Yo, Joe! My Initial thoughts on the GI Joe RPG.

 

I grew up in the 80s, and like almost every 80s kid I know, I loved GI Joe. My parents bought me the giant-sized GI Joe #1 comic. My first Joe was straight-arm Short-Fuze. When the first 5-part series, which we to this day still call "The M.A.S.S. Device" even though the official title was "A Real American Hero." IMDB tells me it's since been re-titled to include both those phrases. Kind of like "Raiders of the Lost Ark" now has "Indiana Jones and the" added to it. Everything about GI Joe captivated me as a kid. The initial years of the toy line and comics were firmly rooted in a modern military aesthetic and technology level- except for the one or two things that were meant to be cutting edge, like Flash's XMLR-1A laser rifle. Heck, a couple of the vehicles, namely the Dragonfly and Sky Striker, were barely modified real-world vehicles over ten years old at the time the franchise re-launched. Others, like the VAMP. and MOBAT, were based on prototypes or designs not adopted by the US Military. The VAMP was based on the Lamborghini Cheetah, and the MOBAT on the MBT-70. Heck, even some of the small arms were old hat by the time the figures came out, like Grunt's Vietnam-era M-16, Gung-Ho's oddly pump-action M-79 derivative, Short-Fuze's mortar, and Zap's bazooka. This was peak GI Joe for me. 

Now, I have always thought it was a damn shame that TSR didn't release both a GI Joe and Transformers RPG back in the 80s. Why TSR? Because TSR had a working relationship with Marvel thanks to the Dungeons & Dragons Saturday morning cartoon, and that agreement allowed the classic Marvel Superheroes RPG to be produced. The same animation studio working on D&D was also working on GI Joe and Transformers. All the comics were produced by Marvel. The tie-in was there. And I wasn't alone in thinking this- I wrote, for my own use, and others have written and posted online conversions of the characters from GI Joe and Transformers using Marvel FASERIP stats. And if you think about it, it's sort of a perfect fit. Marvel has just enough resolution at the low end to make modern military action work, and has high-end enough stats to handle giant transforming robots who can create holograms, teleport, cause earthquakes, and other things we might otherwise classify as superpowers. In the intervening years I have also done GI Joe with Spycraft, Top Secret/S.I., and Ninjas & Superspies. When Everyday Heroes dropped, I immediately statted the original 13 Joes in that system. There had never been an official GI Joe RPG. Until now.

 Renegade Game Studio was not a name I was particularly familiar with when I heard the announcements about GI Joe and Transformers. That was quickly remedied. Along with the RPGs, Renegade has released some damn good card games with those IPs, and some GI Joe miniature and board games that look great. I'm very much intrigued by their "Powered by Axis & Allies" board game. Something that initially gave me pause, however, was that these games were advertised along with the new My Little Pony RPG, and the Power Rangers RPG. 

OK, so, I missed the bus on both those IPs the first time around. MLP wasn't on my radar other than commercials that ran in my childhood until my daughter got into it. We even picked up the previous RPG, Tails of Equestria, when Kaylee spotted it on store shelves. Power Rangers debuted shortly after I graduated, so it was in that terrible blackout spot where a teenager tries to grow up, and I never got into MMPR. Again, my kids changed that. My son loved Power Rangers, and so did my daughter. They were both rangers for Halloween one year. I watched some of both the MLP and MMPR shows with them. I still think the Yellow SPD Ranger is winking at me during the intro. So I have no hate, on the contrary I have quite a bit of respect for both those IPs. They missed me as a kid, but as an adult and a parent I appreciate the shows, and the messages they convey, especially MLP. Oh, and as an aside, Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse, is also worth a watch as an adult. The in-jokes are funnier than hell. 

What alarmed me wasn't the subject matter of the MLP and MMPR games being rolled into GI Joe and Transformers per se. It was the tonal shift. I couldn't wrap my head around a game session in which Apple Jack teams up with Dr. Kat Manx to defeat Megatron and Golobulus. OK, it sounds cool when I say it now, but... anyway.

