Not Too Much to Report - Additions to the blog roll.

Progress on the new versions of my Player Character Sheet for Unearthed Arcana have slowed to a crawl. I had hoped to have it up on Veteran's Day, but that didn't happen. I'm still plinking along at it, so real soon, now.

I continue to add people to my blog roll. I just started reading WELCOME TO THE HOME OF SOME GUY ON THE INTERNET by Robert Aronson. Again, MeWe doesn't disappoint when it comes to highlighting great talent, however I keep the blog roll going because I fear a G+ like collapse. All it takes is a good link on MeWe to your blog, a request in the comments below (with link) or a friend request on MeWe to get that link added here. It's easy.

Robert's blog might be the longest title on my blog roll. One of my favorite points about his blog was the source of the URL, which is kind of like my character Reg. On another point, it is also another good opportunity to mention Red Dice Diaries like I did in my post about Reg.

Three more plugs and I am done with this post. First, to prevent a second G+ like collapse, go follow these two aforementioned mentioned blogs. I gotta be honest, I hit the Red Dice Diaries blog to access the podcast more often than I read it. I love hearing John Alan Large's ideas and those of his guests and callers.

Next, go over to Campaign Wiki and register your blog. If you have a blog, go ahead and do what John Alan Large did and add some info about you. Starting with a name or handle, so people can find you, hear from you and praise you.

And for the final plug, you can pick up all of my products at DriveThruRPG. Each one is PWYW so feel free to give it a try before dropping some change in the tip jar.

Swashbuckler Character Class. A non-standard D&D character class. 

Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners. Rules to standardize your non-adventuring NPCs. 

Character Sheet for Use with Unearthed Arcana. A scan of a 80/90's character sheet. 

The Compass Rose Inn Minisetting. A ruleset agnostic mini-setting. 

Kobold's Folly A ruleset agnostic mini-setting.

Disney+, PayPal and Error Code 83

I am super excited for Disney+. I ordered it today and was pleasantly surprised that they accepted PayPal. As an added bonus, because I opted to PayPal it simply imported all of my consumer information from that platform. I ordered the total package, Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+. 

Right now, my daughter is watching the new live action Lady and the Tramp, which looks awesome! She's on the PS4 while I am down on the computer in the basement watching clips from ESPN+. 

Now for the pseudo-downer. If a video clip is something used for the website, I can watch it on my laptop. But if it is inside the Disney+ continuum, I get an error message. On Disney+, the error is Error 83. 

Hulu gives a little more wordy error that my browser isn't compatible. I haven't nailed down an error on ESPN+ because so much of the content is feeding public websites. It's hard to find something behind the wall, so to speak.

Ok, at this point, I bet you think I am pissed. I'm not. It's all right there in the name: "These Old Games". I run old hardware to support this site. My Chromebook, which I love is 7 years old as of this month.

With this particular package, I can have 10 devices and four simultaneous streams. It's $13 for 30 years of the Simpsons, ageless Golden Girls, 40+ years of Star Wars plus all of the Disney goodness I can stand. I have 4 other Chromebooks which should work and a pair of PS4's, 5 phones and maybe a tablet. I'm not going to cry because my main work machine doesn't work.

Heck, I am lucky not to have that distraction.

Once the kids are in bed, I'm watching one of my favorites.

SimEarth

SimEarth is one of those classic sandbox games, something with a charm that is ageless. I finally found my box and installed it on an old G4 Sawtooth Mac. It turns out that I am very rusty at all of this, so it will be a while before I do a review and some gameplay videos.

Here is a 90 second clip of the software in action.

I was concerned about this old Mac's specs, so I updated it a bit. I have max memory and four hard drives. Unfortunately, I can't seem to run OS 7 on this and don't believe OS 8 will run either. Time will tell.

uMoria on a Mac OS 9

uMoria or Mac Moria 5.5c is one of those classic games that is strangely addictive. You pick a race, a class and you are off to the Dungeon. This classic game was created in 1983 by Robert A. Koeneke and has gone on to be ported to most OSes. I happen to like the old classic mac app best. 

