What Are we Looking For? Settling on a Game of Choice.

So I spent yesterday pondering. Lots of things really, but mainly about games. Big surprise, huh? I recall once reading a books about horses some years back. My daughter wanted a horse and I was trying to self-educate. Anyway, the author said he had been through many hobbies, but he always came back to horses. I wondered while reading that statement, what it was I always came back to. The answer was easy of course. Games. Games, particularly roleplaying games--have always been my hobby of choice. There were times that I gamed less, in college for instance, but I always felt like I was missing something. And that something was gaming. For me, there was truly nothing like it. Yes, table-top roleplaying games were my hobby of choice.

So that got me to thinking yesterday. Sundays are a quiet time for me and my family. Conducive to pondering and intrapersonal ruminations. Anyway, I'm thinking about games of course, and my mind turns to my game of choice. Is there a game I always return to? For the longest time my game of choice had always been Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. It's what I started with, it's the structure in which I was most comfortable imagining and creating. It held lots of memories. It spoke the fantasy language I was familiar with. It had connections to people both met and unmet that I respected and admired. It was my game.

It has only been in the past few years, well it seems like a few but I guess it's almost been over a decade now, that I have been nursing a slowly breaking heart. It seems silly really. It seems childish. I mean it doesn't feel that way to me. This sadness and sorrow of loss feels very real and very present and very, very large. It aches really. For you see, it's like I wake up and am so tired of all the other games, of all the industry crap, of all my debates and diatribes and false starts. I decide to walk out to the horse pen. Back to the horses. I get dressed in my comfortable riding jeans, pull on my boots, grab my dusty saddle and careworn bridle still supple from thousands of loving applications of of saddle soap. I open the back door wondering where me and my horse will ride today. Along the ridges behind the property? Perhaps in the deep creek valley where the shade of the Russian Olives is so cool. Maybe towards the badlands and their beautiful, bleak mesas and hidden draws. Perhaps somewhere we've never even been. I reach the stable, which is unusually silent. I open the gate, clucking my tongue which always brought him running to me in anticipation of a long, sweet ride. But he doesn't come. No nicker, no whinny, no munching of hay in the back of the barn's shade. I search each stall, concerned. More worried with each step I end up back in the stable yard. My saddle hanging limp in my hand now, bridle dragging in the dust. And slowly the shocking realization dawns fully. He's gone. And I know he's just not gone for awhile. He's really, truly gone. And he's never coming back.

And there the metaphors die. Because the natural course of action in the scenario above is to go out and buy a new horse. Now, anyone who knows anything about owning pets. and not just owning them, but really loving them, caring about them like they were one of your family, knows that when one dies or is lost that you can't just replace it. Just buying a new one never does the trick. You need time to mourn, to grieve. And then after a while you will get a new horse or a new dog and you will end up loving it as much as the one now departed. You will still miss them, and that pang of loss never quite goes away, but the new love the new joy and companionship of your new pet makes the grief much easier to bear and at times it seems as if it never existed at all.

I've looked for new games. I've played dozens of games in an effort to find some new game of choice. I've even played retro-clones, and tried to dedicate myself to preserving that spirit of games gone by. Nothing has filled the hole. Nothing has fit the bill. I've wondered why, I've contemplated, written and talked about it with literally hundreds of people. I've thought I've come to decisions lots of times. But nothing seems to stick. nothing seems the same.

A common attack levelled at the Old School Renaissance gamers is that they are chasing nostalgia. I've talked about this before, but I don't think that's a fair assessment. We have truly lost something. We're not just talking about pining for the good old days. We/I have tried to "get into the spirit of things" now. I've played new games, and new old games. And I've even tried to gather all my old books and play AD&D like I used to. But even then it seems to be dead. It's like playing with a dead horse, or at best a stick horse. I suppose that's because noone I've played 1e with really wants to play. They humor me, but complain alot. But it's more than that.

Gary is gone too. ... ... ... Is it too dramatic for me to say that something died when he did? I'm not sure that's the case, but it makes me wonder. What else could it be?

So now I write about games. I still game. Pretty much whatever everyone else is willing to play. I hate to force my game choices on everybody else. That's a pretty sure way to make a game session fall flat. So I game other games. But they're flat for me. I try and hide it. I put on a smile, everyone loves my GMing. We tell stories that they seem to really enjoy. But me. I'm lost. And I feel like I'm the only one in the world who feels this way. You know that old saw about feeling alone in a crowd of people. Well, I can feel like gaming is dead in a crowd of gamers happily gaming away. I make comments at times, about games, about the old school, about what used to be ... but noone really seems to get it. To be fair I live in a small community and gamers are few and far between. I run the RPG club at the school where I teach, but that's a different ball of wax. Lots of gamer turn over from year to year as kids move from grade to grade. And they are kids after all. Most are new to gaming and need slow introductions to the hobby. Most of the older gamers have turned to MtG or Warhammer. Easy one session runs that fit into their adult schedules.

