Best of the Web: Fights are fun, Generators, Video Bits,

The House Doesn't Always win, Fights are fun!
Dreams of Mythic Fantasy has a post about how much fun combat in role playing games is. He's railing against the suggestion of many in the OSR that combat should always be lethal and thus avoided when in fact the combat is one of the funnest parts of the game. I have to agree, combat is fun and memorable. Combat is like gambling and it doesn't take a genius to see the size of those casinos in Vegas and Atlantic City and Macao to know that even though the deck is stacked against the player, gambling is fun. And the thing is in a role playing game the deck isn't necessarily stacked against the player. Smart players can avoid combat, run-away when things look disadvantageous, or pick better terrain and tactics in which to fight their battles. Fighting is a gamble but the house doesn't alway win.

And like any gambling there must be risk for the thing to provide thrills. A game in which nobody dies is akin to blackjack where one gets to see the dealers cards before making there own decision. Without that risk the thing is pointless which is a big reason why I think the OSR caught on and 4E failed.

Generators & Tables

• Telecanter's Receding Rules created a list of real village names
• The d20srd has a Fantasy Name generator with a town option
• The d20srd has a wonderful fantasy world generator as well
• The Amateur Dungeoneers has a nice table to help make villages unique

Video Bits
Normally I prefer reading online to video but there is some fascinating stuff so I thought I'd call it out when I saw it (also so we can find things again, that's really what this weekly column is about don't you know).

• Found a video called DungeonCraft. So far I've only watched one but it was a thought provoking bit about doing away with initiative in 5E. His method looks interesting but somewhat of a hassle for the DM tracking a lot of enemy combatants.

Blog Roll.

• Tenkar's Tavern - Once a must visit but now he's also gone the way of video postings more often than not, that and he tracks kickstarters for those interested. Still his few regular posts as well as the ones on the politics within the hobby are fascinating reading. Tenkar also put together an OSR collaborative effort to create a campaign area called Black Isles that is amazing, and the sort of thing more sites should do (oddly I can't find it linked on Tenker's actual site, go figure?)
• Elfmaids & Octopi - Creates lots of tables that fill our heads with creativity. 
• OSR Search - We should have listed this first. The most useful RPG site out there a search engine customized to find results upon role playing blogs.