Quick Fix: Turning Questions Around

I saw this on Twitter, and figured I'd share. I'm still parsing it myself, but it seems like a really cool tool/approach to use.

Twitter Thread

Quick Fix: Combat Descriptions

One of my friends saw the post from Monday, and shared this chart with me. While this isn't the problem I'm having, this is a hell of a useful chart for D&D and Pathfinder GMs looking for some ideas on how to describe damage of different types. And if someone knows the source, please let me know so I can credit accordingly.

Quick Fix: GenCon Bound!

As I mentioned on Monday, I'm headed down to Indy today for GenCon. There won't be a regular post on Friday, but may be sporadic updates depending on my access to wifi and computers over the convention.

I hope everyone has a fun rest of the week and weekend to follow.

Quick Fix: Whoops & Some General News

First off, I'm sorry for the lack of post yesterday. I ended up getting progressively more sick from Saturday through Sunday night (Monday morning?) and while my being sick gave me a zen like focus on some things, it never even occurred to me that this blog existed or that it needed posts. I'm trying to get back in a place where posts are done sufficiently ahead of time that that isn't a problem, but not quite there yet. Sorry!

Second, if you backed the 7th Sea Second Edition kickstarter, you should really check your mail if you haven't. John Wick Presents has released 2 versions of the final PDF for backer review. These are more or less the final rules and it presents a very interesting game to play.  The game has already sparked several fun debates on rules on the 7th Sea sub-reddit, and presumably other places.

Third, I received my books from the recent FATE More kickstarter. This isn't really news, except one o the books combines GUMSHOE with FATE. I'm pretty excited to look into how those systems combine, and you can probably expect something on that in the near future.

Fourth, how are you doing? Keeping healthy I hope!

GenCon Day 2: Lots of Gaming, and Some New Friends

Day 2 of GenCon is over and all I really have to say about it is: Oh sweet, dear lord, MY FEET!

Kidding...mostly. Aside from my legs being in a good deal of muscle fatigue due to my inadequate level of fitness and sudden high levels of demand, today was pretty fun, but also had a couple of negative notables. What kind of negative notables?

Simply put: I ran into my first (two) bad experiences with fellow players in a con. Even more unfortunate is both were at the same game. However, I should also point out that the game was still over-all a large positive.

The first of the negative experience gamers brings up a couple of points I feel are common sense but may bear pointing out:

1. Make sure the game you are at is the game you think it is, including edition.
2. Don't give the GM a hard time about collecting tickets, or not having enough.

It probably goes without saying that both of these happened with the first person. They showed up to a Level 1-4 D&D 5th Edition game with a D&D 3.5th edition character. Not the same thing. This caused a small discussion with the GM when they were questioned on certain numbers and they were all - due to power scale differences - far off from where they should be.

As for the second thing, the GMs don't have a choice in this matter. If an event is 4 tickets, you need to give 4 tickets. The GM can't give you a pass because if they do not only are they being unfair to all the other players, but they also get in trouble with GenCon itself. This issue ended up with the person being peacefully ejected from the game.

The second bad experience was more generic: rules lawyering, telling players what they should do, and constant prattling on about what would be amazing if someone had a character above the level range for the adventure (yes, if we were more powerful than intended for the adventure, it would be easier. shocking. :P) In defense of the young man, though I'm the kind of jerk that never affords this defense much merit, they were young. Also, the GM handled it well so we were ok.

Beyond those, today was fun. My friend and I played some D&D 5th ed (a 1.5 hour adventure and a 4 hour adventure) than cut across back to the Hyatt for some L5R fun under the guidance of Sean Holland of Sea of Stars RPG Blog. I left that game with a new appreciation for the Suzume and a desire to play one, so damn good job, Sean. :)

Not much that really drew our interest after Sean's L5R game so we returned to the hotel. Tomorrow is a new day, and among other things includes the "big event" for D&D 5th. We still also want to see if we can get a game of Star Wars in with FFG. We will see what we get.

GenCon is half over. It's already been worth the price of admission. If I get to come again next year, I may even try my hand at GMing.

