ICON 30
[Note: this was reposted on the Chapter 13 Press Forums]
Had a blast at ICON this last weekend.
On Friday night, I ended up playing 'musical panelists' with Eddy and Michelle Webb, and Frank Mentzer. The Webbs were first, they did a panel on the current state of White Wolf (exciting stuff, with the 20th Anniversary edition of VtM coming out soon). Eddy has stated that technically he doesn't really know what his job is with White Wolf, since everything is moving so fast, his job description may change from one day to the next.
I was up next, with the Independent Publishing panel, with Brandon Osorio from Dark Refuge, Aaron Rosenberg, and Oscar Rios from Miskatonic River Press, and the Webbs and Frank ended up in the audience for that one. Osk summed up the panel very nicely: "If you're a control freak, if you don't care about making lots of money but want to be able to put something out that where the end product exactly matches your initial vision, independent publishing is for you."
Then Frank took over, for a look back at working (and gaming) with Gary Gygax. He started off with "I hate to burst everyone's bubble, but Gary was a son of a bitch". He told some stories about working at TSR in the early days, the sad story of the legal battle between Gary and Dave Arneson, and the even sadder story about how Gary got ousted from his own company in 1986. He finished up with his favorite story about Gary, which actually happened before he'd even met Gary. TSR was working on Keep on the Borderlands, and Frank noticed that while there was a cleric in the backstory, there was no chapel on the map or in the text. He did a quick writeup of the chapel and sent to to Gary via interoffice mail. The rest of the staff began making plans for Frank's farewell party, because Gary was notorious for not taking criticism well. The response came back: "Looks good; use it", and everyone was shocked that Frank had survived this encounter. He then went on to actually meet Gary about a week later, and they became good friends, and Frank was able to move up in the company, eventually going on to create the Red Box (and accompanying Expert, Master, and Immortal rulesets), as well as starting the RPGA.
On Saturday, I ran Dave of the Dead from 11 to 3, and it went pretty well. The core resolution mechanics continue to work really well. The Yo and Woe still aren't 'popping' the way I want them to, but they're soooo close. I really need to run some regular playtests, instead of just 3-4 times a year. That's what's really slowing down the production more than anything else, except maybe not having enough time to do all the art I really want. This is one of the few times I ran the scenario and it didn't end with the National Guard firebombing the entire town. The PCs did get to blow up a bunch of zombies using an overturned van, so that was neat.
After that, my friend Lucas and I got to play Fiasco with Tim from Dice Food Lodging, and that was really cool. We used the London gangsters playset, so we got our own little Guy Ritchie type story. Lucas played John Horsey, a sergeant that was moving contraband through the quartermaster's office at the local army base, I played Pete Bradshaw, an ex-army buddy of his, and Tim played Pete's brother Jason, who owed some money to Lucas' character due to gambling debts. John put Jason in charge of getting his fat sister Margaret laid in exchange for erasing the debt, while a major from the case showed up to start making John's life difficult, claiming that he had hard evidence that John was not actually a Falklands veteran, a claim that had saved John's career on more than one occasion thus far. In the middle of all of this was a load of 40 chickens, which had showed up at the quartermaster's office, and John put Pete in charge of getting rid of. Pete sold them to the owner of a local Russian restaurant that he was acquainted with. In true Guy Ritchie (and Fiasco) fashion, everything came crashing together by the end, in the most hilarious and wince-inducing way possible.
I ended up showing up a little late for my next panel, Improving Your Game, but that was alright, because there was very little in the way of audience, so it ended up being more an informal chat between me, Brandon, and the 3 or 4 people who did show up.
After the awards dinner, I just hung around for a while before going to see Voltaire play at midnight. He did an extended show because he apparently missed the panel he was supposed to be doing that afternoon.
On Sunday, I got in on an OSR panel run by Frank, along with George Strayton, who among other things (from writing for Hercules & Xena to working on Spiderman and Transformers) is currently working on Legends & Labyrinths, one of many of these so-called 'clones' that have been popping up in the last year or so. Apparently, the whole thing got inadvertently kicked off by WotC themselves, when they rewrote the OGL legal stuff, and someone realized that they could rewrite the text of the rules, and legally release what essentially amounted to original D&D, with just enough changed that WotC found themselves without a leg to stand on when they attempted to serve a C&D order. In response, dozens of similar projects have launched, and it runs from free downloads to actual physical print products you can buy (thanks, Print on Demand!).
No one signed up for my game, so Keepers of the Gateway remains unplayed by anyone anywhere ever. I'm still thinking of maybe turning it into its own game in some fashion. But that freed me up for the Doctor Who panel. In retrospect I probably should not have spoken up as much as I did, but Ken Deep of the Gallifreyan Embassy was really nice, and didn't kick me the hell out.
After that, I got to sit in and watch Frank run a quick (2hr) game from the original brown booklet D&D manuals from the late 70s. Frank said his philosophy can be summed up in one phrase: "Rulings, not Rules." If you don't have a rule for a particular situation, or if it's going to take an hour to look up the rule for something in one of several dozen rulebooks or supplements, just make something up. Make sure it's fair, and when in doubt, rule in favor of the player. Above all, keep things moving. Watching him run a game for 12(!) players, it struck me that this sort of gaming was much more in line with what we (this is, my friends and I) do when playing Arkham Horror than it is with anything we tend to associate with the term 'roleplaying' or RPGs. But this is a good thing, because it allows me to reconcile to very different play styles, and now I can say "alright, tomorrow night we get to do really heavy character-driven drama, but tonight, we're just gonna kill things and take their stuff!"
