Adventures in Kerbal Space

On Deck For Trial
LackLuster Labs & Stock Extension
Spaceplane Plus
ZeroscienceContracts
Mission Controller Extended
Biomatic Biome Sensor

Top Gameplay Priority Mods

KW Rocketry

Ferram Aerospace Research -

Deadly Reentry - 

TAC Life Support -

Interstellar-

Fine Print -

Mission Controller Extended
RealChute
Space Shuttle Engines - this is a neat and tidy pack of parts that fit well into stock, despite their name.  I am finding them useful for building

Lower priority 

Station Science -the stations and the contracts for them are both boondoggles

Dmagic Orbital Science

ScanSat
Infernal Robotics
Universal Storage (needs update)

HomeGrownRockets - I'm lukewarm on this in some respects, but like the 2 man pod and the soyuz/vostok style pod, and the low profile RCS pods.  The 1.75m tanks are cool, and I'm using them with KW 1.25 engines, but his engines are pretty dull and kind of...don't provide choice and gameliness

RemoteTech2 - Seems like it may be causing some physics errors.  I am really, really struggling to get the satellites to network, and the lack of good tutorials and documentation is getting to me.  I do enjoy the mission planning and figuring out how to pack multiple sattelites into one launch.

Not installed but thinking about it:

Orbital Kolonization Modular Kolonization

Taurus HCV

Near Future SpaceCraft (32 bit only...waiting on that)

Airbags 

Kerbal Attachment System, if things get updated

B9 aerospace, if things get updated

Science Value Edit -- (we are getting a lot more experiments, neccessarily the value of each will likely need scaling)

Gameplay

Enhanced NavBall

KER (Kerbal Engineer Redux)

Docking Port Alignment Indicator

MechJeb

SafeChute

RCS Build Aid
Final Frontier (ribbons)
Kerbal Joint Reinforcement

Visual

Chatterer
HotRockets
CoolRockets

Distant Object Enhancement

Better Atmospheres

Environmental Visual Enhancements (buggy for .24)

Maybe more, 64 bit permitting

Other

Starsystems, if things are looking good when I boot things up.

For the Love of the Game, Pt. 1

Every role-playing game has at its core some kind of cognate of what the game is while it's being played.  Within each system there's room for many different types of game, and sometimes the same character sheets, books, and DM can change games without cracking a different core rulebook.

This image screams Traveller.

Often, elements of the game, either mechanical or conceptual, distract from the core of the game.  I ran into this in my own Traveller campaign in which I used GURPS for action resolution.  The mechanical diversity allowed in the character creation rules for GURPS, when combined with my player's inexperience with the setting, led to character concepts that were at odds with the goals of the game and with each other.  The high level of detail in GURPS combat, which I thought would lend itself to an understanding of the deadliness of combat and how dangerous guns were, instead led to players neglecting to understand the combat system entirely.  Mechanically, I wasn't provided with a good way of constructing challenges like rough landings, asteroid sweeps, and so on, and without flavorful mechanics to inspire characters to place themselves in the world, we were eventually playing a very generic 'It's sci-fi and we have a ship' game.  After the fact, I learned how very distant the mechanics can be from the game's core spirit.

What is Traveller? Is likely to be another essay of mine.  Suffice it to say, Traveller is a game about adventurers that travel between planets, usually in the hustle to make enough money for their next meal.  The Empress Marava, and the Spinward Marches are the core of traveller.  The yawning chasm in capability between a character in battledress and one without isn't.  The glaring lack of acknowledgement of the digital revolution in its canon isn't. (Traveller's technology base is more like Cowboy Bebop or Firefly than Star Trek or Shadowrun.)

Roleplaying is a vast canvas of cooperative storytelling, usually of an ascent to greatness.  Within that canvas, though, the several great genres exist as what others would call Metagames: the core spirit of what it means to be playing Shadowun, Pathfinder, or Dungeons and Dragons.  I propose that The sort of tropes & mcguffins that make up the bread and butter of these games isn't the metagame, it's the game itself.  After all, the first rule at the front of all the Codices of Mechanical Resolution is (or should be) 'Take or leave any rules as you see fit among your group to achieve a fun experience.'  Implicit in Rule Zero (which I think players have some claim to as well) is "have fun in this genre."

The important thing to point out is that 'genre' is the shared zeitgeist at your table of that you're playing.  When you're thinking about introducing an action into the game, as the player or the DM, think about how it will be fun, for everyone.  Think of how it fits into the Genre, and think of how it expands your table's current genre through evolutionary increment (Macgyver's agility between action, intrigue, drama, and after-school-special, while remaining true to concept, might be an inspiration in this respect).  Invite your fellow PC's into the action (and don't waste a half hour on a scouting trip as the rogue).  As the DM, invite PCs to take part in politicking (if that's part of your game) by attaching PCs to ethnic or social groupings, and then place PCs in positions as heralds and tribunes for those groups.

Talking about the action is not the action.  Just like boring dialogue about what to do next can be replaced in a TV show to a cut to the beginning of the plan, keeping the audience in the dark, (and in suspense) so it is that you can suck up the game time talking, rather than acting. 

The 'players plan their attack' time, I find, goes better when I simply say "I'm getting a coffee guys, when I come back in ten we'll cut to your assault on the keep.' This tends to be fun, as you can reward players with good plans by leaving the monsters hapless.  It also seems that whenever I'm at the table, I just slow it down, the same way that an off-camera player or a split party would.

Of course, the GM is the usual culprit for this kind of time wasting that isn't actually part of the game.  The long history lecture, the exposition through dialogue (rather than action or, better, adventure), the boring NPC bantering on about details of the world only the DM cares about...  Are also Not Core to the Game.  There are also mechanical challenges that aren't core to the spirit of the game--covered in more detail in part II. 

(for now, recall how tiresome it is to wade through the masses of level 1 undead and orcs that many DMs fill BBEG's castles with for realism; also recall how the PCs are total badasses and the DM had full discretion to accurately roleplay the chumps and have them stone scared by the arrival of the Teleport Commando Action Force (TCAF).

