OD&DITIES Goes Back on Hiatus

As detailed here, OD&DITIES Magazine is ceasing publication.  It was fun while it lasted.

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OD&DITIES Issue 15 On Sale Now

Full Color cover with this issue.  Not bad.  So, what does your 2 bucks get you in OD&DITIES 15?

First things first.  There is a call for submissions.  If you have something you are looking to see in virtual print, this may be your chance.  Go to the author's blog at OD&DITIES and let him know if you have something to submit.  There are deadlines you know ;)

So, what do you get for your 2 bucks? 

A new class:  The Elementalist.  Its an interesting twist on the arcane caster type, it comes with its own spell list.  Quite possibly worth the price of admission on its own.

An article dealing with what you way encounter traveling on the road.  Nice little piece.

A few pages on resurrection and other such spells.  Since my games tend not to reach the level players can cast, or afford to have other cast, these spells, it hasn't come up for me recently.  It may be a good article for others.

Alternate Alignments:  This goes hand in hand with the new class, as the new alignments are elemental in nature.

Elemental Beasts:  See a pattern?  heh.  Imps and Mephits for you Labyrinth Lord game.

An article and charts for treasure maps.  Useful if you need to define one that the party just found.

All of this ends with "Mr B's Last Word".  

The issues have gotten consistently tighter and professional with each release.  A bargain at 2 bucks.  You owe it to yourself to check out a copy.

One a Positive Note

It seems that the loss of quality bloggers has increased my blog's traffic immensely.  Damn fools ;)

Anyhow, I need to cheer myself up, so I think I'll do a review.  As the vast majority of my reviews are of products I actually like and enjoy, they make me feel good when I write them.  Come to think of it, my negative reviews are cathartic in their own way... so all the reviews I write make me feel good.   

I just loves me some OD&Dities.  OD&Dities Issue 14 to be exact.

Now, it is a thief themed issue, and I've never been all that keen on playing thieves let alone bring their Guilds into the campaign as anything more then a distant backdrop.  Suffice to say the articles on Thieves Guilds I could take or leave, but that is a personal prejudice.  The article on Thief Skills however, was an excellent read.  Some decent ideas I'll need to keep in mind when DM'ing.

Worth the price of admission alone is the article on the not so lowly Magic Missile spell.  Very nice, useful and probably not all that balanced variations of the basic spell.  Keeps the PCs off guard with one of these choices.  Very well done.

A new class, or sub-class of Magic-User is introduced:  The Puppeteer.  Just as Illusionists specialize in illusions, Puppeteers specialize in charms and mind control.  Having given the class a quick read thru, I expect it would play better as an NPC (nice reoccurring Bad Guy type) but proof is in the play.  I've already have ideas coming to me as to making a nice party nemesis with this at the template.  Mmmmm... brains!

Those are the highlights.  There are a few other articles for your enjoyment.  I've been thinking that the one page QUALITY article was the thing of the past (I'm looking at you Crusader) but the Unusual Enemies one pager is good.  A thinking man's article (or woman's).

2 bucks for 25 pages of Labyrinth Lord goodness.  Well worth the price.

OD&DITIES Issue 13 is Here

OD&DITIES Issue 13 has hit the pavement, or at least the virtual shelves of RPGNow.  At 24 pages (OGL statement would make it 25) its bang for your buck ratio isn't bad.  OD&DITIES uses the LL rules, but most of the articles are not system specific, and those that are can probably convert to other OSR rules without too much trouble.

The Table of Contents are/is (i need a grammar checker) as follows:

 Editorial
 Building the Keep on the Borderlands
 Table: Twenty Reasons That Guard is on Patrol
 Designing the Keep on the Borderlands
 Table: Twenty Things Found in a Kobold's Pocket
 'A Touch of Class': The Illusionist's
Introducing New Classes to the Campaign
'Man's Best Friend'
'Surviving the DM's Wrath': Party Formation
 Magical Miscellany
 Mr. B's Last Word


As it just released today, and I just purchased it a mere hour ago, I've just given in a quick read thru.  You get a decent amount of articles (and a promise that OD&DITIES will be monthly) .

Timing is everything these days.  The version of the Illusionist Class presented here has a few new spells but a very small spell list compared to the class presented Advanced Edition Companion.

Surviving the DM's Wrath rates classes on their party value.  It includes classes not present in the LL Core rulebook (they are the versions published by Brave Halfing. Again, timing is all.  I expect future issues will reference the AEC.

The rest I just skimmed at this point.  So far, it looks good.  Not perfect, but not bad at all for a reboot after a seven year absence.  Looking forward to Issue 14.

OD&DITIES - Relaunch Forthcoming

Bat in the Attic earlier today announced that OD&DITIES, a classic fanzine of OD&D, is about to relaunch at the end of this month using the Labyrinth Lords rules and the OGL.  More OSR goodness is quite simply awesome.

The plan appears to be a monthly magazine in PDF format for $2 an issue via RPGNow and quarterly compilations via LuLu. First issue should arrive around the end of February.

You can find the first 12 issues of the OD&DITIES fanzine for free here. (published and reproduced there by permission from R.E.B. Tongue)