Today, John and I played coop Halo3. We put about 9 hours into it, maybe closer to 8, with interruptions. We finished it. It was alot of fun. Do I think that I got my $60 dollars worth? No. Not really. Granted, I will not be playing it online. But I don't think that I *have* to play a game online in order to appreciate its value. This is not counter-strike.
I'm a little disappointed, because Halo3 was supposed to be the best thing to happen to gaming since.. ever. And instead I got 8ish hours of fun. Don't get me wrong - it was, in fact, fun. But it just doesn't feel like it was $60 fun. To me, in addition to *how much am I enjoying this?*, I also rate games on *for how much time am I enjoying this?*, and so far, I have not managed to beat the value of games like Civ I, II and III, Sim City 1, 2 and 3, the Total War series, most recently, Rome and Medieval II, as well as Hearts of Iron and its sequel (and add ons) Hearts of Iron 2: Doomsday: Armageddon. Each of which I've managed to get easily 75+ hours out of, in some cases, probably a few hundred.
Halo 3 is action packed, and fun. Yknow, I seem to recall Halo 2 being action packed, and fun, and lasting like twice as long as Halo 3.
Hm.
Edit: And here I come, taking it back to the shoppe that I purchased it from!
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Friday, September 28, 2007
The Office
Join my branch of Dunder Mifflin at http://www.dundermifflininfinity.com/
Sign up as an employee in knoxville, tn, with the code: 903mkbfww4
(create an account, then get in and pick knoxville TN from the dropdown list)
Sign up as an employee in knoxville, tn, with the code: 903mkbfww4
(create an account, then get in and pick knoxville TN from the dropdown list)
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Re: Shadowrun of Yesterday, System Does Matter
Jason (one of my players) posted an insightful response here. In which, I either agree with, or at least get where he's coming from.
System Does Matter. That link is an essay from our friend, Ron Edwards, about System. It gets into Narrativist, Gamist, Simulationist, etc. Read it if you're a huge game nerd.
I linked that though, because, well, system does matter. I've been running a Shadowrun of Yesterday game, which is a conversion of Shadowrun to Shadow of Yesterday. Here's the math, for anyone who randomly reads this that isn't a game nerd, and hasn't read back a few pages to see me explain this already. Shadowrun is a near-future, cyberpunk, magic, tech, Usual Suspects and Ronin, dice heavy game. It can be alot of fun. My experience with Shadowrun varies, both from playing and running. Nearly no matter your GM, shadowrun is a game about trying to just fucking live. While trying to get enough karma to initiate, or enough nuyen to get the latest deltaware, or whatever. Like - that's pretty much it for long term motivation in shadowrun. Sure - there's sometimes some "figure out the story-arch mystery" or something. Shadow of Yesterday is totally a narrative game. Its about telling fun and interesting and exciting stories. At least, it is to me. I bet you can already see how these are diverging.
And here's what I'm saying - the game is different. Taking a gamist/simulationist-heavy game like Shadowrun, where your day to day concern is amassing wealth, getting a bigger gun and better armor, and just staying alive, and shoving it into a game like Shadow of Yesterday, where your day to day concerns are Doing Interesting Things and maybe hitting your Keys... well, it creates a different atmosphere. In SroY, you're doing away with the loads of dice from guns, and the shopping lists of gear, and the scraping to try to get that one extra nuyen.
I'm not saying that you can't do a gritty Shadowrun of Yesterday, just that it is not, and can never be the same. Hah. Heck - if you wanted it to be the same, you should still be playing Shadowrun. You could even try a d20 cyberpunk/shadowrun. It'd taste different too.
Death is a pretty heavy motivator in Shadowrun, and its not in SroY. At least, it hasn't been. I suppose that you could tweak the stakes to more closely emulate shadowrun.... maybe that's not such a bad idea. "You win, the two bodyguards are dead. The walls are riddled with bullets, two or three innocent passers-by lie in pools of blood, and the mark stands trembling, untouched. You lose: The bodyguards fired back, and quick. You're bleeding, your companions are bleeding. You are low on ammo and the bodyguards have reinforcements on the way. Its about to get interesting".
More later.
System Does Matter. That link is an essay from our friend, Ron Edwards, about System. It gets into Narrativist, Gamist, Simulationist, etc. Read it if you're a huge game nerd.
I linked that though, because, well, system does matter. I've been running a Shadowrun of Yesterday game, which is a conversion of Shadowrun to Shadow of Yesterday. Here's the math, for anyone who randomly reads this that isn't a game nerd, and hasn't read back a few pages to see me explain this already. Shadowrun is a near-future, cyberpunk, magic, tech, Usual Suspects and Ronin, dice heavy game. It can be alot of fun. My experience with Shadowrun varies, both from playing and running. Nearly no matter your GM, shadowrun is a game about trying to just fucking live. While trying to get enough karma to initiate, or enough nuyen to get the latest deltaware, or whatever. Like - that's pretty much it for long term motivation in shadowrun. Sure - there's sometimes some "figure out the story-arch mystery" or something. Shadow of Yesterday is totally a narrative game. Its about telling fun and interesting and exciting stories. At least, it is to me. I bet you can already see how these are diverging.
And here's what I'm saying - the game is different. Taking a gamist/simulationist-heavy game like Shadowrun, where your day to day concern is amassing wealth, getting a bigger gun and better armor, and just staying alive, and shoving it into a game like Shadow of Yesterday, where your day to day concerns are Doing Interesting Things and maybe hitting your Keys... well, it creates a different atmosphere. In SroY, you're doing away with the loads of dice from guns, and the shopping lists of gear, and the scraping to try to get that one extra nuyen.
I'm not saying that you can't do a gritty Shadowrun of Yesterday, just that it is not, and can never be the same. Hah. Heck - if you wanted it to be the same, you should still be playing Shadowrun. You could even try a d20 cyberpunk/shadowrun. It'd taste different too.
Death is a pretty heavy motivator in Shadowrun, and its not in SroY. At least, it hasn't been. I suppose that you could tweak the stakes to more closely emulate shadowrun.... maybe that's not such a bad idea. "You win, the two bodyguards are dead. The walls are riddled with bullets, two or three innocent passers-by lie in pools of blood, and the mark stands trembling, untouched. You lose: The bodyguards fired back, and quick. You're bleeding, your companions are bleeding. You are low on ammo and the bodyguards have reinforcements on the way. Its about to get interesting".
More later.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Movies
Saw 3:10 to Yuma, and Eastern Promises.
Enjoyed both. Recommend both. I like a good western - 3:10 made me sad when I realized that I somehow do not own Unforgiven, and I desperately wanted to watch it. Eastern Promises: I like mafia flicks, bonus points for Russian mafia.
Enjoyed both. Recommend both. I like a good western - 3:10 made me sad when I realized that I somehow do not own Unforgiven, and I desperately wanted to watch it. Eastern Promises: I like mafia flicks, bonus points for Russian mafia.
A Secret to GMing fun games
Here is a secret to running a fun game.
Take the current situation that the players are in.
Try to imagine, from their perspective, "What is the coolest thing that could happen next?",
And make that happen. And repeat, until the session is over.
I just ran a long delayed second session of Shadowrun of Yesterday, and I feel like it was a smashing success.
To briefly recap - in previous sessions, the group had to infiltrate an offshore, secret, highly secure, corporate facility - and steal a new prototype cybernetic arm. They'd managed to get onto the island, and into the research building, when the ran into a couple of angry cyberzombies.
Thanks to the beauty of Shadowrun of Yesterday, this did not mean immediate player death, or hours and hours of combat resolution. No - instead it was the team being pursued by the cyberzombies.
