"Forlorn Hope" is a Must Have Addition to the SF Boardgamer's Shelves

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of visiting the Victory Point Games office. While I was there, I playtested their upcoming title Assault on Galactus Prime with the game's designer and had a wonderful time. As the release date for that game approaches, I'll post a review of that gem. I was also able to meet one of my favorite game designers -- in both computer and print games -- Chris Taylor. When it comes to game mechanics and concepts, it just seems that Chris Taylor has a direct link into my subconscious. Either that or we have been having secret psychic discussions about games, books, movies, etc. for decades.

A perfect example of how his designs seem custom made for me is Forlorn: Hope.

Forlorn: Hope has a familiar and well loved theme...Marines vs. Aliens. Ever since I first read Heinlein's Starship Troopers, I have been a fan of the genre. I own a number of games that follow the theme: Bughunters, Starship Troopers, Space Hulk, Death Angel, Aliens, Doom of the Eldar, to name a few. Basically, if it has a small squad of outnumbered and desperate combatants facing off against a rapidly populating army of insectlike foes, I'm game.

When Forlorn: Hope was released last year, I was jonesing for a new addition to the genre. In actuality, I was jonesing for a game of Space Hulk 1st edition, but was having trouble finding one at an affordable price on eBay. I owned the 2nd edition, but I wanted to play with the original "d6" based rules. During this time, I happened to be reading one of Victory Point Games bi-weekly reports and noticed that they were featuring a new game by Chris Taylor called Forlorn: Hope. As I was already a fan of his, and of VPG, I immediately ordered a copy. Not long after this, Games Workshop released a limited edition of Space Hulk 3rd edition which used the mechanics of the 1st edition, so that itch was scratched. I carried my copy of Forlorn: Hope around for months, including to last year's Gen Con, but the stars never aligned to put together a play session.

That changed this last weekend, when most of my regular gaming group was unable to attend our regularly scheduled gaming schedule due to the game day falling upon a holiday weekend. It turned out that only one of my regular gaming group, Eric Lytle, was able to stop by. Thankfully, Eric is one of the few members of my regular group who loves board games as much as I do...and he's a fan of the Marines vs. Aliens genre to boot. I pulled out my copy of Forlorn: Hope, went over the rules with Eric, and played two quick scenarios. All of which took slightly more than two hours. The rules were clear, the play was quick, and the game exciting.

The rules to Forlorn: Hope are simple enough for the beginning gamer, but dynamic enough to satisfy the veteran.

One player takes the role of the space Marines who venture aboard a savaged space station named Hope. These Marines have been given a mission objective that must be fulfilled. The other player controls the Xeno "Mind" and seeks to devour all of the delicious Marines foolish enough to venture onto the Hope. The missions define the make up of the Marine squad and the forces available to the Xeno "Mind." The players set up according to the basic rules, and the Xeno player will draw a number of "mutation" cards which can affect game play as the mission unfolds. At the beginning of each turn the Marine player rolls to determine how many Action Points he or she has to spend on actions, every movement or shot that the player wants a Marine to do requires the expenditure of points. The Xeno player gets to activate every living Xeno during his or her turn. Play goes quickly and the combat resolution system is quick and deadly. The temptation is to play cautiously as the Marine player, but each scenario has a limited number of turns for the player to fulfill the objective and play must be fairly aggressive to succeed.

Our two sessions were bloodbaths, but the Marines did manage to recover the "Master Control General Function Neuralnet" from the Hope in both instances. Forlorn: Hope manages to capture the hopelessness, desperation, and horror of the best sessions of Space Hulk while keeping game play simple enough that the action never bogs down into rules discussions.

Like most VPG games the game is fairly expensive, but the games are crafted by hand by a company that is dedicated to making every gamer into a game designer. VPG is the only game company that I can think of that considers themselves both a company and a classroom. Given how quickly a session of Forlorn: Hope goes by, and considering the replay value due to different scenarios and mutation card effects, there is a lot of bang for your gaming buck in this product.

A Gamer's Treasure -- Different Worlds #23

To say that Different Worlds Issue #23 is one of the highest Superhero Themed Gaming Magazine issues of all time would be an understatement. It closer to the truth to say that this particular issue of Different Worlds is one of the best -- if not the single best -- issue of a gaming magazine ever published.

Issue 23, the "Special Superhero" issue, was published in August of 1982 just as superhero roleplaying games were beginning to emerge in the marketplace. 1977 had seen the release of Superhero 2044. This game was quickly followed by the release of the 1st edition of Villains and Vigilantes by Jeff Dee and Jack Herman and Supergame Aimee Karklyn and John Hartlove. By the time Champions emerged in the marketplace in 1981 at the Origins Game Fair, where it set a new standard in superhero gaming, the genre was well established as a successful gaming milieu.

During the early 1980s, fewer gaming magazines were "House Organs" that existed purely to promote the products of the company that published the magazine. The vast majority of these magazines were published by gaming publishers, like today, but these publishers frequently featured articles containing content for their competitor's games and advertisements for their competitor's products. Dragon, The Space Gamer, and Different Worlds were published by TSR, Steve Jackson Games, and Chaosium but they didn't limit themselves to promoting their own products. Of these magazines, Dragon ran the fewest articles covering competitors' products but it contained a significant amount of external advertising. It wasn't until the publication by Steve Jackson Games' AutoDuel Quarterly that a company produced a magazine with the sole goal of promoting a single product line.

If Dragon was the stingiest when it came to containing articles about other companies' offerings, Different Worlds and The Space Gamer were in heavy competition for which magazine was the most generous in supporting the hobby first and the company second. Both were excellent magazines that are sorely missed today.

It is in this environment that Different Worlds issue #23 "hit the stands" and set a high mark for what a magazine could do in support of the hobby itself. If you were considering starting up a magazine that covered the whole RPG hobby -- I'm looking at you d∞ -- this is the issue I would point you toward to demonstrate how to do a themed issue.

The issue had content that supported all of the major superhero roleplaying games of the day, had reviews of several of their products, and had reviews of some of the smaller emerging titles of the time.

Let's have a look at the issue:

Superhero 2044: Part-Time Superhero -- This five page article, written by the game's designer Donald Saxman, provided designer notes for the game, supplemental rules, and an adventure that players could run in their own campaigns. The inclusion of a couple of new characters is helpful to GMs and players who want to use this system.

Villains and Vigilantes -- Pages 14 and 15 of the issue have a detailed discussion, by game designer Jeff Dee, of the history of the game and the changes that Dee and Jack Herman made to the system for the newly released (in 1982) 2nd edition of the game.

Supergame -- Jay and Aimee Hartlove have a four page article that has a detailed discussion of the game's development and history. This article also includes Supergame conversions of The Incredible Hulk (Marvel), Raven (DC), Captain America (Marvel), Wonder Woman (DC), Batman (DC), Spider Woman (Marvel), and Wolverine (Marvel). This article prompted years of searching for copies of Supergame, a search that was not completed until 2002 when I found copies of the first and second edition at the War House in Long Beach. Modeling existing characters within a specific gaming system is one of the best ways to demonstrate what the benchmarks of a given game are and Jay and Aimee did a bang up job in this issue. They also discussed the limitations of their game.

