I'm experimenting with a free program called Mendeley. It's intended for academics and is essentially a digital library where you load up your pdfs and it'll scan for authors, journals, blah blah blah and generate citations. You can also open up the PDFs, highlight stuff, make annotations, create tags, search through ALL your papers/tags, sort papers into collections etc. There's also an online component where you can share your collection like a reading list or make a shared collection with a limited number of participants so you can see each others' annotations/notes.

Then it occurred to me that I can upload my RPG PDFs into it.

I'm not sure how useful this will be. It means that I can take notes on my PDFs and highlight text, and when you consider that many of the PDFs I have are meant for research rather than play (unless they're short enough that I can print 'em and not feel like I may as well have bought the book), that's pretty good. If I want to, I can export the PDF with my notations and send if off to someone else. Maybe I want to give feedback about the text? It does help me organize my RPGs into a handy interface and tags are always nice. Currently the program is in beta, so some functionality isn't there - advanced search might be nice. I'd like to be able to sort the notes that I make. (They appear in a side bar, so you can jump straight to the page with the note by clicking the note. I like this.)

I've got it open now, mucking about with scientific papers, but my RPG folder is lookin' at me....

Went to the Hunter game last night. It had some cool scenes, which I shall now share because ( I like talking about my character. )

1. Most important announcement thus far: I haz the Mouse Guard RPG. \o/

2. Got talked into acting in a LARP last night. My girl and I are playing emissaries sent to the group to see if they are, as we have been told, willing to submit to our lord's rule in order to destroy the infestation of demons and the demon-tainted mortals that are plaguing the world. We feel out the characters and at the end ask for a show of hands - it's mixed. We're on our way out, ("Now we know. Thank you for your time.") when the following happens:

Theophilus (PC): Wait! How do we know you're who you say you are?
Me (thinking "It's a little late now, isn't it?"): *laugh* Come with us! We'll go meet Divus (our lord) together.
[My girl poses with arm outstretched, beckoning to Theophilus (we couldn't have planned that better!)]
Theophilus: *backs up nervously* I... don't know if I would be walking into a trap.
Me: *laughs again and leaves*
My girl: Either you have faith, or you have none.

(Her parting words have much more impact in the context of the night and the themes of the game.)

It was cool.

3. I'm not prepped for my demo game today! Why am I on LJ?!

Pure Spec is on tomorrow and Sunday. Tomorrow, I'm running short demos of Cog Wars, Don't Rest Your Head, Spirit of the Century and Dogs in the Vineyard. Because my printer ink has crapped out, I'm not sure if I have enough char sheets. Then again, I don't know what kind of traffic I'll see. If I were in the lobby, I think I'd be more worried - but I'm in the Main Hall and I suspect that people coming in may taper off after a while since games aren't especially staggered.

Sunday, I run a game of Cog Wars.

I really need to read through the rules again. And get more ink.

Even though I'm running fewer sessions, this may kill me like last year.

1. Got to play a paragon level encounter last night in D&D 4e. The Warhammer game fell through due to lack of players so we went on a quest for adventure to the mall, picked up Dungeon Delve, threw together characters (the character builder is sweeeeet) and whapped some undead. There was a Goliath Warden, a Halfling Barbarian (me! and I loves it so) and a Half-Elf Bard. I screwed up the monsters a bit (we didn't have a GM and sort of passed the book around though I played the monsters, mostly) but given that we'd forgotten to scale back the encounter to account for less than 5 players, it worked out. Worked out quite well, in fact. The halfling barbarian worked like a charm (starting off with a bang by launching herself off the shoulders of the goliath to land on the other side of a flaming zombie and flank) and the howling and yelling and raging were great fun. The goliath warden soaked up piles of damage, and the bard was throwing around all sorts of temp hit points and other random goodies. Wacky fun.

Of course, now I really want to play in an Eberron campaign with a halfling barbarian and a raptor mount. *sigh*

2. Hey, Levi. Remember that game I couldn't remember the name of? It's called Agora and it's being worked on by Josh Roby.

Once, a long time ago, before field seasons, finaira ran a game which we affectionately called "Dwagons" because we started out as hatchling dragons and were very silly. It was a d20 mod, and generally a lot of fun.

