Make it Official

This year we just used a a freeplay room as a meeting place, but it was open to everyone, so we often had random board games and stuff going on. Next year indie RPGs could have a dedicated play space.

The top option would be to actually get a room set aside, like Games on Demand at GenCon. Hopefully right with the main freeplay rooms, not off in some corner or secret level.

The PAX 10 + 1

PAX, both the people and the organizers, are all about indie videogames. The PAX 10 list, 10 indie games that get floor space and coverage, would be an awesome place to see an indie RPG. Maybe in an extra slot, leaving the original PAX 10 for videogames with an extra slot or two for tabletop (RPGs and boardgames, I guess).

Timing

This year games pretty much happened when there was a critical mass of people ready to play. I hate the time slots used by cons like GenCon, but some type of schedule would help get people to show up when there are actually games to play.

So maybe the thing to do is to limit games to starting on the hour, unless the game is already absolutely full. That way prospective players and GMs can show up at a specific time without actually having to do time slots and all that junk. With enough GMs and some shorter games like Fiasco it should be easy to have at least one game starting every hour from noon till 10 or so.

Get With the Program

It’d be cool if some kind of ‘come here to play indie games’ info was in the event program. If we could get official space and/or a game in the PAX 10, that could pretty much take care of it.

More GMs

We were probably a little short on people to run games this year. I know a few people got badges by volunteering to demo for various retailers, if the indie games room becomes an official event maybe we can get some comped badges for people who run a minimum of games.

Paneling

In past years the Geeknights podcast guys have done a “Beyond D&D” panel that’s been great for introducing people to cool stuff like InSpectres, Dread, and Mouse Guard. They weren’t doing that at PAX Prime this year, so maybe we should step up and plan a new panel with a similar theme?

The other panel idea that might get some interest is something John and I tossed around for this year but never did: GMing Skills Live (lame title, awesome idea). This is similar to what the PA D&D game actually did, with a game run live in front of an audience. The difference would be that the game would be something indie and improv based (no planned dungeons) and that the audience would be able to ask questions about how the GM is running the game and have them answered during breaks in play. No idea how well it would work, but it has potential.

That’s what I’ve got. What are your ideas? What would you like to see at PAX (Prime or East) 2011? How can we make indie games really rock?

In the end it all turned out pretty well. I ran something like 8 or 9 games of Fiasco, which was by far our most requested game. After a while they all blurred together; I know I played a game with some people but I can’t remember what happened in the game. There was one game of Fiasco that took off so well I think they played for well over 2 hours, just because the scenes were playing out so well. Another game of Fiasco self-started, with people just grabbing the book and figuring it out as they went. We even had people just stick their heads into the room, ask where they could buy Fiasco, and then run off to try to buy it.

Talking to Jason Morningstar (the author of Fiasco) online afterwards, he sold 47 books, the entire stock at the show. I have no idea how much I contributed to that, but it’s pretty amazing to see an indie game sell that many copies at what’s primarily a video game con. Numbers like that would sound good for a small game at GenCon, at PAX it’s phenomenal.

PAX was definitely my game of the con, in terms of both quality and quantity, but Dungeon World made a decent showing too. John Harper even called it his game of the con (at least before his Saturday night Apocalypse World game), he ran two sessions and everyone had good things to say along with some great feedback. I managed to run a short game of Dungeon World, along with some Burning Wheel, but both were on Sunday and suffered a little from low energy on my part.

We even had a couple of celebrity cameos. Wil Wheaton stopped by to talk to Will Hindmarch, who was playing Dungeon World with John Harper. I know it’s a longshot, but hey, Wil Wheaton might know something about my game. Mike/Gabe from Penny Arcade also walked through the room, but I didn’t recognize him in time to talk to him. Oh well.

Overall, a pretty amazing weekend for indie games. Now to plan for next year.

from Promethea #3. Words by Alan Moore, art by J.H. Williams III.

JLA - Strength In Numbers

Strength In Numbers sees a new villain, Prometheus, take apart the team; the JLA stopping a mad science experiment from destroying the laws of probability; a quick stint as slaves on the planet Raan under supposed hero Adam Strange; and a trip into dreams to stop Starro the Conqueror from, uh, conquering.

JLA - Justice For All

Justice For All finishes the run up to Morrison’s ultimate JLA story with a few more short arcs and one good crossover. We get the military-industrial-superhero complex gone wild under General Eiling and the Ultramarine Corpse (another awesomely horrible Grant Morrison name), a labored story from Mark Millar, a team-up with the Justice Society to repel an invasion from the fifth dimension, a tie-in to a Batman event, and a brief look at what the pale martians have been doing since their defeat in issue four.

So, what’s notable in these issues? Well, first things first: Batman totally gets beat in single combat by Prometheus. The entire concept behind Prometheus is kind of a twisted Batman: instead of good parents gunned down by criminals, Prometheus has criminal parents gunned down by police. Instead of honing his body to perfection, he programs his nervous system by inserting CDs into his helmet. Instead of a dark hole underground, his hideout is a crooked house in the infinite white expanse of the Still Zone.

