I went to Savanah and ran a game of The Strange

Last weekend I visited The Guild Hall in Savannah, GA for its grand opening, and to help them celebrate, run games, and sign books.

During the game, I'm afraid I had to call a player out... as a betrayer! That's what you get for putting on devices that optically edit your memories. Sure, it's cool to have a nimbus that you can collimate into a beam of lased destruction, but at what cost?

But in the end, all was forgiven. A breach of Ardeyn up to Earth was sealed, Father Foss got his just rewards, and none of the player characters were shuffled off this mortal coil. Great fun, in fact, was had by all, including me.

I provide another perspective of my experience at The Guild Hall here, at the MCG blog:

http://www.montecookgames.com/mcgs-bruce-cordell-visits-the-guild-hall/

MCG at PAX

Come see me, Charles Ryan, and Batgirl at PAX Prime this weekend (Aug 29 - Sept 1, 2014); we're exhibiting on behalf of MCG. We're sharing a space with Green Ronin Publishing, so if you do stop by, you'll also get to see Chris and Nicole! (As an added incentive, note that on the days Batgirl is able to attend, she'll be cosplaying various characters from Numenera and The Strange. Promises to be some cool stuff!)

We'll be in the same room Green Ronin exhibited last year, in room 208 on the 2nd level (see map--BUT NOTE, we'll be in room 208, not 209. The map is a lie! On the other hand, we're the next room over). We're in the tabletop game area, so simply go up the south escalators to the 2nd floor and take a right to find us.

DRAGONCON ON EAST COAST
Meanwhile Monte and Shanna are winging their way east to DragonCon so say hi to them if you're there instead!  They have official signing details for Dragon Con!

Title: Autograph Sessions
Time: Sat 1-2 pm 
Location: International Hall South - Marriott

Go and see them. they'd love to sign your books, decks, fan kits, oddities, or anything else that you have! So bring them your goodies! (They also like cookies).

Best Game in Years

I'm back from Gen Con 2014. How was it, you ask? In a word, fabulous.

Many things contributed to Gen Con's fabulousness this year, including the many honors accorded to MCG (10 ENnies), the launch of a game near and dear to me (The Strange), as well as the rush I always get attending a convention filled with people who love games and geeking out as much as I do. (Plus, the entire MCG team hit it out of the park, as Monte describes here.) As it happens, it was also Batgirl (Torah Cottrill)'s first Gen Con, which was also grand.

However, the thing that really pegged the fabulous meter for Gen Con 2014 was that I also ran an RPG that has the distinction of being the most fun I've had GMing a game IN YEARS.

Really?

Yeah, really. Here's why.

We wanted the game I ran (and the game Monte ran for Numenera) to be a premiere experience for the players. The players were people who either made a high-level Kickstarter pledge to be there, or who made a winning bid during our charity auction to be there.

As it turned out, some of them were such amazing people that a couple had also volunteered to GM other games of The Strange at Gen Con. Before we discovered the overlap, I was also slated to run the same adventure (Eschatology Code) for the premiere game. We worried the experience wouldn't be as premiere for those players who were also running the same adventure themselves. So I wrote a new adventure especially for them called The Hum: Welcome to the Grand Bavarian (The Hum will also soon become available to the MCG Asset Team to run as demos across the world).

Did I mention these were amazing players? Everyone there was excited and pumped to be at the table, an experienced RPG player, smart, funny, and just as importantly, they were all gracious and pleasant people. (EDIT: One was so amazing that we hired her. I'm of course talking about Darcy Ross.)

Finally, it probably doesn't come as any surprise that over the past several years, every game I've run was a playtest. (Either DMed when I was still working as a designer on 5E, or GMed after I joined MCG and started designing The Strange.) If you've ever playtested a game, you know the drill. Play ten minutes, then stop when someone points out a problem. Hash that out for 30 minutes before you get to play another ten minutes or so before someone else calls a halt to deal with some new irregularity in the game. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat...

Fast forward to the convention. The Hum was the first RPG session I've game mastered IN YEARS that wasn't a playtest. It was just a regular RPG session. It was filled with players who weren't there to polish the game. They were there to entertained by me and The Strange. I hope they were.

