Gifts Ungiven

Read the first post, then scroll down to the long post by "Warlord Ralts."

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=86916

Back in high school, I killed time in AP Chemistry one day figuring out what would happen if someone in the Rifts setting wearing typical personal body armor were hit by a typical rail gun burst. The basics:

A Rifts rail gun burst involves multiple high-velocity projectiles
It doesn't breach the armor (always nice to have body armor that can stop anti-tank weapons)

The outcome, in short, was that the target would be sent flying across the landscape at a remarkably high speed, certainly beating them to a complete pulp inside their amazing armor. It's a fun, if icky, SF image.

At least the armor's recoverable.

Dungeons & Dragons artist David Sutherland died on June 6, age 56.

The CBC story

I have a few Advanced D&D books featuring Sutherland's work on the cover.

Fans of the cyberpunk genre, or perhaps people who played the Cyberpunk or Shadowrun roleplaying games will be familiar with the concept of "wired reflexes." The notion here is that you somehow have been modified to react much faster than a normal person. The normal in-genre and in-game consequences of wired reflexes are impressive, leading to the kind of perceptual differences shown in The Matrix, when the Agents and Neo simply see the world around them as moving in very slow motion and conversely are seen as moving very fast, and Underworld, in which a vampire assassin pulls a trigger so fast her semiautomatic handgun appears to be firing on full auto.

Based on the name and some genre ideas, this kind of reflex modification mainly involves replacing your main nervous system transmission routes with a faster mechanism -- fiber optics sound good for this. Assuming away the time needed to convert between the chemical nervous signal to the fiber optic and then back again at the brain, what kind of time could we gain by such a replacement?

Nerve transmission speeds vary depending on the nerves involved, but one reasonable average is about 50 meters/second. At this speed, it should take about 40 milliseconds for a signal to travel one-way along the longest route in your body (foot to brain), or 80 milliseconds for a round trip. This suggests that we could shave that 80 milliseconds off your reaction time by using fiber optics (again, assuming away the time needed to convert the signal).

So how much do you gain from this 80 milliseconds?

Human reaction times differ based on the test conditions, but "recognition reaction times" that require identifying and choosing between two objects average 384 milliseconds. This rises as the number of valid choices increases, making it hard to estimate what that translates to in real life -- how many "valid choices" are present for our cyberpunk protagonist when she's faced by an alley full of scrubs? Even sticking with 384 milliseconds, that means that our wired individual gets an 80 millisecond head start, cutting 21% of her reaction time. Not shabby, but not amazing.

This suggests that someone with wired reflexes would, over time, tend to act slightly before those without, but certainly not so much as to appear to move differently or be a blur. Especially given that another 60 milliseconds or more of even the simplest act is taken up by muscle action, there just may not be a lot to shave off of that reaction time should one be able to speed up the brain part of the decision-making process.

Found by the watchful eye of cataptromancer:

Download Ars Magica fourth edition for free at RPGnow.com.

From Ken Hite's March 22nd Out of the Box column:

Easily the show's biggest news was the announcement of Warhammer 40K Roleplay, which will use a close variant of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay system as revised and designed (rather nicely, in my book) by Chris Pramas and Green Ronin. Green Ronin will likewise be handling the design for W40KRP (as it is unfortunately actually acronymized), and the release will be structured around a three-game line model. Coming up in March 2007 will be Dark Heresy, a basic W40K RPG pitched as "Traveller meets Call of Cthulhu"; then for GenCon 2008, we'll be seeing Rogue Trader, (which is, I suppose, "Traveller meets really dark Traveller") and then in spring-ish 2009 we get Death Watch, which is essentially "Starship Troopers Freelance Police," as best I understand it. Quite frankly, that last is the one I'm most curious about, if only because I ran a "Traveller meets Call of Cthulhu" game for a while in college, and then wrote a treatment of the same basic thing in 2001 that vanished onto the Steve Jackson Games cutting room floor. Thus, the first two aren't going to take me anywhere I haven't already been. But that last concept, "space marines as superheroes," is pretty awesome, and could be amazing in the right hands, which is to say, in the hands of, oh I don't know, Chris Pramas and Steve Kenson. So yee bally haw! Or whatever it is they say in the future, where, you know, there is only war.

