I have found some time to crack open my live play sessions and edit the audio for snappy playback. Here is the first one out of the box; The beginning of the Savage Sword online campaign!
Contact Information:
Wednesday, April 2
Sunday, March 30
I Bend the Knee to My Lord and Master
I find this following blog post aligns with my tastes in fantasy fiction. Long live the king, King Conan!
Professional GM'ing, so far...
The biggest take-away for me has been how bad 5e DnD is. For me, as a GM. I guess players love it. The character builds are more bloated and involved then a superhero game. But without being a cool superhero game. The discord channel for the startplaying.games service is filled with informative first hand experience of successful GMs running games of 5e. It seems they have to live on their laptop. Everything meaningful about 5e is linked to a digital platform of some sort, it appears. There just seems like such a heavy load between the GM, players, and the actual game.
This has everything to do with how I learned to play ttrpg's, I get that. I just don't see how the GM/DM can have any fun. I don't see much player-agency in this gaming sphere for one. Or it is really an illusion. Everyone is running a campaign off of Hasbro product, so a determined storyline. Besides, a GM is not going to go off script when they have put a gajillion hours into the VTT set-up and balancing encounters. Not that this isn't what the players want. Everyone is getting what they want. It just feels so prefabricated. My eighties punk aesthetic just goes condition red on contact with this stuff.
Therefore, I am only offering games I know I can run which offers true player agency. And that means old-school systems. Game systems designed as true tools for your imagination. For me this comes down to DC Heroes 2e, B/X DnD, Chaosium's BRP, Classic Traveller/Space Opera, and Gamma World 2e. Chaosium covers much ground for me. Any genre not covered by the others I've listed can be run with BRP. Just customize the skill list to make it genre specific.
This does mean the campaign world is built by me. But being a student of emergent play, this isn't much, really. Being enthused about the genre, reading original source material of the genre (reading Treasure Island for a game of pirates, for example), and coming up with an interesting and exciting start. After that the game kind of writes itself.
I also have no problem poaching adventures written for other systems and using them in my campaigns. Ideas, I just need ideas. Nightmare fuel so I can get out of my head and expand my scope of view.
All of these intentional actions serve one purpose; make the game fun to play for me. I like being a GM because it is a hard thing to do. It pushes my ability to interact with others to the maximum and demands my brain make quick connections which fit some type of relative pattern, contextualized into a fictional story, after the fact. Like a battlefield. I'm in a mental struggle which, at the end of the session I can survey the carnage and decide "did we win, did we lose?"
This truly puts me at odds with 5e's gaming products. They are designed to make the players feel special and their tastes catered to. To give participants the insular feel of a video game. The ability to disconnect as soon as they feel "uncomfortable". Heavy roleplay in 5e is a "look at me" proposal and "optimal" builds. Old school play is the guarantee if players and GMs do their part something amazing will occur. An unscripted performance done in one take by pros.
So I guess that is what a "professional" GM is to me. The person who does the heavy lifting to make this experience a quantum potential when the game is on. And yeah, I think it is enough of a work load (mentally) that paying the GM makes sense. Game products and comic books are expensive.
Saturday, March 8
Starfinder Design Test Conclusion
The results are in, and are as expected!
Hi jay murphy,
Thank you for completing the Starfinder Design test. The hiring team has decided not to offer you an interview at this time, but I want to personally commend you for completing the test and candidly sharing your views about game design with us. I look forward to your future contributions to the tabletop roleplaying game industry, and I encourage you to apply for other opportunities at Paizo as they become available.
Best Regards,
Jenny Jarzabski
Creative Manager
l particularly like the statement "I want to personally commend you for...candidly sharing your views about game design..."
Besides I am not corporate material, I knew this section of the test was going to take me out of the running for round 3. I just can't say that game design has to support the product line as a whole. What I mean, and everyone knows this, Pathfinder and WoTC's 5e are so much tools of the imagination, but a homogenous place built around the company's particular canon. Or they just become this "thing" which is essentially immutable and unchanging. And I get why you have to drive a product line in this way, repeat business. Sales.
