Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Plays Well With Others

Starting a new semi-regular posting thing here.

I love all sorts of games. I love buying games. I don't always have time to play the games I want or I like things from one game and other things from other games.  So I tend to mix things up a lot.

Plays Well With Others will be my you-got-peanut-butter-on-my-chocolate (or fish fingers and custard) posts where I take two or more books or games and mix them up to my tastes.

I have done some things like this in the past here already.

Witch Girls Adventures + WitchCraft RPG
Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea + Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts
Cortex, Savage Worlds and Witch Girls Adventures

I am sure there are others. I know I combined Star Frontiers and Traveller in the past and talked about it briefly.

I have some more here to post soon. Hope you all enjoy.

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

2013 in review / 2014 preview

Seeing lots of year end / new year posts this week and that is always fun.

For myself, I'll keep it brief.

Highlights of 2013
- Eldritch Witchery was published in October and the Witch continued to sell very well.
- I got to play a lot of games this year which is always nice. 3.x and AD&D1 with my boys, the occasional Basic game and I even ran AS&SH.
- I also got to play in ongoing Pathfinder game and an occasional D&D4 game this year.  I am playing the same character (basically) in both games so it gives me the chance to compare and contrast the systems in a way I like. Which I also find fun.
- Got to play some Settlers of Catan again, which I enjoy.

On the other hand I am not sure if I networked as much I as I would have liked and I was slow getting involved with Google+ for the most part.
I did not get as many reviews in this year as I would have liked. Some at DriveThruRPG, a few at Amazon and one or two at RPG.Net.

Looking Ahead to 2014
- I have a few Victorian age supplements coming out which should be a lot of fun.  Not for Ghosts of Albion but for Gaslight.
- I have a big project starting up soon that I'll be talking about a lot here.  Nothing I want to say yet.
- White Dwarf Wednesday will draw to a close in 2014.  I am not planning on replacing it with anything just yet. The above mentioned project will prevent that.
- Looking forward to Gen Con this year and D&D5.  I am not as excited about it as I could be, but I will certainly be buying it.

I might not (still undecided) do the bloghops this year. The April A to Z or the October movie marathon.  I do have posts I could do for A to Z, but April is going to be busy for me and I didn't see the increase in traffic or interaction as I had in the past. Plus it is a lot of work.  A recharge might be in order.

I will be doing some 80s Sword & Sorcery movie marathons though.  Not sure how those will work out, but it could be fun.

Until then, have a safe New Years Eve and here's to a great new 2014!


Sunday, November 17, 2013

Spamming Hyperborea

So I was going back over some AS&SH posts in prep for today's game and I saw this as a comment:
I am Alan from Finland and I have always look forward for this day to tell the world about the the great powers of Dr.Zabaza. This great man called Dr.Zabaza was able to bring back my lover who left me, And within the space of 48 hours Dr.Zabaza brought my lover back and since then my love life have been more lovely and peaceful than i ever had. You can also strengthen your relationship or get your lover back by contacting Dr.Zabaza on zabaza.logan@XXXX.com or call him on +XXXXXXXXXXXXX and i assure you that you will get a better relationship after the help of Dr.Zabaza

You can read the original here: http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2013/11/my-weekend-in-hyperborea.html

I think Dr. Logan Zabaza needs to become my next evil NPC.  Obviously some sort of evil wizard. Given that "Alan" is from Finland maybe some LotFP influences should be added!

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Favorite Witch Contest!!

Well the contest ended last night while I was out with a migraine.
I have emailed the winners and waiting for confirmation.

But I hate waiting so here they are!

Grand Prize, winning a copy of both Eldritch Witchery and The Witch is:
Mark Craddock

Winning a copy of Eldritch Witchery is:
Justin Ryan Isaac

And a copy of The Witch is:
Chris Copeland

Thanks you everyone that participated!  I hope to some more fun things soon.

