D-Fuses

Storm continues to gather

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:02:48 GMT

Some details and some lovely art of Stromdorf, the setting for the Gathering Storm Campaign pack:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=1035

As always with FFG, the art is superb

Crying interuppted

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 05:03:07 GMT

It seems some of my reviews aren't getting through the Game Cryer queue. But here's November's installment:

http://gamecryer.com/2009/11/30/bohnanza/

This year's Stevies

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 17:18:25 GMT

Stevies for 2009

Here we go again with what’s fast becoming the least popular awards in the blogosphere. As always, it has nothing to do with when the product was produced, but when I encountered it.

Best TV Show

A few contenders this year. You’d probably suspect it’d go to Lie to Me: the science is fairly strong, the technical discourse fun, the writing decent and Tim Roth is glorious. It’s definitely the best new crime show around and is battling Burn Notice for my affections, beating out the charm of Castle (because almost all of that charm comes from Fillion and he cannot hold a show all on his own, no matter how often he smiles). Meanwhile Bones and SVU go from strength to strength to strength. Bones is totally the little engine that could, taking a fairly weak concept and making it rock the world with strong archetypes and fun gags. It’s effectively Buffy reskinned, which is why I like it.

But all of them pale compared to The Big Bang Theory. Not just because Big Bang is consistently home-run funny, each and every week, but because it’s doing that in an age when the sitcom is all-but dead. Reality TV stomped sitcoms so far into the ground that Two and a Half Men looked like comedy genius. Then along comes Chuck Lorre and proves he’s still got it. It’s no Newsradio but it’s extremely reassuring and a welcome return for a maligned genre. Props to the geek boys for doing that most difficult of things: bringing the funny, into a dark world, every damn week.

Best Movie

Son of Rambow is the runner up. Sweet without being saccharine, simple without being simplistic, low scale yet boldly told, this is a movie everyone should think about seeing. If it had more music and less Rambo, it would be this years’ Full Monty: lonely English kids fight their battles and become friends through the power of dreams and creativity. Except, you know, not TWEE like that sounds.

The winner though, is The International. I adore modern techno-thrillers and of late they’ve been kind of co-opted by too much angst (Bond, I’m looking at you), or too much conspiracy (Dan Brown, what have you wrought). The International is an old-school techno-thriller, more Le Carre and the Sandbaggers than anything has a right to be these days. It manages to be gritty yet slick, intense yet realistic, conspiratorial yet not overdone. It features probably the most exciting gun battle ever put on film and yet will probably be forgotten in favour of the more grand-guignol bulletpieces like Shoot ‘Em Up and the Cranks. Which blows goats and makes me yearn for the days when we had Gorky Park and The French Connection and Day of the Jackal and so on. It’s not just that it’s my favourite genre well told though: the execution is extremely polished. Owen is better than ever, Watts manages to keep up, Mueller-Stahl has basically become the new Karl Malden and needs to star in these things forever. More than anything though, it was a film for which I had the absolute highest expectations, being as it is completely in my wheelhouse – and it exceeded them all. And that takes some doing indeed.

Best Board or Card Game

Okay, no surprise: it’s Dominion. It really does live up to the hype. It plays all the roles, it appeals to almost all comers and almost any size of group, it’s quick to learn, fast to play and can be as hard or as easy as you want it to be. It’s a social game but also an involving one. And it’s just goddamn good old fashioned FUN like very little else.

What is surprising is the runner up, and how close it came to snatching the title. Space Hulk is a game which costs more than I make in a week and is, at heart, little more than simple minis rules for two players. Sure it has a modular board and pretty plastic dudes and a cool setting but…no, but nothing. It actually takes a lot of work to make something this simple and this easy – and much more work to make it this beautiful. The rules are few, the set ups simple, the gameplay a breeze, yet the tactics are serious, the tension is palpable and the stories so evocative you can smell the fear. The setting helps but what really helps is the unbelievably high quality components. I mean, we live in an age where beauty and game pieces are synonymous; where every singe chit or tile is a work of art and a monument of design, and yet Space Hulk is beyond them all, a whole extra level higher in design and beauty and construction. Swear to God, you’ve never seen room pieces click together like this. You may never see it again. And the minis are awesome too.

Best RPG

As always, tough to judge for a man with no disposable income and not enough time to review review copies. I’ll decline from mentioning WFRP 3e to avoid bias. Mad props to Dragon*Age for not recreating D&D but rather recreating the unique experience of redbook D&D, and all that implies to creating new gamers – with all the usual Pramas skill and aplomb. Speaking of recreating and attracting new blood: I’m still trying to wheedle a review copy but it looks like Dr Who will be the best licensed game since Buffy (aka the best licensed game since Ghostbusters). Other notables: Rogue Trader was prettier than Dark Heresy, Eclipse Phase brought back detailed percentile systems with a glorious vengeance, Geist had one of the funnest magic systems I’ve seen in ages and Jennifer is Missing broke several brains, including mine. But nothing quite re-wrote the books as much as Supercrew did, and it did it by rewriting the way books are written. 99% of game designers all-but ignore the art of RPG presentation (or just assume that White Wolf does it right, which is pretty galling when you look at the abomination that is Awakening) but if we’ve learned anything from Space Hulk, it’s that design is about far, far more than mechanics. Runner up in the damn-that’s-just-ridiculously-easy-to-digest stakes is Song of Ice and Fire, because Hal Mangold continues to be just better at layout than everybody else in the industry.

