Back from Vacation

We took a week for out tour of history, starting with Boston and the USS Constitution and rushing through Salem, Washington DC, and Gettysburg. With 8 days, one could only hit the highlights.

One can at times fell the weight of history, and in so doing notice the lack of awareness of most.

Through it all I gather a number of interesting details to use in future games, one shot and campaign. Of course some may involve time travel. I love maps, and now I have a better feel for some them be it the battlefield at Gettysburg or the layout of the 'The House of Seven Gables' (even if it isn't really the fictional house of the book).

Even got some good stuff out of Salem, which has become a horrid tourist trap with self-righteous airs. It's someday to be the setting for one of my Holloween games, with one of its many tourist shops getting ahold of something a little too real...

Conventions

Most of the rpg blog world is focused on Gen Con, something that generally leaves me yawning.

I was never into conventions due to a lack of money and time. And now that I have the money, I have even less time. I just didn't find it tempting to take time away from my own campaigns and the people who play them to spend it with strangers I don't know and likely wouldn't want to know.

It used to be that my one possible draw was companies tending to release their new games at Gen Con. But even that has faded for me over the years as I'm just not interested in 99.9% of it. There hasn't been a good game designed since the 80s, and few good products.

There has been really good miniatures released however, companies like Reaper are fantastic.

I did see that HERO Games missed getting out 6th edition in time. So I did get something out of this year's convention after all.

A laugh.

Here's what I'm carrying

Yesterday I talked about all the gear the PCs in my Morrow Project Team have to haul on their backs.

The thought occurred that I may as well list it. So here it is in a PDF. As per the article the list is broken up into the various load types- they stack except for the last three that are meant to be environmental specific additions to the stuff above (i.e. pick one).

I pity the guy who needs both the Cold Weather and the Mountain Climbing gear at the same time...

You're carrying how much?

Our Hero System based Morrow Project meets a more serious Gamma World campaign is coming along nicely. We've completed most of the pre-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it adventures with one more to go.

During this last week, I was finalizing the equipment load outs for the Special Ops team that makes up the core of the PCs. I found a rather good source for what today's soliders carry into the field.

They make most RPG characters look under-equipmented. A full 'existence' load is over 120 lbs, and a light 'combat load' is over 50 lbs and that doesn't include the body armor or the Land Warrior systems seeing use in Afghanistan. Heck, it doesn't even include the more than 8 lbs of clothing the guys are wearing. And that's lean, with things like SAWs and anti-tank weapons unaccounted for.

None of this came a surprise to me, I've long know that the military has been waging a losing battle against equipment weight. There are all these useful toys that can save your life or kill your foe, plus the stuff just needed to exist in the field. And then there's the poor back of the trooper that has to carry this stuff.

Things are even a bit worse for the Project, given that they have to live on what they start with far more today's grunt in the field who can count on daily resupply for the most part. So there was interesting choices for me to make. The body armor plates for example were dropped, and they'll have to depend upon the near magic Project cover-alls for protection.

All this of course just increases the importance of the team vehicle, because it can carry all this stuff. Pity I've decided to be evil to my players and start them off in a different bolt hole from their transportation. I went through all this trouble to determine what the pack contains- so they'll have get to use them for a few days after waking up :)

Revisiting the Threefolds

I was talking about some of the old theory models the other day, mostly the WotC study of gamers and Bartle's play styles. The thought occurred that it would be worth pointing out some of the many differences between these two (professional/academic) studies and other 'RPG Theory', especially the Threefold models (GNS and GDS).

The first major difference that a rather casual inspection should show is that the professional/academic studies both collected significant amounts of data before making any claims or definitions. With data in hand, it was analyzed, trends noted and the model created.

This stands in sharp contrast to the development of the Threefold models which grabbed and defined terms based on personal experience, taste, and power struggles within their respective forums.

The second major difference is found that the professional/academic studies are both based upon two unrelated axis of information, that together produce the resulting descriptions.

Bartle's model used the following: Player -- World, Acting --- Interacting to produce Achievers, Killers, Socialisers, and Explorers.

WotC used Strategic --- Tactical, Story --- Combat to produce Power Gamers, Thinkers Storytellers, and Character Actors.

In short, they used two scales of what are directly opposed concepts that allow direct measurement. Indeed, they had to as it was based upon measurement in the first place. Thus one could 'test' for an individual's focus and where they sit on those scales. It allows for players of mixed tastes by nature as they would just measure towards the middle when their score was totaled.

In contrast the Threefolds prevented any such measurement as they did not have any opposed axis of measurements as part of their construction*. They were instead idealized 'end states' at the points, three different ideas each unrelated to each other.

Each corner perhaps could have been one end of a possible axis, but that was never considered.

Keep that point in mind.

Now imagine the impact on the WotC or Bartle's models if instead of their two axis, they had attempted to define things only in terms of two ends. Say Tactical Focused and Story Focused for the WotC study. A full 75% of the study's users would have dropped out of the model.

The result would have been very useful to Character Actors, but would have had the rest of the player base up in arms. Which is basically the overall reaction to the two Threefold models when looking at them in hindsight. Most seem to hate them, while a few love them beyond reason.

And doesn't that result make perfect sense when one steps back and looks at it?

*The Threefold/GNS originally did start out with an axis, the poorly named Drama---Sim which is better viewed as Meta-Game ---Sim, but this was quickly lost when Gamism was brought into the mix, as it didn't have a scale or opposed point of its own.