9 Pippins & no Aragorn….

Lately I’ve been thinking about RPGs a lot. I’m running two games at the moment. One is a sci-fi space opera game, and one is good old D&D 3.5 edition. The D&D game has me thinking about how gamers today define the concept of heroism as opposed to comic relief or farce.

I’ve been GMing seriously for over twenty years now (and when I say seriously, I mean in terms of effort put into the games; writing plotlines, working with players to develop stories that they find compelling and entertaining, coming up with meaningful and memorable NPCs, and so on), and in the past few years I’ve noticed a weird trend at the gaming table. Is it my imagination, or are more and more players nowadays concerned more with playing the comic-relief character than with playing the hero?

It seems like in any game I sit down for, be it as GM or as a player, about half the party is made up of jokey moron characters. I don’t see the appeal. And it occurs to me that apart from not being my taste (which is fine… people should play whatever they have fun with), having too many characters like this brings the whole game down and lowers the expectations for everyone else. 

Comic relief is there to provide a break from serious or intense events and situations, but if 75% of the game is comic relief, then what are all the bullshit shenanigans a relief from? Nothing. They’re just there for their own sake. But why? What compels people who are allegedly interested in taking on the roles of heroes to cast aside all things heroic and compete for the best one-liner or stupid pun? I mean, let’s ask the obvious question; what the fuck, people? How is that heroic? How does that elevate the story, invest people in the sweeping events or personal challenges that make up 90% of all RPG storylines, or contribute anything positive to the game?

First, let’s take a moment and discuss humor. This seems to be the root problem. Everyone likes making others laugh. We all like to be the witty guy (or girl) who fires off a quick comment or a wry observation and gets a good reaction. No problem. But as we all know, when you try to force humor, that defeats the purpose. If you have to explain the joke, then it was a shitty joke. But humor is no substitute for character development or role-playing. And that’s where the problem comes in, I expect. For a lot of people, the two are more or less synonymous.

Second, I think we’re seeing a trend in pop culture (especially TV, and more specifically networks like SyFy Channel) that the jokey moron character is becoming a legitimate protagonist or hero. Or that more and more protagonists are of the jokey moron variety. You know the kind of nonsense I’m talking about; the quippy one-liners at the end of every scene, the fact that no situation, no matter how dire or meaningful, can be addressed in any way without a smirk and a snarky observation. Usually something so cheesy that you half-expect a little flourish on drum and cymbal to follow it. Characters snapping their fingers, the pointing at the camera and winking.

And yet these idiotic characters are held up as the heroes, rather than as the buffoons they are. Some great examples of this kind of bad writing would be Captain Mal from Firefly (I know, I know… I’m a filthy heathen for not liking that show, and all you Firefly fanboys think Nathan Fillion is the messiah… no need to get all bent out of shape…. I’m just expressing an opinion about the character…), the entire cast of Stargate, the recent Doctor Who stuff, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and all the spin-off shows), and so on.

Those shows are meant to be light-hearted and devil-may-care, and I understand that. The fantasy of being flippant and witty and thumbing your nose at society’s rules, and all of that. I get that that’s what’s going on and I understand the appeal, but I think it’s contributing to a shift in what fantasy and sci-fi fans perceive as being “heroic”.

But lately it’s like the damn court jesters have taken over! The knights who want to quest for the Grail are being re-cast as the stodgy stick-in-the-muds who’re wasting their time trying to do good and save people. And the idiots with bells on their hats, capering around, juggling and making fart jokes have become the new template for heroism.

It’s like everyone wants to be Pippin, and no one wants to be Aragorn. But the problem is that you reap what you sow. You got 9 Pippins and no Aragorn, and then what the fuck happens when the Ring needs destroying? You have a bunch of jokey morons ignoring the heroic task, the very role of the hero, and instead, they’re prancing around, eating apples and taking naps, competing to get off the best one-liner, all trying to be as wacky as they can possibly be, as “random” as possible, and for what? Seriously, what does that add to a game?

Third, this whole comic-relief-as-heroism mindset just breeds lazy players…

Sure, it’s easier to play a buffoon than a serious character. And yeah, not all RPGers are trained actors. Everyone understands that. But taking the easy way out by playing a jokey borderline-retarded character in a heroic setting as a way to dodge the challenge of participating in building the story, is just weak. If the movie the Fifth Element was an RPG, and nine out of ten of the characters were Ruby Rod, what would that have done to the story?

And how do people arrive at the decision to play a comic relief character as a PC anyway? What’s the process? Are they just so desperate for approval that getting cheap laughs by humiliating their characters is their best way to find social acceptance? Or is there a conscious thought-process that goes into it? Something like this:

Do I need a decent character history? Nope! I’ll just have my character crack jokes 24/7 to make up for it.

Should I participate in the plotline, and work to achieve whatever the goal of the game is? Nah… I’ll just sit here quietly until it’s time to make farting noises in the presence of powerful NPCs! That won’t derail things at all!

