Odd Dice

I have admitted to being somewhat obsessed with dice. There's just something about the randomness that appeals to me on a primal level. Perhaps this is why gambling is popular—but I'm not stupid—the games I play never put my money on the line (other than the initial purchase).

Most people have only seen a six sided die:
A lot of Role Playing Games utilize a much wider selection of dice utilized as random decision makers for a variety of situations where the odds require percentages of possible failure that cannot be handled by the humble d6 (that's standard gaming dice notation for six sided die).

A six sided die can decide a 16%, 33%, 50%, & 66% chance of success. (and 100%, but there's no point in rolling for 100%)

Role playing games have introduced a number of different sided dice and a standard gaming set now includes:
a d4 a d6 a d8
a d10 a d% a d12
and a d20

My obsession has led me to purchase a number of non standard dice that have no practical use, but they're fun to have.

You can use a coin as a d2
I wanted a d6 with 3 zeroes and 3 ones for the same purpose



You can roll a d6, divide by three, and round up to simulate a 3 sided die—or if you're crazy like I am you can get a d6 numbered 1-3 twice

If you're really nutty you can get this rounded prism to use as a d3

I have a d10 numbered 1-5 twice
I have another prismatically shaped d5

I have a d7 as well



Due to their shapes you may think that the d5 and d7 aren't as fair as your typical platonic solid shaped dice, but the inventor spent a lot of time playing with the widths and shapes, and they have been scientifically certified as being just as fair as your standard platonic solids.



I have d14

A d16       
A d18 made of rubber that is not mathematically fair

A d20 that is numbered 1-10 twice
A d20 that made of rubber that is not fair

A d24
Another rubbery not fair d26

A d30
A d30 numbered 1-10 three times

A d34

A d50

And a d100 filled with sand so it actually stops



I have a standard gaming set in crystalline shapes.
d4 d6 d8
d10 and d% d12
and d20 .

A d7 based on illustrations found in a 17th century parlor games book.

a d8 numbered 1-4 twice

a wedge shaped d4
A d4 that forms the cap of a pyramid at games end



This constitutes the end of our tour of my odd dice. A lot of these are difficult to find, but then there are others that are not. I would like to create a game that uses a set of dice that are not standard, but not impossible to find. i.e. a d3, d5, d7, d14, d16, d24, and d30. But I have so many ideas bouncing around in my head, and so many unfinished projects that that is an idea that may never come to fruition.

Even More Zombies!!! Goodness on the Horizon.

Humans!!! 2: "Offering new and exciting ways for humans and zombies to try to take over the city." (Aug 09)

Bag o' Zombie Clowns: We always run out when playing Zombies!!! 7—so this is great. (Sept 09)

Zombietown 3: Expansion for the Board Game—No other details. (Oct 09)

Zombies!!! Scenario Book: Offering even more ways to play with hundreds of plastic zombies. (Oct 09)

and while not directly Zombie Related—The Deadlands Board Game. (Aug 09) There are Zombies in the Weird West.

These announcements are so new I don't have any more details than what's offered here. Take note that release dates are close to my birthday [Caveat—Twilight Creations release dates are always early. i.e. Zombies!!! 8 was origilally slated for Mar 09 and the word now is that most likely it will be through customs April 20; therefore on shelves a bit later than that.]

The Time for Skeletons Has Come.......Oh, and Martians!!!

I have mentioned that I have an abundance of Zombies!!!. I have also lamented that my number of Skeletons is sadly lacking. Well, no more. What has held me back is that, if I'm going to jump in, I'm going to go whole hog and get all three games at once. Now I can do it with the assistance of Twilight Creations themselves.

MidEvil Deluxe!!! will include all the skull cracking fun of the complete MidEvil Game in one convenient package. The set includes everything from the MidEvil base set, MidEvil 2: Castle Chaos and MidEvil 3: Subterranean Homesick Blues.

Also announced Martians!!!

So Exciting!!

New Blog—Savage Worlds

I've Started a new blog, currently there is one post—those of you not interested in Savage Worlds and RPGs have been spared my posting all of that stuff here.

Those of you curious about what I posted there—most of it was already covered in This Blog Post, I just expanded it a little to explain the why of the new site.

Enjoy My Savage Worlds Blog.

