Restraint

I need to write.

The trip to Orlando was a good one. Made it to the gate by the skin of our teeth (both ways!), but made it we did. The weather was lovely: cloudless, sunny days in the 70s-80s. Four days at the Universal parks and a couple days at Disney, and saw and rode on all the attractions we'd planned/intended. Very, very stress free for the most part, which is...frankly...amazing. No explosive arguments or catastrophes, and we even picked up a bunch of merch that we were (somehow) able to fit in our carry-ons without checking a single bag (we hate checking bags).

Lot of sickness, though. I picked up a sinus infection on the plane ride there, and it took me a couple days to get over it (but I managed). Then my daughter caught a cold the second to last day we were there and was able to pass it on to my wife and I just as we were pulling up stakes. Now back in Seattle, my daughter is on the mend, I'm, mm, pretty rough, and my wife is sick as a dog. However, tests show all four of us are negative for Covid, so there's that.

["masking" is not on the menu in Orlando. In six days at theme parks among thousands of people we saw exactly one mask on one employee (to be fair, we weren't wearing them either, outside the airport). But we saw a LOT of coughing and sneezing people, and plenty of snot-nosed children. I get it: you drop a load of cash on a Disney vacation and you're not going to skip it because you got a sniffle. Probably, I'm just germ-phobic in these post-pandemic times, but it's nice to be back in Seattle where no one bats an eye if you decide to wear a mask to the grocery store...hey, man, I'm protecting YOU, too]

Longest wait time for a ride was 2+ hours for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. Second longest was about an hour plus for (tie between Jungle Cruise and Space Mountain). I do not like waiting in lines, but it is far easier to do with your family than solo (as I did with Space Mountain). But 2.5 hours definitely tries your patience, even with company. I mean, it really, really does. Probably a good idea to bring a cheap paperback novel. 

Most disappointing ride: Pirates of the Caribbean. I've been to Disney Land thrice in my life (once in Tokyo!) but never Disney World and not for 30+ years. Pirates has long been my favorite ride, and DW's version was: crap. I mean, it's obnoxious anyway that they've had to insert animatronic Johnny Depp into multiple scenes because of the stupid movies (at least I didn't have to see animatronic Orlando Bloom)...but the ride is SHORT...they cut out whole scenes from the DL ride, characters that were the basis for the original movie (like the bomb dude), all the undead/ghost stuff and...I don't know. It felt cheap and chintzy. And I just heard they're getting rid of the original ride at Disney Land, too, changing it for "Jake the Pirate" which is just...*sigh.*  I guess what counts as "adventure" for AdventureLand in the 21st century isn't the same as the 20th. Don't scare the kiddies with grim brutes and bloody cutlasses. Heavens!

The Magic Kingdom did seem geared to a younger audience. Asking for a beer in LibertyTown, the colonial-dressed cashier told me point blank "There will be no alcohol in the Magic Kingdom" in an ominous tone of voice. Like, none? Quite the contrast with Universal's theme parks, where the tourists are walking around with double-fisted pints from 9 in the morning. I mean, that's the way to wait in line (assuming it curls by a restroom). 

[DW's other parks...like Disney Hollywood...were a bit looser than Magic Kingdom in this regard. Though I heard from an Uber driver that a flight of beers at the SW Cantina costs $85!  Holy-moly! Most of the booze cost $12 from what I saw, but I'm not sure the additional $6 shot of rum would save that blue milk. Not my taste]

ANYway, all bitchin-moaning aside, we had a splendid time. Not sure if I'm a fan of the whole 3D/4D rides, as THOSE things made me far more queasy than ANY of the roller-coasters (especially that Escape From Hogwarts thing that the kids made me go on...twice! Nearly tossed my cookies every time we zoomed onto the Quidditch field). But those were mostly at Universal, where you could always grab a beer or a Bloody Mary to settle your stomach afterwards. And beautiful, sunny weather to stand around and drink it in (he says as he looks at the wind and hail...hail!...outside)...the fam had me cooking asado last night for Fat Tuesday and I was grilling in the pouring rain!

By the way, shout out to our hotel, the Cabana Bay (part of Universal) with its 1960s retro-modern vibe. Wow. Loved it...every bit of it. It was like a theme park unto itself (that theme being "1965"). But an extremely relaxing one. 

