The Other Side blog

Thursday, December 13, 2012

The Witch is now in Print!

For those of you waiting till the Witch appears in print. Well wait no longer!!
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/107132/The-Witch%3A-A-sourcebook-for-Basic-Edition-fantasy-games?affiliate_id=10748

My proof copies, your softcover copies will be, well, softcover.

The softcover version of the witch is now ready to go. For $25.00 you can get it along with the PDF, or just the physical book.

These make FANTASTIC Christmas gifts (though I am not sure if you will get them in time for Christmas or not). These make FANTASTIC New Years Gifts for the that special gamer in your life. Or for yourself.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

White Dwarf Wednesday #43

White Dwarf #43 comes to us from the long ago time of July 1983. I was 14 and getting ready to go to High School. White Dwarf gives us this Celtic themed cover. What's inside?
Well we start off with an editorial from Ian Livingstone continuing the same thoughts he had in Issue 41. He notes that some companies have shut down and others are focusing on computer games. Next verse, same as the first I guess. Of course what we didn't know in 1983 was how some of the social aspects of TTRPGs would work their way into computer games, in particular online ones and MMORPG (look, RPG is right there). Still though I think the Ian of 1983 would be happy to converse with the Ian of 2012 and see the changes that have been made, but also how people are still getting around a table to roll dice.

Marcus Rowland is up first with three (that's 3!) mini scenarios for last issue's Cthulhu Now.

Open Box is up with the game changer game for White Dwarf; Warhammer. At this point in time Warhammer is being produced by Citadel Minatures and only gets an 8/10 from reviewer Joe Denver. Questworld for RuneQuest is next. It gets an overall 6/10 from Oliver Dickinson, who is not impressed.
Lastly we have 9/10 review for a Play-by-Mail game, The Tribes of Crane. Kids ask your grandpa about play by mail.

A bunch of new sci-fi books as well as some on disproving psychic phenomena (in particular Uri Geller) feature in this month's Critical Mass.

Lew Pulsipher is up with buying and selling magic items and why the "magic shop" concept is a ridiculous idea.

Oliver Dickinson is back with some Griselda fiction. Andy Slack has vehicle combat for Traveller in this issue's Starbase.

The highlight for me is the second part of Irilian. The time the Northwest corner. We get six pages , dozens of locations and NPCs.

In the Letters section a letter complaining about having to read about Lew Pulsipher all the time was sent in by Lew Pulsipher. More debate over Don Turnbull and his point of view on the Necromancer class.

Thomas Price is up with Starport Design in Traveller. Though there is not much here that couldn't be easily converted over to Star Frontiers, in fact that is exactly what I did.

Oliver Dickinson is back, again, in RuneRites, discussing damage absorption in RuneQuest.

Fiend Factory has a collection of monsters that appear to be riding something. We get Bug Riders (who ride on bugs), The Lich King (who is riding a Nightmare) and the Vanith-Vadiren, or heavenly elves that ride on pegasi.

Treasure Chest covers the martial art Bujutsu for AD&D monks.

At the bottom of the page we get another milestone in the publication of White Dwarf.
The first strip of the comic Gobbledigook by "Bil" aka Bil Sedgewick. The adventures of Gobbledigook the Goblin will appear off and on till about issue #100.

Classifieds and ads end this issue. TSR has a new add featuring all it's Sci-Fi properties; Gamma World, Star Frontiers. Ares magazine and some minigames.

Pretty solid issue. I remember when I first got it I was hoping for something more Celtic themed inside, but not this issue. The cover art is cool all the same.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

S&W Witch?

I have been rereading the Sword & Wizardry rules since Thanksgiving.

http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2012/11/second-chance-weekend.html

And I am discovering I rather like it. It's not perfect, and there are some things that I am still not sure why they did what they did. But it is pretty solid.

The question I now have for all of you is this? Should I spend any time doing a S&W version of the Witch?
Not the entire book, just the class. I would focus on making is a core class and stripping it down to it's essentials. Maybe just 1 tradition with some occult powers. It would be a new tradition though, something not in The Witch or Eldritch Witchery.

I am not sure yet. And if I do, whether it should be free, for sale or what. I would naturally want to include some new material.

Would anyone be interested in such a thing?