Jenny is probably a forever DM as well, and would love to sit at my table and have that breath of fresh air which comes from campaigns that embrace genre over rules. She is probably busy as all get out, but I think I will offer to run a game for her and her cohorts.
I know my ideas are not alien, just unprofitable. But damn if I do not get great gameplay from the players that I get to be a player too. I truly never know where things are going to go. I get surprised constantly and consistently. Fuck yeah!
Sunday, March 2
Starfinder Design Test
I threw my hat in the ring two weeks ago for a design editor position opening up at Paizo. I thought why not. Because I wanted to see if my experience to date in the world of rpg publishing would get my feet in the door. I think I came upon the announcement with like a day before they closed the application process.
Who doesn't want to know that? Besides, I know jack-shit about Pathfinder/Starfinder. Never ran a game of it, never read a rulebook. But I do consider myself a student of the art, and I like to think after all the projects I put myself through I got a handle on the business. At some point you become your own authority and a pro performs without a net. I'm going back over the completed document. Looking for anything I can re-sharpen. And sending it out after I get done typing this post. Ahead of deadline by twenty hours.
I do not intend to take the job if offered. I have another job lined up which is close to home with better pay and benefits. Besides, I have worked from home enough to know social isolation leads to depression and drink. No, I am in it for the validation. Once again to see if I can hit a mark set by others, not myself. And if the offer does come forth probably the best way to get a freelance gig. Which suits me a whole lot better. I'll keep you all informed.
Monday, February 24
Gaming Opinions and Their Consequences
I have pretty strong opinions on how one should run a ttrpg as, and in the role, of Game Master/Dungeon Master/Judge/Keeper, Starmaster, etc. What usually strikes folks I am in discussion with is my unwillingness to change my mind. That I do not have much wiggle-room in my definitions and positions. They also can't get over the fact that I have no issues with "I" statements. Such as, "I believe this...", "I do that...", etc. They are struck by the fact I will not see things "their" way.
The one which really starts the fireworks is when presented with the fact of "learning" modes, or models. As in there are people who cannot visualize, are unable to interact in a roleplaying game via theater of the mind. I state then the game form of ttrpg's is not for them. Requiring the Game Master to change their methods and best practices to accommodate these divergent thought structures. I say no I won't, don't and should not because I would be compromising my beliefs from hard-fought practice and exploration. I think "gatekeeping" is the most scurrilous of accusations. I'm not. I have no problem what others decided to do with their dice and their social gatherings. It just isn't what I am about, or interested in. Going along to get along isn't me.
So my two game sessions I ran at the convention were spot-on home runs accomplishing my goals and rewarding players with a fantastic theater of the mind role-playing experience. One session was to explore a difficult genre, for me, and see if the subject matter translated well for a game session. It did. The other was to run a crunchy, old game system with folks who wanted to explore these modes of play. This was a good discussion of what worked in the system, and some of the improvements over rules implementation here in the last ten years of gaming or so.
"c'est la vie"
Thursday, February 20
Ghengiscon 2025 Preflight
Leaving soon from the Western Slope to descend on Denver, CO and Ghengiscon 2025, Colorado's oldest and longest running game convention. Snow in the forecast so, even though it is an interstate highway I travel, I do have my standard kit in the truck; winter boots, hat, gloves, and a blanket tucked under the back seat. Nothing sucks like 4 hours of stopped traffic due to some "incident". This can range from anything like deep snow, white out conditions, avalanche, 8 car pile-ups, and my favorite - flaming semis. I've seen them all.
I should get into town around 3pm, check in, and wander the convention hall for a new set of dice to purchase. 7pm is Rock Hard 1977. Billed as a board game, you attempt to rise from obscurity into a mega rock star. Never heard of it, never seen it, but going to play it - hard! Then at 11pm is the after hours party with all the sponsors and vendors. I wish I had a good pitch all figured out besides pointing an executive to my drivethru page. Sure would like to pick up a freelance writing project while I'm there. I'm not drinking so that will be a plus, and I am a bit of an extrovert so I will at least be able to gather names and what these people actually do.
