Friday Night Videos: Sojourn in Hell, Part 2

A while back I posted some songs to a "mix tape" I was calling "A Sojourn in Hell".
One of the things I didn't mention in the first post is how the collection of songs got together.

On September 10, 2001 I was working at my dream job at a dot com.  Yeah I'll admit it, I was making a ton of cash. It was the near the end of the Clinton economy and we were rolling investment capital.  And then the bottom dropped out and the dot com crash happened.  I was laid off and went home for lunch.

A year before I picked up the D&D 3.0 Player's Handbook, so I thought I would sit down and finish up my new 3.0 witch book, Liber Mysterium.  Napster had just died and had a ton of MP3s.

Then I sat at home the next day, September 11, 2001 and watched TV in horror.
What began, for various reasons that I will get into on a later date (if at all) my own Sojourn in Hell.

Today I can listen to these songs and they now mean something else to me.  They represent part of my life where I was deep into writing gaming material and producing it at a rate I have not matched.

One of the videos I loved the best in the early days of MTV was Peter Gabriel's "Shock the Monkey". The video was legitimately creepy and Gabriel was the only one who seemed to know how to use this new medium.  The Nu-Metal band Coal Chamber teamed up with Ozzy "Prince of Darkness" Osbourne to do a cover of this song.  It's good but lacks something the original had. Still though I really enjoy it.




For reasons I am not entirely sure of myself I really enjoy Eminem.  It's a guilty pleasure.  Kinda like listening to Spice Girls...er wait. Maybe not.  But the deal with Marshal is he is actually pretty damned talented.  This song has nothing to do with me getting laid off. Nothing. Really.
Plus I have to admit that Dr. Dre looking over to Eminem like he is an idiot throughout this video is great.




I know the pieces fit cuz I watched them tumble down
no fault, none to blame it doesn't mean I don't desire to
point the finger, blame the other, watch the temple topple over.

Tool is the thinking person's dark metal. Lateralus should go down in history with such albums as "The Wall". "Schism" is another song that spoke to me a lot during this time.




There is a rumor/story that when Trent Reznor first heard Johnny Cash's cover his song "Hurt" he was silent for a few minutes and then said "yeah. That's what I meant."  You would have a very difficult time convincing me that Cash's version is not the TRUE version.  Much like "All Along the Watchtower" is Jimi Hendrix's song and not Bob Dylan's, despite what the liner notes say.
This is, as my brother Dan says, like watching an old man slowly die before your eyes.




"Tales of Brave Ulysses" seems the odd one out here, but not really if you consider the feel I was going for in the books I working on then.  I guess to say it makes sense to me.




Deep Purple was always one of those bands I felt that people either got or they didn't. A little like Uriah Heep. "Hush" is notable for being the first song to go into the "Sojourn in Hell" folder on my old Gateway.



I wanted to end the collection on an upbeat note.  I figure I could do worse than the Wiseguys "Start the Commotion".

Tales from the Floating Vagabond...sorta

Back in the early 90s "Tales from the Floating Vagabond" was the game that people most wanted to play in my neck of the woods.  I knew a guy who had playtested it and could ramble of adventure ideas with the best of them.

This is not a post about that game.

This is a post about a place very, very, very much like the Floating Vagabond.

I present, "Hell's Club".



Think of it as Rifts: Disco.

Kickstart Your Weekend: C&C Classic Monsters

I love Castles & Crusades. I love monster books.  This is like the Milky Way Dark of sweet spots for me.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/676918054/castles-and-crusades-classic-monsters/

I am not sure how this one escaped my notice. There is only a little more than a week left.

I reviewed the 1st printing a while back and really enjoyed it. If this one makes it to a full color version it will be a treat.

Today

Today is heads down editing.  I have three projects that I need to get to editors/publishers.

Back tomorrow!

Class Struggles: The Dark Druid

I am have a great time here planning out my "War of the Witch Queens" adventures.  My 5th Ed game is running like a well oiled machine and there is nothing I need to plan for it for many more months (I need a high level adventure to cap it off).

This week I finally got a copy of an adventure I have been wanting forever; Dark Druids by Robert J. Kuntz.  It is a real treat and worth the wait and money I paid for it.

I had been researching Irish myths and legends and read about how Liath, Bodhmall, and Finn defeated an enemy known as the Dark Druid. It was quite a fascinating tale and I loved the idea of an evil druid.
I want to talk today about the Dark Druid class, but first a little background.
Many years ago I wrote an adventure for the Buffy RPG called The Dark Druid. Actually it was the first ever published Buffy adventure.   The adventure was a Willow and Tara focused adventure dealing with their past lives, Liath and Bodhmall, Finn MacCool and the Dark Druid "Fer Dorich".

