Jaded Gamer Diary - Fallout from articles.

Never really expected to get much reaction out of my Jaded Gamer Diary articles.  But low and behold I have! 

First off the 'Archon Part One' entry sparked some interest.  But over on the fan ran Archon STL page a couple days later a conversation started up that had some similar points.  Then out of know where Draco Fornax suddenly appeared and tried to act like he knew what he was doing.

As a side note I posted a link to the Archon article only on one small Archon fan page ran by a friend of mine.  The person who started the conversation over at Archon STL had seen it.  So apparently it had some influence.

You can find the post and comments here.

Then my Sla Industries rant got some attention from one of the folks from Daruma.  The people who were apparently putting out Sla in conjunction with Nightfall games now.  He hopped in to comment on the actual diary entry. Although now it's really funny as since then they tried a Kickstarter, failed to deliver, went out of business and all sorts of other drama.

Here is a link back to that article.

Later on another of my Sla Industries rants would get me blocked on Facebook by Dave Allsop. 

Insert link to post here

Great time to be a DnD fan.

I just realized that right now is a great time to be a Dungeons and Dragons fan of nearly any edition.  Before when a new edition went out of print the previous one was no longer available shortly after they sold what was left in their warehouse except through second hand sales. 

With the advent of Print On Demand that has all changed.

Right now in print you can get the Rules Cyclopedia version of the old basic rules. 1st edition ADnD,  and 2nd edition ADnD have all the core books available. There is a gap for 3.0/3.5 but really you could get Pathfinder to cover that. 4th edition is available pretty cheaply and they even one of the corebooks up in POD already. That's just the corebooks by the way, quite a few of the supplements are available in print as well. 

That's all covering the POD stuff. Nearly everything except a small handful of books are available in pdf.

You can find them all over on DrivethruRPG with just a few clicks.

Try being a fan of some of the games that have never made their way to even pdf.  Long since dead, print copies being scarce and prices all over the board. DnD folks are having it easier than ever.

City State of Kainis - Threshold

Been working on my own system again, mainly for my fantasy setting I've been jotting down for years.  Nothing really world changing but more along the lines of traditional gaming fare since that's what I like to play and run. I am trying to mix a few things up here and there with it though, one would be with a stat called Threshold.

THRESHOLD - If your character is hit for damage that is less than this stat it isn't recorded on the damage chart.

As a base all characters (humans at least) start with a Threshold of zero before other modifiers are added in either class or species based, maybe even some sort of advantage system. It's these modifiers that may raise it a point or two. In some settings other things like nano/bio/cybertech may add to it as well.

So if you are hit with X damage and X is less than your Threshold you take no damage. If X is greater than your Threshold than you take all the damage. So it doesn't reduce the damage but buffers against small injuries. Basically I'm tired of characters, who are supposed to be the main point of the game, getting whittled down a point at a time by tiny hits.

Armor will reduce the damage. Whatever is left goes to the Threshold and then to the damage chart.

Just me thinking out loud here.

Kult: Rectal Dumpings has arrived in pdf

Well the pdf of Kult: Rectal Dumpings finally made it's way to DrivethruRPG.  With one of the most overhyped and utterly unfun systems inside of it now (that would be the Apocalypse World system). It took long enough after a Kickstarter whose goal was to rake the fans for as much money as possible.

But it's here in all it's overprice pdf glory.  Seems like they should have made their production money on the overpriced Kickstarter to cover all costs.  But evidently charging 30+ bucks for the pdf is a good idea and there are suckers born every minute for it.

If you have no problems paying that just click on the link below to purchase it and I'll get a few pennies of it to throw at my ever growing electric bill.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/259252/Kult-Divinity-Lost--4th-Edition-of-Kult-Core-Rules?affiliate_id=35459

Also don't forget the other equally over priced accessories to go along with it.

Iron Pact talks about a Fantasy City Generator

Have to point out The Iron Pact blog for their sharing of an awesome fantasy city generator.  They give a quick over view of it and show one of the maps they created.  Don't judge it by just that map as you can make them look vastly different with all the options that are in there.

http://theironpact.com/city-generator/

Not linking directly to the generator as I want to drive a little traffic to The Iron Pact as they were the ones that got me to notice it in the first place.

Jaded Gamer Diary - RPGPundit proves he is a liar... again.

Two Jaded Gamer entries in one day.  Damn.

Once again John Tarnowski (aka RPGPundit and a bunch of other names) proves once again that he is nothing but a liar.  This time it's all about somebody else wanting to limit the use of their own IP that they created.  Yeah you read that right Tarnowski doesn't think other people should be in control of their own creations... well except for him controlling his most likely.

Anyways.

It started with Stuart Robertson adjusting the creative commons agreement for use of the OSR logo he created.  Basically restricting it from use on products with hate speech, encouraging violence, etc. Here is his post on G+:

ATTENTION OSR MEMBERS

He lines out what he means rather clearly.  Most of this was in reaction to Venger Satanis being a dick like usual and making fun of trans people with his VS post or some such.  Anyways Stuart wanted to adjust the usage of the logo which is well within his rights as the creator.

Now Tarnowski comes off the fucking rails in that discussion many times.  Then over on his forums he makes this claim:

"Stuart Robertson, the inventor of one of the more-common known OSR logos, has decided that he's going to threaten legal action on anyone using the Logo with politics he doesn't like."

