I rolled home late Sunday night still riding the high from five glorious days spent catching up with old friends, making new ones, and playing some games. I came to GenCon for the sole purpose of seeing friends and kept that as my priority throughout the show. Still, I talked some business, landed a few gigs, and made some new connections, all of which is like piling cherries on top of a cherry-frosted cherry cake already dripping with cherry liqueur.

Little Fears Nightmare Edition sold out at 3:30 on Sunday (seems I brought just the right amount of copies) and, though I didn’t witness most of those sales, I was present at a few who received the new edition with a lot of enthusiasm. If you missed picking it up at the show, it’s available through the official site and select retailers in hard copy and through DriveThruRPG in PDF.

GenCon is a magical event. I’m renewed and reinvested in the hobby and industry that has been so good to me. After a long time away, it’s good to be back. Let’s see what the future brings.

I’m heading out to GenCon Indy soon, my first since 2006, and I’m quite excited to see a lot of friends I haven’t in that time and hopefully come away with a few more. I’m going as a civilian this year so don’t have much officially planned but I’m not hard to spot milling about the floor. (I’ll probably have a towel with me.)

For those interested, Little Fears Nightmare Edition will be on sale at Cubicle 7‘s booth (#315) and I’m sure I’ll be around there a fair bit.

I’ll also be at the Diana Jones Awards on Wednesday and most likely at the Ennies Awards ceremony on Friday.

On Sunday, I’ll be at Gameplaywright‘s signing ceremony for their all-about-dice anthology The Bones (to which I contributed an essay). That will be from 1p-2p at the Indie Press Revolution booth (#2339).

Outside of those, who knows! I’m focusing on fun and catching up this year. I’m open to ideas if there’s a gathering or function you wouldn’t mind me crashing. Find me on the floor, on Twitter, via phone or email.

To those going, I’ll see you there! To those not, I’ll see you when I get back (and maybe at a later show sometime).

I was turned onto Alternity about this time last year. Though I forget the source of the initial spark, the fire caught quick and burned bright. I read everything I could on it, scouring Wikipedia, online reviews, and the excellent fan community website AlternityRPG.net. Something about the game hooked me and, through resources such as Noble Knight, gifts from very generous friends, and the occasional rare find at used book stores, I’ve managed to collect almost everything that was released for the line.

You could say I’ve become quite the fan. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance yet to play it. I haven’t even made a character. But I’m going to fix that last part right now.

A Bit about Alternity
Designed by Bill Slavicsek and Richard Baker, Alternity was TSR’s sci-fi cousin to its fantasy titan Dungeons & Dragons. Two books form the basis of the system, the Player’s Handbook and the Gamemaster Guide, with supplements rounding out the core concept and a handful of campaign settings that tort the system towards various ends.

Alternity is a generic system, as much as any system can be generic, and differentiates itself from its cousin in a couple notable ways. The first is a roll-under system, which has a penalty- and bonus-focused step system where a player rolls a control die (d20) and another die (anything from d4 to 3d20) and either adds or subtracts that second die from the control die based on situational modifiers and whatnot. The second notable is an experience system based on achievements, wherein characters get access to bigger and better things (such as leveling up skills and abilities) by completing certain goals throughout a game session. It’s a subtle touch, but given its place in history, a much-needed one. Oh, and a third is its initiative system, called Action Check, which has this cool four-phase system for determining who acts when. I won’t get into it too much here but more information can be found online. I really like that set-up for actions.

The Alternity game line lived for just over two years. During its development prior to release, its parent TSR was bought out by Wizards of the Coast, and then, in 2000, Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition introduced d20 and its open gaming license and changed the face of popular gaming. Though the Alternity system was a casualty of that shift, parts of it did live to see the light of day yet again.

Campaign Settings
Four official campaign settings were released: two original, one classic, and one licensed.

The first original setting, Star*Drive, took the Alternity to its logical space opera extension. Star*Drive concerned itself with life in the Verge and had all the juicy space opera bits you could want: exotic locales, strange alien races, fragile alliances, and far-reaching political machinations. This was the most supported of all the Alternity lines.

