engage thy brain

Originally published at mysticages.com. You can comment here or there.

If you’re looking for webhosting, I’ve reopened RPGShelf.com webhosting. Over the past six months, we’ve switched servers for MysticAges.com, and I wanted to make sure the new webhosting accounts were working smoothly. Not only are they working smoothly, the new server is fast and ready to go. With a $30/year account, you get 700 MB of webspace, 5 Gb of bandwidth monthly, unlimited emails, unlimited domains, unlimited ftp, and more. All of this and you get the popular Control Panel, so you can fiddle with every aspect of the account… and you get Fantastico, which is a whole bunch of great web packages installed by a few clicks of your mouse (blogs, discussion forums, estores, etc.).

If you’re interested, click on over to http://www.rpgshelf.com/.

Plus, you can pick up a copy of Barbarians Versus while you’re at it. Nice, right?

All I can say is... this might just be stunning. Check out some preview pics below. I want to steal those and write a roleplaying game based around it. Awesome:

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/31123

Originally published at mysticages.com. You can comment here or there.

So, one bit of interesting news - Barbarians Versus is now available on LuLu.com as a PDF download. Check out http://www.lulu.com/mysticages for the beginnings of the online store there. I’ll update the BV site with this info later.

On the game design front, I posted a rather quickly put together game of spelling action called… Swords & Spelling. It’s a fantasy roleplaying game. Check it out and tell me what you think. My niece, who is in the 3rd Grade, is getting ready for a spelling bee later this month. I wrote it for her… It’s kind of ridiculous, but I think it would be fun. http://www.rpglaboratory.com/mysticages/swords_spelling_round_one

Originally published at mysticages.com. You can comment here or there.

With the rippling changes in the PDF online distribution world, I decided it was time to diversify. e23 is a great online games store run by Steve Jackson Games. If you haven’t checked it out, it’s been growing steadily over the past couple of years. It hosts a wide collection of GURPS and SJGames material, as well as a swathe of independent and small press designers. The other key name of note is Atlas Games, which has moved almost all of their catalog there.

Anyway, Barbarians Versus is $5, ready for download. If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, now might be a good time to do so. Here’s the link. Updates to the BV page will be forthcoming.

Originally published at mysticages.com. You can comment here or there.

The Big News in the world of indie games is the merger of DriveThruRPGs and RPGNow.com - the two heavy-hitters of PDF/electronic downloads. You can find quite a swathe of materials on both sites - longtime game companies and small independent publishers (like Mystic Ages). The idea is for both companies to leverage their collective might to further grow the electronic download market. In the meanwhile, some publishers are expecting a loss in revenue from the whole thing. It will be interesting to see what happens.

What is Mystic Ages up to in the midst of this? I am reworking the site a bit, and I plan to start hoisting up some more material. I have a Eldritch Ass Kicking blog that will be kicked off next month - it’s a way to march toward an EAK v2.0 someday. Plus, you should see some new products (finally) and a bunch of cool free stuff.

Yeah, this stuff comes in flurries for me, but don’t expect a lot. I’m getting married next month too. That’s my life.

Try these little flash games which are great puzzle teasers but inevitably waste so much of your life as to be frustrating....

http://lightforce.freestuff.gr/warehouse.php

Seriously, have fun... BUT DON'T GET FIRED.

Seriously, the coolest thing about not going to Gencon is seeing the interesting individual reports afterwards, especially the little hints of drama and change that is occurring, but seeing it from sort of an off in the distance vantage point. You can easily pick out the big winners of the con and good buys. Of course, a game can get good buzz at Gencon and still end up disappearing. But the additional stuff is seeing the shift in relationships and energy, like John Wick and Jared Sorensen's soon(?) dissolve of Wicked Dead Brewing Company or the wistful departure of Ryan Dancey from the game scene. It is an interesting dynamic all in all and probably a little different to view when you aren't caught up in the emotional experience of the con.

Originally published at mysticages.com. You can comment here or there.

