Saturday, March 26, 2011

I'm Like WALMART Now!

I took Sniderman's advice and brought the Old School Rocks image to CafePress to make a t-shirt out of it.  I really want to wander around NTPRGCON in a t-shirt with the logo on it.  The boy, of course, needs one too.

If anyone else wants one, the CafePress Store is at http://www.cafepress.com/StudioArkhein.  You can also get mugs, backpacks, and clothing for your dog.  Geez. 

Or, if you want to do it yourself, I'll give you a copy of the 600 dpi colored version so you can go use your own t-shirting facilities.  It's YOUR picture, after all.  Honestly - I suck as a capitalist.  My heart just isn't in it. :)

- Ark

Friday, March 25, 2011

Old School Rocks d30 Version

Okay, since Spawn of Endra asked nicely, here is a d30 version of the Old School Rocks! image.  It's purple in honor of the mythical rientsdie. 

Who said I never did anything nice? :)

- Ark

Old School Rocks!

I've had this picture in my head for a couple of months now, and it was finally time to get it out.  It pretty much looks exactly like what I imagined, which is a first.  It's done with a black Sharpie on cheap copier paper and cleaned up/colored with Paint.net. Click on the image to see a wallpaper sized version in case you want to impress your computer.

It's yours.  I give it to the community.  Do with it what you will.  Spindle.  Fold.  Mutilate.  Clean out your ear wax with it.  Roll it up in your pipe and smoke it.  Print it out for hand outs at GenCon.  Put it on t-shirts.  Replace the flag of your local municipality with it.  You know, whatever.  ;)

If you want a 600 dpi non-colored version, just ask.

- Ark

Have Evil, Will Travel

One of my favorite They Might Be Giants songs is 'The Mesopotamians,' a song about a band of ancient Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Sumerian emperors who drive around in their Econoline van and play gigs.  If you have somehow missed out on this gem, go watch it here.  There.  Aren't you better person now for having watched it?

I love ideas like that - and they are so fun to implement in a game.  Imagine the looks on the PCs faces when they discover that the bards who have been playing innocuously in the back corner of the local tavern for the last year are actually undead emperors from a bygone era with a desire to make music?  Then the band discovers that the PCs have been looting their tombs!  Talk about awkward.

Themed traveling groups are fun.  During one campaign, I created a traveling circus called Cirque Noir.  This circus was run by evil monsters.  The citizens of the towns and villages that the circus visited never really caught on that the evil monsters were really evil.  They just figured that the monsters were people dressed up in costume and makeup. 

The ring-mistress of the circus was a drow - who also did acrobats and used her drow-y powers to startle and confuse the crowd.  There was a strong-man ogre, a knife-throwing dark-stalker, and lesser demon who did fake magic tricks.  One of my favorites was Manny the Minotaur, who dressed in sparkly sequined clothes and carried an equally sparkly red cape.  Manny was a minotaur matador.  I was very pleased with myself for coming up with the idea, and woud laugh for hours thinking aobut it.  The party immediately began calling him Liberace.

My absolute favorite circus members were the clowns.  These were creepy two foot tall clowns with white skin, red noses, pointed hats, and fangs.  They were not wearing makeup or costumes.  They were undead.  They would throw paralysis pies at people, and squirt them with acid from flowers on their lapels.   

The clowns had a self-propelled carriage that they would travel around in.  The carriage would appear to fit an infinite amount of clowns.  The vehicle was actually a portal to another plane of existence where the undead horror clowns lived. 

The PCs stole the carriage at one point and kept in on their ship.  Later, while traveling in another plane of existence, they found where the clowns lived by accident - in a flop-house above a tavern with a portal on the wall leading back to the carriage.  Talk about awkward.

So, anyway, I enjoy themed traveling groups - and akward situations in RPGs. Feel free to use any of these idea any way you wish.

- Ark

PS - I'm inspired by events to remember the exits in back of me.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

I Never Look At My Blog Stats

I am so confident in my posts that I just don't need to look.  I know I am awesome.  I know my words are golden.  Readers swoon at my insights. I can lift cars with one hand.  My toenail clippings can cut through steel.  I can pound nails into oak planks with my penis.  I never even think of the statistics.

Um, well, on occasion, I take a peek.

By 'take a peek,' I mean that I stare at the numbers and charts until I bore a hole though my flatscreen and then click on the REFRESH link over and over again until the good folks at Blogger have to ban my IP to protect themselves against the Denial of Service attack.

What follows are a few things I've learned.  I don't do this to brag.  I do this to show you how much better your blog is doing compared to mine. :)

The big number is 6,445.  That is the 'Pageviews all time history' stat.  Most of that was generated since January when I began to blog seriously.  I am blown away by that.  That is well over 100 times the hits I've gotten in all other project - combined - since 1994.  Wow.  Thanks for watching.

The post with the most hits is "Moonlighting," a brief little ditty about exposed ass cracks at the FLGS with 255 hits.  However, most of those hits are from images searches of the picture I have in the posting of Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd.  The big search keywords are 'Moonlighting Reunion.'  This comes from Google pages all over the planet - Canada, Australia, France, Korea, Japan, Belgium, Germany, and Russia.  So what it appears like is that people all over the world are DESPERATE to know if David and Maddie will get back together again.

Sorry guys, but no, they won't.  The love is gone.

