Great gaming locations aren’t born on trees… some are in the woods

Four weeks ago, my Old Guys Gaming group held our semi-annual gaming get together at the University of Denver’s Mt. Evans Field Station. The field station is an alpine research facility located at the base of Mt. Evans near Idaho Springs, Colorado. Situated at an elevation of 3260 meters (10.6K ft), the station is not a traditional gaming locale.

For a semi-annual gathering, the location is ideal. The dormitory building can house twenty or more people. Our group is much smaller allowing everyone a bit of space and privacy during the extended weekends. Unlike a hotel, you need not worry about annoying people next door. The closest neighbor you could encounter is someone else staying in the house about 50 yards away. Gaming into the wee hours will not disturb anyone.

The visit in May was our third outing to the field station. In addition to the other amenities, the field station is very inexpensive. The rate, as of this writing, is $150 minimum or $25/person/night. Far less than the cost of a hotel.

The cost and amenities have made the field station our de facto locale since our original stay in April 2010. The low cost was discussed several times. Every attendee has agreed the cost is below the value. I wanted to make an extra contribution for this visit to help with the ever increasing costs. I was not alone.

At the end of the stay, Randall, Wheels, and I settled up for the final stay. We left a little extra to support the location beyond the minimum. Our host was just as happy as we were. His thankful response included,

Whow! [sic] Your generosity on behalf of the station is greatly appreciated. You have a season pass at the station!

We might make it back this year, we may not. Still, adding a little extra to the pot so the field station will be there next time is well worth the expense. Thanks fellas for making it possible.

A little generosity goes a long ways.

Mobile Layout Enhancements

I’ve been slow to jump on the modern smart phone wagon. As of last week, I’m the owner of a new Android phone. After the new wore off, I finally got around to updating my WordPress installation with a plugin to automatically detect and change the layout for mobile users. It works nicely. The appearance is clean and simple; exactly what I desired.

Thanks to the folks at BraveNewCode for the WPtouch and WPtouch-Pro plugins for WordPress. The non-pro version is free and works nicely. The pro variant has a dazzling array of options. I’m unlikely to ever use or need the majority of them. Programmers need a few bucks to buy beer and banana’s so I opted for the pro version.

The pro variant supports WP3.0 menus. Menu support is not crucial at the moment. If I get around to updating the rest of the site with mobile layouts, having the menu support will be very useful. I intend to investigate the Web-App framework to see if it would be a viable mobile layout for my generators.

Even if you haven’t plunged into the mobile world, I’d recommend considering a plugin to support the visitors to your blog who have. Adding aesthetically pleasing support is easier than ever.

Introspection: Skills as a Game Master

I’ve spent a lot of hours as a game master. I’ve run numerous systems ranging from classic fantasy games to post apocalyptic settings. Pure hours of running or the range of systems doesn’t make me a stellar GM. I do many things well but the list of things I do poorly is just as long.

Analysing yourself is about as enjoyable as a root canal. If you want to improve at anything, critically identifying weaknesses and strengths is useful.

Weaknesses

1. Big Picture: I am not a grand vision game master. I do not plot or plan story arcs spanning more than a couple of sessions. If players want to have world encompassing impact, I’m not the guy they want running the game. Thankfully, I don’t write fiction otherwise I’d be perpetually assaulted with 1 star ratings.
2. Preparation: Traditionally, I’ve been a very open sandbox style GM. When I do prepare materials, I expend a minimal amount of effort. The likelihood of the material never being played is always lurking in the back of my mind. Making a best effort would improve play. I need to improve on prep work and find ways of making the material interesting to the players.
3. Auto Sandbox: Being overly open isn’t always the solution. This ties into the big picture and preparation topics. If I commit myself to a solid, introduction to the games, player adoption will come quickly. Leaving people adrift with little guidance is just as bad as forcing them down the rails of a pre-planned adventure.
4. NPCs: The majority of my non-player characters are little more than rough sketches. I realize interesting NPC’s can be a major role play driver but somehow I rarely take the time to make them engaging either as allies, acquaintances or enemies. Fleshing out the personalities and involvement with the player characters adds significant potential for roleplay.

Mediocre

1. Defacto Game Master: Both a weakness and a strength, I have often volunteered to run games when no one else was willing. Running blind (no-prep, no-story, auto-sandbox), does not translate into an enjoyable session. It can on occasion but many of the games flounder. This is less of a weakness today as it was in years past since my group has found many other non-rpg games to fill the dead space.

Strengths

1. Flexibility: I’ll give any game a whirl. I have a bent for wanting to try out new stuff. I never planned on running Boot Hill or Cyberpunk. Somehow I ended up doing so. Nothing wrong with that other than what I’ve already mentioned in the Defacto section. Sometimes it works. Alternatively, the group learns they really don’t want to play the system.
2. Player Engagement: I pick up on player engagement fairly quickly. If a session is foundering, I’ll kabosh it rather than continuing to brutalize players with boredom. Sometimes the decision is merciless. Tact could be improved on occasion. If a game is failure, I believe it better to terminate quickly and move on. For games going well, the players who are engaged in the game get the majority of my attention. I’ll try to engage the straggler for a while in a game session.
3. Character Engagement: When players spend the time to generate characters with history and goals, I incorporate them into my games. Especially when players actively point out the nuances of the character prior to game play. Adapting to the character quirks adds a lot of depth for both the player and I. Too many game systems fail to encourage history and quirks. When a character is generated above and beyond the basic system, paying attention to what they envision opens doors. Role play doesn’t come from skeleton characters based off a draw of the card.
4. Criticism: When I suck, my players are welcome to tell me I do. Everyone fails. I listen and try to incorporate the feedback if it is relevant. I’ve screwed up badly as a game master on several occasions. When it happens, I laugh at myself along with everyone else. Being perfect is impossible and laughing at myself is good therapy.

