From all of us we thank you for your patronage in 2007, and we hope that we’ve provided you with many hours of entertainment during the past twelve months! We look forward to providing you with even more merriment in 2008!!

Happy New Year!

This isn’t related to gaming, just a little life anecdote that happened tonight that I wanted to share.
I’ve always found one way to save money is when someone invites you to dinner take them up on it, because free food is always a good thing. So today I had been invited to partake in a large post-Christmas Christmas feast with some friends and their family since they couldn’t get together on Christmas day. It was an all day affair, with a good portion of it spent on the road (for fellow Georgians we were coming from Roswell to Watkinsville) in absolutely miserable weather.

I got home around 9:30 and had several messages on my answering machine.

“This is a collect call from an inmate at the Roswell detention center, will you accept the charges?”

It was my friend, Ed. Obviously since I wasn’t home I couldn’t accept the phone calls, so I didn’t know what his situation was. Thinking that after not getting in touch with me he’d probably call his parents, I looked them up and gave them a buzz. His mother answered.

“Hey, this is Scott, you know me…hey, I’ve been out all day and just got home to find that Ed’s been trying to contact me from jail. Do you know what he’s in for?”

At that point his mother began to freak out and started shouting to her husband (who’s also an Ed, the son being Ed Jr.), “Ed!! Ed!! Scotty is on the phone, Eddie is in jail! In Jail!”

It was around then that I came to the conclusion that no, he didn’t call his parents.

After talking with his father I called the jail and found out he had just bonded out, so I headed over to his place.

“Umm, did you want your parents finding out you were in jail?”

[Multiple curses not appropriate to a general audience site] “Tell me you didn’t talk to them. My mother would freak.”

“Oh, she freaked all right.”

Oops.

So let this be a lesson, kids. When a friend calls you from jail that probably means they’re trying to avoid their parents finding out, so you probably shouldn’t call them. I’ll know next time.

Being the end of the year I suppose it’s time to have one of those retrospective/award entries. Don’t worry, the only time you’re going to read the phrase ‘best game year ever’ in the post is just now. In fact, I don’t plan on talking in terms of best/worst because I’m not the kind of person who can ever decide that this one particular thing is my all-time favorite/better than all/kicks the most ass. What I can trade in though is when something puts a grin on my face, makes me want to come back to it, and tell others about it. Basically, what I found cool.

With that in mind here are a bunch of random geeky things from 2007 that fits my criteria…

Cool Digital Game: Call of Duty 4

Sure, you can complain that the linearity is still there, along with the fact that the world essentially revolves around you tripping invisible triggers to push the AI forward, but the action never lets up to dwell on those issues. And unlike the majority of shooters that seem to all lose steam in the last quarter of the game, Infinity Ward always manages to keep the excitement ratcheting up until the credits roll. Bonus points to them for also featuring realistic enemies in a modern shooter, rather than the usual Hollywood leftist b.s. of neo-Nazi militias or the corrupt military-industrial complex.

Cool Role-playing Game: Delta Green d20

It took forever but the reprint of the original Delta Green sourcebook (which had been going for nearly $300) finally hit. If you were one of the lucky few who were smart enough to pick up the original book (I recall always looking at it and thinking I’ll pick it up next time I’m in. It’s not like it’s going away! D’oh!) the only difference is the addition of d20 stat blocks, but for the rest of us we finally get to experience what everyone had been raving about. Intelligent, intriguing, and an enjoyable read even if you never run a Delta Green campaign, Pagan has always been on top of their game when it comes to role-playing supplements, and Delta Green d20 showcases some of their best work.

Cool Miniature Game: Victory at Sea

A beer-and-pretzels naval miniature system based off a starship combat game. This isn’t the kind of game where you spend half your afternoon computing the angle of trajectory of your secondary mounts, but one in which you grab a bucket of dice and look for those lucky sixes. Because of this large scale fleet actions are doable in a single session, and it also works well for folks who may like to sink some ships but aren’t the hardcore naval elite. Basically, it’s a fun little system.

Cool Expansion(s): Battlelore

Days of Wonder promised that there would be a lot of support for Battlelore and they’ve made good on that promise. The expansions keep on coming and considering the limitless bounds of fantasy, could potentially keep on coming for a very long time.

Cool Magazine: Knights of the Dinner Table

Always fresh, always something to look forward to even after all these years, this year Jolly has outdone himself. Great story arcs, and awesome new layouts. What’s really cool is how he can take something mundane that in lesser hands would just fail (oh look, yet another comic having fun with the World of Warcraft phenomenon), and make it highly entertaining and invigorating to both mind and spirit. The man is a genius!

