New Photos: Cloud Tunnels of Venus

Enjoy these new photos from the European Space Agency's Venus Express. They depict a great gas vortex tunnel at Venus' south pole. These creepy photos are highly inspirational for my Labyrinth Lord Penelion Campaign (currently on baby hiatus), where the PCs were last seen dangling from a rope in a haunted cloud mine...

Poll: Modules vs. Homebrew Adventures

Back in February there was a thread on Dragonsfoot about whether or not to use modules. A post by Wheggi, whose opinionated no-BS forum commentary I really enjoy, stood out to me:

I wish more DMs would use modules, instead of subjecting their players to their crappy campaign worlds. Because face it: most home brew campaign worlds can't hold a candle to a professionally written, edited, playtested and illustrated module. Lots of DMs out there think there stuff is great, but the reality is that most of it is great only in thier own ego-clouded minds.

Guys that let go of their pride and run well-written modules are ultimately doing their players a favor.

I think this viewpoint crystallizes a major difference between the blogger and forum cultures. Most of the blogs I read are filled with session reports and ideas from largely homebrewed campaigns. On the other hand, the Dragonsfoot forum in particular has a large number of module fetishists that discuss the classic TSR modules in great detail. These discussions are fun for me to read because I collect old modules myself - I read them cover to cover and find the good ones to be very inspiring.

...but I've never been a module guy myself. When I was a kid I ran one session of B3: Palace of the Silver Princess and one session of X1: Isle of Dread. Wheggi's post got me to thinking whether my fixation on writing my own adventures is really just an ego trip I'm subjecting my poor friends to. Maybe I would be better off spending some time delving into someone else's work... but dammit, I like writing adventures!

The responses on the Dragonsfoot thread seemed to reveal a pretty major bimodal distribution of module vs. non-module people. It turned out that a lot of Dragonsfoot readers use modules almost exclusively, which surprised me.

I'm curious to get a better idea of where the old school blog community falls in terms of preference for modules. I've posted an anonymous poll in the top right of the blog - I'm curious to know what YOU think.

A Few Items for L.A. / O.C. Gamers

Just a few brief items for local gamers:

1. Starship Valkyrie, the incredible sci-fi LARP/simulation by Christian Brown, has announced games for the Saturdays of Oct 23, Nov 6, and Nov 13. These games will be from 6-11pm, and will occur in Culver City. The turnout was high for the last two games, and they are now charging $20/ head. These games should be fabulous and I will try very hard to attend at least one of them. Click here for contact and RSVP info.

2. Joe Goodman will be running playtests of his new AD&D-inspired Dungeon Crawl Classics game on Sunday October 24 at DiceHouse Games in Fullerton. I understand that there will be a morning session and an afternoon session. This is being hosted by the Dead Gamers Society meetup group. Click here to sign up for the 10:00am session. Click here to sign up for the 3pm session.

3. The U.C. Irvine roleplaying club will begin its Monday 7pm meetings today. This group is open anyone and everyone - no affiliation with UCI is required. If there is interest, I might try to run a biweekly game of OD&D or Empire of the Petal Throne at this event. I will update you all if this happens. Click here for the club's Facebook page.

A Brief Dream of Hell

A few nights ago I dreamed that I was in Hell. In my dream Hell was an vast subterranean hotel. Close to the surface was Level A - on this level each hotel room held the soul of a dead person whose last name began with the letter A. The next level down was B, etc.

My last name begins with R, so I took the elevator down to Floor R hoping to find some of my ancient ancestors to chat with. I was walking through a dimly lit carpeted hallway lined with doors when I realized it would be hard to find any of my kinfolk without knowing their specific room numbers - I needed a directory!

As I was trying to find the Phone Book of Souls, I ended up being informed by a doctor overlooking the residents of Floor R that I had strayed too deep into Hell and that I would have to stay there forever, so I might as well find a room for myself.

Luckily I had a Moustache Phone with me, so I was able to call up four Moustache Commandos to distract the doctor while I made my getaway to the lobby on the surface. This part of the dream was really exciting. Like a spy thriller.

Unfortunately I never got to look inside any of the rooms before I made my escape. During the dream I was actually wondering to myself what the hotel rooms of my Neandertal ancestors would look like...

