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Feb 20, 2012

Links of the Week: February 20, 2012

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For those interested in petty details and statistics, I’m now aggregating over 500 RSS feeds.  Of those, a handful aren’t RPG related but are related to my interests (a couple on cooking, a handful of art sites)… but it’s still more than 500 RPG sites.

This amounts to about 150-200 posts a day on average, or somewhat over a thousand posts a week (about 1500 during a busy week, such as when they announced D&D 5e).

I estimate it takes about an hour per day to triage this.  On a bad day this is also enough time to examine in detail any interesting pages I find… on a good day, it might take another hour or two.

It’s taken a little while to get to the point of this being convenient and reasonably efficient, but I’m pretty happy with how it’s going now.  I still need a better way to convert posts (and more, series of posts) to EPUB for my ebook reader.  Cut and paste into Word, load into calibre, then convert to EPUB… not a convenient process.

I’m rearranging things slightly in my presentation here.  I think the less-itemized presentation works better than the more-itemized presentation I was using originally, and I want to make the separation between major sections (Hall of Fame, Kickstarter, and Blog Posts) a little more clear.

Hall of Fame Additions

Age of Ravens: Known World Gazetteers

Lowell of Age of Ravens has been reviewing the GAZ series of gazetteers for the Known World/Mystara.

I always liked this series, especially how each one focused on a single region and how much the regions varied.

This is an ongoing series, so this page will be updated as new entries are available.

Between are the Doors: OSH Pantheon

Fictivite at Between are the Doors is one of the more frequently linked writers in my Links of the Week.

In this series he is presenting a pantheon for Old School Hack, working from five up to eighteen gods.

This is an ongoing series, so you can expect this Hall of Fame page will be updated when new entries come available.

Blog Posts

Division Nihil

Marshall is looking for ways to devise a magic system.  I’ve run into similar difficulties with regard to this and am interested in seeing how he solves them.  I’ll also be putting some more thought into the matter myself.

Echelon d20

This week I have had some time to actually do some writing of my own!  I’m thinking about how the paths of immortality might fit Echelon, and I have reconsidered the talent slot table to make talent selection more manageable.

Gnome Stew

Matthew gives another view of threat levels varying by region.  He inverts the model (find the danger hot spots and build down, rather than safe areas and build up).  It looks to me somewhat more likely how it really happens, but functionally I expect you end up with something close to the ‘normal’ way (from low-EL to high-EL areas as you move away from the safe places).

Points of Light

There is a poll at Wizards of the Coast regarding multiple attacks.  I find I agree with David’s discussion of multiple attacks — if it is possible to get multiple attacks through basic skill, they should not be penalized.  There’s no real call for it, and if your character build is one that depends on multiple attacks in order to stay relevant (as with D&D 3.x fighters) the bonus needs to stay high enough to be useful.  On top of that, as I said in my post “Falling off the RNG” attack target values should be recalibrated anyway.  Using good BAB as the baseline so ‘fighters are challenged’ leads to all sorts of problems.

Shatterworld: Behind the Scenes

It seems Niccodaemus is feeling a creative block and needs suggestions about things to write about.  I’ll have to think about this, I know there are things I’d like to see more of.

Ye Olde Blog

Ozreth forwarded Ed Greenwood’s response at Candlekeep Forum to a question regarding sexuality in the Forgotten Realms.

Zombie Toast

Orion suggests a different way of handling divination and prophecy in RPGs.  The idea has some practical difficulties, but they are possibly less than the GM trying to predict the future and the consequences of PC actions.

Posted in Links of the Week
Nov 14, 2011

Links of the Week: November 14, 2011

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Okay, I’ve learned something today: I hate one or more of

  • hacking PHP
  • hacking WordPress
  • hacking this theme

Since I’m more or less satisfied with WordPress and can accept PHP, I’ll have to guess it’s this theme.  If I’m going to revise the appearance of this site and integrate link management a little more thoroughly, it’ll have to start from scratch with a more hack-friendly theme.  Annoying that I have to do that, but doable… and I honestly think that ultimately it’ll get me where I want to go.

