We have gotten several reports of issues downloading episodes from the iTunes application. I'm not really sure why this is happening, but I was able to confirm it.

It does seems to be related to the new servers the Archive.org has been placing the media files on. At least that's what it seems like.

The hard part is what to do next. Other podcast downloading tools don't seem to have this issue.

I need to know how many people use iTunes and are unable to download the last two episodes.

I do take this seriously and am trying to work on how to fix this issue.

Recently, I had to reform my gaming group. You see after our Christmas hiatus, we found that we didn't have enough people anymore. This was due to players moving or having changes in their job schedules. This left us with too few players. This of course meant we needed to get new players. This left us with a big problem. What to we play?

You see there were two different Pathfinder Games that were going on. Do we try to integrate the new players into those games? Both games had already gone through massive players changes in the past and only may one or two characters that started the adventures were still around. As Game Master (but not for these games), I could not fathom trying to retcon the new players into the those games. I had the added wrinkle that some of the new players I got couldn't guarantee that they could make it every session. It was decided that we should just play a new game, hopefully one that adventures could be done in one or two sessions. That way players could come and go more easily.

We discuss several games that I could run with little effort. In the end, Gamma World won out. Although I own three editions; 1st, 2nd, and 4th, I decided to stick with 2nd edition. I choose it because I could easily run the classic GW1 Legion of Gold module with little or not modification. It was cool because it had 3 mini-adventures that I thought could be played in 1 or 2 sessions. I think even the final part of the adventure can easily be played in 1 or 2 sessions.

Since almost no one had the rules, we had to make characters at the first session. A few people came over a little early to make them. One nice thing about GW 2nd is that character generation is simple and random. I think including buying equipment most people got it done in about one with several of the players doing things at the same time. Smartly, I printed out copies of equipment lists and the like. In the end, we ended up with four mutated humans and one pure strain human.

No matter who you are, I don't think you can take Gamma World seriously. I know I can't. My players certainly couldn't. But for me, that is what makes it fun. Player get to have crazy mutations like 4 arms and 4 legs, wings, hand that emit low level radiation, and the like. They also get to run into really silly creatures like humanoid mutant badgers with axes and crossbows or giant termites with gas generation. Of course Gary Gygax's GW1 module does help matters. Gygax pretty much seemed to have written as fantasy module but with mutants and technology instead of elves and magic. It takes place in a barony for example. I think he also assumes that most people are normal humans and not mutants. At least no where can I find where major NPCs are said to mutants.

So what did the players think of the game system? I think they enjoyed the lack of rules. For example character creation is easy, there are no classes nor skills. There are only race choices after that, the players can decide for themselves if they are sneaky or more martial in attitude. After using the hardcore initiative systems in most modern Role-Playing Games, the rather simple system was nice change of pace. When it was the player's turn, we either went around the table or the players just decided which of them would go first. It was a little odd to get use to doing again. Still I think the players enjoyed the experience. There was much laughter and mockery. In general, I think everyone had fun.

The only downside is that we only game every two weeks and our next session is not until the first weekend in March.

It's been a while since I've posted a blog entry but thought I would jump on this month's Blog Carnival to get back started into do a blog weekly. It was really a hard choice. After all this month's topic is Pimp A Game. So which little played game to show love to? I was toying with Justifiers RPG, but I no longer have that game. In the end, I decided on SpaceMaster.

SpaceMaster is an old game from Iron Crown Enterprises. The version of the game that I've played a lot and still own is the one based on Rolemaster version 2. This was before all the RMSS silly that happened.

So what was so great about SpaceMaster you ask? After all it was based on Rolemaster. Is not Rolemaster a complex game? Strangely enough, parts of SpaceMaster were much simpler than Rolemaster. For example, there were certainly a lot fewer weapons charts. Much like Middle Earth Roleplaying (MERP), it's charts combined many weapons on a single chart. Have a laser rifle, it use the laser chart. Have a laser pistol, it uses the laser chart. The only difference is where they max out on the chart much like Rolemaster's shock bolt or fire bolt spell charts. The super fun critical charts remain the same.

