I finally cut the shackles of the cube and will be diving in the clear waters of the Caribbean for a week in Puerto Rico.
No WFRP. No Java. No blojsom. Maybe some twitter. Just a book about Agincourt, the battle, by Juliet Barker (good source material for a campaign in Bretonnia by the way), my wife and child and a lot of sun.
And boat drinks.
Whoa. A post.
Well, seems my little corner of the web does get read. Chad Wattler, a host of Fear the Boot recognized my post where I call him out on the use of GM screens.
It made me smile. A lot. Chad is right, the post was both tongue-in-cheek and serious. I would not likely hit Chad, and going back to the original podcast, re-listening to it, I still think that Dan and Chad owe Chris Hussey an apology. Both of them were, as I said before, elitist asses, and I stand by what I wrote then.
I must not have too many hard feelings about Fear the Boot, I still listen to them and consider them the strongest of gaming shows online. Though the Podgecast gives them a good chase. Hey, three of the hosts of the Podgecast are FTB alums and the fourth was a guest! That's saying something about what they learned from Dan and crew.
Just what have I been up too?
Working. Coding. Thinking. Loving. Drinking.
Not necessarily in that order though. Or in equal quantities. Coding seems to have bubbled up to the surface.
I've started committing to the blojsom project. blojsom "is a full-featured, multi-user, multi-blog package written in Java. blojsom aims to retain simplicity in design while adding user flexibility in areas like back-end storage, flavors, templating, themes, and plugins."
I've followed the software for years and now committing fixes and enhancements. ACD is run atop it (along with Tomcat and Apache and Linux. Nothing a Microsoftie would enjoy.)
I'll post again shortly about another distraction I'm giving into, hardcore JavaScript, and how it's letting my play my games and share with other gamers.
Here it is.
The first episode of Morrslieb's Shadow is online.
Pardon the interruptions, the bastardization of pseudo-French, any reference to women's undergarments aflame, and how much smarter an eight year old is than I.
Future releases will be far better produced, and likely will follow in the format of "recap" vs. "actual play."
Let me know what you think...
ACD is configured, at the moment, to require that you subscribe in your favorite reader to consume the podcast over RSS. This will change shortly.
Additionally, I decided you needed to listen to this in MPEG4, i.e., m4a, AAC, etc. So, go get the codec and quit complaining.
I just learned that a table opened at Penguicon for running a game.
It's been 20 years since I ran at a con (AFF c. 1989). It was a rocky game of Shadowrun 1st ed. I think I had 20 minutes to prep.
Here's my primer:
Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, 2d edition
WFRP is Games Workshop's groundbreaking RPG set in the epic, grim and perilous world of Warhammer Fantasy Battles. WFRP 2d Edition expands and builds on the 20 year old system that won accolades in 1986.
Poisoned Borders, an ongoing personal campaign, is spun off in this one-shot as local heroes bravely pickup where transient heroes left off...
"Three days ago, an elf, a dwarf and a priest of Sigmar returned with two men-at-arms and the dwarf high priestess of Valaya. Without as much as a word, they left Helmgart for Bretonnia in the west. In their wake: joy and mystery. The priestess, regaled as a hero for returning with a lost tome of healing that promised a cure to the racking cough plaguing townfolk and garrison, decended into madness. Her ever public rantings foretell greater dangers lurking in the steep mountains above Helmgart."
The party of 4-6 players are locals of Helmgart. Mostly friendly to each other and very bored with scratching out existence on the Empire's rocky western edge, the mystery of just what would shake a dwarf's sanity begs your attention. And now Leo brings his father's journal: greenskins!
Greenskins aren't so tough. Then again, there is the matter of the priestess...
I would like to record the 4 hour session. Maybe just blog/tweet the hell out of it. I'll play it by ear.
My copy arrived last week.
After a vacation in the mountains, I finally set up the game, cut the counters and ran through one of the scenarios.
Wow... Excellent game!
I poked good natured fun at the "removal of the gameyness" but I see the balance of complexity and approachability is met.
I have some rule questions, yet otherwise a great show by MMP.