I can't help but feel that I'm still missing something. It's like I know what my hobby of choice is, but the stable is empty. It's like it's gone. I mean the hobby is there, but for me it's gone. Gone with TSR, gone with 1e and with AD&D, gone with Gary and Dave. Gone. And I'm left standing there at the gaming table, my book bag hanging limply in my hand, dice bag dragging on the floor. Speechless. A tear forming at the corner of my eye.

*sigh*

I miss you Gary ...

There is no Honor Among HackMasters

Actually there is. Lots of it. So let's examine this interesting little mechanic from the KCo design team. Gary Jackson touts Hackmaster as being ahead of its time because, for one, it was the first RPG to create a mechanic for enforcing role play. Quite a novel idea Honor was a concept that I see born out of the somewhat satirical approach to GM-Player antagonism for which Hackmaster is famous. (Actually you'll find quite a lot of useful play mechanisms born out of that very productive forge--but more on that later).

On its surface Honor may be taken strictly in the chivalric or oriental sense as something for which players must constantly be striving to maintain and raise. And it is certainly that. This is called Personal Honor in Hackmaster and can certainly create some interesting roleplay situations. But that is only a small part of the Honor pie. It goes much deeper than that.

First consider alignment. Remember those alignment tracking charts that Gary included in the 1e PHB for AD&D? Yeah, the one hardly anybody used? Well the reason that we didn't was that because there was little game effect connected to alignment beyond a coat hanger upon which we can droop our character's ethics. In truth what happened in most games, and certainly what happened in most of mine was that we enforced alignment by saying something like "Hey! You can't do that! your Neutral Good!" I think in my whole time gaming I forced one or two actual alignment shifts as a GM and even then that was only on one axis.

But with the Hackmaster Honor mechanic we get something very different. Sure, have your player do what he or she will regardless of your alignment restrictions. It is not up to the GM to act as your conscience. But there is a very real consequence for such action. Yes, good GMs are very tuned in to such actions and can play them out in game. We're all pretty good at that. But even the best of us drop the ball. I assert that it is much harder to ignore in HM because of Honor. You see it is up to the GM to award honor to PCs after every session. GMs keep track of player actions that might increase or decrease honor. And just like XP, altho' in much smaller quantity, you get Honor points at the end of a session.

And just what good are Honor Points may you ask? You may. They're darn good for lots of things. First of all they directly affect reputation in game. What people think of you and how they treat you is largely a factor of your honor. Yeah, looks and charisma have something to do with it too, but we've all known good looking arseholes and born leaders that you can't trust as far as you can spit. (No, I'm not thinking about who you're thinking about, I'm thinking about someone different.) Honor has a lot of gravitas in a well played Hackmaster game. But that's not all it's good for. Honor can be used to buy pluses on important die rolls. When the chips are down and your willing to burn a bit of your rep you can get a plus to that potentially lifesaving roll you're about to make.

Not enough yet? Well how about a Full Monty? Yep! You can buy a full re-roll if things don't go your way. It hurts. You gotta dig deep into your virtue to pull one of 'em out, but you can do it. You can even do it twice if you got the shivatza to pull it off. Not needing something that drastic? How about a die tweak up or down one by a slight honor burn? Sound good? Sure does to me.

By now you may be thinking that it sounds okay, but really do we need to be giving out free re-rolls? I mean isn't XP enough?  Well, no. It aint. And the reasons are manifold. For one allow me to quote some of the reasons from the HM Basic rulebook itself,

"Spending Honor helps bring an element of cinematic drama into the game and allows characters to do truly larger than life feats. Honor can also prevent the premature death of a character in which you've invested a lot of time." (Hackmaster Basic pg. 27)

Did you catch that? It's a mechanic that allows you to roleplay cinematic action! We don't need scripted feats to tell us what to do. We dream big, burn some honor and watch the heavens applaud! So Honor invests the game with high drama and action-movie style panache limited only by our imagination. And it does so not as a daily staple, but a once in a game explosive burst of player wondermousness. Any fool that spends too much honor trying to save the day all the time is going to look like an idiotic glory hound and lose his standing not only among his fellows, but likely even among the beasties he's trying to one-up. You can just see it ... One goblin turns to another "Heh, willya lookit that fool Harry? He's jumpin' in front of the battle agin' Yellin he'll save 'em all." Harry grins and cranks his crossbow back to cock it, "Yeah, stoopid idgit. we'll see how he like's saving 'em when he's full o poisoned bolts." The rest is a but a sad footnote in history ... Honor gone and his life. Oops.

