We Be Goblins! - The face behind the random encounter

We all know them, the random encounters that spice up the dull backroads of a beat-down forrest or the stench of a too average sewer. But what stories lie behind these poor creatures that we kill for a few copper pieces and some XP?

We be goblins
The great folks at Paizo let us take a look behind the screens, and let us experience what it is like to be a random encounter. This adventure is an adventure for four (or more, just add water) 1st level goblin characters, for Pathfinder.



The adventure begins in the village of the Licktoad goblins of Brinestump Marsh. They have found some treasure that has them excited beyond the max: Fireworks! The goblin that found the treasure has been exiled from the village for writing (bad, bad, bad, stealing words from poor goblins heads, that cannot be tolerated). A party is gathered to follow the map of the exiled goblin to a shipwreck full of fireworks.

In the course of the adventure the heroes fight lots'o'legs, cannibalistic goblins, and, mostly, themselves. Armed with their dogslicers and filled with visciousness they go on their path to seek out this great treasure.



What follows is a great adventure that lends itself perfectly for an evening of beer-and-pretzel gaming. We had so much fun with it that we decided to start up a series of oddball campaigns*), and make this one a continuing campaing. You can download the adventure here for free (or buy the print version).The adventure serves as a preview for both Pathfinder Player Companion: Goblins of Golarion and the Jade Regent adventure path. After this adventure, I'm very much looking forward to both these products!

*)I will blog about the oddballs later, they will include Army Ants, Gamma World, Turtles, Kobolds ate my baby and more...

Back from the dead

It has been a while since I had any new posts on Behold the Dice. Offline priorities, choices, inspiration, etc.

Posting will continue any day now, beginning with an account of what you have missed in the Traveller and Pathfinder campaigns

Traveller - Into the great divide

Friday night was Traveller Night. Here a quick write up of the events of the evening: The last episode ended with the group trying to start the loader they found. Unfortunately the loader did not have any fuel cells left. So the search for fuel cells was on.

Destroyed settlement
The arm in which we found the abandoned loader turned to an end after 50 meters. We knew that there were no cells to the left, as that was the canyon leading to the steel door. So we investigated the canyon straight ahead. About half a kilometer, we saw a small settlement of three bio-dome tents. Cautiously we brought the raft nearer to investigate. One of the tents was shredded to pieces. Behind the tent was a large hole in the ground with, which looked like, a generator on the bottom. Jack jumped from the raft and tried to open the door. When the combination lock did not work, he became impatient and put his shotgun against the tent, destroying the tent in the process. Inside we did not find the sought-after cells.

Insectoids
From upon the raft it was clear that the generator still worked. So that became our main interest. Again, the impatient nature of our friend Jack nearly killed him. He descended from a steel staircase that was fixed to the side of the hole. Halfway the stairs, two large, praying mantice-like creatures emerged from pigeonholes in the side of the hole. Startled by this sight, jack descended the stairs as quickly as possible. On the bottom of the hole he took his shotgun and blasted one of the creatures to a gooey paste.



Fortunately for him, Ed was rushing in to do his part in the slaying. This could not prevent the insects from taking a few good bites from Jack. On the brink of death, Jack was, once again, saved by Dr Max Alder.
[caption id="attachment_243" align="aligncenter" width="488" caption="Saviour of the day"][/caption]

Using the Loader
Charles climbed onto the loader and tried to steer the thing towards the metal plate. Fortunately for him, the wind shield on the loader was as good as bullet proof. The gun turrets we encountered earlier fired their ammo full blast on the loader. Suffering from the same impatience bug as Jack, Charles started charging into the wall. This did not have the effect he hoped. Studying the controlpanel he noticed a button protected by a plastic cover. Always good news! He pushed the button and saw a sonic blast building up at the tip of the pinchingarm of the loader. He aimed the blast at the soft rock to the left of the metal plate. This was enough to bring the heavy plate down.

