Blog Hiatus Incoming

Hi all,

Between the new job, raising sonny, and a sudden health emergency (11 mm kidney stone), I will be tapping out of this blog for a while to recuperate and work on NUNA.

Take care

RL Avalanche & The Most Beautiful Song Ever

Hello,

Currently crushed under the task of marking, especially comments.

If you're a teacher, you know.

Quietly working on games and career.

This song is pulling me through. I hadn't heard it and suddenly realizing Gord Downey was singing the middle part was like suddenly meeting a ghost at a bar.

Enjoy.

Thanks to the Glatisant!

So, it looks like The Glatisant has given this blog a signal boost. For those few who don't know, Glatsiant is the blog / newsletter of Ben Milton, also known as the Questing Beast, the author of Knave. Although I am currently not interested in D&D, I really do appreciate his rigor and enthusiasm for classic gamestyles. He is a breath of fresh air that reminds me of the early days of the OSR before it became a marketing dumpster fire for WotC.

Ben included my post "The Stupidity of Social Skills in Combat" in one of his weekly link roundups. Looking at my analytics, which I never do, I see that it has jumped 10 x in readers.

Thank you Ben! 

I doubt Ben needs the signal boost, as he is a compelling game theorist and expert marketer, but I exhort my readers to give his YouTube channel, his blog, and most importantly, his books a good look. I have some friends who are smitten with Knave, so I'll have to pick up copies when I get some life stability again.

So whether you like D&D or other old games, give Ben a listen.

HERE

(PS Thanks for calling out my error Gordon)

You should be reading Traverse Fantasy

 I just found this blog HERE. 

Lots of good thoughts about the hobby.

How to demonetize it.

Should the OSR die?

Well written and thought.

Blog Discovery

 Just stumbled across this blog.

Good stuff.

https://refereeingandreflection.wordpress.com/2022/05/20/thoughts-on-putting-a-star-trek-campaign-to-rest/

2019 Plans & No Whiffs Houserule

Hi all!

(crickets chirping)

Well, in case anyone ever reads this blog, I am alive.

I've survived my first year as prof. One more day of classes then it is just meetings, research, and free time till April.

My Advanced Media students surprised me with this meme!
Best class I ever taught!

Whew! OK, hobby plans for the new year:

1) I hope to get my backlog of posts finished and out. Lots of aged fantasy stuff, but also newer Cyberpunk material. Maybe ever some Weird Japan or Chanbara support. Art?

2) Actual play reports (gasp!). I hope to run Swords of the Serpentine (by Pelgrane, whose play test I've signed up for), as well as Spirit of 77.

I actually sat in on a session of D&D 5E last week and had a blast. The character they assigned me didn't do much (he played the fiddle while others fought goblins, and no, not a bard), but it was fun just to be at a table.

It has inspired me to create the following house rule:

NO MORE WHIFFS HOUSERULE

In combats for D&D or similar one roll to hit games, when both sides of a combat miss each other (commonly called a whiff), the higher roll (after all modifications) is considered a hit and damage is rolled.

Note that players on the receiving end of damage under this rule might cry foul, so before implementing this change make sure 1) all players are onboard with it and the reasons for using the rule (ie to speed up combat), and 2) they are aware of and accept the fact that they are just as likely to get a hit as they are to give one

News & An OSR Hidden Gem

Aloha!

Real Life has been on an upswing lately. In the past 2 years, I've traveled for presentations (Valencia in Spain, Lexington KY and NYC), churned out some high level publications (see my discourse analysis of Gudetama in Japan Forum this month), and just made professor at a nice little seaside university in beautiful Kobe.

                                                        Seaside office view makes all the work seem worthwhile

Life is good again, at last!

However, my inner life has paid the price for all this success. I hope to get back to gaming, martial arts, & music with the reduced course load. As ever, I am bubbling away at sociological research on the side as well.

Lurking around the OSR today I found THIS gem. It is the unique creation of an ex RPG.net poster. There is art, philosophy, and gaming related links therein, including a Venture Bros 1 page rpg.

Enjoy!