Do I need to respect the fact that the GM and other players have put time and effort into this game? Why bother!! It’s way more fun to name my character Spliffy J. Squeezinbottoms and have him roll around on the floor, looking up the bar wenches dresses! Hooray for me!

I don’t know about you (and maybe this is just my age and years upon years of GMing talking), but I think heroes ought to be heroic. Characters like Aragorn, Legolas, Conan, Elric, Solomon Kane (reserving judgment on the movie version….), Damien Vryce, King Arthur, and so on. Why is it that those characters are being left by the side of the road when it comes time to choose an inspiration for an RPG character, and buffoonish characters get the nod instead?

Do people not understand that Han Solo could only be a snarky, wise-cracking douche for so long, and that for him to become a hero he had to start acting like one? Do they not understand that Ash from Evil Dead is a parody, not a serious character? That an entire party made up of Jayne clones, all competing for the best walk-off quip, is never going to be anything other than pathetic and farcical?

If you’re reading this and you’ve played these kinds of characters in the past, please take a moment to consider that maybe, just maybe, the constant goofing around, the endless stream of bad jokes, the “totally wacky, zany antics” that your character embarks upon, might be taking your RPG experience from the level of heroic fantasy and dragging it down to the level of a Roadrunner cartoon. Maybe there’s an inspiration for a character that doesn’t involve being the comic relief. Maybe you’ve got it in you to tackle playing a real hero. You might be surprised at what it does for your game.

Dice Superstitions…

Dice Superstitions:  Am I Really Gonna Start Believing This Crap? Apparently I Am…

Being a fairly educated guy and quite skeptical by nature, I’m not much for superstitions. Except for one. For whatever reason, it seems that my dice have something to say. Those little plastic bastards have an opinion (dare I say, some kind of agenda of their own?), and they work hard to make it known.

The other night I was playing Warmachine, trying out my newly-acquired Cryx army. I had also brought my Skorne. I played two games with the Cryx, and these were the first games with this army. 

Two 25-point games in which I rolled a 7 or above about maybe 8-9 times in total. And that’s on rolls of 2 and 3 dice. Sometimes 4. It was unbelievable. My opponent was rolling about average. I lost in pretty short order.

So then I remember saying to my opponent “hey, maybe I should switch to my Skorne…”  but we decided to play again and keep the same forces.

And this time, it was even worse. I’ve never rolled so many 4’s on three dice in my life. My opponent, on the other hand, well, his dice were on fire. It was one 11 or 12 after another. All game long. To tell the truth, it was downright awesome to watch. There was nothing I could do. We were laughing about it the whole game.

So, having decided that the dice were telling me something, I switched to my Skorne for my third game of the night. And holy crap, it must have been what the dice wanted, because in that game, I rolled within 2 of the maximum roll on every single roll. Every boosted attack was a 16 or better. Every basic attack was a 10 or better. Every damage roll was the same thing. I started feeling bad for my opponent….. It was like the dice were throwing their fists in the air and cheering, all excited to be rolling for the faction that they clearly favor.

So I started thinking back on other games I’ve played, and I noticed that most times when I use the dice that “belong” to one army to play a game with another, they’ve deserted me. Anytime I’ve borrowed someone else’s dice to play a game, I’ve done horribly. Just one defeat after another.

So thanks a lot, universe! Here’s one more sucker, irrationally believing in the power of an inanimate object to determine the outcome of something. 

Looks like I’ll be buying different sets of dice for all my factions, and not just out of the convenience of storing them in the figure cases.

The Carnival of Shame: Epic Failures at the RPG table.

The Carnival of Shame is a series I’m writing on the worst failures of DMing, my own and those of others, that I’ve seen over the years. This is not for the thin-skinned &/or easily offended, or those people who can’t wrap their minds around the concepts of humorous hyperbole and sarcasm. Some of the names and places have been changed. Basically because this blog represents my own opinions and observations, and I want to feel free to express them without unintentionally pissing anyone off. This is meant to be entertainment, not social commentary or criticism. It’s done in the spirit of satire and fun, but unfortunately not everyone gets that.

So, without further ado, I present;

The Carnival of Shame, Part 1: 

The Dungeon of Shame….  or  How I Learned To Stop Trusting My Players To Take Over As DM.

OK, so, many many moons ago my good friend Bob decides that he wants a turn at DM’ing for our D&D 3.5 group. Now, let me preface the rant that follows by saying that Bob is a great guy, and I’ve got nothing bad to say about him. But, letting this good friend of ours behind the DM’s screen turned out to be a lot like letting a lovable 6-year old behind the wheel of a semi truck, barreling through a crowded shopping mall at 70 miles an hour. Bad shit happening was the only possible outcome, and it was bound to end in tears.

