This little corner of the cosmos is where I record my thoughts on the pursuit of Geekery! A large portion of my ranting and raving will revolve around gaming tabletop RPGs, console and PC games, boardgames as well as fantasy and sci-fi media.

Truth be told, I've been re-considering a noble house campaign ever since I started listening to the campaign shenanigans of the Podgecast crew. One of the Podgecasts hosts, Luke, uses Burning Wheel to run a house campaign inspired by George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series of books that begins with th "Kingdom the Next Generation" (don't look at me, I just listen to the podcast)

After a quick reading of the A Song of Ice and Fire RPG, I can't say I'm really inspired to run one based on Green Ronin's rules as is. Perhaps I need to take out the ASoIaFRPG system for a one shot and see how it really runs. And yet, the more I looked into Burning Wheel myself (there are free excerpts on the Burning Wheel wiki, the more I was convinced that Burning Wheel

My other go-to games don't really have the intrigue and social interaction mechanic I'm looking for or the level of PC Mojo is out of whack for the gritty, wheels within wheels style a Game of Thrones type game calls for.

• Savage Worlds - Too heroic. I love you lots SW but I gotta say you're not the right one for a Blackfyre game.
• D&D - Again, don't think a mace would be a good weapon to use when a rapier is what is being called for. And as I'm already running a 4E D&D game, I'm looking for something different.
• FATE/Spirit of the Century - Ahhh, another one of my RPG darlings. I lurve many facets of FATE, especially the Aspect system but it's a bit too pulp for my tastes. Now I could do some tweaking but I'm just don't feel like monkeying around with the system.

Of course, I could graft FATE's Aspect system and hack the Intrigue mechanics of Green Ronin's ASoIaF RPG. Once again, I just don't want to invest that much time being monkeying around with house ruled game mechanics. While picking up a new system and reading up on the mechanics also represents a lot of work, reading and studying consumes far less of my time and creative energies. I'd rather read Burning Wheel and work on the "fluff" as I go along.

This weekend I became a Patron of the next Open Design project: Halls of the Mountain King. The book will be either OGL/3rd Edition or 4th Edition. Naturally, I supported the 4E option. I hope this comes out soon enough so I can use it for my MapTool D&D game.

Tonight, I'm running session #2 of my online D&D 4th Edition campaign dubbed 'Age of Might'. Here is the teaser for the game:

The Age of Might

The last Age ended as the world burned in a storm of corrupt magic, other-worldly invasion and human pride.

The last Age ended with the fall of the Thousand Cities, the Empire of Man, the Empire of Folly.

The last Age ended as dweomercrafted battlebarges fell from the sky and abominations called forth by cults of horrific gods ravaged the cities of the Old Kingdoms. A few, unfortunate humans escaped the cataclysm and found sanctuary in the young, Imperial colonies across the Sunset Sea.

The last Age ended as the Eladrin withdrew to their sanctuaries beyond the Veil and the dwarves shut their gates, laying runes of warding and hallways full of traps, and hid in their underground fortresses.

You are the descendants of the survivors of the Last War of the Empire of Man.

---

Deepwell

In the dying days of the last Age, Lady Helja, matriarch of the Bronzesinger clan, offered sanctuary to any and all who would dwell in peace within Deepwell holdfast. Dwarf, Human, Halfling, Elf and Eladrin lived together under the rule of the Dwarf Jarls. Born and raised in a Deepwell you are eager to make a name for yourself in this new Age.

The Jarl (ruling lord of the house Bronzesinger), Nilgar Ebergun, calls upon the intrepid and the enterprising folk of the holdfast to:

• clear the route to the upper gates, unravel the seals of protection, explore the surface world, establish trade routes for Deepwell's ore and goods and learn of the changes since the last Age
• reclaim the abandoned mines and dwarf halls to provide ore for the forges and living space for the rapidly growing population
• explore forgotten passageways or sail beyond the dim horizon of the underground lake and re-establish contact with the other dwarven holdfasts and underworld settlements

Gold and Glory Await!

