Ex-Teenage Rebel

The Travel Bug

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:36:00 +0000

Since leaving Flying Lab I find that the thing I want to do most is travel. During the three years I was working two jobs, I had to plan my travel carefully and husband vacation days. I spent some every year on GenCon and then of course there was our epic trip to Finland for Ropecon. For the time being at least my schedule is more free, and I just want to go all over.

I will be at GAMA Trade Show in Vegas in a couple of weeks. This will be the first time I've been in years, so that should be fun.

In July I hope to be out of the country at another convention. I've received the invite and plan to go but visas must sorted and all that. I'll announce plans when I'm sure everything is a go. It's a country I've never been to before, so that's exciting.

That's all good but I want more. I want to visit my friend Jess in Shanghai. I want to finally take Nicole to Belize. I want to go to Salute in London one of these years. I want see Australia and New Zealand (I was invited to GenCon Australia last year, but after I said yes they stopped answering my e-mails, which was weird). I want to walk the beaches of Normandy. I want to visit Istanbul and see the city my grandmother got booted out of. I want to visit friends in LA, Boston, Montreal, and DC. I want to go to a punk rock festival in Chicago. I want to head east again and see Poland. And I always want to spend more time in my home away from home, NYC.

I want to, but reality intrudes. This year it's probably Vegas, the mystery trip, GenCon, and maybe some business up in Edmonton.

Road Trip

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:51:00 +0000

We got back a few days ago from our first official family road trip. We decided to go on short notice because Kate's mid-winter break, Dundracon, and Nicole's mom's surgery all coincided in a workable way. So we spent a couple of days in Portland, the weekend in San Ramon for Dundracon, and then the final few days in San Francisco. Overall, the trip worked out well and we had a good time.

The Portland leg was potentially dicey. We were there to support Nik's mom and if her surgery did not go well, there was a chance we'd have to stay longer than we planned. As it turned out, the surgery went surprisingly well, they did less than they thought they'd have to, and she was released a couple of days early. While there we had a chance to hang out with Nik's brother Chad and his girlfriend Megan and it's always nice to see them. Alas for Kate, no Voodoo Doughnuts this trip.

We made it down to San Ramon on Friday night, but not before a thoroughly unpleasant cop pulled us over and gave us a speeding ticket. Everyone else on the freeway was also speeding but we had out of state plates and that made us a target. Fucking cops. It was all I could do to keep my mouth shut. We still don't know how much this is going to cost, but it's likely to be over $250 and we really can't afford that right now.

Dundracon was good fun though. We haven't been able to attend in something like 7 years, so it was nice to make it back. Dundracon is a convention that still puts roleplaying front and center and that's a rarity these days. The downside for me was that most RPG sessions were 6-8 hours long and I could not find a game I wanted to play that fit between the seminars I was doing. The only scheduled game I played was actually a minis game, a re-fight of Rorke's Drift using (heavily) modified Sword and the Flame rules. Also played four pick up games of Dominion with Bruce Harlick and a rotating cast of opponents. That is a damn fine game.

The seminars seemed to go well. Ken Hite was my co-panelist on many of them. Get Ken and I chatting about history and an hour goes by quickly. We got to be the youngsters on a seminar about the early days of gaming, but we had a support role there, as the focus was rightly on Steve Perrin and Ken St. Andre. I had never heard Steve talk about the creation and impact of the Perrin Conventions (an early set of house rules for OD&D popular on the West Coast), so that was quite interesting. We take the internet for granted now but it's fascinating how differently D&D was played in various regions back in the 70s.

One feature of Dundracon I have always loved is their flea market. Gamers can rent a table there by the hour and sell whatever they want. I've found some great deals there over the years and this year was exception. This year's score was two old Avalon Hill games. I got an unpunched copy of Napoleon at Bay and a beat up but complete copy of Midway. Total price: $5. Also found some interesting old stuff in the dealers room proper. I picked up Heart of Oak, the minis game companion to the Privateers and Gentlemen RPG. Also got an AD&D adventure that I totally missed when it came out: I8 Ravager of Time. It caught my eye because it came out of TSR UK and many of those guys went on to work on WFRP.

The rest of the con was spent catching up with old friends (some of whom, like Tim, came out because we were going to be there). Endgame was nice enough to sell our wares so we didn't have to man our own booth (which is really how I prefer to do smaller cons these days). Sunday night we went out for a nice steak dinner at Izzy's and then Bruce, Ken, Nicole, and I joined Chris and Brian to record the 50th episode of their 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction podcast. We recorded for nearly two hours but I imagine the final episode will edit out many of the boxed wine jokes and off color comments.

After DDC it was off to San Francisco proper. We had a chance to meet up with Derek Pearcy, who we hadn't seen in person in 10 years or so. It was great to catch up and meet his family. We had lunch in the Ferry Building and I got to make my pilgrimage to Boccalone. Then he showed us around North Beach/Russian Hill. Very nice. The next day Bruce picked us up and we jaunted off to Sonoma. We had a terrific lunch at Restaurant Charcuterie, did three wine tastings, and picked up a couple of bottles to take home. Kate enjoyed an old time candy store (Powells Sweet Shoppe), which had a cool collection of vintage candy boxes and boardgames on display. That night we went down to Fisherman's Wharf at Kate's request. It's normally the sort of tourist beacon I avoid, but it was much less crowded at night.

The drive back to Seattle was thankfully uneventful. We spent almost all of it listening to an audio book, Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. The book brilliantly evokes what it's like to live in a Stalinist state. The ending was a little too tidy but it's definitely worth a read (or a listen).

Now it's back to too much e-mail and work. Hooray?

Hitsville US

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:15:00 +0000

A few quick notes before I get back to packing.

1. The most exciting news is that the game I spent the last year plus working on, the Dragon Age RPG, is out in stores this week. It's a classic style boxed set and it looks like it's going to do really well for us. Look for it in a game store near you.

I must also tip my hat to our partners at BioWare, whose Dragon Age: Origins computer game has sold over 3.2 million copies to date. There's a company that knows how to launch a property and make a great game.

2. I will be at Dundracon in San Ramon, CA this weekend. We won't have a booth (Endgame, one of my favorite game stores in the world, will be selling our stuff there), but I'll be around doing some seminars and playing games. I believe I'll be on the panel at the following seminars: Alternate Histories for Gaming, What's Cool, and Where Is the Hobby Going. I may also be on one in which old timers reminisce about coloring our dice with crayons and the like, but I'm not sure if I'm old enough to qualify at 40. Maybe Ken St. Andre will call me a whippersnapper.

3. I had thought I might head home to the Boston area for PAX East. After I left Flying Lab, I had to reconsider in light of new financial realities. Now it turns out that Wil Wheaton is doing the keynote, so I wish I had kept to my original plan. I still hope Wil has a wicked pissah time.

4. The forecast says chilly with a high chance of feijoada, churrasco, caipirinha.

5. Winter is almost over. And yet, it's still coming.

6. A note for readers of chrispramas.com. I was recently informed by Blogger that they are disabling the ftp option for blog updates, which is what I use. It is unclear if I can continue using Blogger with this URL, and I'm not keen on having one of theirs. I mirror this blog on Livejournal and Facebook though. If this site seems moribund to you, look over at http://freeport-pirate.livejournal.com or find me on Facebook. If that's not enough, I'm also on Twitter as @Pramas.

