Chatted with the family and we are heading to Gen Con again this year.
So far we have no big plans. Last year was dedicated to D&D5, this year no plans yet.
I might run something. I have a couple of Ghosts of Albion games I would love to run.
The kids are thrilled. I am excited.
Looking forward to it!
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Zatannurday: Zatanna and Constantine
This certainly means we won't see John and Zee together on the screen anytime soon.
So here they are on the smaller screen.
Bleedin' Las Vegas by conjob1989 on DeviantArt
Zatanna and Constantine by m0nstersInside on DeviantArt
Constantine And Zatanna That old Black magic... by samayoa on DeviantArt
Surprise by armadillo-CDQ on DeviantArt
Justice League Dark Combo by elena-casagrande on DeviantArt
Commission - Deadman, Constantine, Zatanna by tyrannus on DeviantArt
Zatanna and John Constantine by montrosity on DeviantArt
Hope we get to see more!
Friday, January 16, 2015
Happy Anniversary Hero Press!
Today Tim Knight is celebrating 8 years of blogging with Hero Press!
http://heropresstwo.blogspot.com/2015/01/eight-years-of-heropress.html
A very worthy achievement.
You can see his first post here and it gives you no indication of how useful or how vital Hero Press has become.
For me Hero Press is usually where I hear about all things comic, movie, sci-fi television or gaming first. All with a style and a quality that I think only Tim can bring to it.
Let's all be honest here, blogging is as much about personality as it is about content. Sometime those personalities can be so grating that it drowns out the content. This is not so with Tim Knight.
I always feel like the implied welcome is "come on in, have a pint, hey did I happen to tell you about this thing that has me really excited right now?..."
No one has ever said a bad thing about Tim Knight or Hero Press ever.
Yeah I know I was just railing against personality cults last night. But it doesn't count if the person is a genuine nice guy.
So please join me in celebrating Tim's great accomplishment. Stop by Hero Press now and give Tim your congratulations.
I want to hear more about the Acrobatic Flea and Barney the Bunny and how your kids are doing. Keep telling us more about the new TV shows you are getting before we do and visa versa.
You have kept us entertained and informed for 8 years. Here is 8 more!
http://heropresstwo.blogspot.com/2015/01/eight-years-of-heropress.html
A very worthy achievement.
You can see his first post here and it gives you no indication of how useful or how vital Hero Press has become.
For me Hero Press is usually where I hear about all things comic, movie, sci-fi television or gaming first. All with a style and a quality that I think only Tim can bring to it.
Let's all be honest here, blogging is as much about personality as it is about content. Sometime those personalities can be so grating that it drowns out the content. This is not so with Tim Knight.
I always feel like the implied welcome is "come on in, have a pint, hey did I happen to tell you about this thing that has me really excited right now?..."
No one has ever said a bad thing about Tim Knight or Hero Press ever.
Yeah I know I was just railing against personality cults last night. But it doesn't count if the person is a genuine nice guy.
So please join me in celebrating Tim's great accomplishment. Stop by Hero Press now and give Tim your congratulations.
I want to hear more about the Acrobatic Flea and Barney the Bunny and how your kids are doing. Keep telling us more about the new TV shows you are getting before we do and visa versa.
You have kept us entertained and informed for 8 years. Here is 8 more!
Thursday, January 15, 2015
I Want My Own Cult
Seriously. Where do I sign up for that?
I spent part of my day arguing with a group of people (non gamers) about something and despite overwhelming, demonstrable evidence to the contrary of their opinion I and my small band of like minded rationalists were overwhelmed by their cult like mentality.
I could not even get to click on one link to Snopes that destroyed their entire argument.
I left that after my wife told me to stop poking the zoo animals with pointy sticks. I came back to it just an hour ago to find the situation far worse. I did the only sensible thing. I gave up.
Come back here to the safe haven of RPGs only to see more Cult of Personality type behavior and the inexplicable fawning over people vs. ideas.
So while I am watching these two "cults" fight each other over who thought up what ever idea first I have decided I want my own cult.
