So today I've officially survived 56 orbits of our local star, which means I've been playing RPGs for over 44 years now.
Why?
Because they're fun. Because I can become someone I'm not and walk a while in their shoes. Because I enjoy building worlds and societies and finding the edges of what I know about how everything works. Because controlling fictional powers beyond the ken of mortals gives me hope.
Why did I choose choose the image of a patch for the 56th Operations Support Squad? Because Wizards. It spoke to me. And I'm sticking with it.
I saw someone post that they've been blogging for years, so I thought I'd check the history here at the Gaming Den of Iniquity. And I took a step back.
Twenty Years? And almost a month.
But TWENTY Years?
Twenty Years Ago
On 29 July 2005, a Friday, I had a 2-month-old at home. (EDIT: I did not, in fact, have a 2-month-old at home. I barely remember this morning's breakfast, never mind 20 years ago. Details blur. But I still needed a gaming outlet.) I was self-employed, looking for contract gigs to pay the mortgage. My steady, 10-year-old D&D 3.5E game was going on permanent hiatus, because most of the group had newborns at home and thus higher priorities than gaming. I needed a game-oriented outlet.
So I started a blog. This one, right here. Go check the firsttwo posts. I'll wait.
Because +Tim Shorts asked for it, I decided to pull a map from my gaming roots. I think this was my first "I actually took some time and did a decent job with it" map, probably from late 1987. I used a mechanical pencil and drew it on the first page of a graph paper notebook purchased during my freshman year in college. Yes, that's the very same notebook that contains the maps seen in Meanwhile, In The Game Box... from 2 years ago, and the map of the Tomb of Tor-Kantor from Gone Mapping. Don't Wait Up. back in July.
I knew I still had this kicking around somewhere, and recently I found it in an envelope labeled "Medieval Prints, etc." I present to you, for your amusement and edification, my first game hack and the board game/minis/RPG crossover game that paved my way into D&D.
The box disintegrated, but I cut out
and saved this much of the cover.
Back in 1980, possibly for my 11th birthday, I received a copy of Caverns of Doom. Check out its BoardGameGeek page if you want a full copy of the rules and map. It was a cheap D&D knockoff in board game form, complete with lead minis and a cheesy little painting kit. It had a fold-up dungeon map printed on card stock. The dungeon overflowed with monsters and treasure, populated anew in every game using die rolls against a table. I don't think it came with dice, but I scavenged a couple of six-siders and went to town.
Don't get me wrong. It's been a great year, but it felt very preparatory in a way, like I've been gathering for something greater in 2014.
He's even got a red pen!
The Editing Business
I focused on smaller projects in 2013, since they fit into my schedule much more easily. I also didn't spend much effort on developing leads over the summer, so it felt like I was coasting for a while. It shows in the numbers. The number of projects I did in 2013 doubled from 2012, but the income was about half. I've been keeping my RPG Editor CV up to date, so take a look if you want to see what I've been working on professionally.
Since this is a side business, I'm not terribly concerned about the money at this point. I did get to work with a wider group of really cool people, which worked out very well.
On a related note, I think I hit a tipping point in December when I got a couple of inquiries in a single week. It's taken 2 years, but people are starting to seek me out as opposed to me asking and pounding the pavement. Not that I'll stop asking, but it's nice to have great gigs fall into my lap.
The Gaming Den of Iniquity
I've been shooting for a blog post a week, and I ended up with 42 posts this year. Usually I've ended up posting on Fridays, madly scribbling something on the morning's train ride, and I don't see that trend changing anytime soon. There's nothing earth-shattering being posted, but I think I've done some good work.
On Editing and Writing More Better - I posted a series of writing and editing tips, but tapered off when I got busy in the fall. There's more to come here.
I find myself writing more fiction lately, mostly 200 word flash pieces with occasional lapses into Elizabethan sonnets and cyberpunk ad copy. They go quickly and keep my writing muscles limber.
I ran two sessions of an RPG for kids. I'd like to do more in this vein, possibly with Fate Accelerated Edition, but scheduling got to be a nightmare. Maybe I'll do a smaller group in 2014...
I was on a couple of panels at PAX East 2013, and I posted about Worldbuilding 101. Yes, I'm planning on going in 2014, and hopefully speaking again. I hope I'm healthier this year than last.
I wrote up a one-page scenario for Brent Newhall's Dungeon Delvers, which I called Village of Troubles (here's the PDF). It's fairly skill-challenge based, but I wanted a counterpoint to the usual hack & slash I've seen with most lighter systems.
I wrote a guest post for Troll in the Corner called Three Reasons You Need an Editor for Your Game. Yes, it's mildly self-serving, but many designers still need a nudge to make them realize another set of eyes on their writing is a Good Thing. And I have a hard time not editing, so if there's an extra quotation mark before a quote that'll be the only thing I see on the whole page. And that drives me up a tree.
