OBOJIMA D&D BY 1985 GAMES

Thanks again to the Arcane Eye blog, I was able to get my hands on the PDF for this Studio Ghibli -style D&D game. In the style of My Neighbor Totoro or Spirited Away, it mixes Japanese -fairy tale and fantasy with what I'd call soft twentieth-century aesthetic realism. 

The conceit of the campaign is that there was a First Age, where modern architecture and artifacts serve as a realistic  substratum that grounds the world. But in a kind of Ghibli-esque magical realism, you have flying sea creatures, spirit folk and creatures, 1980s artifacts such as vending machines that vend magic items and such, VHS tapes that can be magically red, bicycles that maybe fly, etc. Quaint class archetypes like -- Barbarian: Path of the Belly Brewer, Monk: Way of the Sheep Dragon Shepherd, Wizard: Origami Mage, etc.

Advice to prospective DMs is to focus on the feel and tone of the setting, to emphasize social interaction over combat, and so forth. To really develop the Studio Ghibli and Zelda aesthetics. And the art is evocative and simply gorgeous. 

Grade: solid A. To learn more about the game, visit the 1985 Games website for the game. Enjoy!

P.S. I plan on running a scenario from the book to start out our Try A New RPG program for adults and upper- teens. 👹

HEROIC INSPIRATION RECONSIDERED

 

A few weeks ago, I wrote about ideas for making Heroic Inspiration more useful, so that players would stop hoarding them here. A few days ago, I found this article from the Arcane Eye D&D blog about how it works in D&D 2024. I'd assumed it was the same. It isn't. And the changes make it more useful and more flexible in use. I'd like to cover the difference, and then which ideas to apply and how they might work within the new scheme for it.

PHB 2014

"If you have inspiration, you can expend it when you make an attack roll, saving throw, or ability check. Spending your inspiration gives you advantage on that roll. Additionally, if you have inspiration, you can reward another player for good roleplaying, clever thinking, or simply doing something exciting in the game. When another player character does something that really contributes to the story in a fun and interesting way, you can give up your inspiration to give that character inspiration."

PHB 2024

"If you (a player character) have Heroic Inspiration, you can expend it to reroll any die immediately after rolling it, and you must use the new roll. If you gain Heroic Inspiration but already have it, it’s lost unless you give it to a player character who lacks it."

Sounds like they're equivalent ways of saying the same thing. (One more concise than the other.) But they're not.

1. Because it's a reroll, rather than advantage, you can now use it in conjunction with environmental or situational advantage. So you can roll at advantage for external reasons, and then reroll your lowest die from the result.

2. You are never wasting your inspiration, because you make the decision after you have seen the result. You can now use it only in those cases where you know you have already failed and it could make the decisive difference.

3. If you are full-up, you can transfer your earned inspiration to another character who has already voided their inspiration. I presume that you can still give your inspiration away to another character for whatever gameplay reasons you choose to. (Or at least, I would house-rule it so that it remains an option.)

 All of these changes encourage players to spend inspiration during normal gameplay. It's never wasted, and it helps to have at least one or more players voided so that you can give them your earned inspiration. All wins for their use, as far as I'm concerned. Combine this with the Human species ability to automatically gain advantage after an in-game Long Rest. Boom again!

As for what I previously proposed, I'd keep the following:

Spend Inspiration to influence the game environment. Spend 1 Inspiration to introduce a minor or major detail into the game world. It could be trivial like an environmental detail in a scene that the player can take advantage, or it could be a major detail that becomes a landmark in the game world. In the latter case, I would consider rewarding the player with a Story XP Award. (In my game, that's a 25 XP bump.) DM's discretion.

Spend Inspiration to perform a power stunt. Do something cool, like swing from a chandelier and perhaps then do X. Spend 1 Inspiration, execute the move with Advantage on related checks. If it's really cool, you may then earn your Inspiration back. DM's discretion.

As for whether these changes run the risk of nerfing the Human ability to gain new inspiration after a Long Rest. No, I think quite the opposite. It makes it even more valuable! Humans will end up (I think) spending their inspiration even more liberally than the other characters, because they never have to worry about wasting their inspiration and they regenerate inspiration. A really powerful combo, indeed! 

DIPLOMACY VARIANT: WORLD WAR I

 

Last night, I saw a posting on the Boston Backbiter Discord channel something about playing some Gunboat Diplomacy. Gunboat is Diplomacy without negotiation; you just plot and resolve moves, in what turns out to be a purely tactical exercise. Don't get me wrong, I really like playing Gunboat, particularly online. (My only solo win was as France in a Gunboat game.)