Camping With Goblins

The Goblins are made of rock but I still found myself repeatedly telling some of the Scouts that I'm okay with RP, but I draw the line at LARPing.

We camped outside Goblin Valley state park in the shadow of Temple Mountain.

(Click Images for High Rez)

In the Morning we Broke Camp and headed into the Goblins.

After Lunch we headed to Little Wild Horse Canyon. This is the First time I'd ever been in Narrows—and it was amazing—so amazing in fact that I forgot to take pictures in the narrowest portions. We didn't have time to do the full Wild Horse to Bell Canyon Loop, so we went up an hour and then back down for an hour.

We headed home afterward. What an amazing location.

Twilight—For What It's Worth

Emily Rented Twilight. Turn away now if you don't want spoilers because I make no Promise to avoid them.

My point of view. I think book three was out before I'd even heard of this series. It never really interested me; don't get me wrong, I like stories that involve all manner of Supernatural Beings—this however is not a Vampire/Werewolf story, it's a romance—and while I'm all for a bit of Romance in my Adventure Stories, I'm generally not looking for escape in a flat out romance story. Something about this whole saga just kind of feels off, and I can't explain it. Most likely it's the raging hordes of Fan Girls—and if there is a group of people that scare me more than Fan Boys and LARPers, it's Fan Girls. That and the wear-all-black, emo, vibe that sits on top of this whole thing.

Having said all that, I went into the movie experience giving this thing the Full Benefit of the Doubt. I wanted it to be good. Mostly it was, but there was some real awkwardness in this interpretation of the source material. I understand what the director was trying to put across, but it just felt uncomfortable. 

The entire first half of the movie, all the encounters with Edward just felt awkward. I know the director was trying to put across that Eddie (is it coincidence that he and Herman Munster's Son have the same name?) had an almost insurmountable desire that he was trying to suppress—But I have to look at it this way, he's been a vampire now for just over 100 years, I got the impression that he was turned by a "Vegetarian" and so he's probably been a Veggie since the beginning of his monstrous career (though he did claim to be a killer...but I think that was just more awkward coping), he's apparently Matriculated quite a number of times—so he's spent a LOT of time surrounded by teenage girls—even if he's Bored to Death (Ha Ha) he's got to have developed better social graces and coping mechanisms by now.


But what do I know. All in all it was an okay movie, I didn't hate it—I got into it, except when Ed was acting weird. The story was compelling enough. Though its execution fell short of its potential, it wasn't enough to make me hate the movie (I'm looking at you Cat in the Hat). 

After watching the Movie, Emily watched some of the Bonus Material and I saw the director and all the awkwardness came into sharp focus—she was putting a lot of her own awkwardness into the character of Edward. I'm sure the next film will greatly benefit from the introduction of a new director.



Now, all this is fine and Dandy, I'm still not going to read the books—not my thing. But let's get to what's really important: There was a trailer for Astro Boy at the front of the DVD—now that's quality entertainment.

Kindle on the Cheap. . . Sort of.

A Literary Journey of Sorts.

This journey starts with a game. A game I have mentioned before and with which I am a little obsessed currently. The Game is Savage Wolds, and it is a Role Playing Game. One thing that sets Savage Worlds apart is its simplicity which lends it well to a Pulp Fiction Flavor. (Another thing that sets it apart is that it is not tied to any particular setting, meaning it can be applied to all manner of settings—High or Low Fantasy, High or Low Sci-fi, Pulp Fiction, Superheros, Pirates, Spies, Etc. Etc. Etc.)

Pinnacle Entertainment Group really accentuates the Pulp Fiction Feeling of their system, by publishing Game Settings to go along with their Core Rule Set that really fit into that Genre. The Most Obviously Pulp Setting they have released is called The Savage Worlds of Solomon Kane.

So, who is this Solomon Kane? He is a Character created by Pulp Fiction Author, Robert E. Howard—of Conan and Kull and Solomon Kane Fame. Conan never really interested me, Kull never interested me because I thought Kull was just like Conan, I can blame the Movie Kull the Conqueror for that. I'll just Quote Wikipedia—it's an interesting twist: "Kull the Conqueror is a 1997 fantasy action film about the Robert E. Howard character Kull starring Kevin Sorbo. It is a movie adaptation of the Conan novel Conan the Conqueror, with the protagonist changed in the face of Arnold Schwarzenegger's refusal to reprise his role as Conan and Kevin Sorbo not wanting to redo a character already played. (This is ironic, as the very first Conan story, "The Phoenix on the Sword", is actually a rewrite of the Kull story entitled "By This Axe, I Rule".) Note however that the Kull story, "By This Axe, I Rule", is very similar to the story line of this movie, and is a more likely basis for the movie."—though the characters are similar, they are not the same. 

