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Post by secretsofblackmoor on Aug 23, 2018 1:55:31 GMT -5
Yup and Yup and Yup and Yup and Yup  |
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Post by Mighty Darci on Aug 23, 2018 10:13:25 GMT -5
I've come to the conclusion that specific rules usually don't matter. There are procedures that work well, and then there are the nuanced little rules that we believe define a system, but does it really? Why should we even need that in our games? Does it really matter if we are using mechanics which so-and-so says that they use, or if we just use the ones that come to us in real-time when we need them? If a badguy throws a lit torch into a house, the house will burn because I said it will; or, if the PC's are in that house, I'll see what they will do with it and go from there. I don't need to look up fires. I know what I want to happen, if the orcs want to burn down an entire village, it's either going to happen or the PCs are going to try and stop me from doing it. They are the deciding factor, not a handbook. If the players decide to play a war game, then we can play the war game, but that is about the extent of what a handbook can do, everything else is up to us. Have an exalt for this great post! |
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Post by secretsofblackmoor on Aug 23, 2018 11:00:39 GMT -5
I've come to the conclusion that specific rules usually don't matter. There are procedures that work well, and then there are the nuanced little rules that we believe define a system, but does it really? Why should we even need that in our games? Does it really matter if we are using mechanics which so-and-so says that they use, or if we just use the ones that come to us in real-time when we need them? If a badguy throws a lit torch into a house, the house will burn because I said it will; or, if the PC's are in that house, I'll see what they will do with it and go from there. I don't need to look up fires. I know what I want to happen, if the orcs want to burn down an entire village, it's either going to happen or the PCs are going to try and stop me from doing it. They are the deciding factor, not a handbook. If the players decide to play a war game, then we can play the war game, but that is about the extent of what a handbook can do, everything else is up to us. Have an exalt for this great post! Agreed. |
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Post by The Bloody Nine on Aug 23, 2018 14:55:01 GMT -5
secretsofblackmoor during your research, how many times have you said "Really? That's what happened or That's the way it was?" Can you share a story or two with us about some of those Aha! moments?
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Post by secretsofblackmoor on Aug 23, 2018 19:19:35 GMT -5
secretsofblackmoor during your research, how many times have you said "Really? That's what happened or That's the way it was?" Can you share a story or two with us about some of those Aha! moments? It's difficult to relate stories because we sort of want to keep some things secret for now. We really do love our secrets. There is also the issue as a film maker, of distortion. Cameras don't tell the truth, they lie. So despite trying to tell the truth, it just does not exist within the film medium. All one can do is try to let the project become a living thing, that then tells you what it wants you to do, and you hope this is a near truth. Holding the very same copy of Strategos that the guys checked out from the U of M library. Then opening it and seeing Charles Adiel Lewis Totten's signature on the inside cover. I was floored. There are several other moments of awe like that. Some others had more to do with merely touching the antiquity of gaming history and realizing that we're somehow part of it. As an example, we went to shoot the guys running a civil war battle. They were using hand painted plastic 18mm Air Fix figures. I had some of these in the 60's as a kid myself. So there I am sitting across from Stephen Rocheford, while to my side is Jeff Berry. The rest of the room is full of Blackmoor and MMSA luminaries as well. I think Gaylord was there. Hoyt was there. Jenk's was there for a bit, but had to leave. And others who may not be famous, but are part of the core war gamer group. And of course Wesely was there since it was his game room. And of course, since I joined the group, we've lost both Jenk's and Peter, which is very sad. I should say that James Gallup III is one of the best war game referee's I've played with. I never see him slip up on the details like others do. And he keeps everyone in line so that the game flows. He treats his ref'ing as a technician and is just very precise. Since I did not know their rules and you are not allowed to measure ranges before hand, I began by taking pot shots at their artillery with mine. I was just ranging, or bracketing the range, at that point. But most of my force was infantry that was sitting in the open. My main concern was simply to try to sneak my troops into the shadow of a tree line, so they would not be exposed to Rock's artillery fire. Which even at a distance could still rattle my troops a bit. Those damned rifled Yankee guns! And then others of my units that were moving into another tree line shadow suddenly and unexpectedly made contact with troops. So now I'm in charge range, and