RolePlayGateway: WeBlog!

AnimeMetro.com, the successor to our parent site GundamWing.com, was hacked at some point during the past 48 hours. Despite any recent uproars between AnimeMetro and RolePlayGateway staff, we sincerely condemn the attack on AnimeMetro as an act of unwarranted hatred and malice.

RolePlayGateway has not, and never will, encourage malicious hacking with the intent to deface or destroy a website or the user data within. This is perhaps one of the primary reasons we started GWing and RolePlayGateway - to create an environment where a member’s writing is safe from deletion. Supporting any behavior that involves destroying such data goes against our founding principles.

In short, we had nothing to do with AnimeMetro’s hacking.

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We’re making preparations to deploy our official Role Playing Chat. It’s going to be exciting - there will be some awesome features that’ll be rolled out around the same time, among which might be included the legendary reputation addon (formerly known as Karma, for you GWing veterans).

Feel free to test the current version of our chat, or you can catch us on our official RolePlayGateway IRC channel.

Look for everything to be deployed sometime in mid-October. We look forward to role playing with you!

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The author of the particularly famous Wheel of Time series passed away yesterday due to cardiac amyloidosis. Diagnosed with the disease in March of 2006, Jordan, born James Oliver Rigney Jr., vowed to fight the disease and continue his legendary writing career for many years to come. It is a great loss to the fantasy community, and on behalf of RolePlayGateway, we send our condolences to his family and friends, who will no doubt be the most affected by his passing.

You can catch more on Robert Jordan’s Official Blog, but due to the high traffic, here’s a mirror of his post:

It is with great sadness that I tell you that the Dragon is gone. RJ left us today at 2:45 PM. He fought a valiant fight against this most horrid disease. In the end, he left peacefully and in no pain. In the years he had fought this, he taught me much about living and about facing death. He never waivered in his faith, nor questioned our God’s timing. I could not possibly be more proud of anyone. I am eternally grateful for the time that I had with him on this earth and look forward to our reunion, though as I told him this afternoon, not yet. I love you bubba.

Our beloved Harriet was at his side through the entire fight and to the end. The last words from his mouth were to tell her that he loved her.

Thank each and everyone of you for your prayers and support through this ordeal. He knew you were there. Harriet reminded him today that she was very proud of the many lives he had touched through his work. We’ve all felt the love that you’ve been sending my brother/cousin. Please keep it coming as our Harriet could use the support.

Jason will be posting funeral arrangements.

My sincerest thanks.

Peace and Light be with each of you,

Wilson
Brother/Cousin
4th of 3

To Catalyst: Never, never loose faith. RJ did not. Harriet hasn’t. I haven’t. Going through what we have, our faith is only strengthened. Besides, if God didn’t exist, we would have never had Jim. We did. God does. Remember my Brother/Cousin, my friend, think of him fondly and glorify God’s name.

Editor’s Note:
The entire staff of Dragonmount.com would like to extend its most deepest sympathies to Robert Jordan’s family. He touched all of our lives in some way and we wish him the rest and peace he deserves. We will be posting information in the near future about where you can send condolences. Please check the News Section for these updates.

May you rest in peace.

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Did you know that we have a feature that lets you share any topic with any of your friends?

We all know how addictive RPGateway is. Don’t be alone in your addiction - there is strength in numbers! Share things with your friends and get them addicted, too.

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Every Friday, we’ll now be giving everyone a plethora of links and articles from the week previous. It’s a great way to catch up if you’ve fallen behind in the role playing world.

Here we go…

Frontalot’s Nerdcore song about Zork - one of the earliest role playing games, and a cultural icon for many. Oh, here’s the actual nerdcore movie.

Fury Building - MMOG Nation covers an awesome RPG-FPS they encountered at the recent PAX gaming conventions. Definitely worth a read, Michael does a good in-depth writeup. Michael, by the way, is the games editor over on Slashdot, and had a recent interview with Russ Pitts, a writer from The Escapist, on how to get into game journalism. Another beautiful piece that you must read.

Gleemax Online Board Gaming? - Mike writes on OgreCave:

It makes a kind of terrible sense, given how many of those crappy free play-by-web games are out there that people put incredible amounts of work into for no compensation at all - not even players. GTO’s offering is pretty far from terrible; it’s well-executed, attractive and solid. And I happen to know how bloody much work it takes to code that. Hell, making the crappy kind is…

Campaign Worlds Should Be Shaken But Not Stirred - Martin of TreasureTables writes about how it’s a good thing to allow your worlds and characters to change.

