There is a Zombie in my Kitchen

Bad Feng Shui

2012-01-13T15:35:00.000-08:00

I finally wrote something for the Zombieville Post, edited by my pal Doctor Warlock over at Pulp Planet. This will be the second issue. For those of you who are asleep (or do not play wargames with the dead) Zombieville Post is a fanzine for the game 7ombieTV. The first issue was packed full of goodness and I hope that the next issue is as well.
As I was saying, I submitted an article and if it is not too bad, I think it will be included. My article discusses the Jiang Shi.
Jiang Shi are Chinese Zombies, often they are called "hopping vampires" but in my opinion (if you read the article) they are more like Western Zombies. So, any way, there's a bit of info on the genre, I wrote some rules for playing the game with Chinese Hopping Zombies vs. Taoists and other living people. Last but not least (probably because I am just a little OCD!!) I had to include information about how to get some minis so one can actually PLAY the rules I wrote. Seeing as the Jiang Shi are very idiosyncratic, it would not do to use regular zombies,did I mention that I am a bit CDO. (because it HAS it be in alphabetic order!) I have been looking for some minis like these eversince I saw my first Jiang Shi film (Encounters of the Spooky Kind with Sammo Hung). I knew that someone, somewhere had to make them. So they do. Enter John Jenkins Designs. Its a company in Britan that makes mostly traditional military minis) but the actual John Jenkins lives in Hong Kong. Take a look at the links over there in the left. I have included both his Asian and UK site. The costumes are done right, the minis have a nice amount of detail and the castings are really clean. I have included a picture of my painted minis below.

Click to Embiggen!

So there they are...very unusual and very cool, with an OK paintjob. Stay tuned for next time when I talk about a couple more Four A minis and some other rare and fun surprises...lets just say that Captain Spaulding would be proud and leave it at that.

Four A Miniatures--- Zombies and a Hunter

2012-01-07T17:49:00.000-08:00

I learned about this UK miniatures company from my pal Drew Wood over at Pulp Planet. I saw his picks of a few of Four A's zeds and had to check it out. Wow, have they got a bunch of cool minis over there. So, I ordered a few zombies and a hunter.

The first pick is the zombies. From left to right...Zombie with an Axe (a fav of mine), Dead guy in a suit and the last is a flesh golem that I thought would make a nice "Tank" zombie.

Before I show the hunter I want to say that these minis are more towards the 28mm (heroic) or 32mm size. However, this is fine with me because I have zombies made by Hasslefree, Studio and Reaper and everything in between. I like the differences in size so long as it is not like the difference between old and new Games Workshop (talk about scale creep! Compare a rogue trader ork to a new 40,000 ork. Do not even get me started.) Anyway, these mins are nicely priced and right out of the package they required very little to no filing. I could hardly even find any mold lines. Amazing! I liked the fact that the first zed has an axe. I think that more zeds should have and use weapons. For the flesh golem, I zombied him up AND kept the flesh golem idea. If you notice one of his hands is new, the other is from someone of a different Ethnic background entirely. The guy in the suit...well, he's a cool zed in a suit and like all the others was very fun to paint. I really like it when minis companies put a lot of unique character into their minis...I for one am a zed snob...the same ole same ole always bores me to death. There is nothing like fielding a hundred zeds that all look the same.
Speaking of character, our next mini dude is one who I have already decided to call Clairvius Narcisse (look out, obscure reference)

Ole Clairvius is from Haiti and is a Zombie hunter from a family of Houngans and Mombos. Just to let you know that Clairvius is one big dude, he towers over the rest. Once again this is cool with me because the character in any RPG that I use him in will be a rather imposing 7 foot Haitian guy with big pistols and skulls hanging from his belt. You will notice that I painted the skulls to look like he made them into Grisgris.

I have ordered a couple more zeds from Four A and I have been in contact with the guy behind the company. He says that there are more dead guys due out soon. Nice for me. Also of interest is that they have a set of Sea Demons (Evil Fish dudes) that my Call of Cthulhu players are definitely going to be encountering!

A very worthwhile and unique bunch of minis in an age of gray conformity. If you like to paint minis, or just like looking at cool stuff you should surely follow the link over there to the left and pay Four A a visit.

TT4N

Newly painted hunters and hunted...

2011-12-27T18:19:00.001-08:00

Here is what I have painted in the past couple weeks. They are a mixture of Reaper, Chronoscope and Hasslefree miniatures. The scales are a bit different, but not so different that it gives me pause using them in the same game

Ranger Rick and Caleb.

Spot the Zombie Dog, Komiko and Trash, queen of the zombies.

Summer, Thomas the Grad Student and Professor Pretorious.

Antero and Ano Aaltonen, Ranger Rick and Caleb.

New Masthead

2011-12-21T10:34:00.000-08:00

Even occasional readers of this blog will notice that I have a new masthead. Jada Fitch of Jada Fitch Illustration Blog kindly consented to the use of one of her super cool illustrations for this purpose, for which I am grateful. There is a perminant link over to the left amongst the Clique of Pickman. Go there and take a look at her work. Her art kind of reminds me of some of the Russian and Finnish Childrens books in her use of colours. I also really dig some of her naturalism illustrations. Cool animals in a kind of Fantastical but realistic style. Once again, thank you Ms. Fitch!

More Zombies

2011-12-04T09:20:00.000-08:00

Thought I would post some more zombie minis I have painted in the past year, now that I am a little better at photographing them...

Zombie Nihilist Strippers...

Have you been Naughty or Nice?

Zombie Scientist

Apologies to Fulchi...this Zed lost

the fight with the Shark.

Worse than Nazi Zombies! (I have some of

those ready to be photographed for another

post)

He only loves your Brainssss!

Send More Cops...

2011-11-29T06:59:00.000-08:00

Here is the Good Constable in his primed form. It was nice, not a lot of flash, good detail. My only problem is that I prefer the slotta style bases. Also, these minis are true 28mm scale.

I don't remember how I discovered this Canadian miniature company, but I am glad I did. One of my readers (and long time friends) suggested a step by step with photos of the mini painting process. I also wanted to couple this with a bit of a review. The mini I chose to start with was RCMP Constable Lestrade, in his investigation and full on zombie modes. RCMP Lestrade is part of what Harwood calls their "Lovecraft Circle" like, which is a line of minis that are kind of set up like the old RAFM Call of Cthulu miniatures. That is to say that while you can buy them separately, they also come in a pack that contains the Normal character, what I call a Mythosed up character (that is to say they have a book or are doing something lovecrafty) and the full on super insane/dead version of the character. The third mini in this pack is the good Constable holding an automatic pistol. I am having trouble putting him together (hes a two parter) my eyes are not what they used to be. But I did not want that to delay me in painting and reviewing. Without further adieu...

Here I have painted the living officer with (all colours are Citadel unless I otherwise note) Dwarf Flesh and used the Reaper flesh wash. The zombie cop got a base coat of my patented zombie colour (a mixture of gray and flesh coloured paint) and was given a wash of flesh wash with a touch of purple ink. I usually use blue, but there will be a lot of blue in this model later so I did not wish to over do it.For this step I dry brushed the flesh parts on both. First a mix of Dwarf and Elf Flesh for the human office and my special zombie mix (patent pending) for the zombie cop. I then painted the shirt parts of both minis with a medium blue and the hair on both guys (since they are the same guy) with bestial brown. This I gave a wash of brown ink (reaper.

I was not at all pleased with the zombie flesh, so i gave him a very light dry brushing with rotting flesh. I then drybrushed the shirt sections with a sky blue and painted the stab vest, hat and trousers a royal blue.
I used no ink on the trousers to this point. I drybrushed the darker blue parts with ultramarine blue then a half and half mix of ultramarine blue and skull white. I painted the metal parts chainmail and the wounds on the zed gore red.
The pics below reflect the done projects. i painted the human eyes white with a black dot. The Zed eyes I used a white dot then chartreuse from Reaper. I glowey green zombie eyes. I then used the panacea called Devlin Mud, which I thinned and used as a wash on dark blues of both and places on the shirt of the zombie. What this does is it deepens the blues, cuts down on the contrast without destroying the subtley of the work. I love this stuff. I drybrushed the black leather harness with gray to give it some definition. I did not do this to the bill of the cap as these are usually patent leather on a real uniform. I then added some more depth to the zeds wounds with a mix if brown ink mixed with a tiny bit of red. Dried blood is a rusty brown, so you don't want it to be too red. I then painted the zeds teeth with a mixture of skull white and bleached bone. I lacquered it in two thin coats of gloss and ended with a coat of flat. I do this because it stands up better to handling and play than just the flat.
So, there you have it. I am not the best painter in the world, but I do OK. If you like the minis please stop by Harwood Hobbies. Here are two glamour shots of our two guys.
You down with O.P.P?! (Ontario Provincial Police)

Send More Copsssss!

A bit of a Face Lift

2011-10-19T05:41:00.000-07:00

As you may see I am in the midst of giving the blog a little overhaul. This change is not going to be merely aesthetic. In the end, I am trying to decide WHAT to do with it. Sure, I am going to be reviewing Miniatures and Games as I always have. Sure, there might be an odd book or film review. It is not likely that there will be any more game session reports, the game nights are too few and sporadic these days. I guess I am just trying to think of something to do with this thing, rather than the meandering catch as catch can it has served as in the past.
One new thing I am planning on doing is more original game content. I would also like to begin an examination of the Old School in a cultural and academic way (all apologies to James at Grognardia!) What else would my few readers like to see? I was thinking about interviewing some of the old school Miniatures sculptors, many of them live right here in my home state of Ohio. I dunno. Gimmie some ideas if you have some. Until then, unpleasant dreams...

I admit defeat

2011-09-20T21:07:00.000-07:00

I entered into the OSR month of short adventures with the full intetion of success. However, it would seem that two jobs and the responsabilitites of life have interupted that. I thought that I could catch up, I was not being realistic. This does not mean that I will quit completely, I will still post some more adventures, just not enough to make 25 of them.

A man has to know his limitations.

My Triangle Shirtwaist

2011-09-08T19:37:00.001-07:00

My Triangle Shirtwaist: A Get Ready, Get Set, Go! Call of Cthulhu adventure set in Washington Square New York City.

Get Ready:
The investigators are called to the City University of New York’s Biological Sciences building, the Asche Building in Washington Square. There has been a series of curious deaths involving young women in the Asche Building. Four of them have been flung out the windows, on fire.
Get Set:
The investigators arrive to find that a co-ed has been flung from the 4th storey window on fire. Over the course of the next week, seven more women will die if the solution is not reached. Investigation will reveal that the Asche Building occupies the same space as the former Triangle Shirtwaist Factory…the site of a great fire in 1911.

Go!:
The culprit is the ghost of one of the many victims of the 2011 fire. She is quite insane and seeks revenge against the living. Her victims are always young women, as she was when she died. The only way that the killings will stop is for the investigators to find the her remains and either exorcise the ghost or give her a proper burial.
Notable NPCs:
Rachel Fineman: Insane ghost. Normal stats for a ghost but with the additional ability to ignite young women.

Return of the Beat Menace

2011-09-08T19:35:00.000-07:00

Return of the Beat Menace: A Get Ready, Get Set, Go! A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles adventure

Get Ready:
The PCs receive information that the Insidious Dr. Cluck has built a clandestine laboratory in Antarctica. He is, most certainly, up to nefarious no-goodery!

Get Set:
The Insidious Dr. Cluck has planned to raise and army clones made from the frozen body of Jimmy Swaggart. It would be advisable for the PCs to stop the Insidious Dr. Cluck before he can reach his end. The floor plan of the can conform to any shape and size
Go!:
The floor plan of the can conform to any shape and size the GM decides. It is very likely be guarded by both robots and mutated monstrosities. At the end of the line there Dr. Cluck has one last minion. Megarhino. Megarhino is a large mutant rhino that has been modified with cybernetic weapons. These augmentations are up to the GM. Needless to say Megarhino is very tough, very strong but not so bright or fast.

Notable NPCs:
The Insidious Dr. Cluck. A mutant Rhode Island Red. He is very intelligent, very mentally strong, medium strong and fast. He is well versed in most if not all the sciences. Dr. Cluck always has an escape from any situation. He always escapes and will make the quintessential nemesis for any PC party.
Megarhino, see above.

Don't Blink!

2011-09-08T19:27:00.001-07:00

Do Not Blink! : A Get Ready, Get Set, Go! An OSR adventure. Thanks to the Doctor!

Get Ready:
The players hear of a ruined temple that contains a magical artifact whilst in a road side inn. They get a crude map from a traveling bard there, who has told them the tale of the temple and treasure.

Get Set:
The Temple of Fallen Angels was, at one time, a very popular destination for pilgrims from all over Eberacum. About 400 years ago a secret society resolved to deposit their treasury there for safekeeping. The hoard contains a magic sword, Hammer of Angels, and was eventually forgotten after the Temple’s destruction during a war between ancient powers.

Go!:
The way to the temple leads through an ancient wood. The wood is populated by the usual kinds of woodland monsters and creatures. These are left up to the DMs discretion. Once there, the party finds most of the temple campus in ruins, but the sanctuary is mostly intact. The treasure is concealed in a secret treasury under the altar and is watched over by four statues in the shape of weeping angels. The catch is that these are not actually statues, but creatures. The creatures have a reflexive defence that freezed them in place when someone is watching them. They are incredibly fast and silent, so if the observer even blinks it allows the statues to get closer and closer. If a PC is struck in a hand to hand attack by an angel, they must save verses death or be transported to another, random time period. This will, of course offer interesting adventure material should all the PCs go to the same time. The only way to defeat the statues is either to flee (and hence be persued for the rest of their lives) or to trick the angels into places where they are watching each other. The DM can decide what effects spells like Wizard Eye and Scrye have on them.

Notable NPCs:
Aethelgar Scop, bard with average states and abilitites.
The Weeping Angels. Most stats are unimportant. 9HD, 19Dex.

2011-09-08T05:55:00.001-07:00

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Dating Site

[OSR Challenge] Silly Rabbit, Trixx'ar 4quits.

2011-09-04T20:34:00.000-07:00

Silly Rabbit, Trixx'ar 4quits: A Get Ready, Get Set, Go! A Gamma World 1e adventure set in the Rust Belt.

Get Ready:

The Charactors find themselves in the middle of a conflict between a tribe of Hoops and a village on the edge of the Wasteland.

Get Set:

The party stops in the village of T’Leedo, on the edge of the Eerie Wasteland. They find that the village is preparing for a siege. A tribe of Hoops is coming because they have heard that the village has gotten one of the ancient manufacturing buildings up and running. The village elder, a Mutant Finch, has offered the PCs many domars and some piece of old technology as payment for finding the Hoop tribe and killing their leader. Barring that, they should get as much intelligence about the tribe as they can that can be used to in some way defeat the Hoops.

Go!:

When the PCs go North, to Old Detroit, they will eventually find the camp of the Hoop Tribe. They have rallied 200 strong. If they PCs look hard enough, they might be able to find the Hoops’ charismatic leader. If they were to kill him than the tribe would disperse. The best way of doing so would be to challenge the leader to single combat and win. There are many other ways of completing this task that might present itself.
As for intelligence, the one important piece of information that might help is why the Hoops are doing what they are doing. It seems that they lack the technical understanding of machinery (something to do with their ability to turn metal into rubber) to be able to refurbish the Old Detroit manufacturing plants. They plan on enslaving the engineers from T’Leedo to do so, and the rest to work in the factories to make rubber coated weapons so they can bring the entire Rust Belt under their sway.

Notable NPCs:
Trixx’ar 4quits--- Hoop Leader
Armour Class: 5 (Scale Mail made of steel covered in vulcanized rubber)
HD:18 HP: 79 Mutations: Mass Mind, Telepathy and Metal transmutation as
Hoop. Weapons: Large Rubber Maul, laser pistol made of high density composite.

Midnight at the Thirsty Devil---Weird West Roleplaying

2011-09-02T21:24:00.000-07:00

Midnight at the Thirsty Devil

The PCs are relaxing at their favorite watering hole and a dusty figure enters the saloon. The room falls silent as he takes the empty seat nearest them and orders a round of drinks.

The posse has just brought an exciting and strange adventure to a conclusion and have decided to spend some of their money on a night of drink and rest in a real bed. As the dark stranger enters, the music stops and all the locals are struck with a silence that only comes from terror. He orders himself, and them, shots of tequila and insists that they drink with him. Further, Stanton Cree reveals that he has been cursed with living death until he can either be bested by a superior duelist or drunk under the table.

The characters can either elect to contest him in drinking or in shooting. Which will they choose. Opting to be left alone will not be an option.

Stanton Cree: Undead Gunslinger, Fighting:2, Grit:2, Magic:2, Skill:2. Stamina:7 Defence Mod:+2, Weird Abilities: Fasted Gun in the West and Cursed (may only be killed if beaten...all other wounds regenerate in 24hours)
Out drinking him is a Grit level 2 task three consecutive failures renders the PC unconscious)

I had to do it...the OSR Challenge, A September of Short Adventures.

2011-08-31T21:41:00.000-07:00

Here we go. I will be participating in the OSR Challenge, A September of Short Adventures. That means that every day of this month, baring the Thursdays, I will be posting short adventures for a number of games. Most notably amongst these will be First Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Gamma World/Mutant Future, Call of Cthulhu, All Flesh Must Be Eaten and Metamorphosis Alpha (1E). I reserve the right to add to this list at any time during the month. Keep watching this space. If you wish to participate as well, you can sign up here.

http://asshatpaladins.blogspot.com/2011/07/osr-challenge-september-of-short.html

DICEPORN!

2011-08-24T21:05:00.000-07:00

Some of these dice are new, some are 30 or so years old!

FLAILSNAILS

2011-08-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

The FLAILSNAILS Conventions
We the GMs of the DIY RPGing, in Order to form a more perfect Ruckus, establish Justice, insure intercampaign Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and Play some Games, do Ordain and Establish this set of Free Location And Inclusion Laws Supporting New And Interesting Leisure Situations (FLAILSNAILS).

Article 1

Any PC that began play at 0 xp (or less) and level 1 (or less) on or after July 26, 2011 may move freely from their native campaign (or any they have participated in subsequently) into games of a like genre run by any GM subscribing to these FLAILSNAILS conventions whether via electronic media or in real life provided the player can get a spot in the game. That's the point of them.

(Like, if you made a PC for Arcadayn's Swords and Wizadry game, you can move it to my D&D game since I subscribe to the FLAILSNAILS conventions. If he does, too, you can bring it back to his game the next day, and then take the PC over to your Uncle Chippy's game if he is down, and then bring it back to my game and then...you get the point.)

Article 2

As stated, PCs may be imported/converted from any game of roughly the same genre and system as the new GM's game, however the new GM is free to determine precisely what "roughly the same" means. GM and Player shall negotiate any complex translation issues regarding system-specific mechanics or powers.

In the case of D&D and similar games, any TSR D&D system or retroclone (Labyrinth Lord, Castles and Crusades, Swords and Wizardry, etc.) is considered acceptable in FLAILSNAILS games, plus, at the individual GM's discretion, refugees from Pathfinder, 3.5, 4e, Rolemaster, Tekumel, Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, LOTFP, Harn, GURPS, Pendragon, etc. providing the PC's stats can be translated into terms sensible in the new system. (And vice versa.) Ask GM if your PC is ok.

Same thing goes for other games--like if you want to run your levelled-up Shadowrun PC in my Gigacrawler game, I'm down because fucking FLAILSNAILS.

The details are up to the GM's discretion, but the purpose of the FLAILSNAILS conventions is to encourage sharing of ideas, rules, and funny stories across groups of gamers, so whatever can be done to encourage and facilitate PC immigration (writing Palladium-to-D&D conversion rules for instance) is encouraged.

Article 3

PCs will level up at a number of experience points appropriate to the system of the last adventure they played in before such time as they were eligible to level up in that system.

Jeez that's hard to understand. What we're saying is: if you gain 200 xp so as to total 1100 xp by the end of an adventure and that adventure was run in a system where you level up at 1000 xp, then you level up, regardless of what system your PC was "born" under or where it's going next.

A level is a level. While in a world you abide by the conventions the GM there uses for characters of your class; but likewise, when your PC gains a level he or she has earned it, even if he or she subsequently enters a world where a like number of experience points would not have earned you that same level.

For purposes of clarity, think of and talk about your PC's xp as follows: "I am 300 xp into 2nd level". Since, for example, a PC levelling up in vanilla 3.5 needs 1000 xp to get to level two, a 3.5 PC who has 1200 xp is "200 xp into 2nd level" in ANY system. S/he does not "have" 1200 xp in any system but 3.5, s/he's just "200 xp into 2nd level" in Labyrinth Lord.

If this creates a situation where a PC would automatically level up merely by starting an adventure in a new system (i.e. you're 3000 xp into 4th level and suddenly start an adventure in a system where you only need 2000 more xp to get to level 5) the GM may ask you to recalculate your progress as a percent of progress toward the next level in the old system.

If you want to make shit real easy for everybody, GMs can just look at the levels of the PCs involved and reward xp in terms of "percent towards the next level" for those PCs. Like say "congratulations, you all earned 30% of the xp you need toward level two or 20% of the exp you need toward level 3, go do math."

