Deep Space Network Comm Line

Creativity in Gaming

John Brengman — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 21:28:00 GMT

^.^

( This entry was originally started back in 2009 or so, but rather than scrap it, I figure the entire topic of creativity in gaming is good to talk about ... )

Before I get into the subject of tonight's blog entry, I gotta lead into it with what's been up in local gaming over the past couple months. My own d20 Modern campaign died a quick death, because it really wasn't getting too popular, and when a GM gets the feeling that their game is not popular, their own interest in the game tends to drop off...

Unfortunately, my friend Rhett was also working on game that died off at about the same time. This happened because of the opposite reason that my game died...it became a victim of its own popularity, as Rhett found himself burning out with all of the work of running a campaign.

With the failure of two games, the group decided to experiment a bit. Those of us who wanted to GM would come up with a campaign idea and run a demo of their idea. Jason was chosen to go first, then me, then Alicia, and finally, Adrian.

Jason's demo was a AD&D campaign that was going to mix in Rhett's Final Fantasy campaign with the original AD%D world that our group started with a few months ago. I found myself unimpressed because it didn't seem that much effort was made to put meat on the adventure. I know we're talking about demos, but if you're doing such auditions, you need to give a FULL presentation of what your campaign is, and what you can do as a GM.

My demo was of Nexus, a long-running campaign set in the Nexus sci-fi universe. It's also featured on the DSN webpage. In my demo, the character were a group assigned to a Nexus ship that responds to a distress signal from a planet. When they get to the planet, they discover a Markann survey mission that is investigating the planet. The players chase the Markann away, and they attack the enemy ship as it is attempting to escape, and the Markann ship destroys itself rather than be captured. While I thought that the episode (entitled "Reload", and using the Rob Zombie song of the same name) was generally good, and presented more story, the downside was that the Champions system was not fully presented, and two
players did not have a lot to do during the ship battle.

The third demo never happened. Rhett ended up creating another campaign, and I brought in a character based off the cartoon character Invader Zim. He was terribly annoying, and WAS SUPPOSED TO BE TERRIBLY ANNOYING ... while actually being competant. This was successful, as Zim is to this day, dreaded by the local gamers ... even those who never played games with him.

Rhett now has a gaming store, located at 214 E. Ivinson, in Laramie WY. The store is called Chrome LLC, and deals mainly in Magic the Gathering cards, Magic tournaments, Warhammer miniatures, and RPG sessions. Anything not in the store can be obtained by special order.

The reason I mention the store is that it marked a turning point in gaming creativity. We've been playing a number of AD&D campaigns down at the shop since it opened, and the campaigns have been of varying quality, but generally good. There was a short-lived campaign shortly after the store opened, and the first (and so far only appearance of Zim at the store) was capped off when he charged into a fight with several zombies, and in a heroic move, decapitated one of them! Of course, the five zombies next to the now headless one turned and attacked Zim, who was a *wizard* who happened to be specialized in longswords.

The next AD&D group has continued since the breakup of the first group, and with a few difficulties and player changes, has continued to this day. The DM is incredible, with a very nice sense of humor and improvisation that brings the campaign to life. Perhaps the biggest problem right now is that we are running elite characters tasked with taking on the gods. Perhaps the most common question in this situation would be, what do we do to top this?

Rhett has also stepped back most recently with a new AD&D campaign. I have a wizard named Meriele, and she was able to hit pretty much everything on the battlefield from where she was standing. The campaign started off with the characters being brought into a small town to combat a zombie/undead problem. It was a fairly simple starting plot, just basically to get the players and characters to know what this group of characters can do.

I am expecting more of course, as things progress. I have done nothing on Meriele's background or past. I figure that this should be a cooperative thing between the players and the DM. What I enjoy is a campaign that steps outside the box, so to speak. How about getting involved in local politics? My character is an Eladrin, which generally means that she was born from nobility. A campaing with political elements may lean toward giving her something to do. Of course, the other players and their characters need some love as well. Perhaps the biggest problem with prior AD&D campaigns held at the store was that one or two characters got most of the play time, in part due to what the characters would do: a bard who insists on playing out the telling of each and every epic tale that they use in a situation simply takes time away from everyone else. At some point, the DM needed to step in and stop the filibuster of the game.

