Random thoughts

In other news, my latest ebay auction just ended. I feel like it went fairly well. About half the items sold, and we made a good chunk of money.

I have mixed feelings about selling my roleplaying books. On one hand it makes me sad to part with them. I have quite a large collection. On the other hand, I know darn well that I'm not going to read most of these books. I'd prefer they go to someone who will give them a good home, rather than stay with me and collect dust.

Auctioning them off is really a winning situation. Not only does it generate money, it reduces the cost of the move by making sure we have less stuff to move.

Logically, selling the books makes sense.

Emotionally it's still difficult sometimes.

Even now I can hear Eunice saying, "Don't sell them if you don't want to." I do. I want them to be read, enjoyed, used, and well taken care of. I'm just not going to use them. It seems shameful to have them sit and gather dust.

Actually, if there's anything I regret about selling items on ebay, it's upgrading Eunice's paypal account to accept credit cards. The upgrade means that paypal takes a percentage of every transaction, and, combined with the ebay posting fees, makes $1 sales almost not worth it. After everything is said and done, I probably make a quarter on a $1 sale.

In other random news, one of my favorite fantasy franchises, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has found a new publisher. It's a great, dark fantasy world. Picture medieval Europe, with all the Tolkein-esque races present. Add an unstoppable force that seeks to destroy everything (Chaos). Now turn the volume up to 11. That's Warhammer. It's two fisted dark fantasy.

I admit, I'm more in love with the fiction and feel of the world than I am with the game system, though that worked fine. I never had much of a chance to play it. It being a medieval style fantasy game and competing with Dungeons and Dragons meant that I never found a steady group.

Still, I read the fiction. I just started reading another book in my favorite Warhammer line, the tales of Gotrek and Felix. From the look of things, it appears that I'm behind in their adventures. I just started Beastslayer this evening. I still have Vampireslayer and Giantslayer to go. The book are all great. I highly recommend them.

The game itself has several interesting points. For one, I really liked it's take on a class system. Instead of your standard Warrior, Wizard, Rogue, Priest you had basic and advanced careers. So, there was a career for a bounty hunter, highwayman, or, on of my personal favorites, rat catcher. Each career comes with its own set of advancements and starting equipment. The rat catcher, for example, starts with 1d6 dead rats and a small yet vicious dog.

I always felt the magic system needed some work, but if I am to believe some of the reviews, the magic system looks more interesting in the second edition. You have to love any magic system that could drive your character insane.

Frankly, the critical hit table in the combat section is worth the price of admission. Just reading it is a blast. How many times can the phrase, "death from shock and blood loss is almost instantaneous" be amusing? Many. As you can guess, combat tends to be very deadly. PCs are pretty resilient though. They get fate points, which they can use as a get-out-of-death-free card (among other things).

Another thing WFRP has going for it is The Enemy Within campaign. It is fairly widely recognized as one of the best RPG adventures ever written. Naturally, I say, "widely recognized" and now I can't find much on the web. A search on google turns up very little worth linking two, though there is a short review that does mention that TEW is critically acclaimed and a fan favourite.

Anyway, I've rambled on enough about my favorite blend of fantasy and horror, though it does appear that my rambling has saved you from my waxing philosophical.

It's 2 a.m. and I should try to go to sleep.