Triple feature (1 of 3): Poltergeist (2015)

It was Thursday, and this week that was my "night out". J and I alternate... one watches the kid, and one goes off and does his or her thing. A "night out" doesn't always mean out per se, and sometimes one of us uses our night out as a night in; working on a craft, or game, or whatever. And quite often my night out is when the gang comes over for RPGs or board games.

But this night, was a masturdating night. I headed to the multiplex with my bag full of snacks:

• Flask of Kahlua for the movie coffee (combined with their French Vanilla creamers = decadent)

• Half-eaten bag of some Trader Joe's flavored popcorn that J hadn't liked

• Bag of Japanese sweet and salty crunchy snack with seaweed in it

• Block of Srircha chocolate, recently delivered from a Think Geek order

• Some Lego chocolate bricks

• Flask of port, to go with the desserts (normally saved for movie #2)

Ready! On the menu for tonight, three movies. Keep in mind I was just coming off of a very excellent Strategicon last weekend, so of course I was looking at the whole thing through the eyes of a role playing gamer. And so I give you: three movie reviews by a gamer.

Poltergeist (2015)

It didn't get very high ratings, and most reviews were comparing it to the original, with the original winning the fight. So obviously I was a little worried going in. I really think it was pretty good. The characters played their roles well, and I didn't feel like any of them overwhelmed the others... each played their part, and if you look at the movie from the aspect of trying to figure out what is going on, there are very few obvious holes in the story, and it gels well.

[SPOILERS AHEAD] It seems like the story is really about the house being in a position that makes it a meeting place for a combination of intersecting powers.Imagine a house built on a graveyard. The developers said they'd move the bodies, but instead only moved the tombstones. There is a tree on the house property that is so old it's been there before ANY of these homes, and there seems to be something angry, or otherwise unusual, about it. And of course there are massive electric poles right behind the back yard which are humming with energy. All these intersect, and cause... something? Great setting for a horror game.

I watched the family in the movie, and decided if I ran this as an RPG, I'd go with Dread, and use the following PC choices (where each would have a standard Dread leading-questionnaire):

• The parent lost their job so they need to move into an "affordable" house, and this is the only one available in the price range.

• The teenager is a fan of parapsychologists TV shows. 

• The lead parapsychologists looks for these haunting and such for a living, however also used to be married to the famous parapsychologist on TV. Your relationship with them isn't bad, and the ex-spouse is the one you call for help when you're out of your league.

• The parapsychologists assistant just graduated from high-school, and instead of college is hoping to make a name here. More scientifically-driven, they have found that all the events thus far can be solved by looking at things from a logical standpoint.

• The kid is closest in age to the youngest daughter, and due to the kid's young age, and therefore sensitivity, gets to experience the house's weirdness first, and first-hand, before the others. Questionnaire should definitely define things like what their favorite electronic-based toy that they dig out prior to unpacking. Also something that keeps them up at night (in the movie they use the clowns, but it could be anything, really).

The main NPCs, mainly because they can all drive the plot forward, would be:

• The spouse helps move the story along, can be put in danger or killed, or otherwise freak out, not believe in the weirdness, etc.

• The youngest daughter talks "to herself" at appropriate times and acts weird (i.e. is able to communicate with the poltergeist), and gets captured by the poltergeist later in the game (maybe after some failed attempts, depending on how the PCs react to things; e.g. in the movie the the kid (her older brother) runs away at some point to get his parents and tells her not to move, and is really too scared to help her... beautiful time to have her captured. If he tried to save her, that'd require some serious guys, and some serious block pulls.

• The famous parapsychologist from TV gets to be knowledgeable and helps provide some key information to the PCs. They also seems to know what they are talking about, but also do something unscientific and generally weird. I think this can best be defined by the lead parapsychologist PC or the teenager PC questionnaire.

• The poltergeist, which is really a bunch of angry dead souls who are able to communicate to our world via the electric emanations, but are only really able to communicate with those that have less formed brains (the youngest of a group). Their goal is to try and convince the youngest daughter to come into a portal, with the intent of then trying to follow her out of it, to escape this deathly world they're in. 

Additionally, any of the player (PCs) can be NPCs if you have less than 5 players. What's perfect is you can borrow their general motivations or attitudes from the movie.

I've got more thoughts on this one, but in general you can follow some of the same plot threads as the movie. You can start with the family just moved in. 

• You'd want to introduce the parapsychologists early, maybe by setting up a pre-story of having them getting a call from the prior owners, but not getting too far before those prior owners took off, or disappeared (can be part of the questionnaire).

• There are certain things that would work well, like revealing that the real estate agent neglect to mention the people disappearing (it's not technically a death so no need to legally mention that, right?), or the graveyard (technically it was "moved"). These things can be revealed by other PCs via questionnaire items (or NPCs if no one chose those roles).

