YouTubes of the Week: No Connection At All Edition
Two videos I just had to blog about this week, but they’re both short. The first, “Mike Tyson’s Brunch Out” which is hilarious and difficult to describe. And after the jump, the first trailer for the first Dragonlance animated movie… and boy, it does not look good, despite some awesome voice talent.
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Campaign Fluff Tools
Tonight I had planned to write an Adventure Prep post for this week’s game, but I don’t have a lot of time and will do it Tuesday evening. Instead I’m whipping up a short post on some Fluffy tools I use to better create a sense of immersion in our games.
One of the walls of my basement gaming room features 2 very useful props.
1) A large Vinyl map of Ptolus, the city where the campaign is based. It’s available from Fiery Dragon Productions. Whenever I plan an adventure I use it to place the action and I refer to it during gaming sessions. Getting up and pointing to specific parts when needed adds a nice dimension and engages the players who crane their necks to have a look. It’s quite large (31” X 47”), looks great on my wall and it features a reference grid (A to O on the horizontal and 1 to 10 on the vertical) that allows to find key streets, buildings and landmarks.
2) A whiteboard where I write campaign specific info grouped in 3 categories (these info are also copied in our Google Group). Here’s a rundown of the three:
Points of interests: Buildings and neighborhoods where characters have interacted with key NPCs and organizations.
Plot Hooks: Any or all NPCs or objects the players have interacted with that could be revisited (at their initiative or mine) in a future adventure. When players seem interested about something, I note it down and add it there.
Rumours and News: Rumours, hints and red herrings about the current and future games. Writing them are a blast because they act like a brainstorm for present and future adventure ideas.
As an example I thought I’d share what is written on the board this week (Although it’s technically readable if you click the image)
Points of Interests:
- Keepers of the Veil: A militant Undead-Fighting organization
- Pale Tower: A tower where most of the Celestials of Ptolus Live
- Khatru Manor: A Militaristic Noble House, Cixi is part of that House
- Iridithil’s House: The Elven Sanctuary of Ptolus, Homebase of Aravar and Lillie.
- Knights of the Pale: A militant Demon-Fighting organization Cruguer would like to join.
- House Dallimothan: A Dragon-friendly Noble House. Home of Plantagonox, my pet NPC.
Rumours and News:
- Unkillable Troll in the Sewers
- Killraven (crime Syndicate) dragon trains Ratmen Rogues
- New Drug Competes with Shivel (another drug) in Warrens.
- Fighting Seen on Spire (Foreshadowing of things to come)
- House Wars: Khatru vs Rau (Following this, the prisonner was a House Rau noble, a Pirate Noble House)
- Vladaam seen in Necropolis (The Vladaams are the über Evil Noble family)
Plot Hooks:
- Troll in Sewer
- “Rescued” Rau Noble
- Lillie’s Spriggans
- Joining the Knights of the Pale
- Plantagonox’s missions.
- Cixi’s Homeworld
- Slavers under Ptolus?
- Objects of note
- Onyx Orb of the Trees
- The Ratskull gem
- The Demon’s horn in Amber
What kind of fluff tools do you use?
You can do that to Magic cards too, it's just not a big deal
We’ve talked briefly about Eye of Judgement before, the Sony/Wizards of the Coast game that merges the CCG with the PS3. I haven’t played it, nor to my knowledge has anyone on the staff here, but reviews say it’s pretty fun. It still has a huge cost of entry, however.
Well, maybe not so bad, because apparently you can photocopy the cards and the system will still recognize them. Whoops! Just find a friend with some cards and a Kinko’s, and you’re in business.
I would imagine that Sony technicians are working hard to find a way to beat this through a software update, which they can force you to install before playing online.
First Impressions: Guitar Hero 3 (Xbox 360)
I strolled right into my local GameStop yesterday and picked up Guitar Hero 3 (game only) for the Xbox 360. (Also grabbed the Orange Box, but resisted Halo 3 for now.)
Using my trusty band THAC0, I’d estimate I’ve played through about half of the game on Medium, maybe a little more. I still don’t have my 360 wired for online play, so I can’t tell you how that plays. I also only bought the game, so I’m still using my GH2 controller. (I’m planning on getting the guitar that comes with Rock Band.)
Inq. of the Week: Webvertising
Transformers! More than meets the eye. Transformers! Better than expected but still meh. Many of you felt it was pretty damn good too, so that sounds like a success overall. I watched it the night after the poll was posted, and found many, many flaws but was quite impressed by Shia LeBeouf. I can see why so many people liked it… and it definitely brought back some nostalgic memories. (As did The Incredible Changebots)
ChattyDM recently posted about his decision to pull GoogleAds from his blog, due to disappointing returns. Well, we sympathize for sure: GoogleAds was the first ad program I signed up for near the site’s inception. In the twoish years it’s been up, we’ve earned less than $30 in clicks. Granted, there was a lot of time when they had sub-optimal placement. I’ve always strived to make ads as unobstrusive as possible, since it bothers me when sites are more ads than content. Despite placing it at the bottom of every post and in the upper-right corner, no arrangement seemed to generate more clicks.
There was a period of time when we sold plenty of Amazon merchandise through our affiliate links, but that died off completely as well. Presently, I pulled the Amazon widget for causing too many load errors. It’ll return in some form using all the new tools after I get a chance to play around with them.
It was a few months ago when we were approved for Text Link Ads, which were recommended to us by GameProducer. Text Link Ads has been great, allowing us to finally operate in the black and put money both towards increasing our bandwidth to keep up with increased popularity and in spending it on contests. Unfortunately, according to David Airey and Yehuda, TLAs are causing some problems in search rankings due how the links work. I haven’t noticed a problem yet, but if we do lose search ranking, I’m not sure what we’ll do…
So anyway, this is a general question based on your surfing habits, as we try to make a decision that keeps us running and keeps you, the all-important reader, happy!
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