In Soviet Czechia: Game Reviews You

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

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RobbyPants
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Post by RobbyPants »

Ganbare Gincun wrote:Best part? They are apparently releasing Draci Doupe 2 in Eastern Europe in 2011! :lol:
Maybe using that new-fangled d20 system!
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Post by fbmf »

Sashi wrote:It still gets props for the cover obviously being a wrestling match between Cleavenstein and Ursa Murder (who is wearing his championship belt)
Where are these characters from?

My google-fu fails me today, but they seem awesome enough that I want to know more about them.

Game On,
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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

fbmf wrote:
Sashi wrote:It still gets props for the cover obviously being a wrestling match between Cleavenstein and Ursa Murder (who is wearing his championship belt)
Where are these characters from?

My google-fu fails me today, but they seem awesome enough that I want to know more about them.

Game On,
fbmf
I'm willing to bet that those are not the actual names of characters, just descriptions of a guy with an axe (or something) and a bear wearing a championship belt. Still pretty awesome, though.
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Post by fbmf »

Huh.

I just assumed it was some Mortal Kombat-esque game. I also didn't get that BONE RIDER was a phallic reference for the longest time.

Kudos to whoever came up with that on the fly.

Game On,
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Post by markus_cz »

Hi everyone, a Czech guy here. Somehow I've stumbled over this thread, and since some of you expressed interest in the gaming situation in Czech Republic, let me say a thing or two.

First, Frank's review of DrD+ (that's how we abbreviate it) is pretty much spot on. Unfortunately, he's chosen a pretty bad game to review - it really is bad (well, the general consensus is that the game has nice fluff but shitty mechanics). So here's the story of Czech gaming:

The very first RPG was Dračí doupě (DrD), indeed written behind the Iron Curtain and published after its fall in 1990. The original version covered levels 1-6 and was pretty much a decent ripoff of the original Red Box DnD. The game then received a couple of expansions during the 1990s that covered higher levels... but it all went downhill. The culmination was the 2004's Dračí doupě+, which is actually a separate game in the same franchise (something like DnD 3e was to ADnD 2e), but also a clusterfuck of disparate rules. The general characteristics of the DrD franchise is that it was written by math and physics geeks who dwelled on excessive "realism" and "simulation" - but they also ignored Western RPGs and had no idea of recent design developments, so the whole franchise are basically just fantasy heartbreakers.

The reason behind the shitiness of DrD is that it was written by volunteers almost for free (you can't make money of RPGs here). Volunteers who had next to no knowledge of foreign games, no experience with design, and no experience with team work - meaning, for example, that DrD+ had no lead designer, the project has been abandoned several times and picked up by someone else, and pretty much each book or even chapter was written by a different person, leading to absolute Chaos.

Aside of DrD and DrD+ there were a couple of more heartbreakers during the 1990s and early 2000s. Stín meče tried to "fix" DrD but again ignored foreign RPGs so they ended up broken and less popular than their predecessor. For some reason, there was also a fascination with GURPS, which addressed the need for "realism" but was actually doing it well - or at least better than DrD. Enter Hrdinové Fantasy which is a fantasy RPG inspired by GURPS... which also failed.

Thanks to the Internet, people finally gained access to foreign RPGs and realised how much better they are. During 2000s, Czech games pretty much ceased to be published and the community instead focused on translating foreign games - quite a few have been translated. They are all essentially "warez", downloadable from the Internet. That's not because Czech Republic is some kind of weird country that ignores copyright law (sorry to ruin the fun, but the law is on par with the rest of the EU), but because the Czech market of 10 million is too small for publishers to translate and publish foreign games "legally" - it just wouldn't pay. A decent RPG here can sell ~500 copies, which is just too little. (Dračí doupě actually sells more, but that's because of its market dominance).

