I have a review up of the new HackMaster Basic, in which I savage and praise it alternately.

The pen & paper RPGs I run these days are all Old-School RPGs:

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• Palladium. Of late I have run Rifts and Dead Reign (yay, Romero zombies!), and plan to use the new Robotech books to run my own space exploration setting.

  I've been running Palladium games since 1983. My house rules have waxed and waned from 20-page rulebooks to almost nothing, depending on setting and my mood. I do play with one consistent house rule in MDC settings: 1 MDC = 10 SDC, not 100 SDC. So getting hit with a 1d6 MD laser pistol will do 1d6x10 SDC to a human… which is painful but survivable, instead of instant vaporization.

• Tunnels & Trolls, 5.5E with Ken St. Andre's house rules; I didn't like 7E. Mostly used when I want to run a comic fantasy one-shot. Pick-up games are always T&T. I once ran a week-long (one session a day) mini-campaign for several players with just the condensed rules in front of the Corgi City of Terrors solo gamebook! Frankly, there's too much fluff and nonsense in even 5.5E, and maybe adding a bit to the condensed rules would be better.

  Despite that, I can't quite take T&T seriously. The spells ("Take That You Fiend!", "Healing Feeling", etc.) are ridiculous, the monsters and situations in the gamebooks and fiction are even sillier, traps and saving rolls are very arbitrary and random, and it doesn't handle much outside of fantasy dungeon crawls. Still… I like it for what it is.

• Swords & Wizardry. Quite surprisingly to me, my serious swords & sorcery game now.

  I started gaming in 1978 with the Eric Holmes blue book Basic Dungeons & Dragons, ran that (and Gamma World and Star Frontiers) until I got Palladium Fantasy RPG. Some years ago, I dug it out, and was kind of impressed, but thought "no way!" Then I ran it again… and liked it, though there were many flaws. Swords & Wizardry addresses many of those flaws, and makes fixing the remaining ones easier.

  I have a strong distaste for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1E and 2E, and Dungeons & Dragons 3E, but Basic always worked okay for me, albeit with some house rules. I've tried the game called "Dungeons & Dragons 4E", which is a mediocre fantasy-superheroes miniatures wargame, but it's not any edition of D&D, nor is it a role-playing game by any definition I can work out.

• My own Nexus Worlds RPG system and setting, which will be published in PDF and Print-on-Demand soon… (and the iPhone game will come out eventually!). While not based mechanically on any specific old-school game, it has their simplicity and player-driven tone.

  I've had a couple of good playtest sessions; the old-school players got it instantly, the new-school players floundered a bit until they learned how to play without mechanical straitjacketing. That's an encouraging sign.

• Next month, Hackmaster Basic 5E is coming out, which I look forward to.

  Hackmaster 4E was an annoying parody game based on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, but they did recognize some serious problems, fix them, and added some good, flexible rules like the honor and skill system.

  HMB 5E is a more serious take on Hackmaster, stripped down to a basic game, with a serious setting, and so far sounds interesting. The Kenzer & Co. people are (not to be mean, but to be blunt:) too conservative, closed-minded, and ploddingly methodical in game design and other issues to ever make a great game, to ever create anything outside of retread D&D fantasy (or retread Boot Hill with Aces & Eights), but they might make a competent retread game. I will certainly not be touching their "Advanced" game, which sounds like all the excessive crap of HM 4E, and then some.

I do play some modern narrative games and some rules-heavy games, but what I run has gone almost entirely old-school over the last 5-10 years.

So, this has made me consider "What is an Old-School RPG".

An "Old-School RPG" does not have to be old, it just has to have learned in the old school, learned from the old games. A "New-School RPG" stormed off to "new school" to make modern art, and ignore everything from the old games. Clearly it is possible to make new "old-school" games: Just take the original old-school games as a guideline, and make a new game that doesn't stifle that kind of creative gameplay. One example would be Savage Worlds; very Old-School, especially in the Solomon Kane book.

Matthew Finch's Quick Primer for Old School Gaming is a good tutorial on running old-school, but doesn't quite make a definition, except to point and grunt at Swords & Wizardry.

