20 for 10

So, I'm not usually inclined to shill for a sale, but this one is worth noting. RPGNow is having their 20 for $10 in 2010 sale for the next few days, where they're selling an array of genuinely fantastic PDFs of rpgs for $10 each. There are some first class winners on this list. If you're uncertain about this whole PDF thing, this is a great opportunity to pick up a really good game at a really good price and see if it might work for you. I look at this list and break it into three categories.

While I'm familiar with or curious about a fair number of these, I try to be clear where my ignorance lies. Extra opinions on things that are worth getting (or avoiding) are entirely welcome.


Stuff I Have
Song of Ice & Fire RPG: I have this in hardcover and I'm still tempted to get the PDF for two reasons, one good and one not so good. The good reason is that the noble house creation rules in this game are awesome, maybe even better than Birthright. It's good enough that it can be ported out of the setting if need be, but then the setting is so magnificent, would I want to? The less good reason is that the hardcover was extensively errata'd, and the PDF is (i presume, since GR is good about such things) updated, so you can skip the hassle.

Artesia: The worst thing I can say about this in PDF is that the book is even more lovely. Still, the book is also quite large and dense (and also quite good - it's numerous Ennie nominations were no fluke) and probably crosses that invisible threshold where havign a PDF to reference really improves things. For me, the big takeaway from this game (besides the amazing art) was a really fantastic tarot-influenced system for character elements.

Battlestar Galactica: This one is worth noting as it's a very good deal. MWP books tend to have very high production values and, in turn, pretty high price tags. At $10 bucks, this is a good way to satisfy your curiosity, and the Cortex system is light enough that the book is mostly setting. That said, it's a tough sell: BSG is so much its own story that it's really hard to come up with a meaningful story of your own within its context, and the RPG has to wrestle with that. There's not quite enough information about the worlds of BSG for a pre-cylon game, but there's too much for a post-cylon game, if that makes any sense. The level of data is tuned more towards what you'd need if you were going to do your own version of the series.

Demon Hunters: A somewhat tongue-in-cheek modern day monster hunting game, it really gets more points than anything else for both being quite funny and also quite playable.

Fading Suns: Holy crap, Fading Suns! I love Fading Suns! Er..ahem, I mean, that's an excellent game to see on the list. It's mashup of Dune and Warhammer 40k makes for a fantastic sci-fi-with-dark-but-not-Chthulu-overtones that's possibly my favorite Sci-fi RPG ever. The mechanics are interesting, and occasionally inspired (the paired stats are brilliant) but it's really all about the setting.

Geist: Totally worth it. The NWoD books just keep getting better, and Geist (the kind-of new Wraith) is mechanically clever (best powers system I've seen since the original idea for Mage/Ars) and with a very playable setting that steps away from a lot of familiar tropes while embracing others in ways you might not expect.

Grimm: Confession - I bought this and still haven't done more than skim it. I bought it purely on the strength of the REALLY, REALLY fantastic D20 minigame of the same name that this is based on. From flipping through, it has a fudge-like dice system, and it has much of the same dark fairy-tale wonder that I bought it for. I'll say its worth it, just based on the amount I've seen, but take that with a suitable grain of salt.

Hero 6th Bundle: The PDF is totally worth it if only to avoid back strain. 6th is HUGE and, well, it's Hero. If you don't know whatthat means, then $10 is a good price to find out. If you do, then you already know if this is worth it or not. Edit: Fred set me straight; This isn't the core (mankilling) books, but rather the basic and advanced books. On one hand, that's a shame because it' snto so huge, but on the other it may make it more practical for folks looking to dip their toes into Hero. The basic book is the streamlined core rules, and the advanced book is a collection of options that didn't make it into the core. It's also handy for Hero evangelists: the basic book is MUCH less daunting to a new player than the core rules.

Mouseguard: This is profoundly worth it. Not only is it a fantastic game, but because of its format (the game is square) the PDF is very screen readable.

Mutant & Masterminds, 2nd: This is pretty much the modern standard for supers (HERO sort of having become more its own thing) and even though I own it in hardcover, it's tempting to get a PDF just for reference.