Gen Con 2014 Schedule

I'll be at the MCG booth (booth 1653) at Gen Con at the following times (Monte Cook will be in the booth at the same time as me, which is convenient if you're looking for dual signatures on your copy of The Strange!):

Thursday: 10a-Noon, 2p-3:15p 

Friday: 10a-Noon 

Saturday: 2p-4p 

Sunday: 2p-4p

These are the times you can and should come by and say hello, or if you want something signed, this is when I'll be ready to oblige. I'm happy to sign anything, new or old. (Including copies of the D&D 5th edition, also out in time for Gen Con!)

I'll also be at the following seminars:

The Numenera seminar is on Thursday at 1p-2p 

The Strange launch event is on Saturday at 11a-1p

Both of those two events require tickets (but they're free). 

Welcome to The Strange

The launch date for The Strange RPG is in August! As that date approaches, +Monte Cook and I will be writing a series of blog posts about the game, including this first one: Welcome to The Strange!

http://www.montecookgames.com/welcome-to-the-strange/

Lead Artist Matt Stawicki

June Kickstarter Message to Backers of The Strange

The Strange corebook is approaching completion. It went to press last week, and we just turned over the final proofing revisions to the printer. So it’s a good time to give our backers a taste of how the fulfillment process will work. This process kicks off in July, so we’ll share the specific details in our next Kickstarter update, but here are the broad strokes.

Spine Tingle: Is it a relic of a tailed ancestor?

Every time I'm somewhere near the edge of a long fall, a tingle descends my spine. It's always happened, so I haven't really thought much about it. Some people tell me they don't get that feeling in high places, though others do. Recently I wondered why.

And I came up with a hypothesis: the spine tingle at edges might be a relic of a tailed ancestor that had an autonomic response to prevent falling out of a high tree, which was to curl its tail around a branch. Since I don't have a tail, all I get is an atavistic spine tingle.

So what's next? I know! A series of experiments generating data to help prove or disprove my hypothesis. You know, science! However, that sort of experiment would probably requires funds, fMRI machines, and monkeys. Three things I'm fresh out of. (Though maybe I don't need monkeys--the ancestor was likely pre-hominid. But I like this picture.)

Does anyone know of someone looking for a doctoral research thesis topic in genetic anthropology? I might have something. And of course, if it turns out this is a subject already studied and researched by someone else, I'd love to know that, too.

Using Real-World Photography As Adventure Prompts

GMs are always on the lookout for good adventure prompts, and sometimes those inspirations come by way of great fantasy or science fiction art. But why limit yourself to merely make-believe when it comes to inspiring ideas to stun and amaze your players? Especially when the real world offers a wealth of wonderful and idea-generating locations, as gathered into collections by photographers and various other online curators over the years.

I’ve located a short selection of such photography collections, and provided a few adventure prompts to go along with one of the pictures presented in each link. The adventure prompts are suitable for Numenera, but also for The Strange (so keep this link in your bookmarks).

Photography collections with prompts: http://www.montecookgames.com/using-real-world-photography-as-adventure-prompts/

How Story Gives Life to Game Mechanics

Game mechanics are meant to simulate and model elements of a story to create an RPG. 

A story without game mechanics can’t be an RPG. Without game mechanics of some sort, you haven’t got an RPG, though you may have an interesting narrative. So mechanics, yeah; you need them, and preferably good ones. But sometimes mechanics are over-valued, which isn’t great. In fact, an RPG that puts game mechanics before the story that the mechanics are meant to simulate begins to lose its way.

Here’s why:

 http://www.montecookgames.com/how-story-gives-life-to-mechanics/

Guest Blog over at MonteCookGames.com

My latest blog entry, "Ordering Art for Games" is over at MonteCookGames.com, where I describe the process from a game designer POV. In addition to one of first art requests I ever made, way back in 1995, I also give a look behind the scenes for The Strange corebook we're getting in art for as I type this!

http://www.montecookgames.com/ordering-art-for-games/

A Brief History of Me and Computers

A short trip down digital memory lane, courtesy Batgirl Claus getting her son Sebastian a refurbished Mac laptop for the holiday, which got me thinking... I've had a lot of computers in my life!

1983 - 1986 
Apple IIe and "dumb" terminals
My parents got an Apple IIe for the household. Around the same time, I learned to program in BASIC, courtesy of our high school computer program (which involved a room of terminals which connected to a mainframe across the street I never saw). This was a magic time, one filled with several different text based D&D-style adventure games I wrote (and various other programs assigned by the school). On the IIe, I also played Sir Tech's Wizardry, Digdug, did my first writing with a wordprocessor called Bankstreet Writer, and played with the Koala pad, which was sort of a precursor to the mouse (and a drawing pad, to boot).

