Mail Call: Back to Basic

 Been down with COVID-19 so most of my posts have been things I wrote a while back.

But here is something new, some of my latest mail calls. All with a Basic, as in B/X, theme.

Up first is the OSE version of Dark Places & Demogorgons.

I like the idea of an OSE version, but I am more likely to play it using its original rules.  Still nice to have and the Cryptid Manual is a great addition to any OSE game.  My only question is do I shelves these with my OSE books or my Dark Places & Demogorgons ones?

Speaking of Demogorgons.

Ryan Thompson's Demonology for OSE is now being shipped. I have already stated most of these creatures for myself (and many posted here) but it is always nice to see more and different takes on the same creatures.

This is OSE so it is compatible with B/X and DP&D OSE above. Bring in the real Demogorgon into your DP&D game!

Since it was Halloween, I treated myself to another adventure.

Witch, Grave, and Haunt from Pacesetter Games is for BX and 5e. I got the BX version.

The "Witch" portion is an updated version of The Witch of Monte Rosa. There are some changes to the adventure which is fine. The other two are not unknown to me, but this is the first time I have them in print.

This and the Demonology book will work great for my War of the Witch Queens campaign.

And finally, I have been playing a LOT of Baldur's Gate 3 so I treated myself to a little Print on Demand fun.

This is Volo's Guide to Baldur's Gate II, released to support the Baldur's Gate II game back in the late 1990s. It would be nice if Wizards put out something to support the new game, given how popular it is.

Mail Call: The Wasted Lands

 Got a nice surprise in my mailbox this weekend. 

Jason Vey's The Wasted Lands has begun shipping. And the books are fantastic!

I feel this game has a good chance of replacing D&D 5e for the games I run. I have been doing playtests on it for months (longer if you count NIGHT SHIFT which uses the same rules) and have been using it to help detail some my gods in my Deities & Demigods II project.  Though I am thinking of pulling together some threads and starting a new campaign (or, rather, making one I have been doing here and there official) and calling it "The War at the Gates of Dawn."

You can get your copies, including the nice leather ones, at Elf Lair Games' website. If you backed the Kickstarter, then your games are on the way. I got mine early because I was a "test subject" for their new mailing system. I grabbed extra copies for our Sunday group since they helped play-test it.

You can also get your Wasted Lands books as PDF if you like. 

• Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age Role-Playing Game (Core Rules)
• Wasted Lands: Campaign Guide and Gazetteer of the Dreaming Age
• Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age Quick Start Rules
• Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age Character Sheet
• Wasted Lands: Bundle

This is a great game and I really want everyone to give it a try. 

Mail Call Tuesday: New Dice from Threshold Diceworks

 Hello. My is Tim, and I am addicted to dice.

It began innocently enough. I got a set in my D&D Basic. Then another in my D&D Expert Box. Then B. Dalton's Bookseller in White Oaks Mall had Dragon Dice in full sets and percentile genators.

Then I got clear sets. Blue sets. Discover more. Now...well, now I have no clear idea how many I have. I have sets for characters, a set for each game, and sets for DMing certain campaigns. Metal dice, tiny dice, huge dice.

So what did I get in the mail yesterday? You guessed it.

These retro dice were made by Threshold Diceworks. Which you can find on Facebook and their Etsy store. He was taking pre-orders a while back and mine finally came in yesterday and I am very pleased with them!

They compare very favorably to the sets I had with my Expert set, the Dragon Dice polyhedrals, and the sets that came with the Mentzer Basic boxes.

Yes. Those are my Mentzer dice still in a bag and unopened and unmarked.

I even have some Armory Dice Markers for them! I might swap a d10 in each set for a proper set of percentile dice. I can even use them for Star Frontiers.

Now. I just need a good dice bag for them.

These will likely be my Old School Essentials dice or my Wasted Lands ones. 

In any case, I am really happy to have them. When they start selling more I need to snag an orange d8.

Mail Call: More Witches!

 Yeah...I am obsessed. Mail call today, and it was full of some great witch books.

Up first, another witch-centric RPG I backed on Kickstarter, Last Sabbath.

Last Sabbath RPG Art, bookmark and pin

The game looks phenomenal, and I want to try it out really soon.

And one I have been waiting 20+ years for.

Ashley Poston has a novel out about 17-year-old Tara, one of my all-time favorite witches. 

This is her pre-Sunnydale days, and I can't wait to jump into this.  And because I had a credit lying around, I picked it up on Audible as well.

While I am sure the narrator will be great, it would have been nice to get Amber Benson to do it.

--

So yeah I *know* I am obsessed, and I know I catch some grief for it online, but you know what? 

I don't actually care.

This is my little corner of the Internet, and I get to do what I love here. And if that gets me 10 fans or 10,000*, then fantastic! Plenty of other sites out there that leave me scratching my head asking "who would even find that fun??" but hey, their sites, their rules. 

To quote Steve Martin, "The most amazing thing to me is, I get paid for doing this!"

(*It is less than 10,000, but a lot more than 10!)

