In Part II of the Spires of Xin-Shalast, the last installment of the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path, our heroes begin their insurgency campaign within the ruins of fallen Xin-Shalast. Yeti, dragons, and… uh, weird invisible psychic slither-beasts prove no match for their spells and steel as they prepare to close in on the Runelord. Death or glory!
Posted in session summaries
Tagged 3.5e, adventure path, D&D, Pathfinder, rise of the runelords, RPG, RPGs, runelords
It’s a simple question. Where do you go to find good reviews of RPG products, so you know where to spend your hard earned dollars?
The answer, however, isn’t so simple. But as a guide, here’s some of the key places to go read RPG reviews, with some reviews of their reviews! (Oh, I can be so meta).
RPG.net. RPG.net is the site I prefer to submit my reviews to. They print reviews of anything – a given week may have reviews of super mainstream D&D products, other established products like HERO, independent games, super old games, totally fringe PDF games… Their volume isn’t huge but is larger than most, maybe 2-5 RPG reviews on every Monday and Friday, but they are notable for having the most complete reviews. The average RPG.net review is long, steps through each chapter of a work, gives summaries and analysis and opinions – there’s not a formal standard, but the understood bar of review quality is the highest of all the review sites. They also do board game reviews and occasional “other” (book, game) reviews. Annoying in that you can’t edit your reviews once you submit them, but nicer than average in that the reviews section isn’t just a forum, it’s real pages.
TheRPGSite. This site has fewer reviews, maybe a couple a week, just put into a forum. The reviews are also in depth, and lean more towards non-mainstream games but non-“indie” in terms of the formalized FORGE/Indie Press Revolution crowd. Reviews are pretty much all RPG. A larger percentage are by a core set of people, especially RPGPundit, so you may agree or disagree with the reviews in bulk based on your philosophical leanings.
ENWorld. Higher volume (a fistful every day), in a customized forum. Some are comprehensive but some are shorter. This part of ENWorld was dead a while and has just relaunched so I’m unsure about the sustain rate on it, and the historical review database is offline. They also have sections for lots of non-RPG stuff. Much more d20-oriented than the other review sites.
RPGNow. Loads of volume; most products in their catalog have a couple reviews at least. The down side is that most are a short paragraph at best. Here’s a representative example. But the star rating and number of readers is surfaced on the product page, so you can quickly see the popularity and average opinion of the game.
I’ve been wanting to post about this for such a long time. And this awesome McCain campaign foulup pushed me over the edge.
One of the most frequent and annoying grammatical issues among RPG authors is a complete inability to use the apostrophe.
Apostrophes are for some possessives, e.g. the boy’s hat. And for contractions, like “he’s going to the store.” But that’s it. <– oo look another. I know “its” is confusing. No apostrophe for the possessive (its tentacles), just the contraction (it’s too much).
Not for plurals. Ever. No. Stop it. You sound like a retard. Just stop. I will start posting violators in the List of Shame in the comments section of this post. You all are welcome to do the same! Forum posts aren’t fair, just examples from “official” RPG communication – published products, product descriptions in stores, formal announcements, like that.
Kobold Quarterly, Wolfgang Baur’s D&D magazine, has a good if short interview with James Jacobs, editor-in-chief of Paizo Publishing and mastermind behind their outstanding Pathfinder adventures, setting of Golarion, and Pathfinder RPG.
For those of you who have been lving in a cave, the Pathfinder adventures, stemming from the Adventure Paths from Dragon Magazine while Paizo ran it, are the best D&D adventures ever for my money. And the Pathfinder RPG is an attempt to move forward with the open gaming D&D 3e source and make something less hideous than what 4e has turned into – and it’s an open beta, so the gaming community can actuallly help shape the rules, and not just take whatever corp-devised mummery someone wants to stick down your craw. And Golarion is the only setting to capture my imagination since Greyhawk. So check out the interview!