Starblazers Adventures: Fate in space, but not just any space: Crazy, wahoo british comics space. Like Hero, this is a worthwhile PDf investment because the book is just so damn big.


Stuff I Want
Deadlands Reloaded: Ok, it's Deadlands, and that's kind of a selling point or not, simple as that. My brother's a big fan, but I've never tried it before. Since this is the Savage Worlds version, I'm willing to make the plunge, if only because I'm also curious about the Savage Worlds part of it.

Dragon Warriors: I never played the original, but I did read a lot of the very enthusiastic gushing when this came out. I guess it's new-old-school or something? Honestly, I'm nto totally cure, but it inspires enough passion that I'm curious.

Legend of the 5 Rings, 3rd ed: So, there's some loyalty here. I've always liked L5R, but I walked away after picking up Second edition and feeling like I got something dirty on my hands. That's left me hesitant to pick up 3rd because on one hand, the game really did need revising, but on the other, if it was more revisions along the line of 2nd, then that would be worse than nothing. But the books were pretty, very very pretty, and at this price point I think I'll finally take the risk.

Mutant City Blues: Superheroic police procedural using gumshoe? Hard to say no.

Pirates of the Spanish Main: Pirates in Savage Worlds. I really have no further explanations except to say those are two great tastes that taste great together.


Curious
Dark Conspiracy: Oh, man, there's a blast from the past. I remember the adds for this when it came out. For some reason I even remember reading an adventure for it. Modern day conspiracy and magic in the shadows. Classic stuff, though I'm not sure what it offers beyond nostalgia at this point.

Etherscope: I've seen this game around from time to time, and it looks full of steampunkey goodness, but I've never had a reason to quite make the leap to pick it up. I still don't, but at this price point I'm curious.

Heavy Gear: Man, I have always been curious about heavy gear. It promises fun, fast mech combat, and the brains behind it have demonstrated an ability to come up with really neat, interesting ideas, but It's never been quite enough to grab me.

Iron Kingdom's Character's Guide: I'm torn on this. I really DESPISED the Witchfire Trilogy, the d20 adventures that introduced this setting, but the art and setting information was all pretty neat and darkly steampunky + D&D. Friends have spoken well of it, but that initial hatred was pretty strong. Hmm.

Judge Dredd: So, it's Judge Dredd. That's one of those selling points that either ha already made the sale, or lost it. admit, for me, it's lost it, but that's not reflection on the product.

Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved: I don't doubt this book is worth the price, but it's like being offered a computer that's a few years out of date. It's a great deal, but will you use it? I probably won't.

Twilight 2000 and Twilight 2013: Another nostalgia trip. The Durham 3 piqued my curiosity by digging this one out for some actual play, but i think I'll let this particular sleeping dog lie.

The City of Brass: On one hand, I love planar cities. On the other, I have enough Planescape material to crush a cat. I'm not really sure what this offers, bu tit definitely looks interesting.


No Freaking Clue
Cooper's Compendium of Corrected Creatures (Bundle): I got nothing.
DragonMech: Cool title, certainly
Dungeon Crawl Classics #51: Castle Whiterock:My keen deductive skills suggest this is an adventure.
Megatraveller bundle, Mark Miller's Traveller and TNE-0302 Traveller: THE New Era DELUXE Package: I'm not a Traveller guy, but if I was, I imagine this would be pretty sweet.
RunePunk: Another cool title
Ultramodern Firearms d20: Something to do with guns, I presume

Dragon Age Actual Play

Yeah, it's Monday, but I've been itching for this one, so I'll break my usual order of things.

I ran a game of Dragon Age tabletop on New Years Day, and it went quite well. The positives I expected were there (as were the negatives) but I still ended up pleasantly surprised.

Random chargen started out interestingly as one of my players nailed an 18 on the first roll, in plain sight of everyone. At ten end, the final distribution was a little unkind, with respective total bonuses of 12, 10 and 7. I let #2 and #1 at 1 and 2 points to their total respectively - this was entirely outside the scope of the rules, but I'm ok with that.[1] They ended up going mage, fighter and rogue.

