Sunday, October 1, 2023

80s

WARNING: Rambling ahead. Just a whole lot of rambling.

I'm trying to remember life in the 1980s. I was born in 1970, so my entire later childhood and teenage years were in the 80s. I grew up in the 80s.

This is an interesting position, I think. Because I remember the 70s, to a lesser degree. I was there for disco and punk rock... at least temporally. I was a kid so I didn't know punk rock from pop rocks. I heard of disco, of course.

The 70s was before the rise of cable TV, but at the heights of TV's general power. When I was really little, we only had whatever channel would come in using the antennae (bunny ears). That was basically KET and the local Fox 41. I saw Emergency, Bozo, and The Incredible Hulk.

But anyway... the 80s came. Things changed as they do. Cable was a thing. We were poor, so we didn't have it. But we did have it once for a few months, including The Movie Channel. It was great. I saw 1941 and Excalibur and a bunch of stuff I don't remember. Hell, I watched Excalibur when I was 12... probably too young. Those scenes of naked women juxtaposed against armored knights really left a lasting imprint on my brain.

In the 80s, you had rotary phones and push button phones at the same time. And phone cords that got twisted up. We didn't have a phone at all until I was about 16. If you have never lived in a world without a phone, that is probably hard to fathom. Like... how the fuck would we have called for an ambulance if we needed one? The answer is we'd run to the nearest neighbor with a phone. When I was about 8 in 1978 my mom and I lived alone on a hill in an old shack without a phone, bathroom, or sometimes electricity. There was an old lady about half a mile down the road who had a phone and would let mom use it if she needed.

So anyway. In the 80s you had the rise of the VHS. We didn't own a player but you could rent one with your movies. If I remember correctly, it was about $5 to rent the player for 3 days and I think $1 per movie. So one of the things we'd do on some weekends, after mom started working at a factory job, was rent a player and 3 movies. I got to pick one movie. The store had maybe a hundred or so movies and my focus was on fantasy and sci-fi.. so basically this one shelf with maybe 20 films on it. I watched Beastmaster, Road Warrior, and Weird Science many times.

The other way you'd catch a cool flick was when they would put it on TV as a special event. They did that frequently with Conan, Road Warrior, and First Blood.

For music, this was the reign of the cassette tape. My first foray into listening to music on my own was to get my hands on a cheap jam box and score a few bootleg cassettes at the flea market. Alabama's Roll On was the first, I think. Then a cousin hooked me up with some AC/DC and it was all over for me. I was a metalhead. When I got my job at Hardees, I would buy at least one tape every paycheck. Often it would be based on the cool ass album cover and names of songs, having no clue who the band was. I didn't read magazines and didn't know anyone who knew shit about it other than a couple guys at school who seemed to know what was up. They clued me in on Metallica.

It was like that, though. Word of mouth was perhaps the most potent form of advertising. Because you weren't going to see TV ads for the super cool shit like D&D (with exceptions... there was the cartoon) or Vinnie Vincent Invasion. You needed your stoner friend who was a year older than you to say "Check this out, man. It's badass."

We were afraid of being consumed in a nuclear fire. This is not hyperbole. We were in a cold war with the USSR and a full-blown nuclear arms race was the name of the game. We had post-apoc movies like Mad Max. I remember checking out books from our local library about survival. They had one called Nuclear Winter that scared the shit out of me. At one point I planned to move to South America and live in the Amazon... probably because I had watched Romancing the Stone a few times. Kathleen... sweet Kathleen.

Let's see... I rode the bus to school pretty much my entire career with the exception of my senior year when I carpooled with some guys. The road I lived on at the time was hilly and curvy. If it snowed and school let out, the bus driver would not attempt to go up the hill. So she would stop and let us out. It was about a mile and a half to my house from there. About 8 of us would get off and hoof it home. By the time I got home, I was alone because I lived near the other end of the road. It was a weird, dreamy time. I don't know if the driver was supposed to do that or not, but it was done.

My friend had a computer (Tandy) and so we did play some games. Test Drive, Galactic Conquest, Bards Tale, etc. But the idea of an "internet" didn't enter my vocabulary until around 1994. I didn't get my first computer until 2000. I think I got my first email, a Yahoo account, in 1996 or something. But in the 80s, almost nobody had a computer until much later in the decade.

