Fanart Friday #3: Danielle Sanfilippo

I met Danielle Sanfilippo this year during a fan-run Undertale tabletop-themed game at Dexcon 20 in Morristown, NJ. Aside from being a top-notch Undyne player, she also showed generous spirit when, after the game session was finished, she gifted each player a little chibi version of the character they played. That was my gateway to doing a deeper dive into her artwork and character design work.

So in the 3rd edition of Fanart Friday, I present to you a selection of the works of illustrator Danielle "Danimagining" Sanfilippo. You can find out how to follow Danimaging at the end of the post, and there's a bonus bit of silly art based on the Dexcon Undertale game session under the jump (since it's slightly spoilerish for Undertale).

First up, above is her take on Overwatch's fighter and competitive gamer, D. Va.

She also has a great take on Zootopia's Nick Wilde.

You don't often find fan art of locations in a game, and here you have a fan landscape of the Waterfall area in Undertale, complete with echo flowers.

Sanfilippo also works in traditional media. In addition to animation and character concept design work, she's also made artwork based on adventures and encounters for the Knight Realms LARP group.

You can find her work under the Danimagining name across pretty much every social media platform you can think of. Her facebook is www.facebook.com/danimagining and she's on instagram as danimagining. You can also even wear her artwork. Her fandom stuff is available at  www.teepublic.com/user/danimagining (I want that Tracer tee so badly, you have no idea) and her original artwork is up on redbubble at www.redbubble.com/people/danimagining .

Fanart Friday is an ongoing series where The Code looks to spotlight fanworks created by and for POC, LGBT artists. If you know of any work you think should be given a boost, send me an email at shawnstruck@gmail.com or comment below!

The Other Kind of DM: Potential & Pitfalls of Eroticism In Gaming

As Katherine Cross writes for Bitch Media, while gaming may use sex to sell, the presence of anything revolving around actual sexuality is thin on the ground in tabletop & online RPGs  :

Most pen-and-paper roleplaying games have hundreds or thousands of pages worth of rules, ideas, story content, and other kinds of errata, but very few devote any of that space to content that addresses issues like consent, sexual diversity or orientation, or the sexual culture of the world one is playing in. In-game, then, one is often subject to depressingly familiar forms of sexual harassment—men having their avatars walk up to yours and awkwardly propositioning you, for instance, or refusing to take “no” for an answer if one rebuffs their entreaties—in or out of character. 

Online roleplaying gaming simply follows the paths of sexuality laid out in the physical world.
In spite of this, sexuality is endemic to the world of RPG and part of its visual culture. Commercials and box art for games are rife with heaving bosoms while pornographic proportions are common background decoration, seen by gamers and non-gamers alike.

Cross' essay goes into how sexual activity and fantasies have been handled in both tabletop roleplaying games and their online counterparts, including how sub-cultures within subcultures have sprung up around it. Speaking personally, I know quite a large number of people that have discovered more about their own sexualities, gender identities and more through online roleplaying everywhere from dedicated serves to IRC chatrooms.

The Last Game I Make Before I Die: Crashland Dev's Amazing Talk

This video is the full GDC 2017 talk given by Sam Coston of game studio Butterscotch Shenanigans. It details the story of Crashlands, the large-scale 2D action-RPG crafting game that Sam worked on with his brothers and talks about his struggles in dealing with developing the game and his own cancer diagnosis. The talk doesn't just touch on Sam's deeply personal story but also offers a very insightful look at the game development process.

GenCon & Gaming's Race Problem

Image courtesy GenCon LLC

GenCon 2014 officially starts today. It's a four day convention that draws over 40,000 attendees to a celebration of gaming, from tabletop games, miniatures, war gaming, board games, collectible card gaming and the like. This year will be its 47th year of operation, making GenCon the longest running convention of its kind (Friend of the blog, Drew of Drew's Robots will be there showing off his walker robot throughout the convention, btw).

However, for all of its long and storied history, there is little doubt that its demographic makeup hasn't changed as drastically as it could have. As A.A. George writes, in "Gaming’s Race Problem: GenCon and Beyond" for Tor.com:

As a lifelong gamer, I am excited to go to GenCon. 

As an ethnic minority, I am apprehensive about going to GenCon. 

For all that GenCon offers, it lacks in minority gamers. Last year was my first GenCon, and as I explored the convention, I saw almost no one who looked like me. By far, the most visible minorities at GenCon were the hired convention hall facilities staff who were setting up, serving, and cleaning up garbage for the predominantly white convention-goers... 