I also wrote up the Deck of Many Legends as a fantasy artifact to support Kaitlynn Peavler's Deck of Legends Kickstarter. It's available under Update #28 if you're a backer, otherwise you'll need to wait until after it ships to take a look. The art for the deck is almost done, and latest estimate has it shipping sometime this spring.
I got all of these projects either through the Gamer Assembly or through personal contacts. It's still all about who you know, so hopefully I can make contact with and start talikng to more people in 2014.
I've gathered some projects I'm proud of and put them on an Author/Designer Credits page for reference. Feel free to peruse the list and get in touch if you want to talk further about any of them.
So yeah. No big breakthroughs this year, but plenty of solid work and good contacts made. And to me the journey is more than a media blitz, so I'm happy with how this year unfolded.
Let's see how this year goes. I'm itching to get back to work.
So PAX East happened this past weekend. I wasn't around as much as I could have been, but I decided that discretion was the better part of health this year. I've been sick off and on since Christmas, and the latest cough/sinus thing has been with me for the past 4 weeks. I think it's finally clearing up, but I didn't want to push my luck by staying at PAX until all hours.
Abbreviated though my pilgrimage was, PAX never ceases to amaze me. The amount of things to see, panels to hear and participate in, and people to talk with creates an embarrassment of creative riches and collaboration opportunities for game players and game industry folk alike. For those who have never been, I made a few crappy cell phone vids to give you an idea of the scope. You can go see all three videos on YouTube, but I've embedded the top-of-the-escalator view of the Tabletop Area below because in my mind it's the most impressive: thousands of gamers in a single hall talking and playing tabletop games for 15 hours straight. In the words of Rob Donoghue, "This is not a fringe. This is a THING."
PAX East's Tabletop Area is the largest high school cafeteria you can think of, crammed with people playing games and a pile of retailers to buy from. The game library is impressive, if slow to use. I heard 30 minute wait times to sign out a game were common at peak times, and almost the entire con is one big peak time. For me it's about the tables: a blank canvas on which to paint the world of your chosen game.
"But Wombat," you ask, "what did you do at PAX East other than gawk at the Tabletop Area?" I'm glad you asked.
Friday
Thanks to crap traffic on the Pike, I ended up arriving around 11, about an hour later than I expected to. I parked in the Overflow Lot down by the drydock, and half-walked, half-shuttled up to the hall. I had a bag of food for the hotel room that I bummed a key to deliver even though I wasn't staying the night this year. I needed dice to choose which of the many bathrooms in the suite to use. I also got a picture of the BCEC from the Commodore Suite high atop the Seaport Hotel. Swanky.
PAX East lies within. Do you dare enter?
(Correct answer: YES.)
I headed back, bumped elbows with Storm of Paul & Storm, walked the expo hall (overwhelming!), and hung out in the Tabletop Area for a bit. Pro Tip: Plenty of tables are empty on Friday during the day while people are still at work, so stake your claim on a table early. I limited myself to playing a demo of Dino Dice at the Steve Jackson booth since I wanted to hit the 2 PM panel on the Future of RPGs (guaranteed wrongness: 90%). The Tabletop Theatre line was declared full about a half hour before seating happened, but I hung out and sleazed into one of the seats left over after the crowd settled. An excellent panel was heard by all, challenging the idea that basements and caffeinated sparkling beverages and threatening the PCs' lives are somehow integral to the "true" RPG experience.
We had our Worldbuilding 101 panel immediately afterward at 3:30 PM. It was "full" a half hour before, but we ended up with space for 5 more. We had a great time with a very responsive and appreciative audience, and we fielded a few questions. We also had it filmed by professional videographers with actual borrowed video industry high-end equipment (thank you Natalya!), so stay tuned for the edited video as it becomes available. I can't wait to see it myself.
After the panel we talked with panel attendees, then dispersed. I wandered through the expo hall again, and ended up picking up some PAX Merch. I found Dan in the Jamspace to return the room key. (Note to self: Spend time in Jamspace next year - that freestyler kicked ass rolling costumes and props into his rhymes.) I was tired, so I left and ended up getting home around 7.
Saturday
The Saturday morning commute held no slowdowns at all, and it delivered me around 10:45 because I started out later. Overflow parking became my friend, and the shuttle bus service didn't have me waiting at all on either end. Win!
I walked the hall briefly and stared at dice (the Chessex booth is the penny candy store for tabletop gamers), saw that the merch booth still had scarves, decided to take the aforementioned crappy cell phone vids, and wandered into the Tabletop Area, my default destination at PAX. I hooked up with both circles of friends, one group sitting down for a demo of the X-Wing mini game on the table directly next to the other group fighting through a game of Zombie Fluxx. Odd how convergence happens. I took over for a round or two at the end of the Zombie Fluxx game, and then we wandered over to the Tabletop Theatre for our Tabletop System Wars panel.