I noticed a great article from one of the co-founders of Bungie, arguably the greatest computer game development company to have ever existed (although it still sort of exists within Microsoft’s gargantuan mass). Alexander Seropian lays out four indie game commandments, before he begins to tackle elements of video game design. I thought this was a good read and parallels many core principles of the indie rpg movement. Here are the four commandments:

• First Commandment: We shall establish our game’s creative direction.
• Second commandment: We shall own our intellectual property.
• Third commandment: We shall not let a third party determine our success, such as the publisher who’s doing (or not doing) the marketing, or the funding source (likely a publisher) making demands that are not in-line with our goals.
• Fourth Commandment: We shall have a small manageable team. We don’t want 50 employees making one game over three years in house (we want low overhead), and we don’t want to suffer the churn of ramping up and down for projects.

You can read the rest of the article here: http://gamasutra.com/features/20060811/seropian_01.shtml

I shouldn’t be surprised at how these link up with the indie rpg movement, but I am curious if there is a broader “indie” movement taking place. Are these just good ideas, or is this a result of what is happening as creativity, new media, and internet collide? Good stuff to think about at least…

Originally published at mysticages.com. You can comment here or there.

I received my comp copy in the mail last week, and it’s been fun looking over it. I think I will try a more expansive review on RPG.Net once I have a little time, but for now, here are my first thoughts:

• The game mechanic uses a domino system. This is very sweet. Not only do I like it, I think I could it use for other games. This is really sweet. Basically, there is a difficulty number, and to beat that difficulty number, you have to get that many matches from the dominoes that you and your fellow players draw. It’s just like playing dominoes.
• The world of Noumenon is frickin’ weird. A gigantic building with 78 rooms, although those rooms are sort of a sustained reality in themselves. Some are fairly open to tinkering, while others are built solidly to convey a theme and maddening message. Exits are not always clearly defined.
• Rooms were written by other authors, without collaboration. So, some rooms read like a standard dungeon crawl description, while others are written in first person with references to strange beings. I wrote three - Sophia, Spider Mountain, and Scorpio.
• Players play the weird bug creatures on the front of the book. There are questions as to the nature of this whole game - what is this world? Who are these creatures? What is their purpose? I like the idea that each bug-man is a soul with a chitinous shell. Just weird, but cool.
• The game has some horror mixed in, as well as bizarre fantasy. There is definitely Lovecraft influence poured in, though I have to admit - I’m not quite sure what to do with it on first glance. I’m still reading, so I’ll see what develops.
• Overall, I hope you pick it up, just because it’s a very unusual entry into the roleplaying game hobby. It certainly can be used as a resource in horror or occult rpgs (plenty of weird source material here to play with), but it can be played on its own. The biggest mark against it is the wide varying tone of the various rooms… some frankly read very amateur, like bad game fiction that makes my soul cringe. Some also tend toward the dungeon crawl tone (at least one of my rooms reads like it), which may or may not put you off. With that said, the domino mechanic is nifty (and simple), and it’s very off the beaten path for mainstream sort of games. I recommend that you check it out.

P.S. I’ll be out of town on July 23rd…. well, out of the country. My fiancee and I are going to visit her parents in Incheon, South Korea. I’m hoping it doesn’t turn into a Korean version of Meet the Parents. Other than that, it should be a very cool trip.

Originally published at mysticages.com. You can comment here or there.

I wrote a couple of pieces for this interesting book out from Abstract Nova. You should definitely pick it up — it looks like the sort of “off-the-beaten-path” roleplaying game that will live on for several years. Your gamer buddies will take a look at it and wonder why they never heard of it. You end up running it, and it turns into this big mental backstabbing session of rampant imagination and bizarre imagery. Yeah, you know they will dig it. In fact, the concept reminded me of some ideas I tried to use when I ran Over the Edge a lot. It has that sort of weirdness feel to it.

I haven’t gotten my comp copy yet, but when I do, I will let you know how it shakes out.

Oh, you can get your copy at www.key20.com.