B/X Companion in PDF

One of the things I like most about the OSR are the products that don't give me things I already have, but things I have always wanted or never knew I needed.

B/X Companion is one of those products. (You can read all I have said about it in the past.)

Well it is now finally out as a PDF. Please stop by DriveThruRPG or RPGNow to get your copy.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/103412/B-X-Companion?affiliate_id=10748&

So if you have been waiting for this one, her is your chance.

Gods of the New Game

I still don't have a name yet for my new Realms based 4e game, but things are coming together really nice.

Now back when I said I didn't know anything about the Realms. Well that wasn't true.  I don't know much about the lands or the peoples.  I have no idea where Elminster is from, but I could pick him out in a police line up.   But one thing I do know about is the gods of the Realms.
Back when I was working on my first Witch netbook I picked up what was at that time my only Realms specific book, Faiths & Avatars.  I wanted some more info on various gods, various 2nd ed Kits and the human deities. Later I picked up Powers & Pantheons and Demihuman Deities.

So Gods, I know.
I have been playing around with the plots lines of the Spellplague and the events in HPE modules.
And I have decided that I have killed of a number of the Gods.

Here is who is living and who is dead and why.

Bahamut has taken on Tyr's and Torm's portfolios. Torm was killed by Asmodeus. Is now a greater power.

Bane - Dead. Why? can't stand him.  Plus I need Asmodeus as a greater threat. He killed Bane and absorbed all his power and portfolio.  Part of his Reckoning of Hell.  Asmodeus is still keeping Tharizdun chained up deep in Hell.

Kelemvor - Was killed by Orcus in the demon lord's attempt to regain his godhood.  In my games Orcus was not a human that rose up through the ranks of demon-hood, but rather he was Death Primordial/Titan that had the powers of a god.  He had been denounced and banished to the Abyss.  He is searching for an artifact to give him ultimate power.

Mystra is dead, as per the book.  But she won't stay that way for long.

The Raven Queen - from the D&D core and not the Realms I know.  She is alive, but she has not come into her power at all.  In fact she is currently in the guise of a teenage girl ala Death from the Endless.  She is the vessel of Kelemvor's power.

Sehanine, Selûne and Shar are much as they are in the books. However in my world there is also a heresy and a cult dedicated to the "Triune Goddess" or the "Triple Moon Goddess" who believe that all three deities are merely part of the same greater goddess.  They are respectively the Maiden, Mother and Crone.
The mother, Selûne,  is pregnant with the infant Mystra.   Since Kelemvor is dead, Shar is pulling double duties till the young Raven Queen is ready.

Others will appear (or die) as needed.

The Road to Winterhaven

The first session of my kids new D&D4 group happened yesterday and fun was had by all.

The road to Winterhaven has it's issues, but yesterday the band of heroes-to-be gathered together to defeat the kobold ambush.  Present were Dracnil, a Dragonborn Paladin/Warlord, Swift aka "The King" a Bard, Hunter a Ranger, Glock the Halfling theirf, Calinndin an Elandrin Swordmage, Drac of the North a Mul Barbarian and Nevar Bloodbrow a Dwarven Cleric.

Some time was spent on getting characters made and the first encounter.  There was also an impromptu skill challenge when one of their fellow passengers was missing after the combat.  Even the natural 20 from the Ranger could find no trace of her.

So far they have the mystery of the missing girl, a symbol they are sure represents some cult, and three of the seven have been hired to investigate the rest of the kobolds.

I am going to add in some bits of the Winterhaven I was working on back in 2003.  It was conceived as a town where witches roamed free.  The D&D4/Nentir Vale Winterhaven is different, but it sits on a nexus point of the Material World, the Shadowfell and the Feywild.   So there is more here than meets the eye.

I thought the kids did really well yesterday, especially the two that had never played before (though I guess their mom was a big player of Werewolf back in college).  In fact I think the extra XP award for best role playing has to go to one of the new kids (who is the youngest) and the next oldest (though he has been playing a lot longer).  In fact it was Drac of the North (one of the youngest) that got extra experience points for being the first to notice the missing girl.

Given how yesterday went the combat was long, but not much different than my 3.x game.  That will change I know.  Also as the kids (and I for that matter) become more accustomed to the rules things will move along better.

Next session is not for another 2 weeks, so progress will be a bit slow, but I think it will be fine.

No name for the group yet, I am going to let the kids choose.

Tomorrow it Begins!

Tomorrow I start my* new D&D group.  

So far where is what we know.

• We are playing D&D 4th Edition with the plan of going from 1st to 30th level
• I will have *7* players aged 8 to 12 1/2
• We are playing in the Forgotten Realms as it is in the 4th Ed books.
• We are going to do the H-P-E Modules starting with "The Keep On the Shadowfell"

Two of the kids are mine. Three are the sons of my friend Greg and two are friends of my oldest son.  The two new kids have never played anything before.

Greg's kids have played a lot of games, mine have played a variety of D&D games, most notably our 3.x Dragon Slayers game.

We are going with the Orcus wants to become the God of Death plot line.  The differences will be that it's Kelemvor that has died due to the Spellplauge and the Raven Queen is only a Godling, her power untapped. This makes her a more likely target to Orcus than the mature Raven Queen.  I'll admit there are some things from Amber Benson's "Death's Daughter" that I want to try out too.   I am still doing many of the ideas from this post back in 2010, except these characters are not the descendants of the 3.x characters and I am going to smash a world into this one.  

Honestly I think it is going to be great.  4e has it's detractors, but we still had fun with it.  Plus my son plays in a Castles & Crusades game with 3 of the other kids listed above and my two boys are still finishing up their 3.x game where I used all the old 1st Ed modules.  We get to do all sorts of schools here.