Champions has two articles back to back in the issue. The first is a set of designer notes by Steve Peterson. Modern Champions players may not be able to envision a day when Steven Long wasn't the man behind the rules set, and he has been a boon for the game, but it's nice to read what the creator of a game thought of his rules and how he wanted them changed for the second edition. The first edition of Champions was a 64 page rulebook released in 1981, Hero Games released a second edition of 80 pages a year later. That "revised" edition contained a number of significant changes. This second edition was the edition of the game I cut my teeth on, though the 4th edition was the one I played the most and still find to be my favorite edition. What is particularly praiseworthy in Peterson's notes is how responsive he was to how the game was being played. Given that he was a decade before the internet -- though there was a significant BBS community for the game -- it is even more remarkable.

The second article for Champions is an article by Glenn Thain, a name you will find repeated in many of the early superhero rpgs and someone who has a knack for testing the limits of systems in character design, where he presents statistical representations for the John Byrne era X-Men. This article shaped the way that I viewed game balance for quite some time. In hindsight I think that Thain's fandom for the characters made him make them a little more powerful than they would have been written up by a more neutral evaluator. Regardless of quibbles, Thain presents some good guidelines to be used in individual campaigns that wish to model superheroes. Thain provides statistics for Sprite (Kitty Pride/Shadowcat), Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Cyclops, Wolverine, and Magneto (giving one villain). Given the accuracy of the emulation of the abilities of the characters, this article is a great demonstration of the versatility of the Champions system -- even before it became a 900 page omnibus.

Superworld -- Given that Different Worlds was a Chaosium organ, one would expect to find a section discussing their superhero entry Superworld and Steve Perrin provides a nice designer notes and errata article for the first edition (the one in the Worlds of Wonder boxed set) of the game. Superworld is based on the Basic Role-Playing system, and as such has one of the most intuitive mechanical systems as its underlying structure. Tell someone that they have to roll 11 or less on 3d6 to accomplish a task and they may or may not understand what the probabilities of success are. Tell them that they have a 55% chance and it is instantly crystal clear. Superworld's system is a percentile based one. It is no wonder that this game became the basis for George R. R. Martin's shared world anthology Wild Cards. The game is versatile and easy to understand. The first doesn't have a large power set, but that was soon changed with a second -- and stand alone -- version of the game.

Like Champions, Superworld gets an article wherein the X-men are modeled using the system. In this case the X-Men represented include a couple missing from the prior article. They are Angel, Storm, Professor X, Sprite (Kitty Pride/Shadowcat), Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Cyclops, Colossus, and Magneto (the villain).

In the reviews section of the issue, there are reviews of Supervillains by Task Force Games (a deservedly negative review by Steve Perrin), The Official Superhero Adventure Game by Brian Phillips (a relatively positive review of the independently published game -- a game that I desperately wish to own), Death Duel with the Destroyers an adventure for Villains and Vigilantes (a deservedly positive review by Steve Perrin), The Ysgarth System (a mixed review of a game that became the foundation of a near impossible to find superhero rpg entitled Challengers).

There are many other noteworthy aspects to the issue, not the least of which is the sweet Bill Willingham cover, so if you are a fan of superhero rpgs you absolutely must track down a copy of the issue. My personal copy is one of the "Collector's Reprints."

Books Every Gamer Should Own: Rick Swan's The Complete Guide to Roleplaying Games

In November of 1990, the world of role playing games was still largely a mystery to the majority of mass culture. Most people "knew," thanks to the culture wars, that D&D was devil worship and it made you go crazy like Tom Hanks in "that" made for TV movie. There had been some products released in the 1980s that attempted to convey to the lay person what role playing games were about and what some of the best role playing games were. These products did a good job of introducing the concepts, systems, and assumptions underlying role playing games as a hobby. They also provided great information to those who wanted a better understanding of these games than the evening news was providing them -- sadly not enough people read these books and some of the misconceptions regarding rpgs linger into the modern day.

While the concept of what role playing games are was a mystery to the majority of the public, the vast array of products available and whether they were of good quality or not was largely a mystery to the majority of gamers. Unless you subscribed to THE SPACE GAMER, WHITE DWARF (before it became all Warhammer all the time), THE DRAGON, or some other gaming magazine -- most of which were fairly obscure and weren't available at your local bookstore (THE DRAGON being the exception) -- you had no source for thoughtful and accurate reviews. Since the creation of the role playing game hobby, circa 1973 with the publication of D&D, literally hundreds of new games -- in a wide variety of genre -- had been published. Some were still in print, others had come into print and faded away. Unless you had a phenomenal hobby store in your local community you were likely unaware of the majority of these games.



Into this product rich and information scarce environment arrived a perfect catalog for the role playing aficionado, Rick Swan's The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games. Even if the "complete" in the title was a bit of an exaggeration, there were many games excluded from the book, the volume is was an invaluable resource for the gamer who wanted to know what was available in 1990 and whether it was any good or not. The fact that the book is topical today is a testimony to the insightful reviews provided by Rick Swan. The majority of the reviews are "true reviews" and not merely product recommendations. This is because the reviews don't merely provide a recommendation pro or con a particular product, they also give a glimpse into the history and mechanics of the game. One can determine whether a particular review is a "true review" or a mere product recommendation by asking themselves one simple question about the review, "does this review add value to the 'art' in addition to evaluating a particular product or work?" In the case of games, a "true review" would include meaningful discussion regarding game design -- from either a mechanical or narrative perspective. Many of the reviews in Rick Swan's book meet this criterion.

This isn't to say that I agree with every review, I don't, but it is to say that the vast majority of the reviews in this book are a worthy read for gamers of any generation.

An example of an argument that Swan presents in the book that has shaped the way I view my hobby (how often can you say a review has shaped the way you view a particular medium?) is this section of his review of the Dungeons and Dragons Game -- in this case the Red Box Basic Set and not AD&D:

Purists grumble that D&D isn't just simple, but simple-minded. The rigid character classes give players little freedom in customizing their PCs, and advancement by levels is arbitrary and unrealistic. The magic system and combat rules are illogical, Armor Classes represent the chance of being hit rather than offering protection from damage, experience points are meaningless and abstract, the adventures are juvenile... you get the idea.

These grouches completely miss the point. Complaining that Dungeons and Dragons is an unrealistic RPG is like saying that chess is an inaccurate wargame. We aren't talking about delving into the social structure of medieval Europe here, we're talking about tossing fireballs at lizard men and swiping gold pieces from ogres. Dungeons and Dragons provides a streamlined, easily mastered set of rules that emphasizes action and adventure. And as a bonus, it's an excellent introduction to the entire hobby.

This is only a small section of Swan's review of the D&D game, which he gives 3 1/2 stars out of 4, but within these two paragraphs you can begin to see an underlying philosophy of what role playing game design should focus on. In this case, the argument is that it is perfectly appropriate for a game to focus on fun at the expense of realism -- an argument that Gary Gygax often made in THE DRAGON while defending his creation. Amazingly, many of the criticisms launched at Basic D&D can be heard in the criticisms many people are making of the newest edition of D&D (4th Edition). It is often said that the game is overly simple, for MMORPG obsessed teens, for those too stupid to understand the complex rules of 3.5, and a score of other statements that echo the sentiments that Swan so easily pushes to the side. Like the Basic Set, 4e is an excellent introduction to the entire hobby.

