Film Review: The Warriors

New York actor Roger Hill passed away about a week ago according to the New York Daily News. He was best known for playing Cyrus from the 1979 film "The Warriors".

I first encountered "The Warriors"on television in the 1980s. It was a perfect movie for me. By this time I was settled in Connecticut but still had a healthy love for my native city of New York and still went back there quite often to visit and stay with family. I have prints of old maps of New York City in my house here in Massachusetts - one of Colonial-era New York and another of the 1970s New York City Subway map. What got my attention as I was channel surfing was the frequent scenes taking place in the subway. 

"The Warriors" tells the tale of a gang (named the Warriors oddly enough) that travels from their home turf in Coney Island to a meeting of gangs in the Bronx. They have been assembled under a flag of truce by Cyrus, leader of the biggest gang in the city. Cyrus has a vision of bringing all the gangs together and taking over the city. However the meeting falls apart as Cyrus is assassinated and the police raid the assembled gang. And worst, unbeknownst to the Warriors, at least at first, is they have been blamed for Cyrus' assassination. All the gangs are gunning for them, as are the police, with their home in Coney Island far away.

The story itself is inspired by the Greek soldier/writer Xenophon's tale Anabasis, a tale of Greek soldiers serving as mercenaries under Cyrus the Younger in Persia. With Cyrus' death the Greeks find themselves deep within enemy territory.

One of the things which makes "The Warriors" notable is its portrayal of New York City and its gangs. The gangs are very stylized with little attempt at realism. They tend to be multiracial with firearms extremely rare. They are also very stylized. For example you've got the Baseball Furies, dressed like a strange cross of baseball players and mimes and armed with baseball bats. The city is New York at its worst. Graffiti everywhere. It is not the New York of the glitzy Times Square that emerged in the 1990s but rather the New York of the 70s and 80s with everything falling apart and someone out at night is considered to have been "asking for" any tragedy which befalls them, 

Almost the entire film takes place at night, with the sun only rising as the survivors reach Coney Island (with one final confrontation to face). The rest of the film takes place at night, with sparse subway stations, parks poorly illuminated and dark streets with stores and bars closed and barred shut.

Our protagonists aren't the nicest people, often looking for fights, one member of the Warriors going after a woman in a park with an intent to at best harass her and far more likely to rape her should she prove unreceptive to him. 

Yet despite, or perhaps because of, this bleak setting and morally-lacking protagonists, it is an absolutely engaging film. You find yourself rooting for them and against the police which are, quite correctly, after them. 

To geek out a bit in keeping with the main subject of this blog... How does the film work for those in the gaming world? I think it's a pretty darn good inspiration. It immediately brings to mind the various White Wolf World of Darkness games. Vampires from Vampire: The Masquerade or Vampire: The Requiem would fit right into this setting. Werewolf: The Forsaken has the concept of territory of utmost importance, much like it is to the various gangs of "The Warriors". And most White Wolf games would recognize the concept of belonging to a certain "gang" (or tribe or clan). Though it is a near-modern setting, the likes of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser would fit right into the New York of "The Warriors" and would understand the ethics the Warriors operate under. Truthfully it also models your typical roleplaying group rather well - as the gang conclave falls apart and the Warriors lose their leader and they are being chased by police they still manage to find to argue with each other as to who is in charge - hello inter-party conflict.

Regardless of whether you're looking for inspiration or just a fun film "The Warriors" is well worth your time. Can you dig it?

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No Power in the Verse Can Stop Me - Thoughts on Firefly Gaming

Yes... Yes... This is a fertile land and we will thrive. We will rule over all this land and we will call it... This Land.

- Wash, Firefly Episode 1: "Serenity"

With a new Firefly RPG out this month I've been rewatching some episodes of the sadly short-lived television show. There's a decent chance I'll at the very least be taking it for a spin - I have some pretty good memories of the the older Serenity RPG, the basis for which Margaret Weis Productions (MWP) created the Cortex System. Cortex System had a decent amount of similarity with the Savage Worlds RPG.

