Topics

46

General Chaos / Sorry about the avatars

« on: February 23, 2011, 02:54:46 AM »

You might have noticed some slowdowns lately on the various RPPR sites or popgunchaos. That's because there's all hosted under my account on bluehost.com and I've only just recently realized that I've been hit with cpu throttling. So, in order to speed the site up, I've been trying to optimize a few things on here. I followed the advice here http://www.siteground.com/tutorials/websiteperformance/smf.htm but for some weird fucking reason the file names of the attachments are all messed up. So, the easiest way for you to get your avatar back is to upload it again.

SORRY GUYS

47

RPGs / Gencon 2011 - run ORE games for Arc Dream and get free stuff!

« on: February 16, 2011, 05:37:42 PM »

reposted from Cult of ORE email list

ORE and Delta Green cultists,

Arc Dream and Pagan Publishing will be at GenCon in force again this
year. I want us to host as many registered games as possible, so we're
looking for volunteers.

If you're planning to be at GenCon and you are willing to run a game
(or two, or more) of one of our games, please send an email to
shane.ivey@gmail.com.

We're looking for GMs to run:

* Call of Cthulhu or Trail of Cthulhu adventures from The Unspeakable Oath.
* Delta Green.
* Wild Talents (Progenitor, This Favored Land, The Kerberos Club,
eCollapse or Grim War).
* Monsters and Other Childish Things.
* Godlike (Black Devils Brigade material would be prime).
* A Dirty World.
* Reign.
* The Savage Worlds or Fate versions of The Kerberos Club.

The basic requirements:

* It needs to be one of the games from the list.
* You can run your own material or one of our published scenarios.
Bear in mind it's a con game; don't try to run a full campaign.
* For each game session we'll give you store credit at the Arc Dream
booth equivalent to $5 per player.
* Before you run a session, you need to come to the Arc Dream booth
and pick up handouts and coupons to give to the players.
* You need to collect tickets at each game and show them to our booth
staff afterward to get credit.
* We may come up with other requests and requirements later if we think of them.

If you would like to join our official block of registered games,
which will all be held in a designated "Arc Dream" room in the new JW
Marriott, get in touch with me right away and we'll see if we can work
that out. I would need the details on what you're going to run,
including a short summary of what the adventure is about, by FEBRUARY
25. That will give us a couple of weeks to work out the kinks.

Otherwise the final deadline for GenCon's registered events is MARCH 11.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks!

48

General Chaos / Any wordpress experts out there?

« on: February 10, 2011, 02:46:41 PM »

I'm doing a project (unrelated to rppr) and I want to create a custom wordpress template page but I have very limited programming skills. Anyone out there more familiar with Wordpress?

49

General Chaos / Fringe discussion

« on: February 08, 2011, 04:43:46 PM »

I'm watching Fringe - just started with season 2 AND I WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT

[spoiler]The shapechanger killing Charlie was soo fucking poorly handled as to be completely retarded. The shape changing device does not let the person change clothes with the victim. It apparently takes at least a minute or so to do since the shapechanger has to reshape his face beforehand. There is no fucking way they would NOT have checked Charlie's mouth for the signature 3 stab wounds in the mouth since they understood the M.O. of the shapechanger at that point. Finally, in the end, they show fake charlie disposing of real charlie. BUT they also show Fake charlie standing over the dead woman's body. So where did the third body come from? So. Many. Fucking. Plotholes.  [/spoiler]

50

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Podcasting FAQ

« on: January 25, 2011, 11:03:43 PM »

hey

so a bunch of people keep asking me: How is Podcast formed?

So

Let's do a thread about it.

Here is an email I wrote a while back about this topic.

You need a few things to make a podcast:

1. Audio production tools (recording equipment, audio editing software) At the very minimum, you need a mic that records to your computer and some software to edit the sound.

2. Website with content management system (web hosting, FTP, CMS software)

The options available are incredibly diverse and it can be bewildering figuring out what you should use. Our setup is like this:

2 Shure M57 microphones on desktop stands with pop filters hooked up to a Tascam US122l audio interface which is connected to my Macbook Pro. I record with Garageband 09 and then edit in it as well. The only other software for production I use is Levelator. I would definitely recommend the microphone and Garageband if you use a mac. Keep in mind if you get the M57, you need to get some kind of audio interface to record directly to a computer.

Keep in mind there's always going to be a cost vs quality tradeoff when you're dealing with audio. If you want a crystal clear podcast, you need to take some time and money to get a decent mic and learn some basic audio production skills.

