Greatest Hits #19 - Trek Tuesday: The Last Unicorn Star Trek RPG

I used to own this book, in fact I bought it the month it came out back in 1998. My main impression was visual - this was the first full-color, full-of-photos RPG book that I had seen and it blew me away when I flipped through it in the store. Plus, it was Trek! We hadn't had an in-print Star Trek game in about 10 years when the FASA RPG petered out with the Next Generation Officer's Guide. Now there was a new Trek game, from a company I'd never heard of, using a system I had never seen before - and it looked amazing!

To continue with the visuals I had a lot of experience with FASA products, from Trek and Traveller in the early days on into Battletech and Shadowrun where they entered their "art is everything" phase, and even they did not publish full-color rulebooks. Even their Trek game was not overstuffed with photos - the main rulebook was, but the supporting material mostly used line art. TSR had gone sort-of full color with the 1995 AD&D 2E revisions (the black cover PHB-DMG-MM) but even then it was mostly black text on white pages with some red headers and some art here and there. This new Trek book was way past that, with full color photos from the show all over the place and LCARS borders in different colors. The closest comparison I can make is with Underground and it's use of color to mark different sections and full color art throughout the main rulebook, but even it didn't have photos to draw on like this. LUG's Trek stood above all others in look and presentation.

The next impression was (not coincidentally) the price - it was $35! This was by far the most I had ever paid for a single rulebook and it was a shock, but the presentation - and the subject matter of course - won me over and I picked it up as soon as I could. Remember the D&D 3E books that came out in 2000 were $19.95 full-color hardbacks, and later jumped up but only to $30. This was a couple of years before that. Even sticker shock and general stinginess can be overcome with the right content and presentation.
I think I may still like it better than the new one ...

Mechanics-wise I was somewhat disappointed. My standard of comparison was FASA's Trek game and it was a percentile roll game with a large skill list, an action point personal combat system, a fairly detailed ship combat system, a Traveller-esque character generation system, and in general a lot of simulationist crunch, to use the popular phrasing. I played it for years and I loved it. LUG's Trek worked on a 1-5 scale for stats & skills which seemed incredibly narrow and limiting at the time. It also had a much shorter skill list which also seemed limiting. On the plus side it did keep a sort of lifepath/background generation system and it added in Hero/GURPS style advantages and disadvantages which could add some flavor to a character beyond their stats, skills, and service record.

I also was not impressed with the die mechanics. That 1-5 stat is how many dice you roll for a skill check, then you take the highest die and add it to your skill rating (also 1-5) and that's your total. So the entire range of possibilities is defined by a d6+5. That certainly makes every point count but that is a huge amount of variability. One die in the pool is the drama die and on a 6 you get to add another die to the total, on a 1 there are increased consequences for failure. The recommended difficulty numbers are 4 (Routine) - 7 (Moderate) -10 (Challenging) - 13 (Difficult). Those seemed really high considering you're going to average around a 4 + skill level).

Starships were also less detailed and starship combat was far less gripping than FASA's game.

I was disappointed enough with the whole thing that I only tried to run it a few times and only played it a few times before the book hit the shelf. So much potential wasted. I eventually sold it or traded it for something else.

Recently though I've been digging into Trek after a long phase of not really caring so much. I stll have my FASA Trek stuff and a complete set of the later Decipher Trek RPG but I wanted to take a second look at LUG.  I picked up a copy of the book again (less sticker shock this time) and at first glance it's still very pretty.

Rules-wise I like it better than I did then, probably because I've played a lot more rules-light games and get this idea more now than I did then. It definitely leans towards the rules-light end of the spectrum, though it gets oddly detailed in some areas like starships, which ironically enough now seem almost too detailed to me in relation to the rest of the game system.

The game also is clearly and proudly in the narrative structure camp of gaming. Adventures are built around scenes and acts and there are really no random encounters and that kind of thing found in the book. That's fine, I can work with that when I know it up front. There are still some elements of a "Trek Universe Simulator" there but it's mostly a "Trek Series Simulator" rather than a physics engine like the FASA game was.

I am still not sure about the main resolution mechanic - relying on a handful of d6's still seems very swingy. I play enough 40K to know how unpredictable a few of them can be (saving throws for a terminator squad come to mind). I think to make this game work I would have to be very very strict about limiting tests to "only when there is truly a chance of failure" which is something I am not always good at doing. It would also need to follow the narrative convention of "one stealth check gets you from the shuttlecraft landing site to the hidden klingon base" rather than the more traditional "one stealth check per 100 feet" approach used in most of the games I have played. I'd be willing to give it a try, but it's definitely something I would have to watch.