The idea was compelling enough that Irish author Brian O'Sullivan took the same characters and same myths and put his own spin on them in his books the Fionn MacCumhail series.   Like I did he has Liath and Bodhmall as lovers and he even has a Dark Druid, a "Tainted One".  I bring this up because HIS Dark Druid is much cooler than mine.  Mine is simply evil.  His is a perversion of nature.  In gamer circles we might want to describe this in terms of undeath or even Cthulhoid like nastiness.   O'Sullivan is better than that.  His Tainted One radiates a level of "wrongness" that it is noticed my Ban-drui Bodhmall from miles away and even puts fear into the legendarily fearless Liath.
(BTW get his books. They are great!)

Back to my Dark Druid for a bit. The adventure was designed to be a modern tale (thus the Buffy) system.  Part 2 took place in Victorian times as Ghosts of Albion: Blight.  The main enemy was an unnamed necromancer that is imprisoned in a faerie ring.  In publishing it was the necromancer, Lord of Dragons from Ghosts of Albion: Embers.  In my personal games it was the same Dark Druid.
Part 3 was supposed to take place back in Mythic Éire and deal with Liath, Bodhmall, and Finn defeating the Dark Druid for the first time.  Three parts separated by time.   Part 3 was going to be called "All Souls Night" (after the Loreena McKennitt song).   It would have been for *D&D-ish and included the new classes the Dark Druid and the Green Knight.  I did write bits of of it for 3.0 and the Dark Druid and Green Knight live on as Prestige Classes (but I am not going to talk about those today).
I was going to release it, but now I don't have too.
Brian Young gave us the wonderful Codex Celtarum and the adventure Night of the Spirits for Castles & Crusades.  Night of the Spirits does pretty EVERYTHING I wanted to do with All Souls Night.  It even has a Dark Druid.

Dark Druids is a similar adventure. I am not reviewing the adventure yet, but I do want to talk about the class it offers; The Dark Druid.

The class is like the Druid of AD&D source; only this time OSRIC.  It can be any evil alignment or Chaotic Neutral.  This has some logic to it.  The book includes the Dark Druid class and two different sects of Dark Druids.  Dark Druids eschew hierarchies  so there are no "high priests" but many that might claim that title. There are "Dread Hierophants", but that really can be more about power than actual religious hierarchies.   Advancement wise they are like Druids. The only thing I didn't care for was that the Dark Druids are controlled by a demon.  I would think that they are controlled by something older and more evil.  An Eodemon or Urdemon or even some other horror from beyond; something outside of reality.  The book also comes with 42 new spells.  I did not see an OGL statement with any of this.
Given all this The Dark Druid would also make for a great class in Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.

I would avoid giving the Dark Druid too many necromantic spells. Sure he can have some, but that is not their role.  Some of the vivimancer spells from the Complete Vivimancer are a good choice.  Obviously there are some good witch spells as well.

There is a lot of potential for a class concept like this.

Demons Run...

Picked up the latest D&D5 adventure Out of the Abyss this weekend.  Part of their whole Rage of the Demons.

I am not planning on running this but there are a lot of cool ideas in it.  Heck it was worth it for me just for the D&D5 stats of the various demon lords.

There is a lot of similarities between this and the GDQ series, which is good for me.  Since I am still planning on running GDQ with my kids this all fits nicely.  The events of this module are what is going on in the Forgotten Realms while over in my little corner of the multiverse Lolth, Camatoz and *maybe* Orcus are doing their thing.


Time for good men and good women to go to war.

Friday Night Videos: Iron Maiden, Part 2

A while back I put up a bunch of Iron Maiden videos.

I figured since they have a new video, album and tour coming up it was time for that Part 2.

They cool thing about Maiden having new material out is the number of people that I have seen excited about it.  The cross-over with the people that I know who are all old-school gamers is both a little expected and cool at the same time.

Plus I am planning on some Amazing Adventures this weekend and Iron Maiden IS the official band of Amazing Adventures.  Ok, not really. But they should be.

Let's start off with their newest "Speed of Light". The video is an homage to all sorts of video games and styles from the last 4 decades. Even if you don't like Maiden this is a cool video.




"Run to the Hills" is one of my favorite Maiden songs. Another great from Maiden's golden age of Number of the Beast.  I have not seen this particular video for it before.




"Holy Smoke" is a fun video. Plus it is a great message that rang pretty clear to a young atheist.  From No Prayer for the Dying.




1984.  We played D&D while outside the world inched closer and closer to nuclear armageddon.  Maiden knew this even while tried to ignore it.  "2 Minutes to Midnight" from Powerslave reminded us everytime we played it.




Ever play a fighter? Ever play one in 1983? I bet this song came up at least one or twice. "The Trooper" from Piece of Mind.




I mentioned it last time but "Wasted Years" is one of my favorite Iron Maiden songs.  So imagine my delight when I find an all girl cover band The Iron Maidens doing a killer cover of Wasted Years.
Irons Up ladies, cause you fucking rock!