A Matter of Perspective

Years ago, when I first set up a Web site (for Mythosa - though a version different from what I have now), I set up a web counter and used to check it daily. Subtracting the totals from my own visits, I remember how excited - yes, I'm a geek - I got the first time I had 10 hits in a single day.

Looking at the web stats for my site (I do that about once a month), my average daily hits over the past year are in excess of 1,900. Not Amazon, but not bad for a little gaming website. My hits would be higher but I've been leaning towards stored information more in downloads, particularly PDFs, rather than HTML pages. Over 36 GB of files have been downloaded over the past year...

The Suffering is Over...

Just finished The Suffering for XBox. For those unfamiliar with the game, it's a "survival horror" shooter (first person or third; you decide) set in a prison on an island off the coast of New England - sort of an Atlantic Alcatraz. Though the ending was a little...goofy (if you've played it to the end, you know what I mean), over all I thought it was a great game. I haven't played the Resident Evil games or the other survival horror console games, so I don't really have anything to compare it to, but I liked it all the same. Definitely not for the kids, though (besides the extreme violence, Samuel Jackson would have a tough time keeping up with the language in this game...)

Since Fable and Halo 2 aren't going to be here for some time, perhaps I can finally play the Morrowind expansions now. I finished the standard game some time ago, and I've been meaning to play the full thing. Best computer RPG ever :) I read someone commenting on how boring they thought it was, and how they gave up on it after a few hours. I can't understand that, particularly since there's so much to this game, that's not even remotely enough time to come to a judgement. Maybe they were expecting a Diablo-style clickfest, rather than an in-depth RPG. Oh, well. I don't care enough about such a wrong opinion to devote any more thought to it ;)

Not that I don't like Diablo; I do. Just two different styles of game.

Can a plug for your own stuff on your own site be shameless?

Ryan Dancey (excerpted from here):

"I think that D&D has to strike a happy medium. If it gets too complex, the rules get in the way of playing the game. I have felt for a long time that the more integrated computer assistance becomes, the more complex the rules can become without disturbing this happy medium. Weather effects, for example, are a hard thing to incorporate into D&D without making the "cost" of the rules far outweigh the benefits. However, if the actual rules themselves could be moderated by computer assistance, then the roleplaying and dramatic value of weather would be a great addition to the game."

What does this mean? Buy a Palm, download my programs, and register TableSmith eXpress!

Hehe...

Hmm...I wonder how much traffic I would get if I posted some specious, trollish argument about D&D (or Vampire or GURPS...those two would be even better since I have virtually no experience with either ;) and posted a link to my site on ENWorld so people would come and read it?

I suppose I could post about the commercial d20 book I was looking through (published some time ago) that obviously used TableSmith to generate a bunch of its material but doesn't actually give any mention about the program. Not that there's any "legal" requirement to do so, but it would be a nice courtesy, particularly given how that sort of thing is supposed to be "common" in the industry. I guess that only applies to publishers and not to the inferior drones whose only purpose in their eyes is to purchase without question the phenomenal material churned out by their prima donna warrior-poets who call themselves "game designers".

No, I'm not talking about all publishers or writers. Yes, I'm in a spiteful mood. It will pass.

Blasted Games Workshop - they've come out with a really nice looking "Make your own terrain" book. I refrained from picking it up today at the local FLGS, but I'm really tempted. The problem is finding the time to make the terrain and paint it. Lack of time is why I use stuff from Dwarven Forge and Miniature Building Authority rather than make my own scenery from scratch or things like Hirst Arts' molds. Don't get me wrong - I love the MasterMaze pieces and the MBA buildings (and I'm lucky enough to have a wife who doesn't discourage their purchase - being a gamer as well, she even encourages some of them), but I'd really prefer to make my own stuff. Unfortunately, I have too many hobbies and obligations to have the time for that. Of course, we're all busy, so the phrase "I don't have time" really means "It's not high enough on my priority list". So what I really need to do is re-evaluate my priorities...

Why Namemaker?

Some people may be wondering why I put "Namemaker" together when I already had TSX. The primary reason was speed. I had an idea, and being the geek I am I had to test it out. I created a new storage format for the TSX tables to see if it would improve performance - and it did amazingly so. Which, I think, makes "Namemaker" far more useful for most people than TSX.