If I told you about I was a fan of Harry the Wizard some of you might think of the other Harry. You know who I'm talking about. Yeah, that stripling who tromps off to Wizard school (Warthogs, was it?) and goes on zany adventures with his friends. Well, I hate to tell you, I'm not really fan of Harry Potter. I'm a fan of Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden.

Jim Butcher's Dresden Files books are excellent when they are “OK”. That's only because there are a handful of Dresden books that are truly awesome. (Or as the kids say “pure win” . Whatever that means.)

The latest book, Small Favor, left me breathless. Small Favor also featured some of my favourite Dresden-verse villains and Harry was backed up by an all-star cast of his close and not-so-close comrades.

There are very few series that keep my attention for very long and very few series where I would the next book sight unseen.

I'm quite in awe at how the author manages to escalate the conflict from book to book. The stakes keep getting higher and higher: both the personal stakes for Harry and the people he cares about and the supernatural threats to the city (and the rest of the world). The escalation rarely, if ever, feels forced. Kudos to Jim Butcher for managing such an incredible feat of writing. The books come to an end that is logical given the characters, their choices and the events presented in each book. If they don't, Jim Butcher has really pulled the Major Cloak Suspension of Disbelief +5 over my head.

Is it a bit repetitive? Perhaps so, I admit the admit there's a bit of a formula in there. And, as a fan, I willingly embrace the formula but I can't wait to see what new shiny bits the author throw my way. Besides, the books' serial and formulaic nature is not necessarily a bad thing in the right hands. Fans KNOW they will be in for a treat when a new Harry Dresden book rolls off the presses.

The actions and choices of the character's are not without consequence. While there is plenty of action within the covers of each book, there is some change in the characters as one follows them from one book to another.

If I told you it's taken me about two years to go through the 10 books in the series thus far, don't be misled. It's taken me that long only because I go through two or three novels in a short period of time, then I go off to read some other things for a few months only to come back to haul back another couple of novels back from the book store. Then the Harry Mania comes back. In full force. And it doesn't stop until I've turned the last page.

Once I pick up a Dresden Files novel, I'm hooked. I tear through it at great speed (at least for me) - staying up late to read through a good chunk of the book, rub my eyes and look at the clock reminding myself I have to get up early, down the book, turn off the lights, figet in bed for a good ten minutes only to turn the lights back on, pick up the book and read on. Just one more chapter, then I'm off to bed. I promise.

I ran a follow-up game to the 'One Shot' Savage Worlds game tonight. We used Skype's free conference calling for voice chat and, WOW, did that make a difference in the pace of the game. Now, I still prefer to use the in-game text chat for some IC chatting as I'm don't really do NPC 'voices' that well in real life.

On another happy, note it seems like the players are still happy with the way I run games and are willing to keep going to see the story arc through. The one-shot is now a mini-series. Huzzah!

Encouraged by the success of my first attempt at online Gamemastering. I'm thinking of running a mini-series: a story arc running from three to six sessions. Not a full-blown campaign yet but if there is any interest beyond the mini-series I would give a campaign some serious thought.
I wrote up some blurbrbs To give people a better flavour of types of games I would like to run.

D&D 4th Edition, Homebrew
1A. Heroes of Myth & Legend: Will you be the one to raise the shield wall against the invaders? Or will you carve out nations with the edge of your axe? Or will venture out to the Feywild, seeking out the Courts of the Eladrin? Will you forge bonds of fellowship with the Fae or will you bend them to your service? Will you stop your people's steady decline into decadence and infernal corruption? In time, perhaps? Or perhaps, you are just content to test your steel and spells against the might and magic of this new world?

The main influence for this mini-series is Dawnforge the Age of Legend . There are others but that is the main one that comes to mind.

1B. Urban Setting & Mega-Dungeon: The Great City was built on the corpses of many great Empires. Underneath the cobblestones lies warrens, catacombs and chambers filled with jewels and treasury of merchant princes and miserly kings, not to mention lost artefacts of untold power. The City is not a place for the soft-hearted nor the merciful as the gangs who rule the streets 'in the name of Law' will just as mug you than protect you from the riffraf.

