Piddlin' about with the nations-as-characters thing again

You know I have an unhealthy thing for my old Battletech: 3087 game (Don't worry, I'm not going to repost it again). In it, players had characters and nations that they ran. The nation turns were simple and abstracted so that players could understand what was going on and make decisions on a national scale. One of the lessons I pulled from the failure of 3087 was that players "get" characters and a good nation-running tabletop game should characterize nations the same way it does characters.

I obviously started with FATE. Skills are bedrock in FATE and I needed a similar positive and negative skill space that characters get. I tried to convert FATE stock skills 1:1 to national-scale equivalents, so each nation could have ten of fourteen skills, but that was unwieldy. I settled on six out of eleven:

Sabotage (Provoke)
Infrastructure (Athletics)
Espionage (Notice)
Internal Security (Stealth)
Law Enforcement (Investigate)
Diplomacy (Deceive/Empathy)

National Resolve (Physique)
National Loyalty (Will)

Military (Fight)
Natural Wealth (Resources)
Culture (Contacts/Rapport)
Finance (Burglary)

Academia (Lore)
Artisan (Crafts)

It feels like a mixed bag. Some of these interact pretty well, but others don't. Impossibly, there are still thirteen. The Sabotage/Espionage and Security/Law Enforcement skills should probably be rolled into one. 

Would you like to run a nation that has six of these skills? Plus Stunts and Aspects that are mostly specific iterations of these skills (ie, a particular unit, a singular resource like vibrainum or hargel, or individual, exceptional people?). 

Where do technologies, histories, and nation sizes still fit into this? Still working on it.

Edere Vir: Powers

So two weeks ago I started talking about a monster type I made called the Edere Vir. Originally envisioned as a part of the World of Darkness, they were humans that preyed on other humans for power and advantage within society.

What could the Edere Vir eat and what could they use those body parts to do?

Trusty Lord: Trust in RPGs

So, as you know, I've been running a roleplaying game (if I had my stuff just a little more together, you'd be reading about that right now instead of this). I originally wanted to do a 26 part series on roleplaying theory, the FATE system, and the specific Steel, Sand, and Sunsets game I'm running. Life happened and now I'm running that game instead of theorizing about it.

Trust. When you think about it (or mistype it like I just did), it reminds you of the word "truest." Generally, players do want characters that are true, as it's a virtue. Having a player that's trusting is considered a drawback. Earning trust is a sign of power; giving it is a sign of weakness.

The Gaming Renaissance

Guys, gaming has been crazy yet. As you know, I like playing some Magic, doing some roleplaying, and firing up a console. I'm not really a gamer in the sense that most people are; I prefer to have a more productive use of my time between applying for jobs, whining about Star Trek, and finding out the newest way that jump-dolphins are plotting my demise. Lately, however, things have been pretty rough. I've had no bites on my job applications, my money is still finite, and I'm pretty sure Shortpacked!'s Dave Willis has thrown in with the jump-dolphins to blow my fucking mind.

Luckily, I've got a lot of Magic under my belt these past few weeks, I'm juggling RPG schedules as I try to balance a 3.5, a Pathfinder, and a Werewolf: the Apocalypse campaign. If I'd ever played D&D before it was salvaged from arcane, nerd-based overcomplexity (4th Edition), this would truly be a nostalgia bonanza. As it is, it's just a regular bonanza of character creation, dice rolling, and trying to stat out The Greater Dominus Encyclopedia on the Proper Preparation and Eating of Dicks because apparently, my character's lightning hands don't actually effect lightning elementals and they can eat a mountain of dicks as a class power because fuck them for being immune to my magics!

I'm having loads of fun, but damn, it is exhausting. I can't complain really; I will complain because it's who I am, and I will complain because I'm too highly talented to get passed over on a lot of the opportunities that I've seen, but at a bare minimum I promise that the most righteous of complaining won't include my gaming schedule.

Probably.

Timewalking Archive Trap: 40k, Part 4 of 4

 

Like anyone whose desire to say something is matched only by their desire to waste time saying it on the internet, I've been blogging for a while. Timewalking Archive Trap presents select treasures from yesteryear for the enjoyment of my readers and the easing of my creative duties. 

This one is dated 15 October 2007: 

Highlights
>My Assault Marines, despite being under lots of enemy fire, managed to totally decimate a pair of Tau Crisis Suits that Derek dropped in front of me to help out his ally. They got off a really good turn of fire before my Marines tackled them and ripped them into Taufetti.