Since Levi has started mucking about with Hoard once more, I decided it might be fun to reskin my dragon character. After a certain amount of flipping, I have decided that Kepesk is a Fledgling Aspirant Wind Drake. Which means:

Fledgling: Having finally grown large enough to no longer be considered a hatchling, Kepesk and her fledge have decided to eschew the normal behavior of dragons her age. Instead of carefully finding and holding a territory (likely with the help or under the orders of an older dragon), her fledge have hit straight into the human empire with a ridiculous and yet strangely compelling story. Her humanoid form is of an Elf dressed in furs and bones. (In the Hoard universe, Elves aren't seen anymore though some humans might have elven features due to inbreeding a while back. That's okay....)

Aspirant: Upon discovering that human society sanctions groups of people to kill and steal from other groups of people (read: mercenary groups), Kepesk has convinced her fledge that the best way to treasure, glory, and the ultimate extermination of the human empire is to found a mercenary group. Not content with just any old mercenary group, Kepesk has taken advantage of old legends of elves (who claimed to be descended from dragons) who were wiped out during ancient wars with dragons (the elves fought on both sides, as I recall) and fashioned a persona who is supposed to be a direct descendant of a unheard-of-until-now group of survivors. Her persona has obviously come out of seclusion to follow an ancient destiny, counselled by the spirits of her ancestor dragons. Her plan is to gather not only mercenaries to her banner, but loyal fanatics in order to plunge the empire into war and chaos.

Wind: With an affinity for wind, Kepesk is learning creative uses for sound. Currently, she is posing as a learned storyteller, and her ability to modulate sound and her voice increases the impact of her voice. (I'm stretching a touch here, as the original Kepesk had bardic music abilities. To simulate this properly in Hoard, I'll probably need another personality trait but as a “I'm faking it!” kind of thing – which is how Kepesk operated for the most part anyway – this affinity works best.)

Drake: Like all drakes, Kepesk appears quite jagged, with barbs and spikes throughout her body, a hook-like tail, and a heavy, beak-like plate on her nose. Her spikes seem at contrast with the curled wings that comes with her Wind affinity, and her pearlescent scales shimmer in the sun. Her Drake covetness inspires in her a wanderlust to find new treasures and increase the fledge's hoard.

... God, now I'm wistful.

A while back I noticed a pretty game called Essence of Eoris. As I understood it, the preview was showed off at GenCon 2008 and preorders were taken. There were some controlled info releases as the year progressed, including some system stuff.

Then, a lot of silence.

Latest news that I've managed to find at LivingDice.com is that the books are printed (or will be, very shortly) but setting up US distribution is still in the works so a US release date hasn't been announced. Given that they're going to an international book fair (Feria Internacional del Libro - I think that's how it translates) to show off the book, it's evidence that it isn't complete vapourware. Still, I find myself inexplicably irritated that (1)the book is as late as it is (projected release date was, if I recall, some time at the beginning of the year, then March, then....) and (2) I had to hunt down news through a third party.

I think I've been spoiled by a lot of the open designing that occurs in small press games. The Eoris team's stringent control of what info was released when (their three Contacts and interviews which can close on each others' heels, which makes me think they were done at GenCon and only at GenCon though I don't have evidence of that) made them feel more like a traditional RPG company. I can forgive Wizards for acting like a monolithic company in terms of controlled info release because they shower me with updates (some of which doesn't interest me, but hey, it's there). More importantly, I feel like I can ask questions about the product that aren't utterly nonsensical. (As an example, if all you knew about Dogs in the Vineyard was that it took place in the wild west, it wouldn't be too far-fetched to ask about stats for different types of guns. This is a nonsensical question - except in a very general sense - in the context of the game, however.) Sparse, controlled info release on a new product when the company has no history, however, means that I don't even know what questions to ask. I also don't feel like I can communicate with the company because it hasn't shown much ongoing evidence of wanting to communicate outwards. It sounds like, for instance, that most of the "delays on release" style announcements are disseminated through emails, keeping a casual browser completely in the dark about the true state of the company's dealings. Not fun.

