Still here, still drinking coffee
Just because I haven’t done one of these in a while.
And also to prove I’m still in the UK and still have that one-a-day habit. I know, what a wuss, right?
More words coming. Most of them about, erm, old roleplaying games. Continue reading
Roleplaying: slight return
Lots going on right now, and not much time to blog about fripperies. However! Considering I’ve mentioned roleplaying in theoretical form more than a few times recently here, I thought I’d mention it again in actual, practical form.
I’ve been lurking on the Brighton Roleplayers Yahoo! Group for a very long time, and had played before with a couple of other list members. I even knew they had a regular meet-up, venue and all. What with all this internal thinking about roleplaying, I figured I should bite the bullet and, y’know, actually go do some roleplaying.
I got a warm welcome, not least thanks to Kelvin, who found the blog here from some trackback I suspect and emailed me to helpfully point out what I already knew, but just hadn’t vocalised. As a result I ended up taking a seat in Kelvin’s off-and-on-again Call of Cthulhu game, which was a whole heap of fun, and very well summarised by Kelvin himself over on the BRPG blog.
A thing of power
Taken this weekend in mid-roleplaying session. I wasn’t even using the die, it just looked good in the light.
Very happy with how this turned out considering it was off my cameraphone. Continue reading
Holy crap! I’m going to live in the USA!
Sorry. It just sort of comes in waves.
Of surprise. Continue reading
Godspeed, get well and good health
After a false alarm earlier this week, I wake up this morning to read that sadly Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons (along with Gary Gygax), passed away late on April 7th, at 61 years old, falling victim to cancer.
In another part of America, Aaron Allston, who I raved about just the other day as author of many Star Wars novels, plus Champions 5th Edition and my personal all-time favourite RPG book, Strike Force, suffered a heart attack while on his latest book tour. He required a quadruple bypass operation – not exactly an easy procedure – but I’m thankful to say, is on the mend.
After hearing about those two roleplaying icons, it felt slightly spooky to read a blog entry from Jeff Grubb (designer of Marvel Super Heroes, amongst many other things, and now a designer for Guild Wars 2) talking about his health, which in his words is “pretty sound”, but “could be better in many ways”. I’m sure Jeff’s going to be designing for many years to come, but all of this reminds me how far the roleplaying hobby, along with everything that span off from it, has come.
Dave Arneson was born in 1947, so he was approaching 30 when Dungeons & Dragons began to really take off. Thirty odd years later the roleplaying hobby has been an industry, and is now shrinking and maybe changing back into hobby it was, but it gave birth to something else: the computer-based descendants of RPGs, both single and multiplayer. Continue reading
