Success! - D&D 5E Session Upgraded to Weird and Interesting

 In a very brief follow up I managed to have a great game of D&D 5E last night. We had a combat that was interesting, plot strangeness and good character development. The little things I did to make it work:

1. Thought about the "game I wanted to run," rather than the story I was running, evaluated how to make that happen with the current group, and executed it as intended;

2. Stayed the heck away from wandering monsters or any filler content;

3. Several characters got some new bonus secret backstories to help those players engage with the setting (and the planned changes I made) better; this helped them out a lot.

So three basic steps helped right the ship a bit, so to speak. On item 1 the level of complexity I engaged in to come up with a plot to wed the ongoing campaign in the "boring fantasy world" to the much more interesting and well-developed original campaign world (Keepers of Lingusia) was thoroughly fun for me and helped create more entertaining mystery for the players, especially the ones who've been gaming with me for years and can notice the hints and clues that something weird and multiplanar is going on. 

GM Advice: Make it Happen-go where Your Inspiration leads You

 Another short post, but in tune with me trying to get back into the habit of writing frequently!

I've griped on and off about inspirational issues I have been facing lately. As I have mulled over the issue, I have gradually managed to narrow down some of where the problem lies. One key item, I realized, is that I haven't really been following my muse in the manner that comports to my "true self." This might sound a bit weird, but for me D&D is only partially a hobby for gaming, a big chunk of it really ties in closely to the very heart of the creative process, and that creative process likes to move, like a cyclical event, through specific creative phases. It goes something like this, I have deduced over the years:

1. Craft a grand campaign in the most venerable fictional realms I have created (Keepers of Lingusia and Realms of Chirak);

2. Do this until I need a break (go play Traveller or Call of Cthulhu or what-not);

3. Eventually, reach a point where I am hitting a creative rut in fantasy; I can discern this point in the process when I start devising alternate fantasy worlds to explore, or I feel like I'm hitting the same creative ruts in existing worlds, or I feel like I'm experiencing some sort of generalized burnout.

4. The burnout cycles through until I suddenly realize the problem is that I moved too far away from the fun stuff....and the fun stuff (being my original worlds) suddenly beckon my return. The wealth of ideas return, and I move back to #1 above. 

There are things which can derail this process and I have to work on better strategies for how to avoid that from happening. Lack of player engagement is a huge issue; if players just don't seem interested in what I am doing it can be difficult for me to feel motivated. I think sometimes the way RPGs are played these days can lead to that sense of disengagement, especially for players who are used to "on rails" approaches to gaming where they (unconsciously or consciously) are conditioned to expect the GM to handhold them, lead them along, as opposed to them actively seeking out the action and plot, making their own stories. 

I can tell when this happens because I start over-plotting, in anticipation of the players' level of inaction. The best solution to this is to cut it out, and find a quick way to untether the plot thread from the decision making process....offer direction, but let them make the decisions as to where they want to go, what they want to do. This can be hard for some GMs to do, but it works exceedingly well for me in my classic campaigns because I have so much content eternally prepared, and so much that I can further exploit. I desperately want and need the players to make these decisions, which are unexpected, to challenge me, as GM. That makes it fun for me. All I need to do is....figure out what combination of scenario setup in turn engages the players into taking control of their own destinies. 

More Random: Retro Collecting and the Playstation 3

 I've decided I need to try and keep up with the blog more, like in the good old days of 2011-2017 when I was able to somehow knock out at least three posts a week, sometimes even daily. Good habit and all! I've always treated the blog as a writing exercise....the idea is not so much that I am writing for an audience, but rather than I will write with the notion of an audience being present. Whether or not what fascinates me also interests you is just a happy coincidence.

So the thing on my mind today:

Retro Video Game Collecting and the Playstation 3

Back in 2019 I got the notion to grab a Playstation 3 from a local retro gaming store. I also grabbed a PS2, which chugged along nicely for a while but now won't read disks no matter how much weight I pile on it, so I think the PS2's laser arm is failing. The PS3 I bought was a slim later model, similar to the one I had in 2012-2013 before I traded it in for the PS4. I was a late buyer on the PS3 when it came out, because of course it was initially $600 (too pricey), then Sony got hacked (controversy!), then eventually it just seemed pointless because by that time I was so deeply invested in the Xbox 360 it was unnecessary. When I bought the PS3 it was late in the game, with the intent of catching up on the many Playstation exclusives I had missed over the years (Resistance, Killzone, Uncharted, etc.). By the time the PS4 came out I was more or less caught up....and the clear and decisive quality of the PS4 kept me once again with Sony for the last console generation. 

