Some More Stuff Now 20% COOLER. (Its hobby games related!)

Consider this me bringing up some general gaming topics and a few other bits.

I PLEDGE MY SOUL TO THE DARK GODS

Good news or greatest news?

While I have never actually played any of the 40K RPGs I do have 2 of the 3 corebooks and some of the expansions.  Like most RPGs nobody in my state particularly is looking for or interested in new games, or new players.

But I sort of love the 40K RPG books for their lovely art design and fluff that isn't the same 4-5 40K storyline topics repeated over and over again.  (Horus and the Emperor's final battle above Terra, the Tyranid invasion of Macragge, Ork invasion of Armageddon being the three constantly repeated.)

The game system itself seems to be the Aspergers' version of Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu/Basic Roleplaying, making me just want to convert it all over to to that system instead.

Because I am a HUGE Chaos fan in Warhammer 40K.  I may sell off most of my 40K stuff but my Chaos Marines won't be parting with me.

And now an RPG based around playing those damned souls?

COUNT.
ME.
IN.

Oh some would immediately say "Use GURPS",  but considering GURPS kind of sucks and now Steve Jackson Games' bread and butter is rehashing mediocre card game "Munchkin" over and over again, GURPS isn't even outputting the sheer mass of interesting sourcebooks they once did.

Yep.  Check this out: SJGames' Stakeholder Report .  The company is pretty much surviving on Munchkin and Munchkin alone.  How such a mediocre game can keep selling with new sets basically being old rules with new funny Kovalic art attached is beyond me.

I'm not a GURPS fan.  Its kind of meh of a system and it is unable of handling things without going into absurd levels of detail.  (You don't EVEN want to look at the statline of an Ogre Cybertank in GURPS Ogre.  You. Do. Not.)  But I do love Car Wars and Ogre.

Its sad to see a company pretty much just follow the money while losing everything that kept them going for decades beforehand.  You can't blame them of course since a company exists to make money, but one can feel sad.

Hell, I have had 2 seperate people find out I like RPGs then get completely crestfallen when they ask my opinion on GURPS and its not a good one.  This has to be KILLING GURPS fans.

On to blog news!

My new computer is running swimmingly even with a budget card installed.  I have been happily installing old games to test them out and getting new ones as well.  Overall I am generally happy returning to Windows.  Luckily I skipped past Vista and got onto Windows 7 merely 8 days before Service Pack 1 was released.

With free virtualization software I can even install Windows XP and 98SE giving me access to most of the games that refuse to run in 7.  (Except Star Wars Republic Commando which crashes to desktop in Windows 7 and XP.  Good thing I only paid 4 bucks for it.)

Expect an eventual post listing how my hobby games based computer games run on it.

I am also soon to enter the land of Youtube video creation so expect some video based reviews or review supplements.  Maybe even a few "How to Play Game X" sort of things.  I did a little practice video with Windows Movie Maker and it made a fair little minifilm with a little tweaking.   I have a 480p camcorder, a nice big tripod, and a kicky fast computer.

More ways to make terrible things.

And if my continual purging of my game collection continues I can add in even more nifty things to this machine.

What I have been up to instead of this blog.

Oh I have been gaming, playing the D&D Encounters and ALMOST having a D&D group.  (Who bailed on me.  I'm quite bitter.)

And I have many good things to review or do unboxing comics of.

But the holidays get wacky and I have been working on what is this site's sister blog.

Blogging Castlevania!

Its a mixture of me playing through as many of the 2D Castlevania games as I can legally get a hold of (right now I am missing 2 of the US released games not counting a pair of digitally download ones), and even covering stuff like the movie and novel classics that inspired the series.

Its also gonna have RPG stats and my Castlevania campaign notes.

Those I will link here as it is gaming content.   The normal videogame stuff I will leave to that blog.

I just finished the original game in the series for the blog and I hope any of this site's visitors who love classic 2d platformers will go over and visit!

I'm Internet Famous. Sorta.

Yeah!

For those of you who have been reading me for a while, you might have remembered my little quickie tribute and overview of the Ultima series I did back in 09:  http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2009/08/little-bit-about-ultima-electronic-rpg.html

Well Noah A. of The Spoony Experiment fame used my little Shrine to Ultima picture in his video about the series.  http://spoonyexperiment.com/2010/07/04/ultima-0-akalabeth/#comments .

Watch at the 54 second mark or so, and again later on.

I am sadly not credited, but hopefully my friendly email asking for this to be rectified will correct it.

I do enjoy the guy's stuff, especially since his rather amusing "Gamers Rant on Movies" column in Knights of the Dinner Table Magazine was really funny even when I totally disagreed with everything he said about a given movie.

(I will post an update here in the next week or so when its corrected.   AND IT WAS.  In under 12 hours or so no less.  So if any Spoony Experiment people have shown up hiyas!  Someone in the IRC channel I frequent (#tinypewtermen on irc.synirc.net) said he knew him back in their high school days and that he was good people.  He was right.  So thank you kindly good sir!)

