Category Archives: Ex Miscellanea

Bachman Turner Overgoth

“What is your character concept?”

“Invulnerable black-clad moody lone wolf in a black trench coat wielding twin titanium monokatanas and smartlinked Desert Eagles firing incendiary moonsilver depleted uranium cold iron explosive tracer bullets while a bloodthirsty yet mournful heavy metal soundtrack wails distantly over the incessant rain that falls like the tears of a thousand fallen angels crying over the heart’s mournful lament for a lost paradise.”

“Um… no.”

I love it when a coterie comes together.

In 1872, a crack team of archons was sentenced to destruction by the Ventrue Justicar for a crime they didn’t commit. These Kindred promptly escaped from a maximum-security conclave to the Anarch Free State. Today, still wanted by the Camarilla, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem… if no one else can help… and if you can find them… maybe you can hire… The V-Team.

Before They Let Me Teach Again

I wrote this a couple of years ago to get it out of my head. Occasionally, I consider submitting it to my current employer’s University Honors Program to see if they’ll let me teach it in place of my occasional disaster preparedness seminar. Lightly redacted to remove contact info and other potentially-incriminating items.


Honors Seminar Proposal: Your Parents’ Dark Futures

Primary Instructor

Clayton Oliver, M.S., CEM – Emergency Manager

Will there be any additional instructors for this seminar?

Additional instructors are not anticipated.

Has this seminar been presented before?

No. This proposal is for a pilot delivery.

Do you think this seminary should qualify for International Perspectives or US Diversity Credit?

No.

Please select how you would like to offer the seminar.

Two credits. Two class hours per week. Full semester.

An enrollment cap of 20 is recommended for this pilot delivery.

Please enter your preferred teaching days/times/location for the seminar.

A Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday evening slot is preferred. A weekly two-hour block is necessary due to the extended collaborative/narrative nature of some class activities. My recommended time is 6pm-8pm.

Preferred location is Jischke Honors Building 1151+1155 for student convenience and the ability to “pod” the room’s seating for breakout groups.

Please describe any additional meetings that may occur outside of normal course hours if applicable.

No scheduled meetings are planned at this time. However, students will be expected to convene for group activities outside class time. Students will schedule these group meetings on their own.

Please write a brief description of the seminar that is attractive to students and will be shared on our website.

In the 1980s, the emerging entertainment medium of roleplaying games (RPGs) began to reflect the political and socioeconomic concerns of the day. In this seminar, we’ll analyze four RPGs of that era, each of which postulates a different dystopian near future: Twilight: 2000 (1984, post-World War III survival), Cyberpunk: 2020 (1990, hypercapitalist science fiction), Vampire: The Masquerade (1991, urban decay and power imbalances), and Werewolf: The Apocalypse (1992, political corruption and ecological collapse). Through reading, class discussion, collaborative storytelling, supplemental research, and reaction papers, we’ll examine the fears, assumptions, cultural stereotypes, literary archetypes, and social trends that produced these works and ask ourselves if they remain relevant today. We’ll also analyze the storytelling craft of roleplaying as a means of exploring and expressing identity – our own and that of others.

For the University Honors Committee, please briefly outline the seminar’s readings, topics, assignments, and expectations. Seminars are graded Satisfactory/Fail; what must a student do to pass your seminar?

During this seminar, the class will be divided into four groups of five students, each of which will examine one of the four selected works. A successful student will be able to:

  • Articulate an understanding of the cultural factors that produced the selected work;
  • Discuss the literary archetypes inherent to the work that shape the narratives which players can use the work to construct;
  • Discuss the identities and assumptions inherent in the work’s archetypes and how they are relevant or outmoded in today’s society;
  • Contextualize the work’s postulated dystopian future within the time it was authored and describe how subsequent historical events support or undermine its fictional setting;
  • Articulate the value of roleplaying for self-examination, problem-solving, and empathy.
  • Contrast the work’s original context to the modern era and argue whether or not the work could be reproduced in today’s environment.

Readings

Each student will be assigned one of the four selected works as a primary reading. These are available commercially in PDF format for between $10 and $20 each.