B2 for Newbie DMs: Easy Intro or Mind Shredding Trial By Fire?

Scott at HUGE RUINED PILE has written an excellent series of posts (start here) pondering how a beginning DM can best get into old school-style roleplaying. Scott makes the excellent point that a newbie DM can easily be overwhelmed by all the homebrew campaigns, blog musings, house rulings, and wildly creative material being posted by grognard DMs with decades of experience. Exciting stuff, yes, but also overwhelming.

Scott proposes a thought experiment where a new DM should only be allowed to start with the 1980 D&D Basic Set (a.k.a. Moldvay Basic), which includes the module B2: Keep on the Borderlands. This is pretty much how I started except I never actually ran B2 – I jumped right into making my own dungeons immediately after I cracked open the rulebook. There were two reasons for this: (1) I like making adventures, it’s kind of a major attraction of playing D&D for me, and (2) as a kid I found B2 extremely complex and intimidating.

B2 complex and intimidating? Yes. B2 is like an D&D neutron star – it is massive and dense, yet small in physical size. It has all the elements of a complex and sophisticated adventure scenario: a roster of NPCs with secret motivations, overland travel and exploration, a complex social ecology in a dungeon, poor judgments result in quick death, and portions of the adventure left blank for the DM to create. I agree with most D&D aficionados that B2 is a masterpiece, however I also think you need some serious chops as a DM make it fly. It blew my mind when I was a kid – I couldn’t handle it.

In contrast to the 1980 Basic Set, the 1978 Basic Set (a.k.a. Holmes Basic) included the module B1: In Search of the Unknown. This is a vastly simpler type of adventure – a pretty standard monster hotel, if you will. No hex crawling, few mysterious NPCs, no factions of monster clans with complex interacting histories. You start at the entrance and start opening doors, killing monsters, looking for loot, and enjoying the interesting scenery. Way easier to DM than B2.

So was it genius or folly for TSR to include B2 with the Basic Set? It’s hard to say. From one perspective you can think of B2 as a kind of trial by fire for would-be DMs. Back in the day it quickly separated those with DM potential from those without. Heck, it did a great good job of intimidating me when I was 10 years old. This sink-or-swim model could be a good thing – there’s nothing like a lousy DM to turn people off to roleplaying. On the other hand, maybe if TSR stuck with B1 more would-be DMs would have stayed with the game and D&D wouldn’t have suffered its popularity crash in the early/mid-80s. There are a lot of unplayed copies of B2 on eBay.

Southern California Gaming Conventions: Strategicon, WyrdCon, SoCal Smackdown, Etc.

Gaming is huge in Southern California. It’s so popular, in fact, that there are no fewer than five major gaming conventions in the Los Angeles / Orange County area alone. Surprisingly, however, I often meet local gamers who either never realized there’s a thriving local convention scene, never bothered to visit a local con because they don’t know what to expect, or went to a local con some years ago, had a bad experience, and never returned.

The point of this post is twofold. First, I simply want to provide a list of the Southern California gaming cons I am aware of. Second, I want to give brief first- or second-hand descriptions of what these cons are like. Hopefully this information will be useful for some readers:

2011 Southern California Gaming Con Calendar:

Feb 18-21: Strategicon / OrcCon – LAX Sheraton Gateway

April (?): Hyphen-Con – San Diego

May 27-30: Strategicon / Gamex - LAX Sheraton Gateway

June 2011:  PolyCon 29 – Cal Poly San Luis Obispo

June 10-12: WyrdCon II - Costa Mesa Hilton

Aug (?): SoCal Old School Mini-Con IV – L.A. / O.C. area

Sept 2-5: SoCal Smackdown – Anaheim Hilton

Sept 2-5: Strategicon / Gateway – LAX Sheraton Gateway

Before I launch into the descriptions, though, I want to briefly describe the weirdness of Strategicon, which is by far our area’s biggest player in the con game. “Strategicon” is actually three different conventions at three different times of year: OrcCon, Gamex, and Gateway. Over the years Strategicon bought out other regional cons and moved them all to the LAX airport. Because of this Strategicon has had a virtual monopoly on gaming conventions in L.A. since the mid-80s. There are two major downsides to the Strategicon monopoly: (1) the character of all of all three cons has been completely homogenized and they all “feel” exactly the same, and (2) since they are all at LAX none of them are particularly convenient to outlying areas like San Bernardino, Orange County, Antelope Valley, San Diego, etc. This is especially ironic because OrcCon’s name is an abbreviation for “Orange County Convention” – so why the hell was it moved to LAX? Lame. Strategicon is a lot of fun and I go as often as I can, however there remains a strong reservoir of resentment towards it for the reasons I describe, especially amongst older gamers who remember the takeovers (for a taste of the vitriol, see the Comments to this previous post).

