Geek on the Borderlands

So, you all might have noticed not only a new look for the site but some new and old posters chiming in here.  That’s because I realized that I just don’t write often enough to really make this site worth visiting very often.  So I’ve asked my friends to join in (and some have been posting here for while now).  I find that it’s a lot better to offer a variety of viewpoints beyond my own and I’ve been blessed with a great many friends that have taken up the challenge of writing random things here.  I figured that I should take a moment to talk about them a bit.

Runequester has been posting here for a long while, and thanks to the new look you can actually pick his posts out from mine now.  He’s been a good friend and it’s probably pretty safe to say that at times we’re on opposite ends of the gaming spectrum.  I’ve had the pleasure of playing in a few of his games and his style is a lot different from mine.  I tend to love new systems while he might be what you’d call a Grognard.  Which is good for me as a gamer, as he keeps pointing out things that I might have forgotten as a embrace the shiny new systems of tommorrow.

The one place where we really meet and have fun is with wargaming.  Runequester is the author of the fabulous Fast and Dirty (http://fad.savevsdm.com/) rules.  We have a lot of fun pushing some lead around a table and drinking beers.  A solid friend all around and a credit to his country and gamers everywhere.

I have known Plain Simple Garak even longer than Runequester, and she’s been a wonderful friend to both me and my wife.  She’s the one who broke me out of my power gaming and hack and slash ways that I had for so long.  She ran the finest Vampire game that I’ve played in and her Changeling games are very, very good.  She’s the one who showed me that I didn’t have to always follow the rules, that games could be more about killing things and taking their stuff, and that sometimes it’s better to ignore the rules.

She tends to run games that are very story and background based, and I’ve learned a lot playing in her games and talking with her.  She showed me that the Forgotten Realms could be interesting and that maybe I could find something better in the older editions.  I think that she’s done more to change the way I think and run about games than just about anyone else I’ve had the pleasure of gaming with.  Which is a good thing, trust me.

Javier is a good friend who happens to hail from Spain, which means that he’s a dashing and handsome young man with a dialect that my wife tends to call “sexy.”  That and he’s got a really good head on his shoulders and a keen mind for crunch in a game.  In some respects he’s the one that thinks the closest to me, save that we tend to like different editions of D&D.  That and he actually got me interested in running a Star Wars game, which is a credit to his silver tongue.

Javier is also quite up on Warhammer and a lot of other systems that I don’t know a lot about.  Which is great, because he’s filling in a niche here that none of the rest of us can really fill.  Sadly I’ve never had the pleasure of actually gaming with him for any length of time, given that we live in different countries.  But I think that I’d really like the games he’d run and that we have talked at length about our various games, giving each other encouragement and ideas.

So, those are the new (and old) faces around here, each of them with a different perspective and voice to add to this little site.  I hope that you all enjoy reading their stuff as much as I do.  Posts and articles are probably going to remain on an erratic schedule for the time being, and I’ve long since given up on promising any sort of regular schedule.  But with more of us here new stuff should be going up a lot more frequently.  Which is good.

As has been reported around the world and internet, Ernest Gary Gygax died this morning. I found out during class when a class-mate of mine, a non-gamer mind you, told me during a break. She’d read about it on some website. At first I accused her of joking, but it soon became apparent that she wasn’t. It was a kick in my very soul, as if I’d lost a very dear friend suddenly.

I never really knew Gary, not in any sense of the common word. Sure, I gamed with a friend who’d learned to game under him in college, I’d talked to him at a few conventions, but I couldn’t call him a friend or even an acquaintance. Still, the two times I had the pleasure of meeting him he was kind, courteous, interested and attentive. He gave me words of encouragement and a smile with a handshake. It’s not often that you get to meet one of your heroes and he turns out to be a wonderful human being.

Wherever he is (and surely it is some great celestial realm filled with ambrosia and never-ending dice), I hope he’s happy. He helped to create a game that changed my life in dozens of small ways and a few big ones. Without Dungeons & Dragons I’d never have met most of my closest friends. I wouldn’t have the wonderful job I have now, or have my name in the credits of RPGs. I’d probably have gone crazy in high school in my tiny town with nothing better to do. Or even worse, I might have turned to drugs or other delinquent behavior.

The game he helped to pioneer changed my life in such a profound way that I feel like I’ve lost a second father. That’s a hard blow to take, especially early in the morning without enough sleep. My thoughts and condolences go out to his family and friends.

Yet, in some very real sense, he’s not completely gone from the world. His legacy and his game lives on in thousands of homes every week. I myself will be running a game tomorrow. The edition may be different, but I’ll be damned if anyone says it’s not a direct result of his hard work. The world may be darker for his passing, but it’s also brighter than a thousand suns thanks to his work. He has brought joy, laughter, relationships, friendships, and countless other wonderful things to millions of people with nothing more than his wits, a friend, and some pencils. That’s a legacy that will live on for generations to come; a legacy that the greatest of men would be proud to call their own.

End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it; White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.

Rest in Peace, Gary.

The news even made CNN and BBC. Gary Gygax, father of the roleplaying game, died today.

I dont it can be adequately be explained how much impact D&D and other roleplaying games has had on my life or the person that I am.

There’s only a small list of people I consider heroes in this hobby. Greg Stafford, Steve Perrin, Greg Stolze.. and Gary Gygax.

If we can see the world of our imagination, its because we stood on the shoulder of a giant.

