Internet WTF, Khunmar, other updates

Posted: October 5, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: bitching, blogs, exquisite corpses, LotFP, Mines of Khunmar, weird | 11 Comments

OK, whenever I ask people on the Internet, “What kind of blog entries do you like?” I always get people saying, “Write more about gaming and don’t write about politics.” However, when I look at my blogs statistics and see who looked at what and how often (and count comments), gaming is always dead last and my posts about the US election or Rush Limbaugh being a douche bag or the fact that I am irritated over some computer issue are first.  Maybe I just write crappy gaming posts… and when I talk about a ‘lot of page views,’ I’m talking an average of 100 views in 3-4 days or so (more views if I post during the week), so I’m not claiming to be creating ‘Grognardia’ levels of interest with my paltry 160 followers. Page views are relative to the obscurity of this tiny corner of the Internet.

I used to think that google+ made the difference, but out of deference to ‘gaming’ followers of the blog who said they didn’t want to read about my political views, I only post blog links to google+ when I am writing about games (and I limit that to my ‘gaming’ circle on google+), so at this point it seems that posting on google+ actually might get me less page views than not posting on google plus — how does that work?  If blogger gives a breakdown on who views a page via google+ versus some other source, I haven’t seen it. but other than occasionally looking at the search terms people use to get here (mostly because some of them are so damn weird), I haven’t delved too deeply into blogger statistics. And I don’t know if blogger differentiates between a ‘click through’ and someone spending an hour reading blog posts — I suspect to blogger, a click may be a click.

I’ve gotten a couple of emails asking about Khunmar. I’ll probably try to finish it after I finish Exquisite Corpses v2 (which will be released by LotFP.  That project is creeping along right now, due in part to me being really busy (yeah, I know I’m writing this blog, but my boss doesn’t mind if I use a little downtime here and there for writing on my blog) and also me being undermotivated and a bit of a loser when it comes to finishing things.  Sorry, internet.

Current conception is that Khumar will be released by ME as either a print-on-demand piece of shit or maybe I’ll print up a ‘collector’s edition’ where everyone who orders one gets 1 piece of orginal artwork chosen at random from the many 1/2 pagers I will be doing for Khunmar.  But that waits till after E.C.v2 is done.

The future is gonna be weird

Posted: October 5, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: weird | Leave a comment
Bunch of fucking clones!

Scientists have used mouse skin cells to create eggs, which were in turn fertilized (thus creating more mice). Last year, researchers were able to use skin cells to create sperm, thereby potentially eventually eliminating the male monopoly on sperm. I didn’t realize the weirdness of this until it occurred to me that if this method can be applied to humans, someone could then be BOTH biological mother and father to their own children.

Session 09

Posted: October 4, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: adventures, campaigns, DCC RPG | 1 Comment

Session 09 (10.3.2012)
Kreglar (priest): Dave M.

Marlowe (elf): Stef
Abothon(sp?)(hobbit): Mike C.
(P)tarth (wizard): Kevin
Zordinaire (wizard): Dave P. (absent)
Almuric (thief): Reuben (absent)
Pablo Van Ott (Wizard): Mike D. (absent)

To start with, we had to name our group, so, given the dysfunctional nature of our group and our decided lack of heroism, calling ourselves “The Stormblades” or “The Heroes of Hirot” or a similar high falutin’ name seemed a stretch. We finally settled on the name, “Kharma’s Bitch” for all of the wrong reasons, but we are a company of men (and elves and a hobbit) who seem to live in the moment and all the shit we pull is bound to catch up to us eventually, so…

Having settled that matter, Ptarth (the P is silent!) began to bitch bitch bitch about the lack of treasure. Kreglar snuck off to the city to ‘see a friend’ with a mysterious bundle and came back with his pockets jingling with coin… certain treasures once seen in the Jarl’s hall and promised to the group as a reward are missing… finally, Marlowe suggested we load all of the wagon wheels, clay pots, sheepskins, jars of gooseberry jelly and other miscellaneous items we had been given by the inbred villagers for saving their miserable hides and we hauled it all off to the city in one of the former Jarl’s oxcarts and sold it.  After paying the teamster rates for hauling all this shit, we realized the princely sum of 5 gps each. Yeah, our group name fits.