We started this session - having left the last one on a cliffhanger. They'd tied up with the two cyberzombies, and ran, since they were WAY out of their league. As we opened, the cyberzombies were charging down the hall in pursuit of the team. The team had just made the elevator, and frantically pushed the "Close Door" button - as the cyberzombies, one with a reticulating mini-gun mount, poured bullets into the elevator. Just as the doors were sliding closed, the lead cyberzombie got its metal fingers into the door, and began prying them back open. Our team started exiting through the hatch in the ceiling of the elevator, as they tried to slow down the zombies, jamming their targeting computers. They thought they'd escaped when their street sam got grabbed by one of the cyberzombies. Our demolitions expert hopped back down into the elevator, undid the armor that the cyberzombie was holding our street sam by, and as the orc mage pulled him up through the hatch onto the top of the elevator, the demo expert ducked around the cyberzombies, tagging each with an explosive charge, and darting down the hall. The explosives went off behind her, knocking one zombie into the elevator, and the other through a wall in the hallway. The four shadowrunners on top of the elevator began to climb the ladder within the shaft, as the cyberzombie inside the elevator got back up and ripped the top off of the elevator. The zombie was nearly the maximum weight of this elevator, and with the additional explosions and gunfire, our street sam shot away one of the last tension cables, sending the zombie and the elevator plummeting down into the depths. Meanwhile, the demo expert found herself trapped in a hall, a cyberzombie behind her, and a six man security response team in front of her. She was wearing a uniform of the corp security guys, so she managed to convince the team that she was just one of them, and she skirted past them, leaving them to deal with the zombie. She caught back up with the rest of her team on the floor above. They ducked into a side room to take a breath and figure out where the prototype had gone. I forgot to mention, during the previous session, they made it to the room where the prototype was supposed to be, only to find it empty. Some guards nearby though were discussing how it was being moved. The discovered at this point that they had a little PDA device that happened to be a tracking device for the prototype. Handy!! They saw that the prototype was moving, above them, on the surface, into what seemed to be a helicopter! They quickly began to formulate a plan for getting up there and intercepting it, when they heard a bloodcurdling scream from the hallway outside, followed by a crunch. They became very quiet, and began looking for an alternative way of leaving the room, since their friend(s) the cyberzombie(s), were looking for them. They began crawling, one at a time into a ventilation shaft that ran horizontally from the room, and just as the last one was climbing into the shaft, the door to the room opened, and a cyberzombie peered into the room. It charged like a defensive tackle, as the demo expert leapt into the duct. The rest of the team, a little ahead, hit the verticle intersection and began climbing up. The demo expert scrambled through the duct, as the cyberzombie grasped the ductwork, and began pulling it out of the wall, like a hollow metal worm (with a shadowrunner inside it). The demo expert scrambled to get out the other end of the shaft before she was pulled out into the hands of the zombie. She threw a grenade down the duct toward the zombie, and used the confusion to get clear of the ductwork. Once the zombie pulleed it on through, she scrambled to the still-remaining vertical ductwork and climbed up to join her team.. as two grenades skittered into the shaft from the zombies, and she cleared the top just before they went off. The team found itself atop a single story building, overlooking part of the corporate facility. South of them was a small airfield and associated buildings, and to the east, a small armored vehicle motor park where a whole platoon of Security officers were changing shift. From the airfield, a heavy armored helicopter was taking off, which according to their little tracking device, was where the prototype was. They couldn't shoot down the chopper, as it could damage the prototype. Also on the airfield was another heavy armored helo, and two smaller helicopters, and a fuel truck. Just about then, they heard a bang from beneath them, and observed that a door to the building that they were on top of had burst open, and a team of security troops were running out of the building, firing back into the building, from where they'd just come. Creating a distraction, our combat mage let fly a massive Mana Ball, taking out half of the security platoon to the east, and sending the rest scattering. The street sam also shot the fellow who was turning up the parked heavy armored helo. The pilot took one through the head and collapsed forward onto the controls, sending the helo rolling forward toward the fuel truck. They leapt from the building, to run to the airstrip, about 100 yards away from them. The mage threw up a bullet barrier, which was timely, since the two cyberzombies were throwing hundreds and hundreds of rounds their way, from their assault rifles and minigun. They ran across the pavement, making a fast hole through the fence, and got to the grounded coptor before it hit the fuel truck. Bear in mind that the other heavy armored coptor - with the prototype - was now a hundred feet into the air and on its way East. The zombie that was closest to them charged toward their newly hijacked helicopter, but our rigger tilted the main rotor axis, letting them dip toward the zombie and cutting it in half. The top half continued to fire its assault rifle at them, nonetheless, but would no longer pursue them. They made it into the air, but the second cyberzombie, now pulling a chain-link fence behind it, leapt up and grabbed onto the helicopter. The demo expert leaned out and stuck a charge to it, blowing it to pieces, and nearly destroying their getaway helicopter. They turned in the direction of their escaping quarry, dodged a few surface to air missiles, and continued the pursuit over puget sound, toward Seattle. They threw a magical confusion spell onto the pilot of the enemy chopper, and were able to catch up, exchanging minigun and sniper fire with it - then using deceit to convince them that they were a response team, *not* the shadowrun team. They told them that they were to swap cargo in order to confuse the shadowrun team, and so both choppers landed at an unused corp facility near Seattle. They managed to continue the facade, deceiving them into believing that they were Ares employees. They got the prototype, and were loading onto their chopper, when they overheard a radio call coming in, blowing their cover "crackle, the shadowrun team is on the second armored chopper!crackle", The Ares chopper opened up with its minigun, as our shadowrun team opened right back up on them in turn. Still confused, the enemy pilot began to steer away from our team's chopper, but another cyberzombie in the helicopter leaned out, and fired a freaking lance, like a grappling hook, at the chopper. It thunked into the tail section, and the zombie jumped out of the enemy chopper, and proceeded to zip up the line toward our team's helicopter. The demo expert jumped onto the wing, and used the handholds to walk along the outside of the chopper as it flew toward seattle - she reached the lance and planted a small charge on it, blowing it apart with only a few seconds to spare, before the cyberzombie reached her and the helo.
They made it the rest of the way into seattle, setting down on a helipad on top of a hospital, right as a couple of Ares attack helicopters showed up, and started spraying the top of the hospital and the helipad with chaingun fire. Dodging a security team in the hospital, the team tried their best to blend with the hospital staff and patients, even as they became aware of Ares security vehicles pulling up outside the hospital. They discovered that there was a subway stop in the 2nd basement level of the hospital, that they made a b-line for. The hospital's security rigger shut everything down though, and Ares and Knight Errant began a security sweet through the building. Our rigger overrode the elevator controls and continued down, making it to the 2nd basement level before getting shut down by the enemy security rigger. However, another security team was there waiting for them. Our demo expert marched out front, and declared that she had a dead-man's switch and was loaded with explosives, and would level the entire block if they tested her. They bought it, and backed off. After a tense standoff, they cut off the security team's communications, and then convinced them of the benefit to letting them escape. They got onto the subway, and were away to their destination.
Okay - that wasn't as brief a recap as I'd intended. But that's cool too.
Couple of observations
Shadow of Yesterday rocks, as does Shadowrun of Yesterday. Seems to me that you get to use the stakes to create situations that you could never get in more typical role playing games.
Loved using the cyberzombies. Used stakes to quickly make it apparent that the most that they could do was to make the zombies more pissed off, as they were nigh-indestructible. They were an excellent plot device in the adventure, letting me lightly push the players around.
I used alot of action movie railroading. Different than normal RPG railroading - in normal RPG railroading you just refuse to let the players do anything other than what you want them to do. In action movie railroading - all roads lead to rome. Or to the mcguffin. Or whatever. When the sewers led to the facility led to the elevators led to the stairs led to the air vents... it all led to the thing that they were after. Oh and the little PDA tracking device? One of my favorites of the evening. I made it up on the spot, intentionally to keep them hot on the heels of what they'd come for, instead of sitting around wondering where to go next. The helicopter chase? I all but begged them to hijack one of the helicopters. Helicopter chase scenes are alot of fun. Especially when they involve miniguns and combat mages.
