AMP: Year Two Kickstarter is up and running

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Hey guys,

Just wanted to talk a little about a Kickstarter project I’m backing at the moment. AMP: Year Two, is the first expansion book for AMP: Year One, a game by Eloy Lasanta of Third Eye Games.

Eloy is a very talented designer who I first encountered through his previous game Part-Time Gods, a brilliant RPG about playing as people who have gained a spark of divinity, and their struggles to balance their humanity against their divine power. So once I heard he was making a supers themed game, well, I was 100% in. Sure enough, when it arrived, it was everything I’d wanted it to be.

So, let’s take a look at it shall we?

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Book Review – Pathfinder Tales: Pirates Promise

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Alright ladies and gentlemen, it’s book review time! Still working on some other updates, but I thought I’d smash this one out-of-the-way while the book is relatively fresh in my mind. It’ll be a quick one, and free of major spoilers, since I’m kind of pressed for time at the moment. Got a lot of stuff on the go at the moment. If I can, I’ll try to come back and write some more in-depth analysis of the book, but this ought to do to get my opinion of it across.

Anyway, let’s get down to it.

Pirate’s Promise

Chris A. Jackson

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Captain Torius Vin gets ready to throw down against a trollhound

Captain Torius Vin gets ready to throw down against a trollhound

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Interview with Phil Day, creator of Sol tabletop RPG

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Hey there guys,

Well, it’s a new year, and I’m back to writing. Not gonna make any promises about regularity of content, but we’ll see how we go. Hopefully I can coax Jimbles into coming back and doing some more posts as well.

Anyway, for those of you who aren’t Canberra based, we have a yearly convention here called CanCon that covers card games, board games and war games. I’m actually not sure if it has much of an RPG component, I’ve never really seen groups there for it, but it could just be that I’m not looking in the right areas. Happens on the Australia Day long weekend every January, so it was on not the weekend before last. I don’t normally play in any games at the convention (I gave up competitive play for card games a few years ago, and carting around my army for Hordes is too much effort on the bike), but I make a point of going and checking out the vendors. There’s usually some good deals on games, and I often find a lot of more obscure RPG books (or even just some older stuff that isn’t as easily found these days). Anyway, while making my rounds of the various stores, I found a table advertising a Kickstarter campaign for an RPG called Sol. Of course, being me, I had to stop and see what it was all about. So I got to chatting with Phil Day, the creator, and Kirk Hone, the chief play tester about what the game had to offer. While I didn’t have a huge amount of time to talk with them, I got a bit of a feel for the game, and started to understand just how passionate about it they are.

Based on the quick chat I had with them, I was intrigued. It sounded like a fairly simple system, with a focus on letting the GM (or in this case, Adjudicator) tell stories without having to worry about a vast library of rules and the ways everything interacts with each other. . Don’t get me wrong, I love my Pathfinder and Shadowrun games, but they do tend to get pretty complicated at times. I’d say it’s not uncommon to have to pause Pathfinder sessions I run at least two or three times a session for around ten minutes at a time, just to look up and find out how certain rules actually work. It’s no one’s fault, it’s just what happens when games have so much content. So sometimes it’s nice to see a single book system that’s designed to have simple core rules, and runs on the old school ethos of “if the rules don’t cover it, the GM makes the call”. Yes Rule 0 still exists, but these days it’s often used as a way of saying “for the sake of time, the GM will make a call now and research how it should have worked later”, rather than “the GM thinks rule of cool says it should work this way, and he’s not being unfair about it, so why the hell not!”. I guess what I’m saying is that as more rules are available for games like Pathfinder, players inevitably want to use them, and often aren’t happy to be told that certain things don’t work in the game they’re playing in. I get that, after all, if I spend money on something, I want to use it, but it can definitely bog things down. So the more I thought about this game, the more interested I was. When I got home (with a pile of books and games strapped to the pillion seat of my bike), I jumped online and checked out the Kickstarter (take a look for yourself HERE). I was interested enough to pledge straight away, and also sent Phil a quick message mentioning that I’d be interested in doing an interview about the game. When I popped back out to the con the next day to spend yet more money and give my cousin his first exposure to a gaming convention, I stopped by the table again to hash out some details with Phil.

So, a couple of weeks later, here we are. I present to you, the Grassy Gnoll’s interview with Phil Day, creator of the Sol tabletop RPG.

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We never think that we’re missing much, til… – Final post for 2014

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Hey guys, I thought I should pop in and let people know that I’m still alive and kicking. Truth be told, I’ve been meaning to post something for a while now, but have just been having trouble getting motivation. I’m not going to make excuses, I’m not going to promise more regular updates. Instead I’m just going to talk about what’s been happening in my life, both recently and over the last year or so (quite possibly longer). I’ll keep it brief, but I just wanted to get this off my chest. As one of my friends says, it’s important that we be able to talk openly about this kind of stuff, so that others going through similar situations can know they’re not alone and that there’s help out there, no matter what the problem.

