Pretty much since I was 12 years old, I’ve always been the guy in my game group who was most interested in new games. I was the one who bought games all the time, compared systems, and convinced others to try something different. With RPGs, this has meant I’ve spent more time behind the GM’s screen than in front of it. Oh, I like playing. Love it, in fact. But oftentimes, if I didn’t run a game, there wouldn’t be a game.

A couple of years back I tried to break the rut of my weekly group by issuing an ultimatum. At the time I was working on d20 stuff all day long and then running D&D; at night. There’d come a point every Thursday where I’d stop grinding d20 stat blocks so I could grind different d20 stat blocks to prep for the game. Finally, I told my group, “Look, either one of you has to start running D&D; or you guys have to let me switch to a different game for awhile.” I offered to run Call of Cthulhu or Pendragon but there wasn’t much interest in those (some day I’ll find the right group for a great Pendragon campaign; some day). A couple of the group made attempts to run D&D; in my stead, but they didn’t last long. Within a couple of months, I was back to GMing. They agreed to try Decipher’s Lord of the Rings game for a change of pace. I set up a big cool campaign that took place in the Long Winter. Had all kinds of great stuff planned too, but everyone hated the game system. When I admitted defeat and told the group that WFRP2 was ready for playtesting and I wanted to switch, people actually cheered.

The WFRP playtest lasted the rest of 2004 and wrapped up right before Xmas. We weren’t sure what we were going to do next, but then Ray told me he was interested in running a game. He joined the group for the first time last week so we could make characters. Last night we played the first session. Ray’s choice of game: Victory’s old James Bond 007 RPG. I hadn’t played the game since high school and many of group had never played it at all. I was worried that some of them might be put off by a different system, but I needn’t have. We put together our team of super spies with ease and everyone got into the spirit of the game right away. We kicked off with a classic opening action scene and had riotous fun climbing up walls with suction cups, parachuting off skyscrapers, and being chased by motorcycle-mounted thugs through London. It was really fun and I must say that the system really holds up. There’s some very clever design there that helps give the game the proper Bond feel.

It’s a weight off my shoulders that I don’t have to run a game for a while. Now I can just show up on game night, play, and have fun. Nice.

There was an American GI in WWII named Bill Mauldin who became a justly famous cartoonist. He did a strip called “Willie and Joe” that appeared in Stars & Stripes. His aim was to portray the real struggle of the common combat man, which he was well familiar with from his own time in the 45^th Division. As Willie and Joe were frontline dogfaces, they were always disheveled and unshaved. They griped about chow, officers, rear-echelon goldbrickers, German 88s, and so on. The cartoons were so accurate that soldiers came to love Willie and Joe. Mauldin also made some enemies in the officer corps. Guys like Patton, who were all about the spit and polish, despised Willie and Joe. Nonetheless, Mauldin kept doing the strip throughout the war and became a beloved figure to the GIs.

A Mauldin book called Up Front was published in 1945. It collected many of his most famous cartoons, along with essays on the trials and tribulations of the dogfaces. If you want to understand what it was like to be an infantryman in the US army during WWII, Up Front is required reading.

I bring this up because yesterday I was up in Capitol Hill and I walked by this used bookstore that’s closing up shop. It’s chock full of cool old books and records. They had a boxed set of Charlton Heston reading the first five books of the Old Testament! I was looking through their WWII section and noticed they had a copy of Up Front. On closer inspection, I realized that it was the 1945 edition. Furthermore, Bill Mauldin had signed it…in 1945. The store sold it to me for $10. How cool is that?

After a full year of working just about every day, I can now finally say: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is finished. Not only that, the first two support products are also done. That’s three products in the line put to bed, with two more on deck right now. I tell you, come this Spring Warhammer fans aren’t going to know what hit them. After years of little or no support, they are going to get it in spades. This has been a helluva lot of work and the most challenging assignment I’ve had in the game industry. I very much look forward to holding the final printed books in my hands. I’m also looking forward to taking a week off to chill the hell out, though I won’t really be able to until February some time. I just need a few days in which I relax and don’t think about game design. And I think I earned them.

Sometimes, when I’m reading some opinion piece or blog, I’ll think, “God, that person is such an asshole.” Then I’ll pause and remember some point 5, 10, or 15 years ago when I might have said something very similar. Then I think, “Damn, I was a jerk back then.” I used to believe that once I settled into adulthood, this phenomenon would stop or at least slow down. Like hell. I think every year on my birthday, I should celebrate the death of the previous year’s asshole. Maybe this is called growth of character.

I imagine a lot of this stems from wanting to believe in the rightness of your own thinking. At any given point, you want to think that your beliefs and opinions are the right ones. Experience and cold hard reality may later cause you to revise those opinions. You then look back on your previous actions in a new light.

