Free Maps for Personal Use!

These look really useful! It's stuff like this I like and applaud - people helping other people, offering their own personal, homemade stuff, to add new variety to other people's games - for free. Sharing. What a concept!

Remember: these are for personal use and are intellectual property of the creator(s).

http://www.fantasticmaps.com/free-stuff/

Analyze Emotions in Photo Faces... and Art!

Microsoft has a photo recognition "tool" that finds faces in a picture and analyzes them for very broad emotions (happy, sad, neutral, etc).

You just upload a photo to the site and it will put a square around each face it finds and you hover them to see what emotions their tool thinks are being displayed. They also have a tool to tell you if a picture is "adult" or not, but this post is about the emotion recognition.

https://www.projectoxford.ai/demo/Emotion#detection

The weird thing about this is - it works with art! I had it analyze a number of my pictures and it found faces and analyzed the emotions the characters were displaying.

It seems like this ... I don't know if I'd say it's significant, because It obviously finds "earmerks" common to all faces, but still - this means ... artists can relay fictional emotions for fictional characters? Weird, anyway.

My View: Bernie Sanders, Hillary, etc.

Even if I *could* speak for "all" of my party, I couldn't do it for Democrats because I'm an Independent, which is poised to become THE largest "party" in the US, bigger then GOP and Dems combined.

Hillary comes off as extremely hawkish, which I don't agree with. She's a corporatist and/or Third Wayer, who is funded almost completely by Wall Street and Corporations. She has NEVER held these further-left views that she has recently espoused, and clearly has been driven that way by Sanders and even the other Dem candidates, no doubt much to the dismay of the DNC chair Debbie Washerman Schultz.

Schultz, said, in an indulgent, amused tone as one would used with a child, when asked about Sanders or socialism of something: "Oh, pff, no. That's... the Democratic party is left-wing of course, but we're still American. We certainl aren't socialist" (paraphasing). And then when asked what the difference was BETWEEN Democrats and socialists, couldn't answer. (Maybe the first part of this paragraph was here reply, can't recall offhand).

I don't pretend to understand everything in life or politics or money or social issues or whatever, and anyone that says they do is either lying or selling something, probably both. Sanders has stated his stance against (unnecessary) war, he's much more focused on income inequality, free tuition for 4 year colleges, breaking up monopoly monolithic corporations, actually setting tax rates right for PEOPLE, righting the economical spending, etc. A litany of things. Actual REAL progressive things.


Not "liberal", past that - PROGRESSIVE. I don't care if he calls it socialism or ham-sandwichism. I'm not intimidated by words, and I judge things by what I can see or read or currently understand about them. I do lament the fact that "progressive" is a somewhat reviled term because it has been co-opted by leftist extremists the way some see other terms as also co-opted by leftist extremists, to authoritarian, speech stifling extents.

There is criticism of Bernie Sanders because he's "not a Democrat". That's still this same nonsense at work. If you compare him to ACTUAL *real* Democrats, from just a bit over a decade or so back, or especially multiple decades, he is the ONLY Democrat in the Democratic party. Hillary is CERTAINLY not one, and the media doesn't give enough exposure to the others to even tell.

I don't claim to know the intricate details of exactly how Bernie is going to do X or Y, but you can say that about ANYONE. Whoever someone is voting for, that person very rarely will be able to comprehend what is involved in the claims they make, about how they're going to make certain things come about - and that is still on the general surface level. Unless you yourself came UP inside political circles, you really have no idea how the guts are cut, even if you understand the topic.

Bernie Sanders isn't perfect. He's not "powerful", and yes he's been in politics for 30 some years. But in those years, you can look at his actions and his record, in politics and in society, and see how he've voted and what bills he's sponsored or voted for or against, and what sides he's been on during social issues. Sanders is one of the few, possibly the ONLY person that even comes CLOSE to being authentic and I believe he will do everything he can to make exactly the changes and put the plans into place that he says he will. I don't give that benefit of the doubt to ANY other politician in any party. Hillary, if elected, will immediately or as quickly as possible, return to her Neo-Republican roots and ignore, undo or twist any promises or claims she made that are "too left leaning" for the banks or corporations to be happy with.

*Elizabeth Warren and Larry Lessg, both no longer in the picture, are also included with Sanders

Fear of Clowns (My Initial Personal Story)

I wrote this on a forum in response to a lady that is concerned her 2 year old daughter cries nightly and is scared of a woman she "keeps seeing". I am not sure I believe a child that young can communicate in any meaningul way, at least I didn't even know what time or dates were until I was 7 and it was pointed out in class via a school room calendar that the year was "1980" - which was like handing someone a can of beans and saying "Tomorrow's red is puppy".

