Deadlands Rises Again

One more Legend of the Five Rings session which will be followed up by by the 3rd and final part of the Freeport trilogy using the Rolemaster system.

Once that is completed I have offered up a few game to run, and the one that most people are keen to play is Deadlands again. This is one of my personal favourites to run, and when I do, this will be the 4th time I would have run a campaign. I love the system and the way the mechanics tie in perfectly with the genre. I love the wild west mixed with the horror, and one of the few games, other than Call of Cthulhu that manages to conjure up the right atmosphere as well.

It was also one of the first games I got into that had a new concept (but which was quite rampant in the late 90s) the idea of the metaplot, a story that exists outside of the game you run or play and provides background and backdrops for the regular game.

I have pretty much everything in print for the game, and will be continuing on with the excedllent Dime Novels.

Ridiculing the Ignorant Pt 1 (Old Blog)

This is going to be an unfortunately regular series of articles, some short and others long, in which I ridicule the ignorant and uninformed, simply because they appear not to have a solution to an obvious problem.

Notwithstanding the fact that RPG.net has been a topic of discussion, I shall pick on one poor sod. http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=242875

In this very short thread, the author, has bought an old ADND boxed set of Dark Sun. He declines to say whether it is 1st or 2nd edition, but it only really matters depending on if you think Brom is Dark Sun and vice versa.

In the thread the guy has read the setting and books (I doubt in details) but then beggars the question as to what to do with the game. I'm sorry but if you have read that much material and are still fucking clueless, then you really are in the wrong hobby!

Just answering/replying to this guy surely must rank you as a prick or at the very least encouraging the jerk. Suggesting he buy the supplements (by a follow-up poster) to make a workable game actually playable is so funny, that its sad. I mean if you are that bereft of ideas that even Dark Sun leaves you a fuckwit, Im glad you are not my DM!

I think it is fair to say that regardless of how poor or badly written (Im sure I will prove myself wrong very soon) role-playing material is, at the very least it must stimulate the mind, otherwise why read it. Just watch the tv instead!

Originally posted 30/01/2006

Exiles & Boycotts - Yeah I know they arent the same! (Old Blog)

Seeing as I have imposed a self-styled Exile (as per Cessna), I have decided to answer my critics here, as opposed on the boycotted RPG.net forum. I fully expect NO ONE to read this but it does massage my ego.

I firstly would like to say Sponsored Links (Green underlined hyperlinks embedded within the text of an article or forum) are akin to spam and spyware. In previous months surfing the internet and finding these "hijacked" links could only mean one thing, you have spyware or a virus on your machine. So when I find myself surfing on RPG.net and seeing a link be highlighted, my first reaction is "fuck" I have a virus or at the worst a spyware program running. Hunting around using all my usual programs reveals my machine is clean, so how come. A bit of searching later and RPG.net are using sponsored green links to help pay for their internet access etc. Which is a bit of a pisstake considering they just raised nearly $3,000 to buy a new server.

My posting on the Sponsored Links Discussion Board went as follows
lose the ads or lose any respect.
Im boycotting this forum until they are gone.

The immediate reply from a forum MOD was rather nice, UberGnome

 I don't really know how to reply to this without coming off as a snarky bastard, so I'll just say that we'll still be here should you ever decide your moral crusade is fruitless.

So not only do MODs sound like snarky bastards (their words not mine), but they also consider my moral crusade pointless. Valandil pointed out that I had indeed made almost 500 posts and that I felt that RPG.net owed me a service. Well no one owes me anything, In fact the service I get from RPG.net isnt exactly worthwhile or really relevant, but as soon as I get "charged" for surfing on a forum, I leave. I have posted larger numbers of posts on other forums and never felt that it should be charged for. Ironically if people actually had to pay for each post they did post, I think there would be (a) less of cuntish posts such as a complete quote of the original poster, followed by "I agree" and (b) less cuntish borish banal posts to start with for cunts to actually agree with in the first place.

One kindly gentleman suggested that indeed I could always turn them off, but that involves putting a cookie on my machine and activating cookies, well sorry Im not prepared to do this for many reasons, but the most apt one right now is because I cant be fucking bothered.

 

Originally posted 30/01/2006

 

animalball (64.234.17.78)

16th Dec, 2007 00:39 (local)

Fear not, lawbag-- I've been boycotting RPG.net ever since they permabanned me two years ago for stuff I wrote on my own site.

SOLIDARITY!

