Rainy Day, Stormy Game

Southern California has been experiencing several days of almost constant rain. I cannot remember the last time it rained so much and so hard. Well, as I said in a post from a year ago, I love rainy day gaming. The rain makes me want to game or at least to work on my game material. So inspiring.

Saturday afternoon we got to do one of our rare weekend sessions. Dan, freshly back from one of his international business adventures, was hosting us in his nice big house in the hills above Bel Air (near Mulholland Drive). It was just pouring non-stop for hours on end. I got soaked to the bone several times that day, but loved it. Dan’s living room has all glass walls looking out on his back patio (very “Los Angeles”). He has a view of a hill across the way, one of the Santa Monica Mountains, and it looked so wintery and wet. It had a real “misty mountains” look that had my “G Zone” (that hidden organ in us that demands that we roll dice and kill things) in high gear.

I went into this game really run down. I had been running ragged for weeks. Not just at work, but all the holiday parties and junk food, and all the high end booze had my innards working overtime. And at work I have been surrounded by sick, coughing and sneezing humanoids. Everybody who walked by my cube last week seemed to have this bad cold going around. Friday night I actually emailed Big Ben and told him to be prepared to run his D&D in case I was not up to it. You see, we are in the last couple of games (I hope) of the Night Below campaign, and running for high level characters is work enough. Adjudicating their assault on a Kou Toa city is another thing entirely. Walking into Dan’s house wet with shoes in hand had me doubting my abilities on this day, but the rain outside and the cheerfully snarky banter inside got my G Zone juicing and we were soon getting into the game after a relaxing half hour or so of goofing around, drinking Heinekens, and munching snacks and pizza.

Everybody seems to be enjoying their characters, especially Dan and Andy. I have to say, with my attitude towards their PC’s around a year ago or so at this time, I have to admit that I am fairly fond of these characters as well. Dan’s drow Krysantha is a killing and ass-kicking machine, and I think the others characters would be foolish to get on her bad side (and she only seems to have a bad side). Her murderous actions of the last game are forgotten now that the party is in situations that could translate into Total Party Kill. And Andy’s Vaidno, well, it is a great character. Not just heroic in good ways, but at the same time the bard is a hopeless showboater and showstopper who cheats death at every turn. Choices from the Deck of Many Things a few games ago gave him a tower (back home in the city area) and an 18 charisma, and it is kind of fun to see him beam with pride at this character that has survived one near-death situation after another and continued to thrive. “Vaidno SurvivnoThriveno!” Goddamn Andy.

Well, some time was spent preparing to sneak into the city (through cracked water pipes learned about from the thief Prentyss that Krysantha murdered last game). In they went and the action was truly on!

After dealing with crossing and fighting the affects of the Kuo Toa “Relaxation Pool,” Krysantha cast a mass insect swarm to molest a nearby section of the city, while the party ran through the town and towards the Illithid quarters in the hopes of taking possession of the Crown of Derro Domination. As groups of Derro and Kou Toa patrolled the streets, the party let loose with all 100 of the hydra teeth they had. *poit*poit*poit*poit* sounds filled the air as 100 skeletons appeared with sword and shield to do their bidding, and the skelly’s ran to attack the patrols to keep them off of the party.

At the Mind Flayer building, the party fought a hard battle against several of the monsters, but a combination of good tactics and good die rolls helped win the day there. Unfortunately, the main Illithid, Zantacore, was not present so the crown was not achieved. We had to end it around then, but we managed to leave off with the players having a great sense of the possibility of success in this assault on the city.

Really, my players are not known to me as great tacticians. With characters like Vaidno and Kryantha usually taking the lead, it was more about gung ho “let’s just take ‘em head on!” type stuff. But they actually thought this one out a bit, which made me kind of proud. It was a great game and a great wintery day to have it on.

Unfortuantly, we did not get to finish the campaign by the end of the year. But the good news is, by February I’ll get a break from AD&D and be able to refresh with some new genres. But boy, this is pretty exciting. I’m running a game for high level characters, which can be a decent amount of work. But now I am at a point where I can look back upon it all more and I have to say, this has been a fun campaign with a great group of people and characters.

Too Many Blogs?

When Bob over at Cylcopeatron first posted a list of gaming blog rankings (by follower) some time back, I was surprised by two things. First, that my blog at that time was somewhere around the top 25 percent of such blogs. And second, there seemed to be less blogs than I thought out there. Bob posted such a list again recently, and two things stuck out at me. Firstly, there were now a lot more blogs out there. Secondly, a lot of low-follower blogs had grown substantially in the amount of followers.

