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Art of the Genre: A Gaming Family Tree

Art of the Genre: A Gaming Family Tree

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Sir Fleetwood: Basic Edition Fighter, Level 30, Art by Jeff Easley
Sir Fleetwood: Basic Edition Fighter, Level 30, Art by Jeff Easley

I began my journey here at Black Gate telling everyone that I was a gamer, a lifer as I put it, and that’s something I just can’t seem to shake. It all began when I was in junior high school, very early eighties, and with that damnable Red Box… but that isn’t to say that there weren’t thousands of others who did the same things I did concerning the D&D hobby in their school years.

What makes me different is that I still play today, but again, I’m not alone in that either as sites like Dragonsfoot help link like-minded, and yes ‘old’, gamers into an online world where they can still discuss the trials and tribulations of gaming life.

[Note: True story, I was on Dragonsfoot last week and someone asked a question about the module B3 Palace of the Silver Princess. I answered the question and added a bit about the nasty trick in the room in question. Bam! I get jumped all over for not posting a spoiler alert on my answer… for a thirty-year old D&D module! We old gamers take our hobby seriously I guess.]

But back to the point, I salute anyone who can continue a hobby for thirty years. Like most things started in youth most people will simply grow out of such simple passions. For me, however, a deep love of history and art kept me involved in gaming, along with a good deal of chance.

To tell this story, I’m going to provide a history, but for the art side of things I’ve gone to great lengths to recruit all the friends I’ve made in this industry the past two years as a visual guide. To me there is a symbiosis involved, and one cannot truly appreciate the tale without the visual additions, because any good fantasy tale deserves some wondrous illustration.

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Eat Flaming Laser Death: An Evening of RoboRally

Eat Flaming Laser Death: An Evening of RoboRally

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roborallyThese are good times for board gamers.

After the death of Avalon Hill as an independent game publisher (its remnants were purchased by Hasbro in 1998), it sure seemed like the era of the board game was over.  SPI, FASA, Task Force Games, GDW, Yaquinto, West End Games, Fantasy Games Unlimited, Mayfair Games, TSR, and finally Avalon Hill… the leading lights of board game design in the 20th Century had all perished by the end of the 90s. It looked like those of us who loved to move cardboard counters around abstract hex grids were relegated to paying ridiculous prices for out-of-print copies on eBay.

But that was before Fantasy Flight proved there was still life in board games yet, with a stellar line up of beautifully produced — and profitable — titles. Mayfair Games returned from the dead, phoenix-like, with the English language rights to the blockbuster Settlers of Catan. Wizards of the Coast purchased TSR and built on their rich tradition with D&D-inspired board games like The Conquest of Nerath (read Scott Taylor’s terrific review here). And, surprise of surprises, Hasbro has kept the Avalon Hill name alive, putting out high quality games like Battle Cry and Axis and Allies.

So on a Sunday night when I’ve managed to pull Tim and Drew, my two teenage sons, away from Gears of War 3 and sit them down at the gaming table, I find I actually have a choice of intriguing modern games to offer them. Should we go for complex and fascinating, like Axis and Allies? Colorful and fun, like Descent: Journeys in the Dark? Quick and light, like Cheapass Games’ Kill Doctor Lucky?

Rhetorical question, of course. When one of the choices involves lasers, killer robots, and blowing each other up in a frenetic race for mechanized glory, the answer is pretty much a foregone conclusion. It was RoboRally in a landslide.

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The Seven Greyhawk Classics of the Ancient World

The Seven Greyhawk Classics of the Ancient World

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against-the-giants1I’ve been pretty hard on Greyhawk novels. They’ve been the butt of more than a few jokes — both mine and others — from those of us who enjoy reviewing and talking about the fantasy genre.

I’m generally pretty forgiving, especially with novels of adventure fantasy. What can I tell you — I’m a fan.  But when books can’t be bothered to clamber over the very low bar of my expectations, I’m as capable of a harsh review as anyone.

The novels of Gary Gygax — and in particular his Greyhawk books — routinely limboed under that bar with room to spar, and I’ve said as much in print several times over the years.

Now, I’m second to none in my admiration of Gygax. I consider the man one of the great creative minds of the 20th Century, full stop.

I believe his work with D&D and Advanced D&D — especially the original hardback rules, and the incredibly inventive adventure modules that accompanied them, such as Descent into the Depths of the Earth and The Temple of Elemental Evil — was directly responsible for the mainstream acceptance of fantasy, as manifested in modern role playing obsessions like World of Warcraft and Warhammer.

But his novels?  Poo poo.

tomb-of-horrorsHowever, Gygax wasn’t the only one to pen Greyhawk novels.

Some of them — especially the so-called Greyhawk Classics published in honor of TSR’s 25th anniversary — are remembed quite fondly.