>Terry's dudes didn't move very much. He sat back and made about four long range attacks each turn after his first advancing squad got wiped out. Derek's Tau moved a bit (a bit like a glacier) and managed to thin my ally's ranks. Most of this kept them from interfering with the Richard/Kris side of the map. 

>And the Tau really are spectacular at range.

Timewalking Archive Trap: 40k, Part 3 of 4

 

Like anyone whose desire to say something is matched only by their desire to waste time saying it on the internet, I've been blogging for a while. Timewalking Archive Trap presents select treasures from yesteryear for the enjoyment of my readers and the easing of my creative duties. 

This one is dated 15 October 2007: 

The Play
I was visibly concerned about Richard's armies. Concerned. Not, 'concerned that he was cheating' like I was about his handwritten army list (We are collectively convinced he exports 99% of Louisiana's willful ignorances, self-justifications, and outright cheats). I can lose a rigged fight and salve my wounds with a one-off barb that gets under his skin. It's the fact that I knew I should have expected a gathering of elite, special ability unique-type Imperial Guard characters. That's what was bothering me before. Massed tactics with untrained units are something Richard sees as inelegant, clumsy, and relying on luck. He'd rather take one guy with fifty special abilities than fifty guys with one each. I figured each one of his guys was going to possess some kind of butt-kicking thing that would--when activated in concert--turn my Space Marines into so many genetically-augmented, pre-packaged cans of soylent green.

You see, at this point I thought he was merely inattentive, overprepared.

Timewalking Archive Trap: 40k, Part 2 of 4

 

Like anyone whose desire to say something is matched only by their desire to waste time saying it on the internet, I've been blogging for a while. Timewalking Archive Trap presents select treasures from yesteryear for the enjoyment of my readers and the easing of my creative duties. 

This one is dated 15 October 2007: 

Learning Lessons

Derek had arrived earlier and given some color commentary towards the end, but it was a new familiarity with the rules and Terry's analysis (and the equipment that he used to kill me) that let me retool The Earls of Sandwiche to be less than a jet pack-enhanced suicide squad.

Terry still hadn't explained the mechanics to me(about strength/toughness, Ballistic Skills, Weapon Skills), but I had picked up enough from memory and watching that I was comfortable with how things rolled.

Derek also ran his army through the Army Builder program, and he and Terry argued quite a bit, flipping through the Codex (a list of all the different options an army for a certain faction has) of Derek's faction--the space-American Tau--and talking about point costs and special abilities and the program. I left, not because the conversation was heated (it wasn't), not because it was annoying (it was), and not because it was irrelevant (Derek's army composition was very relevant to me), but because I knew it would end with Derek relenting because he didn't know the rules as well and just using the army builder anyway because he didn't want the faint chance of dishonesty associated with making his army by hand.

Image courtesy of Requiem (Francisco Salinas). 

You can check out more of his stuff on his deviantart at: http://nataku956.deviantart.com/ 

Minecraft Tour, Part 5 of Infinity

If it's one compulsion that no Minecraft player can resist, it's sharing their Minecraft world. We spend stupid amounts of time collecting resources to make functional structures, fantastic monuments, and the occasional erection that melds both into something whose magnitude is reinforced with every use. Sometimes, the exotic landscape generated from basic blocks through simple algorithms is worth sharing with others.

Sometimes--just sometimes--when you pop out of the nether in an unknown location, you have stacks of netherrack and want to build roads that meet civilization. This netherrack road leads to the eastern edge of the lake where the railroad ends. Netherrack is a good substance; it burns forever, creating eternal light and a barrier against enemies when you fire it up. However, it's hell to walk on when it's covered in flames.

Just past the netherrack road is a simple dirt fortress on the other side of a shallow lake. It's...um, so cool.

Built from an innocuous hillside, it shows the utility of burning netherrack. The checkered patterns keep spiders from climbing the walls.

I don't know how, but &*#^ing chickens always get into my $*#^ing structures and never leave.

Timewalking Archive Trap: 40k, Part 1 of 4

 

Like anyone whose desire to say something is matched only by their desire to waste time saying it on the internet, I've been blogging for a while. Timewalking Archive Trap presents select treasures from yesteryear for the enjoyment of my readers and the easing of my creative duties. 

This one is dated 15 October 2007:

I played some Warhammer 40k yesterday for the first time. I didn't really like it.

Backstory
'The Guys' started showing interest in Warhammer about 3 months after I sold my dust-covered, all-but-forgotten starter box to someone else. It was the wargamer equivalent of finally throwing away my little black book, only to have that hookup whore on the side end up in all of my classes at school. At any rate, I managed to be supportive, given that after getting interested in April, Terry and Derek played their first game a few weeks ago. It isn't entirely fair to say that though; I've got a library of hundreds of Battletech that I've never fielded, which parallels Terry's contentment honing his mini-painting and landscaping techniques without ever rolling initiative.

