Wednesday, August 29, 2012

OSR is Dying


It is official; Netcraft WOTC now confirms: *BSD OSR is dying.

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered  *BSD OSR community when IDC Dragon Magazine confirmed that  *BSD OSR market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers tables. Coming close on the heels of a recent  Netcraft WOTC survey which plainly states that  *BSD OSR has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along.  *BSD OSR is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin Game Master comprehensive networking play test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict  *BSD's OSR's  future. The hand writing is on the wall:  *BSD OSR faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for  *BSD OSR because  *BSD OSR is dying. Things are looking very bad for  *BSD OSR. As many of us are already aware,  *BSD OSR continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

All major surveys show that  *BSD OSR has steadily declined in market share.  *BSD OSR is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If  *BSD OSR is to survive at all it will be among OS RPG dilettante dabblers. *BSD OSR continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save  *BSD OSR  from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes,  *BSD OSR is dead.

Fact: *BSD OSR is dying.

[ okay, if you recognize this ancient USENET and Slashdot troll, then you are an old, decrepid uber-nerd with a penchant for obscure alternate operating systems. ;) ]

- Ark

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Giant Robots Breaking Things


A Battletech tide has been swelling at the FLGS.  Sporadic talk and pick-up games morphed into BattleTech Night last Saturday in which 11 robot jox showed up to best each other in mechanized combat.

It was fun.

The Boy was introduced to the game through a marathon 16 hour Battletech king of the hill scenario at NTRPGCon near the beginning of summer.  It was hard to drag him from the table to go play the other games I had scheduled us for.  Literally.  His fingers dug into the table like claws as I tugged at this legs.

So, when my son saw the Battletech Introductory Box Set at our FLGS, Roll2Play, his eyes got really big. The price tag was a little costly for him, but his birthday was coming up and I suggested that we try the free Battletech Quick-Start Rules before he made a final decision.

He loved it.  Mopping the floor with me and my mechs probably didn't hurt, either.  So, for his birthday, along with a multitude of Lord of the Rings Legos and an bonafide actual real archery set, The Boy became the proud owner of the 31st century.

Hunchback: The Boy's Favorite Mech
After reading (okay, skimming) through the rules, we went back to the game shop to sit down and play.  People surrounded us with big eyes and some joined in our game of mechanical destruction.  It's funny that people had the same reaction and interest down at the comic book shop back in 1987 when I opened my first Battletech game box.

All in all, the rules haven't changed much in 25 years.  A few tweaks here and there, but nothing major, despite the game changing ownership and having various distributors over it's lifetime. What has changed drastically is the organization and presentation.  Where before you had separate, and sometimes disjointed, rulesets for theaters of operation (air, land, space, etc,) now you have things organized along rules complexity that build on one another.

The levels are:

  • Quick-Start
  • Introductory
  • Standard
  • Advanced

Quick-Start is the simplified version - free and easy to learn given an afternoon.  The Introductory Rules come in a $60 box that also contains the Quick-Start rules, a background book on the setting, a book of mech sheets, 26 plastic models (no chit,) and two thick, double-sided maps that are much, much nicer than the originals.  There are probably more things in that box that I am forgetting.

Really, the Intro Box has everything you need to bust giant robot heads for a long time.  There are extra books you can get that go with the intro box - scenarios and whatnot - extra maps - minis - all that jazz.

Eventually I did grab the core standard rules rulebook, Total Warfare.  It really just adds more complex maneuvers and things, as well as adding aerial and space combat.  It's what they use for the 'official' competitions and such.  Pretty nifty, but it may be a year before The Boy ever gets up to that level of complexity.

The advanced stuff gets into waging wars across star systems.  Again, nifty, but very far removed from the Boy's current interests in having giant robots explode in a shower of shrapnel.

There is, however, a piece that I'm interested in beyond the battle bot bash jamboree.  Remember MechWarrior?  Battletech's RPG?  Well, back in the day it really never took off with me and my friends.  But today, I have a different mindset and attitude.  I think i could pull off running a BattleTech RPG.  They call the RPG these days A Time of War.  There is even a quick-start set for it here.  I've got some interest players already.  So who knows?

The guy who is running the Battletech Nights games has some ideas for organizing competitions, having people be from different houses, etc.  Good for robot battles, but not so good for an organized group of PCs.  But the RPG and the wargame don't have to match in continuity.