At some point we may come up with a unified xp table, but, like, Jeff or somebody can do that.

Article 4

FLAILSNAILS GMs may run adventures designed for specific levels of PCs, just like anybody else. Since waiting around for every other FLAILSNAILS-eligible PC to level up as high as your barbarian did during that week you spent off school when you broke your ankle is boring, we have established optional rules for importing "overlevelled" PCs into lower-level games...

Each FLAILSNAILS GM is free to establish his or her own "handicapping" rules for such situations, however these are the Default FLAILSNAILS High-Level PC Handicapping Rules For D&Dish Games...

Roll d100 per level above the accepted maximum your PC is to see what disasters befell him or her during the long journey to the foreign domain wherein their next adventure takes place. These handicaps are temporary--results only apply during the adventure in question (if you survive your season of "slumming", you get better):

(penalties cannot take PC below minimum score for the system in question or below 4 hp)

1-3 Blinded
4-6 Deafened
7-9 Gone mute
10-12 Lost an arm
13-15 Lost a leg
16-18 Gone mad: 25% chance of doing the exact opposite of intended action (after action is
declared) each round during times of stress
19 Cursed: Slowed
20 Cursed: Laughs continuously and uncontrollably--must make a wisdom check to speak an
intelligible sentence
21-23 All equipment lost.
24 One of your items is now cursed--new DM secretly decides item and specific curse
25-Sex change. Armor doesn't fit now. Re-roll charisma.
26-28 Disease: halve your hit points
29-31 Disfiguring disease--charisma is effectively the minimum, no henchmen
32-34 Brain damage: lose d6 from charisma, intelligence and wisdom
35-36 Major brain damage: lose d8 from charisma, intelligence and wisdom
37-39 Too much light reading during your trip: lose d10 intelligence
40-42 Culture shock--lose d10 wisdom
43-45 Disease: lose d6 from strength, constitution and dex
46-48 Major disease: lose d8 from strength, constitution, and dex
49-Curse: kleptomania
50-51 Pregnant or melded to useless siamese twin -2d6 dex
52-PC smells terrible, scent is obvious to any foe at 100 yards
53-55 PC is on a bender and won't sober up until adventure ends
56-58 PC has become grotesquely obese: -10 dex, always last initiative no matter what system is used
59 Curse: PC can't see weapons, claws, teeth or fire. 50% chance s/he doesn't know it
60 Curse: 17 and 18 are cursed numbers for PC--rolling either # is a fumble
61 Mutation: roll on baleful mutation chart of DM's choice
62 Artificially aged: -d10 constitution -d10 dex, -d6 str, -d20 hp
63-65 Fugitive: extremely thorough authorities are following you everywhere
66 Shrunk to 1' tall
67-69 Hungover: -3 to all rolls
70-72 Type 2 hangover: hearing and vision are only 25% relaible
73-75 Having an Elric phase: can only go 4 rounds without needing to smoke/inject/inhale some exotic substance.
You will run out of it after d4 days.
76 Curse: in any round, all attacks will be against our PC until at least 2 have been successful
77 Curse: if any of your companions fall victim to a spell, you will, too
78-79 Haven't been eating properly on your trip--lose d12 hp, d8 con and d6 str
80 Depressed and pining for home. -5 to all saves.
81 Infected wound. -d6 constitution and -3 to attack rolls
82 Roll twice ignoring redundant results
83-85 Limping. -5 dex, movement is 1/3 normal, blows doing more than 2 hp will knock you over unless you're
braced against a wall
86 Paralyzed from the waist down, you have a wheelchair, though.
87-88 Just tired from all that walking: -d4 to all rolls
89-90 Frostbite on the way-lost 3d4 fingers.
91 Partially possessed by minor demon. Wisdom/will roll in times of stress to avoid aiding forces of evil.
92 Just loves it here! PC spends all free time writing a travel journal or sketching the landscape--cannot rest properly at all.
93-95 Can't speak what they call "common" around here.
96 Can speak it but finds the local dialect intensely grating-especially the way the locals pronounce the words "go" "if" "to"
and "get". Use of those words will cause the PC to attack the speaker for 1d4 rounds.
97 None of these hicks can understand you through your accent
98-100 Your blood is too thick for this climate. You shiver or sweat all day--minus 2 to everything.

Article 5

Overlevel magic spells, spells not native to the new setting, unusual powers (such as psionics) and imported magic items may generally be used in the new game, however, the new GM is free to determine the exact details of how such things work. Spiritual conditions and mortal-deity compacts differ from domain to domain.

i.e. Use that crazy wand Jeff gave you in my game and it might no longer work the way you think it does, at least until you get home.

If such powers, abilities, or items are forbidden altogether by the GM s/he will make an honest effort to warn the player first. Neither GM nor player shall be a dick about this.

Article 6

The ontological status, authenticity, and rationale behind allegedly 'unique' items imported to settings where identical items already exist shall be determined by whoever's GMing during the time wherein the paradox appears.

i.e. If you go on an adventure to find the Wand of Orcus with Calithena GMing and show up at the pub holding the Wand of Orcus (because you got it in an adventure with Ian) then it's up to Calithena to explain this shit and he can make up any crazy thing he wants.

Article 7

When you post a new Costantcon game, say whether you are down with imported PCs or not.

Article 8

There are no in-game "hoops" to jump through in order to move a PC from one game to another--i.e. you don't have to have your PC sail in-game over the North Sea to get from my Vornheim campaign to Jeff's Wessex campaign.

However it is acceptable (and maybe fun) for GMs to create mini-"crossovers" in order to do fun, gimmicky things between campaigns. Like Jeff could say "first 3 PCs to kill the a sea dragon in Vornheim get to be in my Wessex game on Thursday".

Article 9

Players have the right to construct their own PCs "timeline" to justify how s/he ended up in place A on monday and place B on thursday. However:

-Once a FLAILSNAILS PC dies, you can't use that PC again in real-time, no matter when in the "timeline" the PC died and...

-If you gain items or level up over the ceiling for a given adventure in the middle of that adventure by doing a "side quest" somewhere else, it's the GM's discretion as to whether you now have the items or are considered "levelled up" during subsequent parts of that adventure.

Like: if I am level 5 and do part one of Evillossia Dungeon (adventure for levels 3-5) with DM Biff and we leave off with me alive in a pit, then the next day I go play with the same PC in DM Jed's campaign and kill an owlbear mastermind and level up to 6--(so high I'm no longer in the suggested "range" for Evillossia Dungeon), and then I pick up the next day in the pit in Evillossia, it's up to DM Biff whether I immediately level up to 6 for purposes of this adventure in Evilossia or whether I have to wait until that adventure ends.

Article 10

All this stuff, plus a calendar of FLAILSNAILS games on Google + and pages for individual FLAILSNAILS-friendly campaigns and PCs will all be on a webpage at some point. Or so we claim. Hey, Calithena's working on it. He's a busy guy.

Players will get xp rewards for pitching in with administrative bullshit on that site if and when we get it going.

Article 11

To speed things up, individual GMs might wanna post a blog specifying exactly what their conversion and/or overlevel handicapping policies are that they can put up whenever they're running a FLAILSNAILS G+ game.

_______

We, therefore, the representatives of the Old School Ruckus, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Referee of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these campaigns, solemnly publish and declare, that these united domains are free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent gameworlds may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to FLAILSNAILS our dungeons, our spare time, and our sacred honor.

Signed:

Representing Vornheim: Zak S
Representing Wessex: Jeff Rients
Representing Ilthar: Calithena
Representing Eberacum: Jeffrey Runokivi

I am itching to play some Deadlands

2011-08-05T22:12:00.000-07:00

What a waste of Steam Powered German Clockwork Zombies!

2011-08-02T06:24:00.000-07:00

When it came to the cinemas a friend of mine told me that Sucker Punch is the 2001 a Space Odyssey of our era. I argued with him strait away, but admitted that I had not, as yet, seen the film. Well, I just rented it and I was not disappointed. When I say that I was not disapointed I mean to say that upon seeing it my initial feelings about what I thought the film would be like were justified.

As for the movie...well.

My advice to Zack Snyder is to just remake the work of better writers and directors. Mr. Snyder directed the remake of Dawn of the Dead, which was a passable film that would have been much better if it had been called something else. He also directed 300, which was also a no brainer for him as most of the heavy lifting was done by Frank Miller. With Watchmen he did as decent a job as he could have done for something that was very hard to film...but do not tell Alan Moore I said that. I don't want Mr. Moore to murder me in my sleep. I love his work, but I also fear him.

Back to Sucker Punch. Hmmm, I have no idea what the title had to do with the story. If you dearly want to see it, then stop reading.

We meet the main character, a girl named "Baby Doll", on the night her mother dies. Her step father upon finding out straightens his tie with a greasy lecherous look as though the "Its Daughter Raping Time" sign has been lit. It shows him reading his wife's will that leaves the mother's money to her two daughters...he has a fit and decides that its daughter raping time and goes about his business. There is a melee and in the course of it, one daughter is killed and our hero, Baby Doll ends up in a sanitarium. This bit of "character development" is basically a video montage done to the tune of a passable cover of Sweet Dreams Are Made of This. Ham-handed at best.

Now to the meat of the film. Baby Doll retreats into a fantasy world where she is actually in thrall to a brothel. I am afraid that this is the best she could do as an escape from the hum drum existence of being in a mental institution and facing forcible lobotomy. So, in her brothel fantasy, she has periods of time she has another fantasy to escape the first fantasy. In this fantasy she is part of an elite fighting force of women dressed like strippers who have strippers names. Don't believe me? The fierce five are called Baby Doll, Sweet Pea, Amber, Blondy and Rocket. You have to keep up with me here because if you fall behind I cannot be held responsible if you get lost. In This fantasy, she meets an eastern master, played by Scott Glen. Why they did not actually cast an Asian for this part is beyond me, but there you have it.

Sensei Glen tells her that she has to collect five objects to escape. The theft of each object, in the Brothel fantasy and presumably in the Asylum real world is accompanied by an adventure of the stripper girl combat squad. The first is just Baby Doll fighting giant samurai with chainguns. No, Baby don't have the chain guns, the samurai do. Baby has a chrome .45 and a samurai sword. The second (or first object...a map) is a Steam/Diesel punk thing where they fight Steam powered WWI German Zombies, wearing lingerie and wielding assault rifles and sub-machine guns. Oh, and there is a Mecha involved. The third (second object...a lighter) they fight Diesel punk orcs and a dragon, with a B29. The forth (third object...a Kitchen Knife) they fly a Huey after a monorail train that is suspended in air by rocket powered platforms and they fight sci-fi chrome robots. I would go on, but you would go on but you would not believe me unless you have seen it for your self. Did I forget to mention that these combat fantasies happen when she is in the Brothel fantasy doing some kind of dance that is so hypnotic that none of the mouth breathing lecherous men in the film can resist watching? Yeah, aren't all men so horrible. Did I also mention that we never...ever...see Baby Doll Dance?! I guess that no one puts Baby in a corner!

This was not the worst part of this film. I can dig the dragon and steam powered zombies and I like attractive women a great deal, however not only do we get the convoluted crappy story line, we are also treated to some kind of tepid EST inspired sophistry they try to pass off as eastern mysticism. Basically, they try to tell us that everything that is bad in our lives is self inflicted and the only way out is to fight our self destructive natures. This is all bolstered by Scott Glen spouting cliche and arm chair philosophy.

Rubbish.

It was like watching an hour and a half horrible video game written by an undersexed 14 year old Hentai nerd.

Late Bloomer - Lovecraft and Love Craft...beware, its probably not work safe.

2011-06-10T12:59:00.000-07:00

Adventure Coach PSA

2011-05-26T12:26:00.000-07:00

Nerdgazm again

2011-04-07T05:58:00.000-07:00

In Lake Geneva the Dice roll wild...On Saturday we arose early, prepared our selves and went down to the convention floor to see what could be done.

Travis found a table with a couple of openings, it was a Dungeon Crawl Classics demo. The demo was run by Harley Stroh. When I arrived, most everybody had a character already and Mr. Stroh handed me a pile of Pre-gens to peruse. I could readily see why these were the characters left in the pile, but chose a Human Berserk (whom I named Trygg Olafsson) and had a seat. The others at the table were Travis Miller (a Noble Cleric), the notorious Jeff Rients (a "foundling" wizard named Tiny Tim), the stalwart Michael Shorten---otherwise known as Chicagowiz (an astronomer-wizard named Carls Agen), and Mr. James Skatch and his son and daughter (a berserk, cleric and farmer warrior, respectively) It was good to meet people with whom I had only been familiar on the internet. Everyone played very well and the system itself seems like a fun one. There are only two things that I can see that people might have problems with. Firstly this system used ALL of the Zocci dice...and that is a lot of weird dice. I personally do not think this is a problem. However, I have been known to have a dice fetish. What can I say...God may not play at dice, but Woden invented them. The second thing is that each spell has a table that decides the relative success of the spell. This is a really good thing on one had because it adds more punch to spells like Magic Missile (which in the game did 1d6 at one point) however on the other hand it would leave one with a lot of chart management. Personally I think that the pros outweigh the cons.

In play, more than a few things of note transpired. In the early stages of the game we had to fight some kind of summoned monster, a giant tentacley thing from under the ice. The ice broke open and formed ramps around the creature. This caused the Farmer Warrior and Tiny Tim to slide downwards toward the waters of icy death. Young Miss. Skatch dug in with a spear and saved herself very cleverly. Jeff Rients did the only thing he could do, his PC grabbed the Farmer Warrior's boot. In a display of Nietzscheian, ice coldness, she shook off her boot...causing the hapless wizard to slide to seemingly to his doom. He was saved...but Damn! that was cold. It was at this point that I discovered my role in this game...Critmagnet. Oh, yeah...I started taking crits and did not stop for the whole game. By the end, Mr. Stroh said that my character had survived more crits than any one else who had play-tested the game...it is my badge of honour. Art imitates life. We thought we were all doomed when Young Master Skatch saved the day by having his (rather able) cleric banish the creature. I very clever and useful move.
We fought walrus men, giant worms and negotiations were made for the recovery of the boot...which will someday be immortalized in saga and song. We ran out of time, but by the end many of the party were dead or dying. Trygg Critmagnet was still alive and fighting walrus men and that is how he remains to this day. A fun time was had.

Later on I watched for a while as my friend Travis and Michael Shorten played a game that re-enacted the siege of Nargothrond. Travis and Michael were the orc forces and had 1200 minis on the table...plus one dragon (if you are scratching your head, read a book!) I heard that this combat went well for the orcs...as one can imagine. I had to leave early to go to the auction. I love to attend game con auctions. Not only does the money usually go for a good cause, they are just plain fun to watch. The recipients in questions this time were the Gary Gygax memorial and the family of Jim Rosloff, who had died a mere 4 or so days before the Con. Bidding for some of the items was furious. In some cases, people bid higher even after they had won because hey wanted to donate more money. Items of Gary's were up for auction. A cigar box (arturo fuente, Chateau Naturals) box went for a couple hundred. A shirt of Gary's went for more than a grand. Some original artwork by Rosloff from the early TSR days went for a tidy sum...all in all a great time, and many ducats were gathered for good causes.

The last event for me on Saturday was a pic up game with Michael Shorten as DM. In this one I rolled up a first level cleric...a good character by all accounts. However (and there always seems to be a "However") in the first couple minutes of play he was killed by poisonous Centipaedes. Um...yeah...awkward. So, I rolled another. This time a better character, I was playing a hobbit warrior which fit well into Chicagowiz's game world because in his world the halflings are a bit martial. The adventure was very cool. Sure, there was a lot to kill, but what I liked most about it is that he has the same philosophy as I...exploration is really more interesting that just killing shit. We made it through the shriekers and stirges, we made bargains with flying kobolds (!) and had an awfully good time...did I mention that it was happy hour and the Spotted Cow Lager was running freely! We ended up gaining extra exp. because we had discovered a new area...very cool. I just wish that we had had more time...because that Crystal lake Megadungeon would have been really cool.

Travis and I played a game on Saturday that is better left unspoken about and then it was time to go back to civilization...aaaaand boredom. It was a great con and it was also really good to hang out with my pal Travis and just game. I would certainly do this again next year!

Nerdgazm

2011-03-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

I attended GaryGon III last weekend. Wow, what a great con. As far as Gaming Cons go it is the best one I have attended, and I have been to GenCon twice.

I have to preface my remarks about the Con itself with some commentary on the venue. The venue was fantastic. The rooms were very comfortable and well appointed. Of course, this comes from a guy who has not been in a hotel room for more than a decade. There was a coffee maker! The Lodge at Lake Geneva is situated on a hillside overlooking scenic...Lake Geneva (I bet you could have guessed!) Excellent view. There were many large rooms both downstairs and up for games. There was a Bar that served Spotted Cow (a very tasty Lager) and during "happy hour" it the beer was free. In fact one happy hour, whilst I was being killed by Mr. James Ward (I will comment on this beating later) my cup was even refilled by Luke Gygax. A gracious host indeed.

I basically played all weekend. Friday was the Terrain Challenge. The rules were OD&D and the object was to repel down into a sinkhole and retrieve the treasure from the wagon that had fallen in. However, things are seldom that simple, are they? The sinkhole opened into a subterranean dungeon complex. My character lived for a minute before the chests containing the gold we were retrieving broke open and sprayed us with poison gas. Of course it was our employer who had trapped the chest, but this did not really matter much. Dead is dead. From then on out I assumed the role of someone elses henchman (all of mine were killed). This was fun, as many other players also had to be henchmen. The henchies soon took the initiative and began loading treasure and setting up a perimeter. Kobolds attacked and a detachment of us when to take care of them whilst exploring the dungeon. One of the original PCs and his henchmen walked into an obvious trap (the bottom end of a ramp with a boulder at the top) and the Indiana Jones moment that followed killed all of his retainers but one. He stood guard there with his crossbowman. In the end, it was a total party kill. No gold ended up reaching the surface but even if it had it would be booty for the marauding orcs who had arrived on the scene.
I am told that this adventure was to be part of a Chainmail scenario that would be played later. I never found out how that went, but it was a blast to play.

The next game I played was one DMed by my friend Travis. The adventure was for Osric/AD&D and was called "Clockwork Demons". We were a delegation from the court of the emperor to investigate the tardiness of an automaton that he had ordered from a local genius. Think Leonardo D'Vinci as a 15th level wizard. I was playing a cleric and had a grand old time. There was very little combat at all, but there could have been. I could sense that some of the players were getting impatient with that fact, but it was fine with me. I like exploration and investigation. I am not going to reveal any spoilers here just in case Travis wants to run this excellent adventure somewhere or sometime other. I just want to say that I did not die this time.

My next big adventure was the one for which I had been patiently waiting for weeks. I got a spot at the table of none other than Mr. James Ward, the creator of many gaming legends, not the least of which are my favorite game (Gamma Wrold) and the game which was before us that evening, Metamorphosis Alpha. We were all to be privates on the Warden. Before the game, he told us that we were allowed to fill a locker with pretty much anything we could come up with...within reason. We also got to pick our weapons and were allowed to have powered combat armour. With each new thing that someone announced that they wanted to put in their locker, Mr. Ward would replay "that's fine" which made me really nervous. It reminds me of when I run Call of Cthulhu and the Players want to equip their PCs with grenade launchers and such and I just say "sure, no problem"...because we all know that it will not matter in the end. Cthulhu will get you and grenades do not guard against insanity and horrible death. Well, anyway, each time players got an affirmative response from Mr. Ward about stuff they wanted to put in the locker I got more anxious...I knew how this was going to end. TPK.
I also am not too sure about whether I want to spoil things for people so I will not. Needless to say every time that someone said that their PC was going to do something, Mr. Ward would say something that under other circumstances would be really encouraging, but in his mellow tone he made it sound pregnant with menace. I do not know how he does this, but I want to learn. At one point he fixed his serene blue eyes on me and said to "You're going to use your Rail Pistol. That's what I love about you!" Another favorite quip, "So, you're going over there, unlike all the smart people who won't be mostly dead in just a few minutes." The man has a wit like a razor. I loved it. Of course, as I predicted, we all died. I was blown up when one of our impatient squad members dropped three grenades and left the room. Nothing I could do. In the end, I learned a lot of things about GMing games, Mr. Ward does this with great accumin. He never opened the book once. Of course, he did write it, but you know what I mean. He had maps, a screen and dice. He never missed a turn or a trick. It was amazing to watch the man work.

I will post part two (Saturday and Sunday) later.

R.I.P. James Roslof

2011-03-19T22:45:00.001-07:00

James Roslof died this morning. The world is poorer and uglier for it. He will be missed.

Garycon III

2011-03-15T18:30:00.000-07:00

So, who is going to Garycon III. I shall be there. I am kind of giddy about it. Hope to see some of you there. It is always nice to put a face to a name.

Dungeon Judgin' Super Freaks!!

2011-03-04T07:58:00.000-08:00

ONE PAGE DUNGEON CONTEST 2011

Hej Kids,

Once again I am a member of the Dungeon Judgin' Super Freaks...weeeee...Internet Notoriety. I am looking very forward to this years contest. Those of you with good ideas, please, write and draw it up and submit it. Those of you without, fine...just tell your friends.