So, yes - I like the game better now than I did and I might be up for giving it a try sometime. Only one of the Apprentices is really interested in Star Trek so I'd have to talk one of my other friends into it and that's going to be a tough sell. It's definitely going on the list as a secondary/try-out game though.

Greatest Hits #18 - A Reminder to All Captains - Count Those Drones!

Pretty sure we've played since this fight but it definitely left me scarred for a while

So we played a little Federation Commander over the weekend ...

Contact!

I took the CC Yorktown and the old CL Arizona out on a "keeping the cats out of the yard" mission against Apprentice Blaster's Kzinti BC and CM.

End of Turn 1

My idea was to have the CL stay in close and play wingman to help keep the drone wave off of the CC. Things went well until Turn 2.

Middle of Turn 2

Each of my ships had launched a drone on Turn 1. The Kzinti launched on Turn 1 and early on Turn 2. As we closed in we lit each each other up with phaser, photon, and disruptor fire. After some close-in maneuvering, I realized all four Kzinti drones were going to hit the CC on the same impulse. I managed to turn off so that two were hitting the #2 shield and two were hitting #3. "It's only four drones, I can handle that". This was a tremendous error and shows just how rusty I was.

So the drones hit, I line them up for defensive fire and say "OK, four drones - " and Blaster says, no, that's four drones. "What, I have four drones out there-" No, there are eight drones he says. "OK, eight drones-" no, eight drones on this shield, eight drones on that shield he says. "Wait, those are four drones PER COUNTER?!" - yes, he says, "I wondered why you weren't shooting at them before."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

Apparently at some point a few weeks ago I told Blaster to use one counter for all the drones he launched the same turn at the same target. He remembered this, I did not. I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts I didn't notice that his pair of ships with 8 launchers had only lunched 4 drones over 2 turns - at least going by the number of counters on the board. The outcome was pretty bad. I did manage to stop 7 of the 16 drones. I stopped two more with tractor beams though, and when I lost the tractors those two hit the ship as well. Been a long time since that's happened to me.

At the end of Turn 2 the CC is in pretty bad shape but still has some teeth. It's not going to outrun anyone but with a fresh shield towards the enemy and some charged phasers I should be able to stop drones long enough to get some more shots off.

(I did manage to rip up the Kzinti Battlecruiser before this happened - overloaded photons are still nasty up close (even with only 2 left) - but not as badly as the CC was hit)

Turn 3 was pretty much the game. We were still in close but I was reloading photons and the Kzin had disruptors and drones ready to go. The poor Yorktown did manage to turn a new shield but did not have enough phasers to stop the incoming drones. After a final volley of phaser fire the CC went down hard.

On Turn 4 the CL disengaged with no internal damage other than armor, ending the encounter.

Notes:
It's been a long time since I marked off that many boxes on a Fed CC and an even longer time since I've actually had one blown out from under me. It was largely stupidity on my part with the whole counter-counting thing. All I can say is I won't forget that anytime soon.

One tricky thing with drones vs. old-school SFB thinking is that given the turn structure a drone can move 3 hexes before you will ever have a chance to fire at the thing. This makes the job of an "escort" quite a bit tougher as once the drones close to zero range only the target can shoot at them. That 0-3 hex range is where phaser-3's are most effective, and it can be tricky to make that work, especially on slow moving ships. I'll be puzzling that out more, especially since Blaster seems pretty attached to his missile boat Kzinti ships.

A dislike: Federation drone racks in Fed Commander are terrible. Most ships only carry one, and it's the hybrid-loadout type, i.e. the G-racks from SFB. Now in SFB they are fine  - against the Klingons I could load up with all anti-drones, giving me an 8-shot defensive system. On the Romulan border I could load all drones, giving me an extra offensive system. In Fed Commander the Feds go halfway - 2 drones, 4 ADDs. Against drone-heavy opponents I can burn through the ADD ammo in half a turn and against non-drone opponents I only have two shots and then have to reload. It's inadequate either way. Beyond that, with only one drone on the ship, any halfway decent penetrating volley will kill it anyway. I've played a few battles with them recently and I'm not loving them at all.

Not my lights, but a nice set.

