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Jeff's Gameblog
Sunday, 14 March 2004

Well, despite my himming and hawing earlier I managed to get a new article up on my BattleTech page.

Edit to add: Well, I got a new page up at the Erol Otus Shrine, too.

Posted by jrients at 5:17 PM CST
Updated: Sunday, 14 March 2004 9:18 PM CST

Working on a website, even an amateur hack job like mine, seems to be fraught with peril. Mainly I'm thinking about the "one more page" syndrome. Lately each page I've developed has spawned ideas for further pages. While I would normally consider this a good thing (as it shows the creative process has become a feedback loop), some of these new page ideas work best if fully integrated into a current project. For example, I'm working on an Otus Shrine page for the old AD&D supplment The Rogues Gallery. All fine and dandy. Otus did the front and back cover and a half dozen or so interior illos. Perfect material for a new page on the Shrine. But Otus also submitted an excellent character for the "Personalities" chapter. I'd like to put the stats for this guy up on its own page, with a link from the general rogue's gallery page. Not a big deal, except for the fact that I feel like I need to complete both before posting either of them. I'm running into a similar issue on the BattleTech page as well. As I think I'm getting closer to finishing this article, I keep coming up with more stuff. I hate to whine over having too much material, but there things are starting to snowball.

I downloaded S. John Ross's custom fontmaking startup package this morning. It looks pretty easy and not that expensive. I'm down to four obstacles to getting my "AlphaTech" font made:

1) I'm about 4 letters short of a full load of characters. I might have to just plain make them up.

2) I need to produce a template for S. John to work off of.

3) S. John needs to have the time available to crank out my font.

4) He needs to be willing to make me a font that uses obviously appropriated imagery. I'm not sure anyone cares about the old BattleTech logos from an IP standpoint, but who knows?

I think I will complete the template before I email him to see if he's interested, if only to establish to myself that I am willing to see this project through to the end. Hopefully if S. John is unavailable or unwilling to do the job I can still make some use of the produced template.

Posted by jrients at 9:30 AM CST
Saturday, 13 March 2004


So I'm not nearly as depressed today. Eating a meal, playing with my daughter, and getting a good night's sleep put me back on an even keel.

I've put the scanner to work today. I've got a couple of new pages in the works for the Erol Otus Shrine, as well as some prelim stuff for improvements to the front page (which desparately needs an upgrade) and the DDG section.

I'm also hoping to get a new BattleTech page up soon. Speaking of BattleTech and scanners, I finally scanned some examples of the old BattleTech logo font. I'm still not sure whether I should produce the font myself (which would mean it would be crude and possibly a .fon file) or have my friend Pat help me (he has a professional font program of some sort) or just pay S. John Ross to do it right.

I've gotten some more nice comments on my BattleTech scenario over at BattleTech.com.

Posted by jrients at 6:05 PM CST
Updated: Saturday, 13 March 2004 6:10 PM CST
Friday, 12 March 2004

Godammit, but this situation with Goph and Dave is depressing me. These are not just two old gaming buddies, they're like my two oldest and bestest friends. We go back to grade school, we were in each other's weddings. I just wanted to get try to arrange to get together and game, but Dave is objecting to all my ideas while presenting none of his own and Goph seems to be blowing us both off. And I feel like a twice-damned fool for trying again after the last attempt to get together totally fell apart. If these were just two game goobers I've played with I would have gave up on this whole thing a long time ago. I don't know whether to get mad or cry or go home and drink some liquor and try to sleep it off.

Posted by jrients at 4:58 PM CST

So Pen & Paper updated last week and added the Lords of Creation info I submitted, though the pic seems to be absent. Ah, it was a losey pic anyhow. Now that I know I didn't screw up the submissions process, maybe I'll do some more stuff.

I like teeny little volunteer opportunities like adding to the Pen & Paper database. It's a niece peicemeal way to help support the larger gaming community. Doing these little projects also helps me get jazzed for tackling a lrger effort, such as another submission for this nifty site.


