Blackmoor Vituperative

Thinking about starting a YahooGroup to discuss new homebrewed rule systems, modifications and house rules for existing systems, and so on. A game design workshop, if you will.

On the one hand, I’m not sure there is much interest in that, despite what people are prone to say. On the other hand, I am not sure YahooGroups is best suited for that sort of discussion nowadays. My perception is that most substantive discussions have moved elsewhere, and what remain on YahooGroups are relatively insular islands of thought. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not the environment I’d be looking for.

If you are aware of a venue for lively but civil discussion of practical game design (as opposed to theoretical navel-gazing, which again, is not necessarily bad, but not what I am looking for), feel free to mention it.

I suppose I should clarify what I mean by “lively but civil”. Here are a couple of benchmarks:

1. Conversation is focused on game design, not on politics or controversies. (There are plenty of other places to discuss evolution or the Tea Party or Justin Bieber.)
2. Critique of ideas is accepted and encouraged: critique of people is not. (It is sad how many people can’t tell the difference.)

Ideally, this is the sort of interaction I would have with my local game group. Sadly, real life has taken its toll, and my local game group is no more.

Hexographer and Dungeonographer received major updates a week or two ago. If you’ve used either tool since then, you’ve probably noticed the changes.

Both tools received layout changes which reduced the number of menu items by placing buttons for many of those features in panels dedicated to those features. For example, the ability to add custom map items is now a button on the map items tab/toolbox.

There were a great many other changes, as well. You can read more about it at the Inkwell Ideas web site.

Five or six years ago, I tossed out shelves and shelves of role-playing games and sourcebooks. Many were games that I had never played: all were games that I never intended to play again. All of my 2nd edition D&D books, nearly all of my indie RPG books, all of my Hero System/Champions books — all went. I saved books for games I still played, or still wanted to play, but this was a very small pile compared to what I got rid of. I also saved a few books that, for one reason or another, were special to me.

Nobilis was one of those games. I had a first edition copy of Nobilis, and I will have it as long as I own any books at all. You see, I was there when Nobilis was written. Oh, I didn’t contribute to it. Not directly. But I was there while the author played with ideas — strange, magical ideas. And in my small, probably insignificant way, I encouraged her. And when the book was published, I bought it.

Well, Nobilis is in its third edition now. Go buy it. Even if you never play it (as I likely never shall), it is worth it. It is strange and magical, much like its author.

P.S. A special, limited-edition autographed copy is available for a limited time. I am tempted. Sorely tempted.

This is not urban fantasy

We are home, safe and sound, from MystiCon 2011. We had a good time, and we are glad we went. Here are some thoughts in no particular order.

I liked Brinke Stevens. I can’t recall (offhand) ever enjoying a guest of honor as much at a con. I wish her luck with her writing.

It annoys me that “horror” is apparently no longer a genre, and that all of these vampire romance novels are called “urban fantasy”. WTF. I have an easy test for anyone wondering if a book is “urban fantasy”: if the protagonist or antagonist in your novel is one of the Universal Studios classic movie monsters, it’s not fantasy, much less “urban fantasy”. Storm Front is urban fantasy. Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter is not. War For The Oaks is urban fantasy. Dead Until Dark is not. This is not rocket science.

We really enjoyed hanging out with Carla and Brian. Fun folks. I hope they come to RavenCon some day (although they won’t this year). We met several other fun people, as well, but I am terrible with names, so I can’t tell you theirs.

The character sheet for Greg Porter’s new Verne game is simply amazing. Also, CORPS has been replaced with EABA… as of eight years or so ago, which shows you how out of touch I am.

The podcast thing worked out pretty well, I think, but I have learned something in the process: I am painfully tedious. There are some people who are so tedious that I can barely stand to be in the same room with them when they are talking. I am one of those people. I don’t know how anyone else stands me. Aside from my annoying nasal voice, I combine the worst aspects of someone who can’t string together two coherent thoughts and someone who appears convinced of their own brilliance. If I was in the audience for a panel I was on, I would probably just leave. No accounting for taste, I guess.

I need to find a way to tether my phone to my laptop, so that I won’t be dependent on a malfunctioning hotel internet connection. I know that there are Android tethering apps; I am just not sure if my phone can do it.

I would like to play in a superhero LARP some time. We were too busy for me to participate in one this time.

Having pizza in the con suite Friday night was awesome. Having a hotel room across the hall and one door down from the con suite was doubly awesome.

In general, I am glad we went.

I filled in on this panel at the last minute. Susan and I did run a LARP at SheVaCon back in 2003 or so that went really well: “The Hotel On Haunted Hill”. It’s where we met our friend Bob. But I am hardly an expert or anything, and honestly I did not expect the panel to be interesting at all. I was wrong about that: it was very entertaining, and packed with people.

This is my second “podcast”: myself, Rod Belcher, Bob Flack, Dave Lystlund, Owen Anderson, and Jestin Jeffries, on the Running a LARP panel at MystiCon 2011, 2011-02-26 @ 13:00.

Running a LARP podcast (mp3, 50 MB)

I had another panel at 15:00, on Game Publishing, but no one showed up. It was just me, Greg Porter, and John Meagher. John and Greg chatted about fonts and pull quotes for a bit, then I took off. I did not bother recording it.