Cut to 2020, and while I was among the lucky few to snag a Playstation 5 out of the gate, it became clear to me that my PS3 I'd purchased still had value (as did the PS2). Tragically the soldering on the PS3's HDMI connection failed at some point and I could only get it to work through the old SD connection with an adapter. So last month I got very lucky and snagged an older original model PS3 on ebay with a ton of games for only $80. Not only was this model in great shape it became clear to me that the original design of the PS3 was superior to the PS3 slim model (the one with the sliding door to open the disk area). This is a solid machine, and the guy who sold it to me appears to have kept his clean and intact....and based on the many games that came with it he was really, really into modern combat shooters like Call of Duty, Battlefield and Medal of Honor.

Anyway, I've been hunting and pecking on Ebay to fill out my game collection, which already had about 40 titles in the mix. A surprising number of PS3 titles can still be found in new, wrapped condition, and a lot of titles for the PS3 were exclusive to the system. Some are much harder to find....for example, Folklore is widely regarded as a must-have for the PS3 era, but it was an exlusive title that is not available in digital format or on Playsyation Now, best as I can tell. In fact Playstation Now, which is the rough analog to Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass, never seems to have any title I want when I search to see if it's available, which is a shame, because if they had half of these I'd subscribe to it. Sony definitely has a retro-compatibility problem, with a strategy that has failed in comparison to Microsoft's superior efforts and retaining as much backwards compatibility as possible. Good enough, in fact, that I really only need a current Xbox to play my digital and disk collection, I have nothing currently that isn't compatible on the Series S/X or the Xbox One X. 

On the plus side, I guess, that means that the fun of retrogame collecting is strong on the Sony side, since so many titles remain available only on their original systems. The top five recent titles on PS3 which I have recently found and been playing, for example:

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard - a great game! The self-aware video game character voiced by Will Arnett tries to survive as his video game franchise comes under literal attack. The game's controls and design are pretty good but just a bit janky (and the box cover art was highly "meh") but the game is still fun to play and has some funny moments. Found new in wrap on Ebay for $18.

Folklore - mentioned earlier, this dang game is expensive on Ebay, but I got lucky and found a disc only copy (no box) for $40 and took the plunge. It's actually even better than I expected, a sort of mystery/RPG/survival adventure hybrid that is compelling to play. I can see why it's sought after so much, and am shocked Sony hasn't tried to secure the rights to port it to current gen consoles in a remastered HD edition.

Medal of Honor - the franchise reboot on the PS3/Xbox 360 era of consoles slipped by, regarded perhaps at the time as not as good as Call of Duty, but I am actually having a lot of fun running through the campaign, which lacks the pomp and circumstances (read: crazy) of contemporary shooters. Cost: trivial, it was one of the many games that came in the box with the console. 

Sacred 2: This Diabloesque competition is actually a lot of fun with some very non-serious story and tale telling; if you recall a game back in the day with extremely amusing (or stupid, take your pick) gravestone commentary, then you may be recalling this series. It died with a poor Gauntlet-reskin style reboot after the second game, but this is well worth it and also provides for easy multiplayer. Indeed, the fact the PS3 multiplayer is so easy to do on the PS3 and earlier consoles remains a huge selling point for these games. So nice not to have to go log in to an account for my son so some online entity can track our data just so we can play a game on the big screen. I snagged Sacred 2 for about $15 on Ebay but you can get it on PC easily enough, probably for very cheap, too.

Star Trek: so I actually played this game on PC when it came out, but I found a cheap copy of the PS3 edition for $8 at a local shop. It's set after the 2009 Star Trek Kelvin Universe reboot film, but is a surprisingly fun game, designed for two players on a splitscreen to play (you can also play solo). My son and I have almost finished it (it's a bit short, about 6 hours), but its key worthy traits include a fun combat system, lots of Trekky puzzle bits, and a really neat take on the Gorn that makes them look like real aliens and not giant paper-mache Halloween costumes. 

I've had a lot of fun collecting on the PS2 as well, and I've owned a PS Vita for years....but more on those later! Especially the poor PS2, which I have one or two more things I can try to fix it before I give up and seek out a replacement. 

Random Musings of the Day - On OSE, Pathfinder, Basic Fantasy and D&D 3.5

 Short post, but still part of the last few months' ongoing theme of "mulling over what games I want to play."

First off....sticking to VTT and Roll20 in particular means that anything I do will need to comport to the medium of transmission, which in this case of course is Roll20. I have Foundry but it looks a bit too much for the level of time/energy I have to invest; a friend of mine who also grabbed it wants to collaborate on figuring it out, so who knows, though....we may crack that nut sooner or later.

I like OSE because its restrained, mechanically, to the style of old school progression I am comfortable with, but also doesn't limit itself to the boundaries of old school options. Unlike B/X D&D or AD&D ca. 1978 you can play other things in OSE like drow, knights, duergar, svirfneblin and much, much more with additional supplements. The rules for OSE are comfortable with this and know that there is a large group of OSR fans like myself for which the conceptual space of OSR does not mean that players must lack choice; I burned out on the sacred quartet of dwarf, human, elf, halfling as the only allowable species for players a long time ago, and I was never on board with "class as race" so the hybrid "do both B/X and AD&D" approach of OSE is really cool, and lets everyone have their preferences.