Pleased that I was able to use my Key of the Team Player to reward Andrew, our young player, and gun junkie, to pass on a wildly chaotic and selfish action that would have created more problems in the game and more tension among the players. By passing on the opportunity to do something that was beneficial to him - in this case, shoot someone - he got XP. And kept the rest of the players happy. And perhaps got more XP for Team Player than he would have for the other key. :)
Shadowrun of Yesterday is different than Shadowrun. Shadowrun was incredibly gritty, and dangerous. I've tuned SroY to be gritty, but I'm willingly going with - or I have been for this mission anyway - the over the top action that you'd associate with John Woo and Mission Impossible. And I loved it. Seriously, like I love most all of my gaming, but few game sessions are as much raw fun as this. I don't think we had any real breaks in the action. I didn't linger painfully over anything - it was action, then intro to more action. As I'm able to play more SroY, I'll strive to do some gritty stuff. This was an excellent exercise and intro to the game and the system. As I discussed with Jason, one of the most easily definable differences is that there's not so much risk of death. In Shadowrun, you have to play it smart, just to stay alive. Which is cool, and is kinda part of what Shadowrun is, but easily leads to frustration when the dice don't fall right, or the plan doesn't work out quite right. In SroY though, I can use stakes to create consequences, but usually its leverage for more tense and exciting action. Its a whole different mechanic. In Shadowrun the anti-negative reinforcement is trying to keep your hit points, so you don't.. well.. die. In SroY, well, I dunno, I guess they're just trying to succeed and to get to the next scene. Alright - I have not defined this as well as I'd like, so I'll give it a shot again some other time.
Two favorite stakes in conflicts:
1> When the third cyberzombie lanced their chopper, and was zipping up toward it, Jax, the Demo Expert, announced that she was going out onto the body of the helicopter to affix explosives to the lance, to get rid of the zombie before it reached the chopper. We went to dice (keeps it dynamic, yo!), and initially I said that stakes were if she won, she'd blown the charge, the line fell away, but the zombie vanished beneath the chopper, and had grabbed onto one of the wheels.. if she lost, then as she was priming her explosive charge, and about to set it, she looked over and right into the face of the cyberzombie, which had just completed its zip-up to the chopper. She didn't like that either way the cyberzombie was still a threat, so we renegotiated the stakes - if she won, the line fell away, as did the cyberzombie, if she lost, then Jax lost her grip on the helo, and began to fall, but caught on to what was available - the zip line, and slid down 10 feet, but stopped sliding when she met the cyberzombie coming up the line. Now picture them both suspended from a cable 10 feet beneath the flying chopper. We liked these stakes and rolled 'em. She won.
2> The 'runners found themselves perched on the roof of a building overlooking the facility, airfield, motor pool, platoon of guards. Our combat mage wanted to create a distraction, and then settled on doing so, while at the same time, trying to reduce or eliminate the threat posed by the large group of armed security guys. He wanted to pump up a spell that would take like 25 of the guards. I've developed a strategy that I try to avoid having the players *fail*, if the dice come up not in their favor, their effort often succeeded, just with a different outcome than they'd expected. In this situation, we setup stakes that if the mage was successful, 25 of the security guys hit the ground, and the rest scattered, running for cover, firing blindly and without direction at everything around them, totally disorganized. While if the mage failed, 25 of the security guys hit the ground, the commander barked out "MAGE! Roof, 9 o'clock!" and the other 25 trained their assault rifles on the corner of the building where I team was crouched, and began unloading on them. It woulda gotten hairy. He succeeded though.
More out of game action:
The game seemed to flow incredibly well. All of my players seemed to be on top of their game, and I felt like I was on top of my game. Everyone was just on it. Stakes negotiation went well nearly 100% of the time. Once or twice I recall spending more than a couple of seconds, trying to come up with fun and interesting stakes, but most of them seemed to roll right off of my tongue. The players pitched in as well, suggesting stakes, or suggesting ways to renegotiate stakes a few times. Everyone was involved in the action, actively listening and participating.
The Gift Dice flowed. Davery handed his last gift dice out at the close of the game. I'm not sure how many the other folks had, but I know players were willingly offering, and at times soliciting the gift dice. As GM, I rarely give out gift dice. I often use only one or two a session. I make it very clear to the players that gift dice are meant to be given out when someone does something REALLY cool, or that you really really want them to succeed. I hand them out when someone seems to be in a bit of a bind, or when I do want them to succeed, but honestly, in this game, I kinda wanted to see them lose the stakes a few times, so intentionally withheld gift dice that might have otherwise given out for doing cool stuff. I wanted to see them lose, because the stakes that we'd setup were just so freaking cool. Like falling and sliding down the zip line to the cyberzombie? I wanted to see her get out of that one. :) I did use a gift dice as a bribe. The group was trying to figure out how to bring down the helicopter with the prototype in it. They weighed two or three options, and hijacking one of the other choppers was mentioned, at which point I held up a dice, and told the player that I'd give him a gift dice toward any action that he took that involved hijacking the other chopper. I wasn't going to force it on them, but I felt no shame in encouraging it.
XP flowed as well. I think that for the first half of the session (we played a full 4 and a half hours), very little XP was grabbed. At one point, either I noticed this, or someone commented on XP, I paused the game and asked everyone to study their Keys, and make sure that they knew what their keys were and how to hit them, and to PLEASE TAKE XP. They got right on board with it. Everyone hit keys. At the end of the session, we still had some questions about XP, for instance the Key of the First Person, a Meta-game key. We discussed how the 1xp bits of the Keys were practically "gimme's", that there were few or no reasons not to max the 3 hit limit for your 1xp bits, for each of your Keys. We briefly discussed the concept behind keys, to help reinforce how it should work - how you get 1 xp for just doing something associated with "Your Thing" (meaning: your Key), and you should get the 3 or 2/5 hit when you're doing "Your Thing" under some kind of duress or inconvenience. I think everyone got 10 or more XP during the game, and some may have gotten 15 .
Buy-in to the game world continued to go well. It is Shadowrun, a cyberpunk future/magic game with guns that have wireless network cards, technomancers, elementals, and freaking laser guns. I am not enough of a nerd to have 100% understanding of how everything works/is supposed to work, and so I frequently make shit up. "The cyberzombie's targetting computer for its minigun? Can you hack it? Um... Sure!". Fuck checking the rules.
Oh - missed two more things:
Would you believe that we did not once Bring Down the Pain? I was a little surprised. I'm not complaining though. I kinda feel like some BdtP would have messed up the pace and action of the game.. The players mostly rolled well, and I generously let ties go to them. They lost stakes a few times, but were willing to live with the results.
Going to dice: I found that I was constantly saying "You wanna go to dice?" or "Lets go to the dice". A number of times, I was more than willing to just say Yes, but even when they're successful, it seems like the chance of win/loss ups the stakes and buy-in for the player. Our street sam wanted to snipe the pilot of one helo while it was on the ground. I almost said, "Okay, you snipe the pilot. What next?" but instead, I offered to make it more interesting and go to dice. Win or lose the pilot was dead, but we'd find out if the guards near it went for the heavy machine gun or not. None of the players were ever displeased with the prospect of going to dice. Often, they would pick up the dice and warm them, as the action drove toward a conflict, which I took as my signal to grab my own dice.
Take the current situation that the players are in.
Try to imagine, from their perspective, "What is the coolest thing that could happen next?",
And make that happen. And repeat, until the session is over.
I just ran a long delayed second session of Shadowrun of Yesterday, and I feel like it was a smashing success.
To briefly recap - in previous sessions, the group had to infiltrate an offshore, secret, highly secure, corporate facility - and steal a new prototype cybernetic arm. They'd managed to get onto the island, and into the research building, when the ran into a couple of angry cyberzombies.
Thanks to the beauty of Shadowrun of Yesterday, this did not mean immediate player death, or hours and hours of combat resolution. No - instead it was the team being pursued by the cyberzombies.
