… at least according to Amazon.co.uk.

I get these regular “you liked this books, so you probably like this one” emails. And yes, I’ve bought a number of Alan Moore’s books from Amazon, like Watchmen. So I was quite surprised to see this!

Alan Moore wrote the New Testament in the Bible!

(The product in the email is real btw and is genuinely listed as being by Alan Moore, the author of Lost Girls. Quite a leap from that to this!)

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I only offer one possible explanation (there may be others) but this one certainly applies to me. By trade, I’m a Software Engineer and, as my project leader said “you’re being paid to be pedantic.” This is quite true: I have to be pedantic, because that thing that fucks up shit at some point in the future (i.e. the devil) is in the details. So I dissect, criticize and over-analysis stuff. You wouldn’t want it any other way though (just think about the software that runs in your set-top-box or medical equipment even).  This need to critically analysis stuff spills into everything else I do though.

It’s not bad, it just means we see more “levels” to things. Take a flower, sure we can appreciate it’s beauty and why others find it beautiful, but we also appreciate it’s construction, the clever mechanisms of it’s survival and how it gets insects to carry it’s seeds and so on. Same with the movies we love, and because we love them, we take them apart, argue over what seem like trivia to others, recognise their flaws, etc. It doesn’t diminish our love for such things, but sure as heck pisses everyone else off. (Not that I have a problem appreciating something at a surface level. I love drawing and despite my amateur skills, I enjoy studying the surface and physical level nature of things when I draw).

My wife sometimes cuts me off when I correct our six year old daughter, because not only do I give the basic correction to her simply mistake, I try to address the underlying mistaken assumptions. I try to share with her my love of the details underneath.

It’s why, being a huge fan of Lord of the Rings (I’ve read all the books only three times so I’m not heavyweight) I didn’t like the movies but I accepted and enjoyed them for what they were.

Of course the side-effect is that with experience it makes you cynical. It’s why we hate marketing and “buzz” as it appears to be an attempt to gloss over and even give a different impression of (what we expect to be) the details. And to us, someone who is very enthusiastic about something can sometimes appear to be either a fool who hasn’t looked under the surface or a salesperson.

In conclusion, some of us geeks/nerds are pedants with good reason and hence we can appear to hate the things we love because we appear to be over-critical (but we are simply enjoying it in a different way).

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So I’m going on holidays tomorrow, for a goodly period of time (but not too long). Can’t wait to get out of here and stop worrying about the recession, work, weather and everything else for a little bit.

I’m looking forward to it, not least because it’s time with my family but also because it’s time I get to indulge my creative hobbies, normally my drawing, writing and coding. No deadlines, no plans. In fact I finished off my One Month Fudge Adventure Challenge early because having a deadline was definitely focusing me but to the exclusion of all my other creative interests. Of course my family takes first place in practically everything (and I can’t wait to see my daughter again as she went ahead to spend a week or two with her French granny), but there generally enough time to get into stuff I don’t do at home.

I’m bringing my trusty/quirky 10-years-old laptop with me, but I won’t have internet access or even local TV. That’s fine for me. I’ll have a local webserver installed, so if I feel like it, I may work on TDO-Mini-Forms WordPress plugin (not bug fixes though, but additional features and refactoring). I’ll have my sketchpad, pencils, paints and bright clear weather to work by. I already have a number of projects I’d love to attempt. And my old laptop with OpenOffice and an install of Bazaar allows me to write away with few worries (and I have a score of ideas and projects just waiting to be cracked open). I’ll even have the time to read tens of books, compared to the measly one or two books every few months I do the rest of the year.

I’ve also been recently getting into twitter (@thedeadone) and using it quite a bit, more so then I blog. But I’ve found I can twitter from my underpowered non-iPhone mobile so I may be sending some tweets and pics from my holidays. I’ve even setup my WordPress blog (so that I can post from my phone too (thanks to a cool plugin called postie), so possible expect some short updates and photos here.

See you in a while!

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There is an interesting discussion going on right now over on the igaming mailing list (and cross-posted to LiveJournal), but one I’ve consciously chosen not to comment on. The people involved have much bigger stakes in it than I ever have and I’ve had my share of being on the virtual battleground but I have little to add on this.

