Damn You WotC for giving me what I want!

People are going to find it much harder to complain about WotC in the future.

They released the Premium 1st Ed AD&D Hardcovers last year and soon Unearthed Arcana will join those ranks.
And we have the 2nd Ed Premium Edition reprint on the horizon. (Thanks to Tenkar's Tavern for the WotC links)

• Player's Handbook (wotc)(amazon)
• Dungeon Master's Guide (wotc)(amazon)
• Monstrous Manual (wotc)(amazon)

There are other rumors about other things WotC may be doing in the near future.  Including rumors about product support for older editions.

Plus D&D 5/Next is shaping up to be very, very old school inspired.

Wizards of the Coast are making it very hard to cast them as the Evil Empire anymore.

Zatannurday: Alouette Cosplay, Part 2

A while back I posted some pictures of a great Cosplayer, Alouette.
I talked to her a bit on Facebook and she is really sweet and great.

And look what I got!

'To Tim: "Thank you for Saturday!" Alouette'

How cool is that!  This is going up in my game room!

She has some more prints for sale on her Facebook, DeviantArt and Storenvy pages:
http://www.facebook.com/AlouetteCosplayPage
http://alouettecosplay.deviantart.com/
http://alouettecosplay.storenvy.com/

I love her Catwoman and Batwoman costumes. But of course Zatanna is my favorite!
(Her Catwoman is really, really close though...)

I am now thinking that I need a wall of these. You know like you see in restaurants where celebs sign pictures of themselves when they have been there.  I could do all the superheroes that have appeared in my games and get them from cosplayers.  My game gets decorated and I help support their costuming!

Cause remember. Cosplayers make cons more enjoyable for everyone.  I drag my wife to cons and she looks forward to seeing all the costumes.  She acted like a total fangirl when she saw "Rose" from Doctor Who.

Thanks Alouette!

OH and LIKE her Facebook page too!

Ohmigod! It's Totally 80s Friday!

At the beginning of the week I was talking about the OSR of Computers where I was interested in going back to buy a computer I had owned back in the day for nothing but nostalgia.  I instead just went out an got an emulator.  Now I just need to transfer the ROM from the machine in my parent's basement (I guess I still have some stuff there).

This train of thought kept going all week, and now I have come full circle.  Looking for games not from the 80s, but set in the 80s.  Not as many as I wanted to be honest.  Here are the ones I got and enjoyed the most.  It's not all of them, and not even all the ones I would potentially like, but the ones I bought.

D20 Decade: The 1980s

It is difficult not to compare this to Damnation Decade or Solid! in terms of capturing the feel of a decade.
For starters this is for the d20 Modern RPG, which I am not even sure is still being supported by anyone.  That all being said, there is a lot of great stuff in this book.   There are some pages spent on modifying the d20M skills, in particular how Computers worked then. That and the new Perform (Break Dance) and Perform (Free Style Rap).  No Perform (Gymkata!) though.  Of particular use to any 80s-based game is the list of common items we take for granted today that just wasn't there then.  Easy stuff like Smartphones, but other not so obvious things like Caller ID. Sure there were cellphones, but they were huge and the batter life was only a couple hours.  Chapter 1 covers the 80s. At 20% of the book content is really worth the price of the book.  It is a great overview of 80s tech, culture and pop psychology.  Its not a history book, but it shouldn't be either.  Even at 30+ pages somethings are going to be missing; but this is the 80s writ large, not Master's Thesis.
Chapter 2 covers the "Imaginary 80s", an 80s that never was.  Among the new races there is also a list of other games you can look into to help you out.  With the OGL they could have simply included what they wanted from many of those games, but I thought it was kind of neat to include them.  Speaking of the new races, they are really new.  Some are twists on familiar concepts, but others are new and all fit the 80s to a tee. My favorite might be the Arcadians (Video game fey) or the Spetsnazski, the Russian Super Soldiers. Cause the only thing more fun than Nazi Weird Science is Russian Weird Science.  The Crow Folk and High Solstice Sidhe could work just as well in a Pathfinder game.  There are also about 16 new occupations for your 80s character.  There are also, surprisingly, 144 new feats! Going past those for a bit there are also 5 new Advanced classes.  If you were wondering when the Miami Vice influences would appear then take heart with the Blue Equalizer, which let you play any sort of 80s "Super Cop".  Perfect foil for the Drug Lord Advanced Class.  These are followed by a few new spells.
The last part, Confetti, has a few bits for the GM for adding 80s flavor to their game.  These are also useful for any 80s game.
There is fairly good list of resources both non-fiction and fiction, and a good list of movies, TV shows and graphic novels.
Final the OGL where everything is released as Open Gaming Content.  Very nice.
Ok, so this is a really cool idea and a lot of work went into these 164 pages.
They did a great job with this, but I am not without some quibbles.
I am not going to mention anything missing from the 80s.  Trying to squeeze an entire decade into a game book is hard and something is going to get left out. If it's not there and you remember it add it on your own.  Though missing *something* about a Valley Girl seems a bit like a huge omission to me.
The art is all over the place. Most is fair, but none of it is great.
The layout has a number of issues.  The background on the pages is not great.  In most cases it is only just there, in others the "page number block" obscures some text.  It's the 80s, where are the pastels?
I have mixed feelings about even mentioning it since I have seen newer products of theirs and they look great.  This one is an early effort.
Going back to my totally unfair comparison to Damnation Decade, I think it would be interesting to see this updated to something like True 20 (which is at the time of this writing just as dead as d20 Modern) with better layout.
Despite all that I can't help but really, really like this product. At 6 bucks it is a great buy.
4 out of 5 stars.

