D&D Rules Cyclopedia in Print again

The D&D Rules Cyclopedia often called the best one-volume D&D book there is, is now "back" in print.  Or at least Print on Demand.

This game covers the BECM of BECMI which is really what most people want anyway.
Really this book has everything.

For the longest time, I dismissed this book and felt stupid for that the second I read it.  At the time though I was in grad school and money was tight.  I have since picked up a couple of copies.

I would LOVE to run a game with this RAW (Rule As Written).  I have even talked about it here many times.

Now we can get copies of this fantastic version of the game in one volume in either soft or hard covers.  I'd get both if I had a current game of this going.

In any case, this is a great deal. Just have a look on eBay to see what these are going for used.

Weekend Gaming: Descent!

Sumer of 1982 I was in Jr. High.  My good friend Jon Cook was our regular DM only by dint he had been playing longer than my 2 and half years and he owned most of the hardcover books.  He also owned a copy of D1-2 Descent into the Depth of the Earth.  I remember flipping through it thinking how much fun it would be to run this adventure.  In my mind, it really was what made Advanced D&D "advanced".  That hex map was above and beyond anything I had seen up to that point.  I told myself that once I knew more about the game I would run that adventure.

Well, this weekend some 36 years later I finally made good on that promise.

The Order of the Platinum Dragon rode a mine cart down, down, down to the underdark (before it was even named such) and began their quest to find the drow responsible for getting the giants to raid the human lands.

The first session went great with the Order making it to the first checkpoint.  They tried to bluff their way through, but that only got them so far.  They had to fight their way out of the checkpoint.  They are now holed up in a side cave looking to heal.

(The Order, surrounded on all sides by Drow)

I have a bunch of material from a variety of sources. Enough to keep us busy for a while.

My wife even had to comment on how much fun we all seemed to have!  It really was worth all the weeks of prep and years decades of thought.  This is going to be great.

The boys are already plotting on how they can get the houses into a civil war to gain the advantage.

This Old Dragon: Issue #92

We are nearing the end of the mythic year 1984 where we had been warned that Big Brother is Watching You. Fast forward 34 years people ask why no one is watching them on YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and so on.  On the big screen, Beverly Hills Cop is still bringing in cash. Wham! Madonna and Daryl Hall and John Oates rule the airwaves. It's December 1984 and this Issue #92 of This Old Dragon!

Oh I am in for a treat today. This is one of my favorite issues, wonder how it stacks up to my memory.  For starters, we have another beautiful Denis Beauvais cover featuring a dragon attack. I always liked seeing dragons on the cover of Dragon.  Seemed to make the issue special to me.

A quick peek at the contents tells me this is a cleric-themed issue, so I know I would have loved it back then.

Letters are still focused on falling damage. Well, at least one letter is.  Back then I loved that stuff, I even wrote a program for my Casio programmable calculator to do it.  Which of course led to discussions of is the gravity of my game world the same as Earth?  Today I'll just roll a d6 per 10 feet and be done with it.

The Forum has some more thoughts from readers on Katharine Kerr's Issue #89 Forum discussion about evil PCs.  I tried to play in a game once full of evil PCs. Didn't work. No one could trust anyone long enough to get things done.

Big ad for the "First D&D Fantasy Novel" Dragonlance's Dragons of Autumn Twilight.  We are getting to the so-called "Hickman Revolution" in D&D.  1985, as I have mentioned here many times, was a transitional year for the game and TSR.  We only see the hints here, ones that only reveal themselves in retrospect.  Then? I had no clue! I Was thrilled to be gaming every weekend.

Our first real article is by none other than the man himself. Gary Gygax's From the Sorcerer's Scroll feature gives us Clerics Live by Other Rules.  Today this advice is given, but back then it was as close to heresy (pardon the poor choice of words) if it had not been from Gygax himself.  To summarize Clerics should get spells and use weapons unique to their faith.   We would later see this in 2nd Ed AD&D with the Priest of specific mythoi and in later editions with domain spells.  But what Gygax is saying here goes beyond the dozen or score spells that are different.

Paul Vernon is up with First, spread the faith which is all about clerics remembering what their purpose really is; they are on a mission from their gods (to quote the high clerics Jake and Elwood Blues).
Bruce Barber takes this one step further in his The more, the merrier: How clerics can find new followers. Or cleric conversion rules.  I remember getting a Xerox copy of this and stapling it to my cleric's character sheet. The problem I ran into is that there were never enough NPCs that were not trying to kill us to convert.  Still it is a nice long article and has some good clerical advice that can still be used in any game today.