As for this blog, I have a HUGE backload of posts to clean up and spit at you, but I surmise I won't get much of that done during the semester (Japanese uni start in April to July, then again in September to January). Expect an uptick in posts in summer, as well as next spring.

To All New Bloggers Doing A Blog Challenge

Good on you! Even though I've been there and done that, I appreciate your enthusiasm and your posts. You're finding who you are and why you care enough to blog - don't let the naysayers like those who pished and toshed the blog challenge I ran last year get you down.

The truth is, being an OSR blogger is a bit like the movie mythology of the jedi. We follow "the old religion" whose "light is gone from the universe" - we love musty old games in an era of smartphone apps and FPS shooters. Like Padwans we each have to make our own lightsaber to cut through the darkness of everyday life, of the gaming industry and the gaming egos. It doesn't matter that people have done it before - it matters that YOU do it NOW.

Jeff Rients once quipped that a grognard making a retroclone is like a jedi making his own weapon. I think for bloggers these challenges serve much the same function.

As for me, my blogging X-wing is buried deep, deep down in the swamp of RL for the next little while. When free I get, see you in the blogosphere I will!

Words That Don't Exist in Common

Whew, what a month it’s been! In addition to teaching full time for a uni that thinks instructors are free as birds to do extracurricular activities of dubious educational merit, I’ve settled into the 4 hour daily commute and somehow finished the 80 page third chapter of my thesis. All the while being a loving husband and father, but admittedly my baby boy’s smile and the wife’s support were the only things that kept me going.

And I’m spent!

Not looking forward to the final deadline for the 300+ page opus in November, but it’s got to get done.

Now it’s time to blow out the cobwebs, read some good novels (starting with Hugh Howey’s ‘WOOL’), write some fiction and gaming stuff, and hopefully do some gaming (if you’re there Sunglasses Jerk, make it happen!).

Without further ado here is my first post back in the saddle for your fantasy game.

Words That Don’t Exist In Common

DWARVISH

Fraubarbicon – The moment when your wife’s beard intertwines with your own.

“I missed the departure because of a frubarbicon, but luckily I caught up with the party just as the goblins started their ambush and bushwhacked those bushwackers!”

ELVISH

Nuquerna Laisi – Deciding to change to a radically opposite alignment and/or class due to boredom with centuries of championing the same cause.

“You think I, Alyahs the Necromancer, killed Shayla the Championess of Isis? Foolish mortals! I WAS Shayla of Isis!”

ORCISH

Chubash chubash – A leader that is inept but is loved for their commitment towards violence and hasty ill-conceived action.

“Our charge on the knights broke our ranks and killed half our soldiers, as well as Chieftess Grokilla. She was true chubash chubash –never see the like again!”

HALFLING

Firdidlong – A day spent smoking pipeweed and drinking beer in a field while getting paid to do so. Considered a high cultural ideal.

“I had always successfully avoided work with the town militia or guards until one day my uncle Figtoe volunteered me. I was right angry at first, until I learned our mission was a complete firdidlong!”

TROLL

Urk flam dang iya! – Taking so much regenerated damaged that you would have preferred the fire.

“Men women dwarf elf wizard in rain, dark. Jump down smash bash. Rain rain no torch. Stab stabbity crush crush, arrow arrow arrow missile. Thinks Urk flam dang iya!”

HUMAN

Demiposer – Inferiority complex to demihumans, resulting in weird haircuts that mimic long ears, ill fitting clothes or incongruous lifestyle choices to emulate them

“The way he cut little triangles in his hair above the ears and starved himself all the time – what a demiposer…”

THRI KEEN

T’chik chik BLAT – A human(oid) so infuriating you wish you wore shoes so you could squish them.

“Mmmmm, human female cleric, chattik, heal humans not me, chattik, screams at giant insects, insulting and lose surprise, chattik. T’chik chik BLAT.”

NEO-OTYUGH

Burble urp de livre – The euphoric feeling of bathing in liquefied feces all day while reading a good book.

“Burble urp de livre is nice work if you can get it, but most privies under castles nowadays offer only the hardest rain of excrement pellets and at best a few soiled pages of the Farmer’s Almanac.”