Which is completely NOT what Stuart said nor implied.

So yet once again, the screaming yelling shitbag John Tarnowski proves once again that he is a fucking liar.

Jaded Gamer Diary - The Vampire 5th ed shit show continues

Well as the shit show known as Vampire the Masquerade 5th edition rolls on it may be coming to a bit of a close as well.  Well let us start at some of the newer droppings today.

Remember the part about Chechnya in the Camarilla book that people were pissed off about.  Well apparently the Chechen people are pissed off about a different spin from the same section. They seem to hate the implied idea that their country is a vampire controlled state ruled over by a Sultan.

Chechens complain on American game that depicts them as cruel vampires with Ramzan as their ‘Sultan’

The we pop over to the Anarchs book and find something new.  But not unexpected when you think about it.  When you get edgy shitlords to run the company then you will also get their fucked up idea that suicide is how the weak are culled from the strong. 

Yeah that looks really good White Wolf.  Really good.

But now it also looks like White Wolf as a production company will be going the way of the DoDo... again... for reals this time.  Paradox Interactive is going to do what they do best with IPs they purchase.  Pull them inside, stop all internal support and just license it all out. Basically just managing the approval process of whatever is submitted to them by the licensee.  I suppose the WW logo may appear on approved material but probably not for long.  Honestly you don't see the Target Games logo on the new Kult material do you?

A message from White Wolf (aka goodbye)

So the end is apparently in sight for White Wolf as a publishing house, even as a branch of a larger tree.  But the people they put in charge, the lack of oversight and the overall approach to sensitive real life issues sunk the ship.

You hear people say "Get woke, go broke", well now it looks more like "Get edgy, get ended".

Vampire 5th continues to be a shit show.

Vampire 5th edition, maybe it should be filth edition... continues to be an ongoing shit show.

I'll copy paste what has been said along with posting a screenshot of the text from a new V5 book.  At the bottom I'll link to the original post that I saw.

----------------------------------

"Joseph D. Carriker

4 hrs

(Please note this is public, so it can be shared. Interact with it accordingly, folks.)
So, filing this under "Second Verse Same As The First": the excerpt bel...ow is from the upcoming Camarilla book for Vampire: the Masquerade 5th Edition.

In it, it describes a vampire-dominated Chechnya. Even setting aside the gross implications of that design decision - and there are plenty of them - it also turns the internment of queer people into literal death camps into what amounts to a distraction.

 

This text literally refers to the "controversy" (which is such a weighted word in this context, quite frankly, carrying with it connotations of mountains being made of mole-hills) over queer internment and murder as "clever media manipulation." This text literally turns the ending of queer lives into a throw-away feint that hides vampires. Which is a monstrous reframing of that real-world thing STILL GOING ON.

 

This is egregiously vile. It's not okay. Our lives are constantly being *ended* for straight peoples' prejudices in real life, but also in fiction and media for straight peoples' fucking entertainment, and all of this is just "second verse same as the first."

 

This isn't avant garde. This is 100% the typical, tired, cliched treatment that queer people constantly receive in overculture's media about us. This is yet more Tragedy Porn, and not only is it distasteful in the extreme, but it's wildly unacceptable.

 

I've already spoken about this with Martin Ericsson, and quite honestly I find his framing of the issue to be callous, while hiding behind performative allyship. But I will let him show up and speak to that: he has asked that I not publish his response, pending approval from his bosses, and I'm find by that, for now. But *something* needs to be said, and in the larger framework, something needs to be *done* about the attitudes in the current iteration of White Wolf that makes this kind of seething horseshit not just acceptable, but desirable.

 

This is not a good fucking look, White Wolf. Not in the least."

 

Here is the link to the original facebook post:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10156065148713379&set=a.136931398378&type=3

 

All I can say is I'm quite happy to not have bought into V5 in the least and never plan on doing so.

 

 

 

Horror Gaming - It's an aid not a crutch.

It has become a challenge among game designers to create the feeling of horror, stress, fear, etc in their games with actual mechanics. Which I do see a really good thing that leads to some wonderful creative systems. The Madness Meter from Unknown Armies is one of the first things that pops into my mind right next to the Mental Balance from Kult and lets not forget Sanity from Call of Cthulhu. They help players and the GM visualize just where they are along that downward slide from whatever horrible things are happening around them (or to them in some cases). However they do have one drawback from what I've experienced.

To often they can be used as the only indicator that it is a horror game.

Running a horror game the same way as you would any other dungeon crawl except that every now and then the player may loose a D6 of Sanity doesn't work out all to well. Your players just end up playing whack a mole with two forms of Hit Points instead of one. Even if there is a high mortality rate among the PC's that doesn't create a sense of horror except for having to take the time to roll up another character.

The mechanics are in there mainly to help the GM set the mood, they are essentially a GM aid of sorts. Use them as such right beside the rest of the bag of tricks that help make a game an actual horror game. You know like getting exquisitely descriptive about things that should send a chill down a persons spine. Covering all five of the senses, hell go and look up what something smells like so you can describe it better in the game. Go for that six sense even, that feeling of dread or tell them of a nagging thought in the back of the characters head. There are tons of tricks for horror games. Just don't get lazy and let a built in mechanic be the only one.