Recent Threads

The spring semester is drawing to a close. It's been a busy one, with me actually focusing on my dissertation/implementation for a change. Sadly, this has meant less time for gaming. I hope to continue implementing into the summer, so there probably won't be too much of a gaming resurgence for a while. But, despite a grading backlog to still get through this week, the coming summer has stirred me to look through my various gaming threads once more:

• d20: I've been brushing off d20house and my Tellurian Tales characters and trying to get back into d20 again. The two players I actually have await me in two other D&D storylines. So I'd really like to get out of my current d20 doldrums.

In brushing off my characters, I'm reminded once more of the huge "character creation" side of D&D. As I was explaining to S., it has some of the same draw as Magic: The Gathering: There is a collection of different abilities that can be combined to form awesome combos. And, thanks to WotC's prolific publishing schedule, the library of possible components constantly expands. So there's this draw to familiarize myself with all the possible components and then flesh-out the "perfect" combos in accordance with some initial character (or deck) concept.

While this is still fun, sometimes of late I find it a bit tedious. Specifically, prestige classes annoy me. Many are close to what I want but none are "just right". So I've been designing a couple custom classes--but, since there's no real mechanic for this, it tends to take me hours of thought.

• Caligo: I poke at this occasionally and I'm quite happy with how it's coming along. So far it's staying pretty simple, which is good. I have a few different one-off story ideas I want to try... someday.

• Dark Heresy: A break-thru here in that this week I decided to drop my Zludge translation of this. While I'm sure the work already done on this will inform eventual Zludge Prime work, I decided to just leave Dark Hersey as it is.... because it's actually quite a nice system, especially now that I've come to appreciate some of the advantages of a roll-under die mechanic. I have lots of story ideas here, and I'd like to move into some serious campaigns with this once my d20 lines end. So I'm trying to shelve it again until then (and focus back on my d20 threads!).

• zilch: I was thinking about this yesterday and this morning. I was refocusing on it's mission: a boardgame-like dungeon-crawling RPG. Some elements of it--such as the spell system--I think could be used elsewhere (like in z20). But I really need to get back to a boardgame sort of focus. This morning, I started sketching out stuff on that: particularly, how I might generate a story/dungeon on the fly so no pre-game GM planning is required--only some (potentially collaborative) refereeing. We'll see where this goes...

• z20: Now I'm turning my eye to z20 once again... that old sore tooth that I can't stop poking.


[I apologize to my readers that my blog is so often a review of threads or a whining reiteration of the same points over and over again, but this blog is really sort of my gaming journal. This is where I come when I need to record (or, frequently, reaffirm once again) some gaming insight or goal.]