October Blog Challenge Day 6

My new plantar fasciitis inserts arrived today. So exciting. If only I’d thought to do an unboxing video. Maybe when the other part of the order arrives – five pounds of expensive (to me) coffee beans – I’ll have the forethought to do so.

Had coffee with Sunny this morning, then we swung by the office and played pool while I complained about how unfair life is. The man is truly a saint.

So those beans, they’re a coffee variety from Panama, and I’ve always wanted to try Panamanian coffee. They probably won’t arrive for another week, which is a shame. Hopefully it’s worth the wait and I won’t end up with five pounds of coffee I hate (unlikely).

I am seriously coming up with nothing to write about tonight.

I certainly don’t want to discuss my impending colonoscopy. I’m not really worried about the procedure, I’m just a wee bit apprehensive about the prep required to clean myself out prior. I don’t know how I’m going to keep myself occupied once I’m on a clear liquid diet. I suppose I could write on this blog, assuming I’m lucid.

Listening to the Metallica of my youth as I attempt to write. I’m a Metallica grognard. Anything after 1994 is anathema. I suppose if I were to hear any of their more recent music, there’s a slight chance I might like it. But the truth is, I don’t really care enough to find out. What joyous musical treasures am I denying myself? I guess I’ll never find out.

I slept very poorly last night. Tossed and turned. It was that kind of insomnia where it feels like you’re still awake, or at least aware of your surroundings, but time seems to pass in a blur. I haven’t had a night like that in some time. Hopefully it’s just a one-off and I’ll sleep like the dead tonight.

October Blog Challenge Day 5

I’m not sure how many words I’ve got in my brain tonight. It was a very uneventful day, wherein I ran errands (read: shopped for groceries) and not much else. I watched a couple episodes of the X-Files from the series’ first season. Thought about grilling burgers for dinner but ended up snacking instead. I’ll make the burgers tomorrow.

I’ll admit, I did do some serious napping today. If I’m tired enough to nod off at noon for 2-3 hours, I suppose I needed the rest.

After doing that canvassing yesterday, I’m noticing what seems to be my plantar fasciitis returning. I’ve got a pair of shoe inserts, but they’ve been in daily use for quite some time so I suppose they’re probably wearing out. I ordered a new pair, just to be in the safe side. I don’t really enjoy pain so it seems the prudent thing to do.

Maddy went with me to the grocery store today. As we were loading the car, I noticed a jumping spider on the roof. Maddy coaxed it onto her finger and allowed it to leap away from the vehicle. I commented that maybe she could’ve kept it as a pet, which evolved into a discussion about possible names. She insisted “Jerry” was a good name for a spider. When I scoffed, she said I shouldn’t dismiss the name because it is similar to my own.

I scoffed again and insisted that “Jerry” is short for “Jeremy,” to which she proposed “Jeremiah.” I said that no, “Jeremiah” is a bullfrog name, not a spider name. She had no idea what I was talking about, so once the car was loaded and we were leaving the parking lot, I pulled up Joy to the World by Three Dog Night.

She’d never heard the song before, but enjoyed it.

When we got home, she asked me if her mom was aware of the Jeremiah/Bulldog connection. I told her most definitely, and when we brought the groceries home I confirmed it by saying “Hey, mother, Jeremiah was a… what?”

“A bullfrog,” she answered at once.

October Blog Challenge Day 4

While the new Salem’s Lot wasn’t everything it might have been, it did remind me that Gordon Lightfoot had some awesome tunes.

Speaking of Salem’s Lot, I saw something today that said the director’s original cut was three hours long, but he trimmed it down to just under two hours. I would hope that cut is available someday, because I think it might be a huge improvement on what I saw last night.

I’m really tired tonight. Worked the day, then went canvassing for about two hours. Came home and grilled some chicken breasts, which we ate alongside the San Francisco treat. I also grilled up a pentad of bratwursts lest they creep past their expiration date.

Those bratwursts were pretty good. I’d read a click-bait article last week about the ten best bratwursts, and number two happened to be the ones they sell at Aldi. I’ve never been to an Aldi, so I figured I’d drop into the one up the road and grab some brats. The prices did seem pretty good overall, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of selection. I picked up the brats in the meat department and was slightly disappointed there wasn’t a real meat counter.

Not sure where I was going with that one, but hey. Wordcount, am I right?

