Mutants & Marvels stuff

M&M is doing ok.  The PDF sells better than any of my other stuff, and the print edition is doing well over at Lulu.  All in all, I’m happy with it.  My only gripe is not enough reviews . . .

Anyways, after some feedback, and going back over the whole thing a few times, I have some ideas of things to add.  So, I am currently working on an updated version of the game.  However, rather than going the traditional route that RPG’s do, and calling it “Second Edition,” I’m going to call it “2.0.”  It’s an important distinction.

In my mind, a new Edition implies that there have been changes to the mechanics.  That the rules will somehow need some conversion work to be compatible with the previous edition(s).  And this is not what I am looking at doing.  The mechanics will remain exactly as they are.  Mainly because I think they work just fine for the game as it is written and presented.

2.0 will actually be the same exact game, but with some errata integrated, some more detailed explanations and clarifications, and added content.  Additionally, I would like to update the artwork by adding more (especially female) characters.  And I even have an idea for a new cover image that I think will kick ass, if I can pull it off.  As always, the artwork will be on me, since I can’t afford to commission any from anyone with real talent.

This will effect the future of the game in two main ways.  First, the price will go up for both versions.  Not a lot, but some.  Right now the game is probably way underpriced, so I don’t see it being much of a problem.  On the print-side, I am going to go with a whole different format.  I plan to have it printed in 8.5” x 11”, saddle-stitched, with B&W interior art.  As neat as the smaller format is, I’ve come to the conclusion that I prefer the larger format.  Chances are, for the print edition, both sizes will be available, since I can simply update the file it is printed from.

As a side note, I tried setting up a POD thru RPGNow, but the process for rendering the cover image was too complex, and I don’t have the right program to do it (I have an older version of Photoshop).

Anyways, I’m not sure when this will all be done.  I’m still pretty busy with real-life stuff.  But it is probably a safe bet that this little project will preclude issue #3 of Zine-O-Morph from being about M&M.  Still, I haven’t even gotten #2 ready for publication, though I am getting closer.  So, I’m not too worried about that.

If you have purchased it, or know someone who has, and you’ve played it, please, PLEASE give it a review.  You have no idea how beneficial those are to indie publishers.

Gary Con 2015 – The Schedule

 

Well, we’re all registered for our games at Gray Con this year.  The up side is I have 22 hours of official gaming scheduled, plus another 2-3 hours of my own private game with my gaming group, most of whom will be at the Con.

The down side is that I didn’t get into any of the games that I had wanted.  In fact, I didn’t even get into games in the genres that I had wanted.  This year it was my intent to avoid high fantasy as much as possible, and aim for supers, sci-fi, and maybe some modern/spy.  That meant no D&D or any of its clones or direct competitors.  In this, I had a 90% failure rate.

The five games I got into are a D&D 3.5 game, an AD&D 2E game, a Dungeon Crawl Classics game, an Empire of the Petal Throne game, and a Castles & Crusades game.  The only thing that keeps my stated goal from being a 100% failure is that the DCC game is actually a post-apocalypse game in a world that I believe is based on the world of Thundarr the Barbarian (“Under the Broken Moon”).  Which is actually pretty awesome, honestly.

I blame Gary Con’s registration system.  It’s kind of clunky and unwieldy to begin with.  And when you add to that the fact that it obviously didn’t like my iPad…well, at one point I got pissed and rage-quit.  It didn’t help that I was trying (unsuccessfully) to watch Agent Carter during the time.  And finally, there was the expected rush on registrations, so the servers were pretty bogged down the whole time.

But, I am trying to stay positive about it.  And really, that’s not too difficult.  All of the games I got into sound pretty cool.  The Petal Throne game is a nice throwback to the origins of the hobby.  And I know of at least one of my friends who will be in a game with me.  Sadly, my wife and I have no games together.  But, we’re cool with that.  It just means we’ll have more stories to tell each other afterwards.

I’m thinking about ordering some print copies of Mutants & Marvels to sell, if anyone is interested.  I might also get a T-shirt made from the cover image.  You just never know.  Either way, I’ll probably still do the T-shirt, simply because I like the design.

So, anyone else going to Gary Con?

Concept is King

Today I thought I would talk about something a little less “newsy” and a bit more “philosophical.”

From my earliest days of roleplaying, I have always been somewhat of a “roll-player.”  I have kind of always been keen to how well my character performs in combat, and other, dice-derived situations.  And yes, I have been known to be a munchkin, and min/max a character from time to time.

But, one thing I latched onto very early on was the Concept.  Every character I play has a basic concept.  What that means to me is that I always know who my character is, where he came from, and what his “motivations” are.  In many games, this has had little effect on the actual play of the game beyond my character creation choices.  But, when 3^rd Edition D&D came out, I think the idea of Concept really came into its own for me.

