Carp vs. Buffaloes vs. Dragons vs. Tigers vs. Fighters vs. Swallows

(Edited May 2. I'm adding the Tokyo Yakult Swallows to the list of Main Contenders. I'm not sure why I passed over them in my initial survey of NPB teams. I think I inadvertently associated all the Tokyo team with the Yomiuri Giants, which are like a combination of the San Francisco Giants and the New York Yankees. A Dodgers fan could never root for Yomiuri.)

My first exposure to Japanese baseball was the strange batting stances, pitching styles, stadiums, and names in those great baseball games for the 8-bit NES, such as Bases Loaded and Baseball Stars. Then my brother spent the summer of 1992 in Japan and brought home a couple of small Japanese baseball cards with rounded corners. One of the cards was a rookie for the Buffaloes named Hideo Nomo, who three years later would be a MLB rookie for the LA Dodgers. Since then, there has been many Japanese stars and non-stars playing in the MLB.

The past few years I've had intentions of following the Nippon Professional Baseball league a little closer, but never remembered to do so. Each year it seems like either another NPB star is moving to the MLB, or some other interesting baseball story comes out of Japan, such as Bobby Valentine becoming a huge celebrity over there by managing the Chiba Lotte Marines to the title in 2005, or the combined perfect game pitched by the Chunichi Dragons in the 2007 Japan Series. Not to mention that Japan has won the first two World Baseball Classics. It's good baseball over there, and I want to be more familiar with the league, teams, and players.

I generally don't follow professional sports unless I have a favorite team, but I'm not just gonna pick a favorite NPB team out of a hat. When I was a kid, my criteria for a favorite team consisted of cool team name or logo, cool player names, and my favorite color. My favorite team became the LA Dodgers and favorite player Fernando Valenzuela. His name barely fit on the baseball cards. That's so cool. Ever since I renewed my interest in baseball about eight years ago, I've used different criteria to determine which teams I am intrigued by. Team history, play style, unique ballparks, etc.

Using a combination of my childhood coolness criteria and my current baseball interests, I've identified some NPB team that pique my interest. The ebbs, tides, drama, excitement, and disappointment of the 2009 season will determine which Japanese team I will hitch my wagon to forevermore. Or at least until the NPB and MLB merge into one league.

The Main Contenders

Orix Buffaloes. I like their blue and yellow colors and their "Bs" logo. Unlike the MLB, where artificial playing surfaces and domes are now rare, in the NPB they are common. They also seem to have more character than the cookie-cutter parks of MLB past. The Buffaloes primary home field is the Osaka Dome, which has a unique exterior and a plain but functional interior. Their secondary home field is Skymark Stadium in Kobe, which is one of the few grass surfaced ballparks of the NPB. The aforementioned Japanese baseball pioneer and Dodgers star Hideo Nomo played for the Buffaloes. So did Norihiro Nakamura, who has hideously crooked teeth and couldn't hit a lick in his 17 games in the MLB with the Dodgers, but he made the most sensational tumbling short-hop pickup of an errant throw that I've ever seen a first baseman make. Super slugging gaijin Tuffy Rhodes plays for them this year.

Hiroshima Carp. The Carp have a lovely name and something of a "lovable losers" aura to them. It seems they have been the bottom feeders of the Central League for much of their existence. The Carp ownership are thrifty, with the lowest team player payroll and having never have signed a free agent player. They moved into an attractive new grass surface ballpark this year, officially called the Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium Hiroshima. Previously, they played at the lovable Hiroshima Municipal Stadium, which had small dimensions and an all-dirt infield. The Dodgers only current Japanese player, Hiroki Kuroda, is the only MLB player produced by the Carp. Their cartoon batter logo is fun, in a Chief Wahoo kind of way. It looks like they have solid pitching this year.

Tokyo Yakult Swallows. Naming baseball teams after birds is a great tradition. The Swallows' ballpark is the ancient Meiji Jingu Stadium, with a time-less and lived-in feel to it. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig once played there on an exhibition tour of Japan. Kazuhisa Ishii was a Swallow before coming over and having a few decent years with the Dodgers. Like the Carp, the Swallows typically have a low payroll and are thus perpetual underdogs, especially compared to their enormous neighbors, the Yomiuri Giants.

