Happy New Year

One way or the other there are some big changes in the wings. I am disinclined to discuss most of them except for those that directly effect my blogs. Blog. Yeah. I deleted the other two. I nearly deleted my google accounts, too… But, I was convinced otherwise. I am simplifying and streamlining the way I interact with the web. That’s probably enough said about that I suppose.

I have some canned RPG posts that will go live every month through February, but I’m not writing any right now. I don’t think there will be another “tesseract” post and as long as I’m not running anything it gets harder and harder to find the motivation to produce for my apparent audience of about two. Roughly. Margin of error plus or minus, uhm, two.

I need to write something that doesn’t feel like wasted effort or busy work. I need this blog to be more than a voice for my inner hibernating hobbyist. I don’t know if that means more Fear Koans or something else, but I have been talking a lot of talk for a long time about fiction.

There’s this: http://nathanrussell.net/naga-demon/ …but, hibernating hobbyist.

Obviously, like every other hack blogger with a minimum level of delusion, there’s this: http://www.nanowrimo.org/ …but, I never freaking finish this stuff.

Beyond a thousand words or so I lose interest entirely. That needs to stop. I talk and I don’t deliver. Then I talk about that. Then I repeat the cycle. ugh. What may end up happening is that I will keep this as my blogging “junk drawer” and an archive of sorts and I’ll start a new blog. I don’t know if a fresh start is what I need or not. Not like I haven’t tried that in the past, too. But, 2012 is going to be a big year for me for a number of reasons. Whether this site reflects that or not is utterly irrelevant in the grander scheme.

I have things to do.

Risus: Clone Wars

My original plan was to make my first “27″ post a re-skinning of my Clone Wars setting, but as I got into the editing of it I discovered that I had a lot more material to convert from Star Wars to… something else. I still want to share that idea, but I think my original effort is still pretty good. So in the interest of breathing room I’ll kick off my Risus posts with my old material.

CloneWars

For those who are interested, there exists a revised and expanded version of my “Clone Wars” hack. If you are interested, contact me. I’ll share it on GoogleDocs or something. I don’t have it in a particularly tidy doc for conversion to pdf, which is why I’ve posted the older version here.

Next Month: Pulp Adventures in a Hard Solar System

Magic Part Two

Last month’s entry was pretty much just a dry list of spells. Boring, right? Well, this month I am going to begin shamelessly raiding [Aeons and Auguries] for little changes that will give the system a little more setting specific flavor.

One of the advantages of a task like this is the ability to re-imagine some of the flavor of the system; the challenge is not altering mechanics when doing so. But, with that in mind, I sort of want a system that combines the “divine” aid of Clerics with the study Magic-users. The two pages I’m working from here are X7, X11, and X51.

What is wrong with people…

UPDATE: the twitter account oceanmarketting is no longer in the control of the party involved. It is being used by someone else now. Still not linking until I get some confirmation that it’s not malicious. My suspicion is that is wholesome.

Yes. Two Ts.

http://penny-arcade.com/2011/12/26/just-wow1

I can’t describe this. Go read it yourself.

Edit: if you check out the guy’s twitter feed (I’ll not link to it – it is at the bottom of the Penny Arcade article) I particularly like the graceless intimidation of, “how many avengers did we send you for review that you kept and didn’t return calls I have emails from you apologizing to me“

When you send people product it does not obligate them to give you a good review. Good product = good review. Free bad product = no review. Bad product that someone had to pay for = bad review. In two of those scenarios you are a winner.

Magic Part One

For a long time the split between arcane and divine magic in D&D has bugged me. I’ve wanted the option to play an arcane healer since at least second edition. However, that’s not the reason the split bothered me. I just don’t see the thematic need for it. Sure, there are mechanical balance blah blah blah…

Whatever.

My Tesseract

I haven’t seen anyone else discuss this – quite frankly – some what mad idea. So, I’m going to give it a go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract

Some of you are looking at that subject and already yawning. Yeah, well, give me some credit. I know Tesseract dungeons are relatively common in the hobby, and I like the idea well enough, sure. But, most of the executions I have seen were not – strictly speaking – true tesseracts. And, that’s just fine this one won’t be either, but…

Rather than mapping my six rooms to a six-sided die or the deranged-ly ambitious… uhm… 12? *hedasplode* Ahem… I am going to map geomorph tiles to a Rubik’s Cube. Well, actually a one dollar knock off from my local dollar store, but you get the idea.

Correction: http://trollandflame.blogspot.com/2010/04/geomorph-cube-dungeon.html and a nerdnyc forum post from six years ago. If there is more out there folks, please post linkage in the comments.

My idea is to mark the squares so I can track the geomorph they are entering and exiting more easily… Once they find the “artifact of immense power” and start rotating it…

Now I just need those 54 geomorphs…

http://davesmapper.com/

And I have the personal blogs of a few of these cartographers already bookmarked.

Stay tuned.

Weird New World

I just picked up the pdfs for Vornheim, and on a whim, Weird New World. I’m wanting to make my next attempt at a Keep on the Borderlands game even more winter and north themed than my last one, so these seemed ideal. And, I have to say barely past the introductions of WNW and I think I’ll be getting a lot of use out of it.

Vornheim remains a bit of an enigma to me. I feel like you really miss out by not having it in print, but that’s just going to have to wait.