These
days, months seem to go by really fast. It feels like I only wrote
July’s monthly round-up a few days ago, but here we are at the end
of August. It was an interesting month
and fairly productive for me on the blog—apart from the past
week, when a hectic schedule kept me from making as many updates as I
would have liked. It was the best month ever for views though, with more than twice as many people visiting the site than in the previous best-ever month!
The
month opened with the BBC announcing that Peter Capaldi would be stepping into the role of the twelfth Doctor
after Matt Smith leaves in this year’s Christmas special. As with
all new Doctor announcements, this one was met with lots of praise
and just
a little bit of criticism,
some justified, some
not-so-justified. As
happy as I am with the choice (and I do believe he will be a great
Doctor), I had to admit to a couple concerns with the
casting process myself. More exciting news came a couple of weeks
later with the announcement of the discovery of a lost William Hartnell interview.
It’s not quite the discovery of lost episodes, but a significant
event nonetheless. Also, for a bit of fun, Doctor Who
fans discovered that the TARDIS is on Google Maps.
Finally, I have begun my own preparations for the upcoming 50th
anniversary of Doctor Who
by looking back at my own experiences
with the show throughout my life. Each week until the anniversary,
I’ll look at one of the Doctors, and finally at the spin-offs. It’s
a little bit of self-indulgent nostalgia, and I hope people enjoy it.
In
the world of Pathfinder, I continued to make my way through my
backlog of products to review. I didn’t get through as much as I
hoped this month, but I still made good headway. Reviews this month
included Castles of the Inner Sea,
Dragons Unleashed,
the Dragonslayer’s Handbook,
The Witch Queen’s Revenge,
the Reign of Winter Player’s Guide,
and The Dragon’s Demand.
Coming up soon, I’ll be getting to products such as The
Worldwound, the new Wrath
of the Righteous adventure path,
and the hardcover release, Mythic Adventures.
Although
no one’s actually enquired about it, it occurred to me that people
might wonder why I review the player’s guides for adventure paths
at the end of the adventure path and not at the beginning, which is
when the guides are released. This is because there have been
legitimate criticisms of past player’s guides that they don’t
adequately prepare players for the entire adventure path, leaving
players with characters unsuited for sudden shifts that occur later
in the adventure path. As such, I leave reviewing the guides until
after all the adventure path’s instalments are out so that I can
evaluate how well the guides prepare players for the whole
experience.
Last month, I included a
couple of very brief reviews with my monthly round-up, and I’d like
to include another such one this month. With every adventure path
Paizo has published, they have also published a map folio to go along
with it. Early ones were just a collection of important maps from the
adventure path, but later ones have been a selection of full-colour,
poster maps that are useful for the adventure path but can
have more generic uses as well. Since these folios are published in
the Pathfinder Campaign Setting
line rather than the Pathfinder Adventure Path
line, they need to be useful to people who get the one and not the
other. It’s also nice not to have to get a set of maps you already
have. I don’t normally review the folios since they are just maps
and I haven’t felt I could give them the in-depth coverage I like
to include in my reviews.
The
Reign of Winter Poster Map Folio
contains three poster maps: one of the country of Irrisen, one of its
capital Whitethrone, and one of the region of Iobaria. Each map is in
a somewhat different style, with the map of Irrisen being the most
visually stunning. In many ways, it’s more like a piece of art than
a map, and indeed, it’s perhaps not the most useful map as a
result. Still, it show the locations of sites throughout the country,
and would work especially well as a representation of a map that
people actually living in the game world might see and use. The other
two maps are more typical of
the gaming maps of
most use to gamemasters. There was a poster map of Whitethrone in the
City Map Folio
from a few years ago, but the one here is larger and more detailed.
Overall, the Reign of Winter Poster Map Folio
contains three good maps that will be useful to people running games
in the northern reaches of Golarion.
A
couple months ago, I listed
some of the most unusual search terms people had used to find their
way to this blog. Since then, I’ve collected a few more. These ones
aren’t quite as bizarre and it’s easy to see why this site might
show up as a result, but they made me chuckle. As before, all
spelling and grammar errors are replicated exactly:
girls
withdigtits – I really want to know why porn searches bring people
to my blog. Could it be because the word sexism
shows up here and that has sex
in it and thus, porn? Or just because?
sarah
jane smith hot – I understand the sentiment, but it seems an odd
search to me.
of
dice and men sexism doctor who – This is clearly a direct search
for this site with either a typo or a misremembering of the blog’s
name. Either way, the error is rather ironic.
sexist
doctors nowadays – I have no idea what to say.
children
girl doctor things – Still don’t know what to say.
left
4 dead original character models – Until this very sentence, I have
never once mentioned Left 4 Dead on this blog. I don’t play video
games these days (mainly because, if I do, I know I’ll never
accomplish anything productive ever again) and so I barely ever
mention them on this blog, if ever. No idea why Of Dice and Pen came
up in this search.
Anyway,
that’s all for this month. Have a great September, everyone!