If you’re wondering about the title of this post, it’s a line from a Chevelle song, called Sleep Apnea. It came up while I was trying to think of something, and it seemed appropriate. I’ll explain that later though.

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CIFF 2014 Reviews – Round 2: Appropriate Behavior, Afterlife, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her & Him, Starred Up

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Alright, time for the second round of reviews for the 2014 Canberra International Film Festival. I know I said it’d be up on Wednesday, but I’m afraid I had a most insistent migraine that decided I didn’t really need to do anything but take a bunch of painkillers and go to bed that evening. Who am I to tell the migraine no? So painkillers and bed it was. Even better, I couldn’t open my right eye properly the following morning, went to the doctor and found out that I have an eye infection… in the middle of film festival season. Thankfully I got it checked out before it had time to take hold, and it’s not contagious or too serious, with no impairment to my vision, so I’m still able to ride, work and go see the films. So, soldiering on through it. Unfortunately I still had a lot on to work around the festival as well, so this got pushed back further than I’d have liked.

Before I get stuck in though, I wanted to talk about something real quick. I was thinking the other day about what it is I love about film festivals. Interestingly enough, the biggest thing for me isn’t the films (though obviously they’re a pretty damn important part of it), rather it’s the people I meet. End up sitting next to the right person, strike up a conversation, and you can find out some fascinating stuff. At last year’s Freaky Fridays I met a couple of guys that I’m now hanging out with from time to time, going to the movies with semi-regularly and even helped out with a Tropfest entry by playing a minor role (I got to be a messed up looking vampire, good times!). I met a woman who helped setup the festival years back, and still bump into her at the movies from time to time, leading to plenty of discussions about cinema and what we’ve been watching. Just the other night at the Afterlife screening, I met a guy who comes up from Melbourne for a few weeks every year for the film festival, and had a great chat with him about what we’d both seen so far, as well as talking about the film after it finished. Without something like the festival, odds are that I’d never encounter these people, and I feel like that’d be a real shame. I sometimes have trouble meeting new people, and to have something like this where it can be almost guaranteed that I’m going to share some interests with the people around me really helps boost my confidence to talk to those around me.

Anyway, let’s get started. I’ve got five films to review this time around, but two of them will be reviewed as one due to the way they’re meant to be watched… don’t give me that look, you’ll see what I mean when I get to them. Moving along…

As last time, there may be spoilers, I make no promises, you have been warned. If you want to avoid them entirely except for basic setup spoilers, read the summary of the review, which is shown above the poster for each film. Again, titles link to the CIFF page for each film, which will have a trailer if one is available.

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CIFF 2014 Reviews – Round 1: In Order of Disappearance, Why Don’t You Play In Hell?, The Salvation and The Congress

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Hey hey! The 2014 Canberra International Film Festival started last Thursday, and I’ve been spending most of my free time since then watching movies. I’ve seen seven of the twenty-two (potentially twenty-three) on my schedule so far, and honestly I’ve loved them all. Unlike last year’s aborted attempt, this year I’m determined to review all of them. In the interests of making that manageable, I’ve set a couple of guidelines for myself. I’ll be reviewing them in batches of four films, and limiting myself to five hundred words per film, give or take a hundred words each. I’ll try to avoid major spoilers, but as always with my reviews, there’s no guarantees, so consider this your fair warning. If you want to be really safe, just read the summary I put at the start of each section. I’ll even put the poster for the movie after each summary so you know where to stop reading, so you know, never say I don’t do anything for you.

Now as I always say, I’m no serious film critic. I tend to go pretty easy on films so long as I find something to enjoy in them, and I make no apologies for that. So far this year I haven’t rated any of the films lower than a 4, and I think last year I only rated one of them as a 1 or 2.

Now that the preamble is out-of-the-way, let’s get this show on the road. For Round 1, I’ll be talking about In Order of Disappearance, Why Don’t You Play In Hell, The Salvation and The Congress. Each title is linked to the page for the film on the CIFF website, if a trailer is available for it, you can find it there.

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Tinkergoth’s Guide to Concert Etiquette (Warning: Profanity)

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Hey everyone. It’s been far longer than I’d wanted it to be before I posted something, but the truth of the matter is that I haven’t been gaming much at all recently, and am in fact taking a bit of a break from Pathfinder while I deal with some personal stuff. Additionally, the Canberra International Film Festival starts next Friday, meaning that any posts I make in the next three weeks or so are more likely than not to be related to that (my next post will in fact be a list of which movies I’m seeing, but in the mean time feel free to check out the program at www.ciff.com.au). Twenty three films in just under three weeks is a bit of a time sink, but hey, it only comes around once a year.

