Highmoon’s Ponderings

All in all, it was a pretty good year. I’ll have to go back through the archives and see what went on, though of great note are:

• My nephew Lukas was born.
• I got laid off.
• I went to Gen Con and made a ton of awesome friends.
• Learned that my Mom had cancer and that with the proper procedures, she is now cancer-free.
• Got a new cat, Pippin.
• Had minor surgery.
• Had a minor car accident.
• Went to St. Augustine, FL, though that was the extent of my travels for the year.
• Started a new podcast (The Digital Front)
• Celebrated my 5th wedding anniversary, and my 33rd birthday.
• Got hired for a great new job just 5 days before the end of the year.

I hope 2008 brings everyone blessings and happiness. Have a great one and see you here for 2008; awesome things are cooking for this new year.

It has been a very hectic last couple of days. I got called on Wednesday to a job interview on Thursday. I went to the interview on Thursday and on Friday I started at my new job! Say hello to the new Webmaster for Miami Dining & Entertainment Magazine.

Miami D&E is a new magazine launching now in Jan. 08 dedicated to bringing locals and visitors alike all the cool spots for dining and partying, and all the special events going on in a particular month. My job is to keep the website current with the info on the mag, and to grow our awareness via social networks and other online mediums. Yes, I get paid to update the website and play on MySpace.

I will also get the chance to work on magazine layout little by little, which is awesome as it gives me more practice that I can then apply to all my other endeavors. I’m very excited about this new opportunity and I hope to do well by it. All of you, my webmaster friends, prepare to get more questions from me from now on.

Off I go. The magazine goes to print on Monday, Dec. 31 and I need to put in a few hours on this Sunday. Weirdly, I don’t mind. I guess that’s what happens after you have been unemployed for 6 months: you welcome the chance to work again.

For a change.

Highmoon Media Productions is proud to present Liber Sodalitas: The Pathfinders of Talus. While most gods are honored by a formal church and clerical order, Talus, the god of travel and safe voyages, prefers the service of his Pathfinders. The organization was founded over 200 years ago by a group of caravan guards who were saved from bandits and other perils on their journey by a priest of Talus. Upon arrival at their destination the priest disappeared, though not before he had imparted much of the wisdom of Talus to the guards. Today, Pathfinders are found everywhere, aiding travelers as cartographers, guides, protectors, and explorers. The Pathfinders of Talus is an 8-page ebook detailing a drop-in organization for your d20 Fantasy game, complete with history, tenets, organizational structures, ways of joining, and ready-to-use NPCs. It also includes the pathfinder prestige class, two new spells and two new feats. Written by: Martin Greening, with James Gabrielsen Artwork by: Anthony Cournoyer NOW AVAILABLE from RPGNow & DriveThruRPG!

This episode is sponsored by RPGnow.com, the leading source of independent roleplaying games.

In The Digital Front - Episode 07 we chat with Philip J. Reed of Ronin Arts. Phil, a veritable pioneer in the e-distributed gaming market, talks to us about the early days of the PDF market, the heyday of Ronin Arts, the changes brought on by changes in the PDF side of the industry, and what he’s been up to lately. Mark Gedak presents a review of a product by RPG Objects, and we tell you about an AP news article on e-books and niche markets (focusing on our own), about a charity project from 12 to Midnight, and about advertising on The Digital Front Podcast.

Please feel free to discuss this episode on our forums or call our voicemail line at 206-350-4441.

Links:

• Sponsor: RPGNow.com
• Guest: Phil Reed of Ronin Arts
• Reviews:
  • Core Book: Modern²⁰ (RPG Objects) - Transcript
• News:
  • Associated Press: Slow-Starting E-Books Find Niche Markets
  • 12 to Midnight: Midnight Charity Project
• Promos:
  • Goblin - Gaming Broadcast Network 
  • RPGPodcasts.com

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Originally posted at Master Mines.

So it’s been a while since I’ve done anything with Grand Tour, and at this moment I don’t see that changing. I like the idea, and I think using PTA as a springboard for hacking out a system for me to use is a good thing to do, but it seems every time I sit down to lay down plans I draw a blank. I think I need to let this one simmer for a while in the dark corners of my mind, let it solidify some more before I can handle it and mold it. That leaves me, though, with a void to be filled.

