Thursday, March 22, 2012

Walking to Mordor

Go to Google Maps.

For your starting point enter "The Shire", for your destination enter "Mordor".
Change to Walking and get directions.


It works for Rivendell too.

Blog Roll Fixed

The simple solution was to split up my blog rolls.
You will now see I have an RPG one and an Everything Else one that has all the writing, horror, comic and other stuff I read.

My RPG one though is now just as full as it was before, so even if it is an RPG site chances are I'll have to add you to the other blog roll.

Another new Blog on the block

Jason Vey of Spellcraft & Swordplay, has a new blog out for movie reviews.

Overpriced Popcorn: Film Reviews for the Rest of Us!
http://overpricedpopcorn.blogspot.com/ 

You can read his introductory post on what he plans to do with and why.
It promises to be very interesting.  Jason and I talk about movies all the time and while we don't always agree, the conversation is never dull.

So check out this new blog and tell your friends.

Blog Roll

You might notice my blog roll is gone.
I am attempting to fix it and add the new blogs I am following and maybe even arrange them in some sort of order.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

White Dwarf Wednesday Issue 9

Issue 9 of White Dwarf nearly finishes up the transitional year of 1978.  We saw a lot of changes int he magazine in the last year and there are still more to come.

In another editorial that seems taken from today's blogs or posting boards is the amount of "Realism" people want in their game.  So much so in fact that they opted to withhold their letters page till next issue since so many were on the topic of realism.

Mike Ferguson gives us some new skills and rules for Traveller. The Fiend Factory is up and running again with FF faves such as the Svart and Umpleby.  Ok, faves might be too strong of a word. There are half a dozen monsters here that didn't make the cut for the Fiend Folio and I have been wondering if there is enough here to make a "Fiend Folio 2" that never was.  Let me think about that one.

Another instalment of "Valley of the Four Winds".
A mini-dungeon "The Lichway" for 6-8 1st level characters which looks like a blast.  Interestingly enough one of the monsters introduced is the Susurrus.  This monster will also later go on to join his Fiend Factory cousins in the Fiend Folio.  The art used is identical (what what I can remember). And later go on to influence this author on a magic item.

Kalgar is back and takes an odd twist. The adventures of Kalgar are no more than the dreams of some man and watched on some sort of high-tech viewscreen by another man and woman.  Not sure where this is going yet.

Open Box gives reviews on Superhero 44 by Lou Zocchi and Legions of the Petal Throne from TSR.  We are also treated to reviews of G1, G2 and G3 which get a 9/10 from Don Turnbull. Finally Judges guild gives us Citadel of Fire (6/10).

We get a new class in the form of the Foresters for Chivalry & Sorcery.

Treasure Chest is a mixed bag of some traps, useless items and instant ability scores for monsters.
The issue wraps up with a couple pages of ads.

White Dwarf Wednesday...

Will be happening later today.  Got stuck in meetings all morning long.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Itching for the Tomb of Horrors

As I posted yesterday my son is going to get to play some of the classic greats, B1, B2, and X1. This along with the idea that 4e is on the wane and 5e coming up, I don't really need to complete my 3.x game just yet.  Plus there are still so many classics I want to play again.

So my kids' characters are at 20th level.  I was thinking that I could take the Tomb of Horrors (3.5 revision), link in some of the ideas (and maps) from the 4e version.  Add some monsters from the Tome of Horrors complete edition and just through it all together in a meat grinder.

They have already gone through S2 and S4 (not sure about S3 yet)

It really could be awesome.

It is one of the all time greats.  And even though the characters are twice the level, I would make it a little deadlier.  Plus a lot of this adventure is really based on Player skill and not Character skill.  My kids are still younger than the average player of this adventure, so the greater power characters might be offset by that alone.

Interestingly enough, this is the only adventure I know of that has has official products for each edition of D&D.

So kind of a no-brainer really.