Onward and Upward; or, Self-Improvement the RPG Way

(originally posted on "Live and Let Dice", Dec. 18, 2006)

“Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.”
--Émile Coué

I got an early Christmas present from my wacky brother Steeve when he and his wife visited us this Thanksgiving: the DVD of the first season of Stan Lee’s Who Wants to be a Superhero? We watched it while they were visiting and it was great fun.

There’s a scene in an early episode where Stan toasts the contestants with his trademark motto: “Excelsior!” When the hero wannabees return the toast, Stan asks them, “None of you knows what that means, do you?” They sheepishly shake their heads.

Stan explains: “It means, ‘Ever onward and upwards to greater glory.’”

There’s a Japanese business philosophy called “Kaisan”. It means “Continuous Improvement”. The idea is that in order to stay successful, a business needs to constantly work at improving itself.

Both “Kaisan” and Stan Lee’s “Excelsior” are familiar concepts for role-players, because improvement is what a lot of games are all about. Role-playing games don’t have “winners” and “losers” the way traditional games do; (something which boggled my brother-in-law the one and only time I invited his wife and him to game with us; “how do I win?” he asked). But most RPGs have some sort of mechanism to record and measure character advancement. Mike Pondsmith, in his classic wacky teens ‘n’ anime RPG Teenagers From Outer Space, puts it this way: “While we’re of the considered opinion that having a good time playing the game should be reward enough, we recognize the need for Pavlovian reinforcement in a well-run game.”

I suspect that the principle for most types of character advancement was based on video games. For every Blormian you shoot, you score so many points; if you reach a certain number of points, you get an extra life, or a new attack, or snazzy new graphics.

That’s roughly the way the granddaddy of all RPGs, Dungeons & Dragons works. In the old AD&D system, each monster was worth a set number of Experience Points (or XP). In addition, the Dungeon Master would arbitrarily award additional points to players for things like good role-playing, achieving quest goals and remembering to bring chips to the table. In one group I played in, the DM would have each player write down what they thought were the significant actions their character performed that game and then he would judge how many points each action was worth. In the newer editions of D&D, the set XP from the old Monster Manuals have been replaced by a Challenge Rating system, so that the points you gain from a given encounter depends on the difficulty that encounter presents for your party’s level.

Levels are another integral part of D&D. When a character gets so many Experience Points, he will Go Up a Level. This gives him extra Hit Points and, depending on his Character Class and what Level he’s at, could also give him attack bonuses, extra skills and abilities, or new spells.

In the old First Edition, each level had its own special name, so that a Thief would start out at the first level as a “Rogue.” At the next level he would become a “Footpad”, and then progress through “Cutpurse”, “Robber”, “Burglar”, and “Filcher”. In theory the idea seems cool and even makes a certain amount of sense. In actual practice, however, it just seemed silly. (“Filcher”???) Later editions eliminated the named levels.

One drawback with this system is that it tends to encourage Leveling Up Syndrome: “Dang! I’m only 100 points short of my next Level. I’m going off into the forest to kill a few kobolds so I can level up.” This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in itself; a clever Game Master can throw together a quickie encounter or two to make the kobold hunt more exciting; or better yet, devise some way for the kobold hunt to lead into the adventure he had planned out before his player decided he needed more XP. But every now and then you’ll come across a player who wonders aloud how much XP he’ll get for offing that peasant walking down the road. When that player is playing a Paladin, you know you’ve got problems.

Another problem is that since characters have the potential to become obscenely powerful as they advance in levels, the system makes them pitifully weak when they start out. This is particularly the case with the Magic-User class. In the old AD&D system, Wizards started out with the least number of Hit Points, were allowed to cast only one spell per day, and were prohibited from wearing armor. Not surprisingly, a lot of players just skipped over the first few levels and started off their characters at a point where they could actually do something.

Not all game systems stratify character advancement into levels. Point-buy systems, such as HERO or GURPS, allow players to use earned Experience Points to buy improvements to their characters; adding new skills or abilities, or bumping up stats, or even buying off disadvantages. These games typically recommend that the GM give out only a couple points per player per session, as opposed to D&D which can award hundreds or even thousands of points per encounter. But in GURPS you can make some significant improvements to your character with only a dozen or so extra points where it can take several thousand points to hit the next level in D&D.

I know of at least one game system where experience actually makes your character worse! In Chaosium’s classic Call of Cthulhu, each character has a certain amount of “Sanity Points.” Each time he encounters an Eldritch Horror or a Thing Man Was Not Meant to Know, he loses some of his sanity. Ultimately all the characters will go mad and become NPCs; their only hope is to stop the Horrors before it’s too late!