Take 5, Star Wars

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 08:48:00 +0000

Back in the 90s, when people asked me to recommend a good starter roleplaying game, I'd always give the same answer: West End's Star Wars. I said that because the game had a premise that new players could instantly understand and a setting they knew from the movies. "You are part of the Rebel Alliance." And you're off. The rules also featured simple character creation and were easy to pick up. Later West End even did a nice introductory boxed set, and you know how much I like those.

With today's announcement that the current license holder, Wizards of the Coast, is not going to renew, you'd think I might have some interest in who might pick up the rights. There's already speculation about which companies might have the desire and money to do so. I've got to say though that best thing Star Wars could do is go away for awhile. Say three to five years.

The interesting thing about the West End RPG is that it came out when basically nothing else was going on with Star Wars. There were no novels, no prequels, no cartoons--none of that. One of the cool things about it was that it was one of the few Star Wars things you could even get in 1987. Today the brand is just tired. Lucasfilm is just flogging it and flogging it and they show no signs of stopping. Star Wars is still everywhere and most of what passes for it is just crap (starting with the dreadful sequels).

So I think the RPG at least but really the brand as a whole needs a fallow period and then a reboot. Look at Star Trek. It had its time away and it came roaring back with the recent J.J. Abrams movie. Right now the only Star Wars thing that looks cool is the upcoming BioWare MMO, and that's because BioWare seems to understand the spirit of the original Star Wars movies better than George Lucas these days, as evinced by their excellent Knights of the Old Republic game from a few years ago.

It seems that Star Wars won't be going away anytime soon though. There's the upcoming TV show, which might have had promise if someone other than George Lucas was in charge. More toys, games, and novels get cranked out every year. What's funny is that the niche nature of the RPG business may actually turn out to be a boon in this situation. There are only a handful of companies that could hope to afford the license and launching a new game with all that WotC product on the shelf would be a challenge. So the RPG at least may have that fallow period but for the rest of the brand the flogging will continue until morale improves.

(Not) Very Metal

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 11:26:00 +0000

I read a review today of a movie called Until the Light Takes Us. It's a documentary about black metal. I did some internet searches to find out more about it and so ran across a British documentary called Murder Music: A History of Black Metal. I ended up watching most of it on YouTube and it was interesting. It occurred to me midway through that I've watched several documentaries about the history of heavy metal. I've enjoyed them in an academic sense but here's the funny bit: I hate heavy metal.

I mean, sure, I dabbled a bit when I was a teenager. I used to like Iron Maiden and some bands who are sometimes (incorrectly, in my opinion) lumped into metal, like Blue Oyster Cult and Rush. Come on, BOC had a song about Elric, I had to check that out. There is that place where fantasy fiction, gaming, and metal meet and I could have gone there, but no. I would look at albums by bands like Cirith Ungol and Celtic Frost in the record store, but they were not for me.

My dislike of metal has two components: attitude and music. Regarding the former, I hated the machismo, the misogyny, and the idiots these things attracted. Nor did the music itself have any appeal. The endless songs, the wanky guitar solos, the high-pitched shrieking--not my thing. Kind of ironic when you consider I went through a brief progressive rock phase when I was 13 and 14 but that thankfully passed.

Then I found punk rock and it was exactly what I needed. It was angry, rebellious, and high-velocity. It was a music that spoke to my alienation and it was made by misfits like me. And as far as I was concerned, punk and metal were like oil and water. When punk bands starting "crossing over," I was appalled. I liked the FUs but not the Straw Dogs, dug early DRI but loathed their later material (in fact, I sold my copy of the first DRI album, which is worth a mint now). I laughed when the metal guys discovered thrash. Slayer? Anthrax? Fuck that shit. A pale imitation of the great hardcore bands of the early 80s (but too long and with the aforementioned wanky guitar solos). Hell, even stuff like Corrosion of Conformity and Amebix was too metal for me.

These days I'm not quite as dogmatic. I think that's why I can watch these documentaries. And I can even appreciate some aspects of sub-genres like black metal. One could argue that it's just a different form of rebel music, albeit one tied to nonsense like Satanism. But the worst part of these documentaries for me? Yep, still the music. When the interviews stop and the music swells, I check out until someone starts talking again. You bang your head; I'll flex mine.

Putting the RPG Back in Game Night

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 03:12:00 +0000

We've had a weekly game night going at our place for a decade now. It started when Nik and I were living in an apartment in the Madrona neighborhood of Seattle and has been at our house since we moved here in 2000. The three Ronins (Nicole, Evan, and I) have been constants and many other friends have cycled in and out. Those who leave inevitably do so because they move away for a new job. We have ex-members now living as far away as Shanghai.

When we started, it was specifically for RPG campaigns and that remained the case for a good 8 years. Keeping momentum going on a particular campaign got harder, as several members do a lot of business travel. Then Bruce Harlick moved back to California, earning the sobriquet "Bruce the Traitor." Jess and Tim followed him about a year later. Since then it's been the three Ronins plus Ray Winninger.

The four of us attempted to keep a campaign going but with me working two jobs and Ray flying all over the place for Microsoft, it just didn't work. For almost two years now we've been playing board games instead. And some nights we don't even do that. Nicole cooks and we drink and bitch about the world. I had a playtest game of Dragon Age going on the side, but that ended when I left Flying Lab.

This is why I find myself hankering to be part of a regular RPG campaign once again. I would like to play but the reality is that I'll need to GM if it's going to happen, so I've been pondering options. I need something I'm interested in and I can sell the group on. I've commented to Nicole several times that the Fables comic by Bill Willingham would make a great backdrop for a campaign. Last week when I mentioned again how I thought Fables was awesome, Nicole said, "You should run a Fables campaign on game night."

The question, of course, is what game would be suitable for Fables? I asked this of my Facebook friends yesterday and got a variety of responses. I didn't quantify what I was looking for, so let me do that now. Basically, I am looking for a more story oriented game. I'm not interested in anything rules heavy or featuring tactical combat. It should be able to handle a wide variety of character types easily, as Fables throws a very wide net. Creating NPCs should not be a bear.

Here's what's been suggested, as well as various games I've pulled from my collection for consideration.

Castle Falkenstein: I always admired this game but sadly never got to play it. The engine is looks workable but I think if I was going to run CF, I'd like to do it full on with the setting intact.

GURPS, Hero, M&M: These sorts of point based systems are great for many types of campaign, but not this one.

New World of Darkness: The core book doesn't feature vampires, werewolves, etc, but is more of a generic supernatural game. I have no play experience at all with NWoD, so it'd be interesting from that angle but it didn't seem well suited to making fairytale characters come to life.

Over the Edge: I played this a lot in college and it could work. Possible but I'd rather try something newer.

Prince Valiant: This game was really ahead of its time and there's a lot to admire about its design and approach. I'd need to mod it heavily for it to work for Fables though, as it really is designed for a medieval setting.

Savage Worlds: This is a game I want to try sometime anyway and I could probably make it do what I want, but the feel of the rules is not quite right. I'll save it for Solomon Kane.

Seven Leagues, Primetime Adventures, and HeroQuest: Interesting suggestions but I have none of these. If not for the final entry, I might have sought out one or more of them.

Spirit of the Century: I played in a SotC campaign for about a year and it was fun. It is more crunchy than you'd think though and that's not really what I'm looking for. I also found that in a longer campaign the whole aspect thing went from fun to humdrum, so I'd use SotC for one shots or short arcs but not a full on campaign.