Readings will be synchronized across the semester to examine:

  • Setting – what is the world described in the game? How does it relate to the societal trends and fears of the era in which it was written? How accurate were its predictions?
  • Player characters – what are the implied and explicitly-stated roles of players and their in-game personas? How do these roles and the game’s provided character archetypes facilitate the exploration of identity or the concerns the game raises?
  • Gamemasters – what are the implied and explicitly-stated roles of gamemaster/referees/storytellers? Is their relationship with the players one of collaboration, antagonism, or something in between?
  • Stories – what sorts of stories is the game intended to facilitate?
  • Mechanics – how does the game model its world? What mechanisms does it provide for resolving uncertainty or conflict? Do the rules facilitate the stated storytelling goals?

Actual Play

Most roleplaying games are designed as group experiences, so reading alone will not enable students to examine the full experience. Over the course of the semester, each group will be expected to meet for a minimum of five game sessions, play the game, submit short written response/reflection papers, and be prepared to discuss their experiences in class. I will attempt to arrange groups to ensure that each one contains one experienced gamemaster who is comfortable running the assigned game, with the other four group members as players.

The standard attendance policy for Honors Seminars is that only two absences are allowed unless there is a special circumstance. If you prefer a different attendance policy, please explain.

This attendance policy should work.

Please include a summary of your background to include with the seminar description on our website.

Clayton Oliver is the university’s Emergency Manager. He is a recovering technical writer, having spent twelve years writing documentation no one read for software no one installed. In 2012, he decided to pursue a more frustrating career and entered the emergency management field. Since then, his disaster response experience has included power outages, severe winter weather, derechos, home football games, hazardous materials spills, overly-enthusiastic student celebrations, that one time someone accidentally drilled into a natural gas pocket, and a pandemic that no one wants to hear about any more. He holds a B.A. in English, an M.S. in Emergency Management, and the Certified Emergency Manager credential from the International Association of Emergency Managers. He maintains proficiency in his former craft through performing freelance design work in the roleplaying game industry, posting on the university’s subreddit as [redacted], and writing about himself in the third person.

Brush Workout

Yesterday, I wrapped up primary work on the Clan War figures I’m doing for a friend back in Louisville. (Photos will be forthcoming once I’ve sprayed matte sealant – which may be a while, given current humidity – and flocked the bases.) I’m probably starting to sound like a shill, but I really am quite taken with Army Painter’s self-shading Speedpaints. I used them exclusively for this project and, while nothing is what I’d consider a competition-ready or professional-grade figure, I think they’re all acceptably table-ready.

Speedpaints are not without their flaws. Because of their viscosity, it’s very easy to overflow the area I’m targeting, particularly if the sculpt’s contours encourage flow and pooling. I’m still learning to recognize and avoid that. Their limited opacity makes it difficult for me to apply light colors over dark, so I’ve gotta spent a bit more effort pre-planning, lay down the light colors first, and then avoid the aforementioned overspill with the darker tones. Finally, there are a few colors that simply don’t apply well – the paint runs like rain on a freshly-waxed hood, leaving noticeable areas of minimal or no coverage. I’m seeing this mostly in handful of blues and greys, and I’m uncertain if it’s a production issue or a formulation issue. This is one of those times when I really wish Dad was still alive because I’d love to get a paint chemist’s professional opinion on what’s happening.

Having said all that, for 95% of the painting I do, Speedpaints make the task easier, less onerous, and less frustrating. This means I’ve painted more figures in the last 12 to 18 months than in probably the preceding decade. There’ve been droughts and burnouts – but what the shift from ultramoderns to samurai has shown me is that at least some of the burnout can be mitigated by moving between genres and color palettes.

This batch of samurai wound up being 14 figures – six different sculpts, with some duplicates. Because their primary use is likely to be opposing NPCs, I decided to do a different paint job for each one. This should make it easier for GM and players to designate targets and track health and other statuses, and it’s a better representation of unwashed ronin. This was a fun challenge and it kept things from getting too samey-samey. It also let me tinker with some colors, and some color combinations, that I hadn’t approached in ultramodern figures who were intended to represent urban operators and opposition. In particular, Occultist Cloak turns out to be a great dark grayish-blue (“blackish blue grey” on the official Speedpaints color chart) that’s a solid midnightish option for something that’s supposed to represent black but will show more of the figure’s detail. Lizardfolk Cyan (“greenish blue” on the same source) is, to my eye, a subdued teal with a grayish hue that has a lot of visual appeal (he said, gazing contemplatively at the number of turquoises in his fountain pen ink stash).

