Link: Simon Rogers’ ‘The Economics of RPG Book Production’

This is a very interesting article on why per-word rates are so low for writers for tabletop RPGS.

Continue reading Link: Simon Rogers’ ‘The Economics of RPG Book Production’

These Bundles of Holding. These freaking Bundles of Holding.

I should know better by now than to click the damn link.  There’s always a damn steal of a roleplaying game supplement or core rules in there that justifies buying the whole damned thing, just by itself.  Thank God they’re PDFs: otherwise, I’d be drowning in good indy RPGs right now.

Have these people no SHAME?

An exciting (and challenging) stretch goal in @RobinDLaw’s Hillfolk Kickstarter.

Hillfolk is a roleplaying system from Robin D. Laws that emphasizes inter-party relationships and dynamics in a tabletop RPG setting; which is to say, it’s a game that encourages the players to play off of each other’s characters, instead of genially tolerating occasions where that happens instead of, say, attacking the orc stronghold*.  It’s well-loved (my wife raves about it, and more or less told me to kick into the KS without me having to hint at all) by the people who know about it, and is currently having the small problem that the book is getting fatter and fatter with all the stretch goals for added material being met.

So Robin announced this:

LOCKED: $50,000: GUMSHOE OPEN LICENSE: We will release GUMSHOE, Robin’s previous game engine for Pelgrane, under an open license with its own GUMSHOE-compatible trademark for products in the English language. Robin will create a stripped-down system reference version of GUMSHOE to support the license.

Continue reading An exciting (and challenging) stretch goal in @RobinDLaw’s Hillfolk Kickstarter.

Not buying this SMBC comic.

Not the bit about evolution/homosexuality bit – as I understand it, Darwinian theory is a little bit more nuanced than that when addressing the ways that traits that affect the group/pack/tribe can be valuable for the species in general even when they’re personally evolutionary dead ends – but the suggestion that gamers and/or bloggers don’t have the opportunity to breed.  I mean, speaking as a gamer… sure, back in the 1980s and 1990s there was a pretty lopsided gender ratio, but I know lots of female gamers these days.  It’s been that way for a while: I’m trying (and failing) to remember the last campaign that I was in that didn’t have a minimum of two female players in it, or a female player and a female GM.  Heck, my wife’s a GM herself.

Maybe we should update that particular cultural stereotype?

Moe Lane