Folder Icons: Pathfinder, LL, and S&W

I posted about these a long time ago, but haven't gotten around to uploading them until now:

Pathfinder: Folder Icons for Mac and PC

Chaosium Basic Roleplaying: Folder Icons for Mac and PC

Labyrinth Lord: Folder Icon for Mac

Swords & Wizardry: Folder Icon for Mac

Because of technical hurdles, the Mac icons are generally enlargeable to 128x128 pixels, whereas the Pathfinder Windows XP icons can only be enlarged to 48x48.

Labyrinth Lord with Nick

Alignment issues can be terribly complicating in the game, but really add to plot development...

Nick had rolled up five characters, three of whom might eventually join his party (or any of whom he may need to utilize should his chosen main protagonist die). One of the things I didn't put on my LL index cards originally was alignment. This was a mistake (since corrected), but turned out well as the ones I filled out, scanned, and emailed to Nick for our game didn't include it, and so he doesn't necessarily know the alignments of the others in his party. He chose one of his characters to play (a cleric named Agnal) and his alignment.

He chose to make him chaotic (evil).

Now, bear in mind that the back story here is that Agnal and a fellow cleric, Mog, are travelling to a village from an adjacent county in order to investigate for their church whether or not there's really been an up-welling of evil in the vicinity, as rumors have indicated. If it's true, the extent of the problem is to be determined, and they are then to report back to their superiors in the church. Mog's (and for appearance's sake, Agnal's) deity is avowedly not evil - in fact the opposite.

Spoiler alert! Nick, stop reading!

The village is indeed experiencing problems with a resurgent evil, and the townsfolk are highly suspicious and carefully watching outsiders to be on guard against it.

Agnal and Mog played the usual part of detectives, asking a local here and there if they'd seen anything unusual lately. Eventually they made their way to the village's own church (of a different faith) to pursue a conversation with the local priest about their mission, who sent them, and to offer aid if needed. Now in the course of this conversation, the friendly local priest invited them to sit down for tea (after soliciting a donation - everyone is solicited, especially out-of-towners!)... At this time, while Mog was distracted with some of the local faith's religious written propaganda and Agnal was lifting a cup of tea to his face to be sure that the tea did in fact taste of dirt and mushrooms, the priest made some quick hand gestures and cast a spell. What spell, praytell? Why, Detect Evil of course!

Neither Agnal nor Mog know this spell, and so although Agnal thought he saw some strange gesturing, he didn't know its purpose. The change in tone of the formerly friendly priest was unmistakeable however. He had suddenly remembered a host of chores he needed to attend to, and something that he'd forgotten to tell the canon about. He excused himself a bit hurriedly, and Nick decided it was time to make a hasty exit out a door in the opposite direction.

It then dawned on me that there's just no way that Nick's character wouldn't have been vetted in exactly this way, at some point, by his own church. Now, Mog is supposedly an equal of Agnal, but Agnal's charisma (at least Agnal had thought) had earned him the original appointment to his and Mog's task. Mog had been ordered to support him in it, at least as far as Agnal knew. The truth is, or I should say, has evolved to be, that their church leaders fully knew the true alignment of Agnal. Mog wasn't sent to help Agnal - she was sent to spy on him, and see if he was connected to the evil in the village where they'd been sent.

Nick suspects that the local church leaders are now on to him. He was wise not to reveal where they were staying, but in such a small town, it won't be hard to track him down to the village's only tavern. If he's cornered by the village elders, he'll likely be interrogated and imprisoned, with Mog only too eager to aid them. Will Agnal realize his naivete before it's too late, taking drastic measures to escape from getting caught in his own web of deceipt? :-O

Labyrinth Lord with Josiah

I'm hoping to get together soon with Nick for some long distance Labyrinth Lord play via voip, but in the mean time today Josiah was interested in another session. Camille couldn't join us due to illness, so it was going to be just one on one. There's a set of challenges with this circumstance, particularly due to the fact that Josiah is only eight years old!

Our session began with Josiah strongly taking charge of his party, insisting upon being the leader at the front of the group in terms of marching order. When another fighter (a more charismatic one) refused to walk behind him, Josiah ordered him back, but the others made threats of leaving Josiah and his two hirelings, and he was forced to back down and realize that he wasn't going to be able to just order everyone around all the time.

