Like the Back of Someone Else’s Hand

This morning (that being the morning I’m writing this, not the morning of its scheduled posting), I was scrolling through the Pathfinder 2e subreddit over breakfast and ran across a post asking why readers prefer PF2 over rules-light systems. Several someones made the point which I would have made if I were going to comment: that different game systems are different tools for achieving different storytelling experiences and outcomes.

The comment thread that prompted this post, however, was this one, in which the OP expressed surprise that someone could be capable of running more than one game system without getting rules crossed up.

I had a bit of an “oh, sweet summer child” reaction to that. It never had occurred to me that this might be a problem. I’ve been collecting accumulating TTRPGs since my childhood in the early ’80s and studying and running them semi-regularly since the early ’90s. Each one still occupies a measurable amount of my brain. While I can’t claim to be able to run anything 100% off-book, the RPGs for which I could play or run tomorrow without much fumbling, unfamiliarity, or pre-session review are, off the top of my head:

  • 7th Sea (original)
  • Dungeons & Dragons (5e, 3e as a stretch)
  • Feng Shui (either edition)
  • Legend of the Five Rings (original through 4th)
  • Shadowrun (2e and 3e)
  • Spycraft (original and 2.0, including Stargate SG-1 as an intermediate member of that line)
  • Trinity (original)
  • Twilight: 2000 (v2.2 and v4)
  • Vampire: The Masquerade (original through Revised and 20th Anniversary)

At one time or another, I’ve spent enough time at the table for each of these to develop a decent familiarity with the mechanics. I can make a spontaneous rules call at the table and be fairly confident that my off-the-cuff decision will be consistent with the game as written. Of equal importance, I also know each of the settings (or genre assumptions, in the case of setting-less games like Spycraft) well enough to improvise plot and the world’s responses to the PCs’ actions.

In a pinch, I also could do passably-good GM work with the rest of the original World of Darkness (strongest in Wraith: The Oblivion, weakest in Changeling: The Dreaming), Dark Conspiracy, Earthdawn, Star Wars (WEG or FFG), and a good cross-section of the Powered by the Apocalypse family.

Through the Gate

Last month, someone elsenet started a thread about people’s most memorable experiences involving gaming with strangers. Here’s my contribution.

At GenCon… ’03, I think… I was on the AEG team. I was primarily there to run demo sessions of Stargate SG-1, which was so new that the AEG warehouse had to unload the books from the truck and overnight them to our hotel to get them to the booth for sales. It was late on Sunday and I’d already run five sessions plus a Spycraft LARP (the less said about that, the better). I was at the booth for the last couple of hours when a group of five or six guys wandered in hoping there was a chance of an off-schedule Stargate demo game. I was utterly exhausted and going through Ricola like it was powdered sugar at a Miami Vice LARP, but they were so earnest and so hopeful. Yeah, sure, I can do one more, just pour a Mountain Dew into me and I’ll be good to go…

… and that was the best table I’d run all weekend. Genre-savvy, well-coordinated, and willing to lean into the plot hard. Better, and this was a high bar, than the group that included three players whose real-world doctorates or career specialties matched the ones on my pre-gen PCs. That Sunday afternoon group turned out to be a college gaming group who’d split to all corners of the country after graduation. They’d mostly fallen out of TTRPGs due to jobs, families, other commitments… but for nearly twenty years, they’d been coming to GenCon to get in one weekend a year of gaming together. Felt good to facilitate that for a few hours.

Measuring Cyberhand

Idle thought while messing around in the basement workshop: a cyberhand mounting a set of dedicated measuring tools. This is inspired by the concept of a cybernetic tool hand (Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk Red) and by Adam Savage’s measuring tattoo.

A measuring cyberhand (or metrology hand for the highbrow ‘punk), as the name suggests, is equipped with an array of sensors and tools:

  • The thumb and forefinger function as calipers, with retractable articulated jaws at the tips for particularly small or inner-distance measurements.
  • The middle and ring fingers mount retractable probes for a multimeter.
  • The little finger contains an infrared thermometer and a low-powered infrared laser rangefinder/tape measure, with both devices emitting through a dual-lensed aperture in the fingertip.
  • The palm contains a digital inclinometer, enabling measurement of a surface’s angle when the hand is placed flat and palm-down on it.
  • The hand can measure a held object’s weight, using pressure sensors in the palm for small items and strain gauges in the joints for larger or heavier objects.

All data can be displayed in a digital readout on the back of the hand or sent to a cyberoptic.

Cyberpunk 2020: negligible surgery (assuming mounting to a cyberarm); cost 300eb; Humanity loss 3.

Cyberpunk Red: install at clinic; cost 500eb (expensive); Humanity loss 3 (1d6).

Shadowrun 1e/2e/3e: This is a modification to an existing cyberhand. Due to the internal volume consumed by the various sensors, no other modifications can be installed in this hand. Cost ¥1,200; no Essence loss. The optional metrology datalink (data routed to any other cyberware for display or storage) costs ¥300 and costs 0.1 Essence. A measuring cyberhand is legal with Street Index 1.5 and Availability 3/24 hours.