So I guess I’m doing it here. If you take the time, read the original post. It’s roughly about now in the year that some argument occurs (though the last few years have been quiet). The discussion is about how scenarios, or rather TableTop RPGs, are run at Irish Conventions. Apparently we do it differently to everyone else and one of the “old hands” in the scene has strongly suggested that cons change the way they do things.

Unlike most of the people involved in the discussion, I’ve only GMed at a few conventions, submitted only two (may be three, I can’t exactly remember) scenarios, attend conventions every few years and I’m not really part of the “scene” though I know a lot of the oldies and some of the younger ones by face or name. We’re a small enough country you know.

I’ve GMed at conventions but only in my younger teenage years (15+ years ago, maybe even more), when the offer of free entry and T-shirt were a big thing for me. I ran only systems I knew but I barely remember the experience. I do remember being called up a few days before one Gaelcon and being asked if I’d GM some game because I did it the year before, I could hardly refuse. I remember as youngster it was the systems I knew that I want to play.

As I entered collage, I wasn’t really involved at that level again. The only scenarios I submitted were because friends asked me to, no other reason. I put a lot of effort into them at time, getting them in on time, trying to layout them out to support GMs, etc. But I found as a newbie scenario writer, I was given the short stick for a lot of it. My second scenario was ran on the dreaded Sunday morning slots where one of the players arrived and promptly fell asleep, because, like everyone else, he had been out drinking at the pub quiz the night before.

The complaint in this discussion is that numbers are dwindling and the organisation behind scenario submissions and finding GMs is breaking down. Writers submit their scenarios late, GMs don’t get them until five minutes before the session starts, everything is a mess and with dwindling numbers, it’s just badness. The solution, proposed, is that the writer is the GM and there is only one table per scenario (ran by the writer). So no bad GMs to run that scenario, but then you have lack of tables, people don’t get to play the games they want, and so on.

I have to agree, at the few conventions I’ve been at, I’ve been lumbered with GMs who didn’t know the system but knew thew world (we still had a good game), with GMs who only got the scenario as we sat down (that game sucked) and games that didn’t run because there wasn’t enough players. Hell, in one case, I heard about game that was going to be scheduled and offered to be a GM, but that fell apart because of not enough players.

From my writer perspective though, it was always a one writer-table experience. Unless you’re one of the “superstars” of the scene or writing one of the stable games (like D&D or in the olden days Vampire), you only ever got one table. Most of the games I’d like to play are not the big name games (and this was before the big “indie revolution”), I play those with my regular troupe, it’s the unusual or less popular ones that I grab my interest. They regularly only have one or maybe two tables. To me it seems like we have the two systems already in place, but then I don’t have the vast amount of con-experience to validate that assessment.

So on side we have the big popular games or writers with several tables and GMs running the scenarios. This is the given impression of how cons are ran. And on the other side then, lesser popular or well known games and writers often only get one table (possible two).  So it already looks like, to me, we have a hybrid system of multiple GM to one scenario and single-table-writer-GM scenarios. The commonality is how the scenario is submitted to the con as a scenario writer must assume that other GMs may read their scenario and can’t just run with a few notes in their head.

So is the issue really with the scenario submission process? Should it be more flexible, lower the bar to get more in or raise the bar to get only the high level of quality? Or am I missing the fundamental difference in the two styles of organization?

It would seem to me that the clog in the pipe is the scenarios received by a con more than anything else. Cons need to have a better submission process that encourage new writers to contribute but keeps a high level of quality. Not easy I guess when everyone involved is volunteers. The more I think and write about it, the more it seems to me that conventions are like publishers in many ways. They need to be to maintain a high level of quality of submission. Yet unlike publishers there is very little feedback from the cons until the actual day of the convention (i.e. the public launch of the scenario in a live game), (in my experience but if yours differs, that great). If you don’t care about the quality than the model needs to change and give more flexibility to writer/GMs to just run stuff.

If we keep the old way, you need more writers to get involved. I think the first thing to do is reduce the foreseeable “barriers to entry” as much as possible, provide some sort of enticement to get new writers in and then provide good and decent feedback before the convention.