In the meantime, a fair bit of reading this week.  All sorts of topics covered — mapping, crafting props for use during play, magic item descriptions and new rules, and some questions to consider when designing a setting.

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Posted in Links of the Week
Nov 12, 2011

Link of Fame: Immortals Trailers

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I first learned of this movie about ten minutes ago.  I have no idea if it will be good or bad, but I do know this:

I need to watch this, because I expect it will illustrate some concepts critical to Echelon d20.

Also, this looks badass.

Immortals – Official Trailer

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Posted in Link of Fame | Tagged
Oct 17, 2011

Links of the Week: October 17, 2011

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So.  Many.  Links.

I’m surprised, according to the thumb on the scrollbar, this is actually about normal.

I think perhaps I need to be a little more selective in what I read, so I actually have time to write.  But there are so many good articles out there, and I’m finding more blogs every week.

Akratic Wizardry

‘Swords & Sorcery’ House Rules Index

(http://akraticwizardry.blogspot.com/2009/07/swords-sorcery-house-rules-index.html)

This page has links to the rules mentioned in the Wrath of Zombie article linked below.  These rules attempt to capture classic swords & sorcery using the Swords & Wizardry rules (which I don’t have a copy of yet, should probably fix that).

Between Are the Doors

No Printing Press

(http://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/no-printing-press-blog-carnival-loot-as-part-of-the-plot/)

Books as treasure.  Not necessarily even magic books.

Those who know me, know I love books.  I like where this post goes.

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Posted in Links of the Week
Oct 3, 2011

Links of the Week: October 3, 2011

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Lots of articles this week, and a wide range of topics.

I take that back.  I just looked at the preview, and it’s huge.  I’d cut it down, but there was a lot of good material out there this week.

I’ve been reading so much lately it’s been cutting into my time to write, even.  It’ll get better once I’m back to taking the bus to work — set calibre to pull the blogs an hour before I get up, then read them on my way to work.  Or, perhaps more likely, stay up another hour each night and sleep on the bus.

Topic: “My Edition of D&D”

I suspect this will prove to be a popular topic.  I had a couple of links to similar articles last week.

I may be reading these posts in a superficial way, but one thing I notice — or think I do — is that Echelon addresses much of what these people are saying.  In the case of The Rhetorical Gamer’s post, I see the following:

  • Keep d20+mods vs. target number as the core mechanic (Echelon almost certainly does this, though I have toyed with the idea of 3d6+mods vs. target number in order to give the +2 Level Bonus per tier more weight)
  • Ditch ability scores and use the modifiers instead (Echelon uses the modifier+5 in order to get rid of the negative modifiers)
  • Classes… one of the options he considers is a handful of major archetypes, each with a core set of abilities, that can then be modified by replacing pieces of those archetypes with other ones.  Echelon can do that — pick talents for the core strength of an archetype, then build around that with the remaining talents.

Or maybe I’m reading too much into this and it’s projection and wishful thinking.

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Posted in Links of the Week
Sep 12, 2011

Links of the Week: September 12, 2011

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This week’s links.  Some here I will need to go back and read in greater detail… the ‘Pocket Civ’ (first link) looks really interesting to me, but I haven’t yet had time to dig into it deeper.

BattReps

Developing a civilization in a pocket

(http://battreps.blogspot.com/2011/09/developing-civilization-in-pocket.html)

This post describes ‘pocket Civ’, a card-based form of Sid Meier’s Civilization.  This excites me quite a bit.

Downloaded, will read when I have a little more time and a lot more not-sleepy.

Big Ball of No Fun

Supervillain: Sha’ir

(http://bigballofnofun.blogspot.com/2011/09/supervillain-shair.html)

One way to do a Sha’ir (as from Al Qadim) in 4e (as a monster, it looks like).

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Posted in Links of the Week