• You can bring in the TV parapsychologist either if he is called, or for another reason (maybe he's felt a disturbance and knows everyone here is our of their league). The TV parapsychologist can know some things, but you should leave room for doubt on his authenticity and knowledge, and you can make him purposefully wrong on some things to flavor that.

• Definitely only the youngest should be able to more easily navigate the world of the dead (as in the movie) without massive block pulls... the older the PC, the more constant they need to pull to prevent going absolutely mad by the onslaught of the disturbed souls of the damned.

The more I've been thinking about this, the more I'd love to run it. Obviously it'd be good if people haven't seen the movie. If it takes a long time to get my shit together, it shouldn't matter, because by then people won't even know what I'm playing off of (as long as I don't call the game "poltergeist"). Work in progress...

Coming next: Mad Max: Fury Road

Painting cheap plastic toys to use as RPG minis

I like running RPGs with minis. Not always... I mean, a great game of Dread, or one of Jim Pinto's Protocol games, or some Apocalypse World and other games I've played, all of these can be fabulous without miniatures, found solely in the mind's eye. However, in general, when running things like fantasy RPGs and campaigns, miniatures can be fun.

I've bought my fair share of minis in the last few years, and actually have painted more than 60 of them, but still have many more in the queue, and sometimes I just feel burnt out on the painting deal. However, being a relatively new miniature painter, I was surprised by what a huge effect the wash has on painting. Wash refers to a paint, normally dark, which is of a fairly watery consistency that is used to give shadows a painted miniature. The first time I painted a mini I had some simple paints, but didn't have a wash, and looking online I found a recipe for do-it-yourself wash (which consisted of dark paint, water, and elmer's glue). It worked, but I quickly moved on to the ones that are put out by the larger mini paint vendors, and haven't regretted it.

All said, buying real miniatures, and of course painting them, can be costly in terms of money, and especially time. But I have found a nice cheat. I've ran into a few cheesy looking plastic kid toys, including little animals, dragons, and such. Although you can use them as is, they tend to be a bit garish... brightly, and poorly, colored. However, applying a dark wash takes it down a notch so that it has a darker, more realistic look. Additionally, the wash allows you to hide what is normally a fairly crappy paint job. 

Check out this example of a little plastic dragon, on one side as-is, and on the other side you can see where I applied a dark wash:

Boom, a perfectly usable miniature, for the cost of a few pennies and a few minutes of your time. So far I've done this with a few plastic animals and dinosaurs I've found, with good effect. In at least one case, with a small coiled snake (which would make a great giant snake compared to a 25mm mini) the toy was too brightly colors... In that case I simply painted the snake with a better color and then a wash, and within a few minutes the cheesiness was removed, and I had something that was nefarious looking.

A perfect spot for short order heroes

In one of our last RPG sessions, I had the gang run into a few (NPC) refugees fleeing from the lizard army that is decimating the area. I wanted the NPCs to have some personality, and who knows, maybe one or more of them would be important in the upcoming sessions, but I didn't want to put that much work into it. I mean, just coming up with some names was hard enough.

Fortunately, I have my deck of Short Order Heroes, put out by Calico Games. I picked up a copy at one of the last Strategicons here in LA, since these guys are locals. I love the artwork, it's very clever and often cheeky. These cards can be used to run its own game, as I witnessed when I brought my 5-year old daughter to a con and we joined in a round of kids playing. I mean, it was a game where the players ranged in age from 5-11, and the GM was like 11 years old. It was awesome:

That said, I didn't use the cards in that fashion, but in another way it can be used, which is to generate personalities. I write down 4 names, place the minis next to them, and in front of my players draw 2 cards each, and voila: 

Now they can start addressing various NPCs, and instead of the me having to pre-plan or remember personalities, it's all laid out there. I'm sure there are many times you'd want to pick the cards behind "the GM screen" (not lay your cards on the table, so to speak), and have the NPC personas come out in play. In our case they had decided to take the refugees along, and we made the next day or so an "interlude" where we assumed they sort of got to know the folks. In that sense this helped since this was effectively how they would have quickly judged the NPCs, but still leaves plenty of room to play different personalities, needs, wants etc. And it helped me quickly define their professions to suit. Tara is fierce and loud. Great, I made her someone who can watch herself, brags a bit, underestimates her foes and the PCs. Lert is foolish and organized. OK then, he's taken on the role of "leader" for the refugees thus far, but only in name, and doesn't really know how to make any good survival decisions. And so forth.

And while I mention my first use of these cards in games, I will bring up that there are a few more days, as of this post, for their next Kickstarter: Short Order Heroes Theme Packs.

Lego-based role-playing games: An introduction to microfigs

I will readily admit I haven't done too much research into how other people have used Lego in RPGs, however I have starting doing so for about 2 years now, and have some thoughts on the matter. And maybe that'll be useful to you.