This last week at work, everyone was given a Stanley 30 ounce insulated mug. They’re Smurf blue and have the company logo on them. As much as I’d written off Stanley mugs for their sin of being trendy, I have come to appreciate mine in a very short amount of time. I put a Miskatonic University sticker on mine so I wouldn’t mix it up with anyone else’s.

I’ve got my fingers crossed for a pleasant and uneventful weekend. I have nothing planned, aside from errands and seeing Sunny for coffee. I suppose I should go read his blog entries, just to make sure he’s holding up his end of the bargain.

October Blog Challenge Day 3

 

Day three. Look at me go!

The new Salem’s Lot movie released on HBO today. I’ve been waiting for it to come out, hoping that it’d be better than the latest crop of horror movies. It starts okay, but I tend to agree with the review I read over at https://www.rogerebert.com/ - it tries to do too much in a relatively short amount of time. There’s no time to get to know (or care) about the protagonists, except for maybe the scrappy, nerdy Mark.

I read Salem’s Lot for the first time earlier this year. Not sure why I never read it when I was in my Stephen King phase (back when I was 12 or so). Suffice it to say, it was one of the books I didn’t pick up early on. It’s a fine story, well-written, but very much a product of its time that feels a bit dated these days.

The movie diversifies the cast a little, which I appreciate. It also takes some liberties with the story and makes some changes I didn’t see coming. There are a few moments of genuine humor (as far as I’m concerned, Alfre Woodard is a national treasure), and not more than a few moments of truly ripe B-movie cheese.

While I found things to enjoy about it, the new Salem’s Lot isn’t a perfect film. Maybe another hour of action and exposition would’ve sanded down some of the rougher edges. At the end of the day, it is what it is, and since I get my HBO subscription for free with my internet plan, it didn’t cost me anything to watch. I suppose I might be interested in watching it again in five or ten years.

Plus, I’m really hard to please (cinematically speaking) now that I’m in my fifties. It doesn’t take much to sour me on a film lately. After Long Legs and Alien: Romulus, I will never again trust the hype surrounding any other movie. Go ahead, call me a curmudgeon. You might even be right.

October Blog Challenge Day 2

And we’re back with another action-packed episode (issue?) of our daily blog challenge. Assuming you read the previous entry, you know that I’m just typing so I can realize a three-hundred word blog post. It’s not that three-hundred words is hard to generate, necessarily. It’s good exercise, right? Brain training. Groovy.

Driving into work this morning I had Pink Floyd on shuffle, and Waiting for the Worms (from The Wall) came on. I’ve always liked the song, but all the sudden I was hearing it from a position I’d never considered before. Today’s politics are an echo of what that song expresses - a mask of 1920’s Germany held over Cold War-era Britain. And now it’s here, in 2020’s America. And about half of all eligible voters don’t even care.

Maybe I’m being dramatic. Would not be the first time.

Was also reading about feral children for no reason other than I’d been watching an X-Files episode called “The Jersey Devil.” Season One, Episode Five. Not the best episode offered by the X-Files, but suitably entertaining in spots. By the time it ended, I was alternating my attention between the television and my iPad. I checked the clock – ten minutes to nine – and decided I’d probably better go upstairs and get this blog post out of the way.

The cats are having a rampage. They are hungry, so they act out in a beastly manner until I get annoyed enough to feed them (or so they assume). At some unspoken agreement, they’ll eventually stop tearing across the scenery, sit or flop down, and stare at me as if trying to decide if there’s anything else that might intimidate me into filling their bowls.

I let them wait. It’s not even ten o’clock yet.

So… yeah. I think that about covers it to the tune of three-hundred words and change. More tomorrow.

October Blog Challenge Day 1

The last time I wrote anything in (on?) this blog, I was in my forties. How time flies.

Putting that last post into context, it was only about a month later that I slipped on ice in my driveway and fractured my ankle. That put the whole gaming club thing to bed for me, though (as I understand it) the kids at Rosemount did get together and play a few games.

At least I think they did...

Not long after my failed attempt at Quebecois ice capades – just around the time I was starting to walk again – the Covid pandemic took the world by storm. I don’t need to tell you about the pandemic or how it panned out, I’m pretty sure you lived it, too, same as I did.

