OK! I figured it was getting a bit dark and depressing around here so I thought I would start up a new blog elsewhere and see if things might go a little better :)
I have decided that it is going to be more about gaming in general than RPGMP3 so hopefully it will work well and keep me occupied :D
You can find it over at Troll Lair (see, nice and none specific).
2008-08-04
2008-06-07
Further 4e Stuff and Other Things
Had a decent chance to read through DnD 4e today and look at some of the specific rules. It seems we did pretty well in the Shadowfell session that is up on RPGMP3. I have uploaded a character sheet to go alongside the Tielfling Warlock that I did on audio (as I promised to do it and it did not take too long).
I have been getting some excellent feedback about Geek-A-Saurus and I have just started the process for installing Woopra to have a look at the stats for the site. I love watching little sites growing as word of mouth spreads. I was talking to Jon on email today and saying how, even through we have be piling out recordings for 5 years now, this seems to give me more of a sense of achievement for some reason. It is also nice to get some feedback as it kind of cements the fact that you are actually talking to someone and not just yourself.
I think the pimping of the podcast has begun to start in earnest and with so many contributors and folks on the site helping out we should be able to get the word out pretty quickly. When we decided to do this, we wanted it to be a lot more community built than be the work of just a few hands and we are excited to see what kinds of contributions we might get in future weeks.
Obviously, massive thanks have to go out to Martin and Jon and the rest of the Whartson Hall lot who are sharing the project with Lindsay and myself. They have secured some bloody great interviews and I am in awe at some of them that are yet to come. Also we have Martin to thank for the extremely funk intro music :)
Right - I am off to check Lindsay has not turned into a prune in the bath and to check on the dog.
I have been getting some excellent feedback about Geek-A-Saurus and I have just started the process for installing Woopra to have a look at the stats for the site. I love watching little sites growing as word of mouth spreads. I was talking to Jon on email today and saying how, even through we have be piling out recordings for 5 years now, this seems to give me more of a sense of achievement for some reason. It is also nice to get some feedback as it kind of cements the fact that you are actually talking to someone and not just yourself.
I think the pimping of the podcast has begun to start in earnest and with so many contributors and folks on the site helping out we should be able to get the word out pretty quickly. When we decided to do this, we wanted it to be a lot more community built than be the work of just a few hands and we are excited to see what kinds of contributions we might get in future weeks.
Obviously, massive thanks have to go out to Martin and Jon and the rest of the Whartson Hall lot who are sharing the project with Lindsay and myself. They have secured some bloody great interviews and I am in awe at some of them that are yet to come. Also we have Martin to thank for the extremely funk intro music :)
Right - I am off to check Lindsay has not turned into a prune in the bath and to check on the dog.
2008-06-06
DnD 4e, Character Creation and Shadowfell
Well we have just finished the first session of Keep on the Shadowfell for Dungeons and Dragons 4e. I have to say that I quite enjoyed it from the DMs chair. There was a lot of leafing through the books to figure out rules and the like but I think it definately has some potential.
Sadly Lindsay had to sit this one out due to a really bad headache, but her character, a relative of the ever popular Feylin Hilltopple was ably NPCed by me and managed to rip through quite a few bad guys without a scratch :)
I have just uploaded the session recording to RPGMP3 and you can download it directly if you want (Keep on the Shadowfell Session 01). Let me know what you think!
I also recorded a quite character generation walkthrough for a Tiefling Warlock as I felt bad that the Shadowfell character creation session ended up bad due to the recorder messing up again. You can download this if you want to listen to me talking about roleplaying characters for half an hour. (DnD 4e Character Creation: Tiefling Warlock).
Lindsay's Mum is coming over to visit so we are skipping the next Thursday session of Shadowfell but should be back to normal play by the following week :) Also playing Rolemaster this Sunday. It is all go in the heady world of gaming here in Texas.
