Monthly Archives: March 2015

RPGs

Magic and Technology – The Porcelain Argument

3 Comments

I ran across this article, The Porcelain Argument: How would the existence of magic affect technological advancement?,  on Sunday. I very much enjoyed it and it is in line with my thinking of how a high magic setting would function.

My campaign is, for humans, a now low magic setting because the ancient empire collapsed a thousand or more years ago and much ancient magical knowledge was “lost”.

Reading this article had me nodding my head in agreement.

I highly recommend it to help set the tone of your campaign’s magic and technology levels.

One interesting thought, would those who could not afford magic invest in fancy technology to try to mimic magic in an effort to appear to be in a higher social status? Hidden mechanisms for an elevator or lift, some way of igniting a light, etc.

This reminds me of a History Channel show some years ago about ancient inventors who made temple devices to make certain items in the temple move or act on their own, with wheels, pulleys, or primitive steam power. One I believe was a holy water dispenser for a coin donation. Another had a dove or other bird “fly” across the sanctuary. In a world where clerical and druidical magic is not lost other than turning from the gods or nature, how would temple technology be different from the rest of society? However, in a societal collapse, the precise applications for certain spells might be lost, if the central hierarchy of a faith was lost.

This all helps to highlight the questions: What remnants of the ancient civilization are still in use? What remnants of it are still visible? What devices both magical and non-magical might adventurers discover? Would any such devices be “set loose” and go on a rampage, or cause other mischief?

In a sandbox setting, one does not have to have all these answers until the players come close to finding them. I have a few things thought out, but as for mundane items, I have not given it much thought. This has definitely given me food for thought and started the wheels turning.

RPGs

300!!

1 Comment

How can I not mention the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae?

While 300 blog posts is not as impressive as the feat of those long-dead Spartans, as someone with a BA in history and a big interest in ancient and medieval history, I could not help it, nor did I try.

Someone posting daily for a year can easily accomplish 300 posts with over two months to spare. In my case, I started in July of 2009, almost six years to get to 300 posts. That’s only 50 posts a year. In 2014, I hit 100 and 200 posts. In 2014, when the weather got nicer, I had a lot fewer posts. When the weather got cold my output increased until November, when I participated in NaNoWriMo, Tenkar’s Landing, UCon, and in late December decided to GM for the first time at a con with Marmalade Dog 20 the first weekend in February.

It isn’t that I wasn’t writing or wasn’t being creative in some way, it just wasn’t on this blog.

I don’t have enough ideas, or the time and energy to post as often as some do, or to have the consistent quality of others. This is not my 300th written post for this blog, it is the 300th posted for this blog. I have an article ready to post for the next nine days, plus what I have started for the April, 2015 A To Z Challenge.

I will post as often as I can and strive for good ideas.

This is merely a navel gazing post, so other than mentioning Spartans that many seem to think are only a movie, or a movie based on a comic book. Few seem to know it is a real event that occurred long ago. There was a movie about the 300 in the 60’s. The acting is not good and the special effects were not outstanding, but the movement of troops give the general idea of how it must have been.

I have mentioned my character Griswald, a 10th level cleric, 10th level fighter, 11th level wizard half elf. I once estimated, based on the area of effect spells and other offensive spells he has that in a narrow area, he could kill over 500 orcs, perhaps more, by the time they got close enough for him to have to use his sword. That was assuming optimal results in his favor. Who would face such a man? One who can call down the power of his god, or evoke the mysteries of the universe, or beat you by martial skill? As long as there are hundreds or thousands of orcs more scared of their chiefs and sub-chiefs than they are scared of Griswald, that’s who.

I have yet to have a character drive a stake in the ground for a final stand. I have thought about it and planned how it might happen, but never actually played that scenario. I thought I might be playing that scenario when Griswald’s town was under siege, but they left. They will think long and hard before they try it again.

Have any of you had a character perform a rear guard action and fight to the death so that other characters could escape or defeat the bad guy?

RPGs

GM’s Day – 2015

Leave a comment

RPGNow.com
GM’s Day is a day for GM’s started in 2002 and in 2008 was coincidentally the day that Gary Gygax died – March 4th. It is a day that we prefer to have fun in honor of Gary Gygax and his creation(s) on the anniversary of his death, rather than be maudlin.

There is a FB page with some information, as well as this website with a countdown calendar, and many others easily found with an internet search engine.

Since it falls on Wednesday this year, it is especially cool. The weekly AD&D online campaign I play in meets on Wednesdays. We will be doing something cool, a new type of undead and clearing a hidden dungeon under an abandoned fortress.

Both RPGNow and DriveThruRPG have a GM’s Day sale with 25% off! Cool!

RPGs

Gary Con Mentioned on Big Bang Theory

2 Comments

One spoiler {Original link to G+ I can’t get Internet Archive to archive.
https://plus.google.com/112306336634914614394/posts/YtBb1vtZdrq ] I didn’t mind was that Gary Con was mentioned on this week’s episode of Big Bang Theory. In general, I don’t like spoilers. My brother has recited movies in detail that I have not seen. A co-worker talked about the space dock scene in Galaxy Quest. I don’t have TV, so I watch programs online. I like that BBT mentions RPGs as part of the geek/nerd life. I find BBT funny because it is true. I have known people like that, and in some ways, I am people like that.

