Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Obscure 80s Swords & Sorcery Movie Trailers

Not all S&S actually, there's also a nice post-apocalyptic trailer featuring Patrick Swayze thrown in there (thanks Big Buck!)...

WARNING: One or more of these trailers may have boobs in them! If you are outraged by boob imagery please surf yourself to the next website. Thank you, friends.













Monday, December 20, 2010

Greg Benedicto is Back: GORGONMILK!

Glad news, friends! Greg Benedicto, the past proprietor of the esteemed and extinct Eiglophian Press and Quantique web logs, is back!

Please now train your attention on GORGONMILK!

Understanding Crappy Dice Apologists

Pry these sparkle dice from my hands at your own peril, villain!

Let's say your elf was stabbing a mean little orc and you had to roll d6 for damage. I hand you a d7 with two "1"s on it (i.e. 1,1,2,3,4,5,6). Would you be cool with that?

Apparently a lot of roleplayers would be totally cool with this.

Indeed, this is the magnitude of inaccuracy in cheap d6s, according to this 2006 study based on 144,000 dice rolls using replicates of dice from different manufacturers. Both Chessex and Games Workshop dice showed this level of inaccuracy - actually a bit worse than this, on average.

Trivial? Insignificant? Meaningless given the small number of rolls in a session? Ummm. Not really...

The study I cite has been discussed endlessly in the various gaming forums over the last several years, yet most roleplayers still don't seem to care in the least that their dice might be way way off. I find the psychology here to be very interesting and quite different from the other gaming subcultures I've crossed paths with.

I spent some years playing Magic: The Gathering and, later, strategy boardgames. In Magic I could not conceive of any player ever being okay with slipping a fifth replicate of a card into a deck (you're only allowed four). In boardgaming, likewise I could scarcely imagine a player showing up to a game of Settlers of Catan or Stone Age with their own funky dice for their own personal use. This would immediately create suspicion amongst the other players, whether it was at a tournament or a dining room table. So why is this okay in roleplaying games?

It's fascinating to read the viewpoints of the dice inaccuracy apologists who responded to my previous post, or this spin-off discussion at RPGSite. A lot of people are quite open about how they are more concerned about the color of their dice - the way they sparkle in the fluorescent basement light or the way they glisten when coated in Cheeto grease - than how they function. One player used the RPGSite thread as a chance to show off a picture of the heavily worn early-80s TSR dice he stills plays with. Obviously these dice have significant nostalgic value to this person, which I can totally understand. I don't think this person would ever argue that his dice roll accurately, however.

Ultimately it turns out that many roleplayers value aesthetics over function when it comes to dice. Dice are symbols, "potent totems of gamer culture" as S. John Ross puts it, that players use to communicate aspects of their identities. The person with the dirty old Dragon Dice is old school... the person with the sparkle dice is a fancy-pants... the person with the 100 cheapies is well-prepared... the person with the sack of 23 weird dice is superstitious. And so on.

Upon reflection, I actually think this is kind of cool and is part of what makes the RPG world such a fun and interesting place. I love gaming with oddball eccentrics, including people that speak in funny voices and wear felt elf hats. Of course a lot of these kinds of folks are going to have complex emotional relationships with their dice. You know what? It's fine with me... For the record, I have never discussed dice accuracy at a game session, much less asked somebody not to use their personal dice. I welcome players to bring and use their special juju dice - this is a charming and idiosyncratic roleplaying tradition that I do not wish to change. I value the cultural weirdness of dice traditions more than I am concerned about a given players' roll outcome accuracy.

On the other hand, I can think of no reasonable excuse for why a DM should not make an effort to use accurate dice. I am of the traditional view that a DM should strive to be an impartial referee, and this would include allowing players to expect fair dice rolls. I would be interested in hearing a rational argument for why a DM shouldn't invest $5-10 in a set of good dice.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Free to a Good Ho-ho-home: Vance, Dunsany Books

I need to thin out my paperbax stax a bit. I'm emulating Scott Driver here by trying to increase coolness in the world by giving out cool books to cool people. I have a big old stack of books to get rid of, including some Epic Illustrated and Heavy Metal magazines. I will be giving stuff away in small batches over time. Here's the first batch! Ho ho ho!

I will send any of these books to you free via U.S. Media Mail. Here are the rules:

1. The first person to leave a comment claiming a book gets it.
2. I will only ship to U.S. addresses (due to postage fees).
3. On your honor you do not already own the book and you are seriously interested in reading it.
4. One book per person per giveaway.
5. You must email me your delivery address (via my blogger profile) the same day you claim the book, or else the next person in line gets it.

Today's offerings:
 Jack Vance - To Live Forever

Jack Vance - Galactic Effectuator

Jack Vance - Emphyrio

Lord Dunsay - The King of Elfland's Daughter

Friday, December 17, 2010

Captain Beefheart Died Today

Bye Captain...