Now that is just cool. Coming in a year.

Bruno posted a truly awesome story of Kobolds on a mission to the SJGames Forums:

The obvious solution is not to find the unicorn, but to find the nearest princess. This has the added benefit that princesses rarely weigh 1500+ pounds and even more rarely have six foot spears grafted to their foreheads.

Full story in the extended.

Several years ago, I decided I wanted a copy of the D&D Cyclopedia, a sort of "all-in-one" book for basic Dungeons & Dragons that was released in 1990 or so. I was able to pick it up at a very sane price (around retail) from an online seller, which was itself a real step up over earlier years when I would have had to go hunting around used bookstores and game stores that stocked used or vintage merchandise.

More recently, game companies, especially roleplaying game companies, have turned to online sales of PDF versions of their books. You can, for example, buy digital copies of your favorite Steve Jackson Games books at their e23 store, or browse thousands of products at DriveThruRPG.com.

PDF versions of game books have a number of benefits. For consumers, they offer immediate access (click to buy it), the convenience of not cluttering your place or your backpack with books, and best of all, the opportunity to buy things that will never, ever see a reprint as a physical book. Similarly, companies can pick up sales from people who are hesitant to add another book to their shelves, can release direct-to-PDF products that would cost too much to distribute conventionally, and can convert their whole product catalog into a revenue stream.

From what I can see on DTR, both Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf have been aggressive in offering a substantial portion of their entire portfolio for sale in PDF. Always meant to run the classic Dragonlance adventures? You can buy them for $4.95 each. Wanted to check out the Planescape setting? $5.95. Try Vampire: the Masquerade, Revised or second edition, for $15 and $14, respectively.

Some people worry about pirating, but to paraphrase Bill Coffin, "Your stuff is being pirated already." And given the option, people will happily buy material rather than torrent it.

For me, the most appealing aspect is having easy access to material that, as I said, will never see a physical reprint. There are just so many things that looked cool on the shelves through the years...

Over at Jeff's Gameblog, Jeff Rients tells us How to Awesome-Up Your Players, including tips like:

"Always Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing"

and

"Your NPCs suck and they are all going to die"

Thomas T. on RPGnet has an excellent idea about an economy based on that immortal D&D critter, the tarrasque.

"Once apon a time a nation decided to end the threat of the tarrasque once and for all. An army was assembled, led by the greatest heroes of the age. Most importantly, a number of powerful magical weapons were created for the battle. The monster was lured into a tight canyon and the battle began.

"At terrible cost, the tarrasque was defeated. But not slain. It was impaled by fourteen Immovable Harpoons (like an immovable rod, but spikey), each attached to a thick adamantine chain sunk deep into the canyon walls by magic. The tarrasque was restrained.

"A fortress was built around the tarrasque, to watch over it. Every day its watchers hack away at the tarrasque with powerful magic weapons to keep it weakened in case of escape. Even so, there are casualties as they misjudge its reach, or as it's angry thrashing causes rockfalls.

"Of course, being a powerful magical crearture, the tarrasque's blood, flesh and other body parts have certain useful properties. A side effect of keeping the tarrasque imprisoned like this was a neverending supply of powerful magical components. A city grew up around the fortress to house the various wizards, scholars and alchemists that came to exploit the tarrasque's bounty. Eventually, it was almost as if the neverending stream of tarrasque blood, flesh and bone was more important than imprisoning the beast itself."

More in the extended. Here's the original thread.

Jeff Rients has an awesome Gameblog where he talks about roleplaying games and associated ideas. I've mentioned him once before, in the context of his essay titled "How to Awesome-Up Your Players".

Now, there's yet another (of many) reasons to go visit his blog. He's training ninjas.