True20, Faery's Tale, M&M again: I am always amused when people suggest games to me that Green Ronin publishes. I appreciate the sentiment, but game night is my time to be a hobbyist, so I try to play other people's games.

The Zorcerer of Zo: I had this on the shelf but it took Sophie's suggestion to remind me. After a re-read, I'd say this is the clear front runner. Character creation feels right for Fables and the rules seem substantial enough to be interesting but easy enough that I won't have to sink a lot of time into prep work. I also have Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies, another PDQ game which I could pull extra material from if needed.

If I can sell the group on the idea, the next step would be picking a time frame to set it. I think I might want to stay away from the modern day so the PCs can shine without being overshadowed by the plots of the comic. The early 60s might be a fun period to roll with. Rat Pack fables and Cold War spy stuff could be an interesting mix. We'll see how it goes.

Excalibur Keeps It in the Family

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 06:26:00 +0000

Excalibur was the first R rated movie I saw in the theater. I guess I was 11 at the time. I think my father took pity on my brother and I because there were so few decent fantasy movies movies in that era. Sure, Hawk the Slayer was fun, but I wouldn't call it good. Anyway, I went on to see Excalibur dozens and dozens of times. When I was in college, we often would run movies in the background as we played Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Excalibur was a favorite.

One day I actually paid attention during the credits and noticed that the actress who played Igraine was named Katrine Boorman. As John Boorman directed the movie we thought it was probably his wife or daughter. She was young enough that daughter seemed the most likely and indeed that was the case.

As you may recall the siring of Arthur is graphically depicted in Excalibur, with Uther tearing off Igraine's dress and then mounting her while still wearing his armor (now that is a horny knight). So in that long ago college dorm, I joked to my friends about what that casting conversation must have been like for the Boormans. "Honey, would you like to have your tit sucked?"

So the other night I watched Excalibur for the first time in at least a decade. I had picked up the DVD cheap at some point but never watched it. When it was over, I noticed there was a commentary track by John Boorman, so I turned that on. I was curious what he would say during the infamous Uther/Igraine tryst.

I'm paraphrasing but his is more or less what he said. "People often ask me if it was difficult filming my daughter getting raped. First of all, Igraine doesn't think she's being raped because Merlin put a glamour on Uther. In any case, my daughter and I discussed it beforehand, we were both fine with it, so we did it and it was not a big deal. The bigger problem for Katrine was being so close to the fire in the background." He then spends the rest of the scene talking about the great job the set designer did on Tintagel castle!

I guess that means both Boormans are either incredibly professional or incredibly fucked up.

My Year in Books

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 21:47:00 +0000

As near as I can figure, the books below are what I read in 2009. This list does not include graphic novels, game books, Osprey titles, or magazines. Looking it over, you'd never guess I'm a raging leftist. I guess I was in a bellicose mood in 2009.

11th Month, 11th Day, 11th Hour: Armistice Day 1918, World War I and Its Violent Climax by Joseph E. Persico

1453 and Empires of the Sea by Roger Crowley

Blackbeard: America's Most Notorious Pirate by Angus Konstam

Camouflage by Joe Haldeman

The Civil War: A Narrative, Volume 1 by Shelby Foote

The Clash by the Clash

The Crimean War by Clive Ponting

A Distant Mirror by Barbara W. Tuchman

Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne by David Gaider

The Family Trade, The Hidden Family, The Clan Corporate, The Merchant's War, and The Revolution Business by Charles Stross

Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany 1942-1945

The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky

Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman

Gods and Heroes: Myths and Epics of Ancient Greece by Gustav Schwab

Greene, Revolutionary General by Steven E. Siry

Halting State by Charles Stross

Lives of Hitler's Jewish Soldiers by Bryan Mark Rigg

Mechanicum by Graham McNeill

The Napoleonic Wars by Gunther Rothenberg

Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, and Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi

Passage at Arms by Glen Cook

Paths of Glory, The French Army 1914-1918 by Anthony Clayton

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Russian Sideshow: America's Undeclared War 1918-1920 by Robert L. Willett

A Separate War & Other Stories by Joe Haldeman

Soldier of the Mist and Soldier of Arete by Gene Wolfe

Toy Wars: The Epic Struggle Between G.I. Joe, Barbie, and the Companies That Make Them by G. Wayne Miller

Randomness in Dragon Age

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:13:00 +0000

Last week Dragon Age, the game I've been working on for the last year, had its electronic debut. It's at print now (just got the printer proofs today, in fact) and will be in stores in January but you can buy the PDF version right now. This has naturally led to a lot of commentary on the usual gaming message boards.

So my biggest goal for this first Dragon Age release was to create an intro product like the industry hasn't seen since D&D's famed red box from the 80s. I was thus quite careful about what went into Set 1 and what didn't. I wanted this to be as attractive as possible to people who had never roleplayed. Thus it looks like a game (it comes in a box), it comes with the dice you need, and it includes two modest, 64 page books. I was simply not going to put a 300 page hardback in front of newbs and hope they'd read it. Nor did I want to create an intro product that was disposable. I didn't want to say, "Spend $30 on this and then you can spend $100 on the real game." So Set 1 is Dragon Age. It's the core of the game we'll be building on and it's designed to be approachable and easy to learn.

Some long time gamers have expressed surprise at seeing that there are a couple of random elements in the character creation process. Surely we've moved past such antiquity methods, they argue. The randomness largely shows up in two places: generating your abilities and gaining some background benefits. The latter is trivial so I'm going to concentrate my comments on abilities. So why is that I decided to go with a random method for generating abilities? Four reasons.

First, I wanted to make this process easy for new players. Generating abilities is the second step of the process. If you are a newb making your first character, your understanding of the game is shaky at best. I didn't want to ask them to assign stats at this stage. It is much faster and much easier to have them roll some dice.

Second, getting those dice out early in the process serves to engage people. You are making a character and rolling dice makes it feel like you are really doing something. Rolling 3d6 and adding the results together is the key mechanism of the game. This method begins drilling the importance of the 3d6 roll right at the start.

Third, when BioWare approached us about doing a pen & paper RPG for Dragon Age, one of their goals was to play up the old school nature of the Dragon Age property. It's no secret that the roots of Dragon Age: Origins lay in the earliest days of tabletop roleplaying. While I was not looking to design a retro clone, I did want Dragon Age to have a certain old school feel. To me rolling for abilities strikes the right chord. This is why many people still refer to "rolling up" new characters, even when playing systems that don't use random stat generation.

Fourth, rolling random abilities can actually lead to interesting characters in a way that other methods do not. You may not have planned for your warrior to be particularly smart, but if you roll a high Cunning, it may suggest a different and fun way to play the character.

Now all of that is fair enough, some folks say, but why not include an optional rule for non-random ability generation? Here's why. Early on I decided that I did not want Set 1 to include a bunch of optional rules. Every optional rule is another choice that has to be made, and again I did not feel this was friendly to the new players. I'm comfortable putting optional rules in follow-up products because anyone who buys them will have enough experience with the system to make more informed decisions.

Set 2 will include a non-random option, but to prove I'm not a big meanie who is going to make you have badwrongfun, here's a simple method you can use in the interim. Your abilities start at 0 and you get 10 points to buy them up. No ability can be greater than 3. Why not 4, you may ask, when the random table goes to 4? Well, on the table it's a rare result. You have a less than 1% chance to rolling an 18 on 3d6. If you could simply buy a 4, that would become the standard not the exception.

