A decent update!
It’s been a long time since I updated my journal, so I’m going to try to make this a decent post, covering most of what has happened over the last month or so. The main reason for not posting has been difficulties with my PTSD - I’ve been very stressed and not coping as well as I previously had been. There have also been lap-top issues, with this piece of shit making all sorts of strange noises and doing weird things. When you’re stressed, technical issues are just another barrier to getting back online and updating stuff. Continued behind the cut, for length.
Dance of Dice games - Where are we with DoD? Well our interior and cover artists, as well as the editors have all gone AWOL. So Ricky and I have been left with a large amount of work and no idea what to do with it. Worse yet, to our minds, we’ve got no way to put it out there in a well-presented package. This was important to us, we wanted to make the whole thing look good, professional, even. Without our artists we can’t really do that, those of you who know me well, know I can only draw two things. In fact a recent sketch of a supposed space-station for Alternity came out looking a lot like the second thing....
We are still planning to go ahead and put something out as Dance of Dice, after all, we’ve done a lot of work so far and it would be a shame if this stuff never saw the light of day (it is always sad when that happens). So we’re currently examining our options and seriously thinking about a couple of “alternative” business models. Likely no new news until next year now. :(
Paizo Playtest - I’ve been thoroughly underwhelmed by the Pathfinder APG playtest, so far. This is so disappointing as my enthusiasm for Paizo was already wavering. The new classes are not really filling niches left unfilled, as promised. The cavalier, a classic, I know, in particular is guilty of this. The Green Ronin cavalier book did a much better job at updating the concept to fit into the d20 era, somewhat ironic as I got my copy in the Paizo sale!
I know that you cannot reduce things infinitely down, but each of these new classes can already be represented in the rules. Additionally, the new mechanics introduced to differentiate the classes (from a simple list of alternate features) are neither innovative nor necessarily well thought-out and balanced.
The oracle, in particular, is an example of poor design. Forcing a player to select a handicap, a physical limitation of sorts, is something none of the classes should do. It limits the class to a particular idea of a what an oracle is, while we all know that the blind seer is a classic archetype, it is one that is fixed to a cultural bias (ancient European? Greek myth?), in a way that a class should not be. Barbarians, for example, as a class, can be used to play everything from Conan and Slane, to a samurai, to a native-American tribesman, to possessed scientist (Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde?), and so on. The oracle is much more specific and doesn’t fill an unoccupied niche, the stated goal of these additional classes.
On top of this, you have the fact that the class forces a handicap upon a player - that is not fun. This is a similar issue to the necromancer-sorcerer bloodline in the core Pathfinder book. You get to 20th level and you start to rot, sure you look like whatever you like, but you’re still rotting. Thanks. How is this fun? How does being blind, deaf, etc. encourage you to play an oracle? There are already numerous ways to play an oracle, using the core classes, all of them more appealing that the sensory-impaired oracle.
In the game world, too, think about it. You can study to be a diviner or you can go blind and crazy?
This really smells, to me, of the prevalent d20 attitude of “you need a class to represent that”. Where are the roleplay guidelines and class variants, like the old AD&D books? Apparently specialist wizards are only to be used to represent specialist wizards. A list of alternate class features, trading in the bonus feats and spells, for specialists, would have been a much more-welcome move. Gasp! Conjurer mechanics used to play a summoner! That’s just crazy talk.
I can rant here as it is my space (see what I did there?), so I’m just going to continue this one a bit. So many of the younger audience apparently *need* a marker on their sheet and a set of special mechanics, in order to play a unique and interesting character. That is just pure horse-crap. There seems to be this idea that a class is a set of abilities that represents something specific, tied to the name of the class. A barbarian can’t be anything other than an uncivilized nut. Sure they can be aggressive or comical, but you can’t use a barbarian to represent a possessed ranger! Oh no - you need to have the ranger class and the “possessed” template.
Further tangent - I really hate it when players insist upon sticking, in game, slavishly to the class names like they mean something. They are an out of game convenience, a short hand for a set of mechanics. You could use numbers if you wanted to! I played in this Ravenloft game for a while. My character was a dwarven fighter who referred to himself as a “troubleshooter”. I faced an endless series of questions about my class, every week.
“Is that some kind of homebrew class?”