-- Ben
Had a blast at ICON this last weekend.
On Friday night, I ended up playing 'musical panelists' with Eddy and Michelle Webb, and Frank Mentzer. The Webbs were first, they did a panel on the current state of White Wolf (exciting stuff, with the 20th Anniversary edition of VtM coming out soon). Eddy has stated that technically he doesn't really know what his job is with White Wolf, since everything is moving so fast, his job description may change from one day to the next.
I was up next, with the Independent Publishing panel, with Brandon Osorio from Dark Refuge, Aaron Rosenberg, and Oscar Rios from Miskatonic River Press, and the Webbs and Frank ended up in the audience for that one. Osk summed up the panel very nicely: "If you're a control freak, if you don't care about making lots of money but want to be able to put something out that where the end product exactly matches your initial vision, independent publishing is for you."
Then Frank took over, for a look back at working (and gaming) with Gary Gygax. He started off with "I hate to burst everyone's bubble, but Gary was a son of a bitch". He told some stories about working at TSR in the early days, the sad story of the legal battle between Gary and Dave Arneson, and the even sadder story about how Gary got ousted from his own company in 1986. He finished up with his favorite story about Gary, which actually happened before he'd even met Gary. TSR was working on Keep on the Borderlands, and Frank noticed that while there was a cleric in the backstory, there was no chapel on the map or in the text. He did a quick writeup of the chapel and sent to to Gary via interoffice mail. The rest of the staff began making plans for Frank's farewell party, because Gary was notorious for not taking criticism well. The response came back: "Looks good; use it", and everyone was shocked that Frank had survived this encounter. He then went on to actually meet Gary about a week later, and they became good friends, and Frank was able to move up in the company, eventually going on to create the Red Box (and accompanying Expert, Master, and Immortal rulesets), as well as starting the RPGA.
On Saturday, I ran Dave of the Dead from 11 to 3, and it went pretty well. The core resolution mechanics continue to work really well. The Yo and Woe still aren't 'popping' the way I want them to, but they're soooo close. I really need to run some regular playtests, instead of just 3-4 times a year. That's what's really slowing down the production more than anything else, except maybe not having enough time to do all the art I really want. This is one of the few times I ran the scenario and it didn't end with the National Guard firebombing the entire town. The PCs did get to blow up a bunch of zombies using an overturned van, so that was neat.
After that, my friend Lucas and I got to play Fiasco with Tim from Dice Food Lodging, and that was really cool. We used the London gangsters playset, so we got our own little Guy Ritchie type story. Lucas played John Horsey, a sergeant that was moving contraband through the quartermaster's office at the local army base, I played Pete Bradshaw, an ex-army buddy of his, and Tim played Pete's brother Jason, who owed some money to Lucas' character due to gambling debts. John put Jason in charge of getting his fat sister Margaret laid in exchange for erasing the debt, while a major from the case showed up to start making John's life difficult, claiming that he had hard evidence that John was not actually a Falklands veteran, a claim that had saved John's career on more than one occasion thus far. In the middle of all of this was a load of 40 chickens, which had showed up at the quartermaster's office, and John put Pete in charge of getting rid of. Pete sold them to the owner of a local Russian restaurant that he was acquainted with. In true Guy Ritchie (and Fiasco) fashion, everything came crashing together by the end, in the most hilarious and wince-inducing way possible.
I ended up showing up a little late for my next panel, Improving Your Game, but that was alright, because there was very little in the way of audience, so it ended up being more an informal chat between me, Brandon, and the 3 or 4 people who did show up.
After the awards dinner, I just hung around for a while before going to see Voltaire play at midnight. He did an extended show because he apparently missed the panel he was supposed to be doing that afternoon.
On Sunday, I got in on an OSR panel run by Frank, along with George Strayton, who among other things (from writing for Hercules & Xena to working on Spiderman and Transformers) is currently working on Legends & Labyrinths, one of many of these so-called 'clones' that have been popping up in the last year or so. Apparently, the whole thing got inadvertently kicked off by WotC themselves, when they rewrote the OGL legal stuff, and someone realized that they could rewrite the text of the rules, and legally release what essentially amounted to original D&D, with just enough changed that WotC found themselves without a leg to stand on when they attempted to serve a C&D order. In response, dozens of similar projects have launched, and it runs from free downloads to actual physical print products you can buy (thanks, Print on Demand!).
No one signed up for my game, so Keepers of the Gateway remains unplayed by anyone anywhere ever. I'm still thinking of maybe turning it into its own game in some fashion. But that freed me up for the Doctor Who panel. In retrospect I probably should not have spoken up as much as I did, but Ken Deep of the Gallifreyan Embassy was really nice, and didn't kick me the hell out.
After that, I got to sit in and watch Frank run a quick (2hr) game from the original brown booklet D&D manuals from the late 70s. Frank said his philosophy can be summed up in one phrase: "Rulings, not Rules." If you don't have a rule for a particular situation, or if it's going to take an hour to look up the rule for something in one of several dozen rulebooks or supplements, just make something up. Make sure it's fair, and when in doubt, rule in favor of the player. Above all, keep things moving. Watching him run a game for 12(!) players, it struck me that this sort of gaming was much more in line with what we (this is, my friends and I) do when playing Arkham Horror than it is with anything we tend to associate with the term 'roleplaying' or RPGs. But this is a good thing, because it allows me to reconcile to very different play styles, and now I can say "alright, tomorrow night we get to do really heavy character-driven drama, but tonight, we're just gonna kill things and take their stuff!"
-- Ben