All about the traditions, misconceptions, and squabbles of gamers.
If you’re a technophile with a smartphone, chances are you’ve heard of social geolocation sites/apps like FourSquare or Gowalla. These location-based mobile social networks allow you to announce what you’re doing and gain rewards for visiting new venues and many other behaviors.
Last November, Neoncon introduced a series of presentations from tabletop gaming industry insiders called GamesU. Luminaries like Eric Mona, Ed Healy, and John Wick. I think Neoncon did a great job executing GamesU and I especially enjoyed being able to stream a couple of the presentations live.
Now, Neoncon is editing the presentations and placing them on their YouTube channel. The first video they released was the keynote by Eric Mona on the topic of Pen & Paper Games in the 21st Century. I obviously have a large interest in how roleplaying games will evolve in the next decade, but this article is to address the latest video released from GamesU, Marcelo Figueroa’s Live the Dream: Building a Career in the Games Industry.
Sometimes it just feels awesome knowing you belong to a community of people that do great things. Today is one of those days. Early this morning I received the RPGNow!/DriveThruRPG newsletter and it contained the following announcement…
When Apple unveiled their new multi-touch tablet device, the [horribly named] iPad, I watched as half of the internet sung praises of Apple to the heavens while the other half spoke of disappointment. In the tabletop roleplaying community, I saw a trend of tech-minded gamers hail the tablet as the messiah of digital roleplaying.
In this installment of Miniatures & Terrain Series, I provide a simple database of manufacturers of miniatures of what I’m calling non-heroic scales (everything but the D&D 25mm-28mm standard). But don’t let the name deceive you, there are some very heroic minis available within these scales.
So you purchased the perfect mini for your character, but it is currently just a heap of white metal in a plastic blister pack. Oh, and it uses a scimitar instead of that awesome two-handed falchion your character likes to use to split enemies in twain, but it is close enough to perfect… and you can literally picture what it will look like painted and finished in your head.
What if you could roleplay at a table that actually contained all the game logic? It recognized your mini when you placed on the surface and presented an array of options available to your character and resolved the challenges based upon GM and Player input? In addition, you were not constrained to play within the rules (game logic), but could play “freestyle” any time you wish by simply switching of the rules?
Besides dice, miniatures are probably the next most recognizable roleplaying accouterments found at the gaming table. Minis, a vestige of RPGs wargaming roots, are often more than just a physical means for representing characters. For many, the collecting and painting of minis are a hobby within the hobby.
OBS and the small press publishers they partnered with, like my own Nevermet Press, are doing a great thing. And the gamers that have contributed, well, I am simply in awe at what we’ve been able to do. Besides crashing the OBS sites with our massive response, we also managed to raise more than $50,000 dollars in a single day. As I write this, OneBookShelf, publishers, and gamers have raised $85,560 that will go to Doctors without Borders. That damn impressive!
I don’t have much to say about travel within a game, except that sometimes the journey is more important than the destination. However, I do have a lot I can say about traveling as a gamer, because I have probably traveled more than the average gamer.