Simply put, with something like TSX (or the desktop TableSmith), most people don't care if they have the ability to create their own tables. They want a tool that has done the work for them already. Essentially, you get both with desktop TableSmith - it has a ton of tables available for people who just want to use them, but you also can create and edit your own. You also get both with TSX, but at the cost of speed. To provide the flexibility that TableSmith enjoys, TSX has to do some things that don't make it the speediest Palm program out there. It runs acceptably on my PDA (Zire 71, 144 Mhz...and it looks like it's been discontinued by Palm...the 72 runs at 312 Mhz? Wow...hmm...no, can't justify that yet...but, I digress), but I imagine that on older, slower Palms, it's slow enough to be unacceptable. So for people who don't want the ability to create their own tables, they can't even run the ones that exist.

Thus, the reason for Namemaker.

The More Things Change...

I've been re-reading the Dragons from the CD-ROM compilation and ran across this letter and response in issue #3 (October 1976 - published over 27 years ago). In light of the current issues with MP3s, software piracy, etc., I thought it was rather interesting:

"Dear Sirs,
A couple of weeks ago I wrote to you asking for permission to xerox some of your tables. I had taken them and cut them out, laid them out differently to provide a compact set of all important tables for GMs. I wanted to sell them to a few friends at cost (no profit). I received a short, curt reply, stating: “Dear Sir: In response to your question, no, you may not reprint anything.

...[skipped]...

I therefore find it hard to swallow or understand your attitude. Not only would I not be competing with an extant TSR product, I would not even be seeking or making a profit. I would only be trying to make the like of people who already bought all your products
easier. And, although I’m not a lawyer, I have some doubts of the legality of your preventing photocopying of your material in a different form for non-profit purposes. I believe Congress has, or is in the process of, modifying the copyright laws to take into account the “Xerox revolution.” I would not try to sell my tables over your objections on such grounds, however, since — despite my dissatisfaction with this stance — I still have great respect for your company.

Everyone is grateful to TSR for providing us with such a useful, flexible, and fascinating fantasy game. But, for God’s sake, youíre not providing effective products for enthusiasts of your game; it seems you are doing a disservice to your loyal customers by preventing others from providing these products as long as they’re not trying to make a profit."

The response:
"Sorry to distress you, Scott, but the NO still stands, and will do so until we have a few matters resolved. Right now, we have denied permission to everyone not licensed by us because it was the only way to sort out just what is going on.

I agree that fandom is a good thing, and would do nothing to stifle it, but we had to draw a line, and now are faced with sorting out the mess. At such time that we have accomplished this, then we will be able to give permission where appropriate. At this time our policy is NO EXCEPTIONS, draconian as that may seem.

I don’t know where you got your information regarding copyright law, but you have it just backwards; if we (publishers and printers) have our way, the new laws you speak of will clamp down on the “rip-off revolution, ” as it should be properly known.
..."

I'm not advocating piracy of any kind (though I don't support the methods the RIAA, MPAA, and others are following, either). I just thought it was an interesting parallel to the present day.

(Yes, I realize that there are bigger issues today - the potential for mass distribution is far higher with the Internet, electronic goods can be duplicated exactly as opposed to how photocopies generally turned out, etc.)

Saturday Gaming Goodness

Finished another Palm util last night - the "Character Manager". Well, sort of. I'll be expanding it more over time, but for now I needed a nexus-point of sorts to get characters into the Palm for use with the other apps (like the XP Tracker). I'll probably be posting it tomorrow some time; I'm hoping to get the mods to XP Tracker done in the next hour and a half, before my regular Saturday game begins. The modifications would allow XP Tracker to apply XP directly to a character record rather than just telling you what the division of XP will be.

Finally finished cutting the pieces from the sprues for Attack!, the A&A-like sort-of-WW2 game from Eagle Games. Not sure when we're going to play, but I'm looking forward to it - looks like a fun game. Of course, I still have to cut the naval units from the sprues for the expansion...

Picked up Complete Divine this afternoon. I'll be looking at the prestige classes first so I can finish the page that describes how they fit into Mythosa (for those that do fit). I've only glanced over CD so far, but it does look pretty good, and maybe better then Complete Warrior.

Za?

I don't know why, but I find this to be hysterical.

Oh, "XP Tracker" should be available soon. Need to update the Dungeon index too, since I finally got issue #111 in the mail.