Damn this is hitting me pretty hard. I was obsessed with Captain Beefheart when I was a teenager. I even used to have his old big green easy chair in my bedroom. He lived near my house when I was growing up and I hung out with some of his acid damaged buddies in the diners and trailer parks of Lancaster, California. I don't know how many hundreds of times I've listened to Trout Mask Replica.

Forbidding Players From Using Crappy Chessex Dice?

It seems like 99% of roleplayers use the round-edged dice produced by the major dice manufacturers. These dice have rounded edges because they are dipped in paint and then tumbled. This wears the surface off of the dipped dice, smoothing the edges and leaving paint only in the numbers. Tumbling does not wear the surface of the dice evenly, however; it results in the dice taking on an irregular egg-shape. These egg-shaped dice produce a non-random distribution of roll outcomes. Gamblers call these "cheater dice". Most gamers call these "Chessex" or "Games Workshop" dice. I have one Chessex d20 that is so bad that it looks like an egg-shaped marble.

Is it fair to ask players not to use their crappy Chessex dice? I mean, if they feel that one of their dipped-n-tumbled dice is "lucky", it probably DOES have biased outcomes. Isn't this cheating?

I always bring a pile of precision-edged GameScience and casino dice to the games I run. I hand out sets to all the players. Yet some players - especially gamers at conventions - insist on using their own dice. The only other gamers I've seen using precision dice are the hardcore old school roleplayers. Why is this? It seems like if someone is obsessive enough to learn how to play a game with 576 pages of rules, they might spend a few minutes thinking about how their dice function.

This is kind of an academic question, of course. I would never kick off a session asking someone to tuck away their favorite "lucky" dice. This decreases joy. I guess I am just ranting here because I am surprised by how many people who fancy themselves as serious gamers use shit-ball dice. I am even more surprised that most game shops don't carry, or even know about, precision polyhedrals.

The thing I am most surprised by, though, is that every second of my life has lead up to this moment where I actually sat down and wrote a nerd-rage blog post about rounded vs. sharp edged 20-sided dice. Sigh...

Rant over. Thanks for stopping by!

NOTE: I wrote this post assuming it was made clear to everyone years ago that Chessex and GW dice are extremely inaccurate. Some of the comments suggest that many people still think the inaccuracies of these dice are insignificant. I direct you to this 2006 experimental study from an engineering class at ASU on Chessex and GW d6s. On average they are over 12% off.

Hottest Blog List: LOTFP and HILL CANTONS Rule!

Here's a list of 235 old school roleplaying-related blogs ranked by the number of followers they gained between 1 November and 16 December. I am ranking blogs using this system - as opposed to raw follower number - in order to determine which blogs are "hottest" without being biased by how long a blog has been around. My main motivation for making this list is to highlight the blogs that are currently attracting the most reader attention irregardless of the blogs' age.

My usual blogometric caveats apply: (1) This list only has blogger.com blogs because follower numbers are not publicly available for WordPress blogs. (2) Yes, I know some blogs are missing. If your blog is on my big blog list as of today, it will be in the next ranking. If your blog is not on my list and you want to be included, please send me the link.

Please go HERE to find direct links to all of these blogs, as well as the fine WordPress blogs I sadly could not include here.

