Thursday, June 25, 2009

RIP Chuck Cuthbert


On Friday night the world lost a great man in the form of friend and fellow gamer Chuck Cuthbert. As his obituary indicates, he was a long-time army man although I really only knew his off-duty self well. But whether on-duty or off, I can tell you that Chuck worked tirelessly to better family, friends, and country.

Chuck and his lovely wife Heather first appeared in my life back around 2000-2001 when they walked into the drug store and asked if I was Bret. "This is odd," I thought, "I hope they don't want money or something." As it turned out, all they wanted was friendship. My dad and Chuck had been members of the same Emergency Management group in my hometown and my dad must have mentioned my affinity for D&D. Long-time players themselves (Heather and Chuck had a Ren Faire-type wedding in fact), they were eager to find a group in Hamburg where they must have just moved to a short time before.

After having just lost 2 players to non-D&D distractions, I was more than happy to have the Cuthberts as part of the regular crew. Not long after we met, the Cuthberts were kind enough to offer their furnished barn in which to host our games and it is where we've enjoyed each other's company for the last 8 years. My group had never experienced such comfortable surroundings! Chuck and Heather always provided refreshments and proved to be better roleplayers and friends than I could have ever asked for.

No matter what character he played, Chuck would always be attentive and ready with a plan to save the beseiged party's collective asses in some outrageous fashion (often forcing me to rethink my bad guy's actions and, overall, make me a better DM). In his final game, a couple weeks ago, his character wrenched a poisoned scythe blade from a trap and hurled it at the 4-armed demon in the next room. It wasn't until after the combat when he learned the creature's immunity to poison, but here's what he wrote on the XP sheet he handed in: "Disabled Scythe Trap and used it to attack Mr. Fourarms (who was immune to poison, but I didn't know that so it was still cool!!!"). As a GM, Chuck was incomparable. Attention to detail and ability to improvise came as second nature to him which, as anyone who's run a game can tell you, are essential qualities. No one could run Spycraft or Traveller like him and likely never will.

We've shared countless adventures together with Chuck--both in and out of roleplaying--but now he has set off on man's greatest adventure. Alone, for now, perhaps. But one day we will all meet again to continue that journey of adventure and friendship for eternity.

Godspeed, my friend. You will be missed.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Wired's 5 Best RPG Blogs

Wired.com has announced their picks as the best 5 gaming blogs. Check them out!

I just don't read enough rpg blogs for some reason. Guess I should change that as there seems to be a wealth of varying info on the ones mentioned. Creativity doesn't flourish in a vaccuum (which is I think why I don't get enough brainstorming accomplished on my isolated drives).

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Swords & Wizardry rules

One of the message boarders at the S&W forums made a nice little site displaying the 2.0 version of the game's rules. This should come in quite handy when production on adventures begins. Click here!

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Roll Out!

My online site of choice for the purchase of retro T-shirts is having a sale until 6/19 in honor of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. http://www.80stees.com/ is the site and the coupon code for 10% off is "transform". Go pick up something nice for yourself. You deserve it. :)

Oh, and sign up for the mailing list because the discounts (offered like 4-5 times a year) are usually as high as 25%.

Monday, June 15, 2009

That Was Fast!

Another weekend suddenly sucked into the misty temporal ethers. Still, it was jam-packed with activity. Got all my cleaning/washing chores out of the way Friday night. After working Sat until 4:30pm I spent ~2 hrs at Delaware Park (nope, didn't come out ahead but didn't lose much either). Got some reading done late that night. Sunday was shopping with Linda where we scored some great deals at Kohl's (I needed some new work shorts and sneakers) and then I was forunate enough to get some mini-golfing in with Scot, Zlaty, and the Cuthberts. Regrettably, I lost by one stroke so the trophy will pass from my house to Scot's. Vengeance will be mine soon enough!

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Snatching from TV

When writing modules for my home campaigns, I always think of them as TV shows. It provides (at least to me) a structure that is lacking in the otherwise loose collection of modules called a "campaign" wherein the characters grow stronger (if not necessarily smarter) simply by killing things.

For characters to grow, and for players to better enjoy adventures, there needs to be some kind of over-arcing plotline. I'm not saying that a string of one-off adventures with the same PCs isn't fun but there's nothing like an epic plot that peaks out of the shadows during the course of a campaign. And nothing heightens the tension and grabs player attention more than a season finale (a la a TV show finale).