We were also all interviewed by the adventurer’s guild.  I don’t know what others said, but Marlowe gave his guild representative a pointed earful on the woeful margins that adventurers were expected to work on these days.  “Lives lost, wear and tear on equipment, stamina points permanently removed from injury, risk of corruption from spell casting, fumbling and being subjected to critical hits and zombification… all for 5 gold? That’s not like adventuring in my grandfather’s day, when one could expect fistfuls of gold for killing kobolds and giant rats.  And five gold doesn’t even begin to cover our expendables (rope, spikes, torches and arrows).  And now our hobbit has only one ear!?! It is outrageous I tell you — I’m ready to chuck it all and go into the chicken and egg business…” The guild representative yawned and shuffled his papers and thanked Marlowe for coming in.

Ptarth cast ‘Find Familiar’ and proudly shows off his new friend, an imp named Ganebon. In exchange for serving, Ganebon gets to keep Ptarth’s soul when Ptarth dies. I’m not sure Ptarth has a soul, so Ganebon is probably getting the worst of that deal.

Kreglar moved into the now vacant chapel of Justicia and hung a large “UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT” banner above the door but hasn’t quite decided to best approach for PR in selling an ancient uncaring tentacled god who drives his followers insane to a bunch of dirt farmers. Seeing how shitty their lives were when they worshipped the ‘Goddess of Justice,’ I’m thinking that a temple of Cthulhu in Hirot is so crazy it just might work. In addition to meditating and counting his gold like Scrooge McDuck, Kreglar spends time considering recruitment arguments like, “Justicia claimed to care and did nothing when the hound attacked your village. Cthulhu won’t care what happens to you, so he is the more honest alternative…”

Marlowe (me) cast ‘Patron Bond’ and came up with the result, “Useful Pawn.” If I understand correctly, this is the most mediocre result I could have gotten — better than corruption, I guess. My patron, Elrond Hubbard, Elven God of Self Actualization, considers me a tool, nothing more.  At least I can cast Invoke Patron now, although, given my mediocre result, my patron is likely to resent me bothering him.  Also, since I gained a level, I gained a new spell.  Rolling randomly gave me “chill touch.”

Wedding bells were also in the air. Dressing in his hobbit best and putting his hat at a rakish tilt to disguise the fact that he was missing an ear, Abothon went to the old hag Emay’s house to fulfill his promise to marry her. She appeared at the door, looking sixty years younger and fresh as a daisy, her arms around a vaguely man-shaped cloud of dark energy with flashes of fire where its eyes should have been.  She kissed Abathon on the forehead and then she and her ‘thunder-man’ vanished into the ether, leaving the hobbit’s heart broken and his cherry unplucked. Under his shirt, however, Abothon found a magnificent coat of lightweight magical chainmail — a parting gift from his two-timing fiancé. Inconsolable, he retreated to the inn where he blubbered into his beer on the stool next to the Lore the bard.

Kreglar has a shield that will allow him to intimidate enemies. Marlowe has a helmet that will allow him to intimidate enemies.  They agree to have an intimidation contest which Marlowe wins.

Finally it’s time for us to go on our next adventure.  I don’t remember what it is or why, but we travel to another shitty little one-horse town named ‘Hamlet’ where they apparently have rumors of trouble with ‘beast men.’  And it’s no wonder, because they always build their shitty little towns right next to a long abandoned castle where evil people once plotted and planned.  Of all the places in the world to build a town, why do they always pick ‘right next to the ancient haunted ruins’?  Darwinism means these villagers should have been wiped out eons ago; perhaps by saving them, we are just enabling them.  Is that what we are?  Enablers? While grilling the villagers, we discover:

·         Look for treasure in the keep’s remaining tower.

·         The keep was once ruled by a pair of Chaos Lords who were brothers.

·         A great treasure vault can be found beneath the keep!

·         Beware of the well!

·         Nothing good can come of disturbing the ruins; you will release the horror under the hill!

·         One of the villagers was doing the dishes late one night after her husband had said he was getting ready to go to bed.  She heard a noise and went to the bedroom to check on him.  He was missing and the curtains were open, so she ran to the window.  She saw someone who looked like he was dressed in her husband’s clothes running away, but when she called out to him, he turned and she saw what looked like the face of a tiger instead of her husband’s face.

