Miscellaneous

Finally, after almost five years of being hosted on a server in my closet, Good Omens is getting a real server!

What does this mean?

• Security: Dreamhost isn’t likely to be hacked several times a year, as I have become accustomed to, so I can re-enable some functions such as user account creation and comments.
• Speed: 384k upload speeds on myside have always hurt the site, especially when I’ve tried to deliver media content. Woot for pages loading faster.
• Availability: Power goes out at my house. I install some new spam filter app that crashes IIS. MySQL Service gets hacked. My print queue jams up so bad I need to restart the server. What did these all have in common? They all meant the site was down, sometimes for hours, until I could get my server back up and running. Less of those issues on Dreamhost.
• Forum: Hardly used before and now that comments are re-enabled, even less useful, so it’s going away.
• Greener: Soon (once I get some other business of it) I’ll have one less box sucking up power 24/7
• Paying the bills: Now instead of just paying once a year for the domain registration and the site using up a certain about of my DSL bandwidth and electricity (which I could never accurately estimate the cost of), I’ve got a fixed monthly bill for hosting. Because of that and the other expenses behind good omens (buying Swag, putting on Good Omens Con, etc), I’m going to put up a PayPal Donate button.

Good Omens Con 3 – July 18th, 2009 – Event Over! Thanks everyone who participated.

Here’s the skinny on what Good Omens Con 3 looked like:

Two years of Good Omens Cons and we’re coming back for a 3rd! Keep coming back to this page for game listings and sign ups.

• Admission: FREE. Please bring a can of your favorite canned food, however, to be donated so we can help local charity.
• Convention held inside EndGame’s store, a great place to find popular as well as hard to find indy RPG titles.
• 921 Washington, Oakland CA 94607
• Website: www.endgameoakland.com Phone: 510-465-3637
• As usual Good Omens swag including t-shirts, pins and dice given out to players for good role-playing
• Games running all day: 9:30 AM to 11:30 PM
• Guest GM: Carl Rigney.
• Special Event: Signing of Penny for my Thoughts by Paul Tevis.
• Update 7/10: Signs ups are now closed and games are filled. If you signed up by 7/1 you should have received an email with your game assignment. If you haven’t received it yet, email Mike Parker (spaz.jedi@gmail.com).

Game Schedule:

Morning Games (Starting at 9:30 AM)

The Collected Crimes of City Predators
Game System: Hunter: the Vigil
Game Master: Richard Taylor
Characters: Provided
Number of Players: 6, all seats filled
It’s 1984, in Moscow, during the final years of the Cold War. In a city of already filled with tension and paranoia, something is hunting citizens. Are you ready to take up the Vigil, tovarische? And can you, with so many others looking over your shoulder? Good luck, gespadin e gespadna.

Coming this Fall
Game System: Primetime Adventures
Game Master: Michael Parker
Characters: Created during Game
Number of Players: 5, all seats filled
Create the best TV show that never was. Primetime Adventures brings the drama and tension from television to life in this role playing game.
This game will cover the full process of PTA, from Pitch to Pilot, and maybe the first episode. This game focuses on Scene framing and immersive play.

Mad as Hell
Game System: Mutants & Masterminds
GM: Gregory Mathieson
Characters: All characters provided by GM
Number of Players: 6, all seats filled
With Batman’s haitus to regain his sanity and direction after his tortrous death at the hands of his arch-nemesis the Ace of Knaves and rebirth in the Lazuraus by his beloved Talia. Over the last year and half it has been up to the Gotham Knights to help Gotham relcaim its sanity and barely managed to stablize itself from the chaos that was unleashed: from the Clown Prince of Crime’s Tyrany, Gangs, Fires, you knwo the usual to a Vicious Serial Killer Impersonaiting the Bat and Cuthulic Entities Invading our realm. That was just the past…

Now, comes something much worse!