It goes without saying that I snatched up the GI Joe RPG when it arrived on game store shelves. I gave it a cursory flip-through. And then it went on my shelf. I only recently picked it back up, after listening to some YouTube videos about how the system worked, and playing a LOT of the GI Joe Deckbuilding Game. I figured I'd give it another look. I am glad I did.

Two main things had made me bounce off the GI Joe RPG. First was I didn't get the Essence20 system at first. For some reason it just didn't click. The second was more about the realities of creating a game that would encompass every version of an IP that goes back 40 years. To me, GI Joe would always be a period piece set during the Cold War. So many of the original two years worth of Joe characters backstories depended on them being Vietnam veterans. Stalker, Snake-Eyes, Wild Bill, Duke, etc. The tech was 80s contemporary with the occasional bit of superscience, like the MASS Device or Weather Dominator. But mostly, a tank was a tank, and at least in the original 5-parter, a gun was a gun. Snow Job uses an actual firearm in the battle at the crystal caves. There are more firearm sounds throughout the miniseries.

This version of GI Joe encompasses technologies that just don't fit in the GI Joe of my youth. One of the character roles gets a freaking energy shield as part of the role. All Joes have satellite uplink tablets. Cool stuff, to be sure, but outside the realm of what Joe was to me. Thing is, there have been a couple of generations since 10-year-old me sat down to watch GI Joe. And the game needs to either serve up their Joe as well, or go against the current presentation of the IP and call itself a period piece. Of course the former is the more lucrative option.

So I sat down with my fellow GM and frequent co-conspirator Ed, and we each made two characters for the GI Joe RPG one afternoon- and damned if the game didn't just "click" in a way it hadn't before. As we stepped through character creation, we started to see that under the hood of Essence20 are common concepts from d20-derived games, mixed with some new or borrowed mechanics. Origin replaced race/species/ancestry. Role replaced class. Skill proficiency was expressed a a die type, sort of like Pathfinder 2e had a lovechild with Savage Worlds. Essences were Ability Scores with the raw number eliminated to just reflect the modifier. It all suddenly made sense. 

I created Inkwell, a Marine Combat Correspondent, who used her journalistic and interpersonal skills for the Joe team but becomes a bit distracted when she's attempting to observe and record things. This "hangup" comes from the option available to choose more than one Influence, for Inkwell I chose Artisan with a focus in writing, and Professional with a focus in journalism. One influence is free, you may select up to two more, but they come with hangups. I like this, it gives the character an interesting weak spot. Inkwell was created with the Officer role, even though she's an E-4. Officer is a catch-all role for leadership, and enlisted/NCO characters can have the Officer role without being officers. As a focus I chose battlefield psychology. This gives Inkwell some pretty bard-like abilities to bolster her allies. We got to equipment, and find that it's done in a very innovative way, Equipment in which a character is proficient can be used without penalty, just like in any other d20 game. If a character has a "Qualification" however, not only can they use the equipment, they can automatically bring it on any mission without requesting it. Requests are handled by the requisition mechanic, and some roles, notably the Officer, can have an effect on the requisition process.

By the end of character creation, I felt like I had a much better grasp on the underpinnings of the Essence20 engine. We also created a character with random elements. Instead of allocating 12 points to the 4 Essences, we rolled 12d4 to see where the points landed. If given a choice for things like influences, origin, and role, we rolled randomly to select them. I ended up with an ex-COBRA Commando with a focus in infiltration called Overthrow. Thanks to an influence from The Cobra Codex, I found that Overthrow was unhappy with the way the system worked in his home nation, and joined COBRA to try to change things. He left COBRA, and joined GI Joe hoping to fix the system from the inside.

In closing- I've overcome one of my two speedbumps to enjoying this game. The system now makes sense to me, and I very much enjoy the character creation process. My issue with the modernization of GI Joe still nags me a bit. There's enough equipment and vehicles from the classic era where this isn't a problem in those areas. The integration of energy shields with the Vanguard role still sticks in my craw. I dunno if I can just handwave it as plot immunity, but we'll see.

"My Trek" for RPGs.

