Highmoon's Ponderings

It’s been months since my last entry in this series, since the last time I dedicated serious mental space to the topic of vampires and to the game that began to emerge from these ruminations. I am here to put the proverbial nail in the coffin, or more appropriate, the stake in the undead heart. Sunrise has come; this series is now over.

When I started what would eventually turn into the Rebuilding Vampire series, I was simply gushing enthusiastically about a game that still holds a special place in my heart, Vampire: The Masquerade. From there, I went on to deconstruct certain elements of the vampire myth that I felt VtM was underserving and found myself designing the beginning of a new game, one centered on the issues of the vampire’s story that I found most appealing, namely: the struggle with the beast within, the certainty of the fall into the abyss, and the struggle of how to best live during the inevitable fall. I can tell you that those are still items that are of essential interest to me and to my enjoyment of the vampire myth.

The problem, as it were, lies in what this developing game latched onto within me as I worked on it. In 2009 I lost my mother to cancer, and it affected me in ways which I refused to acknowledge, even as they drove me down into a deep dark pit and affected every other relationship in my life. Working on the vampire game, this game that I eventually came to call When The Fall, became a way to tap into that darkness within towards some productive goal. It worked, it focused the pain I felt and helped it move out of me, but at a great mental and spiritual cost at times. If use the word drained please don’t think it’s merely a clever pun.

Read more…

Since playing Dragon Age last week, I’ve been wanting to do it more, but my GM, Enrique, is out of town for the holidays. I was sitting at home, very bored, on Saturday night, eating Chinese food (National Jews Eat Chinese Food Day) when I decided to run an impromptu game of Dragon Age online. I got a few takers but having never hosted an online virtual tabletop, I eventually decided to move it to Sunday night. Sunday during the day I sent out invites to a few people who had expressed an interest, and managed to get four players. At 11 PM EST (and with players literally all across the US), we got on Skype to play The Dalish Curse, the introductory adventure included in the Dragon Age Game Master’s Guide (no spoilers below).

As I mentioned, I have never hosted a game via an online virtual tabletop (VTT); I have played in games that have used MapTool, but someone else has done all the heavy lifting and I simply connected and played. I spent a good chunk of Sunday downloading both MapTool and Gametable, and fiddling with all their infinite nifty features — and there are a ton of them, nifties that would’ve made the game very attractive visually — but eventually realized that I’d been wasting hours trying to set up something that was way more complicated than what I needed it to be for a one-shot game. So eventually I scrapped the VTT idea and decided to use good ole Skype coupled with Google Docs for maps and info reference. I pulled the maps from the PDF copy of the GM’s Guide I have, pasted them onto individual Google Docs, and put together a Stunts reference sheet for the players, then shared the folder with everyone. For dice , we used an online dice rolled found at Catch Your Hare, which is especially neat as it displays the dice results graphically and by die, as opposed to the sum of all dice rolled. Each player picks a color for their dice, and I ruled that the middle die is always the Dragon Die, making it easy to see how many Stunt Points were generated on a roll of doubles. Easy peasy.

My four players were Tamara Deeny, Thomas Deeny, Ryan Macklin and Brennen Reece, and all four signed up for the game via my post on Twitter. We used When Is Good? to figure out a time when we could all play, and jumped on Skype at the appointed time for some dark fantasy adventuring. To save time, I had the players choose from the pre-generated characters available on the Dragon Age RPG website. The party consisted of Masarian, a Dalish Elf apostate mage (Ryan); Ackley, a Ferelden Freeman rogue (Thomas); Kedwalla, a Surface Dwarf warrior (Tamara); and Shinasha, a City Elf rogue (Brennen). We played using the rules in Set 1, though I added the Exploration and Roleplaying Stunts available on the Set 2 Playtest document so we could take them out for a spin.

Read more…

Last night I finally had the chance to play a roleplaying game since coming back from Gen Con and the game on tap was Dragon Age from Green Ronin. Running the game was my friend Enrique and joining us was his usual gaming group, plus me.

Let me cut to the point right away: I had a ton of fun. A metric ton. Part of it was because the guys in the group were a fun bunch to hang out with and they welcomed me in immediately as one of their own, but also because the Dragon Age RPG simply rocks. I would dare say that, yes, it rocks you like a hurricane. We played for just shy of 5 hours and not once did I hear anyone complain about the game, not once, and as the night progressed, the praises for it simply heaped up. The system was easy to grasp, quick to resolve and engaging for all at the table, especially during combat when the Doubles Watch went into full effect, everyone just chomping for a chance to yell out Doubles! and spend those Stunt Points for cool effects. Through the banter, the catching-up, the food and drinks, and the barrage of comments/taunts/insults in Spanglish, the game held our attention and interest, and delivered some solid old-school RPG fun.

This is where I get wordy, as I wanna talk about the adventure we played and why this game left me with a smile on my face.

Read more…

After not gaming since Gen Con, I am pee-in-my-pants excited about the Dragon Age game my friend Enrique (aka NewbieDM) will be running this coming Wednesday (12/22) night. I know absolutely nothing of the Dragon Age brand as I’ve never played the computer game, but the pen-n-paper RPG published by Green Ronin is just absolutely evocative in its retro-style to “old-school” roleplaying games and its simple treatment of the world of Dragon Age, which is all I need to get into it.

Enrique said to go ahead and build my character so after reading the Dragon Age RPG Player’s Guide, I came up with the following player character for the game. I’m sure once I sit down at the table and meet the rest of the players/party there will be tweaks, but this is my PC as it stands now. Without further ado, I give you Gwydion Ar Calennar O Stormhold.

Read more…

Last week was the 20th Anniversary of the debut of Twin Peaks on television, a series that literally redefined the prime-time drama and opened the door to everything from The X-Files to pretty much every single geeky show on TV today. We didn’t get Twin Peaks in Puerto Rico (and I didn’t have cable) so I came to watch it about five years after it had been off the air, when the series first came out on VHS (my wife, however, watched the whole thing as it aired, behind her parents’ back, skulking down to the family room at night – she was the one who infected me with Twin Peaks fever).

I fell in love with this show once I saw it, and I continue to friggin adore it to this day. Given that at the time I was running a Vampire: The Masquerade Chronicle for my two players, I decided to express my love for the show in the one way I know how: by using it in my game.

More than 10 years after the fact, my players still remember, with unsettling fondness, that visit to Twin Peaks.

What I did was use a mix of elements from the show and Fire Walk With Me movie. The movie delved really hardcore into the mythology of the show, and given my player characters were supernatural creatures to begin with, I knew I wanted to make them realize that there are even stranger, stronger things out there than vampires. I also knew I did not want to define at all the nature of the Lodge denizens, and that I was not going to try in any way to speculate on what happened to Cooper and Annie after the end of the show (our adventure was taking place a year after the end of the TV series). I would maybe hint, but I was more interested in exploring the themes than in creating fan-fiction about a possible sequel. Because of the characters I had playing, I knew I would be playing on the idea of Nina being a possible next victim to BOB (thus why I presented the ring from FWWM), though the use of the little girl from a previous encounter Nina had had was truly what gave me the emotional key to the whole event. I also knew I would have the vampires face off BOB somehow, and the way it went down was amazing. As it should, it left scars on the characters, both emotional and physical (and spiritual, as in the case of Ben).

It was only a couple of sessions, and only two nights of in-game time, but wow, what a great story that was. It became instant legend in our circle of friends, and to this day we talk about the time the vampires went to Twin Peaks.

If you want to read a recap of the entire episode, then please read on.

Read more…

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…