Metal Merchants Festival III

Ok, I know, I've been lazy and all that and am already way behind on my promise to write one post per week. Anyway, here I am again and today I'll try my hands on a short recap of the Metal Merchants Festival
I have been to all three installments of this great festival in Oslo and it has always been great. So here's a short recap and some ramblings about every band that played this year:

Procession

Opening the festival were chile's finest doom band Procession.
I've seen them a couple of times now and they never disappoint. It was like this in Oslo again. Very loud, probably the loudest gig of the festival, they celebrated their epic, slow hymns for somewhere around half an hour.
This of course meant that not more than a handful of songs could be played, but damn, they were great!

In Solitude

Replacing Solstice on very short notice were swedish Mercyful Fate disciples In Solitude. They were originally scheduled as co-headliners, but had to swap slots with Blizzard because of a delayed flight.
The show was very cool, with incenses burnt on stage for added atmosphere and a large dose of old-school heavy metal.
A very good gig, but in comparison with some of the other bands it somewhat paled.

Elixir

Elixir from England came to play their debut album "The Son of Odin" in its entirety and though I missed part of the performance due to some badly needed food, the parts I saw were very impressive.
Epic heavy metal with a healthy dose of Dio and NWoBHM was on the menu and the band played with admirable conviction. Especially the vocals were extremely well done, very impressive. This is a band I would very much like to see again.

Blizzard

Germany's Blizzard had the bad fortune of a delayed plane and so played as co-headliners. Unfortunately, the gig was very bad. The songs were mediocre to say the least, especially the vocals very somewhere between boring and annoying and the performance was very sloppy, without all the energy that kind of music needs to work.
I'm prepared to cut the band some slack in that department because of the circumstances, but I highly doubt if I had liked them more if they had played any better. Probably the biggest disappointment of the weekend.

Brocas Helm

And then it was time for the mighty Brocas Helm. The trio entered the stage without any ceremony and then kicked ass. It's plain and simple, they just blew any other band that day off the stage and fully justified their reputation as one of the legends of underground metal.
I can't wait to see them again at this year's Keep it True festival after this.

Convixion

I only saw part of the saturday opener's show, but what I saw of Greece's convixion was the perfect beginning for the day.
Melodic, yet raw, thrashy songs about metal and drinking, they sure managed to bring back the thirst for more beer and metal.

Gehenna

Swedish alcoholic thrashers Gehenna were next on the billing and we left after the first couple of songs. This doesn't mean they were especially bad, they were just uninspired thrash metal and we felt that our time was better spent in the pub next door, where the beer was cheaper and conversations were somewhat easier.

Devil

The band of two of the three organizers of the festival, Devil were very well received by the audience. But the response was well earned. Their doomy metal somewhere between old
Black Sabath and Pentagram was well-played and very good festival music to drink and party to.

Jaguar

Probably the biggest surprise for me were Jaguar from England. Another NWoBHM band I only heard about, but never listened to, they managed to absolutely kill on stage. Especially the frontman was an absolute animal on stage, pushing the crowd like no other frontman at the whole festival. They'll play this year's Headbanger's Open Air and I for one will surely be there again!

Nuclear Assault

The last band for the weekend, Nuclear Assault took no prisoners. Old school thrash was the motto and they played with power, but not finesse, just like it should be. The energy was way up and a great headbanging time was had, a perfect show to end a perfect festival.

Once again the Metal Merchants festival proved the best way to start a new metallic year, with its usual mix of surprising new discoveries and old favorites. If there is anothher one next year, I'll surely be there again.

Acimera - A Fantasy World

Ok, I mentioned it before, I'm working on a setting for a pen & paper roleplaying game. I just finished writing the races section of the first draft of the setting and started well into the next one, so I figured, I'll make a post about it.
My plan and wish would be for the finished setting to be published in some way but it is still way to early to think about this in any detail. Anyway, the setting is called Acimera and I'm very happy about the way things are going so far. If I take this any further, I'll be sure to check in here and make as many posts as possible about the whole process of writing this book and getting it out there. At the moment I'm trying to finish a first draft of the whole book that can be used as a playtest document and reference for players. Once this is finished, I will think on how to polish it up and expand it to the size of a real book and then think about how to publish it. So there's still a lot of work to do. I'll keep you posted on the progress.

Not Dead Yet

Well, here I am again.
I almost stopped blogging again after only a couple of posts. I'm terribly bad at this thing. So here goes:
A happy new year to anyone who is actually reading this and not yet sick of hearing or reading this wish at this point in time!

So here are my new year's resolutions, even though I've broken the first one already:

1. Post at least once per week here on this blog.
2. Try to get something gaming-related published / publish it myself.
3. Go to lots of concerts and festivals (Hey I had to include one that I might even succeed at).
4. Try to be more consistent in communication with my friends and other people I know.

That's quite a lot to do for someone like me. Let's see if I'm still around here next year to evaluate them.

