Looks like everyone is back and the flow of good and interesting reads has been abound for this week. Some bloggers have resumed their ongoing series and there are others who have started new and interesting ones too.
One main issue that seems to be going on in the bloggersphere this week has been about Wizards recent sending of a Cease & Desist letter to 4epowercards.com which has stirred the blogging community. This is also agitated by the fact that Wizards still does not have an established fan-site policy and no GSL to provide a guideline of what can posted online and what can not. The reactions towards this has been outrage, uncertainty or have completely given up on the matter.
Well, to those who were unaffected or could care less about this turn of events they still pump out materials that shows that Wizards would really do well with the bloggers than without us while I have been enjoying myself and occupying my time reading them.
Here's my list of readings that I hope you will also enjoy too!
6D6 Fireball
Dungeon & Discourse
Introducing a new web-comic that mixes RPG and philosophy. A very good read (and good art) if you get most of the terms, you Dire Postmodernist!
A Butterfly Dreaming
Adventure Design 101: Dungeons That Live
How to make your dungeon more lively with activity instead of finding monsters standing around in rooms.
Advanced Gaming & Theory
Guide to Halflings
The old school hobbi.....i mean, halfling.
At Will
How to Design a Skill Challenge #2: Branching
An interesting method of designing called branching. I like this approach of adding more than one benefit or consequence for each skill check.
Campaign Mastery
Distilled Cultural Essence - Part 4 of 4: Expressing a different society, Section 3
A very good list of cultural aspects to flesh out that makes a culture come alive.
Capturing Fantasy
Using Improvisation to Hammer Out the Details
A simple tip on how to improvise.
Dungeon Mastering
The Secret Lives of Closet Gamers
A few good reasons why gamers still keep the game to themselves.
ENWorld
Inspirational Images: Real World D&D Locations
There are really beautiful and usable images here if you are stumped for an idea of a location or how to describe it.
Drizzt Live Action Fan Fillm in HD
This is very very very cool. Even if you're not a Drizzt fan, this is how a D&D film should look like!
Exchange of Realities
What's Your Manipulation Style?
Individual Manipulation: Precision and Skill
Organizational Manipulation: Power and Subtlety
Propaganda: When You Just Want Damage
Rayvn does a very good series on exploring different types of manipulations. A very good introduction to manipulators.
Initiative or What?
Symbolizing 4E D&D Classes with Runes, Cont.
The series continue with classes from PHB II.
Living Dice
Prophecies Suck: When the Messiah Is A Moron
A twist for the prophecised hero.
Purple Pawn
Preserved for Future Generations
This is just so cool. A site that is collecting homebrew documents for the purpose of academic study about 'shared imaginative worlds'.
RPGCentric
You're so GM and you don't even know it
Some points on public speaking and GMing.
RPGnet
Young GM - Old GM
A thread of GMs reflecting on how they have grown in their years of experience and sharing some advice to the younger ones.
Stupid Ranger
The Morality of Adventuring
An interesting thought to remind us to look at our character's conscience.
TheLemming
The Underdark: Introduction
The Underdark: Underground Environment
The Lemming starts an interesting series on the Underdark which prepares GMs and players alike and a good list of pointers for an Underdark sandbox. Looking forward to more of this.
Uncle Bear
Toward a Better Evil Overlord
The perfect evil regime worthy of a campaign.
Whitehall ParaIndustries
Tactics & Strategy in Game Design- Part II: Tactics
Tactics & Strategy in Game Design- Part III: Strategy
Some very good thoughts of how games are designed tactically or strategically.
Moral Relativism in RPGs
A response to Stupid Ranger's post on morality.
2 comments:
Nice roundup, I'll have to bookmark this and go over it and see if I missed any of these this past week or so.
About the C&D closing, though, you missed a couple reactions - no shock, no outrage, understanding.
I really don't see what the big mystery is here that has the 'sphere acting like the sky is falling and Wizards is going to shut down blogs and forums. Two sites, both copying huge sections of the books out so far (Powers) and making them available to others online (textbook blatant copyright violations), were asked to stop doing that.
This really isn't hard to figure out. Yes, a fansite policy would be great. But pretending that these sites were skirting the line of what could or could not be acceptable under such a policy is disingenuous at best. In truth, it's mostly just a bunch of piling on by people who dislike the new edition and look for any chance to make a stink about something.
Thanks, Thasmodious!
I'm personally not too concerned about Wizards sending me their love letters because I haven't been making copy pastas out of their non-open content (excerpts are free-for-all, so I don't see why Wizards would make a special case out of me) and secondly is probably because American law doesn't apply to them.
I guess the reason for their fears is that while the closure of those 2 sites were pretty much common sense but without an established fan-site policy, there seem to be no limits at the moment on where Wizards might stop.
And if you had notice that 2 out of 3 of those blogs that I have linked, actually DO play 4E so I don't think they are the anti new edition as they might appear to be.
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