Posted by jrients at 11:58 AM CST

The ominous sound I hear in my head is a window of opportunity slowly closing. This weekend is the last one/only one in March that Dave has open to get together to game. Goph has yet to get back with us about his availability. Meanwhile my folks want to come see their granddaughter and I'm leaving other gaming possibilities (my HU campaign, BattleTech with the nephews) dangling. In their emails Goph and Dave keep saying they want to get together and game, yet they keep erecting obstacles to that happening. Are they humouring me to avoid having to tell me outright that they don't want to get together?

Posted by jrients at 9:45 AM CST
Behold... Rondoo part 2

Posted by jrients at 8:03 AM CST
Thursday, 11 March 2004

So, if I'm gonna be playing in a regular Savage Worlds campaign (and it sure looks like I am), then I guess I should probably pick up a copy of the rules. I'm thinking I'll buy a copy from the RPG.net store. I have yet to use them and part of each sale is donated to keep RPG.net up and running. Besides, they have the old fashioned d20's that I could use for Star Fleet Battle Manual.

I'm continuing to read the Starmada Compendium. Good stuff. Very few rules have been altered (notably banked weapons have been simplified) from the version 5.41 rules I had been using. There's lots of neat new stuff though. I thought a change had been made to the fighter rules when I read that only lasers may attack fighters. I went back and checked and sure enough that had been in the earlier rules. I don't think I've actually used any fighters yet, so this revelation doesn't affect previous games.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the employ cards in gaming situations. Maybe seeing Dave Hoover's official Savage Worlds card deck tripped this circuit for me again. I've long thought that D&D could be spiced up with a deck of combat maneuver cards. The Dork20 deck apparently gets this done for the d20 crowd, and I may have to get a copy. Mayfair put out a less humorous and more complicate product for AD&D called Blood & Steel. Frankly, the cards look to darn complicated to me. The fellow who makes the miniatures rules called Piquet has some interesting things to say about card usage in his theory of Piquet page. The old toy-based Warhammery game BattleMasters got good mileage out of an initiative deck. In addition to spicing up D&D basic/expert combats, I think cards could be used to great effect in BattleTech games where you want to capture the rickety-old-mech-held-together-by-chickenwire feel of the older versions of the game.

I think I will have to get a couple of Glotz decks at some point.

Posted by jrients at 5:00 PM CST
Behold... Rondoo!
Here's my first Savage Worlds character, for Dave's campaign:

Rondoo the Learner
itinerant scholar-monk, hedge wizard, devotee of the god of knowledge

Agility d6
Smarts d8
Spirit d8
Strength d4
Vigor d4

Guts d4 Healing d6
Intimidation d4 Investigation d6
Knowledge (history) d8 Knowledge (the gods) d8
Notice d4 Repair d4
Stealth d4

Hindrances: Clueless, Loyal

Edges: Arcane Background, Scholar

Posted by jrients at 3:53 PM CST
Other BattleTech stuff I've been thinking about
I have in mind a couple of no-Mech scenarios. First off would be a scenario set against the Capellan-Supremacy War, a conflict in BattleTech "pre-history" (before the invention of the battlemech). The second one would be a battle based upon the old TSR minigame Revolt on Antares. The troop types in Revolt (laser tank, hover craft, jump troops, power armor) match up wll with BattleTech coneventional forces. To do that one I'd need a more recent rulset, since my BattleTech Manual does not contain any power armor rules.

In my Starmada posts I already mentioned my Aeromada project, converting the original Aerotech over to Starmada rules to do some dogfighting.

As with most every other BT fan out there, I want to webpublish some mech designs. Unlike most BT fans, all my designs are meant to be historical derivatives of existing mechs. For example, I want to stat out the prototype Blackjack that moved 5/8/0 and had flamers instead of ACs.

Posted by jrients at 11:41 AM CST

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