Other Things:

Arkham Asylum takes best Computer Game for letting you feel like you’re Batman with just a bit of button-mashing. Best comic remains Paul Grist’s exquisitely perfect Kane, the comic that Sin City wishes it would grow up to be like. Best gift to comedy is the Twilight Saga because having your spine broken by your terrible (but sparkly) vampire foetus never stops being funny. Best animal is the Sea Otter for continuing to crack oysters on their tummies. Sadly Missed Montage goes to Dan O’Bannon, the man behind the alien behind John Hurt’s stomach wall.

Awesome of the Year

An easy win for the Large Hadron Collider, built last year but turned on this, and making science huge and sexy and awesome and terrifying in an age where all people think of science as doing is dissing religion and making phones smaller. Let the other ages have their Difference Engines and moon rockets, we have our own edifice now. May it produce something cool by next year.

But who will think of the children?

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:40:33 GMT

Bad-ass torn-up rebel toys, that's who:

http://www.rpg.net/columns/campaigntoybox/campaigntoybox24.phtml

Small Comma Vicious

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:33:59 GMT

I lose the net for two weeks and FFG barrels ahead with the WFRP news:

The Adventurer's Toolkit should be in stores Real Soon Now - see http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=991 and it includes a big splash for an old friend, the Small But Vicious Dog (he's so cute!!!) http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=981

Also announced is the first campaign box, The Gathering Storm, for which I crafted the whole campaign skeleton, which is something of a landmark for me. Should be awesome. http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=967

A review that targets my specific sections

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:24:28 GMT

Which is nice.
"Background: the fluff from these two books are excellent primers for the religions and mage orders of the Warhammer world, with some clever first-person accounts that make the history come alive."

beans: the interview

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 13:29:19 GMT

I mean, the review. My monthly piece on Game Cryer:

http://gamecryer.com/2009/11/30/bohnanza/

Skaven need women...

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:02:13 GMT

he dwarfs tell of times they have broken through into the skaven's inner sanctums to discover the rat mothers: the huge, bloated, drug-addled breeders of the skaven line, kept fat and docile by a handmaiden clan to keep ensuring the enormous skaven birth rate never abates. Human scholars have assumed these must be the only skaven females, like a queen in a hive.

Human scholars are wrong.

For starters, any rat born with the horns and the grey pelt is chosen to serve the Horned Rat, regardless of gender. Sex is meaningless compared to the demands of the rat gods. Second, the rat mothers have a handmaiden clan, Clan Illik, which is an entirely female clan. There are others too, not suited for ascension to rat motherhood, and with plenty of their own hungry ambition, who join any number of the male clans and work their way up towards ascension.

And then there's Clan Vichen.

The best rat mothers are born with great flexible skin sacks to hold litters ten times their normal size. Sometimes, however, the skin sacks don't develop properly, grow thinner and stronger. Such girls are hidden by Clan Illik and sent away from the Under Empire, because they have a gift that even many of the Grey Seers don't know about. When they spread their skin flaps, the rats of Clan Vitchen can fly.

Having no need of the dark tunnels of the Under-Empire, these eagle-eyed agents of flying death insteead roost in the mountain peaks and great spires of the world. So far, the elves say, Skaven have not succeeded in crossing the Great Western Ocean to the home of Ulthuan (since no tunnels can be dug under the Great Maelstrom, and the elven navy is too skillful). But they don't tell outsiders about the skaven menace that clings to their high white towers and steals or destroys their greatest magical secrets. Nor do the lizardmen of the Southlands feel compelled to tell anyone of the "flying monkeys" that leap through the jungle for hundreds miles without ever touching the ground, no matter the distance between trees.

So far, Clan Vichen is content to leave the human lands to their insular, underground brothers. Instead they use their speed and aerial superiority to plot against the High Elves, snatching away their magic and their mastery of the sea, and selling their incredibly fast travel and the knowledge it gives them to the highest bidders (usually the Dark Elves or the Estalian traders). It is bad luck to shoot a flying squirrel goes the Estalian proverb, for they can bring messages. Few take the legend literally, but it's true.

FFG hiring again

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:24:51 GMT

Dammit I need to live in America SO FREAKING BADLY.

Ladies of America, marry me!

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=962

Game Night On Tour: An Interview with Jonny Nexus

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 01:16:26 GMT

As I once remarked (http://ptgptb.org/0021/glories.html), roleplaying is inherently a funny thing. Particularly because it involves two levels of reality, which are never totally in sync and often far removed from each other. But while this fact – and the general comedy of roleplaying geekiness – has prompted the creation of some truly hilarious comics (such as Dork Tower, Knights of the Dinner Table, Order of the Stick, Full Frontal Nerdity, Unspeakable Oaf, and the legendary Phil and Dixie), the written word has rarely, if ever, followed suit.

Which is a damn shame.