 I've been a Star Trek fan as long as I can remember. It's one of the earliest TV shows I can remember watching, along with Battle of the Planets and the old Fantastic Four and Hulk cartoons. When I was in Kindergarten, I had both a Spock uniform t-shirt, and the amazing (for the time) modular TMP Enterprise toy from South Bend. I raced home after school so I could catch the afternoon re-runs of Star Trek. This was, of course, the late 70s and early 80s. There was no TNG yet, no bloody A, B, C, or D. And when I started playing roleplaying games, one of the very first I got my hands on after D&D was Star Trek from FASA.

FASA's Trek was more martial than the original TV show, but not so much that it felt off. At that time, deep roleplay wasn't the default mode it can be today with some games. There are games out there with absolutely no combat allowed. FASA Trek was created in an era where conflict of some sort was assumed in an RPG as something that was going to happen. While Star Trek: The Motion Picture was a thoughtful sci-fi epic without a single phaser firing, and the only torpedoes fired weren't at other ships, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was another story entirely. This is where I begin my specific love for "Nick Meyer" Star Trek. Nicholas Meyer directed Wrath of Khan, and under his influence we got the two Star Trek feature films that felt the most Naval. Wrath of Khan, and The Undiscovered Country. From the far more martial uniforms with a distinct look to differentiate officers and enlisted to details like inspections, the Excelsior crew sleeping in racks, and even corrugated metal floors, boatswain's whistles, and ship's china and blankets, Nick Meyer's Star Trek was, by a quote from Meyer himself, "Horatio Hornblower in space." The naval feel was quite intentional. And it seems to have been popular. Despite the difficulty in making the Monster Maroon uniforms from this era, they were a staple of conventions and fan clubs. Wrath of Khan was upheld as the best of the Trek films, even when Search for Spock and The Voyage Home came out, with Voyage Home returning to a less bellicose and more sci-fi-with-a-message format.

This is the Trek into which the RPG was born. Many of the sourcebooks detailed conflicts - a favorite of

mine being the Return to Axanar/The Four Years War combo. For those who don't know, The Four Years War was FASA's (and fandom's) explanation for the state of things between the Klingon Empire and the Federation in the original series. It's taken as read that there has been a "hot" war at some point in the not-too-distant past, and that it's now boiled down into an analog of the Cold War. Before Klingons were biker Viking samurai, they were basically Cold War-era Soviets. The Tactical Starship Simulator and the ship recognition guides written to support it obviously focused on combat between vessels- that was sort of the point of the game. Starfleet was, in this version of Star Trek, written to be a military organization that did exploration and science as part of their mandate. There were enlisted crew, even a mention of *gasp* Marines. The image on the right by the great David Deitrick. It was to be the cover for the Star Fleet Ground Forces Manual, which was, according to Deitrick's blog, given the kybosh by Roddenberry himself, who by that time was deep into downplaying the naval or martial influences in Star Trek. 

All of this is to say, my Star Trek is much more Nick Meyer than Gene Roddenberry. And if you look at Star Trek the some way some folks cherry pick their favorite parts of various holy books, you can see that my Trek has always been a part of Trek. For instance, some folks insist there were no enlisted crew aboard the Enterprise, each member was at least an Ensign. Thing is, a bridge character in The Cage was Chief Petty Officer Garison, Crewman Green in The Man Trap was a crewman, and in Charlie X Tina Lawton is introduced as a Yeoman 3rd Class. When I got to High School, I became a cadet in the Marine Corps JROTC- so I learned a lot about the traditions and histories of the naval services. Of course I used the Marines that were listed in the Starfleet org chart in FASA Trek. The Mandela Effect ensured that I saw that entry on the org charts in the classic Franz Josef Star Fleet Technical Manual, but alas. 

Since FASA Trek has a lifepath-type character generation, and the enlisted generation method in Trader Captains and Merchant Princes was... not optimal, I wrote my own process for training enlisted crew, and I gave them Navy-style ratings since I'd heard Tina Lawton called a Yeoman Third Class. So my game had Science Technicians, Warp Technicians, Torpedomen, Quartermasters, Operations Specialists, etc. Even Culinary Specialists and Starfleet Counselors. Every ship had a "Chief of the Boat" who served as senior enlisted to the Captain. My Starfleet was decidedly Naval, as presented in Wrath of Khan and the FASA books. Most of my games dealt with the Cold War between the Federation, Klingons and Romulans. FASA lost the Star Trek license shortly after producing their only two Next Generation books, and there was no new Trek RPG in print, until...