There are four traits that define "Old-School RPG" as I use the term:

1. Character creation should be simple and fast. Making a character for any of my current games takes 5-10 minutes. Most fit a character on an index card.

   Palladium's the slowest, and has the most skills and modifiers to write down, and yet it still takes under 15 minutes in the OCC-based games.

   Rolemaster, Space Opera, Bushido, and Champions are old, "Classic RPGs", but they're not "old-school", because they take literally hours to make a character.

2. Combat should be simple and fast and lethal. A combat in an old-school game takes a few die rolls back and forth. Special cases, acrobatic maneuvers, tricks and tactics, are handled by role-play and the Judge calling for task rolls, NOT by a gigantic set of rules defining every edge case (Champions and GURPS were the original offenders here, but Dungeons & Dragons 3E and 4E carried the idea to absurdity). A fight should take 10-15 minutes to play out before everyone is dead, escaped, or surrendered.

   The consequences of a fight should take a while to recover from: recovering HP, magic power, repairing armor, and reloading ammo. Old-school combat is about expending resources that take a lot of time to recover, if ever.

   Death should be a constant possibility. Without death, there is no heroism. D&D 4E can't have heroes, because they can just fart and get a healing surge, inflict 1 HP damage and a minion explodes into gibbets. It's GOD MODE, just like in Doom! 10 years ago, the makers of SenZar were mocked for having a game where you couldn't lose, but now Wizards of the Hasbro does it, it's okay?

   I find that killing 1 player character every 2-4 sessions, and maybe 1-2 NPC henchmen every session, keeps the players nervous and watching their backs. Resurrection should be rare or unavailable. Making a new character is easy.

3. Action resolution should be hazily defined and left up to the Judge and players to work out. The characters may or may not have skills* for sneaking around, perception, climbing walls, and so on, but the exact requirements and effects aren't defined. The skill and experience and cunning of the players (not the characters), good judgement, negotiation, and role-play determine what effect they have.

   * (In games without skills, you just end up using stats, arbitrary "N in 6" chances, or saving throws for everything, which are just skills you can't improve; you may as well add a real skill system)

4. Advancement should be slow and deliberate, and get slower. Old-school games may give sluggish advancment from level 1 to level 5, then glacially slow from level 6 to 10, then geologically slow at level 11-20. Holmes suggested that going from level 1 to level 2 would take 6-12 adventures. I like to add a few adventures per level per level.

   Even as you advance, you shouldn't become too much more powerful than you were; a mob of level 0 NPCs should still be able to kill you. D&D is the most cartoony here: A level 5 D&D character can take and deal 5x as much damage as a level 1, though that rapid advancement does stop at level 9, unlike D&D 3E and 4E. A level 5 Palladium character can take and deal 2x as much damage as a level 1, at best. (I determined these numbers by some rather boring statistical analysis of bonuses to hit, damage, and hit points…)

   My Swords & Wizardry solution to that is to give a racial hit die at level 0, and give additional class hit dice only at levels 3, 6, and 9, +1 HP per level in between. They still deal damage (though not like the overpowered later games), but they stay mortal, and have to play smarter, not tougher.

   New-school games have a steady advancement every few sessions regardless of level, and the powers and abilities scale rapidly out of human bounds, which means a game starting as grim adventure quickly becomes a high-powered cartoon.

"3d6 chargen. Wandering monsters. Save or die. Rust monsters eatng my sword. Level draining. Random treasure (possibly no treasure). Dave the Game may be right and what I'm talking about is a 'playstyle' issue, but the playstyle that I learned from D&D is no longer one supported by D&D. That's why it looks generational to me."

Jeff Rients, Jeff's Gameblog

Yesterday morning, I ordered everything Paizo's Planet Stories had that I didn't (I've long since read every Michael Moorcock and Robert E. Howard story). They arrived this morning (DAMN fast shipping, but of course we're in the same city):

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• Gary Gygax: Anubis Murders, Samarkand Solution
• C.L. Moore: Black God's Kiss, Northwest of Earth
• Henry Kuttner: Elak of Atlantis
• Leigh Brackett: Secret of Sinharat

Yeah, some good old-fashioned swords & sorcery (and swords & planet) stories!