Strategicon (= OrcCon, Gateway, and Gamex): This is by far the largest gaming convention in Southern California. The last event in September 2010 had over 1200 attendees. Strategicon covers all aspects of gaming, including video games, miniatures, LARPs, RPGs, CCGs, and boardgames. Boardgames and RPGs are clearly the major focus of Strategicon, however. Indeed, Strategicon hosts most of the major regional competitions for many boardgames (and related card games like Dominion), sometimes with major prizes attached (e.g. a recent Settlers of Catan champion won a free trip to compete in Germany). There is always a huge turnout at Strategicon for RPGs as well, with major representation from RPGA (i.e. “official” D&D 4e events). While there are usually a handful of old school and indie RPGs being run, most of what you’ll find is the typical current mainstream stuff like D&D 4e, Pathfinder, GURPS, World of Darkness, FATE, and so forth. Call of Cthulhu is usually well represented, too. GM quality can vary, of course, but if you ask around about who the good GMs are you can definitely fill up all your days with excellent roleplaying. I always have an excellent time at Strategicon, but I have heard some complaints about the quality of sanctioned miniature tournaments at Strategicon, which in part led to the creation of SoCal Smackdown. Click here for pictures and a more thorough previous review of Strategicon.

SoCal Smackdown: This is a newcomer to the SoCal con scene, having had its first event in September 2010 at the Anaheim Hilton. One great thing about this con is that it is located in Orange County, and is therefore much more convenient for us more southerly gamers. Turnout this year was about 250. This con is primarily focused on miniatures tournaments, so if you are into Warhammer, Flames of War, Warmachine, etc. your mind will be blown. The downside of this con is that it’s on the same weekend as Strategicon, so most of the area boardgamers and roleplayers are in L.A. during the weekend and don't go to Smackdown. I think this conflict in scheduling is really very ill-advised, and I have ranted about it before: see pictures and a review of SoCal Smackdown.

WyrdCon: This is also a new con based in Orange County. This con is exceptional in that it is alllll Live Action Roleplaying (LARP). With 318 attendees at the first event earlier this year, WyrdCon handily wins the title of the biggest LARP convention in North America. Even though I had no background in LARPing I had a ton of fun at the last WyrdCon and I’m definitely going to the next one. You will see and experience very weird and intense stuff if you go. Read my previous review here.

SoCal Old School Mini-Con: This small and loosely organized one-day event has been held for three years now. The focus is all old school RPGs with a strong bias towards early editions of D&D and their retroclones. Attendance at the SCMC III this summer was around 30 people and it was perfectly awesome! Read about it here!

PolyCon: This is a smallish weekend-long gaming convention that has been running strong for 18 years at the Cal Poly campus at San Luis Obispo. I’ve never been to this event (long drive from O.C.), but I’ve heard it’s totally great. It appears to focus mostly on boardgames and RPGs.

Hyphen-Con: A smallish gaming con in San Diego. I’ve never met anyone who’s been to it, but it looks like a cool boardgame, card game, and RPG event. I think it’s been going on for six years now.

A Big Directory of Old School RPG Blogs

Following on my recent blogometrics theme, I have made a dedicated page that's a directory of all the blogs I am aware of with old school RPG-related content. A tab link for the page should be just under my blog title.

I will try to update this list when I find out about new blogs. I ask for everyone's help in this task! If you want me to list your blog, or know of any other blogs that should be on the list, please leave a comment  and I will happily add the blog.

I am not purposely omitting any blogs. I am doing my best to include everyone. I know there are some ace blog hunters out there, and I would appreciate your help in finding sites to add to the list.