Under a Gibbous Moon

In yet another case of a scientist with too much time on his hands, and engineering professor rolled them bones some 144,000 times. He found that will roll a one approximately thirty percent of the time (instead of sixteen percent for true randomness.)

I think anyone who’s playing a roleplaying game for any length of time has discovered this little quirk. That’s why thieves with short swords always die horrible deaths and Star Wars D6 system was able to roll up a wookie who couldn’t break a stormtroopers neck.

The stars have aligned and Cthulhu has risen from his aeons deep slumber in R’lyeh to… save the world?

Zeboyd Games is producing a retro styled RPG for the Xbox that features everyone’s favorite Old One as the hero. It looks interesting and I’m definitely going to look into it when it is released.

Cthulhu, saving the world through insanity!

Can you believe it? I don’t even get paid to come up with titles like that.

Excuse me, for a moment, while I wax nostalgic and then get down right Andy Rooneyish.

I got into roleplaying games somewhere around twenty years ago (long enough ago to make my mom worry that I was going all Anton LeVey on her). I was introduced mostly through the auspices of an older cousin. He, unfortunately, lived several hours away and was unable to properly nurture my interest.

In lieu of a proper mentor, I went to the source material itself, only to find that TSR confused their rule books with gold ingots. Strapped for cash, I went to the one place where books can be had for free, the library! Yes, believe it or not, I got my a hold of my first D&D rule book via interlibrary loan.

It was an original, if not pristine, copy of 1st edition (the one with the big idol and the ruby eyes). Within its pages I learned the secret mysteries of D&D (stats, classes, and mystical acronyms). Now I had the knowledge but it rapidly dawned on me that D&D was not a game that could be played by oneself. So I did what any good convert would do, I went out and proselytized.

I found a few willing converts but most soon abandoned the game when they discovered that playing might get them labeled as a geek or nerd. But hope was not yet lost, for I discovered that a person I had known for many years was a closet gamer. He introduced me to his circle of friends and thus began my golden age of D&D.

The path through this golden age was paved with the bodies of hordes of orcs, goblins, and impudent city watchmen. We held marathon gaming sessions that were sometimes forty-eight hours in length. Dice flowed like water in our gamer’s Utopia. But, like all golden ages, it was not to last.

We grew up and moved away, scattered to the four winds. I think that its been eight or nine years since I’ve played a game of D&D (It was a little bit after 3rd edition came out). Living in a different state and working full time I haven’t a clue on where to find a new group (other than knowing that no one I work with plays). I try not to be defeatist but as a friend of mine from back in Illinois told me recently, “I think my gaming days are done.”

This, segues nicely into the Andy Rooney portion of this post.

World of Warcraft. I hate it. It (and its ilk) seem to have largely replaced pen and paper roleplaying with a shallow video game. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy video games, but the fact that people consider MMORPGs to be a good substitute for the real thing is ridiculous.

They are like Diablo with a storyline and it’s creating a generation of munchkins. Creative problem solving has been reduced to who has the biggest sword and who can kill the most boars. Storytelling replaced with a static experience. I’ve played a lot of good video games but none of them have come close to the enjoyment of creating your own story on the fly, both as a player and the DM. And don’t even get me started on gold farming.

I think that many of these people would be better served by sitting down with other people and playing “old school” roleplaying games. The experience is much richer and in the end is far more rewarding, both in entertainment and in friendships made.

Carnegie Mellon students created a proof-of-concept application for Microsoft’s Microsoft Surface Table. The program, SurfaceScapes,  adds a suite of tools for both the GM and player by allowing them to interact with their shared virtual world.

I must say, this is far and away the coolest application of the otherwise ya-it’s-neat-but-why-bother, Microsoft Surface Table. While this would be one hell of an expensive addition to your role playing group, if you’ve got the money to spend, this might be the ultimate role playing supplement.

Surfacescapes Demo Walkthrough from Surfacescapes on Vimeo.

Hat tip Boing Boing