Cool Comic(s): Jungle chick comics

2007 was the year of the jungle babe in comics, with Frank Cho’s Jungle Girl leading the pack. While moving along nicely I have to say I found Shanna: The She Devil a little more interesting overall. Not only did it feature the requisite dinosaurs, it also had mercenaries, gangsters, and Neanderthal nazis in a secret city!

Cool Board Game: Last Night On Earth

They’re coming for you, Barbara! A zombie game done right, unlike the flawed (but still fun…at least for the first hour of six) Zombies!!!. Scales great for multiple players, is scenario and character based, and has great production values. You can read more about it here.

Cool Mod Friendly Game: Scallywag: In the Lair of the Medusa

By far the most mod friendly game of 2007 was Scallywag: In the Lair of the Medusa. Want to make your own hack and slash rogue-like dungeoncrawl but don’t know how to code? If you can wield a text editor and some imaging software you’re on your way to becoming your own virtual Gygax. And hey, look, it’s published by us. Go and download the demo and tinker with it beneath the hood. Modding has never been easier.

So there you have it, a bunch of random stuff that I enjoyed this year. You’ll note that while I talk about general board gaming I didn’t bring up war gaming. Unfortunately this year the traditional wargames that got the most play on our tables didn’t come out this year. We played quite a bit of Combat Commander, A Victory Lost, and Third Reich (new version). There are a couple of late 2007 releases (Asia Engulfed, Queen of the Celts) that haven’t hit the table yet though I’m definitely looking forward to them.

This week over on his blog Jay Barnson has been discussing the quirks of RPG economies, mostly in relationship to the pen and paper world. Fantasy economies have always been something I’ve wrestled with, and while I don’t think I’ve finally found the perfect solution in my current system, I’ve at least been satisfied with it.

Back in the beginning, before the homebrewed campaign worlds and house rules, my economy system was right out of the books with no changes. It was safe, but safe is often just another word for dull. At the time though it really didn’t matter, as there were more issues with our games than the economy. This was right at the start of 1E AD&D, and let’s just say we were young and dumb. Hey, it was the ‘70s! It wasn’t until shortly after 2E came out, and I was turning into a campaign creation gawd, that I began to tinker with how the economy worked.

Sometimes I just added coins to the basic system of copper, silver, electrum, gold, and platinum pieces. Once I had a scrip system and throughout the years I’ve also used an ingot system—ingots being just another form of scrip. Then there was the time I decided to get just a tad bit insane…

The campaign world I was running at the time consisted of one main continent broken down into about twenty different nations, most of which were not associated with one another (in my current campaign the nations are all under a mutual defense alliance). The first thing I did was create a currency system for each nation. While there were some standards across the board, the number of coins each nation used varied. After that I created exchange rate tables. Then I decided to go further.

Grabbing all the available books at that time which included price lists for equipment I made out a list of every single purchasable item. I then used a base value for those items and created categories based on the quality of the item: poor, average, excellent, superior. This was followed by remarks on what resources each item used in its creation (e.g. an axe would be metal and wood). Since this was the late ‘80s I hand wrote all this out, filling up a three-ring binder. I wasn’t done yet, though.

Looking at my nations I came up with their basic trade goods, and their general availability based on other nations’ locations and the time of year. Of course there were also variables such as the chance for bandits or natural disasters.

So basically this is how it would work. A player would be shopping for fifty feet of rope. I would then check to see which nation they were currently located in. Then find out the quality of the rope they were looking for. Then compute the going rate of said rope due to trade status (affected by resources, trading partner distance, season, etc). And oh, finally let’s not forget the exchange rate if they were using foreign currency.

After about ten minutes consisting of lots of page flipping, dice rolls, and chart lookups I would have the price. And let me tell you something, the bastards better still be interested in purchasing whatever item they were looking at after all that trouble!

Now, if you’re thinking to yourself that was a hell of a lot of work just to figure out the cost of fifty feet of rope, well, yeah. Now imagine doing that for a standard laundry list of items that a party needs to replace in between adventures. A trip to the general store would take five real time hours to accomplish. But hey, it was the most detailed fantasy economy system I had ever done, or have ever encountered! That’s gotta count for something, right?

It didn’t take long for me to grow extremely sick of my own system. I tossed out the system; in fact, I tossed out the entire campaign world. It just didn’t end up clicking for me for a number of reasons, none of which are important to talk about now.