I had heard of Conan, and Kull—but not Solomon Kane; turns out he is a very interesting fellow indeed. Solomon Kane is a 17th Century Puritan that wanders the World to Fight and Vanquish Evil. Now that's a story I can get into. Funny thing, I was first introduced to a pulp fiction author in high school. My friend Justin told me I should look into H.P. Lovecraft—and I've been meaning to read him ever since. Anyway, after reading about Solomon Kane, I decided I liked the concept enough to actually read the stories—I always want to read more, but find myself doing other things and not committing time to reading. The great thing about Pulp fiction, is that the bulk of it is short stories.

I began looking on Amazon for a Compilation of Solomon Kane Tales, there's a lot of them, but the first one that I thought I might be interested in—due to its completeness—turned out to be a no go. I was reading the synopsis on the site and when I glanced at the price it seemed perfect, 80 cents. Now that can't be right, I thought to myself, and that's when I noticed it was a Kindle Version. I guess if you're going to sell the Hardware for $400, you've got to sell the books cheap. 

So I kind of gave up. I never actually planned to buy a book in the first place; I was just curious as to what was out there before making my trip to the library. Meanwhile I had glancingly noticed that there was an app for the iPhone that allowed the reading of Kindle Files. I filed this away in my mind under things I'll probably get in the eventual case that I actually end up with an iPhone or iTouch. (I filed it mentally right next to a dice rolling application that I saw when I looked up if there are dice rolling applications already available when it occurred to me that that was a really cool idea for an app, and that I should pursue it if it had not already been done, which it had.)

A few days later this was all simmering in the back of my head when it donned on me that with the latest update for the Zune they added Games. Which means the Zune can run "Apps" of a sort, and I got to wondering if people had Hacked that ability for non-gaming goodness, and I wondered if someone had added eBook abilities to the good ol' Zune. The answer is no—not that I've found, at least. (Frankly I find that the Technical Abilities of the Zune are greatly under appreciated and under implemented, even by Microsoft. The device could be used for so much more than they let it.)

But there was another solution. The Zune has a picture Gallery, and a search for eBook and Zune very quickly leads to instructions for converting eBooks to Images. This piqued my interest and I tried a few of them. The one that suits my usage is simply called eBook to Images. It has default settings for a number of portable devices that can display pictures. 

Now that I had software, I needed books. First and foremost on my mind is Solomon Kane. Now the works of Robert E Howard are from the 20's and 30's, and copyright on literary work from that time is a little up in the air, and different for different parts of the world. I figured it was old enough to be in the public domain and started looking online for Solomon Kane Stories. (From what I can tell, this Document indicates that most of the works are indeed in the Public Domain)

I started at Project Gutenberg (Australia), because Wikipedia mentioned that there were some stories available there. But their search function bore no hits. So I spent a couple hours while we watched T.V. one night looking here there and everywhere to no avail. Then the typical happened, I hit upon the right Search parameters and boom, there I was, back at Project Gutenberg (Australia) which is where I thought I had started, staring at a list of Solomon Kane stories.

So I have converted a number of eBooks to Images and have loaded them on my Zune. I like it, though there are some quirks. I have no way to bookmark where I am, in hindsight I probably should have added page numbers (an option in the software), but I thought it would be confusing because the software doesn't handle text formatting as well as I had hoped, it can get confusing, because there were page numbers already in some of the documents and a heading at the top of each page that got inserted into the text. I can ignore all that, but the one thing I have trouble with is the way it handles hard returns. . . it ignores them, which turns bantering dialogue into a difficult to follow mash up of sentences. I got used to it fairly quickly but my reading comprehension suffered a little on the first few pages. 

So I have myself a Kindle Alternative, on the Cheap because I already had a Zune. A Zune that was free—most people don't get that price. So for me, this is a Kindle on the Cheap, for you. . . results may vary.