Another great one has gone to the greater mystery before us. A visionary has passed once more from these earthly bonds to go throw dice with the Father. http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4news/20090409 Dave Arneson October 1, 1947 - April 7, 2009 Dave Arneson, co-creator of the original Dungeons & Dragons game, passed away on Tuesday evening, April 7th, after waging one final battle against cancer. In 1969, when Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax first met at GenCon, both were dedicated ... Read Full Story

April 1, 2008, Renton WA—Scott Rouse, Brand Manager for Dungeons & Dragons, recently announced the D&D Name Change Promotion in support of June’s release of 4th Edition. “To any player willing to legally change their name to “&”, we’re offering a $50 credit toward purchase of any of the three 4th Edition core rulebooks,” Scott said. “Pronunciation of the symbol is up to you, whether you’ll prefer to go by ‘Ampersand’, ‘And’, or even ‘Amp’. That choice is yours. What we’re looking ... Read Full Story

The title pretty much sums up a little something I tried to do in the March Convergence supers game we played with the KORE rules. The basic premise is this: When the players all start to get that glazed, clueless look and start shrugging their shoulders, throw some bad guys at them and reintegrate them into the game. In point of fact, I did this a number of times during the game; most notably at the very beginning.  The game started with the characters heading to the Museum of Antiquities to... Read Full Story

There is a famous quote in software engineering or perhaps engineering in general, the gist of it being “the design is complete when nothing can be removed”.    The point is elegance from simplicity and purity.  No diversions from the focus of the effort.  I cannot find the original source tonight but it matters little. For the record, apparently it is Antoine de Saint Exupéry who is credited as saying, “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing l... Read Full Story

In the days before time, at the dawn of the RPG era, generating a system that was balanced and fair throughout the rule system must have been a challenge.   Certainly, many tests were available including statistical analysis and play testing.   Even so, it must have been a challenge and an extremely difficult task.  Obviously, no testing can be completely thorough.  Given the number of  new editions, modifications, and shifts that have occurred in the last 30 plus years of RPG rule sets I thi... Read Full Story

While not exactly what I anticipated, and a bit surprising to boot, the March get-together was a fantastic success in my book. Four games were played, of which I ran 2, we traded some secrets to theme and pacing, everyone seemed to have a good time, we covered the gambit of genres, and we all talked about doing it again next year. Game #1 consisted of an old-school Boot Hill game run by Mark in which we were aboard a Kansas train that got robbed. Awesome fun combined with deadly Boot Hill mec... Read Full Story

So I’ve begun to grow exceedingly frustrated with the amount of spam comments masquerading as actual responses to blog entries. As a result, for the near future (at least until the spammers get somewhat of a clue) I will be disabling comments on all blog entries. While I thought that the simple fact that none of the spam comments had been published would have been enough to discourage spamming me into oblivion, alas it has not. I have no other choice but to disable comments until furthe... Read Full Story

So I had this idea of how to quickly assign generic teenager roles to players by using a Pinochle deck. Basically have the players each draw a single card from the deck with results determined as follows: Spades - Fighters and physical peeps 9 - Freshman squad member 10 - Sophmore squad member J - Junior squad member Q - Senior Head Cheerleader K - Senior Squad Quarterback A - Perform any Physical feat once perfectly Diamonds - Money peeps 9 - Freshman 10 - Sophmore J - Junior Q - Miss Money ... Read Full Story

In light of my desire to try this: You’re all going to die. I’ve decided that for the March trip, I’ll be bringing each player a small flashlight. When we play “those meddling kids” I’ll turn off the lights and require that everyone play by flashlight. If your character dies, you must turn off your light. Has anyone done anything like this? Does anyone have any advice? It’s kind of Survivor-esque, which (thought a cheesy show) is the “pick ̵... Read Full Story

So a bit ago I picked up some political domain names to hold for a future sale. In truth, I was rather amazed they were available. The domains (in alphabetical order) are: uchoose2012.com udecide2012.com udecide2012.net udecide2012.org votednc2012.com votednc2012.net votednc2012.org votegop2012.com votegop2012.net votegop2012.org While I know these are 4 year plays, I’m quite optomistic about my prospects given the political climate of America. Read Full Story