Editted: I remove the link since the target picture keeps changing; doesn't make sense to keep it any longer. The original was a picture of a bunny with a pancake on its head, with the caption: "I have no idea what you're talking about, so here's a bunny with a pancake on its head."

Another Palm Utility and Other Stuff

I'm in the process of tweaking "XP Tracker", another (my third!) PalmOS RPG utility. This one allows you to keep track of things your PCs do for experience. Primarily the slaughter of misunderstood forces of darkness, I'm sure, but other stuff, too. Whatever has a CR...

I should be posting the app in the next day or two. The next one is a character manager, though it'll initially be fairly small. It's primarily a focal point for a lot of other apps I'm planning (treasure tracker, spell tracker, etc.).

I've got a write-up on Prestige Classes and where they fit into Mythosa ready for being put into XHTML and uploaded, but I decided to hold off on posting it. With Complete Divine coming out this week (it's probably already out; I need to swing by the game shop this weekend), I figured I'd wait to see what I would include from that.

It's raining again, which likely means more water in the basement. Sigh...gotta get that taken care of.

Site Update

Almanac is in the RPG Utilities area of the main site. It's Mythosa-specific (see earlier postings as to why this is), but we'll see what the future holds. I have started mentally planning my next PalmOS utilities, and thus far what I have in mind will be both generic and probably free. Of course, by "generic" I mean non-world specific. Since I play D&D 3.5, they'll be designed for that. Well, technically, for d20. But without the d20 logo. I can still use the OGL for d20-based software, but using the logo with software is too much of a grey area in some cases, outright prohibited in others. I don't want to with that, so they'll be OGL. The source will be available as well, of course, so you can see what's open and what's not. Of course, you'll need to use CASL if you want to modify the code...

I also added a Trivia page, to capture the little items that I want to get posted somewhere. The Detailed Climate Zone map is something I created for myself as a reference for the Almanac program. The weather system was originally based on latitude, but the results didn't quite match what I wanted for particular areas of my world. So, like any good Hollywood writer or junk scientist, I changed the data to fit my desired outcome. Hey, it's a fantasy world, and it works. It's one of those things that fits my philosophy of "it doesn't matter if it's realistic, just if it's realistic enough".

Threw a couple of things into the Timeline that came up when I was putting in the Trivia page. I also modified my "House Rules" based on some recent observations in my campaign. The main one is dumping "Armor as Damage Reduction" (ADR) from Unearthed Arcana. I like the idea, and my initial analysis of it indicated that it was workable, but I've since found some holes in it that I didn't see initially. Suffice to say, the idea being this variant is that you get hit more often but take less damage. Unfortunately, I've found situations where you end up getting hit more often and taking more damage. If I find some time I'll post the scenario I came up with that shows this. Rather than change the rules even further to accommodate ADR, I've decided to go back to the standard way of doing armor class.

Articles Here or There...

With the advent of this blog, I'm wondering whether to keep the Articles page on my site or whether to transfer that stuff over here.

Actually, what might make more sense is to leave that page along, and transfer anything of value here over there. It would be easier to find something in particular that way rather than combing the blog archives...

Friday Ramblings

My wife and I went to see Van Helsing earlier this evening. We found it entertaining, though we weren't expecting much. It's not really a serious movie, it's more of a "fun" movie. Even so, there were still a few things that bugged me (and yes, that's despite accepting the concept of vampires, werewolves, a James Bond-style Vatican monster hunter, etc.).

I also recently finished watching the Penn & Teller: Bullshit! Season One DVDs. Most of what they covered was stuff I already knew, but I did learn a few new things and they were entertaining in any case. If you like P&T, or are a skeptic about things (ranging anywhere from alien abductions to consequences of second-hand smoke), I'd recommend it.

Finally, I had the day off today, and after I got up (12:30 pm or so - I'm not a morning person) I finished the "Almanac" PDA app I've been working on. I'll be uploading it to the site soon. It's pretty much tied to Mythosa, but it might be worth looking at and getting some ideas from. As I mentioned, if there's enough requests, I may make it customizable, or provide a service to create customized versions for people. We'll have to see.

Baby, the Rain Must Fall

Just saw a link to Glenn Yarbrough's website on ENWorld. I couldn't care less about the rest of his music, but this guy's voice sounds like the singer from the "Lemmywinks" episode of South Park. Funny stuff.

Oh, he might have been involved with something Tolkien-related, too.

"The greatest adventure, for you lies ahead..."