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Reports are trickling in from Gencon that Fantasy Flight Games has stolen a march, as it were, and is selling products people didn't think would be available for months yet, if not longer. Of particularl interest to me is Black Goat of the Woods, an expansion for their Cthulhu-based boardgame, Arkham Horror. I think this is the first time I actively wished I could be at Gencon, just because I don't want to wait for the product to trickle its way through the normal distribution chain. And to think just a a few weeks ago, I was patting myself on the back for not feeling the urge to indulge my "gotta catch 'em all" compulsion with the acquisition of The King in Yellow. My brain betrays me and immediately starts figuring out who I know at Gencon I could wheedle into getting a copy for me. But no! I will stay strong, enjoy what I have and not worry about Black Goat until it shows up at the FLGS. Unless, y'know, someone offered to pick up a copy for me. But really, what are the odds of that? Â
Tags: Gencon Ffg Fantasy-flight-games Arkham-horror
Almost a year ago now, I bought two PDFs from Steve Jackson Games' e23 site: GURPS Technomancer and GURPS Technomancer: Funny New Guys. The setting is one where the first nuclear test at Trinity, New Mexico, completed a ritual that brought about the resurgence of magic in the modern era. From then on, the world changes to adapt to and take advantage of both science and magic. It's a setting that's highly spoken of and the original books are hard to track down. Things being as they are, and my apparent inability to read long form documents on a computer, I only just got these PDFs printed out and bound today. I'm looking forward to finding out for myself what life on Merlin-3 -- as the folks at Infinity Unlimited call it in the Infinite Worlds meta-setting -- is like. I don't think there's another RPG setting quite like it.
Tags: Gurps Technomancer Pdf
It may be unfair of me, but the term "homebrew system" immediately brings to mind the image of a heap of three ring binders and spiral notebooks filled with photocopied pages and hand-ruled tables, rendered in a handwriting indicative of someone undergoing a major coronary event. Surprising as this may be, I'm not a huge fan of the stereotypical homebrew. In fact, I tend to turn my nose up at them almost immediately without even giving them a chance. It's a failing of mine, but one with which I am comfortable. Thirty minutes pass, marked by bursts of typing and then pounding the backspace key. I've been trying to expand my initial thought -- I instinctually don't like homebrews -- into a fuller blog entry, complete with exploring how cheap desktop publishing and print on demand services have allowed them to infiltrate the gaming marketplace, but I'm not coming up with anything that doesn't sound mean for the sake of mean. The fact of the matter is I believe in Sturgeon's Law: ninety percent of everything is crap. It holds as true for amateur material as it does professional work. Moreover, there are fewer layers of control and vetting in the self-publishing world than the professional one. My time is limited, and while choosing one thing over another to read is always a gamble, I'm going to hedge my bets towards the books put out by the bigger publishers. At least then I know what I'm getting into.
Tags: Homebrews Rpgs
Wizards of the Coast just announced they are backburnering their social networking site, Gleemax, in favor of concentrating resources on their other two internet endeavors, Magic Online and D&D Insider. Apparently the site will be shut down in September and the message boards will be rolled back into the wizards.com URL.
You can read the official post here: http://www.gleemax.com/Comms/Pages/Communities/BlogPost.aspx?blogpostid=96074&pagemode=2&blogid=2158
Tags: Networking Websites
Unwinding during the three hour drive from OGC to my house this morning, I had plenty of time to ruminate on everything that went on this weekend. First, much fun was had. I played some games, ran some other games, met up with old friends and made some new ones. I call that a highly successful convention.
Friday, I played in Nine_Hands' Iron Heroes dungeonbash. I love Iron Heroes because it emphasizes the characters' abilities, rather than the items they carry. That and it's awesome getting bonuses to beat people up by beating them up. It's a wonderfully vicious cycle.
That evening was StupidSmurf's Call of Cthulhu game Everybody Dies. For the record, it does precisely what it says on the tin. StupidSmurf's an awesome GM and this adventure was no exception. It had a clever set up with great chances for roleplaying and even the opportunity to save the world. After playing the game, the next best thing was listening to everyone else who played it during other time slots that weekend and comparing notes.