So yeah, back to Paizo and I can’t and don’t blame them for trying to cash in and make a little money, while redesigning some concepts into new classes. But in doing so, they’re just moving further and further away from me as one of their target audience.
Dragonmeet 2009 - I made it to Dragonmeet 2009! Awesome! I know that doesn’t sound like much of an achievement, but it really was, for me. See, my PTSD has left me very anxious, so a day out in the capital is not something I can just take in my stride anymore. But I made it and it was awesome. My wife and I were accompanied by Gib and Adrian - they both enjoyed getting a little stoned. Watching them have the munchies in China Town was hilarious! I didn’t stay for any of the games or lectures, but had a great time. We got a present for Sarah (sorry we didn’t make it up to see you last weekend!) and I did a little shopping myself. I finally got a copy of the AD&D Gnome and Halfling book, in good condition, for a mere £7.50. For the same price I also got my hands on a copy of the Gamesmaster’s Guide for Alternity, also in good condition.
I’d like to just take a moment out to say how much I love Alternity. It is an awesome system that suffers from being a bit over complicated. Take out some of the unnecessary rules (and the class structure) and you have an amazing system. The progress levels are a wonderful idea, something that is holding back the Dragonstar setting, I think, and the races are fun as well. It really just suffered for coming out at the wrong time.
Rebecca got some great “funny” dice, including one that determines the weather for you. Awesome! Turns out it doesn’t *actually* determine the weather, though, which left us all a little disappointed....
After Dragonmeet, we went to China Town and to the Orc’s Nest, which is always a pleasure. After that, we visited Forbidden Planet and picked up some Galactic Heroes for Rebecca and a few more Christmas presents. Christmas already! It is amazing to think that this time last year we were in South Korea, enjoying a somewhat lonely Christmas in our lightless kitchen.
WotC Annual Holiday Layoffs - Big seasonal love goes out to those who lost their jobs in this year’s cull. There were some good names in there and I hope that you’re able to take up the offer at Luis J Porter designs. Either way, have a great Christmas and don’t let it get you down!
Rats - My rats are working out wonderfully, helping me immensely with my PTSD. I love looking after them and playing with them. Nose is growing quite large now, and has established herself as the fearless, slightly stupid, leader and chief nest builder. Often it is difficult to see Bum, as her sister has buried her under her latest masterpiece. Bum is the quiet one, and definitely the brains of the outfit. She has learnt to come to me when I whistle, unlike Nose, who just associates the sound with treats. It is so much fun to watch them playing and figuring things out. Plus how cute are rats’ paws? Aww! Big thanks to those who emailed me about the cute video on Youtube.
Movies - Where the hell is Ninja Assassin? It is out in the States, why the delay over here? I really hope that this doesn’t turn into another movie like Outlander and Pathfinder - advertised only to vanish due to poor reviews in the US. The only posters about at the moment are for Avatar.
And where the hell is my Astroboy trailer?!?!
Edit - Ninja Assassin has been pushed back, again, to January 8th in the UK. Damn it! I want to see Rain get his ninja on *now*!
Having a lot of time on my hands, I finally got around to watching a bunch of movies on my “to watch” list. I saw Heat and it was a great film. Often, when you hear a lot of praise for a movie, it can get over-hyped. Not so with this film - great acting and action (the big shootout doesn’t disappoint), just all round high quality. I also got to see Grindhouse - both Planet Terror and Death Proof. I watched them together, back to back, as intended. Them not being shown in this way was made me miss them in the cinema when they came out - I was really disappointed in that. Anyway, the wait was worth it and I thoroughly enjoyed both movies. I think that Death Proof was awesome and very clever - better than Inglorious Basterds, but not quite Reservoir Dogs or Kill Bill.
In TV land, I also caught up with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 6. Man, am I behind the times! The Joss-fem-cred finally goes full force out the window with season 6. You know you’re in a bad place regarding gender and character portrayal when your most sympathetic character is Spike, *after* he just tried to rape Buffy. I thought that season 5 was good, clawing it back after season 4, but season 6 has lost me again. Just one more to go, now!
Games - I’ve been playing a lot of games, chiefly Monster Hunter Freedom 2, and more recently Darkstalkers and the English version of Phantasy Star Portable. It is amazing how much more sense it makes in English. It must be a slightly better game than I first thought, for me to play through it again. Usually I play the second play-throughs in the foreign language (usually French or Spanish), so it is kinda weird to be doing this one the other way around. Not much more to say here.
