Mad Brew Labs

A couple of weeks ago, I got ThinkGeek.com’s “Bag of Holding” messenger bag as an early Yuletide gift from my awesome wife. I immediately decided to put the messenger bag to the challenge of its namesake by stuffing as much gaming paraphernalia into as I could. After the dust settled, the Bag of Holding was able to carry 22 pounds of gaming goodness!

Initial Impressions

The bag itself is constructed from a heavy and durable grey canvas, very much like denim in texture. Unlike it is advertised, the “fourth Velcro compartment” does not use Velcro, it instead uses two lightly magnetic snaps like the outside flap does. There is definitely a lot of storage space and the main padded laptop compartment feels like it might actually protect something.

Specs

Here are the details from ThinkGeek’s site:

• Main padded laptop compartment big enough to hold a 17″ laptop
• Interior pocket dimensions:
  • Main Padded Laptop Compartment: 16″ x 13.5″ x 3″
  • Huge second compartment: 16″ x 13.5″ x 3″
  • Third compartment: 13″ x 10″ x 1″
  • Fourth Velcro compartment: 12″ x 7″ x 1″
  • Front zipper pocket: 13″ x 5″
  • Rear Document pocket: 16″ x 10″
  • Sturdy canvas, brass zippers and pop-rivet construction
  • d20 badge with “Bag of Holding” proudly printed on the front flap

Mad Brew’s Loadout

Main Laptop Compartment

In the main compartment I opted out of a laptop and instead packed the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook, Pathfinder Bestiary, Pathfinder Bonus Bestiary, and the ever useful Ultimate Toolbox. That’s 1346 pages (cover to cover) of gaming! You could easily keep two large books and a laptop in here.

Huge Second Compartment

The second compartment is the same size as the main compartment above, but boasts an extra pouch to help keep things organized. I packed a GameMastery Combat Pad (in the pouch), a tackle box (that can hold 22 medium sized minis), two dungeon tiles, and a flip-mat.

Third Compartment

In the slightly smaller middle compartment, I packed the venerable D&D Rules Cyclopedia and the Domains of Dread Ravenloft hardcover. This amounts to another 608 pages of gaming information.

Fourth “Snap” Compartment

The front pouch is where I stored all my pens, pencils, dice, and item cards. I fit 5 dice bags (80+ dice), 5 pencils, an eraser, four ink pens, 5 wet erase markers, and two item card sets comfortably inside. This compartment garners one, of my two, complaints about this messenger bag. Except for two pencils, I had to store all the pens and pencils loose as the pouches were too short and that left only 2 elastic slots. I might actually mod the bag with some additional pencil holders.

Front Zipper Pocket

In the front zipper pouch, I put a Pathfinder Tales novel, Prince of Wolves, and my smartphone. Yeah, it might be considering cheating since the novel sticks out of the zipper, but you have to let your nerd flag fly.

Rear Document Pocket

In the rear pocket, I put two card games, Three Dragon Ante and Beer Money. I could have easily fit another card deck or a paperback in there, but I was beginning to fear the shoulder strap wouldn’t hold.

Under the Flap

While not detailed as a compartment, I was also able to tuck a 25” x 25” battlemat under the flap before I snapped it shut. It did require some re-organization of the front zipper pocket and the fourth snap compartment in order for the flap snaps to remain fastened. Which brings forth my second minor complaint, the snaps could be more heavy duty (circled in red above).

22 Pounds Strap Test

My concerns about the strap (or at least its mounts) weren’t warranted at all. The bag hung on my office door all night without any visible wear or stress. I can’t say the same for some of the weaker geek shoulders out there. I carried the bag to and from my car several times and while the weight was manageable for me, I doubt I’d want to carry this loadout with me all through a convention.

Final Thoughts

If there had been a better pen & pencil organizer and stronger fasteners, I would have given it a full 5 flask rating, so I guess I’ll just have to slap it with a 4.8. Overall, I feel like this messenger bag would be a great way for gamers to tote around their stuff. Besides, I saw plenty of 3.0 & 3.5 era messenger bags at GenCon that could use replacements. Get yours at ThinkGeek now!

