Highmoon's Ponderings

Though I’ve been silent for some time now because of classes and then finals, I’ve kept the Vampire project (it remains untitled and I really need to find a way to refer to it) alive in my head all this time. Maybe not front burner, but certainly slow cooker-simmering to the side. I can’t help it, really, not even with the other stuff I have going, like Ierne: Celtic FATE or my new obsession with the Colonial Gothic RPG and American Colonial/Revolutionary history.

One of the things that I’ve most been giving though to in between study sessions of human physiology (or perhaps because of it?) is the concept of damage as it relates to a vampire character. Both Vampire games go for the very traditional “hit point” approach: a vampiric character, much like every other character in the World of Darkness, has health boxes to track damage received. As they get checked off, health decreases until it either sends the vampire into torpor or, if it’s aggravated damage, it kills the character. In the WoD, because of the mechanical distinction made between normal and aggravated damage, this work ok; vampires can shake off fairly easily most damage, as it is mundane in origin and no match for their healing abilities, but aggravated damage really puts the squeeze on them, making them face mortality a second time. Yeah, it works for Vampire, but the more I think about it, the more I know that this isn’t what I want for my game. Or rather, I should perhaps say, this isn’t what I want for my game entirely.

I do want a way to track damage received by the character, but I’m far less interested in knowing how many more hits can the character take than what effect the hits already taken have had. I want to know how the damage the character has taken is affecting her and her circumstance, if that explosion at the night club she just escaped from did more than just singe her skin: did it destroy her reputation with the Blood Conclave, or cost her best (mortal) friend’s life, or both? I want damage to be a catalyst for enhanced drama. I don’t want a record of wounds, I want a record of consequences.

Read more…

I wrote the following review at Goodreads, but I have more to say after it.

40 Years of Gen Con by Robin D. Laws
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hard to believe that Gen Con has been around for 40+ years. Heck, hard to believe that roleplaying games have been around for almost that long! And right there, in the space where believing these statements are, amazingly, true, is where 40 Years of Gen Con lives.

Robin Laws had his work cut out for him in setting out to put together this book. Made up of a pastiche of chronological interview quotes from a vast array of people associated with Gen Con throughout its history, the book gives you a transcribed oral history of this most central gathering of the Hobby Gaming Industry. From its days as a tiny gathering at chez Gygax, to its move to current and gigantic home in Indianapolis, you can follow the wonderful and weird history of the convention, and in many ways of the industry as well.

If I have one qualm about the book is that, personally I would have preferred an actual written-out narrative of the history instead of the put-it-together-yourself approach of the various interview segments. A thousand kudos to Robin Laws for having the patience and the archeological skills to assemble a narrative out of all those interviews, though; that alone should win him some sort of prize.

Our hobby, our industry, has officially entered its second generation of life, and we’ve already begun to lose some of the pioneers. I continue to be amazed that there has been no effort to create a biography of the hobby/industry up to now, though 40 Years of Gen Con is a fantastic proxy that deserves to be in every gamer’s library.

View all my reviews >>

It is very strange to me that after over four decades of hobby gaming, from historical miniatures to the latest games debuting at Gen Con, this is the one history book about/on our hobby/industry available. Surely I cannot be the only one who sees value in there being a written history of the development of the industry, the development of the types of games, and even of some of the games themselves.

40 Years of Gen Con, beyond any flaws it may have, is a brilliant artifact because of the gathering of otherwise hard to find/lost information about that one (very defining) aspect of our hobby.

In 2014 we will see the 40th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons (and my own, but we’re not talking about me now). Will we see a book on the history of this pivotal game? I hope so. I so hope so. But more than just a D&D book, I want to see a book (many books?) on the history of our hobby.  We deserve to have our history chronicled, and no one but us will do it.

Happy Ireland day to all. It seems like the perfect day for me to finally talk about Ierne, don’t you think?