So Terry's been the number one guy on this; subsidizing minis, going over the rules, downloading army builders. He's spent the last few months going through the books at a leisurely, but characteristically thorough pace. There was a time--and I think many gamers can parrot this sentence with honesty--we'd rip open a new game system or sourcebook every week, devouring it, as Russo's zombies devour brains. Derek, the number two guy in 40k, was never so fond of that. He's really the type of guy that's more inclined to focus on the essential information and let practice do the teaching.

It's the Magic: Standard Tour of San Antonio: Gamelot

While the internet is full of ways to find game stores in your area, it does very little to tell you about the real character of those stores: their atmosphere, their product, their staff, or anything else a curious gamer might want to know. To help others out, I've started a week-by-week survey of the stores in my area, playing a Friday Night Magic at each one as a way of familiarizing myself with it.

This week I went to Gamelot, located at 7007 Bandera Road, on the corner where Bandera meets Huebner.

Gamelot says it's San Antonio's gaming megastore. That's very true. While I could quibble square footage with Heroes & Fantasies, one is a comics and collectibles store with an impressive gaming apparatus while the other is a massive store pulsating with games. Even packed with the traffic from the Friday night of a new set release for Magic, the play environment for the whole event was comfortable.

Of course, like all of the other places I've visited, Gamelot does more than just Magic. Magic was actually in a separate play area while a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament occupied the main floor, between the miniatures games and LAN center. All of those areas were buzzing with players. I'll confess to some ignorance of the LAN facilities, but I've seen League of Legends, World of Warcraft, DC Universe Online, and Star Wars: The Old Republic being played there.

 

It's the Magic: Standard Tour of San Antonio - Heroes and Fantasies

While the internet is full of ways to find game stores in your area, it does very little to tell you about the real character of those stores: their atmosphere, their product, their staff, or anything else a curious gamer might want to know. To help others out, I've started a week-by-week survey of the stores in my area, playing a Friday Night Magic at each one as a way of familiarizing myself with it.

This week I went to Heroes & Fantasies, located at 4945 NW Loop 410, nestled along the back of a shopping center just off the I-410 frontage road, just off Evers Road.

The tag for Heroes & Fantasies is "Where families collect." I don't think anyone can contest that. This place is chock full of collectables. Statues and statuettes of every variety dot the store, ranging from simple, desktop busts of Rorschach to a five-foot Spider-Man (complete with webs). If there's a famous comic book story line, there's probably a statue of it at Heroes & Fantasies. Of course, it wouldn't really be a wonderland of nerd collectibles if it didn't have action figures. They have new figures, like Matt Smith's Doctor Who), still-packaged action figures for characters I thought I'd never I'd see (like "Klingon" from the Deep Space Nine episode where they went back in time to Kirk's show), and used figures. The used ones were my favorite, as they consisted of banged-up X-Wings, vintage Star Wars guys, and a metric ton of toys I actually had back in the day. There are even separate displays dedicated to fantasy-inspired merchandise and baseball cards.

It's the Magic: Standard Tour of San Antonio - Dragon's Lair

Just moved up to San Antonio from Louisiana a few weeks ago. The place I lived didn't have any game stores, so having not just one, but three game stores within driving distance of my house is a whole new experience.

While the internet is full of ways to find game stores in your area, it does very little to tell you about the real character of those stores: their atmosphere, their product, their staff, or anything else a curious gamer might want to know. To help others out, I've started a week-by-week survey of the stores in my area, playing a Friday Night Magic at each one as a way of familiarizing myself with it.

At 7959 Fredericksburg Road, you can find the Dragon's Lair. It's a great place for both comics and gaming. Better yet, it's in the same shopping center as an Einstein Bros Bagels. 

I know; it sounds perfect.

GoMnomnom: The Role of Weather

Weather is important out here. There's no shade and there's no ground. If the wind is blowing, it blows for miles across the water, unimpeded by any of the tiny structures we've built out here. With the exception of a few clouds, the sun shines straight onto the deck, punishing the deck crew for twelve hours straight. The line of sight that extends out to the horizon gives you an appreciation for the rain, too. Storm fronts aren't monolithic lines moving across the horizon, but masses of clouds that may or may not feel like delivering their precious cargo where you are. I haven't yet tired—and I hope I never do—of the novelty of standing on a dry, sunny deck and spotting columns of rain a few miles away.