Elder Scrolls games and Elder Scrolls Online - part 1

 

I'm usually about 5-7 years behind on video games and consoles. I guess that makes me not an avid gamer, but I never put more than an 2-4 hours of play into a video game a week. OK, there were exceptions. The oldest being Super Mario Bros 3. In the late 80's when I was in my first decent job (clerking in the MGM/UA studios legal department) I truly fell in love with what home video gaming could offer. I would come home and play it for a couple of hours every night. On the weekend it took up a ton of my time, that was only slowed down by me discovering my life time love of Renaissance Faire. 

"itsa me! Flying Squirrel Mario!"

A lot of my weekends were suddenly full during the year, but I played it fairly often for a couple of years. One of my older brothers, no longer living at home then, would come over to play it when he knew I wasn't around. I would come home occasionally on a lunchbreak to play (my drive to the house from Culver City was at least 15 minutes, but it was worth it for a half hour extra play) and he'd be there on it. I'd go out to the big den on a Saturday morning to play and he'd be there. At one point I just took the small connector cable and said it was broken. He immediately bought his own Nintendo. But that is the power of a great game like SMB 3 that you love. My brother coveted it and I became like Gollum with the ring of power. 

my precious

But there were also Silent Hill games, Castlevania games, Final Fantasy 7 (the first game I actually logged my hours...I put just under 100 hours into that one), Fallout 3, Knights of The Old Republic (one of very few games I actually played more than once all the way through...a total of 4 times). 

I love you, Bastila Shan. Especially in the dark side ending...

And then there were the Elder Scrolls games. Whoa. I discovered Morrowind at least a year or two after it came out. What a game. A new level. The type of play that had become famous for "see that mountain in the distance? Walk to it through lakes and forests and find a dungeon on it to delve into" swept me off my feet. In many ways I was overwhelmed. There was just too much to unpack. Just deciding on all your characters ability scores, aspects, and astrological signs could take a couple hours. So many quests. There was so much to do and I was so often blown away by everything I didn't even try blacksmithing and other crafting. My eventual home in Balmora was strewn with hundreds of alchemy and enchanting ingredients. I didn't know what to do with them, but I'd be damned if I was going to throw them away. I even loved the massive glitches. They were never game breaking. But you would come across a town you had visited before and all the people in it were now suddenly floating up in the sky. Another town suddenly was full of water like a great flood had happened, and the townspeople were swimming about their business instead of walking around. I always looked on such as huge curses or something from a mage. It was part of the fun. 

Oblivion was my next step up, and another level. Instead of ignoring the main quest like I usually do for a good while as I went about step and fetch quests, I dove right into trying to close all the Oblivion gates that were popping up all over. 

Again and again going through that portal and into that fiery realm of hell to fight the demons and get the Mcguffin. I was really playing it like a true role playing game. I would do things as I perceived my character would. My Redguard went to the amazing Imperial City, and worked his way up the gladiator ranks (I spent hours just betting and watching other matches from the stands before deciding on a gladiator career). The grand champion had to be killed in order for me to become champ, but I liked him (I helped the orcish champ with vampire trouble his family home was having) so I gave up on my championship dreams.  

Imperial City

Then of course came Skyrim. An amazing entry into the series. It was dumbed down and lost a ton of the character creation possibilities and depth of play, but the trade off was a beautiful looking setting with epic things to do, including the dragon related main quest. Again, I was a bit late to this game by a year or two, but when I started I was hooked. Another wonderful living world. I created a nord character and got him looking very much like Sean Bean. Fitting, as I had become a Game of Thrones fan by then. Skyrim was hella GoT in flavor. And by now I had started experimenting more with blacksmithing and other crafting. 

Around a year or so ago my friend "T" from my home town and long time player in my tabletop before I moved had gotten the gift of gaming head phones, and suggested to me that we start doing a little multiplayer online on weekends. Smashing idea! I had been playing my old XBOX 360 forever, and this was a good excuse to trade up to the latest. And the virus was just getting out of control so this seemed like a good time for it (even though since I now worked in health care I still had a job). T is a bit of a Hollywood socialite (former actress) and is usually out at big parties on weekends, but now she was stuck in like a lot of people. So I ordered a pair of gaming head phones from Amazon, picked up my new nifty XBOX at Best Buy curbside, and it was a go. 

So the search was on for a game I knew we could both like to play. My choice ended up being an indie game called Necropolis. It had a great, goth cartoony look I liked, and the play was based off the Dark Souls engine I think. It was only 6 bucks or so, so it wasn't a big gamble or anything. 

 It was fun, with your alien fighter or assassin slashing and bashing their way through a terrifying alien mega dungeon full of undead. 

A world so alien people don't even have feet

But in the end it was a frustrating experience. Not the game play, though there were glitches here and there. Often you might find yourself falling through the floor and plummeting down through the levels to your death, or get perma stuck on a ladder. But the killer was just trying to get together in multi player. It was hard as hell. It would often take up 20 minutes to log in together. And you more often than not did not restart with your gear from the last save. After a few weeks, with hat in hand I told T I was done with it. It was a waste of time if you could barely even get the game going. 

So the search for a new game was on. T wasn't really into looking at the games in the XBOX online store, so it was really on me. And I had to pick something good that would not be a controller throwing experience like Necropolis ended up being. So I looked at the reviews, and even games that looked amazing had lots of bad reviews, especially about the multiplayer experience. But then it struck me.

I had known about Elder Scrolls Online since it had come out. Years ago. But never heard much about it. World of Warcraft was the 800 lb. gorilla in the room. They even made a movie about it. But hey, T was a big Skyrim fan. I was an Elder Scrolls fan in general. So that simple math added up. Was an MMO the way to go?

My doubts were many. This was a higher level of multiplayer. What if one of us had internet that wasn't strong enough? Though T runs an office, she can be a bit of a non-techie. Would this require a lot just to get up and running? Plus games like this tried to constantly sell you on expansions. How intrusive would that be? Also in an MMO you had to play with people you didn't know. Not sure T would appreciate dumbshit, horny 14 year olds doing what they do in games. This might have been especially problematic in the MMO I was considering besides ESO. I loved stuff I saw of the game play of a game called Sea of Thieves, where you and friends pilot ships around various islands looking for treasure and chickens or whatever. But this game was automatically player v. player. Beginners usually end up being attacked by pirate gangs who kill you and sink your ship. No, this game was out. 

Female characters are a thing on
the seas (80% run by 13 year old boys)

As a fan of Red Dead Redemption I also considered Red Dead Online. But I knew T would probably prefer something with magic and spell casing. 

Is a boomstick magic?

So I went ahead and pitched T on Elder Scrolls Online. The basic game (that currently comes with the Morrowind expansion) was only around 20 bucks. She was intrigued. We decided to give it a shot, download it, and play it the following weekend. 

My worries remained till then. Also, I thought that there was not way they could have anywhere near the deep experience of the solo releases I had come to know and love. 

What happened next was totally unexpected.

to be continued...

