hairylarry's blog

Gamer+ News - August 26, 2019

Gamer+ Inspired Unreality is tonight, Monday August 26, at 9:00 pm Central. Inspired Unreality is an open game chat at Tenkar's Tavern on Discord. The first topic for tonight will be Systems and Modules. Discuss gaming systems you wrote or that you like to play and your favorite modules for these systems. Also how to write OSR generic modules and what does it take to play an OSR module in 5e?

Or bring your own topic. Open game chat. Board games, card games, and role playing games.

CarlHeyl posted "I help with a local homeschool game group and lately we've been playing Dungeons & Dragons. I feel like there are enough players and interest to start a campaign. The one I have in mind is one where there are five evil chromatic dragons (one of each color) that rule tyrannically over the land. They expect offerings from the humans in exchange for not obliterating them. Out of fear of the dragons wrath it is illegal to oppose the dragons plans. PC's would all be a part of an organization that secretly is working against the dragons. I need a good name for that organization that would appeal to kids. Thoughts?"

DragonMac posted the cover for his new role playing system, Adventure Maximum.

Adventure Maximum

Follow Me and Die was a DM in a live streamed charity event held in Gary Gygax's old house. Other DMs at the event were  Chris Lindsay, Stefan Pokorny, and Luke Gygax.

Luke's twitter post

A few gamers reported Gamer+ notifications going to their spam folders or being marked with a warning. I changed the mail delivery system to SMTP and I changed the admin email address to webmaster@gamerplus.org. This seems to have resolved the problem. Please let me know if you still have any problems with email notifications or if you have any other problems. Email webmaster@gamerplus.org or hairylarry@gmail.com.

Thanks

This is a table from CherryTree

A Funny Thing Happened Storming The Castle

Vivian and I made these up in Inspired Unreality Gamers Chat last Monday.

Please add more in the comments. I'm trying to build a D20 table of quest lighteners so you can randomly throw some humor into your quest.

Some of these are good and some are just jokes. Not that there's anything wrong with jokes. If you've got any good quest jokes put them in the comments too.

The table below was created in CherryTree and copied and pasted into this blog post. The lines aren't visible so I created some white space between entries.

1 Creeping through a dungeon, castle, etc the party sees a horrifying shadow on the wall opposite a turn to the right. When they finally build up the courage to peek around the corner or jump in with swords drawn they see a little kitty playing with a candle.

2 Stealth mode on the party is sneaking through the woods, swamp, or grasslands when they come to a river with a baby floating face down. Throwing caution to the wind they dive in to rescue the baby only to find out it's a doll. After they struggle back to the river bank a little girl walks up and says, "Thank you for rescuing my baby doll." Then she takes the doll and walks off never to be seen again.3

The bald cleric, Rogain, is extremely devout and has deep faith in his God. However whenever he meets a priest or pilgrim from another religion he converts immediately and follows his new God with equal fervor. For some reason, whenever he is near a tavern, he becomes a devout follower of Dionysius.

4 A bizarro world vampire is un-undead and he's scared of the dark.

5 A party of three dwarves wading through a creek sees an extremely large alligator moving toward them. One of the dwarves pulls out his sling shot and loads it with a cup of mud which he shoots into the alligator's eye. Moral of the story?

6 When the carnival came to town last year the little baby dragons were all the rage. When the city folk learned how much baby dragons ate they pitched them in the sewer. Now this year you are creeping through the sewer trying to storm the castle. You make a left turn and what do you see/smell? A rather odiferous dragon. And it's not a baby anymore.

7 Three skeletons walked into a bar and ordered three pints. The bartender served the skeletons and then turned to the barmaid and said, "Better go get a mop."

8 A thief was bent on pilfering a castle. He checked around the back and spied a window partly open. Carefully and quietly he slid the window up and crawled through. As soon as his second leg hit the floor the window slammed shut behind him. The thief froze thinking "Damn, that was loud." Barely breathing he counted 60 seconds but nobody came. It was as dark as a dungeon but the thief still had that wand he stole from the blind wizard. When he brought it out it glowed softly. The thief looked around. He had successfully snuck into a jail cell.

9 The chest just yelled treasure. Look at that big lock. Look at that iron hasp. Look at those reinforced corners. The thief was sure it must be trapped. He checked the hinges. He poked here and there with his dagger. He carefully lifted the lock ever so slightly and checked behind it. Nothing so far. He got out his lock picks but before he started on the lock he wiggled them into the hasp. He tapped gently on the sides and the top. He carefully grabbed one handle and lifted one side of the chest a tiny bit. Sticky his dagger under the corner he peered under it. Nothing. So he went to work on the lock. Before he tried to unlock it he felt here and there for traps. Needles that flew out. A sudden pinch on his finger. Nothing. He finally started working on the lock itself. It opened pretty easily. He carefully set it aside and used his dagger to lift the hasp up. He stuck his dagger through the slot in the hasp and inched the lid open. Nothing happened. "I can't believe that this chest isn't trapped." thought the thief. He took his dagger and opened the lid all the way. The chest was empty.