For example, one of the “barriers” people throw about is that people don’t know how to write scenarios and so there should be workshops and guides etc. These are all great but don’t necessarily encourage writers to submit their work to cons. Perhaps cons could start with a “Style Guide” that gives suggestions on format and layout, sections/chapters and notes on readability, much like you’d get from a publisher who may solicit freelance work. Of course they shouldn’t necessarily be about how to design the scenario though as there is “more than one way to skin a cat”, but guides and references are always useful, if well presented. You could use the wiki to “crowd-source” it even.

Also, why not promote the scenarios submitted last year? Make them available from the con website, with snippets of positive quotes from the players. I always find it odd that last year is forgotten, websites deleted and and the scenarios get banked and gather dust. I don’t see an issue with an old scenario being run again if there is demand for it. Also, by using last years scenarios as promotional material you’re also playing to the ego of the writers, encouraging them to come back and write more this year.

And you need to entice writers as early as possible. Awards don’t do it BTW. Not saying awards are bad, they serve their own function, but only one person can win an award, the rest are losers. You don’t want you’re new writers to be losers, you want them to write for the con next year. I know cons aren’t going to pay writers, and while it’s nice to provide them with snacks and give free entry, its not a particular enticement for someone like me. It’s nice, but really not enough. Instead it’s the little bit extra that con might do. As way of example, I write some free software. People  use it and come back to me for support. A small small minority of users will donate a few Euros my way to say thanks. That’s nice. I also provide a wish list of books and that is really really nice when I receive a surprise parcel with one of those books. It’s how I discovered Watchmen. Those little things, are what keep me developing the software and trying to help and support the users. GreyGhost who publish Fudge RPG, for example, will send you free stuff if you run a fudge game at a convention. So to get new writers and keep them, there has to be that little extra something to entice them and keep them. Perhaps a free signed RPG book, a piece of art from a local artist or even getting their scenario illustrated for example. I don’t know whats available to the budget or ingenuity of con RPG organisers, but it doesn’t have to be expensive. Con goers know what to expect from the con experience, but it’s that little bit extra that can make it memorable.

There are less physical ways too, such as proper feedback. If you have a hard deadline for scenarios and those that arrive on time should be reviewed and feedback provided back to the author. For a new writer, knowing that someone took the time to actually read the work in its entirety and make a point of providing useful feedback is great. In fact, feeding to the egos of the writers is cheap but just as effective as physical gifts. Send them a copy of the con pamphlet with their name highlight and their scenario listed.

In the end however, we’ve got to recognise that on all levels of these experiences are people who volunteer and provide their creativity and effort for very little return. So I can imagine it’s hard to change the way things are done or to take criticism from people like me who haven’t done their time. So I offer my thoughts as is.

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I’ve read a number of books on how to write and on the creative process of writing and the one piece of advice I’ve kept with me is that you should cultivate the things that inspire you and avoid the things that demotivate you. The trick is identifying what inspires you and what has the opposite effect. For example, a badly written book can be a great inspiration because after reading it, you think “hey, I can write something ten times better then that.” But for me, I find myself becoming demotivated when I read reviews of roleplaying books and blogs of prominent roleplaying designers and writings. I feel I can’t reach their standards and so it discourages me from writing my own roleplaying game/book.

Last night I finished a large section of Lost Heroes RPG, but I started thinking: “whats the point? I can’t write as well as the guys behind XYZ or that blogger over at that online community”. I literally fell asleep beside the laptop then, my body and mind saying, enough is enough, stopping pushing yourself, you’ve got a cold, you’re tired, life sucks, kids are asleep, give up. But I had to rouse myself and get the kids bags ready for tomorrow. Oddly this activity is even more depressing, my mind wanders as I’m getting everything in order, as if my higher level functions are not really needed for the chore at hand so they are free to evaluate and drift among my memories and feelings and I find myself getting even more down about my writing.

I woke up this morning, physically worse than I went to bed. Nose is clogged up and running, my head is aching and I had to get up twice during the night to take care of the baby so I had a distrubed sleep. But at the back of my mind, I was working through some system-design aspects of Lost Heroes RPG, unrelated to the writing I finished last night. I was getting thoughts and ideas and spent much of my work morning, writing up notes, when I should have been coding.

