Weekly Book Recommendations (May 31)

Bad Trips: a monstrous RPG road trip across America by Finn Gallagher: this was something I picked up during the big Kickstarter event in February. I've never, ever, been a fan of FATE (every exposure I've had since it first came out has been negative) so Monster of the Week was never on my radar, — EDIT: friend of the Blog Joshua Kronengold pointed out that MotW is a Powered by the Apocalypse game and not FATE so maybe I will pick it up — but I love my some cryptozoology RPG ever since I ran a one shot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer set in early 1900's Yale with a "raised by wolves" boy as one of the heroes fighting a cryptid, so I figured I could repurpose this to some other system. Gallagher has produced something truly fun here, and if like me you're not a FATE fan it'll be trivial to convert to a GUMSHOE or d6 system or any other game. The concept here is 12 "episodes" of monster hunting across the US, and each episode is clear, clean, thematically distinct, and immediately feels playable. None have a ton of detail, but that's a plus for me since it makes it easy to work out the specifics. Highly recommended. 

V&V and Gamma Word Again!

I've had the first session of my Gamma World game for the kids at the library (I am using 4E for now, which might drive me insane given how overdesigned the mechanics are, being a modified version of 2E AD&D where they have set on ascending armor class but are still using the term To Hit AC instead of Attack Bonus, so I have to explain to the kids what THAC means when there's no THAC0...) and in digging through my various Gamma World iteration notes I came across this gem when I was analyzing 1E/2E and how I would modify the Attack Chart

I think this does a pretty good job of clarifying how the various Armor Classes would be defined as Defense Types, the weapons as Attack Types, and some clear definitions of how it works. I'm especially happy with some of the notes, like the width of personal force fields, that expands the implicit world building that these sorts of charts do. You walk a way with a good idea of the technology and its quirks. 

I'm seriously tempted to institute this inside the otherwise GW 4E, or just convert to GW 2E entirely, just to be able to use this chart. Of course if I'm going to do that I might as well just build a new, better aligned to me system from scratch. 

Emirikol First Blood and other Fencing Changes for 3E

One thing we ran into during the first official set of duels in the Emirikol game was that duels to first blood in D&D - if you count any loss of HP as first blood - are based way too much on initiative. We saw this in the first dual the PCs had where Bard 2 with improved initiative beat Ftr 2/Ari 2 because he rolled higher on initiative and a modest attack roll for 1 pt of damage. But technically damage! Or is it?

This is where the highly abstracted nature of D&D combat comes into play, and the perpetual question of “what is a hit point?”. To my mind Hit Points are all the characters combat skill in avoiding injury. They’re the dodging and parrying and leaping away injury. But since it is applied AFTER armor class in the flowchart of action, and that Armor Class is modified by dexterity, it can be hard for people to wrap their brains around that. And there were not yet in system game mechanics for “Bloodied” as there would be in 4E and 13th Age that gave a clear mechanical point for me to say “this is first blood.” 

I could have just stated something but I instead put in front of my players that we use the flexible concept of hit points to instead work with fractions of the character HP. 

• First Blood is actually 'drawn' when the character has taken over 1/3rd (round up) of his HP total. Since Cyble has 10 HP she actually gets cut or bloodied once she's taken more than 4 points of damage. Deitrich, with 17 HP isn't actually cut until he's taken more than 6. This might not mean much now, where a single hit with a sword is enough to take a 12 HP character past their 4 point first blood, but it would have extended Hiram's fight with his 18 HP opponent past that first rapier touch.

• Second Blood, or the desire to fight "until one is well blooded, disabled, or disarmed" is generally set at taking more than 2/3rds of your HP (round up). Cybele is well blooded once she's taken more than 7 HP of damage, Deitrich can hold out until he's at more than 12 points taken. This is the level of fighting Melas and his adversary were engaged in, which means his critical hit was needed to push the fellow up over the 2/3rd HP mark. 

• Fighting to the death is often considered 'concluded' once one of the opponents is at 0 HP. Of course, the terms of the duel can stipulate that no healers be present at the match but can be called later, which gives you a pretty narrow window between 0 HP and being dead. Unless it is specifically stated in the terms of the duel that one of the duelists will not leave the field alive it is ungentlemanly to strike an opponent who's already down (and such a duel is technically illegal anyway). 

This got a surprising to me amount of pushback. 

