Looking Back on 2012

What a year! I can hardly believe it. Comparing this to what I wrote in 2011… well… there just isn’t any comparison.

The feedback I’ve gotten from doing these posts this year really inspired me to keep at it. Thanks for reading.

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Car Wars posts — You know, this is what I’m supposed to dish out here, so these get top billing.

• Amateur Kart duel at Ardmore arena: session report, arena designer’s notes, and duelist stats.
• CWQ&A: Why Do You Play Car Wars on a Grid?
• Rogue Arena at Origins 2011
• CWQ&A: Where Can I Find Scenarios for the Car Wars Compendium?
• Vehicle designs from back in the day: A Shadow From the Past, part 2
• Miscellaneous news and commentary about the new Car Wars: Designer’s Edition Planned, thoughts on Car Wars Next, If You Want to Kickstart Car Wars in 2013, Kickstarter Car Wars may be a Refinement of Compendium 2.5, More Car Wars Kickstarter News!, and More Car Wars 6e Scuttlebut
• 5e Session Report: Doom Wheel and Roaster Trade Tire Shots, Collisions
• The Arena Safety Code and its Discontents
• The Articles of the Space Gamer: The EM-50
• Car Wars and the Gamer That’s Played Everything
• Typical Amateur Night Survivors
• California and Los Angeles in Autoduel
• CWQ&A: Suggestions for Continuing Car Wars Campaigns
• 2029: Los Culebras Feroces on South Highway One
• Scorcher Duel at Kettering Arena

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The big series on Madicon 21 — You know… this was a lot of fun.

• Breaking the Ice
• Adventures in Time and Space
• Goblinoid Genocide in the Caves of Chaos
• The Brief Adventuring Career of an Illustrious Elven Lord
• Encountering Jack McDevitt
• Wandering Geek Girl Check
• Game Mastering Panel Discussion
• The Kobayashi Maru of Old School Gaming
• The Hobgoblin’s Pantry
• The State of the Borderlands
• Keep on the Borderlands and Modern Gamers

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My series on game mastering — The ideas in this came to me in a flash of inspiration; years ago I would have just stewed about it for a few days and then forget about it… but I put myself on a schedule and developed it all until I got through everything I had to say.

• Everything is a Ruling
• How Role Playing Games are Played
• Framing and Reframing
• Elements of Adventure Game Situations
• More Elements of Adventure Game Situations
• Fractal Campaign Development
• The Rule of Six

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Earlburt’s guest posts on The Lost City — I was very pleased when my long time Car Wars opponent started running B/X D&D again. I was even happier when he agreed to do this series for me.

• Setting out for the Lost City
• Nonvariable Weapon Damage, Alignment Tongues, and Rolling Hit Dice
• Setting and Player Introduction for The Lost City
• Into The Desert
• Context, Cut Scenes, and the Pen and Paper Experience
• Death Lurks in Every Nook and Cranny
• Guest Post: The Mythic Underworld and Gygaxian Naturalism in The Lost City
• “Yes, of course we’d love to go see the Priests; but first…”
• Cynidicean Bee-people, the Breath of Zardoz, and Giant Geckos

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My Series on Steve Jackson’s first role playing game and its descendents — I was pretty excited to get hold of a firsthand account of what Steve Jackson was like as a game master back in the Metagaming days. That’s gotta be my biggest scoop evah!

• Interview with George Dew of Dark City Games
• An Insider’s View of Metagaming and Fantasy Trip
• Legends of the Ancient World: The IQ 8 Magic Character
• Legends, Melee, and GURPS: A Brief Comparison
• The Fantasy Trip Articles in the Space Gamer #27-31
• My Son’s First Party Kill

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More Old School D&D:

• The Pits of the Spare!
• Party Size, Game Balance, and Difficulty Level in Old School Games
• Brain Storming about Resource Tracking
• Modern Gamers– Who Are They, Really?
• Playing D&D With 6 Year Olds
• The Five Prerequisites of Player Skill
• Playing Labyrinth Lord with Seven-Year-Olds

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The Big Ogre Walkthrough — This became the most-read series in the history of this blog when Steve Jackson himself linked to it from the Ogre Kickstarter update. Three thousand people clicked onto the first one… and a third of those read to the end. (Yeah… I never did post on the end game….)