Mail Call: Enter the Creative Commons Era

 To recover from their massive PR screw-up involving the OGL, Wizards of the Coast swang the completely other direction and released the D&D 5 SRD under the Creative Commons License. 

I know much less about this license than I do about the OGL. I am pretty competent in the OGL and have been part of the Open Gaming Foundation since its beginning. So yeah, I have had nearly 23 years of practice with it. 

I got my copy of the new Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised via their Kickstarter recently and it looks fantastic.  It uses the CC 4.0 By Attribution license.  So I thought I'd grab some more Creative Commons books and see how they are made.

Not a bad collection, really.

The Arcanum 30th Anniversary Edition is an update to the venerable Arcanum and Compleat books from the 1980s.  I always have had a soft spot in my heart for this series. The 30th Anniversary Edition also does a good job of updating these rules and provides a nice history.  

It has been released under the CC BY-SA - Creative Commons Share Alike license. Sadly, Zila Games seems to be either defunct or at least lost their website. 

In a move I think surprises no one, Basic Fantasy RPG Core Rules 4thEd from Chris Gonnerman also has gone Creative Commons. This one was also released under the CC BY-SA - Creative Commons Share Alike license.

All three are worthy updates to their original versions. If somewhat thicker.

The rules have not really changed all that much. The presentation of all three is also better, with Swords & Wizardry inching out as the best-looking update.

This might be just what I needed to help get over my creative hump on my High Witchcraft book I have been playing around with for years.

Mail Call (of sorts) Tuesday: Birthday and Father's Day gifts

 This is a bit late, but one of my birthday gifts finally came in.

I got the three core D&D 5 books in Spanish. I have been taking Spanish all year and wanted an RPG to read. So my wife an kids got me these. The Player's Handbook was back ordered and I just got it. 

Now to practice my Spanish some more!

For Father's Day, in addition to having some of the best smoked food and strawberry pie my kids have ever made for me I got this ridiculous toy.

Yup. A 3.5" USB floppy drive for my retro computers. I have to decide now if I want to mount it or leave it free to use elsewhere.

Mail Call Tuesday: ReAction D&D Figures

A little over 3.5 months later, I finally received my ReAction D&D Figures in the mail, just in time for Father's Day.

They are pretty cool. As you can see, these are the ones from Super 7.

Of the three the Sorceress (as she is properly known) is my favorite.

She is roughly the same size/scale as the classic Kenner Star Wars figures (this is by design of course). She even has holes in the bottom of her feet to put into action scenes.

She is a little taller than the other D&D Figures out last year. 

Maybe Skylla has a bit of elf in her.

She does not come with the green fireball though.

All the figures look pretty cool to be honest.

The font on the cards is closer to the Mentzer Basic books than the AD&D or Moldvay books. 

Yes, I took them off of their cards. 

Now the Efreeti actually will see some use in games I am sure. He is a good size to be an efreeti amir or pasha or something similar.

Compared to the mini from the Classic Monster Manual line maybe he is the long-lost "Greater" Efreeti.

All three of these figures have also, in one form or another, have had premium statues made of them. The Efreeti and the Githyanki from Wizkids and the Sorceress, in her modern guise of Seoni, from Dynamite.

The figures are fun, and I am glad I grabbed them.

I do have another Sorceress on the way that I am hoping to do a little modding on. 

Mail Call: Fright Night Classics Adventures

Nice new mail call. Especially when it is a book I worked on. I have to admit this never, ever gets old to me.

My "The Nightmare" and a great one, "Medieval Mysteries" from Scott George set in a medieval monastery. 

Yeah, I am pretty happy with this, to be honest.

You can get all the Fright Night Classics Adventures on DriveThruRPG.

Mail Call Tuesday: The Twisted Twins

Everyone knows I love horror. I watch more than I can ever review here to be honest and don't always talk about the ones I enjoy.

Case in point I rather love "American Mary." It is so twisted, and really Katharine Isabelle (the star as Mary) is just so great to watch in everything she is in.

But the real stars of the movie are the directors (and occasional actresses) Jen and Sylvia Soska, aka the Soska Sisters, aka the Twisted Twins.

They were having a special on their Etsy webstore before closing it down for a bit and I knew I needed something. 

Well, I got it over the weekend, and I am pretty happy.

I mean really? "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" "Blessed Be!!" "Wanna Join our Coven?"

How could I possibly say no!

Yeah sorry for the glare, but I wanted to get them into frames before I scratched them. 

They would also make great "live-action" stand-ins for my two blood witches Kimbra & Kelleigh.

Now I need to find a place on my game room walls to hang them. Though knowing the Soskas they would want me to hang these with a meat hook!

Not Yet a Mail Call Tuesday: ReAction D&D Figures

 Well...not exactly a Mail Call Tuesday today. Though it will be sometime in June/July.  But I had to mention these.

ReAction, the company that makes action figures for various properties in the style of the old Kenner Star Wars figures (3.75" scale), has a new series coming out.

Wave 1 of their Dungeons & Dragons line has some very familiar faces.

