Rulenomicon "Get-er-done" edition A-D

O.K. so I got the titles  into the spreadsheet and added the links in adjacent columns. Unfortunately I am not blogger savvy enough to figure out how to cut-and-paste a formatted html table into blogger, Therefore I am hand linking all the downloads, blogs and, websites. To avoid boredom and carpal tunnel syndrome I'll be doing it a little bit at a time over the long weekend. Let me know what think of it so far...

P.S. I'd like the forums, blogs and websites to be buttons instead of text, but I don't know how to do that either :(

52 page Rulebook   Blog

-A-

A Song of Ice and Fire  Forum
Adventurer, Conqueror, King   Forum Blog
Adventures Dark and Deep  Forum Blog
Adventures Fantastiques
Adventures in the New Kingdoms Blog
Adventures Under the Laughing Moon  Blog
Adventuring Party
Age of Shadows  Forum  Blog
Altus Adventum 
Arduin (revised) Forum
Ars Magika  Blog
Artesia Blog
Azamar Blog

-B-

Bandits and Basilisks  Blog
Barbarians of Leumria  Forum
Barbarians of the Aftermath  Blog
Basic Fantasy Forum  
Brickmasters  Blog
Burning Wheel Blog

-C-

Challenger 
Chaos and Barberie
Circe
Creatures and Caverns Blog
Crimson Blades of Ara Blog
Crypts and Things  Blog

-D-

Dark Dungeons Forum  Blog
Dark Fantasy of Sundrah Blog
Dragon Warriors  Forum Blog
Dungeon Slayer Forum Blog

Summer of Kickstarters

O.K.  so the kickstarter bug has bit me again. I am in on Dungeon a Day. Still 32 hours to go so you can be in on it too! I am not in on Bones although I still have 9 hours to change my mind. As such I thought this was an apropos time for some good old groginardian angst on the subject. As a rocket scientist I am sufficiently well paid (although not lawyer/doctor rich) that dropping $50 to $100 a month is not going to put a dent in either the grocery or rent money. However, my frugal upbringing (and she-who-must-be-obeyed) does not allow me to tie up large quantities of cash on projects with no quick return on investment. So,as I stated on my previous kickstarter post I am looking for kickstarters from people with a proven track record, whose stuff I have bought and liked before. I also seem to be tending to jump in on projects already funded with lots of swag. That being said, both these kickstarters meet all of the stated criteria.

I am signed up Dungeon a Day in hopes of picking up a complete .pdf of the Mega-Dungeon Monty Cook put together. I already have through level 8 saved on my hard drive from the years subscription I purchased when it first came out. However since I found downloading a dungeon one itty, bitty piece at a time damn annoying, so I let my subscription lapse (WoTC the same is true of Dungeon and Dragon Magazine as well, I mean how much would it cost to hire some intern to spend a half hour a month combining all the little .pdfs into one big .pdf?). Unfortunately the lack of closure in owning half a dungeon gnaws at my soul (it does not apparently bother Monty, since he jumped ship and past the completion to lesser mortals sometime after I left the project [probably more on bait-and-switch authoring in a future blog]). Given the above conditions, the chance to pick up the complete edition for $50 was irresistible. I mean the original subscription was $87 a year! So I am in.

On the surface Bones looks like something I would jump at as well. I mean I like Reaper Miniatures, they have some totally fantastic sculpts. As others on the web have pointed out the $100 pledge gets you an insane amount of miniatures. I also think that the Reaper plan to raise the capital needed to convert their production over to a new process is a perfect fit for Kickstarter. However I am not fond of hard resin models, having had troubles with them in the past (difficult to glue, break easily [many of my miniatures have been subject to the nose-dive from the table], and bubbles in all the wrong places). I cannot tell from the information on the Reaper web site exactly what kind of resin they are using (it might even be something soft like thermoplastic, although fine detail seems to rule this out), but am leery of it (the fact that they are using superglue to reposition is a tip-off its not my favorite plastic polystyrene, the stated objective of cheap is not promising either). I am also concerned that although it is a vast quantity miniatures, many are genres I would not use in my game and would end up siting around unpainted taking up storage space in a house already bursting at the seams with miniatures. March 2013 is also way too long for my impatient soul to wait for something. Getting everything out to  the currently 14,869 backers will be a logistics nightmare (as they say in new product development, the second worst thing that happens to you product is that it succeeds). I wish Reaper luck, I certainly will buy the specific models I want at the gamestore (although with 14,869 orders to fill new Reaper stuff may not ship to the game stores for a while). Besides this looks like direct competition for my evil plan involving 3D printers, polystyrene, and a print-on-demand website. Go ahead and check it out for yourself (my resolve weakens every time I peek at the kickstarter website), but I am out.

