David Raynes

The Name of the Wind in paperback

2008-03-29T09:00:00Z

Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist: THE NAME OF THE WIND is now available in paperback:

Only the Bookscan numbers are in (it will be a while before we get a full tally), but it looks as though The Name of the Wind has surpassed the sales of both George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones and Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule.

Woah! If it beat out A Game of Thrones and Wizard’s First Rule, I am going to have to check this book out. I really enjoyed those two books, especially A Game of Thrones.

Arthur C. Clarke has passed away

2008-03-18T22:39:17Z

According to the Associated Press, Arthur C. Clarke has passed away.

[HT: Charles Stross]

Last Wish Giveaway!

2008-03-14T16:15:00Z

Well, somebody else is giving away a copy of The Last Wish. Over at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, there are four copies of the book available. I’ve already sent in my entry!

I am really looking forward to The Last Wish finally being available in the US. I have heard nothing but good things about the series.

Thanks to Orbit Books for linking to the giveaway, and for both getting the book to the states and making it available through a fellow blogger!

Feedburner Widget on MT News

2008-03-11T01:26:50Z

Movable Type News A WordPress 2.5 Upgrade Guide:

And of course there are lots of third-party plugins for the MT dashboard, to integrate statistics and information from third-party services like your number of FeedBurner subscribers.

It’s always fun when one of my plugins gets, well, plugged by the Six Apart folks.

AD&D Monster Stats for the Presidential Canditates

2008-03-10T16:30:00Z

Charles Stross (scifi author, D&D nerd, and former perl columnist) posted Politics as she is Played with 3d6:

The recent death of Gary Gygax, who together with Dave Arneson invented Dungeons and Dragons, coincides with a most interesting period in the American Presidential primary season, as three hopeful monsters slouch towards an appointment with the polls in October or November or sometime around then. (You can tell how much attention I pay to US politics.) Anyway, in an attempt to correct my woeful ignorance of the state of play, I decided to turn to AD&D as the analysis tool du jour, and consulted my battered copy of the Monster Manual in hope of shedding some light on the crypt.

The rest of the posting includes stats for the top three candidates. Go take a look!

(HT: Scalzi)

NYT OpEd on Gygax's contributions to society

2008-03-10T13:57:04Z

Geek Love:

Gary Gygax died last week and the universe did not collapse. This surprises me a little bit, because he built it.

Complete with very fancy looking flowchart tracing Gygax to Google, among other things.

(Hat tip: SF Signal)

D&D 4th Edition Impressions

2008-03-08T05:00:00Z

Having not been able to attend DDXP last weekend, I queried a few folks I knew that went for their impressions of the upcoming new edition of D&D. Here are the responses I got.

First, from my friend Nick:

Increased tactical granularity. More per-round combat options for low-level PCs. It’s plenty deadly (my 12+ hours of 4E saw 4 PC deaths). Third-party products will be needed for certain tracking issues (for example, glass beads or cardboard counters to track Fighter and Paladin “marks,” warlock curses, hunter’s quarry).

There is a small net gain in combat speed due to 1-1-1 square counting, but the new currency of actions (standard, move, minor +possible action point) offsets the speed gain. Net combat speed increase = none. However I can see that the game could be much easier to prep and run as a DM. OTOH I never have experienced many of the “problems” with 3.5E (static combats vs. one monster, “15 minute adventuring day,” etc.) that 4E proposes to fix.

The game is cool, it is a blast to play, it is definitely slick and shiny… but I’ll be sticking with 3.5E for many, many years to come for my home games. I was, however, suitably impressed to throw my hat in as an active RPGA dungeon master for Living Forgotten Realms. I want to support a growing D&D community and I want the game to survive, and the player base to grow… therefore it only makes sense to support the new edition and provide some energy toward its success.

Fighters still get shafted… not because they are less powerful, but because many monsters have abilities that trigger at “bloodied” (half HP) and cause the fighter or other frontliners to take more damage. And damage is tougher to recover from in combat (much, much easier to recover out of combat between encounters with “healing surges”).

It’s a slick tactical wargame that should be great for dungeon crawling. The new “daily resource” to keep track of is the healing surges… if you run out, it’s time to rest for the night.

And another, who preferred to remain anonymous said:

1) the game is a blast to run and play. It moves quickly, and it’s fun enough on a tactical game level that people will get hooked pretty quick.

2) Many sacred cows gave their lives for 4e. Make no mistake. This is a new game.

3) Ironically, my impression are that it plays a lot like Basic/Expert (or possibly Savage Worlds) with a superior tactical game. Monsters stat blocks are smaller, and there’s less minute detail to esoteric stuff (like crit threat multipliers). Once people get better at running this game, I think encounters will go quicker. my mod contained 5 encounters and ran consistently at 3.5 hours will players being completely new to the rules. This makes me think I can run 6 or 7+ encounters once I get a skilled group together.

4) Many 4eisms are already in later D&D3. Healing surges for example are similar to what a Wand of Vigor does.

5) AoOs still exist, but have a new name: (opportunity attacks) and are less frequent.

6) This game is about action adventure.

7) Living Realms is going to be awesome!

So it sounds to me like 4th edition would be the way to go for the game that I’ve been thinking about starting. Very exciting! In fact, I think I may go wander off to Amazon and pre-order the books now.

My Favorite Gygax Tribute

2008-03-07T15:30:00Z

xkcd had a wonderful new comic posted today:

Gary Gygax has passed away

2008-03-04T19:00:00Z

I just received an email from my friend Peter with some sad news:

It is with great sadness that I have to tell you that Gary Gygax has passed away. He meant a lot to me, even if I sometimes joked like Gary was some crusty old guy from a previous generation. The truth is, he was one of a kind. He created something that I have always loved, and I will miss him.

http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=4373&highlight=gygax&mforum=trolllordgames

It would be hard to quantify the contribution Gary Gygax has made to my life, and to the lives of countless other people like me. So much of the gaming culture I consider myself a part of has been influenced by him, directly or otherwise. So much of my childhood and teenage years was spent playing games based upon his work, games that I continue to play today with friends old and new.

Your presence will be missed, Gary. My deepest condolences go out to his family and friends.

Update: Here are some of the wonderful tributes I have seen across the web today:

Neil Gaiman's American Gods available for free (for a month)

2008-03-03T23:20:00Z

From Neil’s Journal Kids! Free! Book!:

For the next month, your free copy of American Gods is waiting for you at http://tiny.cc/WRiXE

Feel free to spread the link as widely as possible around the web. If it works, and people read it, then a) we may be able to put up another book and b) sooner or later they’ll simply let us give away the book in electronic form….

There is some follow-up discussion of the pros and cons of making a book freely available if you check out the free book section of Neil’s Journal.

There’s even a fancy little flash widget you can stuff onto your own sites.