If there’s one illness in this world I take personal it’s cancer. That shit took my mother and it owes me big for that. Unfortunately, it is a devastating disease that continues to threaten thousands, and it needs to be fought against with tooth and nail.

This here to the right, that’s Kelly Cline. She has just been diagnosed with cervical cancer and she has decided to fight that shit with a positive attitude. I used to wonder how anyone could remain upbeat when confronted with a diagnose of cancer, but I saw that firsthand with my mother. She also put on a smile and said, Let’s do this.

I don’t know Kelly, but my friend Ryan Macklin does, and my friend wants to help his friend in her hour of need. To that end him and some other game designers have put together a collection of roleplaying games to help raise funds that will go towards paying Kelly’s medical bills. They are calling it the Random Kindness Encounter Bundle and it includes 8 roleplaying games and some fiction, along with a chance to unlock a ninth game if the $4000 goal is met by the end of 2011.

Do a mitzvah and get great games in return? You cannot pass that up. I’m not. I know my mom would approve.

Follow the link, help out, get games. That simple. What are you waiting for?

Included in this pack are four adventures that will take the young heroes to far off places and pit them against fearsome adversaries.

• The Curse of the Sleepy Mist – The evil wizard Geleron has released a magical mist that has put the entire town of Springwell to sleep. Can the heroes of Springwell defeat him yet again and make everything right in Springwell?
• Trixie the Unicorn’s Rescue – The fairies of the Evergreen Forest need help, as their unicorn, Trixie, has been taken prisoner by the evil goblins of the Dark Swamp. Can the heroes of Springwell find her and bring her home to her fairy friends?
• Rescue from Dinosaur Island – A group of explorers left on a boat to the mysterious Dinosaur Island but never returned. Can the heroes find them and bring them back home to Springwell?
• The Pirates of Seaweed Cove – It seems pirates have been attacking ships off the coast of Springwell’s beach, teaming up with Shark?Men from under the sea. Can the heroes stop the pirates and the Shark?Men before everyone becomes too scared to go out on boats?

The pack includes all the maps and tokens you will need for your brave adventures.

In addition, we have also released the rpgKids Game Bundle, which includes both the Core Game and the Adventure Pack I for a discounted price, making it the perfect way for newcomers to join in the rpgKids fun!

Both the rpgKids Adventure Pack and the rpgKids Game Bundle are now available at RPGNow.com.

Gather the kids, bring out the dice and get ready to be the heroes of Springwell!

Here is the next The Breakfast Club character converted into Lady Blackbird-style stats for my hack. As with Bender, if you are familiar with Lady Blackbird (and if you’re not, go get it now), you will see pieces work with each other. I’m hoping you can also start to see how the characters interact with each other a bit. It should be fairly obvious by looking at Bender and Claire that inter-player conflict is a big deal in this hack. Not all conflicts need to be problematic, but certainly it is the way in which the five kids challenge each other. Let me know if you have any feedback about Claire; she was fairly hard to figure out, game-stats wise, but I think I captured her essence.

Claire

A princess

 

TRAITS

Student

Prom Queen, SGA Clique, Athletes Clique, Smart, Unapplied

Popular

Social Butterfly, Tease, Popular Kids Clique, Mallrats Clique, Peer Pressured

Rich

Etiquette, Spoiled, Daddy’s Credit Cards, Domestic-War Pawn, Rich Kids Clique

Charm

Charisma, Presence, Beautiful Smile, Good-at-Heart, Fashionista

 

Keys

Key of the Princess

You are teenage nobility as far as you’re concerned. Hit your key whenever you demonstrate you are a princess to your advantage. Buyoff: Accept you are just a regular girl.

Key of Vanity

It’s all about you, period. Hit your key when you do something that makes you the center of attention. Buyoff: Do something to shift the attention to someone else.

Key of Popularity

“Do you know how popular I am? I am so popular. Everybody loves me so much at this school.” Hit your key when you use your popularity to your advantage or make others defer to your popularity. You may hit this key in conjunction with Key of the Princess. Buyoff: Do or say something that would make you unpopular.