Cartoon Action Hour
Cartoon Action Hour: Season 2
I reviewed CAH in depth before and if you spend anytime here at all you will know my fondness for this game.  This not an 80s emulation game, but an 80s cartoon emulation.
The biggest news though I have heard is that Season 3 is on the way.  Looking forward to that!
5 out of 5 stars.

World of Darkness: New Wave Requiem

It's Totally Vampires! Playing in the 80's never looked so good. While I don't follow many of the new WoD titles, this supplement is great. It brings back all sorts of memories and it is nice to see a shift in mentality from the paranoid 90's (birthplace of V:tM) and the weird 2000s. Nice to get back to a time when greed was good, sex was not safe and drugs were everywhere. We can't go back to the 80's but we can pretend to. The art, like all the art in WW's books, is fantastic.
I want a print of that Erik Jones book cover for my game room.
This is one of my favorites really. Not just about the 80s but from the new WoD.  Put on some Bauhaus and give this one a go.
5 out of 5 stars.


So anyone know of other good 80s games?

Email blues

So I was talking to a few people this week and today  about email.
One thing that came up is that is hard to figure out what someone's email  is supposed to be unless you do some digging and very difficult without a Google+ account.

So to that end I created an "email me link".  I used an image to help stop at least some of the spammers.
You can click on it and email me now if you like.

Just another service provided to you, the readers of the Other Side!

Slight Rant: Answer your D@#% email

Sorry slight rant here.

Publishers: It is common courtesy that if you get an honest inquiry about one of your products you answer or at least acknowledge the email.

The end result is I don't buy your product.  And some of you are small enough that you can't afford to ignore your customer base.

Not naming names, but seriously. Customer support.

I have sent out emails to four different companies over the last week or so. Heard nothing back from any of them. One I can forgive, the others? Well to be honest they don't have enough business to be too busy to ignore potential customers.

If we have learned anything from the various Kickstarter non-starters then it is keep in communication with your potential and actual customers.  This business is too small to ignore people.

Rant over.

White Dwarf Wednesday #48

White Dwarf Wednesday takes us to the end of 1983. For Christmas I got a copy of the Police's Synchronicity and I believe the Monster Manual II (and check out the ad for it at the end...if you have a copy).  Out of the shelves was White Dwarf #48.

This one of the cooler WD covers. Brought to us by Alan Craddock I for years thought it was a Chris Achilleos.

Ian Livingstone talks about bring out some RPGs to play with the family this Christmas, wondering what Granny might think of Orc stomping.

Up first is Open Box with a ton of items.  For AD&D we have UK1: Beyond the Crystal Cave, EX1: Dungeonland and EX2: The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror. For D&D X3: Curse of Xanathon. Jim Bambara likes the modules for the most part giving them 9/10, 9/10, 9/10 and 7/10 respectively.  Andy Slack tackles the new version of the Traveller basic rules. This is the cover I remember most about the mid 80s.  It is also the version of the Traveller I never tried having ended with the Blue Book. He gives it an 8/10 overall, but still states that neophytes are better served with one of the other sets.  Jon Sutherland takes on the two Call of Cthulhu adventures (and they are called Adventures now, not Scenarios). Death in Dunwich and The Arkham Evil.  He gives them 7/10 and 8/10 respectively saying these are not for fool hardy players used to hack and slash.  Finally we have the Autoduel Champions and Car Wars Reference Screen.  Autoduel gives us Car Wars for Champions.  Marcus Rowland gives them 8/10 and 6/10.