This will also be a homegrown setting though I would take a page or three from Monte Cook's Ptolus. There are also shades of Fafhrd & Grey Mouser and Thieves World.

Come to think of it, I may add a dash of
Perdido Street Station, Gangs of New York and Eberron into this mix.

2. Star Wars Saga: Knights of the Old Republic: I don't have any specific, fleshed out ideas on this yet. I could go with either Heroes of the Republic or something along Privateers & Merchants.

3. Savage Worlds: We can continue with the Modern Day Monster mash as that's one of my favourite genres. Another game that really has me fired up is:
Starlords of Hadrapur! This will be a Sword and Planet mini-series in the tradition of John Carter of Mars (who doesn't want a little Barsoom in their Savage Worlds?), Flash Gordon and WizKid's Rocketmen.

In the midst of the Great Interstellar War, you and the rest of the crew, prisoners, refugees and other survivors of the Galactic Fleet Rocketship Garuda find yourself stranded on a strange world. You will fight tyrannical Star Lords, explore exotic locations, liberate the oppressed, swing on chandeliers, rescuing princes and princesses all the while searching for a way home. The first session will deal with how our heroes ended up on Hadrapur.

I took MapTool for a shakedown cruise last night. I (mercifully) survived my first time GMingSavage Worlds! Call me a 'believer' - MapTool is a great virtual gaming table. Add in the other RPTools then you've got a truly kick-ass set of tools for an online RPG game. InitTool came in handy for managing combat and has built in support for Savage Worlds and D&D (there were one or two more though I can't remember the other ones at the moment). Using TokenTool was a breeze and enabled me to whip up some custom tokens for a PC and some NPCs in less than a minute each.

However, I wouldn't say that MapTools is "very easy" to use. You will spend SOME time and effort trying to understand the interface and spend even more time to make full use of the application's capabilities. While that may not sound like a ringing endorsement, I found the energy and time very well-spent especially if one is determined to run a game online. There are also screen-cast tutorials out to help you along the learning curve.

I played in a few OpenRPG games a while back and that experience was OK. Over the past few years, I made several attempts to re-install the latest version(s) of OpenRPG and see if I could make a go of it but I always found the UI, the tools and all the XML stuff a bit daunting.

I was also encouraged to find an active and VERY supportive community on RPTools.net. One of the players, a veteran Savage Worlds DM and an RPTools regular, set up the campaign properties (e.g. stat block) and some basic scripts to help with the trait and skill rolls.

I found that I had to do a good amount of prep work setting up the tokens, embedding the stats and making maps. I spent a lot of time making maps but that's really not a necessity as there are a lot of good maps out there. I chose to make some custom maps and also re-scale some existing maps to the grid I was using. All this work saved a lot of effort and time during showtime. The players and I were able to focus on what was going on with the characters and their adventures rather than mucking around with the software.

MapTool does not support voice chat and I only used the MapTool's native chat last night. The chat interface saw us through the game just fine, if not a bit slowly. This is obviously a detriment especially if you or one of your players type slowly. If I were to run the game online again I would use voice chat (Skype conference call or Ventrillo, probably Skype since it's free).

For those interested in MapTool or other Virtual Gaming Table (VGT) software, check out this chart to see how each application stacks up against the others.

Does anyone have any experiences with MapTool or any other VGT software? It doesn't matter whether they are similar or contrary to my experience but I would like to hear your war stories. :)

You can find the free download over at the Black Gate Website.
Thanks to marthawells for passing on the news that...  "Black Gate magazine is now available in high-resolution digital format.

In addition to our regular print edition, Black Gate is now available for download as a high-resolution PDF. To help promote our new format, we're making the complete contents - all 224 pages - of Black Gate 12 available for download for a limited time - for free!

Black Gate 12 is available as a single download, or in two smaller sections. Both versions are suitable for printing, and require a PDF reader (such as Adobe Acrobat)."