GenCon 2015 Day 1: This Is Why I Game

As I write this my legs and feet are burning from day 1 at GenCon. My friend and I left our hotel for the convention at about 8:00am, were there before 8:30, and didn't leave until about 10:30pm. All in all, about 14 hours of walking, meeting folks, and gaming. To put it simply, it was a blast. Granted, I might be biased as I had some great rolls today but I had more fun today than in almost all of GenCon last year, and I had a lot of fun last year.

In a lot of ways today was a great reminder of why I game. How so? Well, I only really played 4 games today, but here is what I did:

• I commanded a space ship in 'The Amega Weapon' and managed to grab the galaxy's most dangerous super weapon before hunting down my fellow players across the board.
• I got to take on the role of Ray Stantz, Ghostbuster Extraordinaire, in the upcoming Ghostbusters board game and help my team stop a group of rampaging ghosts. My crowning moment of awesome? Diving back into Ecto-1 so I could "cheat the rules" to be able to remove slime tokens from Venkman and Winston getting myself much needed XP and freeing them up of action restricting debuffs.
• As Akodo Ochiru I attended the Topaz Championship in the Heroes of Rokugan module "New Beginnings." I did not compete, but when wisked away to a spirit realm stepped forward for my companions and out wrestled an Ogre with the aid of my honor and ancestors.
• Finally, as Utaku Mizuko in an AEG inspired event that will impact the L5R Canon in a story coming out next year, I wielded the sword of Otaku and sliced the arm off a demon saving one of Shinjo's descendants before slaying the demon with the aid of my fellow samurai.

None of this even touches on the people I met, sights I saw, and other experiences. It was a great time.

Oh, also, my friend and I randomly got grouped up in the AEG event with 3 people we played D&D with last year. What are the odds, huh?

Quick Fix: The New Look

Some of you have noticed the blog has a different look. I apologize for the lack of warning. I was struck by the mood to actually act on some of the complaints i've received about the old dark background + light text, and figured better now than never.

At some point the blog may change appearance again. In general though I like this theme and it suits my purposes. The new color scheme is pleasant enough and has the requested dark text + light background that I've heard is generally easier for people of all ages and vision conditions to read.

Hopefully it works well for you. If not, what would you like to see for a basic format of the blog?

My First Time At GenCon - Day 2 Recap

I had a bit of a late start today due to sleeping in, but still had a lot of fun. A bit more cramped for time as myself and my friend who I am here with tried to stick together. Also had 3 hours out of the middle of my time at GenCon day cut up by some seminars I attended. Tomorrow I'm hoping to focus on gaming more than anything, and we'll see how that goes. For today though...

General Information

• Don't lose or destroy your tickets; they can be refunded for other things
• The actual physical ticket is a must
• Most event runners don't care whose name is on a Generic Ticket so keep track of them
• If you have generics, show up early but expect to wait until 5 minutes or so after start time

Events

• The con is huge, so if you want to do something specific plan it out before you arrive
• If you want to play a specific game/event with a friend, get tickets for the events. Generics are hard because often it is just 1 seat available
• The bigger the event, the more likely there will be open seats

Food & Drink

• Johnny Rockets is amazing 
• Seriously best shake I've ever had was at Johnny Rockets
• I forgot to eat after lunch at JR (can't stress how easy this is to do...)

People

• People are still super nice
• Some don't understand personal space
• Please mute your cellphone/devices in seminars. No one wants to hear your phone beep and chirp while trying to listen to the panel
• Younger gamers don't always understand to ask before taking. Try to be patient. (I've yet to have this problem with gamers over 30, but then we used to flog people for even thinking of grabbing stuff without asking.)

Events

• D&D 5th edition is nice enough
• Character differences from Pathfinder are significant, mechanical feel in play is...not
• Will be interesting to see where D&D/Pathfinder are this time next year
• Hoping to find more variance in games tomorrow, but also interested in trying more D&D 5th...
• Don't be afraid to say yes! (I.e. "do you want to try this game? YES!)

My First TIme At GenCon - Day 1 Recap

I know I said I'd be gone until next Monday, but my friend/hotel mate brought his laptop and since I'm back in the room after my first day at GenCon I figured I'd make an update. I intend to do a much more in depth update (complete with some pictures) when I get back, but for now here you go.

