19th Level

On my list of games to try at some point is some game from the Gumshoe family of RPGs. I've got a bunch of them - though I've never played one outright they are all wonderfully done and have a very high density of useful ideas, even if you never play one of those games outright. However, I do want to get around to playing one of them at some point. High on my list is the recent TimeWatch RPG, followed closely by Night's Black Agents , especially it's Dracula Dossier. For TimeWatch  I'm generally a fan of the time travel genre and more importantly, at least for me, a huge fan of history. I hope at some point to be able to visit Istanbul and see the capital of two great empires, to see the pyramids in Egypt, to see the canals of Venice, etc. I doubt I'll ever be able to go on a history world tour but some of those destinations are definitely in reach (alas no trip to the Royal Navy Museum in Portsmouth next year - the girls really want a trip to Disney......

I'm not sure if its's the season of the year or something else but I've definitely been in a bit of an undead kick of late. The picture here shows what my front yard looks like as we approach Halloween, with a nice zombie apocalypse in the making. Tragically, my elder daughter has told me I'm not allowed to keep the zombie display going until Thanksgiving, even with my offer of equipping them with pilgrim duds. Though my yard is decorated by zombies I've been thinking more about vampires. I recently reread Dracula  and I've been going through some of Pelgrane Press' vampire-centric Night's Black Agents , especially the Dracula Dossier . One thing I've been thinking of is some open issues introduced by the novel Dracula , all possible fodder for gaming or stories. It's worth noting that books like The New Annotated Dracula  has some great ideas for some of these open issues. One thing I wonder about is just what Dracula was hoping to achieve b...

Dracula  is a novel which has entered western culture so much that even those who have not read it are familiar with many of its essentials. However, it is a novel absolutely worth reading. Dracula  is written as a collection of journal entries, newspaper clippings, letters, etc. The narrative switches from perspective to perspective. It begins with Jonathan Harker, solicitor, narrating the tale of his visit to Count Dracula of Transylvania. The villagers of the area try to warn him against going there, warnings he of course should have heeded. Dracula appears to be an older gentleman, very friendly, who is in the process of acquiring property in London with the intention of moving there. Over the course of the first chapters Harker becomes aware that he has never seen any of Dracula's servants and he only interacts with Dracula at night. He also notices he never sees Dracula eat. And worst, he realizes he is a prisoner of Dracula and contrives a plan to escape. The narr...

Hey look more stuff to distract me! I came home today  to a pair of packages, one with the new Tunnels & Trolls Deluxe Edition and one with The Dracula Dossier , a campaign for Night's Black Agents. My experience with Tunnels & Trolls is fairly limited - I've played a few one-off games way back in middle and high school. It's a game that looks a lot like D&D, with a series of stats that are generated by 3d6. It has a small number of classes - warriors, wizards, and rogues are the big three. Warriors and wizards are pretty self-explanatory. Rogues are anyone else - they can learn to use magic, they can fight decently well. There's also the warrior-wizard, a class really difficult to qualify for (but one I saw a lot of now that I think of it...). The Deluxe Edition is expanded from this baseline with more difficult-to-qualify for classes. Unlike classic D&D stats go up over time - they go up a lot. Since wizards used to expend strength to cast spells, y...