But allow me to continue with another salient quote from the venerable Hackmaster Basic rulebook,

"Finally, the Honor rules absolutely eliminate the need for anyone, be he player or, so help me gawds, Game Master, to fudge a roll. Fudging, also known as cheating, has no place in a game that already has a mechanic designed to eliminate freak occurrences. If a player cannot succeed with the rules as-written, it is simply a matter of pressing his luck too far, biting off more than his character could chew at the time or moment, or more likely, incompetence." (ibid)

Now that's what I'm talking about. I don't know how many discussions I've had where GMs defend fudging die rolls for the sake of the story, the character, their friend, their wife, fear, inadequacy, etc. etc. ad nauseam. And more sniggling than that blatant embarrassment is how many players cheat! I mean, maybe I shouldn't judge. It's been a long time since I was a player. I'm sure I fudged a few die rolls when I was rolling up PCs in my youth. Maybe I have forgotten the pressure. But my last group of players all had at least one 18 some had three, and there were no stats below 14. And if I have to tell one more player to not pick up the dice after they roll I'm gonna ... Well, now there's no excuse. Honor allows you tweak those rolls, even buy re-rolls. So there's no need to cheat. Well, okay, where there are players there will always be a need to cheat. But as the HM rules said so well above, if they feel like they need to cheat now--they screwed up somewhere along the way. Lesson learned. Move on.

Sound good? It was music to my ears when I first read it last year. And it has such potential in game. As there are several ways to earn honor you can see why it has such potential beyond the benefit to characters themselves. You get Honor for:

• Adherence to Alignment
• Adherence to Class
• Defense of Personal Honor
• General Roleplaying

All in one easy to use and beneficial mechanic. Those are GM dreams. If we could get characters to actually roleplay, and to act as their character would act we would enjoy our games so much more. We could extend our games so much more. And now we have an easy and useful way to enforce it. And it works for everybody. It's these kinds of things that make Hackmaster excel in my mind. All of the things I've learned and wished for as a GM over the years seem to keep coming together in Hackmaster. The rules are not just rules, they're deep principles that guide play. So as you can imagine, I just can't wait to see Advanced Hackmaster.

Where's the Trail Strider?

The trail through my blog that is. I've been cruising around trying to tidy things up a bit and feel a little discombobulated. I'll be reorganizing some things today. It sort of goes with the idea that you can only do what you do well. I've been trying to keep up with the retro clone/variant market but it's a challenge to say the least. I've spent more time surfing than I have blogging lately. There is literally so _much_ out there.

For instance, Drance just let me know about the very excellent looking Crypts and Things. By D101 Games. It actually looks like it is going to offer quite a few fixes to what people are complaining about with the DCC RPG. Keeping in mind of course that DCC is still in beta test. But I seriously doubt they will drop Elves, Dwarves and the like as standard fantasy races. But it is true that Swords & Sorcery rarely featured such tropes. And I doubt even more that they'll drop Clerics. But they may work in some black/white/grey magic what with all the comments about it on the forums. But these are all elements Crypts and Things is starting out with. And I also love their campaign concept of the exploring of a dying world. Great potential there. Brings Jack Vance to mind.

There are so many good games coming out now. And the fact is it would be a full time job to keep up with just the Swords & Sorcery variants let alone all the new games out there. News is news, but covering it all is just not something I can keep up with. So this realization has led me to reconsider my scope lately and think about narrowing it some. I have spent so much time debating game design and theory along with trying to get a handle on the development and evolution of the game industry that I seem to be missing the forest for the trees. Well, actually that's not an apt metaphor. I've been looking for a forest that isn't there. Oh heck, forget the metaphors. I've focused too much on the differences and not enough on the similarities.

Let's face it we all game because we are looking for a god adventure story. Just like there are all types of genres of fiction, even of fantasy fiction, there are all types of games. We all come to one game, or maybe a small handful of them, to the exclusion of others. We can spend lots of time reading other games or we can spend lots of time playing games and extending the imagination. And I suppose that there are those with enough time to do both. But me, I'm a part time blogger, full time Dad, Husband, Professional and any time gamer. Lately that any time has dwindled to no time.

So, I'm trying to get into a play by post Hackmaster game soon, and the owner of my FLGS called me and asked that I run a game once a month -- any game I want! -- on my schedule. And school is starting soon so the gaming club will be up and running in no time. I've got three schools to cover now, the High School, Junior High and Middle School for club membership. So out of the blue the gaming is falling like rain, blessed gaming rain! And it's really made me think about focusing my efforts some here. I don't think I'll try and spread myself all over the industry anyway. The gaming industry is what it is. I suppose I thought in some Don Quixote type of way I could tilt at their windmills and change them some. But a morning epiphany led me to understand that I don;t do this to change the industry. My crusade is really about keeping the flame alive. The gaming flame. And that my friends happens in our imaginations and at the gaming table.

So the forest appears out of the mist around me. A shaft of leaf-scintillated sunlight stabs the gloom and there ahead I can make out a trail. It's only a game trail, thin and covered over; but the tracks it bears are suspicious. And I am hungry enough for adventure to follow.