Last week Battlefront announced Open Fire, a starter set for their Flames of War miniatures game. It contains an introductory booklet, a mini-rulebook, 3 American tanks, 2 German assault guns, and dice; everything you need to get started. I thought this was a great idea. Flames of War is one of the few historical miniatures game with good penetration into game store stores, and Open Fire may help recruit a lot of new players into a part of the hobby that could really use some new blood. Really, who could complain about that? Historical miniatures fans, that’s who! The bitching began immediately. Flames of War, they say, is already dumbed down, so what’s the point of dumbing it down further? The (large and intimidating) hardback rulebook already is newbie friendly so what’s the point? If your puny mind can’t handle a game as simple as Flames of War, you should find a different hobby anyway. Etc,etc.

It is so short-sighted it makes me furious. Hobby gaming, and especially historical miniatures gaming, needs to bring in new players. It’s that simple. Here we have a leading company in the field recognizing that and doing something about it, and all the trolls can do is fling crap at them. I guess that’s fine if you want all historical miniatures conventions to be held in retirement homes in 20 years, but I’d prefer to keep the gaming hobby vibrant. I’d like to see us old hands passing down to the next generation the lore and the fun of tabletop gaming. OK, so you may not like Flames of War. You may prefer a game that better takes into account the sloped armor of the T-34 when calculating armor penetration. Great, there are plenty of games that do that. But at least try to recognize that when Battlefront recruits new historical minis fans, we all win. It means more people to play with, more attendees at cons, and more consumers to help keep all the game and minis companies in business in the years to come. Well done, Battlefront.

I was amused to see how many people responded to yesterday’s post about a family RPG campaign with suggestions of games I had designed or published. Believe me, I am well-familiar with them! Here’s the thing though. When I play a game I worked on professionally, I find it difficult to detach myself from the job and just enjoy it. WFRP2, Mutants & Masterminds, Blue Rose, Faery’s Tale, and Dragon Fist are all great games I am proud of, but playing them makes me think about work and that’s not what I want on my mind on family game night. That’s why when I’m going to run a game for fun, I usually pick something from another publisher. Plus I just like trying out new games.

I know some designers are the same way, but others are the exact opposite. I’ve met folks who love their games so much they will play them anytime and anywhere. That’s never been me though. There’s work time and fun time and I’ve found it helps my sanity to keep them separate. This isn’t to say I don’t get some enjoyment out of running playtests or convention games, but such situations require me to be in an analytical frame of mind. It’s different than just relaxing and having fun with your friends and/or family.

Thanks for all the suggestions though. It was interesting reading. If we get the campaign going, I’ll blog about it.

For the past couple of months I’ve been thinking about starting a family RPG campaign. Kate has long watched our roleplaying sessions and wanted to participate, but we rarely even got started before her bedtime when she was younger. She’s had a few cameos, like her duck with the “quack attack” who was working towards an invisible bill, but hasn’t really been part of a campaign. She’s 13 now, a night owl like her step-dad, and clearly interested in doing some roleplaying. Not a surprise I suppose when it’s our family business. And by her age I had been roleplaying for three years already.

The idea is that I’d run the game for Kate and Nicole. It’d be something we could do on off nights without having to worry about whether anyone else could show up. It’d be fun family bonding too. This, of course, led to the eternal question: what do I run? Nicole asked that we avoid any flavor of D&D; and that was fine by me. I considered games like Big Eyes, Small Mouth, Faery’s Tale, and Prince Valiant but decided they weren’t quite what I was looking for. After digging around in my collection, I had three serious contenders.

Star Wars (West End Edition): This used to be my standard recommendation to people as a starter RPG, because it was fairly easy to pick up and featured a setting that everyone knew. Unfortunately, the whole prequel trilogy has really soured me on Star Wars. Those movies were ultimately so shitty that it takes something on the level of KOTOR to make me feel even a glimmer of the fondness I used to have for Star Wars. Nicole and Kate were both lukewarm to the idea, so this was a no go.

Savage Worlds: I’ve wanted to try Savage Worlds for awhile but haven”t had the opportunity. The flavor I’m most interested in is Solomon Kane, but adventuring like a Puritan witch hunter doesn’t exactly scream 13 year old girl. No other setting leapt out at me so I put this on stand by. I could always make something up, of course, but I don’t have a whole lot of time for prep.