10 The adventurers were led to believe that the cleric wasn't all the way there. Two screws short of a hinge, if you know what I mean. Nonetheless when the cleric sent for them they went to see what was up. Gold from the collection plate was still gold even if it came from a crazy man. When they got there the cleric said, "I heard you did a good job getting rid of those rats down at the dock. I have a similar problem. You see, I've got bats in my belfry."

11 The jester wore an invisible hat and his shoes were made from the wings of a bat. Nothing was too lowly to be reused and he never hesitated to be amused. As he traveled from here to there he often stopped to pick up trash for he knew that one man's trash was another man's cash.

12 The Order Of White Ninjas were lawful good, like paladins. They considered themselves far superior to the regular ninjas all dressed up in black, the white ninjas only wore white, there was no darkness in them. The only problem was the only place they could sneak around was in hospitals.

Gamer+ News, August 19, 2019

Tonight on the Gamer+ Inspired Unreality the suggested topic will be, "A funny thing happened storming the castle, quest moments, stories, and jokes." Inspired Unreality starts at 9:00 PM Central in the gamerplus chatrooms at Tenkar's Tavern on Discord. Voice and text chat. Log on to both.

Feel free to suggest alternate topics. All gaming is on topic.

Please welcome NEA Gamers Guild to Gamer+. They have a convention coming up in Jonesboro, Arkansas, mid October. If you are in a gaming club or involved with a convention please create an account for your group and I will add you to the Play Games column in the footer.

Frylock posted this link to his blog post, Part 1: Copyrightability of #RPG Stat Blocks #DnD #copyright #iplaw.

gsllc.wordpress.com/2019/08/12/part1statblocks/

He really nails the detail on this subject and this is just Part 1.

Gwythaint posted some of his amazing line art here

gamerplus.org/photo/view/333/albumPhotos?albumId=50

and here

gamerplus.org/photo/view/334/albumPhotos?albumId=51

And here's my closing thought.

We are right now in the Golden Age of Gamer+. Although our numbers are small (about 75) I think nearly every gamer on Gamer+ does some kind of creative work. We have writers, artists, podcasters, bloggers, vloggers, DMs and players. Many of us are involved in publishing games, modules, stock art, maps, etc. Gamer+ is here to help you promote your work. Never hesitate to post about new releases whether it's a book or a zine, a blog, a video, or a podcast. All gaming is on topic.

Thanks,
Hairy Larry

Gamer+ News, August 12, 2019

We have a guest tonight on Inspired Unreality, Caeora is a fantasy artist and mapmaker who has been working on Dungeonfog's Project Deios. We are going to have Ask Me Anything (about gaming) followed by our usual open game chat. Inspired Unreality starts at 9:00 PM, Central Time at Tenkar's Tavern on Discord.

Our ranks continue to grow. We now have over 70 gamers on Gamer+. And I've got to tell you, we are mostly creators including writers, artists, vloggers, and podcasters.

We have added gamer RSS feeds and homepage links for their blogs, podcasts, video channels, chat, actual play... You will see this in the footer on every page. The real gem is the "View last 60 items here" link. This updates more quickly than the FeedGrabbr scroll and it has the actual posts with pics and videos included.

And at the bottom of your profile page there is a tool to help you link to your profile page on Gamer+. Your audience wants to read your profile and they may stick around and join.

The final piece of news this week is that starting Monday, August 2, Inspired Unreality will host the Related To Geeks podcast, the podcast of a geeky family. We will discuss The Geek Topic and then go into open game chat. Everyone is welcome to participate. We are planning on making this a monthly event.

Please comment below.

Thanks


 

The "Guidebook to the Duchy of Valnwall Special Edition", published by Small Niche Games is available on Drive Thru RPG here.

Guidebook to the Duchy of Valnwall

It is licensed OGL and is built on top of Wizards Of The Coast and Labyrinth Lord as well as other properties listed in the OGL Copyright License at the end of the book.

Peter C. Spahn (pspahn) writes "Small Niche Games would like to encourage professional and amateur publishers to use the Guidebook as a shared regional setting and set their commercial adventures within the Duchy of Valnwall. Labyrinth Lords (and publishers) should feel free to change, add, or remove any of the information in this book to better suit his or her own game."