A lot of small press stuff, though, is designed (at least in part) in the open and there's a lot of communication with the public, including casual browsers like me. It makes me feel like I can participate in the conversation and, more importantly, makes me far more tolerant of delays, goof-ups and other logistical nightmares that might plague a game. Take Dresden Files. It's release was projected quite a while ago, but the creators 'fessed up to not being able to meet their deadline. Plus, there have been regular updates so we can watch the progress, and the creators invite questions/comments and interaction in general. I've actually read the Dresden Files (and enjoyed them somewhat - I started reading them when I was starting to get tired of the urban supernatural genre, so the fact that I liked them despite my weariness says something), so I ought to be more irritated by its delay than Eoris (for which I've really only seen pretty art) yet that isn't the case at all. It helps, of course, that I know that the Evil Hat products are tasty, tasty candy.

Despite the fact that Eoris' art makes my girl squee madly (and anything that makes my girl squee like that generally gets an unconditional two thumbs-up), it's going to have to be made of liquid gold and ambrosia to make up for the delays and the killing silence.

So, Saturday was Free RPG Day. In a flurry of last minute "It's WHEN?!", I phoned up Levi on Friday, got permission to give away all his hard work, and tossed CDs around like candy. Well, sorta. Made up a stack of Cog Wars burned onto CDs and left them on the table with other free stuff. My extra sneaky tactic was to include a text Read Me file named "Forbidden Lore - Read Me". (Hey, I'd read it.)

Also got sunburned slightly while playing InSpectres and the free adventure of Geist (the WoD Orpheus-esque game). InSpectres was fun and I got to yell with Finaira a lot. Geist was.... *sigh* Railroady. No fault of the GM - it's how the adventure is written. At some points we sat around going, "We wait for plot. It's bound to happen... there it is!" In the end we were trying to destroy a gun (anchor to a homicidal ghost) and we had nothing to do it with and no time to find a good place (the ghost was jumping around possessing people and trying to get the gun back). We had to vacate the table as it was booked and we'd gone over time, but it more or less ended with my character driving away with the gun in a stolen car while the other team members wrestled with our possessed compatriot. My brilliant plan was to drive the car at high speed into a wall. I was hoping that, if nothing else, the gun would be hard to retrieve from the wreck, buying us some time. Still, it was frustrating.

Oh, World of Darkness. You're so pretty - why do you hurt me so?

I caved and bought the Eberron PHB and the PHB2. I'd meant to wait on them, but they were 20% off. Eberron makes my heart melt, as always. Makes me think of my suspended game. So much stuff can be ported.... *sigh* Which made me go back to DDI, and I saw the monk playtest. Oh, monks. How I love thee.... I love the idea of full discipline techniques. They are sexy as sexy can be. Someone needs to run me a game so I can play a monk.

And this week I think there's a Dark Heresy game.

It's nice to be gaming again.

WotC has pulled their PDF products. This strikes me as insane.

Whitewolf has, in response, offered up (until Sunday) a free download of the 2nd edition Exalted PDF and a 10% discount (coupon code: wwlovesyou) at RPGdrivethru. After that fiasco a while back where they wanted to prevent anyone from charging money at events that used the WoD ruleset, this moves them further back into my good books.

There are actually quite a few lovely sales about (Evil Hat, One Bad Egg, Green Ronin), so I suppose I should thank WotC for the crazy.

We have common areas that we use in the lab and there are enough people that these common areas are often booked. Turns out I need to use them relatively often in the next few weeks and one of the only times I can get 'em is Mondays, and likely late into the evening. That being said, I'm going to put the D&D game on hiatus.

I'm annoyed....

Once upon a time I wrote a quick game for a human genetics class because the prof wanted creative projects. The situation was a couple whose unborn child was probably going to have PKU. The mother wanted to abort and the father wanted to keep the child.

I'm not going into the details about the issues surrounding PKU, the potential complications for the child, etc. Instead, I'm going to comment that'd I'd always intended on pretty-ing it up (I had stupid format constraints) and putting it somewhere.

Instead, because I had a brief wait, I tore out the "engine" and wrote it up. Here we go.

*

The next time you're having an argument with your partner, do this.

Disclaimer: I accept no responsibility if your partner decides you're a jerk and throws a deck of cards at your head or commits some other form of violence when you suggest using this method of argument resolution.