As I wrote earlier, Swan's review of D&D is one of the things that helped shape my appreciation for the gaming hobby and helped me form my underlying philosophy. My philosophy is simple, the system should serve the intention -- an adaptation of form follows function. But in the case of my gaming philosophy, ornament isn't necessarily a crime -- ornament can be the purpose; and in the case of games the narrative "fluff" can be said to be the ornamentation surrounding the mechanical design. The ends of gaming is "fun" and though that word can have many definitions, it is the goal of the game designer (and the DM and players in interactive role playing games) to play toward the goal of fun. Needless to say, fun trumps verisimilitude at every turn in my gaming philosophy. I'm not a purist. I like elements of chance introduced into my games. But then again, much to the dismay of Adolf Loos, I adore art nouveau.

It is this love of "form follows fun," that also points to the review where I most disagree with Mr. Swan. He is unkind to the classic Pacesetter game Chill. According to Swan Chill is:

a horror game for the easily frightened...While most of Chill's vampires, werewolves, and other B-movie refugees wouldn't scare a ten-year-old, they're appropriate to the modest ambitions of the game...Though it's been out of print for years, Chill remains as popular as ever on the convention circuit. I'm not sure why...Chill is too shallow for extended campaigns and lacks the depth to please anyone but the most undemanding of players.

I guess for Mr. Swan it's okay for a fantasy game to be about throwing fireballs at lizard men, but it isn't okay for a horror game to be based on the Universal Classic Horrors or the glorious Hammer films. Mr. Swan, it seems, is only satisfied by the deeply nihilistic horror of the Lovecraftian kind exemplified by Call of Cthulhu where life is meaningless. Too bad, Chill has some wonderful fodder for the Game Master well versed in the classic horror tale who wants his players to be ghost hunters like the Winchester Brothers rather than gibbering lunatics who have seen what man was not meant to know. I have always been struck by how an individual can defend the simple gateway game on one hand, but then dismiss another because it isn't high art. And that criticism can apply to any number of critics.

Disagreements aside, the book is a wonderful and necessary edition to any gamer's library.

C is for Chill

You are about to enter the world of CHILL, where unknown things sneak, and crawl, and creep, and slither in the darkness of a moonless night. This is the world of horror, the world of the vampire, ghost, and ghoul, the world of things not know, and best not dreamt of. CHILL is a role-playing game of adventure into the Unknown and your first adventure is about to begin -- CHILL Introductory Folder

In 1984 a group of former TSR Employees -- including Mark Acres, Troy Denning, and Stephen Sullivan -- formed Pacesetter Ltd. Games and released the Chill role playing game. Chill wasn't the first horror role playing game, nor was it the best, but it has long held a place as a "cult" favorite in the role playing game world. Where other horror role playing games sought to capture the dark nihilistic material horror of H.P. Lovecraft, or the gruesome horror of many films, Chill tried to capture the tone of Hammer and AIP productions.

Because of its focus, and because its creators were former TSR employees, Rick Swan reviewed the game quite negatively in Dragon magazine and in his Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games. He described the game as, "A horror game for the easily frightened...While most of Chill's vampires, werewolves, and other B-movie refugees wouldn't scare a ten-year-old, they're appropriate to the modest ambitions of the game...Chill is too shallow for extended campaigns, and lacks the depth to please anyone but the most undemanding players. For beginners only."

Swan was correct that the game was simple, and appropriate for beginners, but he was far from the mark when he claimed that it lacked depth that could appeal to demanding players who want extended campaigns. The game has solid underlying mechanics that encourage a loose style of play that encourages storytelling over combat and reduces the dependency on die rolls that so many role playing games often overly promote. Like many Pacesetter games, Chill is innovative and slightly ahead of its time -- nowhere is this more the case than with their Chill: Black Morn Manor board game -- but like many things ahead of their time there are some flaws to the mechanics. Nothing too big, but definitely things that might make some gamers reject it out of hand. The game is simple enough that a group of players can pick up the rules and start to play within 15 minutes...from scratch.

Let me repeat that. This game, made in 1984, is easy enough to learn that a group can open the box and begin playing within fifteen minutes. Given how complex rpgs seem to the non-gamer, this is quite a marvelous achievement in and of itself.

The most comprehensive review of Chill -- during its era -- was the review in Space Gamer 75 by Warren Spector. In the article, Spector provided a balanced review -- not all of it positive -- but described the game as follows:

You won't find better, more consistently entertaining writing in any set of game rules...
Chill is the first to include an introductory folder advising players to begin playing that adventure before they've read the rules of the game! To begin, players have only to read a four page READ-ME-FIRST! introduction to the rules, pick up the 16-page adventure booklet and begin playing! And, sure enough, the cockamamie scheme works!

Spector's final word on the game is that it "falls somewhat short of the mark," but his analysis is clear and he seems to understand that he is looking at something new here.

There are many games from the 80s that -- mechanically and tonally -- seem extremely dated by modern gaming standards. Chill -- the first Pacesetter edition -- isn't one of them. It has a kind of classic feel to it, just like all the Hammer and AIP movies it was inspired by. It isn't a dark and serious horror game, but it is an adventurous one. If you want to experience existential horror, you can do no better than Call of Cthulhu, but if you want to pretend to be Peter Cushing's Van Helsing hunting Christopher Lee's Dracula you want Chill.

A hand touched his face, but he felt no warmth of human reassurance in that other hand, no sense of comradeship against the dark foes of the night. Boulton shrank from the touch. Then scrambled back. Then shouted. For now he could see the hand, rising like a pale, icy plant, from the churning soil of a grave. -- Chill Campaign Book

[DnDNext] Warding Off System Snobbery

I'm as guilty of it as the next gamer.  If you mention that you play F.A.T.A.L. or one of a small list of games, I will roll my eyes derisively and mock you behind your back.  I might even make a snide comment about your gaming preferences.  Equally, I will be deeply offended if you roll your eyes at me when I mention that I love playing Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition Essential Edition or The Rocky and Bullwinkle Role Playing Party Game.  It's System Snobbery and one thing that the "edition wars" and the recent "dndnext" conversations have aptly demonstrated, it is alive and well.

The thing is that System Snobbery isn't new, and it isn't beneficial to the hobby as a whole.  I was recently reminded of how insidious System Snobbery can be when I picked up and read Laryy DiTillio's commentary on the topic in issue 7 of Different Worlds Magazine.  I've been spending a lot of time recently reading old gaming magazines, magazines from when I was just getting into the hobby.  At the time, as a tween, I had neither the resources nor the knowledge that gaming magazines other than "The Dragon" existed at all.  Heck, even though I lived in the same town as the talented and prolific Allen Varney -- we probably shopped at the same game store -- I hadn't even heard of The Space Gamer at the time.

Back to the point though.  In his commentary on System Snobbery, Larry DiTillio has a couple of key observations that I think are worth sharing as we enter discussions regarding what we would like to see from a new edition of Dungeons and Dragons.

Larry's commentary follows a visit in 1979 to a reasonably sized convention in Oakland, CA called GrimCon.  He mentions that the games organizers all are employees/founders of various small gaming companies like the Multiversal Trading Company and Grimoire Games.  As such, the Con offered a lot of non-traditional role playing games as their "tournament fare." 

Larry's firsts observation of gaming snobbery was that while the hosts of the convention were offering a wide variety of games for sampling, that the attendees pretty much ignored them to spend time in the open gaming area to play D&D.  His thoughts, and I agree, were that conventions are the perfect time to try something new.

