What skills are you testing?

When you run your game, what skills are most advantageous to the players? Knowledge of the rules, or the ability to use them as a rhetorical weapon? Quick thinking or ponderous debate? Is the ability to kiss ass to the GM more important than the ability to entertain the group? Is player expertise demonstrated by a twinked-out character build or by the ability to make best use of whatever charsheet is in front of you? Do risk-takers profit in your game or does playing it safe work out better? Do nice guys finish last in your campaign or do the meek inherit the earth?

There's no right answer to most of these questions. Every GM is going to encourage some behaviors and discourage others. By reflecting on your own GMing behavior you might be able to steer your feedback loop with the players so that you see more of the kind of play you want and less of the kind you don't.

A Campaign Proposal

Let's start with the premise that a campaign is about a group of players. It doesn't have anything to do with the setting, rules, or characters. I've been in campaigns where the character mix was almost completely overhauled, where one rules set was dropped in favor of another, and where the PCs relocated from a homebrew setting to published setting. So a campaign is the label for a group of people agreeing "unless we later negotiate otherwise, this is what we are playing for the next X sessions". Nothing more.

Given that definition of a campaign, here's my idea: three settings, three sets of PCs, three similar but not identical rulesets, one campaign. We start with 1st level Eberron PCs and play through a module. When that module is done we whip up some starting Arcana Unearthed PCs and play through a single AE adventure. Once that is done we play one Iron Heroes adventure with a third set of PCs. Rather, rinse, repeat until we've exhausted all available modules. If along the way someone realizes that they don't like one of the three settings/rules we're using, we can discuss that as a group. Everyone at my table is a grown-up. If someone isn't having a good time I want to hear it and try to resolve it.

Eberron has four short published modules and Dungeon adventures, as well as being fairly conducive to adapting other D&D stuff I have laying around. I've got three AE adventures, two of which are substantial. A few others are floating around out there. The weak link is Iron Heroes, with 2 medium-sized adventures. We may run out of IH stuff before we're done with the others. Since I'm proposing playing IH third, I'd be happy as a clam to reach the point in the campaign where I need more Heroes adventures; that would mean the campaign was chugging along at a goodly pace. Around that same time the Eberron PCs will hopefully be approaching the right level for Red Hand of Doom. If so, I would like to conscript Doug to run that adventure for the Eberron section of the campaign. That would give me a break and hopefully sufficient time to write and/or adapt some material for Iron Heroes. And I would get to play a robot for a while.

My one concern about this scheme is that Doug is the only player I know that has copies of all three of the key books. As I understand it a PC built from the D&D corebooks (and associated splatbooks and whatnot) is still pretty functional in Eberron, but the other two settings absolutely require access to the book to build the PCs. I absolutely loathe the concept of the "chargen session" because in my experience it is a good way to start a campaign on a downer. In games with wildly random chargen they can be fun, but for any sort of points-monkeying game the chargen session bores me to tears. I also abhor the idea of asking players to buy big expensive hardbacks just to play in my crazy campaign. Hell, I didn't pay for IH or Eberron, why should they? But they seem to be more eager to buy big shiny hardbacks than I, so maybe I'm seeing a problem where none exists. I guess Doug and I could knock out some 1st level PCs for the whole party after a little Q&A to establish the general parameters of what everyone wants to play.

Now, you've probably come to the conclusion that this is a pretty complicated way to avoid having to pick one of three campaigns. You'd be right on that point. But for me this crazy plan offers some advantages over a more traditional campaign structure. First, we get to try triple the settings/rulesets in the same time. Second, jumping from setting to setting will help me keep my short attention span engaged. And third, we could prolong the period spent at low to mid levels, the part of the game that interests me the most.

spoiled rotten brat

The title of today's entry was my wife's suggestion. This last weekend I scored a big pile of gaming books as a slightly early birthday present from my folks. Thanks, ma and pa! I won't bore you with listing all the shiny new stuff I got, but I'd like to note a couple of items. The big items are the Eberron Campaign Setting and Monte Cook's ( Mike Mearls's) Iron Heroes. I'm breezing through Iron Heroes and I am really liking what I'm seeing. I don't think I was ready for this game right when it came out, but I've gotten a bit more d20 experience since then. I haven't done much with the Eberron book other than reading the stats for the robot guys, but I plan on tackling it after I finish my first pass through Heroes.

Getting both Eberron and Iron Heroes right now sorta complicates the Next Campaign question. Until now I was pretty set on Arcana Unearthed. Now I don't know. There's still plenty of adventure to be had in my Wild Times campaign, but as we get closer and closer to level 20 the epic rules are looking lamer and lamer. It might be for the best to finish that campaign at 20th, unless in the meantime someone comes out with a set of epic rules that impress me. I'd still love to run that 30th level adventure from Dungeon and part of me says that my group's finely-tweaked Gestalt monstrosities might actually be able to handle it at level 20.

And I no longer have to mooch off of Pat's copy of Complete Arcane, so that's nice.

How the mighty have fallen

In my opinion Kevin Nash is one of the greatest big men in the world of wrestling. While he might not be as physically intimidating as Andre the Giant or the Big Show, Nash has great charisma and can really work the mike. I'm one of those old fashioned wrestling fans that usually boos the bad guys and cheers the heroes, but Nash played one of the wrestling villains that I could really dig.

