Big one

So Jum-jum mentioned something about going down to gen con next month. Great idea, says I. Only been there twice, but well worth the time on both occasions. I really need to sign up for some events this time though. Last time I went, just browsed around, and spent tons of money.

I really miss the gen con preview and event information that used to run in Dragon. It made it seem like gen con was the most important gaming event in the world. Might finally sign up for the RPGA if I go down there.

What Gaming Hath Shown

So, before, there was the post about what our gaming influences are. Made me think of the other route, what gaming has done to my influences. Or, what I discovered through being a gamer.

1. THE Authors. Lovecraft, Leiber, Moorcock. All of which I discovered through a lucky find at a salvation army. The Deities and Demigods that contained all of these. I ended up selling it at the first gen con I went to, meh.

2. Cyberpunk. I might have discovered it later on, when love of film would have shown to me that Blade Runner kicks all kindsa ass. For me though, it was Shadowrun. Orcs with guns and cybernetics happened to be the gateway drug for me.

3. Music. Joy Division, Sisters of Mercy, X, Robert Johnson. For as reviled as White Wolf is, at least it had awesome suggested listening lists.

4. John Woo. The Hong Kong stuff at least. Hong Kong Action Theater had a super awesome suggested viewing list, which I only scraped the surface of. The Gun Fu stuff really sated me I think. So fricken awesome.

5. Samurai. I really only watched Kurosawa and read Book of the Five Rings so I could run a kick ass game of Legend of the Five Rings. Never did, though.

6. Anime. I'm sure I would have eventually seen Akira, MD geist, Ninja Scroll and Vampire Hunter D. Heavy Gear just gave me the kick in the ass to get around to it. Starting with Patlabor.

Splatta!

The sunday D&D game I'm playing in just descended into a gore fest. Now if boobies are inappropriate in gaming, gore is totally kosher. How can you have a game that 75% of the time involves people chopping away at each other with swords and not have a little viscerata? The grinding and chopping was all happening to townsfolk, so it was especially brutal. Gore is blunted in gaming, and wisely so, because if your axe can lop off slabs of ogre flesh, it stands to reason that his cleaver will do the same to you. No player wants to get maimed in every fight.

Gurps goblins used nasty injuries, but in that game, your characters are virtually unkillable. The injuries would just make your phobic sickly alchoholic goblin more miserable. Seems with healing spells, chopping the hell out of players would be ok. The cure light would just stick that flapping chunk of flesh back on you.

Ye Ole Teat Bar

I'm playing in a new game on sunday nights, good times. Still trying to get a handle on the personality of my Mwambi (African) tribesman magic user, Witch Man. Just talking in third person all the time doesn't seem like a deep enough characterization, but meh, I'll get the hang of it eventually.

During the scenario, it became obvious to me that in fantasy towns and fairs there is an abundance of sex workers. Brothels, dancing girls, street walkers, saucy barmaids, willing succubus's, all kinds of naughty girls. In addition to this, I just saw the south park episode Major Boobage. Ahh, one of the hidden ingredients to perfect fantasy. Puerile adolescent nudity and violence. Korgoth of Barbaria, Heavy Metal, Frazetta, Nekkid titty demons in the monster manual, all these reflect this naughty piece of the fantasy puzzle.

Try running naughty things in your game though. It's pervy as hell. For the most part, players are going to be guys. As much as they like boobies and sex scenes, they don't really want their buddies to think them up for them and then tell them about it around a table. I guess it is sexist as well, to plaster manuals and scenarios in boobirific art. Still, I'm thinking the best fantasy has awesome boobage and mysterious super science.

5 Influences! Yay memes!

1. Piers Anthony
As much as I wanted to read real fantasy fiction as a lad, the local library left much to be desired. Of your fantasy mainstays, seems like they never had more than one or two of any given series, and never the first episode. Except for the Xanth books. Think this is where I decided a little bit of silly anachronism is ok in fantasy.

2. Elfquest
When Marvel comics reprinted this under the epic imprint, in color no less, I was lucky enough to stumble onto the first issue. I was just strolling through the local drug store, when BAM! I espied a first issue of a new series. I spouted "Wow! This looks just like dungeons and dragons!" From there on I was hooked. Took periodic three mile walks to the local comic store to try and snag the current issue. If I missed an issue, hunted for it in the back issue bins of whatever comic store we might visit on family vacations. I'm still missing one issue, which I have sort of avoided finding. I like having that quest unfinished.

3. Krull
My brother had the board game, which came with little resin figures of The Prince, and The Beast. They found their way into the first couple of sessions I ran, along with whatever half painted mini's of my bro's I could scrounge up.

4. Zork
Not the computer game, we were too poor for that. Nope, the What-do-I-do-now books. Good stuff, picked them up at school book fairs, when I could beg the change for them. Still have a copy of #4 Conquest at Quendor. Bivotaur and Juranda have to face down a riddle talking cat head on the end of a tentacle. The demon Jeearr!


5. Dr. Frankenstein's Haunted Castle
Awesome attraction at Indiana beach. Just really think a good dungeon should kinda be like a haunted house ride. Like the intro to the DnD cartoon. Rat tails tickling at your feet, drop away balconies, false doors, all kindsa tricksy fun.

Free Game Day!

So, free game day, pretty ossim eh? All kinds of free starter rules, think the one I like the best is the Harnmaster Field of Daisies. Never really paid much attention to Harn, but looking through this, I'm thinking I should have. Half realistic middle ages, half typical fantasy, nice middle ground between the ole D&D and Pendragon. The scenario itself seems like it would be great fun, with a sort of made by Europeans feel, like the old Warhammer fantasy adventures. One of the character stats I've never seen in any other system, is for how pleasant one's voice sounds. That just might be the key to easy role playing (for npc's at least) that I have been searching for!

Field of Daisies also has a new fun toy in it for me, a extensive map key. I really feel like map making in RPG's fell by the wayside. Probably in the early nineties, when on one side, you had TSR trying to convince you to make 3d maps (Castles and Catacombs guide) and on the other, White Wolf telling you that maps are for railroading suckers. This map key has usable symbols for ceiling height, whether or not a door has a bar, what type of ceiling, how to mark changes in elevation and floor height easily, all sorts of goodies.

The castles and crusades quick start has character creation in it. Neato! Reminds me of the Holmes blue book Dnd, without monster and magic item listings. Traveller 0, full set of rules, plus character creation as well. This really impresses me. I thought demo and quick start rules were made of about 5 pre-generated characters, a rough run down of the rules, and a short scenario. Quite a few of these little booklets are just rules, no characters or scenario. One of them is just setting information (the goodman games one I think). Would be nice to have the time to sit down and blast through one or two of these eventually. Heh, seems like the backlog of gaming is just piling up.

The Road

I just finished reading The Road yesterday. It's a Pulitzer prize winner by Cormac McCarthy. Pretty powerful stuff, it's about a man and his son wandering the burnt out ashes of a nuclear war ravaged earth. Of the two visions of a post apocalyptic world, I prefer the one with crazy psychic mutants over the one with endless winter and people slowly dying of radiation poisoning. But as a depiction of the more likely scenario, this book is tops.

Besides being a moving read, this book also conveys the brutality and just wrongness of a world with no order. Everyone but the main character eats people, that's about the only food source. If you meet someone, 90% chance they want to kill, rob, and eat you. It's set like ten years after the fall of civilization, so there is just about nothing left to scavenge. Shoes are as rare as ammunition and guns. A world full of barefoot bearded killers wielding lead pipes.