We did have consoles. Specifically Atari 2600. My cousins had one, which we played on their huge floor model TV on the carpet in 1982. We didn't get an Atari until a few years later when mom started working. Combat, Pac-Man, Pitfall, Berserk, Duck Hunt, Asteroids, Space Invaders, Swordquest!

Lots of people smoked. Every restaurant had ashtrays, every car, everywhere. Yes, you would visit some office such as a doctor or whatever and you'd see people smoking inside. That's just how it was. It was less so in the 80s than the 70s, but still omnipresent.

In my experience, which I know is particular to me, there was never any discussion of race, gender, or sexual orientation in the better part of the 80s. Sexual orientation definitely became a topic as the decade progressed, with the AIDS epidemic. And I know it was a hot discussion point for a very long time before that, but those discussions never filtered down to my level: rural white trash. Fuck's sake, in 1982 I was still telling racist and gay jokes in school. EVERYONE DID. And even though I felt that nagging sensation that "this ain't right" it didn't stop me from occasionally doing it to get the yuck-yucks from my peers, who were mostly redneck boys who probably still tell them to this day.

It was a time.

Another topic nobody talked about was socialism. Holy shit... the fucking communists were the enemy! Socialism was very literally a dirty word. I had no idea what it meant other than it was "people who hate freedom". The level of propaganda against communism and socialism that blanketed the USA at that time is incomprehensible. If you are a leftist today posting on social media about politics you really have no idea how lucky you are to be able to do that at all. You couldn't breathe a positive word about that shit when I was a kid. It was exactly as bad as saying you were gay... and that shit would get you beat up.

Not the best of times. But it had its charms in other ways. We got B/X D&D, some great heavy metal, some classic movies, and some killer comics out of the deal.

Wulf and Batsy

Like I have with so many other artists, I discovered Brian Baugh's work via Instagram. Let's face it, old farts, we live in a time of great riches in terms of art. You can complain all day long that they don't make 'em like they used to, but god dammit they make a lot of 'em and a lot of 'em are fucking awesome.

It was through following Baugh's Insta that I noticed all the posts about this "Wulf and Batsy" duo of a big werewolf and a slinky vampiress. Which eventually lead me to visit the Alterna Comics website and actually BUY THEM. Good move. Because these are great comics.

Physically, the comics I got from Alterna are tops. They are lovely objects, very old school, with a $1.99 cover price that is kind of amazing today. Not sure how they do that. But the printing is on some kind of newsprint, interiors are black and white. But it looks fantastic.

Printing aside, the comics look gorgeous. Baugh is not worried about being in a hurry or trying to cram too much into a small space. One story about a weird science villain takes four issues to play out but what happens is actually very simple and straightforward. But Baugh likes to soak up the scenery and give us what we came to see: cool ass black and white horror line art that is one part gothic, one part classic, and one part sexy pinup.

FUN.

Check out the cool trailer for the series.

I'm just happy this kind of thing has space to exist today. I want more.


 

Sunday, September 24, 2023

Throw Them in the Dungeons!

Here's a thing that is very common in adventure stories but is not necessarily the easiest to use in an adventure RPG: the heroes are captured and thrown into the actual dungeon (jail)!

Happens all the time in movies and TV shows. All. The. Time.

But in a traditional adventure RPG, what is the first thing that tends to happen when any NPC tries to lay a finger on a PC?

"I cast fireball."

"I throw my axe."

"I slip into the shadows so I can get a backstab next round."

Combat. Initiative.

Now, I'm of the mind that the GM should practice firm-but-gentle scene-framing. I think the GM has the power - nay - the responsibility to "force" PCs into certain situations if the alternative would lead to absurdity or certain doom.

I mean, players always assume the PCs can find a way to do anything. And that's great, because they are the heroes. But surely there are times that the party knows collectively when it should measure its words and actions and bide its time. Right?

But we covet our free will as gamers so furiously! Those magic items we carry are not separate things, they are PART OF US. The IDEA of some NPC just taking Hipcracker the +2 war hammer or Whipcakes the Staff of Power off our person and escorting us into a dirty cell? RIDICULOUS.

Of course the NPCs have to be careful. If you have 5 powerful entities in your throne room carrying such mystical magical items and possessing unknown magic powers... you might think twice before just saying "Throw them in the dungeon!"

So there's a caution for the GM as well.

But still. We need to have some cool "will they escape??" moments without "I skewer the first guard on my spear" as the default reaction.

