Return to the Tome of Horrors

Frog God Games, which is from what I can tell Necromancer Games minus Clark Peterson, will be releasing TWO new versions of the wildly popular Tome of Horrors Complete.


http://www.talesofthefroggod.com/index.php/products/the-tome-of-horrors

This three book series was full of old school monsters from the like of the first Edition Fiend Folio and other sources and let them free thanks to the magic of the OGL.

Well the flumph is free once more and the the Complete book has the creatures from the first three books in one cover. It's all been updated to Pathfinder in one book and Swords & Wizardry in another.

I have the three original books and have updated a few of the monsters on my own, so I do find this rather interesting. But I am not 100% sold on it all yet. Looking at FG's products it looks like the same standards that we used to see at Necromancer are still being used. Their publications for both Pathfinder and for S&W look great. So really there is no reason to assume that this product won't be worth every penny. Except, I have them all now. I can use them almost as is for Pathfinder, and retro-scaling them should not be an issue.

I think I am going to wait on this one till I see some reviews.

This is a Test

This is just a test. Trying out some new software.

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Page Views

According to Blogger Stats my page with the highest amount of page views is not anything from the OSR, witches, Willow & Tara, Zatanna or the Hex Girls.

Coming in at 65,967 page views (between May 2010 and right now) is my Xena and Gabrielle page.

My Warrior Princess can take your hot elf chick in a fight any day. ;)

My highest ranking "OSR" pages are either about vampires or goblins.

My next post will be about an adventure featuring Xena and Gabrielle fighting vampires and goblins in an old school dungeon crawl.  The Hex Girls will provide the sound track.

Please contact me if you want me to mention your OSR product in this post.  Extra for a link back to your online store.  (just kidding of course.  unless you actually give me money...)

Season of the Witch: Episode 9 Teaser

Teaser for Episode 9: Web of Lies

Willow on a webcam, wearing only g-string and shear teddy and sitting on a bed: "Ever want to know all those dirty little secrets we keep here in Sunnydale? Ever wonder what we really do in those young wiccan meetings? Well Join me and my very naughty girlfriend (Tara crawls into the scene dressed similarly and begins to nuzzle Willow's neck) for our totally nasty, totally live web show tonight at midnight. I promise you it will be magic.
Join all of us, Young Amy (a very innocent girl joins them on the bed), we don't know how old she really is, but we do know she taught us a few things, and the nasty twins, Kristen and Wanda (two girls, twins, crawl on to the bed to join the other three). Join us tonight at the witching hour of midnight for the show. And leave the credit card in your wallets boys, this show is free!" (All the girls begin making out with each other). Willow stops in the middle of a three way kiss, "see you tonight."

Willow and Tara in their living room watching the action on the computer screen in utter horror.
A pause then Tara says "What the fu--!?"

--

CUT SCENE

A young woman gets off a bus. She is wearing a long heavy coat that seems out of date as well as too much for California. She has auburn hair that is tied up in elaborate pig tails and wears an unflatering pair of half-moon glasses. She walks away from the bus after conferring with a piece of paper in her hands. Her movements are not unnoticed as a solitary vampire begins to follow her. A nearly imperceptible signal and soon more gather.
The young woman, no more than a teenager really, moves forward, headless of her surroundings. She turns down an alley and the vampires close in.

"Not so fast little lady. Don't you know it isn't safe to walk the streets alone?" Laughs as she looks around only now seeing her mistake.

"I am afraid this will have to cost you. An' here we only have one price for everything." The vampire switches to game face. The woman squints at the vampire and says "Kyuuketsuki?" The lead vampire looks confused then suddenly bursts into flames. Soon the gathered crowd one by one bursts into flames. They scream and soon there is nothing left but ash.

Unaffected the young woman goes back to looking for her address.


Friday. Episode 9: Web of Lies.

Review: Vampyre Kisses

So I read a lot of horror and modern supernatural books. I like to talk about them here.  Not all of them are something I want to use in a game, most are just fun to read.  Here is one of the fun ones.  Might not be your taste, or it might.

Ok stop me if you have heard this one before. Human girl meets mysterious guy who later turns out to be a vampire! Girl has some vague destiny, vampire has eating disorder, things get in their way of true happiness…lost you yet? Well none of this applies to “Vampyre Kisses”.

“Vampyre Kisses” is a new book from brand new author Elizabeth J. Kolodziej. Yes, Faith is a human girl with a destiny, but she is also a witch, the last of her kind. Trent is a vampire, but he is not your average brooding Baranbas, Angel or Edward. He has a destiny as well and if anything he is just anxious about it. Fate has thrown these two together and together they hold the fate of the supernatural creatures of Kolodziej’s world. Not related to anything, but I kept imagining Faith looking like Fiona Apple. Nothing in the text lead me to that, just the first woman that came to mind.