Menzo"bore"nzan

Nice art work, nice artwork, not much else. The new Menzoberranzan book was very disappointing to me. As one of the few 4e releases I had  hopes. Splat books used to come with new monsters, new magic items, and least a feat or two, this does even have a theme. I skimmed the whole thing and didn't even spot a stat block. This book has: pages and pages of Drow households detailing the usual Drow depravities; Little thumbnail capsules of the districts without any adventure hooks; a Michelin guide to the shops and taverns of Menzoberranzan in case you are playing "silver and shopping"; a thumbnail guide to the underdark (this is almost interesting, but again no adventure hooks); and how to play a Drow (as you if wanted to play a boot licking, snivelling, conniving bastard, under the thumb of the murderous bitches of Loth and didn't know how [they've even got a card deck, sold separately of course, in case your not chaotic and treacherous enough on you own]).The old Menzoberranzan boxed set was reasonably good, if you want to know about Menzoberranzan get that one, or just read the Drizzt Do'Urden novels.

DON'T GET THIS ONE

GET THIS ONE

P.S. Note to WoTC: If you want to sell stuff from your website don't bury the new releases four clicks down. Putting a link to the Menzoberranzan book on your Rise of the Underdark "Everything Drow" page might be smart also.

And now for something completely different

Here's a brief high jacking of my blog for the latest viral video about my day job. Why? Because IT"S MY BLOG!

Unfortunately I look more like the white haired guy than the guy with the 'hawk. Male pattern baldness makes the 'hawk a young man's hair cut.

The Rulenomicon

So I finally broke down and bought an e-book reader (a nook). This has finally given me chance to download my internet .pdf collection an start reading through. Once I realized I have over 90 different files in my "other roleplaying games"  directory and that the they overwhelmed the 1 GB of storage for things not purchased at Barnes&Nobles ($30 and a 32 GB expansion card fixed the storage problem) I thought I needed to try and organize and and least list them. I'll  try add links and capsule review of the more interesting ones later,

A Song of Ice and Fire 
Adventurer, Conqueror, King
Adventures Dark and Deep
Adventures Fantastiques
Adventures in the New Kingdoms
Age of Shadows
Adventuring Party
The Adventurers Tale
Adventures Under the Laughing Moon
Altus Adventum
Arduin (revised)
Ars Magika
Artesia
Azamar
Bandits and Basilisks
Burning Wheel
Barbarians of Leumria 
Barbarians of the Aftermath
Basic Fantasy
Brickmasters
Challenger
Chaos and Barberie
Circe
The Cog Wars
Crimson Blades of Ara
Crypts and Things 
Dark Dungeons
Dark Fantasy of Sundrah

Dragon Warriors
Dungeon Slayer
Engines and Empire
Elegia
Errant
Fate
Fabled Lands
52 page Rulebook

Fire and Sword
FUBAR
Geasa
Gods and Monsters
The Grey Book
Grom Harnmaster
Heros and Other Worlds
HeroQuest (the G Stafford one)
Humanspace Empires
Impresa Express
Ingenium
Jorune
Judges Guild Universal
Labyrinth Lord
Lady Blackbird
Lamentations of  the Flame Princess
Legends
Lost Roads of Lociam
Maelstrom
Mazes and Minotaurs
Maze of Torment
Microlite
Mini six
Myth and Magic
Novus
Northern Crown
Old School Hack
Orignal Edition Delta
OSRIC
Pars Fortuna
Peril
Pirates and Privateers
Pitch
Platemail
Raven Crowking' Fantasy Game
Redbox Fantasy
Redbox Hack
Renegade The Riddle of Steel
Runequest
Saga
Savage Swords of Antor
Shakhan
Siege Perilous
Spellcraft and Swordplay
Sword and Shield
Swords and Wizardry
The  System
Tibet
Torch and Sword
Tranchons et Traquons
Under the Moons of Zoon
Untold
Vikings and Valkyries
Wizards and Warriors
World of Urtusk
Zenobia