I wanted to keep Allteria for the ancient brethren, so I changed Allandria to Stallandria. Again, I lived with the name for a time. Then, Stallandria started bugging me; the resemblance to Stalingrad was too great.

I changed the name again, this time to Eldlandria. Choosing names should be simple, but it can be challenging to find names that aren’t widely used in other fiction or have some unintended associations.

With Crackdown 2 coming out on the Xbox 360, there’s chatter on the original. Many people hold the first game in great regard – but not everyone. On the OXM podcast, Ryan McCaffrey often talks about how he famously gave the game a “7”. Personally I think the game is a lot of fun, definitely better than a 7.

Why the discrepancy? I think the difference lies in the fact that Ryan had to finish the game. He needed, at some point, to write a review. Myself on the other hand, I had no interest in playing though the game’s admittedly weak storyline. I just wanted to run around and make my character stronger and jump higher by collecting all of the special items in the game. If I was forced to play though the game to the end, I might give it a 7 as well. As a sandbox though, I had way more fun than a 7.

In some ways, assigning quality by way of a number is kind of weird. The TV listings give Schwarzenegger’s Commando two stars, and yet how boring would the 4 star version be? Things with flaws can still be a lot of fun.

Here’s hoping that Crackdown 2 fixes what was broken without washing away what many people found so appealing about it.

RPG link: I like characters with lots of cool abilities. When designing Spellchrome, I made a point of letting all characters have access to some spells, skills and equipment that makes them special, but not to the point where the game becomes just about super heroes. As for the story lines, I can help – but ultimately it’s up the group’s GM to deal with.

Quick thoughts on a few summer movies

Wolverine. I liked it, but lots of other people didn’t. Those that didn’t like Wolverine are able to raise good points why they didn’t like it. That said, when I was walking out of the theater and hadn’t heard any of those complaints, I had enjoyed myself. I’d pay to see a sequel.

Star Trek. I really like this one. I like TNG and other the other Star Trek series more than The Original Series, so I wasn’t sure if I’d like this re-boot when I first heard of it. Turns out I didn’t have anything to worry about, as it was quite watchable. While I think it could have been a little less mainstream, that mainstream appeal is what will get more Star Trek films made – which is something I’m looking forward to.

Terminator Salvation. I saw this one just so I wouldn’t have to avoid spoilers and could checkout what other people thought of it. The movie has some good visuals and some nifty action scenes. Other than that, it was just alright. T2 remains the best of the series.

RPG link
Which of these movies would serve as a basis for a good pen and paper roleplaying game? Wolverine is super heroes, without the costumes. There’s already plenty of Super Hero RPGs out there. I’ve heard Mutants and Masterminds is one of the better ones.

Star Trek: I don’t know if setting a campaign in the Star Trek universe would be better or worse than a made up D20 Future setting. A good GM could make either work. (And of course there have been several official Star Trek RPGs released over the years, one of which would probably work fine.)

Terminator: Post Apocalyptic settings can be interesting and exciting. I do find them a bit depressing though. Spellchrome has a few areas that are designed as Post Apocalyptic settings, such as the Barrier Zone, although as I just mentioned, they’re a bit too gloomy to make a whole world like that.

It’s nifty the times we’re living in. When I was a teenager, and possibly wanted to do this type of work, the only type of resource that existed like this was the odd book. Now lots of people have the technology to record and distribute their insights and conversations on topics that I find interesting, although I don’t kid myself that it isn’t a lot of work to produce a podcast.

Give it a read, if only for the different types of players out there and how they might affect your game.

While I touch on some basic tips for running a Successful Gaming Session and a Successful Gaming Campaign in Chapter 9: Running the Game, Samuel’s article goes further in-depth, talking about, for example, why the group will benefit from taking an entire session to create characters, etc.

I think that it’s cool that important RPG subjects that would get omitted or a brief mention in a “Core Rulebook”, can find places to be talked about with greater depth.

