White Dwarf Wednesday #88

April 1987 brings us White Dwarf #88 and thankfully very little of the silliness that plagued Dragon mag in the month of April.  Mike Brunton even parodies this (a little unsuccessfully) in the editorial page.  But before that let's get to the cover.  I like it.  It is named "Dragonlady" by David Gallagher.  I can't see a date on the cover, but it looks older than 87.  Love the whole punk rock look of the Dragonlady.

So there is a fallacy in many gaming circles that "older" = "better" for some games.  That is certainly not true with this issue.  There are a some stylistic changes that bring it closer to the modern WDs, but time wise it is still closer to the WD of the late 70s early 80s than it is with the ones of today.

Briefly in things that interested me:

Open Box covers H2 The Mines of Bloodstone module.  I have the H series. And I desperately wanted to make them work, but they really don't.  Everything that is disliked in the adventure is magnified in the last of the series, H4.  I went through H4 and I might run it again someday with some the information from the previous modules (H1, 2 and 3), but I wont use this module for many of the reasons listed here (time wasting encounters, killer funhouse style dungeon, ill-planned Battle System tie-in, way too much treasure).

Some reviews on various books for the big tie-in Supers games, DC Heroes and Marvel Super Heroes.  This was a golden age for Supers games in my mind.  I wish I had played them more, but at this point I was wrapping an epic AD&D game and working all the time for extra money for college.

The Paddington Horror is a scenario for Call of Cthulhu by Marcus Roland.  It doesn't seem bad and I do seem to remember this one begin planned when I checked out the SIU Strategic Games Society.  I remembered because it was an example of an adventure I knew I could get my hands on.  Plus I always thought it would be funny if the cover had that kids  book Paddington Bear only with tentacles.

Hm..some Judge Dredd stuff.  Miss the days when the ads were all at the end of the magazine.

Fate Points in Warhammer.

New cards for Chainsaw Warrior (also reviewed in Open Box) my issue does not have the cards.

A RuneQuest III adventure.  Not dual or multi-stated.

There are some pages about assassins for AD&D.  Not too different than things I have read elsewhere.  Must have been something in the water back then.  My favorite character at the time was an assassin.

A little on Blood Bowl. A game that looked really stupid to me in the past, but now I kinda want to play.

Ending with Letters and ads.

Ok so. Not a great issue by any means.  It's only saving grace in my mind was it did not fall into the stupidity that Dragon did every April.  But I'd take Nogard over boring any day.

Pathfinder: Advanced Class Guide Playtest

The newest public beta test for Pathfinder is now up. The Advanced Class Guide Playtest.
http://paizo.com/products/btpy92zi?Pathfinder-Roleplaying-Game-Advanced-Class-Guide-Playtest

This new book introduces new classes that are a combination of two other classes.
Very similar to what WotC was doing with "hybrid" classes back in the 4e days.

I liked the idea of hybrid classes to be honest, take a little from two classes and combine them into one class.

The 4e approach made it feel like each character was unique, the Pathfinder approach makes it feel like it is a new class.

I am sure there are things in this that people could adopt for their old-school or osr game, but for me I am more interested in how to use it my Pathfinder game.  True, I am running near the end of my 3.x game, but I am currently playing Pathfinder.

Yes. There is a "hybrid" of their witch class in here. The Shaman combine the witch with an oracle.
Neat idea, but not what I would have done.  If you are going to combine a witch and an oracle then I am thinking "Sybil" is a better name. Though given that it focuses on spirits, "shaman" is not really that far off.

I am going to read over it more but this might give me the framework to try out a class I have been wanting to play for a while; The Green Witch.  A Green Witch combines the best of the witch and druid classes into a potent divine spellcaster.   Back in the early 3.0 days I had it as a multi-class path.  Later I tried to make a Prestige class for it, but I didn't like how it worked.  Not sure what to do with the Druid's Wild Shape ability just yet, but I think I have an idea or two.

The druid Nature Bond and the witch Patron would get rolled up into one concept.
Likewise an Animal Companion and Familiar become one.

I am thinking something very Miyazaki influenced. With a dash of neo-paganism (maybe even Eco-Pagan) and animism.  Though I would like a different name.  "Green Witch" is great, but not evocative enough of it's druidic background.  Yeah, yeah I am introducing "Tree Hugers" to D&D, but a tree huger that will kill you if you mess with their forests.

Another Clone, but is this the Rosetta Stone?

There is another retro-clone game out on the market.  Fantastic Heroes & Witchery.
http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=63759

Now, while I enjoy clones I am not sure we need yet another one.  So I took a look at this.

FREE PDF: http://www.dcrouzet.net/temporary/Fantastic-Heroes-Witchery_screen.pdf

Print: http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?type=&keyWords=dominique+crouzet&x=-1004&y=-8&sitesearch=lulu.com&q=

First it is really attractive has some great layout and some very cool old-school art.