There were a number of aspects to the game that became extremely streamlined out of necessity. Map making, for example, would be expecting a little too much at his age. I asked him what he'd like to do about it, and though he said he had absolutely no idea how to begin, he then decided to just go for it. I let him make his map without any guidance (I wasn't going to use it in gameplay in any real way) and it was great to to see him drawing and visualizing monster locations and potential threats.

Traps, riddles, and plot have little place in Josiah's hack and slash world of dungeoneering... So be it! His party encountered a group of seven goblins, who looked a pretty good match for his group of five (and two hirelings). An epic battle took place, where nine more goblins from an adjacent room joined in as reinforcements due to the noise of melee. Refusing to retreat, the party was slowly worn down to just two. He would have stayed, but the cleric (who'd already used up his cure light wounds) decided to make a run for it and Josiah was not about to face the remaining six or so goblins on his own. They dropped just about everything and made a dash for the door, dodging the attacks of opportunity their fleeing afforded. They made it back to town with one hit point each.

Josiah relished the dice rolling, and was astonished at our four time initiative tie. I did all of my rolls in the open, and he seemed glad for this, watching alternately with nervousness and relief as I rolled the goblins' attacks. He enjoyed trading taunts with the goblin leader as well.

He had a lot of fun and wanted to keep playing, but it was getting on the late side. Considering how obsessed he can be with Zelda on his Nintendo 64, it was great to see his imagination at work playing this pencil and paper game!

One Page Cities

Over at Bite the Bulette (no relation!), Sean Wills linked to his and David Hutchinson's map and reference sheet for their City of Samurbia. Pretty cool, and inspired by Zulgyan's own City of Enharza.

I've been thinking of doing something similar. I like using a small town as a party base of operation and am implementing both a sort of devolved version of Hommlet as well as Brave Halfling's Larm to serve this purpose, being a little short of time and inspiration at the moment. When I have time and the players are ready or their actions demand it, I'll use Carcassonne in the south of France and this map as my own larger city's template.

I visited Carcassonne in '97 and words can't describe the beauty and awe the place invokes for an old D&D'er like myself. The picture I took above is one of its towers built back in the Roman era, but there are many more "modern" ones that date several hundred years or more later.

Magic Power and Ley Lines

Nick and I were talking again about his ongoing rpg project which seems to revolve around magic as its main theme - everyone is a magic user of one sort or another, and power is summoned by your character from (possibly among other sources) geographic places, or ley lines as you might call them, and their intersections.

I pointed out the interesting politics such a situation might make for...possibly analogous to the Middle-East's oil in our world. There might even be a very similar place in that fictional magic world, where power is highly concentrated and thus greatly fought over. Or perhaps the power in such a spot is already highly controlled and monopolized, and those on the outside or otherwise denied access are resentful, jealous, and ever conspiring against those controlling the magic "oil" fields. Interesting campaign setting, even if it doesn't become an rpg in its own right.

I recently re-read Robert Aspin's Myth Adventures and he made mention (although I'm sure he isn't the only fantasy author to have done so) of such invisible power lines of magic, detectable only by Wizards or their apprentices, who can tap into them and recharge their spell-casting batteries.

Of course, some say this is something that's not the stuff or fantasy or fiction. If you have Google Earth installed, you can download and install this .kmz file that will show you B. Hagen's compiled map of major ley lines and vortices (intersections). Maybe you live in a vortex and didn't know it? :-)

In searching for an image for this post, I stumbled on the above Earth picture and couldn' t resist pairing it with the ubiquitous d20 on the right.

Steven Roy's Beauty of a Zork Map

I love this map from near to the same time I played most of my D&D games. Before we could afford D&D, my cousin Jim and I whipped up our own homebrewed version of the rules, using six sided dice only. I can still remember the vampire in one of those dungeons. This gridless, stained and yellowed map takes me back...

"This dungeon was originally drawn in 1979 by Steven Roy. Revisions of the original were made over the following months and final changes (magic-motion) added in March. End game is intentionally omitted. This drawing made in January 1981."

Swords & Wizardry PC Sheet Do-Over

I was lazy with the 3" x 5" index card sized S&W player character sheet I'd made last week, so I decided to do it over again, using the LL sheet as a template. I'm not quite as happy with it (seems a little heavy on the left side) but it'll suffice. I purposely left this one titled "Character Card" as it might be more useful for some folks to just use it for NPCs rather than their PCs, given its size, and because it's more of a "card" than a sheet. You can get it here.