I prefaced the panel with a brief talk about the usenet newsgroup wpi.flame and the ritualization of flame wars in a safe space so nobody's feelings got hurt, which set the tone for the good-natured intra-panel disprespect which followed. After a rousing chorus of, "You're wrong, the correct system to use is..." from every panelist, we gave away Bob's bags of gaming loot that he was contractually obligated to part with if he wanted to remain married. Everyone who stuck around got something, I think. If you didn't, let me know or poke a head into the chat and we'll rectify that situation. And yes, I'll post the video of this panel as it's available.
We wandered back into the Tabletop Area, and Brent convinced Daniel Solis to demo a few of his card games for us.
Belle of the Ball has come a long way in the past year.
Suspense (I think?) is an evil little game with a 13-card deck which plays in about 2 minutes and breaks your head along the way. Part logic puzzle, part playing to achieve an unknown victory condition, it packs a lot of analysis-paralysis angst into a tiny deck. Belle of the Ball has become a complex game of matching guests and using Belles to change the game, and it'll take a few times through for me to really feel some of the subtler strategies for the Belles. The good news is it'll be Kickstarted in August, so stay tuned for that.
My mother calls me around quarter of seven, just about halfway through the game of Belle, about an hour after she should have delivered my daughter back home. If you've ever tried taking a call during PAX, you'll know that tens of thousands of smartphone users tend to stress the cell network a bit, and the roar of the hall doesn't make phone communication exactly easy. Suffice to say that monkey wrenches were introduced and I had to leave slightly before I wanted to.
Overall
I spent a total of 15 hours in or near PAX. That seems like so little for a 3-day event, but it felt so full.
Playing games with their creators just can't be beat. Thanks, +Daniel Solis!
On Sunday, I learned that I missed a free ninja gig by +Molly Lewis and +The Doubleclicks on Saturday afternoon. Also various other folk I've talked with online were trolling the hall and active on Twitter. Note to self: Next year look at Twitter, you knob.
WARNING: This post contains strong navelgazing and is only tangentially related to gaming. Discretion is advised. You have been warned. UNRELATED: Happy Pi Day!
Dear reader,
I apologize for giving you less than my full attention. I let myself get distracted by the shiny spewing from the internet firehose. In concentration and communication I am woefully out of practice. I'm an editor who needs to turn a critical eye to my own choices and frivolities.
Let's start that process.
In my youth, I switched elementary schools every other year and spent the summers travelling with my grandparents. I was the perennial new kid, and I tended to be academically ahead of my grade level. These circumstances predisposed me toward social breadth rather than depth. I didn't really have deep friendships until high school, after I decided to live in one place for the entire year.
I've been involved in theater since 1981, the same year I picked up the Moldvay D&D Basic Box. Improv exercises and RPGs have gone hand-in-hand for my entire gaming career. To become a better improviser, I've leaned more toward breadth than depth in academic pursuits. In college, I started as a Physics major because I wanted to study everything, but then the math got complex and too non-intuitive for me to grok. I ended up with a degree in what I spent all my time doing: Theater.
Welcome home.
There's a certain amount of omniology that springs from studying the theater, and I did every job I could. I started as an actor, then took on playwrighting, directing, stage managing, producing, advertising, program design and layout, printing t-shirts and other promotional materials, set design, master carpenter, house managing, lighting design, running crew, and dramaturgy. No matter what job I did, I needed to understand the story of the play and how to present it in the most effective way possible.
I didn't get pigeonholed into a specific role in the theater, nor even a specific side of the curtain. I could do any job and do it fairly well. Again, I flitted between the actor and techie social circles. I've played kings and clergy and villains and boyfriends, but I never quite had the depth for a real romantic lead. A part of that realization hurt, but it made sense to me intellectually.
I acted as a social bridge. I could understand what several diverse groups wanted and at least bring them to the same table if I couldn't forge a compromise with my insight into both sides. I could speak several social languages, even if I struggled with high school-level French. I still think of my D&Dified self as a neutral good half-elven bard, firmly wedged between almost every extreme you can think of, building worlds and communities for myself because nothing else quite fits.
"Seek a life useful." Which is not this.
Now social media is a major method of social interaction. I still have the drive to connect with diverse groups, but that leads directly to stream glut. I can't keep up with all of it. I drowned in Twitter, so I moved my focus to Google Plus. Now I'm running into the same problem there from my poor circle management skills. I have almost 1400 people in my "Gamers" circle, and I just added a few more this morning. I post almost everything to every circle I have, if not Public. I feel like I have precious little time to give to diving into the depths of social interaction, and I feel like I'm missing the point of social media.
I'm broadcasting. I'm disregarding the potential for deeper connections and conversations for perceived lack of time, and I'm treating social media like TV: broadcasting into the void and hoping the message gets through. Sure, I try to follow up to comments, but I think that's the barest of minimums for social engagement.
All this breadth is starting to impact me negatively. I'm doing what's in front of me because I gave up trying to plan anything for fear of those plans falling apart. I was lucky to get 4.5 hours of sleep last night, between working, editing, coordinating buildings & grounds at my church, making time to play games, and spending time with my wife and daughter. I want to do all of these things, but I need to start making decisions about the price I'm willing to pay to juggle all of these priorities. And right now it's coming out of my health, which can't last for much longer.
