Deliberate Mischief

Apparently …

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… as devined through gematria by the Gematriculator

… is like herding chats

I have a good group of gaming buddies. They are fun to game with, present me with varied and interesting characters, even spring for pizza sometimes.

They are however a fucking pain to organise. Like passing a dump truck. In fact they are such a pain to motivate and organise that I always end up feeling like i am a nag when I try to arrange game days, which can be a problem for my own motivation. I have tried several ways to make the organisation a group task, such as throwing the debate about “when shall we play next” out to facebook, open emails, forums, drunken debate at parties … none of it really goes anywhere unless I push them to make a decision.

So after looking around the possibilities of what my webhost (thanks Dave, you Rock) offers I decided to try a management organisation tool. At its core is a calendar to organise game days (as well as other game gang shenanigans like trips to the pub or the cinema) and a forum for more detailed organisation.

Though I am a long way from grasping PHP, I can see a lot of possibilities with this software. Projects = well that’ll be different games we play. I can have a forum tied to each game and link all of the above together with the right players and the right games. And now all i need to do is sweet talk Dav (my PHP fu master) so i can alter the fields in the company tab and make it a characters tab and I’ll have a pretty nifty integrated RPG organising system.

I hope … reports and updates to follow.

So, 2011 is a census year for the UK. A census in which we can enter a more accurate version of our philosophical path and expect to have it recorded.

Of course the option to write our faith (or lack thereof) in the religion, other space was there before but for us pagans that wasn’t ideal. Paganism is a broad umbrella under which many different paths and faiths reside. Some of these paths resent actually using the (always controversial) term pagan at all because they do not feel that it adequately sums up their form of religion.

So thank feck for PaganDash! Started in Australia this initiative has helped ensure that all pagans are counted without eroding our diversity. Before the initiative Australia’s census returned a figure of 10,000 pagans and after it was embraced that figure rose to 70,000. That means that only one in every seven pagans was being properly recorded and the numbers for how many we are were worst than worthless.

For that reason I’d really like to encourage all of you who are under the wide heading of pagan, to take a look at the PaganDASH imperative. It encourages us to choose pagan and then to add our path. This way all those of you who have issues with some of the definitions of paganism (the goddess centric aspect that tends to marginalise the Norse worshippers and Chaos magicians for example) can still be counted and retain your identity.

Take a look at the paganDASH site

Also, take a nose at the PaganDASH facebook group

(You’re) just like a left hand w4nk – the arousing curiosity is there but the end result just isn’t - Sena One

Actually, I get them fine, but they don’t seem to follow the rules of HTML. Either they don’t or 1and1’s guestbook doesn’t.

After a guestbook provided by smartgb was withdrawn without warning because it was on a website (http://www.mistressviolet.net) that is a little raunchy I was stuck with finding a new one. I could see the same issue being repeated if I used another free supplier and the customer can’t afford to pay for one. However it occurred to me that if her hosting company was happy with the content of the website they would be fine with their free guestbook being linked to it.

Which is all well and good except that the guestbook they provide truly sucks. No really, like truly! Colour options are rubbish unless you want two browns or an ugly blue as your background field, no black despite they rapidly becoming even more popular than default black on white. At least you can choose to display the message form with the archives or just the archive (or so they claim).

Worse though is that when I load this guestbook into an iframe I somehow get both these options, so I have the message form, the archive and the archive again all squashed into three windows within the single coded iframe all served by ugly sliders down the side.

Advice greatly appreciated.

To be pleased with one’s limits is a wretched state.  – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

OK so recently I joined a PbEM game run by a good friend (who is also a frigging great Storyteller), despite my recent spotty record with this sort of thing. Since I quit dealing with the whole manic thing through self medication*I find my ability to focus is shot to shit. I have created characters and then ditched the games several times in the last half decade, making me pretty much an ideal example of the sort of person I really hate.

So why try again if I know I am unreliable? If I know that even with a much less hectic display of bi polarity of late I could still wander off the mark?

First is the Storyteller himself, whose stories are just that damn good and that damn enjoyable that I would do just about anything to follow the story. Second is the crew of old (a crew I have been online gaming with for over a decade). Hopefully most of them have experienced me at my worst and will understand if I don’t manage to hold my issues in check. But in the end, one cannot be defeatist about these sorts of things. You have to try to overcome your flaws by facing them, and not by avoiding them.

Maybe this Blog will become a dumping ground for how the battle fares or a diary of me disappointing everyone gain. Who knows? Carpe diem, carpe nocturnum!

*Cocaine, Booze, Ecstacy, 60 Marlboro a day and only sleeping 4 hours in every 48!

Combining the dodge with the difficulty of the roll to hit is WRONG! Its as simple as that.

Certain systems are in devolution these days, moving back to the old days when RPG systems focussed on uncomplicated ways to kill lots of nameless NPC’s. Among the worst of these trends are the games in which the only sign of a Targets ability to dodge an attack, of his armour to absorb it, or of a magical ward to negate it are a raised difficulty in the ‘to hit’ or the damage roll.

If you are just playing a glorified figure game like D&D it matters very little but it’s heartbreaking to see it in games intended to promote storytelling and character depth. The modern incarnation of the World of Darkness (nWoD) and its ilk, I’m talking to you here!

The Old World of Darkness / Storyteller system (oWoD) had combat rolls which exemplified the characters individual style and ability. It is an elegant system for story driven games where you can see the panache of the swordsmith in the dice rolls and feel the invulnerability of the Werewolf as he soaks up the damage. The newer incarnation, like so many other modern systems, has done away with that tool, apparently to cater for the mathematically inept.*

The roll to hit and to cause damage was separate from the ability (or lack of ability) to not get damaged. You knew if a Character could shoot straight even if the opponent was bullet proof. You knew that the nimble guy avoided death by his muscles and not from his Kevlar vest. All of which added to and supported the character as an individual and encouraged the group to think beyond role-playing as more than just hack and slash.

But if you do away with this versatility and just throw it all together as a bit of maths before calling for the roll to hit you lose so much of that.

Player: I’ve envisioned a very small and dextrous character with lots of dodge, and Dave has a big bulky character who can really take a kicking …

GM: let me stop you there, the details don’t matter as you’ll both be making the same dice rolls anyway.

Even if you do believe that reducing the rolls speeds up combat, I ask – is it worth the time you gain? What do you do with that time? Hopefully you let players have free reign to describe their cool stunts and combat style at least and not try and fit in more combat.

If so, may i suggest going back to the older way of doing things. Roll to hit, then roll damage, then roll to dodge and to soak/absorb etc. Let the combat take a minute or two longer than it would do without the rolls. Do so and I guarantee you will observe that with more dice rolling, combat becomes much less about the dice rolling!

*I have heard a lot of people claiming the roles in the oWoD were too complicated. To be blunt, if you had trouble with the oWoD combat system based on basic decimalisation and very clear and simple roles then role-playing probably isn’t for you.