So who did you get in witches?
Willow was an early favorite, no surprise.
Medea, classic is always good.
The Sanderson Sisters
Glinda, Elphaba and other variations of them from Oz and Wicked
Helena Markos (Suspiria)
Howl (Howl's Moving Castle)
Tenkar's Sister! ;)
Baba Yaga (a fave of mine as well)
Gandalf's versions got a few nods
Julian Sand's Warlock from Warlock (which I will admit I enjoyed too)
Tara, of course!
We got a Harry Potter (but no Hermoine)
Thulsa Doom from the Conan movie.
A couple for Practical Magic (also a fave)
Krabat (have not heard of this guy)

THANK YOU everyone for participating!
I loved reading your choices.

For anyone that has already picked up Eldritch Witchery the file was updated last night to include some errata and the newer cover.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Post 2000!

Welcome to the 2000th post at The Other Side!

I wanted to take a little time here for some brief introspection.  I started this blog back in 2007 with no idea what I wanted to do with it. I based the name and style on my older website, also called The Other Side, and this was supposed to be integrated into that.  Well I never rebuilt the old website and instead parsed out material I had written for that here.

In 2008 I decided that this would become a design blog where I would talk about the projects I was working on.  The first of those two projects died on the vine as the case with a lot of freelance work.  While that is too bad, I have been allowed to reuse some of the work in my own projects.
The second project quickly morphed.  I had started Eldritch Witchery back then for the Spellcraft & Swordplay game. In the process on working on that I also came up with the idea of doing The Witch.
They were the reasons I kept this blog going in those early days.
Soon I discovered more blogs and the rest, well here are now. Sadly many of the blogs I started with are not around, but the ones are happen to be quite good. So I feel I am still in very company.

It took me over three years to get to 1000 posts, and then just under two years to get to the next 1000.

With Eldritch Witchery and The Witch now complete the original emphasis for this blog is now gone.  But despite my early thoughts of "not having enough to say" I find that I often can't keep quiet!
So I am expecting to have another 2000 posts. It might take me longer since I am not sure what future blogs have to be honest.  Don't expect video blogs from though, just not my thing really.  But I have more projects on the way. More characters to stat up and more games to talk about.

Of course none this is possible without you, the reader and commenter.
To show my appreciations, I am running another contest.

You can win a copy of Eldritch Witchery or The Witch?  Simple, follow the rules below and in the comments section please post who your favorite witch (or wizard) is.

Grand Prize gets a copy of BOTH books.
First Place Prize gets a copy of Eldritch Witchery
Second Place Prize gets a copy of The Witch.

You can enter every day for more chances.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck!!

Friday, August 16, 2013

Not Going to Gen Con, but here are some winners

WOW.

That was a lot of people.

So I expanded my winners.
I pulled out my dice and did this old school.

Congrats to:

F. Douglas Wall.
John Harp
David Cutts

and since demand was so high I did some more.

faoladh
Thaumiel Nerub
Anthony Hunter
Tim Shorts

Seven is a good number!

Honestly that was fun.  I am working on more material for a variety of things (vague much?) so I am going to give more stuff away in the future.  Certainly in October, but maybe sooner.

Thanks everyone for participating!

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

New banner

Thought I needed a little change here.
Course I am only about 9 months late on getting a John William Waterhouse Magic Circle themed one up.
But I figure it is still less self-indulgent than my last one.


Sunday, August 4, 2013

Monday, July 1, 2013

July? That can't be right?

Today is July 1st.

Wait-What??  That can't possibly be right.

Work is kicking my ass at the moment (I just picked up a new school to re-design their entire curriculum) so I have not had the time for fun things since most nights have me working till about 11:00pm.

So the time I do have to work on things, around 6:00am after my morning run, I am usually too brain dead to come up with anything. In fact I have pretty much been staring at this screen (of and on) for the last 4 hours.

So....
Let's see.

Google Reader is dead, or soon will be.
I could get some reviews up while re-charging my creative batteries. I have been itching to review Monsterhearts and Otherverse America.

I have been thinking about picking up one of those Chromebooks to just use for game writing.  Though I love my MS Word and have been a user of it since Edition 1.1.  Google Docs, while nice, is just not the same.  Anyone use one of these?

