[WOD] True Reflection

[lots has happened and I'm not writing it all up. the summary is Vinnie now has the opportunity for power if all goes well and he plays his cards right. At the moment of the following scene, Vinnie is debating what to do with a large haul of cash.]

~A badly lit stretch of road within Austin is seen. Slightly ahead on the left is what appears to be a run down service station. A few lots over is a dilapidated junkyard, crammed with ratty cars, discarded tires, obsolete appliances and twisted heaps of metal. There's strong but quiet sense of emptiness here, lingering like ivy in the night.

What windows are left in the garage are boarded up and the small parking lot is choked with weeds and dried brush. The pole sign is rusty and the lighted section is hanging loosely from the top of the steel pole. Several beat up and crummy looking cars are parked haphazardly in the bays.

A "woody" station wagon pulls into the lot, lights off. It drives slowly around to the back of the lot, where a small one-car garage is seen. This garage is equally run-down, with peeling paint and blacked out windows. Several dingy toolboxes lay around, opened to show decrepitude and neglect. The car stops in front of the small garage.

Vinnie hops out of the car, and twists the knob on the garage door; and it opens with surprising ease. Vinnie jumps back in the car and drives it into the enclosure, and the door shuts behind the car. The camera follows Vinnie inside the garage.

Vinnie sits on a rolling stool, staring at the car. As the camera adjusts to the light, the inside of the car is seen. An exceptionally large pile of money litters the inside of the car. From the looks of things, Vinnie has hit an armored van.

Vinnie takes his gaze off the car and looks around the inside of the garage. One wall is covered in shelves and shelves of books, all very well organized and cared for. In one corner, strapped to a moving dolly, is a suit of armor. The armor's breastplate is painted with insignia implying a religious connection of some sort. The next wall holds a small locked standing tool chest. Next to the tool chest is a workbench with hemostats, tweezers, an engraver's block and chisel set, a brayer block, brayer and several vices.

Hanging prominently by a scarlet ribbon on a pegboard next to the engraver's block is a large pair of stainless steel scissors. The metal is highly polished, and the scissors are the only tools on this pegboard. For the briefest of moments, Vinnie's eyes glint back at him from the reflective surface of the metal tool.

Vinnie's gaze moves back and forth between the money, the suit of armor, and the scissors. He begins talking in darkness in a low voice.

"'There are many paths to ultimate knowledge'; that's what you always said. 'Use the available tools and your surroundings to your advantage.'  'Be aware and think clearly'. 'Disguise your desires in your duty'.

There is a distinct rhythm to Vinnie's speech, a rising and falling with a strange sort of expressiveness; almost a benediction.

"I'm aware that this temptation could be my downfall. Moving past who I was before and making something new is tougher than I ever guessed. Evolution as I truly understand it takes more than just knowledge; it takes application. The question is, do I apply what I know, or do I see what else I can learn?"


Vinnie's eyes linger longingly upon the pile of money in the car and then back to the engraver's tools. He seems to shake off a heavy thought as he gets up from the stool. He opens the car door and grabs fistfuls of money, deliberately handling every piece he can get his hands on. He carefully crawls around the back of the car, grabbing up the cash, counting it into nice; neat stacks. He opens and closes the various doors of the wagon from inside and out, making obvious pains to touch nearly every surface of the vehicle as he does so. He opens and closes the glove box, the console, plays with the radio, and fiddles with the shifter. Vinnie then goes about leaving the garage and locking it up, and drives back towards Austin.

Roughly counted, there is $11,000.  Very rough, considering the sheer volume of change in numerous deposit bags that lay in a couple layers beneath the cash in the back of the Woodson/Woody.  A decent haul, but a small, and short-sighted goal if he ever saw one. 

We see Vinnie drive to a well lit Wal-Mart, and park the car under a light. He walks away from the car and continues traveling for several blocks, finally finding a pay phone. Vinnie plunks in the required coins, waits for a connection, and speaks clearly and briefly.

Vinnie's dark eyes briefly glitter in the reflection bounced off the glass of the phone booth as he reports a car full of money in a Wal-Mart parking lot.

Interview for HOP- Porky

I wrote a series of articles about designing better games for House of Paincakes over the past 2 months or so. While I was working on the process and developing material for the series, I conducted a good number of interviews with various people across the internet, as well as some real life folks.

