Tomorrow is my last final of my legal career.  (Not the last test, mind: that would be the Bar Exam, which I will take in July.  And it is my Secured Transactions final, which by all accounts will be the one test that will probe me unbidden in that uncomfortable place.

But I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about gaming goodness – and by this I mean roleplaying gaming goodness, so all of you readers who have no interest in it can turn away…. now.

As some of you may or may not know, I’m currently working on a brand new campaign setting, inspired somewhat by the advent of 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, but mostly borne out of a lot of frustrations I have with the way the game works generally, as well as specifically.  There’s a lot that I find frustrating about Dungeon Mastering, as I’m sure there’s a lot that people find frustrating about PCing.  And this setting is meant to address a lot of those issues – in effect, it’s a setting built around new methods of playing the game – not with new mechanics (indeed, I shall mostly be keeping to 3.5, despite the fact that I do not believe this setting will be done before the release of 4th edition – hey, I’m not done with 3rd edition yet, dammit, and feel no reason whatever [except, perhaps, the compulsive "shiny new thing" thing] to buy a new edition), but rather with a new way to approach roleplaying in general, with an attempt to tell a vast, cohesive, epic story, while at the same time avoiding DM-burnout and PC stagnation.

Can I do it?  No idea, but JP has expressed interest in what I’m doing, and we’ve been talking about expanding my vision a little to include even more experimental methods of playing the game.   We may not be breaking new ground, but the territory we plan to cross is pretty darn exciting to us, as its something we’ve never done nor personally seen done.

Meanwhile, I’ve been considering the different methods of gaming.  See, everyone does things differently.  It’s built into the game itself – roleplaying is modular.  No two groups specifically work the exact same way (that being said, the varieties between groups are small, I’m willing to bet.)  This comes largely from where roleplaying comes from: war gaming.

In a standard war game, you set up a tactical terrain, pick armies, and then go at it.  There’s usually no real story, and very little beyond just the tactics of the game itself.  A step beyond this pure war gaming is the tactical skirmish, where you have all of the elements of the war game but add a few special terrain elements: victory conditions (such as capture a given area of the map) and tactical terrain that grants bonuses to your units.  This adds an element of story beyond just a tactical war game – it’s not just two armies facing each other on a field, it’s one army defending a castle, for example.

On top of the tactical skirmish is the tactical encounter.  The encounter differs from the skirmish in that it is meant to represent only one sortie.  This is where we individualize the game to the point of having single characters facing just a few bad guys.  This is the standard Dungeons & Dragons encounter.  This is where roleplaying truly started.  If you string a series of encounters together, you create a dungeon.  Once you add a story to the dungeon you create an adventure.  String a series of adventures together and you have a campaign.  String a series of campaigns together around a particular world and you have a campaign setting.

Now, typically, Dungeons & Dragons focuses around adventures and campaigns.  But this wasn’t always the case.  In the early days, D&D was very heavy on the dungeons, more or less devoid of story.  It’s from these days that the game gets its heavy hack-and-slash reputation.  Now, the groups that I’ve participated in have always run campaigns, not just adventures.  When you run an adventure (or a dungeon) without focusing on a campaign, we call that a one-shot.  The one-shot style is very different from the campaign style.

There’s really no problem with any of these ways of gaming.  There are pros and cons to all of them.  And I can tell you my mind is fried because I have no idea where I was going with this, except to say I think we should run more one-shots.  If you’re a new DM, you should mostly do one-shots, because they help you learn how to DM and create interesting stories without relying on more advanced skills like information management and pacing.

I dusted you out of the closet and brought you out into the light. It’s been a long time I’ve kept you locked up in there, in that little corner of nowhere. It makes it easier on the both of us, I think, to keep you out of sight. But, I thought, I would allow myself one hour. One hour to indulge myself in what was, what is, what could have been. To feel the pain and to feel the burn and to feel other things as well. There are other things, even through the burning, even after all of this time. After all of this time.