I am heading to bed. My gaming duties are over. If you get a chance head over to Geek-A-Saurus and give the pilot episode of our new podcast a look.
Sadly Lindsay had to sit this one out due to a really bad headache, but her character, a relative of the ever popular Feylin Hilltopple was ably NPCed by me and managed to rip through quite a few bad guys without a scratch :)
I have just uploaded the session recording to RPGMP3 and you can download it directly if you want (Keep on the Shadowfell Session 01). Let me know what you think!
I also recorded a quite character generation walkthrough for a Tiefling Warlock as I felt bad that the Shadowfell character creation session ended up bad due to the recorder messing up again. You can download this if you want to listen to me talking about roleplaying characters for half an hour. (DnD 4e Character Creation: Tiefling Warlock).
Lindsay's Mum is coming over to visit so we are skipping the next Thursday session of Shadowfell but should be back to normal play by the following week :) Also playing Rolemaster this Sunday. It is all go in the heady world of gaming here in Texas.
I am heading to bed. My gaming duties are over. If you get a chance head over to Geek-A-Saurus and give the pilot episode of our new podcast a look.
2008-06-01
Wishing!
Not written in a while. Things are not going to great here at the moment. I don't know what to do, so I am talking to myself on here to try and get my head in order. I will probably delete this anyway but it might help out.
I wish life was simpler and that the decisions you make with all good intentions didn't turn around and bite you in the arse quite so often. I wish I was happier with things and I wish I had my drive and ambition back. If you see it, email it back over to me ok? I wish it was 8 years ago and I could do things differently. I wish I could express how I feel better and not be negligent, self centred and distracted all the time.
I wish we were happy again.
I wish life was simpler and that the decisions you make with all good intentions didn't turn around and bite you in the arse quite so often. I wish I was happier with things and I wish I had my drive and ambition back. If you see it, email it back over to me ok? I wish it was 8 years ago and I could do things differently. I wish I could express how I feel better and not be negligent, self centred and distracted all the time.
I wish we were happy again.
2008-05-21
Keep On The Shadowfell
Well, my copy of Keep on the Shadowfell (the first adventure for DnD 4e) arrived yesterday and I have been skimming through it to see what's what. Then I figured it might be nice to do a little review for you guys. Not sure hoe many of you have picked it up, so here goes.
Presentation
The adventure consists of 2 booklets and 3 double sided maps all contained within a rather nice folder. It all looks very pretty indeed but I stumbled over a small problem when I started to read the booklets. It is warm in Texas, and though I do not sweat a massive, the fact that the booklets have no covers really bothered me. I care for my books well and I am afraid that this is going to end up sticky and useless especially across the back page. Al lit would take is one Mountain Dew spillage and your lovely adventure would be so much paper pulp. For just under $30, I have to say I expected a cover!
The interior of the booklets are colour and shiny. The art is pretty decent and it is clear that they are going for a different feel. There is a short introduction to the adventure in the Adventure Book and then we are straight into the encounters. Essentially the adventure has been watered down to a series of set piece encounters with a little bit of linking narrative. If any of you have seen the recent adventures for 3.5 (Expedition to Castle Ravenloft and Demonweb Pits etc) then you will be reasonably familiar with this "new" style of adventure layout. I have to say I am not a fan. I do not like the adventure telling me where my monsters start on the map. It worries me that this is perhaps a step too close to computer gaming where the monster notices nothing until activated by a PC.
The System
The new system is what everyone seems to be wanting to know about and it seems like a huge departure from Dungeons and Dragons of old. Alignment essentially means nothing any more (not a bad thing in my opinion), gone is spell memorisation and spells per day, and skills have been simplified. At first glance it appears that combat may run quicker, assuming the group is aware of all the new rules regarding slides and shifts and things. I have to say I think the combat has been strongly influenced by both MMORGs and the desire to sell minis for the Miniatures Game. Although each character class now has many more options in combat than just stand and swing I think essentially you may fall into a trap where the party just deals with combats in the exactly the same way every time. Bob uses ability A, then Frank uses ability B etc.