The Twilight: 2000 Avatar Game

Back in the day, my World of Darkness group occasionally dabbled in what were then called “avatar campaigns” – porting the real-world players to the game’s character model. I’ve seen this done in a number of other settings, usually with results as grim and dismal as ours were. Off the top of my head, the only published systems that are designed for it are Outbreak Undead and its SPEW-AI assessment quiz, and possibly Legendlore (it’s been a while since I glanced at it).

During a discussion elsenet about Twilight: 2000 campaigns, someone commented on players who feel that their real-life military experience should entitle them to command roles or better character traits in play, regardless of the normal character creation process or results. I was inspired to provide something to… help… those folks. These, then, are my pre-alpha-test notes for running player-history-based characters. This should work for any edition of the game.

Step One

Bring to the table printed copies of the following:

  • your latest medical examination up to, but not later than, your nation’s official entry into combat (November 1996 for American players in most editions)
  • if claiming military service, your DD-214 or equivalent
  • if claiming education, transcripts from all postsecondary education attended
  • if claiming workplace experience, copies of income tax records for each year claimed that clearly show claimed occupation for that year

Step Two

Assign attributes and skills appropriate to your verifiable personal history up to November 1996 (or equivalent).

If you had no military service history prior to November 1996, assume you were drafted and apply additional skills appropriate to the training an infantry conscript would have received in your nation in 1997.

Step Three

Pass your personal history documentation and character sheet to the player on your right.

Using your choice of red pen, X-Acto knife, or Zippo lighter, audit the materials you just received and correct the character sheet as you deem appropriate.

When done, pass that character sheet to the player on your right. Continue this process until your own character sheet returns to you.

Step Four

Roll 1d20 and consult the following table:

  1. died in transportation accident or enemy attack during deployment or troop movement
  2. died from small arms fire
  3. died from artillery
  4. died from air strike
  5. died from other kinetic effect (e.g., minefield, heavy weapons fire, destruction of vehicle)
  6. died of strategic nuclear strike on critical infrastructure or military installation
  7. died of tactical nuclear strike
  8. died of radiation poisoning
  9. died of untreated chronic medical condition (either existing but previously-undetected or caused by wartime conditions)
  10. died of animal- or insect-borne illness
  11. died of foodborne illness or accidental toxin ingestion (e.g., eating the wrong frog)
  12. died of respiratory illness
  13. died of dysentery
  14. died of dietary deficiencies (e.g., scurvy, rickets)
  15. died of starvation
  16. died of dehydration
  17. died from medical error (e.g., incompetent surgeon, contaminated or incorrect drugs)
  18. died of environmental causes (e.g., heatstroke, hypothermia, drowning, snakebite)
  19. succumbed to despair and self-terminated in a manner of your choice
  20. survived to enter play

Step Five

If you rolled 1 through 19, contemplate the yawning abyss that is your own mortality and the inevitable triumph of entropy over everything you’ve ever been, done, known, loved, created, or experienced. Take two drinks.

If you rolled a 20, do the following

  • Roll a number of d20s equal to the number of edits the other players made to your character sheet. Add the total of all rolls. This is your starting rads.
  • Multiply your starting rads by 10. This is your starting budget for selecting equipment.
  • Roll 1d4-1. This is the number of promotions you earned after November 1996 (or equivalent). Record your new rank, then edit it off your sheet because it doesn’t matter any more.

At this point, you’re probably the only person at the table with a surviving PC. Good luck! You’re on your own!

This is intended as satire and should not be used for actual campaign setup. No grognards were harmed in the making of this post.

Adhesion

I would like to note for the record that Loctite Superglue Gel is the only thing I’ve found that makes assembling multipart miniatures a bearable task in any way whatsoever. It’s not bad for basing figures, either.

That is all.