Saturday, September 16, 2023

Carry On

Been in a funk lately. I was working on the new game every day, kind of obsessed with it, then I got COVID. Seems like that's when the funk started. Been kind of flitting around since then, not focused on a damn thing. Arting randomly, no focus at all.

But such is life. I have a wandering mind. Sometimes it's worse than other times. I would probably fit into some category of neurodivergent, but I'm not dysfunctional enough to give a shit about checking.

Even unfocused, though, I still draw a decent amount. I berate myself for not doing much but then I look at my art stack and realize it just keeps growing and growing and growing. Even my daughter, who draws all the time, comments "How do you just keep drawing so much?".

I guess my issue is that I see all these accomplished comics creators, for example, who did x number of issues of their book over x decades and I'm like "Where's my x book?". I don't really have one. People know me either for The Pool, Pan-Gea, Black Pudding, or my pin-up art. I think. I'm so god damn random I can't even tell if any of that is true.

Here's a logo I recently drew for a character aptly named Hoofnar. Great visual concept. I even have a cool cover for it, pictured here. But I've been unable to settle on the character's core. Is he a goofy bastard bumbling through a cartoon world? Is he a serious straight Conan riff? Is he something else? I don't know. It's got me locked up on doing him.

I mean, this idea has legs, right?


Meanwhile there's Zarp. That little red bastard has been with me for 23 years and I've drawn lots of little comics about him. I even drew a 16 pager at the end of 2022. I want to get that into print. But I'm stumbling around not sure if I want to do a dedicated Zarp comic or not.




And now, suddenly, there's this Hymla idea. She's a badass warrior chick. She's thick and mean and missing a tooth. I like her a lot. She deserves a comic too.

Picture it in FULL COLOR.

Come to think of it, the Hymla piece, in color, would make a fucking sweet 11x17 poster. I might do up a few and sell them, signed and numbered and all that.

All of this leads me to the inevitable concept of a simple anthology comic wherein I can just dump all my comic book ideas. Like Random Order Comics, which makes sense. I already did a Random Order Comics & Games zine back in the oughts. And my imprint is Random Order Creations (established 1994, and consistently used ever since).

Which leads me to this concept.


Yeah, I'm a creative mess right now. But that's cool. I've always been a mess. I still keep messing around.

Saturday, August 12, 2023

Captain Vista

This post is a nerdy dive into some ZSF rules about character creation. Proceed at your own risk.

I've been drawing a lot of ZSF art lately. I don't know how much of it will end up in the game book, and I'm not even thinking about it. I'm just having a great old time drawing.

As I was doodling last night, I drew this sketch of a character who I named Captain Vista. So I thought I'd go ahead and give him game stats. I wanted to write a little bit about it because I can discuss the character creation system a bit.

Here's the Captain:


 He's a beefy lad! A real space hero. But he is not an example of a starting character. His stats are more beefy than a new PC would be. Of course, like any game, you could tweak the chargen rules to allow for more beefy starting PCs. That's fine. But let me break down how this guy is put together and how it differs from the chargen rules.

Basic Skills

Every PC has six Basic Skills: Explore, Drive, Fight, Operate, Shoot, and Talk.

A new PC has a rank of 1 in each skill and you can distribute 9 additional points between them for a total of 15 ranks. The Captain has a total of 19, not 15.

As you play the game, the GM will hand out Space Points, which are like XP. You spend them on your character to make changes. One of the changes you can make is bumping up your skills. It costs 3 SP to increase a skill by 1 rank. So the Captain has spent 12 SP on skills.

Life Points

Every PC starts with LP equal to their Explore + Fight ranks + 20. Cap's E+F+20 equals 29, but he has 35 LPs.

You can add 1 LP by spending 1 Space Point, so the Cap has spent 6 SP.

Traits

Every PC starts with 2 special Traits. A Trait is really just anything at all about your character that isn't covered by other chargen rules. Rapid healing, a rich uncle, and a magic gun are all examples of Traits you could add to your PC.

Captain Vista has 6 things listed on his sheet that could be counted as Traits, though 2 of them are probably just gear.