Written by Paul Kidd, Ru Emerson, Keith Francis Strohm, and Thomas M. Reid, and based on some of TSR’s most famous adventure modules, including Against the Giants, Tomb of Horrors, and Keep on the Borderlands, the seven Greyhawk Classic novels formed a nostalgic return to some of the most fondly-remembered adventure settings in gaming.

They were published in mass market paperback by TSR (later Wizards of the Coast) between July 1999 and February 2002, beginning with Against the Giants and ending with Tomb of Horrors.

Here’s the other thing you need to know about the Greyhawk Classic novels: you can’t have them.

They’re among the most collectible D&D novels ever published, and that’s saying something.

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Art of the Genre: Concepts of a Fallen Vanguard

Art of the Genre: Concepts of a Fallen Vanguard

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Brom makes beauty out of death like only he can
Brom makes beauty out of death like only he can
Last week I wrote about art direction in a film, primarily a film that failed, but that certainly isn’t the only such place where an unfortunate failure can happen. I recently had the opportunity to go to Oceanside California and share a lunch with Nick Parkinson a former developer on the Sony Online Entertainment MMORPG Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

Now I’d had some limited experience with Vanguard back in about 2008. In a former life I took part in Sony’s Star Wars Galaxies circa 2003, and a friend of mine convinced me to come over to Vanguard and say hello many years later. Since it was only eight months after Vanguard’s release, I figured I’d oblige, so I went to a local Gamestop and asked the clerk where I could find the game. He actually laughed in my face.

Come to find out Vanguard had been a colossal bomb, so much so that you couldn’t even find a retail copy less than a year after it hit the shelves. In fact, Wikipedia lists Vanguard’s awards as: Gamespy awarded Vanguard the “Biggest Disappointment” award for 2007. Vanguard also won the awards in the categories for “Least Fun”, “Most Desolate” and “Lamest Launch” in the MMORPG.com MMOWTF Awards for the worst games of 2007

[Note: As bad as this game may or may not have been, there is absolutely no way it could have been a complete failure in every way like Final Fantasy XIV. That is hands down the worst MMORPG ever released on the mass market.]

Still, even after being thrown out of the store, I eventually I found a version and loaded it up. Thinking I’d meet up with my uber experienced friend, I purchased a full-blown max level character from a clearing house site and was ready to roll! What happened? I promptly fell off a pier in the city my avatar originated, drowned, and lost all my items….

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Game Review: Ikusa

Game Review: Ikusa

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ikusa-300Long ago, in the days of parachute pants and phones with cords, I became addicted to Milton Bradley’s Gamemaster Series of board games. Games such as Axis and Allies, Conquest Empire, Broadsides & Boarding Parties, and Fortress America taking up large blocks of time on Saturday’s all through junior high and high school.

Little did I know the intrigue of big business hijinks going on behind the scenes where my absolute favorite board games were concerned. In 1984 the venerable and one-hundred and twenty year-old Milton Bradley Company was bought out by the gaming giant Hasbro. This moved the GMS [Gamemaster Series] games under a new banner, and when Hasbro acquired the publishing name of Avalon Hill in 1998, the GMS began being published there.

Funny side note: My first ever official interview with a game company came in 1997 with Avalon Hill when it was still independent and located in the industrial district of Baltimore. It was a surreal experience, going on an interview at Applebees and having to answer questions like ‘who was your most powerful role-playing character?’ and ‘tell me about your best gaming moment?’ Yeah, I didn’t get the job, but it was still pretty cool.

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Gen Con 2011: Day 2 Recap – Revenge of the Sith

Gen Con 2011: Day 2 Recap – Revenge of the Sith

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darthelijahThe force is strong with this one, it seems. Yes, that’s my beloved son, taking his first steps toward a larger, more gamer-filled world, as he becomes a temporary apprentice to Lord Vader. (Don’t ask me why the Rebel Alliance officer is standing near them. It just doesn’t fit continuity!)

The second day of Gen Con was our family day, as I took my son and wife to the convention with me. This day is was lot more leisurely paced than yesterday, because we spent more time being selective and sitting down to demo games, because with a six-year-old, you really have to be a bit more picky. He’ll lose patience if you’re chatting up designers about setting specifics. He wants some action, and if he doesn’t get it, there will eventually be a meltdown. With summer ending, we’ve been in meltdown territory for the last couple of weeks anyway, so it was touch and go, but we found enough games for him to get up to speed on quickly that it kept him highly engaged.

One game that we found very interesting, though not particularly fantastic (in the narrative sense of being fantasy-driven) was Bears! from Fireside Games. This dice-based game aims to simulate a bear attack during a camping trip … so, you know, it teaches helpful life lessons, as well. Depending on different die combinations, the players are able to escape the rampaging bears by shooting them, running away, or sleeping contentedly in their tents. However, if there are more bears left over when this is all done, then those sleeping in tents get eaten and lose points instead of gaining them.

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Gen Con 2011: Day 1 Recap

Gen Con 2011: Day 1 Recap

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Did I say I was an unapologetic geek? My wife, Amber, offered our son to a dragon at GenCon!
Did I say I was an unapologetic geek? My wife, Amber, offered our son to a dragon at GenCon!