The one thing I didn't do much of, however, was writing. Oh, I had the chance to do some writing...mostly on the six hour plane rides. But a lot of it was just...mm...not "mean-spirited," so much as just negative. I find, more-and-more, that a lot of what I'm inclined to write about (at least, with regard to commentary) is poking holes in things that others praise...or bringing a hammer to things that others are "okay" with. 

I know, I know...I've blogged before about wanting to be constructive and positive, rather than destructive and negative. I don't really want to start singing that song again.

But it occurs to me that maybe there's a purpose for my negativity. Maybe.

Still, it's Lent and I want to practice a little restraint. Yes, I have one or two half-cocked (well, half-penned) rants waiting to be fired off, but I think I want to get a little more above the weather before I post 'em to Ye Old Blog. Just to make sure my heart's in the right place, I want to make sure my head is clear and non-stuffed.

[okay, now it's freaking snowing. Jeez]

This weekend...well, tomorrow, actually...the fam is headed out west to Port Angeles. My uncle recently passed away, and while there's no formal funeral or memorial (as my father told me long ago, folks in Port Angeles "never really took much to religion") there's a "get together" of friends and family at a (kid friendly) tavern. Very Port Angeles. 

[yes, in Port Angeles they're called "taverns," not bars or pubs, at least by the locals. Most places tend to have a nautical theme to it as well...restaurants have names like The Hook & Line or Smuggler's Landing or 48 Degrees North. My grandfather...and late uncle...ran a tavern called The Wreck for decades...]

SO, I'll be gone this weekend (again) starting tomorrow, and I've got a bunch of packing and whatnot to do before then, as well as a D&D session to prep/run. So...maybe regular blogging to resume again on Monday? I'm hoping. 

Hey...at least I didn't give up blogging for Lent this year.

; )

Later, ya' land-lubbers!

“We’re the only Airship Pirates…”

Goth is sooo over.

Has been for decades; if you listen to my old buddy Matt, it was toast before it ever started reaching resurgence in the mid-90s. I don’t know; I was never a “Goth.” I went through my dark and angsty period quietly listening to metal music and writing tortured poetry and then I went to college and had a very happy life. So there.

By the time I started hitting some of the “dark and gothic” industrial dance clubs (private clubs only, please), I was old enough to be there legally and mainly Matt and I were there to dance and get our drunk on. And that was long AFTER I’d stopped running Vampire sagas (circa late 1996; about two to three years after my final VTM saga).

And hitting those places was a short run anyway. Matt went back to Austin, I carried my carousing to other venues, and eventually I cleaned up and grew up. Now, I’m no longer "just happy" but also "fairly well adjusted."

So, yeah…Abney Park.

A week ago I picked up a copy of a new RPG called Airship Pirates. Or rather, Abney Park’s Airship Pirates. This was last Friday, right after I’d written the bulk of my rant series on lazy RPG design and lack of objectives. Seeing this big, beautiful, high-concept book I had a pretty good idea this was exactly the kind of objective-less game that I had recently vilified…but I bought in anyway.

I have an airship fetish.

“Pirates” of course, are also gravy. I grew up in this little waterfront town called Seattle and we tend to like our nautical and pirate-themed stuff. Heck, that’s one of the draws of the Baranof for me. But just having “pirates” in an RPG isn’t enough for me to buy it; I’ve never purchased 7th Sea or Furry Pirates, for example.

But airships? I break for zeppelins. I nearly threw down a handful of hundreds for a 40 minute zeppelin tour when Airship Ventures brought their bird up to Sea-Town (I followed it on the ground with my car though)…and in Germany I was extremely close to booking a trip on one of their neuvo-zeps. I know I’ve written before that being an NFL coach would be my “dream job” (not that I have any ability to coach; I said “dream”), but actually it’s #3 on my list of fantasy careers:

#3 NFL Coach (assistant okay, but please be the Seahawks)
#2 Tony Stark, Iron Man
#1 Independent Airship Owner/Captain

I’m being perfectly serious. Have you seen the film Life Aquatic with Bill Murray? I want to be Steve Zissou in a zeppelin. If I ever win a lottery jackpot, I will pay off my house, my mom’s house, and set aside money for my kid’s college. If I ever win a multi-state mega-Lotto, I will invest in zeppelin flying lessons and try to purchase a small blimp.