The year I graduated, Task Force Games/Amarillo Design Bureau released Prime Directive, and if Roddenberry felt FASA Trek was too martial, it might be a blessing that he passed away before the release of Prime Directive. Set in the alternate Trek universe that was created to support the game Star Fleet Battles, Prime Directive was concerned with a neat concept - Prime Teams. Why beam down your Captain, XO, and next four senior people into an unknown situation when you could have a purpose-trained "Novel Contact Team" to beam down for you. Purpose-trained, possessed of multiple skill sets, and oh, yeah, more expendable than your Captain and the next five most senior personnel. Character creation had players choosing between Naval and Marine personnel, and it was possible to be an officer or enlisted member of either service. The setting, as it was created to support the outright wargame that was Star Fleet Battles, was heavily militaristic in nature. The sample fiction in the rulebooks mentions saluting, bracing to attention for an officer, and other formalities rarely or never seen in Star Trek. Needless to say, my Prime Directive games were right at home in the kind of Trek universe in my head. Prime Directive was a shift in some elements of my games, as it was set during the TOS era due to specifics of the sub-license that allowed it to be created. I had run most of my games in what we used to call the "Movie Era" - Star Trek II up to, say, Star Trek VI. Or the current film if you rewind to my earliest days as a gamer. Also- Prime Directive had a completely different set of species in play. Rigellians and Alpha Centaurans were absent in FASA Trek, so, too, most of the Klingon servitor species. Hydrans, Lyrans, Wyn, Kzinti, all new options for NPCs and, rarely, players. This game became sort of Star Fleet Navy SEALS. Ish. And we dug it.

You might ask what I did with The Next Generation? Well, I started with the TNG First Year

Sourcebook, and then got my hands on the TNG Officer's Manual, the aforementioned two books FASA got out before their license was terminated. These books are definitely early efforts, before much of TNG's lore was established. There were some gems of concepts in here, though. The Bridge Command Specialist was pure gold. A character cross-trained in several bridge functions, so they could make a credible effort at any station. This mirrored perfectly how Geordi and Worf tended to bounce around with various duties, and why Geordi, as a Lieutenant (j.g.) is given command of the Enterprise twice in the first season when more senior officers are clearly available. A BCS is a line officer in training, and being given temporary command is part of that training.

The Officer's Manual had a lot of things that would be retconned by later TNG. Pay for Starfleet members, some apocryphal starships including the Ambassador Class that looked like neither Doug Drexler's nor the Enterprise-C's versions. Data having some sort of reactor core. The shipboard position of  "Crewmaster" who was responsible for the civilians onboard. Oh, and the rank of Ensign, Junior Grade. I used most of it, because we didn't yet know any better. But oy, did some of those ship designs look janky. 

By the time Last Unicorn Games released their Star Trek offerings, we were ready for a different take on Star Trek. But we always seemed to come back to FASA Trek and Prime Directive. Only with the recent move to Modiphius and their 2d20 system have my players and I found a Trek we like as much as these older iterations. And still, I just finished running FASA Trek at North Texas RPG Con. I toned down the hyper-naval feel of my game, but many elements we used to use were still there. Half the pregen characters I created were not officers. The ship was a Larson-class destroyer, assigned to Military Operations Command (as opposed to Galaxy Exploration Command.) The players said they had a lot of fun. I plan on running again next year. The takeaway is, my TNG games tended to be less martial in nature than my TOS-era and Movie-era games, and those tended to be The Navy in Space. Just as Nick Meyer intended, and Gene Roddenberry resented. 

Chupacabracon! A great con and a less than great weekend.