One of my concerns for wanting to manage it this was to protect the Rogue character class in duel, since their sneak attack if they have initiative in the first round ability was a big source of their damage potential, so I wanted to keep the rules for being flat footed before your first action. Tom playing the Rogue, said he was comfortable dropping flat footed for duels only, due to the formalized ritual of the event. Fair enough. 

Dave (as well as other people on Livejournal) were pushing for the 1 HP equals blood rules. Tom and Jim both pointed out that sticking with as written left Improved Initiative as the critical dueling Feat, followed by anything that was going to boost AC. 

Of four duels only Melas' got that effect, and that was because having seen the others I had his opponent make bad tactical decisions (using all his Expertise + fighting defensively) to boost his AC and reduce his chance to hit. As a result Melas scouted out holes in his enemies armor, leaped from ground to bench, watched his foe do the same, parried and dodged, saw his foe jump to a nearby table and ultimately landed a telling blow. That's what I want to see - if I hadn't done that his opponent's initial attack would have been at +5 to hit rather than -2, and he would have scored first blood right after the initiative roll. If we had made first blood equal to more than 1/3rd Melas HP that initial attack probably wouldn't have done enough to count, and the duel could have continued.

Ultimately the rules for any changes other than abstraction of hit points would have had too many long spillover effects across combat, and I settled on those. But  we also never had any more one on one duels to first blood so it didn’t matter. This is how game mechanics change and are never used….

Weekly Book Recommendations (May 24)

The Boys on the Bus by Timothy Crouse: This memoir of life on the campaign trail for the 1972 election is both highly informative of how the political process is constantly mutating but remarkably stable in some ways, a cautionary tale of the nature of the press and politics today that SHOULD NOT still be as relevant as it is, and a great way to fill in gaps of your awareness of the Watergate affair. Also this is my first real dive into Spiro Agnew and that he was bounced from politics for COMPLETELY DIFFERENT corruption than Richard Nixon is just the chefs kiss of the dumpster fire of that time period. 

The Plastic Man Archives Volume 1 by Jack Cole: This is rough in the way that a lot of early 1940's comics are rough - the wartime jingoism at points, the casual racism of the era, etc. - but I still come down on recommending it just because Cole's panel compositions are just amazing, his creativity with the character is off the charts for the time period, and many of the plots are just batshit crazy. Like, if I tried to explain them to you, you would not believe me. 

Weekly Cooking Report May 23: Pasta with Garlic and Oil

OK team, I've been holding off on the super-simplicity of "just make pasta" but this week we're dipping into a non-traditional pasta sauce to surprise and amaze your family. 

Yes when I made it I had chicken cutlets and chopped veggies on the side; YMMV

Shopping for this couldn't be easier - a pound of spaghetti, some (6 tbs.) extra virgin olive oil, 1/4 cup minced garlic (the recipe has a count of 30 small, 20 medium, 10 large, or 5 extra large cloves but just use the jar of minced you should already have), some red pepper flakes (1/4 tsp. to 3/4 tsp. to taste), 3 tbs. chopped fresh parsley, and 2 tsp. juice from a lemon. Most of this you probably already have in the house. 

Step 1 is put a heatproof bowl in the oven on a lower rack and set the oven to warm/200F. The make the pasta per the box instructions, adding 1.5 tsp of table salt (don't use the kosher for this, you get more salt from table salt because it's smaller crystals). Save 1/3 cup of the cooking water, and then drain the pasta.

While the water is heating, combined 3 tbs. (half of your total) with 3 tbs. of garlic (there will be 1 tbs. left), 1/2 teaspoon of table salt in a skillet (nonstick 10" if that matters to you) and cook over low heat for 10-12 minutes, or until the garlic foams, turns straw colored, and gets sticky. It's nice when the food has several ways to tell you its done! be careful with the heat - low heat is needed because minced garlic can burn quick. Take it off the heat and add the rest of the raw garlic, the red pepper flakes, the parsley, lemon juice, an 2 tbs of the cooking water. Stir it to keep it from clumping.

Once you drain the pasta, set it in the warmed serving bowl, add the remaining oilve oil and the rest of the reserved cooking water, tossing it around to keep the pasta loose and oiled up. Add the garlic mixture, salt to taste (they recommend 3/4 tsp of table salt), and toss well to combine. serve immediately to a grateful family. If you have parmesan cheese having some of that grated for people to add would be a nice add.