Saturday, 16. October 2010
Drink Up Me Hearties
Pirates of the Caribbean – At Worlds End
Hans Zimmer
In addition to some good film making, Pirates of the Caribbean also produced some nice soundtracks. This one trickled its way down to me even though I only saw a part of the movie. Up is Down is also another excellent track, both fit well in games that have an “adventure” theme.
Friday, 15. October 2010
Typically costuming is a live action role play (Who are role playing) or society of creative anachronism thing (Who are attempting to stay in character.) I believe we can use it outside of that however to add flavor and character without going to extremes. This should prevent people from being too put off about it. In addition, some of the items are quite useful outside of gaming as well so its hardly a wasted investment.
The first is simply to add a garment or to in order to set the mood while playing. Simple pieces that have cross purposes for outside gaming are a good place to start.  The simplest ones that I can think of are hats and cloaks. In a worst case scenario both are usable on Halloween at the very least, but on a more practical side they can easily be used elsewhere. The key here is to look for something that is stylish without gross modification. Swashbuckler type hats with the feather removed make a fairly handy and good looking fedora depending on how the hat is made. Everyone (guys especially) should have a few fairly interesting hats since it seems the only thing in vogue nowadays is those stupid baseball hats. Cloaks in addition to being very stylish easily double as a coat (their intended purpose) a blanket or a mat for picnics and the like. I would recommend getting one that is closer to full round or 3/4 round for this purpose. Another piece that comes to mind no so much for its versatility but simply because I would like to see the style come back is bracers. They’re usually fairly cheap and are made in a large variety of styles.
The other option is to help enforce role play. I’ve had generally good success with this, and I’ve heard most other people who have tried this have as well. Typically it is done with hats as they’re the easiest to get on and off quickly. The concept is when a player is wearing their hat any words that come out of their mouth are in character. This makes it real easy to find out who is acting and when and generally simplifies the life of the storyteller. Usually after a couple of creative missteps (“I say we rob the guy!” or “Man, this guy is a dick!”) to NPC’s face they’ll be in character fairly stoutly with the hat on. If your players are doing this, I suggest that a storyteller does this as well to maintain solidarity.
With a little investment you can easily have an item that is cross purpose and adds some nice flavor and mood to gaming. I like to attempt to work off a model that investments are make life better outside of our hobbies as well and this is a good angle to work from.
Thursday, 14. October 2010
Since last week we discussed timekeeping throughout the daytime by use of the sun, it would only figure that this time we move towards the evening. The ring dials appropriate counterpart is known as the Nocturnal and works on quite a bit of a different principal. Since there is no sun to work off of to measure rotation and the moon is highly variable, we have to use the stars. The only downside to this if you’re not entirely familiar with your constellations, you’ll need to figure them out (or at least 3 of them.) to properly use the device.
The Nocturnal
In this case our reference point is Polaris; the north star. Since the other constellations rotate around this on a yearly basis for us, by using their position in the night sky we can accurately determine the time.  Polaris is sighted through the center hole and the other reference constellations.. Cassiopeia, Ursa Minor and Ursa Major are clocked around the outside of the nocturnal. The time is indicated in the local mean time and needs to be corrected for local time.
Some of the smaller models tend to be accurate within 15 minutes, but apparently the full sized models (Which used about an 8 inch disk.) could tell time within 2-3 minutes. With accuracy like this, it is no wonder that mechanical timepieces took such a long time to catch on. In addition, based on the position in the sky, the ships latitude can be determined as well, which is typically based on a scale off of the back of the instrument.
Of course, I would be remiss without including a similar Project to demonstrate how the device works. Like the other timepiece this one is best made out of card stock.  This is also “slightly” more complicated, requiring a rivet with a hole in it to sight the north star. It’s also worth noting that many cities probably have too much ambient light to really make this work, so you’ll need to head out into the country or someplace thats darker to easily see the stars you need. Happy hunting!
Wednesday, 13. October 2010
It’s an interesting question to see how most storytellers implement justice for player characters. Players have a tendency of killing everything in sight that might or might not be an opponent, and then usually walking around like they own the place. When questioned about the carnage, a simple response of “We saved you all” or “They were the enemy.” tends to get them off mostly scott free, particularly if you’re in some sort of authoritarian society and are friend with those in power.
Likewise, a similiar situation exists if you’re running campaigns of forces of good versus forces of evil. Picking off the opposing side is usually the right thing to do. These are fun campaigns to play from time to time, but also can get stale relatively quick.
A more interesting problem is that of settings in semi-modern or modern setting with a good amount of forensics to determine who did what, and a government that wants things relatively calm. Do you have them argue it out in court cases, or simply on the run? They’re going to have to do a lot of work to stay ahead of authorities, particularly of they did a good job of stepping on toes.
Futuristic settings can vary wildly as well. In an outlaws type setting, nearly everyone is charged with something or another and virtually everyone friend and foe is on the run from someone. It’s a feature of the setting. In anything less than this, the players are going to have to work real hard to stay ahead of those that would seek to bring them to justice for havoc caused.