Now, my blog hasn’t exactly grown that much since the first list, despite fairly regular posting. Well, here’s the thing; I don’t think amount of posts, nor necessarily the content, matter that much anymore. A couple of years ago it did. Grognardia has such substantial growth in large part because of sheer amounts of posting, not necessarily the content. Other large follower blogs were either around a long time, or had a female or porno connection of some kind. Not to say by any means that these guys did not have great posts, which of course they do. But it is kind of arbitrary in many cases. If Playing D&D With Porn Stars was just “Zak’s D&D Musings” without mention of gangbang girls running elves, he’d probably have somewhere around 200 followers (or less). Don’t get me wrong, he is obviously a smart and talented dude, but lots of smart and talented dudes (and I don’t necessarily consider myself one of those) often have only around 200 followers.

After that first list at Cyclo’s, I saw one blog that was basically just a dude posting text from Edgar Rice Burroughs with no personal commentary, shoot up fairly quickly from around 20 followers to around 50. Perhaps that is in no small part because Bob at Cyclo asked that his readers support these low-follower blogs (many of which had few followers for obvious reasons). I saw another blog who had followers somewhat less than my count, shoot up past me soon after that Cyclo list. Why? Well, the content certainly did not necessarily improve. But I’ll tell you what, every new blog I look at has this one guy as a recently subscribed follower. He figured out that the more you sign up on other blogs, the more of them will do you a solid back and follow you. His comment in Bob’s recent post was “wow, I’m inspired to try harder!” Harder doing what, signing up for every other blog out there? All that takes is having time on your hands.

That’s all great, but I don’t personally care about amount of followers. It is not at all indicative of my content, nor that all of them are actually reading it. I tend to look at and subscribe to the folks who comment on my post. That is how I learn about and join other blogs. I have no interest in starting my own low-end fanzine nor advertising some new game or scenario I have created for sale. I’m just a gamer doing some gaming, man.

I think the blogosphere as a community thing is great, but in the case of classic gaming I think we are starting to have a glut of blogs that don’t have much to say or much to offer. It is becoming more important to some to have a blog and have a lot of followers than it is to game.

I personally don’t have the time to join up all the others blogs out there, and especially to actually read them all. And to join just to get followers would seem kind of hollow to me. I just do my gaming, and do some blogging because I’ve been at it a long time and feel I have a lot to say. This blog has become a place for me to vent about gaming past and present. A lot of negativity has come out of that, but that is part of the vent. The truth is I love gaming, it has been a big part of my life, and it has mostly been a positive experience for me. The blog, not always so much. One guy freaking out epically on his blog because I tore up one of his creepo players some time ago actually cost me a few followers on my blog . Did he have a point? To a degree. Did I? To a degree. In our own ways we overreacted (and both of us could have talked to the other before acting, but we are dudes and dudes can be dumbasses sometimes). Do I care that some people found my rantings too offensive to continue with? Not a wit. I’m not fully the person I sometimes appear to be on my blog any more than I (or anybody) am always the person I am when I get ticked off at something in life in general. That is why I do that blog. Good or bad, I always have something to say. Either something happy about my gaming experiences, or to let off some steam.

In real life I am usually the biggest person in the room, both physically and in personality. I live large no matter what I do. But do I care if I am a big dog in the blogosphere. Hells no. I have something to say for now, and I hope at least a handful read and have something to say back to me about it (good or bad). I’m actually getting something out of blogging about gaming that I think a lot aren’t. I care not for amount of followers. I care about what I have to say and what others have to say back.

A lot of blogs will be gone in a couple of years (I don’t plan on doing this forever). But as long as I do it I will try to live it by one thing – “blog because you game. Don’t game because you blog.”

That makes sense. I think…

EDIT: I also should add that in the last couple of months I have had two unrelated computer problems that slowdown my own joining of other sites, and my commenting on them. First, my home computer got hit by the Thinkpoint virus and is still messed up, so I spend less time on it. Second, many comment functions on other blogs do not work on my office computer. Only those that allow a pop-up can be commented upon. Other problems exist, such as Bob's Cylopeatron site not loading due to adult content (which he told me does not exist on his site), and also my links to his site don't work for some reason. So to those whom I don't respond to as far as joining your blog or commenting upon, I plead severe tech problems! If you visit my blog and comment and I don't check out your stuff, be sure and remind me to give it another try!