So head over and give Stumbling Blocks To Starting A New Campaign a read.

I had built websites in the past, but was not really a huge fan of designing for the web. The problem, at least in the past, was that in order to layout HTML effectively you had to use invisible tables. Inside those would go more invisible tables. I never like using tables as a method of layout, but eventually got used to it for the few sites I had made.

A modern web site uses CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to control the look and layout of a website instead of building ugly tables. I have to admit that I didn’t clue into what CSS was the first few times I came across it. I thought it was for controlling fonts, and that was about it. Later I found zengarden, and saw what could really be done with CSS.

I decided I should re-learn how to build a web site, so I bought books on the subject and read them. Now that I have a few of them, I’ve noticed that most come in two main flavors: How to code (HTML and CSS) and How to plan and design a website. There’s a fair amount of crossover, but they’ll each have their main focus. I’m sure there’s some tomes out there that fully cover both, but I imagine they’re thick like a phone book.

Here are some of the books I’ve gotten on either HTML/CSS or Designing a Website: (Regardless of the book’s focus, they all say to drop the tables for layout and use CSS.)

By Jennifer Niederst Robbins

One of the first books I read. Pretty thorough with regards to teaching the main concepts and requirements behind HTML and CSS. For example, shows you how to create sections within your HTML and move them around through CSS.

by Richard Quick

I kind of felt self conscious about buying a how to book with a monkey on the front, but I got it anyway. It’s a good book that’s not too long, and has some good content. It talks about the many components of a web site, planning, navigation, etc. It didn’t tell me a lot that I didn’t already know, but served as a good reminder here and there. Like all good web books, it tells you to use bread crumbs wherever possible to enhance navigation.

By Christopher Schmitt

More of a reference book, I read about the first half before getting bored. It’s a good book to have if you need to understand or make something work in CSS.
Talks about web typography, images, page elements, links and navigation, layouts and more.

By Rob Huddleston

Not a bad buy, but I bought it well into development, and didn’t really need it as much as I thought I’d use it.

I do think that the visual examples are a good way to learn.

by Paul McFedries

I got this one for some of the later chapters, like finding a web host. A good design book with lots of information.

By Matthew MacDonald

Again, I bought this one for the chapters on what to do once you have a website. Quite readable.

In a future Post I will try and talk about some of the specific concepts that I’ve come across while figuring out how to build a web site.

I bring this up only after reading a Penny Arcade comic entitled “The Old Ways”, which I believe speaks for itself.

First imagine the Player Characters are not familiar with Starwars (the gamers live in an alternate universe, where Starwars never came out).

Second, the Game Master is taking his PCs, who normally play a Medieval Fantasy game (like DnD), and having them play in his made-up space world.

The comic really shows the difference between a film narrative and an RPG adventure (and player tendencies). “Qui-Gon: I take all the blasters!“

Make sure to look at the commentary below most of the comics. They really go on to explain the strange relationship between PCs, the GM and Adventure Plots.

The comic points out a lot of the oddities of RPGs in general. All are funny when they point them out, but some are kind of frustrating when you’re actually playing them. A good portion of writing and designing Spellchrome is born out dealing with or avoiding such oddities. For example, the comic makes a funny point about vehicular damage tables. In Spellchrome, I state that the GM should just be able to make the right call as a vehicle loses hit points. (Not that I have never been tempted to make up vehicular damage tables in the past.)

I’m really getting a kick out of reading this online comic. Funny stuff if you’re a gamer.

The article is entitled Springboard to Adventure, and it gives a few examples of for story based, thematic based, and character based adventures. The examples fit into a more pure medieval fantasy setting in a few places, but nothing that is unworkable.

Give it a read, see how you might use them in conjunction with Spellchrome’s Chapter 9: Running the Game. Specifically, see the sections on Adventure Basics, Adding Challenges, and Adventure Ideas.