(*really my son's)

LinkWithin

Well I have been trying out LinkWithin on my blog for the 3rd time (or maybe the 4th) and this time it seems to work much better.

In earlier versions of the Other Side layout I had written large parts of my own CSS. The new Blogger layout now gives me the advanced features I wanted without needing to muck around with coding.  That is nice since my own coding also has disabled some of the nicer comments features.  It also was not very compatible with LinkWithin.

Well now it seems to work better.  I am not seeing how the algorithm works; for example how a post on the Zatanna and Hex Girls will also direct you to Dracula, Shakespeare, and D&D Basic.  But I guess in my world that makes sense.

The one thing I am noticing that my hits for older pages are way up.  That is a good thing.  I have over 1200 posts here now, some of that older stuff has to be good too!

Do you like the LinkWithin widget?  Are you finding any hidden treasures, not just here, but any blog that uses it?

My Game Room needs a HUGE map

Custom Bandit Signs

So a bit ago I was approached by Nathan Beddome of "Signs on the Cheap" and "Banners on the Cheap" with an idea of printing up a large game map for my game room.

Well I have always wanted a large map of Victorian London on my  wall so I responded back and we got to chatting.

Today I got the file formats I needed to know about so I am going to give it a try.

This is a very different kind of market for both me and his company.  Afterall I rarely if ever need vinyl banners and I am sure they print up much stuff for gamers.  So I am quite curious to see how this will all turn out.

I will keep you all posted on how it works out and all that good stuff.
Now I just need to find a good image file (that I own) for this!  So far though things have been pretty easy going.

White Dwarf Wednesday #21

Miss me?  Sorry for the delay last week.  This has been a busy time at work and I have been taking it home with me at night to do instead of this.
Let's get down to business. 

Issue #21 is from Oct/Nov 1980 and it is off to a good start with some cool late 70s/early 80s wizard art.  A lone star focused through gems reveals a fighter in battle.  If it were redone today the gem would be d20 shaped.

We have an ad for Ariel games which in a bit of neat synchronicity features a game reviewed earlier today by James at Grognardia, The Mystic Wood.  This and four other pages of ads follow.

The editorial is another "Ripped from todays blog roll" on whether or not the Vancian magic system is outdated.  Interesting really.  This is 1980, not 2012 and the D&DNext playtest discussion.  Though maybe they should read this editorial.  Not that the offered solution, the power point system in RuneQuest, is much more modern today, but it bears thinking about.
There is also a note about their production artist, Robert Owens, who was killed in a crash.  

Andrew Finch gives us a new D&D class based on The Chronicle of Thomas Covenant.  "Lore of the Land" features the Lore Lords.  They are an uber spell casting class that can combine their spell casting levels to cast more powerful spells and increasing the fighting ability of others.  Something like a hyper-bard. Also detailed are Rhadmaerl, or a new type of magic user based on the Lore of Stone and the Hirebrand or Lillianrill, magic uses based on the Lore of Wood. And finally the Bloodgurd, a type of fighter.  If you are a fan of the novels then these might be fine, but as character classes they look a little over powered, with the exception of the Bloodguard.

Roger E. Moore gives us a bit on Merchants.  Including what they do and an NPC class for them. Very much an example of the early days when every profession had to be detailed as a class.

Open Box review Azhanti High Lightning, one of the classic classics of Travleler. Andy Slack gives it 8/10, James gives it a little bit more detail.  Roger Sandell reviews Intruder from Task Force Games, giving it a 6/10. He states it is a "good idea, but needs improvement".   John Lambshed reviews another Task Force Games entry, Valkenburg Castle.  This one fares better at 8/10.

Letters deals with important issues like alignment and why does a lantern burn for 24 hours but the same flask of oil thrown lasts only a round.

Up nest is another complete mini-game Survival by Bob McWilliams. Seems simple and quick to play.

Treasure chest is upping their game this issue with a bunch (15) new spells.

Fiend Factory gets a huge makeover this issue.  For starters the layout is better and the monsters are all grouped by a theme. In this case wilderness monsters for characters of 5th to 7th level.
The font used to write the monsters' names is now a plain one, not the stylized art font unique to every monster.  Monstermarks are still included.  The monsters themselves also seem to have been taking up a notch in terms of design.  The jokey monsters are gone, replaced with real threats. This issue gives us The Brothers of the Pine (undead full of magical pine sap), Chthon (a living rock), Enslaver (a small pool of mercury that controls others), Micemen (the results of Brownie/Orc crossbreeding), Dragon Warriors (created from the teeth of dragons), Grey Sqaargs (a race of evil automata) and a Cyclops.

Starbase, the Traveller feature, continues with a mini "situation" for Traveller.  We would call these an Encounter today.

S. Hartley presents the Tomb of the Maharaja, an AD&D mini-module for 6-10 3rd and 4th level characters.  It is a nice little dungeon crawl that could be completed in one night.

Up next are some ads, including this one from Games Workshop that really got my attention.

Remember when I said at the start of this that anything British was automatically cool in my teenaged mind.
Here is a better scan of the Doctor Who board game that I mentioned last time.

With issues 20 and 21 we see a shift in WD to a more mature gaming magazine.  The jokey monsters and classes are going away and focus on other games, like Traveller, is keeping the focus more of serious gaming material.

Let's see if this trend continues.

Links
Some links to other White Dwarf retrospective reviews

An older RPG Net thread that goes issue by issue
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?405199-In-which-I-read-White-Dwarf-from-issue-1

A newer EN World one that reviews 10 issues at a time to get a better perspective on the overall trends.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/325009-white-dwarf-first-100-issues-read-through-review.html

And other Magazine retrospectives:

Grognardia takes us back to the future every Tuesday with his Ares retrospectives.

Land of Nod does Dragon by Dragon every Sunday.