So, the set-up for the game:   Bob says he wants to run in the Forgotten Realms setting, and he wants us all to play something we’ve always had our eye on, but other DMs wouldn’t let us play. He tells us to cut loose. Anything officially published by WOTC is fair game. This is the first sign of trouble. Savage Species books get pulled off shelves. Players start dusting off Books of Vile Darkness and Races of Faerun.

As a long-time DM, I can see the storm clouds on the horizon already, and there’s not a tornado shelter in sight. I decide to try and do something to mitigate the madness. I play a human paladin. I figure if the inevitable freakshow party has a very vanilla moral center, maybe we’ll survive long enough to follow the plot, right? I can help steer the party away from decisions that will totally derail the game, right?

Wrong. We end up with the following gems:

-A wemic barbarian who was some kind of unstoppable ride-by-attacking combat juggernaut.

-A human paladin with a longsword and a shield. (me)

-Some sort of half-devil, platemail-wearing, tumble-skill-specializing greatsword-wielding fighter chick (this player quit after like two sessions, thus ironically proving she was the wisest of all of us).

-A half water-elemental pacifist cleric who fought with a great-club and who’s combat role was simply to go full defense and provide flanking opportunities, heal us and cast Bless every once in a while.

-A wizard from some race that I’ve never even heard of, that the player found in a poorly-translated D&D errata on a Belgian website or something. This character was kind of human, but also kind of made of shadows or darkness, or something…. I don’t fucking know. All I remember is that he tried to screw us out of any treasure we found, every single time we found any.

-And of course, it goes without saying, the timeless D&D classic; a monkey-man bard from some oriental setting book, who played a lute with his tail and feet and danced around on his hands, singing lyrics from bad 70s and 80s heavy-metal songs. Yes, he was Man-O-War Monkey Man…

So, you know, the classic party template. Tolkien would have been proud.

The Adventure Hook…. a Broadway classic, as it turns out.

Apparently we’re all in this desert together, thousands of miles from anywhere. And we’ve never met before. Wait, what? And we have no supplies of any kind.  And no reason for being there. It’s just, you know, fate or coincidence or something…. or maybe it’s…. what’s the word? Oh yeah. “Lazy, incompetent fucking DMing”. That was it.

Then a city appears. Yup. Just sort of materializes around us, right in front of our eyes. Poof! A giant city, stretching for hundreds of miles. And we’re standing in the middle of a big market. The PCs are all like “Hey, what the fuck? First I run into this bizarre menagerie of freakshow characters, and now a city appears out of nowhere?” But never fear, because an absolutely awesome rationale is coming for this series of events!

I lied. No there isn’t.

So, long story short, the very first thing that happens is that the party is summarily overpowered and imprisoned (for what crime is never made clear, but my paladin’s Detect Evil ability shows that no one here, not a single person, is evil, so clearly we must have been guilty, right? Guess we shouldn’t have been randomly walking around the interior of a vast fucking world-spanning desert without supplies, huh? We should have known the cops would show up….). This all happens completely off-camera, and we have no chance of avoiding or escaping this fate. And then we’re thrown into an arena, where the DM informs us that we’re expected to fight for our freedom.

Then he lets us know that the city only appears once every 500 years, and stays there for 24 hours, after which it vanishes into the mists of time once more. If we can win our freedom in that time, we can leave. To which my response is something like “You mean we’ve been captured by the cast of Brigadoon? Really? I sneak out during intermission!”.

Next comes the part where our DM introduces us to a dude he describes as “an NPC party member to help you guys out if you need it. You’ll love him. I worked really hard writing him up, and he’s a totally original character.”

Enter the NPC…. I shit you not, it was a dual scimitar-wielding drow with a heart of gold, with levels in sorceror and ranger, accompanied by a shadowy dog-cat-monster-thing that could turn into a little statue. His name was Rz’zitt’n. And oh yeah, he also wielded Spellfire, and was the chosen of Mielikki or some shit like that. He was also like 15^th level, where the rest of us were level 4.

The Dungeon…. or, Oh My Fucking God This Is Making My Brain Hurt.

Now we’re in the arena with Drizz…I mean “100% Original Dark Elf NPC Guy”. And the stands are completely empty. No one’s in attendance. Not a soul. Except for this one Arena Master NPC guy, who’s up in the stands to lay out our challenge for us. No word of a lie, this is how this wet turd of a plotline went……

He explains to us that we need to enter the super-secret arena dungeon, which is hidden below the actual arena, and fight our way through it for the amusement of the people. If we make it to the end, we get set free. Being a paladin, I ask what the hell we’ve done to deserve being imprisoned. He says trespassing. Trespassing! With a straight face, no less.

Like any reasonable person would, I ask why the penalty for something so minor is to face almost certain death in some kind of secret dungeon. He says I just don’t understand their laws. So what, this place has the harshest motherfucking rule of law that ever existed, then? These guys make Stalin and Pol Pot look like fucking Care Bears! Remember, we were in the market, during the day, on market day. It’s not like we teleported into the king’s goddamn inner sanctum or anything! And this is a city composed mostly or entirely of good or neutral people!! And yet the penalty for browsing the market without a license is to fight to the death for the sick pleasure of all the good-aligned sadists before Brigadoon vanishes? What the hell is going on here? I can barely follow this line of reasoning, and I was there! It’s like we were suddenly playing Paranoia…..