Here is the info...

Dates: Submission deadline is April 1, 0:00 GMT. Based on last year’s experience, judges will have one month to read all the submissions and another two weeks to discuss the result. Winners will be announced May 16, 0:00 GMT.

Judges:

* Adrian Shieh of Occam’s Samurai Sword
* Shane Mangus of Swords Against the Outer Dark
* Clay Wendt aka Sean FitzSimon on deviantART
* Ken Carcas aka Lawnikky
* Angie Littmann from the Cartographers’ Guild
* Jeffrey Runokivi of There's a Bugbear in My Kitchen!
* Alex Schroeder, organizer and blogger

Prizes & Sponsors: Do you have prizes to donate? Let me know → kensanata@gmail.com!

Current sponsors, in alphabetical order:

1. a copy of Martial Power donated by Adrian Shieh
2. USD 200 donated by an anonymous sponsor (sent via Paypal)
3. a digital copy of Kingdom Builder by Chaotic Shiny Productions for each of the winners
4. a printed copy of Psionics Unleashed for the Pathfinder RPG by Dreamscarred Press donated by an anonymous sponsor
5. various copies of Fight On! PDF issues
6. a hard copy 6 month Endless Terrain Map Tile subscription by Free RPG Maps
7. a printed copy of Labyrinth Lord by Goblinoid Games
8. a printed copy of Advanced Edition Companion by Goblinoid Games
9. a printed copy of Mutant Future by Goblinoid Games
10. a printed copy of Realms of Crawling Chaos by Goblinoid Games
11. a one year PDF subscription to Kobold Quarterly
12. a Midgard standard patronage by Kobold Quarterly and the opportunity to pitch a Midgard adventure
13. a printed copy of Vornheim: The Complete City Kit by Lamentations of the Flame Princess
14. another printed copy of Vornheim: The Complete City Kit by Lamentations of the Flame Princess
15. a $50 voucher for the winner by Otherworld Miniatures
16. a $30 voucher for second place by Otherworld Miniatures
17. a $20 voucher for third place by Otherworld Miniatures
18. a $15 voucher for fourth place by Otherworld Miniatures
19. a first print of C1 Circle of Fire (numbered and signed) by Pacesetter Games & Simulations
20. a copy of T1 The Thing in the Valley by Pacesetter Games & Simulations
21. a copy of Q1 The Screaming Temple by Pacesetter Games & Simulations
22. a copy of Disposable Heroes Printed Paper Miniatures: 4E Core Figures by Precis Intermedia
23. a copy of Fantasy Monsters by Precis Intermedia
24. a free PDF of the winners choice by Rite Publishing
25. a print copy of Roll the Bones
26. a custom black and white character illustration by the RPG Character Illustrations artist of the winner’s choice

Submissions: Here’s how to submit your entry.

* Participants create a One Page Dungeon.
* Submitting a dungeon to the contest releases it under the Creative Common Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license with credit to the contest participant.
* The submission must have a name, an author, a map, a key, a link to the license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) and no game stats.
* A link to your blog, wandering monsters, random events, adventure background or introduction, and descriptions of tricks or traps are all optional.
* One entry per participant. Participants may revise/replace their entries up until the end of contest, with the last revision counting as their official entry.
* Submission must be mailed in PDF, Open Office, or Microsoft Word format to Alex Schröder → kensanata@gmail.com.
* If you have a blog article talking about your submission, I’d love to link to it from the One Page Dungeon Contest page.

Process: Here’s how we’ll determine the winners.

* Every judge nominates their favorite entries and proposes a category for each.
* We try to make sure that every judge has at least three of their nominations in the final list. The idea is to not only reflect popular opinion but to also capture some of the more eclectic entries out there. We’ll make sure that every judge is well represented with three entries each.
* Based on the categories proposed in the first step, we try to assign a category to each entry on the list.
* The result is our release candidate 1. Judges gets to check whether their favorites are still on the list.
* We fix omissions and rename categories until we’re happy. This is our release candidate 2.
* We revise everything until we’re happy. We have our list of winners! :)
* If we have prizes (we currently don’t) each judge gets to nominate their favorite entry for a prize.
* We publish our list of winners!
* Harald puts together a PDF of all the entries and a PDF of all the winners. We’ll make these PDFs available for download at no cost.

Alea Acta Est

2011-02-18T06:48:00.001-08:00

Bashcon 26 begins tonight, at the University of Toledo Student Union. I am hopeful that it will be a good con this year, however last year leaves me feeling a bit dubious on that matter. I dunno. I will be attending tomorrow (Saturday) and Sunday and will have a full report on the con when it is over.

Superficial or not...its there.

2011-02-10T06:38:00.000-08:00

Quite a few OSR pundits have spent more time than I have tracing the "historical and literary influences of D&D." Everybody who has been paying attention for any amount of time and who has even a passing knowledge of Appendix N has heard of Jack Vance, Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp, and Fletcher Pratt, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, A. Merritt, H. P. Lovecraft, Roger Zelazny, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Michael Moorcock, and Philip José Farmer. I myself have read the works of all of these authors. What I do not understand, though, is why Tolkien gets so little love from the OSR.
To be sure, all of the authors in the above list have been huge influence on D&D but, as much as I love Robert E Howard I have never played a D&D game that played out like a Conan or Bran Mac Morn or King Kull story. Never played a D&D game that seemed (in toto) like a Lovecraft story, and I loves me some Lovecraft! I have Never played a D&D game that seemed too awful much like Amber or John Carter or Elric or Three Hearts and Three Lions/Broken Sword. However, I HAVE played games that while not being exactly like Tolkien, certainly have more of that flavor than some of the other authors on the list.
It just seems to me that a lot of the old schoolers have decided that its hip to bash Tolkien, for some unknown reason. Is it because of Jackson's horrible movies? That isn't the Professor's fault. He has been dead since the early 70's.
So, what did we get from JRRT? Many of the basic D&D staple races came to the game from Norse and Anglo-Saxon folklore via the Professor. Elves, Dwarfs, Half Elves, Orcs (mentioned first in Beowulf), Wargs,(Barrow) Wights, Wraiths and many more all came to the game through Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. Races and Classes that made it into the game (even though Gary said they were superficial and done to raise interest only) were Halflings and Rangers.
Yes, still, even now, I know gamers who have never even read Lord of the Rings. I know some that have obviously read it and do not like it (Gary?!) and I wonder why. It has the Early to Mid Medieval setting that few of the authors in Appendix N have (save Anderson and Lieber to think of a couple.)
One fixture of the game that I think has been over looked does come to us via Tolkien, but I do not think I heard anyone speak of it. No, I don't mean starting the adventure in a pub...although the Prancing Pony is where the Hobbits pick up their Ranger. I am speaking of the idea of a multi-racial party of adventurers striving together for a common goal. Most of the early pulp heroes are loaners, and never team up with demi-humans. Sometimes they travel in pairs, like in Lieber or Anderson. In all those stories, though, they never (not before Tolkien...then everybody emulated him...yes, I am looking at YOU Terry Brooks!) traveled as groups of Elves, Dwarfs, Halflings, Humans or what have you. Hek, Tolkien even gave us good reasons why Elves and Dwarfs hate one another (something that everyone seems to have latched on to, Pay Attention Games Workshop!) but the characters, through their shared conflict get over it. Remember, kids, Legolas' dad put Gimli's dad in the dungeons for a long time and they still found a way to get along and even in the end came to be friends.
Not to be tiresome...but isn't Moria really just a proto-dungeon crawl? Admit it haters, admit it!
Tolkien's influence on the Game does not really seem all that superficial to me and to the haters out there I say "get over it!"
So there it is, my somewhat small contribution to the OSR debates of origins. I am sure that the very few of you who read my blog have been edified in ways you never thought possible. heh. Well, there you go. This one was free of charge.

Another Mission...

2011-02-05T13:01:00.000-08:00

Wilhelm Spitzer, Tech IV, Ronreagan and Khung Zhu gathered at the Atomic Cafe on the ancient shores of what was once known as Lake Erie. As they drank home brewed ale, still flushed with their success at the House of the Blue Men, they noticed a man...dressed in a black shroud. He was drinking a red wine, smoking a pipe and watching them intently. It was difficult for the adventuring men to glean any details about his appearance from within the ebon folds of the hood or through the curling blue-gray tobacco smoke.
After what seemed to be minutes of silence, the robed figure rose from his table and approached the party. "My name is Eretosthenese" the man began, "I teach natural philosophy at the University." He went on to explain that he and his collegues needed the services of such campaigning men to secure an artifact that was buried in the Midwestern Wastes, in the midst of the Beegee Salt Flats. "If you all would be willing to go and seek out this object, the University would pay you handsomely" quoth he.
To this Ronreagan spoke up. "What's in it for us" he asked.
Eretosthenese replied that the University would be willing to give each member of the party would be given one item from the University armoury.
The group, as would be their native disposition, attempted to aquire more items than were agreed upon, but Eretosthenese would have none of it.
After equipment was picked, the adventurers called it a night and boarded at the University for the night.
The next day, their packs filled and their bodies rested, our heroes boarded the modified Greyhound bus that was lent to them by the School and began their trip into the Badlands of the Midwest. Of course, it took them close to fifteen minutes to decide which way to take to the wasteland. Once decided they wended their way westward.
They drove their way well into the midst of the fronteir of Northern Ohio and encountered a wrecked, armoured vehicle. This, they assumed (rightly!) belonged to their predicesors. They found it empty but for the bullet riddled corpse of "Sandusky Bob" a famous drifter and bad man in these parts. Bob had been shot in the head once with a high caliber fire arm.
They found tracks from a large vehicle and followed them, thinking that they would find those who had laid Bob to rest. And so they did. They drove up on a large tired armoured car with the other two riders from the wreck, crucified on the hood. The occupants of this car were making camp...so the heroes carefully plotted their ambush. Spitzer would hang back in the bus and wait for Khung Zhu and Tech IV to flank their target before driving up and having Ronreagan open up with the forward mounted flamethrower. This was a good plan, in theory. However...Kung and Tech were in place and Sptizer drove up, opened the window and addressed the other party...thus relinquishing the element of surprise. Then it was an all out attack from both sides. The enemy party was still caught with their figurative pants down. Two of the five mutant drifters were killed by Kung and Tech, while Ronreagan detonated the magazine for the roof mounted machine gun on the other vehicle. Upon examination of the inside of the enemy car, they found that it now looked as though a pan of beef stroghanoff had exploded inside...nothing was salvageable.
Further down the road, they encountered an errant security robot, but that was not very exciting and will not be recounted in this tale...

The Iron Maidens---these Chicks can Rock.

2011-02-01T12:57:00.000-08:00

I am not a fan of the tribute band as a concept. However, these chicks really rock. Also, that lead singer (Bruce Lee Chickinson) can really wail! They even (at one time) had Edwina, a female version of Eddie. Their mascot is different now, and I hope that this means that we will be hearing some of their own unique material in the old kind of metal.

I know, this isn't a music blog, but...This music, at least, is related to the game I am running now.

Also, I seem to have picked up two more readers today (I do not like calling them followers, that makes it sound like we are all gonna drink some Flavor-ade.) After so long without new readers its nice to have a couple new icons.

I shall try to step up the content.

Take care and survive the Fimbulviter!

House of the Blue Men

2011-01-22T20:38:00.001-08:00

Last night my nerdy friends and I played Sorcery and Super-Science for the first time. The party consisted of Kung Zhu, a Mutant Humanoid Catalyst who is a lot like a ninja. Second is Tech IV a Humanoid Master Mutant who fills the role of the Brawler. Third it the Mutant Human Super Scientist, Wilhelm Spitzer and last but certainly not least is their Human master of Mysticism---Ronreagan. Yeah, you got that right...Ronreagan.
The party was in a local watering hole called "the Atomic Cafe" and were enlisted to do a job, but the village headman, Gormond. I will not go into the details of the adventure, because I do not like spoilers...but they took the job. Of course, once out of earshot, Ronreagan's first question to the party was "do you guys think that they would be angry if we burned it down?"
These guys never really change too much.
The party finished the adventure, with a few injuries. Playing a new system was aided by the fact the the S&SS system is really easy to learn. Of course, we still need a bit more play to master it, but that will be the fun of it.
The game world is also really compelling to me. I love the mixture of Technology and Magic, I like the whole Mad Mad meets Thundarr, meets Damnation Alley etc...I think that this kind of game has long been my favorite.
We will see how it goes. The guys drank single malt, smoked cigars and had a hel of a good time. Next week, I will be running something homebrew. We shall see how I do.
In the end, Sorcery and Super Science is a lot of fun, we heartily recomend it.

Tonight...SORCERY AND SUPER SCIENCE!!!

2011-01-21T07:55:00.000-08:00

Its going to be kind of like this...

Tonight!

2011-01-14T12:27:00.000-08:00

I just got done "crayoning" in the numerals on my newly acquired d16s for use in my Sorcery and Super-Science campaign that starts this evening. The PCs are all generated. We have a Human Sorcerer, a Mutant Catalyst, a Mutant Super-Scientist and a Master Mutant. It will be a new experience for me as I have not as yet played this game. However, I have been pouring over the rules books and think that it has a lot of promise. How I will be handling this differently than those adventures of other games that I have guided this group through, is that it will be a little less Sandbox and a little more conventional. The reason for this is NOT because I do not like the Sandbox approach, quite the contrary. I love it. I am just sick of my hard work degenerating into a non-stop murderfest. Some of these players need a little bit more of a goal oriented approach. If I can get it right, this will be a fun game. If not, it will likely still be a very fun game...full of murder.

No more than you could...science it away!

2011-01-02T19:08:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite Mythological creatures visits the Venture Brothers...

It has been too long since I "rolled the bones"!

2010-12-29T23:28:00.000-08:00

1. SPRUNG from tall trees on windy heights, these dice transport me as they turn upon the table. The enlivening Vibhīdaka has pleased me like the draught of Soma from Mūjavant.

2. She never vexed me nor was angry with me, but was ever gracious to my friends and me. For a die which scored one too much, I drive away my own devoted wife.

3. My wife drives me away, her mother hates me: the wretched man finds none to give him comfort. [They say:] "I find no more use in a gamer than in an aged horse which is for sale."

4. Others embrace the wife of him whose riches the victorious dice have coveted:
Father and mother and brothers say about him [to the landlord's men]: "We know him not: tie him up and take him away."

5. When I resolve "I will not play with them, I will remain behind when my friends [= fellow-gamers] depart [to play]", and the brown dice, thrown on the board, have rattled, like a fond girl I seek the place of meeting.

6. The gamester seeks the gaming-house, and wonders, his body all afire, "Will I be lucky?" The dice run against his desire, giving the best throws to his adversary.

7. Dice, verily, are armed with goads and driving-hooks, deceiving and tormenting, causing grievous woe. They give gifts like boys [do], and then snatch them back from the winner, [they are] sweetened [as] with honey with magic power over the gamer.

8. Their troop of three-times-fifty plays [as undefeatably] as Savitr the god whose ways are faithful. They bend not even to the anger of the mighty: the King himself pays homage and reveres them.

9. Downward they roll, and then spring quickly upward, and, handless, force the man with hands to serve them. Cast on the board, like lumps of magic charcoal, though cold themselves they burn the heart to ashes.

10. The gamer's wife is left forlorn and wretched: the mother mourns the son who wanders homeless. In constant fear, in debt, and seeking money, he goes by night to the home of others.

11. Sad is the gamer when he sees a woman, another man's wife, and his well-ordered dwelling. He yokes the brown horses [= the dice] in the early morning, and in the evening he sinks down beside [his] fire, a beggar.

12. To the great captain of your mighty army [of dice], who has become the host's imperial leader, To him I show [my] ten [extended fingers or decahedrons?]: "I speak the truth: No wealth am I withholding."

13. "Play not with dice, [but] cultivate your corn-land. Enjoy the gain, and deem that wealth sufficient. There are your cattle, there your wife, O gamer": So this good Savitr himself has told me.

14. Make me your friend: show us some little mercy. Do not forcibly bewitch us with magic power. Let your wrath [and] emnity now come to rest. Let the brown [dice] now snare some other captive.
---Rig Veda, Mandala X, hymn 34

Picnic Time for the Terror Bears...

2010-12-07T12:32:00.000-08:00

Yeah...so, the PC, with nothing to do, argue a while as to whether or not they plan to attempt to circumvent the imminant Nuclear Apocalypse. Sixto, even makes an argument for actually CAUSING it. That said, the pcs notice some news articles about problems the military is having out at Whitman Air-force Base. Whitman is in Missouri and is home (in 1987) to 16 silos housing 16 Minuteman II missiles, each with three warhead and weighing in at about 10 megatons each...massive death from above. So, the players decide to investigate. They drive out to Missouri, a week before the events in the papers and contact one of Mongo's West point friends. He meets them, they kidnap him to the future to prove their crazy story about WWIII and return. Sixto decides that he thinks that "dis guy knows too much" and thinks seriously about offing him. So, as a compromise, they leave him at a diner 30mi away, with no car.
When they arrive, they witness a night time assault by a bunch of soldiers and a couple of tanks. The Base security forces repel the invaders, and these base forces include Mongo's buddy...so naturally the PCs suspect that he is part of a terrorist organization. Its a bit like the bot calling the metal blank if you ask me...but you didn't.
They do nothing.
The next assault is waged by a smaller, black ops team. These are destroyed, to a man, by sniper fire.
It was then that the players decided to act. Pedro goes in for a short flight over the compound and is shot by a sniper who rolled a nat. 20, this means that points are deducted directly from H.P. and SCD...trouble indeed. The rest of the PCs filter in and begin taking out the snipers, one by one, in an astounding show of actual team work. I was amazed by this holiday miracle.
They made their way into the building and began to search for Launch Control. When they finally found it, they also found themselves assaulted by the mind controlled minions of the Terror Bears...the four trench coat clad creatures they observed outside Big Jim's Tobacco, earlier on. Nightmare Bear did his work right off the bat and trapped Sixto in a flashback from his time in the Cambodian Jungle. Pain Bear used his Bio-manipulation on Pedro and immobilized him. During the melee, three of the hapless, mind controlled humans had been killed, which left three more plus all four Terror Bears. Mongo, who is not one to mess around at all decided to pull his buddies out using his prehensile feet. The next round he unleashed a volley of frag and concusion grenades into the launch control room, thereby not only posing a serious threat to the Terror Bears, but also disabling Launch Control completely.
After the smoke cleared, they search the debris and find that one of the bears as gotten away, Doom Bear has slipped their grasp and is, likely, even now plotting his next attack on the world who rejected him so pitilessly.

Mr. Ward Needs Upgrades!

2010-11-30T07:18:00.000-08:00

James Ward created my favorite game of all time. While I always enjoy a good game of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Gamma World has always been my favorite. From their I discovered Metamorphosis Alpha, its predecessor. Mr. Ward has been really ill, but there are a couple ways people have tried to raise some cash to help out with his rather expensive medical costs...I do not suppose that Game Designing has really great health care benefits. They are selling PDF copies of Metamorphosis Alpha on line to help with the costs. Here are two robots to tell you about that.

Also, there is a Website called "Friends of Starship Warden" where they have set up a fund that can take donations via pay pal. Check it out if you are interested. For some reason Blogspot will not post the link, so you are gonna have to cut and paste...sorry.

http://bailoutthewardenfund.bbnow.org/index.php

If you have the inclination, if Mr. Wards work has given you any joy at all...think about helping the guy out. Grenade launchers, Rotating Knives and Robotic Tentacles aren't cheap, ya know?!

A funny thing happend on the way to the Apocalypse!

