Why “story games” aren’t my preference

It’s the difference between being a character in a story and being the author (or a co-author) of a story.

One of the great things about RPGs

The Guitar Hero & Rock Band games seem to have peaked. No more versions may be produced. Eventually, the controllers will be discontinued. New consoles will come and the old ones—along with their controllers—will get sold in garage sales, given away, etc. The controllers will also start breaking down. Thirty years from now, it may be very expensive to get a working console and working controllers to play some Rock Band with friends.

There’s a great Avalon Hill game called Magic Realm. If you’ve never played it, it will cost you a lot to get a used copy. It has so many parts, there’s a good chance a used copy will be missing some.

Thirty years after the classic, c. 1981, D&D Basic and Expert sets were published, you can download a copy of Labyrinth Lord or Basic Fantasy for free and play pretty much the same game. In another thirty years, that should still be true. (Heck, I’ve got the rules on my phone.) Sure, you need a computer, a connection to the Internet, and—optionally—a printer; but the expense of those things are spread over lots of other uses. If polyhedral dice become hard to find, you can fall back on electronic dice simulations. (I’ve got a bunch of such apps...on my phone.)

War hammers

Back in “Worst Labyrinth Lord melee weapons”, I wrote:

The war hammer. Is this something like Mjöllnir or a late medieval bec de corbin kind of thing? Is the latter subsumed within pole arm or pick? Why is it two-handed with no one-handed counterpart? Note that dwarfs can’t wield two-handed weapons, but the magical dwarven [sic] thrower war hammer has special rules when used by a dwarf. I’m beginning not to care that the mechanics are suboptimal and unlikely to be picked by a PC. ☺

So, after too little research, I jumped to this conclusion: Mjölnir wasn’t a weapon but a blacksmith’s hammer used as a weapon. Or, if it was a weapon, perhaps it was a throwing hammer. The kind of thing that became the sport of hammer throwing. Or maybe both.

(And that’s ignoring the note I saw that said sometimes Mjölnir was called a club or axe.)

So, the war hammer is your typical bec de corbin sort of thing. (Probably one of the shorter variants with the longer ones being pole arms.) The “War Hammer +2, Dwarven Thrower” is not a really a war hammer but a throwing hammer. Which makes me wonder what the stats for a non-magical throwing hammer ought to be. Same as club or hand-axe?

Characters and spreadsheets

How much I like a role-playing game system is inversely proportional to how much I feel I need to use a spreadsheet for my character.

As a general thing.

North Texas RPG Con

Tomorrow, Lauri & I will be headed out to the The North Texas RPG Con. It’s a con organized by Mike Badolato & Doug Rhea dedicated to “old school” role-playing games. It’s a chance to play some games, see and purchase some collectibles, meet some people whose names grace a lot of the games on my shelves, and put faces with some online friends and acquaintances.

We’re registered for...

• Module design workshop with Rob Kuntz
• GURPS 4/e game run by Mike Kelly
• Villains & Vigilantes game run by Jeff Dee
• Expert D&D game set in the Hollow World run by Steve Winter
• Empire of the Petal Throne game run by Steve Winter

I hope to catch some of the charity game, where the special guests will be the players. We’ll also be attending the Artist Panel featuring Erol Otus, Paul Jaquays, Jeff Dee, and Jason Braun.

Rapture day!

From “Why There Will Be No Rapture” on the Exploring Our Matrix blog:

Others understand the Bible even better, and are aware that the passages appealed to in support of the doctrine of the Rapture (such as 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17) do not teach the idea of a Rapture followed by tribulation that is the mainstay of Dispensational Pre-Millennialist eschatology.

I love that. It pretty succinctly tells most of us that we really don’t have the theology chops for this subject.

Honestly, I’m not crazy about the argument that James then makes in that post.

For me, it’s pretty simple. If you’re concerned with when The Rapture will come, you’ve missed the point. Read the book again.

Pause

The number one thing I want most from any iPhone app that plays audio (or video). In particular: Apple’s iPod app, Apple’s YouTube app, Matthew Gallagher’s Stream To Me, and Bottle Rocket’s NPR News app.

The biggest button on the app should be the pause button. The pause button should be separated from other buttons by as much space as possible. I should never go to hit pause and instead find only a spinner. I need to be able to pause even during the time between hitting play and when playback actually begins. (Or, as in the NPR News app, between entries in my playlist.)