philmophlegm | Entries tagged with role playing games

"We can all put aside our partisan differences for a moment and agree that this Trump-Clinton “Dirty Dancing” duet is the best thing to come out of the debate."

Don't trust "factcheckers". Maybe it’s just my innate cynicism and a background as a professional sceptic that always makes me doubt someone who claims to be “unbiased” when giving you “the facts”.

Why Truman fired MacArthur. Fascinating account.

Weaker Sterling is (on balance) somewhere between good and very good for the UK economy.

...and another article making a similar argument.

Tolkien might not have been too impressed by the current trend to concentrate on the ethnicity of science fiction and fantasy authors rather than the quality of their work.

There is no such thing as trickle-down economics.

This is the best explanation of why so many people will vote for Donald Trump that I've seen.

Ched Evans is Not Guilty. Here's ten myths about the case that need to be busted.

Who is winning in Labour and the Liberal Democrats' race to be the most anti-semitic party?

Dennis Byrd didn't deserve to die in a car crash.

Dolly Parton's 'Jolene' slowed down is amazingly good. (Thanks beckyc)

18 Game of Thrones moments improved by quotes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Given the dearth of available options, who should American conservatives vote for in the presidential election?

Are we seeing the beginning of a political realignment in the UK? Interesting lecture.

Here's a particularly unsubtle example of simple corruption from the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth.

Political map of Europe, year-by-year from 3650BC to 2016AD.

70-year-olds play D&D for the first time.

The third most likely person to become the next President of the United States, and how he would do it. OK, it’s beyond unlikely, but not impossible…

BBC admits Bake Off is catastrophic social experiment

A pretty clever piece of political profiling and surveying from the Social Market Foundation.

Terror attack stopped by heroic activist who established a safe space in local mall.

A blog that examines the use of fonts in science fiction. What a time to be alive.

Labour's new shadow minister for domestic violence has personal experience of the issue - a police caution for domestic violence.

Typical day at the Labour Party conference.

Brilliant picture of Jeremy Corbyn at his own party conference protesting to bring back the position of Shadow Cabinet Minister for Mental Health. Now, see if you can guess which politician it was who abolished the position of “Shadow Cabinet Minister for Mental Health”…

Amazingly, there is an article on the website of Standard Life all about collecting tabletop games. Pretty good article too, although there are a couple of factual errors. They should have asked me! (One of the people interviewed described H1 Bloodstone Pass as “almost impossible to get hold of”. We had one in stock, although ironically we sold it last week to a bloke in Denmark.)

Epipens are really expensive in the US. Here's why.

Jewish Labour Movement heckled by Corbynistas at the Labour Conference. The speaker (not the heckler thank god) was a friend of mine at Magdalen.

Reid Hoffman's first job earned him $127 for contributing to the RuneQuest supplement 'Borderlands' (nothing to do with my shop). Now he's one of the richest people in the world You see? RPGs can totally make you rich!

Were the original big cats on Dartmoor actually from the closed Plymouth Zoo?

More links between Corbyn supporters and anti-semitic groups.

Kaunas' Seventh Fort - Ideal for weddings, parties and kids' treasure hunts. Not so good for Bar Mitzvahs.

The Work and Pensions Committee's report into the collapse of BHS is pretty shoddy work. I would have expected better of Frank Field, one of the Labour Party’s more sensible MPs.

How many people here have a Dragon 64? Are you still waiting for 'The Hobbit' to come out so that your Spectrum-owning friends will stop laughing at you?

Time Commanders is coming back! Yay!

The German authorities seem to be engaging in a cover-up of massive proportions.

Fireman Sam episode pulled amid Koran row.

"My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize."

Prescription drug or Tolkien elf? Take the quiz! (What, you mean there isn’t a prescription tinnitus remedy called ‘Tinfang Warble’…?)

The American fake hate crimes epidemic.

The Game of Thrones theme played by a (very good) jazz band.

Millions of Americans are _not_ living on $2 a day.

Wrexham's new central defender has the best footballer name ever.

The Worldbuilding forums on Stack Exchange are a nice way for GMs to pass the time. (Thanks eledonecirrhosa.)

H.P. Lovecraft Lego.

This is how I imagine that beer tastes like.

The only way an independent Scotland could meet the EU's entry requirements would be to implement massive public expenditure cuts and / or tax rises. That might be fun to watch.