Plus once I started reading through it I recognized the art and finally the name of the author/artist.
It was made by an old friend Dominique Crouzet.
Dom had helped me back in 2000 on the original Netbook of Witches and Warlocks.  We had also submitted a game world (Shadow Earth) together to WotC.  They went with this other world, Eberron.
(Some of what was to be Shadow Earth lived on in Eire and in Eldritch Witchery).

What I think is best about this game is in how it tries to be the middle ground between the pure old school games of Basic and 1st/2nd eds, but also the newer 3.x games and the OSR games.
Critics will say there is nothing at all new here. Sure, but that misses the point I think.

What we have here is a game framework that can either be played as a game (and it looks like it is a fun one) OR used as a Rosetta Stone when translating other game products.

Dom put a lot of work into this.  This isn't some "cheap copy and paste job on Lulu". It is a fully playable game with ideas that are very familiar and some new ones as well.

The current PDF is free and there are print versions on Lulu.
And it is pretty much 100% compatible with The Witch.  Just use the Wizard advancement table and replace "Signature Spell" with "Ritual Spell".

EDITED TO ADD: Dom actually uses The Witch as an example on page 393.  He says:

Lets take for example the witch class from The Witch by Tim Brannan (this is a PDF ebook available on rpgnow.com). In this case you could distribute its special abilities as follows: “Least, Herb Use” at 1st level; “Lesser” at 3rd level; “Minor” at 5th level; “Medial” at 7th level; “Major” at 9th level; and “Superior” at 11th level.

I completely concur!

I wish Dom nothing but the best on this!

Winter is...well not here just yet

I tried. I did. And I failed.

I tried watching Game of Thrones and didn't make it past the first 4 episodes.  I might try again.
I just tried reading the book and only got about half-way through it before putting it down in favor of picking up the Hobbit again.

This weekend in Illinois was a good metaphor for this. Winter had been coming then it was in the 60s (with tornadoes) all weekend.

Recently I had been a big Conan kick thanks to +Jason Vey and I was impressed on how good they were now reading as an adult than when I tried reading them as a kid.  I had hoped that GoT was going to be similar in that respect (better than I remembered).  No such luck.

Though I love the imagery of a long winter coming after a period of long summer, I would have thought the people of the world would have been more anxious about it's coming.  Maybe in later books.  Still though I could not help but think this was the same planet from the 4th Doctor's Key to Time episode, The Ribos Operation.  Something I am planning on using in my current AD&D game.

Maybe I should try to reread Jack Vance now.  I actually enjoyed what little I read of the Dying Earth books.

Return to the Keep

We got a chance to get back to the Keep on the Borderlands and the Cave of Chaos today.  They cleared out one cave system and high-tailed it back to the keep to report on the growing threat.  The characters took some time to heal, regroup and restock.

The NPCs that had been travelling with them will come back, the Cinco Hermanos (the Keep is modeled in my game after Spanish missons and castles, so everyone in the Keep speaks Spanish).  They have also picked up a couple of other characters. An assassin pretending to be a thief, a healer (NPC) and a Forester (or maybe an Unseen).  The Healer and the Unseen are classes from Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts.  The wizard of the group is going to drift more towards Pyromancy so I am going to let my son use the Pyromancer spells from Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.   This will work out well since I am gong to start drifting towards my "older, bolder, colder" world that AS&SH supports.

They have not run into Dr. Zabaza yet, but I'll keep you all posted!

This group doesn't have a name yet.  I'll need to figure something out.

Spamming Hyperborea

So I was going back over some AS&SH posts in prep for today's game and I saw this as a comment:

I am Alan from Finland and I have always look forward for this day to tell the world about the the great powers of Dr.Zabaza. This great man called Dr.Zabaza was able to bring back my lover who left me, And within the space of 48 hours Dr.Zabaza brought my lover back and since then my love life have been more lovely and peaceful than i ever had. You can also strengthen your relationship or get your lover back by contacting Dr.Zabaza on zabaza.logan@XXXX.com or call him on +XXXXXXXXXXXXX and i assure you that you will get a better relationship after the help of Dr.Zabaza

You can read the original here: http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2013/11/my-weekend-in-hyperborea.html

I think Dr. Logan Zabaza needs to become my next evil NPC.  Obviously some sort of evil wizard. Given that "Alan" is from Finland maybe some LotFP influences should be added!

Zatannurday: Injustice Videos

I'll admit I have not been keeping up on Injustice: Gods Among Us.
But I figure with everyone so excited about the release of the PS4 (I am not getting one yet) I'd see if this is something I still want to put on my Christmas list.

In my research I found these great videos of Zatanna and some Zatanna game play.



Here is a long one, Zee vs. other magic using characters. The bit vs. Raven was neat.
The players don't know much about the character...but that is fine.



Still though. I want this game.



This one is a walk through of Zatanna's ladder to defeat Superman.