The Latest Decree from His Most Imperiousness

As you may be aware, not too long ago I declared myself emperor and sole ruler of Earth. Since no one disputed that claim in the requisite 90 days allowed by law, it has since become fact.

In any case, my latest decree is thus: The use of the phrase "I, for one, welcome our new [whatever] overlords" shall be allowed for the remainder of this calendar year, after which its usage is officially banned for one year. After that year is concluded, the phrase's usage will be allowed until I judge that it is being overly-abused again, at which time the ban will be extended indefinitely."

Imperial subjects, phrases from The Simpsons are amusing up to a point. If you overuse them, they lose their humor value. Did the "word of curse" episode of South Park teach us nothing?

Note: The phrase "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" is currently in no danger of a ban. Feel free to use it at will.

Finished Half-Life 2

OK, I finished Half-Life 2 last night. Very cool game once I got over the issues with motion sickness (Half-Life did that to me as well, though I have no problem with most other shooters, like UT2004...). I'd say the graphics engine is as good Doom 3's, though maybe not better.

Can't say I cared for the ending, though. If you've finished it yourself, you probably know what I mean. Also, the bug preventing you from jumping in the "Benefactors" area/scene/act/whatever was very annoying.

Cool Links

Here's a handful of cool links I've run across recently:

• The ZOOMQUILT: It's hard to describe, but very bizarre and very cool. Check it out.
• A home-grown gelatinous cube: Posted at Cool Mini-or-Not. I particularly like how the hand of the poor bastard inside the cube hasn't been digested yet.
• #develop: If you want to develop with .NET but don't want to shell out the $$$ for Visual Studio, check this out. It's a free, open source IDE for Microsoft .NET which allows you to create C# or VB.NET programs. I've been playing with it for a little while and it's pretty impressive. I've started coding version 5 of TableSmith with this and so far it's working pretty well.

I'll post more in the future as I find them.

Rallying Against 3E and d20

From a letter to Dragon magazine:

...I’d like to comment on the evolution of D&D®...I was completely engrossed in the game. However, supplement after supplement started pouring forth, plus a whole new bunch of characters. Add to that several lines of playing “aids,” manuals, pre-printed character sheets, etc. and the result is a mess. Now I see dungeon expeditions where everyone consults their manuals to check on a monster’s or character’s ability, making sure their tenth level “idiot” can handle a god know’s what armed with a light sabre. Alas for the good old days when a bucket of money didn’t have to be spent to keep up with the game.

Yeah! Take that, WotC and the d20 publishers! The old days before 3E/d20 were better!

Of course, the above was from The Dragon #27, July 1979. Over 20 years before anyone had even heard of d20 or the OGL...

d20 Sourcebooks for $5

Fantasy Flight Games is selling their Legends & Lairs d20 sourcebooks for $5 a pop (something gives me a feeling they may be shifting out of d20 and focusing on their boardgames...). Anyway, it's a pretty good deal if you ask me; these books originally went for $25-$28. I only have one FFG book (Traps & Treachery); many of their books interested me, but I didn't feel there was enough to make it worth the money. The usual mix seemed to be about half interesting material and half d20 "crunch" (new feats, new spells, new...you get the idea). But at $5 per book, I can certainly justify the cost. And I don't have to worry about updating the stuff I'm interested in to 3.5.

They're selling their mini-adventures for $1 each; not sure what the quality of those are...

Welcome to the RPG Hobby

From the aforementioned thread about the Book of Vile Darkness:

From what I’ve read about this book it seems to me to be suited for weak DMs that aren’t imaginative enough to bring an element of horror and evil to the game themselves.

You can use that argument for virtually any RPG book:

Monster Book: ...this book seems suited for weak DMs that aren't imaginative enough to come up with their own monsters themselves.

Magic Item Book: ...this book seems suited for weak DMs that aren't imaginative enough to come up with their own magic items themselves.

Campaign Setting Book: ...this book seems suited for weak DMs that aren't imaginative enough to come up with their own campaign world themselves.

Any RPG Rule Book: ...this book seems suited for weak DMs that aren't imaginative enough to come up with their own rules systems themselves.

Though it seems to go without saying, some gamers seem to be ignorant of this "industry secret": You don't need any of this stuff. You don't need Complete Arcane, or the new World of Darkness books, or GURPS 4th Edition, or Eberron or anything else. All you need is imagination, inspiration, and time.

Naturally, the last two items - and primarily the very last one - are the reasons most people buy any RPG book (most gamers have an abundance of imagination - whether they exercise it or not is another story). I'm always amused by people who claim that "X" is for people who aren't smart enough or imaginative enough or strong enough to come up with "X" on their own. The implication (sometimes unspoken, but usually not) is they are superior to the people who would purchase such a thing, since they don't need it themselves. I chalk it up to just another element of fanboy posturing.

Book of Tempests and Teapots

From a gaming message board on a thread concerning the Book of Vile Darkness:

And the existence of a book with that title, dealing with human sacrifice and necrophylia, is sure to cause harm to the RPG field too.

Detractors will point to the book as reason to keep children from playing--and such a work is indeed ample reason for any parent to bar their children from such gaming.

In all it is absolutely astonishing to me that WotC and Paizo too, will publish such material, promote it. It is detrimental to D&D and all RPGs alike.