Time is a strange thing. I wonder what drove Einstein to understand it. Was it simply the faculty of knowing, or was there some motive for his study? Did he quest with purpose, some ulterior motive to know more? Some secret desire to not only understand but to manipulate? To strive against some wrong, to undo some mistake, to alter what came? Is this why he dreamt long the dreams of madness, of science, of parallel worlds, of time immemorial? Is this what drives men to understand?

We danced all night, in that memory. It never happened that way, I know, but we did. We danced to music heard and unheard and we drove with the radio through hours of darkness, nothing but the rain. Drip drip. I still, to this day, fail to carry an umbrella when I can. Because the rain touched my skin and washes away the tears. Why do I think back, why are you still in my closet, gathering dust?

I stand strong because of the strength that you gave me. In dark times you were there for me and now, I burn, as a light, to make my own path. But the world beyond is murky – I lose my focus, I lose my drive. You were never good at getting me to focus on anything, and yet things were so clear. This is addiction, this is pain, this is loss, this is the bottle. My hands dust off the bottle like an old lover meeting her again and pop. The cork goes off. Your smell fills the room. Pop, the cork goes off again, and again.

There’s a hole in the world. It feels like we should have known.

As I was reading through my morning funnies, taking a break from paper writing (yes, I started way early today to see if I could get up to page 7 or 8 before too late in the afternoon) I came across this in xkcd’s newsblag.  Which I thought was absolutely hillarious, and of course utterly awesome.

Also, for you Cookie Monster fans (there’s, like, one of you that I know at least), there’s this NPR interview I was linked to yesterday.

And if you are in any way, shape, or form, interested in Roleplaying Games, and have an hour plus to kill, I would suggest you check out the Dragon’s Landing Inn podcast.  The hosts – Chuck and Lonnie – are pretty darn funny, and have some really good ideas concerning games, and their occasional guest History Dave is verily entertaining when he’s on.  Their fascinations with Chupacabras notwithstanding…  (Actually, I do have a chupacabra story.  When I was a wee lad I was in a chuch retreat out in some dinky compound in the middle of nowhere, me and a friend decided to go for a trek out into the jungle.  Now, understand that this was the middle of the chupacabra craze that was ongoing in the early 90s, and while I was never a believer in the chupacabra, my friend constantly kept talking about how we would run into the chupacabra and it would eat us.  Suddenly, there was a noise that we couldn’t identify [which was probably just a branch falling off a tree] and my friend, convinced it was the chupacabra, turned and fled, screaming, having failed what I presume was some kind of fear check.  With the prospect of being alone, I then proceeded to fail my own morale check, and joined him in the screaming and the fleeing, several steps behind.  We made it back to the dinky old compound [our dangerous trek was all of fifty feet, perhaps, not even enough to get us to the fence of the place] and then realized what a pair of idiots we were before heading back into the cafeteria for juice boxes.)

Classes are wrapping up and work is starting to ramp up as finals and papers pile up, so it is fun times in my world right now.

The whole prospects of the future thing hit me pretty hard about a month ago, which was the reason for my sudden and (I would think) unwelcome silence.  For a while, it was difficult for me to find an internship, and it’s been difficult for me to find a job.  And then one day I realized where I found my peace and then all a sudden it was like a wash of tranquility came upon me.  I’m uncertain about the future, yes, but I don’t fear it anymore – which is decidedly good.  I verily hate fear, and find it a destestable characteristic.  (Strangely, my own fear-reaction to the game Bioshock has lessened the more at peace I am with my life.  Fear compounds upon fear, see?  I am glad to once again return to my generally cool state.)

Still, I have a ton and a half to study and very little time for fun (which is somewhat at odds with how much fun I’ve been having, but this weekend I have completely locked down to study/writing.)  I got some sweet surround sound speakers for my the Aberrant-002.

Personal aside: I was sitting in the commons today and some school group or other started passing out Valentine’s Day goodies bags, filled with candies and condoms.  (Yes, Marcy, I do smell sex and candy here.  But no devious stares, however, unless you count mine…  Wow, nice tangent.)  I was watching this group – among which was Legs – and a torrent of bad pick up lines and innuendo came upon me, for which I could only giggle madly at myself and declare, in a solemn voice, that I may well be too immature for law school.