Success!

 Day 1 of the 2026 Busan Con has come to a close. I didn't have any games in the morning, because I was thinking I'd either be too tired from my trip to the USA, or I'd want to go see The Mandalorian and Grogu. Well, M&G doesn't open until next Wednesday in Korea, but I was kinda tired. So it's a good thing I didn't sign up for any morning games.  

I did show up early, and talked to some fellow gamers. After lunch, and a bit more chatting, my Missions & Mayhem game started. I had three players: Jonathan (who also goes by JB, but not the BX Blackrazor JB), McKayla, and Sterling. Sterling was playing his second ever session of an RPG, after his first during the morning session. I'd met Jonathan last fall and knew McKayla was there although I didn't get to talk to her then.  

I'd sent them five pre-gen characters to choose from, and they all had one they liked decided. We spent some time going over the basics of the game, and they had some questions (including some that suggest improvements I could make to the game). When they were ready, I gave them the premise of the scenario I'd prepared (they were all psychics trapped in a government research facility, and suddenly their power-dampening collars all switched off -- Go!). 

It played out very differently than when I ran the adventure with my regular group, which is no surprise. It's not a railroad adventure. Sterling, after it was done, even commented that it was a lot more open and less structured (narratively) than his morning game. There was investigation, there were crazy schemes, there was a bit of combat, there were attempts to manipulate, and of course plenty of use of the psychic powers. 

The players weren't really in a situation where they could use the I Know a Guy rule (although they loved the concept!), but they did use the Gamble mechanic a lot. McKayla used five out of six ability scores to gamble along the way, and Jonathan and Sterling each used three (I think). 

The psychic powers were useful, but definitely not overpowered at low level. They only had 2d4 rolls for activation, so only the lower two tiers of effect were possible without a gamble and a lucky throw...although McKayla pulled that one off. 

The combat was also fun, as they didn't only swing and do damage. They used a combination of normal attacks, subdual unarmed strikes, psychic powers, and special maneuvers during the fight. That shows me the game can be dynamic in combat, not just roll to hit, roll for damage ad nauseam.  

They did not escape from Facility 826 in the end, but the ending to the adventure they did get was satisfying (the 'bad guy' trying to recruit them into his psychic strike force), and the twist [no, not gonna tell you what it is] was a surprise but also made other things make sense to them. So that also went well. 

The feedback from the players was positive. They thought the game was simple to explain, easy to understand the mechanics - especially after they started playing, and they liked how it fit together. They also liked how the mechanics seem to fit the mood of an action flick. Before the game started, talking to some other gamers, one guy mentioned that he didn't know of many modern era RPGs that weren't supernatural or zombie themed. He thought this was a good niche to fill. 

I've got some good notes for more changes (streamlining) and I'll hopefully get those into the playtest document soon. 

Bad News

Not terrible news, but nonetheless, the New GM Workshop at the 2026 Busan Con has been cancelled. 

Two of the four "expert GMs" had to drop the event, so the host decided it wasn't worth holding it. 

I was looking forward to it, but since I'll be getting off a plane two days before the event starts, and I've got other things to prepare for my own games, maybe it's just as well. I've got my Missions & Mayhem adventure ready, but I still need to make some player aids. And I need to make a few more edits to my Star Wars adventure so it's not exactly the same as when I ran it for my players. 

The 2025 Busan Tabletop Gaming Con Was a Success

Last Sunday, November 30, was our first game con. I picked up Justin around 9am, and we arrived at the cafe just a little before 9:30. Richard was already waiting, as well as Jonathan (Kojaq) who I only had interacted with online before this. We got everything set up, and most players, and Peter the other morning GM, made it there by 10am when we were scheduled to start. But Kurt, the cafe owner, didn't show up until around 11 so we had to make due with water or drinks people brought in from outside for a bit. Kurt had given me the door code so we could get in early, if you're wondering. 

In the morning session, I ran Classic D&D, using the same dungeon from the previous Online Summer Con arranged by Amae's Seoul group. This party followed the same route at first, but had a TPK in their first encounter. Four carrion crawlers took out a party of five 6th to 8th level PCs. As they can, especially if the party only has a cleric as a caster. The players got new PCs from the pre-gen pile and set out again in a different route. They didn't have time to make it to the dragon, but they had a great time anyway. 

Just before the thief misses on a backstab and everyone fails their saves (the Dwarf is already down).

Richard's Call of Cthulhu game only had one character death, but that PC died, was brought back, and died again. 

Richard brought his King in Yellow robes.

 

I didn't hear of any PC deaths in Peter's Black Sword Hack game, but everyone said they had a great game. 

Justin's BSH character sheet

We took a lunch break, and more people arrived for the afternoon games. A couple of people also went home (or elsewhere, anyway) after the morning games. I was a player in Keith's Cyberpunk Red game, which was a lot of fun. I got to play the Solo (combat character), which is always nice. But our new player David (who played his first RPG ever in my morning D&D game) was the star of the show. Of course, Richard's PC managed to shoot Peter's PC in the back...twice! None of us died, though several gang-bangers and scumbags died at our hands. 

The start of the game, in our gang's alley base, dealing with druggies

Jonathan's Mothership game was really good, too, from what I heard. There were definitely some PC deaths as well. 

An alien gestated inside one of the PCs. You'll never believe what happened next~!

Both Scott's 5E game and Elyse's Pathfinder game went over time, but this is something they'd planned for, and the players were aware of this. Scott did have one PC death. Elyse runs a more story-forward sort of game, so no PC deaths in her game. She did a think where players started with blank, or nearly blank character sheets, and had to discover who their PCs were as they played. 

Scott's got a lot of style when he runs a game. We could hear lots of laughing and some shouting from them.

Elyse's players were all really intent on the story that unfolded. 

Then it was the dinner break time. Most folks went home (or elsewhere), but a stalwart few soldiered on through into the night. Peter, Richard, Elyse, Jada, Justin, and I were there the whole day. Keith and his partner CC stayed for evening games, too, but they weren't here for the morning session. 
 

Justin had his group (Jada, CC, Elyse) play board games including Whitehall Mysteries. They also played a few smaller games. Justin had planned to play 1775, a tactical wargame of the Revolutionary War, but I guess they never broke that one out. 

London was scoured for clues.

