Brent P. Newhall's Blog
All – Dec 2008

31 Dec 08 – The Advantage of Familiarity In Regards to Huge, Slavering Hell-Beasts

[IMAGE]

I've noticed something. Of those wonderful people who think up horrifying monsters for players to encounter during a tabletop role-playing session, many of them struggle with originality.

They strive to create thoughtful histories and almost complete ecologies for their creatures, in the attempt to create a monster that's not just another vicious humanoid.

I'd like to take a moment to say: They don't need to.

If I'm questing through a dark, eldritch forest, and something leaps out at me, I want to know how to react. Do I swing my katar at it? Do I make threatening moves? Do I very much not make threatening moves? Do I close in or keep my distance?

If I'm fighting a completely original creature, I've no idea how to react to the thing. So I usually have to resort to careful investigation ("Does it seem particularly muscular?"), trial and error ("I poke it."), or having fun with it ("I rush in and stab it, screaming the whole time!").

How much fun is that? Not much (for me, anyway). And certainly not if the same scenario occurs for creature in an adventure. I need some facts I can grab on to.

If, on the other hand, I encounter a bear with lizard-like skin, I know roughly how to react. It may spring plenty of surprises on me, but at least I have a framework within which to act.

Which is fundamental to role-playing. One reason for D&D's popularity is its medieval universe, which is familiar to all of us from reading The Hobbit under the covers as children. We know how to react to most environments in the world, at least basically. The challenge lies in keeping our characters alive and achieving their goals, which usually have nothing to do with the originality of the random creature that drops on their heads as they creep through the Sapphire Caverns.

Now, I love a well-thought-out, unusual creature. I applaud it. But if creature #5 is basically a wolf, don't worry. It'll still be fun.

Posted in Role-playing - Permalink - comments

30 Dec 08 – Something's Going On. It's Called Life.

[IMAGE]

My Christmases have always been quiet. I may spend more time than usual shopping or baking, but I'm able to keep up with everything.

Not this year. A perfect storm kept me busy every hour of every day for the past several weeks. I was left breathless.

After several wonderful, quiet days at home this past weekend, I've recharged. I'm back to "normal," whatever that is.

I'm analyzing these busy weeks. I've since re-negotiated several things that were holding me back, such as teaching, which I don't need to do as much of now. I've also looked at my work. I made a lot of cookies, which were great, but did I really need to make that many? Could I have made fewer, and still delighted people? Yes, and I would have better managed my time had I looked at that more closely.

Because time is precious. There are so many things left in my life that I want to accomplish and experience, and do so fully. Not rush through so I can tick them off a list, but deeply experience an autumn in Maine or a week in Japan or an afternoon at St. Paul's Cathedral.

And one key to achieving that is constant re-appraisal of your life. Trivial things constantly battle for our attention. We must fight them. And live.

Posted in Self-improvement - Permalink - comments

22 Dec 08 – New York City?!?

[IMAGE]

I'm back from my first trip to New York City. Briefly: It was very cold, I saw The 39 Steps, and I took a lot of pictures.

Less briefly: I'm glad I went; it's worth seeing New York at least once in your life, if just for the change of pace. It's breathtakingly diverse; there's always something to do or see. One could spend the rest of one's life just sampling restaurants.

And the people are...hurried. Not rude, though that depends on your definition. They just expect everyone to keep moving. Sit down and talk with an average New Yorker, and you'll find someone as nice as anyone else.

And, to my surprise, New Yorkers stick together. Everyone in New York feels like a native, much more so than in other places I've visited.

It's a city of movement: people moving, lights moving, taxis and bicycles moving.

I'd like to go back when it's warm, and I can take a couple of days to explore some neat parts of the city. I don't think one needs a week to appreciate New York City, but one needs more than a day or two.

As with so many things.

Posted in Misc - Permalink - comments

18 Dec 08 – Great Television, Archived Online Forever

[IMAGE]

I'm conflicted about whether I should write about the Digital Archive Project here. I don't want to get it into trouble.

See, despite TV's bad reputation, there have been a few great shows over the decades. Many of them were canceled early; others left the airwaves and have never received any other release. The only exist on a master tape in a vault somewhere in New York City, and on dusty VHS tapes scattered around the world.

Then there are shows like Mystery Science Theater 3000, in which every single episode requires license wrangling for the original movie rights.

Enter the Digital Archive Project. Its goal is to put every episode of these great shows (except those that have had a legitimate DVD release) online. Essentially forever. All in one place, using BitTorrent technology.