Marvel Superheroes Adventure Game (Saga): This is the second Marvel RPG, the one WotC published in the 90s. Kate likes comics and loves the X-men, and I always liked the card-driven design of the game. I was working at WotC when it came out, so I have everything that was published for the game. And letting Kate and Nik play established Marvel characters means we don’t have to deal with superhero character creation. The downside is they both asked about playing Wolverine! This is currently the leading contender.

I’m still considering options, but Saga is looking pretty good. If there’s something you think I’m totally overlooking, make a suggestion. Just realize that if you tell me to run Exalted or to use Dogs in the Vineyard to run the Chronicles of Narnia, I will punch you through the internet.

2008 was like a psycho ex-girlfriend. Sure, there was some great sex but in the end I’m relieved to have escaped the relationship alive.

Hello 2009. I hope you’re not as a crazy as your sister.

At first I wanted nothing to do with Facebook. I was already using several social networking sites and didn’t see the need for another one. Nicole started using Facebook though so I decided to give it a shot. I didn’t care for it for many months. All the stupid poking and vampire games were not for me. Scrabulous, however, I really enjoyed and that kept me using Facebook (but boy was I pissed when Hasbro got Scrabulous pulled; thankfully the lawsuit has been dropped).

Lately my attitude has changed and I’ve been really enjoying Facebook. That’s because it has somehow succeeded in doing what none of those other sites have: attracting casual internet users. I have found so many old friends on Facebook, many of whom I haven’t seen in 20 years. Some I had Googled over the years and always come up empty. They just didn’t have a footprint on the internet. These people are signing up for Facebook though and I’m glad. It’s gotten me back in touch with a bunch of people I had been wanting to reconnect with.

I’ve also been enjoying the photo application. I’ve created a bunch of albums and have been uploading pics frequently. This has encouraged me to dig out 20 years worth of photos and start scanning in the better ones. So if you want to see pictures of punk bands (including my own), my first GenCon, my appearence in Details Magazine, and much food porn, friend me on Facebook and mention this blog.

I’m not the religious type but a holiday on which people are nice to each other, families get-together, and everyone exchanges gifts is OK by me.

For the hell I’ve it I’ve decided to put together a personal top 10 for 2008. This is cool stuff that happened to me, affected me, or that I just enjoyed.

10. Going to Game Cons for Fun: Most of the time when I go to a game convention, it’s for work. This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy shows like GTS and GenCon, I do, but working the show is a lot different than going as a player. This year I had several opportunities to go to cons with no other agenda than playing games and having fun. In March I went to Trumpeter Salute in Vancouver, BC for a day and played some minis games. Then in May I spent the whole weekend in Olympia at Enfilade, a historical minis convention. Enjoyed playing everything from the Russian Civil War to Victorian Scifi. Lastly, in October I went to NYC for BillCon, which was a get-together with my college game group. OK, so that was a pretty informal con but we packed in a lot of gaming in three days and had a damn good time.

9. Getting Healthier: This year I made some great strides in getting myself healthier. The insurance I get from Flying Lab allowed me to see some specialists, like a sleep doctor, and identify some problem areas. Nicole and I started doing yoga at a great studio in Georgetown and we recently added strength training to that. I am now sleeping better, eating better, and exercising better than I was a year ago.

8. Return to the Herbfarm: A couple of years back Nicole took me to the Herbfarm, a legendary foodie destination in Woodinville. This year I returned the favor for her birthday. There had been a change of chefs since our last visit, but the food was just as wonderful. The blue cheese ice was mind-bogglingly good. If you’re interested, you can check out the photos of the full meal on my Facebook page. The Herbfarm is not cheap but it’s an experience I’d recommend to anyone who loves food.

7. Hobby Games: The 100 Best Now Award Winning: HG100 is one of my favorite titles Green Ronin has ever published. Basically, we got 100 designers and industry notables to each write about a great game they were not personally involved in. Jim Lowder did a great job putting the project together and it was terribly cool to publish a book with contributions from so many designers whose games I grew up playing. It was thus pretty pleasing to see the book win an Origins Award and a silver Ennie Award over the summer. Jim is currently put together a follow-up that should be out next summer too.

6. 13 on the 13th: My stepdaughter Kate turned 13 this month and she’s really grown up this year. The first time I met Kate she was crawling around a hotel room at GenCon when she was 6 months old. It’s hard to reconcile that with the poised and mature teenager I now see in front of me. Kate gets more awesome every year and I am proud to be the stepdad of the smart, funny, creative, and sweet girl she’s become.