While we don't have the luxury of a cutting room, all of these scenes would be cut from a tight television or film script.  Why? Because they didn't bring the ratings up; they weren't core to the game (err...show).  I'm not saying go all out here--but notice how the Temporal Cold War plot in Enterprise is introduced through Daniels, when he places Archer in an uncomfortable prisoner's dilemma.  In that (surprisingly good for Star Trek's worst outing) episode, the exposition was also the action as Archer was left conflicted over which unknown faction to trust.

Traveller.  It's like this.  I think...

The core of D&D is adventure, challenge, adversity, exploration, achievement, and (occasionally) heroism.  Your table may include Intrigue, bloodsport, and heistiness, adding some or all to the core of the game.  So for the love of the game, try to minimize the time spent at the table doing things that aren't part of the core ideals of the genre.  And if you're taking a compositional risk in trying to broaden the palette, find a way include everyone and be ready to retreat from your ambitions if it doesn't go over well.  I've seen at least one long-running campaign go to the tubes because the DM was pushing Diablo-style action alongside a highly political plot that went over the heads of every last player.  I've also inadvertently indulged half-hour scouting trips on the part of the rogue while the rest of the party sat in boredom.

For the love of the game, don't do these things.  Find ways to avert them.  I'm proud to say that I've played impulsive characters that got themselves killed demonstrating how tiresome sitting in a council room can be.

PS, I'll likely end up being called a Heretic for suggesting that Rule Zero is at all the province of the players.  Rest Assured, I'll upset my timetable set down in "A change in the Weather" to include an exploration of this prospect.

For the love of the game, Pt. 2

Every system of pen & paper roleplaying that I've encountered has more than a few mechanics for resolving more than a few things.  Through an extended example, I'm going to leverage how we need to love the game more than the rules.  While this example uses events in a novel/film to leverage its points, the basic differences between PnP RPGing and other forms of storytelling are readily apparent, the most crucial being the cooperative and spontaneous elements therein. 

Take the example of Gimli, Aragorn, and Legolas tracking the hobbits and Uruk-Hai.  Under D&D 3.5X You can, for example, make thirty-six successive constitution checks for 'hustling' to check their fatigue, and have Legolas make a stream of dreary DC10 checks to aid Aragorn's tracking, and possibly even suggest that Gimli's minor clerical magic delivered in the form of humor gives them some resistance to exhaustion.

Rolling the number of dice required to do this would take at least 15 minutes.  It's clear that if the characters decide to take this course of action, they want to see it come to some sort of progress in the plot--and as the DM, you aren't doing anyone favors by belaboring this exercise.  In any form of storytelling, Plot-Points don't come during Montages (Samurai Jack's agility with the technique notwithstanding).  The plot point to resolve here is singular, or so it would seem--Do the Three reach the Hobbits before Isengard?

In this case, the rules are getting in the way of the game.  The game, the tone of the story that has come before, dictates that within ten minutes, everyone at this table would like to know what happens next.  Five minutes would be better.  Two would be best.

If you were the DM, you could say that Whatever comes Next could be that a Nazgul in the skies spots the three on their epic jog and that they must take refuge in a canyon, losing the trail, or that they happen upon the Rohirrim before their battle, or whatever strikes your fancy, guided by the player's level of success.  The action of the trek, however, lays between your gaming group and Whatever Comes Next and the mechanic as written in the rules is standing in the way of the game.

GNS--Something I'll say segregates us too much in another post

 

Here I will be accused of being anti-simulationist, and that the progressive difficulty of manifold CON checks for fatigue gives believability and realism to this journey.  But I say hogwash.  If five people are at a table to play a roleplaying game, they certainly don't want to roll d20's for a half hour with varying descriptions of (you get tired and have to slow down) or (your progress is good this hour).  They want to get to the decisive moment--the one where dice rolling and roleplaying can turn the story in any direction.  And the burden lies now on the DM to get the story past that point.

I'm touching upon many operational terms here in this first essay that aren't well articulated in the other literature on Gamemastering--"Decisive Moment" and a "Mechanic/Game" oppositional axis--terms which I'll bring to light as we continue this journey--but I want first to hook you into this idea of Mindfulness.

Let's return to the Grey Company in the wilds of Eriador.  As the DM, you have reached a point in the story where you need to maintain suspension of disbelief by allowing dice rolls and mechanical resolution to guide the outcome of the epic jog.  Your players are excited by the twist of the captured hobbits.
You have a moment.  You can typically always have about 30 seconds to figure out a mechanic, and it's conventional that if one takes ten seconds to flip through a book it's acceptable.  You have time to think. Thinking for a moment is much more efficient than pressing go on an inefficient mechanic or an unfun encounter--much like a speaker will sound far more persuasive without intersplices of 'um' and 'hmm.'

Let us now go deep.  Let us now go into your mind, and walk through the choices you have before you on how you could resolve this problem.  (note that the choices are spread across a continuum of more>less>no dice.)

• A) Use the mechanic as-is
• B) Make Something up using the nuts & bolts of the system before you.
• C) Gloss it over; they reach the hobbits.

Choice A will waste time at the gaming table and likely disengage all but the most straight-edged of your players (the parallel essay, Time is Precious, will address why this is a cardinal sin).  Choice B will allow everyone to feel that there's a chance of their actions succeeding and that their strategies for helping can affect the outcome.  Choice C will diminish the cooperative element of the game, as it will be left entirely up to you how the trek pans out.  B seems to be the best choice here, because of the successful uncertainty over how the effort of the Grey Company's trek will pan out.

Phase 2: What are the important questions that it might be fun to answer with a resolution using dice ? (if you wanted the Nazgul to appear, or for the Rohirrim to meet the Grey Co. before the scene of the battle, the lead-in is entirely off-camera--and thus up to you by fiat.  (Random encounter tables can be an inspiration here--and provide for turns in the story that your players wouldn't normally expect from you--but that's a topic for another post)

• When does the party intercept the Uruk-Hai? Before or after the battle with the Rohirrim? (notice this subsumes all tracking checks...if they lose the trail, the answer is late or never)
• In what condition does the Grey Company reach What Comes Next? (Since the story before has established that self-reliance is a theme in The Two Towers, we can conclude it's unlikely that deus ex machina will occur so early)

Phase 3: How can we answer the question? We know that the existing rules are cumbersome.  Mechanically, we know that it's a test of endurance--and likely also one of will (to keep going through blisters and hunger.)