Who would have guessed that two men who campaigned for the right to bugger small boys would turn out to be paedophiles...? (This is the same organisation that had links with former Labour ministers Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman.)

All are in 28mm scale. Photography by bunn. They're either characters from A Song of Ice and Fire or from my own roleplaying campaigns.

Melisandre. I'm pleased with how red she came out.

( More miniatures behind the cut: )

I went back to work today. I actually ended up working a fair number of hours last week because unfortunately January is the busiest time of the year for my most important client. In my previous job, where I got eight weeks holiday a year, I would take four of those weeks from Christmas and into January. Now that I work for myself, I don't get eight weeks. In fact last year I don't think I had two full weeks. Most of the holiday I had last year was either running a roleplaying campaign set in the east of Middle-earth in the Second Age or preparing for that campaign.

This Christmas I made an effort to do some creative stuff.

Most of the creative stuff is directly related to that same roleplaying campaign. First of all, a pair of maps (hand-drawn, using dip pen, assorted calligraphy and cartographical nibs and drawing ink and using handmade paper from Nepal). The first (of Numenor) is a direct copy of a Tolkien map, the second is of a non-canonical Numenorean colony in the east which I wanted to do in the same style.

( Read more... )

We've started our sale here at The Shop on the Borderlands. I won't actually start advertising this until Thursday night (ready for Black Friday), so here's your opportunity to snatch some bargains among the classic roleplaying games and boardgames. Well over 1,000 items reduced, and more than 500 of those are half price or better.

Obviously there are far too many bargains to list here, but I will pick out some of what I think are the best deals:

Our entire 13th Age range, including the core rulebook, brand new and 15% off.
Cirque for Traveller 5 - half price.
Star Wars: Edge of the Empire specialisation decks - all 35% off (and brand new)
Designers & Dragons - The Complete Four Volume History of the Roleplaying Game Industry - 25% off (and brand new, from the Kickstarter)
Dreaming Spires boardgame (brand new) 15% off
5th edition D&D Starter Set (brand new) 15% off
Numenera Core Rulebook and Player's Guide - both brand new and 15% off
Out of the Abyss Campaign for 5th edition D&D (brand new) 15% off
Princes of the Apocalypse Campaign for 5th edition D&D (brand new) 15% off
Tons of d20 and 3rd edition D&D slashed to £1, £2 or £3.
Tome of Magic (2nd edition AD&D hardback) - was £29 now £7!
Elven Fire (Shadowrun adventure) - 75% off!
GURPS Space - was £40, now £10
Horror on the Orient Express 1st edition (not the new one) - was £150 now £37.50!
Skills & Powers (AD&D 2.5th edition hardback) - 75% off!
Ruins of Zhentil Keep (AD&D boxed set) - 75% off!
RA3 Touch of Death (Ravenloft adventure) - was £30 now £7.50
HR1 Vikings Campaign Sourceboo (2nd edition AD&D) - was £36 now £9
HR2 Charlemagne's Paladins - half price
Sorcerors of Pan Tang (Stormbringer) - 75% off!
Big reductions on Shadowrun
Ars Magica 2nd edition rulebook - half price
Book of Vile Darkness (3rd edition D&D) - half price
Challenge magazines - half price
Dragon magazines - half price
Changeling: The Dreaming (World of Darkness) - half price
City of Splendors (AD&D Forgotten Realms boxed set) - half price
Dawn of the Emperors (BECMI D&D boxed set) - half-price
Droyne (Classic Traveller) - half price

...and there's loads more, but if I told you about all the great bargains now, it would take away the fun of browsing through the lists wouldn't it?

The full list of all of our SALE STOCK is here.

Oh, and we now sell Shop on the Borderlands gift vouchers too. Face it, I just solved your Christmas present buying problems, didn't I?

Eat breakfast cereal? Lefties think you're scum.

The puzzle book that drove the country to madness. (I bought a copy in a charity shop for £1 the other day. Yes, I know they found the hare.)

Woman ends up in hospital after "confusing builder's foam with her hair mousse".

23 people getting too offended.

There is precisely one commissioned ship in the US Navy that has sunk another ship. And it did so in the War of 1812.

How To Be Outraged On The Internet

Draw your own conclusions as to why Max 'Nazi Orgy' Mosley would want to bribe/make a campaign contribution to (delete as appropriate) Tom 'Paedofinder General' Watson.

