April 2012
1 post
March 2012
1 post
Neil Gaiman: The Difference Between Private and... →
robertreich:
Republicans have morality upside down. Santorum, Gingrich, and even Romney are barnstorming across the land condemning gay marriage, abortion, out-of-wedlock births, access to contraception, and the wall separating church and state.
But America’s problem isn’t a breakdown in…
January 2012
1 post
I declare Dungeons & Dragons and Derby Girls to be a success!
December 2011
2 posts
One teachers approach to preventing gender...
togetherforjacksoncountykids:
“It’s Okay to be Neither,” By Melissa Bollow Tempel
Alie arrived at our 1st-grade classroom wearing a sweatshirt with a hood. I asked her to take off her hood, and she refused. I thought she was just being difficult and ignored it. After breakfast we got in line for art, and I noticed that she still had not removed her hood. When we arrived at the art room, I said:...
September 2011
4 posts
It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, arrrrrr!
2 tags
Joss Whedon: Feminist
Interviewer: So why do you write these strong female characters?
Whedon: Because you're still asking me that question.
Kickstarter - An Evening With Neil Gaiman & Amanda... →
I just gave Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer $5 to help fund their tour of the American West Coast, for which I will receive an digital recording. Seems like a pretty good deal. Go watch the video and see if you want to back them too.
August 2011
3 posts
4 tags
I enjoyed Roller Disco in Shoreham tonight with the Brighton Rockers, and did not fall on my arse. Yay!
May 2011
1 post
Two trending topics amongst my twitter friends are #raptureplaylist and #ItsOKtoBeTakei. I love the Internet.
March 2011
1 post
On the way to weekly D&D game. Ended last session in Great Peril: will we survive?
February 2011
4 posts
All your base are belong to us. You have no chance make your time. Somebody set up us the bomb. - this meme is over ten years old!
Playing Icons (supers RPG) at gameforce in London. Just invented Sir Cedric Parsonby - the “Last Lord a-Leaping”.
Just played a new RPG, The Laundry - a British civil servants crossed with cthullu type thing. Bit cynical, bit satirical, needs more play time to really get into it.
Less stressed at work today, things seem to be calming down. My left knee hurts for some reason, though, don’t understand why.
January 2011
2 posts
“Yeah, life is about love / last minutes and lost evenings / about fire in our...”
– Frank Turner - I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous
November 2010
1 post
Testing out iPhone tumble app. Wonder if this will still post through to twitter & Facebook?
July 2010
2 posts
GenCon 2010 schedule
Thanks to some helpful message-board friends at ENWorld and CircvsMaximvs, I’ve got my GenCon schedule sorted out. Most of this isn’t going to mean anything much to anyone that doesn’t post on those boards, but I wanted to get it down here for memories sake, if nothing else.
Day 1. Depart London, Tuesday 3rd August, 1235 (UK time). Arrive Philadelphia 1555 (US Time). Leave...
Hide & Seek Weekender
The fantastic people at http://www.hideandseek.net/ ran the recent Hide and Seek Weekender at the National Theatre on the South Bank, London. It’s a wonderful, free pervasive gaming event organised on a yearly basis. This was the third one I’ve attended and like the others, I had a fantastic time.
On the Friday I participated in Visible Cities, acting as an Engineer. This was a fun...
June 2010
1 post
3 tags
Unintended Consequences
I’ve heard it said that a good GM is well aware of the Law of Unintended Consequences. The other way I’ve heard to look at this idea is to think of stones being dropped in a pond. There are always ripples, and you can’t always predict where they land.
Unintended Consequences means, to me, that as a GM you think about the wider effects that your players are having on a world. Have everything they...
May 2010
1 post
Gaming & Training
Recently I attended a training day entitled “How to be an Effective Team Leader”. I learnt a lot in one day, but one thing leapt out at me as something that could be applied to gaming groups, and something that GM’s may want to think about.
The idea is that all groups of people go through four stages:
Forming – working about 80% of their potential as they come together as a group. Every is...