It’s just hard to believe the amount of shit that’s happened in those five years. I don’t suppose it was all negative, either. Ups and downs. Peaks and valleys. Highs and lows.

Yet, if given the choice, I’d probably prioritize ups/peaks/highs over their opposites, and for obvious reasons. I’m not exactly keeping track, so I don’t know what the ratio has really been like. I’m probably better off leaving it ambiguous, even though it feels like the scale tips a little too often towards the downs/valleys/lows, those sons of motherless goats.

Assuming you’re even the slightest bit curious – morbidly so, perhaps – you might wonder what has brought me back to this place. I was a lot more prolific back then. Maybe I was less private, too. I do feel a bit more constrained in being as publicly open as I once was. I’m not sure why, exactly.

It’s some kind of “October daily blog challenge” that Sunny came up with. Three-hundred words a day, any topic, anything at all. I could probably type “CTHULHU FHTAGN” one-hundred and fifty times, post it as a blog entry, and meet the requirements (though not the spirit) of the challenge.

Who’s Sunny? That’s not important right now. What is important is that I’m somewhere around 341 words for this post (and that number only rises the more I write). Which means I can feed the cats and go to sleep. I have to do it in that order, too, because not feeding the cats is a wonderful way to acquire A.F.I.I. (Acute Feline-Induced Insomnia).

Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.

What Do You Know? It's September.

I made myself an Instagram account. My initial thought was to post gaming-related photos there. I've recently gone back to painting miniatures, so I figured I could post those there. I've also volunteered to help organize a tabletop game club at my kids' high school, and I reckon there might be some good photo ops there, too.

I used to game a lot. Then we had kids and, well, the gaming went by the wayside for a little while. Before we moved to Montreal, we played every other week or so. I ran games for a while, and my friend JZ stepped in to run a game when I got GM fatigue. Moving here made for a pretty big disruption, but we're back on schedule. JZ runs his game on Roll20, and I've started a Call of Cthulhu game at work with my Narrative team.

All that said, I miss running games at home. Outside of work, I don't have many local friends or acquaintances (yet). Networking isn't always easy. I'm hoping the school club introduces me to some new folks.

I created this program back home (in the US) called Dungeon Scouts. I was a Girl Scout leader and I would run workshops to introduce girls to D&D. I planned to bring DS with me to Montreal, but by the time I got here, the Girl Guides were already wrapping up their year. I expect they'll start up again soon.

There's definite value in Dungeon Scouts. There's also the unknown elements. Being a man (oftentimes the only one) in the Girl Scouts of America was... interesting. In the beginning there was a feeling of, "Who is this guy?" from other leaders. It quickly faded, though. I was fully accepted into the organization, which is what gave me the impetus to start Dungeon Scouts in the first place.

Now that I'm in Montreal, there are a few things that give me pause.

1.) I don't know anyone in the Girl Guides here (though I have been in touch with one of the ladies in charge, and should probably drop her a line if I'm serious about starting the program here).
2.) French. I do not speak it. I'm picking it up a bit at a time, but I'm not even close to being "there" when it comes to communicating. I don't know how French Girl Guides Quebec is liable to be.
3.) Montreal. This place... it's unlike anywhere I've ever lived. It's an island. The roads are horrible. Parking (especially in the city) is sparse or non-existent. Driving anywhere requires a significant investment of time.
4.) Speaking of time, I don't know how much of that I have. I'm still getting used to living here. I have a routine of sorts, and it's sort of intimidating when I think about breaking it.
5.) Something else I haven't thought of yet.

Excuses, excuses. I know.

The way I see it right now, I'll forge ahead with the school club for now. I'll see how that goes and then decide from there what I want to do. There's no time limit, right?

Oh, I need to get more Dungeon Scouts patches made. I suppose I'll contact the manufacturer and get an estimate on costs. I'll have them shipped to my friend (and partner in crime) JZ. He's a really good dude and, dammit, I miss him every single day.

Enough pontificating. Maybe I'll paint some stuff.

Almost September

Why do I always find myself back here when September rolls around? I know it's still August, nearly a year since Carbine shut down and about six months since I started my job at Ubisoft Montreal.

I've been very quiet on the social media. I guess I was never particularly noisy. I don't (usually) like to brag, and I'm not one who's ever felt comfortable airing his grievances or personal issues to a gallery of veritable strangers (anyone who actually knows me is excluded). There's enough negativity in the world. I don't need to add to it, regardless of the theoretical cartharsis it might provide.

