Let's roll some dice, watch some movies, or generally just geek out. New posts at 6:30 pm ET but only if I have something to say. Menu at the top. gsllc@chirp.enworld.org on Mastodon and @gsllc on Twitter.
Oddly, he received criticism for the stat block along the lines of, among other things, “wild turkeys can’t fly!” This is a stupid criticism because 1) dire turkeys are works of fiction in which magic may be involved, so they can be whatever the creator wants; and 2) even if you disregard #1, regardless of its biological cousins, even birds as large as an ostriches or cassowaries can’t fly because their just too damn big. Personally, I think my response (on Facebook) was the best he received.
If only Mr. Carlson had had access to this stat block in 1978….
But what would the holidays be without a little Star Trek thrown in?
Last week, I signed an online petition. There’s very little I could do that’s dumber than signing and online petition.
I signed it. As my comment indicates, online petitions are dumb, but it made me feel good to ask for it. I'd absolutely by those materials in physical and digital form if they were offered for sale.
— Rob Bodine, #Attorney by Day, #Nerd by Day & Night (@GSLLC) November 17, 2022
There’s no guarantee that each signature comes from a unique individual. I alone have a seemingly infinite number of email addresses through which I could have voted. In the case of political petitions, there’s no guarantee that the signors are from the relevant jurisdiction, but that’s not relevant here. The petition at issue here is requesting that Wizards of the Coast (“WotC”) complete and release four cancelled books from the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons (“4e“) era: Player’s Handbook Races: Humans, Gazetteer: The Nentir Vale, Player’s Option: Champions of the Heroic Tier, and Class Compendium: Heroes of Sword and Spell.
Don’t Hold Your Breath
We have no idea how many people actually want that, but that number has to be far too small to justify a release of books. Also of note, even if we know Fred Snerd signed the petition once and only once, how many of those books would he buy? These aren’t core sourcebooks; they’re supplements. Supplements never sell as well as sourcebooks because only the core sourcebooks are necessary for the game. Supplements don’t necessarily appeal to everyone that plays. If Fred never plays humans, he’s not going to buy Player’s Handbook Races: Humans.
Besides, the timing couldn’t be worse. Earlier this month, WotC removed the last remaining 4e content they had from their site. I think the remaining material was their Dragon and Dungeon magazines archive. There’s simply no way they’re going to reverse course so quickly. You can still buy existing content via the DMs Guild, so the material is out there. Hell, I recently bought a ton of 1st Edition material, and I now having everything that was every lost, stolen, or destroyed. It’s a bit much to expect WotC to create new content for that edition. The legacy communities have to rely on each other to create and publish material for those editions. Of course, that’s made difficult by the fact that WotC legal have stifled such creativity with horrible mischaracterizations of intellectual property law, but do you really want me beating that dead horse again?
I love 4e and am currently in discussions to host a new campaign, but WotC has moved on, they have no reason to complete new material for it, and they have no reason to believe it would be worth their while financially speaking.
But it felt damn good signing that petition. I can’t wait to play again.
Recently, a friend and I started planning a 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons (“4e”) game, so my Facebook, Twitter, Mewe, and now Mastodon(!) posts have brought up 4e. It resulted in a loose commitment from an old friend to join the game, which is great, and it has me thumbing through my old material searching for the unfinished business I have with 4e.
I always wanted to roleplay a jannisary, which is a character theme (read: background) from the Player’s Option: Heroes of the Elemental Chaos. This is a character whose backstory includes time in service to a genie. In my case, I’d choose a marid as my former master — probably Ajhuu — who might justify me taking a slight twist on the Prince of Genies paragon path when the time comes. All I’m saying, Vic, is that I have a maird mini if you ever want my benefactor to make an appearance.
Yeah, I see his trident. He’s still very powerful.
Mixing a jannisary theme with a melee bard (valorous bard, maybe?) could be fun, and mechanically wouldn’t be too underpowered. I have a tendency to create underpowered characters because I’m far more interested in building an intriguing character than a powerhouse.
Did someone say, “bard”?
I’m also eager to use my synDCon Dungeon Delves for side quests or when everyone’s just looking to pick some fights.
I’m extremely eager to add this game to my schedule. This shouldn’t be a big deal, but I’ve always been a slave to living campaigns, either directly or indirectly. When I returned to the game after a 23 year absence (due in large part to the Satanic Panic), I found games through the Living Greyhawk campaign, and from that formed relationships with people who were living campaign enthusiasts. As a result, most games I played were in living campaigns, but even my home games were populated with people that, because of their devotion to living campaigns, always wanted to play the current edition of the game. As a result, playing a past edition, and certainly an out-of-print game, was almost never an option.
