Round Table 71 - Dragon+ and Survey Results Review

A rather short episode this week--they open with what is your favorite module & someone says the Dinosaur Lair Assualt which really was great!

The blurb has:

James Introcaso sits down with Joe Lastowski, Andrew Kane, and Vegas Lancaster to discuss the newly launched Dragon+ app and the results of the second D&D 5th Edition survey. This podcast was recorded on May 21, 2015.

I thought that they were overly optimistic on the D+ app which is really not good & a waste of resources that could have been spent making an online character builder or other fan requested tools. Maybe I am alone in this, but I want Dragon back--just pure and simple Dragon like in the old days--not this ad ware zine that reprints Tumblr posts. D+ will need to get much better before I am in. 

The survey summary shows how desperate we are for content--I mean if all we have to talk about going into Summer & Con Season is the Survey Results D&D is really loosing some of its steam.

D20 Gets Worse

So recently I lost my D20 & it appears that his downward spiral continues.

We may be past the time for intervention!

Gamex 2015

Jack & I headed to Gamex this weekend. The highlight was likely the tourists with the dead battery on level four--luckily we had jumper cables & after jumping their car took their fantastic parking spot.

Of course, this spot ended up coasting us US$30 for the day! I am seriously considering finding a cheaper way to attend next con!

This image needs to be on the next Gamex t-shirt--is is definitely my mantra for con:

Jack and I scored tons of Dum-Dums & a great hand fan during registration--which was $30 bucks for the day--EACH! we definitely need to do something about this--$90 to park and attend is just way to much for a day at Con & we still have not purchased nachos, pizza, tube of dice, or any of the other required tools

Speaking of Nachos this was likely our first stop--the food at New Con Location is fantastic

Jack & I hit the Paint and Take minis to get some heroes for our games. Jack had broke his glasses that morning so these are his new two dot pair--which really added to his painting focus.

I made a Slaver with Trident & Net--totally awesome!

Jack totally crushed me with his Bunny with Spear

Then we signed up for games--a little late night Gurps

A great game of Space Hulk--which is not Hulk on a Space ship, as we had hoped

Then some Nuke War in the lobby with Luis

We struggled with a horrible game of Pandemic--actually first time we had won, but we cheated on turn order and some other mechanics so I am not sure we can count it--the couple we played with were awesome--died hair, crazy focused--they had just played some Farting game tournament and were on fire

Our GURPs game was on Star Trek Voyager:

We battled some strange creatures in a mostly non combat type of way which is so popular in GURPS

Our GMs did accidently write on his mat with a wet erase marker, which was tragic.

The big take away from this con was we need to plan more--we did not play any D&D, we did not really game with any people we knew, and we left before 4 in the morning--we will do better next time!

CypherCaster Magazine - Issue 001 (May 2015)

DriveThruRPG is offering the first issue of Cypher Caster Magazine for $4. This is a no brainer for anyone playing and/or interested in Numenera--a good quick read on all the things currently going on with the Monte Cook Games Cypher system--it often reads like an extended press release--but includes a lot of very creative ideas from the community.

The table of contents includes blurb reads:

The first issue of the CypherCaster Magazine includes:

• MCG Spring/Summer product preview
• Shotguns & Sorcery interview with Matt Forbeck & Robert Schwalb by Andrew Cady
• Exploring Cypher Space by James Walls
• “Shapes in the Salt”, Numenera short fiction by Jim Ryan
• “Hunting for Krofwarten”, a Numenera adventure by Chris Fitzgerald
• “Estate Files” covering a Norse Mythology recursion cluster for The Strange by Marc Plourde
• “Holstenwall — A Recursion of Gothic Fear” by Scott Robinson
• MCG Fan Relations News

The stunning cover art by Jeff Brown conveys the vast wonder of the Ninth World of Numenera (or perhaps a recursion in the Strange). A copy of the artwork without the masthead and trade dress will be included for use in your games.

Second issue coming, July 2015

The cover are really is amazing:

And the other art in this issue is fun, playful, and inventive--for example, here is a map:

All of the content is OK, but not all is  fantastic--I am mostly interested in Numenera and not that interested in the Strange or some of the other things that MCG has going on. The short fiction was an easy fun read. I hope that they stay focused on that kind of community creativity part of the Numenera community and not to much in the crunch.

I think that this is a great start to a magazine & expect that the next issue will be a lot better.

Using Fantasy Grounds--Installation, part 1

After listening to a Tome Show Round Table episode on Fantasy Grounds, I finally decided to install it and give it a go.

The down-loader, FGWebInstall.exe was easy to find & ran very smoothly--totally impressed with this & if the 'patch system' which sends updates to content works this well without Steam I will be very impressed.

I do plan to run this on my old mac PowerBook laptop, so this is just a demo install to make sure I know what I am doing.

And I don't...

I get the following after install

I am still confused around what key I need and how I am going to afford it, but the username field also gave me issues

Evidently asking for a logon that I do not think I have created & I cannot quickly find on the download site and/or a way to do it from the client.

Next I start looking for the 5E content that I want to use:

The license is for 4E content & I am still not sure what all of my options are at this time.

At which point I gave up & decided i needed to spend more time on the forums & the discussion rooms & maybe find a specialist that will walk me through some of this.