Don't Rest Your Head

Well guys, it has been a bit since I have done a RPG so today I will do a quick run down of one I just finished reading. Now if you want a twenty page break down of every little detail, I'll save you the effort, I write these game blurbs so people can say 'huh I'll look into that' or 'no thanks' not to nit pick.

So Don't Rest Your Head is a RPG based around insomnia and the first thing they brought to my attention was d6 dice pools. Every PC has three dice pools labeled Discipline, Madness, and Exhaustion. You always roll your discipline, madness is optional, exhaustion is GM discretion. The GM rolls dice from a pool labeled Pain. Doesn't that sound promising? Now the reason for dice pools is because there is consequences depending on which catagory 'dominates' when you roll. So say you roll your discipline and choose to roll madness as well. Oh no! All your high dice was in Madness. Well that's not a bad thing per say. It just means that things will go your way, but now one of those madness dice is permanent.

I bet your asking why is that a bad thing. Well on your character you get x amount of exhaustion and x amount of reactions. Depending on the dominating pool, depends on what box you check off. If you collect to much madness, you go insane and become a nightmare. If you collect to  much exhaustion, well you collapse into a coma and are probably going to get eatin/left for dead, unless your party really loves you.

However that's not the only thing you have to worry about. The GM rolls dice too. If Pain dominates, first of all things don't go your way, your plan probably just got ruined, and the GM can force you to check off one of your boxes for either madness or exhaustion and if you haven't been careful this can destroy your character.

It's ok though. It's not all hopeless. There are also two bowls in the middle of the table. One labeled Despair, on labeled Hope. The characters can spend hope to reduce the amount of dice the GM roles and they can also spend Hope to unmark the boxes that will end up destroying the character. However the only way to really get Hope is by the GM doing aweful things to you. the players get Hope when the GM spends Despair to make your lives hell.

This game seems to be very much about consequence. Nothing happens without a consequence. Even winning a situation has effects on your character that may not necessarily be positive. If you want to sit down and read the rules, its less than  a hundred pages and about half way though it will just start talking about the world they have roughed out for you. So really, you are looking at 20 pages of rules. It is classified as being technically horror. Some call it adventure. I call it a game. The world is sketched out with some major players and enough fluff to hopefully spark some creativity or plot. The character sheet is half questionnaire so if that doesn't float your boat, I'd steer clear.

If you really really want to hear about some of the fluff, it gives me Neverwhere vibes mixed with the Sci Fi Alice Mini Series.

Beware the Wax King!!
Have I raised some questions? I hope so.
Corset signing off.

Let's talk about Quarriors.

As a lot of people in the table top gaming universe will have noticed recently, it's that deck building games are the hot thing. What started out as Dominion and Ascension ruling the deck building world, it has grown much like a viral video. We all have our favorites but you get really tired of seeing them. I had this problem at Gen Con 2011. Everywhere I turned I was looking down at another deck building game and that was really cool for the first day and about a month after the con.

Then it went the bread route. Its a bit crunchy but you'll eat it anyway. There's a bad piece but the loafs still good. Is that forming it's own lifeforms? I think I'll go for soup instead.

I was getting really burnt out on deck builders. Even Dominion wasn't holding onto its glamour amidst all the rest and then I went to game night and the owner was demoing a game. Being curious I stuck my head in to see what was going on. There were cards on the board with abilities and associated dice. People rolled dice from a dice bag and depending on what they rolled they got to buy more dice. I don't know about you but I really like to roll dice. It's fun. It's got an element of change. It's all around fairly nifty, plus I kick butt at chance games. So next round I said count me in.

You have a starting 'deck'. It consists of 8 quiddity dice (mana) and 4 little guys. The little guys are nice. They have a few options on them. Three sides give you a guy to fight with, one gives you a re roll on two dice, and the third is quiddity, there silly but nice starter dice. So you toss all 12 into a dice bag, four are included with the game, and you draw six and roll them. You get to power as many monsters as you have quiddity for or you can use the quiddity to buy more powerful monsters or spells. Discard it all when you are done and next round draw six more. When you can not draw dice, you draw what you can, put your discard pile into the bag give it a shake and keep going.

Now I bet your all wonder how do you score. Well scoring is simple. Remember how I said you could use the quiddity to power out monsters. Well each monster has a point value assigned to him. When you use your quiddity to put a monster into play, he stays there. By stays there I mean you get one round of attack against everyone, then it goes into defensive mode. If it stays alive until the start of your next turn, you get to score it. When you score a monster you put the monster into your discard pile, you also get to cull a dice to make your bag run more effectively.

Neat huh?

Now despite the fact it runs like a deck builders, it doesn't particularly feel like a deck builder game to me. I think that's mostly the lack of shuffling. It's easy set up and easy clean up. They are talking an expansion in November. The game was not that expensive either for all the dice you got, dice bags, and the tin it came in.