Monday, June 24, 2013

Monday Monday

So nothing really to post or chat about today.

The day job is kicking my butt this week.  Our next Summer term starts next week so I am busy getting ready all this week.

In game news I am re-reading "The Silmarillion" for the first time since high school.  I am loving it and enjoying it on a completely different level than I did 30 years ago.  It's just fantastic really.  I had just finished reading "The Children of Húrin" and loved it.

I should have some game reviews up sometime.

Something interesting.
Tenkar has a post about advertising and marketing the OSR.   Go over there read his post, watch the video.
http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2013/06/marketing-your-rpg-panel-on-air-with.html

Me. I am happy with beer money (I make enough at my day job to pay bills and get the things I want).  Or rather, I use the money I make to buy more games or material for new game books.  It's a crazy little eco-system that I am happy with.

Maybe something will motivate me later today.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Winners, Losers and the Tomb

Winners
Wow!  What a day yesterday.  All I wanted to do was celebrate my birthday and give out some free stuff. ;)

Well I have emailed the two winners, I am just waiting for them to confirm their emails.  (ok both have gotten back to me!)

So congrats to John Harp and Michael Bolam!  You can thank the d20 and d6 I rolled!

Honestly that was a lot of fun and I need an excuse to do that again soon.

Losers
The big loser of the week is (or will be) Tracey Alley for publishing Mystara books.
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2013/06/ugh-do-we-have-to-do-this-one-again-ip.html
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2013/06/ugh-do-we-have-to-do-this-one-again-ip_13.html
https://www.facebook.com/groups/mystara.reborn/
I did not set out to ruin her week but seriously folks, IP is IP is IP.

I have seen a lot of comments of "well WotC isn't doing anything with it".  Sorry, but there is no such thing as "Abondon-ware" in fact the Mystara property is alive and kicking with the release of the "Dungeons & Dragons Chronicles of Mystara Game" out next week.
Or even "She is not making a lot of money on it". The amount made (lots, little or none) doesn't matter.  I bought those books (but got a refund) because I thought they were official Mystara books. There are lots of people that would love to make more Mystara products, people that I would love to support.  But they don't make them because they know they are not allowed too.

Of course the other loser in this is me.  I thought I had found a new series to read and instead I have to drag all this out into the light.

The Tomb
The best news though is for my birthday and Father's day I am going to play some D&D with my kids!  YEAHH!

Since it is also D&D day I think a classic is in order.   So Liam and Connor will be headed to The Tomb of Horrors!


I have copies for every version of D&D (well 1st to 4th) so I am not sure which system to run it yet.  1st ed is the obvious choice, but the boys are playing 3e now and their 1st ed characters are only 1st level.

I am expecting it to be a lot of fun!

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Happy Birthday to Me! Here's a Gift for You!

Today is my birthday!

The great thing about being this age is I am pretty much at the point where if there is something I want I go out and get it.  So all I asked for this year was some time to play some D&D with my kids.

But someone needs a gift.

To celebrate this and recently reaching 1,000,000 hits I want to thank you my loyal readers.

Here's the deal.  I am gong to give away a $5 DriveThruRPG gift car and a $5 Amazon gift card.

What do you need to do to get it?
Almost nothing!
Just post below!

Make sure I have a way of contacting you (email is best) and I'll pick two people at random.
That's it.

Post. Get lucky. Win.
I'll email you and you tell me which of the two prizes you want.

Thanks so much for making the Other Side as much as it has been and here's to the next 1,000,000 hits!

Monday, June 10, 2013

1,000,000 Other Side Views Can't Be Wrong

I want to do a bit of celebrating here at the Other Side.

I just went past 1,000,000 hits here and had a pretty successful fundraiser.
Plus it's my birthday in a couple days.

Let's do something special.



I am going to give away some things.

Not sure what, not sure how, but something. and soon!

Keep an eye out.

(if you don't get the image, try here)

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Bloghop and Giveaways

Hey everyone!

May is winding down but there are still plenty of things to do here at the Other Side.
First things first.

