Technical issues

I'm experiencing the following technical issues at the moment:

• I cannot add new blogs to my blogroll - when I open the dialogue box, everything works as it should, except it will not save. I have found a few new blogs over the last week and a bit, but unfortunately I have been unable to share these on the 'roll.
• I cannot comment on my own or any other blog - blogger does not allow me to chose a profile under which I can publish a comment.

I can only hope that these issues will be resolved and amended by the Lords of Google as soon as possible.

The scheduled program will resume after this message.

White Wolf: Print on Demand

This is something I've been thinking about since I found out that White Wolf was going Print on Demand. The hype at the time was that "every book from [their] back-catalogue would become available." Since then I've seen nothing to indicate this is becoming a reality. Until now, that is.

"The PoD catalog currently available on DriveThruRPG is the only stuff they've so far converted to PoD format. Everything which isn't on that list is in the "to do" pile, but depending on the individual book, the availability of original source documents, how easy it is to convert those documents to the proper format, etc., all affect the amount of time it takes to prepare them for PoD. It's a process that takes time, and they've got limited manpower to do it. There's no real way of predicting how long a book will take until they're doing it, so there's no real release schedule. Stuff's ready when it's ready. 

Quote by Ian Watson

Looking at what DriveThruRPG has available in print as per today [link], the list is somewhat dismal. As Watson pointed out in the same post: "Older stuff has been out of print longer, so it's probably got a higher priority for conversion." In practice, this seems to mean that at the moment, unless you're looking for an oWoD-book, you're SOL. I don't know, it seems a little half-assed. If they want to keep people playing their newer lines, they probably should prioritise those, but what do I know. I do know that I want Geist, and I'm not paying the 100 bucks Amazon is asking these days.

Disclaimer: As far as I can tell, Watson is not an employee of WW, nor does he quote an official source. Thus this information, though seemingly accurate, may be considered anecdotal -- a rumour, if you will.

[Picture source: Timothy Bradstrreet]

5.000 gp and an Ice Cream Cone

The user Jetshield posted this little story in the Wizards Community forums. It's a wonderful tale of imagination, roleplaying, and the next generation.


"So there I am, watching my group bicker (in character) about how to get into the Temple of Akargon to retrieve the Rod of Improbability that's rumored to be there. The little one (she's 7), comes in from the next room, taps on one of my player's shoulder to get his attention, and says "I've got the key I can sell you."

Re: Your Dungeon Is Suck

Over a year ago, my blog-surfing led me to a blog named Your Dungeon Is Suck. I scanned a few of the top posts, and quickly dismissed it as immature, anonymous mudslinging of the uninspired type. Then I moved on. Since then I've seen this blog mentioned here and there, and I've also read a post or two. It stays true to form. It sometimes puzzles me that this type of garbage attracts an audience, then I remember that the internets are full of losers, bullies and piss-ants.


Had Your Dungeon Is Suck at least been written by someone with enough integrity to put his own name, and maybe even a picture, to his profile, I might have been inclined to look for nuggets of satire in the steady stream of filth. It is not. It is instead an example of the bad side of the web -- the side where the inadequate feel empowered by their anonymity, and where they use this power to see how much they can hurt other people.


I cannot respect the person hiding behind Your Dungeon Is Suck, nor can I respect the cackling choir that seems to frequent that particular digital dung-heap. He and his followers represent the absolute low of this community.

From my shelves: Leviathan

One of the things that naturally follows...er...precedes moving is packing. While boxing my RPG-books yesterday, I had to stop more than once to leaf through a tome I'd half forgotten. I'll readily admit there are books I probably wouldn't ever remember, should I decide to part with them, but there are also some treasures amongst them. One of these is Grendel's Leviathan. This "post-apocalyptic fantasy battle system" was published in -95, and I assume it never made it big.



I picked it up in a discount-bin sometime shortly after Y2K, not because I wanted a mini-game, but because of the artwork by Adrian Smith. Once I'd read through the fluff-section, I came to like the setting as well. The five factions of the game are dwarves, elves, goblins, humans and orcs. While this is far from innovative in and of it self, these five pieces should illustrate some of what's made me remember Leviathan. The goblins have become my standard go-to-goblins for my fantasy games, and the elves became the First Fallen of Argos. As for the steampunk dwarves, they're just too cool for school.


I did some light looking, and Leviathan-minis are still available, for those of you who have such inclinations.


EDIT: Yup, there's also a blog dedicated to this game. I love the internets.

Some art to ease you over

Lately Blogger has been making some decisions on it's own as to when certain posts should become public. For that reason, today's post appeared on your feed/reader a few hours before it was ready, tomorrow's did the same just now. To avoid people coming here to read about the Painted Man when there is no new post on that subject up as of yet, I'm giving you something else to occupy you with while I'm finishing up for the day.

