16 July 2009

Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net

ROGUE FEED
Call me crazy but somehow this seems a mite disproportionate.
More Old News
JUL 15, 2009 10:27P.M.

I’d meant to make note of this several days ago, but it slipped my mind —
a hazard of old age, I guess. A week ago, John Adams announced that
Brave Halfling Publishing would be scaling back its operations and
focusing solely on creating products for Castles & Crusades and Eldritch
RPG. I’m sorry to hear this, because BHP produced some of the best
products to come out of the old school renaissance. Its support products
for Labyrinth Lord were particularly good and were among the few I
consistently looked forward to seeing released. I think I probably own
their entire catalog of products and, with only a couple of exceptions, I
bought every one of them myself rather being given them as review
copies — a high compliment indeed, given my penuriousness when it
comes to buying gaming products these days.
ROGUE FEED
An Awesome Post
JUL 15, 2009 10:49A.M.
James Mishler has a truly terrific post over at his blog entitled “The
Doom of RPG: The Rambling,” in which he discusses the whys and
wherefores of RPG sales then and now. It’s well worth reading if you
have the time and it might shed some light on just why the RPG industry
is where it is today.

In the end, though, I can’t be upset if John Adams is happy with his Very good stuff.
decision and will better enjoy his business. In the short time BHP
supported the old school movement, it did amazingly good work, far
more than I’ve done in the same span. John deserves a huge debt of
thanks for all that he did and I sincerely hope some joy will come back
into running his business. Goodness knows he’s earned it.
ROGUE FEED

Same Difference and Other

Stories
ROGUE FEED JUL 15, 2009 07:57A.M.

An Honest Question
JUL 15, 2009 07:28P.M.

If saying that I think the traditional “descending” armor class system

makes more sense, both mechanically and philosophically, for old school
D&D makes me a “fundamentalist,” can I use the same epithet to
describe Jonathan Tweet when he claims that “ascending” armor class is
“just clearly better” without any qualifications whatsoever?

I ask because it’s commonplace to claim that those of us who prefer the
Old Ways are somehow deluded by nostalgia or fetishizing the past or
just plain wrong, but to dare to suggest that guys like Tweet, who, if the
aforementioned post is any indication, either doesn’t know or doesn’t
care about either the history of the hobby or the motivations behind the
old school renaissance, are themselves mistaken in some way is seen as
yet more evidence that it’s 1925 and the grognards are the gaming
equivalents of William Jennings Bryan.

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
Same Difference and Other Stories
By Derek Kirk Kim
Top Shelf Productions (www.topshelfcomix.com)
$12.95/144 pages
Back in the spring of 2002 a friend sent me a link to lowbright.com.
There a serialized web comic titled Same Difference was being housed.
The strip was funny, and the story was engaging, but I soon lost track of
the link during my daily busy life. Fast forward to a last month when I
came across a copy of Same Difference and Other Stories. Not only does
it collect Kim’s Same Difference but his other comic strip work as well.
The main story, of which the book gets its’ title, deals with regret. Both
main characters Simon and Nancy have regret over their actions.
While eating lunch at a Korean restaurant, Simon catches a glimpse of a
girl he once knew in high school. Upon seeing her, he remembers how
his teenage angst and feelings of inadequacy led him to lie to her.
Though seven years removed from this event, Simon is still haunted by it
and cannot help shake it.
Nancy, is also suffering from regret stemming from her answering a love
letter addressed to the woman who once lived in her apartment. Though
at first it seemed harmless and funny, she is now guilty and feels rotten
for hurting perfect strangers feelings. It is regret that brings the two to
Simon’s hometown of Pacifica, California. It is here where they come face
to face with themselves.
Meeting the girl he lied to, Simon comes to terms with his regret and
realizes that he was holding on to his past for no reason. Though Kim
handles Simon’s revelations very well, he deals with Nancy’s story with
both humor and poignancy. At first you see Nancy enjoying the fact that
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16 July 2009
she is writing letters to a man she never knew, pretending to be his ex-
girlfriend. It is her desire to travel to Pacifica to see the person she has
been toying with, but the trip turns when she comes face to face with
him. Meeting the object of her teasing, you see her realize her actions
have caused harm. The ending is handled masterfully and you get a sense
of closure to the events.
The strength of Kim’s story is his art. There are panels here that are
breathtaking to behold. Though the art is very good, it is the storytelling
of Kim that stands out. The story is simple, but there is a depth to it that
Kim reveals little by little.
Besides Same Difference, the book includes all of Kim’s shorter works.
With these, you see Kim’s art style change and mesh with the story he is
telling. With stories like Pulling and Super Unleaded, Kim captures
slices of life and expresses the emotion and feelings associated with
them. Here, the art is more realistic, and he masterfully uses the pacing
to bring the stories to an emotionally satisfying climax. These stories deal
with the sense of loss, and love that no longer exists. They are powerful
and masterfully pulled off.
The collected Oliver Pikk stories are funny, but pale to Kim’s hysterical
autobiographical works, especially the one dealing with Kim’s problems
with Korean toilet facilities.
Coming into the collection I did not know what to expect. Reading it, I
was fully drawing into Kim’s slice of life story telling, and I want to see
more of his work. If you are looking for a new artist to support, Kim
should be it. Same Difference and Other Stories is a book worth tracking
down. It is funny, moving, but never preachy. It is well worth it.
Posted in books, comic books, thoughts Tagged: review — comics
ROGUE FEED
Retrospective: Dragonquest
JUL 15, 2009 05:48A.M.
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 16 July 2009