The upcoming Planet Stories novels look great, too, and publisher Erik Mona has a great list of pulp authors he wants to add.

I've been working on my new tabletop RPG, both for use as a real tabletop game, and as the background and game system for my iPhone game. The plan is for the story to begin on the iPhone, and then provide a jumping-off point for tabletop play. I also have some online gaming tools I've been working on to make it easier for gaming groups to play even if far apart. Think of it as a whole party of webcam players from Full Frontal Nerdity.

The game's name is Torchbearer, implying both the lowly henchman who creeps along behind the hero holding a torch so the hero can fight something terrible in the dark, and Prometheus, carrying fire down from the gods to humanity and paying terribly for his mercy and heroism.

(if you're reading this in a feed, click More for the rest of the post)

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The RPG is based on swords & sorcery, the good stuff: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Clark Ashton Smith, and Karl Edward Wagner. Civilizations fat with wealth, but corrupted from inside by serpent-men and cultists to dark and terrible gods. Barbarian cultures, primitive and brutal but honorable. Horrific monsters lurking in every tomb, dark wood, and dark temple. Priests sacrificing virgins as their minions chant, and heroes cutting them down like wheat with their insane, soul-drinking intelligent magical swords...

As for setting, I'm adapting early Imperial Rome, the Mediterranean, and the barbarian lands surrounding civilization. Historical accuracy will be almost totally ignored, and where it makes for a better setting there'll be about 5 centuries of history crammed together, but the flavor of the period will be kept. I really don't get why everyone uses medieval Europe OVER and OVER and OVER. Rome has cities and merchants and strange unexplored lands full of barbarians and monsters, the Mediterranean is, as Odysseus/Aeneas found out, a lot more difficult to sail than you'd think. I recently started reading the Robert Fagles translation of The Aeneid, and it's damned good. David Drake wrote a great series of fantasy/science fiction stories set in Rome, which make use of both the mysteries of the ancient world and the politics of Rome. And of course, the greatest Greco-Roman mythology movie ever, The Clash of the Titans, animated by Ray Harryhausen.

The Roman Empire has some serious virtues for gaming. The frontier is vast and unexplored. The center of the Empire has all the civilization you could want, as do the cities in most provinces, but there's room for a hero to follow his own path. There's real diversity when you travel, since every province was allowed to maintain its own laws and religions, and religion was syncretic, pantheistic, and tolerant (except of Christians, of course, who were quite rightly fed to lions). Once you leave the Empire, things get really weird and different.

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What it's not is D&D. Dungeons & Dragons, and all the computer RPGs based so very blatantly on it, are not swords & sorcery. Real swords & sorcery ultimately requires three elements:

1. Swords. The solution to a problem is almost always to chop its head off; finding the right person or thing to kill may require some quick thinking and perception to find, but strength and brutality are the answer. Careful planning, organization, these are anathema in S&S. If you waste your time on planning and preparation and sitting around healing, the evil high priest will sacrifice the pretty virgin and end the world. Battle is disorganized, chaotic, and a single sword strike can kill anyone, if you can reach them. Defenses and fatigue and escape options are worn down in a fight, not hit points.

   D&D is about planning and organization, with mono-skilled people who fill precise party roles that have to be managed like a corporate office. Combat is just an accounting exercise in whittling the enemy's hit points down to zero before yours; in MMORPGs like EverQuest and World of Warcraft, people compute "DPS": Damage Per Second. Healing is a matter of sitting around forever, waiting to heal, or expending centrally-managed resources. At least the MMOs add some special maneuvers and chained attacks for combat, but D&D combat is just "Roll d20. Compare to a target number. Roll dice for damage. Accountant marks down remaining HP budget. Repeat." I may die of boredom.

2. Sorcery. The opposition uses dark and terrible magics. Sorcerers may well have some direct-attack spells, but most of the magic is ritualistic, takes hours to perform, and can be disrupted at the last minute. Powerful magic is incomprehensible to an honest barbarian mind. Magic is not reliable, and does not follow strict rules.