Yet Another Labyrinth Lord PC Sheet

I made another 3" x 5" index card sized player character sheet, this time for Labyrinth Lord. Much better this time, I'll have to go back and re-do that Swords & Wizardy one. You can get it here.

Update: I changed the header font and title, and added trademark information (not reflected in thumbnail image here).

I'm using these as 4"x6" cards, I just scale to 120-122% during printing. There's some wasted space at the top and bottom, but they're much more readable and at the moment I can't be bothered with re-doing the whole layout for a true 4x6 card.

Yet Another Swords & Wizardry PC Sheet

I 've been playing around a little bit with Scribus lately and being inspired by Chgowiz and the ChattyDM's One Page Dungeon Contest, I created some similarly mini-sized player character sheets for Swords & Wizardry. The S&W rules lend themselves to a very simple character record. These are meant to be printed on unlined 3" x 5" index cards. Get 'em here: Front and Back (pdf files). Yeah, that's a Pink Floyd font folks.

"Real World" Based Maps in your Game

I was thinking back to the books I was reading when I first started playing D&D. The Hobbit and to a lesser extent LotR are definitely on that list, but the longest series I read was Piers Anthony's Xanth novel - I read the first nine books (there are thirty two total now).

I haven't read much fiction in years, and I have to admit that the Harry Potter series is definitely the longest series I've read since I was a kid. The thing that drew me to the Xanth books was the idea that everyone in the world (not including those in the land of Mundania) had a magical talent. A sort of one spell or magical ability, such as the ability to shape change, or talk to inanimate objects. I didn't think of it then, but it's much like the X-Men's mutant abilities (albeit not necessarily so obvious, since all the humans in Xanth generally look normal).

I didn't consider the books to have had that much influence on my D&D games, other than being a place to read about centaurs, ghosts, ogres and whatnot. They were pretty silly, with an overabundance of punning and the occasional sexual innuendo.

For fun and light reading, I recently bought a used copy of the first book in the series, A Spell for Chameleon. On opening it to the first page, there was a map of the land of Xanth. What's remarkable about this particular fantasy setting map is the fact that it's obviously based on the state of Florida (see picture above)! Right down to the long and straight northern border.

I've also been thinking about how I once designed my dungeons and world settings. One of the things I liked to do was base an adventure on a general map of my neighborhood, or of a place I'd gone on vacation to with my family. The houses and the people in them might become monsters, or the village and townsfolk. The day hikes we kids made down the railroad tracks and into the woods (this was in upstate New York) became opportunities. A pond with hoards of tadpoles and frogs we visited became a swamp or a lake I could name. And so on... Mixing fantasy and reality like that was great fun, and there could be inspiration for the game everywhere and in everything we did. It was like putting on D&D filter glasses. I wonder if anyone else makes their game maps in some way like this?

So seeing this Piers Anthony map, it all came back to me again. Is it something that all fantasy writers just naturally do (even kids), or did Anthony's map unconsciously inspire me to base my fictional D&D world (especially the geography of it) on the real world? What a trip to see that page in his book again... Being Florida, it also brought back memories of vacations to Disney World, which seems to be the exact location of the "Good Magician" on the map of Xanth.

Miniatures Review: MegaMiniatures

I'd been looking for more affordable miniatures when I found some options online (see my earlier post). Yesterday I received the six metal 25mm miniatures I'd bought from MegaMiniatures via eBay (they also have a small site at megaminis.com).

It took about a week for them to arrive. I'm satisfied with the items - the detail is very good, I'm glad they're lead free (does anyone still make those?), and the price was right.

I ordered: three goblins (one shaman, one chieftan, and grunt with sword), one zombie with dagger, one skeleton with sword (pictured above), and one rat (sold as "giant rat spawn").

Of these, my favorite is the skeleton with sword. It's a classic, with a nice large and undecorated shield to paint to your own satisfaction. All of the miniatures show great detail. The goblins have facial features. Only the zombie seems somewhat odd to me due to its weilding of a very large dagger (I've never had zombies be armed in my games). The zombie, perhaps because of the weapon it wields is also slightly less obvious than the others as to what type of humanoid it is exactly. Nearly all of the figures came with minor burrs which will require cutting and filing, something I'm not used to...in my old miniature buying days as a kid (some twenty five plus years ago) I almost never ran into this, but it's not a big deal. Maybe they all come like this now? (Edit: Ok, it's been a loong time!)