2012 - a great year of just plain gaming

With the Temple of Demogorgon 4 year anniversary just this last week, I thought it might a good time to talk about some of my gaming from the last year (as seems to be the tradition). Mostly the last year was about focusing on actually running games over blogging or kerfuffling in the OSR, and I found it both peaceful and fulfilling.

In 2012 I didn’t do much in the way of gaming outside the regular group. After a couple of shitty experiences in the previous and other years both at tabletops and online (there were some good ones too), I dedicated myself to the regular group and to new campaigns with gusto, and kept my posts here to an average of 2 or 3 a month.

Pretty much started the year jumping right into my long-daydreamed about classic Runequest game. I did a lot of research, and dreaming up of my own stuff in relation to existing data for this campaign. It was a lot of work, but I love Glorantha and could not wait to portray my version of it. Though I used a lot of the Celtic imagery and some clarifications on locations from later editions, I did my best to keep my Glorantha very basic, they way I experienced it as a kid. There was a bit of work to be done with the crunch, as I almost immediately threw out some of the Strike Rank stuff and started houseruling to make the game and all it’s combat focus go smoother. I think that went well, as I’m pretty sure I captured the groups imagination with strong tribal-clan setting, a nice break from generic medieval Europe setting of D&D. I finally got to do the classic Gringles Pawnshop and Rainbow Mounds scenario’s, and it was all good. I think I left the campaign off later in the year with the players wanting more, and that is the feather in the GM cap as far as I’m concerned. I will for sure revisit the characters later this year.


In January regular player Paul brought a copy of Arkham Horror boardgame when we were low on players, and though lengthy (as most boardgames seem to be) it was fun, and got my juices flowing to do some Call of Cthulhu. We did eventually get a few sessions in, and it was good times. I called this part of the campaign “Fangs of New York,” with a classic New York setting. Byakhees and Chinese Gangsters over Times Square on New Years Eve, Cho Cho People and Chaugner Faugh in the Jersey Pine Barrens. Really great sessions, and as in the past some players hemmed and hawed about the genre, but loved it once we played. Quite honestly, I think I do my best GMing with Cthulhu. I’m really “on” when I run it. Looking forward to getting in some more of this soon. It is a good game for when you are low on players.


Just a quick video gaming mention as an aside. Around the earlier part of last year my video game of choice ended up being Fallout 3. I hadn’t played a video game with this much enthusiasm since Resident Evil 4. Just a great and immersive game, and a big time waster in 2012. Right now, into 2013, I’m putting a bit of effort into Borderlands 1 and Bioshock (I might have mentioned in the past that I am always 2-4 years behind on my video games).

My Knights of The Old Republic campaign continued. Despite the crunch, or maybe even because of it, the group on a whole seemed to really enjoy it. I cannot compare it to AD&D as I hadn’t run that for the group in over two years, but out of everything else I have done; Mutant Future, Champions, and Call of Cthulhu, this seemed to be what the gang liked best. I ran it right up to the holidays, but have set it aside since I want to do D&D so bad. We’ll hopefully get back to it later this year, maybe summer.

In addition to this new D&D campaign we are just getting underway, I also still want to do a mini-campaign with the high level dudes left over from the Night Below campaign I ended two years ago. The players seem very attached to these characters, and it seems a shame to not do the occasional outing with them, despite my mild dislike for high level play.


So we in the group have started my new AD&D 1st edition campaign, and the characters seem like a lot of fun so far. So my gaming wish list for lucky number 2013 is to do a bunch of this AD&D campaign, a smattering of the high level AD&D, More Call of Cthulhu here and there, a continuance of KOTOR later in the year, and…heaven forbid…maybe sneak a little Champions in? That would be a damn good gaming year for me.

Player characters – Divide and sometimes Conquer

I’m not talking about making PC’s squabble, which in itself can be fun and rewarding for a DM. I’m talking about giving characters their own little encounters outside of the usual group encounters. I did this in the last KOTOR game. Andy’s Mandalorian bodyguards for the major NPC Solomon, who visits the Coruscant University from time to time as an alumni. So I had him attacked in a student lounge area near the massive library, by the Sith brother Phade (see last post) whom Mandalorian had ticked off in a previous encounter. Also in the same game, I had NPC Solomon have the female Jedi, Lucia, watch his back as they entered a gang bar on a rescue mission of a young lady; it ended up in a nice big fight.


This is an example of something I have long since done in all my games periodically, including D&D. Give characters a life and encounters of their own from time to time. This is especially useful when you only have a couple or three players for the night, like I did. And they are a snap to design for. If you have decent characters to work with, they will have backgrounds and previous encounters that can give you good ideas for solo fights and you can pretty much just wing it. Old enemies return for an ambush, new enemies attack when character friends are doing their own thing elsewhere, or just rescue and escort missions depending on the character. This really helps flesh them out for me, rather than just constant group experiences.


Once again I firmly blame my comic book collecting background growing up. The example is right there in members of groups like the Justice League or The Avengers; big group-related donnybrooks, but the individual heroes also have their own comics with their own headaches.

You don’t want to make other players wait too long (sometimes I miscalculate, which is the main drawback of this kind of thing – but if it happens you can promise the offended player their own beefed up solo encounter in the near future to make up for it), but if you put some thought into it the players can really dig getting their own licks in without other characters getting in the way. It really helps bring them to life.

Disneyfication of Star Wars

Last night I showed up to run our continuing Knights of the Old Republic campaign (using Star Wars Saga Edition) at Andy’s place, and the big news of the day (right after the disaster on the East Coast) suddenly struck me as being very relevant to our session. Disney buying all things Star Wars from Fox meant that, more or less, we were playing a Disney game! The horror.

Not really. I don’t have a lot of emotional investment in Star Wars. I’m only running a Star Wars based game because I loved the KOTOR video game from a few years ago. That setting, created by fans who grew up on Star Wars, was far removed from the hubris of Sir George. A fresh take, filled with what was GOOD about Star Wars, set long before the whole Skywalker Mess™.

And now that more Star Wars films are confirmed, maybe we can get more like that. More GOOD SW films. Disney has not done wrong by Marvel Comics yet, and I was originally horrified by that takeover.

But so far that is all good. Films by good writers and directors, set perhaps in the era of Luke and Han’s children? Maybe even my precious Jedi Civil War setting for KOTOR? Really, we now know that the further George Lucas is away from Star Wars the better. This is probably going to be a good thing for Star Wars fans, even a moderate one like me.

Statement of Intent is Buzzkill

I hate Statement of Intent. It’s in the 2nd edition Runequest rules, and seeing it in a game I wanted to run was just depressing.

I guess I must have encountered it back in the day, but for sure did not carry it forward. From the late 80’s onward moving and attacking seemed to work out OK for my D&D (and Call of Cthulhu as well, Champions has its own excellent rules for when you move and attack) with me doing it all in Dex order. My players never complained. Ahh, the good old days.

