I suppose there's a first time for everything...

  First of all, second Monday of the new year, and Huzzah, I'm posting.  Heh.  The title of this post refers to the fact that after many years of viewing Games Workship's Warhammer 40,000 universe with a yawn and a distinct lack of interest aside from the stellar realtime stragetgy computer game Dawn of War, I have finally found a glimmer of interest in one of their RPG books.  Don't get me wrong, I get grimdark.  I've played in enough dark game worlds to say that I can definitely enjoy grimdark for what it is, and dig a storyline or campaign setting that is gritty and distinctly lacks the sort of thrilling heroics often associated with the roleplaying game hobby.  That said, the 40K universe just never clicked with me.  Is it some form of twisted humor that what turned me off to the 40K background is that it was endless war after war after war... and yet the title of the book that caught my attention is "Only War?"

  OK, so Space Marines seem one-note and cartoonish to me the way they are portrayed in 40K.  No, I've not read any of the novels or other media, I just know what little I've been exposed to from Dawn of War and my limited knowledge of the 40K miniatures game.  Ho-hum.  Yawn.  So said I.  When I began playing Dawn of War, I fell in love with the Imperial Guard.  These folks at least *looked* like human soldiers.  Their equipment, while still a bit space-Gothic, was still recognizable.  They had weak but plucky infantry, and good armor and artillery.  I dug them.  When FFG started releasing the 40K roleplaying games, I found myself disinterested in the various lines for different reasons.  Rogue Trader looked neat, but I was put off by the scale of the vessels the main characters were assigned.  Dark Heresy?  Mildly intriguing, but I didn't see that my game group would get a lot of milage out of it.  Death Watch?  Same thing.  Why, then did I find Only War so interesting?  Well, I blame my interest in World War One.

  The Imperial Guard are almost always overmatched, under-equipped, and in for a good shellacking.  They make insane charges against superior foes and do so out of love of their Emperor.  For some strange reason this reminds me of Tommys in the trenches of World War One, and I find that kind of endearing.  These poor bastards join the Imperial Guard to fight for their Emperor against incredible odds, most of them knowing they'll never make it home, and yet they fight.  They're not genetically engineered super-soldiers like their Space Marine counterparts, they're just people.  I started doing some reading about the Imperial Guard, and I came across the Imperial Infantryman's Handbook - which is, amusingly enough, designed to look like an early 20th Century book, at least looking at the cover design.  The grain of the cover reminds me of my great-grandfather's 1943 Bluejacket's Manual, or the 1914 Manual of Military Training I have.  I wonder if the analogy my brain drew between the IG and the poor bloody infantry of the past is intentional?

  From the reviews I've read, this book is an in-universe artifact that the soldiers of the IG are required to have on them at all times.  The book is written from that perspective, and is supposed to be kind of humorous in that someone in the real world reading the book can see the blatant lies and propaganda being fed to the lowly trooper of the Imperial Guard.  At $16 on Amazon, it might be worth my checking out.

  I suppose that's what interests me about Only War.  I've spent the last two years finishing up a degree that saw me reading a lot about the plight of the lowly soldier.  I took a special interest in the experiences of soldiers in the First World War, but the reality of the conflicts of human experience and the viewpoint of the common trooper was always forefront in my mind.  When I began this course of study, I fancied that I would be thinking about things fromt he perspective of the generals, admirals and marshals that planned and executed these massive campaigns- but instead I found myself much more engrossed by the view from the bottom, where what we would call the "Commander's Intent" was usually impossible to determine.  Where the scope and focus of the Warhammer 40,000 universe would usually turn me completely off to the game - it is that possibility for being totally lost in the shuffle that leads me to find something interesting in Only War.  I find the idea of telling the story of a group of soldiers that fight they know not why to be a very interesting one.  Perhaps, through the perceptions of my players, I can gather some insight into the minds of the kinds of average people who find themselves in decidedly nasty circumstances with very little background on why they were there.

  If I can fit these books into my budget, maybe I'll post some further thoughts about them.  Being a Dad means not having as much income to spend on gaming stuff.  My grandmother asked me what I did with the Christmas money she gave me and was dismayed when I said "car payment."  Being an adult often sucks in a financial sense, doesn't it?

 

Happy New Year, Dear Readers.

  Today is Monday, 7 January 2013.  I am going to try valiantly to publish something worth reading every week of 2013, and Monday is my target day to do so.  At my day job, Monday is the day I generally take stock of what needs to get done over the course of the rest of the week, with work, home life, hobby life, etc.  The rest of the week is for implementation, especially Friday as that's the day that our classroom utilization is much lower allowing me to do the maintenance that is my main function.  So Mondays are when I plan to blog, and I'd love to make sure there's something fun here to read for the whole seven of you who like The Old Dragoon.

  So, how was my Christmas and New Year holiday?  Exhausting is the first word that comes to mind, but amazing is the second.  This was in many ways our first real Christmas as parents.  Last year we were beset with water leak issues, getting used to being parents, living in a hotel... there were lots of things that made the Christmas season a blur.  This year, Z and K are both firmly entrenched as "our" kids and Christmas felt like Christmas - and now I can see why parents all over find magic in the holiday.  The Z-Man is now a confirmed Star Wars fan.  I mean talking about lightsabers and Obi-Wan and Luke and wearing a Darth Vader mask around the house and everything.  Oh, and I did get him the Playskool Millennium Falcon like I said I would.  The hinge breaks a lot, but we still have fun with it...  I digress.  Christmas was awesome.  Playing with the kids, taking them to visit family, listening to K sing "Purr, purr purr..." when we sing Soft Kitty to her.  More of those magic parent moments that are so deeply touching.

  New Year's Eve?  Gaming, what else?  We played Cyberpunk.  The original Cyberpunk 2013 boxed set.  Why?  Because it's 2013, chombatta.  I own two copies of CP2013, one of which is my battered and well-loved copy from 1987 and the second is a PRISTINE copy I got at Half-Price Books for $7.98 a few years back.  On Ebay now that would cost me over $100 - I checked, I wanted to score one for my players.  Not at those prices.  Luckily, I have PDFs and a printer.  Anyway, the game was a lot of fun.  We rolled up characters becuase everyone present enjoys lifepaths.  I always love how a lifepath gives players some roleplaying meat to chew on for a brand new character.  In example - Bobby Dean's netrunner PC rolled life events that indicated he was accused of murder, and imprisoned for ten years.  That became a backstory in which my wife's PC was his younger sister, and he was recruited by the mob while in prison.  Mary's PC is dating the cop who put her brother away, in order to get information to clear his record.  Coupla die rolls, and a lot of roleplaying material for two of the PCs involved.  We had a blast, thanks to Clint, Dixie, Randi and Bobby for helping Mary and I make NYE 2013 memorable.  Z and K slept through the game, thankfully... GRIN...

  What can you expect from The Old Dragoon's blog in 2013?  Well, I hope to do what I've been doing, only better and more frequently.  My top ten games seemed to generate some interest, so I've been asked to do some more in-depth reviews and visit some other games on my also-ran or honorable mention lists.  I've got a lot of 'em, lemme tell you.  There's also some things I'd like to post about GM concepts, the Royal Dragoon Guards and our associated projects, story inspiration for gamers and other things.  Whatever comes out, I promise I'll try not to make it read like stereo instructions.

See you next week (crosses fingers)...

Episode 4e : A New Hope?

Good morning, True Believers, and sorry it's been over a month.

