10 by 10 room

Check out this character descripton by ‘Simple Man’ on RPG.net. It began with him and a friend invite to a game of D&D, which wasn’t their first choice. But, they were determined to find a hook they could get into. And so…

3 seconds later, my friend hit me with a statement that I should have known all along: “Dude, we’re the boondock saints!” And from then on, our characters were brothers by blood.

And so Wolfgang and Albrecht were born, a Paladin and Cleric (respectively) who drank heavily (often toasting Pelor), roughhoused in the tavern, and basically partook of anything seedy but still considered acceptible by D&D standards of Law and Good. If there was Evil, we smote it. If there was an innocent in danger, we would quickly sober up and save the day.

But we played brothers first and foremost. We played darts in the bar, then beat eachother up when one started to get ahead. If one ran headlong into danger, the other followed. And if one was insulted by a townsperson, the other decked said townsperson. We also tried to get the rest of the party in on it, as we were roleplaying becoming fast friends with everyone, lovable drunkards who were really decent fellows down at the core.

Awesome. Even when the focus is on tactics and challenge, a good D&D game absolutely needs vibrant character hooks you can riff off of.

Dan Solis: “The general “wandering around to get stuff so you can keep wandering around” motif fits with a lot of genres.”

Dreamblade is the new collectible minis game that Wizards of the Coast is releasing at this year’s Gen Con. The game presents tactical battle over a dream-powered landscape, meaning that the figures are drawn from a mishmash of genres and a variety strange and unique forms. (Like a werewolf with freakin’ swords!)

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In certain games of D&D or Shadowrun, I’ve sometimes gotten into debates with the GM about what kinds of weapons can and cannot be safely hidden and carried into public. Is it really that obvious if you’re carrying a double barrel shotgun and two katanas under your trenchcoat in public?

Only one way to find out: let’s go to the video tape!

(Via Clinton.) The 50 Worst Video Game Names Of All Time must be seen to be belived. Kicking it off at #50…

Frogger: Helmet Chaos

(Post title explained here.)

Check out the the trailer for a new title from Valve, Portal, an innovative blend of FPS and puzzle gameplay.

A researcher is looking at mashing up with Google Earth for real-time mobile gaming. The prototype — Battleship:GoogleEarth.

One person places their ships using Google Earth and the other person goes out in the normal world with a mobile phone, a GPS connected to the mobile phone. The phone has a small Python script on it that reads the GPS and sends the data to the game engine, which then updates the Google Earth KML model showing the current state of the game grid. When the player who’s trying to sink the ships wants to try for a hit, they call into the game engine and say “drop”. The game reads back the coordinates at which the “peg” was dropped and shortly thereafter, the other player will see the peg appear at the coordinate it was dropped. If the peg hits one of the ships, it’s a Hit, otherwise it’s a miss.

A Threadless-designed shirt by Dan Solis. Go vote so it becomes real!

Via Daniel: Early Manuscripts at Oxford University.

Old manuscripts (think medieval) were scanned in and are now provided online. Great for inspirational use; Daniel used some documents here to influence some of his current layouts.

In your current RPGs, do you eat breakfast?