With 3E I was able to customize my character on the fly, as he progressed through levels.  If the story of the campaign caused the character to take a turn from his original concept, it was easy to add a different class in order to reflect the changes in the character.  No edition prior to 3E would allow that kind of character development to happen.

At this point I feel compelled to explain why this works for me, and why it may not make sense to others.  Basically, when it comes to class-based games like D&D, there are two schools of thought (in my view, YMMV).  The first is that your class is your profession.  You trained or were taught, maybe formally or informally, how to be a member of that class.  You went to Borg’s Fighter School, or Nanadron’s Wizard College, or what have you.  This concept works well for players whose characters will never change, and who want to excel in one area.  “A fighter I am, and a Fighter I will always be.”

The other school of thought is that classes are merely groups of characteristics represented by a conceptual name.  Your abilities define your class, rather than your class defining your abilities.  This idea first came to me when a friend was playing a fighter in someone’s game, and the character went through a lot of Roleplay difficulty (being manipulated by a God, not the least among them).  So, he decided that the character had become so filled with anger and resentment that he would take a level in barbarian to represent that.  Brilliant! Thanks to my friend, I now had a whole new way of looking at D&D.

My current character is the best example yet of how I have used this idea.  Our campaign, which has been running for four years in real time now, takes place in an alternate Middle Ages Earth.  Replace the real world religions of Christianity, Islam, etc., with a classical-styled pantheon of deities, but run it like the Catholic church (Pope, Bishops, and so on), then add in all of the standard fantasy races from the PHB, and you kind of have what we have been playing in.  Our DM created this setting with an eye towards a lot of role-play opportunities (he came from a V:tM school of gaming).

Unfortunately, this style of game was not my forte, and my immediate thought was a Half-Orc Barbarian (probably my favorite race/class combo ever) from Germany, named Ahnuld.  During the first few levels of play, Ahnuld was kind of out of his element unless we were in a fight.  But, I started getting into the setting, and decided that Ahnuld had an overarching back story of wanting to become a General, and eventually unite the disparate tribes of Orcs in Germany into a nation.  So, he started taking levels in Fighter, to reflect his refinement as a warrior, and his learning of tactics and strategy.  Then, as the story unfolded, it became apparent that the Gods of this Earth were behind the entire campaign.  Ahnuld naturally latched onto Templarus, the God of War, and I really got into the idea of Ahnuld becoming a priest devoted to him.  So, I did some research, and found the Favored Soul class.  Basically, the Favored Soul is to Cleric what the Sorcerer is to Wizard.

We are now at 18^th level, and are nearing the end of the campaign (which involved rooting out the source of a plague, and defeating an evil trifecta and their armies).  Ahnuld is now a 7^th level Barbarian, 6^th Level Favored Soul, and 5^th level Fighter.  He is among the most devoted and powerful representatives of Templarus in the known world.  And I credit the flexibility of 3E for allowing me to evolve my character from a simple uncouth barbarian, to one who can influence world events, as well as stand (literally) toe-to-toe with a Balor in melee combat, and live to tell the tale.

In short, as his Concept evolved, his varied classes allowed his abilities to evolve with it.

More HeroQuest Stuff

Wow, my last post was pretty popular.  Apparently a lot of people still like HeroQuest.  Neat!

My son demanded another game the very next night.  So, after some housework, I indulged.  This second session went much smoother.  I think he's addicted, since we are already planning to make this a regular thing on Wednesdays when it's just me and him in the house for the evening.

After I started looking around for replacement Barbarian and Elf figures, I realized that all of the characters included in the game are male.  Being the progressively-minded gamer I am, I decided that just wasn’t fair!  What if my 12-year old daughter decided she wanted to play with her brother?  Well, I would need female variations, of course. 

So, just under $30 later, I will be receiving six new figs from Reaper Miniatures in the mail next week.  Then it’s off to Michael’s for some cheap acrylic paints and assorted brushes (because these will be handled by children, then tossed back in the box, for the most part).  I plan to enlist my wife in painting these.

I also found a website, Ye Olde Inn, that has a lot of fan-made resources, as well as official stuff from outside the US.  Including a manual on creating your own maps and adventure.  Man, what a rabbit-hole!

Thankfully, I also have the two expansions that came out here in the states, so I will have enough adventures to last for a good, long time.

HeroQuest

 

The other night my son was grounded from electronics for being…well, for being a typical 6-year old.  Honestly, we have become too reliant on stuff like that, and this was an opportunity to maybe become a better parent.  It should have been, anyways, but TV took us over (Thanks, Obama!), so my son was a little bored.  But, he did manage to entertain himself with coloring, and <GASP!> actually playing with his toys!

Anyways, one of the things I had told him was that maybe I would introduce him to a new game if we had time.  We ended up not being able to, but he had latched onto that idea.  He was inquiring about it as soon as I picked him up after work yesterday.  So, we went home, had some dinner (mommy was working late at the salon), and then broke out my old copy of the Milton/Bradley version of HeroQuest.