2010-11-29T12:08:00.000-08:00

With two choices before them, the party of mutant animals decided to go back in time and find out some more information about GenTek. They went back to the year 1985 and cased Big Jim's Tobacco shop (Chitown). Around 2 a.m. or so a buy in a black trench coat came out of the shop. He lingered there in the street, on the way to his car, as though he heard a noise coming from the shop. Suddenly, a table came crashing through the remote store front, followed by a group of what looked like four dwarfs in trench coats. They escape into the night fog. Crestfallen, the trench coated figure got into his car and drove off, the party hot on his trail. Very soon, they found themselves parked in front of the lonely house that concealed the main Chicago HQ for GenTek.The man in black entered and after a small interval, the party followed him. Once inside, they found all the lights off, save for in the main office. The door was partially ajar so they listened for a bit. There were two men having a conversation about the escape of what they called "Terror-bears" and arguing about whether or not they should dispatch recovery teams to "save the innocent". At this point, the PCs kicked open the door to find not two, but three people in the room. There were two identically dressed men (black suit, white shirt, black tie and black trench coat) and a man concealed by the shadows, sitting in the corner and smoking a cigarette. The men in black freaked out. The man in the shadows remained cool. The PCs subdue the men in black and threaten the third man. His only reaction is to smoke and chuckle menacingly. After a protracted conversation with him, they ask him as a sign of good fail to execute the men in black. He does so, remarking that they had failed their mission and deserved no less. He also told to them that the main headquarters for GenTek is located in a sub basement of the World Trade center in New York City that can only be accessed via a secret and unused subway terminal. Sixto asked him how they could contact him, in the future. To this he merely smiled enigmatically and handed Sixto a card emblazoned only with a single telephone number. They then left the building and blew it up a second time.
They decided to then go back to 1984, to escape detection and for the element of surprise, assuming that the smoking man would betray them. Sixto made a suggestion for ridding themselves of GenTek that I shall not type here for fear of the mountain of hate mail it might generate. When they went to check their ammo and supplies they realized that there were only three duffel bags in stead of four. The bat had refused to carry someone else's bags. An argument ensued.
Mongo (the Orangutan)asked their Tasmanian Ninja to rig a shocking security system for the car, at which he failed. He was then shocked by his own work and knocked out. On their way into the subway tunnels, they make an agreement that Taz will eat whom they kill, after Padro sucks their blood. Taz has a high metabolism and needs to eat 100% of his own body weight in meat, per day. Pedro is a Vampire Bat. Their nutritional needs had been a problem for the entire adventure, but it probably will not be so now...right?
Mongo tricks Taz into eating a punk rocker who is passed out drunk on the subway platform. Taz is a little sick.
After lunch, they start their journey to the secret subway platform. After an uneventful trip, they find it...occupied by hobos sitting around an evening fire. They, of course, draw their guns and frighten the hobos with in an inch of their lives. The party, at a loss for how to find the secret entrance, employ the hobos help in finding it, figuring that if the door is trapped "it's no great loss". One of the hobos does find the door, and the Game master rolled a nat 20 and then another nat 20. Our poor Urban Naturalist was fried by electricity. The doors of the secret elevator slowly opened. They send Taz in to check it out. The search of the Head Quarters facility is rather uneventful, but they found a lab with lots of kitties and puppies and little monkeys. A thorough search of the room yields little other than a number of vials containing glowing green, red and blue substances. It was then that the defenders of the good and innocent, ragers against animal testing in all its forms and the Champions of justice had an idea. "Hey, lets test this stuff on the cute little animals!" Sixto shouted out "Where are the syringes?" So they get a monkey, the green syrup and a syringe and decide to inject the little guy. This they did and the effect was quite grotesque. The chemical dissolved the bones of the poor little guy. So, they dropped his smoldering gelatinous corpse. They then decide to "Advance the Cause of Science" by injecting another with the red. This did not dissolve the bones of their victim, it merely dissolved his skin. After an agonizing few seconds advancing the cause of science the animal shrieked in pain and expired.
So...they got another monkey and decided to inject him with the blue stuff. This they did. His cranium starts to swell and Mongo, who can see auras divines that he has increased his intelligence. The monkey tries to bite the bat. Pedro says "I am gonna punch that monkey in the head." He does so, but the chimp beats him up. Sixto, tired of the display, caps the chimpanzee in the head.
It was then that Sixto decided "I shall inject myself with some of that good stuff" He did so. Save or die for the man, save. He developed some mutations. Also, he takes 7 damage. The rest of the party, seeing that they could get some abilities too, decided to jump on the Sixto bandwagon. They all save rather than die and get some new powers. With this done, they stole the remaining chemicals and blow the place.
Now, they have two more paths before them. They could stop the Nuclear Apocalypse...or...use the time machine to cheat the Lottery out of millions. What do you think they did?
Right...the lottery it was. Because we cannot stop the coming nuclear holocaust without four secret bases of our own...right? Right.
Sometimes, though, stuff just happens while you have other plans.

Were all just waiting here for Virgil...to explode.

2010-11-20T16:57:00.000-08:00

This week, it was our Mutant Animal's campaign again. Our heroes, if I may use the term very, very loosley, began their plan for vengance against GenTek, the company who had inprisoned them and from whom they had escaped. The PCs drove their Chevy Nomad to the apartment where Mongo, the Orangatan sniper lives. There, they gathered explosives and ammunition with which to mount their assault. They spoke to Mongo's local contact, and arms dealer with the Sinn Fein (it gave me a chance to use my rather excellent Dubliner accent) He told them that the GenTek HQ was located under a Hyde Park Tobacco shop called "Big Jim's" located under the L track at 55th street. They parked their car and walked to the shop. The Human PC suggested that they blow up a phone booth to provide a distraction. The rest of the players declined. So, barring that, they broke into the smoke shop and began to search. When they found a secret elevator behind a stand up humidor they found that it was secured by an electric lock, but did not feel like disarming it. Their solution? C4. After detonating the small amount of C4, they found that they had bent the door and that it had to be bent back into place to use the elevator. This they did and decended.
They took a lot of time searching the very few rooms for clues. They found an office and a waiting room. They found a room with a few computers and asked the NPC Turtle (Virgil) to plant a virus. The rest of the charactors broke into the lab at the end of the hall and released what appeared to be a small bear. Pedro, the Bat, caught the bear and tried to question him...he did not speak, but tried to use a psionic power on him...but Pedro saved. Seeing as he would not answer any questions, the Human (Sixto?!) riddled him with bullets and stomped on his head. Then, the cut off and ear for a trophy. They spent hours searching the lab for some kind of secret door, finally finding one in the back of one of the morgue drawers. They entered the drawer and found that it led to an emense room full of files. Each file was numerically coded and seemed to reference an individual mutant of interest to the company. Since they could not use the coded files, they decided to blow the complex. They set their charges and left. However, the wire did not reach all the way to the street. Whomever was going to detonate the chage was going to have to do so from inside the smoke shop. It was decided that since Virgil had a really thick shell that he would be the one to do it. He agreed to. They rest of the mutants went outside and Virgil pushed the button.
Afterwards, there was neither enough of the smoke shop, nor of Virgil to identify. The party fled back to their hideout at Mongo's apartment.
While the rest were resting, Sixto decided to return to the smoke shop's smouldering ruin...because criminals NEVER return to the scene of a crime. Once there, the entered a news truck and murdered the sound engineer. He then put on the engineer's suit...because there is no reason why it would not fit...right? Sixto is a human male, 6'6" tall and roughly three hundred pounds of all muscle. So, no...it did not fit well.
With his ill fitting disguise in place he went out and mixed with the crowd of press, trying to glean info about the case...because criminals NEVER try to insinuate themselves into the investigation of their crimes. After asking a cop too many questions like "was this the work of Communists?" and "do they know where Pol Pot is located?" (the game takes place in 1987) the cop got a bit suspicious and spoke with one of the men who arrived in the black sedans. He ran.
He took a circuitous route back to the Maison d'Mongo...not noticing that he had been successfully shadowed by law enforcement. Not long after Sixto arrived, and just before he had a chance to burn his ill fitting disguise, there was a knock at the door. "This is the Police, open up!" Pedro went to the door and opened it. The three policemen at the door, shocked at seeing a 5 foot tall bat at the door screamed and drew their weapons. You see, Pedro's plan was a good one, he had hoped that if they were caught that they would be shipped off to the National HQ of GenTek and be able to destroy the place from the inside. He never had a chance to test this theory. Sixto opened up, over pedro's head, with two mach 10s. The police were killed, but not before wounding Sixto. Sixto then collected the bodies of the police and dragged them over in front of Mongo's next door neighbor's apartment. The neighbor was there, looking to see what was going on in the hall and Sixto shot him in the head. He then dressed him in the ill fitting suit and shot him in the head with one of the policemen's service revolvers. While Sixto is racking up the body count, Pedro had decided to try and shoot him in the head...because the killing was getting really out of hand.
He was unsuccessful.
After this they decided to go and blow up the prison from which they had initially escaped. They called Mongo's Irish friend and he said that he would tell them the location, but that it would probably be good if Mongo did not visit him...or call him...for a couple of years.
So, they drove to the location, under a house in Hyde Park, and gained entry into the house. They went to the basment and found a secret elevator and went down. Once there, they remembered the lay out and went directly to the lab. Once there, they subdued the scientists and questioned them. They did not really know anything. So, then, the PCs decided to use the Time Machine to transport the scientists to the year 2008. This they did, and then blew the rest...this time without loss of a charactor or NPC.
Their next plan is to use the time machine in the Nomad to find out when the Chicago GenTek labs were built. I wonder what they will find.

Cocka-doodle-DOOOOM!

2010-11-15T06:13:00.000-08:00

The party of mutants cheerfully decided to follow Marco Pollo and his band of 50 mutants motorcyclists. They maintained a safe distance from the Gang and when the gang stopped to camp, they did so as well. The bat decided to go on patrol and check out the gang's camp. When he returned, they set a watch and the rest went to sleep. Sometime around the second watch, the characters were ambushed by Fox Ninjas. The party was duct taped and dragged through the forest. The bat noticed that their friend Virgil (the mutant turtle) was not with them and asked their captors where he was...thus ruining any kind of surprise that their buddy might have had. Once back at the gang's camp, the pcs started demanding an audience with Marco Pollo. Soon, he appeared, clad in a great, feathered cloak and crown. This, of course, the pcs mocked...making their situation even more dire. After some witty banter, some threats and some placing of blame, the human pc remembered that he was a psionic and had telekinesis. This he used to set a few of the tents on fire. Most of the cyclists went to putting these fires out, but the fox ninjas were not fooled. They tightened their grouping and prepared for mayhem. The psionic human used his telekinesis to aquire a knife and cut himself loose. He, then, got a weapon and opened up. Getting the knife, the rest cut themselves loose and the fight began. Over on the other side of the camp it had become apparent that Virgil had used the fires as an opportunity to mount his assault on the bikers. Many bikers were killed, few fox ninjas died, and the melee ended when the characters captured Marco Pollo. Marco parleyed for the lives of his ninjas and the pcs actually let them live. The deal was that he was to lead them to his time machine.
The pcs destroyed the other motorcycles and were then on their way. After riding through the tundra they came upon what looked like a concrete bunker. They forced the password out of Pollo and entered. After descending five floors into the earth, they found a garage type structure with a 55 Chevy Nomad in it. Pollo indicated that the Nomad was, in fact, the time machine. He had looted the equipment from a group of people who came from the future, after he had betrayed and murdered them, of course. Our heroes forced him to instruct them in its use and with that information went into the future, Rooster in tow to insure their security. There was a flash of light and suddenly they appeared in 1987...in broad daylight, in the middle of a crowed street in Gary Indiana. They had to beat feet out of town and lay low in some warehouse district while they got things settled. they took Pollo back to the future (comm'on...you know I was gonna say that sometime!) and got to disguising their car. After a window tint and a new paint job they dropped by Mongo's (the mutant orangutan)apartment for some weapons with which to take revenge on GenTek.

Will our heroes have their revenge on the evil corporation?

Will Marco Pollo have his revenge on our heroes?

I dunno, we will just have to see.

It begins...

2010-11-08T07:13:00.000-08:00

Friday night we all gathered at Tim's house, his wife had gone to a party wherein they purvey various types of naughty things and marital aids. So, needless to say, I had planned on wrapping up the game when she got home. It would only be polite.

Our party was made, A mutant Tasmanian Devil/Ninja, a Mutant Orangutan with an attitude and a sniper rifle, a Mutant Bat Thing with pretty much nothing and a human tough guy/military type. Then, the cigars were lit.

However, things are never as simple as they might seem. Each of the PCs was doing one thing or another and then blackness. They all wake up in a 30x30 stainless steel room with a door way blocked by what looks like glowing plexiglass rods. They each found themselves alone in this room, but could hear others in other rooms talking. The long and the short of it was that the TD Ninja found a way to dislodge the food table from the wall and use it to break the bars (which, incedentally give an electrical shock if touched) He got the rest of the mutants out by freeing a mutant turtle NPC (Virgil) who seems to be the only mutant in the complex that knows how to use computers. They also free a mutant rooster named "Marco Pollo".

They made their way through the complex, looking for their gear. They gained entrance into the Laboratory prep chamber by rewiring the palm print locks. It was then that the klaxon sounded and the mouser robots poured into the hall. Robots were shot. The orangutan shot the Ninja. The orangutan shot the Turtle...yeah, of course they are accidents...but that damned monkey kept rolling 1s. As the GM I found it most hilarious.

Finally, the robots were dealt with and they plundered the lab. There were Necropsy tables and instruments. Also, they found what they assumed was an Electric Chair in the corner and decided to leave it alone.

They plundered the lab for chemicals that might be made to go boom. The bat found a device used in surgical Decapitations (there is a picture of the business end of it below...I am still looking for what it is called.) You know that this will lead to more fun latter...right?!

Our party finds the elevators, but notices that Marco Pollo is missing. They go back to the lab, the lights are low and there was a odour of ozone in the air. The Delvers approach the chair and find that it has a keypad on it and a display that reads four numbers...2319. So in the spirit of adventure and also to find out what that crazy Italian chicken is up to they, one by one, get into the chair...of course, they all had assumed that it was a teleporter...nope...Time Machine.

No, inexplicably, they are in the future, a future where we all pushed that button. They hatch a plan to find that chicken...and choke him. Their words, not mine! They begin to follow the chicken tracks and find that he has met up with a hundred of his closest friends. So, they divert and find a smaller patrol, Coyotes on Motorcycles. The bat flits forth into the night, with his surgical decapitation tool. He discovered early on that if the dice ware with him, that he can swoop down with this device and decapitate unsuspecting people. I predict a new martial art forming.

The party gets some motorcycles. Seeing as I had not planned on them using the time machine so early in the game I had not planned out that much in this segment of the campagn. Not a problem, though. Its the price I pay for letting them come up with their own courses of action. Next time, though, I will be ready as will Marco Pollo, il Gallo del Diavolo.

Here is the bat, decapitating an unsuspecting coed...

a Trip to the House of Pain...

2010-11-01T10:55:00.000-07:00

Last Friday night we gathered to play, but the usual DM who is taking us through the linked adventures of the Giant Series all the way through to the end of the Queen of the Demon Web pits was in need of a bit of rest. So, this is where I come in. I decided to resurrect a college favorite...Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness. After the investigation heavy adventures we had been engaged in in the AD&D campaign, the players really just seem to want some bloodshed. I think that they will get it. I really like TMNT&OS because of the extreme violence of the combat and the utter ridiculousness that the story lines are allowed to take on. So far for the party we have a Ninja Mutant Tasmanian Devil (I had to keep reiterating that this mutant does NOT get a spin attack!), a military trained Orangutan sniper and a really down and out mutant Bat. One more PC to go...and I hear he wants to be a human...because he always has to be a special little snowflake...heh. This ought to be interesting.

When I say "Earl Grey"...you say "Yes Please!"

2010-09-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

Yeah, yeah...I know. Not my usual fare so far as music is concerned...but I thought this was kind of fun, "steam punk" aesthetic and all (even though I hate that rather incorrect term) and it IS about my second favorite drink!

The Battle at the T-Hall

2010-09-20T05:58:00.000-07:00

I have heard tell of a band of adventurers stood fast against the evil of the Fire Giant Lord and his retainers. The gained entrance to the fortress of the Fire Giants and carefully advanced through fire and peril, slaying all who crossed their path. The discovered the bed chamber of the Fire Giant Lord and plundered it. By powerful magics they discovered the secret treasury of the Fire Giants, and it nearly smote them with their doom. For, in this treasury lived a great ten headed serpent beast, neither dragon nor wyrm, who breathed fire. After a long combat they laid it low and began to plunder the treasury. There were wondrous items and glittering jewels. However, their joy was short lived. Their companion, Fletcher, was slain by foul venom.
This was not the end, because fortune smiled upon them. The Enchanter, Brand, had found a ring that grants wishes. With this ring he resurrected Fletcher. With the treasury sacked, they moved on.
They found themselves at an intersection of hallways. Not wishing to throw their lives away, they schemed as to how they could defeat the sentries before the alarum was sounded. Fletcher, a man most stealthy, armed with sword and a ring that made him unseen, sneaked up upon the Giant Guards. Meanwhile, Oaklock the Elf and Brand the Enchanter sought to soften the guards up with spells, while also distracting them. This they did, whilst Fletcher made his move and stabbed one of the Giants in the back. From the, the battle was joined and the alarum rung. To their aid came 20 giants, 8 gnolls and a Chimera. The gnolls were simply dealt with, Brand sent them to sleep with a spell, only to send them to their grave at a later time. As for the Giants, Oaklock and Brand ensorcelled them with magical snow and hail. Then, with the coast clear, the warriors attacked. Peter the Holy discovered that since, by Brand's magic, he had been made larger and stronger, that he could use the mighty thundering hammer that they had found in a previous adventure he could smite more than his share of these firey foes. The foemen traded blows and Otto the Pious was smitten to his death. After a long time of hewing and slaying, it seemed like the giants had the upper hand, the heroes were being pushed back. However, in the end, they were victorious. Brand used his wondrous ring to raid Otto from the dead and our heroes explored a little more. They found a room where a dwarfish prince had been imprisoned and liberated him. They longed to return to the safety of a town and heal their wounds, but he would not and left their to their devices. They returned to the town and began to plot their next assault on the fortress of the Fire Giants...for their work was not yet done.

A Cold Reception in the Mountains

2010-08-28T22:47:00.000-07:00

When last we left our intrepid heros they were resting for a bit at the refugee camp. Most of the party was going about looking for the "weapons store" which was a rather daft thing to do. But, there you have it.
They walked out of town, our six intrepid delvers, Brand the Wizard, Otto the Paladin, Caladin the Elven Ranger and his Retainer Oakshock (or whatever), Brother Peter and their theif at arms (weird Gygaxian name escapes me).
They made it out, unwound the chain and Brand chanted the incantation to teleport them to the home of the Frost Giant Jarl. Snow...snow snow snow is all they saw. They were on the side of a mountain and could not seem to decided upon whether they should go up or down. Up it was. They followed their noses into a cave and the first thing they found was a family of Stone Giants. These told them to get lost, it was dinner time. Not wishing to temp fate, and not seeing the Stone Giants as foes they moved on.
Next, they came upon some Frost Giants, whom Brand tried to convince that he was the Hogfather with his elfen helpers. They did not buy it and melee ensued. The blessed Brother Pete was hit by a large rock, but the proactive archaeologists [tm] were victorious. Finally, they found a way into the mountain.
Once inside, Giants, Giants and more...you guessed correctly...Giants. Each encounter more than the last, ever whittleing down the spell stores of the Wizard Brand. It came to the point where his only option was to attack with his magical daggar. This he did, and he slew, not only an ogre, but a Frost Giant was well. This victory caused him to roar with victory and it was this noise that brought the ogres down upon them. Poor ogres...
After a bit of slaying, finding some clues on a dead oni, they stopped for a bit, in a room all tricked out for dinner. Against the back wall was a chained up Storm Giant Maiden who, it seems was chained there until she would capitulate to the amourous advances of the Jarl. The party set her free and she decided to join with them for a little pay back. It was at this point that our party settled down for the night to sleep and regain spells.
What will happen next?

Will the Giants find them and wreck bloody revenge?

Will the Paladin find someone to smite in the name of the Lord?

Will the Ranger find, yet more retainers?

Will the Priest try some amourous advances of his own, on the Giantess?

Will the Wizard, yet again, bathe in the blood of his foes?

You will have to wait to find out the answers to these and many other questions.

Its been weeks!

2010-08-24T11:07:00.000-07:00

It has been weeks since we gathered together, cigars and scotch in hand, to roll the bones. This Friday, although we will be one player short, we are gonna play!

Review of LotFP, die erste Teil.

2010-08-09T21:08:00.000-07:00

I have decided that, rather than reviewing the Lamentations of the Flame Princess RPG all in one blog entry, I shall review it in a series of posts. I just read through the referee booklet today. Rather than merely listing tables and lists and pages of rules, it is more of a collection of advice about how to Game Master the LotFP game within its own unique paradigm. I like this a lot. Sure, I am an old school gamer and I like my charts and lists. BUT, I have always appreciated a more free and creative approach to Game Mastering as well.
My favorite feature of the Referee booklet is its approach to magic items in the Weird New World. There are no extensive charts or tables listing all kinds of magical goodies that players can drool over and makes want lists for future acquisition. There are no price lists for magic items that could ever be used to constitute any kind of "magic shop" (and idea I have always found to be rather dubious anyway.) Instead of this is the primary admonition that magic items are special and individual in nature. They are also rare. They should never confir any kind of simple game mechanic advantage and should always have drawbacks and limitations that make sense within the logic of their own make up. In the majority of the reviews that I have read of this game system, this is seen as a drawback. However, I think that I understand Mr. Raggi's reasoning here and I whole heartedly agree. In the system of the Weird New World of LotFP, a magic sword should have a name and a history, and a story of how it came to be sitting in some subterranean room in some forgotten cache. This makes sense to someone, like me, who is a devotee of ancient mythology where the logic of magical items is very similar. I suspect the Mr. Raggi has the same reading list as I. For instance, a magic sword in ancient Norse Myth had a name, it had renown and a story. It was important to know who forged it and where and why. A magic sword to the ancients had powers that were relevant to a specific instance. The sword was forged for a particular purpose. It had taboos attached that must be obeyed or dire things would occur. For example a sword, lets call him "Doomchanter" might have been forged to slay a particular foe, say...a certain dragon. In increase the swords potency, the smith laid on the blade particular taboos...for instance it could never be drawn in the presence of a woman.
Germanic myth is full of items like this. Sigfried's sword was reforged from his fathers broken blade for the purpose of slaying the dragon Fafnir. The banner "Landwaster" promised victory to whichever army bore it into battle, but also promised certain death to the hero who carried it.
So, there it is. Yeah, I am really gonna have to run this game. I am really gonna have to run it.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess

2010-08-09T17:25:00.000-07:00

Only today, I got my copy of the Deluxe Edition of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess Role Playing game. I will give a fuller review after I actually run a game. I really want to run this...and my players will play it even if I have to drag them kicking and screaming into the Wierd New World.

