Episode 21
The Nemesis Games web site is up at www.nemesisgames.net! If you want to know more about the semi-secret MMO project I've been babbling about, go there and sign up for an account on our forum. Cuz from this point on, if I have stuff to say about that I'll mostly be saying it there.
My air conditioning is on the fritz again, just in time for the 4th of July weekend. Funny how my pal, Mister God, arranges these things for maximum annoyance. Or is it just me? Yeah. Just me. And punctuated equilibrium.
My renewed fascination with the Barsoom novels, written beginning in 1917 by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, continues unabated. I just discovered that the entire series is available to read online (I'd thought it was just the first 5 books, on Project Gutenberg). You can (and SHOULD) find 'em here:
http://www.barsoomian.net/
So great is my fascination that I'm hard at work, in my copious free time, preparing to run a Barsoom RPG for my gaming group using my Pocket Universe RPG rules. It's been fun doing the research to accurately model Barsoomian telepathy (wow, is it WEAK!), coming up with wierd science invention rules, writing up Barsoomian equipment lists, figuring out how to handle Mars' lower gravity, and working up a map of the planet.
Burroughs left only a single, not very detailed map of Barsoom's two hemispheres:
http://www.erbzine.com/mag28/ebmar2.jpg
and
http://www.erbzine.com/mag28/ebmars.jpg
And now, thanks to the wonders of modern science, we have quite detailed maps of the actual surface of Mars:
http://ssed.gsfc.nasa.gov/tharsis/Mars_topography_from_MOLA.new/
So Burroughs fans have been hard at work, trying to make the two things mesh. With, in my humble opinion, poor results:
http://www.erbzine.com/mag28/marsmap.jpg
What's the problem, you ask? Well, for starters, the darker areas on that map are the Martian lowlands. The creator of this map has placed the ruined city of Thark - clearly described as being at the edge of a 'dry sea bottom', out in the middle of the frickin' Martian *highlands*.
But hey, the fans have done their best. The problem is that Burroughs had no idea whatsoever what the real surface of Mars was like.
Or did he?
Tune in next time when I reveal the startling truth! Seriously.
-Jeff Dee
Labels: air conditioning, barsoom, god, mars, rpgs
Episode 20
We humans tend to see special significance in big round numbers, due the to completely arbitrary fact that we have 10 fingers, and therefor developed a base-10 counting system.
Not that '20' is all that big, but it's getting there. Feel free to allow your imagination to conjure up images off all sorts of amazing significance when I get to Episode 100.
I can just imagine my hypothetical 11-fingered readers going, 'what's he talking about? Surely he means Episode 121'.
Major progress on the Semi-Secret MMO. Combat is in, and I'm just finishing up a pass on the combat system to make it balanced the way we want. We're also starting to get ambient sound and musical theme tracks from my friend Jason Rosenblum, and they're terrific. He has a blog at http://adaptablearts.com/, though he hasn't updated it in a while, the scoundrel!
What else. Oh, I'm gonna be the co-host on today's Atheist Experience show. The public access studio is closed for renovations, so we're webcasting from Matt Dillahunty's place. Should be interesting.
We went to see 'Drag Me To Hell' this past weekend, which was quite good despite not being a carbon copy of Raimi's earlier 'Evil Dead' movies. And no Bruce Campbell. But STILL, very good indeed!
Until next time... um... do whatever it was that you were gonna do anyway.
-Jeff Dee
Episode 19
Curious. It seems like the longer I procrastinate, the easier it becomes to continue procrastinating. What an amusing little experiment this has been! But now, back to blogging.
Let's see. What have I been up to? Mainly, I've been dealing with car troubles. First my beloved red PT Cruiser (with the flames down the sides) developed electrical and brake problems. I had those fixed (at the dealership, no less!), and two days later the transmission died. I mean, completely. That has turned out to be hideously expensive. But hey, once I'd opened the veins of my credit card, it became easier and easier to say 'yes' to the mechanic. I'm just glad he didn't suggest that I needed him to strap on some JATO engines, because I'd probably have agreed to that, too.
