Michael S. Miller

I've got a game idea kicking around in my head. Nothing may come of it. But if it does, it will use ... dice!

Of course, it will need dice that do funky things. Specifically, the dice need to have a probability curve that looks like a capital-M, or two camel humps. The extreme results need to be more likely than the median.

Dice tricks are not my forte, so I'm a bit stuck. Any suggestions?

Back from Origins and super-tired. I don't have the stamina to do a full write-up now, and work has already let me know that I won't have the time to do one for the rest of the week. So I'll hit the high points now and do a full write up over the holiday weekend. As always, Origins was a great, fun convention.

Some highlights:

• Driving out and back with Kat, Dalys, and Bill was loads of fun. I finally got to win at the cow game!


• Dalys' birthday was at the con. Bill stood on a chair in the exhibit hall and let everyone know.


• Got to play Serial with Clarence & Naomi. Great game where the serial killer turned out to be a contestant on America's Next Top Model.


• Carey, the hardcore With Great Power... fan, played in every WGP... event Kat and I ran. She brought the melodrama with a side of angst.


• I GMed a game of Acts of Evil and didn't really do anything evil, except maybe devour Don's hand ... but he had it coming.


• Got to play Best Friends with Peter and Gary Atkinson, Jared and Luke. All my friends picked on me. I hate them.


• Would you believe karaoke?


• Peanut butter milkshakes! Mmmm.


• More playtesting with Ralph, Luke, and Dan (?) wherein I failed to redeem a mad god.


• Luke finishing up the publishing panel with "We'll gladly stick around for specific questions, but we've talked for about an hour and forty-five minutes straight. Hope you caught the massive info-dump." And his invisible white board.

Good times. Now, sleep and a return to real life. Yuck.

Hi, all.

Time has all-but overtaken us this year. Kat and I would like to run an Indie Games Explosion at DexCon this year. The convention is in East Brunswick, New Jersey from Wednesday, July 16 to Sunday, July 20.

Unfortunately, that means that we will need event information by this Friday, June 13! If you run at least four events, we can secure you a free badge. If you run fewer than four events, we can still list your events with the rest of the Indie Games Explosion for increased exposure.

I will post this at The Forge and at Story-Games. Please re-post or link to it from wherever else you think might be helpful.

Please send your event information to my Gmail acount: stalwartip AT gmail DOT com

We will be registering all the games, but we'll need all the info to fill out this form

I'll be glad to answer any questions you might have.

I sent out the material for the final playtest of Serial this morning. I've had several volunteers from new friends and old who have never played the game before. They've offered to print out the forms, listen to the audio, and let me know how well this format teaches the game. Getting help is truly a great thing!

If you wanted to playtest the game, but did not receive an e-mail this morning, let me know in the comments.

Rob Bohl, the one-man Independent Insurgency, interviewed Kat and I about Serial last week. The episode is now available. Give a listen. Let me know what you think.

Been playing FreeRice:

If you don't know about it, it's a vocabulary game that donates rice to the UN World Food Program every time you get a right answer. I generally hover around levels 42 and 43. There are 60 levels. Which just go that I like big words, but could stand to learn a lot more of them. Plus, I like to eat and figure other people do, too.

What's your level?

Well, being a father to a high school senior ain't easy. There's colleges to apply to, prom dresses to buy, driving skills to teach, and senior portraits to obtain. We did that last one last week. A sample's below. The rest can be found at Kat's Photobucket page

Making a recording of game rules that you intend to sell as the final product is proving to be a learning experience for me. In case anyone else decides that this route is right for their game, here's some things I learned along the way so far.

Use a pop filter
Jeff Lower suggested I pick up a pop filter to stop my "p" sounds from exploding in my listeners' ears. Even I can hear the difference.

Listen to your playback
This sounds really, really elementary, but I recorded the first few tracks without listening to any of it. When I did listen, I heard this horrible buzzing sound. Turns out my microphone jack inserts a buzz even when nothing's plugged into it! I tried to remove the noise in Audacity, but then it sounded like I was talking inside a coffee can. Luckily, Rob Bohl suggested I pick up a USB microphone.