DM and player creativity is a necessary element to have a good campaign. Rhett and Brock are both capable DMs, and I have been working on a new campaign of my own. We'll just see where things go.

John B.

Review: Struggle For Power 1937

John Brengman — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 17:33:00 GMT

^.^

Before I get into my subject matter for today, I must note that I have been off for about 195 days,
a HUGE amount of time in the podcast world. In large part, this has been because of two opposite
things ... too little has been happening in the local game world, and too much has been happening
in my local game world. This was because while my gaming group has been playing, the campaigns
have been rather short, and short campaigns tend to not have much to blog about...

So ... silence from the blog...

However, while mot much is going on in my own gaming universe, there are other games out there
that are well worth your while.

If you have ever thought about running your own country, consider looking around the Internet for political
or economic games, and get involved. Games such as Struggle For Power 1937 allow you to take the role
of a national leader. You control almost all aspects of your nation's policymaking. You control the foreign
policy and military, you make economic decisions, you control some parts of production and manufacture,
and you deal diplomatically with other nations. The GM moderates the game and comes up with the
responses and consequences of your actions, and then you react to those...

While the game is not flashy or video-involved, as popular games as World of Warcraft or such, the main
draw of SFP1937 and other diplomacy games is that you make decisions, and then you can see the results
of your decisions. Most of the time, this comes in the form of the newsflash, which comes out once per game
turn, with urgent bulletins sent to the entire group when necessary.

SFP1937 actually has an edge over other diplomacy games such as Diplomacy, and strategy games such as
RIsk in that in the case of Diplomacy, there is a broader focus. You can play an activist regional power, or you
can be quite isolationist in your outlook, whereas in Diplomacy, you have to focus on taking more territory,
and everything in the game is geared toward that. Risk has an even bigger focus on the taking of territory.

Currently in the game, the year is 1942, and Nazi Germany is a major threat to its neighbors in Europe. However,
where in real history, the world was deep into World War 2, and German hopes of domination were lost, in
SFP1937, that has yet to be determined, with a wily German government playing off one Western nation
against another. At the same time, other interests sometimes take center stage, such as a war on the Iberian
Peninsula, a war between Argentina and Brazil, the war between the Soviet Union and China (both communist
and non-communist), and other questions, such as the continuing empires of Great Britain and France, and the
rise of nations such as Japan, Greater Syria, and Greater Egypt, among others.

To join the game, or to simply look and see how the game is run, visit:

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/StruggleForPower1937/

---
John B.
Blogger Guy

DSN Blog (8/21/2008) The BLAH Blogcast

John Brengman — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 03:49:00 GMT

^.^

This is the sort of blogcast that will happen when no other really big topic jumps out, grabs me by the throat, and growls into my ear: "WRITE ABOUT ME..."

Basically, there are only a few small issues to write about, and here they are:

1: DEATH OF WARLORDS

Ok, AEG is probably about the worst game company ever. They used to produce the Warlords CCG
and a couple other things, but they sold Warlords to some other company...which hasn't helped the
already bad situation with the game! See, BOTH companies had really sucky service, and really sucky
store support, and really sucky prize support, and you know what happens when you have a combination
of all three of these? You have a good game, with no players...which really does suck, because Warlords
was a good game. It had a solid base of good cards and tactics that could be used no matter whether
you were a novice or a pro, you didn't need a huge collection to play the game, the rules didn't change much
with each new set, and the entire series of playable cards didn't change every few months.

As it turns out there is a new tournament organizer (TO) in our area, and lo and behold, some of our former
group is playing in this nwe group. I hope they have better luck with this new company than we've had so
far, although from first reports...nope...

