Rended Press

I'm deleting my Google+ account in two weeks, after I turn over a few communities I own to new owners. I have no desire to join another social media platform. I'm sticking to blogs. I tried Discord, but couldn't figure it out. I feel old. From now on you can catch me at these places: Rended Press https://rendedpress.blogspot.com/ Poetry Midwest+ https://poetrymidwestplus.wordpress.com/ Me & Alfred Roanoke https://meandalfredroanoke.wordpress.com/ Twitter @mwschmeer (I rarely check Twitter, but there it is)

So a lot of the DIY/OSR RPG folk & funsters are moving to MeWe . I created an account to check it out, but decided it is not for me and deleted my profile a few days later. While the "privacy is everything" mantra of the site is admirable, the ability to discover new people, new shared interests, and new content is limited in such an environment. There has also been a lot of chatter about MeWe actively courting white supremacist groups and the alt-right, but conservative groups & radio personalities are also actively complaining that MeWe is courting antifa and liberal groups. So which is it? It's both. MeWe's CEO, Mark Weinstein, and Jason Hardy, MeWe's Vice President of Product Development, are more than happy to talk with OSR gamers , conservative radio hosts,  &  Fox News  to extol the benefits of their platform. And for good reason--they need users. MeWe needs to convince anyone and everyone to use their platform in an effort to gain users

Back in 2015 I created the following hex map, which I promptly named Dead Island : Two years later, I asked students in my Digital Narratives class to come up with encounters for each hex. It took 15 students 45 minutes to fill in all the hexes. Here is the result: This spreadsheet has NOT been tightly edited for grammar, etc. It's pretty gonzo, too. edit: direct link to spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EJXmraSwCRMMdCbq5yKC__BEi6r9GITC5QAuYXsmvL0/edit?usp=sharing

A project I had a hand in was released yesterday. Evyln Moreau has released the Mudwarren Zine , a final compilation of a community project started on two of Karl Stjernberg 's Google+ threads. Out of the goodness of her heart, Evlyn pulled it all together and released it yesterday as a free PDF and as an at-cost print version at Lulu.com . Download links at her blog!

The creature pictured below is not an owl. It is not a bear. It is not an owlbear or bearowl. What is it? Use the following format to tell me what the hell this is. Actual name of the creature: What people call it: Description: (5-8 sentences!) Things that folks know about it for sure (3 short sentences each!) 1. 2. 3. Things that are rumored about it (3 short sentences each!) 1. 2. 3.

For your mid-week viewing pleasure, a treasure from 1982 starring some meatball & his bosom buddy. Bonus: The work-in-progress Mazes & Monsters retro-clone posts at Blog of Holding .

I'm redesigning the Zine List  to be easier to sort, maintain, and edit. The first step is to capture essential data about each zine, which I plan to personally do by hand, checking & updating each current link as I go. To aid in this process, I'm using a Google Form to capture data to a Google Sheet. Take a look at a screencap of the form below & drop me a comment on what other general data points you think I should consider capturing. I have already decided I am not going to ask for cover prices & shipping costs, as those can easily be found by following the download/purchasing links. I can't figure out how to let you click to make this bigger. Did they change something with Blogger?

So Google is pulling the plug on Google+ . It was a good ride while it lasted. I'm not sure I will make the jump to another social media platform. I loathe Facebook, and even though I have an account, Twitter is a swamp of snark & shame trolls. All the other platforms RPG folks are considering migrating to have their own problems, too (Diaspora, Discord, Mastodon, MeWe, etc.). I've been pulling away from most social media except for one or two groups on Google+ anyway, so leaping to a new platform isn't that attractive at the moment. I plan to stick to Google+ until it's clear that the usual suspects I hang with online are abandoning the platform. After that, maybe I will just go back to posting here. This blog has been on the back burner since 2015, as the lack of posts can attest. Until then, here are my other links. Twitter: @matthewschmeer Gaming blog:  Rended Press Writing blog:  Poetry Midwest+ Writing blog:  Me & Alfred Roanoke

Today on his blog, Zak S. highlighted an equipment list layout by Shawn Cheng  for Zak's Demon City project as if it was something new and revolutionary. I would like to point out I did a similar thing back in 2015 . Twice . Only I altered public domain comic book images and made them die drop tables. I'd mention this to Zak by leaving a comment on his post or G+, but he & I have blocked each other for reasons having to do with me being me and Zak being Zak in an online argument. I refused to  apologize for insulting Zak and refused to entertain Zak's argument tactics, thus landing me on Zak's "bad person" list. I mention this in the interest of full disclosure. That said, Shawn Cheng's layout is pretty damn awesome, and Zak's Demon City project will definitely be on my "buy" list when it is eventually published.

Downloads hosted in my Dropbox account are temporarily unavailable because Steve Jackson Games is run by a bunch of douches who would rather file a DMCA Complaint than email me and request I remove one fucking file that was a fan re-design of one of their out of print games. Update: Access to downloads has been restored after I deleted every last damn SJG-related thing from my Dropbox account, and a few more possibly-infringing PDFs just to be on the safe side.

Oh dear God in Heaven was there a bunch of Google+ spam in the comments that had accumulated while I wasn't looking. Rather than try to wade through them all and delete them one by one, I'm just turning off that feature. This deletes a lot of comment threads, but that's a price I am willing to pay for peace of mind.

So I made this thing: Me & Alfred Roanoke: The ONLY Officially Licensed 2-Player RPG™ which is based upon these scribblings: Me & Alfred Roanoke and I submitted it to the 200 Word RPG Challenge .  Let's see what happens.

I was updating my C.V. and decided to gather these reviews/comments on some of my creations in one place. I've pasted them here (unedited with the original title and grammar errors) with links to the sources underneath each one: Commentary On Matthew Schmeer's Magic Ring Die Drop Table pdf A Free OSR Resource Matthew Schmeer of Rendered Press has been making Dice Drop tables based on old vintage comic book adds and these have been two things, 1. free  & 2. Very,very, useful for post modern OSR games. These tables include his Wasteland Emporium & Wonderama Die Drop Table &the Miracles of the Gnome Workshop Die Drop Table. But his latest efforts are one of my favorites of his, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for weird adds in comic book pages. Those classics that were the comic book equivalent of the gum ball machines in the middle of comic books. The ones that had to break up the action in order to pay for the adds, surely there couldn't be a

I'm sorry, Precis Intermedia and author Steve Robertson, but 60 pages is  NOT  "Ultra Rules-Lite" no matter how hard you wish it to be true. 60 pages? Really? Really? THIS is ultra rules-lite: One. Friggin'. Page.