I remember a very vivid (well, it used to be, I'm 42 now) dream about a clown - I've remembered it for a long time so it MUST have been when I was very young, though I realize with remembered dreams, it's unreliable to factually state much about them, but I'd say I was probably 3-5 maybe?


This is possibly my earlier memory and was a typical clown but looking very scary and behaving, leaning and leering ominously - this was in like 1977 or so, I don't think I had any any cognizant knowledge or understanding of things like what a clown was. I've had some form of fear of clowns ever since this, and this *might* have been caused by something I happened to see on TV or a book (there was a killer clowns scare at some point, and John Wayne Gacy was around), but it could have just been dream imagery of something I had seen some earlier time (maybe Bozo on TV) that became a nightmare.

Psuedo-Review: The Resurrected (1991 Lovecraftian Horror)

So... this post is for anyone that is a fan of H.P. Lovecraft's stories. I just watched 1991's "The Resurrected", and as far as Hollywood Lovecraft movies go, in my opinion, it's probably THE most Lovecrafty and I highly recommend it - it is a modern (for 1991) tale of a private detective investigating Charles Dexter Ward.

It stars Chris Sarandon, the head vampire from the original Fright Night, and even better - John Terry, who played Hawk the Slayer, one of my favorite moves EVER! This is a MUST see for anyone that happened to miss it til now (like me)!

Rating: 8.5/10

Movie Review: Don't Blink (2014 Horror/Mystery)

Horror Movie Review for November 2015



Title: Don't Blink

Genre: Horror/Thriller/Mystery

Cateogy/Type: Unseen Force?

Cast: Brian Austin Green, Mena Suvari, Jack Ward, Joan Kelly, Robert Picardo (closing cameo only)

Produced: EchoWolf 2014

Other:

I enjoy "different" horror movies. I'm not interested in torture porn and gore and people getting chopped up. I want something INTERESTING, whether it's Lovecraft or weird time travel or alternate dimension or thought-created nightmare stalkers - there has got to be a "WHOAH!" for me to enjoy horror movies.

This movie was one of those, with the caveat that, though I won't spoil the ending, if you loathe movies that leave some lingering but relevant questions, you may not cotton to this film.

But like me, if you can seperate this "style" of moviemaking, which I've seen some just call "lazy", the actual progress of the people and actions in the film were compelling and it is definitely a mystery type horror movie, though not a room-to-room-magnifying-glass type.

If you saw and liked Coherence and I see people are comparing this to Phantoms (I haven't seen that yet, somehow), or if you like the "unknown/invisible", creeping ominous threat movies like Mr. Jones or Resolution, I think you may enjoy this film.

I'm not saying it's perfect - there's a good amount of irritation at a few of the way things go down or people behave, that I felt kept it from being more fluid, and while the acting is by and large at least decent and believable, there are some boneheaded decisions, but not like most horror movies, or at least not as frequent, as it really doesn't get a chance to build to that level before the horror is in play.

I did like the dialogue for one of the characters, who was a modern sci-fi and horror movie type that was constantly referring to what was going on as something from Stephen King or aliens or zombies or "the spirit of an ancient Indian burial ground", which made me laugh - he seemed the most "real", well, until later, but that's not germane to the point.

Anyway, a lot of people on forums and other sites are giving this a really low rating, and while, for the overall and idea of a complete story, I can kinda see why... I still think what there IS there is good and different and not anything close to "usual horror movie stuff".

I would have given it an 8/10, but I had to stop at 7 because of the unsatisfying or at least not well-enough intimated ending, because I agree with some people that say the "figure out what YOU think it means" is one thing, an artist can't show you a pristine, untouched canvas and say "just IMAGINE the awesome picture YOU want there!".

Rating: 7/10 on IMDB (I posted this review there too)

A Short US Election Related Macro

I haven't been "slacking" off (been doing stuff), but I haven't been doing much online, no videos or anything. I have GOT to get back to doing stuff! Some of my videos on Yotube are even getting a little notice, get a new view on my last one every day or two! I gotta get back to making fun videos! Or ones on Ouija boards. Or SOMETHING!

WWE Wrestling Superstar Sheamus

Daniel Bryan WWE Wrestler

I sort of missed his debut and arrival but really liked the little bit I saw of Daniel Bryan before he got taken out of the scene. YES! Did you fear the beard? Or was it an endeared beard?