I'm teaching my daughter to play chess, but I feel like I don't have the depth to concentrate on the game. Right now I'm in a crappy position and down a Knight. My daughter isn't even 7 yet and if she manages to plan ahead at all I might lose our third game. I played my father to a draw at age 10 and haven't really played since, but it still hits me square in the pride.
Earlier this week I tried meditating for 10 minutes and ended up straining my back. There's my wake-up call, I think. Maybe I'll answer it this time.
PAX East is next week. I don't want to go into PAX this year with the attention span of a rabid weasel on crack. Again. I want to have deeper conversations. I want to be more comfortable and more open, not moving on like a shark and trying to "trade up", whatever that means. I don't want to run away from awesome opportunities to get to know people like the new kid in school did. If you run into me, sit me down for a few minutes and let's talk.
I don't know if I'll become a better social citizen anytime soon, but typing it out helps.
"To me, it's a print product less meaty than the average book that includes both regular features and one-off content, and which arrives in my mailbox on a regular basis."
Brief lamentations about the demise of Dragon Magazine followed. A PDF just isn't the same, even if it's a coherent collected work. The news that Gygax Magazine will be offering a print edition subscription when it comes out on January 26th (a mere 9 days away) sparked some interest.
A few weeks back, Tenkar's Tavern published an article entitled When Did We Stop "Playing" Our RPG Books and Start "Collecting" Them? Gaming books have become less about utility and more about "gotta own 'em all"; less about making a book your own and more about treating books like objets d'art. Maybe the PDFs are there to print and use and throw away while the book remains wrapped in plastic on a high shelf, spine uncracked.
Someone recently posted a link to the hand-written fourth module of Against The Giants, called Habitation of the Stone Giant Lord. Yes, I've seen it before, and I love it to pieces. In light of the previous 2 articles, seeing it this time it dredged up some new thoughts.
This is a gorgeous example of a 14-year-old gamer's crowning achievement. Here's a module that expands an iconic series of adventures, with similar sensibilities and a catchy title, lovingly hand-crafted with a typewriter and freehand drawings as a totally usable homage to a beloved game. You can see the scars, the scribbled updates, the discolored bits of tape used to mount the graph paper maps to the plain white paper, and each mark tells you about an authentic experience in the creation process.
With desktop publishing so accessible nowadays, I fear we'll never see this level of incidental hand-craftedness again.
Welcome to the New (Digital) World
We're firmly in the Digital Age. If you don't offer a PDF version of your game, you're losing half your market out of the gate. People run RPGs in the ether for players scattered across the planet, through Hangouts or Skype. Your map exists as digital image files, eternally clean and ready for another group to charge into harm's way in the exact same scenario. Character sheets live on USB thumb drives or in the cloud, not in messy collections of paper stuffed into a file folder. Tablets become rulebooks, reference sheets, dice rollers, or character sheets just by tapping the screen.
It's tremendously convenient, but I think we've lost something important during this digital shift.
Sure, I can carry around my entire gaming collection on a device no bigger than my thumbnail or access it online with nothing but my smartphone, but it feels very ... static. I don't get the depth of memory nor the sense of growth that I get with a paper character sheet or a series of maps or a module with notes scribbled in the margins. My game box nowadays is a folder in the cloud, filled with ones and zeros and ideas given an electronic half-reality. I can delete files and in my perception they never even existed. Persistent physical artifacts seem so 20th Century, quaint and rustic like rotary phones or angsty teen poetry with hearts dotting each "i".
How Will We Remember Digital Games?
I wonder how the remnants of today's digital tabletop games will be seen in the future's rear view mirror. Media files of recorded game sessions scurried away like the rare clips of silent Super 8 film showing teens gaming in the early '80s? Or perfectly preserved rulebook docs from a bygone era, raring to go with no idea they're painfully obsolete?
Memory fails with alarming regularity, and sometimes I need something physical to remind me of wonderful experiences. A digital character sheet shows a snapshot of the static time between sessions, not a chronicle of adventure and evolution told in a collection of dog-eared working papers.
Digital media wears out
so much faster than paper
or stone tablets.
On my item list I won't see "Magic Acorn" crossed out with "It gives you a Wish, ya damn fool!" scrawled next to it. I won't be able to follow the failed attempts to map out the hypercube of rooms inside Baba Yaga's Hut and remember the frustration and triumph of finally figuring it out. I won't smell the yellowing paper and jump back through time to the basement where every world lay at our feet and all things felt possible. I won't read the hand-written note, "I may have made a dire error in judgement," and remember tears streaming down my face from a mouth crammed full of Sour Patch Kids. I won't groan at horrible puns hand-illustrated in notebook margins. I won't see the regular distribution of tiny brown dots from when Kev spewed Coke all over everything because we made him laugh so hard. I won't be able to feel the fuzzy divot where my character's hit points were erased so often it started wearing through the character sheet.
Game on.
