The Other Side blog

Friday, September 7, 2012

More Monster Images

Since I want to make this more inclusive here are some more image fro you to use to link back.

There's a Monster in my Blog!

I have had a couple of questions about the MONSTROUS MONDAY Blogfest.

Again, here are the rules.

Sign up below
Grab a button and link back to my site
Post your Monster on Monday October 29th 2012!

That's it!

What can you post?
Lots of things.
- Monster stats for your game.
- a description or story of the monster from your new book
- the monster you love/hate the most

I am even considering some other ideas. But the key here is it has to be a monster.

So lets see them!

3.5 Reprints

The 3.5 reprints are hitting the shelves soon.

They look nice, very evocative of both the 3.0 and 3.5 covers. Though they lack the "old tome" feel the originals went for, and were often imitated during the entire d20 boom.

I am not sure I will get them though.

I have my 3/3.5 books. I even have the leather bound deluxe 3.5 books. And Pathfinder.

How about you all?

Thursday, September 6, 2012

MONSTROUS MONDAY!

This year I wanted to do something extra for Halloween (which in my mind is the entire month of October). So I am going to be hosting the MONSTROUS MONDAY Blogfest!

The rules are really simple.

Sign up below
Grab a button and link back to my site
Post your Monster on Monday October 29th 2012!

That's it!

What kind of Monster? Well that is up to you really. I am going to be posting Monster stats. You can do that, or post a monster you like/love/hate, or tell us about the monster in your new book coming out. Anything would be great really.

I will be posting some more soon.

Here are some banners for your use with some code to link back here.

Code:

Code:

Code:

OR Right-click on the picture you want and re-size as needed.

You can sign up here now.

Blogfest/Bloghop anyone?

So I was looking at my calendar last night and I noticed that October has 5 Mondays and 5 Wednesdays this year. Yeah it has 5 Tuesdays too.

I was thinking that it might be cool to post a new monster here every Monday in October. Then I thought, why should I have all this fun by myself?

So here is an idea and I'd like to see who would all like to join in. On the Monday before Halloween (10/29) everyone post a new Monster. It doesn't have to be horror related and it can be in any system. I then thought I could expand it to let anyone post something about any sort of monster.

I would do this as a Blogfest, like the A to Z challenge, and everyone could see what everyone else has done.

Any takers? This would be a great way to spread the word about gaming into areas beyond our "Blog borders" and it could give you all sorts of ideas.

Let me know what you think. I am still going to post a new monster every Monday in October and mine will be horror themed.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Review: Mazes & Perils (2012)

EDITED TO ADD: There is a new version out, but I have not had a chance to read it yet. I will get to it, sometime in the future.

My first experience with D&D was the Eric Holmes version of D&D Basic. While I soon moved on to Moldvay and to AD&D 1st Ed, the Holmes edition holds a warm and fuzzy place in my gaming recollections. I know I am not the only one that feels this way. So anything that is done as an homage to Holmes I pay attention too.

So I was thrilled when I heard there was a "new" retro-clone that was an homage to the Holmes version of D&D. That thrill quickly turned sour when a.) I couldn't get it any more and b.) I heard the author was the same one as the OSRIC fiasco about a year ago. You can read the drama here as a retrospective:
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2011/09/osric-players-guide-retraction.html
http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2011/10/fool-me-once-shame-on-you-fool-me-twice.html
http://swordsandwizardry.blogspot.com/2011/10/copyright-and-osr-part-1.html

Fast forward to this year and there is a new Mazes & Perils out. I was curious and more than a little skeptical about the game. I want to give the game and the author, Vincent Florio, a fair shake. The OSRIC book was a copy paste job with some art that he didn't own and the first M&P was copy and pasted from Holmes. But again, I never saw that first M&P and can only go on what I read. So, I want to judge this new M&P on it's own merits.

First things first, obviously the name of the game is a nod to John Eric Holmes' book "The Maze of Peril" and I can respect that. If you are going to do a Holmes' homage or pastiche then that is a perfect name really.
Secondly, some others have complained about the art. I rather like it to be honest. The cover is very cool and the interior is no worse than what you would have seen in Holmes.
While this is an homage to Holmes I am not sure what I have here.

Taken as a retro-clone by itself it is not much different than Labyrinth Lord or Basic Fantasy RPG, except it is now quite as good as either of those. M&P stops progression at level 9. Which I kind of get, but there is not enough here to support an end-game style D&D, say the way Adventurer Conqueror King System does.
The rules are simple, as befits the times it is emulating. There is some missing information in some areas (or not easy to find, which is just as bad really). There are tables for STR, INT, CON and DEX but not for WIS or CHA. This is an artifact of Holmes, but M&P expands STR into the AD&D1 numbers, but still does not include these other tables.Some other oddities are the XP levels for Cleric and Magic User. Some of the monster text is awkward to read. There are various grammar errors that even I noticed, and I am terrible at that.

Taken as a "Holmes clone" it certainly does that, even to the point that they are little too similar in some respects. There are some spots of the text that are nearly identical, including some text that is more similar to Holmes than OGC text that is essentially the same in LL and BFRPG. Other differences from the source material has Elves, Dwarves and Halflings as races and not race/classes like Gygax/Holmes/Moldvay/Mentzer. This puts it closer to BFRPG.

This is certainly a labor of love on the part of the author. And as a Holmes fan myself I can respect that.
But I am left feeling that this is too close to the source material. It even shares some of the shortcomings of the Holmes book. I understand the desire, but to mimic the style, even to the point where some sections are not very clear, is not a good idea. This is one of the reasons the Moldvay book was made, Holmes was a transitional project. There are lot of places in Holmes that say "these are give in ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS". M&P does not have that advantage.

In the end this still comes off as a collection of house rules added to Holmes and not really a "Holmes clone" or even a "Holmes what-if". Plus I have the suspicion in the back of my mind that this is merely an edit of a Holmes cut-and-paste job. I am sorry, but it's true. If this had been the first effort of this author then I would give him the benefit of the doubt, but that went out with the second copy-pasta. If you read LL or BFRPG you can see where their text came from; the SRD. This text does not.

Mazes & Perils is a free product. It has that going for it. It is also released under the OGL and has it's own compatibility license. If you can't get a copy of Holmes on your own then this will give you an idea of what it is like, but it's not as good.

In the end it has too many flaws, both in terms of execution and design, for me to really get behind it.

So behind on reviews

I am woefully behind on my reviews.

I am going to try to get some up here soon, but this is a rather busy time of year for me. Hope to have something up later.