The campaign of Poisoned Borders is nearly completed. And with the epilogue, a grander campaign is planned, one that I hope to have the players travel the breadth of Bretonnia. A story of epic danger and threat to the Old World. Ha! Sounds grand at least and that's a first step.
The lost upper deep of the Groz Zorn was not plumbed, but hints at greater forces of Chaos at work were discovered. I may want to venture back to Groz Zorn with a different party in play.
The time between sessions has to made shorter. I enjoyed playing today. I have to engage the other half in this distraction, at least let her see the "release" as an outlet of imagination.
I just finished my psql upgrade. It went flawlessly for a DBA hack.
Check out this primer for a campaign by Herb at Places to Go, People to Be.
This is awesome. Yeah, all about OD&D, but I love the feeling this conveys to the players. I'm an adherent to the theories of Old School, and a reason I like WFRP so much (it lends itself so well to the style of play I enjoyed so much growing up).
I'm going to craft such a list for my campaign and players. The best item:
The two player rule: If at least two people show we'll play...and come up with reason why you weren't there.
This reason alone gets in our group's way far to often.
ACD will be coming down shortly. I'm planning a blojsom upgrade to the data driven platform of blojsom 3.2.
The only thing holding me back is (a) the theme, which could use a refresh anyway, something more with more game and (b) impact to other blogs hosted.
Running in parallel is possible... but could be resource intensive. I'll be planning something shortly. Some of you might have caught wind of the upgrade with the flurry of development I've been doing to enhance some of the features of blojsom 3.2 (like twitter updates) and with the widget tool... more ideas are brewing.
I'm about to have my players venture across the breadth of Bretonnia on a grand campaign of heroism to "save the world" as they know it. And even as planning this campaign has been fun, executing it will be challenging.
And while a couple of attempts at organizing "evil overlords" (PDF, also read World Powers and Big-Picture Plotlines and The Care and Feeding of Evil Overlords), have failed (wholly because of natural forces pushing against regular play), there have been really good ideas from those that have participated in the experiment. And to them, I thank and salute. And add, watch the wiki for your ideas and NPCs to enter play and influence actions for and against the PCs. Though I will not resurrect the players, only to string them along. And for that, I apologize to them.
I'm really looking forward to starting the campaign. My player's characters may well retire in glory, or die trying.
Bernard Cornwell's Agincourt is good. I couldn't put it down and suffered during the day from withdrawals, marking the time til I could turn the pages and return to the brutal, muddy, and cold fields of France in 1415.
If you like historical fiction, make time for reading (as I do), maybe play a game set in a 16th century Germanic fantasy world, you will like Cornwell's weaving of history with fiction. A lot.
The protagonist even feels like a character plucked from a WFRP campaign.
I just generated my GPG key for "caffeinated." I'll link it off the menu. It will be available too by the feed. You are subscribed to the feed right?
I just pushed it to the key servers as well. The fingerprint is also present on the download link on your right.
It is: 9199 8F00 6F75 3BF0 49E9 D0B3 C193 CACA 590D E7EA.
I picked up Bernard Cornwell's Agincourt at the local library yesterday after having read the praise given it by Ronald Maxwell at the Wall Street Journal in Victory By Longbow.
Until recently, most adolescent boys growing up in the Western world have had the dream of being a knight in shining armor, part of a world involving chivalry, damsels in distress, brightly caparisoned destriers, turreted and crenellated castle walls, tapestries, tournaments, broad swords. These elements are present in Mr. Cornwell's story, but only as a thin outer layer that gets peeled away with every turn of the page. Here the medieval world transitioning to the Renaissance is much closer to Hobbes's vision of humanity: "continual fear, danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
Mr. Cornwell does not over-adorn the splendor, opulence and high art of Europe at the beginning of the 15th century. But neither does he obscure its darker side: numbing cold, clawing hunger, savage hand-to-hand fighting, the burning of heretics, the arbitrariness of justice and the arrogance of power. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
As my WFRP campaign prepares to venture across the breadth of Bretonnia in a sinister plot of evil, and having read the pulp Wahammer piece Knight Errant this historical fiction dovetails nicely. Very nicely. 100 pages in, and it is a page turner.