Doctor Fate senses an upcoming disaster that will destory the very fabric of the universe. Needing seven people for an dangerous ritual, he enlists both hero and villain to represent the key forces of the cosmos: Destruction, Creation, Technoloy, Nature, Balance & Potential… only one representative is absent that of Chaos. Six figures will enter into the very pits of Hell, face their inner and outter demons to gain a chance to convince the reigning caretakers to release a single soul into their custody: The Joker.

If you fail, the world and everything before and after ends.

A Penny For My Thoughts
Game System: A Penny For My Thoughts
GM: Matt Espinoza
Characters: Created in Play
Number of Players: 4, all seats filled
A Penny For My Thoughts is a story-telling game in the tradition of The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, 1001 Nights, and The Court of the Empress, designed to be played in an evening. Using the conceit of patients undergoing treatment for amnesia and working with techniques borrowed from improv, you engage your fellow players on a thematic and emotional level.

Evening Games (Starting at 5:30 PM)

Into the Wild – Spring 1152
Game System: Mouse Guard
Game Master: Sean Nittner
Characters: Provided
Number of Players: 4, all seats filled
As the winter snow melts and spring rains begin to fall, the Guard Mice are restless to stretch their furs. Tenderpaw’s eager to prove their mettle and veterans alike receive orders from Gwendolyn to explore the Mouse Territories. Cheers spread through the halls of Lockhaven except in your chambers. Pebblebrook, on the edge of Wild Country has not been heard from all winter and the Matriarch fears for their safety. She has sent you to deliver supplies and ensure they are safe from enemies. Remember Mouse Guard, “It’s not what you fight, it’s what you fight for!”

The Good, The Bad and The Godly
Game System: Scion: Hero
Game Master: Mike Bogan
Number of Players: 6, all seats filled
Characters: Provided
As the mortals wage a war of ideologies, a band of hardened scions follow rumors of a treasure reputed to be buried in a harsh, untamed landscape. Will the heroes set aside their differences long enough to establish themselves among the many Legends of the West?

Everyone Loves a Ball
Game System: Dungeons and Dragons, 4th Edition
Game Master: Josiah Knight
Number of Players: 5, all seats filled
Characters: Provided
Level: 5
Everything had been going according to plan. You acquired a invitation to Prince Jurian ir’Wynarn’s ball in Wroat (the capitol of Breland), an appropriate Aundairian masquerade costume, and managed to infiltrate the secure vault in order to gain the marble griffon statuette you came for.. all without alerting Lord Ruken ir’Clarn’s household guards. Unfortunately, once you reach the vault, you discover the statue is missing. Someone in the ball must have already stolen it. Can you find out who before the ball ends? A combination of intrigue and immersive role-playing similar to Mission Impossible/ James Bond/ and Paranoia.

A Penny For My Thoughts
Game System: A Penny For My Thoughts
GM: Chad Lynch
Characters: Created in Play
Number of Players: 4, all seats filled
A Penny For My Thoughts is a story-telling game in the tradition of The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, 1001 Nights, and The Court of the Empress, designed to be played in an evening. Using the conceit of patients undergoing treatment for amnesia and working with techniques borrowed from improv, you engage your fellow players on a thematic and emotional level.

For more information about the previous Good Omens Cons:

• Good Omens Con 1: Click Here
• Good Omens Con 2: Click Here

A Penny for My Thoughts, by Paul Tevis, will have a signing on July 18th at EndGame during Good Omens Con 3. It is available for pre-order now at IPR.

Have you lost your memory? The Orphic Institute for Advanced Studies can help, with its revolutionary Mnemosyne™ treatment process. By ordering this useful treatment guide, you can learn how to get your memory—and your life—back. Order today.

The Orphic Institute for Advanced Studies: Bringing the Truth out of Darkness™.

For a limited time, you can preorder this instructional book together with the PDF for only one penny more than the book’s cover price. Take back your memory today with A Penny For My Thoughts.

I Survived ConQuest
CQ 2008 is over.