His second observation is of how he was treated at a DunDraCon event.  At the event, Larry was scheduled to run a session of Tunnels and Trolls.  He had been invited to DunDraCon IV by Steve Perrin to run the game. After sitting and waiting for players to show up, eventually a convention representative asked Larry why he had cancelled is T&T session.  He notified them he hadn't, but discovered that someone had -- likely as a prank -- written "cancelled" on his sign up sheet.  He eventually got gamers to a T&T table, but not before being passive aggressively bullied by some System-hater. 

Larry makes a number of other observations, and is a talented storyteller in how he shares them, so I recommend picking up the issue.  The crux of is article is the following:

"[A Good GM] will provide you with and enjoyable, rewarding RPG [experience].  NO MATTER WHAT SYSTEM THEY PREFER." So long as the GM is talented and committed to providing the players with a good time.  He also acknowledges that we should be thankful to Steve Perrin (for "Runequest), to Dave Hargrave ("Arduin"), Ken St. Andre (T&T), Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (D&D).  I would add that in the years since, we have many more names to add to the list.  These names range from Greg Gorden (007 and DC Heroes) to Mike Mearls (4e) and from Erik Mona (Pathfinder) to Chris Pramas (AGE/Green Ronin) to name only a few.  We should also thank those, like Shelly Mazzanoble, who may not be among the "creators" of our games, but who stand at the front lines of those who promote our hobby and try to bring new people in.  Not to mention the great stuff coming out of the Indie games marketplace.

Instead of being snobbish about the games we don't like, we should be thankful that we have so many great ones to choose from.  Does that mean that we cannot criticize mechanics?  No.  We can and should, in a constructive manner that moves the hobby forward.  We just shouldn't disparage people for preferring a system.

Gaming Snobbery...and public snobbery against gamers...are a couple of the reasons Wes, Joel, and I created the Dice Chuckers project.  Join us in that project as either a sponsor, a participant, or in conversation.  We'd love to hear from you.

Gaming and the Screenwriting/Cartooning Widower #1 -- Meeting the Cartoonist

A few years ago, my wife Jody and I decided to attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon while riding a rocket aided motorcycle.  Okay, that's not exactly true.  We decided to attempt something even more impossible.  We decided that Jody was going to become a successful screenwriter and cartoonist.  Jody applied to USC's prestigious School of Cinema and Television, and we counted the days until the rejection letter would arrive and shatter all our dreams.

That day didn't come.  Instead, we received a very large envelope inviting Jody to attend the school.  We were elated, but also quite amazed by the situation.  I think Jody best described our emotional state when we first arrived on the USC campus in order to get her a student ID card.  She said, "But Christian...no one actually gets to go to school here.  This place is for remarkable people."

There was no irony in her tone when she made the statement.  She believed it.  You see, Jody has a serious case of underestimating her own talents and worth.  In Champions/HERO System terms, Jody has around a 30 point psychological disadvantage in this regard.  On the plus side, she spent all 30 of these points on her various skills and talents. 

Last week, Jody started up a blog called "Are You Famous Yet?" where she has been sharing her thoughts and experiences as she navigates the mysterious pathways that make up the Entertainment industry, or as it is typically called in Los Angeles...The Industry.  I thought that I would spend some of my blogging time sharing some of my own experiences as a "Screenwriting/Cartooning Widower."  Jody's struggles and long hours would make for lonely days and evenings were it not for the fact that I am an avid gamer and a working graduate student.

Speaking of gaming, the idea for the title of this post and subsequent posts on the subject, come from an article in issue 54 of Steve Jackson Games' old gaming magazine The Space Gamer. 

When I was an undergraduate student at the University of Nevada, Reno it was a golden age for that schools Cartoons page.  There were two well done cartoon strips (one about college life and one about a bear), and one cartoon strip that was something quite special.  That special cartoon strip had a truly bizarre name.  It was called Nicnup, and it told the story of a group of young people as they encountered life's oddities.  To say it "told a story" is a bit of a misstatement.  It contained jokes which featured young people encountering life's oddities. 

I had no idea who drew the strip, but I read it religiously in every issue of The Sagebrush.  It was the primary reason I read the school's paper.  It was a great strip that seemed to be getting better every issue as the artist better learned the craft.  I had no idea who the artist was, only that this person was named Jody Lindke.  (For those of you wondering, I took my wife's last name.)

One day I was sitting watching NFL in the television room of one of the dorms, I was waiting to see my friend Rich, when I see this friendly looking young woman carrying her bicycle up to her room.  I quickly ask if she would like to watch the game with me and she said yes.  After taking her bike back up to the room, we watched the game and chatted.  Mostly, we chatted.  I was quite smitten by this young woman named Jody and made arrangements to chat with her again in the near future.  Several more discussions later, I was inviting her to play in a Champions superhero campaign that I was running for some other friends.  She asked what day we played and I told her Monday.  She said she would be delighted to come but that she had to make sure she met her deadline first.

"Deadline?...hmm...?"  The words sounded important, but I made no connection at the time.  It wasn't until after a couple of weeks playing that I finally figured it out.  Jody was running late for the game, so I walked up to her dorm room to see if she could make it and that was when I found out she was the illustrator of Nicnup.  I was surprised.  Here I have been the friend of the best cartoonist in the school paper for over a month, and I had no idea that Jody and Jody Lindke were the same person...even after hearing references to this mysterious "deadline" thing.  I guess I'm pretty dense.

Anyway, for the next few months Jody would either show up on time or be late as the muse hit her or she struggled through coming up with a new idea/joke and therein lies the root of screenwriting/cartooning widower-dom.  The creative muse.  Coming up with ideas is difficult, more so when you are trying to come up with an idea that has the potential to entertain millions of people -- quite a few more than the thousands she entertained with her cartoon strips.

In the years since graduating, Jody no longer plays in my gaming groups.  She likes the people I game with, she likes the hobby, but the time she needs for her creative efforts has multiplied a hundred fold.  When we were in college, I could count the number of times she had to stay up all night to finish a cartoon on my fingers and toes. 

In the time since, I have lost count of the number of all-nighters Jody has experienced in the advancement of her career.  But there is one that comes to mind more vividly than any other.  It was the first "mix-week" she experienced at USC.  Twice each semester, student films have their sound mixes completed in a mad dash cram called "mix week."  During this time, the sound designers, sound department, and TAs work for a full week without ever coming home.  Near as I can tell, they work the entire week without any kind of sleep whatsoever. 

The frantic nature of these weeks, as well as film school in general, made for a pretty lonely marriage experience.  Pre-film school, we were a couple who essentially dated every night and had massive movie marathons every weekend.  During film school, I was lucky to see Jody for more than 5 minutes on some days.  I imagine that this kind of grueling schedule could put a strain on a relationship, but it didn't strain ours.  I made sure to visit Jody on her campus as much as possible, and I had my gaming hobby to fill in the lonely hours while she put her nose to the grindstone.  I was working full-time and in a Grad program, but I was the one with "oodles" of idle time in comparison to Jody.  I never felt resentment that Jody "didn't want to spend time with me."  It was pretty clear every time that I saw her that she would much rather spend time with me, but the demands on her time were severe. 

I was also lucky that Jody didn't resent my gaming time.  Yes, there was some minor resentment for the tabletop gaming I got to do.  That was spending time with other people after all, but there was absolutely no resentment for the hours I spent playing Final Fantasy.  Or as Jody calls it, "the walk around on the very big map and do nothing game."