Gaming feels less visceral in the digital world. It feels anti-Cyberpunk, almost antiseptic in its pristine order. It no longer feels like I'm creating something immediate and unique, an experience that will never happen again in quite the same way. In my mind, digital media implies perfect duplication, and while it won't recapture the players' actions, it will recapture the initial conditions in exacting detail. If we fail, we can hit Reset and load from the last save. It's all digital, so we can reload the map and rewind the clock, right?
We're more connected across the entire world through sight and sound in our digital gaming world, but I think we've lost depth of experience and persistence of memory by cutting out the other senses we use unconsciously in analog games. This may be the grognard in me talking, but I don't know if trading depth of experience for breadth of reach has been worth it.
Your mileage will vary wildly, and I hope you'll share your thoughts and experiences.
It's the obligatory navelgazing retrospective post reacting to gaming, blogging, and associated whatnot over the past 12 months!
I've seen much coolness whiz by on my laptop screen, and now I can watch it more easily on my new tablet. I'll touch on a few things that spoke to me this past year, because going into miniscule detail would take more than a year to both write and read.
I Started Something
On 21 October 2011, I put my hat in the ring for an editing gig. I'd been toying with it for a while, but on that day I bit the bullet and did something about it. I ended up with my first gig for pay. In 2012 I put myself out there and found other projects, and I'm happy to say that I made about a mortgage payment and a half from editing RPG materials. Not near enough to live on, but enough to sustain my hobbies.
I couldn't have done that without the creators and publishers who gave me a shot and trusted me with their projects. Many thanks go out to Carl Bussler, Larry Moore, Wolfgang Baur, and Brian Liberge. For more about the projects I've worked on this year, head on over to my recently-revamped RPG Editing Curriculum Vitae.
Community Is King
Google Plus has become my social media platform of choice. There's a vibrant gaming community with many diverse voices. I've met many great gamers and seen ideas go from thought to deed in a matter of minutes.
I feel like we're in the golden age of connectivity, where people can easily find tribemates for whatever oddity they can think of. Google Communities are great for this, though I'm still figuring out how to fit them into my consumption habits without becoming overwhelmed. Search for something and you'll find at least a dozen others interested in the same thing. It makes putting up flyers at game stores seem as archaic as a dial-up BBS.
The Gamer Assembly is still chugging along. We had a great panel at PAX East 2012, and we've got a couple of panel ideas submitted for PAX East 2013 so we'll see how that goes. We retired the Weekly Assembly collection of links, since it felt like it was taking too much time for too little return. It feels like we coasted a bit this year at times, but I think we'll get some group projects going in 2013. Thanks to the regulars (Adam, Brent, Brian, draco, e4mafia, hyperform, Paul, thedandmom, Tresi, and Zed) and everyone else who stopped in and contributed to the Gamer Assembly this year.
Make Way For Kickstarters
This year Kickstarting gaming projects just took off. I've contributed to a few projects this year, and it looks like next year will be even more busy. Gird thy wallet and open up a new budget line item, because Kickstarter projects tend to give piles of bonus material for cheap money, which is usually worth the woefully underestimated production and shipment times.
I'm purposefully keeping this vague, as getting me started will spawn an entirely new post. Personal Projects
In looking back, I posted a goodly pile of things here at the Gaming Den of Iniquity.
Art Spotlight - I tried something on a lark to shine some light onto really cool artists out there. I may restart this series of articles as the mood strikes me.
NaGaDeMon 2012 - Yes, I designed and prototyped a board game in November. The idea actually started with The Domain Game, but it morphed into its own animal in November. It's called Domo, and you can use it to fill in what's happening in the world behind and parallel to a role playing game.
The Tao of Gaming - I got the first 9 chapters down on paper and released before Christmas. More forthcoming. Related: Anyone know an artist who does Chinese Brush Painting?
I think I've slain the NaGa DeMon for 2012, but Domo is far from done. I've got a playable prototype, and I've updated the rules based on issues uncovered in the Alpha Playtest. I tweaked the costs to hopefully prevent the resource stockpiles, but these changes need to be played with to make sure they work.
I technically beat the challenge, but that doesn't mean we're ready for prime time yet.
Downloading Domo
For those of you who want to play Domo or tinker with the rules, you can download Domo Rules v0.7.docx. It's 27K, so don't blink or you'll miss the download.
No, the rules ain't pretty; it's still a playtest document. I still need to add examples for clarity and flavor fiction just because. I included a list of where I got the components for my playtest. I'll see if I can get a hex divider template together for download sometime soonish, but no guarantees. You can play on hex paper or run it via email (if you're interested in playing via email let me know), but I prefer the feel of moving pieces around and seeing how the physical map stacks up.
If you play a game of Domo or even just read the rules, please let me know what you think. Feedback is welcome, and it will only improve things.
Tin Ear Game Design Contest
For those of you interested in a game design contest with props, check out the Tin Ear Game Design Contest. Get those tins ordered and pull your game together by January 31, 2013.
