Showing posts with label Gygax. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gygax. Show all posts

Tuesday 27 September 2016

Back on the Horse

Well tonight sees me writing my first blog entry since July 2016 and a lot of water has passed under the life bridge.  A new job in the private sector was kicking my arse for a while but I now seem to have it all under control (foolish words?).

A return to DMing

In recent weeks I have also returned to DMing after a long hiatus.

When the opportunity arose (a nice way of saying that a game collapsed and I stepped into the breach) I have to say I was filled with doubt.  Could I still do it?, would I be able to juggle the balls of work/life balance to give time to prep? would I be able to physically last for a 3 hour session after a hectic day at work?

Buckaroo!
Technically not a horse, but this is how I felt about DMing after an 1,800 day detox
  Well I did manage to survive and I can't believe how much I enjoyed it.  Sure it was not my finest hour and I was a little rusty, but I made it through to the other side and I think my players really enjoyed it.

Most likely the two go hand in hand, without the catalyst of an ongoing campaign I did not have the creative juices flowing through my mind in order to create content and to share those ideas with you the RPG community.

Old Skool Shits and Giggles

The scenario I ran was an epilogue to the NSFW module Liberation of the Demon Slayer by +Venger Satanis, and Bryan Winter's decidedly Old Skool scenario Baron Mikrut's Tomb from Pulp Dungeons #5: Uninvited Guests published by Corsair Publishing back in 1997.  The latter posed a few problems when it came to monster stats because it was one of those systemless scenario which used to get published back in the day by Independent Publishers who didn't want to sign up to OGL or pay system royalties.

Pulp Dungeons #5: Uninvited Guests (1997 Corsair Publishing)
by Gary Gygax (it must be old skool)
They always require a bit more DM effort than "Official Modules" but they often have a much bigger payback in terms of not suffering from the usual tropes or baggage which come with trying to fit into an established milleu.   

I'll do a proper synopsis on My Campaign Blog but suffice to say the PCs handled the nuclear winter, mutated wildlife, a demon invasion and a dungeon crawl with aplomb.  Thanks to all those who took part it was a lot of fun.  

So my mind is made up and I will now start to...

Plan My Next Game

The question is where do I set my next game.  The library is fully stocked with plenty of dungeon magazines and some old skool scenarios and I have 3 months to put something together to astound and amaze.  Will I be proactive? Will I labour furiously to craft a campaign so cunning that it will be the talk of my game group for years?

Probably not, but I'm going to do it anyway.    

Wednesday 29 May 2013

Outrider: My First Print On Demand Experience

I've been buying PDFs from the likes of RPGNow / DriveThruRPG and printing them at home for a few years now, but recently I took the plunge and decided to order my first Print on Demand (PoD) product.  Being based in the UK, I've always been reticent to use the PoD option as the costs have been quite high to have things printed in the US and shipped to the UK, but a couple of things made made me take the plunge.
  • I had an interesting conversation with the CEO of OBS, Steve Wieck, via his blog OneBlogShelf, which re-energised my passion for making games.  I've had a few ideas for card games in the past and so this was a great opportunity to try out the PoD option particularly with respect to cards.
  •  Another advantage of OBS was that I could convert some of the proceeds from my own product sales into credit with which to purchase the PoD copy of the Outrider cards
  • Following the recent launch of DriveThruCards, a One Book Shelf (OBS) site which specialises in printing card games, I discovered Outrider, an auto duelling tabletop game by Dice Fest Games which featutures an innovative movement/manoeuvre mechanism using cards.  I'm a sucker for post apocalyptic road racing games and sook took advantage of the Launch Discount and got the whole PDF + POD Cards for £17.04 including delivery.

What Makes Playing Cards so Special?

I've made my own cards in the past for things like my DM's Decision Deck and My Item Cards and whilst I'm really happy with the results from my own prints there are a few things unique to playing card printing which are pretty insurmountable for the Print-at-Home (PaH) user.