So... Montreal. We found a nice, quiet place to rent. It's not too far from the office, though the traffic here adds 30 minutes to just about any commute. Parking is nothing like California (where half the urban landscape seems to be taken up by parking lots). Lots of people ride bicycles in the summer, and many of them appear to be suicidal.

It doesn't feel like home here. I don't know if it ever will. Is it the psychological impact of living in another country, surrounded by people who don't always speak your language? Could be. I often comment to friends that, with my first industry job (at EA Mythic in Virginia), I couldn't wait to get out of California. Having returned there to work at Carbine for six years, I think I realized that California--for all its expense, drought, earthquakes, and fires--is my home.

Regardless of how I feel, this is where I'll be for the foreseeable future. I love working for Ubisoft. The project is a lot of fun so far. The people are amazing. My work matters and I feel like I belong. I don't know how long I'll be here, so I'm trying to take it one day at a time. I don't always succeed.

So that's it for now. Maybe more later, if I remember this blog still exists. For now, I'm relatively safe and sound. The family is well. The cats and dog are still sleeping, eating, and pooping. What more can a man ask for?

What To Do When You (Suddenly) Have Lots of Free Time

It's been less than a week since Carbine shut down. I can't say I've been particularly productive. I've been listing old RPG items on eBay, hoping to raise enough money to pay for my hobbies once all this other crap gets sorted out.

One thing I need to do is work on my knowledge of Roll20, the virtual tabletop that I'll likely be using to run games... eventually.

I also need to get a freelance project to work on, add some more doubloons to me olde coffers.

Eh... it's not so much being bored, though that is part of it. It's more about not seeing the people I'm so used to seeing on a daily basis. I don't exactly live around the corner from the Carbine office, either. I should see someone of those folks tomorrow, though. We'll see how that pans out.

Rest in Peace, Carbine Studios

I haven't posted here in almost exactly four years.

Blogging has always been something of an on-again, off-again thing with me. I'll go steady for days, weeks, months, and then... I'll stop. No reasons cited. I guess my attention shifts. Maybe I'll pay better attention this time around.

The game studio I've worked for over the past 6+ years, Carbine, was shut down yesterday. I've been in the computer games industry for over eleven years now. This makes for my third layoff. Being honest, I have trouble considering 38 Studios' implosion as a proper layoff. Maybe we'll say that I've been laid off twice as well as completely vandalized once.

I don't take it personally. There's no bad guys. It's a fact of life and folks like me accept it. There's a dream, of course, that you'll find the perfect product or the perfect team and make a perfect career out of it. That happens, but it's not common. The fact I survived at Carbine for six years and through two other layoffs is something of a minor miracle.

The first layoff I was swept up in was at EA Mythic. I was a designer on Warhammer Online. The game wasn't doing well, and in the end they cut just about everyone (including me). It was right before Thanksgiving. There was a severance package that would keep us afloat for two months, but I came to see that as a lit fuse rather than a safety net. It wasn't going to take long for it to burn away.

I went home that day, told my wife the news, and then I sat and cried. My family and I were across the country from our starting point in California. I didn't know what I was going to do. I had no idea if I'd find a job in time. Christmas was two months away. I was terrified.

I was also a relative freshman in the industry. I had a pretty good list of freelance writing credits to my name, but only 2 years and 5 months of hands-on computer game development. Not only that, but writing jobs were (and still are) hard to find. Recruiters weren't going out of their way to send me messages about openings at their companies.

It ended up working out for me when 38 Studios made me an offer just before Christmas. It was a good offer and their future looked bright... but that's another story, and probably one I've told before. Even if I'd known the outcome ahead of time, I still would've taken the job. I learned a lot from that experience and grew as a designer and writer.

I know I'm going to survive this, but there are so many others who don't have that comfort. At least, not yet.

Losing Players

It's never easy to lose a player, much less two of them. My group is getting smaller by two members who are moving on to a job opportunity in another state. Tonight is the last game we'll be playing together (for the foreseeable future) before they begin their road trip next week. Their absence will be noted and felt going forward, and we'll all miss their participation and contributions. Both of them have been excellent additions to our game, not to mention friends of the highest caliber.

