Season 13 Playoffs

The Victorias and Comets franchises have won seven Creighton Cups between them, but they're sitting out this postseason. While they dream of drafting exciting young talent to rebuild for next year, the other four franchises were locking horns in the playoffs. Here's the recap of Round 1!

Semifinal 1: Millionaires (1st) vs. Thistles (4th)

• Game 1: Who notched the first goal of the Season 13 playoffs? Mickey MacKay, Jack Adams, Gord Roberts? Nope, the first tally was a fluky bounce on a shot by Millionaires blueliner Lester Patrick, who had zero goals during the regular season (and a measly two assists). Aging veteran Frank Rankin then scored to give the Millies a 2-0 edge. Early in the second period, Thistles superstar Alf Smith scored to make it 2-1, but Millies icon Barney Stanley restored the two-goal lead late in the frame. MacKay picked up an insurance goal midway through the third. Jack Walker scored late to bring the Thistles within two, but the game ended with a 4-2 victory for the defending Creighton Cup champs.
• Game 2: No jitters on the road for the Millionaires. They scored four times in the first period, ending the frame with a 4-0 lead over the shellshocked Thistles. Harry Westwick scored once, and star defenseman Harry Cameron notched his first playoff hat trick. Hod Stuart got the home team on the board in the second, but there was no further scoring, so the Millionaires left town with a 4-1 victory and a 2-0 series lead.
• Game 3: The Millies came home with a chance to clinch a spot in the Creighton Cup finals. There was no scoring in the first period, which featured some incredible goaltending from the Millies' Georges Vezina (the reigning Playoff MVP) and the Thistles' Hugh Lehman (himself a two-time winner of that aforementioned award). Rookie blueliner Sprague Cleghorn got his first-ever playoff goal to stake the Thistles to a 1-0 lead in the second. By the third period, the Millies were feeling some pressure; they were trailing, and they hadn't scored since the first period of Game 1 -- a stretch of four straight periods. The red-hot Cameron, however, came to the rescue and tied the game. In overtime, the Millies failed to convert on a power play, but sophomore winger George Hay scored moments later to give his team a 2-1 win and a series sweep. 

Semifinal 2: Bulldogs (2nd) vs. Bearcats (3rd)

• Game 1: The Bulldogs, the league's most-penalized team this year, started this series off with some seriously undisciplined play -- three penalties in the first ten minutes of the first period. With the league's worst penalty killing, the Dogs were playing with fire, but managed to kill off all three infractions. Outshot 10-2 in the early going, the Dogs struck first on a goal by Harry Trihey. Shortly thereafter, superstar goaltender Hap Holmes preserved the home team's slim lead with a highlight-reel save on a Scotty Davidson breakaway. In the second period, the Cats finally connected on the power play with a goal by Bruce Stuart. With the score knotted at 1-1 in the third, Joe Malone beat Holmes to give the Cats a 2-1 advantage. At this points, the Bearcats were outshooting the Bulldogs by more than a two-to-one margin, so the Dogs were lucky to be trailing by just a single goal. All hopes were dashed, however, when Stuart scored another power-play goal, driving a dagger into the heart of the team that had traded him for Holmes after Season 11. The final was 3-1 for the visiting Bearcats in a huge upset.
• Game 2: Penalties were devastating for the Bulldogs in Game 1. Could the Dogs maintain their composure in Game 2 on the road? Things got off to a rocky start for them in the first when the Cats' Billy McGimsie (acquired in a midseason trade with the Victorias) scored, followed shortly thereafter by defenseman Dickie Boon. In the second, Scotty Davidson extended the Cats' lead to 3-0 with a power-play goal. Moose Johnson, in a vain attempt to atone for his many penalties in the series, scored to bring the Dogs within two, but it was all Cats after that. Didier Pitre made it 4-1, and then Davidson scored again in the third to extend the Cats' lead to 5-1. Needless to say, superstar Bulldogs goaltender Hap Holmes had a bit of an off-day.
• Game 3: Up 2-0 in the series, the underdog Cats ("undercats"?) attempted to finish off the series on the road. They got some early momentum in the first when Dickie Boon scored on the power play after yet another careless penalty by Moose Johnson. Late in the second period, veteran speedster Fred "Steamer" Maxwell (who has suited up for more playoff games than anyone in league history) scored to make it 2-0 for the Cats. With their season hanging in the balance and one period to make up the deficit, the Bulldogs needed to come out strong in the third period. They didn't. Holmes was magnificent and finished with 34 saves, many of them spectacular, but his team let him down. The Cats' Riley Hern picked up the second playoff shutout of his career as the game ended 2-0.