 

My evening game was Gamma World. Richard, Keith and Peter chose their mutants and set off to explore a ruined tower. They dealt with crumbling infrastructure, hungry mutants, friendly mutants, and at the top of the tower androids intent on capturing Richard's mutated ape PC. Keith dropped to negative HP twice, and Peter once. At the end of the game, Richard escaped with his companions' bodies, evading the androids to survive the horrors of Gamma Terra. We had a blast. 

Peter's altered human scout is down thanks to poisonous two-headed bat mutants. The espers are about to meet the androids. 

It was a long day, but very much worth it. And we plan to do it again sometime soon. Scott wants to do the next event in May. I'll be back home for my son's high school graduation that weekend, but I'll probably help with the organizational side of things as best I can. 
 

 

 

Mutant Year Zero: Zone Wars

Yesterday, I met with Justin and a guy we met on the TTRPG in Korea Discord group to play Zone Wars, a tactical tabletop skirmish game based on the Mutant Year Zero RPG. Peter wanted to get some war gaming in over the long Chuseok holiday. Sandwiched between National Foundation Day on Friday the 3rd and Hangeul Day (Korean written characters get a holiday...yeah, a day to help prevent Koreans from overworking) on the 9th, we've got an entire week off, 10 days in a row for people who can take the 10th as a holiday. 

Free League link

Board Game Geek link 

The game plays pretty similarly to Stargrave, which my son and I played with Justin a while back. I thought I'd posted about that game here, but apparently I didn't. Both games have players managing a tactical team across the "board" to defeat the other teams or collect enough loot to win. 

When we played Stargrave, I quickly realized that the loot collection was the key to winning, so getting loot and getting my figures off the board was my strategy. And it worked. 

Zone Wars has a similar strategy. There are artifact tokens across the board (it's a post-apoc setting, after all) that score victory points. But you also get points for defeating other players' figures.  To cut to the chase, Peter used my strategy from the Stargrave game, while Justin and I were more into duking things out. Peter won. 

The initial set-up. I'm yellow, Peter is blue, Justin is green.

The game has four factions (two in the base game, two in the expansion): mutant humans and mutant animals (base), androids and psychers (expansion). There are five characters/figures for each faction, but you have to choose three of them for your team (at least for the first scenario that we played). 

Justin's dudes teamed up on my gatherer, and stole his loot.

Each comes with starting equipment and mutations set, but with a bonus random mutation. Justin took the mutant animal team, I took the mutant human team, and Peter played as the android team. And we all seemed to take one tough/melee figure, one ranged expert figure, and one balanced figure. I'm not sure about the other factions, but the two I left behind were another ranged expert and another balanced figure.

My melee guy takes out Peter's sniper just before 30-50 feral hogs rampage through me!

The game has a lot more randomness than Stargrave. Not only do you roll dice for actions, but the initiative is done by pulling chits from a bag. There's one chit per figure, and four Zone chits, which trigger events. And there's a ticking time bomb in the form of Trigger events that scale up the acid rain which will kill anyone still on the board once four have been drawn. 

Land Shark! (unfortunately, no one was eaten)

The random mutations and events, and the ability to not only switch factions but experiment with different teams within your faction should add to replayability, but will also make the game take a little longer to really sus out the best strategies for each faction/team composition. There's obviously an optimal strategy of grabbing loot and running over fighting (due to the built in time limit of acid rain), but where's the fun in that time after time? 

My runner recovered and knocked out Justin's dudes with his mutation...but my sniper was downed.

Anyway, we're planning to meet again in a few weeks, hopefully with a fourth player if we can find one, to play it again. Peter also seems interested in trying Stargrave or Frostgrave, so we may try one of those out as well in the near future.  

A robot named Bender grabbed a bunch of loot and made it off the board before the acid rain fell. Fitting.

 

A Tale of Two Play Tests

Yesterday, I was involved in two play tests. 

The first was my own game, Flying Swordsmen 2E. It was a focused affair, and I think I received some valuable feedback.

The second was for Jeremy's new Supers game that he's been working on. It was my third time testing out his system and while there is progress on that system, the session was a bit...meh.

So first off, for my Flying Swordsmen play test, I had four players: Flynn and Steven (my boys, age 17 and almost 11), Denis, and Charles. They've all played in my Star Wars campaign, so they're familiar with the basics at least of the Open d6 System. 

My goal for the session was to have the players each make a PC using a template, then have them each make a PC using custom design. I thought it would be a quick session. Turns out, it took most of the time to get the template PCs completed mechanically (we didn't create NPC Sifu, organizations, or important NPC relationships since I don't have my starting campaign setting ideas worked out yet). And instead of then turning to custom PCs (which we wouldn't have had time to finish anyway), we ran a practice combat, two-on-two. 

Denis had gone through the character templates the night before. He even called to tell me that he found around seven of them really interesting. That was a good sign. He hadn't read through the player rules packet, though. He ended up using the Beggar template.

Charles had at least skimmed the player rules, and had a few questions about them when we started. I don't think he had looked through the templates yet. He went with a Drunken Boxer template.

My boys were given a basic overview, and I explained the templates to them before we left to meet up with Denis and Charles. Flynn chose the Demonist Shaman template, and Steven went with the Street Fighter template. 

Denis took a bit of time to understand the difference between the suggested skills on the template and the skill dice that could be distributed. Charles had lots of questions about taking specializations of skills. There are a couple of skills that I might need to rename. I went with "Stance" as the name of what Star Wars calls Dodge, and this was confusing for them. I'll probably edit it to Dodge so it's easier to notice...but I like the flavor of the name Stance. 

Denis suggested that instead of walls of text, I could make a visual diagram of character creation, and that's a good idea. I'll get to work on that soon. Color coding a character sheet and putting notes in a sidebar with number references on the sheet should be fairly easy to do. 

My boys didn't have many problems. They've each made multiple Star Wars PCs, so they picked their templates, selected their skills, and were ready to go. 

In the combat, we found that for novice martial artists, it's fairly easy to get knocked out or wounded. Denis' Beggar went down first, then Flynn's Shaman was wounded. Charles' Drunken Boxer took a minor wound, then Steven's Street Fighter knocked him out, ending the combat. I want to run more combats like this, and put them up against some NPCs and monsters as well, at different power levels to see how things go. They had fun with this fight. Everyone had good things to say about FS2E afterwards. 

