TBBYANR: RPG blogs

A couple of RPG focused blogs today!

Cross Planes
"Or how I learned to stop worrying and love D&D"
http://crossplanes.blogspot.com/
I gotta admit I love the alt-title.  It is something I have said in the past myself in connection with getting out of the Edition War mindset.  Cross Planes/Mark Craddock is also very much a non-participant in the Edition Wars.  He talks about D&D Next (and he was the first place where I found out the new packet was out).  He is also into Dragon Age and I'll admit that reading over his site today has made we want to check out the RPG or computer game again. So much so I did this even:

What Dragon Age: Origins Character Are You?
Hosted By theOtaku.com: Anime

Well was there ever a doubt?

He also did a couple of witch builds for D&D Next a Maiden and Mother.  Don't know if he did a Crone at all. What I like about this blog is Mark covers a lot of topics and games.  Single purpose blogs are great, and if I want to do a deep dive into a system that is what I need.  But I also enjoy the daily reading of the general purpose blog (like this one and my own) to get a variety of topics.  Plus he playing his games with his two daughters, how awesome is that?

Silver Divinity
http://silverdivinityrpg.blogspot.com/
I actually found this one from my Monstrous Monday Blogfest a while back and again on the Blog Blitz.  One of my favorite monsters from the MM Blogfest was his Zombie Cow.
The author of this blog, John, is working on a game project "Silver Divinity" and the blog is his proving ground/sounding board/beta tester.
So far the game itself sounds very cool.  It feels like a Steampunk meets Spelljammer sort of thing if I am reading it all right.  If so then that is cool.  The stats for the races look like d20/OGL so that makes that easier to understand.  The blog is only 7 months old and he is still posting ideas to flesh out.  So I expect to see some more interesting things in the future.
In the meantime stop on by and see what he has done so far.



This week I am running my irregular feature "The Best Blog You Are Not Reading" every day.  If you can instead of replying here, go to the blogs I am featuring and reply there.  I think the owners would like that.

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! ;)

White Dwarf Wednesday #58

White Dwarf #58 takes us to October 1984.  Right away we notice the Chris Achilleos cover.  I have always associated his work with White Dwarf and visa versa.  It's funny that some of his best work happened later than I remember.  This horde of evil is a theme he comes back too and I think he does well.  I seem to recall he has a few more coming up.

Ian Livingstone talks about how RuneQuest once again beat out AD&D for Best RPG at Games Day.  Under the new deal with Avon Hill RuneQuest will now cost £40 up from £30! Which is today's money is about $15 extra ($45 to $60), no idea what the value of that was in 1984 England, but I am sure it was a lot.

A couple of pages on traps.  After a DM with a couple of volumes of Grimtooth's traps I got used to checking for traps as I walked more or less. So today traps don't interest me much.

Open Box has some interesting games.  Lands of Adventure is first. I have never heard of it and Richard Clyne only gives it a 5/10.  Though up next is the classic Middle Earth Roleplaying from ICE.  They were such attractive books and I really lament not getting the game when it was new.  MERP gets 9/10 and Bree and the Barrow Downs (which I wanted FOREVER) gets a 7/10 from Jon Sutherland.  One day I need to spend some quality time with MERP.  The Q Manual for James Bond gets a 9/10.  Also an old favorite is the FASA Star Trek. Russel Clark loves it and gives it a 9/10.

Part 3 of the Ninja article is next. It deals with martial arts and the quasi-mystical ninja powers.  I have seen better treatments but I have seen worse too.

Graeme Davis is next with an article I remember well when I got a copy of this back in college. Beyond the Final Frontier deals with death in the games and how it might not be the last go.  The death myths of different cultures are presented it is a cool read.

Some significant typing is needed for the next article if you want to use the BASIC program to Grow Your Own Planets. This is the first time I have seen program designed specifically for the IBM PC using MS Basic (as opposed to Z80 Basic) in WD.

Some ads.  We come up next to a supers adventure for Golden Heroes and Champions.  Looks fun and simple enough.  I bet it would work fine for Icons, BASH! or M&M.
Not to be forgotten we have an AD&D mini adventure too with a couple of new monsters to boot.

Credit is detailed in Traveller.
"Colour" is the theme in Tabletop Heroes for mini painting.

RuneRites has a couple of really short scenarios. should work with about any game.
Treasure Chest details some old spells and gives them new twists.

Letters concerns itself with questions on what purpose does Tabletop Heroes serve.  Oh just you wait!
News details the new games coming up and licenses seem to rule the day; Indiana Jones, Star Trek, 2010, Conan, Star Fleet Battles and so on.

At this point White Dwarf is up to 56 pages and still 85p.  Most of the new space is used by ads though.
Serviceable issue, made better by the use of the fine cover art.

TBBYANR: Author Friends

The next two blogs belong to two people I consider friends. Both were huge help to me when I was working  on Ghosts of Albion.