 

Secrets

Secret of Evasion

Once per session, when someone enters into a conflict with you, you may choose to evade the issue by redirecting it to another character. If the character you bring into a conflict wins, you may inflict a Condition of your choice on the loser as well.

Secret of Perfectionist

Once per session, you can re-roll a failed dice roll. If you have bought off Key of Vanity, you may allow someone else to benefit from this Secret in your stead.

 

Conditions

• angry
• ashamed
• detained (starts checked)
• embarrassed
• hated
• injured
• lost
• tired
• trapped

 

Pool

__ __ __ __ __ __ __

A funny thing happened after my last post on The One That Got Away, where I talked about my wanted-to-but-never-got-to-play character Hal Whitewyrm: Judd left one comment on my blog post that said, simply, “Let’s do it.” Before I knew it, I’d ordered Burning Wheel Gold, had it arrive at my house, read about 300 pages of it over a weekend and had my character made and ready to play.

For the past week and a few days, we have been playing via forum posts over at Obsidian Portal and we wrapped up Chapter 1 of our game. It has been a fantastic experience for me, and I am also glad to see that for Judd as well. Seriously, we went a whole chapter of play, about 10 pages of posts back and forth, in one week! I’ve known PbP games that take months to cover similar ground and here we did it in about 7 days. This can only be attributed to the fact that we’re both giddy about the game. As I told Judd, I feel 13 again: checking the game so I can post my reply, thinking about the story and characters, pulling out books and having them within easy reach for reference. It’s a wonderful experience.

Playing Burning Wheel in the Forgotten Realms has taught me a few things that I want to cover individually later on, about character creation, about how system defines setting and vice versa, about forum play. In general, I can state that my experience so far with Burning Wheel has been fantastic and I look forward to exploring this game more and more. That it is happening while I play my favorite character in my favorite setting with a dear friend at the GM helm just makes the experience all the better.

You can find our campaign at Obsidian Portal: The Ballad of Hal Whitewyrm. We play in the Forums, and you can read the Adventure Log for Chapter 1 and read through it in its entirety.

Here you go, the draft character sheet for Bender. If you know how to play Lady Blackbird, you’ll understand how the pieces work. Of note, you’ll see there’s references to conflict between players; this will be a main feature of this hack, unlike in Lady Blackbird where there are no explicit rules for it. The conditions are also different to fit the theme and setting, and at least one of them can be suffered multiple times (in Bender’s case, 8 times – you figure which one out). I will keep working on the others; they are a bit harder to figure out than Bender.

Bender

A criminal

 

TRAITS

Student

King of the Hallway, Unapplied, Slacker, Stoners Clique, Hallway Navigation, Lost Cause

Outsider

Misfits Clique, Bad Boy Casanova, Rebel-Without-A-Cause, 3 O’clock Rumble,

Hard Knock

Run, Brawl, Switchblade, Intimidate, Pickpocket, Cigar Burn Mark

Cunning

Deception, Misdirection, Sneak, Hide

 

Keys

Key of the Criminal

Whether you are or not is irrelevant; people think you are so you play it up. Hit your key when you play off being the “criminal” to your advantage. Buyoff: Prove you’re actually not a criminal to someone you fooled earlier.

Key of the Troublemaker

Calm is for old people; let’s shake this joint up. Hit your key when you move the story forward by doing something—anything—that gets other people acting as well. Buyoff: Let an opportunity to create trouble pass by.

Key of the Tough Guy

No one’s tougher than you; no one. Hit your key when you play up the tough guy persona. You may hit this key in conjunction with Key of the Criminal. Buyoff: Back down when someone else plays up being the tough guy.

 

Secrets

Secret of Smartass

You may taunt another character with a smartass remark and force them into a conflict with you. If you win, you may refresh one Key, Secret or Condition. If you lose, you suffer two Conditions (GM’s choice).

Secret of Instigator

Once per session, you may force two other characters into a conflict between themselves. The loser suffers an additional Condition of your choice.

 

Conditions

• angry
• ashamed
• detained (starts checked)
• embarrassed
• hated
• injured
• lost
• tired
• trapped

 

Pool

__ __ __ __ __ __ __

In that time, the product has gone Electrum at RPGnow, Silver at DriveThruRPG, and been featured on BoingBoing.net. In short, a fantastic year for a little game. We want more kids playing RPGs, more parents sharing their love of storytelling and adventure gaming with their young ones, so we’re doing a special sale.