So I dropped $50 on the RPG.

Airship Pirates is one of the most…well, shit, I don’t know what word to describe it. “Interesting” or “weird” or even “thought-provoking” are some of the phrases that come to mind…but NOT because of the setting, premise, or game system. The BOOK itself…the fact that it was even published…is tres bizarre.

Here’s why: the game…a neo-Victorian, post-apocalyptic, steampunk fantasy RPG with prehistoric animals…is based on the music and lyrics of the band Abney Park.

Who the hell is Abney Park? Well, apparently they are a local (Seattle) band that started up in 1997, around the same time that I was getting out of the music biz myself. Not that I was ever “in the biz;” singing a few one-offs with random bands can hardly even be called “dabbling,” though I had a moment or two. But I was never a huge supporter of the local live music scene (sorry) and anyway, and I stopped going to shows right around the time Abney appears to have been getting going. And even had I been a big show-goer (like my buddy, Steve-O) I’m not sure I would have ever seen Abney Park play, since they were originally a Goth band.

And one with a fairly strong endurance: I mean, they’re still going, almost 15 years later, and have put out nearly a dozen albums. And I’m sure that “marching technology progress” thing only makes it easier to stay in the music game, so long as you have some chops and a bit of a following. Hell, I’VE got a following and I’m just a hack blogger!

However (here’s the interesting part), a couple-few years back, Abney Park reinvented itself as a “steampunk concept band;” apparently, THE premier steampunk band if you buy the hype on the interweb stuff (I’m not really in a position to judge that kind of thing). What do I mean by that? Well, their songs have taken a turn to singing of their adventures as a band of airship pirates, time-travelling and screwing up historical continuity and creating a neo-Victorian, post-apocalyptic, fantasy world filled with prehistoric animals.

And then the band, fronted by Captain Robert Brown, worked in conjunction with the Cubicle 7 brits to put out a beautiful, slickly produced RPG book, giving folks the stuff to adventure in the imagination of this reinvented, premier steampunk, airship flying band called Abney Park.

Bizarre. I don’t know if Mark Rein-Hagen ever fronted a vampire-themed band (in the early days of White Wolf, the vampire musical group was a major suggestion for why PCs of different clans would hang together as a coterie), but I wouldn’t be too surprised based on the early themes and concepts in VTM. On the other hand, Rein-Hagen isn’t the first person to suggest the vampire music group…what about The Vampire Lestat? Or The Drac Pack for that matter?

However, if the band had come FIRST and then created an RPG based on the intellectual property of their own lyrics and stage show…well, then you’d have something similar to Abney Park’s Airship Pirates. And because the band is still going, it creates a new form of self-promotion: the band promotes the RPG, the RPG promotes the band…all at the same time!

That’s wild! I have never seen something like that before. Yes, I’ve seen D&D-inspired bands (Three Inches of Blood comes to mind)…but none that have a direct tie-in between their own unique music and their own unique RPG/setting. Is it genius? Or just crazy?

No doubt these folks are a little nuts…it takes a little crazy to do what they’re doing. But I believe, in a world where both independent RPG publishers and small-niche music acts have little potential to make a decent living, these folks have found a way to increase the income coming into the coffers without working as coffee baristas during the day. And that’s both unique (in my experience) and pretty cool.

[not totally unique, of course: Kiss promoted themselves through THEIR own fantasies by making movies, selling toys and comic books, etc. Abney Park has taken a page from that book]

As for the GAME itself: well, it’s not all that great in design terms. It bears a lot of similarities to White Wolf (as one might guess), using a Stat+Skill resolution, though rather than roll D10s and try to hit 7s, you’re rolling D6s and trying to hit 1s and 6s (and 6s “explode”). Most of the book is setting material…way, waaaay too much for my purposes. The thing reminds me of a Television Bible for the setting material. If I was tasking a group of authors with writing short stories based on the setting, I would give them each a copy of the RPG for reference and inspiration. As an RPG? It lacks focus and, yes, objectives.