All that, and Prometheus beats Batman in a fight which happens mostly off-panel. I was talking to Ryan Macklin (from the internet) at GenCon about Batman and he suggested that Batman’s character sheet would have two abilities:

1. Batman always ties
2. In case of a tie, Batman wins

Apparently that doesn’t apply here. It’s an odd beat to the story, but it works to make Prometheus seem like a real threat. Morrison really takes advantage of the team book structure here, allowing a villain to take down a character that is known to be ‘the best at what they do’ to set up a threat which can eventually be beaten by the team as a whole. It wouldn’t work as well in a solo book, but it’s one of the best scenes here.

The warped probability story is also one that sticks in my memory, and it’s not event a Morrison plot  - Mark Waid fills in for a few issues through these volumes, including this arc. The sheer absurdity of the pseudo-science setup where a scientist breaks the natural order of the universe by manipulating the split halves of seven protons to control probability gives the entire thing a Silver Age feel that ends up working pretty well. This kind of crazy setup is so key to the comic feel, any game system should really help setup that kind of story.

Speaking of high concept: a star fish from space shows up and conquers North America through dreams. This arc provides a line quoted in Icons that got me thinking about this whole superhero/comic/game setup. Icons looks at this story where Superman, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman go into a dream in which they’re powerless as a statement about resolve. I don’t really see that, the story is all about the iconic nature of the heroes. Sure, they have resolve, but the story is really about the belief a kid has in the heroes to save him, and how that belief grants them the power to do it in this crazy dream state.

The other high point of these volumes is the conflict with the fifth dimension. Morrison manages to tie together Mr. Mxyzptlk, an old Aquaman villain, a forgotten Justice League Task Force character, and Johnny Thunder’s Thunderbolt into a great plot that actually gives every character something to do. This kind of reincorporation is the halmark of continuity comics, to create that feeling in the moment at the table is a real challenge.

Gaming Idea

A lot of the stories in these volumes focus on the nature of the team, expanding the roster and reincorporating aspects of continuity. A superhero team game could have a roster of characters with a few being chosen for any given session. Sure, Batman is an amazing hero, but if he’s not in the spotlight he can be taken out by Prometheus. Maybe the GM has to use characters established in past sessions by default too, spending some kind of points to bring in new threats. Villains we’ve seen before come back in new plots, heroes guest star, it’s all in this crazy shared authorship world.

Once the chaos of PAX is all done, I’ll put together a post with some thoughts on the changes, why we made them, and what’s next.

from Promethea #3. Words by Alan Moore, art by J.H. Williams III.

JLA - Rock of Ages

Moving right along through Grant Morrison and Howard Porter’s amazing run on JLA, we get to the first of a handful of big arcs Morrison pulls off.

Spanning six issues, the Rock of Ages arc starts off with the threat of a new Injustice Gang, led by Lex Luthor and made up of some of worst villains from each hero’s rogue’s gallery. The plot soon splits into two threads: the Injustice Gang’s assault, which Luthor runs as a hostile takeover, and the quest that spans timespace to find the Philosopher’s Stone before it falls into the hands of the evil god Darkseid.

This is the first arc where there’s really two solid plots going on at once. Either one could stand on its own, but as a whole it really sings. As the JLA grows (they picked up Green Arrow during the last arc and gain a few more members at the end of this one) the book becomes more and more an ensemble piece, as each character gets less screen time. Something like this could work in a game, particularly if the players are drawing from a pool of heroes, kind of like the Ars Magica troupe style play.

The structure of the two stories is particularly great. The first three issues of the arc split their focus between Luthor’s takeover and the quest for the stone, but parts four and five take place all in the future, returning to the present for the final issue. It’s a cool story-within-a-story, where parts four and five can be read on their own as a fairly satisfying plot.

Morrison also deals with the happenings in other books just about as well as can be hoped. Between the first and second issue of this arc the DCU had a big crossover event, Superman’s powers change over the course of the series, and all those events are reflected just enough to make this book part of a whole but not so much you have to know anything about what’s going on in the broader DCU. It’s kind of all the upsides to continuity comics thrown together, with very few of the downsides.

Not to repeat myself, but during the last arc I brought up how crazy a concern about putting Batman and Superman in the same book is, and this arc continues that trend. Batman saves the league with, of all things, his business knowledge (Luthor wasn’t counting on someone as familiar with hostile takeovers as he is: Bruce Wayne). In the future, Batman has defeated a god, and the heroes that finally take down Darkseid are Green Arrow and the Atom. Yes, the big bad is eventually taken down by a guy with trick arrows and someone who can shrink, and it’s awesome. A task-oriented game like DC Adventures makes ‘human’ heroes walking next to aliens and mutants seem out of place, but that isn’t really how this comic works.

I also want to point out that, with the exception of a few panels in the first issue, we’ve never seen the JLA out of costume so far. This take on the JLA is really about epic heroes, the whole secret identity shtick just never needs to come into play to make that work.

Gaming Idea

Not a new idea per se, but a riff on something Spirit of the Century already does: a comics game should really embrace the issue metaphor. Advancement can be tied to what’s happening in a hero’s solo title, crossovers and previous appearances can be referenced. Nothing in this arc is entirely new, all the villains and heroes are established players in the DCU, which is essentially a playground shared by all the company’s writers. A game that reflects that style really has to allow for the same kind of shared playground, where each writer is writing new stuff using each other’s creations.