Bobert the Hoosier expatriate

http://bbovenguy.livejournal.com/
Robert Black is someone I have known for more than 10 years.  We were both deeply involved involved in Willow & Tara fandom over at the Kitten Board. It was in my discussions with him that helped me formulate a lot of the ideas I had for the Dragon and the Phoenix and Season of the Witch.  Bob also came up with the original idea for the Sisters of Paradox.  Tara's father Robert in Season of the Witch is named after him. So I owe the guy a debt of gratitude for all the work we did back on the Kitten.
Bob is a YA author. Something he learned well as a writer on the classic "You Can't Do That on Television" back on Nick.  He is the only writer of that show to have dumped green slime on Alanis Morissette.

Dave Chapman's Autocratik
http://autocratik.blogspot.com/
Dave Chapman was working on Conspiracy X 2.0 the same time I was working on Ghosts of Albion.  I used to comment that only Eden hires a guy from Chicago to write a game about Victorian England and an Brit to write an American Conspiracy game.  We helped each other out a lot and then he had come in and do some playtests on Doctor Who.
Dave talks about a number of topics, but mostly related to games he likes.

I say pop on over and check them both out. If you like what you read there pick up one of their books and tell them I sent you.


This week I am running my irregular feature "The Best Blog You Are Not Reading" every day.  If you can instead of replying here, go to the blogs I am featuring and reply there.  I think the owners would like that.

TBBYANR: Aggregate Cognizance

You might recall some posts I have made about the horrible vampire game by Mykal Lakim.
Well a lot of what I know about it all I owe to Wil Hutton and his blog Aggregate Cognizance.

Well he is known for a lot more than being a constant thorn in Paul Cape's side. He has some cool stuff on his site too. So that makes Aggregate Cognizance today's Best Blog You are Not Reading.

Aggregate Cognizance
http://rivetgeek.blogspot.com
Obviously there is the whole Dark Phoenix Publishing/Mykal Lakim/Paul Cape drama to read and I would be lying if I said I didn't find it all fascinating.  HE also has quite a bit of FATE going on his site and he is quite the Tribe 8 fan as well.
I have to admit that his Search Alphabet Soup made me run to my own search keywords to see what people were using to get to me that was worthy of sharing.
The writing is clear and honestly I think with some time this could be one of those cool blogs to read that posts on a bunch of topics but has a central core.  When I pick up FATE again this summer I am going to make a bee-line to this blog and try somethings out.

So come for the FATE but stay for the vampire. Especially vampires.

If you are into Tribe 8 then he does have another blog dedicated to that, Dreams of Flesh and Spirit.
Tribe 8 was always one of those games I wanted to try, but never did.  Of course given my juvenile brain I always think of tribade and might not get out of one session without pissing off someone.

Anyway. Go over to his blog(s). It's good stuff.


This week I am running my irregular feature "The Best Blog You Are Not Reading" every day.  If you can instead of replying here, go to the blogs I am featuring and reply there.  I think the owners would like that.

TBBYANR: Movie Blogs

I love horror movies of all sorts.  I have a special place in my heart for sexy, cheesy euro-sleaze horror from the 70s to the early 80s.  So for the first set of "The Best Blog You are Not Reading" I would like to pick two film review sites that feature a lot of the movies that would be in my personal Appendix N.

The first is The House of Self-Indulgence

http://houseofselfindulgence.blogspot.com/
Truthfully HoSI breaks a lot of the rules of TBBYANR. It's not new, not small and has over 300 followers.  But it is also not one I see listed in the blog rolls locally, so I am going to let it pass.  Also the film reviews are so in-depth that I imagine that the author, Yum-yum, sits there in a private viewing room, whisky in hand with a leather bound journal and an Aurora Diamante fountain pen writing notes and witty insights to later be given to a secretary (who looks like Lina Romay in her prime) to be put on the blog.  Or something like that.
The reviews are long, in-depth and contain a surprising breadth of knowledge.
So yeah HoSI doesn't really need me to sing their praises, but I am anyway.

Another movie review site is For It Is Man's Number.
http://foritismansnumber.blogspot.com/
Again the focus here is horror, but a lot of other types of movies are covered. Owner Kevin Mathews has some solid old-school tastes. What attracted me to this blog was his coverage of Dracula AD 1972. One of the weakest Hammer Dracula films to be certain, but one I have used in my own games over and over.
Honestly this is one of those blogs where you want to start at the beginning of his blogging and read all the way up to the present day.  The reviews though are also the right size for getting a good feel of the movie.  He provides some Amazon links (which is nice).  I particularly liked going over all his Dracula movies.
What I find odd is that Kevin has been posting quality reviews since 2011 and he still only has 30 followers.  I think that is a crime to be honest.

If you enjoy movies then these are both worth your time.


This week I am running my irregular feature "The Best Blog You Are Not Reading" every day.  If you can instead of replying here, go to the blogs I am featuring and reply there.  I think the owners would like that.

Chronicles of Mystara? Yes Please!

I was just thinking the other night I really need a video game to help my D&D itch late at night when I want to game but everyone else is asleep.

This might just be what I need.

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4news/20130322#85749
http://www.capcom-unity.com/gregaman/blog/2013/03/22/announcing-dungeons-dragons-chronicles-of-mystara

It's Mystara on the Xbox.  How can that be bad?


Ok. So it is not going to replace D&D or even Skryim or even Minecraft in my house. But it will be fun and that is all that counts.

Out in time for my birthday.