Hey, I'm alive.

So, it's been a little over two months since I last posted, but I'm making a concerted effort to catch up. It's rough. Not only have I not posted here, I haven't gone to any forums (not even ENWorld), I haven't heard a single podcast, and I haven't even done much emailing.

So yeah, I basically dropped off the planet.

It was unintentional I assure you, but things just became a huge mess after my accident. My broken thumb made it a pain (literally) to type, and both my shoulders nd my knee ended up being a lot worse than I had at first thought. After a couple dozen X-rays and several hours spent in MRIs, it looks like there is finally a solid plan for continuing on my treatment. My thumb is finally starting to heal (though whether it'll ever bend again or stop hurting is up for grabs), and I'm going into a series of surgeries on my knee and both shoulders starting after the beginning of the year. I chickened out and took the less-effective, but easier surgery path to start with. The doctor says there's a 20% or so chance of relapse as opposed to the 100% recover rate of the more complicated procedure, but he also says the harder procedure will make me completely unable to take basic care of myself for a little while, and I'm not ready to go that route yet.

In the mean time, I have these injections that hurt like heck, but are supposed to see me through to the surgeries, and physical therapy twice a week (plus a home regiment to keep the muscles from weakening).

So yeah, basically it sucks, and hopefully you can see why I've been gone. It's a combination of difficulty doing it, no free time, and a general lack of enthusiasm for much of anything.

Interestingly it hasn't stopped or even really slowed down my gaming, so I'll spend a bit of time catching everything up to date on that front in the next few days. One nice thing about gaming is that I can work on it regardless of how bad I'm doing physically. I spend hours plotting stuff out while I'm doing therapy, waiting around in doctors' offices, or just sitting at work.

All in all it's been a great distraction.

A little love for my players.

Just a brief word of appreciation for my players who never cease to surprise me. I sat down to game last night fully expecting to have to argue a little about what I want to play, and maybe even having to compromise and play something that wasn't very high on my list of choices.

Without hesitation they picked my top two campaign suggestions with only one minor change suggested. They even volunteered to play Spirit of the Century, which makes me very excited.

After a rather disappointing last month it's great to see that my players are still right there with me.

Playtesting opportunities and back to gaming.

I was pretty excited to see that playtesting is about to start on the Dresden Files RPG. I mentioned on an earlier blog that I'm pretty excited about this game, so I went ahead and applied for a slot. I'm not hugely familiar with the world yet (having only seen the TV show and read Storm Front), so I doubt I'll get in, but the idea appeals to me.

Besides, playtesting means that the game may actually be coming close to a finished product, which excites me a great deal.

In the mean time, my various groups are all starting up their new campaigns. I've run two sessions of my GURPS game (tentatively titled "Eternal Warriors") and one session of Cold City, which is my first time using the Cold City Companion. It's a freaking great book, but anyone who has read my blogs knows what a fan I am of Cold City. I don't know why, but the darn thing just beats me over the head with cool-factor.

Tonight I'm starting my next game, for which I am trying something new. I won't tell anyone what we're playing. I know it's kind of starting to annoy people, but I'm a little tired of everyone showing up to character building sessions with a character in mind, or worse, a sheet in hand. If no one knows what to expect no one's mind will be working over time before we even get a chance to talk about what kind of group we want.

It's my hope that we'll get there, I'll present a couple of world options, we'll pick one, and then the players will talk about what kind group they want and what kind of adventures they want to play. With any luck we'll have character concepts in mind before we even talk about which system we'll use.

That's my hope anyways.

Tonight will likely be all character/group building, or at least I hope it will be. If so, we'll play this game again next week, and the week after that we'll start playtesting Chains of Aether. Since I had my car accident I haven't gotten the chance to work on it at all, so it'll be good to get back to it and finally get my chance for a "proof of concept."

One final comment. In my accident I lost my iPod. I'm not really sure if it flew out and someone picked it up (I checked the roadside after I got out of the hospital), or if perhaps the tow guys stole it (a possibility since I'm also missing some CDs that mysteriously vanished from my case), but regardless, I haven't caught any of my podcasts in the last few weeks and I'm really starting to jones a bit. I had no idea how much I had come to rely on them for entertainment during my drive into work.