Finally, after gathering our supplies (Lamp oil? Lamp oil! Ten foot pole? Ten foot pole! A dozen spikes? A dozen spikes!), we are ready. We march up the hill towards the stinking, decrepit keep and can see the broken stone walls covered in vines, brambles and rubble, a dry moat with a broken bridge, a half raised portcullis, etc.  A black flag marked with a red skull flaps from the battlements. The whole place smells like mildew.

Nearing the ruin, we see three human bodies bound to stakes by vines. As we draw closer, they start to thrash around and we can see that the vines are growing into and out of their eyes, ears and other orifices… this looks distinctly unhealthy and uncomfortable and Marlowe declares that if vines were growing into and out of MY body, I would want someone to put me out of my misery. After the zombie-ghouls with the snake surprise inside, we decide to take care of this problem from a distance. Fwip fwap fwap go some arrows and one of the plant-people is mostly skewered.  We shoot him once more and he explodes, spraying seeds and a mucus like slime all over the place.  Yuck.

There are two of the vine-zombies coming at us, moaning and shuddering.  A sleep spell has no effect, so Zordinar attepts to enlarge Marlowe, but blows the spell and, as a side effect, rats scurry out of his sleeve. Marlowe manages to spear one, but she rips her way free  and slaps him to zero hit points with her vine encrusted hands. Kreglar uses some sort of spell to hold the zombies in place for a moment and the rest of the party manages to hack them down and save Marlowe’s life, but half the party are covered in ‘pumpkin guts,’ some of us are all hacked up and some of us are out of spells, so, over the objections of Ptarth, we returned to town for a night’s rest, baths, a wash-up and some healing.

The next morning we were back at the ancient keep. The drawbridge has just a few rotted planks remaining.  Looking at the battlements, the hobbit claims that he sees something peeking at us from behind a merlon up there.  Zordinaire tossed a sleep spell up onto the battlements and suddenly this creature, snoring, tumbles over the battlements and falls through the bridge, taking ½ of the planks away, and then lands snoring in the ditch.  It is asleep under some vines and broken boards so we can’t get a very good look at it, but our general impression is that it looks like a mongrel-person of some sort.  Almost immediately we hear a yelp and a snarl from upon the battlements, a ringing bell and there is a mechanical noise and the portcullis slams down.  Then a creature lopes along the parapet towards the tower.  With the expending of some luck and by some face-planting into the site of the ditch by Zordinar later, we are across what remains of the drawbridge.  Kreglar strains to lift the portcullis but cannot, so Ptarth sends his familiar, Ganebon, flapping up to the battlements with instructions to raise the portcullis if he can do so without risk to himself.  Ganeborn returns and says that there is a crank wheel of some sort up there, but he is too small to turn it.

Having cast spider climb upon himself to cross the bridge, Pablo Von Ott scuttles up onto the battlements, cranks the wheel to raise the grate and then tears down the black flag with a skull and tosses it to Kreglar.

We are past the gate and we have taken the flag — what next?

Election Map (warning: political)

Posted: October 3, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: douchebaggery, politics, weird | 7 Comments

There’s an election map quiz on BBC World that asks readers to define how the battleground states will vote in the US election: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19794259

Here is my prognostication:

I think my prediction is probably too weighted towards Obama (I believe the actual election will be closer), but believe that Obama will win the next election (as I have said before). I don’t plan on watching the debates tonight… I’ll be playing in our regular DCC game over at my friend Kevin’s house (in other words, I have more important things to do).

A few of my picks:

Florida: Florida has usually been close (just ask Al Gore), but I think enough old people will be worried about the vagaries of Romney’s position on Social Security that it will push a few of the elderly centrists (reluctantly) into the arms of the Democrats.  Many of the seniors probably don’t like either candidate, so they may just stay home — which is bad for Romney.  Plus, Florida has a fairly large Latino population… with the exception of Little Havana, they are probably going to go Obama. Of all my predictions, I think this is the most likely to be wrong, but I have a hard time seeing the fixed income people being that comfortable with the current war on entitlements being waged by some of Romney’s supporters.

Michigan: Michigan went to Obama last election and Romney probably lost Michigan when he said that the car companies should be allowed to fail. Now that Chrysler and GM are doing better (and Ford, who turned down bailout money, is looking a bit flat), Obama can count on the Michigan vote.

Minnesota:  I think Minnesota is always a tossup, but I’m calling it for Obama. The “Main Street vs. Wall Street” debate seems to look on Obama with a bit more favor than Romney, plus Minnesota is one of the states where the Democrats can claim job growth under Obama after getting pounded years before.