The Archive
In the interest of keeping an archive of this month's activities in one easy-to-view list, here's a link to every blog post about Domo made during NaGaDeMon 2012. Read the three posts about the Alpha Playtest if you want to see rules tweaking in action annotated with italicized asides.
This will be a wall of text, for which I apologize in advance. This blogging on my phone thing is still new to me.
So I raised an issue earlier in this very blog when it became clear to me that Rule Zero wasn't explicitly stated in the D&D 4e rule books. Some people asked what the big deal was, and that it still existed, just not in written form. After some digestion time, I have a little more insight on why it was such a big deal to me.
I was 11 when I read Moldvay D&D. I had moved around quite a bit, and I had very few social peers that I could hang out with. D&D was new. There was nothing else like it in my life, and for me it existed in a vacuum.
The rules told me they were merely a toolbox for whatever I wanted to do with them. These are the guidelines to get you started, but after that you'll need to find your own way. That struck a chord in me and started unlocking some of the creativity in me.
For me, D&D was and is important as a creative outlet.
Sure, there are other games out there with other approaches to the rules and different advice for GMs. But I keep going back to 11 year old me, reading that staple-bound red rule book in my bedroom. And I keep asking myself if whatever game I read now can holds up on its own without all the history and unprinted guidelines and years of experience.
Yes, gaming is a social activity, but I didn't always understand that. I look for rules that will work as a first introduction to role-playing, and I respect rule books that show you ways to extend the rules into areas that nobody has ever considered.
Things are different now; I get that. I grew up before email was anything more than an annoying text-based work tool. Today's online RPG community is great, but not everybody has access to it or even knows it exists.
And for them, and for 11 year old me, I'd like to read about Rule Zero in my rulebooks.
So I'm dealing with a VPN issue which makes working nearly impossible. I'm waiting for updates to install, and I dig out my Game Box.
The Game Box
Yes, that's my original name tag from freshman orientation at WPI way back in 1987 on the lid. I open it, which I haven't done in a while...
Idea Treasure!
...and I start digging. I find my old Hero System binder for the modern-day game...
This is Blade. He's basically Wolverine
with more sharp edges and more issues.
...and I see the character sheet for Gregor Ramon, a swarthy chap. He's a gypsy art thief, one of Derek's characters. Derek has been gone a long time, and losing him still cuts me when I least expect it.
Digging deeper, I find Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue, which still rocks.
Still a great resource for fantasy gadgets
and high magic pseudo-steampunk inventions.
And I found the 7-pointed star of correspondences, lining up my system of gods, colors, WoD magic spheres from Mage: The Ascension, Chakras, and Egyptian souls.
And this is why an Elder Sign works.
It doesn't have Time nor Prime, so it'll eventually fail.
For those of you wondering how a systems guy tries to make the world fit together, keep staring at the star until something clicks for you.
I found the notebook from my several Highcastle games, started back in 1985.
Highcastle and northern environs.
Includes the Rat Cave, where normal rats
made for the scariest adventure ever.
The Tomb of Tor-Kantor.
He's an insane undead elven general.
The PCs lived, but set him free to seek revenge.
I even kept my visual aids from when the Lizardmen and Dragons tried to invade Highcastle.
Priests of Kreigan try to cover for the
routed conscript spear units, heading for the walls.
I remember they had to rebuild a few wall sections after the battle, but they held firm and pushed the invaders all the way back into the sea, 20 miles away.
I even found some magic items I had made and transferred to 4x6 index cards for reference.
This is Water Brand, a Footman's Mace
with a Decanter of Endless Water in its head.
And yes, I colored the pictures in my Player's Handbook. At least I used colored pencils and not crayons.
I'm never selling it.
Don't judge me. You did similar things.
Every piece of paper holds something precious. The smell of old line printer paper, a scribbled map, a jotted idea, photocopied flags of Japanese Prefectures. Research of things never quite real to begin with, but cast in concrete memory of challenges and laughter. And I miss diving into the guts of a long campaign and juggling the rest of the world while the players dance on center stage.
So that's the photo diary of this morning's trip into my Box of Games Past.
I don't think I'll win the Site of the Year competition.
And I'm just fine with that. I'll get some exposure, which will be cool. If I get some feedback from the judges, that would be awesome - totally unexpected, but awesome. But the biggest benefit to entering came from actually entering. I looked at what I've done so far and took some time to reflect.
Nobody warns you that RPGs unfairly tip the scales, pushing more work onto the GM's plate and freeing the rest of the players to have more fun. The Gaming Den of Iniquity seeks to restore balance at the game table by exploring theories, systems, and structures to free GMs to create more awesomeness. Taking disparate ideas and fitting them together in a gaming context gives a new perspective on ways to work with everyone at your table. It's also a personal reflection on 30 years of gaming, with experiences and anecdotes continuing to collect as time goes on.
I believe everyone at the table should have fun. For me as a GM, that means having a system or structure to fall back on that informs decisions I can't even conceive of before sitting down to play the game. It takes the load off of the GM and offers a way to think that doesn't require exacting preparation to cover all possible contingencies.
