A Role Playing Games Blog
Archive for October, 2009
10 RPG geeks you should follow on Twitter
4October 14, 2009
The main problem when you start with Twitter is that you often don’t know who to follow. Aside from millions of spammers, internet marketers and people who just tweet about what they had for breakfast, there are actually quite a few RPG geeks that are worth your time:
@unclebear
Uncle Bear aka Berin Kinsman is AFAIK the only member of the RPG Bloggers Network who made it into the famous “100 Geeks You Should Be Following On Twitter” post. He was called the father figure of RPG blogging and rightfully so!
@chgowiz
Chgwoiz aka Michael Shorten is my personal expert on all things old-school. His excellent Swords & Wizardry Quick Start was my first introduction into retro-gaming.
@chattydm
Philippe-Antoine Ménard aka ChattyDM writes one of the top blogs of the RPG Bloggers Network, “Musings of the Chatty DM” and is one of its “founding fathers”.
@rdonoghue
Rob Donoghue is one of the guys behind Evil Hat Productions, the company that brought you RPGs like FATE, Spirit of the Century or Don’t Rest Your Head. His tweets are protected so you have to ask nicely to get permission to follow him. But don’t worry, he doesn’t bite.
@thefreerpgblog
Rob Lang is not only the writer of the Free RPG Blog but also the designer of ICAR (a free SF RPG) and an awesome 24-hour-RPG called “Cloudship Atlantis”. If you are into free roleplaying games, he’s the guy to follow!
@robindlaws
Robin D. Laws is a game industry veteran and designer of a lot of interesting games including Heroquest, the Gumshoe system, the Dying Earth RPG and many more.
@rpgcircus
RPG Circus is a podcast hosted by Jeff Uurtamo, Mark Meredith and Zachary Houghton, who are all members of the RPG Bloggers Network. RPG Circus is my favorite RPG related podcast and if you want to keep up with all their updates, you should follow them on Twitter. The three hosts are also on Twitter, so you might be interested in following their respective tweets as well.
@greywulf
Greywulf aka Robin Stacey is a RPG blogger from the UK who is known for his awesome CGI renderings, his love for Mutants & Masterminds and recently for some great posts about the modern age D&D 4th Edition campaign he’s currently running. And not to forget that he wrote the awesome Microlite20!
@majyc
Joshua Macy (I hope this time I spelled his name right) is another member of our RPG Bloggers Network. He helped me a lot when I was writing my film noir roleplaying game (thanks a lot, Joshua!) and currently he’s also working on his own superhero game called “Kapow!”
@viricordova
Viriatha Cordova (I still don’t know her real name) is one of the few female RPG bloggers out there and she’s even more special because she is also a 40-something housewife. I always enjoy reading her blog and I always enjoy chatting with her over Twitter.
Of course this list is far from exhaustive, but these guys should be enough to get you started. If you feel I missed a few important people feel free to post their Twitter ID into the comments below!
Medieval town map tutorial
0Some days ago, fellow RPG blogger MJ Harnish pointed an awesome map-making tutorial out to me. This tutorial uses Photoshop and the Roleplaying City Map Generator, which I am hosting at my Google Sites page.
I haven’t tried creating my own map using this tutorial yet, but from what I’ve seen so far its easy enough to follow if you have some experience with Adobe Photoshop. Please note that you need to register at the forums to be able to access the attached images in the tutorial.
Lazy Friday Video Post: The Dungeons and the Dragons
4This video shows us why you never should invite your mom to play D&D!
You have been warned!
Under the Dark Sun
5October 9, 2009
This morning I noticed a post by Moritz Mehlem on his blog “Von der Seifenkiste herab”. In his latest blog post he writes about Matt Seplin’s project of bringing Dark Sun to Spellcraft & Sorcery.