As it happens, Jeff's nephew has discovered his God-given ninja nature. Cute as this is, the feeling of invulnerability it engenders had the unfortunate side effect of making him completely oblivious to "stranger danger." What's a mother to do?

Call in uncle Jeff:

My first line of attack on this problem was to appeal to his ninja virtues. "A wise ninja must avoid unnecessary danger," I tell him. But he doesn't really seem to buy it. So I go for the carrot approach. Ever since he discovered my plastic minis collection he's been dying to try Dungeons & Dragons. I've held off. One of my concerns is that I needed to be sure he and his cousin (my daughter) were sufficiently literate and numerate to play. Elizabeth can count to 20 now so the last big educational barrier has recently been removed.

"Alright, here's the deal then. If you can go four weeks in a row without talking to strangers, your mom and I will schedule a game of Dungeons & Dragons. But it won't just be ordinary Dungeons & Dragons. It will be Dungeons & Ninjas. But listen up, dude. You know I check in with you and your mom every week, right? You have to get good reports four weeks in a row."

With that mission in mind, design has already started on that most awesome of games, Dungeons and Ninjas:

I don't have anything resembling a working draft yet, but I see the Top Secret Dungeons & Ninjas Player's Manual (the Top Secret part is really in the title) as breaking down into 3 major parts. Part 1, "Congratulation! A Ninja is YOU!" is a reworking of Basic D&D character generation. The biggest change will be in the classes. There will be four: Ninja Warrior, Ninja Wizard, Shadow Ninja, and Mystic Ninja. These classes will correspond closely to the traditional Fighter, Magic-User, Thief, and Cleric, except that they all wear pajamas and masks.

Jeff's rapidly earning his way into Uncle Valhalla with his heroic deeds.

The "o" key on my current laptop suffered an injury today. It's sort of halfway better right now, but as part of testing it and trying to get it reattached properly, I ended up typing a lot of "o"s -- five of them in the entry box for Google. On a whim, I decided to see what five "o"s get me.

Turns out, it gets you this.

Following that link takes you to a White Wolf "World of Darkness" character sheet. Yup, the kind with all the "o"s to fill in for your character's scores.

I find this hilarious.

The unfortunate news came yesterday that Erick Wujcik was just recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that has already spread to his liver.

You may, like me, know Wujcik from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness. This was the first roleplaying game that I bought on my own, and as a little kid, I was enthralled. He's probably much better known for his innovative design work for Amber Diceless Role-Playing, which was quite different than anything that preceded it in the hobby. An entirely different and much larger gaming community knows him from his work on the computer gaming side, where he led work on Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, and many other games.

Wujcik's friend and sometimes publisher Kevin Siembieda has set up a tribute site here, so people can let Erick know they appreciate his work before he's gone.

You can see his roleplaying game credits here.

"shanoxilt" asks us this question on the RPGnet forums. Specifically, the question was:

Every time someone starts a topic that mentions fantasy cliches, many people respond that they hate elves.

Thank you for your replies. Have a pleasant day.

-

Some of the many fun and typically accurate replies:

-

The defining characteristic of elves is that they're better than you. - Ratoslav

-

A race of mary-sue's, whats not to hate.

Iron Kingdoms gave them katanas and trench coats, talk about overkill. - GoodnightChesty

-

They're the Vulcans of the Fantasy world.

Because of this, I've found, far to many of the closet basement nerds seem to be drawn to the idea of the fantasy "Master Race" and have either deemed to want to become one, idolize them, or honestly believes they are one. - Archangel777

-

aaannnd that they didn't have to do any real work to get that way. Look at Tolkien's elves.

They're prettier than you, wiser than you, stronger and faster and more skilled than you, they'll live forever, and everything they have they conjure up with their pretty pretty princess magical pixie fairy fuckwit powers. - Halloween Jack

-

Indeed.

People were wigging out over on RPGnet at the announcement that Games Workshop was going to reorient the output of its imprint, Black Library, canceling the nascent Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying line and canceling Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. This was particularly irritating to people who'd been hoping for a Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying game for two decades only to see the game canceled after a lone book saw print.

