What Is This Table? Table

Once again, it is April Fool's Eve, and this time the foolishness will be doubled! Here, in Applied Phantasticality, you are invited to the madness of the What Is This Table? Table. (You'll see...) There, in Savage Arts & Sciences, you may enroll in the Build Your Own Space Opera Table (inspired by the likes of Flash Gordon). Two mega-tables for the price of one! Which will win? Read them both to find out...

What Is This Table? Table

Roll 1d12

1. Roll on the What Is This Business? Table!
2. Roll on the What Is This Market Stall Selling? Table!
3. Roll on the What Is This Plane of Existence? Table!
4. Roll on the What Does This Barrel Contain? Table!
5. Roll on the What Are They Discussing? Table!
6. Roll on the What Are They Discussing? 2 Table!
7. Roll on the What Is This Game of Chance? Table!
8. Roll on the What Does the Eclipse Portend? Table!
9. Roll on the Why Is the Room Spinning? Table!
10. Roll on the What Did the Mad Mage Create This Time? Table!
11. Roll on the What Did the Mad Mage Summon This Time? Table!
12. Roll on the Who Does the Mad Mage Think He Is This Time? Table!

N.B. Results of the What Is This Table? Table are being added [almost] daily (starting on the 1st of April). [And it stands at 12 entries.]

Reconsidering the Anniversary Festivities

As I mentioned in "Phantastical Dodecahedral Anniversary", this year (and this month, in fact) marks the twelfth anniversary of Applied Phantasticality. I mentioned possibly dedicating this year's Random Generator Month (a.k.a. April) to the splendid d12, and I dashed out about twenty d12 tables to this end, but alas they all insisted on being part of something called the Build Your Own Space Opera Table (COMING SOON!) in one of my other blogs, Savage Arts & Sciences. Instead of cross-posting them to both blogs, I think I'll leave the d12 tables to Savage Arts & Sciences and post more recklessly to Applied Phantasticality. I might not even use a theme. That's how wild and crazy I am. (Let's hope I post something, though.)

Carry on.

Phantastical Dodecahedral Anniversary

This year marks the 12th anniversary of my oldest extant blog, Applied Phantasticality (and my 25th anniversary of blogging in any capacity, as shocking as that is to me). In honor of this event, I think I might dedicate this year's Random Generator Month (a.k.a. April) exclusively to the noblest of platonic solids, the dodecahedron, or, as it is known amongst gamers, the d12. I am undecided about the theme of this year's Random Generator Month, but all of the tables will require the service of your loyal twelve-sided dice.

Huzzah!

Ides of March

The controversies surrounding Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast and its dominion over recent, current, and imminent versions of Dungeons & Dragons leave little room for optimism for those of us who like earlier editions, later variants, and different role-playing games altogether, but I can't say it's surprising. I haven't trusted TSR since it published Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space for Star Frontiers (and I ought to have distrusted them starting with the bifurcation of D&D and AD&D), but I've never trusted Wizards of the Coast with or without Hasbro's overlordship. As media personalities jump ship from D&D and launch their own vessels of variable seaworthiness, I think it's worth looking at the craft of great designers, young and old, who have been perfecting role-playing games without regard to, or interest in, Hasbro/WOTC's self-defeating nonsense. There are so many satisfying alternatives from the very beginning of the hobby to the present, and more are being created right now by actual independent game designers who actually play the games. The best part of role-playing is that it's a hobby. The best publishers of role-playing games are hobbyists themselves. The corporations don't care about hobbyists. In turn, we owe them nothing. We can do it ourselves.