Set Up
Get a standard 52 card deck. Remove the face cards. (This is a private discussion, after all.) You may also need a piece of paper and something to write with, unless you really trust your partner's math skills and ability to remember their score correctly. During an argument. That they are trying to win.

Just sayin'.

How to Play

Play is divided into rounds.

For each round:

1. Deal out a hand of 5 cards to each person. Your score starts at zero.

2. You each take turns laying down a card and making a point. Your point may come in two types:

a. Logical - If your point makes use of rational facts and builds on a logical foundation, then you add the value of the card you put down to your score.

b. Emotional - If your point makes use of emotional attacks or entreaties (ranging from "you're a jerk" to "I'm just trying to understand and you won't let me."), then you subtract the value of the card from your score. Your score can be negative.

Note: If you can't come to an agreement as to whether the point is emotional or logical, it's an emotional point.

3. After you have made your point, draw a card.

4. Go back and forth, making points. Do not reshuffle the cards back into the deck.

5. There are two ways to win a round:

a. Get your score to 40. You win! Because you won primarily due to logical points, on the subsequent rounds your score starts at +2. If you win multiple rounds in a logical manner, this stacks.

b. Your score is 20 less than your partner's. For instance, your score is 4 while your partner's score is 24. You win! Because you won primarily due to emotional appeals, on subsequent rounds you get to start with an extra card in your hand. If you win multiple rounds in an emotional manner, this stacks.

Note: If the deck of cards runs out and no one has cards in their hands before either of the two usual ways to win comes up, then the person whose score is closest to 40 wins the round, but they receive no other benefit.

6. If no one has won the argument, shuffle the deck of cards and deal out a new round.

Winning the argument

Whoever wins three rounds first wins the argument. If you won mostly with logical arguments, you get to feel superior and demand worship from your partner. If you won mostly with emotional arguments, you get to gloat and demand comfort from your partner.

I'm up to my eyebrows in grad work, but I've idiot-proofed it to the point where I'm falling asleep on my feet. That kind of distraction increases my idiot-powers to the point where my idiot-proofness can't cope. Therefore, I've a question:

When you buy an rpg, what artifacts do you want?

These include setting books, rule books, minis, tokens, dice, blah blah blah. In a perfect world, where you could see any kind of physical artifact in a box with your perfect game, what do you want to see with it?

This can get as outlandish as you like. Like, right now, I'm increasingly thinking that coil-bound books are the way to go. Pads with character sheets. Dice rollers. Flippy-books that you can stand up. Plastic character sheets so you can write and wipe without graying everything. Thematic tokens. A carrying chest.

Hit me. Please.

A lot of games are offered in PDF format. Many of these PDFs are simply PDF versions of the physical book, which is fine. Thing is, I don't think that many products released purely as PDFs really take advantage of the medium. A PDF is not just something you can print, but is also something that you can look at on the screen. If it doesn't have to mimic a physical book, why should it?

Some considerations for what I consider would be a good PDF-only product, in no particular order:

1. Landscape page
If I want to look at an entire page on the computer screen, it's better if it's landscaped. I never really thought about it until D&D switched Dragon and Dungeon to PDF format, and made it all landscaped. I can read an entire page without scrolling up and down to get to the next column. This is lovely. Admittedly, it's easier to read a portrait style page when it's printed, but I personally feel the comfort of reading a full page without having to scroll outweighs the minor irritation of having to turn my binder to read a PDF I've printed.

2. Simple or no art on essential pages
Pages that are going to be printed should either not have art or have simply line art. Art's all well and good, but I often don't want to blow my printer's ink on art just because I want to be able to reference Table 3.1 more easily or if I feel that all my player should have a copy of it. While a PDF can be printed whole to create a book, the draw of a PDF is that you can print certain sections multiple times, and printing the same bit of complicated, colour art multiple times because you have to is a waste. I'd personally limit colour art to the cover and maybe go with coloured accents (say, in a section header/title) which could be printed well in grayscale.

3. Bookmarks
The one thing I hate about PDFs is how long it takes for me to flip through it to find something. Part of this is tied to the need to scroll through a page to see if it really is the right one. Part of it is just the electronic format. Bookmarks help.