  LOTS of things have happened since I posted my Top Ten, so let's sum up.  I finished my Bachelor of Arts degree in Military History with a GPA of 3.791.  Now I just have to wait until February to actually have my degree conferred.  We are moving closer to adoping Z and K, and I can't wait to share photos of them with the world.  Z saw Star Wars for the first time last night - he started it once before and fell asleep as we'd started it too late at night.  He loved it, and wants to see it again.  I am *so* trying to score him the toddler Millennium Falcon now...  K is now W A L K I N G.  It's amazing how quickly they grow.  And also amazing all those "dad" moments I've gotten lately just playing and spending time with the kiddos.  I'm halfway through my weight loss, havign lost 38lbs and having another 38 or so to go to hit my TXSG height/weight.  After that, I'm trying to knock out another 17lbs or so to hit an even 200.  Also, for the first time in four years, I'm no longer the lead game master for the Royal Dragoon Guards.  That's right, I did not seek re-election as Battalion Commander instead opting for the top player spot, Company Commander.  I'm now the lead player, and letting Bobby Dean GM for a while.  Six months, at least.  If he doesn't suck, and he won't, we'll see if he runs for another six.

  OK, gaming.  Well, first of all, since I'm not currently enrolled in any college courses for the first time in two years, I can put together a regular game session.  Since the Royal Dragoons are a major sci-fi campaign and Bobby runs an occasional Star Wars game, I decided to do something fantasy-based with my game.  I also wanted some folks I don't usually game with.  I got both wishes, having created a D&D Essentials group with two players I don't normally game with, and one who I usually only game with at RDG.  Randi and Bobby round out the group.

  I know, I know.  Why 4e Essentials?  You guys know I'm a grognard, and that my desert island book is the Basic D&D Rules Cyclopedia (I even had Aaron Allston sign mine.)  You know I've run AD&D 1e using Rules As Written.  (We never even played it that way back in the 80s.)  You know I regularly re-read and occasionally 1-shot things like Marvel FASERIP, Star Frontiers, Melee/Wizard, Car Wars, Gangbusters, Top Secret/S.I....  so why in the name of all that's holy did I decide to run a game using what is largely considered to be the least D&D of the D&D games?

  Basic answer?  Because I've never done it before.  Sure, I've run Essentials when I used to DM D&D Encounters at Rogue's Gallery.  That was a cycle of modules that covered levels 1-3 over and over again every few months.  I've never dreamed up my own campaign and run it "in the wild" for a group.  I wanted to give this a shot before deciding that the Old School was the Only School.  One of my players in particular is giving me a lot of gas about running 4th Edition, claiming that all the rules get in the way of the story.  Well, time will tell - and after two game sessions, it's already started to.  The GM and the Players are what makes story happen, not the rules.  But more on that later.

  I'm going to lead off with why I hated 4e at first, and what caused me to decide to give it another try in its D&D Essentials incarnation.  Part of my problem was that the game dictated HOW to run D&D to its Dungeon Masters.  Thou shalt have five players.  Thou shalt bludgeon them with roles and party balance.  Thou shalt hand out this much treasure and no more.  It shall take this long to level, and encounters should be balanced to party level.  Oh, all your players really should be the same level or the math breaks...  Stuff like that.  On the player side, I didn't like martial classes playing like spellcasting classes.  Also - since 3E the game has really encouraged the use of a battle map and counters or minis.  I never used minis much in older editions - which is to say at all, except to mark marching order.  I didn't hate the idea... just didn't like the more-or-less requirement.  4e made that even more mandatory with powers that relied on relative placement of combatants.  Do not want, really.

  Well, with Essentials came a new take on 4e.  If it constituted 4.5 is a discussion for another time, but gone were things that just tweaked me off.  Martial daily powers?  Gone.  Martial marks?  Gone.  In their place were stances, which made perfect sense, and defender auras, which also made a lot of sense.  Something about the Essentials builds just felt more D&D to me.  I tried playing a Warpriest, and lo and behold I felt like a badass Cleric from the days of old save for the turning ability.  I could fight, heal and move all in the same round.  Maybe this wasn't so bad after all...

  So I decided to get into the D&D Encounters scene and stayed there for over a year.  I really started to enjoy the game, and the playstyle.  I realized that there was a good game under the hood of 4e... it just wasn't what I called Dungeons and Dragons.  And that's OK.  So I started planning to run my own campaign to test some of my assumptions... and got back into college, and got my two awesome foster kids.  Gaming went on hold except for the RDG commitment.  So here we are, and I'm getting this Essentials game going - so what do I like about it?  Strangely, some of the things I hated when I had it mentally tagged as D&D.

  First and most obvious - the battle map and map-based combat.  This game, unlike the versions of D&D I prefer, requires them.  Powers are written in bursts and blasts and ranges and adjacent and aura and you really, REALLY need a map to make them work.  The powers are so much a part of each character that you risk really bringing the game engine crashing down on you if you just try to fudge it.  I used to see that as a bug in my normally narrarative style dungeon mastering.  What I needed to do was look at the way it played on its own merits, not as a replacement for my beloved BD&D and AD&D.  Okay, so what does the system do?  It's a tactical combat system in which each class has its role to play and each character potentially has a completely different set of strengths, weaknesses and abilities to bolster the party as a whole.  I used to hate that Fighters were now referred to as "Defenders" and expected to be meat shields...  but that's just codifying the way low-level mages hid behind the fighters anyway, isn't it?  In fact, the Defender Aura makes them better at it than old-school D&D fighters were in a way.  I also liked that spellcasters never ran completely out of spell juice.  I loved playing Magic-Users in BD&D, but damned if it wasn't annoying to be out of spells... and that happened a LOT at low levels.  In the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, Venger never ran out of those cool magical bolts...

  OK, so looking at the way the game PLAYS, the PCs have to have a sense of their own abilities and those of their allies.  They have to learn to use those abilities together to accomplish goals in combat.  It's... tactical.  Hey, wait- I love tactical.  It's no different from the way we obsess over BattleMechs in Battletech and their capabilities and how they work together and separately and how best to employ them and how NEVER to employ them.  So... my favorite part of Battletech can become part of my fantasy games.  OK, I can dig this.  It also reminds me of the great XBox game "Gladius" and Final Fantasy Tactics.  I had always listened to people rail against 4e saying that it was too much like a video game, or an MMO.  Thing is - I'm beginning to see that as a feature of this particular game.
  Is it what I want out of all of my D&D?  Negative, ghostrider.  Does it work for this campaign?  It's seeming to.

  What I mean by that is I've begun to write this campaign as if I was writing a classic 8-Bit RPG.  The enforced pacing I had hated so much in the DMG was now my ally.  I could use that pacing in writing the campaign arc - since it took X number of encounters to go up a level, and encounters were figured as level-appropriate...  So this means that I can now plan the pace of the game based on those assumptions.  The ability to reskin 4e monsters is pretty cool, too.  I've already decided that I'm going to include some creatures my players won't expect - like Oktoroks and Leevers.

  We have played two sessions, and tonight is a third.  I'll blog more about this game after that session, as I think three sessions is enough to get a feel for where this is going and if it's working or not.  Right now, I'm cautiously saying it's working well - even my staunchest 4e hater is having a blast... 

My Top Ten RPGs and Why...

Good morning, True Believers!

  I know, I keep using the Stan Lee quotes - but with my three-year-old addicted to Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, it's hard not to get caught up in Stan's exuberance. 