Despite the inherent silliness of our hobby, game writers, designers, critics and bloggers have a habit of being po-faced, humourless individuals who take their hobby very seriously indeed. But there have been a few – a very few – exceptions, and they’ve stood out like beacons in the darkness. Ten or so years ago, when I was trawling through literally scores of gaming webzines, trying to find something distinctive or ways that my own zine could be distinctive, the only one that made any impression at all was something called Critical Miss.

Not least because it was funny. But also because one of its lead articles was about the chief author being attacked by his psychotic washing machine.

The washing machine was important because it was a very real, very human, very personal story. And the best comedians – the very best – have a natural, humanist quality to them that makes them feel like they are revealing their own souls to the audience, and in doing so, laying bear great truths about humanity. Comedians are story-tellers in the truest sense of the word, and my personal heroes. So it is then a great privilege to help bring more attention to one of roleplaying’s greatest comedians, and certainly one of its very very few prose comedians, the man they call Jonny Nexus.

Ten years after the washing machine incident, Jonny has created Game Night (http://www.jonnynexus.com/gamenight/) a book he describes as “Critical Miss: the novel”. It’s a tale of six extremely dysfunctional “gods” playing a roleplaying game in which they control the fate of mortals on the world below. The roleplaying game in question is hilariously broken and yet horrifyingly familiar to anyone who has dallied in this strange hobby. My effusive review of the work is here (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13736.phtml), and I urge you to again go out and buy the book right now. Failing that, Jonny has insanely decided to give the book away for free, in installments on EN World here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/blogs/jonny-nexus/2059-game-night-chapter-one-gate.html. Presumably to drive up sales because the only thing that makes less money than writing rpgs is writing about rpgs.

Part of this gala event is Jonny’s world promotional tour highlighting the free release. Of course, being a writer Jonny is too poor to actually travel the world, so he is traveling by means of blog (the first two installments of the tour are here: http://rpggamer.org/editorial.php?id=19 and here: http://thatsnotmysquid.com/blog/?p=155#content). Which is why he’s not actually sitting opposite me in the lobby of a shabby Brisbane hotel, not stroking the stylish beard that has caused nobody but me to dub him “gaming’s most unlikely sex symbol”. He doesn’t order a beer, so I can’t ask him if he wants them to warm it up for him and can’t use that to launch into my first question.

The comparisons to Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams have been made by many regarding Game Night, and James Wallis’ quote on the cover declares you “The Funniest Games-Writer in the UK who isn’t me”. Do you think there is an English quality to your humour? Is English comedy a big influence on you?

Well the short answer is, I don't know. (And I expect the longer answer that is to follow will essentially amount to the same thing).

While I never consciously try to write in an English style, I equally have never made any attempt not to. In the early days of Critical Miss, a few people suggested that Americans wouldn't get it, because of the supposed different styles of humour, and the old (and I think totally incorrect) assertion that Americans somehow don't do irony. (And lest we forget, Alanis Morissette – who famously didn't realise that rain on your wedding day is only ironic if you're a weather forecaster – is actually Canadian).

But Americans did get it. A survey we did revealed that about two-thirds of the readers of Critical Miss were American, and the first ever piece of fan mail that we (and therefore me) ever got was, I seem to recall, from an American.

There probably is an English quality to my humour, simply because I'm English. I'd certainly like to think there is (and I believe I make that very claim on my website) but in the end I wouldn't know. I think the culture within which you are raised becomes the “neutral standard baseline” by which you measure everything else. Being aware of your own culture is like smelling your own farts; something that happens only when you encounter an extreme example.

And when it comes to influences, I think English comedy has only been a big influence on me in as much as I've been exposed to a lot of it. My favourite author, Douglas Adams, is English, but I've never been conscious of that fact playing a part in my liking for him. I loved Faulty Towers (but then again, who didn't) but wasn't hugely into Monty Python, for example.

I said the long answer would be I don't know, didn't I?

Apart from Greg Cotsikyan, I’m actually hard pressed to think of any funny game writers from America. And Discworld and the Warhammer world are maybe the only two gaming worlds - or indeed any fantasy worlds - with much humour in them. Is there something about the British that makes them able to laugh at fantasy and indeed SF? Why did the British create say, Red Dwarf and Warhammer while the Americans created Battlestar and D&D?

Well I think perhaps we've more of a tendency to take a cynical look at things, and this is perhaps a help when you're poking fun at an entire setting rather than simply finding humour within a setting. I think a lot of American SF, especially that written in the early years, was quite aspirational, where the future was going to be bright, glorious, and largely American.

It wasn't quite the same for us; if the twentieth century was America's party; it was Britain's post-party hangover (we had our party in the nineteenth century). The Americans spent the twentieth century heading up; we spent the century heading down. Growing up, I was acutely aware that I lived in a country that had once been great and now wasn't. America was putting people on the moon; we launched a single satellite into space three months after the entire British space programme was cancelled (they'd already shipped the rocket to Australia, so the government let them launch it, just to prove that it worked).

There I was, seven years old and dreaming of being an astronaut, and no-one bothered to tell me that the entire British space programme had been cancelled five years before.