We started this session - having left the last one on a cliffhanger. They'd tied up with the two cyberzombies, and ran, since they were WAY out of their league. As we opened, the cyberzombies were charging down the hall in pursuit of the team. The team had just made the elevator, and frantically pushed the "Close Door" button - as the cyberzombies, one with a reticulating mini-gun mount, poured bullets into the elevator. Just as the doors were sliding closed, the lead cyberzombie got its metal fingers into the door, and began prying them back open. Our team started exiting through the hatch in the ceiling of the elevator, as they tried to slow down the zombies, jamming their targeting computers. They thought they'd escaped when their street sam got grabbed by one of the cyberzombies. Our demolitions expert hopped back down into the elevator, undid the armor that the cyberzombie was holding our street sam by, and as the orc mage pulled him up through the hatch onto the top of the elevator, the demo expert ducked around the cyberzombies, tagging each with an explosive charge, and darting down the hall. The explosives went off behind her, knocking one zombie into the elevator, and the other through a wall in the hallway. The four shadowrunners on top of the elevator began to climb the ladder within the shaft, as the cyberzombie inside the elevator got back up and ripped the top off of the elevator. The zombie was nearly the maximum weight of this elevator, and with the additional explosions and gunfire, our street sam shot away one of the last tension cables, sending the zombie and the elevator plummeting down into the depths. Meanwhile, the demo expert found herself trapped in a hall, a cyberzombie behind her, and a six man security response team in front of her. She was wearing a uniform of the corp security guys, so she managed to convince the team that she was just one of them, and she skirted past them, leaving them to deal with the zombie. She caught back up with the rest of her team on the floor above. They ducked into a side room to take a breath and figure out where the prototype had gone. I forgot to mention, during the previous session, they made it to the room where the prototype was supposed to be, only to find it empty. Some guards nearby though were discussing how it was being moved. The discovered at this point that they had a little PDA device that happened to be a tracking device for the prototype. Handy!! They saw that the prototype was moving, above them, on the surface, into what seemed to be a helicopter! They quickly began to formulate a plan for getting up there and intercepting it, when they heard a bloodcurdling scream from the hallway outside, followed by a crunch. They became very quiet, and began looking for an alternative way of leaving the room, since their friend(s) the cyberzombie(s), were looking for them. They began crawling, one at a time into a ventilation shaft that ran horizontally from the room, and just as the last one was climbing into the shaft, the door to the room opened, and a cyberzombie peered into the room. It charged like a defensive tackle, as the demo expert leapt into the duct. The rest of the team, a little ahead, hit the verticle intersection and began climbing up. The demo expert scrambled through the duct, as the cyberzombie grasped the ductwork, and began pulling it out of the wall, like a hollow metal worm (with a shadowrunner inside it). The demo expert scrambled to get out the other end of the shaft before she was pulled out into the hands of the zombie. She threw a grenade down the duct toward the zombie, and used the confusion to get clear of the ductwork. Once the zombie pulleed it on through, she scrambled to the still-remaining vertical ductwork and climbed up to join her team.. as two grenades skittered into the shaft from the zombies, and she cleared the top just before they went off. The team found itself atop a single story building, overlooking part of the corporate facility. South of them was a small airfield and associated buildings, and to the east, a small armored vehicle motor park where a whole platoon of Security officers were changing shift. From the airfield, a heavy armored helicopter was taking off, which according to their little tracking device, was where the prototype was. They couldn't shoot down the chopper, as it could damage the prototype. Also on the airfield was another heavy armored helo, and two smaller helicopters, and a fuel truck. Just about then, they heard a bang from beneath them, and observed that a door to the building that they were on top of had burst open, and a team of security troops were running out of the building, firing back into the building, from where they'd just come. Creating a distraction, our combat mage let fly a massive Mana Ball, taking out half of the security platoon to the east, and sending the rest scattering. The street sam also shot the fellow who was turning up the parked heavy armored helo. The pilot took one through the head and collapsed forward onto the controls, sending the helo rolling forward toward the fuel truck. They leapt from the building, to run to the airstrip, about 100 yards away from them. The mage threw up a bullet barrier, which was timely, since the two cyberzombies were throwing hundreds and hundreds of rounds their way, from their assault rifles and minigun. They ran across the pavement, making a fast hole through the fence, and got to the grounded coptor before it hit the fuel truck. Bear in mind that the other heavy armored coptor - with the prototype - was now a hundred feet into the air and on its way East. The zombie that was closest to them charged toward their newly hijacked helicopter, but our rigger tilted the main rotor axis, letting them dip toward the zombie and cutting it in half. The top half continued to fire its assault rifle at them, nonetheless, but would no longer pursue them. They made it into the air, but the second cyberzombie, now pulling a chain-link fence behind it, leapt up and grabbed onto the helicopter. The demo expert leaned out and stuck a charge to it, blowing it to pieces, and nearly destroying their getaway helicopter. They turned in the direction of their escaping quarry, dodged a few surface to air missiles, and continued the pursuit over puget sound, toward Seattle. They threw a magical confusion spell onto the pilot of the enemy chopper, and were able to catch up, exchanging minigun and sniper fire with it - then using deceit to convince them that they were a response team, *not* the shadowrun team. They told them that they were to swap cargo in order to confuse the shadowrun team, and so both choppers landed at an unused corp facility near Seattle. They managed to continue the facade, deceiving them into believing that they were Ares employees. They got the prototype, and were loading onto their chopper, when they overheard a radio call coming in, blowing their cover "crackle, the shadowrun team is on the second armored chopper!crackle", The Ares chopper opened up with its minigun, as our shadowrun team opened right back up on them in turn. Still confused, the enemy pilot began to steer away from our team's chopper, but another cyberzombie in the helicopter leaned out, and fired a freaking lance, like a grappling hook, at the chopper. It thunked into the tail section, and the zombie jumped out of the enemy chopper, and proceeded to zip up the line toward our team's helicopter. The demo expert jumped onto the wing, and used the handholds to walk along the outside of the chopper as it flew toward seattle - she reached the lance and planted a small charge on it, blowing it apart with only a few seconds to spare, before the cyberzombie reached her and the helo.
They made it the rest of the way into seattle, setting down on a helipad on top of a hospital, right as a couple of Ares attack helicopters showed up, and started spraying the top of the hospital and the helipad with chaingun fire. Dodging a security team in the hospital, the team tried their best to blend with the hospital staff and patients, even as they became aware of Ares security vehicles pulling up outside the hospital. They discovered that there was a subway stop in the 2nd basement level of the hospital, that they made a b-line for. The hospital's security rigger shut everything down though, and Ares and Knight Errant began a security sweet through the building. Our rigger overrode the elevator controls and continued down, making it to the 2nd basement level before getting shut down by the enemy security rigger. However, another security team was there waiting for them. Our demo expert marched out front, and declared that she had a dead-man's switch and was loaded with explosives, and would level the entire block if they tested her. They bought it, and backed off. After a tense standoff, they cut off the security team's communications, and then convinced them of the benefit to letting them escape. They got onto the subway, and were away to their destination.
Okay - that wasn't as brief a recap as I'd intended. But that's cool too.
Couple of observations
Shadow of Yesterday rocks, as does Shadowrun of Yesterday. Seems to me that you get to use the stakes to create situations that you could never get in more typical role playing games.
Loved using the cyberzombies. Used stakes to quickly make it apparent that the most that they could do was to make the zombies more pissed off, as they were nigh-indestructible. They were an excellent plot device in the adventure, letting me lightly push the players around.
I used alot of action movie railroading. Different than normal RPG railroading - in normal RPG railroading you just refuse to let the players do anything other than what you want them to do. In action movie railroading - all roads lead to rome. Or to the mcguffin. Or whatever. When the sewers led to the facility led to the elevators led to the stairs led to the air vents... it all led to the thing that they were after. Oh and the little PDA tracking device? One of my favorites of the evening. I made it up on the spot, intentionally to keep them hot on the heels of what they'd come for, instead of sitting around wondering where to go next. The helicopter chase? I all but begged them to hijack one of the helicopters. Helicopter chase scenes are alot of fun. Especially when they involve miniguns and combat mages.
Pleased that I was able to use my Key of the Team Player to reward Andrew, our young player, and gun junkie, to pass on a wildly chaotic and selfish action that would have created more problems in the game and more tension among the players. By passing on the opportunity to do something that was beneficial to him - in this case, shoot someone - he got XP. And kept the rest of the players happy. And perhaps got more XP for Team Player than he would have for the other key. :)
Shadowrun of Yesterday is different than Shadowrun. Shadowrun was incredibly gritty, and dangerous. I've tuned SroY to be gritty, but I'm willingly going with - or I have been for this mission anyway - the over the top action that you'd associate with John Woo and Mission Impossible. And I loved it. Seriously, like I love most all of my gaming, but few game sessions are as much raw fun as this. I don't think we had any real breaks in the action. I didn't linger painfully over anything - it was action, then intro to more action. As I'm able to play more SroY, I'll strive to do some gritty stuff. This was an excellent exercise and intro to the game and the system. As I discussed with Jason, one of the most easily definable differences is that there's not so much risk of death. In Shadowrun, you have to play it smart, just to stay alive. Which is cool, and is kinda part of what Shadowrun is, but easily leads to frustration when the dice don't fall right, or the plan doesn't work out quite right. In SroY though, I can use stakes to create consequences, but usually its leverage for more tense and exciting action. Its a whole different mechanic. In Shadowrun the anti-negative reinforcement is trying to keep your hit points, so you don't.. well.. die. In SroY, well, I dunno, I guess they're just trying to succeed and to get to the next scene. Alright - I have not defined this as well as I'd like, so I'll give it a shot again some other time.
