text: Uncategorized | At the Table
  Reverb Gamers Day 1
  January 1, 2012 at 4:10 pm	(Uncategorized)
  I'm not sure if I'm doing this right but here goes!
  What was your first roleplaying experience?
  My first roleplaying experience was trying to GM my sister and her Ithorian Bounty Hunter in the old WEG Star Wars game. I had spent the last week reading the rules and prepping an adventure. It went horribly. I had way too much prepped of things I didn't need and had no idea how to improv where I needed too.
  I came to it having played several of the Final Fantasy games and the old Shadowrun SNES game. All of that told me that there were stories to be told in RPGs but not how to run one. No one told me how to be a good GM but I knew what I liked as a player. I just couldn't figure out how to make one translate into the other.
  How did that introduction shape the gamer you've become?
  As I went on I have been a player as much if not more than GM just to help me be a better GM. There is nothing I enjoy more than playing games I wrote myself.
  The Legacy of Risk: Part 1 – First Impressions
  December 29, 2011 at 5:45 pm	(Uncategorized)
  Opening the box I knew that this was not going to be anything like the Risk games I have always loved. Lots of cards I had never seen before and more cards and other surprises hidden behind hazard marked stickers and enigmatic phrases. "Do not open ever", being the most dire of them all. Everything in this box tells me that my family and I are about to have an experience we could not have expected.
  I poured through the rules grabbing any of my family members who would be playing to point out to them significant rules changes. We have all played Risk before (more times than we can count) so the modifications in the rules had us all itching to play by the time we finally got a chance.
  As it happened the only family member who sat down to our first game with me was my dad, Don. We had company over and the father and son, Eric and Joe, often played games with us so they joined us and were the first two to sign the back of the board. Signing the board is significant I builds buy-in. It says, my actions are significant, I am significant. Don and I signed the back as well and as I unboxed the rest of the board, I explained the rules.
  They took to the new rules right away and soon we had everything set up and troops were moving their way across the board.
  Joe – Khan Industries, Middle East
  Don – Die Mechaniker, Argentina
  Eric – Saharan Republic, West Australia
  Josh (me) – Imperial Balkania, South Africa
  The special rules for each army were fun to pick out but did not have much of an impact on the game. The new setup rules that limited forces and left most of the map empty were very interesting. Eric, Don and I each had a continent bonus by the end of the first round in Australia, South America, and Africa respectively. Joe tried to start off by attacking down into Africa and spreading out towards Australia. My defenders chewed through his attacking forces but eventually fell and he left himself vulnerable to attack from behind by Eric. As expected on Don's next turn he launched into Africa as well. His attack devastated me and knocked me out. Eric chewed through Joe's back line stopping in India which left Joe with East Africa and the Middle East. Joe mustered the best offense he could against Don who was weak in Africa after his whirlwind defeat of me and managed to take Egypt. I rejoined the war somewhere up in east Asia just in time to watch Don turn in two cards worth three coins for four armies and walk right through the last remains of Joe's army ending the game.
  Those of you who have played must by now realized that Don should have won when he ousted me but we were still getting use to victory points in Risk and forgot.
  Don signed the front of the board and founded the major city of Dandyville in the Western United States. Eric founded Bollywood in India and I founded Gotham in South Africa. Three Bunkers went down in that game, Eric put one in New Guinea, Joe put one in China, and Don put one in Brazil. The board was filling up fast!
  We also got to open one of the card decks up in the top of the box. The one that was to be opened when a player was eliminated. Out of that deck Joe got a chance to improve his faction a bit which helped ease the sting of being the first player eliminated and not getting to found a city with the rest of us.
  June 20, 2011 at 2:12 pm	(Uncategorized)
  Last night my group got together to finish off the "one shot" of Mutant City Blues that we started a few weeks ago. First let me say that I've really been enjoying the investigative elements of Gumshoe, the system behind MCB, the investigations flow pretty naturally. I did get the sense that I was playing a bit of wack-a-mole with the stats but that may have been more due to the fact that we only had two investigators. The problem I had was with the pacing.
  As I said the game was intended to be a one shot and we had already dragged it out into a second night. The problem for me is that the system really gave me no levers to grab hold of and push the story to conclusion. For those unfamiliar with MCB, the game is basicly Law & Order with super heros. There is a lot in the game about proper police procidures and as an investigator you are always toeing the line between getting the bad guy and ensuring you have enough evidence to keep them.
  We game from five to nine as a general rule and so as we got close to eight I started to try and bring the session to a close. The problem was that as a player I have no tools to do that without ruining the case. I got pretty frustrated at that point. My fellow player did a great job of plowing through my funk and the session ended with us gearing up for the final showdown.
  We should be able to wrap up the game next time in an hour or so but it really bugged me that I lacked any tools to push the story forward. Transpose that against how I felt at the end of last session and it is a stark contrast. The last session ended with us having no solid idea of who the bad guy was and only a vague sense of what motive might be behind the crimes.
  For me the problem was that once I knew who to go after I had no narritive power to do that. What I tried to do was entrap the villian by getting my partner in undercover. My fellow player played along brilliantly and the GM counter offered by trying to get my character to go undercover. That would have been ok but the timeline would have added four days to the investigation. Four days with no new leads, four days with a city in fear, four days of polititians breathing down me and my partner's necks.
  Maybe its just me but I miss my levers. MCB hits all of the right notes for me when it comes to handing out information but when the time for action arrived I felt hamstrung. That may be a feature in such a procidure oriented game but its not my bag.
  Trader's Tales Review
  January 31, 2011 at 12:34 pm	(Uncategorized)
  Just finished the last of @nlowell 's Traders tales. I appologize in advance for what will follow as I have quite a bit to say. @nlowell has crafted an always witty and sometimes stirring tale over the course of six books. As I neared the end I prepaired myself for the pain of loss I knew must be coming but found myself woefully unprepaired. I have very much enjoyed the Trader's Tales and look forward to rereading the series (likely over the summer).
  I find myself compairing @nlowell 's Traders tales to the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. They are both long and strange journeys with oddly romantic protagonists with clear, if strange, sense of morality. Both tales seem to have taken root in the minds of their creators in powerful ways and spawned side creations. Both have a well rounded worlds that I find myself feeling as though I have lived in. I tend to reply with "Sar" as often as "Sir". Some have critsized @nlowell for his fixation with the preperation of food in these tales. As a former cook myself I find these details enchanting. They also bring to mind the works of Brian Jaques and the Redwall series (best not read on an empty stomach). I look forward to more stories of the Golden Age. Well done @nlowell and thank you!