Ernest Gary Gygax passed away today at the age of 69 in his house in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. This is a piece of news that hit me, and many others, like a sledgehammer when we read about it earlier today. Apparently, his health had been failing lately, as his wife reported, and soon we will know more about it.

All in all, this is very sad news for every single gamer, whether they know it or not. Gary, together with Dave Arneson, brought us the first commercial RPG, Dungeons and Dragons. Without what the two of them brought us, videogames, roleplaying, miniature gaming, and many other of our little hobbies would not be the same. We would probably not be enjoying so many fantasy and sci-fi novels as we can enjoy nowadays, we wouldn´t spend countless hours in front of a table, with friends, pizza and mountain dew, slaying dragons and taking their loot just for the sheer fun of using our imagination and enjoying the company and the presence of our friends. Our lives would simply not be the same.

If that was not enough, Gary left behind many great things as a legacy: he took part in creating the wonderful Dungeons and Dragons cartoon series, he was both approachable and friendly whenever the fans interacted with him, and above all, he was The Original Dungeon Master.

Whichever plane you are now in (and I am sure that not even Elysium and Mount Celestia are good enough for you), you have our love, and you live on in your legacy and memory, Gary. May we meet behind the DM´s screen.

Javier.

For those of you who don’t know, gencon filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. While this is of course horrid news for the convention and gamers everywhere, I’m not going to suggest we all panic quite yet. The main convention (Indy) is still a good money making prospect, so I don’t think we need to be canceling those hotel reservations quite yet. I still plan on going, of course (love the Con).

So, don’t panic but be aware. Now would be the best time to support the convention, as a good year of GenCon Indy could really help things out in the long run. We all need conventions, for gaming is a social activity and such large gatherings of players are good for the hobby as a whole. Plus, this year sees the release of Hunter: the Vigil and 4th Edition! Who wants to miss out on that?

But now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

Well, I had planned to make Friday’s post our first podcast – but that rather fell through. We experienced what many folks say are “technical difficulties.” Rather than put out a product that was a bit hard to listen to, we decided to give it another shot. So we have actually recorded a podcast – I might eventually release it for humor value later. But podcast episodes should be forthcoming in a week or two.

You’ll also notice that I added a widget to convert the posts here to pdf. I figure that’ll help people save what I’ve written if they find it helpful. Not much of an update, I’ll admit, but that’s what you get. The promise of audio goodness to come and a fancy little do-dad to make pdfs of my posts. It’s better than nothing.

The trouble with hosting a blog with a bunch of cool content is that you actually have to create and post said content.  Which, normally, you’d think I’d be more than willing to do.  I write articles for RPGnet, I sure manage to write up my games each week, but for some reason there’s always tomorrow when it comes to posting here.  Well, no more.  One of my resolutions was to update this site three times a week with something, anything, for people to read.  Obviously I was exactly punctual with that, either.  That changes today.  From this date forth I will endeavor to post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (possibly more often if possible).  It won’t always be a lot of content, but it will be something.  Hopefully I’ll actually give the rss feeds something to broadcast.

Secondly, the podcast for this website is nearly ready to go.  I’ve got all the equipment together, we actually have an outline for the first podcast, and we’ve set a schedule to record.  I’m going to tentatively say that we’ll be doing a podcast every other week, but that might change due to circumstances.  To give you just a little bit of a teaser, the first episode is entitled Dungeons & Gunboats (a D&D and Traveler double billing).  Every episode we’ll probably focus on two systems and sort of compare and contrast them in some manner.  It should be a lot of fun.

So, to recap: in 2008 you’ll see updates three times a week and a spiffy new podcast.  It should be fun!

I am an unabashed fan of pulp and the pulp game Spirit of the Century. I cannot sing the praises of the folks over at Evil Hat Productions enough. They’ve always been kind, reasonable, and prompt in their responses. I get the feeling that these are gamers like us, and that they’re producing a damn fine product out of love, not greed.

So, when they announced a free supplement for Spirit of the Century, I was excited. Spirit of the Season could have been a cheesy one shot game. But they put in so much love and effort, it surpassed that. Whether your players are up against the miserly Doctor Scrooge and his Crachets, Jacques Frost, the insane and evil arctic explorer (and his murder monsters), or the emotionless Baroness Blackheart, they are sure to have fun. Even among free products, this is a darn fine thing.

Plus it has new rules from Companions! And new stunts! They’re not tied to the holidays, either. Just plain old fashioned rules expansions for free.

Plus, if you order through December, you can get $5 off the book! That’s right, the book is cheaper! You should buy a copy to support this great company. I actually went ahead and ordered a second copy of the book, one to use during play and loan out, and one as a shelf copy.

Anyway, just some news from the land of pulp. If you don’t know what I’m yammering on about, well check out the website. The game is really, really cool.

You can grab the file from here

THis is the first playtest version of the new Traveller game. So far, it looks very promising, seeming to work out as a cleaned up and elaborated classic Traveller, but without any of the excessive complexity that made Megatraveller a bit of a chore at times

More or less all of my old material has now been reposted on the download page of this website. All files are either zipped pdf files or standard pdf files. In addition to all of my old 3.5e D&D material I’ve also posted links to some of my character sheets. In the future the download page will hold all of the material large enough to warrant a pdf release. For now you’ll want to snag the 3.5e material you want to use, as it will more than likely be phased out when 4th Edition hits.