I have to admit that the Rules Booklet is very flimsy and thin and is essentially nothing more than the absolute basic rules to allow for the game to be run. I am really waiting to see the grappling rules on the main book. Only then will I have a true idea as to whether or not this is an improvement.
Looking at the pregenned characters at the back of the book they seem to show a strong resembelece to characters from games such as World of Warcraft. They have their resistances (AC and Saving Throws), the Ability Scores are relegated to the back of the sheet, they have a limited and simplified skills list and they have a big bunch of "powers".
These powers can be used "at will", per "encounter" or "daily", essentially giving then a recharge time like a computer game. Looking at the basic characters there seems to be a lot more hit points floating around even at Level 1 than their ever was before and the fact that you do not die until you reach half your hits under zero means that there will be a lot less mortality in this edition. Add on top of this the fact that each character has a number of Healing Surges per day with essentially restore a quarter of their hits and you have some very sturdy character indeed.
Overall
I am currently on two minds about the whole 4e business. I am going to hold off on an overall opinion until I have seen the core rulebooks (which I have preordered) and have run a game (which I am arranging for the day of release and hopefully it will hit the site the same day as well). I want to see how all the changes have affected how the game runs and feels. 3.5 was a huge change from ADnD and I am wondering if this is going to be the same.
From what I have seen so far I think it may well be fun to play, but it may also be very close to just attending a LAN party and playing WoW with your mates. Time will tell!
Presentation
The adventure consists of 2 booklets and 3 double sided maps all contained within a rather nice folder. It all looks very pretty indeed but I stumbled over a small problem when I started to read the booklets. It is warm in Texas, and though I do not sweat a massive, the fact that the booklets have no covers really bothered me. I care for my books well and I am afraid that this is going to end up sticky and useless especially across the back page. Al lit would take is one Mountain Dew spillage and your lovely adventure would be so much paper pulp. For just under $30, I have to say I expected a cover!
The interior of the booklets are colour and shiny. The art is pretty decent and it is clear that they are going for a different feel. There is a short introduction to the adventure in the Adventure Book and then we are straight into the encounters. Essentially the adventure has been watered down to a series of set piece encounters with a little bit of linking narrative. If any of you have seen the recent adventures for 3.5 (Expedition to Castle Ravenloft and Demonweb Pits etc) then you will be reasonably familiar with this "new" style of adventure layout. I have to say I am not a fan. I do not like the adventure telling me where my monsters start on the map. It worries me that this is perhaps a step too close to computer gaming where the monster notices nothing until activated by a PC.
The System
The new system is what everyone seems to be wanting to know about and it seems like a huge departure from Dungeons and Dragons of old. Alignment essentially means nothing any more (not a bad thing in my opinion), gone is spell memorisation and spells per day, and skills have been simplified. At first glance it appears that combat may run quicker, assuming the group is aware of all the new rules regarding slides and shifts and things. I have to say I think the combat has been strongly influenced by both MMORGs and the desire to sell minis for the Miniatures Game. Although each character class now has many more options in combat than just stand and swing I think essentially you may fall into a trap where the party just deals with combats in the exactly the same way every time. Bob uses ability A, then Frank uses ability B etc.
I have to admit that the Rules Booklet is very flimsy and thin and is essentially nothing more than the absolute basic rules to allow for the game to be run. I am really waiting to see the grappling rules on the main book. Only then will I have a true idea as to whether or not this is an improvement.
Looking at the pregenned characters at the back of the book they seem to show a strong resembelece to characters from games such as World of Warcraft. They have their resistances (AC and Saving Throws), the Ability Scores are relegated to the back of the sheet, they have a limited and simplified skills list and they have a big bunch of "powers".
