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Fate Core Kickstarter

If you haven’t heard of Fate, it’s an updated and improved take on the Fudge RPG rules. It’s a very different but very rules-light and roleplay-heavy system, and has won critical acclaim in the RPGs Spirit of the Century, Dresden Files, Diaspora and more. Now, the company behind this system and games, Evil Hat, is running a Kickstarter to produce an improved writing of these rules in a system-neutral book ala GURPS and others. With these rules, you can run anything from fantasy, science fiction, cyberpunk, and more.

I haven’t personally used the Fate rules, but have heard many great things about it. The buy-in for this Kickstarter is very low; $1 gets you immediate access to the working draft, while $10 will get you all of the PDF expansions that are unlocked. As of this writing, it’s already at $66, 812, with an original goal of $3,000. I commend Evil Hat for setting a realistic goal as well as a long timeline. Right now 10 expansions have already been unlocked, with another one very close. There’s still 55 days ago, so who knows how far this thing can go.

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Blog updates

I currently have 11 posts in draft.

When most people blog, I imagine that each post is a spur-of-the-moment thing (like this post is), and it gets written and posted in one sitting. Maybe it takes a couple minutes, maybe a few hours with a pot of coffee. Most of mine tend to take days if not weeks. I like to write reviews, so it takes a lot more time to really get into what I’m reviewing, collect my thoughts, and then work on how to even structure the review (I try to avoid templates or any other rigid structures when possible). Also, since this is something I do on my own, not getting paid, and no deadline set, I am a bit lax on getting posts done in a timely manner.

It also feels weird for me to upload such a short post. Yeah I could have posts that even just have a link or image I’d want to share, but I don’t really do that anyways (I’m not on Twitter, Facebook, etc.). One nice thing about having many posts in draft is that I can easily see what kind of things are on my mind, what interests me now. Ideally I’d like to write about a number of topics with a fair number of posts for each, but that usually isn’t the way my mind works.

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Star Wars

I first saw Star Wars as I did the Star Trek movies: on good old VHS. We had several drawers of VHS tapes, and nothing beat picking out a tape and putting it into the huge tank of a player and watch the movie on the glowing tube TV. For me, it was almost always a Star Wars or Trek movie. Growing up, I watched both on a regular basis. I saw the re-releases in theater with my mom, and it was great to watch Star Wars on the big screen. A couple years later the new movies came out, and while I had mixed feelings about the movies themselves it was still great to see Star Wars movies in the theaters. Since Revenge of the Sith was released, it’s been several years since I’ve watched a Star Wars movie at home, while I have still watched a Star Trek movie at least once a week. It was only recently that I’ve asked myself why that is.

Growing up, Star Wars blew my mind just like everyone else’s. While I didn’t watch it in theaters to begin with, it was almost better for me to watch them at home; it was just me and the screen, and I was immersed in this world of adventure and heroism. Compared to the cold scientific logic of Star Trek, Star Wars is a warm blanket of risk and romance. I’m surprised I didn’t wear those tapes out. Every time we stayed over at my aunt’s, we watched them there as well.

When the self-recorded VHS copies wore out, we purchased the THX VHS trilogy set.  These had some clean-up work done to them, but it was still the original movies.  A few years later, the Special Edition set was released and we bought those as well.  New effects and more changes had been done to the films.  Even then I had slowly stopped watching the films as often.  The DVD releases weren’t purchased until after the prequel movies had been released on DVD as well.  I think I’ve watched those DVDs once, and I haven’t checked out the newest blu-ray release.

The recent news of the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney is what originally got me thinking about Star Wars at all lately.  With it in my mind, I opened up Netflix and watched The People vs. George Lucas.  This was an interesting film that asked a lot of the questions I didn’t even know I had.  Where are the proper releases of the original, un-altered films?  What happened to you George?  A lot of that are things that should be relegated to another post, but I will likely not cover them at all.  Again, this post is about growing up with the original trilogy and how I relate to it today.