The book reviews focus on the then recent batch of sci-fi/fantasy books. The Complete Book of SF and Fantasy is one that jumps out at me.  I think I owned this at one point, but the title is so generic I could have owned something very similar.   There is also a review of Moorcock's  Dancers at the End of Time, which I have not read.  A couple of Trek books are also covered including what is likely to have been the first time I had ever heard of what is now known as Slashfic, called Kirk-Spocking here.

Lew Pulsipher's  Lew's Views is back this month and covers Gods, Magic and FRP battles.  He discusses the nature of Gods and Magic in fantasy battles.

Rick Priestly has an article on using Giants in Warhammer.  There are some interesting and mostly game agnostic rules about giants getting drunk.  I might try these out.

The Dark Brotherhood is an alternate system for Assassins in AD&D by Chris Felton.  I remember reading this way back when and it influenced the assassin guilds I had made for my game. The Brotherhood (no relation I am sure since I was big into acronyms then and wanted it to spell out BEAST) and the Red Assassins were two rival guilds in my games.  I never made characters in either guild sign contracts.

Counterpoint discusses boardgames derived from books. The big ones are discussed; LotR, Dune, Call of Cthulhu and Asimov's books and the varying degrees of success they achieved.

Ian Bailey has some RuneQuest crunch and fluff for us in the form of Crom Cruach, a Goblin Cult.   It is interesting enough to use anywhere.

Tracing Errors is this issue's Microview article and Gareth Williams covers how to find and debug errors in your programming.

Letters covers level limits in AD&D, Marc Miller and Thomas Price praising the coverage of various Traveller articles.

Marcus Rowland covers computers in Traveller.  By this time the concept of what a computer could do had changed in the world since Traveller had been published.  Computers had always been one of Traveller's weakest area in terms of future tech.  This article helps, but doesn't quite get it there.  My smart phone laughs at the idea of 1 ton batteries powering a computer for only 12 hours.

RuneRites has a double feature for us today. Monsters and a new scenario.  The monsters are listed (nothing jumps out at me), we break for a Thrud the Barbarian strip and head into the scenario.  The Lone and Level Sands is dual stated for AD&D AND RuneQuest.   New monsters are given both RuneQuest and AD&D stats (or at least where you can get them).

Fiend Factory returns the favor and converts the RQ demons from the last few issues into AD&D demons.
Treasure Chest follows with some demon related spells for D&D/AD&D.

The Travellers get into more trouble. And the Victoria Gazette is another attempt at a news article.  No jokes this time, just straight news.

Classifieds and Small ads follow.  Gobbledigook shows us how to handle Illusionists.
Ads end the issue including full page ones for James Bond, Games Fair 84,  Games Workshop and TSR for the Monster Manual II.

In general I feel that once again the layout and general design of the magazine was turned up a bit.  The page count is now up to 52 and still only 75p.

You can get a better look at that cover art here:

New Classes from Barrel Rider Games

I love new classes.  I love all sorts of new options. So when the chance comes around to get my hands on a new class, especially if it is for my current favorite version of D&D (Basic/Expert) or clone (Labyrinth Lord/Basic Fantasy).

So I have been picking up a few from Barrel Rider Games, http://barrelridergames.com/

Barrel Rider Games (and I will admit I love this name) is in the biz (so far) of producing a new class for a buck. Not a bad biz to be in really. There is always a new class that can be made, there is demand and people will part with a dollar pretty easy.

In nearly every case you get a class, some art (usually just cover art), descriptions, and the LL compatibility license and the OGL.  Also, I am afraid to admit they are usually missing the Saving Throws table and sometimes how the class gains To Hit rolls.  This is not a huge deal for most of them since it usually pretty obvious what they should be, it would still be nice if they had them.

Here are few I have tried out.