Fighting the guard
Once inside we saw that the canyon led to a large open-roofed cave. The cave was heavily guarded by human guards and gun turrets. Swift action of Ed ensured that the guards could not use the turrets against us. No all to serious injuries were sustained in the battle that followed.

Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society

In the seventies and early eighties, Traveller had it's own, dedicated, magazine. The magazine was called after the society in the original Traveller universe which aided wanderers across the galaxy with low-lost hostels in starports, and by providing a sort of Hitchhikers guide.

24 issues
The magazine was started by GWD. In total 24 issues were made. After the 24th issue, and the demise of GWD, the magazine continued as Challenge. The magazine featured new rules, adventures, fiction, background materials and Traveller news (see the free table of contents for a complete overview).


Online magazine
Currently, Steve Jackson Games publishes a bi-weekly online Traveller magazine, also called the Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society, or JTAS for short.

Reissue as PDF
The complete run of the Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society can be found at RPGnow

The best of the RPG blogs - week 16

The challenge of making money
Monte Cook, one of the epic heroes of RPG writing talks about his experiences with making money as a freelance RPG writer. The way he describes it, the DC must be at least 35. So, even if you "take 20", which you can't if you're going professional, you have to be seriously skilled. Bottom line: It's hard making a living as a RPG designer, so don't quit your day jobs, boys and girls!
Link

Gamma World: Europe in 2162 Part I: Geography

The year is 2162. 150 years ago a scientific experiment conducted in Geneva, Switzerland went terribly wrong. This event would be known as The Big Mistake. Instantly, all possible parallel worlds were condensed into one single reality.

In a series of posts, Behold the Dice will sketch a vision of what is left of Europe in Gamma World

The big changes
The costal regions of north-western Europe have fought a battle against the invading sea for centuries. In the events following the Big Mistake, the sea got the upper hand and claimed vast stretches of land. This has changed the coastal line of western Europe dramatically. In addition, several large cities, in particular the cities of Amsterdam, Hamburg and Berlin are nog submerged some 10 to 30 meters below sea level.



Temperature
Gradually over the past 150 years, temperatures have been rising as a result of the more corrosive atmospheres on some of the merged worlds. Seasons still hold, with hot and damp tropical summers, and bleak and wet winters. Autumn and fall are not well defined. Both are a periods of 1 or 2 months in which the weather slides from chilly to hot and vice versa.

The landscape
With the loss of a substantial part of society, nature has taken back control again in Europe. The costal region consists of mixed forrests and plains. In central Europe, vast pine forrests, ranging from the German western border to well within Russia have become dark and dangerous places.

Islands
The changes in coastal line have produced a series of new islands. Ireland has split into two islands of equal size. In addition, Bretange has become an island, and the south of Sweden has become an island. The most important new island is the city of London that is surrounded by seawater. The suburbs of the city have been taken by the sea, but the majority of the city rises proud above the waves.

Mountain Ranges
On the peaks of Europe not much has changed, apart from the glaciers, which are by now almost extinct. The cooler climate high in the Alps and Pyrenees have drawn several clans.

Traveller inspiration

Space: 1970 is an excellent blog that features artwork, photo's etc. from science fiction shows and films from the 1970's. Take a look at this wonderful picture of a capital ship.



The picture is from the 1979 science fiction film The Black Hole. The film tells the story of the crew of the Palomino that boards the long-lost ship Cygnus. Here they have to stand up to faceless robots that have unhealthy plans for the visitors.

The best links of week 15

It's Link-sunday again here on Behold the Dice. Reading the gaming blogs so you won't have to.

Adventure Design Deskbook
The Underdark gazette takes Mythmere's Adventure Design Deskbook Volume One for a testdrive. They show how an adventure is made using the random tables from the book. I'm really curious about the book!
Link



Thousand Suns
James Maliszewski talks on Grognardia about his Sci Fi RPG Thousand Suns. It's a game with limited background information. He talks about the challenges you have to face as a DM running an open ended sandbox campaign in the SciFi genre, while your characters have their own starship.
Link
Thousand Suns can be bought here from RPGNow and here from Rogue Games themselves.