One big like: The Federation Old Light Cruiser - It's not terribly expensive, it has a lot of power, a solid phaser suite, and it can take at least one good volley from any direction thanks to the armor. I've always had a soft spot for these ships and so far they've worked pretty well. Sure, I expect to lose both torpedoes and the drone rack on any significant amount of internal damage but with 8 phasers and 30 power I should have enough energy left to move and take some shots afterward.

Greatest Hits #17 - 40K Friday Special Edition - Year of the Eldar: Finale

I've added a few units but 2 years later this is still the core of my Eldar army

Finally! I finished up the wraithknight yesterday and managed to get the stretch goal of the dark reapers (all 3 squads) finished too. I had finished the spiritseer and the cannon battery the day before. Extra extra bonus achievements were getting the second gun painted and put on the metal wraithlord and getting some snow on the bases for one of the dire avenger squads.

Overall it was an incredibly productive 4-day run. I painted up to the point of completion 26 models and touched up or added to another 12 for 38 models finished to a standard I think is table-ready to good. It's been a long time since I knocked out that many mini's. If you go back and in the rest of the wraith host I built and painted from scratch 42 Eldar models this year, along with 30+ Iron Warriors. That's a pretty good year. I do tend to paint in bursts like this around holidays and time off so one of my goals for 2017 is to even that out and make some progress every week.

Effectively the painted part of this army is some combination of wraith host, aspect host, dire avenger shrine, and a combined arms detachment - depending on points available and how I want to play it. There's more than enough stuff here to play with at over 3000 points so I am very happy with the current state of things.

All that said it's not yet finished. There are 30+ guardians sitting on the table along with the associated heavy weapons and warlocks, a wraithlord, 3 war walkers, 3 vypers, and another farseer - enough to build the big guardian host formation and really put this over the top. I have two unpainted wave serpents too. There are two squads of swooping hawks in the queue as well. Those may be at the top of the list before I dive into another massive batch of yellow.

Things it doesn't have:

• Jetbikes! I might add one small 3-man squad just to have some cheap speed for objective grabbing, backing down on my anti-bike stance. They've been an eldar "thing" since the earliest days of the game and it seems wrong to have zero of them in an army this size. I won't go full scatter laser on them regardless. 
• Banshees! Not that great under the current edition, especially with no assault vehicles to jump out of into a fight. I'll pick up a squad someday to complete the set of aspect warriors but it's not urgent by any measure.
• Warp Spiders! I'd like some but I just haven't seen any of them cheap enough to make me want to get them. They're tricky to find new and ever since that guy won a tournament with30 of them they've been pricier used as well. One of these days. Towards the top of the list. 
• Wave Serpents! I do have two on the shelf as I mentioned but I am not really feeling the need for them as much. The eldar battle focus rule, especially when it applies to the entire army, eliminates a lot of the need for transports. They are fast, but with no firing ports you can;t use them as bolter shelter like marines do while still being able to fire out the top of a Rhino.  I'd kind of like to have 3 of them for the dire avengers to sweep in en masse and blast something but it's really low on the priority list.
• Fire Prism! I'd kind of like to have one of these available but this isn't a tank army so it would be a big shiny target for anti-armor weapons - even more so than they tend to be already. 
• Avatar! I love the background and the model but he's just not that great these days and he's not cheap either. Maybe once I finish the guardians I'll cap it off with an avatar, though I don;t expect him to see much table time. 
• Crimson Hunter! The one thing I do not have in the army that I think would be useful. I'm low on anti air and it's very effective AA and anti-vehicle once that's handled.

So for 2017 I expect to be playing them more and painting them less. The goal of the focus last year was to get a painted, playable army together and I have pulled that off. Now I can add a unit here and a unit there as time allows while having fun playing it more. It's been a long time since I've had a "finished" eldar army and I am really looking forward to using it. Here's to 2017!

Greatest Hits #16 - 40K Friday: A Personal Look Back at Past Editions

A nice trip back down memory lane - appropriate for the end of the year I think.


On the literal eve of a new edition, I thought I would meander back through some of the older editions since I was there when they came out too. It's funny how I can tie each one to a certain period of my life.

Rogue Trader came out in 1987. Leading up to it was a series of ads in Dragon that had a look unlike anything else at the time:

Now I already had Warhammer Fantasy, and played it some using the counters from Battlesystem, so I knew what Warhammer was and who Citadel/Games Workshop was, but the biggest sci-fi game at the time was the newly exploding Battletech. This looked completely different, and the background was the complete opposite of genre-defining things like Star Trek and Star Wars. Orks! In space! With guns! Power armor! Plus it was a full-on miniatures game, not an RPG or a boardgame that happened to use miniatures - there was no hexmap in sight!