One of the other things that was interesting was the fact that even with an implied setting, one could still create and use one's own setting. Much like Rolemaster, they have a rather interesting section that gives information on creating your own. Which is nice because I'm not 100% down with the 10,000 years in the future setting that comes with SpaceMaster. I found it was usually pretty simple of just removing some of the races, equipment, and some skills. Being an old Traveller player, I prefer my FTL to take a little longer. The default speeds of FTL are something around 10 LY per day. I usually divided that by 10. Which was useful because one could easily use published material with just a little work.

If one also had the Star Strike and Armored Assault Games, then Gear Heads could make short work of the design systems. One thing that I always thought was cool was the fact that vehicle and starship construction rules were nearly identical. As a matter of fact by combining the rules, you could create a starship that has vehicle drive system (or vice-verse). Outside of maybe Mega-Traveller, I can't think of too many games that had that amount uniformity across starship and vehicles.

The nice thing is that you can get various parts of the Spacemaster from DriveThruRPG. So check it out if you feel so inclined.

Well, I haven't posted something in a few weeks and it's time for to start up again. This week, I would like to talk about something that is currently happening for me personally. the need to restart a stalled group.

So what do I mean by that exactly you my ask? It a group that had momentum. We were gaming on a regular basis. In our case every other Saturday. Then a few things happened. First up was life events for two of our players. Life events are events that change a persons life. It could be marriage, birth of children, divorce, new jobs, etc. In the case of one player, he got a new job and that changed his available schedule. The other player was forced to move so he could get work. This shrunk the available size of the group. It also in our case shrunk the number of people that could be counted on to play on a regular basis. In my group we have at least 3 players that depending on the needs of their job can play from time to time. Which means in my case we were left with 3 people including myself that were guaranteed to show up. The other thing that happened was the Holidays. I think for most people this is a time that RPG gaming takes a hiatus. This of course creates a stall. Sometimes it's hard to recover from such a stall. In some cases because people start planning to do other things. I know for myself, this was the case. I began to plan trips and activities because there was no gaming going on.

So now here it is almost 6 weeks of no gaming. In many ways it feels like there isn't a group. So what's a person to do but to see about trying to restart the stalled group. When one does this, one has to look at what the current batch of players are up to. Are there time constraints to worry about? Are there possible scheduling conflicts? Is there another day and time that works better? Are more people needed? Are there dangling adventures?

While restarting a group seems simple, sometimes it's not. We had a lack of players. First we attempted to see if there were days and times that would allow our current players all play at the same time. The only day and times that worked were on a Saturday evening/night. I hate to say it but being single, I'm not sure I want to commit to that. The second options is to keep the current plan of every other Saturday afternoon. Which meant I needed to find more players. Luckily for me, I was able to tap a few guys that were playing in my Thursday night games. That group had stalled as well. I'm happy that I was able to take the remains of two groups and form one group.

The second part for me to restart a stalled group has to do with looking at dangling adventures and what sort of things we can or should run with the group at hand. One thing for my current group that has come up time and time again is that not all players can make it to every game session. Take the dangling adventure, I think the poor GM has had to retconn the appearances and disappearances of several Player Characters. This should be like this. I think the GM really wants to finish his adventure, but I'm not sure myself if it should continue. I think the issue of not having all the players all the time (or even most of the time) is an issue we all face. I think this is why adventures which can be run in a 4 to 6 hour time frame work out well. The players are able to get involved, have fun, and get things resolved. You play with the players you have at hand and you don't have to worry about retconn hell. That's not to say that an adventure couldn't run into another session but it should not be the norm. This means if you are going to make adventures of epic nature. You may want to breakdown what would have been a large adventure to a series of tasks. Each task being a session adventure. Something that does not require each player to be there for each session.

So currently that's what I'm going for. No it's not pretty but that's the way things go sometimes. I wonder if you the gentle reader have ever had issues like this and what you did to solve them?