• Animated Hair (definitely a Trait)

• Hyper Strong (definitely a Trait)

• .50 Cal gun (probably gear, not special)

• Katana (probably gear, not special)

• Captain of the Heroic Tortoise (definitely a Trait)

• Space Eyes (definitely a Trait)

The difference between what is a Trait and what isn't is that a Trait is something extra. All PCs can buy a laser pistol. If your character buys a pistol for $100 and it deals 5 DMG (damage), then that's just a standard thing. If you want it to be something special, you can spend 2 Space Point and turn it into a Trait. You might then say the laser pistol actually has modular parts and you had a super zapper module lying around. Now your laser pistol, a Trait, deals 9 DMG instead of 5. Or it can be set to scan mode or something.

The Captain started with 2 Traits at chargen. Assuming his weapons are not special, he currently has 4 Traits, so he has spent a minimum of 4 Space Points to add 2 new Traits. It is possible that he spent more, because you can improve your Traits by spending 2 SP on them. We don't really know the details of his abilities from what we're shown here. Let's just assume he spent 4 SP.

Money

Captain has $625. All PCs begin with $100, so he has probably spent and earned some money over time. He's not rich at all. He can't even buy a laser pistol with that kind of cash. So I don't think he has spent any Space Points to make himself richer (you can get a quick $500 for 1 SP).

Summary

In total, we know that Captain Vista has spent 12+6+4 = 22 Space Points. If the GM follows the guidelines given in the rules, they will award 1 SP per 1 hour of play. Adjusting for snack runs and Monty Python jokes, Captain Vista has been involved in at least 22 hours of game play, or about 5 or 6 typical game sessions. He's not a new character.

Of course it's possible the GM awards more points than normal or starts with more bennies for PCs. Every table is different, you know.

Last Thought: The Heroic Tortoise

Nobody starts with a ship in this game. At least not a ship worth a bent penny. Part of the game's theme is that you are poor outsiders working within or against a system that is inherently unfair and kind of ruthless (sound familiar?). Captain Vista would not have a ship like this one as a new PC.

The Heroic Tortoise

How did he come by it? Does he own it or just work for the owner? These are details that grew out of playing the game. He might have rescued the ship from a bad owner and now claims it himself. In that case, the player would add "Heroic Tortoise" as a Trait. They didn't spend points to get it because it was just a result of organic play, as most things will be.

Later, the player might want to improve the ship in some way or add details to it. They can do so by spending money on upgrades or spending Space Points to bump up the Trait's details. It isn't terribly precise or crunchy... this is more of a narrative element. But some game benefits should be imbued, which can be negotiated between player and GM.

Also, this ship might not belong only to the Captain. This is a RPG, after all. It is probably the case that the ship belongs to the team, so every player has ownership. In that case, players could spend money or SPs to improve the ship as well. They just won't have sole ownership of it.


Saturday, July 22, 2023

Don't Ask Me, James Why Do Ya Cuss?!

It's a god damn undead.

I have these mental partitions in my social media posting. On my blog and Twitter I just say whatever I want, fuck it. But on Facebook I tend to dial it back a tiny bit and I try to be more broadly agreeable. I think this is because I have family who follow me on FB (at least a few).

But I do cuss like a sailor at a whorehouse and I do it because that's just how I am and because I don't want to cater to children. That last part is very important to me. I do not do stuff for kids. I don't want children browsing though a lot of my stuff, though I feel like it's mostly completely OK if it happens. It's just weird. Kids have tons of cool shit, they don't need me. And I need to be as unfiltered as I can possibly be.

In fact, I need to be more unfiltered and unhinged than I already am. Why the fuck would I even self-censor at all? I'm not famous, I don't make much money doing art, and I don't have much clout to lose. When no one is looking you can do what you want, creatively.

I actually need to loosen the fuck up.

The Truth About Magic-Users II

In this post, I bemoan the suckiness of Magic-Users as presented in original editions of D&D such as B/X and 1e and I offer some ideas for house rules to give those poor bastards a kick in the ass. Some folks thought I was being too harsh or obtuse. Fair enough. I wasn't, but I get it.

Here I'd like to revisit that topic and attempt to save the ole MU without any house rules. I know, right? How in the world can you possibly do it?

First, please understand I'm not shitting on a beloved class because I hate it. I do love a good Magic-User. But one thing I never did or do is run them without house rules. Because I simply find the original rules for most classes to be limiting and obtuse in ways that annoy me and don't mesh with my play style.

