Ask Me Anything: Harrigan

Name some of the best hiking spots you found in your travels, I'm very interested.

How often, when walking in nature or traveling in general, you stop yourself to picture what type of rpg adventure you could GM taking place in such a place? Name a place that inspired you an adventure or character, and why!

Would you rather quit RPGs altogether if you had to make a pun every third post?

Which countries have you visited? Any local food that you liked? Any that you hated?

What's the thing that you like the most about osr systems?

Can you give us one opinion that you hold about RPGs or PbP, that you think might be controversial?

What's your biggest PbP mistake?

If you could change, add or remove one thing on the GP site, what would it be?

What are some of your favorite board games?

What's your favorite Free League game?

How did you find out about Gamers Plane and what made you join?

What kind of dogs do you have (if any)?

What are your favorite genres of music? Any albums you think are perfect from start to finish?

Good food?? Now you're talking my language!

What's your favorite recipe to make for people when they visit? What about your favorite when cooking for yourself?

What's your guilty pleasure food, one that's either terrible junk food or is objectively bad/low quality but you love it anyway?

Just to clarify, the answer *must* include photos of said dogs.

Barrage of questions! I will get to these, but the next couple of days are pretty hairy. Plus I need to think about some of these answers!

Just gonna add some more frivolous questions to your list:
Favorite arcade game? Favorite breakfast cereal? Favorite Saturday morning cartoon? Least favorite genericized trademark?

Extra few to the pile, whoop-whoop!
- Do you like hiking for the process or the result, or both? How about travelling?
- Do you have a favorite video/board game about dogs, or including dogs? (Do you know that there are Zelda: BoTW speedruns to pet all of the in-game dogs? XD)
- Dog sledding! Did you ever do it? Or maybe watched it? I can't help but associate Canada with it.
- I don't know any of the TTRPG systems you like, so if you had to offer a short sales pitch for one of them, which would it be for? :D

Oh dear. I'd have to think hard about that one, and my memory is terrible for place names. I have some favorite hikes in Nova Scotia (Cape Split comes to mind) and Colorado has too many to even mention, though one of them, Marshall Mesa Trail, was very close to the terrible fires in CO last month. The area around Red Rocks is gorgeous, and I really liked both Arches (hiking) and Moab (mountain biking) in Utah. The US southwest in general I just adore, especially in and around Santa Fe, Taos, Bandolier National Park.

Elsewhere, there's cool hiking on the big island in Hawaii and also on Kauai -- especially the Alaka’i Swamp, which is (we were told) the highest bog in the world, right in the middle of the island. I've also had great hikes in Australia and New Zealand, and now that I think about it -- one in Ketch Harbour, where I used to live, right along the coast of the Atlantic. I'll admit as much as I love hiking in the mountains, my heart belongs to the coast and sea:


(That's Duncan's Cove, very close to where I used to live.)

More may occur to me as I answer these questions...
It sort of depends. If I'm with my wife or family -- not as much, or at least not in the moment. It will usually occur to me later, when I'm thinking about the trip. If I'm alone, my RPG brain is -=never=- off. I am always thinking about ways to incorporate what I experience into my games.

I don't know about a specific thing I can point to in a game that I dragged directly from a trip, but... actually, I can. Having living in Maine allows me to paint the New England countryside in my CoC games. Visiting Doha allows me to pull both gleaming skyscrapers and very noisy souks into games where the PCs visit the Middle East, visiting castles in the UK, ruins in the Yucatán, historical fortifications in Nova Scotia... all these things really embed in my imagination, and I try to draw on them later. Special mentions: York, in the UK, with the old wall, narrow streets and the nearly thousand-year-old medieval guild hall. So cool! And it wasn't while traveling, but I worked on a remote island one summer where a colleague and I got to explore a lot of underground tunnels beneath some old fortifications. I draw on those damp, dark experiences all the time in dungeon delves.

Cool questions!

Puns
I'd make the puns. I can make the puns now. I just choose not to.

Countries
Canada, US, Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Qatar, Ethiopia... maybe some others I'm forgetting, but that's mostly it. I'm missing all of mainland Europe, Asia, South America, Antarctica. Most of the world, really. ;)

OSR Games
I like that, at least for me, they are both nostalgic and also representative of the way I wish I'd played way back when. They are an idealized version of it, with many of the rough edges filed off. Rulings over rules and all that, as well. But you know what? Scratch all that. It's the creativity in that community right now. That's the draw.

