Here’s this week’s bonus episode of UnderDiscussion. This week Jayson joins us for a short review of Roll through the Ages.
Here’s the link to our iTunes feed.
Here’s the link to the UnderDiscussion RSS Feed.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Aug 292010
I find myself again driven to post by an annoyance.
So, for a personal project I’m trying to follow the RSS feeds of as many comic shops around the country as possible. The biggest resource for this is a website called “The Master List.” It’s basically just a huge listing of comic shops and their contact info. What’s nice about the site is that it gives the website for any shop that has one.
Looking at the websites for various websites (I’m through Colorado so far) I’ve noticed that comic shop websites fall into three categories: The professionally done (about 40% from what I can see), The amateur website (about 35% of what I’ve seen so far. This does not include those that use a CMS like WordPress), and those that want to pretend that they have a webpage but don’t. The pretend webpage has almost always been a myspace page.
Why do people think that is acceptable? Websites are cheap. I know. You’re reading this on a cheap webpage. A myspace page IS NOT A WEBPAGE! Not if you’re older that 14. Seriously, it takes like 5 minutes to have a wordpress siteup.
Another fun-filled group of Gen Con pics! I took something like two-hundred photos during the trip.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Aug 262010
Here is another batch of photos from Gen Con.
Enjoy!
Aug 252010
Ok, this is going to be a little rantish. Sorry about that.
I was reading this thread over on the Paizo boards that asked the question “Why don’t you like psionics?” and it got me thinking about why I’ve never included psionics in any campaign that I’ve run. There are a few reasons, the biggest being that I’ve never had a player come to me with a desire to play a psionic character in a game before. Truth be told, if someone came to me and really, really wanted to play a psion I would have to think long an hard about it before I reaffirmed my definitive answer of “no.” Luckily I’ve never had to crush someone’s dream of playing a psion or a psychic warrior yet. I’m pretty sure this is because the people I’ve played with to date have shared my other reasons for not allowing psionics in my game.
Number two with a bullet is I hate the flavor of psionics. I hate the way that psionics integrate (or don’t integrate) into fantasy. It never felt right to me. I’d have the same issue if I was running a Star Trek game and someone wanted to play a wizard. The answer would be a “no” because it doesn’t fit the setting.
I also dislike the idea of having to read through and understand yet another subsystem for essentially doing the same thing that a wizard does. Granted a psionic character has some differences, but in my opinion those differences aren’t great enough for me to actually care enough to make it worth the effort.
I think the third reason is the kind of cheese that I’ve heard psionic lovers spout about the games they’ve played in. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a cheese doodle myself, but there’s a difference between a single slice and the entire eighty pound wheel. A great example is someone once told me about how in a game they played in they used their psychic powers to basically lobotomize another player’s character because of an argument. I believe this was the same character who was described as basically the offspring of Colossus and Luke Skywalker having a child, only this child was brought to term in a surrogate made of Cheddar.
In conclusion it would take a major overhaul of psionics both mechanics wise and flavor wise before I would ever actually consider it for a game I ran.
