We Hardly Knew Ye

Terra Nova – This was the first big cancellation.  Supposedly it’s being shopped to other networks.

Alcatraz – I had high hopes for this one, but it apparently failed to connect with viewers (or Fox is being stingy and quick to cancel, as it has a reputation of doing).  There’s already another JJ Abrams drama lined up for next year, though, on another network.

The Secret Circle – The loss of my guilty pleasure particularly stings, because originally it was reported it had been renewed.  In some cases, I literally clicked on a headline that said one thing and got content that said another.

The River – I’ll not lie, I didn’t watch this one because it looked like it’d be too scary for me.  Perhaps everyone else felt the same.

MTV, You’re My Only Hope

So fans of guilty pleasure The Secret Circle have been springing into action to attempt to save it, or perhaps have another channel pick it up (like MTV, ABC Family, or Ion).  It might be a long shot, but it’s happened before: Roswell was saved not once, but twice, by an outpouring of fan support.  The second time, it was booted from the WB, but picked up by UPN.

Other shows have famously been saved by fans:

Star Trek – This is the one that started it all.  If it weren’t for proto-geeks writing in, one of the biggest sci-fi franchises in TV history – one that has surely influenced the look and function of current technology – wouldn’t exist today.

Chuck – In a novel approach, fans targeted a sponsor, not a network, to get financial support to continue the show – and it worked!  For a few more years, at least.

Arrested Development and Family Guy – Sometimes shows do come back, not due to a tidal wave of support, but a growing swell.  Family Guy was off Fox for years before its popularity on Adult Swim prompted some rethinking; Arrested Development supposedly has a movie in active development… six years later.

A Sigh of Relief

Not all shows of particular interest to geeks were cancelled.  Here are just a few that continue to live on:

Grimm – I said it should get renewed, and luckily it has.  Good thing, too, because this show just keeps getting better.  The season finale is this Friday, and I can’t wait.

Once Upon a Time – An unlikely premise, and it borders on the silly with all of the Disney-specific allusions (the perks of being an ABC show).  Still, it’s brought back to earth with genuinely clever writing and good acting by, well, pretty much everyone.

Game of Thrones and Doctor Who – It’s not really a surprise, but it’s comforting to know they’re out there, continuing to be awesome.

What about you?  What cancellation are you most disappointed about?  Are you going to participate in fan efforts to rescue any shows?  And what are you looking forward to? 

I was involved with a gaming event recently. I don’t want to cause a scene, point fingers, or have people guessing. Suffice to say it was a big game with a lot of players that I was involved with. All of a sudden, we realized that two other people who were involved were gone. We assumed they’d had other obligations, their absence didn’t stop the game from going, and so we played on, oblivious. It wasn’t until later that someone said that they’d left because they were uncomfortable with all of the open gay couples that were also involved.

When I heard that, I felt like I’d been gut-punched. Had I seen some PDAs from the gay couples? Sure, I had. But no more than I’d been seeing from the straight couples. Could this be true? We did some digging, and innocently asked the person who’d invited them if he knew why they’d left? Had they been having a good time? He said he hadn’t spoken to them, but, without us asking if they’d been uncomfortable, their friend mentioned that he thought that one of the people who’d left was homophobic, and he suspected that’s why’d they’d gone.

Hearing such a thing just makes my stomach ache. It gets me mad, sad, and confused at the same time. So since the fallout is fresh in my mind, I thought I’d ruminate over the subject, as painful as it is to me and many others.

First off, the word homophobia is pretty silly. Taken literally from the Greek, it means “fear of the same”. What it has come to mean, of course, is a wide-ranging category of negative attitudes towards homosexuals, lesbians, and so on. A lot of homophobic behavior I’ve seen has been anything but fearful.

A homophobe walking into one of my gaming groups, the LARP I help run, or just about any other local gaming anything in the Boston area is likely in for a shock. My normal gaming groups include homosexuals, bisexuals, lesbians, crossdressers, transgender individuals, and so on. Gaming, in our area, at least, seems to draw a tremendously diverse crowd. Which is probably why this incident came as such a surprise. My brain wonders how anyone with any experience in the local gaming community can have missed this fact so completely.