The key thing I had to focus on was to make sure that my gaming time lined up with her busy time, and that I was free as often as possible during her free time.  Let me stress that this free time was not a lot of time, and that whatever time there was had to be spent doing more than watching a 30 minute sit-com.  There was often a week's (or two) worth of discussion about the world.  There was the need for hugs and quality time.  I made every moment count, and I think I managed to let her know how deeply loved she is in my efforts to cram a weeks worth of marriage into 45 minutes.

Film school was good practice for Jody's time in the "Industry Agency" trenches.  Those were days when she not only worked long, but in an environment that isn't exactly conducive to self-esteem.

I learned a lot about marriage during film school, about what is really important.  Communication and letting your spouse know your care are vital.  When your spouse is working ridiculously hard, it is important to recognize the fact and to sympathize.  Don't think they are doing it because they want to be away from you.  That way lies madness.

Instead, pick up a book, a hobby, or a "long map game" to pass the time, and use that time to think about how you are going to maximize the little together time that you are going to have together.  May I recommend quick jaunts to Culver City or Monrovia for dinner, or a nice hike at Griffith Park, or a brisk walk on the beach. 

When your spouse is trying to get a paying gig in a creative field, it's important to remember to be the net/parachute.  Don't resent any work you have to do to support them, financially or emotionally.  Because your loved one is taking the rocket jump across Snake River Canyon and they are scared enough without having to worry about how things are going at home.

CHILL 1st Edition is an Underrated RPG. #RPGaDAY2017 -- Day 5

You are about to enter the world of CHILL, where unknown things sneak, and crawl, and creep, and slither in the darkness of a moonless night. This is the world of horror, the world of the vampire, ghost, and ghoul, the world of things not know, and best not dreamt of. CHILL is a role-playing game of adventure into the Unknown and your first adventure is about to begin -- CHILL Introductory Folder

 "What RPG Cover Best Captures the Spirit of the Game?"

For me, the answer to that question has always been CHILL by Pacesetter. It's a highly underrated game that captures the tone of my favorite horror films, those of Hammer Studios.

In 1984 a group of former TSR Employees -- including Mark Acres, Troy Denning, and Stephen Sullivan -- formed Pacesetter Ltd. Games and released the Chill role playing game. Chill wasn't the first horror role playing game, nor was it the best, but it has long held a place as a "cult" favorite in the role playing game world. Where other horror role playing games sought to capture the dark nihilistic material horror of H.P. Lovecraft, or the gruesome horror of many films, Chill tried to capture the tone of Hammer and AIP productions.

Because of its focus, and because its creators were former TSR employees, Rick Swan reviewed the game quite negatively in Dragon magazine and in his Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games. He described the game as, "A horror game for the easily frightened...While most of Chill's vampires, werewolves, and other B-movie refugees wouldn't scare a ten-year-old, they're appropriate to the modest ambitions of the game...Chill is too shallow for extended campaigns, and lacks the depth to please anyone but the most undemanding players. For beginners only."

Swan was correct that the game was simple, and appropriate for beginners, but he was far from the mark when he claimed that it lacked depth that could appeal to demanding players who want extended campaigns. The game has solid underlying mechanics that encourage a loose style of play that encourages storytelling over combat and reduces the dependency on die rolls that so many role playing games often overly promote. Like many Pacesetter games, Chill is innovative and slightly ahead of its time -- nowhere is this more the case than with their Chill: Black Morn Manor board game -- but like many things ahead of their time there are some flaws to the mechanics. Nothing too big, but definitely things that might make some gamers reject it out of hand. The game is simple enough that a group of players can pick up the rules and start to play within 15 minutes...from scratch.

Let me repeat that. This game, made in 1984, is easy enough to learn that a group can open the box and begin playing within fifteen minutes. Given how complex rpgs seem to the non-gamer, this is quite a marvelous achievement in and of itself.

The most comprehensive review of Chill -- during its era -- was the review in Space Gamer 75 by Warren Spector. In the article, Spector provided a balanced review -- not all of it positive -- but described the game as follows:

You won't find better, more consistently entertaining writing in any set of game rules...
Chill is the first to include an introductory folder advising players to begin playing that adventure before they've read the rules of the game! To begin, players have only to read a four page READ-ME-FIRST! introduction to the rules, pick up the 16-page adventure booklet and begin playing! And, sure enough, the cockamamie scheme works!

Spector's final word on the game is that it "falls somewhat short of the mark," but his analysis is clear and he seems to understand that he is looking at something new here.

There are many games from the 80s that -- mechanically and tonally -- seem extremely dated by modern gaming standards. Chill -- the first Pacesetter edition -- isn't one of them. It has a kind of classic feel to it, just like all the Hammer and AIP movies it was inspired by. It isn't a dark and serious horror game, but it is an adventurous one. If you want to experience existential horror, you can do no better than Call of Cthulhu, but if you want to pretend to be Peter Cushing's Van Helsing hunting Christopher Lee's Dracula you want Chill.

A hand touched his face, but he felt no warmth of human reassurance in that other hand, no sense of comradeship against the dark foes of the night. Boulton shrank from the touch. Then scrambled back. Then shouted. For now he could see the hand, rising like a pale, icy plant, from the churning soil of a grave. -- Chill Campaign Book

Roleplaying Evangelism -- Hasbro Targets Young Audiences

Last, I commented about my belief that if the roleplaying hobby wants to remain vibrant and "alive," it will need to recruit younger gamers. The alternative is for our hobby to age with us and fade into the mists of antiquity. When I was growing up, TSR specifically targeted younger gamers with the Moldvay/Cook "Basic" line of D&D products, the Fantasy Forest and Dungeon! boardgames, action figures, and a Saturday morning cartoon.

During the 90s, TSR largely abandoned products designed to appeal to young audiences and shifted to a tone somewhere in the PG-13 range. While their misguided attempt to disassociate themselves from Culture Wars criticisms regarding the games occult content through the removal of the words "Devil" and "Demon" from their early AD&D 2nd edition products might lead one to believe that the company had become "kid centric" as a whole, this belief would be in error. The 90s saw TSR produce the Ravenloft line of horror fantasy products (PG-13 horror to be sure), the Birthright fantasy setting (a slightly darker and more political setting), and the Dark Sun apocalyptic planetary romance setting (Dark Sun as planetary romance deserves a whole post of its own). The only real effort to attract young gamers was Troy Denning's "Black Box" D&D Basic set, a set that happens to be my favorite introduction to the hobby ever written. Denning, who left TSR during the Gygax era to be one of the founders of Pacesetter, is an old hand at writing "new gamer" friendly products and his "Black Box" was a doozy (it too deserves its own post). Aside from this product though TSRs products were aimed squarely at mid-teens and higher. Mystara, Spelljammer, and Dragonlance were for the mid-teens, while Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Birthright, Planescape, and Dark Sun were for older audiences. Heck...Planescape has wonderful content that is borderline R rated fantasy. This list doesn't include their X-Files inspired Dark*Matter setting for the Alternity game, that was R for sure.

To some gamers, the fact that TSR wrote so much PG-13 material might make the company seem too "kid oriented." I'm not one of them. When I say that gaming companies need to recruit younger players for the health of the hobby, I mean 8-10 year-olds. This audience was abandoned by TSR in the 90s, to the detriment of the hobby. Pre-90s TSR, for all that grognards think of it as a more "hard core" era of the company had corporate policies directed specifically at attracting younger audiences. To quote a Kevin Blume interview in THE SPACE GAMER #63, "The demographics are moving younger...Our major grouping seems to be from eight to 22...We, ourselves, have adopted a code of ethics and conduct similar to what is used in the comic book industry...People can holler censorship if they want, but that type of material will not be allowed at Gen Con, and the yptes of products that promote sex, nudity, and violence and so forth [sic] are simply not appropriate for this audience...our marketplace is composed of an awful lot of younger people."

