Blackmoor Vituperative

Several of my gaming friends have been telling me about this great new game, Castles And Crusades, so I went ahead and ordered it from Amazon. I’m not really interested in learning a new game, frankly: I think Hero System and Dungeons And Dragons cover just about any game setting I’d want to play in. But if people from two separate game groups recommend something, I figure I should check it out.

This review at RPGNet makes me wonder if I made a mistake by ordering it, but it’s only twenty bucks, so what the hell. I guess I’ll know if I ever get a chance to actually play it. If I do, I am sure this errata will be useful.

The game went pretty well. They were a rambuncious lot. Of the five players, only one had ever played a Hero System game before, and that had been years ago. The only problem I had in explaining the game system was the “to hit” roll. That is the single most-used mechanic in the system, and it’s too complicated. I am going to start using the alternate which I first saw (if I recall correctly) in Champions: The New Millenium.

OCV + 3d6 must meet or exceed DCV +10

I have resisted using this mechanic up to now because I am, in general, extremely reluctant to change anything. There must be a compelling case for a house rule. I think this is a compelling case. The standard way of resolving combat is a huge hurdle for new players. The above mechanic is functionally equivalent, and much easier for new players to grasp.

Anyway, the game went pretty well. Everyone seemed to have fun. I’ll write up a full con report in a day or so. I am technically still on vacation, even if the snow did screw up our plans for the rest of the week.

Susan and I will be attending SheVaCon 2005 in Roanoke, VA, 2005-02-25 through 2005-02-27. Come look for us. In the evenings, we’ll probably be at the Nth Degree party. On Saturday, I’ll be running a couple of Champions (Hero System) games:

The Testament Of Dr. Destroyer (a game in two parts)

Part 1:
“When mankind becomes ruled by terror, then is the hour for the mastery of crime.” –Dr. Destroyer

Unknown to the rest of the world, the criminal mastermind known as Dr. Destroyer has been locked in an asylum for the past 10 years, straddling the line between life and death. One of his last projects involves a mysterious manifesto that sets in place a crime-filled future. When a doctor from the asylum tells the heroes that these exact crimes are coming true, he is mysteriously assassinated. It is up to the heroes to put together the pieces of this mind-bending case.

Characters will be “standard superheroes”, per the H5 or H5R rules. Characters will be provided.

Part 2:
“Only when the world of Man is wiped clean may the world of the Destroyer be created.” –Dr. Destroyer

Unknown to the rest of the world, the criminal mastermind known as Dr. Destroyer has been locked in an asylum for the past 10 years, straddling the line between life and death. And yet, the heroes have tracked a string of bizarre robberies to a source claiming to be the Destroyer himself! Will the heroes solve this bizarre puzzle and foil the plot of the would-be Destroyer before it is unleashed on an unsuspecting world?

Characters will be “standard superheroes”, per the standard H5 or H5R rules. Characters will be provided. Characters submitted to bblackmoor@blackgate.net at least 14 days prior to the convention will also be considered.

Number of players: 4-6

Time Slots:

Saturday 10:00 (10AM): The Testament Of Dr. Destroyer, Part 1
Saturday 14:00 (2PM): The Testament Of Dr. Destroyer, Part 2

Yes, this is the same game I ran at MarsCon. It went really well the first time, so I figured I’d try it again. If it goes well again, I may write it up for Nth Degree (although I have a ton other things I am supposed to have written for Nth Degree, and have not yet done so… so little time, so many pet projects).

You won’t be able to find these in the online schedule, by the way. The SheVaCon web site could be run a bit better, honestly. I have offered to help. You can tell a lot about someone by how they respond to an offer of assistance.

One of my sisters sent me (and about a hundred other people) an email entitled “Help this little Boy – Tsunami Victim”. It was a forwarded message written by someone she’d never met, and she had no idea if either the author or the little boy actually existed. But she forwarded it anyway, just like millions of people do, clogging up the mail servers of the world with yet more junk mail. As if we do not already get enough garbage in our mailboxes.

