Name Game Poll Results

I'm super-thrilled that 68 people responded to my poll, but I'm still as confused as ever about what to call my campaign world. Zindar got the plurality, but it only beat 'Other' by 2 votes. So far the only clear message is that Sinder is right out. Part of me wants to throw the question wide open and just ask all you nice folks for your ideas. But I can't really see myself sticking my personal, idiosyncratic campaign world with someone else's name. So right now my options are to either stick with Zindar since it did win the poll, go with something cute 'Other' based option like Otherwhere, Otherwhen, Othernow, etc., or start over from scratch. Anybody got any good ideas, not for names, but for methods of coming up with world names? Should I start drawing tiles out of the Scrabble bag?

Hmmm, Otherwhere, Otherwhen, and Othernow actually don't seem half bad at the moment. I like the fact that these names call attention to their own otherworldliness, there own sense of the Other as place. What other option are available, using Other as the base? Othergard, Otherland, Otherheim, off the top of my head. We could try some other languages as well, I suppose. Otherworld in Adelic would be something like Andrvøld. Stick a vowel between the r and the v and you could really have something: Andravøld, Andrevøld, Andrivøld, Androvøld, Andruvøld, or Andryvøld. I think I like Andrivøld best of those options. That o with the slash through it is totally metal. Other in Gothic is either Aljis or Anthar. Antharia doesn't sound too bad. Kinda bland, though. Other in French is Autre. Autremonde, perhaps? Going with French may increase the number "Why do you think I speak with this outrageous accent?" Python quotes in any given session.

FASERIP/Four Color non-update

Back in March Phil Reed solicited the internets for money to write an OGL restatement of the classic Marvel Super Heroes system. According to the fundable.org page devoted to the project, the offer was that if Mr. Reed got $1,000 up front he would take 2 weeks to do the initial work on the project, then release a free PDF. 30 days later, after taking input on corrections and errata and such, a print-on-demand version would be made available at cost.

That was the deal. Mr. Reed got $1,130 in up-front contributions to launch the project. By his proposed timeline, I was expecting to be able to buy a new FASERIP rulebook 44 days later. It's now six months later and I can see no evidence of a forthcoming book. A file containing the basic rules of the system was made available in a fairly timely fashion, but six months have gone by since Reed got his money and he still has not come through on his promise to get us a shiny new rulebook.

In the wider gaming industry the screwiness of the distribution system and delays at the printer are often blamed for the hit-or-miss nature of announced release dates. One of the big reasons I bought into Greg Stolze's Ransom Model was because it avoided these issues altogether. You send some money directly to the designer, and gaming goodness becomes available to all. To my knowledge Mr. Reed is the second designer to use this approach. Is he going to ruin it for everyone by taking the money and flaking out on the follow through?

I don't want to suggest here that Mr. Reed was running some sort of flimflam operation. I don't think he set out on this venture with the idea that he would run off with some suckers' money. Surely the problem is that he's just gotten too busy, what with taking a dayjob at Steve Jackson Games, running Ronin Arts on the side, and uh, playing games. As a fellow gamer I don't want to hold it against the man that he spent Sunday playing some games. But come on. He put his hands on over a thousand bucks based on a promise. Maybe he could have spent last Sunday holding up his end of that bargain.

I'm not posting this blog entry to hurl insults at Mr. Reed or demand my money back. I don't feel any ill will towards the guy. But if he could finish what he started, I would really appreciate it. At this point I'm not sure whether I'll be buying that POD rulebook if it ever comes out, but I would like to see it released. That's what the folks who sent money to fundable paid for, after all. But I guess I'm a little soured on the whole project. And right now I'm not in a huge hurry to ever buy anything with Phil Reed's name or a Ronin Arts logo on it. I feel burned.

Jeff's Crazy Thought of the Day

Forward... to Exalted!

For reals. Take the Exalted's crazy ass setting and run it under FtA!. Mere mortals would have stats ranging from -5 to -1, and pretty much any DC over 15 would be a superhuman effort. Stunting would go before general melee in the combat turn. That's what gave me this crazy idea. Spell lists would need reworking. That'd be the hardest part. But if, like me, you think the best parts of Exalted are the setting fluff and the anything-goes stunt rules, then maybe FtE! would be a way to avoid dealing with the Storyteller system.

the indie holocaust

Things are getting draconian as I clear stuff out of my game room to get ready to move. Yesterday I pitched a six inch stack of free RPGs I had printed out over the years. I ended up keeping only those games I had actually played, plus one. There was an extra copy of S. John Ross's Risus: The Anything RPG that I held on to. Somewhere there's already a copy (along with the excellent Risus Companion and his Big List of RPG Plots) in a 3 ring binder stuck in some box, but it doesn't hurt to have an extra. I also kept my print-out of Phillipe Tromeur's Wuthering Heights Roleplay. Had a fun con run of that five or so years ago. In the folder with the rules was the Ron Edwards style relationship map I had drawn after everyone generated characters. Behold:

Everyone ended the run dead, insane and/or incarcerated. It was like a Call of Cthulhu run except sexual anxiety replaced the face-eating fish-men. Also on the to-keep list was QAGS, the Quick Ass Gaming System. You can buy a cool digest-sized rulebook for QAGS, but the freebie one page charsheet/rulebook is almost better. I have both. And then there's Uncle Bear's Bad Attitudes, a great little action movie game. Great for blowing stuff up.