As you may know, S&S definitely looks like another retro-clone but in reality it’s more a game inspired by OD&D. The combat system used in the game is pretty close to Chainmail’s Man to Man combat system. So S&S is a “what if” game that plays with the idea how OD&D would’ve looked like if Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson used the Chainmail combat rules. But said that, I believe it should be pretty easy to convert between S&S and any of the retro-clone like Swords & Wizardry.
Back to Matt’s Dark Sun project: It’s called “Under the Dark Sun” and already contains everything you need to play including new classes, species and psychic powers. The playtest draft of the rules is available on Matt’s website and in PDF format. The PDF is actually pretty nifty, the style is reminiscent of the old AD&D 2nd Edition Dark Sun books. If you are a fan of Dark Sun and old-school D&D, you definitely should check this out.
RPG Blog II says “Thank You” to its readers
1October 8, 2009
Fellow RPG Blogger Zach of RPG Blog II wants to say thank you to his readers and so he has lined up a few deal exclusive to RPG Blog II readers! If you want to make some great deals, check out his blog now! Most of the special deals are good for the next two weeks only!
Thank you, Zach!
Ask The Readers: Can I use the Kindle as a GM tool?
6October 7, 2009
Amazon is finally shipping its Kindle ebook reader to Non-US customers, too. They still don’t offer localized versions, but at least people from all over the world can order the Kindle from amazon.com and access the Whispernet in 100 countries.
I have to admit I love gadgets. And I have been looking for a decent ebook reader for quite some time now and Amazon’s Kindle looks pretty decent if you ask me. But if I put so much money on the table I want to be able to use the Kindle at the gaming table, too. So, are there any RPG rulebooks available on the Kindle store? How easy is it to convert PDFs (I am thinking about the stuff I bought on RPGNow for example)? Can the Kindle handle graphic intensive books? If you have used the Kindle for this purpose before please share your experiences!
The Fantasy Trip
7October 6, 2009
D&D is not the only roleplaying game that evolved from miniature combat games. Steve Jackson’s GURPS actually is based on “The Fantasy Trip”, a roleplaying game that itself evolved from Metagaming’s Melee and Wizard combat games. All these games had been designed by Steve Jackson, too.
Back in 1977 Metagaming released Melee a fast-playing man-to-man boardgame. Melee actually laid some of the basics for some of the GURPS rules. Each character had a Strength (ST) and Dexterity (DX) attribute back then. Strength was a measure of what weapons a character could use and how much damage he could inflict and take during combat. Dexterity determined the chance of hitting your opponents. Armor reduced the amount of damage taken.
When in 1978 Wizard was released, it added magic rules to Melee and another attribute was introduced: Intelligence (IQ). A high IQ attribute allowed characters to cast magic spells. Spellcasting caused temporary ST damage, limiting the amount of spells that could be cast. All this sounds already very much like what we know from GURPS.
In 1980 the third book in the series, In the Labyrinth, was released which finally turned Melee/Wizard into a fully-fledged roleplaying game. Melee and Wizard were rereleased as Advanced Melee and Advanced Wizard which together with In the Labyrinth formed the basis of “The Fantasy Trip”.
In TFT each character had three attributes: Strength, (ST), Dexterity (DX) and Intelligence (IQ). IQ was however not only important for spellcasters, but for other characters, too, because of the introduction of a point-based skill system.
1980 Steve Jackson left the company and the owner of Metagaming decided to close down the company just three years later. Today, TFT, the spiritual predecessor of GURPS is long out of print, but recently Dark City Games have released some rules inspired by TFT:
All those PDFs are available for free and from what I’ve seen are pretty close to the original TFT. I also stumbled upon another tribute site to TFT that also features some nice paper models and a TFT Wiki.
I have to admit that I actually never heard of TFT before I started to do some research on GURPS recently and I was actually surprised that a) the game looks that much like GURPS already and b) that there are not more retro-clones of TFT. Or did I miss anything?
So, what are your thoughts on “The Fantasy Trip”? Have you actually played the game back in the day and would you like to play the game even today?
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