Like I say, I've not finished reading it yet, but it seems to me, from what I have read so far that it sounds kind of like this...

That is all for now.

Miniatures A-go-go

2010-08-02T10:35:00.000-07:00

Hey folks,

Just put up a link to Hasslefree Miniatures. This little outfit in England has excellent minis for a multitude of genres. They have fantasy stuff, Science Fiction, Zombie Survival stuff. Very nice. I have been buying them on and off for the past few years. I just got a shipment in the post today. It took a little over a week from the UK (I have never ordered direct before) and shipping was reasonable.
Most of the minis are carved by Kev White, but they have a few lines that are other up and comings or already out there but have not heards.
The minis I got today are from a line called Twisted Tales. This is a line of what looks like Chaos Dwarfs, goblins and orcs by Sjoerd Trouwee.
You can even find space goblins, space zombies and space dwarfs. If for some reason you need world war one fighting hobbits...yep.

There stuff is very characterful and very cool. There is a scale section on the site so you can see how the Hasslefree minis measure up. I also have to say that their proportions are more realistic than Reaper or Citadel. Just keep that in mind when you order a bunch. Go and take a look. The gods of gameing command it.

Report to Mr. Lashton

2010-08-01T18:56:00.000-07:00

To our benefactor's most earnest servant, Mr. Lashton,

I have no doubt that you have, by now, read the account of the first part of our journey to the Steading of the Hill Giant Chieftain, I shall now enumerate for you the details of the second part of our journey.
We descended the stairs to the underground level to the Steading and found ourselves under attack almost strait away, by Ogres. The Ogres having been dispatched we made our way to the heart of this excavation. First off, we came to some prison cells that contained orcs that had been enslaved. As prison cells seemed to be a rather common feature under that dread house, I shall only mention them in passing from now on, unless there be something of use in the tale.
After an unsuccessful attempt by Otto, the paladin, to rouse the orcs against their former masters we decided to leave them behind. Latter on, we found some cells containing humans, elves and dwarfs. The human we equipped with spare gear and drew a map and sent him on his way. He seemed eager to leave. Second, we rescued an elf fighting mage, he has decided to stay on with our company as the retainer of our elven ranger and an experience and treasure drain to the rest of us. The dwarf told us that if he were to travel with us he was to be cut in for an equal share. This did not sit will with us, as the ranger's ever growing troupe of crumb snatchers proves to be a drain our our resources. Wizard's towers do not build themselves, my lord.
We ended up excavating a section of the dungeon the seemed to be a new construction and behind it were more rooms. Here is where our battle for the underground began in earnest. We ended up fight Giant after Giant, Ogre after Ogre and were taking a bit of a thrashing. However, in the end we prevailed. We stumbled upon a secret treasure room and another Giant Armoury. In the end, most of the treasure was in copper and silver pieces, with a few weapons here and there. We also recovered a map with orders to raid the refugee camp along with a magical means of getting to another Giant Stronghold. Along with the map and orders we found four empty scroll cases. This to me, speaks that there were other orders, to other giant encampments to do very similar deeds as the one we found extant. I cannot prove it, but I feel it would be prudent to move the refugee camp just to be safe.
From here on out, I shall be keeping a journal of our activities and turn it over to you when we have time to do so.

Signed

Brand Enchanter of the Eighth Circe,

Semper Servus.

Down in the Valley of the Jolly Green...

2010-07-29T10:13:00.000-07:00

Last session found our intrepid delvers in a valley dominated by a large hall...by large hall I mean that it was a Giant Hall. A Hall built for and by Giants. The will of most of the party was primarily to burn the hall and its inhabitants to ash, which we found out later would have been much simpler said than done. Our second thought was to take an away team to check things out. So, the elven ranger and Brand the Wizard set out upon the Ebony Fly. Once they had safely landed on the roof, they began to think of a plan. Brand remembered that he had packed an auger in his pack...a suggestion that he had heard one time when he was flying about in the aether by the eerie powers of the internets. He took it out and drilled a hole in the roof, through which he could see into the room below. He saw two giants, a man and a woman, eating. "Fascinating" quoth he. Brand looked at the elf with puzzled gaze and the elf returned the look, although not so puzzled as Brand. After drilling a few more holes and spying on a few more rooms and hallways the pair decided to fly back and report their findings to their traveling companions.
The party engaged in lively debate once the report of the recon mission had been given. Eventually it was decided that they would sneak into the Steading of the Hill Giant Cheif.

SPOILER ALERT...THOSE WHO DO NOT WISH TO HEAR THE DETAILS OF THIS MODULE, THE STEADING OF THE HILL GIANT CHIEF SHOULD STOP READING THIS ACCOUNT. NOW! OKAY THEN, THE REST OF YOU ARE DOWN WITH IT? GOOD.

After a circumnavigation of the hall, the robb...er...proactive archaeologists[tm] saw a window to the rear of the building, away from the activity therein to enter the building. Once inside, they began their assault on the house. First was the kitchen...full of female Giants and orcs. The party brought out their heavy artillery strait away. Brand fire-balled the lot. Not much treasure, but then again, it was a kitchen. They made short work of the barracks just off of the kitchen and larder. They then found some more barracks, all empty. Almost by accident, they happened upon the Feasting Hall of the Hill Giant Chief...and found it full of giants...literally. There were also Ogre servers. The party decided, once again, to pull back and allow Brand to do some Burninating. So, he leveled his want and fire had its way. Unfortunately everything save a few tough giants was burned. After the giants were slain they disappointed PCs searched the room. Nothing, of course...but ash.

Brand really has to find a new back of tricks. All this Burninating is really putting a crimp in the looting trade.

From there, they went throughout the house killing and pillaging where they could. They entered a room that they had thought was empty. However, this was not the case, a Giant Maiden was sleeping in the bed and she surprised them when she awoke and got out of bed. Seeing a need for some information, chiefly as to why there were Good and Neutral aligned Giants in the hall with Evil Giants, Brand decided to offer the Giantess her life in return for said information. The paladin was not thrilled by having to live by this bargain as it meant that this would be one less creature of evil that he could send to the hereafter in the name of his sweet Jebus. He left the room. There was some high-spirited argument as to whether he would or would not abide by the bargain. When he indicated that he would the Wizard began his questioning. As things would have it, she didn't know anything. Brand informed her that she had won her life on the cheap and if she had thoughts of following them after their sortie from the room, that she would then sell it dear. On his way out, he spiked the door shut, although she was evil...an oath is an oath (he is Lawful Good) and he would not want to be forced to have to take that which he and his friends had so recently given.

Only a couple more rooms kept them from clearing the ground floor and in them they found various ogres and lesser giants. They made a grim and valiant attempt to spare one of these for questioning, but the heat of battle and the ferocity of the Ranger and Paladin made it a sisphisian task.

With nothing more to do on this level, they decided to camp for the night and then, with the rays of the rising sun, descend into the cellars.

I write like...

2010-07-17T23:35:00.000-07:00

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Little Green Men

2010-07-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

So, its been a while since I have posted some pics of painted figures...mostly because its been busy around here and I had nothing impressive to post. The other day I got the new reliese from Tinman Miniatures (by John Winter) you can see the link over there to the left...you should go there and take a look. The mini I got was the hoard warrior (read NOT Green Martian from ERB Mars books). I got him out of the packing and painted him almost strait away. Once again, as I said before, no real amount of flash or mold lines at all. It was all just shiney metal. I prime them white because I find the colours are more vibrant that way. You can see the mini below.
Also, you will find pics of his Martian apes. I know, I know, they are supposed to be white...but I am colour blind and white is kind of dull to me...in the future I will probably paint up a four armed ape in white...but that is in the future.
All in all, Mr. Winter's work is very impressive. The peices are of moderate price and are very well made...as you can see. I am certainly looking forward to seeing more relieses from TinMan Miniatures. Go and check them out.

I Bring You FIRE!

2010-07-02T23:10:00.000-07:00

Hello Kids,

Tonight we finished up the Ravenloft module. It was grand fun...however...last week, if you remember, I was bereft of all my magic items by the Deck of Many Things. For a wizard, this does present a certain problem. Particularly since my cloak was magic and Soren would have been naked, but for a borrowed cloak of protection +1. Well, this week we hunted down Strahd in his crypt, with Soren still mostly naked. When we finally faced him he fireballed us from the shadows and of course, Soren did not seem to have enough hit points to take it. I was left at -27 hitpoints and reduced to a fine ash. Of course, to add insult to injury the DM rolled a save for the only magic item I had, the borrowed cloak...yeah, it made it.
So, there you have it. I lost my third in six months. The only thing I have to say is Wow. I am not upset or anything, although I really liked Soren, PC death is to be expected in old school play.

that is all

Well I say "we should have all taken it in Strahd!"

2010-06-29T11:53:00.000-07:00

So, there is to be a slight change of venue whilst I replenish my creative juices. The name of the game is Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. The playing field is none other than the fabled...Ravenloft. I remember some things from this module from when I played it in 1986, but have forgotten the details. What I do remember is that Ravenloft works differently than the regular world. I also remember the atmosphere...which is why I love this module more than most. I am playing my old 8th level Wizard, Soren...the Burninator! The party was sitting round in a pub in Hommlet, celebrating out victory and resting up from the Temple of Ornamental Evil when a strangely dressed visitor walked in. He made right for our table with a letter from a nobleman in Barovia, asking for help. So, being the kinds of folk we are we decided to go and look for the adventure. The paladin called his warhorse and we got some regular mounts and road towards our destiny. We got to the decrepit gates of Barovia. Our horses would not enter. Even the paladin's warhorse would not enter...so what did we do? Of course, we entered. It seems that animals have more sense than we do.
Once inside, we found a blood pool and it instantly became "CSI:Barovia". Soren the Burniator took charge of the investigation. We found a bloody letter clutched in the dead hands of the runner, it was addressed to us. The letter was the exact opposite of the letter that our colourful bar room messenger brought. "Things are bad, stay away etc...doom doom doom" We examined the place where his beaten body had been dragged, a little place just off the road in the forest. Soren took off his sunglasses and said..."Well I say 'I guess he just didnt see the forest for the trees" It was with this CSI:Miami trope that I drove half the party half mad...and sometimes it was funny.
So, we travel into town, its dark and there are no lights. No one walks the dark, damp streets. We go into the public house. There are three gypsies, a taverner and a sullen looking noble drinking wine in the corner. We engage in banter with the taverner and get the idea that Religion is not exactly welcome by some of the people who live here...and that the gypsies pretty much do whatever they want. I thought (naturally) of the novel Dracula.
We finally make the acquaintance of the noble in the corner, the son of the now dead burgermeister. He is shocked that we are there, particularly since his dad sent a letter to us telling us to NOT show up. So, we tell him that the messenger was killed and go to his home. Once there, we meet his beautiful sister, and the Cleric starts hitting on her. Wolves attack, as they apparently do ever single night. We check the defenses and one of the windows gives way...wolves start to pour in. The Burninator sets one of fire and sticks his staff out the window and fireballs the rest, burninating them all.
I shall try to NOT give any spoilers. We enter the keep, Ravenloft, via unconventional means and bypass quite a few obstacles...the key here, is OLD SCHOOL THINKING! We end up in a room and find a chest. Once opened we find a deck of cards...heh, yeah...Deck of Many Things. We declare to draw 4 cards. Soren, then the Paladin then the Elf and then Soren again. I know, I know...but hey man, how many times does one of these items come up? I think that in my thirty or so years only three times, including this one. First card Soren Draws...Death. I had to defeat Death or be destroyed. Strahd appears and we fight. I kill him. (Yeah, I know, its not really Strahd!) The Paladin draws...The Void! His soul is taken from him by some devil, far away. The Elf draws...the Devil...Enmity with a Devil...and the bastard shows up, but not before I drew the fourth card...all my magic items are torn from me. Ummm, yeah. So, this devil, no couldn't be Fredstopholies the butler of Satan...nope, has to be an Arch Devil...Geyron. He appears, all pissed off that the Elf for drawing the card (hey, its not like he drew Mohammad!) and is fittin to fight. However, lucky for us, we get init. Alert...MORE OST (Old School Thinking) which means that one should always know what his PC has and what it does. Since I was playing two characters I had to think fast. The Cleric cast "Protection from Devils" from a scroll. Soren cast "Silence 15feet rad. around Geyron... because if he blows his horn we will find ourselves in a whole lot of hungry hungry minotaur hek! Lucky for us we ended up killing him before he had a chance to blow his horn...(Well, I say...you should never blow your own horn"
Rather than staying the night in Casa de la Strahd the party decides to go back to the village...and we had trouble getting a place to stay. Imagine, in a Vampire haunted village, having trouble finding someone who would invite us in. Freaky huh?

Hek, I aint even reading this crap anymore...

2010-06-22T07:01:00.000-07:00

Exploring...

2010-06-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

When last we spoke of our heroes they had lost the use of their beloved Slayhound and so decided to rest up before exploring the building that seemed to be interesting the aliens so much. When they got to the small tower, they found it dark inside. They sent in the tin-man. He scanned the building and found it to be occupied by something large that gave off a great deal of heat. Inside, lived what I call (for lack of a better name) the Big Electric Cat (Sorry, Adrian Belew). The cat is about 5 feet at the shoulder, is various shades of purple and lets off an electric charge. This creature (lets call him Adrian) did not see the tin-man as a threat, because the tin-man is not even properly alive. He hated the human, did not notice the cactus (they are carnivores) but really liked Richard the Lionheaded. It was at this point that the PCs shocked me. They neither provoked nor slew the cat. They went around it. How strange. They made it to the door on the far side of the room and found it to be an elevator. Via this they descended. At the bottom they found themselves in a small military base of some kind. While exploring the complex they found the mysterious mummified bodies of its former custodians. What had happened is that the officers of this complex packed up all the survival gear into two of the tanks, killed the men in their sleep and got the hek out of Dodge. The PCs found a few things that they left behind in their haste. This included a vehicle, a hovering APC. They gathered up the booty and hit the road. Along the road, I decided to test Dot's resolve to turn over a new leaf and not be such a Killy MacStabberson. Some more aliens arrived, Special forces called "Gemhadar" (a name I got from the elites of the Thuggie cult) and one of them was in a suit of military powered armour. The PCs, though frightened, did not provoke the aliens (who wanted revenge...sure, but really just wanted to know where their lady psyionic was.) The session ended with our heroic PCs driving toward the rising sun.

Paperclip Gap

2010-06-08T19:04:00.000-07:00

Our intrepid adventurers fare forth into the radioactive wilderness to seek...the adventure. Its a picaresque adventure to the gates of hel.

Driving along they find a oval tower, topped by solar panels in a clearing about 200 meters from the road. They, of course, go to investigate. Nearing the tower they see a strange blue glow from behind the tower and find that it is emanating from a silver saucer shaped craft that has landed next to the tower...and the crew is disembarking. Seven short gray humanoids in some kind of armour are investigating the tower for some unapparent entrance. As the party exits the Slayhound to investigate, the aliens appear to ignore their presence entirely.
The party looks for an entrance and cannot find one. They notice that a group of three of the aliens have gone back into the saucer and returned with a box. From the box they set up some type of device on a tripod and use it to cut a hole in the side of the tower. The aliens then enter.

The PCs enter behind them and begin to look around. It appears to be some kind of control tower. They find that the tower controls a silo complex with three missiles. Dot decides that he wants to take one of the warheads to the Slayhound...I give the Gygax advice "are you sure that that is a good idea?" Dot then decides that they should nuke Detroit..."because they can". So he turns on the launch control, and a paper clip comes up...it was not helpful.
Sooner or later all of the beings end up in the same upstairs room. Of course, there is a confrontation. Dot's player speaks. " I want to kill them all and take their ship" quoth he. I ask "do you say this?" He says, "no, I merely think it" The one female alien turns to him and hits him with a mental bolt. The rest of the PCs keep Dot from attacking. The aliens go downstairs and take a few tools and leave. The party arrives as they are leaving. They then, go back inside and take a laptop, some electronic books and a satellite radar station. This they install in the Slayhound (Yes, I let them do it and gave them some XP for it...it was a good idea).

They get back on the road. Dot decides to hunt down the aliens and kill them and take their ship. He tracks them 100km to another building along the road. The aliens are out of the ship so he drives the bus over three of them, killing them instantly. The back door of the Slayhound opens and the battle is on. The aliens take out the flame thrower on the top of the Slayhound with a laser hit. More aliens bite it. One of the alien soldiers tosses a grenade into the Slayhound and blows it in half, killing Gregor Sampsa...the radioactive roach man (NPC...its a shame, it was a cool NPC... but I have no loyalty to them!) The female psychic becomes invisible and prepares to attack. The male psychic attacks and is killed. The PCs also kill the commander of the mission. The female psychic attacks one of the PCs with Ancestral Form...relieving him of his photosynthesis. She then flees. Richard the Lion Headed uses his Killing Sphere on the saucer and then finishes off two of the three remaining crew off with Vampireic Field. The ship then takes off, leaving the female psychic behind and the characters find that they are now in the wilderness...without a vehicle. What will happen next?

All Batteries, no rabbit...the Re-Energizers.

2010-05-29T12:59:00.000-07:00

So, this week we were missing the player who plays "Dot" the pure strain human in the party, so I decided to give a nice little one off a try. I had bought Flying Monkeys "Re-Energizers" (the first publish, full length adventure for Mutant Future) on a lark and decided that it would fit nicely into my post apocalyptic sandbox. The characters were traveling along the highway anyway and as they drove, the engine on the Slayhound busted. Dot decided to stay behind and try to fix the thing. It seems that the fuel and water pumps has simultaneously decided to give up the ghost.
The rest of the PC's decided to go and seek help for their engine trouble and started walking. Along the way they met up with a mutant cockroach named William (tip of the hat to Burroughs!) William told them that he was on his way to a town called Xit9 to seek work. So, Richard (the lion headed), Prick the Cactus and a Robot named Enniac were on their way.
Just so you know, because you looked worried, I am not going to give away any spoilers for the adventures...that is not how I roll.
Needless to say that the PCs were rather lucky, I was rolling cold on the wandering encounters at this point. They got to the town safe as houses.
They got there, met with people and got a job checking out a abandoned Bot plant. More cold rolls for me...very few wandering monsters or whatever. What they did find, they killed and looted (naturally) and arrived at the plant with little problem. They explored a bit, killed some creatures, looted and pillaged and got ready to leave. The problem at the point was that the party was divided on which way to go. They could have taken a safe way out, but they needed to check out one more building...one that they could have checked out earlier...but did not. Good thing too, they found the parts that they needed there (its nice when a published adventure is flexible enough to add things to it without breaking it. this I did)
They made it back and got their money and were on their way.
Now a word about the module. Its a nice one. The plot is simple, the action plentiful. There is a lot of exploration (which the players decided that they liked better than just killing everything that moves. Too bad that this was too late a revelation to save my CoC campaign) There is a nice amount of experience awarded for investigation and a nice amount of treasures. The adventure is short enough and compartmentalised enough to fit anywhere in a sandbox and to be played in one evening.
And we had a crap load of fun.

All in all a fun evening...of course the cigars and scotch helped too.

Poor Sportsmen of the Apocalypse

2010-05-14T22:13:00.000-07:00

So, um, yeah. Tonight was the first night of Mutant Future with my little party of Killy MacStabbersons. I did not know until last night I was running anything, so I kind of winged it and also used a lot of random encounter tables. They took their modified bus (pictures to be posted later) and went to D-Troit. Once there they immediately started to ask "where is the adventure?" and then "where can we find technology?"
The party: One Human, One two headed mutant lion, one mutant cactus and one Synthetic Android. Its kind of like the Wizard of Oz of you think about it...now all we need is a little talking dog. They wanted to go all kinds of places that have been gone for 1000 years and that their PCs would not even know about anyway. They went to a bar in D town and started to barter with the owner about the strange stuff on the walls. This did pay off. Next it was a trip to the docks at the waterfront where they attempted to hire a salvage boat to "go and find technology" under the water. They saw that the captain of the boat "Fishy Pete" a mutant fish and his crew had some "technology" in their ship and began firing. When the human could not barter it out of them, he ventilated Cap'n Pete's head with a laser rifle. Its too bad too, that brain was where Pete kept all the clues. From their they decided to go east to the kingdom of D'walah. to see what loot they can find there. We shall see what happens to them, and I am sure that it will be interesting...Or at least mildly amusing.