The worst I can remember encountering to date has been a sort of “I’d rather not talk about your social life” vibe, which I’ve never had an issue with. When I sit down to play a game, I’m there to play the game. I’m not interested in discussing my sexuality or my players’ sexual orientations. I’m more interested in discussing whether or not Kidalis Havengard’s cousin has indeed turned to the cult of the Elder Elemental Eye, whether Tilly Thistleshanks is ready to take on the massive fey crocodile that ate his father, or if Al’lan Malkier can have Olaf Feyskorn hold his sword, then swing Olaf around by his ankles in order to have reach. (That last one’s still a no, by the way, Jacob.)

I know some of the people I game with, both LARPing and tabletopping, are more conservative than I am. Heck, one of my best friends at The Isles has had a “NObama” sticker on his car since before the 2008 election and considers himself a Fundamentalist Christian. I don’t care about that. I care that he’s personally a really nice guy, and that he’s a good roleplayer with a lot of great plot ideas. He knows I’m gay and married, he knows my husband, and we all get along just fine. That’s the kind of benign “You live your life, and I’ll live mine” sort of attitude I’ve become used to from the gaming community.

Speaking only for myself, romance, no matter what flavor, makes me smile. If I see a couple kissing, whether they’re two men, two women, or a man and a woman, I smile and look away, politely. I’ve seen all of those permutations take it too far, of course, and I’ve either left, or, if it seemed appropriate, asked them politely to perhaps continue once they have a room.

I want to give the people who left the benefit of the doubt. Maybe one of the gay couples was taking things too far, and they didn’t feel comfortable. Maybe rather than cause a scene, they took themselves out of the picture. But part of me worries that they simply left because they didn’t want to be around “those kinds of people.” And that makes me wonder if there are others at our games who are feigning a benevolence they don’t feel. If they are, they’re doing a damned good job of it. Most of the people I roleplay with – LARP, tabletop, online, etc – are like family to me. A whacked-out, dysfunctional family at times, but family none the less.

If there’s a hidden discontent, I’m not sure what I’d hope for. Would I hope they’d just quietly remove themselves like the folks did that I’ve mentioned? Not at all. I’d want them to tell me, to open a dialogue, to see if there’s some substance to what concerns them and not just some cultural or religious reflex kicking in. After all, good old HPL said that the most powerful kind of fear is the fear of the unknown. He may have been talking about cosmic, tentacled horrors rather than sexual orientation, but the fact is that we tend to be afraid of what we don’t understand. Maybe if there were more open, friendly conversations with a real intention to bridge understanding between people, we could put the ghost of homophobia to rest for good.

Maybe.

How did you get into RPG editing? 

I got into editing games on somewhat of a lark. I’ve playtested games before and didn’t realize that my attention to the details of the text (not the mechanics but the words around the mechanics) qualified as editing. I just thought that was what a playtester did and thought nothing more about it. I then continued to keep my game playing separate from my job (which at this particular point was teaching writing workshops and taking on private clients who wanted to write books), but that all changed last November at Double Exposure’s Metatopia Convention in Morristown (only a few minutes and a few traffic lights from my house). I figured it was at least a chance to meet the people whose games I played and enjoyed, as well as give a midnight writing workshop for those interested. Once I arrived and started attending panels, I started giving my opinion and sharing my ideas (which is not an uncommon occurrence once you know me), and that led to several game designers asking me if I was available to work with them on upcoming projects, as well as an interview on the Jennisodes podcast. From that interview, everything has just sort of ballooned, bloomed and blossomed into how things are today – my business has grown into more game-related work than novels (though I’m finding a hybrid with editing fiction lines for games), and I’m enjoying it loads more.

Most RPGs have a geographically diverse staff. How do you build a rapport with your authors and fellow team members who are located elsewhere?

That rapport is critical and for me starts as soon as possible, usually by contacting the authors or whoever is my liaison/bridge to the project and getting into a conversational tone with them. With a more ‘we’re-all-in-this-together-we-all-want-to-do-a-great-job‘ vibe established, it doesn’t matter if the whole staff is half a world away because whenever we come together (through chats or emails or even notes left in Dropboxes), that vibe is strong and clear.  The other advantage to this attitude is moving the ego-jockeying to one side and bringing people together not because they’re just famous names but because they’re good at what they do and we all want the work to succeed.

You’ve worked on a variety of RPGs, some of which have been licensed properties. What unique editing needs have you encountered with licensed games?

