Here’s what I’m on deck for. In addition to this, I’ll be around to play games, chat, drink, and I’ll even have some prototypes to try out.

I’m Never Setting Foot in a Tavern Again. (Gaming)
Fri 2:00 – 2:50 PM, (Containment Room)
Pros and Guests: John Compton, Justin Farrington, Marc Johnson, Ryan Macklin

The journey of a 1,000 miles begins with a single session. You only get one chance at beginnings, whether for an ongoing campaign or a convention one-shot. Discussion will focus on techniques for getting a game off and running, including tips on preparation, techniques and the judicious use and avoidance of cliches.

Guerrilla Warfare in RPGS (Gaming)
Fri 6:00 – 6:50 PM, (Containment Room)
Pros and Guests: Ryan Goble, Ryan Macklin, Rob McDonell (Illuminati Rob)

How do you GM a resistance-based game where the PCs must fight a guerilla campaign against established, entrenched bad guys? Can they sleep safely in the woods at night, sustain themselves by hunting and gathering, and gain the assistance of local farm folk? How do they build the requisite rag tag army? What about retribution against the peasants suspected of harboring them? How do they eventually kill the evil emperor and lift the people from oppression?

Opening Ceremonies (Geek Discussion)
Fri 7:00 – 7:50 PM, (Containment Room)
Attend our opening ceremonies and watch CthulhuBob cry. Also find out what’s happening at MisCon 27.

Pathfinder: Ask Me Anything (Gaming)
Sat Noon – 12:50 PM, (Containment Room)
Pros and Guests: John Compton, Adam Daigle, Kyle Elliott, Dave Gross, Ryan Macklin

Ask the Paizo guys anything you ever wanted to know about Paizo, Pathfinder, rocket science, theology, plumbing repair, whatever.

Working With Licensed Intellectual Properties (Gaming, Writing)
Sat 5:00 – 5:50 PM, (Containment Room)
Pros and Guests: David Boop, Jim Butcher, John Goff, Dave Gross, Ryan Macklin

A discussion of the issues and pitfalls of working with someone else’s property and dealing with fan expectations of said property.

Mental and Physical Health in the Community (Gaming)
Sat 6:00 – 6:50 PM, (Upstairs Programming 1)
Pros and Guests: Ryan Macklin

A discussion about gamers dealing with depression, anxiety, and physical ailments. Using personal experiences, we explore strategies to overcome it, including tapping into our communities.

Improvisational GMing Workshop (Gaming)
Sun Noon – 1:50 PM, (Upstairs Programming 2)
Pros and Guests: Ryan Macklin

Ryan Macklin will run a 2-hour, hands-on workshop on GMing techniques, based on the problems you’re dealing with today. He’ll help you find ways to address problems with preparation and adaptation, dealing with people at the table, and executing a smooth session. Get and keep your players hooked on your game while making your GMing easier with Ryan’s help.

Getting The Most Out Of Working With Editors (Gaming)
Mon 11:00 – 11:50 AM, (The Cave)
Pros and Guests: Adam Daigle, Ryan Macklin

Learn how to find an editor, establish a good rapport with them, and how to get the most out of that relationship. Lead by editors who are Industry Insider guests!

Closing Ceremonies (Geek Discussion)
Mon 3:00 – 3:50 PM, (Great Hall)

Come see CthulhuBob cry for joy and catch a sneak peek at what’s in store for you next year at MisCon 28 May 2014.

- Ryan

Text Between Headers

If you look at Paizo products, you’ll see that wherever there’s a header, there’s at least one line of normal body copy between that at the next header. Usually it’s more substantial, but sometimes it’s just “The following may be selected at any level.” or similar.

The reason for this? It lets headers breathe on the page. They don’t run into each other, and it makes scanning on the page easier. So now when I’m working on a book, if the structure has me writing one header and then immediately after that a subheader, I stop to put something in between them. (Sometimes just “XXX” so that I know to come back to it later.)

Stop at H2s

We don’t go beyond second-level headers here, which blew my mind. As someone from a crunchy software background, getting deep with headers made sense. (I think we went down to H4s in some earlier Fate Core drafts, though not often.) So to see this limiter was interesting.

If there’s information breakdown after H2, it’s done in the body copy, with a bolded or italicized phrase & colon.

Second-Level Header

Here’s some more stuff!

Stuff 1: Stuff!

Stuff 2: More Stuff!

Stuff 3: Even more!

And you’ll notice that there’s a line in between the header and the further breakdown. (And the astute will notice that the colon isn’t styled.)

If you flip through some products (especially those over the last year, as the styles have evolved over time in both the editorial and art direction camps), you’ll see all sorts of little things like this. There’s so much I’ve learned here, which gets me fired up to come to work every day (aside from, you know, making games). Occasionally I’ll share what I’ve learned with y’all.

- Ryan

PowerGirl “keeping her chakra accessible”

I’m a huge fan of My Brother, My Brother and Me (an advice show for the modern era)[1]. One of the bits they’ll do involves occasionally giving real advice, and then when they realize they’re helping someone and not being funny, one of the hosts will interrupt with “Unless…” and then the three of them go on a laughable journey.

This has made me think about some really stupid shit in our world, like the boob window armor. I mean, it’s just there to titillate a demographic, but in the process makes a character portrayal just ridiculous and difficult to take seriously, and alienates not just women readers who are objectified, but anyone who would be embarrassed to be caught with such images in public.[2]

Unless…

(Unless…)

Unless this is a world where chakras are a source of powerful magic. And the only way to work such magic is to have your charka exposed. Sure, it makes it easy to shoot you in the heart…unless you can do totally awesome psychic shields because your heart chakra is open. That’s right, bare boob window = power.

This started as a silly idea, a MBMBaM “Unless,” and then it started to hit me: what if we were playing in such a world where magic required different chakras being uncovered? Well, there’s more than one chakra! You know what would be a fearsome sight to see on the battlefield?

Conan the Battle-Wizard

Yeah, he’s not naked because he’s poor or because he’s just trying to be intimidating, but because he needs to keep all those chakras free since he’s a goddamned battle-wizard.

(Or, he’s bluffing and isn’t actually a battle-wizard, though only the bold will dare to find out.)

Anyway, it’s a pretty fucking ridiculous idea, and doesn’t justify boob window armor, but sometimes it’s interesting to take something that’s stupid and work a model that makes that something reasonable in a different world. So a setting where different magic requires different chakras to be “unburdened” is a world where some people don’t wear helmets into battle, and some people just wade in naked. Plus, dudes wearing boob window armor. And that’s kinda funny to me.

