Trade Deadline

Today was the trade deadline for my nineteenth-century baseball teams, and three of the four teams were involved in the action. The frontrunning Haymakers picked up versatile center fielder Ned Hanlon from the Resolutes in exchange for reserve infielder Sol White. Hanlon provides the Haymakers with speed on the basepaths and elite defense in the outfield, both of which his new team has been lacking. How did the Haymakers land such a useful player for, essentially, a spare part? Well, the Resolutes found themselves in need of a stopgap third baseman for the remainder of the regular season, as their other trade today ended up being quite the blockbuster! 

Here's the scoop on that one: The expansion team nabbed elite outfielder Pete Hill from the Canaries in a dream-come-true opportunity. Hill will bat leadoff for the Resolutes and replace Elmer Flick in center. With Flick shifting to right, Fred Clarke remaining in left, and iron-gloved Orator Jim O'Rourke riding the pine, the Resolutes will suddenly have the best outfield defense in the league, even without Hanlon! It's also a great opportunity for Hill to take a step forward in his career, as he'd been overshadowed by superstar center fielder Hugh Duffy and obliged to patrol right field despite being Duffy's defensive equal. With Hill comes pitcher Rube Foster, who had won the Canaries' closer role this season but will likely revert back to his natural position as a starter now that he's a Resolute.

The Canaries were loath to part with the multitalented Hill, but for team allowing a league-worst 4.13 runs per game (and with a -15 run differential, also worst in the league), the defending champs needed pitching. And they sure got it! Enigmatic hurler Rube Waddell moves to the Canaries after rejuvenating his career with the Resolutes. Waddell sports a solid 2.77 ERA, good enough for fourth in the league (although his 39 innings pitched is a much lower total than the other ERA leaders). The Canaries also get Tommy McCarthy, a natural outfielder who'd been pressed into service as a third baseman on the Resolutes (hence the Resolutes' need to trade for Sol White). McCarthy brings a solid bat, and although his defense at third was nothing short of atrocious, he profiles as a plus defender in a corner outfield spot, thereby softening the blow of losing Hill. 

It's a great trade for both teams, and, as luck would have it, the Canaries and Resolutes will face each other in their very next game...tomorrow!

Universes Beyond

Maybe I need to give MTG another try?

Heroes of Saltmarsh

In June of 2019, after wrapping up our long-running Shattered Realm campaign, our Skype D&D group (Matt, his daughter, my boys, and myself) created new characters and began to play through the Ghosts of Saltmarsh D&D book. Over a year-and-a-half later, we're about to embark upon the seventh and final adventure in that volume. To commemorate this epic campaign, Matt commissioned an artist to create illustrations of the four PCs.

Without further ado, I give you...the heroes of Saltmarsh!

How cool is that?!? From left to right, we have the triton hexblade Vlaryn, the dwarf barbarian Moe, the lizardfolk monk/rogue Seven, and the fallen aasimar sorcerer Ciara. A truly great party, now memorialized in artwork!

Better Than a Battle

We're making good progress in our family Alien RPG campaign. The intrepid colonists have struck out across the frozen, irradiated surface of their new world (thanks to a pesky xenomorph whose acidic blood caused the colony ship to crash) in the hope of reaching a Weyland-Yutani outpost that (they hope) is waiting for them. This part of the campaign is all about survival, and it's shaping up to a a really fun change of pace from typical combat encounters. Amy makes no secret of her disdain for lengthy, tactical RPG battles, and I too was looking for different kinds of threats and challenges in this campaign. 

We've had our share of cool, memorable moments so far -- I particularly enjoyed the bit where Nathaniel's character, a ten-year-old kid, piloted the escape pod down to the planet -- but one episode really serves to highlight what makes this campaign so different from our usual RPG fare. After dispatching a nasty scorpion-like creature in a hail of gunfire, the heroes stopped for a breather. Matthew's character, a smarmy Weyland-Yutani executive, botched his consumable resource check (rolling four 1's on 4D6!) and thus, in narrative terms, the character ended up spilling his entire water supply on the ground. The impact of that roll was far better than any battle, as dehydration is a foe that cannot be fought with pulse rifles or incinerator units. The other characters then had to share their own precious water, and now they're not feeling quite so confident about their ability to reach the outpost...

Midseason Review

We're at the halfway point of Season 5, and it's turning out to be the most fun season since our inaugural campaign. Here are some of the major storylines so far!