That said, the group--a 5th edition D&D party--will be losing its barbarian and bard, leaving behind a cleric, paladin, thief, and warlock to contend with all the threats and nasties they'll face in the future. I'm mulling over the idea of keeping the group at four players, or trying to recruit one more. I suppose I'll talk to everyone about it and see where they stand once the dust settles.

I've had plenty of groups explode in my time gaming, but I can definitely feel this one more acutely because we're all friends and we've known each other (and gamed together) for over two years now.

Anyway, that's about it. I've got a game to prep for, so I'd better stop with the whining.

Lords of Nal Hutta

A few months after I started at Carbine, I received an email from FFG asking if I'd be interested in contributing to their new Star Wars RPG, Edge of the Empire. I jumped at the opportunity to do so, and I'm glad I did. That first project was relatively small in the grand scheme of things, but it started the freelance ball rolling for me after a couple years' worth of downtime.

That project, Lords of Nal Hutta, has just been announced, and it should be on store shelves sometime later this year. Though it's not the first FFG Star Wars product to be released with my name in the credits, it is the first one I ever worked on. This feels like some sort of milestone for me, and I'm so happy to have had the opportunity.

In other news, Cubicle 7's Lone Wolf Adventure Game Kickstarter has been funded, and I'll be doing my best to bring the world of Magnamund to life. As a kid, I enjoyed the heck out of the Lone Wolf books. They took the "Choose Your Own Adventure" formula and turned it into something dynamic and exciting. For a kid who didn't get to play RPGs very often, they were a godsend.

Keep an eye out for more Star Wars and Lone Wolf news, and I'll see you a little later!

#RPGaDay: Day Thirty-One - Favorite RPG of all Time

Not your typical fantasy setting.

This is something of a tough question for me to answer, but when I consider all the games I've run over the past twenty-eight years, I can narrow it down to a handful of settings and systems. I'm going to focus on settings, rather than mechanics, though, to answer this question. The setting, in my opinion, has always been more important than system mechanics. Well, unless the system mechanics are utterly terrible and/or impossible to use. Anyway.

After playing AD&D for a long while, I grew tired of the traditional D&D tropes. I focused more on science fiction and horror settings rather than anything even remotely fantasy-oriented. I was also, for a time, totally done with class-based/level-based systems. I absolutely abhorred them. I even modified my Cyberpunk games to omit the Roles (ie, classes) that, to me, restricted the character creation process.

I don't know when I first heard of Dark Sun, but it was late in the game. It was well after the 2nd edition had been released, I know that. For some reason, I found a used copy of the 2nd edition Dark Sun boxed set on a used shelf and bought it. I took it home, started reading, and suddenly my hatred of class- and level-based systems was a thing of the past. It was a game I had to run.

Our old stomping grounds. Man, I miss this place.

I started a Dark Sun game not long after that. I tested a few things out using my wife as a guinea pig (ask her about the fight with the ankheg sometime) before I really got into it. About the only thing I couldn't stand in 2nd edition AD&D was the psionics rules. Luckily, no one wanted to be a psionicist, and the only thing I had to worry about in that regard were wild talents.

In any case, the players seemed love the game. It went on for a long while, and we managed to finish it off with a bang. I don't remember the highest character level in that crew, but I think they got to around 7th or 8th level. I tried to bring it back once 3.0 came out, but there was something about that edition that got under my skin. 3.5 fixed most of those issues for me, but I never tried to run Dark Sun again with any system.

I realize there's a bunch of stuff out there that adapts Dark Sun to 3.5. Now that 5th edition is here, I'm thinking I might have a go of adapting it to Dark Sun on my own. I'll probably wait until all the core books have been released, so I've got some time. If I ever get around to this little project, I'll be sure to let you guys know about it. However, if the freelance train gets rolling here pretty soon, I probably won't have time for it. Such is life,

Brom's art really sold the world of Athas.

In closing, Dark Sun was the setting that brought me back to fantasy RPGs. If not for Dark Sun, I might never have looked into Midnight, a setting that runs a very close second to Dark Sun insofar as my favorite fantasy worlds go. You also know that I'm a huge fan of the Star Wars RPGs that have been released, as well as The One Ring and Cyberpunk 2020. Like I said, this wasn't an easy decision to make.

