Noble Knight Clearance Sale

Just an FYI post - Noble Knight has a clearance sale going right now.

Clearance Items

Just a trio of GURPS-related items - an issue of Pyramid, an issue of Roleplayer, and another zine of some kind. But still, worth a quick look if you have some item you're in the hunt for, especially more recent D&D and Pathfinder items.

Friday Roundup

Just a few notes.

- I've finished up the NPCs for Felltower, mostly due to a lot of help from Vic. Making the guys was easy; putting them on paper was fast. Getting them into GCS is harder for me, and Vic stepped up to deal with that. I'll just lightly modify them according to the Hidden Traits table rolls.

- I made it halfway through the 2nd edition of Jon Peterson's Playing at the World before I stopped a few months ago. I picked it back up and I'll finish it soon. It's a good book. I was genuinely more interested in my reading of the 1st edition, but this volume is probably more readable. Sometimes I just like a big, hefty, extremely detailed book.

- I still need to finishing prepping the dungeon for Sunday. I put the final work off, and now it's time to get to that.

Friday Roundup 11/1/2024

Not much gaming-wise this week. However:

- Next game of Felltower is 11/17. We have to skip 11/3 because not enough players are available and 11/10 I'm not available.

- It's a bit of a pain to generate the formatted NPCs I put up on the blog, but if they're popular, I'll keep doing them.

- Next game session will be session 200 for us. Should I do something special for it? Inflict 200 damage on a random target? Charge 200 sp to enter the dungeon? Give out 200 xp? Nah, probably not. But it will be a lot of game sessions, especially given the slow rate of gaming in the past few years.

- I went through my comic collection and have a few issues of Forgotten Realms from DC comics. Issues 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and Annual #1 and something called the Grand Tour. I'm thinking of putting them up on eBay. I never got too into it and it's time to pass them on. I thought I had more but here we are.

Assorted Links and Thoughts for 8/23/2024

A few thoughts and links for today.

- there is still a GURPS sale going on.

- same with that Bundle of Holding for Dying Earth DCC.

- Felltower is on Sunday.

- Matt Riggsby noodles on about historical writing for games.

- My Persian Gulf game stalled a bit from being busy. That said, the Soviets have overrunn most of Iran (their ally), savaged Turkey and took most of it, and are now moving into Iraq. As much as the cards favored the US and its allies well, the rolls for aircraft maintenance have housed them. The B-52s haven't been a factor since that one nasty logistical strike. I'm not sure how the US bails this out; the Soviets have them badly outnumbered and it's just Iraq, a few Kurdish units, Jordan, the Saudis, th Israelis, and the RDF . . . holding Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and a tiny slice of Iran. The Soviets have almost a dozen more units on the way . . . I think the US might be able to salvage a Minor Soviet Victory but it's looking like it'll be worse. We'll see.

Random Thoughts & Links for 8/9/2024

Busy week, just a few bits.

- I'm reading Jon Peterson's new book. It's good, and it does have some details on the early days of gaming that the first volume didn't, but it's not so dense as the first one. Much more readable for someone who just wants to learn the history, but I did enjoy the deep detail of the 1st edition of Playing at the World.

- I really need to link up all of the recent sessions on the DF campaign page. I've just been doing too much other stuff to take a moment to do that.

- I forgot to mention that hidden GM rolls seemed to work just fine last game session. It really makes a big difference for us when they are on versus when they are off.

- So busy these past few days that I didn't have time to play any more Persian Gulf. I need to complete it by early next week, so I expect a marathon of turns on Sunday and Monday.

Playing at the World 2e: Part I arrived

My pre-order of PATW 2nd edition arrived today. I learned a lot from the 1st edition book; I look forward to seeing what there is to learn from the updated version.

Here is the link to Amazon if you want a copy, too, and don't mind an affiliate link.

Random Thoughts & Links for 6/28/2024

- The Iron Llama is painting Car Wars 3d printed minis.

And painting them in horrifying interesting ways.

- I don't think I'd be a good GM for it, but rewatching The Wild Bunch recently made me really have an interest in running an "Old West" campaign set way, way too late to be the Old West. Like Mexico 1913. But while I'd mechanically be good at it I don't think I'd run a particularly interesting campaign. I just like the idea of it.

- Next game is in late July.

Call off the search - James Bond game found

On Friday I mentioned not being able to locate a box of my game books.

It turns out I did bring them to a relative's house and store them in a closet. Probably I was just clearing space to help the move, as a few other large items ended up all in that one spot.