Many say that Star Trek is for the brainy, geeky nerds, while Star Wars is more for the masses; Star Trek is about logic, Star Wars is about feelings.   I can agree with those opinions.  Did I simply grow out of Star Wars, and so felt it easier to relate to Star Trek?  Possibly.  It didn’t hurt I later got into The Next Generation and Voyager shows, so there was a lot more Trek in general to dive into rather than just 6 films.  Could I not relate to the prequels since I was no longer a kid?  That too is possible.

So could I watch any of the Star Wars films now, and still be as enchanted as I was decades ago?  I wish I could say yes, but I’m not honestly sure.  There’s little doubt I couldn’t watch the prequels again; maybe it’s generational, or those films really are bad, but they’re not “my” Star Wars.  Even in the original trilogy, I may have to leave out Return of the Jedi.  Ewoks?  Barf.  It was also the one to get the most changes of the original trilogy.  So if I did want to watch the first 2-3 films, how should I?  Purchase the original trilogy on blu-ray?  That would offer the best quality, but also the most changes.  I can try to hunt down the DVD releases that offered the un-altered versions as well, but I’m pretty sure those have gotten quite expensive; they also would be worse quality and not in the proper aspect ratio.  Sadly, unless I want to hunt down illegal copies of the laserdisc versions, I don’t really have any options.  The movies I want to watch, according to George Lucas and Lucasfilm, don’t exist.  Can Disney fix that?  If so, I have some money with their name on it.

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The Cloud

“Cloud” is one of the current buzz words in the computer world. So many companies like to spout off phrases involving the word, and now it’s becoming a hot topic in the consumer area thanks to Apple and iCloud. But like “Web 2.0”, Cloud doesn’t mean anything different or new from what we’ve already had for decades: network- and internet-connected computers.

For the everyday “normal user”, the cloud has two great offerings: file sync and backups. Plenty of systems were around before Apple and Microsoft came into the game, and one of the most popular is Dropbox. Once the software is installed on your system, you’ll have a special folder that you can copy/move/etc. files to, and once there they are uploaded to their servers. Once uploaded, you can either access those same files on their website, or if you install Dropbox on another computer it will download those files there.  You can also share files and folders with other Dropbox users.  Again, it’s a very simple solution for people to use: what’s in the folder is synced and online.

It’s exactly how Microsoft’s Skydrive works.  Compared to Dropbox, there are some disadvantages to using Skydrive.  First, the system requirements for Skydrive are much higher; on OS X you must be running 10.7 (Dropbox still supports 10.4), and on Windows you must be running Vista SP2 (Dropbox still supports XP).  If you’re on the latest and greatest this won’t matter, while there’s still plenty of users all over the world who haven’t upgraded.  Of course, Dropbox also supports Linux, something I doubt will ever come to Skydrive.  When I tried Skydrive on my system, it seemed to work ok at first.  Uploading went fairly quickly considering I had about 4GB (on Skydrive I do have 25GB of free space, while on Dropbox I’m currently around 6GB).  Once synced it was easy to work in its folder as well as on the website.  The biggest downfall happened the next time I started up the computer.  After logging in, Dropbox took a few seconds to check for any changes and show the green checkmark, while Skydrive took over a minute.  During this check, Skydrive also used far more CPU and memory than Dropbox did at its peak.

Google Drive works a little differently, although not as much now that there is a client software that can be installed.  Originally, Google Drive (re-named from Google Docs) was online only; after logging into Google, Gmail, etc. you could choose the Docs section of their website, which would list all of your files.  This was limited to Docs-compatible files, namely text documents, spreadsheets and presentations.  Now images, PDFs, etc. can be added.  The desktop software, like Skydrive, can only be run on Windows and OS X.  Its system requirements aren’t as restrictive: XP and 10.6 are supported.  Unlike the other services, for Google Drive the desktop software is optional.  If you want, you can use it like Google Docs was originally: to create and edit documents online.  This may bother some (me included) as there’s no local copy of files saved, but it does make it far easier if you need to enable sharing and such.  I personally haven’t used their desktop software so I can’t attest if it makes their ecosystem any better or easier to use than the alternatives, but I would at least install the desktop software to have a local copy of the files, which I could then back them up myself.