Still haven’t been possessed of enough fortitude to go back and finish Sonic Unleashed.
Dance of Dice games - Where are we with DoD? Well our interior and cover artists, as well as the editors have all gone AWOL. So Ricky and I have been left with a large amount of work and no idea what to do with it. Worse yet, to our minds, we’ve got no way to put it out there in a well-presented package. This was important to us, we wanted to make the whole thing look good, professional, even. Without our artists we can’t really do that, those of you who know me well, know I can only draw two things. In fact a recent sketch of a supposed space-station for Alternity came out looking a lot like the second thing....
We are still planning to go ahead and put something out as Dance of Dice, after all, we’ve done a lot of work so far and it would be a shame if this stuff never saw the light of day (it is always sad when that happens). So we’re currently examining our options and seriously thinking about a couple of “alternative” business models. Likely no new news until next year now. :(
Paizo Playtest - I’ve been thoroughly underwhelmed by the Pathfinder APG playtest, so far. This is so disappointing as my enthusiasm for Paizo was already wavering. The new classes are not really filling niches left unfilled, as promised. The cavalier, a classic, I know, in particular is guilty of this. The Green Ronin cavalier book did a much better job at updating the concept to fit into the d20 era, somewhat ironic as I got my copy in the Paizo sale!
I know that you cannot reduce things infinitely down, but each of these new classes can already be represented in the rules. Additionally, the new mechanics introduced to differentiate the classes (from a simple list of alternate features) are neither innovative nor necessarily well thought-out and balanced.
The oracle, in particular, is an example of poor design. Forcing a player to select a handicap, a physical limitation of sorts, is something none of the classes should do. It limits the class to a particular idea of a what an oracle is, while we all know that the blind seer is a classic archetype, it is one that is fixed to a cultural bias (ancient European? Greek myth?), in a way that a class should not be. Barbarians, for example, as a class, can be used to play everything from Conan and Slane, to a samurai, to a native-American tribesman, to possessed scientist (Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde?), and so on. The oracle is much more specific and doesn’t fill an unoccupied niche, the stated goal of these additional classes.
On top of this, you have the fact that the class forces a handicap upon a player - that is not fun. This is a similar issue to the necromancer-sorcerer bloodline in the core Pathfinder book. You get to 20th level and you start to rot, sure you look like whatever you like, but you’re still rotting. Thanks. How is this fun? How does being blind, deaf, etc. encourage you to play an oracle? There are already numerous ways to play an oracle, using the core classes, all of them more appealing that the sensory-impaired oracle.
In the game world, too, think about it. You can study to be a diviner or you can go blind and crazy?
This really smells, to me, of the prevalent d20 attitude of “you need a class to represent that”. Where are the roleplay guidelines and class variants, like the old AD&D books? Apparently specialist wizards are only to be used to represent specialist wizards. A list of alternate class features, trading in the bonus feats and spells, for specialists, would have been a much more-welcome move. Gasp! Conjurer mechanics used to play a summoner! That’s just crazy talk.
I can rant here as it is my space (see what I did there?), so I’m just going to continue this one a bit. So many of the younger audience apparently *need* a marker on their sheet and a set of special mechanics, in order to play a unique and interesting character. That is just pure horse-crap. There seems to be this idea that a class is a set of abilities that represents something specific, tied to the name of the class. A barbarian can’t be anything other than an uncivilized nut. Sure they can be aggressive or comical, but you can’t use a barbarian to represent a possessed ranger! Oh no - you need to have the ranger class and the “possessed” template.
Further tangent - I really hate it when players insist upon sticking, in game, slavishly to the class names like they mean something. They are an out of game convenience, a short hand for a set of mechanics. You could use numbers if you wanted to! I played in this Ravenloft game for a while. My character was a dwarven fighter who referred to himself as a “troubleshooter”. I faced an endless series of questions about my class, every week.
“Is that some kind of homebrew class?”
So yeah, back to Paizo and I can’t and don’t blame them for trying to cash in and make a little money, while redesigning some concepts into new classes. But in doing so, they’re just moving further and further away from me as one of their target audience.