Later, after dinner, Flynn and I logged on to Jeremy's Discord to play test his Supers game. This was the third time, and I decided just before we joined the game (well, about 30 minutes before) to make a new character with different powers just to try out a few things. Most of the powers I chose weren't really relevant to the adventure he had us play through, but that's alright. He had no idea I was going to switch from a magic sword-wielding Thor/Warlord/Black Knight type to a technomancer. 

Flynn played Nova, the plasma-wielding hero from the previous session. Dustie played Maya, the gravity-manipulator she had played in the previous session. Jeff and Scott couldn't make it.

Jeremy has been struggling with a few elements of the design. In particular, he wants Stunts -- special or unusual uses of a power -- to be a big part of the game. But he's been struggling with how to model them. I still find the resolution a little unsatisfying, and I think Jeremy is starting to see where I'm coming from. He also has a very slow and painful advancement mechanic, but I can't seem to convince him that it needs to change. He did add in a new way to gain points towards advancement, but is keeping the glacial pace. 

Mechanics aside, the session was dull. In the first game, we had a mystery to solve (although it was mostly just RP, and didn't involve much mechanics), then a bunch of monster fights. Session Two was a bit of exploration (again mostly RP, a bit of mechanics for that), and a bunch of monster fights. Session three was ONLY a series of monster fights. 

The good thing about that was, as we mopped up all of the monsters except for the "Level 4 Psychic Entity" that was only there to monologue, Jeremy seemed to start to realize that 2d10 plus an ability score that is probably going to range from 30 to 60 (and could be more) isn't the best mechanic. Unless we roll snake-eyes, we're not going to fail much. Or the difficulties are going to be so crazy that a character like Jeff made, who has a lot of powers in the 10 to 20 range, is going to find it impossible.  

The bad thing was, we were just going through the motions. Jeremy started us out with the NPC bosses telling us to guard the area monsters would appear. Then he seemed to be fishing for us to do something else, but when we tried doing other things, we were discouraged from that. Then, when we had a break in the monster fighting, we tried doing something unexpected, and Jeremy had us quickly returned to what we had been told to do by his "Dr. Alchemical" NPC. And a few more monster fights took place. 

So yeah, a railroad adventure. 

Now, since it's a play test, I don't mind the railroad so much. What bothers me is that Jeremy was still trying to give us an illusion of freedom, then yanking it away. I'd have been happier if he'd just straight up ran us through the series of monster fights without pretending we had a choice in the matter. 

That's less a problem with the rule set, and more with Jeremy's skills as a GM. I know there are plenty of monsters in supers comics, but when I think Supers RPG, I want to face villains. Street-level bank or tech lab robbers. Teams of colorful weirdos like the Sinster Six or Flash's Rogue's Gallery. Organizations like the Brotherhood of Mutants, Lexcorp, Hydra, or the Injustice League. 

Sure, throw in a few monsters here and there. But where are the ticking time bombs in school buses? The choice to save your girlfriend or the group of civilians from certain death? The pair of nuclear missiles aimed at opposite ends of the country and only time to stop one of them? The crazy non-linear fun-house gladiatorial combat for an extra-dimensional TV personality? The choice between going out to stop crime or attending Grandma's dinner party? Having to make ends meet at a day job while constantly getting pulled away by villains causing chaos? 

OK, had to vent. Three sessions of nothing but fighting Lovecraftian monsters (if you know Jeremy's OSR monster/art books, you know what I mean) gets old.  

Gearing Up for a Play Test

 I've got the Flying Swordsmen 2E rules in what I think are playable condition. So, after today's Star Wars d6 game, I asked the guys if they'd be willing to try out these rules next time. They said OK, although Flynn, my older son, still wants to play more Star Wars while he's here for the summer. I can manage both of those things. 

 This evening, I copy/pasted the player facing rules into a new document, and edited it a little. I saved it as a PDF, but now I'm thinking, even though it's just a play test document, maybe I should add some art to it. Not all of my players have a lot of experience watching wuxia movies. Art could help. 

This will be mostly art taken from movies, because this document shouldn't be seen by anyone but my players. When I am closer to ready to publish, I'll have to make the decision to stick with public domain art like in 1E (probably recycle a lot of the art I did use there), or maybe try to run a Kickstarter or IndieGoGo campaign to fund some original art. I suck at self-promotion, so I'll probably save myself the stress and just use the PD art again. But we'll see. 

For now, I'm excited to share these rules with the group, see what sorts of PCs they come up with, and then form some adventures and test the rules in play.  

I feel a disturbance in the Force...

Next Sunday is May the 4th (be with you), and yes, I'll be running my Star Wars d6 campaign instead of my TS&R (D&D) campaign. Last year, I tried to run a session to introduce SW gaming to a new audience, but out of five players, only two were new. At least they both stuck around (Randy's wife has been keeping him busy most weekends, but he still wants to play). This year, I'm just running with the regular crowd. 

I recently got involved with the TTRPG in Korea Discord group, during their last WinterCon. I offered to run a SW game for those guys on the 4th, but no one signed up. So I cancelled that game and will run for my Busan group. 

If I'd done the Discord group game, I would have used one of my old adventures (the first one I ran, actually, based loosely on the plot of the move Shaft). Since it's the regular group, minus the people who can only play online, I'll be furthering the game as we shift into the post RotJ era. 

The Hutts want to retake their planet Dandoran, which an Imperial invasion made them flee (with help from our Anti-Heroes). Now, the Hutts Strike Back. I've got four mini missions in mind, and the PCs are free to take or leave them (although the first one is smuggling heavy weapons to Dandoran, so they'll probably take up that mission). 

I've still got a bit of prep to do for the other three missions. But the good thing is, if we don't have time for all four (I figure we'll get two done), I've got content prepared for the next time we run SW. 

My first 40 years as a role player

Today, I turned 51 years old. And, as I've mentioned on numerous previous birthdays (and probably numerous "how did you get into gaming" posts), I got my Mentzer Basic Set for my 11th birthday. So I've been a D&D and other RPGs player for four decades now. 

For the first decade, 1984 to 1994, I both ran and played BECMI with my friends and family. We also ran a lot of Star Frontiers. We also played some AD&D of both the 1E and 2E variety, but not that much. And occasionally we'd play, or at least make characters but never get around to playing, lots of other games. Gamma World. Star Wars d6. Cyberpunk 2020. TMNT and Other Strangeness. Marvel Superheroes. I'm sure there are others we tried or at least sampled that I'm forgetting. We played a LOT of BECMI D&D though. Tales of this decade are labeled as The Old BECMI Group, obviously.