Most subsequent postings in that thread agreed with the author.

That post was dated Sept 18, 2002. The only people that actually raised a fuss about the book were people that were worried someone would raise a fuss about the book. Not one word has otherwise been uttered about it in any remotely meaningful place outside of places like ENWorld and wizards.com. Not to mention the final impression most people had was that it wasn't that bad and actually was pretty good for what it presented. Most people thought the hype over the BoVD was just that - hype.

Just another example of my curious fascination of chatting with the Ghost of RPG Past...

Usenet vs. Web Forums

This is more of a post on technology rather than gaming, but hey... And, more of a stream-of-consciousness than a post... ;)

I was reading a discussion on Usenet in rec.games.frp.misc about where people were hanging out these days, since Usenet groups seem to be growing more quiet. Most people talk on Web forums, which is something some of the posters couldn't understand. In their words, how much harder is it to set up a newsreader versus registering for a Web forum? The answer is, it isn't (for the most part), but I'm afraid they're completely missing the point. The question shouldn't be "how hard is it to set up a newsreader", but rather, "how many people even know Usenet exists"? The obvious follow-up question is then: "Why should they care?"

"Back in the day", most Internet users knew about Usenet because they were technically-minded people and in one manner or another knew about all the major technologies that dominated the network. These days, most people on the Internet aren't technical people, any more than TV watchers are knowledgable about the broadcasting industry or car drivers are mechanics. To most people, the Internet is two things: the Web and e-mail (and for those who use web-based e-mail, they might even consider the Internet to be just the Web). Instant messaging is a close second, as well as peer-to-peer stuff like Kazaa and bittorrent (RSS readers may be up there as well in some circles). But ask the typical Internet user today - on AOL or otherwise - what FTP client they use or what they like best for telnet. They won't know what you're talking about.

This, then, begs the question: does Usenet serve a purpose any longer? Before the advent of the Web, or at least forums on the Web, Usenet was the place to go if you wanted to discussions - everything from sociology to gaming to software to politics. Well, Usenet and mailing lists. But now you have more people aware of and using web forums, what point does Usenet serve? It's an extra hassle to set up on your computer when you've already got a browser installed which most everyone already knows how to use. You also don't have to worry about interruptions in the newsfeed. Of course, Web servers being down or overzealous moderators removing or editting posts is a potential danger in the forums.

One of the benefits cited in the discussion was that Usenet provided a "central" location to discuss particular topics whereas the Web forums are scattered all over the place. But really, is that such an issue - or even a good thing? If you want to discuss D&D, for instance, there are forums all over, from company sites to personal pages, but the bulk of the discussion takes place at two sites: wizards.com and enworld.org. Without much effort I'm sure I could find 100 more web forums where D&D is discussed, but the majority of your fans are going to be at one or both of those sites (if not exclusively, in addition to the smaller venues). And that's a good thing - you have a choice of where to go. Someone who wants to keep up on D&D as a whole will visit WotC and/or ENWorld, but if they're a 1E enthusiast, they're likely to hang out at Dragonsfoot as well or Necromancer Games, if they're of the "3E rules/1E flavor" mindset...if they're enamoured of Arcana Unearthed, they're over at Monte Cook's site...and you get the idea.

Not to mention the volume of posts. Whether mailing list, web forum, or newsgroup, only a fraction of those who subscribe or visit actually post. This is often for the best, since otherwise the sheer number of posts would be overwhelming. Now, imagine that everyone who discusses D&D on the various web sites all congregated to rec.games.frp.dnd. Relatively speaking, the ratio of posts to members would probably be the same as it is now. But in absolute numbers? That's the reason I unsubscribed from Wizards' "DND-L" - too much to read. There's also the fact that so much of what's discussed there - and elsewhere - deals either with mechanical minutiae I don't care about or the same tired discussions (alignment, "realism", etc.) that were old 15 years ago.

Another complaint from the discussion is that ISPs aren't informing people of the existence of Usenet. So? They don't inform people of FTP or Telnet, either. Why is that a problem? Most people have no use for either of those utilities, and Usenet isn't any more useful than web forums - or weblogs, for that matter. If people knew about Usenet, I don't think that many of them would be clamoring to use it. You have to look past the technology and look at what it's used for - Usenet is a big unmoderated web forum. People aren't going to care if they already have places on the Web they already hang out, and most prefer moderation to the "wilds" that Usenet groups are known to be.

I should also note that I wouldn't even be reading Usenet if it wasn't for Google, since I access it through "Google Groups" using, naturally, a web browser. I poke my head out there once in awhile to see if there's any interesting discussion. I don't go to the effort of posting, and I don't feel like setting up a newsreader. Usenet offers me nothing that any of the sites I mentioned above can't give me. It served its purpose admirably in years past, but since it offers nothing more than most Web forums and actually requires more work (or tolerance) to use, most people who learn about it will avoid it.

E-Mailing Blog Entries

This is a test post, to see how this works...

Edit: Cool - it worked! Yeah, I'm behind the times when it comes to the "blogosphere". I was just thinking the other day how it would be more convenient at times to e-mail blog entries, and now I see that it's a common feature. Good to know that other people think like me...