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Category: Electrum Pieces (Page 89 of 156)

General heading for all RPGs.

Wake Me When 5e Starts

Enough is enough.

I want to like 5e. In many ways, the modular approach of 5e is similar to what I want to do with Andras. I like simple combat that uses no minis. I like DM Fiat. I like players inventing things because they are not chained to their character sheet.

I look forward to being able to walk into a FLGS and play 5e with total strangers and/or a coupe friends I know. I hope 5e does a little to dislodge the cotillion of Warhammer40K players from taking over every table, every night at one of the FLGS in town. (When I asked, they don't even have any 40K games taking new players. I tried!)

All of this is well and good. As of right now, though, all we get is polls, semi-vague answers parceled out three nuggets at a time, and a flurry of "I-Played-But-I-Have-An-NDA" posts.

So forget it. No missing-the-point posts about gender ability score maximums, speculative what-I-want posts, edition-wars-without-a-freaking-ruleset-to-argue-from posts, or even fake I-disregard-my-NDA posts. Just tell me when the open playtest starts. No email with "sneak peek, but you have to sign an NDA". The REAL playtest. Get on with it.

Too much hype. Thank you for re-designing a website that makes it impossible to find anything. That's great. Keep going, the DC for finding anything in the forums has gone down from 45 to 40. Still, please start the playtest or just tell us you announced an open playtest before legal signed off on it so I know it will be another three to six months before we get any details.

Get going!

Until then, I have ACKS. At least I can pay $5 to see the playtest rules for them. ACKS has many of things I want in my game and I look forward to the Player's Companion when it comes out so that I can use the class maker.

Like every other ruleset, I'm going to add Spelljammer type stuff, so I like the idea that I can create various planets, have some dwarves, elves, humans, and one or two extra races and the classes on each planet are different. Since ACKS does race as class, I hope the class creation system also has a form of race creation inside it.

I've seen ACKS, but I haven't purchased it yet, but I will. It is a great game that does everything I want. I may not buy the GM's Companion if that comes out next, but the Core Rules and the Player's Companion sound very good. I will take the time to learn this game in the hope of playing with others.

And of course, there's always the interplanetary travel thing. 🙂

Breaking the Second Rule of Blogging

Second rule of blogging: Don't apologize for a lack of posting.

I am trying to finish the posts about The Tunnel. It is a fantastic location that relies on Spelljammer mechanics. Essentially, it is Spelljammer's version of a wormhole, but the two endpoints exist on two different planets. Despite the Spelljammer mechanics, the universe is based more on Pythagoras instead of Ptolemy. That means that the Sun is "The Central Fire" and that all planets have a twin that revolves at exactly the same velocity, but on the other side of the Central Fire.

However, there may be delays in posting. There is some extended illness in the family for the missus and I. We don't have the same condition, but I won't speak to her illness. For me, it is a combination of arthritis (knee) and extended flu-like symptoms (sans fever). The result feels very much like walking pneumonia wherein I have some energy at the start of the day, but I am completely exhausted by 7pm.

I barely posted a walk-through of grappling rules I posted on G+ but I don't have the energy to follow-through beyond that. I'm not sure I'll be able to teach my class tomorrow, either. Ugh.

So I hope things will change soon. Nothing definitive from the doctor yet, but I promise I won't fill the blog with constant medical updates. Just wanted to say that I'm still here and I hope to finish.

Last side note: 5e has very similar goals to what I wanted for Andras. That encourages me for some reason.

Links I Want to Save

Unfortunately, I have no way to have a conversation on Twitter. I miss doing that a lot. I can, though feedly.com, share links to Twitter. This makes my twitter account a long list of links with little to actually say.

At some point soon, I'm going to start doing a round-up of all the links I send to Twitter.After all, since I've become a curator of sorts, I can at least summarize.

For now, though, I've been keeping the following links up because I don't want to lose them.

A Word List of Shapes

Over at the phontistery, you can find all kinds of wonderful word lists. This list of shape words is my favorite. Many of the names just ooze Old School Odd.

Open Game Content from Mutants & Masterminds

The D20 Hero SRD has the goal of providing all the OGC from the third edition of M&M. Of interest to me is the Measurements Table. I keep thinking I can use it in Andras somehow...

Secret Maps of the 1930s

I found the link from another blog, but I've had a heck of a time finding out who pointed me here. My apologies. Anyway, this link features a tale of a man that claims to have mapped a secret underground world. Map is included in the article. Woot!

Irregular Magazine

Who knew? Not me, that's for sure. What a great magazine - and it is free!

Project Gutenburg Is Great

Noisms publishes a list of great source material for gaming from Project Gutenburg. I have greatly enjoyed reading the books by Baron Dunsany.

Speaking of great source material, I have begun reading Almuric. The English Major in me reels at the thought. It's like mental bubblegum. The twelve year old in me, though, just relishes the story. For the record, this is a poignard.

Rethinking the Core Races

Sword and Board provides a 5e take on core races. Very cool. Speaking of cool core races, here is the reskinned Halfling as rat-people. Very, very cool.

The Fantasy Trip Resources and Clones

This kind of speaks for itself.

I have been feeling awful for quite a while. I'm hoping to be back to writing soon. I have revised The Needle post so many times, I fear I won't just push the Publish button and move on.

 

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