Anyway, let’s get onto the topic at hand. I went and saw The Tea Party at the ANU Bar tonight, which made me so, so happy, especially since The Superjesus were one of the support acts. For those of you who don’t know, The Tea Party are a Canadian rock band with a unique eastern influenced style that often gets them referred to as Moroccan Roll. They’re one of my favourite bands, have been since a family put me on to them when I was quite young. The show was, as expected, amazing, and they played almost all of the songs I wanted to hear (the only ones missing were Cathartik and Walking Wounded). I met some awesome people, rocked out and generally had a fantastic time. Walked out thankful that they’d finally got back together so that I had an opportunity to see them after all these years.

Unfortunately, as is often the case at shows held at venues like that (smallish university bars), some people can’t just enjoy the music, they have to ruin it for those around them. I kind of expect a crowd to get a bit rough at metal shows and so on, but for bands like The Tea Party it just ticks me off. Particularly when some lovely older woman who’s obviously a long time fan has arrived early to get a spot near the front with her husband and friends, and gets harassed badly enough that she ends up leaving in tears twenty minutes into the main act. So I’ve decided that I’d try to share some information about etiquette at gigs, which will hopefully educate and enlighten some people (not bloody likely, but it’s been way too long since I’ve had a rant, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity). Obviously when I say “you” in the following rant, I’m not referring to everyone. Just the idiots who behave this way. Also, second and final warning, profanity is on the way.

So, buckle up ladies and gentlemen, and prepare yourself for…

Tinkergoth’s Guide to Concert Etiquette

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Review – “Pariah, Missouri” Vol. 1: Answering the Call

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“Welcome to the Weird West.”

That’s the first thing I thought when I read volume 1 of Andres Salazar’s comic Pariah, Missouri. For anyone who doesn’t know me well enough to tell, that’s a good thing. A really, really good thing. While I may not get many chances to play in it, Dead Lands has long been one of my favourite RPG settings, and the mix of western and supernatural influences in Pariah, Missouri, scratches the same itch for me. I’m by no means a fantasy purist, in fact the best way to describe it is that I love nothing more than having my chocolate (the fantasy genre) mixed with peanut butter (sci-fi, horror, westerns, whatever genre floats your boat). Note that this only applies to my tastes in fictional media (games, novels, movies, and so on)… bring any actual peanut butter anywhere near me, well, pray the gods have mercy, ’cause I sure as hell won’t. It’s not that I’m allergic or anything, I just really hate the taste of peanuts. Anyway, let’s get this back on track and into the actual review.

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What’s been going on?

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Hey guys, thought I’d post a quick update on what’s been going on here. The answer is, irritatingly, not a whole lot. More accurately, there’s a lot going on, but none of it’s really helping me get stuff posted here. I’m going through one of my semi-regular bouts of writer’s block, and hating every second of it as usual. It’s a really irritating time for it to happen to, as I have five updates for The Unusual Suspects that I want to get written and posted ASAP. Normally I’d be happy to just put ’em on the back-burner and wait until I’m able to work through the block, but these ones are a little different, as each one is actually a character created by a member from the Paizo message boards. I’ll explain more about what’s going on with that when I get the first post up finally, but they’re some pretty cool characters, and I’m keen to get them out there.

Apart from those frustrations, I’m working on a few new campaigns I’d like to run at some point. My Project Helleborus and Urban Magic homebrew games have sadly been postponed indefinitely, because finding the time to work on such ambitious projects isn’t feasible at the moment. With Pathfinder, I’ve found it’s really just easier for me to run and play Paizo’s Adventure Paths, as they’re generally pretty solid and can be run with a minimum of prep. Urban Magic… well that required me to re-skin the entirety of Mage: The Awakening to run it, and I honestly just don’t have that kind of time. I may be able to resurrect the idea later on using Savage Worlds or FATE, but it won’t be for a while. Right now my focus is on trying to get an AMP: Year One group going, and possibly one for Part-Time Gods as well. As I work on that, I’ll be posting status updates regarding the system, putting the group together, and running the game. I’m also getting a few one shots ready for various systems to run my cousin’s group through, so that should give me some more ammo for Role-Playing 101 updates, but I’m not sure when the group will be able to get together again (while I’m sure the kids would be happy to play every weekend, I know they’ve got school work they need to do, so I’m careful to make sure all the parents are okay with the session times).

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Professor Jimbles Presents! Shameless Bragging

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I won a friggin’ award!

Seriously, they just give these out.

Seriously, they just give these out.