I think that as a result our SF and fantasy has tended to take a darker, more cynical look at things, and hasn't have that built in assumption that history equals progress and the future will automatically be better. (Just think of the difference between Star Trek and Blake's 7).

And it's much easier to create humour when you have a setting full of incompetence, corruption and cock-up, than when you have one where everything's great.

Obviously, comparisons to such literary masters must be flattering. What have been other reactions to the book? Was that what you expected?

I think my honest answer is that the quality of the response has been everything I'd hoped for, if not more, but that the volume of the response has been less.

While the responses and reviews I have got have been great, there's been a lot fewer of them than with Critical Miss. I used to get literally hundreds of emails after each issue. I think I once took the letters page (and that was just email to the letters account – it didn't include all the emails to the editor account) and pasted it into a word processor document, and it came out as something like 70 pages of A4. There's nothing like getting emails or comments to really give your confidence a big boost.

And then there were the really positive threads on RPGNet when the last issue of Critical Miss came out. I'd kill to have threads like that over Game Night.

But I do know from the reviews (and the ENnie nomination) that people really do like the book. I guess maybe it's just not so “discussable” as Critical Miss.

I assume the hope of the free release is to drive up sales, so may I ask how sales have been so far? Is the goal to eventually get Game Night onto mainstream book shelves – and could putting it out for free harm that goal?

I think the last time I published an issue of Critical Miss, it was read by about 5000+ people within a month. And I had a mailing list of about 2000+ people who'd signed up to be informed when I published either Critical Miss or something else. And that was without me making any real attempt to publicize it. So I naively assumed that if I really worked hard on publicity, sending out lots of review copies, and doing banner ads, and so on, I'd be able to sell 5000 copies of Game Night within a year.

Well we've sold quite a few, but after two years we're on nothing like 5000.

It turns out that it's actually quite hard to sell books.

Part of that is obviously the fact that Critical Miss was free and Game Night isn't (or wasn't). But I think that's only part of it. I think a major part is that when something is on the web it's only one click away, and links are easily shareable. Whereas a paper book will have to be ordered, and then waited for, and I think that dissuades people from passing a recommendation for it on.

I'm hoping that by not just publishing Game Night for free, but doing it in a weekly format over twenty six weeks, it will start to build a Critical Miss-like buzz around it that yes, will ultimately translate into sales.

I don't have any immediate ambitions to get Game Night onto the shelves of mainstream book shops. I don't think it will happen anytime soon because I think it's perceived as a niche novel about a niche hobby (roleplaying).

I should add that I don't actually think that's true. Two of my biggest supporters have been two Terry Pratchett fans who've never played a roleplaying game in their life, but bought the book from me at an SF convention and loved it. They got me to go to the Discworld Convention last summer, told everyone there to buy it, and we ended up selling 76 copies at a convention that only had about 750 people.

But it's perceived as niche. I do one day think (hope?) that it will be on bookshop sales, but it's my opinion that this will only happen some years down the line after I've had a couple of mainstream (i.e. standard SF or fantasy) novels published by a major publisher and have started to gain enough of a following to overcome the perception of nicheness. And by that point, I don't think this free project will harm it.

You’re currently working on an SF book. Will that be a comic work as well? Will it be in the same style as Game Night, with roleplaying gods? Or will it be completely different? And will you be publishing it through Magnum Opus again, or looking for a larger pond to play in?

Well at the moment it's still at quite an early stage so I don't want to talk too much about it. But I can say that it's an SF comedy about time travel, and while it has no connection with Game Night (it starts on Earth in the 23^rd century) I'm consciously trying to write it with a similar style of humour as Game Night.

My target is to get a book where people will be able to say that if you like Game Night, then you'll probably like this.

James Wallis and Magnum Opus Press have been great, but yes, I will be looking for a mainstream SF/Fantasy publisher for this novel, who will get me into Waterstones et al. I'm very much looking to swim in the bigger pond.

You’ve written a lot about observing games and gamers, but have you ever written a game or RPG yourself? What form did they or might they take?

Well I've actually written quite a few games, both roleplaying and non-roleplaying, some of which I've published and most of which I haven't. (I've probably only published the joke ones).

I was actually very proud of the rules engine in my RPG Porno! which I published back in issue 8 of Critical Miss:

http://www.criticalmiss.com/issue8/porno1.html

That was my attempt to create a “NewStyle” type game like James Wallis did with Hogshead, in which you had something that was a roleplaying game, but which didn't use the standard games master asking players “what do you want to do” paradigm. I actually thought it was quite revolutionary, but I guess if I wanted people to discuss the theory behind it I should have picked a more appropriate subject matter.

(The lesson here is that games that feature male on male anal fisting don't get discussed at the Forge).

I also wrote a series of unpublished multi-genre RPGs I called Myriad, which featured a variety of different systems. (One of them had a pretty cool magic system where mages were dangerous lunatics pushing at the fabric of reality and occasionally exploding when they pushed too hard).

And I'm still working on my board game Slot Bob Crow in which you play enraged commuters on the day of a London Underground strike who have decided that there is nothing for it but to assassinate the leader of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union. They travel around a map of the London Underground trying to pick up suitable weapons, avoid the Plod counter, and then find Bob and “slot” him.