Controversial Opinion
I think the entire industry is badly broken, commercially. It's almost impossible to make a living at it, and there's no way to really gauge or measure the value of something. You might work for a year on your magnum opus RPG that exactly three people read, and no one plays. You might pound out a little zine over a weekend that becomes a sensation for thousands of people who each spend hundreds of hours of their leisure time on it. Artists are underpaid, writers are underpaid, mechanics can't be copyrighted, products are generally undervalued and underpriced... and the explosion of content -- all the indie games -- is contributing to this, fracturing an already small community.

But damn if I don't love RPGs anyway.

Biggest PbP Mistake
I keep thinking I can run a dungeon delve and keep it interesting and engaging... and I just can't. Runners up: not ending a game when it's time, not calling out a problem player soon enough.

Change GP
Two ideas. (I'm bad at following instructions.)
1. OOC Flip tiles, just like on Tavern Keeper.
2. Some kind of integrated tracker / stat keeper. Always available, showing the latest in terms of the weather, the round, HP, status effects, etc.

Quirkle. No Thanks. Lost Cities. Machi Koro. Defenders of the Realm. Formula D. King of Tokyo. Codenames. Zombicide: Black Plague (want to run an RPG version of this). Memoir 44. Undaunted. Heroes of Normandie.

Lots more that I don't own and am forgetting.

Fav Free League Game
Super-tough question, as I'm a big, big fan. It's probably Vaesen. But strong showings from Forbidden Lands, Tales from the Loop, and Mork Borg.

Finding GP
In 2018, I decided to focus more seriously on RPGs -- to the inclusion of some other nerd hobbies, like comics, board games, etc. I got into gaming podcasts, and one of them -- I wish I remembered which one -- interviewed Keleth. I was huge into PbP gaming, and didn't know there was this other bespoke site for it out there, in addition to rpol.net and Tavern Keeper. I raced over here, joined, then went radio silent for like two years after forgetting about it again and keeping my PbP play focused elsewhere.

In 2020, I determined that I wanted to have an 'off-ramp' I could offer people on Tavern Keeper in case the site suddenly shut down. (There were some disruptions at that time; things have stabilized over there, but it's still just a matter of time.) So I wrote some requirements and evaluated a bunch of PbP sites... and since I remembered GP, included it in the eval. Funny thing is, it came out on top, but I had no idea at the time just how great the community was. The site / tech's great -- but the community is the glue.

Dogs
We have two. A twelve (or so) year old chocolate lab named Trudy -- she's a tough old bird who only cares about balls and food, but and we love her regardless. And a two year old mastiff / boxer mix named Al. He's a goof, 95lbs of lapdog with some deformities that kept him from being adopted. (We were originally fostering him, but when a $12,000 surgery (paid for by the shelter) didn't fix what ailed him, no one wanted him. So we adopted him.)

Remind me on the pics, @DarK_RaideR. I've got plenty, but it's late and I'm tired. =]

It's okay. You can mention me by name

Music -- I should ask Windy to answer this, as we've been trading music a lot.

Music is really important to me. And when I say I like lots of different genres, styles, artists, approaches, I mean it. Normally, when someone asks me what kind of music I like my answer is simple: "Good music."

It's obnoxious and unhelpful, but it's also honest. There are examples of music in virtually every style you can name that I dig, but I suppose I have my favorites. I like many kinds of rock (esp. alt, classic, sleazy, hard), few kinds of country. Lots of electronica, a bit of rap. Folk yep, zydeco yep, soul yep, classical yep, some metal, punk yep, sea shanties oh yes... I could go on and on.

Perfect albums? Many. How about a band that put out two perfect albums in a row? The Police, with both Outlandos D'Amor and Regetta de Blanc.

Ah, SS, you seem to have mistaken my liking to eat good food, vs. make it. :)

I'm a terrible cook, but I have my moments. I can grill a mean steak, whip up some pretty awesome salads, make delicious burgers and have honed my chili recipe over about 30+ years. I can also make sandwiches better than most sandwich shops (ahem), and stock the right breads, cheeses, meats and condiments for that purpose. Oh, and I do like making breakfast. Nothing crazy -- eggs, bacon, toast, fresh fruit salad.

(The foods I like the most are the ones I'm hopeless at making: Thai and Indian curries, Korean bibimbap. Nam Tok / Yum Nua beef salads, etc.)

When people visit, I usually order out. ;)

When cooking for myself, it's usually a sandwich I'm making... or something off the grill.

Guilty Pleasure: Hands down a donair, which is a bastardization of a Greek gyro really only available in Atlantic Canada. So bad for you. So freaking delicious. When I return to Halifax I invariably eat about three of them over the period of about a week. It ain't good.

I will also admit to digging In N Out, Freddys, Five Guys and other slightly higher grade fast food burgers. And fries. I love fries. Have I mentioned fish and chips? Because I love fish and chips too...