Phenomenon, “Canberra’s friendliest roleplaying convention!” Was held on the June long weekend about a month ago. Every year it tries to pull the best GMs, Organizers, Vendors and Players together for as many games as you can handle. The Pathfinder Society holds games all weekend and gives out honourable mentions to their best players. This year they plowed through Rise of the Runelords! In four days!

Phenomenon also holds the Triptych and Diptych events, what I call “Competition” games that are played with a team of five people. They should all involve the year’s theme in some way. The triptych is a series of 3 serious games that are generally rules light and should provoke deep characterization. The diptych games are exceptionally well crafted comedy games that are treated as palate cleansers from all the angst and introspection of the Triptych.

This year, these competition games were: *note* These descriptions are stolen from the Phenomenon website.

Jinkies: A Space Opera (Diptych)
The air duct is dark, claustrophobic. Stale air clings to you, exacerbating the felling of confinement. You still your breathing, straining to hear the footsteps in the corridor beyond the vent. Gradually, you adjust to the darkness, and can make out the forms of your friends, four others in all, silent and shivering from the cold. And the fear. At the edge of your hearing, it comes, the rhythmic tapping of feet, and the metallic grind of a large blade dragging on the steel floor. It seems to be getting louder, and one of your compatriots lets out a noise, little more than a whisper.
“Ruh-Roh.”

The scene is Prima-Rho Alpha, an abandoned scientific outpost turned hip and happening hang-out for all the cool kids. It’s Earth-Hallow, October 31st, and all the kids in the system have turned out for a rocking evening of costumes, pranks, spiked punch and unprotected premarital…holding hands…

What could possibly go wrong?

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Vampire: The Ugoogly (Diptych)
Death. Such a simple and complete concept. One second you are here, and the next you are not.

Time. One thing you cannot fight against, as your face withers, and the things and people you knew move on.

Is there anything that can stand up to these irresistible forces? Well anything besides an Orange Mocha Frappuccino of course!

There is one thing, one thing we’re always lead to believe is a dark and tragic existence, one thing which is painted in horror and tragedy. The so called curse of vampirism.

To five friends, all models of exceptional looks, all the talk of the town, the promise of immortal beauty and youth is too good to pass up. To these five, a curse becomes a gift, and a gift they plan to use to its full advantage.

Maybe it is possible to have a good time, even when blood replaces milk in your nightly pick me up. Maybe it is possible to not let the loss of friends and family be the only thing to define you, as there’s always new and interesting people to meet, and new places popping up to explore.

Maybe it’s even possible to show the stiffs that there’s still a good time to be had after all.

Just have to make sure they don’t find you breaking their precious Masquerade.

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Ever On (Triptych)
Too few years from now.

Our Earth in decline.

A last frontier; a last hope – but a hope for what?

Five explorers venture into space to find solutions to Earth’s problems but return with only more questions.

Ever On is a substantially free-form/somewhat systematised exploration of super-humanity and decision-making across a flexible time-scale. It intends to present players with an opportunity to engage with the consequences of making decisions that direct their personal, cultural, and civilisational development.

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Closing The Gates of Dawn (Triptych)
Age creeps up on us. Aching knees. Fingers that are not as nimble as they once were. Changing priorities. Friends grow old. Get married. Move away. Die. Technology advances. New rules appear.

A door in your home still leads to a place where this is not true.

Will you give away everything real for a chance at lost glory?

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Inner Space (Triptych)
There was an incident…

Shots fired.

What happened?

Where am I?

Who am I?

From a moment of crisis, there can be many possible outcomes. Split second decisions lead to unforeseen consequences. Some people accept the responsibility for their actions, intentional or not. Some people deny their part in the cause or in the effect. Others spend the rest of their lives second guessing and judging themselves for what they did in those few moments, cursing their lack of vision, foresight or courage.

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I went in with my loyal team “Cardgames on Motorcycles” and played hard in all of them. The team knows each other so well that we can push boundaries in playing that others could hope for. We can separate in character and out of character knowledge so well that we can be screaming at each other and then eating dinner and praising each other’s skill. I feel like I let them down.

We particularly shined in Ugoogly, devolving everyone (including the GM) into gales of uncontrollable laughter for up to ten minutes at a time. I thought we’d definitely get an honorable mention.

But we won! The GMs for the Diptychs found us so good that they awarded us the year’s Diptych Perpetual Trophy.

While this is a fantastic honour; some friends have raised concerns about competition roleplaying. I would like to examine the concept in the next Professor Jimbles Presents!: “I play to win, baby.”

EDITORS NOTE: Professor Jimbles forgot to post this for a while, and then forgot to update the published time on it. Silly Jimbles. So while it’s a bit old, I’m updating the time stamp on it since it’d be nice if people actually saw it. Additionally, I’m hoping to get Jimbles to add the photo of the team posing with their medals. Other than that, I’ve just added some spacers to make it a bit easier to read.