I’ve two projects that I could tackle now:

1. Eldritch Rangers - this is a setting-like thing that I am developing with a co-writer as a project for Highmoon Media Productions. The basic idea is “Power Rangers vs. Cthulhu (if the Power Rangers had been created in the 1920’s by Nikolai Tesla, Alister Crowley and the Maharal of Prague, creator of the Golem).” It’s Pulp-Anime and it’s supposed to make you cringe the way you did when you read that description. We originally were going to work it as a mini-setting for d20 Modern, but after a chat with Fred, I will also be doing it as a setting for Spirit of the Century. The d20 Modern part is cake for me, and my co-writer, Scott Carter, has that part down pat for the most part. The FATE part is what I would focus on here, because, as light a system as FATE is, it is still crunchy enough to demand serious attention when creating new rules and fiddly bits.
2. Unnamed Ancients Project - Anyone who knows me or follows my HMP product releases knows I am very much into historical gaming, and especially into Ancient World games/settings. I publish Targum Magazine, and through that I get to indulge my love for the ancient world, albeit in someone else’s sandbox, be it Green Ronin’s Mythic Vistas settings, or general d20. For a long time now I have had the itch to put out my own Ancients RPG, and while for a time I though to do it d20, then I also considered True20 (not an option I have yet tossed aside), I now also consider doing a new system. Or parts of a system. Because the thing is that aside from the cool Ancient World ass-kicking-adventure parts that would be a part of the game, one of the concepts I am most interested in developing is the idea of Civilization as a game mechanic, that not only would this game allow you to play a warrior in Biblical Israel, Mythical Greece or Imperial Rome (almost like 3 separate games in one), but also allow the option of creating a Family that starts in, say, Mesopotamia, where you play this one character, go and have awesome sword-and-sandal adventures with him, then you can flip into a macrocosmic level, trace the character’s Family through a couple of centuries until you reach a new era where you want to drop down into the microcosmic level, and play there again, and so forth. So, to give an example, you could play this guy named Abram/Abraham that starts in Ur-kasdim in Ancient Mesopotamia, go on a few adventures with him in the micro level, flip up to the macro level, develop the Family for a few generations until you reach the Hellenistic era, flip down to the micro again, and play this other character, Judah Maccabee (a descendant of your previous character), in a new series of adventures.

By sheer word count above, one might be inclined to think option #2 seems to excite me more, but they both excite me equally; it’s just option #1 is a lot more defined in my head than #2, and I needed to explain more here to share the idea.

So, I will think about this and make a decision. But I also would welcome very much your input.

I am about to smash my laptop, my wife’s laptop, my wireless router and my DSL modem all against a very hard wall!!!

Ever since a couple week’s ago when I had a huge problem with a bad installation of Norton Internet Security that sent my laptop into a downward spiral of stop errors, I have not had stable internet connection at home. My wife’s laptop worked fine for a few days, but now it also is not holding on to the signal coming from the router. And now, the router itself is just sending out a very unstable signal that sometimes goes down all the way to 1 Mbps.

I’ve not been able to do a lot of work in the last week, my recovery aside, and this is only going to get more annoying. I am about to reinstall Windows XP on this machine, but I keep stalling because that would mean having to reinstall a crapload of programs all over again. But if I have to, I will.

Just allow me to say: ARGH!!!

This was a great and fun read from start to finish. I’m a sucker for re-interpretations of the classics, and from the moment I saw The Looking Glass Wars on a table at the Miami International Book Fair I knew I had to read it.

Beddor knows his stuff, and he can spin a good yarn very well. His extrapolation of Wonderland is fantastic and it feels very much like a living, breathing world. Half the fun is figuring out the supposed real source of the caricature presented by Lewis Caroll in his Wonderland books, but the other half is getting lost in the story of Alyss’s struggle to regain the throne of Wonderland from her evil aunt Redd. I’m very glad this is just the first in a projected trilogy, and I anxiously await the next installment, Seeing Redd.

Oh, and for the roleplayers out there, this world rocks as a setting for a game. Seriously.

So, very quickly, it has been a super busy week for me.
Last Friday, Nov. 30, I had a car accident when a lady did an illegal U-turn and, though I slammed on my brakes and swerved to the left, I smacked into her with the side of my car.

I’m fine and so was she, and the insurances will take care of it all, but I am now without a car which sucks.

On Monday, Dec. 3, while renewing my subscription to Norton Internet Security 2007, and updating to 2008, my computer when into a spastic rash of stop errors, all caused by a wonky Norton installation. The result was the my laptop lost all its Network Connections and I am unable to go online except with an Ethernet cable, as I am right now. Which sucks the big one because of what comes next, which means I have very limited connectivity to the outside world unless I am in the living room.

Then on Wed., Dec. 5, I had minor, outpatient surgery for something I won’t disclose here. I’m doing fine, with some discomfort, but nothing I can’t deal with.

Now I’m home, recovering, and having to come to the living room to go online instead of laying on my bed surfing using my once-fine wireless connection.

So this week I will go back to the doctor for a check-up, take the car to the body shop for repairs, and finish uninstalling Norton from both our computers (it also started messing up my wife’s computer, so out it goes!) and demaning a refund for our renewal fees.

But hey, Chanukah is going awesome this year!