If you go to the site and create a free account, then click on the Categories link in the left-hand navigation pane, you're presented with a list of great old shows. MST3K. Freaks and Geeks. Max Headroom. Cartoon Planet. Brimstone.

All of them downloadable, most in high quality. Until there's a DVD release.

Now that you know about it, go forth and watch some great TV.

Posted in Misc - Permalink - comments

17 Dec 08 – How to really use Twitter

[IMAGE]

Okay, so you've signed up for a Twitter account, and maybe posted a few times. How do you move to the next level?

Here are some suggestions for improving your Twitter experience:

But above all, don't go too nuts. Twitter's fun and useful, but it's not a place to spend your entire day. It's only Ones and 0s.

Hope this helps.

Posted in Tech - Permalink - comments

16 Dec 08 – Practical Advice: Initiative Cards

[IMAGE]

I believe that speed is essential to good role-playing. Think of a good action movie or an engrossing book; the story rockets from revelation to revelation, leaving you breathless. Not that a GM should rush from one plot point to the next, but there's no point in taking a plot slowly.

Unfortunately, many of the rules and resolution mechanisms in role-playing systems slow down the game as players roll dice and compare numbers. They're necessary, sure, but the time they consume needs to be minimized.

Enter initiative cards. This one of those little tricks that drastically speed up a game.

Imagine a 3x5" card that contains the following information:

Imagine writing up one of these for each character (player and non-player). When a battle begins, write down the initiative scores, and order the cards by that score.

Boom. You call out the name of the player on the first card. The player attacks an NPC. You pull out the NPC's card, note any damage, and slip it back in. You then flip to the next card and announce that player's turn.

And battle zips from one player to the next. No need to write down a temporary initiative list, and all vital stats are in one place.

Even better, on subsequent battles you just sort in the appropriate NPC cards. Takes about ten seconds to set up for a battle.

It's greatly sped up my games. I'd prefer to just do away with initiative altogether, but that's another blog post.

Posted in Role-playing - Permalink - comments

15 Dec 08 – Kong Kings

[IMAGE]

A few weeks ago, I watched The King of Kong, a documentary about competitive Donkey Kong players. Which sounds geeky, until you watch it.

It's about guys who take on these classic arcade games as a challenge. A test of skill. Those old games, like Pac-Man, Q-Bert, and Donkey Kong, were very hard; one group claims that the average Donkey Kong player will never progress past the third level (out of 22).

It's fascinating to watch grown men—very smart grown men—take on that sort of challenge. Sure, it takes a certain kind of person, but not the introverted nerd you might expect. The documentary focuses on two men, one of whom is a successful independent business man, and the other who looks like a middle manager at Microsoft. They each have a full-time job (well, one got inerested in Donkey Kong during a period between jobs), and a wife (and, in one case, kids).

They're just fascinated. It's a puzzle. A very hard puzzle that requires quick reflexes as well as a quick mind; the enemies move according to both complex patterns and random directions. Plus, the game has only four different screens; higher levels repeat the same screen, with more enemies that move faster and in more complicated patterns.

Not only is there nothing wrong with their fascination, it's noble. They're bettering themselves: their brains, their hand-eye coordination. They actively seek out new challenges and new frontiers to explore.

May we all do the same.

Posted in Misc - Permalink - comments

12 Dec 08 – Legends of Literature — A Review

[IMAGE]

Every so often, a book comes along that not only follows a great premise, it fulfills that premise completely.

Legends of Literature is a collection of essays written by contributors to Writer's Digest. Famous contributors, like Stephen King, H.G. Wells, Jack Kerouac, and Ray Bradbury. There are good interviews with Kurt Vonnegut, Carl Sandburg, and George Bernard Shaw.

Much of it is writing advice, yes, but it's also a window into the minds of these great writers. We get to see their approaches to fiction, and their opinions on the writing business. Bradbury, for example, is breezy but pragmatic about the need to just sit down in front of the page and write, good or bad.

It's certainly an excellent book for writers, but it's also worth a look for bibliophiles who just want to know how writers think.

Posted in Reviews - Permalink - comments

11 Dec 08 – PeopleBrowsr

[IMAGE]

If you like Twitter, you may benefit from a more powerful interface. Some solve this through use of TweetDeck, a desktop application that shows multiple Twitter streams (your stream, replies to you, direct messages, etc.) in columns.