I'm thinking of it as a fun game for all the family.

In all seriousness, I should say that I'm actually a bit of pinko-web left-wing liberal who's a strong believer in unions and the right to strike... but the tube unions really have managed to piss everyone off over the last few years.

The classic London Underground song that came out a few years ago kind of sums up a lot of the way people feel:

(It was written during a series of strikes by a couple of junior doctors. I don't agree with everything it says, but it does make me laugh. Warning: It contains very, very bad language and is seriously Not Safe For Work.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgwoPG63B3Y

And on that issue, what does Jonny Nexus run and play around the table? What games inspire you and what kind of stories do you tell? Do they always end up like the disasters of Game Night, or do you have some “success” stories as well?

I haven't GMed very much over the years. When I have done, it's been mostly either in SF or superhero settings.

My two most successful campaigns were both superhero campaigns.

The first, which I did in the late 90s, was set on an alternate Mars of canals and ancient empires in 1959. Four magical tunnels/portals connected Earth and Mars, in New Mexico, Libya, Soviet Central Asia, and Australia. Discovered in the early 30's, they'd allowed the USA, the USSR, Germany and the British Empire to establish colonies on Mars. It was basically Happy Days/Grease meets Edgar Rice Burroughs with super-heroes thrown in. I ran this using the DC Heroes rules, but was never really happy with them.

The second campaign was set in Cornwall in the modern day, and drew inspiration from the ancient Celtic Cornwall of King Arthur, the smugglers and tin-mining Cornwall of the eighteenth century, and the modern Cornwall of surfers and tourists. It started off using the old Golden Heroes rules and then transitioned through Silver Age Sentinals and on into Mutants and Masterminds through two epic campaign arcs called Shattered Realities in which reality itself was altered, thus covering up the slight changes you get when you change rules systems.

I also did a little bit of Twilight 2000, which ended up with enough laughs in it that I got a Signs & Portents article out of it.

And speaking of Game Night, if you had to choose one, which of the six Gods do you most resemble? And was there anyone else in particular who inspired any of the archetypes you chose? Did any friends approach you after reading it and say “oh, you totally based the Dealer on me” or the like?

Probably the Dealer, as I can be a bit of a method roleplaying luvvie. Having said that, I can often end up being the Jester, turning what should be serious into a joke. (I once said that if you ever make the mistake of inviting me into your Star Trek campaign, I will turn it into Galaxy Quest. My Star Trek captain once had to write a condolence letter to the parents of a red-shirt killed in a scenario. “Dear Mr and Mrs Jones. It is my regret to inform you that your son, Ensign Jones, has been killed while on active service for the Federation. It may comfort you to know that he did not suffer, as he was instantly vaporised by a Klingon disruptor pistol...”

And then I'm also well known for getting tired at the end of an evening, at which point I turn into the Sleeper.

No one archetype is based on any one person. Instead, they're based on characteristics I've seen people displaying while playing.

I’m sure family and friends have been keen to read the novel, even those without any knowledge of roleplaying. And you’ve mentioned in previous interviews selling the book to non-gaming Pratchett fans. What reactions have you got from these audiences? Do you think Game Night could even act as something to advertise roleplaying or is it more likely to make people fear the hobby and pity those who enjoy it?

Well my wife read the book and actually really liked it, which I was surprised about because it's completely outside the normal sort of thing she reads. She's not into fantasy

or SF or anything like that. I think she was quite surprised too! But I think she's the only member of my friends and family group who isn't into roleplaying to read it. I figure there's no point pushing it on people who don't like the genre.

As you said, Pratchett fans have read it and liked it. I don't think it will serve particularly as an advert for roleplaying, but I don't think it will put people off, either. At least it will explain how it works, and I think it's pretty obvious that if the game in the book isn't going well, it's because of the players.

Which leads to another question: has anyone reacted to the book negatively, taking it as an attack on the hobby or its participants, or as something which presents the hobby in an unfair light, damaging its reputation, like a reinvented Mazes and Monsters? Was that a concern when writing the book? Do you see Game Night as a gentle, loving parody in which readers will see their own reflections, or a scathing attack on the losers with whom we’re so often forced to share our tables?

Yes. There was a guy from Finland who had an online shop and who I gave a complementary copy to at GenCon (an acquaintance asked me to) and then turned round and wrote a really negative hostile review in which he complained that I had “pushed the book” onto him and proceeded to completely gave away the ending.

He felt that it was a vicious attack on roleplaying and could literally think of nothing good to say about it (although he later quite happily volunteered in an email to me that his brother had enjoyed it – something which he didn't feel a need to mention in his review). He also claimed that he hadn't realised that some people might think it a bad thing to reveal the ending of a book in a review (he said the concept of spoilers was something that he'd never heard before), but put in a spoiler warning after I complained.

I've always seen Game Night as a gentle parody of the dysfunctional ways we often end up behaving when roleplaying – frequently to hilarious results. I'd hate to play in a game that was played totally seriously, so I'm certainly not attacking “other people”. And so far, most people have seen it that way.