We had 2 city elves and an apostate elf, so we decided they were cousins, the apostate having gone off to find the dalish and learn their magic for a while. Since I couldn't immediately find the recommended name list, they ended up going with italiante names(Bruno, Vinnie & Luccia). While this started a little tongue in cheek, it actually gelled nicely, since there is an Italian equivalent (Antiva) with elves, and one of the established bts of setting is that marriages are often arranged between alienage (elf ghettos) in different cities to keep the community connected. So their uncle Guido (Luccia's father) had come to Denerim (the big city of the setting) for an arranged marriage after things went bad enough in Antiva that it killed both his brothers, so he brought the kids along with him, so they grew up in the Denerim alienage.

Now, I don't mention this to get my shakespeare on, rather, I hold it up as an example of the strength of the setting. As I noted, it's very generic on the surface, but there's some decent depth behind it. I felt this was a good illustration of that in practice. It was easy to find a fairly generic idea to start with, and the setting gave me just enough material to flesh it out.

The plot of play was simple enough. A shipment of lyrium powder (magic stuff) is going form a mage to a templar, but for the duration of transit will be protected by neither. The players know where the delivery is happening, and can arrange to jump it. I actually stole a page from the CRPG and used one of the locations in Denerim where you get ambushed, using an old portcullis, except with the PCs as the attackers.

The fight that followed was straightforward enough. 3 PCs from ambush with 4 guards (2 trapped behind the portcullis initially) the cart's driver and their advance scout (who the Player's dubbed "The Cool Customer" because he kept making perception rolls to stay on top of the situation). To remove any suspense, the players won, but it was a surprisingly near thing. That out of the way, lots of observations on the fight:

• We used minis, but no grid, just using the minis to show relative position. This worked out pretty well, since it kept certain features (like the portcullis control) in mind. For a fair part of the fight, the rogue was fighting off his opponent with one hand and trying to jam things in the controls with the other.
• In combat, you get one major action (standard action, basically), and one minor action (which includes movement). The major/minor action split worked mostly smoothly. There were a few oddities, like whether or not you could draw a weapon while moving or if you are considered to have readied an arrow when you switch weapons to a bow, or if you also need to reload. It's one of the areas where you can feel the trade off between simplicity and complexity, but it works out.
• In many ways, combat reminded me of D&D before attacks of opportunity. There's nothing keeping people from disengaging so things are much more free wheeling. Paradoxically, this can also mean things are more static: If you find an optimal position, you tend to stay there and just do the same thing every turn.[2]
• Thankfully, the solution to this ended up being the stunt system. it works like this: if you roll doubles on your 3d6, check the value on your dragon die (your off-colored d6). You now have that many "stunt points" to add some english onto your attack. There's a little list of them on the reference sheet, and it's stuff like knocking someone back 2 yards costs 1 point, doing an extra d6 damage is 2 points, making another attack is 4 and so on (There's a similar list for spells). Not only does this make for one of the most fun critical hit systems I've ever seen, it can make the fight change up. As an example, our fighter started in an elevated position, sniping with his bow, and it looked like he'd be there for the whole fight. Then the driver got him with a shot that disarmed him, dropping his bow down into the fight, forcing him to follow. Felt nicely dynamic.[3]
• Our fighter had a better dexterity than strength, so he and the rogue were both armed with dexterity-based weapons. This ended up being educational because the benefits of dexterity in the game are HUGE, but they're not quite as huge as they looked. The small damage output of dex-based weapons doesn't look like too big a gap on paper, but in practice they're total pea shooters. The way armor works is that even negligible armor tends to undercut most of your first die of damage. When the Driver pulled out a two-handed sword and rolled 3d6 for damage, the swearing around the table was impressive.
• The mage was terrifying. Like, terrifying enough that at the end of the fight, everyone suddenly felt like the Templars and the Circle made complete and total sense as setting elements. I think it was the spell Walking Bomb that really just scared the crap out of everyone. Now, the mage was the one who'd rolled the 18, that combined with background bonuses to give him a +5 magic modifier, which is pretty crazily high, so maybe he was scarier than normal, but I'm not so sure of that. On the other hand, he was a total glass cannon - he got knocked down to 2 or 3 health twice, and he was totally out of mana by the end of the fight. Things had gone a little less well, he'd have gotten laid out pretty hard.
• I was flying by the seat of my pants a bit in balancing the encounter, reminding me of my Warhammer 3 experience. But unlike WH3, It took only one or two rounds before I had a firm enough grasp of combat that I now feel comfortable making up adversaries. Enough so that I think the adversary rules are actually too complicated, or at least the statblocks are. They look like character sheets, so I can see the logic of a unified vision, but odds are good I'll just be putting this particular element up on blocks to tune up.