Compare Blume's description of the hobby in 1983 with today's gaming audience. It matches the Games Workshop audience, who due to specific outreach (without overt censorship BTW) have managed to increase the number of young players, but it doesn't match other aspects of the roleplaying game hobby.

This is why I was so happy last week when I saw that Wizards of the Coast, in coordination with Moonstone Publishing, had released a free introductory adventure specifically targeted at younger players. This adventure, The Heroes of Hesiod, is based on the Young Reader novel Monster Slayers by Lucas Ritter -- the novel itself is an extension of Mirrorstone's excellent and successful "Practical Guide to" series of books which includes the best selling A Practical Guide to Monsters.

Wizards aggressive recruitment of younger gamers has also prompted them to publish a D&D version of arguably the best "mass market" miniatures game ever published -- Heroscape.Heroscape Master Set 3 Game. 

If our hobby is to continue to grow, or sustain itself as a mature marketplace, products like these and Faery's Tale Deluxe by Patrick Sweeney, Sandy Antunes, Christina Stiles, and Robin D. Laws need to be produced. As gamers, we need to encourage and support these efforts as much as we fight against them censoring down the product lines for adults. There is nothing wrong with hobby gaming becoming such a mature market that there are separate product lines for kids, teens, and adults. All that matters is that all of the product lines are of good quality and that companies and fans support them when they are. It was tragic that Wizards didn't support the Knights of the Silver Dragon series in the same way that they are supporting the "Practical Guides" line -- an article in Dragon Magazine is not as aggressive a marketing effort as coordination with libraries and well produced online content.

The funny thing is that the "Practical Guide to Monsters" that was successful enough to prompt this expansion, was itself an extension of the Knights of the Silver Dragon series of books.

Show your support and download The Heroes of Hesiod and play it with your kids/younger friends.

Steve Jackson Games Might Have Permanently Lost Me as a Customer

I just might never buy another Steve Jackson Games product again!

That was a hard sentence for me to write. Steve Jackson games has been one of my favorite gaming companies for as long as I can remember. Afternoon sessions of OGRE and CAR WARS are some of my favorite middle school memories. I can thank Christian Hunt for those wonderful memories. Prior to the release of D&D Miniatures, the Cardboard Heroes line of paper miniatures were my minis of choice, some still are, whenever I play(ed) an rpg. AUTODUEL CHAMPIONS was unforgettable, as were all the excellent issues of SPACE GAMER/FANTASY GAMER -- I have a full collection. TOON is one of the greatest games ever designed, and my GURPS library has aided me in running a number of other game systems. I am particularly fond of GURPS Scarlet Pimpernel and GURPS The Prisoner. Not to mention that they were the company that published Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering, a product of immeasurable value.

It certainly wasn't lack of quality products that might make me decide to never purchase another Steve Jackson Games product.

It is a lack of customer service.

On November 7th, Steve Jackson Games notified people who frequent their site that they were changing the format of their excellent online magazine Pyramid from an html product to a pdf one. I believe this is an excellent decision, but...They also notified their subscribers by the same method that archives to back issues would only be available online until November 21st. I believe this was a bad decision. For two reasons.

First, subscribers -- and I was one -- received no email notifying them of the change.

Second, November 7th through 21st was the worst imaginable time -- for me and likely me alone -- for this change to be made.

There was this little thing called a Presidential election, and its aftermath, that was keeping me -- as a Program Director of a non-profit dedicated to youth civic engagement -- very busy. I ran 28 simulation elections in Los Angeles County and then followed those up with celebrations recognizing the students who volunteered to run the elections on various campuses. Oh, and I have twin baby girls who keep me from spending as much time at the computer, and I'm working on my MBA, and I traveled to Columbus, OH to interview with GAMA during this time. Needless to say, checking up at the Daily Illuminator was pretty low on my list of priorities at the time. It wasn't until January, when I went to read the "issues" that I had missed, that I found out about the change. At the time, I emailed SJG about my situation, and subscribed to the new PDF version of the magazine -- which costs a similar price to Dungeons and Dragons Insider -- in case you were wondering.

I sent them the following email hoping they would respond, and praying they would make a special exception:

To Whom it May Concern,



I have been a Pyramid subscriber ever since the magazine went digital (User Name: AaronBurr email was: Frenzyk2 - at - aol.com I believe is now Christian.Lindke - at - gmail.com older records might show me as Christian Johnson). I recently, this week, went to log on to the site to catch up on what I imagined would be a backlog of issues. I work for a non-profit devoted to youth civic engagement and have been swamped since mid-October which, combined with my infant twin daughters, has meant that I have been completely unaware of the changes to Pyramid.



First, let me say that the new magazine looks great. I subscribed to the pdf version today.



Second, WTF?! You offered access to the archive for a very limited time, one that coincided with the busiest time of my occupation, meaning that I have no access to years of articles that I have enjoyed reading in the past and was hoping to read in the future. I get nothing, nada, zilch and I’m pissed. I never received an email, which I did have time to check, or I would have renewed and downloaded in a hurry (your magazine is well worth one late night downloading). I don’t mind that over half the money I used to subscribe in July is wasted – I missed the opportunity to transition over to the new system at a discount, I get that. But to have no access to the archive is ridiculous.



I feel like one of those old SPI lifetime subscribers who were cheated out by TSR. I’m angry, but I can be consoled. Please make available the archive.

Christian Lindke

I admit that the email was not super polite, but I don't believe it was overly venomous either. I sent the email to Paul, Phil, Steve, Info, and Editor. I probably should have sent to Pyramid and pyramidrefunds -- all at sjgames.com.

As I wrote above, I hoped they would respond and prayed they would make a special exception. I wasn't counting on having access to the archive, just praying. I was counting on a reply. I sent the email on December 30th, and have received no reply. I have heard not a word.

I own at minimum $5-8k of their products. I even subscribed to their short lived online d20 magazine, and I get nothing.

That's bad customer service, and it makes me want to stop buying their products.

It really does. Is a reply too much to ask?

The strength of their products, and knowledge that they are a small company struggling through an economic downturn in a niche market, will probably keep me as a customer.

But right now, I am not feeling the love.

My Proposed Rules Changes for Future WorldCon

Prior to this year, I had never voted for a Hugo Award. To tell the truth, I didn't know that I could. I had believed that the Hugos were selected by professionals acknowledging excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy writing. Due to the recent controversies around the event, I learned that participation was open to all of fandom. In this way, it is similar to the way that the Origins Awards were run in their early days when fans nominated (often by turning in ballots they photocopied/mimeographed in Space Gamer Magazine). They differ from the early Origins in that only people actually attending the Origins Convention get to vote for the winner. I imagine that the similarities between the two are not accidental and that the Hugos informed the way that the Origins Awards were run early on. The Origins Awards have evolved over time, but mostly in the nomination process. It's still attendees at the Origins Convention who get to vote on the award winner. This is not without its controversy, but I'm not here to criticize that process which I think is fine for what it is.

