Below are the most recent 13 friends' journal entries.

Friday, July 17th, 2009
drivingblind	5:41p	Evil Hat/One Bad Egg Mega-Bundle To celebrate our four ENnies nominations, you can get all four of our Ennies-nominated products for $19.99 -- a savings of over 40% -- at RPGNow: http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=63523&affiliate_id=231162&src=fredblog You can also pick up both of One Bad Egg's PDFs individually at RPGNow, IPR, or the One Bad Egg bookshelf at a buck off each. Pass it around! (Comment on this)
Monday, July 13th, 2009
drivingblind	9:40a	2009 Ennies Nominations So, the 2009 Ennie Award Nominations are out this morning: http://www.ennie-awards.com/nominations/nominees.asp As someone on Twitter said, my fingerprints are all over 'em. This is good, because I like the Ennies, and it's really great when the Ennies like me back. I'm already a proud papa lately, but this magnifies the feeling, and for my other 'babies' to boot. :) Evil Hat's Nominations Best Writing - Don't Lose Your Mind Best Setting - Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies Product of the Year - Don't Lose Your Mind Product of the Year - Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies One Bad Egg's Nominations Best Electronic Book - The Death Mother Best Electronic Book - Hard Boiled Armies I declare TRIUMPH with chadu at this point, since we went back and forth on the presentation of the Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies' setting so much, and lo and behold a BEST SETTING nomination. Yes, I'm jazzed as all hell for having two entries on Product of the Year (out of 10), but the setting nod is the real marker there as ultimate validation of the goal we had in producing S7S. And Ben Baugh getting BEST WRITING for his work on Don't Lose Your Mind? Well, yeah. He did such wonderful things with language and vignettes and all that in DLYM, I would have been sorely disappointed if that hadn't gotten a specific nod, too. The One Bad Egg stuff is a happy thing, finally, as that's the place where I actually wrote some stuff this year instead of doing higher-level production and layout stuff. I'm a little startled that Armies and Mother beat out Cultures (Cultures has been a consistent strong seller) for nomination, but they're both results from me working at the top of my game at OBE, so I'm pretty tickled. It doesn't stop there, though, as I look towards the question of "What non-Fred IPR-carried products got the nod?" IPR Nominations Best Cover Art - 3:16 (BoxNinja) Best Interior Art - HELLAS (Khepera) Best Interior Art - Mouse Guard (Archaia) Best Writing - Hot War (Contested Ground) Best Production Values - Mouse Guard (Archaia) Best Production Values - HELLAS (Khepera) Best Rules - Starblazer Adventures (Cubicle 7) Best Setting - Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor (Arc Dream) Best Setting - Hot War (Contested Ground) Best Podcast - Voice of the Revolution (IPR!) Best Game - Starblazer Adventures (Cubicle 7) Product of the Year - Mouse Guard (Archaia) Product of the Year - Starblazer Adventures (Cubicle 7) I'm mixed, of course, in my feelings about Mouse Guard. Mouse Guard is a fine work, worth the nods it has gotten (and more that it curiously didn't). But Luke and I are on the outs (something I don't really want to talk about, but also don't want to pretend isn't true) after he decided that it was more important to spit in my face than accept an apology for a big goof-up I made earlier this year. As such, I am doubtful that I'll be continuing The Summer Revolution past this year, and am on the fence as to whether I'll use that promotional site this year at all, since it was based on a partnership with Luke, and Luke's temper makes him a poor partner for me. I might be giving Mouse Guard some vote love, but that love's all for Archaia at this point. Anyway, enough of that drama. Overall, that's a pretty good spread. It's a great spread from the Evil Hat perspective, too, given that Starblazer Adventures is based on the Spirit of the Century SRD, but I'm also intrigued that IPR's catalog includes three of the five Best Setting nods, given that I think there's a sort of general perception out there that "indie means setting light". I'm sad that Master Plan isn't on the Podcast list, but Ryan's influence is still strongly felt, as he's been doing the audio production on Voice of the Revolution, which has improved the show's quality in all sorts of subtle-but-palpable ways. Don't Lose Your Mind author Ben Baugh is getting some love for Candlewick, too, which is good & just; he's probably one of my top five setting authors these days anyway, and it's *hard* to get me to love setting writing. In the end sum, it's important to realize that in one very big way, the Ennies are already done for us (speaking in the smaller EHP/OBE sense, and in the larger IPR sense). Nominations are hard-won and carefully considered by the judges each year, but the voting is in the hands of the general public. It's particularly hard getting actual wins from that everyone-in-the-world vote; our catalogs do their best work not in quantity, but in quality, so to some extent creating the product familiarity necessary to garner a vote is the biggest obstacle of all. So when you hear folks on the above list say things like, "It's an honor just to be nominated" -- and it is! -- listen a little closer. That nomination they're talking about is a win all by itself. Edit: Chad's post: http://chadu.livejournal.com/743514.html Second Edit: Somehow I failed to mention I did the layout on Starblazer Adventures, so I have an actually-palpable connection to that product beyond contributing to the SRD on which it's based. (21 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, July 11th, 2009