It got me thinking about a Diplomacy Variant I'd been thinking about for Solo Play. In the original rules, there were outlined some variant setups for when you have less than seven players. There is the Neutral Italy option for a 6-player setup, the so-called Napoleonic 5-player setup where Germany and Italy are both neutral. Both 4- and a 3- player variants that were less-satisfying IMO -- so the less said here, the better. And then a 2-player WWI variant with Central and Entente Powers and a Neutral Italy until Spring 1915. It was explicitly meant as a Gunboat game, used to learn the rules mechanics for writing orders and resolving conflicts.

It's this last one that I'd like to address. I have actually done it as a Solo game from time-to-time with literally predictable results. My thought was to hack it to make it more playable as a Solo game. (Part of the impetus for this was an event that happened a few years ago at Total Con, which made me swear off playing any more tourneys there -- and in effect, to stop playing Diplomacy for a number of years. More on that at a later date, I suppose.)

The big problem playing in any board game not meant to be played solo, solo is that you, as the player, have perfect knowledge of the state of play. You can solve this by creating your own AI (I've seen a really interesting one for Star Wars Rebellion) of come up with some sort of randomizer or oracle system.

In Diplomacy, the challenge is taking secret orders and simultaneous resolution and transforming it to something that is sequential and linear in nature. My solution comes down to randomizing the order in turn writing for each nation. Starting first is the worst position, with maximal ignorance of the state of play. Last is the best position, with perfect knowledge of the state of play. The trick is to randomize it so that who goes first and who goes last varies from season to season. There are other hacks out there for the game that work on similar logic and that can be combined together. Think of it as a series of knobs that you can set to determine the initial conditions that then hold throughout the course of play.

Here I'm going to talk in general and then apply it specifically to the World War I game:

First Knob: Fixed Alliances vs No Alliances. In World War I, you have fixed alliances, with only the question of Italy to discover randomly or not through the course of play.

Second Knob: Fixed Turn Order vs Alternating Turn Order vs Random Turn Order. I think we can all see the problems inherent in any fixed turn order, regardless of how it is ordered. An Alternating Turn Order fixes those problems somewhat, but still with too much predictability in how it works. IMO, Random is best. What you need is some form of randomizer -- dice are OK (but it strikes me the game comes with its own randomizer, pieces drawn from a bag or cup.)

Third Knob: Alliance vs Individual order writing. In general, I prefer the idea of having each nation be individual and have its own randomly determined turn.

Each of those knobs would apply to any Solo Game.

Fourth Knob: For a World War I game, one big variable is Italy's entry into the War. There seem to be a few options available for this: Central Italy, Entente Italy, Neutral Italy or Random Italy. Some ideas for how to determine each.

Known Alliance at Start: You could start knowing whether Italy was to be Central, Entente or Neutral.

• Spring 1915: D2 to determine whether Italy is Central or Entente.
• Spring 1915: D3 to determine whether Italy is Central, Entente or Neutral.
• Starting Spring 1915: Randomly determine at the start of the season, which nation controls Italy. Omit Italy as a choice. If you don't, though, drawing Italy means they are in Civil Disorder that turn.
• Spring 1915: D4 to determine which of the four choices (including Random Italy) is operative for that game. Then a D2, to determine which version of Random Play is operative, when necessary.

Also, I would institute a rule in the last two scenarios, violating Italy's territorial integrity in 1914 would either move it into the other alliance's orbit instead OR start the random play option immediately.

These are rules I intend on playtesting and sharing the results here on the blog.

BIG HISTORY! CONFIRMS PRECIOUS METALS EXCHANGE RATES IN D&D

 

I've been watching some Big History episodes on Amazon Prime. I'm not very far in. Just three episodes, I think. It is somewhat reminiscent of James Burke's Connections series from the mid-70s to mid-80s. But where James Burke took more of a "History of ideas" approach, this series takes science and history on a grand scale to explain the connections between Big Science and History instead.

Actually, I just looked at Wikipedia for episode titles, and it looks like the Amazon Prime series shows them out of order. (Interesting!) Anyway, the first episode I saw was entitled "Silver Supernova." It explores the historical significance of silver as a substance and precious metal compared to gold.

There's a lot of interesting stuff here. But what caught my eye in particular was the universal ratio of silver:gold, which is 10:1. And I did a little research and found that the ratio of copper:silver is also around 10:1! And this matches the current currency ratios described in D&D since at least 3E -- 100:10:1.

