I read some things this week. After the jump, you can read them, too.
Virtual tabletop app Roll20’s latest major update, Update of Holding is now live. As a player, the most obvious enhancements are pop-out character sheets and “roll templates” which show the results of dice rolls. There’s some work for GMs and players to bring their campaigns up to speed, but generally, the feedback I’ve heard has been positive.
A petition circulated this week, targeting Monte Cook Games’ The Strange RPG and cultural appropriation of Native Americans in its Thunder Plains recursion. I’m not particularly impressed with MCG’s response, but without having read the source material for Thunder Plains myself, it certainly seems like the petition makes a good case. On the other hand, the overwrought, hyperbolic whining of the “Who This Petition is BY” [sic] update makes me roll my eyes. I hate to shoot the messenger, especially when the message seems valid, but come on… this is absurd:
So upon seeing this disgusting and disgraceful display of blatant stereotyping and appropriation…my stomach dropped. My heart fell to pieces. I nearly lost my food from earlier right onto the pages of the book. I was in real physical pain.
So yeah, I’ll call bullshit on that series of events.
Here is a cool take on using Google Earth to draw inspiration for your RPGs. It might pique your interests.
Tangentially related to gaming: I’m not an anime fan by any means, but the one anime I have seen is Record of Lodoss War. Though some classic Dungeons & Dragons tropes are present in the series, I had no idea it was based on a real-life D&D session. Kotaku has a bit of a history behind Lodoss War, which I found interesting, even as a non-animu.