I've heard some very good reports about Monsters and Other Childish Things. It looks like a fun little game. I might purchase it if enough people express an interest in playing.

Monsters are real. You know because you have one. He’s the best! He’s more fun and way tougher than the other kids’ monsters.

Try not to let him eat your friends.

The idea is that you play a kid, and each kid also has a monster. The game revolves around the Relationships that the kid has - with her mother, his soccer ball, her soft blankie or his grandad. Apparently it's really easy on the rules and is fantastic to play.

Let me know if you'd be interested in a game.

I'm in the market for cheap D&D books - 3.5 or, especially, 3.0. Does anyone have any that they don't need any more, that they're willing to give a home to in return for more shelf space? I'm particularly looking for the following:

Heart of Nightfang Spire
Lord of the Iron Fortress
Bastion of Broken Souls
Savage Species
Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations
Libris Mortis: The Book of Undead
Anything from Mongoose's Slayer's Guide or Quintessential series.

Yes, I know I can probably get most of these as PDF downloads. That's not what I'm looking for.

Bill Walton, The Escapist, Dr Awkward, fossilapostle, has a website that he would like promoted. He's asking us to Digg his site, give it thumbs up on StumbleUpon, and do whatever else we can to promote the site.

The site is good. It's a good cause. If you don't know it yet, take a look.

The main site is:
The Escapist

Bill also has a page up where he responds to fundamentalist accusations that the Harry Potter books and Dungeons and Dragons actually teach people to do real magic. Yes, there are some people who do believe this. There are links and everything!

This page is:
Spellcasting 101

It's very funny.

Anyway, Bill's a good bloke, he's a musician, and he's great with kids. Help him out by Digging his site.

I just ran an awesome game of Metascape.

During organisation, it was jokingly suggested that I run a non-canon Halloween Special. I wasn't originally going to do it. I've never run a horror game before - I've played some Call of Cthulhu, but I've never really been comfortable with being in the driver's seat.

But then I downloaded Role Playing Public Radio Episode 22: Get Your Fear On. Ross and Tom told me exactly what I needed to know about atmosphere, about pacing, about the little things that can be done just to make it a little more creepy.

And it worked! I even got the "let's run away right now" moment! *sigh* It was so cool.

Writeup is in point form at the moment - I'm not going to work on it right now because I want to do it properly, it's late and I'm tired. But I wanted to plug Role Playing Public Radio, since they did such a sterling job for me (I've sent them an email thanking them) and to let you know that I had such a good time gaming.

I'm running a Paranoia game on 9th October for some folks who've never played Paranoia before. One of my players has said that he can't make it on the night. I'm not sure how flexible some of the other players are, so I'm going ahead. This means that there's an open player slot available.

Let me know if you're interested.

Don't believe me?

http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/commentary/games/2008/08/gamesfrontiers_0811/

fossilapostle has a new page for his old, old Spellcasting 101 page. It's a good read. Check it out. Link to it. It's a new page, and it needs its Google.

PS. Be sure to check out the email feedback.

PPS. His latest Escapistcast Podcast is out.

I have one opening for a player in a new roleplaying game that I'm soon to run.

Note that this is a face-to-face game, so the opening is for locals only. I've already got four of my five players. Note also that politas and yasutani are excluded due to their playing in my previous Metascape game and my possibly requiring them for cameo roles in this one. curufea, you don't need to respond unless you really want to.

( Click if you're interested )

So just for the hell of it, I'm playing a solo dungeon bash. I've created a dwarf fighter, and elf wizard, a halfling rogue and a human cleric (okay, lack of imagination struck) in eTools and I'm taking them through a dungeon randomly generated using the Random Dungeon Generation tables from my old 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide (remember that?).

It's actually very interesting. Some time ago I translated the random encounter tables from the DMG into eTools tables, and I'm using that to generate random monsters. The most difficult so far has probably been the Huge centipede - its poison almost took out the rogue). eTools is fine for random treasure generation (so far a lot of coins, a masterwork longsword and a masterwork mace and a 0-level wizard scroll). All in all it's working pretty well. I'm fudging the map, well, a lot. After a few hours playing the characters are on the verge of 3rd-level.

I'm playing a few "house rules" - one of them being that when I decide that the characters rest, they are able to recover all HP loss, ability damage and recover all spells (much like resting in Neverwinter Nights although there are no areas where resting is prohibited). And there's traps only when I can be bothered to decide on search and disable DCs and all that. There is, of course, absolutely no character personality development or story, although I am finding that some of the characters have some... trends. It's all fast and loose, and quite fun.

I suspect that this pastime may occupy my spare time for a little while.

Forgive me for this, but it's time to contribute to the Google ratings for the new website of the Committe for the Advancement of Role-Playing Games (CAR-PGa). These people do a good job, in their spare time, and I've been on their mailing list for some time. It appears that their job has been done well, since it has been years since the last time gamers were libeled in a major newspaper or in the movie theaters or on national television, but all of those have happened. Police conducting a murder investigation once questioned a child for more than ten hours without allowing access to his parents or a lawyer--which is illegal on several counts--on the sole evidence that he played a role-playing game. People can lose their jobs and have, in the past few years, been threatened with such for being involved with a role-playing game. I'm assured that very little of this has occurred in Australia, but it happens and has happened nontheless.