CM Punk (former WWE wrestler, current UFC fighter)

I enjoyed CM Punk's in and out of the ring style!

WWE Undertaker Wrestling Champion

I liked him better when he first started but he's still a pretty cool wrestler.

Sample Character from Upcoming CROSS: Secret Agents of the Vatican

Agent Starling - higher up in the ranks of CROSS: Secret Agents of the Vatican!

[Hero System/Savage Worlds/ICONS] Blessed Machine Q&A Chat

Blessed Machine Q&A Chat

Sunday, August 2nd at 7pm CST

http://www.blessedmachine.com

Have a look around BlessedMachine, then click the Chat link in BlessedMachine.Com's menu

"I will be hosting a chat session at blessedmachine.com chat. I will go over all the Blessed Machine products and discuss our current project Secret Agents of CROSS. Obviously, since it is a Q&A, we'll take any questions throughout. Thanks!

-Pete Ruttman (Pruttm), Publisher @ Blessed Machine,Author of Secret Agents of CROSS"

Blessed Machine Products on RPGNow: http://www.rpgnow.com/browse/pub/7646/Blessed-Machine

Free Tabletop Rolayplaying Games Reminder

Hey all, this is just a sort of "update" (though some of the links are the same) of a good selection of resources for legally, freely available tabletop roleplaying games for download - some indie and new(er), some old and kindly made free by their creators. Take a look, there's likely something you'll like!

Free Tabletop RPGs

There are free rpg day collections and just in general lots of people doing other free rpgs. Many full games also have free quickstart or test drive rules.This is just a quick, small sample:

One Thousand Monkeys, etc: http://1km1kt.com

John Kim's: http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/freerpgs/

RPG Free List: https://sites.google.com/site/rpgfreelist/

Chris Garrison: http://sillyhatbooks.com/about/games/

SciFi Free RPG List: http://scifi411.com/RPG/free.html

RPG Library Log: https://www.rpglibrary.org/main.php?showcat=Games&order=license&start=100 (work pages from last, 5, from free to pay)

RISUS: http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/risus.htm

WUSHU Open: http://danielbayn.com/wushu/

West End Game/Opens D6: http://criticalpressmedia.com/download-mirrors/open-d6/ or http://games.whitesaber.com/west-end-games-open-d6.html

MiniSix: http://www.antipaladingames.com/p/mini-six.html

Free RPG Day: http://www.freerpgday.com/

Call of Cthulhu QS: http://www.chaosium.com/call-of-cthulhu-7th-edition-quick-start-rules-pdf/

Savage Worlds TD: https://www.peginc.com/freebies/SWcore/TD06.pdf

DriveThruRPG Search for Free : http://www.rpgnow.com/browse.php?pfrom=0&pto=0&x=0&y=0

Women Wrestling Low Blows Is A Thing

So... a video collection of women in wrestling receiving "illegal low blows" exists. First, I can't believe there are this many, though obviously some are very nickel and dime promotions, and second, someone said "I need to collect these all in one video". You can always tell the ... true wrestling fans?

Now I see there is at least one more, apparently by a girl:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2EhRm9sKbw

And now I see Female Low Blows, Nut Shot (Nut Shot) , Crotch Shot, It Hurts Girls Too... is there some internet meme or fad I missed until now? In looking through these, I see one or two low blows on guys, usually just a clip from one match or something, like there isn't as much interest. What could this mean?

I welcome any thoughts on this!

DeviantArt Search for Pro Wrestling (Odd Offerings)

Sometimes you are interested in a topic or hobby. I like pro wrestling, or "rasslin'" as some people call it, though not nearly as much now as I used to be. But anyway, you look for instances of it, creative ideas about it, just about anywhere. So I decided to see how other fans interpret or include professional wrestling in their own interests and artistic projects... what better place than DeviantArt to see his this plays out in reality? Maybe much better places - maybe any place. Search for "pro wrestling" on DeviantArt at your own mental peril, fans.

Freedom in an Owned World: Too much change/Not enough change

 Kind of an interesting discussion about the tabletop RPG Warhammer going on, both an article and some thoughts on it being too big, or too small, and how the IP is protected. Which to me I find a bit odd, given how fans and fans alone kept Warhammer "going" amd even improved upon and expanded, until a second edition was made.

Freedom in an Owned World: Too much change/Not enough change: Right. It is about time that I weighed on the big debate about changes in Warhammer. I've had plenty of time to consider the rules and ...

