Grokking Mork Borg

 Recently I took time to pack up a lot of my books in anticipation of future moving, and in the process shuffled some of my collection to a stack of "must go" product. In the course of this, I reallocated precious shelf space to the myriad zinerpgs, chapbooks and other weird micro-indie-rpg products I have been slowly accruing, and among those lies Mork Borg.

I don't think it was specifically just Mork Borg which got me in to its strange blend of Dark Souls, Swedish Death Metal design and grim horror thematics. That stuff is cool, but not the reason. No, I think I have to blame some other artsy and weird RPGs for this moment of revelation in which the beauty of Mork Borg finally made sense to me: Mothership, certainly, but also Death in Space and Into the Odd, Screams Amongst the Stars, Into the Zone and Liminal Horror.* All great games, all with their own interesting design quirks and a desire to aim for minimalist mechanical design in hopes of exploiting inherent creativity and storytelling in the process. They are all spiritually OSR in the sense that the games want to exploit the players' inherent desire for challenge and need for unanticipated emergent gameplay as core to the experience, while also aiming for simple but modern rule structures that eschew procedural elements as much as possible. For these games, the intent Dungeon Crawl Classics aimed for, to capture that feel of being weird and different and surprising in the way D&D felt in 1974, is simply the starting state.

Mork Borg owes my sudden interest to the newish playrole.com VTT site, which appears to cater to theater of the mind and nonstandard RPGs extremely well, mixed with a moment, when I got some of my players into a room there with the ultra lite RPG Dead Malls, where rolling three main stats is one half of character generation, an the other half is picking three items of equipment. I realized that the liberating effect of having the minimalist, essential rules structure in place allowed me to do whatever I wanted with the rest of the game, which is about exploring urban decay in abandoned malls, and the hint of danger that comes from an era where the world online regularly invents monsters like slender man and siren head. 

It was then that I realized: Mork Borg is doing the same thing. The story of its world is all meant to inspire and evoke the genre it is depicting, sure, but the point is to have rules that inform the story, rather than the story being informed by the rules. If I am tired --and boy, am I tired!-- of D&D or Pathfinder with the hundreds of pages of exception based rules on every thing, then is Mork Borg, a shining blacklight in a sea of deep ones swimming ashore, with an entire magic system defined on a couple pages, and a setting where character growth of necessity is defined by how marvelously you manage to suffer and mutate due to the stress and pressure of  a dying fantasy world over time, if you don't just die outright. 

It's not for everyone, but it is definitely for me at this moment....as are its many cousins, such as the inimitable Mothership, Cy-Borg and so many more. I think, at last, I am going to start taking these games not just more seriously, but as maybe the zone I should start focusing on for a while, give the big fat-book RPGs a break for a bit, see if this is what my waning interest has needed to spark some interest in the hobby again.  

*I need to write more about and on all of these games. Liminal Horror is fascinating in and of itself. 

Transformers vs. Flash: Nostalgia Wars! (a Comparison Review of Two Venerable IPs)

 First, The Flash was a genuinely good movie, as superhero movies go, and I was overall quite impressed with it. I also like to note that I am an old DC fanboy and I have a lot of history with the IP in general, so it would have been hard for this movie to fail with me. That said....Ezra Miller was great in the movie, and it was fun to see Michael Keaton back as a retro Batman again. The core conceits of the movie captured the entire Flashpoint concept of the DC multiverse quite well. It had some rough spots, but overall this was a more generally enjoyable movie of its sort than the last few I have seen (with the caveat that Guardians of the Galaxy is unique in its role as a film that transcends its own medium). 

The week before we also caught Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. I spent a lot of that film's runtime just mildly bored as I watched the director try to merge the Michael Bay style of excess with the more human level of development found in the Bumblebee movie. It sort of fails at both styles as a result, but that's okay, because about 20% of the way in to the movie I started cataloging all of the little "childhood" logic moments that basically made this a kid's movie (or at least a teen film). It was operating on the fuel of a story told for kids, with the logic that makes sense to kids (and audiences with mild expectations). 