Double Sided Printing - The major advantage of PoD over PaH is that you get access to commercial grade print technology Yes with a little lot of trial and error you can get pretty good results, but you will never match commercial printers which use registration marks for alignment.

Print / Paper Quality - Home printers have come on in leaps and bounds but there is no escaping that with every incremental increase in quality you have an exponential increase in cost.  High grade papers are really pricey and tend to drink ink like a vampires drink blood.  If you want a photo quality result you have to suffer that slightly tacky feel which as you can imagine does not make for good playing cards.  Casino's are very particular about their casino quality cardstock which has a very high opacity preventing stopping people seeing the card values through the substrate.

Cutting - Several cards are usually printed on a single sheet and unlike books are not bound together before guillotining.  I've had some great results at home, but inevitably you do end up with cards either not having precisely the same dimensions or being gaffed in some way.

What You Get

The Outrider download consists of 8 files; the rules, a scenario booklet, a series of optional Terrain Tiles and 5 files of cards, counters and dashboards.  The printed cards which will be delivered to you from the printer consist of:
  • 18 x Manouevre cards.
  • 8 x Vehicle cards (double sided 16 vehicles in total).
  • 8 x Dashboards (double sided 1 for each vehicle).
  • 15 x Counter cards (require cutting up before use).
  • 3 x Range Cards (double sided single/double fire lanes).
  • 1 x Turn Order/Control Loss Reference Card.
  • 1 x Lucky/Second Wind car.

A sample of the 54 different cards contained in the deck

I would have preferred to have multiple sets of the manoeuvre cards included in the PoD element rather than the included tokens.  Personally, I find thicker cardstock counters are easier to pick up during play and would have been happy to do a little bit of DIY before being able to play.  Similarly the included Dashboards and Vehicle cards are double sided meaning that you can only play one of each style of vehicle unless you print your own duplicates.  At the end of the day you have all the files necessary in the PDF element so it's not too much of a hassle to print additional cards.

From the point of order it took about 12 days for my order to arrive, which is pretty good considering that it has to be processed, printed and delivered to the UK.  I suspect that if a UK printer/distributer  could be sourced this time lag would be greatly reduced.


A really nice poker style plastic card box was supplied for free (sadly, mine had a little crack in the lid)


The cards come cellophane wrapped, with a nice plastic poker style protective case.  Print quality is superb with a nice glossy finish.  Although the cardstock used was nice enough, it is slightly thinner in weight to regular playing cards.  This may become an issue in the future as I'm not confidentt it will stand up to normal gaming wear and tear from a bunch of hamfisted boardgamers.

How did the costs stack up


As I mentioned before, the discounted price for the PDF and POD Cards was £17.04 (which includes USPS First Class postage to the UK at £6.73) which compares favourably with say a Fantasy Flight Silverline game such as Bruno Faidutti's Citadels.  The cost of postage from the US to the UK is a significant proportion of the price (almost 40%).  This is of course largely out of the hands of either the printer or OBS and is the one issue which needs to be overcome if PoD as a concept will become generally accepted.

Final Thoughts


For me although the cost was comparable to a mass printed card game, the quality of the cardstock was a little dissapointing.  I also hope that the guys at OBS can source some UK based printing companies to add to their cadre of US ones.  This would certainly go a long way to making me choose PoD as a viable alternative to just buying from one of the big games manufacturers.  At the moment it's a bit of a 50/50 choice, which will most likely be decided by how much I lust after a particular game or not.

I have yet to actually play the game, so stay tuned for a follow up review.

Saturday 18 August 2012

The Super Secret Happy Birthday Gary Gygax Giveaway Bundle Extravapalooza!

WOTC reprint 1st Edition Players Handbook
WOTC reprint
1st Edition Players Handbook

The Secret DM is running a great contest with an awesome prize...

A complete set of WOTCs recently reprinted 1st edition AD&D books!!


and

The chance to have your submission published in a professionally produced digital edition!!