That was a long paragraph to basically say that I looked in to the latest edition of Basic Fantasy and while the system looks nice and tight, it lacks the variety that OSE supports right out of its core books....Basic Fantasy is, peer its name, exactly what it intends to be. I am not looking for that, unfortunately; I want a system with more robust variety. I know my players well....they would be bored and dissatisfied with BF in short order (as would I). So OSE still reigns as king for me right now, an old-school system which supports a more modern range of options for characters. 

Despite toying with the idea of OSE I haven't really engaged with it, though. Instead I ended up once more thinking about how the level of complexity (both in character options and tactical combat) that I find most satisfying is still best supported by either sticking with Pathfinder 2E (which is the game my group is most invested in on Saturday), or D&D 3.5 (which is the game I find myself most deeply interested in, having realized it is evoking the most nostalgia for me right now). 

So....still pondering, but I do know that my next planned fantasy game (outside of the ongoing D&D 5E game) will be further down the road. I want to let it lie "fallow" for a while so that my interest and desire to run new campaigns can come to fruition better.....and give me some time for a little while to properly explore other games and genres (Traveller, Cypher, Call of Cthulhu, etc.).

Putting Thought into a Serious Effort at Old-School Essentials as Default Fantasy System

I've bounced around a lot on the idea of what fantasy system to roll with, and I am starting to think that I need to step back from D&D 5E and Pathfinder 2E, breathe a bit, and give Old-School Essentials an earnest try. Here's my reasoning, starting with the flaws in 5E and PF2E that I want to fix:

1. D&D 5E, which persists on Tuesdays, feels off in a way that I can't stop noticing. Sometimes I think its the bounded accuracy, other times its the "bag of hit points" monster design, which is less about whether they are bags of hit points and more about whether the group is optimized to hit hard and fast. The problem with easy healing remains, even with gritty rest rules in place. 

I'm not likely going to stop running 5E on Tuesdays, as my group has expressed a strong desire to continue with it, but I may bag it all down the road once the campaign is over. There is nothing 5E is doing which I don't see being more fun and interesting at least n 3.5. Tell that to my self in 2007, so they can have a heart attack at this declaration, but it's true....and I never thought I'd see the day, but I realize I prefer more mechanical nuance such as 3.5 offers than less.

2. Pathfinder 2E does offer more mechanical nuance, but it seems to me my players like it less. As GM for PF2E I have to be more mindful of the tight balance, which I realize is both significantly tighter than the bounded accuracy of 5E and actually tighter than the 3.5 design it is derived from. But combat in PF2E is a lot of fun, so I can't knock it....it just happens to have a lot of design implications that need to be considered when playing. I am getting fairly used to PF2E, though, and it is turning into my preferred contemporary choice for fantasy gaming despite my misgivings about its highly focused design on skills and other rules issues I have encountered or discussed in the past (such as organizational rules issues, lack of coherence in detecting and identifying magic rules, the weird way healing works, somehow both making it more and less accessible all at the same time, etc.). But the fact that combat is fun and monsters are interesting to fight really makes up for a lot of PF2E's other failings. 

3. Old-School Essentials is a distilled and concise restating of the classic B/X and AD&D rules of yore, with some modern bits thrown in for the sake of ease of access (such as providing for both descending and ascending AC). But it accomplishes a few things very specifically that are missing from the last 20 years of regular D&D (and Pathfinder to a lesser extent) that I would like to experience again. This includes:

1. It balances the simplicity of old school monster design with a speedier combat system; you won't see hit point bloat in OSE, and combat can be a bit scarier because it still supports creatures with a lot of "bite" and lethal effects. Healing is slower and rarer. This means there needs to be more strategy on the players' shoulders, and the GM can design encounters and modules with an air of verisimilitude rather than "what the encounter budget demands."

2. Magic items are rare rewards and part of the PC flavor....a good magic item can help define a character, rather than go into a bucket for auction after out-leveling it. 

3. The overall pace of play will be quicker and more efficient. There's a more rigid mechanical process in play which will help keep players who struggle with understanding the rules in check, but with enough complexity that the older and more savvy players won't feel bored. The fact that "rulings, not rules" is really important to OSR design will factor in more strongly.....the group I want to propose OSE to recently played Gamma World 1st edition and I think being able to adjudicate the mechanical questions with common sense on the fly was a big part of the fun in those game sessions, leading to interesting results that the simpler mechanical structure of the game did not seek to forbid. You could watch unexpected synergies at play, which was a lot of fun, rather than argue over specific stat block interpretations.

4. Although OSE does not have a detailed skill system it does have some AD&D-inspired skill table support for backgrounds. I am not at odds with this; as I have weathered over the years I think my desire for a common sense experience without skills will be fine, and I can house rule them in f I start to get irritated at their absence. The 5E skill system is swingy, the PF2E skill system counter-intuitive and too balanced, so using OSE with just a "what would you know based on your stats, class and level?" approach sounds okay to me at this point.