In the end, the new Transformers movie was a bust for me personally but it entertained my son (a bit; he's not really in to the Transformers). My wife liked it, but she is a bit younger than me. My entire Transformers experience is encapsulated in a time period from about 1983-1988 and is especially focused on those old "original generation" cartoons and the Marvel comics of the time. Anything after that point is more or less lost on me. She, however, grew up loving Beast Wars Transformers or whatever it is called, so she was looking forward to seeing more of those characters (even though all but two got precious few lines in the film).

Anyway.....I realized that the Transformers film was destined to fail for me because my nostalgia for the giant transforming robots is limited to a roughly 5-6 year window in my youth, after which I effectively left it behind. Indeed, my general lack of excitement for the modern movies is probably due to this; no modern conception of the film is going to come close to embracing my recollection of those early days, which is clouded by my own Transformers headcannon of collecting all those figures. The movies today need to reflect decades of the franchise, and the totality of a vast audience with many, many different takes. The only certainty is that they have successfully captured the inherent lack of overall logic or consistency in the many, many variations on The Transformers. It was never, ever the most consistent or plot-hole-free series (though the old comics certainly made an effort).

Meanwhile, The Flash is reflective of my obsession with both comics in general and DC in particular, especially Batman, which started when I was a tiny kid dressing up as the caped crusader, all the way to my thorough embrace of collecting DC following the Crisis on Infinite Earths, and my largely (mostly) successful effort to collect various DC comics for going on four decades now. My familiarity with the vast range of stories, characters and variations used to construct, like Frankenstein's monster, a movie out of the DC comic universe makes more sense to me. Seeing a return to an aged version of Batman from the 1989 film, now a reflection of a broken timestream by Barry Allen, is a genuine treat, as that movie informed much of my entertainment experience in 1989, along with the increasingly amazing Batman comics of the day, such as Dark Knight Returns and Arkham Asylum, both of which I used to write multiple papers on the transition of comics to film back then in one of my college classes, as well as an argument for how film noir had informed comics as a medium and Frank Miller in particular. So yeah, The Flash is not only better able to capitalize on the long history of its own universe, but I am also better suited to embracing it due to my own immersion.

It also helps that The Flash was just a better overall story with more vivacious actors who were given better lines (and Ezra Miller effectively steals every scene except when Keaton is present). If Transformers had better writing, I might be thinking more about how I enjoyed it.....but alas, it did not. 

Anyway, take this as a positive review of The Flash and if you are not a DC hater or burned out on superhero films I give it an A+! But for Transformers....go see if it you have kids who want to see it, too, but I can't say its really all that worth watching, except as pure family entertainment. 

ASUS ROG Ally vs. Steam Deck (Part 1)

 Yesterday my anticipated reserved ASUS ROG Ally came in for pickup, and I spent most of the day waiting patiently for the Windows 11 environment (and Armory Crate, and the firmware, and the bios...) to update, after which I loaded a variety of games from different platforms to test it out: Epic, Steam, Xbox so far, GOG coming soon.

You might be looking at one of these bad boys and wondering if the $699 pricetag is worth it over the equivalent Steam Deck for $629. Here's some observations I have made in the last day and a half of messing around with the ASUS ROG Ally to contrast with the Steam Deck, which I have had for about a year:

LINUX vs. WINDOWS: The Ally operates on Windows 11 with heavy use of the touch screen interface. Steam Deck, by contrast, is a Linux product, which has its own advantages and peculiarities. Right off the bat I can tell you that my many years of grudging experience working in Windows encironments means I find the Ally a more comfortable device to work with; I know what to do with it. The Linux environment of Steam Deck has been an interesting learning curve, and my greatest victory there has been getting some Epic games to work on it....while also failing to do so on almost every other level; my acumen for Linux is just not strong enough to figure out how to successfully do things like get Battle.net to work right, or run emulators, things Youtube Techies all seem to take for granted. Maybe my kid can figure it out, he's heavily into the modding scene these days.

So for now, the ASUS ROG Ally's Windows 11 based environment makes sense for me over Steam Deck, but it is nice to have an incentive to learn how to play in the Linux environment. Sort of.