4. 8.5" x 11"
For physical books, I like the 9" x 6" format because it'll fit into my purse. Letter-sized PDFs seem obvious because letter-sized paper is the norm. Now, if you wanted to, you could make a PDF with 5.5" x 8.5" pages and set it up so that it could be printed like a booklet. Then the consumer could print the booklet, fold it, staple it (if the stapler is long enough - improvisation is fun!) and have a RPG booklet. This, of course, only works if the PDF is small enough. I actually prefer the 8.5" x 11" as a full page setup because it means there's more whitespace. I find it easier to read on the screen. Also, it means I have room to write on the PDF. I normally have compunctions against writing in books, but a PDF printout is ideal for that sort of things. Make big margins! Give whitespace for notes to be scribbled around important details. Hell, make big margins so that the sticky note I put on the side doesn't cover up the text.

5. A separate file for need-to-print items
If the main PDF is huge and my computer is slow, it's irritating for me to have to wait forever to print off a blank character sheet just because Joe forgot to bring his that night. Since the allure of a PDF is that you can print certain sections at a time, it means you don't have to keep all sections in the same file. Certainly, there should be one "everything and the kitchen sink" file in case someone wants to paw through the entire thing without having to open multiple files, but separating out the "going to print often" stuff is very convenient.

6. Origami
Okay, I'm being a little facetious here, but gimme a minute. You're making a PDF where the consumer does all the work with the physical stuff. So why not give them some fun or useful things to do? Like a printout for a fold-it-yourself envelope to hold the power cards. Or a sheet with dotted lines to show how to fold a ninja star (there are instructions for ninja stars in Ninja Burger - this is genius). You don't have to do the physical work, and the consumer only has to if they want to, so why not provide some options/suggestions?

If I knew anything about actual layout and design, I'd say things about "what's easier to read on the screen" style layout. But I don't. Anybody have any thoughts they'd like to add? Criticisms?

Anyone have any news about Eoris Essence? I think it's supposed to be out now, but I haven't seen any reviews of it yet. Just previews. It looks very very pretty, but I don't know anything about the substance.

In a comment on Levi's journal, I said this:

Here's my theory statement for the day:

When a decision is made, the method needs to be internally consistent; however, when decisions are made, the methods employed do not need to be consistent with each other.

Example: Bob wants to shoot Joe. Bob flips a coin. Heads! Joe is shot.

Later, Bob wants to shoot Joe. He plays the pencil dropping game. He catches it! Joe is shot.

The methods are not consistent with each other but within an individual decision point, it is consistent. (It was predecided that heads = shot, for instance.) Whether methods are consistent between decisions is a matter of context. I stripped all context from the example I gave but I bet you could easily come up with some.

I stayed up super late last night and don't have the ability to put my other thoughts on this in a coherent fashion. So I'm putting in a placeholder post instead to remind me that I want to elaborate on it. Also, to give a place for Levi to poke me and remind me to elaborate on it. :D

I was talking with Levi last night about his idea of a system which promoted intuitive real-time hacking of said system (see this thread on RPG.net to get an idea of what started the conversation - I can't really reproduce what we were talking about since there was a lot of personal jargon/language being tossed about). I said to him, "What you want is a system that looks like this: Flip a coin when you need to."

It wasn't until this morning that the meme caught up with me - our favorite random game to haul out for no good reason.

d02, which know no limit.

Therefore, I present to you "d02 Know No Limit - the Revised Edition." Sadly, this is actually a semi-serious system. I'm so ashamed.

( No Limits! )

1. No D&D on this coming Monday. I'm taking the full weekend off (I really shouldn't, but screw it) and don't want to feel like I have to prep for game. I probably will anyway, but that's beside the point. Game on the following Monday.

2. Is anybody going to the Wake? How are you getting there?

3. Been doing more musing on Haunting. Sometimes I wonder if Haunting isn't going to be my personal exercise in mental wankery. Mind you, wankery can be fun so long as you don't splash it onto everyone else. :P

4. The ending of My Hime is one of those "And everything turns out all right and no one really died and yay!" The sophisticated part of me wants to roll my eyes, but the little girl in me squeals with joy and longs for a pony. I think it's just the way magical school girl animes affect me. I've really got to get my hands on a copy of Bliss Stage one of these days.