Overall, I have mixed feelings, and rather than do a day by day breakdown, I’m going to do my thoughts:

THE GOOD:

• My game went well, as did all the Good Omens games, from what I’ve heard.
• Picked up three books – an early released book for Hunter, the originally planned to be but now isn’t last book for Changeling, and a $10 copy of Unhallowed Metropolis. (If I run it, having two copies is helpful.)
• The hotel is nice. I got to park so close to my room that all I needed to do to pack up the car was step out the back door and walk maybe 20 feet.
• There were nice restaurants all around – well, not nice, but familiar and within two blocks. (IHOP, Togos, Round Table).
• Saw Kara and her husband and their spawn.
• Got to play Sons of Liberty – a fun game, but the standard rules seems to encourage the game to be played more like the card game Speed than an RPG or Story-Game.

THE BAD:

• There was some shenanigans with group names being removed from titles of games. My two big problems with it were: a) my particular group, Good Omens, has worked hard to get a generally good reputation. and b) none of us were contacted in advance (and in fact we found out by happenstance), and normally people do things secretly like that when they know they are doing something somewhat unethical or shady. (Shady is a better word.) (For reference, I point to the secrecy enacted by the Bush Administration in regards to torture, surveillance, and the like.)
• Room numbers for games weren’t listed in the program, and when I couldn’t find where my game was, I was pretty much treated like an idiot by the staff.
• The program was a piece.
• I realized I’m getting sick of “Story Games” that have decided that no rules lead to better stories. (I realize part of the issue is that I do read every game I can to look for good rules to steal for other games, but that’s beside the point.)
• I’m also getting sick of Prima-Donna GMs, and I don’t care what group they are with. Or not with. Some of them are Good Omens GMs, and that’s depressing.

THE AMUSING:

• At the end of my Mage game, I discovered that my main villain had no offensive ability. He had everything he needed to set his plot in motion, but in actual combat? Not so good.
• Ever since meeting him casually, I’ve been baffled by the couple that is deirdremoon and tronpublic. However, after a conversation he was in on Sunday night, it now makes perfect sense.
• I mentioned a game idea to Cil, and now I think she’s hooked, and that she’s got at least one other player hooked.

Overall, I’m concerned about the bad. Last year, CQ made some great strides ‘forward,’ but this year it’s like they took a step backwards. I was less than impressed.

Rich

As part of Good Omens Con, Fred Hicks, creator of Spirit of the Century and Don’t Rest Your Head is making available instant content for the upcoming Don’t Lose Your Mind: A headtrip for Don’t Rest Your Head, from the brain of Benjamin Baugh. Preorder the game at Endgame and you will get a CD with the PDF immediately, and then receive the print copy after the release in August.

Look at Fred’s blog for more information: Instant Content Preorder

Here’s the skinny Fred sent me directly. This looks awesome…

A pair of government agents stalk a runaway girl armed only with a teddy bear. They are never heard from again. A psychopathic hero wields every blade that ever murdered, carving off pieces of his personality in an effort to beat back the Nightmares. A temptress lures the cruel and vile to assault her—only to trap them in a prison built from her own ribcage. Trailing ash and burning footprints with every step, a man cursed with Orpheus’ gift delves deeper into Hell each day on a quest to find the last missing puzzle-piece needed to rebuild his late girlfriend from the wreck she has become…

This is the story of the Awake. From the depths of their terrible and deliberate Madness, they face Nightmares both strange and dire, always knowing they are only a few moments away from becoming what they fight.

From author Benjamin Baugh (Monsters & Other Childish Things) comes Don’t Lose Your Mind, a Don’t Rest Your Head supplement that explores the darkest depths of Madness for your game. Inside you’ll find twenty-six unique Madness Talents that push the boundaries of imagination. Each gives way to its own unique Nightmare, ready to darken every player’s door. And at the rich, nougaty center of this tome you’ll find a toolbox of new techniques and perspectives for supercharging insanity at your table, and making the most of Madness in the Mad City.

Contains mature subject matter. Not recommended for the abnormally sane.