Comparing and contrasting JRR Tolkien with Robert E. Howard is much like comparing the Full and Empty markers on a fuel gauge. But one thing they both had in common was that both their fantasy worlds were supposed to be a prehistory to our world. One of Tolkiend big regrets was that he didn't properly layout Middle Earth to be more European. Middle Earth is supposed to be prehistory Europe, but after all his writing and describing, Middle Earth does no look much like Europe at all. Howard on the other hand knew how his prehistory Europe would look. The Hyborian (a contraction of the Greek concept of the land of "Hyperborea", literally "Super-North-Land") Age is our world after Atlantis sunk, but before the rise of the known ancient civilizations. Howard made a map of all the civilizations or dropped them into his map. He made his map by using what was known at the time of his writing. It was thought that a lot of water was not where it is today and that the Mediterranean Sea and the North Sea were dry. It was thought in prehistory that the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea were both fresh water inlan seas. (This was all pre-plate tectonics geology.) So Howard took a bit of license and made his prehistorical setting based off a supposedly possible prehistory Europe. Howard matched similar cultures to areas that would one day be descended from those cultures. In short, his map makes sense when you overlay a map of Europe over top of it. Score one for the barbarian.

i!

posted by i! at 22:16

New hair, parents will be back probably by Sunday. Webcam is back up, but still the room is dark.

i!

posted by i! at 15:27

So yesterday I went to make a quick trip to Point Roberts to get gas. On the way back up some young new guy flagged me and the customs people went through my car. They made a hassle about my miniatures and wargaming stuff and did their best you're a crominal without actually saying it. Then I backed up into a cpncrete pillar. I'm guessing $500-$1000 to fix the purely cosmetic damage. So much for cheap gas.

i!

posted by i! at 12:50

Now maybe I'm crazy, but does anyone else fond the Hot Coffee controversy over Grand Theft Auto to only point out how fucked up America is. For those of you who don't know there is apparently an adult-oriented dating sim embedded in GTA: San Andreas. If you feed in some obscure cheat codes and then take the character's girlfriends on a number of dates, you will be invited back to her place for "coffee". There you get awkward 3D simulated 3D with no nudity. The moral outrage of a game where the point is to steal cars and kill cops being sullied by consentual sex after numerous dates in a game that you must be 17 in order to buy is incalculable. This has gotten the attention of none other than Senator Hillary Clinton, you know the woman who apparently has a husband that can't keep his penis in his pants around other women. Heck, if we allow late teens to play video games with consentual sex with their computer girlfriend, what next? Consentual sex with birth control? Universal sufferage for every man, woman or child regardless of color or creed over the age of 18?

I tell you, I stood behind Grand Theft Auto when it was a harmless game of stealing cars, killing cops and getting health back by having sex with prostitutes, but now they've gone too far! A dating sim that allows you to have sex with your girlfriend, how morally degenerate can you get!

i!

posted by i! at 13:49

So I ran my Xena game and it was a bit flat as I assumed. The best part of the day was giving Jon a ride home where we discussed some game design via D&D/d20. Jon loves D&D combat but only as miniatures combat or a console RPG simulator. It's a game within a game and he like the tactical choices the rules of combat force on players. I think that combat is too gamey in that it doesn't represent how combat realling is or how we see it in moves, TV or books. My way of thinking is that D&D is to medeviel combat what Monopoly is to modern real estate and development. And Jon actually agrees. His key point is that by making such a game with rules that force tatical choice the end result is better. After all if you remove feats, AoOs, and other tactical options then you might as well just have an opposed BAB roll to determine the winner of the combat. It become an exercise in die rolling so skip 20 minutes of to hit an damage rolls and cut to the chase.

So the key here is that while I may not like the cuttent D&D combat rules, if I want to replace them I need to do so with something that gives tactical choices of a different nature. So it could be maneuvers and a focus on description that relates to die rolls or more emphasis on cover and it's effects on combat or more resourse allocation.

Maneuvers means redoing a lot of the combat system and pretty much means you won't be compatible with D&D. The benefit is that when someone says I hit them with a roundhouse kick, you actually have rules for doing a roundhouse kick. This ceratinly appeals to the fight choreographer part of me.

Better use of cover (especially for modern and futuristic games) means that not all paths are equal and you risk getting shot between stretches of cover. In the real world this is a very important consideration. It's probably one of the most important things in a game like Star Wars or other cinematic, but realistic pulp games. It require a map an figures and a decent layout of cover. It's probably best represented by 3D terrain rather than a battlemat. Your tactical choices are how do you get to the enemy without getting shot yourself. This is probably the most purely tactical option, but requires lots of physical stuff to represent.

The last of my three options is resource management. There is already some of that in the game. Star Wars d20 in particular makes Force Users choice between using Vitality to do things with the Force or save it for when you get hit by blasters. Power attack allows you to reduce your chance to hit in order to do more damage if you do hit. Combat Expertise reduces your chance to hit by increasing your defense. So one way to do this might be to emphasize and expand the amount of feats that allow you to shift resources from one aspect to another. This is a way for you to rob peter to pay paul and give enemies a chance to exploit a temporary weakness before that window closes. A more radical approach (for D&D), would be to replace the round and actions with an action point system. Here you are no longer force to do one move and one standard action, but can do what ever you want so long as you have the points for it. This opens up a lot more tactical option especially if spells have AP costs rather than time in actions or rounds. Imagine casting back to back fireball spells. Even more fun is if you have an effects system for rolling where anything higher that what you needed on a roll can be spent on effects. Now when you blow past their AC you can use those extra 12 points to do extra damage or set up a second action. Heck why not have feats that unlock defensive actions as well as offensive ones. Agile Riposte is a great example of the defensive aspect of effects system.

One should note that the three alternatives I listed already exist in D&D in some fashion already. If you don't like combat as written, but you do want some excitement and fun then you should shift the focus to the aspects you like and diminish the things you don't want. It might be as simple as writing an acceptable feats list for your game or it could be as dramatic as rewriting the feats and combat chapter to fully enforce your style of play. The most important part with a discussion with Jon was that if you take away a part of a game, you need to replace it with something else. Otherwise you have a hole and in the case of combat you are left with soulless die rolling until one side is out of hit points.

Hope to get some more stuff up on my site soon.

i!

posted by i! at 09:23