The Other Side blog

Thursday, January 9, 2014

World of Calidar: Kickstarter final hours

A fast one this morning. Bruce Heard's World of Calidar Kickstarter is in it's final hours.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ambreville/world-of-calidar

It has blown past all it's stretch goals and it should be a fantastic product.

It looks fun as hell and might just be the thing you need for your game.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

White Dwarf Wednesday #92

White Dwarf #92 comes to us from August 1987. About this time I was headed off to college and my game playing took a slight hit. It would pick up again soon, but my game went for a change after this. Interesting for me is the change White Dwarf was also going through as well. Something due to the time or just my perceptions? Likely just me.

The cover is by David Gallagher. It has a vague Warhammer feel to it. The editorial is a rambling affair about how demons in RuneQuest are not real. I may sound a bit glib here, but this was big deal here in the states just a few years before this. Later in this issue we discuss more demons in RuneQuest.

Open Box covers the new Stormbringer RPG and RuneQuest (Advanced RQ). Going back to my idea of "Plays Well With Others", Elric, Stormbringer and RuneQuest were always games I liked mixing up and together. The reviews are positive, as expected. Also reviewed is the Ghostbuster adventure Scared Stiffs. I liked the idea of the Ghostbusters game, I just never got the chance to play it much. Graeme Davis enjoyed it. Also reviewed is the Miskatonic U. Graduate Kit, which is a product I always thought was fun but never used as much as I like. DA3 City of the Gods for D&D continues the Blackmoor series. I13 Adventure Pack I is not actually part of the I series, more of the REF series. The general tone here is that WD is bored with D&D in general at this point. I can't say that I blame them. TSR at this point was in a bit of a rut.

Awesome Lies gives us the latest rumors. The draft of West End Game's new Star Wars game is discussed. It is fast to play and the play-testers hummed Vader's theme while playing. Cute. Also covered is the new non-TSR D&D adventure from Gary Gygax's new company New Infinities. I am not sure if this ever came out or not. I am pretty sure it didn't and my 20 second Google Search found nothing. I do remember the dust up over Gary's and GDW's "Dangerous Journey" and TSR.

Three page article on how to work for Games Workshop. Sorta tongue in cheek, sorta serious, has me scratching my head. Was GW needing a lot of people at this time?

For the Warhammer Fantasy article we cover familiar ground; the psychology of Elves, Dwarves and Halflings (and Gnomes). Long one and and an interesting read, but there isn't anything new here. Dwarves are stereotypical drunks and so on. A load of missed opportunity here if you ask me, especially if you consider the page count given to it.

Clarifications and Errata for the game Chainsaw Warrior. Anyone play this? I have never heard of it.

The "Featured" article is Demons and it is for RuneQuest 3rd Edition. I always rather liked the demons in RQ, they felt a little different than the ones in D&D and therefore had to be better. At 12 pages it goes into some detail. Most of the demons presented are unique and could be ported over to any game. Back in the day I would have worked out every detail of them to make sure their power was on par with their RQ counterpart. Today I am likely just use Balor stats and work from there. A lot of interesting creatures though.

Rescue the Paladin is an AD&D adventure for 5-8 players with characters level 6-8 by Carl Sargent. Interestingly enough it states it is NOT designed to use Unearthed Arcana. Though it is the first mention of "THAC0" I have seen in WD. Instead of classic rescuing the princess, this is rescue the Paladin, Sir Lawrence Le Bon (I didn't make that up). The antagonist is of course a woman named Janni who is a "witch in all but name". The PCs have to defeat her before she "violates Sir Lawrence's vow of chastity". This one would have been a hard sell to my group back then. AS can be expected I find Janni far more interesting than pretty much the rest of the adventure. But hey. That's me.

A couple of pages of Warhammer errata.
'Eavy Metal gives painting advice.
Thrice Upon a Time in Mega City 1 has three mini adventures for Judge Dredd. Again they look good in fact with a little tweaking they could work as hooks for a Mutant & Masterminds game. It also had me thinking that a Judge Dredd / ShadowRun crossover might be fun to try. Not that there is anything like ShadowRun in these to be honest, but it got me thinking all the same.

Letters and Small ads end this issue.

So the romance between D&D and WD is very much over and WD is just still mentioning D&D because they still have all the same friends. Still a lot of interesting things in this issue and the new style is really starting to come into it's own here.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Plays Well With Others

Starting a new semi-regular posting thing here.

I love all sorts of games. I love buying games. I don't always have time to play the games I want or I like things from one game and other things from other games. So I tend to mix things up a lot.

Plays Well With Others will be my you-got-peanut-butter-on-my-chocolate (or fish fingers and custard) posts where I take two or more books or games and mix them up to my tastes.

I have done some things like this in the past here already.

Witch Girls Adventures + WitchCraft RPG
Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea + Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts
Cortex, Savage Worlds and Witch Girls Adventures

I am sure there are others. I know I combined Star Frontiers and Traveller in the past and talked about it briefly.

I have some more here to post soon. Hope you all enjoy.

d20 Dark Ages: D&D Blog Challenge

Stelios V. Perdios over at d20 Dark Ages is going to be hosting a D&D themed blog challenge for February.

It is worth checking out.
http://d20darkages.blogspot.com/2014/01/d-40th-anniversary-blogging-challenge.html

Tentative list

I am going to be on board of course. I love things like this. I am also looking forward to seeing what everyone else does as well.

We get some grief in the old OSR for being nostalgia soaked. Some of that grief is actually warranted. But this is a big anniversary moment in the age of this hobby of ours and a little self reflection is fun and appropriate.

Now if I can only remember everything I did!

Monday, January 6, 2014

DriveThruRPG New Year, New Game

DriveThruRPG is running a sale for the new year. Get that game you wanted but didn't get for Christmas and now get it at 50% off.

Over 80 games to choose from so get there now and find your new game of the year.

The Day the Earth Froze

Bring me the Sampo!!!

Sorry, wrong "Day the Earth Froze".

My fridge says it is -17 outside and it is supposed to get colder.

No today is for many the first back to work day of 2014. Here in Chicago all the schools are closed so I am in my home office on Frankencomputer trying to work.

I was going to work on my project plans for 2014 today but dealing with snow, dangerous ice and trying to work remote is putting a cramp in that.

Plus it is too damn cold to think. I went out to shovel the end of my drive and in five minutes I went from "this isn't too bad" to "this is fucking awful!" Can't wait to start complaining about the heat again.

As soon as my brain defrosts some I'll have something intelligent to say.