It’s that time of the year again, when all the good little gamers gather in Indianapolis to explores the exhibitor’s booths and discover treasures, new and old. I speak, of course, of Gen Con Indianapolis, the “Best Four Days in Gaming.”

If you recall from last year’s report (see Gen Con 2010 Reflections if you don’t recall), I had a lot of fun last year, mostly because I now have a family to take and with whom I could share the experience.

They also prove useful bait for dragons. (Just kidding. No infants were harmed in the making of this blog!)

Today, however, was all about me. I trekked into Indianapolis to experience the first day of the convention on my own, basically blasting through the Exhibit Hall and trying to look at every booth to find if there was anything interesting for me to report back on.
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Art Evolution 2011: Janet Aulisio

Art Evolution 2011: Janet Aulisio

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obsidiman_merchant-254Art Evolution continues with the second entry into this exclusive club for 2011, but if you’ve missed any of the other contributors you can find them here.

I can’t remember the first time I saw a Janet Aulisio piece of art, but I presume it was in the pages of FASA’s Shadowrun RPG in 1992. Like most games of the era, interior work was done in black and white line art [although FASA was the first to include color plates which took the product to whole new levels of RPG design]. Janet, for her part, was tasked with adding a different level of art to the games 2nd Edition and her technique stood out in a style I like to refer to as ‘art of the scratch’.

This is a kind of Russ Nicholson school of art, a concept where ink is used in every aspect of the picture, even the negative space. White is almost seen as an enemy, and Janet herself has said ‘I’m like any other artist, greedy for lots of space to spread my art’.

Oddly, I was instantly taken with her style. I note this as ‘odd’ because to that point I’d been a kind of beauty purist, a clean image always more appealing to me than sketchy stuff. I can only guess that by 1992 my former ‘teenage eye’ was being replaced by something more accepting of a larger world of artistic style.

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Art of the Genre: An Interview with Matthew D. Wilson

Art of the Genre: An Interview with Matthew D. Wilson

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iron-kingdoms-254Once again I get a chance show you all the inner workings of the Black Gate LA offices. Yep, it’s always about living the dream, so I hope you enjoy the view.

After having finally convinced my secretary, Kandline, that cosplaying an elf wasn’t required when she challenged me to afternoon games of Conquest of Nerath, I sat back in my chair and watched a trio of surfers try to catch some rather pathetic waves rolling in along our bit of the Redondo beachfront. From across the hall I could hear Ryan Harvey spouting copious amounts of venom toward Peter Jackson and his newest release of dwarf images for the upcoming Hobbit adaptation, something along the lines of ‘Rankin and Bass will be rolling over in their graves about now!’ a consistent theme.

Enter the dreaded buzz from the front desk. Yep, John O’Neill was at it again, this time his rather brief list of demands of the west coast offices ending in my traveling up the 405 to Santa Monica for an interview with Privateer Press Creative Director Matt Wilson.

Now if you know one certain fact about Matt, it’s that he’s a kind of workaholic. I dig that about him, and while he’s no longer in the Pacific Northwest exclusively doing Privateer work, his mind is ever pushing for bigger and better things at that gaming company.

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Sword Noir: A Role-playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery

Sword Noir: A Role-playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery

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conan-cityImagine Conan in Shadizar, meeting with a beautiful woman calling herself Fortuna who pays him to find Thuris, the man who kidnapped her younger sister. Conan accepts the woman’s coin but finds himself in the middle of double and triple crosses as Fortuna — known as Brigid the Bold in the underworld — seeks for the Falcon of Maltus along with her betrayed confederates, Jubliex Cairo, Wilmer the Younger, and Gutmar.

Think of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser hired by the powerful merchant Sternwood to scare ne’er-do-well Geiger away from the merchant’s daughter Carmen, only to be caught up in blackmail, murder, kidnapping, and family secrets.

Yes, those were the plots of The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep using three of the iconic characters of sword & sorcery. That’s what I’d call Sword Noir, and that’s what I called the role-playing game I just published, subtitled A Role-playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery.

Sword Noir is a game now, but it started as something a little more than a conceit and little less than a genre. Basically, I attempted to give some kind of short-hand to the stories I wrote.

sword-noirAs usual, the kind of stories I was reading and writing bled into the kind of games I was playing, and this took me down a path I did not expect. I ended cobbling together a system that was purpose built to play “sword noir.” In order to do that, I had to define the term.

This is what I came up with: Characters’ morals are shifting at best and absent at worst. The atmosphere is dark and hope is frail or completely absent. Violence is deadly and fast.

The characters are good at what they do, but they are specialists. Trust is the most valued of commodities – life is the cheapest.

Grim leaders weave labyrinthine plots which entangle innocents. Magic exists and can be powerful, but it takes extreme dedication to learn, extorts a horrible price, and is slow to conjure.

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