Listening to: Volbeat – Rock the Rebel/Metal the Devil – River Queen

The online Pathfinder RPG character generator that I’ve been tinkering with in my free time over the last couple of months is quickly approaching open beta testing. I currently have all the validation implemented for core class features, feats, and skills. The sole remaining elements to work on involve displaying character information effectively in the PDF export. Just need to figure out how I want to render class features and feats and it’s ready to go.

I’ll add equipment and spell selection during the beta testing, but before that, I want to optimize the validation logic performance. Seeing how sluggish the JavaScript performs on Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3 bugs the hell out of me. Chrome, which blazes through most of the code, hits a bottleneck during skill validation (but only initially).

Features Roadmap

I figured I might list some of the features I have already implemented as well as those I eventually plan on including. For the moment, I am only supporting the Core Rulebook, but as I find time (and motivation), I’ll add stuff from other Pathfinder products (hint: beer money is motivational).

v1.0 Feature Implementation (bold items are finished; italicized items are in development):

• Ability Scores (point buy, tier points, racial adjustments)
• Core Classes (alignment restrictions, favored class bonuses, selectable class features)
• Skills (class skill training bonus, skill focus bonus, racial bonuses, ability modifiers)
• Calculated Combat Stats (BAB, CMB, CMD, AC, Touch AC, Flat Footed AC, Saves, HPs, Speed, Initiative)
• Feats (Racial, class granted feats, full prerequisite validation)
• Equipment (calculate wealth, calculate encumbrance, attack/damage bonuses, highlight proficiency, equip to slots)
• Spells (select known spells, select memorized spells, calculate DCs, calculate dice/bonuses)
• Save to PDF (complete with calculated values, racial & class features, custom landscape layout)

v2.0 Feature Roadmap:

• Portrait selection (using 60+ Terrible Portraits^[1])
• Traits
• Random Bio Generation (Name, Homeland, Age, Height, Weight, Hair, & Eyes) based on Race & Gender
• Aging Affects validation based on Age in Bio
• Rules Info (overlays with PRD definitions for class features, feats, etc.)
• Pathfinder Society legal character validation
• Save to HTML

v3.0 Feature Roadmap:

• Non-core open entries for class, feats, traits, skills, equipment, & spells.
• Pre-calculated Combat Maneuver & Spell sheets
• Export/Import character from database (may charge fee for storage)

Platform Choices

It’s times like these when I begin questioning the platform choices I’ve made. The entire front end uses valid XHTML 1.0 Strict, CSS2.1, and JavaScript. The back end is ASP.NET 4.0 & C#. I also have access to SQL Server 2008 in case future features require data storage.

I passed on HTML5 because I feel like there are too many compatibility issues that need to be addressed before you get a [nearly] uniform experience across browsers. Cross-platform is still ever elusive. Just take a look at percentage of browsers in use on W3C’s statistics page^[2] and cross-reference that with the HTML5 browser readiness site^[3].

There are still a ton of users out there with little to no HTML5 support. Now consider that each browser implements features in slightly different ways and you have a nightmare for a developer wanting to build a robust app and ensure a similar experience across the browsers.

The choice to build upon ASP.NET was easy. I work with ASP.NET in my day job, so I’m pretty handy with it. The .NET library I’m using to generate PDFs is pretty slick and I’m not sure if it would be as easy to implement with another server-side language.

Concerning CB

This line of questioning is especially germane with current hobby events as I saw my Twitter feed recently choked full of bitching and moaning about Wizards of the Coast’s choice in using Silverlight to develop their new online character builder^[4].

All the geek angst seems to originate from a ZDNet article^[5] that cherry-picked quotes from Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC). Someone thinks Microsoft is “deprecating” Silverlight (I could not find a direct quote from the conference that ever used the word, deprecate). And of course, all of the Apple iP* fanatics are sad-faced because Silverlight means it won’t work natively on their iOS devices.

Microsoft quickly cleared up any confusion about Silverlight (within 2 days of the ZDNet article)^[6][7], because there are a lot of businesses out their using the platform. Also, I’m sure you’ve recently seen a big marketing push for Windows Phone 7. Well WP7 is practically synonymous with Silverlight, so it’s most definitely still supported. You can now think of Silverlight as Objective C that benefits from browser plugins.