Saturday was mostly given over to the two roleplaying adventures I had signed up to run, GURPS Discworld and B.P.R.D.. Discworld went pretty well, with a caveat. I had a table full of Terry Pratchett fans, so they got right into the mood of absurdisms and punnery. I was a little stunned by how quickly we tore through this one: two hours! If I run this in the future, and I think I will, because I eventually want to submit it to Pyramid, I know now to add in more encounters and things to do. Still, everyone laughed and enjoyed themselves, so all was well in the end.
B.P.R.D.: The Celestial Legion took the afternoon slot. It was a smaller group, but I think that was good, in a way. The three players each got to take a bigger role in the course of events, and had to hustle a little harder in those parts where someone else's abilities would have come in handy. The adventure was pretty well received and I had a blast improvising in and around the players choices and questions. (See? I know I can improvise and expand on the fly; now I just need to apply it more to the next time I run Discworld.)
This slot also marked the metamorphosis of Field Team Bravo into Strike Force Gonzo with the reinterpretation of a Venezuelan martial artist into the Ecuadorean Batman, complete with smiley bat symbol calling cards (thanks, Andy!). I'm seriously considering revamping the concept into a connected series of one-shots of over the top action with crazy loons because no one sane will possibly do the job.
After the drain of GMing for eight hours -- and not having a ticket to a particular game -- I decided to take the evening off to hang out with convention friends. These are people I only get to see at conventions, since we live in completely different states. I like listening to the back and forth, and glimpsing into people's lives outside the circle I have at home.
Sunday morning I refereed a board game, Fantasy Flight Games' Marvel Heroes, to keep with the year's super hero theme. It is an admittedly imperfect game in several ways, but it's still highly enjoyable. All four players said they had a good time, and one even asked me if I planned to run it at Carnage (probably not, as Carnage has become my "dedicated shill for Steve Jackson Games" convention). This particular session now holds the record for Longest Game of Marvel Heroes Ever, clocking in at four hours.
The board game ran so long, in fact, I completely missed the lunch break and couldn't find the Cutthroat Caverns GM before he joined a Munchkin game, so I went to the movies to see finally The Dark Knight. First time I've ever been a movie theatre that served food as the movie played. This movie wasn't bad, either.
For the remainder of Sunday, I helped break down some of the convention gear and then chilled out at the after-party, which was a nice way to wind down. Woke up this morning, got packed and was on my way by 10:30.
It was a fun weekend all around. I'm really glad to have met up with old friends and made some new ones. I'm already looking forward to next year, although I have no idea if I'll come up with anything for the "evil wins" theme.
See you all there (if not sooner)!
Tags: Ogc Conventions
So Green Ronin just announced they will not publish any books for the fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons in the foreseeable future. You can read the whole thing [url=http://greenronin.com/2008/07/green_ronin_and_4e.php]here[/url]. In particular, Chris Pramas cites the owners of Dungeons & Dragons' ability to alter the Game System License at any time without notification, the potential financial liability if a third party publisher is sued by the owners of D&D and the license's generally restrictive nature. As always, I am interested in how this will affect the state of RPG publishing, particularly with the exceptionally polarized reception of the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Green Ronin isn't a top tier publisher, but they are certainly a medium sized one. Moreover, they have a reputation for creating quality books. I'm curious to see not only what this will do to the pool of third party publishers for the world's most popular roleplaying game, but also where Green Ronin's excess creative talent and financial capital will go. I think it's fair to estimate that whatever they publish in the stead of 4E books won't see as well, so revenue may drop and thus their overall output. But there will still be more time for games like Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying and Mutants & Masterminds, so I'm hoping Green Ronin can make the best of their other existing properties. In the end, Green Ronin has to do what will keep Green Ronin in business. If they think the potential costs  of publishing for 4E are greater than what they'd make in sales revenue, then they gotta do what's good for the company.Â
Tags: Rpgs D&D4e
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