• The Defense Sets Up
• The G.E.V. Pot Shot
• A Mark III Goes Out for a Snack
• The Mid-Game Melee

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Thousand Suns readalong — Man, I can’t believe I actually slogged through this.  I kept to the schedule and I learned a trick of editing the queued up posts when I wasn’t awake enough to spin out a new installment. Special thanks to Roger Burton West for sticking with me all the way through to the end!

• Introduction
• Chapter 1: A Primer
• Chapter 2: Character Generation
• Chapter 3: Species
• Chapter 4: Career Packages
• Chapter 5: Skills and Hooks
• Chapter 6: Action
• Chapter 7: Psi
• Chapter 8: Technology and Equipment
• Chapter 9: Starships and Vehicles
• Chapter 10: Game Mastering
• Chapter 11: Worlds and Trade
• Chapter 12: Alien Life
• Chapter 13: Allies and Antagonists
• Chapter 14: Meta-Setting
• Chapter 15: Limzano

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Reviews:

• Fight On! #2
• The Stars Are Right
• Axis and Allies: Crushing the Axis, Crushing the Allies, and Nerd Rage
• Pyramid 3/48 Secret Magic
• Pyramid 3/44 Alternate GURPS II
• The Last Starfighter Combat Game

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Tolkien Reader Discussion Questions — Okay, these wasn’t the most successful thing I ever did, but it did give me some insight into why Kili and Fili had to die next to Thorin at the Battle of Five Armies. It also explains why your retainers would do the same for your player character!

• The Homecoming of Beorhtwold
• On Fairy Stories
• Farmer Giles of Ham

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Odds and Ends:

• 23 Answers on Game Mastering
• Sarah Hoyt’s “Infinite Worlds” Setting
• Jack McDevitt on John Carter, Pulp Artwork, and NASA
• Currently Reading Darkship Thieves, part one and part two
• Remembering Jack Tramiel
• Pacific War: Look at the Size of That Thing! and Relief of Wake Island
• FASA Doctor Who: The Matte Painting, the Styrofoam Rock, and the Rubber Suit
• Prime Directive Donjebruche Campaign: Act One and Act Two
• Forbidden Thoughts, Apocalyptic Obsessions, and… a New Darkship Book!

100,000 Hits in Six Years

I’ve been posting on WordPress for six years now… and I just scored my 100,000th hit. I have no idea what percentage of those are robots… or how many readers go uncounted. But the number of hits-per-month sure seems to change in response to my output, so maybe there’s something to it. (I get 800 just for being here. I can bust 2,000 if I post a lot. 5,000 and 10,000 hits in a month require linkage from high-traffic web sites. One third of my hits are from this year, so things have definitely picked up recently.)

I sometimes wonder why I do this, but then I think of all of the creative gamer types I stay in touch with here… the insightful comments that get posted here by dedicated followers, not to mention the occasional package of vintage games that arrives in the mail. (Games that I just wouldn’t otherwise buy for myself.) 100,000 hits represents a lot of attention for old school games that wouldn’t otherwise get covered. Hopefully you’ve been inspired to dig those dusty old games out of the closet and get them good and played like they deserve.

Thanks for sticking with me, folks. I don’t know what the future holds, but the present is significantly more cheerful thanks to you.

Just for future reference, these are the games that currently hit the table as of late. My “Hot Ten,” as it were:

• The Last Starfighter Combat Game
• Power Grid
• Napolean’s Triumph
• GURPS Prime Directive
• Raid on Cygnosa
• Labyrinth Lord
• Car Wars Compendium Second Edition
• The Awful Green Things From Outer Space
• Star Fleet Battles
• Star Trek III Starship Combat Game

Coincidentally, my Car Wars T-shirt arrived to day. (Coincidence? I think not!) Life is good and the stars are right!

Looking Back on 2011

Here is a guide to many of my posts from the year. If there’s anything you especially liked (or anything you didn’t), please take a moment to let me know. If you have any special requests for what you’d like to see next year, feel free to put in your two cents. Jeffro’s CAR WARS Blog wishes you the best as you celebrate the new year. Thanks for reading!