The new service PeopleBrowsr is a web-based application that works like TweetDeck. You enter your Twitter account information, and PeopleBrowsr displays columns of streams. You can easily add more streams, and re-arrange them, right in your browser. The interface is a little busy but highly functional, and provides a lot of information at once. Even better, it's written almost entirely in JavaScript, so it doesn't depend on heavyweight frameworks like Flash.

Why use this instead of TweetDeck? Because you can use PeopleBrowsr from any computer, anywhere. It goes with you; if you have 'net access, you can use PeopleBrowsr and manage a huge array of Twitter conversations.

Very, very handy.

Posted in Tech - Permalink - comments

10 Dec 08 – What I like about D&D

[IMAGE]

All right, I admit it: I play Dungeons & Dragons. This may horrify some of my evangelical friends, but trust me: there's nothing wrong with it.

You may ask, why play D&D when it has so many negative connotations? Why not use one of the hundreds of other role-playing systems out there, like FUDGE or GURPS?

First, I'll use Saalon's metaphor: D&D is like Microsoft Windows. Everyone uses it and it works okay, though it's kinda bloated and sometimes confusing.

I contend that World of Darkness is like the Mac, and FUDGE/GURPS are like Linux, but those are different subjects.

So, I play D&D because it's a standard. It provides a common context for discussing role-playing with others, and if I'm playing with a bunch of folks I don't know, D&D's a convenient default.

But that shouldn't be the only reasons. I play D&D because it's fun. It's exciting and adventurous; it feels like a big, epic fantasy action/adventure movie.

Well, the current 4th edition feels that way. I also played 3.5 Edition, which felt more like an overly-long series of fantasy novels.

4th Edition D&D provides a huge world, brimming with possibility. There are dozens of fascinating races, all scrambling over an ever-evolving world of good, evil, conflict, and flashing steel. You can throw yourself into combat, or negotiate with merchants, or haggle with kings.

(Can you tell that I love setting?)

The system works quite well, too. It's a heavy system, compared to all the others out there, but it works. You choose values for six core attributes, such as Strength and Intelligence. Your race and class (profession, like cleric or warlord) may improve those numbers, and will give you access to a menu of powers. Some powers can be used as often as desired, others only once per battle, and others once per day. You then choose from a set of skills, which are all affected by your attributes (a high Strength score makes you better at Acrobatics).

I'm not as crazy about the two-step combat mechanic, where you roll a 20-sided die to see if you hit, then another die (number of sides depending on the weapon) to determine how much damage you do. Combat can grind to nearly a standstill as half a dozen players roll their dice in turn.

But even that has its charm, with players picking out a shiny d8 or d10 to roll their damage.

It works. D&D is fun. It's goofy, and overly complex at times, but it's a fine way to spend a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, romping through a huge fantasy world and baring your teeth at dragons.

There are worse ways to spend a Saturday.

Posted in Role-playing - Permalink - comments

9 Dec 08 – How to Become More Aware Of Time

[IMAGE]

This past week, I've been thinking about time.

More precisely: awareness of time. Do I know how long I've been working on an email? Drinking my afternoon tea? Reading this book in bed?

It's struck me that this is a key to productivity. If I was more aware of time as it goes by, I wouldn't turn a brief YouTube distraction into an hour-long browse of the latest videos.

And we're all surrounded by clocks. There's one on every desktop and laptop screen, and strapped to our wrists (though I've noticed more and more people without watches lately; why is that?).

So how can one become more aware of time? By glancing at one's watch more often. By keeping a little time log; just a piece of paper on which one writes, "8:33 Started watching anime. 8:54 Checked blogs. 9:02 Worked on RPG document."

And...think. Think about time. Think about how you want to use your time.

When you begin something, do you alot yourself a certain amount of time? Do you hold yourself to that allotted time? I don't. I should, if I want to be smart about my time.

So I think about time.

Posted in Self-improvement - Permalink - comments

4 Dec 08 – Standards For Published Adventures

[IMAGE]

Before I published War in the Deep, I wanted to be sure I was publishing a good-looking, professional adventure. So I bought a few.

D&D adventures are of startlingly high quality, even those made by individuals. Of course, the official, published, $30 adventures look fantastic, though I knew I wouldn't achieve that level of quality on my first attempt.

I did have some minimum standards, though:

I satisfied all those criteria. The adventure is for characters from level 1 through 10 (the Heroic Tier), with maps created in Inkscape, and using Creative Commons-licensed Flickr photos of underwater scenes. Of course, I'd like to have done more with it, like use artwork instead of letters for items on the maps, and use the two-column layout that RPGers seem to love—but nothing's ever perfect. I'm satisfied, and I learned a lot for the next adventure.