So after my first day on my first trip to GenCon what do I think?

General Information

• Will Call lines are huge, do whatever you have to to get your badge mailed to you before hand (so glad I did this)
• The Day 1 Vendor Room rush is real. Huge crowds at every door started gathering at 8:05am and hit critical mass before the Vendor Room opened. Initial lines were huge.
• Good shoes are a must
• If you're fat and/or sedentary, you should walk at least a few weeks before GenCon to build up some stamina

Food and Drink

• There are Vending Machines around the convention center but haven't used one. They're fairly few and far between all things considered
• I've only see one in Center food place so far.
• The food trucks sell out fairly fast
• It is super easy to lose track of time and miss eating
• GiGi's Strawberry Shortcake cupcakes are AMAZING (also, unsure if guy who served me was being flirty or just super nice/joking. He was pleasant enough anyhow :) )

People

• The Con staff is super nice but also good at their jobs. I've been stopped before going into the Exhibit and Vendor rooms several times because my tag had flipped to hide the part that shows it is for this year's GenCon
• CosPlayers are not as plentiful as in some SDCC or PAX picture events, but they are here and the costumes have all be high quality so far.
• Favorite Cosplay so far was a girl as Carmen Sandiego, this is biased though because I found it funny that she was made she couldn't find a friend who had something of hers. The irony was amusing.
• The Vendor staff are also super nice.
• I met a couple nice folks from the True Dungeon at a bar after the con, they seem nice too.
• Basically, everyone is nice so far.
• Oh, and Michael Stackpole is awesome.

Things To Do

• I have yet to play an event game so far, but they are going on
• I've played several demo games
• Including this one on Kickstarter. This game is fun! Check it out.
• You can kill a LOT of time doing demos in the vendor room

Anyhow, I'm retiring to the hotel pool for my legs and then sleeping to get started early tomorrow. I originally had no plans for tomorrow, now there's 5 hours worth of stuff I want to go to at the very least. I'm also hoping to finally get some gaming in!

Quickfix: Race and Sex Generator

I figure the earlier post today about Speakeasy is small enough I can make another post.

Anyhow, if - like me - you sometimes have problems coming up with a variety of ethnicities in your game, or don't make a deal of ethnicity for whatever reason, this tool might come in handy for you.

CLICK HERE FOR THE TOOL

The generator is default set to information off an American Census but you can tweak the numbers to suit your own needs for your world. Probably more useful for games set in the modern day then fantasy, but nothing says you couldn't assign other race types to the ethnicities present.

Have fun with it, use it, and see what comes out of it.

Happy Gaming!

Random Character Life Story Generator

I believe I mentioned earlier that one of the games I'm a part of has shifted into an Infinite World's game and that I am somewhat at a loss for what character I want to play. In my search for character ideas I came across a few random character generators and this one caught my eye. You can read the instructions here and get going with just that.

What caught my eye about this isn't the system. I'm not particularly familiar with the One Roll Engine, but what I did like was that this character generator basically gives you a backstory for a character. You roll 11d10s and any numbers that comes up in multiples represent careers your character has had while singles represent life events. You don't always get the most varied choices (there are only 10 options for each) but it does give you a good starting point.

Don't want to roll 11d10 to do it? It actually works well with most phone numbers. Granted a U.S. phone number is 10 digits, but adding that 11th digit isn't too hard now, is it?

Anyhow, give it a look and see if it helps. Hopefully it will at least get the juices flowing.

Oh, and just for fun, there is also "and they fight crime" for fun character ideas. One of the things that popped up on this has actually got me started on one of the two concepts I think I'm going to play.

Happy 4th to the U.S. readers. Happy Friday to everyone.

Breachworld

When I got into this whole game blogging thing one of the first people to reach out and say hi was Jason Richards of Palladium fame. Jason is a cool guy and I had a lot of fun interacting with him in emails and on one of his pre-made character bits. His blog has been heating up again lately after some time abroad, and it looks like Jason is going to be coming back with his very own RPG.

It is called Breachworld and, from what I can understand, involves breaches and worlds. You should totally check it out and while you're over on Jason Richard's site maybe say hi, check some things out, and get ready for the kickstarter he's looking to get going.

