The Wargate's Game Master Schedule!

Howdy folks!  Been more than a week since my last post, but rest assured we have been working on some serious gaming in the time we've been absent from the web!  We've been putting together stuff for the games we'll be adding to the Wargate's repertoire and working on a top-secret project (involving samurai and ninjas!!) that's totally going to be off the hook!  No excuse for not posting, I'll try to step it up in the next week.

So what's on todays' menu?  The Wargate's vaunted Game Master Schedule!

What is it?  Well, it's simply a chart that has our games, their Game Masters, and the times they'll be running.  This list was created over the last half year by our industrious staff, and goes well into the future - which means we'll never be at a loss for new material and games!  Well, some of the stuff isn't so "new" - in fact some of it is a few decades old.  So just assume that when I say "new" it means in relation to the Wargate itself, leaving those petty notions of "time" and "age".

So let's get to it then.  I wanted to have the immediate schedules online here so that everyone would be dead certain of their spot in the rotation!  First, I should really get to our concepts of Schedule 1 and Schedule 2.

Schedule 1 Games will be ran on Sunday night with the large group, currently Bignutt is running Pathfinder.  This is kind of daunting - our main group averages 10 players, and usually there are more in the periphery who can't make it every Sunday due to living out of state or paying the cost to be the boss.  There are a couple of conventions we use to circumvent this and other issues that arise with this level of play - and there are usually other games going on Sunday also, especially war game campaigning.  War games usually begin around 10 am, and the RPG kicks on at around 6pm.  It's an all day thing, and the guys that have signed up for running the game on this particular evening are motivated and experienced players and I'm sure the club is going to have a lot of fun.

Schedule 2 is sort of a "light" night.  It's currently running on Thursdays nights as Joe K.'s Genesis Syndrome, but each GM will be able to dictate his own night for this when his turn on Schedule 2 comes up.  It will follow our original "rule" of 3 players and 1 GM, but it's almost a full blown game now - averaging 6-7 players in the current slot.  If you want to run a game but would be uncomfortable or unable to do so on Schedule 1, this is the place to go.

So what's on each schedule?  Here are the current and next 4 games for each schedule!

Schedule 1 (Sundays at 6pm)

1. What Lies Below (Pathfinder) - Current game where Bignutt runs Golarion!
2. There and Back Again (Spelljammer AD&D 2e) - Dirty Greg will take us back to 1989!
3. The Other Moons of Persia (D&D 4e) - Jerry lets us in on his Arabian tales!
4. The Doomforge (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay) - My own tales of the fate of Khazid Grimaz!
5. Archeotech Overload (Deathwatch) - Epistolary Swearingen lets us scour space hulks for lewt!

Schedule 2 (Thursdays at 6pm)

1. Genesis Syndrome (Palladium Megaverse) - Current game with Joe K.'s superhero rendition!
2. The Xenos Conundrum (Rogue Trader) - Blast off with Epistolary Swearingen to Mardannon!
3. The Rough Edge of Night (World of Darkness) - Western Horror with Dave Bone.
4. Rite of Passage (Pathfinder) - Skim's home brew stone age adventure setting!
5. Untitled (Vampire) - Epistolary Swearingen's will strike again with a new bloodsucking adventure!

This will pretty much lead us up to next year.    The allotted time frame for most of these is 10+ weeks, but the individual GM's are free to change that up, either to add weeks (we've had them run up to 15) or take them away.  Just few weeks is good, if you've got something you want to throw out that isn't "epic" in scale or just for fun.

That's all for now, take care and I'll see you on game day!

Back to the Megaverse!

My oh my, what is there to say about the fabled Palladium Megaverse?  Where should I even begin?  At the beginning perhaps, when I was 12 years old in 1991?  Should I even tell the story about how my very first rpg game was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness?  I could, perhaps...but since that mirrors the experience of several folk my age, I'll leave it at the pondering stage.  Suffice it to say we're about to move into territory that is both near and dear to me when we begin talking about the games published by Palladium Books.

