Sunday, October 25, 2009

Flap Your Ears Everybody

Which is the beagle way of saying, “Rise and shine!”

Every morning the beagles get me up around 6am or slightly before. They do this by whimpering and pawing at the bed until I get up, whereupon they shake themselves vigorously making a “whap-whap-whap” noise (that’s the ears) and then head downstairs to await their breakfast. If it’s too early I don’t feel bad about ignoring them (and on the weekends they’ll sometimes sleep in themselves)…and truthfully it wouldn’t be so bad except for the goddamn Day Light Savings Time, which I hate with a passion.

DST…a real pain in the ass for my biological clock. But who wants to move to Arizona (though with the way the Cardinals are playing, well, if you can’t beat ‘em…)?

Anyhoo, I am not an economist or a historian, so I certainly won’t waste a bunch of time debating such things (I’ll just complain about ‘em). But you know what? It sure seems like there’s a lot of BOTH floating around the RPG corner of the blog-o-verse.

I don’t know why. I mean, it doesn’t add anything to my D&D campaigns to know the extensive trade route history of various intelligent species of fantasy land. But for some folks, I suppose this kind o nuts-n-bolts specificity is a lot of fun to develop. Hell, I won’t fault others for their preferred form of time wasting (I know I have plenty myself). But it sure ain’t for me.

If trade routes were meant to be an important part o the game, you’d think the designers would have included systems for it…like Traveller did, for instance.

3 comments:

  1. Fantasy and sci-fi games are such different beasts, eh? In a sci-fi game, where your next paycheque is coming from is a serious concern.

    In a fantasy game, it's all about the plot and the beasties.

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  2. I agree with you on that one. I just need the simplified version of why they are trading. I don't need a historical graph of migration patterns and trade routes. If I need to develop them more if a player wants to be a merchant then something can be worked out.

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  3. Someone published a traveller-esque trade-goods table for fantasy games. I thought it was a neat little idea, say, if you are plying the oceans as a merchant (pirate) and need to make ends meet between adventures.

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