Arcade Game: Star Wars (1983), honorable mentions to Bosconian, Tempest, and Galaga.

Cereal: I don't love cereal. I'll eat most non-sugary cereals, but I will admit to liking Crunchy Nut, which I discovered in New Zealand and have found in various places around the world at random times.

Trademark: "Coke" when people mean soda or pop? Maybe. Not too fussed about these, really.

Sigh. Not you, bowl!

More later, maybe after the many con games I'm about to dive into this weekend...

Yeah Cape Split is a good one!

I should point out that döner is actually Turkish and gyros is just a rip-off different take of that recipe. I should know, I'm Greek :P

Also, this doubles as your reminder to provide puppy pics.

Well then I'll ask the follow-up question, what con are attending and what do you think makes a good game for a con?

Oh, I didn't realize that donair is just an attempt to spell Döner in English. That's an extremely popular dish in central Europe as well. In my city there's a street with, I swear I'm not joking, 8 (!) Döner stores on a stretch of 200 meters, that's literally a 3 minute walk. And they've been there for a while too so they can't be doing too badly.

Sounds like a döner debonair kind of place...

I'll show myself out

Let's talk gateway drugs: what was the game(s) that got you into the hobby? Your first gaming memory.

You keep mentioning this Black Hack. When are you running a game and where do I sign up?

Here's Al. Holiday themed!

And Trudy...

And here's the big guy recovering from his surgery with my wife. They are... "close."

That's funny. When I saw the music question I said to myself, I can answer that one!

Hiking: I like that style of exercise -- more about endurance and such, and quite enjoy trails that are difficult without getting into full-on rock climbing and such. Mostly though, I like the wilderness, seeing new places, coming across things that surprise you on the trail.

Travel: Really enjoy different peoples, cultures, foods, ways of living. Though I will admit more as an observer than a participant, in some cases. It's the anthropologist in me. =]

Favorite Dog Game: I don't have one, no. Prefer the real animals over their digital or imaginary counterparts.

Dog Sledding Nope! I've spent quite a bit of time in the north (Anchorage, Fairbanks, Yellowknife), but have never been or seen dogsledding. That's a whoooole different thing.

RPG Pitch: Well, different games are good at different things, so it depends on the group, what everyone wants out of it, etc. I'm polygamerous in the extreme, but I'll pitch a current favorite, Rangers of the Midden Vale. It's an OSR-adjacent game based on Ben Milton's Knave, so it has boiled-down d20 mechanics that should be familiar or at least easy to pick up for a lot of gamers. It's about PCs who are heroes in a dark and wild land that needs them to light the darkness. It's about exploration, about keeping lurking horrors at bay, about uncovering the secrets of the past, and about the bonds forged between the rangers tasks with all this. The mechanics are lean but modern -- resource and gear management is important, but handled by slick procedures such as usage dice from The Black Hack and generic "gear" in your pack that can turn into whatever it needs to be at the time, a la Dungeon World. Then it borrows from Fighting Fantasy to make combat faster, more furious, and way less whiffy than most d20 games. All rolls are contested in melee, meaning if you fail, you take damage back in the moment. Really increases the tension of each roll. GM-wise, the game is a breeze as there's a framework to follow for the adventures, and the book is loaded with random tables that allow for a low-prep, seat-of-the-pants style that I enjoy.

So yeah. It's a cool game and everyone should get and play it! ;)

True, but the Halifax-invented donair is tied directly to the (large) Greek population in the city. Check this out for deets.

BSer Con. Basically the Gaming & BS podcast's first shot at running a small virtual con. Probably fifty games or so running over the weekend, but there are about 35 different systems represented. Very cool community I count myself lucky to be part of. Highly recommend the podcast, their Discord, and hopefully, after this weekend, the con. :)

Running Rangers of the Midden Vale, playing in SWADE's Fuhgeddaboudit, Agon, The Mecha Hack, DCC, and Freebooters on the Frontier.

And finally, Dr. B and Jabes...

Gateway Drug / Memory: The game that got me into the hobby was AD&D, in the fall of 1983. I played Fonkin Hoddypeak, one of the famed pregen characters in G1-2-3, Against the Giants. I don't remember a ton of the specifics other than having my mind blown that this thing was a game and I could play and run it with no board, no fancy table top pieces, etc. And that the GM was killer and adversarial and troubled... so after about two sessions I asked for the DMG, PHB and MM for Christmas, got them, then became a forever GM for quite a few decades. Taught myself by reading and internalizing High Gygaxian, so that may explain a few things.