Last week Mr. Nash returned to the wrestling ring for the first time since last October, IIRC. He had some chest pains the day before he was to main event at a TNA pay-per-view. His spot on the card went to Rhino the War Machine, who enjoyed a brief title reign as a result of this lucky break. I don't think I had seen Nash wrestle since around the time of the Finger Poke of Doom incident, so I was looking forward to his TNA X-Division debut. While I had hoped for a classic David-and-Goliath match, what the fans got was a cheap gag non-match. Nash's opponent was a midget wrestler. (I know "little person" is the current label, but in the neanderthal halls of rasslin' the correct term is still midget.) Basically, the joke was that Nash was mocking the size of the average X-Division participant and X-Division wrestler Chris Sabin in particular.

So Nash beat up a midget for a couple of minutes, while the announcement staff did their best to play up the travesty of it all. Not a bad way to sell Nash as a disrespectful heel, I suppose. And it might have worked too, had Nash not blown out his trick knee at the end of the match. As a youth Nash had desired to play in the NBA. He was semi-pro for a couple years in some sort of European basketball league, as I recall. But his bad knee prevented him from getting into the big leagues and he ended up in pro wrestling instead.

This isn't the first time Nash has injured himself in the ring. He once attempted to give the Giant (now known as the Big Show) a jack-knife powerbomb. I'm not sure the exact injury, but it was something in the leg, maybe that same old knee blew out. Anyway, he couldn't complete the maneuver and dropped the Giant on his head in a way that can legitmately snap your neck. 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin nearly saw the end of his career from a similar injury. But the Giant is even bigger than Kevin Nash. Attempting that powerbomb was akin to Hulk Hogan bodyslamming Andre the Giant at Wrestlemania 3. And to this day Hogan has a torn muscle from that feat of strength! There's no shame in failing to lift one of the biggest wrestlers in history.

But blowing out your knee after beating up a man a third your size? That's a pretty big pit for your reputation to climb out of. Really, only the fact that Nash is pals with TNA ownership can save him now. Between the bum knee and the chest pains I wouldn't clear Kevin Nash to wrestle in Jeff's Wrestling Federation, and I doubt Vince McMahon would have a different opinion. Add on top of that the humiliation of injuring oneself while beating up a midget, and a smart man might decide to hang up the wrestling tights. I'm not sure Nash's ego will let him do that. As I write this I don't have the results of this Sunday's TNA pay-per-view. Rumours on the internets indicate that Nash intends to show up. Will his scheduled match with Chris Sabin go as planned?

All I can say is that Nash really needs to consider this: what does he have left to prove in professional wrestling? He's been world heavyweight champion in both WCW and WWE. His tag team with Scott Hall was probably the best heel tag team of its era. He was a major contributor to the New World Order story arc, perhaps one of the greatest plotlines in the history of pro wrestling. In sumo once you you achieve the rank of Yokozuna (grand champion) no one can take that title from you. But a wise Yokozuna retires before he becomes an embarrassment to the sport.

UPDATE: I didn't order the PPV but I've read some results. Nash showed and had something resembling a match with Chris Sabin. Nash's sidekick Alex Shelly involved himself in the match, perhaps moreso than most outside interference bookings. Nash got the win. Is that the end for Mr. Nash? Lots of great wrestlers have had less than stellar final matches. Arn Anderson's final match was tag-teaming with Steve "Mongo" McMichaels against the Quebeceurs.

dig on this

Table of Malcontents, the blog of internet wonderman Lore Sjoberg (there should be umlaut over the 'o' in 'Sjoberg', but I'm not in the mood to hunt down the proper coding), passed along a link to Wondermark: An Illustrated Jocularity. Wondermark is created by adding text to Victorian era clipart. Hilarity ensues.

My hat's off to this group

Today EN World is reporting that someone has completed AEG's World's Largest Dungeon. This task was accomplished by the folks at RPGMP3.com, who have made the entirety of their play sessions available as a podcast. That amounts to over 5 complete days of audio, gathered from 40 sessions over 2 years! Truly, this is one of the epic feats of dungeoneering, ranking right up there with slaying Lolth after trudging through the G and D series, or making it out of the Tomb of Horrors alive.

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

nifty science item

This two-paragraph report has like a dozen Call of Cthulhu adventure seeds hidden in it.

Minute droplets of oil from 2.4 billion years ago are providing evidence that life on Earth survived a period when the planet was covered with more than a half-mile of snow; an era affectionately deemed "Snowball Earth." The oil, retrieved from ancient rock crystals, contains molecular fossils that scientists can identify as having come from specific life forms. A paper published in the June edition of Geology concludes that eukaryotes and cyanobacteria were alive before "Snowball Earth" and survived the hostile period.

The same meteor that created a 300 mile-wide crater in Antarctica may have also caused a massive extinction 250 million years ago, Ohio State University geologist Ralph von Frese announced on Wednesday. Satellite data shows that the crater, which lies more than a mile beneath a sheet of ice, dates back to the same period as the Permian-Triassic extinction, when nearly all of Earth's animal life died out. Scientists had believed that a series of volcanic eruptions caused the extinction that cleared the stage for the dinosaurs to inherit the Earth.

from seedmagazine.com's Week in Science: 6/2-6/8