Now it's back - MSH, Top Secret, T2K, Star Frontiers, Star Ace, Gangbusters, James Bond 007, and a few other things - like my Car Wars sets and Ogre - were there with it.

Hurrah!

Random Links for 3/29/2024

And I'm back.

- I got what might be an AI comment on my blog. Or maybe not. It's actually well written comment that reflects the contents of the post well, and expresses an opinion on it that makes sense in a way spam comments don't . . . except the profile of the commenter is a sales redirect. Weird. If it was just anonymous I'd have let it through.

- I took a short trip to Italy. I don't normally discuss my non-gaming life here, but it's relevant to gaming.

First, I have a post coming about mapping and room layouts after cruising around Pompeii for a few hours.

Second, I met up with one of the playtesters for GURPS Martial Arts, who I've known online for decades but finally met in person. If anyone remembers Peppe, aka Luther, that's who I met up with.

And third, this door in Roma very close to the Spanish Steps is more Trampier than anything except actual Trampier.

- We're potentially looking at 2 sessions of Felltower in April. Crazy, I know.

Merry Christmas folks

I'll be offline until 12/26.

Merry Christmas. Remember, Christmas is about presents. Presents are loot. Loot is xp. Therefore Christmas is about XP. I hope you all get some XP this Christmas!

Yours,

Peter

Marx Navarone Playset Memories

Christmas is coming, so thoughts turn to presents and toys.

I got this Marx Navarone Playset when I was a kid. I eventually passed the mountain fortress on to a relative's kid, who made it a friendly happy place to visit. That was not how I played with it.

What I remember the most about the set was that mine came missing the mounts for the guns. I had the turret locations, and the guns, but not the piece that connected them and allowed them to mount and swivel. I don't recall anyone ever suggesting that we write to Marx and ask for them, or buy them from a parts sheet, or anything of the sort. They weren't there, and that was that.

Meanwhile these days something like that would be take care of in a flash. I'd post on social media that mine came missing a part, tag Marx, and get a replacement piece on the way ASAP.

It's too bad, because my enduring memory of the toyset was how fun it was, and how the cannons had to just sit there next to the mounting spot. I quickly lost them and just put soldiers with MGs there to defend against the attacking soldiers. I used it as a G.I. Joe base, too.

Too bad it didn't come with the gun mounts though.

My Black Friday purchases . . . weren't

This year, I made all of one purchase on Black Friday (well, Cyber Monday) that related to tabletop gaming.*

It was barely even a purchase. I took last-minute advantage of a Forge sale to get 10% off my yearly subscription to Forge's hosting of DF Felltower. I was able to move my renewal date ahead, get pro-rated on the price, and knock 10% off. So I saved a bit less than $5.

$5 as a gaming purchase on the biggest sale weekend of the year here in the US.

Why?

It's not like my gaming discretionary funds went down any - people still buy my books and SJG still pays me for writing work during the year.

I think it comes down to a bit of purchase fatigue and a growing lack of need.

I bought a few things over the year - DCC #100 and DCC Lankhmar, and How to Defend Your Lair. Maybe one or two other things I'm not thinking of. Even just those have given me a few things to read that I just haven't had time for. Some of the lack of time is from another purchase, Fire in the Lake. All good stuff.

I don't need minis since I haven't been painting, thanks to a decline in my ability to paint those small details effectively.

And there hasn't been a flood of new GURPS titles, has there? A few things here and there.

Plus I just don't need a lot.

The longer I run DF Felltower, the less published materials really help. I play with a smaller and smaller set of rules - not always simpler rules, but less of them overall. I don't need more. Generally, I start with "We're not using any of this, unless explicitly included." Most material stays that way. I just don't need to add a lot. We modify the living hell out of most things, and come up with our own rules for things to speed play along or provide versimilitude or enjoyment.

I have less time to digest and understand and incorporate what I read, too. So plunking down money on new gaming books takes away from what I value the most - having the time to play, or engage in my other hobbies, interests, and work.

It's kind of sad . . . but at the moment I feel a little disconnected from the creative work going on in the field. I do feel very connected to the creative work going on in my immediate circle. We'll see if that's a blip or a trend.






* I did buy some non-gaming stuff - replaced some worn-out footwear, replaced a piece of broken exercise equipment, and spent a wee bit on grappling. I bought a video game, too. I'm not against spending in and of itself.

