Recently, m.s. jackson, had the opportunity to interview Rich Rogers, aka Orklord, of the blog/podcast hybrid gaming site known as Canon Puncture, which strives to bridge the gap between gamers playing mainstream RPGs and those playing "indie" RPGs. Learn about the Orklord's deepest secrets as he also shares his recommendations for us "grown-up" gamers, and discover why you should revere the awesome wisdom of Canon Puncture!
Editor's Note: m.s. jackon is overseas in Iraq with a dead laptop and minimal access to the Internet as a result. I've posted this interview on his behalf to prevent it from sitting on the backburner for too long.
How were you introduced to role-playing? What game did you start with?
I was introduced to role-playing games by my 5th grade advanced studies teacher Mrs. MacDavid. Mrs. MacDavid brought to class the Dungeon! board game. I was completely fascinated by the game and immediately begged my parents to buy me a copy of Dungeons & Dragons, which they did. I got the Red Box Basic D&D rules, happily used the white crayon to color in my ugly blue dice and pored over the rulebooks every night. I still remember sitting alone in my room, playing the solo adventure in the book with my human fighter and being killed by a carrion crawler (carrion crawlers still spook me out after almost thirty years). My parents later bought me the Expert and the Companion Rules Boxed Sets as well as a Lone Wolf Adventure book and I read through all of them. But I didn't know anyone who played D&D at the time, so I didn't get to play with anyone else.
A couple years later, I met an older high school guy named Hanuum who said he played in a game with some friends, but they played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. He let me look through his copy of the Players' Handbook and I was amazed at the complexity of it, and the options for characters. I made a character and was quite excited to play, but things never worked out. More years passed. I watched the D&D cartoon, bought all the action figures and just loved D&D from afar. It wasn't until I was in college that I sat at the back of a biology lecture and met Trey Justice, who became my first DM. We played a seafaring AD&D 1st edition game followed by a campaign in Oriental Adventures (my character was a kensai). It was supremely fun times.
What are your favorite games, and what draws you to these games?
My tastes have changed over the years. In early college, I was hard core into D&D 2nd edition and Star Wars d6. I loved these games because of the ability to share high action stories and to play heroes. Our gaming group just had fun, sitting around a table goofing off with each other. I still remember my Star Wars force adept Wathwenar as he tried (and failed) to join the Rebellion right after the Battle of Yavin and Gevolaste "the elven barbarian" and his misadventures in Gamma World ("Hey guys, we could use this typewriter thingy to make scrolls on the cheap!").
Once I started GMing (that would be in middle and later college… I spent a long time "in college", changing majors and trying to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up), I gravitated to the White Wolf Storyteller System for its focus on character interaction and modern setting that allowed us to play what I called a "sit-down LARP" game with player secrets, high drama and lots of note passing. I ran a Vampire: the Masquerade chronicle set in New Orleans for seven years. I followed that up with an 18 month long Werewolf: Black Ops game that I outlined from start to finish before we began play (I was inspired by Babylon 5's tight storyline and wanted a campaign with a single overarching story). These were my days of GM control where I enforced players talking in character, griped at people who were late to "my" game and ran weekly games that lasted up to 13 hours. The group was really into their characters and the games and while from a distance, I realize I was a complete tool in how I acted from time to time, I truly considered gaming to be my "art form".
After I graduated college and married my longtime sweetheart (and fellow gamer) Cary, we moved to Minnesota and hooked up with a new group. We played Legend of the Five Rings mostly, and I played with Greg Secaur, one of the best GMs I have ever met. He taught me how to relax and have fun again. While I still played my character hard, talking as much "in character" as possible and keeping a small campaign journal, I was able to goof off and laugh, too. I still have much love for L5R for the dueling mechanics and the battle chart, simple but elegant.
Then a few years ago, I started playing small press RPGs. But I'll talk more about that in a minute.
What is your favorite gaming memory?
Wow, one memory? That's tough after twenty years of gaming. I would have to say the Star Wars Primetime Adventures games that I played in at Gencon '07 and '08 with Mick Bradley, Judd Karlman, Daniel Perez and Paul Tevis. The setting of Star Wars a 1,000 years into the future gave us all the trappings we needed to draw from. The game – Primetime Adventures – was an excellent system to give us room to breathe but still interact and play together. I had a great time at the '07 game, but the game in '08 was perfect, it really was. It's the one thing I'll miss most about not going to Gencon this year, not continuing that story. You should check it out; I released the audio on our Actual Play feed: feeds.feedburner.com/canonpunctureactualplay.