   In D&D, magic is mechanical and soulless. You have to choose exactly which spells you'll use ahead of time (a magic system copied from Jack Vance's humorous parodies of swords & sorcery... it's meant to be preposterous and stupid, and yet 30 years of D&D players have taken it seriously!). Magic always works, exactly the same way every time. The spells are rigidly specified all the way up through Wish. A wish, in literature and movies ever since 1001 Nights the most free-form, random event possible, has been reduced to a legal exercise in D&D.

3. Mystery. The hero of a swords & sorcery story may never understand what really happened, what the monster was or where it came from. Even the reader is left unsettled, unsure of the foundations of the world.

   Dungeons & Dragons has no mysteries. Everything is statted out in the rules, down to the last hit point, treasure type, and "% in lair" chance. Magic items are just a more exclusive catalog than the equipment section, the "Sky Mall" and "Sharper Image" of their world. There is no existential horror. There is no chance of anything beyond the scope of the rules happening. It's just routine. Another Orc guarding a chest. Another Owlbear. Another Gelatinous Cube. Troll? Get out the acid and a torch. Pass me another sheet of graph paper, I need to map this section of the dungeon in 10'x10' squares. They have sucked the mystery dry and left a lifeless husk.

The original D&D introduction is fantastic, but so very ironic considering how bureaucratic, mechanical, and wargamey the later editions became, and how few gamers these days have even read the authors named:

These rules are strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don't care for Burroughs' Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard's Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS to their taste. But those whose imaginations know no bounds will find that these rules are the answer to their prayers. With this last bit of advice we invite you to read on and enjoy a "world" where the fantastic is fact and magic really works!

-E. Gary Gygax, 1 November 1973

As far as rules go, obviously, I think there's a lot wrong with AD&D. D&D 3.0/3.5/OGL/D20 still has everything that was wrong with AD&D, plus it's a bookkeeping nightmare. D&D 4.0 looks to be a catastrophic mess, more collectible card game or minis game than an RPG at all.

I do have some respect for the Holmes edition of Dungeons & Dragons. This is what I learned with, back in 1978, and on recent re-reading, it holds up well as a role-playing game, and as a swords & sorcery game, better than any later edition. The white box is too disorganized and has the flaws of being the first attempt ever to codify role-playing into rules, and the Tom Moldvay Basic/Expert/Companion/Master/Immortal D&D series was too polished and abstracted and dumbed down for children, almost more of a boardgame than an RPG.

John Eric Holmes (also the author of Mahars of Pellucidar, an excellent E.R. Burroughs sequel) put together a D&D that was easy to learn and play, loose and mysterious enough that you weren't trapped in an accounting or research hell, and actually approaches swords & sorcery. Many of the flaws of D&D are irrelevant in it. Because it only covers levels 1-3, and advancement is BRUTALLY slow (one level every 6-12 long sessions, probably 20 shorter "adults with jobs" sessions), you don't ever have gigantic stacks of hit points to wear down, and a hero can at best take 2-3 sword thrusts instead of 1. Mages are not artillery, clerics are not endless healing machines. High-level spells and magic items beyond the basics provided would be left up to the Dungeon Master's discretion. While it does have the dry bestiary problem, statting up all the monsters to high levels, most of them are so powerful that you cannot ever fight them head-on without an army. The sample adventure is surprisingly good, and ties into Holmes' Dragon Magazine short stories and his fantasy novel, "Maze of Peril".

There are people around who play this edition as if it was a complete game, sometimes augmented to level 9 by a "supplement" built from other editions (see Retro Roleplaying).

That's not to say it's without flaws. It has the idiotic Vancian magic system, which combines with low levels to make mages useless. Mages should be less powerful than swordsmen, but not crippled as they are in this D&D; 1-3 spells at most, and they're done, useless in combat and without any other skills. At least clerics can turn undead and fight once they've expended their meagre set of spells. The slow, bordering on non-existent, advancement means that all you are, all you ever will be, is what you are now. Equipment thus becomes disproportionately important. The very low stat bonuses in it do discourage min-maxing, but they also mean that almost everyone with the same class is identical in ability. It has rigid classes, and very few of them, so there aren't any real choices. Fighting Man, Thief, Cleric, Magic-User. That's it. Dwarfs and Halflings can only be Fighting Men or Thieves, Elves can only be multi-classed Fighting Men/Magic-Users. Apparently the gods don't like demi-humans enough to let them be Clerics.