While I cannot speak for the other editors I’ve been so fortunate to work with, I can say that for me, the biggest concern is respecting the canon of the source material through the license, rather than taking advantage of it. It is such a privilege to have access to someone’s hard work for the purposes of playing a game with it that I think so many people overlook that fact because they just want to handle their own ‘do-over’ to patch disagreements they had when they first encountered that source material (they thought Character X should have / didn’t need to die, they wanted Characters A and B to get together, they thought a certain plot arc was utter rubbish and want to ‘fix’ it, etc).

But it’s not their job to “fix” it, it’s their job to enjoy it. A licensed game especially has to translate from whatever medium it originated in to whatever marriage of mechanics and development the game incorporates while not radically altering the original material (you cannot suddenly have a flying character not fly because the mechanics don’t permit flight) – because you run the risk of doing a disservice to the license (which makes both the game and the original material look bad) but also alienating your audience (they come to the product with certain expectations and if you’re not meeting them as a product, you WILL hear about it).

Editorially, (again this is my perspective) if I can find the tone and emotion behind the ideas in the source material, I can make sure they’re present in the game material. If a certain property is known to be gritty but have a wise-cracking charm, that has to be present in the text, and that means I often have to read or re-read that text to work out the word choices and the sentence construction along with the chronology and setting (because a licensed property can’t contradict the source). This stems from the idea that the licensed game is an extension of the material, exposing a new audience to the material through a vehicle they understand (rolling dice, character sheets, etc) rather than a “take” or spin on existing material.

What’s working with the rest of the Damage Control team for the Marvel RPG been like?

Far and away the Damage Control team is a wonderful group of incredibly hard-working editors and developers who amaze me with the tremendous amounts of work they do (so much more than many people realize), and who deserve all the credit and praise they’re getting, plus an extra heap more. I have worked with a lot of other people on a lot of projects, and repeatedly I find myself mirroring Damage Control’s organization in other projects – it’s been a profoundly transformative experience. It’s an invaluable asset to me to know that if I have a problem, I can very quickly go to another person, state the issue and we work together to find a solution. It can be so discouraging to ask questions to unresponsive people, and that is not the case with Damage Control.

It’s also the most supportive group of people I’ve ever met, even outside the Marvel RPG work. If I say I’m also doing this or that project, or that I’ve written something for the blog, other people care and do their best to read or comment or share it with others – it leads to a feeling of not being overlooked, undervalued or ignored, which unfortunately can happen when, as an editor, you take on projects and discover that the author may not like you changing their words or that a certain project has quite a few problems bubble up to the surface as you get deeper into it and deadlines loom.

If I may take a moment, I want to single out two people, Amanda Valentine and Cam Banks, without whom I would not be so lucky as to be a part of such a great project and be able to contribute whatever I can to material I believe so strongly in. I owe so much of my recent successes and happiness to their assistance and friendship and am so thankful for their belief in me to do the work I do.

But then the TV show hits the air and there are storylines where the main guy – who’s on an NBA team, mind you – is learning how to shoot a three-pointer.  And half the season is spent focusing on the guy’s girlfriend, who works in a health clinic and deals with inner-city kids – not kids who want to play basketball or anything, just standard After-School Special fare.  Hardly any of it has to do with the aspects of the sport you love.  But you keep watching, just to see the athletes you adore, and for those rare glimpses of the world that made you tune in in the first place.

Yep, that’s pretty much what’s happening with musical theatre geeks and Smash, a show that manages to be amazing and terrible all at the same time.  In Smash, we witness a musical being developed, from the general concept, to writing the songs and script, to taking it through workshops and previews, hopefully to someday land on Broadway.  Two women, relative unknowns but both talented, struggle to take the lead role.

A Gem of a Concept

In theory, the show has everything going for it – fun songs, life behind-the-scenes, the excitement and drama inherent in, well, the world of drama.  And the talent!  The cast contains actual Broadway professionals who do not fall into the cliche of over-acting for TV, and who essentially light the screen on fire with their singing and dancing.  Some known pros either haven’t been featured yet or aren’t in singing roles, but the fact that literally just about anyone on the show could break into song and have the chops to carry it off is pretty fun.  They even brought in Bernadette Peters, musical theatre legend, for a small role.

And if you’re not straight from Broadway, chances are you’re still pretty amazing.  Anjelica Huston, seemingly beloved no matter what geek flavor, as the musical’s producer!  Uma Thurman in the role of the Big Star Film Actress Who Isn’t Really Suited For Theater!   Heck, even Steven Spielberg was listed as an Executive Producer of the TV show. With such talent, how could this show go wrong?