"We're on a mission from God"
totally works in a gaming context.
And it may be all you need for
your game's mission statement.
Using Mission Statements in Your Game
A Mission Statement can take some of the load off in your game. If you have a solid idea of what you want out of your game, write it down and refer to it during play. You don't need to write War and Peace, in fact that's counterproductive because you'll never be able to keep track of that many ideas. Just jot down some touchstones that are important to you and your game, and keep them in mind as you're confronted with choices during play.
Yes, I'm an improvisational GM. But that doesn't mean I don't prep before a game. I need tools in place before the creative spark ignites a new story at the table. And that's one reason I'm writing up Schrödinger's Gun GMing. I've done other approaches and ideas that aren't quite so involved, and hopefully I'll have others as time goes on. So please stay tuned.
One other thing about Wombat's Gaming Den of Inquity
This is more of a dilettante blog, not a business blog. I'm doing this for fun, not for profit. I may never make a dime on what happens here, though I'd like to at some point. We'll see how the future unfolds.
In the end, I'm writing to organize my own thoughts. Yes, this means it'll get crazy in here. Yes, I may never have a schedule of upcoming posts, though I'm consistently updating at least once a week now. Yes, I may confuse or even anger people with my words, though I hope to avoid anger as much as possible.
If you get something out of what's posted here, please let me know. I'm thrilled to get feedback. But I've learned to never expect it. Blogging is akin to screaming into the void - there's no guarantee anyone will even hear you, never mind understand what you're saying or take the time to scream back. You take an idea, you put it out there, and you see what happens, if anything.
I'll keep on putting gaming ideas out there, because my brain is full and making connections all the time. I hope you like at least some of what you read.
The difficulty in marketing is striking the balance between getting the message out and turning your audience off through saturation. If you overload a brain with one message over and over, eventually your message will be blocked as noise.
For a total novice, I think I walked that line fairly well.
The Plan I didn't really have a marketing plan on paper when I started. I tried to listen to feedback and self-regulate as much as I could, but there are a lot of social media venues out there and trying to cover everything can turn into a full-time job if you let it. Since I already have a full-time job, I did what I could.
Here's roughly how my use of marketing method ended up.
Twitter: This was my go-to venue. Updates got posted twice a day without fail. I posted a few times a day otherwise, plus responding to mentions and DMs. My wife got tired of seeing Winter Is Coming, and I noticed retweets falling off as the festival went on, so maybe this was a little too much. Total: 3-5 messages per day.
Facebook: I've got Twitter feeding Facebook, so anything that wasn't a mention got posted here as well. Total: 3-5 messages per day.
Google Plus: G+ is the new kid on the block, and I'm still feeling out how to use it effectively. I relied on Twitter but spent a little time on G+. Total: 1-2 messages per day.
Reddit: This ended up being my 800 pound gorilla for traffic, easily accounting for hundreds of hits per day when the link was "above the fold" on the first page of the RPG subreddit. Calling out a specific article had less staying power than the link to the overall festival, and submitting a link got more feedback and staying power than typing up a note. Total: 1 message every 2 days.
StumbleUpon: I "discovered" the festival main page about halfway through. I didn't add a review until after the festival. I think I still have 1 hit on it. Total: 1 link submitted.
ENWorld Forums: I posted here late in the game. I got some positive feedback, so I'll post earlier in the process next time. Fair traffic, but not Reddit-level by any stretch. Total: 1 post.
Retweeting really got the word out. Having a rabid advocate in @blindgeekuk helped keep interest high with retweets and other "check this out" messages. I got a measurable amount of traffic from mentions on other blogs. We had buzz. I got over 5000 pageviews in September, and to date we have 1752 page views on the Winter Is Coming main page.
My Goals
Going into the Festival, I had a few vague goals in mind. A couple of others solidified as the Festival progressed. I think it's worth noting listing them for discussion or at least contemplation.
Provide a centralized spot for solid winter-themed RPG content. Outcome: Success, though I was expecting about half the size.
Have a sustainable flow of content. A month seemed too sparse, a day too intense, so I settled on a week-long festival. I think that worked ideally, and we had a good distribution of articles across the whole week. I was hoping for flow control on the Submission Page, but it wasn't used consistently especially since I was getting email submissions for guest posts.
I wanted to reach out to the broader RPG community and give people a voice who may not blog or be tapped into the online group. We succeeded.
Get people talking and provide feedback from the community to encourage these newer voices. While I did an edit pass on every guest post and gave some feedback that way, the community feedback in the form of comments on articles was surprisingly sparse. It's an engagement issue, and I think it can be solved through bribery in the form of contests. Still processing this point.
Reach out to artists and bring writers and visual artists closer together. Symatt aside, we could have done much better here, but we've learned and I've got some ideas for next time.
Not alienate anyone. I stumbled a bit with the wording of the warning to bring your best work, but other than that I think we had a rousing success. We had 29 people contribute, which is stunning for a first-time event run by some guy with a gaming blog.