For the second decade, 1994 to 2004, after a bit of interruption in RPG play due to Magic: The Gathering and not wanting to associate with the campus Gaming Guild who embodied most of the negative gamer stereotypes that were out there at the time, I got back into gaming with a group that played a mix of 1E/2E AD&D. Then I went to Japan, and by the time I got a group to game with, 3E had just come out. So we dove into the world of the d20 system, playing 3E D&D and a bit of d20 Modern and d20 Star Wars. The final few years of this era, I had moved to a different part of Japan, and started gaming on RPOL.net since I hadn't found a group to play with there. These tales are under the Evansville Group (1E/2E), and Toyama Group (initial 3E stuff) tags.

From 2004 to 2014, I got in with a group playing in Tokyo. Again, we mostly played d20 stuff, including 3E, d20 Modern, and d20 Conan. But through this group, I also got to try a variety of Forge-style story games, and also it rekindled my love of old school D&D. I also got involved (finally) with some local gamers, and we played some Abberant (an obscure White Wolf game), 3E, and old school D&D. We also developed Presidents of the Apocalypse, which I know I've mentioned many times before, but no, it will probably never get released because it's so scattershot. In the middle of this era, I moved to Korea. For a few years, the emphasis was on board games, but eventually I got some old school D&D going, using the house rules that have by now evolved into Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins. I also got to try 4E and we sampled a few One Page and microlite RPGs, played a bit of Gamma World (the 4E D&D stuff AND classic GW), Pathfinder 1E, and a few other games here and there. I continued to game on RPOL, and also got to sample various OSR offerings through online realtime play (Google Meet, when that was a thing). I also developed, play tested, and released Flying Swordsmen. You can find these stories in the tags Ebisu and Yamanashi Gamers for the Japan era, and Busan Gamers for the Korea era.

My fourth decade, 2014 to today, coincides with the release of 5E D&D, and I've played it a fair amount. As a player, it's fun. As a DM? Not so much. So I've mostly stuck to my TS&R old school D&D rules as a DM. And I've been running my d6 Star Wars game for many years now. As a player, there have been a wealth of games and game systems, that are face to face, online realtime, and play by post. While I've mostly given up on 5E (except for a really good game on RPOL), my TS&R game and SW d6 game are both going well. I've sampled lots of OSR and micro-games, both in person and online. I've recently started both a Gamma World and Star Wars game on RPOL. And very recently, just joined a game of RECON. I developed, play tested, and released Chanbara, and have recently finished up releasing everything to make TS&R a complete game that others can play. I've been too busy to post about that. These last few years of gaming can again be found under the Busan Gamers tag, as will most games I post about going into my fifth decade of gaming. 

The first 40 years of gaming have been on the whole really good. I'm excited for the next 40 years!

Satisfying Game Play

Last weekend (yeah, it's nearly Friday already...I've been busy!), I ran a session of my TS&R Jade campaign and things went really well. In the session before that, the party had confronted a corrupt merchant and his yakuza buddy who were selling black lotus powder in town. Well, in that session, they fought the final battle on the outskirts of town, as the merchant and gangster were trying to flee.This session, after a bit of discussion of where to go and what to do, they decided that since they still had the warrant from the town magistrate to search Merchant Choi's home, they were going to use it and confiscate all his treasure. But first, they paid a visit to Kunio, the yakuza lieutenant who wanted Hideo, the drug dealing yakuza, out of the picture. Kunio agreed to lend them three thugs (using Justin's yakuza PC's streetwise ability to call in favors), and asked for Choi's ornate decorative suit of armor as a reward. The party also hired five men-at-arms, several of whom they had hired before, including Yu-seok (pronounced "you suck"), and Yeuh Dai (pronounced "you die"), much to the delight of the boys. 

When they got to the home, my younger son's Blade Mage used a disguise spell to make himself look like Choi. After they put a loose binding on his arms, they went in and demanded that the guards surrender. "Merchant Choi" told them to comply, and so they did. 

In the house were Choi's guards (around 15 left), a handful of drunk gamblers (who had been hanging out with the yakuza kashira), eight dancing girls, four gardeners, and around a dozen servants. Each group was interrogated, with my older son's Wu Jen using ESP to learn a few secrets. The gamblers were quickly let go. The guards and entertaining girls were disarmed (the poison blades of the dancing girls, being dumped in the koi pond, killed the fish), and most were then let go. One of the gardeners' thoughts betrayed that there were secret passages in the house, so he was kept while the rest were let go. The servants were sent to bring all the valuables. 

Well, knowing there were secret passages, and not getting a suit of armor among the loot collected by the servants, the party started searching the house. But in one guest room, there were three paper lanterns, and ghost-like creatures (ao-andon) emerged from them. The ao-andon got initiative, and they all used hold person, which paralyzed nearly everyone. My older boy's Wu Jen and one m-a-a were unaffected...and of course "Merchant Choi" who ordered his guardian spirits back into their lanterns. One reaction roll later, the plan worked, and the gardener was revealed to be a type of ninja guardian called an o-niwa-banshu. The three lanterns went into the koi pond (along with jokes about zombie koi fish emerging because of it).

The plan to overcome the party with the spirits failed, so the ninja agreed to show the party the secret chambers, including the treasure room which had the armor, and several rectangular areas free of dust, where the crates with black lotus powder had been removed (those had been recovered in the previous session, but the players had suspected there would be more). 

With all the treasure confiscated, Nate started scheming a plan to take over the mansion. Not a bad idea, it's a nice big house with a nice garden (now with zombie koi fish?), secret passages connecting rooms, and space for the party to settle down and expand their operations. Maybe even take on some permanent hirelings instead of recruiting men-at-arms each session. 

But there was a quandary. If they took the loot to the magistrate, it would be public knowledge that they had taken it. Also, Choi's family might stake a claim. But if they took the loot to the yakuza Kunio, he wouldn't pay them full value for it. Eventually, after debate and a vote, they went to the magistrate. But a bad reaction roll to the idea of him granting them the house led the magistrate to take half of the value of the treasure as a tax. And they don't get the house. There were some schemes hatched to "haunt" the house and make the Choi family want to sell it cheap... but that's for a future session. 

I was really satisfied with this session, and so were the players. There was technically a combat. We rolled initiative with the ao-andon, and players made saves vs the spells. But there wasn't a single to-hit roll in the entire session. Just a lot of talking, scheming, intimidation, cleverness, and invention. Not only that, most of the PCs leveled up after the game.While I do enjoy running combats, it's also great fun to have a session like this without any real combat, and everyone's engaged and having fun.

