What does it take to sell real estate? Brass balls. Glengarry Glen Ross. 3.5 minutes. Rip, remix, burn.
Population: One
Whoops, I missed a WISH. Well, last week was pretty busy. This week, it’s all about supplements.
What do you think about supplements to game systems? Do you like the additional material, or are you just annoyed about spending the money for the additional rules? Name up to three supplements you?ve really enjoyed, and describe why you liked them.
I like supplements. I have the gamer fondness for more crunchy stuff, although I’m just as happy without it, but what I really like is cool world material. This bias is about to become utterly apparent when I talk about my three favorite supplements.
First, perhaps the best supplement ever, GURPS Fantasy II by Robin Laws. I’m cheating, here, because the reasons I love the Madlands have nothing to do with the fact that they were presented as a supplement. There’s nothing terribly GURPSy about the Madlands; they’re an insane Cthuloid Laplanderesque setting permeated with the horror of Christopher Robin. Layered over the bleak chill of the Madlands, you’ve got half a dozen ornately conceptualized cultures ranging from a really original take on magocracy to a society of immortals that does magic by shooting up powdered gems. You’d do just as well running the whole thing in FUDGE or D20. Really, it’s a game world that hijacked GURPS for a quick trip to your local gaming store.
So OK, let’s have another first. First, perhaps the best real supplement ever, Spherewalker Sourcebook by Greg Stolze. It’s a volumnious sourcebook presented as an encyclopedia, which is a terribly clever conceit. I think it works so well because the short format of each entry forced Stolze to really focus on getting a game hook or two into a couple of short paragraphs. Further, the interlocking format, in which the entire picture becomes clear only after reading all the entries, is an excellent model for a revelatory campaign — a mode that Everway is well suited for. Doesn’t hurt that it’s very well written.
Second, I’m gonna say Charnel Gods by Scott Knipe. I talked about it a lot in the entry linked to above, so maybe just go back and take a look. This almost falls into the category of “more a game world than a supplement,” but the skill with which Knipe adapts the Sorcerer memes to support his unique concept saves it. You could run Charnel Gods in another system but it’s better in Sorcerer.
Third, I will cheat a little more and claim that the psi order/region supplements for Trinity are a single choice. I could pick one of them but I’m lazy, and they’re really all very good. Andrew Bates, the line editor for Trinity, solved the White Wolf splatbook dilemma: how do you make a clan/guild/breed/whatever book interesting and useful for most of the player base? Answer: you link the psi orders to a specific region and make the order books cover the region as well. Since each order was really designed side by side with the region in which they reside, it doesn’t feel forced. Bates did more within the parameters of the White Wolf system than any other line developer. (Sorry, Rich, Justin, et al. But Bates is the man.)
It’s probably obvious, given the examples I’ve chosen, that I’d rather have world than rules. I like it when rules are presented to support new aspects of the rules; for example, I’ve been pretty impressed with the Forgotten Realms line lately. (For a high magic over the top what if John Woo directed a fantasy movie feel, the Realms aren’t bad.) I am not so hugely fond of just new widgets. The classbooks for D&D excited me insofar as some of the classes provided new plot ideas.
Think you know when the war’s gonna start? Put your money where your mouth is. March To War has a pool; it’s five bucks to buy in. 20% of the pool goes to the player who comes closest in the form of prepaid gas cards; the rest goes to humanitarian activity in Iraq. The agency overseeing this is Boston Mobilization — just the kind of progressive activists the right wing loves to hate. But hey, they’re not planning on keeping the money, they’re planning on funnelling it to relief organizations.
I’m in for March 23rd, midnight Baghdad time. Alas, it’s presently Massachusetts-only.
Thanks to Jon Carroll, I’ve uncovered another incidence of shameful French history. Feast your eyes on this artifact, and be reminded why we must scorn the French and mock their history.
They chose the crystalline design for the replacement WTC. They’ll be the tallest buildings in the world, and they will be pretty darned cool looking.
Magpie RSS is a PHP RSS parser. Tagged for later reference.
Does anyone have any thoughts to share on Steven Erikson? As in, has anyone read his books?
RSS aggregators are going in the wrong direction. Here’s the problem. A good number of my friends use LiveJournal, as do I, mostly to read their journals at this point. One of the coolest things about LJ is the friends list concept, which allows you to interleave the journals of everyone you’ve marked as a friend. Good stuff. Certainly you can do that with the various desktop RSS aggregators.
Only for yourself! What if Trip decides he wants to use an aggregator, and moves his daily reading link list over there? Suddenly I don’t have access to that corner of his brain; I can’t see what he finds interesting. This is a lose. It reduces the information flow, and involuntary information flow reduction is just wrong.
There are a couple of Web-oriented RSS aggregators. Amphetadesk is cool but it is not oriented towards people who want to share their aggregations. Peerkat is cool but it is not an active project as far as I can tell. Ditto blagg, plus blagg doesn’t do RSS 1.0. There’s an RSS plugin for Movable Type (not to mention a decent RSS perl module) but now we’re moving away from the grail of easy configurability.
Actually, the closest thing to what I want is LiveJournal, come to think of it, now that they’ve allowed people to add RSS feeds to their friends lists. You’re kind of stuck if you want to read a feed that hasn’t been added to LJ yet, though, since you need a new account code to add such a feed. I’m installing Peerkat to see if that suits my needs; however, an end user shouldn’t have to dick around with installing Python and so on.
(Sidenote: Dave Winer’s aggregator list arrogantly excludes aggregators that don’t read RSS 2.0. Geeze, at least include a subcategory for ‘em or something.)
Last night on American Idol, after each contestant sung, they did the usual “call this number to vote for this singer” bit. But this season, they’ve added another fillip: “Or text this number!” Just like that, no explanation of what the word means. Fox knows its target audience, I guess. Or they’re just trying to look hipper.
The Retrosheet folks are more obsessive about a larger quantity of data (not to mention more productive) than you. I can almost guarantee this. They are engaged in the slow process of compiling as much data as possible about every Major League Baseball game ever played. They have the day by day standings for every season since 1900. Here’s April 11th, 1912. They have play by plays for most games between 1967 and 1990. They find it disappointing that they don’t know which umpires were assigned to all their games. I am in total awe.
I have a very clever idea regarding all this data, which I will debut sometime. Woot!