I have to admit, I’m usually kind of lax about passing out Experience in the games I run. Unless I’m running a D&D campaign, I often forget all about it. I picked up this habit from the Champions campaigns my friends Bryon and Cath used to run when I lived in Darkest Iowa.

They had a library of nearly a thousand character sheets, (that was when I first met them; they eventually surpassed the thousand mark), converting nearly every character from the DC and Marvel Universes into HERO stats. Each sheet was laminated, because it made them easier to file, because it protected them from soda and pizza stains, and because Bryon had access to his schools laminating machine. Being preserved for the ages in imperishable Mylar meant that the character sheets could not be changed, but that was okay. “Comic book superheroes rarely change,” Bryon explained to me. What changes a character might undergo in the comic, (when the Hulk became grey and smart, for example, or when Superman acquired his “electric look”) were usually significant enough to warrant a totally new character sheet.

(Note: this applies only to American super-heroes. Japanese comics are more likely to follow a character’s development from rookie to uber-hero. The heroines of Magical Knights Rayearth, for example, start out as ordinary schoolgirls who have to grow into the roles of defenders. Goku, from the popular Dragonball series, is a poster child for kaisan and takes the concept to ludicrous lengths).

So in their various Champions campaigns, Bryon and Cath never handed out XP at the end of gaming sessions. Instead, they’d reward players through the social interactions their characters would have with other characters and with NPCs. Cath in particular did her darndest to cultivate romantic sub-plots for characters. Not all players like this approach, but I think it gave a more organic, satisfying feel to character development than a mere shoveling on of hit points every thousand miles would.

Then there’s always the alternative experience system suggested in Teenagers From Outer Space: “Have you ever considered paying your players off in M and M’s? Instant gratification can work wonders.”

Hey, if it works, it works.

Excelsior! 

Live and Let Dice: Climbing the Rope

I sort of gave up on my project of re-archiving all my old "Live and Let Dice" columns here, mostly because there were very few columns left intact after the online siege of the site which originally hosted them.  But this column is relatively intact, and contains gaming wisdom which I think should be preserved for the ages.  So set the Wayback machine to June 21, 2005 and prepare to Climb the Rope:

Climbing the Rope

How to Get Your Players to Stand in Front of That Nice Big Target  (6/21/2005)

By Kurt Wilcken

The majestic steamship plowed through the frigid waters of the North Atlantic. Suddenly, out of the foggy darkness, an iceberg loomed. Unable to veer away in time, the ship struck the berg, rending its hull and flooding one of the forward hulls. As the crew worked frantically to save the ship and the stewards went from cabin to cabin assuring the passengers that all was well, but could they please proceed to the lifeboats in an orderly fashion, a strange droning noise was heard over the noise of creaking metal and panicked voices; a humming like a thousand giant hornets.

A mammoth airship appeared over the steamer, held aloft by a myriad propellers fixed on rows of vertical shafts. A hatch on the airship's underside opened, revealing a strange device emitting a magnetic ray which miraclulously checked the sinking of the steamship.

This was the point where our GM turned to us and said, "What do you do now?"

Cath, who with her husband Bryon were the usual Game Masters of the group I gamed with in Iowa, was starting a new adventure campaign set in Victorian times. (Cath, by the way, is an English teacher, and will probably kill me for the prose in that first paragraph. Sorry, Cath.) She wanted to use the Albatross as the campaign's base of operations; a fantastic flying machine, sort of the Victorian ancestor of the S.H.E.I.L.D. Helicarrier, from Jules Verne's Clipper of the Clouds by way of the Vincent Price movie Master of the World. Cath decided to start off by placing our characters on a steamship rescued by the Albatross. She wanted to keep things flexible, so she let us come up with why each of us was on the steamer and how we were to get onto the Albatross.

For Bryon, this wasn't a problem. He character was the captain of the Albatross. My Wacky Brother Steeve played a strong man and reformed jewel thief; he grabbed a rope, lassoed the understructure of the airship and climbed up to it. Bryon's buddy Doc was "A Surprising Old Indian" with magic powers; Doc transformed into an eagle and flew up to the airship. My character, a time-travelling inventor, was a little trickier, but he had an adventurous NPC daughter who climbed up the rope to investigate for herself and of course I had to follow.

That left Russ.

We turned to him expectantly, and he said, "There's no reason why my character would climb that rope."