That's not to say the game is all perfect. I enjoy it but there are certain things that I think are off balance. Such as the dragon. When there is a dragon in game it comes down to who can get the most first. They score the most points. They have ridiculously high offense and defense and there are few ways to counteract them which is a pain if you want to decide what to play with by random draw.

I know  a lot of people out there own the game and are reading this going and you didn't talk about this or this or this.... I know.  I don't want to bore people to tears by giving a 100% thorough examination of the game and every card. Other people have been there done that. I just want to provide a quick over view so the people who haven't heard of it can say, yes maybe I'll look into it or no thanks.

Girl In A Corset Signing off.

BMXXX

Video Games Literature Review

• Unlike the previous articles I read, this one demonstrates how this male dominated corporation can negatively effect the gaming industry as a whole diverting women from it before they ever have a chance to play. The author writes about her experiences with a game called BMX XXX. It is a generic cycling game. You can choose to play as a woman and can customize her as much as you want. The woman customized by the authors husband was a 75lb brunette with D cups that chose her cycling gear to be patsies with a white lace thong. The goal of the game other than winning the races involves things such as picking up prostitutes to deliver to the pimps. Unlike the races where you earn points, if you score high enough on these side missions, you are rewarded with nudity. They offer actual real life footage from a prestigious full nudity strip club in Manhattan as a reward. There is also a two player form that allows for a type of strip poker. The cyclist looses clothes based on points. It is games like this that has led the author to accuse the game designers of being misogynist. It is games like these that discourage women from ever considering the gaming industry as being enjoyable when it is displayed as a way to gain access to porn.
  
  However it would be very one sided if we only looked at this perspective. I have spoken with many women who don't find this to be a deterrent at all. It seems that woman have their own ideals they wish to customize into a female character just as much as men do. These ideals are actually not to far off. The women also seemed to want the female character to have a small waist and large chest in most cases. The only real difference was men tended to prefer blondes and women tended to have their avatars a little less imatiated with some meat on the bones but just as scantily clad. Given the option many women I talked to would dress characters in a way that would portray them as the stereotyped sexy or they would opt for as close to nude as conservation would allow.  
  
  I think this is in large part to the more open ideals of culture that has been cropping up in the past several years. Women have more options than they used to. Much like how there is an increase of 80 year old women getting a tattoo. I'll have more to say on this subject tomorrow. Let's stay on track here. ;)
  
  Girl in a Corset Signing off.
  
  

Welcome to the Basement

Welcome to the basement, this is where I like to write. Its not dark, nor dank, there are no people hiding in the shadows fearing the light as they roll the dice. There is no mass of pizza boxes and assorted junk food wrappers littering the floors. The place is actually fairly well lit, with windows open most of the day, art fills our walls from black and white landscapes to artistic nudes, we have no shame in it. You are right about on thing though. There are not many lamps or alternative light sources in this space. Of course we really don’t need it as long as we open the balcony blinds during the summer. This is starting to sound less and less like a basement isn’t it? Have you figured out where we are yet?


There are hundreds if not thousands of negative stereotypes associated with being a gamer the most common ones portrayed being pale shriveled people within a hidden place. Another is that they are all sex starved men that would faint at the sight of a woman and still live at home. I am neither. With that thought everyone I know that I game with is employed, or in college. Many of them are in healthy relationships. So What I want to know is where did this idea come from? The release of the original D&D was before my time by many years but I can't believe that a sub culture this large came from a group of individuals portrayed as they are in movies and this is really starting to bother me.


Even the lack of solid information on the statistics of gamers is infuriating at times as I try and trace back the social roots of this. It has in fact gotten to the point where I am going to attempt a long term study in my community to find out more about gamers and why the lack of females within it. In a breakdown:

1. What: I am attempting to study the appearance of higher male to female ratio in the table top gaming community. In this study I am also attempting to centralize whether there is a true higher ratio, or if the females have simply been discouraged from the main stream by the stereotypes and social risk/stigma associated with being a table top gamer.
2. Why: Being a female who enjoys gaming, I am curious as to why it appears that more men may by participating in the activity but during events such as cons, there are a more equal appearing number of men versus women. To me this suggest that women stay out of the mainstream gaming because it is a risk. However at cons where everyone there is a 'geek' or a gamer that is safe so they feel as if they can participate. I would like to conduct a study to find out how much of this is speculation and how much of this is true.
   
   
   However do NOT expect this to by my only subject within this blog. I will keep everyone updated assuming that there is an everyone but right now I have homework to do and art to scan while I cross my fingers for a tablet for Christmas.
   
   
   
   
   Have a good one.
   Don't do anything I wouldn't do.
   -Girl In a Corset