Games

New VTES tournament rules

Ok, the 2008 tournament rules for VTES just came out, and contained some (welcome) surprises. The changes contained two significant items:

• The cards Edge Explosion, Memories of Mortality and Protect Thine Own are now banned in tournament play.

• The way finals results are tallied has changed, now the top scorer of the final round (only) is the winner, all other finalists share second place. In addition, prize splitting is forbidden.

Now, this has already spawned a lot of talk both on the newsgroup and on a local mailing list. The overall reception has been very positive, with of course some dissent here and there.

So, what does this mean, and why was this done? Here are my views, in a nutshell.

First off, the banned cards.

Edge Explosion - I think the rules team correctly identified this as the problem card, causing the problems with overpowered Imbued decks. It let them largely ignore Conviction costs, and also let you largely ignore Virtues, letting you build optimal cryps mostly based on special abilities. Without this, Imbued decks will actually have to pay attention to Conviction as a resource, and also make a lot more (hard) choices in crypt construction. This is good. This would have been a hard card to errata without rewriting it completely, so I think a ban is justified.

Memories of Mortality - this has always been a stupidly powerful card, but with the Imbued it became a problem card. Total shutdown for combat decks, and near-impossible to get rid of (especially since most Imbued decks used Anthelios to cycle it back). I would have personally preferred an errata to this card, making it a lot less powerful, since this ban also hit some otherwise ok ally decks hard… but I’m ok with a ban, too. This card is too strong, whichever way you look at it.

Protect Thine Own - well, what can I say, except “goddamit, finally!”. This card has been a problem since forever, the effect is simply too strong, no easy way to rewrite it to reasonable levels without totally changing it. Ban is fine.

So, in effect: the Imbued get a (deserved) nerf, while still being totally playable and competitive. IMHO, of course, some people disagree on this. Also, an old problem card has finally been buried for good.

Then, for the tournament finals rules: the reason here is that lately, tournament finals have tended to be… well, not that fun. Too much careful table talk and wrangling, and weird deals made just so someone could become 3rd instead of 2nd. This change will hopefully force people to play to win in the finals, disregarding everything else. What will probably happen is lots of careful table talk and wrangling, but the moment anyone gets a VP everyone else goes all-out. We’ll see.

All in all, I’m very happy, these changes should result in better games all around. An overpowered deck type has been toned down a bit, and players in finals have been given new priorities.

My “hate list” is growing short, here, it now only contains Anthelios and Direct Intervention.

On a VTES-related note, Monger is still down, but Jussi Hattara’s excellent Secret Library provides a good replacement. I haven’t played around much with it yet, but what I’ve seen looks very cool and well-designed. […]

Snow days, with daisies

Well, we finally got a pile of snow over here. Sure, it was mostly gone by this morning, but still… Sunday morning, I actually had some trouble driving the car down our driveway, had to take care not to get stuck. Kind of hoping the snow comes back soon, even though it’s a bit of a hassle it still changes the dreary grey into less dreary white – a big deal, as we’re right now in the worst stretch of the “it’s always dark, dammit!” Finnish winter.

Was a bit of an exercise-oriented weekend, for a change; six hours of martial arts / self-defense training on Saturday and three more on Sunday. Was a ton of fun, we explored what options a walking stick, a (big) flashlight, an axe, and a (normal trouser) belt give you. Turns out a walking stick/cane is a lot more versatile than even I would have imagined, especially if it has a hook on one end. Another surprise was the belt… it can become a surprisingly useful weapon/accessory. Best of all, neither are generally classified as weapons, and can be carried in places where a knife, for example, would get you in trouble.

The fact that an axe is a pretty good weapon came as no surprise, and neither the fact that a large flashlight doubles as a weapon without much problems. Have to watch out against blinding yourself, of course… we did some training in a darkened room, lots of fun that.