Nowadays there are basically three RPG communities - one centred around DrD and DrD+. It is assumed this is the largest one but nobody knows for sure because these are the people who don't participate in Internet communities much (if they would, they'd stop playing DrD) - young kids and older gamers who grew up on DrD and are too old for a change - or simply don't care. There has been a widespread tendency not to give a shit about gaming systems and play as rule-lite or freeform as possible - a tendency reinforced by DrD's shitty systems. It is generally assumed that when people say they play DrD, they in fact play a heavily modified and house-ruled lite version of it.

The second community is centred around, suprise, d20 and DnD, and the third one - roughly same in size - around no game in particular, which means it tends to collect those people who play neither DrD nor DnD. I'm from the last one but I can't give a good decription - people play anything from old-school rennaisance, through White Wolf games to small indies. True to the general rules-lite spirit, there has been a wide fascination with Fate.

I dare say the community as a whole (disregarding DrD players) has caught up with foreign design trends, and there have recently been a couple of good new games published. Střepy snů have already been mentioned - they look like a White Wolf game but I'd actually compare them to Primetime Adventures - it's a generic system for playing "narrative" story-focused games. The second game worth of attention are Příběhy Impéria (Stories of the Empire), a Fate-based game set in Victorian England where magic and fae are abound. It's a rules-lite game with a brilliant setting and fascinating visuals - you can look at the Lite version yourself (100 pages!). I'm quite sure both of these games, and especially Stories of the Empire, would be successful on the English market if only anyone cared to translate them (which won't happen).

Aside of that, there is an annual design competition inspired by Game Chef (write a game in two weeks). It gets about 10 games each year, and the fourth year is just finishing. One could find interesting stuff in there but it's of course small, unfinished games.

All in all, we're pretty much a normal Western country, even game-wise. However, we are a small country which has some severe implications for niché hobbies like RPGs - small community (everyone important pretty much knows each other personally), and therefore small buying power, which means the most interesting stuff happens for free on the Internet. Any game that gets published is an enthusiastic endeavour that won't make any money (the author will be happy if he gets his money back). Frank has unfortunately bought pretty much the worst game possible (but it is representative - kids do play it).

======

Oh and sorry to ruin the fun but "Mister Cavern" is in reality "Master of the Cavern", ie. a Dungeon Master :roll:

======

EDIT: Oh and Dračí doupě II will be released this July. It's being developed by the guys behind Stories of the Empire and will be something like an indie take on generic fantasy adventuring.
Last edited by markus_cz on Tue May 03, 2011 11:04 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Username17 »

Markus wrote:The general characteristics of the DrD franchise is that it was written by math and physics geeks who dwelled on excessive "realism" and "simulation" - but they also ignored Western RPGs whatsoever and had no idea of recent design developments, so the whole franchise are basically just fantasy heartbreakers.
Runequest had the same problem. Once you get caught up in having the game keep track of every fiddly detail, the chance that your game is actually spitting out realistic results becomes extremely unlikely. I suppose it's nominally possible to chop your own head off, but by the time Runequest charts got involved, clashing armies had a substantial number of casualties from self decapitations.

DrD has that problem in spades. You have this modifier and that modifier and the other modifier, but the fact is that the entire Random Number Generator is two fucking six sided dice. Having 6 or even 10 points of situational modifiers is wholly unacceptable in that circumstance.
The reason behind the shitiness of DrD is that it was written by volunteers almost for free (you can't make money of RPGs here). Volunteers who had next to no knowledge of foreign games, no experience with design, and no experience with team work - meaning, for example, that DrD+ had no designer, the project has been abandoned several times and picked up by someone else, and pretty much each book or even chapter was written by a different person, leading to absolute Chaos.
Oh good. See, I thought the reason I was unable to figure out the mechanics for things was because I was stupid or missing some key Czech concept. The fact that the rules are actually a complete mess with variables being redefined left and right and radically different takes on the core mechanics in different parts of the book makes me feel much better about myself.

Speaking of which, I'm going to Ghana for a month in June, but for now I still live in Prague. I'd love to get together in person to talk about this stuff.