It was probably found from my posting of it in the RPGCodex Ultima Let's Play thread that is credited.

I love me some Ultima, and even if RPGCodex is full of people so cranky about electronic RPGs I sometimes think its a form of performance art, its STILL one of the few non weeaboo eRPG forums on the web.  So it got posted there, also as a form of nerd cred so the Codexians can't just discount my DARING to enjoy Fallout 3 on its own merits as me being some "contard" as they call it.

Hell, I am playing Eye of the Beholder on an ACTUAL DOS PC.  My first DOS PC no less.

I'll be doing a little talking about playing old PC games pretty soon.   If it stops being 100 degrees outside anyhow.  I have more Warlords 2 and Commander Keen to play!

But also consider this post a welcome for any Spoony Experiment readers who come to take a looksee at my blog!

I mostly talk about tabletop RPGs and wargames but do stray into the electronic side of things from time to time.  I enjoy talking and discussing stuff with folks so feel free to go back and read my backlog, though it really doesn't start being more than just boring trip reports till around June 08 or so.


Important edit as of 22 Jun 12:
Given the recent misogynistic comments and hateful Twitter posts from Spoony, I would like to say that I do not in any, way, shape, or form endorse his recent actions and behavior.

You DO NOT talk that way to people, especially to women in that manner.  Rape and misogyny is sadly an all too real problem and sadly seems to almost always have been.  To joke about it in such a way is really unacceptable, especially when others in fact say they find it as such.

In general I would recommend NOT going to Spoony Experiment or watching anything he creates.  It is clear he has some demons to work out right now and nobody should be encouraging him or harassing him at the moment.  He should be getting help and learning what things he did that were wrong so he can improve as a person.

We ALL can learn from mistakes and be better.  I hope sometime in the future to come back to this post and say this is true and he has fixed himself up.
End edit.

New Edit 12 Apr 13:
From what I understand the fellow above HAS gotten himself straightened out quite a bit and I hope he continues this.

Operation Don't Buy So Much Dammit Part 6 and Current Status

I really haven't bought too much since last time I updated this little project.  Though some things I have bought I actually forgot about.   Some things I THINK were bought on ebay through my "Sell and Buy" clause so I won't list them.  And a

But let's list them anyhow.

Warhammer 40K Drop Pod:  Because I needed a second one for my Pre Heresy World Eaters force.  30 bucks.

A really big D20:  Its like larger than a golf ball.  Mostly for the giggles of having a few.  Plus they could be handy for Federation Commander.  3 Bucks.

A booster pack of Arcane Legions:  I needed a few more dollars spent to use my Debit card at the funnybook shop and it has been sitting there lonely for months.  12 Bucks.

The Dungeon Alphabet:  A nifty little hardback book for 10 dollars thats full of neat old school inspired RPG art and various tables and ideas for making fun bits for dungeons in your RPGs.

So 55 more official dollars spent bringing it up to 329.  Still in Silver, 171 from hitting Bronze.

And now the status of the blog:  My job has decided I get to work more hours now, and they will be somewhat erratic of when I get them.  While I can use the cash and can sometimes give the days away it won't always happen so my schedule just got ridiculously unconsistent.  And I like consistency.  Surprises are bad things.  I may not be updating quite as much though I will try to keep the 4 post a month minimum rule going.

I also had a hard drive wipe on my Mac so tons of photos for backup projects just went into the digital ether, which is also taking time to fix up.  And then the new IPod Touch OS update wipes the memory of that meaning all my music has gone Tubby Bye Bye, so I need to go through gobs of CDs and re-find various fan works to put it all back on my little tiny touchscreen toy.

Also I am trying to self learn the keyboard AND bring an old DOS PC up to working spec for retrogames (and the latter had its own hard drive kersplat, and its one a format won't help!  Im not sure if its the game I tried to install or it just wanted to die having been a free third hand drive.) so I have GOBs of projects to do.

Some I may share here, others really don't fit.

Interesting Times indeed.

Meh.

A Quick Site Update

Given how I am now constantly getting spammers using my comments to post whatever foreign scams they are trying to pull, I have changed commenting to allow me to moderate the commentary before it gets posted.   I have now allowed OpenIDs to comment though.

Not that I get a lot of commentary at all, but it really sucks to get a notification someone replied to one of my posts, and its some effing non English speaking spammer trying their scummy nonsense that probably wouldn't even confuse a 90 year old grannie at this point.  (A Glenn Beck fan?  Probably.  But normal decent people?  Nope!)

So that's a change for now.  Maybe later if I somehow get enough active readers commenting on stuff I will go back to non approval comments as to allow interesting discussions, but for the time being I have to stand up against spammer scum.

Expect an actual gaming related post sometime in the next 10 hours.  I didn't even go play Warhammer 40K today to prepare for my next gaming project.