A great many roleplayers are frustrated writers in some sense. What was the process like for you, to go from gamer to humourist to novelist? What did you learn along the way? And what might be good advice for others walking a similar path?

Well it was a parallel journey, because I've been writing stories longer than I've been roleplaying. But I pretty much gave up writing fiction at the age of 14 or so because my English teachers were so down on pretty much everything I wrote. From then until probably my early thirties I wrote fiction only very intermittently (although I did manage to produce a novel, Barcode, in one particular burst when I was 24). I don't think I wrote any fiction at all between the age of about 25 and 30.

It was only really when Critical Miss started to get a good response, and I started to have fun writing little “fictionette” pieces to illustrate articles, that I started to think seriously about writing fiction again. Then I did a couple of evening classes in writing, and started trying to write novels.

I can't think of any obvious advice, save not to listen to English teachers who are so down on SF and fantasy that you could copy the entire text of a Nebula award winning short story and hand that in as your homework – and then still have them tell you it's no good.

You can find details on where to buy Game Night (and you really, really should) at http://www.jonnynexus.com/gamenight

WFRP 2nd ed stuff going cheap at FFG

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:13:59 GMT

Nothing of mine, though - it's all sold out, baby!

http://store.fantasyflightgames.com/client/client_pages/sale2009.cfm?catid=12

Toybox for November

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:52:27 GMT

Once again, I can't stop talking about fiction imposing upon reality...I may have to stop the Toybox before I start repeating myself...

http://www.rpg.net/columns/campaigntoybox/campaigntoybox23.phtml

The best WFB battle report ever written

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:41:46 GMT

We're experimenting with the Warband rules for <500 points. This is for a 200 pt army and is all the more awesome given that the loser is writing it (and has no formal experience in writing Warhammer).

Here be a slightly accurate account of the brief and decisive encounter between some Brave Men of The Glorious Imperial Navy, and one or two Ogres:

The Imperial Forces
Captain Frankendrak of the Imperial Navy, with his lucky Eel's foot
6 Swordsmen of the Imperial Marines
3 Sailors with Guns
A Free Company of 10 Able Seamen, including the First Mate and Cabin Boy with Fife

The Ogres
1 Ogre Bull (the Bosun, by name of 'Eadbutt')
1 Ogre in a Pirate Hat (the Captain, by the name of Smashgut Smearbrains)
3 Gnoblars
1 Surprising Gorger (the Thing from Below Decks)

Report

Turn 1:
The ogres exhibited their cowardly nature by tactically advancing behind covering terrain.
The sailors of the Empire shuffled about and drank some rum. Some fired their guns in the air in high spirits.

Turn 2:
The Ogre Bosun decided to climb a hill, while the Captain wandered through a wood near to the Marines. I think they fancied themselves Explorers! The Gnoblars foolishly placed themselves directly in front of the Marines.
The Sharp-shooting Sailors managed to wing the Ogre Bosun, who was standing on the hill shouting 'Please Shoot Me, Gallant Seamen'. The Marines charged the gnoblars, who Unexpectedly Fled! leaving the marines in a tactically challenging position.

Turn 3:
The ogre captain Completely Unexpectedly charged the Marines in the Flank! One or two were killed, but the rest brandished their weapons in defiance. Meanwhile, a horror from the dark below decks myseteriously appeared Behind The Imperial Ranks!
The Imperial Captain stepped up, manfully accepting a challenge issued by the ogre 'captain', and received a wound for his trouble, while the Able Seamen turned to face the new threat.

Turn 4:
The insignificant gnoblars, having regrouped, attempted to charge the already embattled Marines, but the Sharp-shooting Sailors filled them with Hot Lead, and their meagre courage failed. The ogre in the silly hat again challenged the Brave Captain of the Empire, who Sensibly Declined, and retired for a cup of grog. Whereupon, the ogre began dismembering his men again, and they turned tail and fled, both captain and marines being cut down in the ensuing chase. Let this be a lesson to all captains: Stay On Your Ship and Use Cannon! Seeing their captain leading the way off the field of battle, the Able Seamen, upon being attacked rather too bloodily by the Thing from Below Decks, decided to follow his example. Unfortunately, they too were caught and eaten.
This left Three Sailors with Guns on the side of the Empire, and they turned to face the ogre captain, who was bearing down upon them with rapidity.

Turn 5:
The ogre captain belowed and charged the three Sailors, who decided to empty their bladders and withdraw. The Ogre captain, however, was too close to be escaped. And thus the battle ended, with an ever so narrow victory for the Uncivilised Ogre Thugs.

Aftermath:
It turned out that the Empire's Secret Goal was to control quarters of the battlefield, which they failed to do by dint of having No Men. It came to light that the ogres' goal was the same, which they had rather more success in, having been less completely annihilated.

Lessons learnt:
1. Ogres are Hard.
2. Tactical positioning is not just for Poncy Bretonnians.
3. 200 points isn't enough to buy a Steam Tank.