With the Smallville RPG, the Cortex System evolved into Cortex Plus. Though the character sheets might look rather similar, the engine changed quite a bit to be a far more "narrative-based" RPG. For example, one of the most important aspects of a character in Smallville is his or her relationships with other characters. For example Clark Kent could use his rating in his relationship with Lex Luthor in his interactions with Lex or in other situations where that relationship could be helpful. While the Cortex System seemed somewhat similar to Savage Worlds Cortex Plus seems to be more a cousin to the Fate RPG.

So how does this relate to a Firefly game? To my mind there's two broad ways you could run such a game (I'm pretty sure one could rattle off a lot more as well as find hybrids of what I propose.) On one hand, you could run, for lack of a better term, a gearhead type of game. Careful tracking of the multiple stars, planets, and moons in the Verse, tracking money, fuel consumption, etc. This is the model one finds in countless Traveller games and I remember similar logic when using FASA's Trader Captains and Merchant Princes supplement for their Star Trek RPG. The appeal in such a simulation is as a player you can truly get a feeling of being in control of one's destiny, of making decisions which have a logical outcome. On the other hand, there are some players who find such a simulation as exciting as a tax return.

The other side of the coin is to try to simulate the drama of the television show. Serenity is short on funds because it is interesting to be so. Simon can persevere against incredible odds not primarily due to skill but out of the love he has for his sister, River. From reading the pre-release materials for the new Firefly RPG it is clear that this is the direction they have taken. Their previous Serenity RPG certainly had this in mind but the mechanics dud not fully embrace this the way the new Firefly RPG does. The trick I find with such games is to avoid a game where the players serve as actors in a story defined by the GM. The players really need to have the ability to drive the narrative themselves, to scatter the designs of the GM in all directions (Dan's GM-ing Secret Number 38 - I actually enjoy it when players in my games go massively away from what I've planned - it's a huge challenge to be sure, but awfully fun.)


What would I do with a Firefly game? Probably the first thing to decide would be if I wanted to run a Firefly-like game or a Firefly game. For example, one could very easily create a similar setting, perhaps more customized to one's individual tastes. The Diaspora RPG, using the Fate engine, excels at creating a setting for your group - a cluster of systems linked by jump routes. The group shares responsibility for defining the systems of the cluster. Despite being a very narrative game, it embraces fairly hard science fiction. One could also shamelessly borrow the cluster creation of Diaspora while going for a more space western feel of Firefly.

Going away from a narrative game, one could simply whip out Traveller and very easily construct a sector with a strong resemblance to the Verse in Firefly, whether in the Official Traveller Universe or in one's own setting. A sector recently brought under one government with some disagreement as to if that is a Good Thing.

Setting in the official Firefly Verse seems a pretty reasonable idea. One danger I do see with it is science fiction fans love to define things and Firefly, for a show that ran about half a season plus a Big Damn Movie, has had a lot of definition. For example, I love the various products that Quantum Mechanix have produced - maps of the Verse, blueprints of Serenity, etc. But if you're going for a more dramatic/narrative realization of the Verse it becomes important to not let those details limit you. Joss Whedon has freely admitted to science not being his strong suit and it shows in Firefly and the move Serenity. Until the movie Serenity it was unclear if the Verse was one system or several - and even when Serenity seemed to settle it as one (admittedly huge and scientifically impossible) system you still had the Operative making references to the galaxy.

I'd be pretty tempted to expand the setting with my own ideas - and invite my players' to make their own contributions. For example, why does the Alliance have such a huge navy? Just for Reavers and pirates? The answer can certainly be yes, but even that answer has its own implications. Is it possible there are other powers in the setting beyond the Alliance? Not all Westerns took place in the United States, with a fair number taking place in Mexico and there's often foreigners paying visits. I've often considered the possibility that there might be other star systems accessible by some sort of "jump gates" at the edge of the system. With the Verse being so huge doing so would in no way contradict what's been shown on the show and film. This need not contradict the slower-than-light exodus from Earth That Was - constructing jump gates might require construction at both sides of the gate and not be something that robots can do. Sure the Alliance got the best system, but there might be visitors from the Holy Russian Empire just waiting to pay a visit.