Awards have no value in themselves, unless they come with a cash prize, and as one of my favorite authors (David Gerrold) describes it, "The credential of an award -- any award -- is not the award itself, nor even who bestows it. The credential of the award is a cumulative one, created by the quality of the previous nominees and winners." In the case of the Origins Award, a lot of wonderful and groundbreaking games have won the award. Savage Worlds won in 2003, Dungeons and Dragons won in 1977, and many more have won over time. When someone wins the award, they are winning the same award as these excellent predecessors and the prestige of the honor is in those prior winners. This is one of the reasons that the rules of the Origins Award are constantly debated and discussed and why the Award evolves over time.

The same is true of the Hugo Awards. The prestige of the Hugo is in prior winners, and that is why there was such an uproar this year. Those who regularly participate in the Conference that determines the Hugo pushed back against those they believed had advocated a process that could lessen that historical prestige. Let us set aside arguments about whether the contributions on this year's various slates were actually Hugo worthy. That is a distraction from what the real underlying question is. That question is whether slates, qua slates, especially when combined with voting blocs threaten the prestige of the Award. Over time, in repeated games, the answer is likely "yes." Not in who wins. Repeated games will mean that there will be an equilibrium of sorts around the winners that approximates what the community as a whole really values, but it will mean that the prestige of being nominated will likely diminish - at least for a protracted period of time. To be honest, that period of time need not be long to do damage to the prestige of being nominated. I would argue that the mere taint of the existence of slates damaged the prestige of being nominated this year. This is too bad, because some worthy nominees were punished by this process.

Who's "right" is it to determine the rules and the how the Hugo is distributed? This is a simple answer, one that is once again provided by David Gerrold. The Hugo Awards "are a gift from the membership of the World Science Fiction Convention." You have to be a paying member, supporting or attending, to vote on the Hugo. I was a supporting member this year and I voted. I will continue to vote and support the Hugo because I really liked getting the nomination packet. I think that the World Science Fiction Convention community was well within their rights to protect their award. I don't think they handled it perfectly, but I have read accounts of interactions between Puppies and Presenters that occurred outside the Awards Ceremony that lead me to have a great deal of hope for the future of the WorldCon community. As tendentious as this year's Hugo Awards were, I think that some new friends were made and some great material for bridging the gap to a community that felt excluded has been produced. This will require work on both sides of the gap, but I see enough people making efforts. I also see people attempting to blow up the bridges as they are being built, but that is some people's nature. If we can learn to ignore the sowers of chaos and focus on our shared love of the genres, we will all be better for it.

Given the conflict, there has been a lot of talk about a need to reform the rules of how things are nominated and voted on. I'm one who is skeptical of most efforts of this kind in general as they tend to lead to unintended consequences. Take California's implementation of Term Limits after the 1990 passage of Proposition 140. The results of that law have been to create a new kind of career politician who constantly aims to jump from job to job, a lack of issue experience among legislators, an empowering of the lobbyist class due to the lack of issue experience and institutional memory in the legislature. Some people predicted these outcomes, but not many. These were all unintended consequences of a law intended to stop "career" politicians that only rerouted that career and made it less accountable to the people because we don't elect lobbyists and that's what many former legislators become after they have earned expertise.

So...I'm resistant to changing institutions for the sake of changing institutions. That said, I do think that one category - actually two but I'm going to focus on one - demonstrates that there is some need for a change in the process. This is a change that I believe should be implemented across the award categories and will enable fans to have significant input, take advantage of recent growth in the pool, and lead to better nominations in some categories.

I believe that the Hugo Awards should take "Open List" open nominations from fans as they do now. That these long lists should then be transformed into 15 item "Long Lists" by committees made up of people who have expertise within a category. These Long Lists are then voted on by members who register as supporting/nominating/attending members and turned into 5 item short lists that are the final nominees. This model is a combination of the current way of doing things with the way that the Oscars handle Sound Mixing and Sound Editing (Design) Oscars.

Quick, tell me the difference between Sound Mixing and Sound Editing? I'm going to bet that most of the Academy couldn't answer that question in any meaningful way. Let's just say that films like Whiplash tend to win the Mixing Award (and get nominated) and films like Top Gun tend to get Editing Awards. As I bluntly described it to my wife Jody today. Sound Editing Oscars reward people who create innovative and immersive experiences that allow us to hear explosions as unique occurrences. Sound Mixing allows us to hear the score and the actors while the world is exploding. That's a glib way of saying that one is about sculpting individual sounds and the other is about creating an aesthetic whole or "euphonic" experience. I'm sure that David Bondelevich could do a much better job at explaining the differences, but that's because he works in Sound and teaches Sound for a living. He has expertise. That's why the Oscars, in their great wisdom, allow David and people like Don Hall to vote on the final nominees who will be submitted to the Academy at large...and that's after their committee has selected what they believe to be the best. Sound Editors have a wonderful event called the "Bake Off" where they view highlights of the competition. These editors understand the value of the Award and there have been years without a nominee in the category, and that's without politics entering the picture.

That's a lot of background leading into one of the two areas I've noticed that have led me to think that this is a change that is NEEDED by the Hugos. Those areas are the Best Dramatic Production (both Short and Long Form) categories. The nominations of the past few years have been non-representative of the genre as it is being Dramatically Presented. It is as if WorldCon nominators and voters don't watch movies and shows at the same clip that they read. This is likely a true observation, and isn't even a "critical" one in as much as reading is likely a better activity to stimulate the mind than the passive viewing of another's creation.

What prompted my sentiment in this area was that as a new Hugo voter, I decided to look at past nominees in this area. When the Hugo nominees were compared to the Saturn nominees (the Saturn being the Hollywood Hugo) there was too little overlap in my opinion. When the 2014 Hugo Nominees didn't include About Time in the Long Form category I was baffled. I was even more baffled when I shared my befuddlement in the SF/F reading fandom I knew and none had heard of the film. This demonstrated to me that there was a disconnect between the Dramatic Form genre and the World Con exposure to it. That and the fact that BBC titles are so dominant as to make it possible to create a parody list that fairly emulates the actual list. Let me give you a couple of examples.

In 2014, the following new SF/F television shows aired.

New Science Fiction and Fantasy Series for 2014 

1. Ascension
2. Constantine
3. Flash
4. Gotham
5. Z-Nation
6. Outlander
7. The Strain
8. Extant
9. The Last Ship
10. Dominion
11. Salem
12. The 100
13. Believe
14. Resurrection
15. Bitten
16. Helix
17. Intelligence

All of these shows meet the criteria to be considered as nominees for the Short Form Hugo. After the 938 nominating ballots were counted  the nominees were:

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form (4705 final ballots, 938 nominating ballots, 470 entries, range 71-170)

• Orphan Black: “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried”, ” written by Graham Manson, directed by John Fawcett (Temple Street Productions, Space/BBC America)
• Doctor Who: “Listen”, written by Steven Moffat, directed by Douglas Mackinnon (BBC Television)
• Game of Thrones: “The Mountain and the Viper”, written by David Benioff & D. B. Weiss, directed by Alex Graves ((HBO Entertainment in association with Bighead, Littlehead; Television 360; Startling Television and Generator Productions)
• The Flash: “Pilot”, teleplay by Andrew Kreisberg & Geoff Johns, story by Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg & Geoff Johns, directed by David Nutter (The CW) (Berlanti Productions, DC Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television)
• Grimm: “Once We Were Gods”, written by Alan DiFiore, directed by Steven DePaul (NBC) (GK Productions, Hazy Mills Productions, Universal TV)

The thought of Grimm (of which I am a big fan) receiving nominations, for an episode that was pretty cool, over The 100 or The Strain or Sleepy Hollow is kind of baffling to me. Let's have a look at the Saturn Award Nominees for 2014.