5. Finally, OSE is, like many simpler and OSR focused games, focused on interesting and experimental fantasy. You can do this with any game, yes, but some games actively support/encourage weird and interesting stuff more naturally (Cypher, for example). If you are even passingly familiar with the prodigious recent output of the OSR and OSE community specifically, its hard not to notice that the most creative and interesting stuff for use at the table is coming from this corner of the hobby, not the big giants.

Anyway....I am going to propose trying OSE for a while to my Saturday group after the latest Call of Cthulhu games closes out. We'll see! I'm hoping we can make this a grand experiment. 

Cool Things About VTT - and Roll20 Specifically

 Last night we resumed D&D 5th edition, albeit in Roll20. I've posted plenty of blogs in recent months decrying the slow death of live gaming in my circle, and lamenting some of what was lost in moving to virtual table tops, but today I am going to take a different track. I have some nice things to say about Roll20, which I can summarize as follows:

It's an Organizational Godsend

You can do a lot with Roll20 and other VTTs from handouts and quick illustrations to having loads of battle maps and terrain stacked and ready to go. This is handy, and easier to deploy than in real life. It is only a chore if you are also seriously in to customizing everything in great depth....but you may enjoy doing that, so win-win?

It Makes Maps and Minis Quicker and Easier

Being able to quickly deploy a map and minis (quick in contrast with the game table) is an incredibly convenient feature of VTT systems, or at least Roll20 for sure. I can do an encounter on the fly with a pregenerated map and tokens with less fuss than at the game table. 

It Still Lets You Do Abstract Combat Just Fine

I have a splash page with graphics illustrating where the PCs are which is the "action page" and that works just fine for holding theatre of the mind combat (TotM), I just establish that when we're doing combat that way I default to what I like to call "13th Age Rules" or sometimes Cypher System rules, two system which have excellent abstract combat mechanics that boil down to "far away, near by, engaged" as the three areas/bands you can fall in to during battle. 

If you Like Using Graphics and Illustrations Roll20 is Key

I do actually like finding cool illustrations of NPCs, monsters and locations, and thanks to the state of the internet in 2022 it is possible to find hundreds of amazing and useful illustrations on the internet without ever using up precious printer ink or killing trees. This is a big plus of the medium for me, as while I'm not that good at messing with making my own illustrations or battle maps, I appreciate the works of those who do. 

Distracted Players Will be Distracted (But At Least You Have Tools)

One thing I have figured out is a distracted player on VTT is also a distracted player at the game table. The difference is you as GM can see them reading a book and not paying attention IRL and if they are on Roll20 or some other VTT you can skip over them and assume they died or something. A player who is known for making horrendous levels of noise can be muted on VTT, but IRL you have to hope they get up and go to another room (well, they usually do). Bottom line is: if a distracted player is sitting at a live table, as GM you feel more inclined to involve them, despite their lack of will. On Roll20 it is easier to skip over them and focus on the players who are actually engaged and paying attention.

It Bridges Gaps in Distance

I have at least one game where I get to game with old friends who moved to the east coast and west coast, respectively. That alone makes VTT worthwhile! 

Roll20 and other VTTs are not perfect, but these are some important perks to consider. As I get older (just turned 51) I begin to realize and accept that more and more of my tabletop gaming will be in the VTT environment, it just makes more sense. 

Solutions and Fixes! - The Ongoing Saga of Too Many Games and Not Enough Time

 I haven't quite fixed anything yet, actually, but I do seem to have gotten past my creative doldrums and last night ran Mothership again, which was "fixed" in that we got to move the VTT game to Thursday night, a night when all players could once again be present. It was a great game, easily one of my favorite games out there now.

When I run Mothership I get this feeling I ought to dive in to Traveller again, that nothing I am doing in Mothership is not doable in Traveller, but that's not entirely correct. Mothership's lightning rod focus on the style of game it supports (we've all decided it's best defined as "retro schlock sci fi") is just so perfectly captured in the meager rules of Mothership 0E. Some of the playtest details on Mothership 1E actually sound like they may accidentally remove some flavor in the name of clarification and expansion....I better check it out, that would be bad. Mothership must retain its core identity, its core ease of play. I have confidence in the Tuesday Knight games people, though. This game is amazing.

If I ran Traveller I'd watch other stylistic genre interventions shift the storyline from one of perpetual dread in a universe defined by 70's and 80's films and turn into one defined by 70's and 80's novels. That's a fine genre in and of itself, but not what we need at the moment.

As for the live game night, it's shut down for the moment but I am investigating moving it back to VTT online. I think that will solve some issues, but it doesn't free up the time I am missing. This could pose a problem, too, as I need to prep for some work-related licensing that will require a fair bit of studying on my part, and I am sure that will interrupt some of the gaming time, no way around it.