Listening to: City of Fire – City of Fire – Rising

REFERENCES

[1] 60 (108) Terrible Portraits for Creative Commons Release

[2] W3School’s Browser Statistics

[3] HTML5 & CSS3 Readiness

[4] Wizards of the Coast’s CB FAQ

[5] ZDNet’s Silverlight Article

[6] Bob Muglia, President of the Server & Tools Division at Microsoft

[7] Tim Heuer, Program Manager for Silverlight

Sunglar (of Stargazer’s World^[1]) kicked off a blog carnival on the Role Play Media Network^[2] earlier this week that focuses on how Social Media has impacted the hobby and the pundits surrounding it. Being keen on technology and its application on the hobby^[3], I felt this was an excellent topic to discuss here at the Labs.

First, let’s define what social media is. Social media are interactive networks and/or tools that store and transmit information. Forums, blogs, wikis, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Kickstarter, deviantArt, BitTorrent, Second Life, Digg, Reddit, YouTube, Picasa and multitudes of other applications and technologies are social media. Anytime users can rate, discuss, share, or otherwise interact with the data or each other, social media is involved.

I think social media has impacted five major properties of the hobby. Social media has increased accessibility to the hobby, decreased the time of distribution, expanded the reach of the hobby, made the permanence of the hobby mutable, and finally, social media has bridged gaps in intimacy between hobbyists as well as publishers & designers.

Accessibility

Before the internet and cheap (often free) social media tools, the means to produce and deliver content were cost prohibitive. It would mean spending money at a print shop and obtaining a mailing list of people to actually send it to and/or distributing it at local shops.

Anything beyond simple black & white facsimiles would require specialized skills and tools of the print industry. Today, one can leverage cheap or free drag & drop applications to create surprisingly good layouts for websites, e-books, and print-on-demand solutions. In essence, this means anyone can be a magazine/e-zine editor, webmaster, or author.

Time/Speed

Social media has significantly reduced the time required to distribute of content. In the print world, it takes days (newspapers) or even months (book printing & shipping) for content to be delivered for consumption. These days, as soon as the content is ready, it can be immediately published and ready for hobbyists to read and use.

With tools like feed readers, email, Twitter, and Facebook, the hobbyist can achieve near instantaneous awareness of when new content is available. No longer does one have to make a trip to the local shop or wait for a product to appear on a shelf.

Reach

Before the internet and social media, the reach of the hobbyist was pretty much limited to people known locally. Programs such as play-by-mail could transcend this limitation, but it suffered from extended periods of waiting by the mailbox and drew out play to a sometimes mind-numbingly slow one action per week.

With the internet and social media tools, the reach of the hobbyist is global. Even language barriers become easily scalable obstacles with a browser like Chrome (recognizes and prompts user if they would like to translate pages). The lone gamer stuck in the backwaters is only a click away from his hobby and others who share his passion.

Permanence

Social media and the internet have allowed what were once immutable and absolute to become evolving and sometimes even capricious. Before these tools, a game reached the hobby in what would be its final form. In order to fix/change the design, a new printing, supplement, or an entirely new edition would have to be created.

Today, errata and fan-made house rules and supplements make a game a constantly evolving beast (should you choose to let it). It seems like WotC puts out a new errata document while prominent bloggers offer optional rules and mechanics to spice up the game on a daily basis.

Depending on your perspective, the new mutability of the hobby can either be a blessing, a curse, or both.

Intimacy

I think the final property of the hobby that social media has changed is that it has allowed hobbyists and designers to develop (at least an illusion of) personal relationships. No longer are the names printed inside our game manuals some unknown being in the ivory tower.

Social media has allowed the hobbyist to glimpse into those areas that were once inaccessible. We can see behind the curtain and watch the processes that make a publisher run. We can give feedback and get answers direct from the designer (without having to wait to see if our question was answered in next month’s sage column).

Convenience

All of these factors add up to one property, convenience. Social media and the internet make it easier to organize, play, obtain content, and communicate among ourselves and with the industry. The ability to connect is nearly effortless.

Be sure to return to the originating post for this RPMN blog carnival, Social Media and its impact on RPGs to see what everyone else is saying.

