Quote from: Bill White;416304I was impressed at how you guys talked Levi into giving the place a second chance, and I started posting when I saw the guy who's been reading Dragon Magazine talk about an article I wrote back in 1994.

By the way, what's the title/issue of the article? I wouldn't mind taking a look.

Quote from: Cole;416307By the way, what's the title/issue of the article? I wouldn't mind taking a look.

Dragon Magazine 190 (April 1993). "Divide & Conquer." A GM-advice article about how to handle split-party adventures. (Un)reason called it "middling" as in not objectionable, but not outstanding either. But I was proud of it at the time, and I really still am.

I ultimately managed to get two other articles published, one in Dragon 220 (Aug 1995) called "Dangerous Ground" and then one much later in Dragon 274 (Aug 2000), called "The Hero With 1d1000 Faces."

"Dangerous Ground" was about incorporating rules for terrain to make melee combat more challenging and scary, and "Hero With 1d1000 Faces" was a "random adventure generator" of sorts. That I thought was clever, but really it just amounted to a tool for prompting the GM's imagination in coming up with situations and hooks to throw at PCs. I'm looking forward to what (un)reason has to say about them.

Quote from: Bill White;416310Dragon Magazine 190 (April 1993). "Divide & Conquer." A GM-advice article about how to handle split-party adventures. (Un)reason called it "middling" as in not objectionable, but not outstanding either. But I was proud of it at the time, and I really still am.

I ultimately managed to get two other articles published, one in Dragon 220 (Aug 1995) called "Dangerous Ground" and then one much later in Dragon 274 (Aug 2000), called "The Hero With 1d1000 Faces."

"Dangerous Ground" was about incorporating rules for terrain to make melee combat more challenging and scary, and "Hero With 1d1000 Faces" was a "random adventure generator" of sorts. That I thought was clever, but really it just amounted to a tool for prompting the GM's imagination in coming up with situations and hooks to throw at PCs. I'm looking forward to what (un)reason has to say about them.

Thanks; I'll have to check the first couple out (I have the Dragon Archive cd)

Quote from: Cole;416311Thanks; I'll have to check the first couple out (I have the Dragon Archive cd)

Tell me what you think; maybe we can talk about it in unreason's thread, if that's cool.

Quote from: BWA;416292

• The Pundit is a tyrant and a hypocrite.

And wrong. I contributed to this thread, too, you know...

Seanchai

Bill,
It's cool you managed to get published in Dragon. I tried a couple times back in the 90's, but honestly, I don't think my articles were all that great, and neither did the Dragon editors. It's a lot harder to get published than some people realize.
I do think Dragon and Dungeon had higher requirements than many of today's fan magazines, for those of you who will say submit to Fight On! or something similar. (That, and the stuff I like writing is not what they are looking for.)

Quote from: danbuter;416320Bill,
It's cool you managed to get published in Dragon. I tried a couple times back in the 90's, but honestly, I don't think my articles were all that great, and neither did the Dragon editors. It's a lot harder to get published than some people realize.
I do think Dragon and Dungeon had higher requirements than many of today's fan magazines, for those of you who will say submit to Fight On! or something similar. (That, and the stuff I like writing is not what they are looking for.)

Thanks! I had just gotten out of the Army and I thought, "Oh, yeah, I'll be a freelance writer!" But it was too hard. If I had had any balls I would have loaded up the car and gone out to Lake Geneva and camped out at TSR until I got a job in the mailroom. But I went to grad school instead.

I had my share of rejections, too. Dungeon didn't want my adventure idea about going to recover a dead man's body to get it back to the temple before it couldn't be resurrected anymore, and Dragon was not interested in an article about gaming the Crusades. So it goes.

Bill, that is cool. I have a gigantic stack of Dragon magazines in storage. I will check those issues out.

Also, if fun-hating false gamers are getting street cred for having published articles in Dragon back in the day, I will take some too.