The "Could capture my heart with a memorable season" Contenders

Chunichi Dragons. The Dragons have the same colors a similar script logo as the LA Dodgers, so you'd think I'd be all over them. But I just find them rather boring for some reason. Their Nagoya Dome has a similar interior compared to the Buffaloes' Osaka Dome, but the exterior is boring. They do seem to have a well-balanced team, though, and consistently place near the top of the league.

Hanshen Tigers. The Curse of the Colonel is great. Their logo is a super mean looking Tiger. Their ballpark is the historic and charming Koshien Stadium. Might be too surreal for me.

Nippon Ham Fighters. The Fighters of Nippon Ham play in the spectacular Sapporo Dome in Hokkaido. Theoretically, I should be a big fan of their star pitcher Yu Darvish, but he seems like a prick to me.

At the end of the season I'll post again about the chosen team. Most English-language websites with NPB content are rather bland, with little more than stats and standings. A nice change of pace compared to the overwhelming coverage of MLB these days. Reminds me of when I was a kid on the farm and I'd run out to the mailbox as I saw the mailman driving up, so I could get the newspaper and check the scores from last night and study the standings and stats. For an informative and colorful look at Japanese baseball from an American fan in Japan, check out Marinerds.

Woohoo! The Carp shutout the Yomiuri Giants last night, 5-0.

The Journal of Valan the Bold

This Tunnels & Trolls adventure that I ran for my brother concluded recently. The Type V Demon guarding a treasure chamber triggered its Wave of Terror attack, causing the party's dwarf and fairy to flee. This turned a tenuously balanced combat to the demon's advantage. The remaining party members made a rushed retreat out of the crumbling tomb, snatching a few handfuls of treasure on their way out. They promptly arrived at a city and partied all night. The leprechaun woke up with a tattoo. Read it all at the wiki.

The purpose of this post is to revisit the premise of this experimental campaign and take notes on what did and didn't work well with the system, scenario, and house rules.

The eight character party was--perhaps predictably--overkill. Part of the reason was because I scaled the adventure difficulty to match the party as I converted it from D&D stats to T&T stats on the fly. So the large party just slowed things down unnecessarily. A 4-6 character party would suffice. Larger parties are better suited for mega-dungeon type campaigns, which The Book of Treasure Maps is not.

"The Triple Secret Random Dungeon Fate Chart of Very Probable Doom" house rule is just too clunky for PbP. This dungeon was just the right size for completing in a month of consistent play, but things will usually crop up that slow down play for stretches of time. A simpler reward for consistent, brisk participation would be extra experience points or Confidence/Fate/Action Points for completing the adventure within a certain time frame.

My need for a quirky random event table to wrap up each adventure will instead be filled by the Carousing Mishaps table from issue #4 of Fight On! For example: "Did you really make out with an emu or was that just the drugs?"

T&T's abstract combat, punctuated with Saving Roll stunts, worked well for PbP. A battle between the 8 character party and 10 skeletons was resolved quickly with the help of an online dice roller.

T&T's Saving Roll (SR) system did its duty. It encouraged the player to declare creative, colorful, and detailed actions by awarding xp on both success and failure. A friend made an astute observation, describing the SR system as "Obama-esque".

I ramped up the SR difficulty as the adventure went along, generally using Level 1 SRs at the beginning, but then using more Level 3 SRs towards the end. In the future, I'll lean towards harder SRs from the beginning, to make things interesting and earn the characters more xp. One thing that could be fun is negotiation between the player and DM for setting the difficulty of each SR, but that may slow down a PbP game too much at times.

I have many more treasure map adventures and plan to keep this campaign open indefinitely, with rotating players. Let me know if you ever what to play it.

The Dungeon Sprint

There isn't much info on the web about running PbP (play-by-post/wiki/email) roleplaying games. One of the few I've found is this one at rpgcentric.com. For awhile now, I've had interest in discovering and testing different ways of playing PbP. My ideas generally take the form of contrived setup, setting, or situation to focus and speed the action. Sandbox-type campaigns are great, but can sometimes be a poor fit for the typically slow pace of PbP.

