It's Vornheim, Charlie Brown!

Says Spawn:

Click to embiggen, naturally.

I took Saturday off from dissertation writing and in addition to starting a batch of sauerruben (fermented turnips) and listening to Wagner and Beethoven, I managed to throw the above image together. It had been percolating in my brain since being reminded of the Vornheim font by this post and learning it can be downloaded here. As was mentioned in the comments, it's so evocative of a specific work that it's not a super-useful font, but it can come in handy for, e.g., Vornheim greeting cards, or similar nonsense like the above.

Had I thought of this a few months ago, this would have been "It's the Great Peryton, Charlie Brown!" I'm sure you can use your imagination for that.

The image comprises elements of original works by Zak S., James E. Raggi IV, Charles M. Schulz, and Andreas Johansson (the electronic font), none of whose claims to copyright or whatever I challenge.

A Two-Part Revelation About Bards

1. Zak's initial breakdown.

2. Zak's additional clarification, also reprinted below:

(Note especially the comment in the far bottom left: 

"people obsessing over their mechanics as if that mattered")

With all due respect to Uncle Junkal, who I very much enjoy having in my campaign, I admit to feeling this way myself sometimes.  My annoyance has less to do with objection to the Bard character type as such, but to the immense difficulties inherent in making the Bard class work within the rules without feeling patently stupid or wonky at times.

Should Bardery simply be role-played?

ConstantCon Has A Homepage

Hear Ye!  Hear Ye!  ConstantCon now has its own homepage!  You can find it here.  I also have added a link to it on my own ConstantCon page, and have added it to my blogroll.

As Zak also just announced, he will continue to host his usual Wednesday ConstantCon posts for a few more weeks, in order to smooth the transition from his blog to the new one.

Rock on ConstantCon!

Zak's ConstantCon Revolution!

While I was away at OSRCon last weekend, one of the other attendees asked me if I'd yet gotten wind of Zak Smith's proposals about online RPG'ing via Google+. It so happens that I am laptop-less so hadn't been reading blogs since my departure to Toronto. But now that I am back, I am catching up on OSR blogosphere happenings, and I think what Zak is instigating and facilitating over at his blog is tremendously exciting and possibly paradigm-shiftingly significant for our hobby -- see quote at bottom of post.

In addition to providing a venue at which Google+ DMs and players may announce and schedule games, Zak encourages cross-pollination between our various campaign worlds by instituting the FLAILSNAILS Conventions, a series of protocols meant to "Establish this set of Free Location And Inclusion Laws Supporting New And Interesting Leisure Situations." This dimension of the undertaking excites me a great deal, and lends creedence to Laowai's notion that Google+ virtual gaming could "[warp] us to a virtual space not unlike Arneson's fast-and-loose 1970's Blackmoor campaign where Dave was reportedly co-ordinating a hundred player characters at the same time in six dungeons with different DM's." Wow!! Sign me up!!

Zak is additionally working to provide helpful updates like this one in order to assist participants (especially "technologically challenged" ones) in running their Google+ games smoothly and efficiently.

This "ConstantCon Revolution" is generally well-timed for me. As regular readers know, I have been keeping my original Oregon-based face-to-face group together via Skype since August 2010, when two of our people (including me) moved to new states. Therefore I am already quite comfortable using online video chat to run D&D games. Much more recently, Greg, one of the players in my Friday morning Labyrinth Lord session at OSRCon, proposed to our group that we attempt to stay in touch and game together via Google+ in the future. What this makes clear is that the idea is out there, it is taking hold in a palpable way, and lots of folks in our corner of the hobby are picking up on it and running with it.

Zak's initiatives have opened a door in my mind relating to my longtime desire to play Swords and Wizardry White Box. As Theo has recently suggested, simple, rules-lite systems may work best for purely online play, and this assertion (whether true or not) dovetails with my desire to try out a ruleset even more stripped-down and 1974-ish than Labyrinth Lord. I do not want to switch gears on my home group at this point; so maybe an alternative campaign could be established via Google+, using S&W White Box in the Lands of Ara setting. I have some specific ideas already, but will wait to unveil them in a future post, once I am closer to going "official" with this.

In the meantime, may the Roleplaying Gods smile benevolently upon Zak S., and guide the FLAILSNAILS participants in all our future endeavors! I look forward to gaming with many of you folks online in the near future!

"I'll be absolutely honest here: I consider online games to be, at best, poor substitutes for meeting with friends in one's home every week. However, I'm also rather keen to give this a whirl, since I've seen a number of people speak well of it."

--James Maliszewski, 8/2/2011

"I like the energy that Zak has been channeling into his vision of a "Constantcon" on Google+. If enough people get on board, I think this could reach critical mass and revolutionize the hobby. It could be a virtual resurrection of the good ole days when high school gamers gathered during lunch break to play casual pick-up role-playing sessions. Something like Google+ has the potential to get us close to this freewheeling gaming space, which strikes me as much more Old School than the biweekly scheduled meetups that most adult gamers are constrained to. I can see a Google+ Constantcon warping us to a virtual space not unlike Arneson's fast-and-loose 1970's Blackmoor campaign where Dave was reportedly co-ordinating a hundred player characters at the same time in six dungeons with different DM's."

--Laowai, 8/2/2011