These powers can be used "at will", per "encounter" or "daily", essentially giving then a recharge time like a computer game. Looking at the basic characters there seems to be a lot more hit points floating around even at Level 1 than their ever was before and the fact that you do not die until you reach half your hits under zero means that there will be a lot less mortality in this edition. Add on top of this the fact that each character has a number of Healing Surges per day with essentially restore a quarter of their hits and you have some very sturdy character indeed.
Overall
I am currently on two minds about the whole 4e business. I am going to hold off on an overall opinion until I have seen the core rulebooks (which I have preordered) and have run a game (which I am arranging for the day of release and hopefully it will hit the site the same day as well). I want to see how all the changes have affected how the game runs and feels. 3.5 was a huge change from ADnD and I am wondering if this is going to be the same.
From what I have seen so far I think it may well be fun to play, but it may also be very close to just attending a LAN party and playing WoW with your mates. Time will tell!
2008-05-16
Post Before Bedtime!
Been pretty busy with stuff over the past couple of days. Lindsay and I have been out entertaining Lindsay's friend from the UK this week - and that was OK. We went down to the Galleria in Houston on Thursday and wandered around looking at stuff we could not afford in all the high end shops.
Thursday night saw the playing of another session of Beyond the Mountains of Madness and finally the game starts to feel like Cthulhu to me. It has taken far too many sessions of messing about and me reading stuff out to get to this point but now we have had explosions, gun play, running, screaming, shoggoths, abductions and all kinds of stuff in the space of 3 hours. This is what Cthulhu is meant to be. Not checking cargo manifests and listening to the Keeper reading endless rubbish about how nice the sky is on your sea voyage. I have to say it was the first session of this adventure that I have truly enjoyed running and I think the players actually enjoyed as well.
Managed to secure a copy of DnD 4e as well, which is great. I was going to go with Will at Enigma's but unfortunately he seems to be having some cash troubles and this means that I am not 100% certain he will be able to get it for me on the day it is released. I had thought of Amazon but then that would likely mean I would not get a copy until the day after it was released. So I have gone with Fat Ogre, a local store that seems to have its shit in order. The guy has said that I will get a call when he gets the books and I can run up and get them - even if they are early and prior to release date. Which is rather excellent I do think.
I have plans to do a session of character creation on the Friday it is released and get that to the site (Patrons and Main Site) along with the first session of Keep on the Shadowfell with any luck. I have primed the players so we are good to go and then hopefully 4e will take over when Cthulhu draws to a close on our regular Thursday night slot and we can have lots of fun playing through the published stuff and seeing how broken things can get.
Tonight I have been playing with setting up a RSS feed for the Patrons Area. I have managed to get it so that it is password protected and so that every Patron can have their own password. This means that if anyone wanders away from the fold I can just remove their access. It also means I can monitor the access for any folks that might have handed their passwords out (though I am sure that's not going to happen as they are all lovely folks). I really really must get the donations block on the site working again. Since I was forced to turn it off due to the bug it caused the donations have once more dried up. I guess you have to be blatant in order to make this sort of thing work. I have not had a new paying advertiser in rather a long time and that makes me sad as well. I think a lot of personally run gaming sites are going to start to feel the bite fairly soon. Things are not looking too great here and I think it will be felt everywhere as people start to watch what they spend their cash on. I just hope we can manage to weather it through to the other side.
Been thinking about the new podcast we are trying to give birth to and I am hoping that Lindasy will agree to give it a crack this week some time. That way we can cut in all the nice bits and pieces I have all prepped for it and see where we end up with a first episode. It is going to stay audio and not be video as video is not the greatest medium for gaming stuff. There is really very little to show people and the filesizes are much more demanding.
I have also managed to get a print out the Labour of Love PDF. All it needs now is for me to correct some typos and ensure the layout is looking good and then it is going online for those who deserve to get it. I will hopefully be uploading it tomorrow and sending out the email to the folks that made the lovely donations way back in the dark and distant past. I feel awful leaving it this long but with such a hectic year and not having the right software to get it all looking pretty it just fell by the wayside a little. Hopefully folks will be pleased with it.