With any luck the jerk at State Farm that is handling my claim will get off his butt some time soon and start reimbursing me for my losses.

The dangers of loose notes.

Last night, on my way into work, my car was hit head-on by a drunk driver. I have some injuries, but I'm more or less ok. There was some bleeding near my heart, but it resolved itself without surgery and I have a bruise on my lung that make deep breaths painful, but other than that there's mostly cuts, bruises, and the usual airbag/seatbelt injuries.
My car, which was less than a year old, was totaled, but even that's not the bad part. The bad part is that I keep a lot of notes on game stuff in my car. Just interesting ideas or what have you that I write down on what ever is handy.

These were unfortunately scattered all over the road in the crash, and during the night while I was in the ER they all blew away and were forever lost.

Remember that, though laziness may seem to be harmless, I've now lost months of ideas that I have no way of getting back. Put to put good ideas on recoverable media quickly and back up often.

As for me, well, my memory is too bad to really do much about what was lost, but I'm going to hope that I can rebuild the important stuff, or at least remember what it was that inspired me.

Buying attributes, and a small problem

I think I figured out what I want to do about attributes for Chains of Aether, which is good I suppose. There are seven attributes (including Centering), rated from 1 (human perfection) to 6 (unplayably low), with 4 representing human average.

For PCs I'm, considering a point buy for attributes. The hard part is coming up with a good number to use, but for now I'll go with my gut and hope playtesting gives me a result I like. For now I'm starting with 12 points, using the following table:

6: Not available
5: +1 point, no more than one stat this low.
4: 0 points.
3: 1 point.
2: 2 points.
1: 4 points, no more than one stat this high.

So, that done I do have one problem. I have no idea how I want to handle damage. For a penalty I'm thinking of lowering the number of cards available in a character's card pool, but I'm not sure entirely how to implement it.

I think if I can get past this hurdle I'll be ready for a "proof of concept" playtest. It'll be enough to just play through a quick game and see if the system works the way I want it to before pushing on further.

It turns out that I'm a cheapskate...

Who knew?

I was over at Half-price books today and stumbled across one of the later Dresden Files books. I really liked the TV show, so I decided to check it out. Unfortunately they didn't have book one, so I went over to Hastings to get it.

Since when do paperbacks cost $9?

Don't get me wrong, I bought it, but wow it's apparently been a while since I bought a new novel, because I had no idea they cost so much.

It's funny really, I have no problem dropping $50 for an RPG I'll likely never play, but a book the cost of a movie ticket shocks me.

Ah well, I'm really looking forward to it, and apparently I need to get out more.

Speaking of the Dresden Files, I'm totally stoked about the fact that it's being made into an RPG. This is partly because watching it made me really want to play, but mostly because Evil Hat, makers of two of the best RPGs I've ever read are putting it together.

Man I hope it comes out soon.

The basic mechanic

The basic mechanic for Chains of Aether is pretty simple. Basically you just add your attribute plus skill (lower is better) together. This gives you the target number for a task of average difficulty. You then play a card. If the card's value if above the target number, the task is a success. The higher it is above the target number gives you the degree of success.

For tasks that are more difficult than usual you would increase the target number. For easier tasks just increase the value of the card.

So, why the cards and card pools are important:

The basic idea of card pools is to allow the player to think tactically a bit and hopefully to encourage him to describe his actions with little fear of them failing. Under most circumstances you will know whether or not you action is successful ahead of time because you get to decide which cards you are playing.

The other reason card pools are nice is because they allow for Chaining. I'll go into that in a bit more depth some other time, but the basic idea is that the number of actions you are capable of in a round is only limited by the size of your card pool (though you can spend to add items to a chain). As you describe your actions, you play a card.

I leap up on the table [play a card], kick the guy's shield out of the way [play a card], punch him in the face [play a card], and stab him with my sword [play a card].

This gives two benefits. First, the only action that really matters is the last one, but you increase the degree of success by the amount that each action beat its target number (target numbers are set by your lowest skill used), less one for each action attempted (this number needs to be playtested, but it feels right for now).

Second, each chain has a pay-off. The strength of the pay-off is determined by the number of actions successfully chained.

Like I said, I'll go into this in more depth later, especially its non-combat applications and how it works with allies, but hopefully this is enough to give you the basic idea.

