Knockspell 4 is Out

Ah, the joys of electronic publishing and instant gratification for the consumer. I caught the post at The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope last nite that Knockspell 4 was released.  Minutes later it was mine to hold.  Well, maybe not literally hold, but virtually hold.

Then I promptly  went to sleep.  What can I say?  I had a long day.

Tonight I've flipped pages... okay, I've scrolled thru the magazine and it appears to be quality as always.  That being said, my eyes were drawn immediately to the article reporting on Online Gaming.  Play by Post, mail, blog, Google Wave, chat, VTTs.  Sorry, but a bit of a disappointment.  I know its billed as a quick overview, but I really wish there had been a mention of more of the Virtual Table Tops that are available.  Half the article dealt with VTTs and was pretty much... well, not much of anything.  It centered on OpenRPG with a throw away mention of Fantasy Grounds.  I guess this is something I could write up myself for submission to one of the mags.  I've toyed with at least a half dozen of the VTTs out there ;)

Bits N Pieces

Jeff over at Jeff's Gameblog has critters that were rejected from the Fiend Folio. For something to fail the Flumph test it has to be good. Go ahead, check it out. I'll be here when you return...

See, still here.

Anyhow, I was / am one of the Charter Members of Monte Cook's Dungeon a Day. Kinda haven't been to the site in a while, what with all the goodies elsewhere on the web. Went back today and the first 4 levels are available in PDF format, free to current Charter members. Sweet!

I'm trying to decide what to run when my Fantasy Grounds 2 / Labyrinth Lord game gets off the ground. Convert some C&C mods, convert Dungeonaday or run with Stonehell. Decisions, decisions.

Well, the first session or so will be the Tomb of Sigyfel I think. Nice and short. Should work well as a reintroduction after a dozen years out of the game for most of my players ;)

Dresden Files: A First Impression, Part the First

Wow.

Ack! I guess you want a bit more then that. First things first, I'll be referring to the pre-release Dresden Files RPG PDFs here. Yes, they look awesome. Not suitable for printing as the page background has a graphic to make the pages look yellowed: it's a nice effect but an ink waster. Then again, at over 400 pages who the hell plans to print out the PDF? I'll happily wait for my dead tree copy to arrive.

The book is presented with fake handwritten notes from the game designer, "Harry" himself, and a few others. Very entertaining and they offer a nice inside glance into the system. Some might find it distracting I expect, so know your own tastes in this one.

I've made it up to (i've begun reading but far from finished) Chapter 3. This is where the group decides on and designs the city the campaign will take place in. Interesting twist as this is done before generating characters. Baltimore is the default if your group doesn't want to go through the process and it is provided as an example.

Alright, that's as far as I've gotten so far. More soon. Remember, you can get a free preview here.

Get Savaged for Less

With Pinnacle's fairly liberal licensing scheme for its Savage World's rule system there has been a proliferation of Savage World's compatible releases. It a way its almost like the D20 explosion, but this one is mostly (thus far) PDF in format.

Some publishers have gone as far as giving a good chunk of their products away as a free preview. I'm not talking a dozen or two pages, more in the range of 60+. Certainly enough to get an idea if the book full bok is right for you, and a great way to borrow and steal freely available material for your own campaign.

Interface Zero (Savage Worlds edition), Players Guide Beta test From Gun Metal Games is the first 3 chapters (over 60 pages) of cyberpunk for your Savage Worlds gaming. Your character generation rules are here. Also works well as a Player's Character Creating Guide so all the players aren't looking over the GM's shoulder.

Savage Suzerain Play Now, For Free From Savage Mojo is nearly 100 pages. For this I'm gonna borrow in the publisher's own words:

Not sure whether you want your characters to be a pantheon in the making? Before you invest in some major gaming pleasure… Product Contains: A 98 page full color, hi-resolution PDF. It is a large download file and art intensive. Inside are 24 pre-generated character sheets for six characters at four power levels, plus all the universe background and game rules needed to play those characters at any of the power levels. There’s also a detailed description of how those characters were made from our resident Savage Worlds guru, Alan Bundock and five One Sheet adventures to get your GM started.