I guess this wraps up #RPGaDay, given that August is over and September is here. I'm sort of surprised I stuck with it (though I was late on a couple of occasions). Feel free to follow me or my blog. You can even find me on Twitter @BarrierPeaks. I can't guarantee I'll update daily, but I'll do my best to keep this thing alive.

#RPGaDay: Day Thirty - Rarest RPG Owned

Uh... I don't really know.

I've got an extensive collection of RPG books. I've been dragging these things around for years and years. I remember finding a copy of Deities & Demigods that included the Cthulhu mythos, and I was ecstatic. I don't know what it goes for now, or how rare it really is.

I'm not sure what the values of most of my books and boxed sets are. I know I had a hell of a time finding a copy of The Will and the Way for the original Dark Sun campaign setting. I did find one eventually, and it's nestled in with the rest of my DS books. I tracked down and purchased just about every supplement they produced for that game line, and they're all in pretty good condition.

Another book I could never find was Hideouts and Strongholds for WEG's Star Wars RPG. The stress of not having that book was alleviated when my friend Jay sent me a copy from his collection. I owe him one for that. It also seems that some of the Saga Edition Star Wars books are worth a pretty penny. For instance, Starships of the Galaxy, the first Saga edition SW product I worked on, used to be pretty expensive.

I don't generally keep an eye on RPG prices. I collect them, but I don't do it because they're valuable. I do it because I enjoy gaming.

#RPGaDay: Day Twenty-Nine - Most Memorable Encounter

Like this. Only without the rat, skull, or sign.

What do you do when you find a half-elf defiler sleeping in your barn? Why, you lynch him, of course.

That's what happened to my wife's character in the original Dark Sun game I ran. Her character, a defiler/thief named Innath, decided to slip into someone's barn on the outskirts of a desert village. While he was sleeping, the barn's owner discovered him, gathered some friends, and decided to mete out some Athasian justice.

The farmer and his buddies, all humans, woke Innath up in a most uncouth manner, searched him, and then escorted him to a place where no one would hear him scream. They gave Innath a shovel made from chitin and told him to dig. As he dug himself a hole, they pulled out the broy and drank themselves silly, but kept just enough of their sobriety to ensure he wasn't going to slip away.

When Innath's hole was as deep as they liked, they tied his hands and made him kneel in it. They filled the hole with dirt until Innath's head was the only thing at ground level. Helpless, Innath watched as they gathered around him and relieved their broy-filled bladders directly on top of his head. Then, laughing, they gathered up the shovel and went home.

The sun rises higher in the sky and the temperature begins to bake the urine-soaked earth around Innath's head. Suddenly, he hears what sounds like a strange, shrill bird call. He can't turn his head real far, but he catches a glimpse of a snake-like neck of a large bird pop over a rise and stare hungrily down at him. The bird shrieks again, and another one pops up. Then another. And another. They begin to stalk closer, revealing themselves to look like spiny ostriches. The birds (abrians) circle Innath's head.

Innath would've been dead if the other players--a fire priest and an escaped gladiator--hadn't been attracted by the birds screeching and decided to investigate. The gladiator charged in, with the fire priest close behind, and slaughtered the birds before they could pick out Innath's eyes.

That was one of the most memorable encounters I remember from that Dark Sun campaign. There were other epic moments--a battle with a bulette at an oasis, the gladiator's duel with an elf tribe's champion, or the climactic fight against a lich and his undead minions in a subterranean tomb below Tyr--but that's the one I remember most fondly.

Note: The art is from a game called Blood Dawn, which is related to a quirky sci-fi RPG called Battlelords of the 25th Century, originally produced by Optimus Design Systems (ODS). Looks like Battlelords is now being produced by the chaps over at SSDC. The artist is Michael Osadciw, as near as I can tell.

#RPGaDay: Day Twenty-Eight: Scariest Game I've Played

This is generally the point when your brain 'splodes.

I've said before that I'm primarily a GM. I've run a lot of horror games in my lifetime, and I've even had players tell me they were genuinely scared during such sessions. What I haven't done is played in a lot of horror games, which means I have a very narrow selection of such to choose from.

I've played horror games at conventions, but they were never particularly scary. Maybe it's the atmosphere of being in a room with a hundred other gamers with everyone talking, rolling dice, and hamming it up. I've always preferred to run my own games with the lights down. Or, even better, keep the lights off, with candles here and there to provide a more "organic" form of illumination. Put some creepy music on at a low volume (always preferred the Hellraiser score, myself) and it takes most of the work out of getting your players in the mood.