I'm better now. Many games, healthy balance of play on both sides of the screen.

The Black Hack: I deeply love this game (own two physical copies, etc.), but I'll admit most of my interest these days is in some of its more recent derivatives. I can run a bog-standard TBH game on GP, if there's interest.

You know there is.

Daaaaang, I feel like you just said the quiet part out loud! :P (Good on ya for it.)

I've always felt like there's not much about OSR that's actually OS... just pastiche.

Aww, your dogs are adorable! I love Trudy' pose in the photo, with how she crosses her front paws? I don't interact with dogs much, but I really want to pet them now. :D

Which RPGs are the firsts to go in your next big clean out? Why?

And which RPGs make it into the "I can only take a few of you with me" bag? Why?

You'll be happy to know that donairs are very common across all of Canada now. Even my small Alberta town has a wicked donair shop. So you don't have to go all alway to the motherland for those beautiful wraps.

Are you serious!?! There's no Donair down south? That sucks.

We've got a place near us that makes a regular and jumbo sized. I'm not sure what animal eats the jumbo. The regular is easily a pound of heaven. We usually get three. One for me, one for my son and one to split between my daughter and wife. Donairs are amazing.

Howdie neighbour! Edmonton.

Sorry for the delay here, had a con this weekend and it ate every inch of my free time!

I recently got rid of about two boxes of stuff, so the really obvious stuff is already gone. But if I had to consolidate... Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, Traveller, Cortex Prime, Punk Apocalyptic, Elite Dangerous RPG... probably a bunch of smaller, sub-par OSR stuff.

If I can only take a few with me, it's The Black Hack for all things classic D&D and a ruleset that can power a zillion offshoots, it's Fate Core or perhaps Fate Accelerated because you can do virtually any genre with Fate, it's Vaesen as the most refined and slick version of the YZE rules that I love, it's Morg Borg BECAUSE IT'S MORK BORG, it's Barbarians of Lemuria because it's just so badass and underrated. Delta Green for having the greatest conceit ever for bringing the players together as a team. Offworlders for being my favorite incarnation of PbtA.

I hate that you're making me pick and leave off Savage Worlds, ICRPG, SotDL, DCC, Into the Odd, Forbidden Lands...

@Donairlovers: I'll believe it when I see it. I know there are shops... but are they like the originals? I know the ones in Vancouver are not. (I think donairs first got exported to Toronto and Vancouver first by Haligonians who moved there.) The west coast also had "chicken donairs" on the menu and allowed a whole bunch of awful toppings. FOUL, I say!

@Harrigan: What's your favourite thing about Spycraft 2.0?

Favorite thing? The fact that I sold it a few months ago. =]

Second favorite thing? I will never forgive you for it. My buying that on your recommendation is worth at least one round on you when we meet in person.

Well, but is "original" very important? If Atlantic Canadian donairs are a mutation of Greek gyros, which are a mutation of Turkish donërs... how do you know the dish has reached its ultimate form?

You can find Turkish donër shops all over Europe, and they range from amazing to truly awful...

I mean the original Halifax mutation. :)

Of course, objectively, they are no better or worse than the food they evolved from, or that they have now evolved into. But I know what I like. ;)

Favorite character you've ever played?
Favorite RPG moment?
If you could create a new edition of any RPG, which one would it be?

If you were banned from owning dogs, would you get a different pet? What would it be?

Favorite Character: Oh man. There are so many. It's got to be on of several characters who just "write themselves," characters who just instantly have their own voice. Toss up between Astounding Man, the first Hero / Champions superhero I ever created, Knockout, who was the clueless but unsinkable daughter of a super-strong villainess and a mad scientist gadgeteer villain, or perhaps Pete Winkmeyer, the teenaged boy with a Norse goddess trapped inside him.

Favorite Moment: even harder. But probably the finale of the Iron Edda Accelerated game I ran a couple of years ago. It was a huge battle at a mountain pass with thousands of combatants on each side. All three PCs died in amazing and dramatic ways we didn't see coming, all while saving the world by preventing the beginning of Ragnarok.

New Edition: I'm going to cheat here and list a few. From the 90s - Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, Underground. Also Forbidden Lands just because it could stand some reorganization for use at the table. And finally I'd love to see a Black Hack-powered version of Operation White Box.

A wolf or coyote. =]

Seriously, I'm more attached to dogs than a lot of other animals because of the relationship they have with humans. Cats are okay -- grew up with cats. Finale answer: a cat that thinks its a dog.

so, a fox?So, a fox?

Foxes schmoxes. Gimme a canine!

Indeed there is!

Now to find the time! What interests you about The Black Hack?