The second highest page is 'Fish in the Sea,' from people searching for FISH IN THE SEA.  Mostly from France.  WTF?  I don't get that.  Why are the French so interested in knowing about FISH IN THE SEA in ENGLISH!?!?

The biggest game related search is 'Forgotten Realms.'  I bet people are not expecting to stumble into my rants on the subject. :)

Google is how most people get to the site.  Here is the referral breakdown for blogs:

523 jrients.blogspot.com
157 eternalkeep.blogspot.com
121 cyclopeatron.blogspot.com
107 gothridgemanor.blogspot.com
101 daddygrognard.blogspot.com
 93 www.risusmonkey.com
 62 unknownzine.blogspot.com

I just gotta say - the amount of people who use Jeff's Blog as a bookmark list must be STAGGERING.

As far as Locations go, 63% of readers are coming from the US.  Our neighbors to the frigid north comprise 12 percent.  Those crazy tea swilling islanders over in Europe are about eight percent. Germans, whom contributed to about half of my genetic makeup, tied Denmark for two percent.  The other 13 percent are scattered from all over the world, with Brazil and India making huge leaps recently.  WHERE ARE THE IRISH?  Come on guys.  Suck it up and read the blog.

Firefox users are 49% of the users.  I'm not sure what all the rest of ya'll are thinking, but hey - to each there own. :)  Windows is, of course, dominant with 74%.  I am just floored, however, that people are viewing the blog with their iPhones, iPads, Blackberries, and even the Nintendo Wii! 

Okay, enough of this nonsense. I shall actually have an interesting, game related posting soon.  I swear.  I just had to get that out of my system. :)

- Ark

PS - Oh, apparently I am a Maven or something now, per the follower XP table thing..  I always thought that a Maven was a chick.  The things you learn . . .

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Something for you d24 Lovers

Okay, it's not much, but here are two list you can use with your d24s.  I'll be using them in the next Labyrinth Lord game on Saturday.  Yeah, I know 6 more would have made it d30 worthy - but I'm giving a hand to the underdog here.  :)


Common Human Names
d24 Female Male
1 Adela  Aldous 
2 Alison  Alistair 
3 Amelia  Anselm 
4 Ava  Bertrand 
5 Belle Bryce 
6 Bliss  Caine 
7 Cass  Caspar 
8 Clarissa  Cid 
9 Colette  Colin 
10 Constance  Dawson 
11 Courtney  Fuller 
12 Ella Gavin 
13 Emma  Geoffrey 
14 Eve Godfrey 
15 Joan  Kimball 
16 Katelyn  Lance 
17 Katherine  Paul 
18 Latisha  Randall 
19 Morgayne Reynard 
20 Pagan  Sterling 
21 Paige  Tristan 
22 Rachel Tucker 
23 Tristana  Wade 
24 Ysabel  Walker 

Have fun!

- Ark

Monday, March 21, 2011

A Hex on You

I was bumming around Half Price Books this weekend.  In the gaming section, I spied something with my little eye; a mess of tall, skinny, funny shaped boxes in the board games section.

It looked like some variation of scrabble.  Lexigo was the name.  Not exactly my cup of tea, but for some reason I could not avert my gaze. 

The back of the box claimed the game came with 100 hex shaped tiles. 

My mind exploded with possibilities.  I've been having a lot of fun with hex-based wilderness adventures using random land type tables.  The tiles had a blank white side.  I could draw land markings with dry erase on the back of the tiles and build a map right before the player's eyes.

I grabbed the game.  For less than seven dollars, it was a steal.

It even comes with a giant black 'dice bag' for all 100 tiles.

The plastic tiles look good and are nice and heavy.  No cheapo crap plastic here.  The big problem is that when you write on them with either dry erase or wet erase, it doesn't completely erase.  Not great for my original idea.

However, one could easily use a sharpie or acrylic paint to mark what type of land the tile represents.  And heck, you could just prepare all the tiles and draw them randomly from the bag, rather than rolling a die, then drawing the tile.  It would be easier that way.

So I'm excited.  I think this would be a cool doo-dad for wilderness adventurers.  I could even have the players draw the landforms from the bag as they explore.

Another thought struck me.  You could use this bag selection process for important random events as well - having the letters act as indicators.  I worked out percentages based on tile frequency.  Here is an example:

Tile # % Magic Weapon
[blank] 4 4% Callandor
A 8 8% Glamdring
B 2 2% Spear of Lugh
C 2 2% Tizona
D 4 4% Gáe Bulg
E 11 11% Fragarach
F 2 2% Mjolnir
G 3 3% Sting
H 2 2% Narsil
I 9 9% Axe of the Dwarvish Lords 
J 1 1% Clarent
K 1 1% Stormbringer
L 4 4% Hrunting
M 2 2% Grayswandir
N 6 6% Mournblade
O 8 8% Excalibur
P 2 2% Sword of Martin
Q 1 1% Anaklusmos
R 6 6% Joyeuse
S 4 4% Kusanagi
T 6 6% Zulfiqar
U 4 4% Orcrist
V 2 2% Broken Sword of Stubbing
W 2 2% Umbrella
X 1 1% Golf Club
Y 2 2% A Stick
Z 1 1% Air Guitar

So, looks like I'm going to have some type of fun with these tiles, even if it wasn't the original method intended by the creator. :)

- Ark