Minifigures, and their problems

So, I've heard of people using Lego minifigures as miniatures for RPGs, and of course I can see how that is attractive. Don't need to paint anything, and with the modern batch of Legos there is a huge variety in Lego minifigures, weapons, and all sorts of good stuff. Lego bricks are interchangeable, so you've got a way to easily configure and reconfigure the settings, over and over again. In addition, you can use exisiting scenery with little modification, as minifigs aren't too far off the standard "25mm" miniature scale (but enough to look a little odd)

The downside is that Legos are expensive, for those making their own scenery. Why would you make your own scenery? Part of that is aesthetics. If you are already using the cartoonish look of Lego minifigs, using realistic trees and hills and other miniature scenery could be distracting. Additionally, one of the charms of using Legos is indeed that... Legos! Why stop at the figures?

Of course there are knock-off Brick systems (Mega Blocks and Kreo being two of the largest competitors), however their quality is mixed.

Also, using minifigures as miniatures means a full-scale dungeon would require a shit ton of bricks.

I would argue that although minifigures look a little cartoonish, if you are coming into this proposition open to that, or even embracing it, than that shouldn't be an issue.

Introducing microfigures...

Microfigures are even smaller Lego guys, which are generally used as pieces in the Lego board games that have gained some popularity in recent years:

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The great thing is they come in a variety of forms, since there are Lego board games that span genres: fantasy, space, modern, and so on. There are even archaelogists from the 20s from Lego's Pyramid-type games (Cthulhu, anyone?)

The obvious advantage here is that using these as miniatures means you can scale-down your Lego settings. Dungeon crawl? Easy, as a 2x2 stud space will easily work as a 5' square. 

Where do you get your hands on these babies? Well, that's a little more work. Obviously you can go purchase the prohibitively expensive board games, just to get your hand on a dozen or half-dozen microfigs, but that'll cost you dearly. Fortunately, with places like BrickLink, online, you can get your hands on them for slightly cheaper (the $0.15 - $1 range for most microfigs). It's not the most intuitive web site, and requires a bit of work to navigate, consolidate purchases, and generally shop, but it's probably the most economical way to get your hands on rare or specific pieces.

That's what I did about a year back. I sunk a not insignificant amount of dollars on a large collection of these guys... probably about $60 all said. However, I put together enough microfigs to populate two full games (which I've run many times - in the case of the Dungeon crawl - or plan to run many times - in the case of the Space game), and still have plenty of microfigs to spare for future scenarios, without having to move them back and forth between settings.

So, toss the minifigures?

Hell no! The greatest combination is using the two. The microfigs are the miniatures for the game environment. But the minifigs? They can be used as excellent avatars!

Here's an example of the character selection for my Yendor fantasy dungeon crawl games:

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Each minifig has a corresponding microfig (which looks pretty similar in color and look). Most of them could be made male or female simply though hair, although there were a few (towards the top there) where I made the whole avatar and microfig different, such as in the case of the Barbarian and Wizard/Witch pairs.

So, that's the basics in getting started, for me.

Next? Understanding scale and settings. And after that? Ensuring you  don't think that Legos themselves are a substitute for a good game and scenario.

A new web site

I've got a new web site. Yippee! It's been a while since I've had a personal little corner in the world wide web, and I think I'm going to like it here. Nice and cozy.

So, what do I offer here, that hasn't been offered elsewhere in this wide world? Probably not much, just a little slice of my brain on a topic I'm pretty happy to share: games. 

"What games do you play?" 

I play a variety of board games. For a while it was Settlers of Catan, and Carcassonne, and a number of others. Recently Splendor is one of my favorite "board" games (although it is all cards and poker chips, sans board).

But recently, after a 20-odd year hiatus from table top role-playing games, I've gotten back into them. What is that? Well, Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is probably the best known of that genre, and a google will help you more definitively answer that question.

The only issue for me is that traditionally D&D is a bit more "crunchy" (i.e. mechanically and rules complex) than I was really looking for, especially since many of my players are close friends who aren't traditional role players and don't care to manage that much game minutia. Fortunately, many indie games abound, and although I first had a stint with the Savage Worlds system, I am now running a game using Dungeon World (which is very narrative-heavy and rules-light). 

For the last 3 years I've been attending the local game convention here, Strategicon, which runs three times a year near the Los Angeles airport (LAX). I've played with many an amazing GM at the con, although I know that even that is a small bit of the greatness that permeates this hobby. That, combined with my religious listening to the Happy Jacks RPG podcast (and participation in the amazing HJRPG forum) has begun to codify some of my gaming tenants and preferences, but I'm always ready to blaspheme a bit.

"Why games? Aren't you sufficiently grown up now to <blah blah blah>?"

Sorry, I kind of tuned you out after "games". Games = Play = Fun = Learning = Life.

We've been playing games with our daughter now for a few years, and it is definitely the easiest way to enable learning of many different types, in my opinion and experience. And I'm sure I can wax philosophical about games some more, but there are plenty of resources out there in internet-land to answer this question for you.

So, without further ado, or introductions, here it is, my little corner of the virtual world.