Monthly Archives: August 2015

RPGs

The Graveyard At Lus – Review

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+Jason Paul McCartan, AKA The Badger, and editor/layout guru for White Star, has a new supplement for it – The Graveyard at Lus, just $4.99.

This interesting supplement is a way to generate an area of space that is a spaceship graveyard due to combat.

Developing the graveyard can be as simple as rolling up opposing forces and determining winners, etc. and which ships were left behind, due to being disabled or destroyed.

Degrees of damage and destruction can be determined and potential survivors or the presence of other scavengers, or the arrival of various others.

This booklet reads like the combat ended not long ago, and looters, rescue teams and others are just now showing up. It is a trivial matter to come up with an age of the graveyard, resent or years, decades, centuries, millenia, or eons old.

What I liked:

  • If you buy the PDF and want the POD, when it is available, the cost of the PDF is knocked off the top!
  • I like this idea. It is a simple plug and play add on that the GM can use in whole or in part. Ideas and options are presented that I had not thought of, and I like that!
    • I like things that get me to coming up with my own ideas.
  • He presents two options for combat, cinematic and realistic, depending on how much time you have or how much crunch you want in it. This idea of a mini game is quite interesting. (For example, I could get out my copy of Imperium and use the chits for ships to keep track of it all.)
  • I assume by app he means something for a cellphone or tablet, and not a webapp, but that isn’t clear. An app to do all this generation is in the works.
  • New races, new creatures, and some tweaks to existing races from White Star.
  • This idea of a ship graveyard could easily be applied to an aquatic navy, or even a battlefield. This would cross genres from ancient to modern, from steam punk to fantasy.
  • The final section is running the scenario to build the Graveyard at Lus for your own use. The reader is walked through how to do it.

What I didn’t like:

  • A few typos, grammar, spelling errors and an awkward sentence that slowed me down while I figured it out. I am sure if I put something like this together I would have the same issue. A reminder for us all to get another set of eyes on these things. I probably didn’t catch all of them in this post.
  • I can’t think of anything else I didn’t like, other than, I wish I’d thought of this!
  • I don’t have time to step through this right now.

What I’d like to see:

  • A few pages of the collected tables in one place with reference back to the page numbers of details. There are several steps involved in this method, and having all the tables in one location would speed things up.
    • It is easy enough withe the PDF to make your own collected tables.
  • A page or two in the PDF with chits with his proposed ship outlines that we could print out. I’d be good with just outlines that I could color in by hand, since I don’t use a color printer. Those who can afford colored ink may want them in full color.
  • Why is there a graveyard here? War, border skirmish, race to control a resource, such as a strategic planet, alien artifact, natural jump gate, etc.
  • Other reasons for there to be a graveyard besides combat. Ancient technology, mysterious space anomaly, etc.

I can see using this at my table for more than just White Star.

RPGs

OSR/RPG Mudslinging

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I didn’t attend GenCon, but I watched some blogs going nuts with different bloggers complaining about other bloggers. Why can’t we play nice and turn on our brains and manners?

There were claims of misogyny in gaming, unworthy products winning Ennies, and lots of tearing down.

Here’s my take on RPG’s. There are some RPG’s that I know I won’t like, it is a genre thing. Some genres just don’t appeal to me. That doesn’t mean I hate or despise people who play those games, just those games aren’t for me. For some of those genres, if I played them with a familiar group that I felt comfortable with, I might have a good time, but wouldn’t find that at the top of my list to play.

I agree that it is good to get more people involved in gaming. People includes women. I like women. They make good friends and they see the world differently than I do. I will admit in the awkward teenage days, there were no women in our gaming group. I did not play RPG’s with women until college. I went to a university where women were in the minority, so the women were still a minority in games. I experienced my first male player with a female character in college. While I have never had a female character, I had not thought of running one until I experienced it. Nothing against women, I just never imagine myself pretending to be one. I am sure there are women who feel the same way about pretending to be a man in an RPG. As a DM, I have NPC’s that are women, but that is somehow different, since the DM is everybody and thing other than the PC’s.

