Apathy Games

The Best Gaming Dice: GameScience Dice

We’ve all spent hours looking at dice in our local game store.  We’ve carefully chosen those that call to us, usually based on looks.  Eventually, long after we’ve paid for them and come home, we cast them back into the Bag of Shame because they fail us constantly with a slew of terrible rolls.  Or, perhaps we find that one d20 that never fails us, even though we hate the color.

Apparently, most of our dice are nowhere near as random as we imagine them to be, and it isn’t our imagination.   Mr. Zocchi, who created the original set of polyhedrals that have become iconic to our hobby, is currently the man behind GameScience, and his dice are intended to be precise pieces of engineering.    Let’s let the man make his point for himself, though:

I already intend to replace my dice with these.  You can buy them online from GameStation.net. I should also point out that Chessex does sell a small selection of the GameScience dice.  They’re the translucent jewel-colored dice with the sharp edges that don’t have their numbers painted.

Now, if only someone would start making machined casino quality polyhedrals.

In the Land of Minis

Figures, flats, minis, dice, tokens, we’ve used all of them. Sometimes, to mark where enemies are on the map, I’ve gone so far as to actually draw them on, in pen, because it’s all I had. Although I’d have to say that using LEGOs with custom made weapons is a new one on me, but that’s exactly what one Savage chatter has done. Andrew Linstrom aka entonfire was discussing in #savageworlds this week that he actually uses a combination of LEGOs and BrickArms weapons packs to up the ante on his games and bring a more hands on approach to the minis.

“We were running Day After Ragnarok, so players dressed up and armed their minis appropriately. When they defeated enemies with different or better guns, they had a tangible piece that they could take and arm their mini with. We also used the vehicles that came with the Indiana Jones sets, so I built ambush encounters around the jeep, truck, and tanker that their convoy consisted of.”

He said that he found that the players just seem more engaged when they could actually pull the weapons off the enemy’s corpses and put them on their characters. “[It] was cool being able to watch your character evolve directly from session to session or even scene to scene, switching a gun or a sword or a hat or hands or something; [e]ven swapping to a head with a different expression. I like being able to evolve your mini as you evolve your character.”

LEGOs and BrickArms weren’t the only props he brought to the game table. “Oh! And I commissioned little plush, coiled snakes from one of our friends who does plush monsters. About the size of your palm, but sized against Lego minifigs, perfect scale for a Day After Ragnarok giant snake.”

The ideas of swapping out guns and weapons to your figs just sounds like a great way of really connecting with your character. Often times I feel removed from them because I can’t hold the weapon in my hand or have much of a sensation of it beyond the stats on paper. I think swapping out parts on a figure might bring back the joy of finding a new shiny.

What props do you use on your game board? Anything different than the normal mini fare? Or do you have some extra special minis you want to share?

Keep Track of Potential Players with a Gamer Rolodex

I have a difficult time assembling a group for games I want to run. The problem is that most of the people I play with tend to prefer Game Mastering over playing. So do I. The players in my social group only have so much time to commit to gaming, and have no difficulty finding games to join, spreading my potential player base rather thin.

The obvious solution to this is to find new players. That’s certainly a possibility, and I do that as well, but given the choice I prefer to run games for people I already know.

And I know a lot of people, many of which would possibly play in games I run. I just keep forgetting about them. So I’ve devised a way to keep track of them. I call it the Gamer Rolodex.

What is it?

The Gamer Rolodex is basically an address book for everyone you know who plays roleplaying games even a little. You could use an actual Rolodex for this, but it would be far easier to just use an existing address book, or even create a special page template for your GM notebook.

In addition to basic contact information, each entry would include the player’s roleplaying experience, what games they like and dislike, what games you’ve played with them, and what days they might be available to game.

There’s an added benefit. Most Game Mastering books these days include an collection of player types or traits to help you determine what each player would like. Their entry in your Rolodex is a perfect place to keep track of this information.

Over time, you can create a rather detailed file on all the people you play games with. Sure, it’s creepy and stalker-esque, but it can also be very useful.

The Gamer Card

I came up with this idea as a supplement to the Rolodex. Essentially, it’s a business card, or a calling card, that includes some of the information above, that you give to people you might be interested in gaming with someday. Keep a few of these on you whenever you go to your local gaming store, or a local gaming convention, and hand them to the people you meet. This is a trend I’d love to see get started.