Now, you as DM aren't trying to raise the ratings for your show but you are, with a "finale", raising the stakes for both players and PCs. To do this effectively, I look at what my favorite shows are up to and what the writers were thinking when they penned a season finale. This blog post stems from a behind the scenes look from Star Trek: TNG season 3 wherein Michael Pillar, the scribe for the seminal episode "Best of Both Worlds" describes his thoughts. To put it succinctly, he didn't think he'd be writing the second part of that episode (the 4th season opener) so he increased the jeopardy to the crew without care because he wouldn't have to deal with the denoument. As a result, he created one of the best hours on TV and in Star Trek lore. (As it turned out, Michael did indeed return for the 4th season at Gene Roddenberry's personal request.)

One of my favorite Millennium episodes (the second season finale) was great probably for the same reason--the writing team behind that was not coming back for the next season. As a result, they made it appear that the planet's population was going to succumb to a deadly viral outbreak and a handful of regular characters were terminated (or made to appear so).

I guess what I'm getting at is try to one-up yourself when "finale" time comes. Give no thought to how the PCs are going to get out of the situation for this adventure (trust me, they'll find a way). The gloves should come off and you don't take prisoners. No ideas? Look to your own favorite shows for inspiration. You'll know you've struck gold when your players' eyes widen but then fear is quickly replaced by that grin which says, "This is cool."

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Road Rage!

Honestly, if you're going to drive 35mph on a 45mph road, please limit your driving to the dead of night. Thank you.

In other auto news, I had a bit of a scare yesterday morning after pulling into the driveway and having the key fail to come out of the ignition. I quickly took it down to the good folks at Schlenker's (where the Fusion came from) and a mechanic dropped what he was doing to investigate. Turns out that the gear shift wasn't quite in Park so the key said, "Oh no, you can't pop me out until you're done driving." After some smacking and jiggling (why didn't I think of that?) of the button on the shifter, it popped out to where it was supposed to be and the key released. They ordered a new shifter and, naturally, I've had no problems since then. Still, I'll be glad to have it replaced (the part is only $30-ish) so I don't have to deal with it on the job. Leaving a key in the ignition and the doors unlocked (can't lock them with the key inserted) is a one-way ticket to my company no longer needing my services.

Last night I just about slogged through the classes in the preview corebook (okay, it's Pathfinder) and found that I like/dislike them. It's neat to see the cool new stuff for each class but also seems like more bookeeping for an already accounts-heavy game. I'd love to say more but, alas.

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

8 Months Already?

Yesterday marked my 8-month anniversary in the courier job. I suspect some don't make it 8 days so I'm happy. It's been fun and, so far, lucrative. Not sure if I'm filing quarterly taxes yet or not (guess I should look into it soon as June 15 is the cut-off for the 2nd quarter). My car will exceed 100k miles by week's end--unbelievable! Good thing I like driving.

Bumped into Mike P, an old friend from our high school gaming days. Ryan, when you read this, he asked about you and Drew and says, "Hi!" He wondered if "that company" Scot and I started was still going. Yeah, Tricky Owlbear is still going. :) Slower than usual, what with the concentration on Kobold Quarterly articles, but still producing.

Back to reading the new corebook before Ed Healy contacts me again for an interview (to be used in a big promotional push come GenCon).

Saturday, June 06, 2009

Where's the Weekend?

Today I've got to have the car in for an oil change and tire rotation at 10am. I should then leave town at about quarter 'til noon to begin the first bank run of the day. If I'm really lucky I'll have enough time after that to stop in town for some coffee and maybe a quick lunch before my second bank run begins at 2:15pm. What's odd is that I should finish the first bank run by dropping off the materials during the second bank run (before picking up the last two stops). And then a million traffic things have to be right for me to be close to dropping off the second run's stuff in New Jersey by 5pm. After that? I should rush home and finish tomorrow's planar game but I don't know if that's going to happen. Delaware (and Deleware Park) isn't far from NJ and I'm sure I'll need a little slots stress relief...

Thursday, June 04, 2009

Let It Begin

I guess it's not a breach of contract to say that I just received a certain core rulebook from a certain company who is releasing said book later this year. Time to prep in earnest for what Tricky Owlbear will be releasing when that book releases.

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Swords & Wizardry


So I sat down and perused Swords & Wizardry this weekend and have to say I'm impressed with the faithful "0e" rendering of the document. If Tricky Owlbear is to produce any old-school adventures I'm convinced this is the way to go. Not only is this version so basic that it is usable with other retro-clones such as Labyrinth Lord and OSRIC but the publishers of S&W also have a massive monster compendium as a free download! (warning: this link is the download!)
I've begun note scribbling for this new line of products (which I'm actually more excited about than Pathfinder) such as what to call it and what format its adventures will be in (think of a TSR competitor from the 80s). Fun stuff ahead!

Contrary to Popular Belief...

...I'm still around! Feeling a little nostalgic for the old blogging life tonight so decided to stop in and post an update. Oh, life, yo...