I upgraded to 2.9.2 today – it took me all of 1 click and about 45 seconds of waiting, for a major upgrade. No problems, no glitches, nothing.
I love WordPress as a CMS. That is all.
My refamiliarization with AD&D continues. As explained previously, the 3.5 campaign that I’m running for my family is going well, and they’re having fun. I haven’t hit them with anything truly sinister yet, with only a couple of divine/DM interventions needed thus far to avoid complete disaster.
But I’m still somewhat nonplussed with the 3.5 system. It’s incredibly complex and some of the details just don’t feel right to me, even with my house rules applied. I’m ignoring some of more intricate details for now, at least until I can get my arms around them. I’m also not really interested in investing in the 4E stuff, given what I’ve read about it.
Anyway, the Pathfinder RPG looks very intriguing to me. It’s NOT a completely new game, and looks to be a very nice 3rd-party take at a revamp of AD&D 3.5 (even though they’re very careful not to say D&D or mention WoTC). I took a quick read through some of their stuff, and it’s very interesting and well done, and is getting rave reviews. I might pick up the core books just to read through them more and pick up some useful details – even then, the characters are only 4th level right now, so if it makes sense, I might just do a conversion if applicable. PCGen is supporting the Pathfinder rules now, too, which is a huge plus.
Anyone out there have any suggestions or comments on Pathfinder?
Even though we’ve added a few more activities to our family’s already-full weekly agenda (Fencing lessons on Monday nights, regular weekend hikes, etc.), we’ve been pretty successful at keeping our burgeoning AD&D campaign going. Rebecca and Jacob have been joined by Mary Lou and my brother Jon almost every week for the past couple of months, and have progressed nicely in their character development.
It’s been pretty fun for me as well: despite the unwieldiness of the v3.5 system, I’ve been able to craft some memorable (I hope!) encounters and NPCs for them to interact with, and the world around them is really starting to take shape. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m using the Forgotten Realms as a base world, but the lands for this campaign are set in a distant location – I’ll connect everything at some point.
The characters so far:
I’ve found some really good resources to assist me on our ‘adventure’ nights. Encounter locations are designed either by hand using Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, or using a Map-Making Tile tool. The latter tool was a bit expensive and limited for what you get ($30) but it does allow for quick assembly of most necessary locations. I take the resulting PDF’s and modify them in Photoshop.
I bought Campaign Cartographer 3 along with the City Designer 3, but find the system very confusing and clumsy. I’m spending some time getting used to it, but it’s a tough haul. What I’d really like is an automatic town map generator, where I can specify walls, ports, gates, population, etc. and have the base map prepared for me. There are some freeware takes at this, but you’d think that a commercial product would incorporate that functionality instead of forcing you to start from scratch for every design.
I’m using PCGen for character maintenance. This tool also has its quirks, but I think some computer-based character creation system is a must for v3.5. The d20 SRD site is a must-have for in-play documentation. I keep the books handy, but have thankfully never had to refer to them during play.
Finally, as the pièce de résistance, I’ve taken an old projector and hung it on the ceiling, pointed towards a table. Real-time dungeon exploration is handled via ‘erasing’ a fog layer on top of the map in Photoshop. This is also nice in that I can swap out locations quicky and display previously prepared graphics of monsters. I started by printing tiles and using an old collection of dungeon pieces, but this was very limiting in a couple of ways. The projector-method, while it has its weaknesses, is a much more manageable solution. All the players have to do is move their miniatures on the map, and roll their dice.
Speaking of dice, I’ve been very surprised at the lack of good gaming supply stores around here. There are a bunch of R/C or model stores, but only one store in the area (The Whiz on Route 9) has any sort of selection at all. I suppose it’s understandable that the world of pen & paper gaming has been overrun by computer games and MMORPG’s, but wonder if a well-stocked specialty store couldn’t do well.
Yay – the 2010 PWD for Pack 106 is over! It was a very busy few days for the all of us who helped out, and while it was fun, I’m glad it’s over until next year!
Jacob’s car won 2nd place overall for speed out of 60 or so cars! It was a very close match-up between his car and the winner’s, but the 1st place competitor was consistently a couple hundredths of a second ahead. My guess is that it came down to superior wheel alignment, which we’ll definitely have to pay more attention to next year. For what it’s worth, we spent most of our “tuning” time on polishing the axles and proper weight placement, but besides ensuring that the car itself went straight, we didn’t worry too much about perfect wheel alignment.
Rebecca’s car was even faster, which I think surprised everyone! She got 4th place in the “Siblings/Adult” race, and was racing against some previous years’ winners, so that’s a very good showing! Mine was an abysmal 10th place – all 3 of the kids beat me soundly!
Another father and I also ran some fun tests to see if “weight in the back” really makes a difference, and the results were interesting: Jacob’s car was consistently faster going forwards (weight in the back) instead of backwards. However, his friend Jake’s car was faster backwards, which we think might be due to a improperly aligned front-wheel causing excess friction against the track. A better experiment could be done easily by just building a simple car using movable weights. The car itself would have to weigh very little, and have the weights be very dense and properly balanced at extreme positions. Maybe next year, I’ll give this a shot for fun.
The debate on 3-wheeled v. 4-wheeled designs continues too! Other packs in the area require all 4 wheels to be on the track, whereas we allow (and even recommend) 3-wheeled cars. The winner this year ran with all 4 wheels, while our cars all used 3-wheel designs, so there might be something to be said for keeping all 4 wheels spinning all the time.
I’m also reconsidering the axle hole style we used: I re-drilled our axle slots using a Dremel-driven drill press instead of cutting new axle shafts. While holes are more stable, they definitely cut down on the amount of adjustment you can do once the wheels are in.
All-told, we had a great time, and are really looking forward to our designs in 2011!
I’ve toyed with moving my MP3 collection (>1,400 files – it’s not a complete copy of my CD’s) online before, but have never really come across the right application to do it in. I messed around with Jinzora but it was surprisingly complex, brittle, and underpowered for what I was looking for.
Serendipitously, however, I recently ran across Grooveshark, and I’ve kinda fallen in love with it. Their business model seems really interesting, and most labels have bought into the concept. I like the fact that I can have the songs I want to listen to, at my fingertips, all the time. If I want to buy a song that I don’t own, I’m shot off to Amazon or iTunes – I think they had an option to buy or download tracks directly from them at some point, but have gotten rid of it since. Or maybe that’s a ‘VIP’ option – I don’t know, because I’m a free user.
The other very cool thing about the service is the ability to share playlists, for free, with other people. I can even present songs in a widget (check the right sidebar) – again, for free. Very cool. And if I’m willing to pay the $3/mo (or $30/year) for their paid service, I can even access my library on my Blackberry. iPhone service is coming shortly.
Grooveshark sounds like Spotify, except that it’s available NOW in the States.