Ok, I'm pissed

I found out at the end of last week that the place I had set up for my gameday fell through.

We were supposed to be doing it in two weeks.

Now I'm screwed. Luckily there wasn't a huge amount of money involved or anything, but I bought some prizes, printed fliers, that sort of thing, and now I have no idea what to do. With zero time left and no where to host it, I'm likely to have to postpone at best, and cancel at worst.

This crap makes me angry. You know, as a business owner I can't even imagine doing this to a potential customer, especially one who was intending on bringing in a great deal more potential customers. I know it isn't limited to gamers, but you'd think that people who play games would at least take them more seriously. The guy actually said, "Yeah, I've know we couldn't do it for a while now, but I didn't know how to tell you, and I knew you were busy getting ready for GenCon."

Getting ready for GenCon! He knew at least four weeks ago?!

Arg. I've spent the last week trying to find a decent place, and short of throwing myself on the mercy of the local FLGS I have no idea where else to try for a decent price. Heck, even if David (the LGS owner) did let us do it there, which I doubt, since Dragon's Lair seems to be phasing out RPGs, there isn't time enough to change the location without changing the date.

At this point I'm considering scrapping the whole idea and just trying to put on a little mini-con this spring. By then I could gather some cash and rent a real space, with a real contract.

The problem is, though I know Austin is a good gaming town, and I know central Texas needs a decent con for gaming, I wonder if the number of people who would come would make up for my out of pocket expenses. I wouldn't mind losing a little money to get the chance to do something cool for local gamers, but I don't want to lose my shirt and then have no one show up.

I frustrate myself sometimes.

I mentioned in my very first blog here that I wanted to do a little game design work, but I'm having several issues, and even though I know they're mostly in my own mind, I can't seem to get past them.

Right now I'm working on two games, but one is definitely on the back burner. The other, which I'm tentatively calling Chains of Aether, evolved out of that one, but since I think it'll be a bit easier I've decided to focus on that one for now.

It really started as a solution for an issue I'm having with my other game. I wanted a fairly typical
roll-under percentile system, but I wasn't content with the degree of randomness that a straight percentile roll allows.

Unable to find a good solution I came up with something that I thought offered some predictability and had some potential for an interesting tactical twist. Basically it works like this:

Players have a stat called Centering. It basically represents perfect balance in one's life. The six other stats, which govern the usual things (combat, magic, intelligence, social acumen), all circle around Centering. Raising these things makes you better in the field they represent, but the further any stat is from your Centering, the smaller your die pool is. Hopefully this encourages balanced builds and gives non-magical or unenhanced characters a reason to shine without making focus characters any weaker.

Die pools are important because players roll a number of dice equal to their pool at the beginning of an adventure. Then they line the dice up in front of them, and choose the ones they want to use each time they attempt to use a skill. This gets rid of most randomness and adds a tactical element to the game. Players must choose when to use their high rolls, while bleeding off low rolls on easy or unimportant tasks.

When a die is used, the player rerolls it and adds it back to their pool. The difficulty here is that, should you only use high rolls, eventually you're going to run out and you'll only have low rolls remaining. That's why having balance is important. Large dice pools mean lots of dice to choose from.

Die pools also allow for Chaining, which is a little complicated, so I'll save that for later. Basically it just means creating action chains by sequencing the dice from your pool (and possibly the pools of allies who are assisting you).

The problem is that having a lot of dice just sitting there on the table is asking for trouble. While at GenCon I came up with an alternate idea. I would use cards instead of dice. Cards are easy to hold in large numbers, and much less likely to be knocked over. I really liked the idea, but it didn't really fit with what I was trying to do in the other game, so I spun the idea off into a game of its own.

The problem now is that I'm left with a conundrum. I have no idea what the new game is to be about, and it frustrates me because I can't just think of something. Every time I think about the game I focus on what the characters can do rather than who they are, and that's not what I want at all.

It's an old problem of mine, and one I don't know how to get past. Whenever I design a game starting with the rules I always focus on powers over story or characters. I don't know what it is about my brain that just shuts down, but I do much better design work when I start with a solid game concept first, and just let the rules grow around it.

I guess that's it, that's why I frustrate myself. I know I have this problem, but I have no idea how to get around it.