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pete_darby (194.60.106.5)

17th Dec, 2007 11:56 (local)

Not so much boycotted as gave up: spent more time on the forge, then on knife fight, now... well, a lot of google reader feeds.

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lawbag (83.104.27.178)

18th Dec, 2007 11:21 (local)

If you are ever to made to feel unwelcome on a forum then leave, quietly or otherwise.

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Hobby Spamming

A while back, DriveThru RPG, (an on demand PDF website selling digitial copies of role-playing games), had a week of letting registered users downloading free versions of previously full-price games. One day they were $ 19.99, the next they were $ 0.00. Now this is great on many levels as it gives people the chance to try out the PDF service, look at games they wouldn't normally look at, but there is a downside which might not normally be realised.

The people who have offered their product for nothing, it would seem, have been provided with the email addresses of everyone who downloaded their product, giving them a valid reason (as per the terms and conditions of the site) to send you unsolicited emails advertising their future games.

I use a slew of Hotmail accounts for registration purposes, so I know the source of these new emails that I am starting to get. Luckily they are hitting the SPAM folders and will continue to do so, as like most people, I downloaded a few choice games, looked at them, and then saved them away, most likely to be forgotten.

Homage to Hackmaster? (Old Blog)

After putting it off for years, I finally played in my first proper DND3.5 campaign. The GM is experienced but hasnt run a game in a fair few years, but the players are ready to give it a try, including me.

It didn't take long for us to realise that no matter how hard you try, combat is just a series of attempts to roll high on a D20 to hit the monsters. Now there is nothing wrong with this, its just that whatever role-playing attempts are made, e.g. descriptive methods of attempting to gain an advantage over a monster or situation or any combat edge is nullified because it isnt in the rules. It doesnt really matter what kind of character you are, its all about your Base Attack Bonus!

Well we intend to finish the short Eberron campaign, simply because he bought all the books and because we do have fun as a group, but not with the game itself. One new player commented about how little role-playing we did, and here is the perfect example of game which discourages role-playing to gain any advantage. Its closer to Hackmaster, in a weird way, DND is a badly implemented and unknowing tribute to Hackmaster. I would be happy to never play a D20 game again. Sorry.

Originally posted 16/01/06

Bookmarks Pt 2 - Jeff Rients

Jeff Rients is or was a regular at the old RPG.net forum, and was one of the early adopters to join the rival and more open forum therpgsite.com.

Now this isnt a little rant about rpg.net, Ive done that in past blogs and on my other gaming rant blog, but rather why Jeff Reints' is a bookmark.

Putting it simply Jeff has some good ideas on the gaming industry, but mostly on what it takes to make a good game better. He has created a three-fold gaming system/style which seems to work for most things.

He finds 5 random links himself that he finds interesting and posts them all up. They all have a gaming theme.

Whilst it is fair to say he has gone off the boil of late, he still is worth me checking in on him at least once a week.

jrients (4.159.104.147)

19th Nov, 2007 03:19 (local)

Thanks for the kind words. I'm unfamiliar with the phrase "off the boil", but I think I follow. I'll readily admit my material has taken a bit of a left turn recently, but then so has the rest of my life.

Please take anything I say about the industry with a large grain of salt, especially when I try to make predictions. I've pretty much given up on gaming industry prognostication after a string of spectacular failures.

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lawbag (81.137.161.230)

21st Nov, 2007 13:47 (local)

I tried to be honest about my opinion.
Unlike the 'pundit though, you do occasionally talk about your family which does make you human.

Thanks for the comments.

As for "off the boil", imagine the finest cuisine put on the "back burner" of a cooker, and it starts to simmer as opposed to boil. So what I was saying was, that the quality is still there, but either not to my taste, or building up for a return to form.

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Ill Breeds Boredom

Been off ill over the last 2 days, which has kind of pissed me off because it looks as though my visit to Dragonmeet may well be cancelled, which is a shame as I had fully intended to get a copy of StarBlazer RPG, En Garde, jonnynexus' book, Games Night and a couple of Legend of the Five Rings books.

Im still holding out being able to make it, but I suspect if I do, Ill end up driving as opposed to leaving it up to public transport.

angusabranson (84.9.37.116)

30th Nov, 2007 09:58 (local)

To soften the blow a little if you can't make it - the Starblazer Adventures book isn't going to be ready for Dragonmeet. Everyone worked really hard to try and get it completed but time was against us.

Chris will be running some Starblazer games though and have prints and sample chapters available to look at.

But sadly no book :(

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