The Rough in the Diamond

Evidently, in the writing.  The show is so completely uneven it’s laughable.  The problems begin with one of the main concepts: the two women vying for the leading role (playing Marilyn Monroe, no pressure there) aren’t really equally talented.  Katharine McPhee, an American Idol favorite, is well-suited for pop music, but she simply doesn’t have the range or depth of Megan Hilty, who starred in Wicked and 9 to 5.  The writers seemingly attempt to compensate by adding scenes where McPhee’s character, Karen, performs for random crowds and is fawned over by everyone under the sun – but all they accomplish is creating an increasingly unlikeable Mary Sue.

Not that McPhee’s the only one dealing with poor writing – pretty much every character on the show is now unlikeable.  The humanity that the actors bring in their performances is constantly undermined by mustache-twirling acts of evil and stupidity.

But what really gets under the skin of musical theatre geeks – or just regular geeks like me with knowledge of the performance world – is the dumbing-down.  No, just the dumb.  It’s perfectly understandable if a TV show wants to clue in the audience to some theater term like “upstage.”  However, when the main character who moved across the country to make it on Broadway doesn’t know a Drama 101 term?  That’s just bad writing.  There’s a non-pro character who could easily serve as an audience proxy… if he wasn’t busy twirling his cape and scheming his way up the ladder because That’s Showbiz!  Ooh!

Polishing Required

As much as I scream at my screen every time I watch Smash, the potential is just so there I can’t give up on it.  I’ve heard there’s a little reorganizing and overhauling going on behind the scenes, as well there should be.  I’m hoping the creative team sits down and analyzes what works and what doesn’t, and adjusts accordingly.  Luckily, geeks aren’t known for keeping quiet about their passions, and it shouldn’t be difficult to figure out what audiences love and hate.

If only one thing is changed, I hope it’s that there’s more focus on theater and less on ridiculous soap opera elements.  Because, though mainstream audiences are certainly drawn in by Kat McPhee and the star-studded cast, the people who really make up the passionate fanbase will be the geeks.  Why water it down?

Luckily, they’ve got the most difficult aspect of a show about musical theatre covered: the talent.  The music, the choreography, and the performances are almost always stellar.  Here’s hoping they take a clue from their own script, and know that with a show in progress, it’s always possible to rework it into something better.

What about you?  Have you watched Smash?  Love it or hate it?  And what other geekery would you like to see explored on the small (or large) screen? 

I haven’t seen The Avengers yet. I know. I have failed all of you, and I will attempt to atone for it by saying two Iron Mans and a Hail Thor.

In the meantime, before ANYONE SPOILS ME FOR AVENGERS (and I swear the first person to squeak ‘Snape kills Dumbledore!’ gets Mjolnir upside the head), let’s talk about superhero team-ups and crossovers. The Avengers, since their inception, has always been a melange of existing heroes and the occasional new recruit – it’s the way most superhero teams work, with the exception of the Fantastic Four and about half the X-Men. It’s gleefully mashing your action figures together and seeing what happens. Sometimes magic happens. Sometimes “Archie Meets Punisher” happens.

Let’s watch.

Deadpool Team-Up

Deadpool is the Somebody That I Used To Know of Marvel Comics lately – he’s everywhere, and everyone is remixing him. Among his host of titles is Deadpool Team-Up, which was a recently-ended eighteen-issue series of one-shot stories where Deadpool, shockingly, teams up with different heroes and villains of the Marvel universe, from little-known baddies like the Zapata brothers, to heavyweights like Thor. Like most Deadpool stories, Team-Up is pure ridiculous crack.

Star Trek vs. Marvel

This title is a little vague, because there is not one (Star Trek/X-Men, 1996), not two (Second Contact, 1997), but three (Planet X, 1998) world-melding forays into the fanfiction-rich territory of a brave new world where Spock punches out Wolverine and doesn’t die, and Picard is totally tapping Storm.

I would write more about this, but I have to go pay some people way too much money to get my hands on these.

Avengers vs. X-Men

These kind of battles happen all the time, as the writers at Marvel throw all their action figures up in the air and figure out who lands where. In fact, I’m pretty sure the Avengers have faced off against the X-Men before, both teams having a roster that changes faster than Cher at a retirement tour concert. But this series just started a couple months ago! And, in true mind-bending Marvel plotting fashion, it ties in the dangling plots from House of M, Seige, Secret Invasion, and probably a few other recent plot arcs I’ve forgotten. The Avengers proper having been disbanded, the titular Avengers are the Luke Cage-led New Avengers and the Hawkeye-helmed Secret Avengers.