Exciting news for Lindsay yesterday. Singstar for the PS3 is out on the 20th of this month. We will have to get our copy saved at Ned's game store and then we will be singing the night away. I am hoping that it is as good as the PS2 version was as it always cheered Lindsay up when she was feeling down. Poor little babe has been a little under the weather lately and has been getting blue. Hopefully some bad singing on my part will help her out. Can't be any worse than my Rock Band drumming skills.
Thursday night saw the playing of another session of Beyond the Mountains of Madness and finally the game starts to feel like Cthulhu to me. It has taken far too many sessions of messing about and me reading stuff out to get to this point but now we have had explosions, gun play, running, screaming, shoggoths, abductions and all kinds of stuff in the space of 3 hours. This is what Cthulhu is meant to be. Not checking cargo manifests and listening to the Keeper reading endless rubbish about how nice the sky is on your sea voyage. I have to say it was the first session of this adventure that I have truly enjoyed running and I think the players actually enjoyed as well.
Managed to secure a copy of DnD 4e as well, which is great. I was going to go with Will at Enigma's but unfortunately he seems to be having some cash troubles and this means that I am not 100% certain he will be able to get it for me on the day it is released. I had thought of Amazon but then that would likely mean I would not get a copy until the day after it was released. So I have gone with Fat Ogre, a local store that seems to have its shit in order. The guy has said that I will get a call when he gets the books and I can run up and get them - even if they are early and prior to release date. Which is rather excellent I do think.
I have plans to do a session of character creation on the Friday it is released and get that to the site (Patrons and Main Site) along with the first session of Keep on the Shadowfell with any luck. I have primed the players so we are good to go and then hopefully 4e will take over when Cthulhu draws to a close on our regular Thursday night slot and we can have lots of fun playing through the published stuff and seeing how broken things can get.
Tonight I have been playing with setting up a RSS feed for the Patrons Area. I have managed to get it so that it is password protected and so that every Patron can have their own password. This means that if anyone wanders away from the fold I can just remove their access. It also means I can monitor the access for any folks that might have handed their passwords out (though I am sure that's not going to happen as they are all lovely folks). I really really must get the donations block on the site working again. Since I was forced to turn it off due to the bug it caused the donations have once more dried up. I guess you have to be blatant in order to make this sort of thing work. I have not had a new paying advertiser in rather a long time and that makes me sad as well. I think a lot of personally run gaming sites are going to start to feel the bite fairly soon. Things are not looking too great here and I think it will be felt everywhere as people start to watch what they spend their cash on. I just hope we can manage to weather it through to the other side.
Been thinking about the new podcast we are trying to give birth to and I am hoping that Lindasy will agree to give it a crack this week some time. That way we can cut in all the nice bits and pieces I have all prepped for it and see where we end up with a first episode. It is going to stay audio and not be video as video is not the greatest medium for gaming stuff. There is really very little to show people and the filesizes are much more demanding.
I have also managed to get a print out the Labour of Love PDF. All it needs now is for me to correct some typos and ensure the layout is looking good and then it is going online for those who deserve to get it. I will hopefully be uploading it tomorrow and sending out the email to the folks that made the lovely donations way back in the dark and distant past. I feel awful leaving it this long but with such a hectic year and not having the right software to get it all looking pretty it just fell by the wayside a little. Hopefully folks will be pleased with it.
Exciting news for Lindsay yesterday. Singstar for the PS3 is out on the 20th of this month. We will have to get our copy saved at Ned's game store and then we will be singing the night away. I am hoping that it is as good as the PS2 version was as it always cheered Lindsay up when she was feeling down. Poor little babe has been a little under the weather lately and has been getting blue. Hopefully some bad singing on my part will help her out. Can't be any worse than my Rock Band drumming skills.
