Showing posts with label Metal Gods 'zine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Metal Gods 'zine. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Follow-up from Yesterday's Game Prep Post

After posting my (intentionally) inflammatory post, yesterday, +Adam Muszkiewicz and I had a delightful exchange of ideas. I don't full agree with everything he says, but we are not as far apart as my original post might have made it seem. Also, a clarification. It should be noted (as Adam did) that his original post was directed at hex-crawl gaming, a different issue than (or a specific sub-issue of) game preparation in general. My take was, to be sure, based on ignoring that very true fact.

Adam also agreed to let me post the full exchange. I will do so, and a small rejoinder to his last comment. I left the rest of you guys who commented out, because you just don't matter. Suck it! (I kid, I kid).

Adam Muszkiewicz
Yesterday 9:40 AM
+
3
4
3
 
Reply
 
I actually do recognize my "information collection" process as being important to gaming, and I am aware that it informs and inspires my gaming. I think in my original post, the point I made had a considerably different focus, though, and that you're picking out only one detail of it (even of the part of the article in question; you're targeting a part of a part here), but I have to say, I stand by my initial assessment: an overabundance of prep stands between the DM and his players as a sort of informational wall that exists independent of the players' experience of that information. If the player doesn't experience it, then it doesn't exist within a game. 

Adam Muszkiewicz
Yesterday 10:22 AM
+
1
2
1
 
Reply
 
Also, I've never come out against prep, just against an overabundance of it. I love maps as much as the next guy and often, like +James Aulds says, I just might start with a map. But what stands in the way of the game is having a list of exactly what every shop in town is and who runs it and how much GP they have in their safe, dresser or underneath a loose floorboard, whether I wrote it or someone else did. I feel like too often, DMs prep themselves into a corner and they lose sight of exactly what the game is to the point where a rift develops between player & DM, th players shrouded in darkness, suffering from indecision paralysis, the DM silently raging at himself "if they'd only do this, it's all so simple!" Of course, again, that's entirely my experience of it, especially as someone who used to over-prep.

Effectively, I'd define "over-prep" as "designing game elements that your players will never experience." 

Edgar Johnson
Yesterday 10:49 AM
+
2
3
2
 
Edit
 
I don't see that as overpreparation, because it helps (me) with what happens at the table. It's a thing that exists in the world. So long as it makes the world make sense to me, and helps me make the world make sense to my players, then it's a useful exercise in imagination. It may not get used directly, but it will shape what does get used.

So, having stuff in my game my players never see may make sense to me, and help me make sense of the world I present, and may help me choose (wisely) the signifiers used to present that specific world-situation at the table.

The fact that Bob the Butcher is getting leaned on by a specific member of a criminal gang may be insignificant to the players. They won't enter the shop. They won't buy a joint of meat from Bob. They may, however, try to pull some kind of caper in this town, or they may have dealings with criminals. When I know Bob, his situation, and why it exists, it is helpful to me when I'm at the table, and trying to present the world and the things in it to the players.

Mind you, I don't usually get that far into the weeds with inconsequential NPCs. This is more of an extreme example to color in the point I'm making: Underprep is less helpful (to me) than overprep in allowing me to respond effectively to players during the game session.

Adam Muszkiewicz
Yesterday 11:06 AM
+
1
2
1
 
Reply
 
My thought here is that, for me, all of what you describe the "I can do this at the table when I prep" can be handled as a natural extension of just applying the game's aesthetic to the situation. Why do you need to know that this specific butcher is being leaned on? Does that help in any way that knowing that organized crime is rampant here and then finding a way to show that to your players doesn't?

Edgar Johnson
Yesterday 11:41 AM
+
1
2
1
 
Edit
 
Another way of putting it. The exercise in thinking in detail about some of the minutiae of the city (e.g., people's names, their situations, etc.) help me, personally, to think about the city as a whole.

Yes, the aesthetic drives this, but the aesthetic (for me) needs to come from the specifics. So, I might not do a write-up for Bob the Butcher, but I would want to think about people like Bob, and the sorts of things that happen to them.

That's sort of like Morlan Twelos, the clerk you guys recently killed. I thought a lot about him and what he does, and who might be pressuring him in particular ways, and what his motivations might be. It didn't end up mattering in that case, because James and those guys offed him, but by thinking about him and the specific place he worked in has helped me to understand a bit more about the city as a whole, especially about corruption in the Imperial bureaucracy.

