Free RPG Day Loot Report!

Yeah, yeah. I realize that Free RPG Day was several weeks ago. Yeah, I'm a little late at getting my loot report done. Y'all who know me well know that there's some serious negative juju going on in my professional life right now. Unfortunately that has to take precedence sometimes.

So, without further ado, here's what MY haul looked like at 5:00 p.m. on Free RPG Day 2013: First off, I took my kids with me to ensure a "shotgun" approach to gathering loot. Our FLGS allows two items per person; even though I'm well known by the staff, I try not to take advantage of that...at least, an advantage obvious to other customers, that is. As in past years, many of the publishers provide PDF versions of the Free RPG Day offerings after the fact (where available, I've included links to legal PDF copies of the materials as well.); I still prefer to get hard copies of these where- and whenever possible. For one, I like holding and reading printed materials; for another, the post-Free RPG Day offerings are not always free after the fact.

Starting at the upper left, we have the Hall of Bones adventure from Frog God Games, for the Sword & Wizardry ruleset. I haven't had a chance to go through this one yet.

Next to that there's Paizo Publishing's follow-up to last year's We Be Goblins!, the cleverly-named We Be Goblins Too!. This was one of the titles that I was particularly excited to get. I enjoyed last year's offering and this one, at first glance, appears to be as fun and interesting as the first. Unfortunately, my gaming group has no interest in playing goblins...so, this seems destined for good NPC fodder. In fact, our current DM is running an orc/goblin-centric campaign right now. I may just have to pass this off to him for inspiration.

Finishing the top row, there's Goodman Games' RPG offering. Like last year, they have stuffed two good modules within these two covers. One is a DCC adventure for 1st-level characters. The other is a Pathfinder Xcrawl adventure. This one is going to be milked for inspiration for sure.

The second row has the Flying Buffalo T&T Adventure Fire Dwarves of Zorr and Troll Lord Games' C&C Adventure A Pot of Broken Bones and Halfling Broth. Both of these are destined to be mined for inspiration for 3.x. The next two items are also for inspiration...I just have to find the correct Sci-Fi/Space Opera game system. Fantasy Flight Games' Edge of the Empire and Catalyst Games' flipbook for Shadowrun and Battletech. (This one will be doubly useful, as one of my gaming buddies wants to start working on a Mech game of his own.)

The last two are two others that were the reason for my foray into the shop: Lamentations of the Flame Princess' Better Than Any Man and James Porter Jr.'s NeoExodus Temple of the Forbidden God. I have plenty of lizardmen just waiting to come out of hibernation. I even recommended Better Than Any Man to a teenager who was struggling over what to pick out; his mother was standing there looking lost. Her advice was "Pick something that you think looks like something Dad didn't pick out himself." He had this one in his hand and I told him that Raggi's products were all pretty sound and quality. It wasn't until I was on my way home myself that I noticed the "18+" tag on the module.

Oops.

Still, though, it's impressive and amazing that Raggi puts out a book--yes, a literal BOOK--of this size for a Free RPG offering. Usually you can count on a dozen pages. This thing FAR exceeds it at 96 pages. NINETY-SIX. That's EIGHT DOZEN pages. Plus the cover is removable and contains a map on the inside.

Hopefully the kids' mom will forgive that anonymous "dirty old man" in the FLGS....

About an hour after leaving the FLGS, I received a phone call to inform me of the results of the in-store prize drawing: my oldest daughter's entry won the collapsible dice tower from Blue Panther. She, of course, gifted it to me out of the goodness of her heart. Then the manager laughed and told me I'd won the grand prize: the massive hardcover DCC RPG. Needless to say I was pretty psyched. (Of course, I may have to look at selling or re-gifting, because I'm not sure how much re-purposing I can do with this, and my game group isn't too OSR-friendly nowadays.

Finally, as some of you may know, I have an addition to dice. Dice. That's right I said: dice. Ahh, the mere word sends my heart racing and my hands shaking. Dice. DICE.

Did I tell you I like dice?

Well, the managers also know of my love of dice and when I went in to pick up our family's my winnings, he slipped me these little beauties. I really liked last year's offerings--a complete set (or nearly complete in my case)--mostly because I don't have a lot of uses for d6s. But they're pretty. And he even slipped me a second Q-Workshop for my daughter, who loves yellow. She "squeeed" just a bit at the gift.

Whew. All in all, a pretty successful Free RPG Day this year. I'm not sure I can match it. I was constantly reminded, throughout the day, of the generosity I felt from my fellow gamers last year, all those who were able to grab up extras at their respective FLGS for my library.

