News from Around the Net: 14-OCT-2011 (Sponsored by Savage Mojo)

Welcome to the weekly roundup of gaming news you can use! Now your uses may differ from mine, but I’ve heard of people browsing the links in these things and killing hours so I know there’s bound to be something you can use for the purposes of inspiration, education, or creation in your gaming!

(If you have even more time to kill and don’t have enough reasons to love the content at ENWorld and Gaming Tonic, Chris from Gaming Tonic has his weekly article “What’s Up With D&D?” to check out…)

As with all weeks (as a software engineer, husband, father, gamer, writer, and avid reader), this one was busy. But for the first time in over a year, I met with a gaming group in the hopes of it continuing more than a single session. The Gassy Gnoll talked about the first session and is looking forward to going to the next on Monday!

Sponsored Advertisement – Savage Mojo, home to Savage Suzerain for Savage Worlds, Suzerain Mojo, and Gamescapes Accessories. If you haven’t heard of them before you might have missed my review of Caladon Falls for Savage Suzerain in which the High Kingdom of Caladon falls to the Wild Army, a seemingly unstoppable force from across the sea. Or maybe you’re more inclined to a dark future in which nanotech and Chinese mysticism combine to do more than consume resources in a worldwide food shortage in Shanghai Vampocalypse, which was a Silver Winner in the 2011 Ennie Awards. (Congrats!) Check out all of Savage Mojo’s products at their site – SavageMojo.com! (By the way, they’re having a sale on Gamescapes story cards and horror titles starting today and running through Halloween!)

Now on to the week’s news!

Food for Thought

• With Halloween fast approaching, I thought this twisted magazine cover for a zombified Yoda from “No ready for the end…” (not sure that’s the original source, as I found it multiple places) might serve as some inspirational material for a Star Wars-based zombie game for the holiday…
• This just made me laugh this week. In D&D 3.5e, skills sometimes got a little… overbearing. Louis Clark at Hermoeblog has posted a fictional (I’m hoping) account of a conversation between a DM and a player using skills to do *everything* – including breathing!
• It’s not often that I see comparisons between RPG rule sets, so Lowell’s article at Age of Ravens mashing up GUMSHOE and FATE (with a bit of an overview of each) was quite interesting. He makes some great points on both sides of the equation and presents an intriguing mash-up of rules. I just ordered Trail of Cthulhu and Dresden Files RPG to look at these two systems more closely, but I don’t know either of them. Anybody have any thoughts on the mash-up?
• Regardless of what you think of Monte Cook returning to the WotC fold to help with D&D, he’s certainly offering things for gamers to talk about. Ameron at Dungeon’s Master this week, as a response to Monte’s latest Legends and Lore column, offers some ideas on how to make magical identification a bit tougher – ID’ing magic items now is commonplace and nobody has to work for it. I agree that we need to do something about that!
• I’m all for trying crazy things in the name of roleplaying, but this is the craziest thing I’ve heard for a while. And you know what? I like it. Ameron from Dungeon’s Master says occasionally we should walk a mile in another character’s shoes. Try on a different skin. Play someone else’s character. Would you do it?
• Has anybody thought to use the new images of Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan, for a campaign world? The images are stunning and I can hardly wait to see more from the various probes traveling through our solar system…
• Is he or isn’t he? Are WotC or aren’t they? Yes, the 5e D&D questions are still out there. Well, Michael Tresca from the RPG Examiner says the writing is on the wall even if they’re not saying anything.