A typical Mac Moira Character

At the bottom of this screen are two options, change name and file character description. The file is merely this page suitable for printing. While the 6 Statistics are close to D&D, they are slightly out of spec if you wanted to use this as a character generator. Also, some of the classes don't work at all like D&D classes. For example, a Druid can cast both clerical and magic user spells, rather than their own spell circle as in the PHB.

In the video below, I take a few seconds to generate a character and play for a bit. There is no sound.



For first time players, you need to purchase items like weapons before proceeding into the Dungeon. Also, the little [p] characters moving around are town drunks who can hit you or thieves who can steal from you. They are relatively easy to avoid.

In this second video, I linger on screens longer. I apologize for the blurriness for the first few seconds. It was something in the file conversion.

Here is a screen shot of a typical first level (50 feet) dungeon.

You can colorize your screen, but black and white is fine for me.

You can find more information about uMoira and downloads over at Beej's website on the game.

Image Resources for Future Reviews

I'm going through my shelves and getting read to review some older products. This is the first post of images needed to get that done. I have some classic books right along side some classic games. Most of the games are Mac OS 9 stuff.

In looking at some of the D&D stuff, I might not do reviews, I'm thinking about sharing how they have been worked into my campaigns. I mean, what more can be said about Deities & Demigods which hasn't been said to death?

Clean Up Time - Family time

I'm cleaning and sorting today. Here are some of my favorite pictures I rescued from various devices and platforms.

Due to the cleaning on my plate, I might be offline for a few days.

Epcot Family Picture on New Year's Eve 2019.
My phone glitched and my family had stepped away in the excitement.
Cool picture though. 

Leo the cat, as photographed by my daughter.
I use this for a "Personal Space" lesson at school. 

Benny's first Christmas

Our first Family Disney Trip, celebrating Catherine's final surgery. 

Cat as Fiona and Nate as Finn.

Tori mugging for Tim Bits.

A picture at Wegmans.

Tori's first Christmas

Me, many, many years ago.

My favorite picture at Disney.

Benny is chill.

I'm not sure what is happening here. Nate and Benny are playing something. 

Nathan, Paul and Catherine going to Home Coming.
This was the first and only year they will all be in high school together.

Kitty and I at Darien Lake. 

Kitty and I.

Catherine and I draw together. 

Paul's first day of work at summer camp, 2019.

The Mac Is Not A Xerox Machine...

Back in June 2019, I released a scan of a Character Sheet I created back in the 80's.

I thought it was the best sheet I'd ever made or used. Still pretty true. You can pick up this one for yourself on DriveThruRPG. This file is pay what you want and it is strongly suggest that you use it before putting any cash down. If you like it come back and drop some change in the tip jar.

Tonight I was looking at it and wished that I still had the disc it came from so that I could have the deep black lines the originals had. Well, I don't have that no matter how much wish I did.

But I still have a Mac.

It turns out that either I have gotten much better at Mac Draw or the processing power of G4 is so much better than a 512K or Claris software has improved before its demise, that I can recreate this document. I started working on it tonight, I hope to have a new version done by Monday. Ah, Veteran's Day.

The new versions will be tacked on the old version of the file on DriveThruRPG, as a thank you to all the people who downloaded it. Many of you paid for it, and I really, really appreciate the support.

What you can expect is a faithful rendition of the old version, a new version with the classic 6 instead of 7 and a few bells and whistles add on, such as Acrobat Abilities added to the thieves table, a better encumbrance chart, AC chart, a space for mounts and pets, and a few other things.

Obviously, this will be more than one file. I might even make a faded version to match my scan of the original.

9% of a plan

I have this idea for a project. Its part of an idea. Like 9% of an idea for a project.

Anyway, this is the first 1%. I have been working on a map of a Roman city for my campaign.

The light gray streets outline an insula. By definition, there are 64 of these areas in the city. My idea is to make 64 maps, one per page. On the left hand pages, there will be a mini-map of the insula with a large diagram highlighting one structure from the insula.

So, that is like 4.5% of my idea. That would look something like this:

The right hand pages would be character studies for some of the more interesting people that live in that structure. There might me more than one character study. There would be a picture of said character(s). That is the other 4.5% of my idea of this project. Perhaps it would be ruleset agnostic or specific to AD&D or D&D.

Not sure.

Like I said, it's like 9% of a plan.

I still haven't decided if this is a book or a patreon thing or something else. Let me know what you think.