A strong recommendation!
I have a royal blue velvet dice bag I bought in c. 1986. It has a stain (that appears to be coffee, but is really unknown). It's stitching is true even after a score of years. The dice inside the bag dates from the same era save three (purchased last year at my FLGS).
There are 21 marbled d6s. I remember buying them for my days playing Shadowrun (dice pools need lots of dice). There is a split set of opaque dice, 2 d10 and a d6, in royal blue with white numbering and polished edges. Seems it probably belonged to a tube at some time; where the others have gone to is lost to history.
Then there is a full set of Gamescience crystal clear dice. All save the d6 and 2 d10s have the original wax coloring I did 23 years ago. I know this because I just pushed the wax out of the d6 and 2 d10s to re-ink them with a fine-point Sharpie.
Soon I will have two new sets of Gamescience dice: Coal Black and Saffron Yellow. I will hand ink them in Yellow and Black (opposite their face color of course). I just like that scheme... like yellow and black striping on cautionary tape or signs.
I'm writing about this because I have become an adherent to the Gamescience philosophy of dice manufacturing and design. Have you seen the video of Colonel Louis Zocchi on dice? If not, you should. It might change your mind about the dice you use in your games.
Part 1
Part 2
I just picked up Shades of Empire: Organizations of the Old World (SoE) at my FLGS Days of Knights in Newark, DE.
The perfect bound 126 pp. source book is well done and worth the $30USD. This title is also the first book published by FFG I’ve owned and I’m duly impressed with the quality.
The Pat Loboyko cover of a pistol wielding, sword swinging member of the Imperial Navy1 in crimson red, bearing a trophy skull (as is the fashion of many denizens in WFRP sourcebooks) draws the reader into the book. It has striking resemblance to Children of the Horned Rat in framing, though I’m reserved in opinion that FFG picked as topical a subject for Shades of Empire as CotHR. That aside, Loboyko does good work and I like him only the tiniest bit more than Ralph Horsley.2
For fans of Green Ronin’s defining work in bringing WFRP back to the shelf in the 2nd edition, and particularly Chris Pramas work and passion for the game, will be pleased to see his name, and many other familiar names, in the design and writing credits. My hope is that this a hint at more work from Pramas’ pen to come under the FFG imprint (despite my rather outspoken and conspiratorial opinions on the subject of the parting of ways between Green Ronin and Games Workshop).
From the back cover, we get a preview of the organizations detailed inside:
As I have recently used the Cult of Handrich in my campaign, and in a previous one, the Roadwardens, SoE nicely supplements my on-going use of these organizations, should they be encountered again. This makes the book immediately useful to me. The broad scope of the subjects easily makes it useful to many campaigns set in the Empire at large, as well as hints for crossing the borders into Tilea and the Mootland.
The contents of SoE is worth the cover price. Each organization is written up with a "Player’s Section" and "GM’s Section." The layout of each organization is such that GMs reading the complete details can flesh out NPCs and players can build character backgrounds. The purpose, history, structure, goals, signs, responsibilities and more is provided in each chapter (incredibly apropos to PCs starting or in a career path touched by the organization). GMs be forewarned: if your players pick up this book nothing is off-limits. Each GM’s Section provides interesting secrets, mentors (NPCs), locations and plot hooks. Spiking, twisting, or otherwise obfuscating these details is near mandatory in individual campaigns.
This last point brings up the what is most enjoyable about the sourcebook: how to layout and design your own organization or cult. A lot of GMs may fear the blank page and taking a cue from this resource is a great start. I liked this outline so much, I created a PDF template for download (on the RSS Feed... consider it bonus content).
In conclusion, I first shied away at the idea of SoE when I first read about it in the forums of FFG, hoping for an elf or dwarf source book instead. Yet having it in my hands I can now see it’s value to the GM and Player. SoE gets a recommendation from this GM of WFRP. SoE has a lot of potential to richly detail the streets of your campaign with new allies or enemies of your players. The organizations protagonists spring from the pages and offer new dangers, or riches (ha!), in associating with them.