There is the Sorceress (D&D Moldvay Basic), the Efreeti (DMG), and the Githyanki (Fiend Folio) in the first wave for preorder now.

Damn it. Just when I was in a good place NOT to give WotC any money out of protest for the OGL shenanigans. 

Anyway. As someone who really went hardcore with D&D with the Moldvay Basic (my first proper D&D) and writes so much about witches, I am morally obligated to buy the Sorceress.  I owe it to that 11-year-old I once was. Besides, she is certainly popular.

The other figures also look great.

The Efreeti also has another advantage. At 3.75", that translates to 18.75' in D&D 3/4/5 scale.  So I could use it as the Efreeti Pasha. It would have a certain level of "street cred" to use the same figure as the front of the DMG for it.  Everyone in my current gaming groups knows all about 1st Ed AD&D, so to them, pulling this guy would have the same effect as pulling out Tiamat or Orcus.

All three of these figures have also, in one form or another, have had premium statues made of them. The Efreeti and the Githyanki from Wizkids and the Sorceress, in her modern guise of Seoni, from Dynamite. These figures are a lot cheaper.

You should be able to preorder these anywhere.

I am getting mine from Super7, which has better shipping. But I have seen them at Entertainment Earth as well. They will likely be on Amazon soon.  Of course you could order them from your FLGS or FLCS.

These are not the same scale as the new D&D Cartoon figures, but they are close to last year's NECA Skyla and Kelek figures. Come back around in June/July, and we will see.

Mail Call Tuesday: Basic Old School

I wasn't planning this one today, but I got some surprises in the mail.  

Both of these will get full reviews later on.

Blue Flame, Tine Stars, or it's full title, Blue Flame, Tiny Stars: A Memoir of Early Experiences Playing the Holmes Edition of the World’s Most Superlative Role-Playing Game, is from Stephen Wendell and it recounts his experiences at the dawn of the RPG scene and with Holmes Basic in particular. I have flipped through it and it looks like a delightful read. It is available as Print on Demand and PDF.

Chivalry & Sorcery Basic Rules is also available as Print on Demand and PDF. It is a stripped-down, basic, version of the 5th edition of the Chivalry & Sorcery RPG. A great place for newbies to the C&S game.

Chivalry & Sorcery is my third of three games I want to use as my D&D 5 replacement, so I will have some characters and ideas for this game later on.

Not a Mail Call Tuesday (But Just as Good!)

I was recently at my FLGS, and I decided to pick up some old friends.

Like many gamers my age, I started with a wide variety of D&D books. A Basic book here, an OD&D book here, and an AD&D book here. In my case, I started with a lot of D&D Basic (B/X) books. I picked up my AD&D books later on.  So my first AD&D books were Deities & Demigods and the Fiend Folio. I only later grabbed the PHB, DMG, and MM and when I did, they were "newer" Easley/Orange spine covers.  I wanted mine to be different from my then DMs. 

Also, like many gamers my age, I lost them in one of the many, many moves during my university days. This was sad, but I had my 2nd Ed books so I could still at least play.

When I got to a point where I could settle down and get them back, I bought back the original covers. But I always missed the "Trinity" of the orange spine ones.  Well, I decided it was well past time to fix that.

I now have the original covers, picked up around 2000 or so. The WotC reprints. And now the Orange Spine ones.

All are in really good condition. I have others, like my softcover Monster Manual and Players Handbook from England and my first-printing PHB and DMG. But those are all safely tucked away from light. 

And I had the mini versions of these covers, so that was one of the reasons I was not rushing to get new copies of these. But I figured I really should get them.

They were not cheap, much more expensive than when I re-bought the original covers in the early 2000s, but honestly, they are really worth it to me.

I have to say, it does put me in the mood for some AD&D 1st Ed! I think I even have some goldenrod character sheets around here as well.

Mail Call: Horror and Pulpy Good Fun

Some new Kickstarter in the mail this week. Let's see what we have!

Up first is Swords & Chaos.

This is a pulpy OSR-adjacent game. It does use the OGL and has the feel of old-school D&D.  The game is what I would expect if Barbarians of Lemuria and Crypts & Things had a baby and Hyperbora was its Godfather. 

It looks like a lot of fun to be honest, but I have not had the chance to really dive into it.

Up next is one from a long time friend and co-worker, Richard Ruane. 

Moonlight on Roseville Beach is largely inspired by the covers of pulp gay and lesbian novels of the 1950s. I think I can pinpoint the exact moment on Twitter discussing the books of Ann Bannon when he came up with this idea.

Richard and I have worked together at various day jobs in academia over the last 20 years. He is a great guy and has a solid game design CV. This new RPG is a lot of fun. Combine 20s and 30s pulp detectives with the gay and lesbian romance novels of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, sprinkle in some cosmic horror and you have Moonlight on Roseville Beach.

It works as a game on its own (as it is designed to do) or even as a mini-campaign for other games. Though Richard doesn't know yet that this is what I will use it for!

Can't wait to find a place for both of these on my gaming table.