Friday, November 20, 2020

Friday Links & Thoughts 11/20/2020

Here is another post on the "Gary Gygax Hated Magic" idea.

Was Gary Gygax Afraid of Magic?

Me, I still see this as realizing you handed out too much power without enough limitations and just adjusted accordingly . . . not hate or fear. Just recognition that hey, maybe powerful, fast, easy, reliable magic wasn't the best design decision for long-term play balance?

James Mal thinks we need large groups. Yeah, I got that covered. We might only get nine people this Sunday. I'm kind of bemused by the people saying it's hard to play online with more than 4-5 people. We've had less than 6 only once, and man, that was a rarity. Zoom holds up well and Roll20 is a pain even with 2-3 people, so 8-9 doesn't make it any worse.

I keep losing the locations for stuff like this, so here it is again: The Magician's Ring story, starring Mike Mornard's wizard Lessnard.

The Magician's Ring

It's really very much a Jack Vance homage, with how arrogant the PC is and how conniving the NPCs are. "Such treasures are not for the likes of mere Mediums" indeed.

Sunday is a game day for us, so I've put what little time I have for prep into it. I'm basically spending a lot of time trying to make Roll20 do things so I don't have to do them on Sunday. It would be nice to game in person for a change so I could just draw a map freehand in 5 minutes and put down the minis . . . instead I needed to make pictures, now I need to make icons, next I need to make the map and hope the players go to the spot I think they're going to. It's annoying prep yet critical for this fight. I may enlist one of my players in it if I'm not able to get it all done by tonight.

By the way, big Foundry sale! I wish I could do nothing but buy their minis and sit and paint them. I don't have that kind of time and money. Well, not money to spend on minis, anyway. And I've had some painting issues. So mostly I look at these bigs sales and think, why, yes, I do need gun-armed Zulus and Swiss pikemen and Hundred Years War archers and Victorian adventurers, plus obviously those Greek heroes. And then I mostly move on, because, I probably really don't. But if you do, get them. I've never regretted a single purchase from Wargames Foundry or Casting Room Minis.

2 comments:

  1. "It would be nice to game in person for a change so I could just draw a map freehand in 5 minutes and put down the minis . . . instead I needed to make pictures, now I need to make icons, next I need to make the map and hope the players go to the spot I think they're going to."

    I feel this so hard... I've been PbPing and while that affords me the time for it, it still takes so much longer to draw, post, answer questions, etc, for the PbP than it does in person, and I imagine it's way worse for Roll20. I'm really surprised no one has come up with a good solution for this yet.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Spending my free time this week - and my game prep time today - on making tokens, putting them in Roll20, trying to get my hand-drawn maps into Roll20 and then properly scaled to hexes for combat . . . has been time consuming. I dislike the investment it takes.

      Delete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...