I guess what I'm saying is that preparation is also a process of discovery for me, and not just for me and the players at the table. There are a lot of places I've "prepped" in that sense, not as keyed encounters, but as specific things that are happening, places that actually exist in the city (e.g., named taverns and landmarks), that allow me to improvise at the table, and to incorporate the actions of the players, after the fact.

A good example, right now, has to do with the three guardsmen killed while the party was ransacking the offices of the mariners' guild. I want to understand how the government/guard will respond to that. I want to figure out how your employer (the Imperial secret police) will treat that. These are important questions for the party, and I want to have some specific answers. One think is that I need to figure out specifics of guard organization, and how the guard gets along with the Ministry of the Inspector General, and what kinds of things typically are faced by the Guard in dealing with the populace in Harbortown. Are such murders common, or not?

I don't think we are disagreeing as much as all that. However, these kinds of details may matter to me more than they do to you, simply because I'm in the process of discovering this city, if slightly less than the players are. I can't abide not knowing certain things that come up, because they seem important to the game, and would affect how I run it. It's not just that I need to know how many copper pieces are in a tailor's strongbox, or what specific kinds of sausage Bob the Butcher keeps in stock. I do understand, though, that Bob has been experimenting with something very much akin to a good kielbasa...

Adam Muszkiewicz
Yesterday 12:46 PM
+
2
1
2
 
 
Yeah, man, go ahead and put that shit up there. But first, here's my commentary on your last piece:

I agree that I don't think we're as far away from each other on this point than you initially made it sound. I'm especially glad that you added the bit about how your in-depth prep informs you about what your aesthetic is, because that's what I would consider it rather than game prep: part of developing what your aesthetic is.

It's probably worthwhile to point out that my post in question was specifically about the use of aesthetic within the framework of my concept of a dynamic hexcrawl, which is by its very nature an improvisationally-run sort of campaign. That having been said, I do apply the aesthetic logic that I've been talking about to EVERYTHING.

So, allow me get back into this.

I feel like aesthetic coming from specifics rather than becoming the rubric by which to determine what the specifics are is putting the cart before the horse. How can you just come up with these specifics if you don't know where you're drawing your inspiration from for those specifics beforeyou figure out what the specifics are? If Bob has kielbasa, then we've made conscious decisions about aesthetic (that Bob knows how to make traditional Polish, pork-based preserved meats, which means that Bob likely comes into contact with something like Polish people or is one himself, all of which points to either a slavic-inspired or metropolitan aesthetic). If Bob's sausage selection has nothing to do with the aesthetic, then it's a detail that's not worth discussing because it doesn't tell us what things are like (unless the conscious decision is thatthings are different here than elsewhere in the setting); if its consistent with the aesthetic and flows from it, we can duplicate the results by applying the aesthetic (slavicism or metropolitanism) to the immediate game demand ("What sort of sausages does Bob have for sale?") and bam! the job is done.

One of the toughest things about learning to use aesthetics as I am has been learning to trust myself to make the right choices. To make choices that improve the game, flow from the game and work to enrich that game. In my experience, having a good aesthetic guide for your game is like the Force: it surrounds your game, penetrates it, binds your universe together. When you need an answer, you dig deep and feel for the answer that your aesthetic is trying to provide; live in that moment and go.

This does not mean "don't prep." This means "prep only what you're going to need for the next session or two," but I've got more to say on that front. In fact, I already have.

http://www.kickassistan.net/2015/04/lets-talk-about-prepping-to-improvise.html


And a quick detour, because that's how we roll.

Adam Muszkiewicz
Yesterday 1:04 PM
 
Reply
 
I'll be thinking of Bob the Butcher at lunch due to the sandwiches I brought with today, which informs me to ask: is his kielbasa bialy or czerwony? I'm having bialy today, myself. 
Edgar Johnson
Yesterday 1:13 PM
 
 
It's a secret. He'll take it to the grave!
Edgar Johnson
Yesterday 1:16 PM
 
 
One of these days (hopefully at the height of summer) I need to get up there and go out and about to eat with you. All this talk of kielbasa is driving mad with desire! For food. Yeah, for food.
Adam Muszkiewicz
Yesterday 1:27 PM
 
