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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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:
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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.
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How to survive a gaming convention
Sly Flourish http://slyflourish.com/ Has a funny and insightful post on how to survise a gming covention.
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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.
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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:
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Steve Jackson Games
MTV Geek interviews Steve Jackson and Phil Reed about... well, Steve Jackson Games. Go check it out!
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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:
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Facebook page

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.
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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:
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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
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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.
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Maps
A mapper to make beautiful old-school maps.
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Alignment
Dungeons and Dragons alignments explained with muppets characters
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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:
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Links week 10 (07-03 to 13-03)

Just like every sunday Behold the Dice brings you the best of the RPG blogs.

Government in your Campaign
The Campaign Mastery goes into details about what forces govern your city. They explore a series of ideas to make the government structure more interesting and more relevant for your campaign.
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Purple Worm
Go to Original Edition Fantasy for a wonderful early picture of a purple worm
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Ethan Gilsdorf
Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks describes his reconnection with Dungeons and Dragons. It's nice to see positive news on Dungeons and Dragons in such a mainstream news source. Also, the book is heartily reccomended.
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The Underdark Gazette
The Underdark Gazette has a terrific wrap-up post for old-school gaming links.
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Traveller AR
A new Traveller-based MMORPG for iPhone will be released in the coming months. Greyhawk Grognard posts a preview of the game. I'm looking very much forward to this game. Look at Traveller AR for more details.
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DnD Love song
Watch it, learn it, sing it
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The best of week 8 - February 21 to Februari 27

Last week has been a quiet week on the blogs. Nevertheless, here are three posts I particularly liked. Have fun!

Music
There is a lot of attention on music at the gaming table the last weeks. In this blog we had Murphy's jukebox. Several other bloggers shared their favorite music. Look at this post at Gnomestew for a large post on their favorites:
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API
Obsidian Portal built up anticipation in the last weeks. On several locations they shared they had big news, but wouldn't say what it was. This week they announced that they have been working on an API. For those who are not familiar with APIs, an API functions like a reception desk servicing requests for information and funtionality that is offered on the Obsidian Portal site. This means that third party developers can start to develop mobile apps, webapplications and such based on the information in Obsidian Portal. I look forward to see whether there are some smart and creative developers out there to put this to maximum use.
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Free game
Stargazers world has a weekly feature which links to free games. This time Stars Without Number, Science Fiction Role playing game that can be downloaded from DriveThruRPG. Take a look:
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The best of week 7: February 14 – February 20

These are my favorite blogsposts of the last week. Check them out, and follow these superb writers!

Ye olde dungeons
Always amazing to see drawings from the old box. Makes me want to get out my old aD&D notes to see what treasures I have lurking in the box. Maybe stuff for some later blogposts.
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Which RPG suits me
Strategy games has a nice decision tree to choose the RPG that will best suit you. I had a fun time playing around with the different answers, finding some RPGs I have never heard of before.
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A rant on skills:
Robert J. Swalb discusses some caveats you should consider when using skills. Skills can misguide discussion and hamper the playing experience if you're doing it wrong. I generally agree with the backdraws that he is describing. His solution: Do away with skills. My solution: Don't do it wrong.
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Terrain, baby:
If you are playing with miniatures, and you want the best looking terrain you have ever seen, look at the following links. Simply amazing.
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Music:
These last few weeks, several bloggers and forums have addressed the question of ideal campaign music. Of course, we have our Traveller D66 list from Murphy's Bar & Grill on our local space station.
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Free Oldscool RPG
I love oldscool RPGs and retroclones. Stargazers World links to Oldschool hack, a free oldschool RPG that has a splendid presentation. Looks really neat. I'm looking forward to reading it.
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The best of week 6: February 7 - February 13

Pulp adventures:

Campaign mastery has an excellent post on the pulp genre. The post elaborates on three aspects of pulp adventures: The world the adventure is taking place in, the particular story conventions of a pulp story, and character cliche's. I like the paragraph on optimism as an important stance in pulp games. Instead of a cynical or dark setting, pulp settings are best played with a hands-on we-can-make-this-work attitudes, no matter how doomed the world is.

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Languages:

An often overlooked aspect of role playing games is the role language plays in the game. Although there are relatively a lot of rules in the different rulebooks, a lot of DMs, and players alike, struggle with making the concept work.

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Dice mechanics:

Statistics, the favorite subject of any gamer! Ever since the distribution of dice results was omitted from the DMG, DMs and players have been searching for more information of the distribution of dicerolls. The following article deals with statistics of dice mechanics and the effect of checks under different gaming systems on successrate. Pretty well worked out.

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Conan:

The following post collects an excellent collection of Conan materials, including a link to a free audio production of Red Nails by Robert E. Howard. Good stuff!

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