Posting From the iPad

Hmmm... It seems Blogger and the iPad's default browser have some issues. In order to enter text for this post, I had to "edit HTML". A work around, but not a great solution. I probably should have used a specialized app ;)

Anyhow, all my reading material for this weekend's country getaway resides on my iPad or in a Dropbox folder, waiting for me to grab it. Therein lies another problem I've been having today... Everyone wants to play with the damn iPad, preventing me from reading (and preparing RPG reviews). It looks like one iPad in the family is not enough... Heh

Hopefully back to VTT and RPG reviews tomorrow or Monday. I just need to squirrel away some alone time for me and my iPad. Wait, that doesn't sound right.

Urh? OOTS!

Somehow, someway, I have failed thus far to post about my uber-favorite online comic - Order of the Stick by Rich Burlew.  Major damn oversight on my point.  It single handedly brought me back to gaming.

Go.  Read.   Start at 1. There are 719 strips to go, not counting the extras in the printed collections.

I'm open for suggestions of other comics to follow.  High standard to be met ;)

Midweek Meltdown - Or at Least Rescheduling

Looks like this weekends proposed first session of the Fantasy Grounds 2 / Labyrinth Lord Campaign will need to be rescheduled... Mother's Day is more like Mother's weekend these days, especially when you have two (or more) sides to the family.  Ah well.  Soon.

As a complete aside (and bizarre tangent)  my "get paid to play with your firearm training" has been postponed and instead tomorrow I will be sitting in a classroom learning "Basic Powerpoint".  If you can think of more diverse training I'd love to hear about it.

I've been putting the iPad through a nice workout with the plethora (always wanted to use that word) of PDFs I've been loading up on it.  I'm even going to bed early just so I can read in bed ;)

Next up (or at least soon) should be a small write-up on Battlegrounds.  I just need to find one of the two external hard drives I have it installed on.  Too many gadgets, not enough organization.

Twofer Tuesday

Yep, its a Twofer Tuesday here at the Tavern.

What's the Twofer you might ask?  Two short reviews ;)

First up is  Dark Fate, a Swords & Wizardry Campaign Setting.  Quite simply put, it is a product full of great ideas to lift for your own campaign (assuming you don't want to stick with the included campaign).  Actually, the included campaign information is so thorough, a prospective DM would be well adviced to just read up on a small corner of the detailed world.

It includes some variant rules (personal favorite... undead are harder to turn then in standard rules, but every 2 points of damage inflicted adds +1 to the turn roll - priceless).  It does suffer from one minor (or major problem depending on your sensitivities) issue -  the author is not a native English speaker, and it shows with the tense of verbs and some other awkwardness in writing.  The ideas and presentation rise above this in my opinion, but others may feel differently.  I'd like to thank my iPad for making this a very pleasant read from bed ;)

Next is OpenQuest, a free, total open ruleset of Mongoose's RuneQuest.  As Runequest is published using the OGL.  From the site:

Open Quest is based on the Mongoose RuneQuest SRD (MRQ SRD), with ideas from previous editions of Chaosium’s RuneQuest and Stormbringer 5th, mixed in with some common sense house rulings from the author’s twenty years of experience with the D100 system.

I don't own the Mongoose version of  RuneQuest.  My last experience with RuneQuest was from Avalon Hill, although I did pick up the Chaosium 2nd Edition years ago.  The price is right for me to start checking out the system again.  You can also pick it up in paper format on Lulu, but that kinda defeats the point of free ;)

Fantasy Grounds / LL - Soft Start Set

It looks like this coming Saturday will be the first session of the Fantasy Grounds 2 / Labyrinth Lord campaign I'm starting up.  I call it a "soft date" as it works for me, barring any unforeseen circumstances.  It may not work for my whole group, as the next day is Mother's Day.  The following week won't work for me, as I'll be playing as a player in a C&C campaign.

I've also been trying to get feedback from my players for an alternate campaign or two of one offs - kinda used for pick-up games when we don't have a full group.  I was figuring on using Basic Roleplay for that, as the rules can cover most genres, and a level-less game works better when your party is less likely to be balanced.

Of course that means they overwhelmingly voted to make the alternate campaign Star Frontiers.  Now I need to translate that into Basic Roleplay.  Eh, could be worse... I could be trying to translate Paranoia (great game, decent rules - don't think I could EVER translate it).

Weekend Wrap-Up

So, what did I accomplish towards getting my Labyrinth Lord Campaign up and running?  Nothing

How about getting ready for my next blog piece on Virtual Table Tops?  Nada

Maybe I found a nice RPG product to write a review of?  Maybe.  Dark Fate has my attention at the moment.  It's written for use with Swords & Wizardry, but that hasn't stopped me in the past.

No, Ive been a slave to the iPad.  Dumbass name but an amazing little product.  Dropbox is my friend for moving my PDFs over to the iPad and I've been ignoring family and fiends as best I can to keep my new toy in hand as much as possible.

Now, if someone could write a basic VTT that would run on the iPad... that would be damn sweet.

Back to work tomorrow.  Back to my regular blog posting tomorrow.  Tonight, I'll be reading some gaming material on my newest toy ;)