Tag: Rants and Ruminations
William Heron’s 40, ‘K?
It was my 40th birthday earlier in the week. The last twenty years seem to have passed so quickly, but its quite a long time when I think about it. In that time I’ve changed careers form Audiovisual to Computing – I probably wouldn’t have been the best AV guy anyway given that I was…
Kickstarter campaigns for RPGs
I’d originally written a whole spiel on Kickstarter campaigns for RPGs as part of my last blog post but saved over by accident! For those unaware of Kickstarter, its a funding tool owned by Amazon that allows people to pledge cash towards a project, with “stretch goal” rewards. It has been used with great success…
Signal to Noise
What we do in life echoes in eternity – Maximus, Gladiator I began clearing out a lot of old bookmarks the other day. I’m surprised at how many sites have disappeared from the ‘net over the last few years, many of which were actually quite useful! While sites like http://web.archive.org are useful, it got me…
RPGers assemble & Impossible Odds
The new Avengers movie out this month is something I’m planning to go and see next week. As a result, I’m planning to run the Marvel Super Heroes RPG, originally published in the 1980s – there’s a newer version out but I’m not sure if I’ll get it in time. I’m planning to run the…
D&D – the Version Wars!
I’ve been playing D&D for over 20 years in its various editions, from 1st Edition AD&D Dragonlance at school, to my own 4th ed. Against the Odds. Over time, each edition has developed its’ little faults: from bad marketing to an over-abundance of rules. Not to mention some god-awful changes in the system: I’ve heard…
Where have all the GMs gone?
It’s a little ironic that up until recently, the Open Roleplaying Community Edinburgh (http://orcedinburgh.co.uk) suffered from a lack of players and a venue. Now we’ve got plenty of players and venues… and no one to run RPGs 🙁 Seriously. That’s how much it has changed recently: from what used to be lots of people wanting…
Ruminations & Realisations
As you might have heard, my life has taken an interesting turn recently. As a result of me becoming involved in the The Secret Fire Beta test I blogged about previously, I’ve also become involved in helping to develop the game in some small part. Without breaking an NDA, I’m actually enjoying the creative process,…
Dark Age of Technology
Seriously, that’s what its starting feel like. We’re continually bombarded with information on the news with absolutely no way of checking the veracity. Nowadays all that is important are rumours and speculation; instead of informed and objective reporting. Often on the news there are “people on the ground” or “as it happens” who are asked…
Happy New Year 2011
Note: those of you who remember or have seen Babylon 5 will (hopefully) recognise this sort of summary; a sort of foreshadowing. It was the dying gasps of 2010: a month had hung on too long for everyone. The chaos of the big freeze has left us cold, leaving us all bad-tempered and charity was…