Update
The Kickstarter for this has gone live. Give it a look!

Quick Fix: Evil Hat's New Kickstarter

If you haven't guessed by now, I'm a big fan of Evil Hat. I'm only playing in one of their games right now - a Dresen Files game - but even if I wasn't I'd be a big fan of them. See, I like Evil Hat more for their business practices than I do for their games, and I'm particularly fond of some of their games. I have plans to, sometime in the future (probably a year from now,) convert my L5R game from the L5R system produced by AEG to the FATE Core system.

Reality Refracted - Also In French

I believe I mentioned this a long time ago when I was first queried about the opportunity, but with the first article having gone up I figured I'd link again. The french website/magazine/webzine (honestly not sure) Places To Go, People To Be has translated one of my articles into French. You can find the article in french here, and the original in english here. Antoher article has been grabbed for future translation.

Personally, I don't speak french. Still, it is kind of cool to see my work in another language. So, thanks to the folks at Places To Go People To Be and to all of you for making it happen.

Quick Fix - Blog Update

Due to spammed comments I am disabling the "open to anyone" format for comments. It is currently set to Registered Users, which should include Open ID. If you guys think it would be better set to folks with google accounts, let me know and I'll make the swap.

Something Soothing To Plot To

Forgive the short post for today, I'll return to the normal length tomorrow with the wrap up of how last week's Guest Star session went. Today though has been a drag. Spent almost the entirety of the day on the road running errands and delivering people back home. Not saying it to complain, just that it was a full day that capped off with GMing Shadowrun, and I'm tired but would really like to share something with you today. What do I want to share? Click the link to find out.

Quick Fix - Fate Core Last Chance

We're within the last 48 hours for the Fate Core Kickstarter. Currently $10 gets you a whole lot of gaming goodness. Check it out and back it. If you don't, hopefully you don't have regrets later when the products involved are going individually!

Next Week (Holiday Hiatus)

It's a very busy time of the year. The holidays are here and everyone is about going crazy with all the stuff that is going on. Add on to that the normal work craziness (teachers trying to figure out systems to submit grades on time) and the general under staffedness of most places around here, and well things are busy.

As such, next week (actually 12/24 until probably 1/2/2013) Reality Refracted is going on a mini-hiatus. There will still be a couple of updates. I'll try to have some form of Happy Holidays post up for 12/24 or 12/25, and I also want to do a Year's End/New Years post, but I'm not going to be holding myself to regular posting until we're actually into the year 2013.

Thanks to everyone who regularly stops by. Double thanks to everyone who regularly comments. You guys make it all worth it and fun. There will be a discussion for tomorrow, and then only about 2-3 more posts until the new year. Have a good one, and stay safe!

Quick Fix: Fate Core Update

So, yeah, just a quick update but have you checked out the Fate Core Kickstarter? It's blowing past stretch goals like crazy. the $10 backer option now gets you a whole TON of stuff. How much? Well, it's pretty much at a book/setting/ruleset per dollar or better already, and there's still lots of room for it to grow.

If you like reading systems, playing systems, or just want setting ideas you should check it out. It's huge and amazing.

Quick Fix: Wow, That's Service

I feel the need to write about this. So, about 15 minutes ago I put in an order w/ Margaret Weis productions for a physical copy of the Marvel Heroic RPG. Since then, I have received two confirmation emails that my order has been processed, a receipt for my purchase, a code to get a pdf copy of the book for free from DriveThru RPG, and an email to confirm that the code was coming, thanking me for my business, and that someone would make sure my physical copy got mailed out as soon as possible so I could enjoy the game.

I mean, wow, seriously? Sure, I could see how the constant emails could be annoying for some, but I can't recall the last time I have felt this important as a customer. My order has been there for 15 minutes and I have a name associated with someone who said they will see to my order. It feels kind of good.

A++ Would definitely order again.

P.S. To be fair about the amount of emails, Margaret Weis has you use paypal to pay, so some of the emails have come from paypal confirming the order. Still, I have three paper trails to this order if something gets messed up. Good products and now good service, what's not to love about this company?