Besides that flailing around on an exercise mat, it was a nice, peaceful weekend. Cleaned up around the house, read quite a bit, watched some “tv”. I can now safely say that Pushing Daisies is very much worth watching, I found it delightful. It’s also… unconventional. It’s a romantic comedy, and it’s also a sort of an urban fairly tale (with a slightly macabre twist). The 3rd party narrator and the hyper-saturated colors add to this, it’s a totally intentional vibe. The writing is excellent and very funny, and there are just wonderfully bizarre momments (like when the passengers in a car suddenly start singing a They Might Be Giants song). It’s quirky and warm-hearted and I’m very much enjoying it.

What’s it about? Well, there’s this pie maker, who can raise the dead by touching them. Thing is, if he ever touches them again, they drop dead again. For good. If he doesn’t “kill” them again within one minute, someone or something else dies as a side-effect. Then there’s a girl named Chuck, some kooky aunts, and much surrealism.

The whole thing is just so weird and unconventional that I’ll be surprised if it stays on air for very long. On the other hand, it’s apparently gotten great ratings and has been picked up for a full season, so apparently I’m not the only one finding it charming. We’ll see.

Oh, and on a totally unrelated note: I’ve previously talked about Delta Green: Eyes Only, a Delta Green book collecting three near-impossible-to-find old chapbooks, with lots of new material thrown in. Well, it’s now shipping, and also nearly sold out; as of Sunday, there were 110 copies left out of 1000. After this limited run sells out, getting your hands on a copy might be highly non-trivial. So: if you’ve been thinking of maybe getting this, act now. Soon it will be too late. There’s a Game Geeks video review of the book available, if you want to get a quick description of what the book’s about.

Word of warning: the book is only available through Internet order, and the shipping costs to Finland are pretty high. The US$ is pretty low vs the euro at the moment, but still… this book will cost you a bit. […]

Snick!

Fun weekend in Turku, attending a knife fighting seminar. This time we concentrated on folding knives (traditional ones, not butterfly knifes etc, those will come later). A lot of fun, and even though people managed to get some cuts and lose some drops of blood, it was due to fumbling with own knife – always better than accidentally scratching a training partner. I learned a lot, having previously had very little experience with the folding thingies, and managed to do a draw + open under one second; a small something to feel smug about. My new toy, though expensive, proved to be worth that cash and was a joy to use. Solid blades are always faster and more reliable than folders, of course, but folders have their advantages.

A funny mental thing: we did the normal pair drills this time so that the sequence started with the attacker flipping open his knife and attacking, the defender then opening his in response and doing what was required. It’s a small thing, but that metallic “snick!” sound you hear when the knife opens brings a whole new psychological element to the game. It sounds evil and dangerous, in a whole new way. My training partner also commented on it, so it wasn’t only me.

Speaking of evil and dangerous… when I got back home on Sunday I curled up on the couch and read Don’t Rest Your Head, a very cool little game from Fred Hicks (of “Spirit of the Century” fame). A bastard love child of Dark City, Neverwhere, Alice in Wonderland and some demented drug dream, this thing rocks and proves you don’t need a huge word count in order to have a complete game. It’s only about 70 pages, but that’s enough. The dice mechanics are very interesting and elegant, with the roll giving you several different details (like the ORE system in Nemesis and Wild Talents, though this has no other real similarities to ORE).There’s a death spiral mechanic that’s vicious, and a “hit the ground running” attitude running throughout the game. I get the feeling that this is most suited for a one-shot or short campaign, if only because the player character lifespans seem likely to be in the “short” category.

If you’re at all into indie rpgs, you’ll do yourself a favor by checking this one out. Mucho cool. […]

It's a tough job being a god

Just finished the latest session of my Exalted game (working title “Cold Dawn”), I had a lot of fun running it. It’s been a while since the last session, and in any case we haven’t had time to play all that much; the initial plan was for one game a month but with summer intervening, it’s been even less. In addition, since I’m trying to run this in a pretty freeform fashion, I (again) had a hell of a time deciding what to prep and what to wing on the fly.

Anyway, things went fine and once again partly according to what I had envisioned, partly nothing like. Exalted is tricky, it’s one hell of a complex world, and bringing the interesting parts of the game world to focus without falling back on needless exposition is a bit of a tightrope walk. I like the game a lot, especially the world (Creation)… but it’s very, very complicated. That’s one reason why I like it, of course, I’m a sucker for complex (but internally coherent) settings.