On the other hand, it has a great premise for party creation: all characters are a crew aboard an airship. In all honesty, I was trying to brainstorm a very similar concept about 5 years ago, but couldn’t figure out how to make a dramatic enough RPG. Airship Pirates succeeds because it blows up the world and re-writes an alternative history in which airship pirates actually makes sense in the setting (a tyrannical government on the ground, heroic free cities in the air, neobedouins and dinosaurs wandering the wastelands). It’s neat and psychedelic and reads a bit like the backstory for certain editions of Magic the Gathering (without the magic)…but the game would require some serious editing on the part of the GM to make it work effectively, and a LOT of reading to get sufficiently steeped in the specifics of the setting.

AND…that’s all I want to say about the game for right now. Though I was initially tempted to return it to the game shop as “mostly unplayable” (due to my non-desire to put in the effort needed to make it work), I’ve decided to hang onto the thing and part with the cash. It is definitely one of the nicest looking RPGs I own, and it has a lot of interesting ideas setting-wise (as well as a totally kick-ass version of time travel). Plus, I feel that by buying it I’m doing my part to help support the local music scene. More bands should have kooky concepts.

: )

50 Fathoms Deep

So last night, I went down to the Baranof to hook up with the gaming group after being on a hiatus with the birth of my new, lovely son (ooooh! he's so cute!). The last couple weeks Luke's been running a "weird pirate" game using the Savage Garden rules, one of the current pop RPGs I haven't had a chance to play of late.

Excuse me...Savage Worlds. I was calling it Savage Garden all evening until Josh (also making a first appearance since his new daughter was born) tells me, "Um...I think that's a restaurant."

"No, no...you're thinking the OLIVE Garden." Oh, right.

Have you ever eaten at the Olive Garden? I have...though not for many years. You see the commercials on television, and you say, hmmm, it sounds like a good idea. And look at all those smiling, happy people being treated like "family." So many options and pastas and sauces to try...and breadsticks!

[all right, all right...I actually have a tendency to believe the opposite of what television commercials tell me. But I can imagine being someone who buys into what the boob-tube tells me. That's just role-playing]

So you sit down at Ye Old Olive Garden with your family or a team of co-workers or your baseball team or fellow cast-members from the play rehearsal you just finished. And there IS a lot of food. And a lot of options. And most of it is pretty tasteless, and some of it is not very good, and your wife with the touchy stomach is going to pay for the evening in hours to come, and at the end it feels like you spent a lot of hours for not much pay-off.

Savage Worlds isn't quite as bad as the Olive Garden...but there are definitely some similarities.

Which doesn't mean I didn't have a good time or that Luke wasn't proficient or that the setting wasn't interesting or imaginative. But the game definitely wasn't to my taste...that's just my honest opinion.

I'm very familiar with Pinnacle's original Deadlands game, considering the Weird West setting probably the best new idea in gaming (at the time it was released) since "Gothic Punk." Unfortunately, the Deadlands system itself had three big strikes against it:

1. Steep learning curve
2. Long character creation (though as with Shadowrun, it did include several archetypes for faster start-up)
3. Excessively fiddly combat (and I like my western gunfights...Weird or not...to be fast and furious affairs).

Savage Worlds has certainly done away with #1...the game is far easier to jump right into and understand (with only single dice rolls, set target numbers, and a "wild die"). While we used pre-gens for the game, I would have to believe that character creation must be radically simplified as well compared to Deadlands...it appears to be a simple point/dice allocation system (the original Deadlands combined point allocation with random draws from a deck of cards, making use of both the showing and the suit...a cool idea but, again, not very simple to execute or teach).

And combat has been simplified considerably as well, especially in the damage allocation phase of the game...aaand that's all I'll say about combat for right now.

All in all, the SW system feels a lot like Deadlands Light. Which, I suppose, is great if you liked the original Pinnacle system but found it too hard to teach, too long to make characters, and too fiddly in combat. I don't know if I originally liked the Deadlands system or not...I was never able to run a single session with it, let alone a campaign, and my knowledge of the fiddlyness of chargen and combat comes from making practice characters and running mock combats. I was never able to get past the TEACHING part (none of my players were enthused enough by the setting to bother learning the game).

So having never actually PLAYED Deadlands, I can't say what game play feels like. However, I can say what Savage Worlds feels like.

Kind of bland.

