From Cartoon to Campaign

In order to help others who might be considering running a game campaign for young children, I've decided to keep a log of my Prince Valiant experiences over on RPGnet.

Christmas Loot

Although my wife and I haven't had any money to get each other gifts, I did receive a present from my wife's parents. A 1 year subscription to Consumer Reports. I used to always read my father-in-law's copy, so I have my own now. :-) Also, my dad gave me $50 cash which I spent in Half Price Books' after Christmas sale. I picked up the following:

• Experts a d20 sourcebook for making artisans, traders, and other non-heroic characters.
• GURPS Basic Set 3rd Edition one of the classic rpg systems that I've never played.
  
• GURPS Compendium II an expansion book of rules and extras for the basic set.
  
• Savage Worlds a popular game mentioned on rpg.net that I decided to pick up cheap.
  
• Sagas of the Norsemen a Time Life book on Viking and Germany myths and legends.
  
• Heroes of the Dawn a Time Life book on Celtic myths and legends.
  
• Legends of Charlemagne a volume from The Illustrated Bulfinch's Mythology.

So, not too shabby for a mere $50 which included sales tax.

Christmas Break and Shopping

One of the benefits of working at a school is that I still get holiday breaks. This year is a pretty good one too. Today is the start of the break and I don't have to return to work until January 2nd. First on my to do list is finish reading The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings.

So, my wife and I began buying presents for Christmas last night. In probably the shortest period of time I've ever shopped, we finished buying for everyone in a 2 hour trip last night and a 1 hour trip this morning. I'm not sure it it's a measure of us being focused and knowing what we wanted to get the children or a result of us being relatively poor. Either way, I enjoyed it and I hope that the gifts bring smiles on Christmas morning.

Work Holiday Party

So, we had the good old holiday party for work today. It was held at Dave and Busters. The food was just okay, but I had a good time playing games after the food portion was over. Each employee had a game card with some free credits on it. I played some arcade basketball (with the moving hoop), skee ball, and air hockey against my fellow truancy department members. I really think the bar and grille style restaurant with an arcade is one of the best places for a corporate party. It offers something for people to do rather than just sit and talk and usually has a bar for those who want something other than soft drinks.

OSU and BCS

Well, last night was a great night of college football. Both teams ahead of Ohio State lost which should mean that Ohio State will play in the national title game. Most likely, LSU will leap ahead of Georgia, but we'll find out tonight. I just hope that whoever OSU plays that the game is not a repeat of last year.

Happy Thanksgiving

Have to love any day that you get to sleep in, then get a feast, then get to lounge on the couch and watch television. To top it all off, I still have 3 more days off before going back to work. :-) I hope that everyone had a good Thanksgiving day.

Everway

So I ran a session of Everway today. Although the rule book had some creative elements, overall I thought that the Playing Guide could have been a 25 page guide instead of a 153 page book. The introductory adventure seemed like it could have used some more playtesting as the suggested course of action was neither a logical choice, nor a sensible one given the clues and interactions that the adventure details. The players liked the pregenerated characters that they used and are interested in giving the game another shot.

Rethinking Publication Options

Looking at the options, I'm considering looking at creating a wider series of books, rather than focusing on just a Runequest setting. Each book would be usable as a reference book for game masters to use as a campaign setting, for players of roleplaying games to understand the culture, religion, technology, and everyday life of the setting they are playing in, and for wargamers to use as a reference for army lists, weapons, and armor. With this, I'd present the bulk of the book as a systemless reference. In the back of the book would be appendices that provided stats, equipment, and rules options for Runequest, Fudge/Fate, and possible a third system. I'd also like to develop a nice easy wargaming set of rules that utilizes Fudge +/- dice. In an effort to better understand ancient and medieval warfare, I'm going to stick with my military history research for an extended period of time continuing the scope outside Carolingian warfare to cover other periods.

Baby Girl Walking

Although Lorene has been taking 1-3 steps here and there for a month or so, she began full on walking this week. I watched her walk the length of the kitchen, turn around and walk back to the other end. It's pretty exciting to see her reach that next level. Children grow so much the first year or so, it's amazing.

Day Off

So, I'm taking a vacation day today. Nothing like sleeping 12 hours and then getting up to lounge on the couch. Not sure what the day holds for me. Maybe watch some DVR'd stuff, go shopping at some used book stores, spend some time at a park. Mostly, just relax and enjoy the day. Later tonight I'll be logging into Guild Wars to try and get some guild versus guild matches going.

Paints and Pets

So my Mighty Armies Wild Elves have been sitting on my shelf for a while waiting to get painted. This weekend I moved one step closer to actually getting them painted by buying some primer, matte varnish, paints, and paint brushes.

In pet news, P.J. brought home his new pet guinea pig today and he was just as excited as I've ever seen him. I suggested the name Tostig, but he went with the name Bob. :-) We've got Bob setup in his cage in the living room with some timothy hay, water, and bedding.

Love Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising? Then avoid the movie.

Okay, the movie The Seeker is a film version of Susan Cooper's wonderful book The Dark is Rising. I was excited when I heard that there was a film coming out. However, after some research on the internet, I realize that what was filmed was a crass American film with little relation to the complexity and wonderfully subtle weaving of myth that was present in the books. Here's a list of what they changed for the film that will make you cry:

http://community.livejournal.com/authorblog/5880.html

1983 Lives Again

My monthly gaming session took on 1983's Red Box Dungeons and Dragons. The group made it to the second battle before losing members of the party to kobold arrow fire. A second attempt resulted in all but one member of the party dead. Third time was the charm with the group using the pregenerated characters from the rulebook. This time, the party successfully made it into the castle rather than failing before even getting inside. A few battles later, the party had been killed again. Four players died a total of nine times. The 1 hit point thief Lilly actually never died, living to run away each time. All in all, a fun nostalgic trip back to dungeon crawls with low hit points. Wizards of the Coast has made the Red Box edition (as well as the other old editions) available as Adobe PDF books for around $4.95 at sites like RPG Now.

Sidetracked

So, most of August I was diligently working on researching Carolingian warfare for my Runequest SRD based gaming book. However, with the school year starting I've been a little busy with the kids sports schedules, increased work business, and my new gadgets. Over the weekend I picked up Bachrach's Early Carolingian Warfare book from Interlibrary loan through Ohio State. I'll have to finish the last 40 pages of Halsall's Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West 450-900 and get started on the new one.

80's and early 90's rap

So far, I'm finding myself utilizing the Old School Rap digital music channel a lot. It's too bad that there isn't a radio station that plays these songs. I mean, I can find old country, classic rock, and 50s-60's music. The only downside is that sometimes the channel is classic disco. Seriously, who wants that channel?

Scientific Atlanta 8300HDC

So, we had a new cable box installed today. It includes an HD DVR. I went to Target and picked up an HDMI cable to run it to our HDTV and the picture looks great. I'll test the recording capability out tonight with Survivorman on Discovery and Human Weapon on the History channel. I wish that Ohio State's season opener was on cable tomorrow, but unfortunately Time Warner hasn't worked out a deal yet.

Took the plunge

Well, after reading so much about blogs and having run an about me page off of Tripod's free service since 1996 I've went ahead and registered a personal domain (see patricktingler.com) and set up a blog. I'm not sure how much I'll utilize the blog, but I'll try and post something when I can.