This hit me, and a lot of other people, in exactly the right spot. I was interested but it was a few months before I got into it so it was 1988 before my Eldar took the field for the first time, followed closely by some space marines. By late 1988 it was showing up at most local cons

Another big win: having a job (a high school/college job) I found the miniatures were not terribly expensive. We used to get around 5 metal guys in a blister for $5.99, or a box of 30+ plastic guys for around $20. Dreadnoughts were metal and about ten bucks. It was sort of like magic is now - I could afford to buy a couple of packs when I got paid, or wait and get a big box. The game also took fewer miniatures then than it does now. A squad or two, a dreadnought, a couple of characters, maybe a support gun or a speeder or a bike, and you had plenty.

There were constant updates in White Dwarf adding things like Terminators, Chaplains, Ogryn, Rough Riders, and Harlequins. After a couple of years those started to get complied into supplements.

Over the next few years most of the foundations of the game were laid - Eldar and their Aspect Warriors, the Chaos gods, the Ork clans, squats, the different marine chapters, and the components of the imperial guard. I was running Eldar and marines all through this, including a Harlequin army. Yes, it was once possible to have an "army" of about 20 figures, and they were pretty nasty. This was my college game and I have a lot of fond memories of it.

This stuff started to get a little clunky with all of the different books (some of them pretty bulky) and so in 1993 we got the Second Edition with the first big box o' stuff. It was time for an update and consolidation but we lost some of the more random elements of the game. I don't remember anyone in our group not liking it. In fact I remember a lot of new people joining in, including friends who had passed on the prior edition, maybe because it had too many books.

This, along with Space Marine - the epic scale game in the same setting - was my post-college game. I had a real job, my own place, a couple of good FLGS that had playing areas - we played it a lot. I stayed with the Eldar, expanded my Howling Griffon marines, and added in some Orks and Chaos for good measure. Those Orks and Gretchin from this box (and with about 4 more boxes worth of boyz) still form a part of my Ork army today. My Griffs are mostly RT models, my Eldar were a mix of RT and 2nd, but the bulk of my Orks are from this era.

This was still a fun time. The first codexes came out, White Dwarf was still going strong supporting the game with new units and experimental rules, and even though it was a lot more "corporate" there was still a ton of the do-it-yourself spirit there when it came to conversions, units without official models, and terrain. Other than the occasional card building everything we played on, from ruins to forests, was home made. This was my biggest period of playing-with-strangers-at-the-game-store and we all had a lot of fun. There were some crazy situations back then and I wish we had all had camera phones so I would have some pictures to share with you.

Towards the end of the 90's the game wasn't as over-expanded as the prior edition but it was somewhat chaotic and favored big powerful heroes over rank and file and the mechanics had piled up in a way that was sort of like the second edition of D&D - even though you cleaned it up there are still a lot of underlying assumptions that mean it plays a certain way. So in 1998 we got 3rd edition.

This was a total revamp of the game. I remember getting the box and sitting down with the rules and being almost shocked - I know the people I played with had been hoping for a change but this was massive. Fortunately it came with army lists built right in to the main rulebook so we didn't have to wait for codex revamps as the old ones were just completely not compatible with these rules. As much flak as GW takes sometimes they did this one right. This is the game I was playing when I started having kids, so game time and paint time dropped precipitously during this edition.

With a sense of renewal a lot of us jumped back in. Late in 2nd edition I had started building a new marine army with a simpler paint scheme to get things done faster. For the new edition they became a major force in my games and my 3rd edition box marines are still the core of my Crimson Fist tactical squads. I never liked the Dark Eldar (introduced here) very much but my old figures are sitting in my wife's DE battalion box awaiting assembly.

As we played quite a bit early on in 3rd edition I decided to consolidate my armies. My chaos force, much of my eldar, and my budding imperial guard army were traded away for Orks. I built up a pretty nasty Ork force, though it was still mostly 2E era models, and I've been playing them ever since. I experimented with "dipping" my orks, again going for speed-to-tabletop.

White Dwarf was still good during this time putting out a lot of articles on terrain and a lot of special units and experimental rules. It was a total revamp so there was a lot to discuss. These generated an annual "rules update" that was pretty much required to keep up, on top of the new wave of codexes.