They ran an article of mine in issue #309. I forget the title, but it was on creating new martial arts styles. (Kind of updating the old martial arts rules from the 1st edition Oriental Adventures book for 3rd edition rules.)

Quote from: BWA;416330Bill, that is cool. I have a gigantic stack of Dragon magazines in storage. I will check those issues out.

Also, if fun-hating false gamers are getting street cred for having published articles in Dragon back in the day, I will take some too.

They ran an article of mine in issue #309. I forget the title, but it was on creating new martial arts styles. (Kind of updating the old martial arts rules from the 1st edition Oriental Adventures book for 3rd edition rules.)

I think I have that one in my attic! Holy shit! I'ma go check it out!

Quote from: BWA;416224If a DM says "Suddenly, an ogre attacks!", everyone accepts that, right? Sure, that's how it works.

But if a DM says "Suddenly, a thousand ogres attack!" or "Suddenly, an ogre with a laser-sword attacks!", you'd be like "What? That's some bullshit, dude." And he'd either say "Yeah, just kidding" or "No! That's what happens!" (in which case you'd never play with him again, because WTF?).

In a regular RPG (that is to say a real one) your ONLY real option if the GM says "suddenly a thousand Ogres attack" is to not play with him again. It is the GM's choice what he does or doesn't do, the GM controls the world.  And Edwards and the Forge Swine knew that, identified it, and specifically had issue with that, so they tried to CHANGE THE HOBBY to alter that reality by creating games that essentially castrate the GM.

RPGPundit

Quote from: CRKrueger;416200*snip*  You do give the GM authority.  You do that when you sit down at his table.  No shit sherlock, move on.   Any deep analysis of the face, function, transfer of power, blah, is just trying to chop off the GM's balls and shove them up his ass because at some point in time, the BAD GMtm wouldn't let someone be a special snowflake.

yup,and one can walk away if un-happy.

When sitting down at a table with a shared creation consensus then those rules apply,whatever those may be.
The forgespeak can get a bit thick but some of it is insightful as well...and the site did have various views on things,not everyone there was a sycophant of RE.

IME the introduction of bennies,heropoints etc. into RPG's has evened the playing field in regards to who has the fudgeypower, which is a useful way of getting feedback about ones game as a GM and sheds light on the rules design as well.

Quote from: RPGPundit;416334In a regular RPG (that is to say a real one) your ONLY real option if the GM says "suddenly a thousand Ogres attack" is to not play with him again. It is the GM's choice what he does or doesn't do, the GM controls the world.  

That's one rigid, arbitrary way to look at it, yes.

Or you could play a game that worked a little differently, and maybe enjoy yourself doing that as well. If you can fathom such a thing.

by all thats holy...RPG's are and have allways been a feedback loop between the "players" and the "GM"...at least the good games are run that way.

That is the very definition of a kick'n GM...some who has ideas but is willing to incorperate the wishes/ideas of the players...and this is assuming all parties concerned are mature and this does not have to do with age..

Quote from: BWA;416338That's one rigid, arbitrary way to look at it, yes.

Or you could play a game that worked a little differently, and maybe enjoy yourself doing that as well. If you can fathom such a thing.

When I want to play a role playing game, I play a role playing game. Not "something that works a little bit differently."

If I don't want to play a role playing game, I'm not going to go play something "a little bit different," no. I go outside walk my dog, play a few games of Halo on XBOX Live, visit some friends and family, have a beer at the local pub... I don't get out of my way to play "almost role playing games," and don't intend to.

Quote from: BWA;416338That's one rigid, arbitrary way to look at it, yes.

Or you could play a game that worked a little differently, and maybe enjoy yourself doing that as well. If you can fathom such a thing.

Can you? Certainly, in the sense that you can expect a GM to have the maturity and the criteria to listen to his players.
But for the Forgers that's not enough, you see, the whole mentality behind the Forge Swine is that because there are SOME GMs who are "abusive"; its not enough to just walk away from those guys in particular, no, you have to FORCE all GMs everywhere to be submissive to the dictates of the game designer.

RPGPundit