2008-05-14
Been A Little Busy
Some of you might have noticed I have been a little quiet of late. This has been mainly due to me finally being able to relax after finishing my classes for the summer, but also due to the fact that I have been working like a little slave to learn Adobe InDesign.
The main reason I wanted to learn InDesign was to get the Labour of Love PDF that I owe some of the site members sorted. I have not really had time to do the page layout work and to be honest I have not had the software to do it, as Word was totally unsuitable and the free desktop publishing package I downloaded was just useless.
Thankfully the production is almost totally done now after 2 days of constant page setting and layout and it has been proof read by my team of train proof readers (mostly Lindsay). All I have to do is incorporate the changes and then I can get the thing up online and email the link to the folks that need it. I have to say that I am pretty pleased with it and I am glad that I waited for InDesign and gave it the necessary time. It has been a pretty hectic year and I have had most of it written for a while - just had no way to make it look pretty. It has some lovely art from our lovely Site Artist and looks pretty slick if I do say so myself. Hopefully you guys will think so too.
Not sure what I will do with it but I might look at dropping it up on LuLu and seeing if anyone else wants it. Technically it was written as an intro adventure to Tomb of Haggemoth so it might be nice to have printed copy as well.
Been wandering the local outlet mall today with the girl Lindsay knows from her forums. It was OK. I frighten myself with how much I know about women's fashion and things but I guess I was well trained when I was young and my training has since been concreted. Ended up eating out at a Mexican. I love burritos but this one was not the greatest. It was a little dry and heavy.
I have been trying to see if I can manage to get a preorder of 4e sorted so that I can get it as soon as it is released. I have seen the demo adventures and could likely run one of those with the pregens but I have been thinking about it and the rules are still only the quick start ones and I think the best test will be to wait until the actual game comes out. I have Keep on the Shadowfell preordered from Amazon so I think I will likely start by running a group through that (hopefully the day the main rulebooks are released). I think I have managed to secure a preorder - now I just have to persude them to stay open until 12.01am on the previous night so I can buy it from them.
The main reason I wanted to learn InDesign was to get the Labour of Love PDF that I owe some of the site members sorted. I have not really had time to do the page layout work and to be honest I have not had the software to do it, as Word was totally unsuitable and the free desktop publishing package I downloaded was just useless.
Thankfully the production is almost totally done now after 2 days of constant page setting and layout and it has been proof read by my team of train proof readers (mostly Lindsay). All I have to do is incorporate the changes and then I can get the thing up online and email the link to the folks that need it. I have to say that I am pretty pleased with it and I am glad that I waited for InDesign and gave it the necessary time. It has been a pretty hectic year and I have had most of it written for a while - just had no way to make it look pretty. It has some lovely art from our lovely Site Artist and looks pretty slick if I do say so myself. Hopefully you guys will think so too.
Not sure what I will do with it but I might look at dropping it up on LuLu and seeing if anyone else wants it. Technically it was written as an intro adventure to Tomb of Haggemoth so it might be nice to have printed copy as well.
Been wandering the local outlet mall today with the girl Lindsay knows from her forums. It was OK. I frighten myself with how much I know about women's fashion and things but I guess I was well trained when I was young and my training has since been concreted. Ended up eating out at a Mexican. I love burritos but this one was not the greatest. It was a little dry and heavy.
I have been trying to see if I can manage to get a preorder of 4e sorted so that I can get it as soon as it is released. I have seen the demo adventures and could likely run one of those with the pregens but I have been thinking about it and the rules are still only the quick start ones and I think the best test will be to wait until the actual game comes out. I have Keep on the Shadowfell preordered from Amazon so I think I will likely start by running a group through that (hopefully the day the main rulebooks are released). I think I have managed to secure a preorder - now I just have to persude them to stay open until 12.01am on the previous night so I can buy it from them.
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