Russ was one of the most genuinely nice people I've ever known; a jolly, cheubic little fellow with a squeaky voice and spindly legs too short for his roly-poly body. He was a Gilbert & Sullivan fan and a lover of P.G. Wodehouse. He also had a relentlessly logical mind; and when he role-played, he always ran his characters strictly in-character, sticking rigorously to the character's motivations and point of view. In this case, he played the Invisible Man and ran him as a fugitive, desperately trying to avoid notice, which would invaribaly lead to capture. It seemed like a cool character concept; except that it was a character who would not willingly risk attention by joining a group of adventurers.

This presented Cath with a problem. By trying to keep the plot flexible, she had wound up backing herself into a corner. The only way she could now get all the characters involved in the adventure was to have them climb the rope. "Russ," she said trying to keep her temper, "any minute now the crew will finish repairs on the ship. The airship will release it and it will sail away with you on board. If you don't climb the rope, you won't be a part of the adventure."

"I know," Russ said unhappily. "And I'll do it. I'm just telling you that there's no logical reason for my character to climb that rope."

"Just climb the rope, Russ."

Ever since, our group has referred to any action the characters have to perform to advance the game's plot as "Climbing The Rope".

* * * * *

Just about any role-playing game will have The Rope is some form or another. It could be the stranger you meet in the tavern with a map to the Lost Temple of Ahsh-Khash B'Ghash; it could be the robbery-in-progress you witness while patrolling the city in your Ferret-mobile; it could be the brunette knockout with the legs that won't quit, wanting to hire you to find her uncle who disappeared in the Amazon; it could be the old man and the kid who want you to take them and their droids to Aldebaran, no questions asked.

The old gaming magazine SHADIS had a regular feature printing capsule plot ideas called "Hook, Line and Sinker". The "Hook" was a brief, one-sentence description of the plot. The "Sinker" was a set of complications not immediately apparent to the characters. Between the two was the "Line", the information the players are given that brings them into the plot; in other words, the Rope. It's what Joseph Campbell referred to as "The Call to Adventure."

Of course, Unca Joe also pointed out that it's possible for the Hero to Refuse The Call, in which case events conspire to force the Hero on the Path To Adventure anyway. (Either that or it's going to be a very short Adventure).

I often refer to the prep work for my own games as "plotting" and think of myself as a storyteller, but the secret of gaming is that GM's don't create stories as much as they create opportunities; opportunities for adventure. It's up to the players to decide what to do with these opportunities. A role-playing game does tell a story, to be sure, but it's a collaborative, and somtimes a competitive, process; less like sitting around the campfire listening to the Old Storyteller and more like narrative volleyball.

Usually, getting the players to Climb the Rope is not a problem. After all, the reason they're playing the game in the first place is to have an adventure. In fact, when I was running my Teenagers From Outer Space campaign, frequently my group would sieze on the little pieces of business I'd throw out to mark time while I was setting up the real plot and they'd start building their own plot out of it. Then I'd have to scramble to keep ahead of them, like the scene from "The Wrong Trousers" where Grommit the dog is riding on the front of a toy locomotive and frantically laying down track in front of it as it goes along.

Other times, the players need encouragement. Like the stereotypical method actor, they'll ask "What's my motivation?" This is actually a good thing, because it means the players are getting into character and ideally will result in a better game. It can also be annoying, especially when it messes up all your beautiful plans.

There are three methods to get your players involved with the plot: The Carrot, The Stick and The Pool of Piranhas.

The Carrot is pretty obvious; offer the players some sort of benefit or reward for their action. "I'll give you each a thousand gold pieces if you'll rid the town of those bandits." The reward doesn't have to be monentary; it could be an appeal to honor or responsibility; or it could be as simple as the classic line from "A Fistful of Yen": "Ah, but you'll have the chance to kill 50, maybe 60 people."

The Stick provides some unpleasant consequences if the players don't act, and works well in conjunction with the Carrot "Jabba the Hutt wants the money you owe him and he wants it now!" "Nah, the cops aren't going to catch the real killers, the cops think YOU did it!" "The German Army will be here within a week unless we can blow up this bridge!"

The Pool of Piranhas gives the players no alternative. "Suddenly you are attacked by a band of orcs. What do you do?" If your players absolutely refuse to bite on any of the plot hooks you dangle in front of them, have the plot bite back. This method can get annoying, but used judiciously might teach the players to be less indecisive.  As Raymond Chandler once said, when in doubt have a velociraptor come through the door with a gun in its hand.