I finished V for Vandetta last week for the first time. (Not as good as Watchman, but still excellent. I’m spooked by the futuristic vision of Britian that the English government are so deseperatly trying to make happen… like this “for your own protection”). There was an article at the back of the graphic novel by Alan Moore about his creative process for V for Vandetta and he described the experince of knowing that you have something but you need to get at it and work it to get there. Waking up with those thoughts about the system design of Lost Heroes RPG was exactly that, my subconsiousness saying, “hey, you got something here so get off your arse and finished it.” It’s not mind-blowing and my subconsiousness failed to convince that I have something amazing, but at least I’m going to keep working on it.

It seems to be a slow process and the current volume seems gigantic compared to previous revisions. Maybe I should start putting pieces of it up as I go though I had hoped to get someone to read over it before I put it online. The website is certainly sitting there, waiting to be setup.

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I think I’m going to have to start a new section of my website: “Reasons why I didn’t write last night“. This week there was three pretty good reasons. The first was Alice, our four year old, got sick in school so I had to take her home early and work the rest of the day from home. (She’s fine night after a full nights sleep). Which meant I was tapping away on my laptop till late enough and seeing I use my laptop to write, it wasn’t looking like it would be enjoyable to spend the rest of the evening, tapping away on my laptop, writing instead of coding.

The second was that our main desktop computer stopped working. There is a light on the motherboard, but the fan doesn’t start, it doesn’t boot, no lights on the front etc. Now I normally write using my laptop, but the desktop computer is used a lot by my wife and with out last night, she was left restless. So ended up catching up on lots of our recorded TV.

But the best (and final) reason is that I got two new books. A gift from an anonymous Internet person for my free WordPress plugin: tdomf. Both Alan Moore Graphic Novels: V for Vendetta and Watchmen. I’m not a comic person at all, but I have a few graphic novels (including all the sandman volumes).  And Watchmen is good, so I ended up spending the evening getting completely engrossed in it. 

I needed a short break from writing anyway. The bit I’m working on for Lost Heroes RPG currently was digging into my brain a bit and there was one night last week I couldn’t fall asleep, because I knew I’d have nightmares and I kept waking myself up (I lucid dream occasionally and can pull myself out of a dream when I need to… the really scare dreams are those that won’t let you wake up… but then there are other techniques to use). Is that a good thing that I have scary dreams about what I’m writing? Not even sure the writing in Lost Heroes is that good even. I’m desperate to get it finished and put it online. It seems to keep growing, the more I cut out, the bigger the rest of it gets.

Hmm… I just watched the trailer for the Watchmen movie. I haven’t finished reading Watchmen but I was able to recognise each scene that was shown in the trailer. What I found odd about the trailer was the feel of the presented scenes and the order they decided to present them in: it made Watchmen look more “action-packed” and “classic superhero saving the world” than how I’m actually find Watchmen which is more like “Taxidriver” for the superhero genre. But then trailers are made to sell a movie to people who may know very little about the original source… so it probably is misrepresenting it a bit. Not that I’m too pushed, chances of me seeing it in the cinema? Slim to none.

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I love it when I receive books in the mail. I have an Amazon Wish list setup so that people who use TDO Mini Forms can show their appreciation and send me a book. So a book shaped parcel in the post doesn’t surprise me. I fill up with a sense of glee and excitement about what someone send me (the last time it was this excellent Dinosaur popup book). So when I found the parcel in the doorway as I got home, I wasn’t surprised.

It was only later, when I realised it wasn’t from Amazon, I got a bit perplexed. The package was from Leisure Games who sell roleplaying games. I had to take a moment, because I was quite proud of myself that I had not used my credit card in months and had cleared any debt left on it. For a moment I got a little worried, did someone go a little bit further than just my Amazon Wish List? I opened it and it was a copy of Noumenon, a game I was planning to get. A roleplaying game about some really weird, Philip K. Dick kind of stuff. For a brief moment it was quite disconcerting. But once I saw the receipt I realised that it was part of an order I had made last year, and were only now sending me a copy.

Certainly it was a fitting way to start Noumenon. I really like it. A strange game where players play Sarcophagi, humanoid-insects that were once human but no longer remember who they were. They wake up in the Silhouette Rouge, guided by the voice of Logos (the voice of the Universe). The Silhouette Rouge is a house with a fixed number of rooms. Some of the rooms are described by a short story, a little abstract and strange. Some are precise. I found myself swallowing this surreal metaphorical setting with joy. However it’s not a book I’d let my young daughter flick through: insects, blood, monsters and metaphors do not, a batgirl, make.

