Lavonardo

Delta Green is back after a long long hiatus.

Back as a properly published game. Dennis Detwiller has worked wonders with the ransom model during the last year, and now the game is back with a one-two punch.

The original book is finally reprinted, though sadly the content has not been updated since the original printing (apart from adding d20-based mechanics), the conspiracy-riddled world contains no details of a post-911 scheme. (This is based on a very brief and cursory look in Compleat Strategist in New York, so the new and improved data might be there, just carefully camouflaged).

The main event of this spring, however, is the long-awaited release of the three Eyes Only books in a much-expanded edition. The trio of books was originally available directly from Pagan Publishing only - and in the days of pretty much nonexistent web stores, really hard to obtain outside the united states. Got the last two books from a friend who visited Gencon back in the day, and have been looking for the first on eBay. Though, with prices regularly crossing the $100 mark, haven’t been sorely tempted. Now, with a reworked edition, with doubled page count from the originals. There’s simply no excuse not to buy this book. Even with the horrible shipping costs. The initial printing is limited to 1000 copies, half of which have now been sold in ten days.

Rather strong a show for conspiracy/cthulhu mix-up, which was judged to be dead in the water years ago.

Recently sighted game-related links:

• The third part of the history of computer role-playing games is out. This one concentrates on the decade starting from 1994 - and covers many of the classics of the genre such as Planescape:Torment and the Baldur’s Gate saga.
• Unsurprisingly, a videogame on Lost has been announced. No statement on which seasons this will cover - if it’s up to the third, the spoiler-averse in the audience (including me, obviously) will avoid this until the third season is available on dvd - expectedly in september.
• Bethesda Softworks has bought the Fallout IP. If the resulting game combines the storylines of the previous Fallout installments with the graphics of Oblivion, its arrival will be a happy day indeed.
• Keyboard pad for xbox 360 - how long before the first Z-machine (and Zork, naturally) makes it into the Live Arcade…
• World Without Oil, an alternate reality game launched on mayday eve. Haven’t played with it at all yet - seems US-centered on a first blink.
• Publishing a game based on George R.R. Martin’s still-to-be-completed septalogy a Song of Fire and Ice suddenly bankrupted Guardians of Order. The sad history of the franchise doesn’t deter Green Ronin from trying out the very same move.

Purely game-related links, avoid like plague if you think gaming is not a dignified pursuit past the tender age of tweleve.

• The second part of the history of computerized role-playing games is out. And this one covers much more familiar ground than the previous segment.
• Chaosium’s Beyond the Mountains of Madness is one of the most imposing books on my gaming shelf. Imposing enough that I haven’t really considered subjecting any players to it yet. A recent collection of game aids for it might just mean that a summer campaign is born. Too bad that it’s a monograph, and not for sale except through direct order (wouldn’t matter much, but Chaosium’s mailing chargers are a killer).
• The issue of Dragon Magazine focusing on the works of China Miéville is out. Forty pages of low-crunch goodness.
• Put together a set of pages for our nicely starting Enemy Within-campaign.
• Casual games: does uncle Bob dare to go BEYOND MINESWEEPER?
• Haven’t participated in the annual novel-writing effort, 50′000 words in a month is a scary concept. However, a target of writing a 32-page adventure is far less frightening - and that’s exactly what Worldwide Adventure Writing Month attempts to accomplish this june.

Some recent gaming-related links and products that look worthy of a click or even a purchase.

• China Miéville’s New Crobuzon will get turned into a game setting in Dragon#352 in january.
• The third expansion for Arkham Horror will be King in Yellow (though it hasn’t yet been officially announced by the publisher).
• Munchkin Cthulhu has been delayed till spring 2007.
• Age of Decadence looks like an immersive and text-rich role-playing game. Without a set release date.
• Changing Times is the first new Transhuman Space product in ages.
• Jenova Chen’s Flow is nothing short of hypnotic.
• Tarot of Cthulhu, Ken Hite’s followup to his wildly successful Dubious Shards has been out for a while.
• And while continuing in the unremitting horror-genre, the brand new Esoterrorists looks like a game with a worthy subject and an even worthier author.

Utterly forgot some quality links in the previous entry. Centered on the latter speaker:

• Out of the box: newest article and archives.
• Blog. Written in the style of his speech, and discussing other things than gaming as well. Will end up on the blogroll on the left column.
• Dubious Shards, a collection of essays on Lovecraft-initiated Cthulhu mythios. The booklet has a formidably ugly cover, but I have very high hopes for the quality of the contents.

Visited Ropecon, the annual finnish gaming convention, for the first time in four or so years. I’m guessing at the interval, it sure has been a while - and previous few years’ cons have been missed due to being abroad or lazy.