Psychic Circle Mini Review and Ouija Thoughts

Hey everybody, I don't normally delve a whole lot into this in my gaming material, but this sort of qualified as a "board game", and it's new content, so hey! Who know, you might find it interesting.

If anyone has any quastions or comments or experiences to share, please feel free to comment here or on the video or wherever you darn well please! If you like it, please like, share and subscribe!

The Sorting Hat and Randy Orton - Slytherin

A bit of wrestling humor, no incentive for RPG stuff at the moment, bad financial situation is taking most of my deep creativity away from me.

20 Items Found In a Haunted House - Ragine Swan Press

I come across cool tabletop RPG lists and links now and then and this is one. Simple, nothing crazy awesome about it, but very solid, good template for other items, and a really good evocative drawing of an exterior shot of a haunted house. Enjoy!

http://www.ragingswan.com/20-treasures-to-find-in-a-haunted-house/

Supervillain Showdown for Icons RPG Released on DriveThru/RPGNow!

So I am a contributor at Blessed Machine for this RPG release for the Icons RPG system. Supervillain Showdown is a "pack" of a five member team of supervillains called Hardhate - a gadget-powered construction crew bent on vengeance! The Foreman, Lemonhead, Dragline, Lookout and Slag! I think it's $5 right now.

If you get it, we'd love to hear what you think. Leave a review on RPGNOW/DriveThruRPG or post of Facebook or email or PM us, something! Thanks!

http://www.rpgnow.com/…/148076/Supervillain-Showdown-1-ICONS

Evilution Unchained Superhero Adventure for Icons, HERO 6 RPG

Evilution Unchained supers adventure and HERO Designer Character Pack for HERO 6E RPG sytem and Icons system. Also a Hero Systems 6E Combat Record sheet!  

Hey everybody! Looking for a fun, entertaining city-based adventure for the HERO or Icon systems? Pete Ruttman at Blessed Machine has released the new Icons version of Evilution Unchained (previously only in HERO format), as well as a pay-what-you-want HERO 6 Combat Record Sheet! I did some of the art/illustrations in the adventure and helped give some feedback, so I'm pretty proud of this product myself! Why not try it out and see what you think?! :)

http://www.rpgnow.com/browse/pub/7646/Blessed-Machine

Evilution Unchained is a three act mystery adventure that takes the heroes throughout the city to solve a series of high profile kidnappings. Heroes will Hunt for clues on nine Fully detailed color maps to discover a horrific plot that threatens the entire campaign city. Also, The Heroes will meet a fresh batch of full color supervillains as they try to solve the mystery of Evilution Unchained

IBM Watson Demo Psychoanalyzes Your Writing

So I came across this the other day, I guess many people will have already known about it, or maybe it's even been posted here, but it's interesting.

Basically, copy and paste a few paragraphs from something you've written into the text field and hit analyze, and it evaluates your writing and spits out a bunch of statistics on some typical psychology criteria like Openness, Empathy, Creativity, etc.

Presumably this is done simply by your word choice, so do be aware that the topic likely will have a significant bearing on the results - ie, pasting a long, intellectual bit of "thinking aloud" about the complexities of life and your own experiences is likely to give you a dramatically different result than posting a block about why Knuckles the Echidna is your favorite Sonic character.

I did notice, though, when I posted two fairly different but still related "articles" of mine on the same topic, many of the values in the majority of properties remained fairly consistent, while a handful changed wildly. It does list me repeatedly as 94% Cautious and 98% Melancholy (I have clinical depression so I guess it shows through, if this is accurate, which is interesting), and says I'm "100%" creative - I don't know what practical meaning a number has in something like that, but it's interesting. It also gives you a few sentence general summary of its findings and a visual diagram representing the text values it came up with.

So if you are interested, try it out, maybe post your results here and compare and discuss. Kind of an interesting time waster. For thoroughness, if you are someone who is concerned about people "stealing" your ideas or finding out things about you, do remember that ANYTHING you post ANYWHERE on the internet is theoretically read and stored and could even be hacked even from the assumedly secure/objective site (like an IBM demo), so maybe don't post the entirely of your tween vampire romance novel or your own last five year journal of coming to terms with the fact that Justin Bieber really helped you become the adult you are today...

https://watson-pi-demo.mybluemix.net/

I don't necessarily agree with a lot of the things below that Watson determined, but a person can't really just be reduced to a pile of labels and numbers, and even two samples of writing on different topics on different days could yield vastly differing analysis, so I'd recommend you do like me and take it with a grain of salt. =)

Needs
Challenge 100%
Closeness 100%
Curiosity 100%
Excitement 100%
Harmony 100%
Ideal 4%
Liberty 100%
Love 13%
Practicality 82%
Self-expression 100%
Stability 98%
Structure 56%

Values
Conservation 1%
Openness to change 88%
Hedonism 73%
Self-enhancement 76%
Self-transcendence 58%

You are heartfelt and confident.
You are empathetic: you feel what others feel and are compassionate towards them. You are laid-back: you appreciate a relaxed pace in life. And you are unstructured: you do not make a lot of time for organization in your daily life.