Two favorite stakes in conflicts:
1> When the third cyberzombie lanced their chopper, and was zipping up toward it, Jax, the Demo Expert, announced that she was going out onto the body of the helicopter to affix explosives to the lance, to get rid of the zombie before it reached the chopper. We went to dice (keeps it dynamic, yo!), and initially I said that stakes were if she won, she'd blown the charge, the line fell away, but the zombie vanished beneath the chopper, and had grabbed onto one of the wheels.. if she lost, then as she was priming her explosive charge, and about to set it, she looked over and right into the face of the cyberzombie, which had just completed its zip-up to the chopper. She didn't like that either way the cyberzombie was still a threat, so we renegotiated the stakes - if she won, the line fell away, as did the cyberzombie, if she lost, then Jax lost her grip on the helo, and began to fall, but caught on to what was available - the zip line, and slid down 10 feet, but stopped sliding when she met the cyberzombie coming up the line. Now picture them both suspended from a cable 10 feet beneath the flying chopper. We liked these stakes and rolled 'em. She won.
2> The 'runners found themselves perched on the roof of a building overlooking the facility, airfield, motor pool, platoon of guards. Our combat mage wanted to create a distraction, and then settled on doing so, while at the same time, trying to reduce or eliminate the threat posed by the large group of armed security guys. He wanted to pump up a spell that would take like 25 of the guards. I've developed a strategy that I try to avoid having the players *fail*, if the dice come up not in their favor, their effort often succeeded, just with a different outcome than they'd expected. In this situation, we setup stakes that if the mage was successful, 25 of the security guys hit the ground, and the rest scattered, running for cover, firing blindly and without direction at everything around them, totally disorganized. While if the mage failed, 25 of the security guys hit the ground, the commander barked out "MAGE! Roof, 9 o'clock!" and the other 25 trained their assault rifles on the corner of the building where I team was crouched, and began unloading on them. It woulda gotten hairy. He succeeded though.
More out of game action:
The game seemed to flow incredibly well. All of my players seemed to be on top of their game, and I felt like I was on top of my game. Everyone was just on it. Stakes negotiation went well nearly 100% of the time. Once or twice I recall spending more than a couple of seconds, trying to come up with fun and interesting stakes, but most of them seemed to roll right off of my tongue. The players pitched in as well, suggesting stakes, or suggesting ways to renegotiate stakes a few times. Everyone was involved in the action, actively listening and participating.
The Gift Dice flowed. Davery handed his last gift dice out at the close of the game. I'm not sure how many the other folks had, but I know players were willingly offering, and at times soliciting the gift dice. As GM, I rarely give out gift dice. I often use only one or two a session. I make it very clear to the players that gift dice are meant to be given out when someone does something REALLY cool, or that you really really want them to succeed. I hand them out when someone seems to be in a bit of a bind, or when I do want them to succeed, but honestly, in this game, I kinda wanted to see them lose the stakes a few times, so intentionally withheld gift dice that might have otherwise given out for doing cool stuff. I wanted to see them lose, because the stakes that we'd setup were just so freaking cool. Like falling and sliding down the zip line to the cyberzombie? I wanted to see her get out of that one. :) I did use a gift dice as a bribe. The group was trying to figure out how to bring down the helicopter with the prototype in it. They weighed two or three options, and hijacking one of the other choppers was mentioned, at which point I held up a dice, and told the player that I'd give him a gift dice toward any action that he took that involved hijacking the other chopper. I wasn't going to force it on them, but I felt no shame in encouraging it.
XP flowed as well. I think that for the first half of the session (we played a full 4 and a half hours), very little XP was grabbed. At one point, either I noticed this, or someone commented on XP, I paused the game and asked everyone to study their Keys, and make sure that they knew what their keys were and how to hit them, and to PLEASE TAKE XP. They got right on board with it. Everyone hit keys. At the end of the session, we still had some questions about XP, for instance the Key of the First Person, a Meta-game key. We discussed how the 1xp bits of the Keys were practically "gimme's", that there were few or no reasons not to max the 3 hit limit for your 1xp bits, for each of your Keys. We briefly discussed the concept behind keys, to help reinforce how it should work - how you get 1 xp for just doing something associated with "Your Thing" (meaning: your Key), and you should get the 3 or 2/5 hit when you're doing "Your Thing" under some kind of duress or inconvenience. I think everyone got 10 or more XP during the game, and some may have gotten 15 .
Buy-in to the game world continued to go well. It is Shadowrun, a cyberpunk future/magic game with guns that have wireless network cards, technomancers, elementals, and freaking laser guns. I am not enough of a nerd to have 100% understanding of how everything works/is supposed to work, and so I frequently make shit up. "The cyberzombie's targetting computer for its minigun? Can you hack it? Um... Sure!". Fuck checking the rules.
Oh - missed two more things:
Would you believe that we did not once Bring Down the Pain? I was a little surprised. I'm not complaining though. I kinda feel like some BdtP would have messed up the pace and action of the game.. The players mostly rolled well, and I generously let ties go to them. They lost stakes a few times, but were willing to live with the results.
Going to dice: I found that I was constantly saying "You wanna go to dice?" or "Lets go to the dice". A number of times, I was more than willing to just say Yes, but even when they're successful, it seems like the chance of win/loss ups the stakes and buy-in for the player. Our street sam wanted to snipe the pilot of one helo while it was on the ground. I almost said, "Okay, you snipe the pilot. What next?" but instead, I offered to make it more interesting and go to dice. Win or lose the pilot was dead, but we'd find out if the guards near it went for the heavy machine gun or not. None of the players were ever displeased with the prospect of going to dice. Often, they would pick up the dice and warm them, as the action drove toward a conflict, which I took as my signal to grab my own dice.
Friday, September 21, 2007
D&D 4e
So I have a gaming blog, sortof.
Actually I have a terrible gaming blog. I talk entirely too much about running, and work, and money, and what I think about movies.
Anyway, I've been reading a number of really good gaming blogs, and they make me wish that I was more articulate, better organized, and was writing a gaming blog.
I'm sidetracked already.
I was going to blog about how I'm excited about D&D 4e.
There are a few reasons that I feel this way, even though I've been rather vocal about my disdain for < 4e.
Let me drift again.
I didn't start role playing with D&D, but I started it with some home-brew fantasy gaming- because I wasn't allowed to own/play D&D. But I eventually picked up the 2nd edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. I didn't have the player handbook, so I still wasn't playing D&D, but I still gleaned lots of creativity from it. Eventually I did make it over to 2nd edition AD&D. I had a ton of fun with it. I DM'd everything during my first few years at it, and only after high school did I meet up with someone else who would do the job of DMing. That stretches my memory, but I do not recall doing much prep work way back then. Any prep work, in fact. It was all about the characters that folks were playing, and building stories around them. Here's a way that I'm relating this back to D&D 4e. In 4e, they're talking about resource management, and number of encounters per day. They're gaming it. To the max. Which is fine, and is certainly the way that it should be treated, I think. But I didn't use the game that way, back then. It was an outlet to be a fantastic warrior, or to slay orcs, or do fantastic things. I didn't dissect the system. I didn't think about the mechanics, I just used them. And they were so great.
Well, everyone grows up. In the same way that the television shows that we watch, change as we age, our gaming changes too. How we see it, how we use it, what we expect out of it.
Now - back around to my topic. I'm excited about 4th edition D&D.
I loved Fallout Tactics, a PC game that was all about turn based squad tactics in the universe of the Fallout games. There was some story built on to it, but you didn't play it to see the story unfold, really - not the way you would be interested in reading a book. No, I played it because I wanted to lead my squad through strange and unknown territory, overcoming obstacles and stuff. I was fine with making some "role playing" decisions along the way. And I feel exactly the same way about D&D 4.