The system is elegant and, from my reading, appears delightful. I love when games keep in theme and break from the traditional approach. Instead of dice, you use dominoes, which have their own mythos about them. I love how they are used encourages the player group to work together.

It’s not specifically horror, a genre I like but am not enthused by. I can’t picture long-term stories and games based on horror themes. Great for short once-off, creepy stuff. Noumenon has horror, but it’s not specifically about horror except as a mechanism for change. I keep thinking of Don’t Rest Your Head, which is explicitly a horror game but one also set in a mad abstract world. Don’t Rest Your Head drives the players and their characters into madness. Noumenon allows the characters to explore and journey through the horrors like a dream that flows from nightmare to dream to eventual waking. A difference of taste.

My only problem really is I don’t think I could get my group to play it. They’d just look at me, with those, “you’re not serious are you?” faces. But then sometimes they surprise me. And surprises are good, like mysterious books in the post.

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With the few indie games that have entered my bookshelf I noticed that there is a scale of player’s narrative power versus GM’s power. Power is probably not the right word, influence? At one end you have something like Universalis that gives all the players GM powers by removing the GM. Then you have something like Shadow of Yesterday gives quite a lot of power to the players to control when and how they enter conflict (conflict resolution) and how their character is pulled along (keys). Then Spirit of the Century where players can “tag” narrative details that they may think are in a scene or story. At the other end of the scale you have the traditional RPGs like White Wolf and D&D.

The belief it would seem is that the more narrative power a player has, the better the game or experience is because the player has more ability to control and determine that. I think thats not completely true. They offer different experiences along the scale certainly. I don’t believe any is lesser than the other and people will be certainly draw to certain points in that scale.

Of course I am speaking a little through my arse as I haven’t played SotC or SoY yet. Planning to but that really doesn’t count. Thankfully I have played Universalis a few times and it is definitely one of my favourite games. But I’d put myself preferring the opposite end of the scale. (Universalis works for me because it’s explicit in it’s power-sharing, you go in with no pre-conceptions about who controls what.)

Part of it this is that, as a player and GM, I prefer long-running games over one-shots or single-adventure games. Universalis works brilliant in a single session however my group has never really got into the idea of running Universalis over several sessions. Don’t get me wrong, you can do it with all games. Yet I think games that give more narrative power to the players give more punch in the short term than games that work better in the long term.

Maybe that’s not complete fair. In economics: all variables in the long term are flexible. Games at the restrictive end of the scale are just as flexible in terms of who has narrative power as games on the other end of the scale, if you talk about the long term. For me it’s about what being GM means. For me as a player and a GM, being GM means giving the players a good experience. Take the narrative powers away from the GM, the GM can no longer guarantee a good experience for the players, the players have to do it more themselves. Thinking about this in the short and long games, if you have a short game and you want everything up and running quickly without much input, then you should probably let the players do it for you. Let them grab what interests them and run with it. In the long term, as a GM you have more freedom. You can present a world to them and you can setup and guide the players as part of that world and see what takes hold over time with them. An engaging long-term story must be evolved from the fusion of players and GM, I think while a short-term game can be just lighting the fuse of the players and watching it explode.

Or perhaps it doesn’t matter and I’m simply getting older and preferring the way “things were done in my day”.

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Does anyone else have difficulty separating the author from the book?

I prefer to know little or nothing about the author of a book before I start reading it. This equally applies to roleplaying books and it’s a roleplaying book that I’m having difficulty at the moment separating the creator (and his/her actions/opinions) from the writing. I don’t have a problem with dead authors. Once they are dead, everything about them is becomes simply “context” (historical).

The FudgeList has awoken and it got a bit heated there for a little bit. But I saw a comment from a writer on a blog about when the whole “Fudge is dead” debacle started. He hadn’t gotten involved in the list or this particular argument and had no idea what he was talking about yet he said something nasty about the Fudge community. It was only one line. However, all I could think was “asshole!” It’s a pity, because I would have bought one of his forthcoming books, now I won’t. I’ll probably never look at his work. He doesn’t know me and I don’t know him, but that opinion has tainted my perception of his him and his work. If I pick up a book of his, I’ll remember the comment. I could get over it and let it drop, but the problem is that it creates a barrier to overcome and therefore it makes reading one of his books effort. Why should I bother reading a book if it’s just going to be work instead of enjoyment?