Why podcasting?
What is the draw for you? I like the sound of my own voice? This is great because I edit most of the shows, so I get to hear myself alllll the time. But seriously, I started podcasting because I was an avid listener of the Sons of Kryos and Durham 3. Those guys were my gaming gurus. I was a frequent denizen of the Sons of Kryos board and ended up chatting with another guy called Common Dialog (Common is Chris Perrin). I tossed up a New Years Gamer Resolution post on the forum where I resolved to start my own gaming podcast. Chris Perrin Private Messaged me that he wanted to do one, too. I reached out to my good friend and gamer buddy from way back in my early college D&D days, Chris Norwood, and we started Canon Puncture. Chris Perrin has moved on to some other projects and we've added Mick Bradley to the mix, and we've featured Judd Karlman (one of the Sons of Kryos), and even brought in special guests like Ryan Macklin (of the Master Plan).
The draw for me is that I get to involve myself in a very exciting hobby and share it with the world. We interview game designers who make games we love or are dying to play, we've covered game design contests and conventions, and we find and share great gaming blog posts that intrigue, delight, amuse and sometimes even frustrate us.
Canon Puncture is an interesting name, what is the story behind the name?
Thanks! Canon Puncture was the result of a long discussion between the Chrises (Perrin and Norwood) and me. We had decided from the get-go that our podcast would tackle these weird little small press "indie" games from a newbie's perspective and try to talk about our gaming history as well. We wanted the podcast to break down the barriers between the more conventional RPGs and these crazy little indie games. Chris Norwood tossed out the name Canon Puncture, which is a term for when characters within a particular fiction are contradicted within other pieces of fiction (such as when Futurama appeared as a television show on The Simpsons and vice versa). It sounds convoluted when I break it down like that, but to me, Canon Puncture is the idea of stepping across gamer boundaries that shouldn't be there in the first place. There shouldn't be a trad vs. story game dichotomy or Old School Renaissance vs. 4E grousing or Rifts vs. "the rest of them" or any of that. Our hobby has so much potential that is untapped and I see great gamers stepping into these circles and talking down to other gamers and it just bothers me. I want to puncture that canon!
Has recording the podcast been everything you expected? Harder, easier? Does it eat into your available game time? Is it as successful as you thought it would be?
Making the podcast happen is a bit of work, there's no doubt. I spend about 6 hours on each show, counting prep, recording time and editing. We record each episode over Skype, so I spend a good bit of time editing the files together to sound as professional as possible. I also have a personal cap of a half hour length for the show now, so I edit out whole chunks of audio. I cut an entire ten minute segment out of episode 74 of the show that wasn't bad, it just didn't measure up to the other two and took us over time. I've organized my podcast time around my family and gaming schedule, so editing the podcast happens late at night during the week (hello Baja Blast from The Bell) or early in the morning on weekends. This summer, we moved the podcast recording schedule to biweekly in an attempt to get more gaming in, and that's been a great relief for me.
The show has been relatively successful. We were nominated for a Diana Jones Award last year, which was such an honor (and free drinks at the awards ceremony at Gencon '08!). We've received praise from many of our podcasting peers and received lots of feedback from listeners. We aren't at the tip of the tongues of most gamers since we cover more small press games, but the effort of making the show is satisfied by the amount of positive feedback we receive. Plus, now that RPGNow sponsors the show and Mick has taken over hosting, making the podcast is no longer an expense in real dollars, which is really nice.
Do people recognize you at cons now?
Well, the podcast is audio-only, so I wouldn't expect people to recognize me on sight. However, I met some of our listeners at Gencon, which was supremely cool. We've had game designers and publishing companies seek us out for interviews, which is high praise for our work.
You made a move a few years ago from traditional, mainstream RPGs to more small press or indie games, why do you think you made this move?
