Tag: rpgs

Quote of the Day, I’m Not Sure If I Buy This About Gamers edition.

I mean, I’d like to. Still, I’m not sure I’m buying this:

More than a decade ago, John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade, who now work at the consulting firm Accenture, surveyed 2,500 business professionals and concluded that people who played videogames as teenagers were better at business than people who didn’t. Their 2004 book “Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever” found that videogame players were more likely to consider themselves experts, to want more pay for better performance and to see persistence as the secret to success.

Seeing as I’ve personally racked up an insane amount of time on, say, Skyrim – and I’m not exactly sure how the ability to crouch my way through a dungeon while pre-emptively shooting corpses that just look wrong will translate into a marketable skill.  Although the mummified remains of an office complex would make for a heck of a dungeon. No, wait, that’s Fallout 4. So… yes, yes it does.

So what do people use for running RPG campaigns via video chat, anyway?

Google Hangouts and/or FaceTime, right? …Yeah, I’m thinking about running one of those. I’m pretty sure that I can get some people together and it’d be easier to coordinate a campaign where nobody actually has to drive to the GM’s house. The major issue?  Keeping the kids from interrupting.  Which my kids will do in a heartbeat.

[UPDATE] Interesting.

Ooh, Castle Falkenstein is on Bundle of Holding.

I personally don’t need it…

…because I was lucky enough to track down a complete physical set of the game line in the 1990s. A combination of ample discretionary cash and ready access to NYC’s gaming stores allowed me to devote resources to find some of the more esoteric stuff, which Castle Falkenstein certainly is. Castle Falkenstein is… it is the distillation of all that is romantic and fun about steampunk. It is a 19th century world where historical and fictional figures meet all the time and have adventures together, set in a backdrop of magic, zeppelins, and dramatic reveals. And, oh, yes: the game uses playing cards, because while ladies and gentlemen might readily amuse themselves by pretending to be cowboys or mages for an evening, they will most certainly not use dice to do it.

I love the Castle Falkenstein setting dearly. And, not to brag (I totally mean to brag) I also have a playtester’s credit for the GURPS edition of it. So while I don’t need these PDFs, there are worse ways to burn through twenty bucks than to get the complete game line…

ZOMG! They have TORG back on Bundle of Holding!

You have, like, a day left to buy it! Well, them: they broke it up into TORG 1 and TORG 2.  At twenty-ish bucks each for both Bundles it’s still a goram steal.

For those who don’t remember: TORG was a RPG that used the convention of ‘alien realities invade our own’ to justify having elves and cyberpunk and dinosaurs and horror and Rocket Rangers and, well, everything else at once.  Mechanics were meh, the setting was awesome.  Perfect reading material, if you’re me.

My PJ Lifestyle piece on the differences in tone between the 1st edition Delta Green and the 2nd.

Found here. Short version: …it’s interesting how a roleplaying game about government conspiracies and cosmic horror can shift over the course of eighteen years. 9/11 casts a very long shadow still, and Delta Green cannot avoid the effects any more than the rest of us did.

In the Mail: Dungeon World and Fate Core.

All hail birthday money! Grabbed the Fate Core bundle and Dungeon World RPGs because all the cool people are apparently playing them, which implies that all the cool people are possibly amenable towards buying what I might be selling (with proper regard for all rights and respect for intellectual property, naturally. So it behooves me to learn these games… yeah, it’s a great rationalization.  I’m almost in awe of it.