2: CHANGING D20 GAMES

Well, our GM decided to call it quits for a bit, and he wrapped up our AD&D campaign in a blaze of god-fighting glory as Pelor took on the Dragon Lord, with our characters in the middle trying to fight it out. Even though we had a group of 10-12th level characters who should have been wiped out within seconds, with the help of Pelor, we survived and triumphed...although I think Pelor went through a bit of an alignment change as a result of this battle. I mean, when Pelor's basically boiling down the souls of his loyal followers (us) to power god-level attacks, that's saying something. An evil god would be like: "Who cares, you live for me, you die for me." Pelor might have second thoughts after using his followers as god gasoline, but I sometimes question the Lawful-Good alignment anyway...I mean, what good is being a paladin if you get killed? If you can do X amount of good deeds in five years, could you not do that much more in ten years if you avoid the fight to the death with the ancient red dragon?

But I digress...

So I have started a d20 Modern campaign where the characters are all recruited by this secret intelligence organization that's working to keep what is left of society together in the post-nuke, post-oil crash world of 2100. Time will tell whether this works out...I've been away from the GM's chair for a bit, but I think it will work really nice.

More later...

John B.

DSN Blog (5/27/2008) If I Never See Another Stone Statue Again...

John Brengman — Wed, 28 May 2008 04:44:00 GMT

^.^

Greetings and welcome once again to my blog, which will soon be expanding out into the
world of podcasts...hopefully soon!

In the meantime, I am stepping back a bit, out from the world of MMORPGS and mega tournaments
at our local gaming store, and this week, I will be talking instead about an AD&D campaign that my
friend started.

The campaign is called "The Last Dragonlord", and currently, I play a cleric, my room-mate plays
a ranger, the GM has a dwarf in the game, and his fiance has a wizard.

We start off as prisoners, because apparently we crossed the border into dwarven territory without proper papers or something, perhaps making us the first illegal aliens in any AD&D campaign. Anyway, we are all
hauled into this town, where some fight breaks out with the guards, and as the party escapes, I stand proudly in the back of the open prison wagon and proclaim that we were released by the glory of Pelor and proceed to teach the heathen dwarves the error of their ways...

I wish.

What really happened was that I was the last to attempt to escape from the wagon, and instead of jumping to safety, I failed my REF check, fell off the wagon, hit my head on the metal wheel or something, and was knocked out *snaps fingers* just like that! SO much for a heroic entrance.

Despite all of this, we managed to fight our way out of the mob scene that had developed around us, with me only needing to save someone from death once. However, when I missed the next game session, I noticed that the number of near-deaths skyrocketed. I was quite surprised. Anyways, when this evening's session got going, tonight's mission was to clean out another section of the city. Apparently the founders of the city had a death wish, because they built the entire place on top of a gigantic cemetary, so now a lot fo things are coming back. As if that were not enough, there are these stone statues that act as general guardians of the city...so if you do something dumb, the statues will wake up and attack. Needless to say, waking the damn things up by attacking them will get them to retaliate, and stealing valuables from the city will arouse their anger as well.

Our party managed to do all of these things, and in fact, the best roleplaying of the night came when the wizard had broken into the city's vaults and stolen a nice big black pearl...and now didn't want to give it up even though several statues were attacking. The cleric kept telling the wizard that she needed to drop the pearl and flee, and that she could not enjoy "her shinies" if she was dead, but the wizard steadfastly refused. It wasn't until the dwarf made it very clear that she would probably die real soon if she didn't leave the pearl that the wizard droped the thing, and we were allowed to leave.

I commented that the wizard needs to become a dual-class and add rogue.

Next time, I'll talk about the WOW CCG.

John B.

DSN Blog (5/19/2008) Warlords, and the Tournament of DOOM

John Brengman — Tue, 20 May 2008 00:57:00 GMT

^.^

This week, I will be addressing two topics, the first is the topic of the
Warlords CCG tournament that has gotten started at our friendly local
gaming store, and the second will be the infestation of ghostly gamers
from the past that has infested both my personal life, and this blog in
recent days.

First however, the Warlords stuff...