5. Burma Performs Vs: Mission of Burma is one of favorite bands of all time and their best album is the mighty Vs. It was amazing when they got back together and didn’t suck. It was more amazing when they put out new albums that rocked. This year to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Vs., they did a tour in which they played the album in its entirety from start to finish. This show made me so happy.

4. GDC Is Go: I’ve been wanting to go to the Game Developers Conference in San Fran for many years and this year I finally got the chance. I’ve come late in my career to the computer gaming side of things and there’s a lot I don’t know. GDC was a chance for me to learn more about the computer game industry and meet folks from other companies. It also turned out to be an excellent opportunity to catch up with old friends from the tabletop gaming industry who made the jump years ago and who I hadn’t seen in some time. As a plus I had time on this trip to stop by Endgame in Oakland, one of the best game stores in the country, and hang out with Chris Hanrahan and crew. Too bad the podcast we recorded got corrupted.

3. Pirate Booty: Speaking of the computer game industry, my first title in that arena shipped this year. Pirates of the Burning Sea is a MMO RPG set in the Caribbean in 1720. If you like kickass naval combat and swashbuckling swordplay, Pirates is a lot of fun. I was one of the lead writers on the game and now I’m the Creative Director at FLS.

2. Throwing the Bastards Out: Eight years of the most criminal and corrupt administration in memory is finally coming to an end. I am so delighted that Bush and Cheney are almost gone and the party that put them there was soundly drubbed in November. What do I want for Xmas next year? Trials for the war criminals. Too bad Obama is almost certain to let them go scot-free.

1. Finland!: Without a doubt the best and most fun thing I did in 2008 was go to Finland for Ropecon. Nicole and I were able to spend a week in Finland, and our excellent hosts took such good care of us that I’m ruined for American cons now. We had time to see the sites in Helsinki, ate delicious food, and then spent the con making some great new friends while drinking ungodly amounts of alcohol (go long drink!). So thanks to Jukka, Katri, Mikko, Timo, Outi, Ville, and all the other crazy Finns who made this trip such a blast, as well as my fellow guests Peter and Greg. As General MacArthur once said, “I shall return!”

I must admit that I’ve been enjoying being snowed in these last few days. Kate is up in Vancouver visiting her dad, so Nicole and I have had the house to ourselves. We have enjoyed the quiet, particularly as the snow and cold have kept the world’s lamest gangstas out of the kiddie park next to our place. We were able to make a supermarket run just as the snow was starting again on Saturday, so we haven’t wanted for anything but a snow shovel (Lowe’s had none). It’s been nice spending some time alone in a calm environment. I shared Love and Death, still my favorite Woody Allen movie, with her last night. Today we took a pleasant walk down to the library. It was icy but the sun was out and the snowy vistas were beautiful.

I’ve gotten a lot of work done on the game I’m designing as well. I’ve written down enough of the thoughts that have been swirling around in my head for the past several months that the basic framework is in place. Now it’s a matter of building on it and refining it.I’ll be doing more of this on my days off over Xmas. Hopefully we’ll be announcing the game in January.

I’ve also been trying to get caught up on GR mail orders. We had a lot come in because of the d20 blowout sale we’ve been running. Orders backed up and the snow has made it worse. We got five bins to the post office on Saturday before the storm. Today I spent an hour in the cold garage picking more orders. Soon this will be handled at our warehouse and I’m so looking forward to that.

My only problem right now is that it’s 2:30 am and I should be asleep. I’m going to try to bus to Flying Lab in the morning and I need to get an early start. I was saying to Nicole earlier that although I’ve been working every day I’ve been home, I still felt more relaxed than usual. She smirked and said, “That’s because you’ve only been working one job.” Good point.

I grew up in New England, which gets all four seasons in full measure. It can get brutally hot in the summer and frigidly cold in the winter. I know how to deal with snow and lived through the blizzard of ’78. Seattle though, has a much milder climate. It only gets really hot for maybe a week of the year and when it does snow, it usually melts in a day or two. That makes this week all the more unusual. It’s been quite cold for starters and then snow began threatening on Tuesday.