GAME COMPATIBILITY: everything I have loaded so far has run without issue (after all updates were applied....there are a LOT of updates). I have several Epic Game store games running, Fortnite, Destiny 2, Outriders, Diablo IV, and so forth....all working great. By contrast, Steam Deck is running smoothly for the most part as long as its in the Steam environment and has met the Linux compatibility issues. Some games don't cut it, though, as they may be online titles that require anti-cheat software that doesn't play nice with Linux, or weird general compatibility issues with control schemes, graphics, or other issues. So far (but we'll speak more as I have time to properly test) the Ally is better here simply by virtue of supporting the OS most games are built for.

CONTROLS: For games with native console support so far both the Ally and Steam deck are totally fine. Both provide extensive options for community or custom setups, through the Armory Crate app and Steam's own support system respectively. All games I've tried on the Ally so far worked just fine with  controller support. Steam Deck has more than enough games without issue, but some games rated yellow or "?" on their platform may have....special issues with controller setups.

Issues both decks will face include games that are heavily mouse and keyboard dependent. Surprisingly I was able to get World of Warcraft running on the Ally, and it played surprisingly well (wouldn't team up on a raid with it, but for soloing? sure). I did not know that WoW now had controller support which you can enable using /console commands. 

Although the mouse pad on the Steam Deck is cool and works well for it, the only mouse movement (without attaching a mouse) on the Ally is the right analog stick. The Ally makes up for this by being very touchscreen friendly. The downside is the Windows environment is by default assuming a larger screen so touching the right area with big fingers can be frustrating sometimes. Windows 11 really needs a "portable touch edition" that works well. Win 8.1, the version used for the Surface, was a good start in that direction. 

GRAPHICS: Both of these machines look good, and I like that the Steam Deck I have uses etched glass to reduce glare. Ally does shine just a bit brighter as it seems to be able to run smoothly at a 1080p setting with higher average framerates and graphic settings. Must test more on this, though.

STORAGE AND CONNECTIVITY: So far great for both. Ally, once fully updated, has some blazing fast speeds on the UHS I and II microSD cards it supports, make sure you get at least the A2 designation (it's faster, trust me), but A1 is perfectly fine. Given both units have 512GB onboard storage, you will want to expand this a bit. 

ERGONOMICS: The Steam Deck is a clear winner here for comfort in holding and using it, but the ASUS ROG Ally is also pretty comfortable to use...just slightly less so due to being a bit more compact. The Ally is abotu the same size as my OLED Switch with the HORI Grips, and fits into the same size case. My official ASUS ROG Ally case arrives tomorrow, though, so I can let you know how that fares.

So far though, in terms of portability the Ally is ever so slightly more portable. 

BATTERY LIFE: time will tell! I'll discuss this more in Part II. I can say Steam Deck's battery life is rarely as good as I wish it were, and I suspect the Ally will probably be just as bad, but I will report more soon.

Okay, this is only Part I! More later, maybe next week, once I've had some time to really mess around with it.

PDF Round One: Fatality!!!!

 So after my post yesterday I had loaded my iPad Air with plenty of useful stuff for the D&D 5E game. Although I had all the D&D books along for the ride, the plan was to see if I could set up and use the iPad Air for some of the work. Here is what I discovered:

So yeah, turning on the device and using it creates an attention/focus vacuum that works in direct counterpoint to the social engagement of the table. I can't "multitask" good engagement at the same time as trying to focus on the device. I'd say this is a skill-based thing, but the truth is, we see evidence of this issue constantly. If we could do better at keeping our eye on things around us and on the screen at the same time then no one would ever complain about people looking at their phones in a park, or while driving, or in social circles, etc. 

It creates a palpable vacuum that is distinct, and as I tried to use the iPad to look stuff up, track initiative and so forth I felt it immediately. About the only thing it was worth doing was taking notes. The sad truth is, for me, it created a big speed bump in my ability to effectively gamemaster at the physical level. I could see being able to use this as a player, since players have "between turn" time to organize thoughts....the GM really doesn't have that time, you need to have your act together consistently, your attention on at all times and focused.

I haven't given up entirely. It may require practice and there are some apps I have for which I could see lots of handy utility (such as for initiative tracking). But for content look-up? Yeah, unfortunately this old dog found it faster and easier to just pull out the book and flip to the right page. Go figure.

