Various Updates: Year of the Monster, Mega-dungeons, and the OGL 1.1

Lots of little things going on here during this time between 2022 and 2023.  I am not sure what day it is or even the time, but hey, here we are.

Hastur, Ifrit Princess, and 3 Goblins in a trenchcoat.
Painted by my wife.

Year of the Monster

I have made some oblique references to this, but 2023 is going to be my Year of the Monster. Going back to my earliest roots of this hobby and talking more about monsters and monster-related topics. So more monsters for NIGHT SHIFT, more Monstrous Maleficarum, and a few other projects I have in my back pocket.

#Dungeon23

So this is one I just found out about. The idea is neat. Detail a new room every day for a 12-level mega-dungeon in 2023. I have never really been a fan of mega-dungeons, BUT as a writing exercise, I can see how it would be fun.  I would want to have a theme and do it for Old-School Essentials. Though I have not made up my mind just yet.

New Year, New Character

I have done this for the past two years, and it was fun.  I had an idea for this year but have run out of time to do it right. Have to think some more about this one.

OGL 1.1 and One D&D

Well. Once again, people are freaking out. Here is exactly everything we know for sure about the new OGL coming out when the next version of D&D is released.

• It will be called "The Open Gaming License 1.1."

And that is it. 

Everything else is, at best, speculation and, at worst, Chicken Little style running around fear mongering.  My personal plans are not changing. I will still publish under the OGL 1.0a, and still use the 3.5, Pathfinder, and 5e SRDs as I see fit.

Other Items

More "This Old Dragon" and other regular features. I am undecided on The April A to Z Challenge yet, and I am pretty sure I will not do another 100 Days of Halloween. But who knows.

Hope everyone is having a great Holiday Season.

5 x 5: End of the Year Top Fives. RPGs

And finally my Top 5 RPGs of all time.

Dungeons & Dragons

CJ Carella’s WitchCraft

Chill

Ghosts of Albion

Blue Rose

5 x 5: End of the Year Top Fives. Television Shows

Continuing my Top 5, here are my top 5 television shows of all time.

The Twilight Zone

Star Trek: The Next Generation

The X-Files

Tales from the Darkside

Game of Thrones

5 x 5: End of the Year Top Fives. Novels

Another Top 5 list.  Today, Novels.

Bram Stoker Dracula

JRR Tolkien Lord of the Rings

Douglas Addams Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Anne Rice The Vampire Lestat 

Umberto Eco Foucault's Pendulum

5 x 5: End of the Year Top Fives. Albums

Over on the old Facebooks I have been challenged or tagged in various top five lists. Five favorite books, favorite albums, things like that.  So I thought I'd end my year here with my Top Five favorite Top Fives!

For the next five days I'll post a top-five list.  These will be presented in no particular order and at least according to the rules of a couple of the challenges, with no explanations.

So today I am doing my Top Five Albums.

The Police Synchronicity

Thomas Dolby The Golden Age of Wireless

Sinéad O'Connor The Lion and the Cobra

Pink Floyd The Dark Side of the Moon

Stevie Nicks The Wild Heart

Years End: 2018

Here we are folks, another Years End.

2018 was a good year for me gaming wise, even if I did not chronicle it all here in my blog.

I did manage to get four new titles out. Two for Swords & Wizardry, one for Pathfinder and one for D&D 5e.

The Winter Witch for Swords & Wizardry

The Witch for Swords & Wizardry White Box

Strange Brew: Skills and Feats

The Shrine of St. Aleena (5e)

I have more coming out for even more systems in 2019.

Got to play a lot of 5e this past year and that has been fun.

My sons both have very active D&D groups, so we were averaging about a game a week here for most of 2018.  So that has been fun.

Tonight is a D&D New Year's Eve party for my youngest son's group.  We made some homemade party crackers filled with dice, a mini and a D&D joke.

Really looking forward to it!

I'll talk about 2019 more tomorrow.

2017 A Look Back

Well, 2017 was an interesting year.

I managed to get a few PDFs out. Mostly for Swords & Wizardry:

• The Witch: Aiséiligh Tradition for Swords & Wizardry
• The Witch: Hedgewitch for the Hero's Journey RPG
• The Warlock for Swords & Wizardry
• The Green Witch for Swords & Wizardry
• The Witch for Swords & Wizardry Continual Light

And some more Strange Brew for Pathfinder:

• Strange Brew: Mystical Paths & Prestige Classes
• Strange Brew: Covencraft
• Strange Brew: Magic Items

So naturally, my blogging took a hit. This was my least productive year in terms of posts since the start really.  But that is cool.