For the month of September, rpgKids is on sale for $0.99 cents!

Download it today and enter a world of fantastic adventure: the imagination of a child.

After my last post I am due for some Githyanki Therapy, a practice I am borrowing from my friend Judd Karlman.

Judd has been playing a game of Burning Wheel (which I’ve been wanting to play for a long time) set in the Forgotten Realms (which I love) and not an update of his goes by without me wishing we had Star Trek transporters, so I could go play with him in New York and then come back home to Miami. Judd asked me on G+ if we were to play a BW game in the Realms, where and what I would like to play. My reply to him took me a bit by surprise and it leads me to my therapy post.

Hal Whitewyrm is the character that got away, the one character I really wanted to play and never got the chance to.

Hal Whitewyrm is a half-elf bard living in Highmoon^[1], in Deepingdale, in the area known as the Dalelands. He has somewhere in his heritage a trace of weredragon^[2] blood which gives him orange eyes. He’s a joyful fellow who honestly loves adventuring.

Hal is the character I created back in the early 90s, when I first started to get into AD&D in high school. He’s the character I would constantly recreate during class, the one I would write short stories about, the one who was my avatar in the world of high adventure that are the Realms. He was a shallow character concept^[3] with cool orange eyes and a weredragon girlfriend who existed mostly in my 5-subject spiral notebook in story after story. And I loved it.

I just never got to play Hal. My D&D group played Basic D&D/Rules Cyclopedia and we had a fairly regular schedule, so, little time to try out new ideas. Then we played less and less, then I moved, etc. Aside from the fact that I used the name as an email address for some time, I have not gone back to this character in over a decade. Which is why I surprised myself when I answered Judd’s question about what character I would play in a Burning Wheel Realms game as follows:

* I’d play the character I’ve carried with me for years, Hal Whitewyrm, a half-elven bard with weredragon blood in his ancestry (weredragons are a race of female-only shapeshifting wyrms from the Moonshaes – see the thread there?). He’s the guy I wrote stories about in my teens yet never got to play. Hal is all about the romantic journey (as in literary genre, not mass market Harlequin titles), facing adventure in a large world, ideally of the legendary danger kind, with fast friends at his side, a love life to look forward to, and death around him to put it all in perspective. Think Aragorn’s journey, but with a bard who also deals with issues of identity.”

Wow, I’d never really put those ideas into words before but yeah, that’s what Hal is all about for me: exploring the high fantasy romantic character arc; less about killing monsters and taking their stuff, more about zero-to-hero who saves the princess and loses friends along the way.

So, what about you? Which is your character that got away? The one you always wanted to play but didn’t? And what’s their story like?

1. ^[1] Yes, this is where my online nickname comes from. ↩
2. ^[2] In the D&D 3e edition of the campaign setting, they were renamed Song Dragons. ↩
3. ^[3] He was originally called Daniel Stephaln Whitewyrm–yeah, talk about transposition–which then changed to Daniel Whitewyrm, and eventually to Hal Whitewyrm. ↩

I’ve been swamped at work due to the start of the semester (I work at the university bookstore, so imagine the scenes of chaos) and applying to a new Nursing program, which means I’ve had little time to spend at home with my wife, let alone to write. Which isn’t to say I haven’t written, but it hasn’t been as much as I would like. What I have had time for, as I process endless textbook rentals and returns, is thinking, and that thinking has gone in great part towards the PJ&N Blackbird hack. It’s late, I’m half asleep and need to be up early in the morning, but I wanted to throw a couple of musings out there.

Building the characters continues to be the hardest part. I’ve managed to create more Keys for each character, but Secrets remain elusive. This actually ties to the other two thoughts I have to share now.

Sean Nittner, in a comment left in my previous post, brought up something that I also had noticed when I last saw the movie in prep for writing: there is very little action. The Breakfast Club is a talky movie, not an action movie, which means a lot of the events are conversation-based. That’s great for the movie, but it means there’s a distinct lack of external pressure to do anything in a game that needs to be addressed.