Call to Action: What methods have you used to keep track of potential players?  Or do you just wing it?

Creating a Memorable NPC

When we develop worlds what do we remember most? The sprawling landscapes, the epic adventure, or the great bartender in the tavern where the adventure started? NPCs craft the adventure, give it a human aspect and make it memorable. As one of the most important pillars of gaming why is it that some GMs neglect them or fail to do more than create voices in which to give out quests? What’s needed to create a truly memorable NPC?

Play up Traits

The most fun I have when playing an NPC is playing up some of their traits. Most recently my players encountered a fat man, and I mean a morbidly obese probably needed a wheel chair to move around kind of fat. So I chose to play up the fact that the gentleman was overweight. Specifically when he would get nervous he’d eat sweets, his weight just began to imply he was a fairly nervous man. When the players eventually started grilling him for information he began to root around in his pockets to pull out a candy bar and began chewing at it while responding to questions. It made for a fairly quick trait that became easily memorable to the players, especially when he got so nervous he began smearing chocolate all over his face. Laughter definitely helps make a scene memorable.

Use Voices

I use accents and vocal traits for all of my characters, it helps me not only get into character but literally develops the characters voice. While I can do a fairly competent impression (I do a pretty good Ernie/Kermit impression) I only have a small repertoire of voices. My trick around this is to change my vocal speech patterns. While it makes it hard to repeat without notes (or recording myself) it does quickly establish the character and how they speak. So even speaking just a little higher, using a different lilt to your speech helps create a new character. Personally I tend to borrow speech patterns from shows I watch; it’s how I picked up on the northern English accent of Christopher Eccleston.

Devil is in the Details

Keep a notebook on hand to jot down the details of your NPCs. It’s something I have a terrible time remembering to do, but if you keep a running log of names, accents, and traits you’ll be able to quickly pick up where you left off. I’ve found that repetition is really what solidifies the awesomeness of any NPC. Having a one great scene with an NPC isn’t enough; you’ll need to be able to channel that character again and again in order to make them truly memorable.

What are your tips for making a memorable NPC? What do your players remember the most about some of your characters?

Playing Cards: My Emergency Gaming Kit

This weekend I was at a multiple day family function and couldn’t get my gaming fix. It was day two and the shaking had gotten so bad that I was considering knocking over convenience store so I could go buy a Monopoly board. That’s when I decided that I would have to put a game together. Fortunately, I had paper, pencils, and a prime audience for creating a new gamer: a fourteen year old boy. What I lacked were dice.

I was lamenting this fact and working on ideas in my head for flipping coins, or fabricating some sort of die, when I spied a couple packs of playing cards. Salvation was at hand!

I took one deck apart and separated it by suit. From the spades, I removed everything higher than a ten; from Hearts, everything above an eight, and so on. Thus, I had a d4, d6, d8, and d10, rolled by drawing a card. I helped them build novice characters from memory, which meant that I didn’t have a complete list of edges or hindrances, but I could wing it. Essentially, you get a benefit if you take a detriment of some sort. It wasn’t really very important to get it right.

And thus we played. I ran a pulp adventure with a tropical island, savages, and Nazis. Pretty basic stuff, but it went well and fun was had by all.

And best of all, the card-based dice work rather well. It was a little slower than normal, but acceptable. So now you know. If you can’t keep dice nearby, try to locate some playing cards and all is well.

Do you have any tricks that worked on the fly? Maybe you have an actual gaming emergency kit. Let your fellow readers know in the comments.

Give It All That You Got

Savage Worlds combat can be the most brutal combat of any game system I’ve ever played. At the same time I struggle to balance the fight to make it challenging enough for my players and interesting enough for me. The fluidness of the dice can really shake a battle one way or another. If the players roll poorly the end may be nigh. If the dice explode they win without too much of a problem. So how do we tip the scales in a oh so subtle way?

Change Weapons

It’s hard to predict how well the dice will roll, luck is a harsh mistress. However, it can be easy to hand wave a bit on exactly what types of weapons your enemies are carrying. For example if your encounter is built around melee fighting; bringing a gun to a knife fight is just not fair. So drop a couple of extra Saturday Night Specials on your mooks to even out the playing field. It takes a bit of a deft hand to make sure that the dice don’t explode in a terrible gruesome way but switching out the weapons to something a bit deadlier will quickly level the playing field.