CAR WARS Articles:

• Notes on playing CAR WARS in game stores with slightly more casual players.  (See here, here, and here for details.)
• An exclusive Ramona Richards interview
• An old school vehicle design with variants and ADQ-style ad copy
• Gaming relics in the form of actual vehicle designs I played back in the eighties
• A look at the Autoventures solo adventure, The Gauntlet
• A run-through of the obscure Autoventures Turbofire supplement
• A big write up of an eight car “Amateur Kart” duel at the Gallagher Autodueling Stadium, including session report, designer’s notes, and campaign stats.
• Two 5th edition sessions: Dragon vs. Lightstrike and Mako-RL vs. Manta
• A guide to the Earlburt and Jeffro 2029 Campaign

Miscellaneous Session Reports:

• Twilight Imperium
• Outrider (here, here, and here)
• Illuminati
• Moldvay Basic D&D and Keep on the Borderlands: with my daughter, then with Earlburt, with just my son, and then with my son and daughter together!

Convention Notes:

• A long, in-depth post detailing my experiences at Madicon 20 where I played Serenity, BattleTech, Tsuro, Race for the Galaxy, and Chickie Dominoes…
• My notes on Origins 2011 where I played Federation & Empire, ran four Prime Directive sessions, and facilitated two Distant Armada games…

Reviews:

• Henchfolk and Hirelings
• The Mote in God’s Eye
• The Gripping Hand
• Pyramid 3/35: Aliens
• Pyramid 3/34: Alternate GURPS
• Pyramid 3/33: Low Tech
• Pyramid 3/36: Dungeon Fantasy
• Knockspell #1
• Fight On! #1

In Search of the Unknown: Top Gaming Blogs and Borderlands Buzz

I was curious about what gaming blogs I might be missing out on… and I noticed that a significant portion of the blogs out there that focus on old school gaming seemed to be on Blogger for some reason.  So I built a web spider to go to a game blog and get the front page… then do the same for everything on the bloglist there… and then do everyone bloglisted there… and so on.  I would have ended up downloading almost every single blog on the site if I didn’t stop at some point, so I put in an arbitrary limit of only getting blogs that were up to four degrees of separation from my starting point.  From there I could tally up which blogs were bloglisted the most often and use that to rank them.

At that point, I was sitting on a large pile of HTML and I figured I could search it to see if these select folks were blogging about my favorite stuff.  I sifted through the text for anything that looked like sentences containing the phrase “Keep on the Borderlands” to see what would turn up.  These are my results.  (The number in square brackets is the rank.  The number in parentheses is the number of people that blogrolled that blog given my arbitrary collection of 8000+ blogs.  Note that non-Blogger blogs could sneak into the ranking, but I only spidered on the blogger site, so these are limited, arbitrary results.  Only the “Blogger” bloggers got to vote here!)