Political Thoughts

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:05:05 GMT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/nov/23/palin-sowing-seeds-destruction-america

A good commentary on the Sarah Palin situation (I'm too terrified to call it a 'phenomenon') but it contradicts itself in the middle:

"It would be easy to discount her as just a media phenomenon who would go away if we stopped talking about her"

"every time she is taunted she becomes more popular"

I am more and more convinced that - certainly with pundits, probably with politicians themselves - we fuel them by mocking them. They are the boy in kindergarten who used to eat the worms - the negative attention was what drove him onward, to disgust more and more. And the only way to stop them is to completely ignore them. To be disgusted even in the slightest was to ensure it would never end.

Do I think if we stopped mocking and exposing Beck, Coulter and Limbaugh for the vampires they are that they would stop existing? No. But they know quotes like "when they start shooting at you, you know you're in the right" and the mockery makes them bolder and more furious and far more assured of their own pure, untouchable inane dogma-babble. And their fans hear the mockery and go siege-like into deeper fandom, as is human nature. And the media sees the war and makes money out of it, because shock and disgust sells newspapers, just like car accidents and birth deformities.

In short, I believe Glenn Beck is our fault. Sarah Palin may be as well. Large chunks of the republicans seem to be driving to the extreme for exactly these reasons. We need to stop pointing and laughing before we get nothing but the politicians we despise, because hate makes headlines and headlines win elections. But on the other hand, in the face of this insanity, what else can you do but laugh ... except, ala Mencken, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats?

The Potatos Have Eyes

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:24:37 GMT

Write through the pain, as they say. So the nice people on RPGNet asked for a WFRP adventure to help me out of a deep, deep funk. I asked for two words, and three people responded. Figured the result was decent enough for a more general airing:

our words were:

Devil
General
Nurgle
Swine
Jewelery
Potatoes

So here we go with the horrible tale of Die Kartoffelaugen or The Potatoes Have Eyes!

Devils are rare in Warhammer - it's usually daemons we speak of. But there is the Devil's Cauldron, north of Twin Falls, a crater made by falling warpstone. The warpstone itself has been long since claimed by Dagmar von Wittgenstein (see Death on the Reik) but the land around it never recovered. The druids/jade magicians nearby keep an eye on it but they can't reclaim the land. And word of this place reached the ears of one Baron von Rachesucher. Twenty years ago, an upstart young lieutenant made the mistake of marrying Rachesucher's daughter...and then continuing to tomcat around with a girl in every port. Twenty years later, now-General Fuegepanzen retired and was granted by the army, for grateful service, his own plot of land with a manor and villages to tend the fields. Guess who was in charge of deciding which bit of land to give him? And guess where the land just happened to be?

Always a resourceful fellow, Fuegepanzen makes a good go of trying to farm his land in the Cauldron. Unfortunately everything dies, until he hits on the idea of trying potatoes, the new wonder crop from the New World. When his potatoes come up they have eyes...of jewels. Yes, from a sackload of seeds his fields can produce a purse full of emeralds, emeralds which feel warm to the touch. And when he feeds the rotten potato leftovers to his pigs, they become green and bloated and one of them talks with the voice of Feugepanzen's mother. As the last bit of the General's mind slips away he realises that Rachesucher sent him to this place as a kindness, and he must repay that kindness...by sending his brother-in-law these gems at a wholesale cost - which is still enough to make Feugepanzen filthy rich.

The PCs get involved when they stumble onto a job to take a cartload of potato seeds to a village upriver from Nuln. It's a simple job which pays far more than it should, conditioned on a "no questions asked" clause. Basically, nobody who has heard about the Potato Farm wants to take supplies there any more, but the General is rich enough he can pay danger money to keep his seeds flowing in. The money's good enough that the PCs take the job and everything seems mostly normal when they drop it off...except for the screams from inside the manor house and the bloodsedge growing everywhere and the pig the size of a dragon slowly eating its own arse....but Feugepanzen gives them a bonus bucket of emeralds for their trouble and wishes them well.

Before they can run away, nearby villages beg the PCs to help them get their relatives back. Mages and religious folks will spot the evil in the emeralds. Eventually, they'll realise that something ain't right in the manor house and go in, pistols blazing (or sneaky-like). Feugepanzen is a general and is no push-over, despite being a mad worshipper of Nurgle and the PCs will lose buckets of sanity and wounds cleansing the world of this evil. (You can add mutated servants and horrific nurgle-pigs to make it as hard as you need. DEFINITELY keep the pigs. Pigs are scary as all fuck.) Most importantly though they'll discover that the emeralds are being sold to Rachesucher...who has set up shop as a jeweler to make the most of his brother-in-law's find. (which is why they can't just burn the house down from a distance, too).

Racing back to Nuln they discover Rachesucher sitting in his study with two emeralds in his eye sockets and no skin left on his skull, screaming that he can see all the sickness. From here, you can either end the adventure with a massive town-wide scavenger hunt for all the sold pieces of jewelery OR start a massive Old-World-wide campaign-length scavenger hunt for each piece. Thanks to the powers of the Eyes of Nurgle (for that is what the stones are) looking into one can reveal the location of others, allowing the characters to track the remaining stones even without Rachesucher's sales records. The hunt is on!