Call of Cthulhu Friday: Cthulhu zeitgeist

There is more of it out there than I thought. Not just plushies and Miskatonic U. bumber stickers ( Go Pods!), but I’ve discovered from my Amazon.com browsing that there are a pile of Cthulhu humor books out there. “Where the Deep Ones Are” is obvious, but an interesting one, not so much humor as a “Cthulhu for Idiots” type info book, is Cthulhu 101. Made for people who don’t really know what the works of Lovecraft are all about. It gives you the lowdown on the various entities of the Cycle, goes over Lovecraft and his life, and hits on the pop culture items where the Old Ones and their crew make their mark. Cthulhu zeitgeist!

Much as I am with zombies, I’m sort of Cthulhued out (although that may not jibe with the fact that I do a twice monthly Cthulhu post). Although I’d love more than anything to have a CoC campaign going on in the coming year, I think I can take a pass on the plethora of ancillary Lovecraft floating around out there. I wonder what HP would think of all this stuff?

Wii Owner Update

Last week I posted asking for advice on my Wii system that had been sitting in the back of my closet. I had offers from a couple of friends who were interested in buying it, and I was considering using it for a few days before I decided. Well, I used it for a few days, and here’s my verdict (hold the applause). I rented Epic Mickey from Blockbuster over the weekend, and have been playing it this week (Good: fun homage’s to cartoons past – Bad: the camera angles were often very frustrating and the gameplay a bit repetitive and juvenile). I really have been charmed by the unique control possibilities offered by the controller and nunchuk (I can see this being great for sword fighting games), something I previously thought I never would. But most appealing is the possibility of downloading old games. I actually went ahead and bought a wireless router last night so I can use this out in the garage (where I usually play games), and successfully bought some Wii points. Tonight I’m planning to either buy the original Legend of Zelda or Super Mario 3 to relive some of the old magic of those clunkers (only three bucks each!). I’m sure others will follow (Castlevania games for sure. Hmm…I wonder if the original Metal Gear is available?). So it looks like my Wii is here to stay. I still want a 360 and PS3 soon, but this should occupy me enough so that I can wait until all the great after Xmas sales in January.

Zombie Invasion Dream (sans zombies)

Last night I had an interesting zombie dream. It had no zombies in it.

Now, I should have been dreaming about Mickey Mouse. I’ve had a couple of people offering to buy my Nintendo Wii (see this recent post) from me, since it has been sitting in the closet collecting dust since I won it at the office Xmas party last year (this year I just won a shiatsu massage pillow from Sharper Image). I decided yesterday that I had better try a real game out on it, so I went to Blockbuster and picked out Epic Mickey to rent for a few days. Now, I am not a huge fan of the Mouse from the Disney House. I find him bland and lacking in any kind of depth (unlike the always awesome Goofy), nothing more than a corporate shill. And I haven’t been to Disneyland since I was a teenager there on a date (I hate lines and crowds and phony baloney cutesiness, so there ya go).

Anyway, I got it because of all the hype, and I played over three hours of this Mickey Mouse game, and that much video gaming at night will usually lend itself to dreams inspired by that game for me, but no go. It was zombie apocalypse all the way.

But this is the weird part. No zombies. Oh, they were out there all right. I mean, my dream self knew it for a fact. I don’t know if this was because my mind did not want to scare me. I’m pretty zombie-out, actually. I’m enjoying The Walking Dead on TV, but really, after I saw the excellent Shaun of the Dead, and then read World War Z (and also listened to a lot of the audio book for that), I figured I had experienced all I needed to in the world of animated corpses. So I’m thinking my brain just decided to go for the human element. It was all about dealing with other survivors.

Early on I was alone on an office building rooftop. I started out with a handgun. It was a glock at first I think, but at some point when I checked the bullets it was more like a revolver. But either way there I was, looking down on the city and seeing other people running around, or on other rooftops. The zombies I guess were down on the streets where I wasn’t looking.

Soon I was joined by a hot blond chick. I liked that. I lead her around by the hand as we left the roof and went down into the building, which seemed to be not an office building, but made up entirely of stairwells, hallways, and huge indoor parking areas. Nameless blonde and I were soon joined by others, and we all discussed our options and things to do. At one point a side door was opening, and I ran over to cover the door with my gun. I tried to shoot, but I didn’t know about the safety. Good thing, because it was a big black security dude. He drew on me, but luckily he did not shoot. Maybe he didn’t know about the safety either.

My group and I came across some other folk in the parking area, and it was on the verge of violence. But I spoke up as the voice of reason. “We need to come together. We are the survivors, and maybe the last humans around. We need each other.”