As for the web side of things, I use wordpress  and the powerpress plugin. slangdesign.com is hosted on bluehost.com which costs a little over 100 bucks per year and has practically unlimited bandwidth. Podcasts eat up bandwidth so keep that in mind when choosing a host.


LINKS
I talk about setting up a recording studio: http://www.pulpgamer.com/genconseminars/134171/setting-up-the-studio/

Recording game session threads (for AP podcasts) http://slangdesign.com/forums/index.php?topic=495.0

Another panel I did at gencon about podcast content: http://slangdesign.com/forums/index.php?topic=625.0

51

General Chaos / The Internet movie firearms database

« on: January 18, 2011, 07:52:09 PM »

holy fuck http://www.imfdb.org/

Tom is going to freak over this page, assuming he hasn't already found it http://www.imfdb.org/index.php/Face/Off

That's because he LOVES Face/Off. You have no idea. He would marry it if he could.

52

RPGs / Licensed RPGs are the devil

« on: January 12, 2011, 08:32:53 PM »

https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/blog/2011/01/op-ed-the-licensing-trap/

my response:

This is the weirdest critique I've ever read about the tabletop RPG industry in a long time. First off, I think you're wrong about licensed RPGs dominating the 'big' releases of the last 5 years - 4E D&D came out in 2008 and Pathfinder after that so they obviously own that category. (technically nWoD came out in 2004 but it's released a ton of material in the last 5 years obviously) You're also ignoring the Warhammer 40k RPGS (since they started as wargames, I wouldn't call them licensed games in the same sense you're referring to movie and TV show licensed games) Furthermore, I wouldn't call some of those releases 'big' - who's playing Army of Darkness or Elric now?

Also, you are really criticizing the tabletop rpg industry for a LACK of creativity? Really? <i>Really?</i> I mean, there are many, many possible complaints you can make about this industry and hobby but if it has one thing, one trait it is creativity. It blows my mind for you to even not realize how creative RPGs are compared to basically everything else - if you examine the sheer breadth and depth of the games that are out there, you find some of the weirdest and wildest ideas put on paper - only the best speculative fiction exceeds it in terms of creativity.

Look at games like Eclipse Phase, Don't Rest Your Head, Kerberos Club, etc etc etc. There is no shortage of extremely creative games being released.

Honestly, I think the biggest problems RPGs have are in communicating this creativity to a larger audience or in any audience at all but that's an entirely different discussion.

53

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents

« on: December 18, 2010, 12:23:12 AM »

Dark Sun is fun but we want to do a huge ass campaign in another genre. So we're talking about doing a sci-fi or superhero game as the next 'big' RPPR campaign.

I have an idea for a street level Wild Talents game - the unintended consequence of decades of superhumans battling each other around the world has resulted in mass proliferation of superhuman enhancement methods reaching the public.  Anyone with a little money and a few connections can get diluted supersolider drugs, reverse-engineered alien cybernetics or a 7th generation photocopy of a black magic grimmoire.

Superhumans used to be few and far between due to the Kronos Syndrome. The most powerful superhumans killed or otherwise neutralized any rivals that appeared before they could become rival threats. Legal protection was granted to these modern demigods as governments sought to keep them placated. A detente was reached between the sides. Skirmishes and battles happened. But the peace was kept. Life went on as it should. Even the most powerful superhumans wanted civilization to continue as it was. The heroes that could have brought utopia were killed or believed that man's free will was most important. The villains that could have conquered the world were imprisoned or realized that any serious attempt to take over would only result in total destruction of all human life. So despite the colorful heroes and rogues that made the evening news, life went on as life does.

A few years ago, an extinction level threat wiped the majority of superhumans around the world. Both hero and villain gave their life to protect an alien menace that threatened the world. Of course the details of the event are classified. The world only saw a massive structure large enough to be visible in the night sky. One night - bright flashes and the structure was gone.

With the experienced heroes and villains gone, their secret labs, fortresses and small countries were discovered, raided and invaded. Looters and scavengers plundered them and sold what they found to the highest bidder. Henchmen and sidekicks revealed secrets for profit and fame. Governments ramped up superhuman experimentations in order to field the first new generation super soldiers.