I ask about this. Why is the arena so central to life here? I’m told that the entire economy is based on money that comes in from the arena. It’s the lifeblood of the city, you see, and without it, the people wouldn’t be able to support themselves.

I look around at the empty coliseum we’re in and get suspicious. Where the hell are all the people then… you know, the neutral good sadists for whose sick fucking entertainment we’re supposed to face our collective grisly demise? I was planning on appealing to the mercy of the common people of the city to have us released, you see. That’s something a paladin would do, isn’t it? The DM explains that no one comes to the arena anymore to watch the spectacle. But wait, I thought the entire economy was based around this place. The DM assures me that it is. I scratch my head and ask then what in the holy fuck is the point of an arena when no one wants to watch what happens there?

So, the wizard decides to short-cut all the talking, and just blast this NPC asshole with a spell, and start our escape attempt. But no, that doesn’t work, you see, because the whole arena is sealed off from the stands by an Anti-Magic Field. You know, just like the glass around a hockey rink. For the crowd’s protection and stuff. This attempt to help us escape is the last useful thing this wizard does, by the way.

The Arena Master chuckles and goes on to tell us that no one comes here anymore in person, for precisely this reason. We all look confused and ask well, how does anyone watch what happens here, then? When the DM answered, I finally understood why goth kids cut themselves and Lovecraft protagonists commit suicide. Because now I too was trapped in a world devoid of reason and logic, where all control is lost and incomprehensible madness reigns, and I just need to hurt myself so I have at least one tiny thing that makes sense.

Here’s what he says;   “The government had permanent Major Image and Scry spells placed in each resident’s home, so they can watch from there. Think of it like Pay Per View, guys, except that it’s free….”

My head explodes. My character screams at the NPC “But that doesn’t make sense!! How does that bring in any money!! This is supposed to be the cornerstone of your economy!!”

DM’s response (I swear to God this is the truth):  “Well, they come for the concession stand food. We have the best cooks in the city working in the Arena. That’s how we make our money.”

I try to struggle against this tidal wave of shitty logic. But I’m drowning. My friend Brian actually slams his PHB down on the table, throws his dice into a corner and announces “That’s it. I’m done with this shit!” and leaves the table. The rest of us sit there and just stare at Bob, waiting for the punchline. But there isn’t one. He’s serious. They come for the nachos. They come for the motherfucking nachos!

Shopping = Trespassing = Imprisonment = Fight to the death in a hidden arena =  Free Pay Per View = Huge Nacho Sales = Economic Survival of Brigadoon!  That’s how this place functions.

So after being shut down with some awesome DMing there, we get shoved into this dungeon. Where a Major Image appears, and it’s an image of the Arena Master. Hooray! Weren’t we just talking to this guy face-to-face? What the fuck is going on here? The illusion informs us that he can hear and see us by means of scrying spells strategically placed around the dungeon. So to add insult to injury, this place has some sort of CCTV system in it? Jesus H Butt-fucking Christ. I’m losing brain cells at this point just from being at the same table as this ridiculous dungeon.

The Adventure….  or, Wait, Dude, I Totally Played Doom in 1993, Is That Why This Looks So Familiar?

So after having our brains raped with the big spiky dildo that passes for an adventure hook in this game, we ‘re finally in the dungeon. Okay. Maybe the combats will be awesome, and we’ll salvage something from this after all….

We’re in a hallway. A long, straight hallway with 13 doors on each side. At the end of the hallway is a big blue door with a glowy blue field covering it. As soon as we enter the hall, the door behind us slams shut, turns red, and is covered by a glowy red field. The image of Arena Master guy appears and tells us that we need to find the blue keycard (yes, the DM said keycard) and kill all the monsters on this level before the blue door would open.

Now, we’re 4^th level, so remember that, because it’s going to be important in like 5 seconds. Only one of us has a magic weapon, and it’s only a +1 longsword. We also have this douchebag Drizz’t clone with us, who’s level 15 at least, but won’t intervene to help us for some reason…… fucking good-hearted drow assholes. Hope they all die in a mine fire…..

So, door number one is on our left. It’s not locked, but it is closed. On the door is written the word “Aoric”. Knowledge checks are made, but it means nothing to any of us. Fair enough. We open the door. No traps. So far so good. Behind it is a 30 by 30 foot room with a large sarcophagus sitting in the center.