I’m running this game with a slowish start, on purpose. The power level has been pretty low so far, but will probably escalate as the characters start discovering what they can do, and what they need to do in order to survive. Things are on the move, only a small part of them visible to the characters (or players, so far).

In any case, our band of stalwart (or not) heroes are slowly wending their way up North, sailing up the River of Tears towards Sijan as a waypoint to Rubylak and territories even more unknown. Today’s session involved friendly but clueless cultists, friendly merchant-sorcerers from Lookshy, neutral river gods, reputedly dark-dwelling bloodsuckers who are presumed hostile, and the proper use of air elementals.

I’m not sure one of the players knew what he was getting into when he chose the Cult background… […]

Beyond the Mountains of... Aieeeeeeee!

This morning, it happened. An ominous silence fell upon the land, and a mysterious van drove up in front of our door. A silent, brooding man stepped out and rang the doorbell. Still unaware of the signs and portents, I opened the door and was handed a heavy package. Being not quite awake yet, I signed the small slip of paper (which I really should have read before signing), and took custody of the package. Only then I realized that…

I now actually own a copy of Beyond the Mountains of Madness, the almost-impossible-to-get and out-of-print-for-aeons megacampaign for CoC. It’s referred to as one of the greats, and I’ve been trying to get my grubby little hands on it for a long, long time. Some weeks back, I got email from Chaosium saying that they’ve found a hardcover printing company that they are happy with, and that a new hardcover version is now available in limited quantities. They also set up a separate ”Antarctic Dementia” section on their website, with some other related goodies.

So now I have the book, the game aid kit, a Starkweather-Moore Antarctic Expedition 1933 t-shirt (yes, really), a sticker, and a collection of short stories including the original “At the Mountains of Madness”. Joy.

Rpg.net recently had a “horror week”, and one guy compiled a list of the Top 10 horror adventures, based on ratings given by rpg.net users. I could quibble with that list a bit (“To Go” isn’t really horror, it’s more in the “occult weirdness” category), but generally… yeah. It’s fun to note that I have almost all of those books in my game collection, and I intend to remove that “almost” word soonish.

About BtMoM… it’s a huge campaign, the book itself is 440 pages… it’s bigger than most game core books. It’s an exhaustively detailed and period-authentic story of a 1933 Antarctic expedition, and apparently a brilliant game if you can find a group that likes that sort of thing – it’s long, sometimes slow-paced, and needs commitment and actual interest in the workings of an expedition like that. In any case, it’s a book I’ve long been wanting to read, if just to see if it’s something I might like to run one day. Anything that’s generally compared to “The Enemy Within” on the quality scale must have a lot going for it. […]

Friday, yay!

Been feeling a bit under the weather, maybe some shade of a flu coming on. Nothing serious. just feeling more tired than normal.

I think I’ll try to get at least some part of the BM pictures done this weekend, and there’s also some prep for the next Exalted game to be done. Still not sure when we’ll manage to play, people have been having some calendar problems (what else is new :), but anyway. Should also take a look at the new car and see if I could fix the glove compartment latch thing and a couple of other things. Depends a bit on the weather, too, if it’s dark and/or rainy, I’m not twiddling with the car or anything else outside, if I can help it.

Found someone (actually, a couple of someones) who are interested in the old car, which is nice. That should sort itself out within the week.

I suspect the hood mechanism repair on the new Cabriolet will require a shop that knows Peugeot tech, so that means either the main importer (Automaa) or a Peugeot-specialist shop. Found one of those, Autochic Oy in Lauttasaari, but it gave the impression of being very expensive and a quite Google resulted in some forum comments about it being in the same price range as official repair shops, so…

If anyone knows of a good shop that does Peugeot repairs in the Helsinki/Espoo area, please let me know. Some of the stuff I can do “wherever”, of course, but it’s good to have options.