Noble Knight Clearance Sale

Noble Knight is having a big clearance sale. Some of the items are mildly discounted, but many have pretty steep discounts.

I've found there sheer volume of sale items makes it hard to browse, but still . . . sale RPG items.

There is basically no GURPS stuff, but still . . .

Here is the main sale page:

Clearance Sale

Random Links & Thoughts for 10/20/2023

Let's wrap up the week here.

- I'm still reviewing and doing the things needing doing for Felltower. The VTT is the chunk I want to do the least . . . so I'll put that off until last.

- I played big chunks of Fantasy General for a few weeks . . . I have no idea how much longer the game is. Am I on the last island? I don't know. I've maxed out almost all of the unit research, and the foes are pretty tough. It's just weird not knowing where am I in the whole process. Still fun . . . but I needed to take time off after one more big battle this past week.

- Interesting discussions and ideas popped up in the comments of my Retreat post. I'm intrigued by some of the suggestions, although my goal with that system is to simplify decision making. It's always tricky if a "fix" adds a decision fork to replace a decision fork; I'm not sure it helps speed it along.

- I might be unavailable all weekend. If so, see you all Monday.

Oh, you game, too? I'm probably not going to say anything about that anymore.

Back when I was first gaming, in the early 80s, there were a fair number of gamers. Not too many, but they were around. When you met them, you knew you found someone with at least an overlap in interest. I didn't necessarily connect up with them all, but they were special. I still remember a teacher of mine gloating about how he killed off his brother and his brother's friends party with a pack of halflings (!). I always remembered him as a killer GM, but also a good teacher who taught me how stocks worked and probably who is direct-line responsible for me learning how to invest.

As the years went on, I generally stopped discussing my hobby with others. Very few, if any, people played the games I played. For a long time, gaming was synonymous with being on the outside, socially. I rarely played with people I met who gamed but I did talk to them about it, even as shy as I could be as a younger person.

Now, I still have that habit. Yet I'm surrounded by gamers. Our sub-group supervisor at work? She players D&D, presumably 5th edition, with her son and her husband, and others. My BJJ buddys' kids, who I generally submit with triangle chokes and Kimura armbars? They play D&D. Heck, they missed open mat the other day because they had a D&D game. I noted that I game on days not conducive to rolling on the mats.

They're not the only people I work with, roll with, or otherwise interact with that game. It's become just a generic hobby. I still hold tightly onto my friends I gamed with them it wasn't just a normal hobby.

I don't have any deep point here. Just a thing to note. People I know for no reason to do with gaming ask me about gaming, or just casually mention playing D&D. It's a different world than the one I grew up in. For the better in my opinion. But it's different regardless of how I feel about it.

Stupid Tyler Stories

Recently, I met up with one of my old gaming buddies, Ryan V. For those playing along at home, Ryan's the one playing with a bunch of famous people out in L.A. and wrote Blackbirds. We talked about another of our buddies, Tyler, who we hadn't heard from in a while. Ryan hadn't, anyway. I'm basically out of contact with most people most of the time. He said he hadn't heard from him. That had happened before, but he was concerned. I wasn't. Shows what I know. Tyler died in February of this year. I'm sad. Tyler annoyed the hell out of me as a fellow player in everything we ever played. His paper men would do stupid things that messed things up for everyone. More than once, I was the direct cause of his PC's death because that advanced the cause of my PC, or just because he'd done such bad stuff for the plot that we needed him out of the way. But Tyler? I genuinely liked him a lot as a person. He's gone, now, which sucks. So let's tell some stupid Tyler stories.

Don't Eat the Evil Snow

Setting: Armageddon: The End Times RPG.

We're rebels against the evil Church of whatever the heck the evil church was. We found out that at Tunguska, in the former USSR, they'd done some crazy experiments. For reasons that escaped me, we headed there.

We found a lot of black snow that, for want of a better way to describe it, radiated evil. It was evil snow. We warned everyone off from touching it, did our investigations, and moved on.

But Tyler's guy, oh no, Tyler's guy wasn't done. Tyler's guy ate the evil snow. I'm not sure why, except this totally encapsulates what Tyler did every freaking game. Have a chance to do the right thing by the plot and the goals and your fellow PCs? Or eat the evil snow? You eat the evil snow. Tyler always ate the evil snow. He was a naughty paper man.

We eventually figured out that Tyler had eaten the evil snow.

Sigh.