That oughta make them climb the rope.

RPG Resources: The Once and Future RPG

And here we have another chapter in my ongoing project to salvage what I can of the "Live and Let Dice" column I used to write for Pop Thought. This piece originally ran September 9, 2004

The Once and Future RPG

"RPG Resources" is an occasional feature of this column where I talk about books and such which might not necessarily be directly related to role-playing games, but which provide useful backround and source material for games.

It's difficult to imagine, but there was a time before Gary Gygax, before J.R.R. Tolkein, before even the Science Fiction Book Club. In that antediluvian era, the beginning and end of Fantasy Adventure was the Legend of King Arthur. Oh sure, you had your Robin Hood and your Arabian Nights too, but for real heroic fantasy nothing beat King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

I did some dipping into Arthurianallia this Summer as research for Alex's Review Club and decided to re-read one of the classic retellings of the Arthur Myth: T.H. White's The Once And Future King. I read it in high school and enjoyed the first part, but found much of it rather thick. In the name of deepening my understanding of Chivarly, however, I gave it another try.

I'm glad I did. The book is still depressing; as White observes, Thomas Mallory didn't call his version "The Death of Arthur" for nothing; but mixed in with the tragic tale of three lovers is a splendid tapestry of medieval life, or at least how medieval life should have been.

The Once and Future King is divided into four books. (Actually, White wrote a fifth one, "The Book of Merlyn", but it was not published until after his death). The first book is probably the most familiar because of the Disney film based on it: "The Sword in the Stone". It tells about the boy Arthur, (or "the Wart" as he is called by his adopted family), and his marvelous education by the wizard Merlyn and of the miraculous sign which revealed him as Rightful King of England. The second book, "The Queen of Air and Darkness", shows Arthur early in his reign, trying to put down rebellion and find a way to end the cycle of wars which have plagued the island. It also introduces Morgause, Arthur's half-sister, a beautiful but self-centered sorceress whose children become poisoned by her family's hatred of the House of Pendragon. The third book, "The Ill-Made Knight", brings us to the heart of the Arthur legend: the Knights of the Round Table and the tragic affair of Lancelot and Guenivere. It also tells about the greatest of the knightly deeds, the Quest for the Holy Grail. The final book, "The Candle in the Wind", tells of Arthur's twilight; of the treachery of his son Mordred and the war which turned the Round Table against itself.

Until I re-read Once and Future King, I never thought about how much of D&D is really taken from Arthurian lore. Everyone knows that the game swipes Tolkien; I shouldn't be surprised if a lot of people outside the hobby think that The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons are the same thing. People who are more fantasy-savvy recognize elements of Conan the Barbarian and Elric of Melnibone; but a lot of the game's setting and structure can be found in the Arthurian romances.

For the role-playing Game Master, The Once and Future King provides a wealth of background detail. White's version of Arthurian Britain is a romanticized version of the Middle Ages, as is the world of D&D.

"The Sword in the Stone" gives us life in a small country castle. The descriptions of life as a squire-in-training, of a Yule-time boar's hunt, and of the Great Forest Sauvage can give the GM ideas for flavoring his campaign. There's even a neat little 1st-Level Adventure in which Wart and his adopted brother Kay venture into the buttery castle of Morgan le Fay to rescue some captives. (Yes, I said buttery. Long story).

As we go further, we get other views of the period; the dreadful state of pre-Arthurian Britain, when autocratic barons waged war for sport and committed atrocities simply by virtue of their power to do so; Arthur's revolutionary approach to warfare; the splendor of his court and daily life in Camelot; the adventures of his knights and the quest for the Grail.

More importantly, we see Arthur grappling with the problem every GM has to deal with: how do you channel the warrior's aggressive impulses into something constructive that benefits society? Arthur is not only inventing the Knights of the Round Table, from a D&D perspective he is inventing the Lawful Good Alignment and the character class of Paladin.

Anyone who wants to understand the Paladin class could do worse than read "The Ill-Made Knight", the third book of the volume. Galahad fits the popular conception of the Paladin; noble, pure and insufferable. White only shows us Galahad through the eyes of other knights and they, on the whole, can't stand him. (Although Arthur does reflect that it is his most worldly knights who dislike him most). But Lancelot, for all his sins, is a Paladin too, and White spends a lot of time opening his heart to us so that we can understand why he is what he is, the good and the bad.

