For most of the latter half of the twentieth century, animation studio Hanna-Barbera absolutely dominated television animation. They're best remembered for shows like the Flintstones, Scooby Doo, and the Smurfs, but they had a large stable of adventure-type shows that were full of action, had humor without being wacky, and could definitely serve as inspiration for the game master in need of a quick jolt. The full list of H-B cartoon shows is massive....
Friday, 31 May 2013
Thursday, 30 May 2013
Bestiary Kickstarter in the home stretch!
Posted on 08:24 by rajrani

As of right now we're about 60 hours from the end of the Adventures Dark and Deep™ Bestiary Kickstarter (it ends Saturday night). About $9,500 has been pledged, which means more than 1/3 of the 900 monsters in the book will be illustrated.I've got to say, that is an enormous accomplishment and I'd like to thank everyone who has backed the project. Kickstarter being Kickstarter, I'm sure we'll see a bump at the end, and I'd be thrilled if we...
Gamers helping Oklahoma tornado victims
Posted on 07:15 by rajrani
Here's a great story from io9.com:The Merciful Cousins is an order of cavaliers for the Pathfinder role-playing game that functions as a sort of D&D Red Cross. Now, if you buy the PDF that details how to use them in your D&D campaign, you can help the actual Red Cross bring aid to Oklahoma tornado victims.The Merciful Cousins (aka the Masons of Recovery) were created by Super Genius Games, and the book was written by RPG journeyman and Oklahoma native Owen K.C. Stephens. Artist Wayne Reynolds donated a sketch for the book's cover. The PDF...
Wednesday, 29 May 2013
RIP Jack Vance
Posted on 17:38 by rajrani
Legendary fantasy and science fiction author Jack Vance has passed away at the age of 96.Fans of Dungeons and Dragons and role-playing games in general will surely remember him as the inspiration for so-called "Vancian Magic", wherein magic spells, once cast, leave the mind of the caster and must be re-memorized.However, his contribution to both gaming and the world of science fiction and fantasy writing is enormous both in quantity and quality. He is known for the Dying Earth, yes, but there were many, many more. Lyonesse, Space Opera, the Demon...
What should come next?
Posted on 13:41 by rajrani
If you cast your gaze to the upper-left corner of the blog, you'll see a new poll up there, asking opinions as to what you'd like to see next. With the Adventures Dark and Deep™ Bestiary moving into the art stage, I'll have quite a chunk of writing time freed up. I'd like to get your opinion as to how best to fill it up. Nothing's binding, of course, but I'd like to get a sense from you guys.The first option is something I've talked about before; Adventures Great and Glorious™. It would cover rules for large-scale warfare, large-scale economics,...
Tuesday, 28 May 2013
Thoughts occasioned by OOTS #890
Posted on 06:53 by rajrani

If you're a reader of Order of the Stick, you've hopefully read the last couple of strips, including the latest one, #890. If you haven't, go ahead and do so, because this won't make any sense unless you have.All done? Okay.See now, in a real game, this is the point where the players collectively leap across the table and force the DM's dice down his throat through a funnel until his abdomen ruptures from within.Imagine this: After six months of...
Wizards won't have a booth at GenCon
Posted on 06:12 by rajrani
According to this article over at io9.com, "Wizards will not have a presence on the Gen Con exhibit floor" (the exhibitor's map at the GenCon site confirms this).Wow. Nothing. I realize they're trying to lay low in order to build excitement for D&D Next, you'd think they'd have something there to, I dunno, hump M:tG or something. This is the 20th anniversary of Magic: The Gathering, for crying out loud. You'd think they'd want to make a splash with that other than just tournaments.They will be running events, and are an official sponsor of...
Sunday, 26 May 2013
Saturday, 25 May 2013
A Setting Book That Would Hit a Few Buttons
Posted on 19:14 by rajrani

So I was driving home today and was struck by an idea for a setting book. It's something that would definitely hit a few buttons, among OSR types in particular.The idea would be a "grand campaign" book, akin to The Great Pendragon Campaign, which would advance the timeline of the setting 25 years or so. So that's one button; I know a lot of folks don't like "advance the setting" things at all, and some do. (Please don't turn the comments into "advancing...
Friday, 24 May 2013
Thoughts on Dragonspear Castle
Posted on 11:03 by rajrani