Your choices are driven by a desire for prestige.
You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done. You consider independence to guide a large part of what you do: you like to set your own goals to decide how to best achieve them.

FRANKIE MACDONALD REPORTS ALL THE WEATHER

Okay, this is just a goofy one-off, but seeing so many posts on Facebook about this new cold front and winter attack, I made this, thanks to a very intrepid weather reporter!

Frankie Macdonald reports the weather and he is AWESOME at his job!

Free Tabletop RPG Resources 2015

Free Tabletop RPG Resources

---

Free Games

OpenD6 (formerly West End Games' D6, base for original Star Wars and Ghostbusters)
http://opend6.wikidot.com/

RISUS the Anything RPG
http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/downloads.htm#Risus

Basic Fantasy Roleplaying
http://www.basicfantasy.org/downloads.html

Free RPG Day Site
http://www.freerpgday.com/

Modern Crossbow Hunter Silhouette

This is a freely downloadable black silhouette of a modern day crossbow hunter. It's available in two formats:

SVG (scalable vector graphic)

PNG

Small Demo Image:

36 Questions for Character Development

36 Questions for Character Development

This is taken from a New York Times article, considering the possibility of falling in love being a process encouraged by sharing 36 questions between two people and staring into each other's eyes for 2-4 minutes. While the jury is likely still out on that idea, I found the questions themselves, by and large, very solid ones one might ask of a character, to help a player develop a more fully realized personality and sense of being, for roleplaying purposes.

1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?

2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?

3. Before making a telephone call or having a planned discussion, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?

4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?

5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?

Creating Coherent RPG Adventures From Random Elements

Obviously, what you want, as a tabletop RPG designer or GM, ultimately, is to come up with a few good solid components to make a coherent adventure. Sadly, even the best "adventure generator" you find online or PDF or book you buy, can provide you with elements or the skeleton of a framework, but the content itself, the specifics, often do not lend themselves to combinations.

There are good, creative designers and GMs that can work with about anything and make awesome adventures with the strangest ingredients, but that type of genius may not come that easy to the rest of us, me especially. But I do want to discuss and hopefully give an example of how this type of thing CAN be done - it IS possible, but it isn't magic - it does take effort and some rather unintuitive conclusions and leaps of deduction, to make a plot.

Among other things, I've created a random plot element generator, for lack of a better term, uncreatively titled, "22,000 Count Word Generator", which you can find here: http://www.peracles-rpg.com/guest/jp/toys/index.php?pagecont=22

Video version of this article

The linked Youtube video version of this article is here: [LINK]. 

The Audio is here: [LINK]

Now first off - I created this primarily for inspiration, so in its most basic form, it just spits out random things - adjectives, nouns, whatever, in no particular order or relation. From there I tried to refine it a bit and built one option to give some structure - a person or thing, an action or verb, an event or other thing - to sort of artificially give some hierarchy of usefulness to the random words. Then I decided to make both viable, so when you generate info with it, it may give you one style, or the other. And overall, this is of variable use - you can get crap no matter what, or some may be compelling. Both are set up in the form of Acts and Scenes, with a few scenes per Act, as per the standard narrative story or plot structure. Ideally, the elements of each would make sense and tie in to others, but as it is, these designations of "Scene 2, 3" are really just suggestions.

Let's just start with the first page I get, and we'll see what works and what doesn't, and what we can do with what works. Here is the first of the result sets that my generator gives us.

My Top Six RPG Elements Video on Youtube

Table Scraps: Top Six RPG Elements: http://t.co/A5qZxyFrRf via @YouTube

 

Table Scraps: Top Six RPG Elements

Table Scraps has reviews, humor and other videos on tabletop board, card, dice and RPG games. This is a collection of a few different "top six" lists generated by some "toys" I made and have online. NPCs, useless items, wrestling movies, scene/plot elements, just to name a few. I'd love to get feedback from anyone on this! Enjoy!