-Username17
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Post by markus_cz »

FrankTrollman wrote:Speaking of which, I'm going to Ghana for a month in June, but for now I still live in Prague. I'd love to get together in person to talk about this stuff.
-Username17
Shame we didn't find this link a week ago - just this weekend we had a large get-together of Czech and Slovak gamers (30 people :mrgreen: ), you could have come. I'm from Brno, personally, but if you ever happen coming here we could have a game of... well, anything, but you could be interested in some behind-the-scenes DrD II :cool:

Seeing as the link to this thread just got posted on Czech forums, and people are already talking about it, you can expect a flood of Czech and Slovak gamers. Someone from Prague will eventually appear.

By the way, kudos for learning Czech, even if just a little. I don't know how well you understand, but you might be interested in this review of DrD or this review of DrD+ (no HTML version, the link leads to a PDF magazine). They are both fairly critical.
Last edited by markus_cz on Tue May 03, 2011 11:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

markus_cz wrote:Oh and sorry to ruin the fun but "Mister Cavern" is in reality "Master of the Cavern", ie. a Dungeon Master
Are you kidding? That's even better.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Almad »

FrankTrollman wrote: Speaking of which, I'm going to Ghana for a month in June, but for now I still live in Prague. I'd love to get together in person to talk about this stuff.

-Username17
I think some gathering would be nice (I am leaving now, but will be back in two weeks). As an ignorant gamer still present in "Draci Doupe" community, I might attend as an ancient relict with answers ;)
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Post by alef0 »

Hello, I'm the second of the announced Czech and Slovak flood :-)

Frank, it's wonderful that you cracked through the DrD+ rules, it's a feat that even native speakers didn't manage and the translations made my day, but more on that later :D

As Markus noticed, the original DrD was pretty much a rip-off and a legend goes that it was heavily inspired by D&D book brought into then Czechoslovakia by some relative of one DrD designer. (Maybe f he brought Paranoia, maybe we would all play absurd sci-fi games now). Due to lack of information and lack of foreign games, DrD was pretty much a monopoly until at least 2005 or so, heavily competing even with D&D 3.x.

It's interesting that in circa 1993, official Czech translation of Shadowrun, 2nd was made, but its fanbase wasn't that large.

DrD+ was a strange product, with little advertising, and 10 year development span. In the final years, even the hardcore fans didn't believe that it would be ever released and if I remember well, the initial team and the wrap-up team were basically different groups of designers. DrD veterans didn't see any reason to upgrade because the ``strive for realism via even more rules'' did not appease to them. However, noone of the designers could realize the futility of this philosophy... but nonentheless it was the primary motivation of almost all Czech/Slovak RPG systems, no matter whether they were officially released (Stín meče/Shadow of the Sword or Hrdinové Fantasy/Heroes of Fantasy) or they were just a homebrew DrD patch.

Furthermore, in 2004 when DrD+ was released, D&D slowly achieved attention among more playes. If you check the reviews on the RPGForum.cz, you could clearly see that according advanced players, DrD+ is a geeky alpha-psi-gamma-thousand-tabled unplayable model of reality and among newbies it is complicated beyond comprehension with no obvious advantages against DrD. Despite that, DrD+ is still sold along with DrDo and English of D&D.

However in last 5 years or so, at least online community rapidly changed and moved from the RPG hic-sunt-leones dominium to healthy environment. There are still many bastions of DrD, but those two games (Stories of the Empire/Příběhy Impéria and Střepy snů/Dreamshards) are en par with the international games. Dreamshards may be a little bit too abstract, but it is heavily story oriented and features almost no elements common with DrD. Stories of the Empire draws much inspiration from FATE and is deeply focused on atmospheric Victorian steampunkish fluff with wonderful presentation. However, the DrD/DrD+ saturated the Czech-language RPG market in such way that the indie publishing model remains the only viable option for designers.

Besides that, there are many translations either illegal or pirated, but as Markus mentioned, the market is so minor that even the D&D 3.5 Boxed Set official translation was cancelled. AD&D Player's Handbook 2e was completed, d20 SRD is basically done and there are loads of translated indies (Wushu, Primetime Adventures, Solar System...)