My first modern experience with SOI was when Big Ben was trying it for his Evils D&D game. I don’t think it worked out so good. For one thing, it’s a time waster; yet another thing that makes you have to go around the table, person to person, and have them tell you what they are going to do that round. Then you have to go around again for everybody to actually move, attack, etc. But why it sucked in this particular case was that at least half the players forgot right away it was about saying your intent, and they would grab their miniature and move it. I did this too at least once. It just added to the time it took for task resolution, and caused confusion. Yeah, that’s all a game needs, more of that shit.

Getting rid of it in Runequest combat was the first thinh I wanted to do. It’s a friggin’ buzzkill to me. I don’t want to spend more time on combat. In RQ it takes long enough as it is. Luckily, the combat in the first session was restricted to fairly tight Humakt combat circles, so it did not matter very much. But for next game I gotta get it figured out.

I’m thinking individual initiative rolls might be in order for this. That way, each combat can be different, characters who went last could maybe go first next time, and there will be less bitching from the guy who goes first; in this case Andy, who when he has a fast character always wants to wait and see what everybody else is doing, requiring allowing him to change the order he goes in. With initiative rolled for each combat encounter, this can be eliminated. You just go when you are set to go. If you get the chance to act early in the combat, you gotta STFU and take it and hope next time you’ll get to be last and see what the hell everybody else is up to.

When we started the Knights of the Old Republic game, I chaffed at the thought of using it’s initiative rules. But you know what? I got to like them. It was clean, fairly easy, and it changed often. I might make me ditch Dex order entirely in my AD&D games. Anything that gets me the hell away from Statement of Intent. Faaaar away.

The Star Wars Universe is like a Toaster

In this recent post about the Star Wars city planet Coruscant, Chaz makes this comment:

“…On a further aside - what's with the technological stagnation in the star wars universe? My grandmother was born in 1916 and today she uses a kindle with ease! It always seemed weird to me that KOTOR tech was in line with Episode IV etc…”


It’s true that we still think more about the cool tech, and enduring “lived in” look of Star Wars than why this 25,000 year old galaxy-spanning civilization does not advance much in terms of the functionality of the equipment available. Over the thousands of year of the Republic, little changes outside of, perhaps, the architecture and style-design of weapons and gear. Pod Racers might be popular towards the end of the Galactic Republic, while Swoop Bikes are the choice for racing 4,000 years prior, but very little goes forward in the technology that drives and powers things. The biggest technological difference that comes to mind to me time and time again is that the protocol droids are far less mincing than their Empire era counterparts (but still a little light in the loafers) although that is sketchy research matter at best. Bottom line; if C3PO was proficient in over 6 million languages, odds are that was the same amount a Knights of The Old Republic droid would be proficient in.

Comlinks are the cell phones of the Star Wars Universe, and Datapads seem to be the Laptops/Netbooks of folks. You would think that just like the real world these things would change fastest and the most, but between the KOTOR period and the Trilogy period, the tech has not changed. In fact, in the classic Star Wars periods you do not see many Datapads at all, usually only in the hands of tech dudes on the Hoth base or whatever. But as little as 30 years prior in the Clone War era Anakin is seen goofing around with one on the couch. So did they just get too expensive in the Empire era? Was everybody just too busy shitting their pants to even think about such frivolous items?

In Dune, the universe had a pretty good excuse for keeping tech from advancing. They had bad prior experiences with robots, so they banned all computers any more advanced than an abacus. There’s yer technological retardation right there. Not even the Golden Path could overcome that fear.

But Star Wars has no such excuses. What’s the deal?

One could say that the galaxy and Republic is constantly being faced by devastating wars again and again, usually involving the Sith and the Jedi. This not only costs huge numbers in lives and sucks up resources, but puts many thriving planets, again and again over the millennia, into periods of urban decay and semi-post apocalypses. When this happens to major industrial areas, technological growth gets retarded. OK, but you soon have to hand-wave theories like this, because wars tend to bring forth greater and great technologies that eventually trickle down to the masses. That does not seem to be happening (outside of the occasional Death Star or Star Forge).

So could the very presence of Jedi as constant allies in the Republic over the millennia have something to do with technological retardation? Probably not, because after most Jedi are gone regular folk seem to fuck things up pretty good on the high tech front. Everybody heads for the hills when The Empire takes over, and most of their ships and vehicles don’t seem to be able to even get a paint job, much less an upgrade. Hey, when the highest tech items on Tatooine are either used to vaporate moisture or bullseye Womp Rats, you know you are in a universe in decline.

But I think my “Toaster Theory” is the most logical fit. You see, toasters have barely changed in almost 100 years. They must be the least changed technology in our real world. Sure, they have come in countless designs and styles on the shelves of Sears stores over the decades, but when the day is done they all still heat your toast and your Pop tarts by heating up metal coils. That’s it. Why? I think it must have something to do with functionality meets cost-benefit analysis meets the point of diminishing returns. Could we come up with better ways to toast our multi-grain grub-outs if we threw a lot of money at it? Sure. We could probably also set little laser beam blast traps to disintegrate the mice infesting the garage, only 2.1 million dollars per trap down at Rite-Aid! But will it kill mice better than a spring-loaded roll bar that breaks it’s neck for 3 bucks? Nope. Don’t need a better mouse trap. Come to think of it, in Star Wars they would probably have it be a low tech Rube Goldberg-like device with gears and poles and descending cages like the old board game.

So maybe in the Star Wars universe, blasters work as good as you need them too and still be able to afford them. How much faster does a starship need to go once it’s in hyperspace? Would it make that huge a difference to spend three times the money to get somewhere a day sooner? And when your police force numbers in the millions and your armed forces number in the billions, can you afford to give them all blasters that do double damage, and give them all hand held super-computers? Could you divert needed funds towards teleportation technology? Who would set-up all these resources? And could such advances actually ignite wars over them, fracturing the Republic even more than the endless beatings it takes over the thousands of years of it’s existence?

In all Star Wars eras computers not changing is the real head scratcher. They seem to be in the early to mid-80’s Earth level of tech millennia-in, millennia-out. So…there are no Steve Jobs types in the SW universe? Perhaps there are some planets in the universe with super-tech that has actually advanced beyond those you see in general population use in Darth Vader’s time or Darth Revan’s time. But what works and is cost-effective on a planetary scale probably is not on a galactic scale.

OK, obviously I have no answers, and the Toaster Theory™ only goes so far. But apparently The Republic after the Empire era sufferes for it’s lack of tech advancement and too much reliance on The Force when the Yuuzhan Vong invade the galaxy. With their own bizarre organic hi-tech weaponry and immunity to The Force, they are enough to make the sentients of the galaxy wish they had put more nose to the grindstone in the technology department, and less in ancient weapons and hokey religions.