Not too shabby for the gamer on the budget.

Then again, there's the game I've been waiting for for ages, and I've already plunked 90 bucks down for the dead tree / PDF preorder (and its not savage Worlds, its Fate / SotC):

The Dresden Files RPG Preview: Nevermore From Evil Hat Productions, LLC. If you've read ANY of the books in the Dresden series you'll know why this excites me. If you haven't, you owe it to yourself to start. I already have the PDFs from the preorder... the 2 books combine for some 900 pages or so... time for me to take a week off sick from work to start reading. ;)

Carcasonne Big Box, Big Hit

My mother and my girlfriend have both become hugeCarcasonne fans, even moreso since I picked up the Big Box set with the expansions.

What I've done over the past few weekends is add one aspect / element of an expansion each day we play.

It's going to be a while before I'll be able to tear them away to play any of the other board games I picked up ;)


- Posted from my iPhone

Talislanta - Elf Free for Free

GROGNARDIA: New and Free Games of Interest

Thanks to James over at Grognardia for bringing this to my attention. I remember the ads for this game vividly back in Dragon magazine, but was far too much of a TSR fanboy to stray too far from AD&D those days (Traveller and Rolemaster/MERP were as far as I went).

Talislanta apparently has been released under the Creative Commons license. I say apparently because a quick reading of the forums shows there is some confusion as to the restrictions (if any) to the distribution with some conflicting wording. In any case, it is a treasure chest of material to rip for your own game of choice. Use it well

Back Behind the (Virtual) Screen

Anyhow, I'm sitting in a semi crowded room, waiting for my son to get interviewed for a volunteer position he's interested in, and I'm feverishly answering emails on my iphone from my gamer friends.

Suddenly, I get the "Wasn't Erik going to run a game using one of those online interfaces he's been using?" Next thing I know I have 4 players (2 from my old pen n paper group from 13 years ago) talking about what they want to play.

It appears I'll be running a Labyrinth Lord game (possibly with the Advanced Edition Companion thrown in the mix) using Fantasy Grounds 2. I would use Silvertable (from the guys at iTabletop) but it's not outa of alpha yet. I have 2 weeks to prep. Wish me luck ;)

Classic Traveller for Free

Lo and behold, I logged into my RPGNow account when I got home from work and I see the Classic Traveler Starter Set, the very same set I purchased as a teenager. It was the second game I purchased for myself (Gamma World was the first... my parents bought me the three AD&D books that got me started in roleplaying).

Anyhow, the set is being given away for free. You may need to check your email on your RPGNow account to download part 2 (the charts) and part 3 (the adventures).

This is a great game at a great (free) price. Get it now, before someone on the other side changes their mind and actually puts a price on it ;)

Vacation is Over... Did I Miss a Party?

After a fine 9 days off, I'm back to work tomorrow. If things had gone perfect in the scheme of grand karma, the iPad would have shipped on its first reported date and in all likelihood the iPad w/ 3G would have come out this past week and I would be giving a hands on review right now... especially as to how it handles PDFs.

Alas, the 3G won't be shipping until the end of April... which means I won't be getting my iPad until then. In for a penny, in for a pound. If I'm willing to blow 5 bills, may as well blow the whole wad and have access to the net away from Wi-Fi.

Yes, I'm a techie AND a gaming geek... so beat me! See, the money I save getting my gaming in PDF format is funding my iPad purchase. Really! Or not, but it sure sounds good ;)

In the meantime my Kindle DX is serving me well. As an aside, if any of my Kindle subscribers (and there are a few) have trouble with any links i may have posted (or will post) email me at Erik AT Trublunite DOT net. Amazing what you have to do to fend of the trolling spam bots!

Amazing Thing About the OSR

Is that there are always new products hitting the Virtual Shelves. Or old products that gets rediscovered.

Course, if you are like me and want just about every new product that is Old School in presentation price, and space becomes an issue. PDFs tend to cost less then print and consume no space... tastes great AND less filling.