All you have to do is to come up with a 10 room dungeon which evokes the feeling of 1st edition and submit your entry to thesecretdm@gmail.com with the subject line Gygax Contest.

The contest runs until 27th September 2012, so get your designing pens out... I know I will.


Saturday 11 August 2012

Cyberpunk: Appendix N - Inspirational and Educational Material


In the Gygaxian tradition here is my Appendix N for Cyberpunk, a list of the books, movies and anime which have inspired my cyberpunk adventures since first encountering it in the very late 80s.  Also available on Pinterest. 

Please do not treat this an exhaustive list of what is and isn't considered cyberpunk, these are just the things which have inspired me, I will probably add to it when I get access to the deep recesses of my cortex.

Cyberpunk - APPENDIX N: Inspirational and Educational Material

BOOKS
MOVIES

ANIME

Friday 27 July 2012

Read an RPG in Public Week

Today, in memory of Gary Gygax's Birthday, I took a stroll along the river and read an RPG in public.

Reading Diana Warrior Princess by Marcus L Rowland
Not 5 minutes later this little lot rowed by...


Royal Barge "Gloriana" carrying the Olympic Torch along the river Thames
Royal Barge "Gloriana" carrying the Olympic Torch along the river Thames
(click to embiggen)

... which was nice

Thursday 29 December 2011

2011 in Review

2012 is almost upon us and its time to set some goals, but first I have to review 2011.

2011 Resolutions Progress

Last year saw me start blogging in earnest and for the first time in ages I made some New Year Resolutions:


1.  Take More Notes (5/10) - I'm counting this as a partial success.  I created the Lands of Dual website to act as a repository for session reports and to store all my campaign notes and maps.  I also began using record cards to take notes, but still relied far too heavily on players notes than I would have liked.  This became particularly troublesome when calculating the XP earned by individual PCs so I must come up with a better solution.

2.  Weekly Blog Series (5/10) - Another partial success as I managed to create two of the weekly blog series ideas I spoke of in my original resolutions article.  Unfortunately they petered out within a few articles.
  • Monday Motivations - was an attempt to compile a list of mini-backgrounds for fantasy characters along class lines.  I managed to write 12 articles before the juices ran dry.  There's plenty of life left in this series though and I did promise to publish it as a collected series which will clearly need to be expanded upon.

  • Citymorphs - Following in the footsteps of the Geomorphing community I successfully created 29 citymorph tiles over the course of 7 articles.   In retrospect I should probably have reduced the number of morphs per article and eked it out over more posts as the pressure to create 4 morphs per week quickly exhausted my creative juices.  However, I did manage to get them added to Dave's Mapper so you can play with them to your heart's content. 

    The focus for Geomorphs seemed to shift towards the Dungeonmorph Dice project founded by Joe "Inkwell Ideas" Wetzel but there were casualties along the way and the inspirational Dyson Logos has apparently gone off line for the forseeable future.

    I liked the concept a lot and as my attention drifts away from Fantasy (in the form of my current OSR clone Castles and Crusades) towards Sci-Fi (namely Judge Dredd) I think there are options for this in the future.
This was not theend of the story and a couple of other series ideas sprang forth.
  • A to Z of 80s UK RPG - Was an attempt at nostalgically recording my gaming inspirations but stuttered at "I is for ....".  I intend to continue this series as I have written further articles along the line which have yet to see the light of day and it would be a shame to end it after only 8 articles.
     
  • Mapping Tools - Was a little 4 part series investigating the state of free cross platform mapping solutions at different scales.  I enjoyed making this series and it led to the discovery of the sweet little tool TILED which I have now used on a number of occasions to construct classic blue style dungeon maps such as The Ruined Tower of The Archmage.
3.  Blog in Advance (3/10) - I have come to the conclusion that scheduled blogging really only works if you have an ongoing series combined with enough inspiration to easily create articles for it in advance.  This lack of inspiration has really been my issue and I don't want to end up with quality suffering for the sake of quantity.

