A new Traveller die

Hardcore Traveller fans probably recall the official Traveller dice: black d6's with Imperial starbursts surrounding micr-fontish numbers. A new die is being offered, designed by dice freak Kevin Cook, that may be of interest to the LBB fans. This new die allows you to randomly generate hexdecimals. Behold!



You can buy a dHex here.

Neato!

So for the last week or so I've been poking around a bit in Wikipedia, mostly looking up the kayfabe biographies of professional wrestlers. The rasslin' section is quite extensive. While I was flipping through pages I decided to see if anyone had updated the Wraeththu entry. Lo and behold, someone has added and external link to my very own Wraeththu Report. It's very nice to see links back to that, as it was a lot of work to put together.

Although in a previous post I was ragging on Kaissa, the Gorean chess variant, I've since considered that maybe the game ought to be allowed to stand on its own two feet apart from its dubious origin. I think maybe it's because I recalled a maxim from Old Man Murray: "If it was found that Hitler had designed a FPS in his final days in the bunker, I would give it a try and hope that it was good." To this end I am working on a Chess Variants page that examines the game in a vacuum, much the same way I approached Enochian Chess. Here's my attempt to put Kaissa on a graphical footing more in line with the mainstream of chess variants, if such a mainstream actually exists:

Unlockables: WTF?

Prior to getting this X-box thingy, my last serious go at video games was in college. Particularly with Doom, which I discovered just before finals one semester. That proved disastrous. As near as I can recall, there was one or two secret goodies in Doom, a gun called the BFG 3000 (kinda a full auto laser rocket launcher) and a godmode cheat. Prior to Doom most of my video gaming had been on the Atari 2600, the NES, and the C-64. I don't remember much in the way of unlockables in those games, unless you count accessing the next level of the board. Somewhere between Doom and the present unlockable features have gotten completely out of control. Here's my beef: I paid for the whole game, not just the portions that some numbnuts decided I should be able to see. Apparently someone thinks I need to earn the priviledge of accessing some parts of the game. Well guess what? I already earned that priviledge, with my money.

Now I understand that the sweet spot in any good game lies somewhere between 'godmode' and 'impossible to beat' but I think too much stuff is being locked up in some games these days. Case in point: Legends of Wrestling II. Despite the opinions to the contrary I am finding this to be a fun game to play. But all the stuff that starts locked is making me nucking futz. I have to unlock several of the venues? Why should I even care that much about which squared circle I have to go to in order to pound the snot out of Jimmy Snuka? But what really gets me is the number of characters that have to be unlocked. Sure they give you Hogan and Andre and Piper right out of the box. Making you unlock the Hulkster would probably set off riots. But dammit, I want to play Andy Kaufman and I want to play him right now!! His picture on the back of the box is what sold me this game, you stupid bastards! I could understand if you made him a super secret bonus character and I didn't know that he was on the disc until after I unlocked him. But this is just meanspirited teasing.

A Glimpse of FlatCon

So I actually made it over to FlatCon in Bloomington. Due to scheduling snafus I was unable to run my game on Friday, but I did get to stop by for a brief visit on Saturday. My sister and I played some Ticket to Ride with a friend of hers on the staff and the couple running the Noble Hero Press booth. These folks were hawking a d20 superhero game called Beyond Mere Mortals that probably would've made fat loot had it been released back at the height of the d20 boom. Here in the present I don't have much hopes for it to be a breakout success. The other vendors included the game & anime shop from Springfield (the one that comes to Winter War), a card & clicky man, someone selling fan bootlegs of radio and TV shows, Khyber Pass Games (their Alamo wargame, Deguello at Dawn, looked awesome), and one nice fellow hawking a chess variant called Kaissa.

This last case is a weird one. An itching in the back of my skull told me I had encountered Kaissa before (probably at the Chess Variants pages) but I couldn't remember anything about it. The guy at the booth was selling little booklets outlining the game rules for only 2 bucks, so I bought one. Turns out Kaissa is the chess variant described by John Norman in one of his Gor books! In case you are out of the loop, the basic premise of the Gor series is that swords & sorcery fiction needs more objectification of women. Almost all women on the planet Gor are property, pleasures slaves to be whipped and fucked at their master's command. And the women like it. I can be as kinky as the next guy, but Mr. Norman really seems to be attempting to argue that life on Gor is the way things ought to be. If you want to learn more about this stuff, go google it or check out the wikipedia entries or something.