It's also satisfying that Stevie's Blade Mage made it to 3rd level, so he was able to pick two 2nd level spells, and chose phantasmal force and locate object. He's definitely not trying to be a combat power-house with his spells, which is good. He can play more cleverly this way, something he's learned from our earlier West Marches games (although in Star Wars his Jedi is packing more guns than anyone else in the party, including the Mandalorian!).

Back! Gaming! Happy!

I've been avoiding blogging the past week or so, because of the OGL whoop-de-doo. I said my peace earlier about it, and didn't really have more to add. And now, I've got my TS&R campaign started up again, and am working on notes for the next Star Wars d6 adventure (nearly done). My older boy and I also, at the invitation of a friend, started playing a campaign dungeon crawler board game called Swords & Sorcery: Ancient Chronicles. 

I mentioned this game over on BX Blackrazor's comment section, and it spawned a whole post by JB. I may have some thoughts to add to his post later. For now, though, I want to talk about the game itself.

Like many of these campaign style games, it's fairly rules heavy. The basic mechanics are pretty simple and straightforward. There are red and blue dice (d10s). Red are better offense, blue are better defense. For any task, you roll the number of red and/or blue dice indicated, and try to get the right symbols to come up. When to roll, what to roll for, and how the cards (items, abilities, etc.) interact make it complex. 

One really cool thing about the game is the way it runs monsters. After each player takes their turn, they turn over an Encounter card. This card will say to activate certain types of monsters. All monsters are colored by strength tier green - blue - red - purple, and given their primary attack method (Strength, Faith, Magic, Dexterity). The player characters also have these attack methods. So one card might say "Activate all red creatures -or- activate any two creatures." Any red creatures would then take an action, and if there are none, players decide which two creatures in play take actions instead. And each monster has a card with various if/then statements, combined with all their various attacks and defenses. So if a monster activates, we read its card to see which situation applies, and how they act. 

For example, the first two dungeons had a lot of giant spiders. The spider cards (didn't get a picture of that, so going from memory here) have actions for the spiders if there is a hero in the same area, 1 or 2 areas away, or farther than that. And within those, there are if/then conditionals. If a character is in the same area, and it is slowed (webbed up), the spider uses a special attack. If not, it bites then moves 1 area away. If a hero is 1-2 areas away, it shoots a web. If no heroes are within 2 spaces, it moves closer. 

The interaction between the Encounter cards and the various conditionals on the monster cards make the monster actions unpredictable, and emulate a DM running monsters in D&D fairly well. In fact, the monsters in this game are a lot more challenging and unpredictable than most monsters that I run in D&D... I do sometimes get into the bad habit of having monsters just rely on their main attacks once combat starts, unless I'd specifically prepared some interesting tactics for them beforehand. 

Another thing the game does that mimics D&D or other RPGs is that it has a story book. Certain markers get placed on the board, and when characters move onto them, story events happen. It's also a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure style, in that some of the events are different depending on if we're playing the Lawful or Chaotic versions of the heroes (my hero, the Thief or Alchemist, is always Neutral, so can play with either party). Also, some of the events include actual choices like a CYOA book that we can make. It's not quite the same as playing a proper RPG, but I can see why Adam (the host) prefers this sort of game to an RPG.

The premise of the game is that the gods have awakened these five heroes from their immortal slumber to stop an evil threat. Being already dead, death in the game is not the end. You become a ghost, and can rejuvenate at a shrine. The players fail the dungeon if all four are ghosts at the same time. And of course there are soul points that need to be earned during play, which need to be spent to rejuvenate...but they're also needed to level up your character. 

It's a bit of a learning curve, but we're getting better at it as we play. In the first session, we only managed to get through the introductory adventure and the first town phase (shopping, info gathering, gambling...we lost most of our cash there). The second dungeon took us two whole sessions (the picture above is where we stopped at the second session, halfway through the dungeon crawl. The third session, we managed to finish that dungeon. Each session has been 4 or 5 hours of play. It's a bit smoother, though, and probably our next session (next Monday) will go a bit faster than that. 

After we get through the winter break, we'll only be able to play on weekends, though, so that will probably have some conflicts with my D&D game.

______________

In other news, Pat of the original Busan Board Game group is finally leaving Korea soon. As he prepares to leave, he's getting rid of a lot of stuff. He contacted me the other day and asked if I wanted his RPG books. Of course I said yes. So yesterday, I drove over to his apartment and got them. He had the 2E DMG and Monstrous Compendium (original versions, I only had the black reprint versions until now), a few modules and the Ravenloft Masque of the Red Death box set. 

Also, he gave my his 4E books. That collection includes the PHB, PHB2, DMG and MM, plus three modules and some modular dungeon tiles. 

I'd mentioned to Adam that he might dig 4E more than other editions of D&D, so the books may end up with him in the end. For now though, I'm wondering if I'd like to give them another try, running the game more like this S&S board game than a proper RPG campaign. I think that's what 4E was really designed to do, after all. But I've also got my TS&R campaign, my Star Wars campaign, and I think I'm about ready to take the plunge with a PbP Gamma World game that I've got set up but haven't recruited players for yet. So probably no time for an experiment with 4E.

Starting the campaign with a near TPK

Today was the second game of the new campaign. Last session, the PCs had discovered that the town constable was acting strangely, and were asked to investigate. They discovered that the constable's new lieutenant was an aswang - a shapeshifting creature. 

This session, they followed up a few leads and set out for the desecrated shrine on a map they found among the lieutenant's stuff. Despite hints from me that they could hire men-at-arms, the party just went in on their own. Despite setting off an alarm at the gates of the shrine, they proceeded anyway. Despite the kensei falling in a pit trap and losing half of her hit points (and no healing spells), they pressed on. 

When they found captives tied up in a locked room, there was a little bit of suspicion, but they came to the decision that these were in fact captured farmers from the neighborhood and set them loose. Then when they were about to go through the next door, the "farmers" revealed themselves to be aswang and attacked. [They'd been warned by alarms and set the ambush for the PCs.]

Now we had some unlucky dice rolls. The aswangs (bog standard doppelganger stats, revised description) got surprise on the party. With 4HD and 1d12 damage, and a couple of good rolls, they managed to kill the party wu jen and thief in the surprise round. One of the fighters was wounded. 

