[Sunday Spotlight] Two Rifts® Blogs/Post Themes I Recommend

This post is cross-posted from my other blog, A Megaversal Miscellany.

I think it is fair to say there seems to be a shortage of blogs devoted to the game lines of Palladium Books®. I am sure part of that is some feel a little intimidated by their internet policy and do not want to get it wrong on their blog.  Most of the blogs I have found have been dormant for some time.  Some of them have some really good content so it is unfortunate that they are no longer updated.  I do follow two blogs that are either devoted to a product of Palladium Books® or has posts devoted to one or more of their game lines.

Stabilizing Rifts® is a blog fully devoted to the game of Rifts®.  The stated mission is to "cut away the stupid stuff, and follow through on the rest to their logical conclusions.".  I find it very interesting reading.  Some of the posts series include Playing a Coalition Campaign, Playing a Magic-User in Rifts®, Playing a Psychic in Rifts®, and more.  These posts tend to take a good long look at the subject and provide practical information for use in your games.

101 Days of Rifts® is a series of posts at Places to Go, People to Be that is focusing on Rifts® for the next 101 days of posting.  The posting just started and is not scheduled to end sometime towards the end of December.  It is cool to read the author reminiscence about old games, articles in The Rifter®, developing house rules, and his Rifts® Laramie campaign.  There are also posts about other games at this blog.

Now that I have shown you some Rifts® links, what can you recommend to me?

Rifts®, The Rifter®, RECON®, Splicers®, Palladium Books®, The Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game®, Phase World®, Nightbane®, Megaverse®, The Mechanoids®, The Mechanoid Invasion®, Coalition Wars® and After the Bomb® are Registered Trademarks of Palladium Books Inc. RPG Tactics™, Beyond the Supernatural, Chaos Earth, Coalition States, Dead Reign, Heroes Unlimited, Ninjas & Superspies, Minion War, Mysteries of Magic, SAMAS, Thundercloud Galaxy, Three Galaxies, Vampire Kingdoms, and other published book titles, names, slogans and likenesses are trademarks of Palladium Books Inc., and Kevin Siembieda.

Robotech® and Robotech® The Shadow Chronicles® are Registered Trademarks of Harmony Gold USA, Inc.

  

[Sunday Spotlight] Talislanta: Savage Lands

It is an exciting time to be a Talislanta fan!  The game has been out of print for a few years now but the entire library is available in the Downloads section of the Talislanta site.  Suddenly, there is talk of a new Talislanta book coming out!  The new book is tentatively titled Talislanta: Savage Lands and will cover a "dark chaotic age that followed the Great Disaster (all knowledge of spell casting lost, no cities or nations, just warring tribes)”.  Sounds fun!!!   

[Sunday Spotlight] ars phantasia

This post today is the first one to use the Sunday Spotlight feature and a short explanation may be in order.  The Sunday Spotlight is my chance to draw attention to something related to gaming that catches my attention; it is planned for irregular updating but could develop into a weekly deal.  I may focus on a blog, a single blog post, a new resource, a trend among the blogosphere, or something else entirely.  For this initial post I am focusing on an excellent blog that I stumbled on to by following a link from some other place on the web.  

There are plenty of gaming blogs out there to read so why should you add ars phantasia: reflections on fantasy cartography and game design to the list of blogs you follow and read?  The simple answer is that Tad Davis does not waste your time with diarrhea of the keyboard to drive up his post count but instead offers up posts of substance and insight that can improve your gaming experience. The first post I read there was Testing Out a new Dungeon Format and it immediately grabbed my attention because he detailed a method of writing up a dungeon for practical use at the table that could make your Dungeon Mastering time a little smoother. By using his format you can easily see what to read to the players, search results, traps, and encounters.  Granted, some prefer a different format style or to just wing it with minimal notes but the method presented there is clear, concise, and easy to use; I know I am going to steal borrow it for my own use.  

Although that one post is enough for me to recommend checking out ars phantasia for yourself, I dug around in the archives and found some other stuff of interest also.  Clicking on the Portfolio tab on the home home page will take you to a collection of his impressive cartography work with examples in a photorealistic or hand drawn style.  If you are interested in information on Hexcrawl Procedures you can read about the process used by Mr. Davis.  He also put up a post on Hexcrawl Resources with everything from inspirational reading, design & mapping, hex-mapping programs, drop-in adventures, drop-in maps, and miscellaneous information.  There is a tutorial on Creating Forest in GIMP that he originally wrote for the Cartographer's Guild a few years back.  Finally, Mr. Davis has also come up with an Alternate Armor System for the D20 Fantasy system.  This is something I have always wanted to do an "Armor as DR" system and he has come up with something that is far better than my attempts because it also has a method for wear and tear. 

In the spotlight on ars phantasia above I touched on several of the available posts.  That is just a small sampling of what is available.  Stop by and look around to see what you find.  There should be something of interest for just about any fantasy gamer.