Also notable for me was that right before this edition a completely new version of Epic came out that killed the game for me, then Battlefleet Gothic came out a few years later which I really liked but could never get anyone else to get into. This meant that 40K was "the" game for a few years.

This is also the edition that was current while I was busy getting a divorce, which meant I was not doing much with it by the end. Late 3rd edition was not nearly as much fun as the beginning.

The next edition was the "lost edition" for me. I was not very active with 40K when it started, epic was gone (as far as I was concerned) BFG was not a big thing anymore, and I just was not that interested in anything GW was putting out. I played all of two or three games of this one. I never bought the boxed set, and only bought the rulebook late and on the cheap when I was thinking about getting back in. I was busy with other things.

Fifth edition was the renewal - within the first year of its release I was married and had picked up a couple of new apprentices and decided the time was right to introduce all of the boys to the game. To make up for missing 4th I bought two of these sets (for the older Apprentices) and fortunately it was a really good starter set. They swapped halves and the parts from each form the core of Blaster's Space Wolves and Red's Evil Sunz. This was their introduction to the game and piqued my interest enough to dive back in full-force, rebuilding old armies and building up new ones.

During this I dusted off the Griffons once again, reforged the Fists into a more normal marine army than the cutting-edge-of-3rd-edition they had been, acquired an entire Deathwing army in a confluence of interest and finances, added vehicles to my previously foot-slogging ork horde, and in general liked playing the game again. I was still having a lot of fun with 5th when word came that we were getting 6th ...

In the two years since it came out we've played as much or more 6th then we did 5th, which is pretty good. This time I only picked up one boxed set since it didn't really fit with the armies the Apprentices were running. They did get the big hardback rulebooks for this one though and they have been well-read. We've mostly ignored flyers and allies, the two biggest additions to this edition, but they've cropped up a few times. I put together enough mini's to field a Chaos Marine army and decided 3 loyalist marine forces weren't enough so I built up a Dark Angels force too - not the smartest move but why not have a marine army from (almost) every edition?

Red was in a local store league for a while and got to play against more than just family and learned a lot. He added a Necron army during this time while Blaster added Eldar. I think two armies is enough for them to manage so we're not in a hurry to add any more, and having them does make Christmas and birthdays a little easier to shop for in a pinch. Watching the kid open a well-painted Logan Grimnar feels pretty good - it's fun to make them lose their mind over something you know they're really going to like.

Apprentice Red will be done with high school in a little more than a week, so presumably this will be his "college edition". For Blaster it will be his main "high school" edition, and for Who it will be the first one he really digs into as he got his first starter mini's for Christmas a few months ago. I think it is a little ridiculous to be doing a new edition this quickly, but I'm going to roll with it. I'll be going to pick up a copy tomorrow so amid all of our end of year proms, banquets, concerts, and graduations I'll be reading up for the next round. It should make for a fun summer.

Greatest Hits #15 - Which RPG cover best captures the spirit of the game?

Another art-related post ...

I think this question has come up before and my answer is always the same: Shadowrun. That single scene covers almost everything you do in Shadowrun and shows what makes it different: guy plugging in to computer, girl with a gun and some kind of magic effect, and then indian-painted guy with dual sub-machine guns, all in a dirty part fo town with a backdrop of skyscrapers and opposition - Yeah, that covers a lot of ground.

It's so perfect for the game that second edition kept the same cover - how often do you see that?

Later edition still have nice art but 3rd kind of lost it's purpose and became "generic action scene", 4th goes back to something similar to these covers (a step in the right direction), then 5th is so busy I can't tell what's going on.

My runner-up hasn't changed in a long time either:

Gamma World has had some incredibly evocative covers and this one really pushed my buttons as a kid when it was current - armed men going into a ruined, overgrown city - please tell me more! That is a whole bunch of what the game is about. Plus the whole style is pure 60's-70's sci-fi art and it really sets the tone.

Then with second edition we get this:

This is another winner with Giant Deadly Robot acting out against a human with a stone axe and some kind of mutant with an energy weapon - yep, that's pretty much Gamma World. The cover of the rulebook inside the box was pretty solid too:

Mutant with pistol and shield and another with a fusion gun against blaster guy on a horse? Yep, that's the game!

Honorable Mention:

It's not a rulebook but it is the origin of the legendary Stop Sign Shield! This picture, again, is totally in line with what a Gamma World adventure looks like.

