Old School Sampler PDF Bundle

Yes, I'm lifting this from Lamentations of the Flame Princess. I doubt Jim minds all that much ;)

Brave Halfling Publishing's OSRIC adventure People of the Pit by Alphonso Warden
Expeditious Retreat Press' OSRIC adventure The Lost Keys of Solitude by Joseph Browning and Suzi Yee
Goblinoid Games' Labyrinth Lord adventure Idol of the Orcs by James Boney
LotFP's adventure for oldschool system in particular Death Frost Doom by... Jim

Listen up. Its good, quality gaming at a discounted price. It's hard to go wrong.

Here's the RPGNow link: Old School Sampler PDF Bundle

In Between Games... Gaming Purgatory

Still not participating in a regular FG2 game. The recently canceled C&C game may be resurrected as a once a month campaign, but I'm not sure how much of the old group will make the transition.

Looks like Aion is the new MMORPG of choice for my gaming group. Will probably take the plunge for 2 subs for the kid and I. It not easy being the father of a fellow gamer... and it aint cheap either ;)

I've been reading the latest issue of Fight On! (issue 6 I believe) on my DX and it reads really well, both visually on the DX and in the quality of the articles. They announced a fiction contest which I MIGHT decide to participate in. I am brainstorming in my spare time to come up with a concept. I have until the end of October but need to get myself in gear if I want to have any kind of a shot.

Astak Pocket Pro - In Hand and Testing

My Astak Pocket Pro arrived bright and early at 915 in the morning yesterday. Its a good thing I over slept and adjusted my plans, or I would have missed the delivery.

First things first, you get alot for your $199... E-Reader, case, headphones, wrist strap, USB cord, AC adapter for USB cord, even a screw driver to open the battery compartment if you want to swap batteries.

As for how well it works as a book reader: I've tried different formats and so far so good, although there are some formats where I wish the font size change was more gradual.

PDFs work better then I expected for a 5" screen (I haven't looked at many yet). The PDF reflow isn't as bad as I expected, but it saves itself from messing up charts by not reflowing pages with charts on them. This can mean a page with a chart is displayed in such a small pitch size as to be nearly unreadable. I'll r need to give this a real workout.

Astak Pocket Pro has Shipped

My Astak Pocket Pro has shipped, but FedEx is supposed to make a Saturday delivery, but I won't be home most of the day, damn it!

At best it looks like I won't see it until Tuesday. I'm anxious to see how well it handles my RPG PDFs. I'd never give up my Kindle DX, but for portability the Astak Pocket Pro looks like it will have a real edge.

Rolemaster Classic Ruleset for FG2 is Released

Here's the post from the FantasyGrounds.com website:

Rolemaster Classic Ruleset Now For Sale!

Digital Adventures, LLC and Iron Crown Enterprises present the Rolemaster Ruleset for Fantasy Grounds II! Nearly two years in the making, this ruleset features some of the most innovative Fantasy Grounds programming to date, giving both Game Masters and Players all the tools they need to enjoy this classic RPG online. In addition to including the full text for the Character Law, Arms Law, Spell Law, and Creatures & Treasures remakes of the original game, the Rolemaster Class Ruleset for Fantasy Grounds II features fully automated combat and spell effects resolution! This automation allows for quick play online, or around your local gaming table.

The CEO of Iron Crown, Bruce Neidlinger has been a driving force in seeing this project come to fruition. "ICE is delighted with this electronic conversion of Rolemaster Classic to be played online using Fantasy Grounds II. This abmitious project brings the full Rolemaster experience to the Internet, with its automated combat allowing for speedy play with your friends all around the world! This is exactly the product we have been waiting for!"

The following is included in the Rolemaster Classic Ruleset:

• The complete text of the core Rolemaster Classic rules: Arms Law; Spell Law; Character Law; and Creatures and Treasures.

• Fully automated look-up for combat and spell rolls: resolve attacks and spell results in just a few clicks.

• Resolve critical strikes and spell effects, plus fumbles and spell failures with ease.

• Includes 30 individual weapon attack tables, seven spell attack tables, and dozens of criticals and fumbles.

• Includes more than 2,000 spell descriptions, across 162 spell lists, and three realms of power.