I had heard that the new Clone Wars animated Star Wars movie was “the suxxorz” via Ain’t It Cool News (no link because the review was taken down due to studio embargo) and other such sites. Even Ebert ripped the movie a new one. I was ready to believe it; I think Lucas somehow went crazy in the long intermission between the two trilogies, and I hated the second trilogy with a passion, especially Phantom Menace. In fact, I bet you didn’t know this, but your friendly Geek created the Death to Jar Jar Binks Home Page, which gained some popular and media note following the release of Phantom Menace. So I was quite prepared to stick it in and break it off Lucas with Clone Wars. I hadn’t planned on seeing it at all, but I took a father-daughter day with my six year old today and she wanted to see it; it’s the only new kids release out. “I saw Space Chimps for her, I guess I may as well see Clone Wars,” I thought.
“This is more betterer than the real people ones,” she whispered to me halfway through. And I have to say, I agree. Clone Wars wasn’t bad at all. In fact, it was kinda good.
There seems to be quite a net furor on. Apparently several people, perhaps a gaming group, were at Gen Con wearing t-shirts saying “4e Killed Gary Gygax.” (There are further claims that a company was selling them at Gen Con, but as no one from the thousands of people at the con can quite remember which company it was, that stinks of wishful incorrectness.)
This immediately generated a wave of incorrect rumors that a company called Dragon Root was selling them at the con – they weren’t, but people are happily spreading the misinformation since no one wants truth to get in the way of “revenge porn,” as one ENWorld poster puts it. I’ve been treated to about a hundred forum posts by “offended” people who, claiming two or three more balls than they have in real life, want to “find whoever did it and beat them senseless.” (My ex, following along as I write this story, notes “There seems to be quite a lot of woodwork, doesn’t there!” with her trademark dry wit.)
1. Yes, it’s tasteless, and yes, it’s funny. It’s 2008, get over it. If you live in a flyover state that has a lower than usual irony/postmodern humor quotient, watch a Comedy Central roast or something.
2. 4e didn’t kill Gary, it just makes him roll over in his grave. Bonus Gamespy Interview quote:
GameSpy: Have you had a chance to play or even look at some of the current Dungeons & Dragons games?
Gygax: I’ve looked at them, yes, but I’m not really a fan. The new D&D is too rule intensive. It’s relegated the Dungeon Master to being an entertainer rather than master of the game. It’s done away with the archetypes, focused on nothing but combat and character power, lost the group cooperative aspect, bastardized the class-based system, and resembles a comic-book superheroes game more than a fantasy RPG where a player can play any alignment desired, not just lawful good.
Although I have my doubts about whether this is really a Gary quote, as it doesn’t use the words “fatuous,” “jejeune,” or “scrumdiddlyumptious.”
Anyway, all of you fruits feigning rage since of course YOU were the one who loved Gygax more than ANYONE – give it a rest, you’re passive-aggressively trying to cash in on his name yourself by publicly declaring yourself his biggest fan and posthumous defender. (Hey, Posthumous Defender, that’s a great name for a prestige class!)
All of you with real rage over it – and I say this in love – Jesus, get a grip and out of your parent’s damn basement, or the dark bungalow where you live singly (more common for older adult geeks). I’ve seen twenty people post “what must his FAAAAAAAAAAAMILY think.” Well, you’re not them, so keep it to your fucking self. How about instead, you show some sympathy and consideration to people you know when someone you actually *know* dies.
/PSA over.
Well, sadly it was bound to happen. It happened right after the 3e launch too. Wizards announced an innocuously-worded “organizational alignment” the other day. It turns out that a number of people have gotten the axe including Mike “Gamer Zero” Lescault and Linae Foster, D&D Licensing Manager. More to come I’m sure. (P.S. Scott Rouse says they’re still making headway on a GSL revision despite this.)
In other WotC news, I’m a little concerned that Wizards is being referred to by Hasbro as their “digital strategy.” In the Hasbro Q2 2008 earnings call, they only mentioned Wizards thus: “During the quarter, we continued to invest in our digital strategy, including the Wizards of the Coast initiative and building our business with Electronics Arts.” Conspiracy theories about them looking to sunset traditional pen & paper D&D with an ‘electronic’ revenue stream may commence.