Instead of surrendering or retreating, the other party members fought on. They managed to kill one of the aswangs, but then the sohei and kensei and one fighter were killed. The other fighter, a cat hengeyokai, transformed and fled the combat. 

Most of the players have been playing in my West Marches game, so they know that old school play can be deadly, and that I'm not pulling punches. The kensei's player had played a bit of WM back when I was still using 5E rules, and she's mostly played 5E since then. She was a bit surprised that nearly everyone died, but took it in stride. She was at least satisfied that her character achieved a noble death in battle. A previous version of her PC in a 5E campaign run by a friend had a less than satisfying end, so this gave her character concept some closure at least! 

I did try to warn them by suggesting multiple times that they hire some men-at-arms. Also, bad luck that they were surprised by the aswang. If the wu jen had not been taken out in the surprise round, he likely would have put two or three of them to sleep, making the encounter manageable without the men-at-arms. Oh well, two of the PCs (wu jen and kensei) were still at 0xp since the players couldn't come last week. And the other three that died didn't have that much collected yet. They can roll up some new PCs and play will continue in two weeks.

New Campaign Prep Continues

Been busy teaching an elementary student English camp last week, and this week. They are both physically and mentally draining, but a lot of fun. And I get to inspire a bunch of Korean kids to take more interest in learning English. 

This year, instead of reading and creating choose-your-own-adventure type stories, I'm playing board games with the kids. They're really enjoying it. Some got into the interactive fiction thing, but for most it was just a thing to do. With the board games (Bang!, King of Tokyo, Dungeon!, Clue, The Keeyp) they really have fun. But explaining the games takes a lot of effort. 4th and 5th graders aren't the most patient bunch. :D 

Aside from the board games, quite a few of the new teachers I've met this time are gamers. One runs a Pathfinder game, and two others play in a 5E game together. Another guy isn't currently gaming, but both he and the PF guy were interested in maybe joining my new TS&R campaign. So I don't need to worry about one of the currently interested players dropping out. That's a nice feeling. 

I've got enough locations and NPCs in the home town described in enough detail to get started. I can add layers of detail as they develop in play. I've got half a dozen small dungeons ready. I've got the "main" dungeon maps drawn and keyed. I just need to fill in what's in the rooms. 

The dungeon is not a megadungeon, but it is fairly large. The first level has around 60 encounter areas. About 100 on the second level. And approximately 140 on the third level. Three hundred encounter areas seems like quite a bit, but there are several "special" locations in each level, most with multiple sub-areas (counted in the totals above). By the standard stocking numbers, that's around 100 empty rooms, 100 rooms with monster encounters, 50 traps/hazards, and 50 strange or unusual encounters. 

It will take a bit of time to get that all filled in, but with the adventure seeds included with the home town, the small dungeons nearby, and a local wilderness area with encounter tables complete, I think I'll be confident to start if I only have the 1st level keyed by the time the campaign starts. I'll get as much of the 2nd done as well, if I can. Best would be to get all three keyed, so I can start throwing in rumors and missions at the players.

Working on the New Campaign

Haven't been blogging much lately because I'm prepping for the new campaign. I'm slowly building up the personalities, factions, and services available in the home town. I finished the third level map for the local "micro mega" dungeon. Three sprawling levels, lots of access points between the levels, and several key locations on each level. Stocking might take a while, but with the map done, that's half the battle. 

I've got several micro dungeons and challenges/rivalries/factional moves (some recycled from previous games, some new). Have to flesh out a few more, but I've got enough done, or nearly done, that I will feel comfortable starting the campaign in September. 

Of course, I'll be working at an elementary school English camp the next two weeks, so not much time to prep during those. They're pretty intense, and I doubt I'll get much work done on this campaign during the camp period. But I think I have enough in place to start. 

Also, my younger son made his character, a cat hengeyokai fighter. My older son will probably roll up a PC this weekend. I've got four or five more players lined up. 

The only problem is that this week, I've been looking at Southeast Asian folklore/mythology a bit, and finding lots of cool ideas for monsters from Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines that I'd like to add. Since I've already got the monsters & treasure book done and mostly formatted, so maybe I'll have to make a supplement already to add more monsters! 

Update: My older boy made his PC this evening. Another fighter, but a human this time, named Shi Jinping (ha ha)*. He's got lamellar armor, a heavy crossbow, a straight sword, and a backpack. He says he wants to take the game more seriously this time, but then starts drawing a picture of Winnie the Pooh in lamellar on his sheet. :D 

Son #2 doesn't want to have the same sort of sword, so says he wants to switch to a katana. He's got the cash, so that's no problem. 

*I told him it's spelled Xi, but he decided to keep this spelling.

Thinking about Gamma World again

One of the players in my West Marches has never DMed a game before, and another player has been pushing him to try running something. I've been giving advice to Player 1, including suggesting some game systems that might not be too much of a shock for him. (Player 2 was suggesting things with 200+ page world lore books in addition to the rules themselves...probably not the best thing to have to worry about on a first time as game master.)

After some discussion, Player 1 decided to check out Gamma World. Close enough to Classic D&D, but different enough to make him interested. I suggested he get the 2E PDF from DriveThru, and he did. He's been going over it slowly, and every now and then shooting a question my way. 

I'm not actually an expert on 2E. My cousin had the box set back in the day, but we never really did more than make characters with it. Later, when I was in college, I got 4E and we played that a bit. I like it, but it's a bit crunchier than 1E/2E. It throws in character classes on top of mutations and whatnot, plus there are a lot of derived statistics to juggle. 2E is a lot simpler, and also a bit better organized than 1E. 

So I've been brushing up on the 2E rules as well. I've also been compiling the creature and robot stats from the main rule book and the modules that I have on PDF. There are quite a few interesting ones that didn't make it into the 4E book. 

I mentioned to my sons a while back that we might be playing Gamma World with Player 1 soon, and my younger son got really excited. He has been transitioning from a love of bulldogs to a love of cats (because of some buff cat character on the internet? -- yeah, I'm old, get off my lawn). So of course he wants to play a mutant cat character. 

We looked through the 4E book's creature section together, and for bedtime reading we read through Light on Quest's Mountain, the old Endless Quest book set in Gamma World. He enjoyed it. 