What about you? What standard elements do you need in an adventure?

Posted in Role-playing - Permalink - comments

3 Dec 08 – What Is Glogster?

[IMAGE]

A lot of educational folks who "get" the new web (Web 2.0, social networking, etc.) are excited about Glogster. Despite the annoying name, it's a neat site: it lets you quickly and easily create a poster as a web page. Essentially.

So when you go to Glogster, you get a blank page, and a simple little menu of neat things you can add to the page: text, images, clipart, video, sound, etc. And, of course, you can add your own.

Imagine a student who has to give a presentation on Benjamin Franklin. She uses Glogster to create a one-page presentation, with images of the man, biographical notes, etc, and presents that in class. Immediate multimedia presentation, without the ugliness or restrictions of a PowerPoint deck.

Or she could assemble her notes in a Glogster page, and work on it while at home, or at school, or wherever.

Of course, once you've created your glog, you can save it to an account, create new glogs, share them, etc. Here's my glog.

And Glogster's not limited to students, of course; anyone can use it. It provides convenient, simplified website development, without the limitations of FTP or wrestling with a web-based HTML editor.

Cool.

Posted in Tech - Permalink - comments

2 Dec 08 – How I Introduce Myself To New RPG Players

[IMAGE]

New players are a fact of life for GMs. They may have never played a tabletop RPG before, or only using vastly different systems. How do you introduce yourself? How do you lay the ground rules?

I'm still figuring it out, but I do have a few things I make sure to go through.

  1. I describe my policy on character death, that while I don't actively try to kill player-characters, neither will I re-arrange the laws of physics to prevent willful character death.
  2. I explain what I love about GMing. This lets players know what to expect from me. I explain that I love to create worlds, so my games tend to be expansive and original, but not heavily detailed.
  3. I describe what excites me in players. I figure, as a player, I'd want to know what sort of player the GM expects. Heavy role-playing? Intimate knowledge of the rules? Whatever. For me, I love players who really get into their characters, and who are ready when their turn comes up in combat.
  4. I describe what gets me angry. I think this is vitally important, yet I never see folks write about it. What are those hot-button issues? Let's get them out in the open, so they don't surprise anybody. Mine are dealing with too many questions at once, and stubborn insistence on looking up every rule even when it halts gameplay for 10 minutes. So I explain that I'll sometimes come up with a reasonable temporary ruling if a rule look-up takes too long.

I also talk about a few of our house rules and social policies, such as:

  1. Cell phones should be turned to vibrate or switched off.
  2. If anyone has to leave the table, they should announce where they're going. They can leave instructions on what to do with their character while they're gone. If they don't, and they're gone for a full round, we'll skip their turn for that round.
  3. The GM is happy to keep character sheets if players have trouble remembering to bring them.
  4. We use "luck tokens," which can be turned in to either immediately succeed on a die roll, or add one fact to the world. The only restrictions on the latter are that the new faact cannot change history, and that if a luck token is traded in to immediately resolve a fight or problem, the players get no experience points for it. Players start with one luck token per session, and win more for good role-playing.

Once I began explaining this to new players, everyone gets up to speed much more quickly, and we don't spend valuable playing time with unhappy players.

How do you tell new players about house rules and such? And what are your house rules?

Posted in Role-playing - Permalink - comments

1 Dec 08 – So What Is A Commitment, Really?

[IMAGE]

A recent post on the GTD forums started me thinking about commitments.

We all have many ongoing projects. But what does "ongoing" really mean? Have we really committed to them? Or did we just put them on a list to remind us to get them done eventually?

I'm realizing that a lot of my own "active projects" are there to push myself to finish them. I haven't truly committed to them, not deeply and seriously.

This is, perhaps, no revelation to many. That's what commitment means, doesn't it? To truly decide and agree internally to accomplish something.

I haven't been. And many people don't. We create lists and map out plans, but how many of those items have we deeply, seriously committed ourselves to completing?

There's a problem here: we really can't commit to a huge workload. You can't fool your mind. If you try to commit to 50 things, your mind will start to drop the first few in the list the further you get.

The answer is, as usual, to simplify. Truly commit to a few things, and execute. Track the other things, and do them if you can. But choose a few things to deeply commit to.

And, please, choose important things.

Posted in Self-improvement - Permalink - comments