While I'm at it, I may as well plug The Escapist, a website run by one of my LJ Friends - fossilapostle - devoted "to the betterment of role-playing games and the education of the public and media of their benefits to society". This is the guy who proved that various Harry Potter and D&D spells really aren't real by trying them to see whether they worked.

Good sites, both of them. The CAR-PGa site needs a little work, but you can join the CAR-PGa (I haven't... yet) to get details about how you can improve the site.

The CAR-PGa Yahoo Group.

For those who are interested, I have posted pretty much all of my resources for the Metascape space opera roleplaying game on my website. This includes The Adventures of Team Fugazi of House Dha - summaries of most of the games I ran with that particular team. Also on the page are discussions and analyses of the unusual dice system, the Galactic Calendar, and detailed descriptions of the starships of the three major races that are not detailed in the main rulebooks.

For those who were players in this game, allow this to bring back fond memories. For those who weren't, check out a damn fine roleplaying campaign.

http://www.arthwollipot.com/games/metascape/

Yesterday was a good day. First up, training. Mike (the Chief Marshall) thought football was more important than training, but he left us with a detailed set of instructions, which we followed to the letter. Well, almost. We only had seven people training, but it was good regardless.

Then on to gaming. Football wasn't more important than Cyberpunk. The game's going really well - the gang has been doing various illegal jobs, and they've only been caught once. There doesn't appear on the surface any linkage between them, but I'm sure Mike has them all linked up in his backstory.

Last night was a routine kidnapping - if such a thing could ever be described as "routine" in the first place - which went off without a hitch. Well, Sparkles got shot at, and I was a little upset at that, but she didn't get hit. We had been given a target and a clapped out flyer to assist with the raid. A charge of explosive beneath a manhole cover in the road took care of the assault vehicle which was escorting the buses, and a sleep-gas grenade pacified the passengers. The target was quickly located, loaded into the flyer and delivered to the rendezvous point.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Some time ago I ran a Paranoia mission, "How Many Troubleshooters Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb?"

I wrote this particular mission myself. I know that at least a couple of readers of my LJ were players. Re-reading it now, I found it immensely entertaining, so I have taken the liberty of uploading it to my website.

How Many Troubleshooters Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb?.

This is from my Roleplaying Tips Weely newsletter, after an article
about incorporating festivals and celebrations into RPG Campaign Worlds.
This one tickled me.

The full Roleplaying Tips Newsletter is found at
http://www.roleplayingtips.com/. If you're a roleplayer, go and
subscribe to this now. It has heavily influenced my GMing and playing
style. Positively, of course!

Email post from Arthwollipot
http://www.arthwollipot.com/

> 2. Odd Celebration To Inspire Your Campaigns
> From: Darryl
> ============================================================
> Found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_Dead_Guy_Days
>
> Frozen Dead Guy Days is an annual celebration held in the
> town of Nederland, Colorado.
>
> In 1989, a Norwegian citizen, Trygve Bauge, brought the
> corpse of his recently-dead grandfather, Bredo Morstel, to
> the town of Nederland. When Trygve was deported from the
> United States for overstaying his visa, his mother, Aud,
> continued on in the shack, keeping her father's body
> cryogenically frozen behind her unfinished house. Aud was
> eventually evicted from her home for living in a house with
> no electricity and plumbing, in violation of local
> ordinances. At that time, she told a local reporter about
> her father's body, and the reporter went to the local city
> hall in order to let them know about Aud's fears that her
> eviction would cause her father's body to thaw out.
>
> The story caused a sensation. The city passed a new
> ordinance outlawing the keeping of human body parts in a
> residence, but because of the publicity that had arisen,
> they made an exception for Bredo, a grandfather clause. The
> local Tuff Shed supplier built a new shed to keep him in. In
> honor of this event, the town holds an annual celebration.
>
> Frozen Dead Guy Days is celebrated from Friday through
> Sunday on the first full weekend of March. Coffin races, a
> slow-motion parade, and "Frozen Dead Guy" look-alike contests
> are held. A documentary on "Grandpa Bredo", called Grandpa's
> in the Tuff Shed, is shown. A newer version of the film,
> Grandpa's Still in the Tuff Shed, was premiered in Nederland
> on March 7, 2003.
>
> Other events include a tour of the Tuff Shed where Grandpa
> is still frozen; a "polar plunge" for those brave enough to
> go swimming in Colorado in early March; a dance, called
> "Grandpa's Blue Ball"; pancake breakfasts; a market
> showcasing local artists; snowshoe races and snow sculpture
> contests. Glacier Ice Cream, headquartered in the nearby
> city of Boulder, makes a flavor specifically for the
> festival (named, appropriately enough, Frozen Dead Guy),
> consisting of fruit-flavored blue ice cream mixed with
> crushed Oreo cookies and sour gummy worms.