I spent the ten seconds it takes to research this sort of thing, and discovered that a) surprisingly, the little boy does exist, and b) that he was identified and rescued by his family months ago. So why are people still forwarding this junk mail to dozens of people who wouldn’t know this little boy if he walked in the room? Because they don’t think.

I replied (to all) with a very polite response, saying that one should investigate email from strangers before forwarding it, and that the little boy in the eponymous email had, in fact, already been helped back in December. She was offended, naturally.

What makes me really sad is that my family is brighter than most. I weep for my species.

Some friends and I spent all day yesterday watching the entire Special Extended Edition of The Lord Of The Rings from beginning to end. 12 hours is a long time to watch a movie, but I’m glad we did it. I had a great time. We’re already talking about the Star Wars marathon.

The big news at the LinuxWorld conference is that OSI is planning to trim the ridiculous number of OSI-approved open source licenses down from 50 or so to around 3. Personally, I think that’s a good thing.

There is a natural impulse to create a new thing even when there is no need for one. I think that’s what is at the root of this current situation. I’m certainly not immune: once upon a time, I was one of the people who wrote the October Open Gaming License, or OOGL, which was supposed to be to role-playing games what the Apache license was to software. You’ve probably never heard of it, and for good reason. There were already other open licenses which were completely adequate for gaming. Why invent another one? The OOGL never caught on (it was actually used only once, as far as I know, in a game called Four Colors Al Fresco), and eventually we (the people who wrote it) realized that it just wasn’t worth the effort to keep track of yet another license. We stopped using the OOGL in 2002 (switching to the exceedingly cool Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license), Woodelf (the author of Four Colors Al Fresco) did the same, and eventually we took the OOGL offline entirely.

Most other open source licenses should do the same. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, even if it is pretty cool to say, “hey look at this wheel: I made it myself”. So I agree with OSI on this one.

(Incidentally, any mention you see of the OOGL which makes it sound like that license is still in use is either woefully out of date or the work of some net loon with an axe to grind. Feel free to correct them, if you’ve some free time.)

Is this great, or what? I do not play EverQuest anymore, because I grew frustrated with the game, but I do think the ability to order pizza online while playing is pretty neat.

For ten thousand years, humanity dug in the dirt. stank, and had bad teeth. Then we invented air conditioning, and less than a century later we have cell phones, jet planes, internet porn, and grocery stores so stuffed with luxury items that you can eat yourself to death while making minimum wage. Without air conditioning, people sat around and sweated miserably, unable to concentrate. With air conditioning, we are able to work all day and be productive. What makes the USA better than countries like Iran and Afghanistan? It’s not a difference in religion, or a difference in philosophy — it’s air conditioning. If you live in the USA, and you have a house, an apartment, or even a car, you have air conditioning. Afghanistan? No air conditioning.

Air conditioning. Think about it.

Susan and I saw The Phantom Of The Opera last weekend at the Commodore Theatre in Portsmouth. The costumes were nice, but I didn’t really sympathize with any of the characters, and the music was only so-so. Moulin Rouge was better, as was Hedwig And The Angry Inch.

The best thing about Phantom Of The Opera is the art direction and set design. The sequence when the Phantom first leads Christine down to his lair is great. Her costume during that sequence is also particularly nice.

Norton SystemWorks 2005 is free after rebate at Outpost.com. Don’t buy it: it has “product activation”, one of the “treat your customers like criminals” techniques that threaten to become more common. Symantec has joined the ilk of Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA, and the rest of the robber barons, and the only way they will ever stop is if we make them hurt where they hurt most: the bottom line.

So don’t buy SystemWorks, even though it’s free. Spurn Symantec until they wake up and stop treating their customers so disrespectfully. Buy SystemSuite 5 from V-Com instead. V-Com doesn’t treat you like a criminal. Besides which, SystemSuite 5 has a better antivirus utility, better registry tools, a better user interface, and it’s less of a resource hog.

SystemSuite 5: it’s the right thing to do.