The second original setting, Dark•Matter, took Alternity to a rather unexpected place: modern conspiracy horror. Four books were released for this setting but they’re good stuff: the main campaign setting, a weapons and equipment guide, a lengthy scenario, and a brilliant monster book called Xenoforms.

The third setting was the revival of the venerable post-apocalyptic stage, Gamma World. This was the setting’s fifth incarnation and also its shortest as it only saw one book, the core book, released.

The fourth and final setting was StarCraft, based on Blizzard Entertainment’s wildly popular eponymous real-time strategy game for the PC. Released as a box set, the product included a couple booklets and some dice, everything you needed to play the game. It used a streamlined (for some, stripped down) version of the Alternity rules.

The two signature Alternity settings were brought back under d20 Modern and d20 Future respectively.

Let’s Make a Character
For the character collection today, I’ve chosen my favorite of the official campaign settings, Dark•Matter. In Dark•Matter, you are an agent of the Hoffmann Institute, a shadowy global conspiracy that studies the true history of the world, collects and catalogs bizarre finds, and protects all us regular folk from things that bump and snarl and drive mortals beyond the brink of madness.

It’s like Wolfgang Baur and Monte Cook, the authors of the core book, read my mind and wrote a game specifically to draw me in. (And, given the concept, maybe they did. *cue theremin music*)

Game: Dark•Matter
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
System: Alternity
Books Needed: Alternity Player’s Handbook, Dark•Matter Campaign Setting Core Book

Note: Character creation rules are contained within the Alternity Player’s Handbook with additional skills, perks, and flaws presented in the Dark•Matter main book. According to page 20 in the aforementioned Player’s Handbook, you can create a character in nine steps. Also, though Dark•Matter includes its own version of the character sheet, I’m using a generic Alternity sheet as that’s what I can print from PDF.

Let’s begin!

Click “Read More” to jump down the rabbit hole.
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Thought I’d shed a little light on some of the exciting projects my friends have been cooking up.

Jeff Preston’s 60 Character Portraits
Illustrator-extraordinaire Jeff Preston recently launched a Kickstarter project along with co-conspirator A Terrible Idea called “60 Terrible Character Portraits For Creative Commons Release.” Don’t let the name fool you; the images are anything but terrible. See for yourself below.

If you dig it, kick in a few bucks to help the project here.

Daniel Solis’ Happy Birthday, Robot!
Daniel Solis, along with publisher Evil Hat, just released the print version of Happy Birthday, Robot! I can’t praise this game enough for its concept, goals, and presentation. This game is perfect for getting kids into story creation and using their imagination for the purely fantastic. I can’t sell it nearly as well as the creator does. Check out this video for more information.

If this sounds good to you, pick it up through Evil Hat’s online store.

Monica Valentinelli’s Queen of Crows
Monica Valentinelli released a book trailer for her ebook Queen of Crows, a tie-in to her Violet War setting. She created the video herself, featuring work by illustrator Leanne Buckley and musician James Semple. Check out the trailer below.

If you’re intrigued, you can currently grab the pdf at DriveThruRPG for 25% off its list price (just $3.74).

Last year, my good friend Matt McElroy (of Flames Rising fame) put together a fiction compilation in support of design studio 12 to Midnight‘s excellent Pinebox, Texas game setting (now published by the fine folks at Pinnacle Entertainment Group). The resulting book, dubbed Buried Tales of Pinebox, Texas, attracted some great talent notwithstanding my own contribution, a story of skinshifting and strange dates called “Lovable Creatures.”

The book is so good, in fact, that the folks who head up the tabletop gaming industry’s preeminent awards, the Ennies, saw fit to nominate it for Best Regalia. Yep, I can now say I’ve contributed to some of the finest regalia in gaming. Another dream to check off the list!

Anyway, if you haven’t your own copy of the book, check out some excerpts and author bios over at the official site. You can buy the book in digital or physical form, whichever suits your fancy.

Public voting begins next Friday, July 16th so cross your fingers and toes and make your voice heard! (And while you’re at the site, check out the nominations for other excellent gaming products such as Eclipse Phase and Supernatural!)

Last September, I managed to convince the folks at Gameplaywright that I was worthy of being included in their next book. Their previous publication, the well-received Things We Think About Games, was buzzing around the gamer zeitgeist with supersonic speed and I knew I wanted to hop whatever train was leaving their station next.

