Category: Updates

This is the first part of a series of blog posts about DragonCon. Part 2 and 3 will be up soon!

I was at DragonCon this weekend and addition to staying up way too late and dancing way too much, I was also a panelist. The panels at DragonCon are different from the ones at gaming conventions because…well, people attend them. 

(For those of you who don’t know the Forbeck Rule—named for Matt Forbeck—”When the panelists outnumber the attendees, the panel moves to the bar.”)

The rooms were packed to capacity. Standing room only. In fact, on many occasions, there were people standing. I ran a 7th Sea panel that was full of fans eager to hear about the game. I was also on a “Making a Great Character” panel and a “How to Make a Game for Everyone” panel. (Short answer: Don’t.) I got to sit next to Lord British on that one, and let me tell you, the man is nothing short of the archetypal gentleman. I also got to hook up with the ever-brilliant Keith Baker (of Gloom, Eberron, and Phoenix: Dawn Command fame) and Clint Black (systems developer for Savage Worlds) and we all chatted about ways to make games more fun. There were a ton of D&D questions, and one suggestion I gave seemed to haunt me for the rest of the convention.

A GM started asking a question about the right way to handle hit points and before he could get to the end of his question, I stopped him. “Ditch hit points,” I told him. “They’re a redundant system. They do the same thing as armor class and saving throws. They all do the same thing. Instead, you should replace hit points with peril.”

I explained how this little system worked and the room seemed to light up. And for the rest of the convention, people asked me about it. “John,” they’d say, “I heard about this thing you use to replace hit points. Is it written down anywhere?”

“Nah,” I’d answer. “If you heard what it does, you know what it does.”

Well, after this blog entry, I can’t answer that question the same way. “Yes,” I’ll say. “It’s on my blog.”

How It Works

PCs have peril instead of hit points. Just replace any hit points a character may have with peril. If your fighter has 34 hit points, she now has a peril threshold of 34. That means she can take 34 peril before hitting her threshold.

Whenever a character would normally lose hit points, they gain peril. If your character gets hit for 8 hit points, instead of losing those 8 hit points, she gains 8 peril. 

Your character can also take peril for non-combat actions. If you’re trying to sneak around and you get seen by a guard, take 1d6 peril. (I just made that up. If the situation calls for something less drastic, use a d4. However, I seldom use more than a d8 for peril, unless under really dire circumstances.) 

As soon as your character hits her peril threshold, the DM announces some sort of perilous consequence for your character. For example, if your character is in a duel, you may lose a finger or an ear. Or, if you’re fighting on a rooftop, the villain may throw your character from the roof to the cold waters below.

In essence, peril is a way to get around the humdrum, boring death mechanics D&D (and other games) have. “My character died? Fine, the cleric will pay 5,000 gold and I’ll be back.” May as well do a console restart, my friend, because at that point, you’re playing a computer adventure game. 

It opens options for players and DMs for when your character hits zero. It isn’t just death, it’s sometimes something much, much worse.

Fighting a vampire and you hit your peril threshold? Guess what? You’re a vampire now.

Sneaking across the city and you hit your peril threshold? Now, you’re in jail.

Dueling a man with six fingers and you hit your peril threshold? Now, you’ve got two scars on your cheek and your father’s sword.

Once you hit your peril threshold, it resets to zero. Lucky you!

But What about Healing?

I have to admit, I have an answer for this one, but Keith Baker’s was better. When he heard about peril and someone asked about healing, he brought this up. I think it’s brilliant and I’ll be stealing it (and putting Keith’s name in the thank you section) of my next game.

My answer goes something like this: healing is gone. It’s a narrative thing now. Can a cleric heal peril? No. But he can restore your confidence! A bard can do this, too. Restoring a character’s confidence is pretty much the same as healing, but once you’ve taken a wound such as a lost eye or limb, that’s it. That’s a permanent injury. And you can’t get rid of it. Just like Raistlin can’t get rid of his silver skin and bloody cough. Just like Elric can’t get rid of his albinism. Just like Jaime Lannister can’t regrow his hand. (Or Tyrion regrow his nose, if you’ve read the books.) 