• Rules for 20 character professions, including 15 spell-casting professions, and over five dozen skills from which to choose.

• Descriptions and stats for hundreds of monsters, animals and fantasy races, including Dragons, Demons, Elementals and Giants.

• Hordes of treasure, both sparkling and magical, with guidelines for generating the treasures to go with your monsters.

• Supports optional rules to add depth and flavor to your RoleMaster campaign.

• Drag and drop weapons, skills and spells directly onto your character sheet from the core rule books.

• Automate the combat sequence, with a fully-featured combat tracker linked to graphical battle maps.

• Play this much-loved role-playing game with remote friends all over the world, old and new.

The Rolemaster Classic Ruleset for Fantasy Grounds II will be available available at Digital Adventures Online Store (http://www.digitaladventures.net/catalog/), the Fantasy Grounds Store https://www.fantasygrounds.com/store/), and any One Book Shelf affiliate for the price of $20.00. ::end quote::

I'll be picking this up before the week is out, even if its just to play with the tables. Screw C&C... I want to get into a RoleMaster game now! heh

The Call of Cthulhu rulest rocked. If nothing else I'll run a oneshot with my MMORPG/ Old Face to Face group around Halloween.

And so it goes... or doesn't, as the case may be

Lets see. The Dark Heresy weekly Fantasy Grounds 2 game lasted about a year before tanking mid spring. It was fun while it last, but the core was down to 2 originals plus the GM, and when the other original (not me) announced he was taking a break from gaming altogether... long, slow gaming death. Think it took 3 weekly sessions of non-gaming to realize we weren't going to be gaming. That frees up Tuesday nites.

Then the weekly, Saturday nite, FG2, Castles and Crusades game was cruising along until the end of May. Hiatus until the first week of August due to vacations, school, trips and such. Fine and dandy, but what happens to your favorite TV show when they announce it is going on hiatus? Yup, it never comes back. That's the current situation. Our GM, Sak, started a new business with his wife over the break and was also suffering from GM burnout. Which is a damn shame, as Tenkar, my Dwarven Cleric, had just hit 3rd level and I was so looking forward to my new second level spells.

So, If any read this and have an opening in their VTT game (I have Fantasy Grounds 2. Maptools, Klooge, Screenmonkey, Battleground and iTabletop... holy crap that alot of VTTs) just drop a post here on my blog. I'm in EST and Friday evenings and Sundays are basically spoken for (the g/f is understanding, but no need to needlessly piss her off ;)

Pathfinder Confessions

I'm a PDF junkie as most will have realized from reading my posts on this blog. That being said I've been subscribing to the Pathfinder Adventure Path since the first issue, and get some other Pathfinder products as they interest me. In print direct from Paizo (give me a PDF copy for free... Woot!)

I did not pre-order the new Paizo Core rulebook. I figured I had the beta book in print and the PDF was just going to be 10 bucks... why waste 50 on a game i'd probably just read and never run?

Then I downloaded the Core rules, saw the shiny, sweet, holy mystery there is a higher being... simply amazing artwork. Beautiful layout. I finally succumbed and ordered the book thru Amazon for 32 or so plus shipping earlier this morning. I had to. No choice in the matter. Besides, it's probably too frickin' huge to read comfortably on the DX ;)

The World of Onn: Supplement 1 for Swords & Wizardry

Look at me. I'm actually getting around to doing yet another short and dirty RPG review. Swords & Wizardry has been getting lots of love recently, what with the excellent quickstart rules earlier this summer and now a fully loaded supplement.

The World of Onn: Supplement 1 (hereafter referred to as Sup 1) gives a lot of meat for its 5 buck price take in PDF format on Lulu. 145 pages of mix and match rules, new classes, new spells, new monsters, new treasure and even some maps and info on the world of Onn.

Hell, I'm still waiting to put a S&W or LL game together and just flipping thru the pages of Sup 1 has me even more hungry to do so. Use what you want and leave behind the rest.

Personally, I like adding classes, and the ones brought to the table: Ranger, Divine Champion, Illusionist, Bard, Druid and Shao Disciple bring back some of AD&D's options without all the complexity (but still more complexity them S&W unadulterated). Count me as pleased, as I was toying with doing some of this myself.

