Showing posts with label News/Updates. Show all posts

Hey folks.

It's been a long time since this place has seen any life, but I never really considered it "dead", per se. Just sleeping, deep within the earth, with stories told by the folks who used to visit the place of its once prominent words spilling forth onto your battlemats.

My life has afforded me the chance once again to pick up this hobby - writing has always been something that I enjoyed, but now I have something of an abundance of free time and a fire in me to pick up the pen where I had left it. There's been a TON of material released for Pathfinder, as well as the debut of 5th ed. (which I must admit I do not have much experience with outside of Geek and Sundry's wonderful twitch show Critical Role).

If this is your first time here, there's a lot of old material to look over, and most of it still very relevant to your games today. Particularly might I suggest my series on the darker side of DMing? (psst... start at the bottom) or perhaps spice up your game with some new Magic Items?

Ultimately I plan on updating this blog daily with new tabletop, storytelling, worldbuilding, and mechanical content. Please subscribe if you see something you like, because the ancient words have been spoken...

...and...it...LIVES!

It's always fun to see the amusing April Fools pranks the internet conjures every year, but I was in particular amused by This Is My Game's reveal of D&D Next's true face - D&D Live! It was particularly amusing to me because I missed all the April Fools shenanigans around the internet due to actually driving back from a LARPing event. Yeah, I LARP - but don't get too worried, rockers, I won't cheat on you. There's no larping to be done on this blog. For now.

We will be participating in the April "A-Z" challenge - essentially, we will be publishing an article every day with a theme starting with that letter. Today's article, ("April Fools!") is basically the biggest cop-out ever but I'm still busy with some personal stuff so I get one get-out-of-jail free card, ok!? More details below.

Personal Update
You may have noticed I missed my Monday Update - I am sad to report that my home was robbed in the middle of the day yesterday and dealing with that took up all the energy I'd usually devote to this blog. Fear not, I have returned. As a side note, although we did lose some valuables, it could have been far worse. Pick up and move on, right? There's plenty of loot to be had in the next dungeons, as they say.

I would like keep Rocks Fall very active, and sometimes my life gets in the way. While I'm sure there's a chorus of "It's ok, life comes first!" waiting to be reassured at me, the reason I bring it up isn't as an excuse, but as a request - Rocks Fall needs writers! You know you have it in you! As it stands I don't write articles on the weekends and need about two/week to keep at the pace I'd prefer. If you can write one article a week, and want a little publicity, I'd love to give it to you! Please, send me an email with that fancy tool on the right ("contact us!")

As gamers, there is a certain habit that I think we are all too familiar with. That is to say, we have all been in games that for one reason or another seem to just fade into memory without anyone putting the nail in the coffin. Meetings become scarce, people become busy (or move away), and slowly it becomes an unspoken truth that the game is simply just dead. When we were in the height of our posting glory here on RocksFall, it seemed like it was something we would do forever - something that we genuinely enjoyed doing. The words flowed from our fingertips and I in particular would compete with Spenser in trying to get the most pageviews for our articles.

But then slowly, it started to fade. When our domain (www.rocksfallblog.com) was jacked in a moment of negligence by domain resellers, our morale was struck in a way that we never really recovered from. Articles slowed down. Eventually, on one fateful day in October, we just stopped. It was never agreed upon - there was no "goodbye" post, and the cliffhanger of our last post sat on the front page of this blog like a ghost town. It was almost as if we might just come back at any moment and start writing Sunday Hooks, or bits of advice for DMs.

A lot has happened in the two years since we primarily stopped writing this blog. I almost made a video game. Spenser actually went and got his degree in Creative Writing, and is presumably on the job market now (or perhaps gainfully employed). I'm not certain. He and I don't talk very much right now, but I'm certain his writing talents are being put to good use, even if it's torturing poor newbies with certain death in pathfinder games far away from here!

I'm breaking this dusty tome back open because role-playing games are still a relevant and large part of my life. I've been collecting ideas that I used to write out in posts here, from my experiences DMing and playing, and I'm eager to share them like I used to.

Rocks Fell. Everyone Died. But as you all know, the adventure never ends there. Let's reroll!