Clerics (and bards) gan restore confidence. That’s it. And I usually only allow a d6. If you’re generous, anyone can restore confidence equal to their charisma bonus, but clerics and bards get to add a d6 to that. And only once per day. 

But Keith brought up a rather brilliant healing thing that I really liked. In a nutshell, he said his clerics can heal wounds, but they have to put the wounds somewhere. Good clerics take the wounds unto themselves or share them with the group. Evil clerics heal their own wounds and put them onto someone else.

I really liked that idea. So, I’m sharing it with you. 

Next?

We finished today talking about gods and next time, I’ll be talking about them again, but I’ll be putting on my Play Dirty hat. A young man asked me for some advice about a player of his and I improvised an answer. He liked it enough to take it back to his table. I’ll be sharing it with you the next time we meet.

And get a helmet. This one is rough.

The first person I fell in love with was Wonder Woman.

In 1975, when I saw her first, I was only seven years old. Sitting in the little room where our family set up the TV, watching her on the screen, I fell in love. Now, being only seven, I had no idea what I was feeling or even why I felt it. All I knew was I felt good when I saw her or thought about her. She wasn’t the first superhero I saw—I had already been collecting comics and drawing my own by then—but she was the first woman superhero I saw. And I was in love. My first love. The first time I felt my heart beating faster, my skin tingling, my thoughts turning to her…. It had nothing to do with sex—remember, I was only seven at the time. No, I was in love.

When I got older, our relationship evolved. I started becoming more complicated and sophisticated in the things I read and as I learned about her sordid past, I understood she was more complicated than I first knew. That’s because characters like Diana are more than just characters, they’re myths.

Myths are not stoic, nor are they made of stone. They have elasticity and they can stretch. I saw Diana as a living symbol, someone who could change as the times changed. Wonder Woman is a myth, a creature of great power. A woman of great power. All at once, she can be a symbol of peace and love and she can be a warrior. She’s big enough to mean different things to different people.

Like all myths, her strength depended on the storyteller. If the voice was weak, she was weak. If the voice was strong, she was strong. Myths are like that: they need us just as we need them. And that means when we engage with them, we must do it with respect. Mishandling a myth is a lot like mishandling a weapon. Symbols have power. And Diana’s power…

…ahem. Yes. I should get back on subject.

When people ask me about characters I’ve created, they often ask me why they feel so real. And I reply, “Because I treat them that way. As if they’re real.” When I wrote The Last Kachiko Story, I cried. I told my (then-)wife Jennifer, “It’s the most cruel thing I’ve ever done to a character.” There’s a moment in Daughter of Fate that broke my heart when I wrote it and every time I read it. (If you’ve read the book, it’s when Ignacio asks Elena to dance.)

Ideas are real. At least, as real as us. Even if they’re only electricity flashing through our brains, the electricity is real. The signals being passed from brain cell to brain cell are real.

Diana is real. She’s impacted and influenced my life in so many ways, there’s not enough space in the world to tell you how. But she’s just as real as me, just as real as you, just as real as anyone else.

I try treating my characters with profound respect, even the ones who don’t deserve it.
So, when I see characters I love mishandled—such as the gross and ignorant portrayal of Kal-El in Man of Steel—I feel like someone has taken a crap on a friend’s head. Or that someone slapped them and said, “You’re welcome” and walked away. I take it personally. Both as a fan of the genre and as a storyteller.

I tried explaining this to a friend of mine who told me I was taking things too seriously. “It’s just a story,” he said. My friend happened to be a Christian. I told him, “How about I make a movie called Jesus of Nazareth about a guy named Judas who’s the King of the Jews. He gets betrayed by this guy named Jesus who betrays him so he can sleep with Judas’ wife Mary Magdeline and that’s how the movie ends. Judas on the cross and Jesus and Mary humping like rabbits.”

His eyes got big. His mouth just opened wide. And I said, “It’s just a story. Don’t take it so seriously.”

And yes, Diana means that much to me.

Myths may be elastic, but if you stretch them too far, they snap. You can’t pull them beyond recognition. Otherwise, why are you using the myth in the first place? That’d be as silly as making a movie out of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and making it a parody of the book you were…

…yeah.

