Two Local Items of Note

1) The Winter War preregistration booklet is now available for download here. Winter War is Champaign-Urbana's annual gaming convention and one of the oldest gaming cons in the country. This year's War is February 3rd to 5th.

2) Big "We hate annual inventory" sale at the Dragon's Table today. The used crap in the milkcrates by the front door is 75% off. The used crap on the shelves and "red dot" items are 50% off. Most of the rest of the store is 25% off. I'm pretty sure TODAY IS THE LAST DAY OF THIS SALE.

Well, I did it

After much himming and hawing I've launched a second blog. Travellers & Traders is meant to be sort of a "Captain's Blog" for some solo merchant missions using Classic Traveller. Although I'm letting all you nice folks who stop by here know about it, the real intended audience for this new blog is just me. I'll try to keep my posts interesting for fellow enthusiasts to the tramp merchant approach to Traveller, but anybody beyond this narrow audience will probably be bored to tears. Consider yourself both duly notified and warned.

David Deitrick Mini-Shrine

Some of you already know of my appreciation for gaming art from my Erol Otus Shrine (which desperately needs an update). Now that I've finally blogged about Encounter Critical, I can pay proper homage to another truly great artist: David R. Deitrick. Mind you, Deitrick had absolutely nothing to do with the amateur line drawings that disfigure EC. Some of you may recall a couple months ago when, apropos of nothing, I devoted a gameblog post to several graphics of that bounty hunter robot known as IG-88. What I didn't say back then was that the whole point of the post was to provide reference drawings for Mr. Deitrick to produce this for me:
That's a David Deitrick character portrait of one of the PCs for my upcoming Encounter Critical convention game. I call him IG-666, and he is a Robot Warlock. Ain't he awesome?

You see, I happen to be on friendly terms with Mr. Deitrick's son. You may know him by his RPGnet name, Random Goblin. The Goblin and I seem to have pretty similar gaming tastes, and given the material he puts on his blog, The Goblin's Lair, we're pretty much on the same page politically as well. I find the latter fascinating because RG, like his father before him, is a military man. The usual perception these days is that serious soldiers vote Republican but from time to time I find people like the Goblin who don't fit this mold. When I solicited the talented folks of RPGnet looking for a photoshop of IG-88 in pointy hat, RG suggested that maybe his dad could draw one up for me. That was awfully nice of both Mr. Goblin and his illustrious father.

Anyway, enough name-dropping and personal yackety-shmackety. Back to David Deitrick and his excellent art. For those of you who weren't gaming in the eighties the importance of Deitrick's work can hardly be overstated. I don't think it's exaggerating to say that he single-handedly defined the look of 80's sci-fi gaming. His paintings graced the cover of many products from the key sci-fi lines of the era: Star Trek (the FASA version), Doctor Who (also the FASA version), and Starter Traveller. I'm hard pressed at this moment to recall a Deitrick cover for any BattleTech products of the era, but his interior illos included some aerospacecraft in the original BattleTech Technical Readout and many of the fabulous color plates inside Mechwarrior.

In sci-fi gaming it's always easy to depict bug-eyed monsters or cool spaceships or flashy equipment, but Deitrick always did an excellent job of keeping the human element front and center. For the Starter Traveller line and Mechwarrior this was an especially important task, because before his work appeared original Traveller and BattleTech were largely faceless, with concentration on the machines (starships and giant robots respectively). Consider here how Deitrick integrates a cool uniform, an attractive woman, and a sci-fi gun. With a spaceship thrown in the background for good measure.Original Traveller, you may recall, had no art on the cover of the original books, just a single stripe of color on a black background. Those Little Black Books still look pretty slick to me, but when GDW rolled out Starter Traveller to attempt to capture some of the D&D Basic money they decided to go with some killer art on the cover. Deitrick was responsible for the cover art on the Starter boxed set and many other Starter Traveller products. I'm fond of his art on the cover of Alien Module 2: K'Kree, even though Mr. Deitrick names it as one of his least favorite in a 1987 interview with Stardate magazine (volume 3, number 6). Rather than display a cover the artist doesn't like, here's another one of his Trav pieces that I enjoy:

Again you can see how Deitrick includes all the necessary stuff for a product like Alien Realms. There are aliens in the picture. You can tell from the gun and space city that it's a sci-fi product. But ultimately a human story is being told here and that's one of the reasons I think Deitrick's work is so special. He's got a storyteller's and gamemaster's approach to his work. Here's how he put it in the '87 interview:

Every one of my paintings usually has a story behind it, too -- I'm talking about my non-pay stuff...
I've got one painting in particular that shows an Indian look, a very native American-looking guy with a real light rifle and a motorized hang glider over the top. And yeah, it's fun, it's got a nice feel, but what people don't realize is that character is out of an alternate universe that I've thought up all by myself. I'm a real big alternate-history nut.

(Incidentally, what's up with the color selected for the title? Even with the actual book in hand it's only vaguely legible.)

Two other signature Deitrick effects are on display here. Like my man Otus he's not afraid to use purples and violets. And Deitrick often incorporates abstract elements into his pieces. As a lad I did not appreciate Mr. Deitrick's use of the abstract. I think I was overly influenced by the school of thinking that gaming art should be photorealistic depiction of fictional events. As I've matured more fanciful artists like Otus and Deitrick have grown more and more fascinating to me while the Elmores et al. of the world grow more tiresome. Below is the Deitrick cover of a book I purchased when it was first published in '87. Back then I just didn't get it but today I consider it much cooler than a standard photorealistic approach.I think the three pieces above give you a pretty good idea of how Deitrick operated in the 80's, but there's a lot of other good art of his out there. You can see some of it by following the links on his credits over at the Pen & Paper database. For more recent Deitrick work check out David R. Deitrick Design, his official web presence.

One other thing I ought to note about Mr. Deitrick's work is his treatment of women. He does great work with the female form but every such piece I've seen avoids the pitfall of unnecessary titillation. My favorite black and white Deitrick piece is a good example:

Like the Mechwarrior art above the subject is dressed appropriately for the milieu. And neither the pose nor the proportions show the prurience so prevalent in gaming art. Not that I'm against gratuitous displays of female anatomy, it's just that Deitrick impresses me with the way he can depict a beautiful woman in a classy and respectful manner. Even the color plate in Mechwarrior depicting a female mech pilot in her rather scanty cooling vest and panties ensemble avoids the usual traps accompanying such subject matter: the pose and facial expression are that of a woman in her work clothes taking a coffee break. Given the rest of the field of women in gaming art, that's an interesting artistic decision.

Bonus Linkage:

Random Goblin's Reliquary, CafePress shop selling T-shirts adorned with Deitrick cover art (among other things)

Christmas among the Geeks

Every family has its own idiosyncratic Christmas traditions. Here's a couple from my family.

Once many Christmases ago I decided that the Christmas tree was the perfect place for my G.I. Joe action figures to take up sniper positions, and so I would conceal a couple of Joes in the branches. This became a sort of Christmas tree decorating tradition but one year no little army dudes were handy but my Hydra from the official AD&D toyline was available, so it took up residence among the candy canes and tinsil. As a teenager I went through a period where I thought I was "too old" for toys, but each December the hydra continued to lurk among the foil icicles. We ended up storing the hydra with the Christmas decorations and when I went off to college my parents started putting the little critter in the tree for my benefit. Well, I'm in my 30's now and have a kid of my own, but when we travel to the grandparents at Christmas there's always a certain five-headed beastie waiting to greet us:
When my in-law's get together it's a gamer-rich environment. My brother-in-law and his sons and my sister-in-law and her hubby are all gamers of one stripe or another. So after the Christmas meal is consumed and presents are opened we inevitable play a game of some sort. Usually it's something from the excellent Brittannia/Vinci/History of the World family of games, where each player directs the migrations and conquests of several whole nations and each turn can represent centuries of time. The past two years we've done History of the World. This time we even got together two days in a row for two different games. I did horribly on the first game, as a year between playings is too long for me to able to hop back on the saddle. I'm quite proud of my accomplishments in the second game. I got the Romans and did quite well (establishing the Empire in India, South East Asia, and China!). As anyone who has played History knows, the guy who pulls the Roman Empire has a target on his back for most or all of the rest of the game. Despite being handed both the Inca/Aztecs and Americans I managed to squeak out second place on tie-breakers. Huzzah!