Why not 3rd edition, or 3.5? Honestly, I liked 3rd edition. Played in a campaign at it. Even ran a couple of games with it. It was fun. I didn't like 3.5 so much. I'm at a bit of a loss to clearly explain why, but to me, it felt like it was hovering between "Hey! I'm D&D and I'm a role playing game!" and "Hey! I'm D&D, and I'm a tactical miniatures combat game!" and instead of hitting a mark, to me, it just fell down between the cracks. Anyway, I didn't like it, really. Looking back at all of the iterations of D&D, now, there are all kinds of mechanical issues and problems. And it seems like they're trying to address/fix many of those things in 4th edition. Like wizards. One of the things that always annoyed me was the slots that they gave to spell casters. They've been calling it 'Vancian'. The idea that a wizard or spell caster, especially a low-level one, gets to blow his limited load, then hang out at the back of the party and try not to get killed. Its both frustrating and boring.
In the same way that sometimes you may be in the mood for a tense crime-drama, other times you may want some high flying action and adventure. I kindof feel that way. I've done the pendulum swing, leaving D&D and discovering the world and the philosophy of indie gaming. And - wow - its been incredible. Eye opening and such a learning experience. I'm kinda eager to go and apply some things to a game of D&D. Like... pacing, and structure, and the simple, but often lost mindset of "We're here to play a game and have fun doing it".
I'll leave with an analogy. I think that part of my problem with D&D, and my move to indie games, was that I really wanted a hamburger, and when D&D served me, it was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And I was like "WTF? This is the worst hamburger I've ever had." So I went and found hamburgers, and enjoyed the fuck out of them. Kinda feel like I'm hungry for a little peanut butter and jelly.
Actually I have a terrible gaming blog. I talk entirely too much about running, and work, and money, and what I think about movies.
Anyway, I've been reading a number of really good gaming blogs, and they make me wish that I was more articulate, better organized, and was writing a gaming blog.
I'm sidetracked already.
I was going to blog about how I'm excited about D&D 4e.
There are a few reasons that I feel this way, even though I've been rather vocal about my disdain for < 4e.
Let me drift again.
I didn't start role playing with D&D, but I started it with some home-brew fantasy gaming- because I wasn't allowed to own/play D&D. But I eventually picked up the 2nd edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. I didn't have the player handbook, so I still wasn't playing D&D, but I still gleaned lots of creativity from it. Eventually I did make it over to 2nd edition AD&D. I had a ton of fun with it. I DM'd everything during my first few years at it, and only after high school did I meet up with someone else who would do the job of DMing. That stretches my memory, but I do not recall doing much prep work way back then. Any prep work, in fact. It was all about the characters that folks were playing, and building stories around them. Here's a way that I'm relating this back to D&D 4e. In 4e, they're talking about resource management, and number of encounters per day. They're gaming it. To the max. Which is fine, and is certainly the way that it should be treated, I think. But I didn't use the game that way, back then. It was an outlet to be a fantastic warrior, or to slay orcs, or do fantastic things. I didn't dissect the system. I didn't think about the mechanics, I just used them. And they were so great.
Well, everyone grows up. In the same way that the television shows that we watch, change as we age, our gaming changes too. How we see it, how we use it, what we expect out of it.
Now - back around to my topic. I'm excited about 4th edition D&D.
I loved Fallout Tactics, a PC game that was all about turn based squad tactics in the universe of the Fallout games. There was some story built on to it, but you didn't play it to see the story unfold, really - not the way you would be interested in reading a book. No, I played it because I wanted to lead my squad through strange and unknown territory, overcoming obstacles and stuff. I was fine with making some "role playing" decisions along the way. And I feel exactly the same way about D&D 4.
Why not 3rd edition, or 3.5? Honestly, I liked 3rd edition. Played in a campaign at it. Even ran a couple of games with it. It was fun. I didn't like 3.5 so much. I'm at a bit of a loss to clearly explain why, but to me, it felt like it was hovering between "Hey! I'm D&D and I'm a role playing game!" and "Hey! I'm D&D, and I'm a tactical miniatures combat game!" and instead of hitting a mark, to me, it just fell down between the cracks. Anyway, I didn't like it, really. Looking back at all of the iterations of D&D, now, there are all kinds of mechanical issues and problems. And it seems like they're trying to address/fix many of those things in 4th edition. Like wizards. One of the things that always annoyed me was the slots that they gave to spell casters. They've been calling it 'Vancian'. The idea that a wizard or spell caster, especially a low-level one, gets to blow his limited load, then hang out at the back of the party and try not to get killed. Its both frustrating and boring.
In the same way that sometimes you may be in the mood for a tense crime-drama, other times you may want some high flying action and adventure. I kindof feel that way. I've done the pendulum swing, leaving D&D and discovering the world and the philosophy of indie gaming. And - wow - its been incredible. Eye opening and such a learning experience. I'm kinda eager to go and apply some things to a game of D&D. Like... pacing, and structure, and the simple, but often lost mindset of "We're here to play a game and have fun doing it".
I'll leave with an analogy. I think that part of my problem with D&D, and my move to indie games, was that I really wanted a hamburger, and when D&D served me, it was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And I was like "WTF? This is the worst hamburger I've ever had." So I went and found hamburgers, and enjoyed the fuck out of them. Kinda feel like I'm hungry for a little peanut butter and jelly.
All Thieves Are Gay Anyway
Okay, so easily in my top 5 funniest gaming things ever.
All Thieves are Gay Anyway.
Download the PDF here.
All Thieves are Gay Anyway.
Download the PDF here.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
On Games
I think its safe to say that a "Game" is anything that has a factor of randomness and chance, and often features some competitive air.
Poker, Chess, Monopoly, Darts, Baseball, D&D: all get lumped into games.
But this isn't really what I wanted to talk about. What I really want to talk about is Hit Points.
What do Dungeons and Dragons, World of Darkness, GURPS, and Shadowrun all have in common? A health metric.
One of the things that I dearly and truly love about Shadow of Yesterday is how its version of the health metric includes not only "getting hit with pointy things" but also "How'd he talk me into doing this again?" and "I swore I wouldn't fall in love with him.."
See - and maybe this was where my half-baked lead in came from - most game systems, er, Role Playing Game Systems, feature a combat resolution system that is somewhat granular. You whack orcs with a sword until all their hit points spill out, then you collect them in the form of gold and XP, much like a pinata. In D&D, you walk into a room with a bunch of hostile critters and you roll a bunch of dice, and then you win. Its not a single dice roll. But turn the coin over - if you walked into a room with a suave diplomat, who wanted to convince you of the foolishness of your plan to kill the king, it might come down to a dice roll. If your group is even willing to tolerate its course being changed without bloody combat. And that's also assuming that they do not make the aforementioned diplomat into just another fleshy bag of XP. But what I'm getting at is that even among the most open minded D&D groups, diplomacy and such things are relegated to an afterthought, a single dice roll. And back to the beauty of Shadow of Yesterday - if you're going to talk Ungar the barbarian into not going down into the village and slaughtering all of the able bodied men, you get the same kind of method and mechanism for doing so, as you would with combat.
I was trying to think of ways to hack other systems, and include some kind of a metric like this, and no great ones came to mind. For D&D, I imagined having hit points, and will power, side by side. Anyway, I digress.
/ramble
Poker, Chess, Monopoly, Darts, Baseball, D&D: all get lumped into games.
But this isn't really what I wanted to talk about. What I really want to talk about is Hit Points.
What do Dungeons and Dragons, World of Darkness, GURPS, and Shadowrun all have in common? A health metric.
One of the things that I dearly and truly love about Shadow of Yesterday is how its version of the health metric includes not only "getting hit with pointy things" but also "How'd he talk me into doing this again?" and "I swore I wouldn't fall in love with him.."