That’s my clumsy attempt to say I like gaming with women. At Marmalade Dog back in February, we had one memorable woman gamer and she was a lot of fun to play with in RPG’s. There were two other women at Marmalade Dog in two different sessions of Homlet I ran. They were with their boyfriends, and were just as involved as the guys. One woman was way more into it than her boyfriend, and they were with the same regular weekly group they play with. I think the right environment and the right group of people make the situation more appealing to women. I am sure the GM has a big influence too. I have never played in an RPG ran by a woman. There has never been an opportunity. I know that one of the women I played with at Marmalade Dog will be GMing for the first time at UCon in November, so if her game doesn’t fill up too fast, I will sign up. However, just like with men, not everyone who is excellent at playing a character has the desired, motivation, and ability to be a competent GM. Until you try running a game and see what is involved, if you have played with skilled GM’s they can make it look easy. To a point it is easy, but the prep time and grasp of the material and scenario, and engagement of the players go a long way to making a good GM.

Side Note: Most of my hobbies are mostly followed by men, so it’s not a good place to meet single women. What women are involved tend to be girlfriends and wives of the guys. Sometimes they met through the hobby, or one or the other of them introduced the other to the hobby. Generally, it is the men who introduce the women to male dominated hobbies, but there are women who introduce men to it as well. I’m old enough that RPG’s were for boys and men, and Barbies and dolls were for girls. I’m not saying it was right or wrong, only the way it was. Women either need to jump in and do RPG’s, or be willing to participate when their boyfriends and husbands invite them to join in. Common courtesy should prevail. Don’t treat women like a piece of meat. If some players have poor social skills and so forth, the group should help that person along. Remember, it is a game, and it is supposed to be FUN!

As to the Ennies, I didn’t know what products were nominated until the blogs were buzzing about it during GenCon. To make Ad Hominem attacks against winners and throw public tantrums because someone won an award you don’t think they should have won is ridiculous.

If you don’t like the outcome of an award contest, don’t show your ass to the world. You don’t like someone’s profession, so you equate that with the quality of their award winning entry, that doesn’t make sense. Judge the entry by it’s own merits. Is the person a jerk to people online? Well, I don’t know him, and don’t follow all the drama. Just because he may or may not be a jerk to some people does not mean his product is crap. Is it a product that does not interest you, OK, that’s fine. You have a constructive criticism of the product. By constructive, I mean a comment that will add value to the discussion. I don’t have the product, I haven’t seen the product, I just know what I have read from others. Thus, I have no opinion on the product. NOTE: I know that some consider the art to be adult/pornographic.  If that’s your problem with this game, you better get busy and get all the magazines out of gas stations and stores, and movies and pictures off the internet. Those have a far wider audience than this game.

Sometimes the RPG blog community reminds me of high school, or in some cases preschool. Grow up and get a life. If you spent less time complaining about how bad things are with this or that person, RPG, supplement, etc. and put that energy into either making your own product, or playing more RPG’s then you would be happier.

The older I get, the more I realize that all these kerfuffles are just so much horse $&!#. They stink and some people throw it around like a monkey in a cage. Step out of your cage and look around. If you don’t have a cellphone, computer, or other internet active device, does anyone care that you don’t like something? People like that are the ones whose parents didn’t teach them good manners and the movie theaters have to spend all this time reminding people to turn off their devices so they don’t bother others. You are not the only person in the theater! The world does not revolve around you! What happened to common courtesy?

I think this is true of the world in general. With the internet we can make rapid posts of whatever is on our minds and blast people for not being in lockstep with our desires and beliefs. I know that if everyone was like me, the world would be a boring place. It takes all kinds. Live and let live. As long as someone is not trying to come into your house or on your personal page(s) on the internet and tell you how to live your life, why do you care?

