The Passing Of An Era....

Tromping around the internet this morning, I stopped by Dumpshock, what I consider the premire Shadowrun fansite. Upon looking around I was dismayed to find that, while they had fixed many of the errant links on the site, they also seem to no longer be hosting two sites that for me are a rather large portion of Shadowrun history - the Shadowrun Archive and Blackjack's Shadowrun Page. Neither of these pages has been actually updated since 2000, so it's understandable to stop hosting them, but...

Blackjack - one Branson Hagerty - is a personality that is likely little known to the wider populace, or to newer Shadowrun players for that matter. A notoriously...grumpy...individual who mainly GMed rather than played the game - something he constantly complained about - Blackjack apparently switched to 3rd edition Shadowrun when it came out, but his site never reflected it. Indeed, said site - and his Blackjack's Corner column on the Shadowrun Archives - was full of his uniquely crusty humor and NERPS as well as a good deal of his philosophy and opinion on how to play and GM the game. His writing was quirky, sarcastic, vaguely nostalgic, and downright bitchy......and I loved every bit of it. His philosophy of gaming had a large effect on mine, even though I never interacted with him directly. These two sites were two of the first Shadowrun sites I ran unto when I first got access to the internet back in the fall of '94, and they were "places" I loved.

And now they are well and truly gone. Yet another sign that I'm getting old.

For those interested, portions of these sites can be viewed via the Wayback Machine here:
Blackjack's Shadowrun Page
The Shadowrun Archive - Blackjack's Corner

Confessions Of A Gamer Geek

I admit it, I'm guilty. I'm a gamer, a total geek and damn proud of it. I'm into video games, mainly PC based at the moment and I'm just getting into World of Warcraft since my girlfriend got it for me for my birthday. I've always disliked MMORPGs due to the fact that you have to pay to play a game you already bought, but then I didn't buy this so I guess it's ok ;) Anyway, I've loved the Warcraft series of games ever since I played the first one back in college.

My true passion in gaming though is pulp (aka table top, pen & paper, etc) gaming - particularly Shadowrun. Having played SR for something like 15 years starting at 1st edition and now on 4th, that pretty much says where my preference lies. That said, I also like D&D 3.5 (specifically the Eberron setting), Star Wars (d20 and the new Saga edition), and have some appreciation for White Wolf's games (even though I find them kind of pretentious).

D&D (the old, old red box) and Dragonlance were actually my first gaming experiences, and while I have a hate-hate relationship with the game's magic system I keep coming back to it every once and a while. That might change with the advent of 4th edition though. Frankly, neither I nor anyone I know is happy about it. Especially after spending a good chunk of change on the 3rd and then 3.5 edition books. All I can say at the moment is that WotC had best do a damn good job on 4th edition, like miraculous, if they still want my group's patronage.