Even if I put aside my disdain for the Tolkien setting elements, and the decades of terrible TSR fantasy "novels", there's no way I could ever actually play this again. Still, it's interesting, and looks fun aside from some problems, in a way that few later Dungeons & Dragons products ever have been.

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So. Torchbearer's game design so far is very simple, and unlike my previous indie games, deliberately uses D&D-isms where they make sense, but still throws them out where they don't. I'm hoping to make it easy to convert D&D adventures over, and the conversion system will be as much about changing the tone to swords & sorcery and correct Roman citizenship as about changing the mechanics.

The stats are similar to D&D, and yet adjusted to distribute their value more evenly. The one time D&D ever tried to change its stats was with the addition of Comeliness, which just made Charisma even more useless. Torchbearer's stats are: Strength, Health (just a shorter name), Agility (as it represents physical coordination more than manual dexterity), Intellect (as much perception and education as intelligence), Willpower (no relation to Wisdom; Willpower enables resistance to magic and aids in survival), and Presence (used by priests, and made significantly more useful than D&D's "dump stat" Charisma). These are all 3-18 scores, rarely going up to 19 (or 20 for gods and godlike monsters), but they can be improved in play. Modifiers are significant in the game, but any decent stat will get a bonus, so I'm hoping a fair set of 3d6 rolls remains fun.

The races aren't Tolkienesque (no Elves/Dwarfs/Halflings! Ever!), they're Roman: Civilized Men, Barbarians, several kinds of Nymphs, Centaurs, Satyrs, and more. I've found some interesting ways to differentiate the races and balance them.

Torchbearer is skill-based; there are no classes, and anyone can develop any skill as well as anyone else (subject to stat differences). In most skill-based games, there are dozens of skills and it takes forever to allocate points among them. Not so here. There are currently 9 skills: Armor, Artifact, Athletics, Burglary, Lore, Magic, Melee, Missile, Prayer. I might have a couple more by the time I'm done, but these are pretty near complete already. By mixing your skill selections, you get very different character types. If you want a thief who can fight well, focus on Melee and Burglary; if you want a wizard, Magic and Lore; if you want a wizard-thief, Magic and Burglary. You won't get many skill points per level, but every skill rank really matters, it's not just a small chance of success upgrade.

It is level-based, both for compatibility and because I do find that levels help the Judge balance encounters, and force a smoother distribution of power, rather than a character focusing on ONE skill at the expense of all others. Experience can be earned by fighting, but also by exploration, social advancement, magic, role-playing, puzzle-solving, and so on; a totally peaceful campaign should be possible, though certainly that's not the main-line choice.

Combat will be rather different from other games. A deck of cards is used to give the player choices in duelling strategy. Miniatures and a battle map are NOT to be used; foes may occupy different range bands, and advance or retreat along them, but are presumed to be very mobile throughout the area during a fight. Damage, too, is very different and more dangerous than in most other games. While not "everyone dies in every fight" lethal, it is considerably more dangerous regardless of level than an accounting game like D&D. Warriors win by intimidation, trickery, quick strikes, and defenses, NOT by being able to absorb dozens of blows before falling. Watch the swordfight in The Princess Bride. How many hits does anyone take?

Magic is unreliable, but spells can be shaped in many different ways, rather than having a laundry list of specific effects. Monsters use a construction and/or randomization system, so there will never be a "standard bestiary".

When complete, the game will be available as a low-priced PDF from an online store, and I may be able to set up print-on-demand. This won't happen for some time; I expect to get the iPhone game out this summer, and the tabletop game will follow it, possibly coinciding with the online tools.

I started playing Pirates of the Caribbean Online last week, and it's an extremely fun, simple little MMO (for Mac and that other platform) about killin' British Navy guys wit' their fancy red coats an' all, and shootin' undead pirates what ain't even alive no more, and sinkin' ships of the British Navy, the East India Trading Company, and the undead. It be, in short, a whole rum barrel full of awesome. Arr!

