Around the blogs...

Ah the Saturday weekly reading list. Lost has happened this week; I feel busy than ever with the RPG Blog Anthology project. Nonetheless, I'm still lurking around a few blogs and even managed to leave some comments here and there. Here's my weekly RPG blog reading list:

1. SKILL CHALLENGES: Of course, with the Skill Challenges of War series we are writing here at The Core Mechanic, this topic has been big on our minds - and apparently at a few other blogs as well. Actually, its more like exploded into the hive of the blogosphere, so much so that Critical-Hits.com has made a dedicated (and awesome!) list of posts about skill challenges from the RPG blogosphere. You must check it out. My own personal fav posts this week came from A Butterfly Dreaming - two posts titled "What Skill Challenges Aren't" and "Hacking Skill Challenges" really add some depth to my understand of how I might use them in my own games. Also, I came across a very in depth (and older post) over at Tales of the Rambling Bumblers about skill challenges, "Skill Challenges: Threat or Menace?", that has a great back and forth commentary on the topic. Finally, the blog At-Will came about with two more skill challenges for use in your game: "The Noble Assassin" and "Prison Break - Caged". Someone is even porting the skill challenge idea to Shadowrun, "Skill Challenges of War: Shadowrun Style", which is awesome!
   
2. The Rule of Cool, Goofy, and SMITE: Lots of echo chamber noise about Phil's post "The Rule of Cool". Some people love it ("Too Cool For School? When did awesome become lame?"), some hate it ("I'm in a Different Hobby than All These Other Folks..."), some wish people would just STFU and stop trolling for traffic ("The Rule of SMITE!"). Others just think its funny ("The Rule of Goofy"). There's even more links I think in the RPG blogosphere buzz about this, but I didn't bookmark all of them...
3. Battletoads: Yes, you read that right... BATTLETOADS. This post ("This Post Does Not Contain Wolfgang Baur") had me laughing all week, even if Wyatt was up in his treehouse throwing rocks as usual. I haven't seen a review trash an indy product this badly in a long time. BATTLETOADS!!! They're my new flumph.