For those who don’t know, Gameplaywright is the venture of two of tabletop gaming’s brightest stars, Will Hindmarch and Jeff Tidball. Through my serpentine path through gaming industry, I managed to connect with Jeff years ago. When I heard his outfit was putting together a new thing, I got in touch with him. He put me in touch with Will, who was heading up the next book, a collection of dice stories called The Bones. Will had a pretty full roster, which included smarter and more renowned folks than myself, but was open to hearing my idea.

I pitched him a manifesto, a defense of my favored randomizer: the six-sided die. Will and I hashed out the specifics and I set pen to paper. A couple weeks later, “The Die of the People – A Six-Sided Manifesto” was born.

Will was an amazing editor, cheerleader, and guide. I’d contribute to any book for which he’d have me.

Before you think me hyperbolic in my enthusiasm or insincere in my modesty, check out who I’m sharing page space with: Keith Baker, Greg Costikyan, Ray Fawkes, Matt Forbeck, Pat Harrigan, Jess Hartley, Fred Hicks, Kenneth Hite, John Kovalic, James Lowder, Russ Pitts, Jesse Scoble, Mike Selinker, Jared Sorensen, Paul Tevis, Monica Valentinelli, Chuck Wendig, and Wil Wheaton. Having my name on the list is humbling, to say the least.

Anyway. The Bones. It’s a book about dice. But not about the technical nature of dice. Not math, not chances. It’s about people, traditions, and superstitions. It’s about dice and gamer culture. I have the limited edition hardcover and, though I haven’t read it cover to cover yet, what I have read has been amazing. The standard edition is coming out at the end of this month. I highly recommend you pick it up for yourself, a gamer friend, or anyone who’s interested in games, culture, or the weirder parts of history.

Back before my life took a turn for the crowded, I promised I’d make a new character every week from one of the games in my roleplaying library. Okay, I’ve lost some time but let’s not dwell on such things.

For character collection this week, I’ve chosen one of my favorite games, R. Talsorian‘s follow-up to their hit game Cyberpunk 2020, a strange little dark future-anime-superheroes gem called Cybergeneration.

Originally a supplement for its older brother, Cybergeneration became its own game with the expanded 2nd Edition released in 1993. The corebook was followed by three rules and setting expansions (the “Documents of the Revolution” supplements which you’ll know because they all end in -Front) and an introductory adventure called Bastille Day. Ten years later, Firestorm Ink picked up the license and released a player’s guide called Generation Gap, a sourcebook/adventure called Researching Medicine, and a recent PDF called Mile High Dragon which presents a new city setting. All seven physical books are available through places like Noble Knight et al. If you’re inclined to the genre, or just like well-written games that do new things, they’re a great investment.

Cybergeneration is a weird game that I believe was, like a lot of Mike Pondsmith/R. Talsorian’s work, ahead of the curve and ahead of its time. While I have no idea of the sales data for the line, I think the shortage of supplements (compared to Cyberpunk 2020) speaks volumes (no pun intended). This is a shame, because there are a lot of good ideas in the game, not the least of which is the unique way the game engages the reader and leads them through character creation.

Which is what we’ll get to right now.

Game: Cybergeneration
Publisher: R. Talsorian Games
System: Interlock
Books Needed: Just the main book

In an alternate timeline to the classic Cyberpunk 2020, the sub-18 children of 2027 fight for survival on the mean streets of the ISA. On top of dealing with puberty, insecurity, and feeling like guppies in the shark tank, they must evade the BuReloc goons whose duty it is to neutralize any of them who pose a threat. See, these kids have been exposed to something called the Carbon Plague. Nasty little bug that kills any adults it infects. The kids, it just changes. And not peach fuzz and squeaky voice changes but crazy superhero-type biz. Meat that turns into metal, souls that infect machinery, that kinda stuff.

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A couple weeks ago, I finally catalogued my pen and paper game collection. I’ve been into RPGs for almost two decades, and I’ve worked in the industry for almost half that, so I’ve accumulated a fair amount of books. Nowhere near the collections some folks have, sure, but still a fair amount.