No one intended for what would happen. But the first superhumans to reappear were not government, corporate or criminally backed soldiers. They were civilians, amateurs in the purest sense of the word. They had no fear of experimenting with the new discoveries, had no hesitation with altering themselves and had no shame in proving that they had learned how to become more than human. Most of all no one thought these amateurs would share what they had learned to any that asked them. They put their knowledge on the Internet.

Naxalite rebels in India burned down government tanks with their minds thanks to a designer drug cocktail formulated by a Japanese otaku obsessed with a dead German pyrokinetic supervillain. The drug is based on cryptic notes found in the villain's apartment and posted on the Internet by paparazzi. Only the Otaku knew enough about the villain's life to decipher them and figure out the formula. Only the otaku isn't a chemist so the formula isn't perfect and the new drug cocktail has several...flaws.

Day traders and other finance workers start talking about "seeing alphaville" on insider message boards and email lists. This actually refers to a reverse-engineered precognitive alien tech. The alien was from Alpha Centauri and it had the ability to see the future by employing certain exotic radiations. Once a few engineers and unemployed physicists learned how to get about 20% of its full power with current technology, they started selling their services. Of course, eventually others learned how to do it and now anyone with a few pieces of lab equipment and a few rare minerals can see glimpses into the future. Traders use it to predict stock prices as the effect is too limited to see more than a few seconds into the near future and a single vision takes an hour of exposure.

A US infantry soldier stationed in Afghanistan recited a summoning ritual and successfully bound a demon lord to his own soul using an incantation that was emailed to him by a new age girl he had met at a party before he was deployed. The demon lord stays under control as long as the soldier kills, which is easy to do in Afghanistan. But now, the soldier is about to go home. He doesn't want it to bring the demon home, as he only wants to kill legitimate enemies of the country. So he's going to transfer the demon to a new soldier at the outpost. There's a lot of competition for it. All the other soldiers there know about the demon and conspire it to keep it in Afghanistan as a secret weapon against the Taliban. The officers know nothing.

A new MMO is released on the Internet. The players control robots on a weird alien world. There is no combat, only exploration and limited scientific experimentation. Despite this lack of action, it is strangely compelling. The graphics are incredible and the gameplay is incredibly immersive. That's because it's real. A sidekick of a dead super-scientist is crowdsourcing the exploration of the cosmos through a video game.

A new martial art is sweeping the country. It is easy to learn but provides incredible fighting expertise, relative to the time the student puts into the discipline. It's actually the supreme martial art, thousands of years old and the reason it's so easy to learn is due to its utter perfection. It was after all, created by a god. It was kept secret because its masters feared what its destructive powers would do to humanity if unleashed on the unwashed masses. It seems the masses use it for MMA and backyard wrestling. Well, at least those that only master the basics. A few have learned that superhuman abilities are possible if a student puts in years of work and dedication into it.

This is the new world. A world with a global economy, unfettered Internet and superhuman powers available to almost anyone that is willing to pay the price for them. A world where the institutions that enforced the status quo no longer have a complete monopoly on force. A world without a Superman to save it from the near existential threat.

This is your world. What do you do?

54

RPGs / 4E D&D Character Builder has now been modded

« on: December 16, 2010, 12:13:45 AM »

http://code.google.com/p/cbloader/

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3368249

55

RPGs / This is the quest that never ends

« on: December 12, 2010, 08:49:05 PM »

I've been playing Dragon Age and the nesting quests can be pretty ridiculous - I get a quest to ask for help from a noble but his village is being attacked by zombies
I do a quest to save them to get to the castle to ask the noble
I get to the castle but castle has monsters
so I do a quest to stop the monsters
source of the monsters is the noble's possessed kid plus the noble has been poisoned
only way to exorcise the demon is to go to the magic astral plane
only way to get there is either a human sacrifice ritual or go ask the mages for help
go to the mages for help
GUESS WHAT
THEY'VE GOT FUKKEN MONSTERS TOO
and in the process of saving their asses I get trapped in the astral plane so I have a new quest to free myself
I had to do a quest to do a quest to do a quest and I have one more quest to do in order to finish the first quest of asking the noble for his help in fighting the evil army AND HE IS JUST ONE OF THE PEOPLE I HAVE TO ASK FOR HELP 



So let's have a game of a quest that never ends. Ean and I started it:

ean: You will need to find the bathroom key. Unfortunately it is in the posession of the ice dragon, who will only give it up for a flower from the eastern slopes of the great mountain. But the mountain pass is blocked, and you will need to borrow the fire orb of the savages of the river level.