It had literally been over a decade since I last played this game.  The last time I recall was when my eldest daughter (who is 19) was about Connor’s age.  So, it seemed fitting.  I opened the box, began organizing the pieces and books, all while trying to recall the rules.  To my chagrin I had lost the Barbarian and Elf figures (probably pilfered for some RPG at some point).  So, I told Connor he would just have to be the Dwarf.  And he was cool with that.

Over all it was a fun experience.  He wanted to just jump in with the game, but had to sit through me re-learning the rules.  I flubbed a few things, but we made it through.  He was also playing solo at first, so when he invariably died, I brought in the Wizard to help him.  In hindsight, I probably could have just given him some armor and better weapon.  But, he seemed to the like the idea of the Wizard casting spells with him.  So, we went with it.

I also instituted some little rules like healing surges, and had him roll his Defense dice, and for each skull he rolled he got back a hit point.  Funny thing was, every time he did that, he rolled two skulls on two dice.  I also figured out a way to have the Wizard regain a few spells to help with the rest of the monsters.

It was kind of funny because he kept bypassing doors.  But, after he had defeated the Gargoyle, and “won” the game, he wanted to go back and explore those bypassed rooms.  I think I may have a gamer on my hands.

I’m going to replace my missing figs, and see if there are some options I can institute to make the game more fun, and more survivable for a solo character, or even just a pair.  He wants to play again, so we’ll probably play on Saturday.

Gary Con 2015

 

Finally got around to buying our passes and getting the hotel room for Gary Con 2015.  So, we are now committed.  For three days (March 27-29, can't make the 26th for work reasons), we will be in Lake Geneva, WI, playing games, meeting Geek Stars (not to be confused with Rock Stars), and generally having a great time.

This year I am going to aim for some non-fantasy gaming.  Last year I got into a Star Frontiers game, and it was a hoot!  The guy runs the same excellent game every year, so I probably won’t go for that again, but something similar would be cool.  I am definitely going to aim for a Supers game of some kind.  And if I can get into a Marvel Super Heroes game, that would be aces.  Other than that, I’m pretty open.

I had thought about running a game this time, but decided against it.  First of all, I just don’t have the time to prepare anything.  Plus, I’m more of a player than GM, and frankly running a game for strangers makes me nervous.  I’m actually kind of introverted, and I get stage fright easily.  So, I’ll just stick to being a player.

My wife is still thinking of running a Dragon Age game.  She was intending to run something she came up with on her own, but now that time is short, she’s thinking she might run a published module.  She has a few options there.  Her game at Gamehole Con last year was a hit, so I know she will do well either way she goes with it.

We bought regular badges, so there won’t be any special events on our schedule.  And that’s fine.  While it’s very cool to be able to say that I have gamed with Dave Cook and Mike Mentzer, I’m more than happy to just pass some time with friends among my peers that I haven’t met yet.  So, if you are headed to Gary Con, maybe we’ll run into each other.

In other gaming news, an old friend of mine from City of Heroes bought a print copy of Mutants & Marvels, and has now gathered a few others from the CoH group on Facebook to do an online game, possibly once a month, and probably through Roll20.  I’ve never played in that format, so that should be interesting.  But more than that, I am eager to see what people think of my take on the classic MSH game.  So far, feedback has been pretty positive.

Speaking of the feedback, some of it has given me ideas for my special M&M issue of Zine-O-Morph.  Not sure when that will become a reality, but it’s still on the to-do list.

Mutants & Marvels - Continued

So, I finally got around to ordering a print copy of Mutants & Marvels from Lulu.  It arrived about a week ago, and it looks really good.  It's not perfect, though.  I went for a smaller, TPB size (6" x 9"), and I forgot that the aspect ratio for that size isn't the same as it is for standard 8.5" x 11".  Subsequently, the side margins are a bit narrow, making it harder to read the print closest to the spine, and the top margin is over-large.  But the print quality is excellent.  I opted for color interior, and it looks great.

In other M&M news, today I got a very nice, and humbling review on Mutants & Marvels at RPGNow. And, like any good reviewer, he pointed out the shortcomings, and listed some improvements he would like to see. I am very glad that others find the game useful and fun. Thank you very much, Brian!

Brian's comments, as well as some from others who have downloaded the game, have inspired me to move forward with an idea I had.  I've kind of now decided that issue #3 of Zine-O-Morph will be dedicated to Supers Roleplaying, and M&M in specific.  My initial idea includes an article that details some options based on what feedback I have gotten, some detailed locations, maybe some new characters, and most likely another adventure.

This will all be coming in the future.  Right now ZOM #2 is still sitting in limbo, basically waiting for me to get off my duff and put some Military Sci Fi artwork together.  Once I get that done, I'll get it PDFed and uploaded ASAP.

I'm hoping to get in a lot more writing this year.  I have a lot of fiction I would like to do, and a list of RPG-related projects I'd like to work on.  However, until I finish school in a few months, all of that will be slow-going.