We approach cautiously, and my paladin Detects Evil on the coffin. Nothing. I give the go-ahead to carefully crack the lid open. We do so, and before we can even complete that action, a Death Knight wielding a greatsword leaps up out of it like some kind of satanic jack-in-the-box and begins one-shot killing characters. Two party members down instantly. We panic, faced with some CR 10 or 11 monster that has DR 10/+2 or something equally ridiculous. We attack it, using up all my lay on hands to damage it, and all the cleric’s turn undead attempts too. Our weapons just bounce off this thing, and we eventually beat it by having the wemic tackle it into a corner and then taking its greatsword away. Without Improved Unarmed Strike, it can’t attack us without drawing attacks of opportunity, so we just dance backwards and hit it with its own sword, which seems to damage it just fine.

So that works, we recover and heal our fallen party members, and realize we’re mostly out of spells and class abilities, and there are 25 rooms to go. Shit.

But then we have a closer look at this weapon we got. It’s a +2 greatsword. Awesome. So future damage reduction shouldn’t be a problem. That’s good, at least. We move on.

The next door is identical, except that the word on this one is “Boric”. It’s not locked, but it is closed. We open the door. No traps. So far so good.  Behind it is a 30 by 30 foot room with a large sarcophagus sitting in the….hey, wait a minute. Seriously?

Inside this one is another fucking Death Knight wielding a glowing greatsword. This time we at least have numbers on our side. It’s a tough fight, but we kill this one too. Now we have 2 of these +2 greatswords. But on this fight, we all ran through our single-use items, used a bunch of charges on our magic items, and got pretty hurt.

The next door also looks identical, but the word etched into its surface is “Coric”. We go into this one, and holy fucking shit, another 30 by 30 room with a huge coffin. We all look at each other like oh my god, there’s no way we can keep doing this. So my buddies Jon and Brian and I make a plan. We’re all going to hold our actions for someone to open the lid, then we’re all going to make disarm attacks at once, while Brian’s wemic holds the Death Knight we’re assuming is in there pinned in place. Then as it tries to climb out, we pound the shit out of it with attacks of opportunity.

This plan works like a charm. We smoke this third Death Knight without breaking a sweat. This is when Brian makes a critical error. He looks in the DMG and figures out how much XP we’re getting for each of these monsters, and how much a +2 greatsword is worth.

“Oh my god,” he says “at this rate, we’ll level like eight times by the end of this hallway, and have something like a couple hundred thousand gold worth of magic swords, you guys!”

Bob gets this look of panic on his face. Like oh shit, how could I have let that happen?

We roll up to the next door, which, as predictably as the sun rises in the east, is marked “Doric”, and we bust in there, ready to kick some death knight ass and get us a fourth +2 weapon. But Bob, never one to let logic stop him from ruining the fun, declares “Um, ok, all the other rooms are empty, guys. They all say Eoric, then Foric, then Goric, then Horic, and so on, right down to Zoric at the end, but none of them are in their coffins…”

I won’t even go in to what the players’ reactions were like to that bit of news.

So the door at the ends of the hall opens after we find a glowy blue keycard in Zoric’s empty bed.

The Boss Fight….. or, I Was Never Given A Name.

The door opens, and what lies before us?   A huge chamber, stretching “almost forever”, in the DM’s words. At the far end of this pillared chamber is “an enormous red dragon, with wings reaching out to touch both sides of the giant chamber. The dragon is absolutely enormous, and is perched like a canary on top of a huge pile of treasure.”

What the fuck is this? Were we supposed to level eight times before coming in here? Is this an illusion? It better be, or we’re fucking dead.

My paladin steps up, and I figure what the hell, if I get eaten then at least I’m done with this farce of a game. I’m going to go down playing my character to the hilt, right? So I walk right into the chamber, declare my character’s name and the fact that I challenge the dragon to combat. I ask the dragon what its name is, so that if I die, I can at least take the knowledge of who bested me into the afterlife.

The fucking dragon looks at me and says “I was never given a name.” in, to quote the DM, “a sad voice”. What? This is a colossal red dragon, perched like a canary on a Scrooge McDuck-sized pile of loot, and it doesn’t know its own name? A red dragon, right? The most proud, egomaniacal, self-centered and ruthless dragons there are, right? And this is some kind of emo asshole dragon with his bangs hanging in his eyes, looking at us like Eeyore, claiming that he doesn’t even have a name? Urge to kill rising!

So we fight the dragon, and after it’s killed most of us, the DM’s fucking dark elf NPC steps up, blasts the thing with some kind of spellfire, and kills it in one shot. Then he heals the party members and congratulates us on how well we fought.

I don’t even have words for how pissed we all were when this shit-bomb got dropped on us.

At least we got the treasure, right? That way when the other guy who wanted to DM takes over, we’ll be rich and high-level, right? Maybe that’ll make it worth it.

So we eyeball the treasure and ask Bob how much is there. He grins like he’s being the most generous DM on earth and says “four thousand gold pieces”. I wanted to punch his neck out from under his head.

I remember yelling “Perched like a canary, Bob! Your words! Perched. Like. A. Canary. On top of a big pile of treasure! How big are these gold pieces?”