MegaMiniatures has licensed the art/molds of one of the original TSR contracted artists that worked for Grenadier - as a result, Julie Guthrie's old school Grenadier molds are available again from MegaMiniatures, this time without the lead. If you're a fan of these in particular, you can save some money with MegaMiniatures. Many of their figures start at $1.50 or less, making these new Grenadier pours a buck or more more affordable than buying the originals via eBay. Many of the non-Grenadier figures are also priced this way.

I'll buy again from them, especially from their monster selection (warning, 5mb PDF!).

Hex Map Brushes in GIMP

I was hoping to help someone over in the forums at Goblinoid Games with some GIMP and large scaled, hex mapped based map issues, but the being the GIMP newbie that I am, I could only really steer him towards Inkwellideas' sweet GIMP hex map brushes.

I'm a bit confuseth with regard to shapes and paths in GIMP myself, having stumbed over some possibilities recently with the one page dungeon contest map I submitted. I finally resorted to just quickly hand drawing and scanning the map I'd made. At some point I'll play further with it, but it's hard to break with my Photoshop 7 experience. This custom GIMP brushes tutorial might come in handy at some point, but Inkscape might be the better tool for .svg scalable hexes for mapping purposes.

Villains of Volturnus

I found the book pictured here at the local used bookstore. I was looking for any early edition books or supplements, but this was the closest I could find. I don't think it'll be necessary to review this book, but I did buy it as a curiosity/collector's item!

Published in 1983 by TSR, its unfathomable cover includes one of the winged monkeys I'd mentioned in an earlier post. "Choose Your Own Adventure" books were pretty popular when I was a kid (are they still?), and this was TSR's take on the idea. Their version was "An Endless Quest Book", and in theory it does seem like a good way to both promote their games and introduce the idea of role playing fiction.

Anyone wanna caption this cover?

One Page Dungeon Contest - Submitted

Phew! I finally submitted my entry for the one page dungeon contest.

I included a few humorous bits and references to hopefully make the judges smile, and appeal to the particular era/setting I was aiming for... Nothing fancy, and a bit treasure heavy perhaps, but it was for a small group of low level characters, and they do need encouragement and a little extra to help themselves not die so quickly. :-)

Knockspell Magazine #1 Belatedly Reviewed

Now that the second issue has come out, I am going to very belatedly review Knockspell #1, which I ordered a print copy of long after it first became available.

Production value: The first thing I'll say is that it's a little pricey to be honest - $10 for a 61 page magazine (not including shipping). Still, it has almost no ads, and the few that it does have you're glad to see there (for example, there's an ad for Goblinoid Games' Labyrinth Lord). The print magazine is manufactured by Lulu.com on a print-on-demand basis - I think there's something about Lulu's printing process that turns things a slight shade darker than the original artwork, and I suspect this is why the front cover might be just a tad more black than originally intended - still, the art work lends itself to this effect, and I'm a big fan of what art I've seen by the cover artist (Peter Mullen). The 8.5"x11" pages are crisp, the font is very readibly sized. A lower priced electronic download version of the magazine is also available.

There are a few columns as well as about 15 articles in this issue, a few of which are dedicated to player and non-player character classes for use with Mythmere Games' Swords & Wizardry rules. The latter is essentially a clone of the original D&D rules by Gygax from about 1974. These are easily adaptable and could be used with the red/blue box versions or clones, or even with first edition AD&D/OSRIC.

Of these, my favorite is the Necromancer NPC class, which is an absolutely great contribution by author Scot Hoover. Necromancers as a class have been described before, in Dragon magazine if I remember correctly as well as at least one other fan zine I've read. This particular contribution is very well fleshed out, with extra spells, limitations, and upper level constraints and abilities. I can see some of my players being thrilled to see this article and they'd probably love to play the class as outlined here (even though it wasn't really intended for players).

Of the other articles in this issue, my next favorite was probably the short "Random Hireling Generator" by Richard Lionheart. The included tables will definitely find use in my campaign where hirelings figure prominently due to the low level of the PCs.

An adventure for 4-6 PCs of levels 4-7 is included, "The Charnel Crypt of the Sightless Serpent", whose main villain is actually a Necromancer himself.

