Mail Call 09 SEPT 2011

Just the one today, picture from EBay.



This one is all about Ronin in Rokugan, which sounds pretty cool.

In other news, Ashli came home yesterday. She is recovering OK, but is somewhat depressed and angry about her service with the US Army being at an end. She should be OK to start college in the Spring semester like she had planned anyway, so I guess there is still that.

Mail Call 08 SEPT 2011

A GURPS WW2 extravaganza today, once again the pictures are from the EBay auctions.



I convinced myself this was research material for my, now largely back-burnered, B/X WW II project; but really I just like GURPS sourcebooks despite the fact that I really am not a big fan of the game system.



This gives us the specifics of the mighty British Empire.

Since I'll hop on any bandwagon...

...I am rated R.





I never would have guessed my blog was for the over 17 only crowd. I guess I can feel free to swear more often and add more blood and boobs. Sex, drugs and violence are the wave of the future, eh?

Mail Call 06 SEPT 2011

It's a Samurai RPG extravaganza in the mail today; as always the pictures are from the EBay auctions or, in the case of the Sengoku book, Amazon.com despite the fact that I recently bought a new digital camera. Now I am just set in my ways.


I already have a version of the L5R RPG Gamemaster's Pack, but this one is different.

Walking the Way- The Lost Spells of Rokugan. It's a compilation of spells and adventures.


Kind of like a Rogues Gallery.


I was curious as to why this wasn't called "Way of the Nezumi". I noticed it has a WotC logo on the back, odd; I guess this means it's one of the ones that's compatible with 3e OA.



When each of the major clans has a splat book I guess it's time to make the L5R RPG equivalent of the Gnome/Halfling handbook?

This seems like a proper non-human splat book for the L5R RPG.


Ah, the Crane. They're like L5R elves as far as I can tell, all artsy and better than everybody else, yet still deadly as all get out.


Serious wizards.


Straight up toughest fighters. Tanks. Maybe like L5R 1/2 Orcs? Dwarves?

And now for something (almost) completely different. This was supposed to be being designed, I read, as a new edition of Bushido; which I own but have never played. They grafted it onto the generic Fuzion rules set, as was the fashion at the time and included a bunch of conversion guides including for Bushido, as well as L5R and GURPS: Japan.

I figured I might just as well order the only published supplement for it too, it's an entire campaign.



The auctioneer was kind enough to include a picture of the back cover too.

I have a lot of reading to do; this is just the first wave to reach here, there is more to come.

A couple thoughts

First- I kind of suck at sitting down and trying to plan out an adventure. I have been called a great DM by a lot of people, so I have to assume they weren't all BSing me about my DMing skills; but I have a really hard time sitting down and creating an adventure. I am bad at making dungeons. I am bad at drawing maps. I can create a compelling campaign world, but I tend to avoid having to map as much as possible. I steal maps from other sources and repurpose them when possible. I can take a published adventure and make it my own, altering it beyond recognition from the original and I can do that on the fly. I can pull an entire evening's entertainment completely out of thin air based on a couple of die rolls and my knowledge of the campaign world; I am good at hex-crawls and other sandbox style stuff. It's creating unique locations and mapping them out ahead of time that I am bad at, I have made some pretty cool almost random dungeons on the fly. So I don't really write adventures, I write vague outlines of what the bad guys plans are and what will happen if they aren't stopped probably and update it after each session with the party's actions (or inactions); I also make liberal use of other people's ideas, particularly if they're better than mine.

Second- I have a mountain of Legend of the Five Rings RPG stuff (and some Sengoku stuff) that I won on EBay coming soon, just a head's up- there'll be a flurry of Mail Call activity in the near future. It's mostly for 1st edition, but since I have never played any edition I guess 1st edition is the place to start. Since my gaming group hasn't really met since Ashli went away to basic training I may try to kick start some gaming with L5R, maybe online via Google+ if I can't get everyone together in my regular gaming group.

Thirdly- I saw Paizo has a new product with Ninja's and Vikings in it. I laughed a little, I did the OA meets Vikings thing over a decade ago; it was a cool idea then and it's a cool idea now, I hope it does well for them.

Lastly- My daughter Ashli is getting a medical discharge from the US Army, that's our current crisis. She's been in the hospital at Fort Jackson for about 3 weeks now, she may be coming home soon. Since she is over 18 and it's a medical condition, I figure it's her place to tell people about it if she wants them to know.

Geek and Gamer Girls Song

Anybody seen this?

Mail Call 25 AUG 2011

As always, the image is from the Ebay auction.



I am a sucker for a good deal. I may never play this game, but now I have two different editions of it; and hundreds of miniatures, maybe thousands at this point. All of this happened because TSR (and later WotC) couldn't be bothered to give decent support to their Oriental Adventures line. I guess it's probably because, at least at first, the OA project was Gary's pet project with his French buddy. When Gary got pushed out the door they had already gone too far to NOT publish something, so David "Zeb" Cook got the call to make it work- and he did; OA was probably the meatiest 1st edition AD&D supplement ever published. Sadly, they decided to let it wither on the vine rather than give it any real support. Sure, they shoe-horned it in to the Forgotten Realms, along with EVERYTHING ELSE from earth history, Al-Qadim, Maztica, Hordelands, ad nauseum, but they really didn't support those lines real well either.

