Everything I Needed to Know, A Dragon Taught Me

This contest has taken a life of it's own. I may need to quote from some of the best comments to make sure the posters get the attention (and laughs) they deserve once this runs it's course.

I believe the poll ends sometime tomorrow. I should be able to announce the winners sometime tomorrow evening / sunday morning the latest.

It looks to be a two dragon race between Ullduthindor and Sully, but I do expect this to go down to the wire.

Soon the Dragon shall have a name ;)

Mini Review - Crusader # 25 (Castles & Crusades)

Sometimes you need to take a break.  Sometimes you need a reboot.  Crusader #25 seems to be both.  Long time readers of this blog should remember my previous posts of the Crusader Magazine under the auspices of James Ward.  I was far from kind.

Move ahead to now, and I am very suprised.  This is most certainly not the Crusader that I learned to louth and, lets face it, you probably felt the same with those issues too.

This is a new magazine.

Forget the News & Culture section.  Interesting, but all of the articles are dated.

The Gen Con article?  It's alright.

Dropping Into Adventure: An Unorthodox Approach to Beginning a Dungeon Crawl - my God!  A real article in an issue of Crusader!  It's decent too.

Movie, game and book reviews.  Eh, nothing special.

New Class for C&C:  The Pankratiast - A Western Monk.  This isn't the Crusader I knew and hated.  This is a real resource.  This is also a decent class.

A Stairway to the Gods.  An honest to God adventure.  In Crusader.  What is the world coming to?

Historical Footnotes.  Classic armor and weapons for Mesopotamia.  Nice illustrations.  Useful article.  In Crusader.  I'm still stunned.

There's some other stuff: fiction, a deity write up, new magic items, comics...

Useful, interesting, well written, articles that aren't just advertisements for the C&C product line... Crusader 25 is a keeper in my book.

A Tight Race in the Name the Nameless Dragon Poll

Holy Democracy Batman! We've had over 75 voters so far for the Name the Nameless Dragon Poll. Every morning I wake up and I'm very pleasantly surprised at the votes that have been tallied overnite.

The current vote leader is Sully with 20 votes, Feltothraxis in a close second place with 17 and Ullduthindor still in the race with 14 votes.

If you haven't cast your vote(s) yet, do so. The poor dragon needs a name and only YOU can choose it! ;)

Make 'Em Walk the Plank!

I just started reading the latest RPGNow.com newsletter. Sean Fannon (he who writes it) often has some nice thoughts he puts down on paper but this one has some priceless thoughts on e-book publishing. One piece really sticks out to me:

Forget pirates. Seriously. Forget about them entirely. There is NO percentage in wasting any time on the matter. Any stringent efforts you make to combat pirates will only serve to annoy and drive away your legitimate customers. The music industry first proved all of this for us, and our own experiences have born the truth out utterly. Measures that do not impact your customer experience in any way are reasonable; anything else hurts more than helps. The most important truth here is that legitimate customers WANT to be legitimate customers; pirates are NOT lost sales. :: end quote

I wonder if WotC will ever see things in this light?

Color Me Surprised!

The Name the Nameless Dragon Poll seems to have taken on a life of it's own.  At least 3 fellow bloggers are putting on a "get out the vote" movement.  Believe it or not, this is as much fun for me as it is for you.  Heck, I had to stop reading the blog at work for fear of laughing out loud at my desk.

All that and Conan O'Brien stopped by the building I work in trying to do a skit of sorts... he hijacked a Chinese Food delivery guy and was going to deliver the food himself.  Only problem is it was food going to my Lt. and myself.  She was very surprised, very annoyed and long story short we didn't get our order after she turned around and walked away.  Maybe I should have asked Conan for a few naming suggestions ;)

Holy Sheep!

Just curious, but has anyone found they needed a detailed write up of "sheep" in their campaign? I only ask because at the moment "Sheep" is in the top 5 hottest at RPG now. (on the right sidebar of this blog)

Those sheep can be really dangerous!

Sad Dragon Needs a Name

Just a quick update on the Naming the Nameless Dragon Poll. We currently have 43 readers that have cast votes with 3 days to go... nicely done! Keep 'em coming.

Feltothraxis has a bit of a "grass roots" movement behind it and is currently in the lead with 10 votes, followed by Sully, Tenkasarus and Ulduthindor in the top 3 spots.

With 3 days left to vote, it's still anyone's guess ;)

X-plorers Boxed Set X2

I got my 2 boxes of the X-plorers Boxed Set - #52 and #60 of 200.  Pretty damn cool!

One minor quibble - the maps are awesome but they don't want to lay flat - they were shipped rolled and want to stay such.  Folding them would have been painful, I'm sure, but I've already creased them trying to get them to stay flat.  Like I said, very minor complaint.

I noticed one typo - a reference to a "strength bonus" on page 30, which is obviously a hold over from the  OGL rules X-plorers is built upon (it should be referring to Physique, which is combination of Strength and Constitution).  I only noticed this as page 30 is the first page I opened at and started reading right away.

Anyhow, very high quality boxed set, but I expected nothing less from Brave Halfling Publishing.

The Power of Democracy in Naming a Dragon

I'm looking at the numbers for the Name the Nameless Dragon Poll and I'm pretty impressed. We have 27 readers that have voted thus far (if you haven't yet voted, please do!) and we have 4 days left in the voting process. Pretty cool!

As voters can cast more then 1 vote, the total votes cast is more then 27, but we can point out the vote leaders in the currently tight race:

Sully has 6 votes
Feltothraxis has 5 votes
Tenkasarus and Uldurthindor are tied for third with 4 votes each.