Next up: The Season 13 Creighton Cup championship series with the Millionaires against the Bearcats! (And for the Bulldogs? An offseason of humiliation and finger-pointing after scoring just two goals in the Bearcats' three-game sweep.)

Secret Identities

Foxy Shazam was live in Reno tonight, and you'd better believe I was rocking out right up front!

They sure sound a lot like Clark Kent's favorite band. Hey, did I just discover the secret identity of the Mighty Crabjoys?!

FCBD 2026

Today is Free Comic Book Day!

Season 13 Highlights

Season 13 was exciting down to the very last game, which the Millionaires won to secure their second consecutive regular-season pennant (and thus home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs), denying the Bulldogs their first-ever pennant in the process. It was a frantic second half for the Millies (the reigning Creighton Cup champions), whose midseason swoon resulted in Jimmy Gardner being stripped of his captaincy as well as his roster spot, and Harry "Rat" Westwick taking over as captain. The Millies needed several late-game goals to salvage enough wins and ties to sneak ahead of the Bulldogs, who look like the league's strongest team (with a league-best +11 goal differential). I thought the Dogs would claim first place in the end, but the Millies' Mickey MacKay really elevated his play over the last few games and ended up winning the Scoring Championship (12 goals, 18 assists) for the second year in a row. MacKay also won the Forward MVP, edging out Bearcats superstar Joe Malone (last year's winner) and the Bulldogs' Jack Adams, who managed to rack up 22 points despite missing a decent chunk of the season due to injury. For the blueliners, stalwart veteran Hod Stuart captured his second Defenseman MVP trophy a full ten seasons after winning it for the first time; he delivered an impressive mix of offense and defense (7 goals, 11 assists, +8) to beat the Bulldogs' Moose Johnson (a league-leading +16) and defending trophy winner Harry Cameron of the Millies. Stuart's teammate Sprague Cleghorn won Rookie of the Year, becoming only the second blueliner ever to win that award. The season's most dominant performance, however, belonged to the Bulldogs' Hap Holmes, who claimed his third Goaltender MVP trophy after posting a 1.75 goals-against average and a .943 save percentage, which was the highest single-season save percentage in league history.

Cypher Musings

With a new edition of the Cypher System on the way this summer, I thought it would be interesting to reflect on how it's worked out in Front Porch campaigns over the past year. The first thing to note, however, is the small sample size. To date, we've done one in-person Cypher campaign (Vanguard Saga, with three players) and two email-based campaigns (another Vanguard Saga storyline and the revamped Torchlight, each with one player); compare those numbers to decades of D&D -- Druid Cycle, Shattered Realm, and so much more. That said, I think I have enough experience with Cypher to make some general observations about the rules and how we're using them. 

The most important point is that I'm very satisfied with Cypher as the default game system for the Front Porch multiverse. It's fast and easy, very flexible across genres, and well suited for narrative games. Long-running campaigns like the Druid Cycle setting will always be D&D, but at this moment I can't really imagine starting a new campaign that didn't use Cypher. My upcoming Vesper project, for example, is going to be our test run for the new Cypher edition.

So what else have I learned about Cypher from a year's worth of gaming? Below are some observations about how the experience at our table differs from the rules as written. 