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But one behavior of online players weirds me right out. Not the obsession with talkin' like a pirate, that be perfectly normal, landlubber! No, it be when some pirate ye have ne'er fought alongside or spoken to wants ye to join their crew, or be their friend (even if, as in POTCO, it's just as a "Pirate Friend", not a "True Friend"). That's just way too intimate, way too fast. If we fight in the forest together and I see that ye be a true pirate with cannonballs of solid brass, if'n ye know what I mean, I'll offer me dialog box of friendship to ye. But ye're just askin' for some treacherous devil like me to stab ye in the back, steal your coin pouch, and make off wit' yer girl if ye ask a stranger to be yer friend. What be ye thinkin'?

Oh, and last night I learned voodoo powers. I can now make someone be attacked by a swarm of bees just by waving a voodoo doll in their face. Muahahahahaha!

I've been seeing more of the "smelly gamer" stereotype, and frankly as a non-smelly gamer, it's pretty offensive. I've had enough.

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First, most teens are smelly, and many people get into gaming when they're teens; thus, there are some smelly teen gamers there, but there's just as many smelly teen non-gamers.

Almost all adult gamers are clean, well-groomed, and not sexist dipshits. I base that statement on decades of gaming and convention-going, and actually observing everyone, not just pointing at the bad ones and forgetting about the greater numbers of normal ones. Do an actual headcount, don't just rely on your intuition, because intuition is always wrong about statistics. The kid gamers tend to be pretty awful, because kids are pretty awful (sorry, kids, but you'll grow out of it eventually). Once they grow up, they're okay.

What gets noticed in any group, what forms the stereotype, are the ones who aren't socially acceptable. Example: Go to a sports bar, and you'll see the retarded, inbred, and inebriated sports fans who can't identify their state on a map, but can recite every sports stat for their favorite team for the last 100 years. They're the minority, but the normal sports fans, who look and act like everyone else and have learned basic social skills, don't draw attention, so the stereotype of the worst members is applied to everyone in the group. I still think watching someone else play a game instead of playing one yourself is insane, but I know plenty of sports fans who aren't idiots.

The other problem is that those with social skills tend to shun those without, so usually a group will only have one or the other in it. So when a group of socially dysfunctional people is out in public, it makes all gamers look bad.

Please Help Save Palladium from Going Under

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Just what it says.

I've been playing Palladium's games since 1983. They have a fast, simple system, produce detailed characters, have interesting settings that carefully walk the line between enough detail to play with and leaving open spaces for you to build your own campaign in, horrific monsters, sinister plots, and a bleak Lovecraftian cosmology... The books are inexpensive softcovers, every main book is a complete game with a setting, they have readable plain text on white background without any fancy "layout" obscuring the text, and have high-quality bindings; I have only one Palladium book that's ever cracked and had loose pages in 23 years. They've had some truly excellent game writers. Of all the games I've played in this long gaming hobby, Palladium's the one I cannot imagine doing without.

So, if you like Palladium and their books even a tenth as much as I do (I own over 50 Palladium books, so I guess 1/10th is 5 books...), buy one of these prints, or buy those extra books from the online store that you've been drooling over.

If you aren't familiar with Palladium, now's a great time to go pick up Rifts (post-apocalyptic science-fiction/fantasy/horror), Palladium Fantasy (heroic fantasy), Nightbane (dark fantasy with monstrous heroes), Heroes Unlimited (4-color superheroes), or any of their other games.

Addendum 2006Apr27: You can follow updates on Palladium's Murmurs from the Megaverse blog/forum.

Addendum 2006May12: Pin yourself on the PalladiumBooksFans frappr map.

Today, I made a new character for a Witchcraft game. MC Xevious is a wererat, and a shaman of King Rat. Since I've been playing Witchcraft since the original Myrmidon edition in 1996, I know how to whore out every last point of efficiency. By the time I'm done, I have an obscene character at physical combat, and weak but with potential at magick through my spirit patron. The word "munchkin" has been heard, but the GM is insane, he could easily wipe us out no matter how powerful we are.