I hope that answers everyone's questions. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got proofs to get back to.

Tree Fluffers

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 03:27:00 +0000

Kate, my always awesome step-daughter, is turning 14 this weekend. I remember how mature I thought I was at 14 and I can only ruefully laugh at myself. Now Kate has grown up plenty. It used to be that I could make double entendres and the like for Nicole's benefit and they'd go right over Kate's little head. Now Kate makes a point of saying, "I understood that," and glaring at me disapprovingly when I'm too saucy. It's very cute.

But Kate is not all the way grown up just yet. Yesterday she and Nicole went shopping for a Xmas tree. We opted for a wee tree this year, which suits our house well. When they got home, Nicole explained it took them a while to find a good one. Apparently many of the trees had been crushed or bent out of shape or crushed when stacked up in storage.

"It was so sad," Kate said. "They really need a tree fluffer to fix them."

I smiled at her like she was being cute, while desperately holding in a belly laugh. "A tree fluffer?" I queried, meeting Nicole's eye.

"Yeah, you know," she replied. "Someone who can fluff the trees and get them back into the right shape."

"Ah, yes," I said, "an important job. I guess that'd be seasonal work."

"Yup!" she agreed. "You wouldn't need a tree fluffer in any other part of the year."

I let it drop there and Nicole and I managed not to fall over laughing. I was not about to explain to my step-daughter what a fluffer was. Nicole and I had a good laugh about it after Kate went to bed though.

Cider Quest

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 02:27:00 +0000

I have never liked beer. To me it always seemed like a giant bait and switch scam. When I was a kid, I saw all these TV commercials that told me how awesome and delicious beer was. When I was 12 some of my cousins sneaked some from the keg at my Uncle Mel's place and we found a corner away from the adults to try it. It tasted like boiled socks. What the hell? Where was the refreshment? Why did adults drink so much of this swill? Since then I've tried dozens of different beers of all sorts in countries around the world. I've found a few I can abide but Belgian lambics are the only ones I can say I actually like and that's because they don't taste much like beer. No, beer isn't for me. I later discovered hard cider, however, and that became my brew of choice.

About 11 years ago I was home in Massachusetts for Xmas. I think it was the first time I brought Nicole east to see my old stomping grounds. We were out getting some libations for the holiday and I saw something I'd never encountered before: a mulled hard cider. It was a seasonal special, I think by Cider Jack. I got a six pack and drank it all in a couple of days. It was delicious, and the mulling spices added a lovely flavor to the cider. I said to Nik, "We'll have to get some of that when we're back in Seattle."

The problem was it never made it Seattle. I don't know if that was a regional test that didn't sell well or what, but in fact I never found that mulled cider again. And oh, I have looked. For over a decade I have haunted liquor stores and specialty shops, scanning the ciders from brewers big and small. I never found anything close. The only things I searched for that long were the Witch Hunt RPG and the "Kill by Remote Control" album by Toxic Reasons, both of which I eventually tracked down.

The other night Nicole and I went to a cider tasting at Full Throttle Bottles in Georgetown. We tasted six ciders. Five of them were made here in Washington. The sixth was Scrumpy Jack, which I've had in England but isn't sold in the US. The woman running the tasting wanted to contrast a mainstream English cider with the local varieties. The tasting was fun and we got to try some different ciders. As we were browsing the store, it occurred to me to ask her about mulled cider. She seemed to know her business after all. So I told her my story and she said without missing a beat, "Try J.K.'s Solstice Hard Cider." I found it in the case (it's made by J.K. Scrumpy) and picked up a bottle to take home.

I am drinking said cider right now and it's delicious. It's the closest thing I've had to that mythical mulled cider of over a decade ago. It's spiced with cinnamon, vanilla, and maple syrup that enhance the apple taste and give it a very full flavor. The label has snow flakes which makes me wonder if it's also a seasonal variety. I think the only safe thing to do is go back to Full Throttle Bottles and stock up for the winter!

Pramas and the Olympians

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:24:00 +0000

In my "free" time I've been boning up on my ancient Greek mythology. I had an idea for a skirmish miniatures game set in the Age of Heroes. The idea is that the captain of your warband is a hero like Achilles or Perseus. You play a series of battles with other heroes and monsters and try to win enough glory to become a demigod like Heracles. Not sure I'll do anything with the idea, but it's simmering on the back burner.

In my research I ran across a reference to some novels by Gene Wolfe set an ancient Greece. I'm reading the first one, Soldier of the Mist, right now. It's about a Roman mercenary named Latro who fought for the Persians during their invasion of Greece. He receives a head wound which causes the loss of his short term memory. By the morning he forgets the events of the previous day. He thus keeps a journal and that supposedly provides the text of the novel. The premise is reminiscent of the movie Memento, but the book came out long before the film (1986).

I'm about halfway through and enjoying the book quite a bit. Due to his head wound, Latro can see the spiritual world that lies hidden from most mortals, so he has many encounters with gods and spirits. Wolfe evokes the beliefs and superstitions of the ancient Greeks vividly and I'd recommend it to gamers looking for a good portrayal of day to day polytheism. He stresses the idea that gods are strange beings and hard to understand. Their actions may help you, but showing mercy to mortals is an alien idea to them.

My only complaint is that Wolfe chose to use the literal translations of all the place names in ancient Greece. This is certainly evocative and reads well, and it would not bother someone who doesn't know much about the history of the period. I have read a fair bit about the Persian invasion of Greece, however, and the naming conventions are throwing me. I had to figure out that the "Rope Makers" are Spartans and "Thought" is Athens, for example. I was overjoyed to discover a glossary in the back, but it was no help in that regard. It would have been nice if at least the glossary clued you in on the more common names. Overall though, this is good stuff and I look forward to finishing it and moving on to the sequel, Soldier of Arete. You can get both in one trade paperback called Latro in the Mist.

A Story for Veterans Day

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:22:00 +0000

My middle name is William, which is my father's name. He was named after his uncle, a Greek immigrant who fought in the American army in World War 1. When I was home a couple of years ago, my dad showed me a folder of paperwork regarding my great uncle. There was very little family lore about him because he died young on the Western Front. My father said he always wanted to know more, particularly how he died. In the folder I found his unit information and his date of death. I said I'd take to the internet and see what I could find out. My dad scoffed (to say he's not Mr. Computer is an understatement). "What are you going to find there?" he asked.

My great uncle William had been a private first class in the 3rd Infantry Division. He died on July 15, 1918. Finding out what happened to him was not too difficult as it turned out. July 15 was the first day the Second Battle of the Marne, which was Germany's last major offensive of the war. The 3rd Division, including William's 38th Regiment, was posted on the Marne River and here the Germans tried to break through to finally capture Paris. The units on either side of the 3rd Division fell back under the assault of German stormtroopers. The 3rd's commander, Major General Joseph Dickman, said to his French allies, "Nous resterons la." "We shall remain here." The 3rd held the line and earned a name they still bear to this day: the Rock of the Marne Division.

That was the action and the day my great uncle was killed. I also discovered where he's buried: the Oise-Marne American Cemetery, Plot B, Row 25, Grave 33. No one from my family has ever visited his grave. Included in that folder were letters from the government offering his mother a free trip to France to do so. Apparently in the 1920s this offer was made to the mothers of soldiers who died in the war. She was too grief stricken to take the trip and the letters went unanswered.