If using the concealment and equipment capacity rules from SR3’s Man and Machine (p. 35), a measuring cyberhand has an ECU of 0.9 and a concealment modifier of -4. The metrology datalink adds 0.1 ECU. If, at the time of installation, the user chooses to omit the digital data readout and rely entirely on the metrology datalink to receive results, this reduces the concealment modifier to -2.

Hell Comes to Cave City

Another ConCave, another unfortunate encounter.

In this instance, several of us had decided we were hungry and the hotel diner was overpriced. But that vaunted mecca of civilization, Cave City, was nearby! And our hero protagonist victim had a car! Thus it was that four people squeezed into my ’99 Mitsubishi Eclipse, truly the gothiest of goth rides, to seek sustenance.

Two of the witnesses shall remain nameless. The third passenger, he whose reputation burns in infamy even today, shall be called WB, he who sometimes was called “Wookiee” for his stature and lack of a volume control. WB was about 6’6″, not a small man in width, made mostly of metal from the knees down, and aggressive in asserting his identity as Louisville’s largest and most notorious Jewish goth punk gamer bookmonger.

So it was that the four of us sauntered into a combination Long John Silver’s/A&W (i.e., the Fish&W) restaurant. I was attired fairly nondescriptly, as was my habit. My companions… had only brought Vampire LARP costumes to the con.

Needless to say, we attracted some attention on this fine Saturday morning. Our kind was rarely seen in Cave City. There were murmurs of outrage and consternation.

I, being attuned to the ways of incipient redneck unrest, was uneasy. My unnamed companions, alas, were more sheltered. And WB… WB was aware of the attention and was feeling provocative.

As we dined, WB’s volume increased. Every French fry brought forth another bloody tale of in-game vampiric horrors, presented out of context for the Barren County public’s edification. I began gauging the distance to the exits.

Finally, our trays were empty. Could we escape without incident? Alas, WB had one more arrow in his quiver. As we discarded our waste and headed for the exit, his voice boomed out: “Hey, Clayton, you know the best thing about this leather jacket?”

I cringed. “No, WB, what would that be?”

And as the door swung shut behind us, the last thing the good folk of Cave City heard was WB’s proud declamation: “A little rain water washes the goat blood right off it!”

Decomposition Book

No shit, there I was…

This was in spring ’98 or ’99, I think. I was running a LARP at ConCave, a small local convention in deep rural southwest Kentucky.

I was minding my own business at my registration and logistics desk when a pack of prospective players staggered into the room in what was either a Fleshcrafted gamer-centipede mass or a consensual close-order formation of mutual support for upright locomotion. It was just past three in the afternoon and I could smell the liquor and questionable decisions from across the room.

“Heeeeey,” one slurred, fumbling in his pin-festooned leather vest for what I hoped was not a weapon. “I heard yer runnin’ a Vamfire game.”

Trepidatiously, I responded in the affirmative.

“Awesome.” He located the object of his search and withdrew, to my rmingled relief and slowly-rising dread, a small wad of paper. As he unfolded it like some non-Euclidean eldritch origami horror, I recognized it as a character sheet. It appeared to have been used as a placemat for last night’s pizza and this morning’s coffee, and under the layers of organic debris, the owner’s pen had left no dot behind. “I wanna bring in my home chara… chiro… character. I call ‘im ‘Roadkill.’ He’s a Samedi wererabbit Abomination.”

WIP X

Working on a second set of Spectre’s SAS Counterterrorism Response Squad figures. Back rank is the first set in desert colors; front rank is the second WIP set in more traditional green. For both sets, I went for a “dropped what we were doing and threw on the armor when we got the callout” look, hence the total lack of uniformity in shirts and pants.

Preparing for Winter

I’m hoping to have the motivation to continue grinding away at the Pile of Shame over the winter. With temperatures and winds here being what they are, the days between November and May that I can safely spray primer outdoors are rather limited. In expectation of that, I’m assembling and priming a large number of minis so I’ll have a decent selection ready to paint when the mood strikes me.

(Once they’re complete, they’ll probably have to hang out in the project trays until spraying season comes ’round again and I can hit them with a coat of matte sealant, but that’s not the hard part.)

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).

WIP IX

On the workbench this week: a batch of samurai from the Clan War starter box (anyone else remember AEG’s twenty-plus-years-ago attempt at a wargame?). These guys and their friends are getting done up as a collection of scruffy ronin for a friend’s Legend of the Five Rings tabletop campaign:

Once again, Army Painter Speedpaints FTW. Despite rattling around in a box for a couple of decades, the sculpts are still crisp enough that the texture on the armor really pops when the self-shading compounds do their thing.

I’m trying to decide if I want to try to do eyes and risk fucking up the whole face.