Brainstorm something that tests these things.  We know we are rolling too many dice as is; would fewer dice, or even one die per player work better?  Endurance and will are two things we need to test...(and it makes sense that charactersthat have invested more energy in being good at these two things should have a higher degree/chance of success) HEY! there's something called a Fortitude Save, and a Will Save in this game.   Now here's where we can get unconventional.

Here's an option:

Dumb, but production this good in player imagination mean you're ok.

Have the players roll a fortitude save.  Then subtract each player's result from 30 or 40; that's how many damage they've got on their sheet when they reach What comes next. You could say that players that took 10 or more damage are fatigued, and those that took 20 hp are exhausted.  This rewards players with high HP, drains healing resources, and rewards thoughtfulness if anyone remembered to memorize something like restoration.

The propensity to falter and slow down the party seems like a test of will.  You could have them all make a will save; if they mostly save high, they get there early, if they mostly save low, they're late.  If they end up late, perhaps allow a junction if they're doing poorly: "Gimli's ankle will be sprained by the end of the day, and his quips are becoming less humorous and more desperate as he excuses falling behind..."

Then, if Aragorn's player were to say, "I'll carry him" you could have him make a strength check (i'd recommend climb as it's STR-based and improves with level), and apply similar damage/fatigue from the first check, or maybe STR damage from soreness.

That's all.  I'll edit with more ideas, and perhaps chime it with your own ideas of how to expedite this 'fistful of dice' moment (which are to be avoided, explained in principle in part 1).  You can add pivot points (another essay) and a second batch of die rolling/saves to modulate this (climbing a cliff, avoiding a stampede of aurochs, etc.)

End Phase: Now that you've gotten all that time from eliminating the part where the Rules got in the way of the game, you might have time for a twist!  Perhaps the party comes to a ravine that would take more time to cross, but there's a chance they might be able to jump across or balance on an ill-secured log...

 PS: I'll point out that with this kind of resolution we can count this as an encounter, and give folks some xp.

A change in the weather

When I last wrote here on the prospects of convening a group together to the end of Pen and Paper Roleplaying, how it was nearly a lost art, I was forlorn. The armies of WoW stood at our gates, put fire to our fields, our kingdom at its knees. Mass Effect was a more readily known word than Traveller or Shadowrun in the halls of Gen Con. Yet the Success of the film Drive speaks to a love for earlier eras, and for a kind of storytelling that wasn't in such a frantic rush. Success can be had in refreshing and updating the classic, while honoring the patience and grace of a passed era. And the music is AWESOME. (See Left).

So I've changed and revised my tune since then. I say we should embrace the idea that technology has passed us by. Don't mistake me for one of those OSR fellows that would see us all jump into a deep, dark lake of nostalgia. Nay, I suggest that the whole practice of P&P gaming, in all forms, is as retro as the B-52's were in 1981. And the most retro among them is the pen and paper roleplaying game. And it's got a lot going for it--interaction, the opportunity to make friends, positive reinforcement of hygiene, and the opportunity to be part of a story--one that can take unexpected turns that television, or even novels, would flinch from...let alone the increasingly formulaic and boring mileu that passes for Videogame 'storytelling.'

After all, don't we love Shakespeare? Isn't it a given that If you can sit through five acts of slowroll storytelling, that there's something to be said for roleplaying? The answer is yes. But like Shakepeare, like Drive, we can't merely stand on the laurels of Brando and Brannagh or a Steven Seagal film from 1990--We've got to do better and put on some good-nay great pieces of work. This propensity for unearthing the Little Keep on the Borderlands every five years isn't honoring our forebears. We've got to get fresh with it.

You're going to ask yourself, 'I'm just a DM,' or 'I'm just a Diehard Wizard, Thief, or Fighter,' you're going to say, "What can I do for the love of the game?" My answer is, Do better. All the sound and fury in the Internet has distracted us from what can make us better at our craft. All it takes is a little mindfulness, the echoing of a few mantras when you can manage it: "For the love of the game," "Show, don't tell," and "Time is precious." Prepare for posts following that bode the beginning Of Game Journal J's Prophecy (and the dawn of a new blog to come:)

Post Rotational Syndrome

This is something of a wall of text, but seeing as you're getting into it, I thought I'd chime in with my experience of playing D&D over the last decade.

1) The pacing of something that's a shared experience of imagination is so different from everything else, where entertainments are fast, faster and fastest, very goal-oriented, and very videogamey (even prime time TV has gone this way with CSI et al, and it's very refreshing to do something cooperative, uncertain, and spontaneous. Even when there's a paper adventure the DM is going by, D&D and roleplaying in general is both unpredictable and fun. D*D was a real escape, it didn't want to profit from you (seemingly), no-it wanted to give you a world with a magical sword, a spellbook, an epic story, heroic deaths and even greater triumphs, all realized through cultivating your imagination with people of like mind. Sounds great, no?
2003:
2) Over the course of its run, 3.5th edition brought almost all of the manifold Pen and Paper enthusiasts into the fold of the same game. White Wolf, the makers of Vampire et al, destroyed their continuity while revamping their rules, alienating all but the most harcore LARPers. As LARP was always a very different set of folks from us, this meant that we got the best of the creative and mathematical talent from White Wolf's playerbase. D&D had never been more fun, and almost every house game you walked into was strong, with people showing up weekly and regularly leveling their characters 1-13. The death of the primary publisher of off-genre RPGs would prove pivotal later on.
2007:
4) Wizards, the Publishers of the primary D&D game, made a new edition of the game, which aimed to capture more of the Warcraft and Video game crowd by toning down the elements of the game that were oriented toward storytelling and simulation. While attrition and a sense of segregation between those with a causal approach,
--those who were already praising WoW and calling off their attendance at weekly sessions,
--and those more dedicated to the game,
was already becoming clear, the burden of sorting out which rules to play, and moving forward afterward,
2009(ish):
5) a group of game designers at Paizo splintered away, updating the 3rd edition rules, and generally capturing the more intelligent, tech-savvy and modern members of the playerbase. Those that neither used the internet for its intended purpose, nor attended Gen Con or Origins, regarded the hype around this 'new' game as somewhat quaint. For whatever reason, during the first 18 months of Pathfinder's debut, too few of the casual crowd was educated on how Pathfinder would bring new life to 3rd edtion.