So I printed out what I had found online and brought it down to show my dad. He was impressed with what I had been able to dig up in just an hour. "See," I said, "the internet is good for something." I was glad my dad could finally find something out about his uncle and how he died. He had been wondering his whole life, but the family didn't like to talk about PFC Pramas. Too much pain I guess and I can understand that. I've since tracked down a history of the 3rd Division in WW1, published by the unit in Germany in 1919. I'm trying to learn more about where William's company was on that fateful day. Some day I'd also like to visit his grave. I feel that someone from my family should, since over 90 years have passed since his death.

I think of my great uncle when I see the anti-immigration bigots wrapping themselves in the American flag. William was a recent immigrant to the United States. He likely spoke little English and army life couldn't have been easy for him. But he joined up and he gave his life, as did many immigrants before him and as have many since. His willingness to do so did not diminish America, it enhanced it because we are fundamentally a nation of immigrants. Lets remember that this Veterans Day.

Leaving the Lab

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 08:02:00 +0000

Friday was my last day at Flying Lab. I worked there on Pirates of the Burning Sea for three years and three weeks. I had not been happy in my job for some time. For starters I was tired of working on pirate material. It's been nine years since I wrote Death in Freeport and I've been working on pirate oriented stuff off and on for most of that time. After Pirates of the Burning Sea launched, I hoped to move on to a new game and get a chance to lead the narrative design effort from the ground up (PotBS was several years into development before I came on board). There were many proposals and many meetings with potential publishers, but none of the big projects ever got a green light. So it was just week after week of grinding out new content for the game post-launch. Once you've written over five hundred missions that involve a ship combat or a sword fight, it gets a little old.

On top of all that, I had of course been continuing to run Green Ronin and for the last year design the Dragon Age RPG as well. I worked just about every weekend of the last three years on GR and most of my "vacations" were conventions or business trips. At the certain point the weeks just began to blur together. What day was it and did it even matter? And even when I would take a day off for mental health, I just thought about all the work I had to do and usually failed at relaxing anyway.

I hung on and hoped something would break my way. But at Flying Lab the content team was at half its original size a year after launch. Some people left the company and others moved over to work on the kids MMOs the company is doing. We also decided to make the missions less cookie cutter by designing each from scratch instead of using templates. The upshot was we had fewer missions designers creating fewer missions and that meant less and less writing for me to do. At the end of the summer the content team and the design team were combined into one team under a new lead. We finished Black Flags and Dread Saints, an eight month serial story line I had conceived, and then started working on an expansion. With the state of the game and nothing else in the offing, there just wasn't enough for me to do. So here we are.

In the short term it's not so bad. I can concentrate on Green Ronin as we launch Dragon Age. I can maybe relax a little and take some weekends off. Health insurance is going to be an issue though and Nicole and I still need to figure out how we can afford to fix the heating system in our house (see her blog for that story). There's also the larger question of where I want to go from here. There are other forms of writing I'd like to explore, such as fiction and comics, that I simply haven't had time to consider the last few years. It may be time for that or something else. I'm sure it's going to make 2010 interesting.

Fund My Hobby!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:32:00 +0000

I want to get my 28mm Norman army painted and I know I'll never find the time to do it. I'm also on a never ending quest to get stuff out of my house. The solution? You buy stuff I don't need any more and I use the money to get my army painted. So there's a big list of stuff below. If you are interested, drop me a line at pramas [at] greenronin [dot] com. I'll figure out shipping and then you pay me via Paypal. Here we go:

Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Edition, Limited Edition rulebook, $50
Mutants & Masterminds Annual #2, $40
Vampire: Damnation City (White Wolf), $20
Witch Hunter: The Invisible World (Paradigm Concepts), $20
Original Dark Sun boxed set for 2nd edition AD&D (TSR), $35
Forgotten Realms: Empire of the Shining Sea boxed set for 2nd Edition AD&D in the shrink, $40

Inquisitor miniatures game (GW), $20
Epic Armageddon miniatures game (GW), $25
The Hills Rise Wild minis game (Pagan Publishing), $25

Blitzkrieg General boardgame, unpunched (UGG), $20
Autumn Mist: The Battle of the Bulge boardgame, unpunched (Fiery Dragon), $15
Tide of Iron boardgame (FFG), $55 (shipping on this may be a bear because it's huge; if you live in Seattle we could meet for a handoff)

Flames of War 2nd Edition hardback rulebook, $35
FOW D Minus 1 book, $15
FOW D-Day book, $15
FOW Bloody Omaha book, $15
FOW Afrika book, $15
3 FOW American M3 Lee Tanks, $21
1 FOW American Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel Boxed Set, $30

Flames of War American Airborne Lot, $95
* 1 Parachute Rifle Company Boxed Set
* 1 Parachute Rifle Platoon
* 1 Parachute Mortar Platoon
* 1 M1 57mm Gun blister (for Glider anti-tank platoon; 2 guns)

Catachan Imperial Guard Force for Warhammer 40K, $200
The following are metal minis:
* 8 guardsmen with satchel charges
* 8 special weapon and officer minis, including Sly and Straken
* 7 heavy flamers
* 4 autocannon teams
* 3 seated heavy bolter teams
* 2 standing heavy bolter teams with “Ox” from Schaeffer’s Last Chancers
*2 missile launcher teams

Then I have over 60 assembled plastic guardsmen. About half are primed and half have a few colors put on. They are a mix of regular troopers, special/heavy weapon troopers, and sergeants.

Bushido Miniatures (True 25mm), Ral Partha, $40
* 5 blisters of Samurai with Sword (30 minis total)
* 1 blister of Samurai with Naginata (6 minis)

The GR Summit

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:35:00 +0000

We had our annual Green Ronin Summit this past weekend. Hal, Steve, Jon, and Bill all flew into Seattle and met up Nicole, Evan, Sparky, and I for several days of meeting, planning, eating, and even a little bit of gaming. We did a debrief on the last year, talking about what went well and not so well. Then we reviewed our various lines, brainstormed new ideas, and banged out a schedule through the end of 2010. After we adjourned the summit proper, some of us recorded new material for the Green Ronin podcast. All in all it was a productive and enjoyable weekend and it's always nice tohang out with the other ronins away from a convention environment.

I have sometimes pondered handling this stuff via e-mail like we do most of our business, but it's really worth getting everyone in the same room at least once a year. There's a spontaneity you don't get in e-mail and sometimes it's the little asides that you wouldn't type that send the conversation off in a direction that proves fruitful. This year we had a particularly large knot to untangle and the solution we came up with was not something I had considered beforehand. It was the back and forth discussion during the brainstorming that led us to something I think will be really cool. That's the sort of result that makes the summit so worthwhile.

WFRP2 and the Storm of Chaos

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 23:37:00 +0000

I did an interview earlier this week for the Open Design podcast and that’s up already at www.opendesignpodcast.com. One of the things we talked about was licensed games and the pitfalls of dealing with someone else’s property. Something that came up on an rpg.net thread is a case in point.

When I started designing the second edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, one of the biggest tasks was the presentation of the setting. The question was, what should the default era of the game be? My preference was for a period of time in between world changing events, so we could set a baseline of what the Empire and the Old World were like. However, Games Workshop was pushing one of their periodic big events for the miniatures game, Warhammer Fantasy Battle, at the time. It was called the Storm of Chaos and it was the story of a new Chaos incursion into the Empire. As far as GW was concerned, the Storm of Chaos was current events in the Warhammer world and it had to be reflected in the RPG.