 

So, I know I had said I'd try to post on 1st and 15th, but I held off this post so I could give a review of my weekend at Chupacrabracon, one of the three cons I try to make it to every year. Chupa used to be in biking distance from my house, or a rather lengthy walk. It moved to San Marcos, TX, which is theoretically 52 minutes from my house by car. Theoretically. Traffic on IH-35 is legendary for being an absolute mess, and this weekend was no exception. Still, I was jazzed. I was scheduled to run Shadowrun on Friday, play Battletech/Alpha Strike all day Saturday, and run Robotech Sunday. At Chupa, there is a nice little perq that if you run at least 8 hours of games, you get in free. Score. But things started to change the day after I submitted my games. My wife, Mary, has been suffering with early-onset arthritis in her knee, it was basically bone-to-bone. We suddenly got a surgery date- a week and a half before the con. Recovery for this surgery is said to be 6-8 weeks. As I type this, she's got her home care physical therapy nurse coming to work that new CyberKnee. OK, so, I'll be on nurse duty the same as Mary was when I had my heart surgery, no problem, we'll find family or a friend to assist Mary for the weekend, and I'll hit Chupa. And to be clear, there were more reasons to go than just gaming. Chupa has a lot of industry folks in attendance, from Battlefield Press, for whom I am coordinating the Robotech sub-license effort for Savage Worlds, to Pinnacle Entertainment, and more. And this year, Catalyst Game Labs. I love Battletech and Shadowrun, and Philip Lee, the editor of Shrapnel, was there to talk to about what they look for in submissions. So, cons have become business as well - Retro Arcana needs to get our name out there.

So I was pumped. Ready to go. And the week Chupa was going to happen, we got a call from my wife's surgeon - post-op appointment, Friday at 11. So I had to cancel my Friday game as I'd be in a completely different city. So we did our appointment, and I resolved to go to Chupa Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, traffic more than doubled the time necessary to get to San Marcos, so I missed my scheduled Battletech game. Then my phone rang. My BFF was in the hospital. Stroke. Needed help. My battle buddy Ed and I dropped what we were doing and went to the rescue. Like Ed said, if we don't help our friends what good are we? So, we missed most of Saturday. Made it just in time to be 40 minutes late to the next Battletech game. The awesome Catalyst staffers who were running the game held my spot open, and I was able to play some Alpha Strike. My partner and I were matched up with Rusty Zimmerman, author, and apparently dirty clanner. It was a GREAT game, we barely - BARELY - pulled out a win. The cool thing about this game? We were playing con attendees versus editor Philip Lee, author Rusty Zimmerman, and community manager Rem Alternis. And at the end of the game, each player got to take home a lance of painted 'Mechs. My partner took home our Lyran Guards 'Mechs, and I got our opponents, pictured below.

So, this was amazing. I really dig Alpha Strike- though I'm still a die hard fan of good old Battletech. Great game, close fight, and the MVP on the OPFOR side was the Mad Cat (Timber Wolf for you Clanners) which was the last OPFOR mech to drop, and killed three of our Mechs, leaving only our Stalker standing.

I had to did home after that, to make sure my wife was being taken care of and had to deal with my kiddos for being in Teenager Mode and failing to keep up with Mom Duty. I really dreaded driving back the next day, and wasn't sure I should given the difficulties Saturday caused at home. But we made arrangement for a friend to come over and hang out on nurse duty, and I returned on Sunday to run my game. I had planned on running Savage Robotech, but I didn't have the time I needed to translate Cyclones and Invid into SWADE stats with Sci-Fi Companion data. And I only have 2/3 of the backer draft at that. So I fell back to Palladium- but realized creating last-minute pregens for Palladium would take all night. I did, however, have pregens already made for the Strange Machine Games version of Robotech. So I grabbed my SMG stuff, and crammed well into the wee hours.

