I certainly agree that with some settings you really have to use the "known" gods. For instance, it would unthinkable to run a Dragonlance campaign without Paladine & Tahkisis (unless you run it in the later Age of Mortals, of course). Likewise, a game set in the Hyperborean Age of Con...

Best of luck, HB! I'm hopeful that your lost material will be recovered, and I'm looking forward to a 'banner year' for BIP!

How's the new supercomputer working out? Is it weird actually having more HD space for storage than a Playstation One memory card?

For me, it's always been a major PITA to come up with interesting new pantheons though. My players can marvel over serving Odin or Zeus because they grew up reading mythology, and those gods are familiar and exciting. But ask them to have their characters worship Terron, the god of storms and disas...

The neat thing is when the players get to know your campaign world well enough that your deities start to "come alive" for them. Sure, at first they're just funny names, but as they begin to interact with the world your players start to think of them as characters. In my last campaign, the...

I think it's a story element. If you have the type of campaign that supports it I think you can have fun with divine ascension. But for the most part it would have to be extraordinarily rare, I should think. If I was going to do it I'd probably do so to wrap up a campaign, allowing the PCs to attain...

IMOHO Gods are absolutely essential to fleshing out a believable campaign world. I just don't get the "suspension of disbelief" when I'm told my cleric "just prays to The Powers, the details aren't important." When creating a new campaign setting, I create the pantheon of deities...

Even a pretty severe crash can often be recovered. Hopefully you'll get all your data back. But I also hope you learned your lesson- always back your important stuff up! :wink: :shock: :) Especially given how cheap harddrive space is nowadays. You can generally get an external 250 GB Seagate for und...

Yikes! Best of luck, Halaster. Hopefully the stuff can be retrieved. If you can't do it yourself, maybe you should consider taking it to a PC shop. Data can be retrieved from some pretty serious catastrophes.

I like XP pretty well. Eventually though I'll probably have to get Vista...if not now, next time I build a PC.

Awww, that sucks. I have a few pretty up-to-date PCs, and a few big external HDs (between 400 and 750 GB) but I don't back up nearly as often as I should. :oops: I'd be totally screwed if I lost my Favorites for Firefox. :shock: It'd take me years to find all my sites again, and I doubt I ever could...

Been pretty quiet here lately...I realize everyone is busy with life and the holidays, but I wanted to drop in and say HI! And to thank Hal for BIP. I know your life's been crazy, but hopefully the new year will find you well and ready to tackle some old school gaming projects!

I'm probably going to work on Turkey Day; not a big deal, though- I'll be off by 5:00 pm. And it will get me off the hook, cooking wise. FYI- I've spent most of my working life as a chef, so it seems like my family thinks I'm the only one "qualified" to cook for the holidays. :? Nevermind ...

One problem I have is this damned museum piece computer. 8 GB harddrive (I think my cell phone has a bigger drive!), 333 MHz processor, 256MB RAM, Windows 98SE...I'm a bit behind the times! :oops: :lol: Holy crap! :shock: Yeah, your phone is probably more powerful! :P I just read Wal-Mart is rollin...

Why the pessimism re Thanksgiving? At least you'll be in a new place! I'm looking forward to the it, probably cook a big ol' bird for my parents & siblings. I'll have a couple months to just work my 40 & work on some D&D stuff before I start having to juggle classes & work.

Wow, I didn't realize you'd been so busy! :shock: :twisted: My life has been mildy crazy, too. I quit my job to take a much higher paying one at a company I knew I wouldn't like as much...well, I hated it enough to quit after 3 months. And instead of taking another job in my field I decided to work ...

I could never figure out CC1. But Fractal Mapper v8.0 is pretty intuitive. So far I'm only scratching the surface of what it can do but I'm impresses. Hopefully instead of beating on it 8 hours a day I can chip away at it a bit at a time over the next couple months. For $35 it's well worth looking i...

I purchased Fractal Mapper v8.0 a week ago and have been playing with it a lot. I haven't figured it all out yet but so far it's much easier to use than the early version of Campaign Cartographer I owned. The latter I never did figure out. What do you all use for mapping? Any CC3 or Dundjiini users ...

Just getting back online myself. I'm anxious to catch up on everything I've missed.

Well, I'm in Maple Grove, MN for work right now, and will be til almost October. So my posting be a bit (more ) sporadic. Hopefully when I get back home it's gonna be to stay, and we're talking I'm-throwing-away-my-suitcase type of stay!

Anybody have big plans? I will probably light up the grill, make a few burgers and knock back a couple cold ones.

When the comic book market (ie the prices) collapsed a while back I was a bit bummed, as my collection went from pretty valuable to nearly worthless...but upon reflection, I never collected with the hope of profit. I started just collecting the books I read. Now that prices are way down I should tak...

Take care of yourself, Halaster- you have to live long enough to recreate the entire decade of the 70's in your house!

...You guys still here?

I'm sorry to hear what you've gone thru- it sucks to deal with that stuff. Hopefully keeping busy on BiP will help take your mind off things.