Languages
Kobold Quarterly has a great post on the working of the Speak Languages skill. The skill doesn't work as a skill, since you either know a language or you don't. In the blog, the skill is modified to work as a skill, with examples of DCs for different tasks etc. I never really thought of this one, bu I like it! This will be employed in our campaigns.
Link

Traveller inspitation
The Zhodani base links to 5 free ebooks from the project Gutenberg to use as inspiration for your Traveller game. It's old stuff, but good stuff.
Link



Some of my own books for Traveller inspiration:




Gamma World adventure
Sly Flourish has an exciting Gamma World adventure on his blog. Go check it out!
Link

Review: Kobold Quarterly 17

This month, the 17th number of Kobold Quarterly was released. For those of you unfamiliar with Kobold Quarterly, Kobold Quarterly is a quarterly magazine focussing on Pathfinder, Dungeon and Dragons 4th edition, Dragon Age, and system neutral materials. Since the demise of Dragon, it is the sole torchbearer of quality RPG magazines.



Kobold Quarterly 17 is packed with ideas and resources for your games, review of fiction, and questions and answers. A few highlights of issue 17 are:

Rules for archenemies
This article from Michael Kortes describes a series of rules to make the recurring villain in your campign even more memorable. A really nice approach is to give characters certain benefits, such as improved diplomacy when aquiring information on the villain, or an extra 5 foot step to represent the extra mile characters are willing to go to slay the villain.

Interview with Jeff Tidball
The interview with Jeff Tidball (twitter) focusses on the practical aspects of game designing and working as a freelancer in the games industry. Very valuable to see a little bit of the inside of the industry.

Secret of the Four Golden Gates
This article describes new societies and new items for monks. A monks weapon that is presented in the article is a magic prayer wheel. Somehow it's a funny thought seeing a monk beating the living daylights out of a drow using a prayer wheel.



Fireworks
Jonathan McAnulty writes an article on fireworks, and the magical effects they can have. These effects range from being blinded to sustaining damage, and finding the way north in the wilderness.

Kobold Quarterly shows that there is an important place for print or PDF magazines in addition to all the online content that is out there. The articles and artwork in this issue generally are of a higher quality and higher editorial standards than blogs and other online content.

Kobold Quarterly is available in print and pdf

Farewell 2nd edition

A little over six months ago we started a 2nd edition advanced Dungeons and Dragons campaign. The reasons we started the campaign was out of nostalgia for our old books, and to be able to play Night Below in the original edition. Now, six months later, we decided to leave 2nd edition and move to Pathfinder.

Amazing
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition is amazing! The history of the game, the depth of the products, the quality of the boxes, maps and artwork are all top notch. At the risk of contributing to the Edition Wars that are fought on forums and blogs alike, let me explain why we made this depatrure.



Rules
Playing 2nd edition again, after many years, really made me admire the work and effort that went into Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition. Advaced dungeons and Dragons is an organic ruleset, grown and adapted over many years, and the rules reflect this. In our group we had the growing sensation that the rules did not facilitate the game. Let's face it, the rules of 2nd edition aren't really all that streamlined or balanced. Now, this may not be a bad thing. A lot can be attributed to playing, and DMming style, etc. but still. I can say that 2nd edition isn't really all that suited to govern our playing style.

Playing style
We like to play a fast-paced game. Both in terms of style during sessions as in terms of character advancement. Our style can be characterized as epic or heroic, or pulp-fantasy if you like. The ruleset of Pathfinder natively supports this style, 2nd edition not so much. For instance, we like to use a lot of skills. Let's face it, its fun to roll dice, and we like to succeed. The thrill of succeeding a tumble check to get past an opponent, followed by an jump and acrobatics check to swing from a chandelier, and to finally make an attack against the villain on the balcony. That kind of stuff.