So, whatever the case - The Boy is now a die-hard Battletech fan and will be spending an inordinate amount of time at eh FLGS blowing stuff up.  And me?  I'll be right there next to him - most likely getting blown up by him and his unstoppable HBK-4G Hunchback.

- Ark

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Picking Up the Pieces

The bout of pneumonia I recently had was kind of like a reboot - physically and mentally.  I had been feeling really frazzled, and was going to use my vacation as a time to reflect, meditate, have fun, recharge, and just basically figure out what the hell was wrong and get on a better track.

Three weeks of stabbing lung pain, hallucinations, and a seething, unexplained anger later, I was finally recovering slowly.  But in some ways, I felt better than I did before I left for vacation.  All of those little projects, those plans, those things I do on a regular basis - I just tossed them aside - not just put on the back burner - but cancelled indefinitely in my mind.

That's one heck of a load off.

I've been mentally focusing on the core things - the really important things - family and such - and putting the other things into their proper perspective.  It's been a pretty freeing exercise.

I've been adding things slowly back.  Simple, small things.  Reading Tolkien, for instance.  The pneumonia interrupted my jaunt through Middle Earth.

Letting my mind run free in the lands of J. R. R. Tolkien has been great.  No expectations - no projects - no end result.  Just getting to know the paths of the Shire again, so to speak.  Very nice.

Then I look at gaming.  Either DMing or playing - it takes a lot of work and effort.  I miss it and my gaming group greatly - but I wonder when I'll be ready to put it back into my repertoire   I mean, seriously - I went up to the game store last weekend and played an hour and a half of card games.  Those 90 minutes completely wiped me out - mentally and physically.  How am I supposed to do a 4 to 6 hour role playing session?

It worries me.  I feel old.

Well, enough staring into my navel.  How about something positive?  Drawing had been frustrating me, so I remembered to do some exercises that have helped out a lot in the past.  It's called gesture drawing, in which you basically give yourself between 30 seconds and 2 minutes to capture a pose.  I've been doing it a lot recently, and am pretty happy with the results.

Below are the last three gesture drawing I've done - each at the two minute mark, and I think they are the best ones I've ever completed.  Okay, yeah, there are some proportion issues - but that's not what's important in this kind of exercise.  We're looking for movement, action, and direction - all done as quickly as possible.

Hmm - maybe I just need the equivalent of D&D rehab.  I'll just sit here and roll dice for a while and see if I can strengthen my crit muscle.  ;)
 



- Ark

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Roads Go Ever Ever On

Before our vacation, The Boy and I started listening to the audio versions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, narrated by Rob Inglis.  Having more time than I typically do, The Boy raced ahead of me in the narrative, but would gladly go back with me and listen at my slow-poke pace.

Unexpectedly, one day, The Boy sat down beside me and said, "Do you know what my favorite part of the Lord of the Rings books is?"

I thought for a moment, imagining battles in The Hobbit and the other books, wondering.  Could it be the spiders is Mirkwood, or maybe Bard and Smaug?  Perhaps the fights in Moria, at Helm's Deep, or Minas Tirith?  Tolkein was typically more skimpy on descriptions of warfare than Jackson's vivid interpretations, so it was hard for me to pinpoint something in the books themselves that would rate high on The Boy's Awesome-o-meter.

"I don't know.  What is your favoirte part?" I smiled.

"The songs," he said.

It took me a second to process that.  He meant the poems.  Well, at least what I called poems - as I was introduced to them as 'spoken' cadences in my head.  But yes, they were indeed songs, as the narrator Rob Inglis reminded us by actually singing them.

Upon the realization of what The Boy meant, I was rather overwhelmed with emotion.  I had been blindsided.  As a kid, I had dug through those books are read those songs over and over.  I even sat down and wrote my own after hearing the songs in the cartoons.  I turned my head and wiped the tears from my eyes.

"What's wrong," my son asked.

"Absolutely nothing," I said, clearing my throat and weakly smiling.  "I like the songs too."

"You know what my very favorite song is?" he asked.

I shrugged.  It was safer to shrug at that point, since I was still blinking away moisture.

"Roads Go Ever Ever On," he smiled widely.