The thing that I find most interesting about this whole situation is the fact that nothing at the booth or in the booklet or that the guy said gave any hint whatsoever about the connection to Gor. To the untrained eye Kaissa looked like any other chess variant doomed to obscurity. Which, as a game, is exactly what it is. I'm just kinda creeped out by the way the presentation of the game was completely divorced of its context. Not to cast unnecessary aspersions at Mr. Norman's character, but imagine this scenario: You find a new game. You love the game. You play it for years. Then someone tells you that the author of your now-favorite game is someone whom you consider despicable. Ivan the Terrible created Monopoly. Poker was invented by Torquemada. It turns out that E. Gary Gygax is a pen-name for Adolf Hitler. Etc. I understand that an artist and their work are not one and the same, but my sister was at that convention. 'Nuff said.

Back to FlatCon. Unsurprisingly I saw some familiar faces from Winter War. Jeff Kopec and Tom Pennell were seen in the boardgame and minis areas. Over at the RPGA section you could find James Holzhauer and Thom Hendricks. I'm sure there were others I knew present, but I was very deeply engaged with whupping Jenn at Ticket to Ride. You gotta understand, we have that sibling rivalry thing going and she's better than me. I have to work extra hard to beat her.

Let's also talk about the venue. Previous FlatCons had been held at Illinois Weslyan University, but the con outgrew the facilities they had been using at Weslyan. So this year the location was the Interstate Center, which is basically a big ass metal shed with concret floors and warehouse style lighting subdivided into large, sterile halls. It sucked. Probably the worst con venue I've ever been in. I can only think of three good things to say about it: there was plenty of room in the shed, the parking lot was right next to the place, and the chairs didn't suck. As to the bad, there was plenty. The average table was lamer than the worst table the Chancellor would give us for Winter War. The bathrooms were hidden in a labyrinth guarded by an irate minotaur. The concession stand was actually a band of brigands armed with kitchen utensils. I bought breakfast for Jenn and I. The sign said "biscuits & gravy". The gravy was fine, but apparently "biscuits" plural meant "a single English muffin, quarted". At the time, I thought the concessions stand was being operated by and for the benefit of the con, so I did not complain. Jenn reported later that the InterState Center was actually to blame. I understand that it is standard procedure to gouge me for three bucks for a pop that would cost 75 cents at a gas station, but this biscuit bait-and-switch is absolutely beyond the pale.

The con staff seemed like friendly people, but the operation seemed less organized than several other cons I have attended. Sign-ups for games used the put-your-name-on-the-wallchart method, which I find to be a pretty loosey-goosey way of doing things. I didn't really notice any staffers checking up on the games or noting which ones were actually running versus which ones were duds. I did overhear two staffers talk about counting the number of people in the room, and apparently attendance on Saturday morning was about 40 people. Jenn reports the hall got significantly busier later in the day after I left.

One final note: They had some LAN games and such set up. Jenn and I tried Dance Dance Revolution, with the screen projected onto the wall of the shed. That was fun, but I wasn't properly dressed for that kind of activity. I ended up bowing out early because the jeans I was wearing were either going to trip me up or split up the middle. Neither sounded like a fun addition to my con experience. Still, I am seriously considering getting DDR and some pads for the X-Box.

it's Latin for "laughter"

So I've decided to do my "Fantabulous Five" silly superheroes game using S. John Ross's excellent free comedy game Risus. I even signed up to join the International Order of Risus, thereby gaining access to the Risus Companion. Now Risus itself is only 6 pages, a powerhouse game packed into 6 pages, but still only 6 pages. I was a bit dubious about shelling out ten bucks for a 64-page supplement to a 6-page game, but let me tell you I was not disappointed. Risus is distilled awesome, but adding in the Companion only makes it better. Very little of it is actual rules add-ons, all of which are completely optional. Mostly the Companion looks at what makes the Risus system tick, sort of an extended designer's notes.

Anyway, here are some first draft stat blocks for three members of the Fantabulous Five:

Captain Ultra
caped ubermensch (4)
plumber (3)
member of the Arnim Zola Defamation League (3)
exemplar of truth, justice, & the American Way (1)

Hook: faints in the presence of fire, even a lit match

Blue Streak
suave superspy (4)
hi-tech rollerderby stunt jockey (3)
disco inferno (2)
former corporate sell-out (1)

Osprey
brash New Yorker (4)
winged wonder (3)
electronic tinkerer (2)
sports fan (1)

The number in parentheses represents a die pool of d6's. Standard Risus is exlusively d6 based. The optional rules allowing for other dice types were specifically designed for things like superpowers, but I don't thing I need them. The F5 crew are so low-powered the cubes ought to work just fine.

Woe unto me!

I have brought shame upon the House of Rouismoff. Today I bought Legends of Wrestling II, so that I would have a game to play on the X-box my wife won. I'm still learning the control interface. Clearly I should not have selected Andre the Giant as my wrestler. That was a mistake. For now the memory of the beloved Andre is sullied by a loss. A loss! A loss to Kerry Von Erich! What could I possibly do, what penance could I serve, to wipe this stain from the pages of wrestling history?