Linky love from a papercut DM!
Hey there,
I’m taking it cool today, Gym was tiring, and while I am working on a Robin Laws post, I realized that I need to spend a little bit more time reading up on stuff to do a good post on it.
Plus, I got a paper cut on my ring finger today and it makes typing painful and slow! Stupid job with too much paper! Woe is me… 
However, let me point you toward a interesting things I recently found about.
First up is Geek’s Dream Girl, a blog that offers Geeky dating advice and talks about e’s (that’s her online persona) recent introduction to D&D. She invited me over to participate in her next edition of her Blog Carnival. What a cool concept: you ask bloggers to choose their own posts to be featured on your blog!
Next up is my friend’s Yax recent call for DM tips over on his blog in exchange for a chance to win his Comp copy of D&D’s Exemplar of Evil. He got a whooping 160 comments on that post (!!!) . So instead of being a jealous jerk, I’m inviting to go over there and read all the gems Yax’ readers posted.
Finally, there’s a new ‘kid’ in the DM blogging town who just opened his blog. His name is Rip and he was somewhat forced into it by Tommi and I after he posted a great long article about making interesting villains over in my forums. RipperX, a long time D&D 2e Storyteller, and recent commented here took his courage in both hands and made the leap. You can find his new blog, called Advanced Gaming and Theory, here. His Villain post can be found here.
Oh and the Evil DM is trying to stick it to the Google man by trying to rack up 100$ in Ad money. He’s rewarding the clickers with some gratuitous Cheesecake pictures (Note to non-English speaker: it’s an euphemism for ‘partially undressed ladies’) .
There you go Ripper, your 1st link! That should give you your 1st Technorati authority level in a few days! Good luck mate!
All right, I have almost no prep to do this week, but I have to do some serious Ret-Coning to fix last game’s horrendous plot exposition. I’ll talk to you later this week but chances are I’ll skip the Adventure Prep post if I don’t have anything relevant to say about it .
Cheers!
Inq. of the Week: All We Want To Do Is Eat Your Brains
Last week’s poll was quite informative and surprising! First, I learned that no one under the age of 16 reads our site, so I can swear more! Hell damn fart! Secondly, the bulk of our audience is between 31 and 40 weighing at 40%, with 20-25 at 24%, 26-30 at 21%, over 41 at 9%, and 16-19 at 7%. Finally, I learned that Bartoneus wants me to feel old by placing my age as the cutoff between two categories.
Speaking of which, he and his wife Sucilaria moved into a new house recently and celebrated in a typically geeky way: by holding a multi-room Xbox party, with several of us bringing our 360′s and TV’s and networking them together. It also served as an impromptu gathering of Critical-Hits staff members. Myself, Bartoneus, Sucilaria, joshx0rfz, drscotto, Sion, DarthCthulhu, and steve/The Foodist were all in attendance, along with frequent commentors Abe (who I had never met in person) and Blumpkin.
A sweet projector/sound system setup made for a near ideal way to rock out in Rock Band, and we used the projector plus the Wii to hold an improptu “Worst Smash Brothers Player” tournament.
However, the star of the day was Halo 3, which was built for these kinds of gatherings, and offered a number of different gameplay modes. (Unfortunately, my disk got damaged in the shuffle, so I won’t be playing for a while!) From there, we quickly settled on the Infection mode of multiplayer as our favorite. I mean, obviously Zombies + Halo = Win, but it was a blast to have everyone start on the same team as a trained military unit… and then have the zombies overrun them and plans fall apart. Bartoneus in particular was faced with a common zombie movie dilemma as we once stood back to back, but then I was taken out by a vent-leaping joshx0rfz. Then Bart had to face me in zombie form, and couldn’t bear to kill his former friend… until a turret did it for him. Of course, his survival was short lived, as he soon stood alone against the ravening hordes coming after him. He tried in vain to shoot himself in the head before the zombies got him, but that’s impossible to do in Halo, and he was all out of grenades… then it was over.
In the spirit of that, I ask a very important question whose answer could come in handy some day!
Loading ...Now if you’ll excuse me… braaaaaiiiiinnnnsssss…
Of Exercise Videogames and Musical Rumours
No RPG content here… but a few geeky lifestyle comments and a video game scoop.