Sunday, I explained to the players that we just didn't get the mecha portion of the SWADE Sci-Fi Companion in time for me to have gotten what I wanted done finished, so I was going to run the SMG version of Robotech. We jumped in, and had a GREAT time. Some Expeditionary Force personnel crashed on Invid-held Earth, joined up with a Southern Cross survivor and his Myrmidon tank, recruited some of the locals for a resistance cell, and fought a few Invid and some collaborators. We all had a good time, poked and prodded the AD6 System that SMG used in Robotech, and pronounced it fun. One of my players was even an old shipmate from my time in Starfleet, and it was wonderful to see her and her family. Also - WOW, she played the Medical Corpsman and just happened to have the Medical Cyclone, which sports medical equipment and a pair of vibroblades to cut survivors out of wrecks for medical treatment. Turns out they also cut through Invid. And collaborators made into cyborgs by the Invid. Damn, Doc.

So, it was a rough weekend, but there were a couple of bright spots, courtesy of Chupacabracon, Catalyst Game Labs, and the tag team of Strange Machine Games (Robotech with the AD6 system) and Battlefield Press International (Robotech for Savage Worlds.) Chupa has been a great con since Chupacabracon I. Chupa is one of the three Texas cons I try to hit every year- Chupacabracon, The Long Con, and North Texas RPG Con. Next up: NTRPGCON in June.

Gaming the Game - Subsystems For Their Own Sake

 I have to admit, I'm a sucker for a thematic subsystem. A conceit within a game's rules that is there to model a certain part of the genre addressed by the game. Sometimes, especially in older games, these subsystems can feel clunky, tacked-on, even arbitrary if the reader doesn't see the setting or genre the same way the game author does. But just as with the core rules of a game, there are threads of the intended world coded into these rules and subsystems. These modules themselves both tell you something about the world, and give your players some actual rules to grasp onto to interact with the intended world. So, what the hell am I yammering about? Let's take a look at some of the subsystems that I love to this day.

First, what do I mean about the rules telling us something about the game world? Let's take a look at the good old "wandering monster" mechanics from D&D and many other games. These mechanics usually have dice being thrown at regular intervals of in-game time or distance travelled, and if the result indicates an encounter, another table or set of tables inform the GM what specific people or monsters are encountered. This can also tell you how common or uncommon certain encounters are intended to be in the world in which you're playing - in Traveller, the table of spacecraft encounters gives you an idea of what ships are the most commonly encountered. In D&D, a look at the table for the terrain in which your party travels tells you what creatures are the most likely to be encountered in that area. Taking into account the frequency of a given encounter on the table, and the frequency of encounters happening at all can give you a good idea of what an area is like, how hazardous it is to travel, how friendly others along the route are likely to be. Remember, not every encounter is with someone who will want to fight you.

One could argue that random encounters are probably a core rule of a given game. What I want to talk about are subsystems that do what I outlined above, but a bit more explicitly.

Starships & Spacemen 2e

So, this game is totally not Star Trek. It uses a variation on the B/X D&D engine to do exploration in the Final Frontier. It has a couple of subsystems that I think really add to the genre emulation of the game.

First is the ship's computer. A given character can only ask a certain number of questions per day of the computer upon making a successful check. This may seem strange, arbitrary, and unrealistic. But think about the show upon which the game is based- how often does the computer solve the entire crux of an episode? It gives information, sure, but never simply spits out the entire solution to the conundrum of the week. This mechanic allows the computer to be useful, but not overwhelming to the plot.

Second, and much more detailed, is the resource management system for the character's starships. Each vessel produces an amount of power per game day. This power must be allocated to various functions of the ship, from raising the screens to maneuvering at sublight or FTL, to using the teleporters. There is both resource allocation and risk/reward to be considered, as a ship that uses all its power early on might not have enough left in case an emergency arrives. It can be fun to decide when and how much power to use- or as GM have the Zangid attack the ship after a landing party teleports down, causing the ship to use much of the power it might need to teleport the landing party back up!

Gangbusters 

This TSR classic has some fun subsystems in place to help model the Roaring 20s Prohibition time period. My favorites among them are the criminal ones. Want to run a numbers game? Rules are in place for running one - and for running one that's rigged. Want to set up your own brewing or distilling operation to sell bootleg hooch? Subsystem exists to allow you to do so. Want to run the speakeasy where the illicit booze is sold? Rules are here for how many patrons you serve, how much alcohol they drink, and how many dollars you rake in from your scofflaw practices.