The first test was a Tunnels & Trolls game based on treasure maps. This one is nearly completed and I will likely report on it in the near future.

The next idea was adventures inspired by movies. I'd like to test this one some day.

The latest idea puts "zero level" PCs in a "hit the ground running...escape!" situation. Combat scenes are often the most excruciatingly slow to resolve in PbP games. Having an adventure setup that explicitly discourages combat could put the focus on mechanically simpler encounters such as problem solving, negotiation, deception, etc. Maybe not something that everyone would be interested in, but like any other house rule or unique setting, it's still possible to have fun with it. I'll call this idea the Dungeon Sprint...inspired by this video:


The One-Sided Dice from Mikko Torvinen on Vimeo

Another inspiration is an article in Knockspell #1 by David Bowman that describes the Thrall, an essentially level-0 character class that begins play as a newly-freed slave with little more than guts and desperation. The article's somewhat novel innovation is that one regular PC equals three Thralls. A player would choose this class when they are unsure what kind of PC to make and would like to test and flesh out several characters simultaneously during play. Could be fun.

For the short Dungeon Sprint test, I'm adopting this multiple level-0 PCs concept. In fact, one player will be playing all six characters in the party. The six characters are (largely copied from the article, but I made a couple tweaks):

The Sack-Hauler: Has a hammer, several large sacks and a length of rope. 2 hit points. Skill: +1 to attack roll. Role: Carry the loot and protect the flank.

The Torch-Holder. Has torches and tinder box. 1 hit point. Skill: Not surprised as often. Role: Light the way.

The Map-Drawer. Has papyrus, quill, ink, measuring string, and a piece of chalk. 1 hit point. Skill: Uncanny sense of direction. Role: Know where the party is, relatively.

The Shield-Bearer: Has a dagger and shield. 2 hit points. Skill: Provide +1 AC to an adjacent ally. Role: Keep the leader safe, whoever that may be.

The Pole-Prodder: Has a long spear. 2 hit points. Skill: Bonus to detect traps, etc. Role: Point man.

The Good-Looker: Has just her "assets". 1 hit point. Skill: Bonus to reaction rolls, etc. Role: Gather info and get the party out of tight spots.

These characters have no ability scores, names, etc. until after they've advanced to level 1 by gaining 500 experience points. With limited resources and thin defenses, the player would be well-served by MacGuyver-esque ingenuity.

The second component of the Dungeon Sprint is putting the party in the middle of a dangerous place and having them find a way out, maybe gathering some loot along the way. How did this group of flunkies get into this hairy situation? Railroading is a dreaded word among roleplayers, and for good reason, but for purposes of this PbP experiment I feel it is perfectly acceptable to concoct an explanation for the party's present predicament.

The story is:

Sir Rutherford is an aging, foppish adventuring knight. He's somewhat of a blowhard; prone to histrionics and petty idealism. He polishes his chest plate armor to an ostentatious shine, almost a mirror. Other adventurers know better than to join him in quest, so Sir Rutherford is generally forced to purchase help whenever he catches wind of a new adventure. This time it is stories of a haunted house, ripe for glory seeking and treasure snatching.

Enter...the player's six characters. One for each of the lowly tasks that Sir Rutherford refuses to lower himself to. Soon afterward the party sets off and, after a long journey, arrives at the spooky manse during a thunderstorm and enters. The giant front doors slam shut and lock as soon as the last member arrives into the funereal foyer. As everybody shakes the rain out of their gear, a ghostly butler materializes and says, in a strong, snooty AEnglish accent, "Welcome. I can take your cloaks and bonnets." Sir Rutherford gasps...clutches his chest...sounds a croak...and drops dead from a heart attack.

Check back in a month or two and I'll report how this experiment went.

Vin Scully. A funny man.

I considered creating a new blog where I would chronicle an entire season's worth of the wit by the voice of the Dodgers, Vin Scully. I decided against it, not wanting to feel compelled to listen to all the 130 or so games that he does. So I'll just record the greatest of his genius here at Burghers as it occurs.