The one rpg I kept but have not played is Micro-Dot. I can't find the linky for this one anymore, so in a blatant act of IP piracy I am going to reproduce the game in its entirety.

Micro-Dot-RPG
State action and Roll 1d4
1. Amazing fumble
2. Fail (Unless part of PC Occupation)
3. Success
4. Amazing Critical

Seriously, that's the whole game.

Federation Commander

The folks responsible for Star Fleet Battles have come up with a new faster-playing, cut down version of the game. Called Federation Commander, it promises better play for larger scale conflict in SFB's oddball alt-Trek universe. The official website makes it look like they've kicked production values up a notch as well. Check out this fullcolor Ship System Display:

That's still more complicated than a lot of spaceship gamers want, but it sure looks like an improvement to me. There's a thirty four page demo rulebook available for download here.

Good times

The wife of my gaming buddy Doug has some way of occassionally scoring comp tickets to the local arena and she managed to snag a pair of sweet seats for the WWE Raw house show this last Saturday. Doug is one of those weirdoes who prefers 'real' sports, so he passed the tickies along to me and I took my pal Pat. This was the fifth wrestling card I've ever seen live and it ranked right up there with the WCW show I took in at Springfield with Paul Pomykala and Don McKinney's son Michael.

The opening match was a fifteen man over-the-top battle royal, with the winner get a title shot against the champ in that night's main event. Pat and I were shocked when "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan came out to participate in the bout. That guy is awesome. He's big, loud, and stupid. I pretty sure I saw Curt, one of the many cops in my lodge, working security near the wrestler's entrance. Dude stopped Hacksaw and shook his hand as he exited the room. Curt's quite a character in his own right. I'm told he has the Punisher skull emblazoned on his kevlar vest. The battle royal went to Jeff Hardy, who I had seen wrestle a couple of matches in TNA. He was new to Pat, who dubbed him 'Hot Topic Lad' based upon his ring attire. Most of the gusy who wrestled in the opening match later performed again in singles competition. We were thrilled to get a double dose of Duggan when he went mano-a-mano with a fellow named Daivari, who plays the role of Evil Arab. I'm not a big fan of the Heel Foreigner gimmick. It often smacks of racism and blind nationalism and this particular version came with a heaping side order of religious intolerance. But this Daivari fellow did a helluva good job with the limited character palette available.

I was shocked that the most technically sound match of the night was the Women's Championship bout. Candice Michelle managed to defend her title against Beth 'the Glamazon' Phoenix. Both ladies did a great job wrestling, but I was extremely impressed by the Glamazon. She had Haughty Heel charisma on the mike and in the ring she pulled off a very credible array of powerhouse moves. Women's pro wrestling has a long history of hair-pulling, catfighting, and screaming but all that nonsense was very subdued and instead we saw a lot of power moves, high flying stunts, and legitimate grappling. Great stuff.

The match before the main event was Carlito versus Triple H. Both of these guys have an amazing amount of charisma. They wrestled a sound if relatively unspectacular program. The match was really built around the lavish Triple H entrance sequence and pushing the cage match between the two of them on tonight's episode of Raw. Look for Carlito to wear the big belt some day. I've only seen him a couple of times while flipping through channels but he clearly has that special something. One segment I've watched he didn't have a single line but still owned the scene. His performance Saturday night only cemented my impression that this young man will one day be at the top. Question for people more familiar with WWE: Does Lemmy sing Triple H's entrance music? It sounded a lot like Lemmy to me.

The main event was a bit of a bait and switch. The Jeff Hardy/John Cena title match ended early when battle royal sore losers Cade and Murdoch (I think that's their names) stormed the ring and beat on Hardy. Quick DQ win to Hardy, no title change. So Cena talks some trash at these two dorks and proposes a tag team competition. What followed was a mostly by-the-numbers tag team match, but the crowd was really into the two babyfaces and ate it up. I had never seen John Cena wrestle before. On the internet he's often said to be the kind of champ who is long on looks and short on wrestling. I thought he acquited himself quite well. He wasn't up to Jeff Hardy's level in terms of high flying spectacular moves, but he was more than sufficient to wrestle the two dweezels on the other team.

All in all, a heckuva a good show. Thanks again to Doug and his wife. It's annoying the crap out of me that I can't remember her name. I'm sure Doug has mentioned it more than once, but I've never met her myself. I feel really stupid thanking her as 'Doug's wife'.

check out this treasure map

My little name game poll continues in the upper right corner of the blog. Sinder and Zindar are neck-and-neck but 'Other' is making a surprisingly strong showing. Zinthar and sticking with Cinder have been suggested as viable alternatives, but several people voted other but have not made a suggestion. Please let me know what you're thinking, even if you just say "All these names suck, Jeff. Go back to the drawing-board."

Anyone, on to the sweet treasure map.



My school chum and D&D buddy of old, David Dalley, made this treasure map back in the day. I posted one of David's campaign maps not too long ago. It's probably about 20 years old at this point and has never been actually handed out to a group of players. Here's the text:

Start at cave
of Master Ealrond

Pass the way of
Mud-Slïck Pond

Double League further
thee mïte descover

Thru the pass of
Man & Lover

A wïnding path
which may break thee

The rough-hewn path
ït wïll take thee

To the forest of
Zook

Where ïf thee
Look

In every cranny &
Nook

Thee shall Hook
A precïous [text ends prematurely with a character that may be a capital 'B']