  An old friend asked me on Facebook the other day what my top ten RPGs of all time were, and why.  I was about to try to answer from the hip, but damned if this is a much bigger question than I could answer without putting some serious thought into it.  Surely, there are RPGs I can consider among my favorites, but to pick and rank just ten?  I had to wait until I had some time to think about it, and then start working on a list- then revising the list, then throwing the list away and starting over.  Sooo many games that have things I like about them, and soooo many games I have sentimental attachments to, and soooo many new games that might make this list, but I've not had the chance to see them in action yet due to school, parenting and work.  So... what are the top ten RPGs of all time for The Old Dragoon as of today, 22 October 2012?  Let's start with Number Ten and work our way down to #1.


10) - Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (First and Second Editions)
Publisher : TSR Hobbies
Year: 1977-1999
The Rules:  Class-level.  All the basic polyhedron dice, with a myriad of mechanics and sub-systems.  This was the gold standard for many years, sublime in its incomprehensability.
Preferred Editions: First and Second.  I played 3.0/3.5 and 4e, but they aren't on this Top Ten list.

Why I Love It:  This was the Big Boys game.  I first flipped through AD&D books in 1985, before I had played my first game.  It was like the first time I read Stephen Hawking - I couldn't quite grasp what the book was on about, but I knew I wanted to.  AD&D was the staple game of my high school years.  While I never left D&D Basic behind, and we dabbled in LOTS of other games, we always came back to AD&D.  I will always remember my first sojurn through Ravenloft before it was a game world, or the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.  I loved exceptional strength, multiclass demihumans, THAC0 - most of the things that made it complex and frustrating and were thrown out in later editions.  Also - artwork.  The original 1e covers are good for inspiration.  The second set by Clyde Caldwell are even better for my money.  The picture here, the 1e Dungeon Master's Guide's second cover, just oozes atmosphere.  The Second Edition has some great cover and interior art, and truth be told, when AD&D2e came out in 1989, we switched over to it pretty exclusively for the rest of High School.  Lots of folks look back at it with an unfavorable eye, but we had so damn much fun playing it I guess we were too busy to notice how much it apparently sucked.  I happened to *like* 2e.  I would still run it today.  Same for 1e.  They have their flaws, but if they were unplayable... never mind.  I won't get into edition wars here.  Sufficient to say AD&D (both editions) were important enough to my formative experiences as a gamer growing up in the 80s that I'll include them here separate from Basic D&D, which also appears on this list.

Snapshots of Things I Remember About  AD&D:

• (V,S,M) - Spell requirements.  Holy crap the game actually takes into account *how* the spell is cast, not just that it is.  That's cool!  Likewise, page requirements for spellbooks.  Detailed memorization times...  Advanced, indeed!
• NON WEAPON PROFICIENCIES FTW!
• The Dragonlance hardcover book for AD&D 1e.  Wow.  Just... wow.  Krynn really caught my imagination back then, and the classes for Krynn were awesome.  I still want to play a Solamnic Knight by those rules someday.
• UNEARTHED ARCANA!  I loved playing Cavaliers.  Too bad none of them made it past third level.

 9) - Space : 1889

Publisher : GDW
Year: 1989
The Rules: Skill-based, with professions that you might call classes.  D6s only on this one, with various arcane subsystems to carry out various tasks.  Ranged combat and melee combat on two TOTALLY different systems.
Preferred Editions: The original.  The Savage Worlds redux seems OK, though.

Why I Love It:  This game was Steampunk before Steampunk was a thing.  A thing that is running the risk of overexposure.  But let's face it, it's a COOL thing.  And this game was an awesome idea that really had not been explored much in the annals of RPG history.  Crown Colonies on Mars?  Edison inventing the Ether Propeller?  Germans riding dinosaurs on Venus?  Sign me up!  Add to that the really cool invention rules so that your character could be some sort of mad scientist or inventor and use their new infernal devices for good or for awesome and Space: 1889 became an instant classic for me.  Problem was, most of my gamer friends just didn't "get" it, so it didn't get nearly the love it deserved in sheer play-hours.  This game was supported by some really great supplements and wargames like Sky Galleons of Mars and Cloudships & Gunboats, both of which were lots of fun to play.  Again, a game I love because it positively oozes the genre it's trying to emulate.  The rules were a bit off-putting at first, and perhaps the new Savage Worlds take on the game would find more traction, especially now that Steampunk is a much more popular genre.

Snapshots of Things I Remember About  Space: 1889:

• The look of the book interior was very, very nice.  Good paper stock, old-fashioned illustrations, lots of sidebars on history both real and imagined.
• Lloyd Bates' Criminal Mastermind and his henchman, Jiri.  If you don't like it, Lloyd will have Jiri stab you.
• The Royal Geographic Society's race 'round the inner planets campaign that I never ran.  I designed ten completly different Ether Flyers for the NPC participants of the race.

8) - Marvel Super Heroes

Publisher : TSR
Year: 1984 (Basic) 1986 (Advanced) 1991 (Revised Advanced)
The Rules:  D100 with a chart that handled effects for pretty much everything.  This was one of the first games I played with a true "unified mechanic" although we would not recognize it as such, because back then we just played the damn games, we didn't try to pidgeonhole them and pick them apart mechanically.  With evocative ratings like "Amazing" and "Monstrous" instead of straight ability score numbers, and effects like "Slam" and "Grand Slam" this system really made a good use of its intended genre.

Preferred Editions:  Most people play Advanced, I like the 1991 Revised Basic Set
Why I Love It:

  Why not?  What is not to love about FASERIP?  Marvel is called that because the ability scores are Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurace, Reasoning, Intuition and Psyche.  Face Rip.  Say it with me.  Anway, this game knocked it out of the park for us.  The orignal basic set was written as if Spider-Man was teaching you how to play the game.  It came with cards for most of the popular Marvel heroes at the time, and some basic rules for generating your own characters.  We'd seen nothing like it at the time, being mostly players of games like D&D, Star Frontiers, Traveller, etc.  Not only did this game handle superheroes, it was tailored for them.  Getting Hulk to uproot a streetlight and knock The Thing across a city block, nearly bringing down a building?  Friggin awesome when you're in the seventh grade.  I ran a couple MSH games over the past year as one-shots and you know what?  Still awesome.  The later Advanced Set added more powers, options, and rules.  It's the set most people play.  The Ultimate Powers Book is a love it or hate it proposition.  It gets a lot more detailed with powers, but runs the risk of overpowering your campaign.  A lot.  I prefer the revised 1991 Basic Set.  It takes all the innovations from the Advanced Set and creates a new, smoother set of basic rules that is really all a group needs to play.  I heartily recommend this system even now for all your superheroic needs.  Also - you can get it for free at Classic Marvel Forever.

Snapshots of Things I Remember About  Marvel Superheroes:

• Rolling up TONS of random supers.
• Cody Hammock's shapeshifting Penguin with ice generation powers.
• Realizing how boned the PC's Karma Pool is when they get into a fight in town.
• Thinking about running Secret Wars for the umpteenth time...