So, we do play many RPGS (DrD, D&D, WoD..), we do buy RPG books, we are in touch with current design trends, some people are regular Forge/StoryGames visitors, we design modern games (DrD II seems to me inspired by elements of Shadows of the Yesterday, In a Wicked Age, FATE and is far from the usual D&D clone) and we do produce many articles and two fanzines.

Btw, Pán jeskyně is a direct translation of Dungeon Master and jeskyně means cave/cavern, but there is no special word for underground structure that means both dungeon (as in castle dungeons) and natural caves/caverns. It may not be the best translation, but it stuck, and many players pronounce the acronym PJ in English way (P. J.). Master Cavern is such a hilarious translation, perhaps I will use it.
Last edited by alef0 on Tue May 03, 2011 2:11 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Starmaker »

Almad wrote:an ancient relict with answers ;)
Great! What does "damage resistance Ψ" on [awesome] monsters mean?
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Post by Korwin »

alef0 wrote: AD&D Player's Handbook 2e was completed, d20 SRD is basically done and there are loads of translated indies (Wushu, Primetime Adventures, Solar System...)
Wow, you have an translation of the SRD?
There isnt an german translation (I think because there are translated D&D books in german)...

Just to be shure, I googled "SRD deutsch". It seems Pathfinder will get an german translation...
http://angraenor.wikidot.com/srd-system ... e-document
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Post by skewCZ »

Hi, another guy from Czech republic.
And i think the only one so far who actually played DrD+ for a while, so perhaps i can answer couple of questions.

EDIT2: aw damn, thats a lot of text here, sorry for that...
Starmaker wrote:
Almad wrote:an ancient relict with answers ;)
Great! What does "damage resistance Ψ" on [awesome] monsters mean?
As others guessed before, IIRC it's psychic damage / damage resistance. In Czech, the letter Psi is pronounced quite similarly as the beginning of psychic*, so it's actually not such a nonsense to us.
As for the other damage types, there's BSD for stabbing, slashing and crushing, and then 4 types for each element (voda = water, vzduch = air, oheň = fire and země = earth). The mysterious pluses and minuses with different multiplicators are actually kinda intuitive, even though useless. + simply means excess of the element, and - means deficiency. So +Oh*2 means double damage from fire, and -Oh /2 means half damage from frost. +/-Ze has something to do with acids and poisons and basic/alkalic stuff. -Vz probably means damage from suffocating, +Vz... I have no freaking idea. -Vo passes also for bleeding i think.

Also for those of you who were disappointed by lack of werewolf in the MM, thats because the Bestiář came out some time later after the game was released and untill that happened, PJs had only the DMG, which incorporated about 30 monsters. One of which was the werewolf.

As for the orcs, i think they are a playable race, with sub-races goblin and skurut. They're also marked by the asterisk as Frank mentioned, meaning they're regarded as evil race.

Cleric and ranger. It's not like they totally don't have abilities lists which the player gets to pick from. I think cleric would be sort of ok, if not for the fact that he gets 2 points per level to buy these prime abilities, but the player only gets to pick one and PJ determines the other. And for some of those abilities, the cleric player doesn't actually know what they do, mechanic wise (though they don't get many mechanics anyway...).
The ranger is more extreme form of cleric, and a complete mess. He gets 7 point, but only 2 of them are for player, the rest is distributed by PJ who is supposed to keep track of what the player was doing during the campaign and assign those points accordingly. Also, the ranger book is kinda split in 2 sections - one of which the player is allowed to read and it contains description of abilities, and the other one contains mechanics for those abilities. And yeah, the player is discouraged to read that until he actually gets the ability. DMG also contains some surprise abilities the ranger can get for free if he unlocks them (by some miraculous coincidence).