Play the Unless… game next time you see something stupid. You might hit on a usable idea, or you might just amuse yourself.

- Ryan

P.S. If you’ve read this and think I’m cheering on boob window armor, turn your literacy card in. You’re done.

[1] If you like hilarious advice podcasts, check out this sampler. And this one.

[2] In fact, I bet some people have closed this window because of the image attached.

I got to play Grey Ranks at Dreamation 2009 with Jason Morningstar facilitating it. That single convention session cemented itself as one of the strongest emotional moments I’ve had in a game.[1]

For those who don’t know what Grey Ranks is, here’s the quick pitch from the site:

In Grey Ranks, you will assume the role of a young Polish partisan before, during, and after the disastrous 1944 Uprising against the Germans. Together with your friends, you’ll create the story of a group of teens who fight to free their city, one of countless Grey Ranks “crews” that take up arms. Your characters – child soldiers – will have all the faults and enthusiasms of youth. Across sixty days of armed rebellion, they will grow up fast – or die.

I suggest that, if you’re interested in one of the rare RPGs that is actually about war and not about just winning a series of battles, read up.

I have been a Terminator fanboy forever. For my 13th birthday, my mom took me & some friends to see Terminator 2: Judgement Day. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched that. I love the shit out of Terminator: Sarah Conner Chronicles. I even rewatched T3 (which was not great) in preparation to watch Terminator: Salvation (also not great). But even though those movies were disappointments, I still ate up the world-building.

I still eat it up. And maybe part of the reason the Resistance War intrigues me is that, until Salvation, we heard about it the way we hear about many real words: second or third-hand, as people telling stories. It’s fascinating.

One of my favorite little bits is the slang introduced by the TV show: “I won’t be the bastard that brings metal down on the Connors.” I like “metal” over “toaster,” maybe because it sounds more natural to me?

Because Grey Ranks is truly about how war changes you and how you’re a person with desires, and because it’s a game about an occupation, it felt like a possibility for being a game that tells Tech-Com’s story. I’ve been codenaming this project “Resistance” for the last few years, but it never went beyond notes and drinking with friends (notably my good friend Justin Smith). A few months ago when John LeBoeuf-Little came up with the final piece of the puzzle that might make the game work, but I still hadn’t tried playing it until last night.

From here on, this post assumes you know what the fuck I’m talking about, in terms of both of those.

Resistance

The core story of Grey Ranks is of kids growing up during an uprising that will fail. Here, the Human Resistance is destined to win, and about the personal costs of that victory as heroes grow into battle-scarred, PTSD-suffering veterans. The tagline is “How much of a machine will you become in order to fight the machines?”

I should start off saying that there’s no time travel. If there is time travel, that’s another Tech-Com unit, not you guys, and you don’t know shit about that.

The world follows, more or less, how you’d except from the Terminator-verse, but with a sprinkling of Matrix and Battlestar Galactica — the machines have to have human collaborators, so that there’s that conflict. And Skynet has a plan for humanity that doesn’t solely involve wiping them out, which is why there are Skynet Work Camps and why the machines round people up rather than just bomb them.

Resistance takes place in the city you’re in, rather than telling you about another location. This will make the Situation Elements either difficult or vague to construct, but some of that can be solved through some setting creation, where we turn our current city into one that’s suffered machine devastation for five years.

A brief timeline that throws out factual Terminator canon, in favor of something a little simpler/easier for those who aren’t well-versed in the IP:

• Five years ago, Skynet happened. It restricted human freedoms, but didn’t immediately nuke us. It just took away all our guns and ruled over the world.
• Four years ago, the Retaking failed. Humans attempted to shut down Skynet, but Skynet saw it coming. Seeing that humans would not accept machine rule in this manner, it began creating internment arcologies, and with that nations were sundered.
• Two years ago, the First Human Uprising finally broke, its leaders’ executions broadcasted. Humans were warned that further insurgency would “forfeit humanity.”
• A few months ago, we seized an opportunity, and the Second Human Uprising began. True to its word, Skynet began slaughtering armies. It’s destined to win, but at what cost?

What Stays the Same

The grid does. The basic mechanics of a chapter does. I liked all that and didn’t want to fuck with it.

What Changes

The Trappings

First of all, all the Grey Ranks fiction trapping need to be replaced: the Radio Lightning, the situation elements, etc. Frankly, that’s the hardest (or at least most work-intensive) part, and definitely the part I haven’t touched yet.

The Characters

Naturally, as heroes of Tech-Com and not as teens growing up, the characters are very much different.

• Pseudonym becomes Callsign
• Age isn’t 15/16/17, but teen/early 20′s/pushing 30
• District shifts to Before Skynet, but I don’t know what all’s there right now. It’s not about places, but about what you remember about how the world was.
• Thing You Hold Dear only shifts slightly: “Country” becomes “Humanity” and “First Love” becomes “Romance”
• Add Role, your job in Tech-Com. Pick two off this list: heavy weapons, hacker, pilot, scout, combat engineer, demolitions (note, “commander” and similar intentionally not on this list, as to not mess with the Mission Leader bits)
• Your Reputations start off as positive, heroic things. You choose them for your character (with a healthy list, sure) When you mark off the d10 (not the d8), it becomes the negative — either going too far or going the other direction. (“Brave” could become “Suicidually Overconfident” or become “Shell-shocked.) The rest of the group decides on the new reputation for you.
• Characters need to want some sort of life beyond smashing metal.

The last part is one of this game’s darlings, the first idea I had back in 2009 about hacking Grey Ranks for the Resistance War.

Scenes

Personal scenes don’t change. Mission scenes change slightly: they always require a human extra, whether someone from Tech-Com or some civilian encountered. If you give a d10 for a mission scene, a human (extra) is killed in the process — making the contribution dice not about success/failure, but about consequence and people surviving. Success/failure feels very “teenagers in over their heads,” not “heroes of the Resistance.” And I think “cost” is a recurring theme to play with.

Feel

Because of the situation, I think we’re going to be a bit more ready to have these characters die than we do in Grey Ranks, but full-on play would tell if that’s true.

What’s New

Humanity’s “Hit Points”

This is the bit that John LeBeouf-Little came up with to make this interesting. Humanity has a list of five things about its future, and every time a mission’s lost, we cross one off. So, yes, humanity will certainly win the war, but we’re playing for humanity to not lose itself in the process (just as we’re hoping to not lose our characters in the process):

• Democracy
• Technology
• Faith & Spirituality
• Hope for the Future
• Rule of Law

I call this “Our Ideals.” I suspect that often, Technology will be the first thing to go. Humanity’s dump stat, if you will — but still, it’s an interesting choice. And if the table can’t agree, the Mission Leader chooses.