So what would be the best way to use the Storm of Chaos in WFRP? What I wanted to do was set the game right before the incursion. Strange things are happening all over the Empire, there are grim portents of the future, etc. This would have allowed us to still establish the baseline of the setting. Nordland is like this, Averland is like this, and so on. We then could have provided material for playing through the Storm of the Chaos. Not in mass battles (that’s for the minis game) but certainly the disruptions of a major invasion and the sense that the End Times were here would have provided plenty of fodder for adventures. It would also have neatly separated that material out, so those not interested in using the Storm of Chaos in their campaign could build off the baseline their own way.

The snag was that by the time the RPG came out the Storm of Chaos was going to be over. GW thus wanted the RPG set in the post-invasion time period. I argued that doing so was like setting a WWII game in 1946 (by which I did not mean that WFRP was a war game, but that if such an event was to take place, you should give players a chance to experience it). That was the state of the property though so thus it had to be. So we forged ahead and I think the team did a good job and put out many excellent books. It just wasn’t an ideal starting point from my point of view. When we did the Empire sourcebook, Sigmar’s Heirs, for example, huge swathes of the northeast were described as being destroyed and depopulated. If you wanted to set your game in another period, the info provided about these areas wasn’t very useful.

Towards the end of our tenure on WFRP, Rob Schwalb and I spent some time kicking around ideas about a potential third edition of the game. We thought that a cool approach might be to present three different time periods in the core rulebook so GMs had options. I believe we suggested the Age of Three Emperors, the Enemy Within period, and then the post-Storm of Chaos era from second edition. With the end of our deal and then the dissolution of Black Industries though, that vision of third edition WFRP never moved ahead. The irony is that since then GW has stopped advancing their world timeline year to year, and now keeps the “official” year static. Such are the challenges of licensed games.

Hello, Georgetown

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:21:00 +0000

Georgetown is one of my favorite neighborhoods in Seattle. It was originally a working class area near the railroad and Boeing Field, and was home to many saloons and the original Rainier Brewery. As urban decay set in, it became just the sort of place that attracted punks, artists, bikers, roller girls, and other counter culture types. Of all the neighborhoods in Seattle, it reminds me most of my beloved Lower East Side in New York. It’s home to the Fantagraphics store and Georgetown Records, cool bars like the 9 Lb. Hammer and Jules Maes, an underground punk club called the Morgue, and good eats like Stellar Pizza, Two Tarts Bakery, and the Hallava Falafel truck. Best of all, it’s quite close to my place, being down the hill and across the freeway.

The trouble with Georgetown was that it wasn’t well-served with public transit. When Nicole or Ray would drive, it was a snap to get down there. If I wanted to go on my own, it was a big pain that required taking the bus to a different neighborhood and then backtracking to Georgetown. I was therefore delighted to discover on Sunday that the new route for the 106 bus now goes through Georgetown instead of going on the I-5. This means I can hop on a bus a few blocks from my house and go directly to Airport Way, the heart of Georgetown. The timing is excellent too because this weekend Italian hardcore legends Raw Power are playing at the Morgue and now I know I can get down there easily. Thanks, Seattle Metro!

Summer's Over?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:42:00 +0000

Weeks continue to fly by. Last weekend was the Penny Arcade Expo, which by all accounts was a huge success. My PAX was more miss than hit. I woke up Saturday feeling crappy. I made it in to the con in the afternoon because I had a meeting and needed to touch base with a few people. I did what I had to do, spent maybe an hour in the exhibit hall, and then went home. Nicole and Kate stayed out for the Jonathan Coulton show and didn't get home until 3:30 am. Sunday was a bit better but let's just say it was no GenCon for me. Next year I need a better strategy for PAX (and not getting sick would also help). They are doing a PAX East in Boston in March and I'm considering going to that. My family is in the Boston area and I have a bunch of friends there I haven't seen in ages. Do some business, see some people; seems like a reasonable idea.

This weekend is GwenCon, which is basically a big weekend of gaming at my former co-workers Gwen Kestrel and Andy Collin's house. It's a good time and chance to catch up with people from the WotC diaspora, but I think I'm going to have to skip it this year. It's been incredibly difficult to get any good work done the past month and I really need to have a solid weekend of that if I'm going to get out from under my current task load. Three years of the two job thing is wearing me thin.

Oh, and I'm really behind on e-mail at the moment. If I owe you one, I apologize. I am trying to catch up.

I guess summer's officially over, though it doesn't really feel like I had one.

For Our Freedom and Yours

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 09:31:00 +0000

Seventy years ago today World War II began when Germany invaded Poland. You will likely see a lot of news items and articles that talk about the war in general and its awful cost. And that's as it should be, but I want to talk about something that often gets lost in the big picture. We remember that the war began with the invasion of Poland but forget that six years later the UK and America themselves betrayed Poland while seeking to appease Stalin.

It is ironic because the UK and France went to war over the violation of Poland's borders. The Soviets, while eventually joining the Allies after Germany rolled east in 1941, invaded Poland from the other side on September 17, 1939 and soon after massacred 10,000 Polish officers in the Katyn Forest. Meanwhile, those Poles who escaped continued to fight on. Polish fliers played a key role in the Battle of Britain. Polish ships fought with the British Royal Navy. Later the Polish II Corps fought in the Italian campaign and it was they who finally captured Monte Cassino. Another Polish army fought under the Soviets. And no one can forget the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 or the Warsaw Uprising of the Polish Home Army in 1944, both brutally surpressed by the Nazis.

By the end of the war the Poles had the fourth largest force under arms after the Soviet Union, America, and the UK. And yet none of these soldiers, sailors, and airmen were allowed to march in the great victory parade in London lest Stalin be offended. By this point Churchill and Roosevelt had written off Poland at the Yalta Conference, conceding it as a buffer state to Stalin. So while Poland's freedom was worth going to war over, in the end it was given away as a bargaining chip.

The motto of the Poles was "For Our Freedom and Yours." By helping to defend England and defeat the Nazis, they hoped to liberate their own country as well. It was not to be. So while we should remember all those who suffered and died in WWII, on today of all days we should remember the Poles, their contribution to the end of Nazi tyranny, and the terrible price they paid.

This Is Tyranny?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:14:00 +0000

The health care "debate" has been a sad spectacle. The insurance company executives must be laughing their asses off at the sight of so many people who can't afford health insurance standing up for the rights of their companies to make staggering profits from human misery while denying sick people coverage. What truly boggles my mind is how universal health care is now being portrayed as tyranny by the right wingers, with the obligatory pictures of Obama as Hitler to punctuate the point.

So this is tyranny, huh? Funny, I don't recall Hitler's infamy arising from his desire to give health care to Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and communists. Leaving aside the fact that no one is suggesting that the public option be compulsory (that's why "option" is right there in the phrase), I find it interesting it interesting that all of a sudden the right wingers are afraid of tyranny in America. So let me get this straight, tea baggers:

You didn't protest when the Bush administration lied us into a war in Iraq with tales of phantom weapons of mass destruction.

You didn't protest when people rounded up in the wake of 9/11 were imprisoned for years without any charges being filed against them or when Guantanamo Bay was turned into a legal limbo that made a mockery of the idea of American justice.