Some Thoughts on Metaplot

Well, as I mentioned before, I am currently working on a larger rpg project, the design of a world setting.
In the course of this endeavour, I am running into many problems, and some of them will hopefully spawn ramblings to be posted on this blog. Here's the next of these ramblings:

In the course of designing the culture for one of the races in my setting, I started to think about metaplot in this setting in particular and gamedesign at large.
First, let me define metaplot for the rest of this post: Metaplot is an ongoing narative for a game's setting as a whole. It can be completely open for everyone to read and take part in, or it can be for the GM only, full of hidden things happening to baffle the players with.
Games with strong metaplot have been White Wolf's World of Darkness games and Deadlands, some other games like Fading Suns do have a metaplot of sorts, but it is very weak and can be ignored quite easily.
Advantages and disadvantages of metaplot are quite obvious, or at least I think so. A strong metaplot keeps things interesting for the gm as well as the players, it offers lots of hooks to hang cool adventures on, giving everyone the feeling of actually taking part in the world's history. The disadvantages of a strong metaplot are very much about freedom.
A strong metaplot can force GMs and players alike in a certain direction, cutting off interesting avenues of adventuring. It also can be very cruel to the GM to be the only one to know all this stuff and never getting the chance to reveal it to te players.
So is a strong metaplot a good or a bad thing?
Frankly I don't know. Of course, a good gaming group can always make up their own world-shaking plot-lines, but this takes some experience.
It's not that this is very hard, but it often takes a lot of self-assurance on the GM's part to tinker with an official setting in that way.
So, returning to my original point: Should I include a metaplot of sorts in the setting or not? At the moment, I'm thinking yes, for a few reasons that I will try to outline below:

First of all, I like metaplot, I like reading about it and discussing it with others.
Secondly, the setting is very well suited for metaplot. It is a very young setting with a short history. So quite a lot of things are happening at the starting point of the setting. Many changes are yet coming to the new world and I think that some of them are ideally dealt with in the form of metaplot.
Thirdly, I'm trying to make te metaplot as optional as possible, so that those who don't want it can ignore it without much hassle.

How will I achieve this? I'm not yet completely sure, but I always liked the idea of optional campaign supplements that can be used to play out one particular strand of metaplot. If the group doesn't want to play the campaign, the part of the metaplot simply doesn't happen.

This may lead to some problems in a future second edition of the setting, but at the moment I'm simply too far away from even a first edition, to bother about this.

The point of these ramblings?
Metaplot yes, but in moderations, I guess.

Deadlands Preparation IV

Ok, I think I have the main plot for all three days down.
Looking at my plans, the next thing would be to decide on the locations and so forth.
Luckily this will go much easier, since the plot demands certain locations in certain places.
The first adventure will take place in a city, probably New Orleans, the second on a steamer up the Mississippi and the third somewhere much further west, with prairies and so on, I think.
I might put day one on the steamer and make day two a travel adventure, starting out on the boat and trying to get west, so that the gap between the second and third day is not as large as it is no.
This will depend on the details of the adventures, subplots, npc's and so forth.

Something I have to find out now, is the exact number and character of pc's in the posse. I know te number of players, but some of them are thinking about creating new characters, so I need to find out their exact plans to include hooks and challenges for each pc.

Apart from this, I'm rather pleased with my progress so far and will devote the rest of the day to the fleshing out of npc's and subplots.

Deadlands Preparation III

Ok, so now I have a shadow of a plot for three days, a shadow of a villain and a few cool scenes.
The next problem will be to make some of the things more concrete, including the location where things happen.
The first thing I will now work on, is the villain. He must be scary, after all, this is supposed to be a horror game, at least in parts.
The whole concept of a Deadlands adventure, at least for me is about the overcoming of real evil by the power of big guns. Victory however, must be paid for with humanity and morals, no one can stay a saint while fighting evil.
It is this dilemma between good versus evil on one side and cold rationality versus humanity on the other.
These four concepts form a carthesian grid of sorts, with the perfect neutral character at the null-point.
The goal of my villains is now to drag the players from that point into the extremes, giving them choices that lead them ever further from moral and psychological equilibrium and then confronting them with the consequences of their decisions.
Sounds grand and noble, right?
Well, the difficulty lies in breaking these ideas down into a cool adventure, so that the players have a lot of fun, blasting away at everything, right up to that point, where they realise what they have done and are scared of themselves.
I Think, I'll make use of dreams to drive some points home, but I won't go into more detail. Fleshing out the main villain will probably take some more time, I just wanted to get these ramblings out.
Oh, and there might in fact be a steamboat in the adventure. Thank Terry Pratchett for it.

Deadlands Preparation II

Ok, so I have not yet cleared up all ideas, but the one I like most at the moment has lead me to another problem:
Do I try out novel concepts, like flashbacks and so on, or do I stick with a sequential plot?
I'd really like to open the game with a scene from later on in the adventure, but am uncertain about how it would work out.
The point is that flashbacks and so on work very well in long-running campaigns, I think, but can feel like overkill in a short adventure. Now, some of the characters that will appear in the game, have been around in the Weird West for some time so they are to all purposes long-running characters, which makes me incline towards using the flashbacks and time-jumps.

These narative devices also add to a more cinematic feel, which is exactly what I'm aiming at.
So the structure of the adventure will be something like this:
First day: Begin with a boom, perhaps a scene from later on in the narative, then roll back a bit and play the part where the heroes meet again and set out for some adventuring.
Second day: The heroes are now in the deep shit. Their plans from the first adventure have seemingly succeeded marvelously, but then something wicked their way comes... with a vengeance. The Day should end with anoter big boom.
Third day: Begin at the point where we began the first day, but now there follows not the flashback but the story continues from that point onwards. End with anoter big bang, the biggest bang possible, since it is the end of the adventure.

Things I need to watch out for are manifold. The largest issue I have, is the problem of consistency. If the adventure begins with a scene from very late in the narative, I need to have a way to lead the story to that point, no matter what the players do. This sounds a lot like railroading and in the purest sense of the word it is.
The trick will be to make it feel as if it was a natural development and not planned from the start. And possibly have a backup plan to explain the beginning, if the players manage to derail the adventure to an extend that makes it impossible to reach that particular scene.
I'll now try to fit my ideas into that frame and see how it turns out.