Playtesting group

I was listening to a podcast (Voice of the Revolution I believe) and thinking a little bit about what I wanted to do with my group when an idea occurred to me.

I spend a lot of time playing. Right now I'm going to be running games three times a week, and playing in another game every-other week. The problem is, I ended all of my games before GenCon, and I have no idea what I want to play with all of these groups. Then the guys mentioned how hard it was to find good playtesters, and it occurred to me that it might be a lot of fun. I've run some playtest groups in the past, but since I have three separate groups of veteran players right now, it might be a great time for me to look into doing it again.

Anywho, I think it might be a good idea to start looking into the idea. If there really is a need, I think I'd really like to volunteer my group for the task.

Reviewer for sale or rent.

Thanks to some good advice from CW Richeson and a suggestion from the guys at Zeitgeist Games I've decided to start reviewing game products. I'll publish reviews here, at ENWorld, and over on RPG.net.

Unlike the informal reviews I did over on my other blog I'll do my best to give clear, in depth reviews on as many products as possible, and where possible I'll playtest materials before publishing my thoughts.

This'll give me a chance to continue contributing to the RPG community in some small way, and it'll give my group a little variety in the games we play, something we really enjoyed about working on the ENnies.

If anyone has a product they'd like to see me review, please just let me know. My collection is pretty extensive, and if I have it I'd be glad to talk about it. Right now I plan at least one review a week (to be released on Mondays) starting September 17, when my personal schedule slows down a bit. If I can get something up before then I will.

If anything should be submitted for review it'll go straight to the top of my list, and I personally plan on a two week turn around. Barring emergency I should always hit this, unless we need a little bit more time for playtesting. My schedule allows me plenty of freedom to read, write, and play.

Anywho, thanks to CW for the suggestion, and thanks to the guys over at Zeitgeist for getting me started. If anyone has questions or idea for reviews, let me know here or at jeramyware@yahoo.com. If you email me, please put the word [Review] in the title so my spam filter doesn't eat it.

A new blog.

As I mentioned over on the old In My Judgment, I've decided to move my personal blog over here. I'm going to give the other blog over to this year's crop of judges in hopes that they will continue the work that I started. I know I'm really excited to hear what they have to say, and I think a lot of other people will be as well.

I also went ahead and started a second blog to cover my personal life. I like the opportunity to vent a bit, but I thought I should keep it separate, since it has little to do with gaming.


As for this blog, it will contiue some of what I started over on the old blog, as well as allowing me a place to talk about my gaming life a bit. I'll go into a bit more detail later, but I wanted to go ahead and get this thing started. The next couple weeks will be hard on updates, but I'll start working on it as soon as possible.

Thanks to everyone who has supported me, and I hope that I continue to have something new and interesting to add.

GenCon report, and moving forward.

So, it's been a week since I've gotten home from GenCon, which probably makes this the latest report on the internet, but I honestly just kind of took the last week off. Not from work, mind you. I went to work the day I got back, and have been working since then to make up for the time I took off, but from games. With the exception of learning how to play the WoW card game I got as swag, I haven't opened a game book, taken a note, or typed a word on the campaigns I'm supposed to be working on. I basically took last week to decompress a bit and hang out with my wife and kids before school made our lives crazy again.

Anywho, I guess I had better start with talking a little bit about the awards. The ceremony was awesome, and best of all I got to spend a bit of time hanging out with all of the great people that I got to know on line over the last few months. There weren't a whole lot of surprises among the winners, though I sincerely wish that a few of the outstanding small press titles had gotten a bit more recognition. I really thought there would be at least a few more medals going out to them.

And then of course there were the announcements for the judge elections.

Since that night I've heard a huge number of people come out to tell me they were sorry that I didn't get elected, and how shocked they were. I appreciate that a lot, but it wasn't entirely unexpected. I was far more shocked that Jeff Ranger (who had been a judge in every previous year) didn't get elected. My election the first time was a fluke, and the result of a whole lot of hard campaigning, drawing from groups that most other judges simply didn't have access to. I hit local gatherings and nearly every gamer in central Texas looking for votes while the others campaigned among the people who could already be counted on to vote online. This meant that I got a nice little surge of votes, but it also meant that they went away as soon as I wasn't around to remind them to get online and vote for me. While everyone else was online, campaigning and answering questions like they should have been, I was on vacation with my family. I knew I was taking a chance with the election when I made the choice, and I don't really regret it.