Several folk in my gaming groups (since that fateful day I happened to pick up Mutants of the Yucatan at a friend's house and began to ask questions) have had their encounters with this system / place.  We've run Palladium Fantasy Role Playing Game, Ninjas & Superspies, a plethora of various worlds in Rifts, and a lot more besides.  There's a lot of nostalgia here for us, and the whole reason I'm bringing it up is because one of our GM's has decided to revive this system for us to use now at the Wargate with a new set of adventures for Heroes Unlimited!

It's been a long, long time since we've even thought about Palladium.  First of all, let me say the biggest complaint we have had are the problems with the system itself.  You know what I'm talking about - Glitter Boys and Rogue Scholars, anyone?  We at the Wargate are competitive wargamer types who play in a large group so this sort of thing cannot be handwaved away.  Strict rules must apply all the time to every player, and we've found that for us that is the best approach that elicits the best satisfaction from most of us.  Palladium isn't the best for that, and the combat system can be tiresome when it drags on through thousands of MDC.

Aside from all that, Palladium isn't known for it's awesome book layouts or really anything technical about the process of making books.  For the most part, they really suck in quality - shoddy paperbacks whose lamination peels off pretty quickly.  I hate them.  They never last.  More hardbacks for this line would be much appreciated and might even move a few units in my neck of the woods, but that sort of quality is kind of lost on the works themselves in which the text itself tends to be - let's say - much more personal than professional.  For myself, I prefer a more professional text in my RPG's that distances itself from the audience like an encyclopedia or textbook.

I also am more prone to buy a book if it is hardcover and looks slick, and these books from a time gone by look like pieces from a comic shop than professional gaming books, though I understand that might be part of the point.  I don't like it at all that the books are still being produced this way.

Hence the decline of Palladium Books since the early 1990's.  You might can present a few figures that show that Palladium once or twice had a "good" year, if those exist for developers in this niche publishing zone.  More likely you will turn up barkings on Google about the "Crisis of Treachery", which made me sick when I first read the publisher's letter to his fans.  This has it's own place in the Wikipedia entry, and is best examined on your own time.  Take a look at it. No really, if you don't know what it is, go read that paragraph or two about it.

After that I wanted nothing more to do with this publisher, other than perhaps to help Palladium commit ritual seppuku by cutting off it's head.  I ceased all support for the company in reaction to what I perceived (as a loyal fan) as gross mismanagement of the company akin to what happened to TSR, only basically a lot worse.  Already having been disgruntled by all sorts of problems with the systems in every single Rifts book I bought (and I bought all of them), I basically sold the entire collection for a pittance.  Good riddance to heavy comics, said I.

There are a ton more criticisms that one could level at Palladium, but oddly enough this post isn't meant to rag on the Megaverse as much as I have been.  I actually want to talk about what we are going to do with the whole thing here at the Wargate, and I'm glad to say - I have great news.

We do lots of systems and worlds here, and the Megaverse (by which moniker I will now refer to the entirety of Palladium's lines from now on) has a lot of potential for us.  Rifts practically oozes the entire premise of the Wargate itself, and I'm kind of sentimental for it anyways.  Now, being free to examine the Megaverse from the Wargate, we'll get to see a lot more of the coolness that was inherent in those books come out as we focus on tiny pieces of the Megaverse during our campaigns to come!

Heroes Unlimited will be kicking off our return to the Megaverse and the beginning of our support for this venerable line of rpg books.  That said, we'll be making our houserules and general conversion notes available online, as well as a smattering of original material in the weeks and months to come.  Expect to see the State of Play emerge for Genesis Syndrome, the starting point for our players to enter the Megaverse - many for the first time!

We've already passed several Heroes Unlimited, 2nd Edition books around, and the game is starting to get a move on.  We are going to be very careful about what we add to our particular game, and all those other groups out there are cautioned to do the same - don't allow random Megaverse books into your game!  We'll talk about other books later as we widen our options with the massive amount of books out there.  For now, expect to see The Compendium of Contemporary Weapons and Aliens Unlimited on the table in the near future.  We're going to milk this thing for all the awesomeness it's worth!