This is mildly complicated by Wizards’ Senior Manager of Technology PMO flipping out and murder-suiciding his wife. Sad, and with the recent closing of Gleemax too, seems like there’s a lot of flux at the moment. Hasbro seems to be leaning on the digital angle heavy but will they be able to execute in this environment?
What does this all mean? Jeez, I dunno, but I’m guessing chaos + turnover doesn’t bode well.
(Bonus points for naming the reference!)
Anyway, Topless Robot has brought us the kind of D&D article that only comes around once in a blue moon. Remember the random harlot table in the AD&D 1e DMG? Well, here’s the extended dance remix!
The 12 Harlots of the Dungeons & Dragons Random Harlot Table Explained
I’ve always had a soft spot for the brazen strumpets myself.
Well, looks like the new RPG Bloggers Network wasn’t expecting the load. When you hit their page you get redirected to a page which says, in short,
This Account Has Been Suspended
Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible.
Hey guys… Contact the billing/support department!!!
I went to http://www.critical-hits.com to see if they had info but they’re on the same hosting account apparently. 😦
Update: I contacted Dave Chalker and they’re trying to get more info from their ISP.
Update: It’s back up, panic over.
This came to mind while I was researching for my recent “Indie RPG Awards” article.
Let me give one bit of advice to our indie RPG people out there. Let’s pretend someone hears about your game and would like information on it. Well, some of you make it very difficult. If you don’t have any “product page” besides the sale page on RPGnow or whatnot, you’re doing it wrong. Let’s take Ave Molech. Morbid Games has a Web site, but once you get on it and try to find out information about Ave Molech, you’re screwed. The best you can do is find a link to an online store that has a two-sentence blurb on it. HTML’s free, boys, if you have a whole frickin’ Web site already take the time to put up a couple pages about your product, its world, etc. Same goes for Valent Games re: The Princess Game.
Even if your game is free you need to do this. It still takes a minor commitment from a person to download a big ass PDF and look through it. So even though the Dead’s site does a good job of just getting you to the game, it can turn off a casual browser. How about a couple paragraphs on what this is and why I might care? When I first was going down the Indie RPG list, I came very close to not clicking on it. “Another survival horror game, whatever,” I thought. Luckily the “Death and relationships” tagline got me just enough that I did dl it, and it’s really neat. But you’re shaving off your audience bit by bit if you don’t give them enough information to know whether they want your game or not. If they aren’t sure, you’re not going to close them.
You’re indie already, and getting an audience is hard. Don’t deliberately make it harder. With the Web, it’s pretty darn easy to get a message out there. If all you really want to market to is the other two dozen indie wonks at the FORGE, then fine, but I would hope most proud authors would like to see more people experience their fine work.
Lest I be accused of giving more love to the Corp$, here’s a rundown of the Indie RPG awards, also presented at Gen Con yesterday!
I’ve done some value-add by hyperlinking them for you, apparently that’s what “the Man wants you to do” since they don’t bother on the awards site. Go there to read about all the runners-up, I like how they indicate point totals so you can see how close (or not) the race was. For example, Grey Ranks didn’t even have a close competitor for Best Game, pulling 52 points to Reign’s 29 in the category. Congratulations to all winners, runners-up,and nominees!
Here’s the complete nominee game list and supplement list. The ones that intrigue me the most personally are The Princess Game, The Dead (free), and Ave Molech (supplement). But they’re all cool!
Our doughty band travelled way past the settled frontier into the Kodar Mountains, seeking the legendary golden streets of Xin-Shalast, Runelord Kharzoug’s millenia-lost capital. But, holed up by a blizzard out in that remote place, trapped in a shelter together for what seemed like an infinity, our hunger grew different. More severe… savage. Not to be sated by magically conjured gruel. What strange meat might quench it? Oh, what?!?
Find out in Part I of the Spires of Xin-Shalast, the latest installment of the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path!
Posted in session summaries
Tagged 3.5e, adventure path, D&D, Pathfinder, rise of the runelords, RPG, RPGs, runelords
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