But I digress.

The scariest game I've ever played was one of my girlfriend's (now wife's) Call of Cthulhu games. There are three such games that stick out in my mind, and two of them were genuinely frightening. I'll focus on the one I recall the best, which was set in 1920's San Francisco. At least, I think it was. Anyway, there were two players in the game. One of us was an educated fellow, sort of a scholar. I, on the other hand, was playing a federal agent.

Our first investigation began as a missing persons case, or so we assumed, involving a little girl. We canvased the neighborhood where she'd been seen, talked to folks about her. No one could say where she lived, but they'd seen her here and there. In fact, one of them had called the case in, hoping we'd locate her and find out where her home was.

Eventually, we did find her. Her name was Madeline, but she was a bit odd. Once we'd spoken with her the first time, she sort of disappeared (not before our eyes, but she definitely wasn't there anymore). We did some research, and it turned out a girl about her age and description went missing near the turn of the century. It couldn't have possibly been her, since she was around eight or nine years old. Or could it be? Old photographs we dug up looked pretty much like she did, right down to the clothes she wore.

Long story short, she'd been taken away by some kind of extradimensional thing or being, which she referred to as "mommy." Apparently, there were lots of "mommies" where it had taken her. In order to get into the realm where this entity lived, you had to do a little hopscotch thing and recite a strange rhyme filled with words no sane man should ever hear, let alone speak. We didn't believe her, but when she showed us--and vanished right in front of us--there was a bit of sanity loss.

My character, as sentimental as he was, felt that he had to rescue this poor innocent girl from whatever evil had taken her away from her family all those years ago. This meant doing "the Hopscotch" (as Madeline called it) and reciting the rhyme she'd used. The creepiest part of the game was crossing that threshold and seeing what lay beyond it.

We did end up saving her, and our sanities suffered for it. My character ended up adopting Madeline. She was a strange little girl, probably insane, but she was also young and there was a chance she'd recover. My character made life as good for her as possible, but she never was what people of the '20's would call "normal." She was even a useful reference during future investigations, though my character was hesitant to go to that well too often.

That, in a nutshell, is the scariest game I've ever played in.

My wife doesn't run games anymore, for which I'm eternally saddened. She had a great grasp of storytelling, and she was probably the most internally consistent GMs I've ever had. Occasionally I bug her and whine about it, but she hems and haws. She doesn't really enjoy GMing, so I don't push the issue. I have her as a player, and that'll have to be enough.

#RPGaDay: Day Twenty-Six - Game I'd Like to See a New/Improved Edition of...

Darker than Dark Sun.

This is a pretty easy topic, and I bet you're probably thinking, "He wants a new edition of Cyberpunk." While that may be true, I'm perfectly happy with 2020 the way it is (was?). If a new edition of my favorite dark future RPG comes out, I'll pick it up. I may even play it. But it's not what's at the forefront of my mind when I think about RPGs that I want to see a new edition for.

That distinction belongs to Midnight, a campaign setting produced by Fantasy Flight Games, and which I was privileged enough to contribute to. You see, after I discovered Dark Sun in the mid-nineties, I didn't think there was another fantasy setting that could draw me in. I was certain of it. Who wants to play your run of the mill dwarves, elves, and halflings, anyway? Athas is all I needed.

Then, some time after D&D 3.0 came out, I discovered Midnight. It was a campaign setting that threw everything for a loop. People would ask me what it was like and I'd generally answer, "Imagine you're playing in Middle Earth, only Sauron (or Morgoth) wins." Dark Sun was a sort of post-apocalyptic fantasy setting where the events that shaped the world happened long ago in a time that no one remembered... except for the Dragon-Kings.

In Midnight, the war against the Shadow has been lost within living memory. The formerly free peoples of the world are either enslaved or backed into the corners of their own homelands. Peace is a fleeting dream, and the future a horrible nightmare. To rail against the enemy is to invite your own death, as well as that of your family. It's a dark setting, even darker than Athas.

A map of Eredane, the land of the Midnight campaign setting.