I mentioned on the first day of the Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia that I would donate all the money this site made to charity.
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2013/05/blogfest-hop-against-homophobia-and.html

And the total is...$15.37 in affiliate sales and $5.90 in sales of the Witch for a total of $21.27.
Not bad for this site, I was hoping for some more.  I will likely round it up to an even 25 or 50.

There is also the business of giving away a copy of the Witch!
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2013/05/bloghop-giveaway.html

Waiting to hear back from the winners (yes winners!) now.

I must be crazy because in June I am going to do some more giveaways.
Yes to celebrate 1,000,000 hits here I am going to give away copies of my books, gift cards and who knows what else.  No contest. No promotion. Just me giving stuff to you as a thank you for supporting me over the years.

That's coming in June.  So stayed tuned.

EDITED TO ADD:  The winners have been notified.  Rachel Ghoul and RQRobb both received a copy of the Witch!

Saturday, May 25, 2013

1,000,000 Page Views!

I hit 1,000,000 pages views earlier today!


Not too shabby really!

Planning some stuff to celebrate! Keep an eye open.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Blogfests

Doing the A to Z was not enough for me so I am signing up for a few more blogfests.

I like these things.  They help me stretch my creative muscles and give me something special to work for.
Plus it exposes my blog and work to others that might not seek me out.

May Monster Madness
http://littlegothichorrors.blogspot.com/2013/04/second-annual-may-monster-madness-blog.html
http://www.anniewalls.com/2013/04/may-monster-madness-sign-up-linky-list.html
http://wickedwaysproductions.blogspot.com.au/


I love monsters as you might be able to tell.  So I am going to try to post something each day of this.  My hope would be to post something to promote Eldritch Witchery some more.

The Best and Worst Remakes Blogfest
http://alexjcavanaugh.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-to-z-challenge-memento-meant-to-live.html


From the King of Blogfests, Alex Cavanaugh.  I am not sure what I going to do here yet, but I am certain it will be horror related.

Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia
http://hopagainsthomophobia.blogspot.com/2013/03/hop-against-homophobia-and-transphobia_15.html


I have never been shy about the fact that I support equal rights for everyone. In particular I have been a strong supporter of gay rights and freedom to marry rights.  So I am very pleased to be part of this one.  Since this hop is focused on authors I am going to talk about some characters.  Honestly no idea who yet.

Towel Day Blogfest
http://lgkeltner.blogspot.com/2013/04/announcing-towel-day-blogfest.html


This one is easy.  I am going to talk about what is the best RPG to play a "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" game.

May ends with:

The Obscure Fantasy RPGs Appreciation Day
http://mesmerizedbysirens.blogspot.com/2013/05/announcing-obscure-fantasy-rpgs.html
(no image yet, but here is one from the site)



This will be a bunch of blogs talking about their favorite pre 90s fantasy RPGs.  I think I know which one I want to do.


Heroes & Villains Blogfest 
http://danibertrand.blogspot.com/2013/04/u-unfair-ultraviolet-blogfest-unveiled.html


This one is very new to me.  I am sure I can come up with something in the next month!

There you have it!  Watch for these over the next month.

Monday, April 22, 2013

Stop CISPA


CISPA is bad for the internet, bad for people.
Learn more at https://www.eff.org/cybersecurity-bill-faq

Regular post continues later today.

Monday, April 1, 2013

A to Z Blogging for April and Introduction

Hello and welcome to The Other Side!  My little home on the internet.  I will have a proper post up later today.  I wanted to post an introduction to me, my blog and the various people that are likely to be here.


This blog is the "reincarnation" of my old The Other Side website from the dawn of the Web.  I like to write about role-playing games, particularly old-school ones, D&D and horror games.  I post a lot of character write-ups, I love witches and magic.

I am participating in this blogging challenge for the same reasons I am blogging to begin with; to help improve my ability as a writer. Challenges like these help stretch those creative muscles and hopefully get me to write about stuff I might not normally do.

