You're probably going to see a lighter-than-normal posting schedule from me in the next few weeks. I've got three big gaming projects that are all coming due at the same time, and my free time and creative energies are going to be put into them:Adventures Dark and Deep: A Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore. I'm expecting the rest of the artwork to come in June, and then need to set the final version of the book up for the printer. It's supposed to ship in July, and I should have no problem making that date, as long as the art comes in on time (which...
Tuesday, 29 May 2012
Monday, 28 May 2012
Sunday, 27 May 2012
A bit of a departure this time; this is a review of a game that came out this year rather than one that I bought back in the 1970's or 80's, but which has quickly vaulted into the ranks of my favorites. I had the opportunity this weekend to spend a few pleasant days with old friends playing board games. This is something of a ritual that my college buddy Bob has organized for the past 19 years at his house every Memorial Day weekend, and it's usually...
Thursday, 24 May 2012
Takeaway: If you like 3.x, you're going to like DnD Next.This game is an incredibly obvious response to the success of Pathfinder, and a repudiation of 4E (not that I think that's necessarily a Bad Thing). I'm not seeing a lot of mechanical throwbacks to 1E (or 0E, for that matter), but the "background" and "theme" things for the characters are evocative of character kits from 2E. There is a goodly amount of OSR "feel" to the books, though, that's hard to put my finger on. With rules sections in the DM book with headings like "Ignoring the Dice",...
Wednesday, 23 May 2012
Well here we are.The final corrected versions of the maps are now all gathered into a .rar file (link to the right in the "Free Resources" section). It's pretty big-- took me four minutes to upload on a cable connection, but I think it makes more sense than keeping them all out there individually. These final versions of the maps have a few more tweaks than just correcting the colors of the oceans; a few other things here and there jumped out at...
Tuesday, 22 May 2012
And here we are, the last map of western Oerik. The new map is in the lower-right corner below; I'm including the surrounding maps so you can see how they all fit together.As usual, the link to the largest size file is off to the right.One thing I particularly want to mention is the source of the Great River Ithru; I envision it as an enormous spring gushing out of the mountains, with its origins either in the Elemental Plane of Water or the Underoerth,...
I can't believe that I've come so far so fast with this project. Today I present the eastern half of the Barbarian Seameast, but I also made some adjustments to the three adjacent maps as well (mostly consisting of making the deserts just a tad less empty). The newest map is the one in the lower-right, below:As always, click to embiggen, and download links for the large-sized files are off to the right in the "Free Downloads" section. Next up, one...
Monday, 21 May 2012
Friday, 18 May 2012
The circuit of western Oerik is almost complete. My latest map covers the southwestern corner of the great continent; Ishtarland, half of the Barbarian Seameast, and the Red Kingdom. I've also made major revisions to the Drazen's Horde map (the one in the upper-right position, below), based on feedback regarding placement of some of the lands from the Chroniques de la Lune Noire. The Red Kingdom has a unique sort of terrain, to indicate the extent...
Thursday, 17 May 2012
So you think the "Rebel Yell" of the Civil War was something akin to "yeeee-haaaa!!!"Think again.Here's the Museum of the Confederacy explaining how they went about recreating the actual rebel yell: And here's how that knowledge was applied by modern reenactors:Both segments take a total of about 10 minutes to watch, and I think it's really worth it (but then again, I am a creature of admittedly eclectic standards). You can purchase the CD mentioned he...
Wednesday, 16 May 2012
At long last, another in my series of Darlene-style maps covering western Oerik. This time, we cover the Tharquish Empire and the remainder of the Tharquish Dominions. I envision the region as a Greco-Roman type place (which is attested to in the Chroniques de la Lune Noire, which shows a decidedly Classical Tharquatis about to get taken out by a tidal wave; but that's okay, because it's no more canonical than Tharizdun destroying Oerth in the Gord...
Sunday, 13 May 2012
Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And onto this, Conan, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!Conan the Barbarian, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, came upon the world this weekend, 30 years ago. I know for me it was a seminal moment, not only because I was a huge fan of the Conan stories (albeit the bastardized versions that...
Saturday, 12 May 2012
A question to the audience.Do different styles of combat require different combat mechanics? Or is it possible for a single game system to portray widely disparate forms of combat coherently and in a way that make them workable against one another?Consider the following examples:The question becomes, can a single combat system handle all those disparate types of combat? Should any single system be expected to be able to handle them adequately, or do different genres (or sub-genres) require unique combat systems? And, of course, the other question...
Please read this post over at RetroRoleplaying. I realize that times are tough for everyone, but if you have anything you can spare to help out Ms. Boomgarden, even $5 or $10 could help. Plus you'll be helping out the RetroRoleplaying cancer fund, which has been one of the Worthy Causes in the upper-left corner of my own blog for some time, now.UPDATE: The effort has so far raised a total of $1700 or so out of the $2500 that is needed. Thanks to everyone who has donated, and another imprecation to those who might have $10 or $20 that they can lend...