That was about it. What a gyp. I can’t fly in my dreams, and I guess I can’t run n’ gun on zombies either. Maybe this was a lesson for me though. Maybe my brain wants me to think things through and take a more peaceful path. But shit, I really would have loved to have shot that gun at least once in my dream. I bet I would have, if I had been playing Halo instead of a damn game about a helium-voiced rodent.

The Angry Villager Rule

This item on page 24 of White Box booklet 3 really stuck out at me as I was preparing for the OD&D session I did on my birthday:

“Anyone who has viewed a horror movie is aware of how dangerous angry villagers are. Whenever the referee finds that some player has committed an unforgivable outrage this rule can be invoked to harass the offender into line. Within the realm of angry villagers are thieves from the “thieves quarters,” city watches and militia, etc. Also possible is the insertion of some character like Conan to bring matters into line.”

Note the sweet Conan reference. You can imagine Arnold showing up “Ah am He-ah to bring mattahs into line!”

James over at Grognardia sure has a point about old Universal and Hammer horror movies having a load of influence on the game. And here it’s obviously being used as an abstract tool for a DM to bring a douche bag player into line. If the DM does not approve of the slaughter of an innkeeper or the rape of a lass by some social ‘tards chaotic evil assassin, he can drop this sack of bricks on the offending munchkin. Mr. Evil is confident he can take the farmers and milkmaids in the tavern room, but when one of them runs out and riles up the locals you can literally have hundreds of peasants with torches and pitch forks up your power gaming ass! And if they are getting cut down like wheat on harvest day, just have a certain Cimmerian or reasonable facsimile show up to lay down some smack.

It smells of DM “cheat,” but hell, I like it. I need to remember this rule for my 1st edition games.

Birthday Game/Birthday Wishes

I have never made much of a deal out of my own birthday. I for sure usually don’t skip work, and don’t talk it up there like a lot of people do (there are people here with balloons in their cubicle from 8 months ago). I don’t like parties in my honor, and I don’t like discussing my age (after I hit 40 I stopped telling people, at least at work, how old I am) even though most people who know my true age tell me I look at least 10 years younger than I am. Must be all that clean living *cough*.

As it just so happens, it’s a game night tonight, so for the second time in three years I’ll be spending my birthday night with the gaming group. Thank God most of them are drinkers. Anyway, I enjoy DM’ing on my birthday, and tonight I’m going to continue our occasional White Box old school dungeon delve. Some nice relaxing fun compared to the uphill struggle that is my AD&D campaign (a torture of my own design). I just gotta find a way over to Andy’s and home without risking a birthday DUI.

Anyway, I would like to divide this post into two parts, each where I ask your input/experience. OK, first one: have you ever run a game on your birthday, how was it, and did you eventually wish you had just had a traditional birthday party (y’know, a night at the Super 8 Motel with a couple of hookers, a pizza, and bottle of Gray Goose)? Have you ever DM’d or played on a birthday?

And secondly, have you ever made a “Bucket List” of things to do before you die? I haven’t. To travel the world? Outside of some visits to Scotland back in the day, I don’t leave America (although I often hear Amsterdam calling my name). If you gotta pee in the street and poop in a hole in the ground, I don’t go. Date a supermodel? I think that boat passed me by. Get rich? Man, I’m tryin’. But anyway, below are some of my favorite Bucket List items from Adam Carolla’s new book In “50 years We’ll All be Chicks.” I relate very much to the pop culture nature of some of these, and I choose these things to do before I die. Do you have any?

*Disclocate my shoulder to get out of a straight jacket.

*Pull a fake mustache off someone and shout “Ah Hah!”

*Shout “Release the hounds!”

*Stop a crime by throwing something. A guy steals a purse and starts running. I throw a can of corn football style and knock him out.

*Catch a punch and twist the guys hand until he drops to his knees

*Get shot and blow it off “I ain’t got time to bleed”

*Put my hand over the mouth of a beautiful woman to stop her from screaming and alerting the bad guys.

*Punch out my undercover partner who is about to say something he shouldn’t and blow our cover.

*Get kicked out of a casino for winning.

*Have a cape removed on stage.

*Be killed by the person I told to kill me if I start turning into a zombie.

*Dry-shave with a machete

*Drive my car off a pier onto a garbage scow.

*Box a kangaroo

*Fight somebody on top of a moving train

*Pop the locks on an attaché case full of money and slide it across the table.

*Silently communicate/point to my watch underwater.

*Fend off a Kodiak bear with a torch.

*Track somebody. I get off my horse, squat, then do that thing where I pick up a clump of dirt and let it sift through my fingers.