AEG apparently has decided to offload its attempt to make a CCG as
popular as Magic the Gathering...something that is so out in the realm
of things that won't happen that I can't come up with a pithy way to
describe it...it just ain't happening.

However, because AEG is going bye-bye, and because our group has signed
up in the forums of the new company who will be taking over sometime soon,
we should now have somewhat ergular prize support, and other neato things,
such as the fact that the person who runs our games each Sunday is now, or
will soon be considered to be OFFICIAL!

YAY!

Now, perhaps in celebration of this, Rhett has put together a "campaign" of
tournaments, where each player earns points for their performance in
varying tournaments. Last week's tournament was a "mutant" multiplayer
one, where each deck played with an Overlord and a Warlord in the third
rank, three characters in the second rank, and four in the front rank. Alicia
came with Qor-Teth, Rhett came with the Seigemaster, Adrian came with
Xaxxon, and I used Deima.

The Outcome was as follows: both Rhett and Alicia spent the first half of the
game reducing Adrian and I to dirt, so to speak, although I took the
opportunity to kill Rhett's Warlord (Taoth) the first chance I got. It turned out
that I ended up being the last person to have both the Warlord and the Overlord
in play, but that turned out to be little help.

As it tends to happen, if you let a deck build up, it tends to turn and wipe the
floor with you. This was the case as Rhett eliminated Adrian, who then was
himself eliminated by Alicia, who ended up winning the tournament, with me
finishing in second. The big prize was a chess set that Rhett made from a
collection of miniatures. I passed on it because I was more interested in a
few of the cards that were being given for prize support, and Alicia didn't want
it, so Adrian now has a new chess set.

Next week is an Emperor Tournament, and I should have standings information
for ya by then, as well as some other news from around the gaming scene here
in SE Wyoming.

---

GHOSTS EVERYWHERE!

You can see some evidence of this blog being haunted if you check out the
comments, which got posted to my email address. For those not familiar with all
of the inside info revealed in that comment, here it is...

When I was back in Pennsylvania, so many moons ago, a relative of mine and some
of my friends combined together to form this really cool gaming group that played
everything from Rolemaster to Marvel Superheroes, Gurps, AD&D, and other things.
We made trades of game materials that were worth hundreds of dollars in exchange
for other stuff that was worth $20, we had weekenders at a friend's aunt's house
out in the country where some of the best gaming EVER happened, and we had
drunken parties where we watched Monty Python and I pretended to be the Majestic
Moose.

SO, now I have a response to DSN's first podcast, and I have a pertty good idea who
it's from, because for the most part, my cool relatives and my cool gamer friends were
the SAME PEOPLE, or part of the same group. Just check out the listing of Nexus
episodes...the first four seasons of Nexus were played with this group in Pennsylvania.

Now, as to the FUTURE JOHN, and the SHIELD in the PS, that was something that for
some reason, just ticked the Hell out of me, perhaps because I had other people
picking on me at school and such and didn't want to deal with it while hanging out with
the friends. However, in THIS case, it telegraphs to me that someone from the old
group has found me. The reference to Episode #28 also harkens back to a time when the
GM allowed the players to kinda lose it, and they kinda went nuts, and after they were
done, the entire campaign looked like Hello Kitty exploded all over it...

But whoever you are out there, in your haste to be really brilliant and show me that you
know me, you left no real means for me to get a hold of you!

So, in the meantime, I am going to hope that our ghosts out there will read this, and
reply again...this time with a phone number, or an email address...or both!

BTW, if you play World of Warcraft, I play on the Deathwing server...just contact
Ferborg, Arisa, Tiine, or Gishanti.

Or you can email me at lunahq7@gmail.com

---

Anyways, until next time, which I will try to make a bit sooner than once a month,

FOR THE HORDE!

John B.

DSN Blog (4/28/2008) World of Warcraft

John Brengman — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:28:00 GMT

^.^

Good afternoon, all, and WELCOME to another post on the Deep Space Network blog.

Today, I'm going to dive into some commentary on what has been described as the "crack cocaine"
of online gaming, Blizzard's powerhouse MMORPG, "World of Warcraft".