There's a lot of dice rolling. Even though you aren't rolling many dice, you're often trying to set up a dice roll...whether you're in combat or hunting game or sailing a boat or looking for treasure or anything. The game feels like, "hurry up and get to a spot where you can roll a dice." And if you're smart you try to angle the action so that you can roll your bigger dice.

Most of the time, it felt like the target roll was either 4 or some gi-normous number that required blowing the top off the dice (rolling the max and then re-rolling and adding). Since fortune is a fickle bitch, the randomness often lent an overall feeling of lameness...for example, it didn't help to "blow the top off" the roll, when all that was needed was a roll of 4 (I had huge successes rolling every day our ship was at sea...without receiving any benefit from those "huge successes"). And then when one needed to roll high (such as for damage rolls with a tough/armored opponent) those "exploding dice" always seemed a bit more elusive.

There are other pet peeves of flawed design I could list (for example as Hindrances that have mechanical value versus those that do nothing and have no rules for enforcement). But that's just going to get redundant...the fact is, I didn't find the game all that fantastic.

Which, I have to say, kind of surprised me. I especially liked the Weird Pirate idea of 50 Fathoms (though I have to say I much prefer Christian Aldridge's version of the setting in his 1997 game Maelstrom)...hell, I like pirates in general and was looking forward to swashbuckling adventure. Plus, I've seen how popular Savage Worlds is (at the Dragonflight convention last summer, SW was definitely the largest turnout of any game system...by a country mile!). And I know the game won some Gamers Choice award at Origins in 2004.

My question would have to be: why? Why would someone choose to play Savage Worlds? What was its competition that year anyway?

Ah, well...I am a man notorious for being "behind the times" in these things (I only just started listening to Lady Gaga in 2010). There is probably some cool IPhone adaption for the game that elevates the play experience to a whole 'nother level, that I'm just missing.

The point is, it wasn't really to my taste. But it was fun to get back with the guys and play and kabitz and poke fun at each other and consume large amounts of beer. Hopefully I'll get to go back next Thursday...there's nothing on "must-see TV" that beats role-playing, even a semi-bland game like Savage Worlds.

: )

Battleships and Broadsides

Ugh. I am having a heck of a time writing starship rules for my space opera game and part of it comes down to simple (if figurative) schizophrenia…there are two or three different tacts to take when doing starship combat and I am having a darn tough time figuring out which I want.

Maybe I should let you folks decide for me.

Or maybe I should just “write it out.” Here’s how it breaks down (as far as I can categorize it):

#1 Old School Pirate: this is the “Age of Sail” transported into space. Warships try to maneuver close to each other to unleash “broadsides” (blasting the hell out of each other at close range due to heavy armor/force screens). Bringing one’s ship alongside another is preferred, as it allows more of the warships weapons to target more of the opponent’s hull. Boarding actions with tractor beams and assault vessels mimic the swashbuckling pirate movies of old.

In real world history, this type of action was rendered obsolete by advancement in better guns (longer range)…and certainly a sci-fi game with spewing lasers and plasma cannons might do the same. Still, we’re talking fictional super-science…who’s to say those cannons don’t need to get close enough to penetrate deflector shields or super-heavy durallium armor?

#2 World War II Dreadnoughts: Warships are more like Space Battleship Yamato, i.e. huge, armored, mobile gun platforms. In the early part of the 20th century, the main arms race was to build the biggest, bestest battleship. Heavily armored and bristling with big guns, these behemoths used radar and smaller observational ships to fire over the horizon line, devastating surface vessels. No broadside necessary, and no boarding action appropriate.

In real world history, battleships became obsolete due to ascendance (literally) of air superiority. Small fighter squadrons with bombs and torpedoes could sink even the largest battleships for a fraction of the cost, and aircraft carriers became the preeminent capital ships of today. In classic space opera stories Battlestar Galactica and Space Battleship Yamato (aka “Star Blazers”), we see this treatment with combo battleship/fighter-carriers.

#3 21st Century Futurist: let’s face facts: I’m really not up on current military technology or where it’s progressing. People actually working for Boeing or who are in the more technical combat ops areas of the U.S. military (or who read well-researched science fiction published for today’s sophisticated connoisseur) probably have a better idea of the “shape of space opera to come.”