The Bounty Hunter

In many ways the Bounty Hunter (class) is a better class for "Basic" Era Games than the Assassin is.  The Assassin has a history in the "Advanced" Era and it has it's place, but a game aimed at simpler rules might not be it.   That is why the Bounty Hunter (this book) is a good choice for Labyrinth Lord or any other Basic-era compatible game.

Like all the books from Barrel Rider Games this book presents a class, reasons why it can be used, and the associated skills and tables.  The Bounty Hunter (class) then is part thief, part assassin and part tracker/ranger.  Honestly it might well be the best of all the BRG classes.

Also, though, like the other classes, this one is missing some key information.  Namely this book is missing the saving throw tables and to hit tables for the Bounty Hunter.  I would suggest using the thief tables in both cases.

Other than that, this is a solid class.

The Undead Slayer

I love undead and all the classes and trappings that go around them; so slayers and necromancers are great in my book.

This class is a very specialized one, against other monsters it has the fighting prowess of the a thief (which isn't bad), but it shines against Undead. I felt the powers it received were fine, I think I would have started them at lower levels to be honest. The feel of this class is akin to the ranger. It has some sneaking ability, some magic and bonuses to fight undead.
If the Cleric is modeled off of the Hammer-era Van Helsing, then this class is more along the lines of a Captain Kronos.

The class might be a little under powered in some respects to be honest. But that is only a read-through and the proof would be in the playing. For example it does have some thief abilities that would aid a party in non-undead adventures.

In earlier reviews of products from Barrel Rider Game I mentioned that I didn't see the Labyrinth Lord Compatibility License. That was an error. It is very clear on the same page as the OGL. This book has it.
I also mentioned that in some of the other classes that I could not find the to-hit and saving throw progression for the classes. I also could not find it in this one. There is only about a page and half of text and about a page of tables. I am sure I would have seen it. I suspect that the undead slayer uses the Clerical to hit and saving throw tables.

I would like to try this class out sometime. I think it would work well in the right kind of adventure. Care though needs to be given that it does not interfere with the cleric's role of hunter of the dead.

The Assassin

I don't expect a lot for a buck. Can't buy a bottle of Mt. Dew or a cup of coffee for a buck anymore. But you can buy a class.

This is the classic "1st Edition" class for Labyrinth Lord, but should be compatible with any number of other Old School RPGs.
You get a cover page (oddly formatted, but hey), fours pages of the class and the OGL statement.

The class has what you would expect, tables for advancement and assassinations. Also there is a bit on the use of poisons.

There are, unfortunely a few things missing.

In the missing must haves there is no saving throw advancement tables and no to hit advancement tables. I would use the Thief for these.
In the missing like to haves there is nothing on new weapons unique to the assassin. Nothing for example about the garrote, the time honored classic of all assassin weapons. This is almost a missing "must have" to be honest.
So it has a lot of potential, but the publisher really needs to fix these omissions.

The Dragon

Again, I don't expect a lot for a buck. Barrel Rider Games though gives you a whole class for a buck.

This one is a bout Dragons as a class/race. Not Dragonborn or Dragonfolk, but full blown dragons.
Now my first thought is these characters could be unwieldy in a group of adventurers or even overpowered. That is best left to the Labyrinth Lord to decide really.

The book is five pages: Cover, 2 pages for the class, and 2 pages for the OGL.
This one does have the Labyrinth Lord compatibility notice.

There seems to be a bit missing though.
For starters there is no "To Hit AC" tables for the Dragon. Nor are there any Saving Throw tables.
Kind of need these in order to play the character.  In this case I don't have any suggestions.

I would have liked have seen a little on how to play this character class and what motivates them to adventure.

Smith and Scholar

This book is only a buck and it is very simple. But don't let "Simple" translate into "not worth it". This book is filled with ideas for all the Basic/LL core classes. They are billed as professions, but if you are familiar with the old 2nd Ed "Kits" then these are very similar.
There are 6 per class and all provide some background, history and some mechanical bonus for the character. There is no balance issue from what I can see if everyone in the game opts for one or if there is some sort of DM-enforced obligation attached. For example the Exorcist Cleric should be obligated to investigate any claim of possession he/she hears. The other Professions can work the same way.

These are set out as flavor, but I think in the right hands these can really brighten up what would be an ordinary game into something very interesting.

They have other books that I have not tried yet as well.  The Barbarian, the Swashbuckler, Half-Orc, Half-Elf and Dark Elf.

I say give them a look.