exchanging fire with the enemy. I had no idea they were there because of secret deployment, so I charged Rocheford's dismounted cavalry. You have to understand,. Roch, is a former tanker and also would play war games for the military during his tour, I knew this and was sort of quaking in my shoes. I figured he was going to come up and just roll over my line and then chase the last remaining dregs off the board because he is a sharp gamer. Anyway, I missed the point. The minis we were using to play that battle were Dave Arneson's collection of AirFix minis that he had likely bought around 1966, or so. When they told me, I was very deeply moved. I think it was this game when Rocheford got a look on his face of surprise, and said something like: I had no idea you actually knew how to play war games with minis! So for me handling Dave's sort of sacred AirFix minis was pretty amazing. And being in the room with guys, who if they were chess players, would likely be world famous names like Capablanca, or Fisher, or Korchnoy. That was cool, but different, because we are all friends by then. I actually feel a bit awkward speaking about my friends and sort of analyzing them, but it is part of what I struggle to get across in the film. And in a sense it is a duty to note them as people, as their sort of in-house historian. I want people to really see them and how as a group of people, these are exceptional people in all ways. I wrote a longer post and decided to delete some of the more personal commentary about how these people are, because I just don't want to cross that boundary right now -- perhaps later on and with permission. And I don't mean to imply that you asked anything that is not appropriate. I just worry that I may over step some boundaries. I can hint at some other ah ha moments. Seeing some rules that no one else has seen that look like original Blackmoor rules with some minor additions. I can say that everything Arneson ever claimed he had before he worked with Gygax is in there. There is a privilege and intimacy to being allowed within a circle of people to literally study and observe them. If you've seen the film about Vivian Meyer the photographer: It is possibly the most violating transgression of a person's life and privacy I have ever seen on film. The film maker should be ashamed of himself. And the people selling art she made, supposedly in her name, are playing a game of bloodsport with her legacy while making money off of her. Just shameful. |
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Post by ripx187 on Aug 23, 2018 19:27:03 GMT -5
WOW! That is deep and crazy awesome stuff secretsofblackmoor. Well worth the Exalt. I got goosebumps! |
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Post by secretsofblackmoor on Aug 23, 2018 20:51:21 GMT -5
No idea what anexalt is. Must be good. Excelsior!!! (We shout excelsior when we make bad die rolls at game night. But you have to do it with conviction. ) |
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Post by Bartholmew Quarrels on Aug 23, 2018 21:11:46 GMT -5
secretsofblackmoor, you were asked a great question and gave a great answer. If this film is two hours, are you just scratching the surface? Would there be additional parts on DVD? Or with permission will you also be writing a book full of their stories in mostly their words? I really hope someday that whoever is still around gets to see all those documents, best would be a physical and online museum. Better yet would be all of it published in books hard copy and pdf, all of it. Hey I can dream.
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Post by ripx187 on Aug 23, 2018 21:19:56 GMT -5
No idea what anexalt is. Must be good. Excelsior!!! (We shout excelsior when we make bad die rolls at game night. But you have to do it with conviction. ) It's a little game that we play here, if you say or do something that inspires others, you can give them an Exalt or a point. I do like your Excelsior house rule. One of mine is if you roll a die off of the table and onto the floor, you automatically fumble and are subject to a hit. Grumpy farts like me hate stepping on d4s. |
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Post by Admin Pete on Aug 23, 2018 21:30:05 GMT -5
secretsofblackmoor, On the left side of the your post you will see your name and below that is a place for an Avatar and below that is how many posts you have and then below that is says Karma and when someone gives you an Exalt your Karma increases by one. When you are looking at someone else's post you should see a button you can push to give that person an Exalt. There is also an option for Smiting people when you don't like there post and our founder TPD turned that off when he installed the plugin and that option will stay off.
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Post by secretsofblackmoor on Aug 23, 2018 23:43:57 GMT -5
Ok, I feel sort of strange right now, because I think god may be talking to me. Or some kind of internet deity called -- Admin.
I know that Admin is the one true deity, yes I do.
Hello ---- god?
Uh, I feel ashamed because I am using an old browser and I may be a bit of a curmudgeon because I just learned how to use this one maybe 10 years ago and I am a late adopter.
uh, hello there god.
No, I do not get Exalt, or not exalt. I am ok with the giant THUMB thing for now.
Thank you god.