It really shouldn't take much. I'll post like I always do. You just agree with what I say! You don't even have to read what I posted! I get a sense of self-worth, you get that nice warm feeling of belonging to something larger than yourself. Best part is when I eventually do something really stupid you have deep conversations with people on what it was I was really saying or not. And when I totally go off the deep end you can have a moment of clarity and talk about how you knew all along I was full of shit!
So how about it? Join my Cult of Personality. No weird initiations. No fees. But if I get enough people then maybe we can have a secret handshake. Or a secret milkshake. Whatever.
I could not even get to click on one link to Snopes that destroyed their entire argument.
I left that after my wife told me to stop poking the zoo animals with pointy sticks. I came back to it just an hour ago to find the situation far worse. I did the only sensible thing. I gave up.
Come back here to the safe haven of RPGs only to see more Cult of Personality type behavior and the inexplicable fawning over people vs. ideas.
So while I am watching these two "cults" fight each other over who thought up what ever idea first I have decided I want my own cult.
It really shouldn't take much. I'll post like I always do. You just agree with what I say! You don't even have to read what I posted! I get a sense of self-worth, you get that nice warm feeling of belonging to something larger than yourself. Best part is when I eventually do something really stupid you have deep conversations with people on what it was I was really saying or not. And when I totally go off the deep end you can have a moment of clarity and talk about how you knew all along I was full of shit!
So how about it? Join my Cult of Personality. No weird initiations. No fees. But if I get enough people then maybe we can have a secret handshake. Or a secret milkshake. Whatever.
Quagmire
This has been passed around a lot lately, but still an interesting read.
The development of the module Quagmire by Merle Rasmussen.
https://medium.com/@increment/quagmire-the-making-of-a-1980s-d-d-module-c30e788ea5f2
The article is less about module design than it is about commercial module development. It is insightful on how things were created in the heyday of TSR. Also if you look hard enough you can even see the seeds of TSR's eventual demise here.
I post this though because it is an interest footnote to me. I remember this adventure. I picked it up and completely gutted it because what I wanted was a swamp with a tower in it. All that hard work detailed above and I chucked it all!
This article did make me want to pull my old copy out, but I remembered that it was one of the many pre-2e materials I lost back in the mid-90s. Thankfully I do have the PDF. I might use it in my current game, but everything is so packed now I fear I will end up doing exactly what I did in the past; chuck the adventure and make it an interesting locale to stop over in.
The development of the module Quagmire by Merle Rasmussen.
https://medium.com/@increment/quagmire-the-making-of-a-1980s-d-d-module-c30e788ea5f2
The article is less about module design than it is about commercial module development. It is insightful on how things were created in the heyday of TSR. Also if you look hard enough you can even see the seeds of TSR's eventual demise here.
I post this though because it is an interest footnote to me. I remember this adventure. I picked it up and completely gutted it because what I wanted was a swamp with a tower in it. All that hard work detailed above and I chucked it all!
This article did make me want to pull my old copy out, but I remembered that it was one of the many pre-2e materials I lost back in the mid-90s. Thankfully I do have the PDF. I might use it in my current game, but everything is so packed now I fear I will end up doing exactly what I did in the past; chuck the adventure and make it an interesting locale to stop over in.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Owl & Weasel Wednesday #24 March 1977
The issue is pretty solid really. Very, very much like what we will expect to see in White Dwarf.
Though they do start off with some pretty bad game fiction. Yes it is supposed to be humorous. but I got bored with it really fast.
Page 5 gives some advice on dungeon mapping. Not bad really, but very much an "early days" sort of article. You don't see stuff like this outside of blogs anymore.
In typical O&W fashion there is a naked angel at the bottom of the page telling us "the end is nigh! See page 11 for details."
Pages 6 and 7 are dedicated to the D&D Day hall and schedule. It runs 10 hours and there competitions for best mini, best room and best magic item. I do admit a certain level of curiosity to know what won.