Monday, December 10, 2012

Reminder: Adventures Dark and Deep

Just a reminder that there is only just about a week left for the Adventures Dark & Deep Kickstarter.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/623939691/adventures-dark-and-deep-players-manual

This is the best thing to a no-brainer Kickstarter. The book is already done and the author is looking for some art to improve it.

So please stop by and support this really cool "What if" project.

Selling my Soul to Google

I am very active on Blogger. All my RPG related email goes to my Gmail account. I use Google Analytics to track trends on my blog. I own an Android phone and tablet. So I am pretty sold on this Google idea.

Well this weekend I found the one thing my gaming life needs more than anything else.
I discovered the new Chrome Book.

It runs the new Chromium OS and uses all the same tools I use now for my RPG work.
Not only that, but last week I began a new RPG book. No surprise there. But this deal is that this is the first time since 1989 that I have started one on something other than Microsoft Word.
I was an early adopter of MS Word. The first copy I ever bought was Word 1.1 for Windows, I quickly upgraded to 2.0. I have tried other software. I had used many others before this; PC Write was a big one for me. I spent untold hours in front of a screen using WordStar. I even, briefly, tried WordPErfect (and hated it). I would guess that in the last 23 years I have spent about 30,000 hours using Word. That's about 5-6 hours a day. Work really adds to this number since everything I do there is in Word.

Last week I started a new RPG book in Google Docs. I have used Docs before for other things and even have written a number of things for work or pleasure in it. But I usually started them in Word. So this is a big deal for me.

This new Chrome Book would give me all the tools I am using now. Sure I have a laptop and a computer. The computer is in my office and not portable. The laptop is for work. My tablet is great, but not great to write with.

I like the idea of having a separate RPG computer to hold all my PDFs and works-in-progress.
Now if I can only get one for Christmas!

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Google+ Communities

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Zatannurday: the Amazing Adventures of Zatara!

I have been spending the week with Amazing Adventures the new Pulp Game from Troll Lords.
The cool thing about the "Pulp Era" is it more or less coincided with the "Golden Age of Comics". There are a lot of reasons for that which I will leave to others more knowledgeable than me. There is one thing I do know pretty well that covers both the Pulp and Golden Age of Comics and this blog.
Giovanni "John" Zatara.

Giovanni Zatara is the father of Zatanna Zatara. I have talked about and stated him up before, but this might be my favorite version. It seems to fit rather nicely. Again, I started with his M&M3 stats as a base line. I also wanted to make him a CHA based Arcanist since I felt that it worked best, given his career as a stage magician wold have mostly been about illusion. I also felt the description of a CHA-based Arcanist fit my idea of who Zatara, and Zatanna, are.

Giovanni "John" Zatara

Arcanist (CHA) 12
Human* Male, Lawful Good
hp: 50
MEP: 120
AC: 14 (dex, ring of protection)
Move: 30'

STR: 12 (0)
DEX: 16 (+2)
CON: 10 (0)
INT: 16 (+2)
WIS: 14 (+1)
CHA: 19 (+4)

*Zatara is a member of the Home Magi race. He gains a +1 to CHA and a -1 to CON.
Zatara, as a quirk of his own style of magic, must speak all his spells backwards in order to wrok.

Languages: Italian, English, Latin, Greek (native language is Italian)
Background: Entertainer (Actor) +4,
Traits: Spellgifted (transmutation), Spellgifted (illusion)
Skill: Knowledge (Arcana)

Gear: Top hat, cane (magical focus +2), tux

Spells 9/5/5/4/3/2/1

0: Arcane Mark, Detect Illusion, Detect Magic, Influence, Light, Mage Hand, Message, Prestidigitation, Stun

1: Change Self, Charm Person, Daze, Obscuring Mist, Sleep, Silent Image

2: Alter Self, Blur, Detect Thoughts, Hypnotic Pattern, Misdirection, Pyrotechnics

3: Blink, Clairvoyance/Clairaudience, Hallucinatory Terrain, Major Image, Suggestion

4: Confusion, Dispel Magic, Mirage Arcana

5: Major Creation, True Seeing

6: Mass Suggestion

I am very, very pleased with this. So pleased in fact that if I ever get a chance to play AA I want to play Zatara.

Links for Amazing Adventures

http://www.trolllord.com/store/product_info.php?cPath=22&products_id=211

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/106153/Amazing-Adventures%21?affiliate_id=10748