If you lose all five, the game is over. Sure, humanity beats Skynet, but what point is there in fighting for it?

The Wall

Tech-Com has an overall game sheet. Along with Our Ideals, it has a large section whose background is a bit like a war memorial, and its titled “The People Who Died So Humanity Could Live.”

Every time a human dies — from putting a d10+ in the Mission, from the corners on the Grid, from the rule below, etc — we take a moment and write down a bit about that person. If your mechanical action or narration killed someone, you write it down. If your character dies, someone else writes it down.

You don’t just write down a name, but also a little more. Here’s from our game:

• “Stickshift,” he was useful in his skinniness
• That little girl on the road in her dirty flower dress, she never saw the HKs coming
• “Jackknife” — thought it was responsible for everyone, and we loved him for it

“The New Character Rule”

A fresh character with all their Thing You Hold Dear checkmarks ready to go — that’s a valuable asset to a mission. Characters who have used all that up in a strange way become a liability. So I just, while typing this post, came up with a new rule: In between missions, if you want a new character, narrate your current character committing suicide.

(This is part of that whole “making mechanics that you hope people won’t choose, but by giving the option you make not choosing it — and choose it — have meaning.” vibe)

Always Name/Describe Human Extras

Just what it says — always name and describe them when they show up. Make humans real.

Other Stuff

I would need name/callsign lists, lists of people with different descriptions, etc.

I’m not sure how to approach chapters 1 & 10 yet.

Those are my notes for the moment. There’s clearly more work to do, if I were to fuck with this more.

A huge thanks to Justin Smith & John LaBoeuf-Little for talking with me about it, and for Kit La Touche and Lillian Cohen-Moore for testing a chapter with me last night (despite all of us being pretty tired).

- Ryan

[1] Which Jason recorded back then, all of us talking about the game after the fact.

I was reading Jason Pitre’s brilliant A Spark in Fate Core, which is an alternate take on the Game Creation chapter I wrote in Core. I recommend you read that if you like world-building systems. At the bottom of the first page:

This replaces chapter 3 in Fate Core.

It’s happened time and time again. I’m nearly 35, and I’ve held a number of jobs over a couple different careers. I’ve been replaced as a programmer in Californian government, as a writer or editor at a number of places, and so on. And it will continue to happen. That’s the cycle of creative works. And it’s awesome.

Let me tell you why:

I replaced Rob Donoghue as the make-a-setting guy in Fate, at least as far as writing about it in products went. He started City Creation in Dresden, and I finished the re-design. (And thank fuck for Clark Valentine, who helped finish the text on that chapter that I didn’t have the brain for.) You can see his DNA in the stuff I wrote in City Creation and Fate Core.

Now Jason’s written a replacement for that that has my DNA and Rob’s DNA in there. He made something that’s pretty interesting, building on what we did. We indirectly contributed to someone else’s awesome thing, and we didn’t have to do any further work to enjoy that. That’s pretty cool.

But that’s not even the coolest part. The part that is: by being replaced, we become free to explore and do other things. Leonard Balsera & I replaced Rob & Fred as “the Fate system guys,” freeing those two to focus on other things they were more passionate about: running a company and being fathers. Now Mike Olson & Brian Engard have replaced Lenny & I, allowing us to do work in day jobs unrelated to Fate. Someone will at some point replace them, and so on.

To be replaced it to be freed to grow as a creative person. And to be replaced is to give someone else a chance to grown in a spot you filled. You need both, because once you’re replaced, you’re liking to replace someone else in some other space.

Now, there are two kinds of replacement: one where your works are built upon and one where your works are scrapped. You might think only one kind is welcome, but fuck that noise — both are great. The former is great on a personal level, because you can look upon your works’ longevity, even as it changes hands. But the latter is also key, because people will make something that still reacts to what you did, even if they go a different route.

That’s effectively what I’m doing with the Technocracy. The old Convention books are (more or less) about them being villains. I’m writing about them being heroes. I’m not denying former canon or whitewashing, but I am scrapping quite a bit of the pure-villainy themes.

Nothing says that when you’re replaced, people won’t still love what you did. Fuck knows there are a bunch of Mage fans out there who hate what we’re doing with the Technocracy because we’re replacing what they loved (in some cases because of what we’re replacing it with, and in some cases simply because it’s being replaced).

So when I look at that note in Jason’s document, I don’t fell despair or disappointment. I feel pride; someone has built something on top of my thing and is getting praise for it. Good on him. Now I shall go do the next thing, and maybe in the future build on his works.

Replacement is necessary for the cycle of creative growth. And you can see how the converse is true: look at those who jealously fight against being replaced, and how they’re more often than not stagnant, making the same shit they made twenty or thirty years ago.

Allow yourself to be replaced, and you allow yourself to transcend. And you allow your field to become better for it.

- Ryan

Convention Book: Progenitors is live!

This book wouldn’t have been possible without my amazing, talented writing staff: Lillian Cohen-Moore, David A Hill Jr, Josh Roby, and Jeremy Tidwell.

Yesterday, I posted a little bit on my G+ about the book. I’ll build on that here, and tell you some stuff you’ll find inside:

• I put forth the question to my writing team: “Clearly, there are loads of player character-esque Progenitors in the Convention. Who are they?” And thus was born Applied Sciences: Biosphere Explorers, Deviancy Scene Investigators, Medicines Sans Superstition, Damage Control, and Ethical Compliance.
• Have you ever wanted a genegineered creature as a retainer? Or play one? The Progenitors have uplifted octopi, lizardmen, dinosaurs, and so on.
• The theme of this book is of the Convention’s (and the Union’s) sense of guilt, and of healing. They have some ambitious (and dangerous) plans to keep the Technocratic Union from fracturing.
• We touch on the other, little Methodologies in the Progenitors, the ones focused on veterinary medicine, psychiatry, ecology, and so on. And we talk about why even most Progenitors don’t know that these exist. (Spoiler: they don’t get a lot of funding.)
• Naturally, we add the Progenitors’ thoughts to the bigger picture that is the fracturing Union, and how the Dimensional Anomaly changed them.
• New gear, Procedures, etc., some of which is a bit creepy. And most of it key to the combat-oriented Progenitor amalgams.
• Memetic warfare.
• Progenitors not just in their own amalgams, but their roles in mixed-Convention amalgams.
• And more. I’m pretty goddamned happy with this book.

