Category Archives: General Geekness

2010 Year In Review

Ladies and Gentlemen, 2010 has left the building. On momentous occasions such as these we humans really get off on looking back and taking stock of the year that we endured. We also like to look forward, predicting the year that we will endure. So in that fine tradition, here’s the Strange Stones 2010 Year In Review.

Where Have You Been, My Blue-Eyed Son?

What have I done with the time I’ve sunk into Strange Stones? Well, as far as putting out content goes:

I posted a bunch of Demons for Labyrinth Lord (though I still have to bust out the Demon Lords before I can call that project complete).
I made a bunch of ready-to-use NPCs for Labyrinth Lord, Traveller, Barbarians of Lemuria, Basic RolePlaying, Mini Six, Where No Man Has Gone Before, and a few other games.
I posted some monsters for Swords & Wizardry, Barbarians of Lemuria, Basic RolePlaying, and some other games.
I hacked Mini Six to emulate Echo Bazaar.
I did a lot of work on Tlactoztlan, a MesoAmerican setting for Barbarians of Lemuria (though this, too, can’t be called complete just yet).

I also got to play host to the design diaries for Barbarians of Heavy Metal (thanks, Nathaniel!) and turned some folks on to The Sword. I got to see (and film) Michael Moorcock doing a reading and share some of that with my readers. I made some friends (cheers, Gobbo and G-Man and Mike and Geordie and anyone else I’ve left out!) and generally had a good time. All in all, not bad for 10 months of doing in public what I normally do in private, I think.

After starting out as a hosted WordPress.com blog I moved to my own self-hosted WordPress install at StrangeStones.com. In case you never quite understood why I did that, let’s just say that I’m a Texan and we tend to prefer not having people tell us what colors we can and can’t paint our houses.

I flirted with a couple of other mediums, primarily Tumblr and Twitter. Neither of these went very far in expanding my audience, nor did they seem to provide any additional benefit to the folks who are already getting whatever it is they get out of visiting Strange Stones. So while I won’t be closing up shop at these places, I expect I’ll continue my relatively minimal exertion of effort regarding them as well.

What’ll You Do Now, O Venomous One?

So where am I going now? Well, I intend to make a concerted effort to finish out the Demons of Adad Untash and Tlactoztlan. I can’t say they’ll be done right away, but those two things are definitely solid goals that I aim to accomplish sooner rather than later. And once they’re done content-wise, I plan to put both things together as PDFs for distribution. I’m probably not going to go whole hog on those with art and such, and consequently I probably won’t try to sell them through Lulu or anything. But I would like to have them as convenient downloads rather than just a series of scattered blog posts.

Along with those, I’m sure I’ll keep pumping out random monsters, NPCs, scenario tidbits, and such. I also suspect that I’ll find some new projects on the order of Adad Untash and Tlactoztlan to build out, but at present I don’t know what they’ll be. With Mesopotamian and MesoAmerican in the can I’ll have to find some other Meso- culture to explore 🙂

They Say That System Matters

And I generally don’t believe them when they do. I can run any damned game I desire using any old system I pick up off the shelf and it will be fun. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about (Strange Stones isn’t really an RPG theory site, in case you hadn’t noticed). Nope, this section is here to highlight the systems that I think I’ve fully settled into for both playing and writing. And while I’m always open to a new system or two, these are the key systems you can expect to see me talk about and/or monkey with for the foreseeable future:

Labyrinth Lord/Advanced Edition Companion
It’s just so easy to write for, and it represents the World’s Most Popular RPG quite well (especially if you consider its compatibility with other retroclones and their source material).
Basic RolePlaying
This is the game I run most because, as I’ve noted elsewhere, it’s the one my players prefer. And that’s cool, because I truly dig it, too. Viva BRP!
Barbarians of Lemuria (and its derivatives)
Good god, I just love the simplicity of the BoL system. It’s a snap to write for and, as I mentioned a while back, it’s easy for me to “think in BoL” and “act in BRP” with just a little conversion. Now if only I could get my players more interested in it.
Mini Six
It’s so light and hackable I just want to tear it apart and put it back together, like Legos or Tinker Toys. And it’s different enough from the other games I dig that it makes a nice escape. Also, since I have exactly zero prior experience with the D6 system, I have no preconceived notions about what can and can’t be done with it.
(Classic) Traveller
I don’t really play Traveller anymore, but it’s just such a great way to break out of writers’ block, with all its random charts and stuff. And it’s fun, too.
Mutant Future
This is, at present, the game I’m taking part in most as a player. I’m not sure I’ll ever run it (situational, not taste-related), but it, like LL, is easy to write for.