Living system
Last, and certainly not least, I want to be part of a living system again. 2nd edition with it's huge legacy is amazing, but largely static. It doesn't have the creative energy of the retrogaming community. Nor does it provide the thrill of buying brand new books and incorporating them in the campaign. Again, not for everybody, but it is something that appeals to me in Pathfinder.




To conclude
2nd edition is amazing. However as of the next gaming session were converting Night Below to Pathfinder. I'm very much looking forward to it.



*) Picture of edition wars is by the Weem, check him out!

The best links of week 14

Each week Behold the Dice brings you the best blogposts of the week delivered in a nice crispy package. Without further adue:

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
The hopeless gamer features a review of the graphic novel Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, a graphic novel published by Dark Horse comics. As a fan of Fritz Leiber I'm very much looking forward to this one.
Link


Pricing
There has been some debate on pricing of RPGs, following Adamant Entertainment’s very low pricing of their products. Long story short, initially Adamant Entertainment sold more copies of their products, but the beneficial effect did not last long. Inkwell Idea's explains what they think is a suitable price for RPGs in PDF-format.
Link

Kobold Quarterly 17
The good folks at Kobold Quarterly have released another issue of Kobold Quarterly: Number 17. Look here for the contents.
Available here


Larry Elmore Western Art
We all know Larry Elmore's art from the elaborate dragon paintings he did. Grognardia posted some pictures from a different genre: Western. Fantastic to see this master in another genre.
Link

The best links of week 13

Pole arms
You think you know your weapons, right? Especially the pole arms hold no surprises for you. You know your halberd, glaive, spear, even the exotic naginata. Well, think again. Do this test at Wizards to see where you stand. My score? An 8 out of 22
Link



Artwork from MERP
Tales from the tower http://iguanaslair.blogspot.com/ regularly publishes artwork and maps from the Middle Earth Role Playing game (MERP). Look at this wonderful collection of drawings:
Link



Space 1889
Frank Chadwick started a blog on Space:1889, and the steampunk genre in general. In the first posts he talks about France in the world of Space:1889, and on the position of steam punk in the pubishing industry.
Link



How to survive a gaming convention
Sly Flourish http://slyflourish.com/ Has a funny and insightful post on how to survise a gming covention.
Link

Traveller: Summary of first five chapters

• You are in the backwater Inchin system, in the Spinward Marches. Inchin is a poor desert planet owned by a guy named Iarl Rowri, an exentric rich guy who bought his own planet, sure he could make a lot of money there. He has met a lot of setbacks and has not succeeded as of yet. Inchin now has a kind of totalitarian regime. Rowry apparently lives in a palace (!) at the only town on Inchin, called Rowri's Folly by people off planet.


• Takeda Station orbits Inchin. It used to be a mining/industrial base, but Rowri sold it to Takeda beacause he needed the money. This was 15 years ago. You have no idea who or what this Takeda guy is.
  


• You've all arrived at Takeda station, killed some rats, bought a weird ship (without a jumpdrive) named Beetlejuice of an old geezer named Finkle.
  


• You don't really have a purpose here, but are bound to the system because you have no transport. The only one with a purpose here is Max. His research was stolen, and after some investigation it appears the assignment came from the Inchin system. He has no other clues.


• You did some mining runs for an independent group of miners, opposing the League of Miners and prospectors and a trader named Bachus, who owns a 500 ton far trader "The Predator".


• Security Inspector Reichmann of the Inchin Police asked you to check out Bachus, because he appears to deliver weapons to the Inchin resistance.
  
  


• It turns out your ship belonged to an alien (Aslan) named K'syah. He found the ship right there in the system, a dangerous place he refers to as the "Galactic Dragon". He doesn't want you to know where it is, because it's a dangerous place. You did discoverer this Galactic Dragon must be a large vessel.


• This K'syah person was murdered about 10 years ago, after he hid the ship. It's unclear who murdered him or why, but he was very paranoid just before he was murdered, saying he was being followed because of something that had to do with the ship.
  