RSS podcast feed

Oh, I nearly forgot: I was interviewed for a few minutes last night by Bethany Halle, of “Fire of Fantasy and Darkness with host Bethany Halle”. I am not sure why she thought I would be interesting, but since she appeared to be having technical difficulties (did I mention how badly the internet at this hotel sucks?), there probably wasn’t much harm in interviewing me rather than someone genuinely interesting.

My portion of the interview starts at one hour and twenty-five minutes (1:25) into the podcast:

The Fire of Fantasy and Darkness with host Bethany Halle – Highlighting the World of Fantasy

RSS podcast feed

I have been invited to be a guest at MystiCon 2011. It’s this weekend. Here is my schedule, in the unlikely event anyone wants to seek me out and listen to me blather.

• Game Development, Friday, 20:00
• Running a LARP, Saturday, 13:00
• Game Publishing, Saturday, 15:00
• A Unique Magic System – Can It Be Done, Sunday, 11:00

I am not a terribly interesting person. At best I am “a character”, but I haven’t actually done much worth talking about. However, I have the good fortune to know some genuinely interesting people. For example, Tee Morris.

I know Tee through RavenCon, a science fiction convention in Virginia which he and I had a part in founding in 2006 (my part in that being a bit smaller than his). He is also the author of a number of books, the most well-known of which is probably MOREVI. He also happens to be one of the authors of Podcasting for Dummies. In this case, I am the eponymous dummy.

Here’s the deal: I wanted to record our Friday night superhero game, because I think it’s going really well. I tried using a PC microphone I have had rattling around in a drawer since 1995. The results were not satisfactory. I went to H. H. Gregg and Best Buy and looked for an omnidirectional microphone, but they didn’t have them. I searched online for “omnidirectional microphone”, and all I really found was a Blue Snowball. Was this microphone good? Bad? Indifferent? Hell if I knew. So I called Tee and asked for advice, and now I am passing that advice on to you.

First off, he said the best choice for microphones for what I was doing is the Rode Podcaster. The Rode Podcaster is $230, though, which is way more than I wanted to spend.

A decent second choice, according to Tee, is the Samson CO1U. It’s $100, which, while more than I would like to spend, is not out of the question. So that was a strong contender.

However, Tee asked if I ever planned on recording on the go — recording a panel at a convention (MystiCon, for example, where I am appearing as a guest). It really hadn’t occurred to me, but you know, that might actually be pretty cool. His suggestion, in that case, was the Zoom H2 portable stereo recorder. Tee himself has the Zoom H4, which he loves, but he said that the H2 was much easier to use, that it has great sound fidelity, and that it also doubles as a USB microphone.

I read up on all three of Tee’s suggestions, reading reviews online on various web sites. I dithered a bit, but eventually went with the Zoom H2. It should arrive in a couple of days, and I plan to take it with me to MystiCon.

Thanks, Tee! I hope I haven’t grievously misrepresented you.

I don’t play a lot of video games. I played WOW for a couple of years (rather, I paid for it for a couple of years), and from time to time I dust off my neato-bitchin’ Logitech Extreme 3D Pro flight stick and fly my WW2 fighter plane into the ground a few dozen times, but really that’s about it. That’s not the point, though. It doesn’t matter whether I play video games, collect Norwegian ballads, or spend my days writing pornographic limericks about toothpaste — in the USA, no one is allowed to pass a law against it, or even regulate it. Why not? The important reason why not is because IT’S NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS WHAT PEACEFUL, CONSENTING ADULTS DO WITH THEIR FREE TIME. A less-important reason is because we have these rules that the government is supposed to abide by, and one of them says (among other things) NO LAWS RESTRICTING FREE SPEECH, YOU FASCIST JACKASS.

So why am I spouting all of this stuff that every child ought to know by the age of ten (and which most legislators apparently never learned)? Because some jackasses want to pass laws regulating video games. That by itself is not new. This sort of thing comes up every so often. Before video games, it was movies, before that it was rock and roll, before that it was novels, and before that it was movies again. Ad nauseam. I bet you dollars to doughnuts that the first time some monobrowed cave dweller scratched a stick figure in a limestone rock, another monobrowed cave dweller was there claiming it would cause the downfall of not-yet-quite-humanity. And yet here we all are, and it’s turned out more or less okay so far.

What’s new (ish) is the Video Game Voters Network. So watch this short but entertaining public service message, and then get off your butt and do something useful: vote. Vote libertarian, if that’s an option, but if not, at least vote for the least oppressive, least power-mad, least war-crazy, least superstitious person you can find. And then call them periodically to remind them that you voted for them because they were supposed to be less of an irrational fascist dillweed than the other irrational fascist dillweeds that wanted the job, and if they don’t shape up you’ll vote for some other irrational fascist dillweed next time around, and they’ll have to go get a real job.

You might or might not know that Green Ronin’s DC Adventures book (published in August) uses the same ruleset that Mutants & Masterminds 3e will.

This demo session might give folks an idea what the game is like in play (more or less — they explain things that wouldn’t be explained if no one were recording it, and the role-playing is very sparse for the same reason).

“Vigilance Press Podcast has DC freelancer Jack Norris and artists extraordinaire James Dawsey and Dan Houser join them for a game of DC Adventures to see how it plays (and Jack gets to play Green Lantern). Check it out!”

http://mikelaff.podbean.com/2010/09/08/dc-adventures-actual-play-demo/