Brevity Is Not Usually My Style, But Its Been A Long Month...

Dear Blog,

Today I woke up with heat in my house.  It was a very good day...



Seriously; I could hide, like,
five bodies in there!

In all seriousness, I'm happy to report that my heating issues have been dealt with.  New furnace, new duct work, happy Darth.  There is now a good amount of  heat in my home, and just in time.  Next week is supposed to be "Damn Cold".
 
As an odd consequence to this home improvement, I discovered a "void" in my home's floor plan that would cater quite nicely to a new closet.  Some nut-job just threw up a wall, instead of making a closet.  The home has space issues to begin with, why would you wall off 48 cubic feet of usable space?! 

Talking with a carpenter to see what they think it would cost to convert into useable space. 

Three's a Charm

Anyway, games!  Just ran my third session of my Wild Cards game.  I have a standard that I live by...more of a track record, really...that if a game can make it through three sessions, then it'll go.  It'll get the momentum it needs to carry on for years.  I've had one anomaly to this in recent years, my Earthdawn game only made about a year of games before "game-fading".  It fell apart around the time that the 2012 LARP season started, as soon after I started house hunting and house packing.  My new home doesn't cater well to large groups of people, and my own attention to the campaign faltered, so it sadly is off the radar.

Could it be run online?  Eh, maybe.  I'm finding it difficult to run games entirely on my PC.  It's one thing if I'm running a game with half my PCs in the room, and the other half on Roll20.  Especially if the ones online have web-cams.  My current Wild Cards party has one person with a webcam, the rest are all still images of the players.  And even then they're about 200 pixels high.  It's hard to connect with the players, at least that's what I feel.  No visual cues, can't tell if they're engaged or looking at websites between combat actions.

It is only the third game, though...  *shrug*  Maybe it'll change.

Also, my gaming space is pretty tight.  I'm at my desk, crammed in the corner of my library.  My "table top real estate" is pretty tight.  If I try to have a book open in front of me, it doesn't work out too well as far as room to type goes.  Heaven forbid I need to have a second book open too, as that will be in my lap.

Eh, maybe it's time to figure out a new desk set up, or room layout, or something else entirely.

As far as the campaign goes, I'm having a pretty good time.  I'm going to try to keep the Wild Cards episodic for now, with every 3-4 games being one story.  Maybe the 4th "episode" will tie directly into their back story.  I figure we'll need at least three episodes to get the PCs used to each other, and with me, really.  I've got two new PCs (never before played), one PC who I've had at my table twice before (a campaign that only made it to session two), and two "hardened veterans" who will likely be able to see several plot themes coming.  The vets are the only ones who have played together in prior games, too.  I think.  Regardless, it's a real new group so it'll take time to gel.

Still, at least I'm gaming regularly again.

A Long Time Ago...

It's sadly been quite a while since I had the opportunity to update this blog.

(Aright, to be honest and fair I've had plenty of opportunity, I just haven't had the mental drive to.)

I'm going to take a moment or two and try to back-fill in what's been going on in my Costuming and Gaming career since last we spoke.  I've started a new, non-Star Wars campaign, returned to one of my Star Wars campaigns with feelings of trepidation, and went to Dragon*Con 2011.

Earthdawn

As mentioned in a previous post, I have returned to the lands of Barsaive and am running a new campaign set in the world of Earthdawn.  Called the Exiled Lords*, the campaign will focus on a band of heroes drawn to the village of Asylum, and their discovery of two great legends; the Books of Scale and the Exiled Lords.  The game just completed it's second session, and the PCs are being very forthcoming with keeping the Obsidian Portal site for the game up to date.  This is because there are mechanics in the game that reward Players for keeping journals of their hero's exploits.  I've also devised mechanics for awarding the PCs more experience for contributing to the website.  In a game system where you spend Experience Points to improve your character's abilities, there's a ton of motivation to write a few paragraphs to get enough XP for a new Talent or to improve an old one.

Go and check it out if you're curious.  The PCs are doing a heck of a job.

Star Wars: Brothers in Arms

Back to the main focus of this Blog; Star Wars gaming.  I ran/returned to my Clone Wars Era campaign this past Monday night, and it went okay.  There's a lot of cob-webs to shake loose, a new character to introduce, and a general feeling of dread on my part.  We really only had time for one space encounter and a bit of roleplaying that led into a set up for a combat encounter at the start of the next session. 

As is typical with any social group, a lot of time was lost in the game session catching up with each other.  Some of us hadn't seen other players for months, and a lot has happened over the summer.  I'm just as much an offender to the "tangent of stories" as the rest of the players, I found myself side-tracked at least three times when I should have been bringing the focus of the evening back to the gaming table.  I figure it's going to take another 2-3 sessions before we get back into the groove of gaming, and are able to stay focused.

I still wish folks would refrain from dropping the innuendo-fueled comment of "That's what she said!" at every humorous opportunity.  It's a rampant problem in that game.  Cure for the first twenty times, but it's gotten old.  To me, anyway.