Like last year D&D 5 dominated my play.  Though I did play some other games.

The big game of my year was not Starfinder as I expected, but rather Blue Rose.

I spent a month or so on it back in June and my adoration of it has not lessened.  Looking forward to some more Blue Rose in 2018.

Later in the year I also spent a lot of time with Mighty Protectors.

It was also a joy to review and play. Looking forward to some more.

Hope your 2017 was good. Here is to a better 2018.

Year End 2015

We are a few hours from seeing the end of 2015.
All in all not a bad year.  I got in a lot of great gaming, not a lot of variety of gaming, but a lot.
I played a lot of 5e and I even got to play some rather than just DMing.

One of my favorite features here were my Class Struggles posts.  Originally I only thought about doing about 15 of them, but it grew into something more.  Looking forward to doing more of those in 2016.

After 258 posts and nearly 5 years I think it might be time to retire Zatannurday. It has been a good run but I don't I have added anything new to it for a while.  I have a few posts left I want to do on it, but I think I will replace it with something new in Feburary.

I have a few more Skylla posts I would like to do.   I also have some posts on running horror games I would like to get out as well.

There are few games I would like to try this next year and some adventures.
My son has gotten pretty good at running 5e so maybe I will get in more playing too.

Hope you all have a great new year's eve and a happy new year!

Bringing 2014 to a Close

Well we are in the last hours of 2014.

Not a bad year personally.  I didn't post as much as the last couple of years, but my "keyboard" time has been split between this and working on various projects.

My gaming all year really has been devoted to D&D.  Basic/Expert D&D in the first half and then D&D 5.  I got in some AD&D1 and even some AD&D2 this past year as well.  All in all I am not complaining.

I am not sure yet what is going to go on in 2015.  I am certain more D&D 5.  Maybe a dip into AS&SH, AD&D1, and some B/X.  Of course I have Pathfinder and C&C on my list since I still have some witch material to work the kinks out of.

I wanted to wrap up my D&D 3.x "Dragonslayers" game this past year, but didn't get around to it.  Hopefully this year.

Otherwise I hope you all have a great 2015!

Best of / Worst of 2014

We are getting to the end of the year.  Lots of things still going on of course, but everyone is now turning their attention to the end of 2014 and the start of 2015.

So let's get going and in no particular order.

Best of 2014

1. Gen Con 2014.  Gen Con had another record breaking year.  Some of that was fueled by D&D's 40th anniversary but most of it was due to growth every year for the last few years.  Gen Con is still no where near the size of Comic Con, and that is fine by me, but I do like seeing the growth.

2. D&D and D&D5.  Dungeons & Dragons had a banner year this year.  We started out the year with 40th anniversary news and more items on the cultural impact D&D has made in it's 40 years.  This summer D&D 5 was big news in the same way and the good will kept on going.  This was all helped by the fact that D&D 5 was actually a really good game.  Fans young and old could embrace this game as their own.  It could be stated even that 2014 was the year the Edition Wars ended.

3. Small Publishers hit it big.  A number of smaller publishers had huge hits this year.  The evidence can be seen in the best sellers over at DriveThru and winners at the Ennies.  While it may have been D&D's year in the spotlight, smaller companies took the awards.


Worst of 2014

1. Gamer Gate.  Pretty much anything and anyone involved in the entire mess.  Were there some important issues?  Who knows really.  The vitriol thrown around by both sides completely drowned out whatever the message was supposed to be.  This extended too...

2. Consultant Gate.  Some people got paid to consult on D&D and other people didn't like that.  Boo freaking whoo.  Someone is always going to get paid for something. Sometimes people you like will pay people you don't like for something you do like.  That's not unfair. That's life.    Again if there was a message here it was lost on all sides being so nasty to each other that I wanted to divorce myself from the lot of them.

3. War on Cosplay.  No one has come out and said this specifically but there was a lot of anti-cosplay sentiment in 2014.  Old comic book professionals telling cosplayers to get off their lawn, to actual assaults and claims of being "fake" (what ever the fuck THAT is?).   Here is my take.  Cosplayers spend 100s of hours and sometimes 100s of dollars on making a costume. How does that make them fake or not a real fan?


Ugh.

I don't want to end on a sour note, so here is something to ponder.
What are YOU looking forward to the most for 2015?  Let me know here.