Saturday, February 8
Start Playing New Listings
I have two new campaigns available on startplaying.games; B/X Dungeons & Dragons Rom'Myr, a Dying Earth and Gamma World 2e Metal Earth!
I am old-school after all. Gamma World was the first ttrpg I purchased with my own money. Basic Dungeons & Dragons was the first ttrpg I ever had, a Christmas present from my parents. They had seen me since 1976 bringing home other people's books so I could learn to play the game. They were a little concerned of my fast friendship with kids much older than me, but I was hooked. I was not to be denied!
It was a heady brew as the 70s came to a close. Besides ttrpgs, there were all the science fiction and fantasy paperbacks I was devouring by the hour, and a raft of Savage Sword of Conan and Heavy Metal magazine underneath my mattress. Not to mention the starting collection of Star Wars action figures!
So, like a newborn chic, these two gaming properties define much of how I view, and play, roleplaying games.
Thursday, February 6
VTT and the Original Dark Magic
The VTT feels like a video game to me. Probably because, like ttrpgs, in the seventies consul and arcade video games were in their infancy. And contrary to popular opinion, most gamers knew ttrpgs were what they had been looking for all this time, but just didn't know it. The game, the concept of the game was dead simple and easily understood. I do remember as a wee child being bored with Monopoly, Clue, Candyland (makes a great drinking game though), Stratego, and Risk. I had been exposed to tactical wargames before I was double digits, and if was going to move counters around the board they better be able to blow hell out of the countryside. But before all this, I only had paperback fiction delivering the imaginative excitement I craved. When Arneson and Gygax put the chocolate with the peanut butter what I needed had been just born. I cannot be the only one the first time someone told you about this game Dungeons & Dragons you got it. The lightbulb didn't just turn on, it exploded. I didn't have any of these game books and boxed sets until '81. What I did have was enticing rumors of this game, what it looked like, where you could find it and who was playing it near you. These trails, these breadcrumbs were everything like a classic Call of Cthulhu game. I was searching secrets many did not know. Picture a seven-year old hanging around the roller skating rink investigating the whereabouts of some person I never met who might know a little something about DnD.
Saturday, February 1
Savage Sword, the BRP version of Adventures in Xoth
human-centric sword and sorcery game, which we all know resulted in Deluxe USR Sword & Sorcery. Now, twelve years later, and I am once again a serious fan of Chaosium's BRP game system! In the last decade I have thoroughly explored the game systems of Dungeons and Dragons and lots of the OSR retro-clones, Classic Traveller, Space Opera, Clockwork & Cthulhu, Champions, DC Heroes, Cyberpunk 2020, MS&PI's. Some of these systems I had played with before, some it was my first time running the system. And others... I just plain forget all the games I've done a deep dive into since 2012.
There are so many rich rewards I have gained from all this, and the one I am talking about tonight is how much the BRP system suits me. A truly great universal game system it is. You can pick up any of their different types of games and play them all with a brief refresher on the buffs, and options being used which make the games, while using the same system, all having their own unique aspects. Rule tweaks, optional rules, powers, abilities, skills- under it all is just a d100 roll for success mechanic. Combat rules in each different game (Call of Cthulhu and its immense list of specific genre-takes, Runequest, Pendragon, Magic World, Superworld, hundreds of fan-made systems for a specific purpose...
This is all to say, I feel BRP is the best system to run human-centric, pulp-fantasy sword and sorcery tales. If written "right". I am in the process of writing up the rules for Savage Sword, Fantastic Pulp-Fantasy Adventures in a Primordial World. And this world is the tremendous campaign setting Xoth, a creation of Morten Bretan.