Get someone very talented to do the music
I spoke with Russell Collins at Dreamation about the project, and he agreed to do a short intro for me. It sounds great, and sets a pretty high bar for the rest of my recording to live up to.

Record it in stereo
This past week I recorded all the tracks. This morning, when I tried to add in Russell's excellent music, I found out that I had the microphone set to MONO rather than STEREO, which means that unless I want some people to only be able to hear the game from their left speaker, I have to record everything again. This will push playtesting back, but only hopefully a few days.

More updates as screw-ups warrant.

from the Anthropological Survey: Cetus-Four: Unauthorized Colony head surveymanager: Wunfife Aye-fortree

The surveyteam's insertion went exactly according to protocol. While in transit to Cetus-Four, each team member engaged hyperlearning techniques to master the indigenous languages, as had previously been decoded by the surveyrobot stationed in orbit two years ago. The team prepared itself to endure and dissect the planet-bound, indigenous culture through clothing its bodies in replicated indigenous clothing and rehearsing plausible rationales for unknown humans traveling freely in society.

For the benefit future action of Singularity human resources on the surface of Cetus-Four, it should be noted that physical resemblance to the indigenous population is achieved very easily. Evolutionary divulgence from the basic genestock of the Singularity has been minimal in the 3,542 years since the planet's illegal colonization.

The rationale for unknown humans to be wandering is far more challenging. In the end, this surveyteam decided to capitalize on the fact that the indigenous peoples still use surfacecraft to traverse the planet's many oceans. Our rationale involved washing up on shore after a storm. We explained our presence as survivors of a shipwreck.

The difficulty faced by more plausible rationales lies in the most central and peculiar of Cetus-Four's social structures. The presence and strength of this structure caused continual confusion among this surveyteam, as well as excessive overtaxing of archival, obsolete anthropological sources. One tangental majorityopinion was to marvel at how far humans can devolve in three-half short millennia of isolation. In the time since these criminals defied Singular will and colonized here, the indigenous people have resorted to living in families.

To Be Continued...

I finished recording the audio files for Serial, a game of the horrors of serial murder last night. Kat and I have a bit of sound-editing and form-creation yet to finish up, but by next week at the latest, I'll be looking for some playtesters. This will be primarily a test of the sound files + playsheets presentation of the game. We're confident that the game itself does what we want it to do. We need to be sure that the instructional method teaches the game as well as we hope it does. Therefore, I'm only looking for people who have never played Serial before.

WHAT'S THE GAME ABOUT: Serial is a game about the impact and investigation into a serial killer's murder spree. All players will portray potential victims of the serial killer, and also the skilled investigators attempting to bring the killer to justice. No one plays the serial killer.

WHAT'S THE SHAPE OF THE GAME: A game of Serial handles 3 to 6 players, and generally takes 2.5 to 3.5 hours--about the same as a long board game. It requires some light role-playing and imagination in the same vein as popular law enforcement dramas (CSI, Law & Order, etc.). Good for giving non-gamers a taste of role-playing.

WHAT PLAYTESTERS WOULD NEED TO DO: I would send you .mp3 files of the game instructions, and PDFs of the forms. Before you play, you'd need to print out the forms, and make sure you have the equipment set up to play the mp3's for the entire group. Also, you'll need writing implements and 5d6 per player. During the game, you'll need to listen to the mp3s as they explain the game, and keep note of any points of confusion that arise.

IF YOU'RE INTERESTED, reply in the comments, or send an e-mail to my gmail account: stalwartIP

via ambersknave who got it from wickedthought
Why is that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?" -Ernest Gaines

We would like to know who really believes in gay rights on livejournal. There is no bribe of a miracle or anything like that. If you truly believe in gay rights, then repost this and title the post as "Gay Rights." If you don't believe in gay rights, then just ignore this. Thanks.

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

from the Miscellania Galactica, compiled by Gase Trimagus

Based on this author's decoded readings of the venerable Proceedings of the Eighth Stalwart Conclave, as well as other sources, both ancient and contemporary, the enigma that is the Stalwartian glaive shall now be made clear.