Like Civil War, this is a surprisingly well-balanced conflict. Both sides have fairly equally valid points for their wildly differing ideologies. I’m looking forward to seeing how it highlights the military vs. intellectual conflict in the groups’ mission statements.

Ultimate Meets Amazing

Okay. This one hasn’t happened yet. But I am so excited for it. The Spider-Man storyline that is supposed to be starting in June will mark the very first crossover between the Ultimate universe and the “regular” Marvel universe, known as Earth-616 to the extremely nerdy. The “Ultimate” nomenclature isn’t just yet another synonym for Amazing and Astounding, it indicates stories that take place in an alternate version of Earth where Nick Fury is black and played by Samuel L. Jackson. But the new Avengers movies all take place in something similar to Earth-616, not the Ultimate universe (in which Bruce Banner is played by Steve Buscemi).

ULTIMATE SPOILERS IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH

Anyway. Ultimate Peter Parker joined Ultimate Uncle Ben in Ultimate Heaven, and the mask was donned by the half-black, half-Hispanic, Donald-Glover-inspired Miles Morales. New Black Spider-Man (I sense a seventies blacksploitation film about to happen . . .) somehow will fold over into Earth-616 and go webslinging with the no longer dearly-departed Peter Parker – thus forcing him to deal with his own guilt over Peter’s death, and having the hots for his girlfriend/widow.

Ungh. The drama. It feeds me.

What magical pairings have you discovered? Which still lurk in your secret fanfiction-writing hearts?

But when the iPad came out, I eyed it with more interest. I liked its larger size. Sure, I couldn’t put it in my pocket, but I could type on it with relative ease, and a Bluetooth keyboard would make it even easier. What finally decided me was the idea that I could leave my Mini-Laptop, Kindle, and iPod at home and just take a single unit with me when I traveled. I become an early adopter.

Not surprisingly, being the RPG obsessed loony I am, before long, I started looking at ways to use my iPad to run games of D&D. As time has gone on, this process has evolved. As I was pondering this week’s article (and making notes about it on my iPad), I thought I might share some of the techniques I’ve come to use that make this sleek lil unit a DM’s best friend.

Caveat

To begin with, I don’t mean this to be an advertisement for the iPad, or to start some sort of weird Apple vs. PC vs. Android war, or anything. I’m sure many of the things I mention in this article are available across multiple platforms. I mean this article to be more about getting you to think of how a mobile device can be used to enhance your DMing skills; I’m not looking for any kooky flame wars.

Made for Gaming

Sadly, Wizards of the Coast isn’t currently offering their books for sale in a PDF format, but many RPG companies are. And even if I don’t have a DM’s guide on my iPad, I can still download a module in PDF format from Dungeon Magazine and have it handy.

While there are many programs available for viewing PDFs, I’ve come to like one called Dicebook. In addition to storing books, it has a built in dice-roller that you can customize. While I generally prefer rolling dice, sometimes I want to roll one without the PCs knowing, and a silent die-roll is very helpful. This flexibility makes it ideal for my purposes.

I initially thought I’d use the iPad to access features of DDI, but this proved to be somewhat difficult at times. Of far more use at this point is a program called Compendium. This useful little app doesn’t function without a DDI subscription, but it turns that DDI subscription into a mobile app for looking up anything that WotC has put into the DDI Compendium. I can look up monster stats, trap details, skills, powers, feats, and more.

With a minimal fee, you can get the version of the app without ads. This version also has a more powerful search engine, allowing you to search for items by rarity, monsters by level, and so on, just like the actual DDI Compendium tool.

The Remote Control for my iTunes

Okay, so two programs specifically made for RPGs isn’t exactly a stunning revelation. But there are other programs that can enhance your gaming experience that have nothing to do with gaming per se.

One of my favorite little apps is a program called Remote. This program lets me hook into my iTunes wirelessly, controlling volume, starting and ending songs, and so forth.

As I’ve mentioned in earlier articles, I have organized tons of music in my iTunes into different musical themes, and I use these to evoke specific moods. I have my Battle playlist, my Creeping Through the Dungeon playlist, my Sorrow playlist, my Wonder playlist, etc. Before my iPad, I had to roll my office chair over to the computer and change the music when I wanted to alter the game’s mood. This wasn’t a problem, but my players would kind of chuckle when I did it. “Uh-oh…I think the mood’s about to change.”