 
Any time, Johnson. You should really come up for the Polish festival in Grand Rapids in October. Beer, polka, food... I think it's what heaven would be like. 
Adam Muszkiewicz
Yesterday 6:06 PM
+
1
2
1
 
 
"Bob the Butcher... the zine" - IN THIS ISSUE: This Year's Top Dungeon Beast Cuts - Intelligent Fungus Counts as Meat, Right? - Know Your Sausage! A Field Guide to Preserved Meats 
Edgar Johnson
Yesterday 6:49 PM
+
1
2
1
 
 
Also:
10 Sexy Ways to Eat a Sausage
It's All Greek to Me: Gyros and Souvlaki for People Who Can't Pronounce Them
And don't forget his opinion column, "The Finest Cut."

Now, just a quick reply to the last serious comment Adam made:

I feel like aesthetic coming from specifics rather than becoming the rubric by which to determine what the specifics are is putting the cart before the horse. How can you just come up with these specifics if you don't know where you're drawing your inspiration from for those specifics beforeyou figure out what the specifics are?
I think this is the main place where Adam and I part ways in our conception of game prep. I don't see this as an either/or thing. My details usually inform my aesthetic. I get caught up in them as a New Cool Thing (thanks, ADD!) and forget for a moment the overarching theme, at least in part. So, for example, in my thinking about elves (teaser for the upcoming issue of the Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad zine), I started with the iron susceptibility of the DCC elf class and asked, "Why isn't this used?" Then I thought about what it meant, on the level of the specific things that might happen to an elf character if iron susceptibility was taken to a logical conclusion (i.e., like heavy metal poisoning). What would the details of specific NPCs' lives be like if that were a thing, in Ur-Hadad? It would depend on who you were. So, thinking about the details of NPCs I'd like to use for that sort of thing got me thinking about what a society where this was an issue might be like (more of an meta-aesthetic thing). That got me to thinking about conflict in that society based on class divisions, technologies that might be utilized to help the problem, specific game-based effects on player characters and the like. I even started thinking about a detail like a faction leader who resents that a lower-class elf is doomed to horrible death, and becomes a terrorist. Cool details I may never actually use in a game, but which inform the overall feel of the game, and how I might present it to my players.

My point: Sometimes I find that specific details that I think are cool become the resource material that provides the resulting aesthetic that will then be used to generate other details. Then, some of those details recur to the aesthetic frame and change it in subtle or not-so-subtle ways. I work back and forth between them--not always, but pretty regularly.

Another example. I wrote an adventure called "Mysterious Temple of the Serpent God," where I wrote the entire adventure from song titles by the band High on Fire.* One of the songs used was "Frosthammer." The existence of the artifact known as the Frosthammer of Graki Deathstalker was a detail that I used to resolve other things that occurred in that adventure. The significant detail is, for me, one of the things that helps me to develop a coherent aesthetic. That said, I understand that it also can work the other way, and has done so for me, as well.

*Note that this way of generating the adventure was based on using song titles for designing specific encounters, and part of developing the adventure, as such, involved me discovering a specific aesthetic framework based on those encounters. So, detail to aesthetic. That said, the method for generating my encounters might be seen as, itself, an aesthetic. I do not agree that the method is, in itself, an aesthetic, because it lacks content associated with aesthetic frames. I could have used REO Speedwagon to do the same thing. The method would be exactly the same, but the result would have been completely different (one would hope).

Another thing: I like having details in my adventures, even if they don't get explored by the PCs. Here's why. If you've ever played a CRPG like, say, Morrowind, and been frustrated by doors you can't open, or objects you can't manipulate, or NPCs you can't interact with, it creates a sense of futility, for me. It gets to feeling "railroady." Prepping a single location, like Bob the Butcher's shop, and thinking about what kinds of things he has there, and how that that implies what sort of neighborhood it's in, and how that affects the kind of customers he attracts, and what kinds of problems he has, etc., etc. All of those little things give me a better picture of the larger world around Bob. He becomes real and, as a result, the whole world becomes more real. The aesthetic springs from the details of the place just as much as the place is birthed from an aesthetic preference. Good fiction is like that, too: An "insignificant" detail can become the thing that makes the story meaningful for a particular reader. (and yes, I realize that I'm conceding Adam's point that this is something that is "significant" because a PC actually encounters it at the table, for this example). The larger point, though, is that the detail may not get encountered, at all, but it may help me (as a GM) understand the larger aesthetic and produce things that are encountered.