This isn't, however, bad news. For the judging panel we got five qualified and excited people who came straight home with piles of books and got right to work. I think they're going to do a fantastic job, and I can't wait to sit back and see what they come up with. As far as what that will mean where this blog is concerned, well I have even better news. At least three of the judges told me that they are interested in blogging like I did, and together I know they'll do a far better job than I ever did alone. I have offered to give them this blog site, since it would be a bit disingenuous of me to keep using the enniejudge address, and hopefully they'll take me up on that. Even if they maintain separate blogs, a combined blog here might make for interesting reading. Liz also asked me to consider writing a guest column on occasion, which would be extremely cool, though I have no idea what I would talk about.

As for me, I accepted a staff position doing outreach for the Ennie Awards, and I'll be moving my private blog onto another feed just as soon as I figure out whether or not there is any way to transfer over all the stuff I've already written. I'll leave my entries here as well, but I wanted to archive them on my own site if possible. Beyond Ennies stuff, I'm thinking about starting a pet project. Dan Repperger told me that he believes that everything happens for a reason, and that he was able to speak far more for podcasting by presenting the award than he ever could have in a simple acceptance speech. That got me thinking, and though I personally feel the same way, I don't usually have many opportunities to apply that to gaming. Here perhaps I do. I have two RPGs that I have all but complete, that I never bothered to do anything with because I never had any desire to try and get them published. As a judge I never could have anyways.

Having met a lot of great publishers and writers at GenCon however, I begin to understand why people might want to put their stuff our there, even if they know it'll never make them a real living. So I think I may give it a shot as well. I'm going to take this year to try and get together at least an ashcan edition, and hope that the Ashcan Front has room for one more. I really loved what they were doing there, and it would be incredibly awesome to have the chance to be a part of that.

Anywho, enough of that. Let's talk about GenCon.

Maybe it's just been too long, or maybe I'm just older, but it sure seemed like GenCon was bigger and much more of a presence than it was in Milwaukee ten years ago. You couldn't swing a boffer weapon without smacking a gamer ("2 magic!"), and you couldn't walk down the street without meeting someone cool.

That's good, because I turns out that I am the worst GenCon planner ever. I went to the con signed up to run two unofficial games, and to play in one more. Beyond that, all I had to do was two shifts at the Ennies booth. That's it. Silly me, I thought I'd just find a few games when I got there.

I did, however, run Hollow Earth Expedition, and the players there made it the most fun I've ever had in a con game, and probably the best time I've had with any game in a really long time. I cannot express enough how much I love that game, and as glad as I am that it got a silver for Best Cover, I'm pretty saddened that it wasn't honored beyond that at the Ennies. It helps of course, that the people who make it are so completely awesome. Not only did they set aside a special copy of the limited edition Secrets of the Surface World supplement for me (number 10!), they gave me a copy of the GM screen for running the game at the con, even though mine wasn't an official game, and loaned me a ton of the extremely cool new style chips to use.

I also played in a game of Traveller20 run by Psion from the ENWorld forums. There I made the unfortunate choice of playing the pilot, and I basically spent the entire game sitting on the ship hoping to make myself useful. I'm sure I was a ton of fun for the poor other players who kept trying to encourage me to leave the ship, but the paranoid GM in me was sure that the moment we left the ship unoccupied it was going to take off without us. Yeah, it's tough switch from GM to player. If you guys are reading this, sorry if I was a stick in the mud.

Finally I managed to worm my way into Chris Hussey's Skies of Glass demo (the game written by the guys over at Fear the Boot). The game itself is still in early stages of development, but it looks really cool, and that demo adventure is the best written con game I've ever seen. It's really tough to write a game for a bunch of strangers. Doubly so for a group different enough to touch on all the features of a game, and that game was perfect. Everyone at that table had something to do, and we were all engaged the entire time. I can't heap enough praise that direction. Even if my best friend did betray me to the law and get me executed...