It is well known to all learned persons that a Stalwart's physical prowess derives from her complete and utter self-command. While even a novice might display feats astounding to the undisciplined crowd, such as slowing of the heart, focusing of the fist-strike to shatter ferrous alloys, or leaping distances seemingly impossible within gravity wells; the powers of self-command gained by better-trained Stalwarts boggle the imaginative faculty itself.

The will of a trained Stalwart—one who has passed his Rite of Ordeal—has been so focused by his exposure to and understanding of the very energies that make interstellar travel possible, that the exercise of that will can affect the very cells and molecules of the Stalwart's physical body. Through repeated mental exertion, the Stalwart is able to draw the very iron and carbon from her blood and flesh and shape them into the form of their glaive. Over weeks and months, these weapons grow from a seed crystal invisible to the unaided eye to the modest dirk-sized glaive of a young initiate. As years pass, a Stalwart will repair, shape, and enhance his glaive, as the weapon serves as physical symbol of the spiritual path the Stalwart has traveled. It is not unknown for accomplished master Stalwarts to wield glaives taller than their own bodies.

As for the seemingly miraculous relationship repeated observed between Stalwarts and their glaives, its dynamic spark lies in the method of glaive craftsmanship divulged above. A Stalwart's glaive is sprung from her own body through application of unyielding will and Interstellar energies. Even after it is forged, on a spiritual level, it remains a part of the Stalwart's body--still subject to his will, still connected to the quickening of life within his veins. Thus, summoning a fallen glaive to hand is as simple as matter as raising a hand in celebration.

This, of course, is but the least of the mysteries of the Stalwarts. In my own travels, my own senses have beheld no less than—

Remainder of Fragment Irrevocably Datacorrupt

From the Miscellania Galactica, compiled by Gase Trimagus

Much has been written about the bond between a Stalwart and his glaive. Mystics and scientists, debunkers and demogouges on a hundreds of worlds have expended thousands upon millions of words probing the pressing questions: Why does an order devoted to inner peace arm itself with the weapons of war? Why are their weapons so antiquated--why a glaive rather than a plasma rifle? What craftsmen could turn out such detailed workmanship? What factory could create each glaive unique to its owner? Older Stalwarts wield larger, more intricate glaives--why do they change their weapons throughout their careers, or do the blades actually grown and age along with their wielder? And what of the miracles that Stalwarts have been known to perform with their glaives? How can a skilled Stalwart summon the hilt of her blade to her outstretched hand from vast distances, even across the dead vacuum of space itself? How can the touch of these sharpened implements of combat also bring healing and rejuvenation to those in need?

All those piles of words, and the only bit useful of them is the questions, never the answers. So it is with most things. But, herein, gentle reader, I shall divulge that most sacrosanct of Stalwarts' secrets: the true nature of the glaive.

To Be Continued...

I never developed a taste for coffee. (UnAmerican of me, I know.) But every now and then I'll have a crappy night's sleep and need a caffiene-boost. Sodas laden with high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners threaten to aggrevate my gout, so I picked up some chocolate-covered coffee beans. I can eat one of them and get rid of the flavor with a piece of gum, and in 20 minutes or so, I can feel my heart speed up and my eyes open wider. Mission accomplished.

Today, I look at the lables. One of the "Shock-a-lots" packages claims "Caffeine equivalent: about 2+ cups of coffee." The Starbucks box says "Serving size: 40 pieces" They expect you to eat FORTY of these things at a time? Is that like the equivalent of 80+ cups of coffee? Is my caffiene tolerance so low?

There's my love-hate relationship with caffiene. What's yours?

Yesterday we went to PoliCon 2008 in Philadelphia. Every year, Don and Joanna Corcoran organize a convention as a birthday gift for their buddy, Joe Poli. Some years it's invite-only due to space, some times its part of a larger convention. But I've had a good time every year I've gone.