7) - Traveller

Publisher : GDW
Year: 1977
The Rules: 2D6+Skill, with the game being skill-based while having classes of sorts represented by the services the characters took part in before the game begins.  This was the first game I played where you did not begin at "first level"

Preferred Editions: Classic, and Mongoose

Why I Love It:  Traveller was gifted to me by the engineers at Eaton Corporation where my Mom worked.  They gave me a bunch of Traveller books and a brand new Cyberpunk boxed set.  This was probably one of the best gifts I've ever gotten from older geeks to a younger geek, and this act really made me want to keep passing the geekitude along as the years go by.  Traveller's little black books and the compiled "The Traveller Book" I also received got a LOT of love from me both during games, and during long hours of summer before I had to get a job when I had nothing better to do - or was waiting for the next game session to start with my friends.  Traveller's character gen system was really eye-opening to me.  No more did you play a fresh young "first level" character, now you could be a retired Admiral, or a grizzled veteran merchant having years of experience and a decent bankroll behind you.  The ship construction system was really awesome, too - I know I tried to design the Jupiter 2 several times while watching Lost In Space reruns.  I learned a lot of real science from Traveller - the damn formula for calculating travel time in space based on distance and constant acceleration is part of the game...  Also, I learned how big the mass of a ton of hydrogen is.  So much was packed into the three little books, allowing you to generate planets, animals, characters, ships...  Plus all the supplemental books were great.  There were even bootleg stats for Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in the back of one of the booklets.  I made a game of trying to roll up a Merchant Captain who scores a ship upon retirement and has the title free and clear.  It's not an easy thing to do, and most of the characters wash out or are candidates for a nursing home by the time they can accomplish that feat.  The new version by Mongoose Publishing codifies the 2D6 throws into 2D6+Skill+Mod versus 8 across the board, somewhat cleaning up the more 70s situational approach of the original Traveller.  It's very playable, aside from a few editing issues.  It is a worthy successor to the original Traveller.

Snapshots of Things I Remember About  Traveller:

• Rolling up TONS AND TONS AND TONS of characters.  Because character gen was fun.  And yes, you could die.
• Getting really pissed off because the Army had an easy promotion roll... but a 50% chance of getting booted out of the service every damn term.
• Reading the part where they describe the kinds of weapons in terms of modern firearms... then having a mental image of troops in Battle Dress powered-armor storming off an assault cutter wielding Garands.

SEE ALSO:
MEGATRAVELLER - A sort of second edition that had refined character creation, but a totally changed setting as the Imperium shattered.
2300 AD - Originally marketed as "Traveller : 2300" this game is not actually related to Traveller, but rather to Twilight : 2000 as the world that arose after World War III.  This was a more or less hard sci-fi game, and an excellent one that only barely did not make this list.  I recommend it highly.
Traveller : The New Era - Not as well recieved as GDW had hoped, this version of Traveller reworks the system competely, and shakes up the Imperium yet again by making it a more or less post-apoc version of the Imperium bootstrapping itself back into space after Virus (a sentient computer virus) takes out... oh... everything.  Vampire Fleets - vessels whose self-aware computers become affected by Virus and kill their own crews - ply the spacelanes.  The Star Vikings seek to restore interstellar travel.  Basically, the setting rocks, the system is a bit more modern than classic traveller... a good game to check out.  Good luck on the book not falling apart, though...

6) - Star Wars (D6 Version)

Publisher : West End Games
Year: 1987
The Rules: D6s only, dice pool system.  Roll the dice, add together, try to beat target number.  Characters were built on a set of templates at the back of the book.  Very simple, very quick.

Preferred Editions:  The first one.  Definitely.

Why I Love It:  This game was the first time I was aware of "genre emulation" as a thing.  Marvel DID it, but it didn't really click to me what it was doing.  In Star Wars, Greg Costikyan wrote in a conversational tone, and offered advice on how to make the game feel like Star Wars.  Ammunition?  Don't worry about it, they didn't in the movies.  If you don't sound convincingly like a Wookiee, don't play one.  Keep things fast, keep the pace moving, make it feel like a Star Wars movie, dammit!  That style of writing in an RPG book was something I'd not encountered, and as a kid who grew up with Star Wars, this game was a no-brainer.  The cover art...  wow.  The interiors were all stills from the movies or artwork from the production staff (often Ralph McQuarrie!) that very much help set the tone of the game.  The rules run pretty quick, and character creation by template is a snap.  I still keep a couple of sets of these templates in a file folder in my game room for one-off Star Wars games.  This is my gateway drug of choice for teaching people the hobby if for some reason D&D won't work.  Why?  It's easy, it uses the dice everyone already knows from Monopoly, the templates are iconic, and pretty much everyone has seen Star Wars.  The Second Edition and the Revised Second Edition are good games, too - but they make the mistake or realizing they are role-playing games and correct things like not having ammo limitations for weapons and having skills that are too broad. The result is a marginally crunchier game that gets away from Star Wars, to my mind.

Snapshots of Things I Remember About  Star Wars:

• Putting a Butter Krust book cover on the core book so I could read it in Saturday Detention.
• Using my vinyl copy of the original Star Wars soundtrack on a turntable to add ambience to the game.
• This game is when I became aware of my endearing love of the Y-Wing.
• The Star Warriors fighter combat game (which I got used in Tampa, FL the Christmas we invaded Panama) was awesome, and your RPG characters could be used in it without any need for conversion or modification.

 
5) - Cyberpunk (also known as Cyberpunk 2013 and Cyberpunk 2020)

Publisher : R. Talsorian Games
Year: 1988
The Rules: 1D10 + Stat + Skill.  Very simple system.  Lifepath character generation gives you some background before you begin.  Combat is unforgiving if you're not wearing armor.  Probably one of my favorite base game systems ever, even if Reflexes is something of a God Stat.  There are classes "roles" but they only limit the one skille each role has exclusively.

Preferred Editions: Either 2013 or 2020 are great.  CP2013 was a boxed set, and represents a fairly solid core.  CP2020 was a stand-alone book with some rule refinements, but the power creep began with the supplements to 2020.

Why I Love It:  I was gifted this game the year it came out.  I'd done space, I'd done fantasy, I'd done stuff based on anime - but this was something different.  This was the Dark Future of... our Earth.  Not a long time ago, etc.  Not some fantasy world.  This was OUR Earth.  And the Japanese Megacorps ruled everything!  Remember that in the 80s the fear of Japanese economic takeover was very real.  This was something new to me - but somehow familiar.  I had Bladerunner on VHS.  I was a huge fan of the Max Headroom TV series.  I had yet to read Neuromancer - but I would after playing this.  This tapped into the Cyberpunk I had been exposed to in media and gave it an outlet.  And it was my very first anti-hero game, where the players weren't explicity trying to be Lawful Good or anything like it.  You were scraping the bottom, just trying to survive, and the future was disposable!  This game brought out the worst in us in a good way.  Getting to play high-tech low-lifes was a blast.  Little did we know in another year there would be a twist to the genre that would blow us away again!  These days, I run Cyberpunk 2020 when I run Cyberpunk - but I have been giving some thought to a limited campaign using only what was in the 2013 boxed set for the same reason I've thought about doing limited D&D (B/X only) or MechWarrior (nothing published after '89) games - to avoid power creep.

Snapshots of Things I Remember About  Cyberpunk:

• Thinking being a Netrunner would be the coolest thing ever.
• Thinking that it would be pretty damn stupid to put all your personal and banking information on some kind of world-wide computer network where it could be hacked.  I mean, that's grotesquely stupid, isn't it?
• Soviet Cyberware.  Soviet anything.  Yakov Smirnoff would still be funny for another year or two when this was written.
• Jennifer Milburn's solo who liked to kill opponents with a hammer.  A plain old hardware-store hammer.

4) - Robotech

Publisher : Palladium Books
Year: 1986
The Rules:  The Palladium House System used D20s for combat - opposed rolls for dodging, parrying etc.  The skill system is D100.  It's class-level.