All 50 US states (plus DC) ranked in order of nerdiness. Go Utah! (And Alaska – No. 1 for D&D!)

Rape threats are now part of the Corbynistas' arsenal. (Seriously, these people are just scum, aren’t they?)

Notorious anti-computer game Californian politician turns out to be a corrupt gun-runner.

19 Things You'll Only Understand If You're Absolutely Fucking Terrified of Spiders. (Like me. And don’t worry, there are no pictures of spiders in the article. And in fact, that is number 1.)

The correlation between being a Jeremy Corbyn supporter and being a conspiracy theorist nutjob.

Not one, but two fecking enormous models of the USS Missouri in Lego.

The Humanitarian Threat to Free Speech

Are "leading economists" really backing Corbynomics? No, of course not.

Ranking the 50 states of the USA in order of personal freedom. (1st: Florida; 50th New York)

What to buy the roleplayer who has everything*.

Had to happen. They're attacking roleplaying games now.

Orcs of New York. Giving a face to the Mordor diaspora in New York, one orc at a time.

OpenOffice is insecure.

* Well, in addition to a Shop on the Borderlands gift voucher…

Never swallow a porcupine whole.

And the lesson to be learned here is this: make a self-deprecating joke to a conference that could be misinterpreted as politically incorrect if removed from the context in which it was made, then it _will_ be removed from its context, selectively quoted and used by a social media mob to hound you out of your job, no matter how great your previous accomplishments. Richard Dawkins is angry about this, and really so should we all be. This is typical of the condemnatory articles that didn't think to check facts.

Doctor Who Online does look to be defrauding advertisers. They’ve tried this with The Shop on the Borderlands (we sell Doctor Who RPGs), but I was too sceptical. Combine a proprietary analytics system that massively overstates traffic with quite persistent selling, and yes, I think Mr Sandifer is on to something.

Half of households receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes. (And that’s before you include the cost of state education, state healthcare, public sector salaries etc…)

Free market lessons from Scandinavia.

The man who invented trainspotting (sort of) has died.

Well Google, this is awkward...

Sir Nicholas Winton, the "British Schindler", has died aged 106.

Did Joss Whedon base Firefly on Traveller? This is a good examination of the evidence.

Holograms that you can touch (sort of). Next step, Holodecks!

This year's ENnie Awards (the RPG and miniatures industry awards) nominees

So let me get this straight - Scottish votes for Scottish laws is right and proper; Welsh votes for Welsh laws is right and proper; Northern Irish votes for Northern Irish laws is right and proper but English votes for English laws is "racist".

Nice collection of photos of the British Grand Prix over the years.

I'm amazed that the Forth Bridge isn't already a World Heritage Site.

This is who we got to present the winner's trophy at this year's You're Hired! final. Seems a good chap.

This time it really is the end of the line for the Avro Vulcan.

Vladimir Putin's formative German years

The most decade-specific words in Billboard popular song titles, 1890-2014. (A remarkable illustration of the decline of western civilisation…)

The 10 Most Insane Old School Dungeons & Dragons Rules

Why is America so obsessed with STEM education?

#realisticYA

This is absolutely the sort of ship that the new series of Thunderbirds should feature.

Remember how Rotherham's Labour council allowed the gang rape of 1,400 children by muslims because of political correctness? Would it surprise you to learn that one of those councillors' sons has just been detained in Turkey while trying to join ISIS?

The 2015 Hugo Nominations are out!

Brad Torgersen has done his job well. Kudos. (Predictably, some people are embarrassing themselves on Twitter right now by complaining about this.)

Sir Terry Pratchett never won a Hugo. (Which should tell you all you need to know about how legitimate the award has been in the past.)

Even if the minimum wage doesn't hit jobs, it hurts the poor.

Why Netanyahu won.

How to roleplay during RPG combat.

How diverse are the English?

More on that British DNA study.

Historiography in RPGs.

Of the Rings of Powerpoint and the Third Age

Christianity didn't nick Easter off the pagans.

Fluid dynamics is weird.

One of my ambitions in life is to come up with a hoax this good.

A pretty decent short history of the British videogame industry.

Every argument about 'Buffy' on the internet from 1998 until now.