Sith Lord Lich and the Three-Headed Apprentice

This weeks KOTOR session was an action-packed blast. The group has been trapped in a derelict, haunted space station along the Hyperspace routes. Some decades ago during the Sith War the Dark Lord known as Darth Sinaes and his apprentices took over a Republic ship repair station and committed mass murder and horrible atrocities there, to the point of the Dark Lords apprentices themselves being appalled and turning on the master. Although they managed to kill him, his evil lingered in his body and allowed him to be a Dark Side Lich. Sinaes used his unholy power to meld the apprentices into one single body (three faces and three sets of arms, but just one pair of legs and a torso) that could use three regular lightsabers and one double lightsaber simultaneously. Oh, the horror! Along with his three-in-one apprentice, zombified bodies of old victims, and some other monstrosities, Darth Sinaes has lurked in the station an occasionally used it to lure unwary spacefarers to their doom, to become part of his growing undead army. Also trapped on the station was the ghost of a Jedi victim, Amelia, who had come along years ago. Amelia had her spirit locked here because of all the corruption, but she came in handy as a warning to players. She was able to tell the party the history Sinaes and his corruption of the place.

I originally meant this to be more or less a space dungeon for the characters to crawl around in, and it was, but in the end I mostly focused on combat encounters. The party had fun in the previous game fighting zombie hordes and a couple mutated monsters, but in this session it was time to face Sinaes and his hideious apprentices. Good thing we had a full group that session.

The apprentice managed to put a lot of fear and damage into the party, before he was ultimately defeated by a combination of good rolls and the infamous Force Grip of Pauls Khil (tentacle faced humanoid) force user. During this battle Terry’s Cathar (cat lady) Jedi Lucia was taken down with a killing blast (not so deadly due to the use of her last force point) of force lighting, but the spirit of Amelia used the force to bond with Lucia and not just bring her back to full health, but increase her stats and abilities for the encounter, allowing her to jump right back into the fray.

The party was now able to put the screws to Darth Sinaes, who I had planned to have run away but I hesitated so he could gloat and get an attack in. Bad move, because they were all over him. After some fierce melee and force use, Darth Sinaes set off explosions in the hull of the station that immediately started explosive decompression and loss of life support. Even though Andy’s Mandalorian soldier had Mando armor with life support, the party on a whole only got a couple more licks in on the beat-up Sith Lord before they had to make it for the ship (in cinematic fashion barely escaping).

This was the most exciting session yet, and I really got a kick out of it (and the players seemed to as well). Although faced with the possibility of a powerful enemy escaping from them, they mixed it up with a real challenge for a change and came out with flying colors. And Terry’s Jedi Lucia gets a colorful addition to her bio – namely, the soul of another Jedi whom now sort of haunts her (in a non-evil way), but also gives her a little bonus to a couple of stats and hit points when she is in contact with her. This will make for some interesting role-play down the line, methinks. I think Terry may have been struggling with what exactly the personality of Lucia was, but now she for sure has an interesting angle to work from. I originally though Amelia might do this bonding thing with the male Jedi (I thought he would get the focus of damage and be the first knocked out of the fight), and also thought it would be funny if her spirit bonded with the Wookiee, but in the end I am glad Terry will be the one dealing with it. Her character seemed the least fleshed out.

Next week we play in Dan’s palace up in Bel Air above Mulholland Blvd, and the party will finally arrive at the Galactic Core and the planet Coruscant for more mayhem. Man, I think I have finally decided that I like this game! (the prequel movies, not so much).

City Planet

There is something very cool and awe inspiring about a city that spans an entire planet. The concept actually goes way back in Sci Fi literature, so George Lucas’ Coruscant was nothing new. He had actually planned to have Alderaan (a certain brother-loving Princess’ home world) be the setting for much of the action of the first Star Wars film, but budgetary constraints prevented what he envisioned. But he was finally able to include it in his prequel films. Unfortunaly, much of the time it is only visible through an apartment window as we listened to the cringe-worthy dialogue of Anakin and Padme. Outside those windows was bumper to bumper traffic of flying cars filled with yammering muppets (you would think it would be a simple matter to widen those traffic lanes, there being plenty of room in the sky) . We did get some good views of the planet surface during the opening minutes of Revenge of the Sith.

Anyway, tonight we do another session of KOTOR at Andys, and before the night is over the party should have escaped the space station haunted by a Sith Lord Lich and his minions, and be arriving at their next destination, Coruscant, the seat of the Galactic Republic.

On the day of many KOTOR game nights, I have sent little info-blurbs to the group about something in the Star Wars universe related to the nights adventure, so today I put together and sent the Coruscant stuff below. You’ll see that Coruscant has many features that make a city planet cool, especially one that has been such a city planet for over 30,000 years. There are miles and miles of true underground ruins, factor and industrial areas, and lower levels that cater to the lower rungs of society in contrast to the higher levels inhabited by high society (shades of Lang’s Metropolis).

Even though I only plan to have characters there for a couple of sessions, you could do an entire campaign set on this planet, and the only environment you would be missing is that of a wilderness. But with the underground areas being huge enough to have evolved their own ecosystems and unique creatures, I guess you could have that as well.





"Seen from orbit, it is a blaze of light and sparkling colors, reminding some spacers of corusca stones, after which this planet was named long ago."

"An incandescent organ of life, visibly vibrating with the pulses of billions."


Coruscant

Coruscant was a planet located in the Core Worlds. Its hyperspace coordinates were
(0,0,0) which in effect made it the center of the galaxy. The actual galactic center, was located in the Deep Core. As the center of the galaxy, Coruscant was generally agreed to be the most important planet through most of galactic history. It served as the capital for the Galactic Republic, Galactic Empire, New Republic, Yuuzhan Vong Empire, Galactic Alliance, and the New Galactic Empire. Coruscant also served at various times as the home of the Jedi Order and the Jedi Temple. Coruscant was not only the political center of the galaxy. Most of the hyperlanes at some point would travel through Coruscant making the planet one of the richest in the galaxy.

Geologically, the planet was composed of a molten core with a rocky mantle and a silicate rock crust. At its poles were huge ice caps that were popular spots for tourists. The entire surface of Coruscant was covered by sprawling kilometers-high ecumenopolis, and boasted a population of over a hundred billion to several trillion, depending on the era. Following the end of the Clone Wars, an official census noted 1 trillion official permanent residents. The statistics did not include transients, temporary workers, unregistered populace nor residents of orbital facilities. Because of these omissions, the "real" population of Coruscant was estimated to be three times the official amount.

Coruscanti skyscrapers dwarfed all the original natural features, including mountains, as well as floors of oceans which once covered a large portion of Coruscant's surface. Areas of Galactic City were broken up into levels, megablocks, blocks, and subblocks.[14] Coruscant itself was divided into quadrants, which were divided into zones.[7] Below the skyscrapers was Coruscant's undercity, where sunlight never reached. Artificial lighting illuminated these lower levels and advertisement holograms could be seen everywhere. There were numerous establishments for entertainment, catering to a myriad of alien species. The residents were collectively referred to as Twilighters.

Coruscant was once a world mostly covered in oceans.[15] However, all natural bodies of water were drained and stored in vast caverns beneath the city as a result of years of overpopulation. The only body of water visible was the artificial Western Sea, with many artificially-created islands floating on it, used by tourists on holidays.

With no other bodies of water available to feed and water its trillion inhabitants, Coruscant's architects, along with many others from around the galaxy, worked together to build a self-contained eco-system in the massive buildings set all over the planet. Polar cap stations also melted ice and distributed water throughout the planet-wide city through a complex series of pipes.