My poor Saturday game will resume tomorrow, with me reinvigorated and looking forward to more Call of Cthulhu, though I am certain my "GM creative block" is gone because I am actually excited to resume the Pathfinder game again, a clear sign I've gotten over the hump. I also suspect I'll run it again, and like happened on Tuesday will just be, "gaah, why am I doing this" again....I am realizing that my tastes in systems have shifted, a lot. More specifically, genres. I may just be really burned out on "D&D like" experiences right now. Call of Cthulhu....Mothership.....Cypher System....maybe even the likes of Traveller and Mythras are what I need to focus on for this year. I seem to have an enormous well of creative inspiration for science fiction, horror and unconventional fantasy tales. We shall see....

More Random Musings - the Scheduling Nightmare

 Almost a month and  I have only blogged three times in January! Good thing "more consistent posts" was not one of my 2022 promises. 

This has been a weird month already. Hard to find time to game due to a combination of work schedules, school (for my wife), COVID scares, regular illness taking out players and GM alike at random, etc. etc. and amidst all of this I have been keenly aware that I am wrestling with a combination of sleep-based fatigue making it tough to motivate myself to run games, and a level of GM burnout (akin to writer's block, I would say) that has made actually showing up difficult at times. More of the former (fatigue) than the latter, but still.

I also continue to question my systems of choice. Running D&D 3.5 last year has forced me to see that my problems with D&D 5E are deeper and more troubling than I had considered....I really like the deeper level of granularity in D&D 3.5, the level of customization and content, and its such a sharp contrast with D&D 5E that I just am not sure I can keep on with the latest edition. I started a new campaign which is only two sessions in and I'm already barely motivated to continue.

When I've gotten to this point in the past I often stop and take a moment to think hard about what has been motivating me the most, recently. When I look at what was successful in 2021 I realize I really enjoyed the one D&D 3.5 campaign which felt very energetic and fun. It was put on pause due to an absent player, but I'd like to get back to it. I also really enjoyed the Cypher System game earlier in the year, even though I had a persistent disconnect between my use of a world grounded in very D&D-style theatrics, but using a game system (Cypher) in dire opposition to that style of play. It's a case where I'd love to get back to that campaign, just not with that system....Cypher had already streaked past the more conventional level of play the story expected and left it all in the dust. Cypher is a wonderful game system, but its demands on the story telling are distinctly different from conventional D&D storytelling.

I technically had a great campaign with Pathfinder 2E that I quite enjoyed, but I wasn't actually enjoying running it as much as I should have, and felt at times not motivated. This is my tip that I am experiencing GM burnout: the plot was great, the players brought exciting characters to the table, there's a lot of interest in total, but my own desire to just show up and do it was lower than ever. Bad sign! 

Some of the problem is oversaturation: I am currently running a live game Tuesdays (D&D 5E), a virtual game Wednesdays (Mothership), playing in a Call of Cthulhu game on Fridays, and Pathfinder on Saturdays (Roll20). The reality is that I only have time for maybe two nights a week....and what is happening is I achieve that by cancelling, a lot. Sometimes its provoked by work schedules, sometimes by illness, but the net effect for the last couple months has been a harrowingly inconsistent mess of random game nights.

If I could dial it back to one night a week, which is realistically all I really have time for, I think it would be the best solution....but the problem is I have players who are friends that I like gaming with, and they are often quite spread out on which nights they can actually game. It is a no win situation! Worse yet, even if I picked, say, Saturday night to be the sole night for gaming that would be tough because the fewest number of players among all groups can actually game that night. Worse yet, I in theory can't game on Saturdays as often as I'd like simply because I periodically take weekend trips. 

Of all the nights for gaming, Fridays are least problematic because I am not the GM. In the old days of the before-pandemic times I often could find a reprieve for a while, sometimes for weeks or months, when one of the other players could step up and run games for a while. This let me recharge my batteries and get a break. But that stopped with the pandemic, ironically, as the process of a sub GM setting up a VTT room and putting the time in to a pick-up game is actually laborious and requires some careful planning. It doesn't help that no one I know, including those who used to GM, ever volunteer anymore. Put simply: if I don't GM, apparently no one else does, either. Gah!

So one thought I have is to make some nights deliberately bi-weekly and rotate. One week: Mothership Wednesday. Next week: Pathfinder Saturday. Tuesdays are a special issue which I have special considerations to address, that go beyond the scope of this post (or what I will stick into print in a public space). Long story short is: I may make Tuesday night the "chopping block" game for a bit, even though it is the live game. I don't want to....but I can then dial it back to the D&D 3.5 session I enjoyed, and move it back to a VTT environment for a bit, selectively picking the players I wish to continue with. Or I can just keep going with the live game and maybe disinvite a couple specific players. We shall see.

In a perfect world I'd get my A-Team of players all on one night, but I know that is impossible currently. And that night I picked would be the mysterious eighth day of the week, that mystery day that exists outside of time and space and on which I have a full night's sleep and am feeling my maximum level of creativity and engagement. What a day that would be!

