Dramasystem

Just found this via Google+ and cannot describe how pleased I am.  It ticks so very many of my personal boxes.  I admit I am gagging to playtest.  Drama as RPG all neatly wrapped up together.  Yes please.

Dramasystem

Suddenly it's summer

It's very odd.  The last couple of days have been warm.  Really warm, as in teeshirt weather even for the non-hardy.  The qualification is necessary as we live in the tough north and for a lot of the population even a blizzard doesn't stop them from wearing midriff-baring tops.  What is even more bizarre is that I've been hearing fairly consistent rumours that October (due to arrive tomorrow) is scheduled for snow.  Mother Nature is playing some pretty strange games.

Friday sees me driving up the A66 to Bowes where I run the Drama Club and will shortly be beginning work on the nativity play (and I'm not going to whine about that until I have to).  Normally Bowes is the last bastion of wind-chill.  Anything resembling wind, rain, snow or frost hits it incredibly hard even when the rest of the county is reasonably unaffected.  Today it looked and felt like the kind of rural idyll Rupert Brook had in mind.

I did the obvious thing and hauled the whole class out to their amphitheatre.  I have mentioned that Bowes is a very pro-active school and among other things they have a very functional vegetable garden backed by a small amphitheatre.  Overlooking the hedge are a pair of brass giraffes.  I hadn't see them before and they were a bit of a shock.  "Oh - them," a helpful parent kindly enlightened me, "our Tanzanian exchange programme."

Over the mild surprise of two life-size brass giraffes, we went on with the session in which I got them to demonstrate as many appalling things to do on stage as possible.  It was a hilarious session and quite an informative one.  By the end they were putting their hands up and bellowing "She's looking at her feet!", "I can't hear her!", "She turned her back!", "We can hear them offstage!", "They don't know their lines!".  "So do you think you can do better than that?"  "YES!!!".  We'll see.  The nativity will be the acid test of that one, but some of it may sink in.

Our own vegetable and fruit tree order has just gone in.  Two apples (Bramley and Braeburn), a stripey humbug pear tree, some asparagus crowns, many onions, shallots and garlic for seasonal planting, many potatoes (first early, second early and maincrops), parsnips, cabbage, strawberries and probably some other bits I've forgotten.  Look upon the Humbug pear and be amazed.  Love at first sight.

Internet collapse and gentle 4e discussion.

I been suffering from a brief interruption to internet access in the last couple of days.  According to Dave in Mumbai, this was the fault of BT rather than our ancient home network hub - a relief to me, but possibly less to him.

That enforced absence might have been quite a good thing.  For a start I didn't torment myself by deliberately going and looking at all the forums* indulging in slash and burn criticism of 4e.  Informed comment and discussion, I like and can take part in.  The wholesale "It sucks because it isn't what I like, and I know this because I have read it on the internet/played for an hour with the intention of hating it/heard it's garbage from a friend of a friend" is painful.  It applies all ways of course.  I am just as annoyed with ill-informed smackdown of other systems too.  The thing is, I know the 4e ruleset pretty well, so it grates more.

4e is not a perfect system, but it is an extremely robust one and for the most part elegantly designed.  Some points in favour below:

1. It is virtually impossible to create a useless character.  There are no negative attributes for races or classes, only positives.  Naysayers claim that this is a form of nanny-state "Everyone gets a prize" thinking.  What they're not quite seeing, I think, is that although there are no active negatives for picking a certain race or class, the positives are different for each of them and it still behoves the player to think about whether that sneaky Goliath Rogue wouldn't be better off as a Halfling Rogue or a Goliath Barbarian.  That said, if you do go for a Goliath Rogue, you'll still have something you can play an actual game with and be a viable party member.  Not to be sneezed at.
2. It rewards team synergy and group play.  Can I just stress how much I like this notion?  It's always been true, but 4e is the first system I've seen that actively promotes this.  Builds and powers are designed to interlink with each other.  Even better, it does not do so in a cookie cutter way.  There are a myriad ways to build a viable party.  When I first started playing it wasn't obvious how subtle the interactions could be, but three years down the line I'm still finding things out.  Easy to learn but subtle in application.  A good combination.
3. The GM's job is infinitely easier.  This is a bonus point that very few deny.  Preparing a game is a pain in the neck.  Even with great pre-written material there will be tweaks and changes.  If I can do those in 10 minutes and know it will work, I'm a happy camper.  And I can.  So can anyone.  The base mechanics work well enough that a few quick pencil changes to a pre-existing monster of too low or high a level means you can throw just about anything you fancy at any given party.  No more spending the first five levels fighting kobolds.