5. Hey, Levi? When's the Fateful Cog party?

The Cog Wars has two different ways to change your character mechanically to get more dice: the safe way and the fun way. (I'm a little biased - can you tell?) The safe way involves spending experience points. You can get new traits, increase old traits, and increase your zeal pool (the game's "go juice"). These are safe because they can't be used against you - you maintain control of thost traits and they give you extra jam. Good stuff. (As a side note, you can also change the name of your trait for no experience to reflect change in your character, but it doesn't come with an upgrade in dice, so it's cosmetic.)

The fun way is to use conditions.

Conditions are like aspects in that they are traits which a location or a person might have. They can be built up or down, and they can be added without experience cost. There's often a dice roll involved, but that's not a big deal. They can represent equipment, injuries, a state of mind.... Anything. The really fun bit is that they can also go hostile. Conditions can attack you, attack others, attack the scenery. At first glance, this makes them ideal for tracking things like injuries. The thing is, this is probably the simplest use for them.

Levi put up an example of using conditions in a creative and bizarre way, which I'll reproduc here. Say you've had your ass handed to you by the bad guy, and you have "battered and bruised" as a condition at 4. It's hostile now - it gets turns where it makes throws against you to kill you dead. So you go, "Well, I've got no healing jam... but I'm a mystic. So I'm going to crawl into a sewer tunnel and make a throw to add the condition 'Healing Coma' on myself. And I'm going to increase it until it gets to 4, and when it goes hostile I want it to fight my injuries."

This is cool. Now, Levi's example includes the "Healing Coma" condition fighting itself and removing itself once the other injures are gone. This goes only so far, as it ceases to be hostile once it drops itself from 4 to 3 dice. But maybe you've got the condition "Desperate for revenge." So you use that to get rid of the rest of "Healing Coma" so you can wake up and get a move on. Or maybe the group decides that "Healing Coma", once it's finished off the other injuries, attacks you to try to keep you in blissful slumber while the world whirls around you. (I bet that's what happened to Snow White.)

Or what if you wanted to represent rank in a particular group? Like say you were part of the Knights of Hegerron. When your membership to the Knights goes hostile, it forces you to follow the code of the Knights or go off on some side quest when it might be to your character's best interest to pursue something else. So you sit there, with your "Knight of Hegerron" condition at 3, sweating as a Mastermind snickers, "O gallant knight, surely my poor, sputtering machine is not nearly so important as the factory workers in the CogWerks disassembly shop? Children, all, and I hear that there has been the delivery of a Cogworking contaminated with a dreadful substance." The Mastermind makes a throw to increase the "Knight of Hegerron" condition to increase it to 4, whereupon it goes hostile and tries to force you to go running off to check on the kids in the factory (who may not even be in danger, but probably are) while the Mastermind puts the finishing touches on his machine.

Or what if you have your true love as a condition? But you don't want your true love to turn against you, so you keep the rating low - say at 1 or 2. So the Mastermind, instead of driving your condition to turn hostile, destroys it.

Conditions are the fun way to change your character because they drive your character. Many are just trackers, but it's easy to make conditions that can drive you in one direction or another, and it always emerges out of play. This is the hidden gold of The Cog Wars and makes it rock.

My eyeballs hurt for no reason. If I'd known my eyeballs would hurt today, I would have gotten sloshed last night. Then there would be a reason.

In more important news, Dec 22 sees our day long D&D game. Come at 1PM.

As for food:

Since we'll be playing for most of the day, rather than doing the usual "bring bits for a single meal", I suggest everyone brings drinks, snacks and a food dish which can be put into the day-long buffet. Because I'd like everyone to bring drinks and snacks, you don't need to bring much. As for an example of a dish for the day-long buffet, we're making meatballs in the crock pot.

Sound good?

Just sent Levi the latest edits for The Cog Wars Zero Edition.

Was there more I'd like to do? Sure.

Is it a spiffy product anyway? Absolutely.

Behind-the-scenes DVD commentary when I've had some sleep. :)