Deciphering the Instagrammaton

 I've recently rolled out a new Instagram account for Abhorrent Vacuum Games!

Huzzah!

I'll use the account to do some basic promotion of my publications, as well as periodically sharing pics of my RPG print collection and dice sets.

Ooo, marketing adverts, book covers, and polyhedral still lifes -- that sounds like the kind of excitement you'll definitely want to be a part of! I can hear you clicking on the "follow" button even now...

Abhorrent Vacuum Games on Instagram

Faint Pulse -- Yet Signs of Life

No, wait -- don't go! Your initial assumption that I'd abandoned this blog for dead was hasty and incorrect!

I'm still here. OK, yeah, there was a hiatus, a stepped away for a bit. In my defense, the world seems to have no shortage of existential threats to share, so...

OK, so, with that said -- I wanted to share a little list of updates and to-do items that lie ahead for me. Each of these will likely have a post that elaborates on the details. 

• Last September, I released my first, official RPG publication -- a third-party scenario for the Mothership RPG!
• Next on my writing agenda is to rewrite an adventure I recently penned, playtest it a second time, and then lay it out and publish it.
• After that, I want to draft and playtest a rules-lite cyberpunk hack.
• Somewhere amid all of the above, I aim to launch an Instagram account for my game publishing brand, Abhorrent Vaccuum Games -- or maybe adapt my personal account to somehow do double-duty? We'll see what works out. 

Anyway, here goes a new attempt at keeping things active here. Fingers crossed, more to come!

Foundational Friction in Mythos Gaming

All right -- it needs to be said right up front that I love the Call of Cthulhu RPG. A lot. Really like it. I'm even a very big fan of it's weird cousin, Delta Green. Honestly, I'm down with just about any cosmic horror/Cthulhu Mythos RPGs. And if I'm starting off with this overt of a disclaimer, it can only mean that I'm about to throw some serious shade in the direction of these games...

But it's going to be a very generalized kind of shade, I swear! Because, as I said, in my heart, I truly like these games.

That said... [OK, here it comes.]

I feel there is a baseline, conceptual pitfall with Mythos RPGs: to have an ideal play experience, everyone involved should be fairly well-versed in Mythos lore, or at least familiar with lots of the Lovecraftian horror tropes. Not having these conditions present can possibly set a limit on player enjoyment under best conditions, and can potentially frustrate players and derail fun under worst conditions.

All the Matrix's Many Faces: Cyberpunk RPGs

The cyberpunk genre always lends itself so naturally to an RPG context. I guess it's not too surprising -- there are lots of gameable aspects to it. And, to be honest, I'd be surprised if there was some established genre that wasn't being mined for content by game designers. It walks that edge between a dark, near-future dystopianism that's very relatable to a modern audience and far-side, high-tech science-fiction -- and walks it in a way that feels very natural and is invariably appealing. And, of course, liberally peppering it all with a hearty dose of the film noir aesthetic will only make it even more appealing to a gamer's palate. Multiple great tastes that taste great together: it's like a role-playing sundae. (In which case, what's the butterscotch? The gritty, urban landscape? Certainly, though, the cherry at the top has a monofilament stem.)

I decided that, instead of doing another installment of my prior RPG Tasting Menu series, I would share a few, quick thoughts on the cyberpunk RPGs that I've played over the years, then focus some future posts on a connected project that I've been working on. 

Hail to the Hack: Thoughts on The Black Hack 2nd Edition

When you've spent any amount of time running RPGs, you inevitably learn a lot about yourself as a person, as an improviser, and as a project manager. Or at least you have some suspicions about yourself confirmed through play. So it came as little surprise to me when, after running one-shot sessions of Low Fantasy Gaming, Colonial Gothic, and The Sprawl for one group and starting a longer D&D 5th Edition campaign for another group, I realized that I wasn't so great at storing and juggling a large number of system rules in my head while also presenting and arbitrating over a fictional environment. Giving me access to the rulebook during the sessions didn't help; I struggled with trying to do more than a quick, cursory search for a piece of information.

I thought back on my younger years. Did I really do that? Spend a lot of time just paging through myriad D&D books, searching for all the detailed rules? Did I derail a few dozen immersive moments each session to check on minutia? The memories are hazy and I'm left unsure. Maybe I wasn't tuned in enough to the dramatic potential of immersive gaming to notice; maybe I didn't look much up then either. 