That’s six systems, and that’s probably enough for any one person to be focused (for some value of focus) on. Any more than that and I think I risk drowning. That said, I’m not entirely well known for my ability to focus, so don’t expect that those are all you’ll ever see here. At the very least, I’m bound to whip up a couple of additional Where No Man Has Gone Before characters when the mood strikes. I might even do some more stuff for a BoL- or BRP-powered Mythic Russia.

It’s A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

Or, A Brief Divergence Into Some Thoughts On The Old School Renaissance And Me

It is my personal opinion that things have gotten pretty fractured (and in certain corners, at certain times, downright fractious) in the thing they call the OSR. And that means, for my own sake and to my own tastes, I have to make some tough choices on which games I want to spend my time and money on.

All of the “These rules! No wait, this publisher! No, that publisher with those rules and this other cover!” stuff with Swords & Wizardry has grown really tedious and put me off my feed. Or, more plainly, I no longer feel the warmth I used to feel for S&W. It’s just gotten too jumbled for me to continue focusing on it. Plus, to be honest, my players are not keen on the ultra barebones nature of S&W and I’m not of a mindset to flesh it out for them. If I wanted to take a skeleton and build it up into my dream system I’d start with something that wasn’t class-based D&D at its core (hello, BRP and Mini Six). Still, I hope the S&W players out there can make use of the stuff I’ve already done for it as well as the easily convertible LL content I have and will produce. I wish everyone involved with S&W well and I’ll happily buy them a drink at NTRPG Con if I make it up to Dallas this year. I’m not condemning the game. I’m just saying it’s not the game for me.

The addition of Dark Dungeons to the fray only exacerbates things in my mind. I’ve looked DD over, and it’s just not my cup of tea. It emulates an iteration of Dungeons & Dragons that I never played and have precious little interest in. Sure, that version is quite close to the versions I’m fond of, but it’s definitely a road I’m not looking to travel. But if it brings joy to people, good for it and good for them. Just don’t expect to see me say much more about it than I just did.

I freely admit that ORSIC calls to me (and always will) since I love the arcane nature of 1st Edition AD&D. It was my first “real” game – by which I mean it was the first game I played with people who knew what they were doing, as opposed to Moldvay Basic, which was me fumbling around like a virgin monkey. But in spite of (or because of) those awkward moments with B/X, I’m still fond of that flavor of D&D and Labyrinth Lord, combined with the Advanced Edition Companion, lets me scratch both Basic and Advanced itches quite nicely. So OSRIC sits there as a shiny, complex thing I like to see on my shelf but am not so inclined to take down and play with lest I get a nasty pinch from all those gears.

All of those things are what have lead me to my decision to work primarily with Labyrinth Lord/Advanced Edition Companion when I do things that can be considered OSR stuff. I learned to play with Moldvay Basic and then cut my teeth on AD&D. LL/AEC lets me have the best of both of those worlds easily (and in nice packages, too).

But Really, How Classless Can I Be?

Nicely mirroring my early days in the hobby, I find myself growing weary of class-based systems. When the retroclones first appeared I was excited by the thought of returning to the simpler, archetype-based models of gaming that the main pillars of the OSR/clone movement seek to emulate. But after a while I began to itch to revert to skill-based games that don’t rely on the class construct to enforce niche protection (or any of the other fancy design speak that comes with classes). I mean, the game I really grew up on was The Fantasy Trip, after all. So when I play or run games, I almost invariably lean towards the non-class games on that list up there. It doesn’t hurt that my group remains strongly anti-class-based in their tastes as well.

That said, in the BRP Fantasy game I’m in the midst of using to introduce some new folks to our geeky little hobby I am drawing heavily from the outstandingly well done BRP Classic Fantasy to give something of a D&D feel to the game to help the new folks find those niches and work within them. Of course, what I actually did was use CF to make a BRP-powered TFT-style game with D&D spells that uses a magic points system instead of a Vancian approach to magic. In other words, I hacked together bits from some of my favorite games over the course of the years into a system I wanted to run and that I felt (and have since proven) was easy for this particular group of new players to learn and get into. Fingers crossed that this particular game thrives.

But What About That Arabian Nights Thing?

The regular readers out there are aware that I’ve been running a BRP-powered Arabian Nights-themed game. We’re not quite done with the story arc (yes, this thing has a story arc and isn’t a sandbox – how painfully new school of me), but when we do wrap things up I’m likely to call this one done. It’s been a lot of fun, and we’ve gotten some memorable events and characters and NPCs out of the run. But ultimately it’s just a one-shot that went long due to us old dudes not having enough time to bang out 8 hour sessions anymore. So eventually something else will rise to take its place. But there’s no telling what that will be.