Bob:  “You know, regular size, like the size of a quarter.”

Me: “So they’re not the size of fucking manhole covers or pizzas or anything?”

Bob: “Nope. Just regular gold piece size.”

Me: “How fucking tiny was this dragon?”

Bob: “Oh, it was huge. Like with an eighty-foot wingspan at least.”

Me: (inarticulate sputtering as I choke on my own rage for being a part of this game)

Me: “Bob, have you ever seen four thousand coins? You realize that’s the same as one hundred rolls of quarters, right? I could fit that in a single backpack! We could put that in the center on this table and it wouldn’t even cover the combat map!”

Needless to say, Bob did not continue DMing for much longer after that point. But the story of this party is far from over!

It continues in The Carnival of Shame Part 2: The King’s Face is Missing!

This is the exciting story of a country without a king, and our heroes’ quest to find him, or at least figure out what the hell the old coot looks like…. 

Coming Soon!

My cup runneth over… with delicious pain-flavored Skorne goodness!

Soul Slave? Cull Souls? A fan that Blinds?  Razor Wurm? Someone at Privateer has been reading my dirty filthy Skorne-douchebaggery-hope-chest diary!

If I didn’t already love the Skorne so damn much, this would have done it. All you rage-quitting theorymachiners out there can start sending me your bargain basement Skorne offers right now!

Let’s talk for a moment about how freakin’ awesome the Razor Wurm is. I know we have no idea what it does, but to be honest, I don’t need to! I’ll take two, at least. The concept is fantastic, and reasonable explanations for how it works be damned! How do the Skorne stop it from escaping long enough to train it? They keep it in a pen made of stone, or glass, or Pyrex or Kryptonite, or something. I don’t know. I don’t care!

It’s a giant creepy-crawly that’s been tortured into submission and made to wear a fancy horn-ring, then unleashed against the enemy from underground. I…I don’t even know what to say…. I’m getting all emotional about it…..

I’ve got a long-standing love for creepy, sort of twisted stuff in RPGs and miniature games, especially if it’s also either fancy or cutesy. And this thing is all three. In my old gaming group, we had a nonsense word for this kind of monster. Mooble-dy. We had to make up an adjective, because nothing else in English really summed up that perfect storm of black-hearted evil, cutesy-ness, slightly cartoonish ridiculousness and menace. Well, I guess we didn’t have to, but we did. To have to explain each and every time what makes something mooble-dy would just take too long. We needed something more succinct. Suffice to say, when something’s mooble-dy, you know it.

The word started when my friend John Haas and I were playing a game called Confrontation. In that game, there’s an army of demonically-possessed dwarves and demons posing as dwarves. They’re short, evil, they like to wear masks made from the faces of their victims, and for some reason they love fancy clothes and making tiny, cute voodoo dolls shaped like stuffed animals, which they fill with the ensorcelled ashes of the organs of enemies they’ve ritually sacrificed to their dark gods, and then animate to act as little friends and servants. See, how do you sum up something like that? The human brain can barely comprehend how perfect it is in the first place! A little, partially-mummified spawn of the abyss, wearing bondage gear and the preserved face it cut off a paladin, carrying a weapon that drips poison and consumes souls, who’s being followed by a little swarm of happy pink and blue voodoo dolls shaped like birds and bunnies? It’s mooble-dy. I don’t know why, but I have a terrible weakness for stuff like that. I think that when it’s done right, it’s absolutely fantastic!

And this Razor Wurm thing has mooble-dy to spare. And for me, that’s the one thing this game had been missing. Something that when you look at it, at first makes you go what the hell? Is it just me, or does that thing look sort of stupid, and kind of cartoony-cute? But then you think about what your reaction would be if you encountered it, in real life, to scale, and it was coming after you, and then you go oh wait, holy crap, I would totally shit my pants in terror and never sleep again… So thank you, Privateer Press, for making something like this, that for me at least, hits that sweet spot between cuteness, evil, and fancy-ness that just makes my heart swoon. If I could own a trained one of these in real life, I would.

Moving on.

So Hexeris is back, and apparently while the other skorne warlocks were all patting each other on the back (or something), he went into the desert and found his balls. I can’t wait to play him now! Soul Slave is the spell that, in my opinion, has been missing from the Skorne all this time. Soulfire and Psychic Vampire are so characterful for him, and Death March seals the deal. MAT 9 Arcuarii or Cetrati with Vengeance? Yes, please!

Mordikaar has Cull Soul now? Great! I don’t know how often I’m going to end up benefiting from it, but it fits him so well that I’m excited to see it on his card. Why shouldn’t he have it? Even if I only get 4 or 6 tokens from it over the course of a game, that’s still an extra Essence Blast or two, or some more Revives. Nothing wrong with that! Combined with some Hollow soul tokens, that can start to add up quick. Hands-down the most versatile and effective warlock for Skorne in Mark 1 in my opinion, Mordikaar’s finally got that same feel now for Mark 2. I think he’s going to be my go-to warlock in pretty short order. (Plus, he’s got tentacle-things coming off his back that hold up his magic night-lights that he got after returning from the land of the dead. There’s just a hint of mooble-dy there as well… if only he were a little more Lovecraftian, he’d be perfect.)

