My Brand-Spanking New Alignment System Which I Will Never Use...

You could say I believe in a descriptive rather than prescriptive approach to alignment. Or you could say I don't give much of fuck about it unless my players do.

Here are the only observed alignment elements I've ever actually seen in a game:

ADD--PC wants to do things. Fast. NOW. Will totally admit to being willing to do the wrong thing as long as it is something.

Sneaky--PC wants to think of clever things to do, then do them. The end is largely irrelevant, the sneaky means is the end.

Greedy--PC wants to get gold, level up, or whatever s/he thinks is worth doing in this game to make him/her more badass.

Bloodthirsty--PC is fighty.

Curious--PC wants to find out what the fuck is going on in this dungeon/world/city/city-state.

Righteous--PC wants to Do The Right Thing. (Does not include helping fellow PCs, this is a bolt-on characteristic that anybody of any alignment might do.)

Fancy--Player wants to role-play in the Theatre Club sense of the word and does all kinds of seemingly game-goal-not-achieving stuff. May even go so far as to want to use an alignment system.

Laid Back--PC will pretty much do whatever his/her friends are doing.

Note:
PCs can also be--re: their fellow PCs--Disruptive, Helpful, or Apathetic, but since everybody is one of these things and it sometimes depends on which fellow PC they're thinking of, it ruins the elegance of the system and I left it out.
________

An alignment is a string of these words in order of their priority to the PC:

Fafhrd is Righteous Greedy Curious
The Mouser is Greedy Sneaky Curious
Elric is Fancy
Pippin (in the movie) is Laid Back ADD
Bilbo is Fancy Curious

Kimberly Kane always plays Bloodthirsty ADD
Mandy plays Curious Fancy
Connie plays Sneaky ADD Greedy
Frankie plays Sneaky Greedy
Satine plays Fancy Greedy Sneaky
Caroline Pierce is Laid Back
Cameraman Darren is Laid Back Sneaky
McCormick is Righteous
I play Sneaky ADD Curious

Wayne Reynolds Has His Moments

I ain't no company man, but...



And yeah yeah yeah, I know how you prefer Frazetta or Erol Otus but my house has many mansions and there's room for post-anime-kubert jr.-esquisms in it. And I guarantee half my players will be like "Oh, I wanna be her", especially Nightcrawler's sister up there.

And before anybody starts moaning about the "unrealistic proportions" Mandy would just like to say:

Did You Playtest Vornheim?

(Totally unrelated picture. I like pictures.)

Getting the final Vornheim manuscript together, doing the credits. I asked all the DMs who playtested it for a list of their players so I could include them in the credits but I don't know if all of them actually did it. If you helped playtest Vornheim and do not see your name here, (or if it's misspelled) lemme know now (zak z smith at hot mayle dawt calm)...

Eric Gall, Patrick Mastrobuono, DJ Papcin, Ian Gardocki, Steve Lightsey, Duke Dukellis, Joe Burns, Tim Jenkins, Lon Varnadore, Sam Deere, James King, Chris Lowrance, Craig Wilson, Ken Fernandez, Michael Marshall, Pablo Clark, Nikolai Fullman, Hakon (a little circle over the "a") Nordheim, Martin Skullerud, Aron Riktor, Sven Roald Undheim, Tavis Allison, Mike Monaco, Tom Monaco, Richard sullivan, John Ughrin, Ara Kooser, Susan Rati-Lane, Terran Lane

City Supplement Wishlist

(<--this picture has nothing to do with this post but I like it. Anyway...) Ok, putting the final touches on Vornheim: The Complete City Kit. James is finalizing the layouts and I'm finishing the pictures and seeing just how much extra space is left over in the layout--because I want to cram every single inch of this little book with stuff you can use during a game.

So, since we're in the middle of that, here's a question for you, gentle readers:

Is there anything you would like to see in a book about running D&D cities?

Speak now or forever hold your piece.

This is Raggi testing layouts:

Here, Have A Font

Cut, paste and label things...

Found This Lying Around

Another One Of Those Posts With Lots Of Notes On Things

-Despite the fact that they require looking numbers and letters up on gigantic charts, fights in Rolemaster feel somehow more like fights in real life than fights in any game (including video games) I've ever played (feel like I've already said this on this blog--maybe I have?). You can prepare and slide the odds in your favor, but when the time comes, you just do something, hope it works, and then, next thing you know, you're on the ground or with one arm tied behind your back and you do something else, and cross your fingers again, and a few seconds later you're just glad you aren't dead. In D&D you seldom get that roll -wince- -wince- -wince- -sigh- effect.

-More on our Rolemaster games when I get a minute. Busy doing the cover for Vornheim.

-Ever seen that game Rune Wars on a shelf in your FLGS? My friend bought it. Cost him 100 Bucks. That box is the size of a small suitcase and is, no kidding, 90% air. The whole thing could actually fit in a Monopoly box. They just made it that big so you'd think it was worth 100 bucks. Is it? Don't know, didn't play. It literally took him so long to unpack all the (tiny) pieces that me and another friend played 2 games of Citadels while we waited (fun game, by the way) and by the time he was done we were too tired to do anything else.

-Why is Willow such an under-appreciated movie? Ok, we can all name like 90 reasons it's under-appreciated. But it was the first western movie with kick-ass kung-fu-style swordfights and for that I was, as a lad, grateful.

-I cannot remember what gameblog tipped me off about the (very poorly named) Kabod, but since it looks like this:





I am 100% certain Mandy, Satine (bing!), and possibly Viv (addendum: bing!) will become obsessed with it & play it day and night for months on end, so thanks, whoever that was.