First impression upon arrival in Dipoli was of disbelief: “what am I actually doing among these kids”. Kids that have either dressed up, dressed down, ingested far too much sugar or are lethargic to the point of catatonia. A brief trip on the very shallow sales floor didn’t really much improve matters (though the first sighting of Ptolus confirmed that it is indeed a humongous tome). Figured that following the official program would be a better bet than roaming the halls.

The first of the guests of honor to speak was Bruno Faidutti, a french boardgame designer. The topic was the distinction of theme and mechanics in the games. A good talk, peppered with references to well-known games as well as to Faidutti’s own output (which is pretty much a blank slate for me, have played only Warrior Knights). The boardgame industry seems to be in decent shape, and the publishers have slightly retreated from the “all games must be easy”-stance - and true gamers’ games (such as Twilight Imperium) occasionally show up. The american (theme first) and german (mechanics optimized) schools are mixing up - and the market is bristling with interesting offerings. Mr. Faidutti didn’t much like online (”for me gaming is a social event”) or co-operative games (”they are so hard to balance, since the players do not play each other”). A long interactive session followed the presentation, and I think I have to take a serious look at his Mystery of the Abbey, a dedcuction game in the style of Name of the Rose.

Kenneth Hite was the guest of honor I chose the friday to show up in the con. A prolific author who has written more ideas about alternate history and conspiracies than pretty much anyone. He first gave a “state of the industry”-style speech (like his annual Out of the Box-post about the topic). And the state is bleak, very bleak - substandard books and a needlessly complex three (or even four) tier system are sapping the profits. And most companies are clueless to see the writing on the wall, and especially to react to it. Massmarket sales in bookstores are one way to increase the volumes - but only very few companies attempt to gain a foothold in, say, Borders. The future lies in two directions: PDF and small press. PDF because the sales can be controlled, without any inventory out in the field, and because the middlemen are eliminated from the equation. Small presses fill niches, and fill them in a way in which they know their customers and play to them as the customers want, and do not attempt to court the wider market.

Favorite games were discussed at length. Call of Cthulhu’s position at the very pinnacle is not threatened by anyone - and an appropriate comparison to old western movies was spot on. The #2 spot is held by Unknown Armies and Over the Edge, both games that have simple rules and a complex milieu in which to act. Lots of other games (and individual supplements) were named to be of rabidly good quality - both from massmarket publishers as well as some of the independents. My poor AMEX is going to scream soon, the tips will be put to good use.

Mr. Hite was quite simply one of the best speakers I’ve had the pleasure to listen to in ages. Precision-aimed sentences at the hobby were a good beginning, but when the delivery was drily witty and completely deadpan, I was sold. And the skill of deprecating himself and the audience was impressive. After all, in most circumstances repeated statements to the fact that the people on the other side of the stage were “basement-dwelling bozos” wouldn’t have gone down so well. But Hite, having been one of them just made himself more available to the audience. And availability was indeed made good use of, in another lengthy Q&A-session. The two statements (heavily paraphrased) that crystallize the event: “the industry may be dying commercially, but the hobby itself if flourishing” - to cap the state of the union-part, “do not be disturbing weirdos” - on how to attract more players (especially women).

Hite’s questions-n’-answers was curtailed by the arrival of the next speakers. The session turned out to be a game, not a description of the jeepform. A massivish LARP-ish game whose topic was a dating show on stage. Watched for fifteen minutes and decided that I wasn’t really into it (being a card-carrying member of reality-tv haters club) and sneaked out.

Despite the sunshine, some interesting destinations have accumulated:

• DRM is bad, mmmkay? And it’s always good to know the enemy.
• Wanted to check out whose song Radar Love originally was, and was broadsided by this information blast. Never guessed that it was this popular.
• Ptolus looks like it’ll be the biggest game-related publication ever. And most expensive. Though the idea of having lots and lots of unprinted material available on an attached cd is a very good idea.
• It’s been a week since the world jump day, and at least I’m oblivious to any axial wobble the six hundred million participants have caused.
• Finland’s selection of insects (and related animals) is far narrower than that of the US. And especially that of any big/poisonous enough to be hazardous to health is very small. But a bug-identification site like or would still be good.
• Now this is getting seriously funky and impressively twisted! Doom 1 is playable on a monitor screen in Doom 3.
• Amit Singh’s book on the internals of Apple’s OS X looks very interesting. And the web-only bonus content is an excellent addition - the latest extra chapter is a 140 page history of all the operating systems put out by Apple, since the seventies.
• And hopefully Singh’s book is still valid after the fifth release of OS X (codenamed Leopard). The content’s been kept under wraps solidly, and the best guesses as to what’s going to be in can be found in the keynote bingo for the Worldwide Developer Conference on the first week on august.
• Now this registers high on the nift-o-meter: gotapi.com is an interactive syntax guide for those awkward moments when, say, the attribute names of tag prove elusive.