So I say thank God for access to PDF publishing software. And PDF distributors. And PDF publishers, writers, artists and fans. Without all of them I doubt much of the OSR would have taken hold.

PDF publishing lowered the cost to enter the market. Yet with little overhead for PDF distributors the D20 Implosion won't be an issue.

Oh, and Lulu isnt all that bad... except when the US Post Office loses your stuff... but that's a rant for later.

Enjoy the Holidays / Holy Days all!

Are You a Fan... zine?

It seems like this little thing collectively known as the Old School Renaissance (wow, spelled that w/o the spell checker)has spawned another fanzine. We have two print / PDF magazines so far (Fight On! and Knockspell) and two PDF only magazines / fanzines. OD&DITIES is a fairly recent resurrection and bang for the buck has been good so far. Really, at 2 bucks an issue its hard to go wrong.

The newest addition is Oubliette. Again, bang for your 2 bucks is pretty good. My personal highlight? Subdual rules for LL. My low? The gobbie themed adventure. Sorry, too far from the norm for me to take to it.

4e has one print mag, and its not even from WotC.

Long live the OSR ;)

I Was a Teenage Gamer

Hey, I made the big time! ;)

Anyhow, last nite my son (soon to be 17... oh those teenage years) was looking over my shoulder as I was blogging / reading blogs. He says to me "people are still playing those games?" and later asked "how many people play those games?". These questions are leaps and bounds past the usual "You call Fantasy Grounds graphical?"

That and he's looking to read novels based on the TV series The Unit. My kid HATES reading. I think I might turn him in to a gamer yet. At least, he's thinking about it... in that of so frustrating teenage way. Me, I was so taken in my Lord of the Rings I was ready to get my gaming feet wet in 8th grade.

In the meantime we still have Star Trek Online together... and he's outleveling my ass in that game.. god bless him ;) Oh, and its very graphical... heh

Mythmere’s Adventure Design Deskbook

This is gonna be a quick and dirty review of Mythmere’s Adventure Design Deskbook, Volume One: Principles and Starting Points. Damn, how's that for a long ass title?

Anyhow, to some extend the introduction reads like a college textbook about RPG adventure design. Don't let that fool you or deter you. The meat of this product is its charts... and yes the do deliver.

This is NOT The Dungeon Alphabet. That was a slick production with amazing art and themed charts. Some people even complained about the scarcity of charts and tables in the The Dungeon Alphabet - 26 letters in the alphabet should have given most of those interested in the product a general idea of the number charts and tables they could expect to find.

Mythmere’s Adventure Design Deskbook takes a more practical or workman like approach of its presentation of tables and charts. This 46 page long, sparsely illustrated book is packed with charts that will flesh out the who, what, where, when and why of the latest adventure you plan to subject you group to. Motivations, twists, hidden history.. its all there.

5 bucks for the PDF version is a steal! Well done... this is dying to be put in a small program that will kick all the chart results out to the DM in waiting. Already looking forward to the next volume.

By the Letters...

There have been a good number of reviews of The Dungeon Alphabet since its release.  I even did one on the PDF version, which I liked alot.  I found the dead tree version on Amazon for 10 bucks, free shipping, so I had to bite.

As much as I enjoyed the PDF, the dead tree version is a killer with its artwork.  Any one of these pieces would look fine on my wall as a framed print.  They are that good, and that evocative of my gaming years when I was a teenage gamer.

If you can find yourself a copy in hardcover, do yourself a favor... grab it!

On a side note, this is day two of my country getaway.  Wheee!

Tomorrow I may give a short write up of Friday nite's C&C game I played in via Fantasy Grounds 2.  Or perhaps another review.

A Game I Regret I Wont be Attending

Quick repost of the game Joethelawyer will be running tomorrow in Manhattan (lifted from the TARGA site and The Mule Abides) .  This is the 2nd Annual Dave Arneson Memorial Gameday tomorrow, March 27, 2010.

Thanks to the generous support of the Compleat Strategist, we will be meeting in the gaming space of   their New York location:
11 East 33rd Street (between Madison and Fifth Avenue)
New York, NY 10016
212-685-3880
Games will begin at noon and wrap up at 5, to allow time for cleanup before the store closes at 6.