After the fight, we had some good non-fighty stuff. We leveled up, jsut to see how it worked (very quickly and easily, it turns out). The guys found more than they expected in the wagon, tried to fence it[4], and found themselves fleeing from The Pearl (a high class brothel) from a posse of angry looking templar. The flight involved ropes, falling, cross dressing and no small amount of alcohol, so I was good with that. We wrapped up with them paying most of their money on hand for passage on a smuggler's ship, and pulling away from the docks.

All in all, we had a lot of fun, and final thoughts include:

• The character sheet needs more space for details. I had to print extra copies of the classes so the rogue and mage had their class abilities on hand, and I ended up just handing the mage the printout of the magic chapter because it was easier than trying to write them down. There were other things (like, it would be nice if there was a quick way to note known weapon groups, and I'd love it if the stunts were on the character sheet) and I'm hopeful that the 2 page character sheet from Green Ronin will address these. Otherwise, I'll just make my own.
• Very, very few choices in chargen. This is pleasantly speedy, but makes it a little bit rough to serve a concept. If you're comfortable using chargen as inspiration, it's fine, but if you have an idea you want to support, it's a crapshoot.
• I love stunts. They're just fun. My sole regret is that they don't kick in out of combat (or even in combat if you're doing something besides an attack). My players definitely were feeling like that was a gap. The counterargument is that this would make them too common, and that might be true.
• I'm not sure if you're allowed to upgrade gear during chargen (rather than buying it outright). I allowed it (so the fighter turned in his class-granted armor for a discount on better armor) but I've got no idea if that's legit.
• If we keep playing this (and it's a tempting choice fro more-or-less pickup play) then I'm worried that we'd clear level 5 before the second box set comes out. Not that that's a terrible problem to have, but it'll be aggravating if it happens. I'm also curious about advancement past level 5 - specifically you get a bonus point to your primary stat every other level (you can spread it around, but nothing makes you do so) and if there's nothing encouraging/forcing distribution, then the stat spread is going to start looking really weird by level 10 or so.

Anyway, while there were definitely some weird bits, they ended up causing far fewer problems than I expected, and the whole thing was just quick and easy to play. That's a measure I'm pretty good with.

1 - In fact, I'm explicitly ok with it. I'm running this with Red Box in my heart, so by god I will embrace opportunities to house rule. This game was written for someone with less experience than me, and it will work for them just fine, but the point of having more experience is the ability to tune it. On some level, this is a lot like buying one of the less-expensive cars explicitly to soup it up.

2 - 4e solves this problem with flanking and the grid, and that ability to keep fights from getting static is the reason I am willing to deal with that many maps and minis. Because of that, it was exceptionally interesting to me to see other solutions to the problem.

3 - I had been concerned that the stunts would feel a bit too much like a speedbump as you stop to look things up, but that didn't bear out. There are a few options, but not so many that you don't have to deal with decision paralysis. This means that while the mechanical range is only so diverse, that's only part of the equation. Stunt events are also cues to put some thought into the description of play, and that's really very handy.

4 - The mage also did a line of Lyrium, which suited the sensibilities of things quite well.

Bow to Your Partner

So, New Years Eve was geeky indeed. Three games of Pandemic (2 wins, 1 loss) followed by extensive and satisfying geeking with Fred and Fuzz. This is always a magnificent thing, and we ended up getting onto winning and losing on MUSH.

So, I'm mostly channeling Fred here, since the key idea was his, but it was awesome enough that it deserves some broadcast.