Also there's thing suggested in the show that never really had a chance to be fully developed. The opening scenes of the pilot episode "Serenity" suggested criminal tongs. One might get inspiration from the tong wars of San Francisco in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From the film Serenity we know the Alliance botched at least one social engineering project at Miranda, along with attempting to create human killing machines. Mal referred to River as a "reader", the existence of such a term suggesting her abilities might not be unique in the Verse. And might there be a moon settled by a gazillionaire who used dinosaur DNA to make his own little Jurassic Park. Perhaps he called it... This Land...

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Delta Green Fiction

In my last post I spoke a bit about Delta Green. After posting I realized that my familiarity with Delta Green is solely through RPG supplements and I was very unfamiliar with the Delta Green. To be honest, I have a tendency to avoid most "gaming fiction" - I read and enjoyed Dragonlance and Drizzt once upon a time but generally speaking I tend not to enjoy it. However, I was curious as to the Delta Green fiction so I asked around on the Call of Cthulhu RPG Google+ Community.The people there spoke very highly of the Delta Green fiction, even those who, like me, generally don't read RPG fiction. With that in mind I've obtained some ebooks of what seemed to be available and did some searching online to compile a list of what seems to be available in chronological order. After I finish the first anthology I'll post a review. However in the meantime I thought it might be worthwhile to share what I've been able to find.

Delta Green: Alien Intelligence. An anthology, out of print but available as a PDF from DriveThruFiction.com. It appears to be the earliest published fiction available though I believe some may have been printed in The Unspeakable Oath magazine.

Delta Green: Rules of Engagement. A novel by John Tynes (who is one of the creators of Delta Green and wrote some fantastic material in Call of Cthulhu d20). This book is out of print though it can be found within Strange Anthologies (below). I've linked to the Amazon listing for this book which appears to have some copies at a decent price.

Delta Green: Dark Theaters. Another anthology. This one sounds interesting, what with covering the raid on Innsmouth that gave birth to Delta Green and covering the tragedy in Cambodia which cost them their official recognition. Sadly, also only available as PDF. (I much prefer eBook formats but hey...) It is listed as the third Delta Green book and it lists the novel Rules of Engagement (above) so I'm guessing I'm placing it correctly.

Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy. A novel by Dennis Detwiller, another of the creators of Delta Green. He also was a co-creator of the Superhero RPG game Godlike, a very gritty take on WWII superheroes. Denied to the Enemy is set during World War II and seems to have been originally published in 2002. The version I link to is to the Kindle version from Amazon. Right now it is available for only $0.99.

Delta Green: Through a Glass Darkly. Another Detwiller novel. And the covers have suddenly gotten creepier. The link is to the Kindle version, the physical version appears to be in print as well. First published in 2011. I'm very much unfamiliar with this one. Reading the description, it seems to be about a Delta Green case that starts of in January of 2001 and serves as a bridge from the "classic" Delta Green era of the 1990s to the more modern (2010s) era. Also from reading the reviews it seems this one is a lot less standalone than the previous ones with lots of references to other works,

Delta Greens: Strange Authorities. This collection by John Tynes contains both short stories and the novel Rules of Engagement. Two of the short stories can be found within Alien Intelligence and Dark Theater. Looking at the copyright dates of all of the stories it appears that all of these were written prior to Through a Glass Darkly.








So I'm going to be plunging through these pretty much blind. I'm actually looking forward to it. As I work through them (which can take from weeks to months to years I'd imagine knowing me) I'll add links to reviews that I make.

Flipping through them I find myself looking forward to the upcoming Delta Green RPG that is in development. As most of my experience with Delta Green is after 9/11/2001 one reason I've shied away from it is it has always appeared a bit dated. While culturally I view the 1990s with some fondness, one thing which seems clear to me is just how close the 1990s were to the 1920s - a pleasant-enough seeming decade on the surface with a number of problems that were soon to manifest themselves and set the tone for the decades which followed. I think of how much time we spent thinking about the government hiding UFOs and not worried about an economy headed for some extremely rough times and terrorists getting ready to attack US warships and crash planes into New York City and Washington, DC.

However, I'm finding myself curious about those works set in the 1990s and even more about those set earlier in Delta Green's history. My gaming group has wrapped up its fourth Call of Cthulhu session in our current campaign and its becoming clear that I need a stronger framework to bind the characters together and direct them to their cases. With the game set in Arkham, Massachusetts in the summer of 1928 it seems a proto-Delta Green organization might take an interest in our band of investigators.