On the Google Drive and Skydrive websites, office documents can be edited using the company’s respective software.  Google’s has been very popular as a lightweight alternative, especially for Word.  Microsoft has been working on an online version of Office for awhile, but it’s been recently integrated with Skydrive.  It is a bit heavier than Google’s offerings, so depending on your needs it may be too much.  For simple edits, it’ll be hard to beat Google Docs.  Dropbox, on the other hand, is strictly a “file server”; there are no built-in apps to edit text/Word documents, etc.  Again, depending on your needs this can be good or not.  As mentioned in a previous post I’ve been working a lot more with plain-text files.  With Dropbox installed on all 3 OS’s, I can go to each system and open those files with my preferred text editor.  You could do the same with Skydrive and Google Drive, but if you’re not using the native software to edit certain filetypes (.doc and .docx for example) you may either end up with weird appearances or worse, a corrupt file.

One thing to note about these three systems is their mobile apps: all 3 are quite excellent.  I like Dropbox’s as it allows a PIN to be setup, so even if your phone itself is unlocked you don’t have to worry about someone accessing your data easily.  The Skydrive app, while its desktop equivalent isn’t available on Linux, is available on Android, and it’s one of the most well-designed apps I’ve used.  It has a strong Metro appearance, and from what little I’ve used it’s very easy to navigate and use.  It’s also far easier to browse images in the Skydrive app compared to Dropbox, as the icons are larger by default.

So which cloud service to use?  There’s ups and downs to all services, and for file syncing and backup any are better than not using anything (unless you already back-up your data, which of course you do, right?).  If you plan on collaborating with many people and don’t need a heavy office suite, it’s hard to beat Google Drive.  If you do need to use Office but you already have a “proper copy” installed, then you may get by using Dropbox; otherwise if you do need full Office support and don’t have a copy then Skydrive may be the best for you.  If you’re running Linux, then Dropbox may be one of the few or only options out there. There are plenty of other services out there as well (SugarSync, SpiderOak, etc.) and all of them offer a trial, so feel free to try as many as possible before deciding. Welcome to the cloud!

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Labyrinth Lord

When searching for a Retroclone to play, it’s impossible to not read about Labyrinth Lord. Written by Dan Proctor of Goblinoid Games, Labyrinth Lord is a clone of Dungeons and Dragons Basic and Expert rulebooks. It’s part of the “first-wave” of retroclones to come out, and has had one major revision since its release (primarily new artwork).

Goblinoid Games knows how to make a nice-looking game, there’s no doubt about it. While the initial release had a more “amateur-looking” cover and artwork, the revised edition, with all art by Steve Zeiser, has a nice uniform look. The font is very easy on the eyes, and each section is clearly marked. Of all the retroclones, Labyrinth Lord may be the best as far as looks.

But to counter that heap of praise, there is something about Labyrinth Lord that I can’t quite pinpoint. As one forum poster noted, reading Labyrinth Lord left him “cold”.  At first I had trouble seeing it that way, but after going back to review the book I can now. I’m not sure if it’s the abundance of blacks/darks in the artwork, very little shading, etc. Or perhaps it’s the nice if straight-forward and no-nonsense writing. This is a book that wastes no time; here’s the game, here’s the set of rules, go play! Compared to the gushing enthusiasm of Swords and Wizardry or even the slight smile from Basic Fantasy, Labyrinth Lord is the straight-faced lecture.

As a Basic/Expert clone, Labyrinth Lord has a solid foundation to build on, while refusing any “wishy-washy” feeling of Swords and Wizardry, or the march of progression of Basic Fantasy. Labyrinth Lord sticks to the guns of Moldvay, Marsh and Cook, and does little to sway from it. Again, it’s a great ruleset and those who aren’t looking for anything different from a “true clone” will be happy to go with Labyrinth Lord and never look back.