Or making a Superman movie where the whole idea of Clark being a farmkid from Kansas with the ultimate power set is thrown out the window so you can tell a story about an Ayn Rand übermensch who…

…yeah.

Ahem. Yes. I should say what I wanted to say.

I saw Wonder Woman tonight. Saw Diana in her new garb. And I don’t mean the costume. Paid my money down, sat with my popcorn and Coke and watched the screen.

And I remembered exactly why I fell in love with her in the first place.

A myth is only as powerful as the storyteller. And in this case, the tag team of Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot knocked me down and out for the count. My first love found herself two storytellers who treated her with dignity, respect, and most importantly, with love.

I can’t wait to see it a second time.

Last week, I got sick. The kind of sick that sits on your chest and won’t let you breathe. The kind of sick that gets into your head and screams until your skull starts to crack. The kind of sick that you have to fight all day long, so by the late afternoon, the only thing you want to do is just lay down.

That kind of sick.

My doctor tells me I caught a cold. No big deal. But the cold triggered asthma. I said, “Asthma?”

She nodded and said, “Asthma.”

Well, ain’t that fun?

So, I got sick. I had five different bottles of pills, kettles of hot tea, and the empty cardboard corpses of tissue paper rolls strewn around me. I couldn’t do anything except lay back, be miserable and watch Netflix.

Well, as it turns out, you can watch the entire run of Star Trek: The Original Series on Netflix.

I’m not a Trekkie, but I know a lot of them. Jess is a Trekkie, Chris is a Trekkie, Lenny is a Trekkie. Hell, even my dad is a Trekkie. But not me. I saw Star Wars before I saw Star Trek, so…well, you know how that goes.

Now, I may not be a Trekkie, but a whole bunch of people I love are. And because I love them, I want to understand the things they love…even if I don’t. For example, both Jess and Chris have Trek bathrobes. Jess has blue and Chris has gold. So, I got red. And one day, we’ll all be in the same place at the same time and wear them together. I also have an idea for a Trek RPG scenario I want to run for both of them. I won’t spoil it here, but it involves two of their favorite episodes from the classic show.

Yeah, I indulge in the things my friends love because I love my friends. And so, with my red Engineering robe on, I settled in and started watching the classic Star Trek tv show…for the first time.

That’s right. You heard me. For the first time.

Now, I’ve seen a couple episodes before. About…three, I think. “City on the Edge of Forever” (because I’m a fan of Harlan’s), “Trouble with Tribbles,” and “Balance of Terror” (at the urgings of many Trekkies). And I have to say, I liked all those episodes. In fact, “Balance of Terror” even beats out Harlan’s episode as my favorite. I loved that one.

But as for the rest, I’ve never seen them. Never once sat down and watched TOS. So, I figured, it was time. I started writing brief notes about each episode on my Facebook with the tag, #trekforthefirsttime. And the response has been pretty fun. At least it gets my mind off the fact that I can’t sleep because I can’t stop coughing.

Now, as of this writing, I’m not finished with the series. I’m halfway through Season 2—just watched “Conscience of the King”—but I still have a few thoughts I’d like to share with you about the experience. Specifically, as a Game Master. Because that’s the hat I’m wearing when I watch these episodes. And it’s gotten me thinking a lot about a Star Trek RPG.

As I began watching, I noticed that there are three kinds of episodes. I’m dubbing them:

1. Kirk vs the Machine
2. Kirk vs God, and
3. The Good Ones

In “Kirk vs the Machine,” Kirk beats a godlike machine or android by using logic or absurdity. I didn’t like it the first time, I didn’t like it the rest of the times. I mean, it’s clear these episodes were written (or, in many cases, re-written) by people who don’t understand what the word “logic” means. It’s infuriating as someone who studied philosophy to hear “logic” thrown around so freely. In the world of Star Trek, nobody can agree on what “logic” actually is because they all have different definitions. Just like folks can’t agree on what “god” is because…

Well, let’s talk about that one, shall we?

