The Other Side blog

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Halloween Sales

It is that time of year.

DriveThruRPG is offering a Halloween Sale.

The one that caught my attention was the sale Troll Lord is having on Castles and Crusades.

If you ever wanted to try out the C&C system, this is a great time.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

October Challenge: Blood and Roses (1960)

Blood and Roses (1960)

Blood and Roses, or Et mourir de plaisir, is one of those movies I have know about for years and I have always wanted to see. Well I found it on Amazon Instant Video and thought this was a good of time as any.

After dealing with The Twins of Evil earlier in this challenge I have to admit my hopes for this one were low.
Well this one certainly has it's moments, even if it is a touch slow. I was thinking if it were redone today the narration would have been dropped.

This movie takes place in the modern day and plays a little like a sequel to the Vampire Lovers, with Twins of Evil as a prequel. This one though introduces a male lover for Carmilla/Millarca which will have any long time reader to this blog scratching their head like me.

The movie though is good. The lesbianism is as underplayed as the vampirism. This easily could be about a girl going crazy because the man she loves is marrying someone else. It is only at the end is their a supernatural (maybe) twist.

I now think I have seen all the film adaptations of Carmilla, but it is possible that one is still out there.

Tally: Watched 26, New 20

What are you watching?

Slasher Flick: Jenny Two-Bags

I am a fan of Shon Richard's Erotiterrorist site.

If eroticism or even mostly R and X rated stories bug you, then don't go. But among many other things Shon has a great imagination and can write a good tale.

His Halloween feature this month have been tales from the Succubus, Sukubeth. Today's tale was about this serial killer that comes back from the dead. It is a great mash-up of Carrie, Friday the 13th and any nameless college-age porno. Of course in my twisted mind I think it would make a a great Slasher Flick bad guy.

I reviewed Slasher Flick a couple of weeks back (here) and even posted some characters. What I never posted was a Killer to go along with the story.

So, presented here, is the horrific, but ultimately sad, tale of of a Girl known as Jenny Two Bags.
You can read her story here, http://erotiterrorist.blogspot.com/2012/10/fiction-jenny-two-bags.html
I will not attempt to retell it.

Appearance: Jenny appears as young women, roughly college age. Her body would be the envy of most supermodels and she usually does not spend much time covering up. Her face though is completely hidden by a sexy red devil mask. If you were to remove her mask (which is a suicidal idea) you would see her face. While Jenny was not attractive in life, death has done nothing to improve her. In fact she bares the marks of every kill and every time she has been killed on her horrific face.

Components: Fearful Visage, Feeds on Fear, Hard to Kill, Linked Location (the cemetery where her body was dumped and the nearby colleges), Punish the Promiscuous (this is her Raison d'être), Superhuman Strength

Plot Hooks:
• Jenny Two Bags only shows up on Halloween. If there is a high school or college party with alcohol (which means EVERY party) then expect Jenny to show up.
• Don't call her that! If a character calls Jenny by her name "Jenny Two-Bags" then she will go into a mindless killing frenzy.
• Last Boy. If one of the last characters is a somewhat average male (the Nerd Archetype works best here) and he tries to be nice to Jenny she will forget why she is there. This is treated as an attack.

Jenny can be killed by normal weapons and has been killed many times. But she is always back by next Halloween!

Read about Jenny Two-Bags here: http://erotiterrorist.blogspot.com/2012/10/fiction-jenny-two-bags.html
Get Slasher Flick here: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/82728/Slasher-Flick%3A-The-Director%27s-Cut?affiliate_id=10748

White Dwarf Wednesday #37

White Dwarf #37 opens up 1983 with what will be the first full year of monthly issues for WD.
At this point in time I was DEEP into D&D and AD&D, often mixing the games as was our wont.

The cover art is a small faerie, perfect for the article coming up.

We start off the issue with a large number of ads (more Judge Dredd) and then the editorial. Ian Livingstone laments the lack of British RPGs, complaining that the recent downturn of the Pound vs the Dollar have made American RPGs kind of expensive. o for myself I would have sworn there were British RPGs out at this point, but I guess I was wrong.

First up we have the aforementioned article on Faeries. This is an attempt by the author, Alan E. Paull to bring AD&D in line with the land of Fae; or at least close to it. This first entry is short (2 pages) but a great start really. Faerie should be so much more than what it typically is in *D&D. Next issue will have stats.

Andy Slack is back with An Introduction to Traveller. This issue is Part 2: Refereeing. He covers a lot of the published material out there and how to use it to help your game.

Open Box is next with reviews of Soloquest from from Chaosium. This little gem helps you run a solo RuneQuest game. It has some interesting ideas (DreamQuest, Maguffin Hunt) that I think might be interesting to try in D&D or even CoC. Clive Bailey gave it a 9/10 all by himself. Star Frontiers is next. I had just gotten this one for Chistmas so I was quite excited to build my own adventures from Star Wars, Star Trek and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Yes my very first character was a Vrusk named Zaphod. Andy Slack likes the rules and what you get in the box, but does not like the lack of space travel rules, (Night Hawks was still a bit away) and gives it a 7/10. Eventually my issue with Star Frontiers was the same as one of my issues with Traveller; it degraded into D&D in Space. Er, wait, sorry. D&D in SPPAAAAAACE! Lastly we have a Play By Mail game, Crasimoff's world "The International game for the modern thinking mind". Trevor Graver likes the detail and gives it 8/10 but dislikes the poor English and slow turnaround time (2 weeks).