April 2010
6 posts
2 tags
FLGS Finder
ENWorld has launched a FLGS* finder here. It’s worldwide, and currently has over 200 gaming stores from the UK , USA , Europe and as far afield as Japan . However, Morrus is looking for it to be the biggest internet list possible, so go have a look and if you can add one that’s near to you you’ll be helping out everyone. It’s an awesome idea and is a good example of how ENWorld is starting to...
3 tags
Play. Just Play.
Last summer, I left my partner and now I’m in the process of getting divorced. One of my friends made a really interesting comment when I told him that it meant I was playing in a lot more RPG’s now. He wanted to know why, so I explained about socializing with mutual friends, taking time out to spend together… so he interrupted me.
“Gaming is your hobby, isn’t it?” he said. “It’s the thing you...
1 tag
Unexpected Hilarious Consequences
Sometimes, the game just turns out to be funnier than anything you could make up.
D&D 4e, Norse-themed game. We’re not so much trying to prevent Ragnarok as trying to do as much as we can to save the right bits of the world when it happens. We have a Warforged Cleric of Kord (me), an Eladrin Warlock/Swordmage hybrid, a Gnome Rogue and a Human Paladin of Kord. The group is now at 12th level.
...
4 tags
Dice Pool Systems
I’ve played in a few games that use dice pools as a mechanic, with varying results.
On the negative side, I quickly found that Exalted 1st Edition had some serious problems. It wants to be a free-flowing game of kung-fu athleticism and poetry-in-violence. When played, it quickly becomes “so I’ve got five dice in this, plus another four from this, plus these Charms give me some more…so I roll...
Ars Magica Character Creation
I’m signed up for an Ars Magica game. It’s a new system to me, and last night me and the rulebook settled down for some character creation.
All I can say is, wow, that is one detailed system.
By the time I was done, not only did I know how my character grew up, not only did I know how he spent both his childhood years and his Mage apprenticeship, I knew about his magical skills, his...
1 tag
Geek Songs
So, if there were a group of people and they were planning on doing a performance of something they describe as “Geek songs”, and you were going, what songs could they play that would make your evening completely awesome?
This is all inspired by Get Excited and Make Things, by the way.
Here’s my potential short list:
It’s the End of the World As We Know It Mad World...
March 2010
3 posts
4 tags
How Lethal Do You Like Your Games?
As a long-time D&D player, I very much got used to the idea that whilst PC death was a part of the game, it’s not something that happens that often if the DM doesn’t want it to. The games I played in usually had an understanding that continually rolling up new characters and trying to integrate them into the party was difficult and to be avoided.
I’ve played in some other groups that didn’t...
1 tag
Neptune's Pride
This has been mentioned in Rock Paper Shotgun (which is worth a read if you’re a PC gaming, or indeed console gaming fan). Neptune’s Pride is an online, browser-based, no-download game whereby you attempt to conquer a galaxy by sending your fleets of ships off to do battle with other real players. You also upgrade your tech and star-systems to improve your chances.
The key thing,...
6 tags
I Apparently Play a Lot of Games
Inspired by this thread on ENWorld, I just had to think about all the games I’m currently playing in, and I’ve realised it’s actually a really wide variety with a lot of different people - so firstly, thanks, all!
Here’s the list:
D&D4e - Swordlands game (about once a month) Savage Worlds - Hellfrost setting (once a week) Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader (mini-campaign,...
February 2010
7 posts
3 tags
“The important thing to think about here is - What Would Starscream Do?”
– from the Transformers Game, Belper Spring 2010 Gaming Weekend
6 tags
Spring 2010 Gaming Weekend Write-Up
I do this twice a year, now that I can, and in the last two Weekends I’ve attended I’ve had a fantastic time. Too many good memories to share!
Drove up last Wednesday, picking up A and S on the way. The trip was easy, the conversation flowed as usual and our mid-drive Burger King went down as well as can be expected. We then spent a little while in the pub, catching up with some of...
“Captain: We need to check if this strange green-ish swirling gas is harmful to...”