How do you handle such situations with your players?
(On a side note, I’ve been absolutely killed this week in between work and travel trying to keep up with everything.)
Saturday, 9. October 2010
Pedro has a great piece up today from the old Legacy of Kain series. Raziel as a Halloween project. Very neat, and more importantly from a time when vampires weren’t glittery!
Friday, 8. October 2010
Planscape box cover
This is time for a bit of nostalgia here. The game that got me very interested into some of the additional dungeons and dragons setting was called Planescape: Torment and was released for the PC back in 1999 by Black Isle Studios. For the time, the game was absolutely magnificent… Planescape settings are very bizarre to say the least and the game does a fabulous job of visualizing these and putting a good audio backing to them.
None of the characters are really traditional in any sort of the way.. your main character is the Nameless One; a mortal who dealt his way into immortality. The character is rather scarred up and frankly plain ugly (as you can see from the box cover) but has a distinct magnetism to him. Along the way is Morte, a floating skull and Dak’kan, a Githzerai who bargined to serve the nameless one until he died. Sadly, he was unaware of the circumstances. There are 7 major player characters in all and each has a good amount of subplot and dialogue that you can use to get better information out of them.
The game has a tremendous amount of talking involved in it and unlike a lot of games at least along the main plot point there isn’t a tremendous number of times you really “need” to fight, which is a great stepping stone for crpg’s. As for non plot battles, you find yourself getting into dust ups quite regularly if you go out of your way to look for them. (and you should, because there is a lot to see.) The Wiki here goes into considerably more plot and character details that I won’t bother to repeat.
I haven’t played this in a long time, but I imagine that it will require some tweaking to get to run on Windows 7 and Vista platforms… as it seems most of all the older games do. The game uses the old Ad&d 2e system, which is of course good and bad at times. The games resolution isn’t quite as hot as it could be, but all in all everything is very well put together with it and something I highly recommend checking out if you haven’t seen before.
Thursday, 7. October 2010
Throughout our all of our lives problems or lesser and greater natures inevitably crop up. How we resolve these problems in large part determines our success in life. The logical process of troubleshooting is very useful both in life and in gaming to determine the real cause of failures, so is worth examining further in depth.
With any systems there is a line or web (in the case of more complicated situations.) of supporting systems. Its useful to look at some of these as a supporting chain in which any failure within it will produce an overall system failure. In addition, the first chain within any loop is the core supporting structure and even small deviance’s in this can cause cascading failures throughout the system.
Each failure within a supporting system causes a specific kind of result, which may or may not be shared by others within the system. These results have to be sifted through and tested to find the real root cause of the problem.
Read more »
Wednesday, 6. October 2010
Bolero
Maurice Ravel
Performed by: Andre Rieu
A very interesting constant building of pace, it would be good to see it involved in is proper play.
Monday, 4. October 2010
I am a fan of older technology because of its resilience as well as it’s elegance in many cases. This particular item is an advanced form of a tool nearly everyone is familiar with.. the sundial. This of course measures time by the position of the sun, assuming you factor in a bunch of corrections for time of the year as well as latitude. They are also not very portable in many cases. as you’d have latitude to correct for and have to know true north. Far too many calculations to mess up.  Thus enters the ring dial.
Ring Dial
This folding little piece of genius was developed supposedly around 500 years ago although most versions you will currently find available are 18th century. It was quite useful for finding time when sailing due to it being usable while hanging and quite stable in this regard. The ring dial needs to be adjusted for both the northern and southern hemisphere, the users latitude, and the date. From there, the light shining through the hole onto the inner ring displayed the time.
There are several vendors who make these, and most are reasonably priced considering the amount of work that goes into them. Most of us however, aren’t going sailing in the 18th century however and can’t afford to play around with this cool little piece of equipment unless we’re using it for an artwork display or to talk about history.
Or you could use a bit of innovation and the Internet, and look up a nice little piece of work by Wee-Meng LEE. He put together a Origami ring dial that reverses the time and latitude rings. This particular one is printed (preferably on card stock), cut out, printed and then hung by a finger on the inner ring and the position is adjusted to shine on the outer for time. Great toy to play around with, and a good kids project if nothing else.
Friday, 1. October 2010
One of the elements of a game that I always harp on is that I think flow is a quintessential element. Granted you still need to have story, players willing to role play… but really overcomplicated rules slow down game play and can really put a drag on having fun, especially once you get rules lawyers involved.
What do you do to keep games flowing quickly?
My typical methods involve..
1) Generalized notes on areas and characters for quick reference
2) Minimized additional rules
3) Avoid going into too much detail for beginners, letting them play and pick the game up as it goes.
4) Quick arbitration, detailed arguments can be heard after the game is done
and lastly
5) Favoring simple systems
Obviously the last point doesn’t work if you’re a tactical battle guy that enjoys playing with miniatures.
