Two Brief Wraeththu Items

1) RPGnetter Belphanior now has a review over at RPGnet. He is less generous than I in his evalutations, but I don't see anything in his analysis with which I find myself in disagreement.

2) I owe Wraeththu: From Enchantment to Fufilment an apology. Yesterday I recalled another RPG that has genitalia on the cover of the book, so Wraeththu's not the first game to pull that stunt. Fantasy Wargaming: The Highest Level of All by Bruce Galloway, a moderately infamous tome amongst fans of bad rpgs, has a cover depicting an Eliphas Levi-style devil leaping at a wizard. The devil's caduceus/penis is clearly visible. I can post a picture in a week or two if anyone so desires.

Heading Up North

Don't expect too much in the way of updates for the next week or so. I'll be up in Minnesota. My plan is to drop by the Games by James in the Mall of America and hopefully I'll make it over to The Source Comics and Games. The Source is by far the best Friendly Local Game Store I've ever visited. If I end up near an intarweb connection I'll try to post a little update, but otherwise I'll catch up with all y'all later in the week. I'm taking my copy of World of Synnibarr along with me for some light reading. I'll let you know how it turns out. ;)

2 New Bloglinks

I added two new game blogs to my linky list: The Goblin's Lair (by RPGnetter Random Goblin) and M's LiveJournal (by RPGnetter eyebeams). Both are quite excellent.

Also, if you haven't checked it out yet, do yourself a favor and visit the Uruguayan Gamer by the RPGPundit (formerly known as RPGnet pariah nisarg). I don't agree with everything that RPGPundit says, but he's well worth the read.

Quote of the Day

I never believe gamers who go on about realism. Nearly every case usually involves said gamer going on about a personal fetish or peeve.

-E. Deidre Brooks

I killed Ironbeard!

Urban Dead is a graphically simple browser-based game, somewhat Roguelike in character. It's player-versus-player in a city during a zombie overrun. Best of all, you can play a zombie! My character is named Putrid Joe. My first act in the game was to bite a fellow named Ironbeard to death and feast upon the gooey treats inside his skull.

The greatest zombie link ever

Here.

Random Movement

Why is movement in D&D (and many other RPGs) a fixed variable? It seems to me a lot of tension could be added to combat by requiring a die roll after declaring a move. Will I be able to close to melee range with the wizard, or not? Can I go around the square with the caltrops and still beat on the orc this round?

Here's the basic idea: 20 feet of movement gets you a d4 squares of movement, while 30 feet gets you a d6. A little chart of some sort can be extrapolated further from these two data points. A double move would be 2dX but charging would be dX times two.

While I'm re-writing movement systems for games, how about Savage Worlds? Why is walking certain but running risking? (I.e. a normal move is 6" but a run is d6+6".) I say flip those around. Make a walk d6 inches and running adds 6 to that.

I don't have either the SRD or my copy of Savage Worlds in front of me as I write this, I'm just brainstorming here. If you foresee a conflict between the rules as written and my idea, please let me know.