I'm going to leave off today with a list of demands for Palladium's publisher that he should seriously consider complying with.

1. Clean up your system and give us a corebook that's hardcover.  You don't need to reprint all the rules in spells in each book - that's a cheap copout and wastes my bookshelf space.  If it's that integral, make a corebook.
2. New editions are a good thing.  Good for you, the publisher / good for me, the gamer.  Reorganize the line so the old ones are collectors items and the new ones can be gobbled up by today's gamers.
3. Format your books and do them all the same.
4. Hardcovers.  Right now. Of every single book you've ever published.
5. Clean up your house and set things straight for the future, before you die and leave all this mess.

I have thought many times about converting to D20, I know others have done this but I'll be honest - I won't use a fake system for a published game.  Palladium, you need to try using a different model for your lines. This tired devotion to an ancient and only partly successful business model is really hampering your growth, and ours.

D&D Realms: Pathfinder

It's been a while since we've booted up the ol' Dungeons & Dragons, like - since before 4th Edition was announced.  I don't really remember my last D&D session, but it must have been some time in early 2006.  As I remember, the Dungeon Master had a hard time of working my companion and I into the game.  Apparently, his group was not quite used to our "tactical" and "aggressive" playstyle.  His group dissolved, which left just us.  So we started playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay instead.  As I recall, it might have been Forgotten Realms.   Or maybe not, but last I heard that particular DM has been playing 4th Edition for a long time now.

I know there are differing schools of thought on the subject, but I'm going to let you know that I simply consider Pathfinder to be a different edition of Dungeons & Dragons.  It's pretty much the same.  The rulebooks have a lot going for them, being as pretty as they are...they are color, glossy, hardcover and well formatted.  That last bit, for me, is the best part.  Just the same, it's pretty much good ol' D&D.  So, why are we all up in it?

Pathfinder is sort of a psuedo-3rd Edition, and I consider it a campaign setting like Ravenloft or Spelljammer.  It has it's permutations to the ruleset, conveniently located in the rulebook.  Imagine that.  The Golarion campaign setting has had a plethora of materials published in slick looking books, which brings us to the crux of the matter.

Why play this particular edition / setting when we also play 2nd Edition, 3.0 Edition, and 4th Edition?  I don't know if you've taken a look at 4th Edition lately, but it's not looking so good.  You probably somehow disagree with me on that, but hey.  Whatever.  The point isn't whether it's selling, look at the design of the line and the products.  You have to have a PHD in RPG History to decipher where to get to have the amount of material you're used to in your games.  Even then, you'll probably decide to go with 4th Edition material that isn't even in production anymore.

The main reason that Pathfinder is just as (if not more) relevant that the other editions that will be running is that it's alive.  It's breathing.  What I mean by that heavy metaphor is that it's currently in production by the parent company (those responsible!), and more material is on the way. That alone is incentive enough to get into this new edition.  Add to that an entirely new world with it's own themes and twists, and that's a lifetime's worth of adventure.

Not only that but at least two of our Game Masters will be using this ruleset to run their games.  One will be set in Golarion, the official setting of Pathfinder Adventures, and the other will be a homebrew campaign set in the Stone Age.  We'll get to use a lot of the published campaign material, and other material from 3.5 Edition.  Oh yeah, did I mention?  Pathfinder is backward compatible with most material from 3rd Edition, so there's a lot of material that can be used to add further permutation to the game experience.

I don't feel that this edition replaces any of the older editions, or even the newer one.  Rather, it adds to the spectacle.  We play so many settings and games here at the Wargate, it would be remiss of us not to include all the portals to other places that Pathfinder offers.  As a campaign option, it's concise and well organized.  There are a lot of attractive campaign materials, and 3rd party publishers are back via the D20 System Resource Document and Open Game License.

Long live Dungeons & Dragons.