So the announcement about the first D&D Next adventure, Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, has hit the blogs, and there is a bit of buzz going on around it. They also seem to be cementing their relationship with Forbes, with a spiffy article all about it.Erik Tenkar isn't pleased (to say the least) that it's being offered as a GenCon-only offering. Meaning, you can pre-order the adventure, but there is no shipping option. You must be at GenCon this...
Tuesday, 21 May 2013
Wikipedia is the DMs Friend: Medieval Demographics
Posted on 13:11 by rajrani

Most (A)D&D worlds are generally sparse in population, with but a single village in an entire 30-mile hex, if that. Many find that sort of emptiness unsatisfying from an historical perspective, and seek to beef up their worlds' population accordingly.Many are probably already familiar with S. John Ross's excellent Medieval Demographics Made Easy page. In it, he crunches a bunch of numbers and comes up with likely numbers of people, occupations,...
Original Art Reward Now Available
Posted on 07:56 by rajrani
Thanks to the generosity of one of our artists, there is a new reward level now available for the Adventures Dark and Deep™ Bestiary Kickstarter:ORIGINAL ART SPONSOR: You get your name listed in the Bestiary as the sponsor of a particular monster illustration. In addition, you get a hardcover and pdf copy of the Bestiary, and your name in the back of the book as a supporter. PLUS, you get the original version of your sponsored piece of art!There are only five of these rewards available, and we're asking $145 (you're in essence paying $35 to sponsor...
Monday, 20 May 2013
Forgive my gloating...
Posted on 12:43 by rajrani

I've been collecting books and other products relating to the World of Greyhawk pretty much since there was such a thing to collect. So as you might imagine, there are very few lacunae in my collection. Today, I filled one of those lacunae with something rare and wondrous. It's a graphic novel called Vecna Hand of the Revenant by Iron Hammer Graphics, and tells the story of Vecna's early days in the ancient past of the Flanaess. It came out...
Saturday, 18 May 2013
On Intelligent Magic Items
Posted on 20:44 by rajrani

Even back in the very earliest days of my RPGing career, it never made all that much sense to me that the only sorts of magic items that could be intelligent were swords. Perhaps the most famous intelligent magic item in fantasy literature, The One Ring, bucked that particular restriction:__________The One RingForged by the Dark Lord Sauron many centuries ago, the One Ring is filled with a portion of his malignant will. It has an INT of 17, an Ego...
Bestiary update: 2 weeks to go, let's get it to 300 pictures
Posted on 07:45 by rajrani
Hey all! Just wanted to note that today marks the two week mark before the end of the Kickstarter campaign for the Bestiary. Right now we're only about $500 away from getting one third of all the monsters illustrated. If you haven't done so already, I'd really encourage you to back the book. The 900 monsters are already a given -- the book itself is already written -- now we're going for illustrations, and the more pictures we get, the more a thing of beauty the book will become.900 monsters in one book. Almost all of the monsters from the original...
Friday, 17 May 2013
Game Masters Toolkit Now Available!
Posted on 06:52 by rajrani

The second of the core rulebooks for Adventures Dark and Deep™ is now available! The Game Masters Toolkit gives a ton of tools that the game master can use to help run his games, and almost everything is generic enough to be applicable to any sort of OSR-compatible rules. Here's just a few highlights:Guidelines on what sort of races (sub-races, underground races, etc.) can be included in a campaign, and the potential impact of the choices you makeNPC...
Thursday, 16 May 2013
Friday, 10 May 2013
Remembering Ray Harryhausen
Posted on 06:19 by rajrani

Ray Harryhausen had a huge influence on me as a kid growing up. I've been a fan of science fiction and fantasy for as long as I can remember, since at least the age of 5, and Ray Harryhausen's films were a regular part of my watching and reading diet.The "reading" part may seem a little odd, but remember that, back in the 1970's, before cable was ubiquitous, and in the early 80's, when VCR's and VHS tapes were still something of a novelty and pricey,...
Thursday, 9 May 2013
Just think what the dwarves could do...
Posted on 09:28 by rajrani

I was struck by this article over at io9, and my thoughts immediately raced to Moria, the Kingdom Under the Mountain, and Nogrod. Imagine, if we puny humans can achieve such a feat in a little over a century, what the dwarves, masters of stonecraft that they are, might achieve in the span of half a millennium.Where a human might consider 75 a good run age-wise, 500 would be so for a mountain dwarf. That means a single generation of dwarves can...
200 Monster Pictures and Counting!
Posted on 06:24 by rajrani

We've hit another milestone on the Adventures Dark and Deep™ Bestiary Kickstarter-- 200 monsters will now get illustrations, as well as the cover and editing for the ADD Bestiary. I can't thank you all enough-- I know much of that comes from you all mentioning the Kickstarter to your friends, on blogs, and on various gaming forums. Thanks to you all!With a little over three weeks to go, we've got a real shot at getting illustrations for all 900 monsters...
Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Review: Iron Man 3 (Spoiler Free)
Posted on 18:22 by rajrani