Some of the recent things that got saved to del.icio.us or just bookmarked.

• A semi-complete list of this year’s april fool’s jokes.
• A contest to invent a movie plot threat sounds like it ought to belong in the previous category, but it seems that Bruce Schneier is for real with this.
• Dennis Detwiller’s ransomed Nemesis is out.
• Barça has a finnish fan club.
• If you’re not yet convinced enough to go see V for Vendetta, perhaps these two gentlemen might persuade you further: Katuoja or William Gibson.
• Fifteen greatest skylines of the world. Seen seven of them thus far, none of the honorable mentions.
• More Lucas vs. Whedon goodness (my original rant here).

Greg Stolze’s Executive Decision is out, and the 1000 bucks have been delivered to the red cross.

And Dennis Detwiller collected enough for the first part of the gigantic Future/Perfect (his blog does not seem to have easy access to individual entries).

Hooray. I’ll be showing up for more.

Otherwise I wouldn’t be holding brand-spanking new Delta Green material right now.

The constantly improving Escapist-magazine has not one but two extremely interesting articles in its newest issue. One on the current state of interactive fiction, the other on Planescape: Torment, still one of the best-written games there ever has been.

Slashdot (from which the previous was nabbed as well) provides a review of this year’s GenCon. However, it’s very shallow on content, and a lot of the named games have already been released. The ever-reliable GamingReview provides much better coverage.

Gamespot has a nice, albeit short, review of easter eggs in gaming. Ranging from classic to obscure, via the ego-stroking variant, it’s an interesting read. But the attendant forum just fails to work.

Dennis Detwiller’s ransomed Insylum is out. And the fund for the next one is open, and progressing towards the goal. The surprising success of the model has evoked a largish thread on the rpg.net fora. To a mixed response: the actual ratio between freeloaders and interested patrons is thus far unresolved. And yeah, I’m a card-carrying pledged member of the latter caste.

While the age of micropayments has not yet arrived, interesting payment models continue to surface.

A recent concept is the use of ransom model. In it a sum is named by the author (around the expected costs to generate the product), and contributions are calculated (with money kept in escrow) until the sum is reached. At that point the product is released for free (under an appropriate license, of course). If the target is not reached within a specified period, the funds contributed thus far are returned.

So what this really means is that the model is actually patronage in a distributed form. Where the distributed part effectively removes “you’ve got to be this wealthy to take this ride”-requirement, now anyone can contribute.

Meatbot Massacre by Greg Stolze was the first ransomed product that I know of. Was aware, wasn’t interested (it’s a “tactical miniatures game”), haven’t even looked at the final product.

However, with the arrival of Greg’s second ransomed game: …in spaaace!, the model saw a lot of discussion in the rpg.net fora, and Dennis Detwiller jumped into the game. Indeed, Dennis Detwiller, apparently the sole remaining Pagan Publishing guy. And he promptly kicked off not one, but two projects - both related to Delta Green, still one of my favorite shared halluc^W^W game universes. So from my perspective this looks to be a very interesting development indeed.

fundable.org seems to be the biggest player of the game, but by no means very big at all yet.

And for added value, NPR interviewed Greg Stolze (though there’s not much more exposure in the interview).

And gaming isn’t the only niche for ransom-model, as it’s used by at least one novelist as well. And there’s been funds and drives in the software industry. Probably the most famous was held for blender in 2002 to raise no less than 100000 euros.

There’s no wikipedia article on the topic yet. And in my quite sleep-deprived current state, I’m definitely not going to start one now.

Figured it’d be good sport to buy a firefox t-shirt. Got dissuaded quickly, as the Mozilla Store, is nothing but expensive when it comes to shipping stuff out. The freight charge for a single shirt is a staggering 54 dollars. Luckily, the organization is opening an European location this year. I’ll be keeping my money until then.

Seems that Christopher Walken’s bid for 2008 presidency is sadly false. Too bad. Compared to the other actors-turned-politicians Walken seems to be head and shoulders above them intellectually. Probably just the reason to be avoiding the DC circuit…

Even more SVG brouhaha. Looks interesting - and with Mozilla browsers moving to include support by default, now’s an appropriate time to get familiar with the technology. Proceedings not out for this year’s conference, but bound to appear.

New blog on the roll (mine, definitely not quick on the uptake): Life with Alacrity. Quality over quantity.

Greg Costikyan has released Violence under Creative Commons-license. A gag game that applied the “kick in the door and slay the inhabitants”-style with fully automatic weapons and dropped the characters into a housing project. Well-written and laid out, provocative to the extreme, and bound to throw anyone with a conservative mindset into dramatic convulsions. And sure, the Wednesday Emperors will try this out. Once.