So in this post, I wanted to highlight a few places where I have been making some comments. Ok, so it is writing week, and I have been spending all week writing my Global Frequency session, which is turning out to be quite good…and have not written an article for mid-week. But have been around a few blogs and have made a few comments…so I am liking them here so that you can see what I have been saying, not because I have this need for you to listen to what I say all the time (not all the time), but rather, they are some good discussions..

Chatty’s Debates: Black Box vs Process-Response design

My good friend, and Canadian twin, Philippe, the Chatty DM, has posted an argument from one of the EN Worlders, or as I like to call them EN Ranters. This one has to do with the black box vs. Process-response models for D&D 4e vs. 3e, respectively. Personally I find the EN Ranters argument flawed because no one has A COPY OF A FOURTH EDITION PLAYERS HANDBOOK! Check out my comment to the piece.

Avoiding Gilligan’s Island Syndrome

This is a great question on the Treasure Tables boards. Personally, I love the TT Forums, it is some of the best GM talk you will find, and the most reasonable (Glares at EN World). The question is about how to set up a campaign that focuses around an event, that when it occurs could lead to the campaign, and how to avoid it feeling like Gilligan’s Island. This is right up my alley, as my Iron Heroes game is centered on this same idea. I give some comments on how to deal with this, and compare this to Star Wars.

Another week…another cancled game. This time it was Spenser with a chest cold, that took down Sargon’s Cyberpunk game. It was not a big surprise, as Spenser was kind enough to give us warning as early as Wednesday of last week.

So with no game to play, Sargon and I hung out and chatted outside, while my Son ran around and played in the back yard. As we talked we both came to understand that we had been seeing some of the same trends in our gaming group, an erosion of our Social Contract. We had a lot of cancled games, though many of them were unavoidable real-life problems, we have had a decrease in intensity at the table, and we are having some issues on email ettiquette, and the role of the GM in organizing their game.

We came to the conclusion that the best thing to do, was to have all the players, from our three overlapping (by player) games come in and talk about the issues that have been cropping up, and what do we want to do about them going forward. So this morning I sent out a message to our group inviting everyone over next weekend to discuss the above issues as well as any issues they may have.

In the evening, after my Son was in bed, Sargon indulged me in a little rules construction, and helped me work on my current pet project: an RPG version of the Global Frequency comic book. We both agreed that the Conspiracy X 1.0 rules would be perfect for the core of the game. We then came up with a set of rules for invoking the Global Frequency to assist with figuring out problems, pulling strings, and coming up with equipment. In about two hours and five different colored dry-erase markers, the Global Frequency rules are scratched onto the dry erase board in my game room.

Tomorrow, Sargon, Spenser and I will get together. The two of them will start to create some Global Frequency characters, and I will start to type the rules into our game wiki. Next Tuesday, The Global Frequency will go live, and we will start testing our new rules.

That is about it on the gaming front. Wish my luck this weekend, at the gamer meeting, and hopefully this will inject some energy into our group and get our momentum going again.

So I am suppose to be writing my Iron Heroes session, for this weekend, and I was skimming my RSS feeds, and saw my fellow GM-Fu Master, and blogger Zach has posted an article about White Wolf’s offer to Graduate to Exalted. Graduated? I think I just threw up in my mouth a bit.

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With the sneak peeks at D&D 4e, coming out on different web sites, I have been hearing a phrase coming up, that has been annoying me. On more than one post and discussion thread, I have heard people talking about how the mechanics for 4e is killing the ability for players to properly role play; that 4e is so crunchy that it is now all roll and not role.

Pure rubbish. Want to know why? Keep reading.

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Thirteen (by Richard K. Morgan)–My hiatus from gaming, these past 4 weeks, as resulted in another book on my 2008 Reading List completed. Earlier this week I finished the latest book from Richard K. Morgan, Thirteen.

If you are not familiar with Morgan, you should put his name in Amazon right now and order all his books right now. A co-worker of mine got me started on Morgan, with Altered Carbon (the first of the Kovacs trilogy) , which I would say is in my top 5 books. If you enjoy good sci-fi, in a post-cyberpunk setting, you will enjoy Morgan. Enough fanboy raving, and lets get to the review…

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A few weeks ago, I posted my Reading List for 2008. I have been reading since Christmas and have made some progress on my reading list. So as a way to get back on the writing wagon, I thought I would update you on how my reading list is coming along. So here are the books that I have read so far….

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