Every entry has at least one vote and the race is far from decided.

Vote and vote often (or at least once, but for all the choices that strike your fancy)

Free - OSRIC Player's Guide

Not to be confused the with the OSRIC Player's Reference, which came out a week and a half ago and lasted less then half that time before being pulled (improper use of copyrighted artwork), the OSRIC Player's Guide is the Player's Handbook for OSRIC.

Since OSRIC includes all of the AD&D 1e material that has been seen fit to re-image and print (both virtually and otherwise), the OSRIC Player's Guide strips out all of the stuff you might not want your players getting their grubby little hands on.

Pick a Name, Any Name!

I've been having run with the Unnamed Dragon, but I suspect you could tell that from the videos ;) The poll is up through the end of the week. You can vote for more then one name if you would like. The poster of the poll winning name gets the $10 OneBookShelf gift certificate. The runner up will be gifted a copy of Bean! The D2 RPG. Gotta love your beans.

Greg, he of boundless energy and limitless vision, has granted me a peek of the Alpha of his latest project. I'm going to try and get some reading in tonight after the contractor comes to give us an estimate on the kitchen renovations and some other stuff.

Fall Has Arrived

I don't know what the temperature was when I left for work this morning somewhere around 645, but it's now nearly 930 and it's only 53 degrees outside. Brrrr.

Since I'm still in the summer mindset, I'm wearing a short sleeve shirt. No jacket. Not I. No sir-ee!

I think I need to unpack one for tomorrow morning tho ;)

Sometimes You Have Luck, Sometimes Luck Has You

Sorry, I'm watching the Jets have some get their collective azzes handed to them, and it reminds me of the games where no matter what I did, the dice were against me.  If it was a board game, I knew when to admit defeat.  In an RPG session, those days were painful.  There was no bowing out, you were in it to the bitter end.  Bad rolls often led to bad playing, as the frustration was contagious.

As a Jets fan, I'm taking this for what it is:  an excuse to go to bed early tonight ;)

Unearthed, But Best Forgotten? Castle Perilous from West Wind Simulations (1980)

My God!  I rediscovered this earlier today.  I remember the cover, but the contents I don't recall at all.  Copyright 1980, this is one heck of a Fantasy Heartbreaker.  At this point in my life, I don't think I could get myself to read it even if it was food for the blog.

15 of it's 70 pages are devoted to a short story, which means the rules fit into 55.  But that's okay, as the author mentions they have books II to X awaiting printing and production.  Somehow I don't think I'd be able to track those down even if I wanted to.

It just uses 3D6 for combat resolution.  I can see some D&Disms in it as I flip around, but the system does seem fairly unique.  It's just that I'm much less into charts at this stage in my life then when I came into this hobby 30 odd years ago.

More Treasures Uncovered - Role-Playing Mastery and The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games

I never even realized that I owned Role-Playing Mastery by EGG himself and the Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games by Rick Swan.  TCGTRPGs was apparently bought at Odd-Job for 88 cents.

They were packed away for at least 10 years.  It feels like I've discovered OSR Gold.  I'm actually more excited about finding The Complete Guide to RPGs then RP Mastery.  I need to find which of these out of print games are worth while tracking down ;)

The Unnamed Dragon FINALLY Reviews The Tome of Horrors Complete for Swords & Wizardry

Well, the Unnamed (as of yet) Dragon finally got around to reviewing The Tome of Horrors Complete for Swords & Wizardry.  He didn't have an easy time with it (as you can see in the bloopers at the end of the clip) and I think he refers to it as The Tome of Horrors for Swords & Wizardry Complete, but what do you want, he's just a dumb dragon!  heh

You still have time to enter the Name the Dragon Contest.  Entries close around 6pm NYC time tomorrow, October 2, 2011.  Enter as many names as you would like, but only one will be entered into the poll to decide the winner(s).

Defining the Kindreds in Tunnels & Trolls - The Basics - Fairies

I'm half tempted to try and find my Hackmaster rule book to see how they handle fairies, but that is boxed and stacked in some random storage box and it will be at least a month before I can pick through them.  Still, I'm fairly sure the guys at Kenzer had the Tunnels & Trolls Fairy in mind when they added the class to Hackmaster.

The T&T 7e rules have nothing to say about fairies with the exception of the Attribute Modifiers.  The T&T 5e rules mention that fairies can fly, but become too overburdened to fly if carrying over half heir weight capacity.  Armor shouldn't be an issue in weighing them down, as they are 1/10th the height of humans and 1/1000th.  So if we say that specially crafted fairy armor is about 1/10 the weight of human armor, it shouldn't hold them back much in the armor department.  Still, a fairly forced to walk does so at a speed of 1/4 compared to the standard races... they just can't keep up with their extremely short legs.

Weapons are an issue.  Coming in around 6" in height, a 3" blade would be a challenge to wield effectively.  Again, customized weapons would be needed for the fairly to arm themselves.  The damage from these weapons would be piss poor.  Let's say 1d6-3 for the low end weapons and 1d6 or 1d6+1 for a two handed weapon.

Pricing of the above is the same as standard sized armor and weapons.  Just because it's smaller doesn't make it easier to create, and the demand isn't there for most smiths to keep these items in stock.

There is no restriction on making a Warrior or Rogue fairy, but survival would be an issue in the early levels.  In T&T 7.5e, the low STR and CON have an opportunity to increase fast, so the low initial starting attributes won't be much of a hinderance IF you can survive the first few gaming sessions.  Certainly NOT a viable choice for any of the Tunnels & Trolls solos I can think of.  Squish factor is too damn high ;)