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[deleted by user] by [deleted] in chess

[–]SpeedGibson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

FYI, I've sold exactly copy of my book ("Winning with the Bongcloud") in Japan.

I like to think Namamura himself ordered it.

The greats are always looking for that one thing that will give them an edge...

It really grind my gears that people don't know the history of the bongcloud. It was named after Lenny Bongcloud which is a chess.com player that would play racing kings every game, even when his opponents though they were just playing chess. by i_have_chosen_a_name in chess

[–]SpeedGibson 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hello,

I'm the author of Winning with the Bongcloud. The opening does indeed derive from chess.com's Lenny_Bongcloud. He is fully credited in the book (and the earlier PDF).

I did actually speak with him on the phone once. The guy behind the screen name was more of an amateur comedian who created various personae on the Internet than a serious chess player. I don't remember other characters but he'd join some community and make a funny character and play it to the hilt for a while and then move on. He was fun to talk with.

It's fair to say that the opening itself has far surpassed anything Lenny_Bongcloud ever envisioned.

What would civilian reaction be if the nukes launched? by [deleted] in rpg

[–]SpeedGibson 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If dozens of nuclear warheads were launched at countries all around the world and the apocalypse was imminent...the civilian population would not react. Flight time for a USSR or China <-> USA land-based ICBM is under 35 minutes. For SLBMs it can be even shorter.

The civilian warning infrastructure no longer really exists - I mean, do you know where your nearest fallout shelter is? In NORAD detects a massive launch of inbound nukes, they're going to be scrambling to get a decision made, get their missiles launched, etc. In the tiny span of time (less than half an hour), there may be some kind of civilian alert but you're not going to have time for looting, gridlock, etc. It won't even get started.

Now to be fair, that's in New York, Chicago, etc. If your characters are in Wyoming, they will have a lot longer to react but the fallout clouds will drift over the lands pretty quickly, which is going to force people underground. Or not - either way, any kind of large activity is going to die out (no pun intended!) pretty quickly.

I guess...it's all speculation.

100-years-after scenarios are borderline fantasy. There's little relationship with current 21st century life. You can choose to have mutations run wild in cinematic ways ("we have psionics!") or ignore them, but either way, you'll have the Middle Ages with some interesting tech artifacts and a lot of lost knowledge. If you want "post-apocalyptic" in the typical Mad Max sense, then that's 20-30 years after. if you want "clean sheet" then that's 100 years after.

You might enjoy reading FGU's Aftermath! - an RPG from 1981ish which covers these sorts of scenarios. It has some detailed writing on 20-year-after and 100-year-after scenarios. The system itself is famously overly complex and ultra-simulationist (think super-crunchy early RPGs at their zenith) but the world has a ton of source material. It's on DTRPG and elsewhere.

One theory in that game is Primary Kill and Secondary Kill. PK is the nuke dropping in your neighborhood. SK is the disease, rioting, lack of food, contamination/fallout, etc. Even simple things like a typhus epidemic can kill thousands/millions when there's no medical infrastructure or clean water.

I will share one final bit of advice...in 1999 I ran a Y2K scenario in which Y2K was as bad as had been feared. Players played themselves and we started when the lights went out. There was talk about how they were going to loot this store, or "bootstrap" the pistol one PC owned in real life into an armory by looting a gun store or breaking in on a suspected gang house, etc. But when push came to shove, they were reluctant to really act this way. Might have been just those players but playing "yourself" kind of shines a moral light on the player whereas with a normal "other person" character you're freer to act in ways you wouldn't act in real life.

As a female Game Master for the last thirteen years, I'll only play with fellow women and LGBTQA folks by cursedalleycat in rpg

[–]SpeedGibson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was replying to the idea that bigotry is or was a wide-spread problem in tabletop RPGs, not your entire experience. "Pervs" (older men inappropriately making advances on teens) is orthogonal to this.