rob_donoghue	1:21p	Digging into the Psion III Question #1: Does the assumption of encounter equivalency hold up? The level 1 abilities sort of held it up (close enough for government work) but what about the most powerful ones? Let's look at level 27 Psion: 2d8 + Stat and target is stunned until the end of your next turn (Close Blast 3, all targets) 3d8 + stat and target is blinded until the end of your next turn (Burst 2 in 20 squares, enemies only) Invoker: 3d8 + Stat and target moves half its speed away from you as safely as possible (Burst 2, range 10, all targets) 2d6 + stat, creates a zone that either does 10 damage to targets in it or targets out of it (Burst 2, range 10, enemies only) 4d10 + stat (Close blast 3, all targets) Wizard: 6d6+stat (Close blast 5, enemies only) 3d10 + Stat, control the target on the next turn (Range 20) 3d10+ stat, Until end of next tun, target is immobilized, grants CA, cannot get line of effect against non-adjacent targets (Range 20) I admit, I would probably say the Psion's set are the _weakest_ of the three, but I would probably categorize them all in the same weight class. Verdict: The assumption stands, more or less. Psion might be a tiny but less. Question #2: How Potent is Minimal Augmentation? The table seems to suggest that minimal augmentation i equivalent to major augment 10 levels lower, and looking at it we have a startling apples to apples comparison with "Sudden Control", the level 23 attack, which has an at-will ability equal to a level 7 ability (Betrayal) with full augmentation. That actually suggests that if there were a level 13 version, it's maximaized version would probably equate to Sudden Control's minimal augmentation. So the ~10 level thing sort of holds up (and it does with a few other examples) but now that I've answered it, I;m not sure that's hugely useful to know. However, it's important to note that minimal augments usually set up the larger augment well, by doing things like adding vulnerabilities. That's very useful, but possibly more situational than some other powers. Question #3: How much to the At Will's improve? This is important because the 7/17/27 attack will never cost more than the 3/13/23 attack, so if the *7 is better, then being able to do it twice is a definite leg up. Having looked through the powers, I honestly don't know. There's definitely escalation between tiers, but within tiers, it's close, and it's muddled by powers like Betrayal and Sudden Control which are hard to compare and are just plain awesome. They're close enough to suggest that this is not quite as much of a leg up as it first appears, but I'm still wary. Conclusion: On paper, Psion's scare me. Final verdict waits on play, to see if it reveals some non-obvious weaknesses, but just from the text, I suspect this class is A) fun to play and B) Scary, maybe a little too scary. Final caveat: It's a controller, so all this comparison may be meaningless. Controllers still have no real benchmarks, so I may be looking at apples and oranges without realizing it. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
rob_donoghue	9:57a	Digging into the Psion II Ok, so given the previous assumption, let's look at psion powers versus encounter powers on a per level basis. ( Warning, tables ahead ) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 10th, 2009
rob_donoghue	11:15p	Digging into the Psion Ok, so I ended up staring at the Psion and pondering the question of how its power point model compares against the standard build. To do this really requires an assumption, and that is that an at-will power with it's maximum augmentation is comparable to an encounter power of the same level. So before anything else, that assumption required some exploration. The psion's Level 1 At-will's, maxed out, get this: 2d6 + stat, plus penalty equal to a secondary stat to enemy's attacks until the end of the next turn (Burst 1, All targets, Range 10) 2d6+Stat damage and you are invisible to the target until the beginning of your next turn (Burst 1, all targets, range 10) 2d10+stat damage and target takes a penalty to defenses equal to secondary stat mod until the end of your next turn (Range 10) Compare this to the level 1 encounter powers of another controller (the Invoker): 1d6 + stat damage, push target 2 squares (Close Burst 3, all enemies) 1d6 + Stat Damage, Each ally in burst gains +2 bonus to AC (Burst 1, range 10, enemies only) 1d10 + stat damage and target is immobilized until the end of your next turn (range 10) 1d6 + Stat damage (or 2d6 is single target) and target is dazed until end of your next turn (Range 10, 1, 2 or 3 targets) And the Wizard: 2d6 + stat damage (Close blast 5, all creatures) 2d8+stat and target is dazed until end of next turn (range 10) 2d8 + stat and secondary attack against all adjacent enemies for 1d10 + stat (Range 20) 1d6 + stat damage and targets knocked prone, plus create difficulty terrain until end of your next turn (burst 1, range 10) 1d10 + stat damage and target is weakened until end of your next turn. (Range 10) I feel like it's safe to call these comparable, or close enough for government work, but before I go any further I want to put that assumption out there for examination. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
esmerel	11:07p	I live an exciting life Except not really. Since our last exciting update: Our entire house had some form of horribly nasty gastrointestinal bug. If you find yourself feeling oogy with frequent trips to the facilities, then really tired, then nauseous, with lower back pain and the feeling of having a spike through your hips? That's it. Just resign yourself to two days laying on your arse, because you won't have the energy to do anything else except maybe read a book or play a game on a handheld console. Seriously. Also, it takes a couple of days to manifest. So awesome having us all come down with it in succession. So awesome hearing your kid make hacking noises in the middle of the night, only to run in and well. I had to change clothes. One brother and my nieces are moving to CO. We went to the girls' birthday party um, a week and a half ago now? Sprout was glad to see her cousins, it'll be a while before we see them again. Sprout continues to astound. Her vocabulary makes everyone think she's at least a year older than she actually is. Two years after her birth, we're finally starting to get into some routines with her that are supposed to make things go smoother, but are not yet managing to do so. It does mean that she's getting books read to her more often, which is important. Other than that, the book is consuming my entire life outside of Sprout. I've actually written everything I can personally write; I'm on to the edits. Some of them are piddly and annoying, but for the most part, a lot of them are very good and I'm glad to have them. It's kind of weird to be this close to done with the book, except for where merlinofchaos changed the UI for the entire last section of the book and now I have to fine-tooth-comb the entire thing and redo all the screenshots *sob*. I'm waiting for him to finish what he's doing so I can spend a couple of days fixing all of that. ANd then hopefully he'll be able to finish all of his stuff. Argl. I'm ready to be done. I've also done a couple of craft projects. I finished a stole, and even made a cushion for the top of Sprout's toybox. I'm pretty darn happy with it. Current Mood: busy (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
rob_donoghue	9:59p	Looking at the Psion So, WOTC has released the Psion, with the summary in Dragon magazine and the chargen material in the character builder, and it's really, really interesting. It's enough of a departure from classes we've seen to date that while I think it has some pitfalls, it seems clever an interesting. Before I get onto the class, I need to remark on the presentation. The PDF from dragon magazine includes commentary from the designers, which is nice to read, but more interestingly it does not actually include the text of the powers. Instead it simply has the title of the power and a hyperlink to the power entry in the compendium. This is, to be frank, a giant pain in the ass. Yes, it sort of means that they can update powers in only one place, but really this just feels like more knee-jerk anti-piracy, and while it does not reflect on the quality of the material, I'm not terribly happy with it. So, the Psion is going to be a controller, which is no great shock. The half of the class they're showcasing is the telepath, and it sounds like the other half is a telekinetic (lots of push and slide by the sound of it) and the general shape of the class abilities had no surprises. Where it gets interesting is in the handling of the powers. The Psion has no encounter attack powers, and every time he would get a new encounter attack, he gets new At Will powers. This is complemented by a pool of power points which gets bigger over time. Those points (which refresh each encounter) can be used to enhance At-Will powers, either a little or a lot. Enhancing an attack with 1 point gives it a nice bump, and enhancing it with 2 makes it roughly comparable with an encounter attack. The upshot is that you can burn your points for potency or spread them out for flexibility. As the designer notes point out, this is a really clever way to avoid one of the classic pitfalls of a power-point system. Even if the player runs out of points, he can still use the at-will powers, so he never gets totally jammed up. On some level, I really dig this - the flexibility