Dungeons & Dragons for Girls - a wonderfully expansive article on girls in the D&D world, covering a few things from GenCon.

…and there you have it - this week’s Free Link Friday. Enjoy!

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I’ve always loved Eve Online. It’s a space MMO, with ridiculous levels of immersion. They tout that it’s the world’s largest game universe, and let me tell you - it’s absolutely huge.

One of our new members has posted her intentions to work on an Eve Online Roleplaying Journal. I think this is an incredibly awesome idea. It’s not new, I’ve seen character journals before, but it just seems to fit in with Eve’s extensive world and role playing experience.

Character journaling is a great way to extend the world of a game and add more depth to both the character and the plot. Be careful that you don’t fall victim to the inactivity that often plagues real journaling! Stick to it, and you’ll reap the benefits of fleshing out your character and having a solid history of the thought processes involved.

Be sure to check out Emywn’s Journal from Eve Online Roleplaying. It looks like it’s going to be something I’m going to have to follow using my trusty Google RSS Reader. Good luck, Kethro - and thanks for the idea!

P.S.: Google Reader is an amazing tool that lets you follow your favorite sites and their content without ever checking the page. You can check out my shared items list to see what sort of things I follow, but check out the official Google Reader page for more information.

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In many online communities, like our beloved role playing forum, member activity often slows to a drip, and can risk being shut altogether. There are tons of methods of addressing this, but we’re going to address one particular facet.

Make A Commitment.

Get your members to commit to something simple and attainable. In our case, I’d like to make the challenge to all of our members to commit to dedicate one hour per day to the forum.

Encourage your members to set their own goals, too - but be sure to give them solid standards and pushes for the direction you want them to go. Your goal is to drum up activity, so push them in that direction using a guideline, or a pilot commitment.

So what can you do in one hour?

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On our forums, we have a resource list of places to roleplay. It’s a great list, but as I’m sure you know - there are tons of places that we have no idea exist. Some are underground, and you can’t find them in search engines, others are private and are only for those who’ve been given the link.

Where are your favorite places to roleplay online? Forums, Chats, MUDs, MMOs - it doesn’t matter, give us the link!

Oh - and don’t forget to send this to your friends. The more people, the better. Please don’t forget to add the link!

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Establishing great gaming relationships with your fellow role-players is an integral part of enjoying the experience.

These days, the rosters of local gaming groups change frequently. Gone are the days when you got together with your close friends and started a gaming group. Role-playing game shops and the internet especially, make it much easier to join gaming groups of people you’ve never met. This leads to a whole new age of problems.

And if you think joining an established group is hard, try forming a new one; it’s much harder. Most people overlook the obvious reason this is so hard; in order to effectively role-playing game with a new people, a high level of trust is fundamentally necessary. The truism is “you can’t game with strangers.”

The Obvious That Needs to be Mentioned
You’ve probably heard it all before, but it bears re-thinking. Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Introduce Yourself - a name and a short description are much better than being ‘the new guy’.
• Be Polite - even as much or more than you are with your parents’ friends. (It works!)
• Learn Everyone’s Names - believe it or not, the more you say someone’s name, the more they like you.
• Share Your Interests and Remember Theirs - beyond gaming. What made those old-time, role-playing games so good were the outside friendships they were built on.
• Treat Everyone with Obvious Respect - even if you have to go out of your way to show it. (Why? Read the next line closely.)
• Give Trust to Get It - it’s a fact of life and yet so many people forget it. Everyone gets the benefit of your doubt, no matter what! If you trust everyone in the group explicitly, the rest of the group will defend you if you are taken advantage of. Honest!

Real Quality Goes Beyond the Gaming Table
I’ll say it again; if you want a great, role-playing gaming group, you must be friends with these people away from the table too. Do things together outside the sessions. Remember those interests I made you remember? This is what you can do with them. The important part is to learn to think of them as people (and especially as friends), not as gamers (or even just as their characters).

The best way to carry yourself is to be considerate, but tough enough to be honest. Make yours an equal relationship with neither taking advantage of the other. This is the best avenue to any friendship.

If you feel you are having trouble fitting in and may be upsetting the people in the group, keep an eye on the quieter members of the group. They usually reflect the feelings of an established group the most, just not verbally. If they look uncomfortable, do what you can to throttle back and be more sensitive; if they look happy or excited, you’re doing fine.