Evaluating Systems

[Edit: I changed out one fantasy game for another, as I concluded that I preferred the more streamlined system of Vagabonds of Dyfed over the more complex, move-based system of Freebooters on the Frontier 2e. 4/27/21]

Recently taking a moment to reflect, I've found myself hip-deep in middle-age. It happens to a lot of us. I realized that, in a likelihood, I've probably got as many games ahead of me as I do behind me. (It's possible this is inaccurate, as I did take ~20 years off from RPGs, but in the interest of an introspective post, let's just roll with that estimate.) I looked back at past campaigns, thinking, They were numerous, but the variety of RPG systems across them was very limited. Like many RPG hobbyists, I tend to collect a lot of game systems -- but, if I'm being honest with myself, there's not a very high chance that I'll actually spend much time (if any) playing those systems.

Admittedly, it's fun to simply collect RPG rulebooks, even if you're not going to necessarily play them all. And, if you're like me, you also get enjoyment out of reading them and expanding your awareness of the variety of rules and mechanics across the hobby. But, that's not ultimately why we're here: we're here to play or run them at the table. So this pause for reflection got me reading. I decided to read through all the rulebooks that I owned (in some cases, it was a quicker read, closer to skimming) so that I might identify my personal "core" games -- those that I turn to as favorites and that I'd be most likely to enjoy running for others. I began a survey of my collection to help me wrap my brain around exactly what I had, how each worked on the simplest level, and how much I valued each personally.

Many Resuscitations of the New Year!

After a long time away, I've returned to this blog, determined to reinvest myself in it and to share more content. It's kind of like a resolution for 2021. I have three formal resolutions, so I think this one really counts more as an "ancillary goal" than a true resolution. 

Still, it's the thought that counts. And I intend to do a lot of thinking about RPGs -- and then sharing of that thinking in this arena.

Buckle in, finish your drink, and prepare yourself psychologically. A new year awaits us.

RPG Tasting Menu #1: Low Fantasy Gaming

This session marked the start of my RPG Tasting Menu series. The idea here is that we would play a one-shot session of a particular game that we'd never played before, a way of test-driving the game and seeing how we liked it.

Low Fantasy Gaming

There is an important disclaimer that I should put front-and-center. I am a Patreon supporter of Stephen Grodzicki and Pickpocket Press, the creator and publisher behind Low Fantasy Gaming. I've been oddly drawn to this game ever since I stumbled across a listing for the original edition of it on Lulu, marked at an astonishingly reasonable price. The cover of the book, with its shadowy, hooded sentinels standing guard at the mountainside entrance to a dungeon, were a perfect reflection of my nostalgia-laced memories of childhood D&D campaigns. And the game's blend of specific genre trappings, grim black-and-white art, and interesting take on d20 mechanics were an instant appeal. So it's possible that I'm a less than disinterested and dispassionate reviewer. Nonetheless, the view expressed here are sincere and honest. Though I'm clearly familiar with the game itself, in the true spirit of the Tasting Menu, this was my first time running or playing LFG.

The following sections of this post contain spoilers for an adventure published for this RPG! Be warned before reading on.

RPG R&D: System Engine

This post is part of a series examining my ideas for a new sci-fi/horror RPG, Red Shift.

One important point that I feel I should lay out, right up front, is that I've recently decided to forego writing the Red Shift RPG. After some introspection, I decided that the world probably doesn't need one more tabletop RPG that badly -- especially with the sheer number of them that are being released in recent years. Even if it had been functional (I hope that I could have ultimately guaranteed at least that much from my design work), it wouldn't have been original enough in a new or challenging way. As a good friend said to me, right now, there are a lot of rulesets out there that aren't strongly supported with adventures or settings. So why would I create one more? That said, I intend to continue this series of posts because I think sharing the design work that I did complete would be useful as part of the overall conversation on RPGs. Plus, it might prove useful to someone who is considering creating an RPG, at least to perhaps provoke some critical inspection. With that out of the way, let's proceed with the first topic...

Hopefully, at the core of any successful RPG is a decently running engine, some kind of resolution mechanic that introduces randomness into and elicits engagement with the game. There are already a number of highly popular and extremely effective systems out there -- as well as a number of less popular ones.

SoSA Campaign #3: Haverford House

[This is the third reflection post on my gaming group's long-running Call of Cthulhu campaign, Sentinels of Strange Aeons. For a little more context, you can check out this earlier post.]