The reality though is that I am treading water on the time/energy amounts I need to sustain three different games and storylines, and I only really have energy for one right now. A cruel situation indeed, one in which I drown in a bounty of excess. But because I try to juggle three games at once, all of them suffer. So I need to solve this by going back, ideally, to one game a week, and maybe one other game every other week, like I used to do in the Good Old Days. The problem is....which games?

2021 Gaming Year in Review and 2022 Gaming Plans

 Last year I only really talked about gaming plans and made no predictions....hell, last year was my lowest post count year-over-year since 2011 when I started blogging. At least some of this has been due to a lack of time, but some of it was also due to a gradual slowing down of the total creative content I had energy to post on-site. I might tick that up a bit this year, but if you look at the first 3-4 years of the blog I spent a ton of energy on posting existing world and lore content, sometimes just for fun, sometimes in a useable form for those who might be entertained by such. Cut to 2021, and I think the old era of "dense lore-packed fantasy gaming settings aimed at inspiring the imagination (or boring those who don't like dense lore-packed settings)" is a bygone era, and contemporary gaming are all about hitting the right ratio of inspirational reading to accessible content. Everything from current WotC products to Necrotic Gnome's OSE style of module making reflect a shift in design emphasis that moves presentation of a world or setting much closer to the "practicality" of the content in design. This has led me to think a lot about how I could do something like this for my own settings and scenarios, and that's not a bad thing; making content that is accessible to the average time-harried GM is a great idea, actually. 

Anyway, for 2021 I predicted some things then a couple weeks later noticed my predictions were all wrong already. In the end I ran several games: D&D 5E for a while, then Cypher System, then back to Pathfinder 2E. I dabbled in Call of Cthulhu for a couple months here and there, started a Mothership ongoing campaign somehow despite being overloaded, and then at last got to run live games again, focused on D&D 5E, D&D 3.5 and Call of Cthulhu. I had a two-session Gamma World 1st edition game in the mix, which was a trippy and fun experience for all. During all of this I got to be a player in a Call of Cthulhu game a friend of mine ran for much of the whole year using Astral Tabletop.

For 2022 I make no crazy predictions at all: there's going to be more Traveller this year with its 2022 edition fresh in mind; Mothership is here to stay, too fun to give up any time soon; D&D 5E will likely return, as I have a group that quite enjoys it and doesn't mind when I apply some gritty rules to make it feel more like I like things; Pathfinder 2E is likely not going anywhere, I suspect. Outside of that, I can't say for sure, but I may push to run some historical games soon, though whether I will use GURPS, Mythras or OpenQuest 3 I cannot yet say. I wanted to do this last year but there are limits in life. I could easily run something that is "mostly historical" anyway with careful use of D&D in either 3.5 or 5E, or Pathfinder 2E.....it would just require some serious caveats about the magic.

Still, I'm not much for tinkering with game systems so in the end I will run what I actually have time to mess with. That means pretty much D&D, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, Mothership, and maybe if I am inspired to a certain weird campaign this year a return to Cypher System. I feel like a broken record player, but hey, I'm getting old and this seems to be what happens when we all get old. 

My biggest goal this year would be to move back to fully live gaming but the pandemic has permanently changed that to some degree, so I will settle for one live game a week for now. Where things are a bit wacky are in the current online Mothership game, which I am running with old gaming buddies from across the country and do not want to ever quit, and with Saturday, which has players who for various reasons that is simply the best way to handle it. I think I am fine with that. 

Roll20 looks like it will reign supreme, at least until or if I can figure out Foundry. I bought a copy, but it's kind of inexplicable to me as to what to do. I need to find time (and interest) to watch some videos and find out how to use Foundry, at like, even the most basic level. Foundry assumes a level of competence in handling the kinds of tasks it provides for, and I do not have any of that (even Roll20, outside of its basic fundamental usage model, is a bit of an enigma to someone like me who has a live-game experience informing my view on gaming).

I do have a wishlist for 2022, which is short and sweet:

1. I'd love to see a more user-friendly VTT enter the market, one which is more cost effective and provides for a more "table-like" experience with less fiddling over complex virtual maps and minis;

2. I'd like to find time this year to prep and play the Aliens RPG and Conan RPG (both from Modiphius), and maybe even the Star Trek RPG (fun fact: in the long-ago days I was a big Star Trek fan and ran a lot of the Star Trek RPG as presented by Last Unicorn Games);

3. I'd like to settle once and for all this year whether my obsession with the OSR games, especially OSE, DCC, MCC and other acronyms of similar nature, is mostly a fun trip through a wonderland I have no intention of seriously visiting, or if I can get some traction out of these titles. I am continually obsessed with the long-ago recapturing of the old days, but thwarted by the fact that the exact nature of what I enjoyed most about gaming back then is not quite in the same spirit as what most OSR manufacturers produce today, which is itself more of a nostalgia trip filled with a vision of nostalgic compliance that I was thwarting even in 1981 with AD&D. 