This left the casuals and the oldtimers, who either adopted 4th edition abortively, kept on playing 3rd edition, or got into Pathfinder very reluctantly in an awkward position. Most of them already were at a point where they were at sessions about 1/2 of the time, and with the burden of figuring out how to play a new rules system, their internal calculus told them (correctly) that girlfriends and job applications were a better investment of time. D*D didn't hold its promise any longer. Players alienated themselves from each other as they either despised their playmates for being too stupid to play the 'best' game, or simply refused to have an opinion, and delved into playing WoW full-time.

Why did the dream die?
During this decade, the grounswell of visual ammunition for the imagination in the form of the Lord of the Rings movies helped immensely to make games exciting and boost a feeling that mental images were shared. But around 2006, the enthusiasm of more and more of the players I respected most wore away. They got their gaming fix during the week playing WoW (they admitted it was inferior, but so convenient!). They tuned out to the onrushing waves of content from Wizards that was constantly adjusting the power levels of the game. Second-rate jobs became increastingly unpredictable in schedules, and holding a group together required another individual beyond the DM just to 'coordinate' games.

By the time edition wars came along, it was the nail in the coffin. People didn't want to put the effort into pushing through their campaigns. Smartphones at the game table made things still more distracting. And at about this moment, new editions of Starcraft and Warhammer were released, sapping more energy from the nerdy tabletop community.

And most importantly, the sort of geeks that play D&D have never been good at conversations where consensus is pushed through. Mostly, they are happy to sit on their opinions, and are after all entitled to them, since they decided around 7th grade that they were different enough to spend 5 minutes or more a day thinking about elves and wizards instead of pokemon and baseball. That takes a certain nonconformist attitude, eh? The consensus needed to push past edition wars just wasn't something that a pack of introverts could arrive at.

After the sundering, Geeks' other great weakness reared its head: Inability to Network. Networking geeky groups is harder than ever, despite the internet. As the recent Finkelgate attests, the quest for a girlfriend, and probably a job, can get majorly snafu'd by having your real name branded with true nerdiness. (I'm talking the really geeky stuff here. Loving Ocarina of Time and Marvel Comics is about as mainstream as you can get). At the dawn of facebook, it was very clearly decided that D&D was an off-limits topic due to the possibility of Alyssa Banezak reading your feed.

And the alternatives to renetwork playgroups have not materialized. About a half dozen websites compete for true matching app functionality, and some people haven't moved beyond the use of forums and even NEWSGROUPS. So without the ability to discover adults that share your hobby discreetly through the internet, one would have to randomly proposition people in your life that just might be interested. They will probably turn out to be flakes--and as anyone that has leveled a character to 2 simply to see him go to the binder due to poor attendance can attest, flakes make great 5th and 6th players. When you're trying to get up to 4, they don't cut it.

And D&D can't take a hit like that. It takes effort and investment to get into, something that WoW et al. doesn't. You could, in that time, work on your golf game or your knowledge of the Jersey Shore, both sure paths to advancement in the workplace, rather than risk the time on this retro game where you use PEN and PAPER and DO MATH IN YR HEAD WTF? D&D requires effort, something that this casual-tilting age eschews, and therefore its potential players are few and far between.

Now, only diehards continue to play weekly and level up their characters. And without the continuity of a storyline, D&D really is WORSE than playing a video game.

Last year I learned that the author of the much lauded first book of Paizo's Kingmaker adventure path (the recipient of the industry's highest prize) no longer played weekly with a group, and had playtested the adventure online over VOIP. I'm sorry, but if the people making your product don't have the time/ability to play with it in its intended form, your product is officially now in the realm of the arcane. The numerous flaws in the adventure's scenarios were overlooked (it's braindead easy, 5-foot corridors are not a fun place to have a fight) by the journalists in the zeitgeist, and thus it was proved to me that only the true fans, those that aren't critical of their love enough to realize it's a mummified corpse, are still playing enthusiastically.

Inward-turned and in-bred. That's the direction D&D is headed.
Is D*D really dead?
I sure hope not.
I hope someone out there will prove me wrong.

Traveller 'verse: the empire

The empire sounds kind of sinister...

But really it's more 'distant.' It's the paradigm. Hereditary families called nobles look after the somewhat time-consuming and arcane world of interstellar relations...after all, who else has time to sit for 3 months on a starship just to go to a meeting?

The empire itself regulates and protects interstellar trade. Everything else resides in the jurisdiction of its member worlds, which can have any government they like: It has a very, very few rules:

• No non-imperial warships with jump drives (there are some ways to skirt around this, megacorporations have heavily armed route protector cruisers, there are interstellar mercenary corporations...but internal warfare can't interfere with commerce at large without the Empire intervening.
• All tarriffs to member worlds must be lower than those to non-member worlds by 50%; and tarriffs can't exceed 5%.
• No use of nuclear NCB weapons;
• No slavery.

The empire can of course claim jurisdiction in cases of interstellar commerce, and has its own court system. But there is no appeal to the imperial level: a judgement on a planetary level is final, it's final.

The empire supports itself through something like a 0.5% revenue tarriff on interstellar trade, which adds up to ALOT of money, and a fairly large military, though ground forces are not organized on a federal level except in times of war (think civil-war-era USA)

The imperial Credit is the usual medium of exchange in interstellar trade, though member worlds are allowed to issue their own currency, and even make it the only legal form of exchange onworld. Rate-fixing is not a problem, because it's illegal.

So there you have it.

The traveller universe: Technology.

Imagine everything we have now in the cozy early 21st century. Then add a few fantastic items, and a few steps backward.

• Medicine is performed with microsurgery and advanced pharmaceuticals. Infectious disease is not a danger...unless it's bioengineered.
• Strong taboos mean that getting cybernetic upgrades or biotech grafts are unknown technology. Somewhere, somebody knows about these things, or did, but they were a mad scientist and didn't last long outside their own Private Idaho (a small asteroid in the outer belt of the Glisten system).
• AIs and robotics have a similar taboo around them. Outside of table service and simple floor cleaning, people don't really like robotic workers, for two reasons: one, most planetary governments pursue policies of maximum employment, and two, the Imperiums' biggest threat, the Zhodani consulate, is a robot-friendly, telepathic-mind-control government. A branch of the Zhodani government is actually called the thought police.
• Imperial law forbids the enslavement of sentients. No one really devotes much time and money to creating AIs, as they're likely to have some legal problems if they were successful.