Games and Gaming

• As we see over and over again, there is no *one* way of putting together a campaign, adventure, NPC, PC, item, etc… Everybody achieves results in a slightly different way. Well, late last week DNAPhil at Gnome Stew offered the “Engine Style” of campaign preparation over at Gnome Stew. I’m a big fan of Masks and Eureka, but I haven’t tried using 3×5 cards and some random chance to construct plot maps… Things that make me go “hmmmm…” (And while you’re at Gnome Stew, please contribute to their charity auction to support the March of Dimes!)
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  Image via Wikipedia

  Along the same lines, Scott Malthouse at the Trollish Delver has a different theory about campaign creation called “The quest sandwich” which uses interwoven quests, which is less plot driven and seems to leave things a bit more open for side adventures…

• Geek Related also posted an article this week on campaign planning, offering both a process and and example. As a software engineer myself, the idea of using project management techniques such as “horizon planning” for campaigns is something I’ve not seen before.
• Eric Paquette at Eric’s Gaming Pulse used a modified version of Dave Chalker’s 5×5 method (called the 3×3) method to create a shorter campaign arc for only a few sessions over a summer. I like seeing this sort of post, as it offers a more concrete example of some of the techniques bouncing around on the internet these days. (By the way, welcome to the gaming blog community Eric! I hope to see more posts in the future!)
• Villains. In any great campaign they come in all shapes and sizes. But they’re not known for taking criticism well. Ravyn at Exchange of Realities has posted an informative (as well as imaginative and amusing) exploration of common flaws of evil characters. Personally I had no idea the life of a villain was so hard and will do my best to treat future villains more kindly…
• Far too often, fantasy campaigns focus on monsters and not on animals. Monsters are typically not natural and should be unique events vs. the typical encounters with flora and fauna that should be much more common. Stuart at Strange Magic offers a descriptive article on animal companions or helpers that PCs might consider taking on expeditions. I’m not sure I’d start with a giant ferret or a dire rat, but some of the other suggestions make great sense.
• Jumping from the player’s seat to the GM’s chair is not always an easy transition, but Jayden at DM Fiat seems to have survived an adventure in the hot seat. Shifting from the World of Darkness to the Pathfnder RPG was probably a bit of a shock to the system, but it sounds like he made the leap and everybody had a good time despite his trepidations – and isn’t that what gaming’s all about – having a good time?
• As if you didn’t have enough reasons to love the Dragon Age RPG and the AGE system, several folks have been adapting it for different genres. The Eidolon Core has adapted it for horror with Eternal Shadows. And even Daniel M. Perez has been talking about it… “This is both a fantastic development of the AGE System to handle Horror and, as far as I’m concerned, the baseline for any AGE hack to be set in the modern world.” High praise indeed!
• Looking for another blog carnival? Check out the end of the Winter is Coming carnival and look forward to On a Night in the Lonesome October… I love blog carnivals. All the fun without the unsafe rides and the fried foods.

Publisher News and Interviews

• I don’t know what it is, but these days I seem to be drawn to YouTube videos of people shooting, bashing, or blowing things up. And Todd Gdula over at Kobold Quarterly is happy to demonstrate his Tetsu No Bo to satisfy those urges.
• Inkwell Ideas, home to Hexographer and Dungeonographer, as well as other great articles and tools for gaming posted some intriguing survey results this week about advertising for small publishers. And I think the data is pretty spot on with what I’ve seen doing some (very little) advertising for GKR. But it’s awesome that folks are sharing data like this for the community at large.
• Stargazer gets some great interviews, doesn’t he? This week he chatted with Sean Preston from Reality Blurs about his latest project – Agents of Oblivion! Agents uses Savage Worlds and combines horror and spies. Sounds cool to me!
• Flames Rising also had an interview with game developers Webb and Bailey, creators of Strange, Dead Love – a romance sourcebook for Vampire: The Requiem coming out in December. In the age of Twilight, I would imagine that it might encourage a whole different group of folks into tabletop roleplaying games.
• On the new product front, Rite Publishing released The Secrets of Tactical Archetypes for Pathfinder. Within those pages are six options for cavaliers, gunslingers, magi, rangers, samurai, and summoners who go above and beyond the call of duty to face the enemy.
• And Raging Swan has released a new series collecting encounters for your use. The first edition is Random Woodland Encounters by Creighton Broadhurst and Julian Neale. Inside are eight ready-to-use random encounters ranging in EL from 1-9 suitable for use in any woodland or forest. I would imagine it puts another tool in the GM’s toolbox to pull out when the need arises!