Beyond that I have no real idea.....there are some other things which will affect 2022 a bit, but nothing that merits mention in the blog. Will, for example, a game like Pathfinder 2E be a more satisfying experience at the live game table vs. the VTT environment? I suspect that it will...at minimum because the GM has more positional control to "fix" things when they seem to be going severely south for the players, something which happens a nontrivial number of times in Pathfinder 2E, a game which due to its tighter balance means there's less wiggle room for the GM when it comes to the math on encounters.*

Also, we might be losing our resident rules lawyer in the games, at least for a little while. That tends to have an interesting impact at the game table. The GM gets to lean more heavily on the "rulings instead of rules" axiom, and there is less flipping through the rulebooks to figure it all out; the net result is maybe less mechanical accuracy but in exchange the pace and story elements pick up. In all honesty, I used to run games for a more relaxed and non-rules-lawyery group, so its been a long time since I had this sort of situation and its kind of exciting. Don't get me wrong, I will miss the player, but a game which move more seamlessly and allows the GM more leeway to do rulings over rules is ideal.

Actually....this is a thing I have considered. There are some games I like because their rules elements are "just enough" that they work fine without the need for complex elaboration mechanically. Then there are other game systems (of which Pathfinder 2E is one, and maybe Mythras is another) which often beg for mechanical alliteration and literacy, and the net result is that the game can, at times, bog down in such minutiae. I admit....I am really starting to spiral away from that approach these days. Not in a "I suddenly like OSR systems with no skill rules"** style of play, but more like a "I'd love to run GURPS again, but with all the mechanical bits set to minimum/zero" style. Or, you know, BRP but with none of the more complex optional rules in play unless it enhances rather than bogs down the experience.

I guess what I keep trying to say is, "Help, my players love our ongoing Pathfinder 2E campaign but I am so very, very tired of dealing with the mechanical tightness and predictability and wish I could have a more relaxed, freeform game using D&D 3.5 or 5E in its place," which is crazy, of course, to realize that the looser design of PF2E's predecessors is actually a superior play experience for everyone despite the generally more convenient GM elements in the newer game. But I embraced it two years ago so I guess I gotta see this ship through to its end, right?

*Some of the problem is showmanship; with VTT environments the players often have the books, tools and visibility to notice when a GM has just chosen to break a rule, "fix" a # (or roll in secret), or is willfully modifying or ignoring a stat block. You can run a game straight, mechanically, in Roll20 but the net result leads to arbitrary TPKs and scenarios where the campaign gets unintentionally derailed. This is less of a problem in games where the intent is to play as sandbox as possible, but I have been running a more story-driven and less sandbox-like campaign in PF2E and its been kind of a nightmare as a result.

**A lot of the OSR is obsessed with the B/X and BECMI era of D&D. I am not on that camp; class-as-race sucks, and limits what you can do and what stories you can tell (and characters you can play). Likewise, both AD&D 1E by the Wilderness Guide/Oriental Adventures era of books introduced a proficiency skill system, and the B/X era books had a skill system as early as the first Mystara Gazetteer set in Karameikos. Why does the OSR abstain from at least importing some version of these skill mechanics to the respective OSR editions they emulate? Why is AD&D 2E the only edition with any OSR emulation that includes skills? I had already made a homebrew skill system by 1982, chiefly because skills added lots of flavor to characters, and it let players (we were all kids back then in my group) to identify when their character, who was supposed to be a skilled adult adventurer, identify that he or she had a given skill that we as the player couldn't hope to live up to. 

I get that OSR design today leans heavily on the minimalist side of mechanics and play approach, but what I am trying to say is: my OSR experience was not the same as what is reflected today, and that leads to an eternal disconnect for me. At least OSE emulates the career/profession skill rolls from AD&D 1E in its books! And covers race with class mechanics in addition to race-as-class quite well, too.

2021: Death Bat's Top 5 in Movies

 This was also a weird year for movies. For some regions such as the state in which I live (New Mexico), we didn't even have an opportunity to start going to theaters again until around June, as I recall. For much of this year theater-going actually felt safe enough, as hardly anyone was actually going to the movies. If you wanted to watch new films at home, many streaming platforms did simultaneous releases; HBO Max has been a very good deal, for example.

So what movies earned a top five place on my list? This was a tough year, because you not only had to watch films that had often been delayed a lot, this year saw a slew of late arrivals in the theaters that were heavily immersed in pig-slop-wallowing levels of nostalgia that were at times almost embarrassing.  Not a good year (for the most part) for creative effort in blockbusters! Still, I can think of five movies I quite enjoyed:

#5 Free Guy

Ryan Reynolds has an affable comedic charm about him that translates really well into certain films. Free Guy was the surprise movie of this year, a film I figured would be a relatively benign, no-punches-pulled comedy with lots of sappy moments. I wasn't entirely wrong....but wrapped up in a story of a non-player-character trapped in a persistent online video game world who attains sentience is a pretty good movie about what it means to be an AI, what a prospective realistic future online world might look like (with some caveats for the story), and a film that is surprisingly relevant and entertaining. Taika Waititi as the tech mogul bad guy was hysterical, and Free Guy quickly made my list of one of the most enjoyable and generally feel-good movies I had seen this year....and this is from a guy who normally shuns "feel-good" films like the plague!