The whole “outrage brigade” thing is a tempest in a teapot. Get over it. Will it matter when you are laying on your deathbed? When you are laying there taking your last breath, if you are still thinking about some dumb argument online, then you have a very small and lonely life. I know that I am working to have a great relationship with my sons and my granddaughter so that whenever I die, they will miss me, rather than be glad I’m gone.

I shouldn’t be surprised and amazed at how stupid, petty, and narrow minded people can be. It is part of the human condition. I don’t know any of these people, I just had this on my mind. I don’t have to post it, but I will. My hope is that someone will see this and realize that they are doing more to hurt others and the RPG hobby than they are to help.

If you think that the only way that the RPG hobby will be wonderful and grow is to only do things the way you think it should be, then you are leaving out a large segment of the population. There are games and genres I have no interest in. If RPG’s were done based on my interests, there wouldn’t be very many to choose from compared to how many there actually are. Is that the kind of reality you think the RPG hobby should have?

For crying out loud, we’re talking about a GAME! It is supposed to be FUN. Not everyone thinks the same things are fun. No problem, don’t do those things! END OF PROBLEM. No need to whine and complain and waste others’ time telling us how miserable your life is because you gave someone you don’t even know in real life the power to control your happiness. SMH. The only one responsible for your happiness and satisfaction in this life is you. The sooner you learn that, the sooner you will find happiness.

/EOL

RPGs

Kickstarter Chaos

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A well publicized Kickstarter funded well over a year ago and had a lot of drama during the leading up to, during, and following GenCon.

I won’t will name the Kickstarters, but and will point out that it’s their failings should be a lesson to all who are running or plan to run a Kickstarter.

  • Be realistic
  • Plan for the unexpected
    • Review all the points that massive failure can happen. That is, anything that is out of your control, such as suppliers and other third parties.
  • Kickstarter is a use of technology. Use technology to keep track of stuff.
    • There is no excuse for not having a timeline your whole team can follow, or lists of backers and their reward levels.
    • At least use a spreadsheet to keep track of things. Kickstarter and other companies have some sort of tools to help with this, as I understand it.
  • Don’t spend the money without a budget/spending plan.
    • This should be prepared BEFORE launch.
  • Don’t use the money for things not associated with the Kickstarter.
    • The incentive for you to get rich off Kickstarter is to do it well, on time, and under budget. Take your share AFTER the Kickstarter is fulfilled, i.e. EVERY item is shipped.
  • Make shipping costs in addition to the initial pledge.
    • Too many have failed due to their own success and not accounting for all the various shipping costs.
  • Don’t whine about all the reasons you can’t.
    • Keep it simple, be honest (always and should go without saying).
    • If there’s a problem, don’t wait, let the backers know.
    • I’ve made mistakes in my job, but I always admit when I make them right away, and I call my boss before the customer calls my boss. I drop everything and fix the mess I made so that it does not grow and compound and make even more work.
      • If you have ever ran an SQL statement on a live database and left out a phrase to limit it to the desired data, you know what I’m talking about.
  • Regular updates are key.
    • If you must launch the week of GenCon, don’t let the Kickstarter languish and lose momentum.
  • For books/rules have the text ready before launch. Don’t wait to start when the funds are released. Do the work first. If it is worth others giving their hard-earned money, it is worth you doing your part before holding out your hand.
  • Under promise and over deliver. Pad your public timeline, so that you know you can make it. You can have a private timeline for delivery, if you want.
  • If it is a team effort, make sure you have the right members on our team.
    • If you sign up to do something for a Kickstarter project, don’t string your colleagues along then at the last minute before your deadline, admit you did nothing, leaving the team holding the bag and trying to pick up the pieces.
  • As much public accountability of things as needed to reassure backers. If you leave room for doubt, show the actual books to people.
    • If you are not an accountant, not good with money, don’t know Excel, get someone on your team to do this. You will have to pay them.
    • Pay your taxes off the top. A simple rule of thumb, at least 30% needs to be held out for taxes. If you don’t know how to handle the Social Security, Medicare, federal, state, and local taxes, get a tax adviser. Most small towns have one.
  • If it is a total failure, refund the money instead of stringing people along.
    • If you blew the money, be ready for anger and unhelpful comments from the backlash, and lose the trust that anyone in the RPG field had in you.
  • Don’t add on stupid crap that just makes it harder to deliver.
    • Some Kickstarters get lost in their own success and let themselves lose self control and add on anything that comes into their head.
      • I like what Benoist and Ernie did with the Marmoreal Tomb. It appears to me that they made a list of small goals that could easily be added on and contracted out without delaying delivery. Any goals they add to that, all appear to fit and follow the same pattern.
  • Add-ons should be relevant and add value.
  • Don’t get people lined up to do the work and not pay them.
    • Pay your artists and other what you agreed. Have a written contract so their is no ambiguity about who gets what.
    • If someone is an employee, make it clear that they are an employee and working for the specified hourly wage or salary.
  • I have not heard of anyone dying before they could deliver a Kickstarter, but I read that the Symbaroun RPG translation Indiegogo had a team member die. It slowed them down, but they are still moving forward.
    • This should fall under planning for the worst. All the more reason to have as much done before launch.
    • Everyone dies and no one knows when it is their time. We are adults, be as responsible for fulfillment as if you were preparing for the worst for your family.
    • I bet you could find some insurance company that offers Kickstarter insurance, or at the very least have your main talent take out a term life policy until everything is ready to ship, or shipped.
  • As for advice from others who have done Kickstarter to make sure you haven’t left out anything.
  • If you only have one idea worthy of Kickstarter, it might be better to get someone with experience with Kickstarter to help you do it.
    • If you have lots of ideas, make the first one small and make sure it is manageable to make sure it is a success. If it funds, you should line up everything, so that once the funds are released you can roll with it.