Preferred Editions:  That's a tough one.  The original edition was terribly flawed in that it did not accurately reflect a lot of the source material - especially the hardware.  The second edition is more accurate, but has its own issues with character creation and combat.  Don't let me sell you off this game, though - we had a LOT of fun with it, and you can, too.

Why I Love It:  Robotech was the first cartoon I ever watched where someone died.  And when that happened, boy howdy was there wailing and gnashing of teeth that day at River Hills Elementary School in Temple Terrace, FL.  I think we were more upset about Roy Fokker than we were about the space shuttle.  Robotech, as much as it doesn't hold up very well to adult viewing for some people, was ground-breaking.  Yes, a direct translation of Macross would have been better - but it was the 80s, and I'm not sure America was ready for primetime animation that wasn't The Simpsons or The Flintstones.  The Robotech RPG was the first game book I ever purchased with my own money after my birthday in 1987 when I picked up a copy at King's Hobby Shop along with a set of Koplow Games red translucent dice with white ink.  Since Robotech never aired in the Round Rock area, and it had been over a year since any of us had seen it - except the three episodes that could be rented from local movie stores on VHS - we didn't notice a lot of the inconsistencies in the RPG material.  The VR-052 cyclone never had chest missiles.  The radar mast of the Beta Fighter wasn't a missile launcher.  The Super Veritech was just a standard veritech with a FAST pack added, not a separate model... 

  Screw it, the game rocked.  OK, so it wasn't accurate.  Was it fun?  HELL yes.  We ran the crap outta that game, especially the Robotech II : The Sentinels core book that showed us what we would have seen if the Sentinels series had been made.  Fighting the Invid with VF-series Veritechs, using mecha that never existed in the show (VF-1V Vindicator, I'm looking at YOU) and rolling with the alien concepts from the aborted TV show was a blast.  To this DAY I want to run another Sentinels campaign.  A lot.

Snapshots of Things I Remember About  Robotech:

•  The field scientist kit, chock full of useful items and specimen containers.  You know, for all that science 7th graders do when fighting aliens.
• PERYTONIAN ENERGY WIZARDS, BITCHES!
• Handguns that did more damage than tank guns.
• Personal armor that could take a tank shell.  WTF?!?
• The books thankfully included no Minmei recordings.

3) - Shadowrun (And Shadowrun, Second Edition)

Publisher : FASA Corporation
Year: 1989 (Second Edition 1992)
The Rules: Dice pool of D6s, rolling for target numbers.  The first game I played where dice "explode" or roll again when max value is rolled.  The system is... arcane.  Lots of sub-systems.  2nd Edition cleaned it up a bit.  Complex, but the system really supports the game world.

Preferred Editions: 1st and 2nd.  With the publication of Shadowrun 2050, it is not possible to play a 2050s game with the Shadowrun 20th Anniversary rules set.  I may try that.

Why I Love It: Ok, I loved Cyberpunk.  A lot.  Like I said above, Bladerunner, Max Headroom...  Obviously, I liked fantasy as well.  Peanut butter?  Chocolate?  HOLY CRAP.  SHADOWRUN.  This game came at me like a jacked-up Troll Go-Ganger, chummer, and it's hard for me to tell you how wiz that drek is.  Yes, the slang was one of my favorite things.  Another thing I loved was the "shadowtalk" in the sourcebooks, where denizens of the Shadowrun universe would hack into files and leave their own thoughts on things that might differ from the official version.  The weapons commentaries in the Street Samurai Catalog were particularly amusing at times.  "Now I can flatten light rounds against body armor faster than ever before!"  Orcs, Trolls, Dwarves and Elves in a hypertechnological cyberpunk dystopia?  Sign my ass up.  This game was really, really something new.  Mixed genres was something we'd never done before, even if we knew from the back of the AD&D 1e Dungeon Master's Guide that we could port Boot Hill characters into AD&D.  Even if we did play Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.  The mix of magic and tech was a brand new thing at the time - at least to us - and we played the crap out of it.  The rules were complex, but somehow felt right given the source material.  There are rules holes in Shadowrun 1e you could drive an Aries Citymaster through, but if your players aren't actively trying to abuse the rules, it'll hold up well enough.  Shadowrun Second Edition fixed a lot of the abuse-worthy rules, but not all.  Shadowrun 2e is my go-to for Shadowrun these days, ans the Third and Fourth editions committed the unforgivable sin of moving the world forward and trying to adapt it to how modern technology was emerging.  Leave by Cyberpunk firmly 20 minutes into the future of 1987, dammit!  Deckers must jack in!  Decks are the size of a Commodore 64!  The only thing wireless is cellular phones!  Anyway, Shadowrun had this great feel and vibe.  We actually stopped playing straight Cyberpunk for about five years due to Shadowrun.  This game has very much earned its place as #3 on my list.

Snapshots of Things I Remember About  Shadowrun:

• Running the Universal Brotherhood module for three girls.  It was amazing.  Girls are brutal, heartless and cunning.  Read all about it.
• My former girlfriend Amy, the Great Love of My Life(tm) and The One That Got Away(tm) as far as my teenage mind was concerned, coming to play dressed as her character.  I still have my Shadowrun First Edition hardcover in which she pinpointed the location of her character's apartment on the Seattle map.
• The absolutely jaw-dropping combat ability of a cybered-up troll with an axe.  More damage than a 20mm cannon you say?  Yes, most definitely.
• The ability of that same cybered-up troll to eat three .50 machinegun rounds and only take a wound level of "Moderate"

2) - MechWarrior (and MechWarrior, Second Edition)

Publisher : FASA Corporation
Year: 1986 (First Edition) 1991 (Second Edition)
The Rules: 2D6 task resolution versus target number, skill-based but "classes" do exist insomuch as in-game jobs like MechWarrior or Aerospace Pilot tend to be exclusive.

Preferred Editions: First for atmosphere and feel, Second for game mechanics, my own version for both rolled into one.  That one's forthcoming.  May take a while, though.