A lot of the problems with conflict on MUSH come down to the fact that most peopel really suck at winning. This means a lot of things, but the big one is that people tend to be very bad at findign ways to win which remains respectful of the loser. For the most part, if we win, we don't want to respect the loser, we are focused on getting them to respect us. This cuts to the heart of most issues: people aren't afraid of most bad things, they are concerned that they're not being respected. When every party feels that way, it's hard for an atmosphere of trust to ever be established, and things get and stay toxic.

This is where Fred's idea comes up. He proposes a ritual element to conflict where the first thing you do is to ask the other party what they desire you to respect. The example used is someone gettign in a swordfight with Benedict (the swordfighting badass of Amber). If Bob asks that Benedict respect that he's good with the sword, and Benedict asks that Bob respect Benedicts higher social role, and they both agree, that sets the ground rules for the fight in a non-intrusive way that allows both players to steer things towards what they want.

This is not an idea that needs any mechanical support (though maybe some code support to publicize these boundaries would be useful), and that's part of the point. See, while the information about the boundaries is useful and can shape the fight in fun ways, it is arguably even more important to have asked the question. That moment of stopping to think about it, like saluting an opponent, is a moment to focus on the sport and how to go about it. In my experience, most people mean well, but they need a nudge to be reminded of behaviors they support on paper.

Obviously this won't always work. There will be disagreements about what should or shouldn't be respected. There will be passive-aggressive, snarky social nonsense. Edges will blur and people will get indignant. But all that happens already. I am optimistic enough to think that a moment of reflection and respect can go a long way towards improving it.

Magic Item Thoughts

I'm not a huge fan of the level of itemization in 4e. The process of filling in "slots" it both a bit too mechanical and a bit too bookkeeping-heavy for me. Thematically, I'm a much bigger fan of fewer items, but with more punch and more story.

Curiously, this is harder than it seems. You can handle the gross balance easily enough by just removing magic item bonuses entirely in favor of an automatic bonus to, well, everything (attack, damage, defenses) of +1 at 1st level and increase it by +1 at levels 6, 11, 16, 21 and 26. Call it a "Heroic" bonus, the benefit of being named characters. This pretty much guarantees the characters stay balanced in terms of numbers, but it doesn't solve the entire problem.

See, it also strips the character of a wide range of extra abilities, as many as 15 or so. Some may be minor or passive, and there are limits on how many can be used in a given scene, but that's a LOT of options (for better or for worse).

The easiest way to address it mechanically is to give more feats - if you give the character a feat at every level, that's about as many extra feats over the course of their career as they have magic item slots. This is a little out of whack since the distribution is over time, but since you can synergize with your existing feats, I feel like that comes out in the wash.[1]

There are two downsides to that approach: First, it wreaks havoc with the character builder software, and second, it overlooks the simple fact that magic items are really cool. We WANT to have a sword whose blade flickers with flame - it's just that we don't want it to be lame.

The simplest solution is to use the cool magic item rules, and only hand out artifacts. Yes, artifacts used to mean items of earth-shaking, game changing power, but in 4e they really mean "Magic items that aren't boring". They're potent, sure, but nowhere near as much so as previous editions, and they have numerous interesting (and play-driving) checks in place to make them a practical inclusion in your game.

Now, I can sense the hesitation. Making heavy use of artifacts has historically been a shorthand for monty haul style play, and in the classic usage, a single artifact can really dominate a game. Plus, can you really *trust* players with that kind of power?

To that I can only say: embrace the ways that 4e has changed the game. More than any edition of D&D, this is the story of YOUR GROUP - not Elminster or Bigby or Raistlin or Drizzt - YOU. Own it. If something looks like it's cool or interesting, then it should end up in your player's hands, not someplace where they can watch it from a distance (or worse, just hear about it). Previous versions of the game have (sometimes unintentionally) told you that you weren't cool enough for the things that regularly happened in novels. 4E makes it clear that opinion should be stuck where the sun don't shine.

So just think about it for a minute - a game where every magic item is an artifact.[2] Think what that says and does for the world, how rich it demands that things be. Power comes intertwined with stories and people, and that's as it should be.[3]

Anyway, I personally favor using all 3 (inherent bonuses, extra feats and artifacts-only) if I'm stickng to the core rules. A more complicated (but maybe more rewarding) approach is to construct item to grow with the player (and use more than one slot) but that's a while other post in its own right.