See - and maybe this was where my half-baked lead in came from - most game systems, er, Role Playing Game Systems, feature a combat resolution system that is somewhat granular. You whack orcs with a sword until all their hit points spill out, then you collect them in the form of gold and XP, much like a pinata. In D&D, you walk into a room with a bunch of hostile critters and you roll a bunch of dice, and then you win. Its not a single dice roll. But turn the coin over - if you walked into a room with a suave diplomat, who wanted to convince you of the foolishness of your plan to kill the king, it might come down to a dice roll. If your group is even willing to tolerate its course being changed without bloody combat. And that's also assuming that they do not make the aforementioned diplomat into just another fleshy bag of XP. But what I'm getting at is that even among the most open minded D&D groups, diplomacy and such things are relegated to an afterthought, a single dice roll. And back to the beauty of Shadow of Yesterday - if you're going to talk Ungar the barbarian into not going down into the village and slaughtering all of the able bodied men, you get the same kind of method and mechanism for doing so, as you would with combat.
I was trying to think of ways to hack other systems, and include some kind of a metric like this, and no great ones came to mind. For D&D, I imagined having hit points, and will power, side by side. Anyway, I digress.
/ramble
Monday, September 10, 2007
Life of Crime
So I obsess sometimes.
I just can't shake the idea of an Organized Crime game. I have yet to fully clarify to myself what I want out of it though. There are a few Mafia type board games out there, none of which I've gotten my hands on to see if they could fulfill my desire.
The idea that's banging around in my head is, at this point, two fold. One part is a strategic territory and resource control game. Imaging a city map on graph paper. I keep thinking that the Atlantis Play by Email engine might translate to this kind of thing. I'd imagined taking a group of players and explaining that they had been sent to "set up shop" in a city that was for some reason rather free of organized crime elements. Post-Katrina New Orleans perhaps, or a post-war city, or even a city that Federal authorities had just purged. Not sure whether I'd have them all working together on the same team, or whether it'd be all opposition, like players sitting around a Risk game. I'm also not sure of mechanics. Like I said, that's why I'd considered something like Atlantis play by email. Not entirely sure that it'd be good or easy to free-form it, without some actual rules.
So anyway, the players have to get business going. Start extorting places, stealing stuff, getting in on the drug and gambling and prostitution outfits - y'know, all the vice stuff. Then again, how much would this be hobbled by my lack of knowledge about the specifics (or even the generalities) of organized crime? I mean, I'm no expert on werewolves or orcs, yet I still feel comfortable running a game of Werewolf, or D&D.
Maybe I'm touching on something that I'll label "Knowledge gaming". Seems to me that part of the excitement of an organized crime game would be, for the players, coming up with new ways to make some cash. The players can use their real cleverness to come up with some new scheme to run, or a new scam to pull. Something for which I may not have a ready answer, unlike in D&D, where I just need to know what is on the other side of the door with the demon's face on it.
Anyway, I mentioned two fold. The other idea is using some system to play a street level game, that would tie in with the more strategic portion. The players would sit down and we'd break some knee-caps and shake some folks down. I actually browsed through the D20 Modern book, thinking that perhaps it would make a good rules set for something like this. TSOY isn't what I'm looking for, maybe the World of Darkness rules would work.
/braindump
I just can't shake the idea of an Organized Crime game. I have yet to fully clarify to myself what I want out of it though. There are a few Mafia type board games out there, none of which I've gotten my hands on to see if they could fulfill my desire.
The idea that's banging around in my head is, at this point, two fold. One part is a strategic territory and resource control game. Imaging a city map on graph paper. I keep thinking that the Atlantis Play by Email engine might translate to this kind of thing. I'd imagined taking a group of players and explaining that they had been sent to "set up shop" in a city that was for some reason rather free of organized crime elements. Post-Katrina New Orleans perhaps, or a post-war city, or even a city that Federal authorities had just purged. Not sure whether I'd have them all working together on the same team, or whether it'd be all opposition, like players sitting around a Risk game. I'm also not sure of mechanics. Like I said, that's why I'd considered something like Atlantis play by email. Not entirely sure that it'd be good or easy to free-form it, without some actual rules.
So anyway, the players have to get business going. Start extorting places, stealing stuff, getting in on the drug and gambling and prostitution outfits - y'know, all the vice stuff. Then again, how much would this be hobbled by my lack of knowledge about the specifics (or even the generalities) of organized crime? I mean, I'm no expert on werewolves or orcs, yet I still feel comfortable running a game of Werewolf, or D&D.
Maybe I'm touching on something that I'll label "Knowledge gaming". Seems to me that part of the excitement of an organized crime game would be, for the players, coming up with new ways to make some cash. The players can use their real cleverness to come up with some new scheme to run, or a new scam to pull. Something for which I may not have a ready answer, unlike in D&D, where I just need to know what is on the other side of the door with the demon's face on it.
Anyway, I mentioned two fold. The other idea is using some system to play a street level game, that would tie in with the more strategic portion. The players would sit down and we'd break some knee-caps and shake some folks down. I actually browsed through the D20 Modern book, thinking that perhaps it would make a good rules set for something like this. TSOY isn't what I'm looking for, maybe the World of Darkness rules would work.
/braindump
Thursday, September 6, 2007
This week at work
So this week...
I've been working on wrapping up my interview process, so that I can get to hiring. Here's a summary:
~200 resumes received.
~18 first interviews performed
3 second interviews performed
1 second interview canceled
This week has felt so long, despite that its only a 4 day week. Heck, its Thursday, and boy do I wish it were Friday. I've had the pressure of interviewing and hiring, plus the pressure of getting some stuff ready for some users who are headed to china, plus all of the other normal IT tasks that need to be done, so I have been weary and tired all week. I haven't gotten any running done, and quite frankly, have allowed myself to make excuses and not run. I'm willing to let myself slip a little, but I'll pick it back up this weekend.
couple of things randomly, about my interview process:
One of the questions that I've asked all of the people that I've interviewed is this: "What criteria are you using to evaluate the organization for which you hope to work?" In my after-action evaluation, it is a somewhat unimportant question. I cannot think of very many things that a candidate would (or did) say to this question, that made me go "Wow, that's a fantastic answer." I did however get three people who responded: "The Internet." That's right. They went on, "I'm using the internet to check out your companies website, and read information about your company." I did not correct them, or explain the meaning of "criteria".
Another question that I asked was "If you were hired, and six weeks later there were a complete IT systems failure, we were both called in, and on the way, I drove off of a cliff; what would you do to recover and respond?" I had at least two people who responded that they would check to make sure I was okay. This always makes me chuckle internally, and then gossip about it afterward, because it seems incredibly obvious to me that what I'm asking is not "Do you like me, and if I was hurt, would you come visit me?".
I enjoyed the process, I like people, and I met some very smart, and very charismatic people. It was my semi-wish throughout the process that I could take two or three people and, using science, meld them into the perfect candidate. But I can't do that. So I had to keep hunting the person who was the perfect melding of IT related skills, programming skills,bow-hunting skills, inter-personal and customer service skills. I'm still not 110%, or even 100%, but I'm 98%, with the fellow that I've got. I think that's a pretty good fit. The hardest part has been taking these people, each with varying skills and abilities and personalities, and trying to throw them all against the wall and see which one(s) stuck. Not knowing how the future turns out, I still sorta wish I could 'save' my progress, so that I could restore later, and have the option of trying out a different candidate, but apparently I've been playing way too many video games lately.
I've been working on wrapping up my interview process, so that I can get to hiring. Here's a summary:
~200 resumes received.
~18 first interviews performed
3 second interviews performed
1 second interview canceled
This week has felt so long, despite that its only a 4 day week. Heck, its Thursday, and boy do I wish it were Friday. I've had the pressure of interviewing and hiring, plus the pressure of getting some stuff ready for some users who are headed to china, plus all of the other normal IT tasks that need to be done, so I have been weary and tired all week. I haven't gotten any running done, and quite frankly, have allowed myself to make excuses and not run. I'm willing to let myself slip a little, but I'll pick it back up this weekend.
couple of things randomly, about my interview process:
One of the questions that I've asked all of the people that I've interviewed is this: "What criteria are you using to evaluate the organization for which you hope to work?" In my after-action evaluation, it is a somewhat unimportant question. I cannot think of very many things that a candidate would (or did) say to this question, that made me go "Wow, that's a fantastic answer." I did however get three people who responded: "The Internet." That's right. They went on, "I'm using the internet to check out your companies website, and read information about your company." I did not correct them, or explain the meaning of "criteria".
