I knew Oprah played GURPS!

Dice Education

I'm sliding you a little knowledge - right from the horse's mouth!

I know we talk a lot about dice out here, I have a fascination for the silly things. Our randomizers are an important element of the hobby. What fun would the hobby be without the element of surprise? The suspense of a roll of the bones?

So, who better to speak about dice than Lou Zocchi. "Lou Who," you say? Oh! Well, get thee to YouTube!








Okay, yes, he goes on a bit and maybe some of you don't care. But, he isn't wrong. Let's face it, the man invented and patented a die that's named after him - he's crazy about dice! I love him!

Rolling Dice

I have a D&D game going with some friends. The DM asked us to do a little out-of-game shopping and dice rolling. I decided to video my rolls for the sake of fairness. Then I decided to add titles and sound effects for giggles! I thought I'd share. Enjoy!

Yo-yoing

I'm sure you have heard of yo-yo diets. Well, I'm currently yo-yo gaming.

Two Sundays ago, I was invited to play Vampire. Got my junk together, showed up, but I was one of the few that did. The Storyteller decided not enough people showed. So, we didn't game.

A week ago Saturday, my Star Wars GM flaked out. So, no gaming there.

This past Tuesday night, I was invited to do something I cannot remember doing for the longest time: play D&D on a school night. It was fun and we had a good time.

Today - today was the anti-climax to about three weeks of mixed and missed signals. It's pretty obvious that I have some personal investment in seeing the role-playing hobby survive. So, when I was approached by an MIB from SJG to run a GURPS game at a FLGS - I was all "LOL! FTW!" :)

To make a long story short, I didn't make it on the schedule at the store - no one outside of the staff knew I would be there. So, I sat for three hours. Not that it was a bad thing. I put out a little sign practically begging people to talk to me. Many did. (Shout out to S and his son S - you know who you are! Thanks for entertaining me!) Others came by said hi and talked a bit. Most were more interested in my copy of The Red Dwarf RPG (not an SJG product) than the other GURPS items on my table. (Little hint for the licensing boys in Austin, no?)

The FLGS is correcting the scheduling problem and one of the D&D players that was in the store (they had a HUGE turn out - apparently that campaign has been going for a while) stated he was interested in playing GURPS - asked me if GURPS did fantasy? Yes, indeed!

So, in all, not a total loss. Certainly is breaking up my unemployment boredom.

Gaming in the Living Room

I recently had a really good time at a friend's house. He has a "Man Room" with a huge TV, surround sound, big, comfortable leather couches (with built-in cup holders!) and, of course, an XBox.

So, there I was, sitting on the couch, wireless controller in my hand, playing Civilization Revolution. If you are a Civ fan and own a console, buy this game! It's awesome. I had a great time.

In the near future, I will be buying myself a large flat panel and I have been considering my options. You might remember a while back that I looked at my options for buying a Wii - but I decided I couldn't cost justify it. Well, after my recent experience, I was again thinking about a console and looking really hard at an XBox.

I went out to Amazon and to xbox.com and looked at all the available games. The only games I really wanted on the XBox 360 are Civ Revolution and Star Wars Force Unleashed.

I keep forgetting I'm not a shoot-em-up gamer. Essentially, the XBox as well as the PS2 & 3 focus on shooters and thin RPGs that are really just shooters. I like resource management and simulation. I like Civ and WarCraft and WoW and The Sims and I'm looking forward to Star Wars: The Old Republic. With the exception of Civ, none of that is available on the XBox, PS3 or Wii.

At retail, an XBox is only $200 less than a Mac Mini.

I was excited about being able to download movies on the XBox, until I looked at the limited selection of movies. I'll be able to download movies from my Netflix account to either a Mac Mini or an XBox. I can also rent movies from the iTunes Store on a Mac Mini.

I found a great wireless keyboard with a track pad from Logitech - meaning I'll be able to chat and surf from my couch.

I already own most of the games I like to play, upgrading to a more modern Mac will allow me to play even more. I might even be able to play WoW from my couch - I'm excited about that!

I won't get Civ Revolution, but I already own Civ IV for the Mac. I won't get Force Unleashed, but I have KoTOR and I should grab and play KoTOR II and eventually I'll have SW:TOR.

The Mac will have a web browser. My PSP has a web browser. I think the Wii has a web browser. The XBox? No browser. How can this $400, internet connected device not have a web browser? This thing is built by Microsoft - how does it not have Internet Explorer built in? MS slaps Exploiter on everything! They make watches with web browsers - how is it that XBox doesn't have a browser???

A Mac Mini will also be a media player - I could buy a terabyte of external storage (for cheap! Their $100!) and rip a good portion (if not all) of my DVDs to that.

I'm back to having a problem cost justifying a $400 device (even more with accessories) for two games.

Why is it that I can't buy a device that just works? Why? You go to look at a game, it's made for only one console. Or, worse, it's made for every console but the one you own. Why would a game manufacturer make a game for only one console, or make it for three consoles but not the fourth? For years I've fought the "The Game isn't made for the Mac" battle. And now that this battle is nearly over (Mac uses Intel processors and emulates Windows faster than some PCs can run Windows) - I find a whole new world of bull!

I want one device that will run Mac & PC software and play any game I shove into it! That would be an amazing device! Everyone would want one - but likely no one could afford one!

What Zines???

The OGL is one of the coolest concepts ever in the field of role-playing games in my humble opinion. The fact that WotC is now messing with it blows my mind. I guess the corporate mindset finally made it to Renton, WA. Most likely, they got a shipment from Redmond, WA.

