D&D 4E & Essentials

Now I know that the bulk of the good folk who skim my blog don't play D&D 4E. Regardless, after flipping through Heroes of Shadow at my local store it was weird to see a book that had character options laid out more like Essentials but without that tag on the book AND in the large hardcover format.
I'll be honest, my initial reaction was screw you WotC, you've now resolved to lying to your customer base by trying to sell an Essentials book to a non Essentials fan. I've picked up the Essentials Rules Compendium as it's the 4e rule set with all of the eratta. I haven't read anything from the Essentials DM Kit or Monsters Vault and am not sure how they might differ from the "standard" 4E DM Guides and Monster Manuals from a mechanical stand point.
Is the Essentials line really 4.5? Not really. I see it as Wizards trying to make roping in the new guy less intimidating and with "simplified" leveling up that I guess is more akin to 1st Ed(?). Unfortunately, it seems like the end result was mostly just another line in the sand to be drawn for many. Personally, I've only experienced Essentials at Wednesday Night Encounters. The folk who play it love it. I've enjoyed it when I do go out to play. What needs to happen is for Essentials to stop being viewed by the players as another game but as another way for Character Classes to advance when they level up. But from my personal experience, I've never seen or actually heard about any table that has a combination of players who've built their characters from the Players Handbooks AND the Essentials books. The guilty forces in my opinion? The mindset of the optimizer/power gamer.

Mouse Guard: Making The "Mundane" Terrifying

Oh look, it's raining. Meh oh well, just means it'll be depressing if I have to go outside. Well, to a mouse, that same rain drop is now the size of a basketball ball. Everyone has a concept of the dangers that are present in Mouse Guard because we simply take the things we know about "nature" and make it much much bigger. It makes for a solid foundation unlike the fantasy or fiction elements that fill our fantasy world. From a GM perspective, it's great to know that everyone at the table will probably know what I'm talking about since most of it is based on reality. This awareness came about as we talked about some of the over the top settings that have shown up in D&D and my friend Erin talking about how easy it is to just to do stuff in Mouse Guard whereas if presented an open sand box in Cartoon Action Hour she wasn't sure what all was available to her in the world of ________ (insert name of made up cartoon world).

It's The People At The Table That Keep Me Doing This

I'm sure most of us have gone through periods where you just don't care about the games you're running and prepping for that next session feels like doing homework for a school assignment. I've been in that mode since January. Happened to me in D&D after Christmas and that ended. I thought about just dropping Mouse Guard before it even started when it became so hard to schedule that first session. Fortunately for me, two of my friends' enthusiasm to play kept me from just scrapping the idea. We finally all sat down to play after over a month of rescheduling. I'll be honest, up until the moment that we started to play, I was just kind of there. But once we started role-playing, I might have been the happiest guy in the world.
Sure, prepping for a game can be a huge chore but to be able to escape into a make-believe world with them for a few hours makes it all worthwhile.

What Happened Today? Mouse Guard Happened. My Impression.

Sunday Sunday Sunday! I've been wanting to play Mouse Guard for quite awhile now and today it took place. I woke up, got ready, headed to the grocery store, went to my LFCGS to hang out for a bit with two friends who were playing Hordes before the store opened, picked up a friend and then off to the host's home. Haha actually, everyone who lives in that house (four people) is playing Mouse Guard; My buddy, his younger brother, his girlfriend and her best friend. To round out the patrol; two friends whom we know through the LFCGS.
Erin made us a delicious brunch and after doing some finishing touches to our character gens, we were ready to play. While I've never ran anything as a DM/GM outside of D&D 4E, I was very pleased at how easy Mouse Guard is to prep. You essentially have the following things you can throw at the Guard Mice; Weather/Seasons, Wilderness, Other Mice and Wild Animals. The book recommends pitting two of the four at the patrol and have some twists on stand by. And when you scale things down to a mouse, EVERYTHING can be terrifying when a drop of rain is the size of your arm and Turtles are larger than tanks.
While the party had good skills in its ranks, it was primarily was formed around getting as much drama between the players with much opportunity to cause trouble through curiosity, being naive and douchebaggery. Fortunately for us, playing with your characters' goals, beliefs, instincts and against them are beneficial to earning rewards in the Mouse Guard system. Heavy roleplay is highly encouraged in the mechanics itself and not being rules heavy and quite flexible in most areas. Those who are playing purely for character development, plot and atmosphere will not have to be afraid of a ton of rules crunch to play. The thing I found odd, is the amount of times that we had to flip through the book to check things out when you realize how few actual rules the game has.
I had a lot of fun and it was great to be playing and not having half of the table try to break the game through the biggest uber combo that could come out during combat or making skill test versus obstacles.
Playing out combat without the use of minis much to my surprise, is actually something I really enjoyed. All in all, a great experience and I'm looking forward to play again in two weeks and Erin's going to make waffles. I could go into details of the session but overall I just wanted to commit to getting my thoughts of the feel of the game.