[1] Jeffs Gameblog (145)
[2] Beyond the Black Gate (145)
[3] LotFP: RPG (144)
[4] The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope (143)
[5] The Underdark Gazette (131)
[6] Cyclopeatron (125)
[7] B/X BLACKRAZOR (117)
[8] Bat in the Attic (114)
[9] A Paladin In Citadel (114)
[10] Greyhawk Grognard (112)
[11] Trollsmyth (109)
[12] Gothridge Manor (103)
[13] Akratic Wizardry (98)
[14] Dungeons and Digressions (97)
[15] Monsters and Manuals (96)
[16] Swords Against the Outer Dark (96)
[17] Hill Cantons (95)
[18] Sham’s Grog ‘n Blog (90)
[19] HUGE RUINED PILE (89)
[20] Uhluht’c Awakens (84)
[24] Ode to Black Dougal (82) :: EDIT: Oops, one idea I forgot to add was to run Keep on the Borderlands using 4E.
[27] Playing D&D With Porn Stars (77) :: I know that sounds expensive but seriously if you just go to a Patton reading and say “Hey you ever run ‘Keep on the Borderlands’?
[55] Joethelawyer’s Wondrous Imaginings (60) :: Note: under the part dealing with a keep, my players were currently adventuring in mines under the Keep on the Borderlands, so they would have come up after adventuring and have to deal with a full scale mutiny.
[75] The Yaqqothl Grimoire (51) :: So, instead, I’m running The Keep On The Borderlands for the very first time!
[123] The Jovial Priest (34) :: When I played Keep on the Borderlands my players even contemplated casting a sleep spell on the town guard just to get their hands on some chain mail! — A B/X fan of grognard age who having succeeded in my foolish plan to dungeon master Keep on the Borderlands (for the first time) to a bunch of oldie-won kenoobies; now wants to drag them all back to do Isle of Dread.
[125] For A Fistful Of Coppers (33) :: I’ve never explored a megadungeon, visited the Keep On The Borderlands or used a ten foot pole.
[155] People them with Monsters (29) :: The basic framework I’ve started with and am building upon is of course B2: Keep on the Borderlands.
[186] A Wizard in a bottle (25) :: Even if some details don’t match, I found it very inspirationnal for the famous Keep on the borderlands.
[203] The Keep on the Gaming Lands (24) :: Compare that to a description of our lunchtime Keep on the Borderlands game from Tuesday.
[243] Back Screen Pass – A DM’s Secrets (21) :: I align myself nearer to the Sci Fi / Arnesonian / Temple of the Frog school than the Fantasy / Gygax / Keep on the Borderlands camp. — but the rulebook and The Keep on the Borderlands inside are in absolutely perfect condition, and the set still has the original dice, uncolored, with the original crayon!
[313] gnotions (16) :: I was into war games until we gave “The Keep on the Borderlands” a go (Holmes).
[332] Iron Rationales (15) :: I don’t know what’s in the water in the OSR blogging community, but module B2: The Keep on the Borderlands is having a strong showing this weekend.
[498] Where’d my Vorpal Sword Go? (9) :: I decided to combine the keep on the borderlands with 0one’s blueprint for the Caves of Chaos.
[590] Tales from the Dusty Vault (8) :: First there is a section on hazardous environments, as well as a collection of new retainers – including the Assassin, the Castellan (so the Keep on the Borderlands guy gets 2,000gp a month. — My one niggle is the old ‘Keep on the Borderlands’ problem – none of the NPCs have any darn names!
[733] Dungeon Fantastic (6) :: It has Keep on the Borderlands spoilers. — We left off last time at Falcon’s Keep (aka The Keep on the Borderlands), as detailed here. — Right now I’m running The Keep on the Borderlands Click on war stories in post tags to see the post-session wrapups and campaign notes. — It has Keep on the Borderlands spoilers.
[875] Legacy of the Bieth (5) :: It’s certainly a departure from the sandboxy modules like Keep on the Borderlands, a bit more linear, with clearly defined choice moments.
[5660] Dragonlance D&D Game Blog (1) :: After the events of the last few sessions ( A Different Keep on the Borderlands – Part 4 and The Test ), the rest of the party continued tr.

Newspapers are dead! Long live the… uh… internet stalkers?!

You know its got to be bad if Scoble stops blogging….  When the little feed that occasionally pops up through out the day on my system tray began to be noticeably light on tech news, I had to wonder if maybe a nuclear bomb had gone off that I hadn’t heard about.  This was only a short while after he’d pronounced newspapers dead; maybe the media cabal had conspired to silence him….

It turns out that he’s stopped blogging for a week as an act of solidarity with a fellow a-list tech blogger that’s received several disturbing threats on her blog and elsewhere on the web.  (They’re pretty disturbing; don’t look unless you want to be grossed out.)  That’s shouldn’t be that surprising– but what really makes it scary is that the wacked out stuff is coming from, apparently, other well known tech bloggers….  Perhaps what’s most surprising about all of this is that it is in fact… uh…  surprising.  If we’d just paid attention to Clay Shirky, though, we’d have known all along that A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy.

(It amazes me that Shirky had written this as far back as 2003.  His speech is the only thing that makes sense out of the 25 years of technological development that I’ve witnessed first hand.  This is definitely one of those cases where reality is stranger than science fiction.)

Folding this in with my Traveller gaming, I’m going to play blogging in the far future as being one of those forbidden technologies that are outlawed and restricted the same way that robotics and psi research are.  It’s not that nanotech and blogging can’t exist… it’s just that any culture that goes too far with this stuff just mysteriously annihilates itself.  Whether the technologies are that inherently volatile or whether there are mysterious forces that want to guide civilisation along certain predetermined “tech trees,” it is not known.  But the information technology of the Third Imperium is strictly organized along the Encyclopedia Galactica approach.