When d20 first came out, there was a ton of buzz and rightly so - it was one of the neatest things to happen to RPGs. Everyone and their brother put up a Zine with free content. Even Steve Jackson Games, one of my favs, got in on the act. They started a subscription based zine called d20 Weekly.

Don't go looking for it, it's just a holder page out there in the ether. (I could buy the domain if I wanted it. Tempting!) d20 Weekly was ended at SJG after a rather short run. They cited at the time that the zine was losing money. At the time I remember reading (can't find the reference) that it was losing money due to the fact that there were so many d20 zines offering free content, d20 Weekly just couldn't compete.

Today I decided to write an article on various free gaming zines. I figured a stroll through Google would deliver me hundreds and I could pick out a few to showcase.

I was shocked. Repeated Google searches brought me very few results. Frankly, there were no zines I wanted to point to directly.

It's amazing to me how this hobby has struggled. There are more games available now than there has ever been. There are dozens of FREE games. The hobby has died and come back more times than a Marvel super-villain. First, the religious right tried to kill it. It came back. Then, it just wasn't cool. It came back. Now, at a time when every person under the age of 25 owns a game system and millions of people play WoW - we're seeing the hobby again retreat.

I'm tempted to start my own gaming zine, with paid writers and artists, struggle for the next few years and then ride the next wave or two of popularity. It would probably make me rich, then poor, then rich then utterly broke - but it might be a fun ride!

Virtual Tables and Tools

Like many people, I have friends in other cities. Friends I miss. Friends I would love to just hang out with and even game with.

However, I don't have the cash to buy a plane ticket for a weekend in another city for a couple of RPGs. I'm sure most of you don't, either.

In these days of powerful computers and broadband Internet access, there should be ways to do remote games, right? Well, I set out to see if there were.

I decided that I needed to come up with several tools. They should all be free or low cost. They should be readily available and they should be platform agnostic (I'm a Mac guy and I have friends that fall all over the OS spectrum).

To start with, I will need to communicate with my friends and they will need to communicate with each other. This need was going to be the easiest to fulfill. I have chat accounts on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Skype and Gmail. Most of those have conferencing capabilities and even voice & video chat. I prefer Yahoo. It shouldn't be difficult to get my friends into the same chat room.

Next, we'll need a common database. As a GM, I will want a way to give out information to my players and, in turn, I want a way to see their character sheets and what not. So far, I'm very impressed with Obsidian Portal (I wrote about them recently). I have had a lot of fun putting together my new campaign. The great thing about writing in this wiki format is that it is addictive. Every time I mark something as a link - it stays red until I write the page. (Maddening!!) I keep finding myself marking links, thus I have to write more pages! I think I'm going to write myself silly!

Not only that, but I can mark info as "GM Only", so I can write material on the wiki before it will be used in the game. So, when I am on a roll, I can just keep going! If something happens in the game that invalidates that material, I can simply update it or never remove the "GM Only" check-box or just delete it - the players never have to know that something they did made me change my mind on a bit of material but I recycled it later because I needed something and was out of writing time!

Next, I needed a "table" - a virtual table. A place where I could load and share a map. Where I could roll dice and see my player's dice rolls. There are a few tools out there, some are for pay, some are free but offer premium content. The first one I tried was RPTools. This is a set of five different tools, programmed in Java (very cross platform!) and ... FREE!

Their MapTool is impressive. It has an internal chat program and dice rolling capabilities. It has tools for drawing maps. Then, you can load up pictures to act as figures for the PCs & NPCs. The whole tool is game system agnostic, easy to use and easy on the eyes.

I was very excited about this tool. However, I've not been able to get it to work for me. The program requires you to set up one machine as a server. When I tried to do this, I could list my game on RP's site, but no one could join it. I'm a pretty tech savvy guy and I had other move savvy guys have a look and we couldn't figure out the issue. As far as we can tell, my ISP is blocking the port that I need. So, as impressive as the tool is, I cannot use it.

However, I have had a blast working with the TokenTool. I've decided to use that format for making the figure-replacements I will use in whatever game I run. I've even begun making similar tokens in Photoshop.

(Speaking of Photoshop, I have been drawing maps like a madman. I've got enough material for a whole other post - look for it soon!)

The next tool I tried is RPGtonight. It, is also Free, so already I'm in love! It's web based, so no messing around with my router or trying to set up a server or whatnot.

RPGtonight has similar functionality to RPTools. There isn't a map drawing tool (but, you probably already have MS Paint or can find something better. Have I mentioned how much time I've spent on Photoshop lately??) However, the rest of the expected functionality is there. You can store and share maps and figures/minis/icons/tokens. You can even choose from maps and tokens on the site! There is a dice rolling application and there is built in text and voice chat.

However, I wish I had found RPGtonight before I found RPTools. I'm a visual guy and RPGtonight is ... messy. They aimed themselves at D&D players and there are fake wood grains and other medieval touches, that, had they been done by a better artist, might not be so obtrusive. The size of maps and tokens that one can up-load is quite small as well. They give one PLENTY of room for uploaded content, but at 500k for maps and 25k for minis, well, it's been a challenge. (I built a large and detailed map in Photoshop, shrank it down to what I thought was a reasonable size, 1.5 MB, and tried to upload it. Of course it failed. All of my shrinking work has had less than desirable results. I will likely have to cut up this map and my maps in the future will be smaller.)

I haven't yet run a game with RPGtonight, but I will soon. For free, it's certainly not a bad deal - I'm willing to compromise and I hope things will improve as money rolls in for the owners.

I'm still looking for other tools. When I find them, I'll review them here.