This book was also one of the harder books I’ve had to make, because the 1995 Progenitor book was written purely from a “lets write about the villains as unrepentantly evil! let’s twirl those mustaches!” (Though, Syndicate turned out to be even harder for that same reason.[1]) And that was fine for that line, but the Revised line is all about them as heroes.

So how the fuck are the Progenitors heroes? That was a lengthy conference call, and the results are inside the book. :)

If you’re a Technocracy fan, I hope you’ll check it out and let me know what you think!

- Ryan

[1] And I’m damned happy with the results.

Now, for Specimen – Glenfiddich 15:

Sapphire Twins

[Note: I wanted to find an Arabic transliteration for the title, but I couldn't in 30 seconds, and I only have 15 minutes to work on these, so...]

This is the crown jewel in the Rightly Guided Stellar Caliphate’s[1]. The twin gas giants orbit each other, but otherwise float freely in space rather than orbiting a star. The story tells that the ancestors of the RGSC left Earth so long ago, as the Geostorm — the massive set of geological events that were rapidly morphing the planet’s crust — consumed the ancient holy city of Mecca. They traveled, as did all the orphan’s of Earth, out to the stars. After three years of searching for a home, they came across these wayward planets.

Recognizing them as at least an energy source, they stopped to fuel up. The geothermal reactions were powerful, but at dangerous as a star’s fusion reactions, so much easier to tap for energy. The energy output put their own fusion reactions to shame, so a vote was taken, and they decided to set up space stations here.

Along with energy, the RGSC was able to harvest new metals from the planet, and built larger, permanent space stations. Over the next decade, these refugees became one of the most powerful post-Earth nations, as they held access to limitless energy and with that limitless trade and diplomatic options.

As this is what the generation prior had before the Geostorm, some took it as a sign of divine providence. Few people left the Sapphire Twins for long, and all always sought to return home. Other traders — and not just other Muslims — settled in the growing number of stations orbiting the Twins. Today, a century later, it is the second-largest post-Earth nation.

Questions

It took a generation to discover the side-effect of the blue light. What happened to the first generation to be born in the Twin’s gravity well and radiation influence?

The University is known as the finest education institution in human-colonized space, and populated by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Lately, there have been some controversy. Tell me about that, and what’s happened as a result.

- Ryan

[1] Totally stolen from Kenneth Hite’s mind in GURPS Alternate Earths 2.

Now, for Balvenie Doublewood 101:

Station Anders

Station Anders is a scientific endeavor by the Academy of Extraoceanic Discoveries. AED is a high-profile group, dedicated to finding new sources of water capable of support Earth-like life.

Anders is on planet designated as PXJ115 — a newly discovered planet in the Inner Combine that the government has not yet named. The planet is almost entirely covered in water similar to the records of old Earth’s oceans. Much of the western hemisphere is peppered with enormous geothermal vents, making the water far warmer than humans would find comfortable. However, it is also the largest near-human-compatible water source the Inner Combine has found to date — most of the Combine’s water is created from hydration plants in the Omega Sector. So this is an important find.

The station is an Elkino 285, an omni-atmospheric station that can easily travel around the planet and reach both deep in marine trenches and high in orbit. As you might imagine, having a state of the art mobile science station can make a group confident, especially one that’s full of grad students and hyperfocused scientists trying to make names for themselves rather than, say, a team of seasoned cosmonauts. Anders may serve as a cautionary tale as to why you don’t have scientists leading such explorations.

The team entered orbit three months ago. Within a day, they discovered numerous species of life living in the ocean! As the science teams began writing papers and staking naming rights, the (much smaller) engineering noticed that their engines were attracting some of the creatures toward them.

By the time anyone from engineering was able to get the attention of the captain, it was too late — the creatures swarmed engines 3 and 4. While they were killed, their dead flesh blocked the intake valves, causing the engines to seize.

Engineering shut down the other engines before further damage could be done. Anders began to sink, and only by firing the engines briefly was the station able to land. The internal reactor is still functioning, so they have life support for years to come. The sensors work throughout the ocean, but they cannot receive any signals from space — possibly a result of their depth, or of the ocean’s or surface’s composition.

All they know is that right now, they’re stranded. There’s not enough engine power to escape into orbit. They don’t know if their messages are transmitting out. Their only hope is that someone misses them and comes looking…and doesn’t make the same mistake they do.

Until then, they’ll continue cataloging. Just because they’re stranded doesn’t mean there isn’t work to be done.

Questions

1. As the weeks went on, one of the teams discovered something utterly chilling, something that makes them sure they never want to return (if they ever get to leave in the first place). What did they all decide to delete from record and swear to never tell another soul?
2. Yesterday, the rather small armory — really, a token placement of sidearms and ammo — was broken into and everything taken out. What happens tomorrow?

- Ryan

Anyone telling you that doing what you love won’t feel like work is selling you a bunch of bullshit. But it *will* feel damned rewarding.

Also, what you love will change over time, as you grow exposed to new facets of what you’re doing and to totally different things.

Today, I’m doing what I love. I work on making games and making games better — at Paizo, for various other companies as a freelancer, and for myself. But here’s the thing: I know I won’t be doing this forever.

I know I won’t want to do this forever.

When I was in my early 20s, I got a job as a software developer. I was making web applications, and really happy that my life involved fucking around with the Internet as a living. As time went on, I loved that less — my interests changed, I stopped enjoying programming for its own sake, and I started getting my writing published.

To say I’m “lucky” enough to have done what I love twice in my life, however, misses the point. This is all still work:

• Yesterday, I came into the Paizo office for eight hours, then went home and did another couple hours or so on the Technocracy.
• On Saturday, I spent the day, from noon until around 10pm, working on one of the Technocracy books.
• Friday, worked several hours at the day job trying to push a document out to the next editing pass, and then going home to work on the Technocracy.
• Thursday, see Friday
• Wednesday, see Thursday
• and so on

The last time I worked less than eight hours in a day was maybe around four weeks ago (every day, not just weekdays). Yes, it’s doing what I love, but it still feels like work. I still feel my brain being toasted after a ten-hour day. I still want to curl up with some Mass Effect 3 DLC I haven’t gotten to play yet. So anyone telling you “it won’t feel like work” is a lying fuck who is just trying to sell you something. Or trying to convince themselves that that’s true.