So, what is there, since we know what there isn't?

• Compact hot fusion. Buses and trains can and do run on fusion power plants.
• Contragravity devices, and artificial gravity aboard ship...these are very cheap, and so almost all personal transport (motorcycles, cars) are built on this principle, at least on high-tech worlds.
• Superconducting battery/capacitor cells. "Energy cells." Battery-operated devices use universal sizes, kept in place for at least a millenium.  Even cellular communicators have interchangeable batteries.
• Sensing technologies that we can logically expect. Chemsniffers, Biosniffers.  Densitometers are highly sensitive at mapping the interior of objects using gravity sensors. (probably uses the CG tech; though we have crude densitometers using radioisotopes.)
• Gauss (magnetic accelerator) weapons
• Laser weapons.  These were at one point standard issue to space crews (extrapolation), but have never been as damaging as similarly-sized gauss weaponry at the personal scale.
• Bullets are still pretty good for regular folks, and cheaper.
• Flying power armor suits: "Battledress."  Different interpretations of canon have these on almost every regular army trooper, sometimes only on imperial marines.
• 'Reactionless' Thrusters. These require power, and increase an object's inertia. Imagine a rocket that burns nothing. These are pretty much the cheapest way of moving something, and so are ubiquitous. Even on lower-tech worlds, these might be imported and installed in gasoline engine vehicles (unsupported in canon, but believable extrapolation).
• Nanomaterials have developed to the point that carbon fibers and thermal superconductivity are normal for military hardware; some efficiencies in manufacturing may be due to nanoassembly...but...things are still made in factories and sold by retail/mailorder, not asked for in from a household factory.
• Some biotechnology, however most of these advances (in agricultural production) have been made millenia ago, and the technologies are now open-sourced or sold as a service package (chemlawn). Folks are just as creeped out by the throught of putting a rebreather lamprey on their face as you are...so most people just wear masks when they have to.
• REALLY cheap computers, and a large market for specialized devices. IR 'shades,' about as light and expensive as a pair of Oakleys, are available. Brands exist that combine these with handheld cellular devices to lookup products...but a lot of people value their privacy.

The traveller universe: the way it is.

The driving logic behind Traveller is the Jump drive. A ship sublights out to 'shallow space' (at least 100diameters from any celestial body) charges up its jump grid, does some calculations, and falls out of existence.

It remains in Jumpspace (a poorly understood other quantum of reality) for about a week, undisturbed, and pops out somewhere between 1 and 4 parsecs (depending on the quality of the drive) away. A jump always takes about 160 hours.

The implication is a powerful one: Information from another star system is at least one week old. There is no other form of FTL travel in the traveller 'verse. No FTL radio. The capital of the Empire is about a YEAR away from the imperial fringes on 'swift boat' 4 parsec mail carriers.

This means many things: progress has a hard time equalizing itself--to support the technology level we have on earth we need a 6 billion person economy. To support more advanced technology, even larger economies of scale are needed. So there's sort of an upper ceiling on what technologies are out there in the market.

For two, there's lots of nooks and crannies in the universe for the little guy. Because of the information gap, small(er) businesses can thrive because of the agility compared to the interstellar megacorporations.

For three, the only way such a huge volume of worlds (there are hundreds of trillions of souls in the imperium) can be governed is through federalism. In fact, the Imperium is just the interstellar layer of government; anything beneath is the business of its member worlds. The empire simply subsists on tiny revenue tarriffs on interstellar trade, and even with so little, there's a fleet for each subsector of space.

The Traveller Universe: the really brief version.

Humanity has risen and fallen twice, passed through manifold ages of barbarism. It is several thousand years into our future, but that frame of reference has stopped mattering a long time ago.

In the beginning, humanity developed jump drive. The US, Japan, the ESA, China, and a few others invested in a new spacegoing technology that allowed a starship to travel a parsec (~4.3 ly) in a week. the first jump away from earth, we contacted an advanced interstellar empire with materials and nuclear technology far superior to our own...who were, apparently, human in every respect. Of course the nutjobs with their ancient pyramit conspiracies (TM) were very excited, but the reality proved far more pressing than the metaphyscial angst.

The Vilani Imperium was a baroque autarchy, with stagnant corporations so byzantine in their power structure that Earth's political scientists could not pin down where enterprise stopped and government began (and vice versa). Innovation was strictly regulated in the Imperium, leading to software built on ROMs, almost exclusively rerun entertainment, and two thousand years of no progress. The Earth humans already had superior medicine and computers; the vilani weapons and engines had a significant edge.

Several centuries of alternate war, peace, and trade resulted. The Earthlings replaced the Vilani at the top of the empire, but the influence was two-way, like the British in India. Eventually the Imperium of Man fell, too, leading to more than a thousand years of piracy and isolationism on the planets of the former empire.

NOW...
A new empire has risen. It's really more like a federalism, to anyone that cares to look closely...but that's for the next chapter.

Games on the Horizon:

Holiday watch/buy list and I'm only going to point out the things that are new/not expansions.
1) Dominant Species.
This game synthesizes worker placement with amazing area scoring and optimization. It also drops in a tiny bit of uniqueness to each race, and therefore bouys itself out of being an entirely Eurogame. Has a map, has geometry, has competition, and has alternate ways to win. A lot like Founding Fathers, but easier to Grok, with perhaps slightly more replay value (and a longer play time)
2) 7 wonders.
I'm not the only one lining up to have this game's babies. It takes the (machine building) mechanic from RFtG/PR/51st state, and then allows for unique players, and has perhaps the ultimate opportunity-pimp mechanic (pass your hand to the left, pick up the player's hand to the left) after each play. Add into this a brilliant distillation of competition on map games (All competition/interaction lies in the players to your right/left), and some unique abilities from each city (fixed components/races) and you've got another Card-Game that isn't a Card game...The ease of play and speed of games looks mighty attractive also.
3) Merchants & Marauders. This is an Ameritrash title that I can get behind--a strong theme, many options, and player competition in paralell (to a high score) and in series (combat, opportunity pimps). There is a colorful map of the carribean, upgrades like chain shot to your ship, and perhaps most importantly, little plastic men (err...ships.) Z-Man seems to be a rising star if this game is one to judge them by.
4) Kingsburg (not new, but I just realized that it wasn't exactly Ameritrash. I simply assumed that most everything that FF published was all armies and boards.) A sublime combination of the worker placement mechanic with a dice roll that determines which opportunities you can bid on. Not all bids are equal. Of course, there are several goods-trading and challenge-resolution mechanics, along with base-building, which are layered onto the game for good measure. In some ways this game is what TI3 attempts--a combination of depth/number of layers ala' america, with the elegance and depth of thought required of a Eurogame.
5) Alien Frontiers. This game also uses dice for its workers, though some say it has a player downtime issue. However, it has something perhaps more important: WICKED GOOD THEME, absent from many of the worker placement games. Of course, it's out of stock, too.