Why I Love It:  Because it's MechWarrior.  There aren't too many game universes with as much background and development as the MechWarrior Universe.  I started playing Battletech in 1986 at Chisholm Trail Middle School, we played at lunch, I played the WSP-1A Wasp a lot because I thought it looked cool.  I died a lot because it was a WSP-1A Wasp.  I read Battletechnology Magazine voraciously, and I loved the black and white "photos" of battlefields using models and toys and parts of Robotix sets.  This was the first RPG I ever played where there were five (seven if you count The Star League and The Periphery) House books that were nothing but history and background for the factions in the game.  Hundreds of pages on the political systems, religions, militaries, intelligence agencies... It was mind-boggling, and intriguing and exciting.  I was a House Steiner loyalist almost from the get-go.  My friend Robby Houser has the Davion flag tatoo on his arm.  MechWarrior inspired a level of interest in the world and the factions I'd never encountered before.  The game was amazingly deep compared to other games on the market, and the blend of post-apoc, Dune, giant robots and Starship Troopers was really, really cool to folks like me.  The initial book was full of details about house retinues, landholds, Planetologists, ComStar religious zealots - and the best thing about it was the random event tables and total lack of metaplot beyond 3025 that let you lead your game where you wanted to.  I will say that my deep and abiding love of the MechWarrior universe is rooted firmly in the Third Succession War era.  The further one gets forward in the timeline, the less deep and abiding my love for the universe gets.  My problem is not the normal gripes about The Clans and the technology they bring to the game - my gripe is about the fundamental change to the atmosphere of the game.  MechWarrior 1e is about MechWarriors as Knights.  Their 'Mechs, like an ancestral suit of armor, are handed down the generations.  MechWarriors hold land, and rule from a position of military strength.  The techno-feudal feel is strong, as is the feel of a society in its twilight after centuries of brutal war.  It works for me.  By the time of the 3050 setting, MechWarriors are just jet pilots as far as being special goes.  Well trained, yes, respected, yes - but now that BattleMechs are rolling in ever increasing numbers off the assembly lines the BattleMech has once again become just another piece of military hardware.  A lot of the post-apoc and hard-scrabble feel, not to mention the Pendragon with Giant Robots feel - has gone out the window. 
  The current license holders at Catalyst and their fans love to point out that the Battletech universe would have stagnated without a major shakeup.  Well, if the Fourth War hadn't been glossed over in two volumes, and "20 Year Update" glossed over the rest, how much story could have been told without such a drastic shift in feel?   The friggin Jihad storyline took FOURTEEN YEARS of real-time and they're saying they couldn't get more than four out of the original setting?  I don't buy it.  The new regime's A Time of War RPG is what we're using now for the Royal Dragoon Guards, but it really doesn't "do it" for us any more than any other edition of MechWarrior did - the rules are more than a bit cumbersome (Damage in quarter points?  Really?) and the game tries to cover so much ground it really doesn't carry the feel of Battletech with it at all.  With that in mind, Bobby Dean and I are working on our own take...  Stay tuned for more on that...

Snapshots of Things I Remember About  MechWarrior:

• Being a young, inexperienced GM and throwing the Slayers from Krull into a MechWarrior game.
• Clint Hill pulling off a rock star character in a Solaris VII campaign and making it work.  Downward Spiral will henceforth appear in all my Solaris VII games regardless of time period.
• How the Jim Holloway cover art from MW1e just got my imagination rolling.
• Falling in love with Melissa Steiner only to see her marry Hanse Davion.  Well played, Hanse.  Well played. 

1) - Dungeons and Dragons Basic

Publisher : TSR Hobbies
Year: 1974-1991
The Rules : Class and Level system.   Elves, Dwarves and Halflings are a class. D20 for attacks, but not "D20 System."  Uses all the classic polyhedral dice, some things are roll high, some things are roll low, by modern game standards a mess.  But oh, what a glorious mess!

Preferred Editions:
1983 Elmore-art Mentzer BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia Version
1980 Erol Otus-art Moldvay B/X Edition

Why I Love It: D&D was my first love.  I played my first game of Dungeons and Dragons during the summer of 1986 with Daniel Varner as my first DM at his house on Dry Creek/Purple Sage Drive.  My love affair with roleplaying games had begun.  My first D&D boxed set was the 1983 set whose cover is posted here.  Larry Elmore, Jim Holloway, Jeff Easley- their art inspired me.  Frank Mentzer's reworking of the Basic D&D rules was easily grasped by my middle-school mind and it wasn't long before I was DMing myself.  I cannot overstress how the art in and on the books and boxes of this series inspired my early D&D games.  This is still my go-to edition of D&D after all these years.  The 1991 Rules Cyclopedia is my "Desert Island" RPG - if I can only have one RPG book to run from for the rest of my life, it's the most complete version of D&D that has ever existed in a single volume.  In later years, I obtained the 1980 Erol Otus-cover Basic and Expert sets, as well as the earlier Holmes blue-cover edition from 1977.  All of them have more than just historical merit.  There has been a movement lately to base new versions of fantasy RPGs on the simplicity and completness as a game.  There is SO MUCH MILAGE you can get out of just the Basic and Expert rules.  Also - the default setting for the 1980 and beyond sets, the Known World or Mystara, is awesome and gonzo.  The Grand Duchy of Karameikos has been the backdrop for many, many epic campaigns and entertaining one-shots.

Snapshots of Things I Remember about D&D Basic:

• You never forget your first.  Come on, that has to count for something.
• My Cleric, Brother Maynard of the Holy Outhouse, bravely fighting demons all summer at Lost Pines Scout Camp, where Troop 145 was much more interested in D&D than they were in all that scouting stuff...
• My first wizard being killed by the acid breath of a dragon we had subdued while attempting to feed bag the dragon.  This was done by the DM intentionally because said wizard was around 20th level and way too powerful for the campaign, which we played most days after school and almost every Saturday for 6th, 7th and part of 8th grades.
• Thinking level limits on demihumans was awesome - because hey, an 8th-level Halfling becomes SHERRIFF OF HIS OWN FRIGGIN SHIRE.  How cool is that?  Also, the artifacts each demi-human race was able to create as they levelled up.  Who needed levels when you kept advancing in Attack Rank anyway?

Variants and Spin-Offs:
  I have to give a shout-out to a couple of games which are derivative of D&D Basic under the OSR (Original Source Rules) movement.  These are also called Retroclones, as they are clones of the rules of Basic D&D.  While these games are, fundamentally, Basic D&D each one seeks to do something with the rules that Basic D&D didn't do.  Here they are, and why I recommend them.

Labyrinth Lord

What It Does: Keeps Basic D&D in Print.

Why I Like It: It's a modernized presentation of B/X D&D in a sturdy, attractive volume.  The rules are almost unchanged, close enough that old modules can be run with no coversion.  There are modules, a GM screen, and the Advanced Edition Companion which allows it to expand to cover AD&D as well.

Oh, and it's FREE in PDF.


Stars Without Number

What it Does:  Shows us what would have happened if Basic/Expert Dungeons and Dragons made sweet, sweet love to Traveller and they had a beautiful child.

Why I Like It: SWN is brilliant.  I say that with a twinge of pain because I was working on my own sci-fi adapation of B/X when this came out.  It did everything I wanted my version to do and more - and it did it better.  Honestly, this game rocks HARD.  It has a core of Basic D&D, but adds a skill system that is 2D6+Skill+Mods for a very simple, Traveller-like skill experience.  It has domains and factions, and the tools to manage them and place them in conflict with one another.  It has vehicle and startships - even 'Mechs.  This is one hell of a one-volume game.

And oh, yeah, it's FREE in PDF.


Adventurer Conqueror King System

What it Does: Takes the endgame from Basic D&D in which PCs become rulers and influential folks, and turns it up to 12.

Why I Like It:  This is Basic/Expert D&D with explicit phases of a campaign.  The low levels are "Adventurer" and play like most D&D campaigns.  As you ease into "Conqueror" you start finding a different flavor of adventure as your PC becomes the most proficient in the land at what it is you do.  Graduating to "King" levels, your PCs are carving out their own domains.  This game really brings depth and interest to the old "At 9th level the Fighter may construct a Castle..."  Lots of depth.  Domain management, economy, war...  It's all here in wonderful detail with simple mechanics.  A few new character classes round out the game, along with an explicit table showing just how good at their job a character of 1st-14th level is.  14th level, as in the original Expert set, is the upper limit of this game.  I haven't gotten to run it yet, but I've read the book longingly, wondering where all my time to game has gone and then remembering oh, yeah, parenthood and college...

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG

What it Does: Sword & Sorcery roleplaying, perhaps better than D&D did it.