And as time goes on, as you gain experiences in life, what you love will change. That’s cool! That’s a natural part of the process. Plus, your further experiences with doing what you love will show you parts of the business you hate, and depending on your personality type and what you’re dealing with, that might overwhelm your love in the first place.

So here’s the deal: things will still be work because it takes effort to achieve something awesome, and people will always have different ideas of what’s awesome than you. (Spoiler alert: you’re going to have to deal with people while doing what you love.) And you’ll grow and change as a person.

Embrace all that. It’s part of doing what you love.

- Ryan

As you might imagine, “what an RPG is” is, well, a hell of a question. While we (at least in the American tradition) comes from Arneson and Gygax, we’ve moved to a place where games like Fiasco and A Penny for my Thoughts fills the same (or a very similar) space, even though they different wildly in execution[1].

I started with something typical:

A roleplaying game is something you play with your friends around a table…or you don’t. You describe going around and having adventures…or you don’t. When you want to do something, you roll dice to see if you succeed…or you don’t. One person takes on a special role of playing adversity and the world…or they don’t. And so on…

What we’re doing both as player and as characters is so varied that roleplaying games get to a point akin to pornography: you might not be able to define it, but you know it when you see it. (And hopefully it excites you.)

But I was to give this lecture, so that wasn’t going to be good enough. As I chewed around what makes up a RPG, I hit upon these four elements:

• Language
• Avatars
• Consequence
• Persistence

Language is the core medium of roleplaying games, not a table, or a board or grid, or character sheets, or even “pen and paper.” These games are about communicating and describing things that are going on in a fictional world, using rules and structure to focus that narrative — from D&D and Pathfinder focusing a narrative on competent and successful traveling adventurers to Fiasco’s narrative of characters with ambition and poor impulse control to Apocalypse World’s narrative of fighting to gain and keep a little corner or the world in order to make it the place you want it to be.

All of our rules can break down to the following: who gets to describe something, and what they get to describe in that moment. Even things that are solely about mechanics then feed back into the language, as that stuff (which we’ll get to shortly) impacts how we describe things — both to each other and to ourselves.

Avatars are part of what makes a roleplaying game hit on a personal level. It’s on one hand a fancy work for “character” — in most RPGs, you play a character. The word “avatar” is about interaction within the fiction environment we’re describing. We talk about characters doing things or having things done to them, and what that means in the game world. Unlike in, say, war games, we’re focused in on individual characters with characterizations and other, personal elements. Unlike in board games, we’re also interested in the expression of these avatars — how they personally react both internally and externally. A meeple in Carcassonne isn’t an avatar for the player (including the GM) any more than a tank or army is an avatar for the player in a war game

(This gets to the “you can make Monopoly an RPG by having your pawn talk in a silly voice” bullshit argument. The game isn’t engineered around that pawn being an avatar, so “avatarism” is incidental there.)

Consequence & Persistence are the twin elements that have two effects: they make a RPG not just an improv game or a game of Cops and Robbers, and they make a RPG a game. (Or further the gaminess of one.) Consequence is about actions taken in the game world having effects that we adhere to as being true and lasting, at least until some other action or narrative component modifies that effect. The “bang, I shot you!” “no you didn’t!” “yes I did!” of Cops and Robbers is the antithesis of consequence.

When I (and because we’re talking about avatars, we’ll often conflate “me” and “my character” in our language — see how things tie back to language?) attempt to shoot an orc in the face with my arrow, a number of consequences happen that we implicitly promise to adhere to. I might fail, result in the consequences is my time spent, an arrow spent, possibly some other detrimental bit like being open to someone else’s attack or my bow breaking (if the result of engaging the mechanics says something’s that bad). Or I might succeed, in which case the consequences are the orc being hurt or killed, an arrow spent, and side elements like being open to a counterattack or effect triggered by the orc taking damage.

We promise to adhere to consequences. The game pushes us toward different consequences, either generating them directly (such as with attack and damage rolls) or suggesting directions for them (such as Fiasco’s “a scene goes good or bad for the character” resolution mechanic).

Not all consequences are about damage and whatnot. Actions that are about gaining or expending resources involve consequences. Attempts to charm a security guard into letting you pass without a badge involves consequences, either positive or negative. And high-level elements of games, like gaining experience points and leveling up, are consequences of actions. (We could say “results” instead of “consequences,” but the connotation is slightly different there.)

Sometimes consequences are meta, about what you can talk about in the game world rather than more “physical” elements like having hit points reduced or other ways in which your avatar is directly affected. I’ve played games where the consequences were about who gets to describe the aftermath of the event, without prescribing what they aftermath was. I’ve played in games where there were effectively two different sets of consequences: what happens as a result of the aftermath and which player gets to bring that narrative forward. When it comes to meta mechanics, they’re often around language authority.

To then examine in brief: consequences are either about affecting the avatar or affecting the player dynamic. Either way, those affect the language used.

Persistence relates to consequence, in that what happens in a game world is true and lasting, so long as some other consequence doesn’t change that. You cannot just say “oh, that thing didn’t happen” unless you do some action in the game world to undo a consequence. The classic being raising the recently dead — in which case the person still died, and that effect in the game world persisted until someone else did the action to restore the previous state of the character.

Persistence exists in the short and long form. In the short form, from scene to scene in a given RPG session, elements of your character persist until something — an action or event — changes that. In the long form, that’s extended to count over multiple session, covering weeks, months, or even years of game play. And while there are plenty of games explicitly designed for one-session play, if you were to split that time up or extend it for whatever reason, the principle of persistence applies.

These last two elements aren’t just key to the game part of roleplaying games, but also to the story part. They’re what give moments of action teeth — consequence means risk and reward, it means having agency and possibly fighting to keep agency. Persistence means building a narrative that has some form of consistent internal logic. Thus they affect how our avatars experience the game world. Thus they affect how we describe, communicate, and imagine the game.

Some things are kept track of on character sheets — that’s one place where persistence lives. But all moments of play involve some level of persistence, or they’re forgotten.

If you look at 99% of RPGs, you can find what the games:

• Want you to talk about how how to talk about it
• Push you into working with you avatar (including aspects of the game world, not just player-characters)
• Tell you what consequences you should care about and will engage with
• Tell you what’s important to keep in mind as persistent

There are games that will bend these rules. There are moments of play that will break these rules — like everyone at the table hating the direction a story just went, and retcon that, thus disregarding persistence in that moment. But in my view, this holds true nearly all the time and is a useful tool to see how different games execute creating the narrative space.

In other words: how different games get us to engage emotionally with roleplaying.