From that experience I decided that you know what, sometimes simple—while not entirely realistic—is best. Ever since then I’ve used a fairly basic system that I continue to this day. My coins are standard, although I place a different value on them than standard book prices. Instead of a silver piece being the starting point I use the gold piece, with everything adjusted in accordance. I do add some flavor to the currency by having specific names for the coins, along with minting periods, so depending on the age of the coin it may be more valuable than face value (which in turn makes even finding copper in an ancient catacomb worthwhile). Additionally, I use some basic resource rules as far as scarcity goes, but nothing as detailed as the old system.

There’s a little more to the current system, but you get the basic idea of what I’m doing. Instead of totally reworking the suggested economic system, I’m just enhancing it. The campaign gets flavor but it never becomes a burden.

If I talk to a dozen other gamers I’ll probably discover a dozen different other ways they do they economies. Heck, I haven’t even talked about how I do magical items and that’s one more factor that you need to consider.

Here’s the thing I find most interesting: considering how important fantasy economies are in RPGs why are in-depth studies on them lacking? While over the years there have been countless books on specific classes, races, magic items, and monsters, I can’t think of a single book detailing possible economic systems for your game. Oh sure, there’s a few pages in the various rulebooks, but nothing really detailed.

Why is this? How money functions in your campaign world is just as important as the ways of magic or the ecology of bugbears. True, fantasy economics 101 is nowhere nearly as sexy as kewl new ways to blast/gut/freeze/annihilate your foes, but really, how many books with variations on magic missile do we need?

Do we expect too much communication from developers today?

Back in the day if you had a question concerning a board game the best you could hope for was a yes or no answer (and you had to provide your own SASE to get even that!). During the early days of computer gaming it was no better; maybe you could find something out through a BBS or by picking up the phone and calling the publisher.

Today thanks to forums, blogs, email, and everything else, it’s fairly easy to connect with the folks behind the games you’re playing. From a gamer’s perspective this sense of community is great, but is it so great for the developers?

If a developer stops by a forum and responds to questions on a regular basis this can be seen as caring for the community, but if they halt the visits (or don’t visit to begin with), this can be construed as any number of negative things: they don’t care about the game’s fans, they don’t care about the game itself, they’re far too aloof, et cetera. While you’d hope people would assume they’re just busy making the game, hey, it’s the Internet and you know that always seems to bring out the worst in humanity.

So what say you? Does the ability to instantly communicate necessarily mean that folks should be expected to communicate? Do you get offended/concerned during the development of a game if there is very little discussion on it? Or do you take it in stride?

Traditional wargaming has been dominated by a handful of themes (World War Two, Napoleon, American Civil War, and during the ‘70s/’80s Cold War-turned-Hot War), although there has always been a dizzying amount of subject matter to game. About any period in history can be found as a wargame, although obviously games with subjects like the Thirty Years War don’t get the same love as those on the Russian Front.

One subject though that has never really seen a lot of interest is speculative future warfare beyond the previously mentioned NATO/Warsaw Pact games. Over the years there have been a handful of games, such as War in the Ice, Invasion: America, and Orbit War, but it’s never been a big sub-genre. Even today, with the ever changing dynamics of global security, only a handful of games look to the immediate future, and those tend to be all designed by one designer, Joseph Miranda. You would think that someone would want to examine a US/NATO versus China scenario, or maybe an end-of-the-world fight for resources.

Wargamers love to refight history in an effort to change the outcome on their kitchen table, but it seems that when it comes to the future there is little interest. Why is that? Off the top of my head I can think of two potential reasons.

First, for many gamers the thrill is putting themselves into a situation, a situation that they are keenly aware of thanks to their study of the battle/campaign/war, and seeing what they could have accomplished. And with the outcome already known there is something to compare and contrast the experience with. You can’t do that with battles yet to be fought.

Second, there is a slippery slope when it comes to speculative future warfare. Get too speculative and you end up with something more akin to science-fiction. For gamers who got into the hobby for its historical basis there is little room for phasers and star drives.

If those reasons are correct than to design an appealing near future game it should (a) feature a conflict that is based upon historical extrapolation and (b) take place in the future, but not the far future.

How far is not too far? When the technology has no relationship to what we can currently produce, then it’s too far.

Could speculative future warfare ever enjoy more popularity than it currently experiences, or are most people just happy to push panzer divisions and Imperial Guard units around Europe?

From your friendly neighborhood Shrapnel HQ team (Tim, Annette, Richard, Mindi, myself, and of course the Sarge) may you have a joyous and peaceful Christmas!!!