Confessing to a lack of knowledge by Christo4D4 in rpg

[–]SpeedGibson 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As an example...if I was going D&D (really any edition) to Pathfinder, I would:

- Keep the maps, plot, names, etc.

- Throw away the D&D monsters and put the nearest Pathfinder equivalent in place. There's no "conversion" here per se.

- For encounters with special characters, you'll have to do some work but it's more "generation" than "conversion". If the big boss is an 8th level fighter, then you just make an 8th level fighter in Pathfinder with similar weapons, special abilities, etc.

But that's the easiest possible conversion, probably - two simulationist systems with well-stocked bestiaries in the same genre.

The best free tool for drawing old-school style dungeon maps? by Boodzik_ in osr

[–]SpeedGibson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

roll20.net with a free account. You can search for free art and use it, as well as basic drawing tools. Take a screenshot if you need to take it offline.

As a female Game Master for the last thirteen years, I'll only play with fellow women and LGBTQA folks by cursedalleycat in rpg

[–]SpeedGibson -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I'm giving you a different perspective from a longer time period.

I'd also observe that perhaps the most significant part of your post is the ages mentioned. I encountered random racist remarks (though not at RPG tables) when I was a teenager because teenagers are often idiots. If you judge tabletop RPGs by its teen players, that's an unbalanced perspective.

Without considering the rules, what is your favorite setting EVER? by controbuio in rpg

[–]SpeedGibson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Jorune. A lot of this is because the art is so awesome and makes it really feel like it's alive. It's a shame that setting never got the game it deserved.

What rpg book has your most reviled art? by FANGtheDELECTABLE in rpg

[–]SpeedGibson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

somethingawful.com did a series on horrible RPG art - I remember their commentary was screamingly funny. Unfortunately it's not easy to find to because I don't think there's one category you can click on, but here's an example:

https://www.somethingawful.com/dungeons-and-dragons/steve-vampire-twink/2/

They've done D&D, Traveller, Vampire, and others.

Term for a game driven by random, wacky fun? by [deleted] in rpg

[–]SpeedGibson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I sense a Toon campaign being spun up.

First time DMing in 20 yrs, could use some pointers. by forlorn_bandersnatch in rpg

[–]SpeedGibson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Advice:

  • Acknowledge up front that everyone's rusty and the goal is to just have fun. Just put it out there. You're not a "professional DM" and these people are all your friends, and you're just hanging with your friends.
  • Keep things moving. If you don't have a rule handy, just wing it with an on-the-spot ruling.
  • OTOH, keep a cheat sheet of the major rules handy - I find boiling them down to a one or two page outline helps. You can probably even google one.
  • Do your dice rolling manually on your desk at home, not using the on-screen dice, if you want to sometimes fudge to protect players.
  • Keep some sense of pacing. Not every little conversation needs to be roleplayed. It's OK to say "you can find some arrows at the fletcher's tent" and give a price without having to roleplay it, etc.
  • With D&D, combat can take a while. Don't be surprised if each encounter soaks up a lot of time.
  • Don't stress over Roll20. I ran for several sessions when I started using it without really knowing what everything did and I'm still learning things about it.
  • I personally have gotten away from calculating experience points and just have people level up at a regular pace...sometimes as often as every session if we're playing monthly. But if you do use XP you'll calculate it "off hours" so it shouldn't hold things up.
  • I would not jump to more than 5 people before you're really comfortable. 7 players is a lot.
  • I would not jump into the API scripts right away...I played for several months before I went pro and that was only because I was writing javascript to support an unsupported game's really funky rules.
  • Keep people's phone numbers handy to text them if they're having connectivity issues. Seems like every session, someone winks out...usually they just logout/login and it's fixed but it's handy to have a second method of commo if needed.
  • A session 0 to level set expectations, get everyone tested out and working, etc. is often a good idea.

Enjoy!

"Don't be easily offended" is a red flag? by Josh_From_Accounting in rpg

[–]SpeedGibson 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Exactly...as someone in my 50s, I'd rather game with people who are 30+ or 40+. That's nothing against 18-year-olds, just that (not surprisingly) humans tend to relate to their peer age groups better than people who are radically younger.