Kat and I made a wrong turn and ended up being late. Thankfully, the games waited for us. Bill White ran his fantastic game Ganakagok for five of us--Pattie, Liz, me, Tali, and Will. In a fit of verisimilitude, Bill invited us to play outside in the crisp April air. It helped to evoke the spirit of our Nitu characters (eskimos) who had always lived upon an island of ice, but who knew that a change was coming--the sun was going to rise for the first time ever. We created the initial situation inspired by some draws from the game's cool tarot-like deck, and determined that the Nitu were in the midst of a famine, and some of the sacred whales had beached themselves. Rather than help them back into the water, the Nitu had feasted upon the taboo whale meat. My character was hit with a vision in the contented, drowsy trance that siezes hungry people after a feast. He knew that superstitions and the old god-ways were nonsense, and the time had come for the people to abandon them. Most of the other characters were focused on returning us to the old ways, so I had lots of opposition. We ended up with many characters having bad endings, and, although the Nitu were no longer the Nitu after the womenfolk had moved to found a new village, it was a very fulfilling game.

Lunch was provided by many tasty sandwich fixings, and then it was on to With Great Power...

I had brought both "Mutant Academy" and "Monster Squad." My players were Kat, Phil, and Amy. They chose monster Squad, and played Debris (the living statue and leader of the Monster Squad), Mudslide (oozy former supervillian, still in debt to the evil mad scientist) and Cerebus Prime (German Shepherd with a 500 IQ). Debris started the game being haunted/inspired by visions of Gaia, the earth-mother, tellingd Debris that she was meant to be the avatar of the earth. By the end, Debris was teetering on the brink of delusional madness from these visions. Mudslide was trying despately to ooze his way out of his obligations to Dr. Grotesque. Cerebus Prime was steadily souring on the stupidity of people and joined forces with his unrepentantly-misanthropic sister to take vengeance upon The Utopian for seemingly killing the third member of their litter. A good session, but I've really got to retool the game to make it fit in four hours. It's always just a little fustrating to never get that sense of closure that I tend to have when I play other convention games lately.

Dinner was a quick trip to the Melrose dinner. Phenomenal cheesesteaks, fries, and milkshakes. So bad for the body, but so good for the tongue.

In the evening, I played Shock: with Dave Cleaver and Scott Lesher. It was my first time playing "that orange game" and it went really, really well. We decided on a Shock of "first contact" with Issues of "conspiracy," "power politics," and "xenophobia." We decided to keep it near-future, and took an idea from Ursula LeGuin's "The Left Hand of Darkness" and decided that exactly three aliens had landed. They would only speak to certain people about certain things, and were had never spoken about their advanced technology. Our praxis scales were Mass Media/Personal Contact and Impel/Inspire. Dave's character was a priest trying to change the church's "aliens have no souls" position to one of "god loves all beings." Scott's character was the U.S. Secretary of State, with whom the aliens liked to play poker. He was trying to form a working relationship with the aliens. My character was an aspiring science fiction writer whose book had been in-process of being published at the time of the aliens' arrival. It had vanished, his computer was stolen, and he was on the run from a conspiracy. In the end, the priest changed the church AND kept his pulpit--his was story of reform within the church, perhaps a documentary on a civil rights leader or something. Scott's Secretary of State had a story more like Contact or Childhood's End, where the president was leaning on him for "results" and the aliens end up playing poker for items of advanced technology versus parts of his own soul. In the end, he wins the secrets of cold fusion, and is also "enlightened" into meaning on a higher plane. My guy ended up with a sort of Philip K. Dick ending, where it was revealed that my never-to-be published science fiction novel had actually been prophetic about the aliens and their landing, and somehow my subconscious mind had been transmitting the entire thing back to the alien homeworld. So, even though I was killed in the CEO's office, I had just finished transmitting the last paragraph.

The game was very good, and particularly with my fellow players being so creative and invested, I had a great time. However, there were some parts of the game that seemed rough. It seemed a waste of potential that the only mechanical effect of links was to risk them for a re-roll. Plus, praxis scales were a pain. On many rolls, we felt out the scene to find the conflict, set our non-mutually-exclusive stakes, chose our assortment of d4s and d10s, rolled the dice, and said "crap, we forgot to set the praxis." I think the game might work better if the audience decides on the praxis scale for both the protagonist and antagonist, based on the role-play they do in the scene. That notwithstanding, I was glad to finally get to play Shock:.