From the Old Dog Learns New Tricks Dept: Going 100% PDF in a Live Game?!?!?

 It started this way: last night, as I hauled out two 30-40 lb. bags of books and campaign material, I laid it all out for the following morning so I had stuff ready for the game I run after work. I then sat down, and while perusing Drivethrurpg noticed a new compendium from Autarch for the Adventurer, Conqueror, King RPG. In looking at it I realized I had the ACKS core book and Player's Guide on my account as PDFs from many ages ago. It dawned on me that I really had no idea why I had ignored ACKS over other systems, beyond my tendency to go for physical books as a sign of official status, and had never had physical ACKS books in hand...therefore never messed with it before.

The thing is, three years of pandemic and post-pandemic existence got me quite used to using PDFs of books to prep and run games online. I am more likely to have and use the PDFs these days when running Roll20. The first time I really brought out the old tomes for actual use beyond the visceral satisfaction of reading a paper-based product was our return to live gaming a few months back. Yet, when preparing the live scenario at home I am still mostly accessing PDFs now, and only using physical books for which I have no PDF alternative.

That got me to thinking: here's ACKS, a game system I admit I have not done anything with due to the PDF-only status it holds in my collection, but it actually looks like a rather neat game (especially if you enhance it with some of the many cool supplements it has). What if I....and yes, this if crazy talk for an old Gen Xer like myself!....what if I just, kept it as a PDF collection but also tried to use it that way, too????

Madness!!!! But also....yeah. I looked at the other ACKS books I didn't have, and started shoveling print+PDF editions into the cart, and looked at the $150+ price tag to get physical copies of what I wanted. Then I noticed I could get a lot more for a mere $50 and have a very nearly complete collection of all the ACKS stuff without breaking the bank.

I have, like, 3 or 4 active current tablets that can all handle decent hi resolution copies of PDF without any speed issues. I have a very nice laptop which can do this. So....what's to prevent me from showing up with a modest bag of just the campaign stuff, GM screen, and maybe one or two main books I need, and use the iPad or laptop for the rest? Only my own hang up about physical media!

Anyway.....I am now thinking about trying this out tonight, at the game table, and my newly discovered obsession with the ACKS System may be next, to try and run a game which is 100% in my digital bookshelf. 

As a side note on ACKS: definitely a variation on old school, but I love that it uses proficiencies, and while its a class as race domain, the way ACKS does it is rather cool, with unique classes suited to the species in question (such as elven spellswords). I'll post more about that later, I imagine.

Borrowing from Film to Make Genre Bending Homage Games

 A few years ago I ran a Starfinder campaign for a bit that was genuinely fun. It was a group of four players who were all quite in sync, and a real blast. One of the elements I enjoyed was the method by which I extracted a useful Starfinder plot: I took the core elements of the movie Conan the Barbarian and put the entire thing in space. In stead of a cult of Set it was a cult to Typhon. Instead of Thulsa Doom we had a renegade vesk (lizard man) whose temple was not in some mountain range but a floating space station filled with abominable horrors and mysteries. Pilgrims would flock from across the galaxy to come here, and the vesk cultists wore white robes with yellow trim. I riffed on perhaps 70% of that movie to great effect, and the net result was a blast, as well as me getting to enjoy a plot and pacing of a film I knew well, transcribed into a sci-fantasy setting. 

That mixture of "movie-inspired plot/theme" mixed with a genre outside the scope of the source material has got me to thinking about other ways you could blend movies with unusual genre combinations. Any of this would work well in multigenre systems such as GURPS, Basic Roleplaying, Savage Worlds or Cypher System. Some examples that come to mind include:

The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2) but as an historical adventure set in the West Indies or maybe on the Silk Road. A lone trader or small group who journey the world of the 16th century stumble across a caravan or remote fortress besieged by raiders, seeking an incredible treasure;

Air Force One (the one with Harrison Ford)! but its a scifi Traveller-style setting on board a starship when foreign (alien?) invaders attack to seize the emperor of man;

Blackhawk Down, but its a fantasy setting about a team of dragon or wyvern knights who find themselves trapped in enemy territory during a brutal war;