this allows is really compelling, and the idea of at-wills as a foundation to build on is one that has begged to be kicked around (I think the Barbarian was actually an interesting nod in this direction, albeit with dailies, but it's much more tentative). While I'm sure there's some room for abuse, having the target of the encounter powers to use as a baseline seems well designed to keep things in check. The number of at-wills is capped at 3, with the Psion rotating in new powers as they level up. They seem to get more potent at higher levels (often in ways other than increasing damage) though this is a bit rough to eyeball. My gut read is that they're kept a little bit in check for fear of abuse. I don't have a very good read on the budget of the power points, and I think a lot is going to hinge on it. It's very clearly thought through very thoroughly, and balanced against the increasing cost of augmentation, but there's definitely some voodoo in their application. Taken to a high level, this approach (and the Hybrid classes WOTC's been kicking around) can really be seen as a large concession to fans of D&D 3.x. One of the things a lot of people miss is that sense of character customization which the PHB and PHB2 don't really provide, so it's no great surprise to see options start emerging that might let people scratch that itch. I admit I'm not really convinced of the necessity of it - I'm vastly more interested in party building than I am in tweaking individual characters. At the same time, I recognize that it's a smart path for WOTC to take in their design because, hey, I suspect it will sell. That said, it failed the ultimate test for me - I'm not that excited to play one. Sure, I'm curious to see it in action just to test out the mechanics, but it doesn't excited. That's maybe not the fairest of yardsticks, but there it is and it's noteworthy since I'm pretty trivially excited - most of the classes to date have made me want to play them. Afterthought: Having slept on it, I think there are a few big contributors to the lack of excitement. 1. The formatting sucks away a lot of the fun. Since a lot of the sense of a class comes from reading through the powers, the necessity to click out for each and every one makes it hard to build an overall impression, so in the end it comes across as kind of dull, even if the powers are intensely interesting in their own right. 2. There is a half-full/half empty question of whether the at wills are cool powers that get better with augmenting or if they're crippleware that needs the augmentation to work. I waffle on this, but I am coming down slightly on the half empty side, possibly because the cap on at-will's seems low. This concern can be addressed through play, and I don't hold it strongly, so we'll see. 3. This is a good, interesting mechanic, but it ventures dangerously close to "If this is the game I want, I have better choices than D&D", at least on paper. Again, testable. 4. I think psionics make an interesting addition to the game, but they don't excite me. I think the elements of presentation that I find bland may actually be mental points of insertion for the players who have been waiting for psionics from day 1. That's not a bad thing, just not something for me. (12 Comments |Comment on this)
esmerel	3:04p	Hats! Hey windrose! http://topsyturvydesign.com/pages/categories.php - this made me think of you. via archanglrobriel (1 Comment |Comment on this)
merovingian	9:13a	This day will soon be at an end Every year on my birthday I like to make plans for what I'd like to accomplish in the next year. Here's my list of what I want to do at age 36: Discover the lost continent of Triceratopia, which I just made up. Broker peace between robots and mimes. Discover, distill, bottle and mass-produce happiness. Have a big giraffe head instead of a human head, like one of those Egyptian statues, only with a giraffe. Write a sternly-worded yet convincing letter to every evil person in the world, asking them in very clear terms to please stop. Do everything not covered by this list. Current Music: They Might Be Giants, "You're Older" (23 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 6th, 2009
merovingian	10:01a	I have a problem. I'm having a problem. I've never encountered a problem of any kind before, so when this happened, I googled "Problem Solving Worksheet" to find a good way to solve it. (Worksheet taken from ADHD News.) ( Problem Solving Worksheet ) I think I may need to grab another worksheet and start over. Please help. ( Another Worksheet ) This whole "solving" thing is difficult. (29 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 5th, 2009