There are two hurdles in this "re-launch"; first is that I lost a Clone.  When we started we had three clone troopers; a character going Arc Trooper, a support clone trooper who was actually Force sensitive, and a Clone Commando named "Professor".  The player of "Professor" wasn't having fun with the Follower system and it really colored his perceptions of his Clone Commando he made.  We tried various mechanics, including using the Droid's Protocol system as a base for handling his followers, but nothing seemed to be working well.  He wanted to stop playing Professor and has swapped out to a Bith Jedi Knight.  I didn't get to see the character until that night, because the player procrastinated in even making the character (he had 3 months; what the hell, man?)  I haven't even really had a chance to see the character and review it, so I'm glad that the first encounter was a space encounter that the Jedi wasn't really built for.  Now I have a copy and can review him.

Thanks to my brother for taking a look at the Jedi, and noticing the player chose Phase for a Force Power.  I don't allow Phase in my game.  This is Star Wars, not X-Men; no "Kitty Pride Tricks" in my campaign.  Now I have to look it over and see if there are any other issues with it.

With the loss of the Professor, and the character evolution of the Force Sensitive Clone Trooper, the game is starting to feel less and less like a "Brothers in Arms" situation.  The players are all the same, but the in-play dynamics have changed.  It could all just be me not being in the mind-set of the campaign after 4 months, or it could be more of a feeling of writer's block with where to take the game.  It's something that I'll have to figure out and play out over the next few weeks.

Dragon*Con 2011

An amazing and good time.  Anyone who's into TV and Movie Stars, Sci-Fi and Horror, and Costumes needs to go to this Con.  I spent way too much money there (I'm looking at you Ultra-Sabers...damn you and your Convenction Discount prices!) and had a great time.  Sadly I caught the "Con Crud" and in the drive back to New England gave it to my Fiancee.  I've still got a cough that I can't quite get rid of...

Bumped into Sam Witwer, of D20 Radio fame (he also does this side project, acting in Sci-Fi's Being Human TV Series as the vampire Adian).  Sadly didn't get a chance to talk to him for very long, but it was nice to be able to shake his hand none the less.  I had much better luck talking with Star Wars authors Mike Stackpole and Aaron Allston.  Two very cool guys, and fun to just shoot the breeze with. 

I'll get up pics of the costuming I did soon, I just don't have them accessible right now.  Commander Fil in the Georgia heat, and my contribution to a Renassaiance JLA costuming group.  It was awesome.

That's it for now.  Back to blogging, and back to growing Fragments from the Rim.


* Yes, I totally stole the name from the forthcoming Sith Empire guild the D20 Radio listeners plan to form when The Old Republic MMO launches later this year.  It's a solid name!

Update from the Rim

Greetings, true-believers.

I'm still here.  The blog has not died.  I've been distracted for a few weeks with the creation of my Earthdawn campaign. 

Not to jump games too much, but I've had a long, involved history with Earthdawn.  It was the game that helped me find a lot of friends when I went to college.  Back in 1993, it was one of the "Hot Games" on the market, something else to play besides D&D.  I ran about three campaigns back then, and gamed the hell out of the world until 1998 when 3rd Edition D&D came out, and that was the new "Hot Game".

Since then, my friends would occasionally try to tempt me back to Earthdawn, but I had become burnt out on the system.  You run something for years, you need a break.  That and I wasn't too impressed with what Living Room Games changed, or didn't change, when they took it over.

Now here I sit, twelve years later, putting together a campaign in a world I haven't touched for over a decade, yet feels like I'm coming home after a long trip away.  My buddies' perseverance has paid off, and I'm developing another game that has the serious potential for awesomeness.

I'm still creating for Fragments from the Rim for the Order 66 Podcast, still running Order 65, and Brothers in Arms, and still developing Another Longshot, but now for a change of pace I'll have Earthdawn too.  It will be interesting to see what Legends get told this time around.

Plotting a Return to the Age of Legend

I'm sitting here at my cube on lunch, finishing my meal, and flipping through my old 1st edition, well loved, spine split and peeling, corners rubbed to near nothing copy of Earthdawn (by FASA!). 

I haven't picked up this book in over fifteen years.

Why am I picking it up now?  because some crazy-ass friends of mine picked up on the fact that while I love running Star Wars SAGA edition, I'm hankering for a different flavor to supplement my favorite sci-fi game.  Their argument was that back in college I ran a MEAN Earthdawn* game, and my friends who still love the system and it's latest incarnations wonder what I could do with an Earthdawn game.  With my current capabilities and experience in running scores of enjoyable campaigns, they tempted me to see how it woudl go. 

Now, I'd successfully held off their advances and pressure for several years now.  Not sure why, because really the system was solid.  Maybe it was because I did play Earthdawn a lot back in the day.  I had three campaigns going; Fitchburg State College Prime, the Keene Game, and Fitchburg State College Two (after Prime went away).  I played the hell out of that game, and it was my main game until D20 rolled out with D&D 3rd Edition, and OCR Star Wars.  From there on, WotC was my master, and they got my money.

The fact that FASA folded didn't help either.  I was in a very "No company support, not interested in the game" mentality, and when Living Room Games took over the franchise I didn't want to "start over". 

But now it's been over fifteen years.  I've learned a lot, and I've really refined my style of storytelling and gamemastering.  Is it time to return to the land of Barsaive?  A time of Adepts, and Dragons, and the Horrors of the Scourge?

Maybe it is.

* As a funny side note, thanks to the bombardment of Cialis and Viagra commercials in recent years I can no longer abbreviate Earthdawn to "ED".  Damn you, Pfizer!  Damn you!