Letters to the Den

Appearing below are various e-mails that I have received, and the various answers I gave. The answers may vary from the ones I originally gave. Hell the answers may not even agree with the answers I gave, or look anything like the answers I gave. All names, addresses and so on have been removed. If you see one of your questions on this page and for some strange reason you don't want it there, e-mail me and I'll kill it.


Hey, chummer, your link to Shadowland doesn't work.

I know. Thanks anyway.
Note:Since that time the link to Shadowland has been fixed.

 

Hoi. I run a Shadowrun page, and I was wondering if I could link your page?

I've actually received several e-mails along this basic line. The truth is you don't need permission to link someone's page. I'd appreciate it if you informed me when you did though, as I will actually want to look at a page that's linked me. Who knows, sometimes out of guilt or respect for your page I may decide to link you as well.

 

Hi! I have really enjoyed your site. How would you like to join the <NAME DELETED FOR SECURITY REASONS! it was a webring> You would be a great addition! Come check out the ring and join if you like.

After checking out the ring, I decided against it on the fact that it was a FAMILY WEBRING. I don't know what this individual missed, but I seriously doubt the content on my page fits into the family category.

 

Hi, I just wanted to suggest that you change the background of your web page. Makes it a little difficult to read. Otherwise, lookin' cool!

Well, after I told this individual I'd look into it, I obviously did nothing. Now let me explain the reasoning behind this:

1)I have received no other complaints about the background of my page.

2)There is a possibility my page shows up in a different color on different browsers

3)I tested #2 on another browser, Netscape gold, and it did show up in other colors, blue and white. I have no idea how this page would show up on another browser.

4)I lied on #3. It seems to show up fine on Internet Explorer.

5)It's possible this individual had his color preferances set wrong.

6)I can read it.

7)None of my ramblings on the front page are really important anyway.

8)The green links seem to stand out on the grey background, while they seem to be hard to read on any other background.

9)I went through a very rigorous, stressful and complicated way of selecting my background. It's the standard default setting on Adobe Pagemill, which I use to build my page.

Well all in all I can't change the way this person feels about my background. I hope they are in no way offended by this rambling, and if they are I apologize in advance. But otherwise I currently see no reason to change my background. If you people out there think I should change my background, E-mail me about it. On the other hand if you think I should leave my background alone E-mail me about it. If you don't care one way or another E-mail me anyway! Your vote will count!

 

I really apreciate you linking my page to yours without me even asking! You can expect a link on mine soon.

Initial response:Cool.

And now..:Well, this is one of the first e-mails I ever got when I started the page in... oh about October 97. That links still not up...

 

Saw your page, thought it was great. It seems we gm's are forced to make decisions about characters with no fear. Thanks.

I was greatly relieved when I got this e-mail. At that point I was wondering if anyone was reading any of my writings at all.

 

Greetings. You may or may not remeber me. I sent you an e-mail long ago telling you how good your brand new shadowrun page was. Now I have the honor of e-mailing you telling you that your veteran Shadowrun page is better than ever. Your second brain spasm told the world what we game masters have been telling players for years. Now for my own group I have recommending your 77 Questions, along with a freehand history. I am also going to recommend all of the pc friendly parts. I thank you for putting that on the computer, so I can stop explaining it. Again, congrats and kudos for your sight.

(Coincidently it was the same author of the last letter.) Of course I remeber you! It's not as if I get enough e-mail that I can forget anyone who e-mails me. As for the rest, I don't know about the veteran part of the shadowrun page but...
And I admit, sometimes the 77 questions can get rather repetitive/hard to understand.
As for the bullets, I'd like to thank the sites I stole them from...
Well, all in all thank you.

 

Hello! This is <NAME DELETED FOR SECURITY REASONS>. I just happened to be surfing the net and came upon your webpage. Could you please e-mail me back and tell me about yourself? (Age, sex interests, what your page is about, etc.) I would appreciate getting your e-mail. Thanks for reading this and I hope to hear from you soon!

21, male, RPG's music and da computer, RPG's. Well I'm guessing since you didn't know what my page was about this means one of two things:

1)You are part of the normal populace who knows little to nothing about Role-playing games, and somehow you found my roleplaying page from a non-roleplaying source. I don't know how this could actually happen because all my attempts to get my page on a search engine have failed.

2)You didn't read anything on the page. Hey that's alright, I understand, where did you say you lived again?

 

Scared Pc's...yep they rarely come around. Generally I (try) to scare my PC's by creating an atmosphere which later can be broken. By using background music(this is a great effect) and generally killing a PC that picks on someone(thing) that he/she shouldn't. Generally fear comes from being in shit you maybe don't survive, but there's got to be a chance...
The dragon situation: Let your PC's throw anything at the dragon, and then let it shrug it off(hey your the GM), that usually scares most people.

Only problem with music, is that tapes will need to be flipped, and cd's will generally run out at exactly the worst time possible. Of course if you have a remote...(It's really effective if you have some way of hiding it so that none of your PC'scan see it.) And yes, I know some ways of making my players afraid, very afraid. The two that come to mind is when they launched an attack that would have taken out an entire third world country, and it just caused their opponenet to blink. Another being the time they ran into a mil-spec vehicle, that advised them to leave and then fired of warning shot. at which point I said "Remember that range of mountains behind you? They're gone." that was very effective.

 

YES! The Aliens RPG kicks ass! (though some of the rules(combat) can make things a little slow). But it's got the same kinda atmosphere like many of the great RPG's like Call, Vampire etc. I think this atmosphere comes from the knowledge of knowing that you're PC's are in deeeeep shit, but you can get out of it.

Well, I like it. Problem is Aliens seems to be pretty rare now. Something to do with it going out of print I think. And while I've never actually played Call of Cthulu(I've heard good things about it, but I've never actually even met a person who's played it.) And as for the atmosphere of Vampire...well...you don't know some of the people I do, who can make a game of Vampire make a National Lampoon movie look completly serious. Granted, we're all generally blasted out of our skulls when we play...

 

...yeah how about some Aliens on your page? Yeah I know I'm a bastard just complaining, I know!

Well, lets see... I got my copy of Aliens in 92, a couple of my friends got their copies a couple of years later, 94, 95 at the latest. And they had a hell of a time finding their copies. Now it's 98, Aliens is out of print, and good luck finding a copy. besides the only thing that we ever created for the game was an alien ship...and that was by my friend Steve...and I don't think I can find the damn thing anyway

[Back]

By P. Baumgart, and the people who e-mailed me.