We Need to Talk About Adventure Lethality

I feel like we need to have a serious conversation about adventure lethality.

A couple weeks ago, I ran a horror-themed one shot adventure at Gamehole Con (more about that in the blog soon) in which the players, knowing full well that the adventure was emulating a grim horror movie, took far too few risks in fear of losing the lives of their pregenerated characters. By playing it safe, they actually missed out on discovering essential clues about how to defeat the threat.

In turn, as GM, I often find myself reluctant to up the danger level in sessions at my OWN tables because I know how frustrating it can be to take wounds or even become incapacitated (yes, we're focusing more on Savage Worlds here).

Last night, I ran a published adventure for my weekly game group. As written (and I'll avoid spoilers), the adventure should have been FAR more dangerous with overwhelming numbers of opponents, very real chances of the heroes being captured, and extremely powerful attacks by the "big bads."

While I reined in (and altogether skipped) several scenes mostly for the sake of time, I know full well that I also adjusted things to ensure that we didn't end the night with a table full of dead heroes.

But why???

Just like the aforementioned adventure at Gamehole Con, last night’s game was a one shot using a few pregens that the players shouldn’t really have cared about, right? Shouldn’t one shots by their very nature be all about taking wild risks and putting your heroes in danger without fear of consequences?

I sometimes feel like we take injury and character death far too personally, even in the case of simple one shots where backup characters (I had two) are standing by should the heroes fall. In turn, we also find ourselves irrationally frustrated with the GM for daring to use an enemy’s listed Special Abilities or Powers and/or (heaven forbid) rolling well when they attack!

What are your thoughts? Should we as GMs not worry about our NPCs smacking down the heroes, especially in one shots? Or are we somehow obligated to “play it safe” in order to keep everyone at the table alive and happy?

I worry that constantly reducing threat, avoiding certain attacks, or not taking advantage of PC vulnerabilities (especially when the player has consciously put their heroes in great danger) would make for pretty dull game sessions. As a player, I always want to feel challenged and I want to know that rushing into situations without Bennies or other defenses can be DANGEROUS. How do you balance that without coddling your players or feeling like you're dropping them all into a meat grinder with no chance of escape???

Four Months Unemployed

It has been four long, grueling months since my previous employer of over eight years unceremoniously informed us (and when I say “us” I mean 800 of us) that our services would no longer be required. 

We had no more than 20 minutes following a brief company-wide Zoom call to download any important files and close out projects before access was completely cut off and we were left standing outside the virtual office with virtual cardboard boxes tucked under our virtual arms. (It was May, so there was no virtual rain falling on our virtual heads to really round out that scene.)

Since then, I, along with a LOT of others out there, have been focusing a significant amount of time and energy on landing that next exciting role and because of that, my creativity has taken a major hit and I am only now starting to recover from it.

I have two contracted projects on my plate and I have barely touched either of them since the tragic events back in May.

Let me just say that even someone with my extensive and award-winning career (TV Promo Writer/Producer for Warner Bros. and Disney, award-nominated tabletop Game Designer (Pinebox Middle School, Flash Gordon, The Sixth Gun), award-nominated Author (Cinema and Sorcery), produced Playwright (Doctor Who, Dark Shadows), practical special effects Fabricator and SAG Puppeteer, and Voice Actor) is having as rough a time finding a decent job as everyone else out there.

I’ve submitted well over 100 applications since the layoffs and I’ve had exactly ZERO interviews. None. Nada. It’s demoralizing and soul-crushing, but it is what it is.

Fortunately, I have an amazingly supporting partner (we’re celebrating a BIG anniversary next month, by the way) who is helping me through all this and encouraging me to climb back up on that horse to refocus on my writing and restart my voice acting career. More about that later!

Anyway, the horror adventure I’m writing, titled Long Night, is pretty much ready for playtesting, so I’m hoping to bring it to the table in October for “Spooky Season.” Once I’ve done that and made changes as a result, I’ll get it into the publisher’s hands and move on to bigger and MUCH better things.

I’m here. I’m persevering, and you can expect more exciting game-related content in the future including posts about my experience at Gamehole Con in mid-October!

Roll ‘em if you’ve got ‘em! Dice, I mean!

Gen Con 2024 After Action Report

Well, another Gen Con has come and gone and this one was exciting, fun, and moderately stressful, but for good reason.

A few years ago, I decided to return to Gen Con (the Best Four Days in Gaming™) after several years away and have made it an annual event ever since. This year, having crashed and burned in the dreaded housing lottery (the nearest hotel was eight miles away!), we (my friend Mike was going to make this year his big return) opted to cancel our plans, instead focusing our energies on Gamehole Con in October.