Anyhow, here are some ways that I would personally want to run a B/X MU, for example, without necessarily needing house rules. Most of these ideas came from reading or hearing about similar ideas in other games, blogs, and social media over the past decade or so.


1. UNIQUE WIZARDS

I love this one. In B/X it doesn't say you can memorize the same spell twice, nor does it prohibit it (as far as I remember). This leaves the GM to decide which way to go. For this mode of play, go with "no you can't". Each spell occupies the wizard's mind as a single entity and will not or cannot tolerate another version of itself in the same brainspace.

But take that idea to another level. Make a setting in which a spell can only exist in a single book, scroll, or crystal, or wherever you like to put spells. If it is copied to another place, it disappears from the original. If it is read out loud to cast it... the damn thing is gone forever.

Also, make MUs very rare. Within the PC party, you don't have to limit folks. If you wanna be a MU, be one. But in the setting itself just don't include MUs on your wandering monster tables or as NPCs in towns. They just don't exist very frequently. Consider a small world and there are like a dozen wizards in it, period. One of the PCs is an up-and-coming member of the elite.

In that kind of setting, each spell is extremely valuable and precious. You can't just go to another MU and learn a new spell. You have to find spells in abandoned spellbooks, negotiate the purchase of spells, or steal them.

This kind of campaign, though it seems low magic, might be very wizard-centric because so much time would be taken up with your MU seeking power and playing 5d chess with other wizards who are doing the same thing. Could be fun.

2. MIX EDITIONS

Not technically a house rule, I guess. Use B/X and Holmes combined to allow your lowly wimp wizard to make scrolls. I don't believe Holmes explicitly limits when a MU can make a potion, so just lump that in with scrolls. Then the party's riches at lower levels could be poured into the wizard's laboratory so they can make plenty of Sleep and Magic Missile scrolls and Gaseous Form potions. Make extra and sell 'em to other parties. Clean out that ruined tower, set up a shop, defend it from marauders, discover the hidden dungeon that lies beneath. That's some fuckin' fun right there.

3. MAGIC SCHOOLS/GANGS

Typically, a D&D party has no real ties to anything other than each other and the dungeon at hand. But maybe create a rich tapestry of wizard orders and fit the PCs into that framework. Now the PC MUs have in-world goals related to the setting. Perhaps more potent spells can be had by working your way into a coven or cabal. Perhaps secret powers can be offered, magic items bestowed. Now the lowly 3rd level MU with three spells also has a talking skull necklace that spits acid and knows the names of 3 demons and can call on them for favors (dangerous but that's magic, baby).

4. CREATIVE GMING

The players can be creative as hell, trying all kinds of cool things. The MU is out of spells, but the player says they want to use their arcane connections and lore to cause some magical effect anyway. A shitty GM would say "No, you're out of spells. Can't do it." But a clever GM who actually enjoys playing the fucking game could say "Neat idea. Tell me what you're doing and what you hope to accomplish".

So the player, jazzed at having to work for it, works for it. They describe how they call on the names of several imps they knew during apprenticeship in order to barter for a boon. They sacrifice some tiny portion of sanity and the imps cause something freaky to happen, such as a swarm of flies to appear. Hell yeah. The GM decides what percentage chance the PC has of succeeding, based on the Magical Research rules. A roll is made. SUCCESS!

"Now reduce your Wisdom score by 3. You're not doing too well, emotionally. You'll gain 1 point back each day you pass a Save vs. Spells."

I like this because it re-purposes Magical Research to accomplish on-the-fly magical effects. Unlike casting a spell from memory, this type of magic has a price.

And so on.

Thursday, July 6, 2023

ROC Art Journal

Now available for immediate purchase: ROC Art Journal!

64 pages, A5, saddle-stitch, color cover, bw interior, signed and numbered, limited run of 100 copies.

Includes an original sketch.

$20 USA, $30 International.

Go to jvwest.art to get yours today.



Sunday, July 2, 2023

The Truth About Magic-Users

Here's a truth that many OSR folks do not agree about: low-level Magic-Users in pre-3e editions of Dungeons and Dragons suck. I'm sorry, grog, they just do. You know they do.

A first level M-U gets one god damn spell per motherfucking day. They can't even create magic scrolls to store spells until level 7 (if you use general 1e wisdom). In B/X, a M-U must be level 9 to create a scroll or magic item.