D&D before 3E, gave currency values in ratio that accorded with historical rates. But which probably also included different weights for different metal types and denominations. Do I think the shift to ratios of 10 to match their actual material distribution within the cosmos was intentional? No. I think it was to simplify the cognitive load and math involved in handling D&D currency. Still, it's kinda nice to see that there's a real possible, real-world reason for it. And no, I haven't checked out how platinum figures into it. (But I should.)

KING CRIMSON - RED (1974)

 

This is the album that broke up the band until it reformed again in the early eighties. It is the third and last album from the classic Fripp-Wetton-Bruford et al. lineup. (For me, the best and tightest lineup they had.)

Apparently, it got so bad that Fripp announced the band had broken up two weeks before its release. The group photo on the front is actually a very clever composite of individual shots of the band members.

With all that, it is generally recognized as one of the four essential, classic King Crimson albums. For certain, it has their signature song and generally recognized as their best tune "Starless" -- 12:18 long, and you end up wishing it would still go on even longer!

Track 1: Red (6:20): I must confess, this is one of my least favorite King Crimson songs. It's loud, repetitive and has hardly any interesting musical ideas in it IMO. 'Nuff Said!

Track 2: Fallen Angel (6:03): Solid song. It only fails to stand out more compared to "One More Red Nightmare" and "Starless" which are two exemplary songs. It tells the story of the death of a young gang member on the streets of the city. Good, but not great.

Track 3: One More Red Nightmare (7:08): An exemplary song. Brash, loud -- but also polished and rich in sound. Standout song that effectively demonstrates Bill Bruford's chops on drums -- and would presage his contributions later on with Discipline. It's a song I always rock out on!

Track 4: Providence (8:08): I used to regularly skip this track because it was too experimental and too slow to develop for my tastes. As I've gotten older, however, I have found that these types of songs have really started to grow on me: Moonchild, Talking Drum . . . and Providence. They are the type of songs that really sneak up on you and eventually start to dominate your inner soundscape from time-to-time.

Track 5: Starless (12:18): Their magnus opus -- comparable to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" or "Kashmir" in its impact and importance. It starts out mellow, with a lush mellotron, some restrained guitar from Fripp, and haunting vocals by Wetton and evocative lyrics. 

Once the opening vocal passage is complete, the real party begins. The song becomes what I've called it a "rock fugue." It is a masterpiece of tension and release. Wetton lays down a solid, ominous bass riff. Fripp picks up with an ascending two-note guitar drone, which finally reaches a crescendo with Bruford's frantic drumming. The middle section moves into a more jazzy blowout with Mel Collins and Ian McDonald on saxophone and which concludes with an uptempo fake ending, the final section reprises the lyrical intro and mellotron sans vocals which leads us finally to the crescendo close and then-final tone of the song. (My spine literally tingles every time I hear this song! And I always want it to go on more and forever!)

Grade: A-. While there is an unevenness to the album IMO, it ends up being one of their more impactful and important albums ever. Less than perfect, but more powerful than pretty much any other album.

WHAT AM I READING?

 

Medusa Uploaded by Emily Devenport. Just a few chapters in, but I'm already liking it. Part of the mystery of the book is figuring out what has happened and why. The narrator calls itself a "worm," special but one among many, it would seem. The novel begins in media res with a murder in an airlock of a generation ship of a noble from a powerful administrator family, planned by this "worm" (who seems to be a product of a human-AI hybrid, or at least, that's my best guess, so far.) The novel then moves back to the genesis of the being and the cold, calculated murder of vengeance that we witnessed at the start.

Perfume by Patrick Suskind. This is the next book in the series for our High Strangeness book club. I'm only a couple of chapters into it, and my reaction is kinda meh to it. It's set in pre-revolutionary eighteenth-century France, with a foundling who receives the name Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. The child seems disquieting because he has no personal odor at all, yet has a preternaturally powerful and discriminating nose himself. His growing obsession leads him eventually to murder.

Rebound by Kwame Alexander. This is a verse-novel that I cataloged back when I was temping at the Bolton Public Library. It has received a lot of love in the public arena. And I want to read a verse-novel, as a modern revival of the classic genre.

Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, From Pointless Bones to Broken Genes by Nathan H. Lents. This nonfiction title details how evolution has engineered and broken the human genome. For example, how the human retina evolved to be backwards, how the ACL evolved for quadrupedal movement but is vulnerable for bipedal locomotion, how our wrists and ankles have too many bones, and why we need to consume essential vitamins and minerals to survive. It's 

"DISCIPLINE" - KING CRIMSON COVER

I have yet to review Discipline as one of the classic four King Crimson albums. That is forthcoming. What I thought I'd do today, however is share an interesting cover of their song "Discipline" which showcases the intricacies of Fripp's use of gamelan for its textural and compositional complexity. The xylophones model the dual guitars of Fripp and Belew, playing in slightly different, phased time signature. "Disipline" in its structure is the counterpart to the controlled chaos of their song "Indiscipline" from the same album. Enjoy!

COMING SOON (AGAIN)!

 

Now that I am back from my Dad's funeral, it's time for me to catch up on some self-assignments for the blog. (My wife is in Indiana at her Mom's working remotely for the next two weeks, so I now have some Me Time to focus on stuff.)

1. Fix any broken links and update some tags to better reflect the content.

2. Return to doing some Marvel Heroic Roleplaying stuff. I want to get back to playing Breakout and blogging it. (I may actually start it again, since I'd like to develop some momentum again.)

3. Review some RPGs from Total Con: Para, Trashsexy, maybe Top Secret. Plus Cairn, from which I just received my Kickstarter Kit for it.

4. Maybe do some more reviews of books, films and series. So stay tuned.

OTHER USES OF INSPIRATION

 

What I've noticed in my games is players holding on to Inspiration, instead of using it. Inspiration is one of the tools DMs have to encourage inspired, creative gameplay. Rules-As-Written when a player has no Inspiration left and does something cool in-game, the DM can reward them with an Inspiration. The consequence is that, according to RAW, you have no means to reward them with Inspiration if they aren't yet void of it.

Player's see it as a finite resource that they lose if they use it, and thus want to save it up for when it will have the greatest impact. As opposed to it being a renewable resource that they can successfully manage. What we have to do is shift their gaming mentality from one of scarcity to one of abundance. How to do this?

1. We can ignore limits on Inspiration. But I fear this may lead players to hoard them instead.

OR

2. Make them more useful, so that not spending them becomes something of an opportunity cost. Some ideas:

--Spend Inspiration to influence the game environment. Spend 1 Inspiration to introduce a minor or major detail into the game world. It could be trivial like an environmental detail in a scene that the player can take advantage, or it could be a major detail that becomes a landmark in the game world. In the latter case, I would consider rewarding the player with a Story XP Award. (In my game, that's a 25 XP bump.) DM's discretion.

--Spend Inspiration to perform a power stunt. Do something cool, like swing from a chandelier and perhaps then do X. Spend 1 Inspiration, execute the move with Advantage on related checks. If it's really cool, you may then earn your Inspiration back. DM's discretion.

(Any changes to Inspiration have the potential of nerfing the Human's advantage here. I might consider allowing Human characters to raise their Inspiration limit to 2.)

There must be other interesting uses that can be leveraged at the table to encourage using Inspiration and to encourage creative gameplay.

TENDER IS THE FLESH / AGUSTINA BAZTERRICA

 

At the library, we're starting a new adult book club, called the High Strangeness book club. The first book we're reading is Tender Is The Flesh by Agustino Bazterrica. It's quite a remarkable book, well-made but definitely hard to read, to stomach (pardon the pub). It's a dystopian horror novel about socially-normalized cannibalism, and what that would look like and how it would feel.

In it, we follow Marcos Trejo, the son of a processed meat manufacturer, who now sells "special meat" up and down the industrial food-chain (pun intended). He does this to pay for his father's nursing home care, is estranged from his wife after the death of their infant son, etc. The "special meat" he purveys is the product of human beings cultivated and raised for slaughter. But always throughout, there runs the theme of the illicit thrill of killing and eating "meat with a first and last name" -- i.e., so-called ordinary people. We see the plant where they slaughter people, the human deli in the city, the hunting preserve where they hunt what elsewhere has been called "the most dangerous game," the research lab where Mengele-type experiments are conducted on human subjects, etc. The story turns when Marcos is gifted a prime female subject as a gift / bribe. The theme of all this has to do with our ability, through euphemism and language, to de-humanize the Other and the consequences to Them and to Us that necessarily brings.

Grade: This is a tough one. I can't say that I love it yet. But I do more than like it. It's a hard book that makes me think and that I find very haunting. For right now, I'm going to give a B+.