BUT ...

I have a problem with Wizards of the Coast.  WoTC seem to have a curious attitude to their baby.  On the one hand, they continue to publish material for it and update their online suite of tools.  On the other, those updates are patchy and pushy in a way that I really dislike.  The bells and whistles all seem very nice, but a Character Builder that only lets me store 20 PCs when I run many games and want to access all of them is a pain in the neck.  A set of online tools that I can't download to my desktop is a pain in the neck.

WoTC don't seem to know what to do with 4e.  For example, the bizarre non-presence of published material at GenCon -
"Hi, I'd like to buy the Shadowfell supplement" - 
"Sorry, we don't have it."  - 
"Whuh?!?!, you've got the biggest audience you'll get all year for your product and you're not selling the material?" - 
"That's correct, we have partner publishers who do that, they will be around somewhere."  -  
"Thank you." 
Flabberghasted retreat.

I do wonder how much of their seeming indifference to selling the product is down to some serious backpeddling and an attempt to retrieve some of the old market.  If so, that's a pity as what they have is genuinely good, but it needs support.  If the parent company doesn't do that it sends a horrible message and is just depressing for those who do enjoy it and use it to bring new geeks into the joy of RPGs.

*fora? - sure it should technically be fora with the Latin root and all, but I don't know

Hawk Giant again

Forgive me if I do a little gloating.

I mentioned entering a contest to provide a short adventure based on a title rolled old-school.  Also that it was bewildering me a lot.  Anyway the thing was done and sent and has come second in a three-way tie.  This is making me absurdly pleased.  See Hill Cantons Asinine Adventure Contest for details.

Even better, Fabian at Bladesharp tied for second as well.  I'm now agog to see the other entries.

Following up

I think I may have sounded too bitter about the nativity plays thing.  There is something about the process which drives me nuts though.

Typically this is the one time of year when even the least drama-oriented schools decide that performance is the right way to celebrate.  It's a golden opportunity for children to find out about the creativity and magic of live theatre by doing it themselves.  That's something I'm passionate about and it really, really gets under my skin when the stuff that's on offer is so very mundane.  It is patronising.  It assumes a lowest possible common denominator.  It is not good work.  It's often worthy work and very well meant, but it's not inspiring.  And I can't help thinking and feeling with every bone in my body that drama needs to be or there is no point whatever to doing it.

I feel very bad about disliking all these plays so much.  I want to love them.  I just can't.

Eeep!

So, so close to missing a day.  Can't be doing with that.  Hectic day is no excuse.

Classes were good.  Got through two whole acts of Faustus blocking, nothing else too infuriating and gamers around in the evening.  We dealt with many, many vermin.  The woodshed turned out not to be the problem at all, merely the site of a bizarre rock linking us to another plane infested with spiders and many, many rats.  They are now ex-vermin.  Knowing our luck, they'll come back to haunt us.

Weekend plans and Nativity plays.

I teach all day on Saturdays.  Tomorrow will see me sorting out a session for would be technical and backstage crew.  Then Faustus.  Experimenting with devil movement and how to decapitate someone using curtains.  After the main rehearsal, I have a session with Dr F and Mephistopheles to sort out their decidedly odd relationship.  They're both good, conscientious actors and are looking forward to it.

Back at the ranch, we have gamers over in the evening.  Tomorrow is the day we sort out the unpleasantness in the woodshed.  Possibly.  Unless it sorts us out. 

Busy day in any case, but a good one.

Sunday should be quieter, although I've just been handed three nativity plays to read and listen to for son's old primary school.  Joy of joys.  They will be mind-manglingly horrible, but one of them will probably be more performable than the others.  I have to bear in mind who I will be casting here.  This being a school nativity, it has nothing whatever to do with talent and everything to do with which year the child is in.  A child in Year 6, however hopeless and unwilling to be on stage must have a more important role than a drama-mad child in Year 4.  It's a rule.