RPGs: Good Observation by Mearls

From a forum discussion a little while back:

The staggering majority of d20 books aren't bad, or horribly written, they're just pointless. There are literally hundreds of titles out there that don't offer any real, compelling reason to buy them.
- Mike Mearls

Of course, if you want to bog down your game with more and more optional rules, I guess that would be a reason...

In any case, this reflects my views - and many others - on a lot of material that was produced for d20: What's the point? I mean, the combo of the DMG, PHB, and MM is really plenty to keep you going for years, assuming you have some imagination to help you along. Everything else, even books that have a point like Complete Arcane and Lords of Madness is just icing. Though I suppose you could throw a fourth book in if you need a setting, like the FRCS or Eberron book; the core books don't really give you a ready-made setting, despite the Greyhawk references.

On the other hand, that is a nice aspect of the PDF publishers. They can produce something that 90% of buyers would have no use for, but which is perfect for that other 10%. Very little overhead, which is appropriate for niche products. Of course, even then you have to determine if the potential audience is big enough.

Web: Attention Webmasters!

Please stop using the "blank" target tag for your hyperlinks. If I want to open a link in a new window, I'll do so on my own. If I click on a link directly it means I don't need to be on your page any longer and want to go to the new one - keeping a window open for you is bothersome.

In any case, opening a new browser window for your link is something I thought was being discouraged primarily due to the fact that "windows" are not a universal concept (PDAs and cellphones don't use them in the sense we think of them with things like Macs or Windows XP). The target attribute is not included in XHTML Strict, which is the only true HTML anyway.

This technique is somewhat similar to pages that disable the "back" button in your browser so you won't leave their site. That infuriates me to no end. You can get around it, sure. But you shouldn't have to. Your job as a webmaster is to make navigating your site as easy as possible for a visitor. If you want to keep people on your site, give them a reason to stay. Trying to "force" someone to stay on your site is a surefire way to keep them from coming back.

Hex Maps

For my current campaign I wanted to put together some regional maps for overland travel. That wasn't much of an issue in my last campaign; I generally just hand-waved that sort of thing, and at high levels teleportation handled the lion's share of travel. I've also become enamored of the old Judges Guild maps, with the 5-mile hexes where each hex always has something in it: a mysterious (or mundane) village, a monster lair, some weird ruin or crumbling statue, etc. The question then came down to "what to use" for the maps.

The first obvious choice is CC-Pro since, well, I own it and I should get my money's worth. I also found a JG-style hex template for CCPro on the web, complete with numbers in each hex. The problem with going this route is that it's not particularly fast. It's not bad, but I wanted something quick. To that end, I decided to use a mapping tool that was specifically designed for creating hex maps. I looked for how to do this in CCPro (other than just throwing a hex grid over a regular map), but didn't find anything. So, I looked for other software designed for hex maps. I found four: Grid, AKS Hexmapper, Hex - World Creator, and Atlantean Enquirer. Oddly enough, these programs are all pretty old; as far as I can tell they haven't been updated past the 20th century. I suspect part of the reason is that hex maps have gone out of style; TSR used to use them all the time. Some people seem to think they're only really for old wargames. Others believe that every map must be an artistic masterpiece with utility being a quaint afterthought. There are even a few who are so immersed in their own egos that they can't fathom the value of a hex map and think that they're only for people who can't read a "real" map. In any case, I believe hex maps do have value and are quite useful in a tabletop game setting. Anyway...

I remember Grid from years ago. It's a very complex mapper, but it's a DOS program, so I pretty much set it to the side. I realize I can run DOS apps in a command window in XP, but I'd rather deal with something written with Windows 3.1 in mind at least. Hex - World Creator has a lot of potential (as well as some extra features I don't need), but the biggest problem with it is that it's very unstable. Given it's repeated crashes, I rejected it pretty quickly. From what I've seen elsewhere, others have had the same problem as well. Atlantean Enquirer was just...weird. I filed it away for ideas but I'm not using it. I ended up selecting AKS Hexmapper. Like the others, it appears to be unsupported, though it does have a small community of followers on Yahoo, mainly for trading tilesets. I was actually pretty impressed by Hexmapper. The program is small and fairly simple, but it has a clean, fairly intuitive interface and works well. One nice feature about it is that it can load any BMP file so you could convert existing maps into hex maps if you so desire.

There are some features that are lacking ("undo", for instance), so I'll likely do some post-work in Paint Shop Pro. But for something that's easy to use and gives pretty decent results, I'd recommend the program. It's everything my own Wilderness Mapper should have been but wasn't.

Once I finish the maps, I'm hoping to put together some JG-style tables to generate interesting features that can crop up in each hex...

When Posting PDFs on Your Site...

...make sure I can download it and look at it at my leisure. Don't force me to open it in my browser. That's very annoying. I know you can do that with all this object-oriented stuff that the young people are into, but here's an idea to try: Use the browser for HTML and Acrobat Reader, running on its own, for PDFs.

Don't make me issue an imperial decree...

T'Raukzul is done

I had started a longer post about this Reaper miniature, but I had another window open in Firefox that hosed the entire session. I hate that - I'll have a few tabs open to different pages and if one gets screwed up I lose the entire app. I love Firefox, but when that happens (and it's not uncommon), I get annoyed. Hurry up and fix that, hippies! Yes, I'm complaining about free software - free software that's better than IE. I don't care - I demand satisfaction!