SESSION 3

Synopsis

Having dispatched Corbitt, the investigators turned their attention towards the nearby church that was potentially related to the Corbitt mystery: the Chapel of Contemplation and Church of Our Lord Voice of the Silent. They found the chapel in ruins, burnt down long ago. On a crumbling wall was a strange, painted symbol that caused uncomfortable, buzzing sensation in the investigators' heads when viewed, and, beneath the ruins, lay a basement strewn with skeletons and church records mentioning Corbitt.

The following day, the group returned to meet with Mr. Porter, but only found his associate, the younger man from the trolley, waiting for them. He finally introduced himself as Daniel "Cloddy" Barnhill and informed them that he was to take everyone to meet with Mr. Porter at another location. He drove them out of the city to the western suburb of Haverford, where they met Mr. Porter at an old farm house. He explained that he represented a secret organization, the Laterna Mortuis, which was dedicated to rooting out and eliminating inhuman, cosmic forces that threaten humanity, along with their malevolent human agents. Mr. Porter and Cloddy were ranked members of this ancient society (Porter being a "bishop," and Cloddy a lower-ranking "knight"). Bishops were tasked with overseeing a "House," a group of LM members who worked together, conducting investigations under the bishop's direction. By inducting the investigators into the LM, Mr. Porter wants to reopen Haverford House, the LM House that had operated at that site until 1910, when all of the House members were killed following a horrific incident at the farmhouse. Mr. Porter implored the investigators to join the group and help to ensure a future for humankind.

RPG R&D: Existential Questions

It seems it was, in many ways, inevitable. When you've turned a very particular corner in your gaming life and you make the decision to try your hand at designing an original RPG, one question is certain to arise: is it really worth it?

This is most definitely a well-trod path. In fact, I suspect that this is a path winding in close proximity to several other, similar paths within the same wood, all of them converging at the aforementioned corner. In the same way that most people reach a point in their lives when they question if they've made the right choice regarding career path, the RPG game designer almost certainly will -- and definitely should -- call up the specter of doubt to haunt their project. There are, after all, a lot of RPGs out there that bear a much-more-than-passing resemblance to one another.

Originally, I had the idea that I would make an augmented version of an existing RPG, take something that I felt had promise and expand or edit some of the rules, perhaps retool the setting a bit. There was a sci-fi game I found that, at first, seemed right for this treatment. But as I went along, I started to realize that it would really work better if I started from scratch and worked from the ground up. Thus, Red Shift was born.

A Die for All Sessions: Boxes & Basics

One of the first things that struck me about this series of posts is the inappropriateness of the title. "A Die for All Sessions" -- already, this is a pretty bad pun; or at least uncomfortably reminiscent of an eye-roll-inducing library conference presentation title. (why do librarians consistently view puns as the ideal means of conceptual first contact for their ideas?) Also, the title sort of implies that there is an ideal die (or set of dice) that will somehow meet the gaming needs of any and all tabletop situations, a Renaissance dice set that can cover all the bases -- when what I actually intent to discuss at some length is just the opposite. I plan to talk about the extensive (and, arguably, unnecessary) thought and aesthetic deliberation that has gone into the various dice purchases I've made.

Anyway--

SoSA Campaign #2: Work Release Program

[This is the second reflection post on my gaming group's long-running Call of Cthulhu campaign, Sentinels of Strange Aeons. For a little more context, you can check out this earlier post.]

SESSION 2

Synopsis
Having reached the subway surface platform, the trolley passengers were rounded up and shuttled off to the nearest police precinct. There, while everyone was divided into smaller groups to await questioning, the investigators were placed in a holding room with an NPC from the trolley, a man named Eric Garfield.

Before long, a strange man wearing a grey suit, fedora, bow tie, and eyeglasses (one lens darkened to cover a missing right eye) came to speak with them. He introduced himself as "Mr. Porter," and offered to get everyone in the room out of trouble with the police, provided they accompanied him for an hour. After sneaking out of the station, he escorted the investigators to an empty restaurant where he made them an offer. He would handle any issues they had with the police if they would assist him by looking into and resolving a problem: David McCullough, a West Philly landlord and associate of Mr. Porter's, managed a house in which recent tenants had developed violent tendencies and gone mad. Also present at the restaurant was a young man who had previously been a passenger on the trolley, involved in the strange encounter with the old woman, and who, it was now clear, was associated with Mr. Porter. The investigators agreed to look into the incidents and report back.