The problem is that my game schedule has been pathetic these past *grumble*mumble* years what with work and family and trying to coordinate with other people’s schedules and all the other stuff that marginalizes fun time. This has left almost all of them unplayed and most of them unread beyond a cursory skim.

I’d like to change all that.

While I highly doubt I’ll be able to play all the games on my shelf, I can make characters for them. Inspired by Matt McFarland’s efforts over at his LiveJournal, I’ve decided that I will go through my entire game collection and make a character for each game I can.

I will try to post one new character every week under the “character collection” tag. I don’t foresee an order to it. I’ll probably just pick a game that suits my fancy and go with it.

I’m doing this to scratch the itch that not playing has left. I’m also hoping to open up discussion about these games as a lot of them are older titles that maybe haven’t gotten much love as of late. For some, it might be interesting to see how these games have changed from an older edition to a newer one or simply be reminded of an old favorite.

I like having the excuse to crack open some of these books again.

Anyway, the first character will be up this week. I hope you enjoy it!

Yesterday, on my Twitter account, I posted:

I prefer games that are more focused on stuff I can do than on stuff I need to know.

This is something I’ve been turning over in my head for a while. I have shelves full of games, including a lot of big lines, but I keep coming back to the same handful over and over again. While I rarely get buyer’s remorse over a game purchase, I do look at some and wonder what it would take to get me play the game. Or, perhaps more telling, to run the game for friends. For playing, all I’d really need is time and an interested party. But in order for me to run a game, I need it to really speak to me, to compel me to heave the conch shell of game moderator and all that entails.

Now, part of this is the game’s premise. I’m not that into standard fantasy. Of the broad genres, it’s my least favorite by far. I’m more easily drawn into urban fantasy, modern horror, and dark future games.

Some of it is design. I don’t care for systems that bend over backwards to simulate the real world. Back when I was more active in the game publishing scene, first with Key 20 Publishing and then at Human Head Studios, I didn’t go long without being pitched “the most realistic game system ever designed!” I didn’t bother looking at a single one. These types of simulations bore me. I want systems that have something to say or that emulate interesting source material, such as crime fiction or the beats of a television series. If I want a realistic game system, I’ll plagiarize a physics book.

But some of it, I daresay a fair chunk of it, is presentation. Not artwork and font styles, though they don’t hurt, but ratio of useful player material to game fiction and setup.

I have to be very smart about how I spend my free time; I don’t have a lot of it. Frankly, I have zero interest in reading 100,000 words on stuff that will never come into play. I don’t want supplements that expand upon this or advance an in-game timeline. I want premise, ideas, setting, and enough fuel to light my own fire. Some folks thrive on this stuff. They eat it up. They want to exist in a shared world that folks are participating in all over the world. I make no bones that this is a preference. I want to tell my own stories. I want tools to do that, not a bunch of fiction that’s just trivia to memorize.

I prefer games that are more focused on stuff I can do than on stuff I need to know.

This is probably what makes me such a bad freelancer. I want to create or expand game function more than I care to add to a game’s fiction. I don’t mind writing about someone else’s world (I can imagine a few game lines for which I’d like to write stories) but I want it to be whole fiction, not backstory, not continuation of metaplot. If I do add to another game line, I want to build a new facet, explore a new idea, add substance to what’s already there and give players more to do. By this I mean new organizations, new character types, new systems (magic, hacking, stunt driving, whatever fits the game or new idea presented for the game).

That said, I am currently available to novelize any major film or video game releases, thank you.

In my own games, that’s something I struggle with. I want to give players plenty of stuff to claw into without dictating a strict canon which will invalidate their own games as I continue to build on it with supplements. It removes power from the players, and games are nothing if not power tools. The supplements I’m currently designing for Little Fears Nightmare Edition are idea-focused.

I’m currently reading Robin D. Laws’ The Esoterrorists RPG. It’s a slim book, 96 letter-sized pages, with big margins and fair-sized type. It’s a quick read and a light system. It’s also not written for the new gamer so the text can be pretty assuming and doesn’t hold anyone’s hand. As a gamer with nearly two decades of RPG experience under his belt, I can ride its wave. If this were retooled for the newcomer, it’d probably be a signature thicker at 112 pages.