This year I am writing about Demons.  I am going to talk about them from the point of view of a game author and a fan of horror.  I am planning to "stat-up" as many as I can.  By that I mean work out the Role-playing Game stats for the creatures so you can use them in your own games.  I am also going to try and focus on creatures that have not been seen before in any of the games I play.

So with that in mind welcome to the A to Z challenge!

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Blogging Contract

Blogging is not writing. Not really.  Sure there are a lot of similarities but there are plenty of subtle differences.

When writing an RPG book I have an audience in mind. That is a nebulous audience that I may or may not interact with.  I don't know who bought every copy of The Witch or Ghosts of Albion or Buffy.

I do have the chance to get to know each and every reader here via the comments section.  I post, you comment, I reply.  There is a social contact at work here.. You are not expected to reply, but I write my posts hoping that people will.

Implicit in that is one of control.  I try to keep my posts interesting to my known audience.  This is one of the reasons I have different blogs.   I control what I post.  You control what you reply with, but ...I also control your reply. See I can delete any reply I don't like.  But I don't.  There are few good reasons for that.

I don't because it is dishonest. Having people disagree with me is a great way for me to learn something new.  I have lost track of all the things I have looked into because some one said "no. you are wrong."

I don't because it violates the social contract we have.  You put yourself out there, those were your thoughts.  I may not agree with it, but that doesn't give me the right to shut it down.

I also don't, and lets be honest here, controversy and conflict means more hits, more audience and hopefully more people reading my stuff.  Not fake controversy, people can see that a mile away, but real and honest.

A natural extension of that is I will also not delete old posts.  I don't see the point. You may want to go back a read something I posted in 2010. Great!  I will leave it there.  Even if it something I don't agree with, like or otherwise grok anymore.

I have been seeing too many cases of people taking down posts, editing posts to put themselves in better light. Sorry folks, between Archive.org and Google cache people can find anything that was posted given time, so don't try to change history.

I'll remove a post of your own if you ask me to. I'll delete multiple posts if looks like you were fixing a typo or something. I'll delete spam.

That's my contract with you.
Your contract with me is not post anything to make be doubt this choice! ;)

Friday, March 22, 2013

Friday Updates

hmm this might a regular feature.

Ok so next is a busy, busy week for me.
I am going to post a bunch of "The Best Blogs You Are Not Reading" posts.  I may not though be able to adequately respond to responses or even properly promote the posts.

I am also unsure whether I'll have a White Dwarf Wednesday ready to go at all either.  Yeah, it's going to be that kind of week.

In other news the new D&D Next playtest packet is out. People seem to like it. I have not read it yet myself.

So let me get this all straight WotC is A.) distributing their playtest material for free for anyone to play with and they are updating based on the feedback they are getting. B.) selling PDFs again and C.) have the reprints in physical stores for people to buy.  Oh and every so often Dragon features material for older editions.  It sounds like they are listening to their customers.

Eldritch Witchery Update / Elf Lair Games Update
Ok so. Yeah. I am way late on Eldritch Witchery. It was due out at the same time as the Witch, but needed some additional editing.  In talks with Jason Vey (head Elf at Elf Lair Games) we decided to merge in a couple of other products with EW that fit.  My celtic themed Old School game based on Spellcraft & Swordplay is for the most part dead in the water.  I know. I am saddened by it too, but Jason did not want to be in a position of competing with Troll Lords who publishes his Amazing Adventures game.  I can't say that I blame him.  Besides, the Codex Celtarum looks fantastic.  Ã‰ire will see the light of day, someday, but not as a Spellcraft & Swordplay book.  The materials though that went into it have been folded into EW rather nicely.  The other book I was working on was a book on demons and devils for Old School games.  But since that project started we have had a number of good monster books come out.  So that is also being folded in and the Warlock class in EW is getting a nice boost because of it.  I am editing down some things too to make sure this is not going to be a 300 page book.  Some of that will appear here on the blog.

A to Z Blogfest
I am doing demons. Should be fun. I have 100s or so to talk about, so the trick narrowing it down to just 26.
What pushed Demons up over Vampires?  Easy. I found a "Q" demon before a "Q" vampire.