All right, my stress is under control. Exercise helps a lot, but end of weeks are always easier. My big test for my new stress-control strategies is going to be tomorrow morning (i.e. returning to work).
Friday morning, before I left for my friend PM’s house for a Geek Movie day, I picked up my Gym things and went to do a short session of stress-busting Cardio.
I did my required 30 minutes and as I was walking toward the floor mats to do some abdominals and lumbar exercise (I have a weak back and those exercise are magical), I stopped beside the Dance Dance Revolution station (It’s a PS2 with 2 full-sized metal dance pads).
Since it was Good Friday and the gym was mostly empty I said ‘what the hell!’ and stepped on the machine.
After spending a few minutes learning to navigate the interface, I started the ‘workout’ option, entered how much I weigh (215 lbs, although the gym’s scale under weighs me by about 10 lbs) and entered the time (15 minutes).
I’m no swan, I move like a lot of nerdy white overweight guys. However, after 5 minutes, my geeky side took over my self-conscious neurotic one and my nerd side started analyzing movement patterns to make it easier. I failed, miserably, but boy was that fun!
I ended up doing a second 15 minute series of songs (bringing my cardio session to a never before reached 60 minutes!)
Being of the slightly obsessive-compulsive nerdism school, I had found me a new project! [Read the rest of this article]
Game Design Exercises
(This is a guest article by Jacob Davenport, designer of Covert Action and owner of Play Again Games. You can read more of his excellent articles about games and game design at his site.)
Every designer has to design in his or her own way. For me, game designs don’t spring from nothing, I have to be thinking about it and working on it. I don’t wake up from sleeping with a good design in my head, I don’t gather them as I am paying attention to other things. I need to work at designing, and here’s a bunch of exercises to get my mind working. I do these with a time limit, because I find that a deadline, even an artificial one, pushed me forward and prevents me from doing any self-editing. I sit with a two-minute sand timer and my notebook. This is how I work.
Most of these exercises follow the same pattern: brainstorm, churn, brainstorm, design. None of these exercises is supposed to get in the way of good design. If a promising game idea brews up in the middle of an exercise then ignore the exercise, ignore the timer, and let the ideas flow. [Read the rest of this article]
Some weekend Portal viewing
Stop-motion Portal Lego video, set to the awesome end song.
The CH crew will be spending this weekend playing Xbox (and maybe some Wii and other games as well), so mayhap we’ll get a chance to play some games we haven’t played before, or maybe we’ll just play a lot of Halo 3 and Rock Band, as usual!
YABM: Welcome new commenters, almost 2000 comments!
YABM: Yet another Blog Milestone
Having been a bit out of it in the last few weeks and having finally tackled the very passion inducing subject of 4e (and Paizo’s 3.5 strategy) I haven’t been able to personally welcome each new commenter on the blog as I tried to do before.
So I’m taking a few minutes to welcome you and thank you warmly for investing the effort to put your thoughts out here. I hope you will find, like I do, that this growing community is fascinating, involved, passionate and respectful.
In no particular order (and with added extra linky love to your respective blogs, go technorati), welcome to :
- Tetsubo
- Donavan
- Michael Natale
- GAZZA
- The DM
- Brian
- Deadshot
- Yehuda (indirectly with a link from his game news blog Purple Pawn)
- Shadow145
- Scot Newbury
- God of Awesome
- Jeremy
- Composite
- Jeff Rients
- Aywren
- Justin Hilyard
- xfoo
- Epic Level Grognard
- BrianB
- Greenvesper
I know I already welcomed some of you, but I don’t think one can overextend his hospitality.
While we’re doing the whole meta-blogging thing, this blog is just 9 comments shy of hitting the 2000 comments mark. I don’t have a contest or a prize set up for it yet (I’m planning a much bigger thing with Graham and my soon-to-be-unveiled sponsor) but I’ll chime in later and name the 2000th commenter I’ll make sure it’s not me
Also, this week I rose over the 200 000th rank on Technorati (that’s a far cry from my initial 8 000 000th place 6 months ago) giving me an authority level of 40 (which I started from 0 again when I moved out of Blogger in late November). Thanks to those who linked to me.
It’s now a running joke in my gaming group that I level up faster on Technorati than I allow my players to do so in the game.