... GenCon is emblematic of this problem. Of the twenty-seven Guests of Honor (in various categories), only two are people of color. The judges of the prestigious ENnie Awards for role-playing, hosted at GenCon, have been almost exclusively white since its inception. The same is true for the nominees and winners of the Diana Jones Awards. There may be more efforts to include people of color in gaming artwork, but where are the real life people of color on the grand stage of gaming? 

Furthermore, GenCon is disturbingly tolerant of deeply offensive material. Shoshana Kessock wrote about her experiences with Nazi cosplay and paraphernalia at Gencon shortly after returning from GenCon 2013, and I had similar encounters... GenCon has weakly worded policies to prevent these horrific violations, but it has failed to enforce its own rules.

There are lots of well-meaning gamers that say that race isn't a factor in what they choose to play or who they choose to play with. I've even heard a number of gamers insights that they don't even see color, just a gamer. A.A. George responds:

I’ve been told time and again by gamers, “I don’t see race” as if they were doing me a kindness. This is not enlightenment or progressiveness. It is ignorance. If you do not see race, you do not see me. You do not see my identity, my ethnicity, my history, my people. What you are telling me, when you say “I do not see race,” is that you see everything as the normal default of society: white. In the absence of race and ethnicity, it is only the majority that remains. I am erased.

He does have suggestions, however, on what allies, advocates and those that want to make gaming an open, inclusive and more accepting and diverse:

• Listen. The Gaming as Other series is a great place to start. There are a handful of panels at Cons on the topic and I’ll be sitting on two of them at GenCon: “Why is Inclusivity Such a Scary Word?” and “Gaming As Other.” 
• Keep engaging, listening and supporting. We notice your support and it gives us the strength to keep going. 
• Hire more people of color and give them agency, visibility, power, responsibility, and credit in a wide variety of meaningful and important areas in your organization. Do not simply hire a token minority. Do not use people of color as a form of marketing. 
• Reach out to minority groups and invite them personally to conventions. Your neighbors, your co-workers, the people at your church, all of them. 
• Offer and play games that are actively and intentionally more inclusive.

These are all excellent starting points. I'd also encourage you to read the entire post of George's, because he addresses how fantasy gaming both helped and hindered acceptance his own identity.

New Retro Review Up

I have a new Retro Review up, this time giving an in-depth look at one of the Nintendo Game Boy Advance's swan-song RPGs... Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 2.

RPGX at A-Kon 2008 in Dallas This Weekend

Just a reminder—you can meet members of the RPGX crew at the A-Kon anime convention in Dallas from May 31 to June 1st.

I’ll be wandering the convention on Saturday and Sunday in-between interviewing people, or setting up interviews, or taking notes at a panel. I’ll be waering a plain-white T shirt with the RPGX logo on the front.

Fellow RPGX member (and former roomie) Wraith should be haunting the tabletop gaming area and should be playing in two Palladium Robotech games run by an area Megaversal Ambassador.

My wife is returning to the Dealer’s Room, once again running her Green Dragon Candles ‘n’ More booth, selling scented candles & incense .

Other RPGXers, check in! Any other site fans, are you going to be there? Maybe we could organize some sort of meetup?

First Impressions: Palladium's Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles RPG Sourcebook

I finally managed to get my hands on a copy of Palladium's new RPG source book for the Robotech setting: Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles. Here are my first impressions of the book, based on a few read-throughs and comparison with the previous Palladium Robotech books.

The Villians

While this source book is billed as "The Shadow Chronicles", the content seems heavier on the New Generation Secondary continuity, and lighter on many aspects of The Shadow Chronicles. Of 333 total pages, the main villains of Shadow Chronicles (the Haydenites) garner a rather anemic 6 pages of information. Important statistics for the Haydonites themselves are not given in the sourcebook at all (which means you're going to have to house-rule combat involving the main villains). The 'mech stats are there, but the book provides no numbers on to strike bonuses, number of attacks per melee, etc.

The Artwork

The color cover is gorgeous, and I love the new art for this edition. The style and linework fit this edition perfectly. What is a little disappointing, however, is seeing some recycled artwork that has appeared in other Robotech sourcebooks, going back two decades. What's particularly galling is seeing recycled artwork from other Palladium source books that aren't even Robotech books. Seriously, Kevin, how many times do we fans have to see the same RIFTS Coalition States martial arts instructor? Couldn't you have drawn up an REF instructor kung-fu just this once?