The good news? The dog's medical issues seem to have cleared up. So I have a much happier doggie. Oh, and Lulu Press, the web-based print on demand service that I use to publish my paper RPGs, just put Living Legends and Quicksilver on Amazon.com. If any of you have played (or at least read) these books, I'd really appreciate it if you'd post reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002AD73UU
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002AD5KKA
The Nemesis Games crew is still hard at work on the Semi-Secret Mini MMO project. We're *very* close to getting combat to work, which will be a major milestone. Right now we're having trouble getting both sides in a fight to attack each other. We're not sure whether the problem lies in the AI or in the combat code. Anyway, we hope to be at a point where we can launch our web site [nemesisgames.net] and make an official announcement to the press by the end of June, followed very closely by closed alpha testing.
Have a good one!
-Jeff Dee
Episode 18
Despite the fact that I'm working on one o' them eeevil MMO computer games, I'm a paper RPG player at heart.
My eldest brother first mentioned the original Dungeons & Dragons books to me back when I was in grade school. He tried to explain what it was like, but I wasn't invited to attend his gaming club with the older kids. So I tried to play D&D with a friend, based just on my memory of how he'd described it. Boy did I not get it right. For one thing, the 'dungeon map' I drew was a cutaway cross-section. As I recall, that made it very hard to describe things to my player.
I did eventually get to participate in a one-shot game with my brother's group, but not of D&D. They were playing Chainmail, the miniatures game from which D&D evolved. I got to control one very tiny unit of troops, led by a knight. The troops all got wiped out, but my lone knight leader figure tromped all around that map, and I role-played my heart out through that little guy.
The first paper RPG I ever ran was TSR's wild west themed Boot Hill. Not because I'm particularly interested in the genre, but because it and Empire of the Petal Throne (which I mentioned in a previous blog) were all that my brother left behind when he left for college.
I still remember a moment in that game when a skilled gunslinger, armed with a shotgun, managed to miss an enemy who was standing right in front of him. That was the moment when I first understood that the rules of an RPG are important. If they allow ridiculously improbable things to happen, they can spoil the fun.
A lot of paper RPG players denigrate the rules, thinking of them as (at best) a necessary evil, or (at worst) an actual impediment to having a good time. I disagree. To me, the rules of a paper RPG are the physics of the world. They're what enable the player to grasp what we all feel instinctively in real life: a sense of the odds. If the rules can provide that in a way that feels right, without being very complex, then that is (in my opinion) a GOOD set of rules.
-Jeff Dee
Episode 17: Transhumanism
I'm a transhumanist. Transhumanism is the view that our finest destiny lies not in merely embracing our humanity, but improving upon it.
This video beautifully portrays the transhumanistic outlook:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics.html
The Wikipedia transhumanism page offers an excellent overview:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism
-Jeff Dee
Episode 16
I missed a day. That was very bad of me.
Today we tromped on down to the lawyer's office to sign the final paperwork on Nemesis Games. We're officially & completely in business! Except that we don't have a company bank acccount yet, we haven't lined up an accountant yet, our web site is still blank, and on and on... but it's another step forward.
Been a while since I dropped any hints about the Semi-Secret MMO project, so here's another one: it is NOT based on any of my previously published paper RPG games. Though I think Teenage Demon Slayers could make a pretty cool MMO. Maybe someday...
You know what's pretty cool, that you probably never knew about before? This:
www.jasonhackenwerth.com
If you can't be bothered to go take a look, I'll tell you: the man makes amazing balloon sculptures - and costumes! - of weird undersea creatures. Is that amazing, or what?
-Jeff Dee
Episode 15
Another cool thing you might not already know about:
Tekumel
http://www.tekumel.com/
This is the most fascinating fantasy setting ever devised, in my opinion. Published materials include novels, treatises on history, culture, religion and warfare, maps, and several different role-playing game systems. I spent most of my spare time last year adapting the previously published game material to my own tabletop role-playing rules, Pocket Universe. For a while I was running three concurrent Tekumel campaigns. If you have any interest in this sort of thing, you should check it out.
-Jeff Dee
