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Trevor Blake: Gary Gygax RIP [LINK-ZUM]

Around 1978 my father read an article in Parade Magazine that mentioned the game Dungeons and Dragons. He thought that sounded interesting and bought a copy. I went on to spend a shameful amount of his money on the game and games inspired by it. Getting on thirty years later, I often think about fantasy role playing games. I don't make time to play them, but I think about them. The good memories of those games will be with me for the rest of my life. And so a late thank you to the late Gary Gygax for his role in bringing such games into being. From an interview in 2003...

Q. While many people have accused Dungeons & Dragons (and roleplaying games in general) of being "inspired by the devil," don't you feel that there is some correlation between ritual magic (adoption of roles, costumes, gathering in circles) and the standard AD&D game playing session?

A. LOL. No. Frankly, I don't believe in magic. We all play roles - do you speak to a cop, your parents, your friends, your teacher, your boss, someone who works for you, etc., the same way? Of course not. People dress in costumes to go to parties and discos - to point out just a few such instances - and most people do not don costumes to play RPGs (as they do in live action RPGs). Playing any game, or having a meeting of a small number of people means "gathering in a circle."

Labels: games, magick

Trevor Blake: OGRE [LINK-ZUM]

OGRE is a game designed and published by Steve Jackson. Wikipedia describes OGRE as "an asymmetric-forces hex-map game set in the late 21st Century pitting one player's giant unmanned robot tank against the other player's headquarters defended by a mixture of conventional tanks, infantry and artillery." OGRE was first published in 1977 and I have been playing it off and on since 1980. The game itself is apparently out of print, but you can piece together most of what you need to play with free resources online. The majority of the back story to the game is found in a vignette by Steve Jackson. OGRE lite [pdf] is a condensed version of the rules. Design your own hex map with the OGRE Map Editor, or base your maps on the original maps. Make your own counters, or use some fan-made counters. Steve Jackson Games offers a number of OGRE items for sale and links to a number of OGRE resources. There are one or two especially good fan sites that aren't listed at Steve Jackson's site. OGRE can be played by e-mail. Here's a note of thanks to Steve Jackson for thirty years of OGRE.

Labels: games

diy tags [LINK-ZUM]

DIY commerce del.icio.us games krankheit mac p2p paper robots rockets sex tools transhuman trevorblake

Labels: commerce, del.icio.us, DIY, games, krankheit, mac, p2p, paper, robots, rockets, sex, tools, transhuman, trevorblake

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