And another thing before we get to the last category. Any episode that ends with someone solving the problem with technobabble is just not for me. Instead of Scotty saying, “We re-routed through the Jefferies tubes,” he may as well be saying, “I waved me magic wand and made the problem go away.” That’s boring. It’s like telling Dorothy should could have gone home at any time by tapping her heels together. I call bullshit. But more on that in a moment.

Let’s talk about Kirk vs God. Yeah. I…just…can we just not talk about this one? I mean, I’m the openly atheist in the room and this one just makes me feel dumb even thinking about.

As for the third kind of episode, this is where we get stuff like “Amok Time,” “Space Seed,” and the always delicious “Mirror Mirror,” along with the previously mentioned “classic” episodes. This is the real stuff. Nothing gets solved because of technobabble. And the reason is simple: there are no easy or simple solutions to the problems in the episodes.

Everyone likes talking about the Kobayashi Maru test: a test of character. And how Kirk fixed the test so he could win. But what’s interesting to me is how many Kobayashi Marus there are in the series. No good choices. Just choices. And you hope you made the right one.

“Balance of Terror” is an hour-long series of vague choices. Any one of them could doom the Enterprise at any moment. Kirk and his crew have to be at their best against an enemy that’s just as smart, clever and capable as they are. As fun as it was to see Khan in Star Trek 2, I would have loved to have seen the unnamed “Romulan Commander” make a return.

“City on the Edge of Forever” is another example. There’s no tricorder reading that can solve the problem of having to watch another human being die.

“Amok Time” sticks in my head for so many reasons, all of it weighing heavy on the dynamic chemistry between Kirk, McCoy and Spock. I understand why this was the first episode of the second season. Hell, I wish it was the first episode of the first season. And again, there is no easy solution to the problem. Sure, McCoy pulls a bit of trickery out of his med kit at the end, but the choice was still Kirk’s to make. A choice for his best friend.

These are the episodes that resonate in my head because they are about watching characters I care about—and yes, I’ve grown to care about them—facing real and certain challenges. The banter is fun. I like the banter. But what hits me hardest are the real moments of the show. When the characters talk to each other. And when they face dangers with no easy answers.

Remember that the next time you sit down at the game table. Do you remember your character’s stats? Do you remember how cool the initiative mechanic is? No. You remember when your character had to make a choice and nothing on the character sheet could help you.

That’s when shit gets real.

So, more of that, if you would Mr. Roddenberry.

Game designer John Wick, via his company John Wick Presents, has acquired the rights to the Dungeons & half of the Dungeons & Dragons franchise. “The 7th Sea Kickstarter was so successful, we had enough cash to do something important.”

While the dragons are still out of reach, Wick is excited for the possibility of taking the dungeons to new heights. “It turns out the dragons are pretty expensive,” Wick said. “But we’ve got some neat things planned for the dungeons part.”

Wick announced Dungeons & would be released into the public domain in five years, making the gaming public owners of the property. “The fans can do what they want with it. It belongs to them now.”

In the meantime, what are JWP’s plans for the property? Wick said, “We don’t plan on changing much. 5th Edition is my favorite edition of D&D. Maybe some new lighting for the dungeons. More pirates. Switching to a d10 system. Nothing major.”

Along with the acquisition of D&, JWP has also acquired Raven-, Plane-, Dying and Birth-. Wick said, “When we get the rest, we’ll be giving the full rights back to the original creators. Until then, they’ll have to settle for halfsies.”

For further information, please visit www.johnwickpresents.com/d-and.

So, I’ve tried to write three different blog posts. I’m supposed to do this twice a week, and this time, it just isn’t happening. Why? Well, this little gif pretty much lays out why.

Writing is different for everyone—which is why there are so many different writing advice books—but one thing seems to be true among the writers I read and admire. That’s momentum. It’s hard to get started, but once you’ve got momentum, once you’ve been writing for ten-to-twenty minutes straight, you just keep going. You’ve found a rhythm and that rhythm keeps you going. Unless, of course, the world throws a fire in your face. Then, you have to start all over again.