• Back when I was just getting started with Cypher, Matt suggested a minor house rule to help ensure that ranged attacks at close range were not unequivocally superior to melee attacks. This house rule has worked out very well.
• In our family Vanguard campaign, Nathaniel created an android speedster whose many ways to ease Speed defense rolls has made him virtually untouchable by conventional attacks. Not everyone is out there trying to break the system, of course, but Nathaniel showed that even with a system designed by the best of the best in the gaming industry, it's quite possible to build unbalanced characters. 
• To help address the aforementioned problem, I created a house rule that enables certain low-level characters (such as troops who are part of a unit) to "gang up" on a single target more effectively. Nathaniel's android still runs circles around everyone, but at least now he has to be wary of large groups of foes taking aim at him all at once.
• No one remembers cyphers. I know it's supposed to be a big deal in the Cypher System, and it's right there in the name of the game, but cyphers still feel like a clunky add-on and not a core part of the game mechanics. 
• I love coming up with nasty GM Intrusions when players roll a 1 on their d20 checks, but all other GM Intrusions feel forced. When should something be an Intrusion rather than just a regular challenge for the PCs to overcome? Maybe I should think about Intrusions as "optional" encounters that players can either take on for the XP, or pay XP to avoid? Well, I guess, but that leads me to the final point...
• Players only use XP for advancement. In Cypher, players can spend XP for rerolls, for Player Intrusions, to avoid GM Intrusions, etc., but in practice, I've found that players don't use XP for any of these things. Only once -- and quite memorably -- did a player spend XP on a Player Intrusion, and that was when an NPC's life was at stake. Similarly, I think we've only had one or two instances when a player spent XP on a reroll. I guess it's nice to have these options in your pocket, but our experience is that players hoard XP for advancement. That realization, of course, has changed how I hand out XP; when players don't use it for all these other purposes, I have to slow down the XP rate or the characters will advance too quickly.

What changes will the new edition bring? I'm eager to find out. Here's to another year of Cypher gaming!

Another Torment Ended

I finished up Torment: Tides of Numenera, and found it to be...pretty fun! I'm still not a huge fan of the Numenera setting, and the game's voluminous text was a lot to get through (even just skimming it!), but I greatly enjoyed Torment as an example of the Cypher System translated into video game format. Spending points from your pools, applying levels of Effort, getting a "discount" from your Edge -- all that stuff felt very true to the paper-and-pencil game. I would love to see another video game make use of the Cypher System at some point.

Season 13 at the Halfway Point

I'm playing through the thirteenth season of my old-timey Strat-O-Matic hockey league, and we have some interesting storylines developing at the midway mark. The reigning Creighton Cup champions, the Millionaires, are comfortably in first place, although not quite as dominant as they were a year ago. They're followed by the Bearcats, who have continued their strong run from the second half of last season; the Cats are the league's best five-on-five team, but they're held back by a power play and penalty kill that are both dead last -- by a lot! -- in the league. The Thistles have climbed into the playoff picture on the strength of all-around improved play, just slightly ahead of the fourth-place Bulldogs, whose offensive woes in last year's playoffs have continued, especially after an injury to Jack Adams temporarily robbed them off their best playmaker. The Victorias and Comets, at fifth and sixth, respectively, are currently outside the playoff picture. Fortunately for the non-playoff teams, there's some amazing talent available in the Season 14 entry draft. The Victorias got started early with their rebuild, shipping five-time Creighton Cup winner Billy McGimsie to the Cats for a talented but penalty-prone young center named Frankie Fredrickson. 

Looking ahead to the end-of-season awards for individual players, the Scoring Championship is shaping up to be a two-way race between Bearcats superstar Joe Malone (5 goals, 9 assists) and last year's titlist, Mickey MacKay (5 goals, 7 assists) of the Millionaires. These two stars are also vying for the Forward MVP trophy, although I'd say the frontrunner is Malone's teammate Didier Pitre, whose 7 goals lead the league. The race for Defenseman MVP is wide open, as no blueliner has yet to distinguish himself from the pack. The Millies' Harry Cameron might pick up a second straight trophy, but Frank Patrick of the Bearcats is tops in the league in plus-minus at +9. A rejuvanted Hod Stuart of the Thistles, the winner way back in Season 3, might also make some noise. In a lackluster year for freshmen, Thistles blueliner Sprague Cleghorn will likely win Rookie of the Year by default. Saving the most striking stats for last, can I just declare that all six starting netminders should share the Goaltender MVP award? Goalies are dominating even more than last season; in fact, the average save percentage for all goaltenders has risen from .908 in Season 11 to .917 in Season 12 to an astounding and utterly unsustainable .931 this season! Hap Holmes of the Bulldogs leads at .942, followed by Riley Hern of the Cats at .936; both men are two-time winners of the Goaltender MVP.