As I've mentioned, I had the opportunity to visit Tate Modern a week or so ago. One of the artists I was made aware of was Helmut Herzfeld, a.k.a. John Heartfield [Wiki], a pioneer of photomontage. Some of his most famous work was done in the years between World War One and Two, and calling his art political may be an understatement. Since this post is thrown together in a hurry, I'll cut the introduction short and give you the art.

Schweine

The scheduled program will resume shortly. Have a smashing day.

Do you feel motivated?

I came across this site while working on the chapter-post. I just had to share.

A Gentlemen's Duel

Enjoy your day.

Superhero Centennial

In 1911 the first story about a fictional hero with super-powers was published in France. Le Nyctalope, or Léo Saint-Claire as his Christian name was, could see in the dark, and he had an artificial heart. In his first adventure, Le Nyctalope has to stop the evil Oxus from taking over Mars and creating an army of super-soldiers. While his powers seem a little meek by modern standards, they represented a break with the earlier heroes of popular culture. Sherlock Holmes and Rocambole, while being quite extraordinary, were normal humans. The Nyctalope (as he's called in the English translations) represented the dawn of a new age: The Age of the Superheroes.

Scoundrel Days

Trey asked a question about music and roleplaying. Just to illustrate, this album is probably the one with the most rotation over the last year.

Comrade Baggins

In 1976, The Hobbit was published in the USSR. The fantasy-classic was illustrated by Mikhail Belomlinsky, and to be sure, his work has a distinctly different feel. Not at all wrong, just very different. 

A Familiar Face

Advertising on the Book of Worlds

As the astute reader will have noticed, over the last day or so, the Book of Worlds has gotten some new features. Yes, dear reader, I have whored out my blog to Amazon.com. Or, to put a finer point on it, I have opened an Amazon Associates account. In the future, following any links to books or DVD's from this site, if resulting in a purchase, will earn me tons of cash. Or at least a few credits.

I've been considering this for a while, and while I do not want to fill the site with ads, I have decided that I'll try this on for size. I've been linking to books for a while, in posts, and under the "Currently reading" header in the sidebar, I've also reviewed a couple, both books and movies. Now I may get a little something out of it.

I've also created an Associates-store, where I've hand-picked a few titles. Should you buy anything through it, I'll get a small kick-back. This will also be accessible through the widget below the blog-roll.

I would greatly appreciate any feedback on this. Is it too much, do you think it's an improvement, etc.


Now to something else.

Apocalypse When?

Trey over at the Sorcerer's Skull alerted me to the end of the world being scheduled for this last Saturday. As we've all now reached a safe distance to 21 May 2011, regardless of where we are in relation to the date-line, I think it is safe to say that yet again, Ragnarok has been delayed.


Now, being a grown man in this day and age makes me more than a little sceptical towards such things. As a child in the 80's, the threat of nuclear holocaust was very much a part of my childhood. I grew up in a part of Norway where Soviet noise-transmitters occasionally blocked the radio-waves, and the Iron Curtain was a vivid part of my imagination. Then there was the Y2K. We, the human race, survived even that bad boy. Fear not, there's always another end in sight, and the next widely publicised date is 21 December 2012.


Given all these near-misses, there's no wonder the end of world is so popular in fiction. Our own culture sure has done it's best to keep the nightmare alive. God alone knows how many apocalyptic, and post-apocalyptic, role-playing games were published during the 80's and 90's; I've played a good handful of them, but those are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.


A novel, and most daring approach to this topic was executed by White Wolf, with pretty much every line they published up until 2004 promising total destruction. They even put it in the name of one of their lines: Werewolf: the Apocalypse. Vampire: the Masquerade, though more surreptitiously named, rode the pale horse of the Göterdämmerung relentlessly all the way in to the sun... er... rise. The end of the world didn't come in time, and in the end, that killed the game. Now there's irony for you. Note that the nWoD lines tread very carefully around anything smelling remotely like doomsday prophecies.


Even my own setting has it's widely prophesied End of the World. Actually, there are a couple... I blame popular media.


I wont delve into a lengthy harangue about why we have the hots for the Rapture, but I'll just note that we do, and we've always done. The ancients lived in constant fear of it, the year 1000 was believed to be the end by those who knew about such things at the time (I picture it having been a little like Y2K, only without the internet), as was 1666 AD (for obvious reasons, I would say). Our history is full of missed apocalypses, and I dare predict there'll be a few more before the end.


So, while we wait for 2012 to roll around, next time you mock the prophet who fails to deliver fire from the heavens, I suggest you turn to Deuteronomy 18:22:

"When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing doth not follow, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.