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Alternate Mythos Lenses

HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos have had an influence on various forms of entertainment. Many episodes of Doctor Who and Star Trek have had a Lovecraftian feel to them. The early Tom Baker episodes of Doctor Who with stories like Pyramids of Mars, Horror of Fang Rock, and Talons of Weng-Chiang have many elements to be found in the Cthulhu Mythos, like ancient aliens, god-like beings visiting the Earth, etc. Star Trek had references to the Old Ones placed by Robert Bloch in What Are Little Girls Made Of and many episodes dealt with the remnants of previous interstellar empires - the Iconians, known as "Demons of Air and Darkness" come especially to mind.

And looking at the Mind Flayers of Dungeons and Dragons one cannot help but find influences from Lovecraft.

What I've found rather interesting is those settings which go beyond mere influence from the Cthulhu Mythos but embrace their cosmos in its entirety yet put their own unique perspective on them.

One of the best known is the Delta Green setting as published by Pagan Publishing. It takes as its starting point the US Government's raid on Innsmouth, Massachusetts in 1928. The premise is after being made aware of alien beings such as the Deep Ones, would the government simply forget about the whole thing? In the Delta Green setting the answer to this is no. In the aftermath of World War II this organization becomes official as Delta Green. However, it runs afoul of a rival government organization, Majestic-12. Eventually it is disbanded but nevertheless continues to exist as a conspiracy within the US government working against the Cthulhu Mythos. It has a very 1990s "the truth is out there" feel, though it actually slightly predated The X-Files by a year (confession - The X-Files is one of those bits of popular culture that I just never could quite get into). Characters in a Delta Green campaign are working against the Mythos from various organizations within the government, working in cells and unaware of who else might be in the organization. Though a new incarnation is being worked on by Pagan Publishing which will be its own RPG (currently it is realized as fiction and supplements to the Call of Cthulhu RPG) in which in the post-9/11 world Delta Green regains its official status within the government.


Another lens that goes even farther is Charles Stross' Laundry Files. Now technically it isn't fully in the cosmos as created by HP Lovecraft, but it is in one extremely close to it. To quote Stross:

The Laundryverse is not exactly the Lovecraftverse; HPL himself is going to show up as a character in a future story (and be seen to be a dangerously flawed correspondent).

This setting has many of the mainstays of the Chulhu Mythos. You've got your Deep Ones (which have signed a treaty with humanity, though most of humanity is unaware of this). Nyarlathotep is out there. And you've got your mad cultists and evil sorcerers. The big addition is that of computational demonology. Basically, magic spells aren't really magic, they are advanced mathematical equations that can connect universes, perform summonings, provide protection, etc. This is very much in keeping with the science fiction aspect of Lovecraft's writings and in accordance with Clarke's Law of any sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic. While in the past your sorcerer might pour over tomes for decades to learn how to cast a spell, an app on your smartphone can do the job far easier and far faster. Many computer scientists and mathematicians get pulled into the world of computational demonology, where some program or theorem they develop accidentally alters reality. The Laundry is a part of the British Civil Service, an odd crossover of The Office, Delta Green, and the works of John le Carré. Agents of the Laundry are must deal both with bureaucracy and the Old Ones. There's a sort of dark humor to this. Cubicle 7 has published The Laundry RPG along with several supplements. It uses a form of Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying System, the same system which powers Call of Cthulhu.

Chaosium itself has published Cthulhu Invictus, a take on the Cthulhu Mythos at the time of the early Roman Empire. While the Mythos are largely unchanged, the society is very different. This is not a civilization that has a difficult time believing in the supernatural. Richard Tierney's stories about the sorcerer Simon Magus, who appeared in the Acts of the Apostles, are set during this era. This setting offers many possible frameworks, such as citizens of Palestine, self-interested sorcerers, Roman soldiers facing the Mythos, etc.

This is just scratching the surface of some of the lenses that have been used to view the Mythos - should time and inclination point in that direction, I'd like to go deeper into these and others at a point in the future (heck I'd like to run a game in all of these I've listed here...(

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Having a Long-Term Relationship with the Old Ones

The Call of Cthulhu RPG has a reputation for extreme mortality. If you don't die you're pretty much doomed to go insane.