That's really it for my gaming experiences. Like I said, I just didn't plan well at all. I was really hoping to do some stuff that I never get to at home, play some board games, demo a few story games, and play in a LARP. Ever since I read the excellent new version of the Cthulu LARPthat was entered in the Ennies I've been dying to give it a try. Anywho, I never really got the chance. That's not entirely true. I did get to do a cool demo of Breaking the Ice, which was a huge amount of fun, but I was desperate to try out Dogs in the Vineyard and Prime Time Adventures, and I'm bummed that I never made that happen. Especially after hearing the latest Sons of Kryos talk about the great Star Wars game they played with PTA.

In spite of my terrible planning I did get to meet some extremely cool people. Wednesday night the guys from Fear the Boot took me out for a great dinner, and not only gave me a Baron von Badass mug, but introduced me to a new beer to fill it with. I also got to hang out with Jeff and Judd from the Sons of Kryos, though I never did meet Storn; Paul Tevis, who also introduced me to Ken Hite (sorry, Kenneth Hite in print); Jeff, Melissa, and the Exile Crew; Lenny and Fred from Evil Hat; all three of the All Games Considered crew, Jared Sorenson; Luke Crane; all the ENnies folks (Denise, Russ, Rich, Liz, Kennon, Michael, Gertie, Jeff, Stuart, Kevin...); the list goes on and on, but now I'm just listing people, so I'm going to stop while I'm ahead. Sorry if I missed anyone. I had such a great time at GenCon, and it was all because of the people I met.

So, I guess that's really all I did. I missed the Judges' Party Thursday night, so I don't have all the great stories everyone else does. I skipped it at first to run my HEX game, intending to show up late, but then promptly forgot about the party by the time the game ended at midnight, and went up to my room to sleep after my 20 hour drive earlier in the day. Other than that I spent all of my time in the dealers' room. You'd think that I'd have managed, in all that time, to get everything that I wanted, but I didn't. I don't have my stuff with me, but let me see if I can remember the list:

• Play Dirty, by John Wick (Dude, if you stumble across this, you're my hero. Just throwing that out there.)
• The Blossoms are Falling, by Luke Crane
• Jihad, by Luke Crane
• Cold City Companion, by Malcolm Craig (Who also gave me a second, signed copy, to give away at my game day next month.)
• Monte Cook's World of Darkness
• Hollow Earth Expedition: Secrets of the Surface World
• Hollow Earth Expedition: Player's Kit (A cool little bag with Ubiquity dice and Style Chips.)
• Hollow Earth Expedition: Game Master's Screen
  
• Aces and Eights
• Classic Battletech TechManual
• Classic Battletech Technical Readout 3050
• Shadowrun: Augmentation
  
• Dogs in the Vineyard
• GURPS: Martial Arts
• Blackmoor: Clock and Steam (Which was given to me for review by the guys at Zeitgeist.)
  
• and the guys at Eden sold me Forsaken Rites, Cryptozoology, and Atlantis Rising for $5 a piece on Sunday :)

I know I'm forgetting some stuff, but I won't remember any more until after I publish this I'm sure, so I'm going to press on. I guess the combination of crunchy and narrative games that I bought may make me the most eclectic gamer ever, but I just love new games. So long as they fulfill their design goals I'm willing to give anything a shot.

What's really notable is what I didn't get, mostly because I'm an idiot. In retrospect I'm angry with myself for skipping the new Battletech boxed set. I was already so far over budget I couldn't justify buying a starter set since I already had all of the regular books, but man I wish I had a copy. A similar thing happened with GURPS Supers, where I got money concious and started thinking about the likelihood that I would be playing a Supers game any time soon. Somehow I also missed three of the games that I specifically went into the dealer's hall to buy. Reign, Prime Time Adventures, and Dread were right at the very top of my too buy list, and I have no idea how I missed them. I went to the Forge booth to pick them up, got distracted when my inner fanboi took over and I went around getting my books signed, and managed to walk away without thinking about it. I didn't notice that I managed to leave without them until I packed up my suitcase Sunday night.

All in all however it was certainly the best four days in gaming. I can't begin to describe what a great time I had and how much fun it was meeting everyone. Next year I'll plan better, and I'll do all of my shopping Thursday in case I miss anything. Other than that, I have no regrets.

Thanks to everyone who made GenCon, and this blog, such a blast. Especially to all of those who voted for me or vouched for me when I was running for judge. I got a lot of love this year, and win or lose it meant the world to me.