For a few weeks now I have been writing these little vignettes set in a land called Ierne, each showing a small glimpse of ongoing events before moving on to the next tale. I have also been dropping vague statements about my plans for Ierne as well as some hints as to what I’ve had in mind right from the start. Astute readers as well as customers of my Bardic Lore products for Highmoon Games (and also anyone who read my last Ierne tale) may have figured out that Ierne has been showing up for a few years now; this is a world that has been brewing in my mind, in one form or another, for over a decade, and I think it’s time to move from brewing to serving (stretching the beer analogy to its limits there). So, let me tell you about Ierne…

Read more…

Heading back to Ierne for another glimpse.

It was a terrible sight to behold, and I could not turn away. Fomorian heads and limbs flew in every direction, making me doubt those creatures had the same number of extremities as I did. Blood pooled at the feet of the giant a few feet away from me; hacked carcasses littered the field around us as far as I could throw a stone, yet the Fomorians did not relent. In groups of twos and threes they approached, frothing mad, evil incarnate, wicked blades flashing – only to be annihilated by the thing that only I knew to be my foster brother Bran.

I knew the stories of Cúchulainn, I knew about the ríastradh—the warp spasm—but I had never witnessed it myself. When, after fending the devils off for an hour, a Fomorian spear pierced my leg, Bran’s rage surged unchecked. His mouth foamed as he tore the shirt from his back, and as he rushed forward to meet the mass of Sea Devils attacking us, he started to grow, taller than a house, wider than three bulls. His skin bubbled from within like tar bursting from the earth, and his muscles stretched into shapes unnatural to humans. His right arm grew to the size of a thick oak tree trunk, and with every swing of the sword which now seemed like a toy in his mutated hand he slashed three Fomori in half. His hair stood on end like a halo of spikes, and from each tip burst a mist of blood and pure rage that choked any who came too close to him. His legs twisted around in their sockets, his knees now at the back, and he was able to leap high into the air and rain death as he came down. And just like the hero Cúchulainn, one eye sunk deep into his head, while the other almost popped out of its socket, and it was the last thing a Fomorian saw before being shred to pieces.

One hundred Fomorian died that afternoon at the hands of Bran, the warped one, hero of An Daingean, and I was never able to look at my foster brother the same way again.

—From the journal of Amergin Ó Míl

Ok, so I cheated a little here. This was originally published back in 2006 as the introduction to Bardic Lore: Ristradh, my D&D 3.5-compatible product introducing the warp spasms of Celtic myth. I did revise the above version, cleaned it up a bit, but it is essentially the same scene. The reason I brought it into the present, and into this Ierne series of vignettes, is that I need the warp spasm to be present in what I’m planning to do with Ierne in its early stages, and I saw no reason to write another scene when that one was very much to my liking.

To address something that came up in the comments to Ierne: The Gate, these little vignettes are not really meant to be interconnected. Imagine you’re flying over Ierne and every so often you zoom down to ground level and get a small glimpse of what’s going on with a few people, then you fly back up and go somewhere else on the island. I’m not saying they couldn’t be interconnected–some have already suggested ways in which they are–but I’m leaving that to you.

By the way, I promise I won’t tease forever on what Ierne is to be. Astute readers will have picked up the few clues I’ve left in previous posts or seen the one outright mention of it I made earlier in January. So I’ll come clean, but not just yet.

Another tale of Ierne:

Photo by Yvonne McNamara.

He held her arm as she took her first step up the hill towards the gate. “You can’t go there,” he whispered.

She looked at him with a curious look. “Why’r ye whisperin? And why I cannae go? Tis jus’ a ruin, tha’s all.”

She was beautiful, he found himself thinking. Her auburn hair spilled like an unruly cascade down her back and framed her plump face as she turned to look at him in a way that just made his heart ache. She was so beautiful. And she knew it. Used it to get her way many times. Used to make him do things he did not want to, used to do things he wanted to but felt too shy to do, used let her do things that she shouldn’t, things like going up the hill to the ruined gate. But she couldn’t. “I whisper because we are not alone in these woods. And you simply cannot go up the hill. And no, it is more than just a ruin.”