After living in Minnesota for a few years, my wife and I moved back to Tennessee where we'd met and gamed during college. I tried to revive the Vampire game we played in college and it fell flat. So, I started looking for new games. I read a glowing review of Dead Inside on gamegrene.com and decided to buy the .pdf and check it out. I was immediately hooked on the fast and loose PDQ system! The freedom the players had with their PCs in Dead Inside got me thinking about more flexible and open systems (I'd bought a copy of Orkworld at GenCon 2000 and it had many of the same elements as Dead Inside, I hadn't cracked the book and played it to see how it would work. To be honest, I bought the game because John Wick wrote it and I really love orcs/orks).
Around the same time a coworker named Jason Herald turned me onto podcasts, starting with This Week in Tech. I used iTunes to look for gaming podcasts and settling on Gamer the Podcasting because it had a White Wolf feel. On their boards and episodes, the hosts mentioned Sons of Kryos, so I started listening to Sons of Kryos and soon after, Durham 3.
These podcasts kept espousing these weird ideas about player empowerment and collaboration and narrative-driven mechanics (not to mention being low-prep). Being a theater-guy who was big on story-oriented over wargamey RPGs, I had to try them. I was hooked quickly and I've thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of playing games in new and different ways. I haven't turned my back on mainstream games, though. I've recently played D&D 4th edition and ran some Labyrinth Lord and I'm looking forward to trying Hellas soon, which is pretty conventional.
What is your favorite small press or indie game, and why?
I'm going to whip out a little something from the fabulously creative RPG Polaris here. But only if… I can list several of my favorite games and why…
I love the crunchy, gritty fun I've had with Burning Wheel. This is THE game that after twenty years let me scratch my itch to play a hard-edged orc without compromising the barbaric and power-hungry aspects of them that I find compelling.
Don't Rest Your Head has my heart because it's easy to GM (all you need to do is ask yourself, "How much Pain is this?") and easy to make characters to play (answer a series of questions and go). The mechanics allow for twisted quiet horror or straight up gonzo fury and the rich rolling system gives the playgroup so much to work with for the narrative.
I adore Primetime Adventures because it has so much potential for awesome stories and drama and conflict and the framing device of a TV show gives everyone a baseline for communication unlike any other game out there. As Judd mentioned on the Canon Puncture Actual Play Recording episodes, it was the perfect system for Star Wars 1,000 years in the future.
Inspectres and Lacuna Part 1 own a piece of me because of the consistent fun they deliver. With the wackiness of Inspectres and the wild and weird dream-world mysteries of Lacuna, I have had some of my most fun times at a game table.
Dogs in the Vineyard took hold of me and smacked me around until I played a Western genre RPG, and then made me play with heavy religious themes… and I loved every minute of it. It has one of the most interesting conflict systems I've ever used in any game and the way Vincent Baker designed how you run the game is eye opening.
There are many more I think are fun and engaging and will teach experienced gamers some new tricks, but I'll stick with the six above.
I noted that you recently ran a game of Lady Blackbird. This game has seen a recent flurry of activity and talk of how it is set up, the game's small footprint, (nine pages), and its freeform role-playing. One of the most interesting aspects of the game is the very wide differences each group comes up with as it creates the world in which it is playing. What are your thoughts on LB and its small footprint, is it, and John Harper's other games in the same format, the future of small press and indie games?
Our session of Lady Blackbird rocked my socks off. The mechanics are simple enough to fill up half of the pre-generated player character sheets and are rather comprehensive. The system is a nice mix of the Solar System from the indie darling the Shadow of Yesterday and a nearly forgotten gem called The Pool. The setting is more suggestive than proscriptive and the pre-generated characters evoked strong images in everyone's head (my only gentle complaint was the heavy parallels to Star Wars IV led to a few too many jokes in game, but that's my groups' deal more than anything). I haven't tried John Harper's Ghost/Echo or The Mustang, so this is the only short form game I've tried so far (I plan on giving Matt Wilson's Vanguard a shot soon, though; I also found a couple more from the Story Games forum that I need to read through).
While Lady Blackbird was grand fun (and free), I'm not sure if this is the future of indie games, but I hope it is a future for more indie games. I think the short form game is great for a group looking to play something different with little to no prep time. With simple and compelling mechanics, this game would be a powerful tool to introduce non-gamers to the hobby without overloading them on stats and fiddly bits to codify every little bit of the story. Another reason I hope Lady Blackbird isn't the future is that it is free. I want indie game designers to get some money for their hard work. They won't be able to retire on game sales, but they should be able to get something for their efforts.