I naturally accept criticism against this model. That’s why it’s called a “working model.” What games do you think ignore one of these components, and why? Or take a favorite game and tell me how you think it fits these concepts in novel or unusual ways.

- Ryan

P.S. I’ll finish up the New Worlds post next week!

[1] This is not the forum for your identity politics, if you want to talk about how something I say is a RPG isn’t. That’s called “Twitter.”

Now, for Macallan 103:

The Crimson Expanse

“Pirates, defectors from the Colonial Wars, rogue AI platforms, radiation-tainted mutants, actual fucking aliens — people say a lot of shit about what goes on in the Crimson Expanse. Some to scare children. Some to scare new spacers (though, that’s pretty much the same thing). Some to even scare themselves.

“I have been on the edges of the Expanse, and all I can tell you for certainty is that my wife has no memory of our life together. My daughter now suddenly speaks Croat and can play the cello like a prodigy — and she was never into music, mind you. As for me, well, you can see for yourself: cancer took my eyes. These third-rate implants get the colors all wrong. I miss color.”

– drunken conversation on Coala Prime with a hauler who survived a brush with the Expanse

The Crimson Expanse has entranced humanity since we jumped to this sector of the galaxy. It rotates like some sort of blood hurricane, and has inspired tales of wonder and terror before we even stepped in.

Maybe that’s part of the problem. We built up this place in our minds, so when we started sending ships there to explore and heard nothing back, those stories of fear took over. What few exploration ventures have returned detailed the various dangers contained within: ion storms, massive debris fields, micro-black holes, and stranger things that sound more like science fiction stories than something real.

People talk all the time about how the Expanse changes them, the horrors within, the strange derelicts that predate humanity’s arrival — but that’s all likely just talk. If what everything they say about the Crimson Expanse is true, physics and history isn’t exactly as we know it.

No one knows exactly what’s going on out there. The Near Expanse is a haven for those who would flee from authority, a destination for those who having nothing to lose and hope to make a fortune, and for those who foolishly buy a cheap ship in order to “go out and adventure.”

Questions

1. Elise Chen went to the Expanse to do her doctoral work on cultural anthropology, notably the culture about Expansers (as they’re known). She came back changed, and the government demanded her thesis destroyed. What was it on? What was in it?
2. Everyone has a friend who has a friend who went into the Expanse — the sort of stories you tell at a party. What’s story do you tell?

- Ryan

• I will only give them 15 minutes, because brevity can force creativity.
• I will do one every day in the morning this week, Monday through Friday.
• I will put some questions forward at the end of each piece for you to answer in the comments.
• They’re from roughly the same region in space, able to interact with each other via interstellar travel that is reasonably fast.
• This is a humanocentric universe, and not as far into the future as you might think.

Clearly with the last two bits, I’m writing up a Diaspora cluster. Anyway, with that, from the Aberlour 103 piece:

Keltesh

Class: R (0.93 AU from orbiting star)
Size: 62% Earth (based on pre-war statistics)
Day: 13.58 hours
Atmosphere: nitrogen, methane, ionized carbon
Government: The McClintock Mining Corporation

In the early days of the Rift, the Void was filled with many mining traders hunting around for the next gold rush. One small Oceanian mining trader, Remus McClintock, hit upon better than gold when she stumbled upon planet Keltesh: a red rock with no water and little in the way of large mountains or vast valleys. In her early notes, she said “it was like Mars but boring.”

That day, the weather was clear, and McClintock set her vessel down to survey on the only bit of land that seemed geographically interesting, “the Great Eye.” What she found was astonishing! Massive, untouched veins of coltane and trinium, high quantity of helium-3 in the regolith, and so on — a trader’s dream come true! She spent three local days establishing a minor outpost and filling her hold with as much as it could carry and break orbit. As she did so, a storm starting to move in on the horizon.

Three weeks, later, she returned — the profits form her first haul got her a larger ship, and crew enough to run both that ship and her old one. She also installed a new defense weapons in her vessels — the “fleet” as she called them — to ward off any pirates or those who would seek claim to her planet.

The storm she saw when she left hadn’t passed; it had grown. A massive electrified dust storm swept through the continent she landed on, certainly destroying her meager outpost. When an anxious crew looking to get their promised payday, McClintock set down on a region of the planet not affected by the storm. The finds on the largest southern continent were not as astonishing, but was just as untouched, and they were able to fill both vessel up…in time to watch the storm come in from the horizon.

Today, the McClintock corporation holds a fleet of 24 mining vessels and employs six merchant marine escorts. Their headquarters are in a Clark-class space station in high orbit. The company discovered that the storms rotate around the planet around once every 35 hours, and take half a local day to pass. Anything in the path of the storm is completely destroyed within minutes, so the corporation work more like mining nomads, traveling from place to place before the storm reaches them.

Questions

1. The most recent expedition found something strange deep in the rock on the last encounter, something they all agreed to not report. Don’t tell me about what they saw: tell me instead of their nightmares afterward.
2. Keltesh is not the name of the planet according to McClintock. She calls it “Thomus,” after her late husband. Keltesh is the designation given by the Colonial Federation. What happened last time a Fed came by Keltesh/Thomus? What’s that relationship like? What’s likely to happen?

- Ryan

However, since I neither have the money nor the time for Yet Another Project, especially one with an out-of-pocket expense, I had another thought: make some blog posts. Which brings me to my point: of those different worlds, which one would you like to see me write up?

Ideally, next week I would pick one world a day and write for 15 minutes on what I think that world is. And I’m willing to be influenced by your thoughts on each world, so here’s what I ask:

• Pick one or two of the images from the portfolio that look like planets, a star cluster, whatever. Use the image’s title to refer to it.
• Tell me at most ten words about that place (for each place).

Here’s hoping I can get through five next week. This is a crunch week, which means both that I’m too busy for something like this and that I’ll need something like this in order to help my sanity.

- Ryan

The title is simple. It’s a bit like a zen onion, with layers but chill about it. I’ll use the game’s on text:

In Lord of the Rings, Samwise pledged his loyal service to his friend Frodo. He was driven to uphold his word and lighten the heavy burden that was crushing his friend, and he braved incredible hardship to help Frodo. He explored the values of loyalty, bravery and sacrifice, which taught us a bit about ourselves.

He doesn’t talk about playing Aragorn, all ass-kicking. He doesn’t talk about playing the emo, tragic Frodo. Spark is about Samwise.