Belrithian

2010-05-10T19:41:00.000-07:00

I have been looking for this little guy for many years. This is Citadel FF2, from the Fiend Factory, Lords of Darkness range, 1981 or 1982. To me it was Belrithian, the fourth character I ever rolled up and the third miniature I ever painted. I lost track of him sometime during college in the mid 80s. Belrithian was my first evil character, a Lawful Evil Cleric of Loviatar...yeah I know, I am sure that the drawing had nothing to do with it.
Ah, nostalgia...

Frank Frazetta 1928-2010 RIP

2010-05-10T18:22:00.000-07:00

The man who raised genre art to...well, an art form has died. His use of colour and movement are legendary. His images are known to all, whether they are of the Nerd tribe or no. The Death Dealer, Conan book covers, every Molly Hatchet album cover that was ever any good. All was Frank. I grew up admireing his art. Sure, Boris was good...but Frank...sublime. This image was always one of my favorites.

None of the strange family drama that played itself out in the press matters any more. We have lost him.

The world is diminished. Farewell Frank.

Oil Can...Oil Can...

2010-05-04T22:21:00.000-07:00

Just ordered a couple of the new minis over at Tinman Miniatures...John Winter's endevour. Here are pics from the site...censored for the more distaff amongst us. It seems that Astro Apes do not wear pants. heh. So, go and check out the new stuff, the link is over there on the right. He is a local guy so I command it. Besides, his minis are really flash.

What is nice is that they will make cool figs for a Martian campaign or mutants for Mutant Future. Hek, they would even make nice Trolls.

I will post pics when I get them and paint them.

Ogrepalooza!

2010-05-01T20:51:00.000-07:00

Here are the Ogres I painted last week. They are all from the early to mid 1980s, Citadel code number c23. I believe that they were all sculpted by Jess Godwin.

Loss

2010-04-30T22:50:00.000-07:00

Not long after I posted this afternoon, I found out that a friend of mine died this morning. Lew was a fixture at the Wednesday afternoon meetings at the comics and games shop, and was always a real pleasure to talk to. It could be anything from pop culture rubbish to kvetching about pop culture rubbish to philosophy/religion and politics. His rather gruff exterior belied a genuinely large hearted soul and although I knew him for many years since my return to Toledo, I cannot say that I ever knew him well enough. Can one ever?
Suffice it to say that he has gone now, and the Wednesdays will be a little quieter for a long while. We are likely to sit and think about the friend who will no longer be there with us. We who remain are diminished, Lew will be missed. Requescat in pacem, Lew.

He was always so quiet and a good neighbor...

2010-04-30T22:25:00.000-07:00

It would appear that tonight session would be more memorable than I had originally thought. To explain, I must go into the story of all that happened, so bear with me.
The PCs took up where we left off last time, at the doors of a large Labyrinth. They were about to go in, when they decided that they would forgo going into the labyrinth and "seek the adventure, elsewhere." This was disappointing to me, as I was convinced two weeks ago that going in was their chosen course of action. So, I decided to spend two weeks preparing a labyrinth of which King Minos would be proud and Theseus would be annoyed. This I did, but to no avail. The party decided to seek adventure to the south. After realizing that they had been away from their tower lair for close to a month they changed their minds and returned to their tower. These are the drawbacks to a sandbox/character driven adventure model. I, however, took it all in stride. I had decided a week ago that if they were to return to the tower, they would find it occupied by interlopers, who would be enjoying their hospitality and their treasure. When they entered the clearing, they found that someone had built a twelve foot wall around their keep and decided to keep it for themselves.
They got to the gate house of the new wall, only to be attacked by orcs. In short order the party entered the yard and dispatched all of the orcs but one. they put the anti paladin's grand horned helmet on him and told the occupants of the tower that they had captured the "Orc King" and would ransom him for the tower. Silence. They scaled the locked tower and were attacked by ogres, one boss, this thegn, his sorcerer and 2 mooks. A furious battle ensued. The shaman had a cube of force and was thus protected from the giant anvil spell. He cast a hold spell on the necromancer and disabled him. Meanwhile, the other ogres were making quick work of the rest of the party. The dwarf was knocked down to -5hp and was out of the combat. The Anti Paladin and Assassin finished off the thegn and the mooks. The shaman, seeing that they were about to be outclassed took the boss and teleported away, thus denying the Necromancer of a cube of force...which he already begun to covet.
After the battle, they took stock of the treasure and the tower, healed up and decided to go to town. In town, the dwarf stopped by and procured a yearly contract with Hans, the ostler to deliver 41 gallons of dwarven ale per month for a hefty sum. They then had dinner. Little did the party know, but the assassin slipped out and murdered Hans, for reasons that will only become all too painfully apparent later.
The party then went to a wayside chapel of the goddess of death (the Crow Goddess) and burnt it down, which drove the attendant priestesses out only to be slaughtered by the PCs and eaten by the Anti Paladin...did I mention that he is a cannibal? Um...yeah.
After their repast, they went west, into the great forest, along the great road, searching for the remaining ogres looking for payback. It was at this time that the assassin produced three sacks, which he then tossed one to each of the other PCs. The Anti Paladin's sack contained body parts from an unidentifiable person...a dwarf. The Dwarf Berserk's sack contained 1000 gold pieces with the comment that he felt that he could not keep the money having failed the job. The Necromancer's sack contained the head of Hans, the dwarf's beloved brewer. It was at this point that we had something of a dwarven standoff, but only for about a second and a half. The dwarf immediately drew the demonic vorpul sword of head choppiness and attacked the Necromancer, thinking him responsible for his loss of Ale privileges. A very short combat ensued, as the berserk gained the upper hand by rolling a higher initiative. On his second attack, he rolled a natural 20 with the sword and beheaded the necromancer.
silence.
With his next breath, the Dwarf declared that he could no longer live in thrall to the dark sword and commited suicide with it.
Game over.
Next week...Mutant Future.
yeah.

Its been a while...

2010-04-30T13:03:00.000-07:00

Hey there,

Its been a while since I said anything...mostly because there has been no gaming goodness here in the interim. I work downtown. There are a lot of little shops that are mostly crappy little mom and pop stores...not that all mom and pop stores are crappy...just the ones downtown. However, the one I go to while at work has a bunch of secondhand books that they sell. I happened to look at them today and found a copy of "Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way" in hard cover for $3.00. Oh, yeah.

So, on to tonight's bit of fun. Tonight the party of wicked evil PCs are going to navigate a Labyrinth...that is, if they live. I am kind of psyched about it, there hasn't been any game in a fortnight. Also, the labyrinth is vast and brutal. It is a blunt instrument. Should be fun. I do not want to say anything else that might spoil the surprise for my Dastardly Delvers, so about that the word will be "mum" until early tomorrow morning when I give the damage report.

The collecting and painting front is going well. I now have 6 of the Jess Godwin Ogres from the 80s. Very cool. I love the personality of these models. The one that they label "shaman" has a piece of broccoli hanging from his kit belt on the front and on the back, a duck's foot. There is a mushroom on his bracelet. Back then, all these figures were actually named, or at least they had some kind of clear role. I miss the old days of minis when they weren't all homogenized. It seems that GW/Citadel is more interested in parting 12 year olds with their cash. Don't believe me? Ask yourself WHY they changed the colour scheme of the Ultramarines from blue and yellow to blue and gold. Its because yellow is hard to paint and make look good. Gold is simple.

Feh...rant averted.

Talk to you guys later.

A Letter From Chgowiz

2010-04-26T11:34:00.000-07:00

Look here...http://poleandrope.blogspot.com/2010/04/letter-from-chgowiz.html

Dicey situations

2010-04-21T21:41:00.001-07:00

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

It Takes a Village...

2010-04-16T21:35:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the last game session two weeks. The PCs steered away from anything that I had planned. They went to investigate the other guard tower and faced up with...Slug Eat Your Face!Here are his stats.

SLUG-EAT-YOUR-FACE “SQUISHY”

Slug-Eat-Your-Face: HD 16; AC 7[12]; Atk 2 bite [to eat your face!](1d12) or acid spit [also to eat your face!] (1d12+6); Move 7; Save 3; CL/XP 13/3300; Special: Spit acid, Eating Your Face, Swallow Whole, Scary, Crazy (to eat your face!)

Slug Eat Your Face (his actual name is “Squishy”) is a unique creature. One would like to muse that the SEYF was spawned in the laboratory of some insane alchemist or is the foulest curse ever forged on Hell’s Anvil. However, the truth is that nobody knows from whence came Squishy. He is a gigantic mass of rubbery flesh, completely covered in slimy goo. Because of these physical attributes he takes no damage from blunt weapons at all. When he attacks his is most likely to try to bite a person’s face right off. He is crazy like that. If, however, he gets a lucky shot (natural 20) than he swallows his prey whole (face and all!) When this happens the gobbled up character takes 1d8 damage per round. They may try to cut themselves free, but suffer a -2 penalty for attack…because they have been eaten by a giant Slug.
From a distance, Squishy can be equally as intimidating. He has the ability to spit acidic goo at a base range of 70 feet. At this range, he has a 60% chance of hitting his target. For every 10 feet over 70 this chance reduces by 10%. On the first of these spitting attacks, Squishy is only 10% likely to hit his mark, he has to warm up. These are not the only perils in fighting the Squishy one. All who initially see him must make a saving throw verses paralyzation or be terrified. He is just that scary.
Unlike all of his other giant slug kin, Squishy is intelligent; he has the effective intelligence of 13. This, however, avails him little as he is both mute and quite insane.

They actually killed Squishy quicker than I thought. Pitty, I love him so. He did, however, get to swallow the Drow Necromancer whole and that was fun. The other PCs kept stabbing him, and wounding their fellow delver. heh.

This was also the session where the Anti Paladin Character was introduced. The other players met him whilst he was being pursued by his nemesis, Heinrick and his totally righteous friends. Heinrich was a 5th level paladin. Bloody combat ensued, but they were victorious.
From there the PCs decided to go north, due north. They found a village and slaughtered every living person there...well most of them. The others they pursued into the forest to finish off or find out if they could lead the party (now completely evil!) to another village to loot and pillage and then burn. They ended up at the gates to a local forest garrison, and decided that the prospect of being killed by a bunch of rangers or whatever was inside the fort was too much.
They headed north again, for a week or so and ended up being lost in a snow storm near the arctic circle. they had to start eating their horses due to the fact that they had run out of rations...and did I mention that the Anti Paladin is a cannibal? Yeah, gotta keep him fed. After all the hinting I gave them, they finally had the sense to turn south, but still wanted to know where the adventure was...so they found an immense labyrinth and entered. That is where we left it, I have to come up with the particulars of the maze. At least one of the players (the English Professor) all Theseus like used his roll of twine so as not to get lost. The advantages of a Classical Education.

Titans Will Clash...in a totally banal way.

2010-04-12T20:33:00.000-07:00

I went to see the remake of Clash of the Titans this past weekend. I am going to review it, but I warn you dear reader...there will be spoilers. If you plan on seeing this film and do not want me to ruin the surprise...DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER!

SERIOUSLY, ARE YOU STILL READING...I will give you a few seconds before I begin the review...

OK, the rest of us can talk about it now. The good news...this is almost a completely different story than the 80s film. That is both good and bad, I will get to that later. The creature design for this film is really good. I particularly liked the design for the Medusa. She switched back and forth from snake haired beauty to horrid fanged monster and that was cool. However, I am not a fan of computer effects, not at all. They look cartooney to me, now that might be because I am colour blind or not, I don't know. I just hate them. This film is ALL computer effects. All of it. Strike one.
In all honesty this was not a horrible movie, but it was not awesome either. I am sorry to have payed 8 dollars to see it. However, what is seen cannot be unseen and what is spent cannot be unspent. No use crying over spilt milk there. I would have been OK with having rented it. That, however, would have been no remedy for the main problem I had with the film. Mostly, it was historically unrealistic. Yeah, I know, Krakens don't exist, yeah I know that they were not even Greek (the word Kraken comes from Old Norse) that's not my point. My point is that it seems like everybody and his brother in this film is some kind of god hating humanist. This certainly reflects a modern view, but NOT an ancient Greek view. They reflect everything I hate about hypocritical god haters. "Everything that I do not like in the world is the fault of the gods, but none of the things that are good in the world are thier works." It seems a little philosophically dishonest. Its not that they are Atheist, they are not. They believe in the gods, but they just believe that they have the sand to make war on them and actually win. Funny. All that happens is more about how the "gawds ow bein mean to us" and not what we do or do not do, what we do are do not say. The gods are just being mean, its not that Cassiopea is guilty of Hubris...oh, no. Poor us, boo hoo. I got sick and tired of Perseus whining after a while. Of course, they had to change the story from the original 80s film to make this work. They do not change it sufficanly though, Zeus still gifts Perseus with many divine gifts, which he refuses to use when he probably should...and it kind of contradictory that Zeus is giving these gifts anyway, I mean, Ole Percy is trying to bring the gods down and here is their king giving him the tools to do so. Stupid. But it doesn't stop there. Somewhere in the desert, Jinn show up. Yep, you read correctly, Jinn, and they are made of wood. Wicked Arabic Fire Spirits are made of wood, who knew. Not only this, but Jinn apparently ride on Godzilla sized scorpions, the self same ones that Percy and pals were mostly killed off by. Stupid.
One more thing that seemed typically post modern was that every person in the story with any kind of religious belief was portrayed as either a dullard or a fanatic. How typically modern.
In short, this movie was a train wreck. I am looking forward to seeing Kick Ass this weekend, though...you know, to kind of clear the palate.

"Dude...Didn't you read Stormbringer?!"

2010-04-10T07:00:00.000-07:00

Last night found our heroes exiting the Secret Fane of the Cave Gods, or whatever. They came up to the flat of the cliff and found that their horses and pack animals had been carried off in a violent carnival of gore and rage. So, like any party of adventurers they wanted a little payback. They followed the bloody smearing trail into an ancient forest. At the trails end they found that a small patrol of Orcs (13) had taken their horses for dinner and that their animals were already on the spit.
So, the hobgoblin assassin sneaked round and killed a cent...erm...guard. Then, he killed another guard. Then...you get the idea.
They all moved into attack position and then...attacked. There were some surprises, a shaman, an ogre a plate armoured orc with a sword that mournfully moans and glows with an unholy light. I kept describing that sword thusly, and of course, inevitably, that's what people wanted to pick up. After a contest of wills (the sword is intelligent for some reason) one of the Dwarven berserks now has it...Doomchanter it is called, an intelligent and evil vorpul sword. There are drawbacks though...oh yes.
From here, the players threw me for a loop and decided to go and find adventure in a part of the world that is not done yet. So, I winged it. Thus are the drawbacks and sometimes interesting parts of a sandbox campaign. They decided to go to the dead city on the coast. This port was one of the most important ports of the ancient world. Some time, about a millennium ago, the city was quite literally razed. Not one stone upon another. The only buildings standing at all, strangely enough, are two fortresses in the bay, designed to protect the city from seaward attack. These are two, two hundred foot square towers rising out of the water of the bay. The PCs decided to fashion a raft. Some wanted to actually carve a boat shaped thing out of a log. Others just thought that they should lash some logs together. The lashers won out and they were on their way to adventure. They paddled out to one of the fortresses. Once there they scaled the 20 feet or so to the only entrance into the fortress and inside found a maze of rooms. The walls, however, only went up ten or 12 feet. The rest of the other storeys in the fortress were all wood and had long ago rotted into non-existence. Once a light source was established, one of the dwarfs climbed up on a wall to take a look at the layout of the building. Once up there, he could see the rough floor plan, but more disturbing was that he could see hints of movement within the darkness of the rooms. Once he mentioned this to the party, they all decided (of course) that the sources of movement would be the first places that they would go. So, one of the dwarven berserks, the hobgoblin assassin and the drow necromancer all waited outside the door to a rather large room. The other dwarven berserk climbed the wall and when his brother opened the door to the room, he jumped the wall into the room to gain the element of surprise. So he did...and was surprised by an undead Blue dragon. Of course, there were enough scales left to tell what colour the dragon was...and there was no where to run. In turn, the Dragon charmed three of the party with spells...they all rolled sucky saves. The Dwarf who jumped the wall was unaffected. He attacks and a melee ensues. A few claw claw bites and axe chops later, the undead blue dragon decides to use his breath weapon. He kills the berserk by shocking him to ashes. It is my first PC death for a very long while. This is because, in the past, I have been more partial than impartial. I fudged die rolls in the past. However, i have resolved to let the dice fall where they may and reform, become more impartial. The player took this all in stride and quite gracefully...however, he is making me pay as I shall tell you in a minute.
The rest of the party, now free from the spell attack the dragon, which is done in by an Anvil Spell which crushed its head. As the dragon is destroyed, he crumble to ancient dust and the treasure is gathered.
They decided to leave all the treasure there, as they have no pack animals and no way to transport it across the bay. Recovering their treasure will be another adventure for another time.
So, how did the player of the dead PC make me pay? He wants to play an Anti-paladin. I did not really think about it before, but it would appear that the party has kind of become a bunch of evil badasses. This should make things interesting.
On another note...the sword Doomchanter...I had not thought that anyone who read the Elric of Melnebone stories would have heard the copious clues I made for them and still tried to possess the sword...but I guess that anything can happen in a sandbox. And that is kind of cool.

Dave Arneson---October 1, 1947 - April 7, 2009---Requiesqat in Pacem

2010-04-06T21:22:00.000-07:00

James M over at Grognardia has beat me to the punch...but it needs to be said by whomever can say it. Thanks Dave, we would never have done this without you. If you think of it, raise a glass of Mountain Dew or a Horn of Mead or whatever and drink a Minne to Dave Arneson.

Once again, Thanks.

My own Devolution...

2010-04-06T11:25:00.000-07:00

Al over at Beyond the Black Gate is doing a series of blog articles detailing his development as an Old Schooler and I thought that it would be interesting to vike his idea and do something like that on my own. My main reason is, perhaps, that in writing about it I can actually think about the last thirty or so years in some kind of rational way. Yeah, I know...fat chance. Props go out to Al for the idea...BTW, if you are not reading Beyond the Black Gate or any of the other really super cool blogs by people who are way cooler than I am, than you are missing out.
I started gaming sometime during 1979-1980. I started out With Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, mostly because that was what everybody else was playing. However, the catalyst for this was the fact that, as a kid, I was very enamoured of Bestiaries. Simple fact of the matter is that I LOVED MONSTERS. I still do. My mother got me a copy of the Monster Manuel (back then there was only one!) and I ate that up. It began to occur to me, though, that this book was part of something larger. I realized that it was part of an actual game where I could fight monsters to my heart's content. So, I embarked upon a quest to find others who would like to do the same thing too. I found some here and there, but my playing never really took off until I reached Junior High School, about 1982. There I joined with a band of misfits (you know, the kids who read books etc...) and we decided that it was high time we did some killing of imaginary creatures and taking their stuff. All in all we were 6, there was Todd, Bret, Doug, David, Marc, Dan and myself. It was a golden age for us, we played nearly ever weekend. We sometimes played during the weekdays. We met for the regularly scheduled 24 hour games sessions at one house or another. During this time a new Games Shop came to town (Mind Games, requiescat in pacem) and we discovered other games that we would soon add to the rotation of what we played. In no time we were playing Traveler, Gamma World, Boot Hill, Top Secret, and Star Frontiers as well. The my introduction to Star Frontiers came when Todd and I made the short trip to Chicago for the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) in Chicago (Chicon V?) in 1982. There we could not resist the siren song of playing this new game. We had a very interesting Game Master, a man in a green suit. I played a Dralasite communications officer and the module was Volturnis. I later found out that the game master, who unknown to me, was a rather famous individual named Gary (yeah, I didn't even know it was Gary Gygax...)
During this rather rich time in my gaming life I also discovered the joys of painting miniatures. Ral Partha and Citadel were my favorites and I soon had many of them. I will not forget, however, painting my first one. It was a little Ral Partha Goblin Archer. We were at Doug's house and he had many many miniatures and organized what would later be known as a paint and take...I only wish I still had that little guy. It was horrible.
During High School, gaming with the gang didn't seem to be enough gaming for me so I actually found people in my own neigborhood who gamed. This group was mostly Jeff, Jeff's older brother Ken, Mike, Douglas and Doug's sister. We mostly played AD&D and Gamma World. By now I was gaming every weekend without fail.
Then, something happened. I graduated and went to college. I was a bit worried that there would be no gameing at Bible College...you know, because of the Bible in Bible College and all. Nothing could be further from the truth. At college I met, weekly, with Bob, Johnny, Joel, Mikael, Jamey and a number of others occasional people. This included James, whom none of us really liked. So there we were, games nerds at Bible College. There we started out with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and then went to Heroes Unlimited. What fun! The strange thing about it was that we were completely open about our game activities with the administration. We showed them the books and everything. A few times, we caught hek from other students, but this did not keep us from gameing. No siree. They would call us things like "Toxic Wasters" and other less flattering names, but we had much fun none the less. For my part, it seemed like the TMNT system (Palladium) became a bit cumbersome sometimes, but it was still a good time...even though it took about an hour to roll up a character. I had one of these characters that took me an hour to roll up and the GM killed him in less than 15 min. (a pack of mutant alligators with sub-machine guns if I remember correctly.) Some of us graduated and others stayed and we picked up Joe and John and a couple of others. The games changed. We moved on to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Shadowrun. Then the worst happened. We all graduated and went our separate ways. I went off to Seminary (?!) One would think that there would be no games to be had at Seminary...however, Carlos, Greg, and Craig proved me wrong. We were later joined by my wife and Joel (from College) for games of Vampire the Masqerade. It was then that Games began to be annoying. I was highly annoyed by the kinds of characters people would play and all the whining. I know that Joel was too. He played a Werewolf that ended up murdering all the other players. That was fun. This, however, did not last long. Seminary became tiresome and I got my degree and left. From there I returned to Springfield MO and the games continued. This time it was something new...D&D 2E. I played that for a couple of years, but never really liked it as well. We did not play as often, being adults with jobs and all...but it was still fun to gather and game and smoke pipes.
I was there for a couple of years, but eventually I returned to Toledo. For the past decade or so I have always found groups with which to game. In the early days of my return, 3E came out. I embraced it, as the other gamers in my area did. The more I played, though, the less fun I had. Game sessions became tedious...long and convoluted. I do not blame all of this on the system itself, but most of it was due to the way that powergaming and munchkinism is encouraged. The sick, sad thing is that I kept playing 3E and 3.5 even though I was not really having all that much fun. I dunno...I guess I am slow when it comes to some things. Occasionally, I could muster up a game of Call of Cthulhu and that was BIG fun. I had always liked playing CoC, but could never find anyone who wanted to go mad and then die on a regular basis. Not until I started hanging out with old men (you know, in their 40s and 50s etc...) of course, by then I was in my late 30s myself. I had rediscovered the Old School thanks to a little game called Mutant Future. I had a little game going every week or so and that was a good time, a really good time. I began to remember what it was I liked so much about RPGs to start with. It reminded me of the good old days with Gamma World. However, this group eventually broke up and there was no joy for a while.
A couple of months passed and I found myself in a Book Club. One of the books we read was At the Mountains of Madness and this gave me an idea. I hand picked a few guys from the book club to play CoC. The Cthulhu game was a long campaign and very full of gratuitous violence in public places and what not. By the time we finished that one, though, I decided I had had enough of what was going on with that. Besides, after murdering some Chicago Police Officers, burning down the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Blowing up the former site of Ferme labs and many other crimes...including the smothering murder of an old man in the hospital...it was time to move on. I decided that, perhaps these kill crazy chaps would really appreciate AD&D more.
So David (marketing professor), Brian (editor for TV station, former city politico), Tim (english professor and published poet) and Michael (dentist and forensic odentologist) began our games of Ad&D. Needless to say this is the strangest group with which I have played. Some of them have game experience from early on. Tim and Brian played AD&D, David played Rune Quest. I started DMing, then Tim DMed and then Brian took us through Hommlit and ToEE. Right now, though...its my sandbox Swords and Wizardry campaign.
All that said, I have to say that I am having more fun now than I ever had in the past. Even the worst parts of it are still better than the best parts of 3E and the rest. I am now a lot older and can appreciate what it is that I always loved about Old School games (back when they were the only games in town!) They are flexible, versitile and a whole lot of fun.
So, you can keep your weepy vampires and your S&M clad munchkins...gimmie a little bit o'that Old School!