Congratulations to James Edward Raggi IV (LotFP),


Rank
Blog Name
1-Nov
16-Dec
Change
1
LotFP: RPG
274
320
46
2
Hill Cantons
50
94
44
3
GROGNARDIA
685
726
41
4
Gothridge Manor
96
133
37
5
Swords Against the Outer Dark
142
172
30
6
Risus Monkey
75
103
28
7
Cyclopeatron
151
177
26
7
In Places Deep
51
77
26
8
HUGE RUINED PILE
111
136
25
9
Playing D&D With Porn Stars
538
561
23
9
World of Wonder
52
75
23
10
Aeons & Augauries
68
90
22
10
Destination Unknown
114
136
22
11
Lord of the Green Dragons
223
244
21
12
Errant
17
37
20
12
Tenkar's Tavern
63
83
20
12
What a horrible night to have a curse...
65
85
20
13
A Paladin In Citadel
198
217
19
14
Axe & Hammer
77
95
18
14
B/X BLACKRAZOR
190
208
18
14
THE LAND OF NOD
87
105
18
14
The Tao of D&D
134
152
18
15
Green Skeleton Gaming Guild
86
103
17
15
The Book of Worlds
28
45
17
15
The Lands of Ara
37
54
17
16
From the Sorcerer's Skull
96
112
16
16
HeroPress
125
141
16
16
The Other Side blog
92
108
16
16
The Underdark Gazette
165
181
16
17
Fabled Lands
54
69
15
17
Gaming All Over The Place
14
29
15
17
In a Dark Cell
7
22
15
18
Beyond the Black Gate
247
261
14
18
The Grumpy Old Troll
27
41
14
19
Dungeons and Digressions
178
191
13
19
Have dice, will travel…
29
42
13
19
The Blog That Time Forgot
66
79
13
19
The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms
66
79
13
20
aldeboran
58
70
12
20
Carto Cacography
38
50
12
20
Forgotten Runes
31
43
12
20
Havards Blackmoor Blog
86
98
12
20
SWORD & SHIELD
32
44
12
20
The Weirdlands of Xhuul
25
37
12
21
Countdown to Game Time
14
25
11
21
Jeffs Gameblog
385
396
11
21
MORE & BIGGER LOOT
9
20
11
21
The Warlock's Home Brew
91
102
11
21
Trollish Delver
22
33
11
22
Age of Ravens
31
41
10
22
Crawdads and Dragons
29
39
10
22
FightingFantasist
48
58
10
22
Jasoomian Dreams
35
45
10
22
OEF
112
122
10
22
Old School Psionics
0
10
10
22
The Lair of the Evil DM
139
149
10
22
Trollsmyth
161
171
10
23
"It's okay; Gary sent us."
89
98
9
23
Bugbears for Breakfast
12
21
9
23
ENCOUNTER
20
29
9
23
EXONAUTS!
52
61
9
23
Hack & Slash
9
18
9
23
I SEE LEAD PEOPLE
168
177
9
23
Warning - Mutagenic Substance
61
70
9
24
A Wizard in a bottle
25
33
8
24
Appendix N
29
37
8
24
Carjacked Seraphim
64
72
8
24
chirine's workbench
34
42
8
24
For A Fistful Of Coppers
28
36
8
24
How to Start a Revolution in 21 Days or Less
120
128
8
24
Teleleli
9
17
8
24
The 25 Mile Hex
15
23
8
24
The Hopeless Gamer
175
183
8
25
Akratic Wizardry
130
137
7
25
Back in '81
103
110
7
25
BigDungeon
9
16
7
25
Daddy Grognard
116
123
7
25
Discourse and Dragons
66
73
7
25
In Like Flynn
41
48
7
25
Like Being Read To From Dictionaries
41
48
7
25
Old School Heretic
42
49
7
25
Sorcery & Super Science!
41
48
7
25
Telecanter's Receding Rules
105
112
7
25
TEMPLE OF DEMOGORGON
116
123
7
25
The Gallery: Russ Nicholson
141
148
7
25
The Jovial Priest
0
7
7
25
The RPG Corner
122
129
7
25
The Savage AfterWorld
97
104
7
25
Threads of Adventure!
36
43
7
26
Greyhawk Grognard
158
164
6
26
Henchman Abuse
17
23
6
26
I Waste The Buddha With My Crossbow
84
90
6
26
Monsters and Manuals
177
183
6
26
My RPG characters
16
22
6
26
Ode to Black Dougal
126
132
6
26
Over the Misty Mountain
7
13
6
26
Save Vs. Poison
76
82
6
26
Some King's Kent
24
30
6
26
Sword and Board
48
54
6
26
Swords of Abandon
29
35
6
26
Tempora Mutantur
12
18
6
26
The City of Iron
9
15
6
26
The Contemptible Cube of Quazar
35
41
6
26
The Grand Tapestry
124
130
6
26
The Keep on the Gaming Lands
110
116
6
26
The Realm of Zhu
9
15
6
26
The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope
196
202
6
27
Asshat Paladins
38
43
5
27
Bat in the Attic
159
164
5
27
Dungeonmum
86
91
5
27
PLANET ALGOL
95
100
5
27
Roles, Rules, and Rolls
54
59
5
27
SAVE OR DIE!
24
29
5
27
Tales from the Flaming Faggot
44
49
5
27
Tankards & Broadswords
118
123
5
27
The Metal Earth
53
58
5
27
Tombs of Horrors
21
26
5
27
Troll and Flame
71
76
5
27
Unfrozen caveman dice-chucker
16
21
5
28
AD&D Grognard
11
15
4
28
Castle Dragonscar
45
49
4
28
Fame & Fortune
16
20
4
28
Lawful Indifferent
39
43
4
28
Middenmurk
23
27
4
28
Rule of the Dice
53
57
4
28
Shouting Into The Void
35
39
4
28
Swords of Minaria
32
36
4
28
The Omnipotent Eye
47
51
4
28
The Wasted Lands
61
65
4
28
Tower of Zenopus
9
13
4
28
Uhluht'c Awakens
77
81
4
29
Attack Plan R
11
14
3
29
ChicagoWiz's RPG Blog
228
231
3
29
Cthulhu's Library
12
15
3
29
Delta's D&D Hotspot
84
87
3
29
Grevious-Injury
14
17
3
29
Joethelawyer's Wondrous Imaginings
98
101
3
29
Let's Make Believe
17
20
3
29
Musings from Myern
7
10
3
29
Old Guard Gaming Accoutrements
119
122
3
29
Oubliette Magazine
30
33
3
29
Reviews from R'lyeh
43
46
3
29
Rustfoot
38
41
3
29
Sham's Grog 'n Blog 
102
105
3
29
Sickly Purple Death Ray
74
77
3
29
Superhero Necromancer
47
50
3
29
The Frothy Friar
47
50
3
29
THE WHEEL OF SAMSARA
42
45
3
29
There's a Bugbear in my Kitchen!
39
42
3
30
5 Stone Games
28
30
2
30
A Hamsterish Hoard of Dungeons and Dragons
74
76
2
30
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition
33
35
2
30
Archive of the Rotted Moon
30
32
2
30
Beacon
7
9
2
30
Blood of Prokopius
34
36
2
30
Cimmerian Chronicles
16
18
2
30
Digital Orc
5
7
2
30
DUNGEON ADVENTURES
21
23
2
30
El RagnaBlog
25
27
2
30
Embrace the Dungeon!
10
12
2
30
gnotions
18
20
2
30
Iron Rationales
17
19
2
30
Knightvision Games - Two Knights, One Vision
2
4
2
30
of Pedantry
5
7
2
30
RPG Blog II
127
129
2
30
Terminal Space
50
52
2
30
The Library: Retro and Classic Fantasy Games.
42
44
2
30
The Polyhedral Dicebag
23
25
2
30
Tower of the Archmage
53
55
2
30
Unofficial Games
42
44
2
30
Weird Worlds of Geoffrey McKinney
61
63
2
30
Wilderlands of Runequest
18
20
2
31
Coffee swillin' analog gamer
33
34
1
31
Creative Mountain Games
11
12
1
31
Drawings & Dragons
44
45
1
31
DungeonCurmudgeon
1
2
1
31
Dungeonskull Mountain
77
78
1
31
KOK'ed Dice
21
22
1
31
Mike's Amazing RPG Fun Pad
22
23
1
31
O RPG da Vida Real
8
9
1
31
Polar Bear Dreams and Stranger Things
20
21
1
31
Quickly, Quietly, Carefully
9
10
1
31
Rocket-Propelled Game
12
13
1
31
SANDBOX EMPIRE
67
68
1
31
Saturday Night Sandbox
29
30
1
31
Savage Swords of Athanor
65
66
1
31
Semper Initiativus Unum
37
38
1
31
Spell Card!
35
36
1
31
Tales from the Dusty Vault
9
10
1
31
The Delve
43
44
1
31
The Doomed Wastelands
27
28
1
31
The Dragon's Eye
2
3
1
31
The Old Forest
11
12
1
31
The Paradigm Traveler
8
9
1
31
The Vorpal Spork
25
26
1
31
Vaults of Nagoh
65
66
1
31
Visions of Paradise
7
8
1