Because everyone has such a personal investment in the game (especially in their characters), avoid all conflict with players and be careful in conflicts with characters. Players often identify quite closely with their characters and take insults and injury to them quite seriously. Remember? “Treat Everyone with Obvious Respect.” This is where ‘tough, but honest’ is most necessary. Make it clear where you stand, focusing on the outside of the game situation. (Such as, “Only my character hates your character’s guts. I like you.”)

Possible Problems
You can go all over the internet and find real articles on how to deal with these: Favoritism, Best-Friend-itis, Turtle Players, Rules Lawyers and Month Hauls. The fact is almost every problem at the gaming table stems from someone not wanting to be taken advantage of, mostly a matter of being subversively defensive or overly generous. Be charitable and in order win their trust!

Finally
The most important thing to remember is that you’re there to share the fun! Nothing more, nothing less.

“This is an exhibition, not a competition. Please, no wagering!” — David Letterman

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Well, there’s a good writeup of what we know so far about D&D 4E, thanks Michael. Here’s everything in a nutshell:

• Classes are going to have a lot more internal variation from character to character. Fighters are singled out as the example for this, with ’sword and board’ fighters being substantially different than a flair Fighter or an two-handed axe Fighter.
• These characters’ abilities will stem from the Martial Power Source. Unlike Wizards and Clerics, Fighters draw their strength from endless training and personal resolve. These characters are about ‘mastering their inner potential’ and externalizing it in the form of combat.
• Races will have more efficacious abilities, with some pieces coming into play as your character goes up in level. Again, the intent is to have characters differ from each other even if they’re the same race and class. Racial feats will allow special tricks, tactics. Half-elves will get something called ‘inspiring presence’, which has to suck less than what they’ve got now.
• Monsters are going to have far more in the way of options when it comes to combat, as seen in an article about what it’s like to fight a dragon. New dragon abilities include: AoE attacks based on their energy type, the ability to attack as a free action, and the ability to use a breath weapon in response to an attack.
• Clerics will somehow be able to heal allies while doing damage, as described here: “Calling on the power of her god, she swings her halberd at the dragon—a critical hit! The damage isn’t bad, but even better, the wizard gets a nice surge of healing power.â€?
• Dungeons will be designed with that earlier stated goal of ‘more monsters, more movement, more tactics’ in mind. Instead of having players go from room to room fighting a couple of enemies at a time, groups of monsters will be interconnected. They’ll come to each other’s aid, and generally make things more messy for the players.
• Character classes now fall into one of four Archetypes: Leaders, Defenders, Strikers, and Controllers. Bards and Clerics are Leaders, and Bards are going to be more specialized than they are in 3.5. Parties that choose to double up on certain Archetypes while leaving others out will face different challenges than a ‘balanced’ group … but should still be able to play.
• Though it’s not entirely clear, one of the Playtest Reports hints that loot will be handled differently for NPC encounters. This would be something I’d greatly appreciate, as I love sending NPCs at my players but hate them walking away with six +1 longswords as a result.
• Tieflings are implied as a core PC race by the PHB cover art, and a Playtest Report implies that Eladrin will be as well.
• Ranged melee attackers are going to be much more effective in this version of the game: “[The player’s] second impression [of Fourth Edition combat] came squarely from the three arrows with which Heron skewered the hapless goblin sharpshooter in the loft. That poor goblin fired on Heron, missing but triggering an immediate counterattack from the ranger, who followed up with two more arrows on his turn. The sharpshooter was dead before the third arrow struck home.â€?
• Rogues will have a group buff ability of some kind, described as ’shouting encouragement’.
• A wizard, hitting a wolf with her staff, not only did damage but ‘moved it away’, implying knockback as a basic combat element. There is also an implication that a long weapon like a staff can hit more than one enemy with a single blow.
• The concept of ‘Second Wind’ is used in a Playtest Report, which is a game mechanic lifted right from Saga Edition Star Wars. From that book: “If you are reduced to one-half your maximum hit points or less, you can catch a second wind as a swift action. The action heals one-quarter of your full hit point total (ruond down) or a number of hit points equal to your Constitution score, whichever is greater. You can catch a second wind only once per day.â€?
• Rogues can attack such that their opponents are vulnerable to other ally attacks, possibly an Attack of Opportunity.

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