Happy new year, folks.




1 - This wasn't really an option when the game started, but now that it's mature enough (and DDI makes it easy to track) there are now enough feats that this sort of option is actually useful rather than just useful on paper.

2 - This includes minor items. One nice upshot of this is that you can get a little bit old school and encourage clever use of items in strange places. A bottle that's always full of water is a trivial item in terms of power level, but absolutely drips with story potential that is best realized when it's a one-of-a-kind (or one of a set - sets work too) item.

3 - If you take this route, there's no reason you can't use regular magic items, at least as a starting point. The trick is to remember that when you want to use an item, you need to think about what it means if this it "THE flaming sword" not "A flaming sword". Look at the Adventurer's Vault products for inspiration - they're full of neat stories about how an item came to be, but they tend to end with "and now people make copies of that" which kind of saps the juice from it. Take those backstories and bring them to life, and suddenly they're a resource for your game, not just clever color.

Tastes Like Chicken

We have a hard time handling well worn ideas.

If an idea was once good, but it's taken a turn off the road an into the weeds, we often describe it as having "jumped the shark". The popularity of that term means it also is used in situatiosn where an idea has been used so much that we're now bored with it, and I find that a clumsy conflation of ideas.

After a certain point, ideas become cliche and familiarity breeds contempt, but that's a very steep precipice, and lots of ideas are overused without quite reaching that point. This is especially true of ideas with varying degrees of exposure - I may have grown tired of Chthulu, but there are plenty of others who barely known the name.

I think that it's all about chicken breasts.

If you spend any amount of time cooking, especially if you pursue the self-taught-American-bachelor school of cooking, you will use a LOT of chicken breasts. They're reasonably priced, they incredibly versatile, and they're easy to do well. They offer a depth of options for the beginner while still staying useful for the expert.

But sooner or later, you will have had enough, and that's when it becomes interesting. It's not that you start hating chicken breasts, or even that you stop using them entirely - sometimes they're on sale, or they're the only thing in the house or you're in a hurry - but they just stop being something on your go-to list. If you see them on a menu, it'll take something really interesting to catch your eye. When you're planning shopping, you think about other meats.

That's all well and good, but what's so interesting to me is that when you set aside chicken breasts, you do so with respect. You would never suggest a new cook forgo using chicken breasts as he learns, nor would you suggest they're not a worthy food.

And that's where you see the interesting divergence from geeks. We all have our chicken breasts - maybe they're ninjas or zombies or tentacled horrors but whatever form they take, we really stink at leaving them behind gracefully.

It's fun to think about why this is. Maybe it's a function of the fact that cooking takes physical effort or produces a physical result that can be measured. Maybe it's part of that ingrained geek insecurity. Maybe it's aliens. I doubt we'll ever know, and that's ok. Life needs mysteries.

But it also needs a little more respect for other people's fun, and chicken breasts is now my codeword to remind myself of that. It's a cue to remind myself that someone else's passion about something I have discarded does not suggest inferiority or poor judgment. It asks me to think abut why I thought this was a good idea once too, and to consider that maybe the idea is not the thing that's changed.

Or barring that, it's just a reminder to make chicken salad.

More Business of GMing

When I brought up the parallels between management and GMing the other day, one particularly valid point was brought up in the comments. I'd suggested that there are enough parallels that there is probably useful GMing insight to be found in the world of management/leadership literature (at least in part because so much more thought has been put into it).

I'll stand by that position, but I must acknowledge the very, very important caveat that was raised: most of that literature really, really sucks. Seriously. For every good book on the topic there are five crappy ones, and five more crappy ones which are just rehashing the first crappy ones. So with that in mind let me step back a little bit to discuss what's useful and what isn't.

First and foremost, I'm talking about leadership. This comes in many forms, and there are a lot of misconceptions about what it means. Most notably, it is often conflated with authority because the hope is that the person with authority has the qualities of leadership. Certainly, the person with authority will tend to believe they have those qualities - after all, who is going to tell them differently?