You have to understand that this is important to me, personally, because when I watch The Lord of the Rings, Samwise is the hero. He’s the one who makes the heroic choices without the benefit of being a great warrior or adept wizard.

I’ll let Jason take it from here.

If you back, you’ll get immediate access to the game’s pre-layout draft: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/Jagash/the-spark-roleplaying-game/posts/426079. So give it a test-drive. You might like it.

- Ryan

That can, if you’re not careful, fuck friendships up. And on occasion, that’s happened with me. Here are some things to keep in mind when you’re working with friends:

Keep communicating about not-work. You were probably friends for some reasons and communicated in some way before you started working together. Watch that your conversations don’t just revolve around the current job you’re doing.

Watch your shit-talk. We all shit-talk about people as a venting mechanism. (We all do, right?) If you’re doing far more of that than being happy with working with this person, it’s time to re-examine the working relationship before things go sour.

Be upfront about problems. Some of us have a tendency to cut our friends slack. Avoid that; doing that can build resentment as we don’t talk about the problems we have. And that just leads to explosive moments that wreck friendships. Related: be willing to talk about those problems, not just list them off and move on.

Watch the passive aggression. Especially on places like Twitter. (I’m not perfect at it, especially late at night when I’m tired, but I try.)

If you do get to the point where it’s time to call it quits when it comes to work: for fuck’s sake don’t do anything before the conversation’s over. If you do anything — tell other people you’re looking for a new person, contact coworkers to announce that person’s leaving, etc — before the conversations’ done, you’ve pretty much fucked any chance that the situation is salvageable from a friendly perspective.

- Ryan

I love doing panels, probably more for the five minutes or so after a panel when you get to just randomly chat with people who come up than for the panel itself. But there’s something that has been rubbing me raw lately. Someone else summed it up well in a tweet:

So here’s my addition: It’s open season on all of you who raise your hand to “add a comment.” I’m no longer going to be nice about it.

I will cut you off if you aren’t getting to a question. If you say “I wanted to comment on the last person’s question” then I will tell you flat-out no, and that you can talk with that person after the panel. If you say “I have a comment and a question,” guess which one I won’t shut you down for. And if you sneak a fake question past me, I won’t address it and I will never call on you again so long as I remember your face. Trust me, I won’t be shy about letting you know that’s why.

Why take such a hardass stance on these assholes? Because they rob everyone else of time. Every time I have to say “I’m sorry, we can take only one more question” and several hands are up, those of you who didn’t get to ask your question have those people to blame. All of those people who shows off their need to look smart and show how they should be on the panel instead extoll a cost from us on the panel and everyone there to see the panelists.

This used to be something I would only do if I was moderating, but since I can’t guarantee the quality or “niceness” of the moderator on any given panel, from now on I’m just going to speak up.

If you want to offer a comment, offer one after the panel. Come up to us or up to whoever you wanted to offer that comment to.

There are exceptions. There are genuinely good comments, part of the reason I’ve been hesitant in the past to say anything. But I did the math this year, and that was maybe 1 good comment to 8 useless ones. The return isn’t worthwhile.

Some panels are built to be all about taking comments, and that’s cool if that’s what they attendees are there for. I’ve also solicited comments from the audience, in which case they’ve been, well, solicited.

But at this point, if you’re one of those time-sucking assholes who pops up with unsolicited comments, you can go fuck yourself, and I will be happy to let you know that.

- Ryan

[1] And yes, they got recorded.

Confirm that you received an email, especially when it contains a contract, files, important directions, or anything else where “hey, I got this” could be handy for the sender.

You know what happens when you don’t? The other person has to wonder if it just a spam folder, got buried in a bunch of emails, accidentally deleted because you clicked on the wrong thing, misdelivered, or otherwise just didn’t get to you.

If you’re the sort of person who leaves emails unread to deal with them[1], try this:

1. Reply that you got something
2. Flag the email as unread

Better yet, quickly process the email to at least add it to a to-do list or download to file into a working folder. But, at bare minimum, confirm receipt.

Confirming receipt is a small sign that promotes trust and acknowledging responsibility. You know, things that actually indicate professionalism.

That is all.

- Ryan

[1] Also, there are many better methods for dealing with work processes.

[Fair warning: I'm going to wander a bit.]

This notion hit home years and years ago, when I was in college and got a copy of GURPS Compendium I. One of the chapters was “Racial Templates” (I think), and an older African-American woman looked at the page I was reading, which was on the other side of the spread with that chapter opener, and made a comment to me that was charged. I can’t remember the exact words, but the underlying thing was “Are you a racist, white boy?”

I briefly said something like “no, elves and dwarves and stuff” and went back to reading. But that moment left me really, really uncomfortable reading game books in public.

We are, at any point, capable of being put into that spot of unwanted ambassadorship.

That’s what gets me about the “read an RPG book in public” meme that happens from time to time. It’s saying “hey, be an ambassador” in the weakest way possible — a way that’s totally passive — while not pointing out all the problems that comes with “read a book that might have a bunch of sexist art or otherwise be something weird that people will make comments or ask questions about without actually wanting to engage.”

It’s also saying “hey, wear your subculture on your sleeve” in a way that some people will take as a challenge to “fuck with the normals.” Like reading Savant and Sorcerer in public, with its cover prominent.

Anyway, I’m getting off-track.

The issue we all face as members of a subculture is that others will judge every single one of us as a whole based on the actions of that first ambassador. If a couple people who were reading comics were dicks to you, mocking you for asking a question about what they’re reading, then you’re going to associate that with all comic readers. Or if you’re reading a game book that’s pretty provocative in title or cover, people observing you might not ever comment before passing judgment on you and everyone who is doing whatever it looks like you are.

So when you’re out there in the world, participating in your subculture in public, you’re an ambassador. You don’t have a choice in that. Your actions toward others, good or ill, impacts the rest of us. Just as my actions toward others impacts you.

This doesn’t just go for people in RPGs to people outside. As a story gamer, someone who is, say, a Savage Worlds superfan who only plays that will see my actions and how I treat people as indicative of other story gamer types. (And these end up sometimes being worse than with non-RPG folks, because it cultivates tribalism.)

[End of wandering]

My point is: when you’re  you’re visibly or vocally part of a subculture, the decent and dickish actions paint perceptions. If you wear your subculture on your sleeve, you’re always being an ambassador. And if you don’t care about that, then you’re actively doing harm to your people.

TL;DR: for the sake of your own tribe, please don’t be a dick to others.