6) A GAME NIGHT THAT HAPPENS REGULARLY.
Boardgames are simply too good to ignore. It's my aim to get going on getting people together at the 5+ per table level more often. Boardgames are so much more entertaining, reliably, than video games, drinking without boardgames, and usually...roleplaying games. As the DM, I'm more or less exhausted by the pressure to keep people engaged and entertained...In more cohesive groups, the DM can afford to suck or do something more in-depth, requiring a bit of patience/investment on the part of the party...
But in the group I have now isn't that. On top of that, because of the short attention span, I really don't feel motivated to prep monsters/encounters

Pocket Universe: Boardgame concept.

1) this is a 'hex tile' game. Random assortment of tiles, face down at start.
2) Theme: each player has a tramp ship that is attempting to exploit the cached resources of an ancient civilization that sequestered itself inside the pocket universe. The different players may be from civilizations with radically different technology and psychology--the wormholes open into wholly different galaxies, or at least the other side of the galaxy. Sometimes a player will want to trade with the newly contacted civilizations; sometimes he will want to close the Pocket off to prevent invasion, and other times he may be bent upon awakening the ancient builders of the Pocket.
Each player begins at a wormhole hex around the perimeter of the pocket universe with his ship.
3) Goal: varies by player card recieved; each player has a large VP bonus for completing the goal.

Mechanic: each wormhole has a demand for one of the (three) types of ancient technology stashed: culture, philosophy, weaponry, and biodiversity. The demand value indicates how many VP the given type of technology may be traded for at that wormhole.

SHIPS: each ship has three stats: cargo, endurance, and resources. Endurance is how long the ship can voyage away from its home wormhole before it returns ('rubber band' mechanic). A ship can have a number of cards in hand equal to its Endurance stat. When it has no more cards, it returns to a wormhole of its choice.

Cargo is how much technology the ship can carry, either as digital storage or AI scientists anaylyzing with all their computing might...or as an actual cargo hold.

Resources are used to buy upgrades for the character's ship.

DECKS: There are two decks in the game: the Explorer deck (used for movement), and the Ancient deck (used for scouring the Pocket for usable stuff.) A player draws from the explorer deck up to his endurance

MOVE:
An explorer card can be played either as its event, or as movement for the ship. JUMP X(hyperspace your ship to a system up to X). PROBE (peek at a face-down hex, and choose to flip it or look at one of the challenge stacks in the ancient deck and rearrange them.

CHALLENGE STACKS:
Each system, once flipped face-up, is assigned a CHALLENGE STACK number from 1-8. Each challenge stack contains 3 cards from the ancient deck. (only

ENDING THE GAME
In the

On the Psychology of DMing

DND, Roleplaying, et al. has a mantra:

"It [we] takes all kinds.

At least, such is the case of players. And perhaps, such is the case of DMs. But something unique happens. its the germ of an idea, a virus that spreads in your mind. In the lost moments between sleep and wakefulness, you muse upon what will happen next to the party of heroes...and what happenings they will next cause. When the campaign reaches a certain depth, its little microverse has all the truths of a waking dream: you both create and experience your reality at once. And it's a shared dream, not unlike something from a recent Major Motion Picture.

If you're like me, and you've broken though the fourth wall and realized that all stories are mechanical storytelling contraptions, you realize that the object is twofold:

• Fun. In a book, film, or any other creative medium, everyone there must both enjoy the moment at hand, and anticipate with excitement the next.
• Exposition. To be a good story, it has to awaken new ideas, or allow the participants to tell truths about what kinds of people they can be, and what sorts of things they think adventure really is. As the DM, it's your responsibility to create a world that, at the very least, gives reason for the players to think twice about who they are.

But here I want to change gears: I get tired. DND et al. forces a DM to create a million castles in the sand, all folded into his head. IRL dilemmas and delays can overwhelm the impetus of a game, and cause it to become the sort of Subconscious Hang-up that the protagonist of Inception so suffers.

Buried in my mind are the cities upon cities, decaying masterpieces of imagination, that so haunt the DiCaprio character. Every game that I've run, every time I've adopted a new setting, it's a dreamworld that gets tucked away in my subconscious. While it's only the year-long campaigns that literally have demons leaping about them, even the small games have poor lost souls inside.

Of course, I'm almost normal on the Autism-Asperger's-Etc. spectrum, and to me DND isn't nearly the obsession that consumes some folks. But don't you ever get weary of how unfulfilled most of your characters/plots/story arcs ultimately end?

Last year, I went to Pittsburgh, stood up for a few college kids getting shot at by police, and got the biggest legal shitbag imaginable thrown at me. That story arc is now about to conclude...and I've gotten a few EPs from it. It feels closed.

Now, I won't go into my IRL CG Wiz4 of Jesus character, his anarchist leanings, etc., as I find that the last thing people want from DND is something that resembles IRL. (speaking of which, where are the Gay NPCs guys? We've had female Everythings since 1e after all...)

...but do you ever think that you got into DND in the first place to feel like you were part of the big, important things that allegedly don't happen anymore? I know I did. I've met dozens of escapist players looking to pile up 100k of GP and learn 9th level spells...and as far as I'm concerned, they're not the sort of red blood cell that carries oxygen. It's the true dreamers, the ones that cry at the end (and the middle) of Les Miserables that made DND last 35 years. And to you types, I say,

Maybe, occasionally, we should wake up, not to the IRL world of Jobs, Kids, Girlfriend Aggro, etc., but to the world of an oppressed Palestine, of union busting at every Wal Mart, of the Taliban that exploded millenia-old masterpieces of Buddhist culture, of the still more fearsome hate-mongers that call themselves Terry Jones and Glenn Beck.