– dialogue for last night’s Dr Who RPG.
Twitter
If you’re reading this on Twitter could you reply to confirm, please?
Testing again
Ahah, this should now work! Hello, Twitter (and Facebook!)
I should go sleep now.
5 tags
RPG Discussion
My Tuesday night group had a long chat this last week about what we were going to play next. We’d just finished testing out Savage Worlds to decide if we liked it as a system (answer: Yes) and were looking for something to take up.
It was a great discussion about our options, about what we like about our DM, about the kinds of games we want to play. With three of the group just having come...
“I’m not staying any place where they shave Dwarves.”
– Player in my fortnightly D&D game.
January 2010
11 posts
D&D 4e still rocks
Firstly, a big thank you to LeoStableford of this parish for taking my recommendation on Esoterrorists. I hope you find it useful!
Earlier this week I promised some information on the house rules that myself and my brother Neal have cooked up to make D&D 4e more to our liking. They mostly came about because of the following issues:
4e combat felt too ponderous and slow, because of high...
1 tag
Why I'm Sold On Savage Worlds
I’d talked on here before about how I wasn’t totally convinced by Savage Worlds. Well, last night I had one of the more awesome gaming sessions of recent years, using that very system, and I’m sold.
I like Savage Worlds.
The thing that sold me was the following situation - we had been trapped in a small sea-cave, the only way out (we thought) was a large, locked stone door and...
4 tags
Feeling the Love
I mentioned I was running an Esoterrorists game on this blog, and also on ENWorld.
Today, I log into ENWorld on my lunch break to find a private message from Simon Rogers of Pelgrane Press offering me publicity and support. This is in additional to Sasha Bilton (also of Pelgrane) offering to set me up with a D&D 4e game to go to GenCon with.
I just wanted to state, publicly, that this rocks....
Savage Worlds - Fantasy Game
With the snow in the Sussex finally dying down and being washed away, we’re going to be picking up our Savage Worlds fantasy game tomorrow night.
I’m looking for some combat experience in this genre to try and compare it to our D&D 4e game. Hopefully it’ll give me a better grip on how Savage Worlds and D&D are both different and the same.
Assuming the predicted snowfall...
Running a Game at GenCon
As previously noted, I’m going to GenCon this year (or at least I’m planning to). I took a big step forward today as a GM and declared I was going to be running a game of The Esoterrorists. This had a slightly unexpected outcome.
On ENworld, there is an admin named Piratecat. He’s the DM of a particularly fine Story Hour and the creator of a brilliant thread about D&D 4e....
3 tags
Co-Writing a LARP - help?
Anyone out there ever co-written a LARP and got any advice?
Back up a step… twice a year I get together with a bunch of gaming friends and we head off for what’s named The Gaming Weekend. Given it now runs from Wednesday through to Sunday (with people finally leaving on Monday morning) it’s increasingly inaccurately named, but it’s a lot of fun.
The centre-point of each...
2 tags
First Experiences With Savage Worlds
Since it came out, I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition, and I’ve really enjoyed it. However, my current group have decided to try out Savage Words, and I have some things to say about what I’ve experienced so far.
Frankly, I’m not sure if I like it. I understand that this may be somewhat aggravating for those Savage Worlds fans, and I’d like to explain...
6 tags
Last Introductory Post, Promise
Where else can I be found on teh Interwebz?
I’m on Twitter.
I post on ENWorld under the name Mathew_Freeman. Look me up in General Discussion, but also the Off-Topic Forum wherein I participate in a very long-running thread called the Hivemind.
I’m on Livejournal.
I’m on Facebook.
I sometimes read the UK Roleplayers forum, but post very rarely. That’s another blog post...
7 tags
So What Gaming Do You Do, Anyway?
Currently:
I play on a Tuesday night with my brother and some friends. We’ve been playing D&D 4E for the last six months or so, but we’re currently trying out Savage Worlds as a system to see if we like it better for fantasy games.
I also play every other Thursday with my brother and a different set of friends. This is a house-ruled D&D 4e game (I’ll post more about...