You didn't protest when the Bush administration began an illegal program of torture.

You didn't protest when the CIA began to rendition prisoners to black hole prisons in other countries where they could be tortured even more brutally.

You didn't protest when the government began an illegal program to wiretap the phones of all Americans and the telecom companies played right along.

You didn't protest when stop-loss was used to involuntarily extend the service of American soldiers so they could serve additional tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But now, now you get up frothing at town hall meetings and wave your placards. Now you protest and posture that the tree of liberty must be watered with blood. And why? Because somehow making sure that every American can have affordable health care is tyranny. Where were you, tea baggers,when Bush and Cheney were asserting that the executive branch could do anything and because they did it, it could not be illegal? Oh, that's right, you were out there chanting, "USA! USA!" and telling those of us who did protest that we were commies undermining the president in a time of war.

So don't talk to me about tyranny. You know nothing about it.

GenCon Report

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:45:00 +0000

I finally got back from GenCon last night at 9 pm. It was a successful and fun show and as is usually the case it helped recharge my creative batteries. It’s really nice to spend the week with other passionate game enthusiasts and see the cool stuff going on in all aspects of the hobby. The focus of my con was, of course, the Green Ronin booth and I spent most of each day there pimping our wares and talking to people about Dragon Age. We did a DA promo flier for the show and there was a lot of interest in the game, which made me happy. I don’t have the time or energy for a day by day breakdown but here are the things that stand out in my mind.

Ice and Fire: This is the first GenCon since the release of A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying and it was great to see the depth of interest in the game. We sold out of core books and the new adventure Peril at King’s Landing by noon Sunday. Jim Kiley ran demos at our booth three of the four days and all slots filled up easily. And it won two ENnie Awards. The game has got legs and once we get the Campaign Guide out it’ll really be cooking.

Girl Scouts Gone Wild: GenCon did a program with the Girl Scouts this year. I donated five copies of Faery’s Tale Deluxe for GMs and an adventure. The demos went over so well that many of the girls and their families came to our booth and bought us out of the game. I love the idea of Girl Scouts learning to roleplay at GenCon. Thanks to Faith Felice for organizing this very cool program.

Punking the Punk: After our post-ENnies dinner, I ended up at this horrible dance club with Nicole and Paul Tevis. There was a party for the Brave New World movie there and Nicole wanted to drop by and congratulate Matt Forbeck. You could hear the music a block away and inside you had to yell to talk to anyone. We found Matt and the last holdouts of the party in a small room off to the side. After a couple of minutes, Nicole went out to the main room and the others followed. This left Tevis and I alone in the room. It didn’t take long for other patrons at the club to discover it. As Paul and I tried to have a discussion about wargames, the room filled up with dancing drunks taking pictures of each other. Imagine trying to talk about PanzerBlitz and For the People over thumping house music as club kids gyrated all around. Then they started taking pictures of us and still our friends were nowhere to be found. Finally, I yelled, “Are we being punked?” We were not but we didn’t stay too long either.

Sympathy for Monte: Fantasy Flight announced Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Third Edition at the show. I, of course, designed Second Edition so this was of some interest to me. To be clear all I know about it is what was said at GenCon. I heard rumors it was in development but no one from FFG ever contacted me about it. It’s taking an interesting approach, but my gut reaction is that they should have called it something else. There have been many, many games using the Warhammer IP. If they had called it Warhammer Uberquest or something, I doubt anyone would have cared. Calling it WFRP 3E invites comparisons to the previous editions, however, and seems bound to create the same sorts of tensions that are tearing up the D&D fanbase right now.

Grub Quest: Indianapolis loves its chain restaurants, which is bad news for people who want to eat good food. I made an effort to find some decent places to eat this year, though lunches still ended up being Chick Fil A more often than not. Finds included Café Patachou, which was a good spot for breakfast; TaTa Cuban Café; and Maxine’s Chicken and Waffles, a great soul food restaurant whose only downside is its distance from the convention center. We did our end of con GR meal at Barcelona Tapas, which was also quite good. Weirdly enough, the only disappointment in the meal was the sangria, which tasted like it was missing an ingredient or two. Their tres leches cake, which I dubbed by 20th GenCon cake, was awesome though.

A Night with Dr. Evil: Rob Schwalb ran a D&D game Thursday night in which I played my minotaur barbarian. Eight players plus a bottle of brandy made it a raucous affair. We all had a good time, though I think Rob regretted running for level 21 characters. He says I’m on the hook for next year, so maybe I’ll run Dragon Age. Hal and Adam AKA “Tennessee Hal” need to sit apart though.

Stuff and Things: It wouldn’t be GenCon without bringing home some swag, though this may be the first time I didn’t bring home even one miniature. I bought Kate a Dr. Who graphic novel and myself Chronica Feudalis, which was a pretty easy sell to me considering my history with Ars Magica. I finally got Trail of Cthulhu, as well as Shadows Over Filmland and Mutant City Blues from Pelgrane. I did a trade with Richard Iorio of Rogue Games for Colonial Gothic, Thousand Suns, and their various supplements. I got the boardgame Ubongo from Z-Man Games, which looks right up Nicole’s alley. Andrew Hackard of SJG also dropped by copies of their boardgame Revolution and the card game The Stars Are Right. I played the latter with Evan Monday night and it was fun. Lastly, I picked up the second edition of Reaper’s Warlord miniatures game. I set up a trade for Starblazer Adventures and then forgot to go to the Cubicle 7 booth to make it happen. D’oh!

A Small Thank You: It’s always hard to know how much stock to bring to the show. You don’t want to run out of a title early but neither do you want to pay to ship a lot of stuff back. On Sunday a couple of the big consolidators came buy, asking if we wanted to sell our overstock to them. I could have taken the princely sum of 5 cents on the dollar but instead Steve Kenson and I carried four boxes of books to the GenCon office. These books were given away to the many volunteers who staff the convention. I figured they deserved our thanks for making the show run so smoothly.

Twenty Years of GenCon

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:50:00 +0000

It was 1989 and I was looking for distractions. I had just finished my second year at NYU and I was in a bit of a haze. The first great love affair of my life had ended badly and I was messed up about it. I decided I need to do something different and it had to be fun. It so happened that my roommate in Hayden Hall was from Milwaukee and earlier in the year a couple of his friends stayed in our tiny dorm room for a week. Before they left, they told me I could crash with them if I ever came to Milwaukee. I'm sure they thought they'd never see me because what were the odds of a New Yorker vacationing in Wisconsin? I thought to myself, "Milwaukee, isn't that where GenCon is?"

GenCon, for you non-gamers out there, is the biggest game convention in America. Gary Gygax (of Dungeons & Dragons fame) started it in Lake Geneva, WI in 1968 with 100 attendees. It grew year to year and changed locations many times. In 1985 the show moved to Milwaukee and remained there until 2003. All throughout my teenage years I had seen endless ads for GenCon in various D&D publications. Dragon Magazine used to do an insert that listed all the events. Even though I couldn't go, I'd read over all the events and marvel at all the cool stuff that seemed to go on there. I always wanted to go but it was beyond my means.

If I had a place to stay though, that would reduce the cost of going enormously. So I called the guys in Milwaukee, confirmed that I could indeed stay with them, and booked a flight for August. The convention was held at the Milwaukee Exposition & Convention Center & Arena. That's right; I was making a pilgrimage to MECCA.