World of Warcraft, or WoW for short, is now up to patch 2.4.1. There is a rumor that Patch 2.4
(and the family of 2.4.X) will be the last major series of patches before the release of the next
expansion, "The Wrath of the Lich King", which we expect to be out by anywhere from August
of this year to March or so of next year...but it will probably be released closer to the August
date because there's another rumor that Blizzard has already started Alpha testing on the
expansion. A friend of mine who works in the computer field says that an Alpha test means that
Blizzard is shooting more for the 2009 release date, because you first do the Alpha test, work
out the bugs from that, then do the Beta test, work out those bugs, and THEN you are ready
for the release.

In any event, I would recommend listening to The Instance podcast, which can be found at
http://www.myextralife.com/wow/ Some of my info for the above material came from Episode
#101 or #102 of this really cool podcast.

In my own adventures in the world of WoW, I have gotten to Lvl 58 with Ferborg, my troll rogue,
and he has taken the leap, ditched his old-world quests, and will now almost permanently reside
in the Outlands. The problem with this of course is that everything larger than a gnat can pertty
much beat the crap out of him! This is what happens every time a new area opens up for a
character. They go into this NEW place, and look at all the pretty NEW stuff, and check out the
really cool NEW towns and such...that is if they can do all of this in between getting ganked by
all the knotheads on the other side of the faction war, or getting turned into boar food when you
accidently stray a bit too close to one of those things. In the meantime, the FEL REAVER is walking
around like "Hey, I'm the Fel Reaver..." I'm sure I'll love The Outlands once I get a level or so...it's
just getting through that annoying first few quests that will be hard.

---

In future posts, I plan on updating you with everything that is going on at Slackerz, our local
game shop. I might even do an interview with the shop owner and run a podcast of it here.

I realize this blog entry is a bit short, but I promise I'll make up for it in the near future.

John B.

DSN Blog (12/28/2007)

John Brengman — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 01:11:00 GMT

^.^

Before getting into specific games and gaming systems, I'd like to give a shout-out to
my local friendly gaming store. The vital stats follow:

SLACKERZ
211 South 1st Street
Laramie WY 82070
(307)745-7525

http://www.geocities.com/slackerzge/index.html

Slackerz is an excellent place to get games and game supplies for a number of games,
such as Warhammer, both Fantasy and 40K, War Machine, Magic the Gathering,
Warlords, as well as a variety of roleplaying games.

Slackerz also is a great place to play other sorts of games. Visitors will often come
into the store and find a game of Settlers of Catan, or Munchkin, Puerto Rico, and
even Dune.

Slackerz also has a sizeable rack of comic books, with new issues being brought in
each week, with some leeway given for weather.

The store is a great place to hang out, to play games of various kinds, and meet new
people. The environment is welcoming, and the people who work there are friendly.

So, if you are in the neighborhood, feel free to stop in and visit.

---

That's it for now, but a new blog entry will be posted soon.

John B.
Blogger Guy

Welcome to the DSN Blog

John Brengman — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 05:49:00 GMT

^.^

Welcome to the first ever DSN Blog! While I have written other blogs, and
while I have written FOR other blogs, this is the first that combines my
love of writing, and my love of various games.

So, here is what my plan for this space is... I will talk about a variety of
subjects each week. Now, I have the ability to include podcasts with this
blog, so no doubt, I will be venturing into that area of web content soon.

The subject of both my blog and podcasts will be almost anything in the
gaming world. Anything from World of Warcraft, and stuff within that game,
AD&D and information and other stuff from within that game, board games
such as Dune, Settlers of Catan, other card games such as Munchkin, and
pretty much anything I find interesting.

At the same time, I can not ignore the fact that I have a game in development,
and that can be discussed as well. I would love to see it launched.

For the moment, I will wrap it up here. I will work on what my first real

entry will be about. If you have ideas on what the first few articles should

be about, feel free to either respond to this article, or email me at:

lunahq7@gmail.com

John B.

Blogger Guy