This is really what I'm talking about - each of these subsystems might appeal to a different player, and give them each an activity they can do as part of an adventure, or between adventures. Maybe your players form a syndicate, and one player specializes in the production, and another in the distribution, while a third handles the games of chance that just happen to be run inside the speak while people are drinking their fill. 

Pendragon

This game just drips with genre emulation, but one thing that jumps out to me as a neat subsystem is the Winter Phase. Each adventure is assumed to take place during the summer, or adventuring season, with the knights returning to their manors for the winter. During the Winter Phase, a series of die rolls are made to see what happens. Does your knight find love? If already married, is a child born? Are the horses healthy? How much income do the lands bring in? Was it a good harvest?

The Winter Phase tells a story that adds to the knight's adventures, and perhaps creates impetus for further adventures. It's both extremely pertinent to the intended feel and tone of a Pendragon campaign, and something players can look forward to and attempt to manipulate to greater fortune.

Virtual Realities for Shadowrun

This book might contain the single subsystem I've spent the most real-world time crunching my way through. In fact, I've even created an Excel spreadsheet to help me with it. I'm talking about, of course, the cyberdeck construction rules. They're detailed, they're complex, and they're not something every player will want to deal with. In fact, they may be the very opposite of what some people want in their hobby games.

So why do I include it here? Because for the right kind of player, something like this is pure gold. As a nerd of a certain age, of course I have constructed my own computer- more than once. In the spirit of those first pioneers sending away for the Altair 8800 kit, I built a couple of systems that would have been considered badass in their day. Predictably, I have enjoyed playing Deckers in Shadowrun, Netrunners in Cyberpunk, and various types of hacker in other games.

When I saw the rules for creating my own cyberdeck as a young Shadowrun player in 1990 or 91, I knew that had to be my character's mission. I didn't wanna be the Decker stuck with an off-the-shelf rig built by a megacorp. I wanted my own badass deck. And to do so, I had to start by buying the proper tools. Chip encoder, electronics toolkit, followed by an electronics shop in the basement. I raised my character's skills in the Build/Repair areas, and started making rolls at the end of our sessions. I was constantly tweaking my designs, and rolling for the construction process, and demanding more money from my teammates because I had spent it all on parts and needed to spend more. 

This gave me as a player something to think about and plan for between game sessions. It gave my character something to set their sights on - a reason to go through the dangers of being a Shadowrunner. It wasn't just about money, it was about a computer nerd's bragging rights, and those are worth getting shot at over. Gotta be the best. L33t, as we used to say in the 90s.

So there we go - some examples (without going into specific detail) of the kinds of subsystems I love in my games. Shadowrun was great at having them for several character types - Shaman could build out their medicine lodge, Mages their Hermetic libraries, both could seek Initiation, and form magical societies. Riggers could customize vehicles and drones. Things that can give characters goals, and something to do between sessions. Others are used during game, like Starships & Spacemen's computer and starship rules. In BECMI D&D, there's domain management, and the War Machine mass battle system. Add in the Republic of Darokin Gazetteer, you can build a mercantile empire. Hey, the trading rules from Traveller have led some of my players to create their own cargo shipping lines and dealing with the growing pains of a fledgling line, and piracy, and customs agents. The best kinds of subsystems support the feel the game is going for, and feel like FUN to the players, and add to the narrative.

Let's Try This Again.

Good Lord am I bad at this blogging thing. Or maybe I'm just bad at the whole Life thing.

Since my heart surgery, it's been hard for me to get back to where I used to be mentally. What I found I really wasn't prepared for was the brain fog, the loss of words mid-conversation, the inability to really focus and stay on-task. It was extremely hard for me to finish my part of the Dominions of Steel manuscript in the fall of '22, as I was still in recovery from the surgery and in no real shape to "brain." Apparently, being on a heart-lung machine while my actual heart was physically outside my body caused a condition referred to as "pump head" by folks who have had Open-Heart Surgery. It's caused me to be fairly scatterbrained.