Kim Eastland and Dan Sample have some text and pictures from the 1984 Gen Con miniatures open.  I never read these in detail, my money never went to minis back then, but I loved the little Jabberwock at the end and always wanted one.

Speaking of minis, next page over is TSR coming attractions featuring a set of metal minis for the Indiana Jones game.  I don't remember if they ever got made, but those would be a prize today.

Ahh.  One of my faves is up.  The Suel Pantheon from Len Lakofka.  In this, the last of the series, we get Lydia, Bralm, and Jascar.  One day I want to collect all of these (issues 86 to 90 and 92) and look at them as a single work.  These gods and their write-ups were a nice working model of what Gygax was saying above about how clerics need to be different.

Let the horse buyer beware is an article on how to buy horses from Robert Harrison who is obviously pulling on a lot of real-world knowledge he has.  While I don't find this article particularly useful to me I do admire the work that went into it.

The Ecology articles are back from Ed Greenwood. This time taking on Ettins in 'Duh Cology of...Duh Ettin!  Again, given to us in-universe, even though that universe will not be available for another 2 years.  I think this is the first time I began to think of Ettins as two-headed orcs rather than two-headed hill giants.

Ed is back for more in Pages from the Mages III, another favorite feature of mine.  In particular, I remember going on a quest to recover Aubayreer's Workbook having only the glyph as a clue.  I don't remember all the details save that the quest was dangerous and the spells in the book were a bit anti-climatic given the quest.  Not that the spells are bad (hardly!) it is the quest was that hard.
This is also, at least from what I can tell, our very first mention of The Simbul, "the shapeshifting Mage-Queen".  I guess she is looking for a copy of this book too! I think I see a plot hook for my next Realms game (and playing on the events in The Simbul's gift).  MAYBE that quest was only half of the tale! Maybe the other half was really to get this book to The Simbul.  I am only 30+ years late.   Thank you Ed!  Of course, that is only one of FOUR magic books. The others also have great history and potential for adventures. 

But Ed would later piss me off because I had written a Moonbow spell myself. Only mine was clerical and it was a spell given by Artemis/Diana to her clerics. My DM at the time told me it was too powerful at 5th level and here comes Ed with a similar spell, similarly named and his was only 4th level!

Book Reviews are up next.
One of the books reviewed is the famous "Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco.  Eco is required reading for anyone playing the WitchCraft RPG from Eden studios.  Name of the Rose needs to be required reading for anyone playing a cleric AND anyone who thinks playing a cleric is lame.

Our centerpiece is an adventure that I have ran on a couple of occasions. First it is for the D&D game (not AD&D).  Jon Mattson's The Sword of Justice.  It's nice little low-level adventure that can be snuck in between dungeons or other adventures. It is a nice mystery involving a missing sword, a mysterious elf (remember when elves were mysterious!) and a village full of scared but well meaning folk.  A tiny bit of tweaking here and there and it could be run under any edition of the game.  Yeah, even 4th (I thought about that version in particular. If I can convert it to 4th I can convert it to anything).

Big ad for the TSR 10th Anniversary game pack with four pages of game shops you can buy it from.  I checked the local listings and sadly only one or two reamin.  I am also kicking myself for not getting this.  Well...never had the chance really.

Let's see...
A review for the TOON game is up.  I liked the idea of this game, but never got a chance to play it.

Some advice for characters in DragonQuest, Going up and getting wet: How DRAGONQUEST natives climb and swim by Paul Montgomery Crabaugh.  DQ is another game I want to try someday.

The short fiction is The Multidimensional Caper by Mark Acres.  It is an interesting story and a good example of mixing D&D with Gangbusters.

The Ares section is up.
The Six Million Dollar Mutant covers cyborgs in Gamma World.

Jeff Grubb's Marvel Phile gives us some Heralds of Galactus.  I remember reading this one because I never understood the fascination with the Silver Surfer.  I got it, I think, a little more after this.

Ed going for three gives us (along with Penny Petticord) some answers to Star Questions on Star Frontiers.

Small ads and classifieds.
Con Calendar.

Ad from The Armory which looks exactly like the stand I bought some paint from over the weekend.

Wormy. Dragonmirth. SnarfQuest, where we are introduced to the Gagglezoomer for the first time.