Back to the Dungeon!
57
57
0

Beyond the Wall
24
24
0

Bloody 20s
17
17
0

GAME SNOB
9
9
0

Kingdoms in Trevail
22
22
0

Lances to Lasers - A gaming blog
8
8
0

malevolent & benign
37
37
0

MF WARS
10
10
0

Notes From Under the Kyak
9
9
0

No School Like The Old School
12
12
0

No Signal!
13
13
0

Penguin Overlord
4
4
0

Places to Go, People to Be
35
35
0

Prime Requisite Games™
25
25
0

Rather Gamey
3
3
0

Romance Monsoon
11
11
0

Swashbuckler's Hideout
39
39
0

The Badger King's Den
16
16
0

The Blue Gnoll
8
8
0

The Burning Wastes
6
6
0

The Dragon's Musing
6
6
0

The Hydra's Grotto
15
15
0

The Incredible Fétide Grigou Rôliste Show
7
7
0

The Moldy Vale
31
31
0

The Purple Wurm
3
3
0

The Zonked World of Holmold
1
1
0

Tremulous Antennae
9
9
0

Where'd my Vorpal Sword Go?
19
19
0

Grimmhaus
64
63
-1

Mandragora: The Mandrake March
46
45
-1

New Fish In An Old School
16
15
-1

Ramblings of a Gentleman Gamer
14
13
-1

Redbeard's Ravings
16
15
-1

Stocking The Dungeon
19
18
-1

Valley of Blue Snails
35
34
-1

Dungeon Mistress
57
55
-2

Maximum Rock & Role Playing
43
41
-2

elves ate my homework
49
46
-3











Lack of data (will be included next time):




"The Troll Ate My Homework"
NA
47


Backscreen Pass
NA
44


Dungeons & Dorks
NA
12


Warriors of the Red Planet
NA
73


Apprentice Of Old School
NA
9