Yes. There are things in this book we have seen before, not just creatures but plots and circumstances. The difference here, and it’s the difference that makes the book worth getting, is that Kolodziej’s world is very rich and detailed (sometimes too detailed, but I’ll get to that). No Trent is not a Sparkler, he is a vampire, but he is cut from the modern cloth of vampires and more to the point he wants to be more. Faith could have been just another vapid little Gothamite doing 9-5 and partying, but she knows early on there is more going on than just that. In lesser hands these characters would have been annoying characters, or rather caricatures, but thankfully they get much more interesting as the tale weaves on. It is told from the point of view, alternately of both Faith and Trent. Kolodziej does a great job of giving us the proper voice for each character and it is rather easy to hear that voice in your head. There are complications galore including a romantic rival in the form of a werewolf.

A minor criticism, in the beginning of the tale Kolodziej has so much to tell us that she tends to over tell it. I see this as exactly what it is; she was very excited to tell her tale, had all these ideas and wanted to get them out on to the page as fast as she could. It did slow down as the story progressed and a good rhythm was established. Though every once in a while we are hit with a lot of information. While I am calling this a “minor criticism” it is also part of the book’s charm. The author has so much to say and has built up the myths of her world that she just seems excited to tell it all to us. That’s what future books are for.

The book does read like the first book of so many authors, so the pacing is odd at times and there are odd word choices here and there, but that is all something that will work out. Once the pace though is set and the story begins in earnest then you want to keep going and learning more. The book reminds me a bit of the first “Anita Blake” book.

The mythology of this book is well thought out and great care is given to it. Kolodziej is building a world here, not just a novel. I bet if you asked her she could tell you 10 generations of Faith’s ancestors, names and all. Even if she can’t, the book feels like she could.

Admittedly I am not the target audience for this sort of tale. I prefer my vampires darker, my witches more mysterious and werewolves as ravaging beasts. That all being said there is a good tale here and an interesting set of myths. This could very well be the start of a new series of modern supernatural novels that everyone will be talking about, and if not it is also an enjoyable read and in the end isn’t what we want? Kolodziej shares her world with us and we all enjoy it.

I am pleased to hear there is a second book coming. She has built up a lot mythology here and there is plenty for a lot of books.

Lost my Projects Drive

Damn.

I work on a lot of projects.  Maybe too many to be honest, but they help keep my sanity.
So imagine my horror this morning when I could not find my projects flash drive.

IT's a tiny thing really.  8 gigs, black.  But on it were WORLDS.  It had my drafts to a couple of Old School projects I was working on. It had my complete draft of my "new" old-school campaign world "Eire".  Dozens of characters for a few different games. About 2  gigs worth of PDFs. A few reviews of some books I was reading.  Some new adventures for Ghosts of Albion.

Nothing I can't replace or rebuild in time, but irritating all the same. Well the review I have to restart from scratch and the three books I only have the last backed-up versions.

Not at all happy this morning.

Review: The Nameless City

Mythmere Games, who gave us Swords & Wizardry, have recently published a new adventure and I decided to download it.  I am very happy I did.

The Nameless City is built in the same vein of the old TSR S-Series, the same that gave us Tomb of Horrors and The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.  The adventure is for higher level characters, 7 to 10, and the adventure is certainly a deadly one.

The adventure itself is something of a cross between a dungeon crawl and an H.P. Lovecraft story (the Nameless City in fact).   There are plenty of degenerate lizard men, a cult to a forgotten god ala Lair of the White Worm, undead galore and of course dinosaurs and crazy snake-people cultists.

While there is nothing per se new here, it is all put together in a rather interesting and fun way.  Yes this adventure is dangerous.  The first room is enough to kill most parties and they have not even gotten into the city yet.
There is a bit of "old school ecology" here, ie monsters seem to be here for the sole purpose to be killed, but that is fine really and the adventure does give reasons why everything is in the place it is in.
The maps are nice, but I like mine a bit larger, but that's fine.
The plot is thin, but more robust than most of the old school modules it emulates and it does, I think, exactly what it was setting out to do.

What do I like about this?
Well the obvious and acknowledged nod to both Lovecraft and the dungeon crawls of old are nice.
Killing undead is always a plus in my book.
Loved the desert setting.  Investigating pyramids is always a blast.
Snake-People as secretive cultist like bad guys pretty much moves anything to the top of my list.

So this adventure succeeds for me on many levels.

I would have liked some more art sure, but what is there is very useful and the rest I guess is up to me and m players.  Again, bigger maps would have been nice.

The Nameless City comes in two flavors, S&W Complete or Core Rules/OSRIC version and a S&W White Box Version.  The rules are the same, except where needed and the monster stat blocks differ.  Of course either version should work well with any version of D&D or it's clones you desire.  Heck even with a very, very minor amount of tweaking I bet it would work well with 4th Edition, Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds or even Ghosts of Albion.  If I were Mythmere games I'd be looking into a CoC version myself.

The Nameless City is fun adventure and one that can be run in an afternoon or so.  And for the price it is a steal.

• The Nameless City: Swords & Wizardry Complete or Core Rules/OSRIC version
• The Nameless City: Swords & Wizardry White Box version

5 out of 5 stars