And what needs to be said about eMorghoul? Not much, I think. He looks sweet, and I love the changes. Can’t wait to try him out. I never played much eMorghoul in Mark 1, but I’ll certainly be giving the new version a good stress-test. Assassination Run looks like it’s really going to reward good combined-arms type Skorne lists, and really has that sense that it’s Morghoul leading from the front, directing a whole force of assassination-capable heavy-hitters rather than relying 100% on his own skills to get the job done. 

Here’s hoping that not much from the Skorne changes between “final online rules” and print time. The warlocks that needed a little extra flavor got it, the stuff that needed to stay the same has more or less done so, and now we have the Razor Wurm to look forward to. Awesome. Good time to be a Tyrant!

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Warmachine Terrain I Recently Made

 

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Some more NorCal palette Skorne

Here are the next couple of models in my NorCal-inspired Skorne army; Master Tormentor Morghoul & a Cyclops Savage. Plus some better shots of the Krea and Zaal.

Bases have been left till later, as always.

Page 5, Soap, & the Manchurian Gamer.

In the wake of all the recent conspiracy-theory laced rambling on the Privateer forums, I’ve been thinking about something; is it possible that Matt Wilson & Co really do have a secret agenda of some kind? Beyond just making awesome games  and running the company? Is there something about Warmachine/Hordes that’s fiendishly designed to influence our behavior? Are we mere moments away from a Manchurian Gamer situation?

I know I joked in a recent post about him doing a silly voodoo dance to curse our dice to roll nothing but ones… but is it possible that there really is some secret message hidden in Page 5? Or how about tucked away in the index of terms, or the Trample rules? Maybe….

Here’s what got me thinking about this;  I was playing a game earlier this week with one of the regular Warmachine players from the local group. The Privateer crowd usually gets together on a certain night, but we had scheduled a game for the day after. This matters because on designated PP nights, the Warmahordes guys have the gaming room pretty much to themselves. Other nights, not so much. There’s lots of card games, other wargames, and so on. Even the occasional Vampire LARP.

Which brings me to my point; why is it that Privateer night is the one night where we don’t have to endure waves of vomit-inducing foulness, boiling off the other gamers like a leaking nuclear reactor spewing fallout? The one night where I don’t feel like my nostrils are being raped with a pitchfork made of rancid chicken, fat-flap funk and curdled milk? Why? What makes this one night different from the others?

So, we’re all gamers no matter what our system of choice is, right? No difference there. We all think pushing little metal & plastic dudes around on a table is a fun way to spend an evening. Most of us would rather spend an evening with Aragorn & Arwen than the First Family.  Chances are you can’t swing a dead cat in that room (which frankly may have been another explanation for the smell…. hmmmm….) without hitting someone who’s willing to throw down over which is better, Star Wars or Star Trek.

There are young & old players in both camps (The camps being Privateer & non-Privateer in this instance). In fact, look at any social factors, and gamers of all stripes tend to run the gamut. Well-off adults and struggling college kids. Men and women. Single and married. Gay and straight. Tall and short. Fat and thin.  There didn’t seem to be any reason why one group should be aware of soap & shampoo, and the other group thinks hygiene means rubbing themselves with old fish and big handfuls of simian dick-cheese.

But then I hit upon the obvious answer; Mind Control. Yes, friends. Mind. Control. Clearly, the only sensible explanation. 

Why would Privateer take away our free will, you ask? I mean, this is America for cripes’ sake!

Here it is: Conventions and personal protection. Think about it. Thousands of gamers packed into tight quarters for days at a time, too busy to “waste precious gaming time” by taking a shower or changing their socks, excited by the prospect of meeting their favorite game designers, shaking hands and thanking them for doing what they do. Can you imagine the all-out, nuclear weapons-grade cloud of stink that those designers have to endure in a 6-8 hour shift at a display table or a demo booth? I shudder to think. Walking through your average convention game hall is usually bad enough.

Who of us could blame the game developers if they took just one or two tiny, morally questionable steps to forestall the coming Stenchpocalypse? Not I.

How much easier would their lives be if they had the power to nudge their players (just a little, mind you), in the direction of cleanliness?  Would that be so bad? Just a little subliminal messaging dropped into the artwork. Just a touch. Maybe the next time you see Kreoss, Spellbreaker’s ball looks just a little like a bar of soap. Just from this one certain angle…. And hey, are those soap-suds bubbling out of that Ironclad’s shiny, polished boiler stack? Neat! Deathjack already looks like he’s got his head down to shampoo his hair. Maybe this time around the bolded letters on Page 5 will spell out “Wash your filthy ass or risk dying a miserable virgin, you’re making everyone around you sick with your foul odor of swine”…..I mean, would that be so bad? It’s not like it’s hurting anyone…..

