GM Styles

I found it!

I was looking for Zak Smith's post about GM styles.  Sure enough, I found the one about Jeff Rients and the one about his own style.

To summarize: Jeff is enthusiastic and seems very attentive, Zak is impartial and almost bored.

I like both, and actually think I oscillate between the two.  At first, I'm pretty reserved and just set the scene.  But then something happens, and get more enthusiastic with a voice almost giddy with murderous glee.  Likewise, I occasionally offer suggestions, which almost always imply doom — my players consider my suggestions, but rarely act on them (or at least they don't act on them without careful consideration).

Though it's difficult, I might like to try to switch my style in the future.  We'll see.

Epic Characters vs. The Other Guys

Last night before D&D, one of the players was talking about superhero video games, and how one doesn't want to play Superman's trainee, one wants to play Superman.

That may be true, particularly in video games (did you actually put Magma in your party in X-Men Legends?), but I'm not sure it's totally accurate.

In roleplaying games especially, both can be fun.  Sometimes you want to play the Fellowship with all the power and responsibility that entails, and sometimes you just want to play, say, David Wong and John Cheese.

Then again, these guys also lend themselves to different playstyles.  The Justice League is more likely to get railroaded into some grandiose plot, but the Mystery Men are more likely to chew on the scenery and muck around in the sandbox.  It's likely that some groups naturally tend more toward one over the other based on personal preference.

Calling All Artists

Zanazaz plans on releasing a roleplaying book called Kinship, and he's looking for artists (and proofreaders and playtesters, for that matter).  There's no money, but you'll get a copy of the finished product and a credit in the book (so, you know, you get the geek cred of being a published artist).

Inquiries should be directed to zanazaz at yahoo dot com.  Further information is available here, and again at the tag for Kinship.

More on the Sandbox (and Bonus Random Musings)

So I've previously talked a little about railroading vs. sandbox, and will likely do so again.

For the moment, though, go check out this post at Digital Orc.  It's a very simple thing, but it's a thing worth considering.

Along the lines of the sandbox, I'm currently fiddling with some things, including converting that AD&D 1e module for my 4e players (it's going well, but since I'm reworking one of the dungeon levels from scratch, it's a little slow going because the dungeon layout is rather particular).  I'm also trying to find a halfway decent hex map for my Crux of Eternity map, but it's big.  If I go with 5-mile hexes, this thing is 125 by 100 hexes.

If I manage to make one in a digital format (I'm currently playing with Hexographer, so I very well might), I'll probably post it here for your general perusal.  Note that I have already drawn a map, but I finally decided that a hex map would probably be more workable.

Maybe I should break it down into sections?  I'll play with it and figure it out.

Pestilence

Earlier this week, this post over at Jeff's Gameblog showed a short film taking place during England's plague years.  A good piece of cinema if you happen to be mucking about in that timeframe, or in any setting with an epidemic.

You can also view said film below:

Realism vs. Fantasy

So I saw a blog post recently, but I can't remember what it was.  It was an OSR blog, and I was thinking about the post lately, and...

...that's it.  Maybe someone will recognize the rant and shove me in the right direction?

Anyway, the author put forth the proposition that you shouldn't care about rational world design when it comes to the dungeon.  These monsters don't need to live in a logical ecology that worries about energy distribution; these monsters need to symbolically represent our fears.  I'm paraphrasing my rapidly decaying memory of the article when I say that orcs represent our fear of the prehuman ancestors we killed, while liches represent our fear of our politicians ruling us forever; nobody cares about how an owlbear gets nutrition out of the vermin scurrying around the dungeon, because the symbolism behind him is more important than ecology.

It gets back to noisms talking about non-banal D&D (and collating some stuff on the same topic here), and Zak's rebuttal here.

Basically: do you want to make a logical setting, or do you want to explore a weird, fantastical world of symbolism?

Some games imply an answer — we tend to just expect a certain level of realism from modern-day games — but the answer is highly subjective and pretty complex.

For example, you can bring the fantastical into the modern world — just watch anything made by David Lynch.

Also note some of the advice in the above blog posts.  You can always have a place where the fantastic holds sway.  Maybe civilization is held in place by the psychic residue of its residents, but the wild is wild.

As normal, something to consider.

Sharpened Hooks: The Aeolipile

I've been wanting to develop this for a while.

I once attended a lecture wherein the sociology professor discussed how one should not judge other cultures as "primitive" because they might just have different values than we do.  As his example, the Romans had a steam engine, but it was just a toy, a curiosity; they didn't see any practical use for it.

I looked it up today, and found this device to be an aeolipile.  Initially described by Hero of Alexandria in the first century A.D. (though Vitruvius described an aeolipile earlier than Hero, it is not clear whether it was the same device or not), the aeolipile was less a toy that a child would use and more a weird piece of equipment from The Sharper Image.  A simple steam engine, the aeolipile (as it was) is a curiosity with no practical purpose.  But it's still a steam engine.

Suppose, however, that Hero of Alexandria or another innovator really understood the implications of this device.  If anybody really understood it and developed a high-pressure steam engine, the Roman Empire would suddenly go steampunk.  Rome might still fall — a steam-powered Rome could probably more effectively defeat enemies, but it was internal strife that really shattered the Empire — but it would truly be a juggernaut astride the world while it lasted.  Even the Dark Ages would look different; imagine Charlemagne and a young Catholic Church with Industrial Age technology at their disposal.  The whole thing could quickly go the same way as the Civil War in Deadlands — picture the Battle of Hastings, fought with medieval tactics but powered by Victorian and World War I technology.  A lot of natural defenses can be nullified by mortars and other weapons.

Note that this also assumes little differences from history as we know it; it's highly likely that the varying technology would cause history to take a much different shape.  Perhaps, instead of the Dark Ages, the fall of Rome would be followed by a scientific revolution.  However, given the situation in Europe, this scientific revolution might very well begin in the quiet contemplation of the monasteries, turning the Catholic Church into a haven of scientific thought.  In this alternate history, scientific thought would probably be considered something one does in the service of the Church, as a method of understanding the beauty of God's creation.