#4 Spider-Man No Way Home

Okay so this one is pretty egregious on not only the nostalgia factor but also the "let's mix up our universe of franchise IP content into a big pot and see what comes out" approaches to film. Unlike many other movies that fell into the category of appealing to nostalgia and IP-smelting pots of content this third Tom Holland entry did a decent job of leaning hard into the tropes so common in comic book lore, and ended up making not only a decent third movie for the Holland Spider-Man, but gave some closure to the two prior Sony Spider-Man film series as well. It would have been very easy for this to have gone bad, quickly, but an exceptional cast and approach made it fresh and interesting, which is impressive. Ultimately, this movie, along with The Suicide Squad earlier in the year, both boldly drew their plots and focus from the weirder spectrum of comic book stories and pulled it off big time. 

#3 Censor

I'll admit, I am a total sucker for indie horror, and Censor is an amazing movie. Starring Niamh Algar as Enid Banes, who works for the British film industry censorship dept. during the mid eighties, a time when this was actually a thing and the British government was concerned about the enormous number of exploitation flicks and horror movies with the substantial gore that rose in the late sixties and seventies. Enid's job is to clinically analyze the films and indicate what must be cut to allow a British release, when she sees a video which reminds her suspiciously of the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of her sister in her youth. Beyond that, I will say no more, but this was a great movie. 

#2 The Suicide Squad

I don't know how James Gunn's take on DC's Suicide Squad ever got greenlit the way it did, or how it avoided studio meddling, but it's like watching an actual Suicide Squad comic book brought to disturbing life. It manages to hold to the story beats of a blockbuster summer film while also completely violating the core conceits of blockbusters with a disturbingly entertaining yet unlikeable cast of vile misfits, deliberately sets up audience expectations for sympathetic characters only to kill them off the second they get a payoff to their story arcs, and then grabs one of the zaniest villains of DC's long history (Starro the Conqueror) and makes it a genuinely interesting existential threat. Amazing film, but I feel like it was made specifically for me and other fans of the comic, and somehow people thought it would also be well received by general audiences....which it sort of was? And of course Margo Robbie was amazing in this movie, which is essentially part 3 in a trilogy of Harley Quinn tales. 

#1 Dune Part I

This movie broke the spell on Hollywood that you cannot take Frank Herbert's novel and make a good movie out of it. Although the film takes a few liberties, it does a dramatically better job of setting the mood, ambiance, and smart story telling of "show, don't tell" to recreate the first halfish of the novel and is well worth experiencing, especially on the big screen if possible. It is sufficiently amazing that it retroactively generated interest in the Lynch version of the movie from the 80's and the later SciFi Channel editions, just so people could analyze what about prior attempts fell short where this one excelled. Thankfully Part II has been greenlit, although I am shocked that they didn't have the chutzpah to just film both parts at once. 

Honorable Mention: The second Venom movie was a short (1 1/2 hour) and entertaining film that could have overstayed its welcome but did not, and in many ways improved on the formula of the first movie, with Woody Harrelson and Naomie Harris getting an opportunity to really ham up their villain roles while Tom Hardy did his thing. Fun! I can't say I'd recommend it to anyone other than comic fans or Venom fans (or fans of these actors) but I didn't leave the theater feeling regret (unlike some other recent movies).

I might also mention Eternals, but while this was a good movie, I think if asked to watch it or Venom II again I'd have to stick to Venom II, just because it was shorter and more amusing.

The Movie Walk of Shame: Lots of films disappointed this year. I talked about a few of them, including Ghostbusters: Afterlife (shameless pillaging of a comedy franchise corpse to appeal to Stranger Things contemporary nostalgia feels); Resident Evil Welcome to Raccoon City (by-the-numbers pandering attempt to make a video game franchise by people who forgot that you need to also care about what you are making); Matrix Resurrections (I, and everyone I have talked to, agree the movie was "just fine" but really didn't need to exist; I think the first thirty minutes were great and wish the film had gone hard into a subversive deconstruction of the original trilogy rather than tease us with the concept then veer away to a confusing medley of traditional beats); and both Black Widow and Shang Chi were perfectly serviceable Marvel movies that show that the standard formula is getting stale. 

I can't say that any particular movie I saw this year was terrible, though, which doesn't mean there weren't any...I just got lucky at dodging them. Even Ghostbusters: Afterlife was a perfectly watchable movie with some good moments, it was just tonally off from its franchise origins and too busy emulating a brand of nostalgia I was entirely out of tune with. 

A lot of the good stuff that did come out this year was actually on TV....perhaps a future column on that later!