Out of touch for awhile

In case anyone actually reads this, I'll be out-of-town from September 26th to October 2nd. So, if you send me any messages, I won't be able to respond to them until October 3rd. That includes registrations for TableSmith eXpress (i.e.; I handle those manually, it's not an automated process).

Sorry for any inconvenience this causes anyone. See you in October!

Got Fable...

I planned on starting to post here regularly tonight (my plan is Thursdays and Sundays - that way I can keep up a meaningful dialog without degenerating into posts about my yard or what I'm listening to or troublesome co-workers...). Unfortunately, I picked up Fable for my XBox yesterday, so that didn't really happen...

It's no Morrowind, but it's still very cool. And, unlike...well, any RPG I've ever played, your character can fart and belch. And the game keeps track of how many times you've had sex (among other things). So, in some circles, that would make it the Best RPG Ever.

(It also has magic, monsters, quests, villages, and all the standard trappings of a fantasy RPG, so don't think that it only focuses on what I mentioned above ;)

d20 Mini-Reviews

Complete Monster Cards from The Other Game Company
A PDF containing almost all* the monsters from the revised d20 SRD (3.5E). The PDF pages are meant to be printed out double-sided and cut into trading card-sized pieces. Contains standard monsters, all the pyro/cryo/headed hydra combinations, fleshed-out dragons of each color and size, monsters from the summon... spells, etc. Overall great idea and very useful. Major flaw: The text is very small; for creatures with lots of abilities (solars, for example), the text is smaller than what is standard elsewhere on the cards, making it difficult to read. I would have preferred if they'd gone for cards that came out to 3x5 in size. Still, I recommend this for DMs.

Available from RPGNow.

*: I say "almost" since I didn't find the greater stone golem.


Dungeon Crawl Classics #9: Dungeon Geomorphs from Goodman Games
Not a module, but 30 pages of geomorphs: quarter-page map segments you can join together randomly to create dungeon maps. Unfortunately, I bought this without browsing through it - a mistake on my part. There are segments for caves, castles, castle ruins, hallways/corridors, lairs, "Underdeep", mazes, dungeons, "old-style" dungeons, and temples. Some of the cave and "Underdeep" segments may be useful, but I found many to be just plain weird or uninspired. I should have left this on the shelf, but it is a book of geomorphs, so I should have expected what I got. Anyway, not recommended.

The Nature of the Game

WTF? Goddammit - I had this cool essay started about how people have been complaining that fantasy has been cliché for over 25 years (citing examples in Dragon magazine), and that Eberron is simply a recycling of some of the root elements of D&D in a new form, but Blogger ate my post - I didn't even click on anything! It just errored on me.

Grr...

Anyway, I'm not re-typing all that. In summary:

• What's old is new again, etc., etc.
  
• Ravenloft, Spelljammer, Tekumel, Wilderlands from Judges Guild are all examples of how things have differentiated themselves from the LotR/Forgotten Realms standard.

Good enough. There's something profound there. Or not.

Long Time No Post

I really need to get off my backside and post more. Of course, I complained about that a month ago, and it didn't do a lot of good, so I guess I'm going to have to resort to threats of violence. I'm not sure how I'll respond to that, but I'll do my best to coerce myself to comply.

WTF?

Anyway, I've uploaded the latest issue of the Mythosa Chronicle to the World page. It was actually done a few days ago, I just haven't gotten around to updating the site until today. Due to time constraints, the majority of it is re-prints from articles I'd already posted, though the piece on weapon groups (from UA) for religious classes is new. Eventually, I'll run out of articles from the World page and have to stock the Chronicle with new material. Expect shorter issues in the future...

I finished Doom 3 a couple of weeks ago. Amazing game. I was turned off a bit by the "Guardian" (if you've played the game you know what I'm talking about), as I felt it took away from the feel of the overall game. In retrospect, I believe I approached the encounter wrong, so that may be partly to blame. Outside of that, though, an excellent playing experience. I hope Half-Life 2 can match up.

I'm also looking forward for Fable for the Xbox. It's supposed to come out this month, though with many features removed from the original design. Still sounds pretty good, and I've seen it compared favorably with Knights of the Old Republic, which is good news (KotOR is in my top five favorite electronic games, along with - in no particular order - Morrowind, Doom 3, Unreal Tournament 2004, and C&C: Generals).

My plan is to start posting here regularly, if for no other reason than writing practice. Not sure what I'll be discussing, though I'll try to keep it at least tangentially related to gaming. And non-political. I'd really love to post some of my opinions about the current goings-on (going-ons?), but I don't want to turn this into yet another soapbox. It's nice to have a few havens away from the constant tide of partisanship.