Ultrablamtacular!

So. I’ll bet you thought this site was dead. Not so neither.

I mentioned I was in a play…which was awesome, if time consuming. Now it’s over. So, to get back into the swing of things, I’m reading the text of the rules again. Remarkably, it does not suck. That’s always a fear when I return to a project after a break. What if it was just the momentum that made it seem good? What if in the harsh light of reality it was just awful?

Anyhow, so far, so good. I’m only a few pages into it, but they are the first pages – “What’s a roleplaying game?” and so forth, which I had particular trouble with and didn’t expect to like on this reading at all.

And another thing that really provided a lot of motivation was my way-early and totally awesome Valentine’s day gift: Dice. Custom dice. That say “Ultrablam!” on the 1 side. They are awesome. I got two sets from the smartest wife in the world (a name she earned many years and several blogs ago). A fantastic sparkly-shiny-translucent-iridescent set that change depending on how you look at them, and a classic set in basic black with red pips – twins of my go-to dice for d6 based games for the last…ugh…20+ years. Anyhow, they were a total surprise and the best thing I could have gotten. I totally want to use them during playtests! I’ll get a picture of some of them up sometime if I can.

Anyhow…game on!

Well, I know it’s been a long time coming, but I wanted to drop a quick note to everyone who might have wanted to know what’s going on with Ultrablam. What’s going on is this: I’m still working on the playtest materials – but a couple of things happened along the way. Read more…

My awesome editrix is going out of town this week. And I just found out tonight that she ordered the new Batman video game to keep me company while she’s away. Jona rocks.

You can probably tell that work on Ultrablamtacular! had slowed recently. I started work on it again today, and one of the things I knew I needed to do was to update this blog. Read more…

I was working on an adventure for the SIFRP game I’m running (which, though I’ve located some flaws, is still working pretty well, and is still a Thing I Like) and I needed some details about pre-industrial mining. I remembered an article I had read an indeterminate-but-long time ago about the development of humankind’s ability to dig and drill in the earth. I couldn’t remember exactly where I’d read it, but I narrowed it down to one of three magazines and started googling.

I didn’t find it on the goog, but I did find it. I turned up the entire text of an article I sort of remembered from what turned out to be a decade ago based on a vague recollection of a magazine and one phrase that stuck in my head. The internet is awesome.

Many years ago, when AltaVista was the big deal in search, my dad commented that the internet was useless because while you could find all sorts of things on it, you could never find the thing you wanted. He was right then, and the fact that he’s wrong now is what makes the internet so awesome. It’s like having an enormous photographic memory. I know. This is old hat. But seriously. One partially remembered phrase.

Today is Free RPG Day! Head out to your Friendly Local Game Store and pick up some cool stuff, try out a new game, and buy the father in your life that Father’s Day present you’ve been putting off. Dads love RPGs!

Read more…

Here’s a guy who made a bunch of D&D monsters. In origami.

Credit where it’s due: You could run a blog for years and have people think you’re clever, just by stealing judiciously from BoingBoing, which is where I got this link.

I just wrote a long post about something I didn’t like. I feel like I should post about  some things that I do like, to sorta balance the cosmic scales.

Read more…

Roleplaying is a young hobby. OK, it’s a little older than I am, and I’m not exactly a kid anymore. But still, it’s not as old as say…darts. And now we’re losing our pioneers.

Last year, we lost Gygax. Now, Arneson.

Thanks for everything, Dave.

Once upon a time, April Fool’s day on the internet was cool. No longer. It is undoubtedly the stupidest day of the year.

Ultrablamtacular! will not be participating. Thanks but no thanks. Not even Google can come up with a good one. Blah.

Who else thinks that April Fool’s day needs to go back to the real world and let the internet proceed unimpeded?