Why I Like It:  This game gave me a hummer, then kicked me in the jimmy so hard I just had to run it.  First, DCC got me with the artwork.  Oh, the artwork.  Jeff Dee, Erol Otus, the list goes on.  It is old school in the best of ways and the art just begs to play the kind of gonzo sword-and-sorcery stuff that cries out for a million Boris Vallejo paintings.  This game is brutal and beautiful at the same time.  Fighters are capable of amazing deeds of might without a cumbersome feat system.  Arcane spellcasters run the risk of corruption regardless of their alignment, and Clerics must take care not to offend their gods.  Death waits around every corner, especially due to the fact that in the first adventure of the campaign each player rolls up multiple completely random 0-level characters.  The one that survives the first adventure gets to be first level.  Some might chafe at the extreme old-school sensibilities of this game, but the group I ran a 0-level grinder for loved the ever living crap out of it.  This game is simply amazing in its ability to capture the feel of all those stories of "the way it was done in the 70s" and do it with modern mechanics.  Don't expect modern mechanics to include class balance or any of those other newfangled concepts, though.  This game is old school through-and-through, and that makes it pretty damn awesome.

And Parents We Shall Be!

Greetings, True Believers!

  Court on 19 OCT went well.  Very well.  We were told to expect to have an adoption date set sometime in February or March.  HUZZAH!  I cannot wait to make the world an introduction to the kids, as we're not allowed to do so while they're still in foster care.  No public photos, and I can't really even mention their full names.

 So... if everything goes well with the 90-day waiting period - IE, no close relatives come unexpectedly out of the woodwork...  Mary and I will be the legal parents of our foster kids and there will be much rejoicing.

Excelsior!
(With apologies to The Man)

The Old Dragoon

Long awaited update...

  This past weekend the Royal Dragoons hosted an Open Game Day, which was attended by Jeff Dee, who presented a demo of his new game, Cavemaster.  We invited a lot of folks, a LOT of folks... in the end, we had around thirty participants.  What was nice was we saw some folks we haven't seen in quite some time - Sean, Patrick, Sarah, Kathy, Alan, Mitchell and especially Larry.  Was good to see you all.  More about that in a bit.

  Life updates before I get all philosophical.  Everyone who reads my sporadic posts is pretty well aquainted with my hectic life.  In fact, I'll have to post most posts as I can about some of the revelations I've had recently thanks to life, children and the therapist I've been seeing for almost a year now.  Anyway...  From a maximum weight of 308, I am now down to 265 on my way to my TXSG weight of 217.  Actually, I'm shooting for 200.  Nice round number - one I haven't seen since my junior year of High School, but what the hell, right?  Gotta have goals.  I am two classes away from my BA - I finish my last final this week for the current semester, then I start Korean War History and War and Society on Monday.  By just after Thanksgiving, I'll be done.  Huzzah.  On the kid front, we've had some great frustration with CPS and our daycare arrangements that required me to spend three days off work taking care of K.  I loved every minute of it.  She and I had some wonderful daddy-daughter time.

  Remember that moment in Jurassic Park when people freaked out when they realized Raptors could open doors?  Problem-solving intelligence?  Well, my 16-month-old has shown me in the past days that not only does she understand the relationship between the X-Box controller and the television, but she understands that Cat5 cable goes into the wall (and attempted to plug one in herself) and that the "Windows" key on my keyboard makes something immediately happen on my PC or laptop.  Holy crap this little girl is SHARP.

  Anyway...  so the mediation was yesterday where the parties to the case discussed the future of the kiddos.  and after angsting about what was going to come out of that meeting I find out we're not ALLOWED to know what happened in that meeting.  As Foster Parents of less than one year in duration, we're still not legally parties to the case.  Still just the babysitters.  Damnit.

  I'll have some gaming-related posts later this week.  Since I'm finishing my classwork tomorrow AM hopefully, I'll have some time to post about the awesome stuff I've come across in the last couple of months...

Time Marches On... Updates!

  Good morning, True Believers.  OK, I'm not Stan Lee, but thanks to Z I've been watching a lot of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.  And He-Man.  And I've now seen every Beethoven movie about 167 times.

  Quick updates on... stuff... and then on to some new games (new to me, at least) I'd like to draw your attention to before I plunge into this week's adventures in finishing my BA.

PARENTHOOD -
  Well, things are still up-in-the-air.  SSDD.  Our caseworker for CPS has left the department to move up north somewhere and get married.  Huzzah for him!  Hope he knows what he's in for...  That leaves us, once again, with a new caseworker.  Who is it?  Well, your guess is as good as mine this morning.  We've been without a caseworker for over a week now.  Fun, fun.

  We had a surprise court date come up last month.  Birth mom's lawyer filed for immediate change of placement for the kids.  The Judge said negatory to that, but did order that visits would have to begin with the "fictive kin" the parents want to see the kids placed with.  And so they have, which has made the case more complicated.  First of all, CASA and the Ad Lidem Attorney surprised us by being overwhelmingly supportive of the kids staying right where they are, with the Ad Lidem going so far as to tell the Judge she felt it was wrong to call these new visits "pre-placement visits" as the Ad Lidem's office does not agree this is an appropriate placement for the children.  We'll see how far they can get that line of reasoning to go.  I hope all the way, as it would mean we'd have a shot at adopting Z and K. 

  What has occurred is now we have to schedule two visits per week, one with the birth parents, and one with these fictive kin.  Mary and I have gotten to know them over the two visits that have already occurred, they are good people.  A bit long in the tooth to be raising toddlers, but their hearts are in the right place.  I've found that I remember a lot more Spanish than I thought I did, and I am able to communicate fairly well even though Mary requires translation by one of their teenage kids.  They have a son who is going to be a Senior and a daughter who I think is going to be a sophomore.  The kids speak fluent English and Spanish.  If Z and K end up living with them, I will feel a little less troubled than I did before I got to know them, but I still feel their optimal situation would be for us to adopt them.  Better neighborhood, schools, and an amazing support structure of family and "fictive kin" on our end.

  K turned 1 in May, Z turned 3.  We had small parties for both of them, with K being way too clean with her cupcake for a 1-year-old and Z riding the train at Zilker Park.  These kids are so much of our lives now - they ARE our family.  As far as they are concerned, Mary and I are mommy and daddy.  I hope, for the sake of their stability and growth, that we remain so.  Our CASA worker mentioned in court that the bonds formed at this point in a child's development have an overwhelming effect on their ability to form close connections for the rest of their lives.  That alone is enough for me to fight for these kids - not to mention the fact that I love them with all my heart.

  K has learned now to point at Mary and say "Ma ma."  She points at me and says "Da da."  She has learned that pointing is effective in letting us know what she wants, like her sippy cup or some of Mommy's fries.  She also loves green beans - so I cook them often.  She's scooting around like lightning, and we expect her to be walking soon.

  Z is having some temper issues of a different kind.  Unlike the wild, primal tantrums he had when we were first placed with him, he's acting like an angry 3-year-old- which he is, when he's angry.  He doesn't like to be corrected (who does?) and we're working with him on it.  He's also going through his hitting phase, so we're dealing with that.  I got him Castle Grayskull for his birthday, the original 1982 one, and some He-Man figures.  Yeah, he's a little young for it - but Mommy and Daddy watch him while he plays and he's a very smart little boy.

  We watched E.T. with Z the other night.  I keep getting blown away by the experience of being a dad for the first time, and this was no different.  For the first 20 minutes or so, we thought he wasn't going to pay attention to the movie- then he got drawn into it, snuggled up with me, and stayed rapt for the rest of the film.  When the guys in the space suits showed up at Elliot's home, Zane pointed and yelled "I don't like that!!!  Scary!"  He loved the movie.  And I got to watch E.T. through the eyes of a child who had never seen the film before.  It was a pretty moving experience, watching his expressions and reactions to the movie- it was like I was seeing it for the first time.  I noticed things I never noticed before.  Being a dad is amazing.