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Spellburn!

First, thank you +Jeffrey Tadlock+Jim Wampler, and +Jobe Bittman for featuring my research project (and my email) on the recent Spellburn podcast. Everything Jeffrey said was pretty much correct. I'll answer some of the areas of uncertainty, below. Thanks, also, for your kind words about the 'zine. We will have a new one coming out soonish (end of May, probably). My contribution to that one will not be quite as substantial, but will lay out some history of the Elder Races of Ore (the planet where Ur-Hadad is located).

Now, to answer a couple of questions folks might have.

Who is this Edgar Johnson guy anyway?

I'm an old punkrawk and gamer guy (45 in May) who started playing D&D in 1979 and listening to Black Flag in 1982. I flunked out of college, joined the Marines (1987-1991), got out and went back to college again, for engineering. I sucked at that, and was much better at drinking and gaming. Almost flunked out again. Eventually got it together, got a B.A. in sociology and a minor in writing (1995), with honors. Got a full-ride fellowship for grad studies at the University of Iowa, where I studied rhetoric, media, and ethnography. Graduated with a Ph.D. in Communication Studies (2000). Took a job I hated, and kept it for four years. Found a better job and have been at this institution for 10 years (we recently consolidated with the medical college and became Georgia Regents University). Got tenure in 2008 and got promoted to full professor last year. I teach persuasion, media studies, business and professional communication, argumentation, and rhetorical studies. I also serve on a lot of committees and workgroups. Published my first book, What About Us? Standards-based Education and the Dilemma of Student Subjectivity, in 2010. I blog here, and game regularly with the Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad group. I also am a pretty decent cook, if anyone is passing through the Augusta, Georgia area and wants to hook up for food, beers, and gaming.

What's the research all about?

After I started gaming again, and the university shifted from four-tier state school to research intensive, I decided to do some research on gaming, and particularly the rise of online tabletop gaming. The project began as a short paper about the Google+ community and the development of hangout gaming there. I soon realized that I wanted to turn it into something more. I submitted a proposal to the university's institutional review board for human subjects research (You guys are the "human subjects." MWAHAHA!). The proposal covered all the bases: Survey research, face-to-face interviews (both focus group and individual), online research of other kinds, content analysis of blogs and websites, and field observation of actual play. The survey research I posted on the blog (links over there on the right) are a small part of the puzzle, a snapshot of what's going on right now.

What happens next?

I'll be continuing the survey research. I also will be running some live, in-person play sessions with younger gamers over the course of the summer (mostly college-aged people who either have only played 3rd ed D&D, of who have not played any tabletop RPGs at all). I want to get a sense of how they approach gaming. I'm probably going to run DCC RPG for them, to get both the old school feel and the new school die mechanics. The d20 system should provide a good bridge between what they're used to and what I hope to show them (and find out about their play styles).

I also will be petitioning some of you for "live" intereviews, either at GenCon or via a hangout. Those interviews will be similar to some of the stuff covered in the surveys, but more far-ranging and specific to your own situation and interests.

I think I also will be asking my regular G+ group to play a major role in the research, as much of what interested me in pursuing this project was inspired by my experiences with them. I haven't brought it up yet, but I will soon.

While I was at my conference, I met with a publisher who had contacted me beforehand. She was interested in my work and wondered if maybe I had a book-length project in mind. "Funny you should ask," I told her, and explained my research agenda. She was interested, and contacted me after the conference. I also made a visit with another publisher, and their rep seemed to be very interested as well. Short version: I will be producing a book proposal this fall, and hope to secure a contract with one of those publishers. It would be nice to have them both want the project, and get into an intense bidding war, but only one is necessary. Still, a boy can dream.

Why should we help you, anyway?  

For me, the answer is pretty obvious: I'm going to be writing about this thing that we all do: tabletop gaming. I want to make sure I'm telling as good and accurate a story as I can. The more people who participate, the better I can do my job.