I suppose one can’t discount the arrogance of youth either. It’s very easy, when you are 18 or 20 years old, to think that you know all the answers. Older people “just don’t get it”, have been duped by the man, etc. Over time though, I have learned the value of experience. Thinking about something or reading books about it is no substitute for doing it. Running a game company is a good example. When I started my first company, the original Ronin Publishing, I had a few years of freelance writing under my belt and a lot of friends who were publishers and gave me advice. I thought I knew all about the game industry and how to run a successful game company. Now that I’ve done it for nearly ten years, I can look back and laugh. I had no earthly idea of what it would really be like. Things I believed in vehemently at the time have been shown by events to be completely delusional. Companies I used to criticize I see in a new light, as their decisions were informed by experience I lacked and in time proved to be the right ones. Conversely, companies I used to praise for “doing it right” have gone belly up or declined into insignificance.

I’m not sure why I’m thinking about this now. The New Year perhaps. Maybe later I’ll relate the story of how Kate complaining of snow-chilled hands led to me giving her a history lesson about the Russian Front in WW2 and Siberian ski troops.

Had a pretty nice weekend all in all. Worked all day Friday on the next WFRP book, then we went to Redmond for an early New Year’s party. My friend Pat, who moved down to San Diego awhile back to work for Upper Deck, hosted a party at his dad’s place. Other young girls were in attendance, so Kate spent hours running around, giggling, and having a good time. We caught up with Pat and some other friends, ate some tasty Brazilian food, and left around 7.

We then went over to Ray and Christine’s and met up with the rest of Clan Geek. John and Jenny had made a couple of trays of righteous lasagna and Christine had one of her famous cheese plates in effect. We hung out, drank, and played some family games. At 11 Bill took half the party to his place, which has a view of the Space Needle, so they could check out the fireworks in style. Kate was delighted. We were playing some Cranium game (Hoopla, I think) when midnight rolled around and didn’t even notice until 12:15. The rest of the group then came back and people started drifting off into different rooms to sleep. I ended staying up yakkin’ with Winninger and Tynes until 3:30 or so, then went to the basement to sleep.

The next day everyone stuck around, as is somewhat of a tradition. Ray and Christine’s place is big and cool and everyone feels comfortable there. It’s not unusual to find two people drinking cocktails at the kitchen bar while two others play an X-Box game and yet others reads graphic novels in the living room or watch a movie in the basement. Saturday I made the coffee (my lot in life) and we ended up having cold lasagna for breakfast. Nicole started doing a giant puzzle and spent most of the day on that. Ray and I retired to the basement for a couple of games of Up Front, while Christine and Bill went out to get supplies for dinner and John and Jenny read books.

That evening we had fresh sausages, trip-tip, grilled asparagus, broiled fingerling potatoes, and fennel slaw. Kate then got just about everyone downstairs for one of her performances. It was a bizarre, steam of consciousness sort of thing, the point of which was to have everyone pay attention to Kate. That girl loves to be the center of adulation. When that had dragged to its conclusion, we finally loaded up and headed home.

Today it was back to work, finishing up a bunch of odds and ends on different projects. In the early evening I sat down to clean and mount some Flames of War minis, so Rick and I can start playing that soon. Still have a ways to go with my army, as I haven’t even started the tanks yet. And really, you gotta have tanks.

I used to have terrible luck with New Year’s Eve. I spent several years just staying at home, since my plans always seemed to backfire. This year I have no complaints. Well, OK, it would have been nice if we could have made it to Jess’s party as well, but we thought three shindigs would be pushing it.

If you are interested in helping the vicitms of the tsunami, try the American Friends Service Committe. My brother, who is plugged into such things, recommends them as a reputable group. The AFSC was “Founded by Quakers in 1917 to provide conscientious objectors with an opportunity to aid civilian war victims.” They later won a Nobel Peace Prize.

http://www.afsc.org/give/asia-relief.htm

I just spent 11 hours rewriting an RPG adventure. That’s on top of the four hours I spent on it yesterday. It’s nearly midnight, my eyes are bleary, and I still have to design all the stat blocks tomorrow. I think I can most easily sum up how I feel with one word: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is all.

I’ve been meaning to update my blog for the last week with some posts about the holiday season and a bit of work-related stuff. All that seems trivial though, with Mother Nature having roused herself from beneath mountains of garbage to say, “Hey, motherfuckers, remember me?!” The death and destruction of the earthquake and tsunami in Asia are just beyond comprehension. Yesterday morning, the death toll was reported at 12,000. “Damn, I thought, that’s already four times the casualties of 9/11.” And then it just kept going up— 20,000, 30,000, 40,000, and on. As of a couple of hours ago, it was up to 55,000 and the count is still incomplete. With thousands of unburied bodies rotting away, a wave of disease is going to follow all this that’ll kill thousands more. When all is said and done, I wouldn’t be surprised if the death toll tops 100,000. That is a just a staggering loss of life and it happened without warning. Despite our spaceships, our internet, and our global economy, humanity really is just another virus running around the Earth’s surface. We may have 24 hour shopping and 600 cable channels, but we’re all just one bitch slap from oblivion.

