Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Book Fetish: Warhammer 40k RPG

Can you be into RPGs and not have even a mild case of book fetishism? I know I've got it bad. This would have been tempting if I'd seen it before they were sold out. Still, I can't help but think that a battered leather cover with large buckles, bronze-capped corners, and a few purity seals might have been more appropriate, and infinitely cooler.

Monday, December 10, 2007

A Deep Look Into the Unmentionable Comparison

Yep, it's time for another round of "You got your MMOG in my D&D 4th edition!" Only this time, it's from the point of view of someone who is primarily a MMOGer. Aggro Me actually does a very nice job of piecing together the clues and extrapolating the potential outcomes. It's a bit of a longer read, but definitely worth your time if you're interested in either the next iteration of D&D or MMOGs.

What? No Trollsmyth?!?

Yax over at Dungeon Mastering has listed his "completely arbitrary" top 50 RPG web sites. Even though his list is woefully inadequate, especially considering the lack of RPG artist sites or any mention of trolls what-so-ever, there's more than enough linky goodness to burn an entire holiday season of lazy, cold afternoons.

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Google Ad to Art

I keep my eye on the ads that get pasted at the top of the page. Mostly, I'm just curious about the sorts of products will be returned by the algorithms' perusing of my writings. I also like to know what sort of things are being promoted on my blog. A few times I've been inspired to remove the ads altogether, but it's always been more trouble than I've had time for, and so they remain.

Just lately, there was a link to this gallery of fantasy art. It's a fun perusal, though there's not much that's new there. I was surprised to find what appears to be a (NSFW) Frazetta cover for one of the Flashman novels.

Anyway, I suggest spending a bit of time checking it out. In spite of the odd organization (like lumping Frazetta's work with Boris Valejo and Julie Bell's which, yeah, I can kinda see why, but...) it's a neat collection.

- Brian

Tieflings = Melniboneans?

Well, not exactly. Melniboneans had their pacts with the gods of Chaos. D&D 4th edition tieflings, apparently, had their pacts with devils which, in older versions of D&D, were lawful evil. This comes from ENWorld's news of December 9th:

Tieflings are not human and demonic offspring, but are the true-breeding descendants of an ancient empire that made dark and terrible pacts with the Nine Hells. Their fiendish visage is actually a manifestation of a curse, due to their progenitors' crimes. They're more closely tried to devils than demons.
I'd love to give you a direct link, but I'm not seeing how to do that just now. :p If you can find it, there's lots of neat stuff from the "Races and Classes" preview book for 4th edition D&D.

Saturday, December 08, 2007

Paizo's Harrow Deck

Ok, I'll admit it: I'm a sucker for cards and tarot-based knock-offs. Paizo's working on one that is wonderfully tied into the mythology of D&D:

The Harrow deck is our fortune-telling tool for this Adventure Path. The deck itself is a 54-card deck broken down into six suits of nine cards each. While, in-game, these six suits and the card images themselves are "in character," it draws a lot of its inspiration from the mechanics of the game as well. The deck's six suits each symbolize one of the six basic attributes all characters are built around: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. And in each of those six suits, we have nine different cards for each of the nine alignments. Therefore, we have a chaotic evil Wisdom card, a neutral good Strength card, a lawful neutral Dexterity card, and so on.


Now if they can build a rules mechanic around it, I'd be in heaven. Granted, I doubt I'd ever get to play the game, just as I doubt I'll ever get to play my tarot-based mechanic for Fading Suns that languishes in rough-note form, but it'd still warm my heart to know such a thing existed.

Savage Solomon

S.S. Pequod has a nice little overview of the Savage Worlds RPG system. It was inspired by recent playing of the new Solomon Kane game.

Yep, it's REH all the time over here.