Thanks to all for making PoliCon such a great time.

( More VERY surreal stuff from last night's dream )

(suggested by judd_sonofbert)

Kat's doing some role-playing on IMVU. It's a 3D chat site, and some people have crafted the rooms into fantasy taverns and the like. She was explaining that there's a lot of people who have customized their avatars to look like elves or whatever, and they sit in the tavern and exchange character histories. Since there's not much of a social contract, there's no one who's doing the GM-duty of "adversity-bringer" and so, not much happens going forward. But each character has a past that is rich and melodramatic and well-storied.

I think some of this has to do with the lack of trust intrinsic to role-playing in a public forum like IMVU. You could also see it in "classic" old school D&D where anyone who wanted to play, could play, and character histories (and the player interests they represent) didn't matter, because the GM was going to lay the dungeon or the kingdom-in-peril out in front of you. Your job was to react to it, and if your character was secretly the lost prince of the Sea Kingdoms raised by a mystic order of monks in the fulfillment of prophesy, it didn't really matter.

These sorts of situation are (in the broadest outlines) similar to the circumstances that gave rise to feudalism in Europe. After the fall of Rome, the barbarians might arrive and sack your rough-hewn village at any time. In wide-open roleplaying culture, the other players might ignore or subvert your creative interests at any time. In both cases, the obvious solution is to pull up the drawbridge and lock your treasure away where it cannot be touched. In role-playing, the best place to do this is in character history. No one can touch what has already happened to your character. Their fictional past is your Private Story Fiefdom--none may tread upon it without your express permission.

Personally, I'd much prefer to use character histories to catapult story going forward... but that's just me.

I've been fitting in a little face-to-face gaming with Kat and Michele. Since mid-November we've done half-a-dozen sessions. Most of them last less than 2 hours, but they're quite enjoyable. Since we've been out of practice, we're falling back on our comfort zone game/source material: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We've crossed this with our affection for Victorian adventure literature and are playing a game exploring the many supernatural happenings of the 19th century British countryside in the Buffyverse.

We started out using the standard Buffy Unisystem rules. But there's a problem with that. Kat and Michele aren't much concerned with rules and the like. Give them melodrama and peril with a dash of mystery and a pinch of romance and they are happy as clams. While I want all that stuff, too, I also like the rules. I *like* manipulating them and letting them manipulate the story and push it in surprising directions, and leaning on them when I'm tired. But, frankly, the Unisystem is duller than dirt. Skill use might as well be "flip a coin" and combat is a boring excercise in arithmetic.

Early on, I had tried to force myself to embrace the system for its good points, with little success. By session four, I found myself trying to minimize combat just because it's so boring. Kat and Michele mentioned that they wanted some real peril--things weren't dangerous enough.

I didn't really know what to do about this, but after a very long break, we started session five seated in the living room where dice are less convenient to roll anyway. When the time for the fight scene rolled around, no one really wanted to get out of the comfy chairs and head to the table. Although Kat and Michele likely wouldn't have minded me just freeforming the whole fight, I didn't want to do that either--there's no surprise or interplay or tension.

So, I opened my mouth and something surprising came out: "This is an episode of Buffy, so we *know* you beat the magical beastie. But we don't know how and we don't know what it costs you. Each of you tell me one Cool Thing and one Bad Thing that happens to you in the fight, and then we'll weave it all together into a description of the fight."

Wow, was that ever great! Now, I'm going to be tinkering with formalizing these Cool Things and Bad Things a bit more, and we might have the makings of a neat little Narrative Combat system. We even played episode six tonight, and tested some stuff out, like spliting Bad Things into short-term Setbacks and long-term Consequences. Each monster will require so many of each to be defeated.

I guess it's true what they say about the mother of invention. When you have a boring game that you nevertheless want to play, it's necessary to make a fun game in its place.

You can hear what Brennan Taylor and The Enny-Award-Winning Paul Tevis have to say about With Great Power... on The latest episode of The Voice of The Revolution.

Some folks on the NerdNYC boards just played With Great Power...
With Great Power AP Report They have some of the coolest superheroes around. I particularly love Favorite Son!