LE COEUR ÉLÉPHANT / FRÉRO DELAVEGA

This is one of two songs that I absolutely love from their album Des ombres et des lumières. I discovered them (I believe) listening to the online radio station France Bleu. The group is named for the musical duo Jérémy Frérot and Florian "Flo" Delavega.

I love the lyrics and the otherworldly, ringing tone of the guitar. The lyrics are about humankind and mutuality. My favorite part of the song are the lyrics of the break -- and particulary these lines:

Voir les hommes comme les doigts    To see humankind like fingers
D'une main qui construit                     Of a hand making
Pour toi et moi                                     For you and me
Nos utopies                                         A utopia for us all

It speaks to my most optimistic, visionary self. I hope you find the song equally inspiring. Enjoy!

KING CRIMSON - STARLESS, LIVE IN TOKYO 2021,MEDIA

 Pretty much universally acknowledged to be the greatest King Crimson song, live in Tokyo for the most recent nostalgia tour. When they did it as a final song here in Boston, the crowd went crazy for it!

I'll write more about the song when I post about the place and role of Red (1974) as Top Four King Crimson albums ever! In the meantime, enjoy!

ADAPTING D&D 2014 TO MY NEW RAVNICA CAMPAIGN

So i'm currently working on developing content for my upcoming Ravnica D&D campaign. It is a campaign that will start out as a private campaign for my Library friends on staff at MPL and for others (like my brother) who I specifically invite to the campaign. Later, I may open it up for a wider audience. But right now, I'm going to keep it relatively small.

This campaign is conceptually part of a larger Magicverse meta-campaign. Some notes on the setting itself and how it deviates from existing MTG Lore:

• Set in 10,076 AR, the year following the Implicit Maze storyline and Jace Beleren's elevation to become the Living Guildpact and his subsequent disappearance.
• Ravnica, rather than being separated from the other planes of the Magicverse, has a history of being a nexus plane.
• Each of the Ten Guilds has their own Guildgate that, previously enabled targeted exploration of the other planes of existence within the Magicverse, until the Sundering happened, when they all went dead. Now that we have entered the Mending Era, they are each starting to come back online, one by one.
• Because of its history as a nexus hub, immigrant species and cultures from other planes of existence have become integrated into Ravnica culture. (For example, Theros with the Azorius Guild, Innistrad with the Orzhov Syndicate, Old Kamigawa with the Selesnya Combine, New Kamigawa with both the Izzet League and the Simic Combine, etc.)
• There is a single nexus to the larger D&Dverse through linkage to the Forgotten Realms.

The players can start out as unguilded. The notion being that they will have the opportunity to grow into a guild, join it and adopt (if they choose) one of the related class archetypes associated with the guild by 3rd level. They will start out with three renown which they can distribute freely among the factions as they choose. If they invest their three renown in one of the Ten Guilds from the start, they can automatically start out as a solid member of the Guild in question.

A lot of what makes the Guilds work in the Guldmaster's Guide to Ravnica (GGR) is the inclusion of Guild backgrounds and Guild spells. What I've done is to 'port the backgrounds into the game as Roles, rather than try to convert them into bona fide D&D 2024 backgrounds. Here, they are tangible rewards given to players for joining their Guild -- conceptually, a second background for them -- albeit with no ASI or granted feat. Guild spells can also be used as-is, once the character joins the Guild.

I'm thinking about including other Roles into my game, introduced judiciously, of course, based on whether they overlap with existing backgrounds or not, and their narrative function within the game.

More on My Ravnica later!

NAME THAT BLOG: ANSWER REVEALED!

 

First of all, my apologies for not posting much recently. But my dad passed away suddenly on Valentine's Day, and the funeral is next Monday. So my brain has naturally been elsewhere.

Name that Blog ...

I promised to reveal the origin of this blog's name Grupo de Uno. The phrase in Spanish is a translation of the English phrase "A Group of One."

The line is from David Bowie's song "Teenage Wildlife" on the Scary Monsters album:

You'll take me aside and say
"Well, David, what shall I do? They wait for me in the hallway"
I'll say, "Don't ask me, I don't know any hallways"
But they move in numbers, and they've got me in a corner
I feel like a group of one, no, no, they can't do this to me
I'm not some piece of teenage wildlife ...

In context, I found the phrase striking ... as many of the lyrics are on this song. But during COVID-19, it took on added meaning, since I couldn't very well play games in-person with others. I had thought to take up some solo gaming then, and well ... you can see where this train of thought leads.

No one replied to the challenge, so there are no No-Prizes to give out. Which is OK!