T Minus Two and More Blog Love

The OSR love keeps pouring in for the March Madness Non-D&D Challenge. The ever sunny Alexis from Tao of D&D has showered the endeavour and yours truly with encouragement:

(From his comment on Talyman’s blog) “These things are for people who can't think of anything to blog. Moreover, I'm not interested in helping "noobs" get their blogs started. If they have something to say, then they'll be fine. If they need a crutch, or anyone's help, they should stop blogging immediately and attend to their hygeine instead.

We need less 'training wheels' and more 'toss them into the pond and watch them drown.'

But then, that wouldn't let Tedankhamen and many others feel good about themselves for pointing and then gleaning off the self-important righteousness of 'finding new talent.' ”

Beautiful! I do hope he is right and we get lots of new voices and hear about new games, and I am pretty satisfied with the response to date.

In case anyone is wondering about my feelings, these types of comments don’t bother me at all. In fact, they remind me of my uni gamer days when dissenting opinions and barbed comments darkened the skies. I never took talk about a game seriously back then, and I don’t now. People who want to play with me will, and people who poo poo us won’t.

But there is some real good feedback - someone has already completed the whole thing! The blog Timinits and Trolls gave some great responses, passed on questions he didn’t care for, and gave us a peek into some obscure French RPGs. Go give it a read and be inspired!

T MINUS THREE, WHO’S IN ON MARCH MADNESS, & TWILIGHT 20XX

WHO’S IN ON MARCH MADNESS

“There is no such thing as bad publicity.” – Brendan Behan

It looks like word is getting around about March Madness. Talyman notes that it has exceeded the D&D challenge in dullness of questions, and that the cool kids do not do blog hops anyway. I never considered myself cool, ditto this blog, which besides being uncool by nature, has been described as mixing “fantastic content with headache-inducing graphics in a way rarely seen in this day and age.” LOVE IT! That was precisely the vibe I was going for, so I am glad someone is paying attention.

Talyman’s comments have also inspired me to make a list of blogs which have expressed interest in participating in the challenge:

Mesmerized by Sirens

Barking Alien

The Savage Afterworld

What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse

The Other Side

The RPG Corner 

Crit This 

Timnits & Trolls (who has gone ahead and finished the challenge already! BRAVO!) 

Tower of the Archmage 

Swords & Dorkery

d20 Dark Ages

Semi-retired Gamer 

Wine & Savages

If you plan on participating and want me to add you to the list, drop me a line.

TWILIGHT 20XX REBOOT SEED

I’ve always had a soft spot for the game Twilight 2000, not for the somewhat clunky mechanics, but instead for the tight adventures and attractive portrayal of a non-fantastic apocalypse. No zombies or rifts, just things falling apart and lonely soldiers trying to get back home.

But the game had one major flaw – it was dated incredibly quickly, both in terms of geopolitics and technological advance. When it came out way back in 1984, no one could have predicted that its US-USSR nuclear exchange scenario would become moot with the dissolution of the Soviet empire a scant 5 years later. Similarly, the splatbooks of the latest military gear look antique in a world where DARPA is rolling out power armor, drones make daily strikes in the heart of Pakistan, and both the NSA and Snowden showed us how laughble the ideas of privacy and security are in the age of Wikileaks.

In this light, I've whipped up a little transmission that would set the scene of a reboot of the game, Twilight 20XX, in a projection of our own dystopic world. A projection that (hopefully) will turn out to be as laughable as the original premise of Twilight 2000.

Enjoy.

United Nations Secure Transmission

Helmund province, Afghanistan

<<Begin Transmission:

We’re the last ones here at base, and we’re bugging out. I’m not giving details, as all communications have been compromised. Another group tried to get through by way of our ‘allies’ in Pakistan. They took the best APCs and gear here and went last week.

Word is they never made it across the border. So we are gone.

Our orders are to stay put, but that is a death sentence. We’ve got a few locals on our side, thankful for some of the infrastructure and education we provided. They’ve given us supplies and, more importantly, hope of a way out. We’ve got some local translators who want to come, and some stragglers from the UN office and independent contractors.