I woke up Wednesday expecting to see the ground covered with snow. All the weather reports had said it would definitely snow overnight. So I went to work and heard about snow all around Seattle but not in the city itself. At lunch I went down to the Pike Place Market to get lunch and pick up a few things for home. I got some fresh bread at Three Girls Bakery and then stopped at Bavarian Meats for some charcuterie. The nice German lady was efficiently filling my order for things like liver sausage and blood and tongue sausage when I asked if I could also get three potato sausages. At this she lit up. “Good choice! Are you Norwegian?” For those of you who’ve never met me, I am like an anti-Viking. So I laugh and tell her I’m Greek. “Oh,” she says, ” you have good taste. Do you want more than three? We have more in the back.” I assure her that three is more than enough and head back to work. That night the news says the storm will bypass Seattle completely.

Sure enough the weather reports are wrong for two days running. The next morning everything is white and it’s still coming down. I decide to stay home from work and catch up on Green Ronin business. In the afternoon I shoveled out the backyard path and the front steps and sidewalk. Lacking a snow shovel, I had to use our sad garden shovel, a rake, and an old broom to do the clearing. Naturally an hour after finishing, it started to snow again. It felt like being back east.

Last night I made the potato sausages for dinner, along with baked sweet potatoes and lingonberries. While I had previously baked potato sausages, I thought I’d check the internet to see if that was the correct way to prepare it. I discovered that potato sausage is apparently a traditional Swedish Christmas food, so this was the right season to pick some up. However, the Swedish community seems split on the proper way to prepare it. Some boil it, some bake it, and others poach it. I decided to go with slow boiling and it came out great. The lingonberries were an excellent match. Meat + fruit = win.

Today I foolishly decided to head into Flying Lab. Even more foolishly, I brought two bags full of packages to mail at the post office. These were GR mail orders that had gone awry and I really wanted to get them out before the weekend. I thought the bus might be empty today with many people staying home. In fact, I’ve never seen it more crowded. The bus driver stopped taking on new passengers before we even got off Beacon Hill because we couldn’t fit even one more person onboard. I had to balance my bookbag and the two other bags on my lap while hemmed in by other commuters. What a magical season.

This weekend I’m going to stay in, write, and eat more charcuterie.

For years I have joked that it was old British movies that made me love imperialism. When I watched films like the Four Feathers and Gunga Din on our black and white TV, I knew there was a historical background but I was in it for the action and adventure. Two of my favorite films growing up were Zulu and The Man Who Would Be King, both starring Michael Caine. My brother and I would “play Zulu” with our neighbors on a regular basis. Two of us would play the British, crouching at the bottom of a small hill with wooden rifles. The other two would play the Zulus, hurling a stream of sticks at the (very) thin red line. To represent their enormous army and British firepower, the Zulus would get gunned down over and over again until was time for hand to hand combat. Then we’d switch sides and do it all over again. Considering the number of sticks we threw at each other, I’m surprised none of us lost an eye.

It is thus no surprise that when I was in NYC a couple of months back and browsing the temple of knowledge that is The Strand, I was drawn to a book called Josiah the Great: The True Story of the Man Who Would Be King. A quick skim convinced me to pick it up and I’m glad I did. Ben Macintyre has written a cracking good biography of a little known American named Josiah Harlan, who was likely the inspiration for Kipling’s tale. Harlan was a Pennsylvania Quaker who swore he would never return to America when his lover jilted him. He traveled to India in 1820 and on the strength of having read his brother’s textbooks got a job as a surgeon in the army of the British East India Company.

This proved just the start of an amazing series of adventures inspired by his idol, Alexander the Great. He met the ousted ruler of Afghanistan and offered to put the man back on the throne in exchange the viziership. He then recruited a small mercenary army under American colors and marched into Afghanistan. Harlan should have died 20 times over but somehow he did not. He ended up working for Dost Mohammed Khan, the very man he had sought to depose. He became a governor for many years and eventually led the Khan’s army. He led an expedition into the Hindu Kush, and while there won a princedom of his own. He never had a chance to rule, however, as the British were marching on Kabul by the time he returned. He was forced to leave Afghanistan and eventually returned to America. He attempted several schemes to get himself back to Central Asia, including one to import camels for use by the US army, but never returned to claim his princedom. Still, this unlikely character managed to raise an American flag in the Hindu Kush in 1839 and become Prince of Ghor, even if briefly.

Ben Macintyre has done some excellent historical detective work and manages to skillfully evoke both the period and Harlan’s eccentric personality. If you like true tales of adventure, I heartily recommend Josiah the Great.