All was fine and good until it was announced that my most recent big TTRPG, Pinebox Middle School, had been nominated for an ENNIE Award in the category, “Best Family Game.” Though I had just lost my job of eight years a few weeks prior, TaMara encouraged me to try and attend Gen Con regardless.

Luckily, I was able to cobble things together to secure a flight, ensure I had a badge (thank you Pinnacle Entertainment Group), and reserve a decent hotel within walking distance of the colossal Indiana Convention Center.

As everything was so last minute, I was unable to register for any events (everything I was even remotely interested in was already sold out), however I did wind up filling my schedule running several demos of Deadlands: Dark Ages for Pinnacle, shopping (so much shopping), and socializing. I brought a few dozen business cards with me and managed to push all of them into hands, so it was a highly successful trip in that regard.

I also attended the Diana Jones Awards and, of course, the ENNIE Awards (Pinebox Middle School did not win, by the way). Additionally, a great group of gamers livestreamed a session of Pinebox Middle School which you can still watch over on the GenConTV channel on Twitch if you're interested!

In the end, I had a really great time and it was definitely worth the stress to pull everything together at the last minute.

Next up, Gamehole Con in a couple months where I’ll be running my original adventure, “The Locked Door” for Pinebox Middle School along with the tried and tested Savage Saturday Cinema adventure, “Final Rest Stop.”

Nominated for an ENNIE

Last Friday, July 5th, I learned that the latest tabletop roleplaying game I worked on, Pinebox Middle School for Savage Worlds, had been nominated for an ENNIE Award in the category, “Best Family Game / Product.”

“The ENNIE Awards (the “ENNIES”) are an annual fan-based celebration of excellence in tabletop roleplaying gaming. The ENNIES give game designers, writers and artists the recognition they deserve. It is a peoples’ choice award, and the final winners are voted upon online by the gaming public.”

While there are naysayers out there who sometimes poo-poo the ENNIEs, saying that the whole thing is just a popularity contest and the awards don’t necessarily reflect the quality of the works presented, I will say, as someone who has been nominated twice, they are still prestigious awards in the tabletop roleplaying game industry, and awards that, at the very least, offer a nicely categorized selection of works that may well be worth investigating.

Like many (most) industry awards, the way the ENNIEs work is that publishers interested in participating must submit copies of their “personal best” releases from the previous year for consideration. In reviewing the 800(!) or so submissions for this year’s ENNIEs, I present to you a list of some of the more well known TTRPG publishers and the numbers of items they put forward for consideration:

• Chaosium - 38 (includes “Chaosium Community Content”)
• Renegade Game Studios - 37
• Paizo - 23
• Pinnacle Entertainment Group - 10
• Free League Publishing - 9
• Cubicle 7 - 8
• Modiphius - 4
• Evil Hat - 3
• Green Ronin Publishing - 3

You’ll notice that Wizards of the Coast is not present on the list this year and it’s possible that some of your other favorite publishers are also not represented. To quote a section from the ENNIE Awards’ own FAQ:

“A lot of people ask us why their favorite products were not submitted. The answer is that we have no control over it. If you want a publisher to submit a product, then you need to contact them and convince them to do so.”

Anyway, not only am I thrilled to be on the list of nominees, but I am also delighted that our game is a nominee in the “Best Family Game / Product” category as I always intended the game to appeal to both kids AND kids at heart. While there are certainly plenty of scares to be found in the setting, if Pinebox Middle School were a Netflix series (one can hope) it would likely have a TV-14 rating (the same rating as Stranger Things, Wednesday, or Locke & Key).

For those interested in supporting me, Pinebox Middle School, and Savage Worlds, voting will take place from July 12th through the 21st with winners announced on August 2nd at Gen Con!

My First 'Doctor Who' Audio Drama is ON SALE NOW!

Just passing this along to all my fellow Doctor Who fans out there!

With Melanie back on our screens once again, Big Finish Productions is currently running a SALE on her many audio adventures including MY very first one, the Juggernauts starring Colin Baker (the Sixth Doctor), Bonnie Langford (Mel), Terry Molloy (Davros), and a few Daleks!

Get your copy now for just $2.51 USD through Monday, June 24!

It's Origins Awards Time Again

As I write this, the start of the OriginsGame Fair, a long-running annual gaming convention run by the Game Manufacturer's Association (GAMA), is less than a week away, and with that comes the prestigious Origins Awards.

