Jan 21 2013
I haven’t done one of these in a while! Between work and classes I’ve been away from the blog and not been as effective at getting to review some books provided to the blog for that very end. This time around I’ll tackle three books by the wonderful folk at Kobold Press for the Pathfinder RPG. So without further ado…
Jan 18 2013
My longest running super hero campaign is over… It lasted almost two years, and it has been my favorite supers campaign ever! Let me give you some perspective: We began playing the first week of January 2011 and finished the second week of November 2012. One year and eleven months. Of course we didn’t play every week, real life happened, we took a break to play a zombie adventure/mini campaign, so we actually played a total of 72 sessions, what amounts to 18 months of weekly gaming. I’m a big believer in consistency and trying to keep the game going on a weekly schedule to build momentum, keep it fresh in everybody’s mind, and to create a rhythm. It worked, and here after giving myself some time to allow the fact that it is over sink in, I am very happy. Was it perfect? No! But I think I learned a lot, and the players enjoyed it overall. So in an attempt to learn from this process, I’ll write this little postmortem and share it with you, hope you find it interesting.
Jan 16 2013
2012 has been a great year for the blog. According to the stats plugin I use the blog has been viewed about 260,000 times last year. This is quite amazing in my opinion. I never thought so many people were interested in what we’re writing here. 
So let’s have a look at the 5 most popular posts in 2012:
What was your favorite post in 2012? Please post your thoughts below!
Jan 14 2013
We’re back! After taking a well-deserved break Stargazer’s World is back in business. I want to start the new year by wishing you all a happy new year 2013. I also want to greet all our old and new readers. You guys are still the #1 reason for the – in my opinion – great success of this blog.
So, what’s new? On my side: not much. I mainly spent the holidays relaxing, playing computer games, reading, and eating great food. One of the highlights during the holiday season was me running “Into The Iron Coral”, which is – for me at least – still the best Into The Odd adventure. The players survived, brought back a few nice treasures and two powerful Arcana, and are interested into playing ITO another time. I have to admit that I am a bit hesitant to continue playing Into The Odd during 2013. Don’t get me wrong, ITO is a marvelous game and I like it a lot, but I just don’t feel I am the right guy to actually write ITO adventures. Hopefully Chris McDowall can make some more adventures available to us, perhaps then I’ll reconsider.
So what are my plans for 2013? First and foremost I want to finish writing Galaxy Rising. I actually planned to write down the setting and the missing rules during my vacation, but I was just too lazy. But now with my batteries fully recharged I hope to get this done in no time. 
The extremely successful Fate Core Kickstarter is making me quite excited for Fate again and I have very high hopes for the Fate Accelerated Edition that has been announced a while ago. FAE is one of the stretch goals that has been reached during the last weeks and it will be 32-paged version of the Fate ruleset. That’s exactly what we need to introduce new people to Fate without intimidating them with the 300+ pages Fate Core ruleset. From what I’ve seen Fate Core looks like the best Fate edition to date and I think I finally need to introduce more of my friends to this game.
Last but not least I want to play more often in 2013. 2012 was a very bad year for me when gaming is concerned. I think my mental health issues that got worse in early 2012 were the main reason for this. Slowly things are getting better and I hope I’ll play and run games much more often than last year. Instead of having a long list of New Year Resolutions I just plan to play more often, finish writing Galaxy Rising and do more with Fate.
What are your plans for 2013? Do you have a long list of resolutions or do you prefer to focus on just a few things you want to accomplish? Please share your thoughts in the comments below! As always any comment is highly appreciated.
Dec 17 2012
The end of the world year is almost upon us and I decided to take a break from blogging during my holiday. My creative batteries are almost empty and I want to use the upcoming days and weeks to relax without having to worry about the blog too much. Don’t worry, this is no goodbye. As long as nothing unforeseen happens, the Stargazer’s World will be back in action in January 2013.
I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! Take care, guys!
Dec 14 2012
Bruce Heard is a name I will forever associate with classic D&D content, but for the uninitiated I have just one word, Mystara! Of course it wasn’t always called Mystara, once upon a time it was just the Known World, the starting setting and the greater world hinted at in the Dungeons & Dragons boxed sets with which I learned how to role-play.
That world came alive for me with the Gazetteer series. I remember when I got my hands on the first one, The Grand Duchy of Karameikos. It showed me what a D&D setting could be, it was at once familiar and surprising. I learned the word gazetteer that day. Of course the book that really blew my socks of was the Principalities of Glantri, the land rules by magicians cemented what this world was like in my mind and made me a long life fan. Back then I didn’t really know much about who wrote what but I remember looking at the cover and wondering just who this guy Bruce Heard was…
Imagine my surprise when I got to talk to him online not too long ago! After all these years I actually was exchanging messages with someone who was instrumental in my formation as a role-player and game master. Isn’t social media grand! Of course one of the first things I did was pester him about and interview and he was so kind as to answer the long list of questions I sent him. So now without further ado, here is my interview with Mr. Bruce Heard…
Dec 10 2012
Over the last couple of years I have regularly meet with my gaming group on New Year’s Eve to play a one-shot game – usually something from the horror genre like Call of Cthulhu. This year I am thinking about running Into The Odd, Barebones Fantasy or Reality Blur’s tremulus depending on what my friends are more interested in.
Running roleplaying games on New Year’s Eve has become something like a tradition for me. There are actually a lot of advantages to running games on this day. It’s a day almost everyone has off, everyone is prepared to stay awake until midnight at least and playing games is a perfect way to spend hours and hours. 
Alas we usually don’t game that much on the Christmas days, probably because it’s more a family activity and my girlfriend’s and my family are not really gamers. We might play one or two board games but probably some non-geeky ones like “Scrabble” or “Mensch ärgere dich nicht”.
 |
 |
 |
So what are your plans during the Holidays? Do you spend the end of the year in quiet contemplation or do you prefer to celebrate using your favorite hobby? Please share your thoughts below!
Except where otherwise noted, the Content on the Site is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.