Now, however, I can make these changes from behind the comfort of my DM’s screen. I can slowly fade out the Adventure music I lay when the heroes are riding across the countryside, then cut in with building, ominous music from my Impending Doom soundtrack, and the players will realize that things are going wrong. I can also cut across the music with a specific sound effect to startle them. And they never see it coming. Hehehe.

Organized Notes

I’ve seen a lot of great feedback for DMs about how to organize notes and keep track of details. I’ve seen amazing flowchart programs, and I’ve envied the DMs who can think in three dimensions like that. For me, a well-organized notebook has always been the most useful tool, and I wanted a program that would operate like that for me. I came across Notebooks as I was looking through various word processing apps, and I’ve never looked back. This simple program lets you create different books and store various documents in each book.

I’ve been making “one-sheets” for my campaigns for years, but I used to print them out each game, which was very wasteful. Now I keep them electronically. I store older ones in a notebook called “Past Game Sessions”, organized by date, which lets me go back and check details. When I’m making a new one, I can cut and paste material I didn’t use in the past game for use in the next game.

I also keep a notebook called Brainstorming, where I store all the little jotted notes about thoughts for future games. When I’m preparing games, I go back and look through these for past ideas I’ve had, cutting and pasting material I intend to use in the upcoming game session. This program, more than any other, stays on during game nights.

I sometimes use a sound recording program between sessions to “jot down” thoughts for games. If I’m busy and don’t want to do a bunch of typing, this is a real godsend, as it lets me make a recording of what’s on my mind. I’ve gotten some odd looks on the subway as I make notes like, “Dungeon concept: The Well at the Bottom of the World.”

Showing Off the Visuals

If I know there are pictures I want to show my players, I will sometimes copy them onto my iPod. At the appropriate time, I will pull up the picture, lift up my iPad, and show the players.

Since my housemate and I both have iPads, it opens up some possibilities. There are apps like Dropbox which allow you to share pictures between different iPads. We’re pondering on a system where I can move pictures into the Dropbox so that he’ll have them on his iPad, and he can then pass his iPad around.

I’ve also pondered on a game if everyone had a mobile device. Imagine having everyone on some kind of chatting program (Skype maybe) where you could notice that the Rogue’s Perception was high enough to notice a trap, cut and paste a pre-prepared message about it into his private chat box, and send it. Then the Rogue’s player, seeing the message, says “Hold on, guys…I’m feeling there’s a trip here.” It would add just a tiny hint of coolness to the game. But my group isn’t geeking out quite this hard yet. Give it time.

Your Turn

Do you love or hate electronic devices at the gaming table? Are there any specific ways you’ve come to use an iPad or similar in order to run or play a game? This is a very DM-skewed article, but I know one of my players swears by a program called i4E to use instead of a printed character sheet. Do you use something different? Let us all know.

Fiasco

2009. Bully Pulpit Games. Author: Jason Morningstar. Editor: Steve Segedy.

Truer words were never spoken.  Fiasco is not a campaign game—though I suppose if you’re crazy and/or inventive enough for sequel games, more power to you—it’s a bloody adrenaline soaked cinematic roller-coaster you play in a single session.  I find the rules are always simple to explain if using the play map, and anyone who grew up watching movies can follow the narrative beat, including the full-throttle oh-shit moment of the Tilt, and the fast downhill trip to the Aftermath. There’s a bevy of playsets at the Bully Pulpit site for whiling away a night with your friends, dreaming big, losing hard, and leaving a bloody smear on the cutting room floor.

The Fiasco Companion

2011. Bully Pulpit Games. Authors: Jason Morningstar and Steve Segedy. Editors: Steve Segedy and Amanda Valentine.

The Fiasco Companion is geared towards making your Fiasco games better—advice on writing Playsets, hacking rules, playing with new Tilt and Aftermath tables, and four new Playsets to tool around with. With a foreword from Wil Wheaton and the encapsulated advice of some of the best storytellers you’ll run across, the Fiasco companion sits right next to Fiasco on my shelf. I bought it to add to my Fiasco experience, I kept it because it confirmed what I’d felt the first time I played Fiasco—it’s a game, sure, but it’s also one of the best lessons on pacing and improv most of us will ever get outside of a conservatory.