• K'syah had a girlfriend who might still be on the station, but she's employed at the upper section, which is off limits to lower section folk. Maybe she could lead you to the location of the Galactic Dragon.


• You broke into The Predator to discover a small ships boat inside, which could be used for smuggling runs. You planted a tracking device with a range of 1000 miles. Maybe that way you can catch Bachus red-handed.

Sessions so far:
Chapter 1 - Rat Hive Exodus
Chapter 2 - Beetlejuice
Chapter 3 - Spacetruckers (in Dutch)
Chapter 4 - The Lion and the Dragon (Dutch)
Chapter 5 - Deadly Choices

Traveller: From the files of Max Adler

The laboratory was in shambles. Max just stood there, perplexed. His papers were all over the place. His set-ups lay on the ground, shattered. Geiger-counters were ticking like mad. He didn't have to look to know that it would be gone. The object of his research, the thing he affectionately called his "marble of wonder". And sure enough, the container lay on the ground, taken from the freezer. It had been opened, and both the marble and the protective box it came in were gone. Years of research... all in vain. He had been so close to unlocking it's secret. Who could have stolen it? Who even knew it existed, besides a few members of the university? It had disappeared just as mysteriously as he had received it.



Isis
Isis was her name, a beautifull black physicist working on the university, who he had never spoken to before. They had a brief relationship, and she asked him to take a look at an object with strange magnetic properties. She had received it from a friend, she said, and apparently someone had been murdered for it. It wasn't the only victim the object would claim. Isis had not been careful enough during her first contact with the quicksilver-like liquid, shaped like small sphere. She contracted strange radiation sickness and died two months after Max had met her. He had retained the object and examined it ever since.

Max spotted something on the container the marble and the box had been in. Some sod had taken the thing from the freezer with his bare hands! These must have been dumb ruffians, working for somebody else, who had no idea the container would be extremely cold. Small patches of skin stuck to the metallic cylinder. At least he had some DNA to go on...



From the files of Max Adler:
"Topological states with non-Abelian anyons describe a new phase of matter. When there are excitations in the topological quantum liquids, there are gaps between the excitations and the ground state. The topological origin and the gap protect the anyons from environmental decoherence." ~Max Adler


Love, Max

Traveller: Chapter V - Deadly choices

Friday night was our group's monthly Traveller night. We're playing the fifth session.

Baccus' request
There we were, hanging out in Murphy's again. Hank Williams was playing on the jukebox, and we were enjoying our beers. "You boys and girls want a drink", Baccus asked. "Sure, anytime. Sit down", our reply was. It turned out Baccus needed us to make a run. Apparently, he was double booked for this week. Yeah right! As if it had nothing to do with making smuggle runs to the planet. I guess he is feeling Reichman's heat, and doesn't want to burn himself this time. What he doesn't know, or seems to know, is that, for the time being, we are in the same ballpark as Reichman. Anyway, a gig is a gig, and this baby would earn us 10.000 credits in a day, half up front. Perhaps we find some useful information to sell back to Reichman as a nice bonus. If we're real lucky we can even nail that bastard Baccus, we'll see.



Making the run
For 10.000 credits we have to deliver two 250 kg heavy crates to some predefined coordinates on Inchin. With the crates loaded Jack can't hold his curiosity any longer, and has to try the activation code of Baccus' ship, 5382, on the lock on one of the crates. Unfortunately, it doesn't work, and the light display on the crate seems to indicate that attempt one of three has been used.
We decided not to meddle with the crates any longer. The run into Inchin's atmosphere was a smooth ride, thanks to the excellent flying skills of Jol Nar.



At the delivery point, no one was waiting for us. We decided to drop off the crates and to fly the beetle juice to a nearby mesa were we could spy on the spot without a too large change of being spotted in return. After a while we see a raft approaching the crates. A group of X, presumed rebels pick up the crates and leave in the direction they came from. We had our own raft ready, and pursued the rebels to see if we could learn something interesting.