Galactic City was divided into quadrants, "several thousand" in number, with each quadrant further split into sectors.[7] Each sector was numbered on official maps, but sectors often had nicknames, such as Sah'c Town (sector H-46, named for a prominent family that owned a large portion of its land) and The Works, the largest of Coruscant's designated industrial zones. (Coruscant practiced zoning, which is the designation of specific areas of land for particular purposes, such as governmental and senatorial, financial (including banking zones), residential, commercial, industrial, and manufacturing. Manufacturing and industrial zones were typically the largest designated areas of the planet.) The Works was once one of the galaxy's major manufacturing areas, where spacecraft parts, droids, and building materials were heavily produced during centuries, but as construction and industry became more efficient and cheaper away from Coruscant, The Works fell into disrepair.

It gained a reputation as a hub of criminal activity and many locals stayed away from it. A similar, but more dangerous area, was the Factory District, which was once the industrial heart of Coruscant until it too lost out to competition from producers in other Core Worlds. By the time of the Great Jedi Purge it lay in ruins and was almost completely deserted of sentients, because of the feral droids that prowled its streets. It was located on the opposite side of the planet, and was much more dangerous than the Southern Underground, Invisible Sector, which were infamous in their own right.[12] Another area of Coruscant was CoCo Town (short for "collective commerce"). Many diverse species lived there and worked in manufacturing. A partially enclosed open-air plaza near the Senate building, the Column Commons, was so-called because it housed most of the HoloNet and news media corporations.

The planet produced trillions of tons of waste an hour. Though almost everything on the planet, from clothes to packaging and machinery, was recyclable, some waste was too dangerous to recycle. Such items included worn-out hyperdrive cores which were delivered to one of the planet's five thousand garbage pits, where they were put into canisters and fired into a tight orbit around Coruscant. Garbage ships would then collect them and transport them to nearby moons for storage. Some of the more dangerous materials were shot into the nearby sun for complete incineration. Garbage not exported or destroyed was mixed into a slurry of silicone oils and processed by garbage worms which chewed it into pellets while removing any remaining organics, plastic, or recoverable metals. They turned millions of tons of pellets into carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases. Another problem for a world like Coruscant was the unimaginable amount of carbon dioxide and heat energy that its trillion-being population generated each day. Thousands of carbon dioxide-reactive atmospheric dampeners were put into place in the upper atmosphere to prevent atmospheric degeneration. The first set of these planet-wide dampeners, developed by the Galactic Republic, was known as the Coruscant Atmospheric Reclamation Project.[18]
Near the planet's core were a number of massive power relay stations. The lowest levels were abandoned to mutants and scavengers, such as the cannibalistic, mythical Cthons. The foundations of many of the buildings, some of which weighed billions of tons, also extended deep into the planet's crust.

History
Pre-Republic

"The recorded history of Coruscant stretches back so far that it becomes indistinguishable from legend…"
―Pollux Hax

The very early history of Coruscant is a bit sketchy and is not well known. Coruscant was considered by many to be the Human homeworld; early in its history, it was referred to as Notron, the "cradle of human civilization". Its name was changed at an unspecified date. At a certain point, the Celestials could have removed Humans from Coruscant to populate Corellia and other human societies on different planets throughout the galaxy.

It is known that at some point in ancient history, the near-Human Taungs attempted to conquer the 13 baseline Human nations of the Battalions of Zhell. A volcano decimated the Zhell, the ash filling the skies for two years, so the Taungs adopted the name Dha Werda Verda (Warriors of Shadow) for themselves. The Human Zhell eventually recovered and drove the Taungs offworld.

One hundred millennia later, Coruscant was surveyed by the Columi, who dismissed the planet as a primitive disappointment, despite the already planet-spanning ecumenopolis of Galactic City. New buildings were built on the old. As a result, there was virtually no exposed land. In the forgotten underlevels of the city, there was darkness, pollution and crime. Higher up, there were government offices and penthouses owned by the elite. The lower fifty levels of the ecumenopolis is said to have last seen sunlight tens of thousands of millennia ago.

Coruscant was one of many worlds conquered by the Infinite Empire of the Rakata, who used Human slaves to build the Star Forge in 30,000 BBY. Under Rakatan domination, the Humans of Coruscant's colonization attempts were limited to sleeper ships, which ended up on Alderaan, in the Tion Cluster, Seoul 5, Kuat, Alsakan, Axum, Anaxes, Atrisia, Metellos, Corulag, and many other worlds. The Rakata were eventually decimated by a massive plague, leading to slave revolutions on Coruscant and other subjugated worlds.

Over the next two centuries, Coruscant was linked to other Core Worlds, including Corellia, Alderaan, New Plympto and Duro, by hyperspace cannons, via the Herglic Trade Empire. It was during this time that the Coruscant government peacefully absorbed the nearby Azure Imperium. During these pre-Republic years, the languages of Coruscant and its neighbors meshed to become Old Galactic Standard.

Galactic Republic
"That's the seat of Galactic government!'"

The Sacking of Coruscant in 3,653 BBY. In 25,053 BBY, when the Galactic Constitution was signed, the Corellians and Duros invented the hyperdrive proper, allowing Coruscant to become the capital of a democratic union: the Galactic Republic. 53 years later the planet became the galactic center, and remained the Republic's capital for 24,981 more years. Shortly after the formation of the Republic, the Perlemian Trade Route was mapped, linking Coruscant to Ossus and bringing the Jedi Knights into the Republic. Over the next millennium, the Corellian Run was mapped, linking Coruscant to Corellia and beyond. Blasters were also invented on Coruscant around this time, and the famous Galactic Museum was constructed in 12,000 BBY.

From the very beginning, Coruscant, as the Republic's capital, was the primary objective in several wars. The earliest among these was the Tionese War with the Honorable Union of Desevro and Tion in 24,000 BBY, in which Coruscant was bombarded with Tionese pressure bombs. Other early battles included the Alsakan Conflicts, the Duinuogwuin Contention, the Great Hyperspace War, the Third Great Schism, the Great Droid Revolution, and the Great Sith War. At the end of the Great Sith War in 3,996 BBY, the Senate Building was built to replace the old Senate Hall.

Following the devastation of Ossus, the Jedi Council took up residence in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, to which many Jedi relics from Ossus were taken. The Temple was greatly expanded, including the building of the original Jedi Council Chamber. The Temple was repeatedly expanded including in 3,519 BBY, 2,519 BBY (when the Jedi Archives were built) and 1,019 BBY (when the Temple spires were finally fully rebuilt).

Jedi Suck

It’s the busiest time of the year for me, what with driving almost 5 hours every weekend to work at a Ren Faire, working late most nights during the week, and trying to keep up with a very hard, labor intensive math class. But I did manage to get a Knights of the Old Republic game in last week.