Listening to: Murderdolls – Women & Children Last – Chapel of Blood

REFERENCES

[1] Sunglar at Stargazer’s World.

[2] The RPMN is a Ning social network for RPG hobbyists created by Berin Kinsman.

[3] Check out my many posts that deal with leveraging technology for RPGs.

I was given an opportunity to read & review (i.e. given a free copy) the latest book from Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective, the sequel to Johannes Cabal the Necromancer. You might be asking why I’ve chosen to review the book on Mad Brew Labs, which is an RPG blog. Well, fiction is a primary influence for gaming and I hear Howard is a bit of an RPG gamer himself (in fact he also does video game design).

No worries though, I plan on approaching the review from an RPG world-building perspective as well as turn a bit of Johannes’ world into game crunch at the end of the review.

I want to see more main characters in media like Johannes Cabal. He’s selfish, but not necessarily evil. His activities are not condoned by society, but he’s ambitious in his pursuits and he generally doesn’t give damn. From a not-so-different perspective, Johannes could be the villain of the story.

Johannes Cabal is constantly struggling against his conscious and upstanding individuals around him as he makes logical, if antisocial, or even amoral, suggestions to solve problems. This is a character I can identify with.

The Story

See, Johannes Cabal is a Necromancer (of some infamy), and in most civilized nations, necromancy is a crime that carries stiff penalties (including death). We find Johannes imprisoned in a Mirkarvian dungeon at the onset of the book, having been caught trying to steal a copy of the Principia Necromantica from the Special Collection of the library of Krenz University.

Fortunately for Johannes, the Mirkarvian Emperor just died and militants in the Mirkarvian Empire were depending on the Emperor’s announcement of war in order to set off a chain of events to restore the empire to its former glory. So, Johannes is given an opportunity to escape the clutches of certain death if he can reanimate the dead emperor so he can make his dying wish.

Unfortunately for Johannes, the Count that requisitioned his service didn’t have any plans to release Cabal. So during the chaos that ensued after a risen emperor began eating his guard’s brains during a public announcement, Johannes makes a break for it and tries to escape from Mirkarvia in an aeroship (or zeppelin).

It’s during his flight from Mirkarvia on the aeroship that Johannes becomes embroiled in a murder investigation. Johannes begins the investigation in order to maintain his civil servant disguise but eventually is committed to finding the assassin when an attempt is made on his own life.

Much of the book is centered on his investigation, all the while trying to maintain a stolen identity to escape Mirkarvian authorities. It’s full of dark humor, satire, and Johannes generally trying to be antisocial. It’s a character driven story where the minor steampunk elements take a backseat and only serves to paint in the background (which is a good thing!).

I think my favorite part of the story is really the epilogue. The epilogue is narrated by an individual who must team up with Johannes after his escape in order to survive an encounter with some bandits and ancient sorcerer they happen to accidently set free from imprisonment.

World-Building

Howard took a great approach to world-building with his Cabal books. They are sort of an alternate history of Earth. He manages to reinvent the world just enough that he can simultaneously take advantage of elements readers will already know about while ensuring they won’t also get bogged down in the details of actual history.

I think many DMs and designers could actually take lesson from how Howard built the world of Johannes Cabal. It shows that you can take advantage of a familiar setting (real history, established RPG worlds, fictional locations) without worrying about the baggage that comes with it. Unless you have some real douchebag players that refuse to compromise.

Jonathan Howard took the real world and inserted fictional nations, which Mirkarvia belongs to. You can definitely see their influences (Mirkarvia definitely has some Austrian-Prussian flavor). With the addition of the esoteric and unrealized technologies (necromancy & steampunk), he can manipulate the expectations of his audience.

When you obviously break an established element, your audience won’t know what to take for granted.  You can then begin to rebuild their expectations by re-establishing those elements you wish to keep. For example, Howard re-asserts British culture by inserting certain elements throughout the story. It can be a tricky process to master, but I think it is one well worth learning.

I think such an approach to world-building works best when you want to make use of powerful existing atmospheres (e.g. re-inventing Ravenloft) or if you want to back-fill a lot of geography or history while exploring a what-if scenario.