There's only one article that I really thought of as "filler" here. I'm looking forward to the much larger second issue to come - if you're a fan of the early editions of D&D or the so-called retro-clones, you'll enjoy this magazine. A great premiere and I fully expect even better issues to follow based on the intelligent editing and selection of contributions found in this first issue.

One Page Dungeon Contest Update

So I finished my One Page Dungeon Contest entry and submitted it fifteen minutes before midnight... However, I was informed by email that my submission couldn't be counted due to it being overdue - apparently the rules on one site indicated an EST time zone and but it was not mentioned what time zone on another. Twenty or so people either ran into the same problem at the last moment or got confused about the 12am time posted and which day the contest submission officially ended on...

Fortunately, the deadline has been extended for another week! I've been emailed and notified that my entry will in fact be counted and that (in answer to my question) I can go ahead and edit it further for re-submission if I'd like. Woohoo!

Honestly, although the prizes look great I'm really just interested in being a part of this. It's forced me to get to work on creating my own dungeon for the first time in many years too. I'm looking forward to seeing the many entries - it should be a goldmine in and of itself.

New Old School Products Available from Mythmere Games

Knockspell issue # 2, the "magazine of fantasy retro-clone gaming and the original editions: 0e, 1e, and Moldvay Basic" is now available, both in print and as a free PDF download.

Also now available in print and free download in Word Document format (sans artwork) is the"0E Reloaded Monster Book" (front page pictured above).

I ordered mine the other day from Lulu - word to wise though, if you order either or both, use discount code "MAYCONTEST10" to get a 10% discount!

Err, Questionable Monsters

On the heels of my Gelatinous Cube blog entry, I stumbled on headinjurytheater's "30 years of very stupid monsters" essay from over at basicroleplaying.com's forums. It is fantasy after all, but a number of the points made there are not exactly the first time they've ever been shared! And so a review of some of the more silly (I'll not venture to agree and say stupid, per se) monsters follows...

The Hero Machine

I don't remember whose blog I found this on now, but check out the HeroMachine (v.2.5 at posting). A quick way to create a fast generic PC or NPC graphic. Not a lot of personality to be found, but quick and dirty, it definitely is... Image to the right is of the dwarf I generated using this tool.

Miniatures in Early Edition D&D

The use of 25mm miniatures has always been kept to a minimum as far as my own gaming experience goes both when dungeon mastering and as player in Basic and Advanced D&D. The focus was always on the role-playing itself, with the needs of tactical combat being minimal and either waved away as unnecessary or else rules were made up on the spot as needed. Typically the few miniatures we had were to display a marching order. Rarely they were also used when a peculiar room or set of circumstances required us to state exactly what the characters' positions were. We didn't use battlemats or graph paper. I really suspect now that a lot of our use of miniatures was simply due to thinking that they were cool looking. The fact that the boxes they came in were labeled as not suitable for young children (due to the lead content) probably only made us want to use them more.

My favorites were the old Grenadiers, made for TSR, that came in yellow rectangular boxes with fantasy art on the front. I could never afford one of the larger box sets Grenadier offered, but our characters almost never got to the high levels necessary to battle the rarer monsters found in them anyway. The other brands I liked were Ral Partha, which was decent, and Citadel was fine if the others weren't available. I don't know if I'd feel that way now if I had a lot to review, but that's how I felt then for whatever reason.

Now that I've started playing and am planning to play more, I wondered if I should acquire some miniatures again. I bought some of the old figures I had as a kid on eBay partly out of nostalgia (ok, probably more than was necessary!) and partly because I thought they might be good to have on hand for future sessions. When my eight year old future player Josiah was over visiting one day, he saw the figures and was immediately intrigued. We'd talked a little before about playing some Labyrinth Lord, and even though he didn't fully know what the game was about, the fact that these figures were somehow involved made him even more interested.

I did end up printing out some graph paper and laying some clear acrylic over the top of it on our game table to serve as a visual aid in our first adventure. I had some dry erase markers, and they worked great on the acrylic sheet, wiping off easily with newspaper.

I'm glad I set that up, because for our first session, I think Josiah was very pleased to see a lot of miniatures. I think it was helpful for both new players to have something visual to focus on, being totally unfamiliar with the game. Though we haven't even used them inside a dungeon yet, having them in a town setting was still handy for introducing them as pieces to help the the players visualize their surroundings.