Metamorphosis Alpha and other Ancient things...

2010-03-31T12:29:00.000-07:00

I love the game Metamorphosis Alpha. I love the idea of it...Dungeon Crawl, Gamma World on a Generational Star Ship whose mission has gone horribly wrong. I have been reading and collecting books from what would be the Appendix N of Gamma World/Metamorphosis Alpha, and are they ever cool.
On the Gamma World side of things take a look as Andre Norton's "the Starman's Son", Lanier's the Hiero books and Zelazny's Damnation Alley. There are also a number of stories that are collected in a book called "Wastelands" and edited by Stephen King. Those are a very cool to one degree or another, the Hiero stories and Damnation Alley being favorites of mine.
As far as the MA side of things, there is significantly less. Two books stick out in particular. I read "Non-Stop" years ago and decided that Brian Aldiss (still alive and writing!) is one of the coolest unknown-by-most Science Fiction writers out there. Non-Stop is very cool and was sited as being one of the direct inspirations to James Wards work. Aldiss also wrote a book that influenced GA as well, called "Long Afternoon of Earth" (in America these books are called "Starship" and "Hot House" for some uncompelling reason) So, recently, I got my hands on a first edition of Heinlein's "Orphans of the Sky." I have always been a fan of Heinlein (even though I am not an engineer...smirk) and I have to ask myself why i've not read this before. I really like it and am having some interesting ideas for a Mutant Future campaign that takes place...you guessed it...on a generational starship. Who knows if its gonna turn out or if it is gonna suck? We shall see.
If you read these books or not, and hunger for more of this. There is a film that might fit the bill. Take a look at Pandorum. I know, I know...the name is stupid, and the teaser trailer made the movie look like a cheap rip off of Alien (or shall I say, expensive rip off). However, I am going to tell you right here and now that this film surprised me. Regardless of the bad title, its a good film, there are plot twists agogo and all in all its pretty cool. Go rent it, even if you dont like it you will only be out 4 bucks.

The Secret Fane of the Cave God

2010-03-26T22:36:00.000-07:00

Tonight, my players got into that door in the side of the sea cliff. They trudged down a very long hall into the interior of the cliff and the surrounding countryside. Deep underground they delved into a long forgotten Dwarven Fastness. This fastness, however, was inhabited by a tribe of Goblins and their hangers on. They slew goblins until they thought that there were none left. But there were. They fought an ogre and were almost slain. In a major surprise, they encountered a creature that even those who had played before had forgotten about...the Rust Monster. Oh, Yes! Rusty (that is what his friends call him) feasted upon the magical chest plate and +1 Battle axe of one of the Dwarven Berserks. It was not until then that they wised up. I even had a miniature and they couldn't identify it (thanks Otherworld!). Great fun...I love the reaction when they run into something that they cannot identify.
At long last, they breached the secret door that let into the cave complex containing the Secret Fane. As it turns out, they surprised 15 goblins, in the act of worshipping their god...all chanting a single word "Snackrifice, Snackrifice, Snackrifice!!!" The final battle was on. While engaged in battle with the worshipers, their eyes adjusted to the dim light of the cave and they saw the creature that the Goblins worship...a Large Roper. The Berserks almost met their match with this creature, but eventually the party was victorious. Too bad...heh. Well, we shall see how they fare against the SEYF...more later.

Slug Eat Your Face (redux)

2010-03-24T12:59:00.000-07:00

In the next few days I will be posting my stats for Slug Eat Your Face (his friends call him "Squishy")...stay tuned.

Actually, I have to decide whether or not to use him on my PCs this weekend. OK, we all know that I am going to give him a chance to eat all their faces.

Mr. Roper has a new Avatar (not the damned film!)

2010-03-22T20:28:00.000-07:00

I just finished painting my new Roper mini from Otherworld miniatures from across the pond. The unfun part was putting in the tentacles, because I am a spaz. I pinned them and arrainged them for maximum stability...mostly because my players can be a bit rough on the minis. the paint job is not exactly up to "Golden Demon" standard or as cool as the pics in the Otherworld forum...but I am satisfied with the result. I have to say that I LOVE this mini. Finally, a roper that doesnt look rediculous. Of course, as far as the paint job goes, I could be wrong...I AM colour blind!

What the Hek is going on here?

2010-03-22T10:30:00.000-07:00

Well, there was another tempest in another teapot this weekend...the Old Guy Blog is gone and I am assuming that this was the reason. Geesh. Its a pity, I really liked Mike's blog, it was one of the first to which I subscribed when I was figuring this computer blog thing out. Guys, can we not just all get together and have a beer and talk this stuff out and put it behind us? I think we should. Mike, if you are reading this, I miss your blog already. Seriously.

Natural 20---Judging One Page Dungeons

2010-03-21T21:14:00.000-07:00

Hello Kids,

This weekend I sent in my 20 picks for the first phase of the One Page Dungeon Contest. Out of the almost seventy submissions I have to say that it was a very difficult job to pick only 20. Here I thought that I was going to have it easy...but no. Next phase the Chief Justice is going to tabulate which entries had the most votes and then we enter phase two. I do not see that it is going to be any simpler for us then, even having fewer choices to make.
However, I believe that me and my fellow "Dungeon Judgein' Super Freaks"[tm] are up to the task.
There are a lot of things brewing in the OSR right now. Garycon II rapped up this weekend and I am waiting for the reports to start hitting the Internet. Hopefully with photos of the event. A friend of mine and I are planning to go next year. That will be cool. We had a good game here on Friday Night but I couldn't help but to sigh a bit...wondering how much fun the con would have been. I guess I am gonna see that next year. Its good, because I don't get out nearly enough and I don't anticipate that BASHcon is gonna suck any less next year. Although, I can hope that I am wrong about that.
I am eagerly awaiting the latest issue of Fight On! slated to arrive in my post box this week. I am also painting some Otherworld Miniatures that arrived last week, pictures and commentary to follow. These are good ones, kids. I got a Roper, two Rust Monsters and the large resin sculpture of the Demon Idol from the cover of the PHB. See, I got me one of those vouchers so I will be able to order a few more goodies from across the pond before I am out of equity. Nice!

Tarot Cards and a Hut with Chicken Legs...

2010-03-19T23:23:00.000-07:00

Tonight the players got a taste of what it means to be in a "sandbox" game. Last week they got themselves a Tower as their base of operations. This week, they went exploring for some area towns in which to (hopefully) find some workmen to enhance it for them. What they found is that they got lost. They went north along the coast of a bay, past the location of the Grinding Gear and stayed in the old Chapel. It was here they met some of Bahsa's (the Hobgoblin Assassin) former tribesmen. There were some tense moments, but the party kept from insulting the hobgoblins and the next morning (after sleeping with one eye open) got away as soon as they could. From here, they headed further down the coast and at night fall the next day found the ruins of an ancient port. For some strange reason, undead creatures are attracted to them...those the know, know why, and they had a close call with some ghosts. They decided to leave this place as soon as they could, and made their way to a nearby Rom village where they restocked, fed, slept and Basha got his Tarot read. Interesting, it was totally random but the result was very apropos to the adventure arch to which they were heading. Nice, I love it when things come together like that. From there they got impatient for lack of killing and stabbing and went north as the gypsy told them to. In the deep foreboding forest they stumbled across some goblins and their Orc Shaman. It was here that they got to test out a magic item or two, a wand of paralysis saved their bacon from many of the 20 goblins and the shaman. They killed them, looted the bodies and went off looking for where the "adventure" is. More forest for a couple of days and then, one night while camping in the forest...GOBLINS AND AN OGRE! Surprise, two of the party were almost killed but they prevailed. The next day they made their way north some more, looking to spy on an evil hag, Baba Yaga (yeah, I know...but my grandma used to terrify me with that one as a child, being half Finnish and all, the only thing that would do was a Russian Devil!) They did not find her, but did find an entrance in the side of a cliff on the sea. They repelled down to the alcove and door and ended the night trying to get into a door that is obviously locked by some means for which they have no remedy. Good fun, cigars were smoked, rum was drunk...a good time.

Faceing the Grind...

2010-03-13T15:33:00.000-08:00

Yes, I opened up that can last night. The PCs went to the Grinding Gear. I placed it along the coast on the way to an old, destroyed port town. They, originally, had the idea to go up to the Grinding gear to find some Henchmen/hirelings...and got more. They approached with caution, perhaps too much. They went to the Inn itself, but did not check all the rooms. Checked out the stables, but did not even enter the chapel. They went through the rest...and I was impressed with most of their new and emerging Old School Fu...by some strange turn of events...they missed half the first level. Those of you who know the module will know what kind of heartache this might cause. And it did. However, I was very proud of them. They made the most of a bad thing. Through skill and a little bit of luck, they did not die and actually made it out of the dungeon. Seriously. In the end, I was extremely impressed...mostly because all things being equal they should not have made it...but they got lucky a couple of crucial times and the rest was made up by skill. Not a bad evening.

As to the adventure...those of you who want to run it, make sure you know it VERY well. Read it and read it again. There are all kinds of subtle little treats for the delver and DM alike and these should not be missed. It was a fun and impressive adventure to run, and is survivable even if the party makes mistakes...but either way, the Players are gonna have to work for it. I like the atmosphere of it, the mood. I like the fiendishness of the construction and the back story. Very cool, but I do not believe it is for everyone.

Excellent work, Mr. Raggi.

He is gonna eat your face...count on it!

2010-03-11T20:24:00.000-08:00

I just ordered some miniatures from another Ohio miniatures company, Thunderbolt Mountain. In fact, the more I look, the more companies I find here in the birthplace of flight. Tom Meier is the mastermind behind the artistry and has been a paragon in the field for decades. Now, he has his own company and has a very cool variety of different and unique takes on Fantasy standards, historical minis and even a few very different genres. Even though some of the races he sculpts are genre standards, he has a very idiosyncratic style. First off, his minis are true scale, very much like GWs LotR line, but better executed. They have realistic armour and weapons and their clothing is more medieval than fantasy standard. He offers 30mm Goblins, Humans, Wood and High Elves, Medieval Historic and 30mm Arthurian...Yes, I said Arthurian! Very cool. I bought a pack of the Arthurian Giants. They come with realistic armour and trappings and a whole slew of weapon choices. Thunderbolt Mountain even included a separate pack of different weapons. Very nice. I shall post pics of them when they are painted.

Other offerings that Mr. Meier creates are larger scale resin busts of different historical soldiers, a 32mm Nativity line and the other mini I ordered (and bought two of) the infamous "Slug Eat Your Face! I shall include for you, my loyal reader and excerpt from Mr. Meier's blog detailing the creation story of the vicious Slug Eat Your Face. This story not only made me wish I had children whose young minds I can twist but it made the miniature all the more cool to me.

Here it is...

I thought it might be interesting to follow the process of a commission work from inception to finished sculpt.I was first approached by the client Theo Meier, three weeks ago. I’ve known Mr. Meier for nearly six years and although in the past he has bandied about ideas, this is the first sculpt he has commissioned from me. The price was quickly agreed ("a zillion dollars and I’ll be good for a whole week") and we began to discuss the project.

Theo M. It’s going to be called ‘Slug-eat-your-face’.

Tom M. So, It’s going to be a kind of slug…

Theo M. Yeah!Tom M. And how is it different from an ordinary slug?

Theo M. It’s big.

Tom M. Is that all?

Theo M. No, it has big teeth, to eat your face and is really scary.

Tom M. What kind of teeth, like a shark or an alligator…

Theo M. No, like Hambam (a hamster who, it ought to be mentioned, once bit the client)

Tom M. Any other distinguishing features?

Theo M. Yeah, he’s really crazy, crazy to eat your face!

Tom M. And how does his mental state manifest itself in his appearance?

Theo M. He’s got one eye bigger than the other.

Tom M. One eye bigger than the other?

Theo M. Yeah, that shows he’s crazy.

The details of the design being worked out and a rough mock-up created by the client sculpting was begun a fortnight later and concluded in the course of a Saturday afternoon. Payment is pending.

Here are some pictures. First is my attempt at painting. Second is of the green (proto-type so named for the green putty from which they are made.

Enjoy...and visit his site if you like super cool minis made by a master! The link is in my sidebar. Also, visit his blog, linked from his site, to see what he is cooking up.

slug eat your face...and other mysteries.

2010-03-11T12:41:00.000-08:00

I am almost finished with the painting of the much storied "Slug Eat Your Face!" from the ever talented Tom Meier over at Thunderbolt Mountain miniatures. I shall be putting up a review of their miniatures as soon as I am done with at least one and have picture of the finished product.

I am also kind of anxious about tomorrow nights adventure. I am not all that used to running other people's material, however, I have read and re-read the adventure and am confident that I will be able to do so. I guess what I am really worried about is that these guys are gonna die, all of them. On the one hand I have been EXTREMELY impressed with their playing...they are adapting to an old school world very well. They are doing things and checking for things themselves and not relying on dice. They are coming up with new and novel ways to use their resources. However, and this is a big however, there seems to be a conflict of personalities developing and I am hopeing that this will not mean their end. The party seems to be fragmenting into cliques and the cliques are hostile. Although, this doesn't have to be a problem. Real life is like that, sometimes you have to co-operate with someone you would rather kick in the eye. I know I have. This is a test of will. I hope my PCs have the will to NOT kill one another off tomorrow night...I just do not want to have to paint any more miniatures for them right now. I've got a Slug Eat Your Face to paint...

This Friday...

2010-03-09T18:09:00.000-08:00

This Friday I will be sending my players into one of James Raggi's fiendish creations...the Grinding Gear. Oh, yeah. Afterwords I plan on posting a full review of the work, from the viewpoint of playing through it...but without spoilers, of course. I feel that they are ready for it now. Most of them are at third level. I am a bit worried, though. There seems to be a rather strange dynamic forming between one of the Dwarfs and the elf (and the other dwarf doesn't really stop it either) that might end in a player vs. player conflict. This, however, will not do for the Grinding Gear...oh no. So, I figure that they will either all make it through or it will be a total party wipe out. There will be no in between there. Well, that is my felling right now.

In other news, I am almost done with the first phase of my judging of the One Page Dungeon contest entries. This weekend was a fruitful one for me and I made it through about half of them on Saturday and Sunday. This week is Spring Break so I only have one job to worry about and have a little extra time to work on the reading of dungeons. It has been really fun and there are a lot of really cool entries. In the end it is going to be really hard to pick just a few.

There have been a lot of other developments in the OSR. It seems that Mr. Raggi is working along on his system and hearing that makes me want to see it. Also, it would appear that Otherworld Minis and Swords and Wizardry are teaming up and that is an AWESOME team if I may say so myself.

So, check in here this Saturday to see who lives and who dies in the Grinding Gear!

Of Tempests and Teapots

2010-03-07T08:59:00.000-08:00

It must be said. Games that have been, in the past, very fine games have in their newest editions become rather somewhat less fine. I have not played 4e D&D, but I did own and read the books for a while. What struck me was its resemblance to a video game, with its once a round/combat/day powers, its healing surges and what not. What also struck me was that the Monster Manuel contained no more information than is needed to kill whatever critter is discussed. Sometimes the entry would have a cool picture, but not always. The choices they made for new PC races were also telling, to me at least. Dragonmen and half-demons...edgy! It may or may not be fun to other people. This is not my concern. I, honestly, do not like it. Its a matter of taste.
Another game that used to be a favorite of mine was Warhammer Fantasy Role Play. Back in the day, the rules were just one book. It was fun, and dark and atmospheric. The third edition (following very fast on the heels of 2nd ed by about a year) is a circus. Not only do you need a huge box full of books, but the box is full of all kinds of cardstock doodads that are required to play the game. The doodads are meant to force you to role play. But that is not all! There are expansion boxes full of more doodads and bricabrack. There are special WFRP dice that do not have numbers...but pictures of axes or what have you. Have we lost the ability to count? What I find even more interesting is that there are various sites out there that have put up advice on how to make this game portable. PORTABLE!? People do not think its a problem when there is so much crap required to play a game that people have to figure out how to haul this thing around so they can actually play it? WTH?
As I said earlier, its a matter of taste and perhaps I am old and set in my ways and like the Old School games too much to change my tastes. I can accept that. If others have fun with this new stuff and think its "kewl" that's fine too. However, not to put too fine a point on it, all of these new changes to the face of Role Playing Games is a symptom of the dumbing down of our society. I heard a new schooler at the FLGS actually say "Video game graphics are way better than my imagination could ever be." I was so shocked all I could say was "that is really sad."
Now I hear that they are planning on ruining another of my favorite games with a new edition. Gamma World is said to be next on the block. I hear that there are going to be collectable mutation cards that one must have to be able to use this mutation or that. I do not know if this is true, but if it is words cannot express how I feel about that. I suppose that I will let you know when it finally comes out and the awful truth has been made manifest.
One thing is for sure, I am done with the dialogue between Old School and New. It is pointless. Even the most intelligent of them seems to act like an ignoramus, scribing their invectives of something they do not understand and then, when they are called on it, either playing the injured party or resorting to anonymous insults and tirades.
It is a waste of time when what we are talking about is aesthetics and taste.

Towering above the rest!