And that’s pretty much what happened to me this week. I’ve been trying to avoid the news and politics and culture, trying to catch the momentum, and I’ve failed. All week long, I failed. I’ve gotten very little writing done, but I’ve been posting a lot on social media. More than I should have, to be honest. Because arguing on the internet is… well, we all know what arguing on the internet is all about, don’t we?

Way back when I was writing 1st Edition 7th Sea, my then-wife Jennifer (isn’t she knockin’ it out of the park with her 7th Sea fiction bits, folks?) put a rule on my head. No Internet Before Writing. I wasn’t allowed to check e-mail or go to any websites until I had written my daily word count.

I guess I’m gonna have to go back to that rule.

No internet before word count.

So, I’ve got very little for you this week. But I do have one thing. One very small thing. It’s small but very important.

The Mighty Matthew Colville—whose Youtube channel is required viewing for Game Masters, and that’s coming from the guy who wrote Play Dirty 1 & 2—introduced me to a couple memes that have become important in my life. The first is “Friendly Game,” which has become an important part of my game design philosophy. But the second is the concept of “mans.”

“Mans” is the name for the figures/chits/bits/pieces you move around in a board game. We were playing the old Dune board game (a brilliant, but flawed gem) and Matt referred to all his pieces as “mans.” I found the term absolutely delightful and adopted it into my own vocabulary. I even unofficially brought it into Houses of the Blooded. I’ve always loved RPGs that allow me to have “mans.” Folks who are linked to my character. I once designed a Noble character class for D&D that gave me more mans as I leveled up. And when I wrote Houses, I made sure one of the elements of that game allowed me to have mans. I could have a Spy Master and a Valet and a Poison Master. You know, like I was a Landsraad noble from Dune.

That was many years ago, but the word has stuck with me. And I should mention, in my head, it’s gender neutral. “Mans” means both men and women. But I’ve also become considerate to the fact that I cannot ignore it has a masculine connotation, and there are women friends of mine who would not appreciate being called a “mans.” (Yes, “mans” is not only gender neutral, but also both plural and singular.) And so, I’ve been looking for a new term.

What’s more, just recently, I realized that I actually do have mans. My company, John Wick Presents, has a whole bunch of people working on projects. We just released Heroes & Villains and Pirate Nations is off to the printer. Nations of Théah, Vol. 1 & 2 are both on the fast track to coming out in a couple of months, and just today, I saw Secret Societies has an outline deadline of this week.

Secret Societies! The very last book on our schedule for 7th Sea has an outline deadline for this week!

I have mans. A whole lot of them. And they’re doing some really damn amazing work. But, I can’t call them mans. I really can’t. I need a new term. Not because I’m afraid of offending people—if you know anything about me, I don’t give a single flying @#$%ing @#%% about @#$%ing offending people. But because people get to choose their labels. And if someone doesn’t feel comfortable with being one of my mans, then they deserve a new nickname.

Especially if they’re doing outstanding work for a company with my name on it.

Still, I’m a little sad to lose it. Nevertheless, a new word for the folks who work for me.

“Employees” is stale and boring. These people aren’t my employees. Some of them are the best friends I have in the whole world. And “friends” isn’t right, either. It just lacks the charm of the original term.

And entourage? Yeah, no. That’s just demeaning. That’s too close to “hangers on,” which does not denote the fact that I need these people.

And then, in the shower, the place where all great ideas hit you in the head, I knew what to do.

I knew the term I needed to use. Something for the JWP folks working so hard to make the company with my name on it look so good.

I have a crew.

Sure, I may be the captain of this mad voyage, but I’ve also got officers who manage things and keep us going in the right direction. A captain without a navigator and a pilot… yeah, no good. And the crew working the sails, we need them, or the ship goes nowhere.

A crew. All working together so we all get to where we’re going. We all heave together or the ship don’t go.

Yeah. That sounds about right. A crew.

I’ve got a damn fine crew at JWP. Looking at the books we’ve produced so far, at the Wiki page, at the Free Rules we just released, at the maps, at the art, at the innovative mechanics, at the editing, at the fiction… at just about everything. All working together to keep the ship going.

I’ve got a crew. And that’s about as much anyone can ask for.