Well, as it happens, GW wasn't killing the line. Instead, they've just signed an agreement with Fantasy Flight Games, publishers of Arkham Horror, World of Warcraft: the Boardgame, Tide of Iron, and a personal favorite of mine, War of the Ring, to be the exclusive publisher of board games, card games, and roleplaying games based on Games Workshop's properties.

"We are just so thrilled to partner with Games Workshop in such an encompassing deal," said Christian T. Petersen, CEO and founder of FFG. "Not only will we be able to continue the publication of some phenomenal roleplaying, card, and board games currently on the market, but we look forward to creating new games for the popular GW universes!"

This is exciting news, as FFG has a good track record for publishing fun, high quality games. I especially like that they're not just going to be a reprint house, but will be able to generate new games based on the licensed material.

You can read the original press release, in PDF form, here.

The word is that Gary Gygax passed away today. Presumably his wiki entry will be updated with more in the near future.

Jeff Rients and pals are playing a classic Gygax module in honor of the man. As usual, Jeff's game sounds just plain old fun:

Doug came up with a character with high Int and Dex. We tried to trick him into playing an illusionist, but he opted for a straight up magic-user. When he diced for the initial spells in his book he came up with light for his "offensive" spell. He didn't cast it or any spells all night, as I recall. He threw some daggers and even hit a couple of times. But in the grand tradition of crappy 1st level m-u's he spent most of the night leeching xp's off the rest of the party.

Stuart ended up with a human cleric, which he opted to play as a harsh Lawful Neutral servant of a harsh, Old Testament-style Lawful Neutral god. I'm thinking Marduk is a pretty good fit, but we didn't spend any time worrying about the specific deity. Stuart brought three live goats along, in case he needed to sacrifice something while in the dungeon. (Fortunately "virgin" is not listed among the standard equipment in the PHB.) Anytime the goats misbehaved he lectured them sternly.

With the arrival of the first Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying game, Dark Heresy, RPG.net is abuzz with ideas for gaming in the setting (and in case you missed it, future 40K RPG products will come from Fantasy Flight Games rather than Black Library). Although Dark Heresy is about playing the retinue of an Inquisitor, one player's question about the Tau convinced me that, were I to run Warhammer 40K roleplay, I might well run a Tau campaign.

Warhammer 40,000 is one of those settings that you basically don't want to live in. Our human heroes are ruled over by a particularly frightening, fascistic take on a dark-ages Catholic church if the Church worshipped a decrepit, people-devouring, largely inanimate God-king who mainly serves as a locator beacon for interstellar travel. The other civilizations aren't much better.

That said, the Tau are kind of on the upswing, moodwise. Sure, they have a rigid, caste-based system and an overriding devotion to a central cause (it's 40K -- who doesn't?), but they're portrayed as a young, optimistic race out to conquer the universe and not quite yet aware that the universe is full of horrid things in balance with each other.

I think it would be great fun to have the players represent a Tau exploration team, boldly going (for the Greater Good) where no Tau has gone before, and encountering dying races, the devouring Tyranid hordes, death planets, rampaging Orks, and the unending legions of the weird, backwards-yet-universe-dominating humans. The different castes and their roles provide a range of niches for the players. In a way, you could run it as a hybrid of Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek, with the hopefulness level set somewhere in between the two. Send your Water Caste crew down to explore the surface with a Fire Team in support, then figure out what to do when the weird, undead robot things occupy your landing craft! Explore a derelict alien spacecraft and attempt to operate its unique interstellar transportation gateways! Solve problems in five minutes following a forty minute setup!

And so forth. I think it would be a lot of fun, especially if everyone got into the "working for the team" mentality of the Tau.