Let's talk about Encounter Critical

It is only right that I start this thread with one of Dr. Rotwang's contributions to the Overly Honest RPG Book Covers, an excellent thread at RPGnet inspired by SomethingAwful's photoshop-fueled hooliganisms.

I think it was back in September or October that I first mentioned the fact that Encounter Critical has stolen my heart from World of Synnibarr. Don't get me wrong, I still like World of Synnibarr more than any sane RPG enthusiast should. But EC manages to cram into its 32 digest-sized pages almost as much sheer loopiness as contained in Synnibarr's nearly indigestible 500 page girth. Encounter Critical is old (the second revised edition was published in '79) and mind-numbingly obscure, perhaps not quite as obscure nowadays as Excursion into the Bizarre but pretty damn close.

So what makes Encounter Critical so special? The first reason is the author's proclaimed devotion to "true scientific realism" in a roleplaying game that features apes and elves and "klengons" and robots and magic spells and anything else you want to include. Crazy. The random mutations table that can allows you to "ignore gravity" or gives you "edible excretions" stands as People's Exhibit Number One that Scientific Realism never met Encounter Critical. Yet designers Hank Riley and Jim Ireland have the balls of steel necessary to say in the introduction "If you are a newcomer, you can enjoy the assurance that this is the only game we know to include true scientific realism in every system."

Then there's the fact that this game was kitchen sink before kitchen sink was cool. You really, truly can play a cyborg-ape ninja/pirate with no tweaking of the rules necessary. Lots of games allow you to play anything, whether we're talking about generic systems like GURPS or chaotic freak-outs like Rifts. But Encounter Critical liberally rips off the author's favorite geek fodder and, with only the thinnest of veneers, smashes them all into the same game. So Tolkienian elves and dwarves can hobnob with coldly logical "vulkins", aggressive "klengons", and wookies. In this class-based system your PC can be a standard swords-&-sorcery Warrior or Warlock or Criminal (thief). But you can also seek out new lifeforms and new civilizations as a Pioneer or cloud minds and levitate stuff as a Psi Witch (read: jedi) or you can play a Doxy, "the class of harlots, concubines, pleasure Robodroids, and go-go dancers." The monsters you fight range from Bee Girls to Godzillas to Orcs to Smog Monsters. The dazzlingly goofy possibilities are endless. It's like if Synnibarr is a slightly-nauseating beer buzz then Encounter Critical is a full-on Nyquil-induced hallucination.

The point of the game, like all the best early RPGs, was to "have adventures". And EC gives you some nifty little tools to accomplish that end. Take the sample campaign map, for instance. The art is extremely crude (I could draw this map myself) but the "Mighty Land of Vanth" is chock-full of nifty places to go. You ever look at an RPG map (or one in a book or a real map for that matter) and see a place that just begs to be visited? I sometimes find myself pointing at spots on maps and saying out loud "I'd love to visit that place." Maybe it's one of the ruins markers on the Darlene map of Oerth. Or maybe I want to peer behind the Black Curtain on the TNE sector map. The Encounter Critical map is chock full of these kind of places. What adventurer worth their salt wouldn't want to find out what dangers await in the Holdings of the Zombie Princess or to visit the Ape Sultans?

Another great idea that makes the game all about the adventure is the advancement system. You have experience points and levels just as Gygax and God intended, but to qualify to advance a level your PC must also do something new and interesting. Warriors must defeat a foe of equal level using a new weapon, either one they haven't wielded in the past or an entirely new weapon of their devising. Warlocks must add a new spell to their spellbook. Criminals must come up with and execute a new illegal scheme. Doxies must find and seduce a new and more influential client. Pioneers must discover a new place or a new route between known locations. All this sounds like a great way to put the ball into the players' court. "Hey, I've got enough XP for level 4. Would you guys help me rob a bank?"