In contrast ...

There are lots of good covers out there, and even more bad ones - static posed hero, static posed monster, symbol of something relevant to game + title of game = boring and non-evocative. They may be pretty at times but they are often just too plain. The covers for 5th edition D&D and for FFG Star Wars are usually pretty and well done technically but they don't tell me much about the game itself. Most Pathfinder rulebook covers have some kind of action happening and so in my mind are a step above. Look at Numenera or The Strange too - what do they tell you, visually, about the game or the setting? Even the new Trek game, for example, on the collector's edition has a cover picture that is a close up shot of a starship hull.

WHY? It's incredibly boring and tell you nothing about the game! At least the standard version has some characters doing something! It's a great example of "pretty but uninformative". People get excited about Star Trek ships, sure - but not hull textures. Not really.

It's an interesting question today and I ended up writing quite a bit more about it than I expected.

More tomorrow!

Greatest Hits #14 - Which RPG has the most inspiring art?

A companion to the prior post, a little bit apart in time...

This is a little tougher because I don't usually distinguish between cover art and interior art - I tend to think a game looks good or it doesn't.

That said, my initial thought was the FFG Star Wars line because it is really well done, consistent across books and lines, and makes for some very pretty game books. I don't know that it's really "inspiring" though. The Star Wars movies and shows and books and comic books and video games are already pretty inspiring and so it's more reinforcing an existing thing than starting a fire on its own. Also, while the illustrations are both numerous and well done they do not generally show you things that your characters might be doing during a game - they're Star Wars pictures for sure, but they are not really Star Wars RPG-specific pictures:

• Here's a star destroyer flying near a planet
• Here's Han Solo sitting at a bar
• Here's a droid peering through some binoculars
• Here's a scout walker
• Here's a couple of characters standing still and looking "at the camera". 

So while they look good they are not really "inspiring" me to get a group together and roll some dice. They confirm the setting but do not really enhance it, in an RPG sense. 

So now that I've talked about what doesn't do it for me, here's one that does: Dungeon Crawl Classics. Why?

• It's all strong black and white art.
• It tends towards a "weird" vibe. You don't always know what you're looking at.
• It shows things that could easily (and maybe should, easily) happen during the game.

It does, for me anyway, build an interest in playing the game as I read through the rulebook or an adventure. Heck, even the maps are more evocative of some lost document than in most other games and yet they remain as usable if not moreso than most others. 

Yes, some of it is the old-school thing which does have a certain appeal to those of us who started in that earlier era. 

But the very unexplored/unexplainable/rough around the edges tone of much of the art enhances the atmosphere of the game. We don't know everything about the setting. We can;t instantly identify every monster that is shown. We don't know why that character looks that way and this other character looks completely different as far as dress, gear, and attitude, and in the game you aren't going to know everything either!

When it comes to art-matching-expected/designed-tone-of-game I can't think of a better example than this game.

One more for the road:

Greatest Hits #13 - Favorite RPG Illustration

It's nice to be able to say that art in everything from 5th Edition D&D to the latest M&M books to 40K is still strong.

There have been many illustrations over the years that have had an impact on my interest, and that's probably my primary interest when looking at an illustration for a game: does it tell me something about the game and more importantly, does it make me want to play?

There have been a ton of them over the years - spectacular covers, amazing interior pieces, small character/monster portraits ... how to choose?

Old School: A Paladin in Hell

I could have said "cover of the AD&D Player's handbook" but that's almost too easy. Once you get inside that cover this one always made me stop and look again. It's one signature element of D&D showcased in a full page drawing. There's bound to be a story here - how did he get here? Is he alone? Who is he, and does it matter or is it enough to know he's a Paladin?

Bonus Old School: Emirkol the Chaotic

This one, near the back of the original DMG, was always another stopper too. Trampier's work was a lot more elaborate than Dave Sutherland's but I like both for different reasons. There's even more of an implied story here too - what started this? What happens next?


Additional Bonus Illustration for the Special Edition: Cover of Dragon magazine #62

I loved this picture the first day I saw it and I still love it today.  Who is that guy? Why is he here? Where is he going? What happens next?


Different Flavor of Old School: Gamma World 3rd Edition - the cover of "Delta Fragment"

 Some kind of power armor putting the hurt on a dinosaur while another beast closes in - yeah! This is an image that some of my players and I bring up from time to time. It could equally be a part of Rifts or some supers game but it has stuck with us for close to 30 years so it's worth a mention.