I’ll probably wait till next month to schedule shop time, my salary just came and went via my account, the last big part of our USA/BM trip (car rentals, etc) took care of emptying my cash register. Will have to be semi-poor for a while here.

I’ve lately been thinking of running some other game(s) “on the side”, besides the Exalted game. Maybe with a (partly) different set of players, to help with the calendar problems. Dunno what, though, the problem is too many great games. The are a couple of game systems I’m interested in trying out in practice – Burning Wheel and Reign – so maybe something fantasy-oriented using those (since both are fantasy rulesets). One option I’ve been toying with is a short game set in Freeport, using Burning Wheel rules. Pirates, evil cults, swords, mayhem… all that good stuff. Might be fun. […]

Rain, sleet, slush, snow

The weather is starting to hit freezing at night, and there are small patches of snow here and there in the morning – methinks summer is starting to be over. Our yard is finally clear of crud used by the workmen doing our roof insulation & wall paneling makeover, so there’s some hope of getting things into winter shape. I managed to scrounge up energy to rake up leaves into nice piles a few days ago, but by the time I finished it was so dark I didn’t feel like carting them off – and then it started to rain the next day. Oh well, at least they don’t form a soggy matress over everything, just a few soggy piles. Better than nothing.

Life’s been pretty quiet; work, some EVE Online and reading, nothing too hectic. I did attend a knife fighting workshop in Turku last weekend, though, so it hasn’t all been wombat mode. Said workshop was a lot of fun, learned quite a bit (more) about how to carry, draw and use sharps. I’m really liking my new toy.

The new VTES expansion looks solid, the “post-release” tournament was a lot of fun, with Antti Horelli claiming victory for Clan Assamite. I haven’t made any decks based on the new cards yet, but have a lot of ideas. Maybe this weekend I’ll sit down and put together a deck or two.

My four-wheel-transport situation is changing a bit, I’m getting my sister’s old Peugeot 306 convertible, which is 5 years and 100k km newer than my current car. It needs some fixing in the retractable roof department, but should otherwise be in good shape. Doing the papers on that on Monday. This leaves my trusty old ‘89 205 automatic a bit useless to me, so I’m giving it away if I can find someone who needs a car (for free). Details here (in Finnish). It’s old and has lots of “features”, but it still works.

My pile of 400+ USA/BM pictures are sitting on my hard drive, eyeing me balefully. Should do something about getting them processed and published. […]

Ropecon VTES tournament

Ok, the tournament report for Ropecon is now finally available. Sorry it took so long, but better late than never.

It’s still missing deck lists from Juha Nyholm and Tommi Hakumaa, I’ll add them if I get them.

Let me know if you spot any errors there. […]

Back in the default world

Boys, now the times are changing
The going could get rough
Boys, would that ever cross your mind?
Boys, are you contemplating moving out somewhere?
Boys, will you ever find the time?

Here we are stranded
Somehow it seems the same
Beware, here comes the quiet life again

– Japan, “Quiet Life”

We’re back. Actually, we landed on Saturday evening, with myself feeling like a stranger in a strange land. I guess it’s a sign that the trip was a good one, I feel like I’ve been gone much longer than the 2,5 weeks. Playa time.

Jetlag struck back on Sunday, we woke at 3.30pm thinking it was morning. Heh. I’m now more or less back in the normal Finnish sleep-wake cycle, and actually doing some of this “work” thing again. Strange stuff.

Burning Man was the same as ever, and also different. I guess that’s one of the points of the thing, and one that people complaining that “it’s not like it was in the early days!” tend to miss. Our camp was fun, and we met some new wonderful people and met up with some old friends (some in a really serendipitous manner).

I’ll write more about the trip later. I also have a ton of pictures, which I’ll publish when I process them – that’ll take a while, though.

I think it’ll be quiet life for us for some while now, if for no other reason than that our credit cards are feeling the strain of all this travel (and other things). Quiet life good, in moderation.

On the other hand…

As a quick side note: the “post-release” tournament for the new VTES expansion, “Lords of the Night”, will be held on Sunday Sept 30th (12:00, Fantsu). I’ll add info about it on the VTES page, also ,soonish. […]