So here is my plea: For a gamers' delegation to something simple, something emblematic of the truth that there is good, evil, law, chaos, and neutral...and that we'd be better off with more of the neutral. What gathering could so epitomize a truth so complex, you ask? Why, look no further:

Golarion: an an Apology.

I've recently latched onto a PF campaign that has those critical elements: good scheduling (biweekly Sundays); good players (half newer, roleplaying types and half fatigued out of powergaming, but enthusiastic in teaching the rules to the newbs); and a good location (solid table, playing in a house with no kids/parents/dogs).

I laid it on thick with a mysterious doom plot revolving around a prophecy (HP4/5 analagous) that's not only dangerous but locked away. When some players started hitting 2nd level spells, and even making 5th level, I realized the campaign was going to go the distance, and then realized that I'd missed on setting exposition.

Setting exposition, from a player's perspective, comprises several things:

• "Those NPCs we met that were busy/bent upon doing X"
• "That asshole noble/police/merchant that wouldn't help us, even hindered us"
• "That one helpful NPC"
• "That one silly/hilarious/foil NPC"
• "That city that we went to with the Frakked up laws"
• "That place with the kewl architecture/setup/gimmick"

I had to hurry up and start dropping these things, or the PCs would be living in a cartoon world of 'us, the shop, and the badguize,' which is the sort of campaign you can get out of WoW or any cRPG. I quickly realized that to make up time, I would have to use a published setting to catch up. The more bookish players could help flesh things out, as one can often drop a noun with a Capitalized Letter and a bookish player will drop exposition like manna from heaven, relieving 'DM lecture syndrome,' one of the ways to ruin a game in the attempt to establish a sense of place.

In Eberron, the bullet points above are usually expressed though the PC's first visit to sharn, their interactions with the 'marked houses, a few setpiece encounters on railroad, and some mysterious goingson perpetrated by the shadow syndicates (the Dal Quor, Inspired, or Witches of Druuma). The whole thing reeks of design based on unmitigated fulfillment of each of the bullets above. (In hindsight we all see the heavyhanded marketing that WoTC/Hasbro was pulling on us; why did we fall for it again?) I wanted to get away from it, bad.

I wanted to get away from the overblown visuals/NPC orgs/everything that Eberron was; I also wanted to get away from the sense of drifting that FR can give you, as locations are interchangeable...let's be honest, can anyone really tell me what distinguishes the Dales from the Silver Marches other than that one is the child of Greenwood and the other of Salvatore? (both backwoodsy lands with loose city/feif states confederated, nourished by trade). For that matter, what's the difference between Cormyr and Tethyr? Between the Dragon's Reach and the Lake of Steam? FR is rich with cool places, but too many of those places are too similar to one another or too distant from the stage to be relevant (Moonshaes, U.East, Halruaa anyone?)...Most of the FR games I've played or ran were so frantic with travel that only one placename on the map gets enough facetime to have texture to PCs.

I turned to Golarion. I'll first cover what was holding me back, and then the cathartic 'Eureka!' moments that led me to commit to the setting. First, the holdbacks:

• It's got a 'balance of power/entente' kitch which is emphasized in PF Society events, but it's not the lynchpin of the setting, the way that Ex-Galifar is to Eberron, and more importantly, the Five powers are Very Different From One Another.
  
• In fact, the Very Different From One Another feel approached heights reminiscent of cartoony Mystara, with its patchwork, stitched-together feel. On first glance, countries look like 'flying saucer land,' 'devilworship land,' 'Egyptland,' etc.
• At times, it has a 'wheres the monsters?' feel that plagued overly political settings like Kalamar. The Goblinoid menace, and even the second 'D' of 'D&D' feels strangely absent.
  

But then I realized something, something that is the very core of what makes Golarion Tick. It's at once new while being evolutionary, not revolutionary. It builds upon the shoulders of other shared settings (GH, FR, Mystara ultimately each became the brainchildren of several individuals, though their birth may have been from one mind.) Paizo has struck the nail on the head, taking the best of what each setting has to offer, while giving us a land that's alive but not under such tension that every DM picking it up will unleash the next apocalypse upon it. Now, L&G's, for the beloved bullets:

• The borders also aren't stretched so taut that we lose the sense of wilderness, the way that one might on Khorvair (while the scale of the continent is vast, players have grown up in the era of passports and checkpoints, border fences and park rangers, and if you show them 'this line is the border between Nation X and Y, they'll imagine a militarized fence). Besides, up north things are much more loose, to the point that they could set Kingmaker in Brevoy, without it feeling overly "This Adventure Takes Place in the DM's Preserve Lands, the Only Place Unsettled/Unclaimed Land Exists." The fact that KM lives someplace between several other places, rather than in an awkward 'otherwhere' the way that FR's BorderKingdoms, Eberron's Lhazaar, or Mystara's Freeholds--speaks to the cinched feeling of Golarion.
• The Distant past feels intimately connected to the present. In FR, the ancient civs are there as 'those people that left a bunch of dungeons,' and yet did little to flavor the civs still presiding. In Eberron, the only thing really shaping Khorvair is Galifar. Golarion gives us a world where Crusadres killed the LichKing, then set up a country; a second Crusade vs. Demons, invades the Baltic States (yeah, caught that one guys...), Where Taldor colonized Cheliax, which rebelled, then ruled Andoran, which rebelled...
• 'That other wild/underdeveloped continent' isn't just close by, but has a sensation of relevance. Nex, Katapesh, Osirion, Radahoun, etc. are 'out there' the same way that the (Shining South, Unapproachable East, Jungles of Chult) or (Xen'Drik, Sarlona, Argonessen) are, but are actively pursued by the Old World in not just one, but several dimensions--Osirion has revolted from Qadiran rule; Sargava is the 'lost colony' of Cheliax; the Society plunders actively (Paizo teleports PFS parties south to Garund, even @ tier 1); Andoran is getting much of its cash from tomb raiding.
• It's morally ambiguous. And not in a realworld Neoliberalizm vs. the Treehugger Creed way. Slavery, and even Devilbinding, are not only commonplace but accepted in more than one place. Andoran is zealous about spreading democracy, perhaps in parody of Bush-era foreign policy. Razmiran is the ultimate Cult-of-Personality location. While there's always a 'bad guys,' Paizo goes out of its way to differentiate between 'these badguys are a bit misunderstood' and the really bad 'this land is ruled by shady sadist sexcults,' or sometimes 'These Crusaders just had a witch-hunt of epic scale.'
• Its demihumans are FLAVORFUL. Elves with their brightness-seeking, Gnomes with their Bleaching, and Dwarves with their Quest For Sky. All this hearkens back to JRR's nonhumans, who were different on a mythological scale. This doesn't go to the cartoon level of Eberrron's Necromantic elves, though. The different consciousness and view on existence is emphasized as profound, enough to remind anyone that you should simply play a human if you aren't up to it. Again, contrast to FR/Eberron, where you can simply label yourself a 'Whiteguy' Galifaran/Waterdhavian Elf/Dwarf/Gnome, loot the bonuses, and get away with it. Further, the distant past isn't bogged down with the usual 'we elves ruled the earth/All the Dwarfholds are abandoned' baggage that FR has...while the brighter days of the Dwarves and Elves have passed, Ancient history's outline can't be summarized as (first, there were Demihumans, then there were Humans).
  