Let's drive home this point a little bit more. A M-U cannot even read a magic scroll without casting the spell Read Magic. Which means, as a first level caster, if you don't take Read Magic as your one and only spell, then you can't read scrolls.

"I'm glad I didn't choose Magic Missile instead of Read Magic. I was able to cast Read Magic so I could read that Magic Missile scroll and save the party from that one orc!"

The pushback is obvious and widely-screamed: If you can't think of anything else to do other than cast spells then you suck at this game.

That's fine. Except it's a fantasy game and I came on my Friday night with but one dream: to be a motherfuckin' wizard. And here you got me casting Read Magic and hiding behind the dwarf.

I beseech you, my OSR friends: don't visit this hell upon players. Unless you know for a fact that the person who wants to be a wizard both understands these limitations and LIKES IT, you gotta house rule that shit. And there's a lot of fine, fine house rules out there you can use to fix this broken-ass setup. For example, Magic-Users in your game can...

• Read any scroll.

• Create scrolls and magic items, per the Magical Research rules, starting at first level.

• Cast 3 additional first level spells per day in addition to what's on the spell slot table. Call it baseline training.

• Use any weapon they care to pick up, but if it's not allowed by the rules-as-written, then they get a -3 to hit. No biggie.

• Detect the presence of magic in a device or an area, perhaps by making a simple Intelligence check. You don't have to tell them what the magic is, just that they "get a vibe" off it.

• Possess one trivial magic item at character creation. It's their signature thing, like a hat that returns to them or an unseen hand that carries their sack. I promise you it will not break your fragile dungeon ecosystem.

Ok, this is all just a little bit tongue-in-cheek. But it's also true. If you can't save the Thief class at least pull the Magic-User up from the darkness.

Saturday, July 1, 2023

ZSF Noodle Doodle Drop II


Following up on this post, more thoughts about ZSF: Zoa Space Fantasy!

ZSF is a work-in-progress space fantasy adventure game set in a wild galaxy where the Companies and the Law run the show. PCs are on the outside of mainstream society, and probably outlaws.

Since my last post, I refined the rules a bit.

• Instead of rolling for your Basic Skill ranks, you start with 1 in each and can add 6 more to them. The only rule is you can't dump all 6 into one Skill. So you could end up with a mix, as long as it all adds up to 12 total.

• Successes, called Hits, are on a 5 or 6 on d6.

• The difficulty of any task is called the Difficulty Level, or DL for short. The GM sets the DL for tasks. NPCs and creatures will have DLs so you know what you need to score to hit or otherwise oppose them.

• The DLs are very limited in range. Due to the nature of the dice mechanic, getting even 2 Hits is not easy. So a range of 1-4 is plenty wide.

• All action dice rolls are made by the players, just like in GOZR.


I've spent some time thinking about money and economy in the setting. Not much has changed on that front. PCs begin with $100 and some basic equipment. As I said before, if you really want to start with a badass weapon you can use one of your Traits to describe it. Because almost everything really cool is well beyond your $100 budget.

Right now I'm considering different ways to approach equipment. What I'm thinking is, similar to GOZR, there will be some short, simple lists with prices for relatively generic goods. But then also a fat section on very specific goods and services, name brand stuff like the PH22 blaster or Breathe-O-Matic cozmask (space mask, a kind of auto-fitting helmet). Since Companies are tied into the setting, it'll be fun and rewarding to lean into that and have a lot of branded merchandise that PCs can get their hands on. Why settle for a generic laser rifle when you can have the industry standard RIG 17?


SUPERCALLA

Of course much of this material was first introduced in my 2019 Troika! book, Supercalla, and the 2020 follow-up Cozmic Metal Heads. I'm super proud of those books. ZSF is essentially taking that same core setting idea and exploding into a full-blown RPG with an original system. Almost everything you saw in those books will land somewhere in ZSF in one form or another.


EDFOST

Ok, a little behind the scenes into how my brain works when I'm noodling ideas. I spent a ridiculous amount of time deciding on the core stats (the Basic Skills). My idea was that they MUST form a cool acronym. At least something that you could pronounce. I can't even remember what all I came up with. One idea involved these monosyllabic words like Oomph, Bam, Yak, etc. Which was cool, but I veered away and landed on EDFOST:

Explore, Drive, Fight, Operate, Shoot, Talk.

Having the acronym, which is now etched into my brain, helps me always remember the list. "E is Explore... what was F? Oh Fight!"

More later.