Another question that I asked was "If you were hired, and six weeks later there were a complete IT systems failure, we were both called in, and on the way, I drove off of a cliff; what would you do to recover and respond?" I had at least two people who responded that they would check to make sure I was okay. This always makes me chuckle internally, and then gossip about it afterward, because it seems incredibly obvious to me that what I'm asking is not "Do you like me, and if I was hurt, would you come visit me?".
I enjoyed the process, I like people, and I met some very smart, and very charismatic people. It was my semi-wish throughout the process that I could take two or three people and, using science, meld them into the perfect candidate. But I can't do that. So I had to keep hunting the person who was the perfect melding of IT related skills, programming skills,
Quechup Pie
Don't you hate it when you get suckered by something? And then, having gotten suckered, you're made the star of a made for tv movie that details how you got suckered, and offers the opportunity to get suckered to other folks?
Well yeah, like a few of my friends, I failed to apply some reasoning to a situation and got hit with a hammer.
I'm going to go hide.
Well yeah, like a few of my friends, I failed to apply some reasoning to a situation and got hit with a hammer.
I'm going to go hide.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Foccacia
I did forget part of my previous update, related to food.
Foccacia bread.
Krissi has made two batches of the stuff now, from a recipe that she found on the commercial appeal's website.
oh.
my.
god.
Its so awesomely delicious.
By itself, its wonderful. Saved in the fridge, warmed up in a toaster, sliced in half, so that turkey and swiss cheese and spicy mustard can be sandwiched between: holy shit.
Foccacia bread.
Krissi has made two batches of the stuff now, from a recipe that she found on the commercial appeal's website.
oh.
my.
god.
Its so awesomely delicious.
By itself, its wonderful. Saved in the fridge, warmed up in a toaster, sliced in half, so that turkey and swiss cheese and spicy mustard can be sandwiched between: holy shit.
Just the stuff that I've been up to
Here's the "My Life" update.
It's all good.
More specifically, I did get a promotion recently at work, which is very cool. I'm in the hiring process for an assistant. This is the first time that I've been pretty much 100% responsible for the hiring. I've received between 150 and 200 resumes. I'm very glad that I've got some very specific knowledge/skill related criteria, otherwise it'd be hell going through the 50+ highly qualified tech resumes that I've received. I've interviewed ten or so people, with 3 or 4 more to go, and have picked 4 of those people to come back and do second interviews. With this being new to me, I'm trying to proceed wisely. I don't want to dally forever, waiting for someone to walk into the door that immediately screams "HIRE ME NOW!", but I certainly do not want to under-do it, and hire someone who is just the best of a mediocre lot. Anyway, this is just my thought process. I've gotten some good candidates, and I look forward to wrapping this process up in the next week or two and being able to make an offer. Aside from the hiring processor, work has been super busy lately - my feed reader is two days behind! It does not really mean any significant changes in what I'm doing, but it does mean significant change in level of responsibility. Instead of being only responsible for technology things that were "my" projects, or that I was tasked with, I'm now responsible for.. well, pretty much anything that can fall under the IT umbrella. It's good. I'm excited.
This evening I went out for a late 8 mile run. (Woo me!!) 8 miles is the longest run I've done since last year, I'm sure.. and I'm happy to have gone out and done it. It was tiring, and I'm kinda beat now, but it was a good run. Thankfully it was not a billion degrees outside this evening, just a "cool" 90 degrees. As I write this, I need to be working on stuff for my ongoing Werewolf game, that we'll be picking back up tomorrow after a three week hiatus, which, sadly, is kinda par for the course. (Wow, comma, anyone?) I'm also making my famous "Chicken Yuck", as named by Maddie. Here's the recipe :)
1 part chicken, cut into small, bite size pieces (one half breast per person)
1 part red or yellow potato, also cut into small bite size pieces (one medium potato per person)
1 part frozen broccoli
a little olive oil
a little of your favorite seasoning
Throw it all into the Corningware, or equivalent oven container, cover with tinfoil and the lid, throw it into the oven at 425 for 45 - 60 minutes. Remove and throw a generous handful(s) of shredded cheese into it.
Serve. Also makes delicious leftovers (if there are any).
Also, we've been playing the heck out of some Xbox 360 (on loan from Jason. Thanks Jason) and Playstation 2. More specifically: Gears of War(360), Bioshock(360), Burnout Revenge(360), Katamari Damacy(PS2), and God of War II(PS2). Totally waiting for Halo 3, GTA IV, Assassins Creed, and Beautiful Katamari.
Hrmz, what else is going on- I think I've covered everything. And now, lots of tags:
It's all good.
More specifically, I did get a promotion recently at work, which is very cool. I'm in the hiring process for an assistant. This is the first time that I've been pretty much 100% responsible for the hiring. I've received between 150 and 200 resumes. I'm very glad that I've got some very specific knowledge/skill related criteria, otherwise it'd be hell going through the 50+ highly qualified tech resumes that I've received. I've interviewed ten or so people, with 3 or 4 more to go, and have picked 4 of those people to come back and do second interviews. With this being new to me, I'm trying to proceed wisely. I don't want to dally forever, waiting for someone to walk into the door that immediately screams "HIRE ME NOW!", but I certainly do not want to under-do it, and hire someone who is just the best of a mediocre lot. Anyway, this is just my thought process. I've gotten some good candidates, and I look forward to wrapping this process up in the next week or two and being able to make an offer. Aside from the hiring processor, work has been super busy lately - my feed reader is two days behind! It does not really mean any significant changes in what I'm doing, but it does mean significant change in level of responsibility. Instead of being only responsible for technology things that were "my" projects, or that I was tasked with, I'm now responsible for.. well, pretty much anything that can fall under the IT umbrella. It's good. I'm excited.
This evening I went out for a late 8 mile run. (Woo me!!) 8 miles is the longest run I've done since last year, I'm sure.. and I'm happy to have gone out and done it. It was tiring, and I'm kinda beat now, but it was a good run. Thankfully it was not a billion degrees outside this evening, just a "cool" 90 degrees. As I write this, I need to be working on stuff for my ongoing Werewolf game, that we'll be picking back up tomorrow after a three week hiatus, which, sadly, is kinda par for the course. (Wow, comma, anyone?) I'm also making my famous "Chicken Yuck", as named by Maddie. Here's the recipe :)
1 part chicken, cut into small, bite size pieces (one half breast per person)
1 part red or yellow potato, also cut into small bite size pieces (one medium potato per person)
1 part frozen broccoli
a little olive oil
a little of your favorite seasoning
Throw it all into the Corningware, or equivalent oven container, cover with tinfoil and the lid, throw it into the oven at 425 for 45 - 60 minutes. Remove and throw a generous handful(s) of shredded cheese into it.
Serve. Also makes delicious leftovers (if there are any).
Also, we've been playing the heck out of some Xbox 360 (on loan from Jason. Thanks Jason) and Playstation 2. More specifically: Gears of War(360), Bioshock(360), Burnout Revenge(360), Katamari Damacy(PS2), and God of War II(PS2). Totally waiting for Halo 3, GTA IV, Assassins Creed, and Beautiful Katamari.
Hrmz, what else is going on- I think I've covered everything. And now, lots of tags:
Internet Parser
Kinda randomly:
I use google's feed reader, and my livejournal friends page to keep up with the stuff that I'm interested in keeping up with on the intarnets.
It randomly occurred to me that it'd be cool if in addition to subscribing to a particular feed or set of feeds, one could type in a term, like "Intel E6600 Processor", and maybe select whether they were looking for things that fell into categories like news, or reviews, or selling, etc, and have their reader/parser find all of those articles on the internet, and make them easily available for the user.
/random.
I use google's feed reader, and my livejournal friends page to keep up with the stuff that I'm interested in keeping up with on the intarnets.
It randomly occurred to me that it'd be cool if in addition to subscribing to a particular feed or set of feeds, one could type in a term, like "Intel E6600 Processor", and maybe select whether they were looking for things that fell into categories like news, or reviews, or selling, etc, and have their reader/parser find all of those articles on the internet, and make them easily available for the user.
/random.
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