LIFE, THE UNIVERSE and EVERYTHING

  Aside from the foster parent shuffle, I have to report that my body has finally sent me the message my friends, family, and Dr. Lisa have been trying to tell me since November.  I am not a superbeing, I cannot do it all, I need to slow down.  I landed in my doctor's office with what is probably a stress-related illness.  Too soon to absolutely tell, but all the indications are there.  I'll have to go back for some follow-up work, but it seems I have something akin to a dissociative anxiety disorder that caused me to explode into the most severe case of hives I have ever had in my life for four days plus.  Benadryl, which knocked hives out in 30 minutes when I was a kid and had them with some frequency, did nothing.  I was perscribed some super-antihystamine that did work after a few days, but it knocked me on my butt.  My office mate was chuckling at me for two days as I kept falling asleep at my desk courtesy of my meds.  So - I HAVE to slow down.  I've been looking over my posts and realizing that I've been saying I was going to slow down for months, and I was going to run that "for me" game Dr. Lisa thinks I need to help me relax, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

  Well...  Now I kinda gotta.  I kept telling myself if I just put my head down and kept marching I'd reach the goal line.  My goal line was this November or December, basically because by then I'll know if Z and K will be ours permanently, I will have finished my BA course work and started a well-earned break before beginning my MA, and should be sworn in to the State Guard by then.  All my major stressors resolved more or less.  Well, I didn't make it that far.  So I've enacted a few changes that are supposed to make my life easier, and if this last weekend is any indication - it's starting to work.

  First of all, I have to have the discipline to get my schoolwork done during the work week, preferably during work hours as my job permits.  This allows me to have my weekend to do weekend stuff, rather than stressing about homework.  I crunched HARD last week to achieve this, and I can tell you my weekend was much more laid back without worrying about setting aside Saturday or Sunday for homework.  So that much helped.

  Second - some chores can just wait.  If it's not mission critical to do something RIGHT THE HELL NOW I am going to consider going to bed at a decent hour every night after some leisure reading time.  I've been able to do this for about four days now, and it does help immensely.  Strangely, this weekend I was MORE productive on the chores front, since I found I was feeling more rested and motivated.  I got a lot of work done on the game room - including scrubbing the floors by hand, vacuuming, and doing a bit of re-org and re-shelving.  Someday I want to do a complete catalogue of my stuff...  But that's major project for a later time.

  Third - a leisure game will happen.  Period.  It has to.  I must disengage my brain.  Gaming is the way I do that.  Sure, it's escapism - but it's healthy escapism.  And it stimulates that imagination part of my brain that I find absolutely vital to feeling like "me" and not an automaton.  What will it be?  That's the question.  And to with who?  That's another problem.  TO MY FRIENDS - For the love of sweet merciful crap.  Life is too short for us to hold onto crappy grudges and stuff.  I've done it - and I wish I hadn't.  I'm sick and tired of having to plan crap around which of you yahoos can stand to be in a room with one another and which can't.  Once upon a time we were all one big happy group, and we can be again.  I know we've hurt each other, and it's been everything from personality issues to folks cheating on each other or breaking up or whatever.  It's time to move past this stuff and enjoy life.  Dammit.

TXSG

  Still working on getting my weight down.  But dammit, it's going to happen.  My mates all went to Annual Training without me, but by God they impressed their chain of command and told them it was all due to the training I've given them.  I want to get off the bench and back into uniform - for the first time in my life as a soldier rather than as a cadet.  I will be a soldier or NCO in the 3/2 before the end of the year.  Big goal.  Gonna make it.  Hooah.

GAMING

  Ok, what you've all been waiting for.  The fun part. 

  First, I want to talk to you all about Cosmic Patrol, by Catalyst Game Labs.  This little red hardcover is definitely worth the price of admission.  Cosmic Patrol is just what it says on the tin, folks - pulp sci-fi gaming with rayguns and fishbowl helmets.  The system?  Imagine if FATE and Savage Worlds had a lovechild.  Abilities are rated in dice, D4 through D12, you have plot points you can spend, and your characters have "cues" that are very much like FATE aspects, but don't have a mechanical effect - rather, they are there to help you get into character.  There are Red Martian Barbarians, Venusian Scientists, lots of pulpy aliens... this game would be amazing for pickups and one-shots.  Character creation is pretty quick and straightforward, and the rules are extremely light.  The other nifty thing?  Well, you can share GM duties.  In the default style of play, each player takes a turn as "Lead Narrarator" and GMs once scene before the mantle passes to the left.  Player doesn't know all the rules?  Well, no problem.  The LN doesn't have to set difficulty numbers or make up monsters.  The bad guys are in the book, and the difficulties are set by rolling a D20.  Done.  Check this book out, or download the free preview that was handed out on free RPG day back in June.  If you're a fan of old school sci-fi or the old black-and-white serials like Flash Gordon this is for you.  http://www.rpggeek.com/rpg/11720/cosmic-patrol

  Next up - my Reese's Traveller games.  Why do I call them that?  Because in both cases Traveller is the peanut butter, and something else is the chocolate.  In the case of Stars Without Number, the chocolate is good old B/X Dungeons and Dragons.  For Diaspora, it's FATE.

  Stars Without Number is available for free online, or as a hardcover book.  This is sort of a retroclone, in fact as I read it I got the feeling this very well could have been what resulted if the TSR staff circa Moldvay Basic had decided they wanted to do a more direct competitor to Traveller instead of going their own way with Star Frontiers (which I love, too...)  So, SWN is a class-level game with only three classes - warrior, expert and psionic.  There is a skill system that uses 2D6 task resolution, which means easy adaptation of older Traveller or MechWarrior material.  There's ship construction, planet and sector generation, even notes on simple artifact mecha.  SWN also has an amazing section on factions and how to use them.  Everything from basic mercenary units to full-on stellar empires.  Also of interest to any Game Master is the section on names for characters and places.  Lots and lots of tables of names based on multiple backgrounds and ethnicities.  This information alone is worth the download- but the game itself is pretty darn good.  We all know I have a deep and abiding love of Battletech, Dungeons and Dragons, and Travller, right?  So I've got this idea to do a Battletech game with SWN since the faction system would work GREAT for a Succession Wars game.
http://www.rpggeek.com/rpg/8524/stars-without-number

  My final notes today are on Diaspora.  I don't have a lot to say about it at this time, as I've only owned it for about 48 hours and haven't gotten to dig into the meat of the book - but the authors credit it specifically as a FATE take on Traveller.  This, too, is pursuant to my interests.  Also - I'm thinking about doing Battletech with it.  Again.  I guess I'm just so disillusioned with A Time of War that I keep looking for other systems to run in that universe with.  SWN would scratch my old-school itch, but Diaspora definitely has that FATE narrarative quality that some of my friends call "Tree Huggin' Hippy Roleplay."  I like it.  It has all the... erm... aspects... of a FATE game, along with minigames concerning star cluster development, ship combat, ground combat on the platoon scale, factions...  Yeah, it might be tailored to be FATE Battletech if only there were a specific section on 'Mechs.  Maybe I'll get to write more on this one when I get to read the rest of the book.
http://www.rpggeek.com/rpg/2676/diaspora

  Well, that's all for now, folks.  Excelsior!