The Once And Future King is a thick book and not always an easy read. The lightness and whimsey of the early section can be a little off-putting and give the erroneous impression that the book is a child's story. "The Sword in the Stone" is indeed an excellent children's story of the best kind. As C.S. Lewis observed, no book is worth reading at the age of eight which is not also worth reading at the age of eighty. This is such a book. The lightness of tone continues into the later section, but darker, more adult themes emerge which, by the books end, threaten to swallow the optimism and hope of the beginning. But the hope remains. Arthur is defeated, but not forever.

Arthur's dream lives on. He will return.

"Do you know what is going to be written on your tombstone?" Merlyn tells him early in his reign, "Hic jacet Arthurus Rex quandum Rexque futurus. Do you remember your Latin? It means, the once and future king."

RPG Resources: The X-Men

I haven't updated this blog for nearly a year now. It's high time I fixed that. For a while I was using it to archive some of the "Live and Let Dice" pieces I wrote for a site called Pop Thought. Unfortunately, most of the material I posted there were corrupted when the site was besieged by Chinese spammers back in 2008 and I lost a lot of data, including some of my best pieces. Ah well. Some of them are still intact. Including this one, which is a review of sorts.

From June 23, 2004:

RPG Resources: The X-Men

I don't normally do a whole lot of research for the role-playing games I run. This is mostly because of laziness, but also because most of my RPG's either are based in worlds I am already pretty familiar with or have a GURPS supplement for, or which are complete fantasy so I can pretty much run it on the fly. Every once in a while, though, I need to do some actual research.

That was the case with the 'Uncanonical X-Pals' game I began running with my wife some months ago. Now I've never really been a Marvel Zombie. My wife read Uncanny X-Men back in the '80s during the Chris Claremont era, but most of my knowledge of the Marvel Mutantverse came second hand or from the movies and the two Saturday morning animated series. I know who the characters are, what their powers and personalities are like, but that's about it.

Now this isn't necessarily a problem. I wasn't planning of closely following the comic book's continuity any more than the movies or the cartoons did. My philosophy of RPGs is rather similar to what the Muppets said in their version of Alice in Wonderland: "Don't be surprised if you see Captain Hook / 'Cause our version won't always follow the book!" But still, I thought running this game would make a good excuse to delve into Mutant Minutiae.

As any serious scholar will tell you, the most important source for a project like this is Primary Research: the original material itself. My wife has a few dozen Uncanny X-Men and New Mutants from the 1980s and a couple of the early graphic novels. Her treasure, though, is a graphic novel reprinting the Dark Phoenix storyline from Uncanny X-Men including the first appearances of Dazzler and Kitty Pryde, the first battle with the Hellfire Club, ladies in lingerie, and the Tragic End of the Carrot People which led in turn to the Trial of the Phoenix and the (First) Death of Jean Grey!

The edition we have is out of print, but the "Dark Phoenix" Saga has been again reprinted as part of the black and white Marvel Essentials series and is well worth reading.

Another obvious source for running an X-Men RPG, strangely enough, is the X-Men RPG. Last year Marvel published a new Marvel Universe Role-Playing Game and so I picked up the MURPG's Guide to the X-Men game supplement. The book covers a lot of material in a slim 94-page volume and I have found it very useful. It gave me helpful information on the nation of Genosha and a lot of material on the Morlocks, (the supplement includes an RPG adventure set in the Morlock tunnels). Each character it covers gets a full column write-up.

It's a very slick-looking book. These days hard covers and snazzy graphic design are essential to role-playing games. The layout of this book is sharp but not so splashy that it competes with the content as some more artsy books do.

The down side is that this is a supplement. The Guide to the X-Men has no listings for Magneto, Beast, Jean Grey or even Cyclops. That's because they've already been listed in the MURPG's core rulebook. They assume, rightly, that you wouldn't be buying the Guide to the X-Men unless you already had the MURPG and wanted additional information not included in the main rules. That's what the word Supplement means.

Another disappointment is that the book is very brief. As I said, they pack a lot of information into it, but there's a lot of material which is only skimmed over. Each character gets an illustration, usually the most recent appearance available. Which means that Iceman for example, instead of his classic "body-of-ice" look, is portrayed looking like a thug in a leather duster. A fan more familiar with the X-Men of the '70s and '80s, or even of the '90s, is likely to look through this book and say "What the hey? What did they do to Banshee? And why is he wearing the same costume as Avalanche?"

They also give a lot of space to characters from X-Statix, an X-Men title I was completely unfamiliar with. It looks very interesting and surreal but the characters are drawn in a thick-line cartoonish style that, while appealing in itself, clashes horribly with the artwork for the rest of the characters. I suppose for completion's sake X-Statix needed to be included, but I could not convince myself that the characters existed in the same universe.