Likely systems: True20 or an adapted Shadowrun

Over in this thread on RPGnet, Sabermane suggests Hyborian adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom, spawning an excellent, excellent thread:

It crept back into my head again. Super Mario Brothers done at 11 through the "epic" lens. A world where humans are a short race. A world where you're sucked into a place that's Wonderland through the eyes of Conan. A place where a warhammer is the common melee weapon. A place where a gorilla, a plumber, and a mushroom-man sorceror is a common party, fighting off ten foot tall lizard men in large bulky armor, or sky gods, or terrible things living in secret caverns deep in the earth. a game where a standard weapon is something that covers you in flame and allows you to shoot napalm from your hands (screw that "spitball"), and that if you're lucky, you can kill ANYTHING for ten seconds.

Some fantastic story seeds in the extended and many more in the thread (and pictures!).

Over in this RPGnet thread, Thornhammer rethemes an old favorite as a part of the Old West. His words:

New Hope County, southern Arizona. Looking at an invasion by some unpleasant Federal Government types, led by US Marshal Garth Vader. He wears black.

An old prospector and a young hotshot cowboy roll into Los Eisley on a lazy summer day, looking for transport out to Estrella Muerte...

When D&D 4E was announced and initially released, I check in with some of the discussions about it on the RPGnet d20/D&D forum, hoping to get a feel for the game based on people who'd actually had a chance to read it and play it. Curiously, it was the complaints about the new game that really inspired my interest, as the things that die-hard fans of earlier editions were citing as flaws or problems were things that sounded great to me.

A little later, I found out about the Penny Arcade / PVP podcast series, in which the creators of both comics sat down with Wizards employees to play their way through some adventures using the new rules. This is a great set of podcasts to listen to, as the play group includes an experienced player, someone who played in high school, and brand-new player. You can check out the first podcast in the series here. The guys in the podcast had a lot of fun, and are often hilarious to listen to. Even though the style of game they played is likely not the kind I'd play, it still highlighted the new rules quite well, and garnered even more interest from me.

Yesterday, I was given the 4E combined set, featuring the Player's Guide, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual. I spent some time reading through them yesterday, and was really impressed. Although there are things I love about how the new rules work, that's not what was most striking.

The 4E books are very, very clearly written and wonderfully organized. The "this is a roleplaying game" introduction is quite good (although I haven't needed one of these in years), and the little box explaining the history of D&D is excellent. From there, the rules are clearly laid out, with basics first and elaboration later. In the appropriately titled "The Core Mechanic" section, the basics of the d20 system are laid out. Later on, we have clean and smooth explanations on making characters, using powers, and so forth. Throughout the books, the authors do an excellent job of presenting the simple, clean concepts first, then adding the elaborations later.

But I was even more impressed by all the non-rules assistance for play. There's a substantial section discussing characters and characterization, with helpful suggestions on setting up ideas about what your character wants in life, how he or she would react in different situations, and so forth. In prior editions, lip service has been paid to making a character a character, but in this edition, it gets an entire package of helpful advice. This is very important, since the ability to play an actual character with actual characterization is perhaps one of the unique, market-defining traits of a pen-and-paper roleplaying game. I think the authors of 4E got this in a way that people haven't in prior editions. After all, if you aren't playing an individual character, you might as well be playing a computer RPG. This pattern of strong assistance for the non-rules aspect of gaming continues into the Dungeon Master's Guide, where there's a wealth of advice on running adventures, pacing story, setting up campaigns, making spot decisions, and the especially practical advice of "how long should I put aside to prepare?"

I am quite impressed. This set of books really is a great introductory package to get even brand-new players started on the game, and on roleplaying in general. I'd recommend it to someone who wants to give tabletop roleplaying try.

In a pleasant surprise, Palladium has decided to monetize its back catalog by starting digital sales of its RPG line at DriveThruRPG. You can click here to see the available Palladium line. Nicely enough, the PDFs are discounted, meaning you can, for example, pick up the original Rifts core rulebook for $12.49.

The ability to monetize your past products by offering them in digital form is a good thing; the discounts and the convenience of not adding more physical products to my shelves mean that I'm inclined to blow a couple bucks from time to time on an older book that I may have been interested in years ago, and can now mine for ideas or just read with a sense of appreciation for the history of RPGs.