Really a fun issue with a lot going on.  Plus it has a lot of material that I can still use today in my D&D 5e games.

Want to see what I was saying about White Dwarf at the same time? Check out White Dwarf Wednesday #60.

Witch & Witchcraft Reading Challenge: The Simbul's Gift

I am doing the Witch & Witchcraft Reading Challenge again this year, hosted by Melissa’s Eclectic Bookshelf.  This year I also want to focus on the Forgotten Realms, so I am going to combine my reading as much as possible.

So the obvious place (to me) to start is a book about The Simbul, the Witch Queen of Aglarond.  Is that what I got?   Well...

I had been warned previously that this was not a great book, and it isn't, but it is nowhere near as bad as I was lead to believe.  The author, Lynn Abbey, has a solid reputation in fantasy novels. Her work on the Thieves' World novels alone secures her place as one of fantasy's great authors.

So I guess I was suspecting more in this one.

We get a lot about the Simbul.  She is somewhat vain (ok a lot) and capricious, but she also has plans.  She wants to get her sometime paramour Elminster a gift. She scrys and sees the perfect gift, a horse named Zandilar's Dancer. Trouble is it belongs to a half-elf lad.  Her machinations over the horse get her and the owner Ebroin into all sorts of trouble, even drawing the attention of the Red Wizards of Thay.

While I loved the background on the Simbul and like the information on Thay and the Red Wizards I felt this was really three stories crammed into one. Watching her interact with Ebroin, either as herself or in disguise, and watching her interact with a couple of Red Wizards made me realize that the Simbul has a lot of acquaintances, a lot of enemies, but no close friends. Even her people fear her more often than not.  While she is not presented in the most favorable of lights here I could not help but really like her.  I could see how she got where she was and how disconnected she must feel from everything and everyone except Elminster (who is not really in this book at all).  I wonder if she actually loves him or feels she does since he is the only other person that could possibly relate to her.  There is affection for her sisters, but even the seem aloof to her.

In the end of the tale the horse is all but forgotten and even the reasons for stealing him or not stealing him seem moot.

The Simbul is a like a storm. She comes, she goes, and she can leave destruction in her wake. Despite (or because of) that she is still a fascinating character and one I would love to read more about.

You can find Lynn Abbey on the web here: http://www.lynnabbey.com

2018 Witch & Witchcraft Reading Challenge

Books Read so far: 1
Level: Initiate
Witches in this book: The Simbul, aka Alassra Shentrantra Silverhand.
Are they Good Witches or Bad Witches:
Best RPG to Emulate it: This book screams AD&D 2nd Edition.
Use in WotWQ: Yes.  The Simbul might end up being one of my central Witch Queens.

Forgotten Realms Date: 1368 DR

Wayward Sisters: I am the Fire

Supernatural is back with its midseason premiere, that is really a back-door pilot to the new Wayward Sisters spin-off.

Currently, the episode is one of the highest rated episodes of Supernatural in a long time and getting nearly universal critical praise.  This bodes quite well for the series.  Especially a series that will likely inherit the extremely loyal fan base that Supernatural has.

So here are my five wishes for the series.

1. Focus on the Family aspect.  The characters have all been survivors of various monster attacks and have all stood up in their own ways to those attacks.  Each one though lost something in those attacks.  Jodie, Clare, and Alex all lost their entire families. Donna lost her innocence and naïveté. Patience lost a very promising future.  So each one now looks to this group to help replace what they lost.  In Supernatural Sam and Dean have each other, but that is really it.  Everyone they have known over the years has died.  Well. More or less. This group can be stronger because they all have each other.

2. Don't Forget the differences.  Jodie and Donna are both Sheriffs. Clare and Alex both lost their families.   It might be what they all have in common that brought them here, it will be their differences that keep the show going.  We have seen Jodie be silly and funny. We have seen Donna be serious. So they can play against their "type".  Patience as the newest character has the most room for growth.

3. Give us Something New.  This show cannot be a distaff Supernatural. It needs its own identity and it's own voice.  Jodie isn't going to pack everyone up in her SUV and drive across country.  The stories have to be local and therefore more immediate and even intimate.   Also.  In the course of 13 years, the Winchesters have fought every type of monster there is. Every mythological beast, every horror movie standard, every urban legend.   Wayward Sisters needs to give us new things.  Sure I 100% expect to see ghosts, vampires, werewolves still AND I would miss them if they weren't there.  But this is a chance (and there is even an in-universe justification) to give us more.