The rules certainly allow for this to happen. Even without adding the supernatural your character is rather fragile. He or she has about 12 hit points. Almost any firearm can kill an investigator with a single hit (sometimes requiring a critical). As of the 6th edition you can only dodge once per round so if your foes gang up on you you're pretty much doomed. Add to it supernatural beings and you become aware of just how fragile your character is. And then you've got the danger of going insane. It doesn't take much to drive an investigator at least temporarily insane.

Reading on various gaming forums you 'd get the idea that your typical character can last but a single adventure or two. I mentioned previously that this uncaring fragile heroism nevertheless gives the game a certain heroism. However, I also have found that the genre is absolutely compatible with long-term play.

First, let us take a look at the mechanics and a history of published adventures from the game. Clearly a character is fragile and one who frequently gets into fights without maximizing the odds is doomed. Indeed, even with extreme caution bad luck can spell doom for an investigator. I find this vulnerability is very much in keeping with the genre. However, a lot of caution goes a long way. Do your research. Do more research. Get all the facts you can. Don't fight fair. Better yet, don't get into a fight.

Looking at published adventures one can see the advantages of a long-term campaign. Chaosium's Masks of Nyarlathotep and Horror on the Orient Express are two famous examples of long-term campaigns. I've only recently received the draft of Horror on the Orient Express so I'll look more at Masks. Without spoiling it for those unfamiliar with the adventure, it is a global campaign against Nyarlathotep, with the investigators facing various incarnations of Nyarlathotep's cult across the globe. There are supernatural foes aplenty, but many of them fall short of horrors that can kill an investigator in a single round. And when one meets such a horror the best advice is not to fight it.

This isn't to suggest that such campaigns - or even individual adventures - should be easy. The genre really demands a true sense of danger. Does the genre support the possibility of long-term survival? The answer is, "it depends".

Many of Lovecraft's tales deal with a doomed protagonist who is presumed to end his life after telling his horrid tale or to plunge into insanity or some similar fate. This is largely what Pelgrane Press has referred to as Purist play.

However, Lovecraft also has protagonists who triumph against, or at least survive, their encounters with the Mythos. Henry Armitage survives The Dunwich Horror and Randolph Carter appears in several tales. I think this quote from Lovecraft serves as a good reminder that his universe is not a hostile one but rather an uncaring one:

Contrary to what you may assume, I am not a pessimist but an indifferentist— that is, I don’t make the mistake of thinking that the… cosmos… gives a damn one way or the the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitoes, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.

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Looking Back on the 1990s

With the lights out, it's less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us

- Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit", 1991.

"No one holds command over me. No man. No god. No Prince. What is a claim of age for ones who are immortal? What is a claim of power for ones who defy death? Call your damnable hunt. We shall see who I drag screaming to hell with me."

"A Beast I am, lest a Beast I become."
- Vampire: The Masquerade, 1991.

I've mentioned in this blog that I'm very much a child of the 1980's, being born in 1971. However, I became an adult in the 1990's. I went off to college in fall of 1989 so the great bulk of my undergraduate career was in the 1990's. I had my first serious relationship in the 90's, met my wife a mere month before graduation (on an evening dedicated to forgetting about women), began my professional career in the mid-90's, got married, and moved to the state that has been my home for nearly twenty years in the 90's

While I've spent a lot of time talking about the world of the 1980's it seems that the 1990's deserve a fair amount of love as well. This is going to be somewhat random and based upon my own experiences - that of a geeky middle-class white male from suburban southern New England.

I think I'd like to first reflect upon the technology. When one things about it many of the technologies we've come to expect in our day-to-day life began their penetration in the 1990's. While culture and styles and current events always changed, in many ways the background technology you could expect was relatively standard from the fifties through the eighties. Yes, the cars got smaller, televisions became more advanced and cheaper, video recording became commercialized. But a revolution in communications had yet to occur. If you wanted to buy a book you'd go to a bookstore or order it from a physical catalog. While there were some computer bulletin board systems starting in the 1970's, the idea you could become involved in online communication with people across the globe really began in the 1990's and cemented itself in the 2000's. When I look at my Facebook friends and my gaming group they consist of people who I have never met in person, from New York City to Utah to Australia - people whose opinions I have come to greatly value and whose involvement in my life, though virtual, has been beneficial. 