I will be importing all the things I have learned about game systems, tables, random charts and use the coherence of Chaosium's BRP to put it all together. Character Creation is as streamlined as I could make it, skill resolution and task resolution are a snap. Combat system, including simultaneous hand-to-hand combat, is the chariot of this ride. Yes, I love pulp sword & sorcery because of the limb-lopping and corpse-strewn trails of gore! And the combat system has to reflect this. One of the easiest tweaks is to reserve Critical Hits and Critical Successes for PCs only. NPCs... sure they can fumble, but the average gate guard is not going to be the cur slicing your head off. Important NPCs, the important villain will get all the combat bells and whistles, but there are going to be mook rules.You know how Stormbringer resolved this design "question"? They gave Elric an 880% skill level with his hell-sword. Basically it allows this top-tier warrior 9 attacks a combat turn! Now, I am not one for bloated skill levels, but it works because it is BRP, and because it is sword and sorcery in the worlds of Michael Moorcock where the heroes reach god-like proportions. I will be tackling this design question differently, just like every other iteration of the BRP system does.
Thursday, January 16
Even Heroes Bleed is Back on the Air
I mean, the Vanishing Tower house game has been going steady. We are live streaming the session. But it has been a year since I downloaded a recorded session and created an edited audio of the session for snappy play back! 13 months actually. Since an edited audio of the session is the only thing I can stomach to listen, I have got myself out of my omnipresent god-like vision which has me aware of everything which is going on in the Capitol City universe. Not good. This is a supers game so the subplots and NPC threads are like a busted can of spaghetti-oos on vinyl, spread out everywhere!
Sunday, January 5
Space Acid, the Mothership Mod
No need to write up a Space Opera retro-clone, just use Mothership as the basic rules chassis and modify from there. Then you are just creating a setting book instead of this comprehensive rule book. And it is really simple to do. Just add the 2 new character class options I have outlined at the end of this blog post!
Psychedelic
Science-Fantasy
A hybrid
genre within speculative fiction, science fantasy simultaneously draws upon or
combines tropes and elements from both science fiction and fantasy. In a
conventional science fiction story, the world is presented as being
scientifically logical, while a conventional fantasy story contains mostly supernatural
and artistic elements that disregard the scientific laws of the real world. The
world of science fantasy, however, is laid out to be scientifically logical and
often supplied with hard science-like explanations of any supernatural
elements. For this author Heavy Metal magazine typifies the best elements of
the diverse world of science fantasy. For yourself it could be much different.
No
matter, this kitchen-sink rule kit should provide more than enough tools to
capture the spirit of your campaign. If you ever need inspiration for your next
Space Acid adventure, thumb the catalogue of movies, comics, music, books, and
magazines which brought this genre to life in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. There is
literally a bottomless reservoir of material to draw from.
1.2 New
Character Classes
Character
creation follows the standard one-page procedure outlined in the Mothership
core rules. There are two new character Classes to choose from. They are the Clone,
and the Fixer. The Clone uses the Android Class but may freely choose the 3 Trained
Skills they begin with. The Fixer uses the Teamster Class, but with Max Health
being 3x Strength (not the normal 2x).
How to be a Professional Game Master
Like many things in this hobby, you just need to get up and go at it! I'm "in-between" jobs right now so I decided I needed to generate some income via my life long passion, TTRPGs. You are going to need, want, and should set up a profile on startplaying dot games.
And a thumbnail. A really good thumbnail. Since people have only one way to see choices and make selections your front end pitch has to beat thousands of others vying for the same euro and dollar.
Move to a foreign country. Unless you already live somewhere that doesn't use the euro or dollar as their currency. Then stay right where you are and rise to the top 20% of income earners! Living in a third world country with their own currency will make the money you make from players exponentially "more";Constantly churn options. If an offering isn't getting any hits you need to toss it and put up something new. The internet is a loop, continually spewing content like a news ticker at the bottom of your television screen. You need to be constantly feeding this loop with intriguing and flashy offerings.
5E and Curse of Strahd. Be prepared to run a whole lot of this. Whatever WotC/Hasbro is doing you need to be right in their back pocket mimicking. In fact it is best to consider yourself a Mimic. An alluring trap which can change faces instantly. Then hang on with all you got and never let these people go. You need to shadow their life constantly and..... no, no, no, none of that.
But marketing, marketing, marketing is the nit to crack to get steady money from the gig. I have been up and posting just this last week and have had one gig. This is from doing it all wrong and just winging it, like I do any game session. Hopefully I can turn this into some regular cash money so I never have to leave the house! Or where pants for that matter.