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So for our first session, we just finished up characters, talked about setting, and then did a quick one-shot ass-kicking in a graveyard to playtest our abilities; everything that happens is discarded, but we get experience.

My friends well know by now my feelings about Z-grade "people who appear on film" (I refuse to call them "actors", because that would imply acting ability) Sarah Michelle Geller and David Boreanaz: I would have liked both Buffy and Angel so much better without Buffy or Angel, just the supporting cast, who were all fun and well-acted. So the antagonists chosen for us: Angel, Buffy, and about 10 normal vampires. We don't know who they are, we just act on our knowledge that all vampires are evil, and since the blonde chick is associating with a vampire, she must be his Renfield.

The other two players are hack-and-slashing and telekinetically throwing stakes through vampires, doing fine. I take on the "master vampire". Round one: I bite Angel just barely, and dodge his punch. Round two: I bite Angel in half, he explodes, the streetlights blow out, and he settles into dust. YEAH! Take that, David Boringanus!

Round three: Now this vampire-loving blonde bitch comes charging at me with her big fucking sword, screaming about me killing her boyfriend (filthy necrophiliac), easily hits me despite my insanely high dodge skill, but luckily rolls pathetic damage and it bounces off my equally pathetic Shielding spell. She turns and runs, probably to go get Willow to nuke my ass. I whip the shotgun off my back and fire (yes, from behind: rats don't do honor or dignity, they're survivors). Cha-Chick. BOOM. Headless Buffy falls to the ground. I walk over and make sure she's dead. Cha-Chick. BOOM.

Whole table applauds me. I have single-handedly eliminated my two least favorite "people who appear on film". Sunnydale is saved. Justice is served.

I came, I saw, I shopped.

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I have returned from GenCon, bearing many new things. I bought the Rifts Ultimate limited edition, Tunnels & Trolls 30th Anniversary Edition in a tin box, Aces & Eights: Showdown wild west skirmish rules (the RPG isn't out yet), a bunch of old RoleAids supplements (with writing by Roger Zelazny, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Robert Asprin!), and more.

Best Product: Tie between Rifts and T+T. They both do exactly the right update of the product, fix the necessary flaws, and keep the style and tone of the originals.

Shiniest Product: A Game of Thrones RPG. I hadn't read the novels, so I didn't buy it. I started reading the first novel on the flight back. Seems okay for no-magic fantasy, but I have no empathy at all for aristocrats and their political machinations, which is what it's about. What's the difference between a bad aristocrat and a good aristocrat? Twelve inches off the top.

Worst-Designed Product: Tie between the new Mage and the new Shadowrun. The new Mage is apocalyptically bad; I can't believe they perpetrated that piece of crap. I had major ethical issues with the previous game, even considering that it's in a line of games where you always play inhuman and anti-humanity monsters, but the new setting is completely unappealing, and they've almost completely abandoned the only good thing about the original: the freeform magic system. The new Shadowrun is only mediocre by itself, but the change in system breaks all compatibility with previous-edition supplements. Screw you, Fanpro.

Worst-Marketed Product: Adventures in Fantasy (Infamous Games). AiF has a cheesy D+D-like game in white cardstock covers with a tiny picture pasted in the center, photocopy-quality pages, spiral-bound, overpriced, and no setting. Why did they even bother coming? I spent much of the con in the booth next to them (an expensive booth, too!), and I didn't see them make one sale in 4 days. It's just sad.

What was I doing there? I was at the Eos Press booth, with the Weapons of the Gods game I've been playtesting and writing for (the Furious River Gang demo adventure, for instance). And watch this space for news of my board, card, and roleplaying games being published!

Despite The Evil (see previous post), I had a good time at the con. I will only ever go back to Indiana if I stay in a hotel in the air-conditioned/filtered skywalk system, though. Ugh. My lungs still feel like they're coated with felt.

Okay, it's a few months early, but mocking Jack Chick and furverts is always in season.

"Let's see you yiff with a sliced-up esophogus, motherfucker."

New: a review/rant about the latest reincarnation of Gamma World.