Where I’ve Been, What I’ve Been Doing, and What’s Next
It’s been sometime since I’ve been able to sit down and work on an update for the site. So where have I been and what have I been up to?
After getting my computer working, I began working quite hard on re-working the Aleph Fantasy game to incorporate a number of changes and modifications that had come to me in my dreams the week before. Most of the changes are largely cosmetic and focused around filling in some blank spots and tying game elements together. Unfortunately, because my data files had not yet been restored, this meant that I had to re-type the ~90 pages by hand, reading the old hard-copy version and making changes as I went along.
Tuesday night I ran a quick test session to ensure that the changes didn’t have any unintended ramifications of impacts. If you’ve ever spent two solids days re-typing, modifying, formatting and editing information before staying up all night to run a game you can understand and appreciate the coma that followed.
I’ve had a lot of 4e rage lately, a lot of which resulted from reading the Races and Classes preview book, and being shocked by how uber the Dragonborn are and the knowledge that Tieflings would be in the core books, but not Aasimar because, to paraphrase, it’s hard to make them look cool. However! They will be introducing a new Celestial race that’s crafted out of the same pool of uber as the Dragonborn.
The next bit of 4e anger came when I read a Wizards article on Death and Dying in 4e, which included a little section on how to implement the 4e-style rules in a 3e/3.5 game:
If you’re dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times before
you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
10-19: No change.
20: You get better! You wake up with hit points equal to one-quarter your
full normal hit points.
…What? As far as I can tell, you’re not be healed or treated in this instance. This is for someone who is bleeding out on the ground by themselves. And there’s a 5% chance they go from dying to one quarter health. I simply can’t wrap my mind around that logic.
The article insinuated that the actual 4e numbers are likely to be a bit bigger, so we’ll see what changes are made there, how well it’s explained and how well the rules work together (the most important bit). If you’d like to read the article in it’s entirety, you can find it here.
Or if you don’t want to sign into Wizards to read it, you can read a copy of it here without signing into anything here.
One of the best things that can happen to me is getting an e-mail about some new gaming service/product/website from a reader or company, it always make me happy to see how much content there is out there and how much more good content there is for me to discover.
Recently I was e-mailed and alerted about a DnD Blog called the Tavern of the White Wolf. The content seems to exclusively be DnD-related, and a lot of the content can be pretty easily adapted to other systems. The content is all of a good quality, and since the site is still active and updated once or twice a day, you’ll likely find a good stream of DnD content here for at least some time.
I was also recently contacted by Trask from LivingDice.com who has started a nice gaming blog with some great content as well as a heads up about free d20 modules.
So what’s next? For the next week, I’m going to work on a series to help you build a campaign world. Information will be included on topics from map making to religion design.
Computer Update
Windows Vista is truly an evil beast. It regularly interrupts my internet connection, making doing anything from checking e-mail to checking forums. Out of three attempts to shut down Windows Vista, only three succeeded without the computer crashing during shut down - all applications were closed and all non-system processes had already been stopped. If anyone is ever considering using Vista, for your own sake I urge you not to. The compatability problems I’m already running into are astounding. Attempts to download a compatable version of Linux have been interesting. The first three downloads all seemed to go smoothly, until it came time to put the files onto disc. The burning process went smoothly each time, however there was an error while finalizing the disc, making it (apparently) unreadable. The fourth attempt seemed to be going smoothly right up until the download reached 101%. By the time it reached 110% and 710 MB out of 698, I cancelled the download. The fifth attempt is now underway. I fully expect to have these issues taken care of by the beginning of the week - but I also expected to have them resolved yesterday.
Updates Resuming Soon
Due to the near simultaneous death of my desktop and laptop, I have not had computer or internet access for the last several days. I have now replaced the laptop, and after resizing the partitions and installing new Operating Systems to replace Vista (a truly horrible experience that reminds me more and more of using Windows ME) normal updates should resume later tonight or tomorrow.
In the meantime, if you haven’t already check out my new column at RPGnet. This months article discusses the Origin of the Species in a fantasy world.
RSS Error
There is a temporary error regarding the site’s main RSS Feed. Please be patient while this problem is being resolved. In the meantime, E-mail subscriptions should still be working without a problem.
Update: The error has been fixed, and the RSS Feed should be working normally now.