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Post by Admin Pete on Aug 24, 2018 8:05:17 GMT -5
Ok, I feel sort of strange right now, because I think god may be talking to me. Or some kind of internet deity called -- Admin. I know that Admin is the one true deity, yes I do. Hello ---- god? Uh, I feel ashamed because I am using an old browser and I may be a bit of a curmudgeon because I just learned how to use this one maybe 10 years ago and I am a late adopter. uh, hello there god. No, I do not get Exalt, or not exalt. I am ok with the giant THUMB thing for now. Thank you god. Please don't do that, it makes me very uncomfortable. I am not a god in any way and most particularly I am not God in any way. Using an old browser and being a curmudgeon is just fine. WE have lots of curmudgeons here. Quite a few people here browse using devices with limited capabilities. |
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Post by Admin Pete on Aug 24, 2018 8:09:48 GMT -5
No idea what anexalt is. Must be good. Excelsior!!! (We shout excelsior when we make bad die rolls at game night. But you have to do it with conviction. ) It's a little game that we play here, if you say or do something that inspires others, you can give them an Exalt or a point. I do like your Excelsior house rule. One of mine is if you roll a die off of the table and onto the floor, you automatically fumble and are subject to a hit. Grumpy farts like me hate stepping on d4s. Game, game you say?! Don't be giving the man misinformation, this is deadly serious stuff, it's not a game. You know what happens each time the scores are tabulated. That is why it was very brave of me to reset the Karma score on the Admin account instead of letting TPD's score ride. Man, how can you say something like that! Game! You really called it a game, when you know it is a life or death matter!     |
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Post by secretsofblackmoor on Aug 24, 2018 11:15:49 GMT -5
Ok, I feel sort of strange right now, because I think god may be talking to me. Or some kind of internet deity called -- Admin. I know that Admin is the one true deity, yes I do. Hello ---- god? Uh, I feel ashamed because I am using an old browser and I may be a bit of a curmudgeon because I just learned how to use this one maybe 10 years ago and I am a late adopter. uh, hello there god. No, I do not get Exalt, or not exalt. I am ok with the giant THUMB thing for now. Thank you god. Please don't do that, it makes me very uncomfortable. I am not a god in any way and most particularly I am not God in any way. Using an old browser and being a curmudgeon is just fine. WE have lots of curmudgeons here. Quite a few people here browse using devices with limited capabilities. Yes, Oh Great One. I will no longer make such mistakes. Thank you, Oh Great One. |
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Post by mormonyoyoman on Aug 24, 2018 15:41:47 GMT -5
When I get to the Big Boy laptop, I have to dismember to Exalt Mr Secret's currentest post.
Just remember that Mr Admin Sir can be referred to as Great One, but only Darci has earned the title of Mighty. Because she scares us, that's why.
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Post by secretsofblackmoor on Aug 24, 2018 18:35:48 GMT -5
secretsofblackmoor , you were asked a great question and gave a great answer. If this film is two hours, are you just scratching the surface? Would there be additional parts on DVD? Or with permission will you also be writing a book full of their stories in mostly their words? I really hope someday that whoever is still around gets to see all those documents, best would be a physical and online museum. Better yet would be all of it published in books hard copy and pdf, all of it. Hey I can dream. BOINK! Ok, another of my fine delete the response before you post responses. So as I said... Yes, this film had to be honed down to only one subject. So some people may say, but it doesn't tell us about Dave Arneson's biography, or it doesn't show us... you name it, it may be missing. The one element that seemed most interesting was the creation of the RPG game itself, whether it is D&D or not. Some people may be disappointed to find it does not go into Blackmoor itself in depth, but a lot of people make comments about it. I had one guy tell me he felt the war gaming stuff is boring, yet that is the basis of all of this. I doubt you could find one D&D historian who would argue that fact. WE argue other facts, but not that it comes from war gaming. So having said that, this is merely Volume 1, in a series of possibly 3 films. But we need to get this one out first, hence the big T-shirt and marketing drive. The original rough draft is 6 hours long. WE cut out a lot to make it 2 hours long. Another side project that several well know, and perhaps not well known researchers are interested in, is to have an online resource archive. This archive could also be annotated by certain people who seem to know what they are doing. So you could search by object, date, creator, patrimony, and even perhaps researcher notes. On our end, we have several actual game playing aides we are interested in publishing as modules. We have not made an official announcement, but we have an artist working and we have about 70% of an actual Blackmoor module already created. This would include copies of original documents as additional setting material. But even this is more cash up front. An extrmely high qiality limited run of 1000 hard bound boooks costs about as much as a car to print. I ain't got that lying around. Well since you are being so friendly, a little bit of inside scoop there for you. I hope I was not too pedantic. I hate how I end up sounding alike a blow hard sometimes. oh, and another cool thing, we are the present keepers of Dave Arneson's Fanzine. It really is of no interest to most RPG players, it's all war games. But these are the original plates he used to do his mimeo graphs with. It would be interesting to find a specialist who could do NEW prints off the first 2-3 volumes as actual mimeo graphs. |
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Post by mormonyoyoman on Aug 24, 2018 19:30:59 GMT -5
Man, I wonder if Gesetner even make mimeos any more.