The fighter and wizard archetypes are actually not as confining as Frank said. Player gets to choose any archetype every time he gains a level, so it's almost like multi-classing within your own class. Maybe fighters get some limit like "at most 3 levels of one archetype in a row", but other than that it's ok. Wizard and fighter are the easiest classes to grasp and if the fighter got more powerful abilities, he would be probably the best designed class of the game. We didn't play the game for long, though, so I'm not really sure how would he keep up with the others, but considering his only domain is fight, he should be probably more powerful.

...

As alef0 said, though, i personally think there are some neat ideas when it comes to fluff.
Characters on high levels got to do some supernatural** things like transforming into a sword for a while or merging with the spirits of battle (fighter), decomposing almost any obstacle to bits in mere moments or shadowing your presence from magical sight (thief), become invulnerable to hostile elements and shape-shift (ranger). Wizards had this cool ability they could simply use to just try and counter a spell - and if they rolled high enough, they could revert it to it's caster or even to someone else (surprisingly, this mechanic isn't even so complicated, it's just opposed roll i think).
Also, i really liked the cleric, even though he doesn't fit into heroic sort of a game much. Unlike in D&D, he's not a walking miracle factory. Instead, he picks small amount of supernatural abilities, i think based on his domain (thats the mentioned hexagon), each ability belonging to certain emotion.
He isn't really limited in their use in the terms of amount per day or something like that. But to be able to cast the spell on someone, he has to first use empathy on them and sort of rouse the appropriate emotion. So he basicly makes people (literally) burn with passion, seethe with hatred, vomit out of disgust and other awesome shit like that.

...

Ok, that's it for now...

EDIT: also, in DrD and DrD+, astral sphere is where the demons and magic and weird magic spawns come from, so thats probably why the dryad is in different section than the exploding frog in the MM.

* psychické - pronounced like [pse-ch-e-c-kee], with the exception of 'ch', which is pronounced like 'h' in Ahmed...

** most of the players didn't appreciate that , though
Last edited by skewCZ on Tue May 03, 2011 8:34 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Post by Sarandosil »

skewCZ wrote:
* psychické - pronounced like [pse-ch-e-c-kee], with the exception of 'ch', which is pronounced like 'h' in Ahmed...
:twitch:
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Post by alef0 »

Wow, you have an translation of the SRD?
There isnt an german translation (I think because there are translated D&D books in german)...
There is a large subset translated to Czech, and yes, it is perfectly legal, since it is OGLed. German translation of SRD doesn't make any sense due to official translation and fairly reasonable prices.

And Pathfinder is already in German, since 2009, officially, see online shop.

Officially, there are not many products to choose from in Czech / Slovak (Slovak people can fluently understand and read Czech).

* Draci doupe Classic: out of print, but lots of copies are available here-and-then
* Draci doupe Plus (2004): still available, for 65 EUR you'll get Player's Guide, Mister Cavern (;-)) Guide, three books containing rules for 6 classes and hardcover Monster Manual.
* Stín meče/Shadow of the Sword (1997): out of print
* Hrdinové fantasy/Heroes of Fantasy (2004): still available, for 25 EUR you'll get four paperback guides
* Dobrodružná hra Pán prstenů / Lord of the Rings Adventure Game (1993), an official translation of the 32page rulebook, it seems that the first two scenarios were translated and sold as well.
* Yrrhedesovo oko / Oko Yrrhedesa / Eye of Yrrhedes (1995): translation of a Polish (sic!) RPG game, basically sold-out, sometimes can be bought from second-hand books
* Shadowrun 2e, cca 1995, sold-out
* Příběhy impéria / Stories of the Empire (2009) + add-on Rukověť mága (Handbook of Mage), available
* Střepy snů / Dreamshards (2009), available
* Čarodej / Sorcerer (2006), not to be confused with Edwards' Sorcerer, a fantasy D&D-like heartbreak on 32 pages, available
* Kouzlem i mečem / With Spell and Sword (2011), available, boxed set with expanded rules of Dungeon Squad, adventure scenario, miniatures and dice
Notice missing D&Ds, no AD&Ds, no Vampires :-) And notice the 9 year hiatus between 1995--2004, when only DrD Classic patches were available.