So I went out there for a week. I crashed on a couch, took the bus down to MECCA each day, and ate a lot of peanut butter sandwiches. I didn't know anyone at the convention. The guys I was staying with were, in fact, gamers big into Call of Cthulhu but they never went to GenCon despite it being in their home town. So I just explored the con on my own and it was by far the biggest one I had ever been to. I played a ton of RPGs and minis games over four days. I experienced the awesome auction (this was pre-Ebay remember). I went to seminars. I drooled over things I couldn't afford in the dealers' hall. Every company I had ever heard of and many that I hadn't were there. This was before you could order whatever you wanted online, so just being able to find some of these games was a treat, never mind meeting folks from the companies that produced them. The whole experience was awesome and when I got back to NYC I told all my friends about it.

Then a funny thing happened. After hearing my tales of GenCon, they wanted to go in 1990. So the next year I found myself back again. It soon became a tradition with my gaming friends in New York. We eventually started renting a van and turning it into a massively fun road trip. After awhile going to GenCon each year was no longer a question. It was just something I assumed I'd be doing one way or another. Now all of a sudden it's 2009 and I'm about to go to my 20th GenCon in a row. I can count on one hand the number of things I've done every year for twenty years.

Looking back on it I can see that my impulsive decision to go to GenCon in 1989 had a major effect on my life. I had wanted to try my hand at game design for years, but it was my trips to GenCon that made it happen. It was there I met people from various companies and hustled for freelance work. There I started my career as a publisher. There I met my future wife face to face for the first time. There Green Ronin won the Best Publisher ENnie Award three years in a row.

Tuesday night I'm heading out again. These days the show is in Indianapolis and it attracts more than 25,000 people each year. In many ways it'll be a GenCon like any other. I'll be at the Green Ronin booth with my friends and colleagues selling our wares. There will be business meetings, late night drinking sessions, and as much gaming as I can squeeze in. I'll attend the ENnie Awards Friday night and if I'm lucky take home one or two. I'll see many old friends and not have nearly enough time to spend with them. I'll have spent all year thinking about GenCon and then the show will go by in a flash.

It may seem the same, but this one is going to be different. I'll be celebrating 20 years of great memories, fun times, and enduring friendships. There won't be a party and there won't be cake, but it'll be special nonetheless. Thanks for everything, GenCon.

We Have a Winner

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

With GenCon coming up and the deadline past, it was time to pick a winner in the Make My Character contest. Thanks to everyone who participated. The winner is Bryan Smart, who Minotaur barbarian with the vicious executioners axe +5 pushed the right buttons. When will I rage? Later this week, thanks. Congrats to Bryan. I'll contact you privately about your prize.

Bay Area Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 08:30:00 +0000

This past weekend I was down in the Bay Area for Endgame's 8th Anniversary party. I decided to make the most of my three days by flying down really early on Friday and coming back late Sunday night. This proved a good plan and I was able to pack a lot into the trip.

I was in San Francisco by 10 am Friday. Took the BART downtown and met up with Aaron Loeb, an old and dear friend that some of you may remember as the author of Book of the Righteous. We had lunch at a tapas place called Bocadillos near his office and then I headed off. I hit the City Lights bookstore and spent some time browsing. I could easily have spent $300 there but since I had much walking ahead of me, I settled on only one book (The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic).

After that I walked up the Embarcadero to Pier 45 to tour the Jeremiah O'Brien and USS Pampanito. The O'Brien is a WWII liberty ship that was part of the D-Day invasion. It's one of a handful of surviving liberty ships and the only one still in its WWII configuration. It's docked right across from Alcatraz, so I got a great view of that and a chance to climb all over the O'Brien. It was particularly cool to go all the way down into the engine room, which made me feel like an extra in the Poseidon Adventure. The Pampanito is a submarine that prowled the Pacific during the war. Just a couple of months ago in NYC I toured the USS Growler, a nuclear sub from the late 50s and there were many similarities between the two.

Later I walked back down the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building, which has turned into a real foodie destination. I had some terrific oysters at Hogg Island, a "salumi cone" at Boccalone, and then a bit of gelato from Ciao Bella. That night I took the BART out to Endgame in Oakland and met up with Chris Hanrahan. We then grabbed Chris Ruggiero and drove to San Rafael for dinner at Original Buffalo Wings. The wings were good but it was actually the chips that were great. Hand cut and cooked to order.

I had been up since 5 am and walked over 20,000 steps throughout the day. Still didn't sleep too well though, and was up at 7 on Saturday. Chris H. and I went over early, as he had prep work to do before the party. I wandered the empty store looking at games and minis and snapping a few pictures. At 10 the doors opened and happy gamers began to arrive. There were games and raffles throughout the day. Green Ronin and many other companies donated prizes. I was pleased that the German edition of WFRP I provided actually seemed to go to a guy who could speak German. I played in a Flames of War game that largely consisted of my Russians being gunned down by a wave of big Nazi tanks. I had a chance to chat to TS Luikart for a bit and finally meet his daughter, who was terribly cute. Then I went off to lunch with Bruce Harlick and Brian Isikoff.

I always try to research interesting restaurants before a trip so I was ready with a Peruvian place that seemed walkable from Endgame. It was but no one had heard of it. We gave it a shot anyway and I'm glad we did. The food was delicious, particularly the mixed ceviche that Bruce and I had for an entree. We then returned to the store for the rest of party. Chris R. taught us how to play Dominion, which I had heard a lot about. It is indeed a very clever design and we enjoyed two games before Endgame closed its doors.

As you can imagine, Bruce and I were not very hungry after our big lunch, so we went to a small plates Mexican restaurant called Tamarindo for dinner. The queso fundido was divine, and they had outstanding guacamole. So much better than your typical family Mexican joint. Bruce dropped me off at Hanrahan's place and Chris showed up about 10 minutes later from a going away dinner for Endgame founder Aaron Lawn (who is moving to Boston, my hometown). We talked about watching a movie and I even looked through two big cases of DVDs, but in the end we spent two and a half hours talking instead. Turns out we both want to strangle the same d-bag. Who knew?

Bruce was back Sunday morning and the three of us headed up to Napa Valley. Our first stop was Brix, another choice from my research. They do a Sunday brunch and it was fantastic (better than Salty's for you Seattle-ites). It was an all you can eat affair but there were no steam trays. Food was cooked in small batches and put out on plates that were rotated out regularly. Everything was fresh and delicious. I ended up making myself five courses: breakfast, cheese and charcuterie, lunch, seafood, and dessert. We sat on the back patio with a gorgeous view of vineyards and nearby hills. Big thumbs up for Brix.

The plan was then to do some wine tasting. After a navigation fail and a double I-Phone fail, we took a 45 minute detour up Route 29. I told Bruce I was beginning to think the Dutch Henry winery was like the Flying Dutchmen and we'd never find it. We did finally get there though, and it turned out to be a nice little place. Friendly staff, many pours, and good product. Then we drove over to BV and that place was the polar opposite. It was big, corporate, and impersonal. Not really my scene.

At this point we had a bit of a scare when Chris got a flat tire, but he got it changed pretty quickly and it was sturdy enough to get us back to his place. Bruce then kindly drove me to SFO and I was there in plenty of time for my flight back. Good friends, good food, good games--an excellent weekend all around. If not for the big bag of shit I had to eat right before the trip, it would have been a perfect getaway.