Dragonmeet 2009 - I made it to Dragonmeet 2009! Awesome! I know that doesn’t sound like much of an achievement, but it really was, for me. See, my PTSD has left me very anxious, so a day out in the capital is not something I can just take in my stride anymore. But I made it and it was awesome. My wife and I were accompanied by Gib and Adrian - they both enjoyed getting a little stoned. Watching them have the munchies in China Town was hilarious! I didn’t stay for any of the games or lectures, but had a great time. We got a present for Sarah (sorry we didn’t make it up to see you last weekend!) and I did a little shopping myself. I finally got a copy of the AD&D Gnome and Halfling book, in good condition, for a mere £7.50. For the same price I also got my hands on a copy of the Gamesmaster’s Guide for Alternity, also in good condition.
I’d like to just take a moment out to say how much I love Alternity. It is an awesome system that suffers from being a bit over complicated. Take out some of the unnecessary rules (and the class structure) and you have an amazing system. The progress levels are a wonderful idea, something that is holding back the Dragonstar setting, I think, and the races are fun as well. It really just suffered for coming out at the wrong time.
Rebecca got some great “funny” dice, including one that determines the weather for you. Awesome! Turns out it doesn’t *actually* determine the weather, though, which left us all a little disappointed....
After Dragonmeet, we went to China Town and to the Orc’s Nest, which is always a pleasure. After that, we visited Forbidden Planet and picked up some Galactic Heroes for Rebecca and a few more Christmas presents. Christmas already! It is amazing to think that this time last year we were in South Korea, enjoying a somewhat lonely Christmas in our lightless kitchen.
WotC Annual Holiday Layoffs - Big seasonal love goes out to those who lost their jobs in this year’s cull. There were some good names in there and I hope that you’re able to take up the offer at Luis J Porter designs. Either way, have a great Christmas and don’t let it get you down!
Rats - My rats are working out wonderfully, helping me immensely with my PTSD. I love looking after them and playing with them. Nose is growing quite large now, and has established herself as the fearless, slightly stupid, leader and chief nest builder. Often it is difficult to see Bum, as her sister has buried her under her latest masterpiece. Bum is the quiet one, and definitely the brains of the outfit. She has learnt to come to me when I whistle, unlike Nose, who just associates the sound with treats. It is so much fun to watch them playing and figuring things out. Plus how cute are rats’ paws? Aww! Big thanks to those who emailed me about the cute video on Youtube.
Movies - Where the hell is Ninja Assassin? It is out in the States, why the delay over here? I really hope that this doesn’t turn into another movie like Outlander and Pathfinder - advertised only to vanish due to poor reviews in the US. The only posters about at the moment are for Avatar.
And where the hell is my Astroboy trailer?!?!
Edit - Ninja Assassin has been pushed back, again, to January 8th in the UK. Damn it! I want to see Rain get his ninja on *now*!
Having a lot of time on my hands, I finally got around to watching a bunch of movies on my “to watch” list. I saw Heat and it was a great film. Often, when you hear a lot of praise for a movie, it can get over-hyped. Not so with this film - great acting and action (the big shootout doesn’t disappoint), just all round high quality. I also got to see Grindhouse - both Planet Terror and Death Proof. I watched them together, back to back, as intended. Them not being shown in this way was made me miss them in the cinema when they came out - I was really disappointed in that. Anyway, the wait was worth it and I thoroughly enjoyed both movies. I think that Death Proof was awesome and very clever - better than Inglorious Basterds, but not quite Reservoir Dogs or Kill Bill.
In TV land, I also caught up with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 6. Man, am I behind the times! The Joss-fem-cred finally goes full force out the window with season 6. You know you’re in a bad place regarding gender and character portrayal when your most sympathetic character is Spike, *after* he just tried to rape Buffy. I thought that season 5 was good, clawing it back after season 4, but season 6 has lost me again. Just one more to go, now!
Games - I’ve been playing a lot of games, chiefly Monster Hunter Freedom 2, and more recently Darkstalkers and the English version of Phantasy Star Portable. It is amazing how much more sense it makes in English. It must be a slightly better game than I first thought, for me to play through it again. Usually I play the second play-throughs in the foreign language (usually French or Spanish), so it is kinda weird to be doing this one the other way around. Not much more to say here.
Still haven’t been possessed of enough fortitude to go back and finish Sonic Unleashed.