Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Owl & Weasel Wednesday #7 August 1975

Owl & Weasel #7 comes to us from August 1975.  I guess according to the editorial they were experiencing some uncommon heat then.  That is at least a explanation for the cover art.

Topics covered are the British Monopoly Championships, a set of rules for playing Frisbee (must have been the 70s) and coverage of a couple older (older even then) board games.

There is a quite a bit on Stalingrad, a game I still see played every so often.
The interesting bit is a letter from Action Games and Toys Ltd. They took exception in a page and quarter letter about the coverage from June on the London Toy Fair.

There is a letter complaining that the D&D combat system is "broken" since there is no way a goblin could ever hit a 20th level Lord with +5 plate, even 5% of the time.

Page 11 covers some more concepts in D&D like rooms and passages.
Finally there is a price list for more T.S.R. material.

Not a landmark issue by any stretch, interesting for the questionable line art, pink paper and the continued inclusion of D&D.

ETA: D&D pages.


#RPGaDAY Day 27, Game You’d like to see a new / improved edition of…

#RPGaDAY Day 27, Game You’d like to see a new / improved edition of…

That's easy.

C.J. Carella's WitchCraft RPG

There have been two editions so far. 1st Ed was from Myrmidon Press.


The more popular 2nd edition was from Eden Studios.


I would love to see (or better yet write!) a new 3rd Edition.

For a 3rd Edition I would like to see the course creation more streamlined. Like you see in the Cinematic Unisystem books.  Make the base rules the same as Beyond Human and add in some material from Armageddon (which looks very dated now).

I would also increase the number of Lesser Supernaturals you could play and bring the Bast under that group.   I would also provide an appendix for adding Cinematic style Drama points to the Classic game.

As much as I love the magic system in Ghosts of Albion I would keep the Essence based metaphysics of WitchCraft.  But I think I would also include the Ghosts/Buffy system as a lesser form of spell casting.

Though I will admit a 3rd edition is a hard sell.  Currently Eden gives WitchCraft away for free (sans art).
And in truth it would be very, very hard to top that cover.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

#RPGaDAY Day 26, Coolest character sheet

#RPGaDAY Day 26, Coolest character sheet

Hard call.  I love character sheets.

The original AD&D sheets were not works of art, but they certainly fueled my imagination like no other.
I loved the "new" sheets for Mage the Ascension when it came out.

My favorite sheets though are some I made myself.
- WitchCraft RPG
- my hybrid Cinematic/Classical Unisystem sheet and character journal.

There are a lot of great custom sheets over at Mad Irishman and a lot of classic and original sheets at RPGSheets.com.



Monday, August 25, 2014

What is Missing from D&D 5?

So the D&D 5 lovefest is continuing across the internet and assuming the world (it was Amazon's #1 best seller in all books for a bit).  It seems to do everything everyone wants.

But is it missing anything?
Now before some snarks off and says "yeah the Monster Manual and DMG" take a moment to think about it.

I have played it quite a bit now and really it does everything I think it should do.
Though I have to admit I miss "Bloodied" as a condition.
Part of what I want here is covered under Exhaustion.  It even makes sense now that hp are also a measure of fatigue.

But I wonder how it would work it adapt 4e's Bloodied in to 5e.

Something like if you (or a monster) are at half or lower than your max hp then you have combat disadvantage till you get above the half-way mark.

Not sure how well it works with the current healing and resting rules though.

#RPGaDAY Day 25, Favourite RPG no one else wants to play

#RPGaDAY Day 25, Favourite RPG no one else wants to play

At home it is Ghosts of Albion.  Yeah, I can't even get my own kids to play my game!

Outside of that no one seems interested in any of the World of Darkness games.

Sunday, August 24, 2014

#RPGaDAY Day 24, Most Complicated RPG Owned

#RPGaDAY Day 24, Most Complicated RPG Owned

I honestly don't keep many complicated games around.  I play to have fun, not to torture myself with terrible rule sets.

RoleMaster is probably the most overly complicated game I ever owned.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Zatannurday: Zatanna Cosplay at Gen Con 2014

I didn't get a ton of pictures of Zatanna at Gen Con this year. Nor did I find any others online.
But what I lack in quantity I made up for in quality! At least I hope so.

Again, I didn't get anyone's names.