[A to Z April] Reflections

I'm pretty sure that somewhere I mentioned how crazy my April was going to be. Well it was. Oh yeah, it was last week. Let me give you a brief recap, since I'm reflecting on the month of April anyway.

• I had a heap of religious commitments come up throughout the month as I am a member of the lay clergy in charge of my congregation. To make matters worse, another member of the lay clergy has become quite ill, laying a heavier-than-usual load on my plate.
  
• Work was intense, as the boss is worried about advertising; therefore I received a new assignment from him to sit in on all the advertising meetings as a witness to the various agreements and negotiations. Training had to continue on a new member of the staff, so answers to basic legal questions had to be dredged up out of my head on a more-often-than-usual basis.
  
• Family got crazy with some extended family nuttiness (we'll just leave that one alone).
  
• Then we had my questionable judgment to agree to participate not only in the A-to-Z Challenge, but also the One Page Dungeon contest.
  
• I had a commitment to the gaming group for at least one six-hour session.
  
• In addition, I had committed to paint one of the other guys' character's miniature for him.
  
• On top of that, the DM gave me the assignment to paint something enormous for him. No, really...the thing is gigantic. Easily the largest miniature I've ever had to paint. Right now I'm sworn to secrecy; hopefully I'll be able to fill you in on this project later.
  
• As for projects, my friend Dylan Hartwell asked for my proofreader's eye on his latest offering, the Horrendous Heap of Sixteen Cities! This project was truly the least onerous of anything else I had committed to do in the month of April, largely because of my sick, sick love for all things proofreading. I plan on offering a more detailed review of this product soon, but suffice it to say: BUY IT. It's a great setting, and I'm not just saying that because I helped to edit it. It's a unique setting and some amazing ideas that can be ported into a campaign. (Note: I have received and will receive NO monetary remuneration for my referrals, review, or any sales of the product. I just edited it. And enjoyed it.)

And most of all of this chaos fell into place AFTER I'd made a personal committment to participate in the A-to-Z Challenge.

Enough time has now passed from the Challenge, I think, to reflect on it in an objective matter. At least relatively objective. So....

• How did your journey through the alphabet go? Did you meet new bloggers with similar interests? Are there any you would like to feature and share with others?
  There was enough indication in mid-March that April might be a little hairy (I had NO idea) so I sat down this year with a calendar and first set out each "letter day." I then spent an hour or so with some different online random word- and name generators. I used those as creative sparks for NPC names, spell names, item names, and place names. Each one was assigned to a letter of the alphabet. In this way I was able to fill up about 20 letters pre-April and begin the idea machine percolating. I was even able to get about a week ahead before April began--a buffer that quickly evaporated.
  
  As far as other bloggers, there were several of my fellow RPG-bloggers that I had known previously who participated. Several more came out of the woodwork. Unfortunately, in part because of my busy schedule, I did not get a chance to visit as many other bloggers' sites as I would have wished. Certainly not as many as the Challenge is designed to send me to read. I was, however, able to find several new sites to follow.
  
  Confession time: my biggest reason for failing to visit a lot of other sites was a concern over plagiarism. I found out last year (and on one occasion this year) that after I visited a site and liked the idea(s) presented there, some idea, nugget, or heck--the entire subject--seemed to creep into my creative pool and demand attention. While that may be expected or anticipated, I don't like to see it happen to my work. I understand that it happens, and it IS supposed to be the sincerest form of flattery. But for the A-to-Z Challenge, I prefer to try and keep my posts based on my own ideas. (I should note: I'm not calling anyone out here. I appreciate that it happens and happens often, particularly among gamers, as ideas spread and build upon each other. I'm simply criticizing my OWN tendency to want to steal ideas during the month of April instead of relying on (what I believe to be) my own ideas.
  
  
• What were the highlights for you? (lowlights too...we want to hear it all)
  I enjoyed seeing my numbers go up on the first week of the Challenge. It was great to be able to expose people who were not familiar to RPGs (or those who hadn't gamed in a while) to the hobby. It was also great to see these aforementioned non-gamers appreciate the creativity and/or the ideas involved in my posts.
  
  
• Did you enjoy posting daily? What was your biggest hurdle? What was your easiest task?
  Frankly, it was difficult for me to post daily. My preparation in having a title or idea for my posts in advance made it a little easier. Some changed as the month went on because I found something more interesting to do with a letter. It was nice trying to keep a buffer, even though it didn't always work. I found that if I jotted something down, whether a thought, statistic, or even an entire post, in my spare time (sitting at court waiting for my cases to be called, sitting in traffic, sitting in front of the television) that I was able to keep at least a day ahead. It wasn't until the last five or so days that I was writing on the day OF the post. My biggest hurdle was probably finding something for some of the "stranger" letters such as 'X' and 'Y'. Oddly it was also difficult weeding out some of the ideas I had for letters such as 'M' and 'S'.
  