Alive and Eating
Last week after returning from PhilCon, I stopped posting for a few days, except to say that I had not eaten in several days and my headache medication had stopped working.
First off, I’d like to thank everyone who sent me kind thoughts, either through comments or e-mail. They were very much appreciated.
Second, I have a condition known as Ulcerative Pancolitis. In layman’s terms, it means that the length of my colon is covered in a series of ulcers. When I have flair-ups, eating anything becomes absolutely impossible, which often causes my stomach to shut down entirely and stop processing anything, liquid, food, or medicine. This is what happened to me last week, and I hope you can understand why it prevented me from posting.
Though I am still weak, and find my appetite severely limited due to my stomach shrinking after nearly six days of not eating, I am recovering and feel well enough to resume. So now I’m back to work, with 150+ RSS entries to catch up on in Google Reader, pages to update on the site, and entries to write up for everyone here on gaming goodness.
PhilCon Schedule Update
The update for my panel scheduling at PhilCon has come through, and I’ve been added to two new panels. Here are the panels, along with times and locations, you can expect to find me at:
Fri 8:00 PM in Salon 1 (1 hour)
BEST… COMIC-BOOK MOVIE… EVER!: THE COMICS ON FILM AND TV (399)
[Panelists: Glenn Hauman (mod), Mike Pederson, J. Andrew World,
Jennifer Williams, Kimberly Ann Kindya, Daniel Burnet]
We’ve seen the best, like SPIDERMAN or BATMAN BEGINS. We’ve seen the worst, like THE PUNISHER, or BATMAN & ROBIN. But what makes a great comic-book movie or TV series? What changes should and should not be made to adapt a classic comic-book to the screen.
Fri 9:00 PM in Salon 2 (1 hour)
WHO AM I? WHO IS HE? CHARACTER CREATION IN LITERATURE AND ROLE-PLAYING
GAMES (548)
[Panelists: Alex Padilla (mod), Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Eric Avedissian, Daniel Burnet, John Wright]
Join our panelists in a discussion about character creation in fiction and role-playing. They will be looking at the similarities and differences in the process within the different genres
Sat 11:00 AM in Salon 2 (1 hour)
O’ WHAT A BRAVE NEW WORLD: WORLD BUILDING IN LITERATURE AND
ROLE-PLAYING GAMES (547)
[Panelists: Alex Padilla (mod), Eric Avedissian, Michael Ryan, Daniel Burnet, Mike McPhail]
Join our panelists in a discussion of world building from different perspectives: that of fiction and role-playing games.
Sat 12:00 PM in Salon 2 (1 hour)
“SO I HAVE THIS GAME I DEVELOPED…” GAME PUBLISHING 101 (551)
[Panelists: Michael Miller (mod), Eric Avedissian, Brennan Taylor, Tony DiGerolamo, Daniel Burnet]
Join our panelists as they discus getting games published whether independently or through larger companies
Sun 10:00 AM in Parlor A (1 hour)
THE “BALONIUM” FACTOR (432)
[Panelists: Daniel Burnet (mod), JJ Brannon, Ariel Cinii, John
Wright]
Balonium is that substance or effect that suspends the laws of the universe as the plot requires, producing cheap interstellar travel, time travel, egg-laying alien princesses and the inexplicably powered sandworms of Dune. Yet we know all of these things are impossible. Can science fiction be written about things that are actually possible without using liberal doses of Balonium?
Aleph Fantasy Classes Update
The main site now has a new page with some additional information regarding each of the classes in Aleph Fantasy. You can find the new page here.
Main Site Back Up
The main page, AlephGaming.com, is now back up. It’s fairly simple, but hopefully it should be expanded soon.
Site Updates
You may have noticed some minor changes to the site in the last few days. Here’s a brief summary of the changes so far:
Categories to Tags. I’ve always been more of a fan of tagging article as opposed to putting them into specific categories.
Subscription Service. You can now sign up for a subscription, either through RSS or by e-mail delivery, both thanks to Feedburner.com
Social Bookmarking Shortcuts. At the bottom of each post you’ll find buttoms to allow you to quickly and easily submit the article to Stumble Upon, Digg, Del.Ico.Us, Slashdot and Technorati.
Recent Comments. I’ve added a recent comments section to the sidebar, which will display a link to the most recent comment from each of the five most recently commented on articles, as well as a link to the website of the most recent commentator from each category.
Stay tuned for more updates!