Now that you are older, what changes have you made in your gamer life to accommodate these changes?
Now that I'm "all grown up", I have to juggle a loving wife, a 3.5 yr. old son, a 50+ hour a week job and my hobby. Yes, gaming is no longer my "art form," and I've made my peace with it. In order to carve out time for gaming, I've had to change how and when I take part in the activity. I have a biweekly game I play over Skype that I play near my son's bedtime and occasionally play late night pick-up games with friends on the west coast. My wife and I have arranged babysitting for an evening a week to game with friends, but the game is much less hard core than my college days. We're a group of couples who share dinner, talk and laugh and roll some dice. My hard core gaming days happen when I go to cons, so I bundle that obsessiveness into a weekend a few times a year. Its worked pretty well since our son was born, and I'm happy with the arrangement.
Do you have any recommendations to fellow mature gamers who might be returning to the hobby and struggling to balance the draw to the game with the rest of their busy lives?
Try to schedule some time for your hobby, work with your significant other. Game at night when the kids are in bed. Skype gaming can be fun, but it is a different animal. Those funny little indie games run much faster than the combat intensive conventional ones, so I suggest you give them a try, since I'm guessing you don't have as much time to play as you once did. Try not to let talking about RPGs on fora or blogging or podcasting about games replace the act of PLAYING games. Talking about the thing you aren't doing hasn't been healthy for me in the past and I recommend against it.
Does your wife game as well?
She does. In the last few games we've played in our Monday group, she tends towards games on the darker spectrum with lots of in character dialog and politicking. She's also a darn good little strategist who can tweak a character for maximum potential if she's sufficiently motivated. As I said earlier, she isn't as interested in pick-up or con games and prefers a more intimate play experience. I love gaming with her, but I also like some games she doesn't (can you say 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars?), so I play apart from her on my Skype games.
Do you intend to introduce your son to gaming? If so, at what age? If you answered that your wife did not game, do you think your wife will object to this?
As much fun as I have playing RPGs and as many of the books as he's already seen me reading, it is unavoidable that I will introduce him to playing role-playing games. We've already watched the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series together, as well as several choice episode of Thundarr the Barbarian (which, at the time, he called "Fundar"). It took me some time to come to grips with the idea of my son as a gamer because most of my life, I've struggled with the self-perceived "stigma" of being an RPG nerd. After two years of doing a podcast where I sit down and talk about RPGs openly with friends and pore over books and blogs about the hobby, plus the sheer openness my wife has about gaming, I got over my previous phobias about "making my son into a nerd" by showing him gaming.
My wife, on the other hand, has never had misgivings about playing role-playing games and is completely at ease with the idea of showing our son this cool thing we do. We both agree that we will not force him to play, but will only introduce him to the concepts of gaming if he shows interest. I'd be happy if he loves sports and outside activities and is the captain of the Quiz Bowl team. Heck, right now, I'm just thrilled to play Uno with him!
As for when? I'm not sure the answer to that one. I would have to say, when he feels like he's ready. My wife has declared that our son will be playing Dungeons & Dragons first, since it's always best to start with the classics. But me, I've already got a few indie games made for kids in mind… mwahahaha. Although, honestly, he's a boy. He'll probably gravitate to a game with big swords and lots of combat. By the way, that's cool with me, too, since I have a bunch of killer minis in storage and my ole hex map from back in the day!
Name one Orklord factoid our readers, or your listeners, may not know?
I don't talk about it too much on air, but I am a huge baseball fan. My favorite part of living in Florida is going to see Major League Spring Training games each March. I save up my vacation days and take almost three weeks each year to go all over Florida and watch as much baseball as I can. Heck, I'm so stupidly in love with baseball and RPGs that I'm currently toying with a RPG about baseball that is tentatively called "Making the Bigs". I've had one small playtest so far and I'm having fun working on it between games and podcasts and being a family guy time. I'm sure as I get the text into a format that would be useful to anyone that is not me, I'll be talking about it on the show. What show? The Canon Puncture Show, of course.
0 comment(s):
Post a Comment