New Mexico/Colorado: These two are a toss-up. Obama gets love on the coasts but not in cattle country. I split the difference by giving Colorado to Romney and New Mexico to Obama. I think that Colorado has more electoral votes than New Mexico, so Colorado is a better prize, but I’m predicting Obama will get around 75% of the Latino vote for obvious reasons, thus New Mexico, California and maybe even Florida are probably all going to go blue.

There you have it.  Feel free to stop in after the first week in Novemeber to congratulate me on my accuracy or gloat over my stupidity.

The ‘Dominion’ Level Game

Posted: October 1, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: adventures, aldeboran, Blackmoor, campaigns, Chainmail, Dungeons and Dragons, rules | 1 Comment

I’ve always had this fantasy of running a D&D campaign (or Labyrinth Lord or whatever) with player characters having their own little dramas AND a continental level wargame with country A, B and C going to war with each other, being invaded, plagues wiping out half the population and other mishaps. To the players on the player level game, these incidents might or might not have an effect on the player’s lives (much like news and current events in the real world), but, unlike the relatively static fantasy world that most RPGs take place in (or the world where all world events are orchestrated by the DM), there would always be something going on in the wider world… and even the DM (or referee) might not necessarily know what the map would like like later in the campaign. When/if player characters manage to take control of armies or perform deeds of derring do that grab national or international attention, the players may become ‘active forces’ in the world game rather than just players on an individual level. So what happens on a ‘national’ level isn’t just decided by GM fiat — it could be played out as a wargame.

Part of the inspiration for this idea comes from the original ‘Chainmail’ by Gary Gygax and Tom Keogh.  (NOTE: If you are reading this blog, it is 90% likely you can skip the rest of this paragraph…) ‘Chainmail’ is probably pretty familiar to blog readers; it’s a book of rules for ‘miniature war games’ published by Gary Gygax back in the 1970s.  Gygax and Tom Keogh were original ‘sand table’ gamers who would set up miniature armies of Crusaders & Saracens or refighting the battle of Agincourt or similar medieval period conflicts and ‘Chainmail’ was their rule set for deciding who won the battle. Later editions of ‘Chainmail’ included a ‘Fantasy Supplement’ that included rules for goblins, dragons, etc. According to grognard lore, Arneson was inspired by ‘Chainmail’ and some other games being run and talked about in the wargamer circles at the time (check out “Braunstein“) to run some games where each player controlled a single guy instead of an army. From these ideas, so the story goes, Dungeons & Dragons was born.

(NOTE: If you are a ‘grognard’ who is not an actual veteran of the wars of Napoleon, it is 75% likely that you can skip this next paragraph) “The First Fantasy Campaign” was published in the 1970s by Judge’s Guild. It’s a collection of Dave Arneson’s notes and some maps, incomplete in many areas and full of typos. The rough presentation, however, does not stop me from considering it a very interesting booklet.  In it, Arneson describes the ‘Blackmoor’ campaign that he ran for years when he was living in Minnesota and it was this book that made me want to consider the idea of a micro/macro campaign where play might switch back and forth between ‘campaign level’ play (where armies clash on the battlefield and borders get re-drawn) and ‘player level play’ (where each player might control just one character). Back in Armeson’s day, if I am understanding the book correctly, the players often took control of the different forces and battled it out. Blackmoor Castle itself apparently changed hands sveral times. The First Fantasy Campaign also had very vaguely stated rules for allowing players to build roads in their kingdoms, build inns and canals, etc. Plus it has one of the most kick-ass maps of a fantasy campaign that I think has ever been published.

My Campaign Map, circa 1980 something

Unfortunately, despite the best intentions, I’ve never gotten the critical mass of interested players involved… and the huge time issue to carry out such a campaign probably makes it a pipe-dream in any case. I’ve played a few ‘skirmishes’ on the tabletop, but not every player enjoys the miniature-war-game-combat aspect and then there is the fact that my regualr gaming group suffers from what I think could politely be called ‘Attention Deficit Disorder.’ Everyone is always thinking the grass would be greener if only we were playing a slightly different (or much different) game — getting them to commit to such an endeavor would be like trying to herd 100 cats through a thunderstorm. Never gonna happen.

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