completely color d20 evil, as plenty of quality games came out. But stores had a problem bigger than the Magic glut a few years earlier. When everybody and their brother released a CCG, the smart stores stocked the licensed items that most people "should" be interested in and when a questionable game came out, they wisely invested in a box of boosters and starers. The Magic gravy train allowed for experimentation. Players always bought more booster packs.

With role-playing, the average player is a casual player, and they only purchase the PHB. So, when the initial fanfare wore off, you don't have nearly as rabid a base, and an increasing supply of new product becoming available. Pretty soon, most stores faced extremes: Either they had shelves chock full of product, or were two scared/too stupid to listen to customers and stocked nothing. For the stores with product, that turned from shelves to discount boxes...LOTS of boxes.

Where does that lead us now, a few years after 4th edition hits the street? After having two oppounities in the last twenty years to focus on diversification (Magic glut of profit, and TSR's failure forcing them to), stores continue to ride the cash cows till they die of exhaustion, and unfortunately, some of these cash cows have died, tipped over, and fell on top of the stores. The stores in the area focus on three categories (1) closed due to finacial incompetence (2) divested from role-playing, and (3) stil trying to ride the Magic/D&D/GW cash cosh with no sign of future plans.

It's sad. The number one item on my want list currently is the latest Call of Cthulhu Keeper's screen. I've never owned one and it's inexpensive enough to feed my need for new gaming without breaking the bank. Do you know that I can't find one in stock at any brick-and-mortar store without driving past State College or nearing Harrisburg or Philly. That's two hours of driving both ways for a $15 screen!

The reasons are simple. The closest place, in downtown Wilkes-Barre (Golden Unicorn), has moved into the Scranton area, and has disappeared off the map. No phone number, a vague address at best. My old comic book store (Essential Comics) twice the distance, got sold to a crew in Bethlehem, and they effectively canibalized the place. The Unknown in downtown Scranton? Closed up shop and merged with the store another 15 minutes north (Adventure Games). They unfortunately have horrible hours, focus on computer games, and stock largely D&D, Magic, and old Star Wars minis. With all the effort I made to get to the store, only to find it closed when it was supposed to be open, plus a general indifference in customer service, I refuse to even make a laughing try to place a special order.

I could try the Encounter in Stroudsburg, no wait, they closed up due to the worst managerial decisions and general incompetence I have ever seen. And these guys were racking in the dough from Magic, Pogs, Beanie Babies, and every other collectible trend known to man. Plus, even if they were still open, they screwed up special orders for me multiple times in the past. There was 20% chance they would stock the item normally, so it would have been worth it to drive down while visiting friends.

That leaves me witha 90-minute drive to White Knight Game Room in Williamsport, no sorry, they closed their doors to. Tons of stock with no sales makes the decision to close easy when money's tight.

Maybe drive down to my old stomping grounds in the Lehigh Valley? Phantom of the Attic focuses on collectible items, and I remember Tony's special ordering habits from his days as ACME Collectibles. Portal, the guys who gutted my comics stomping ground? Possibly my weakest argument. I could imagine placing the special order that would work, but by the time it would come in, I would be back at work and money would be tight, particularly with Historicon coming up. Plus, I still have sour grapes.

Dreamscape? Nick would order it if asked, but the track record of him using Previews/Star System for gaming order has been sketchy? He's great for comics only, and now avoids the headaches of gaming.

Maybe Cap's? I know, it's been dead for years. Finally, the Allentown Encounter would be a nice place to buy my Crystal Meth, not comics and games. They focus on Magic (and drugs), and give me even fewer reasons to visit Allentown.

I finally went onto rpgshop.com. I know, it's probably cheaper on Amazon, but I despise them for poltical and employee relations reasons. With shipping I ended up paying four dollars more than retail, but given the travel expenses I would need to pay to buy it "locally" (haha heehee), it was a steal.

Now if my guys could actually get together and play the damn game.

(RPG) Over-rated!

It's been a week with the mundanes, and when I wasn't working on parties and playdates, I've been working the "very special" gaming session Sunday. Lots of printous and such. I've got some Gnome Wars painting to do as well.

I've been lurking through the forums at rpg.net lately, and I still wonder why I even go back. Actually, it's the Jerry Springer effect. The rpg.net forums, from Role-playing Open to Tangency, make the worst TMP forums look like a diplomatic discussion of educated, well-mannered people.

The one topic that I trudged though 15 pages of was, "What RPG is most overrated" or something within that vein. Withing seconds, it devolved into a subjective hate-fest, with a crazy discussion on the need for social mechanics in RPGs. In a hobby with a definitive quote of, "If there's any girls there, I want to DO THEM!," I have to giggle.

I will try my best and be objective, because this isn't a love/hate fest.

Overrated: To overestimate the merits, rate too highly.

This can be created three ways: Through company promotion (advertising), unwarranted critical reviews (critics), and the consumers' community (fanboys). Mass popularity tends to void this. Ford, McDonalds, and Microsoft might suck, but they are so pervasive in society that the average person admits that their products are at best, average. Lamborghini, Ruth Chris Steakhouse, and that fancy boutique down the street. They definitely have a better opportunity to be overrated. They are NOT vanilla.

So here we go:

TORG: Chalk this one up to company hype. Way back in the early 90's, West End Games bought full page ads in Dragon Magazine for months hyping their next big thing. We now know this as the multi-genre amalgamation known as TORG. The reviews that came in (critics), and if they were any positive towards the creators, the reviewers would be cooking breakfast the next morning wearing only their favorite shirt.

Unfortunately, the "ground-breaking" mechanics, cinematic play, and multi-genre setting did not bode well for casual play for the average gamer. Don't get me wrong, there have been a number of fantastic Torg games through the years, and if Russ and Todd ever start running again, I'd ponder sacrificing my children for a seat at the table. Even in the age of massive stat-block 3e/4e games, the average GM simply does not have the time to properly pull off a good game, and the average player is not enthused about such a wacky setting, even if a campaign focuses on one genre.

As much as I wanted to believe the hype, Rifts would have been a better choice for me back in the day.

d20 OGL The 3rd Edition/d20 craze was fueld by the ability of third parties to produce their own materials, any idea, any genre, so long as it followed the OGL rules. A new edition of the most popular RPG in the world, and a glut of new material turned it into a "one true game" for some. WotC/Third parties hyped the ability to play different styles/genres, the reviews harped on new games like Spycraft and Mutants and Masterminds, and the fanboys? Oh the fanboys. "d20 can be used for anything!" was a regular cry, yet we all knew that was impossible. If GURPS couldn't be used for every setting (and it tries better), a system geared towards fantasy can not do the same.

Ten years later, we see what's left. Pathfinder. And people have finally begun to expand their horizons again with different games. Thank God. Again 3e D&D isn't overrated, d20 is.

I'll need some time to go over mini/board/card game options....