Finally, the slam dunk for Encounter Critical's greatness is its insane stat/skill system. Most of the nine attributes are pedestrian items like Dexterity and Strength, but there's also oddballs like also Adaptation and Robot Nature. Each of these stats are generated using the classic 3d6 plus racial modifier method. You then consult a series of charts to find out the percentage ratings of your skills. With a few exceptions for class-based specialty skills, all PCs have the exact same list. So any character with an Adaptation score of 11 will have Camping 50%, Consume Alien Food 7%, Appease 49% and Invisibility 63% while a PC with Robot Nature of 17 will have Unpleasant Order 90%, Logic 22%, Seduce -22% (a modifier to a skill tied to another stat), Invisibility +13% (so a PC with Adapt 11 and Robot 17 will have a net Invisibility of 76%), Guard 80%, Labor 100%, and Machine Friend 51%.

These skills sound crazy and they are, but they are also quite useful. Do the PCs want to activate a robot found within a ruin? Have them roll Logic to figure out how to turn it on and Machine Friend to make sure it isn't immediately hostile. If the party needs to camp out for the night in hostile territory, have someone roll Camping to find a good spot out of the way from enemy patrols. If they blow that, then the person standing watch can make a Guard roll to be able to alert the group before an attack. Some of the skills require interpretation based upon the race and/or class of the character. Consume Alien Food doesn't really work for a Robodroid PC, but should they need to recharge their batteries while onboard an alien spacecraft, a successful Consume Alien Food roll would indicate that they could adapt to the non-standard power supply. Similarly, some skills are actually magic effects when used by certain classes. For example, the Invisibility skill is simple equivalent to a hide in shadows skill. Unless you happen to be a Warlock, in which case you can pull off true invisibility. Or a Psi Witch could use the skill to cloud men's minds. The magic system is where this dynamic really comes into its own. Most folks use skills like Conjure or Ensorcel to activate magic items, but Warlocks can use the skills associated with the Magic Power stat to achieve nifty magic on the fly effects. Combine this with a limited number of traditional D&D-style spells, and EC manages to put together a magic system that is tailor made for rules-light sword & sorcery.

Other little gems of inspired lunacy can be found throughout the EC rulebook. Really, if you've followed me this far and are the least bit intrigued by the game you ought to just get yourself a copy. You can download a legal PDF of Encounter Critical here or over in the Files section of its yahoo fangroup (scroll down a bit for the former, registration required for the latter). There's also a few other items at the yahoo group, as well as a way to communicate with a couple dozen fans of the game.

And if you plan on attending Winter War in February, you can experience the insanity first hand by signing up for my EC game scheduled for the Sunday of the con. They'll be robots and warlocks! Hell, one of the PCs is both!

Special bonus! Here's a great Overly Honest RPG Book Cover from RPGnetter squideye.

I know I'm a bad person for saying it, but that version of the cover makes me want to play Exalted : The Abyssals.

Silly Internet List Meme Attack

FOURS....inspired by a post today at Political Animal

Four jobs you've had in your life: Mac lab nanny, pig pen cleaner, study assistant to a disabled law student, cog in the Kraft corporation logistics system
Four movies you could watch over and over: Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian
Four places you've lived: Bucks county, PA; Flanagan, IL; Champaign-Urbana, IL; Mahomet, IL
Four TV shows you love to watch: TNA impact!, old Saturday Night Live re-runs, The Daily Show, Thundarr the Barbarian
Four places you've been on vacation: DisneyWorld, Las Vegas, Niagara Falls, Knoxville (for the World's Fair)
Four websites you visit daily: RPGnet forums, Citizens of the Imperium forums, RPGPundit's blog, Wonkette
Four of your favorite foods: Sushi, Apple pie, Homegrown corn-on-the-cob, cheese of nearly every stripe
Four places you'd rather be: Right now? Wherever my wife and daughter happen to be at the moment. Or at the FLGS. Messing around in my game room. And, uhhhh, DisneyWorld. (Assuming my wife and daughter were there too.)

Merry Xmas!

The Scared of Santa photo gallery in all its glory!

Also, my favorite Christmas joke:

Why is Santa always so jolly?

Because he knows where all the naughty girls live.