Geek on the Borderlands

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.

As some of you will eventually notice when you get bored, I added a wiki to this site. Mostly it’s for a few home games that are going to have extensive homebrew elements, but I figured it would also be a good repository for some more permanent material (like classes and the like). It also got me thinking about just how much the gaming landscape has changed in the past 10 years.

Gone are the days of reams of notebook and graph paper (though I imagine all of us still us it to some extent). There is now a plethora of programs aimed exclusively at roleplaying games. Even programs like OpenOffice or Word have found new life in gaming. As roleplayers, we have more options available to us than we might have dreamed about 10 or 15 years ago.

Generally, I think this is a very nice step forward. I’ve yet to see where a nice digital tool has actually hindered a game. A good planning or creation tool can probably save hours of time investment, allowing the game master to spend time on things that are a bit more fun, like designing that deadly monster to eat the party.

The biggest thing to hit, in my opinion, is actually the concept of a game wiki (as in wikipeda). There are now dozens of ways to add a wiki to your own site (or form one online if you don’t have server space). Suddenly all players with internet access can look over house rules, campaign material, or anything else the game master deigns to post on the wiki any time of the day or night. For myself, I plan on posting my new homebrew campaign world on my wiki. I’ll probably even give my players limited editing permission, so if they come up with a good addition they can just add it themselves.

Forgive my random musing at this time of night, but I wanted to share this “discovery.” If the whim strikes me I might actually do some more in depth analysis of some of the digital tools offered to gamers. But for now, I have a wiki. I feel special.