Tips for Next Time These are a few notes for me for the next Blog Festival, but feel free to use them if they'll help you.
Find a rabid advocate. Derek Sivers has it right when he talks about how to start a movement: the first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader. Extremely important for motivation and to show that a festival like this is about community and not about one person.
Reddit early, Reddit often. Reddit only takes one link, but you can add some meat around your link by submitting a note. As long as the link is on the first page, you'll get pageviews. (Side note: My Open Letter to D&D R&D got me a high of 183 pageviews in an hour and 1177 pageviews on the day I submitted to Reddit. I got some great comments up there, too.) Once it drops off the first page, the hits drop to near nil. Keep it interesting and offer something to the community.
Figure out StumbleUpon. I've heard it's a great traffic driver, but I'm not tapped in enough to make it work for me. I'm twwombat over there (go figure), so feel free to follow/friend me.
Post to ENWorld much earlier. Generating discussion on forums wasn't a priority for me this contest, and that can generate buzz and get more people involved.
Reach out to the DeviantArt community. I missed the boat on this one because I decided to try it a little too late. Plus, I'm not tapped into DeviantArt, so I don't know how to get a message to interested members of the community over there.
Find an easier way to handle guest posts. Guest posts were very important to me, because it gave the chance for non-bloggers to get their content read easily, and gave bloggers a resume building "I've appeared on other blogs" credit. Formatting posts sucks. I could cut and paste to some degree, but I was till twiddling HTML by hand on every post.
Get more people involved earlier. Many hands make light work, so adding people as blog admins might be the way to go. Also getting feedback on everything festival-related (and not festival entry-related) before posting would have helped avoid ruffled feathers.
Cross-market more. Trading links on blogs is cool and all, but I think I missed some opportunities to get more eyeballs onto the entries through writeups on other non-participating blogs and possible interviews. A week-long festival only needs exposure for about a month tops, and I get the sense that impersonal banner ads aren't worth the money. Not sure where to start here, other than asking online.
If you're planning on doing a festival, prepare to spend at least a few hours a day on it between outreach, fielding questions, and actually handling the content. It was worth the effort for me due to a great number of random factors aligning, but your mileage may vary wildly.
I'll end it here. Keep the faith and feed your online RPG community. Thank you all for reading and participating.
"So Wombat," you may ask, "why the heck did you write up Wombat's Path and document your gaming experiences over the past 30 years?" And you pose an excellent question.
The ego wants what the ego wants. I'll admit to shameless ego-stroking as a reason. What person with almost 3/4 of his life tied up in one activity wouldn't want to celebrate that, especially with a 30th anniversary coming up this fall? I'm not a slave to my ego, but the process of writing brought home to me that I may have learned something useful to share about running and playing games. That feels good to me.
Still selfishly, I can mine these posts for blog fodder to expand on an aspect of gaming that I find interesting or useful. Finding topics and generating content for a blog can be challenging if you paint yourself into a corner. I'm purposely not limiting topics for this particular public writing endeavor. I've done so many rules hacks on the fly while GMing that at least one of them could make sense to you. So many times I have wanted a supplement that would cover something missing in the rules as written, so it makes sense to expand on or add a system that would increase the depth and enjoyment in a game. So I'll do exactly that in this place as much as I'm able. I may not know what you'll find useful, but I hope I can solicit your help to guide me.
Contrary to the beliefs of 17-year-old me, history is important. History teaches newer generations about previous forays and failures, and hopefully saves some trial-and-error time when working on new ideas. It gives us a sense of what's come before and a sense of involvement in something bigger than just the people involved. However, 17-year-old me got burned out on 5 years of American History that studied battles and skipped over the meat of motivation.
On a more altruistic note, documenting my game experiences brings my past into focus and make me think about how my gaming preferences have matured over the past 30 years. This gives me a well of learned lessons to draw from as I try to share my experiences where appropriate. Not everyone games the same way, and not everyone cares to hear advice. Though in the cases where people need help, I'll do my best to get you where you need to go.
Yummy gaming book!
Order 2, they're small!
If you have any questions about GMing or comments about anything I've written, don't hesitate to get in touch and I'll do what I can. I will answer, even if it's just a quick "Thanks!" You can leave a comment to any blog post, or twittle me at @twwombat, or email me at jim (at) twwombat (dot) com.
Yes, I'm playing with pictures linked to my Amazon referral account. Sue me. Or better yet, click through one of them and the Google ad to put a penny or two in my account and then hop in your '91 Indignant Huff and drive away. I think the pictures add a little graphical oomph which is great for a non-graphics person like myself. Also, please let me know what you think about the new background I put up in the past couple of weeks.
almost 3/4 of his life tied up in one activity wouldn't want to celebrate that, especially with a 30th anniversary coming up this fall? I'm not a slave to my ego, but the process of writing brought home to me that I may have learned something useful to share about running and playing games. That feels good to me.
