Here's wishing a happy and prosperous new year to a...
Saturday, 31 December 2011
We're coming down to the home stretch in terms of the Tamarian starter army! This time up we have a battlegroup of feudal spearmen and a battlegroup of crossbowmen (foot, this time, rather than mounted). First we have a second BG of spearmen:And here they are side by side with the first BG of spearmen that were painted to kick off the whole Field of Glory armies project in the first place. I can't wait to see the whole army arrayed! Here's the battlegroup...
Thursday, 29 December 2011
Wednesday, 28 December 2011
Just wanted to quickly dash this one off; these guys were a bit difficult to paint, with all the bags and the poses they had. (Again, I'm going with not painting the demi-humans in any of the national colors, since they serve as auxiliaries and semi-independent vassals in armies across the continent.) But painted is painted, and I'm on to more spearmen, or maybe the crossbowmen, tomorrow. If I'm lucky, I'll have the whole Tamarian basic army completed...
Tuesday, 27 December 2011
Oh...Sweet...REASON...Pen-and-paper RPG companies have nothing on console video game companies when it comes to-- not only bad customer relations, but-- incredibly bad, nay, bad-of-Biblical Proportions public relations.First, we see the string of emails between "Dave", an innocent customer who pre-ordered some sort of game controller that was intended to be a Christmas present, and Ocean Marketing, whence he was trying to get some idea of when the...
One of the great things about the holidays is, well, that you don't have to work. And what does one do when one isn't working? Paint! (Well, that and write and write and write...)This time I got through two battlegroups for my Field of Glory figures for my Erseta campaign. First up is a BG of halfling slingers (in FoG-speak: Superior, Unprotected, Undrilled, Light foot - Sling), which will be useable as auxiliaries in just about any army that takes...
Monday, 26 December 2011
Over at the BRW Games™ website, I've started a new blog called "From the Designer's Desk" that's going to focus solely on stuff that is or will be published, including Adventures Dark and Deep™, the World of Erseta Fantasy Setting™, etc. Please feel free to add it to your blogrolls, and enjoy the opening salvo, which gives an optional rule for human sacrifice...http://www.brwgames.com/bl...
Saturday, 24 December 2011
Not the second session we've played by a long shot, but my second post. I'm getting better about posting more regularly!The players have been concentrating on how to get back to the lost dwarven city of Glitterdark. Having finally found the place via a lengthy overland journey, they zipped to the town of Ritterheim through a magical gate found therein only to discover the trip was one-way.The party decided to have their gnome thief give the alley where the gate deposited them a thorough investigation. In order to avoid discovery, the two clerics...
Thursday, 22 December 2011
Wednesday, 21 December 2011
Tuesday, 20 December 2011
Heraldry as practiced in courts and kingdoms of humankind features three basic types of tincture; metal, color, and fur. Of metals there are only two; argent (silver/white) and Or (gold/yellow). The basic rule (although there are exceptions known as "arms of enquiry") is that metals should never be placed upon metals in a coat of arms, and colors never be placed upon colors, thus almost all human arms contain either white or yellow."Bronze"In dwarven...
Monday, 19 December 2011
I had a day off from work, but didn't have the whole day to paint, as I spent my morning finishing up our Christmas shopping. I did, however, manage to belt out a BG of Tamarian javelin-men (light foot) in the time it took to watch two episodes of "The Wild, Wild West" on DVD, so a shade under 2 hours. These guys actually come from the Esquerdalloc region in the southern tip of the count...
Saturday, 17 December 2011
Well, I did say last time I'd have a "little" something different. ;-) 5 hours or so elapsed, and I have labored to produce a complete battle group of dwarven axemen. Obviously, since Field of Glory isn't a fantasy game (yet... they are talking about a fantasy supplement, but nothing has been announced, let alone released), this is a bit of a kluge, but I see these gents as heavy foot, average, drilled, armored, heavy weapon. That puts them at 10...
