Xmas in Nelfarrih
Merry Christmas! I am down in South Carolina with Matt's family, and it's snowing. The accumulation is only 2-4 inches, but it's still impressive.
I received many wonderful Christmas gifts this year, but by far the most outstanding was a 16GB iPad WiFi + 3G, a communal gift from Matt's entire family. We had been eyeing the iPad idly for a while--it was one of those things we both wanted, but couldn't really justify (although it might have been useful to Matt on his frequent work travel). This is more iPad than we would have bought ourselves--the 3G is a feature we probably wouldn't have purchased. That said, I've learned that you can buy AT&T's 3G service on a month-by-month basis, so we can just purchase it when we need it, like when traveling.
The first app we downloaded was the popular GoodReader PDF reader, which seems to be the best in its class. The next (non-free) one we downloaded? SmallWorld. That is quite possibly the best $6 we've ever spent. It's a beautiful adaptation of the board game, and now I can bone up on it and finally beat _dragonwolf_ or laurion or Bernie.
By the way, I would love recommendations for apps! Aside from the above, I've gotten:
- Free Books - basically just a nice interface for a bunch of Project Gutenburg-type books. But since I read a lot of classics, that's perfect.
- Viking Lords - this is an adaptation of the Battlelore board game/system (which Memoir '44 is based on, I guess? Matt knows more about it than I do).
- a free clone of Robo Rally, with some odd rules changes
- the BGG iPhone app, which alas only runs at iPhone size
- Several social networking apps, including Twitterific, the Livejournal app, and the free Facebook app. The latter I'm not thrilled with, because it's another one that is meant to run iPhone-sized. If anyone can recommend a good native iPad Facebook client, that would be sweet. Bonus points if it's free.
- the Pandora app, which is pretty slick on iPad.
I just need to be careful of the games I download, given my addictive personality. Electronic versions of board games are okay, but I have to avoid any game that involves collecting meaningless virtual schwag or titles. For that reason, Angry Birds is probably out, or any of the Zynga-style social games.
Oh! And I'm looking for good, GM-related resources - like dice rollers or toolkits or the like. I've seen a few such resources (like DM Toolkit or Battlemap), but I'm hesitant to put down money on these apps without some personal reviews.
Aside from the iPad, one of my most notable gifts, from Matt, was a PDF of the Leverage role-playing game, using the Cortex Plus system developed by Margaret Weis' game company. I so wish I had discovered this system before I started my "LeverageCraft" campaign. This seems like it would be perfect. It's more like a framework for interactive storytelling than a role-playing game, which is exactly what I would want for this. Stuff like combat, for example, is much much simplified--you resolve an entire combat with just a few dice rolls of your relevant stats; there are no turns or initiatives or different types of combat actions to resolve.
Even though it's too late to switch what system LeverageCraft is using, there is a lot of good information here on building a caper-style adventure, which I can still apply to the game in the current system. I guess I could always adapt the combat system, too, although I don't want to screw over players whose characters are heavily advantaged by FantasyCraft's combat rules.
Well, anyway. This post was supposed to talk about my progress on my 2010 goals, but I've gotten long-winded in my conspicuous consumption, so off to a different post that goes.
I received many wonderful Christmas gifts this year, but by far the most outstanding was a 16GB iPad WiFi + 3G, a communal gift from Matt's entire family. We had been eyeing the iPad idly for a while--it was one of those things we both wanted, but couldn't really justify (although it might have been useful to Matt on his frequent work travel). This is more iPad than we would have bought ourselves--the 3G is a feature we probably wouldn't have purchased. That said, I've learned that you can buy AT&T's 3G service on a month-by-month basis, so we can just purchase it when we need it, like when traveling.
The first app we downloaded was the popular GoodReader PDF reader, which seems to be the best in its class. The next (non-free) one we downloaded? SmallWorld. That is quite possibly the best $6 we've ever spent. It's a beautiful adaptation of the board game, and now I can bone up on it and finally beat _dragonwolf_ or laurion or Bernie.
By the way, I would love recommendations for apps! Aside from the above, I've gotten:
- Free Books - basically just a nice interface for a bunch of Project Gutenburg-type books. But since I read a lot of classics, that's perfect.
- Viking Lords - this is an adaptation of the Battlelore board game/system (which Memoir '44 is based on, I guess? Matt knows more about it than I do).
- a free clone of Robo Rally, with some odd rules changes
- the BGG iPhone app, which alas only runs at iPhone size
- Several social networking apps, including Twitterific, the Livejournal app, and the free Facebook app. The latter I'm not thrilled with, because it's another one that is meant to run iPhone-sized. If anyone can recommend a good native iPad Facebook client, that would be sweet. Bonus points if it's free.
- the Pandora app, which is pretty slick on iPad.
I just need to be careful of the games I download, given my addictive personality. Electronic versions of board games are okay, but I have to avoid any game that involves collecting meaningless virtual schwag or titles. For that reason, Angry Birds is probably out, or any of the Zynga-style social games.
Oh! And I'm looking for good, GM-related resources - like dice rollers or toolkits or the like. I've seen a few such resources (like DM Toolkit or Battlemap), but I'm hesitant to put down money on these apps without some personal reviews.
Aside from the iPad, one of my most notable gifts, from Matt, was a PDF of the Leverage role-playing game, using the Cortex Plus system developed by Margaret Weis' game company. I so wish I had discovered this system before I started my "LeverageCraft" campaign. This seems like it would be perfect. It's more like a framework for interactive storytelling than a role-playing game, which is exactly what I would want for this. Stuff like combat, for example, is much much simplified--you resolve an entire combat with just a few dice rolls of your relevant stats; there are no turns or initiatives or different types of combat actions to resolve.
Even though it's too late to switch what system LeverageCraft is using, there is a lot of good information here on building a caper-style adventure, which I can still apply to the game in the current system. I guess I could always adapt the combat system, too, although I don't want to screw over players whose characters are heavily advantaged by FantasyCraft's combat rules.
Well, anyway. This post was supposed to talk about my progress on my 2010 goals, but I've gotten long-winded in my conspicuous consumption, so off to a different post that goes.