Steel plate
Going 140 km per hour through a narrow canyon required the full attention of Jol Nar. We came across a crossing with a second canyon, but did not give it much thought, and went straight ahead. Just around the corner of a slight curve in the canyon a big steel plate, the size of the canyon, was blocking our way. Jol Nar managed to stop the raft just in time before getting crushed on the surface of the plate. All of a sudden we heard the familliar buss of gun turrets targeting. Jolnar took the raft in full reverse while Ed and Charles were emptying their combat riffles on the turret muzzles.

Contacting Reichman
Back at Takeda station we contacted Reichman. The information we told him was not necessarily new information, but we did manage to get a new assignment. Even if this amounts to nothing, we still have our backs covered as far as the authorities are concerned.




Going back
We took the beetlejuice back to Inchin and got the raft out. following the exact trail as the first time, we arrived at the junction between the two canyons. Instead of going straight to the metal wall again, now we decided to take a turn for the left. Here we found an enormeous loader. Figuring this might come in handy when approaching the steel wall, we tried to start is. Alas, the power cells were drained. Next session we have to look for a way to power the loader. But, with Max and Stacey combined, that shouln't be too much of a challenge.



The sessions we played so far:
Chapter I - Rat Hive Exodus
Chapter II - Beetlejuice
Chapter III - Spacetruckers
Chapter IV - The Lion and the Dragon
Chapter V - Deadly Choices

Links week 12

Sunday-links-day here on Behold the Dice. It's been a slow week, link-wise. Still we managed to present you with three links that caught our attention this week.

Developments in Old School Gaming
There's Dungeons Down Under brings a nice review post of three interesting developments in old school gaming. As regulars here will know, I'm a big fan of old school gaming. Every time I see news that the old school community is alive and kicking, I'm thrilled.
Link



Pulp Characters
We linked to the previous posts a few weeks back. Campaign mastery again delves into the pulp genre and provides some interesting ideas:
Link



Steve Jackson Games
MTV Geek interviews Steve Jackson and Phil Reed about... well, Steve Jackson Games. Go check it out!
Link


Dave's Mapper
David Millar, the creator of the wonderful mapping tool we linked to earlier, mailed to tell us the new location of the mapper. Thanks Dave! Here is the new link:
Link
Facebook page

Traveller D66-list: Takeda's Lounge

Situated on the top of Takeda Station is Takeda's Lounge. This is the hangout of the elite of this system. Although the lounge is unreachable for the uninitiated, a service engineer managed to smuggle a data tape from the place's jukebox to the lower levels.



Now, for the first time we see what king of bleak, nihilistic music the jet set is swinging their hips to:

• 11 - Sarah Brightman - I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper


• 12 - Zlad - Elektronik Supersonik


• 13 - David Bowie - Space Oddity


• 14 - Daft Punk - Derezzed


• 15 - Joy Division - She Lost Control


• 16 - Tubeway Army - Gary Numan - Are Friends Electric


• 21 - Wolfsheim - A New Starsystem has been Explored


• 22 - Welle Erdball - Monoton + Minimal


• 23 - 8bitFanatic - Space Traveler


• 24 - M|A|R|R|S - PumpUpTheVolume


• 25 - Air - All I Need


• 26 - Duran Duran - Wild boys


• 31 - Geoff Love - Barbarella Theme


• 32 - Dead or Alive - You Spin Me Round


• 33 - Depeche Mode - Just Can't Get Enough


• 34 - Soft Cell - Tainted Love


• 35 - Kraftwerk - Das Model


• 36 - Welle:Erdball - Ich bin aus Plastik


• 41 - Welle:Erdball - Es geht voran


• 42 - Front 242 - Headhunter


• 43 - Skinny Puppy - Smothered Hope


• 44 - Ministry - Everyday Is Halloween


• 45 - Ministry - I Wanted To Tell Her


• 46 - Ministry - Effigy


• 51 - S.P.O.C.K - Never Trust a Klingon


• 52 - The Prodigy - Firestarter


• 53 - Nine Inch Nails - Down In It


• 54 - Front Line Assembly - Plasticity


• 55 - KMFDM - Anarchy


• 56 - The Human League - (Keep Feeling) Fascination


• 61 - Billy Idol - Power Junkie


• 62 - Sabrepulse - Skyfire Ace


• 63 - New Order - Blue Monday


• 64 - Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart


• 65 - The Smiths - Panic


• 66 - Joy Division - Transmission

Links Week 11

Sunday is links-day here on Behold the Dice. We read the gaming blogs so you won't have to. Enjoy these best links of last week!