I missed Gary Con last year, and was very interested in going this year, but things have not worked out.  The closing of the local office and the transition to working at home was not expected, and I am tired from moving stuff from the office to home, moving stuff around in my home office, and sorting and moving stuff trying to find the best use of the space. I am glad it worked out to not be able to go. I am tired. I also am not too keen to travel in winter. Perhaps I can make Con on the Cob in October instead.

RPGs

Whither the OSR Superstar Contest?

Leave a comment

I had this article scheduled to post on March 6th, but Erik beat me to it and announced the resolution here.

Not what any of us wanted, but a conclusion nonetheless.

Below is what I wrote.

In 2014, Erik Tenkar, over at Tenkar’s Tavern, held a contest for the OSR Superstar. It got down to the finalists in July and there were some delays on the final judging. Up until Erik re-organized his page, there was a largish graphic about the contest.

I posted a comment to the OSR Superstar page asking about it a few months back, and I have seen others ask about it in other forums.

It is understandable if judges dropped out, or something else beyond Erik’s control. Did the finalists not submit? He is a NYPD officer, so his job comes with stresses most of us will never encounter.

Erik usually keeps all the Tavern’s readers in the loop. If he has mentioned it, I have not encountered the explanation.

If it’s resolution is dead or will eventually be resolved, I would like to know. I had a submission, I did not win. The submissions that did well were very cool, and I am curious to see what the finalists come up with for the final challenge.

I know that Erik is looking forward to retirement soon, sometime in the next year, I believe. I would ask that he wrap up a soon to be year old contest before then, so he can focus on the good content he regularly provides.

RPGs

Working From Home

2 Comments

TL/DR – I am now working from home and have an hour a day I don’t have to do the round trip to and from work Monday through Friday, and will have more time to focus on living life and preparing and playing games.

My company decided to close our local office because there are only three of us and have us work from home. Two other office are being closed, each with two employees, and having them work from home, saving the company over $100K a year in rent. Too bad I don’t get a piece of that. At least I get to save on gas and have an hour more each day for other things since I don’t have to drive to work. I really like avoiding driving in winter and saving money on gasoline and wear and tear on my car.

Last weekend, I packed up my office and hauled everything home except my desk. I will miss my desk. It is just too big for my house. We have three desks to get rid of. At least I got my desk chair. The cheap one I have from Wal-Mart is wearing out.

I spent five hours moving some things out of my home office to make room so I could move in my work office stuff. I got it all to fit. This inspired me to clean and organize. I already had three 5-shelf bookcases in here and a smaller bookcase. I moved in two 2-drawer file cabinets and put my shorter bookcase on top of them. I brought a five shelf bookcase from the office and a little rolling file cabinet with a “desk top” and a small drawer and a big file drawer.

This gave me storage space to make it all fit even better and a half-done job of organizing a few months ago. Of the three bookshelves I had in here to start, one is nearly organized the way I want it, the second is partially organized with two shelves in a holding pattern, and the third has three empty shelves and two for temporary holding. I have my AD&D manuals and some of my campaign notes on one shelf of the work bookcase. They say that you’re only supposed to touch each thing once, but the sorting of getting everything out is not so easy with cats and dogs and other people in the same house. It’s like one of those number puzzles where you shift the numbers in odd ways until you sort them in order. It may not be efficient, but I have found several things I have been looking for and I now have room to speed up the sorting. If you hadn’t seen it before I started, you wouldn’t think the way it looks now is an improvement.

I had my office at work mostly decluttered, but had a buildup of stuff to sort and toss. I look forward to having a place for everything and everything in its place. Soon I will have all my AD&D manuals, campaign information and other active game related materials together on one or more shelves of a bookcase for easy access. I am good at decluttering and sorting through files while on hold or if calls ever slow down.

If they will ever get the last few clients off a DOS based series of products, for which I am the main support tech, I can pitch 6 or 8 binders, or rather pitch their contents and re-purpose the binders for game materials.

I will also have room for my few board games so that I can keep all of that stuff together. If the bug bites, I might even sell off the stuff I don’t and realistically, won’t use.

Over the years, I have accumulated a lot of floppies, CDs, and odd bits of computer related tech that is old and obsolete. I can sit here and feed floppies to an old PC in the corner and determine if I need the data. If there is a market for used floppies, I can get something out of them. I would like to avoid the landfill…. I remember when a 1.44 MB 3.25 inch floppy was considered a lot of space. Now all these floppies would fit on one DVD with room to spare…..

As I look around and think about some of this stuff, there is a lot that I have not even touched since I divorced my wife four years ago. I’m finally able to get out some breakables and display them, like my great-grandfather’s pocket watch in a glass covered display stand.

My dog likes it because I don’t need to put her in her kennel while I’m at the office. I can also let her out multiple times throughout the day. If I get stuck and have to work through my lunch hour or work late, I have food here and don’t have to rush out and buy crap. There are not many choices in my village for a healthy lunch, so I won’t be spending money eating out for lunch very often, if at all. No more getting home at 5:30 or 6:00 and not having supper until 8:00 or 8:30.

Once it warms up, I can set up by wi-fi and work outside, or in the garage, or on the deck. I can lounge in my hammock on my lunch hour.

Life is good! The level of order I prefer in my life and living environment is rapidly coming together.