Friday, January 11, 2013

A Little Link Love

I think I'd like to have a regular "feature", if not weekly then perhaps more often than"whenever", where I highlight a few of the gaming-related items on the web that I encountered in the preceding week that I think merit attention.

The purpose is two-fold: in case you missed it in your own feed reader, this is a second chance, and, more selfishly, I'm hopeful that others might do something similar from time-to-time on their blogs.

There's so much good stuff out there, and we have so little time to read it all, I rely on other bloggers to steer me to items I may have missed and that might be of interest.

JF of SoloNexus has turned his 9Qs into a PocketMod!
I love PocketMods so, of course, that got my attention. I know not everyone is ga-ga for PocketMods like I am, but it's worth a look if you're short on table space or want to make an ultra-portable solo gaming kit. Combine with the Risus or USR rules pocket mods, wilderness or dungeon words mods, and some dice and you have everything you need for solo gaming in a tiny package.

Bob Cordery released the Ancients version of his Portable Wargame into the Wild
I don't play ancients, yet. I have contemplated doing a medieval army or two. Russia and Teutonic Knights or perhaps Mongols and Russians. What's with me and Russia? Anyway, I don't have any way to evaluate these rules except to say that I enjoy gaming on a gridded surface, so someone who plays ancients will have to give them a go and report on it.

The Tunnels & Trolls Deluxe Edition Kickstarter Exceeded Funding within 48 Hours of Launch
As I mentioned earlier this week, I went in on this. I had sworn off Kickstarter after seeing too many undelivered and long delayed projects (two of which I supported). But, this is something I want in on. It sounds like it will be 5th edition with plenty of bells and whistles if you want to use them and Flying Buffalo's involvement means that someone in the publishing business is right there at the start. It seems that's where a lot of the RPG Kickstarters falter.

Are children intuitive railroaders? on Daddy Grognard
As the father of a one year old, playing rpgs with my kid is a distant dream, but never-the-less, it's a subject I enjoy reading about. Daddy Grognard presents an interesting analysis of children and how their experience effects the way they might run a game in spite of having played in a sandbox campaign for some time.

Wargame Horizons on Polemarch
Not unrelated to the above, Polemarch examines the basis for our ethical decisions and the role our experience plays in the decisions we make. If the article is of any interest at all to you, make sure to check out the discussion that continues in the comments!

There were certainly many more posts and articles I read that were interesting and worthy of review, but there you are, five for Friday.

Which is what I'll call this from now on, thereby dooming me to never being able to come up with five again.

And way off topic, this arrived Thursday afternoon!
2nd Printing
(you'd be surprised how happy having an index inside the book and not as a print-out makes me)
I am slightly overwhelmed by the monstrous size of the thing. As someone who spends a great deal of time with Moldvay (at a whopping 64 pages, 128 if you include both Basic and Expert) and Labyrinth Lord (133 pages), the 460 pages of DCC is a touch intimidating. Fortunately, I'm slated to play in a game of DCC, not run one, thereby greatly reducing the burden of what I should try to remember.

4 comments:

  1. Forgive me if this sounds silly . . . because this was a good post . . . but I was disappointed that it was not a continuation of your ever-expanding dungeon craw.

    I find that I am really enjoying your crawl . . . and I've always said that there needs to be a real danger of death in RPG adventures to add tension. Otherwise they are too MontyHaulish.

    So do keep the crawls coming even if you do have to interrupt them with more "pertinent" posts.


    -- Jeff

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jeff,

      Thank you for the encouragement!

      I will definitely be posting more of the crawl - I hope to play at least once a week. As it stands, it's my only regular gaming.

      --John

      Delete
  2. DCC is a great retro clone. A lot of the space (as always) is taken up by magic spells. The effectiveness of the spells vary wildly according to your casting roll, so it's not really information you need to be familiar with, so much as able to reference.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi DaveB,

      Thanks for the comment.

      I had a chance to crack the book open last night. You weren't kidding about the volume of space dedicated to spells.

      I'm really looking forward to playing this.

      -John

      Delete