But that’s not me…I was just trying to make a game I could use for Star Wars that wouldn’t suck.

[EDIT: actually, now that I think of it, a “21st century take” on ship battles would probably be similar to films like Avatar, Aliens, and Starship Troopers, a la “marines in space” where it’s all about the deployment of the infantry-style fighting force supported by gunship fire. However, I don’t consider these films to be very “space opera” in scope or depth]

And speaking of Star Wars…Lucas’s approach to starship combat is a hodge-podge of everything. Episode IV showcases the classic pirate boarding action and WWII dog-fights; episode VI shows Battle of Midway type action (battleships AND fighter squadrons), and Episode III shows pirate broadside action between the huge-ass capital ships. Not to mention it throws in Lensmen-style screens and lasers (excuse me “shields” not screens), not to mention tramp steamer exploration/adventure (echoed later in Weedon’s Firefly).

What a mess. I mean, it makes glorious cinema (as in “fun, visual spectacle”)…but role-playing isn’t cinema, and the object isn’t to make a nice movie but rather, have fun playing characters in a virtual, imaginary environment.

Which leads me more towards option #1, even though it makes the least amount of sense (if space opera can be assumed to make any sense at all). Even though I would like to model Star Blazers (who wouldn’t?) or the Lensmen’s galactic planet-launchers, a role-playing game…at least THIS role-playing game…eventually boils down to individual characters and the actions of those individual characters. And if those characters can’t get close enough to get in on the action…if they’re relegated to shooting cannon-fire against foes on opposite ends of the solar system…then the game is moving from one of heroic individuals to one of tactical ship maneuvers.

And there are already games that do that.

However, here’s the problem with going the “pirate” route: the role of star fighters, specifically, and individual heroes who specialize in the “ace pilot” skill category.

If capital ships are so heavily armored that they need to get up “close and personal” to be effective against each other, then what’s the point of having fighter craft at all? In WWII (against those battleships that were shooting at each other from miles and miles of distance), fighters were a speedy option of taking the fight (in the form of a battleship-sinking torpedo) to the enemy. Dog fights were fought because defending fighters would be used to repel these dive-bombers and ship-sinkers.

But if ships are so heavily armored/shielded that it takes a broadside from another warship to make a dent, then what effect will little fighters have? And if those little fighters are ineffective, then what’s the need of repelling fighters? And if you don’t have multiple sides of fighters, then where’s the dog-fighting?

Reviewing Lucas’s films for how he reconciled this mish-mash doesn’t help too much…except for the opening battle with the Tantive IV, all of the original trilogy seems to be in the WWII style and the ship battle of the prequel trilogy are all in the pirate style.

That is to say: in the prequel trilogy, the emphasis is getting the characters on-board the ships (boarding actions, close quarters work, NOT dog-fighting). Even the “space battle” at the end of the Phantom Menace is barely battle at all…instead, it A) attempts to parallel Anakin’s actions (blowing up a space base) with that of his son (Luke blowing up the Death Star), and B) does this by getting Anakin’s ship ON-BOARD the space station. In this regard the final “battle” is more like a space “obstacle course.”

The space battle over Coruscant in Revenge of the Sith is a large scale pirate battle with broadsides and boarding actions designed to get the heroes on-board the enemy pirate ship, so they can have a few Erol Flynn style sword fights.

Whereas the battle over Endor in Return of the Jedi is like watching the space version of Pearl Harbor or something. No one’s trying to get “on-board” anything, and fighters are dog-fighting and dive-bombing while long range laser blasts are blowing ships to Kingdom Come.

[by the way, I don’t consider the asteroid “battles” in Episodes II and V to be battles at all, but rather chase sequences, a la James Bond or any modern action movie chase sequence. “Chasing” in an RPG is simple enough to do, though as it generally comes down to dice-rolling, it’s important to have a good risk-reward system in order to provide the proper in-game tension]

Ugh! Lucas! But of course, it’s no use yelling at HIM…his creation is aimed at creating good cinema and spectacle, not in making sense. It’s ME that’s trying to come up with a particular consistent RPG universe.

Hmm…maybe I DO need to ignore the damn prequel trilogy…

[and just by the way…I’ve had the damn Star Blazers theme song stuck in my head for the last two days. How annoying is that?!]