I have no illusions. At times, I’m a pretty good GM. On other occasions, I fail miserably. Every game and session is different. I aim to improve on where I lack and be humble when corrected. As long as everyone is having fun, life is good.

Up yours, Google.

I love Google. I really do. I really hate some of the assumptions they make… Take commenting on a Blogger blog with a Google ID:

Then you get crap like this:

Like many, I don’t need 417 different identities I need to track. I certainly don’t need another blog when all I want to do is comment on yours. So I wanted to comment but failed. Such is life. I don’t need another identity, yet another blog.

Blackberry Mead

Yet another batch of mead. Pretty much the same as the grocery store mead except I used White Labs Sweet Mead yeast rather than Fleischmans and I added around a pound of blackberries. Additionally, the orange went in with the peel unlike the prior batch.

The blackberries were from the freezer section of the grocery store. I let them nearly thaw then tossed them in the blender. If I had a small brewing pail, I may have placed them in a cheesecloth bag rather than adding them directly. I plan to add a second round of berries when I rack into the secondary to augment the fruit flavor.

I’m also giving the balloon method a try for an airlock. I should know how well its going to work within a day or so.

Grocery Store Mead

Conversations at Convergence always vary widely. Randall and I were talking about brewing at one point and I mentioned I’d been thinking about trying a batch of mead. From what I’d seen, brewing mead was far simpler than beer but thought it took quite a while longer for the fermentation and ageing. He thought it would be nice to try. The idea was still ticking about in the back of my head on Monday so I did some research.

Mead is an interesting drink. I like it on occasion but really didn’t want to start with a five gallon batch. Several sites I read mentioned 1 gallon batches as an easy way to get started along with a variety of recipes. The primary components for a batch of mead are water, honey, and yeast. Yeast varieties vary for beer brewing and mead brewing has several choices as well from what I read. Then I stumbled on stormthecastle.com’s page: How to make some Mead today -the cheap, fast, and easy way.

I already needed to visit the grocery store. So along with the other necessities, I picked up the water, yeast, honey, balloons, oranges, and raisins. The total additional cost was $14.78, the bulk of which was honey. A Colorado brand was on sale so I chose it over the store brand, which added a minor amount of cost. Also, it turned out one of my beer airlocks fit the water jug nicely so I didn’t need to buy the balloons.

The instructions are pretty clear except for one thing. I wasn’t sure if the orange was sliced with or without the peel. After watching one of his videos, I discovered its peel and all. Mine is missing the peel but the orange is apparently optional. The omission of the peel will likely not add as much acidity but should be fine. I also added a cinnamon stick and a bit of vanilla bean. Spices are crazy expensive but both were on sale. For the amounts I used, the cost elevated by a couple of dollars.

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The Munchkin Zombie Infection Continues

Somewhere in between games of Magic and Munchkin Zombies at Convergence, Steve Jackson Games announced Munchkin Zombies 2 – Armed and Dangerous. The expansion set will be released in August. I enjoyed Munchkin Zombies but not quite as much as Munchkin the first time I played it. The really strange and oddball stuff didn’t seem as common as in the original. Likely, the added expansion sets in Wheel’s Munchkin collection added more flavor. I’m pretty sure he can make room for an additional 112 cards when they come out. Especially if he adds a Box of Holding. At the rate he’s acquiring cards, he’s going to need a suitcase just for them. Beyond the original and the Zombies he also brought along Star Munchkin, which was a cool twist. Munchkin is definitely on the list of card games to fill in the gaps between roleplaying sessions.

Other Convergence Madness

To fill out the Steve Jackson Games section, I picked up Zombie Dice at Bonnie Brae Hobby Shop before heading out for the weekend. The game is just as advertised – fast, fun and engaging. Even after reading the lightweight rules a couple of times, I still spaced out on playing out the final round. Including it would have made several of the games much more interesting.

In tandem with my Zombie Dice purchase, Randall was sucked into buying Wench! A Drinking Man’s Thinking Game. The card game appeared to be a juvenile, crazy paced card game at first glance. In the right mood, it might be a cool game but it is overly complicated for just playing off the cuff. The premise was sound, albeit crazy, but the playability languished. The game was worth several laughs. The game designer was thinking ahead — the cards can be used as a normal deck of cards. The artwork is pretty good if you enjoy the style.

Dozens of games of Magic the Gathering rounded out the card play. The highlight was 3 different decks designed to force drawing and discarding along with the associated pain. I couldn’t begin to count how many of those games we played but even starting at 40 didn’t keep one alive for more than a handful of rounds most games. Duelling might be fun but laughing as you get your ass handed to you round after round due to multiple players was crazy fun.