But authority is a funny thing. In all but the crudest of cases, it depends on a certain level of buy-in by all participants, and the person further down the ladder can often just say "Screw this, I'm quitting". This gets muddy when you start talking about big things, like society and laws, but for most of our day to day activities, these are tradeoffs we make, usually for something we want. We want a paycheck, so we give our boss authority. We want to perform on stage, so we give the director authority. We want to fly in a plane, so we give the airlines authority.

That last illustrates an important point. Just because a deal is being made doesn't mean it's always a very good deal. The more you want or need the thing you're getting, the more authority you're likely to concede.

And that brings us back to gaming, and GM authority. You want to play a game, sure, but there are lots of games and maybe even lots of other potential GMs. A given GM may have a lot to offer, but in the grand scheme of things it's only so much. As such, any authority the GM has or seems to have is extremely tenuous (at best) and rests upon his players finding it more fun to grant him that authority than it is to go read a book.[1]

And that brings us back to management disciplines and leadership. It is rare that books actually call this out (because it is uncomfortable for leaders to acknowledge it) but there is an entire strata of advice and literature that is more or less dedicated to the question of how to lead when you have no authority. This is a great strata because it puts a lot of emphasis on what the people you lead want and need, and how your job is to really help them excel and make everything work. These are great lessons for a GM to take.

In the modern business world, most of that strata is labeled "Project Management". You probably have some at your company, but if you've never stopped to consider their job, it is this: to get groups of people to get stuff done despite having no power (authority) to insist they do so. They can wheedle or cajole. They can lead or inspire. They can bully or sulk. They might do all of these things and more, depending on how good or bad they are.

Sound familiar, GMs?

Now, the catch is that the good to crap ratio is even more skewed in project management than it is in regular management. I can wholeheartedly recommend Scott Berkun's "Making Things Happen" (formerly "The Art of Project Management") but after that I start coming up dry. There's some interesting stuff in the arena of agile software development (Paul Tevis has raised some interesting comparisons between his gaming and scrum development) but I worry that's a bit too specialized.

Not to say there's nothing to use. Even the bad books have some fun tools - PM's have a lot of tools (some good, some bad) for representing complex sets of actors and actions, some of which are in parallels, others of which are sequential. Most RPG designs still consider the flowchart to be cutting edge technology, but project management has embraced a host of tools (most famously the gantt chart) to try to express these complex relationships visually.

This is worth bearing in mind because a lot of what they're tracking bears structural similarities to good adventure design. Imagine a project plan/gantt chart of a set of NPCs in a town and what they're up to. It's a useful overview, but the introduction of the players is going to mess things up, just like real life events constantly require project plans to be revised. Project management is not just about making those plans, it's about revising those plans when things go off the rails.

Again, sound familiar?

Not to say that Project Management is the only useful discipline out there. Leadership and planning are necessary in many fields, not just business. The trick is that if you expect it to be useful for gaming, you need to find where it's similar (and where it's different) and work to understand how to apply those strengths.

1 - This is a bit of a simplification. Social interaction, bullying, secondary concerns and such can all complicate this, but if that's what's going on, it's not about the game or the hobby, it's about that specific group.

The Fate of my Library

Someday we will be able to have conversations about the kindle and other readers without someone bring in up the smell of books. Seriously. I love to read. Everyone I know who has gotten a kindle or a similar device loves to read. We are all book lovers. But all this talk about touch and smell is starting to sound like a fetish community.

My own understanding of the Kindle was clinched the other day when I was grabbing my bag to go out. Normally I'd bring my kindle, but I was loaning it to my wife, so I needed to pack a book, just in case.[1] Of course, I couldn't pack just one, because one might get finished, or might not be quite the right book. So there I am, tossing a pair of hardcovers[2] into my bag and I have to fight off a flash of annoyance at how cumbersome this is. I have grown so accustomed to the ease of throwing dozens of books in my bag at once without any weight or hassle that the alternative seems awkward.

This kind of cleared up something for me. I have a decent-sized library of well loved books. We occasionally try to cut it down to reclaim some space, but we rarely do more than trim the edges. I am attached to the books, and I have often wondered about their future, especially now that my son is has entered the picture. How do I square these separate ideas of a love of ebooks and a love of paper?