For you, each person's answer would probably be different, but here are a few potential reasons you should help me out:

  • Collegiality: That Johnson guy's alright, and I want to help him do a good job. Why not?
  • Lust for Glory: I have important opinions, and need a person to listen to (and publish) them. Fame will be mine!
  • Fear I'll Get it WRONG: That Johnson guy is going to screw this up if I don't set him straight on some Very Important Things.
  • Curiosity: I've never done anything like this before, and I want to find out what happens.
  • Desire for Vengeance: That Johnson guy is a dick! I will work from the inside to destroy him!
  • Stalker: I secretly have a big man/woman crush on Johnson. This is my very best chance to demonstrate how much I love him. I will give my all (nay, my very life) to further his ambitions!
  • Profit: Dude must be rolling in dough, and I'm gonna get mine! [Yeah... sorry. Nobody's making any money off of this, including me. Academic publishing is not a lucrative trade, nor is teaching in the humanities.]
  • Precursor to Alien Invasion: I am the one with the real research agenda. You puny humans must be studied, and this will be where I must start. Then, later, will come the anal probings.

I'm hoping the spirit of Collegiality moves you to participate, but I'll take what I can get. Feel free to make up your own reason, if none of the above appeals to you.

How do you really pronounce Adam's name?

Also, to amplify this for my friend, +Adam Muszkiewicz: It's pronounced "MOUSE-kah-witz." Nah, just kidding.

From the man himself, it's actually pronounced "muz-KEV-itch." (but feel free to keep mispronouncing it, anyway, just to fuck with him)

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Ode to an Urchin

When I started gaming with the Metal Gods crew, about a year and a half ago almost, we ended up with a lot of zero-level urchins in our party. Most of them died (of course), but for some reason I was taken with the idea of this band of urchins, with the thought that I could write a story worth telling and have those children of the streets tell it for me, with me the instrument of their speech. I didn't think it through this rationally, of course, but on some level it was always happening.

The next adventure I wrote (Mysterious Crypt of the Serpent God) involved human sacrifices. The blood of a whole village's children had been used by serpentmen to fuel their terrible machines. In a later revision, I changed that horrible aspect of the adventure: The corpses of the dead ones piled head-high, their hearts ripped whole from their chests, and the blood... the rivers of blood... flowing down the drain in the altar, and overflowing onto the floor when the drain wasn't enough to contain the flow. They hadn't gotten to all of them, though. Just in case more zeroes were needed, I had stashed eight extra zero-level urchins in a holding cage, nearby the altar.

The situation was done just that way, because it is the very heart of horror, for me. It is the sickness of the world. It is the stealthy sound in the black of night. It is the creepy bastard with the leering eyes, who smiles brightly at the little kids, with dead, dead eyes, and a burning, sickly hunger in his heart. It is the lamentations of every mother who has lost a child. It is the screams of the dying, too small and weak to fight back against those who would harm them. It is the most horrible thing I can imagine, there on the page of that adventure, as a device to show my players that there is something worth fighting for, something besides glory, or treasure, or a righteous kill. There are some things in the world that need killing, because failing to kill them is to excuse depravity and, thus, to perpetuate it. The serpent men weren't bad enough on their own. Monsters, yes, but not monstrous. The deaths of a generation of children, though, that made them truly monstrous. Dirty trick? Yes. Manipulative? Yes. Did they die for their sins? Oh, hell yes, they did.

Later, that adventure done, I turned to new things. Again, there were the urchins. In this case, it was the Streetkids of Ur-Hadad adventure I wrote and later published in the recent Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad 'zine (On sale now, by the way, for any price you name). In that situation, all the PCs are zero-level urchins, trying to make a name for themselves by impressing the Divine Order of the Purple Tentacle, the mercenary band at the center of the Metal Gods campaign--Think The Black Company, but with more silliness and a bad drug habit. These are kids who want a better life, and who look up to the Divine Order for what they've done, certainly. They also see them as a way out. A way to escape a short and brutal life on the streets. A way to avoid the compromises and outright surrenders that are forced upon the powerless. A gang so powerful, and so formidable, that no one will ever be able to do that to them again.

We all like our stories about heroes from humble beginnings, who make their own way in an uncaring world, who rise to unlikely triumphs. Sometimes they're kids to begin with, and sometimes they're just guys (or women), you know. But it's the kids' stories that I find the most fascinating and compelling. Mind you, nothing terrible happened in my past to spur me this way. Sure it wasn't idyllic, and, yeah, I had to deal with some bullshit at times, but I wasn't one of those kids. I knew a few who were, though, friends and acquaintances. Maybe that's where it comes from. I honestly don't know why, but there you go. If there is a heart to the stories I want to tell, it's the kid from the streets who wants a better life, and who is willing to risk everything. For that kid, "everything" is him- or herself, because there's nothing else. No possessions. No family. Just a few friends, maybe. Death is only a release from the bondage of a hard life, at a young age. I'm not trying to provoke depression among my readers, mind you, just trying to establish the frame of reference.