[NOTE: Below I have provided a Pathfinder RPG compatible fantasy version of the Principia Necromantica. I've taken some creative license with its powers and history, since not much was said about it in the novel. ]

Principia Necromantica, Minor Artifact

Aura strong necromancy; CL 18th
Slot –; Weight 4 lbs.

DESCRIPTION

Only a few copies of this book are known to exist. The original copy was penned in blood on pale leather pages worked from the skin flayed from the abdomens of 333 virgins. The original Principia Necromantica was created under the tutelage of a powerful demon lord by an accomplished necromancer whose name has been struck from history.

An interesting aspect of the Principia Necromantica is that the pages are not static, but are constantly changing and evolving. The effect is supernatural and can be maddening to the weak willed, forcing any character that invokes one of its powers to make a Will save (DC 20) or suffer 1d4 Intelligence and 1d4 Wisdom drain.

The Principia Necromantica contains knowledge, incantations, and stored magical energies that enable a character to animate the dead. Characters may utilize the book as a library to make Knowledge (religion) checks (they may make checks with a DC higher than 10 untrained, but it takes 1d4 hours of research) with a +5 competence bonus.

A character may invoke the Principia Necromantica to cast animate dead at a caster level equal to his character level once per day. The spell does not require spell components. This books increases the amount of undead a character may control by 2HD per character level.

DESTRUCTION

The Principia Necromantica may be destroyed if the burial site of the 333 virgins sacrificed during its creation is consecrated. Once their grave is consecrated, the pages will boil away into vapor never to return again.

[Special thanks and an apology for this taking so long to see the light of day to Matt Staggs, the publicist to who sent me the book].

Listening to: Down – III: Over the Under – I Scream

Wow, there’s a lot of dust around here!

Things have been pretty busy elsewhere in my life, so I have unfortunately had to concentrate my energies there. But enough excuses, let’s get to the RPG-related content.

ENnies Blog Shout-out

First, I’d like to give a shout-out (back?) to Tony Law and the ENnies Blog. Tony interviewed me (and many other ENnie nominees and winners) and the interview went live this morning. The interview was completed before I gave my controlling interest in Nevermet Press to Jonathan Jacobs, who is now the sole proprietor.

Pathfinder RPG App

Even though the Labs appear to have been abandoned since GenCon, I can assure you I have only secreted myself away from the villagers with their burning torches and nasty pitchforks while I gave life to my newest endeavor.

If you cannot tell from the screenshots, it is a web-based character generator for the Pathfinder RPG. I cannot say when I’ll be finished; I am currently on my 3^rd re-write of the code at the moment in an attempt to get the app to perform decently on any browser but Chrome (Chrome IS the fastest browser when complex JavaScript routines are concerned).

The character generation takes place completely on the client side through the liberal application of JavaScript until the final step where the app creates a PDF of the character and stores it for a limited time on the server (the app automatically redirects to the (Character Gen Sample) PDF in the browser).

Here is the list of features that have been developed so far:

• Point buy Ability Score calculation (though you are free to break it)
• Favored Bonus points distribution (including Half-Elf bonus favored class)
• All racial features for the 7 Core Races
• All selectable class features for  the 11 Core Classes
• Validation logic for all 176 Core Feats
• Skill bonus calculation
• Saving Throws, BAB, CMB, & CMD calculation
• Hit Point calculation using ½ Hit Die + 1 (and max HPs at 1^st level)
• Save to PDF

As far as things to come, I want to add equipment and spell selection, with automated calculations for attack, damage, and save DCs. I plan on introducing Traits from the PDF enhancement as well. I also want to look into implementing random Ability Score generation options as well as random options for Hit Points.

Since I am in the middle of development, I do not want to reveal the project’s web address (it is actually live), but any parties interested in testing the app when the time comes, feel free to leave a comment below. I would also like to thank the handful of people who have already given me feedback on the project during its infancy.

For now, I’m sticking to the core rulebook only. Once the core rules are hammered out, then I will consider adding material from other sourcebooks. The core of the web app will certainly be free, but I am considering charging a small fee to store characters in a database.

Listening to: Danzig – Deth Red Sabaoth – The Revengeful