BTW:
First of all, Polish rpg market before 1993 was virtually non-existent. The only rpgs available back then were copies of copies of copies of American handbooks brought to Poland by some lucky people who had uncles, aunts or whatever in the USA. Those who had such copies were treated like gods. People would copy those books by hand (sic!). The original version of KC was distributed in a similar manner: some would copy the game by hand, but there were also copies in .TAG files (they are still roaming ‘round the internet) on diskettes
This was same in Czech Republic / Slovakia. Those uncles, aunts or brothers stood behind DrD inspiration.

Personally, I saw the first AD&D rules in 1997, retrieved via internet/third-generation photocopy and I've still got compiled AD&D tables which seem like typewriter edition with lines drawn by hand (and``Bazooka, d100 damage" added by some unknown hand to the weapon list). I remember (and possibly can find) class descriptions from AD&D PHB printed by dot-matrix printer on tractor-feed paper and incomplete spell descriptions, since spells were printed as needed -- in AD&D they were sorted by level and not alphabetically.

Oh and speaking of the alphabet: Duch obrazu (Painting Spirit(?)) indeed comes before &#270;ábel (Devil), since characters with diacritical marks in Czech are alphabetically after the nonaugmented versions, e. g. D < &#270; < E. Not to mention that "ch", as in "psychický", is a single phoneme, in alphabet betweeh H and I, so many English newcomers tend to search "Charisma" inbetween "Humans" and "Intelligence" and become surprised when they find it before "Classes" :-)
Last edited by alef0 on Tue May 03, 2011 11:13 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: In Soviet Czechia: Game Reviews You

Post by dante »

And the invasion of Czechs continues...btw, no doubts why ur nickname is Trollman :D Compensating something wth ur reviewstyle?

There were some reasonable posts already. Let's do some trolling then.

What I don't see is any need to adjust to tendencies. Originality is what's valuable - both board games and RPGs. (though it doesn't seem so, DrD+ - there's a lot of it, a lot of inspiration and great ideas hidden under the chaotic and mathematical (and even philosophical) call-it-whatever-you-want)
At least in board games, there are creative and original games. In RPG...somehow Strepy Snu ...aaaand already mentioned Draci Doupe 2 could hit u with a surprise :D

There's no need to follow any western, any eastern, any northern, any southern, any..... Why adjust to something what u can play already according to original rules? Many, almost everyone speaks English anyway and the vast majority of rulebooks are in English.
There's no superior way of playing role-playing games, there's nothing like a "better approach" or modern. The same as there no "übermensch" even thfor sure u feel like one.
I thought that evolutionism in the way "everything that comes after is better" is an ill philosophy, abandoned in sixties or so.
Sometimes u want to play the roles, sometimes u want to play the rules. None is supreme, not even what hides in between.
FrankTrollman wrote:(the K stands for "Kost" because you are literally "rolling the bones")
That made my day :D We can discuss the etymology of the word KOSTKA (what K stands for, and kostka might be a "little bone"...just might be), but the meaning today is simple - a die. As markus said, still u have my big respect for learning Czech.


Then, as usual, let's do a little basic geographical lesson:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Europe


And the good old one, keep it in mind:
Image


Good day to you too :D ;)
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Post by Judging__Eagle »

Well, Dante, "rolling the bones" does indeed mean rolling dice in english. Rush made a song using the phrase a long while back.

As for Frank's name, that's actually his name. He's one of the only people I know online that uses their real name as their login name on webforums.
The Gaming Den; where Mathematics are rigorously applied to Mythology.

While everyone's Philosophy is not in accord, that doesn't mean we're not on board.
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Post by JigokuBosatsu »

Gosh, it's almost becoming a scandal in Bohemia..
Omegonthesane wrote:a glass armonica which causes a target city to have horrific nightmares that prevent sleep
JigokuBosatsu wrote:so a regular glass armonica?
You can buy my books, yes you can. Out of print and retired, sorry.
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