Their are several great maps in this book including this one.

Just a little bit right of center is a small rectangle that makes a perfect map for our Milyagon Quest, "The Witch's Panacea". Fortunately the map is huge with many pixels so I was able to throw it into GIMP, do a crop and make a few small edits and I came up with this.

Nice map, huh? Much better than I would have drawn myself. So I guess now I know where Milyagon is. It's in the Duchy of Valnwall.

Thanks to Peter Spahn and Small Niche Games.

Serpents Fall

caeora.com/product-page/serpents-fall

"Here is the finished Serpents Fall map! The colossal remains of a dead sea serpent, twisted around a few dark rocks and shallows just off shore. When I was making this I imagined that the serpent has been killed by something even bigger in the ocean like a Kraken! And the creepy statue in the top right was brought to the rocks by a kraken worshipping cult, using the blood and organs of the sea serpent for dark rituals."

Caeora will be our guest on the Gamer+ Inspired Unreality open game chat at Tenkar's Tavern on Discord next Monday, August 12, at 9:00 PM Central.

It's been a great week @Gamer+ with many new gamers joining us. We now have over 60 gamers and like I was hoping I have been getting good suggestions on how to improve the site.

I just added a Link To Your Profile feature at the bottom of every profile page. Go to your profile and scroll down to see it. There are detailed instructions here.

Link to your profile

We have also added gamer RSS feeds and homepage links for their blogs, podcasts, video channels, chat, actual play... You will see this in the footer on every page. The real gem is the View last 60 items here  link. This updates more quickly than the FeedGrabbr scroll and it has the actual posts with pics and videos included. Try it now.

View last 60 items here

Thanks to TheEVilDM for helping with this project. Do you want to include your link? Contact hairylarry or TheEvilDM on Gamer+.

TheEvilDM also pointed out that he wasn't getting email notifications. I was able to fix that and I wrote a post about it here.

Email notification

This post also explains how to unsubscribe from Gamer+ News if you would rather just get this online.

Check out the Groups. We've got several budding communities started. If there's no group for your interest start one. Somebody has to do it.

Also we now have gamerplus voice and text chat rooms at Tenkar's Tavern on Discord. Come tonight for Inspired Unreality open game chat scheduled for Monday's at 9:00 PM Central. We will be adding occasional guests and I have a few other ideas too.

If you have ideas for Gamer+ please post them in the comments below. If you're reading this in your email or at Tenkar's Tavern log on to Gamer+ and click Blogs to find this post. Then add your suggestions in the Comments below.

Thanks

TheEvilDM pointed out that email notifications weren't working so I googled around and found out about a cron job that takes care of that and other stuff.

I checked the cron jobs for Gamer+ and sure enough, there it was, trying to run a program on yourdomain.com. So I changed that to gamerplus.org and sure enough, email notifications started working.

So, you might be getting some email notifications. And you might not want to get email notifications.

In the upper right corner there is a dropdown menu with your username on it. Pick My Preferences. Then pick Mail Notifications. You can fine tune which notifications you want to get. This will control the notifications that you get in your Notifications menu, right next to your username in the upper right.

I left these all on because that little Notifications menu helps me keep up with my discussions on Gamer+.

Scroll down to the bottom of that page and you will find a section called, Also send by email.

So you can set it to Immediately if you want to receive an email as soon as someone responds to your post.

You can set it to Never it you would rather not receive notification emails at all.

And in the middle is the wonderful "Automatically (if you don't show up on the site for 2 days)". In other words, don't send me emails if I'm on Gamer+ checking them myself. But if I get busy for a few days I appreciate the reminders.

Additionally on the My Preferences screen there is a General tab where you can set your timezone and subscribe/unsubscribe from the Gamer+ newsletter.  We haven't sent one of these yet but we probably will sometime. In fact a weekly email isn't a bad idea. Think I'll start that today.

So you can turn that off too if you want to.

Thanks

If you have a blog, podcast, video channel, or other website and you want to send your readers to your profile page on Gamer+ you can copy the link code at the bottom of your profile page just above the footer.

Drag your mouse over the code or triple click to turn it blue. Hit Ctrl-C to copy it to the clipboard. Go to your website code and wherever you want the link hit Ctrl-V to paste the code in. Then change your_username to your username on Gamer+. Be sure to get it exactly right. It is case sensitive so it has to be capitalized just like it is on Gamer+. Test the link.

This is a great way to support Gamer+. Your readers will enjoy reading your profile and they may decide to sign up for a Gamer+ account.

Thanks