Poltergeist, but it's set in a post-apocalyptic future where the house's "incursion" is caused by the horrific aliens/nanites/mutants that live outside the complex, which is the last bastion of civilization;

The Truman Show, but its literally a world focused on any other two genres you can pick outside of the great dome: maybe it's scifi (a small worldship and maybe kidnapped by aliens), or post-apocalypse (the PCs are kept pets by robots who maintain an imaginary world for them), fantasy (cruel subjects of a mad wizard's experiment), or even modern day, but its all part of some bizarre top secret experiment;

Alien, but its in the 1720's in the Caribbean and the eponymous entity is actually a loasummoned by a houngan/bokor found in a mysterious derelict ship;

The Thing, but its a realm of sword & sorcery and the imperial outpost is at the edge of the known world, protecting from unknown monsters when a lone rider on a horse chasing a hound arrives at their doorstep from the watch tower 100 miles away....;

The Matrix, but its a demonic hellscape where demons or devils have trapped humanity in an ageless sleep, dreaming whatever nightmares are conjured up, to which a small few awaken to serve as resistance fighters against the abyssal hordes. Alternatively, the world of the dream is fantastical itself, but the reality is that humans who awaken find they are part of a society of magical godlike beings who use the deliberate limitations of the matrix/dream for their own amusement, and discard awakened humans like chattel; the humans, of course resist!

Anyway, you get the idea! The key elements to make this work are to find a solid basis for the story/plot outline from a good movie, then make it unrecognizable with the trappings of a different genre. For this to work, the dichotomy needs to be stark when contrasted; for example, in Starfinder when I borrowed from Conan the Barbarian no one got the feeling it seemed familiar to them because it was using trappings of the setting, and comparisons (such as Thulsa Doom's compound) to the movie were parallel but not exact (mountain temple vs. floating haunted space fortress). 

Of the examples I provided above, a fine example would be The Truman Show, in which maybe not unlike the classic Dreampark novels maybe the Truman Show itself in this setting is a devised world using technology to ape magic, and people dropped in to it are deliberately treated to forget who they are; when the unreality of the universe becomes apparent, the PCs eventually expose it for a lie, only to discover that the real world outside is so much stranger!

Level Up! A5E vs. Pathfinder 2E

 In consideration of my earlier post I realized, after some thought, that I had talked myself in to playing a known quantity (Pathfinder 2E) over the lesser known and intriguing Level Up! A5E. In truth, I really should lean in to trying out Level Up* if only because it is such an interesting reimaginig of 5th edition, and one which I think will be a more generally satisfying experience to everyone at the table. The nuance and additional layers of complexity that add to story elements (not merely rules) introduced to 5E in Level Up is really interesting and I absolutely want to see that in action.

I have proposed a PF2E game for some future off-night, though, to those in my player groups who are keen on it. We'll see. But honestly.....whichever group needs a shift first (and probably the Wednesday game night to be honest), Level Up should be the next thing I propose.

*Dropping the "!" and by the way, Morrus really needs to learn to name his game systems with better titles!

The Conundrum of Buy-In and Very Similar Game Systems

 I have been thinking about how, when and where I will run a future campaign using one of the D&D-like rule sets, and realized that this is probably to some degree a bit futile. One of the problems is a simple matter of buy-in: while I have all the Level Up! Advanced 5E rules at hand, only one of my other players has also invested in it, and it might be a tough sell to the multiple players in my group who buy lots of regular D&D books and have D&D Beyond subscriptions. Would they give it a try? Sure. Will they enjoy it as much as if they were playing straight 5E? Maybe....maybe not. The optimistic view is that if I run it and they enjoy it, they may decide to become invested. The pessimistic side recognizes after decades of gaming what a slog it can be to convince players to try something they were not already aware of. We'll see how it goes. 

I want to try Level Up! A5E soon because it's essentially already what One D&D plans to be: a revision of the current rules with an emphasis on new and interesting features and approaches to the core mechanical conceits of 5E. Once One D&D is out, I predict that the ongoing success or failure of the D&D-variants (such as future Tales of the Valiant from Kobold Press, as well as Level Up! A5E and other prospects like Shadowdark RPG down the road) will depend on precisely how they manage to distinguish themselves from the competition. Given that Level Up! A5E is already here, I'd like to get a chance to see how it fares before the tidal wave of future competitors arrives along with One D&D.