I've saved this interview for last. It was the most fun, the most challenging, and the most though provoking. I don't really consider myself much of an intellectual, so plunging these depths caused me to do a lot of intense thinking, spreading out past my normal limits, and enjoying the conversation with a brilliant mind. I find Porky to be an artist of the highest caliber; using words and stretching boundaries for all who listen.

When you look at a game, is art a factor in buying it? If so, how much of a deciding element is the art?

I'm definitely drawn to new things by the art, but I'm more interested in heavily stylised pieces than big pictorial scenes. I want texture and mood much more, even without action and even in shades of grey, and maybe better like that, for how soft black and white can be and how much contrast it can have. There doesn't need to be much art either because the people I hang out with are very happy to imagine and improvise, do things their own way - there should be just enough to prompt and trigger, set off trains of thought, but then cleverly chosen words can do that too.

Interview for HOP-TheDude

I wrote a series of articles about designing better games for House of Paincakes over the past 2 months or so. While I was working on the process and developing material for the series, I conducted a good number of interviews with various people across the internet, as well as some real life folks.

This interview just sort of "happened to me". I was actually enjoying a nice conversation with my spouse when the topic drifted to gaming; so why not throw the interview into the conversation while I was at it?

It's always fun talking to him about games. He's a smart guy and listens to OTHER PEOPLE pretty well. And he looks great in a tie.

The picture really doesn't convey how great this looks in person. 

[Review] Axis & Allies Angels 20

I have a giant soft spot for airplane games of any kind. I had pestered the living daylights out of TheDude for copies of Wings of War (now Wings of Glory), but he really didn't listen. (Sad panda!)

When Axis & Allies newest expansion line: Angels 20 came out, HiSign tried VERY hard to get me to buy it. I kept resisting, and he kept tempting me. I wasn't interested at first, and then I was worried I would spend too much, and I just didn't have anyone to play against.

Then TheDude bought a starter box. We all checked out the contents and were pretty impressed with the quality and quantity of items for the price. TheBoy started poking me about wanting to "play airplanes", and my resistance was wearing down.

The other day TheBoy out and out cheated. He asked me- "Mommy, will you play some airplanes with me?" He then proceeded to make cute engine and shooting sounds and batted his enormous eyelashes at me.

I bought a starter box and a booster.

DON'T YOU JUDGE ME!

The map- pretty nice quality

The starter set comes with 3 German and 3 British planes, along with dice, stands, a rulebook and counters. I wish I had actually READ the box before buying it, because I didn't want Germans, and TheBoy wanted British.  TheBoy got an entire flight (or bunch of planes), and I got zero planes I wanted. (More Sad Panda!) TheBoy took pity on me, and bought 2 boosters. I wound up with some Americans, some Japanese and some Russian planes. I still don't have a full flight of any one faction, but I have lots of choices.

We decided to try to play today. We set up the map, which is made of nice magazine thickness paper. There's not any obvious markings as to how they fit together, but after turning the map around a couple times, we figured it out.

Building my list of airplanes was really tough. With a point limit of 100 points, it was difficult for me to get more than 2 planes. I saw several options of 3-4 plane flights if I mixed factions (ie, 1 Poland, 1 Fin, 1 Britain) but single factions made it tougher.

For our first time around, I went ahead and played the Germans, even though I really didn't want to, because I had the most options that way.

This is what I picked from.  I had a bomber, an ace and two "average" planes to figure out what to fly. I picked the bomber and an ace.

These are the planes TheBoy had to pick from. They were pretty sweet, to be honest.

We figured out initiative and movement pretty well. There was a little confusion on whether and how to turn (and when), but after a little discussion, we got that decided. We opted not to use altitude because the rules were wonky and we wanted to get the basics down first. We just pretended we were at acceptable altitudes and went on our merry way. Lots of "merrrrroooooooooooom" noises were made.

My planes after movement

Movement went really fast. TheBoy had an ace that had movement almost double mine, so in one turn, it went from what you see above here to the picture below:

There was a little more movement (getting planes into place) that put us within a hex of each other. Unfortunately, we were situated in such a way that TheBoy was outside of my firing arc, but I was smack dab in the middle of his.