Till next time, unless the zombies get us first.
 

 
 
[Picture source: Treehugger]

A New Hope: Gaming With an Eight Year Old

I've been away for a while, but that doesn't mean that I've been abstaining. No, sir (or madam, whatever the case might be). I managed to keep the once-weekly going. I've even GM-ed a little.

As far as the GM-ing goes, I ran a session with the GF and The Punk, her eight year old son. Now that was an interesting experience. As most boys between six and sixteen, he is a proper space-cadet. His attention span is that of your average hamster, but he makes up for it with imagination in spades. Big spades. More like industrial-grade earth movers, actually.

The game was Star Wars d20, and The Punk is a proper little fan-boy. He got the choice of Rebellion or Clone Wars, and chose the former. Going through character creation, he picked Trandoshan as his race. He also picked Soldier as his class, as he wanted to be able to climb walls, and to kill badguys. His main mellee weapon was a vibro-ax, and he also had a heavy blaster. In addition to this, he wanted vibrodaggers. Lots of them. Once he had made the choices, I did the crunching and point-distributions – at this point he was busy acting out how his hero, Ssneckeyes, was dispatching his enemies in droves (sound-effects included).

The GF made herself a Droid, and the plan was for her to help The Punk with rules and such, and me with keeping him more or less on track. This proved to be a brilliant strategy, as once in game, our biggest challenge was to keep him thinking inside, or at least close to, the box. He had no problem whatsoever getting involved in the plot, and he did some pretty good roleplaying in the set-up phase of the adventure. Combat was more of a challenge, though. 

In the main encounter, he first dropped his axe so that he could drive his claws through the skull of a security officer. He never touched his blaster (I guess Ssneckeyes is more of a close-quarters kind of guy), and used his daggers only as single-charge items (one was thrust through the skull of an enemy and left there). The challenge quickly proved to be how to encourage him to use the system to channel his imagination, as opposed to letting him discard the rules and godmode the entire battle. The result, somewhat influenced by really crappy dice-rolling all around, ended up as one of the most entertaining combat-sequences I've run in a long while. Again with plenty of sound-effects included.

Once all the enemies had been defeated, The Punk was pretty tired, and he politely asked if this was a Save Point. I guess it's no wonder some newer RPGs tend to mimic computer games...

I'll drop a few lines on my player-experiences a little later, but to provide a small spoiler, let me give you a few hints: Call of Cthulhu, Nunavut, and an Arctic marine-expedition.

Take care, and to quote the Californian, "I hope you get some gaming done this weekend."

[Picture source: LucasArts]

Blockage no longer a problem

I've been on vacation for a while now, and for some reason I left my computer at home. Why I did such a foolish thing is something I can't provide a good answer for, but there it is. I'll be back home in a week, and then I will no longer have an excuse for not posting. I have missed it, and I am both touched and grateful for the encouraging words some of you have taken the time to leave in my absence. To those of you who have become followers while I have been in the doldrums, I hope to make it worth your while.

So, where have I been hiding, you may ask? The answer is Canada. I have mentioned this before, but the reason for me having spent the last weeks on the left side of the Atlantic is that I intend to move here quite shortly. I have found myself a girl on these far shores, and since she happens to have a couple of wee'uns, I'll do as many of my countrymen have done before me; I will cross the ocean and try my luck in the Americas.

I hope to have a post or two for you over the next few days, but I make no promises. Now I have a baker's dozen of other blogs to stop by, and I can't wait to see what you've been up to lately.

See you guys in a bit.

[Artist: Christian Krohg]

Blogger's Block

Yup. It's official, I've got it. I have a handful of drafts, but I just can't get them finished. So for now, enjoy this picture of the statue of Arkon commissioned by King Rowar II for the Sovereign Square in Crondor.

See you again when I get my head out of my ass.


[Picture source: Ray Lederer]

Back to Business

I've got my technical issues sorted, and I'm back up. I've got several posts on my list, and I hope to get them out there over the next week. First up is the last three sessions, one of them a one-on-one with Bomb-master Bansl, and one being Yolander's last chapter for now -- Håvard is out on paternity leave for the foreseeable future. I'll try to cover them in one posting, and if I can keep my focus, that should be up before I turn in for the night...


As for those of you who've got blogs out there, I am looking forward to catching up on your ramblings and musings.


EDIT: Nope. Won't be posting more tonight. I'll finish the chapter-post tomorrow.

Technical Problems

As I am having some severe technical issues, I have not been posting the last few days, nor will I for at least a couple more, most likely not this week. I'm working on getting it fixed, and will return to the scheduled program shortly.




Picture unrelated; source: Zdizislaw Beksinski