• It's truly polytheist, with a few opportunities for a player to kitch up a salvific or Samsaric cleric if he'd like. Irori (Buddhism/Yogic Hinduism foil) and the Dawnflower (vaguely Abrahamic covenant/salvation faith) are sketched out enough to give player clerics without a PhD in comparative spirituality something to fight for, while the rest of the Gods are truly constructed as patheon members ("my god deserves honor and worship in all things relating to his domain," not "my god wishes their faith ruled all the earth and I am his crusader."). If I have any complaint, it's that whoever wrote the 'Gods&Magic' supplement imagined that each god had a 'holy book' that was instructional the way that one of the 'Paraphrased Modern Relevant'™ Bible versions attempt to be. But I can compromise...this dovetails nicely into my next point:
• Golarion is Digestible, without being monochromatic; Original, without Overexceptionality. The folks at Paizo set down to create a setting that had deep color. One that used kitchpoints from many settings without playing them up to the point of a feverpitch. Meanwihle, rather than simply being derivative, they created a setting that returned to the source material and sought to bring in JRR, HPLove, and even Vance, UKLeG, etc. with the fullness of their flavor that first lent D&D its sense of auteur those thirty years ago.

Folks, Golarion is where D&D has to go, if it stands to avoid becoming a mockery of itself and a dark echo of the MMORPGs/ConsoleRPGs that some believe it is competing with. If we really want to share in a world like it is the Bread and Wine of our shared imaginations (Blasphemy!), then we need to take what's best from fiction, what's best from the thirty years of P&PRPG literature, and Evolve. The mere fact that Golarion is built to expand, rather than simply stagnate & revise by timeline push...isn't a coincidence. Thank you, Mr. Mona, Thank you Paizo...We have many years ahead of us.

APPENDIX: Where things come from: a list of parentages for Golarion entities. Some of these Paizo is on record as saying, others not so much.

• The Inner Sea: The Mediterranean. A highway of commerce, culture, and war, with many disparate cultures somehow arranged around it. This is no mere Moonsea, No Dragon's Reach, this is
  
• Absalom: The city's parentage with Aroden closely mirrors the mythology of Rome, along with its 'eternal city' vibe. The 'commercial heartbeat/city @ the center of the world' is an obvious homage to Waterdeep and NYC. Together this is synthesized into something much deeper than 'Frisco/Seattle with a dungeon under it.' (Waterdeep/Sharn)
  
• Numeria: Blackmoor/Mystaran Blackmoor successor. All 'Saucers in Fantasy' references.
• Osirion: Egypt. This goes without saying, but its resurgence in the timeline draws parallels to Nasser, Cleo, and the Ptolemies, each a time when that ancient country glimmered with a new prospect of greatness.
• Irori: Buddhism. Enough said.
• Andoran/Galt: American Revolution:French Revolution is to Justice:Madness? The advent of the Alchemist class already has me stoked to create a Lavoisier NPC parallel.
• Taldor: Believe it or not, I'm going to drop this bombshell: China. The fact that the place is 4000 years old leaves us no other RW example of continuity of rule. I'm not saying that anything is culturally analagous, but consult the texture in your mind of ShiHuangdi's pyramid and the Terracotta men. Taldor's capital city, Oppara, is landmarked by legion-like assemblages of hero statues.
• Irrisen: Slavic folktales.

Etc...

Game Journal 3/6: Twilight Imperium

This was the Inaugural game for us with TI. I'd spent a good deal of time thinking about the game, and sounding out how the strategy worked, and had more or less memorized how the strategy cards worked.

No one else had.
I was thus anticipating that the game could easily work out to be a five player, five hour affair. WRONG.

I'd grossly underestimated the level of information overload that would occur in other's brains--the strategy phase in the midgame lasted inordinately long as people hemmed and hawed over their choices, not yet familiar with the cards and their interactions,

While elsewhere a myriad of vocabulary attacks assaulted folks. The strategy card executions, the comprehension delay of how secondary abilities executed, and the way that builds were spent and limited all served as horrendously underestimated timesinks.

The whole affair ended up netting twelve hours. Which left me to think harder on how better to establish a baseline vocabulary to help get the facts into people's brains. For minds that are accustomed to thinking that pieces on the board equal pieces that can be brought to the fight, the game is something of a new problem: I heard a thesis put out that 'the game is sluggish, you can't bring forces together.'

The truth is, in fact, that the game encourages smaller battles across wider fronts; that rendezvous of fleets must occur at their target, and that production is a pipeline--produced units are little able to defend existing ones.

Stardock capacities are a puzzlement to me still--how does one accumulate dozens of fighters when one build will often only net four, for the loss of a command counter and so many resources?

We mused in the end on how a disengaged and insular strategy might do well, by waiting to discover the important bottom objectives; and how this sort of strategy would do little to prolong the game, and in fact wouldn't hurt the atmosphere at all.

As with all initiative games, however, the go-go-go-go-pause pattern easily fails if people aren't truly 'with' the table, and their heart is elsewhere. With turn-based games, phones and facebooks don't neccessarily bomb the game out--sadly, the age of multitasking