2015 is the Year of the Busy, apparently. I feel like I've been flat out for the past 6 weeks. I think things are loosening up now, since this is the first weekend in a long while that I have nothing solid planned. I may even catch up on some sleep.
(Probably not, though.)
It's time again to free up some memory. Here are a few of the things that I'd like to keep track of.
On Quarterly OSR Zines
Jason Paul McCartan of InfiniBadger Press is putting together a quarterly magazine called OSR Quarterly. Issue Zero is already in the works and due out soon. You can get a jump on the Submission Guidelines (get paid, and paid well to write OSR articles and adventures) and the Advertising Kit (cheap rates for many OSR gamer eyeballs) for Issue One due in the fall of 2015.
Apparently the idea of a quarterly OSR zine makes sense to several people. Greg Gorgonmilk has put together 666 pages worth of crowdsourced OSR goodies, and has announced Gorgon Quarterly, intended to reprint cool things from around the OSR community. Lay out your own articles for a true embrace of DIY zinedom!
Games Old and New
Interested in hearing how Sandy Petersen came back to Chaosium and what his and Greg Stafford's return might mean for the future of Call of Cthulhu? You're in luck! You can listen to this 20-minute interview with Sandy over on Yog-Sothoth.
Mark Hunt is holding a One Page Space Adventure Contest for the OSR Science Fiction game White Star. The submission deadline is June 30, so get cracking for a chance to win a signed White Star hardcover. There’s been some OGL debate in the comments, but the contest is still on (put the OGL text on the back of your single page adventure).
Speaking on controversy, Monte Cook Games has released a free PDF containing their revamp of the poorly-received Native American recursion included in The Strange. This new version is based on Lakota Sioux stories and myths.
Brent Newhall knows we all need an online Score Generator for John Harper’s successfully-Kickstarted and forthcoming game Blades in the Dark. Push the button and a score pops out, complete with optional twist!
John Stavropoulos jotted down 5 concepts for running successful convention games in this Google+ post. It’s also available as an article on Imagonem. Excellent advice here, and each point is worth remembering. Communicate incessantly, and remember that listening is the larger part of communication..
Ryan Macklin wrestles with thoughts about innovation, relevance, and success in the tabletop RPG space. These thoughts apply beyond the RPG space, however. What do those terms even mean? What happens when you actively pursue innovative ideas? How can we plebians make peace with our non-innovator status?
Connecting Role-Playing, Stage Acting, and Improvisation delves into the similarities and differences between improvisation, LARP, and true stagecraft. It scratches the surface of psychological states and theory. Heavy stuff, and fascinating.
Apparently RPGs are legit, especially after this recent article in TheGuardian on the Joy of Reading Role-Playing Games. Epidiah Ravachol’s Swords Without Master and Joshua Newman’s Shock: Social Science Fiction are held up as shining examples of joyful RPG reads.
If you need a resource to get some character ideas flowing for a newbie friend, Geek & Sundry offers 5 RPG Character Building Tips for Beginners. And if you need an intro to RPGs, check out Titansgrave, G&S's RPG series spinoff of Tabletop, hosted and GMed by Wil Wheaton. Game sessions are 30-45 minutes and I find them entertaining. The 5 Gold and a Party tagline sounds like something that would come out of one of my games.
The Four White Suburban Soccer Moms of the Apocalypse: Look upon this priceless sketch of a terrifying modernization and quake in wordless panic.
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