4. Don't Forget the Music. One of the things that was a huge feature of Supernatural was it's "soundtrack".  Classic rock dominated the earliest days of the show.  This ran sort of counter to other shows on the WB and then CW at the time which featured new music.  Now the show has backed off of the music (disappointment), but that is the result of the producers knowing who their fans really are vs. who they thought they were.  Also, and let's be honest, it is cheaper.
One of the things about the WB then was that shows featured all sorts of new music.  Wayward Sisters needs to get back to that.  The CW is dominated now by Superhero shows and those don't often lend themselves to new music (Black Lightning I hope will be an exception).  Wayward Sisters can do this.  The mid-season trailer/opening (above) is like a music video for the Halestorm song "I am the Fire".  Embracing newer artists like Halestorm, and hopefully, more female artists will be a key factor in giving this show it's own identity and place in the CW lineup.

5. Remember What Made Supernatural Good.  Supernatural today is not the same show it was 12 seasons ago or even 6 seasons ago.  Somethings worked. Somethings didn't.  But there are reasons it is still on the air.  Wayward Sisters needs to tap into that as much as they can. Well minus the Sam and Dean part, which is a huge draw.  The female audience (who make up a lot of Supernatural's fan base) admittedly like the show for the eye candy (read some of the fan postings on boards sometimes).  Eye candy, while that can work here, is not going to have the staying power.  So instead the producers need to be conscious of something this time that they only did on accident with Supernatural; attract and keep that female audience.  They are going to have to tap into what made Wonder Woman such a success. Strong female characters who are not victims (anymore) and can do the job they need to do.   Or to quote the Halestorm song I am the Fire, "I am the one I've been waiting for."

Hopefully we will she this picked up (I am sure it will be) and hope it is good.

The Kids Are Alright, 2018

So. I got into it with one of the luminaries of the original RPG scene.  I am not going into any details (no need) save that I was a little more caustic than I should have been and I obviously hit a nerve.

But I have been seeing a lot of this around.  People not just bashing editions that are not their particular favorite (that always happens) but people bashing the players of those editions.  Often the ones doing the bash have zero knowledge and/or experience with the game in question.
Go to any group on Facebook and you will find people complaining about any edition newer than their own often with ideas of what they think is in the game but have nothing to do with the game at all.  When pressed I invariably get the same answers "oh I have not played it" or "I have neve even read it".

I am glad I did not argue the points further online, either with those groups or individuals. 

Later that day I was headed to our local fish market so my son could smoke some fish for us and we all stopped at my Favorite Local Game Store. 

That was a refreshing treat.

First off I was not planning on getting anything but they had this.

The Classic Creatures collection.  Including a giant Demogorgon, a purple worm, and Pig-snouted Orcs!  The owlbear looks like the AD&D 1 MM one, not the 5e one (I am partial to the 5e look myself).

So yeah I grabbed that.  My youngest son pointed out all of the families there.  And there were a lot, with some young kids.

One girl, maybe 9 or 10, was walking around with her dad holding her latest treasure; a collection of D&D 5th edition tiles for minis.  I saw other kids holding books for other new games and even a small group in the game room playing.

It dawned on me (though it should have been obvious).

They don't care what we say.  In fact, they are not even listening.

I have been gaming for close to 40 years now. I am full of advice.  They won't listen to a word of it.
And that is FANTASTIC!

They need to find their own ways, make this game their own, do what they want and damn what anyone else has to say because that is what is needed to keep the games alive.
The future is not ours. Only the present.

The kids will be doing fine despite us yelling to get off our lawn.

My son smoked some fish and worked up a Succubus race to play in D&D 5.

Kickstart Your Weekend: Castles & Crusades Monsters & Treasures

This one is probably my fault.

So earlier this week I was organizing my notes and books for my "Secret Castles & Crusades" project (coming to you soon).  And I was working through all my monsters.  I have the hardcovers, but I also print out my PDFs to organize my material/thoughts and scribble notes on them.

Then back on Monday Troll Lords posted this.


I showed them my pictures of my binder, talked about how much I want every monster in one book and now here we are.

Ok, in truth they were planning on reprinting the book anyway, but now there is a three-ring binder option.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/676918054/castles-and-crusades-monsters-and-treasures?ref=creator_nav

If you are a fan of Castles & Crusades then this is a must buy!