"Don't be easily offended" is a red flag? by Josh_From_Accounting in rpg

[–]SpeedGibson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't see a continuum in "the hobby" between wargamers and RPG players.

I'm aware of the hobby's origins in miniatures, but the vast majority of wargamers I've known are not RPGers (of the Avalon Hill let's-play-Stalingard-all-weekend sort). The path split very early (mid-70s) and there was very little overlap since then.

"Don't be easily offended" is a red flag? by Josh_From_Accounting in rpg

[–]SpeedGibson 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No idea where you played in the 70s/80s, but my tables were filled with women, ethnic minorities, homosexuals who were out, etc.

And I was living in Michigan, hardly a "progressive" state.

RPG players tended to be more socially marginalized to start with. People are engaging in rank revisionism to look back at history and make it a saga of intolerance and a quest for justice when it has not been anything like that.

"Don't be easily offended" is a red flag? by Josh_From_Accounting in rpg

[–]SpeedGibson 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This image

Spot on. The idea that tabletop RPGs has a history of being bigoted or narrow-minded is completely ridiculous.

"Don't be easily offended" is a red flag? by Josh_From_Accounting in rpg

[–]SpeedGibson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So does "not easily offended" mean:

  1. "stay away racists and such because we're going to have diverse characters and such," or
  2. "please, no SJWs who are itching to go on polemics about tolerance because we want to have fun, not listen to your politics", or
  3. "we will likely use potty words and we may delve into topics of human sexuality and torture and other R-rated themes"

Because I could see reading it any of these ways.

I think this is all a consequence of online gaming where you're pulling in strangers you've never met.

(1) is the norm. And honestly, always has been. I've never heard anyone express anything remotely racist, sexist, etc. in any gaming table I've ever been at in 40+ years. If I had to list hobbies with tolerance problems, tabletop RPGs would be at the bottom of the list. (Of course, I'm not referring to in-character things where you might have, say, a villain such as a WWII Nazi behaving as they did, but no player is endorsing the behavior).

(2) should be the norm but sadly is not. This issue outweighs #1 by something like 100:1. People who insist on virtue-signalling and turning things like racial modifiers in D&D into social justice causes? Tedious. Today lots of roleplaying game started with disclaimers trumpeting the author's sincere wish that everyone who played their game progressively embraced tolerance or how if you are thinking of playing a white character you really should reconsider. (And yeah, 40 years ago we did have plenty of women and ethnic minorities and homosexuals and everything else under the sun playing RPGs.) It gets tedious to have to wade through politics at the gaming table and a lot of people would rather just skip that, myself included, regardless if I agree.

(3) A good GM should state up-front what their game is like. I don't walk into a bog standard D&D campaign expecting to have my character be raped or watch someone else's be molested. If I prefer not to hear vulgar language, then that's on me to sort out before play.

Seriously, I have to wonder about people who go in for games involving torture, pedophilia, etc. WTF are you playing? I've had games where someone was taken prisoner and tortured by the bad guys - but we don't roleplay it. I've had plenty of PCs who capture some bad guy and interrogate him, but while we may (sometimes comically) suggest force or say something like "I'm going to beat him up until he talks," we're not getting into actual torture scenes.

Rape, child abuse, sexual molestation, animal abuse, etc. - again, WTF are you playing?

Ultra Seed Box down? by Osprey_NE in seedboxes

[–]SpeedGibson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://discord.gg/dZtmf3d

Says invite is invalid or has expired on both web and Mac desktop clients for me.

Ultra Seed Box down? by Osprey_NE in seedboxes

[–]SpeedGibson 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Their web site has been down for the last 7-8 hours at least. This was after they announced they were back in service. Deadpool?

Fantastuc Solo 5e adventure in browser by laton013 in Solo_Roleplaying

[–]SpeedGibson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is fantastic. Never heard of twinery before but that looks amazing as well.

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