And I’m loving it.

The thing I like best about it: It’s all ideas. It’s stuff to do. There are two sections totaling five pages that I’d consider backstory. I’ll sum it up: “You are a normal person who is part of a secret society. You protect humanity from supernatural bad things.” That’s the hook. And it’s enough.

The rest of the book gives systems which provide the tools you need to go forth and create. The Esoterrorists is heavily biased toward premise. Anyone with exposure to The X-Files, Supernatural, and even straight-up procedurals like CSI can see how to use the premise and these pieces to great effect.

This isn’t to say I don’t like supplements. I do. I like supplements that give me new toys, new systems, and most importantly new ideas for stuff to use in my own games. One of my favorite things about Eden Studios’ All Flesh Must Be Eaten is that it’s a simple idea (“Zombies are on the loose. You have to fight them to survive.”) that is iterated again and again and again. The corebook focuses on the game systems you’ll need, based on the UniSystem (and, in the Revised corebook, d20 as well). The back is all different premises, brief histories behind the zombies, and samples of zombies built specifically for that setting.

Of all Eden’s lines, AFMBE is its most supplemented. And these supplements do what I love for supplements to do: They give me ideas. Character books, new types of undead, new (blissfully brief) backgrounds for zombie invasions, using zombies inside other genre settings (Westerns, pulp, sci-fi, etc). There’s no metaplot, no exhaustive breakdowns of thirteen core zombie infections and the five common mutations, or 3,000 years of history for the mass conspiracies behind the infestations and outbreaks. It’s all meat, no filler. Human meat, sure, but as my Aunt Zombilena once said, “Anything that can no longer press charges counts as food.”

Now, there are some major game lines I like to play. White Wolf/CCP’s World of Darkness line is one. But I don’t read the fiction, memorize the faction histories and current rivalries, keep up with the moving and shaking of the official game organizations. I don’t want to play in their game. I want to use their game rules to create my own game with my own group. I’ve been chastised before by fans of certain games who think I should not play a particular game unless I’m current with official canon.

I don’t mean for that to be indicative of my counter. I don’t think folks either fall into my camp or are slaves to canon. But I do know a fair amount of gamers who love to dig their hands into setting, who anxiously await the book that will tell them the history of their favorite player class or fantasy race. When I look forward to a release focused on a favored class or fantasy race, I’m looking for new bits, new ideas. I usually have to skim through the fluff to get to the parts I’ll use.

I realize mine is a preference, and possibly a minority one within the hobby, but I’m certainly not alone in it. I’m sure I might find my own exceptions—especially if a favored show was ever adapted into a full game line*—but the big book game lines rarely fit the mold. I have great respect for the folks who build those elaborate, incredibly detailed game worlds. Some of the designers are good friends of mine. As a whole, as writ, as law, those big books don’t appeal to me. As toolkits wrapped in six inches of padding, I’m much more comfortable.

Because above all, I’m not looking for something to know about a game world; I’m looking for something to do within a game world.

*For which I am also available, thank you.

Maschine Zeit is a new horror RPG currently being developed by David A. Hill Jr for publication by Machine Age Productions. David put the call out a few days ago for folks to playtest the character creation rules and, intrigued as I was by the concept, I quickly volunteered.

The basic premise of Maschine Zeit is pretty cool. In the future, the larger nations launch a bunch of space stations into orbit. The program takes off quickly, despite some major setbacks, and is touted as a way off the Earth—which is good because the old blue lady is kinda circling the drain at this point.

About 10% of Future Earth’s population ends up on these stations—about a billion people, says the game, which sounds good to me given the timeline—and it’s all pretty idyllic until they all die horribly in a radioactive pulse.

Luckily, you don’t play those people.

Not so luckily, you play the people who are sent to these hulks, each with his or her own agenda and thanks to the funding of a party that brings its own agenda on top of that one. Also, these stations are haunted by stuff that really, really wants to kill you.

If you’re imagining a pen-and-paper Dead Space, we’re sharing a mindlink here. If you’re now thinking that sounds like awesome-hella fun, allow me to send you a digital high-five.

HIGH-FIVE!

(I make a character after the jump.)

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