In Conclusion

Geek blogging over most of the past year has been a fun and enjoyable hobby. It is one I expect I will continue to pursue, but not to the exclusion the other ways I like to pass my time. I’m not here to win any prolific or profound blogger awards. I’ll leave that stuff up to the other guys out there. Heaven knows there’s some good reading to be had on the internet, and I’m grateful for the quality stuff folks are putting out there for free. I’m just here doing my thing as I feel the need.

Once again, I’d like to thank the folks who read this blog. Odds are I’d be writing at least some of this stuff anyway, but being able to share it with friends and strangers sure makes it more compelling to me to keep doing. I’ll be back in a day or two or three with something new for you to take and use as you see fit. Also, I’m sure I’ll see some of you kids out there on the various geek forums. That’s a habit I wish I could kick, but I just don’t seem to be able to no matter how hard I try.

Happy New Year, everyone. Here’s to hoping you all have a wonderful 2011!

Happy New Year!

This post is set to go off at midnight Central Standard Time, so forgive me if I’m early or late with my wishes to you and yours. I’m most definitely not at the wheel right now (in any sense of the phrase) – I’m out playing board games and eating enchiladas with my beloved wife and some very good friends. I’ll probably be hung over in the morning and won’t post anything, but you never can tell with me.

So happy new year one and all. To celebrate, I’ll share a touch of my dabbling with the world famous Stylophone…

[display_podcast]

Here’s to a great 2011!

Barbarians of Heavy Metal Design Diary 9

RANDOM MUSINGS – BoHM FORMATS

Nathaniel here, again, this time with Random thoughts that are rattling around my head and new developments for Barbarians of Heavy Metal.

Things are afoot with BoHM, with a spot on my very busy schedule and a tentative release date set for the end of March or beginning of April. This game isn’t going to be your standard RPG release in a number of ways, however, and I’ve been probing the RPG community, thinking aobut new design and distribution models and otherwise looking for ways to make it more widespread than your average indie RPG. Outside of a uniquely entertaining setting and the evocative but easy to learn and use rules, the best way to do that is to present the game in a larger variety of cheap and easy to access formats outside of the standard Printed or PDF Book.

Considering this, BoHM will be released in three formats (hopefully simultaneously), and I’m considering a fourth:

Playbook

This is part of my thesis project as well as an attempt to come up with a post-digital format that can move the RPG Industry into the 21st century, hopefully attracting new blood that will revitalize our hobby.

Some of you may already know what this is about, but for those who don’t, the Playbook line is a series of RPG Boxed Sets in a digital format. Think the old (or new) D&D Red Box, with everything you need to play right in the package (rules, dice, character sheets, etc.), but completely automated and portable so that you can take it anywhere including the park or the car. No stacks of paper, broken pencils, dice rolling all over the place or miniatures getting knocked down and no internet needed to play. For more info you can go to this design thread.

BoHM will be the first game designed from day 1 to be used in the Playbook format and the rules writing and programming will go hand in hand. It will be the first playbook with a map and miniature function for playing out Titan, vehicle and personal combat. Both Player and Full versions will be available. What’s more, the new build of the Playbook software will be available in a number of formats, from iPad to Android to CD for those who are stubbornly clinging to your lap and desktops.

PDF

This is by far the easiest format to get a game out quickly, to the largest number of people and for a low price point. Pretty much the current standard in the industry, AFAIC. The thing is, I think the Boxed Set is king over your standard RPG book and BoHM will be sold as a PDF Boxed Set, with a copy of the Player’s Guide, the GM’s Guide and maps, fold out minis, a GM Screen, character sheets and any other chotchkie I can put into a Portable Document Format. You will also be able to buy the Player’s Guide and the GM’s Guide separately for the cash conscious folks.

The interior will be clean and B&W with only a single piece of art per page, if that, so that it will be very easy to print out for the average printer and to keep art and, by extension, product costs down.

POD

I have come to realize is that in a niche industry with a highly fragmented market, it is no longer really feasible for an independent designer, such as myself, to go the traditional route of creating a product, getting it printed and then distributed to brick & mortar stores. There really isn’t a huge market for this sort of thing anymore and you can count the number of RPG publishers who are still capable of doing so on the hand of an incompetent shop-teacher.

That being said, however, recent threads in which I have posed the ‘Print is Dead-ish, Long Live Digital Media’ theory have revealed that there are still a number of people that prefer dead-tree to digital for a number of reasons. This means a suitable print format must be made available as well.

The most obvious choice is Print on Demand, and I’ll be using Lulu or something similar, as it doesn’t cost me anything up front, although it can get a bit pricey for those who are purchasing overseas. The print versions will be B&W to keep the cost low, because If I’ve learned anything about this industry, pretty pictures are all fine and dandy but what you’re really selling is a game, not a picture book. Experience with the BotA print edition has shown me that even those folks who demand a lavishly illustrated full color hardback will often bypass it for something less pretty but easier on the wallet (usually complaining all the while about the expense of RPG products).

