Vacation notes

I just got back from camping in the NJ Pine Barrens for the weekend. Great fun. There were lots of moments where I felt like I was watching other people enjoying their vacation while I could do little more than sit in a chair watching the river. But I fished, I spent lots of time reading and writing. It was a good weekend.

My wife and I spent more time than I expected talking about Pennsic. We're working more and more to make labor-intensive camping-style vacations like Pennsic more fun, less chore-like. We've decided that when we make it beack to Pennsic, we're taking it easy, buying food when we get out there, cooking little, and enjoying more things together.

Which was what our weekend trip was like. I'm still nursing a ruptured Achilles tendon, so there wasn't much for me to do. But we had fun together. Neither my wife nor my kid are terribly interested in SCA activities, and I'm much more interested in having fun as a family than I am in experiencing more SCA stuff...we'd likely enjoy a relatively short Pennsic vacation in the future...a short week, where I'd fight and fence a little, shop a bit, and experience so much more together.

We all went out last week to be part of a western martial-arts class. The boy was bored, my wife ended up doing a little nature walk while I talked to the instructor and witnessed the class. It interesting when there's not a whole-geek household (or a household where we don't geek out about the same things...my wife loves the natural world and local history, I'm a gamer and history / literature buff, my kid has developed a strong appreciation for video-games, far beyond my interest). But we've learned to accommodation each other. This may not sound remarkable, but I know too many families that can't seem to do this. I'm glad we can.

We took a day trip to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire last year, and we all had a great day. My plan is to have another weekend-vacation out there, where we could all have fun at faire, then spend the rest of the weekend chilling out in a hotel. With a pool.

Lord of the Rings gaming coming back

Have you seen pics from Cubicle 7 of the new Lord of the Rings role-playing game, The One Ring?

Well, take a look.

I'm a sucker for nice presentations, and the pics alone make me want to add this to the collection. The dice in the next-to-last picture are nice, though I think I would rather use Q Workshop "Elven" dice. The maps look nice, and I guess that's to be expected. You just can't have a Tolkien game and not have gorgeous cartography.

It reminds me of their Doctor Who - Adventures in Time and Space boxed set, which included some equipment cards, blue dice, and a sheet of "story points." I enjoy boxed sets with props and extra bits (anyone seen my small collection of 3rd edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay?). I can see myself getting The One Ring just for the cool bits.

Am I interested in playing in a Middle-Earth setting? The usual argument about playing in a setting like that is that all the cool stuff has already been done. I never quite got into LoTR gaming, but I blame the people who introduced me to LoTR gaming...rabid fanboys who forced their own love of the setting on the players, and punished any deviation from their image. I've had the same problem with Dragonlance, Star Wars, Serenity, Star Trek, Forgotten Realms, Call of Cthulhu...same as most gamers, I imagine.

If you love a piece of literature or fiction like that, enough to want to run a game in that setting, then you are going to want to spread that love to the rest of the layers. You want them to be as rabid about the things you love about the setting as you are. But then, you get folks who want to play quick-drawing space pirates in a Starfleet-based Star Trek game, or are playing Forgotten Realms just to kill Elminster*. Things just don't work, and you declare that they just don't get your artistic vision or some such thing.

I ran a Star Wars game for a few years. The players played it like they were CIA agents in the early 1980's. They spent a great deal of their time destabilizing planetary governments, making propaganda videos, assassinating heads of state, organizing military coups...nothing at all very Star Wars like. There were no heroic Jedi Knights fighting to restore the glory of the Old Republic. This was the kind of story we wanted to build together. And we spent a lot of time sitting, talking about what we all wanted to do with the story. And we built it all together. If I were more of a rabid Star Wars fanboy, I'd be upset. But they wanted to do what they wanted to do with the setting, and I had to be cool with that.**

So I hope that people have fun with The One Ring, and make their stories their own. Best way to make it succeed.

*And can you blame them?
** As said during one LARP: "The rest of us are playing Call of Cthulhu, and Tony's playing Kult."

News from DriveThruRPG.com

Do you get the DriveThruRPG.com weekly newsletter? If not, you're missing out on some good gaming news.

The thing that got me today was a write-up for John Wick's new game: Wicked Heroes: Children of the Mirror. Here's a setting where a sorcerous mirror is the origin of superpowered people. But Wick put his spin on them:

Each born with one Blessing, one Curse. But if one kills the other, he
steals her Blessing, adding it to his own, replacing his Curse with hers.

They are faster than us. They are stronger than us. They are better than us.

This is the kind of superhero setting I want to know more about. These are the kinds of heroes I want to get to know.

Short update about being hopeful

So, next month, I may know if I can fence again. I have some physical therapy ahead of me, I understand.

This is bugging me just a little, because I've been planning on buying a new sword and some new armor. I'll like to try out SCA cut-and-thrust fighting, and I've found another western martial arts group in the area.

So, for right now, I hope for the best.

Something else to look forward to: Castles and Crusades game this coming weekend.

Laziest post ever

Have I mentioned how much I love Castles and Crusades?

Yeah, laziest blog post ever, but its been a while.

I'd go over and upload some maps to this, but I have a blown Achilles tendon, and can't walk to well.

I will say, though, that I'm very energized to get back to fencing once I'm healed. If I heal correctly. I miss my swords.