And think of what a difference the cell phone has made - think of how many episodes of Seinfeld or how many horror movies of years past would be fundamentally different now with the possibility of instant communications. I remember needing to make plans to meet with friends in advance with designated rendezvous spots. And actually needing to use payphones. Even when cellphones began penetration the old analog phones were super-expensive, with you paying for each minute of use with no free minutes. When my wife was taking grad courses at Northeastern she'd make quick calls to let me know she was safe at her car and driving back home, with us working to make the calls last less than a minute.

Online  communities really began forming back in the 1990's, where you could go on Usenet and find massive debates on how superior Storyteller games were to obsolete games like AD&D and you could count on a massive flamewar by asking if the USS Enterprise would emerge victorious over an Imperial Star Destroyer. While streaming movies to any device had yet to begin, the idea of quick access to media began to emerge with Amazon.com beginning its presence as a source of books, VHS tapes, DVDs, and CDs. Looking back at my Amazon history I see my second ever purchase from there in 1997 was Chaosium's Escape from Innsmouth Call of Cthulhu adventure/sourcebook.

It's also worth remembering that not everyone had broadband. Living in an apartment until 2000 we had digital cable but high-speed internet was not yet available to us - we first got that when we bought a house in 2000. So it was the dial-up modem connecting to an internet service provider for us. I remember in 1998 waiting two hours to stream the trailer for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and at extremely poor quality. The difference with high-speed internet is amazing - we watched that same trailer at work a day or two later and we were able to watch it instantly and at much higher quality. 

Moving onto music I don't think you can underestimate the impact that alternative or grunge music had on my generation. I won't claim it was universal - again, I'm the product of my white middle-class background and am speaking of my own experience and those of my peers and artists like Janet Jackson, N'Sync, Britney Spears, the Spice Girls, and countless others experienced great success - I amusingly reflect on Billie Piper, for example, being known as a pop star in Britain with her days as a key player in relaunching Doctor Who years in the future. But the likes of Nirvana and Pearl Jam greatly shook up the music scene and the fashion. As the 90's continued there were backlashes and responses to grunge music - for me I became a fan of Nine Inch Nails - one of my favorite concerts to this day remains when I saw David Bowie and Nine Inch Nails performing together in September of 1995.




I also believe that much of the way popular entertainment crosses over into multiple forms truly came into its own in the 90's. Entertainment franchises had long licenses into other areas - for example the 1980's saw RPGs for Star Wars, Star Trek, DC Comics, and Marvel Comics. Star Trek and Star Wars also had comics in those same periods but there was little to no linkage between one franchise and another - indeed, the Star Trek novels line back then treated each novel largely as a standalone work without reference to others in the same line. However look at Star Wars in the 1990's. The RPG became source material for various novels which continued the story from Return of the Jedi. The RPG also covered these new novels. Dark Horse Comics produced comics which were also consistent with the novels and RPG (and were in turn covered in the RPG), eventually reaching a point of a coordinated release for Shadows of the Empire, set between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi and being realized in video games, RPGs, toys, novels, and comic books.

This segue into RPGs leads nicely to Mark Rein•Hagen's Vampire: The Masquerade. In my opinion V:TM is a game which massively shook up the gaming industry. It is derided in some circles for moving RPGs into a more story-based style, something which often led to railroad-style adventures where PCs get to watch interesting things happen.but be powerless to influence those interesting things. However, Vampire provided something new - the opportunity to be the monster. Game mechanics allowed you to measure how much of your self-control you maintained - how human you remained. It was likely the first game since the D&D boom of the early 80's to bring an influx of new blood into the hobby (eek, just realized what a horrible pun that was). This revolution in both style and in mechanics influenced a number of RPGs of the 1990's, some of which are largely forgotten while others are still active. Off the top of my head and from a quick glance at Wikipedia reveals games like:

• Deadlands - Alternate history in a horrific weird west with magic mechanics using hands of poker
• Dragonlance: Fifth Age - card-based RPG with mechanics based entirely around the actions of PCs (in other words if an enemy attacks you you are attempting to avoid being hit)
• Blue Planet - a setting and rules based entirely around a water-covered world
• Star Trek (Last Unicorn Games) - a far less tactical take on Star Trek than had been previously seen from FASA
• Amber Diceless - An RPG which dispensed with any random number generation (to the best of my knowledge this actually predated or was roughly simultaneous with Vampire but is definitely indicative of the 1990s style of gaming)
• Castle Falkenstein - A gorgeously-illustrated card-based game of Victorian fantasy and steam-punk
• The End - Biblical role-playing involving those left behind after the Rapture
• Legend of the Five Rings - East-Asian styled RPG supplementing a popular collectible card game
• Fudge - Less an RPG and more a toolkit, led to the popular Fate RPG of the 2000s and 2010s.
• Unknown Armies - Occult role-playing of varying power levels with a system inspired by Chaosium's BRP
• Nexus: The Infinite City - A nexus of realities where walking down the street can take you from Ancient Rome to a cyberpunk megalopolis. Game system later modified into the popular Feng Shui RPG

Looking back, in many ways D&D 3rd edition can be seen as a reaction against this style of gaming - while the games I list above tended towards a very free-form nature D&D 3rd edition brought about a much more rigid style of gaming, a very tactical approach. (Something I'm not downing - I've had fun in a number of D&D 3rd edition and later games.)

This has been a rather lengthy (and likely rambling) post so it's time to bring it to a close. I've just given a glimpse of my thoughts on the 1990's. I've skipped over a number of things from the 1990's - things like the Gulf War, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Crystal Pepsi, Zima, Doctor Who: New Adventures, 800-TREKKER, Seinfeld, Michael Jordan, Babylon 5, etc. In any case I hope you found this trip down memory lane interesting.

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Introductions to Doctor Who and Avoiding the Info Dump

About a month ago I was watching the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary special "Day of the Doctor". Jasmine, my eight-year old daughter, wound up joining me and watching most of it - she didn't quite get it having only a vague idea as to what it was about but she still couldn't pull her eyes away. She had a ton of questions and I promised her I'd watch an episode with her that made no assumptions on experience.

Yesterday Jasmine and I watched "Rose", the first episode of the new series. She absolutely loved it. And the format was, of course, perfect. You've got an established franchise but you are relaunching it after a long dormancy. There's some die-hard fans out there who will be watching it but you need to go far beyond that fan-base. So you start with a viewpoint character who is a surrogate for this audience. And you don't dump all the history and lore of the program all at once. Instead you release it as you need to.

Jasmine liked it enough that she wanted to watch another episode so we also watched the second episode, "The End of the World". For this my wife and eldest daughter had just returned from a shopping trip and wound up joining us. My wife is a Doctor Who fan from way back but our older daughter has just minimal knowledge. And despite not being a "science fiction geek" she too loved watching it, groaning as Britney Spears' "Toxic" played as the Earth burned. Moreover it was interesting to see that despite missing the first episode she was still able to enjoy this story on its own merits.

While I love long and intricate stories (I'm eagerly looking forward to the next season of Game of Thrones) watching with my daughter did remind me that sometimes its possible to overdo this and wind up locking your potential audience out. I think this is something that happened with the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie, which began with a massive info dump, had references to Skaro, Gallifrey, the Master, Daleks, the Eye of Harmony, Regeneration, etc. Moreover it started from the perspective of the Doctor. I think Paul McGann did a fantastic job portraying the Doctor but I also feel the 1996 movie was a disservice to his talents - indeed he showed he was definitely worthy of the role in under seven minutes with the recent "Night of the Doctor" web-special.

As a gamer who also every once in a while flirts with writing fiction the, I find the cleverness in how Doctor Who was re-introduced worthy of imitation. Whether in gaming or in fiction, when one creates a detailed background there's a huge temptation to show off all your work. But even in a sandbox style gaming experience it's clear that it is far too easy to overdo this and overwhelm the player (or reader). Even as the new show has progressed it has periodically made certain it has good jumping off points for your new viewer.

Tomorrow it's "The Unquiet Dead" for Jasmine and me. Excellent timing with Christmas right around the corner.

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