I think Fred Hicks was right when he talked about prompting RPGs and always being positive. A single negative can lose you a customer and then the power of the internet is that if you hit the wrong person, it can have a much bigger impact then just one dropped potential sale.

It’s another reason why I find it hard to objectively read the work of friends. I see my friend’s personality in the work and it, well, becomes hard to separate my opinion of my friend from my opinion of his writing. It becomes especially difficulty if the writing is in a field of shared interest like roleplaying, because more than likely we’d have argued and discussed RPG design issues and I’ll see that shining through their work.

Which is perhaps why it’s a good idea for me to keep some distance from many of the RPG design forums like RPG.net, theForge and story-games. My perspective of people’s work will become tainted by my opinion of the them, not their work. (TBH I think it’s more than likely that I have a tendency to shy away from very large online communities), I guess also perhaps that’s why I’m quite closed about my writing and my ideas. Afraid they’ll judge me rather than the work itself.

Anyone else feel the same about books?

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Among them three Fudge books!

I was originally going to order them all from Indie Press Revolution. Even though they are setup in the states, it can be actually cheaper to order them from there then the UK due to the Dollar to Euro conversation rates right now. The nice thing about Indie Press Revolution also was that they had nice PDF and paper bundles for many of the products. I’m not a huge fan of the PDF medium but it does mean there is zero wait time before I can start reading.

However, in the end, I went with Lesiure Games, a UK based RPG shop. The reason? They had two books that Indie Press Revolution didn’t have (Magical Medley and Noumenon). BTW neither retailers had all the books I wanted – Mythic Role Playing is only available lulu.com.

When I first compare prices (including delivery) and converted to Euro, I compared only the games that they had both in common.

• The Shadows Of Yesterday
• Spirit of the Century
• Don’t Rest Your Head
• Capes
• With Great Power

I would actually save 7 euros by ordering with Indie Press Revolution and get most them as PDF too – that’s pretty nice. However the delivery time might be a while but that’s offset with PDF’s instant delivery. With Leisure Games I can also get two other books plus delivery time won’t be as long for paper back but no PDFs. That’s what sold me.

Anyway, theses are all books I wanted to get for a while.

Spirit of the Century

I’m not big into “pulp” or “adventure” type games but there seems to be so much good noise about SOTC I decided it is definitely worth checking out at least. I am already familiar with Fate from before SOTC and there was some nice ideas in the system which I would love to see taken back into the Fudge fold. I was not too big on the Fate character creation process though. I don’t know what changes are in Spirit of the Century, maybe it all makes sense then.

Don’t Rest Your Head

Another RPG from Evil Hat (makers of STOC). I only really came across it because of it’s proximity to the STOC rattle. I like the description of the setting, that slightly off-kelter world. I don’t know anything about the ruleset though, but I don’t mind so much. As I said when I wrote why I don’t like Exalted, “if a setting does pique my interest, then a broken system will not stop me trying it out…”.

The Shadows of Yesterday

There was a great discussion on the FudgeList about “Keys” and Fudge in Shadows of Yesterday. I’d like to point you to the discussion but I can’t seem to access or find the archive from before the FudgeList transitioned from just a Mailing List to a Web Forum and Mailing List format. Anyway, this discussion alone made me interested in getting my hands on The Shadows of Yesterday.

Capes and With Great Power

Two superhero games with innovative systems, specifically using cards instead of dice. Again, I’m not big on the superhero genre, however, the different systems behind these games has got me excited and I’ve been hearing good things about With Great Power.

Noumenon

An odd one here. I read the blurb and it got me excited. What I found fascinating is that it offered me as a player something new, to play a character utterly alien, not just some angle on slightly different human.

Magical Medley

This is an oldie Fudge compendium of Magic systems. It’s actually out of print nearly everywhere so I’m glad to get it. Mostly I’m getting this because I’m looking at redesigning the magic system for LH.

Oh, and it’s my birthday today, so I guess all this is my birthday present to myself.

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