I wonder if I even spelled Gesetner's name right!
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Post by mormonyoyoman on Aug 24, 2018 19:33:35 GMT -5
No they don't and no I didn't. Man, I wonder if Gesetner even make mimeos any more. I wonder if I even spelled Gesetner's name right! |
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Post by El Borak on Aug 24, 2018 20:58:10 GMT -5
This is just me, but I am not impressed with expensive limited run things that I could never afford and will never get to see the contents of. I am only interested in the things that I might possibly be able to scrape up the cash to buy.
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Post by secretsofblackmoor on Aug 25, 2018 2:16:25 GMT -5
This is just me, but I am not impressed with expensive limited run things that I could never afford and will never get to see the contents of. I am only interested in the things that I might possibly be able to scrape up the cash to buy. Yeah, There is definitely a cost difference between now and the old days. Manufacturing is costly. But as with all gamer material, there's paper back on demand, as well as PDF's. It seems to be the standard model. |
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Post by mao on Aug 25, 2018 7:23:30 GMT -5
This is just me, but I am not impressed with expensive limited run things that I could never afford and will never get to see the contents of. I am only interested in the things that I might possibly be able to scrape up the cash to buy. This big time. I saw an incredible Cthulhu thing that was like $200 Really Incredible. not that incredible |
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Post by Crimhthan The Great on Aug 25, 2018 12:53:04 GMT -5
This is a great project, I hope it succeeds beyond our imagination.
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Post by El Borak on Aug 25, 2018 14:24:59 GMT -5
This is just me, but I am not impressed with expensive limited run things that I could never afford and will never get to see the contents of. I am only interested in the things that I might possibly be able to scrape up the cash to buy. Yeah, There is definitely a cost difference between now and the old days. Manufacturing is costly. But as with all gamer material, there's paper back on demand, as well as PDF's. It seems to be the standard model. Well yeah the POD and PDFs are great, but those won't help much on a limited print run once in a lifetime deal. I have looked up books various times to find out, there are only 1000 in the world and in no other format, collectors only and everyone else tough. You can't even find those books in a library because of the rarity. |
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Post by secretsofblackmoor on Aug 25, 2018 18:17:37 GMT -5
We have no interest in creating scarcity. We just need to honor agreements with people who own rights for certain items. On our end, we will do what we can do to make things available.
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Post by El Borak on Aug 25, 2018 20:15:24 GMT -5
We have no interest in creating scarcity. We just need to honor agreements with people who own rights for certain items. On our end, we will do what we can do to make things available. I hope those people will at some point relent and allow a wider distribution than just a collectors only edition. |
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Post by Mighty Darci on Aug 26, 2018 23:19:41 GMT -5
When I get to the Big Boy laptop, I have to dismember to Exalt Mr Secret's currentest post. Just remember that Mr Admin Sir can be referred to as Great One, but only Darci has earned the title of Mighty. Because she scares us, that's why. And don't you forget it Mr YoYoman! |
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Post by George Smith on Aug 27, 2018 13:58:38 GMT -5
Thanks for all the links, good stuff.
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Post by El Borak on Aug 27, 2018 23:35:29 GMT -5
Thanks for all the links, good stuff. Yeah, great informative thread. |
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Post by secretsofblackmoor on Aug 28, 2018 10:48:20 GMT -5
We're Blogging our hearts out. We ran Greg Svenson's Tonisborg dungeon again.. It is a very old Dungeon. David Megarry was able to locate the key to Level 10 a couple days ago. If you want to know just how old Tonisborg is, The dungeon level key implies that Clerics use Cunning as their primary stat. www.secretsofblackmoor.com/blog/greyhawk-meets-blackmoor |
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Post by Harry Wolf on Aug 28, 2018 23:07:02 GMT -5
We're Blogging our hearts out. We ran Greg Svenson's Tonisborg dungeon again.. It is a very old Dungeon. David Megarry was able to locate the key to Level 10 a couple days ago. If you want to know just how old Tonisborg is, The dungeon level key implies that Clerics use Cunning as their primary stat. www.secretsofblackmoor.com/blog/greyhawk-meets-blackmoorWow, I remember reading a thread about cunning as a stat, that is a really old dungeon. What is Svenson's campaign name? I wonder how many campaigns there are that are originally form the Twin Cities that predate January 1974 and what are there names? |
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