Pages 8 and 9 give us some meat to chew on. We have two new character classes. The Samurai and the Psionist. The Samurai is what you would expect; it is a take on the fighter with more attacks per round and an unarmed attack. Not a lot in terms of flavor, but that was supposed to be what the player brought to the table and what the DM gave a background for.
On the other side of the coin we have the Psionist. Using the psionics rules from Eldritch Wizardry this class excels in psionic attacks, defenses and effects, but not much else. They get a d4 for hp and then after level 10 they get .5 hp per level! Their powers are determined by level and they have a 15% cum chance per level to develop another random talent. There are Standard and Special abilities. Despite it's lack of detail the class looks pretty solid and playable. I could have used this class back in 1989 when I was playing an OD&D campaign with psychic (not exactly psionic) characters. It is also something my youngest would like.
There are also some new weapons, interestingly enough nothing particularly related to either class.
Pages 10 and most of 11 are dedicated to the 80 names of people in the D&D society. This is the full list to date. Bottom of page 11 is the announcement that next issue is the last issue of Owl & Weasel. Ian and Steve tell us that they want to shift focus to more SF/F games with an occasional dip into other games. The new magazine will be called White Dwarf and have higher production values. Subscriptions will transfer over to White Dwarf from Owl & Weasel unless of course you don't want to.
Finally Page 12 covers all the games that Games Workshop has to offer in their store. Far more than a year ago.
This is the most "White Dwarf-y" feeling issue to date. In fact, other than the size and layout it feels more like White Dwarf #1 than Owl & Weasel #1.
Next week, The End.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Crisis on Infinite Earths
This month is the 30th anniversary of the the biggest event in comics history. Well. At least from my point of view. In truth if it had not been for 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths we would not have seen a lot of the big events in comic we have seen over the last 30 years. That can be good or bad.
Sure Marvel's Secret Wars predates it by almost 6 months, but Crisis was a much bigger deal to me.
At the time I was reading a lot of sci-fi and I loved the idea of alternate Earths, parallel dimensions and all that good stuff. One of my favorite books from the time was Fredrick Pohl's "The Coming of the Quantum Cats" (1986) and Robert A. Heinlein's "Job, A Comedy of Justice" (1984).
I have always wanted to do my own Crisis-like arc. Back in the day it wasn't too difficult of a prospect. Back then we all played in Oerth. Greyhawk was the campaign setting of choice. The idea was to do a huge Crisis like event and in the end have all of our worlds merged into one.
Later I thought about doing it with different systems; where each Earth was represented by a different game system.
Needless to say it has left a deep imprint in my psyche.
Now in DC we are coming up the new Multiversity.
The optimistic would say it has been all part of a larger super-arc. The pessimist would say that DC is out of ideas and cashing in on their last good one 30 years ago.
One day I will do a Crisis-like campaign in one of my games. Maybe something like CoIE where it is a large in scope but limited in duration sort of mini-campaign.
In any case I am sure it would be fun.
Sure Marvel's Secret Wars predates it by almost 6 months, but Crisis was a much bigger deal to me.
At the time I was reading a lot of sci-fi and I loved the idea of alternate Earths, parallel dimensions and all that good stuff. One of my favorite books from the time was Fredrick Pohl's "The Coming of the Quantum Cats" (1986) and Robert A. Heinlein's "Job, A Comedy of Justice" (1984).
I have always wanted to do my own Crisis-like arc. Back in the day it wasn't too difficult of a prospect. Back then we all played in Oerth. Greyhawk was the campaign setting of choice. The idea was to do a huge Crisis like event and in the end have all of our worlds merged into one.
Later I thought about doing it with different systems; where each Earth was represented by a different game system.
Needless to say it has left a deep imprint in my psyche.
Now in DC we are coming up the new Multiversity.
The optimistic would say it has been all part of a larger super-arc. The pessimist would say that DC is out of ideas and cashing in on their last good one 30 years ago.
One day I will do a Crisis-like campaign in one of my games. Maybe something like CoIE where it is a large in scope but limited in duration sort of mini-campaign.
In any case I am sure it would be fun.
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