5 outa 5 for quality and value. DX-ability is also a 5. Looks very nice and extremely readable on the DX.

Midnight the Movie - the Review

Short and sweet: not bad at all! Much better then either of the two Dungeons & Dragons movies that were released. It's a real shame that it was intended as the intro to a TV series that just never panned out.

It really has gotten me to want to dig out my Midnight source books from the bottom of the closet, but since I ordered the movie with the extra PDFs for an extra 5 bucks I can probably add it to my DX for convenient reading.

Damn, its been a while since I've done a DX-ability review of anything. Time for me to get off my ass ;)

Pathfinder RPG PDF Non-Review ;)

This is a quicky: The Pathfinder RPG PDF is a beauty to behold. I haven't done much more then look at the pretty pictures on my computer screen and think "wow, I wish I I had ordered the printed book!" Heh

I'm sure it will work fine of the kindle dx, as you have the option to DL it as either one big file or by chapters. Still, that will need to wait for when I have the time to dig into that RPG 10 course dinner ;)

Midnight the Movie is released on RPGNow

Midnight, the straight to download on RPGNow movie has been released (link is to the trailer). Twenty minutes into the full movie and it is already better then the first Dungeons and Draons movie by leaps and bounds... not that that feat is all that hard.

Midnight is a setting where the Dark Lord defeated the forces of good, and has enslaved the world for the past 100 years. This is the Lord of the Rings gone bad, story wise that is. Production quality is on par with some of SciFi Channels mid to lower end made for tv movies. Still, the first 20 minutes have been enjoyable so far ;)

As a RPG setting it is one I have wanted to play or DM for a while. Assuming the other players don't mind a world where things are hopeless and success in the long run is damn near impossible. Kinda like Warhammer in that regard I guess... heh

Korgoth Of BARBARIA!!!!!!

Oh My Freakin' God! How did I ever miss this? Korgoth Of BARBARIA!!!!!! Best frickin cartoon evah! Heh, shame its just a pilot and was never picked up by Adult Swim.

Astak 5” EZ Reader Pocket PRO to Ship at the end of August

Yeah, I know I seem to have ebook readers on my mind recently... well, ore so then usual. It just seems that there are more new releases then usual ;)

Here's the skinny on the Pocket Pro: 8 shades of greyscale, PDF reflow (may or may not be a selling point... was spotty on my sony), uses SD cards up to 16 gb, text to speech (and at 100 bucks cheaper then the Kindle 2), and reads a crapload of formats: ADE (Adobe Digital Editions), PDF, TXT, PDB, DOC, HTML, FB2, LIT, MP3, EPUB, PRC and some others.

I'm not going to call this a Kindle killer, but PDF use and text to speech for less then 200 bucks is damn attractive and tempting. Hmmm, if it could read PDFs to me I could go to sleep with an RPG lullaby...

So, before you ask, yes I placed a preorder on a black one... I have Lit files that I just can't read on my Kindle ;)

New E-Bok Readers Coming From Sony

The Sony 300 will hit at a price point of $199. It will read PDFs via reflow, which has been spotty at best when used with RPG products (I have current Sony reader qith reflow and generally have not been pleased with the results). It does not appear to have any expansion memory like an SD card and it is indicated that it will hold 350 books - I doubt that is 360 books in PDF format.

The Sony 600 has SD and Memory Stick Duo slots for expansion, a touch screen, a stylus and the ability to take notes. It will have a price point of $299 (same as the kindle2). While it might be a real competition to Amazon as an ebook reader, as a PDF reader the DX will probable still be the better choice, especially for gamers.

EnWorld - Its Up, Its Down - Part II

EnWorld is getting to be a waste of time to even attempt to visit. Damn shame. It's still too damn slow!

I'm thinking of not checking it again for a month or so, but I expect it will still suck to load even then.

Ah well, there are other places to play on the net.

A Week Later... Where Did it Go?

I just realized its been a week since I added anything of use to this thing we call the "internet".  Its been a busy week, what with birthdays, work, vacation, health scares... that thing we call life is a real biatch.

