geek stuff
Aug. 8th, 2004 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ironymaideni finally got to visit Genesis Games and Gizmos on Friday (in Redmond. oddly enough, in a shopping center). it's got a large selection of all sorts of games and plenty of tables (with and without terrain) for in store play, which is free of charge and the owners encourage. there was a great crowd present playing all sorts of wargames, card games, and painting minis. i saw many board games i'd like to try and got a little too caught up in reading a Knights of the Dinner Table collection. i also took a look at the very silly thing that WizKids did to Shadowrun.
i also picked up and perused the source book for the new D&D setting, Eberron. the first thing i noticed was that the art included an (definitely crossing the streams here) artifact creature that bears a startling resemblance to one from Iron Kingdoms/Warmachine. there are more points of similarity which i found unfortunate since i think the Witchfire adventures were out when the contest that yielded this world was happening. whatever. i think generating a unique fantasy world today is nearly impossible.
the thing is, i'm not interested in playing there. the blurb that introduces the book basically says, use all the magic you want, min-max your character, and get lots of treasure. oh, and this is totally compatible with all our other game worlds, so if you play in the Realms you should buy this too. since i didn't start playing until i was twenty, and was a theatre geek to boot, i've always been much more interested in story, character development, puzzles, and problem solving; my first three DMs did a lot with awarding XP based on roleplaying. when i want to destroy my enemies and be all-powerful, i play Magic, or a video game. when i want to participate in telling an adventure story with my friends, it's time for an RPG.
i know that i'm not really the target audience for these things. i used to pick up C's copies of Dragon and flip past the name generators to read the comics, ecology of, and the column on industry news (the name escapes me, but i know it was something charming like the other headings). the industry news thing got dumped in one of the redesigns, but there were always more articles that seemed to have content for the imagination-impaired. i remember coming across an older issue and being fascinated and delighted by the article content, which was name-generator and list-free. i actually wrote an extremely long letter to the editor, which i then chose not to mail. i've since had the opportunity to complain about it to said (now former) editor, and get some feedback about why the changes were made (and he was certainly more gracious than i would have been in his position). the people who buy the magazine and the largest amount of product are not me. it actually makes sense, since if you are developing your own gaming worlds and reworking rules to fit your style of play, you don't need or want someone else to lay it out for you, and you're more likely to snap up one of the old campaign sourcebooks or do some historical and folktale research outside of RPG publishing altogether - and you really don't need more than the core books to play a satisfying campaign.
but i am inspired to finish painting my Warmachine guys.
i also picked up and perused the source book for the new D&D setting, Eberron. the first thing i noticed was that the art included an (definitely crossing the streams here) artifact creature that bears a startling resemblance to one from Iron Kingdoms/Warmachine. there are more points of similarity which i found unfortunate since i think the Witchfire adventures were out when the contest that yielded this world was happening. whatever. i think generating a unique fantasy world today is nearly impossible.
the thing is, i'm not interested in playing there. the blurb that introduces the book basically says, use all the magic you want, min-max your character, and get lots of treasure. oh, and this is totally compatible with all our other game worlds, so if you play in the Realms you should buy this too. since i didn't start playing until i was twenty, and was a theatre geek to boot, i've always been much more interested in story, character development, puzzles, and problem solving; my first three DMs did a lot with awarding XP based on roleplaying. when i want to destroy my enemies and be all-powerful, i play Magic, or a video game. when i want to participate in telling an adventure story with my friends, it's time for an RPG.
i know that i'm not really the target audience for these things. i used to pick up C's copies of Dragon and flip past the name generators to read the comics, ecology of, and the column on industry news (the name escapes me, but i know it was something charming like the other headings). the industry news thing got dumped in one of the redesigns, but there were always more articles that seemed to have content for the imagination-impaired. i remember coming across an older issue and being fascinated and delighted by the article content, which was name-generator and list-free. i actually wrote an extremely long letter to the editor, which i then chose not to mail. i've since had the opportunity to complain about it to said (now former) editor, and get some feedback about why the changes were made (and he was certainly more gracious than i would have been in his position). the people who buy the magazine and the largest amount of product are not me. it actually makes sense, since if you are developing your own gaming worlds and reworking rules to fit your style of play, you don't need or want someone else to lay it out for you, and you're more likely to snap up one of the old campaign sourcebooks or do some historical and folktale research outside of RPG publishing altogether - and you really don't need more than the core books to play a satisfying campaign.
but i am inspired to finish painting my Warmachine guys.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-09 05:59 am (UTC)Which is another way of saying, who's going to run the IK d20 RPG?
since you mentioned it...
Date: 2004-08-10 12:52 am (UTC)