Friday, 16 December 2011
Thursday, 15 December 2011
In the comments accompanying my previous post about the prospect of 5E being on the horizon, the question of whether or not such a thing would be historically atypical came up. Well, I'm a numbers man, so here are some numbers. I'm deliberately omitting the basic/expert/etc. pathway in the interests of clarity; including them doesn't materially alter the point. 1974: 0E (White box edition)1977: 1E (Monster Manual first published)1989: 2E (Core Rulebooks first published)2000: 3E (Core Rulebooks first published)2003: 3.5E (Core Rulebooks first published)2008:...
Conventional wisdom says that WotC is working on 5E. I've done a little digging, and I'm officially agreeing with CW. Here's why.When Monte Cook returned to WotC back in September, there was a bit of buzz as to why he did. He wasn't talking, and it doesn't seem like he's working on any big 4E related projects. There was even outright speculation that he was brought back specifically to work on 5E. As Mike Mearls said in announcing Cook's return:"It's now time to focus much more on the future of the game. Monte has an unmatched design pedigree...
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
It's time for the annual Christmas Layoffs at Wizards of the Coast!And this time the cheerful elves at WotC have given coal in the stockings of two guys who should be well-known to the OSR. Steve Winter and Rich Baker.Steve Winter's been with TSR/WotC for 30 years. His credits include editing Star Frontiers, co-creating Marvel Super Heroes, editing the gold World of Greyhawk boxed set, editing the original Oriental Adventures book, and a slew of...
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
Monday, 12 December 2011
Sunday, 11 December 2011
Back in late July, I received a copy of the first book in a new series of fantasy novels called the Ancient Blades Trilogy (which I reviewed here). The author was kind enough to send me the next two books in the series as well, and I just finished the last one today. The author, David Chandler, is a member of the New York Red Box campaign in NYC. It helped that at the time I was looking for a new fantasy series to start, and Chandler's trilogy fit...
Saturday, 10 December 2011
Today marks the one year anniversary of the beginning of the open playtest for Adventures Dark and Deep. For those who might not know, Adventures Dark and Deep is my attempt to see what the world's most popular role-playing game might have looked like if its inventor had been allowed to continue developing it, rather than leaving TSR in 1985. I don't have any insider knowledge; there are no secret notebooks in my possession. Rather, the game is based...
Another six hours well spent this afternoon-- a battlegroup of the mounted chivalry of Tamaria. For these figures I went with a different painting scheme than my previous two efforts.Rather than having them all wear the livery of Tamaria itself, the knights are decorated in their individual coats of arms, and their horses are painted to match. Those with penants mounted on their lances have those done in the purple of Tamaria, with a few white...
Friday, 9 December 2011
Just a quick thought that I'll hopefully be able to expand on later. While preparing some Field of Glory army lists for a few of the nations in my Erseta campaign, I was stuck by just how useful this information was going to be in my ADD campaign, and how I was able to give the lists some color by incorporating some of the material I had worked up for the role-playing game.As an example of the first, I now know that the Principality of Drachenpost has special troops known as "greatswordsmen"; foot soldiers who fight with two-handed swords. That's...
Thursday, 8 December 2011
Not you, Gentle Readers-- the title of this post is directed at one "fugaros" (who shall hereafter be known as "wise fugaros", for reasons which shall be apparent), who runs a new blog called "How Not to Run a Game Business" which you will find newly ensconced in my "Blogs I Read" list over to the left; I make a point of reading points of view with which I disagree. Keeps me young.With his wealth of experience running a just-broke-even lemonade espresso...
Just wanted to send out a reminder to all my fellow OSR-ifiles that we're planning to storm the gates of the Dreamation 2012 convention in beautiful Morristown, NJ on February 23-26, 2012.I'll be running Castle of the Mad Archmage, some old-school AH hex-and-counter wargame goodness, Ogre Miniatures, and hosting a discussion about the joys of older games. I will, of course, be pimping these games mercilessly at the con, and am happy to include others'...