Marcus Rowland, of future Forgotten Futures fame, http://www.forgottenfutures.co.uk/ has a GREAT article on Vampires. This article is a great companion piece to the old Dragon article Varieties of Vampires. This article was fodder for me and my games. I don't think I had a single vampire that was 100% like another in my games. Great things about this article, vampires getting more powerful with age, variations on powers and weaknesses. Great, great stuff really.

City in the Swamp was another one of those articles that made their way into my world myths. My Necromancer from a few issues back had his base of operations in a swamp. Actually a lot of things went into making that character, but this was one of those pieces. Graeme Davis gives us this adventure for 5th to 7th level characters.

Letters are up next. A reader LOVES the Necromancer, calling it the best class White Dwarf has done yet. Not so says Don Turnbull, putting on his official TSR cap, he calls the Necromancer "most distasteful". Which gets a note from the editor reminding him (and us) that the class is an NPC class. Another reader dislikes Infravision based on what he knows about infra-red cameras. Another dislikes the constant D&D focus of everything and one more asking for better Traveller material.

Lewis Pulsipher is back with D&D Scenarios, or what we would call adventure seeds today.

Fiend Factory has some odd monsters that cross species. Some land dwelling reptilian cephalopods that seem to worship the god Pyaray from the Elric books. We also have chameleon cats, bird men and ant men. None are bad, I like I the cats, the Crestcats, but also none of them fill me with any desire to use them. This has been the case for Fiend Factory for a while now.

RuneRites has two new Battle Magic spells from Richard Case and edited by Oliver Dickson.
Starbase has more new vehicles for Traveller.
Treasure Chest deals with AD&D encumbrance.

We follow with the ads and classifieds. One that was brought to my attention was this one:

Help!
15-yr old male AD&D player wishes to contact very attractive female AD&D players to discuss adventures. Please send current photo (if possible) or letter to...

I wonder if he ever got a response? I found someone the same age and grew up in the same area. I can report he seems successful and happily married. No I am not posting his name here.

We end with a few more pages of ads.

White Dwarf of 1983 is certainly taking a page or two from Dragon. The layout is cleaned up more and and there seems to be a great deal of professionalism as well. 83 was a big year for RPGs for me. Interesting to see this all again in the pages of WD.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Wicked After Dark Blog Hop / Spread the Witch

EDITED TO ADD: If you are NOT a Gamer I will also include a set of rules to play the Witch with. There are many free ones out there and I need to make sure I can include one of those in this giveaway.

Reposting this to officially start the Contest!

Wicked After Dark Blog Hop

I am participating in the Wicked After Dark Blog Hop and Give Away. The hop takes place over October 24th to November 1st and is hosted by Close Encounters with the Night Kind.

You can find more information on it here:
http://closeencounterswiththenightkind.blogspot.com/2012/07/wicked-after-dark-halloween-giveaway.html

This Blog Hop will run over the same time as my own Monstrous Monday Blog Hop so I hop to get a lot of great crossover. There are a TON of good blogs on both lists.

The Wicked After Dark though is a giveaway bloghop.

I will give away a PDF copy of The Witch.

I was considering giving it to anyone on my "Followers" list. But I have people on that list that do not have email addresses and others that I know follow me on Google+ or Facebook.

Given that the Wicked After Dark is also full of books on erotica and paranormal romance I think I am going to run a contest for this.

So without further ado, the Spread the Witch contest!

Here are the rules.

On your own blog, Facebook page, or Google+ page put a link up to my blog, http://timbrannan.blogspot.com. This can be for the one post only.
Talk about The Witch. You do not need to link to the DriveThruRPG page, but if you like you can. This can be something as simple as "Hey check out Tim Brannan's new book The Witch at http://timbrannan.blogspot.com".
POST the link to your site in comments section of this post. Posting the link to your entry on my site is my way of knowing you are entering this contest.

Entries will be judged by myself with the help of my wife. I am looking for clever, cute or creative ways to get people's attention. While I am not going to say avoid NC-17 ads, I will say please keep in mind your audience and mine. I don't restrict my blog due to content mostly because I think my demographic skews 25+.

The winner will be chosen the week of Oct 29th. I would like to give it away on Halloween to be honest.

So link here, spread the word and maybe you too can get a free copy of the Witch!

a Rafflecopter giveaway
If the Rafflecopter above app is not working please right-click on it and choose "re-load frame".

Listed below are the other participants in this blog hop. They are all giving away things too!

The Witch: Preview

I have had some questions about what is in The Witch.
Namely, what is in the book, how long is it.

So here is a preview PDF. It includes the cover, table of contents, and the complete text of the first 2 chapters and the introduction to the chapter on Traditions.

The Witch - Preview

I will be talking about the spells and rituals a little bit later.