I've begun considering that I might need yet more of these, given Josiah's reaction to them, but I'm reluctant to invest heavily. I've found two solutions to this so far (aside from just outright not using them). One is Discount Hobby's Mega-Mini's, from whom I've ordered a few metal miniature samples. I'll post pictures and give a short review once they arrive. The other is Chessex's gaming stones. I remember using dice or other small objects in place of missing figures for NPCs and monsters, and these gaming stones will work nicely - they're cheap (a few bucks for a couple dozen), you can choose various colors (I bought some white for use as skeletons for example, and some green for goblins), and they fit my homemade battlemap's squares nicely. For now, I foresee using these along with more specific metal figures (representing the goblin chief or shaman, for example) as a compromise.

It may very well turn out that we dispense with figures entirely as we move forward. If we do, it'll be because they only slow down game play and enjoyment, so that'll be fine. I'll still have them for use with later editions of the game, should I ever decide to try them out (Paizo's 3.5 based Pathfinder 2nd edition has gone to the printer's after all). I can't imagine ever playing the newest version of D&D, but the use of miniatures in 4th edition seems mandatory and I'll have some if need be.

Labyrinth Lord Character Generator

Veteran LL players probably already know about the Character Generator linked to from the forums at Goblinoid Games, but if not, check it out - It was really helpful in setting up the game my wife and nephew played, taking just a few minutes to "roll" up a bunch of NPCs for them to hook up with in town (some of whom may be candidates for them to use should their own PCs die). I like the way it produces PDFs to print out that look just like the regular LL character sheets from the rules book, but next time I'll probably just copy the results down in pencil so the stats can be changed as necessary.

The Temple of Elemental Evil by Thomas M. Reid

I picked up The Temple of Elemental Evil paperback by Reid for almost nothing at a flea market and read it recently, mostly during time off from work due to the flu.

For that purpose, it was just what I needed - nothing too deep, nothing too complicated, nothing that would give me an even worse headache than what I already had. I thought it might be fun to read as Nick and I have been slowly working up to a play by post game of 1st edition AD&D with the Village of Hommlet module.

As one might expect, D&D rules were apparent throughout. For example, the elven wizard memorizing and preparing his spells at the beginning of the day and the thief-like character stealthily serving as the party's recon and continually sniffing out traps. And of course familiar spells like Ye Olde Magic Missile.

It's not Tolkien, but it was fun and got me more into the mood to game.

Gelatinous Cubes

The gelatinous cube boggled my brain as a kid. As my fellow players and I were eating lime flavored jello cubes our moms had made in the summer, it wasn't hard to imagine what one of these would look like full sized in a dungeon. Why or how they adapted to fit perfectly into a 10' wide dungeon passage (mirroring our graph paper's 1 sq=10') never entered our minds, nor apparently their creator's (Gygax). I reckon we unconsciously thought that scarfing these down was the monsters' just desserts.

This fantastic image of a Gelatinous Cube was created by Shockbolt at Deviant Art.

Creative Commons Licensed Monster Art?

Does anyone know of a SRD or OGL monster compendium with art licensed under the creative commons? If there isn't such a thing, I'd love to see one...and suggest to (esp. aspiring) artists that their work might reach a greater audience, be distributed widely, and be frequently referred back to if they were to contribute to such a project. I'd be willing to host the images if anyone wants to contribute, contact me here. The Monster Index at d20srd.org makes a decent starting point. Maybe if we dig around enough on the Creative Commons website we can begin to build a bestiary under the CC license immediately. An example is this post's wraith art (above), by Zufiel at Flickr.

Update: Having looked a bunch, I'm amazed at how few images have been open licensed (at least on Flickr). Maybe there's a better source... There IS the OGL'd Monsters of Myth book available at Lulu, but the images are obviously still copyrighted by the artists. What I'm looking for is an online warehouse of these things, just to show new players to give them an idea what they're up against, although maybe it's just best to let their imaginations come up with it.

The blog's name change

Well, as I'd indicated here previously, I was wanting to replace the unimaginative "writingrpgs.blogspot.com" url for some time, so I finally did. I have no idea how people will find it who might have been following it before, but I hope they do (it couldn't have been more than one or two!).

Originally, I was going to put up a poll before I did it, but I really didn't have that many (of what I thought were) good ideas.

btw, if anyone has a suggestion as to how I can center the blog title without the center tags being visible across the top of a browser window, I'd love to hear it. it worked fine before, but now that i've renamed the blog, it got broke.