Newer School: Pathfinder Mythic Adventures "the one with the monk and the barbarian and the dinosaurs"

I never get tired of this picture as it too effectively conveys just what "mythic" means in Pathfinder. The weaponless monk making a flying leap on a T-Rex while the barbarian throws a dinosaur at a dinosaur is exactly the kind of ridiculousness that generates table stories that last for decades. Pathfinder has a lot of great illustrations - they are right up there with old school FASA when it comes to art quantities -  I just like this one a bunch.

As far as "image that best conveys what the game is about" I think nothing compares to this:

The illustration so strong they used it for two editions of the game! I think it perfectly shows what a typical Shadowrun campaign is all about. Again, there's a story here - who are those people? Who are they shooting at? Where is this? When is this? It's a great piece for a game book.  It's only rival is this ...

...I mean, that is pretty much AD&D right there on the front. More implied story here - I mean, we all know in general what's going on here but where is this? Who are these guys? What happens next?


I could do a post on this every week and never run out of material...and that's not a bad idea ...

Greatest Hits #12 - Missing Players in an Ongoing Campaign

Still a good discussion - it's not like the problem has gone away!

I've been running two ongoing campaigns the last few years, both more narrative than sandbox. What happens when a player can't make it? We deal with it and the game goes on. But how do you deal with it? OK let's discuss some details. Here are three rules I go by:

1. Never end a session in the middle of a fight
2. Set a minimum number of players who need to show to run your game
3. There's always a plausible explanation why Character X isn't here right now

Another wave?

Reasoning for Rule 1:
(This is really more about avoiding the awkwardness of having a missing player next time)

Say you have a 5-person party in the middle of a huge fight = "alright, it's two in the morning, we're going to have to call it til next time." Sounds reasonable, except that someone won't be able to make it next time - better hope it's not the cleric! Maybe two someones won't. Then another week goes by and someone else has a conflict. Odds are you're going to end up finishing the fight either a man down (or more) or so much time will pass that no one can remember the details from the first part of the fight and spell or power usage, hit points, and maybe even consciousness state are all very fuzzy. It dilutes whatever dramatic impact your fight might have and for me anyway is just an unsatisfying way to handle things.

Most people who give this advice don't do it because its's a nice theory - we do so because we've tried it and found how many ways it can go wrong. After a few years go by you might be tempted to try it again - nope, it still sucks.

Solutions:

• Never start a combat 5 minutes before "quitting time". My weekend night games generally run til midnight, but we've called it as early as 11:35 when it felt right.
• If you know they're starting a good-sized fight and you could freeze-frame before it starts but are tempted to push on, tell your players the situation and let them have some input. They might be cool running over a bit or they may already be running on fumes. 
• If you find yourself in the nightmare of fight-started-with-plenty-of-time-but-now-taking-way-longer-than-expected-and-it-needs-to-stop here are some emergency ideas:
• Bad Guys all beam/teleport/vanish out
• Bad Guys retreat through a hidden secret door to some new room you may need to map before next time. Darkness spells and smoke grenades can help here.
• Bad Guys heads explode and all fall dead - could be real, could be an illusion
• Bad Guys surrender - players never really expect this in the middle of a fight. If you can tie it to the death of a particular bad guy leader or a nasty move by one of the characters, so much the better.

These are much more satisfying without built-in excuses like "but the cleric wasn't here"

Reasoning for Rule 2:

Maybe your sessions are "game night" and you play something regardless of who and how many show up. That's cool and I envy you. Here it's "Campaign X Night" and we either play that or we don't play at all. The concept of the "backup game" has never really taken root with us. That said we very rarely cancel at the last minute, so setting that minimum number lets us figure out in advance whether we're going to run next week or not.

Examples

• I was running Red Hand of Doom in 4E with a party that varied from 5-6 players. If at least 4 can make it we play, if 3 or fewer we don't. It does mean you miss some sessions but it also means you don't have a TPK destroy your campaign because the groups was a man or two short the night they ran into a really nasty dragon. 
• In Wrath of the Righteous I knew I was going to run it mainly for two of my players, so they each made two characters (it's Pathfinder, so it's easy enough). Adventure Paths are written for 4 characters - presto, we're solid. If both of my two can't make it, we don't play that weekend. If someone else can make it on a day we do play, they can make up a new character or continue with the one they had created last time. If someone else starts showing consistently they might get to make a second character if they so desire. It's easier to adjust upwards on the fly than downwards, at least for me. 
• The Exception To This Rule: Superhero games - I've run sessions with only a single player running a single hero and still had plenty of fun. 

