Old Guy Gaming

This is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Many of you probably discovered it long ago (possibly years ago) but I just now ran across it.

Gary Gygax was an active user on the enworld forums, under the user name Col_Pladoh. Enworld archived a number of threads where Gary answered all sorts of questions and shared his wisdom with the community.

What would a fantasy game be without magical items? A magic wand, a cloak of invisibility, a flying carpet… these things are at the core of fantasy stories. But what is their place in a fantasy game?

I am in the process of developing an economy for a fantasy setting that will hold up to close scrutiny, be reasonable at all levels, and that can withstand the sudden influx of treasure brought back by successful adventurers. A number of weeks ago, I posted my preliminary thoughts on the matter.

There are so many things that I enjoy doing on the computer: programming, web design, graphic design, games, social networking, and browsing websites (just to name a few). I can’t count the number of times that I have woken up, gone straight to the computer and sat in front of it all day long until I’m ready to go to bed.

One of the issues that every group has to deal with is what happens when a character dies. There are various ways to deal with single character death, that can be handled fairly smoothly. But when the whole party dies, the issue becomes much more complicated.

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No, this is not about 4th edition. In fact, it has nothing to do with edition wars at all. Dungeons and Dragons is dying and we are all to blame. Even now, as we see it coming, there is nothing we can do to stop it.

While doing research into the amounts of various resources necessary to support a fantasy world population, I discovered that I needed to make various decisions about how to interpret the data and how to modify it to account for the differences that exist in a fantasy world. Some of these decisions revolve around which set of units to use.

Years ago I decided that I was unhappy with the published prices for goods and services. I created my own economic structure and have been using that ever since. Recently I have been revamping my entire rule set, so I figured it was time to re-evaluate my economy as well.

The Cartographer’s Guild is home to hundreds of brilliant, talented, fantasy and science fiction map-makers. Their best works are being honored at a showing at the Soho Gallery for Digital Art in Manhattan.

During the past week, I have been working almost exclusively on my large scale campaign map. It is coming along very nicely. Another week should see it close to being done. However, “done” may not be the right word. There will always be more that can be done, new ideas to try out, more development to do in some areas. As the campaign itself progresses, story ideas will certainly inspire more modifications to the map. I had intended to work on it for a couple of weeks and then send it off to the printer. Now I suspect I will fiddle with it, off and on, for months before I commit to it being “done” enough to send to the printer.