• While the Haymakers (8-4) have been comfortably in first since the start of the season, the other three teams are locked in a tight battle for second. As of this writing, the Blue Legs (6-6) hold that spot, with the Resolutes (5-7) and Canaries (5-7) on their heels. At the end of the regular season, the first- and second-place teams will face off in a best-of-five series for the Creighton Cup. Will the Haymakers reach the championship series for a fifth consecutive season?  
• With the expansion Resolutes now in play, the talent pool has been diluted quite a bit. Not surprisingly, scoring is way down. Thus far, teams are scoring 3.48 runs per game, more than a half-run drop from the 4.18 per game that the three original teams were scoring last year.
• On a related note, pitchers reign supreme! The single-season ERA record (1.61, Mickey Welch, Season 4) is in jeopardy as the Resolutes' John Clarkson (3-3, 1.53 ERA, 53 innings pitched, 2 shutouts) and the Haymakers' Cy Young (6-0, 1.84 ERA, 49 IP) have dazzled in the first half. Meanwhile, Pud Galvin (5-1, 3.18 ERA, 51 IP, 1 SO) has exceeded all expectations after coming over to the Blue Legs prior to the start of the season. Although Clarkson and Young have the inside track for Pitcher MVP, Galvin seems to be getting better with every start. As for some of the other accomplished moundsmen, Tim Keefe of the Canaries (2-4, 3.77 ERA, 43 IP) and Mickey Welch of the Haymakers (2-2, 2.54 ERA, 39 IP, 1 SO) have struggled in comparison to their past standards; Keefe, however, did manage to strike out a league-record six consecutive batters during one of his starts. 
• The Position Player MVP race is shaping up to be a two-man contest between Cap Anson of the Haymakers and Nap Lajoie of the Blue Legs. Lajoie is tied with teammate Sam Crawford for the league lead in home runs (three), but last year's top sluggers -- George Davis and Sam Thompson -- have experienced a major power outage, with nary a home run between them. 
• Finally, three cheers for the Resolutes, who are solidly competitive in their very first season! Led by rejuvenated hurler John Clarkson and slugging left fielder Fred Clarke, the Resolutes are a threat to reach the Creighton Cup series. How are they succeeding? In a word, pitching. They're dead last in defense and their offense is scoring a paltry 2.50 runs per game (also last), but their pitching is ranked second behind the Haymakers. 

The second half begins tomorrow! Hmm...for future reference, maybe we need a midseason All-Star Game or something...

Tiny Supers

As much as I want to give Champions its due, I'm struggling to muster the energy to slog through the rest of the rulebook. I need a system that gets to the fun faster. In the words of Comic Book Guy...

I'll see if Nathaniel, who enjoys reading highly detailed game rulebooks, might want to give Champions a whirl. In the meantime, I'm switching over to Tiny Supers, part of the TinyD6 family of minimalist RPGs. Lots of flavor and fun, with fully customizable characters. If I ever do run a superhero campaign for the boys, it's gonna be a Tiny one!

Spreadsheet Sold Separately

Matthew got up late last night to go to the bathroom and found me in the living room reading the latest edition of the superhero RPG Champions. 

"Tell me about Champions when you finish reading it," he said. I could barely stifle a laugh. It's going to be a while before we have that conversation. Holy hell! This game is complicated. 

I have a newfound admiration for my twelve-year-old self. How had I managed to keep all these esoteric rules in my head? How had I created countless Champions heroes and villains without Excel and formulas to crunch the numbers? 

Game design has come a long way over the past several decades. I know a few grognards who still yearn for the days when games had rules to cover every possible situation and the quality of a system was directly proportional to the size of its rulebook, but I've come to appreciate the elegance and adaptability of games that have light, flexible core rules with the ability to layer in complexity through exception-based mechanics. 

I'll finish reading Champions Complete -- I owe it to my younger self to get through the rulebook, at the very least -- but if I ever do run a follow-up to the Earth Commanders campaign or play any sort of superhero RPG with the boys, I think I'll keep my eye out for another system.

Full Circle

Matt and I have been exchanging emails about superhero RPGs, and it got me thinking about my first true RPG love, Champions. Long before the Druid Cycle world, long before the siren song of AD&D lured me into TSR's clutches, I was a dyed-in-the-wool Champions fanatic. In fact, the original Front Porch campaign -- one of only two that was actually conducted on my parents' front porch -- was Earth Commanders, which employed the delightfully fiddly Champions system to tell a tale of cosmic superheroes based (where else?) in Montreal.

Earth Commanders got me hooked on gamemastering, but my favorite Champions memory is unrelated to Front Porch stuff. Decades before taking part in the D&D Fifth Edition playtest, I was a twelve-year-old kid who somehow managed to get access to playtest materials for Champions and related HERO System products. I used to dial up a BBS (remember those?) based in Texas, and, as my parents fretted their long-distance bill with every bit that trickled through my 1200 baud modem, I downloaded drafts of HERO System books and read them with a kind of awed reverence. One day, I mustered the courage to email a fan letter to prolific game designer Aaron Allston -- a fixture on that BBS -- and he sent me a very nice note in response. (Sadly, Allston passed away a number of years ago.)

I think it's high time to share Champions with my own kids, so I've ordered a copy of the most recent edition of the game. With our Alien RPG campaign starting up again soon and our ongoing Shattered Realm stories to continue, I have no idea when we would actually play this game, but it certainly will be fun to share all my old stories with the boys.