Tonight against the Rockies, Mr. Scully delivered his first great zinger of the young season. The Dodgers pitcher, Randy Wolf, was at bat in the second inning and bounced an easy grounder to the Rockies pitcher, Jorge De La Rosa, for what would have been the third out of the inning. De La Rosa fielded it cleanly, but then made a doofus toss high above the first baseman's head and everybody was safe.

Mr. Scully's lead in to the replay:

"Your eight-year-old would have made that play."

Old Time Radio: Abbott & Costello

This week has been an Abbott and Costello marathon for me. Their "Who's on First?" routine is an all-time classic, of course. Their other routines followed a similar pattern: Costello confuses similar sounding words to make an absurd situation even more absurd. It's formulaic and predictable, which makes it easy to laugh at.

Streaming audio and downloads can be found at: http://www.archive.org/details/otr_abbottandcostello

Just as funny are the advertisements for Camels cigarettes. I learned that in a survey of 113,597 doctors..."More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette."

"Hello, monsters. Here's some cookies for you."

Another session of D&D with my wife...

Eager to learn what the magic scroll contains, the adventurers head back to town. But four skeletons ambush them on their way out of the dungeon, inflicting serious injuries upon Eldon and Maira. Grizz the cleric saves the party in the clutch by turning the skeletons. (Needed to roll 7+ on 2d6, and rolled a 7).

That gang of boneheads will likely try to sneak up on the adventurers some other day.

The party returns to town, studies the scroll, and rests up. A Web spell is discovered on the scroll. They prepare their return to the dungeon by stocking up on fresh baked cookies.

Back at the palace, the utility of the sweet treats is soon realized. Two groups of humanoid monsters are calmed by cookie handouts.

Reaction rolls are fun. Next time, we'll see if another group of goblins likes cookies. Only the dice know...

Ambush!

Parry!

Begone, you fiends!

Old Time Radio: Orson Welles

Orson Welles may well be the Grand Poobah of old time radio. His "War of the Worlds" is perhaps the most famous radio broadcast ever. It was part of his Mercury Theater show that dramatized classic literature.

Most Mercury Theater broadcasts can be downloaded for free at: http://www.mercurytheatre.info/

The sound quality of these old recordings is gonna be a mixed bag. For example, the "Heart of Darkness" recording is almost unlistenable, but "Les Miserables" sounds great.

Bufflehead

Saw a Bufflehead Duck in our backyard pond tonight. A first for me. Cross another one off the list.

The vibrations of a needle on plastic, revisited.

"North Korea's state-controlled news agency, however, said the rocket succeeded in placing in orbit a satellite that was broadcasting revolutionary songs."

This picture was taken of the satellite in orbit...

"Could we, uh... talk to Colonel Kurtz? "

I read a forum post recently about a fantasy rpg scenario that culminated in a village defense reminiscent of Seven Samurai. It got me thinking about other movies that could be adapted into a fantasy rpg scenario. Of course, the strength of these and any great movie is depth of its characters. Playing in one of these scenarios could give the players cues on how to play their PCs if they want to recreate aspects of the movie, or not, if not.

Stand By Me
The news reaches Castle Rock that a young man was killed by a dragon across the downs and through the glen. The PCs set out on a coming-of-age adventure to recover the body.

The Dirty Dozen
Enemy knights are gathered at a castle in occupied territory, celebrating their victories with a ball and planning their next mission. A squad of convicts are trained for a suicide mission: infiltrate the castle and eliminate the knights.


Apocalypse Now
An insane, renegade lord has established a kingdom deep within the sinister jungle. The PCs are sent to terminate the lord's command with extreme prejudice.


What other movies could be simply adapted like this?

The truth is...

...that I like Holmes Basic D&D because I want to be like this guy.

A low, humming mirth

I love politics quizzes. This one pegs me as a comedian. That's fitting, because long ago my brother once said I was funny and that I should be congressman when I grow up.

Link: The Politics Test

What's the difference between "disagree" and "strongly disagree"? I dunno, but I suspect that if I answered more of the questions "strongly" maybe I would have gotten up there in Ted Nugent territory.