As I'm sure some of you noticed, we had a... shall we call it a 'slump'? Yes, a slump in our posting on this blog. But we're back. We promise.

You also may have noticed a change of address. We implore you to update your bookmarks and RSS feeds accordingly.

I'm assuming that most of you who read this blog regularly have at least an active interest in (if not debilitating addiction to) the Pathfinder RPG, so I'd like to direct your attention to Troll in the Corner's Pathfinder International Giveaway. One lucky winner will take home the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook, Bestiary, and Gamemastery Guide hardcovers, and fifteen more will win various PDF rules supplements. Just be sure to enter before the deadline on August 4th.

A few weeks ago we received an email from Nicholas Cloister telling us about his new blog, RPG Creatures. I always enjoy supporting fellow bloggers and freelancers, and spreading word about their projects, so of course I had to stop by, and Cloister did not fail to impress.

The goal of RPG Creatures is to provide a system-independent, illustrated bestiary of fantasy monsters. Our dedicated readers know by now that I've got a taste for weird monsters, and RPG Creatures has those in spades, each with its own high-quality art. It's always hard to evoke the right imagery with a simple description, which is why this art is RPG Creatures' greatest strength.

The art is by no means RPG Creatures' only strength, however. Each monster has a very detailed description of its attributes and powers, as well as a section on their general behavior and where they fit into a fantasy setting. As stated above, the stats are systemless, but there's enough detail presented that even a moderately experienced DM should be able to convert it to D&D (or another system) fairly easily (that is, if you even use stats anymore). Of course, unless you're running a hack-'n'-slash affair, you may not need game stats anyway, in which case RPG Creatures is the perfect resource.

I'd recommend RPG Creatures to any fan of fantasy. It's a cool little site and I'm very excited to see where Cloister goes with it. Check it out and leave him a comment on your favorite beasties.

Just a quick update for those of you who haven't followed me on twitter yet: You can now connect to Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies over on Facebook. So, if you haven't accepted twitter as you lord and master, you can still tell us what you think about us and what you want to see more of. Just remember, feedback is the grease that keeps the Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies machine running, so if you like our blog, throw a few keystrokes our way.

Just wanted to reassure everyone that, now that November (and thus NaNoWriMo) is over, we'll be back to our previous schedule of irregular but much more frequent posting.

For those of you following this site, you may want to check out an article I did for ObsidianPortal.com that went live today, titles How To Kill Your PCs. As my comrade-in-arms Michael can tell you, I'm more than qualified to comment on the topic.

Tomorrow, come on back for the second post in my Races of Ralsenna series, featuring the rare and mysterious spirit-bound, a race of once-human children warped by the spirits of the dead while still in the womb.

Gentle readers: I'm going to be participating in NaNoWriMo this month, which, among other things, will almost certainly result in fewer posts here. So, if you start to notice that, don't worry, I'll be back in December. Wish me luck!

I'm sure most of you have heard about the D&D-themed Jones Sodas. I've got a couple of those babies on their way to me, or so I thought until I got the following email:

Dear Jones Soda and D&D fans:

We are very excited about our partnership with Wizards of the Coast and the opportunity it has given us to offer specialty Jones Soda D&D cases. We knew there were many D&D fans in North America, but didn’t anticipate just how great of a response we received from you. Upon the release of the cases, the volume of orders has been much larger than expected.

These cases are not mass-produced, they are handmade in a process that lasts three days. Due to the production time involved and the high volume of orders, we have overwhelmed our production facility. They are working hard to catch up, but we ask for your patience and understanding at this time. Currently, it appears that orders placed last week will ship out this week and this week’s order will ship next week. Rest assured, we are doing our utmost to process your orders quickly and will ship them as soon as possible as we realize how eager everyone is to receive and enjoy their new sodas.

Thank you for your orders. We truly appreciate your business.

Sincerely,
Jones Soda Interactive Department.
Seattle, WA 98109
206-436-8756

I know the site has been down for a few days (Read: Like a week maybe? >.>) But I finally fixed the issue with the domain provider and we're, uh, still in the positive hit points. Stay tuned.