The biggest challenge of this game is twofold for me. Firstly, I am bound and determined for this to NOT be a Star Wars game. The KOTOR setting, and my experience with that excellent video game that made me actually fall in love with a certain version of the SW universe (set 4000 years prior to that douche Anakin Skywalker coming along and getting a woman more beautiful than he deserves), and secondly I’m trying to take it in different directions than a typical SW game might go. That did not work out so well for my infamous experience with a group of grumpy, mostly middle-age Star Wars nuts the other year, but it seems to be going over pretty well with my thankfully un-Star Wars geek group (early on a Star Wars game was a hard sell for some of them).

But most challenging is finding a way to keep Jedi characters from ruling the universe. They are just so fucking powerful, even at low levels. Telepathy, sensing of other force users, and galactic scanning abilities are served up before they even choose particular powers. And when they do those powers are almost always no-miss. Force powers have different, more potent task resolution than normal day to day stuff of other PC’s. They barely even need light sabers to rule the battlefield. As a matter of fact, the iconic light saber seems to be the weakest part about them (blasters do more damage).

The player of the female Cathar (cat people) Jedi isn’t really taking full advantage of these facts. She’s never been one to go for the power game. But the male Jedi player has studied the rules, sussed out the strengths and weaknesses of the abilities, and gets the maximum juice out of them. I’ve already discussed that the GM and the Jedi players need to be in agreement about how much the powers get used, and how potent they are. I thought there was an understanding, but when the player somehow thought he could stealthily use the Jedi Mind Trick on a Mandalorian who was surrounded by Mando pals who were wise to Jedi tricks, and I told him this was not really possible, it was outburst of anger time. “Go ahead and nerf the Jedi!” So at least this one Jedi player has already been conditioned by this game to not fear failure. Yeesh.

Well, I suppose if I had a little more experience with the game, I could have made it an all Jedi game so everybody could be insanely powerful badasses at low level, or I could have just forbid Jedi from the campaign (this would have been the wisest choice, I think).

But what is done is done. I’m trying to go by the rules as much as possible, so I can’t be too nerfy like I would with Dan Dan the Power Game man running a female drow in a D&D game. But the very presence of Jedi makes it very difficult to match the power of NPC’s with the PC’s. Too weak, and the Jedi in the party will help the group win out way easily. Pump them up a notch, and the party could find themselves stretched out on the tarmac (but at least alive. It is a bit difficult to get killed in this game.).

The mid-levels are being reached in the game now, so a new dynamic could be setting in. maybe it’ll get easier (even if the Jedi players don’t want to “play fair”). But one thing sort of nags at my mind. This is fun, but I’m very much looking forward to running a game again where the balance of power and the status quo is a little easier to maintain.

(Note: I should at least mention that not one player has moaned about the power imbalance. And even “gimmi gimmi” Andy seems to be against any kind of nerfing of Jedi funk even though he is not running a force user. Also, there is one character that is a force user and not a Jedi – so like I said, the dynamic might change as the game goes along)

Stars Wars - Less Lucas the Better

This post over at Grognardia reminded me how much better a lot of the expanded universe of novels, video games, and comics were than the "hands on" work of George Lucas himself. Much of the talent working on these other non-movie aspects of the SW universe were fans of the material, and it showed in loving ways more than The Man himself. They "got it" while the master had "lost it."

Case in point. Several years there was a Clone Wars cartoon (not the odd looking one they have now - talk about "uncanny valley") miniseries that really got it right. Bad ass Anakin and Obi in mountain-shattering combat with Sith agents. Clone Troopers having their own piece where a group of them find themselves in a sort of Black Hawk Down situation where they show more skill and action than any of the movie clone warriors did. And best of all, they gave us a frightening and powerful General Grievous. Not the wheezing, slouched cyborg clown with the bad Dracula voice. Take a look at this clip if you haven't seen it, then tell me which version of Grevious is cooler.

Starship Crash - the horrible fate of the Silver Princess

The characters boarded the passenger ship “Silver Princess” after a few drinks at the space port outdoor cantina. After having mixed it up with murderous outback poachers, space port gangsters and thugs, and a Darkside Marauder, the group was looking forward to a short 10-hour trip to the remote planet of Dantooine, where their two Jedi comrades had already left for a few days prior. The party had a spacious passenger lounge to themselves (there were several such lounges on the ship), and after liftoff they settled in with their datapads to connect to the media center to pass the time.


Several hours into the journey warning alerts sounded, and the ship’s captain’s intercom voice commanded all passengers to strap into the landing seats near the center of the room until further notice. Soon, the vessel rocked from an explosion within the ship, and the captain announced that the escape pod bay had been destroyed by a mysterious blast. There would be no escape from whatever was going on.


Within moments more explosions were felt. The combat veterans of the group knew that ships were assaulting the Silver Princess, and panic set in when the blast doors to the room dropped with a smash. Kruk the Feeorin veteran of the Mandalorian War unstrapped from his seat in an attempt to reach the weapons locker, but found himself flailing around the room, bouncing off the walls, as the ship took a brutal shellacking from the attackers. Beaten and bruised and lucky to not have broken any bones, Kruk got back to his seat.


Soon the attacks stopped. Were they safe? Not by a longshot; the characters hearts sank as they realized the beaten ship was awkwardly entering a planetary atmosphere at frighteningly higher speeds than was normal. With various alarms still sounding, they found themselves pushed back into their seats by the momentum of the dive, and started feeling the air grow thin and hot. The life support systems were failing. They knew there was no way to survive this, as the lack of air and the heat mercifully eased them into unconsciousness. When the Silver Princess hit planet side, there would be no fear and pain.


In the hilly grassland of Dantooine below, the young Jedis Rokran and Lucia were on patrol in a speeder piloted by Cisco Patelli, a teenage son of settlers who did odd jobs for the Jedi Enclave. As they took a break and Cisco heated up a hearty Ibez stew with his camping gear, both Jedi sensed great coming of mass death from nearby. Looking skyward, they saw a flash and heard a boom, and realized a large starship was breaking through the afternoon clouds on a crash course for the planet. Blazing down at an angle, the crippled ship disappeared behind nearby hills, and with a sickening bang and shaking of the earth, a huge fireball shot up, and a huge wall of fire appeared beyond the hills, marking the skidding of the flaming wreck across more than a mile of landscape.


Rushing to the speeder, young Cisco fired it up as the Jedi leaped aboard, and they shot off for the area beyond the hills. As they rounded the gentle slopes of the foothills, they came around the flaming blast area and saw the long and wide trench created by the crash, and beyond that the main portions of the middle and forward sections of the craft lay in a huge heap of infernal wreckage, flames wisping up towards the sky. They knew there could be no survivors…

A KOTOR cast of characters

IMHO, interesting and varied characters add greatly to the gaming experience no matter what game you play. Star Wars, or more specifically Knights of The Old Republic, is no exception (just go easy on the “Muppet” races). Here are the characters that are in my current campaign. Not a goddamn Muppet in sight (unless you count the Wookie. But he’s kind of an evil Wookie).

Garvin (Paul): is a Khil (bald and having many tentacles hanging from his face that sound like chimes when he talks). Garvin is of the Noble class, and his wealth talent has him raking in the cash (something like 5000 creds each level he gains). He is also a Force User. I started him out as a college acquaintance of my major, regularly appearing NPC.