Book Organization

Most of the book is poorly organized,unfortunaly. Not all the character rules are gathered in one place. There is no index in the back of the book, which could have also reduced flipping back and forth. There does not appear to be any ship combat rules, either-- when there are signifgant portions of the movie this is based on that feature ship combat, this is a rather glaring omission. From the press releases released by Palladium before the book's release, players were going to were going to see the stats on the spaceships, and I was looking forward to seeing what the Icarus could do.

Additionally, the Invid section is mostly a word for word reprint of the original Invid Invasion sourcebook content.

Character Creation

Much appreciated is the decision to place the character sheets in the middle of the book, which makes for easy photocopying. The character creation process has also been tweaked. The MOS (Military Operational Specialty) system in Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles adds some
flexibility to the Occupational Character Class (OCC) system. In the original release of the Robotech game, making a unified squadron or unit meant everyone was pretty much the same, with little to no variation between characters since there was really just one practical OCC: Veritech Pilot. Now players can select an OCC (Vertich Pilot) and each player can select a different MOS (Alpha pilot, Beta pilot, or Recon). Another nice touch: the book has some easy to use template characters that makes pre-gen quick and easy.

The Rules

As a whole, while the game is based on the Robotech anime, the combat system doesn't feel true to its source at all. There are still no concessions by the Palladium combat system to emulate the rules of the Robotech universe. For example, there are no one shot kill attacks, except for missile volleys missile volleys. Volleys of 4 or more missiles cannot be dodged at all, which is counter to nearly every Robotech anime, ever. Hitting Invid Eyes has been made nearly impossible (it now counts as an aimed shot with -11 to strike) and not worth the effort to attempt. While the MDC (Mega-Damage Capacity) of enemy 'mechs have been increased, the damage the good guy's weapons do has not. Unless the Invid in powered armor is an important NPC, it should not take a group half an hour to destroy it.

Conversely, The Robotech source book has an interesting way of handling Palladium's MDC rule, that while not quite in the spirit of Robotech, is at least a little closer to G.I. Joe:

The last M.D.C. of any armor, be it a body suit, mecha, or vehicle, absorbs all the damage from the final blast that reduces it to zero or below, saving the character inside. This is the case even if there are only a couple of M.D.C. points left and the attack inflicts M.D. x10 or greater.

For example, if a bandit is standing there with 10 M.D.C. left on his armor, and someone strikes him with a volley of 60 missiles from an Alpha mech doing, say, 3000 MDC... the bandit only loses his armor and is now standing on the battlefield naked and unharmed.

While this sourcebook may be a tad lacking as a Shadow Chronicles RPG sim, it is small, portable, and has some welcome tweaks from the first Robotech sytem that make character generation easier and more fun. If you decide not to use the Palladium Rules system, this book still is the best you will have in North America as far as source material goes, should you decide to convert to another system.

You can buy Palladium's Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles right here.

EA Expands Potential Social Network For MMORPGs, Finally Makes Shawn Fanning Rich

Shawn Fanning, best known for founding Napster, has a new job. He will be working at Electronic Arts, which is about to buy his social-network-gaming startup Rupture for $30 million, according to sources with knowledge of the deal. His co-founder Jon Baudanza will also join Electronic Arts. Rumors of a possible deal for just such a buy-out offer began swirling in early February when TechCrunch first broke the story, but did not know the identity of the buyer.

Rupture’s first product was a social network for players of the online video game World of Warcraft, but it only came out with a beta version and kept delaying its public launch.

Electronic Arts is buying the company for its technology, since it doesn’t have a lot of users (it was only ever in beta) and never launched the second version of its service. Presumably, creating social networks around MMORPGs is a key component of its online strategy. The company has not yet officially announced the acquisition, but it is expected to do so soon.

Rupture had previously raised only $2.5 to $3 million in an angel round last summer from investors including Ron Conway, Joi Ito, Reid Hoffman, and Baseline Ventures. Although this is not Fanning’s first startup, it is his first real payday. Napster helped change the music industry, but it went bankrupt doing so. And although he just sold his second startup SnoCap to Imeem, that was more of a pity fu mercy acquisition.

Hilarious bootleg NES game review: Titanic

The ever-irascible CinnamonPirate brings us another import bootleg review, this time of an NES game based on the popular flick Titanic.

Yes, THAT Titanic.

From the review:

I have a hard time imagining what possessed anyone to make this game. The board meeting probably went something like this:

President: OK guys, we have this terrible RPG engine for the Famicom. How can we squeeze more money out of it?
Developer: Well, Titanic has been popular with students studying English. What if we make a game based on the movie?
President: But how will it work? I mean, the only character you could play as would be Jack, and he dies.
Developer: Don’t you see! An RPG where the player’s character dies! It will be revolutionary!
President: Make it so.

