Heavy Metal Sunday has big nasty teeth!

One more day, peeps! In the meantime get your groove on with Tool performing Sober. Tool is a fun mix of art/progressive rock with more traditional metal riffs.

Watch on YouTube

Maps and gaming.

pauldrye makes an excellent post about his upcoming D&D world based off this quote from the new Dungeon Master's Guide

"The World" in which the D&D game takes place doesn't have a map -- not until you create one. And you shouldn't feel in any great hurry to create one. A map is important only when the characters seek out the places shown on it.

I love maps. Reading them, creating them, using them in my job, just admiring them for their artistic value. I've read magazines about maps, spent hours in the San Francisco Library's map room, and have tortured Kirsten by spending far too long at the USGS Map Store. For me, a good map is as engaging as a good book.

But... I can see the point. Take the Thomas Guide I use daily. It gives detailed street maps for dozens of towns and cities, has odd little back roads, and all the loving detail you can ever ask for. But I use it when I need to find where a specific place is, and how to get there from where I am right now. All the intervening detail becomes scenery at best, ignored at worst.

Every GM has had this moment. You've labored over a setting.. a town, a solar system, a bar. you know every detail down to the genealogy of the bartender, the average daytime temperatures of the gas giant's moons, etc. And what do the players do? Either ignore it all or assume that because there is detail, it has to be a vital plot point. Everyone remember the infamous "lone cow" story?

One of the greatest settings ever written for gaming has to be Hârn. The sheer volume of material for Hârn is staggering. I stopped actively collecting Hârnworld stuff 15 years ago and I have two thick binders crammed with material. Yet that volume of detail means that most of it will never be used. Hârn has become more an exercise in cooperative world building. Hârnies have more fun "filling in the grout" and never get around to throwing a party in the mansion they've built.

Another good example is Traveller's Third Imperium. Over the last thirty years fans and pros have heaped detail onto the setting. What was once a "distant government" became this all-powerful state. Again, the level of detail begins to choke off creativity, and most of it never gets used. Despite the near-universal accolades I got for GURPS Traveller: Ground Forces I often wonder if anyone actually uses half the stuff I put in there.

So do we really need a detailed map? Let's try an experiment.

You're standing on a high hill, looking north. You're at the end of a peninsula; around you the ground slopes away to meadows to the east and north and a long stretch of sand dunes can be seen to the west. Peering into the fog, you see that the water to the west appears to be an ocean. To the north is a narrow straight, with highlands beyond. To the east the straight opens into a broad, calm bay with several large islands. You can just make out the far shore, about ten miles away, with a hint of high hills in the distance. Turning around, you see that the hill you are on is just the start of a chain of mountains. There are two peaks about the size of the one you're on to your immediate south, and you can tell that the group rises and gets steeper the further south you go. But judging from how the fog is blowing in the steady wind, there might be a pass down that way. The vegetation around is mostly long grasses, with clusters of oaks and other trees.

Got the picture? I've just described the view from Mt. Sutro in San Francisco with all works of man deleted. Now not one of you pictured that scene in the same way. When I described the Marin headlands as "highlands", some of you pictured cliffs, others a beach reaching up to hills. Same for the Coast Range. Some pictured the Rockies, others a range of hills. I could do a quick free hand map of the region with rough approximations of "mountains" "marshes" and settlements. Everything else is in the details, and if I need a village, I write one in. If a detailed map becomes necessary, I can make one using my notes and rough map. But I don't need to know that the Altamont Pass is 1009 feet above sea level (it is, I drive past the sign twice a week) to be able to accurately describe the scene.

This movement towards less "stuff" on the table isn't overly new. Thousand Suns has as it's default FTL drive a jump line system. Since this means that travel requires a jump line, you don't even need a map, just a list of what stars a particular system can reach. Lois McMaster Bujold uses a similar system in the Vorkosigan saga.

I think we're seeing a new phase in tabletop RPGs. We can't match the MMORPGs for shiny stuff. So I think the focus is swinging back to streamlined rules and good opportunities for adventures and storytelling. Given that we can get (or make) good maps, the producers of RPG materials are going to focus more on their core product. I think we're going to see less in the way of additional rules and more in the way of generic campaign support (books like ...and a 10-foot Pole are going to be strong sellers.)

The new D&D books have been ordered, and we'll see what this brave new world of RPGs holds.

Being antisocial.

I was going to karaoke tonight, but I've been experiencing growing stress over getting the dentures tomorrow. I understand that everything is going to be fine, but that doesn't stop my usual panoply of "everything that can go wrong will" fears from creeping in around the edges.

So instead, I tested out the On-Demand feature on the new cable box and watched National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets. Fun film, not as good as the original, but it's Nick Cage playing Nick Cage with Ed Harris as the bad guy. Usual compliment of clues and ingenious devices.

Doing a very late load of laundry, then grabbing a shower and trying to sleep tonight. I swear, this is harder than waiting for Christmas when I was six.