So earlier this week, the Print Master PDF’s for the 4e Core Books (Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual) were leaked to the Internet.  Within hours, it was seeded in Torrents, and being downloaded over and over.  No one may ever know if the leaking of these books were done by accident, for malicious intent, or done as a calculating move by WoTC.  Regardless of how it happened, the PDF’s are out there.  The question is, will the leak be harmful or helpful to WoTC?

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Hope you all had a good Memorial Day weekend.  And special wishes to those of my friends, family, and readers who have served in the Armed Forces.   This weekend was a busy one, with family in town for the weekend, but for a change, that did not interfere with our gaming.

We were able to get a Global Frequency session in on Friday, before the family arrived.  It was just Sargon, Spenser, and I, but GF runs great in small groups, so it was just fine.  I think the session went off great.  Our latest rule upgrades really worked well, and helped to make th game go much smoother.  We did identify four issues that we needed to address, but they were all pretty minor, issues.

I spent part of Saturday, coming up with some ideas for how to solve those issues, and sent them out for review.  Only one place left to revamp, and that is the gear section.  It is the ability of the Agents to be able to call in for extra gear in the middle of an operation.  So far Gear has not been a real issue in the game, but it still needs some work, to be really cool.

All in all, the GF material is coming out great, and I plan to play a few of these scenarios, with some friends at GenCon in August.

I also got some time in to read more of the Corporation RPG.  I really like this game.  It’s only weakness is that the rules are a bit scattered, and could be better organized.  But it is a high-octane, hard Sci-Fi game that has roots in both Cyberpunk 2020 and d20.  It has a very rich background, and is easy to imagine the world, and playing in it.  A trait that is key for me when looking over a game.

On Monday, Sargon came over to do some grillin’ and we talked about our upcoming games.  It looks like this summer is going to be a good gaming summer.  We have 4e coming out, which Spenser is going to run for us shortly after it comes out.  Sargon is just weeks away from having his new Star Wars: Saga Edition campaign ready to.  My Iron Heroes game is gearing up for its final storylines.  And with some Global Frequency one-shots and some demoing of Corporation RPG it should make a fine summer of role playing.

This week, at Encoded Designs, I am going to gush about my new favorite program, Microsoft One Note, and how I have been using it for my Global Frequency game.  Also, I will be writing a piece for Gnome Stew, on wikis and their place in RPG’s, later in the week.

That is it here.   See you during the week.

So in this post, I wanted to highlight a few places where I have been making some comments. Ok, so it is writing week, and I have been spending all week writing my Global Frequency session, which is turning out to be quite good…and have not written an article for mid-week. But have been around a few blogs and have made a few comments…so I am liking them here so that you can see what I have been saying, not because I have this need for you to listen to what I say all the time (not all the time), but rather, they are some good discussions..

Chatty’s Debates: Black Box vs Process-Response design

My good friend, and Canadian twin, Philippe, the Chatty DM, has posted an argument from one of the EN Worlders, or as I like to call them EN Ranters. This one has to do with the black box vs. Process-response models for D&D 4e vs. 3e, respectively. Personally I find the EN Ranters argument flawed because no one has A COPY OF A FOURTH EDITION PLAYERS HANDBOOK! Check out my comment to the piece.

Avoiding Gilligan’s Island Syndrome

This is a great question on the Treasure Tables boards. Personally, I love the TT Forums, it is some of the best GM talk you will find, and the most reasonable (Glares at EN World). The question is about how to set up a campaign that focuses around an event, that when it occurs could lead to the campaign, and how to avoid it feeling like Gilligan’s Island. This is right up my alley, as my Iron Heroes game is centered on this same idea. I give some comments on how to deal with this, and compare this to Star Wars.

Finally some gaming this weekend!   This Sunday, I got to run my Iron Heroes campaign for the first time since early April.  It was a pretty good session, but it was a but bumpy and the group was a bit unfocused, myself included, since it was our first time back to the table in many weeks.  The adventure went off pretty well.  The only sticky spot, was a one-on-one combat between Dr. J’s character Arion, and the minor bad guy, The Chain Maiden.  I don’t like to put one-on-one combats into the game, as they are a bit boring for the other players, but it fit the story, and for what I was looking for.  In the end it was a bit boring for Sargon and Spenser, as the fight took a bit longer than I had hoped.