The Underdark Gazette
The Underdark Gazette is one of my favorite sources of old-school gaming information. This week they featured another great links collection.
Link



Sword & Sworcery
The new tagline for the blog is "99.9% unplugged". I'm a big fan of retro-style RPGs and in particular retrographics with modern games. I'm very much looking forward to the Sword & Sworcery, a new adveture game in an old styling. Take a look at the wonderful artwork they have on their site:
Link

Walk in the Woods from Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery on Vimeo.

Printing on Demand
Over at Stargazer's World they have a piece on the printing on demand (POD) of RPGnow. The book that is printed on demand is Stars without numbes, the link to which was featured on the linksfest a few weeks back. In all, Stargazer is very positive about printing on demand. With RPG sales to a (very) low, at least here in the Netherlands, and brick and mortar stores having to make shelf space priorities, it is good to see that this innovation in the publishing industry is working well. In the near future I plan on doing some experiments myself. reports to follow
Link

Dragon deseases
I love the idea of a dragon catching a cold, though I hate to be in the neighbourhood when he sneezes. Kobold Quarterly had the third post in a series of five that describe diseases that can strike a dragon.
Link



Maps
A mapper to make beautiful old-school maps.
Link



Alignment
Dungeons and Dragons alignments explained with muppets characters
Link

Party
Over at Kobold Quarterly they have an anniversary. It's been five years since Open Design, the parent company of Kobold Quarterly started. This pary is celebrated with massive discounts on their products. Go check it out:
Link

Traveller AR: a MMORPG for iPhone

Fight... Trade... Explore... Those three key words will describe the gameplay of the new Traveller AR iPhone game. I already linked to Traveller AR in the link collection of last week, but I'm so excited I decided to write some more on this upcomming MMORPG. The game will be available on iPhone in the summer of 2011. I will keep you posted on news. For your own Traveller AR fix, visit the links at the bottom of the post.



Setting
As the name suggests, the setting in which the game is taking place is the Traveller universe, in particular the Third Emperium. This should mean that the game comes with a very rich background and a huge universe to play in. The hexagon space charts imediately feel familiar. The game will offer the majority of the classes found in the pen and paper RPG, including traders, belters, Scientists and diplomats. The artwork of available ships look inspiring.



Augmented reality
A cool feature of the game is the use of augmented reality. In augmented reality game graphics are added to the real world environment, integrating the two. Imagine your iPhone working as a pair of virtual reality goggles, registering the real world with it's camera and adding a layer of 3d objects to those images for game play. According to the website, augmented reality enambles you to:

• Paint the ‘real’ sky around you as our game canvas.


• Remove the constraints of gaming on a phone, a monitor, or even a BigScreen, and let you “wave your phone around” in real space, and see fully rendered 3D objects drawn on top of what your camera sees.


• Use your iPhone’s Compass and Accelerometers to let you “look around” you in full 360 degrees by 360 degrees of freedom (just as if you had a huge window in your ship’s cockpit or bridge).


• Use your iPhone’s GPS to detect your location and help you connect with other real players near you physically as well as virtually.
  Use your iPhone’s Camera to bring forward the real world and let it interact with the objects in the game.

Previews
As you would expect from a company aiming for a new MMORPG, ingZ Inc, the developers of the game, are well connected in the social media. Their Youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/TravellerAR features preview of the game.




Links
Traveller AR
Traveller AR's Facebook page
Traveller AR's twitter account