I'd love to stoically plant the haft of my polearm in the dirt and say "That stops now." But I can't, I really don't have any control over the ongoing effects of pump head. But I am learning I can try to power through the fog and get stuff done. Stuff like starting a YouTube channel that I hope to make a companion to this revivified blog to put out my thoughts and feelings on tabletop gaming. To that end, I've used the Tasks reminders so thoughtfully provided by our Google overlords to set goals of posting here on the 1st and 15th of every month, as a bare minimum. 

So, here we go. I'm going to post this little letter, then write a game-related post to get the reboot started.

Where have you been, Old Dragoon?

 Well, the health update earlier this year was only part of the story.

  On 28 JUN 22 I had open-heart surgery. Turns out, I needed a 5x bypass. I'm back on my feet, but I'm still in recovery. My body is bouncing back, but I had no idea that heart surgery had a potential for cognitive impairment, emotional issues, and traumatic stress. That part caught me by surprise, and I'm still trying to recover/adapt to my "new normal" in a mental sense.

  I've never been as regular at blogging as I'd like - but I've basically been granted a "second chance" since without the heart surgery, I was a goner. The phrase "walking time bomb" was used by my cardiologist. Talk about words that make your blood run cold.

  My first published RPG is coming out in 2023, the manuscript has been submitted, edited, resubmitted, and is now in the hands of the layout and art folks. I am a partner in a new game publisher, Retro Arcana Games, and we will be launching a web site and podcast in December of 2022. I will be writing content for the Retro Arcana site, and dual-posting it here. With any luck, there will be some more content here for folks to read. I want to make the most of the bonus time I've been granted.

Health Update - Holy Crap.

 Well, yesterday was 4/20, and the only thing 420 about me was my blood sugar.  OK, it wasn't 420, but it was between 200 and 280.  I've never been good at blogging regularly, as the spotty nature of this blog will show, but this year I've had issues with focus, and extreme fatigue, and now I know why.

  When I was diagnosed diabetic, my doctor basically said "Well, you're diabetic.  Avoid carbs." That was it.  No diabetes education, no instructions on how to take my glucose, no instructions TO take my glucose.  Nothing.  So I did what I was told, watched my carbs, took my Metformin, and took my Ozympic.  Eventually, we got my A1c down from the initial 13 (!!!) to 7.2, almost where we wanted it.  But by this point I was really frustrated.  For my A1c to be 13, I would have had to have been diabetic for a while.  I had mentioned things to my doc that in hindsight, now that I know my condition, should have been big red flags.  My office mate and co-author Bobby even called it because of all the tea and water I drank while we were in office.  So, I changed doctors, and got a CGM (constant glucose monitor) and learned about my condition.

  The CGM was wildly inaccurate for me.  But we got my A1c down to 5.5 and later 6.5, and it seemed my diabetes was well-controlled.  Due to my frustration with my inaccurate CGM, I did something stupid and stopped taking my glucose.  I figured with my A1c between 5.5 and 6.5, I was in the zone.  Well, I didn't account for the effect of getting off my weekly Ozympic shot.  Then I got so involved with taking care of all those things in life we take care of, I missed a 3-month checkup.  I started to feel really tired, all the time.  I lost my ability to focus, I could barely complete my work, barely work on my game design, barely get all those parent and adult things done that were necessary to keep the household running.  It got so bad I couldn't make it through a day without taking a nap, or at the very least nodding off here at my desk.

  My A1c had jumped back to the double-digits.  It's no wonder I had no focus, no energy.  So my new doc, wonderful as she is, prescribed me a new CGM, one that we have verified against finger sticks and put me back on Ozympic.  I got a CT scan to make sure my high triglycerides and blood sugar haven't messed with my heart.  I'm back on a strict diet, not that I was eating tons of carbs before, and drinking water and decaf tea.  The thing that has been frustrating, is that my first time around I wasn't taking my glucose, so I had no idea it would take weeks to get my blood sugar back under control.  I kinda thought a couple of days of water and salads and my glucose would be back in the pocket.  Naïve, I know, but... 

 Anyway, that's where I've been.  But I'm really missing being involved in games and gaming.  I'm going see if I can't crank out an article or two to get back into the groove.