Friday, 11 May 2012
What has 5,512 backers, $923,680 in pledges, and weighs 14+ pounds?The Ogre Designer's Edition game.Steve Jackson Games shattered all sorts of records with their ludicrously successful Kickstarter campaign, which concluded mere minutes ago.Congratulations to the entire team over at Steve Jackson Games. I can't wait to get this baby in my han...
From the fine folks at Inkwell Ideas who brought us Dungeonographer, Hexographer, and the Coat of Arms Visual Designer comes... Cityographer:You set some preferences for the city you want (technology level, population size, whether the city has a river, if it is on the coast, etc.) on a setup screen and it will randomly generate an entire village or city for you. (You can also start with a blank map/city.) Not only will the program generate...
Tuesday, 8 May 2012
To quote Gurney Halleck from Dune, "Gods, what a monster!"I gave my first impressions as to the content when I got my hands on the pdf, but now that I have the physical hard copy in my hand, it's... BIG. Has the heft and feel of a high school biology book. The glossy cover doesn't hurt that impression any, either.I really hope someone is going to run this at Dexcon this July. I'd love to take it for a spin from the player's point of vi...
As my regular readers will know, I recently concluded a successful Kickstarter campaign for Adventures Dark and Deep: A Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore. The book is a version of my ADD game presented as a supplement for other 1E-compatible games. I learned a few things about Kickstarter from the experience, and thought I'd share.First off, Geek Industrial Complex has a great three-part analysis of crowdsourcing for RPGs, here, here, and here. Excellent...
Monday, 7 May 2012
I thought I'd knock out some of the easier ones this time. As before, these were done using the wonderful Coat of Arms Visual Designer by Inkwell Ideas. The images are all in .png format, so they should scale pretty well. Ice Barbarians:Frost Barbarians:Grand Duchy of Geoff:Great Kingdom of Aerdy:Narwell:The Theocracy of the Pale:Snow Barbarians:County of Ul...
Sunday, 6 May 2012
Steve Jackson may have just made you very, very happy.If they hit the $700,000 mark for the Ogre Kickstarter, they'll do one for Car Wars.I will now go on record and say that I will support a Car Wars kickstarter at exactly the same level that I'm supporting Ogre.So if you're a Car Wars fan who've been a bit put off by the attention that Ogre's getting, now's your chance! Can Steve Jackson get another $117,000 in 4 days? Perhaps the Car Wars fans...
One of the things I think is lacking in most post-holocaust RPGs is the "fish out of water" element. That is, most such games, like Gamma World, have the player characters come having grown up in the setting, many with mutations, etc. I think such settings are made for a scenario which envisions people from the modern era somehow being thrust into the post-apocalyptic world, and having to explore it and deal with the changes the cataclysm has wrought.Several...
Saturday, 5 May 2012
I'm not a big fan of "consensus".I think, especially in creative endeavors, that following a single driving vision is preferable to having something designed by a committee. Some folks are going to like it, some folks aren't, and that's okay. It's the philosophy I followed with Castle of the Mad Archmage and Adventures Dark and Deep. I wrote those for myself, and if folks wanted to read it as well, that was great.I noticed something the other day when going through some of my Greyhawk materials. In the late 1990's, they stopped having author credits....
Friday, 4 May 2012
With as few spoilers as possible; any spoilers will be hidden through the magic of inviso-text (highlight to read).The Avengers is probably the most anticipated film of the summer (with all due apologies to Dark Knight Rises and Prometheus). It's going to make an absurd amount of money, and it's garnered something on the order of 85% positive ratings at Rotten Tomatoes. I got to see it on Friday with my family, in 3D (no IMAX).In a word, it was a...
This was a great way to start my morning (no sarcasm intended at all). Apparently, Dave Arneson's personal collection of games and notes from his days as a designer were left in a storage unit after his death. Eventually, they were put up for auction, and found their way to The Dragon's Trove, which specializes in auctioning exactly that sort of material. From their website:In early 2011, The Dragon's Trove had to chance to buy what is arguably one of the two most important collections of gaming materials every offered for sale, the one belonging...
Thursday, 3 May 2012
Big news coming out of the phenomenally successful Ogre Designer's Edition kickstarter campaign. According to Steve Jackson in Update #17:The $450,000 goal is . . . Somehow, some way, we WILL bring back the miniatures. Maybe resin, maybe metal. I have already gotten some interesting responses from custom casters.Well, boys and girls, the count now stands at a staggering $465,779 (of an initial goal of merely $20,000, I might add). So, to quote...
I came across this site today, and I'm loving it! It's a collection of "What if?" movie posters by Peter Stults; taking films we know and (mostly) love and turning them on their heads with new actors, directors, time periods, and of course wonderfully retro movie posters. Here are just two-- there are tons more on the site, and some of them are available for sale as prints! I might just get the Fritz Lang "2001: Odyssee Im Weltraum" poster if it...
Wednesday, 2 May 2012
Way back in the 1970's, Marvel was putting out a magazine called Planet of the Apes. In addition to running comic adaptations of the five Planet of the Apes films (at that time), they ran original stories that were only loosely associated with what at the time was Apes canon. The longest-running and most intriguing of these original stories was a serial called Terror on the Planet of the Apes.The plot roamed widely, and included quite a few science...
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