  
• Was time management an issue?
  Like I said above, time management was not an issue to begin with, having prepared many of the titles and ideas in advance. This allowed me to schedule a post the day before the letter was due. Time became an issue the final seven days or so when I hit a rough patch made up of 'no time' and 'letters for which I could develop few or no ideas' (such as the aforementioned 'X' and 'Y'). There were a couple of days--especially the final weekend--when I was posting late in the day ON the day in question rather than a day ahead.
  
  
• And what about your content - did you have a theme or did you wing it? Was it easy to come up with ideas for each letter, or were some harder?
  Wow. Another question I've already answered.... It seems I'm anticipating some of these. As I said, I didn't have a "theme" so much, unless you count RPG Gaming Material as a "theme." Because it's the theme of the blog, I'm not sure it qualifies. My pre-month prep allowed me to have a pretty good variation between spells, items, and NPCs. Some of the lesser-used letters were difficult. 'X' has given me trouble both years. So has 'Y' and, oddly, 'U' has well.
  
  
• How about commenting - did you stumble upon lots of sites still using word verification? Did this prevent you from leaving a comment? What worked for your blog?
  As I said above, I didn't get a chance to do a lot of visiting. I can only remember maybe two sites that still used word verification and I don't seem to recall having issues with it. I will echo some of my fellow bloggers' complaints: Wordpress was NOT user friendly for either commenting or for following. Certainly not as simple as Blogger.
  
  
• What will you do different next year?
  I will probably start a bit sooner than the end of March to pre-prepare titles and ideas. I will certainly try and resolve some of the other time consuming issues before and after April. I may even try and narrow down an actual theme.
  
  
• What pearls of wisdom do you want to share with the Co-Hosts of this event?
  I'm not sure there is anything TO suggest. It was a good experience for me. I appreciated seeing some of the Co-Hosts visit and comment on my blog. It showed to me that they had great buy-in into their Challenge and that they embraced the spirit of the Challenge that they were trying to impart to the rest of us.

In conclusion, I'd urge anyone who HASN'T tried the A-to-Z April Challenge to try it next year. I know there are a lot of bloggers--especially RPG bloggers--and readers who believe that it is forced, contrived, or simply downright annoying. It can be done in interesting, intruiging, and compelling ways. It can also be done in quite subtle ways; at least one of my acquaintances pulled off an A-to-Z without my realizing it.

Just like any challenge, you get out of it what you put in. You can make your theme(s) and posts as detailed or as cursory as you want. Creativity is the goal (at least for me) and exposure to new ideas a secondary goal. The reduced timeline is, for me, a good driving force for focus and creative stretching, much like NaNoWriMo is in November.

And not only do I have a bunch of new stuff to throw at my players, I also have a dozen more ideas that were named/brainstormed but were passed up as the month went along.

Cue Evil Laughter.

Help Me Obi-Wan.... You're My Only Hope....

My friends, out there in the blogosphere, you are my Obi-Wan this morning. You all are my General Kenobi. I need your help.

Specifically, I'm looking for a Sci-Fi RPG. I love me my D&D for sure. However, sometimes I long for a little blaster-zapping, planet-skipping, alien-hunting fun.

The problem is, I just don't know where to go for that fun.

Z is for Zero Dice Roleplaying

Look.

I collect dice. I don't have a huge collection, but I have more than my wife can believe.

I'll be honest: I love dice. All kinds of dice. All shapes, sizes, colors, and numbers of sides.

I love rolling them, stacking them, and spinning them like makeshift tops.

I love playing games with them, allowing them to decide the fate of my characters and of my players' characters.

But are they necessary to a good game? To an evening of fun?

A is for Adventure

Atari Adventure, that is.

Adventure may have been the first video game I ever played on the Atari 2600. It was not the FIRST video game I ever played--that honor went to the Magnavox Odyssey game system. I believe we got that game system around Christmas 1974 or so. It was a fantastic system that used TV static to hold plastic overlays on the screen. My favorite, next to the Pong-like game, was "Haunted House" where the little white cursor would light up various things in the house. I wonder what my parents did with that old stuff anyway....?

There were also several games I played on one of the first Apple PCs--you remember, the ones that saved programs on audio cassette tapes? Yes, kids, Audio cassettes. Not disks, not flash drives, not CDs. AUDIO CASSETTE TAPES. Those old Apples were where I first learned to program.

But back to Atari Adventure, that was my first Atari 2600 game.

The First Step

"Who are you?"

Well, that's a long story. So far as this blog is concerned, and so far as the interest of time allows, suffice it to say this: I am a Gamer.