Technoir

2011. Cellar Games. Author: Jeremy Keller. Editor: Will Hindmarch.

Being a character in Technoir strikes me a lot like being poor, overworked, and stuck in a job you probably hate. It feels light on noir aesthetic but a good turnout for the moral crapstorm present in the genre of people doing very bad things for revenge, personal profit, or the girl. If you simultaneously sex up our world with more neon and slick flash, while bringing your A Game of corruption and technology, the world we know now could be a little taste of Technoir’s world to come. The big draw for me is Technoir’s rules, and the GM approach. The push dice, descriptive nature of stats, and a focus on giving characters an honest-to-Betsy story, not just a tech-draped dungeon crawl, appeals to me greatly. Technoir’s been a hard read for me in terms of grasping all the rules, but the promise shown by the rules is keeping me going.

Shelter in Place

2011. Galileo Games. Authors: J.R. Blackwell, David A Hill Jr., Filamena Young. Editor: Brennan Taylor.

If you’re unfamiliar with one of the most classic terms in disaster response, to shelter in place is the directive for individuals in an affected area (pandemic, disaster, zombie outbreak) to confine themselves to an area, seal off the HVAC, and try to wait whatever problem is on the other side of the door.

Shelter in Place is a cinematic game that expands on the concept in a deeply disturbing and visceral way. The Director (GM) helps coordinate the game, which at its basest of points is a story of survival. Just like any good horror movie, the humans only hope for survival is managing the resources they have, and depending on each other in a world where everything has gone to Hell. The rules are clear for me even on a first read, which makes Shelter in Place an unusual gem for me. As someone who has taken disaster response exercise design (read: drills and game writing) Shelter in Place should be on the list for disaster-response teams to play.

As for a more usual consumer of games? You might want to go to the park this weekend and play Frisbee.

Or you could bring a few extra friends, and see who would survive the zombie outbreak instead.

Have any RPG books you want to recommend as summer reading? Have a new—or old—game you’re reading or reading over again?  I’d love to hear about them! Leave me a comment or find me on Twitter.

Turns out, my table wasn’t the only one busting out this game; pass a table with some particularly cackling laughter, and chances are they were playing Cards Against Humanity too.  And at least a dozen people stopped by my table to ask, “Hey!  Where did you get that?  It’s not on sale here, is it?!”  Sadly, it wasn’t, but just the same, it was a large part of the PAX experience.   But perhaps you’re like me, and you haven’t come across it yourself yet.

No Need for a Euphemism

Cards Against Humanity can most easily be described as a “Fill in the blank” game, or perhaps “Apples to Apples for filthy-minded adults.”  One black card is read aloud, with a blank  (an actual example: “Anthropologists have discovered a primitive tribe that worships ______.”).  You have a hand of white cards with options ranging from “A balanced breakfast” to “Getting really high” to “Irritable Bowel Syndrome” (and way worse ones I don’t want to mention for fear of waking the spam bots).  You choose the one you feel best fits (or is simply the funniest) and toss it in a pile, and everyone does the same.  The answers are read aloud, usually to a few guffaws, and the person who originally read the black card (the Card Czar) chooses their favorite, awarding a point to the one who struck the Czar’s funny bone.  Everyone takes turns being the Card Czar.

This is definitely a PG-13 game at the least (the very, very least).  You don’t automatically win by being the most offensive; each person has their own taste in humor, and sometimes the picks for favorite are surprising.  Still, you will have offensive cards in your hand, and at some point, you will have to play them.  Plus, when you’re acting as Card Czar, you have to read out everyone else’s choices to the entire group.  Thus, if you’re going to be cringing, either because of your own sensibilities or those of the people in your group, this isn’t the right game for that situation.  In other words, don’t play this with Grandma, unless Grandma’s down with the scatological humor.

Home-grown Humor

One of the really neat things about Cards Against Humanity is that it’s an indie game, developed by a group of people and financed through Kickstarter.  You can buy an official copy of the game for a reasonable price ($25) from Amazon, when it’s in stock – most of the time it’s sold clean out.  Another option, however, is to utilize their free, official PDF and print a copy for yourself.  Granted, if you’re looking for a shiny, nice, reusable copy it might be cheaper in the long run to wait and get a pre-made version when it’s available, but the option is available.

Cards Against Humanity was only released in 2011, but pop culture references move quickly, and humor can always be refined.  As such, the set has already been updated once, and there’s an expansion set, too.  Hopefully the expansion sets will keep on coming; though the replay value is high, more options leads to more unexpected humor.   Plus, these games always seem to grow – you’ll start a game with 5 or 6 players and by the time you’re done you’re up in the teens.