Anyway, T'Raukzul is cool. Expensive, but cool.

Rant: SheetToGo and an MS wireless mouse

SheetToGo is a program for PalmOS that allows you to view/use Excel files on your Palm. It's part of DocumentsToGo from DataViz (which also allows you to view/use Word files on the Palm as well - that's the "WordToGo" part of the suite). Since I'm an Excel junky (I find it easier to organize thoughts and ideas in a spreadsheet than a word processor), I really like SheetToGo. It makes me regret buying...I forget the name, but it was another Excel-like Palm program. I bought it awhile back and it was OK but not quite what I wanted for a Palm spreadsheet. Then I ended up getting DocumentsToGo for free with a new Palm. Sigh...

Anyway, that's not the rant. The rant is that when I try to adjust the size of a column, nine times out of ten the stupid program brings up the pop-up menu that assumes I tapped the column rather than the divider between two columns. It's probably something I'm doing wrong, but still... I still like the program, but that issue always annoys me.

As long as I'm ranting, what's the deal with the stiffness of the mouse wheel button on the Microsoft wireless "Intellimouse Explorer" mouse? I picked one up the other day since one of our cats has taken to going after my mouse cord when it's moving around (usually while I'm doing something vitally important, like playing World of Warcraft). I tried one in the past but discovered that the weight difference compared to the old mouse I had was adversely affecting my performance in Unreal Tournament 2004; having batteries in the mouse makes it a lot heavier and I had gotten very used to the lighter mouse. However, since WoW is my addicition these days and isn't a twitch-heavy game like UT2004, it's not as much of an issue. And this mouse is quite nice (though I disagree with the feature that allows horizontal scrolling; we really don't want to encourage that). But clicking the mouse wheel button is maddening; it's very stiff, and half the time I end up in "autoscroll"mode when I'm trying to open a link in a new tab in Firefox. And I do that all the time.

I like the mouse a lot, but that aspect of it is really getting on my nerves...

Interesting Blurb from Dragon #41

In an article from the September 1980 issue, Tom Wham predicts:

"The microcomputer will take the garbage out of gaming, and leave the fun to us humans. Instead of a DM’s screen, the chic Dungeonmaster of the future will sit behind a computer, do a better job of monitoring the players and non-players, and enjoy the game more.
...
And the poor gamer who just can’t seem to find anyone to play with will be blessed with a 24-hour opponent. One who never wants to quit, doesn’t break for meals, never goes home to a spouse, and who knows the rules to every game the two of them play."

The second forecast has been with us for quite some time (since about when the article was written); it's taken a little while for the first. But laptops aren't so uncommon at the gaming table any longer.

The problem these days isn't having a computer to use, it's actually having software that makes a DM's job easier. Granted, there are a number of programs out there that are supposed to do that, but in my experience the more they try to do the more they get in the way. There are exceptions (DM's Familiar and TableSmith come to mind, of course), but they're precisely exceptions because they don't try to be the do-all and end-all of gaming software.

Of course, that's a discussion for another time...

Myriad Tidbits

Of course, "myriad tidbits" is rather redundant, isn't it?

Mythosa Chronicle #10 is now available. I'm still pretty much on the "monthly" schedule, but I don't want to be beholden to that. I'm a little surprised I've kept up with it for almost a year. Seems to be a good style for me - publishing a few articles on various topics about once a month. I would like to do something more...standard, as in a sourcebook on Mythosa's kingdoms, or a "big book of magic" or whatever. Unfortunately, doing that entails a lot of work I may not want to do at a particular time. For instance, while I find Amaristan interesting (wouldn't be there if I didn't), at the moment I don't feel like fleshing it out to the degree that I'm going to be soon for Ralynia. If I tried doing that, it would turn from fun to work and would take longer than it should and would ultimately be disappointing. If this was something I got paid for that might be different, but even then there's the question of whether it would be as good as it could be - if you want to do something, it's a lot easier to make it good versus doing it because of a financial or professional obligation.

That does lead me to wonder if I should have built up my campaign in a different manner. Rather than "top-down" if I should have gone "bottom-up". I think what I've done is a combination of both - "top-down" for the general details of the world, so there's a general coherency to the whole thing, and "bottom-up" for the specifics of campaigning. If that makes any sense (I think I'm rambling now...).

I still need to re-do the front page of the site. I'm cool with the general layout with the menu, title, and background. But the change log, search area (does anyone actually use that? I may pull it), web counter, etc. seem kind of thrown together. I may get rid of the web counter, too. I originally put it there for my own use, but any value it has is superceded by the web stats I have with my host. Come to think of it, I haven't used that counter in months. Not to mention the fact that posting your visits seems to be as useful these days as showing all the "kewl" awards you've won - no one cares any more.

Well, gotta stop writing and get some painting done. I've been doing much better in the past couple of weeks - doing any painting is more than I've done in a few months. Even finished a figure in less than an hour (an otyugh from WotC's defunct Chainmail line). It's not going to win any awards but it's good enough for the tabletop.