I encourage you to review the list of nominees as it is always a nice cross-section of quality in a number of categories including board games, card games, roleplaying games, and even media contributions (podcasts, vlogs, and the like).

This year, Savage Worlds (and Pinnacle Entertainment Group) is represented in the Best 2D Artwork category in the form of Holler: the Appalachian Apocalypse. Congratulations to Francesco Chiappara, Aaron Acevedo, Karl Keesler, Simon Lucas, and Alida Saxon for their outstanding work on this gorgeous setting!

Meanwhile five years ago this week, I learned that one of my proudest accomplishments, the Savage World of Flash Gordon, was nominated for Best Roleplaying Game of 2018!!! While the game did not win that year, it was still thrilling to see it up there among other outstanding titles like Forbidden Lands, Invisible Sun, Star Trek Adventures, and Vampire: the Masquerade!

Who knows, maybe next year Pinebox Middle School will appear on that list! 🤞🏻

The Sixth Gun TV Pilot

Well, well, well... 

After 11 long years, the rejected pilot for the Sixth Gun (based on the critically-acclaimed comic by Cullen Bunn) has finally turned up online!

As a huge fan of the source material and the writer of the Sixth Gun Roleplaying Game for Pinnacle Entertainment Group, I have been eager to see this pilot for a very long time, and today, I finally carved out 42 minutes to kick back and give it a look-see.

Without turning this post into a full-fledged review (I’m sure you can find one or two of those online already), I will say that the pilot is quite ambitious and it gets a LOT right, however it is also plagued by a few oddities that make it less than perfect:

1. It’s obvious that titles, captions, and a few visual effects are not in any way final. The visit to the Hanging Tree, for example, is a clear example of some of those incomplete VFX which, unfortunately, ruin what should have otherwise been a phenomenal sequence!
2. Pedro Pascal (yes, THAT guy) appears here as Agent Ortega and is fine in the role, however, he LOOKS like he should have been Drake Sinclair, even down to the moustache, hat, and tie. Meanwhile, Michael Huisman as Drake does a decent job, but comes across more as a fast-talking rogue versus a driven and haunted soldier in an ongoing war for reality. Additionally, how could someone look at Drake’s appearance in the comics and then do a complete 180 from his signature ‘stache, dapper suit, gloves, and bowler?
3. In the comics, Becky Montcrief is instantly recognizable by her flaming mane of red hair, yet here, she appears as a blonde. That said, Laura Ramsey still does a good job.
4. Continuing with the hair theme, Missy Hume, as presented in the comics, sports long, raven-black hair, but inexplicably, in the pilot, she’s the one with a mountain of red hair! Elena Satine still delivers a good performance and it’s nice that we get see her in her aged form for one quick scene.
5. I can think of no reason why the name of Missy’s saloon was changed from “the Silver Palace” in the comics to “the Emerald Palace” in the pilot. I’ve never been much of a fan of change for change’s sake.
6. The hard rock music tracks (mercifully used sparingly during a few fierce battles) are jarring and completely out of place. I get what they were trying to do, but I would have instead preferred a powerful, dramatic score during these moments.
7. I would have LOVED to have seen General Hume in all his undead glory, but alas, all we get is a bloodshot eye, a grim voice, and a couple dusty hands in the last 10 seconds of the presentation.

As for things I quite liked:

1. James Le Gros, in an understated role as Billjohn, is spot-on! Had Billjohn’s story unfolded as presented in the books, it would have been interesting to have seen if Le Gros would have continued in the role as a silent reanimated husk or if they would have ignored that storyline altogether.
2. It’s nice seeing René Auberjonois as Becky’s stepfather, Gregory.
3. The Six Guns, with Roman numerals emblazoned on their grips, look very nice. I wonder where those props wound up.
4. The opening attack on the monastery, with Silas wielding the Fourth Gun to great effect, is exciting stuff, and the husks exploding out of their graves is pretty awesome!
5. I quite like the way the flashes of both future and past are handled when Becky uses the Sixth Gun.

Overall, this pilot is pretty entertaining. On the one hand, it packs too much into its short running time, while on the other hand, it leaves a LOT of great material out with the assumption that those things (the rest of Silas’ gang, for example) would have been revealed in future episodes.

If you’re looking for a little weirdness in your westerns, give the pilot a look. If you want to really see what the Sixth Gun is all about, read the dang comics (and there are plenty of them out there) and get your hands on the RPG (the core book is still available in both softback and PDF from Pinnacle Entertainment Group)!