But that one-on-one went directly into a group fight against the main bad guy for the evening, the Chain Devil.  That fight went pretty well, but Sargon’s mage, Severis, got left behind in the rush to fight the Chain Devil, and wound up doing some buffing and not much direct combat.   In all the session was positive, but I would have liked to have had the entire group engaged in the fight.

After the session, our group sat and talked about where the campaign was going.  We had decided a few weeks ago, that we would be dropping the Mass Combat system from the game, as we did not have enough time to support it.  So with that component gone, there was discussion of what we should do next, and after talking to all the players and looking at what remaining story threads we had left, it was clear that it is time to start the final arc’s of this campaign and bring this campaign to an end.

It was a bitter sweet talk, as this campaign has been running for over two years, and is the longest I have run.  At the same time, the campaign was set up with one huge goal, and eventually you have to deliver that goal (unlike Chris Carter in the X-Files).  So I will be gearing up to finish off my Iron Heroes campaign this year.  I told my group, that i wanted it to run into December, so that it will be 3 years old, because I like milestones.

Aside from my Iron Heroes work, I spent time working on the rules to my Global Frequency game.  I am running the second “extended beta” of the game this Friday, and need to not only get the session notes together, but get some of the rules done at the same time.  I will be burning the candle at both ends this week to get it done, but I think it is totally possible.

I have also continued my reading of Corporation, and am fully enjoying what I am reading.  Its like Cyberpunk and d20 hooked up, and their angry offspring got their hands on some large scale weapons and combat enhancing drugs.  How could you not want to play that?

This week, I have an article coming out on Gnome Stew, about Backup Games, and I will do a few commentary posts, as I am going to spend the week writing Global Frequency.

See you later this week.

So this week, the Gnome Stew blog went live, with a huge opening week. It was quite well received around the RPG blogosphere. I wrote an article on opening day on RPG Arguments. I have another article in the queue that should go out on Tuesday.

So how will Gnome Stew and Encoded Designs work together? I have been thinking about this during the week. I enjoy maintaining my own blog, in both the writing side as well as the actually configuration and administration of the software. I also like having a place where I can post about the games i am currently playing, so that months or even years from now, I can look back and remember those games.  So for those reasons I fully intend to keep Encoded Designs up and running.

On the flip side, I was one of the people who encouraged Martin to take Treasure Tables and make it into a multi-author site. Rather than transforming Treasure Tables, after a hiatus, Martin created Gnome Stew and invited me to contribute. Gnome Stew’s initial success comes from the momentum that Martin created with Treasure Tables with his excellent writing, as well the superb group of contributors and commenters, who frequented the site. Most of those contributors accepted Martin’s invitation and are now Gnomes. I have thought that a multi-author site of the caliber of Treasure Tables would be a sight to behold. If this week’s posts are any indication, Gnome Stew will be a home for excellent GM advice and thought. For all those reasons, I fully intend to keep my Gnome Hat and keep contributing to the Stew.

So how will I put it all together? Well, I am going to keep my Gnome Stew articles strictly focused on GMing techniques and theory. On this blog, I am going to write my Weekend Update, as well as more opinionated pieces about gaming. If there is any ranting to be done, it will be here. I will also use Encoded Designs to do my reviews of books and games, and post my GenCon advice.

I am going to contribute to Gnome Stew every week to 10 days. When I do post on Gnome Stew, I will post a cross link for it here.  For Encoded Designs, I will post my weekend update, and try for two articles a week. One will be a regular article and the other will be a comment piece on a blog article that I read somewhere else on the net.

I hope that clears things up and I hope that you brave few who have this site subscribed to will keep on subscribing, and will also head over to Gnome Stew and have a taste in some really great GMing articles and discussion.  For those of you who are coming in from Gnome Stew, I hope you will subscribe to this site, and enjoy the rest of my content.

Thanks.

Normally I don’t get into making houserules or my own custom rule sets. Having rarely mastered the Hard Skills of GMing, I tend to shy away from making too many of my own rules, and am content to stick with what has been written in the rule book. Also, I have had some really bad experiences in collaborative rule building that has convinced me that too many cooks can spoil the pot.

All that said, I started making some home rules for an idea for running a game based on the Global Frequency comic books. And I thought I would tell you how it is going….

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