Make ‘em tougher to Hit

Paul is a bit famous in our group of taking a by the book D&D monster and “doubling the hit points and armor class” in order to make the combat more interesting. While we obviously can’t double the hit points in Savage Worlds finding the Toughness sweet spot can prove to be a bit of a challenge. So if your mooks or wild card starts the battle out with a low toughness and are proving too easy to kick the crap out of then have them duck behind something. Even better have them find a make shift shield or body, to hide behind. This quick change in toughness will definitely bring a bit more spice to your battles.

Give them an Out

While learning the ins and outs of a good combat session it’s entirely possible that you may end up accidently killing the entire party. Trust me, it happens. It’s why it’s good to give your players an out to continue playing their characters. While it depends on your setting a well-placed ambulance or resurrection scroll can do wonders for your combat tweaking. Just try not to pull the deus ex machina card too often or your players will see through your façade.

Learning when you can tweak battles is a time honored skill that takes years to learn, and a couple too many total party kills to master. Unfortunately for every GM, every time you change the system you need to relearn how to tweak it to your liking.

Do you change combat on the fly, or do you just stick with the numbers you wrote down originally?

Stuff Your Character Knows

My old D&D group could be pretty crunch heavy.  We liked rules and numbers that expressed knowledge that our characters had.  We wanted a way to express that our characters had knowledge that didn’t have skill points attached.  For example if a character was learning how to play the piano, and only knew one piece of music does it really worth giving them the skill Perform (Piano), or could it be expressed some other way that they were proficent in that one piece of music on one instrument?

The Article System

And thus our system was born.  In short we would give a +2 for a hyper specific skill or piece of knowledge.  Using my piano example it would be expressed by giving a +2 to the perform check when playing Mary had a Little Lamb on the piano.  Now the character would normally only roll their stat check when playing but as they had studied this one particular piece it gave them a little helping hand.  This could be expressed in any number of ways for any skill type, for example if a character knew the statistics on divorce in the state of Wisconsin they would get a +2 to any relevant skill using that knowledge.

How it was acquired

The beautiful thing about the system was how these articles were acquired.  We dropped these rules into a modern game which is full of information sources; wikipedia, blogs, and newspapers.  Characters were a fountain of resources to know little bits about everything.  Our system just provided a crunchy way of expressing it.  We began to horde them like gold pieces, articles were placed with loving care to round out characters and proved useful tool for remembering things we were told.  It was quite a little success in our group.

Why I bring this up

Savage Worlds is a rules light system, and trust me, I have no desire to change that.  However, the rules tweaker in me can’t help but wonder how I might change a few dice rolls here or there.  My thought immediately rushes to just porting the old system over and making it a +2 roll like we used to, but I balk at such a callus change.  What should I do?

So I turn to you my dear readers; how would you make the change?  I want to respect the fast, furious, fun aspects of Savage Worlds but want an elegant way to express these little areas of study.  Expanding common knowledge just seems a bit broad, but a straight die roll change seems to grating against the philosophy of  Savage Worlds.  So let us participate in a thought experiment, how would you express such an idea?

A Tool for Fantastical Names

Personally, I’m terrible at generating names. It’s a bit of a chore and I rarely remember the name after I’m done. While TheForge doesn’t help with remembering them it definitely makes coming up with names easy.

“Many times, users are faced with an overwhelming flood of quantity over quality. TheForge eschews this, allowing you to tailor each creation to your exacting specifications. The difference is remarkable, and as many will attest, wholly satisfying.”

The brilliance of the program is subtle at first. You’re presented with options of types of names you want to generate; fantasy names, fantasy beasts, fantasy spells, and fantasy lands. While presently limited to the fantastical TheForge is keen on adding more. Names appear in front of you, and then you start clicking the names you want to change. When you find something you like, lock it. Keep changing everything else until you find something that works. This is where the program really shines; the words all make sense together. It’s not taking two random words and mashing them together it’s artfully combined words that make sense (in a fantastical sense at least). Soon you’ll be throwing the Quartz Form Titans from King’s Crater at your players while they respond by casting Jullavierre’s Weeping Sink to bring crushing despair to their enemies.