me:  and don't forget you have to capture a mountain ape in order to gain the trust of the savages
and you have to learn the secrets of mountain ape hunting from a notorious ranger
who is in prison

 ean:  Only his lover holds the key
But she is imprisoned at the top of a high tower that only the eagles may reach.

me:  and the eagles can't fly because a gnome stole their magic feather
and its in a dungeon

 ean:  Next to a gnome skeleton.

 me:  which can only be found if you have the secret map
WHICH YOU LEFT IN THE BATHROOM

 ean:  D:
But don't worry. Once upon a time there was a man who entered the bathroom.
He may of seen the map. If you can find him, he might be able to help.
He came from a village to the north and wore a red scarf. Perhaps if you systematically talk to each person in the village several times after changing various things, one will know something about him.

 me:  but before that happens
you have to free the village from a curse
the only way to do that
is to go back in time
in order to learn how to travel back in time you must venture to the ruins of Atlantis
and find the fabled Zybourne Clock


So what quest do you have to finish to get the clock?

56

RPGs / Good advice for running Delta Green/Call of Cthulhu

« on: December 10, 2010, 02:18:31 PM »

http://mortengreis.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/running-a-delta-green-campaign-part-2/

57

RPGs / My Rifts Experiment

« on: December 06, 2010, 11:37:50 PM »

<a href="" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win"></a>

After seeing this trailer, I decided I wanted to run Rifts for the RPPR group. I also heard about this item at the Palladium store: http://www.palladiumbooks.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=XMAS&Category_Code=Spec

A grab bag of random items but you can ask for specific things

I asked for Rifts books. If I get nothing but Rifts books, I will give each RPPR player a book and then I will run a Rifts game where each player has to make a character from their gift book.

Then I will run a game based on the movie the Eliminators. I will throw in other appropriate films as encounter fodder as appropriate.

I will make an 'unpacking' video when I get the grab bag.

58

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Ruins of Lemuria Kickstarter

« on: November 23, 2010, 12:01:05 AM »

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rosspayton/ruins-of-lemuria-a-new-world-dandd-campaign-source

The New World is the grave of Lemuria, the greatest of all nations. The barbaric tribes that live in the New World now walk upon its bones, the ruins of temples and palaces, ignorant of the wisdom and power buried beneath their feet. When a colony from the kingdom of a distant continent settles on the shores of the New World, whispers of Lemuria flutter through the winds. Adventurers from the colony find the ruins and marvel at their beauty. Scholars listen to the legends told by tribal elders and connect them to ancient stories of a lost empire. Native warriors and mystics commune with spirits awoken by the colony’s arrival. The Ruins of Lemuria stir the blood of the ambitious and curious. Soon expeditions will be mounted to crack open the dusty tombs leading into the Stygian depths to learn their secrets and plunder their treasures. Little do these adventurers know that the doom that befall mighty Lemuria waits to greet them.

The Ruins of Lemuria describes a massive network of ruins that spread across the entire continent of the New World, the remnants of a powerful civilization more advanced in science and magic than any other in the history of the world. Fragments of their knowledge lie deep within the ruins, along with powerful magical items and vast amounts of treasure. Needless to say, if the knowledge or magic items are found and brought back to civilization, it could change the course of history. Lemurian magic and technology is still more advanced than anything else the world has ever known. A few adventurers armed with this power can end wars, curse diseases or doom their own civilization. This supplement provides a framework to incorporate the Ruins into most high fantasy RPG campaigns

59

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Help us pick The Best of RPPR!

« on: November 14, 2010, 05:10:33 PM »

I have an idea: Find and post the Best of RPPR on Youtube. People already post audio clips from popular podcasts so why not RPPR? The problem I face is simple: We already have well over 300 hours of content on RPPR and I want clips that are less than 15 minutes, preferably ones that are 1-5 minutes long.

As an example of what I'm looking for: http://slangdesign.com/rppr/RPPR-Otyughs.mp3

This is where you come in. 

Use this thread to post your favorite excerpts from whatever RPPR content (regular show or AP or whatever) with approximate time code so I can easily find them.

I'll reward people that contribute a lot to this thread - not sure how but I'll think of something.

60

RPGs / Tablepocalypse now

« on: November 03, 2010, 01:40:12 AM »

http://gmskarka.com/2010/10/21/tabletopocalypse-now/

I don't think the industry will disappear even if WOTC and WW leave - indie small press will fill in the gaps and I can't think of any hobby industry that has outright disappeared. People still make model trains for instance.