Years on, I can't remember what eating the yellow snow evil snow did to his guy. But it wasn't good. We were opposed to it all. My character, Bota Khan, wasn't amused. Bota was a hardcore gun running religious fanatic dedicated to keeping his group of anti-evil church rebels going at all costs. He didn't brook opposition or threats, and took everything seriously. We had a talk, and Tyler's guy agreed to part from the group and keep up the good fight on his own.

He didn't make it.

Bota had his trusted aide-de-camp shoot him in the head with a Ruger P99 on the ride away from our current location.

That kind of thing needed doing to Tyler's guys.


My spouse came to talk to me during this post. I explained what I was writing and why - not something I do, normally, since my spouse isn't a gamer. I had to explain why I was sad my friend passed, yet my friend literally was the worst guy to having on your side in a game. The worst. No one was worse than Tyler. He'd sacrifice virgins and bathe in their blood for power. He'd sell out your secrets to the bad guys and rationalize why this was the right move for everyone. He'd steal from the group and explain why it helped. He was the worst. But we always let him play, because we liked Tyler.

One of my friends told a story about Vampire. He said something like, I did X, I did Y, and then I dominated Tyler into doing Z. I said, "I didn't think you had any dots in Dominate." "Oh, my PC didn't Dominate Tyler's PC. I dominated Tyler." Yeah, he was like that. Tyler had a stutter that came out when excited - like when he was explaining how selling everyone out was awesome - or under pressure, like when we'd all go "WHAT THE F---!" because, I don't know, maybe because he sold out everyone.

I'm going to miss Tyler. I'll missing playing with him, and not playing with him. I'd never invite him to game, and I sighed when he'd show up, but he was my friend and I don't regret the times I spent gaming with him. He was good people to be friends with even if he was the fly in the ointment every single actual game.

I'm hoping the others of the crew - Jon, Don, Ryan, Marco, Dok, and others - will chime in on the comments with more Tyler stories. He deserved to pass with a lot more regard from us than he got when he died a few months back. Hopefully we'll have a game memorial for him.

For what it's worth, remember everything is finite. You only have so many times with each person. Even one who's screwing over your paper man.

Assorted Links & Thoughts for 3/31/2023

Thoughts and Links for the week.

- So, if different languages wire your brain differently - as discussed here - what the hell do spells do to you? I'm going with my player's comment about "evil traits" - "Only Magery" - and assume they change your brain quite a bit in not terribly good ways.

- No game this weekend. No one can make it. Well, I can, but that's thin pickings since I'm also the GM.

- Writing update - still working on a project idea with Doug. Time to get work in on it tomorrow, I hope!

No, seriously, don't buy me things not on my wish list

Weird gripe, I know . . . but I received a gift order from DriveThruRPG a day or so ago.

I didn't want either item. They weren't the usual "gift" of a free item, from the writer or publisher of the item. They were for-real paid RPG supplements, for games I'd never play, from someone I didn't know.

I contacted DriveThruRPG and asked them to refund it and take it away. They did so, very quickly and efficiently.

I have no idea what was up with this. I don't know the gifter. I didn't get a message, just the "thanks for your order!" I wasn't charged for these, either, that I can tell. It was just a flat-out gift from someone I don't know for something I don't want - heck, one was for the Aliens RPG. I don't like "Aliens."

What the heck is it with this? I mean really.

I just don't know.

Last Wills for PCs?

Back in the day, our character sheets for AD&D were from TSR. Most of them had a little section on the back for a "Last Will."

We used them then, even though we had a pretty low-lethality game compared to how I do things now. In campaigns, it was rare for a PC to die. In our early games, it was more common, but I never saw a will successfully used to transfer anything to a new guy. Playing much of my very early days (and more here) in elementary school was not conducive to such play.

I'm curious how people have had this work out in their games. I don't use it in DF, mostly because I game with actual lawyers and managers who do long-term risk mitigation strategies in play already. My head hurts considering how they'd angle this. And it would be one more thing to keep track of. But color me curious . . . who wills the wills?

This and That Game Prep

Very little gaming today, or gaming things to write about.

I pretty much:

- did a little work on a project proposal

- played some Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which clearly had an upgrade since I last played it. I don't recall my town ever changing its in-game appearance when I upgraded to a capital. Or having a "library" showing all of the backers of the Kickstarter.

- did some VTT updates. I really need to get a printer, or at least a scanner, and use it to start putting sections of upcoming adventures into the VTT.

- read a short story that I want to discuss eventually as "gameable fiction."

And that's about it. Slow day.