Well it’s been a month since I last posted about the D&D campaign I’m currently playing. In that month we had two more sessions and then unfortunately the archenemy of adult hobbies, scheduling, reared its ugly head. But we’re resuming play this Thursday. Assuming we can play regularly then I think by the end of October we may be ready to transition to the “second stage” of the campaign I had planned. But now I’m not sure if we will. Continue reading…
Category: life
This covers the general events of my life and my thoughts upon it. Its probably going to be the most generally downbeat category (feel that angst).
Hexcrawl High: The serenity of a clear blue mountain lake
Fuck how I hate that clear blue mountain lake. I cannot figure out what to do with it. The worst thing is that every time I try to brainstorm something about it it ends up going all Innsmouth on me. Look, I love Lovecraftian pastiche as much as the next person. But I think I go to that well too often. It’s a spice goddammit. Anyhow, this was supposed to be about my plan for the campaign’s first session, not the problems of populating fantasy lakes. Continue reading…
Hexcrawl High: Might say he found the key for every hex
So as per my previous post I’d decided to go with a hexcrawl for my next D&D campaign (I’ve also clearly decided to run with the Rocky Mountain High thing as well). But as I also mentioned, I’ve never played or run a hexcrawl before so I was going into this largely blind. So as with every problem in modern life I turned to the internet for the answer. How could that possibly go wrong? Continue reading…
Best of 2015 – Videogames
Well that time of year again, I’m typing this up in the first week of January. When I actually finish and post it is anyone’s guess. 2015 was a pretty solid year in terms of gaming as a whole. Lots of great games were released, several of which will easily become “classics”. Most major publishers and platform holders started making serious moves towards promoting VR. Sony had perhaps the greatest E3 ever. Several white whales were spotted and beached (Shenmue 3, FFVII Remake, Last Guardian alive and well). Overall a solid year. But it was also the year of the delay, so many titles got pushed back 2016. Which, when you add in the titles planned for 2016, makes the upcoming year look like a monster. Continue reading…
GIWTR 02 – Eight Devils of the Demon’s Gate – Part 02 – GURPS and Iterative Conversions
Came up with a snappy title, and by came up with I mean just took the literal translation of the antagonists from Ninja Scroll. But I won’t tell if you don’t. So when we last looked at EDotDG (behold my mighty acronym powers) I was considering how best to create a system for the Tracking/”Discovery” phase of the game. I do have some thoughts on that, which I’ll get to later, but while thinking around it other elements sprung up. Perhaps the most pressing of which was how to make the combats against the “Devils” feel both different and fun. Considering the menagerie of huge monsters that show up in most fantasy RPG’s (and a number of other genres) there is surprisingly little written about how to run such combats, in terms of either GM advice or actual mechanics. Continue reading…
GIWTR 02 – Part 01 – (Ninja) Hunters of the Shadows of Monster Colossi (Scrolls)?
If you have forgotten what the amazingly unwieldy acronym “GIWTR” stands for it is “Games I want to Run”. Spawned in the heady days of 2013, when the world seemed a much brighter place (I mean I had a job and a working chair which are two things I lack now), it (like this blog honestly) hasn’t seen as much use as I thought it would. But as running and playing RPG’s is now a vaguely regular thing I’ve started to have those hot movements in my brain pan that the village elder assures me are what the gentry call “thoughts”. Thoughts for campaigns of such magnificence that playing in them would alter lives, cure illnesses and doubtless increase sexual potency (no refunds). I suppose at this point I should stop amusing myself and get to the subject at hand, what is this campaign idea about? Continue reading…
The laziness of relying on an Internet of hats
Whenever I read an article about people being horrible online it’s now guaranteed that someone in the comments will suggest turning to “Anonymous”. Which I find confounding. It’s like an onion of ignorance, each layer as eye wateringly stupid as the last. Continue reading…
Convulsive Witching
The Witcher, Geralt of Rivia, The White Wolf. You mean Elric? No, this is a different White Wolf you fucker! Hunter of monsters, reluctant hero, plougher of saucy wenches, protagonist of the best-selling fantasy series by Polish novelist Andrzej Sapkowski and (more pertinently for this post) protagonist of a series of computer role-playing games based on the same character and world as the novels. Continue reading…
(Very) Brief thoughts on the upcoming Summer 2015 anime season
Well not so much upcoming as almost finished. I only realised when I went to post my initial impressions of the upcoming Fall Season that I totally forgot to hit publish on the similar post I wrote for the Summer season. So here it is. I have to say, this season looks pretty lackluster to me Continue reading…
Out to Sea 03 – The only one who gives the orders here
So week two of my time with Kancolle began pretty well. My resources, while not high, were relatively stable and I’d unlocked some of the key levelling areas in the game so I was all set to start levelling up my main fleet. Unfortunately ignorance of how the game functioned once again took me by unpleasant surprise. Continue reading…