I believe I have written the final 167 words for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 2^nd Edition. Hal, hating empty space in a book layout as he does, wanted something to fill the one little corner of the book that didn’t have text, illustrations, or other graphic elements. With that written, I believe I am done with the core book. Every rule, example, fiction vignette, monster, scrap of legalese, caption, and credit is…done. And man am I tired.

I’m also, however, hungry. Nik’s feeling a bit under the weather today and game night was cancelled because of the holiday. I could not eat crap though, knowing there was a pork tenderloin sitting the fridge. So I took over cooking duties tonight and the tenderloin and some sweet potatoes are in the oven as I type. It should be done in about 15 minutes. Then I just need to whip up a quick pan sauce and it’ll be dinnertime.

And after dinner, it’s on to the next book!

Today is a 60^th anniversary of the Malmedy Massacre, which took place during the Battle of the Bulge. As it happens, I just finished a book called the Longest Winter by Alex Kershaw about the important role played by a single platoon during that battle.

The Battle of the Bulge was Hitler’s last gasp, a desperate attempt to cut the Allied armies in two and retake the port of Antwerp. In perhaps the biggest American intelligence failure of the war, the huge buildup went undetected and the launch of the attack took Eisenhower and his generals completely by surprise. The Ardennes in Belgium was thinly held by either green or worn out American units, because it was supposed to be a quiet sector. When the full might of the German offensive hit the American lines, many units just melted away. The Germans took thousands of prisoners, sometimes accepting the surrender of entire units. At Malmedy a group of 150 prisoners was summarily executed by SS men. While perhaps not that unusual an event by the standards of the Russian front, it caused a huge uproar in the American press. After the war 43 surviving SS men, including the commander of the Kampfgruppe, Jochen Peiper, were tried by the Allies. They were at first sentenced to death, but with the Cold War heating up their sentences were commuted. Most got out of prison in the 50s, including Peiper (who wasn’t on the scene at the time of the massacre in any case). Peiper ended up living in France and was murdered in the 70s after a Communist who sold him chickenwire IDed him.

The Longest Winter focuses an Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon from the 99^th Infantry Division. They had been ordered to “temporarily” occupy an advanced position until another unit could take over. This was not the normal work of I&R; platoons, who were trained for mobile intelligence gathering, not static defense. Nonetheless, they found themselves facing one of the major thrusts of the German advance with just their 18-man platoon and 4 artillery spotters who joined them that day. They had one heavy machine gun, no anti-tank guns, and no mortars. They had, however, dug in very effectively in an excellent position, the men were well trained, and well lead.

These 22 guys ended up taking on an entire regiment of German paratroopers. They fought off three attacks, killing dozens of Germans for a loss of only two of their own. Eventually, they ran out of ammo and the Germans flanked their position and got amongst the dugouts. At that point, they surrendered, but they had held up the advance all day long. Since Hitler’s plan relied on surprise (achieved) and speed (not achieved), the action of this one platoon ended up having a significant impact on the Battle of the Bulge. And interestingly, it was nearly unknown for thirty years.

The survivors were sent to various German POW camps around the Reich. Kurt Vonnegut, captured that day as well, was on the same train away from the battlezone. Quotes from Vonnegut are used to provide some details of the story, though he isn’t the focus of the book. He faced the same imprisonment and privation as the members of the platoon.

The rest of the book details the POW experience of the survivors. Amazingly, none of them died in captivity, despite the terrible conditions, the lack of food and water, and the endless array of diseases. All sorts of interesting stories intersect those of the platoon. At one point, for instance, they were in the same camp as Patton’s son-in-law. In an incident that was quickly covered up, Patton sent a small advance taskforce to liberate the camp and bring his son-in-law to safety. It was a complete debacle. The entire task force was crushed, the few prisoners liberated were recaptured, and several hundred more Americans were captured as well.

A couple of months later, the survivors were liberated for real. The platoon’s lieutenant, however, had hepatitis and was on the verge of death. Though he made it, he never filed a proper report on the actions of his unit on December 16. This meant none of the men received any recognition of their heroism and the incident remained unknown until the 70s. At that point their story came out in an article in Parade Magazine that focused on the platoon’s Greek-American member, who had been shot in the face with a submachinegun and ultimately had 36 operations because of it. His relatives and some others were pushing for him to get the Medal of Honor. Others disagreed, thinking that the whole unit should be awarded, since he didn’t do anything above what the rest of the platoon had. Ultimately, President Carter gave them a unit citation and a bunch of individual medals and they became the WWII American platoon most decorated for a single action.

The book was quick and interesting read. Since all the guys survived the war, there was much first-person testimony, which was good. It also has some interesting details about the latter part of the European war, which many books gloss over. All in all, pretty decent.