So now I'm stuck staring out a crap load of PDFs I'm waiting to read and thanks to the fine posters over at Dragonsfoot I stumble across this truely bizarre and highly entertaining review of RIFTS.  RIFTS and I go way back:  The first and only GenCon I ever attended was the year RIFTS was released, and I got my copy of the rules signed by the two Kevins.  RIFTS holds a special place in my gaming heart despite the failings of the system iteslf... the fluff was simply amazing.

I'll see if I can do something productive tomorrow... don't hold your breath ;)

Kobold Quarterly 10 - Capsule Review

Well, I have a print and PDF subscription of Kobold Quarterly and just received the print copy in the mail today and it is a beauty to behold. 3.5e and 4e in the same package. Only problem was when I started flipping thru the magazine... I realized I read most of it already... in PDF on my DX. I downloaded my copy on sunday ;)

I give the mag a steady 5 for quality... you can pick up any issue and be sure that it will be top notch. DX-abiity is a solid 5.

On a side note, EnWorld is loading... slow as frozen molasses flowing uphill, but loading none the less.

EnWorld - Its Up, Its Down

I happen to enjoy the EnWorld site. I enjoy it enough to be a community supporter (I'm actually a paying customer). So, what have I been getting recently? This wonderful message:

Traffic is through the roof at the moment. The effect should die down in a day or so, but we've had to temporarily cap the number of users online to 3000 or so in order to keep the site running at all. Once traffic drops down to below 3000 or so users, we'll remove the cap. Apologies for the inconvenience!

So, let me get this straight... when traffic drops below 3000, they'll remove the restriction of the traffic exceeding 3000. Sure, that makes LOTS of sense.

I haven't been able to get into the site for the past few days, and there have been days this summer where I haven't gotten anything but a web page that times out.

All I want for my yearly donation is to actually be able to access the site I've been donating too. Is that too much to ask? Maybe priority login for Community Supporters, or maybe even adding some bandwidth.

Hmmm, is it even technically a donation or more like an optional user fee for additional privileges?

I'm ranting because I can. I'm ranting here because I can't rant on a site I can't even log in to.

Castles & Crusades: Season 2 starts August 8th

Yes, the Company of Delvers weekly Saturday night session will return on August 8th. By that point it wil have been nearly 2 months since our last C&C Fantasy Grounds 2 game (we've been on a summer hiatus).

Tenkar, my Dwarven Cleric (who'da guessed? heh) just hit 3rd level at the end of last session. This opens up a whole lot of possibilities for Tenkar now... or if not a whole lot, then a wee bit more then being the secondary tank / healbot. Not that he didn't fill those roles well, but sometime a third dimension (in this case 2nd level spells) should add a little to my so far usualy strategy of "knock heads, heal tanks... rinse, repeat".

I find that C&C plays very close to AD&D in practice. As my younger gaming years were mostly AD&D, it has made the transition to using a VTT nearly painless. Then again, it didn't hurt that I had been playing in a almost weekly Dark Heresy game using FG2.

I am (hopefully) close to running an online gaming session or two myself. I am waiting on iTabletop to see if its all that it appears it will be. Fantasy Grounds I am comfortable as a player, but not as confident in my abilities to actually run a game session.

It's a Circus I Tell Ya!

I never imagined I'd be able to enjoy a podcast. I like to read and listening to people talk amongst themselves is what talk radio is for. So imagine my surprise when I saw that The Free RPG Blog was highlighting RPG podcasts this week.

I was intrigued, and decided to listen to RPG Circus. It was actually entertaining. Yes, mark me surprised. I doubt my girlfriend would want to listen, so headphones are advised to protect your family from the game speak you will find yourself being enthralled by. I listened to episode 3 tonight (the latest as I write this) and it kept me to the end. At over an hour that's pretty damn good. Then again, I'm a multitasker, so I was surfing other blogs at the same time. If you are like me and suffer from GADD (Gamer's Attention Deficit Disorder) DOWNLOAD the podcast and play it back using your favorite media player, otherwise you'll find yourself clicking links on the blog page that relate to the podcast and you'll loss the podcast.

I haven't checked out the other podcasts listed in the article but I'll be listening to them soon for sure. 5 out of 5 on the entertainment scale.