All right you have a nice Easter holiday (for the Christians out there) for the rest, have a great weekend!
DM Chronicles, Session 13: Of Moons and Xanathos Railroads, Part 2
See part 1 here.
After the fight and Eric’s Bare-assed performance we moved on the evening’s 3rd scene.
Now I won’t get into details of the scene, because there’s no way I could describe it without spending hundreds of words in backstory.
Let’s just say that this time I really managed to surpass my tendency to over-complicate simple plans and it landed the game directly in Xanathos Roulette land.
In my defense, I wrote the scene the day before the game, while under a massive writer’s block, during lunch, at McDonald’s.
Here are the highlights of the scene I played to the PCs. Try guess where things went wrong (yes, it’s a rhetorical question):
Anime Batman and Other Hidden Comic Movies
By now, most of you are probably aware of all the big superhero movies coming out this summer. However, there are a few other projects that haven’t gotten quite as much attention that I’m interested in.
Justice League: New Frontier was released recently, and since I was a huge fan of the original comic, I bought it and watched it on the first day. I’d definitely recommend it to Justice League fans in general, and it manages to keep that great retro style the comic was done in. There’s some improvements in the story overall that make the “big bad” not come quite as much out of nowhere as what happens in the comic. However, the whole thing feels rushed, much like the first in the series, Superman: Doomsday. Maybe DC will start giving these direct to DVD features a little longer running time to stretch out.
On the DVD was a trailer for Batman: Gotham Knight, the next direct to DVD feature. This, in a nutshell, is Batman meets Animatrix. In fact, it features a number of creators that worked on various Animatrix segments. Several Batman tales, written by some great comic writers, animated Japanese anime style. What could be better? Oh yes, Kevin Conroy is returning to voice Batman. It officially changed from “check out” to “must buy” for me.
Finally, not a superhero movie per se but one based on comics is the film adaptation of Scott Pilgrim. I recommend this series not just to comic fans, but video game fans (as the characters live in a video game-esque reality, where people really do level up) and fans of twenty-something comedy/dramas. But then, some more information came out recently: Micheal Cera is set to star in the lead role (of whom I’ve been a big fan since Arrested Development) and Edgar Wright of Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz fame is set to direct. Yet another team I can get behind.
So while they may not have the advertising dollars of some of the blockbusters, these are all movies I recommend seeing.
Chatty's Out of the Box #005: Right Said Slaad!
Here’s a new comic with my favorite Green Spawn of Chaos!
As usual, click thumbnail.
This time I’ve officially teamed up with PM who contributed to the writing and the Photoshoping. He deserves his share of the credit and here it is. I think we’re on to something here and we already have brainstormed a few gags, so chances are, this comic thing will become a team effort.
I ‘m really growing fond of Kermit here and this, as any Troper will tell you, is a sign that I need to step away from it before I Flanderize it. I don’t want to burn the potential for that character just yet.
As always, thanks for reading!
Paizo's 3.75
Paizo announced yesterday that they will be sticking with their own re-branded version of Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 for their popular (and well made) Pathfinder series. The Pathfinder RPG will serve as the core book, which will update the 3.5 D&D Rules. You can even download the nice-looking Alpha document from Paizo’s site now. After looking through the rules, they incorporate what I consider some “no brainer” updates to 3.5, and nothing that struck me as brilliant game design. It’s also not nearly complete, since they just offer a selection of updated classes and such, still having the expectation that it’s an add on to the PHB.
I personally am not happy about this because I loved the first Pathfinder series, but I’m definitely moving to fourth edition, which means I won’t have a Pathfinder in the new edition. (I am glad to see that Necromancer Games, a Paizo partner, will be publishing an adventure path for 4e. I just hope it’s up to the same standards.)
Looking at it from a business perspective, however, this makes a lot of sense. WotC is behind in offering the big third party publishers the new license and rules to use 4e. Paizo is uniquely positioned with the existing 3.5 market. Judging from the divisive reaction to 4e (and those who just don’t want to pay money to switch rules) there will be a market for 3.5 for at least the near future. I’m not sure they had a choice.
Still, I hope they produce high quality accessories and adventures for 4e, even if they don’t switch for Pathfinder. The truth of the matter for me is that no one else is making products up to their level except Wizards.