The answer, as it turns out, is a lot simpler than I'd thought. It all comes down to why I keep books.

For the vast majority of them, the answer is simple: because I might want to read them again someday, or perhaps to look something up in them. My habits were established in the pre-amazon era[3], where your only chance of finding an out-of-print book was if you got lucky enough at a used bookstore. That meant if I found something like a copy of "The Well Favored Man" that I needed to grab it and hoard it, because the odds of my finding it again were pretty damn slim.

The next biggest reason, and this overlaps some with the first, is so I can loan them out. However, I am an old-school cynic on the subject of loaning books, and any book that's been loaned should be treated as lost. This is why I actually own multiple copies of certain books I consider particularly loan-worthy.

The far smaller fraction are the books that have some value in and of themselves. Some might merely be well-loved stories. Others might be gifts. Some might be signed, or be particularly lovely editions. These are books which, even if I never read them again, I cherish.

Someday, my library is going to be almost entirely composed of that last category. It's possible that the transition won't really happen in my lifetime, but I look at the speed of change in general, and I'm betting 10-20 years. I consider this more or less inevitable, but I also find it informative. The trick is that with my understanding of why I keep books, I can clearly look at what ebooks need to do if they'll supplant my existing categories.

To do that, ebooks need to be reliable, ubiquitous, and transferable. In practice, that means that:

• I need to be able to own the file enough to choose how to back up and protect it, and I need to be able to find it when I go looking.
• I need content to be available in electronic format.
• I need to be able to loan and give ebooks.

Unsurprisingly, DRM is the biggest barrier to these needs, followed slightly by the simple logistical problem of getting books converted to electronic form. DRM (and the perfidious idea that I am "licensing" the material) is a barrier to use that offers me no benefits in return[4]. Sure, there are other barriers - the cost of entry is too high, the technology of the readers is still clunky at best, the available content is limited and the various formats muddle the waters even further - but those are all problems that can do nothing but diminish. The hardware and technology will eventually reach a point where the price and convenience are comparable with (or better than) a printed book.[5]

But it's all for nothing if the content is still stuck in the mud. The kindle give an interesting taste of what ubiquitous content might look like: you can access your library on your kindle, your phone or on your computer. That's pretty fantastic, and that's still a closed system; imagine if it was opened up further.

Of course, this might also have a transformative effect on the books themselves, but that's another topic for another time.

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1 - This idea, that you should always pack a book just in case, is one that may not be instinctive to everyone, but I think most readers get it.

2 - "Parking Lot Rules" (a parenting book) and "Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate"

3 - I cite Amazon here, and not print on demand or e-distribution for a simple reason. While someday we will probably have all this content available on demand, that's not the case for the near term. Amazon, in contrast, is here now, and it has made exploratory trips to the used bookstore unnecessary because the used bookseller with the book you need is right there. I miss that sense of exploration and discovery, sure, but I
don't miss the inconvenience and frustration.

4 - I completely understand the need for creators to get paid, but that not what DRM does right now. Consider book loaning and gifting - Amazon controls all kindle content, and there are few technical challenges that should keep me from being able to say "Take this book off my kindle and send it to my dad's kindle", much the same way I could hand him the physical book after I finished reading it. If they had such a feature, they might be able to say "We need DRM to protect ourselves, but look how we also use the software to improve your experience" and they'd at least have a leg to stand on. Instead, DRM is an attempt to erect a barrier against change that is doomed since it's a barrier built on the very source of the change itself. A wall built on a foundation of sand will stand longer than one built on a foundation of bits.

5 - This is the "Bathtub Test". Right now, one of the smug anti-ereader talking points is how much you lose if you drop it in the tub. It's a fair cop, especially with readers costing what they do now. But there is a cost of replacing a book you drop in the tub too, sometimes a non-trivial one, since you are losing the artifact and the content (with an ereader, you lose only the artifact so long as you've backed up the content). If ereaders get cheap enough or if e-content gets ubiquitous enough, that gap may narrow or even invert.