Kruk (Andy): is a Feeorin (big and strong guys with dreadlocks like The Predator). Kruk is a Mandalorian from the recent wars, although he hasn’t admitted such to the other players. He is a Soldier class that Andy is meticulously choosing combat skills for, making him a run n’ gun type commando fighter. Fairly anti-social to others outside the immediate group, he has his item shopping and other errands done by other characters because he doesn’t trust himself not to put the hurt on some shoppie who talks to him wrong. I had thought Andy was going to run this guy as less of an asshole Mandalorian for some reason, but he has proven to be fairly cold blooded, killing a foe who had surrendered and was prone on the ground. I expect more brutal violence from this character in the future. BTW, this was the type of character I was hoping for in the campaign; something aiming it more at hard Sci Fi than just another dopey Star Wars storyline.

Totha (Little Ben): is a Bothan Scoundrel (goat dudes) and general agent for the Bothan Spynet. He travels around looking for interesting tidbits to report to the ‘net. Is an excellent shot and so far seems not to miss what he aims for. A Bothan spy is kind of handy for the GM; he is constantly feeing info to his superiors, and gaining info from them in return. Macguffins can be easily inserted in the game this way.

Rookieen (Dan): is a Wookie soldier, but is no “nice guy” like Chewbacca. So far the rumor is that Rookieen has worked as a slaver capturing his own kind. Yep, a Wookie traitor (Wookies are a slave race during this time period). Rookieen is a typical Dan “The Power Game Man” character; arrogant, anti-social, and prone to violence. With Kruk the Mandalorian and this evil Wookie around, I expect to throw lots of combat the groups way. Combat is hella fun in this system. Not a ton of room for abstraction, which is a nice break from AD&D old school.

Rokran (Big Ben): is a 20-year old Zabrak (Darth Maul’s race) Jedi from Coruscant. Like Andy, Ben is leaning towards well-studied optimization, become powerful fairly quickly through his (somewhat broken) Jedi powers .

Lucia (Terry): a 15 year old Cathar (cat people) Jedi, who was sent to the Dantooine Enclave as a child after the brutal attacks and atrocities of the Mandalorians several years ago. Sort of a Jedi bumpkin compared to the metropolitan Rokran, Terry has not had much of an eye towards optimization of abilities, but is just picking stuff that appeals to her for the characters (she seems to be leaning towards lightsaber combat specialist). As Lucia is Cathar, it will be interesting to see how she feels about Kruk when/if his Mandalorian background is revealed.
Note that all the characters that were created are non-humans. That set up an interesting dynamic right off that bat. Even in this time period humans are dominant.

The Jedi characters had special reason for being around where I started this first game, but all the rest just ended up, for one reason or another, at the Muunilist space port. The Muuns are the banking clan, as shown in the Star Wars prequels. I had no idea if they existed in the KOTOR period, but decided that they would have some galactic banking, loan, and law services set up even though the Intergalactic Banking Clan status of the planet was thousands of years away.

I had Kruk and Rookieen just being mercs who were slumming it at space port waiting for a job or whatever, and the Bothan also just hanging around sniffing for interesting happenings to report to his superiors. Garvin the Khil had a computer tech gig at one of the Muun universities, where he met and became friends with a student, Solomon (my regular NPC for this part of the campaign).

Solomon is an NPC and sort of the catalyst of the main adventure. He appears to be a good looking young human male (more or less) with blood red hair and sort of “mood ring” eyes. Solomon is a student of Ancient Galactic History and Languages, and he would bring all the characters together by offering them bodyguard jobs to protect him as he went to potentially dangerous places to look for clues to the historical stuff he is interested in (old ruins and ancient caves in wildernesses).

I expected the characters to be on Muun for one full game tops, but there ended up being so many fun things I could do with these PC’s before they hit the spaceways, we actually spent 3 games doing things there. The characters have fought andrenal junkies (adrenals are stat-boosting drugs very common in the KOTOR video game that inspired me to do this campaign), brawled in the cantina, gambled, had a gun battle with well-armed and violent poachers out in the mudflat outback, and got mixed up with a conflict between gang members with The Exchange (galactic Mafia), and thugs in the employ of The Hutts who were encroaching on Exchange territory. I’ve had the opportunity to use a Darkside Maurader (force sensitive soldiers with no force training who channel the force through battlefield rage) in a couple of fights. One fight had the Maurader crash a stolen truck into the spaceport ground shuttle some characters were on, and engaging them in a brutal gunfight on the street in the blocked traffic.

The two Jedi were around just by happenstance because they were on some kind of Jedi errand to the planet. The Cathar catgirl Jedi is young, and when she got involved in drinking and gambling at the cantina with the other PC’s, she indulged like any teenager would. It will be interesting to see if she continues that behavior. I have to give her plenty more opportunities to party it up in the future to see if she bites. Partying hardy is the path to the dark side!


Next: The players are on a space flight that crashes and nobody could possibly survive it. Do they? Stay tuned.

Would you face Traffic Hell for a game session?

Even though my life has become much busier due to previously mentioned things happening at work, our gaming group has managed to become a once weekly affair. One week I’m doing Knights of the Old Republic, and the next week Ben does his AD&D campaign (the one where we don’t all have to run elves). I haven’t done gaming on a weekly basis since I was a teenager, so it’s kind of a trip. I think all this solid, quality gaming is partly to blame for my decline of online participation in the gamer community, but I’ll talk about that in a separate post.

I thought I would be taking a summer break from gaming, as Andy and the wife are renting out the back place to a young guy from Spain for the time being (who Andy is trying to get interested in gaming so he’ll host us out there, if I am not mistaken). But Dan-Dan the Power Game Man, with the big palace up in Northern Bel Air off Mulholland, has stepped up to host for the time being despite a brand new baby in the house (his, he thinks).

It has been rough going for me so far, because as anybody in So Cal knows, the 405 Freeway (the gateway from West LA to the Valley) is a tough drive in the late afternoon. And despite a couple of better alternatives, it is the way I have foolishly tried to go to get to Dan’s (the Mulholland offramp has been closed, meaning having to drive down to Van Nuys, get off, and go back up Sepulveda).

Next week they are closing the 405 between West LA and Ventura Blvd. They are demolishing the Mulholland overpass or something. What this unheard of act means is that traffic is going to be a living nightmare for those willing to take to local freeways during his apocalyptic event. Sure, there is Sepulveda, and the few winding roads that go up into Northern Santa Monica and the Bel Air area, but those are more likely than not going to be a car nightmare.

For somebody like me who doesn’t like to drive unless it's long road trips up uncrowded Interstates, it was a given there would be no game next week, at least at Dan’s. But how about you? Have you ever gone into what you knew would be horrid traffic to get to a game session (maybe you were DM and didn’t want to disappoint those who showed up)? Would you try to get to the Dan situation I described for a game? I mean, I’m loving gaming lately, but LA traffic is bad enough without something insane like a 405 closure. I’d show up so frazzled I’d end up getting drunk and having to crash on the couch with Dan’s dogs.