Brazil have reacted to their World Cup humiliation by retreating into the past.

'Virtual nose' may reduce simulator sickness in video games.

Shooting the opening scene of Star Wars Episode IV.

Austrian fanatics ruin it for the rest of us.

How social democracy is destroying Europe.

The first character sheets.

I've said it before: 3D printing is going to be huge for miniatures. (And I totally want an 'LRV-7 Insurgent 50mm'...)

The perfect holiday destination for the socialist in your life.

How to make a social justice warrior's head explode.

The Star Wars ellipsis....

Classic Guardian Logic: Councils providing funerals is evidence of "dwindling state support".

The 536 AD Dust Veil

Woman thrown out of Paris opera after cast refused to perform unless she removed her veil.

I really like the look of the new Mazda MX-5.

Brilliant new Blade Runner theory about Deckard, Rachael...and Gaff.

Scotland to be covered in tinfoil.

You bake. You roleplay. You NEED this. Now.

A Conservative - Labour coalition in 2015 is more plausible than you think.

How to complete Snake.

Trying to explain the American academic jobs market.

Is getting milk delivered by a milkman really so unusual? I mean we can get it in a tiny sub-village in Cornwall that doesn't have mains gas or streetlights.

Can you name a nation that became rich with statist policies? Can you name a nation with interventionism and big government that is out-performing a similar nation with free markets and small government?

Five great football derbies of the world that you might not know about.

This is a very effective way to liven up what appears to be quite a tame rollercoaster.

How to win at Rock, Paper, Scissors. (By the way, did you know that Rock, Paper, Scissors was the very first roleplaying game combat system, in Dave Arneson’s pre-D&D Blackmoor campaign?)

How big a snob is Vince Cable?

The Daily Mail (i.e. the newspaper) and MailOnline (the website) are very different. And to prove it, just look who MailOnline have hired to be 'Editor-at-Large (US)'.

Europeans drawn from three ancient tribes.

How an independent Scotland could have been the richest nation on Earth. (Note that's "could", not "would".)

"...there is someone out there who thinks Doctor Who is fundamentally a show about two teachers hanging out in a junk yard, and that it all fell apart when they introduced that time travel guff."

Jens Voigt breaks the hour record.

Grammar NAZIs, grammar libertarians and grammar rapists.

"That Sinatra, he's met me, you know."

Some common sense feminism on the 'Are video games sexist?' question.

Who's buried in this tomb?

£8 minimum wage - good idea? What do you think?

This clever analysis of why the New Zealand Labour Party isn't as successful as it should be applies equally well to the British Labour Party.

Scottish role-playing games (sort of...)

Would cracking down on the number of foreigners in the Premier League help the England team? Let's use economics to find the answer.

Uncommon dragon hoards.

Are gamers racist?

To all those Scots planning to vote 'Yes' so they can usher in a socialist utopia, let's see how another small oil-rich country overshadowed by larger, more prosperous neighbours is doing.

The Oxford have-a-go heroes who stopped an armed robber in the Covered Market...and crushed him to death.

Muslim man? Want to ogle naked women? Worried that your religion doesn't allow this? Worry no more!

The correlation between studying economics and being a nice person.

Official Firefly Yahtzee. Seriously.

You need to find the national anthem of Kazakhstan to play at a major sporting event. Whatever you do, don't just google for "Kazakhstan national anthem".

Bah humbug.

Two things have really got me annoyed this afternoon and frankly put me in something of a bad mood. This is a shame, because earlier I was in a good mood, having returned from lunch with a friend to find that my RPG shop had taken two substantial orders from France in my absence.

Both those orders came on the back of a little bit of digital marketing. I wrote a couple of blog posts. The first simply reproduced Dungeon Magazine's 2004 list of the 30 Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time, while the second explained what was wrong with the original article and suggested 20 more adventures. I then included both posts in an email newsletter, sent the newsletter to existing customers and posted about the articles on a couple of relevant facebook groups. Lots of interest, discussion, likes etc on the facebook page, and subsequently these two sales this afternoon.

( And then one guy posted this in response: )

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philmophlegm

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Phlegmatic

The Curious Journal of Philmo Phlegm

Entries tagged with role playing games

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Some miniatures I've painted

Some artistic things I did during my Christmas holiday

The Shop on the Borderlands Pre-Christmas Sale

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F***ing off for charidee

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