Sing ho! for a brave and gallant ship

With a fair and favorin’ breeze

With a bully crew and a captain too

To carry me over the seas

To carry me over the seas, me boys,

To me true love far away

I’m taking a trip on a Bucca ship

Ten thousand miles away

Listen to “Ten Thousand Miles Away” for 7th Sea by Sheldon Morley

I’m starting my own church. A church of one. This is what I believe.

I.

I believe in a reality that is very close to our own, a reality that sometimes touches our own, and sometimes even crosses over. This reality has been called many things by many people. It has been called the Astral Plane, the Dreaming, the Tellurian, and Ideaspace.

We feed this place with our dreams, our ideas, our inspirations and aspirations. We visit this place when we dream. When our minds are set at the right speed. Shamans used peyote to reach this place. Tibetan monks used meditation. If we refuse to sleep, sometimes the dreams fight their way through. This is the place where dreams and dreamers meet. We call to them and they answer back.

Heroes are born here, live here, and die here. All our legends, all our faiths are born in this place. It is the home of Robin Hood and Beowulf. Buddha and the Christ are here, breaking bread and drinking wine. Just over there, Jacque de Molay and the Old Man on the Mountain play an endless game of chess. Odin and Loki argue with Zeus and Prometheus. All our dreams, all our legends, all our myths. They come from this place. This holy, sacred place.

I believe this place can be reached through various means. We use ritual and ordeal. We use the ritual of enacting the stories of heroes. We do not simply tell the stories of heroes, we don’t walk in their footsteps. We make the footsteps. To summon the energy of heroes, we tell their tales. We wrap ourselves in their symbols and invoke the hero. We do not simply tell the myth, we become the myth. We are the heroes of the stories we tell.

We are shamans, summoning the spirits of heroes.

We are magicians, making magic with rituals and ordeals.

We are gamers.

II.

Every man, woman and child is part of the Imagination, but all of us see it differently. All of us know it by different names. The Astral Plane, the Dreaming, the HeroPlane.

For me, I call it, “Valhalla.”

This sacred place where heroes went after they died. In that holy hall, the victorious fallen drink, feast, sing, and make love until the fighting begins. They fight to the death, each and every one of them. Then, the Allfather calls their names and rises them up, mending their broken bones and torn skin, so they can do it all again the next night.

The victorious fallen. The Einherjar.

(As a sidenote, what most people don’t realize is that only half the Einherjar actually go to Odin’s hall. The rest go to Freya’s hall, Folkvang. As for me, I’d rather hang out with the Sex Goddess than the Allfather, but to each his own.)

My last name is Wick. My grandfather changed it from Vik when he arrived in America. (He thought it sounded too Scandinavian.) I grew up in Minnesota, learning the tales of my ancestors. I learned about Valhalla and the Grey Wanderer, about Loki and the Lay of Thrym. I learned about Mjolnir and Bifrost. And I learned about the Einherjar. And I used to brag that my funeral would be me with everything I own, floating down the Mighty Miss on a burning barge.

Most importantly, I learned the only true immortality was having your name spoken after you were in the ground.

I believe in Imagination. This place where heroes go. The Victorious Fallen. The Einherjar.

Heroes are there. Sherlock Holmes and Lamont Cranston. John Constantine and V. Tim Drake and Jack Burton. Irene Adler and Kachiko.

(“Who?”)
(“Jack Burton! ME!”)

Heroes go here. My heroes. Your heroes. Like Hemmingway and Roger Zelazny. Dorothy Chandler and Harriet Quimby. Buddy Holly and Harry Chapin. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Lincoln. The Buddha, the Christ, and Owen Hart.

This is what I believe. I believe we can make stories of our lives that we too may eat and drink and make love with the heroes in that sacred place. As long as our names are spoken after our death, I believe we may stay in that sacred hall. With Johnny Cash and Ossie Davis. With Elvis and Byron. With William Blake and Jim Morrison.

And my grandfather.

I perform the ultimate alchemy: transforming my life into a story. And when I am gone and I go before Freya, she will ask me, “What have you done to earn the right to sit beside my Einherjar?”

I will say, “I have a story worth telling.”