When the House of Saud went down, the world as we knew it ended. We’ve waited long enough for evac, and it’s not coming. We figure that although everyone has oil reserves, the way the climate has gone out of whack they need it to survive the winters. Most of us are North American, and we figure Alaska and northern Canada are OK with woodstoves and an endless supply of wood. That is our objective.

In some ways, this place is better than it was, in some ways worse. The locals burnt their opium fields to grow food, but the Taliban muletrain hasn’t been affected. It just switched from hauling arms and opium to potatoes and child brides. People either are too busy surviving to care about us or want our heads on a pike. Time to go.

We’ve all seen the news about how the Muslim Brotherhood swept into the power vacuum created by the Arab Spring and turned off the oil. They’ve restored the Caliphate, just as Hitch always knew they wanted to, and plunged us all back into the Dark Ages. To tell the truth, I think a lot of the hillpeople here won’t know the difference.

So we’re out. The goal is to get to some US bases in Asia - that is if China doesn’t roll over them with her oil reserves in the next few weeks.

Wish us luck, and hope to see you back home.

<<Transmission End

Count Down to March Madness OSR Challenge!

Here’s your warning – there are five days left before February ends and the start of the March Madness 31 day Obscure Game Blogging Challenge. All are welcome to participate, and I am really stoked to learn about some games in the shadow of Grandpappy D&D.

Here are the revised questions– these are probably the final versions unless people give me some good suggestions or criticisms. Notice that for most questions I am not specifying old school game, mainly because some posters voiced concerns over their lack of experience playing them. The challenge is open to all, and participants should feel free to ‘tweak’ questions or answers to fit their gaming experience.

1 What was the first roleplaying game other than D&D you played? Was it before or after you had played D&D?

2 What was the first character you played in an RPG other than D&D? How was playing it different from playing a D&D character?

3 Which game had the least or most enjoyable character generation?

4 What other roleplaying author besides Gygax impressed you with their writing?

5 What other old school game should have become as big as D&D but didn’t? Why do you think so?

6 What non-D&D monster do you think is as iconic as D&D ones like hook horrors or flumphs, and why do you think so?

7 What fantasy RPG other than D&D have you enjoyed most? Why?

8 What spy RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.

9 What superhero RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?

10 What science fiction RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.

11 What post-apocalyptic RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?

12 What humorous RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.

13 What horror RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?

14 What historical or cultural RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.

15 What pseudo or alternate history RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?

16 Which RPG besides D&D has the best magic system? Give details.

17 Which RPG has the best high tech rules? Why?

18 What is the crunchiest RPG you have played? Was it enjoyable?

19 What is the fluffiest RPG you have played? Was it enjoyable?

20 Which setting have you enjoyed most? Why?

21 What is the narrowest genre RPG you have ever played? How was it?

22 What is the most gonzo kitchen sink RPG you ever played? How was it?

23 What is the most broken game that you tried and were unable to play?

24 What is the most broken game that you tried and loved to play, warts and all?

25 Which game has the sleekest, most modern engine?

26 What RPG based on an IP did you enjoy most? Give details.

27 What IP (=Intellectual Property, be it book, movie or comic) that doesn’t have an RPG deserves it? Why?

28 What free RPG or what non-English RPG did you enjoy most? Give details.

29 What OSR product have you enjoyed most? Explain why.

30 Which non-D&D supplemental product should everyone know about? Give details.

31 What out-of-print RPG would you most like to see back in publication? Why?

I had hoped to post more this month but real life is taking its toll on my hobbies. I think the March Madness Blog Challenge will be a good, structured way for me to get some posts out while I grind away at real life Things That Must Be Done! I hope both readers and writers have a blast with it.

The Buzz

Seems there is some good buzz about the challenge....

HERE

Updates and Mostly Good News

Hey all,

I am enormously pleased with the response to my proposal for the March Madness Non-D&D OSR Blog Challenge. Some bloggers who I respect immensely (check the replies to the original post to see who, and check out their blogs!) have all come on board. In addition, the post has reached just shy of 200 reads, tripling any of my previous posts and (hopefully) foretelling a good time for both readers and writers in March.