I just about lost it.  Only through an iron will did I not just sit there and sob.

"That's a good one," I squeaked.

Something about Tolkein's works get me - deep down.  I heavily identified with Frodo and his pains and travails as a child.  Tears still fall - either in the books or Peter Jackson's movie.  That's probably why I like to watch the DVDs in the dark.

Listening to the books, I'm amazed at how - absent - the songs are from the movies.  Jackson still provides the emotional context via images and the soundtrack.  But really, the songs are the soul of the books.  The fact that my son understands that at some level - while not surprising when I think about it - is still very comforting.

- Ark


Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.

- The Hobbit

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Bedtop Wargaming


I'm still slowly recovering from the pneumonia that I contracted three weeks ago.  It's been a doozy.  At some point I got laryngitis as well, and my voice still sounds like one of those anti-smoking tracheotomy commercials.

One of the more interesting points of my pneumonia has been the hallucinations.  At first I thought they were dreams, but then I noticed I was awake when they were occurring.  Kind of unsettling at first, but after you get used to it - it's just kind of like free cable TV.

The most vivid hallucination was when I was trying to get comfortable in bed and one of the cats was trying to make herself comfortable on my chest.  Known fact: cats will sense when their owners are about to die and try to help them die more quickly.

So, at some point my chest became The Lonely Mountain and the cat became Smaug the Dragon.  You know, like cats are apt to do.  From somewhere down near my toe, Bard the Bowman and King Tranduil of Mirkword began to march towards my chest, war banners unfurled.  I think the cat morphed into Thorin at some point and hurled curses at the men and elves.

Then from a crumpled up comforter at the bottom of my bed, Dain began to march towards my chest.  I had no idea that my black and green comforter with a picture of Yoda on it was indeed the Iron Hills, but you know, stranger things have happened.

As I was trying to get Smaug/Thorin off my chest, the Goblins raced down my precariously placed pillows and attacked the gathered host.  There was a horrible battle, with tremendous coughing up of phlegm and cat scratches.  Then there were Eagles and Beorn showed up in bear form and Bilbo go knocked unconscious and everything got really confused and hazy.

What was particularly odd about the whole thing is that I could see each army very vividly - from a high vantage point with binoculars.  The battleground, however, remained my sheets, comforters, and pillows.  No other imagery covered those up, so it looked like some sort of Lilliputian war game on my bedtop.  Very odd.

Strangely enough, it harkens back to when I was ten - about half a year before I discovered D&D.  I had been reading the LotR books when I was hit by one heck of a flu or cold of something.  I remember that my mother was very concerned about my temperature being so high, and she'd check on me and ask me questions to determine how close I was to reality - like where I was and such.

At one point, my mother popped her head in the bedroom and asked who I was.  I remember very clearly that I didn't have the foggiest idea who the hell I was.  I just couldn't remember.  Then suddenly a named popped in my head.  I didn't really think it was my name, but since it was the only name I could remember, I figured it would do.

"Gandalf," I told my mother. "My name is Gandalf."

A brief look of concern crossed her face, to be quickly replaced by rolling eyes and a 'you smart ass' stare.

I shrugged and smiled.  I figured that if I told her I really had no idea what my name was, she'd get all upset and keep me awake - and what I really wanted to do was just to sleep.  So, I let her think I was a smart-ass (which was accurate, actually,) and got back to sleep.

It's funny how much of Tolkein seems to be etched on my subconscious.  I suppose I should warn the nurses at the old folks' home when I arrive.  My dementia should be pretty predictable.

- Ark

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Screw Me, Vacation

First day at beach nice.  Then cloudy.  Then rainy.  Then monsoon.  The flooding outside condo.  Then waves of mosquitoes. My bites had bites. Got horribly sick.  Then the flying ants.  An alligator was somewhere in there.  Left early.  Shit my pants in a convenience store.  Not convenient.  Thought it was a fart.

Been sick for 7 days straight.  Not getting betting.  Prognosis unknown.  Pneumonia maybe.  Must have pain meds to get out of bed.  Dunno when will be well.  Everyone else healthy.  Vacation over tomorrow.

No blog features for a while.  Must cancel all games I run indefinitely.  Players please spread the word.  Will get back in touch when I have the good sense to stop myself from letting the entire world know I shit my pants.

Sense of humor still intact.

- Ark