She gave him that practiced look of hers: full smile revealing only a sliver of her teeth, rosy cheeks pushed up making her eyes small and sparkly. Like every other time he melted inside. She was so beautiful. But he must stand firm.

“That there is a gate from another time, brought here by the Otherworld. The fili says the Tuatha travel through all places and times of Ierne, and sometimes things get dragged behind them. Like this gate. My grandfather’s grandfather saw it appear one day when in the woods training, I’m told. The fili also says we should not go up to it, lest we be pulled into the Otherworld. So no, you cannot go up.”

“Ye don’ wan’ me going to the Otherworld?” she teased.

“No,” he said smiling, blushing. “I want you here, with me.”

She looked at the ruined gate, its dark stones in stark contrast with the snow all around them. She looked at her young warrior-in-training, his strong hand still holding her arm. Gate. Him. Gate. “Let’s go back,” she said as she slid moved his hand from her forearm to her own hand.

They walked through the snowy forest, the cool air stilling everything around them except the sound of their feet on the dry ground. He put his arm around her shoulder, holding her to him, feeling her warmth, basking in the scent of her hair. She was a handful, but she was so beautiful. And maybe one day. One day…

She tripped him.

It was a simple movement of her foot, something he should have been able to recover from and turn into an offense, something his trainer would be ashamed to see him fall prey to. And fall he did, on his face. He managed to get up fairly quickly, but by then she was gone. He could hear her giggling ahead, running through the crackling underbrush, heading towards the gate. He called to her, asked her to stop, pleaded. She kept running, laughing. It was a game to her. It was horror to him.

He reached the foot of the small hill panting, but could not hear anything anymore. No laughing, no giggling, no sound of a young woman running, walking. Nothing. He looked down and saw her tracks headed up the hill, to the gate. Taking a deep breath, filling his lungs with cold courage, he ascended the hill as well. One step at a time. Matching her tracks. Left. Right. Almost there. Left. Right. Now at the gate. Left.

Nothing.

He stood with his right foot in the air, looking around for the next track. Nothing. The next one would be inside the threshold of the gate. He thought about it. He made a most minuscule move, almost a step. Almost.

He stepped back. All the way down the hill. She was gone. Into the Otherworld. Where he could not go. She’d be fine there, he thought, fighting back tears. She was so beautiful.

I found this photo linked from a post at the Irish Fireside Blog & Podcast about the recent freeze in Ireland. It caught my attention immediately, and I wanted to know what its story was. I guess now I know.

I also know what Ierne will be. But I’ll leave that for a post all its own.

Photo by Yvonne McNamara. Used with permission.

A new vignette from Ierne:

From Thúr Rí they sailed, ten black small ships each carrying three soldiers. Three giant soldiers. Three giant Fomori soldiers.

The ships moved independently, pulled by some dark magic over the rough seas on their approach to mainland Ierne. On each mutated hand, each demon held a wicked blade as sharp as hatred, a blade that could tear a horse in half, a bull in quarters, a man in shreds. With these cruel instruments they tore into the sleeping seaside village, wasting no time to unleash death. Into thatched roofs they stabbed, through lime-covered walls they broke, spilling warm blood from warm bodies onto cold earth. Stomping over the village, towering over the sluggish defenders, they slashed at the small and slow targets as if they were little more than chickens in a pen come dinnertime. For dinnertime had arrived.

When it was all over, twenty-nine Fomori dined on the crudely-cooked corpses of sixty-four men, women and children. Sated, they capped the feast with the one fallen giant, fuel for more chaotic mutations, its strength absorbed into the rest.

On their own one or two feet, or in the bellies of the others, all thirty Fomori would reach the walls of Dún nan Gall and recover the stolen eye.

So did Balor command. So it would be done.

What I want to do with this is becoming clearer in my head. I still need to figure out some Aspects of the whole, see how they fit within the greater Fate of Ierne, but maybe in a couple of weeks I’ll be able to tell you something more concrete.

Photo CC Licensed by Liam Moloney.