Flash forward to today, and I’m running my first 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons game in 40 years and am on the cusp of returning to 4th Edition. I’m actually getting to play what I want because my circumstances have changed. Not bad for someone who not too long ago left the game (willingly this time). Could the FASA Star Trek RPG be in my future?
I’ve also started working with the Masterplan application for running campaigns in 4e. If you play, check it out. I’m doing a lot of work on cleaning up the data.
By the way, this post has inspired me to change the name of my blog to Play What You Want.
A few days ago, I complained about how clunky Mastodon was. I stand by that. However, I managed to figure it out. So, let me tell you some things that, for some ridiculous reason, no one else seems willing to tell you.
First, if you go to Mastodon.com, you’re screwed. It won’t work. So, how do you do it? The best way to get on Mastodon is to know what server you want to join. In my case, I went with https://chirp.enworld.org/web/home. Another popular one for nerds is https://dice.camp/explore. I applied for membership 🙄, which was accepted. Mastadon.social appears to be the baseline, as a few celebrities are on there, but it doesn’t allow signups for some reason (maybe it’s just me). However, I learned that you don’t have to be on a server to follow someone on another server. As long as you see them appear in your server through a re-toot (yeah, their “tweets” were called “toots,” but now they’re called “posts”), you can follow them. I’m not sure how that works, but it does, so there you go.
Now, if I wanted to join a server that’s dedicated to sports, I wouldn’t know where to start. Someone had to give me the name of a server for me to find it. Again, going to Mastodon.com doesn’t help. You just have to know the URL of the server to find it, but for all I know, no such server exists. How could I possible find it?
I’m sure it can be done, but Mastodon is horribly clunky, so it’ll be a slow burn to get there. It’ll also take a while to get followers. To do so, I think I need to pepper my followers on other social media outlets to do so. In other words, the only way to even get on Mastodon in the first place, then to make it work for you, is to use other social media sites. Not a good business plan. Note, however, that there’s a setting in your profile that allows you to be found and promoted based on other members’ searches. It’s off by default, so I imagine you’ll want to turn it on.
So, join whatever server you want, then migrate to my profile and follow me. I’m at https://chirp.enworld.org/web/@gsllc and https://dice.camp/web/@gsllc. I believe these can also be found by searching for gsllc@chirp.enworld.org or gsllc@dice.camp once you’re in Mastodon.
My annoyance with the legal department at Wizards of the Coast led me to create a new law of the internet. You all know Godwin’s Law:
As an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1.
Put another way, if an internet argument goes long enough, someone’s going to call someone else a Nazi. Then, there’s Poe’s Law:
Without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, every parody of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied.
In other words, you can’t tell the difference between an idiot and a comedian unless they’re a comedian and they ruin their joke by explaining it. Well, Poe’s Law inspired the text of my own law, which unsurprisingly I call Bodine’s Law:
Without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, an arrogant author’s exploitation of another’s ignorance can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere, ignorant/incompetent expression of the views being expressed.
In other words, arrogant authors, thinking their dishonesty will never be exposed, tend to take advantage of the ignorance of others by knowingly making ignorant or incompetent statements, but if you understand the topic, you won’t know if the authors are actually ignorant themselves. The arrogant authors generally rely on an argument from authority, but not necessarily, so I think this rule is useful to keep in mind.
Henry, Sr. shouldn’t have slapped Indy. He should have used a baseball bat.
As you know (if you’ve ever read my blog), I’m running 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons for the first time in 40 years, and I’m in talks with Luddite Vic about organizing a 4th Edition game. Moreover, in the back of my mind, I’m contemplating a FASA Star Trek RPG game. That one may never happen because I’d absolutely have to run that online to find any players, but it’s certainly something I’d like to do in theory.
The point is that all of that material has been sitting on my shelf for years (if not decades) collecting dust, but it’s still as good as it ever was. The potential is always there, and you never know how your circumstances will change. Hell, I even have 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragonsmaterial on my shelves, and I can’t stand that edition. I’ve played it a couple of times in the past ten years just so I could hang out with some friends, and I’ve written not one, not two, but three posts on unfinished business I have with the edition, so even that has potential value (assuming the DM gets rid of confirmation of critical hits). Two editions of the Gamma World RPG, Star Wars Saga Edition RPG, Dragon Age RPG, Margaret Weiss’s Marvel Superheroes RPG, several board games (Demons!), and some games still in shrink wrap all litter my “man cave,” but I wouldn’t consider my collection huge. If yours is huge, that in my opinion you’re doing things better than I am. You never know what you might need to pull out for company. Hell, I’m even ready to host a night of blackjack or poker.
Where’s a roided-out Barry Bonds when you need him?
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to, nor endorsed, the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
Play What You Want 