Ultimately, Cards Against Humanity was one of my favorite finds from PAX East – and it was something that was purely person-to-person buzz.

So how about you?  Have you played this game?  Are you eagerly waiting, like I am, for it to be in stock?  And what other racy games should I be checking out?

Happy May!

Every month in 2012, I’m delivering tips, questions, and writing prompts to freshen up your dating profile and have you looking your best for the love of your life (or the love of the month, if you roll that way).

Big Tips For Every Dating Profile

Start with a bang! Folks on the internet are in a hurry and like to have things delivered to their eyes as quickly as possible, otherwise, they move on. If your first sentence or two isn’t gripping, they’re going to slip away to the next profile.

Have an interchangeable section of your profile.  If this happens to be the beginning of your profile, even better. Have parts of your profile that you can delete and replace with other information. This is where you can freshen up your profile for the month by shooting in some new words that will catch the eye of someone new.

Three Questions for May

Looking for inspiration to freshen up your profile so it says, “I’ve updated this recently”? Here you go!

• Got big plans to celebrate your Mom on Mother’s Day?
• Memorial Day is coming up. Have you (or your loved ones) served in the military?
• What piece of summer clothing are you looking forward to taking out of your closet?

Three Writing Prompts

Starting a new profile or re-writing yours? Here are some questions that might get your creative juices flowing.

• Every pet has a quirk that makes them unique. What does your pet do that makes him or her adorable?
• What is your favorite movie of all time? Can you recite it word for word? What makes it so great?
• Who is your personal hero? Is there someone you admire for their strength of character? Who is it?

Happy Dating, Geek Friends!

Remember that I’m here for you if you need any help with your dating profile.

By now you should be getting the hang of the skills necessary to write and some of the things you can do to be a professional in the industry. For the next two articles, I’m going to explore the part of freelancing that has to do with your flow of assignments — what you decide to take on and when you get paid.

There are four things that affect your ability to deliver an assignment on time and in the condition that a game company is happy with: how fast you write, how well you know the system, how closely you follow the submission guidelines, and how familiar you are with the setting.

How quickly you can complete an assignment isn’t always an easy thing to understand, because sometimes playtesting is required and other times real life obligations or communication mishaps pop up. What should have been a project that took you five hours now forces you to re-examine your submission over ten or twenty.

When things don’t go as planned, well… That’s where freelancing gets interesting. Your ability to freelance comes down to what your financial obligations are. Personally, I don’t budget based on what I’m going to earn (or what I might). I plan based on what money is guaranteed to come in the door — and that is typically founded on steady part-or-full time work. You might be different.

To any company, you are an independent contractor. You’re not a company employee and you’re not on the payroll. This means that you are part of the company’s billing cycle which is dictated by the terms of the contract or company’s cash flow.

Often, freelancers don’t read the fine print. I’ve seen a lot of arguments pop up about issues that are clearly resolved by reading terms between the freelancer (you) and the company (them). If you’re taking on multiple assignments, you have to juggle your obligations based not only on deadlines, but how and when you get paid.

On the company side of things, freelancers are vendors. When working with a vendor, companies don’t always pay by the date of the invoice, but by the terms of the agreement. Sometimes, those terms do not spell out the date range when payment is owed. For example, vendors can get paid 30 days after the invoice, 45, 60, 90, and sometimes 120. For a game company, the numbers depend upon how that organization makes money. If their vendors are late or they’re not selling enough to make ends meet, the cash flow dries up, and they fall behind paying their freelancers.

With RPGs, that can mean life or death for freelancers who require that money to pay their bills. Unfortunately, this type of business model, especially when you’re counting on a payment, can be really damaging overall. When you start to fall behind on your own bills, you take up more and more assignments to pay the bills. But what happens if and when things go wrong? One assignment may be manageable, but if all the revisions come in at once?

Who you freelance for and how you structure your queue is really on you to figure out. I’ve found that the best way to stay sane is to have a job — even if it’s part-time and pays eight bucks an hour — to cover my basics. You may find you can take on twenty assignments and everyone pays you on time. Or, you may decide to pick and choose the assignments you’ll take on because you find you can’t write what you’re not interested in.

The challenge, of course, is figuring out how to juggle all the tasks required of you and still make enough to live on at the same time. Next month, I’m going to walk you through a few scenarios to help you decide how you want to proceed to Dice Castle.