merovingian	10:09p	Sunday Shopping On Sunday mornings, I like to go shopping in medieval Europe. You know, just to relax, and build up my immune system. Maybe feel a little smug. Everyone back then was illiterate, so the signs all just showed picture of what they sold: a horseshoe for a blacksmith, a basket for a basket shop, clothes for a clothes store. It makes the shopping experience a little like playing card games with a three year old, and who doesn't like that? This morning six hundred years ago, I was shopping around and decided to take a break and grab some watered-down honey wine. I stopped at an inn called the Rose and Griffin. Except it wasn't an inn at all. It was a roses and griffins store. There were long rows of fragrant roses, and huge cages filled with mythical lion-eagles. "No, no, we're not an inn," said the shopkeeper with a laugh and a shrug, "but people assume that a lot. We get a lot of angry medieval would-be drunken would-be customers." "Do they ever cause trouble?" I asked, noting that the roses were way too expensive for my shopping day. The shopkeeper just chuckled, "Of course not. Nobody comes around to raise a ruckus. My store is full of monsters." He takes credit cards. Anyone want to go in with me on a bulk discount order? (12 Comments |Comment on this)
rob_donoghue	9:58p	Games, the normal Kind So, this has been a really fantastic stretch for me for board and card games, and I figured I'd run through the goodness. Race for the Galaxy continues to be our go-to game. I have lost track of how many times we've played. The two player game holds up really quite well, but playing with my wife is a welcome pleasure, and the wife-friendliness really helps take the game up to the next level. Dominion has fallen by the wayside, only because Race is just that much fun. That said, I'm really optimistic that the expansion's going to add that little extra bit of awesome to the game. San Juan - I picked this up when I found the game store in Savage Mill. I'd heard that it had a lot of similarities to Race for the Galaxy, so I'd been pondering it for a while. We played it, and my impression is that is feels like a greatly simplified version of RftG, with most of the complexity pared down. Early games ran headlong into the Guildhall - a card that seems greatly out of balance with the others in the game. I went and checked the web afterwards and fans of the game assert that the Guildhall is balanced, and that it's beatable. We played some more, and we tested some of these theories, but they most seemed to play out as "The guildhall is not overbalancing if players squelch it by hanging onto it or burying it in a chapel or the like." That's not entirely satisfying, and the shadow of it kind of loomed over play. All in all it was fun, but much less fun than Race, so it will probably fall by the wayside. Shadows Over Camelot: Merlin's Company - Shadows is an old favorite, and we finally got to try it with the new expansion. In a word, wow. The new knights are fun, the addition of Merlin adds an interesting element, but the really fantastic parts are all in terms of making it harder. The new black cards are a ton of fun, and the addition of the hazards of moving really ratcheted up the tension. I think that game was the most nail-biting one we've played, and pulling it out really felt like victory. It is unfortunate that Shadows tends to take so long to play that we don't play it very often. Wits and Wagers - Holy crud this is a fantastic game. We've always liked their other game, Say Anything, which is a little bit more of a social game. Instead, W&W is a trivia game, but one which I described as one that my mom and dad could play together. It plays quickly and while there are a few points to be gotten for answering questions correct, but the bulk of points come from betting on other people's answers. This one's going to float to the stack next time there's a call for a social game. Pandemic - Despite the awesomeness of Merlin's Company, there's a good chance that this one is goign to take over the spot formerly held by Shadows. Like Shadows, it is a cooperative whack-a-mole game. Unlike Shadows, it plays lightning fast, and we played easily four or five sessions in one night. Some of that speed comes from a little bit of simplification, but that's offset by the less-structured nature of the challenge which makes the whole thing a bit more organic. More notably, we got whupped. First game played we won by a huge margin, and that was the only one we got. We proceeded to get beaten up and down the map for the next two nights. But it was the kind of losing that makes us more eager to play, not less. I have an impression that there are some better and worse combinations of the role cards (which dictate special abilities) but unlike the Guildhall in San Juan, I am comfortable accepting that there's more subtlety to be revealed. For all that play, there are also a few more games coming down the pike I'm looking forward to. Small World - This is Days of Wonder's new wargame, and it's on a UPS truck as we speak. The promise is that is will scratch the wargame itch in about an hour of play. Dominion: Intrigue - The Dominion expansion, which I'm mostly worried is going to create storage problems, but which otherwise looks promising. Revolution - Just want to shake my fist at philreed because he has me chomping at the bit for this. (25 Comments |Comment on this)
drivingblind	7:03p	Evie, weeks 2 and 3 More of that here: http://fred-and-xie.smugmug.com/gallery/8796771_9nGC5 (15 Comments |Comment on this)