With name generating this quick, and keeping track of them in Evernote I may remember the name of the Captain of the Guard longer than he’s present to the players.

Gaming with Wave or Why I Hate Play-By-Posts

After gushing lovingly about the Savage Mushroom Kingdom, Theron “SlasherEpoch” Seckington of These Dice Look Funny, invited me to partake in a game over Google Wave. Not being one to pass up an opportunity to play the game with the designer himself, and looking for other ways to branch into online play, I began excitedly communicating with him about character ideas. After we began play however I’ve grown a bit of disdain towards Wave as a gaming platform. Theron has been great at corralling all of us together and providing an interesting story so far I can’t but feel a bit far removed from my normal role playing experience. Granted, we’ve only just begun and I do need to give it more time to really sink in, but I couldn’t help but thinking about my experience thus far.

Lack of OOC interaction

What I miss the most is the ability to interact with the other players. While I can have side conversations and engage them out-of-character, it lacks the social aspects of why I love gaming. Even though I do have a great common point with all of them (we all love gaming) I find myself at a loss on how to start a side conversation. The addition of any type of voice chat would definitely add to the interaction level, and facilitate the conversations.  However, getting everyone together would be tough. Granted, if I knew all of them in person and had a chance to play with them before I’m sure this wouldn’t be as big of a deal.

Slow Response Times

One of my biggest complaints with play-by-post games in general is the length it takes for people to respond. I’ve gotten so used to having an immediate response I find myself impatient for things to happen. The reasons of course are simple time, distance, and when we’re on make for slow response times. Unfortunately, it is the nature of the beast and unless we coordinated a time for all of us to be on (which I doubt could be done) there isn’t a way around it. So I stare longingly at my GWave notifier waiting for an update.

Organizational Mess

The Dice of Life has a great post on Gaming with Google Wave which gave some great organizational tips for running your game, like having a table of contents.  The platform however, is still a bit of a mess. What I need are rules of social etiquette.

When should I do an inline reply or when should we start a new wave?

Is it ever OK to edit someone else’s wavelet, or comment in the middle of it?

Most of the etiquette would need to be handled on a per group basis but some guidelines would be appreciated. While so far the game so far has been readable I can easily see it getting out of control. While I look forward to continuing the Savage Mushroom Kingdom game I don’t think I could ever switch to Wave for all of my gaming.

Have you played any games on Wave? Any luck with Savage Worlds or did you find other games worked better?

Tips for Getting your Game Online

Last Sunday was my first attempt into trying to bring my Savage Worlds game into the 21^st Century by moving it online.  Some of my players will be moving out of the state (and one the country) so we were looking to change our play to adapt to the new distance.  While I am big fan of internet technology and generally try to live more and more in the cloud I found the experience frustrating and bit off putting.

Set it all up your stuff a week in advance

It may seem like a bit of a duh but get all of the programs you’ll need to run your game setup well before you play.  I chose to use MapTool for our game as it was free, open source, and generally didn’t annoy me.  That being said it does have some quirks that are not apparently at first, unfortunately, these “quirks “held up the game for an hour while we tried to work them out.

1) Everyone needs to use the same version. Which was something I wasn’t aware of at first; fortunately some of my players also play in another online game and quickly pointed this out to me.  So save some time and use the same version.

2) Just because the program says it can be accessed from the internet doesn’t mean it’s not lying to you. I was never able to host the game.  While the internal tools told me I should be able to host the game no one was ever able to connect.  In the end I had another one of my player’s host the game.  I never figured out why it didn’t work, but I discovered some great port forwarding tutorials at PortForward.com.

3) Careful with maps done in Photoshop. While a minor quibble at this point it was frustrating to put in a map that had been lovingly crafted only to have it not fit the internal grid.  After getting everything is setup, make sure your maps work properly; it’ll really dampen your mood if it doesn’t.

Register all the accounts before hand

Most of my players either didn’t have Skype.  So we spent a good while getting everyone registered, futzing with mics, and generally getting us all on at the same time.  Save yourself some pain and assign some homework to everyone to get the accounts setup and registered well in advance.  Skype has a great built in tool to make sure the mic is on and that you can hear everything.  Use it.  It’ll save you time pretending to be the Verizon wireless guy.  “Can you hear me now?!”

Have you tried to make the transition to online play? What successes or failures have you had?