RPComix

While trying to think up a cheap alternative to traditional printing, it occurred to me that a game done in a cheap pulp format, like a reader’s Digest or Sci-Fi Anthology magazine, would be cheap to produce and offer a number of advantages to the consumer. First it is cheap to purchase, with the average rulebook costing a fraction of the cost of your standard hardcover high gloss 4/4 affair, allowing everyone at the table to get one. Second, it is cheap to replace if you spill a drink on it, tear it or the cat takes a whizz on it. Third, it can be sold in places that sell comics or magazines, but not normally RPG books.

I might do a limited run batch of player’s Guides and Gm Guides for sale at conventions to see how folks like the format, but that is up in the air at the moment as I investigate the costs and quality of an RPComix line.

Up Next: Random Musings – A Brief Treatise on the Thousand Psychic Wars…

200th Post!

Actually, the previous post was the true 200th published post here at Strange Stones. I knew this milestone was coming, so though I’m not surprised, I admit to being amazed. I didn’t really think I’d keep this blog going anywhere near this long when I started it back in February. But I can honestly say I’m glad I did.

I’m working on an end of the year wrap up piece that I’ll post sometime after Christmas that touches on the “Holy crap! I’m still blogging!” concept a bit more. But in the meantime, I figured I’d at least acknowledge the accomplishment before it receded too far into the past. Yay me!

Oh, and for the record, I’m well aware that there are lots of RPG blogs out there with way more than 200 measly posts. But none of them have the style and panache that Strange Stones does 🙂

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone

Even if your locality does not celebrate this holiday at this time (or at all), you should be able to enjoy the following classic…

Regular geekitude should resume shortly. Meanwhile, there are enchiladas to cook and cranberry margaritas to be drunk. Cheers!

Like A Demon’s Eye (Where Have All The Paos Gone?)

Sorry for the general silence of late. I’m actually prepping for a couple* of Thanksgiving week games and it’s distracted me from the blog. Have no fear, though, I’ll be back to providing you with the content you’re itching for ‘ere long.

In the mean time, here’s some Deep Purple that’s almost as old as I am:

Why? Because it’s good, that’s why.

* A sequel to last year’s BRP Western and, um, something else. Yeah. I don’t quite know what I’m running yet, since I’ve got some brand new folks involved and I’m not sure what to throw at ’em. Labyrinth Lord or BRP are most likely, though.

The D&D World Series!

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got Rangers vs. Giants! The ultimate D&D-themed world series. And, as we all know, Rangers get some pretty significant bonuses against Giants. So this should be quite interesting. Go, Rangers, go!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled geek blog.

Fifteen Games…

All the cool kids are doing it, so I guess I’ll navel-gaze for fun & profit, too…

Here are fifteen games that will always have an impact on me (that I can come up with in under fifteen minutes)…

D&D (specifically Moldvay/Cook/Marsh B/X and Gary’s AD&D)
The Fantasy Trip (including Melee & Wizard, of course)
Traveller
Champions/Justice, Inc./Fantasy Hero (i.e., the early, pre-unified Hero System games)
Illuminati
Talisman
Poker (5 card draw & 7 card stud, none of this Hold ‘Em stuff, thank you)
Spades & Hearts
SunDog (old Apple ][ game)
Quarters (no, really)
Magic: The Gathering (sigh, really)
Big Eyes, Small Mouth
Basic RolePlaying
Barbarians of Lemuria
Out Of The Park Baseball (computer game)

I’m sure there are more, and I’m sure I’m cheating by lumping a few things together up there. Oh well.

Garishly Painted Greek Statues

This is just neat:

Ultraviolet light reveals how ancient Greek statues really looked

Of course, the statues don’t look as classical when seen, pardon the pun, in this light. But hey, Science! makes lots of things look less classical. And that’s why Science! rocks. It keeps us real.

And though this isn’t particularly gaming-related, maybe knowing that the Greeks had appalling taste in color will come in handy somewhere down the road.

Welcome To StrangeStones.com

Howdy! After a nice long run as a hosted site at WordPress.com I’ve struck out on my own and now will be running the blog here, on my self-hosted site at StrangeStones.com.

All of the content you loved at the old site, plus everything else I’ll be producing, can be found here now. Please update your links and RSS feeds and such when you get a chance.

And now, it’s time to sleep. But the good news is that there’s fresh content a’comin’ soon. Including some long-awaited Higher Order Demons of Adad Untash! Stay tuned!