Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Mandela Effect, A Spell for LotFP Modern

MANDELA EFFECT
Magic-User Level 1
Duration: 1 Hour/level
Range: Global
By casting this spell the magic-user is able to change one inconsequential detail about the world. For the duration of the spell this change will have always been true and no evidence to the contrary exists.  The caster will know the truth of the matter, as will any persons aware of the spell being cast and the intended effect. Any other characters will make a saving throw against magic. Success of this throw means that character has retained all memories of the original reality and will not be able to fully accept the new "truth," although they can be convinced of having misremembered the details.

The change in reality must be minuscule and cannot effect any past events although the change will be made throughout time. Once the duration of the spell is over, reality will snap back to its original state, erasing any evidence of the change. Examples of acceptable changes would be altering the spelling of the Berenstain Bears name, removing Curious George's tail, and changing a line in Disney's Cinderella.

See the below video to watch this spell in action.


How Did My 2015 RPG Predictions Pan Out?

- Roleplaying games will become more popular. I've got no real way of knowing this, but it does seem that the hype of D&D 5e has settled down. I haven't seen D&D penetrating other pop culture like movies or TV, but maybe I'm just missing it.

- Wizards of the Coast will announce the sale of 5e PDFs late in the year. There was the free PDF player's guide to Princes of the Apocalypse, but none of the 5e print products have been released in PDF.

- WotC won't release very many new D&D books but there will be a new Forgotten Realms setting book and it will be praised for being the best version of the Realms yet. There were very few releases from WotC this year, but one of them was a Forgotten Realms setting book. However, this book has been panned by anyone I've seen actually read it.

- No official D&D electronic tools. Really? I whole fucking year without a character builder? I wanted to be wrong about this one. They've outsourced the virtual tabletop to Fantasy Grounds, but I don't think that counts.

- Likewise, Project Morningstar will non-existent by the end of the year. The Kickstarter campaign failed and I can't find any actual news about the project, so I think it's safe to call it dead.

- There will be a lot of A Red & Pleasant Land hacks, but the best one will be A Red & Pleasant World. To be honest, I'm a little let down at how little has been done with R&PL. I'm also at fault here, having read only 50 or so pages in before being distracted by something else shiny. I was hoping that I would put together A Red and Perfect World, but I fell out of love with the Apocalypse Engine some time in the spring.

- Lamentations of the Flame Princess will release (almost) all of the many miscellaneous adventures from all those crowd-funding projects. Probably all at once along with the Referee Book. I was very wrong about this. I think there was one or two PDF releases. Here's hoping the best for next year!

- The RPG clique war will be quiet for most of the year. There won't be any major controversies. More and more people learn to co-exist. It really was mostly quiet. Drama would flair up when events provoked the most volatile characters, like Zak laying waste to the Ennie awards, but people didn't just start shit for the sake of being fuckards and I liked that.

- The line between storygames and D&D will blur to the point of irrelevance. Eh. Not really? I was expecting a lot of weird experimental D&D stuff this year and I don't think it really happened.

- Fantasy Flight announces a new Warhammer Fantasy Role Play edition that will marry the older editions with the current 40k RPGs. Nope and now I don't think it will ever happen.

- Troll Lord will run eight different Kickstarter campaigns. Troll Lord had a total of five Kickstarter campaigns launched in 2015, which is way more than I was honestly expecting. I was being sarcastic with this prediction but Troll Lord loved them some crowdfunding. I think it's worth noting that the final campaign was canceled due to slow funding. It seems to me that Troll Lord has been loosing a lot of steam due to their reliance on crowdfunding and the number of projects they promote through it. Kickstarter has basically become their business model. While I think that Troll Lord does a decent enough job with their products, their big Castles and Crusades campaign from 2014 is still not completely fulfilled and in the time from the launch of the campaign until now, C&C has gone from my favorite version of D&D to a game that has completely lost my interest.

- The inevitable Unknown Armies 3e Kickstarter will be a huge success. Things get really crazy while post-modern conspiracy and chaos magick becomes the flavor of the month. No kickstarter and really not much word on this project for a while. I've heard some of names associated with the third edition and now I really could not care less if this ever comes out.

- There will be another huge Reaper Kickstarter. It's a massive success but somehow puts Reaper out of business. No one gets their Bones 2 packages as a result. Reapers Bones III. My sarcastic conditions of Reaper going out of business and people not getting their packages didn't pan out

DC Heroes will see a resurgence in popularity. Not sure what I was thinking with this one.