RPGnow: no more minimum purchase

One of the things that used to annoy me about RPGnow was the $6.40 minimum purchase. Scott McCloud can sell comics online for a quarter. S. John Ross can sell kickass fonts for three bucks apiece. Why can't RPGnow deliver less than $6.40 worth of product and still make a profit? Well now they can. Thanks in very, very small part to yours truly, they've added another purchase option: for a 35 cent handling fee you can buy underneath the minimum. Not perfect, but still a step in the right direction. Kudos to RPGnow for listening to its customers!

Between this development and DriveThruRPG switching over to digital watermarking, I'm starting to actually believe that you can accomplish some things simply by bitching on the internet.

(Hey! I just noticed that Games Designers' Workshop has been added to the watermarking list! Hot damn! Pocket Empires will be mine! And while we're on the subject of cool new stuff, two new cool items have been added over at RPGnow: The full version of Blue Rose and the Johnny Nexus Compilation, a collection of articles from the editor of Critical Miss.)

One-Shots for '05

It looks like I will be running campaigns for Mutants & Masterminds and d20 Modern. Given the success of my Blue Rose one-shot I'd like to work a few more one-off projects into my schedule. I like being able to play with different people as well as trying out different games. Here's my tentative list:

• Castles & Crusades test-run
• There Is No Spoon
• Some sort of Risus comedy game (maybe set in Uresia)
• A sentai game of some sort (BESM d20? Mekton? Feng Shui?)
• Various action movie ideas done as Feng Shui one-shots
• A micro-campaign for Savage Worlds based upon the old Star Frontiers module Dramune Run

Anybody got any strong opinions on any of these? Any other suggestions?

I'm a Troublemaker

I just started this thread over at RPGnet. Honestly, I'm not trying to pick on the Troll Lords, but I had to vent a little and hopefully get some feedback from the folks over there.

Well, poop.

Dave's gone and cancelled tomorrow night's Feng Shui game. Between recovering from the Winter War and feverishly scrambling to purchase his first home, he just doesn't have the energy to devote to a game. I'd rather he cancelled than run anyway given the circumstances, but it's still kinda disappointing. Especially given that last session was hosed (for me at least) by that stupid meeting I had to attend.

On a good note, I'm still congratulating myself on that Puerto Rico win. I win some games at the Monday night group now and again, but usually a good deal of the credit for my victories has to go to lucky card draws or dice rolls. This time it was pure gamemanship, baby. I made some damn good plays, if I do say so myself.

The next post I make to this blog will be more humble. I promise.

The War Is Over: Cat Piss Man Wins

Winter War 32 is nothing more than a collection of fond memories. I'm hoping to get a full report on it up later this week. There are a few items I want to report on in this venue though. First, Don McKinney made an earnest attempt to talk me out of getting the Castles & Crusades Players Handbook. He was part of the playtest and in general I highly respect Don's opinions, so I am going to run a session or two of the boxed set before moving any further towards C&C. Second, I am done running Call of Cthulhu. My Jack the Ripper game was a bit of a mess, but I've got the bug to run a Ripper game out of my system. And the Cthulhu Mythos seems played out to me. Maybe I'll revisit it someday, but in this era of Cthulhu plushies the Mythos is little more than an one-note joke.

So it looks like I've now got two campaigns. Don, Sue, Paul & John want to get my Home Team game up and running again, so I need to finish converting their characters over to Mutants & Masterminds. Our first session back in the saddle will probably be a small potatoes run with a handful of minor supervillains, but then I want to get into some big heroic adventures: Saving New York from destruction. Rescuing the President of the United States. (Are they bad enough dudes?) Thwarting alien invasions. That kind of stuff. The other campaign I am going to be running is that d20 Modern kid's game I have mentioned before. Ian and Alex have obtained parental permission and proposed a schedule of every other Saturday afternoon. With these two longer term projects on the table anything else I run in the meantime will have to be one-shots or micro-campaigns using quick-and-dirty types rules.

At Bruce's place I won last night's game of Puerto Rico. That was really satisfying. It's one of the more complex German games that we play, a "gamer's game" as Jim likes to call it. I've got to pat myself on the back for this one. I made some good sound plays. I made several goofs as wells, but I took the lead early and just barely held on to it throughout the game.

Brief Winter War Update

Don (the convention chairman) decided to try posting a pdf of the final program on the Winter War website. Our Glorious Leader also reports that Winter War 33 will be Feb 10-12 at the Chancellor. There had been some talk of moving to another venue, but it looks like we'll be staying at the Chancellor. Since the date has been moved from the first weekend in Feb to the second weekend, it looks like we will not be sharing space with the firemen.

Aother Webcomic

This one's political, so consider yourself warned. As far as I've seen, the rest of this guy's comics look pretty lame, but this one is worth the clicky.