So there I was; my opponent & I were having a perfectly enjoyable game of Warmachine. He was testing out his Cryx list for Resurgence, and I was losing. So far, it was par for the course. Then a couple of guys playing a competing company’s mini game arrived. And, oh look! They brought their friend, Rancid Stink O’ Doom-n-Feet, with them! Hooray!

No word of a lie, it was so bad I was having trouble concentrating on the game. They set up shop right near us, and right about then I started contemplating throwing the game, just to get out of there faster. And this wasn’t a group of twenty people packed into a crowded game-store, playing in the heat of summer with broken AC. This was two guys, playing in a room the size of a small warehouse, with maybe 15-20 foot high ceilings.

I’ve played wargames and spent time in gaming stores and convention halls for 20+ years now. I even managed a game store for a while, and must confess to a decade or more long streak of LARPing, boffer weapons and all. So I’ve seen every kind of barely-functional, misanthropic, slack-jawed troglodyte weirdo these hobbies have to offer.

And by no means am I saying that all 40K players, LARPers, or the players of any one particular game or genre of games are universally rank & vile. Not at all. Many are great, and none of this applies to them on an individual basis. I’m just saying that when it comes time to play wargames, CCGs, RPGs, or any of the other myriad of games out there, you usually get a good dose of some pretty ripe people showing up.

But my experience over the years has been that when it’s Privateer night, the sort of average level of bat-shit crazy & stink in the room seems to be dialed way down. Never seen a rules discussion result in torn-up cards or flipped tables. I never saw anyone puke into their hands because of the smell coming off their opponent. The overwhelming majority of players seem to be actual fully-functional human beings in possession of the proper number of chromosomes. Weird. It’s almost like they’re people first, gamers second. ;)

So; have Privateer Press encoded some subliminal message into their products? Does it secretly encourage us to shower regularly, wash our clothes, not spend the night in a ditch filled with medical waste and taco meat? It almost seems like they might have…..  and I, for one, truly welcome the behavior-modification programs handed down by our new overlords & masters. It’s a Brave New Privateer Press Day.

Shit! Wait, I didn’t mean to type that last bit… how odd. Oh well….

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Cygnar Warcasters and a WIP Ironclad

A recent string of unfortunate trade attempts resulted in my playing Cygnar again, rather than starting my fancy new Protectorate of Menoth army.

(And apropos that, let me send out a big, heartfelt Fuck You to people who can’t grasp the concept that when you mail things, you shouldn’t endzone-spike a pile of heavy shit onto fragile models from 5 feet up, then send that to me in a cavernous box with no packing materials, so that when the postman hands it to me, all the weight slides to one end of the box, accompanied by the delightful music of hundreds of metal fragments rattling around loose in there….)

So anyhow, I had an alternate sculpt Haley and a pNemo that I did a couple of years ago, and I recently got Siege to the final detail stage as well.  The Ironclad is nearly done, just the legs and a little clean-up left to go, and Siege is missing some clean-up work on his pouches.

Again, the bases are for the most part not 100% done. Hate doing bases. Always put it off for as long as possible. Enjoy!

 

I’m liking this color scheme. I think the bright blues look good when you see them at arm’s length at the gaming table. The white is just something I decided to go with as an alternative to gold. But the more I did it, the more I thought it looked sweet. I’m not crazy about bright metallics as a rule, so I decided to save those for the Cygnus on the jack chassis and select details on the ‘casters.

I like the color combination on armor and rigid surfaces. However I have yet to figure out how this scheme is gonna translate to infantry and solos (because of all the soft surfaces & clothing), and that’s going to be my next project. Or maybe I’ll cop out and do some Sword Knights or Stormguard instead. Put the Long Gunners and Black 13th off for a bit.

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Ulf’s Red Mercs: Part 2

Here are some more of the red merc army models.

The bases on most of these are still WIP. I hate doing the finishing steps on bases for some reason, so I always do them as the very last step, in a  big batch, when all the models are done.

Credit for the Wrecker conversion goes to my friend Jon (SteelWings on the forums). A really simple conversion, but I think it adds a lot to the model.

This Nomad was photographed using my old camera. So the color balance is a little off. It’s actually exactly the same red as the Driller & Durgen.

So that’s all for now. I’ll photograph the rest as they get completed. Next up should be some red Sea Dogs and maybe a solo or two. Most likely Eiryss &/or Thor.

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Ulf’s Red Mercs; Part 1

I thought I’d post some of my red-themed Merc forces here. I did these originally as an add-on force to bring a Khador army up to 1000 points in Mk 1. The Khador part of the plan never really panned out, but the mercs looked good, so I stuck with the red scheme when I decided to play Mercs as my main faction.

This group shot below links to a larger version….

 

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