The Other Side blog

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

New Year, New Game

The recent announcement of 5th Edition D&D is now out, but the game itself will take a bit longer.

DrivethruRPG is though running a sale on 20 games for 2012 for $12 a game.
Depending on which book you get that can be an absolute steal.

Here is the list, along with my thoughts.

Arcanis: the Roleplaying Game
Artesia: Adventures in the Known World - awesome looking game. Very, very cool
Ashen Stars
Blue Rose - The Roleplaying Game of Romantic Fantasy - big fan of this one. Gave us True20.
Buffy RPG Revised Corebook - I think you all know my thoughts on this one.
Burning Empires
Chthonian Stars Core Setting - Cthulhu is SPAAAACE! Well, not exactly (well. yes.) For Traveller.
Conspiracy X 2.0 - fantastic game of modern conspiracy.
Dark Ages: Vampire - loved the DA line of Vampire. Great stuff. POD versions too!
Fantasy Craft Second Printing - would have liked to try this one more.
Icons - great, fun game.
Legend of the Five Rings 4th Edition
Legends of Anglerre - new one to me, but looks cool.
Macabre Tales rulebook
Mouse Guard Roleplaying Game
Mutant City Blues
Mutants & Masterminds Hero's Handbook - 3rd edition of the World's Most Popular Super-hero game. And tons of fun.
Outbreak: Undead
Requiem for Rome
Spycraft 2.0 Rulebook - Second Printing
Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies
The Laundry RPG - more Cthulhu inspired goodness.
The Savage World of Solomon Kane - at 12 bucks this is more than a steal.
Traveller Main Rulebook - update of the classic SciFi RPG.
Werewolf The Wild West - never quite got this game, but werewolves in the Wild West? Yeah lets do it!
Wild Talents 2nd Edition - a steal at 12 bucks.
Witch Hunter: the Invisible World - I have had my issues with this game, but it is damn attractive and still fun.

There are 1000s of games out there. Use this new year to try out a new game!

Monday, January 9, 2012

So...what would we like to talk about?

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition

The worst kept secret in the RPG biz is now out.

Players Roll the Dice for Dungeons & Dragons Remake

I'll have some thoughts on this in a bit. But I am interested in how they are going to get the player input.

Here is the press release from WotC.
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120109

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Here There Be Dragons...update

Working with my son right now on his dragon book. He has a lot of cool ideas and I like how the book is shaping up.

After going around a couple times on the system we wanted to use, we decided today that the book will be stated up for 1st Edition Advanced rules.

We felt there are a ton of books out there for 3e. We were not really interested in doing it for 4e though either. Basic was my original choice since it can be translated well. We even very, very briefly considered Savage Worlds (his new favorite).

I need to read over the OSRIC license IF I want to indicate compatibility with OSRIC (no idea if I want too or not yet). Of course there is the Labyrinth Lord "Advanced Edition Companion" and that is also a good candidate. They both represent the same era of play and are largely compatible with each other.

I think this is a good way to go to be honest. His ideas are very much n the mindset of the earliest days of the hobby; when everything was permitted and no one said you couldn't have a blue dragon that had ice cold fire as a breath weapon. HTBD will be a new point of view on these creatures, something I think we could all use after nearly 40 years.

Not sure on the deadline or when it will be out. But the author is working on it when it is his turn to use the homework computer.

Zatannurday: Cedric Poulat

I discovered Cedric Poulat in a Deviant Art search for pictures of Ice for the first day of winter. Turns out he is just about as crazy about Zee as I am. So I figured I'd start out the New Year's Zatannurday with the artist I ended the old year with.

His Deviant Art page is here, http://j-estacado.deviantart.com/
And his Zatanna gallery is here, http://j-estacado.deviantart.com/gallery/11873463 here are some of my favorites.

Z by *J-Estacado on deviantART

Z A T A N N A - markers by *J-Estacado on deviantART

Zatanna 2 by *J-Estacado on deviantART

Zatanna- A R T N O U V E A U by *J-Estacado on deviantART

Z A T A N N A - burlesque by *J-Estacado on deviantART

So, go to his page and check out all his cool art.

Friday, January 6, 2012

La Befana The Christmas Witch

La Befana at Disney World

Every year I try to remember to say something about La Befana, the Italian Christmas witch.
This year I remembered, but had set the date wrong. Oh well.

You can read more about her here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befana

The most common tale is she directed the Three Wise Men to the new baby Jesus, but declined to go with them till her housework was done.

Like St. Nick/Santa, she gives out gifts to Children on Epiphany Eve. Befana, like many other Christianized myths has her origin in an older story of the Goddess Strenua. So she is seen a protector figure in myth.

Given that she is such a complex character it would be difficult to do her justice in a write-up.

But I can talk about her broom.
Her Broom seems to be perfect as a powerful witch artifact that you can drop into your games.

The following is released as Open per the OGL.

La Befana’s Broom
La Befana was a great and powerful witch. Legend says that she once helped three great and powerful Magic-Users find their way when they were lost, search for a young king. They had asked La Befana to go with them, but she declined telling them she had cleaning to do. In reality she did not want to go because she had lost her own baby and seeing this new one would have made her sad.
The Magic-Users on their return brought La Befana a gift, a magical broom that would clean her home for her if she uttered the proper word. It would also render her invisible and allow her to enter the home of anyone unnoticed as long as her intentions were good and pure. La Befana used this magic to go into people’s homes on the eve of the Magic-Users' return to her each year to clean the homes of the good people in her village and leave a small present, usually a bit of candy for the good children or a bit coal for the bad ones.
She has let the broom go now so it may continue to do good in the world where she can’t go.
In the hands of a Good witch this broom will manifest the following powers:

Act as a Broom of Flying
Act as a Broom of Protection, Threshold
When held it will render the witch Invisible
When used to knock on a door the door will open as if a Knock spell was cast on it. Inhabitants will not be able to hear the knock.

Neutral witches can also use these powers, but only if their intent is pure and good. If they attempt to do anything that is considered harmful or against those pure intentions then the Broom treats them as if they were Evil.
Evil witches cannot use the Broom at all. Once they touch it it becomes a Broom of Animated Attack. The broom will attack for 1 round (it gets the initiative due to surprise) then it disappears.
Typically the Broom will remain with any given witch only for one year then it will disappear to find another worthy witch.

Blogging A to Z?

Last year I proudly participated in the Blogging A to Z challenge in April.

I felt it was not only a good way to stretch my creative abilities but work on my writing and do a bit a cross blog-genre promotion. My hits went up, and stayed up, drastically during and after April and I got my greatest surge of followers.

Well they are doing it again this year.

http://tossingitout.blogspot.com/2012/01/blogging-from-to-z-april-challenge-2012.html

Though I am not sure I am going to do it this year yet or not.

Last year it worked out on many levels for me. I recall thinking about the posts I had queued up and how they would fit the challenge. When "Z" fell on a Saturday it clinched it for me.

Part of the purpose of the blogfest is to post every day. I do that now anyway.

Keep in mind I am NOT saying participation is a bad idea, far from it in fact.

I actually suggest that we get MORE OSR/RPG bloggers participating to get our message out there.

The one thing we all talk about is getting more people involved in our hobby, we can't do that if the only people we talk to are already in our hobby.

Plus if you are selling a product you should participate just to more attention to you and your book.

If I do it this year then I need to do a theme or something, make it more challenging than last year.

Are you going to participate? Why or why not?