Of course, now my son wants to pick and choose mutations to be catlike: heightened balance, jumping, night vision, claws, and of course chameleon power. :D 

Now I'm considering putting together a GW game for RPoL (a play by post site). Simple sandbox. Home town, different strange regions in each direction, ruins sprinkled here and there. Nothing as grand in concept as GamMarvel World that I tried to run a few years back. That just became a headache trying to work out a bunch of connections to Marvel comics in each ruin and adventure site. KISS Principle this time around, if I pull the trigger.

Also, it'll be fun to play some GW if Player 1 gets his game up and running.

A Novel form of Exploration

Usually when we think of exploration in RPGs, we're talking about one of three things: exploration of the imagined game world (dungeons, wilderness, settled lands); exploration of character (role play); exploration of the rule systems (optimization/min-maxing, rules lawyering). 

My friend Jeremy, over the past few years, has been embarked on a novel form of RPG exploration. He's exploring varieties of rule sets. Now I know he's not the first person to ever do something like this, but I call it novel mostly because it's a form of game exploration that we don't often discuss.

I remember when he first pitched the idea to me. He wanted to run lots of impromptu pick up games, each time using a different rule set in a different setting (or sometimes the same setting, with characters transferred over to the new system). I remember giving him some pointers on what I thought he would need to do to make the idea work. I don't remember exactly what I said to him, but things like having pregen PCs to pick up and play was definitely one of them. 

Over the past few years, he's run all sorts of rule sets. His preference for games runs towards the grimdark, so sometimes the games feel pretty much the same regardless of the rules we're using. But we have been able to try out lots of those games that we've looked at but figured we might never play. 

I haven't really been into it much lately though, but to be honest I was not super fond of the idea when Jeremy pitched it. While getting to try all these games sounds good, my gaming time is limited. And it kinda sucks to always have to make (or select) new characters, figure out how things work in an unfamiliar game (both rules mechanics wise and setting wise), and to always be starting at level 1 over and over again (something I'm pretty sure I warned him against doing that he didn't heed). 

I'm not posting this to criticize Jeremy or his methods. I do think what he's doing is interesting. But it is also a bit frustrating that we never get to play a rule set long enough to really get a feel for it. We also don't get to run characters long enough to get a feel for them, either. And sometimes the games just feel a bit pointless. Especially in systems that are more story-game influenced and advancement is arbitrary or keyed to number of sessions played. 

Without a solid game-driving objective (like XP for GP, or even XP for combat), and without enough game sessions to figure out who our characters are or what in-universe goals we might want to be accomplishing, the sessions sometimes feel either rudderless or railroady. To be clear, Jeremy isn't railroading us, but it can feel like it when we know so little about the settings. 

And now I'm being negative again. Honestly, I didn't start this post with the intent to criticize what Jeremy's doing or how he's doing it. Jeremy if you're reading, sorry!

So, getting back to the idea at hand: Lots of one shots or mini campaigns, each with a different rule set and different characters. 

It's kinda fun for a side campaign. I've always got more character ideas that I can come up with. We do get to try lots of systems. It's interesting to see different ideas for RPGs put into practice. And it can help identify interesting game mechanics or stylistic choices that I might want to borrow (or to avoid at all costs!). 

But the down side, as I've mentioned, is that these Baskin Robbins sample spoon games don't satisfy the way a Thanksgiving Feast ongoing campaign does.

Marching On in the West Marches

 I'm preparing to run my West Marches game this weekend. It's been a little while, what with the funeral and my sons being sick and general business. I just updated the player map with the hexes that were explored in the previous session and thought why not stick it up here as well? I think the last time I did that was 2 years ago in this post. You can see that in two years of mostly twice a month sessions, they've explored a fair amount, but are still relatively close to the home town (middle right). Lots of white space left to explore.

As you can see, I started adding old school terrain markers on the map to help the players distinguish the terrain types. The key to interesting numbered areas is here: 

1. Silverwood (the home town) on the Gallandus River

2. Scorpion Shrine (Goblin Hills)

3. Moon Temple (White Woods)

4. Sahuagin Lair (White Woods)

5. The Caves of Chaos (Goblin Hills)

6. Centaur/Green Flame Temple (Tiger Home)

7. Long Cliff (Whispering Forest)

8. Abandoned Elven Outpost (Black Woods)

9. Border of Dead Woods (Dead Woods)

10. Chimera Shrine (Dead Woods

11. Neanderthal Village (Hellhorse Plains)

12. Quasqueton (Cloud Lands)

13. Ruins where tribal dragonborn camp (North Moor)

14. Haunted House (Dead Woods)

15. Mimir’s Well (Dead Woods)

16. Knight’s Pavilion Encampment/Endless Tournament (Far Downs)

17. Blue Dragon (deceased)’s Lair (Far Downs)

18. The Hall of Power (The Folded Lands)

19. Gemstone Tree (Black Woods)

20. Elven Spire in Quicksand Mire (Goblin Hills)

21. Twin Isle Lake (Hellhorse Plains)

22. Dark Druid Circle (Haunted Woods)

23. The Moathouse (Haunted Woods)

24. Obsidian Ridges (The Folded Lands)

25. Fairy Kingdom of King Louhi (White Woods)

26. Ruins of Xak Tsaroth (Voodoo Bayou)

27. Centaur Ranch (Tiger Home)

28. Dragon Hill (Hellhorse Plains)

29. Cyclopskin Trading Post (Hellhorse Plains)

30. Aboleth Ford, Dragontail River (Far Downs)

31. Boiling Lake (Folded Lands)

32. Petrified Forest (Cloud Lands)

33. Pavillion (Whispering Forest)

34. Hobgoblin Castle (Whispering Forest)

35. Cloud Lake Monastery (Cloud Lands)

36. Non-Euclidean Fortress (Cloud Lands)

37. Haunted Lodge (Brooding Forest)

38. Forgotten Chapel (South Prairie)

39. Halfling Village (South Prairie)

40. Red Feather Elf Tribe (Elfin Vale)

41. The Gates of Barovia (Brooding Forest)

42. Cozy Cottage (Brooding Forest)

43. Ancient Amphitheatre (Hellhorse Plains)

44. CCCP Obelisk (Voodoo Bayou)

Gnomish Tarot

Dean, who has been a good friend and fellow gamer for many years now, has always produced some gorgeous art derived from our games, dating back to Justin's Vaults of Ur campaign (see the labels to this post). Through Ur, Chanbara play tests, various games run by Jeremy, and into West Marches, he's consistently drawn a lot of amazingly detailed pieces that illustrate our games. I've posted some of it here before. He also ran a pretty amazing campaign himself, that started as 4E and migrated to 5E along the way. The campaign was a bizarre mix of Oz, Spencer's Faerie Queene, Narnia, Pellucidar, Dr. Who... and tons of fun. 