And by the by, if anyone does want to strap one of the Eyes to their own socket and wait till morning, they lose their eye (-20% to BS) and gain 1d10/2 Insanity Points but the glowing green thing now in the socket grants them Witchsight and the ability to see disease and sickness. The latter grants them +30% to Heal checks and may offer other situational bonuses (such as to tracking). But of course the mutant eye will need to be covered by a patch lest the bearer be burnt at the stake. And Shallyans will never take an Eye, for that would be trucking with the Fly Lord.

WFRP 3rd ed video from FFG

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:03:53 GMT

Although as you'll see it's becoming sillier and sillier to pretend this is a "3rd edition" in the sense of it following on from 1 and 2 (and indeed, the box doesn't say it's 3rd ed). It is, as Jay says in the film, a whole new way to engage with the Old World. Enjoy!

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/media/front-page-player/player.html

If I hit you with my 3E, you would die

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:58:45 GMT

Look at the SIZE OF THIS THING. :0

Somebody finally picks up my drive-by Mouse Guard snark

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:21:40 GMT

I don't really write to inflame and incite, but I do like to raise some side issues on the fly.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=481666

If anybody sends me Mouse Guard, I'll give it a full and proper review. All I put in that review was what I thought in the two seconds I had to examine it in a store.

Steve

Every now and then, Manfred leaves a letter in my mind

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:44:36 GMT

My dearest Ariette,

Thank you again for your many letters regarding your studies. You are one of the very few individuals I have met in all my years and travels with any insight into these matters, and I join your thoughts to mine with the hope of further understanding this world and our condition within it. It is on this matter that I once again write to you.

You are aware that since my blessed return some ten years ago I have striven to do one thing above all, when I found the time, which was to sit and once again have my portrait painted. As the storm in the north abated, I found I finally had the time to spare, and after the untimely death of the artist, hung the work in my gallery next to the reclaimed works from my last reign at Waldenhof. And there I saw what I sought.

The picture drawn from just a few months before the long march to Hel Fenn does not match the one that now hangs next to it, and I do not mean in the differences that must occur as artists change and styles wash across the ages. The faces are not the same. My hair is now all-but vanished, my eyes pulled back, my teeth more prominent. I do not mean to play the fool and pretend I am no longer a handsome man, nor indeed do I feel weary with age. The simple fact is this: I have changed. Be it my return to the world from the chasm beyond or simply the passing of endless centuries, I have changed. Of course we know of Melchior and Zacharias turning to nought but cadavers of leathered flesh and protudring bone; of course we know that although my great cousin Vladimir was thought by many to be Vashanesh the First, of so long ago, yet many who knew who him then could not mark him now as the same man, we knew, in short, that the lash of time and magic could change a vampire's flesh. But I have died but once, and dabbled in magic with care, and honed my body and mind to be as a fortress against all that might assail them. No man - save one! - and one blasted dwarf, too be fair, has marked me with a blade; no magic spell, save one, has ever gone awry in my research.

And yet I age. I am not, as we thought, out of time, but instead His prisoner, just as all mortals, even the elves, though they and I alike think ourselves free in our arrogance. We are but dogs on a leash, falcons on a wire, rusing to the farthrest end of the strain, only to be pulled back when we most thought ourselves out of bondage. No Time and the waves of magic that course through her whoring robes robs me as it robs the briefest seconds of the life of a dung-fly and there will come a day, some time, when if I do not fall to nothingness from Time's beatings, He will have so robbed me of my strength and senses that others will surely cut me down for their own sakes.

There is then, for the first time, a sense of urgency within me. I feel as if to weep, for there are so many worlds to conquer, and now, as never before, so few years in which to do it. The lash of Time is at my back, and with it I run to the wind, sails full, and strive towards fresh conquests. My appetite is whet, and I know now the taste that so often filled my elder brothers' mouths.

More on this in later correspondence. Consider this...but the sound of drums.

Yours,
M

Toybox for October

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:51:42 GMT

Damn, I really like this idea.

http://www.rpg.net/columns/campaigntoybox/campaigntoybox22.phtml

Grimm Downloads

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:07:19 GMT

Grimm now available in PDF form! All the fun of fairytales gone bad...on the cheap.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=877

What's in the 3e box

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:39:42 GMT

Here's all the piles and piles of stuff you get in your new WFRP 3rd ed box! Enough tokens and cards to choke a horse! A BIG horse!

A Letter to the Game Industry

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:42:57 GMT

Some moron having a hissy fit about this reminded me of this excellent link, which could always use with more rounds. Simple, clear, hopefully a guide to the future.

http://letterstogaming.wordpress.com/

Turn up that dial, and gather the family in the den, for I am once again upon the wireless

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:34:35 GMT

The awesome podcasters of Oz, Here Be Gamers, interviewed me at GenCon! Woo! Sorry for the late notice, I have STILL not sorted through everything from Gen Con. I should be finished by next year's con.

http://www.herebegamers.com/index.php?post_id=536940

I am upon the wireless, once again

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:00:19 GMT

Small but Vicious Podcast interviews me! Woot! Find out the truth about the censored parts of Night's Dark Masters! :0

http://www.d20radio.com/sbv/?p=36

I haven't listened to it yet, hopefully I don't sound like a total douche.