I had planned to attend, but it appears that events (vacation) are going to preempt the attempt.

I need someone to roll some dice it my stead ;)

Thankfully I do get to play in my monthly FG2 Castles & Crusades  game tonight... small consolation, but still better then no gaming at all this weekend.

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.

Three Down

I have my count of lost, or soon to be lost, OSR blogs at three.

Chgowiz's Old Guy RPG Blog  was the first to tap out.

 

The Old School Ranter is wrapping up on Friday apparently.

The Rusty Battle Axe will be leaving at the end of the month, for reasons dissimilar to the first two, but a damn shame none the less.

Three damn good blogs, not because of the topics they posted, but because of the people that did the posting.  The damn 'net is a double edge blade. 

Shit's getting damn depressing.  Tomorrow I'll sneak in a review.  I need something to cheer myself up.

Was it a Full Moon last Weekend?

I only ask because of the lunacy that prevailed in the little corner of the web I like to relax in.

After all this is said and done, do we have to redefine what constitutes "Old School Gaming" and by its very nature, what is "Porn"?

Because the gaming in the video in question might have loosely hit upon old school gaming, but I certainly missed the porn  (really, as in "WTF!  Where is the T&A in this vid?)

Chgowiz  has left the building.  Dude, don't EVER leave in anger.  More importantly, don't let an ASSHOLE dictate your actions.  'Nuff said.

TARGA - leaner?  smaller? larger? unfocused?  more focused?  tastes great?  less filing?  Did you even know about it before The Old School Rant up and ranted the mother of all rants? 

More people probably knew about Zak and his weird as all shit Pornstar filled gaming group.  Weird as in "what kinda pornos do they star in" kinda weird.  As a gaming group goes... fairly normal composition... except that its full of girls.  That stuff NEVER happens in real life. (Well, according to one reviewer this was played by an all girl group - she also insinuated I lacked brains... which might be true, but the product still sucked)

Okay, I'm getting off topic it seems.

Then again, the whole weekend of Ranting was off topic.

Listen, if there is one thing I've learned having a 16 y/o son is that he will find the porn no matter the method I try to block it.  Kids are smarter then most give them credit for, and if they want to find it on the web odds are they will find it quicker then you ever could.

Besides, I'd expect he'd be very disappointed in Zak's little video ;)

It's a Classic Two-Fer Tuesday!

I'm always looking for adventures written for the Classic D&D / AD&D rulesets.  Sometimes I find two on the same search.  This time I found 2 in 1.  Yep, its a damn flipbook, which is annoying as a PDF, but cool in the "it's got 2 short low level AD&D adventures in 1" sort of way.

I'm talking about the Dungeon Crawl Classics Flip Book from Goodman Games.  Now, I'm sure the flipbook format works great in print, but as a PDF the presentation is less then ideal.  Get ready to use the rotate button in your PDF viewer.  Still, for less then 5 bucks you get two quality adventures that can be easily used with any Old School system without much work.

Figure 2 sessions of gaming for less then the price of a Subway's Footlong.  

Isn't that better the Classic Rock Two-Fer Tuesday on the local rock station?

Random Monday Madness

Sigh.

Spent the weekend going thru bouts of food poisoning.  Not fun. 

Still, I'm home and I'm finally able to appreciate Fight On! #8.  Is it just me or is the artwork getting better and better?  7 bucks for the PDF is a steal for the amount of material that is packed into this issue.  I do have one little quibble... hyperlinks... why are there no hyperlinks in the PDF?  Yeah, I can copy and paste the link, but a hyperlink makes it effortless.  No biggie.  More curious then anything.

Nice.  Thunder and Lightning here in NYC at the moment. 

Just got the complete Little Rascals DVD collection delivered earlier today.  Hmmm, that could make for the setting of a simple and silly RPG at some point.  Backburnering that ;)

Trying to track down my sources of free and cheap old school RPG material.  Might take a wee bit.

See, I told you it was going to be random.