A lot of these things apply to lots of Kickstarters that have been horror stories. The latest horror story was KotDT: LAS, which others have gone into more dept than I. What a train wreck. I used to be an EMT, so I’ve had my share or traffic accidents, I’m not curious to rubber neck on a real accident. But this whole fiasco was something else. I hope the guy comes through instead of stringing people along. I also hope it is his last success at cheating people. I haven’t followed up lately, but it seems like he’s going to jail.

I watch Kickstarters and am careful. The first Kickstarter I was burned was the CSIO re-print. Thankfully, it is just late, and I don’t have a lot of use for miniatures. The other is the Great Kingdom D&D movie that is in legal limbo. I have $50.00 tied up in that. Since Kickstarter froze it, there is no word from that team on what is going on. I have probably lost my money, but I hope one of them makes a movie and I get to see it.

It is easy to armchair quarterback, not having done a Kickstarter myself. I don’t have any ideas at this point, that are worthy of a Kickstarter. However, I think it is obvious, if you have backed multiple Kickstarters, and read of the experiences of others, to get a clue of what does and does not work. I might have an idea or two worthy of a PDF on DriveThruRPG/RPGNow, but those are fairly easy to do well as one person projects.

RPGs

Jim Ward

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As many already know, Jim Ward has been in the hospital for over a month and looks to be there much longer. As a freelance writer/game designer from the original TSR, if he can’t work, he doesn’t make money.

He had a hand in D&D and developed the first science fiction RPG – Metamorphosis Alpha, and others.

I encourage everyone to back the latest Metamorphosis Alpha Kickstarter. It has funded, but is no as well publicized as the rapidly growing Marmoreal Tomb Kickstarter that launched the same day. That would be great moral support.

There is also a GoFundMe drive to help with medical expenses, and was nearly at the initial 8,000 goal last night. This morning it is at $8,600 with a new goal of $15,000. With the costs of today’s hospital stays, this is a drop in the bucket. For some reason, in the days of the Affordable Care Act, his insurance is being unhelpful, so anything you can do will help.