2010-03-06T13:53:00.000-08:00

Last night we had a full house for my Swords and Wizardry Sandbox game. The PCs traveled north from Badenberg in search of what they had been told was called the "Tower of Almost Certain Doom!" They passed the Tomb of Sredni Vashtar and went on, through the forest to the slightly larger town of Aldtstadt. Once there they kibitzed about town for a day getting their adventuring equipment togeather. Dori, one of the Dwarf Berserks came up with an idea for a kind of cart to carry his ubiquitous pony kegs of ale, and a drinking tube for when he is riding. They also had to get some new mounts, as the old ones were killed in the forest and devoured when they were all attacked by giant spiders. They had narrowly escaped because one of their number had the foresight to secret in his sleeve a sharpened silver coin, with which he cut the webbing that was securing them all for a future use as spider drink boxes. The went on to the tower, through the oak forest and were attacked by a young green dragon. Two of the party were disabled by the breathweapon and the berserks killed the beast. They took toothy and clawey trophies and also the breathweapon organ from the dragon. Oh, and they also feasted on dragon heart and understood the language of birds for a while.
They got to the 100foot basalt tower in the middle of a very large clearing. The clearing was a field of fire for the archers in the top of the tower. The Hobgoblin assassin crossed the clearing under his shield and made it to the tower. However, before finding the secret entrance he was struck down by boiling oil. So, the Drow Necromancer rode across he field and was miraculously not hit by arrows. he healed up the Hobgoblin and they found the door. Then, the berserks came. They scaled the tower and found a room at the top of the stairs. Inside the room, was the sound of many warriors ready for their assaut. One of the Berserks stayed there, with his ring of poison resistance and the rest went up the stairs, whereupon he produced the breathweapon organ from the green dragon. This, he rigged under the wooden door and stomped, thusly filling the room with chlorine gas. They finally slew all the men in the tower and enjoyed their reward. They have also decided to keep the tower, or rather the Necromancer has...and the rest decided that they will have a place to stay when they are in the neighborhood.
However, there seems to be a kind of antagonistic relationship forming between the Necromancer and one of the Berserks. It seriously looks like it is heading toward a PvP type of thing. We shall see.

five and twenty black birds...

2010-03-04T19:55:00.000-08:00

Sorry there is no pie for you folks. I have hit 25 followers. Believe me when I say it is many more than I thought would ever read this.
Not really much more to say about that, dear readers.

I have begun to read through the entries for the One Page Dungeon Contest...some very interesting entries in deed. I have seen a couple that really stretch the definition of "Dungeon" and I have to say that I like that. I do not want to give anything away until all the judging is done and all my fellow Dungeon Judging Super Freaks have had their say.

These Pictures suck...I will learn to take better ones.

2010-03-01T18:58:00.000-08:00

Here are the pics of my painted Martian minis...from Tinman Miniatures. Enjoy. I will put better ones up when I learn to take better ones.

Barsoomtastic!

2010-02-26T22:20:00.000-08:00

I just recently ordered some minis from John Winter over at TinMan Miniatures. Mr. Winter has quite a long history (as far back as the 80s if I am correct) and has carved for all the major old school companies and a few new ones too. He is also a local guy too, an Ohioan...or at least he lives here now...and I am glad of it. Makes me wonder why he was not invited to come to BASHcon as a special guest...I shall see to it that he IS in the future. I had a few of his new things from Reaper and back in the day many of the models he carved for Ral Partha. Now he has his own thing going, over at Tinman. The link is in my links list...you should go there as soon as you are done reading this. The miniatures he is doing right now, for his own company are all of a Sword and Planet genre...I would say "John Carter of Mars" but I don't want anyone to get sued. I am going to post pics from his site, of the ones I ordered here. They are very finely done. Well crafted, very nice detail and right out of the packet they have very little flash or mold lines. What little that they did have was simply dealt with by craft knife and file. I have mounted them on round plastic bases because this is what I do with all my minis. I painted the calot (Moola) first, because I like the look of him. Part bulldog and part reptile, with ten legs and a sly grin he makes a nice and very charactorful (is that a word?) presentation. I painted him green with an off white underbelly and black claws. He has red eyes and I based it with some red sand I keep around just in case I got some martian minis...which has never actually happened before! I am half way through painting Jack Carson and I really like how this mini is going. I am painting him all in reds and golds and the hair will be dark brown rather than black...I like the contrast better. He is mounted on a large round base and I shall have a bit of fun basing that one too...but I think I need to buy some of Mr. Winter's deserty bits. As for the princess...I am an oaf, in cleaning her and basing her (I almost said...mounting...blush) I broke her. Not a design flaw, but I am a bit ham handed...or was I distracted by her ample charms? I am going to order another, along with some of the other things he has comming up the canal...soon. I am also going to post pictures of the finished deal when I have finished Jack Carson and found a decent camara. AND as it seems, since Ravyn over at "Beyond the Black Gate" is collaborating with an artist and making a Swords and Wizardry/Planetary Romance game...so awesome. This along with some of the crackerjack ideas over at Plaent Agol I think make a very cool Sword and Planet game...and I like this very much. So, stay tuned my friends, there will be more about all of this, particularly because one of my players is (co-incedentally) re-reading the John Carter books and I have him looking forward to adventuring across the surface of Mars too.

Tomb and Tome

2010-02-26T22:01:00.000-08:00

Tonight we started out Swords and Wizardry game. The characters are all second level and we have two Dwarven Berserks, a Drow Elf Necromancer and a Hobgoblin Assassin. It was a very interesting game. The world is a sandbox and I have alowed them to go and do whatever they want. These (by and large) are people who are new to gaming, accept for the player of the Drow, or are people who gamed briefly back in the day and never again.
What is fun is that they are really getting into Old School style play...forsaking reliance upon dice. One thing that I really liked is that they queried the bar man (a former adventurer) about this and that and he pointed them toward their first adventure. They also made friends with the priestess at the local Athenaeum and have forged a good relationship with someone who can give them some services in the future. As there are no adventuring clerics in my world yet, this is a good thing.
They entered the tomb of Sredni Vashtar (yeah, I know...I stole the name, deal with it) and did many very right things in there. They used their spikes, their ten foot pole, they searched for traps and secret doors without relying on dice...it was lovely. In my campaign world, a Necromancer can turn/control undead like a cleric and this they did. He got hold of some zombies and let them do some of the more hazardous things...very clever really. I am kind of psycked about where this seems to be going...seriously. We all had a great time...even when one of the berserks was almost killed.
Yes, very pleased.

Otherworld is Moving on UP! You can help (and get a lot of cool minis in the process)

2010-02-25T06:43:00.000-08:00

Here is the release from their webforum. If you have bought from them before, or even if you are new to Otherworld minis...you should go over to their site and take a look. They are fantastic. This is a great offer (check it out on a currency converter if you don't believe me!). We should support our cool Old School merchants and creators!

"Otherworld Miniatures is on the move! The business has now outgrown the facilities that I have available at home, and I’m hoping to move into new, dedicated business premises in the next few months. However, this move will be fairly costly, and I need to raise some funds to make this possible.

So, for the next few weeks, I will be making vouchers available to customers of Otherworld Miniatures. Three different vouchers will be available.

1) Bronze Voucher – This will cost £50.00, and will be redeemable for £65.00 of Otherworld Miniatures.
2) Silver Voucher – This will cost £100.00, and will be redeemable for £140.00 of Otherworld Miniatures.
3) Gold Voucher – This will cost £200.00, and will be redeemable for £300.00 of Otherworld Miniatures.

In addition, each voucher buyer will receive a free figure which will be produced in the summer of 2010. It will be a variant model of the DM6 – Minotaur, wearing armour and wielding a spear. It will go on sale at a later date, but voucher holders will receive master castings (which will be marked on the packaging).

Vouchers will be valid until 1st April 2011, and may be spent in small potions, or as large purchases. Alternatively, a voucher may be used as a standing order to pay for all subsequent new releases until the voucher is used up.

To spend a voucher, or part of it, the holder will need to place an order by email, rather than using the usual webstore checkout system.

Vouchers may be purchased in the Otherworld Miniatures webstore (http://www.otherworld.me.uk/store.html) until 31st March 2010. Vouchers are limited to a maximum of 2 per person, and may not be used in conjunction with other special offers or sales."

One Page Dungeon Contest Submission Deadline...One Week!

2010-02-21T17:57:00.000-08:00

One Page Dungeon Contest 2010.
Dates
Submission deadline is March 1, 0:00 GMT.
Winners will be announced April 18, 0:00 GMT.
Submitting
Participants create a One Page Dungeon.
Submitting a dungeon to the contest releases it under the Creative Common Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license with credit to the contest participant.
The submission must have a name, an author, a map, a key, a link to the license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) and no game stats.
A link to your blog, wandering monsters, random events, adventure background or introduction, and descriptions of tricks or traps are all optional.
One entry per participant. Participants may revise/replace their entries up until the end of contest, with the last revision counting as their official entry.
Submission must be mailed in PDF, Open Office, or Microsoft Word format to Alex Schröder → kensanata@gmail.com.
If you’re also hosting your submission elsewhere, you’re welcome to link to it from this page.
If you’re not hosting your submission elsewhere, your entry may be hosted on the contest site.
The link to the license doesn’t have to be a hyperlink. Simply having the URL readable on the submission is enough.
Submissions
One Page Dungeon submissions will be linked from here. If possible, we’ll link to a blog post so that people can comment on the submission. If the author has no blog, we’ll host the submission on this site.
Halls of Ksarnia
Escape from the Dragon’s Lair
Crypt of the Shattered Mage-King
Under the Blood Moon Banner
Pit of the Mad Sage
Gas-n-Die
Necromancer’s Crypt
The U-Turn Challenge
Epsilon Outpost
Central New Jersey after the "Big Whoops"
The Horrible Hermitage
Tower of Light, Tunnel of Stone
Sewers of Victorian London
Trolls will be Trolls
The Emboweled Coffin of the Tutelar Fiend
Where’s your submission?
Prizes & Sponsors
Do you have prizes to donate? Let me know → kensanata@gmail.com!
Current sponsors, in alphabetical order:
a perfect bound copy of Swords & Wizardry: WhiteBox by Brave Halfling Publishing
a copy of the Martial Flavor ebook by Chaotic Shiny Productions for each of the winners
a softcover copy of War of the Burning Sky #1: The Scouring of Gate Pass by EN World for D&D 3.5 or D&D 4 – winner’s choice
issues #1-#8 in PDF by Fight On! magazine
winner’s choice of either a physical copy of Labyrinth Lord or the Advanced Edition Companion by Goblinoid Games
a copy of The Dungeon Alphabet by Goodman Games
a copy of Random Esoteric Creature Generator by Goodman Games
a copy of Points of Light by Goodman Games
a set of The Grinding Gear, No Dignity in Death: The Three Brides, and People of Pembrooktonshire by Lamentations of the Flame Princess
a print copy of Stonehell Dungeon by Michael Curtis from the author himself
a full year Ascendant membership to Obsidian Portal by Obsidian Portal for first place
a 6 month Ascendant membership to Obsidian Portal by Obsidian Portal for second place
a 3 month Ascendant membership to Obsidian Portal by Obsidian Portal for third place
a one-year PDF subscription to Kobold Quarterly by Open Design
a $50 voucher for the winner by Otherworld Miniatures
a $30 voucher for second place by Otherworld Miniatures
a $15 voucher for third place by Otherworld Miniatures
a $15 voucher for fourth place by Otherworld Miniatures
a first print copy of RC2 The Screaming Temple by Pacesetter Games & Simulations
a first print copy of RC3 Eruptor’s Vengeance by Pacesetter Games & Simulations
a copy of the Treasure Awaits! boxed set by Precis Intermedia
a US$50 voucher by ProFantasy Software
a set of Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords dice by Q-Workshop
a set of black elven dice by Q-Workshop
a few extra dice by Q-Workshop
a copy of the Fantastic Maps: The Dragon's Lair PDF by Rite Publishing
a copy of the Feats 101 PDF by Rite Publishing
a copy of the Restless Souls PDF by Rite Publishing
a custom black and white character illustration by the RPG Character Portraits artist of the winner’s choice
a copy of the Slave Queen Of The Ruined City PDF adventure from Scratch Factory
Thank you very much!
See also:
Information for One Page Dungeon Sponsors
Judges
Alex Schroeder, RPG category on his blog
Kenneth Harrison, The Rusty Battle Axe
Chris aka Pukako on rpg.net
Jeffrey Runokivi, There's a Bugbear in My Kitchen!
JB, B/X Blackrazor
Norman Harman Troll and Flame
Ravi Shankar aka ravells of the Cartographers' Guild
Judging
Judges will have one month to read all the submissions and another two weeks to discuss the result.
Here’s how we’ll determine the winners:
Every judge nominates twenty entries and proposes a category for each.
We prepare a list of the entries that get three or more nominations. These are the nominations.
Every judge again nominates five entries from this smaller list.
All entries getting three nominations or more are the judge’s picks.
We try to make sure that every judge has at least three of his picks in the final list. Judge with an eclectic taste may find that not many of their nominations made it into this list. As the idea is to not only reflect popular opinion but to also capture some of the more eclectic entries out there, judges may add additional submission to the judge’s picks until we feel that every judge is well represented. We’ll try to aim for three entries per judge.
Based on the categories proposed in the first step, we try to assign a category to each entry on the list.
The result is our release candidate 1. Judges gets to check whether their favorites are still on the list.
We fix omissions and rename categories until we’re happy. This is our release candidate 2.
We revise everything until we’re happy. We have our list of winners!
Each judge gets to nominate their favorite entry for a prize.
We publish our list of winners!
Somebody puts together a PDF of all the entries and a PDF of all the winners. We’ll make these PDFs available for download at no cost.

First Night of BASHcon

2010-02-19T22:50:00.000-08:00

I have to say, BASHcon has seen better days. I got the impression that things were not all that well organized. I paid for the special 25th anniversary membership to the con. We were supposed to receive a custom die with that and I was lucky to get a plastic holder for my ID card.
Worse showing in the exhibitors department than last year. Largest and only real games shop in town not there this time...confusion over details. Aaron Williams also not in attendance...big draw back as far as I am concerned. Exhibit hall half the size of last year...and it was small then. I dunno what the hel is going on with these kids. It is almost as though no planning or preparation went into the thing at all. Seriously. Honesty, if tomorrow does not improve the situation I do not think that I will be back to BASHcon. Disappointed. Very disappointed.

Six days 'till BASHcon.

2010-02-13T21:50:00.000-08:00

BASHcon starts next Friday and I am really looking forward to it. It is always a good time with a couple thousand gamers from the local area and abroad. This year is the 25th anniversary of this three day con, and back in the day there were two in Toledo. The other was TOLcon and has since gone the way of the Dodo. At BASHcons past they had film festivals, games, lectures and round table discussions and even guests like Poul Anderson (sadly I missed that one!) These days there are no more film festivals, but there will be gaming aplenty, round table discussions and seminars about game design and if we are lucky enough to entice Aaron Williams up here with the lure of our German Pancakes we will be seeing him too. Always a good time talking to Mr. Williams.
So, there it is. I will be posting a report of my activities after the fact so you will all hear from me then.
On other fronts, my gaming group has not met in a couple weeks. I am kind of worried about that, as you all probably know the longer a group goes without playing the more likely it is that the group will disband. That would be unfortunate. I have a lot in store for them.

If you are out there listening, you guys, take heed and lets get it together!

Swords and Wizardry Game

2010-01-30T11:18:00.000-08:00

My gaming group rolled up their characters for my, as yet, unnamed S&W campaign last night. Interesting choices. The paladin and ranger players from the ToEE sessions decided to roll up twin Dwarfin Berserks. The DM of the ToEE is playing a Drow Necromancer and the cleric player is playing a Hobgoblin Assassin. Interesting choices really. This sandbox is going to be fun but a lot of work for me, but I have no problems with that. I already have a couple of locations for the area they are in. One of them is going to be the Grinding Gear (thank you Mr. Raggi!) Another location is going to be modeled after one of my favorite Robert Howard stories, the Tower of the Elephant. There will also be a bunch of ruins to explore and an enterence into the Underworld.
Basically this campaign world is one in upheval. The playable races basically get along well enough to co-operate because the world is being changed, slowly. There is cabal of 13 powerful outsiders that seeks to effect a change in the world in order to carve it up into 13 peices for their own use. The drow are fighting a civil war because of it, half of them support Lolth, one of the outsiders in the cabal and the other half do not, because they see that, however desireable the final effect might be for them...that it will change the world so much that no one will be able to survive it, not even the drow. So, thats the back story. The characters will be free to try to foil the plot, or not...as they desire. However, it will add some interesting events that will effect their lives in game.

What I like about this format is that it will not matter if all the players can show for each session. We will be able to play with whatever players show and have to make the best of it. It should be interesting. I have never done a sandbox style setting before, but I think that this one has potential.

On another front, one of my future projects will be a Swords and Wizardry setting for mythic India.
mmmmm, curry!

Shortcut to Mushrooms...

2010-01-30T11:10:00.000-08:00

Last night we finished the Temple of Elemental Evil. With the help of the Golden Skull of death or whatever that thing was called, we gained access to the secret lair of the Fugui Goddess...or Fungirl Goddess as she came to be known out of lip service to Politically correct rhetoric. It was a furious battle but in the end we were victorious. Soren (called "the Burninator") finished her off with a lightning bolt and the whole Temple began to shake. At this point my mantra was "Um...Guys...I think it's time to leave! No seriously, we have to leave" However, on the way out the paladin decieded that he wanted to pry some gems out of a throne and this summoned a demon. So, with the temple falling down around us we had to fight a demon. We eventually left, and made it back to the town of Hommlet where we were all heroes. The end. All in all, the ToEE was not what I thought it would be. It had its really good parts, but there are also some real problems with the way it is writen. In the final analysis we all had a hek of a lot of fun.
Now, on to my Swords and Wizardry game.

A Ten Pin for Your Thoughts...

2010-01-28T18:56:00.000-08:00

Hey Kids,

I think that I am going to start reviewing more Old Schooly things in this blog. Anything will be...erm...game?! I am planning on reviewing games, modules, settings, miniatures (definately minis...particularly Otherworld!) and even music...if I can get a hold of a Tripod album (oh, also Darkest of the Hillside Thickets and other nerdcore/nerdrock).
All this with up to date game session reports on the wacky doings of my games group. You know who you are!

ONE PAGE DUNGEON CONTEST!

2010-01-25T18:21:00.000-08:00

Remember the One Page Dungeon Contest 2009? Good times!
Dates: Submission deadline is March 1, 0:00 GMT. Based on last year’s experience, judges will have one month to read all the submissions and another two weeks to discuss the result. Winners will be announced April 18, 0:00 GMT. A pitty this will be too late for International Traditional Gaming Week 2010!
Judges: I’m still looking one more judge! Last year we got a bit under 120 submissions. If you read four submissions every day, you will still need thirty days to read them all. Or looking at it another way, if you need ten minutes for each submission, you will spend a total of twenty hours reading. Last year we had less time, so I’m not worried. Interested? Let me know → kensanata@gmail.com!
Prizes: Do you have prizes to donate? Let me know → kensanata@gmail.com!
Submissions: Here’s how to submit your entry.
Participants create a One Page Dungeon.
Submitting a dungeon to the contest releases it under the Creative Common Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license with credit to the contest participant.
The submission must have a name, an author, a map, a key, a link to the license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) and no game stats.
A link to your blog, wandering monsters, random events, adventure background or introduction, and descriptions of tricks or traps are all optional.
One entry per participant. Participants may revise/replace their entries up until the end of contest, with the last revision counting as their official entry.
Submission must be mailed in PDF, Open Office, or Microsoft Word format to Alex Schröder → kensanata@gmail.com.
If you’re also hosting your submission elsewhere, you’re welcome to link to it from the One Page Dungeon Contest page.
If you’re not hosting your submission elsewhere, your entry may be hosted on the contest site.
Process: Here’s how we’ll determine the winners.
Every judge nominates twenty entries and proposes a category for each.
We prepare a list of the entries that get three or more nominations. These are the nominations.
Every judge again nominates five entries from this smaller list.
All entries getting three nominations or more are the judge’s picks.
We try to make sure that every judge has at least three of his picks in the final list. Judge with an eclectic taste may find that not many of their nominations made it into this list. As the idea is to not only reflect popular opinion but to also capture some of the more eclectic entries out there, judges may add additional submission to the judge’s picks until we feel that every judge is well represented. We’ll try to aim for three entries per judge.
Based on the categories proposed in the first step, we try to assign a category to each entry on the list.
The result is our release candidate 1. Judges gets to check whether their favorites are still on the list.
We fix omissions and rename categories until we’re happy. This is our release candidate 2.
We revise everything until we’re happy. We have our list of winners!
If we have prizes (we currently don’t) each judge gets to nominate their favorite entry for a prize.
We publish our list of winners!
Somebody puts together a PDF of all the entries and a PDF of all the winners. We’ll make these PDFs available for download at no cost.

Review: the Grinding Gear by James Raggi (with some stuff about Death Frost Doom as well)

2010-01-24T19:47:00.000-08:00

I bought the Grinding Gear mostly because I have been reading the Blog at the Lamentations of the Flame Princess and I really like the way that James Raggi thinks. I am not going into the details of what is in these two mods, because I do not like spoilers. However, I will say that they are very well put togeather. The art is evokative of the mood in both cases and I rather like it. I have read some review that say that they do not like the art, but I disagree. Art is a rather subjective thing. I remember, back in the day, that I heard a lot of people did not like Erol Otis either, mostly because of its stylized nature. But to my mind that is a plus rather than a minus. Art is all about mood and the art fits the mood.
As to the contents of both...yes, they are very tricky dungeons...very very tricky. However, the kinds of people who think about what they are doing with they go adventuring and who look before they leap will be able to get through both of these trials.
To my mind I think of both of these publications stronly evoke the Old School asthetic. In every way. I plan on useing both as toys in my little sandbox and will look forward with glee to see my players confront them with gusto.
I look forward to many more publications from the Lamentations of the Flame Princess.