Spock's player couldn't make it that night - look at how that worked out

Reasoning for Rule 3:

If you've seen The Gamers then you've seen "Mark". Mark just appears in the background of the scenes, motionless and doing nothing. Then his player shows up and the character goes into action for one fight.  The player then has to go and his character pretty much disappears from the rest of the story. It's dumb but very true to life. 

Speaking from my personal view as a DM, I'm not here to run your character - that's your job and I have enough to manage. So I'm not going to run your character, Spock's Brain-style, in the background just because you're not here. My rule is pretty much "if you're not here then your character's not here". That pretty much eliminates the issue of characters dying in a session the player didn't attend, treasure shenanigans, and "I wouldn't do that!" conversations. 

Practical Considerations for Rule 3

• It's incredibly easy to explain character comings and goings in superhero games - they were "called away" or Lois is in trouble again or they had to go take some pictures for their day job. it's trivial and should never be a real problem. Unless you're running Time of Crisis, then it's a little tricky. 
• Wilderness adventures are great for this kind of thing - communing with nature, following some interesting tracks, leading a hostile monster away from the party, gathering some rare herbs, celebrating a high holy day in private, heading back to watch the road, spending quality time with his new dryad friend, acquiring a new familiar - these are all pretty easy to do. 
• Cities make this even easier - it's not hard to figure something out. Shopping, stealing, or carousing are all popular options.
• In contrast dungeons can make this really painful, especially the big ones. When the party is six levels deep, the DM still checks for encounters even on "cleared" levels, and there's no shortcut back out (Hello Town Portal!) then it can really strain belief to come up with a plausible reason why the fighter suddenly isn't going to fight for awhile. My advice is to think about this beforehand and try to come up with some possible explanations. Some ideas:
• Fell through a trap door into another room or another level - hey megadungeons are supposed to be "living" right?
• Taken prisoner by some group on this level or the next one
• Ran into a rival adventuring party and didn't want to lead them back to the group until he checked them out
• Wizards are studying in that last library/laboratory/summoning room the group discovered
• Clerics are purifying a defiled temple, defiling an enemy temple, or communing with their god in some other room
• Thieves are off sneaking around looking for more loot - you know how they are. A good candidate for "taken prisoner" above. 

Sure, let the DM run your character while you're gone ...

Final Thought: If you're really stuck for ideas ask the player what their character is doing while they are out. Their third or fourth idea is probably good enough to use.

Greatest Hits #11 - PHB's I Have Known

Of course there's another one to put in the picture now ...

Yep, that's all of them. Bottom right comes in about 1980-81 for me (and yes that's the same book I bought with my allowance back then) and that upper left showed up on my doorstep yesterday.

I've had a lot of fun with these over the years and I can tell stories that came from games played with all of the previous versions. Even though I am still running Pathfinder and 4th edition games I am sure we will get around to giving the new one a try and then I'll have some stories to go with it too.

There are memories around the time each of these came out too. The joy of discovery, when all of this was so new with the first; the college days playing in dorms and at night at the IHoP of second; the fun of putting a new group together with old and new faces and new versions of classic adventures with third; the annoyance and disappointment of fourth gradually turning into a rediscovery of the fun and putting together another mix of old and new - including a new wife and some new kids; with 5th, well, right now it's all kid milestones for the last month - a 12th birthday, a lot of summer band practice, driving to and from the first job, and moving into a college dorm. If 5th has a good enough run, they may ALL be in college by the time 6th comes out.

PDF's may be the future of a lot of smaller RPG's, but I hope the biggest games, or the kickstarters for smaller games, give us a chance to acquire them as books. I'm pretty comfortable using an iPad at the table but there's something about being able to pick up the same book I held way back when that helps refresh those memories too - it's more than visual, it's texture, smell, weight, and all of the little nicks and dings they pick up in use. I'd say the largest ingredient in some of my AD&D materials after paper, ink, and glue is probably Domino's Pizza and Dr. Pepper. I took pretty good care of my stuff but hey, accidents happen, and Domino's was new here back then. We spent a lot of summer time scraping up our dollars so we could order pizza and keep on playing, especially before we could drive.

Anyway, I suppose I've "completed the set" for the time being - now to read the thing, and start the next chapter of a 30+ year story.