DM’s Jollies

Here ChicagoWiz discusses more or less standing his ground on doing in his game what is appealing to him, and not giving in to player demands for what they find fun.

Although I think I am philosophically with him in that, historically I have tried to present things in my games towards player enjoyment. I’ve never really been a “killer DM” or gotten my jollies from “threatening” characters with my bag of DM tricks as is often prevalent among our kind . I think my focus has been on giving players the means to have a good time within the game context, because player’s enjoying my games is probably most of the fun for me. If they feel generally challenged by things, and are also feeling their character is “doing what he does best” and moving towards some as-yet formed destiny, it tends to be fun for them.

The game just sort of happens without a lot of conscious thought during the process of “I’m really enjoying myself!” (Although there have been exceptional in-game moments where I have allowed myself to savor some true bliss). It’s after the game, and during prep for the next one, that I let my mind wander to what I really enjoyed about it. But I can’t expect players to get that same feel. Players need to be palpably enjoying the experience during the game more than any other time. Otherwise it seems like a long time to be sitting at a table together.

Over the decades I have not experienced a lot of player complaints about not getting enough of some thing or another in games. I very rarely hear “we are in the wilderness too much” or “we are in the city too much” or things like that. I present what I am going to present, and players interact with whatever it is. Not necessarily because I “am that good,” but maybe because I am comfortable with any type of location or situation that might pop up in games. I’ve run entire campaigns in the wilderness (ranger and druid focused parties) and in civilization (thieves’ guilds). It’s all good.

Also, because I don’t often enjoy being a player myself, I try not to include things in my own game that I find a turn-off in others. Killer DMing, excruciating and fun-sapping overlong initiative and declaration rounds, and challenges beyond the group’s level are all peeves as a player that I keep in mind as a DM.

But as far as my own enjoyment as DM, it has been tested a bit here and there in my current gaming incarnation. My balls-up with an established Star Wars Saga group the other year is a perfect example of players expecting that the GM is “working for them,” to the point that they even patiently waited for me to leave at the end of a session so they could discuss my performance as a group (can you imagine?).

And in my regular group I have “Power Game Dan” and “Gimmi Gimmi Andy” (great foes of a player-friendly GM) to tussle with on a regular basis. But I get a lot of laughs out of these guys as well, so I don’t feel fully tested as far as an “overworked game master” for the most part. It’s become part of the game dynamic to successfully deal with sharks who go after a fairly easy DM. One hand has “hate” tattooed on the knuckles, and the other has “love” on it.

But bottom line, a GM/DM needs to look to what is fun for him. And if he has no fun whatsoever with games set in towns or whatever, it’s his prerogative to avoid those settings in his games. For the better part of the 90’s I barely had any true dungeons in my games because I had become so tired of them in the 80’s. And this freaking game is called “Dungeons and Dragons.”

Radio Rivendell

I’ve always loved having music going for my games. Whether it’s some soundtracks or just the classical music station on, I think it adds to the atmosphere and mood and can be very inspirational. And as we all know, gaming is one half mental masturbation and one half inspiration (or some compound mixture thereabouts). The few games I’ve sat down as a player in where the DM was against having at least some soft music on where generally sucky. Nothing worse than a quiet room and a boring, uninspiring Game Master.

The ambiance of the infamous Star Wars group I ran a few games for the other year was dominated by yapping, barking (and smelly) mutts and was seriously lacking in much needed music. The host(“ess”) would not even let me at least put on the soundtrack to my beloved Knights of the Old Republic video game to try and get the juices flowing (although I am sure she would have loved to have had the horrible prequels on TV in the background).

It may not be possible in every gaming situation to have good music going, but for our regular sessions at Andy’s house we have always appreciated some background mood. I used some video game soundtracks and other stuff, but that was a little limited. And Andy horned-in on the music with some much hyped computer set lists to play (which sometimes included some inappropriate stuff like Butthole Surfers). But we have really settled on Radio Rivendell going on his computer for our ambient sounds.

Radio Rivendell is an internet radio station created in Sweden and devoted to tunes for gaming. Streaming live 24/7, they play a great variety of orchestral, Irish music, neofolk, dark ambient, and video game soundtrack tracks (and hopefully in the future some tunes from me and the boys in the Bruno Band; we’re going to send in some samples that might make good tavern tunes). The music goes great with fantasy gaming, but I can see it working for my upcoming Knights of the Old Republic games pretty handily.

The first night we tried it was during some heavy underworld evil city combat, and the music playing was dark and dramatic and could not be more appropriate. Sure, it doesn’t always match the action, but it is always good.

Check it out and get a little music going to enhance your games.

Running games in pain

Last Thursday I crashed my mountain bike and took a bad fall. I hit the concrete like a sack of bricks. Nothing seemed to be broken, but I had bashed my forehead, tore most of the skin off my right knee in addition to bashing it, bruised my hip bone, pulled a groin muscle (haven’t done that since high school football), and badly sprained (or worse, seeing a doctor finally today) the fingers on my left hand to the point that a week later I still can’t make a fist.

I had a Star Wars Saga KOTOR game to run on the following Sunday in Hollywood (my second game for this group of strangers that asked me to run it). Even with a broken leg I could have made the game, but my biggest worry was the nausea that often came to me when I popped pain pills (like a real man/dumbass I was refusing to go to a doctor at the time, so I bummed some Vicodin off a family member). So my biggest worry was getting sick and having to end the game early.

But I went for it, ran the game, and luckily did not get sick. But the pain of the various injuries made things a little difficult. For one thing, I liked to GM mostly standing up. Keeps me energetic and also makes more room at the table. Well, that was not an option. I had to pretty much sit for the 5 hours. Also, I’m fairly expressive with my hands, and I kept punching that busted up left hand and smacking it on the table. Ouch.

Last night I had my Wed night AD&D 1st ed. game, but luckily that groin pull and hip were much better, and I managed to stand the entire 3 hours as usual.

This was, in my best recollection, the most injured I have been and run a game in all my 30 years of it. So I was wondering: have you ever GM’d while badly injured? How did you cope? And if you did it with a gunshot or blade wound, I REALLY want to hear about it.

Ah well, off to the doc within the hour to see about these fingers that don’t seem to be getting better. Hope it ain’t nerve damage…

The game that doubled in price overnight

Earlier this year when I agreed to do A Knights of the Old Republic game in the Star Wars Saga game, I picked up the core rules, and of course the KOTOR campaign guide. Both were around 40 bucks, and I managed to get both for close to 30 on Ebay in great shape.

I heard rumors a week or so ago online about how the KOTOR book was suddenly super-rare. A couple of the players at my first game Sunday mentioned it as well. I just looked on Amazon, and it's going for nearly 100 bucks! Dang.

What would cause an RPG supplement to go critical so fast? I dunno, but it's popularity may be helped by the fact that the XBOX game from years ago is still popular. I considered getting this sourcebook a year ago anyway, because I loved the video game so much and really loved the setting.

What other game books have shot up in price so fast? I got 60 bucks for my 70's copy of Bunnies and Burrows a couple of year ago, and that was almost 30 years after it went out of print.