Reviews

• Do you need any deities in your campaign? Why not check out an older book for some inspiration? Wymarc at Quag Keep recently checked out GODS (2002) from AEG. I have a number of books from the late ’90s, early 2000s myself and look to them on occasion for ideas, so I think this is a great idea.
• Tenkar has about as eclectic a review queue as I do these days. Last weekend he reviewed Dusk of the Dead from Kenzer & Co. for Hackmaster for characters of levels 5-7. Don’t you just hate it when the wait staff at your favorite watering hole is missing? All you want is a good night’s sleep and you end up with a mystery on your hands… Sounds a lot like an episode of Scooby-Doo! to me.
• Jatori at tenletter has reviewed Divine Favor: The Cleric from Open Design (looking forward to this one in my own review queue). The various options in high fantasy and fantasy sub-genres sounds great. I look forward to checking out a non-spellcasting cleric!
• Fame & Fortune took a crack at Divine Favor: The Paladin late last week.
• And Sunglar at Stargazer’s World has also taken a broader look at the Divine Favor series, including Divine Favor: The Cleric Divine Favor: The Druid, Divine Favor: The Paladin, and Divine Favor: The Oracle.
• Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium for 4e from WotC continues to get all kinds of love from the community. Hyperform at A Susurrus in Carcosa posted a review a couple of weeks ago I just ran into this week.
• Looking for an adventure to run for Shadowrun 4e? Megan at G*M*S Magazine reviewed Smuggler’s Blues, a “Shadowrun Missions” game from Catalyst Game Labs. Sounds like there’s a bit of everything in this adventure, including hackers (who as I recall from SR often get left out of the fun).
• Thilo at G*M*S Magazine also posted a few reviews this week and last. Monsters Unleashed V.2 from Purple Duck Games sounds like a bit of a mixed bag but with plenty to like in the new version. And Ultimate Options – New Magus Arcana from Super Genius Games sounds like it’s interesting, but not earth shattering.
• In a couple of weeks we’ll see the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box start appearing on game store shelves, and Stan Shinn at RPGHacker has some ideas for where Paizo should go next…
• Also getting a lot of love recently is Abney Parks’ Airship Pirates from Cubicle 7. JB at B/X Blackrazor has a lot to say about it, and though he’s not sure it’s playable he thinks it’s one of the nicest books he’s seen and has some cool setting ideas (plus airships!).

Tools

• Are you looking for tools to create your next dungeon or encounter map? Well, check out the Dungeon Painter Online and Scene Viewer (to embed it on a web page) at Pyromancers… Though it’s a little slow to load for me, it’s going to be one I play around with when I need a map eventually…
• Have you seen Paul Hughes’ poster showing all the OD&D wandering monsters (dungeon & wilderness)? This thing is cool and you can buy a copy through blogofholding! (Thanks to Tavis at The Mule Abides for bringing it to our attention!)
• I’ve seen a lot about using MapTool for fantasy campaigns, but not much about using it for science fiction. So Michael’s article at Online Dungeon Master on how NewbieDM is using MapTool for a Star Wars d6 campaign is quite intriguing. Michael’s gone so far to help with a full campaign framework file…
• Need some campaign building resources? There’s a wiki for that! The Campaign Builder’s Guild wiki has quite the eclectic collection of links!

That’s it for this week on the news front.

I hope everybody has a great weekend!

As always, if you feel I missed something (and it would be impossible NOT to), drop me a quick note via the contact page and I’ll add it to the list for next week!

Related articles

• The results are in, Paizo wins the day {ENnies} from Trollish Delver (trollishdelver.blogspot.com)
• Game Review: Dark Harvest: The Legacy of Frankenstein by Iain Lowson from Cubicle 7 (gameknightreviews.com)
• Gen Con 2011 Play Report Part 2 – With Bonus Swag! (livingdice.com)
• Savage Worlds : Savage Insider Issue 2 (chaosmeister.wordpress.com)
• Interview: Sean Preston from Stargazer’s World (stargazersworld.com)
• Agents of Oblivion is now available! from Stargazer’s World (stargazersworld.com)