 

Best Network Television Series:

The Blacklist
The Following
Grimm
Hannibal  (winner)
Person of Interest
Sleepy Hollow

Best Syndicated / Cable Television Series:

12 Monkeys
American Horror Story: Freak Show
Continuum
Falling Skies
Salem
The Strain
The Walking Dead  (winner)

Best Limited Run Television Series:

Bates Motel
From Dusk Till Dawn
Game of Thrones  (winner)
The Last Ship
The Librarians
Outlander

Best Superhero Adaptation Television Series:

Agent Carter
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Arrow
Constantine
The Flash  (winner)
Gotham

Best Youth-Oriented Television Series:

The 100  (winner)
Doctor Who
Pretty Little Liars
Supernatural
Teen Wolf
The Vampire Diaries

There are more categories, to be sure and to be expected from an award dedicated to the media, but there is also a wider representation of the genre. The 2014 Hugos have three shows of what I would call the "arty" SF variety and 2 from the "pulpy" variety, signalling that the struggle of the year was echoed in even the TV nominations. So...let's look back one more year. The year where the Hugos failed to nominate the very "literate" About Time in the Long Form category. What new shows were released in 2013? 

New Science Fiction and Fantasy Series for 2013

1. Almost Human
2. Dracula
3. The Tomorrow People
4. Witches of East End
5. The Originals
6. Atlantis
7. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
8. Sleepy Hollow
9. Under the Dome
10. Defiance
11. Orphan Black
12. Utopia

What was nominated?

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form (760 nominating ballots)

• Game of Thrones: “The Rains of Castamere”, written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, directed by David Nutter (HBO Entertainment in association with Bighead, Littlehead; Television 360; Startling Television and Generator Productions)
• Doctor Who: “The Day of the Doctor”, written by Steven Moffat, directed by Nick Hurran (BBC Television)
• Orphan Black: “Variations under Domestication” written by Will Pascoe, directed by John Fawcett (Temple Street Productions; Space/BBC America)
• An Adventure in Space and Time, written by Mark Gatiss, directed by Terry McDonough (BBC Television)
• The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, written & directed by Peter Davison (BBC Television)
• Doctor Who: “The Name of the Doctor”, written by Steven Moffat, directed by Saul Metzstein (BBC Televison)

 Let's see...Game of Thrones because social phenomenon, BBC, BBC, BBC, BBC. Wow! Almost Human had some flawed episodes, but it had episodes that are among the best ever made in SF TV. "The Day of the Doctor" was pretty badass, but "The Name of the Doctor" is the weakest of the 2013 nominees. What did the Saturn Awards Nominate?

Best Network Television Series	Best Syndicated/Cable Television Series
Hannibal (tie) Revolution (tie) Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The Blacklist The Following Sleepy Hollow Under the Dome	The Walking Dead American Horror Story: Coven The Americans Continuum Dexter Haven
Best Television Presentation	Best Youth-Oriented Television Series
Breaking Bad Bates Motel Black Sails Falling Skies Game of Thrones Vikings	Teen Wolf Arrow Pretty Little Liars Supernatural The Tomorrow People The Vampire Diaries

Well...shit...American Horror Story and Hannibal kick ass. We can write off some as not fitting the Hugos, like Hannibal, but American Horror Story is some of the best Fantasy on TV and Falling Skies is a solid show that is worthy of consideration for a category that awarded Gollum's Acceptance Speech during a year that the Saturn was considering Dead Like Me and Carnivale. Let's just say that a "literary" award got out "literaried" in the nominee category in 2004.

I understand that the Dramatic Presentation being two awards is new, and I understand that World Con is first and foremost a celebration of print. Having said that, I think that the Hugo would benefit by creating Juries that winnow the infinite to the Long, then having voters narrow the long to the nominees, and have those nominees voted on. I think that this would expose the SF/F community to a lot of great genre entertainment they might be overlooking.

I also think they might be well served by opening up the categories a bit like the Saturn and asking if there aren't some subgenre's that should have their own awards.

Kobold Quarterly #13: A Must Buy for Dragon Age RPG Fans

Longtime readers of this blog know that I am a big fan of Wolfgang Baur and his Open Design Project. I am also a big fan of his quarterly role playing game magazine Kobold Quarterly and have been a subscriber since day one. I have watched as this magazine went from a primarily pdf product, where one had to special order the staple bound black and white version of the first issue, to the full color slick paper state of the art product it is today. This quick transition is no surprise as Baur has extensive experience as a magazine editor.

Throughout the magazine's run, I have only had one small complaint -- and it is very small. I have been disappointed that the magazine limited its focus to d20 (and after the new edition's release 4E) articles. The magazine's subtitle has been "The Switzerland of the Edition Wars. The market lacks a non-house organ magazine, one that covers gaming products from a wide variety of publishers. Early in the gaming hobby, there were a number of magazines that covered the role playing hobby as a whole. TSR's Dragon magazine and Games Workshop's White Dwarf weren't always house organs that only provided content related to their respective companies, they covered the industry as a whole. Add to these magazines like The Space Gamer, White Wolf, Shadis, and Pyramid, and you have a long tradition of magazines covering the broader hobby.

This tradition largely died when Pyramid ceased print publication and became an online subscription. Fans were left with only one magazine that covered the field, Knights of the Dinner Table. While Knights contains articles that cover he hobby, it cannot be argued that the magazine's primary purpose is the comic strips it contains and the promotion of Kenzer Company related gaming products. Knights is a good magazine, that does have some broad coverage, but it is still primarily a house organ. There is also the small print run magazine Polymancer, but that product has yet to get wide enough distribution to fill the much needed hole in the market -- a hole made all the bigger when gamingreport.com ceased to be the news source for the gaming hobby.

Thankfully, Kobold Quarterly has begun to see some generic and non-D&D (retro, modern, post-modern versions) content filling its pages of late. Key among these offerings is in the Spring 2010 issue. In the issue, Chris Pramas -- lead designer on Green Ronin's excellent Dragon Age RPG -- has written an article that will allow fans of Green Ronin's flagship Freeport line of products to translate their tales to the AGE engine used by the Dragon Age RPG. It will also help to expand the gaming horizons of new gamers who were introduced to the hobby by the Dragon Age RPG. The article provides character creation rules for nine backgrounds based on Freeportian archetypes. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Green Ronin's Freeport, it is a setting that combines traditional fantasy elements with tropes from pirate stories and horror elements from the weird tales of H.P. Lovecraft. Imagine Elven pirates wielding fireballs while battling Eldritch Horrors who fire cannons from their tentacle beards and you have some sense of the setting -- make sure you don't forget the Serpent men and the Yellow Sign. It's a fun setting and it is nice to see Kobold Quarterly publish support material for an wonderful new role playing game. The fact that the material is based on content originally designed for d20 makes the publication of the article even more appealing. It demonstrates that Baur is willing to promote articles that seek to expand the gaming horizons of all of its readers.

This takes Kobold Quarterly beyond the status of "The Switzerland of the Edition Wars," and places it at the "Publication on a Hill Promoting All Aspects of the Hobby" status.

Kudos to Baur, and thanks to Chris Pramas for giving us Dragon Age RPG fans a background for Gnomes. The DM in me cringes at the incorporation of Gnomes, but one of the players in my group will certainly be grateful.