The Humble Indie Bundle
Soooo… six months later. I guess this sort of fell by the wayside. And I make my return with a brief post. Ah, well, so it goes.
I just wanted to direct any gamers out there who haven’t already heard of it to wolfire.com’s Humble Indie Bundle. This is a “pay whatever you want” sale of a bundle of five indie games to benefit Child’s Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The games in question are World of Goo, Gish, Aquarius, Lugaru, and Penumbra Overture. They work on Windows, Mac, or Linux, and there’s no DRM. No catches. Just a chance to get a couple of great indie games while also supporting some deserving charities. Which reminds me, there’s no “overhead” on the donations (aside from credit card charges), and you can choose how much of your money goes where, if you’d like.
As I write this, there’s about 4 days 15 hours left in the drive, and they’ve collected just over $430,000. Check them out.
Categories: Computer and Video Games, Websites | Comments (1)
How a Sorceress Becomes a Planet
Today my first article for Nevermet Press went live: the planet Nyraeve. This is my science-fiction adaptation of Wyatt Salazar’s villain, Neirave, the Sleepless Drift, who is currently “starring” in Nevermet’s cycle. To encapsulate the concept, Neirave is a fantasy-genre sorceress with an affinity for cold who managed to live on after her physical body’s death, and who is now slowly bringing an eternal winter to her region — and eventually, if she’s not stopped, to the world. Many of the articles in Nevermet’s cycle develop the concept further, providing information about locations within Neirave’s forest, for instance, or encounters that can be adapted to any fantasy game. (Nevermet Press presents systemless content.)
I’m pretty pleased with how my article came out. Getting there was half the fun.
Categories: Original Game Content, Websites | Comments (0)
“No, Wait…”
Order of the Stick #1, by Rich Burlew. Upgraded to 3.5e!
There’s an interesting thread at the Giant in the Playground forums that deals, in part, with retracting an in-character action. (As a side note, if you’re not reading the Order of the Stick comic at GitP, you really should. There’s a lot of terrific gaming humor there.)
Among the questions the original post poses is the following:
- Do you allow your players to revise an action, if, a second or so later, they remember themselves why they shouldn’t do that?
There is, naturally, quite an array of views on the matter. Some espouse the “you said it, it’s done” school of thought. Others allow retractions with few restrictions. There’s a lot of ground in between. General opinion seems to fall toward “it depends,” which I realize isn’t terribly dramatic. But the question of what, exactly, it depends on remains intriguing.
Categories: Comics, Manga, and Anime, Philosophy and Rants, Websites | Comments (2)
RPG Top 25
Over at RPG Blog II, Zachary is holding a vote for the top 25 RPGs. While the inherent selection bias (the blog’s audience) will no doubt affect the final numbers, it’s an interesting thing to think about, and I’m looking forward to seeing the ranked results. Not least because it might give me some more games to check out.
I was a little surprised to realize that I have, in fact, played more than 25 RPGs. And that’s just the ones that I remember playing. This would be the case even if I weren’t counting each edition of D&D (and their clones) and each World of Darkness book separately. There are a lot of RPGs out there.
My list, after the jump.
Categories: Philosophy and Rants, Websites | Comments (1)
Resource: Crime Library
Thought I’d share a site I sometimes use in planning my games. Crime Library is devoted to murderers, gangsters, serial killers, terrorists, and spies, and all of their various crimes and operations. Its tales are very detailed and well-researched — check out the feature on Sidney Reilly, the British spy thought to have inspired James Bond, for instance.
In addition to the features about individual criminals, there are articles about criminal psychology, organized crime, unsolved crimes, the police, and criminal investigation methods such as forensic toxicology. The articles cover both contemporary and historical crimes, although there’s a significant bias toward the more modern.
Crime Library is of obvious use to anyone planning to run a game in, say, the Prohibition era, or a plot featuring a historic serial killer or spy. Its stories can also serve as a source of plot inspiration in general, and many of them are simply fascinating to read.
Categories: Websites | Comments (4)