Lastly, I continue to vacillate between making this an actual The Breakfast Club game or an inspired one.

Answering those last two questions will make my job of building the characters easier. In terms of the external push to action, it is very easy to notice in the film how Bender is, essentially, an agent of plot: he has to find a way to keep things happening, keep the situation fluid, keep everyone moving. Bender gets a Key that rewards him for doing just this, and a clever player will use that ability to drive play and rack up advancements. In addition, I am toying with the idea of having an external force that opposes the characters and which they can only defeat by the use of advancement XPs. This could be used to simulate the overarching goal of “proving the stereotype wrong” the kids face during their day in detention.

Choosing whether I’m making a TBC game or an homage to the style will also help me in fleshing out the characters. At the moment I am leaning towards making it as close to the movie as possible and letting the players decide the events from the basic premise laid out in the film. I also would like the basic framework to allow groups to explore beyond the day of detention, like, what happens when they all meet again in school on Monday?

These are some thoughts that I have been mulling over and over in my head as I get ready to make final decisions and put the game together.

The best four days in gaming have come and gone and I can say that this ranks as one of my top Gen Cons ever. I mean, I’ve only been to five, but still, this was right at the top. It wasn’t perfect, I left with some regrets, and yet I enjoyed it so thoroughly that even now as I write this two weeks later, to think of it puts a smile on my face.

Since I started going to Gen Con Indy, each year I have done it as part of something, never as a regular attendee. Last year I went as an Exhibitor to help out Rogue Games. This year I went back to being Press, as I’d done in 2007-08, but not for my own show/blog. This year I went as part of the team putting together This Just In… From Gen Con, along with my friend and co-host Rich Rogers (you can read about how that happened here). I knew it would be a lot of work, but it provided a great new window through which to view this awesome convention. Rather than go day-by-day, I’m doing thematic recaps.

Games

Despite all the time devoted to the podcast, I did manage to find the opportunity to play a few games and do a few demos on the Exhibitor’s Hall. I ran a game of Lady Blackbird for five people, three of which had never played it. It wasn’t a planned game, just something to that came together when all of us found ourselves standing around without a game to join. It was the most interesting Lady Blackbird session I have played as I was able to put into action a few ideas about that game I had been mulling over for a while (skip the boring setup, force the agendas out in the open, get to the Pirate King!). One of my players, Amanda Valentine, wrote about it on her blog, and I am very happy that she and the entire group had a great experience (Steampunk Jane Austen FTW!). I also played in another game of Lady Blackbird on Sunday evening, and in a game of Shelter in Place, an upcoming zombie LARP game which was laugh-out-loud fun. Rounding it out were a few sessions of Martian Dice, which I bought, and two games of unpublished prototypes: Feed the Birds by Tim Rodriguez, which is really done and needs to be published, and Battletech Deckbuilding Mechfighting Game by Thomas Denagh, which needs tweaking but was actually fun and a great idea in the making.

Lastly, I got to do Sagefight, a one-on-one duel with Ryan Macklin which I won. You can see the entire duel below.

Social

I did a lot of this at Gen Con. There’s a lot of people I only get to see once a year and I wanted to make sure that I had a good amount of time with them. My friend Robert came from Puerto Rico and this was fantastic. I also got to see my friend Mick who drove up from Kentucky for two days, as well as JJ Lanza and Rich Rogers and so many others I simply cannot name because it will take way too much space. As always my roommate and friend David Miller. And even my Miami friend Enrique and some other local folk, we ended up meeting over at Gen Con because back home we’re busy with life and stuff. I went to the Diana Jones Awards on Wednesday and was overwhelmed by the amount of industry friends all in one place, went to a social soiree on Thursday and right after did karaoke, had a wonderful Shabbat dinner on Friday, hung around the Gen Con Party on Saturday night before spending some quality time with my Puerto Rican friends, etc. I certainly filled up my social meter during this Gen Con, that’s for sure.