What I've seen of the MURPG's rule system looks interesting. It's a diceless system. Instead of rolling randomly against an Ability score, each character has so many points called "Stones" which may be allocated to different Abilities each turn. Oh, and it also refers to each unit of time as a "Panel", which is cute and I'd be happy to give the games points (or Stones, or whatever) just for that conceit alone. I was tempted to hunt down the core rulebook, but by the time I picked up the X-Men supplement I had already started running my own game using GURPS rules. Still, if I come across a copy of it, I just might pick it up.

We were well into the campaign when we came across the Marvel Encyclopedia: X-Men in a bookstore. This is the second volume of the Marvel Encyclopedia and in many ways is a superior source of information than the MURPG book. At 240 pages it is longer and lacking the need to include game mechanics it has the elbow room to do the Mutant Universe more justice. We get the complete team and detailed descriptions of all the major characters in the X-Men books and a good number of minor characters as well.

If I have one complaint about the Marvel Encyclopedia, it's in terms of its organization. The characters are categorized by group affiliation. Within each group, first the major characters recieve a page, or in the case of really important characters two pages. Then the secondary characters get a half page each. Then the tertiary characters are listed three to a page and the minor characters four to a page. Each grouping is arranged alphabetically. The arrangement is logical, but makes it difficult to find anyone in particular. Is Mastermind listed under the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, or under the Hellfire Club? Is Sabertooth listed with the Marauders or with Weapon X? In order to find a particular character you need to use the index, and the index does not differentiate between primary and secondary entries. The index entry for the mutant-hating rabble-rouser Senator Kelly cites pages 80, 81, 196 and 201. You'll have to check them all to find his main entry, unless you're lucky enough to guess checking the last one first.

A lesser complaint is the same as my complaint about the MURPG's illustrations. In fact, the Marvel Encyclopedia uses the exact same ones. It does however take advantage of the greater room to show the illustrations off to their best advantage and most of them are very good. The minor characters, however, don't get the star treatment and their pictures are down to near-postage-stamp size.

One aspect of the Encyclopedia that I did really like was that each super-powered character, even the minor ones, gets a capsule listing of powers and weapons and a chart rating them on a one-to-seven scale in terms of intelligence, strength, speed, durability, energy projection and fighting skills. Another chart in the back of the book explains what each ranking means.

The Encyclopedia easily beats the MURPG in terms of breadth, and also in terms of depth for the major characters. The lesser characters, however, are only mentioned in passing with little more than a thumbnail illo and a sentence or two of description. When I needed info recently on the villain Omega Red, I actually found much more in the MURPG than in the Encyclopedia. The MURPG also has more maps and diagrams, as you would expect from a RPG supplement.

Using both books to cover each other's lacunae actually went pretty well and I didn't really need any additional reference to run my game. But I got one anyway. I just couldn't resist.

X-Men: The Ultimate Guide from DK Publishing originally came out in 2000. The more recent Updated Edition which I picked up incorporates some new material including photos from the movies and material on the Morrison run on the series. It's a big coffee-table book with gobs of illustrations.

This is the book I really wanted, because it presents a historical overview of the X-Men from the very beginning. The book is arranged chronologically, starting with the team's first appearance in 1961. Most of the characters get whole double-page spreads and multiple illustrations showing how they looked in various eras. We get to see the Beast, not just in his current puddy-tat incarnation, but also his original, "big feet" neanderthal look and his classic more ape-like appearance.

It's a big, beautiful book. Once again, it is not quite as broad as the Encyclopedia; it won't list all the members of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard, for example, but what it covers it does with a wealth of detail both in terms of background and illustration. I heartily recommend it.

Oh, and now I've started buying Astonishing X-Men too. This game is turning out to be the most expensive campaign I've ever run!

* * * * *
"The Uncannonical X-Pals" turned out to be a fairly successful campaign. It ran for a good long time and my wife, Lute, enjoyed it a lot. Her character started out as a normal reporter working the mutant beat and getting involved with the X-Men. For a time her character developed a romance with Hank McCoy, the Beast. Ultimately, it was revealed that she herself was a mutant (not something we originally planned, but that's how it worked out), and that brought her to the attention of Magneto. Lute has always been a fan of Magneto -- she has a thing for charismatic megalomaniacs -- and her character and Magneto eventually married. It was a wild, roller-coaster of a campaign.