Well, they made it so.

The result was the most unbelievably fucking awful game in history.

Read the whole thing so his suffering won't be in vain.

Reminder For Those Robotech Fans NOT In The USA or Canada

From Kevin S himself, on the Palladium Message boards:

Please Note: We’ve forgotten to remind people in our last few Press Releases that, currently, Palladium can only sell the RPG in the USA and Canada. I know that must disappoint a great many of our friends and fans overseas. Each additional country costs an additional licensing fee (and a substantial one at that), so it just wasn’t cost effective for us to add even places like England, France, Germany and Australia. That may change in the future, depending on how many books our distributors in those countries think they can sell, but for now, only the USA and Canada can get the books. I hope you understand.

So, take any Amazon release info with a grain of salt. Aside from having someone you know in the US or Canada that could buy a copy and ship it to you, any other international orders seem to be out of reach for now.

Remembering Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons

Last week, Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, the grandfather of tabletop roleplaying games, passed away at the age of 69.

On a personal level, news of his passing made me very sad. I had hoped to meet him at GenCon some day, shake his hand, and thank him for creating a product that had such a profound impact on not just the person I am today, but the writer I strove to become. The house I live in now, with the friends I have down here in Texas, I would not have if it was not for D&D. My work with RPGX? A fellow D&D player in our gaming group introduced me to RPGX's head honcho. One of my best friends, a man who became ordained just so he could be the one to officiate at my wedding was someone I first got to know via a few sessions where he ran some amazing Dungeons and Dragons games.

Tributes have been pouring in from all over the 'net in ways personal, profound, profane, hilarious, and heart-warming.

Here's a run down of some of the best tributes:

Web comics:

• The Order of the Stick
• Penny Arcade
• Full Frontal Nerdity
• XKCD
• Dork Tower
  

Online Communities:

• Metafilter
  
• RPGX.org
• RPG.net
• Gary Gygax Facts
• Worst Forums Ever

Also of note are three illuminatingt looks at Gygax: a cute interview with Gygax from 2001,
and video of Gygax reflecting upon the influence of D&D in the movie Uber Goober: A Film About Gamers, and an article about Gygax from The Believer published September 2006.

Every tabletop or fantasy gamer owes this man a debt of gratitude. I'd say if you're a nerd of any stripe, you probably have a memory of your first encounter with Dungeons and Dragons.

Share in the comments section!

Tell My Wife I Love Her!

My wife was given WoW and a bit of World of Warcraft time by a friend of hers.

She just started her first character.

Pray for me! ;_;

Kill Dr. Lucky Lord British

Lord British, the in-game alter-ego of Ultima series creator Richard Garriot is essentially immortal and nearly impossible to kill.

That doesn't mean that it's completely impossible, nor that gamers haven't tried.

Computer & Videogames has a feature article that covers all the ways Lord British can or has died.

Bonus video: How to kill Lord British in Ultima IX:

John McCain: Power Gamer?

Prolific fanatasy author and role-playing game designer Robin D. Laws ( he designed Feng Shui, Over the Edge, Hero Wars, and Jack Vance's The Dying Earth Roleplaying Game) has an interesting and amusing analysis of the recent US primaries:

On the Repub side, John McCain takes the award for most skillful power-gamer. His team saw a process with a clump of winner-take-all states at the beginning and concentrated his efforts there. Now that he’s taken them, Romney is already dead in the water, mathematically speaking. Most of the races to come are proportional, and he’d have to get impossibly high margins of victory in all of them to triumph. It may be Ticket To Ride for McCain, but Mitt's stuck playing Arkham Horror, and he's already lost.

The whole article reads like a hilarious playtesting post-mortem. Read the whole thing here.

Palladium's Robotech RPG Re-Launch May Release On Time

In a recent press release from Palladium, it was announced that the Robotech RPG re-launch is almost a done deal:

"We are working hard to get the Robotech® The Shadow Chronicles® role-playing game done and to the printer by next Friday."

An since Palladium did announce a release date of February '08, this looks like it's shaping up to hit its release target! Further details include:

We estimate 70% of the artwork is ALL NEW and it looks fantastic!

Awesom-- wait, what? So is 30% of the artwork recycled?

Well, uh, um... the book's gonna look hella-cool, and the staff's pretty sure it's going to the printers by this Friday, right?