I saw the latest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe series, Iron Man 3. I saw the standard version; no 3D or IMAX. I'm going to make an effort not to put in any spoilers here, so pardon my vagueness.Bottom line, it was terrific.Robert Downey Jr. was, as always, absolutely pitch-perfect as Iron Man. If every actor has a single role for which they were destined, this is his, as Robert Preston was Professor Harold Hill and Leonard Nimoy was Spock....
Ten more days for Domains at War
Posted on 12:03 by rajrani

Ten days to go for the Domains at War Kickstarter! I've got the original ACKS rules, and their unique integration of domain management is impressive to say the least. The next book in the series, Domains at War, explores mass battle in several different ways. Can't wait to see this one, and I'd highly recommend it if you're at all interested in RPGing in a larger scale that mere dungeon crawli...
New D&D Movie "Far Along in Development"
Posted on 06:59 by rajrani
Well here's something I'd heard rumors about for a while, but nothing concrete until now. Apparently, the next Dungeons & Dragons movie is "far along in development" by Warner Brothers, and has writers and producers already hard at work:The studio is actually quite far along in the development of the project, as it will use a script by Wrath Of The Titans and Red Riding Hood scribe and Frank Darabont protege David Leslie Johnson. ... Given the heightened interest in sword, sorcery, chivalry and cool creatures within Warner Bros with the...
Tuesday, 7 May 2013
RIP Ray Harryhausen
Posted on 15:42 by rajrani

Stop-motion animation and special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen is dead at 92.This is particularly sad for me, as I grew up on Mr. Harryhausen's stop-motion cinematography when I was growing up. My own personal "Appendix N" would be stuffed to the gills with films like the Golden Voyage of Sinbad, It Came from Beneath the Sea, Jason and the Argonauts, and First Men in the Moon.The images are definitely not in the uncanny valley; you can tell they're...
Sunday, 5 May 2013
100th Anniversary of HG Wells' "Little Wars"
Posted on 16:00 by rajrani
The New York Times has a fascinating article on the legacy of what is arguably the first "popular" wargame; HG Wells' Little Wars. Here are some particularly interesting quotes, but it's well worth reading the whole article.While miniature war-gaming has never been able to claim a place in the mainstream, it has influenced almost everything we think of as gaming today.The game designer Gary Gygax, in a foreword to a 2004 edition of the book, credits “Little Wars” with influencing his own set of rules for medieval-period miniature wars, Chainmail...
Friday, 3 May 2013
May the 4th Be With You
Posted on 21:00 by rajrani
__________Also, please don't forget the Adventures Dark and Deep Bestiary Kickstarter going on right now! 900 monsters, suitable for most OSR-type games, all under one cover. Can you help get us to having an illustration for each and every o...
Whither Adventures Dark and Deep?
Posted on 19:01 by rajrani

There's a lot going on right now, so I thought it would be a good idea to recap where things stand with Adventures Dark and Deep...The Kickstarter campaign for the Bestiary proceeds apace. As of this writing, we are at $5,333, which is enough to get us 153 illustrations, the cover, and the editing. Woot! Since it's only been a couple of days, I'm very hopeful that we'll get much closer to the goal of having a custom illustration for each one of the...
Thursday, 2 May 2013
My Dream Campaign
Posted on 16:25 by rajrani

This month's RPG Blog Carnival theme is "campaigns I'd like to run". I've been lucky to have been able to run some fantastic campaigns in my time, but there is something that I would love to be able to do that just hasn't jelled for a variety of reasons.My dream campaign isn't based on some outre concept, or weird and wild setting. There are no mutant elves with mohawks riding down Cthulhu-worshiping orcs with steampunk cyborg parts or anything....
Wednesday, 1 May 2013
Adventures Dark and Deep Bestiary Kickstarter now live!
Posted on 07:50 by rajrani
Well, here we are: the last of the core rulebooks for Adventures Dark and Deep™. The Kickstarter campaign for the Bestiary is now live. What a wonderful trip it's been!The goal to get the book out is pretty modest; $1,500. But that's for a book with little internal art.For every $25 that's raised past the initial goal, one monster gets illustrated. There are around 900 monsters in this sucker. That's a lot of art.Please check out the Kickstarter page, and help spread the word far and wide. Even if you don't play Adventures Dark and Deep™, you're...
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