Mouse Guard RPG
Pros:
-quick session prep
-reward system really encourages roleplaying
-passing AND failing skill checks contribute to advancing
-non-gamers can have a blast playing without having to learn a lot of rules
-conflicts easily turn into nail biters (in fact I was going to hold back and my players had to remind me that they're playing mice, and it was my job as the gm/ controller of the world to be constantly kicking the crap out of them)

Cons:
-conflict rules can feel too abstract at times
-from a D&D 4E background, I have to be careful not to let things potentially turn into a skill challenge by throwing out rolls against obstacles
-conflict's inherent rock-paper-scissors mechanic is neat but feels awkward and makes it hard to want to do multiple types of conflicts at once

Are One Shots The Way To Go?

I had a discussion with a friend last Friday about gaming. He DM's the Heavy Metal D&D campaign that I played in from level 1 to 10. That campaign is still going strong. I mentioned to him that I was feeling pretty blah about RPGs. Kris responded that I should stick to one shots. Why? I'm in the zone when I'm passionate about my games or a certain aspect of it, and it really shows. When filler takes place, I'll just coast through it and play it out almost like taking care of formalities. Couple that with my extreme frustration with plot if player attendance isn't regular, it makes the thought of a long campaign seem like an ideal. The idea of doing one shots or campaigns that are done within three sessions do indeed make sense. I get to play out fresh ideas quickly. Cycle through player rosters and no one has to feel like they're giving up every other Saturday or whatever for an unknown amount of time. But the trade off... you don't get to build that level of character bond and backstory where it almost feels like you just got dumped by an ex when the DM kills your character.

Today, I go to my friends' place for brunch and we'll create characters for Mouse Guard while watching Buffy. We'll see how long we play this for and I have no clue what the scheduling for sessions will be like as only two of us have Monday to Friday work weeks. Regardless, I'm excited to get this going.

Thunderhead Warjill

Mecha Musume or Mecha Shoujo is a style or genre of art most popular among anime/manga art styles that involve fusing a girl and machine. After looking at a thread on a gaming forum that I frequent, I decided to tackle this with the Warjacks from the Warmachine game. I refuse to do blatant anime styling and excessive and pointless fan service didn't come to me naturally. Hope you like. I had fun drawing this.

Oh Noes D&D!

Well there's been a lot of talk and speculation on the blogosphere and among my friends at the local comic book store due to all the things that Wizards is cancelling, discontinuing and changing with D&D. I honestly don't know what to think about it. While it sucks that the business model doesn't seem to be working for their shareholders, etc I doubt it'll effect me too much unless I let people who are very passionate and vocal on the subject effect me.
Yes, I've put in about $600 into 4E material over the last year and a bit but it still works as long as I still feel like playing the game and can find others who would too. The thing with the minis don't bother as I've never used the prepainted plastics for my own campaigns anyway.
I'm however trying to figure out if I'm not too bothered because I'm a little meh about D&D at the moment or because I'm not allowing myself to get caught up in the speculations and change is bad side of things. Besides, most of the blogs I follow on here are from people who play older editions of the game. I look at blogs for the spirit of the game and for ideas, not rule mechanics.
I'll worry about all this when someone WotC Officer barges into my house and tells me that I can't play blah blah blah because it's non-compliant with the current edition. Then I'll be looking to bust some heads.