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
I probably just gave my regular players a heart attack with the title of this post, but I'm referring to the general ways and means of starting new campaigns. A new campaign doesn't necessarily have to be in a new campaign world; many's the time I've started a new campaign in Greyhawk, for example.The question for the GM becomes one of information flow. Just how much knowledge should the players have about their starting locale? Especially in a sandbox style campaign, starting the players with zero or next-to-no information means they are going...
Monday, 5 December 2011
In the upper-right corner of the blog, from now through Christmas Eve, you'll find a poll inspired by one of my favorite films of all time; "A Christmas Carol". There have been scores of adaptations over the years, and I listed a few which I felt were either influential, popular, or just struck my fancy, but I made sure to leave room for "other" just in case someone just had to share some love for a version I've not included.Please feel free to share...
Sunday, 4 December 2011
I'm on a roll! Hot on the heels of my battlegroup of feudal spearmen, painted in the livery of the Kingdom of Tamaria from my own campaign, Erseta, comes a battlegroup consisting of four stands of mounted crossbowmen, similarly attired. Fortunately, my lack of expertise in photographing miniatures sort of hides my lack of expertise in painting them, but once again, they're painted, and based (sans flocking), and now I'm ready to move on to some of...
Saturday, 3 December 2011
James Raggi is selling pdf versions of a bunch of his stuff for just $1.35 until December 10. Looks like a great deal for those who might be on the fence regarding his products, and who want to dip their toe in and see what's what before committing to the hard copies. That includes the highly acclaimed Vornheim module and the "Grindhouse Edition" of his rules. I'd recommend taking advantage of this while it lasts. Avoid the bundles that are listed at RPGNow.com, though; they haven't been re-priced for the sale, and you're much better off getting...
Friday, 2 December 2011
The arms of Tamaria:purpure, a barulet argent,with a triangle argent, voidedWell, since my home campaign is now set in my homebrew setting of Erseta rather than the World of Greyhawk, my long-languished miniatures painting project has now been rechristened the Armies of Erseta. And what better way to try to jump start things than to belt out an entire battlegroup of spearmen?As long time readers may remember, I'm intending to use the Field of Glory...
Thursday, 1 December 2011
Earlier this month I set up a poll asking what different types of games readers played, either ever or within the last year. 219 people responded, and it must be remembered that web polls are not scientific measures. They are made up of what is known in the trade as self-selected respondents, and are good for stimulating discussion but little else. Certainly no firm conclusions can be drawn about RPG players in general, OSR players, or even the readers of this blog.That said, the results are interesting in their own way: Game type Ever...
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
Whew!I honestly underestimated the amount of work that would go into The Torian War when I first undertook to finish a complete game design in one month-- part of National Game Design Month (NaGaDeMon). But here we are and here it is, not in a finished state for public consumption by any means, but a complete playable game; a fact which I proved tonight, just in the nick of time.The map is printed in grayscale just for the sake of economics; at this...
Tuesday, 29 November 2011
I haven't played Champions since high school, but I remember it as a fine game for the genre (in my own case, it got displaced by TSR's Marvel Super Heroes, but that wasn't through any fault of Champions). There's a bit of bad news from Hero Games, publisher of Champions and the Hero system RPG, that they are laying off two of their full-time staff and remaining with staff of one. Even though I don't count myself as an avid fan, I hate to see...
Monday, 28 November 2011
I refer to a trip I undertook, braving the crossing of the mighty Hudson River, from New Jersey into the borough of Manhattan, to visit what has been the centerpoint of gaming in the greater New York City area for nigh on three decades or more; the Compleat Strategist.When I was growing up in the 1970's and early 1980's, the Compleat Strategist was a mind-blowing experience for me. I coaxed and conned my mother into taking me on a regular basis (usually...
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