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?

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.

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.

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

So this is my first post on my new Mystic Ages site. Just a test here, so don’t get all excited if it doesn’t seem like much. Just hold on a bit.