Fuck You, Gary Gygax!

I'm going to celebrate my birthday today (which just happens to be Gygax's birthday, as if I need any more reasons to be depressed) by honoring Mr. Dave Arneson, inventor of role-playing games and co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons.

While Arneson's contributions to the industry may be few, there is no doubt that his greatest contribution was giving that thieving scumbag Gary Gygax his career. You see, the one-time insurance salesman realized Arneson had captured lighting in a bottle with his Blackmoor campaign and quickly did everything in his power to wrest that bottle from Arneson's grasp, which, for a time, he successfully pulled off with the creation of AD&D.

Until the lawsuit, that is. Arneson won, but the public continues to think that Gygax created the game, thanks to him never mentioning Dave's name in regards to D&D. It's like he took a page or two out of Stan Lee's 'Fuck You, Jack Kirby' Playbook. When you run the company and edit the magazine you get to revise history as you see fit.

So, what we're left with now is the few remaining Gygax ass-kissers and coattail riders occasionally shitting on Arneson's name over at Dragonsfoot.org. Classy lot, they are.


Here's to you, Dave Arneson, sole inventor of role-playing games. Some of us know the truth and appreciate your fine work.

XXVc Notebook - More Random Stuff

Tried to run a bookless, diceless and, ultimately playerless game of XXVc last night and you can probably guess how that went.

In the absence of anything to say about that, I do want to share some flavor ideas and a quote from a fellow XXVcers web log.

I got to thinking about how people refer to their tech gadgets and decided that common usage would continue into the future. Case in point the fact that people will refer to their mobile communication device as a phone, no matter how advanced the thing is or what all its functions are. Applying that to other gadgets I've decided that anything one might wear on their wrist (that isn't a weapon) is called a Watch; any small hand-held comm device is, as I said, called a Phone. This replaces my earlier, clumsier term "celcomp"; Any portable computing device (no matter what it can do) is called a Book. This assumes that, in the future, most or all personal computers will resemble in some way today's tablets. This term would apply to devices that are more rugged than something you might find in an office or library.

I've used the term Scroll for a fancier version of the Book; one that kind of rolls up into a kind of short rod, but I think I'll go with Flat, which is a very far-sighted gadget seen on the sci-fi series Andromeda. This is where I actually see computers going in the future- a thin, flexible touch-screen computer, roughly the size of a sheet of typing paper and maybe 3mm thick. I can see these as being more common than the Book, but perhaps unsuitable for use in the field. I guess I should include Glasses now, as well, which could potentially replace the Watch. Maybe Glasses are a strictly Martian thing.

UPDATE! - Televisions--anything from a simple home entertainment box to a giant Diamondvision type screen--is now called a TV in the common vernacular, although the term Palantir is finding some footing among the hoi polloi, particularly on Mars and Venus, where the entertainment  conglomerate of the same name dominates.

Here's a portion of a post by +DerKastellan (I think. I don't read German) that provides a little more variety to weapons-

In fact so limited that the designers of the computer games tried to introduce magical items through the back door by establishing +1 up to +4 bonusses on THAC0 and damage for weapons according to their quality of manufacture - Terran or regular would receive no bonus, Martian +1, Venusian +2, Mercurian +3 and finally Lunarian +4

 True, it's not a exactly glowing endorsement for the game, but this uncovered nugget is at least an attempt on someone's part at TSR to make the game better. For more on XXVc (not all of it happy) and Space: 1889, have a peek here.

Lazyass Summer Post

I hate summer. I want to do things even less than I normally do in summertime. However, that doesn't keep my swelling, itching brain from annoying me with ideas and new interests. 

Case in point, Hulks & Horrors.

When I first read about it, I thought it sounded kinda pointless and a little stupid, but after grabbing the free version and giving it a scanover, I change my view on it. Now, all I can picture when I think about that game are those shitty 80's sci-fi horror movies like Galaxy of Terror and Inseminoid. Now that has my attention. Not that slick, oh-so-serious transhuman nonsense of Eclipse Phase or the wanna-be Travellerness of Stars Without Number.

No, Hulks & Horrors makes me wanna crawl through dark, greasy access tunnels that are dripping with alien mucous to track down some mythical high-tech McGuffin. The idea that the galaxy has become an endless graveyard waiting to be robbed by opportunistic scumbags has a great appeal to me. I could go on, but I think I'll let this amazing movie trailer wrap up why H&H took such a hold on me.

"Struggling for survival in the infected remains of a diseased universe." I'd say that sums up Hulks & Horrors rather nicely. Also, FUCK YEAH GREEN SLIME! If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. 

Everything else is just the usual shit I've been shoveling here for a while- XXVc; Traveller has reared it's ugly head once again (and, no, I don't mean that trainwreck Traveller5) and, new to the roster, but less new than H&H, Star Frontiers.

So, I got all cylinders firing for some hot, wet summer sci-fi action. Whether or not I can complete even one of these goals remains to be seen.