We did some shooting. TheBoy tore me up. It was awful. I am ashamed at getting beaten so badly by my lil punk so and so of a son. =/

I will take this moment to let you know that the rulebook is what I consider 'typical Hasbro/WotC' in that it is laid out badly and needs more examples. If I had any idea HOW bad it was, I would have brought TheDude's rulebook so I would not have spent so much time flipping back and forth from section to section for rules as we played.

We were interrupted quite a lot, so we didn't get more done, which is too bad. It was just starting to get fun. We both agreed that the game has a lot of promise to be extremely entertaining, but the map was way too small. There was not a lot of room for manuevering or moving around. Now, if the idea is to move the maps as you play, that might change things, but with the map staying static, we found it to be crowded.

We still had a blast and made way too many fun lil' airplane sounds as we tried to shoot each other up.

Interview for HOP- SinSynn

I wrote a series of articles about designing better games for House of Paincakes over the past 2 months or so. While I was working on the process and developing material for the series, I conducted a good number of interviews with various people across the internet, as well as some real life folks.

Up next, my favorite Xeno-

This guy has a great mind with the ability to create incredible conclusions. I always enjoy talking with the man from another planet; even if his tentacles DO go places they shouldn't! I've got the owner of the Disintegrator Ray ZX3000, SinSynn on tap for you. Warning, we both swear- a LOT.

Interview for HOP- Von

I wrote a series of articles about designing better games for House of Paincakes over the past 2 months or so. While I was working on the process and developing material for the series, I conducted a good number of interviews with various people across the internet, as well as some real life folks.


Next up, I interview the person most like myself on the internet: a person who loves all kinds of games; adores strange games solely for their unique attractions and not to be "cool"; a person who looks at things and asks questions, a person who carries on all kinds of good discussion with everyone. Ladies and gents, I give you my smarter, wittier, more literate, beardier self: Von.

This is not Von. (Note the lack of beard!) 

[RPG] Answering the Question

So back to real blogging, mostly on RPGs, with some intermittent tabletop games and the now and then MtG posts. (And the occasional riff from SinSynn.)

A little while ago, Von posted the interesting Old Stuff Day post and I was interested in the ideas he presented here- the "Less is More" concept for game setting and even to some extent, game description.

I spoke in the comments about an idea for a game I have that is still in development. I mentioned that to me, it can't be nicely summed up in tables or mechanical descriptions; but WHY is a difficult thing to explain.

Not quite. I'm trying. 

I'll blert a little about my game idea, and then walk through the problems I'm facing, and then see if Von (or anyone else) has any comments that can get me on the right path.

The setting is pretty much this; but some major points have been changed around. Instead of "cities", the localities will in essence be islands. The distance between the islands isn't made of water; but rather made of 'void space' that takes special training to traverse.

Another chance since I last visited this idea seriously is the knowledge of other places. Rather than knowing that each place has strange but predictable behaviors, the inhabitants of the universe DON'T know very much about outside lands.

The problems- 

Describing the "void space" idea is pretty tough. I still haven't nailed down exactly how it works. I'm not sure if it's psychic, magical, mathematical; or something else.

Because I haven't decided what the void space IS yet; determining how to traverse it is equally challenging.

What if any wilderness and beasties are on each "island", and why- it seems silly, but "the stuff you encounter' seems to be the crux of both Von and Zak's commentary for gameable material and setting my setting apart. I haven't really considered that yet.

I'm still very much of the mindset that the environment alone (the voids and the inhabitants of the various islands) are treacherous enough without throwing beasts/monsters into it. But somehow that seems lame, and I'm struggling.

System is my last real issue. My concept has wild variations in theme or setting- because it changes everytime the PCs go somewhere new. A flexible system seems to want to lend itself here, but the underlying plot and it's supporting cast mean a deeper system might be needed. I'm looking at 5 different possible systems at the moment, and none of them offer everything I need. So a hybrid might be in order.

(Aside: Anyone have a Mage:The Ascension book they're willing to sell or trade? I have lots of interesting trade material....)

Trying to describe this setting in an effective fashion has me stumped. People ask me "what kind of game do you want to run?" and I have no real way to answer, because I want to run every kind of game.

So how do I answer the question?