He's back in Canada now, and producing a webtoon based on his campaign. You can check it out here: 

Tales from the Gnomish Tarot

Dean actually gifted me a lot of his original work that he produced while he lived here in Busan. Here's a couple of illos I have on my hard drive (the originals are in my office, I'm at home right now):

From my Megadungeon games

From Vaults of Ur

Getting Old?

A week or so ago, I had a bunch of ideas for blog posts. Of course, this was right before bed time, but somehow in the morning I still had them in mind. But I didn't write them down, and since I've been so busy the past few weeks, they've completely slipped my mind now. All I can remember is that I had interesting ideas for things to write about here. Frustrating!

Anyway, things are going well on the gaming front. My West Marches game is coming along well. We had a great session of it over the weekend. The party managed to explore a bunch of hexes on their way to the Ruins of Xak Tsaroth, and scouted it out a bit. No one died, and my younger son got his first taste of D&D (he turns 6 in two months, so he wasn't really paying that much attention, but had fun clicking on the button to roll dice in Roll20 and enjoyed making a character).

The Star Wars d6 game is also going well. But my wife and kids are back in Korea (if you couldn't guess) so my gaming time is going to be much reduced. When it was only me, it was no problem gaming two or three nights a week. Now it's going to be once a week if that. And with West Marches on a regular schedule, Star Wars is going to be much less frequent.

Dean's 4E game is going pretty well. It is fun, despite the drawbacks of the 4E system, and I'm enjoying my quirky character.

Nate, one of my regular players in West Marches, has started a 5E game using the free content WotC has been putting on their website over the past couple of months. I didn't get to play in the first session, but I made a PC -- a human conjurer with a pointy hat as his arcane focus. Named Preston. Any resemblance to 80's cartoon characters is purely coincidental!!! Honest!

Then there are the PbP games I'm involved in on RPOL.net. I've joined too many games, I think, but players in games I'm enjoying were starting new games, and I jumped in on them (along with my previous games). I'm running two (Classic D&D megadungeon, and my d6 Star Wars stuff) plus playing a dozen characters in eight different games (in two games I have three characters each).

And then I'm still plugging away at Treasures, Serpents, and Ruins - East. Once I get the main rules set (working on the GM stuff now, which is tedious and going slow) I'll get back to work on the East Marches setting/module idea I've got. But again, with work stuff and my family back with me, don't expect it any time soon.

Reconsidering 4E

Dean switched his games from 5E back to 4E a few months back. At first he was still running the 5E game, too, but now he's gone to only 4E. So while I could resist playing 4E when I still had the option of 5E, now that it's only 4E, Dean got me to join.

I think I mentioned this already in the last post. He almost didn't. The first time I tried to make a character, I started looking through the options (and since my only sources are online, there are WAY too many!). For some reason, a Hengeyokai Monk seemed like the character to play. I started to make the PC. But then the WAY too many options as well as unfamiliar jargon got in the way and after maybe two hours wasted, I gave up.

Then a few weeks later, I tried again. This time with a personal character sheet to model provided by Dean, and knowing what I wanted to play already, I made it through the character creation process and created Xuan Lai, Monkey Hengeyokai Stone Fist Monk. Yeah, that's a mouthful.

The monk in 4E is a "striker" with some "control" ability, meaning that on the tactical battle map, my role is to dish out damage and set up the enemies where we can do the most damage, or else maneuver my way across the battlefield where I can do the most good. And unlike the Ranger or Rogue (or other "strikers") my character is designed to deal damage to multiple opponents more than massive damage on single opponents.

And I have to say, when we get into the tactical battles, it is pretty fun to play around and try to use my powers most effectively. And even when we're not fighting, playing a slightly less Chaotic version of Sun Wukong (the Monkey King) is a lot of fun too.

But then I hit level 2. And I had to go back to the online database to search through it to decide on my Level 2 Utility Power and a feat. And that took a good part of an afternoon. No joke.

We'll see how it goes. Like I said, playing it is fine. Fun even! It's not normal D&D, but I've read plenty of times how it's a good game on its own merits. I see that now. I still have some issues, especially since character creation/leveling takes SO long, and pretty much every level will involve choices like this.

CoronaBlahs, and a Simple Rule for Black Markets

My coronavirus isolation, plus online teaching, has kept me busy the past month. So not much blogging. I haven't done any more reading of the Immortal Set. Barely worked on my TSR-East project. I did paint a lot of minis, though, and started a play-by-post Star Wars d6 game using the same starting adventure I used with the Busan Gamers. I got some VERY enthusiastic players, and it's going pretty well so far, along with my now long-running but slow posting megadungeon Classic D&D play by post game. And I'm still running West Marches and Star Wars on Hangouts/Roll20. Star Wars tonight! Also, Dean switched back to 4E, his edition of choice, and I think the adventures of our high levle 5E characters, Jack Summerisle and crew, are finished.

Dean finally convinced me to try the 4E game. It took me two attempts to make a character. The first time I gave up in frustration at the overload of options. The second time, I got it done. I now play Xuan Lai, a monkey hengeyokai Monk. Yes, he's the monkey-est monk in Eberron! [Any similarity to Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, is purely coincidental, honestly!]

Anyway, the Star Wars game is heavily involved with Hutts. Both, actually. So I was thinking of ways to simulate black market sales of goods. And I think I have a pretty elegant idea that would work regardless of system, at least for things like odd treasures that don't have a set price. I often do that with treasures, saying it will be worth 1d8 x100 gp, or 2d6 x250gp, or whatever. If players want to shop around for different buyers, they might get a better price than the one first offered (they never do, tending to take the first offer).

For a Black Market, you're selling something illegally gained or illicit, so you want to avoid paperwork/official notice. And you will need to accept a probably lower price for the object to avoid the imperial entanglements or whatever. So roll twice, take the higher roll as the legit sales price, take the lower roll as the black market price.

And for  something with a set value (price in the book, gems/jewelry in D&D with set value, etc.) just decide on a number range and the dice to roll to get that range, with the book value at or near the top. Hey, sometimes something like that might be in demand on the black market, why not give it a chance to be worth slightly more from time to time?