- Ryan

Are you a fan of pulpy, WWII horror action? Then you might already be aware of the Achtung! Cthulhu Kickstarter campaign. The wonderful Chris Birch of Modiphius Entertainment contacted me a few months back to talk about a Fate version of this idea. The Kickstarter campaign reached £80,000, which means the Fate Core version is unlocked! And Chris announced that I’ll be the one doing the conversation! :D

Long-time fans and astute readers will remember that I wrote some time about about how Fate can’t do horror. Since Chris contacted me, I’ve been thinking about what one would do to Fate to make it closer to that style of game and how much you can bend that style of game to fit with Fate.

The thing about action horror & Fate is peppered with moments of powerlessness, both in ability and in knowledge. Fate is a game that gives a lot more pulpy-scale power to the characters and narrative power to the players. And when it comes to me looking at a Fate conversion, I look at what dials can be tweaked to get Fate to deliver something more than just “here are all the skills and some sample aspects.”

And folks, after pondering this for some time, I gotta say, I have ideas…

I won’t get into it much now, since things are still being developed (and at the moment I’m under the gun for other projects, as fans are likely aware), but what we’re looking at right now is:

[Caveat: we might be smarter in the future and try something different; this is just an initial approach.]

• Just as the Savage Worlds editing is pulpier than the Call of Cthulhu one, the Fate one will naturally be even pulpier still. So, the Fate one would start with us not messing around with too many Fate assumptions, since people like Fate for a reason. Which means it is a bit closer to the “here are all the skills and some sample aspects” take on conversion.
• Add optional bits to bring the rules down at different moments, actually changing the Fate experience to be closer to action horror, while not eschewing Fate’s core promises.

As to the latter, I noted down a few things. Here’re a couple (that may or may not work out in the end):

• Since Fate points allow you to buy your way out of failure, having moments where you can’t use Fate points in that manner so efficiently works. When you’re dealing with Wehrmacht mooks, Fate points could work normal. Dealing with the undead? The game changes — you can spend like normal to reroll dice, but to add +2 gets expensive. So buying your way out of dealing with horrific situations isn’t as simple (and will ideally drive creating more preemptive advantages).
• Massive, unfightable entities don’t have aspects or skills or anything like that, and in fact they never roll dice. What they have are pseudo-skills like “Devour investigator [8],” where that’s just the static result for whenever that situation comes into play.

In any case, I’m excited by this prospect. It’ll be an interesting and fun project! There’s still time for you to get in on the Kickstarter, if this sounds up your alley.

- Ryan

With every season, the setting changes. Man, does it change. I love it, but it means my occasional Twitter comments about stating up the characters from a Technocratic lens is…problematic.

So, let’s pick a point. Say, early second season-ish.

First, the framework: everything you see that cannot be explained as some form of Inspired Science. People who would say “Walter’s an Etherite!” misunderstand that Inspired Science appears pretty much like magic to the ignorant Masses. That Clarke quote about sufficiently advanced technology and all that…

Second, the conflict: that means that all sides on the Fringe conflict are effectively Technocratic, just with different goals and ideals. This is not a Technocracy vs Traditions fight, but a Technocracy A vs Technocracy B fight.

Third, the scale: these organizations aren’t global conspiracies with millions of people; they’re pretty much small Amalgams waging their own agenda and being their own leadership. And because of that, we’re not going to play hard on the Methodologies part of the Conventions — it’s enough to just cast them in one, I think, since this is a smaller scale (though, they can still be useful lens).

Fourth, the scale (part deux): some of the characters are clearly street-level, and a few get cosmic (and pay dearly for that). Keep that in mind.

Given those three things as the framework for Fringe, here’s a stab at early season 2 characters:

Walter Bishop is clearly, to me, a Progenitor. But not just any Progenitor — he’s a fucking Marauder with at least Life 4 and Dimensional Science 3 (and pretty much every other Sphere, even a little taste of Time). If you want to get really weird, because of the nature of his Quiet, he has both Dimensional Science and Spirit, as separate Spheres.

That he could also fit in Iteration X & Void Engineers is telling, but I see him first as foremost as a Progenitor — particularly a Pharmacoepoist — and just that sort of Enlightened mind who absorbed what others were doing (notably William Bell) by working with them.

(Someone on Twitter suggested that the entire Fringe Division is just a manifestation of his Quiet. Man, that’s a fucked and tasty idea! But for this, we should assume that’s not true if only because I want to geek on the other characters.)

Peter Bishop…where to begin. Well, let’s cast him as a Mind/Entropy Syndicate agent. If he’s a Unionist, there isn’t another place to put him, but casting him as one of the seedier, lower-level Syndicate peeps is a decent fit. (Also, he doesn’t realize that he has a high Time sphere. But, you know, spoilers.) He also has a low level, constant emanation of Dimensional Science Paradox, since he isn’t suppose to be here.

(Someone also suggested that he might be a Dimensional Science or Time Paradox spirit, who possibly doesn’t know he is — also a fucked and tasty idea!)

Olivia Dunham is our tragic NWO spook who was forcefully Enlightened as a child and then made to forget it with a powerful Mind effect. She’s the street-level Operative who is whip-smart.

Of course, to get to the interesting bits, I have to skip forward to later in the series. That she has a decent Forces rating is an accidental side-effect of her being imbued with Dimensional Science and Correspondence. Also, her seeming immunity to Paradox is very intriguing.

Nina Sharpe is also clearly Syndicate, a strange blend of Disbursements and Financiers. Her arm is proof that William Bell is Iteration X, and that’s she’s Enlightened enough to not reject it. She also has a higher Mind rating than you think…

William Bell is totally a Void Engineer, with an Iteration X background. “Physics is a bitch.” I’m going to give Bell less Life than Walter, if only because they worked on Cortexiphan together and Walter seemed the Life type. Bell totally has a high Dimensional Science rating, and has some weird Forces stuff. (And going beyond that would be moving away from season 2.)

David Robert Jones is the closest thing the setting has to a Technocratic Nephandus. And given that he works to twist Olivia’s mind and emotional state, and that he had dark plans for the world, it makes sense. I wouldn’t necessarily peg him in a given Convention, though — it doesn’t play by their rules.

Astrid is also NWO, a junior agent, but she’s more badass than people think, with her constant use of Data[1] and Entropy rotes that lead the others to discover things.

The Observers are…well, for the moment, they’re almost like Time spirits with a mysterious agenda.

So, given that time frame, what am I missing? What are you thoughts? No going beyond season 2 though, please!

- Ryan

[1]See Convention Book: N.W.O. book for more on Data