Work

I’m going to do an entire post-mortem on having done This Just In… From Gen Con, but briefly, it was a great experience, even if it was exhausting. I got to meet a lot of wonderful people, be they guests or patrons or audience members, and that alone made it all worthwhile. I was on Press mode every day during Hall hours, and I was sure to spread the word about the show far and wide.

Loot

I bought very little this year. I already had some of the things that were hot at the show due to pre-orders or Kickstarter, and some that caught my fancy I did not get either because I forgot to go back to buy them or I was more judicious and ruthless with myself knowing I would not really get to play X or Y, so I could always get it later. I also didn’t get any review copies of any game (and I wasn’t asking either), though since I have already received a card game from Looney Labs (thanks!). There’s a lot of the Exhibitor’s Hall I didn’t get to see properly due to my duties elsewhere, which I guess helped me not to spend too much.

Here’s what I brought back, and if you go here, you can see the notes that say what is what.

Overall

As I said, I loved this Gen Con. The new Exhibit Hall area meant I couldn’t just use pre-mapped mental routes, which forced me to look at everything anew. I still didn’t get to see everything, and I honestly got lost quite a few times, but it was fantastic to wander through the hall as if for the first time once more. I had a lot of work to do each day, as you can imagine when producing and releasing two podcast episodes a day, but that also allowed me to meet a lot of great people. I got to hang out with dear friends I only get to see once a year, if that. I got to play a couple of games despite it all. And I had the most wonderful Shabbat dinner at Gen Con so far.

Yeah, I’m looking forward to Gen Con 2012!

Last week at Gen Con, I had a chance to both run and play Lady Blackbird once more, which was just great. I played this little game extensively a couple of years ago and it never ceases to amaze me how much a few pages can deliver. After running it, I was talking to some friends at the lobby of the Embassy Suites about the game, comparing notes on how we ran the game, and I made the observation that for me, Lady Blackbird really sings when you have all the characters in one location, with their agendas out in the open where they can see how much at cross-purposes they are. After that it’s just a matter of seating back and enjoying the ensuing show.

Later, as I went back to thinking about Princess, Jock & Nerd, it occurred to me that the Lady Blackbird format would be a really amazing and simple way of doing this The Breakfast Club game since that is exactly what the movie is about: putting these characters in one location and letting them interact with each other. This was confirmed in my mind as I played the game on the last day of the con and then spoke about it some more with more people, including some of my players from the weekend.

I mentioned this on Twitter and immediately the idea was both liked and supported. It makes sense; Lady Blackbird is an experiment on character interaction at its core and fits well the theme and format of the movie.

So that’s what I’m doing now, turning The Breakfast Club into a Lady Blackbird hack that can be played quickly and in a short period of time, which fits my design goals to a T. In addition, Sean Nittner of the Narrative Control podcast issued me a challenge to have this done by the end of September so he can run it at Big Bad Con in Oakland, CA, which works for me as it lights a fire under my butt to get this done quickly. To that end, I’m just gonna go straight into writing, as opposed to blogging the process as I go along.

I’m starting it all by cheating, though.

Distilling the movie characters into stats is hard; I have to make a lot of assumptions based on actions, gestures, expressions and one-off lines of dialogue. I decided to start with the Keys^[1] for each character as these are the “stats” that most define who they are and what they want. It was also the easiest because the very stereotypes they are called in the movie create the first Key for each.

Below are the five characters and the Keys and Secrets I sketched out on my first pass. I am not defining them yet, though the names do give good indications about what they do. They are incomplete, however, so feel free to give suggestions.

Allison

• Key of the Basketcase
• Key of the Outcast
• Key of
• Secret of Lies
• Secret of

Andrew

• Key of the Athlete
• Key of the Pack
• Key of
• Secret of
• Secret of

Bender

• Key of the Criminal
• Key of the Troublemaker
• Key of the Tough Guy
• Secret of the Smart Ass
• Secret of

Brian

• Key of the Brain
• Key of the Nerd
• Key of the
• Secret of Insight
• Secret of

Claire

• Key of the Princess
• Key of Vanity
• Key of Popularity
• Secret of
• Secret of

1. ^[1] Not familiar with Keys? Read what they are here: http://solarwiki.janus-design.it/en/book/chapter-seven-keys-and-experience ↩