As for the questions, I thought about changing them based on suggestions, but ultimately have decided to put it out into the world warts and all. The only 2 improvements will be the following clarification in question 2:

“2 What was the first character you played in an RPG other than D&D? How was playing it different from playing a D&D character?”

Also, I will be adding “… played or want to play…” in the questions about system (questions 7 to 15) because, let’s face it, there are so many great games we are dying to play but just haven’t gotten around to. I will send out a reminder about the challenge around the 20th of this month.

There is a spot of bad news – I was actually planning to go to a small con and do some (GASP!) actual roleplaying in March, but sadly family concerns have made it impossible. I am sure March Madness will make up for it.

Always end on a high note they say, so HEREis a link to a story, “The Coast,” that got published last week in Canada. If you like historical fiction, you may enjoy my imagining of an incident that happened to my Inuit ancestors on the coast of Labrador in the mid-eighteenth century.

I hope you enjoy it, and thanks for reading.

PS: If you are interested in Weird Japan, check out  Zack Davisson's blog Hyakumonogatari!

Blog mod

I just added a cloud of topics on the right to help readers navigate the blog better. Figured I'd better do it before this thing became unwieldy.

OSR Planet replacement

I found it!

This site scratches my itch. Nice work Jaap!

http://nirdday.blogspot.jp/

Project plans and Palladium 'missile circus' houserules

Wow. That whole 'Weird in Mystic Japan' thread went on longer than I had intended. I still have one more post, maybe two maximum, but thought I'd break things up with this.

I have a prelim exam first week of January, so expect a slowdown until after that. Projects I have simmering are (in no particular order) some dystopic Traveller tables; finishing my Stormbringer 1e adventure 'Spiders and Angels'; more D&D semiotics; and starting my retroclone, Iceships & Inuit.

I also intend to roll out my Palladium Patch at some point. Anyone who responds 'Why bother?' has missed out on some gonzo playing with an admittedly clunky old ruleset. My patch aims to make Palladium's funky old school games playable to gamers with more modern sensibilities who'd dismiss them offhand because of their rusty rules.

To give a taste, here are the Mecha Missile and Melee Mayhem Houserules. We used these back in the day last time I played and the feel of an Itano missile circus a la Robotech was pretty spot on. Give em a try and tell us what you think.

Mecha Missile and Melee Mayhem Houserules

High Explosive Missile – Does an equal number of dice of SDC damage to human pilot or each passenger, pilot can roll for half. Ignore MDC damage multipliers. (i.e. 1d6x10 MD missile does 1d6 SD to pilot or passengers).

Fragmentation Missile – Apply each dice of damage to a different part of the mecha within the blast radius. (i.e. a missile doing 3d6x10 will instead do 1d6x10 to 3 different parts of the mech).

Armor Piercing Missile – In addition to damage, causes critical damage per critical damage tables if any of its damage dice rolls maximum. (i.e. a missile doing 2d6x10 will also inflict critical damage if either dice comes up 6).

Plasma Missile – Does full number of dice in damage first round, then one less dice per round thereafter until no dice remain. Pilots may make a stunt roll to shake plasma off, but can take no other actions while doing so. (i.e. a missile doing 2d6x10 MD will do that the first round, 1d6x10 the second, then 0 thereafter).

Multi-Warhead Missile – Attacker rolls a number of d20 equal to the damage die, then takes the best as his attack roll. (i.e. a 2d4x10 MD missile allows the attacker to roll 2d20 and keep the best as his attack roll, while a 4d6x10 MD missile allows 4d20 to be rolled).

Hand to Hand– Always does critical damage on a maximum damage roll. (i.e. a 1d4 damage punch also incurs a roll on the critical damage table if a 4 is rolled).

Chaff (NEW!) – Each chaff fired automatically leads a number of missiles off course as follows: Mini-missile chaff 1d4, short range 1d6, medium range 2d4, long range 3d6.

Penalties to Dodging or Shooting Missiles – Either roll gets a – 1 per multiple of 5 missiles/ (i.e. – 1 to dodge or shoot down 5-9 missiles, – 2 for 10-14 missiles, – 3 for 15-19 missiles, etc).