Other Achievements in 2011

Blog Performance

2011 has seen Roleplay-Geek hit the 20,000 pageviews mark (woot) and I've written 96 articles.  I've even tried mobile blogging with limited success, if anyone has any suggestions for free iOS apps for mobile let me know in the usual way. 

 The top 5 articles of the year (by pageviews) are:
  1. Minions My OSR take on the one hit wonder (697pv) - High interest in this article probably due to being picked up in Tracy Hurley's Festival of Lights article on the official D&D website.  I must namedrop 4e concepts a bit more...
  2. Make: 3D Dungeon Tiles Pt 1 - The Design (193pv) - Where I set out the design to produce a cheap as chips and, more importantly, a useable 3D dungeon set.
     
  3. Make: 3D Dungeon Tiles Pt 2 - The Build (189pv) - Building the rooms with foamcore.
  4. RPG Mapping Tools Part 1 - Battle Maps (183pv) - Part one of my 4 part series exploring free cross platform mapping tools.
  5. UPDATE: RPG Google mapping with MAPLib (159pv) - An update to my article on using MAPLib for your campaign map needs.
Top referrers are of course RPG Bloggers Network  and RPG Blog Alliance, thanks for all the visits guys.

Roleplay Geek Publishing

In April I became an RPG publisher and over the course of the year managed to create a total of 7 products which are currently available for download on RPG Now.  All the advice I gleaned from the various blogs I read forewarned me that this wasn't going to make me a millionaire, but I have enjoyed the experience so far and have been pleasantly surprised with the results so far.

ItemTOTAL SALESTOTAL EARNINGS
Item Cards - Adventurer's Gear57$ 36.68
Item Cards - Potions44$ 26.18
Item Cards - Animals32$ 18.48
Paper Minis - Animals28$ 18.90
GM Aids - Decision Deck18$ 25.20
Item Cards - Free Sampler391$ 0.00
Paper Minis - Free Fungaloid Lurkers & Brain Vine130$ 0.00
Grand Totals627$ 124.44

RPG Now is a fantastic way to publish but consequently there are some 15,436 products available to download and standing out from the crowd is extremely difficult. Most of my sales occurred soon after products were added to RPG Now and so featured in the Latest Products list and I haven't worked out a marketing strategy yet.

PDF pricing seems to be a bit hit and miss, Tim Shorts of Gothridge Manor recently wrote a neat article revealing his thoughts and research into pricing his own products.  It doesn't seem to be any easier for the DIY print publisher either, Chris Tregenza has started a new thread on his blog detailing his progress towards making a profit for the 6d6 RPG and I will be watching this with interest.

My philosophy with my PDFs is that I'm producing them for my own games anyway, so the personal effort involved isn't factored into the profit equation.  I'm under no illusion that I'm going to become rich as a result, but if I can gather up a few dollars along the way to buy the odd bit of swag then it's a success.

Miniature Painting

I returned to miniature painting and finally completed my Harlequin Giant Forest Troll and am part way through painting a Ral Partha Djinn and Efreet.  As I get older I have begun to have issues with painting under electric light (or it could be those god awful compact fluorescent bulbs we now have to use) so this restricts the time when I can comfortably paint to a small window on a Saturday morning.  I have a stack of minis which need a bit of colour so I need to ramp up production in 2012.


All in all a mixed year, stay tuned for the New Year Resolutions post.

Wednesday 15 December 2010

Gygax Game Collection for sale on ebay

E. Gary Gygax
(July 27, 1938 – March 4, 2008)
Gary's widow, Gail Gygax, has started to put his games collection up for sale on e-bay with help from Collectors Trove, with proceeds going to the Gygax Memorial Fund.  Auctions end between the 15-16th of December so there's still time to bid and perhaps you too could own a piece of history from Gary's own collection.