Here's an interesting and compelling (to me) model of the classic Thieves' Guild, one I've encountered in something I'm reading (the Night Angel trilogy). I that book, the way it works is that street kids pretty much form around gangs led by older kids. To remain in good standing, and not be beaten or killed, they must come up with a weekly take. Maybe it's just a few coppers. They have to get them, no matter what. Nobody cares about excuses. If you don't get them, you get beaten, maybe killed. Eventually, if you survive, you get older: "littles" become "bigs," and when you get big enough, if you're hard enough, maybe you rise to lead your gang. When you get a bit older, maybe you can save enough of the take (what you don't have to funnel upward into the Thieves' Guild, that you're able to buy in. You secure a place in the Guild by buying a stake in it, and becoming a real member, if only on a probationary status. However, what this means is that the Thieve's Guild is built on the backs of the streetkids. The live (sometimes), suffer (always), and die (usually) to fill the coffers of the Guild. It's only a few coppers at a time, but there's thousands of them. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Most die. All will contribute before they do. Pretty soon, you're talking about real money. It's the most brutal form of multi-level marketing, Amway with a hard heart and a truncheon, and no labor laws.

This is one of the most depressing versions of the Thieves' Guild I've seen, but it's also the one that seems the most real to me. This is what happens, isn't it? When there is no boundary to our brutality, when there is no check on our greed, when we make disposable the lives of the least of us, we get this game. To be clear, I'm not talking about the "sanctity of life" like some anti-abortion zealot. I'm talking about the already-born, not fetishizing fetuses as if they matter more than kids who actually have been born. That's enough about that, though.

This has been a bit rambling, I know, but there's something important about it, to me, at the heart of this discussion. In my fantasy campaign world life is cheap, and it is especially cheap when you're young and poor. Every wealthy boss stands astride a million corpses. The boss didn't even have to kill them. The boss just had to extract the wealth they generated. There's nothing more efficient for doing that than a Guild. Poverty provides the engine. The system breeds itself, perpetuates itself, and eats itself. And copper, silver, gold, and power all flow up to the top. Maybe fantasy is realer than I thought.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

You know what you need?

 This shit, right here.


The Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad 'zine. Issue #1. 


Get yours now!

And listen to some of this, too. It'll make your ear holes feel good. 




Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad 'zine coiming soon!

I'm a bit late on this, but here it is: The (we hope) highly anticpated Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad 'zine, Issue #1.

http://fromkickassistan.blogspot.com/2014/01/metal-gods-of-ur-hadad-zine-issue-1.html

We still gotta get cleared by DCC heaquarters, but it's ready for primetime (taking into account the small sample sizes and whatnot)


Thursday, November 14, 2013

Metal Gods 'zine update


So, rumor has it that +Adam Muszkiewicz is just about done with layout for the Metal Gods 'zine. In fact, we're not gaming tonight because he's "on a roll." I really wanted to game, but also am really glad to hear it's close to ready. I think you folks will like it.

A brief word about urchins.

Adam mentioned that we were going to be supporting a charity: Stand Up for Kids. He also expressed our sentiment that it seems kind of weird to be supporting a kids' charity while putting out a 'zine with an adventure about urchins fighting their way across Ur-Hadad as a funnel. Here's where that comes from.

We had, in one of our first groups, a party with a disproportionate number of urchins. They all died. When I wrote one of our first 1st level adventures (Mysterious Temple of the Serpent God), I put in a room containing four urchins (extra zero-level guys, just in case). So, urchins, as such, have become sort of an Easter egg in my dungeons. It just sort of happened.

That said... In my life I've known a lot of homeless kids. Some of them are friends from my childhood, and some I've met since. So, I'm particularly committed to the charity we've chosen for this 'zine's "target" charity. If you can do so, I encourage you to support Stand Up for Kids by picking up a copy of the 'zine, print or PDF. I promise that whatever we don't use to cover costs of production will go straight to the charity. Their work is incredibly important, especially given the effects of the recession and sequestration.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by the Kickassistan Ministry of Tourism.

P.S.

What is wrong with me? Why have I not been reading this blog?

http://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/