A second edition of Midnight was released that brought everything together under the 3.5 banner. It had a lot of great improvements, a wealth of information, and as much fluff and crunch as anyone would want, maybe even more. After 4E was released, there wasn't much more to be done. In 2009, FFG seemingly put the nail in Midnight's proverbial coffin. I still ran games of Midnight because it was still awesome and I hadn't jumped on the 4E bandwagon. To me, it was like running a game of Red Dawn, except the Russians were orcs and the AKs were vardatches.

Now that 5th edition D&D is out and I've had a chance to read the rules, roll up some characters, and will be running a game of it soon, I feel that it would be a great system for running Midnight. That said, even an original system--perhaps even one akin to Edge of the Empire's rules--would be pretty cool, too. I'm not picky. I just want my Midnight to come back and see support. Maybe they'll even ask me to write for it again.

Well... a man can dream, anyway.

#RPGaDay: Day Twenty-Six - Coolest Character Sheet

This is how we used to do it in the old days, kids.

This is sort of an odd one. I mean... I don't really have a favorite character sheet, nor do I think of any of the ones I've seen as being particularly "cool." Character sheets need to be useful, presenting important details at a glance while providing enough space for all those building blocks we make our characters out of.

Truth be told, I miss the days of yore, when characters were scrawled on sheets of lined paper in pencil. The way that games have developed over the years, with increased character options and a variety of different systems, has made tabletop RPGs more dependent on official character sheets. If you look at a 2nd edition AD&D character from the 90's, and then compare it to a character sheet from D&D 3.5 (or even 5th), you'll notice there's a heck of a lot more to record and write down. At least, it feels that way.

I appreciate a well-designed character sheet just as much as the next gamer. I'm generally pleased with the quality of the sheets made for the games I've been playing over the past few years. Edge of the Empire/Age of Rebellion, The One Ring, and D&D 5th edition have perfectly functional and visually-pleasing character sheets in my opinion.

Are they cool, though? Sure, I guess so. Are any of them the coolest sheets ever? I really can't say. They do what they're supposed to do. If they ever invent a character sheet that can roll my dice and track its own hit points, I suppose that might earn the title of "coolest."

#RPGaDay: Day Twenty-Five - Favorite RPG No One Else Want to Play

Only one person in my current gaming group actively wants to play The One Ring. The rest of them aren't necessarily opposed, but they'd prefer something else at the moment. Perhaps it's the over-saturation of Peter Jackson's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies that have set them on their course. In my opinion, TOR is so much more Tolkien than Peter Jackson's films are. While they're pretty (the sets, costume designs, and visuals are certainly top notch), the movies are likely far and beyond what Tolkien would have approved of.

I will do you a favor and avoid ranting about the movies. That's not what we're here for. Must... resist...!

Be that as it may, I will be running The One Ring again at some point. You hear me, people? You're destined to walk the byways of Wilderland eventually! And when you do, not even Gandalf will be able to save your sorry behinds!

#RPGaDay: Day Twenty-Four - Most Complicated RPG Owned

Living Steel gave Rolemaster a run for its money.

I never did buy into Phoenix Command, but I seem to remember that Living Steel and the Aliens Adventure Game (both of which are based on PC) are pretty damned complicated. I've got copies of them both on the shelf next to me, and a cursory glance through the rules confirms that many charts and tables are required to perform any manner of combat check. I always felt that anyone who bothered to foster their familiarity of the system might be able to run it reasonably quickly. That person was not me.

I also own a few Rolemaster and Hero system books. GURPS can also be pretty complicated, though I was exposed to it a lot growing up and I know it doesn't have to be a nightmare to play/run. And, of course, I always considered my copy of Shadowrun first edition to be nigh-incomprehensible. I played in a few games of SR in my earlier years (never wanted to run it because I was a Cyberpunk 2020 guy) and I always relied on the GM to know what needed to be done and why.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Twilight: 2000 (first edition) by GDW. I remember picking it up because it looked so damn cool. I got it home, read the rules, and was instantly befuddled. It was the first game I'd ever seen where you needed a worksheet to create your character, which you then transferred to a proper character sheet. The fluffy parts of the game were awesome, but learning that system was a struggle. GDW eventually released a simpler version in the second edition, but damn.

I keep a lot of these complicated games around because, when you look past their systems, there's a plethora of very evocative content in there. Care went into creating these worlds and settings. Inspiration is important. I may never play these games, but it's nice to comb them for interesting ideas and tidbits that I can employ somewhere else.