You can also leave him a note of encouragement if you use Facebook. Use the money that you might spend on a stamp and postage to help. If you can’t do both the Kickstarter and the GoFundMe, please give what you can to the GoFundMe campaign.

Several other OSR Bloggers are holding raffles for items of interest to benefit Jim. If you can afford to give and want a chance at some cool stuff consider the following:

Tenkar & Matching Funds

James Spahn – White Star Proofs Raffle

Taylor Frank – The Dungeon Lord – Multiple Raffles [Edited September 20, 2016 to use Web Archive link as blog removed from Blogger.]

Tim at Gothridge Manor and other OSR bloggers with patreons are donating a portion of their proceeds.

Johua De Santo has made an RPG Bundle of his offerings on RPGNow, and has invited other content creators to join or make their own bundles.

As for me, I have backed the Metamorphosis Alpha and Marmoreal Tomb Kickstarters, and when I get paid tomorrow, I will give to the GoFundMe. If 1,000 people could give $5 it would go a long way. So far 180 people have gotten the GoFundMe to $8690. At least 30% of that will need to go towards Social Security, Medicare, Federal, and State taxes, so we need to give a lot to maximize how much actually go to medical bills.

RPGs

I Failed My Save Vs. Kickstarter

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You may have noticed that I ended my streak of publishing an article a day, my last post was for July 28. I thought I might finish out July with the daily run, but I did not try to come up with any ideas. When I quit trying, I soon had ideas for several posts. So, I will make notes on my ideas, and publish them as I get them finished. No rush. I found that I was spending more effort trying to maintain a daily post that I had little time for other RPG related stuff. So, I will publish something when I have an idea. I will spread them out, so the ideas I have on the back burner don’t all come at once.

So on to my giving in and supporting not one, not two, but three new Kickstarters. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was going to say no to new Kickstarters.

The first Kickstarter I gave into is the Remix Mini, Android based PC. I don’t really need another computer, but for the price, I can set up a PC in a different room, and use it for my entertainment PC, so I don’t have to sit in my office chair to watch movies. Not RPG related, but a neat project. This one has the biggest possibility to flop, due to its own success. $50 won’t break the bank, so why not?

Next is the new Metamorphosis Alpha Kickstarter, Epsilon City. I’ve been kicking myself since I talked myself out of the MA re-print Kickstarter last year, $80 seemed a bit much. For $65 I am getting Epsilon City and a softcover of the MA re-print. It would be cool if they had the GM screen as an add on. It is well past its funding goal with 30 days to go.

Finally, the Marmoreal Tomb Campaign Starter by  Ernest Gary Gygax, Jr. with Benoist Poiré. It funded in the first day, and has hit four of the initial seven stretch goals. I was happy that they got the Jeff Easley cover option. The goal just unlocked is for James Spahn to do a Science Fiction conversion. I hear that James knows something about science fiction RPGs. [I keed, I keed.] It has 30 days to go, so it could easily unlock all the goals, and perhaps add additional ones.

I don’t know if any other “must have” RPG kickstarters are coming. Knowing my luck, I am sure there are. I have resisted other cool Kickstarters, so I know I am mostly safe.

Of the four outstanding Kickstarters I am waiting on, the Grimtooth’s Traps just announced an update to the PDF and softcover copies of the printed book, so it is nearing completion.

The City State Kickstarter is aiming for a November fulfillment of the book. I believe that makes it a year late. They are still working on the miniatures, for those that ordered them.

The other Kickstarter only recently funded, and is on track.

The one I don’t expect movement is the documentary, due to the legal wrangling.

There was a lot of kerfuffle about rogue Kickstarters in the lead up to GenCon, but I won’t go into that here.

The thing to remember about backing a Kickstarter is to know who is running it and if they can handle it.