rant Archives - Neitherworld Stories

September 15, 2008

Whose game is it, anyway?

About a week ago, Angela picked up Spore. I’ve tinkered around with it. The character modeling and such is really cool. That’s not what I want to focus on, though. If you look at the Amazon link (above), you’ll note that Spore has a lousy rating. It isn’t because the game is bad (although parts of it seem very oversimplified),...

April 8, 2008

Roleplaying in your own backyard

It seems like most of the modern rpgs that I end up playing in are set in the area I live in… Currently, I’m playing in a Mage campaign set in Champaign-Urbana and a post-apocalyptic game set in Illinois (we haven’t actually been to C-U yet, but we’ll end up there at some point). I have mixed feelings about this...

January 25, 2008

Claw/Claw/Bite

One of the things that made me pretty happy about 3.x D&D was that they made monster attacks more on-par with PC attacks. In earlier versions of the game, for ever time my Thief tried to stab a monster, it could attack me multiple times depending upon how many natural weapons it had. Dragons, with their two claws, bite, wing...

December 14, 2007

WOW! A recipe!

I don’t play World of Warcraft. I’ve never been interested in MMORPGs. Still, I find this sort of offensive. For those too lazy to follow the link, it is to a food blog that I read regularly. It has a recipe for “Murloc Fin Soup” – a bit of Googling tells me that is a soup in WoW that is...

September 12, 2007

Bad Press

Lore Sjöberg thinks he’s funny. He hasn’t been. Not since the Brunching Shuttlecocks… and I suspect that Brunching may have been funny despite him. I sometimes find myself reading his column in Wired – mostly because I follow a link and didn’t realize it would end up on his column. I find that I am invariably sorry I did so....

August 16, 2007

4venture

The 4e announcement depresses me. I am trying to figure out why this is. Some random thoughts: I’m worried that the licensing will change. From what I’ve read, it sounds as if all open-license-fan-material will need to be run through Gleemax. If that is true (and it may not be), it has at least some unpleasant consequences for what I’ve...

May 15, 2007

Zir’an Frustrations

I’m finding preparations to run The Secret of Zir’an to be equal parts awesome and annoying. I’m creating pregenerated characters. Character creation? Awesome… and annoying. The concepts flow quickly. The process of creating a character uses a lifepath-like system that creates a well-rounded PC with unavoidable coolness. Unfortunately, the mechanical bits behind the lifepath system are less than intuitive and...

April 23, 2007

I am lame. (and other news)

It appears that I completely flaked out yesterday. There was a C-U Run Club meeting scheduled that I just missed. I could blame it on hectic work and sleep deprivation, but the truth is that I knew that it was scheduled for the end of April. I knew it was the end of April. I just didn’t put those things...

March 12, 2007

Not for Everyone

Bruce Baugh is writing a supplement to Spirit of the Century focusing upon marginalized (due to race, religion, gender, or whatnot) pulp heroes in the 1920s. Some people love the idea. Some people are skeptical. The usual suspect is spewing the usual vitriol. Me? I’m curious and (cautiously) hopeful. I like some of Bruce Baugh’s stuff. When it was published,...

January 25, 2007

Complete Scoundrel: First Impressions

I’m feeling updatey today. This isn’t really going to be a review. I’ve skimmed through the book, but I haven’t read it in detail. I’ve already talked a bit about skill tricks and luck feats – two of the more notable things included in the Complete Scoundrel. After skimming through it, what do I think? I think this book would...

Tag: rant