Badges

I have to admit I like the idea of the DM bling, but I won't be using them for two reasons. First, they remind me of something that Brian from Knights of the Dinner Table would have come up with, and that smacks of parodizing our beloved hobby. Second, I hate to give away too much of my game. I do mirror ideas back at my players and reward them for good play and death is always possible; I roll most of the time in the open (exception for thief skill checks and secret doors), I am not afraid to use published material, rule 0 is always in play. Gonzo? Check. Improvisation? Check. House Rules? Check. If it's old school I am probably doing it, that's why I play old school. My games are a mix of OD&D, Holmes Basic, B/X and AD&D anyway, so the only one that really knows how everything works is me. My world evolved with D&D and kind of hit a wall with 2nd edition AD&D; some of it's stuff I liked (Thief skills), some I loathed (Rangers), over-all it lost the "feel" of D&D to me.

I probably won't be posting much for a while; we're having something of a crisis here now.

Is Google+ Killing My Blog?

Or have I just been too busy with other stuff to blog regularly since my computer woes were ended? I have been working with my dad (and my son) building his enormous garage since mid-July, and it still looks like we've barely started. However Google+ seems to be taking up a large amount of my free time as I try to figure out exactly what I can do with it to make my online experience better. I have been barely keeping up with reading blogs, much less posting regularly; sorry about that, trying to integrate new tech and all, especially since the mighty Google empire already controls Blogger as a fiefdom. I rather expect that somehow all of this will be somehow integrated together and I'd prefer not to be caught off guard when it does.


Also, I went to the central New York Scottish games this past Saturday, which was nice. I don't go every year, sometimes I just forget what weekend it is, sometimes I have other plans, sometimes I just don't have the money for it. The nice old lady from my clan that taught my wife how to make shortbread informed me that my clan hasn't had a champion in the games since I quit competing some two decades ago. On the one hand that's nice to be remembered as the clan's champion, on the other I kind of feel like I let them down when I quit competing. I was never serious about it, just big and naturally suited to feats of strength from growing up in farm country.

150 Google+ Invites

Come and get them-

https://plus.google.com/_/notifications/ngemlink?path=%2F%3Fgpinv%3DoXVoEIYMd8Q%3AeKJFG2VQCyw

Deaf Pedestrians-Hail to the Geeks

Yep.

Hardest Gary Gygax Quiz in the World

William Dowie took the Hardest Gary Gygax Quiz in the World and got 80%!



You are a Gary Gygax Superhero. If aliens ever invade Earth and challkenge us to a Gary Gygax trivia contest, you will be our champion.

Paladin Code: You completed this quiz without using Google.

I took the quiz- results above and saved also to the to the right for posterity. Now I must know the answers to the following questions: Which of the words does NOT appear in the AD&D DM's Guide? Which game did Gary NOT write or cowrite? and, lastly, What was the command word for Gord's buddy's axe?

Tonight (D&D song) - Allie Goertz

As a grumbly old OSR grognard* I have to preface this by saying that I am not a 3e player (anymore), but this is nice. I like all the D&D inspired music coming out lately. Play what edition you like; I like what I grew up with- a crazy mix of Holmes Basic, B/X and 1st Edition AD&D. Since I am usually DMing and the rule book is my brain there isn't usually a problem.

*I turned 42 while my computer was down for repairs.

Deadliest Warrior

So I finally got around to watching the season opener for Deadliest Warrior.

Really Deadliest Warrior? Really? I am as patriotic an American as any other, but having George Washington beat Napoleon Bonaparte is simply incredible. Deadliest Warrior has dropped the ball on a number of occasions in the past, and in some pretty big ways, but they even MENTIONED ON THE EPISODE that Washington would not have defeated Cornwallis without French help while describing his greatest victory.

Sad. I only really like to watch the show for the cool blowing stuff up/chopping them to pieces, the silly trash talking BS and bad re-enactments CAN be a little fun too, I guess; it is Spike TV, so I guess the over the top macho nonsense is par for the course. I also like it because I get to talk to my kids about history during the show and after it's over, usually for making corrections, although even they could tell the really stupid calls like Comanche over Mongol, or stupid match ups like generic Celt vs. Persian Immortal.

After season 1 they "fixed" the show's format by separating the battles between pre-gunpowder and post-gunpowder era combatants, which screwed over the Knight in season 1. They also moved to a small unit battle instead of having one-on-one fights all the time; this I think is what made the Washington vs. Napoleon episode suck. All of these musket era battles really need to be fought with full armies, sorry if it destroys their re-enactment budget, maybe they could use software for that part too.

Now, don't get me wrong, I ALWAYS expect them to get it wrong on Deadliest Warrior, they have a knack for it; when they manage to get it right I am pleasantly surprised, now that I am done ranting about the injustice done to the memory of L'Empereur I guess I'll go out there and watch William the Conqueror get his ass handed to him by Joan of Arc and unless it's done in a particularly egregious way I'll just accept it with good humor and continue to take the show for what it is- gratuitous weapon porn wrapped in a pseudo-historical context.

By the way, who EVER referred to Napoleon as the "God of War"?

Alright I'm Back.

I opted for repair rather than outright replacement*, but it still seems a little sketchy as to how well it intends to work. I spent most of yesterday with it insisting that either my system memory had changed, not booting at all, not booting and giving me a beep code I didn't recognize or hanging at the bios screen; so right now I am pretty happy just to have it up and running. I will eventually finish writing the now nearly month old report on the SCA Mêlée event I went to, and that'll probably finish my lengthy series on Shields, Helmets and Mêlée tactics and D&D.

*Not just because it was the cheaper option, but because there are new technologies that have either just entered the market or are about to enter the market that I'd like to take advantage of, and I hate to get hosed on the price while I essentially beta test new hardware. I have been down that road too many times in the past.