I'd be remiss not to mention the Commodore 64 owned by my friend Brett during this period. Many hours playing Ultima and some video game emulating the Hunt for Red October...

1986 - 1990
Macintosh Plus
College was an oddly computer-lite period of my life, save for a few times I accessed the computer lab in the library to write a paper. They had Mac Pluses, and I was enthralled by the 'point n click' elegance of it.

1992-1995

Macintosh Classic
Variety of PCs using Windows 3.0
The time had come--I wanted my own computer. My pal Monte had a Mac Classic and printer he wanted to sell. This was when I really learned how to experiment on an operating system to learn all its in and outs.
 
But in 1992, I started work at NeXstar (originally Nexagen) Biopharmaceuticals. One aspect of my job required spending a lot of time on a variety of PCs hooked up to DNA synthesis machines. Which was, honestly, far more computer than was required, but they were convenient for input. Right around 1992 was when the internet was really getting going, and ALL these computers were hooked straight into it. Which meant that during my free time (and nights and weekends) I immersed myself in MUDs and MUSHes (and learned a fair bit about coding C-style languages in the process).


1995-1997
Macintosh Performa 6300
TSR hired me (supposedly to code MUDs and MUSHes, branded for D&D), but nope. I stayed on to write D&D the old fashioned way, and used the Mac Performa to do it.

1998-2000
Gateway PC computer GP6-350 pentium II 
Wizards bought TSR in 1997! The first computer they started me out with was a ... I don't recall, sadly. Some sort of Mac I'm imagining. But probably the reason I don't recall is that I'd decided it was high time I buy another home computer, one with the chops to play "real" games. Which meant it was time to buy a PC. I chose a Gateway with 3 gigs of hard drive space! This cost a cool 3 grand. But I got a lot of enjoyment out of it.

2000-2002
iBook 300 Tangerine Clamshell
Then those beautiful iBook clamshells came out, and I HAD to have one. And I did. My first lap-top, and still the one I love the most--it was ergonomically perfect. It had a retractable handle!  (I still have this computer, actually, though it's stored away for some future project when I retrofit it with modern hardware.)



2002
iBook G3 Snow
I can't recall why the clamshell wasn't cutting it anymore. I may have become a crazed computer buyer, or maybe the comercials got me. Maybe it was the firewire, and I needed better hardware to make movies? Maybe the jump to OS X. That might be it. But it wasn't enough, because a year later, I gave it away to a friend (who I believe still uses it today to serve music for his home theatre system).

2003-2008
Powerbook G4 Aluminum 17 inch
I'd definitely drank the Kool-aide. I was so enamored of the concept of this machine that I PRE-ORDERED it. I'd never done that before. I even shot a short film to commemorate the unboxing! However, this computer lasted me 5 full years, when the hard drive gave out. I sold it for a few hundred dollars, remarkable given that it didn't work.

2008-2013
Macbook Pro 15 inch
I loved me some Powerbook, so even though they changed the name, I bought a replacement when my previous one gave it. I used it myself for 5 years, and it is still being used in this household, being almost daily fought over by Batgirl's kids ;-). But in 2012, I wanted something more modern, and more portable

2012 - to present
Macbook Pro 13 inch
The screen's smaller than my 17 inch, but I have a 2nd monitor set up from the home office where I do most my work. Right now, though I have it set up next to Batgirl's 17 inch Macbook pro unibody, and it looks a bit tiny. But it still gets the job done. I'm hoping for 5 years of solid service like the last 2 (though as I say, the last macbook is still going!)

Thank You! THE STRANGE is coming!

Thank you again for your support of The Strange! We’ve said it many times, but it’s still completely true: We’re utterly blown away by the interest and enthusiasm that you have shown for our project over the last five weeks. It sincerely means a lot to all of us.

Thanks for backing, and for making The Strange such a big, vibrant game line. We’ll never forget that you helped make that happen!

Check out Charles Ryan's thank you message on behalf of all MCG!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1433901524/the-strange-a-tabletop-rpg-by-bruce-cordell-and-mo/posts/671947