The Weird In Mystic Japan – Part Two

It seems like my post on Mystic Japan coincided with some other great thoughts on the same subject. Age of Ravens did a great post on his ‘Age of Yokai’ concept for Lo5R, which incidentally made me rethink my opinion of the system and its setting. Wine & Savages responded to my post and mentioned his own post Mappo Monogatari, another interesting setting for Savage Worlds.

I should state that I am not trying to devalue anyone else’s Japan game, just clarifying where I come from and how I would run one based on my experiences here in Kyoto. Someone living in Texas would have a different idea of a western game than someone living in Tokyo, and having lived nearly 1/2 my life in Japan I have a certain perspective on games set here. If you agree with some of my thoughts and could steal them for your own table, have at it. If not, fair enough and good gaming nonetheless.

Back to the subject, there are a few cultural notions that will color character actions, while adventures themselves based on indigenous canon are very different from western stories and adventures. Below I present the concept of girininjo, which I think is integral to understanding things Japanese. In the third and (hopefully) final part of this series, I will give examples of adventures based on literary sources, and end with some youkai monster examples.

THE TWO POLES OF JAPANESE BEHAVIOR – girininjo

If I remember correctly, the old Oriental Adventures added the attribute of Honor to D&D to emulate Japanese aesthetics. Although honor (meiyo 名誉in Japanese) is as important a value to Japanese as to other peoples, the idea of Asian ‘honor’ and ‘saving face’ is largely a western conception used to try and explain Japanese motives. Understanding the Japanese language and people first-hand, one realizes that honor may accord with the outward show of behavior, but often fails to explain the inner moral mechanisms that underlie it. Trying to evaluate Japanese thinking or behavior simply in terms of honour leads to mistaken conclusions or apparent contradictions, especially since what westerners mean by the term ‘honour’ and Japanese mean by ‘meiyou’ can often be very different. A more useful concept, and one that Japanese people commonly apply to their actions and thoughts, is that of ‘girininjou’.

GIRININJO (義理人情)

To understand the motivations and actions of Japanese characters in fiction, and thus reflections of Japanese people in real life and throughout Japan’s history, one has to understand the concept of girininnjou. Girininnjou is a collocation of the terms ‘giri’, or duty or moral obligation, and ‘ninjou’, or humanity or humane feelings. In other words, most Japanese actions can be understood by the paradigm of two values – how they relate to a characters obligations and/or his humaneness.

Thus, Japanese characters would put their obligation to their clan, tribe, sect, or family before others, while these obligations would be tempered by the character’s humanity or humaneness. In Shusaku Endo’s classic novel ‘The Samurai’, if I recall correctly, the youngest brother of 3 samurai ordered to commit seppuku (ritual suicide) is allowed to go first so he can show his older siblings he is worthy of the family and his title of samurai, a ‘kindness’ allowed by their guards. Although the order of death may seem inconsequential to us westerners, as is the kindness of allowing a person to commit suicide at all, Japanese readers would most likely be as moved by the guard’s ninjou and young samurai’s giri as the characters in Endo’s novel are.

In game terms, characters whose actions are lead by girininjou should receive bonuses to XP and NPC reaction. Following one’s lord despite the burdensome nature or questionability of their orders, or letting a downed foe escape because they showed bravery in fighting against insurmountable odds would be examples of giri and ninjou respectively, and should consequently earn rewards and renown for characters. Conversely, NPCs should also be bound by girininjou, and will be helpful or merciful to to PCs who show girininjou and merciless or scornful to those who lack it.

Mystery Solved

It seems Alex took down the OSR Planet due to some complaints about copyright mumbo jumbo.

I guess some may have valid gripes, but it just seems to me another case of some folks peeing in the water and poisoning the well for everyone.

Oh well, thank you for the hard work Alex. First Eternal Keep, next Old School RPG Planet - looks like anything nearing a community forum gets destroyed. Is this some natural OSR cycle of creation and destruction I wonder?

OSR Planet Takeover?

Is it just me or has the Old School RPG Planet website been taken over by RPG Bloggers?
I suppose it is a free site so no cause or right to gripe, but a head's up would have been nice.

Oh well, the layout is a bit commercial, but is also clear and has categories that may steer traffic a bit more.

Wonder what happened?