The writing is close to completion and many sections are undergoing final editing. That means we are also still shooting for an end of February release, though it could slip into the first week of March (we hope not).

Awww, Palladium, why ya gotta do this to me? Writing is close to completion? With 4 days to to hit the printers? And the release date might slip AGAIN? Of for the love of --

All the text is new, updated and brought in line with the official timeline, data, stats and info of Harmony Gold, plus additional details, info and gaming data... Stats have been adjusted to reflect the official Robotech data and satisfy a new generation of gamers.

Oh, Palladium, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, come back!

My new year is starting off hilariously!

I don't know which has left me laughing harder whilst on-hold with vendors for work today:

• Supporters for Presidential candidate Ron Paul decided an effective use of their time and energy to garner support for their candidate of choice was to lead a campaign rally march... in the middle of WORLD OF WARCRAFT, or
• this RPG.net thread devoted to brainstorming a new game setting, "Weaboo Fantasy"

Either way, it looks like my year is starting off with a lot of laughs.

Help A Homeless Shelter By Donating Your Used RPG Material

From livejournal user belladonalin:

Hey, ya'll.

So those of you who are on my regular friendslist know that I work at a homeless shelter with street-dependent and homeless teenagers. I have a handful of kids there who are gamers. Unfortunately, when they had to move out of their respective homes, they lost all their gaming stuff.

I know that there are some people on my friendstlist who used to be D&D gamers (or still are) and I'm wondering - if you have your old gear that you're not using, would you mind sending it to me for these kids?

They're trying, you know? They're trying to stay out of gangs and away from the drugs and in general to maintain relatively normal lives. I'd buy the stuff for them, but that's not appropriate for me to do.

So, if you have any of the following, used and in any condition? I'd love it. More importantly, they would.

Need:
Any extra character sheets you can spare (or direct me to a decent downloadable one?)
Player’s Handbook
Dungeon Master’s Guide
Monster Manuel I
Player set of dice (1 D4, 4 D6, percentiles, 1 D20)

Would Like:
Complete Warrior Handbook
Player’s Handbook II
Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures
Feind Folio
Monsters Manual 2-4
Complete Arcane
Complete Divine
Complete Scoundrel
Complete Adventurer

More info here.

E-Books? Good idea? Bad Idea?

RPGX.org's own King R@t weighs in with a pretty good breakdown.

The Mind's Eye Theatre book for Mage: the Awakening isn't here? But where...only being released in .PDF format? [cries]

Well, it looks like you won't be toting THAT one around in your Jansport anytime soon. But is it really such a bad deal?

He goes over the pros, cons, and how Amazon.com's new e-book reader might affect the playing field here.

Good News, Bad News: Palladium Edition

First, the bad news.

The new Robotech RPG release date has been bumped again, with a release date set for February 2008, as announced in the Palladium Forums by Kevin S.

The good news? Palladium seems to be pretty optimistic about its future, and a recent press release teased some interesting details, like...

Downloadable adventures, source material and G.M. aids; therifter.com, and a second podcast program...

... which is very encouraging. Could we finally see Palladium making greater use of digital distribution?

Hell, be still my beating heart, might we even finally see... PDFs? E-books?

The most recent press release is here.

Palladium's New Robotech RPG: WIll It Make Its Scheduled November release?

One of the new products announced by Palladium Books (publisher of the RIFTs series) earlier this year was "Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles." The role-playing game would be released in a smal, "manga-sized" pick up where the DVD movie released by Harmony Gold begins (return of the Robotech Expeditionary Force, the separation of Rick Hunter and the SDF-3 from the rest of the fleet, etc.), and was scheduled for a November release coinciding with the release of the direct-to-DVD anime movie.

Then the release on the product page was changed to "November (tentative)".

Then, in an official press release, the release date was given as December.

As of October 30th, the Robotech RPG was categorized as being "still in development".

Dyval, the next book in line for being published before Robotech, isn't even finished.

When posters at popular tabletop gaming portal RPG.net expressed concerns that the Robotech book wouldn't cover the Macross era due to licensing restrictions, Alex Marciniszyn
(Editor for Palladium Books) said: " Your information is inaccurate. Macross era will be covered."

So, whether the new Robotech RPG will be released in November, or December... when then hell are we going to see any marketing for it, if it's going to be out in the next month or two? Why not release a table of contents, or a character sheet?

What eras of the anime will be covered? Will there be canon characters with stats? What new things will you be adding? Maybe a taste-- like stat blocks for Veritechs?

Why don't more anime news portals know about this?