There's also the Pathfinder 2E Revised situation looming for later this year. I can't decide if I will buy in to it or not, though knowing me, I probably will. If I'm lucky PF2E will fix all the little gripes I have with PF2E in its current format, and at least make it easier to sell to players. Until then, I don't know what to do or where to go with it....PF2E is a game I like running as a GM, but its a hard sell to a lot of my players for precisely the problem I mentioned earlier: we've all had a chance to play it, and not as many people like it as don't. PF2E is super GM friendly, but it caters to a certain type of player over others, and therefore is not nearly as fun and interesting to play when you're on the other side of the table unless you grokk (and like) the minutiae of the character development systems.

If I did find a gang of pro PF2E players though, I would totally run it again. Just saying! But in the mean time, I am going to make the Level Up! A5E pitch to my players, probably sooner than later. I think the live group would be the best choice, though Roll20 has a decent Level up! character sheet. A Roll20 game I ran with my son went pretty well. We devised some characters based on one of his favorite subjects (Mortal Kombat) and tried out the combat with an off-brand Scorpion and Sub-Zero, and it was quite fun. Still, I'm loving the concept of live play whenever possible, and currently the Roll20 game on Saturday is in a new low level D&D 5E game, so suddenly jumping to Level Up! A5E might feel a bit redundant there.

In fact....that redundant part I mention is the real problem all of the off-brand D&D competitors will face. Time will tell, I guess, as to which (if any) manage to claw their way to a level of competitive status. 

The Nightmare of Moving as a RPG Collector

 A brief gripe post, always fun those! I am preparing for a possible move (looks like we may be closing on a house, all pieces seem to be falling in to place as intended), and so I have been packing up box after box of books. Excluding normal non-gaming books I must have four dozen banker box and magazine box sized boxes full of books. It's a lot. For the record, I am 52 years old. If you are younger, I warn you that moving does not get better with age! It gets worse. You will want to hire people to do this stuff, trust me.

Anyway, it's really made me think a bit on how much crap I have, and why I have it. These days I've been investing my time in a limited set of games, and in perusing the many boxes I have packed, I realize I have hundreds of books that I think, at this point in life, I can be assured I may never use (or even read) again. In fact, setting aside "books I am using or know I will use" I suspect I can fill maybe 4-5 boxes at most with "books that have pure sentimental value or a collectibility that transcends my desire for reduction."

Time for another house cleaning! Maybe I can find some other homes for some of these books before I move.

Tunnels & Trolls acquired by Rebellion

 EN World has the full story here. Rebellion in the UK now owns T&T and the other Flying buffalo IPs. This is likely good news, as the ownership of T&T by an obscure holding company a couple years back looked like an odd move destined to kill T&T. Now it looks like T&T will have a new chance at life, and I happen to know it has a pretty decent following in the UK, too. 

I went to Rebellion's site to see what they were all about. There's a Judge Dredd RPG mentioned, and something called Adventure Presents that looks sort of like the classic solo game books of yore.

They have an FAQ there talking about what's planned for Tunnels & Trolls, which includes:

--New planned releases, and an entirely new edition of the game;

--promise to let fan content continue (but see below);

--compatibility with old content is left as a question mark;

--existing content will remain available on Drivethrurpg as PDFs.

I had spoken with a couple people who indicated that there were active takedowns of published T&T compatible third party content going on at Onebookshelf sites. I don't know for sure if this is true or not, as I will be honest, I haven't kept up with what's been going on with 3PP for T&T in recent years. Maybe this was due to the planned sale, some one from the old ownership at the holding company tidying up to make the sale look more lucrative? Maybe Rebellion? I have no idea.

Still, its good to see T&T has a possible publishing future. Unfortunately it may now enter the realm of "Games that grew away from their creators" as I have no evidence, yet, that Ken St. Andre, Steve Crompton or any of the other T&T alumni may be involved in whatever Rebellion has planned....but who knows! Time will, as always, tell.