memory.

DragonQuest used percentile dice for all its mechanics. Character

creation was a mix of random generation and player choice, since the
game lacked classes and used skills instead. Races were mostly standard
fantasy one — human, dwarf, elf, halfling, etc. — with orcs and
lycanthropes for variety. Characters could begin play under the influence
of certain stars or planets, granting special bonuses or penalties, an idea
I’d previously seen in Chivalry & Sorcery. Combat was astoundingly
complex and pretty much demanded the use of miniatures, since it used
a hex grid and facing was very important. At the time, this didn’t bother
me in the slightest, but I doubt I could stomach it now. Characters had
two “hit point” pools, fatigue and endurance, with fatigue regained
quickly and easily and endurance damage being more difficult to heal.
Magic was divided into several colleges. I recall that the college of
summoning included lists of demonic dukes cribbed from Johann
Weyer’s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, which I found endlessly
fascinating.

In the months following my discovery of DragonQuest, we played it a lot,

When it comes to fantasy, I have pretty much always been a D&D gamer.
I dabbled in RuneQuest and Swordbearer at various times, but I never
really got into any other fantasy RPGs, because I was generally happy
with Dungeons & Dragons. That’ll probably strike a lot of people as odd,
even improbable, especially given the culture of wild invention that so
permeated the hobby and the industry back in the late 70s and early 80s.
Odd and improbable it may be, but it has the advantage of being true. I
have abandoned D&D many times throughout my gaming history, of
course; I think most gamers do. In my case, though, I abandoned it only
when I abandoned fantasy roleplaying altogether and moved on to
science fiction or horror. I never did so out of disgust or frustration with
the game. Each time, though, when the fantasy bug bit me again, I
returned to D&D — except once.
but, much like Boot Hill, I can’t recall now any of the characters or the
adventures we had. That’s not terribly surprising, since, in play, I found
the game system much less enjoyable in play than it was in reading. Back
then, we had a higher tolerance for such things and soldiered on,
managing to enjoy ourselves despite the game’s clunkiness. I know I
wouldn’t have the patience for that nowadays, but I still look back fondly
on DragonQuest nonetheless, since it was one of a handful of RPGs that
made me reconsider, even if only briefly, my lifelong devotion to
Dungeons & Dragons. The game’s also a reminder of the sad, sorry fate
of SPI, a game company whose passing is another important marker for
the passing of the Golden Age of the hobby.

The one time I didn’t was during my brief but passionate love affair with
SPI’s DragonQuest, the first edition of which was released in 1980. I
never saw the first edition and I’d have never seen the second if my local
library hadn’t had a copy in the fall of 1982. RPGs were so popular in
those days that even public libraries had copies of them, including less
popular ones like DragonQuest. Intrigued, I checked it out and fell in
love with the thing, eventually buying a copy, along with SPI’s science
fiction RPG, Universe, from a toy store in a nearby shopping mall —
again, how different the world was back then that you could easily buy
third tier RPGs from toy stores!

I’m still not sure what it was that first attracted me to DragonQuest, but
I suspect it was because I didn’t perceive in it any sense that it was the
designers’ attempt to “fix” D&D or do D&D “better,” qualities I always
perceived, rightly or wrongly, in most other fantasy RPGs at the time.
Indeed, DragonQuest struck me as being off in its own little universe,
almost oblivious to the rest of the gaming world. Consequently, the game
held a strange fascination for me and read and re-read it numerous
times. Even now, I can still see its illustrations and page layout in my